This next offering deserves a wee bit of explanation.
First off, "AWQBC" is set firmly in the Sailor Moon
Expanded (SME) shared fanfic universe, home to Mark Latus's
Dark Kingdom Renegades, Frank Barr's Trenchcoat-Mask, and
many another nifty tale. You can find our archive at
http://www.tuxedomask.com/SailorMoonExpanded/
Second, this is a rather peripheral tale, and
the Senshi themselves make only fleeting cameo appearances.
Whether or not this is a good thing I leave up to the
reader. :)
Third...ah, the heck with it, just read.
--Sam Ashley
"Blood covers The City like a big red afghan."
__ _ _
/ | | \ The Evil Midnight Lurker what Lurks at Midnight (YEAH BABY!) / \
\ / | / Warrior Chef--Avatar of Virtue--The Muse of Deep Left Field _\_/_
\ \/ / *Spem Successus Alit* Member, Institute for Yahtzee Theory |
\ / Makoto--Ai--Yuuki - CoC OtE SA+RM L5R <*> - MARS NEEDS JADEITE! |
\/ Sailor Moon Expanded: www.tuxedomask.com/SailorMoonExpanded/ |
________________________________________________________________________
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-- Attached file included as plaintext by Listar --
-- File: awqbcp.txt
Text notes, for anyone enthused enough to print this out:
_italic_
#boldface#
This and other Sailor Moon Expanded 'fics may be found archived at
www.tuxedomask.com/SailorMoonExpanded.
The Evil Midnight Lurker what Lurks at Midnight
in association with
The Sailor Moon Expanded Project
presents:
AN AMERICAN WIZARD IN QUEEN BERYL'S COURT
by W. Samuel Ashley
Prologue: Nightmare's End
_"They say the devil's in the details
I know what they mean
I'm walking in the wasteland
With a Ghost in the Machine
There's a simulated sunset
And starlight in my eyes
The skies are filled with miracles
And half of them are lies
Are you real or not?
It's a fine line
Are you ready or not?
For the light of day
Are you real or not?
These are strange times
And I don't want to live this way."_
--Warren Zevon, _Real or Not_
Numbers.
110011100100101001100010011010010to infinity, marching past with
cool detachment. The world was one and zero, over and over and over and
over and over and over and
This wasn't right.
Nothing was what it should be. Nothing in the world. Nothing but
her.
She was right. She was whole. Whole again. What was whole? What
had been wrong, what had been missing, why were all these damn ones and
zeroes and ones and zeroes and ones and zeroes and ones and zeroes and
ones and zeroes and ones and zeroes and ones and zeroes and ones and
STOP IT!
Power. Power had been restored. That was right but everything else
was still (everything else but her was still) wrong. The numbers were
wrong. The pattern behind/of/despite the numbers was wrong
tattered 11001010
0100 warped
twisted 0100 001010
10010000110101110 101 changed
broken 1001
010010
who was she where was she what when why how
Name. Names. Two names. One right one wrong wrong wrong worse
than wrong worse than anything terrible bent awful not her not her not
her not me not mi not mimi not Mimi.
Hanyu. Hanyu Mimi. Not the other. Not the hateful fearful lieful
Other but the other was her was part of the whole but the whole had been
changed
ripped
slashed
sundered
the other was wrong wrong wrong but the other other was right too
right too perfect nothing still alive can be that perfect that unstained
that shining
nothing that perfect should be where it had been sent had been taken
had been eaten devoured digested tortured wrong so wrong so wrong
but it was over. over? the bad place the bad thing was gone gone
gone in light so blinding it made you see so joyous it hurt so right it
could not be borne not even by the right ones the perfect ones so many
there were so many the right ones in the wrong place all gone now gone to
the right place the place where perfection is bearable all gone all but
her
whole again one again too right and too wrong make one whole not the
wrong one not her not me not mime not Mimete.
Mimete. Witch. Evil. Evil but a part of me but I don't want to be
a part of her don't want her to be a part of me
breakthrough there was a breakthrough the Professor was ecstatic was
going to bring the machine up to full power open the gate open the way
the Opener of the Way there are people on the other side no not people a
person no not person a thing a monster a horror a Pharaoh
the eye the eye its eye devouring eye sifting eye ripping shredding
cutting in two eye
all of them the same all of them servitors slaves witches feed the
eye find the talismans feed the eye find the grail feed the eye pure
souls it wants pure souls it eats purity eats light eats truth eats love
eats courage eats humanity leaves everything else leaves pollution leaves
darkness leaves lies leaves hate leaves fear leaves madness
feed the eye the grail the power all the power need the power to
bring the Pharaoh who will call the one who will come the one who will
take what remains the one who is not who is the end who is the Silence
they stand in our way they the girls the warriors the sailors the
hunters the grim and furious ones and the others the dreamers the love
and justice girls a joke it must be but they win and win and win and no
souls are taken no souls are eaten no souls but ours
she is weak she is ugly she stands in my way the snail woman she
loses always loses I can win I can feed the eye she must go she must
vanish she must die so easy stupid woman stupid wagon break the wagon
brake the breaks over the edge into the sea die die die
but now I lose I lose lose lose the sailors win win win must do
something must find a way find a machine find the snail woman's machine
so simple pour myself into the machine control all the machines all
everywhere ghost in the machine steal the ghosts steal the souls all the
souls all at once
but she is there she tells me snail woman did it wrong tells me
snail woman never finished never used because too dangerous no safeguard
no lifeline pattern depends on power no power no pattern trapped forever
and then she pulls the plug
power goes pattern changes warps twists traps no way out no way out
no way out no way out trapped in the machine trapped in the dark trapped
alone nothing no one not even the other not even her not even me not mi
not mimi not mimete
power. power? The power...the power was back.
She'd had that thought. The power was back but the pattern was
still warped, still binding her inextricably into the Machine.
Her.
Hanyu Mimi. Graduate student. Would-be actress. Death Buster.
Mimete. Soul hunter. Servitor. Witch of the Five.
Two sets of memories had finally twisted together, two halves of one
soul reunited. But still trapped in the machine, in the pattern, in the
numbers. Locked in a simulation, currently set to default: a bare room,
perhaps five meters on a side. Her clothes, her very body, apparently
intact but in truth transformed into a construct of mingled electrical
and magical energy. Now, perhaps, irreversibly transformed.
But the pattern...only trapped her. Only. Everything else still
worked, only the transference was impossible. With the power back she
could still control the numbers, control the data. Control anything the
data could reach. Eudial's ghostmachine made its inhabitant the ultimate
hacker, a digital god.
Reach out. Find the connections, examine them, see what the Machine
is hooked up to. See what there is to use, to find a way out...
Power line. Trace back...not far. Not far at all. Not hooked into
city power at all. A generator! No modem, no connection, no way into
the Net. Cut off. Only the Machine.
But the Machine has an interface. The monitor-camera. Both in one,
look into the screen and the screen looks at you. A window on the world.
There. Still functional. Activate. Who was there, who'd plugged her
in...?
A window came into existence before her eyes. A head, staring
worriedly into the camera/monitor. Backing off in surprise as the
monitor lit and cast her picture into the world. Tall. Male. Stranger.
Strange stranger, indeed.
Mimi's grip on reality began at last to solidify, as she and the
stranger took one another's measure.
He was tall, unreasonably so--over six and a half feet!--and skinny
as a rail. "Wiry" was probably the most appropriate term, but a single
missed meal would have pushed him over the edge into "gaunt". Clearly
not Japanese, but Mimi couldn't begin to nail down his origin--his dark
brown-gold complexion and rugged features didn't quite match any ethnic
type she'd ever heard of. Huge clean-shaven chin, moderately wide thin-
lipped mouth, turned-up nose; bright, almost neon-green eyes with a hint
of epicanthic fold; all topped off by a thatch of short, unruly black
hair. He looked to be in his late twenties.
This oddity was casually clad in sneakers, faded jeans, and a black
T-shirt bearing a Jolly Roger...the Captain Harlock version, she noted.
The environment that framed him...A trick from Eudial's notebook
came to mind and Mimi accelerated herself to Machine speeds, examining
the stranger's surroundings in an instant without (she hoped) seeming
rude.
A room. Large room--living room? Study? Two walls are visible, no
windows. Immense fireplace taking up much of the left, cords of wood on
the hearth, paintings on the mantel. Landscapes. Focus in: what on
Earth are these places? A stone house, snowbound, in what appears to be
a forest of giant mushrooms. A wide, low hill seen from a great
distance: arranged around it are five vast monoliths, each at the point
where a road enters a tunnel into the hill. The monoliths each are a
single precious stone: one a beryl, two of jade, and two she does not
recognize. The sky in both landscapes is jet black, empty.
Between them, a portrait: a woman. A female, rather--not human, not
with those long pointed ears and orange skin. A daimon? Surely not. No
daimon ever smiled like that, ever had eyes that showed such warmth.
Such humanity.
The rest of that wall, around and above the fireplace, is liberally
covered with weapons. Swords of all styles and sizes, axes, polearms...
but mostly guns. Pistols, rifles, ancient muskets and flintlocks.
Should she be impressed? Her Charm Buster could outperform any of these
low-tech toys--
--(no not hers Mimete's not hers not her)--
--never mind, never mind, other wall! Bookshelves. Great old
bookcases, Victorian and Edwardian, hosting a vast array of hardcovers:
some more ancient than their shelves, some new. One case close by holds
CDs: on the left side nothing but the classics, Bach, Mozart, Vivaldi,
Beethoven; on the right, bands with strange names, They Might Be Giants,
Frantics, Firesign Theater, Weird Al, Cocteau Twins. Novelty and
classical are divided/bridged by a complete set of Gilbert and Sullivan.
Above and between the shelves, this wall is covered in antique
masks. African, Polynesian, Italian theatre, Japanese (one of these,
weirdly, is a Ranger-sentai helmet), others she does not know.
The ceiling above... Mimi looks again, yes, most of the ceiling is
taken up by an elaborate display of High-grade Zeta Gundam models; AEUG
forces appear to have the Titans on the ropes.
Immediately behind the tall man, an ancient massive oak-and-stone
table. Covered with chemistry equipment--chemistry? Bubbling flasks,
distillation coils, alembics and cucurbits and a pear-shaped bottle
formed of oddly glimmering glass. All these things she has seen before,
in Professor Tomoe's laboratory; she knows them well. The bottle is a
true aludel, a philosophical vase. Magical, impervious to acids. Not
chemistry. Alchemy.
This is most certainly the home of a wizard. No ordinary man could
be _this_ weird.
And this tall man with green eyes unnervingly bright against dark
skin must be the wizard.
Hello, wizard. Can you send me back to Kansas?
Get a grip, Mimi.
All this is observed in less than a second of realtime. Now she
composes herself as best she can, brings the clockspeed back down...
The stranger unfroze, recovering from his own mild surprise, and
spoke, somewhat tentatively: "Are you...all right, in there? Can you
hear me?"
His Nihongo was flawless, as if he'd lived in Tokyo all his life;
the voice was deep and rather gruff, something Mimi would have expected
to hear from someone far more heavily built than this gangling gaijin.
Oh yes, she thought: when someone asks you a question you're
expected to answer. Conversation. Funny how you forget things like
that.
"...I can hear you," she managed after a moment. "'All right'...?
What's that? I don't think I can remember what being all right is like.
And...who are you, anyway? How did I get...um, wherever we are?"
"Ah, forgive me," the stranger replied, smiling an odd, crooked
half-smile. "My name...well, I go by Michael Maxwell around here. As
for where: this is my home, in the town of Bonny Doon." Noting Mimi's
blank look, he continued: "...In the mountains just northwest of Santa
Cruz, in California."
California?! "Santa Cruz...that's the tertiary magic zone, but I've
never heard of any wizards living there--um, here..."
"My family's gone to great lengths to make sure nobody knows about
our skills. _Especially_ not other wizards."
"All right, so what am I doing here?"
"I've been...keeping an eye on the Senshis' activities for some time
now; and when I noticed your aura was still embedded in that mechanical
whatsit--and that no one _else_, on either side of your conflict, seemed
to know--I thought I'd make off with it and see if there was any way to
get you out and back to normal." He paused. "'Normal' seems to have
more or less taken care of itself, with Pharaoh 90 destroyed, so I
figured it was safe to plug you back in and make contact."
"Why?"
"What, why'd I rescue you? Bit of a silly question, isn't it? I
saw a good deed to be done, one that I might actually be able to _do_
without making things worse..." That crooked smile again. There was
something dark about it this time, a self-mocking or perhaps self-
_loathing_ quality that sent shivers up her spine. "So here we are."
Cold, she felt so cold. "You should have left me there. I don't...
I don't deserve to be rescued..."
"Oh, come _on_ now--"
"No!" It came pouring out now, a flood of her own brand of self-
hatred. "I've done horrible things--assaulted innocent people, tried to
destroy the _world_, to kill--"
The image that rose up before her mind's eye was enough to stop her
cold. "Kill. Oh, gods, I killed her--Eudial, _Yuuko_, I MURDERED her,
she was my best friend and I...!"
Mimi collapsed to the floor of her virtual space, curling into a
tight little ball of anguish, tears building to great racking sobs. The
station wagon, the brakes, the snails, Mimete's hideous gloating still
all too much a part of her--
She did such a good job of shutting out reality that, Michael later
told her, he had to resort to a megaphone to get her attention (slapping
the monitor just hadn't seemed likely to work). The incredibly loud
shouts of "SHE'S STILL ALIVE! ARIMURA YUUKOU IS _ALIVE_, YOU DID _NOT_
KILL HER, WOULD YOU PLEASE _LISTEN_ TO ME?" finally penetrated,
registered, and Mimi began tentatively to uncurl.
"Alive...? But, but I saw her wagon go into the bay..."
"And if you'd stuck around long enough," Michael replied, "you
would've seen a passing JSDF coast patrol cutter fish her out. Arimura-
dono _was_ pretty badly hurt, though; she's in a hospital." He took a
deep breath. "In a coma, I'm afraid."
"How...how bad is it?" Mimi asked, choking back her tears. "Please,
tell me, I--"
"Actually, I can _show_ you," the tall man said, "if you're sure,
that is." At her nod, he waved his hand and produced an antique hand
mirror from thin air; he stared hard at it for a moment, and his
reflection blurred and swam into a new scene entirely.
Michael held the mirror up to the ghostmachine's monitor, giving
Mimi a clear view of its image: a hospital room, a terribly frail
redheaded figure occupying the bed, hooked up to a daunting array of
tubes and wires. Yuukou looked so small, so pale, before the gate she'd
been so vibrant, to see her like this--
Her arms. An IV ran into her left arm, but the right...ended in a
stump, a few inches below the shoulder.
"...Yuu-chan...what have I done to you...?"
"It wasn't exactly _you_ who did it--" her host attempted, only to
be cut short.
"Yes it WAS!" Mimi beat a virtual fist against the virtual wall,
suffering only minimal virtual pain--minimal, at least, compared to her
current emotional state. "Everything _she_ did, all the insults, the
cruel jokes, the stalking, all of it...it was...me. She didn't do
anything that I hadn't dreamed of doing, and tried to hide, to pretend it
wasn't true..."
"You, then," the wizard qualified, "with all the brakes off. All
the qualities we consider 'good', all morals and ethics, stripped away,
leaving a psychopath with just enough of a veneer of civilization
remaining to let her pretend to be a normal human being."
Mimi stared at her host. "You sound like you've _studied_ this."
"Well, I _have_," he replied. "Think you were the only ones who got
suckered in by that monster's beacon? It happened once before, a few
thousand years ago."
"...A few _thousand_?!"
"Long story. Anyway," Michael continued, taking on a slightly more
formal tone, "by the authority vested in me by the Clan Mazael, I hereby
find you innocent of all charges, by reason of externally-induced
temporary insanity."
"And is that supposed to make me feel any better? What the hell are
you _talking_ about?!"
"First, not really, but I had to get it out of the way; second,
that's _another_ long story."
Shame and guilt were beginning to be shouldered out of the way by
sheer irritation. If she'd been thinking clearly, Mimi might have
wondered if that was not precisely what her host had in mind.
"Yeah. Okay. Look, can we just get a few things clear first?"
"Probably. What did you have in mind?"
The ex-Witch paused to gather her thoughts. This pause lasted
rather longer than she had intended, as she was momentarily distracted by
the wizard's shirt--she could have sworn it sported the Jolly Harlock,
but in its place were now the cryptic words VISUALIZE WHIRLED PEAS.
Ignoring it seemed the most prudent course.
"First off. That...thing...Pharaoh 90 _is_ dead, right? Not just
driven off or wounded or whatever...? I _think_ I felt it die, but...
that part of me...couldn't really pay very close attention..."
"Nothing to worry about there," Michael assured her, his smile only
slightly crooked. "It's definitely...well, _dead_ isn't the right word,
since it wasn't really _alive_ the way we understand it...you might call
its normal state _un_death, except that traditionally requires the
subject to have been alive at some prior point..." Mimi felt a digital
sweatdrop forming. The tall man kept going, swept up in what she
recognized as Professorial Rant Mode #1. "...It was more a sort of
_anti_-life, so one could regard its destruction as an act of _creation_
that negated its already negative existence, bringing it _up_ to the zero
state..."
Two can play with megaphones. Mimi cranked the external speaker
volume up to Eleven.
"*AHEM.*" The masks on the walls and the glassware on the tabletop
rocked slightly. Michael blinked and turned his attention back to his
guest (the t-shirt now bore a picture of John Lennon, but again, she paid
it no mind).
"Pardon?"
"Were you going anywhere in particular?"
The wizard flushed. "Um, probably not. Sorry, I tend to ramble.
"Anyway, the _short_ answer is yes, it's been thoroughly...removed.
I believe it was Sailor Moon and Sailor Saturn who did the honors--so
completely there may not even be a _planet_ there anymore, though it's
kinda hard to check."
"Sailor _Saturn_? How many of them _are_ there?"
"Couldn't say." For just a moment, an odd, evasive look flitted
across his face. "In any case...it really is over, you can be sure of
that."
Mimi let out a long breath. "Over...thank the gods...
"But--what about everyone else...? Lulu, Yui...the Tomoes...did any
of them survive...?"
The wizard looked rather glum. "Not a lot, I'm afraid." He paused
in thought. "I rarely get clear views of Senshi incidents, but as far as
I can tell...Teruno Lulu and Vido Yui were both killed by their own
devices, and the twins accidentally did one another in. ...And there
hasn't been any sign of Yoruno Kaori since the final battle; I'm not sure
if she's dead or alive, but it doesn't look good. I'm sorry."
"...Don't be," Mimi sighed. "Believe me, death was a mercy for
them...you can't imagine what it was like." She shuddered with resurgent
memory. "But what happened to the Professor?"
"Now there I actually have good news," Michael replied. "Tomoe and
his daughter are both alive and well...mostly."
"'Mostly'?"
"Well, the Professor has lost all memory of the past few years, and
Hotaru..." That odd look passed over his features again. "She
was...transformed into an infant in the final battle, but apparently
she's been growing back to her normal age rather quickly."
Mimi gazed askance at the wizard. "There's something you're not
telling me. Is anything still wrong with her?"
"Nothing's wrong, not in that sense anyway. I checked both of them
_very_ thoroughly, and there's no trace of daimonic influence in either;
Mistress Nine and Germatos are every bit as dead as their master."
"So what's the problem?"
"...I can't tell you," Michael sighed. "I may be a snoop by nature
and by career, but _never_ a gossip; any personal secrets I might
accidentally run across _stay_ secret."
Glare. "And that's my _next_ question, right there. _How in Hell
do you KNOW so much about us?!_ AND the Senshi? A snoop by
_career_...?"
The tall man smiled his crooked smile again. "That's still another
long story. The quick and dirty version...my family has been, er,
keeping watch on nearly all the magic-wielders in the world for a long,
_long_ time. Which naturally includes the Death Busters, and the Sailor
Senshi."
_That_ left Mimi's head swimming. "'Keeping watch'? The Death
Busters kept track of all the other magic-users around Tokyo, even
_before_...um, before things went bad...and if we'd been being spied on
ourselves, the Professor would have found out about it!"
"I'm afraid, Hanyu-dono, that my own operation is on...a slightly
more refined level, let's say. You and everyone else in the Tokyo occult
underground are no more capable of spotting my spy-eyes than a non-mage
is of sensing normal magic."
He knew her name. The others' too, now that she thought of it.
That lent a little credence to Maxwell's outlandish claim, but before she
could recover he went on: "Until recently, you see, I and my family were
charged with preventing the abuse of magic. We had to work out ways of
dealing with necromancers and the like, while staying hidden from
_everyone_ to make sure they didn't come after us."
Mimi grinned weakly. "What are you, the Warlock Wolf or something?
We were expecting a seven-foot wolfman to show up and try to stop us, we
were _prepared_ for werewolves, magical girls took us totally by
surprise--Kaori tried shooting Uranus once but the silver bullets just
bounced off her fuku--"
Michael grinned back, considerably less weakly.
Wolfishly, in fact. (And crookedly, but by now that was only to be
expected.)
"Actually, I stand a bit over _eight_ feet in the union suit."
"...," Mimi managed.
"I could demonstrate, but you've been through too many shocks today
already."
"...," she repeated.
"And we started that silver story ourselves; it's a pretty poor
metal to try to kill anything with. More of a safety margin if people
are stabbing at you with a dull knife. We tried gold first, but no one
was _quite_ dumb enough to believe that one."
"...You're a werewolf."
"_The_ werewolf," he corrected pleasantly, "there's only one at a
time--it's not a curse or a bloodline thing, just a bit of shapeshifting
magic."
"Then...what you said earlier, about 'finding me innocent'..."
"Was an official judgement, in my capacity as Guardian of the Arts
Arcane. Or as official as it can be considering my family never bothered
to consult anyone else before imposing their rules on anyone they could
catch." Michael sighed. "It's a damned dirty job, but it's necessary.
_Was_ necessary," he corrected himself. "Anyway, we should really table
that for the moment and get on to the most important matter at hand."
"That being?"
"Getting you out of there and back to physicality."
Mimi scowled. "How? My Electric Warp reintegration matrix is
snarled up beyond repair! There's no way to untangle it--it's a small
miracle the whole thing didn't _explode_ when Lulu cut the power!"
"Well, that's where you're lucky," the wizard grinned. "You happen
to have fallen into the hands of the one man who _can_ manage it--sure,
that's a pretty damned messed-up spell, but it's only the second worst
I've ever seen. That one I couldn't untangle if my life depended on it,
but _this_ thing...?"
"Wait a minute." Her host, Mimi noted, was studying the
ghostmachine's exterior most intently. "Are you saying...can you _sense_
the spell? Directly?!"
Michael met her gaze, honestly puzzled. "You mean you _can't_?"
"Not without my gear, no!"
"Huh. I thought you guys were farther along than that...well, I
_can_ see magic, and work with it on a fine enough level that fixing this
matrix of yours shouldn't be a problem.
"_Time_, though, that's the problem..."
"How so?"
"Well, working with a warped spell like that _is_ tricky. I've got
to go slowly, make sure not to overstress any part of it...put up
frameworks to hold the repaired areas in place while moving on to the
next...can't risk more than about two hours of work a day, I'd say..."
"...So how long are we talking about here?"
He squinted at the machine, deep in thought for a while. "Best
estimate? Five years, give or take a few months."
"Five YEARS?!"
"It's better than forever, isn't it?"
Mimi shivered. "I suppose. But, honestly, I don't know if I could
stay sane that long...it's so _empty_ in here..."
"Well, I've already come up with a couple of partial solutions." At
her questioning glance, Michael held up a bundle of wires. "Now that we
know you're more or less normal, I can hook you up with a modem, cable
feed, you name it. And while _your_ matrix is scrambled, that gizmo's
functions don't seem to be impaired--there's nothing to stop us scanning
in some furniture, books, food--"
"Oh, my..." Mimi flushed. "Maxwell-san, I don't know what to say...
you're going to so much trouble, I don't want to be a burden..."
"Eh, it's really not that much," he shrugged. "Finance isn't a
problem, after all--" he glanced back at the alchemical apparatus "--and
I don't have any other pressing business."
Now that was interesting. "I see...that wouldn't be azoth you're
making, by any chance...?"
"The Philosopher's Stone, indeed," Michael grinned. "I thought
you'd recognize it--the Professor's skills were legendary in the
underground..."
She nodded. Mugen Gakuen and the Death Busters lab beneath, as with
their original research center, couldn't have been built without Tomoe-
sensei's secret stockpile of alchemically transmuted gold.
But the uses they'd made, since, of alchemy and genetic engineering
combined--that didn't bear thinking about...
"You okay?"
"...Yeah, sorry, I was just lost in thought--" Wait. A question
that had been tickling the back of her mind finally broke through.
"There's just one more thing I have to know."
"Shoot."
Mimi took a deep breath, tried to contain herself.
Failed.
_"Where the hell WERE you?!"_
"Wha--?" Michael rocked back, stunned. "What do you..."
"You're the Warwolf," she began. "You're the guy who's struck fear
into the hearts of every half-baked wizard, mage, and mahoutsukai in
Tokyo and London for--practically _forever_. Or at least you're the
current holder of the office. The monster who shows up whenever anyone
tries to raise a demon, or use necromancy, or cast _any_ spell for
anything less ethical than stock market prognostication, and Shows Them
the Error Of Their Ways.
"And you obviously know a _hell_ of a lot about current events in
Tokyo. Including damn near everything we were up to.
"SO WHAT WERE YOU DOING?! Why didn't you pop up and _do_ something
about us before we even opened that gate? Or the demon-whatsits back in
'91, for that matter, or those alien plant-people, or whoever the heck
those guys with the giant chandelier spaceship were...?"
"Well, that's..."
"--'A long story'?" Mimi cut in, rather snidely. "Look, why don't
you just quit dancing around everything and _tell_ me about it? You
brought me here, you switched me back on, you seem to know more about me
and the Senshi and everything else weird in Tokyo than anyone else on
Earth--I want to know what the real deal is, and you _owe_ me that much!"
Michael stiffened for a moment, then slumped back in his chair.
"...I can't argue with that. Wouldn't even if I could. I'm not kidding
though, it's a _long_ story, and not a very nice one. A bit like yours,
really.
"It's the story of...how, with nothing but the best of intentions, I
showed another ancient evil force the way to invade Earth, wrecked a good
portion of the Central Coast, found and lost the only woman I could ever
love..."
The wizard sighed, a shadow passing over his features, and
concluded: "...and killed sixty-eight innocent people."
After a while Mimi said, as gently as possible, "Tell me.
"The whole story."
* * *
To be continued in Chapter One, "If I Knew Then...", in which
Michael tells of family history, the science of mana, and his own
disastrous attempt to restore magic to the world...
NOTES FROM DEEP LEFT FIELD
-The opening song, "Real or Not", is the closing theme from the
TekWar TV series. (The only good thing _about_ TekWar, in this author's
completely biased opinion.)
-Mike's character design...well, perhaps you could best think of him
as a taller, skinnier Sagara Sanosuke, with a much bigger chin (face by
way of Yamagata, second-in-command of Kaneda's gang from _Akira_; or,
alternately, the animated Batman), and skin a shade or three darker than
Mihoshi's. ...And a smile akin to Lupin III. His voice, in an ideal or
at least a sillier world, is that of Sasakii Isao, probably best known as
Condor Joe from "Science Ninja Team Gatchaman" (specifically from the
third season, Gatchaman F, after Joe's mellowed out a tad). For an
English dub...maybe Kurt Russell. :)
-My thanks to Andy, Mark, Frank, Becky-chan, and all the members of
SME, for putting up with this insanely delayed thing. n.n;
-I would like to take a moment to assure the readers that Michael
Maxwell is not, I repeat NOT, a self-insert character. n.n; Honestly, we
aren't very much alike at all, except for some similarities in political
views...and I wouldn't want to be him if someone _paid_ me...
-Comments, flames, or whatever may be sent to
midnightlurker@hotmail.com (checked irregularly) or
73310.3217@compuserve.com (checked more often, but please put "To Sam" or
similar in the subject line as it's a shared account).
--Sam Ashley
v1.0: 07/23/2000
"An object at rest--CANNOT BE STOPPED!!!"
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