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The Ark
By : Dunkelgelb
Category: InuYasha > General
Views: 2034 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own InuYasha, nor make money from this story.
Chapter List
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Good writing, but a ridiculous premise. Discarded.

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Battlefield 1542
Chapter I: A Way Out
West City, 57 miles NW of Kanazawa, Japan, 2137 CE
West City, by the middle of the 22nd century, had become the most developed and heavily-populated metropolis in all of Eastern Asia. This radical growth had been spurred on by the Capsule Corp's continued and almost monopolistic dominance over the development and sale of advanced electronic equipment, both for the civilian and military market. Being the center of the World Martial Arts Tournament greatly increased its importance, too. In fact, the city had grown to be so large it had to be disconnected from the mainland, moved sixty miles into the Sea of Japan, and anchored to the sea floor. The city now sat waterlocked, a quintet of man-made islands connected by mile-long underwater and above-water bridges. Even with this expansive measure, the city was practically on the verge of spilling over into the sea; each island was easily the size of New York, and some buildings came withing twenty yards of the water, the only division being a thick, steel-reinforced concrete wall surrounding each urban sprawl. The whole thing could be easily seen from space.
It was a beautifully sunny late afternoon and the only clouds in sight hovered high up in the stratosphere. It seemed to always be sunny in West City, the sea air did wonders for the weather. The city looked polished and clean in the fresh light of the low afternoon sun, its aerodynamically-designed, aluminum-skinned buildings gleaming brightly. West City was alive and bustling with activity, with people driving to and from work, to the shopping centers, and the schools. Every one of the millions who lived there felt wonderful and proud that they were living in such a hub of activity. All except one.
He sat on top of the city's TV station, which stood higher than any other structure around. His legs dangled over the edge of the roof and his heels every so often tapped the wall behind them. He lifted his head from his folded arms, which were resting on the middle rung of the safety rail that lined the concrete edge. This lone man wore a loose-fitting pair of golden-yellow training pants, and a blue, double-breasted training gi. His boots were scoffed and dusty from years of hard hand-to-hand combat, and his jet black hair spiked out in every direction, wavering slightly in the wind, as if it were standing some kind of watch over his head.
For 140 years, Goku had not been happy for one solitary second. After he and Vegeta killed Li Shenron, the true incarnation of the Eternal Dragon demanded that Goku follow him and absorb all of the power of the Dragonballs into his being, presumably to give them some much needed rest within his pure-of-heart body. When a person, any person, intakes that much energy, the line between life and death blurs somewhat and becomes a sort of half-life, enveloping that person in perpetual limbo. Because of this, Earth's absolute mightiest had gained immortality and outlived his family and friends, watching them die from simple old age. He sat on top of the TV station for a reason; it lay on the procession route of a certain funeral.

Pan was dead.
Main Street fell quiet as a funeral stretcher, which supported a lifeless form wrapped in the Japanese flag and carried by six black-clad mourners, crept its way down the exact center of the road, making its way to the World Tournament stadium. Men, women, and children alike whispered amongst themselves, discussing the stretcher's occupant. Even in the 22nd century, Mr. Satan's purported and legendary defeat of both Cell and Majin Buu resounded with proud fervor. Back then, he was a hero. Nearly two centuries later, he was seen as a deity. Some of that reverence rubbed off on Pan, if only because she was his granddaughter. Despite this, Pan herself didn't want her body to be paraded around, though she suspected somebody would step in and turn it into a national event. Thousands lined the sidewalks in perfect rows and columns, knelt low in respect to the Mr. Satan's offspring. Goku just couldn't object.
The saiyan warrior smiled sadly at the sight below him. It was a spectacle to see that such an enormous number of people turned out to bid farewell to his granddaughter. Truthfully, she deserved it. She was an excellent fighter, and though she wasn't the defining advantage in any of the major battles for control of Earth, she was certainly an asset. Sadly, with Pan's passing an age came to end; the Z Warrior was a thing of the past. True, Goku Jr. and Vegeta Jr. were perfectly good i exhibitioni0 warriors, but their hearts weren't into full-time planetary defense. They took normal occupations. Goku Jr., now in his twenties, found a job as a mechanical engineer. Vegeta Jr, fitting his militaristic heritage, designed weapon propellants for sale to any interested military. Realistically, there was no harm in this, as the legend of the Earth saiyans spread far and wide across the galaxy, and anyone interested in self-preservation steered well clear of the entire star system. Furthermore, the nations most directly affected by Cell and Buu in the 20th century, namely the Russian Federation and Japan, formed a competent defense coalition on their own, combining the old android designs of Dr. Gero with the engineering capacity of Capsule Corporation to create the entirely independent Earth Defense Force.
The stretcher continued down the street. Goku could recognize only three of the carriers. Goku Jr. was there, along with Vegeta Jr., but there was someone he hadn't expected. Right behind his namesake was the timeless Android 18. Goku was amazed that she was still alive. Here she was, 130-plus years after he disappeared, and there was not even the slightest hint of any age on her. Shaking this thought aside, Pan's grandfather leapt down from his perch to the rooftop of the building below, then across to the next one and the next one as the funeral procession arrived at the looming World Tournament Stadium. It was a massive, black plexiglass dome, with riveted steel walls securing it to an elevated, circular, and stepped concrete slab. Massive gears creaked and the two blast-proof doors at the front of the stadium groaned open with a mechanized whirr, revealing the darkness shrouded interior. As soon as Pan's carriers set foot on the bleached tile floor of the fighting ring, six giant torches, each radially distributed around the stadium's circumference, blazed to life. In the center of the ring lay an elevated concrete block, on which sat an unlit funeral pyre. Its two attendants stood tall and proud on either side.

The first wore essentially one color: panzer grey, which was a mix of white, black, and blue. His outfit was militaristic in nature, an odd cross between an officer's uniform and the combat fatigues of a normal soldier. His baggy, four-pocketed cargos drooped slightly over the edge of his shiny black boots, while they neatly cut off his double-breasted flap jacket. A cape, light grey on the inner side and the normal panzer on the outer, ran down his back and underneath his belt, finally ending just above his ankles. The man's black-gloved hands rested behind his back, leaving his chest to proudly display the symbol affixed to it: a large, tilted, and wavy "I", embossed in black and white steel plating. On his brown-haired and bearded head rested a panzer grey, Russian i ushanka, i0 a furred hat designed to fight winter cold. This was a bit strange in West City, though, because the temperature rarely dipped below 70 degrees Fahrenheit.

This was General Ivan, Russia's best.
The other man was a pure down-and-dirty, in-the-trenches, in-the-jungles warrior. His steel-toed, lusterless black combat boots were scarred and worn, presumably from years of bitter run-and-gun fighting. He wore an olive-drab jumpsuit, with his leg pockets housing multiple fully-loaded rifle magazines. A black, bulletproof vest featured itself over that suit, on which was painted the number "1". Unlike Ivan, this man sported a knee-length trenchcoat, also of olive-drab color. Furthering this difference was his face. Instead of the craggled and bearded visage of General Ivan, the soldier's face was cleanly shaven and without line, with his shoulder-length, jet black hair spilling over a white bandana. Centered on this cloth was a red sphere, with the letters JS on the left and DF on the right. His eyes, though, were the most captivating thing about him. His eyes were symmetric, curved diamonds, each dominated by a jade green pool that lacked all luster, content with being a sphere of color with no discernable depth. Despite this, they radiated a keen and almost ethereal countenance, letting the world know that if it tried anything stupid, it would not learn from its mistake. He caught the eye of many a woman, but in particular, he caught the eye of Android Eighteen, and for an entirely different reason. He was a piece-for-piece reproduction of her brother.
This was Android Seventeen, known to Ivan as Eito Hakari.

Together, Ivan and Seventeen formed the Earth Defense Force.
Goku made the final, 500-foot-long leap from the top of the Warrior's Museum to an outward-facing catwalk on the gigantic stadium dome. Walking around the circuit of this metal path, he found a service door that lead inside. To his annoyance, it was locked. Goku quickly overcame this obstacle by turning the doorknob with enough force to snap the deadbolt in two, which allowed the door to swing open on its own. Stepping into the cavernous arena, he found himself on another catwalk, looking down at the dimly-lit stands, which were filled over capacity with tens of thousands of mourners. Every seat, every space between seats, and even the aisles themselves were packed. Goku turned his attention to the fighting ring hundreds of feet below, and though he was too far away to make out who was down there, he could hear the speaker at the microphone perfectly well.
"Westerners, we have gathered here on this day not to say goodbye to one single woman, no. We are here to bid farewell to an era!" Ivan bellowed, his gruff, unsteady, and electronically amplified voice echoing through the stands, "Pan is the granddaughter of a legend: Mr. Satan, who single-handedly defeated Majin Buu and the android Cell! Do you know this?"
A rousing cheer erupted from the crowd, signaling their understanding of Pan's significance. Seventeen, however, folded his arms and rolled his eyes at the general's comment, knowing full well that a single human like this Satan could never stop monsters like Buu and Cell, and the fact that Ivan himself knew this also. With his left hand thumbed through his belt and a half-grin on his face, Ivan raised his gloved right hand to quiet down the voluminous roar of his audience.

"But Seventeen here and myself are part of the Earth Defense Force," Ivan continued, his voice softening, "and we don't make side-trips to sports arenas just because someone's kin died. We give Lady Pan a state funeral not because she is a relative of a great warrior, we honor her in such a way because she IS a great warrior. Her battles have spanned the galaxy, and now it is our time to repay her! Do you agree?"

Another vibrant roar of applause exploded, eventually morphing into the repeated chanting of Pan's name. General Ivan looked over his shoulder to Seventeen's green eyes, then nodded his head. Seventeen, in turn, looked over to a ceremonial drumline, and as he raised a hand to signal them, their drum mallets rose as well. Ivan looked down to the funeral procession below him, then stepped to the side and gestured to the pyre. At the same time the six carriers resumed their duty, Seventeen lowered his hand and the drummers began to forge a slow and solid rhythm that reverberated throughout the Tournament grounds, causing 30,000 people to fall absolutely silent. Goku Jr. fought the urge to cry as he and his companions slid Pan's wooden carrier onto the circular, concave cement block. They then backed away by thirty feet and knelt down to the ground, praying for Pan's peaceful afterlife.

General Ivan flung an arm out and out of absolutely nowhere, another Russian ushanka appeared in his hand. He then tossed it to Seventeen, who, as he walked to the opposite side of the funeral pyre, promptly slid it onto his head. The massive sunroof of the dome groaned open, enveloping the tiled tournament ring in sunlight. Ivan and Seventeen looked at each other then nodded their heads in perfect synchronization.
One.
Two.
THREE!

Ivan widened his legs, clenched his fists and teeth, then threw his head back as his ki and the wind began to pick up. His whole body rattled as sparks of electricity jumped around him. Seventeen was in a similar situation. The Japanese soldier was in an extremely low crouch, with his right arm curled up and his left hand pressed flat against the floor, his teeth also clenched. Blue flame crept up Ivan's legs and wrapped around him, fully encasing him in a spherical shell of pure blue energy. The sphere of power expanded and contorted then finally shattered, revealing gently cascading waves of Ivan's power. His jaw rattled as he brought his head down to its normal angle, centering his gaze on some random, faroff point. At that moment, he sensed pain from Seventeen.
The JSDF's finest was struggling bone-wrenching pain, as his eyes were screwed shut, and his whole body trembling as his own sphere of green light tried to assert itself around him. Ivan's telepathic voice entered his mind.
"Power down, Eito! You're going to overheat!"
"No.....brother! I....I can do this!" Seventeen replied, his smooth voice cracking and wavering, even in his mind.

With that, he bolted upright and screamed out in both pain and success with his arms braced hard, for his energy shell burst into existence and successfully held itself around him. He breathed hard and raggedly as the discomfort faded, replaced by the euphoria of his own strength. Hakari turned around to face the pyre, and Ivan did the same, his angered brown eyes locking with his brother's green ones.
"You didn't have to do this, Eito."
"If I did not, it would be disrespectful to the dead. Let us finish this!"
The two stretched their arms out toward one another, open palms parallel. They firmly rooted their feet on the floor, and the wind began to pick up once again. Both of their energies expanded and intertwined, neon green and electric blue dancing in a whirlwind around Pan's body. The drummers increased the tempo of their song as Android Seventeen and General Ivan began to build a joint, vocal roar. Their voices burst into all-out screams, and the drums fell silent as Pan's body incinerated in the sand-melting heat of two fused energies. The wind died away, as well as the energy storm, and all that remained in the bowl of the pyre was a mass of superheated ozone. Each warrior lowered their arms and faced the crowd, and yelled out in unison.
"It is done!"
The two brothers stepped off from the tiled platform and made their way to the back door, leading to the parking lot. Ivan could see that Seventeen was still in a large amount of discomfort, as his jaw was set hard and his shoulders shaking slightly. The general detected the stench of burning protein, and look down the Seventeen's right sleeve, where a small wisp of red smoke escaped into the air.

Goku hands, which he wrapped around the railing of the catwalk he was standing on, had crushed the steel piping into palm-shaped metal curls. His knuckles were bone-white from the force of his grip, and it looked like his fingertips might i penetratei0 the palm and split the carpal bones inside. A small electrical arc leapt up his forearms. He was furious, barely keeping his rage in check. Those two bastards had just vaporized his granddaughter! She was nothing more than a billion separate particles of ash now. The two men down in that fighting ring destroyed Pan's body just like Freezer had done to Krillin on Namek. Now, laying her body to rest alongside the rest of her family was impossible, and why? Because 30,000 hockey fans wanted a show? As the two perpetrators walked toward the double-doored exit, Goku briefly, just i briefly i0 considered killing them. They were only about 300 yards away, which was spitting distance in terms of a ki blast. However, from what little Goku saw of their power, starting a fight here and now would inevitably escalate into an all-out war. Things had started out so well, but now, they were a travesty, a mockery of family values.

The enraged saiyan's energy began to pick up in strength, but he did an excellent job of supressing it whenever it rose. Down on the ground, Android Eighteen brought her head up from her interwined hands, detecting a familiar energy near her. Her aqua-blue eyes locked themselves onto Goku Jr., who was kneeling beside her, his hands still pressed together in prayer. Neither he or Vegeta Jr. seemed to notice that someone other than Ivan and Hakari had powered up. In fact, she didn't see that they even sensed the immense power of Ivan and Hakari themselves. Evidently, those two had forgotten everything they knew about fighting, and their special senses atrophied and died away from disuse.
Eighteen localized the power's position to the point that she knew it was above her, and she looked up to the ceiling of the stadium. She saw nothing but metal girders, deactivated spotlights, and a certain door hanging open and swinging back and forth in the breeze, allowing a beam of light to shine through. As her group rose to leave, she placed this finding in the back of her mind, resolving to deal with it later. She bid her companions goodbye and quickly hurried off after Seventeen, because she had seen him in pain.
The two brothers, as soon as they were satisfied they weren't being watched, made an all-out sprint toward the parking lot door, bursting through it then slamming it shut once outside. Seventeen cried out in pain as he leaned against the cement wall and sank to the ground, cradling his right arm in his left, small tears forming in his eyes. Ivan sat down next to him.
"Come on, take your glove off. Let me see it" Ivan said.

Seventeen winced as he pulled his right glove off, the fabric sliding against the wound on the back of his hand, sending ungodly sensations into the center of his brain. Ivan carefully took Seventeen's right hand and shoved it underneath the magnifying glass he retrieved from a side pocket, studying the depth of the wound. It was a smoking, smoldering, and foul-smelling hole in the skin, revealing an inhuman assembly of bleach-white bone, inky black muscle, and a translucent film of skin, with countless microscopic blood vessels running to and fro. Ivan sighed and removed the lens from his specimen, satisfied this was the absolute extent of the damage.

"Well, Eito, you're going to live." Ivan said, smiling lightly, trying to alleviate some of Seventeen's tension.

The pained soldier gritted his teeth.
"It is far from a laughing matter, Brother."
"I know, I know. The entire upper layer of your epidermis burned off. I'd say you were playing with roughly five, maybe six hundred gigawatts electromag."
"Fuck" cursed Seventeen.
"But hey, at least these things are working! You could have gone cryptkeeper on us!" Ivan chuckled, snatching up Seventeen's ushanka and turning it over in his hands.

"It did not seem to save me much trouble."
"That's true, but you have to realize that this is untested on warriors of your level. My ushanka works just fine because the Russians favored volume of fire over fire power, which is why I can power up and not burn my damn skin off!"

"That is also why you are a lucky bastard, Ivan."

"Hey, I'm not the heavy artillery here; you are. When things elementally go south in a battle, you're the man."

Seventeen sighed.

"Thank you for the compliment" he said, resting his head against the wall.

Beside Ivan and Seventeen, the double-doors opened up to reveal Android Eighteen.

Seeing her brother hunched down on the ground and holding his right arm as if it were going to fall off, Eighteen cried out and ran to his side.

"Seventeen! Are you all right?"

A look of horror crossed her face when she saw the bloody chasm on Seventeen's right hand. He realized what she was looking at and drew his hand away, hiding it from her view.

"What happened, Seventeen? What happened to your hand?"

"What happened to my hand is what happens when science gets infatuated with itself. Do not worry about it."

Eighteen grabbed her brother by the shoulders and berated him.

"I can't sit by and watch you suffer! I lost you once, and I'm not going through that again, do you understand me?"
"I understand perfectly, Eighteen, but I am not quite the same android I once was, and you have known this for sixty years. Besides, I am a soldier, and I can take care of myself" Seventeen said, his smooth, calm, and slightly cold voice putting a grimace on the woman's face, causing her to pull him into a fierce hug.
If this happened any other time, Seventeen wouldn't have worried. However, this particular hug was just another in a weeks-long series of several, each occurring closer and closer together. For a good while, Seventeen had been toying with the idea that something was wrong with his sister.
"You scare me sometimes, Seventeen" she whispered.
Truthfully, Eighteen scared Seventeen just a little bit more, with her increasingly emotional behavior. She was never really one for hugs and words of affection.
General Ivan rubbed his nose with a gloved knuckle and coughed suggestively.
"What is it?" Seventeen asked.
"Don't I get a hug, too? Technically, I am Eighteen's sibling" Ivan said, suggestively raising and lowering his eyebrows.
Seventeen freed himself from the hug and slapped his brother upside the head, knocking his furred hat off and revealing his cleanly-shaven head.
"Make that i step-i0 sibling, Brother. It is not the same thing, and never think otherwise" Seventeen warned, as a stern frown wrought itself across his lips.
Ivan shrugged, repositioned his hat, and shuffled to his feet, then looked off into the distance at the setting sun, cooing at the late hour.
"Wow, we've been here for a significant while; the sun's setting."
The following quiet allowed Ivan to finally hear a small beeping that reported from a pocket on his left arm, one that had been going for several minutes. The general opened up that pouch and looked at the small, green electronic display of a radar. A yellow, upward-pointing arrow blinked on along the bottom edge, indicating something was above and almost directly behind them. Ivan pressed a button on the display's side and the radar transformed into a coordinate graph. At the top of the vertical axis lay the number "1000", and on the bottom lay "0", with the letters "gigawatts" along the side. The horizontal axis was marked 1-60 and labeled in seconds. A jagged yellow line snaked its way across the graph, zigzagging between 100 and 150. Ivan tensed up.
"I've got something on the electromagnetic scope, and the data is from a few minutes ago. 150 gigawatts, bearing 175 degrees, elevation 45 degrees, range 300 yards" he said.
Seventeen perked up at this and looked around him, trying the use Ivan's data by turning it into a definite point. He scooted away from the wall and turned around, finding himself looking up at the high, curved wall of the Tournament stadium.
"It was on the catwalks somewhere." he said.
This sent a slight chill through Eighteen's spine. That was exactly where she had pinpointed the power to be. For a reason she couldn't explain, she told neither Ivan nor her brother about it.
"Okay. I'll check it out." Ivan replied.
"I am coming with you!"
"Nah, I'll be fine alone. Who could possibly stop me, the Russian renegade General Ivan?" Ivan said.
Ivan's brother was quick to respond.
"I could, for one."
"Riiiight. Now, I don't need to tell you this, but I will anyway. Don't try going electromagnetic until I can get your heatsink sorted out, understand? I'd hate to let you fight a tough battle alone when I could help you. Oh, and if I catch you powering up with live ammo in your pocket even one more time, I promise to bust your ass into a thousand tiny pieces. You go on home with Eighteen and get some rest, okay?"
Seventeen looked down at his pockets and smiled sheepishly. He had forgotten to ditch his Kalashnikov magazines before the funeral. It was a good thing that his clothes were excellent heat insulators. Ivan waved an index finger in front his face in playful scold of his brother, tipped his hat to Eighteen, and rose into the air, then floated off toward the top of the stadium dome, leaving his brother and pseudo-sister on the ground. He landed on the highest metal path a short time later, the tail of his cape whipping about in the evening wind. He walked for almost five minutes before he found the service door that led inside. He placed his left hand just in front of the rusted steel doorknob and outstretched the other, ready to blast anything that might leap out at him. Ivan took a deep breath and jerked his left arm in an effort to turn the knob, but was surprised when the door opened unbidden. The tense soldier peered into the light-fractured darkness, fanning his open palm across the empty expanse, his index and middle fingers forming a "V" and acting like the sights of some giant, hyper-powerful handgun.
There was nothing there, except for two large, deep, and hand-shaped indentations in the steel piping of the safety rail. Ivan turned around and checked the door. He turned the doorknob back and forth to see if it was damaged, and sure enough, a fractured metal tube slid out of its frame and clattered on the floor. The intrigued general picked up the little chunk of metal and examined it closely. It had snapped clean in two, and whatever could break a tungsten-cored titanium rod this cleanly had to be at least i halfwayi0 powerful. Ivan tossed the little trinket to the steel-grated floor and walked back to the windy exterior. Thousands of people were flooding out of the dome, walking to their cars and driving off toward home. Whoever had broken into the stadium was long gone, and even if he or she wasn't, they would blend right in with the crowd and become effectively invisible. There was no sense in looking here. General Ivan faced due west, vaulted himself over the outer railing, then exploded into the blue flames of supersonic, electromagnetic flight, rocketing past the tall buildings of West City and heading out to the open sea.
There was only one place where he could possibly learn the location and identity of his new quarry.
Zastava, Yugoslavia.

- To be continued -
- 25
- 26
- 27
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The Ark	By : Dunkelgelb Category: InuYasha > General Views: 2034 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own InuYasha, nor make money from this story.

The Ark