Hi everyone.
Wow. It's been a while for me. I *think* I posted part of this first
chapter a LOOOONGG time back... like, sometime in '99 or '00. Here it
is again, after some polishing and refinement.
I'm still refining chapters 2 and 3... feedback, positive or negative,
would be greatly appreciated.
--sofaspud
--
---------------
B A C K L A S H
A Bubblegum Crisis Fanfiction
by Brian Payne (sofaspud)
Bubblegum Crisis is copyright (c) Artmic / Youmex. I do not own,
nor do I claim to, any of these characters and settings with the
sole exception of purely original material. In other words:
Please don't sue me. I'm just taking them for a quick spin. :)
* * *
Chapter 1
* * *
Deep in the bowels of the Earth, in subbasement seventeen of GENOM
corporate headquarters, MegaTokyo, Japan, stands rack upon rack, shelf
upon shelf, of old, useless, abandoned projects. They are in limbo;
too dangerous to throw away, to esoteric to re-use, and too expensive
to finish developing, they gather dust year after year, occasionally
trotted out and re-evaluated, then put back to wait for 'future
developments'.
The relics come in all shapes and sizes. What remains of the
original Dragon prototype sits in one corner of the massive area,
covered in a moth-eaten tarp that lets the melted armor beneath show
through. High on a shelf rests a polished silver skull, emblazoned
with the characters "HYPER-BUMA" and a serial number. And low to the
ground, underneath a pile of broken metal and glass canisters that
still occasionally glow with a faint green light, lies a heavy signet
ring. The face is a bas-relief of a human skull, and twin gems gleam
in the eye sockets.
Throughout the GENOM corporate structure, the department is
officially recognized as Storage -- a simple enough name. But all the
personnel refer to it as The Graveyard, with only one exception:
Ichiro Watanabe, who was the master of it all.
Ichiro loved the storage area. The relics residing there were
his babies; their every movement tracked on his computer as lovingly
as a parent tracked their child's schoolwork. That GENOM paid him --
and paid him well -- to care for them mattered not to him; he was
there for the love of his work, not for the money.
From time to time he would rise from his desk in his office
just beyond Security Station Twenty-Three, stretch, walk unhurriedly
to the lift tubes, and drop forty stories to the storage area. He
would often take his lunch down there, sitting on an old BUMA chassis
or magnetically sealed crates with "TOP SECRET" warnings as he ate his
ramen or sandwich. He would walk through at least a small portion of
the dimly lit alcoves each night before he went home, letting his
hands caress the stored treasures and dreaming of the day that they
would again see light. And once a month, whether anything had changed
or not, he'd whip his staff into a frenzy as they conducted a thorough
inventory of the entire storage area. That he worked right along with
them, getting dirty and dusty just as much as they did, was the only
thing that kept his staff from lynching him every time the subject
came up.
His superiors for the most part ignored him. They had stopped
bothering with the monthly, paperback-thick reports that Ichiro
submitted. They knew, from painful experience, that Watanabe would
let them know, loudly and repeatedly, whenever something that required
their attention was afoot. Until then, they reasoned, they would just
stay out of his hair and let him stay out of theirs. The man was mad,
after all, and only his good work ethic and near-fanatical zeal for
the job kept him employed.
For Ichiro was a romantic. He harbored the secret dream that
each one of his babies would one day rise again, like the Phoenix from
the ashes, and make its mark upon the world. His imagination fueled
his mind with plans for redeployment, with development schedules and
production quotas, with fiery images of steel and electronics meshing
in a beautiful dance. And he had no qualms about informing people of
his dreams -- only if they had sufficient security clearances, of
course. He might have been mad -- and somewhere, in the dim recesses
of his mind, he knew that he wasn't quite sane -- but he wasn't
stupid.
On this particular day, a warm, breezy Tuesday in late July,
Ichiro was down among the racks. His slacks were immaculately
pressed, his shirt and tie hanging straight, with only a faint tell-
tale darkness on his back indicating how hard he had been working.
Four mechanical monstrosities lumbered through the shadows towards
him, cradling a large, menacing-looking object between them, and
crossed into the light spilled by an overhead lamp with a conical
shade.
"Two more steps," Ichiro cried, "then set it down. Gently!"
The four general-purpose boomers responded with dull,
mechanical voices and in unison, "Yes, sir." They took two more
precise steps each, then lowered their burden to the concrete floor.
It settled with a dull boom that shook the surrounding racks.
"Gently, I said! Fools," Ichiro spat. The boomers didn't
have the grace -- or the necessary equipment -- to look embarrassed.
They simply stood, awaiting further orders.
Irritably, Ichiro waved them away. "Go. I have no further
need of you." He moved forward as the boomers left, eyes glued to the
massive crate. Stenciled on the side was the ubiquitous GENOM logo,
and the magnetic seals still glowed green, indicating that whatever
rested inside hadn't been tampered with.
Ichiro loved this part of his job, more so than the rest. It
was the thrill of discovery, he supposed. GENOM MegaTokyo was the
largest GENOM facility in the world, and was the official storage site
for projects deemed too vulnerable, valuable, dangerous, or expensive
to store anywhere else.
But GENOM, for all its vaunted skill at constructing labor-
saving devices and tools to ease the woes of everyday life, was still
a corporation. And if there was one thing that corporations excelled
at, Ichiro thought, it was creating red tape.
Thus, he was never quite sure what he would find when a
shipment arrived. Sometimes the manifest would be correct, but more
often, it would be slightly off. And sometimes -- he loved these the
most -- it would be wildly inaccurate.
Today, he suspected, it was one of the latter. The manifest
claimed that the contents were 'cryogenically stored organic
artifacts, approx. mass 50kg, ref. project 2501'. Ichiro was
skeptical of that, if for no other reason than the fact that the crate
weighed in around the neighborhood of seven hundred kilos.
Still, he told himself, it could just be a typo, or they might not
have included the weight of the cryogenics system in the manifest. He
had learned long ago that it was best not to get too excited.
Despite his doubts, he was smiling as he opened the seals one
by one. After the last blinked and died, he attacked the crate itself
with a hydraulic prybar. Eventually, the top was loose -- a bit above
waist-high, several centimeters thick, and almost a meter square, it
wasn't a quick job -- and he set aside the prybar and heaved the
composite plastic top off the crate.
His smile developed into a full-blown grin. Yep, the
bureaucracy had struck again. Nestled in foam inside the crate was an
object that was only somewhat familiar to him. He was used to that;
half the stuff in storage was unrecognizable by normal standards.
Made of metal, and -- the top at least -- circular in shape,
it was a lab table, of sorts. It had the standard odd protuberances
and controls along the edge, and a shallow depression in the middle.
This one also had scorch marks all over the surface, and several of
the tell-tales and controls were blown out. Typical, Ichiro thought.
Nothing ever comes through here in working order.
With a sigh -- he had hoped it was something more interesting
-- he pulled up a chair and sat down to fill out the paperwork.
Ichiro yawned, rose, and stretched carefully. His office was
dark, lit only by the soft glow of his terminal monitor and the lights
of the city outside. The small luminescent clock on his desk informed
him in large blue numbers that it was well past quitting time -- not
unusual for him, he admitted to himself with a rueful mental grin.
Today could have been a good day, he thought. Inventory was
complete, and his people had put in extra time without complaint when
several small, but annoying, discrepancies had been noted. Those
discrepancies, though, were the cause of his discontent.
Ichiro scowled as he recalled the incident. Of six items
listed, he and his staff had only been able to account for two. He
had no idea what they actually were, either -- the crates were sealed
and locked, and even his security clearance wasn't high enough to open
them. While unusual, it wasn't unheard-of -- the standard procedure
when something like that came in was to log it, stow it, and leave it
alone.
And it was actually fairly common for a small amount of the
inventory in Storage to develop legs and walk off. He didn't like it,
but had grown to accept the fact that, sometimes, his superiors pulled
things from Storage without informing him.
But when four of the same batch went missing between one
inventory audit and the next, from a secure area that only he had the
keycode for, well... it was a mite strange, as his uncle would say.
To be sure, his superiors could override his lock and access the
storage area... but such an action would raise alarms on his terminal
before they'd finished typing.
Frowning, Ichiro pulled open his desk drawer and removed a
bottle of antacid tablets. He shook two into his hand, considered
briefly, then added a third and gulped them down with a cup of tepid
water that had been sitting on his desk since he came back up to his
office late that afternoon.
Regretfully glancing out the window at the waiting city
outside, Ichiro resumed his seat and began composing a politely-worded
request to his immediate superior for a meeting in the morning.
And after he was done with the message, he thought, he was
going to go get drunk at some friendly bar that had pretty girls,
quiet patrons, and strong drinks. The storm that was to come on the
morrow was more than he felt he could stand without a hangover to
brace him.
* * *
She crouched behind the garbage cans in dark shadows, one knee soaking
in the puddle that had been left behind by the previous night's
storms, and hugged herself for warmth. The girl was young, in her
late teens or early twenties, with dark hair and eyes that glittered
in the twilight darkness of the alley. Her clothing was expensive and
well made without being extravagant, tailored to add shapely curves to
her somewhat skinny frame. Now, thoroughly wrinkled and smudged, it
looked as though it had been slept in for a week, then tossed in a
garbage heap and left to rot.
On the street light traffic whirred by. It was late, and most
people were at home, although an occasional pedestrian would wander
down the cracked sidewalks through seas of gloom, disturbing shadows
left alive through the lack of working streetlights.
The girl shifted cautiously, peering out of the darkness at
the street beyond. They were looking for her, had been for almost a
week, and she was running out of places to hide. Her eyes burned with
rage and shame at the memory of her last hiding place, a friendly and
much too trusting older woman and her husband who had taken her in and
let her spend the night.
It was to be their last.
They died, horribly, as she had made her escape. She heard
the screams and the death rattle of the old man when his body caught
up with her at ground level, striking the pavement with enough force
to liquefy internal organs and shatter bones. Even after impact his
fingers continued to claw for the windowsill that was no longer there,
clutching feebly at the air while his eyes grew dim and dark.
Absently, she brushed at a stain on the lower edge of her
skirt, not really seeing it, her eyes focused somewhere very far away.
Tears rolled down her cheeks, startling her as they always
did, and despite herself, she smiled. The doctors had been so
surprised, that day. They weren't supposed to be able to cry. They
weren't supposed to feel pain, or remorse, or even an instinct of
self-preservation. Certainly none of her sisters had.
She rubbed at her eyes with the back of a grimy hand, and
frowned.
Her sisters were still alive. She could feel each one of them
in her mind, like a shining beacon amidst an ocean of roiling
darkness, cloudy seas that threatened to drag her down and drown her
in their depths. But her sisters weren't talking to her any more, and
she didn't know why.
Just maybe, though, she was afraid that she did know why. She
was afraid that her sisters had returned to captivity, were working
with the doctors to find her and 'cure' her disease.
Oh, God, she thought, please let me be wrong...
A prickling at the back of her neck snapped her out of her
thoughts. Eyes narrowing, she peeked out and cautiously looked
around.
Sometimes, she had been able to tell when her pursuers were
close. They were getting sneakier, harder to detect, but right now
something was... *wrong*. Slowly, she shifted until both her feet
were planted firmly under her body, ready to run at a moment's notice.
She held her breath, tasting the air and straining to hear anything
out of the ordinary.
A shout from the far end of the alley grabbed her attention.
With a heartfelt curse, she leapt to her feet and sprinted away from
the voice, across the street, sending garbage cans flying and narrowly
avoiding a small car that screeched to a halt with its horn blaring.
The driver yelled something at her as she entered the next alley, but
it didn't register in her hearing -- all she heard was the thunderous
bass drumming of her heart and the sound of blood rushing in her
veins.
And the Voice. The one that incessantly whispered at her,
almost driving her mad with its never-ending chant.
(Go back, go back, go back,) it cried soundlessly. (They
won't hurt you if you go back.)
"Never," she muttered through gritted teeth as she ran. "I'll
never go back."
She pounded down the brick canyon, feeling her pursuers gain
on her. Panting, she skidded to a halt and threw her shoulder against
one of the ramshackle doorways in the walls. It gave with a
splintering crack, and she dived through just as a stun beam lashed
through the space her shoulders had occupied moments before, scorching
her blouse and sending sparks flying from the doorjamb.
The stink of unwashed bodies and several different varieties
of smoke greeted her as she scrambled to her feet. Scattered around
the dimly lit room were a half-dozen people, all in a drugged stupor,
some with needles, some with pipes, and others with no visible sign of
their habit. Those that were conscious grinned up at her with vacant
stares; there was a slight murmur of conversation, but it trailed off
quickly. Vials crunched underfoot as she stumbled through the gloom,
looking desperately for a way out.
"Hey, babe," rumbled a deep voice from the shadows. "You
wanna hit? Wanna party?" The words were slurred, but understandable.
A brief, high-pitched female giggle joined the drugged speaker.
"I think she does, Ryo." The high-pitched voice giggled
again.
The girl ignored the room's occupants, instead furiously
tugging on the only other door in the room, a steel beast that led
further into the building, looking ridiculously out of place in this
dingy basement.
"Look! She went in there!" The shout came from outside.
Tossing a terrified glance over her shoulder, the girl yanked on the
door with all of her strength. Reluctantly, it creaked open enough
for her to slip through.
She pulled the door shut behind her -- it was much easier from
this side -- and swung the locking bar into place. Almost
immediately, she heard startled shouts from the people in the next
room, and a girl's terrified scream. She heard the crackle of
ionizing air and the muffled explosions of gunfire, and the noises
stopped.
The door rattled briefly then fell silent. Soon, a bright
glow appeared in the center and began to spread, slowly edging
outwards in a circular shape. Waves of heat made the door surface
dance and waver in her vision.
She turned and ran. Not more that twenty steps had passed
before she heard the door collapse. A formless cry escaped her lips
as she rounded a bend.
The door at the end of the hall was blocked by a hulking,
monstrous figure which had to crouch to fit in the doorway. It was
turned half-sideways, one clawed hand gripping the doorframe, and
watching her with an eerie intensity.
(Doberman!) her mind cried at her, and at any other time she would
have wondered how she knew.
Sobbing, she cast about desperately and spied an archway.
Beyond it lay a row of wall-set mailboxes and a stairwell; without a
backward glance, she took off, climbing the stairs at a rate that
would have surprised her, had she thought about it. Flight after
flight passed beneath her feet, and through it all she could hear the
metal feet of her pursuers getting closer.
She risked a glance back, and was rewarded with a glimpse of
the protruding snout of the Doberman combat boomer just barely visible
coming around the corner behind her.
(Doberman: threat level two...)
The errant thought that flashed through her mind found no
purchase; she ignored it as one would ignore snatches of conversation
half-heard in a crowd. She skidded around the last corner, slipped,
recovered, and continued running. Ahead of her, a second steel
security door with a sign labeled 'Roof' blocked her escape.
Without slowing down, without a pause, without thinking about
what she was doing, she threw her hands over her head, ducked her
shoulders, and lunged.
The quiet of the night was shattered by the shrieking noise of
tearing metal. Concrete dust and shards of steel rained down on the
asphalt rooftop. The girl hit the roof hands first, rolled
gracefully, and came to her feet... then wobbled and nearly collapsed
in shock.
How did I do that? she dazedly wondered, staring at the
wreckage of a once-hefty security door that lay in scattered remnants
all around her.
Almost of their own volition, her feet carried her to the edge
of the roof. She risked one glance over, down the concrete canyon to
the hard landing site below, then turned around and resolutely refused
to look again.
Twin beasts of metal stood outside what was left of the
stairwell entrance. Their amber eyes and gleaming teeth flashed
evilly in the darkness as they split, edging to either side of her and
slowly beginning to advance. Between and behind them, she saw the
silhouette of a man, glasses flashing in the cherry glow of a
cigarette that floated in shadow.
"We've been looking for you for a long time, Naoko."
Naoko? Was that her name? she wondered, mind racing in
fright.
"You've been a very bad girl."
(You should have gone back, you should have gone back, you
should have gone back,) the Voice gibbered.
"Shut up," Naoko whispered, taking a step back. The low sill
around the rooftop dug into her left calf with painful force, and she
stopped.
The Dobermans growled in tandem, a half-electronic, half-
bestial sound that raised goosebumps on her arms and sent shivers down
her spine.
"I- I won't go back," she declared defiantly.
The silhouette cocked his head, seeming to consider her
statement as a businessman would consider a proposal from a rival.
The cigarette briefly flared, followed by a gray plume of smoke that
curled for the stars. "From where I'm standing, it doesn't look like
you have much of a choice."
(Gobackgobackgobackgoback-)
"Shut up!" Naoko whispered fiercely, tears springing anew from
her eyes.
"What's the matter, my dear?" Soft, mocking laughter rang out
of the dark. "Is someone saying something you don't like?"
Naoko collapsed to her knees as the Voice suddenly grew
louder, ringing out in her mind and echoing through her skull.
(GO BACK! GO BACK! GO BACK!)
"No, no, no," she whimpered, holding her head in both hands,
rocking back and forth on the rooftop. Faintly, through the screaming
in her mind, she could hear music... and the sound of Doberman
footsteps slowly, softly crunching across the roof.
The Voice continued, growing louder and angrier by the second.
Naoko clenched her eyes shut in pain, reduced to moaning, unable to
form even a single word.
(GO BACK! GO BACK! GO BACK!)
And then-
(I can help you, Naoko. Let me in.)
Her eyes flew open in surprise as the music suddenly swelled,
and a soft, clear, friendly voice silenced the gibbering madness of
the previous one.
"Who- who are you?" Naoko whispered, staring blankly into
space, her hands falling limply to her sides. As if from far away,
she saw a startled look come over the silhouette's face -- she could
suddenly see his face, in perfect detail, she realized distractedly --
and the desperate lunge of the Dobermans, claws reaching out to rend,
to tear, all in fluid slow-motion.
(A friend,) the voice replied. (I can help. Give me your
hand.)
In a fashion that she couldn't even describe herself, Naoko
reached out.
And the world turned inside-out.
* * *
"What the hell was THAT?!" Detective Leon McNichol barked,
jumping to his feet and spilling his coffee all over the sidewalk.
About a kilometer away, a mushroom-shaped fireball gutted the
top three floors of an abandoned housing complex. When it flared out,
the city plunged into darkness so deep that it was only then that Leon
realized how big and bright the explosion had been. The shockwave
battered him, and he fell back a step as hot wind tore at his
clothing. The sounds of the city seemed muted, dull, after the roar
that he hadn't realized had half-deafened him. His ears were ringing.
"I don't know, but we'd better find out," replied Daley Wong,
his partner. They shared a glance over the roof of their interceptor.
As one, they shook their heads and got in.
Leon leaned forward and peered up at the burning skyscraper as
he drove, dodging other traffic with the ease of long experience and
the assistance of a screaming, flashing siren.
"Fire's on its way," Daley said from the passenger seat,
racking the microphone back on the dash.
"I dunno," Leon muttered, nodding to acknowledge his partner's
statement. "I got a weird feeling about this one."
* * *
"What in the world -- !" Sylia Stingray stared in shock at
the fireball that blossomed over the city outside her window. Scant
seconds later, the thick glass shook violently and a low, booming
rumble knocked a couple of paintings off the wall. Sylia watched the
explosion die down to mere thirty-foot flames licking upwards from the
destroyed building, then shook her head slowly.
Without another word, she turned and strode out of her
apartment, down the hall to the elevator that would whisk her to the
basement.
Long hours of practice had her stripped and into her softsuit,
the all-important link between her body and the outer armor shell of
her hardsuit, in less than a minute. She chinned herself up on the
bar that hung above her armor for that very purpose, lowered her legs
into the hardsuit, and wriggled until her hips and feet had seated
properly. Her arms slid in next and she stood, pulling the hardsuit
closed around her body. Faint hisses and clicks sounded as the suit
warmed up and sealed itself. She completed the process by pulling her
helmet on, giving it a final quarter-twist to engage the locking
mechanism.
Cool, filtered air washed over her face as the environmentals
came on-line. Short, low-power spurts of thruster gas fired from
various locations across her armored form as the jump systems checked
out. A low hum sounded, quickly subsiding past human hearing, and her
until-then-dark visor lit up with a holographic view of the outside
room, overlaid with esoteric diagrams and displays that her trained
eye had no problem both understanding and ignoring.
Saber White left the room, clanking quickly down the hall
towards the staging area. A few minutes after she left, the lights,
sensing no presence below, shut themselves off. Shadows drew
themselves like a cloak across the three still forms of dust-covered
hardsuits crouching in the corners of the room.
* * *
(Wake up.)
Naoko stirred, blinked. One eyelid twitched, then opened.
The second soon followed, and she stared dumbly at the wreckage
surrounding her before realizing what it was and sitting up with a
startled gasp.
(Naoko, you must leave. Now. Quickly.)
"Wha- what happened?" she cried, looking about in confusion.
The rooftop looked like the proverbial glimpse of Hell. Pools
of molten asphalt bubbled and smoked, clinging in gooey rivulets to
half-melted steel girders and blackened, charred chunks of concrete.
Waves of heat danced in front of her vision, and she abruptly realized
that the small area she sat on, a roughly circular section of
undamaged roof that was not quite a meter in diameter, was the only
part of the roof that wasn't destroyed.
It wasn't even warm.
As she gaped in shock, the voice spoke again.
(Naoko, you must leave. We can't be safe here.)
"I'm scared," she replied, and blinked. She was, although she
couldn't put a finger on exactly why.
(I'll take care of you.)
Naoko stood slowly. She nodded. "Okay."
(Follow me.)
Naoko opened her mouth to ask, "Follow you how?" when she
suddenly realized where she needed to go. It was as if she could see
someone, waving to her and beckoning her on, right in front of her...
but she couldn't. Her eyes showed nothing but the melted, flaming
rooftop. She hesitated, eyeing the leaping, dancing flames in naked,
unashamed fear.
(Trust your instincts, Naoko,) the voice said insistently.
(Now follow me!)
Naoko gulped, nodded, and closed her eyes. Unerringly, she
followed the voice through a sea of flames, climbing over melted
rubble that should have fried her in an instant but instead was merely
warm to the touch. Her hair swirled in the updraft of the flames,
playing tag with leaping sparks yet never scorching or burning. Her
blouse and skirt fluttered in the wind, snapping against her body, yet
remained cool and unharmed. Naoko risked a peek more than once, but
was always glad to shut her eyes again and follow the voice.
When they reached what remained of the edge of the roof, she
hung back. At the back of her mind, the real Naoko was screaming in
fear, useless, but this Naoko was calm, collected, and ready to follow
orders. It was ever so much nicer to be this Naoko right now. She
hoped she could stay this way until everything was over.
Dimly, she knew she was in shock, but like most everything
else right now, it wasn't touching her.
"There's no other way?" she asked the air fearfully, staring
past her dangling toes at the concrete and asphalt so far below.
(No.)
With that, the voice leaped over the edge. Naoko squinched
her eyes shut, balled her fists, and followed.
The screaming wind tore at her clothes, her hair, her face.
Naoko opened her mouth to scream and couldn't as the air ripped her
breath away. The ground, which had seemed so far below, rushed up at
her with surprising speed, and she knew that she was about to die.
(Fall rate unacceptable. Initiating landing procedure.)
(Hang in there, Naoko.)
Naoko watched as the world slowed down, just like it had back
on the roof when she reached out and took the voice's 'hand'. Her
feet touched the pavement, sunk into it four inches deep.
Then she was gasping as the world returned to its normal pace
and she fell forward onto her hands and knees, rough asphalt digging
into her palms with a sharp sting that quickly became a throbbing
pain. She raised one hand wonderingly and watched as a trickle of
blood slid down from a shard of glass embedded in the meat of her
palm, gathering at her wrist. Poised, shimmered, and fell, splashing
on the blacktop without a sound.
And another.
Another.
(Naoko... hurry...) The voice was fainter, now.
Naoko stood, absently brushing her skirt off with her
undamaged hand. She looked around in a daze, then stumbled down the
street, away from the conflagration.
The shining sparks of her sisters seemed brighter than before,
somehow. As she walked, she watched them, and thought about better
times.
(We'll find them, Naoko. We'll save them.) If it were
possible, Naoko would have sworn the voice yawned.
Naoko smiled timidly and plucked the glass shard from her
hand, curling her fingers into a fist to slow the bleeding. "Right."
She absently caressed her knuckles with her free hand, the
knuckles that were white and trembling under the strain of her
clenched fist.
"Right," she repeated.
* * *
Leon felt rather like a spectator at a barbecue gone wrong as
he stood leaning against his interceptor, watching thin streams of
high-pressure water rise above the flames and fall on their prey.
Clouds of steam, born with an enraged hiss, raced skywards, and he
could hear the heavy thump-thump-thump of rotor blades struggling to
hold heavy fire-retardant chemicals in the air until they were over
the drop zone. The fire crews were doing their damndest to keep the
blaze from spreading -- he could feel the heat himself, even here,
thirty-odd stories below -- to the surrounding buildings.
If he was any judge, he mused, they'd put it out pretty
easily. The real danger lay in the rubble, for the fire investigators
would have to go through it to determine the cause. Boomers were no
good at that kind of work; they hadn't the guts for it, the instincts.
And just maybe, Leon chuckled ruefully, the current fire chief
doesn't like them any more than I do.
Turning away from the scene, Leon said, "Well, Daley, I don't
think they need us around here any longer."
Daley smirked and shook his head. "Guess not. Hey, Leon -"
he started, then broke off, staring over his partner's shoulder in
surprise.
Leon frowned, then his ears too caught the unmistakable sound of boot
jets splashing off of pavement. His knuckles whitened on the
doorframe, and slowly he forced himself to let go and turn around.
"White," Leon greeted the hardsuited Knight Saber
noncommittally. He paused for a moment, then indicated the blazing
inferno above. "Looks like your handiwork. Almost. Not quite as
destructive, maybe."
Behind him, Daley groaned and hid his face in his hands.
"That was uncalled-for, Detective." The modulated electronic
voice of Saber White was the same as ever. Briefly, Leon wondered if
the woman behind the mask really was that emotionless, or if the suit
had some sort of program in it to leach the emotion out of the words
as she spoke.
Didn't matter either way, he supposed.
After a short, uncomfortable pause, Leon nodded an apology.
"Scans show no people inside the building," White said, as if
Leon had never spoken. "But I did find this on a neighboring
rooftop." She held out her hand, the firelight from above gleaming
off a charred, smooth metal surface.
Daley leaned forward and his eyes widened. "A Doberman."
White nodded. "That was my conclusion as well."
Leon accepted the twisted, yet still recognizable, vaguely
humanoid metallic skull from the Knight Saber. It was still warm to
the touch, and oozed a thick orange fluid from shattered optics. His
thumb ran across an almost unnoticeable machining stamp on the
forehead. Property of GENOM Corporation, it read, with a serial
number directly below.
"You know what this means, Detective."
Leon smiled sardonically and leaned back against the
interceptor again, closing his eyes and dropping the skull to the
ground.
"Oh? What's that, White?"
"GENOM is up to its usual tricks."
Interesting, Leon thought. She _can_ express emotion with
that voice. He replied, "Hadn't you heard? GENOM's one of the good
guys now," and opened his eyes.
Saber White stood rigid in front of him, every curve of her
armor expressing disgust. "Do you really believe that, Detective?"
"I suppose I do, White. I seem to recall some other people
believing in someone once, and getting burned for it. Beliefs
change."
Daley sucked in air with a sharp hiss. "Leon..."
For a moment, Leon thought that White was going to swing at
him. Instead, she stood trembling. "Detective -" she began. Leon
cut her off.
"Get out of here, White. I sure as hell don't have any
respect for you any more, but I owe you a few. This is one of 'em."
As an afterthought, he kicked the skull towards the armored figure.
It rolled to a stop at her feet.
"Take that. It might help you. If I keep it, it'll get
buried."
"Please, go, Saber White," Daley added. "Backup will be
arriving soon."
Saber White looked from Leon to Daley and back again. With
what might have been an electronically-modulated sob, she scooped up
the skull and fled, leaping high with her thruster jets and quickly
disappearing from sight amidst the towers of the city.
* * *
"Two Dobermans and a four-man team."
"Yes, sir."
"Lost."
"Ah, that's right, sir."
The commline was voice-only, and filled with static. Jiro
stood in the dilapidated phone booth and shivered, holding the cracked
handset to his head, and wondering if the director was the type to
punish the messenger.
God, he hoped not.
"Property damage?"
"Uh, at least the top three floors of an old housing complex
were destroyed. There's probably more damage on the next two or three
floors, and lots of windows were shattered for a good ten blocks all
around. A few crushed cars, from the falling rubble."
"Casualties?"
"One firefighter injured by falling debris. A few deaths,
druggies and street trash. Those weren't caused by the target,
though. Our men were, ah, a little overzealous. Sir."
The director's voice, which had been growing quieter, returned
in full force.
"Handle it, Jiro. News slants, payoffs, the works. I don't
care how. I want us to shine on tonight's newscasts. Got it?"
Relieved, Jiro grinned. "Yes, sir!"
* * *
By noon on the following day, Sylia was ready to scream.
Training new hires was an accepted, even necessary, part of running a
business, but that didn't mean she had to like it. The entire morning
felt like a waste, and the two girls seemed just as relieved as she to
take a break.
"Go ahead and go to lunch, ladies. Be back in one hour, and
we'll continue."
When the door had closed behind them, Sylia went to take her
lunch herself, nodding in passing at her remaining employee who
returned her tired smile with a grin.
"Don't worry, ma'am. They'll come around," she said.
"I hope you're right," Sylia replied, and went upstairs.
She had just settled down to hot bowl of soup when a timid
knock sounded on her apartment door. Frowning, she answered it.
A red-haired young woman in an AD Police uniform stood
nervously outside.
"Nene! What are you doing here? Come in, come in!"
"Um, hi, Sylia. I can't stay long, I'm on my lunch break."
"That's fine," Sylia replied, ushering her guest in. When
they both were seated, she continued: "How is everybody?"
Nene looked uncomfortable for a moment, then shook it off.
"Oh, we're all fine. Priss is singing again, Linna's got her own
dojo, and I'm-" and here she chuckled a bit, indicating her uniform,
"-still with the AD Police."
"Well, that's good..."
An awkward silence ensued.
Finally, Nene broke it with a single quiet word. "Why?"
Sylia blinked. "Why what?"
"Why are you still doing this, Sylia? Wasn't what happened
enough for you?" Tears began to flow down Nene's cheeks as she looked
at her friend. "Why?"
Sylia turned to face out the window. Her soup lay untouched
on the table as she spoke.
"I do what I do because I must, Nene. What any of us would
do, in the same situation."
"That's the same excuse you used last time," Nene noted
bitterly, wiping at her tears.
"Nene, that's not fair-" Sylia began. Nene stood, shaking in
anger.
"Fair?! Sylia, is _this_ fair?" One finger flashed upwards
to point at her cheek, previously hidden by shadow from Sylia's view.
A long scar stood out on the delicate cheekbones, running from over
Nene's left eye to just above the point of her chin, narrowly missing
her lips. Sylia gasped as Nene continued.
"Do you know how hard it is to get a date with something like
this on your face, Sylia? Or how hard it was for Linna to walk again,
let alone dance or do her martial arts? Or for Priss to sing after
her injuries? Do you?" Nene stood, shaking in anger. "And all you
say is you had no choice."
"I never intended for any of that to -"
"Ooh!" Nene stamped her foot in anger, cutting Sylia off.
"You used us as bait! You weren't even injured that night!"
"Nene..." Sylia began, standing.
The fiery redhead picked up her purse and stomped to the door.
Just before leaving, she turned for one final parting shot.
"Sylia, we used to be friends. Take my advice: Quit while
you're ahead. Leon won't be so nice, next time, and... and neither
will I."
Sylia blinked as her door slammed shut behind Nene's furious
back. Slowly, she returned to her seat. Her shoulders slumped and
her hands came up to her face.
She stayed that way for a long time.
* * *
Intermittent lights washed over the sleek motorcycle as it
effortlessly wove in and out of traffic on the busy highway. The
high-pitched roar of its engine was almost drowned out by the rush of
air over the surface; the pilot, crouched low to present as little
resistance as possible, couldn't hear anything quieter than a loud
horn, or, perhaps, a gunshot.
That was fine; she liked it that way.
A quick twist of the throttle, a slight shift of weight, and
the small vehicle darted through a gap in traffic barely longer than
itself. The sound of the engine dropped to a throatier pitch, and for
a moment, lightning crackled around the solid hubs of the wheels. The
bike shot forward, clearing a block of traffic. For a short while, it
would be alone on the highway.
Priss Asagiri steered her ride effortlessly. Her mind wasn't
on the highway around her -- her body was more than capable of keeping
her on the road and out of trouble without her conscious help.
Instead, she seethed.
"Damn that bitch, anyway," she muttered, the sound of her own
voice only audible inside her head. Habitually, she tensed and
relaxed the muscles of her left leg, feeling the deep pain that all
the doctors insisted was only in her head.
Feh. As if. She knew what her leg had felt like before that
night, and it was nothing like what it felt like now.
For that matter, SHE didn't feel anything like she had before,
either -- leg be damned, her whole body had required massive repairs
that she still didn't like to think about.
Despite herself, she half-smiled. She was no boomer; she
didn't need 'repairs' in the mechanical sense. Somehow, it was easier
to think of what they'd had to do to her in mechanical terms, rather
than medical.
But whichever way she thought about it, the cause was still
the same.
Her eyes narrowed of their own accord as she recalled the
earlier afternoon, and the visit from Linna.
"She's still at it, Priss."
"Who?" Puzzled.
Linna merely looked at her.
"You're kidding, right?"
A sad shake of the head. "No. Leon saw her last night and
mentioned it to Nene." Linna crossed the small room and sat down on
the couch across from Priss, who put down the lyric notes she had been
studying. A pencil, forgotten, remained in her left hand.
"You heard about the explosion?"
Priss nodded, her eyes dark and cold.
Linna sighed. "She was there."
The pencil snapped. There was silence for a few moments,
then, with a heartfelt curse, Priss leaped to her feet and hurled the
pencil remnants at the room's single window. The small wooden
cylinders clattered off the glass and landed on the floor, very nearly
all the way back at her feet.
"That fucking bitch!"
Linna blinked, then half-shrugged. She watched her friend
pace up and down the room for a few moments in silence. Finally, she
could stand it no more.
"What are we going to do, Priss?"
"What do you mean?" Priss replied absently -- and angrily.
"Should we..." Linna trailed off, unsure. Priss looked at her
in confusion, and Linna continued with: "Well, should we, um... tell
somebody?"
"Tell them *what*? C'mon, Linna, out with it!"
Linna's next words froze the blood in Priss's veins:
"About Sylia," Linna said, despair hanging heavy in her voice,
"and about the Knight Sabers."
"Six damn hours of thinking about it, and I'm still no closer
to an answer," Priss bitched to herself. Sarcastically, she muttered,
"Thanks, Linna."
Familiar landmarks caught her eye, and she suddenly realized
what she needed to do. She banked sharply and shot down an off-ramp,
cutting off some jerk in a small two-door that shouldn't have even
been on the highway to begin with.
"Yeah, you too, buddy!" she yelled over her shoulder. She
eyed the streets around her carefully. It had been a while, and --
there it was.
Yeah. This would solve her problem.
"I said," Priss growled, tapping one finger on the surface in
front of her, "GIMME ANOTHER BEER!"
"C'mon, Priss, ease up. I'm just doin' my job, y'know?"
"Joey. If I don't get my beer in the next ten seconds, you
won't have a job left to do. Get me?"
Shaking his head sadly, the grizzled American behind the bar
turned away. A few seconds later a mug slid down the bar to a precise
stop. Priss grabbed it and poured half of it down in one swallow.
After tilting back and coming forward, her head felt a lot fuzzier
than before. She raised one hand to her forehead to steady herself.
"Jesus, Priss."
"Oh, give it a rest. You people," and here she paused,
blinking owlishly at the dark, smoky interior of the quiet bar, "you
people are always trying to tell me what to do. Everybody. Not just
you." Hiccup.
Joey tiredly nodded, polishing a glass with a none-too-clean
towel. The glass didn't need polishing, but it kept his hands busy.
With no one but Priss in the bar, the other alternative was to go
nuts.
Come to think of it, that might not be such a bad idea, he
groused.
"'nother one," Priss muttered, pushing the now-empty mug back.
Joey absently caught the falling glass with one hand, while his other
flipped the towel up to rest over his shoulder.
Priss observed him from a vantage point that was nearly eye-
level with the bar.
"Wanna talk about it, Priss?" Joey asked calmly, sticking a
cigar into his face but not lighting it. He was trying to quit, but
nights like tonight really made him want a smoke.
"Talk 'bout what?" Priss muttered, slowly pushing herself
upright. "Nah. Gimme a beer."
"No can do, Priss. You've had enough, and it's past closing
time." Joey pointed at the clock hanging over the bar. Priss
blearily peered at it, then snorted.
"What the hell good is a bar if, if..." she swayed, then
straightened. "If you can't get a goddamn drink?" Swinging around on
her stool, she barked: "Why are all you here if you can't get a
drink?!"
A few moments later she turned back. "I'm the only one here,"
she observed quietly.
Joey nodded. "Yeah, the salarymen left about three hours ago.
The hard-core drinkers left two hours ago. I was supposed to lock up
one hour ago. But you," and here he eyed Priss with a cold stare,
"needed 'just one more beer'."
Priss shrugged. "Still need one more. Gimme."
Deciding that the old saw about, 'in for a penny, in for a
pound' applied in this situation, Joey drew another beer and set it
down in front of his surly patron. Priss attempted to lift it, but
Joey's massive palm was covering the top of the mug and, incidentally,
holding it to the bar as firmly as though it had been glued.
"Last one, Priss. Deal?"
Priss eyed the beer glumly. The wave of dizziness had passed,
but her head still felt fuzzy. She figured she'd have one mother of a
hangover in the morning. Damned cheap beer.
"Yeah. Last one."
Joey didn't move his hand. "And give me your keys."
"Over my dead body."
Laughing, Joey removed his hand. "Okay, you win that one."
In a more serious vein, he continued:
"What's the matter, Priss? I haven't seen you for a couple of
months, figured you'd found a classier place to get potted. Why the
sudden visit?"
Priss sipped her last beer slowly. Irritation at being
interrogated was foremost in her thoughts, but vying for first place
was a strong desire to bitch about her problems to someone who wasn't
involved and couldn't possibly guilt-trip her for them.
Finally, she made up her mind. What the hell.
"Joey, you got any friends?"
The bartender snorted. "Yeah, I got one or two." A sudden
grin cracked his face. "Always get a few more around payday."
Priss returned the grin, but only for a moment.
"Ever been burned by one of them? I mean, really burned.
Reamed. Ran over with a fuckin' steamroller. You know?"
The bartender nodded slowly. "Yeah, I think so." He dragged
a stool up across from Priss and lit his cigar, drawing in a deep
breath. Smoke slowly began to trickle from his nostrils.
"That bad, huh?"
Priss nodded. "Yeah."
Puffing gently on his cigar, Joey leaned back and made himself
comfortable.
"You remember the Collapse?" he asked Priss suddenly. Taken
aback, she nodded quizzically. Joey shrugged at her as if to say,
"Trust me, there's a point to this," and continued.
"I lost it all back then. Had a home, a decent job, a nice
set of wheels -- you know. I wasn't rich by a long shot, but I had it
pretty good." He gestured with the hand holding the cigar. "Boom.
One little quake, all gone.
"Now, that's nothing special. Lots of folks had the same
thing happen to them, even more after the big one hit. But see, I had
a friend. He was a real good buddy of mine. He didn't lose a fucking
thing, even during the worst of it. One broken window in his home, I
think, and a couple of glasses smashed on the floor.
"And the asshole wouldn't even give me the time of day,
afterwards. Too busy, he said. I had no money, no job -- kinda hard
to go to work when work's been flattened by a few tons of rock,
y'know? -- and no place to stay. I figured, what are friends for,
right? All I needed was a place to crash for a while, so I could find
a job. But no, he dropped me like a bad habit."
Joey paused for a moment to blow a smoke ring upwards across
the bar.
"About six months after the last of it, just when I was
getting my head screwed on straight again, he calls me up, tracked me
down at the fleabag I was staying at. He'd lost it all -- his
girlfriend left him for some punker, he couldn't compete with GENOM
and its boomers during the Reconstruction and lost his company, the
bank repossessed his cars, you name it. He got screwed. Wanted a
little help." Joey fell silent.
Curious despite herself, Priss asked, "What'd you do?"
Joey snorted and blew another puff of smoke -- this one a
lumpy shaft that speared the dissipating remains of his earlier ring.
Bullseye.
"Whaddya think I did? I told him to go fuck himself,
sideways."
Priss snorted and took another sip.
"Now, see, I don't know what your beef with your friend is,"
Joey continued. A stream of smoke blasted out of one nostril -- Priss
found it fascinating, but somewhat disturbing, the way it bounced and
spread as it hit the polished bar top. "But if I were you, I'd decide
if whatever they did was worth losing them over."
Joey stubbed the cigar out and rose to his feet tiredly.
"Because believe me, Priss: Telling my old pal Mason to go
fuck himself was the dumbest damn thing I've ever done in my life."
Dawning realization slowly reshaped her face. Joey nodded
slowly. "Yeah, Priss. That Mason."
As Priss gaped after him, Joey moved into the dark shadows at
the end of the bar. A set of keys clattered to a stop in front of
her.
"Lock up when you leave. You know where to leave 'em." She
heard the door open and close, followed by the sound of a large engine
coughing into life. It roared enthusiastically, gradually fading into
the distance.
Sitting in the dark bar, the only lights the hazy neon glow of
a half-dozen beer signs and logos, Priss shook her head slowly and
chuckled. Then, raising it in a silent toast, she drained her mug.
* * *
"C'mon, Hiro... we ain't got all night, man."
The man in the phone booth ignored his companion. His hands
rested gently on twin gimbaled control sticks jutting from the surface
of an expensive-looking piece of electronic equipment. About twenty
centimeters square, and perhaps three deep, it was wholly
unremarkable, being made of dull black plastic with only a few dim
LED's glowing on the surface.
The glittering fiber-optic cable snaking up to a heavy set of
goggles -- so heavy they had a strap cinched around the man's head to
hold them on -- were a better indicator of the price of the toy.
From behind the close-fitting lenses, an occasional flash of
light could be seen.
"C'mon, man..."
"Almost there, almost there. Chill...." Hiro twisted one
stick gently, pushed the other forward slightly. His fingers began to
tap intricate patterns on the touch-sensitive surfaces of the control
sticks.
Cut off from the outside world by the heavy goggles, and with
data streaming into his nervous system by means of a set of inductive
electrodes across his temples, Hiro was only peripherally aware of his
companion.
In his vision, rivers and streams of data twisted, converged,
melded together in a wildly intricate dance. He rode the currents
towards his destination, a medium-small 'building' surrounded by
corporate databanks and networks. His route was a zigzagging
rollercoaster -- partly to stay off the radar of the system he planned
to crack, and partly to avoid pursuit. Flashes of red at the corners
of his vision kept him sweating; the electronic defenses of the
telecom network were closing in on him, and would make him in a few
more seconds unless he disconnected or found a way to distract them.
The corners of his mouth tugged upwards in a half-smile. The
adrenaline rush was making him giddy.
Finally, his target lay right in front of him. A week's worth of
painstaking research, of illicit telephone calls and data
transactions, of social engineering and plain old-fashioned lying, all
of it was coming together in front of him right now. Even as he
watched, the electronic security perimeter guarding his objective
shimmered and vanished.
He glanced at the semi-transparent clock hanging in his vision. Right
on time.
Hiro's hands acted of their own accord; his electronic self
shot forward, through the formerly-strong walls of the databank. He
twisted down electronic hallways, negotiating checkpoints without
leaving a trace of his passing. One by one the locks fell away, and
in mere milliseconds he reached the sector containing the data he was
after.
Back in the real world, his mouth mumbled, "One point five
million, coming up. You want fries with that?"
His companion snorted and kept eyeing the deserted street
anxiously. "Just hurry up."
Hiro tapped out a quick command, readying his stored routine
to copy and erase the data in front of him. Just before he engaged
the process, a chill ran down his spine, and he shot a glance around.
Nothing out of the ordinary.
Mentally shrugging, he tapped out the execute code.
The first thing Hiro's companion noticed was the smell of
smoke. Sniffing, he turned away from the street and towards the
booth.
"Hiro, what -- what the hell!?"
Hiro was arched backwards, trembling, as bright flashes of
light poured out of the crevices at the edges of his goggles. Smoke
drifted upwards from his head, and his hands were stark white and
clawing at his face.
"Hiro?" his companion mumbled, stepping forward. His eyes
were blank in shock. "Hiro, you okay, man?"
With a final, spasmodic twich, Hiro collapsed. His equipment
clattered to the concrete beside him as the carefully-spliced telecom
connection ripped itself free in a shower of sparks.
"Hiro?"
No answer was forthcoming. Mumbling, his companion backed
away slowly. "I gotta go, Hiro... I'll be back later, man. Okay?
I'll be back later..."
His receding footsteps quickly became a jog, then a staggering
run, then faded into silence.
The telephone clicked. A voice, tinny and full of static,
drifted out of the dangling handset:
"Your call could not be completed at this time. Please hang
up, check the number, and try your call again."
Click. Buzz.
"Your call could not be completed at this time. Please hang
up, check the number, and try your call again..."
Flashing lights reflected off the walls of the buildings
surrounding the phone booth and its charred occupant. A regular
patrol cruiser and Leon's interceptor were parked nose-to-nose,
blocking the view of the news crews who were reluctantly staying
behind hastily-strung police barricade tape. Leon ignored the lights
and cameras as he and the officer on the scene discussed the case.
"What have you got?" Leon asked, peering at the cloth-covered
body laying half-in, half-out of the phone booth. Faint tendrils of
smoke still curled upwards from the head, and the smell of death was
thick and choking in the air.
"One hell of a hot hacker, looks like. Little too hot, if you
take my meaning. Hah!"
Leon ignored the weak joke. "Any details?"
The street cop sobered slightly. "Not really. Dispatch asked
us," and here he indicated his partner, a fresh-faced young officer
who looked a little green around the gills, "to check out the area for
suspicious activity around the phone booths. So we did."
Leon frowned. "So why was I called in? I'm ADPolice; we
don't handle normal stuff like this."
"I dunno," the other cop replied. "I told dispatch that he's
got some sort of weird tech on him, and she said she'd call you guys
in." He shrugged. "Anyway, the scene's yours. We haven't moved
anything, and as far as I know, neither has anyone else. Have fun."
"Sure, thanks," Leon replied absently as he squatted down
beside the still form. The other officer and his partner returned to
keeping the reporters back out of the way. In the distance, Leon
could hear the sound of an approaching siren.
"Ambulance is a little late on this one," he grunted. Daley,
crouched down opposite him and holding a handkerchief over his mouth
and nose, nodded silently in reply.
Leon pulled on a pair of rubber gloves and lifted the sheet
back. Daley gulped and fought down a heave. Leon's lips compressed
to a thin, tight line, and his face whitened.
"What happened to him?" Daley asked when he regained control
of his stomach.
"I dunno," Leon replied, having overcome his initial
revulsion. Using just his fingertips, and as gently as possible, he
removed the warped, half-melted goggles from the corpse and slipped
them into an evidence bag.
Rising to his feet, Leon indicated the phone booth. "Let's
see what else we can find in there before the meat wagon shows up."
Some twenty-odd minutes later, the corpse was but a memory,
although the smell still lingered on the air. Daley shared a troubled
glance with his partner as he climbed into the ambulance for the ride
to the morgue. Regulations stated that the senior officer was
supposed to witness the delivery and collect the receipt, but Leon had
a habit of ignoring regs that he didn't like.
"Looks like you're all done here, Detective."
Leon shrugged as he peeled off the gloves, his hands sweaty
and slightly sticky from being confined for so long. "Yeah, looks
that way."
"Well, we'll be off, then." The street cop turned away. His
partner was just finishing the chore of cleaning up the police tape;
he pitched the yellow wad of plastic into a nearby dumpster and
climbed into the drivers seat of the patrol car. Leon watched the
pair leave silently, then shook his head and slid behind the wheel of
his own vehicle. In seconds, the street was deserted.
Lost in thought, Leon almost didn't notice the all-too-
familiar figure stumbling down the sidewalk. The motorcycle she was
pushing woke him up; he slapped his forehead with one hand and steered
the interceptor to the side with the other.
"Just my luck," he muttered as he braked to a stop. "And
she's probably drunk, too."
Priss turned as the sleek car stopped beside her. "Aw, shit,"
she muttered. "Not him."
"Need a lift?" Leon asked conversationally.
"Nah. I'm okay," Priss responded. The bike started to tilt;
she overcorrected and nearly ended up on her butt. Leon laughed.
"Sure you are. C'mon, I'll give you a lift. We can strap
your bike on the back."
Priss considered the offer silently. She didn't want anything
to do with the detective, especially not after... well, that was all
water under the bridge. But she wasn't looking forward to the walk
home, either; she was still a good five kilometers from home and
wasn't feeling too hot.
She sighed. "Fine."
The ride passed mostly in silence. Leon would try to engage
her in conversation; Priss would respond in monosyllables or an
emphatic grunt. She kept her head turned, watching the lights of the
city flow by outside the window.
For his part, Leon was feeling more than a little frustrated.
Finally, he turned to her. "What is your problem?" he asked,
exasperated.
Priss jumped, startled. She turned her head to face him, then
looked away with a sharp jerk. When she replied, Leon didn't
recognize the tone in her voice. Nor did he like it.
"I heard you ran into Sylia the other day."
Leon turned his attention back to driving, frowning as he did
so. Priss -- even back when they were an item -- had never spoken
openly of her involvement with MegaTokyo's mercenaries-at-large. She
had known that he knew about them, but it hadn't mattered. It was one
of those things that just wasn't done.
And she had never used their names before!
Finally, he responded. "Yeah, I did. Why?"
Ignoring his question, Priss asked: "What did she seem like?"
This, Leon thought to himself, is getting just a little too
weird. "The same, I suppose. I never did talk to her much, you know.
You and I talked a lot more than she and I did."
He gleaned a small amount of satisfaction from watching Priss
flinch when he mentioned their old conversations.
"Did she cause the explosion?"
Leon shook his head slowly. "I'd like to say yes, but I don't
think she did. I can't say why. Gut feeling, I guess." His dislike
of the Saber in question was evident.
"Why do you hate her?" Priss asked, curious.
Leon was silent for a long time. The interceptor drew to a
halt outside Priss's apartment building. Sensing that she wasn't
likely to get an answer, Priss started to get out. Leon's voice
stopped her.
"Because she hurt someone I care about." His eyes met hers
without flinching. Priss felt a cold lump grow in her chest.
"I- I'll see you later, Leon," she said. She had barely
unstrapped her bike -- the wheels weren't yet fully on the ground --
when Leon gunned the engine and shot down the road.
Priss watched the interceptor vanish into the distance. Her
jaw firmed, and, holding her head high, she wheeled her bike inside.
Given the sort of day she'd had, she half-expected the
landlord to be waiting for her, even at this hour. But the hallways
were silent, and no one accosted her as she struggled with the locks.
She entered the dark room and shut the door behind her.
"Mmm... Priss? That you?" The voice was thick with sleep.
Startled, Priss peered through the gloom. A familiar figure
was stretched out on her couch.
"Yeah, Linna, it's me. Go back to sleep."
"Need to talk... Sylia--"
"We'll talk in the morning, Linna. Go to sleep."
"Ookaay..."
Sighing, Priss made her way to her bedroom and sprawled on her
futon.
* * *
Nene Romanova was Not Happy. She wasn't angry, but the
almost-visible cloud hanging over her head had kept her coworkers at
bay all day, and she liked it that way. It was a welcome relaxation
from her usual routine, and she fully planned to make the most of it.
If certain people would let her, she thought ruefully as a
tall man in shades sat on the edge of her desk and peered down at her.
"Hey, good-lookin'," he greeted her casually, slipping the
shades down farther on his nose and raising his eyebrows at her over
the rim.
"Leon, get your butt off my desk!" she replied, using a stylus
to poke at the offending portion of his anatomy. The detective
grinned -- he was really cute when he did that, she thought wistfully
-- and dodged the oncoming point with ease.
"Now, now, Nene-chan," he admonished her jokingly. "I
wouldn't want to have to tell the chief that you were attacking a
superior officer." He gave her his best stern look, which only made
her giggle.
"The day you're superior to me, Leon McNichol, is the day I
swear off ice cream," she replied flippantly. "Did you want
something, or can I actually get back to work?"
Leon hopped off her desk and straightened his jacket. "As a
matter of fact, Nene-chan, I do need your help with something. Got a
few minutes?"
Curious, Nene shrugged and locked her workstation. "Okay!"
"Hello, gorgeous," Daley said as Leon and Nene came into the
lab.
"Not now, dear," Leon replied automatically.
"Hi, Daley," was Nene's response.
The three of them looked at each other for a moment in
silence. Leon was the one to break it, with a grunt and a shake of
his head. He strode over to the main lab table and indicated an
object on it.
"Ever seen one of these before, Nene-chan?"
Nene looked at the object curiously. When she spoke, awe was
evident in her voice.
"Only in trade journals and a few descriptions on-line," she
said, bending closer for a better view. "They're rare. I mean,
*really* rare. Not even on the market yet -- the only people who are
supposed to be able to get them are the military and a few high-tech
firms." Frowning, she looked up at the two men. "Where'd you two get
ahold of this one?"
Daley looked a bit ill, and even Leon looked uncomfortable.
"Don't ask, Nene-chan. Believe me, you don't want to know."
Nene shrugged. "Okay, I guess."
"So what is it, exactly?" Daley asked.
Nene brightened. "Only the most advanced virtual reality
system in the world, that's all. The military uses it for combat
simulation, a couple of genetics firms use it for controlling micro-
manipulation equipment and such, and that's about it. Supposedly, it
interacts directly with some areas of the brain, but I'm not too sure
on the details. It only came out last fall, you know."
"Could someone use it to, say, make a phone call?"
Nene blinked. "I- I suppose so. They'd have to have some
sort of computer to run it -- a powerful one, if I'm any judge -- but
I suppose it could be used for a videophone call. I don't know why
you'd want to, though. That would be a bit like using a K-12 suit to
pick up your laundry. It works, but..." she trailed off.
Leon nodded. "Thanks, Nene-chan. I appreciate it."
"Hmph," Nene replied. "And I suppose that's it, huh? Pick my
brains, get me interested, and then tell me to run off and play, hmm?"
Leon chuckled and rubbed the back of his head. "Well..."
"She's got a point, you know," Daley commented, grinning.
"Tell you what, Nene-chan," Leon said, guiding the redhead to
the door. "I'll make it up to you. Okay?"
"Leon, wait a -- ooh!" Nene glared at the now-closed door.
Leon waved cheerfully at her through the small inspection window and
turned away.
"Hmph," Nene uttered. She spun on her heel and returned to
her desk.
* * *
Linna awoke slowly. She blinked and rose to a sitting
position, feeling the ache in her neck and back from sleeping on the
couch all night. Blearily, she looked around, rubbing at her eyes
until her vision cleared. To judge by the faint light forcing its way
through the apartment's heavy drapes, it was near noon.
"Priss?" she said into the silent apartment.
"In here," came a quiet reply. Linna stood and walked into
the kitchen area.
Spread on the small table in front of her were the parts for a
heavy pistol, gleaming from fresh oil and scattered randomly about a
bright white dropcloth. A foam block holding several large, menacing-
looking bullets rested in the center of the table. Priss finished
cleaning a small part and set it down gently, then looked up.
"Morning," Linna offered. She eyed the hardware curiously.
"What's all this?"
"Well..." Priss began slowly. As she spoke, her hands were
reassembling the weapon so quickly that Linna couldn't follow. "I
don't know how today's going to turn out. And I don't like that.
I'll feel better if I have a little, mm... backup. You know?"
"You... you're not going to --"
Priss finished reassembling the gun, slapped a fresh clip in,
racked the slide, set the safety, and finished by giving Linna a flat-
eyed stare.
"I'm going to go see Sylia today. That's all."
With that, she rose and slipped the gun into a back-draw
holster where it would be concealed by the fall of her jacket. As she
left the apartment, she tossed a wry grin back over her shoulder at
Linna.
"Don't worry. I'll be fine."
Linna sat down heavily in a chair and stared blankly at the
door. "It's not you I'm worried about," she muttered.
* * *
Sylia had had the nagging feeling that she was being watched
all day. As Saturday afternoon began to slip into Saturday evening,
the feeling became more pronounced. She chided herself for being so
edgy as she struggled with the locks on her building, her arms
burdened with groceries.
"Sylia." The voice came from behind, was flat and menacing,
and Sylia found herself reacting rather than responding.
She whirled, dropping her groceries as her hand dipped and
rose in one fluid motion. Then she blinked.
Priss eyed the handgun that Sylia held steadily on her face
and struggled to keep her composure. She'd had no idea Sylia was so
fast. Her own arm was straight out and her gun was currently menacing
Sylia as well.
The two women froze in that tableau for perhaps two seconds,
guns pointed at each other, then Sylia found her voice.
"Priss?"
* * *
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