Subject: [FFML] Re: [FFML][BGC][Shortfic][Metropolitan Blues 01: CUT]
From: HARIJUBAL@aol.com
Date: 3/1/2004, 1:51 PM
To: sommer@3rdm.net, ffml@anifics.com

In a message dated 2/25/2004 4:51:51 PM Pacific Standard Time, 
sommer@3rdm.net writes:

HARIJUBAL@aol.com wrote:

METROPOLITAN BLUES

"This city is what it is because our citizens are what they are"-Plato

01: CUT

No, no. That's what you shout to end the scene, not begin it. You want,
'Roll 'em'

[Sorry, a bit distracted by the thought of a Transformers/BGC fusion.  No, 
no!  Bad brain!  Bad!  No Optimus Priss and Bumble-Ne.]



PRISS


  I'm Priss-Priss Asagiri.

Looks like she's a Nuku-Nuku clone. break it up with a comma or ellipse or
somethign else

[Yeah, I used MS Word and just pasted onto my email thingy.  Originally, it 
was two dashes that were merged into a longer dash.  I suppose I should fix it 
. . . one of these days . . .]



I'm a singer, a fighter, a biker,

A cold heart breaker.

Sorry. Steve Miller Band running through my head for a moment there.


[I think you're thinking about Pat Benatar.

But, really, doesn't Priss remind you more of the Pretender's Chrissy Hinds 
with like a dash of Debbie Harry?  No?  Guess I'm the only one, then.]

and a Knight
Saber.  I'm a friend to my friends and an absolute bloody terror to my
enemies.  I'm a goddess to my fans.

  I live in a trailer, in an abandoned part of town.  I don't need much,
and what I've got I've got.

got, I've

[Uh huh.]





  I was in the orphan factory for only a couple of years.

I was quickly outdated. They're always making newer models of orphans. It's
like a computer factory, in that regard.

[The older orphans were usually first stripped for parts, then left moldering 
in a heap.  Finally they'd just render them before selling to the Green Food 
Company.  Remember, Soylent Green is People.  Soylent Green is people.]



It was a horror
there.

'a horror' is weak. Go for something stronger to convey the sense of
loathing she has for the place.


[Hmm.  Gonna have to think on that one.  I really like the understatement of 
it.  She loathed it, sure.  I think it came through in the previous part, but 
understating it, I think, is key to her personality.]



  You know, I never really got that whole "this is my friend, this is my
best friend, this is my bestest-best friend, tee hee" thing.  Why try to
rank
your friends?

It helps when you have to choose between them. ^_^


[. . . What, you mean like, if a robber came into your house and asked you to 
choose which of your friends got to live and which had to die?]



  But, well, if I were totally honest, I'd have to say that Linna-that's
Linna Yamazaki-is my, I dunno, best (?)

drop the (?). Too intrusive

[I guess you're right.  *Sigh*.  I put it in to kind of suggest a mental 
shrug but I guess it didn't work.]



friend.  Not that I love her any more
than I love the rest of my friends, no, we've all been through too many of
the
same fires for me not to love them all equally.  It's just that . . . even
at
the best of times, Sylia partitions herself away.

Yeah, she's like a modular cubicle, that way. ^_^

[I don't really get *corporate* humor.  Probably why I don't read Dilbert.]



I know, I can feel it.
There's a bit of her watching what we all do.  And Nene, she's just so
young.  And
I know that I sound like one of those old rural grandmother matriarchs
from
those television dramas, all hunched over and slightly bitter,

I didn't think there was that much age difference. It's just nene looks like
a kid. Still, don't know canon ages


[Priss isn't much older, she just *feels* that way because of Nene's 
exhuberance.]


but that's how
she makes me feel a lot of the times

time


[uh huh]


-too old.

just go with 'old' I think that will suffice.


[Hmm.]


Linna and I are around the same
age, we've gone through a lot of the same things, so we have a lot of
commonality to bond us even without this thing we do, but we're also
different enough
that it's not like talking to a copy of me.

Uh, yeah. Got that right.


[Yeah, despite each having their own story arc devoted to a previously unseen 
friend being killed, and going out for revenge, they are very different 
people.]




SYLIA

Sylia: Right, like you'll get anything out of me. Just go on to Nene. She'll
spill her guts for a little extra memory chip.


[Nene: Hey!  That's not fair!  Do your turn!  . . . and I would *not* spill 
my guts just for that.  I'd want ice cream first.]



  My father was called Katsuhiko Stingray.  This was not the name he was
born with.  I do not know what that was.  I do not care.  He had ideas
about
things, ideas about people, ideas about the world.  He never showed the
world his
ideas, begrudging them only his boomers, the least of his thoughts, a
digression.  He showed me his ideas.  He showed my brother.  Then he began
his
surgeries on us.

But I ask you, what good is a spleen anyway?


[Well, it tastes pretty good, if that's what you mean . . .]



  Our minds were made better.  Our nervous systems made faster.  Our
bodies
better.  Information is absorbed and processed faster.  Everything faster.
Everything better.  Everything stranger.  Optimized humans.

Sort of like being super-sized at a McDonalds, when you think about it.


[What an odd non sequiter.  Surgery and fast food.]



  This does not matter.

Which is why you brought it up.


[Well, yeah!  

Actually, I meant that Sylia sort of disregards any emotional trauma she'd 
undergone in order to focus on her "vengeance."  Maybe I should make that 
clearer somehow . . . hmm . . .]


Actually, I finally used 'Needless to say' correctly. I started off a 
phrase
with 'Needless to say' and stopped right there, since everything else was...
well, you get the picture. :)

[Gasp!  You mean how like you're not supposed to "quotation" marks in order 
to make an "emphasis"?]


  I am nearing the end of the first phase of my vengeance.  I have
tested
the enemy and found him wanting.  He has gained a false confidence.  He is
powerful, resource-fat, but slow, too slow, and filled with the fearful
and
ambitious.  Communication is weak within him.  He is cumbersome.

And perhaps he's using you to whittle away the fat and make him lean and
hungry again. Nothing brings out the best in a man better than a worthy
adversary.


[Yeah, tell that to Dr. Doom.  

Hmm.  Speaking of, which Ranma character do you think would make a good Dr. 
Doom?  You could go for the completely ridiculous, like . . . Picollete Chardin 
or if you go to other Takahashi series, there's the baddest bad ass she made: 
Naraku.

(and, if other anime, there's the obvious one: Char Aznable.  C'mon, think 
about it!]



  He has a secret history to him.

Pictures involving him and a Sailor Moon blow-up doll.


[Nooooo . . . rather not.  No, no, no.]


I would know this, though whether it
will speed my vengeance I

vengeance, I


[Darn those commas!]


do not know.  It is a history that he and my father
shared in common.  Is this why I feel such kinship and contempt for him?
It is a
needless question and feeling.

So's revenge. :p


[Uh huh.  No argument there.  But because it's Sylia's vengeance, does that 
mean that's ALL she's doing?]



  I'm the "normal" one.  I'm Linna Yamazaki.

  I'm not angsty like Priss, not that I could be.  I'm not terrible like
Sylia.  And Nene would be normal if she weren't so weird.  Compared to
them, I'm
a picture of conformity.  I like socializing, I like dating, I like sex.
I
like sitting in my living room, listening to some classical music and
reading a
book.  I like going to temple and praying.  I like dressing up as a cow
for
Halloween and giving kids chocolate.

  But I love to dance and I don't do that anymore.

Freak.

^_^


[Linna: Hey!]



  I was sent to an orphan factory afterwards and spent a brutal two
years
there.  I couldn't get into a Click;

I think you mean 'Clique' though I could be wrong and you're using a
different slang term.


[I do know the proper spelling and it is in this sense I'm using it.  I just 
felt that, a) japanese orphans, while using it as slang, wouldn't neccessarily 
know how to spell it in english.  and b) it's slang so the spelling might've 
changed for it, like . . . "phat" or adding all those umlauts on top of vowels 
for heavy metal bands.  Things like that.  THere's a further reason but I'm 
not going to go into it right now.  Maybe later.]



  It was also incredibly boring.  They lived in a fishing village, my
grandparents.  My uncles and aunts and cousins were fishermen or the wives
or
girlfriends of fishermen.  Even my relief over not having to worry about
being
stabbed or raped turned to boredom pretty damn quickly.  I guess that my
experiences made me feel cut off, alien, from my family.  There wasn't

weren't


[Darnit!]


any points of
intersection between them and me, beyond blood.  It had been dangerous in
the
factory, but I missed the lick of adrenaline.  It's strange what you can
get
nostalgic about.  I think that I would have killed myself if it weren't
for the
television.

Yep. Perfectly normal.


[Linna: Do I detect sarcasm?  Hmm?]



  I developed a sort of sick fascination with Mega-Tokyo, the city that
took so much from me.  I hated it but

it, but

[darnit!]



there was something there.  My destiny,
maybe.  Certainly I wasn't going to be happy in the village, despite the
love and
safety.  Maybe I didn't deserve to be safe.

  The television not only fed my sickness, it also gave me dance.  I saw
my
first Hikaru Hiyama movie one day, one of her earliest works, "Downtown
Cats."

Heh. KOR movie cameo, right? Hated it, but then I found KOR cliche and
boring.


[I'm going to ignore that.  Really, really ignore that.  (though I suppose 
this explains the whole Kyosuke as Fixer thing.)]



  I learned something in the factory: you have to let go of the bad but

bad and


[hmmm.]


   It didn't work out that way.  I became a cop because . . . well, first
off, because it was a bit of a lark.  You know, anarchist programming
goddess
infiltrates the Man for fun and chaos.

Yeah. I'm sure Michael from WHR felt the same way before the shackled a
collar to him. :)


[Sorry?  Don't get the reference.]



  But I still think that it should be better than this.  Every single
victory we have shouldn't always be so bitter.  For instance, we should be
taking
on Genom now, damn it!  We shouldn't be just buzzing around, taking out
those
guys that get too far out of line.  We should be doing something about all
this.

Yes, kill them all. Kill all the unworthy. Genom is only the beginning. I
don't like jaywalkers either, flaunting traffic laws. They need to be put
down as well.


[Nene: Traffic laws are there for your safety and the safety of others!  
Please remember to buckle your safety belt, especially during Traffic Safety 
Awareness Week.  Thank you and remember that in Mega-Tokyo, cops don't really need 
a *reason* to shoot to kill!]



  You know, petty as this might sound, sometimes I feel guilty around my
friends.  The main reason being, I had a pretty normal childhood.  Both of
my
parents are still alive.  I should know; my mother calls at least once a
day to
nag at me.  What kind of a job is a policeman for a young lady?

it isn't which is why we refer to them as 'policewomen' :)


[Heheheheheheheheheh.  Yeah.]



  (Come to think of it, I guess I have more in common with my uncle than
anything.  He was a cop too and according to all the old family stories, a
bit
of rebel.

They nicknamed him 'Mad Bull 34'. Don't know why.


[Man, that's an old anime reference.]




  I don't know if Mother died or not.  Father never talked about it and
Sylia . . . Sylia never really cared all that much.  At least I don't
think she
did.  She would have told me if she had.

  I was born MacDonald Stingray.  There was a reason why and Father told
me
once.

I think he hated me. Why else give a kid the name of 'MacDonald'? It's like
tattoing 'Kick My Ass, Please' to my forehead.


[Mackie: Which is why I go by Mackie.  Pretty sure that reason he gave was 
because of globalization.  Down with the WTO!  Woo!
Sylia: Time for your medication, Mackie.
Mackie:  No!  No medicine!  They stop me from seeing the Illuminati/CIA 
transmitters in my drinking water!]




  One day I sliced the palm of my hand.  I don't know why.  It was not a
bad cut, neither deep nor long and did not require stitches, but it was
enough
to draw some amount of blood.  A sudden impulse came to me and I put some
of my
blood under a slide and microscope.  There are things crawling in my
blood.

They were white, and seemed to be killing viruses and such. Obviously I'm a
freak of nature.


[Mackie: My god . . . when my blood's inside my body, it's blue.  But outside 
it turns red and tastes like copper mixed with blood.  That's just wacky.]


I think there is something in my mind.  I don't know who is thinking this.
I
think it is someone put there by Father.  He did surgeries on Sylia and
me.

I think the spleen is an underrated organ. I think without it, I'm just not
complete.


[Spleen, spine, what's the difference?  They both start with a sp and have at 
least one e.  Right?  It's a mistake that anyone could make.]


  I live on the top floor of the Lady 633 and have been working in the
Silky Doll, a lingerie store, for more than a year now.  It was a bit
weird being
surrounded by all those frilly things and women and mannequins and all but
I
got used to it soon enough.  I can get used to anything.

  I wonder if I'm human anymore.

That's usually a sign of being human. We can adapt marvelously when we try.


[It's that recursive and downright paradoxical nature of sentience that 
ensures that a robot takeover will never occur.
Robot: The electoral colleges works . . . how?  bzzz, bzzz plorp!]



  I don't think I'm well.  I think I'm in love with Sylia.  I keep on
thinking about her smile.  She has the best smile.  It's not the one that
everyone
else knows.  Only I know it.  Only I've seen it.  It's wide, showing all
of
her teeth, and her eyes are like spinning diamonds and there's this soft,
not-even whispering repeating gasp of breath and . . . and . . . like

spinning

diamonds and her skin is so cool and her hair is rustling and the things
that I
want to do on her, to her, with her, all of it.

But she doesn't like blackjack. She thinks card games are a waste of time. I
think I'm crazy.


[Mackie: Sylia thinks card games are a waste of time because she never wins 
at them.  I rule at Texas hold 'em . . . now if only I could convince the girls 
to play strip poker . . .]


Nice look inside the various characters' minds and what makes them tick.
Each story flowed very well. I approve.

DB Sommer


[Thank you.  Thank you!]

-murmur



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