The red humanoid-shaped boomer rocketed past as
sporadic gunfire splashed off of it.  A crashing, thunder-
like report sent an explosive shell lancing at the armoured
biomechanoid, but it exploded harmlessly behind it as the
combat machine neatly sidestepped the shot.  The boomer's
mouth gaped wide, and a crackling green energy beam scorched
the air, being followed a moment later by a blinding
explosion.  A deep, grandiloquent voice began speaking as
the boomer proceeded to rain death and destruction on its
foes.
     "Are you having problems with rebels, or other,
irritating counter-insurgents?  Do you perhaps have some top-
secret facilities that need top-notch protection?  Or are
you interested in giving ironclad security to your nation's
defense?  If you fit any of these categories, then the A-12
`Tankbuster' Heavy Combat Boomer is for you!  Designed for
the discriminating arms-buyer, the A-12 sports an impressive
array of offensive power.  From the 1000-terawatt particle
beams to the compact, but deadly, Vulcan autocannons, it's
all you'll ever need from a front-line combat boomer!  As an
added bonus, the A-12 can be configured to meet specific
mission profiles!  Just pull out the unnecessary components,
and insert the new ones!"  The monologue paused briefly, and
the boomer finished off its last opponent in an impressive
blast of pyrotechnics.
     "For those of you who can't afford that unbeatable army
you've always wanted right away, no problem!!  Just talk to
your local GENOM representative, and a deferred-payment plan
can be negotiated for a minimal charge.  Some dealers may
sell for less; `Plug'N'Play' options extra.  Buy now!  This
is a limited time offer!  GENOM Armaments:  Tomorrow's
firepower, Today!!"
     The image of the boomer disappeared from the large
projection screen at the end of the cavernous meeting room,
the room lights flicking back on at the same time.  The
pale, somehow gloomy illumination revealed a tall, lean man
in a white suit, with long, shoulder-length greyish-white
hair.  Icy blue eyes glinted in an impassive, craggy-
featured face, as the man swiveled his chair to face the
only other person in the room: a tall, slender woman with
long, violet-coloured hair, wearing a dark blue business
outfit.  Her face was calm, her blue-grey eyes revealing
nothing of what she thought.
     "Impressive," Quincy's gravelly voice rumbled, "if the
sales pitch was a little overdone."
     "Marketing felt that it would be the best approach,"
Madigan replied, with a slight shrug.  "Flashy advertising
attracts attention, and we definitely want to attract
attention in this case."
     "True," Quincy admitted.  He paused, looking
thoughtfully at the now-empty projection screen.  "Dr.
Yoshida's designs are performing beyond our immediate hopes;
we must be sure he is adequately compensated for his
efforts."  A short silence fell again.
     "Did you want me to proceed with the other field tests
of the A-12's and C-55E's?" Madigan inquired.  Quincy nodded
curtly.
     "By all means," he replied, a slight smile twitching at
the corners of his mouth.  "We do have a reputation to
uphold; it wouldn't do for defective goods to get into the
marketplace."

                    SkyKnight Productions
                      Proudly Presents
                     A NonTechnical Film
                       MegaTokyo 2035
                      The Knight Sabers
              "The Bubblegum Zone - Episode #9"
              Copyright (c) 1995 Bert Van Vliet

     The quiet hum of computer terminals, overlaid with the
clatter of keyboards being tapped on drifted through the
sprawling office area of the ADPolice Investigation
Division.  In one area of the office space, several young
women worked away at filing reports and entering data into
the machines;  the rest of the office space was taken up by
scattered desks, manned by overworked detectives trying to
keep up with the reams of paperwork required by the ADP
bureaucracy.  A tall, well-built man with brown hair walked
through the door into the offices, wearing jeans, a white
shirt and a blue jacket with a badge pinned to the left
breast pocket.  Under the jacket, a large-caliber revolver
peeped out from a shoulder holster just under his left arm.
As the man walked through the office, he cut an impressive,
yet somehow incongruous figure.
     Inspector Leon McNichol resignedly ran a hand through
his hair, sighing.  Another glorious day in the life of a
public servant, his mind noted sardonically.  There were
days he hated his job, mostly because the crooks seemed to
get bolder and bolder, and the cops became more and more
hamstrung by paperwork and procedure.  At times, he almost
wished for the simpler days when he'd started out as just a
front-line trooper; at least then, things had seemed
straightforward.  Clear blue eyes swept the office with a
searching gaze, noting all the details from force of long
habit.  A slight frown creased his brow, as he slowly walked
further into the realm of officialdom.
     "Have you seen Nene yet?" he asked a nearby secretary.
The harried, brown-haired young woman looked up from the
report she was rapidly pounding into the computer in front
of her.
     "Sorry, I haven't," she replied.  "I think she's still
on sick leave.  She might be back today; I don't know for
sure."  The young woman went back to her report as Leon
turned away, walking over to his small island in the sea of
paperwork.  Daley hadn't arrived yet, so he sat down,
propped his feet on the desk, and sat thinking.  Nene had
been working on getting some information on a case for him,
and her coming down sick before she could get him the
information had been annoying.
     Nene's sudden illness had struck a few people as
strange, mostly because the cheery, red-haired girl always
seemed bright and energetic; she'd have been the last person
anyone had expected to come down with something serious
enough to keep them bedridden for almost two weeks.  It had
been very sudden, also.  Leon had seen her the day before
she'd called in sick, and she'd been perfectly healthy.  For
some strange reason he couldn't define, he found himself
suspicious.
     He liked Nene a lot; she was cute, almost always
cheerful, and had a kind of innocence about her that made
talking to her refreshing, especially given the caliber of
people he had to talk to most of the time.  There was also a
sharp brain behind the cute, green-eyed face; her work was
always thorough and meticulous, and she'd helped Leon get
information on some cases at times when he'd sworn that
there was no possible way to find out about a certain
subject.  She'd also easily, but politely, brushed him off
on the couple of occasions he had tried to get her to go out
with him, and in a manner that left no doubt in his mind
that he was wasting his time.
     At the same time, however, he now found himself
remembering how she occasionally disappeared while she was
supposed to be on duty, and how, come to think of it, she'd
shown up at work before with unexplained injuries.  Nene
didn't strike him as the normally accident-prone type, but
she'd been in several times with bandages, and once with her
arm in a sling.  She'd usually explained the questions away
by saying she'd fallen off of her scooter, but Leon doubted
anyone could fall off of a scooter that many times.  No,
there must be another reason for it.
     He mentally sifted through the list of people he knew
she was friendly with, then immediately discarded some of
her friends from work as above suspicion.  He realized
suddenly that, outside of work, he really didn't know who
her friends were, with one exception: her boyfriend.  He'd
met the tall, red-headed, greenish-brown eyed, young man
once before, almost two years ago.  There'd been something
about him back then that had aroused Leon's inspecting
instincts, some aspect of his manner that hadn't quite rung
true.  He hadn't been able to find a reason for his
suspicions, however, and had shoved it to the back of his
mind.
     Now, those suspicions surged back to the forefront,
clamouring for attention.  Who exactly was he?  He vaguely
remembered Nene calling him `Bert', but that was it.
Apparently, he had an engineering job somewhere, but where
exactly?  No matter how hard he thought about it, he
couldn't remember Nene ever telling anyone at the office
anything else about him.  That in itself was strange,
because almost all of the other girls in the office talked
about their boyfriends, constantly at times.  Why was she
staying quiet?  Did they have something to hide?
     Leon's feet dropped to the floor as he sat up, a
sudden, unpleasant thought striking him.  Could her
`accidents' be the result of something he was doing to her?!
He dismissed that though a moment later as unlikely; Nene
didn't have any of the signs of someone abusing her.  Given
the way he'd seen the two of them look at each other on the
very rare occasions when he did see them together, it was
unlikely that there was that kind of a problem:  the red-
haired couple were obviously madly in love with each other.
Okay, fine; leaving that aside, just who the hell was he,
what did he do, and what was Nene getting involved in?
     "Hey McNichol!!" someone yelled across the office,
jerking him out of his ruminations.  "Call for you on line
three!!"  With a sigh, Leon picked up the phone, and set
aside the puzzle he'd found for some time when he was less
occupied.
                            ****
     -..."Don't shoot; I'm not armed," the blond-haired man
in front of her said smoothly.  Nene grinned savagely to
herself as Hollister's hands started to come up.  She'd done
it!  She'd managed to get the bastard who'd hurt Bert and
Sylvie, and now she was going to...
     Her heart leaped into her throat as Hollister suddenly
dodged sideways, leveling a large gun of some kind at her.
For one awful moment, Nene stared, shocked and fear-
stricken, into the gaping black muzzle.  There was a
blinding flash from the gun, and a thunderous roar that
shattered the world into a hazy, pain-riddled fog.  Nene
screamed as she felt the slug from the gun pierce her
armour, destroying the plating effortlessly, and burrowing
deep into her flesh.  Burning agony washed through her,
spreading outwards from her numbed stomach...-
                            ****
     "NOOOOOOOOO!!!"
     Bert jerked upright in his recliner at the terrified
scream that suddenly blasted from his bedroom.  Pitching the
novel he'd been reading before dozing off into the nearby
couch, he jumped up from the chair, and walked quickly,
almost running, across the room to his bedroom door.
     "Nene?" he knocked cautiously, listening.  No one
replied, but he could hear hysterical sobbing coming from
inside.  Turning the knob, he opened the door and stepped
into the room, moving on memory, and turned on the small
lamp by the bed to provide a bit of light.  The dim
illumination revealed a tangled mass of bedsheets, wrapped
around a sobbing, red-haired young woman in a white
nightgown who was shuddering and shaking uncontrollably, her
face pressed into the pillow.  Bert quickly went over next
to the bed.
     "Nene?" he called again gently, reaching out and gently
touching her shoulder.  She rolled over, revealing a tear-
wet face and horrified green eyes.  Bert sat down on the
edge of the bed, and scooped her up, hugging her tightly.
She hugged him back, and cried into his chest for several
minutes before calming down again.
     "Another nightmare?" he asked quietly, running a hand
tenderly through her tangled hair.  She nodded wordlessly,
her face still pressed against him.  He squeezed her gently
again, trying to offer her some comfort, while at the same
time damning Hollister in the back of his mind with every
curse he could think of; none of them seemed to even come
close to promising what he thought the bastard deserved for
having hurt her.
     The last two weeks had not been easy on any of them.
Nene was still terrified as a result of her near brush with
death; she'd never been hurt that badly before, and she
wasn't dealing with it very well.  With the brash assurance
of youth, she'd assumed she was immune to serious harm, an
impression that had been irrevocably shattered by
Hollister's bullet.  He hoped the shock would not be an
insurmountable obstacle for her.
     He understood exactly what she was going through,
having been through it himself, and he was trying to help
her through the rocky parts.  He wasn't sure how successful
his efforts were, though; she'd been having nightmares a lot
lately, and despite all his attempts to help her deal with
it, she was still waking up screaming at times.
     His own recovery from his ordeal at Hollister's hands
was proceeding, but at a very slow pace.  He was able to
control himself a lot better, and not lash out instantly at
anyone who came near, but he still had the occasional
relapse.  The other day Priss had slapped him on the
shoulder in a comradely fashion, and the response had been
nearly instantaneous: he'd very nearly slugged her.  They'd
both apologized, Priss for forgetting that he was still
twitchy, and him for almost decking her, and they'd let the
matter drop.  At the same time however, something in him
seemed to die, just a little, each time that he had to
restrain himself from hitting one of his friends.
      He hugged Nene again, wishing her peace of mind with
more intensity than he'd ever wished for anything before,
for anyone, himself included.  He could handle a certain
amount of stress himself, having been through the wringer
enough times to have learned how to withstand most of it,
but Nene was not as...as...battle-hardened as he now was, in
some respects, anyway.  She'd always had a sort of youthful
innocence that he loved, but these problems could very well
scorch and irreparably harm her cheery personality.
     Nene had become quiet, and Bert started to release her,
easing her back to her pillows, thinking she was falling
asleep.  Instead of laying back, she threw her arms around
his neck, pulling him down, and gave him a hard kiss that
had an intensity in it that almost bordered on desperation.
After a moment of surprise, he hugged her again, returning
her kiss.  After a few moments, she pulled back slightly,
her face still wet, with a few stray red hairs clinging to
it.  He gently brushed them out of her face, and looked into
her lustrous, emerald-green eyes.  They were a little calmer
now, but the lurking fear that had triggered her nightmares
was still in the backs of them.  His own eyes were showing
her his love and concern for her, which was helping her to
calm down a bit.
     "You'd better try to get back to sleep," he finally
said gently, looking at the clock.  "You've got to go back
to work in a few hours."  Her two weeks of paid sick leave
were up, and there was no way they could sidestep the issue
any longer:  In the morning, she had to go back to the ADP
offices and get on with her usual job.  If she stayed away
any longer, there was sure to be a semi-official probe into
her illness, and they couldn't risk that.  At the mention of
sleep, however, the fear in Nene's eyes intensified a bit.
     "Will....will you stay with me for the rest of the
night?" she asked him in a small, quavering voice.  She was
still trembling, and her pulse was still pounding like
runaway trip-hammers; he could feel it as he held her.
"Please?  I....I  don't want to be alone...I..."  Her voice
cut off as he leaned forward and kissed her again
compassionately.
     "Whatever M'Lady wishes," he said quietly, which
brought the faintest, fleeting flicker of a smile to her
face; it was the first time in a while he'd called her that
since his run-in with Hollister.  Giving her a quick smile
of reassurance, he stood up, and dug a spare pillow and
blanket out of the closet.  He went back over to the bed,
plopping the pillow down next to hers.  Quickly
straightening out her tangled sheets and blankets, he
squeezed onto the bed next to her, draping his extra blanket
over the both of them, and settled back.
     Nene hugged him gratefully, and snuggled closer as he
wrapped an arm around her, putting her head on his shoulder.
After a few moments, her breathing slowed down a bit,
becoming the even, steady breaths of someone slumbering
soundly.  Bert carefully reached over, and hit the switch
for the light; gently cloaking darkness slithered across the
room.  After a few more minutes, he also fell asleep.
                              
THE NEXT DAY......

     The subdued murmur of bureaucratic activity greeted
them as Bert escorted Nene through the door of the ADP
offices where she worked.  The hum of computers and rustle
of forms and other paper being shuffled was overlaid with
the bored tones of people talking on the telephones, or the
slightly more animated sounds of people having arguments
over a morning cup of coffee.  It appeared to be business as
usual for the ADP.  In the few times Bert had been through
the offices, they'd always appeared the same: vaguely
hyperactive and chaotic.
     Glancing around in apparent unconcern, he walked with
Nene over to her desk, noting that there were a few bunches
of flowers with `Get Well' cards left on the desk.  The
sight of the floral arrangements helped perk her up a bit,
but she was still quiet, pale-looking and subdued, which,
for her, was not her normal demeanor.  Nene had never seemed
to be anything but cheerful and bubbly at work; the sudden
mood change might seem suspicious, and he hoped that nobody
inquired too deeply into what her `illness' had been.  She
sat down behind her desk, tucking her handbag underneath it.
     "Think you'll be okay?" he asked quietly, sitting on
the edge of the desk.  She looked back at him, biting her
lip in uncertainty, and nodded, once.  Bert very carefully
kept any more unease about her from leaking through to his
face; Nene wasn't talking much, which was not a good sign.
     "I'll pick  you up after work," he told her, "and we'll
go to dinner someplace, okay?"  She nodded again, giving him
a weak smile.  He smiled back, then leaned over and gave her
a gentle kiss, trying to express his feelings for her in the
brief contact.  Her eyes appeared to be a little brighter-
looking as he pulled back, which eased his heart slightly.
     A sudden stir at the far end of the office attracted
his attention.  As Bert's gaze snapped up,  he saw a small
army of young women, with a few men, led by a brown-haired,
blue-eyed young woman with freckles in an ADP uniform;
Naoko, and several of Nene's co-workers.  Obviously, they'd
heard she was back.  He restrained the urge to bolt wildly,
leaned forwards, and gave Nene another quick kiss.
     "Take care," he said, looking into her eyes.  He stood
and beat a hasty retreat as the mob of well-wishers
surrounded Nene's desk, all clamoring to find out how she
was, and what had been wrong with her.
     Through the milling crowd, Nene watched him leave; for
a brief moment, a lost and lonely expression flickered on
her lovely face, then disappeared.  Forcing a smile onto her
face, she turned to dealing with the crowd of people around
her desk, preparing herself for a very long day of answering
questions.
                            ****
     Bert walked quickly through the ADP halls, shoulders
hunched, with his hands in his pockets, trying to get out of
the building before anyone started asking questions.  He was
in a really lousy mood, and he really didn't feel like
answering inquiries on anything.  His foul state of mind was
a result of his concern for Nene, and helpless frustration
over the fact that he couldn't help her in any other way
other than being there for her; he wanted to do more,
damnit.
     He strode rapidly through the halls, avoiding
contacting people with unconscious deftness; since his
`incident' he'd found he had an almost sixth sense about
when people were around him.  While useful occasionally, at
times it made him more furious than anything.  All he wanted
was to go back to being normal, but it appeared as if that
option was being denied him.  That thought always provoked
towering fury, and an almost overpowering urge to go looking
for Hollister with a weapon of some kind.
     He fought off the lurking anger over what had been done
to him again, unaware that his internal struggle was making
him look like a red-haired thundercloud, as he stalked
through the halls of the ADP Headquarters with a very
foreboding expression.  People who saw him coming were
surreptitiously moving out of the way, giving him a wide
berth.  All of them stepped aside,   except for one man,
dimly noticed out of the side of his eye.
     "Excuse me," a voice called over to him.  Bert didn't
reply, being lost in his own thoughts.  The call was
repeated. "Hey!! You there!!"  He ignored it again, and was
preparing to exit the building when a hand reached out and
grabbed his arm.
     Bert froze, fighting the instant reflex action that
erupted.  Inside his pockets, his hands clenched into tight
fists, and his face became taut with strain as every muscle
in his body tensed.  In the depths of his mind, the snarling
urge to retaliate against whoever had just attacked him
howled for release.  He fought it down, reason overriding
instinct; he was not being attacked, and there was no threat
to him.  He turned slowly, damning his subconscious mind for
its now-violent reactions to unexpected contact.
     "Let go of me. Now," he said tightly, still quivering
slightly.  Shit; he'd tried to sound normal in his request,
but it had come out sounding vaguely like a threat.
     Leon McNichol released his arm, and stepped back
slightly, his face inscrutable, blue eyes flicking quickly
to the ID passcards Bert had hanging from the breast pocket
of his jacket.  Once his hand was clear of his arm, Bert
relaxed a bit, mentally sighing in relief.  "Was there a
problem Inspector?" he asked, his tone a little more
courteous.
     "No, not really," Leon replied easily, his manner
appearing to be calm and relaxed.  "I just heard that Nene
had come in today with her boyfriend; I recognized you, and
I wondered how she was doing."
     "She's fine," Bert replied, trying to sound like there
was no doubt in his mind.  "She's over the worst of the
illness, and the doctor said she'll be completely recovered
before too much longer."  He wished he could believe
himself; he wasn't sure Nene would be `better' anytime soon.
     "What was the problem?" Leon asked curiously.
     "Virus of some kind," Bert said, shrugging.  "That was
all the Doc would say, but he's pretty sure it's gone now."
     "Hmmm," Leon looked thoughtful, and there was a look of
calculating appraisal in his eyes that made Bert's guts
tighten in unease.  The look vanished, and Leon grinned in a
friendly, disarming manner.  "I'm sure she'll be okay.  I
guess I'll see you around, then."
     "Sure," Bert replied, forcing himself to smile in
return.  "See you later."  He turned and walked on, exiting
the ADP building through the large, swinging glass doors.
He could feel Leon's gaze almost boring holes in his back as
he walked away.  He carefully kept his walk normal looking,
even though his tension level now made him want to start
running as fast as he could just to get some distance
between him and everyone else.
     As he strode down the steps of the building, his mind
uneasily went over his brief discussion with Leon.  It was
the first time Leon had ever specifically sought him out at
the station; why?  Could he suspect something?  Or was he
just trying to be friendly?
                            ****
     Leon watched the younger, red-haired man leave the
building, his face unreadable.  His mental state, however,
was not quite as calm as his face seemed to indicate.  There
was very definitely something up; his years of investigative
work screamed at him that something was amiss.
     Leon had decided to try casually approaching Nene's
boyfriend on his way out of the building by merely `bumping
into him' along the way.  However, he'd had to actually grab
the guy's arm to get his attention; he'd been stomping
along, ignoring everything else, apparently thinking about
something unpleasant, if his expression had been any
indication.  It was his reaction to being grabbed that had
confirmed Leon's suspicions that something was not right.
     While very rigidly controlled and concealed, it had not
been the startled reaction of someone interrupted in their
thoughts.  In the sudden tension that had swept the red-
haired young man, and the flicker of...anger?...that had
passed fleetingly over his face, Leon had detected
a...wariness...almost a primed readiness, as if the young
man had been expecting an attack.  Very peculiar.  The half-
threatening way he had told Leon to release him had also
been strange.  The young man he'd just seen bore very little
resemblance, other than physically, to the person he'd met
before; there was a driven, vaguely hostile feel to his
demeanor now, although what the source was, Leon couldn't
even begin to guess at.
     Leon pulled a notepad from his pocket, turning and
walking back into the depths of the ADP building.  As he
walked, he jotted a few quick notes onto the pad, and tore
off the top sheet.  He re-pocketed the pad as he entered one
of the offices belonging to the Records division.  A cute
secretary, blond and blue-eyed, looked up from her data
terminal as he entered.  A wide, slightly hopeful smile
spread across her face.
     "Inspector McNichol!" she exclaimed.  "What can I do
for you?"  Leon grinned back boyishly, unconsciously
smoothing his hair back with a hand.  He handed the young
woman the slip of paper he'd been scribbling on.
     "Could you run a quiet background check on this guy?"
he requested.  "He may be related to a case I'm working on,
and I can use all the leads I can get."
     "Why, certainly," she replied cheerily.  "I can have it
for you in twenty minutes."
     "What a coincidence," Leon drawled, smiling.  "That
happens to be when my coffee break is.  You busy then?"
     The young woman flushed slightly, dimpling.
                            ****
     "Come on, rest break's over!!"
     Priss groaned, pulling herself off of the wooden side-
bench she'd collapsed onto.  Wiping a hand across her sweaty
forehead, she glared at her impudently grinning, blue-eyed
and black-haired tormentor.
     "Linna, I'm going to kill you when I get better," she
promised her friend grimly.  "Haven't you ever heard of
`mercy'?  Or even `sympathy'?!"
     "Nope," Linna replied instantly, grinning again.  "Come
on, your leg won't get stronger with you sitting on it!"
The energetic young woman was wearing a two-tone, blue
spandex exercise outfit; Priss was wearing an old, faded,
red track suit.
     "Well you get shot through the goddamn leg the next
time then," Priss grumbled sullenly, levering herself to her
feet, wincing as her left leg throbbed angrily.  "Then we'll
see how goddamn athletic you are afterwards."  Her leg had
proved to be the worst of her injuries from the Knight
Sabers' raid on Hollister's hidden base; her shoulder and
stomach muscles had healed completely, and weren't bothering
her at all; okay, maybe there was some residual stiffness in
her shoulder, but that was minor.  Her leg, on the other
hand, was taking sadistic pleasure in either tormenting her
with aches and pains, or refusing to support her weight.  It
had already resulted in a couple of embarrassing collapses.
     "I'll pass, thanks," Linna returned dryly, reaching up
and tucking her hair back under her headband.  "Look at it
this way: this is the perfect incentive to never get hurt
again.  If you'd try learning something a little more
technical than bar-brawling, then you wouldn't get hit
nearly as often."
     "You fight your way, I'll fight mine," Priss snapped.
"It's worked up until now."
     "And we've got the medical bills to prove it," Linna
deadpanned.  Priss' red-brown eyes narrowed in irritation,
and she was about to reply when someone snickering off on
the sidelines drew her attention.  She spun around, glaring
at the offending person.
     A few feet away on another bench, a tall young woman
with short, dark-brown hair and a slender, well-rounded
figure, wearing shorts and a dark T-shirt was muffling her
laughter behind a hand.  Sitting quietly next to her, not
saying anything, but smiling nonetheless, was a smaller
young woman with dark green hair and blue eyes, similarly
attired.
     "Was there something funny?" Priss demanded.  Sylvie
tried to control herself as she replied.
     "No, not at all," she replied, completely failing in
trying to look innocent.  "You just seem upset about
something, that's all."  Mirth sparkled in her golden-brown
eyes as she looked back at her friend.  "I can't imagine
why, though."
     "I'll just bet," Priss retorted.  "You probably just
came to watch Linna torment me."
     "That's a possibility," Sylvie agreed impishly.  Priss
threw up her hands in disgust, giving up, and turned back to
her smirking instructor.
     The exercise session lasted another half-an-hour, which
was thirty minutes too long as far as Priss was concerned.
Her leg ached abominably by the time she was done, and it
didn't feel a hell of a lot better after she'd showered and
changed.  Wincing, she limped back out to the exercise room
where Sylvie, Anri and Linna were waiting, cursing her
slowly healing leg muscles all the way.  The other three
women had already changed, and were gathered near the door.
     "Feeling better?" Sylvie inquired innocently, as the
brown-haired singer came up to them.  Priss glared at her,
sparks crackling in her eyes.
     "No," she snapped.  "Bugger off and leave me alone."
     "She sounds fine to me," Linna noted dryly.
     Anri giggled as Priss swung an ominous glare in Linna's
direction; the green-haired girl had come a long way from
the terrified, reclusive creature she'd been a few short
weeks ago.  In the time since she'd been rescued, Anri had
been kept company almost constantly by Sylvie and Priss
whenever they hadn't been busy at something else.  Their
quiet support and encouragement had slowly drawn her out of
the shell she'd retreated into.  She wasn't quite back to
normal yet; she was still shy, and reluctant to talk, but in
Priss' mind, she was one hell of a lot better than she had
been right after they'd gotten her out of Hollister's
clutches.
     "You might as well forget it," Linna cut her off with a
grin as Priss opened her mouth to retort.  "Grumble and
gripe all you want, but you're not getting out of the
exercise sessions, and you're not getting any sympathy, not
from me, anyway.  Just ask Bert; he'll tell you to give up
and just get it over with."
     "Where is he, anyway?" Anri timidly inquired, flushing
self-consciously as everyone looked at her. "I...I mean...I
just wanted to thank him for the flowers he sent before,"
she explained awkwardly, flushing again.  Priss and Sylvie
swapped suddenly concerned glances.
     "I haven't seen him in a week, come to think of it,"
Priss said slowly.  "He's been spending all his time with
Nene, I think.  Have you seen him, Linna?"  Linna's grin
slipped slightly.
     "No, I haven't either," she said.  "He hasn't tried to
contact me at all, and he's missed all our usual practice
sessions since...well, you know, since..."
     "Since he almost turned on you, right?" Priss sighed.
"That wasn't his fault, Linna; he's been through a lot
lately.  We all have."
     "I know that!" she shot back, biting her lip and
running a hand through her hair.  "It's just that...he's
so...so..."
     "Driven?" Sylvie suggested quietly.
     "That's not quite the right word, but it'll do for
now," Linna said agitatedly.  "He used to be a lot more
relaxed, easier to get along with.  Now...now I feel edgy
around him all the time, and I don't like it."
     "After all he's helped you with, and the amount of time
you've spent with him before this, and now you're afraid of
him?" Priss asked, shaking her head.  "You should know him
better than that, Linna."
     "I thought I did, once," Linna replied quietly, looking
away.  "Now I'm not so sure anymore."
                            ****
     "Come on, come on," Bert snarled under his breath,
glaring at the computer screen in front of him.  "Compile
the goddamn data faster, will you?!"  The computer ignored
him, and continued to churn through the simulation data he'd
fed it at its own pace.  Stifling the curses that sprang to
mind, he shoved his chair back from the bench, angrily
snatching up his mug and taking a large gulp of the steaming
tea sitting in it, drinking it without really tasting it.
     Wiping the back of his hand across his mouth, he
slammed the mug back down onto the counter, slopping a few
drips over the side onto the counter top,  and turned away
to the worktable sitting in the center of the room.  On it
sat a barely-recognizable pile of silver armour plates,
wiring, myomer bundles, and small, molded circuit boards:
what was left of his hardsuit at the moment.  Scanning the
plans tacked onto the nearby wall board, he spent several
minutes re-wiring and re-connecting the parts.  After about
half-an-hour, the lower body portion of his suit was re-
assembled.  As he was running a diagnostic scan on it, the
computer beeped; it had finished analyzing his calculations.
     Dropping the scanner, he strode quickly over to the
computer, snatching the printout from the print roller as it
spat it out.  Greenish-brown eyes scanned it intently for a
moment, then his face settled into a look of disgusted
disappointment.  With a slow, searing oath, he ground the
hapless printout into a crumpled wad between his hands,
teeth clenched.  He chucked the compacted paper into the
garbage pail nearby, and turned back to slapping his suit
back together, his face set in a stony expression.
     "Bad news?" a quiet voice inquired from the shop door.
Bert stiffened imperceptibly, then turned, forcing himself
to remain calm.  Sylia Stingray walked over to him, moving
calmly and gracefully, the picture of poise and self-
assurance.  Her blue-black hair was neatly arranged, and her
business-like attire, a white blouse with dark skirt and
jacket, gave her a look of austere beauty.  Her brown eyes
held a look that was part concern, part inquiry.
     "You could say that," Bert replied in a neutral tone.
"I just got the test results back on the armour plating."
     "And?" Sylia prompted.
     "And nothing," he gritted, flames seeming to leap in
his eyes briefly.  "There's not a goddamn thing I can do
that will stop that kind of ammunition; anything using
depleted uranium shells is going to cut through our
hardsuits like they were made of tissue paper.  Shit!!!"  He
spun away from Sylia, slamming a hand into the countertop
behind him, shoulders hunched in frustration.  "Not only
that," he added a moment later, before Sylia could say
anything, "but I blew it when I used ceramel as the only
base material for the hardsuit armour."
     "In what way?" Sylia inquired quietly.  He turned
around, and she could see the lines of strain that were
slowly being etched into his face around his mouth and eyes,
partly from his own recent problems, and partly from
worrying over the other problems.
     "Ceramel is a very light, strong, heat resistant
material," he told her.  "Those qualities alone made it a
fantastic armour material, but I didn't realize that it
could get shattered by stress vibrations as easily as it
does."  His fists clenched.  "That's why Priss' suit was
turned into a shattered mess, and Nene's torso armour was
cracked all over:  the DPU rounds hit with enough force to
cause vibrational stress cracks that spread outwards from
the impact site to the rest of the plating.  Damn it, I
should have known that something like that might happen!!"
There was an anguished, self-condemnatory look on his face.
     "Stop that, right now," Sylia ordered firmly, eyes
flashing angrily.  "You're not omniscient, and you can't
predict the future.  All right, so you missed something.  It
happens.  Get used to it, and get over it.  Nene and Priss
would have been hurt even if the plating had held together;
you just said yourself that nothing you can make would have
stopped those bullets."
     "I know that," he said in an even, flat tone.  "But it
mightn't have been as serious if the plating had held
together."
     "There's no way to know for sure," Sylia told him, "so
quit flogging yourself over it."
     "Well, it won't be happening again, I can tell you that
much for damn sure."
     "What's that supposed to mean?"
     "It means I've already replaced all the armour plating
on the team's suits," he informed her.  "The base layer is a
multi-plex carbon fibre weave, coated with a material called
Starlite, which is a very, very heat resistant, space-age
plastic.  Over top of that is a layer of ceramel plating,
coated with my polymer concoction.  The new plating is every
bit as physically strong as the old armour plate, and it
won't shatter under stress, no matter what happens to it,"
he noted with a grimly satisfied expression.  "In fact, it's
a little bit stronger in that regard."
     "Just when did you do all these improvements?" Sylia
asked suspiciously.  "I thought you've been spending your
time with Nene?"
     "On the occasional night when she was sleeping
soundly," he replied absently, reaching past Sylia to get
his mug.  He drained off the rest of his tea at a single
draught, and walked over to the teapot that stood nearby on
a hotplate, off to the side of the worktable.  He refilled
the mug, adding his usual dosages of cream and sugar.  As
Sylia watched, he drank the mugful in a steady, continuous
drink, and then refilled the mug, again adding sugar and
milk.  She walked over to him, and put out a gently
restraining hand as he started to knock back the next
mugful.  Her brown-eyed gaze was compassionate, but firm and
unyielding.
     "That's enough," she told him firmly.  "You're over-
compensating for something that wasn't your fault, and
you're going to run yourself into the ground if you keep it
up.  When was the last time you got a full, and I mean full,
night's sleep?"
     "I don't remember," he muttered, flushing and looking
away from her.  "I've got too much to do."
     "No you don't," she corrected.  "You just think you do;
you're supposed to be relaxing, and trying to get better
yourself, remember?"
     "I've got to do something," he snapped.  "I can't go on
outings with the team, so I've got to contribute somehow!
I'm not gonna just freeload!"
     "You're not freeloading!" she snapped back, her own
temper finally beginning to fray from exposure to his
current irritable state.  "You're supposed to be
recuperating, not driving yourself towards another
breakdown!!  You owe it to everyone else to get better, not
worse, you jackass!  Just what would Nene do if you snapped
because you've been overworking yourself?!  Tell me that!"
she demanded.  Bert flushed bright crimson, and looked away
from her, not replying.
     "Well?!" she demanded again.  "Answer me!"
     "I can't," he mumbled, flushing again, looking at the
floor.
     "Well this is going to stop, right now," she told him
flatly.  "You're done for the day; go back to your place and
get some sleep.  I'll be checking on you, and you'd better
not be back in here.  Don't force me to change the access
codes for the lab and the shop."
     "Yes Ma'am," he sighed disgustedly, slugging down his
tea and banging the cup onto the workbench.  "Was that it?"
     "Unfortunately, no," Sylia sighed.  "I originally came
down to see if you felt up to going through another testing
session in a few days; I'd thought you were getting more
stable, and I wanted to evaluate your responses again."  She
kept her feelings carefully masked as she spoke, watching
him carefully; testing him the last time had involved
driving him over the brink to see just how he'd been
affected by his ordeal.  She hadn't enjoyed having to do it,
and still felt vaguely guilty occasionally over having done
it, but she'd needed to know exactly what was wrong with
him; necessity was a harsh taskmaster at times.
     "Mind if I ask why?" he asked quietly, some emotion
flickering by on his face too quickly for her to identify.
     "Because," she replied simply, "I may need you in your
suit.  Priss and Nene are not going to be physically able to
go on an outing for some time yet.  That leaves us with two
functioning members:  Linna and myself.  Physically, you're
unharmed; if you can control yourself, I'd like to have you
on standby, just in case.  Three Knight Sabers are
definitely better than just two, and with the modular design
you've built your suit around, you can take up some of
Nene's usual detection/counter-detection roles."  A chill of
some kind washed through Bert at the thought of replacing
Nene, but he managed to fight it off; she'd be fine, he told
himself firmly, she just needed some more time to recover.
     "All right," he said slowly.  "I guess I'll feel up to
it in a couple of days, but it'll also take me that long to
finish re-assembling my suit."
     "Fine," Sylia nodded.  "I'll let you know in the next
couple of days when I'll be doing that, then.  Right now,
you are going to go get some sleep.  Oh yes," she added as
an afterthought, "and stay off of your computer, too.  I
said sleep, and I meant it."
     "You're the boss," he replied morosely, sighing, and
walking towards the door.  Sylia followed him out, flicking
off the lights and closing the door.
                            ****
     Bert closed the door to his apartment behind him,
wearily running a hand through his hair.  His eyes flashed
irritation for a moment, and he half turned as if to leave
his room again.  He stood for a moment, hand on the
doorknob, as if trying to decide something.  Resolution
formed on his face.  He carefully opened the door, and took
a quick look around.  Not seeing or hearing anything, he
started to stealthily step back out into the hallway.
     "Going somewhere?" Sylia's cool voice inquired
politely.  Bert froze instantly, mentally swearing at
himself, and at his luck.  After a moment, he relaxed and
turned resignedly towards the far end of the hallway where
her voice had come from.  As he turned, she walked down the
hallway towards him, emerging from the darkness of the
corridor, a faintly exasperated expression on her face.  "I
told you to get some rest," she informed him.  His shoulders
slumped into a defeated-looking posture.
     "I wasn't going to..." he tried explaining half-
heartedly, but Sylia didn't even let him get the sentence
finished.
     "Bed. Now," she ordered sternly, pointing back into his
apartment.  He turned around, feeling like a kid caught up
past his bedtime by his mother, and walked back into his
apartment.  Sylia followed him.
     "I don't need a chaperone," he said testily, glaring at
her.  "I can go to bed without supervision, thanks."
     "Then why were you trying to sneak out again?" she
asked pointedly.  "I'm making sure that you get some rest,
even if I have to sit out in your living room for the
afternoon."
     "You wouldn't!" Bert exclaimed, paling.  Sylia looked
him square in the eye, brown eyes calm.
     "Try me," she invited.  Bert stared back at her for a
moment, gazing searchingly into her eyes.  Sylia looked
right back at him, totally serious, and watched grudging
acknowledgment of the fact that she was indeed serious about
her threat appear in his eyes.  Muttering disgustedly to
himself under his breath, Bert stalked into his bedroom, and
forcefully banged the door shut, stopping just short of
actually slamming it.
     Sylia stood for a moment, watching the door, a faint
smile on her face.  With a sigh, she hunted around, found a
cup, and poured herself a cup of tea from the almost-always
full pot Bert kept warm on the counter.  Sipping at it, she
walked over to the easy chairs and couch surrounding the
coffee table, and sat down on the couch.  As she settled
back to keep watch, some of the pages in a nearby sheaf of
notes on the coffee table caught her attention.  She leaned
forwards curiously, and picked up the stack of papers to
look at them, setting her teacup to the side.
     She shuffled through the notes, wincing as she tried
interpreting the pained scrawl that passed for his
handwriting.  Pages of calculations, with the occasional
paragraph of explanatory text passed through her vision, and
she realized he'd been pushing himself a lot harder than
he'd told her at first; there was no way one person could do
this much work and still be getting enough rest.  Her face
hardened slightly as she glanced at the closed bedroom door,
and she mentally promised herself that she was going to have
another chat with him about it.
     She thoughtfully scanned the rest of the papers and
notes, wondering just what he was trying to design.  She
understood all of the mathematics, and the physics theory
that appeared throughout the pages, but she couldn't even
begin to guess what he was trying to do with it.  It was
when she got to the last three or four pages that she
realized what it was he'd been trying to perfect.
     The last three pages each held a diagram of a sleek
red, white and pink hardsuit; the first page held complete
technical details on what Sylia knew were the current
capabilities of Nene's suit.  The second page held another
sketch of the red-haired girl's suit, but the technical
specifications had changed slightly to match the new armour
plating designs Bert had told Sylia about.  The third page,
with yet another diagrammatic sketch, was obviously the end
result of a combination of all of the previous work.
     Nene's hardsuit had been re-designed from the ground
up.  While still having the same physical appearance, the
suit systems and subsystems had been re-designed into a more
compact, more power-efficient configuration that gave some
extra room in the suit's frame for some additional systems.
Bert had already filled that space, however.
     The space had been filled with a complicated series of
what looked like small, linked magnetic field generators and
micro-sized particle-beam emitters that were spaced all over
the suit in a symmetrical pattern, and concealed just
beneath the armour plating.  As Sylia examined the spec
sheet, her eyes widened as the full significance of what she
was looking at hit her.  Her stunned gaze lifted to the
bedroom door, as the pages she held flopped back to the
coffee table.  The bottom-most page came loose from the
stack and fluttered to the floor.  As Sylia picked it up,
she noticed the title across the bottom of the page that
she'd missed previously:

             HARDSUIT FORCE-FIELD DEFENSE SYSTEM
                     PRELIMINARY DESIGN
                            ****
     "Who the hell IS this guy?!" Leon muttered to himself
in exasperation.  Irritably slapping the thin file-folder in
front of him closed, he leaned back in his chair, rubbing a
hand over his eyes wearily.  He drank the last of his
coffee, grimacing at the foul taste of the now-cold liquid.
Almost against his will, his eyes dropped back to the folder
on the desk, and the few meager scraps of information it
held.  Despite diligent searching, it was all he was able to
find on Nene's boyfriend.
     He sighed, leaning back and running it all through his
mind again, and again coming up against a brick wall.  He
had a description, age, apparent address, apparent employer,
and some academic records.  That was it.  The traffic
department had a license and a couple of vehicles registered
for him, but that hadn't given Leon any leads either; except
for a speeding ticket for a motorcycle incident, he was
clean.  The guy was a complete unknown, with no immediately
apparent ties to anyone or anything, and Leon found himself
becoming more and more irritated about the lack of
information the more he thought about it.
     The other peculiarity was that none of the existing
records were older than three years; it was as if he had no
past at all.  Since there was no way that average people
could just erase all possible records of themselves, Leon
found himself looking at the unpleasant possibility that
Nene's boyfriend was either a government agent, or else a
member of a very powerful criminal organization.
     Bullshit, he told himself irritably.  The man didn't
have the right feel, the right.... mannerisms to be a crook.
Despite the fact that he appeared to have undergone some
kind of personality change, Leon was willing to bet his
badge that the guy wasn't a criminal...well, not a mobster,
anyway.  That still left open the option that he was a
covert agent of some kind, however.
     Leon sat back, rubbing a hand over his face again
tiredly.   The question now, was what was he going to do
next?

THE NEXT DAY.....

     Priss looked around, a puzzled frown creeping across
her face as she unzipped the front of her jacket.  Her
searching gaze swung once more over the strangely empty
archery range.  She looked over at her brown-haired
companion, who shrugged when Priss' gaze met hers.
     "Maybe he's upstairs?" Sylvie suggested.  "He did only
say he'd be here, not necessarily shooting arrows."  She
unbuttoned the collar of her blue-white bike suit, and
opened the neck a little; bike suits really were too warm to
wear indoors.  Despite that, she still preferred them as her
normal attire
     "Hmph," Priss muttered.  "What the hell else could he
be doing up there?  There's only some exercise rooms and an
arcade...aw hell, forget I said that," she added a moment
later, sighing as she remembered that Bert was a bit of a
videogame nut at times.  It was entirely possible that he'd
tried out a new game, and was still glued to the screen
upstairs.  "Let's go take a look, then."
     Sylvie nodded, and the two women closed the door to the
range, and began the climb up the stairs to the second
floor.  Priss winced every so often as her leg cried out at
the movement.  Thank God she didn't have to go through
another torture session with Linna today; the soreness after
yesterday's bout hadn't yet worn off, and the normal -hah,
normal, yeah right!- pains from it were still bothering her
occasionally.
     They reached the top of the stairs finally, and checked
the arcade room.  There was still no sign of their red-
headed friend, however, so they decided to try the exercise
rooms.  As they approached the one weight room, they could
hear the faint stir of activity of some kind from within,
and Priss relaxed a bit, although she couldn't really say
why she'd been tense.
     They opened the door and stepped into the room.  About
thirty feet from the door, a tall, red-haired young man was
doing pushups on a mat on the floor.  At the sound of the
door opening, he rolled smoothly upright to his feet, ending
up in a somehow ready-looking stance, looking towards the
door.  A smile appeared when he noticed who his visitors
were, and his posture relaxed a moment or so later.
     "Ladies!" Bert exclaimed, giving them a sly grin, and a
half-bow.  "What brings you this way?"
     "We just thought we'd drop by and see how you're
doing," Sylvie replied, smiling back.
     "I'm fine," he shrugged.  "Just getting in shape for
tomorrow afternoon."
     "Oh? What's happening tomorrow?" Priss asked curiously.
     "Sylia's giving me another test," Bert replied simply,
shrugging again as if it was an everyday occurrence.  "She
wants to check my suit responses again."
     "Don't you think you're pushing it?" Priss asked
worriedly.  "You said yourself the other day that you're not
entirely back to normal."  Her worry stemmed primarily from
the fact that she knew Sylia would probably run him through
the grinder again to see if he'd snap.  She understood why
Sylia had done it the last time, after Bert had rather
patiently sat her down and explained it to her;  however,
despite that, Priss still couldn't eliminate the faint anger
that she felt every time she thought of Sylia's treatment of
him.  Damnit, there should have been some other, better way
to find out his condition than by driving the poor bugger
into a relapse...
     "Don't worry," he told her grimly, a flash of something
like determination appearing briefly in his face.  "I know
what I'm doing; I won't snap."
     "You seem awfully sure of that," Sylvie noted quietly,
peering closely at him.  She liked Bert, but at the same
time she was still a little wary of him; she knew from
personal experience that he wasn't fully over his ordeal
yet, and she didn't want to have to stop him from attacking
anyone again.
     "I won't snap, because I can't," he told her.  "There's
two active Knight Sabers at the moment, which means we're
undermanned...er, under-staffed, at the moment.  If anything
major happens, like either a boomer rampage or a job offer,
we'd either have to sidestep the job, or else risk getting
creamed because we'd be outgunned and outnumbered.  Since
I'm physically fine, if I can hold myself together, Sylia's
going to keep me as reserve for when something does happen."
     "You sound like something IS going to happen," Priss
remarked, swearing again at her leg in the back of her mind.
She'd wondered what Sylia was going to do about losing three-
fifths of their forces to injuries and problems; getting one
of the mentally-uncertain members back on active duty was
not what she'd thought she'd try.  Bert was like a brother
to her, and she didn't want him doing anymore damage to
himself by forcing himself into something he wasn't ready
for, and she didn't think Sylia should have asked him to
try.
     "I think something is indeed going to happen," he
replied calmly.  "It's been far too quiet, for far too long.
Leaving our former kidnappers aside for the moment, it
appears as if there's been all kinds of activity at GENOM
lately, and it's making Sylia, not to mention me, nervous."
     "What kinds of activity?" Sylvie asked.  Bert shrugged.
     "Sylia didn't know for certain, but the company appears
to have recovered from the market reverses it suffered
earlier.  Their production facilities have been running like
crazy over the last few weeks, and Sylia thinks the activity
might mean that the boomers will be getting restless again."
     "SHIT!!" Priss swore, turning and angrily slamming her
hand onto the backrest of a nearby Nautilus machine.  Her
leg snarled at her, sending pains shooting along the nerves
at the sudden movement, reminding her again of why she was
mad;  they were finally going to get the opportunity to have
a shot at GENOM again, and she was sidelined because her
goddamn friggin' leg wouldn't behave.  Life was so bloody
unfair at times, it wasn't funny.
     "I know how you feel, believe me," he said quietly,
coming over and hesitantly reaching out and squeezing her
shoulder.  Priss turned around as his hand dropped away, to
look into a sympathetic pair of greenish-brown eyes.  "I
didn't find it that easy staying behind a couple of weeks
ago, and ..." he hesitated for a moment.
     "And what?" Sylvie prompted curiously.  Bert sighed.
     "And I've been getting restless myself," he told them,
sighing again and sitting down on a nearby weight bench.
"I've been holding myself back, but recently I've been
getting the urge to suit up and go flying again."  He
abruptly stood and started pacing angrily, a tightly
controlled energy in his movements.  "I'm smart enough to
know by now that part of it is I want to go find Hollister,"
he continued, a flicker of cold anger passing across his
face.  "That's why I've been holding myself down; I don't
want to lose control and go hunting.  I can't just tear the
city apart and hope I find the goddamn slimy bastard."
     He paced some more, fuming over the fact that the blond-
haired man and his cronies had effectively disappeared;
Sylia hadn't been able to find out anything at all about
them yet through her connections.  He had to find Hollister;
he owed the bastard a lot for everything he'd done to both
his friends and him, and he intended to take it out of
Hollister's hide, one bloody strip at a time.
     "Nene's still having problems?" Priss asked quietly.
He nodded, anger again flickering across his features, gaze
turning distant.
     "She had another nightmare last night," he replied.
"She's getting a little better, but this is still hitting
her hard."  His face turned tight at the memory of the
aftermath of each nightmare, seeing again a terrified and
sobbing red-haired young woman.
     Priss looked away, damning herself again for not having
kept a closer eye on Nene during their last outing.  She'd
gotten carried away with boomer-bashing, instead of paying
attention to what the rest of the team had been doing, and
Nene had paid the price.  If she'd been with the red-haired
girl when she'd confronted Hollister, they might have gotten
the bastard without anyone getting hurt.  Now Nene was a
mental wreck because of nearly getting killed, and she had
only herself to blame.  It didn't matter that Bert said he
wasn't blaming her, she was blaming herself, and would
continue to do so for a long time.
     "It wasn't your fault," Bert's voice intruded briefly
on her thoughts.  Priss' angry gaze snapped up to meet his
somewhat calmer one; he'd stopped pacing, and had come over
nearer to her.  He didn't add any other absolving
statements, knowing it wouldn't really do any good, but he
kept his gaze calm and compassionate, indicating that he
understood her state of mind perfectly.  After a moment or
so of eye-contact, Priss looked away again, flushing
slightly, suddenly uncomfortable at his look.
     "So how come you're working out by yourself?" Sylvie
asked, attempting to get everyone past a suddenly
uncomfortable moment.  "Wouldn't practicing with Linna be a
better way to get ready?"
     "It would, from a practice standpoint," he admitted
expressionlessly. "It wouldn't be smart from a personal
standpoint however."
     "Why not?" Priss inquired.  "You've trained with Linna
lots of times; that's where you learned most of your stuff,
remember?"
     "I wasn't potentially lethal to my friends before," he
snapped, his vehemence making Priss blink in surprise.
"Sure, it'd be better to spar against someone, but all it
would take is a slip-up, or a hit in the wrong location, and
my `autopilot' that I have now could take over.  I won't
expose anyone to that kind of risk on purpose; it's bad
enough when it happens by accident."  A suddenly bitter
expression flashed across his face.  "Besides which,
Linna... doesn't want to get near me at the moment, and I
can't say I blame her, given what happened the last time."
     "Remember when we told you to quit hiding before?"
Priss asked him quietly.  "This is the same thing.  Hiding
from Linna won't make this go away.  We're on the same team,
remember?  You're going to have to work this out with her,
especially because we'll still be going on missions
together."
     "I'll worry about that when it happens," he replied
shortly.  "Right now, I've got other things to worry about."
He brushed the matter aside with a slashing gesture, and
squared his shoulders.  "I'm going to get some target
practice in now; feel free to come on down."  With that, he
stepped past them and was gone out the door.  Priss and
Sylvie swapped a concerned glance.
     "Not good," Priss muttered.  "We've got to get him to
work this thing out with Linna, and quit sidestepping the
issue."
     "I can see why you want to," Sylvie concurred quietly.
"But maybe you should leave him alone to work this out by
himself.  I admit it's a serious concern, but it's nowhere
near the same level as the last time; you've already helped
him get started on a recovery, and the rest is up to him
now.  I realize you don't want to just let it rest, but
maybe you should this time."
     Priss was silent, brooding for a few moments.  In the
back of her mind, she agreed with Sylvie that maybe all he
needed was more time, but a part of her didn't want to just
`leave it alone'.  She'd never had all that many friends,
and she treasured the few she had.  She didn't want anything
to happen that could drive a wedge between two of them, and
as a result felt compelled to try and nudge them into
resolving the problem.  She wrestled with herself for a few
more moments, then reluctantly conceded that Sylvie was
right.
     "All right then, we'll let him be," she sighed, running
a hand through her hair.  "Let's go get some practice in,
then."  The two friends left the weight room, heading
downstairs to the archery range.
                            ****
     Kate Madigan walked thoughtfully through the gigantic
oaken portal to Quincy's lofty office, paging through a
lengthy file nestled in a tan folder.  From behind the vast
expanse of his desk, the white-haired CEO watched her
approach, his face impassive.  At length, she reached his
desk, and looked up, meeting his gaze levelly.
     "We have a problem, sir," she began, taking a last
glance at the file folder, and then handing it across the
desk to the craggy-faced corporate ruler.  "Dr. Yoshida is
becoming too unstable to employ for much longer, I'm
afraid."
     "Oh?" Quincy rumbled.  "Who has made this
determination?"
     "Almost everyone being forced to work in the same
production facility with him," Madigan returned with a trace
of dryness.  "The man apparently refuses to confer with
anyone lesser than a manager, hardly eats, hardly sleeps,
and spends all his time creating `perfect boomers' for
`proving himself'.  He has completed the work on our new
combat models, and they are indeed superb, but his
`independent' designs are a joke now.  The technicians are
all convinced now that he's completely crazy, and won't work
with him at all, even under threat of termination of their
employment."  Madigan had herself briefly visited the
facility where they'd hidden the crazed boomer designer
after the death of the Headhunter, and she'd been a little
shocked, and very definitely uneasy at what she'd found.
     She shuddered mentally, recalling what she'd seen: a
tall, emaciated-looking man with shaggy reddish-brown hair,
and with skin drawn so tightly over his frame now that he
almost looked like a mummified corpse.  His face had a
perpetual rictus-grin on it, and all the fat there might
have been  on his body once was gone now; his clothes hung
on him like rags on a rail fence.  His once-brown eyes were
now bloodshot, and appeared to glow all on their own.  He
seemed to be hardly aware of anything going on around him,
and was continually muttering "They'll pay!" and "My genius
can overcome anything!" to himself while scribbling formulas
and sketches on whatever paper he had handy.  Madigan hadn't
needed to take another look to know that the man's mind,
while being questionable before, was very definitely in
decline now.
     "That is indeed unfortunate," Quincy's voice rumbled.
Madigan gave her attention back to him as he continued.
Quincy tossed the file folder onto his desk. "Dr. Yoshida
was a useful employee; it will be a great loss to us when he
retires."  A slow smile spread across Quincy's face as he
looked at his violet-haired second-in-command.  "We must be
sure that he gets the full benefits package when he leaves."
     "Sir?" she asked, confused.  They couldn't risk just
`retiring' Yoshida by taking him off of work; the man was a
wanted criminal.  Even though he'd been presumed dead,
having him suddenly turn up alive would raise awkward
questions, and all Yoshida had to do was mention some of the
details of what he'd been working on, and GENOM would
suddenly have all kinds of problems again.
     "Why, Dr. Yoshida will soon be leaving our employ,"
Quincy explained with a dark smile.  "We wouldn't want him
complaining about being unfairly treated, so we shall
arrange an adequate, shall we say, compensation for his
services."  A rumbling chuckle rolled through the office,
giving a chill to anyone outside the office who happened to
overhear it.

THE NEXT DAY....

     "You're sure you want to go through with this?" Priss
asked again.  Her red-brown eyes were worried, despite an
almost Herculean effort to keep her feelings hidden.  Bert
sighed in irritation as he shrugged into the bulky telemetry
suit; the suit was the main component of the virtual reality
testing room Sylia had constructed.  Behind Priss, he could
see Sylia programming some parameters into the testing
computer as Sylvie watched from where she was leaning
against the wall.  Nene and Linna were both absent, Nene
because of a sudden change in her work shift, and Linna
because her dance company was working late to get ready for
a big production.
     The telemetry suit was basically a very bulky
undergarment softsuit, with some plastic armour plating in
places, that was meant to approximate the physical feel of
wearing a real hardsuit.  There were sensor webs all
throughout the suit that monitored the wearer's movements
and responses, and fed the information to the sophisticated
computer that ran the simulator.  The computer took the
data, and matched the simulator responses with it to provide
an adequate response to someone's actions, such as
registering a boomer as being killed.
     The link was two-way, however; the suit could also
provide some stimuli to the wearer, letting the wearer feel
if he or she had been hit by weapons.  The armour plates had
vibrational devices inside of them that gave the suit
occupant a brief physical nudge when the computer deemed
them as being physically hit.  It also had some electrodes
that could give the wearer an actual, very low powered,
electrical shock to simulate being hit with energy weapons.
It was the electrical feedback aspect of the suit that had
set him off the last time; it had tripped the automatic `all-
out attack' mode that had been plaguing him since his
kidnapping ordeal, and he'd gone berserk briefly, destroying
all his simulator opponents, and then the replicas of his
friends.
     No one had been very happy with Sylia afterwards,
himself included.  After some soul-searching on the subject,
however, he'd reluctantly concluded that she'd been right in
doing it, and had told her as much.  The slightly relieved
look that had appeared on her face when he'd told her that
he wasn't mad at her had told him he'd done the right thing;
Sylia had enough problems to worry about without having to
feel guilty over being too hard on one of her friends as the
team leader.  He didn't envy Sylia her job at times.
     "Look," he finally said to Priss, fastening up the last
few closures on the suit.  "I appreciate the concern, but
quit nagging will you?  I'm nervous enough as it is."  That
was no less than the truth; memories of what had happened
the last time danced at the edges of his memory, prodding
him with needle-like poignancy.  He shrugged them off almost
angrily; that had been a little over two weeks ago, and
things had changed since then.  Reaching out, he picked up
the helmet that accompanied the suit, and tucked it under
his arm.  "It's just a simulator," he told her.  "There's no
real danger, and besides, we need to know if I've improved
or not.  This is the only way."
     "Well, I still don't think...," she started to retort
when Sylia's voice drifted over her shoulder, ending the
conversation.
     "The simulator is ready, Bert," she told him quietly.
"You can start anytime."  He sighed, and looked over at
Priss, giving her a quick, reassuring smile. He settled the
helmet into place as he clumped over to the door to the
simulator room;  until the suit became active, the helmet
muffled most of the noise from his surroundings, and
severely restricted his vision, making moving awkward.  He
fumbled around, and managed to get the door open, and
stepped through.  It took another couple of minutes to find
the interface cables inside the room, and get them plugged
into the suit.  He swore under his breath to himself as he
worked at getting connected; his real hardsuit was less
hassle than this was!  At last, he made the final
connections.
     "Okay, Sylia," he reported over the helmet comm,
straightening up and stretching.  "I'm ready; let `er rip."
     Bert took a deep breath, and tried to hold down the
crawling nervousness in his guts as his entire field of
sight suddenly lit up, looking briefly like a static-filled
television screen, and gradually resolved into a large,
crisply-detailed, seemingly deserted, warehouse district.
He looked down at himself, and saw brightly polished, silver-
and-blue armour plating.  He raised a gauntlet-clad hand up
to in front of his face and flexed it; it looked and felt
like he was wearing his real suit.  He shook his head,
marveling at the sophistication of the simulator briefly;
damn, but it felt and looked real!  The imaging system
combined with the feedback sensors was fantastic in its
approximation of the real thing.
     SkyKnight shoved the thought to the back of his mind,
and powered up his systems.  Positive status readouts
flickered across his helmet viewscreen as he moved towards
the center of the warehouse area, keeping a wary eye out for
trouble.
     With mechanical snarls, a pair of C-55 boomers suddenly
shot towards him on flaring thrusters, lashing out with
crackling plasma beams.  SkyKnight ducked smoothly under the
assault, dropping into a sideways shoulder roll as the
biomechanoids blasted past him.  He rolled back up to his
feet as his swordblades snapped into extension, turning to
face the way the boomers had just taken.  The boomers banked
around in mid-air, and dove back towards him; the warehouse
district soon reverberated with howls and explosions as
Knight Saber and boomer battled for supremacy.
                            ****
     "Level Seven now," Sylia reported quietly, tabbing a
console switch before leaning back in her chair.  Through
the viewing window, she could see Bert ducking, weaving and
periodically attacking his virtual adversaries, the bulky
telemetry suit apparently not impeding his movements to any
great extent.  On a large, central viewscreen, the computer
displayed a rendered image of what was actually happening
from the computer's viewpoint:  A silver-and-blue hardsuit
was systematically dismantling every C-55 boomer that came
within reach of it.  Behind her, flanking her seat, Priss
and Sylvie watched wordlessly, faint traces of worry on
their faces as the program began to approach the point that
had driven Bert over the edge the last time.
     "Computer, boost difficulty to Level Eight, and
initiate random factors," Sylia ordered the machine.  It
whirred for a moment, then flashed a question on the screen:

                 COMBAT PROTOCOL TO ENGAGE?
                              
     Sylia hesitated for a moment, her gaze lifting to the
red-haired young man in the room beyond.  She sighed,
looking anguished for a moment, then the look disappeared,
her smooth face becoming emotionless..
     "Full assault," she replied flatly.  Behind her, Priss
sucked in a sharp breath, and her fingers dug into the back
of Sylia's chair as her hands clenched in worry.  The three
women watched the viewscreen as a sudden horde of blue C-55
combat boomers charged towards the lone silver suit.
                            ****
     SkyKnight ducked under a whistling claw swipe, at the
same time sweeping his own swordblade through the boomer's
midsection, gutting it and taking it out of the fight.
Using the momentum of the strike to continue his motion, he
drove his armoured fist into the guts of the next boomer
along, pulling the triggers on his particle lasers at the
same time; the boomer flew apart in a flare of energy and
spinning armour shards.  Still moving smoothly, SkyKnight
dropped and rolled over on his left shoulder, coming to his
feet again as a scorching volley of spitting, blue-white
plasma bolts carved divots from the asphalt where he'd been
standing a scant second before.
     The silver-blue battlesuit shot backwards on howling
jets,  spraying a covering fire of red laser bursts to cover
his supposed withdrawal.  The half-dozen or so C-55's left
snarled again, and all six leaped into the air to pursue
him.  As they all became airborne, SkyKnight's backwards
motion suddenly reversed, and he blasted forwards, the
scream from his suddenly stressed-out flight system sounding
like a jetplane going into a power dive.
     As the silver-clad Knight Saber swept through the
surprised boomers, there was a pair of closely-linked,
electric-sounding snap-hisses; huge, glowing blue arcs were
carved through the air as both of his arm-mounted
lightsabers activated.  A second or two later, four of the
six remaining boomers dropped to the pavement, in several,
widely differing locations.  As the remaining two boomers
tried to re-orient themselves to deal with the sudden
reversal, a loud series of crack-bangs sounded.  Several
sharp, driving impacts pounded them from behind, and a
moment later, the boomers burst apart in a messy spray of
armour parts and oily liquids.
     SkyKnight dropped to the pavement again with a clank,
breathing heavily.  As he landed, the railgun bolt launcher
on his left shoulder folded back into its rest position.
Bert wished he could wipe the sweat off of his face; it had
been a grueling workout so far, but he had a sneaking hunch
he wasn't done yet.  While Sylia hadn't been taking it easy
on him, she also hadn't tried to set him off with the same
set of circumstances as the last time.  Not yet, anyway.
     To his immense relief, he wasn't having to exert the
same desperate, ironclad control on himself that he'd had to
the last time he'd been in the simulator.  It was definitely
easier this time; he hadn't had any sudden flashbacks, at
least, not yet, and he felt...relaxed.  He pondered that for
a moment, trying to figure that one out.  Even though he
knew he was in a simulation, he'd never, ever been relaxed
about being in a fight of any kind before, real or
imaginary.  Something stirred uneasily at the back of his
mind at the discovery, but he couldn't define what it was.
     It dawned on him suddenly that things had been quiet
for a few minutes now.  That was not good; quiet was as
boring as hell right now.  A slight grin crept across his
face.
     "Hey, Sylia!" he called into the helmet comm.  "Don't
tell me you're done already?!  That wasn't even a decent
warm-up!!"
                            ****
     "He's starting to sound like you," Sylvie remarked, a
faint smirk on her face as she looked over at her friend.
"You're corrupting him."
     "Oh, go to hell," Priss muttered distractedly, although
a faint smile was tugging at the corners of her lips at
Sylvie's observation.  Bert had sounded okay, and he'd
certainly performed well so far, but she had this nagging
feeling that something was not...quite..right.  She'd seen
Bert fight before, several times, and there was something
about his style now that she couldn't quite pin down,
something unsettling, but also something she couldn't
identify.
     Sylia didn't acknowledge either of them as she leaned
forwards and hit another button on the console, the faintest
trace of a frown on her face.
                            ****
      "You stupid, moronic, jackass," Bert swore under his
breath at himself, ducking under a point-blank cannon blast
from the hulking B-12 Assault Boomer in front of him.  "You
just had to go and open your goddamn mouth, didn't you?!"
He skipped sideways from another fiery salvo, edging just a
few scant inches closer to the biomechanical war machine.  A
second or two later, a blazing, blue-white energy blade
scythed through the air in a roundhouse slash, and the
boomer collapsed into two smoking heaps.  SkyKnight started
to turn around to check if he had any more opponents, when
the numbing shocks of a series of direct hits from weapons
fire hurled him sideways to land in a heap, near the
smoldering remains of the boomer he'd just killed.
     "Damnit, damnit, damnit, damnit," he snarled to himself
as he stiffly rolled over on the ground, just barely
avoiding another round of cannon fire into the pavement
where he'd been laying.  The two B-12s that had caught him
by surprise stomped closer, getting a better vantage point
from which to shoot at him.  The left-most boomer was
suddenly rendered headless by a shattering volley of red-
white laser bolts that seared upwards from the prone
hardsuit, and the right-hand one instantly dodged aside,
narrowly avoiding a similar fate.
     SkyKnight rolled to his feet, gasping for breath, and
still swearing at himself.  He should have kept his mouth
shut, he noted to himself; Sylia had kicked up the
difficulty level again, and now he was getting royally
pounded.  Even though he couldn't really get hurt, given the
level of realism in the simulator, he was responding as if
he was in actual danger, and he was now sore from several
clumsy acrobatic evasion attempts, and once from
accidentally diving headfirst into a wall he hadn't realized
was there.  Thankfully, however, he found he was still not
having too many problems maintaining control of himself.
His biggest problem at the moment was fatigue.
     The B-12 ended his self-assessment by lumbering
forwards again, and opening fire with its micro-missile
launchers; a hailstorm of small, high-explosive warheads
swept towards him.  SkyKnight vaulted high into the air in a
parabolic arc with a brief assist from his jets.  As he came
down, he knocked the B-12 staggering backwards with a laser
shot; a split second later, as he landed next to the
stumbling boomer, a blue-white plasma blade again sizzled
through the air.  The swordstroke ended at the boomer's
cranial casing, and it dropped heavily to the ground.
     "Okay, I surrender, Sylia," Bert panted into the helmet
comm, staggering a step backwards as his lightsaber snuffed
out again.  His preferred weapon, the lightsaber he'd
devised was the best hand-to-hand weapon available, capable
of cutting through almost anything.  The only drawback, of
course, was that you had to get close to your assailant to
use it effectively.  He used it a lot more often in the
simulator than he did in real life, mostly because it was
safer; there was no risk of accidental amputation in here.
Despite the range drawback and personal risk involved, it
was a good weapon, and a perfect `ace-in-the-hole' at times.
As he quietly admired his creation, it suddenly hit him that
the simulation hadn't ended yet.
     "Uh, Sylia?" he called again.  "What are you doing?  I
think that's enough, don't you?"
                            ****
     "Sylia?" Priss echoed the statement from the comm
speaker.  "What are you doing?  He's had enough now, he
said."  She looked from the viewing window to Sylia, who was
still seated in her chair.  Sylia looked back at her calmly,
a calm that was tinged with faint traces of regret.
     "I'm sorry, Priss," Sylia sighed.  "But there's one
last test we have to try."
     Priss stared at her for a moment, then looked back at
the viewscreen; a silver-blue hardsuit was looking around
uneasily, nervous apprehension in every movement he made.
Sylvie remained quiet, also watching the screen, her face
unreadable.
     "You're not really going to do that to him again, are
you?" Priss asked her friend, and sometimes leader.  There
was an overtone of entreaty in her question that didn't need
explanation.  "He's stayed in control up until now; we
really don't need to push him any further."  Sylia sighed
again wearily, running a hand through her blue-black hair.
A brief flicker of anguish again washed across her face.
     "I don't like it either," she replied flatly.  "But I
don't have a choice: we have to know for sure."  Her hand
reached towards the control panel once more.
                            ****
     SkyKnight walked warily through the now seemingly
deserted warehouse district, his stomach feeling like
tightly-strung piano wires, and his mind skittering around
in nervous dread of what he was sure was coming.  He'd
realized after a few moments why Sylia hadn't ended the
simulation yet:  she wanted to see how he'd react to having
the rest of the Knight Sabers around him in a fight.  So
far, it had all been solo action, which wasn't a good enough
indicator of his competency.  She needed to know if he was
going to be able to distinguish friend from foe in a heavy
fight.
     In the back of his mind, there was also the nagging
fear of just how she was going to conduct that particular
test.
     The silver-clad hardsuit rounded a corner, still
searching for some indication of what was coming, but found
none.  It was almost as if the computer had taken pity on
him, but he knew that wasn't the case;  it was merely
waiting for the right opportunity.
     Another couple of minutes slowly inched by, with
SkyKnight restlessly pacing around the warehouses, beginning
to get irritated.  As he paced, his sensor display lit up
with a set of signals indicating someone, or something, was
nearby.  Swallowing nervously, he turned and moved
cautiously in the direction the readings had come from.
     As he walked, a red-pink hardsuit came into view,
several metres distant.  The hardsuit was carefully scanning
the surrounding area, with all the sensor antennae from its
backpack extended and deployed.  For a brief moment, Bert
wished this was the real thing, and not some computer-
generated mockup; it was doubtful that Nene would be in her
suit anytime soon.
     "Hi there!" the Nene simulacrum waved cheerily.  "No
boomers detected yet, sorry."  Just as Bert was about to
respond, three blue-armoured C-55s sprang up from the
surrounding darkness, and all of them converged on the
isolated hardsuit;  she screamed in fear, and tried to shoot
one of the marauders while avoiding the other two.  The
attempt failed miserably; Nene was grabbed by two of them,
and the third's mouth snapped open to target her with a
plasma cannon.
     SkyKnight blasted forwards instinctively on snarling
thrusters, time seeming to slow down as his mind suddenly
began working with an icy cold clarity.  Before the third
boomer could fire, it was tackled sideways by the hurtling
hardsuit, and the two hit the pavement with a bang.  The
boomer tried to blast him at point blank range with its
plasma gun, but SkyKnight grabbed its face with a gauntlet-
clad hand, and ruthlessly squeezed; the boomer's head casing
burst apart in a shower of oily liquid, parts and sparks.
     Leaping to his feet, SkyKnight spun towards the two
remaining boomers and Nene, his swordblades snapping out.
As he turned, one of the boomers holding Nene suddenly
picked her up bodily as she struggled to get loose, and then
hurled her hardsuit at him as if she'd been weightless.
SkyKnight instantly stepped back and to the side, and
grabbed the red-pink hardsuit as it flew past him, spinning
her around, absorbing the momentum of her uncontrolled
flight and setting her gently on the ground.
     "T-t-thanks," she stammered, staggering slightly.
Suddenly, she clapped one hand to her visor, while pointing
over his shoulder.  "Oh no, look out!!"
     Moving smoothly, he shoved Nene to the ground, leaping
sideways in the opposite direction, as a jagged, crackling
blue-white bolt of electrical energy sizzled through the
air.  It was so real-looking, Bert was willing to swear he
could smell ozone in the air.  The uncomfortable proximity
of the shot also started him sweating, and murky memories
began to claw at the barriers he'd managed to wall them off
behind.
     SkyKnight dove sideways again, trying to hold onto his
control and avoid getting hit.  This, then, was what Sylia
had been holding in reserve; she wanted to know how he'd
respond to possible electrical attacks.  He ducked another
electrical blast, still trying to scrape together enough
presence of mind to return fire; at the moment, most of his
attention was being held by keeping the flashbacks at bay,
and avoiding getting hit.  Something in the back of his mind
was screaming at him, telling him to just flee and avoid the
pain that was sure to come; his guts had locked solid at the
thought of being hit electrically again.
     "It's not real, damnit.  It's not real," he muttered to
himself repeatedly, trying to convince his subconscious to
shut up and leave him alone.  It didn't work; the fear
scrabbling at his defenses continued to eat into his self-
control.
     "Leave him alone!!!"  the Nene-simulacrum suddenly
shrieked, firing her arm laser at the boomers.  Instantly,
they switched aim from him to her; searingly hot blue-white
streams of electrical energy slashed through the air towards
her.
     "NO!" SkyKnight yelled, reflex again taking over.  In
the back of his mind, a voice howled that it wasn't real,
that it was a trick, but it was too late; he threw himself
into the path of the energy streams, knocking the red-pink
hardsuit aside.
     "AAARRRGH!!!"  The hoarse yell was torn from him by the
brutal, agonizing slam of the electrical current.  Every
muscle in his body spasmed again, partly from the actual
shocks provided by the simulator, and partly from the
memories triggered by it.  SkyKnight doubled over,
staggering helplessly, clutching at his head, as a red tide
began to rise, drowning his sight in a crimson miasma....
                            ****
     "Sylia!!!  For God's sakes that's enough!!! Leave him
ALONE goddamnit!!"  Priss snarled, her gaze whipping from
the blue-black haired woman to the twitching, doubled-over,
red-haired young man in the simulator room beyond.
     "I can't, Priss," Sylia replied quietly, her own face
tortured-looking as she looked away from the screen.  "I
know it looks cruel, but we have got to know for..."
     "Yeah, yeah, you've said that a dozen times already!"
Priss cut her off furiously with a slashing hand gesture.
There was a helpless fury flashing in her red-brown eyes as
she kept looking from Sylia and then back through the window
to the still-spasming Bert, hands clenched into fists at her
sides.  "How the hell is he supposed to get better if you
keep trying to break him, though?!  Hasn't he already been
through the goddamn wringer enough times to allow for some
friggin' sympathy once in a while?!"
     "Priss, I'm not doing this to try and break him!!"
Sylia snapped, traces of hurt appearing in her eyes, quickly
concealed.  "This is hurting me as much as anyone else, but
are you willing to risk your safety, or anyone else's, just
because you feel sorry for him?"
      "He wasn't ready to get back in his suit!" Priss shot
back, glaring.  "You shouldn't have asked him, goddamnit!!!
It's partly his goddamned misguided sense of honour and duty
that made him try it; he probably wouldn't have if you
hadn't asked him to!!"  Sylia opened her mouth to reply when
Sylvie's quiet voice cut through the argument.
     "He's getting up," was all she said.  The gazes of the
arguing women snapped to the viewing window, then down to
the computer screen.
     On the monitor, a violently shaking and shuddering
silver-blue hardsuit was straightening up, bracing itself
against the electrical streams that still were washing over
it.
                            ****
     "I...will...not...snap!" Bert snarled defiantly, eyes
squeezed shut, teeth clenched.  Sweat poured down his face
as he fought to force himself upright, overriding the
convulsions that were wracking him at the moment through
force of will.  The strain was horrendous, however; his guts
felt like they were going to burst.   Red flashes crackled
and snapped through his sight, carrying brief images of a
smirking, blond-haired man, and other, associated images
from when he'd been tortured, with them.  It was in the
past, now, he told himself again; he'd survived, and would
continue to survive.  He had to; there was too much at stake
to just give in.
     SkyKnight tried to take a deep breath and hold it, but
the pain and convulsions tearing into him, and the fight to
keep from dropping over the edge into overdrive, made that
impossible; he was gasping for air as if he'd just finished
the Ironman Triathalon in record time.  Darkness flickered
at the edges of his vision, and he realized he had to end
this...ordeal... quickly, or else he was going to either
lose it again, or pass out.
     Bracing himself, SkyKnight forced himself into an
upright stance facing the boomers.  In the back of his mind,
the whirling storm of incandescent rage and memories
continued clawing at his rapidly-failing ramparts of
control.  Another shudder wracked him anew, and he hazily
realized that his first priority was stopping the electrical
currents from hitting him; that should give him a little bit
of breathing space.
     Twin cylindrical handgrips snapped into his hands from
their arm-guard slots, and with synchronized snap-hisses,
two blue-white lightsaber blades sizzled into being, and
were whipped up, directly into the path of the electrical
beams the boomers were blasting him with.  The result was
more than he'd hoped for; the plasma blades blocked most if
not all of the electrical current by deflecting the energy
off to the sides, resulting in an immediate release from the
pain he'd been suffering.  There was a lingering trace of
it, but the minute the energy had been blocked, it had
disappeared and was more like a vague recollection.  The
retreat of the torment also allowed him to slam the lid on
the memories and anger that had been raging at him, and to
get his breath back.
     The boomers snarled at him again, seeing their prey
beginning to recover, and they split up, trying to flank him
and attack him from two sides.  As they moved, the
electrical beams cut off, and SkyKnight erupted into
blindingly swift action.
     The silver hardsuit shot sideways, towards the left-
most boomer, moving quickly and running hard.  As the
boomers fired at him again, he dove forwards, arms
outstretched in front of him, and pulled a forward,
somersaulting roll that brought him to his feet right in
front of the one offending boomer.  An almost casual, full-
powered backhand from SkyKnight removed its head, and the
biomechanoid collapsed into a scrap heap.  The silver-clad
Knight Saber immediately did a back-handspring, avoiding the
wild volley of plasma beams and lightning bolts that the
remaining boomer shot at him.   He backflipped twice more,
instinctively staying just ahead of the searching fire that
sought him out hungrily.
     SkyKnight suddenly dove sideways instead of
backflipping again, and the C-55's attacks missed harmlessly
by a very wide margin.  The boomer never got a chance to
correct its aim; A blazing volley of four, coruscating
particle-laser beams wiped it from existence, turning it
into a cloud of spinning armour shards, vaporized liquids,
and carbonized circuitry.  With a thundering blast, the
beams also half-vaporized the wall of the building behind
it.
     As the lingering echoes of the final fusillade faded,
SkyKnight straightened up, his weapons systems shutting
down.  A grim smile flickered over his face inside the
helmet; he looked down at his gauntleted hands, and flexed
them a couple of times.
     "Checkmate.  Game and match," he quietly said out loud.
The warehouse district suddenly dissolved into a multi-
coloured field of static, and then darkness.
                             ****
     Bert shoved the door of the simulator room open,
wearily stripping off the VR helmet at the same time.  He
was the picture of almost total exhaustion; his shoulders
were slumping, and his head was hanging.  Every so often he
lurched a bit as he walked.
     Cool air rushed in and gently caressed his sweaty face,
offering a modicum of relief as he peeled off the helmet.
He swiped a sleeve across his forehead, and then began
undoing the closures on the telemetry suit as he walked
across the room towards the changeroom.  Damn it, he was so
tired, everything hurt...
     "ANSWER ME, GODDAMNIT!!!"  Priss' voice blasted in his
eardrums, making him jump in surprise.  He'd been so worn-
out, and anxious to get out of the suit that he hadn't heard
the volley of concerned questions that had barraged him when
he'd come out of the simulator room.
     Blinking slightly bloodshot greenish-brown eyes, he
lifted his head and looked into her worried, red-brown eyed
face.  Sylvie was hovering anxiously behind her, her golden-
brown eyes also reflecting her concern.  He couldn't see
Sylia, but he was too tired to think straight, and didn't
look for her.
     "Pardon me?" Bert croaked.  His mouth was dry as hell;
he needed a drink in the worst way, but he managed to get
some moisture into his mouth long enough to speak.  "What
was the question?"
     "I said `Are you okay?'," Priss repeated, swapping a
glance with Sylvie.  Bert nodded vaguely, pushing past them
absently and continuing on to the changeroom.
     "I'm fine," he replied tiredly over his shoulder, "I
just need to use the washroom for a bit, first."  He shoved
the door open and stepped in, closing it behind him and
locking it.  Weaving a bit now, he went over to the nearby
lockers and managed to get out of the telemetry suit
finally, sighing in relief at how much easier it became to
move around.
     As he started to fish some clean clothes and other
things out of the locker, a sudden tremor shook him.
Wheeling around, he sprang for the nearest available garbage
can, and proceeded to throw up violently in it.  The racking
heaves persisted for a few moments, than died off.  Bert
shakily wiped his mouth off with the back of his hand, and
waited for a moment or two, still coughing occasionally.
Nothing else happened, so he turned back to the lockers with
a weary sigh, and dug a bar of soap, bottle of shampoo, and
some towels from the top shelf.
     The hot shower helped to revive his flagging energy
just a bit, and he felt almost normal again once he'd dried
himself  off and thrown on a clean tracksuit.  He still felt
a little out of it, however, so he splashed some cold water
on his face.  It helped a little, but he realized he was
going to have to get to bed soon, or risk collapsing; the
combination of the testing and his many late nights recently
was finally extracting its toll on his body, with a
vengeance.
     Bert sighed again, and made his way to the changeroom
exit.  Unlocking the door, he opened it and stepped out into
the short corridor joining it to the testing control room.
As he did so he could hear Priss fuming angrily about
something.
     "What the hell is taking him so long?!" she grumbled.
"He should have been out of there  by now."
     "Priss," Sylvie's voice replied.  "Relax.  He's fine,
really; you heard the shower.  He's just getting cleaned up.
You can stop wearing a groove into the flooring; he'll be
out soon."  Bert started moving closer to the main room.
     "Oh, sure," Priss snorted.  "He's perfectly
okay...horseshit!  You saw what the hell he looked like
coming out of there, and that didn't look to me like he was
fine.  He didn't even realize we were speaking to him until
I yelled almost in his ear! The stupid bastard's probably
passed out on the floor right now."
     "Thanks for the concern," Bert remarked dryly, stepping
into the room, "but the stupid bastard is quite upright at
the moment."  Priss spun around, flushing bright red as
anger, worry, and relief vied for dominance in her
expression.  Anger won, easily.
     "It's about goddamn time you came out," she snarled,
stepping right up to him.  Angry red-brown eyes stared hotly
into his.  "You could have at least said something before
vanishing into the changeroom; it would have made waiting
just a little easier," she fumed.  Bert stood quietly during
the scolding, his gaze flickering from Priss, to Sylvie, to
Sylia.
     Sylvie looked relieved to see him, but at the same time
there was a question implicit in her eyes that he knew he
was going to have to answer shortly.  Sylia also looked
relieved, but she was trying to suppress rampant guilt at
the same time over what she'd put him through.  As for
Priss... he knew exactly what her feelings were right now.
     "Thanks for the concern," he replied wearily, cutting
Priss off before she could speak any more.  "I appreciate
it, really, but I'm fine.  Now if you'll pardon me for a
moment..."  He carefully reached out and gently took Priss
by the shoulders, moving her out of his way.  Stepping past
her, he walked over to Sylia.  She was watching him
intently, her concern and other feelings hidden behind an
impassive mask.
     "So what's the verdict?" he asked simply when he
reached her chair.  She looked up at him for a moment
thoughtfully, then reached out and hit a switch on the
computer console.  A small monitor screen lit up, and two
lines on a graph appeared, a green one and a red one.  The
red one was slightly higher than the green one, but it
maintained a nearly identical shape, except for a brief
spike near the end.
     "You're now officially at Level Eight," Sylia replied
quietly, her face concealing her inner disquiet.  "You did
extremely well overall, with an increase in combat
efficiency to 82%."  His increased skill was a trifle
unsettling to her at the moment, mostly because she wasn't
entirely sure if it was due to practice, or a  side-effect
of his kidnapping and the subsequent self-control problems
that had resulted.
     "That's not what I meant," Bert replied, dismissing the
information with an irritable gesture.  "I meant am I in, or
not?"  He waited as Sylia looked away, her gaze becoming
briefly filled with agonized indecision.  He raised a hand
to brush his hair out of his eyes, and noticed it was
trembling suddenly.  Oh hell, part of his mind noted, not
now!  Please, not now!!  He carefully lowered his hand
again, clenching it into a fist, and trying to will himself
to stop shaking; he could feel faint twitches spreading to
the rest of his muscles.
     "I guess you are," Sylia sighed, looking back at him
after a long moment of silence.  Priss sucked in a sharp
breath, and divided an unhappy glare between him and Sylia.
Sylia ignored the look and continued.  "You've demonstrated
that, for now, at least, you can hold onto your self-
control.  I think that makes it safe to take you along."
Bert's face relaxed, and a relieved smile began to spread
across his face.
     "As backup, ONLY," Sylia added firmly, stopping the
smile in its tracks.  "We'll have to wait and see about the
fully active duty status."  Bert's expression turned sour,
but he fought down the urge to protest; Sylia was right in
not returning him to full duty yet, and whining about it
wouldn't change her mind, so he might as well get used to
it.
     "Okay, fine," he nodded.  "It's a deal."  There was a
sudden ringing in his ears, and he blinked, looking around
to find the source.  As he did, both Priss and Sylvie let
out a startled exclamation of some kind, and the two women
jumped forwards, grabbing him as his knees buckled.  Sylia
looked startled, and started to get out of her chair,
surprise turning to concern.  Bert shook his head dazedly as
the ringing turned to a loud roar of some kind.
     "What's wrong?!" Priss asked worriedly.  "What the hell
is it?!"  She and Sylvie were holding him upright by main
strength; Bert's legs wouldn't support him any longer.
     "Not...sure.." he replied distantly, blinking and
shaking his seemingly fog-filled head again.
"Tired..I...guess.."
     There was a loud, rolling, rumble, almost like an ocean
was crashing down on him; black waves of unconsciousness
washed over his sight, and the room vanished.
                            ****
     A blue and white ADP patrol car pulled to a halt on the
laneway in front of the small, two-story brown house, gravel
scrunching noisily under its tires.  The gull-wing driver's
door swung upwards, the rush of air-conditioned air from the
interior of the car dissipating the faint cloud of dust that
the stopping car had raised.  A pair of booted feet swung
out of the car to the ground, being followed a moment later
by a tall, blue-clad, brown-haired man with an ADP badge
hanging on his jacket.
     Leon looked around at the area surrounding the house,
noting all the trees and shrubs that ran riot all over the
place.  He fished in a pocket, and pulled out his
sunglasses, donning them out of force of habit.  He didn't
really need them, though; the setting sun was sinking behind
the trees, casting a sullen red light over everything.  He
had to look around quick; before long it would become too
dark to snoop further.
     Leon walked slowly over to the small, somehow rustic-
looking house, slowly looking around.  There was a cool
breeze wafting through the leaves of the trees, providing a
quiet background rustle that was oddly soothing, and there
was a hint of freshness to the air that was lacking in the
downtown core of MegaTokyo.  As he walked along, Leon felt
himself relaxing despite himself, stress vanishing into the
pastoral surroundings like water being soaked up by a
sponge.
     As he came up to the house, Leon's gaze sharpened as he
noticed that a couple of second-story windows were boarded
up, and the front door was practically in the same
condition.  Strange, he noted to himself.  The house didn't
look like anyone had been living in it for some time, which
struck him as odd; if Nene's boyfriend wasn't living at his
listed address, then where was he staying?
     Moving cautiously, he eased up to the front door, and
looked around again uneasily.  He couldn't see anything, and
he turned back to the door.  The door had been crudely
boarded shut, and then a padlock had been placed on it.
However, judging from the marks and gouges on the door,
someone had forced their way in very recently; the lock was
snapped off, and the boards had been loosely put back.  Leon
started to see if the door would open, then stopped,
hesitating.  He really didn't have the authority to go any
further as he had no proof that Bert was involved in
anything shady, just suspicions.  Suspicions that were
getting stronger the more anomalies he encountered, however.
If he entered the man's house, even though it looked like it
had already been broken into, technically speaking, he'd be
trespassing.  After a moment, curiosity and investigative
instincts won.  Leon carefully pulled a board out of the
way, and stepped over the others as he shoved the door open.
     The first thing to greet the tall inspector was a dusty-
looking suit of steel, medieval plate armour.  Leon's eyes
widened a bit at that; that suit was a fairly impressive
piece of work, and was probably worth several thousand yen.
The coating of dust on it confirmed that no one had been
living in the house for a while.  He quickly swept through
the rest of the rooms, not quite sure what he was searching
for.  As he searched, he noted that some of the rooms looked
like they'd been searched; chairs were overturned,
bookshelves rooted through, and tables moved.  The bedrooms
looked like a whirlwind had passed through, with blankets
and clothes spread everywhere.  The entire upper floor had
been ransacked and overturned, with the first floor being
apparently ignored.
     Leon finally concluded that he wasn't going to find
anything useful, and he made his way back out the front
door, puzzling over the questions his quick look at the
interior of the house had raised.  Not only had the house
been unoccupied for some time, but evidently someone thought
there was something valuable inside.
     None of the electronic components, a TV, VCR, and some
other weird devices had been moved, the dust alone was an
indication of that, but everything else looked as if someone
had thoroughly searched through everything.  Very, very
strange, he reflected.  He shut the door behind him, and
quickly placed the boards back the way he'd found them.
Casting a quick glance at the rapidly darkening sky, Leon
pulled off his glasses and decided to take one last quick
look around the exterior of the house.
     The blades of grass whispered under his feet as he
tramped around the house, sending a searching gaze into the
surrounding bushes, trees, and lengthening shadows.  He
moved out a short distance into the forested area behind the
house, still looking around.  After a few moments, he gave
up in disgust;  it was rapidly becoming too dark to see, and
he really didn't expect to find anything anyway.  With a
disgusted snort, he spun around and started to walk back to
his car.
     As his boot swept through the grass, it caught
something and kicked it briefly free of the concealing
ground foliage.  Whatever it was, it was small, and glinted
with a metallic sheen as it fell back into the grass.  Leon
stopped in his tracks, and bent down to find it, whatever it
had been.      He pulled a small, clear plastic bag from a
pocket, putting it over his hand like an improvised glove.
After a moment's searching, he found what he'd kicked, and a
couple of other objects like it hidden in the grass nearby:
a small, metallic cylinder of some description, open at one
end.  He had an immediate suspicion of what they were, but
it was too dark now to see any other details.  Leon stood up
again, peeling off the bag and turning it inside out so that
it contained his finds, stuffed the bag back into his
pocket.
     Moving rapidly, he strode around the house to the front
driveway, and climbed into his car, closing the door.  As
the door swung down, he tabbed the switch for the interior
lights; a dim yellow glow sprang up from the recessed lamps.
Fishing in his pocket, he brought out the bag with the
cylindrical objects, and held them it to the light.  He
sucked in an apprehensive breath as  the appearance of the
objects confirmed what he'd suspected.
     The cylinders were almost three inches long, with one
end open, and crimp marks showing around the open end.  The
other end of the tube was sealed, with a rimmed end, and a
small, depressed circle in the exact center of the end.  The
brass colour of the cylinder body left no doubt as to what
the cylinders were:  rifle cartridge casings.  Military-type
weapons, too, if he was any judge of weapons and ammunition.
Offhand, they looked like they might be 7.62 mm ammunition,
probably higher.
     The hand holding the bagged casings dropped back to the
arm of his seat as Leon stared blankly out the car window,
shutting off the interior lights at the same time.  Just
what the hell was going on around here?!

THE NEXT DAY....

      Bert jerked bolt upright in bed, the flannel blanket
draped across him falling away.  Bleary greenish-brown eyes
stared around at the momentarily unfamiliar-looking
surroundings: a plain but richly-finished dresser, covered
with a white cloth, and a couple of easy chairs over by a
fairly large window with closed blinds.  A vase containing
some colourful flowers sat on the dresser, providing a homey
touch.  Other than a couple of non-descript pictures, the
kind just added to break up the monotony of bare walls
rather than for actual content, there was nothing else in
the room.  After a moment or two of dazed confusion, he
finally recognized the room as Sylia's guest room.
     "Aw, bloody hell," he muttered to himself, as he
remembered the final results of his testing earlier.
Despite a massive effort not to, he'd folded like an
accordion and passed out from the strain and exertion.
That, and the fact that he'd been driving himself to perform
on substantially less sleep than most people required.  He
flopped back into the pillows after a moment, as his body
let him know exactly what it thought of the situation:  it
wasn't happy with him.
     Every single muscle he owned felt stiff and sore,
almost like Linna had flogged him through one of her
workouts.  His mouth tasted foul, and he desperately needed
a drink of water on top of that.  There was a dull, gritty
ache around his eyes, and a steady but subdued throbbing
pulsed at his temples.  As he lay there contemplating how
lousy he felt, he drifted into a light doze again.  After an
indeterminate period of time, his eyes snapped open, and he
sat up again, finally becoming fully alert.
     Wincing at the twinges from his stiff muscles, he got
off the bed, and went into the small adjoining washroom.  A
long drink of water, and a quick wash cleared the last
clouds from his mind, and he stretched cautiously, trying to
decide what was next on his agenda.
     He peered into the mirror at himself, noting absently
that he needed a shave; the beginnings of a reddish stubble
was appearing on his face, making him look a little meaner
than he normally felt upon first awakening.  He sighed,
scrubbing a hand along his jaw as he scowled at his scruffy
reflection, whiskers rasping coarsely.  His stomach rumbled,
and he concluded that breakfast was the first thing on his
list.
     Turning away from the mirror, he left the bathroom and
the bedroom, stepping out into a short hallway that
connected the guest rooms with the main living room.  He
stealthily moved down the hallway, and took a quick look
around the living room; no one was in sight, so he started
drifting carefully towards the door to the apartment.
     "I just made some tea," Sylia's voice called from the
kitchen, stopping him in his escape attempt.  "There's
dinner, too, if you're hungry," her voice added a moment
later.  Dinner?  What happened to breakfast?!, his mind
asked.  His stomach answered for him: it didn't care, just
as long as it was food.
     He looked out the window at the city, and saw blackness
peppered with twinkling neon lights.  The clock on the wall,
unnoticed until now, read 7:30 PM.  He stood confused for a
moment, until he realized that he'd apparently been out a
lot longer than just the night after his combat testing.
Damn.  His stomach growled at him again, and he sighed in
resignation.  Turning around, he went into Sylia's kitchen.
     She was sitting at the small dinner table, her meal
already partly finished, and a cup of steaming tea sitting
by her elbow.  A folded up newspaper sat on the edge of the
table.  Across from her, a second plate with another
generous portion of food had been set up, and a large mug of
tea called enticingly to him from where it sat on the table,
next to the plate.
     "Trying to sneak out again, were you?" Sylia asked, a
faint smile on her face as she shook her head.  "That's not
very polite, you know."  Bert flushed guiltily as he sat
down, his mouth beginning to water at the smells coming from
the plate of food.  It smelled fantastic, and looked good,
too.  His internal combustion engine rumbled once more, and
Sylia smiled again at him.
     "I didn't want to wake anyone up," he tried explaining,
flushing again.  "I thought it was early in the morning."
Sylia shook her head.
     "Sorry, but you've been asleep for about twenty-three
hours," Sylia informed him, her expression hardening
slightly.  "We'll discuss just how hard you've been pushing
yourself later.  For now, eat something before you expire."
Bert flushed again guiltily, and he didn't reply for a few
more moments as he worked his way through the meal.  It was
a fish and rice dish of some kind, and it tasted as good as
it smelled.  It also made him acutely aware of how limited
his own culinary talents were; he'd been living on canned
and microwaveable stuff for too long, he reflected.  He
could make a few things that were pretty good, but by and
large his dishes were pretty basic, not at all like this
was; it had that added touch that made it seem extra tasty,
and somehow ...comforting...like a home-cooked meal from
when he'd been much younger.
     The food quickly vanished, and he sat back with a
contented sigh, taking a long, appreciative pull at his mug
of tea.  Sylia watched him thoughtfully the whole time, a
faint smile on her face.
     "Ahhh...Thanks," Bert told her after draining the last
of his drink, sighing deeply and relaxing.  "That was
fantastic; you're a great cook."
     "Why, thank you," she replied, flushing slightly.  A
slightly awkward silence fell for a few moments.
     "If it's not a stupid question," Bert asked hesitantly,
"Why'd you move me here?  There is an infirmary room at
Raven's; you didn't have to put yourself out on my account."
     "I figured it would be more comfortable for you, and it
made it easier to keep an eye on you," she replied smoothly.
Too smoothly; Bert peered closer at her, noting what  he'd
been too tired before to really notice.
     "And you felt guilty for running me through the
wringer," Bert quietly added, "and you felt you had to
apologize or make up for it somehow."  Sylia flushed a
bright red, and looked horribly embarrassed for a moment.
After a second or two, she regained control of herself.
     "That's a possibility," she admitted with just a trace
of coolness.  Bert shook his head smiling ruefully.
     "I'm not carrying any grudges," he told her simply.
"Yes, it was hell; I'd be lying through my teeth if I said I
enjoyed it, but that doesn't change the fact that you had to
do it.  Hell, if you hadn't suggested it, I'd been thinking
of trying it again just to see how I was."
     "You're being awfully...calm and forgiving about this,"
Sylia quietly noted, faint traces of guilt still lurking in
the backs of her eyes.  Bert tried shrugging nonchalantly,
but it came off as looking vaguely irritated.
     "I've changed a bit," he replied, a quick memory of a
quote flashing through his mind, something about being
forged in the flames of adversity....  He shrugged the
memory away, and continued speaking.
     "Before?  Yes, I'd probably have been pissed off and
snarling for days about it." He sat staring off into space
absently as he talked, and Sylia watched as a parade of
memory-linked emotions flashed across his face.  "After
everything I've been through now, though, I've realized that
there are some things it just doesn't pay to get steamed
over.  Evaluating my performance is one of them; I've been
fighting myself for weeks now, and there's no way you could
describe my views on the subject as impartial.  That means
that, unfortunately, it becomes someone else's
responsibility to make that particular call."
     He looked over at her, greenish-brown eyes showing a
combination of sympathy and respect.  "I don't envy you your
job," he told her quietly.  "I don't think I could do it
myself, not without being a complete wreck and recluse
afterwards."  He looked away again.  "So since I'm not
carrying any ill-will, maybe you could relent a bit and
forgive yourself.  Besides, it's done now, and I'm still all
right."  Oh really? a sardonic voice at the back of his mind
noted.  If you're all right, then how come you still act
like almost everyone's a potential enemy?  Bert stuffed the
unwelcome observation back into the dark corner of his mind
that it had emerged from; the last thing he need now was his
subconscious producing nagging, gloomy remarks.
     As he sat quietly, staring into space and brooding,
Sylia refilled their tea cups, giving him a quietly
searching look.  She didn't say anything, though, and they
sat quietly together, sipping at their drinks.  After a few
minutes, Sylia sighed and set her cup down, her expression
becoming slightly stern.
     "I think we need to discuss just how far you were
pushing yourself before last night," she told him quietly.
"I think you overextended yourself for no good reason, and I
don't want you to repeat that.  Luckily, last night was only
a test; you'd have been severely at risk if it had been a
real mission, and I can't allow that.  Am I making myself
clear?"
     "Perfectly," Bert sighed, a scowl flickering across his
face.  "I understand your concern, but I'm not going to
apologize for what I did; you may think it wasn't necessary,
but I sure as hell did."
     "And just what was so important that you were
jeopardizing your own health?" Sylia asked, although she had
a faint inkling of what his reply was going to be.  His next
words confirmed her suspicions.
     "Nene's safety," he replied quietly.  "That, and being
able to giver her some peace of mind if...when she gets back
on the team."
     "Care to explain that?"  she asked quietly.  Bert's
gaze turned distant, and slightly pained-looking.
     "Nene hasn't been taking her...near miss very well," he
started awkwardly.  Sylia nodded, understanding perfectly,
and he continued.  "I know what she's going through, because
I went through it myself, back when those USSD Dobermans
jumped me."  He paused, taking a drink.  Setting his mug
back down, he continued.  "I was able to get over it, partly
because of my `heroic ideals', I guess you could say, and
partly because ...because of my friends being there.  Well,
Nene doesn't have my heroic ideals, and..." He paused,
staring into space, trying to collect his thoughts, as Sylia
waited patiently.
     "Nene has never had the same drive, or fire, if you
prefer, about our work as the Knight Sabers as you, Priss,
or even Linna has.  I always," he flushed suddenly, almost
guiltily.  "I always thought she...didn't take things
seriously enough at times;  I didn't myself for a while,
but..." He stopped speaking, floundering in a complex
quagmire of emotions that he was trying to give voice to.
He loved Nene, more than anything else, but at times her
apparent innocence about the world in general seemed like a
liability.  He'd never said anything, to anyone about it
before, mostly because he wasn't really the one who had any
right to comment, being a hopeless idealist at times
himself.
     "But I'm not sure if she can get over nearly getting
killed by Hollister," he said, swallowing against the sudden
pain in his throat; Nene just had to get better...she had
to!  "I've tried everything I can to help," he told Sylia in
a low tone, "but...but I wanted..want to do more than just
`be there for her', damnit.  I've got to help her
somehow...and that's when I came up with those defense
upgrades for her hardsuit."
     "The forcefield system?"  Sylia asked quietly, sympathy
evident in her eyes.  Bert nodded tiredly.
     "It will work, but only for limited time periods," he
told her.  "There isn't a suit powerplant available that can
power it for more than a few minutes before the entire suit
shuts down entirely.  "I've devised a sensor program to link
into her control systems; if the sensors detect something
capable of penetrating the normal armouring of the suit,
then the field comes up, briefly, just long enough to divert
the attack."  He hesitated, then sighed.  "Unfortunately, if
someone were to fire a heavy projectile, such as a DPU
round, with enough velocity, the kinetic energy in the
object would likely break through the barrier anyway.  I
tried to design around that, but I can't.  For the size and
frame of suit we use, that's going to be the limit of any
forcefield defenses: limited power and duration, and we'll
still be vulnerable to very high-velocity projectiles."  A
very faint smile appeared on his face.  "That gives us an
excellent incentive to not get hit."
     "The incentive not to get hit has always been
excellent," Sylia noted dryly.  "Why do you think this will
help Nene?"  Bert took another swig from his mug.
     "I'm hoping it will provide a measure of comfort..a...a
`security blanket', if you will, that will help her in
getting her confidence back," he replied simply.  "She
doesn't have the advantage of being the scarred and world-
weary war-horse that I am now," he noted, with just a trace
of resentful bitterness.  "I don't think that there's much
that would really bother me now, with the exception of
losing any of you."  He looked up at Sylia, a complex
whirlwind of emotion swirling in his eyes.  "I don't mean to
say that I've become callous," he assured her, "it's just
that...with everything I've been through, now, I've got a
breadth of perception not available to most people, and I
guess that lets me be a lot more equable about a lot of
things now; I can take a lot more in stride.  Nene doesn't
have that advantage, and if she ever does develop it, I hope
she never has to go through what I had to."
     An uncomfortable silence fell over the room as he
finally quit speaking.  Sylia took a sip from her now cold
tea, pondering his explanation.  She could see he'd told her
the complete truth; some of his observations about Nene had
been almost too painful for him to say, but he'd forced it
out anyway.  She could see one minor point he'd missed,
however.
     "I can understand your feelings," she told him quietly.
"But you're never going to be able to protect her
completely.  I think if you try too hard, you'll smother
her.  She has to be allowed to grow on her own."
     "I know that," he replied miserably, shoulders
slumping.  "But that doesn't mean I have to like it."

THE NEXT DAY....

     Bert took a large slurp from his mug of tea as he
stepped past the end of his kitchen counter while
simultaneously trying to juggle a slice of toast spread with
Cheese Whiz, and a well-worn novel.  Just as he made it
almost all the way to the coffee table, the phone rang,
startling him.  Stuffing the last bit of toast into his
mouth, he took another quick sip of tea to wash it down, and
dove for the phone, dropping the novel onto the floor and
almost tripping over it.  He snatched the receiver from it's
cradle.
     "Hewwow?  Mmfgh!"  He tried swallowing the lump of
toast that had suddenly become stuck in his throat, and
doubled over coughing for a moment.  After sounding like a
dying automobile with choke problems for a minute or so, he
finally cleared his air passages enough to speak.
     "Hello?" he wheezed into the mouthpiece, still clearing
his throat.  The last few crumbs grudgingly surrendered, and
went down his gullet finally.
     "You didn't go and get sick, did you?" Nene's voice
asked suspiciously.  "I heard about your collapse the other
night;  I'm not happy with you, mister."  Bert grinned wryly
to himself; in some ways at least, Nene was still the same.
Now if only the rest of her personality would recover...
     "No, nothing like that," he hastened to assure her.
"You just caught me in the middle of eating something, and I
discovered I couldn't eat as fast as I thought I could."
     "Humph," she muttered by way of reply.  "Okay then; are
you still meeting me for dinner after work?"
     "But of course, M'Lady!" he exclaimed.  "I keep my
promises; you should know that by now."
     "Okay then; I'll see you at 8:00 PM then," she replied,
sounding a shade more cheerful.  "What are you going to be
doing today?"
     "Getting a little exercise," he replied, straight-
faced, taking a swig from his cup.
                            ****
     Vibrant, energetic dance music reverberated throughout
the spacious room, as a black-haired and blue-eyed young
woman in a blue-green spandex aerobics outfit seemed to
float across the floorboards.  Her dancing was a seemingly
never-ending whirl of leaps, twirls and artistic pirouettes
that carried her effortlessly across the floor space of the
room, with her never seeming to actually alight on any spot
on the floor for very long.  The dance patterns she was
using were simple and clean, but elegant at the same time,
immediately entrancing to the eye.  The entire performance
was spellbinding, her every movement a rejoicing in the
freedom of the dance.
     With an echoing snap, the cassette player came to the
end of the tape, and Linna finished her routine with a grand
flourish, seeming to become firmly rooted to the ground
again as gravity re-asserted itself.  With an exhausted, but
contented, sigh, she walked over to the small table in the
corner of the room.  Picking up a towel from where it hung
precariously on the edge of the table, she mopped off her
streaming face, looping the towel around her neck
afterwards.
     Picking up the water bottle from the table, she took a
long draught, enjoying the feeling of delicious coolness as
it spread through her parched tissues.  She took another
drink after the first one had been given time to settle,
humming quietly to herself.
     She absently gazed out the large bay window as she
hummed, one hand sweeping her hair back under her headband
automatically in an unconscious gesture.  Things were going
pretty good at the moment; her job was fantastic, nothing
catastrophic had happened lately, and she felt great.  What
more could anyone ask for?
     Originally, when she'd started her new job, she'd been
worried that her duties as the chief choreographer wouldn't
allow her any time to do any dancing herself.  She'd soon
had that worry put to rest; a lot of the other dancers
reacted more favourably to someone who led by example, which
had suited Linna just fine.  She was now regularly leading
the various dancers through their paces in a class-style
fashion.  It had immediately prompted a lot of the dancers
to work harder to try and keep up to her, and she couldn't
get rid of a faint trace of smugness over the fact that
she'd been able to run most of the more seasoned company
veterans into the ground during the first week of training.
A couple of whiners had quit over it, but they hadn't been
missed by anyone.
     She sighed again, a feeling of contentment filling her.
For the first time in a while, she felt happy and fulfilled
at her job, which hadn't been something she'd been able to
say very often before.  Sure, playing with stocks and bonds
had been fun, for a while, but there'd always been something
missing, some feeling that she wasn't doing everything she
was capable of.  Now she was, and she felt great.
     Smiling to herself, she glanced at the clock.  She
sighed as she realized she had a couple of hours to kill
yet.  Shrugging mentally, she turned around to leave the
room, and stopped in her tracks, her smile fading slightly.
Standing in the doorway, leaning against the frame with his
arms crossed over his chest, was a familiar tall, broad-
shouldered figure with red hair.  Greenish-brown eyes met
hers from across a room that suddenly seemed to be too small
to Linna.
      "Hello, Linna," Bert greeted her quietly.  He was
wearing a black track suit and running shoes, and was
leaning casually in the doorway, almost completely filling
it.  Linna's nerves began jangling as she realized she was
going to have to squeeze past him, if he didn't move, in
order to leave the room.  "That was a great dance routine,"
he complimented her.  "You looked fantastic."
     "Um, thanks," she said uncertainly, slowly walking over
towards him, her unease growing with every step closer that
she took.  She finally stopped, short of him by about
fifteen feet, even though the distance was not much of a
comfort, or a defense.  "Could you move out of the way,
please?" she requested politely.  "I've got to go get
cleaned up."
     "What, don't you have time to talk to friends anymore?"
he asked, a slightly wounded expression appearing.  "We used
to chat all the time, before.  Remember?"
     "Of course I remember!" She flushed guiltily at his
words.  Before the torture ordeal that had altered him,
they'd always talked for a while after workouts, on whatever
came to mind, ranging from personal problems to just silly
things to pass the time.
     Since his kidnapping, though, she'd hardly seen him.
For a while he'd been more or less hiding from everybody;
however, once he'd come out of being reclusive, and it had
become apparent just how serious his problems were, she'd
started avoiding him.  She was honest enough to admit to
herself  that at least part of it was fear; ever since that
night at Sylia's when he'd almost turned on her, she'd been
uneasy around him, fearful of another outburst, fearing for
her own safety.
     "Look," she told him, "We can talk some other time.
Right now I've got..."
     "Nothing," he interrupted in a flat voice, the banter
gone from his tone.  "Priss, Anri, and Sylvie aren't due in
here for Priss' rehab session for another two hours, at
least.  I checked.  That means you're just marking time
right now."  He straightened up, and began walking towards
her, his arms dropping to his sides.  "What's the real
reason you don't want to talk to me, Linna?  I think I
deserve an answer."  Something screamed warnings in the back
of Linna's mind, and she tensed, backing up a step as he
advanced on her.
     "Bert, stop it," she pleaded.  "You're... I....this
isn't the time or the place to discuss this..."
     "I think it's the perfect time," he replied, his intent
gaze seeming to bore into her.  "There's no one else here at
the moment, so that means we won't have eavesdroppers.  I
want to know the real reason you don't want to stand and
talk to me."  He advanced closer, narrowing the gap between
the two of them to about six feet.  "I want to know the real
reason someone I considered a friend has been treating me
like I've got the plague suddenly.  Well? I'm waiting."
     Linna backed up another step as he stepped closer,
bringing the distance between them to less than a couple of
feet.  She could almost feel a driven intensity radiating
from him, and it immediately sparked a flashback of what
he'd looked like that one night a few weeks back when he'd
flipped out.  She swallowed against the sudden dryness in
her mouth.
     "Bert, please don't be like this," she said, not quite
meeting his gaze.  "I have got some stuff I have to do.  Now
would you please move out of the way?"
     "Make me," he said calmly, folding his arms over his
chest again, staring down at her.  Linna couldn't believe
what she'd heard.
     "Pardon?!" she asked, dumbfounded.  "What did you just
say?!"
     "I said make me move," he replied evenly.  "The only
way you're getting out of this room is by either knocking me
out, or talking to me first.  I want to know why you've been
hiding from me."
     "I haven't been hiding..." she started to weakly
protest, but he cut her off angrily.
     "BULLSHIT!!" he snapped suddenly, angrily, making a
slashing, negatory gesture with his right hand.  "I...."  He
never got a chance to finish the sentence.
     Linna's mind, with her nerves already stretched tight
from his behaviour and menacing demeanor, interpreted the
gesture as a prelude to an attack of some kind, an
impression strengthened by her fear of his behaviour lately.
The response was almost instantaneous; she struck out, hard,
not sparing the force she put into her strike, trying to put
him down as quickly as possible so she could get away.
     Bert's head was snapped back on his neck by a lightning-
fast uppercut.  A split-second later, he was knocked back by
a spinning kick that connected with pit of his stomach.  He
flew backwards as if kicked by a wild horse, and bounced,
hard, off the wooden floorboards with a dull thud and a
strangled grunt.  There was a loud crack as his head
impacted with the floor, and his body flopped in a limp heap
as he slid to a stop.
     Linna stood in a ready stance, gasping for air, partly
from fright, and partly from the sudden exertion.  She
watched the slack form warily for a moment; there was no
movement at all.  She waited a moment more, trembling a
little as the adrenaline wore off, and started moving
cautiously around him towards the door; he still didn't
stir, and a faint edge of concern finally intruded on her
thoughts.  She stopped, and waited; several minutes passed,
and there was still no movement from the prone, red-haired
individual.
     It suddenly hit Linna that he hadn't been going to
attack at all.  As she mentally reviewed what had happened
just before she'd clobbered him, she realized that he hadn't
been attacking; his stance had been angry, yes, but he'd
been totally out of the right posture for attacking someone.
She also realized that, if he'd been going to hit her, he'd
have been primed and ready for a counter-move from her; the
ease with which she'd nailed him indicated that he'd been
wide open and unprepared.
     "Oh no!!" she gasped, the colour draining from her face
as she realized she'd been the one who'd gone over the edge
this time.  For all her worry and concern over his
stability, she'd hit first. Fear nudged the concern in her
mind, and after a brief moment's hesitation, she ran over to
Bert, kneeling next to him.  She took a deep breath, and
reached out and tentatively grasped his arm.
     Nothing happened.
     Releasing her breath in a shaky sigh, Linna rolled him
over so that she could see his face.  He was very definitely
out cold; a large, angry-looking bruise was on the left side
of his jaw and face, and there was a thin trickle of blood
coming from the corner of his mouth.  Sudden fear prompted
her to check his pulse, and she sighed in relief to find
that it appeared to be steady;  the blows she'd hit him with
could seriously injure almost anyone.  The fact that he was
in good shape might have helped to spare him somewhat from
serious damage, but there was no way to tell for sure until
he woke up.
     Linna stood, and dashed over to where she'd left her
gym bag.  Rummaging around in it, she found another, smaller
towel, and proceeded to dampen it with some water from her
water bottle.  As she sprinted back to where he lay, she
scooped up her other towel, which had fallen on the floor
when she'd knocked him out.   She folded the larger towel
into a small, pillow-like bundle, and placed it under his
head.  Taking the dampened towel, she gently sponged off his
face, wiping the blood away.  At the touch of the cool
cloth, he stirred and muttered something.  Linna swallowed
against a suddenly dry mouth again, and gently wiped at his
face once more.
     Bert's eyes opened, a vaguely stunned and unfocussed
look in them.  His gaze swung over to her, and she watched
as a sudden wave of pain washed through them; he immediately
doubled up around his sore guts, a strangled groan coming
from him, as he flopped over onto his side.
     "Bert?" she queried tentatively.  She hesitantly
reached out and touched his shoulder; he twitched a bit, but
remained curled up.  "Bert?  Are you okay?" she asked
timidly.  Now THERE'S a stupid question!, part of her mind
noted dryly.  Hardly anyone would be `okay' after having her
slug them the way she'd just hit him.
     "Why don't you just finish the job and put me out of my
misery?" He hissed painfully, sounding like he was speaking
through clenched teeth.  "If not, just leave me alone and
I'll crawl off in a few...hours.  Maybe."  His voice trailed
off into another strangled groan.
     "I'm sorry," she said quietly, but firmly, "but you
could have just asked me to talk to you."
     "I tried, damnit!" he half-snarled, turning towards her
and almost sitting up, then flopping back to the floor with
a groan.  "But if you won't answer your goddamn phone, then
how the hell am I supposed to ask?!  I've been trying for a
friggin' week now; don't you check your goddamn phone
messages?!"  He finally sat up, sweat popping out of his
brow at the effort it took to keep from collapsing again.
There was a whirling mix of pain, anger and confusion in his
eyes as he looked at her.  The tight, strained expression on
his face indicated just how much he was feeling her strikes
at the moment.
     "Bert," she sighed, "I've been working almost twelve to
fourteen hours a day lately, and today was the first day
I've had off for a little over a week; up until today, I've
been giving Priss her sessions on my lunch breaks.  As for
the phone, I haven't even looked at it for days; I didn't
feel like doing anything or going anywhere, so I covered it
up and ignored it.  I didn't have any important appointments
coming, so I figured it was safe to ignore."
     "Well that's just perfect," he replied, wincing and
gingerly feeling his jaw.  "So how the hell are your friends
supposed to contact you then?"  He winced again, and quit
poking his jaw, and went back to holding his stomach.  God
damn it, it bloody hurt!!  His neck wasn't much better; it
had already stiffened up from having his head snapped back
on it.  "You were never in the building at the same time I
was, although I guess it was by accident, considering what
you just told me, and I didn't want to pass on messages with
anyone else.  Just what was the reason for going into
effective hiding?"
     "I wanted to be by myself," she said simply.  "You, of
all people, should know what that feels like; you certainly
go off on your own to sit and think often enough, or at
least you used to."
     "Okay, true enough," he conceded grudgingly.  Another
flicker of pain flashed across his face.  "So why the hell
did you try to kill me?"
     "Why the hell did you come barging in here like a
thunderstorm?" Linna countered evenly.  "Your method of
approach was, shall we say, less than diplomatic?"
     "I had tried being reasonable," he growled back,
cautiously feeling the back of his head; his probing fingers
found a very large, egg-shaped lump that was extremely
tender, and he quickly jerked his hand away, wincing.
"However, to me, it didn't look like you wanted to be
reasonable, so I opted for a different approach, and decided
to try cornering you."
     "Well, don't ever try it again!" she told him, suddenly
angry.  "I don't enjoy being scared half to death, thank you
very much!"
     "All right, so I was a little pushy.  That's hardly a
justification for damn near taking my head off!"
     "You scared me, you stupid asshole!" she flared.  "I
thought you'd gotten angry and gone off the deep end again,
and the way you were acting certainly didn't contradict that
impression!  I was scared, and you pushed me too hard, you
jerk!"
     "I'd noticed that," he remarked dryly, cautiously
feeling his jaw again.  For a moment, he sounded like his
old self.  "Mind telling me just why you were so scared of
me?  You should know by now that I'd never do anything to
hurt my friends."  Linna sighed, looking uncomfortable.
     "I did know that, once," she replied quietly, getting
off her knees to sit cross-legged next to him on the floor.
He seemed to be completely in control of himself; she wasn't
getting any hostile or tense feelings from him anymore.
"But..." She hesitated, not sure of what to say next without
hurting him.
     "Go ahead, say it," he said, suddenly sounding old and
tired.  "It's probably nothing I haven't already thought
myself."  There was a sudden pain in his eyes that had
nothing to do with his recent injuries.
     "I know you've always said that you'd never hurt your
friends," she said slowly, not looking at him.  "But...that
night at Sylia's when you turned on me...the look on your
face, it wasn't... it wasn't you," she finished in a rush.
"I literally couldn't recognize you for a moment, because
there was so much anger or hate, I don't know which, in your
expression.  It was like looking at an entirely different
person, and it scared me," she finished simply.  "I think
I've been scared of you ever since; I just wasn't sure what
you were capable of anymore."  Bert nodded wordlessly,
looking away at the flooring, suddenly looking drawn and
old.
     She looked at him, a quiet apology in her bright blue
eyes.  "I'm sorry, but that's the plain truth, and when we
found out just what you were capable of in the simulator, it
didn't make me any less scared; Level Ten is beyond my
ability, and I was afraid of getting hurt if I was around
you when...if you lost control.  I wouldn't have been able
to stop you, and I guess that just added to things."
     "At least you didn't have to walk around afraid of what
you might end up doing to other people," he rasped, clearing
his throat angrily, and scrubbing a sleeve across his eyes.
Linna reached out and gave his arm a sympathetic squeeze,
noting that there didn't appear to be a reflex response to
his being touched this time.  Maybe he was getting better.
     "I know it wasn't easy for you, either," she told him.
"And I was honestly going to check with you about continuing
our practice sessions when you felt up to it, but I didn't
think that you were ready yet.  The way you barreled in here
this afternoon, stomping around like a renegade boomer,
didn't help that impression."  A long interval of silence
stretched between them for a moment.  Linna watched him sit
there, quietly going over her words, some of the strain
lines in his face seeming to become etched just a little bit
deeper.  After a while, he sighed and looked over at her.
     "I'm sorry," he apologized.  "It wasn't my intent to
scare you; I just thought I might be able to get some
answers if I was more direct."
     "Your directness was bloody intimidating," she told him
a trifle tartly.  "Next time, just ask first."
     "Oh, rest assured, I won't try anything like that
again," he assured her, wincing.  He looked over at her,
trying to conceal his feelings behind an impassive mask.
"So where do we go from here?" he inquired.  "If you want me
to leave, I will, and ...I'll...understand."  There was a
bit of a catch in his voice, and Linna could see the faint
hope that he hadn't irreparably harmed their friendship
lurking in the backs of his eyes.
     "You don't have to leave," she told him quietly.  "I
think we can iron out what to do next."
     "Thank you," he replied just as quietly.  Linna gave
him a quick smile, then became businesslike, standing up and
looking down at him.
     "The first thing we need to do is to get you moving
again," she told him.  "You're going to feel it a lot worse
if you just sit there feeling sorry for yourself."
     "What I'm feeling is a great deal of pain, thank you
very much," he grumbled back, recognizing immediately her
switch to instructor mode.  "Sorrow has nothing to do with
it."  That wasn't entirely true:  he was definitely VERY
sorry he'd screwed up on his interpretation of her
behaviour, especially since the results of his actions had
not been pleasant.
     "Well get up, get moving, and get your mind off of it,"
she told him.  "Believe me, it'll make things seem a bit
better."
     "If you say so," he sighed.  Gritting his teeth, he
carefully got to his knees, then tried to stand up and
straighten the rest of the way.  Linna stepped closer to
him, and grabbed his arm, helping him.  She felt a brief
tension flash through him, and then disappear.  After a
period of strangled noises, and subdued, under-his-breath
swearing, Bert made it to a fully upright position again.
Next, Linna made him walk around a bit again to try and
loosen up his agonized gut muscles.    After a few minutes
of very crabbed-looking movement, he seemed to be moving a
bit easier, and she picked up the pace a bit.  After almost
an hour, she had him more or less fully mobile again,
although he was sweating from the effort it was taking at
times to keep from doubling over in pain.
     "Okay," he finally sighed.  "That's enough; I've walked
around this room enough times to do it blindfolded now.  Can
we move on to something a little more technical?"
     "Technical?  Like what?" she asked, frowning slightly.
     "Well...," he hesitated for a moment.  She waited, and
he continued.  "Could you try teaching me a bit more martial
arts?" he asked quietly, looking at her uncertainly.  "I
know you said I was hopeless at it before, and just showed
me some of the basics, but could we try it again?  If
nothing else, I don't think some of the discipline would do
me any harm."
     Linna stood silently for a moment, vaguely uneasy over
his request.  She wasn't entirely sure teaching him how to
be a better combatant was a good idea, especially since he
seemed to have developed a certain amount of natural attack
aptitude since his kidnapping.  She wrestled with her own
inner fears for a few moments, and made her choice.
     "All right," she sighed finally, looking up at him.
"We'll try it out for a bit and see how you do.  I want you
to keep in mind, though, that this is for self defense only.
Got that?"  He nodded, and bowed slightly; his stomach at
the moment wouldn't allow him to move much further.
     "I will keep your words firmly in mind," he assured her
soberly.  There was a sudden glimmer of amusement in the
backs of his eyes as he added, "Sensei."
                            ****
     "No!!  I don't wanna go in there!" Priss moaned,
flailing around and trying to get away from Sylvie and Anri
as they herded her towards to front entrance to the non-
descript brown brick building where the exercise facilities
and archery ranges were located.  "I can't take it anymore!!
Just shoot me now, goddamnit!!"
     "Priss, for God's sake shut up and quit bitching!"
Sylvie finally said, exasperated almost beyond endurance.
She grimly held onto her friend's arm, and kept steering her
towards the entry door.  "You have to go through with this
if you ever want your leg to be fully healed and back to
normal!  Now shut up and get in there!!"
     "Look on the bright side, Priss," Anri added, helping
Sylvie hustle the brown-haired woman through the doors.
"After another couple of weeks, you'll be free."
     "I don't want to wait," Priss snapped.  "I'm sick of
being goddamn tortured by a sadistic aerobics instructor
while my `friends' kill themselves laughing on the
sidelines.  I don't need to do this anymore and that's
final."  As if on cue, Priss' leg suddenly throbbed and
folded on her; only Sylvie holding her arm prevented her
taking an ignominious fall to the ground.
     "Oh, right," Sylvie noted dryly, bracing herself and
helping Priss to get her supports back under her.  "I can
see you're perfectly all right.  Priss, quit whining and
acting like a child, will you?  It has to be done, and
that's all there is to it."  Priss looked angrily away from
her, but her anger was only partly at Sylvie's words; she
was mad at her seemingly traitorous body for refusing to
heal as quickly or as well as it had in the past.  It
implied that a time was coming when she might be hurt beyond
her ability to heal, and she didn't like that thought, not
in the slightest.
     Sighing in resignation, she quit resisting Anri and
Sylvie's pull on her, and they trooped through the doors,
and over to the stairs.  Why the hell didn't he put in an
elevator system?, Priss snarled to herself as she climbed
the stairs, leg cheerily protesting all the way.  At least
he could have considered the fact that not everybody would
be up to the task of climbing all the bloody stairs there
were in the place.  She made a mental note to give him shit
about it the next time she saw him.
     The three women finally reached the second floor, and
began walking to the end where all the exercise rooms were
located.  As they walked, they could hear the faint murmur
of voices from the main room where Linna liked to work out.
Priss and Sylvie exchanged curious glances, Sylvie raising
an eyebrow.
     "Sounds like Linna's got company already," she noted.
     "Maybe we should wait," Priss stalled, half turning
around.  "I don't want to interrupt her at anything."  Anri
quickly grabbed Priss' right arm as Sylvie grabbed her left.
     "Oh no you don't," they chorused.  "Quit trying to
weasel out of it; you're going to your rehab session,"
Sylvie added firmly.  "If you don't quit whining and
complaining, I'm going to carry you into there over my
shoulder."  Priss blanched, looking at her friend; from the
level, clear gaze Sylvie returned, she knew that the golden-
brown-eyed young woman was serious in her threat; Sylvie was
also quite capable of carrying it out, too.  After a moment
of glaring back at her friend, Priss rather irritably
acquiesced to being led into the exercise room.
     The scene that greeted the trio upon entering was not
quite what they'd expected:  Linna was standing off to the
side, watching Bert go through a slow series of martial arts
moves of some kind.  His attention on what he was doing was
intense; he didn't notice the trio as they entered the room,
focusing entirely on what he was doing, and on Linna's words
to him.  Linna did notice them as they entered and gave them
a quick wave; the group moved off to the side to wait until
she was finished as Linna turned back to her student.
     "Not bad," she observed.  "Practice those ones on your
own for a couple of days, and I'll get back to you a bit
later in the week.  Okay?"  Bert nodded wordlessly, and
Linna gave him a quick smile.  Becoming momentarily serious,
she bowed to him, and he replied in kind, although a little
more care was evident in how he was moving.
     Linna straightened up, then the black-haired, blue-eyed
dancer and martial artist turned around and grinned at the
reluctantly approaching Priss and her escorts.  Behind her,
Bert sighed in relief, and also slowly straightened up,
wincing.  Sylvie could see that he was moving a little
stiffly, but didn't think he looked like he'd been working
out that intensely.
     "Hi, Linna," Sylvie greeted their grinning instructor.
"We dragged her in for the next session.  Ready to start?"
     "Sure," Linna nodded, then smirked again.  "Just as
soon as Bert gets off the exercise mats."
     "I'm moving, I'm moving," he grumbled from behind her.
"Just give me a chance to recover from the workout first."
As he moved up behind Linna, she seemed to tense briefly,
then apparently shook it off, glancing behind her and
smiling impishly at him.
     "If you're looking for sympathy, forget it," she told
him.  "You know better than that."
     "Can't blame me for trying," he sighed.  As he slowly
moved past the black-haired young woman, Sylvie and Priss
noticed what they hadn't been able to see before: a very
large and angry-looking bruise on the left side of his jaw
and face.  Anri couldn't see it because of the angle she was
looking at him from.
     "Holy shit!!  What the hell happened to you?!" Priss
burst out.  "What the hell did you do now?!"  Out of the
corner of her eye, Sylvie saw Linna twitch, and started to
look at her questioningly, but Bert's voice replying
distracted her.
     "I wasn't watching where I was going, and I ran into
something," he replied simply.  "Nothing to get excited
over."  Priss looked at him skeptically; he looked back
innocently, his face revealing nothing at all to indicate
that he wasn't telling the truth.  That alone made Sylvie
suspicious; usually, he was much easier to read.  She heard
the barest trace of a relieved sigh come from Linna, and a
suspicion flashed in her mind, but she refrained from
commenting.  Obviously, whatever had happened, they'd worked
out their differences.
     "If you say so," Priss muttered dubiously.  "It looks
more like someone belted you, to me."
     "Tell you what, Priss," Bert offered, a grin forming.
"You walk over to the door, and I'll hit you with it; we'll
compare bruises afterwards and see who's right."
     "Go to hell," she shot back irritably.  "I'm due for
enough pain right now as it is."
     "Well then," Linna said brightly, eyes sparking with
amusement as she looked over at her grumbling, red-brown
eyed victim.  "Shall we get started?"  Priss moved out onto
the mats, a look of gloomy martyrdom settling over her face.
Linna shook her head briefly, flashed a quick grin at Sylvie
and Anri, and then got started on getting Priss warmed up.
     Sylvie turned away from the exercise mats, and began
walking over to where Bert was carefully leaning over to
pick up a towel from off of a side bench.  Anri trailed her,
suddenly turning shy.  He looked up as they approached, and
then forced himself upright, draping the towel over a
shoulder.  Sylvie watched a very carefully hidden grimace of
pain flicker across his features, and noted that he was
favouring his midsection; she surmised that he'd been hit
there as well.  She kept her own feelings hidden as she came
up to him, smiling warmly.  He grinned boyishly back.
     "Ladies," he declared grandly, giving them a half-bow.
"What brings you this way?"
     "We just thought we'd say hi," Sylvie replied.  "It
beats watching Priss complain about her leg."  At her words,
Bert's expression sobered a bit, and Sylvie detected
sympathy and a trace of...worry? concern?...something else,
anyway, in his gaze as he quickly looked over to where Priss
was stretching out her muscles.
     "How's she doing?" he asked quietly, still watching the
brown-haired young woman move.  Sylvie sighed.
     "She's getting better, slowly," she replied.  "But it's
not healing as fast as she'd like, and even though she won't
talk about it, it's been giving her a bit of pain every now
and then."
     "I know what that's like," he muttered to himself.
Sylvie traded a confused glance with Anri, then looked back
at him.
     "What's that supposed to mean?" she asked.  "Old
injuries bugging you or something?"  He jerked, as if
startled, and his eyes quickly became masked, cloaking
whatever expression had been in them.
     "Nothing, just rambling," he dismissed the question
with an irritated wave of his hand.  "I just know what
having to wait for something is like, I meant."  Sylvie
wasn't so sure; his expression had indicated a bit more than
just an understanding of Priss' impatience.  She didn't pry
further, respecting his privacy, but at the same time she
wished he wasn't so self-contained at times.  He'd never
been wildly outgoing before, and with everything that had
happened to him lately, he now was downright isolationist at
times.  How were you supposed to help your friends out if
they wouldn't say what was the matter?
     "I've been meaning to talk to you for a while now,"
Anri shyly spoke up.  Bert's gaze swung to her, a friendly
smile appearing as he waited  for Anri to continue speaking.
She flushed slightly, self-consciously.  "I just wanted
to...to thank you for everything you've done," she said
awkwardly, "and to thank you for the flowers you sent when I
was...sick.  They really helped cheer me up."  Bert grinned,
and swept her a deep bow.  Anri blushed.
     "It was my pleasure, M'Lady," he declared floridly,
straightening up with the barest of winces.  He hesitated
for a moment, flicking a quick glance from Sylvie to Anri
and then back.  Sylvie nodded slightly, understanding his
unspoken question, and Bert stepped over and gave Anri a
gentle hug.  She seemed surprised, then hugged him back,
blushing again as he stepped back.  "Seeing you recovered
and getting around again is all the thanks I need," he told
her quietly.   He took a quick glance at the clock and
sighed.
     "Well, ladies," he said, sighing again.  "I hate to cut
and run, but I've got to go pick Nene up from work.  I'll
try and connect up with you again later, okay?"  The girls
voiced their agreement, and Bert quickly strode from the
room, casting a last, unreadable glance at Priss as he left.
                            ****
     Nene sat at her desk, quietly finishing up the last
report of the night.  Like a large portion of other reports
she'd had to file, it was some minor incident that seemed to
have had an inordinate amount of importance attached to it
by the investigating officer, and it was as boring as hell
to read.  She sighed, running a hand absently through her
hair, and glanced at the clock as she finished off the last
data entry, and archived the file.
     She sat back from her terminal and stretched
languorously, yawning as weariness hit her abruptly; it had
been a long day, and she was heartily glad it was over.
Just as soon as Bert picked her up, she was going to...
     "Hey Nene," Naoko's voice intruded on her thoughts.
"Got a minute?"  Startled, the green-eyed, red-haired young
woman looked up from her desk to meet Naoko's frankly
curious, blue-eyed look.
     "Sure!" she replied, trying to sound bright and cheery.
It wasn't easy; she was tired, and she still was having
problems keeping her mind off of....some rather morbid
thoughts, at times.  It wasn't making her job any easier,
either; several people had already commented on her apparent
personality change, and Nene was finding it hard to keep
coming up with excuses.  "What's up?"
     "Did your boyfriend go and get into some kind of
trouble?" Naoko queried.  Nene blinked in surprise,
wondering what was going on.
     "No, not that I know of," she answered, looking
puzzled.  "What makes you ask that?"
     "It's just that Leon's been checking him out,
apparently," Naoko shrugged.  "A friend of mine down in the
Records division told me that Leon had a background check
run on him."
     Nene stared at her friend, face paling as an awful,
sinking sensation hit her in the pit of the stomach.  Why
would Leon start checking on Bert?!  She asked Naoko, and
got a shrug in response.
     "Apparently he's tied into some case Leon said he was
working on," Naoko told her.  "He's been kind of tight-
lipped about the whole thing, and acting kind of strange,
come to think of it."
     "Strange?" Nene repeated faintly, her mind racing.
What did Leon suspect?  What did he know for sure, if
anything?  "What do you mean by strange?"
     "Well, he's been kind of preoccupied lately, and a
little grouchy about something.  He also gave some stuff to
Forensics for testing," the brown-haired young woman
replied.  "I think they were cartridge casings or something.
Apparently he found them outside someone's house, but that's
all he would say."
     "Outside their house?!" Nene repeated dumbly, a wave of
cold shock spreading through her.  It couldn't be....Bert
had said that he'd removed all traces of the kidnap attempt
on him, and the fight that had occurred outdoors.  Still,
empty cartridges would be hard to locate in the grassy area
surrounding his house, so it was possible he'd missed them.
"Did he say where this house was?"
     "No," Naoko sighed petulantly.  If there was one thing
she hated, it was not being able to get anyone to talk.  How
could you keep up to date on things if no one would say
anything?!  "He's clammed up completely over whatever it is
that he's investigating.  You couldn't get two words out of
him right now with a crowbar."  Naoko glanced at the clock.
"Whoops, gotta run!  Let me know if anything else happens!"
With a cheery wave, Nene's friend disappeared out the office
door.
     Nene suddenly shivered, and wrapped her arms around
herself, hugging herself for warmth.  There was an
unpleasant cold feeling working its way through her right
now;  for almost three years Bert had been worrying
intermittently about whether or not somebody would start
checking on his background, a worry that, up until now, had
seemed pointless.
     She stared blankly at her computer terminal, trying to
figure out just why Leon had suddenly started investigating
Bert.  After several frustrating minutes of her mind
spinning its wheels, she gave up.  There was no reason she
could see at the moment for the sudden interest.
     She tried to console herself with the fact that there
wasn't really a lot of information for Leon to find.
Immediately after that thought, she realized that, in a way,
that was worse:  a lack of information would only raise more
questions, and start an investigator into digging deeper and
looking harder for something.  From what she knew of Leon,
she realized that he was probably doing that right now.
     Nene sat up in her chair, trembling slightly.  What if
Leon found out, somehow, about Bert being SkyKnight?  What
would he do?  Her mouth turned dry as fear began sinking its
talons deeper into her guts; knowing Leon, and how `By-the-
Book' he could be at times, he'd probably try arresting him,
if he did somehow manage to figure it out.  He might even
try hauling him in for questioning right now, on suspicion
of something illegal.
     Nene blinked as a wave of sleepiness swept her;
glancing at the clock, she realized that she was twenty
minutes late now for meeting Bert down by the front
entrance.  He was probably still waiting.  Another
uncontrollable surge of fear struck her as she realized Leon
might see him down there and try fishing for information.
Given the way Bert was reacting to people other than his
immediate friends lately, there was a horrible potential for
disaster implicit in that occurrence.
     Nene quickly yanked on her jacket, and pulled her bag
out from under her desk.  She settled her jacket into place,
sweeping her vibrant red hair back over her shoulders,
freeing the few strands that had become caught under her
coat collar.  She glanced around the office quickly, almost
furtively, and then reached down to her bottom desk drawer.
Opening it to the very limit its tracks would allow, she
rummaged in the back of it, and pulled out a file folder.
Closing the drawer, she looked at the file folder for a
moment; the folder was almost empty, and contained a very
brief report, dated `March 2032'.
     Nene stared at the folder, chewing at her lower lip for
a moment, indecision running rampant over her face.  The
file folder contained the report she'd finished filling out,
almost three years ago, on a certain, red-haired individual
who'd claimed to be from 1995.  It had been sufficiently
intriguing at the time, that she hadn't filed the report
normally, but had decided to wait and see what, if anything,
else would develop in relation to that report; she'd always
notified Sylia if sufficiently interesting reports had
passed her way.  Given what had occurred afterwards, it had
never been processed.
     Other than her, and the detective who'd originated the
report, no one else knew of the file's existence, and she
was currently holding the only copy.  She hadn't filed it,
mostly because she'd known somehow that the time might come
when it could raise awkward questions.  It appeared as if
that time had arrived, and now she had to decide what to do.
     Destroy the file was the best option all around; it
eliminated any possibility of her boyfriend being found out.
Despite the fact that she knew it was for the best, Nene
couldn't erase a faintly guilty feeling as she stuffed the
file into her bag, glancing around again, hoping no one
noticed her.  She took a great deal of pride in the ADP, and
destroying records, no matter what the reason,
seemed...somehow criminal.  She quashed her misgivings after
a moment or two of struggle; it was necessary, and that was
all there was to it.  With one last glance around at the
office, she quickly left.
                            ****
      Bert waited, trying hard not to fidget as he leaned
against the hood of the nondescript blue car he'd borrowed
from Sylia's garage; his truck was still effectively in
hiding, since it was entirely possible that Hollister and
his cohorts were keeping an eye open for it.   The car was
okay, but he really missed his truck.  He shifted a bit
again, wincing as his gut muscles protested.
     He swore under his breath again as he glanced at his
watch.    Damn it, what the hell was keeping Nene?!  She was
almost half-an-hour late from getting off of work; unless
she'd suddenly gotten some last minute work, in which case
she'd have called him, there must be something wrong.
     He paced a bit, wondering if he should try entering the
ADP building to find her.  He immediately dismissed that
idea; after Leon quizzing him the last time he'd been in
there, he didn't want to go inside unless absolutely
necessary.  He didn't want, or need `official attention'.
Just loitering in the parking lot was making him nervous
enough as it was; sooner or later someone would notice, and
probably come over and start asking questions.
     Just as he spun around to irritably pace the length of
the car again, the glass doors at the top of the stairs
banged open, and a breathless, red-haired young woman in a
form-fitting ADP uniform burst through them, bounding down
the steps as fast as she could.  Unconsciously, Bert
relaxed, and a welcoming smile appeared as  Nene ran over to
where he'd parked the car.
     "Well, it's about time," he remarked with a mock-sigh.
"I was beginning to think...mmff!"   He was cut off in mid-
sentence by Nene hurling herself at him, and pulling his
head down for a kiss.  After a rather surprised moment, he
hugged her and kissed her back, ignoring the twinges from
his neck and stomach.  It was when he hugged her that he
realized she wasn't entirely okay; she was shaking like a
leaf in a high wind.
     The kiss lasted for another couple of moments, until
she drew back to breathe, looking up at him.  "Sorry I'm
late," she apologized meekly.  "I lost track of the time."
     "After a greeting like that, I don't care," he told
her, smiling down at her.  "I was beginning to get a little
worried though.  Some last minute work crop up?"
     "Not quite," she evaded, suddenly looking around almost
fearfully.  "Let's get out of here; I don't want to discuss
this here, and I think we need to talk to Sylia, too."  Bert
nodded, puzzled, but didn't prod her further; she was pale,
and looked scared for some reason.  He briefly hoped it
wasn't a complication of her nightmares, and held open the
car door for her, helping her into the car.  Carefully
closing the door, he went around the car and clambered into
the driver's seat as Nene belted herself in.  Starting the
engine, he shifted the car into gear, and drove off onto the
highways of MegaTokyo, leaving the gleaming cylinder housing
the ADP behind.
                            ****
     Sylia sat quietly, sipping her tea, no traces of worry
evident anywhere on her face.  She was the picture of
unruffled calm, her blue-black hair neatly in place, and her
brown eyes unrevealing.  Bert briefly envied her as he paced
the length of the room, back and forth, several times.  Nene
sat on the couch next to Sylia's chair, holding her own
drink, her worried emerald green eyes darting from Bert to
Sylia constantly.  She was still pale and nervous-looking,
running a hand through her long red hair every so often
unconsciously, sweeping it back over her shoulders.  She
looked a little rumpled at the moment, with her uniform tie
loosened at the neck, and a few wrinkles showing in her
normally neatly-pressed blouse.
     "Bert, quit trying to wear holes in my carpeting,"
Sylia finally said testily, getting sick of watching him
pace the room like a caged tiger.  "This is not as big a
problem as it seems."
     "Isn't it?" he snapped, spinning towards her, anger and
worry both warring for dominance in his face.  He was
slightly pale with the strain of maintaining control on
himself, and it was highlighting the large bruise he had
somehow acquired on the left side of his jaw.  Sylia had
noticed it earlier when he'd arrived with Nene, but had
managed to keep from asking about it.  Nene apparently still
hadn't noticed it, being preoccupied with her own worries.
Bert began pacing again, trying to attain a calm appearance;
he failed.
     "I've got one of the brighter police inspector pulling
covert probes into my past," he fumed, "and you don't think
I should worry?!  Damn it, Sylia, this is worse than an
official investigation!  At least if it was officially
sanctioned, we'd have had some warning that way!  Leon's
discreet inquiries have already netted him enough to be
suspicious, and he's not going to just go away, not now.
He's going to just keep poking and prodding, and eventually
he'll find something out, something we'd all wish he
hadn't."






















     Almost before he realized it, he reached out, tilting
her chin up gently with his hand, leaning forwards, and gave
Priss a gentle kiss on the lips.  She twitched in surprise,
but didn't...quite...withdraw.  It felt kind of nice,
actually, sparking some kind of a warm glow in the back of
her mind.  Almost of their own accord, her lips responded to
his.
     After what seemed like a long moment or so, he pulled
back, and she flushed a deep red colour, suddenly feeling
embarrassed and awkward for some strange reason.  He
appeared to be in a similar state, turning slightly crimson,
quickly looking away from her.
     "So, um, just don't do it again, okay?" he told her,
then quickly retreated before she could do anything to stop
him, and left the room.  Priss watched him go from where she
sat on the bench, her mind falling all over itself as she
tried to sort out exactly what it was she was feeling.
                            ****