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
show 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, and
we'll even upgrade your existing C-55s to better cope with
your requirements!  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 didn't look up from
the report she was rapidly pounding into the computer in
front of her.
     "Sorry, I haven't," she replied distractedly.  "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 trembling making it difficult to tell that she was
nodding, keeping her face still pressed against him.  He
squeezed her again gently, 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 once more, 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 at least a semi-official
probe into her illness, and they couldn't risk that.  At the
mention of sleep, however, Nene's eyes widened, and brimmed
with tears again.
     "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,
putting her head on his shoulder as he wrapped an arm around
her.  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
thought I told you to get some rest?" she inquired coolly.
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 an alternating 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 ragged, 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-coloured 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 cables inside the room that were used for flight
simulation, and get them attached to 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; two 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 to the sink, and rinsed
out the foul taste that had been left in his mouth by
throwing up, and took a long drink of water.  He stepped
back over 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 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.  It felt like
he was seeing everything through an infinitely long tunnel.
"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, and 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 up 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 lately 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 utterly 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 reddened again, 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,
finishing her meal also, 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, blushing 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 she.....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 force field 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
force field 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 moisture-starved 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, furiously, 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.  He staggered backwards, and a split-second
later, he was knocked back again by a spinning kick that
connected with pit of his stomach.  He flew backwards
through the air 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. Concern nudged the fear 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, 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 over him; 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; his
posture was relaxed, and 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 right now, 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 perception."  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 mostly 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 happened to you?!" Priss burst out.
"What did you do to yourself 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 apparently been checking him
out," 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 more persistent police inspectors
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'll all wish he
hadn't."
     "That is always a possibility," Sylia conceded, "But
suspicion is not proof, and he'll have a very hard time
proving anything."  She drank from her teacup, then set it
down on the table.  "I also think that he won't have too
much time to devote to checking you out; Leon can't just
avoid his regular duties, and that means he'll be busy at
other things before long."
     "Right," Bert snorted, resuming his pacing while
scowling darkly at the carpeting.  "Like that's a real
hindrance; he's always found ways to work around the
limitations of his job before.  I don't think that's going
to be an effective deterrent for long."  He swore under his
breath again, wishing that, just once, his luck would quit
running on the abysmally lousy side.
     "Well," Sylia tried another tack, "we can always create
a `history' for you that we can place in the official
records; I realize that now is a little late, but if Leon
tries to point to your lack of past records as proof of
something suspicious, he'll get a rude shock when he finds
out that they do exist."
     "That'd help," Bert admitted, trying to force himself
to calm down and be reasonable.  His success was limited; he
still felt like going out and running as fast as he could
for a few blocks.  His nervous energy level at the moment
could probably burn out his hardsuit systems.  "That doesn't
change the fact that he already knows, or suspects, that
something isn't right.  If he's watching me, he could find
out about the rest of you.  I don't want to risk that."
     "What possible reason could he have to suspect people
you were friends with?" Sylia asked.
     "He's a cop, Sylia.  They're suspicious of everybody,"
Bert replied sourly, then caught himself, looking
apologetically at Nene.  "I wasn't aiming that at you,
Nene," he told her.  "I just meant that as an inspector,
he's always looking for something suspicious, and since
something started him checking me out, he'll probably take
any small thing related to me, and start poking into it.  I
don't want him poking into the activities of my friends."
Nene nodded wordlessly, her green-eyed gaze troubled.
     "Well, we'll just have to be careful, won't we?" Sylia
said simply.  "There's no real way to stop him looking
around, so we'll just have to be careful, and not give him
any more reason to look around."  Bert didn't reply audibly,
but muttered something under his breath as he stalked back
and forth across the room.  Sylia caught part of his
sentence, and it prompted an uneasy feeling to start
slithering around in her stomach.  To her, it had sounded
like he'd said "we could always shoot him."; given some of
the ways in which he'd changed, she wasn't entirely sure he
wasn't serious.
     "I hope you didn't really mean that," she noted
quietly.  Bert jerked, startled, and looked at her.  She
could see helpless frustration in his gaze, frustration, and
fear over being found out.
     "No, I didn't mean it," he told her, " but I..." He
paused, fighting to control himself.  "I'm scared," he
admitted tightly.  "I don't want to lose what I've managed
to put together here; I've just barely gotten myself back
together after what Hollister did to me, and having
something else ruin my life right now...would be more than I
can handle."  He went over and finally sat next to Nene on
the couch, reaching out and taking his now-cold mug of tea,
drinking it down.  Nene almost hesitantly put an arm around
him; he smiled warmly at her, and put his own arm around her
shoulders, drawing her closer.  A thick silence settled over
the room like a heavy blanket, as everyone sat, lost in
their own private worries for a moment.
     As they sat there for a few moments, a quiet but
insistent beeping erupted from a computer terminal tucked
away almost invisibly in a corner of Sylia's living room,
hidden under a cloth cover of some kind.  Bert looked up, a
faint look of surprise crossing his face, one that was
mirrored by Sylia and Nene.
     "Now that's something I haven't heard in a while," he
noted.  The computer that had started signaling was Sylia's
automated `watchdog' on the ADP communications lines, used
mostly when Nene was off duty.  It was set to monitor the
ADP channels, and notify her if certain conditions arose;
apparently, after a long silence of several months, the
right circumstances had arrived.  Sylia nodded absently in
agreement, a faint frown flickering across her smooth face
as she rose from her chair, and walked over to the terminal.
     She flicked the cover off the monitor, and turned it
on.  Bert and Nene watched as the light from the glowing
screen flashed across her face in a rapidly changing pattern
as the machine churned its messages across the screen.  As
she read the data, Sylia seemed to tense up; she shut down
the terminal, covering it back up.  There was a very serious
expression on her face as she came back over to the red-
haired couple.  Her gaze centered on Bert alone.
     "Do you feel up to a mission tonight?" she asked
quietly.  "I think we're going to need everybody we can
get."  Bert nodded, once.
     "I can handle it," he replied, a sudden, icy calm
seeming to settle over him.  Sylia wasn't quite sure, but
she thought she'd seen a brief flash of...eagerness...in the
backs of his eyes.  "What's the situation?"
     "There's almost twenty C-55's running loose," she
replied simply.  "The ADP says they just `turned up', and
they've started trashing whatever they can.  There's been
several casualties already."
     "They `just turned up'?" he echoed.  "That doesn't
sound right; how can twenty combat boomers just appear out
of nowhere?"  Sylia shrugged; it had struck her as funny
also, but the whys were not as important right now.  After
they'd stopped the boomers, then they could worry about the
source, although she had a faint suspicion what that source
was.
     "I'll go get suited up, then," Bert replied,  standing
easily and stretching.  "I'll wait for you and Linna
downstairs.  Are we going to need the KnightWing?"  Sylia
shook her head.
     "No," she answered.  "The boomers are only a few blocks
away; we won't need the plane for that short a distance."
She didn't bother mentioning that they really needed someone
to fly it anyway; leaving the KnightWing unattended was not
a good idea.
     "Okay then, I'll see you down there..." Bert started to
reply, when Nene's quiet voice interrupted him.
     "I'm coming too," she announced quietly.  It shaped an
instant silence in the room, as both Bert and Sylia looked
at her.  Nene flushed under their gazes, but didn't look
away.
     "Nene," Sylia spoke slowly, "I'm not so sure that's a
good idea..."
     "Why not?" she demanded.  "You're taking Bert along,
aren't you?"
     "That's a slightly different situation," Sylia replied
awkwardly.  "He's been tested lately, and we know how he'll
react to combat situations.  You're....still recovering from
your.... experience; we should take it easy for a while
before you get back into things."  She wished Bert would
speak up and help her out here; he should know better than
anyone that Nene wasn't ready to go on a mission yet,
especially one that  was likely to be pure combat.  He
remained silent, however, his gaze locked on Nene's face,
his expression unreadable.
     "I'll be fine," Nene spoke confidently.  "It's only
some boomers.  What could possibly go wrong?"  With that,
she stood, and left the room, Bert's silent gaze still
following her.  After the red-headed ADP officer had left
the room, Sylia rounded angrily on him.
     "Why didn't you say something?!" she demanded,
seething.  "You know she's not mentally ready to face a
dangerous situation yet!"
     "I know," he replied tiredly, looking at Sylia with a
pain-filled gaze.  "But she's made up her mind, and nothing
I can say will change that.  If she wants to go, the only
way you can stop her is to tie her up somewhere, or wreck
her suit before she gets to it."  He sighed, scrubbing a
hand across his jaw, wincing as he accidentally aggravated
the bruise Linna had given him earlier.  "She's going to
have to find out the hard way whether or not she's ready
yet," he told Sylia.  "You said it yourself yesterday: I
can't protect her all the time.  Well, you can't either;
she's going to have to either fly on her own...or fall."
     "If you'd at least voiced some concerns, she might have
reconsidered," Sylia replied quietly.  "She'll listen to you
more readily than anyone else."
     "Sylia, please," he said painfully.  "I'm already
scared enough about her going along as it is; I know what I
said sounds cold, but it's like your having to run me
through the grinder on my testing:  it's necessary.  I don't
need guilt feelings complicating things right now, on top of
everything else."  Sylia flushed slightly, embarrassed.
     "I'm sorry," she sighed.  "I'll call Linna, and meet
you downstairs."  He nodded, turned, and left the room.
Sylia stood for a moment, her inner disquiet finally coming
out from behind the impassive mask she'd been hiding it
behind.  After a moment, she controlled the fear and
uncertainty, shoving it to the back of her mind, and stepped
over to the phone.
                            ****
     The last piece of silver-coloured armour plating
slapped into place with a pneumatic-sounding hiss-snap, and
there was a gentle hiss of displaced air as the suit lining
molded itself snugly to his body contours.  Bert carefully
flexed an arm, feeling how the suit was responding to his
movements; there was no apparent interference, but then
again, the suit wasn't fully functional yet.  He reached
over to the blue-antenna-winged silver helmet that sat on
the side bench, picking it up, and looked at it for a
moment; the darkened eyeslot that represented his eyes as
SkyKnight stared back blankly at him, offering no insights
into what was in the immediate future.
     Sighing, he reached up, and settled it into place, the
contacts between his helmet, hardsuit, and softsuit clicking
together with a metallic-sounding snick.  He still didn't
entirely understand the way the hardsuit controls and
softsuit interface worked, but as long as they worked, he
wasn't going to knock himself out over details; the control
systems were the one thing on the hardsuits he didn't fool
with.
     As the last connection was made, the familiar hum of
activated circuitry filled his ears, and his viewscreen
flashed on.  Flickering readouts sped past his sight,
indicating that everything was working perfectly.  He sighed
again, and stretched, reveling in the comfortable closeness
of his armour.  The familiar, supportive feel of his suit,
and the comfortable feeling of security it provided him with
had been something he hadn't even realized he'd been
missing.  Now it was back, and it was a fantastic sensation,
somehow uplifting and invigorating.
     He paused very briefly, searching himself for any signs
of the nervous tension that had bothered him the last time
he'd been in a real hardsuit, but he couldn't find any.
Something inside him questioned that finding, but he
irritably squelched the doubts; what he needed was some
action to help him get over the doubts and worries that had
been dogging him lately, not more soul-searching.
     A grimly anticipatory smile flickered across his face
as he clanked across his workshop to a nearby workbench.  He
picked up the twin railgun bolt launchers sitting there, and
latched them into their respective shoulder mounts.  Their
muzzles briefly tracked around the lab as his suit
battlecomputer tested them out before adding their command
paths to the main suit control programs.  He was ready, he
hoped.  As SkyKnight  turned around, a knock at the door to
the lab sounded.
     "Door's open," he called, his now-modulated voice
booming through the confines of the room.  The door opened,
and an olive-green and gray hardsuit entered the room.
Linna tucked her helmet under her arm as she walked over to
him;  he pulled his off a moment later, and his suit went
back to standby mode, his shoulder guns folding down into a
low-profile rest position.
     "I can't talk Nene out of it," he told Linna before she
could say a word to him.  "I've tried, and she won't listen
to me.  So please, don't ask."  She blinked, looking a
little hurt.
     "I didn't come in here about Nene," she replied,
looking up at him.  "Sylia already filled me in on what
happened, and I think you're doing the right thing.  I came
in here to see if you were all right, not to nag you about
anything else."
     "I'm sorry," Bert muttered, flushing.  "I didn't mean
to snap at you.  I'm just...worried, that's all.  I don't
want anything to happen to Nene, but she's...she's pushing
it, I think.  I wish she would wait just a bit longer first,
but she won't."  He looked away from Linna.  "I know I'm the
wrong one to say anything, given how I've acted in the past,
but, damn it, I...."
     "You want to protect her, and she's not co-operating,"
Linna said quietly.
     "Yes.  NO!" he snapped.  "I mean...aw shit, I don't
know what I mean anymore!  I'm just scared for her, that's
all there is to it."  He looked away from Linna's concerned
gaze, forcing himself to stay calm; he had a horrible
feeling that something bad was going to happen.  He could
feel it.  Unconsciously, his gauntleted hands balled into
fists, and he had the sudden urge to start pacing the room.
     "Hey," Linna said gently, reaching out and grasping an
armour-clad arm.  Bert didn't react negatively to being
touched, and looked over at her quizzically.  "Relax;
everything will be okay," she told him.
     "If you only knew how much I wanted to believe that,"
he replied gloomily.  "But I can't shake the feeling that
something's going to happen."
     "If you don't relax, you won't be in much shape to
fight boomers," Linna told him.  "Then something really will
happen: we'll have to re-hospitalize you."  A faint smile
flickered across Bert's face.
     "That's a possibility," he conceded blandly.  "Good
thing my health insurance is paid up then, isn't it?"  Linna
rolled her eyes, and shook her head.  A brief moment of
quiet dropped over the shop.
     "We'd better get going," Linna remarked after a moment.
"Sylia's probably wondering where we are."  Bert nodded,
donning his helmet again.  Linna settled hers into place,
and the two hardsuits left the shop.
                            ****
     Probing talons of smoke pierced the night sky,
emanating from the hungrily roaring fires below.  Almost the
entire block near Kaneda and Fifth streets was aflame, and
sporadic explosions occasionally burst through the choking
pall of smoke that wreathed the street level.  From a
rooftop offering a vantage point above the destruction, four
armour-clad figures looked on.
     "I'm only reading about ten boomers," Nene reported.
Bert wasn't sure, but he thought he detected a bit of a
tremor in her voice.  He irritably throttled down his
nagging subconscious; he had enough to worry about.  Nene
would be fine; all she needed was some more time.  "They've
spread out, and appear to be moving away from this area,"
she finished.
     "Damn," Sylia muttered.  If the boomers were spreading
out, that meant that the Knight Sabers would have to spread
out in order to get them, and Sylia didn't want to thin
their forces out any further.  After a moment or so, she
realized she didn't have a choice, and sighed in combined
disgust and resignation.
     "All right then," she finally replied.  "Nene?  You,
Linna, and I will take the nearest boomers here; SkyKnight,
you're responsible for intercepting the outermost boomers
before they reach anybody.  With your flight system, that
shouldn't be a problem.  Okay?"
     "Gotcha, Boss,"  SkyKnight replied, an anticipatory
grin again wreathing his face inside his helmet.  "Consider
them intercepted."
     "Be careful," Sylia warned him sternly, then sighed.
"Knight Sabers....Go!"
                            ****
     "Take cover, damn it!!  Fall back!! FALL BACK!!"  Leon
hollered at the top of his lungs, sweeping the arm of his
ADP K-17 Armour Suit around in a motion signaling a
withdrawal.  All over the street, ADP troopers in body
armour and helmets scooped up their weapons and began
withdrawing from the area.  Leon flicked a quick glance at
his cockpit displays, noting that most of his men were still
unhurt.  He tabbed his loudspeakers again.  "Get the wounded
out of here now!  I want them evacuated before things get
any worse."
     The bulky, blue-white mechanized suit turned around
again, facing towards the raging infernos a scant fifty feet
away.  As he turned, his two remaining K-17 units moved up
to flank him.  Damn it, Leon swore to himself, just when
he'd thought things were getting better in this rathole of a
city, something had to happen to destroy that impression.
     The ADP had been caught with its pants down, both
figuratively, and literally speaking; there hadn't been a
boomer rampage in months, and the top brass had decided to
cut back the staff on the `Boomer Response Units'.  The net
result of that inspired decision was that Leon had been
forced to take one of the K-17s out himself, because there
had been a shortage of qualified suit pilots around when the
current disaster had developed.  Topping that off, the K-17s
hadn't been overhauled in so long, that some of them had
developed mechanical quirks ranging from poor control of the
suit, to involuntary shutdowns.  He mentally promised
himself that he was going to correct the negligence of the
mechanics when....if he made it back to the station in one
piece.
     He swore again, as several indistinct forms stirred in
the smoke and flames ahead, and hulking, humanoid shapes
began to emerge from the hellish conflagration.  Four, blue
C-55 boomers stepped out of the flames, and stopped,
spreading out.  Leon's mouth was dry with nervous
anticipation of what was to follow; he didn't think that his
three K-17s were going to be able to stop these boomers,
mostly because they'd already lost four suits, and two
pilots, elsewhere in the city, from just a meagre handful of
boomers.  He spared a brief moment to aim a heartfelt curse
on the bureaucratic horseshit that had effectively
emasculated the ADP's efficiency.  How the hell were they
supposed to stop boomers if they weren't given the necessary
support and equipment?!
     For a moment, the tableau of the boomers facing the ADP
suits held still; then, the boomers sprang forwards with
mechanical snarls, almost faster than thought.  Leon just
barely ducked aside as the boomer that had singled him out
slashed at his cockpit canopy with wickedly curved claws;
the faint squeal of metal on metal indicated that he'd only
been partly successful, and his computer informed him of a
hull breach on the right shoulder of his suit.  Luckily, no
systems had been damaged.  He was still in the fight.
     Leon's K-17 lumbered forwards, and managed to grab one
of the other boomers from behind, seizing it by the arms.
He immediately realized that he'd made a mistake, as the
boomer started to tear free from his grasp with almost
insulting ease; the boomer's strength was burning out the
hydraulic musculature on the K-17.
     "Shoot the bastard!!  Hurry up, I can't hold him much
longer!!"  Leon panted into his radio microphone.  His guts
clenched in sudden fear as he received no reply, and he
quickly glanced at his status readouts.
     Only one of his men was still in the fight, and was too
busy dodging the persistent attempts of one of the C-55s to
kill him to try and help Leon.  The other K-17 pilot was
dead; he hadn't even had time to scream before the boomer
had torn through his suit, and him, spreading a sticky, gory
mess all over the street.  The blood-smeared boomer that had
killed him was just turning from the unfortunate pilot's
body, and appeared to be targeting Leon next; its mouth
snapped open, and a beam emitter of some kind shoved itself
into view.  Leon watched helplessly as a greenish glow began
to build in the boomer's weapon.
     With a piercing, crackling boom, a red-white lance of
coruscating energy speared down from the darkness above; the
crimson-splattered boomer was smashed into a backwards fall,
and flopped around on the pavement, trying to regain its
feet.  A second and third blast hammered into the downed
biomechanoid, blasting its torso into spinning shards of
twisted metal and wiring.  The C-55 flopped limply, and quit
moving.
     Just as Leon was about to start cheering wildly in
relief, the boomer he'd been holding tore free of his grip;
his K-17 suit jerked crazily as the hydraulic systems burned
out from the stress load, and his suit quit moving.
     "Awwwwwwww  SHIT!" Leon swore, feeling panic claw at
him; he was a sitting duck now.  It would be several minutes
before the backup systems came on-line enough to allow him
to move.  In the meantime, the boomers could pick him off
like a fish in an aquarium tank.  Sweat began rolling off
his forehead as he watched his immediate antagonist pop its
claws, and step closer, arm coming back for a swing Leon
knew would kill him.  The boomer seemed to grin evilly, and
its eyes flared redly as the coldly-glinting claws started
to slash forwards.
     There was a loud, almost supersonic engine scream, and
a silver flash dropped from the smoke-shrouded sky.  The
boomer spun around, aiming its claw strike at its new foe.
The strike never connected, as the killer machine was driven
off of its feet by a crushing roundhouse punch from the
silver-and-blue clad armour suit that suddenly materialized
in front of it.  The boomer hit the pavement headfirst
almost twenty feet away, and rolled over swiftly, roaring
defiantly.
     SkyKnight's arms snapped up, and two beams of spitting,
sizzling laser energy lashed out towards the boomer, neatly
bracketing its location.  The boomer easily dodged between
the beams...and lurched around, staggering drunkenly as it
encountered the hailstorm of explosive railgun bolts that
SkyKnight's shoulder launchers had fired into the apparently
empty space between his particle laser beams.  The bolts
punched into the boomer's plating, then detonated deep
inside its body; the boomer flew apart in a snarling flash
of flame and spinning scrap pieces.  The glowing red eyeslot
of SkyKnight's helmet swung over to regard Leon's paralyzed
K-17.
     "Thank God you're here," Leon told the silver hardsuit.
"We can use...Hey!! What the hell?!?!"  The silver-clad
Knight Saber abruptly sprang forwards, and almost casually
shoved Leon's K-17 over onto the ground.  The K-17 toppled
over like a skyscraper in an earthquake, making an ungainly
arc before slamming into the asphalt on its back with a
clamourous, ringing bang.  Leon saw stars briefly as the
back of his head smacked into his cockpit canopy, and he
damn near bit his tongue from the jarring impact with the
ground.
     "What the hell did you do that for?!" Leon snarled
angrily, swearing.  "You goddamn..."  He cut off what he'd
been about to say as a brilliantly green-white energy bolt
hissed through the air over him, momentarily blinding him.
Leon swallowed his words, a chill working its way through
his guts as he realized that the shot would have hit him if
he'd still been standing upright.  If SkyKnight hadn't
shoved him over, he'd have been dead.
     Several more blindingly bright energy shots tore
through the thick, smoky air.  Leon muttered some more
strangled curses, and tried moving again.  His K-17 whined a
bit, but still refused to move; the actuator system backups
still weren't on line yet.  He lay there, helpless and
fuming, while the sounds of battle roiled through the air
around him.
                            ****
     "Sylia!" Bert's voice crackled urgently over the comm.
"Watch yourself!!  These are NOT normal C-55s!  I repeat,
these are not standard C-55s!!"  Sylia stiffened in shock at
the abrupt report.  The channel was still open, and she
could hear the crackling whine of energy weapons of some
kind in the background of SkyKnight's transmission.
     "Can you explain a little better?" she requested, as
she, Linna and Nene moved closer to the location of the
boomers they'd detected.  "What do you mean by non-
standard?"
     "They're faster," he explained tersely.  "Better
armour; took two to three p-laser shots to get one of them.
Monomolecular claws.  Particle beams instead of plasma
cannons..."
     "All right, all right, we get the picture," Sylia cut
him off.  "Don't take any unnecessary risks; just take them
out and then get over here."
     "Roger; Done in ten minutes...I hope," SkyKnight
replied, then cut off the channel.  Sylia took a moment to
swear silently; new boomers, and here they were without
their full complement of members.  She signaled Linna to
take the left flank while she moved over to the right.
     "Nene," she ordered.  "Hold back here, and keep us
updated on the boomer's movements."
     "But Sylia!" Nene started to protest, and was silenced
by an angry slash of Sylia's white-armoured arm.
     "I mean it!" she said sternly.  "I didn't expect these
boomers to be upgraded ones; you're not fully ready to be in
a combat situation yet, so I want you to stay clear.  Do you
understand me?"
     "But..."
     "I said, do you understand me?" Sylia repeated, turning
more towards her.  The red-pink suit sighed petulantly,
crossing her arms over her chest in a sulky manner.
     "I understand," Nene replied grudgingly.  She didn't
think it was fair; Bert had been allowed off on his own, and
he was in danger of losing control of himself if the
circumstances were right.  She didn't have anything even
close to that kind of a problem, but she was being sent to
the sidelines as if she'd misbehaved, or something.  She
watched as the white and green hardsuits of her teammates
disappeared into the darkness beyond her.  With another
disgusted sigh, Nene activated her sensors and began
sweeping the area with sensor scans.
                            ****
     SkyKnight cast a quick glance over his shoulder at the
C-55 that was circling around behind him, and then returned
his attention to the one that was in front of him.  The blue
biomechanoid was trying to distract him while its colleague
moved in behind him, mostly by feinting strikes at his head
whenever it seemed like he was about to attack the second
one.  He knew what they were trying to do, but he couldn't
think of a way out of the quandary he'd found himself in.
     Part of his dilemma stemmed from the fact that Leon was
still down and helpless, and he was trying to keep the
boomers away from the defenseless officer.  They seemed to
have realized this, and were playing that fact to the
fullest advantage possible, attacking him in ways that left
him unable to respond fully, not without leaving Leon open.
The other K-17 that had been still functional when he'd
arrived was dead;  it had tried to go hand-to-hand with one
of the C-55s from behind when it had apparently been
preoccupied with its silver adversary, and the boomer had
spun around, and promptly blasted a huge hole through the
blue and white mechanized suit with its particle beam.
     SkyKnight hadn't been able to do anything about it,
being preoccupied at the time with not having his guts
speared by the other homicidal machine that was assailing
him.  He'd felt a brief pang of intense sorrow and guilt
over not being able to prevent the officer's death, but that
had been fleeting at best, vanishing under the cold
adrenaline wave running through him right now.  His own
survival was what counted at the moment; too much was riding
on him remaining alive to get caught up agonizing over `what
ifs'.
     He ducked a claw swipe from the front boomer, and
twisted desperately sideways, avoiding the claw strike he
knew would be launched at his back by the boomer behind him.
He wasn't quite fast enough; there was a high-pitched
screech, and a ripping sound, and a wave of angrily burning
pain spread out from where the boomer's claws had sliced his
side.  Slapping a gauntleted hand to the gash, SkyKnight
backhanded the boomer with his other arm and swordblade,
slashing a deep trench across the boomer's carapace.  It
snarled angrily, and flipped over to join its cohort as they
both fell back for a moment, regrouping.
     Bert risked a quick glance at his side; it didn't
appear to be serious, but there was definitely blood
flowing, as he saw a thin crimson stain beginning to seep
out around the edges of the gash.  Unfortunately, the sides
of the suits, under the arms, was where the armouring was
the thinnest.  It had to be, in order to allow the wearer
enough flexibility and articulation of the armour joints to
move.  It also meant that the wearer had to guard against
getting attacked from the sides too often, since a lucky hit
could punch through.  He gritted his teeth, trying to banish
the discomfort to the back of his mind.
     The boomers moved in a perfectly synchronized pincer
movement, slowly, almost as if savouring the anticipated
kill, and Bert abruptly realized what else had been
bothering him about these upgraded C-55s: they were fighting
intelligently, using strategy.  They'd never been able to do
that before; the only boomer he'd ever encountered before
that had been capable of deductive reasoning had been the
Headhunter, and that bastard was well and truly dead.
     What about the AI technology, though? he realized with
a cold flash of dread.  It had never been determined if only
the Headhunter had been the sole possessor of the
technology, so it was quite possible that GENOM had the data
to build new combat models based on the more `human-like'
AI's processes.
     "It goddamn figures," he muttered to himself, getting
into a ready crouch and flexing his fingers.  Despite his
training lately, and his simulator results, he'd come to the
realization that his fighting at the moment was not up to
par.  There was a huge difference between practice and the
real thing, and he'd realized he'd backslid a bit.  He'd
been out of a hardsuit for so long, that he'd grown rusty;
even with the new AI, he should have been able to take care
of these boomers a lot quicker than it was taking him.  And
if he was rusty...then his friends were likely going to need
help.  He had one last chance to quickly nail the boomers, a
desperate gambit he wasn't sure would work....
     With snakelike speed, the two boomers leaped at him,
one slightly in front of the other.  In a purely instinctual
move, SkyKnight threw himself backwards, clumsily landing on
his back with a loud clang, ending up sprawled next to a
concrete lamp post and storm sewer grate.  The boomers
dropped to the asphalt with heavy impacts about ten feet
away from him.  SkyKnight didn't try to get up, however.
     Metal gauntlets crunched a clenched set of handholds
onto the sewer grate and post as he pointed the soles of his
armoured boots towards the boomers, and his helmet came up
slightly to look at the boomers for one last time. Then...
     "AFTERBURNERS!" SkyKnight barked sharply.  With a loud,
hungry roar, incandescent waves of white-orange flame
spurted instantly from the rocket booster nozzles on the
backs of his boots, hitting the boomers squarely.  High-
pitched, mechanical screams came from the firestorm,
sounding vaguely agonized.
     SkyKnight wasn't paying attention, however; he was
desperately trying to maintain his purchase on his anchorage
points.  His head was back, helmet against the pavement;
inside his suit, Bert had his eyes squeezed shut, and sweat
was running down his face as he tried to withstand the
sudden forces that were trying to take over and send him
flying.  The brutal thrust of his rockets was slowly
crumbling the grip he had, and he was starting to slide
slightly, grittily scraping his hardsuit along the pavement.
He tried to dig deeper and hang on, his gauntlets starting
to slide as the violently snarling washes of flame continued
to mercilessly sear the boomers.
                            ****
     "Linna!" Sylia panted as she hauled at the chunk of
masonry pinning Linna's right leg, "are you all right?!"
The slab shifted, and the dented and dusty olive-green
hardsuit was able to slip free; she hadn't been able to get
enough leverage on the concrete pieces pinning her to be
able to escape on her own.  Sylia grabbed her friend's arm,
and helped her to straighten up.
     "I'm fine, just bruised," Linna's voice reassured her.
"Since when did boomers start trying to collapse buildings
on people?!" she suddenly demanded, almost angrily.  She
felt her left arm, and rotated the shoulder a bit to make
sure everything was still working.
     "Since now, it seems," Sylia replied dryly, looking at
the smoldering pile of scrap nearby that had been a blue C-
55 boomer.  The biomechanoid had been ferociously attacking
Linna, never letting up, and forcing her back;  only Linna's
tremendous agility had kept her from serious harm.  Then the
boomer had suddenly fired, apparently missing by a large
margin.  It hadn't been aiming at the green-hardsuited young
woman, however; it had been aiming at the wall behind her.
Linna had been caught under a sudden cascade of masonry as
the wall crumbled.  She had been pinned by the leg, and
unable to move when the boomer had tried to get in the
finishing blow.  Sylia had been able to intercept it before
it could harm her, and had blasted it into a smoking
junkheap with her particle-laser beam cannons.
     "They never used to be able to do that," Linna noted,
wincing and placing a hand on the small of her back as she
unbent herself.  "I mean, they never used strategy before."
     "It appears as if more than just their hardware has
been upgraded," Sylia sighed, helmet swiveling around; there
were apparently no more boomers in the area.  Best to make
sure, though.  After a moment, she opened her comm channel.
     "Nene," she called.  "What's our status?  Any more
boomers left?"
     "There's a couple, I think," Nene's voice crackled
back, still sounding miffed.  "I can't really tell for sure.
Maybe if I were to..."
     "Don't start again," Sylia warned flatly.  "You're not
coming any closer to the battlefield.  Get over it.  Now."
     "Fine.  I'll call if I detect anything," Nene sulkily
muttered back, and shut down the channel.  Sylia swore under
her breath to herself.
     "What's with Nene?" Linna asked, puzzled.  "That didn't
sound like her."
     "She feels left out, and she's trying to prove there's
nothing wrong with her," Sylia replied, sighing again.  "She
hasn't quite gotten over the scare she got from Hollister,
either.  I just hope she doesn't get into trouble trying to
prove that she's okay."
                            ****
     Nene's sensor scopes flashed urgently, and she
irritably looked at the displays, emerald-green eyes
flicking across the images and data displayed.  There was a
lone boomer approaching her position, and not from the
direction Linna and Sylia had taken; it appeared to be a
lone marauder.  Perfect!  Now she had the opportunity to
prove to Sylia that she could handle her end of things; one
boomer wasn't going to be a problem.  She'd handled single
boomers before.
     Charging her laser cannons, the red-pink hardsuited
young woman concealed herself behind a nearby rooftop
antenna mast, and waited for the renegade biomechanoid to
come within range.
                            ****
     SkyKnight staggered upright, pulling himself up by
using the lamp post he'd been desperately clinging to
earlier.  A few feet away, blackened, carbonized lumps
sizzled angrily on the pavement:  what was left of the two
boomers he'd managed to catch with his rocket exhaust.  He
sighed in relief, and stretched; his armour creaked while
something in his back crackled and popped back into place.
     "It's not the years," he sighed to himself with a wry
grin.  "It's the mileage."  Despite feeling tired, he felt
pretty good, considering...he winced as his side throbbed
again.  He carefully looked down at his side, and noted that
the red stain was still growing slightly.  Damn, the gash
must have been a little deeper than he'd thought.
     Sighing again, SkyKnight awkwardly reached around to
the small of his back, and felt around.  A small,
rectangular object fastened to his armour met his probing
hand, and he pulled it loose with a metallic clack.  He
brought the small object around front to where he could see
it.  He looked from the small box-like object he held to the
gash on his side armour, mentally estimating something.
Taking the object by its sides, he cracked it open
lengthwise, revealing a soft, gauzy-looking white pad of
some kind nestled inside; the pad was attached to the casing
that had contained it, preventing it from falling out.
     Careful not to touch the pad with his gauntlets, he
carefully moved the object nearer to the hole in his armour.
After a moment of careful positioning, he slapped it over
the hole, exactly like a patch, making sure to force the
white padding into the slash in his plating.
     He held the `medical patch', or hardsuit field
dressing, as he liked to call it, in place for a moment,
stifling the curses that sprang to mind as the antiseptic
and coagulant compounds contained in the pad burned into his
wound like live coals.  He'd come up with the HFD idea
shortly after the Knight Sabers' semi-disastrous raid on
Hollister's base.  While a full-blown medical kit might have
been a better idea, no one on the team had medical training,
which would make using a medkit worse than not having one at
all, especially if the user were to make a mistake of some
kind.   Making these bandage pads was much more practical
and easy to do, but he reflected that he was going to have
to find something that didn't sting quite so much for a
disinfectant.
     After a moment, he pressed all around the edges of the
outer casing of the HFD, and the adhesives in the edges
securely glued the patch to his suit.  Sighing in relief, he
activated his comm systems for a moment.  The comms spat and
crackled in his ears, sizzling like something was frying.
Damn; evidently his systems had gotten scrambled by one of
the boomers tagging his helmet with a punch.
     "SkyKnight to Saber Prime," he broadcast, hoping he was
transmitting clearly.  "All clear over here.  The place is a
mess, though."
     "Roger that, SkyKnight," Sylia's voice replied,
interference snapping in the background.  "What is your
status?"
     "I got scratched up a bit, but other than fatigue, I'm
okay," he replied.  "I've got a couple things to check on,
then I'll rendezvous with the rest of you.  How's Nene?"
     "Fine, I think," Saber Prime replied.  Bert's heart
jumped slightly; Sylia didn't sound so sure.  "She's on
sentry duty right now, and we haven't received any word of
any more boomers yet; we're pretty much done over here
ourselves."
     "Okay.  Meet you in ten," SkyKnight replied, and shut
down the channel, an uneasy feeling tickling the back of his
mind.  He couldn't really say what it was, so he dismissed
it.  He turned towards the center of the street, where a
badly mauled K-17 was picking itself up from the street.
Its movements were jerky and erratic, and smoke was coming
from some of its joints, but it was definitely moving.
SkyKnight shook his helmeted head, and walked over to Leon's
suit.
                            ****
     "Come on, you useless scrap heap," Leon snarled under
his breath.  "Move, damn you!"  His K-17 grudgingly
responded, reluctantly answering the commands of its pilot.
With several jolting shudders, the mangled armour suit began
to get up from the pavement.  The way it was stopping and
starting made Leon feel like he was popping the clutch on an
old manual transmission car.  He gritted his teeth and
persevered, forcing the damaged K-17 upright.
     "You're clear now, Inspector," the deep, resonant voice
of SkyKnight penetrated Leon's cockpit.  "There shouldn't be
any more problems tonight."  The ADP inspector finished
pulling himself and his malfunctioning suit upright as the
voice finished speaking, sweating from the effort it was
taking to move the damn suit; the backup motivators weren't
nearly as good as the primary ones.  After a moment's
hesitation, he popped open his cockpit canopy.  Cool air
rushed in, sweeping his face with a welcome freshness.  The
stench from all the nearby fires also wafted in,
unfortunately reminding him of what maintaining the peace
had cost the ADP tonight.
     "Thanks," he said, his suit turning slightly so he
could look at the crumpled, mangled heaps of white and blue
metal that had been the other K-17s on his squad.  "Too bad
you couldn't have gotten here sooner," he added, unable to
keep a trace of bitterness from entering his voice.
     "We try our best," SkyKnight shrugged.  "I can't do
anymore than that."
     "Well that's just fine," Leon retorted.  "I'll be sure
and tell that to their families."  He knew he was being
unreasonable, and knew it was partly because he was tired,
but he just didn't care.  It always hurt to lose men that
had been under his command, especially to something this
goddamn senseless.
     "Look, McNichol," SkyKnight suddenly snapped.  "Just
what the hell do you want from me?!  I don't like what's
happened any better than you do, but we can't be everywhere
at once.  Nobody can.  Instead of bitching about what we
didn't do, and who we couldn't save, why don't you try
looking at what we did do?!  It could have been one hell of
a lot worse."  The silver suit turned and started stalking
away, angrily kicking a chunk of scrap metal away from
itself.
     Four new K-17s suddenly loomed out of the smoky
darkness in front of SkyKnight, blocking his path.  The
silver-blue armour suit stopped, then tried to walk around
the looming battlesuits emblazoned with the ADP logo.  They
moved to block him.
     There was a moment of tight silence, during which Leon
could hear the flames crackling nearby.  SkyKnight's helmet
came around to look back at Leon his red eyeslot flickering
ominously in the dim, fire-lit light of the street, but he
remained silent.  Leon looked puzzled, wondering what was
going on; he hadn't heard any orders over his radio to the
effect that more K-17s were being sent to his area.  He
ponderously stomped over to the area where the police suits
apparently had SkyKnight surrounded.
     "What's going on here?" he queried the lead suit.
"SkyKnight just saved our asses; let him go."
     "I'm sorry, sir," an apologetic voice spoke from the
lead suit.  "But we've been ordered to arrest him."
                            ****
     Nene grinned to herself as the blip on her tracking
sensor display moved closer; her target would soon be in
visual range, and then she'd be able to prove to Sylia that
she was recovered.  In the back of her mind, a voice was
cautioning her that she really should call for backup, and
reminding her of the fact that she'd promised Sylia she'd
call if she detected anything.  She ignored her conscience,
however.  She was sick and tired of being treated like a
little girl.
     Her sensor readout indicated that the boomer had just
entered visual range, and Nene peered cautiously around the
support beams of the antenna mast she was hiding behind.
Where was it?  It shouldn't be too hard to locate a blue C-
55....
     Shock washed over Nene with the numbing force of a
bucket of ice water being suddenly thrown over her.  The
boomer approaching her, flying on jets of some kind, was not
blue.
     It was red.
     Her suit computer scanned through its database...and
came up empty.  The boomer was a new type, unlike any she
had information on.  She swallowed against the sudden
dryness in her throat and mouth, and activated her long
range scanners, gently probing the boomer to see if she
could find a weak point on it, or something.  In the back of
her mind, uneasy fear had begun to crawl around, and she
thought that she felt a twinge from her stomach muscles.
She tried to ignore the feelings, chiding herself for an
overactive imagination.  Information scrolled across her
screen, and she frowned at her sensor display; she couldn't
scan the boomer very well, and the results were
inconclusive.  Shrugging to herself, she boosted the power
to her active sensors, trying to get a better scan.
     It was a mistake.  The instant she boosted her scanner
output, the boomer wheeled around in midair, streaking down
towards her position.  A huge, coruscating wave of green-
white energy seared through the air towards her.  Nene
shrieked and ducked, as the sizzling energy blast sheared
off the antenna mast she'd been hiding behind.  She threw
herself desperately to the side, as the bent and twisted
metal wreckage from the top half crashed to the rooftop
decking, scattering bouncing shards of metal all over.  The
young ADP officer saw stars flare briefly in her sight as
she hit the roof on one shoulder, and slammed into another
nearby rooftop structure.  As she groggily shook her head,
and rolled over, trying to get to her knees and get up so
she could get the hell out of there, a heavy impact shook
the roof's surface beneath her.
     With an awful sinking feeling, Nene looked up to see a
huge, hulking, red-armoured boomer standing about twenty
feet away from her.  Standing about ten feet tall, it was
roughly humanoid-looking, resembling a very large, red-
coloured C-55,  although the vaguely skull-like face looked
more like it had fangs than normal teeth.  It was huge and
very muscular looking, making the young woman feel suddenly
small and helpless.  With something akin to a physical
shock, Nene realized that this boomer looked like the
Superboomer that the Knight Sabers had killed years ago.
     Yellow eyes flashed  balefully in the gloomy darkness
of the rooftop, and Nene's suit sensors informed her that
she'd just been scanned.  She started to back away from the
boomer, as fear began to scrape and gouge at her.  Call for
help!! her mind urgently screamed at her.  Now, before it's
too late!!  Nene swallowed again, trying to control her
racing heart.  She was about to call Sylia when a cold,
mechanical voice from the boomer paralyzed her with icy
fear.
     "Identity confirmed," the biomechanoid stated
laconically.  "Red Knight Saber.  Procedure:  Exterminate."
The boomer seemed to suddenly smile malevolently.  "Threat
Level Estimate:  Inconsequential."
                            ****
     "You're joking, right?" SkyKnight asked flatly.  "Just
what the hell did I do now?"  This is turning out to be such
a wonderful day, he observed sourly to himself.  On top of
everything else that had happened to him today, now some
hotshots from the ADP wanted to take him in.  Bloody
marvelous.  Bert kept his attention on the mechanized suits
in front of him, a cold, watchful feeling spreading through
him.
     "You're an illegally operating vigilante," the lead K-
17 stated.  "I recognize the fact that you have assisted the
ADP on several occasions, but we cannot make exceptions for
anyone.  We have been ordered to arrest you, and we intend
to carry out our orders."  The K-17s spread out a bit more,
surrounding the silver hardsuit.  SkyKnight didn't move, or
even shift slightly.
     "Who issued the order?" Leon interjected from where he
was standing behind Bert.  SkyKnight couldn't see it, but
Leon was watching him with a very uneasy expression.
     "The Chief," the lead suit replied, with the closest
thing to shrug he could manage inside such a bulky armour
suit.  "I realize you don't like this Inspector, but we have
our orders.  Personal feelings aside, he's an outlaw."
     "I suggest you gentleman reconsider your decision to
try and take me in," SkyKnight said coldly.  His mind was
icily calm as he noted the location of the four K-17
battlesuits on his viewscreen.  He didn't want to fight the
ADP, but he wasn't going to allow himself to be arrested.
He eased into a ready stance, and prepared to fall back in
order to get the hell out of there.
     "We know you won't harm cops," the lead suit replied,
sounding almost bored.  "So spare us the theatrical threats,
huh?  Just come along quietly."  Bert opened his mouth to
reply, when a terrified scream came through on the helmet
comms.
     "BERT!!!  SYLIA!!!  SOMEBODY HELP MEEE!!! PLEASE!!!!"
Nene's voice shrieked through hissing static, sobbing at the
same time.  There was the sound of a loud impact of some
kind over the channel, and the line went dead except for the
electric crackling of his comm systems.
     SkyKnight instantly stiffened in surprise and shock,
and everything seemed to start moving very slowly.  He spun
sharply, ears ringing from the force Nene had put into her
desperate call for help, and he started to sprint away from
the K-17s,  a wave of arctic-cold fear sweeping through him
as he moved.  He'd only taken a couple of steps when two of
the K-17s grabbed his arms.  Jerking him to a halt, the K-
17s tried to pull his arms back, pinning them to his sides.
SkyKnight's mind went utterly cold.
     "We said you're under arrest, damnit!" he heard.  "Just
where the....AAAAARGGH!!"  The speaker's voice ended in an
agonized scream, as SkyKnight tore his arm from the grasp of
the police suit on his left, and brutally drove the point of
his elbow into the guts of the offending K-17 with all the
power his hardsuit possessed; armour plating cracked and
shattered, and was driven inwards.  The K-17 toppled over
backwards, sparks and smoke flaring from its ruined torso,
pieces of scrap metal clanging to the pavement with a
ringing noise.
     Tortured groans could be heard coming from the downed
suit, as the silver-clad Knight Saber ripped his other arm
free of the confining grasp that held it, turned with a whip-
like quickness, and mercilessly slammed the other K-17 with
a roundhouse right that instantly shattered most of the K-
17's armour plate on the torso and cockpit canopy.  A
wickedly-fast, left uppercut drove the mechanized suit
staggering backwards; it collided with a lamp post, then
keeled over onto its face with a loud bang.
     The remaining two K-17s were caught flat-footed; they'd
never anticipated resistance, not of this kind.  The missile
pods on their shoulders popped open, but by then, SkyKnight
was already thirty feet down the street and running hard.
As the stunned police watched, the shoulder-mounted wings of
the silver suit snapped out, and the silver-garbed hardsuit
shot skywards with a roar.  He was barely ten feet from the
ground when a wash of incandescent flames from his booster
rockets kicked him into the skies even faster.
     SkyKnight quickly locked onto the erratic signal from
Nene's transponder beacon, and blasted towards it.  As he
roared desperately along, his boot rockets sputtered and
died; they'd exhausted their limited fuel supplies.  Bert
didn't hesitate, immediately boosting his jet turbines to
150% maximum power.  With the tortured shriek of stressed
machinery, his flight jets shot him forwards, towards the
beacon marking Nene's location.
                            ****
     The blue biomechanoid burst asunder under the combined
impacts of a heavily-charged knuckle bomber, and both of
Sylia's palm-mounted laser cannons.  The white and green
hardsuits didn't pause, but immediately spun around and
leaped skywards.  Jet thrusters kicked in, hissing urgently,
as the two Knight Sabers also sped towards where the frantic
call for help had come from.
     "Nene!!"  Sylia called, fear running through her with
icy-cold feet.  "Try and get out of there, now!! Nene?!"
There was no answer to her call, just static.  Sylia
banished the horrified thought that kept trying to claw
through her mind;  Nene would be okay...all they had to do
was arrive in time to save her.
     "I can't get a response from Bert," Linna reported.  "I
mean, the channel is working, but he's not replying."
     "Damn it, what the hell is he doing?!" Sylia fumed.
"We're going to need him, I'm sure of that."
     The two hardsuits sped onwards, leaving behind the
smoldering battlefield.
                            ****
     A smashing impact rocked the world with a crimson wave
of pain, and Nene was driven to the rooftop again, crying.
She doubled up around the agonizing pain she could feel
eating into her stomach, whimpering and trying to crawl
away.  Her helmet viewscreen flickered erratically, showing
the hulking red boomer that was slowly and systematically
killing her stomping closer.
     "Sylia? Bert? Anybody?!" she called into her helmet
comm, trying to force her voice to behave for a moment.
Static hissed mockingly at her, and Nene started crying
again as she realized she was all alone.  She tried getting
up again, gulping and attempting to ignore the agony from
her midsection long enough to activate her flight system and
escape, but the boomer sprang forwards before she could get
halfway upright, and again belted her sprawling with a
stinging backhand slap.
     Nene's hardsuited body flew across the roof, smashing
into the low retaining wall that ran around the rooftop
edge, and crashed to the decking.  She tasted blood from
somewhere in her mouth, and shakily tried to pull herself up
the retaining wall.  Her body refused to co-operate, and the
badly-shaking young woman collapsed to the rooftop, crying
in fear and despair.
     She'd tried so hard...but it hadn't done any good.
She'd known the minute she'd seen the boomer that she'd
gotten in over her head, and she'd tried to get away, but
the boomer hadn't allowed that.  The brief fight she'd
managed to put up hadn't accomplished anything, either; the
boomer wasn't even showing scorch marks from the few brief
shots she'd hit it with.  Topping that off, her sensors
couldn't find a weak point on the boomer's armour to
exploit.  Calling for help hadn't produced any responses,
and she felt cold claws of fear seize her guts, squeezing
mercilessly.  She'd never been this alone before.
     She looked up at the boomer as it approached her,
moving slowly and with unmistakable intent; she realized it
had decided to quit toying with her, as a compact weapon of
some kind sprang out of one of its arms.  Her sensors
registered a large energy buildup, and she could see
greenish light gathering in the muzzle of the weapon.  A
faint, droning whine rose in the air.
     "No," she whimpered again, trying to huddle back into
the wall.  Everything she could see turned blurry with tears
as her eyes brimmed again.  "No, please, no..."  She stared
at her imminent demise, a sick feeling settling over her,
unable to look away as the glow in the boomer's weapon
became brighter.  The image in her viewscreen seemed to
waver, becoming for a brief instant a smirking blond-haired
man in a grey suit, pointing a large handgun at her.
     What happened next was difficult to say for sure;  the
entire night seemed to light up in a dazzling, blinding
blast.  Explosions tore through the air, pounding her with
shockwaves from the blasts.  Nene screamed again, and curled
up protectively, throwing her arms over her helmet.  There
was another flurry of explosions, and something crashed into
her.  Nene cried out as the heavy weight of something
landing on top of her drove her hardsuit bruisingly into the
wall.  She couldn't see what was going on, however, since
the earlier explosions had blinded her temporarily.
     She heard metal plating scrape and grind against her
hardsuit as whatever it was that was laying on top of her
shifted, and started to move.  She felt the heavy weight
pinning her down ease as whoever was on top of her started
to get up, and she heard some pained, under-the-breath
swearing.  A faint hope blossomed.
     "B-Bert?" she quavered, swallowing and trying to keep
from breaking down again.  "Is that you?"
     "I'm here," his voice reassured her.  There was a flat,
ugly quality to his tone that she'd rarely heard from him,
but she was too relieved at being saved to pay it much
attention. "Just stay put until I'm finished," SkyKnight
told her.  "This won't take long."
     The young red-haired woman started crying in relief, as
the sounds of a vicious fight began to racket through the
air.
                            ****
     SkyKnight ducked the crackling green energy bolt the
hulking red boomer in front of him spat at him.  The boomer
dodged his attempt to reply in kind with his particle lasers
with equal dexterity, and the two antagonists briefly
circled each other, looking for an opening.
     SkyKnight winced as his body complained at what he was
forcing it to do, and he kept a cautious eye on his suit
readouts; everything seemed to be working normally.  In
order to save Nene, he'd thrown himself in front of her, and
taken at least two particle beam shots to the torso.  His
armour was now incredibly scorched-looking, and marked with
a few dents; inside the suit, Bert was feeling like he'd
stepped in front of a train.  He ached all over now from the
physical shocks that stopping the energy blasts had
produced, and it hadn't helped his gashed side to feel any
better, either.
     The boomer had also suffered some damage; smoking
craters pockmarked its torso from the laser fire he'd
hammered it with at long range just before it could shoot
Nene.  Its left arm was also missing from the elbow down; it
had exploded when he'd managed to hit the weapon with one of
his particle-laser bolts.  It hadn't been slowed down by the
damage, though, and it still had several weapons, if his
sensor readings were giving him an accurate scan.
     Snarling, the boomer lunged forwards, a long, wickedly-
sharp looking blade snapping out from the wrist of its
undamaged arm.  SkyKnight's own swordblades snapped out, and
he blocked the descending edge with a cross-block move.  The
boomer recovered immediately and feinted a strike at his
lower body.  SkyKnight moved to respond to it, then quickly
blocked the boomer again as it scythed its weapon towards
his head.  The fencing match went on for a few more seconds,
a flickering storm of edged death whirling between the
Knight Saber and the biomechanoid.  Even though it was only
seconds, SkyKnight felt like it was years;  the boomer was
incredibly fast, and very strong, at least a match for him.
He began to wonder if he'd been premature in saying this
fight wasn't going to take long.
     The boomer's yellow eyes flared for a moment as it
stepped back a pace.  As it did, twin guns of some kind
flipped up from concealed shoulder housings.  The guns were
very compact-looking, each with about six barrels arranged
in a circular pattern.  With a cold shock, SkyKnight
realized what the guns were, and desperately dodged sideways
as the miniguns opened up, the streams of hot metal they
churned out gouging trenches through the rooftop.
     Not all of the slugs from the cannons missed entirely,
however;  Bert swore as a stray shot tore loose his armour
plating on the left shoulder.  The impact from the hit saved
him from a couple of serious injuries, though, as two more
slugs gashed trenches across his chest armour; if he hadn't
been turned by the previous shot, the next two would have
taken him right in the chest.
     Fury and fear erupted, lending speed to his moves.
SkyKnight blurred under another salvo, and snapped a quick
shot at the boomer.  The scorching, red-white energy blast
shattered the leftmost cannon into a smoking tangle of scrap
and wiring.
     Howling furiously, the crimson boomer spun around after
SkyKnight, trying to tag him with its one remaining Vulcan
cannon.  As it turned, the silver hardsuit flashed through
the air, leaping in close, accompanied by an electric snap-
hiss noise.  A blazing blue plasma blade slashed through the
air, destroying the second cannon, and carving a huge gash
in the boomer's chest.  It snarled, and a particle cannon
muzzle protruded from its mouth as its head tracked towards
the silver-clad hardsuit.
     "Oh no you don't, bastard!"  SkyKnight snarled.  His
lightsaber sizzled through the air
and cut into the boomer's head and particle beam assembly.
     Unfortunately, the boomer fired at exactly the same
time.
     There was a blinding flash, and an explosion that
knocked SkyKnight sprawling to the rooftop with a loud
clang.  He wasn't really paying attention, however, being
more preoccupied with the miasma of pain that was washing
over him from his right arm; the arm felt like it was on
fire, and he rolled around on the roof a bit in pain,
clutching his arm at the elbow.  After a few moments, the
agony diminished to almost bearable levels.  His breathing
coming in short gasps, SkyKnight rolled to his knees, and
forced himself to his feet.  Gritting his teeth, he finally
managed to work up the courage to look at his arm.
     The arm of his hardsuit was a mess:  the entire
gauntlet and arm-guard assembly that had housed his weapons
for that arm was burned and cracked, and several pieces of
plating fell off as he looked at it, dropping to the rooftop
with muted, sorrowful clangs.  His particle-laser cannons
looked intact, but he shut down the power to them completely
as a precaution.  He cautiously tried to flex his hand and
make sure that, inside the suit at least, he was okay.  He
could feel his hand trying to move, but the gauntlet itself
was welded almost completely into immobility; he clenched
his teeth as his arm throbbed angrily from the attempted
movement.  Damn; felt like it was burned.
     It was when he turned his arm slightly to examine the
mounting for his suit lightsabers that he realized what had
happened.  A huge, jagged hole had been torn open in the
underside of his arm armour, running almost the entire
length of his forearm, and wiring was spitting and smoking
from within the ruined systems.  Evidently, his lightsaber
system had overloaded and blown up from being hit by the
boomer's particle beam.  Wait a minute....the boomer!!!
     SkyKnight spun around, frantically searching for his
foe before it could take advantage of his momentary
distraction.  He didn't have to worry; the boomer was far
too preoccupied in dealing with the dodging and darting
white and dark green hardsuits that were attacking it.  As
SkyKnight examined the red combat machine, he noted that the
weapon explosion had evidently worked both ways; the boomer
was missing the lower left side of its jaw, and its head
mounted particle beam assembly.  Smoke was curling sinuously
from the wreckage, but the boomer was fighting as if the
damage to it was insignificant.
     As Bert watched, Sylia's white-armoured form ducked
under a shot from some unidentifiable weapon in the boomer's
chest, while at the same time Linna leaped in close, driving
her knuckle bomber into the boomer's lower torso.  There was
a bright flash and a racketing blast, and a few pieces of
armour plating went flying.  When the smoke cleared, there
was a fair-sized hole in the boomer's carapace, but it
didn't appear to be badly damaged.
     "Damn it," SkyKnight sighed.  He ached all over, and
his arm felt like it was still burning up, but he had to
help Sylia and Linna finish off the boomer; as had been
proven so far, the killer biomechanoid was no pushover.  He
powered up the guns on his good arm, and prepared to jump
back into the fight.
     "Forget it!" Sylia's voice cracked over the comm
channel like a whip.  "You're hurt; stay out of this, and
check on Nene.  That's an order, mister."  She ducked under
another scorching energy salvo, as SkyKnight grudgingly
complied with her order.
     Turning away from the raging fight, Bert quickly strode
across the rooftop to where a trembling, red-pink hardsuit
was wobbling to its knees.  Nene's suit was battered and
dented, with scratches marring its enameled exterior.  A
couple of the antenna spars on her backpack had been snapped
off, and her helmet was missing one of its antenna wings,
but other than that, she looked like she was unhurt.  He
suddenly noticed she was holding her stomach, and all
thoughts of his own injuries vanished under a wave of fear
and concern.
     "Nene?" he asked quietly as he came up to her.  Her
helmet came up, looking at him, and he dropped to his own
knees next to her on the rooftop.  "Are you okay? Are you
hurt?"  She didn't answer, but collapsed against him, crying
uncontrollably.  He awkwardly wrapped his arms around her
suit, trying to console her.
     "Shhhhhh.  It's okay," he soothed, giving her as gentle
a squeeze as possible when two people are wearing powered
body armour.  "You're fine.  Don't worry, I'm here.
Everything will be fine."
     "I tried," she cried, shuddering and gripping him
tighter.  "I tried so hard!!  I just wanted to...to..."
     "I know," he told her quietly, compassionately.
"Believe me, I know what you wanted."
A bright flare of light washed over him from behind,
followed a moment later by a thunderous detonation that sent
reddish armour pieces skittering by him on the edges of the
hot blast of displaced air from the explosion.
     "Nene!!" Sylia's voice called.  Pounding footsteps
sounded behind them, and in the next instant, her white
hardsuited figure was standing next to them.  SkyKnight
stood up, gently pulling Nene up with him.  She didn't
relinquish her hold on him, however, clinging to him like a
drowning person to a life preserver.  "Is she badly hurt?"
their leader demanded anxiously, her blue visored helmet
turning slightly from Nene to him.  Behind her, the sleek
green and grey shape of Linna's hardsuit came up behind her,
looking a little dusty and battered, but otherwise okay.
     "I don't think so," he replied quietly.  After a
moment's hesitation, he sighed, and added, "Nene was holding
her stomach, though; she might have been re-injured."  Nene
didn't deny or confirm his observation, but continued to
cling shudderingly to him, crying.
     "We'll have to check after we get back to base," Sylia
decided, sounding worried.   "What about you?  You look like
a wreck."
     "It's a long story," SkyKnight sighed.  "Could we
perhaps go home first, and then worry about the whys and
wherefores?"  He winced as his accumulated trophies of the
night all decided to scream in protest at the same time.
"I'd like to get out of the suit before too much longer."
     "I second that motion," Linna put in, sounding tired.
"I'd really like to get out of my suit, too; I'm beat."
     "Okay, let's get out of here, then," Sylia sighed.
Nene didn't appear to be in any condition to walk or fly,
however.  SkyKnight and Linna gently supported her on
opposite sides, as the Knight Sabers lifted into the air,
and disappeared into the cloaking darkness.
                            ****
     "YEEEOWWCH!!"
     "Sorry," the white-haired old man said insincerely.
"Did that hurt?"  The old man straightened up, a blood-
soaked wad of what might have once been a white bandage pad
in his gloved hand.   He tossed it into a nearby, plastic-
lined garbage pail, and pulled out a sterile-wrapped
antiseptic pad.  Unwrapping it, the old man stepped back to
his reluctant, red-haired patient's side, and sponged off
the now lightly bleeding gash on the lower left side of his
torso.
     "No, of course not," Bert half-snarled sarcastically,
wincing at the sting of the antiseptic, glaring.  "I always
yell like that.  Of course it goddamn hurt!!  You didn't
have to rip it loose like that!!"  The old man tending him
was tall and wiry, with short white hair and a mustache, and
wearing a white doctor's coat over some rumpled-looking
jeans and a shirt.  A compact, briefcase-like medical kit
sat on the nearby countertop, filled to the brim with
various surgical implements, sterile packages, and bottles.
Sardonic amusement glinted in the doctor's brown eyes as he
looked at Bert, fishing something else out of his briefcase.
     "I sure as hell did," he replied, unfazed by his
patient's profanity.  "In the first place, I needed to make
sure the wound was clean; in the second, those drugs you
used in the pad almost permanently glued the damn thing to
your idiotic hide."  He pulled out a syringe, and filled it
with a few cc's of a clear liquid from a small, stoppered
bottle.  "I'll give you a formulation to use that won't do
that for the next time.  And from now on, for God's sake, if
you have to design something with medical applications,
leave the decisions on what preparations to use to the
professionals, okay?"  Bert flinched violently as the doctor
stabbed him with the needle and depressed the plunger,
flushing in chagrin from his remarks at the same time.
After a moment, the burning in his side seemed to cool off
and vanish.  Bert sighed in relief, and managed to hold
himself still while the doctor quickly and expertly smeared
some kind of medicated ointment on his gashed side, firmly
bandaging it up afterwards.
     As the doctor stepped back, Bert quickly pulled his
sweater back on; the basement infirmary wasn't the warmest
room in Sylia's building.  He carefully flexed his lightly
bandaged hand; it was burned slightly, but not enough to
cause more than a day or two of discomfort.  He'd already
had several comments about sticking his hands where they
weren't supposed to be.  He sighed, deciding that
complaining about his treatment wouldn't really get him
anywhere.
     "Thanks, I appreciate it," he told the doctor, who was
now packing his medical implements into his case, closing it
and locking it.  The doctor turned around, picking up his
case as he did.
     "You're welcome," he replied, faint flickers of
amusement visible in his eyes.  "It was nice to meet you
awake and lucid for a change, instead of comatose and
feverish.  Try and dodge faster next time, though, okay?"
Bert flushed again.
     "It's not like I try and get injured," he muttered.
"It just happens."
     "I know," the old man replied dryly.  "But if I'd had
even just a couple of patients as injury-prone as you are
back when I was practicing, I'd never have needed anyone
else."  The white-haired old man grinned as Bert flushed
again guiltily, then reluctantly grinned himself.
     "I suppose I do run up a pretty good bill at times," he
remarked, sighing, and hopping down from the examination
table.  "Thanks again."  Bert hesitated slightly.  "I never
did get your name."
     "That's right," the old man replied calmly, becoming a
little more serious.  "And you won't be, son.  It's safer
that way for everybody.  Good night."  The old man left,
leaving Bert to stand by himself in the infirmary for a few
minutes.  At length, he sighed and stood a little
straighter.  Wincing slightly at the aches from his abused
body, Bert strode briskly out the door, flicking off the
lights and shutting it behind him.
                            ****
     A  fairly tall woman with blue-black hair paced back
and forth across the small lounge, steering with unconscious
deftness around the scattered chairs on the room.  A look of
extreme anxiety marred her smooth features, and her brown
eyes were whirling with a complex multitude of concerns.
She was wearing a form-fitting white, red, and blue bodysuit
of some description, covered by a white lab coat.
Periodically, she cast a glance at the door to the lounge,
but her constant, agitated motion around the room never
slackened.
     Sylia looked up anxiously as the tall, thin, white-
haired old man carrying a medical kit knocked briefly and
then entered the room.  The old man sighed tiredly, and
dropped his kit into a nearby chair.  He looked over at
Sylia finally, and a warm smile spread across his face.
     "Sylia," he greeted her.  "How's my favourite niece
doing?"
     "I'm your only niece, uncle," she reminded him, shaking
her head as a reluctant smile spread across her face.
     "Then that makes you my favourite as well, doesn't it?"
he replied blandly.  "Come here and give this tired old
sawbones a hug."
     "You haven't changed a bit," she sighed, walking over
to him and embracing him.  He kissed the top of her head
fondly as he hugged her, then allowed her to step back.
     "Why, would you want me to?" he asked, quirking an
eyebrow at her, unsuccessfully hiding a smirk.
     "It'd be a hopeless wish," she said dryly.  "You've
always been incorrigible."  She was silent a moment, and
they stood there looking at each other for a minute or two.
Sylia opened her mouth to speak, but was forestalled.
     "The young lady is fine," he assured her.  "She's just
terrified at the moment.  I gave her a sedative to help her
sleep, so she should be okay until the morning.  As for the
young man, he'll recover completely.  The burn wasn't
serious, and the gash was just a flesh wound, this time.
Other than being bruised up a bit, he's perfectly healthy.
He'll probably gripe about stiffness for a couple of days,
but nothing you can't live with."
     "Easy for you to say," she retorted, smiling.  "You're
not the one who's going to have to listen to him for the
`couple of days'."
     "The burdens of command," her uncle replied blandly.
     "Thanks a lot."
     "No charge," he replied grinning, then sobered.  "There
was one thing I wanted to ask you about, however," he noted.
"Has your friend there always been ...overly sensitive about
physical contact?  I know I caught some kind of reflex
action about to occur a couple of times when I was examining
him, but he was controlling himself pretty well.  I almost
didn't notice at all."
     "No, he wasn't always like that," Sylia sighed, sinking
into a nearby chair wearily.  "It's a long story."
     "I have time," the old man said dryly.  "The one
advantage to being retired, I suppose."
     "Regrets, uncle?"
     "Sylia," he sighed, easing himself into a nearby chair.
"The older you get, the more regrets you have about
everything.  I don't think there's anyone alive who doesn't
wish that they'd done something differently, or wonders what
might have been.  Yes, I suppose I regret my decision in
some ways, but in other ways, I don't.  I know I made the
right choice; I was one of the few with enough guts to stand
by their convictions, and the fact that I'm still alive
proves it."
     "I'm sorry," she said contritely, reaching out and
clasping one of his hands.  "I didn't mean to re-awaken any
painful memories."  He shook his head, squeezing her hand
briefly before releasing it.
     "They've been with me for years, Sylia," he assured
her.  "I've gotten used to them.  Now you were going to tell
me about this friend of yours?"  Sylia nodded, sighing, and
gave him the condensed version of the kidnapping, skipping
some of the details her uncle didn't really need to know.
Her uncle was silent for a moment when she'd finished, head
bowed slightly.  When he looked up at her, there was concern
mixed with fear for her in his eyes.
     "Sylia," he started to say slowly, but she shook her
head slightly, cutting him off gently, but firmly.
     "Please, uncle," she told him, "let's just skip the
argument where you try to convince me to do something else,
shall we?  I know it's dangerous work, and I know that
there's a risk I may get hurt, but I have chosen to accept
that risk.  Why can't you?"
     "Because you're young," he snapped irritably.  "I'm
old; I haven't got all that many years left, but you still
have your whole life ahead of you.  I don't want to hear
you've been killed because of your....your `crusade'.  I
know how you feel, and I share your feelings, believe me I
do...but I worry about you, constantly."  An awkward silence
fell for a moment, and the old man sighed, a slight smile
appearing.  "I knew I wasn't going to change your mind
anyway," he told her wryly.  "You're as incorrigible as I am
in a lot of ways."
     "Runs in the family," she deadpanned, then smiled
warmly at him.  Her uncle smiled back, then stood stiffly,
Sylia rose also, and he gave her another quick hug, kissing
her fondly.
     "Take care of yourself, my dear," he sighed.  "I don't
want to have to ply my trade at your expense."  With that,
the old man picked up his case, and left through the door,
giving her a parting smile.  Sylia stood quietly for a
moment, arms folded in a strangely defensive gesture, almost
like she was hugging herself for warmth.  A melancholic
expression briefly flashed over her face, but she shook it
off.  The lounge became deserted a few moments later as she
flicked off the lights and left herself.
                            ****
     "Priss, for God's sake sit down," Bert said wearily.
"It wasn't your bloody fault, so quit castigating yourself
over it, will you?!"   From where she was seated on a nearby
couch, Sylvie nodded in unconscious agreement.  The dark-
haired young woman was clad, as usual, in her snugly-fitting
blue-white bike suit, and her helmet lay upended in a nearby
chair, with her gloves crammed inside of it.  Her golden-
brown eyes kept shifting from Bert to Priss.  Linna was
nowhere in sight; she'd had to go home early, since her
dance company was getting an early start the next morning.
     "Wasn't it?" Priss snapped, bitter self-reproach
flashing in her eyes.  She peeled off her red leather
jacket, and angrily hurled it into the same chair that
Sylvie's helmet was sitting in.  "If I'd kept an eye on her
on our last mission, she wouldn't have gotten shot, and then
she wouldn't have felt she had to prove herself tonight.  I
didn't, she did, and now she's probably going to be even
more of a wreck."  Priss spun around angrily, intending to
keep pacing, but it was at that moment that her injured leg
decided to give out on her.  She grabbed the back of the
nearby couch to keep from falling, biting her lip against a
startled, pained outcry.
     Sylvie immediately moved to get up and help her, but
Bert was already moving.  He leaped out of his chair in a
fluid motion, a concerned look on his face, and was around
the coffee table and couch in an instant, putting an arm
around Priss' waist to help her stand.
     "Get away from me, goddamn you!" she snarled, trying to
shove him away.  "I'm fine!! Go play the chivalrous hero
with someone else!"  Bert's face remained concerned,
although a slight flash of hurt at her response flickered
briefly in his eyes.  He could see angry moisture gathering
in Priss' eyes, and realized she was more upset over her
leg's condition than she was letting on.  He didn't respond
immediately to her remarks, but guided her around to the
front of the couch, and helped her to sit.  Priss refused to
meet his gaze, staring moodily at the coffee table.
     "I'm not playing," he told her quietly, trading a quick
glance of concern with Sylvie.  "I'm concerned about you."
     "I don't need it," she growled.  "I'm fine.   Bugger
off and leave me alone."
     "Fine," Bert sighed disgustedly, his fatigue greatly
lessening his tolerance for her usual stubbornness.  "Be
like that, then.  But I'm still telling you it wasn't your
fault.  If it was anyone's fault, it was mine.  I should
have kept her from going somehow, especially since I knew
better than anyone that she wasn't fully ready to go back
out yet.  Instead, I decided to let it lie, and now she's in
even worse shape."  He turned away from his friends and
started pacing himself, suppressing winces at the twinges
from his bandaged side.
     "I can't believe you two are arguing about whose fault
it was," Sylia's voice came to them from the apartment door.
Everyone looked up as she wearily entered the room.  Sylia
had changed into a faded grey tracksuit, and looked tired;
there were slight circles under her eyes.  She sighed,
running a hand through her blue-black hair as she came over
to the central area where the seating around the coffee
table was arranged.  "I don't think it was any one person's
fault, specifically," she told them as she came up to them.
"Nene was at least partly to blame herself for not following
my orders at the time.  I should have realized that there
was a possibility of her disobeying me, but I chose to
ignore it, and that makes me partially to blame as well."
     "I think we can stop with the `who's at fault'
session," Sylvie spoke up from where she was sitting.  "Why
don't we just say it was a shared responsibility, and leave
it at that?  I'm getting tired of listening to everyone
wallow in guilt, if you don't mind."  Everyone else flushed
red, and didn't meet anyone else's eyes for a few moments.
Sylvie shook her head ruefully.
     "She's right," Sylia sighed.  "It's pointless; it's
done, and we'll just have to live with it.  Self-
recriminations are a luxury we can't afford to indulge in
right now, especially given the seriousness of what happened
tonight."
     "What did happen tonight?" Priss asked, still sounding
slightly sullen.  "All I got to hear was that Nene got
jumped all over by a new boomer."  She was still pissed off
over the fact that Sylia hadn't even notified her of the
mission, until after it was too late to try and go along.
     "What looked like a pile of normal C-55 boomers,
wasn't," Bert replied absently, still pacing like a caged
animal.  "They were better armed and armoured, and
definitely faster and smarter."
     "And the one that Nene decided to confront was a new
type," Sylia added simply.  "I've never seen one like it
before, although it did have some resemblances to the
Superboomer.  I'd say GENOM's design team has been very busy
lately."  She sighed, sitting wearily in her chair, and
staring out the large bay window of her living room at the
twinkling nighttime lights of the sprawling city beyond.
     "So what are we gonna do about it?" Priss demanded.
"Are we gonna just sit here and let them get away with it?!
We should go out..."
     "And what?" Bert interrupted irritably.  "Level the
city until we find the production facilities?  We don't know
where the damn things are being produced.  You think they're
just going to nicely tell us where they're illegally making
combat boomers?  Yeah, right!"  He paced some more, scowling
unconsciously, as Priss flushed.  Her red-brown eyes
narrowed dangerously, and she glared at the restlessly
moving red-haired young man.
     "I'm going to be looking into that," Sylia spoke up,
interrupting whatever retort Priss had been about to launch,
glancing at Bert with the faintest trace of concern in her
gaze; he paced on, face like a thundercloud, apparently
oblivious to everything else.  She looked back at Priss and
Sylvie.  "The main thing that we have to do now is get
ready."
     "What do you mean by `get ready'?" Priss asked, looking
suspiciously at Sylia.
     "I mean that everyone, and I mean everyone, is going
back into training, starting as soon as possible," she
replied.  "We were all unprepared for tonight; we've been
inactive for so long that we've all grown a bit rusty, and I
think that it was a contributing factor to our performance
when we went after Hollister.  I'm going to discuss setting
up a training program of some kind with Linna, and then
everyone will be on it.  Including myself," she added, as
Priss opened her mouth to say something.  The brown-haired
young woman kept silent, and leaned back into the couch
looking vaguely upset for a moment.  She didn't say anything
else, but Bert noticed absently that she was unconsciously
rubbing her injured leg.
     With a sigh, Bert stopped his pacing, and came over to
the couch, dropping heavily into it next to Priss.  She
didn't appear to notice, but sat staring into space with a
distant, pained look in her eyes.  They all sat silently for
a moment.
     "Well, I think we need to do something more than just
get back into training," Bert finally said.  "Maybe `field
trips' wouldn't be a bad idea now and then.  You know, just
go out and dodge around on the rooftops a bit, so we can get
used to the way the terrain can change."
     "That's a reasonable idea," Sylia agreed.  "It's a lot
better than just sitting in the simulator all the time."
Nobody else replied to his observation.  Bert's gaze met
Sylia's eyes for a moment, and he almost imperceptibly
nodded in Sylvie's direction.  A faint hint of a smile
appeared on her lips as her gaze flicked briefly to the dark-
haired woman, and she nodded ever so slightly.
     "We're also going to have to do something about evening
the odds a bit," he spoke up.  "Even with everyone present,
and at 100% we're still getting outnumbered at times.  What
we need is another member for backup."  He casually looked
over at Sylvie, raising an eyebrow quizzically.  "Wouldn't
you agree, Sylvie?"
     "What?!" she said, startled out of whatever thoughts
had been preoccupying her.  She stared, wide-eyed, from Bert
to Sylia, her gaze staying on Sylia.  "You mean me?!"
     "That's correct," Sylia replied, nodding.  "If you are
willing, we'd like you to become a member; we had a meeting
about it the other night, and everyone was in agreement.
Anri is welcome too, if she wants in."
     "I'm.....I....I don't know what to say," Sylvie said
dazedly.
     "Say yes!!" Priss exclaimed, a crooked grin spreading
across her face.  "Come on, it'll be a blast!"  Bert had a
momentary vision of something exploding at Priss'
observation, and hoped that it wasn't a prediction of what
was going to follow on the heels of the addition of a new
Knight Saber who also happened to enjoy a lot of Priss'
usual pastimes.
     "I...yes..yes, I'd like to join," Sylvie said softly,
sudden tears glimmering in her eyes.  "Thank you.  It really
means a lot to me, I...."  She started crying a bit, and
Priss carefully stood up and limped over to her, giving her
friend a hug.  Sylvie hugged her back.
     "You won't be on fully-active status right away," Sylia
continued speaking.  "At the very least, not until you're
used to handling a hardsuit.  However, until then, you can
pilot the KnightWing for us; we really need a good pilot.
Once you are fully ready, you'd be our reserve force."
Sylvie nodded wordlessly, swabbing at her eyes and trying to
regain her composure.  While she composed herself, Sylia
stood and went into the kitchen.
     "So when are you building their suits?" Priss asked
sitting back down on a nearby chair, figuring that Bert
would be immediately jumping all over that possibility,
since he was so nuts about building suits and other gadgets.
He didn't answer, apparently not having heard her; his gaze
was slightly abstracted as he stared into space, almost like
he'd already started planning what to build.  Sighing in
irritation, she reached over and prodded Bert's leg.  His
body jerked in a brief snap of motion,  not quite the
offense-geared reflex action of a few short weeks ago, but
still more than just surprise.  He appeared to catch himself
and come back to the present, and he looked quizzically over
at Priss.
     "I said, when can you build Sylvie and Anri their
suits?" she repeated.  Bert shrugged.
     "From the ground up, a brand new, fully-tested suit
will take at least a couple of weeks.  I can certainly
handle the hardware end of things," he replied.  "But the
controls and the ...um...er ...the ...ah...."
     "The what?" Sylvie and Priss chorused.  Bert squirmed a
bit in his seat, flushing slightly.
     "Sylia will have to do the ergonomic part of the suit
design," he replied awkwardly.  "I can't do that."
     "Ergonomics?" Priss repeated.  "What the hell is that
supp...oh."  She suddenly developed a wide grin, and
actually started to laugh.  "You
can't...do...the...HAHAHAHA!!!!"  She collapsed helplessly
into the couch again, snickering and laughing out loud.
     "What's so funny?" Sylia asked, coming back into the
room with a tray of steaming mugs.  Sylvie was staring from
Priss to Bert, who by now was flushing almost brick-red.  He
was also steadfastly refusing to meet anyone's eyes.
          "He...can't...do....the.." Priss gasped, then
collapsed laughing again, tears squeezing out of her eyes.
Sylia looked at her, puzzled, as she placed the tray on the
table and sat down, taking a mug for herself.  Bert
immediately seized another mug and started drinking it down,
trying to hide his obvious discomfort.
     "Ergonomics of my suit," Sylvie finished Priss'
sentence for Sylia,  puzzled.  "What's so funny about that?"
Sylia developed a sly smile of her own, and looked over at
Bert, raising an eyebrow.  Sylvie didn't think it was
possible, but he seemed to turn even an even brighter red
colour.  He was so embarrassed, she was positive he was
radiating heat waves.
          "Part of the `ergonomics' of designing the suit
for a specific wearer is taking their measurements," Sylia
explained to her gently.  "It's a rather involved process,
since the suit has to be as perfect a fit as possible, in
order for some aspects of the control systems to work
properly.  Since that's the case, you'd only be wearing a
softsuit."
          "What's the big deal about taking my
measurements?"  Sylvie asked, still puzzled.  "Something
like that shouldn't be too....hard."  She looked at Bert,
abruptly remembering just who she was dealing with.  She
grinned suddenly, impish humour glinting in her eyes.
          "Don't bother," he growled, his gaze meeting her
eyes briefly as she opened her mouth to make a comment of
some kind.  "I don't want, or need, the hassle right now,"
he stated flatly, banging his mug back onto the tray table.
Sylvie sighed, shaking her head and smiling.
          "What are we going to do with you?" she asked
rhetorically, smiling gently at him.  She should have
remembered how hung-up he could get on propriety; he was so
square sometimes, it was almost painful to watch.  They were
going to have to find some way to get him to loosen up a
bit...
          "You could tell Priss to shut up," he mumbled,
giving the still-laughing, brown-haired woman a smoldering
glare;  Priss was gasping for breath by now, she was
laughing so hard.  "I don't happen to think it was that
funny."
          "I'll take care of that end of the suit
construction in the next few days," Sylia interjected,
giving him a slightly sympathetic smile.  "You can just
concern yourself with the hardware aspects of her suit."
          "Thanks," he said, flushing again.  "I'll check
back with you in a couple of days then.  Right now, I've got
some things to do."  With that, the tall, red-haired young
man stood and swiftly exited the room, Priss' laughter still
trailing after him.

THE NEXT DAY.....

     Bert carefully carried the steaming mug of tea over to
his coffee table, balancing a couple of books in his other
hand.  With painstaking care, he lowered the mug to the
table; it was slightly awkward, handling things while his
hand was bandaged up, because at times it interfered with
his sense of touch.  With a sigh, he flopped back into his
recliner, putting his footrest up.  Tossing one of the
novels he'd been carrying into the nearby couch, he started
to read the other, occasionally sipping his tea.
     He read quietly, just relaxing, for about an hour or
so.  At length, he sighed again and stretched, feeling oddly
peaceful for a change.  With everything that had happened
over the last few weeks, he couldn't remember the last time
he'd just said `to hell with it', and quietly read or done
something recreational.  He made a mental note to try and do
it more often; he needed to use anything that could help him
relax.
     Stifling a groan at the way his battered body protested
the movement, he sat up and stiffly levered himself out of
his recliner; it seemed as if every bang and bruise he'd
received the night before without noticing them were now
having a competition to see which one could attract the most
attention.  He ached all over.
     Well if you keep throwing yourself in front of shots
like you were last night, it's not going to get any better,
his subconscious pointed out.  You're going to have to
either find a better way of saving people, or else just get
used to being sore the morning after, it added before he
irritably squelched it.  He couldn't help it, especially
where Nene was concerned; instincts just seemed to seize
control of him at those times, instincts that didn't allow
time for the contemplation of the sanity of a particular
action.
     With a rueful grin, which turned into a wince a moment
later, he succeeded in getting up out of his chair, and he
hobbled over to the kitchen counter.  He had just made
another pot of tea when his bedroom door creaked open.  As
he turned around, a rumpled and disheveled Nene slowly
walked through the door, into his kitchenette, rubbing
sleepily at her face.
     Her normally lustrous red hair was a tangled mess, and
there were dark smudges underneath her eyes.  An old flannel
blanket was draped across her shoulders, covering her
wrinkled white nightgown.  Her expression was distracted and
lost-looking, and she didn't return his tentative smile of
greeting.   She didn't have any visible marks from her
ordeal of the night before, but it wasn't physical injuries
Bert was worried about.
     "Hi there," he greeted her out loud; she didn't reply.
He walked over to her and gave her a gentle hug; she-half-
heartedly returned it, almost like she was still asleep.  He
reached up and brushed her tangled bangs out of her eyes,
looking into them; there were still lurking traces of fear
in the green depths, stirring around in agitation.  Bert
tipped her chin up, and kissed her softly on the lips;  Nene
kissed him back, but she was lacking the ...energy, the
spirit she normally seemed to have.  A chill of some kind
starting curling around in his guts, as he hoped her
listlessness was merely a result of the sedative she'd been
given last night.
     "Come on, you'd better go and get cleaned up," he said,
deciding that trying to carry on as if things were normal
was the best course of action.  He gently steered her
towards the bathroom door.  "You still have to go to work,
remember?"
     "No!!!" she suddenly cried.  Before he could move, Bert
had a sobbing, red-haired young woman clinging tightly to
him like a leech.  He stiffened as pain knifed through him,
but managed to stifle the swear words that sprang to mind as
Nene unknowingly squeezed his bandaged side.  "I don't want
to! I c-can't!  Please!!" she sobbed, almost hysterically.
Bert held her as she cried, a feeling of complete
helplessness welling up; Nene appeared to be falling apart,
and there wasn't a thing he could do about it.  He wrapped
his arms around her shaking body, trying to comfort her
somehow.
     "Nene, I'm sorry, but I can't do that," he replied
softly, swallowing against the sudden, painful tightness in
his throat.  "You know I can't do that.  You have to go to
work; there's no way to avoid it, not like before."
     "B-but I can't stop thinking about it!" she wailed,
fresh streams of tears dripping off her face as she looked
up at him.  Bert gently brushed them away, caressing her
cheek with his hand at the same time.
     "You have to try," he told her simply.  "It's in the
past, and we can't change that."  He leaned down and kissed
her again.  "Dwelling on it is only going to make you
miserable.  Please, just let it go," he told her as he
pulled back a bit.  "You're going to drive yourself crazy if
you keep this up.  I realize it was a terrifying experience,
and I know how you feel, but you have to face it, put it
behind you, and then move on.  Crying and denying it like a
little girl isn't going to make it go away."  It was the
wrong thing to say; Nene's eyes narrowed dangerously, and a
slight, angry flush suffused her face.
     " `Little girl'?!" Nene repeated, stiffening in his
arms.  "Is that what you think of me?!"  Bert mentally
cursed himself for the poor choice of words, then swallowed,
and braced himself.
     "Nene, you're a very attractive and smart young woman,"
he told her, suddenly feeling like he was picking his way
barefoot through a minefield.  "One of the things I've
always loved about you is your cheerfulness and ....and
vitality, but..."
     "But what?" she asked ominously, her face darkening.
Bert sighed mentally, bracing himself for the now inevitable
explosion.
     "But I've .... felt that....maybe at times you
don't.... take things seriously enough, don't...think things
through often enough," he said slowly, a sharp pain lancing
through him with each word as he watched Nene's face become
more and more stony.   "You know your suit isn't built for
front-line fighting, but you still tried to do it last
night.  I..."
     "I don't take things seriously?!" she repeated, cutting
him off, anger flaring hotly in her eyes.  "You're a fine
one to talk, Mr. Chivalrous Knight-in-Shining-Armour!!  At
least I'm not running around trying to fit myself into some
stupid image!!"  Bert stood, shocked into speechlessness, as
Nene stormed into the bathroom, slamming and locking the
door behind her.  Awful silence permeated the room for a
moment.
     "I'm sorry," he said quietly to the suddenly empty and
hollow-seeming room.  He turned, and leaned against his
kitchen counter, putting his head down on his arms,
squeezing his eyes shut as a couple of tears leaked from
them at the edges.  "Damn it, I'm sorry...."
                            ****
     The usual hum of office activity rose and ebbed around
the isolated islands of desks scattered through the ADP
Investigation Division.  The noise was unusually hushed this
morning, however, as if people were afraid to talk too
loudly about something.
     Inspector Leon McNichol didn't even notice the subdued
atmosphere in the offices; he was seated at his desk, trying
to finish his report for the upper brass on what had
occurred the night before during the sudden boomer rampages.
His mind was only partly on the task however, and he was
unable to keep his attention on his work.  He absently
sipped at a cold cup of coffee, grimacing disgustedly at the
taste while staring off into space.
     In part his distraction was due to numbed sorrow over
the loss of some of his men to the biomechanoid rampage; he
still couldn't erase the feeling that he was partly
responsible, even though he knew he'd done all he possibly
could.  He knew that the possibility of death while on duty
was part of the price of wearing a badge, but that didn't
make it any easier to live with the results.  He throttled
down yet again the lingering rage over the way the
government bureaucracy had crippled the ADP's ability to
effectively deal with boomer problems.  How could they do
their jobs if they couldn't get the support they needed?!
     The second reason for his distraction wasn't quite as
easy to categorize, but it did have an easily identifiable
source: SkyKnight.  For the first time since Leon had known
the silver-clad Knight Saber, SkyKnight had used almost
deadly force on someone other than a boomer; the two K-17
pilots he'd injured would recover, but they weren't getting
out of the hospital anytime soon.
     Leon hadn't seen SkyKnight in a long time since before
last night, and they'd never chatted much before anyway, but
the hardsuited mercenary he'd seen last night had seemed
totally unfamiliar.  It was almost like there was someone
else under the armour.  For one thing, he'd been completely
silent during his brawl with the rogue boomers, which was
unusual; previously, he'd always made some kind of
smartassed quip once in a while.  There'd been a driven
intensity to his fighting that hadn't been there before.
     The other factor adding to Leon's unease was that there
had been a definite hard edge to his conversation, and his
subsequent actions.  SkyKnight had always been civil before,
and scrupulous in avoiding conflict with the ADP, but he'd
been terse, almost harsh when talking to Leon, and his
effortless smashing of the K-17s that had tried to restrain
him had been further proof that SkyKnight was not the same
any longer.
     Leon sighed, leaning back far enough in his chair that
he ran the risk of toppling over backwards.  He yawned,
scrubbing at his gritty eyes; he hadn't been able to sleep
all that well in the aftermath of the fight, and his mind
had insisted on replaying everything he'd seen, giving him
no rest.  He leaned forwards again, folding his arms on his
desk, and he let his head sink down onto his arms for a
moment.  Despite himself, his eyes sagged shut, and inside
of a minute he was dozing quietly, as the office noises
still continued to drone around him.
                            ****
     Fires crackled sullenly, wreathing the street with a
sooty shroud of smoke.  Electrical cables writhed and spat
like artificial snakes, hanging down from shattered utility
poles and transformer boxes.  In the distance, the subdued
roar of burst fire hydrants spewing water into the air
almost drowned out the sounds of distant explosions.
Asphalt crunched underfoot as an armoured shape stirred in
the darkness and smoke.  Around it, dimly-seen blue and
white shapes spread out, surrounding it.
     "I suggest you gentleman reconsider your decision to
take me in," the deep, electronically-modulated voice of the
gleaming silver-and-blue hardsuit rumbled, as a low,
throbbing hum began to pulse ominously through the air.
Leon suppressed the uneasy twinges that ran though his guts,
and noted the silver hardsuit had shifted into a combat-
ready stance.  Alarm bells started going off in the back of
his mind, and he shifted a bit closer to SkyKnight, hoping
he could somehow mediate a peaceful resolution of what
looked like immediate combat.
     "We know you won't harm cops," one of the blue-white K-
17s replied.  "So spare us the theatrical threats, huh?
Just come along quietly."  Leon shifted closer another step;
SkyKnight's head came up a bit, almost as if he was going to
reply, and then it happened.
     "....HELP...!!...."  Leon's ears just barely caught the
muffled, staticky voice, apparently coming from SkyKnight's
helmet.  Whatever it was, it was instantly cut off as the
silver suit jerked and stiffened in apparent surprise.  Leon
was caught flatfooted as the silver-garbed mercenary spun
with surprising speed, and started to sprint away from the
hulking K-17s.
     Leon's mind seemed to be spinning somewhere off in the
distance; as he watched the K-17s grab SkyKnight, and the
silver-garbed Knight Saber's instantaneous reprisals, his
mind kept replaying the brief cry he'd caught from the
hardsuit's helmet.  It certainly hadn't been SkyKnight's
voice, and it had sounded distorted with static, almost like
a transmission from somewhere, calling for help.  It had
obviously been intended as a private transmission, though;
the bit that Leon had heard had sounded like the faint
pickup of a microphone from a speaker.  At any rate,
whatever or whoever it had sent the call out had obviously
been the reason SkyKnight had suddenly tried to leave the
scene.
     Leon's mind churned, replaying the garbled cry he'd
barely heard.  It had almost sounded like it had started
with a name....
                            ****
     "MCNICHOL!!!!"  The piercing yell blasted his eardrums.
Leon jerked upright in his chair, eyes snapping open.  He
frantically tried to clear his mind of the cobwebs of sleep
that still clung to him, as he blearily looked around.  From
a couple of desks over, a blond haired detective grinned at
him as he put down the phone.
     "Have a nice nap?" Henderson inquired, smirking.  "You
really should quit snoring like that; makes it hard for the
rest of us to concentrate."
     "Go to hell," Leon growled back, irritably brushing his
hair out of his eyes and smoothing it back.  "You spend a
night like I did, and we'll see just how spry you are the
next day."  Henderson's expression sobered a bit.
     "Sorry, Leon," he apologized, nodding in sympathetic
understanding.  "I can understand that you're tired, but
that was the Chief Inspector on the phone, and she wants to
see you in her office.  Now."
                            ****
     The double doors banged open, the chill outdoor air
flooding into the archery range building's front foyer with
a hissing rush of breeze.  The damp, cold air seemed to
settle over the room like a shroud as Bert strode through
the doors, a bleak, depressed expression riding his
features.  The doors swung shut behind him as he reached up,
and pulled off his wide-brimmed hat, absently brushing his
hair out of his eyes.
     He stood for a moment, staring at nothing in
particular,  then his face contorted into a disgusted, angry
look for a moment, and he pitched his hat with a muttered
curse at the coatrack on the wall nearby.  The spinning hat
smacked into the rack's edge, and dropped to the floor.  His
long, black duster coat followed a moment later, flailing
through the air until it hit the rack, somehow catching on a
couple of the coathooks and hanging on them in a disorderly
fashion that somehow was reminiscent of a body sprawled
lifelessly on the ground.
     It was a fitting metaphor, he gloomily reflected,
turning and slowly trudging up the stairs to the second
floor of the building; given the aftermath of his remarks to
Nene, he felt like he'd shot and left for dead.
     After the red-headed ADP officer had re-emerged from
the bathroom, she hadn't spoken to him except for the barest
minimum number of words necessary to ask him to get some
breakfast ready while she changed into her uniform.  After
that, she'd been even more stoic, ignoring his stammering
attempt at an apology, and giving him a cold shoulder that
made dry ice seem hot by comparison, keeping a thick barrier
of silence between them all through breakfast, and on the
drive to the ADP building.  After she'd gotten out of the
car, she'd informed him that she'd be getting home on her
own that night.  Without even saying good-bye, she'd walked
off into the HQ building.  He'd watched her go helplessly,
unable to think of anything to say to her that would...
     That would what?!, he irritably snarled at himself.
That would magically make everything better?!  It was too
late, the damage had been done; she'd already been
distraught over nearly getting killed by the boomer, and his
blunt, unflattering appraisal of her hadn't helped any.
     Given her emotional state he should have realized that
she'd been looking for comfort of some kind.  He hadn't
provided it; instead, he'd managed to put his foot in his
mouth, and he'd hurt her at the same time by being honest.
He sighed again, cursing himself with every word in his
vocabulary as he came to the top of the stairs; the only
certain thing in the whole mess was that Nene wasn't going
to be speaking to him anytime soon.  His face twisted
briefly in inner torment at that thought, and he quickly
yanked his mind away from the subject.
     He was unable to stop dwelling on it, however.  As he
walked down the hallway towards the lounge, his mind
morbidly kept replaying the image of the hurt and angry
expression that had appeared on Nene's face as he'd tried to
explain his inopportune remark.  The memory was like burning
coals eating into him; he would have given anything he
possessed at that moment to have been able to recall his
words.
     Nene's retort to his remarks had been equally as
painful to him, and totally unexpected.  Okay, sure, she'd
expressed misgivings before over his `shining armoured
knight' ideals, but it was the first time she'd ever ....
ever intimated that it might be more than just misgivings.
Part of his mind tried to dismiss her remarks as being
fueled by anger and hurt, and not to be taken seriously.
Unfortunately, another part of his mind was unable to just
dismiss them, and kept analyzing them to try and see if
there was any justification for her observation.
     He opened the door to the lounge and stepped in,
casting an unhappy glance around the room; everything looked
normal.  With a deep sigh, he went about making a pot of tea
while part of his mind continued to probe through his soul,
analyzing what it found.
     Was he just trying to fit himself into an ancient,
glorified image?  While in some respects it might have been
true at the beginning of his career as SkyKnight, it was
definitely not the case now.
     He was honest enough to admit to himself that in the
beginning, it had been an ego trip of sorts, flitting
heroically around the city, defending the public from the
evil depredations of rogue boomers.  He had gotten carried
away with the armoured knight image, and hadn't really
thought seriously about certain harsh realities associated
with the job the Knight Sabers did.  He'd been dangerously
blind to them in fact, and had suffered the consequences:
more injuries than he could comfortably count anymore, and a
rather rude awakening to just how corrupt things were, and
how cold and unforgiving the rest of the world really was.
     The results were that most of his idealism had been
burned out of him, leaving him cynical, and occasionally
bitter.  There was still a faint shred of it inside of him,
somewhere, that faint longing for a better world, and the
belief that somehow he'd be able to make it come about.  At
least, he hoped it was still there; he'd been through so
much that he wasn't really sure anymore.
     There were some aspects of his character that were
inseparable from his chivalric ideals, his sense of honour
being the first and foremost of those.  It had gotten him
into more trouble than he cared to think about, but it was
just the way he was.  A wry smirk briefly appeared as he
recognized that the existence of his honourable leanings
confirmed that he hadn't lost all of his idealism.  At the
moment, he needed whatever cheering thoughts he could get.
     Sighing again, he poured himself a mug of tea, and sat
down on the couch, absently pulling a novel from the nearby
wall bookshelf at the same time.  He sat for a while,
aimlessly paging through the book without really reading it,
sipping his drink.  After a few minutes, his face again
flashed disgust, and he irritably pitched the book onto the
coffee table.  Setting his cup aside, he put his feet up on
the table, and leaned back, lacing his fingers together
behind his head.
     He sat like that for a few minutes more, a black
expression on his face as he scowled at the ceiling.  With a
growled curse, he abruptly sprang to his feet, and started
pacing; he had to find something to do now, or else he was
going to snap.  He didn't feel up to archery, and he really
wasn't in the right frame of mind to play in the shop.  His
mood wasn't going to make him the most sociable person in
the world right now, either.  Damn it, he needed to do
something.... anything!!
     A dull thump, and a muffled, pained outcry of some kind
sounded through the walls, just barely audible.  Bert froze
in mid-step, listening intently, but the sound didn't repeat
itself.  He eased over to the door to the lounge, opened it
a crack, and peered cautiously around the door into the
hall.  Seeing nothing, he eased the door open a bit further,
and stealthily slipped out into the hallway.
     He carefully crept down the corridor, keeping his back
to the wall, moving towards the next door down, the door to
one of the exercise rooms.  As he moved along, his mind
raced; could it be an intruder?  He didn't think so, since
none of the burglar alarms had gone off.  Of course, someone
who knew what they were doing could easily bypass security
systems; technology was not foolproof.  Nene could have
circumvented the building systems blindfolded.
He quickly squelched that thought, and focused on what he
was doing.
     He reached the door, and carefully reached out,
grasping the door handle.  He waited a moment longer,
listening, and he thought he could hear....someone crying?!
He listened a bit more, one eyebrow unconsciously quirking
upwards.  Now who the hell could that be, especially given
that it was still pretty early in the morning?  Slowly
turning the handle, he eased the door past the point where
the latching mechanism would catch, and let the door swing
quietly open.
     Stepping softly through the door, Bert swept a
searching gaze across the room; all the equipment was the
way he'd left it, with everything in its place.  His eyes
tracked across the room, and came to rest on a familiar-
seeming young woman with long brown hair who was awkwardly
trying to get back to her feet from a semi-kneeling
position.  The woman, who was wearing a faded red track suit
with running shoes, had her back to him as she shakily got
to her feet.  She appeared to be having problems with her
left leg; both of her hands had a clenched grip on it at
about knee level, as if she was trying to keep it from
folding on her as she stood up.  He could hear her breath
hissing with the effort she was exerting, as if she had her
teeth clenched together.
     Bert frowned as he finally recognized the woman as
Priss, and started quietly walking towards her.  It suddenly
struck him as odd that she'd decided to come in by herself,
without anyone else.
     Priss unsteadily straightened up, weaving a bit.  As
she released the clenched grip she'd had on it, her injured
leg folded, and she toppled backwards to the mats, a
strangled cry of pain and frustration being torn from her.
Bert was across rest of the room before even being conscious
of having physically taken the steps.  As he came up to her,
he noted that there were tear streaks down her cheeks, and
there was an expression on her face somewhere between total
despair and frustrated fury.  Her head jerked up as he
approached, and she flushed, angrily scrubbing an arm across
her face, trying to dry it off.  She glared hotly at him as
he came over to her, starting to reach down to help her up.
     "Get the hell away from me!" she spat, slapping his
hand away.  "I don't need any help! I'm fine!"  Angry
moisture gathered at the corners of her eyes again, and she
scrubbed it away furiously, only to have more leak out.
     "Bullshit," he replied levelly.  He ignored the way she
stiffened and tried to get loose from him as he grabbed her
one arm, looping it around his shoulder while bending down,
and then put his other arm around her.  Straightening up, he
easily lifted Priss to a standing position once more.
     "I SAID leave me ALONE!!" she snarled, yanking her arm
from around his shoulder, and shoving him away at the same
time.  The motion overbalanced her, however, and her
weakened leg gave out again.  Priss started to topple over
backwards, a pained cry escaping her lips, but Bert
immediately snagged her again, managing to get around behind
her to catch her before she could hit the mats.  He gently
scooped her up, and carried her over to a side bench.
     He carefully lowered her to the bench, sat next to her,
and then gave her a tender hug.  Priss sat stonily for a few
moments, as if ignoring him completely, then, almost
grudgingly, briefly hugged him back.  She lifted her head,
her eyes meeting his for a moment.  At seeing his concerned
look,  she flushed, and pulled away from him slightly.  He
didn't try to stop her, but reached around and grabbed a
nearby towel, wordlessly handing it to her.
     Priss flushed again, and almost angrily snatched the
towel from his grasp, scrubbing fiercely at her face, trying
to clear away any evidence of the fact that she'd been
crying earlier.  Bert continued to watch quietly, still not
saying anything, worry and concern flashing in a whirling
tide through his greenish-brown eyes.  If Priss was aware of
his feelings, she wasn't giving any indications of it; in
fact, she was steadfastly refusing to meet his gaze.  An
oppressive silence fell over the room as Priss pitched the
towel down the length of the bench.  It hit the bench end,
then flopped limply off of it to the floor.
     The red-brown eyed singer folded her arms across her
chest in a defensive gesture, and leaned forward, resting
her elbows on her knees, trying to appear indifferent.
Instead of making her appear unaffected, however, it made
her look isolated and lonely.  Her expression was more
contained and emotionless than it had been a few minutes
ago, but Bert could still see lingering traces of depression
in her face.   After a couple of minutes of smothering
silence, he finally got sick of being ignored, and cleared
his throat;  the young woman sitting next to him didn't even
acknowledge that she'd heard him, but stared off into space,
brooding.
     "Want to talk about it?" he asked quietly.
     "No."  Priss didn't even change expression, and didn't
look at him.
     "Come on, Priss.  You expect me to believe you're okay
after what I just saw?"  Bert shook his head.  "I don't buy
it; something is obviously bothering you, a lot, if it can
make you break down crying.  I...."
     "I said I don't want to talk about it!!" she half-
snarled, hands balling into fists as she swiveled towards
him.  Bitter fury burned brightly in her eyes.  "Mind your
own goddamn business!!"
     "This is my business," he replied calmly.  "We're
friends, remember?  I want to help.  Please."
     "I don't want help!" she spat angrily.  "Get lost, and
leave me alone!"
     "I can't, and I'm not going to," he replied, irritation
starting to show through the veneer of concerned calm he had
in place.  "If I was even slightly inclined to leave, I'd at
least like to know what the problem is, first."  Priss
didn't respond, but turned away from him again, her lips
compressing into a thin, bitter line as she stared out
across the exercise room.
     "It's about your leg, isn't it?" he asked suddenly.
She didn't reply, but he caught the merest flicker of
something as it flashed across her face, and noted that her
body suddenly seemed to become taut as a coiled spring.
That was all he needed to confirm his suspicions.
     "Afraid it's not going to heal completely?" he asked
quietly.  "Maybe you should see a specialist ab...."
     "SHUT UP!!!" she shrieked abruptly, catching him by
surprise.  Bert jerked backwards, startled, as a backhanded
slap whistled by his face.  He grabbed Priss' arms as she
tried to hit him again, looking into her anger-contorted
face; her teeth were clenched together in fury, but there
was an anguished look in her eyes, almost one of frantic
denial.  She tried to pull loose from his grasp, but he
grimly held on.  It wasn't easy, however; she was stronger
than she looked.
     "Priss?!  What the...."
     "I'm fine!!!" Priss snarled defiantly, although there
was a hint of desperation in her declaration.  She struggled
against his grip on her arms as she continued,  "I don't
need to see anyone!!  I'm fine!! It's healing, you hear?!
I...I..."  Bright tears suddenly were streaming from her
eyes.  "I...I...I'm ....fine..."   She started crying, still
trying to pull away from him.  Sighing, he pulled her closer
and gathered her up in a hug; she stiffened, trying to shove
back from him, but he held on tightly.  She finally gave up
and slumped against him, sobbing quietly.  Bert continued to
quietly hold her, trying to offer some solace by his
presence.
       They sat like that for another few minutes, until
Priss managed to pull herself together again.  Bert pulled a
handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to her; she took
it, and again wiped her face dry with it, sniffling only
slightly as she sat a bit straighter, putting a slight gap
between them.  He ignored the hint, and kept one arm gently
around her shoulders.
     "Why didn't you say something about it sooner?" Bert
asked quietly.  "If I recall correctly, you're the one who
told me, several times, not to hide from problems."
     "That's different," she replied in a low voice.
     " `Do what I say, not what I do'?" Bert quoted, shaking
his head.  "Seems like a bit of a double standard to me."
     "You're not the one looking at the possibility of
being..." Priss faltered a bit, then swallowed and forced
the words out.  "Being crippled for the rest of your life."
     "You're not going to be crippled," he told her
fiercely.  "You're blowing this all out of proportion; just
because your leg isn't healing as fast as you'd like doesn't
mean that it's going to develop into a permanent
disability."
     "Oh yeah?" she retorted, wiping at her eyes.  "And just
what makes you such an expert?"
     "Experience," he replied soberly.  "Trust me, I know
what having to wait for something to heal feels like; it
never goes as fast as you'd like it to, no matter how minor
it may have seemed at the time.  Please, stop worrying so
much."
     "I can't help it," she muttered.  "It hurts most of the
time now...and...and..."  She faltered a bit, swallowing as
her eyes began brimming again.  "I....I....I'm scared; I
don't want to spend the rest of my life in pain, and
crippled because of it" she said in a low voice.  "I....I
just couldn't handle it."
     "Are you sure part of it isn't just psychological?" he
asked.  "You're so sure that it's not healing, that it could
be mostly in your mind.  As for pain," he shrugged, "that
can be endured."
     "What's that supposed to mean, `it can be endured'?!
How the hell would you know?!"
     "Because, I've been living with it for a while now," he
told her quietly.  "Remember when the Headhunter speared me
through the shoulder and chest?"
     "I'm not likely to forget something like that," she
replied, a trifle dryly.   Having one of her friends laying
in her lap, bleeding heavily, was not an experience she was
anxious to repeat.  She'd felt an awful horror at the time,
sure that he was dying right there in front of her.
     "Well, supposedly, it's one hundred percent healed," he
told her, carefully flexing his left arm, and rotating the
shoulder.  "I've been to a few specialists, and they've all
said the same thing.  Despite that, it's still painful at
times, almost like it's still torn up inside.  There's no
physically detectable reason for that to be the case, but it
still hurts occasionally."  He shrugged again.  "I've
learned to live with it; I hardly notice it anymore, but
it's there."
     "Oh."  Priss looked uncomfortable, and sat silently
after his revelation, uncertain of what to say.   She
shifted a bit on the bench, and stared at the floor, her
mind going over their conversation.  There was a possibility
he was right, but...she didn't want to go see a doctor, only
to have her fears confirmed, and find out that she was going
to have a painful handicap for the rest of her life.  That
thought scared her like nothing else ever had before.
     "You've got nothing to be afraid of," Bert spoke up
quietly, almost as if he was reading her mind.  She realized
that he was, more or less; their personalities had enough
similar quirks that he could probably predict fairly
accurately what her state of mind was like.  "I know it's
scary," he continued, "but trust me, you've got to get it
looked at.  I'm sure Sylia can direct you to some good,
discreet, orthopedic physicians; all you have to do is ask.
Okay?"  He reached out and tilted her chin up in order to
look into her eyes.  "Okay?" he repeated.  She nodded
slowly.
     "All right," she replied, sighing in resignation.
"I'll go this afternoon.  Satisfied?"
     "A little," he smiled briefly, then became serious.
"If you don't mind my asking, why'd you come in here by
yourself?  Couldn't Sylvie come in with you?"
     "I didn't want anyone else around," she mumbled.  "I
don't enjoy falling on my face in front of an audience.
I've been coming in by myself for a while now, trying to get
my damn leg back into shape."
     "Wait a minute," Bert interrupted, frowning.  "Linna's
been giving you rehab sessions, right?"
     "Right."
     "And you've been coming in here, by yourself, and
working out with your leg on top of that?"
     "Yeah.  So what's wrong with that?" she queried,
wondering why he was frowning.  Bert rolled his eyes,
shaking his head and putting a hand over his face, sighing
deeply.  He looked at the ceiling as if praying for
guidance, while Priss wondered what the problem was.
     "Hey, what's with you?" she prodded him, giving him a
quizzical look.
     "You've been overdoing it, that's what part of your
problem is," he told her, sighing and shaking his head
again.  "Priss, the ONLY exercise you were supposed to be
doing was the rehab sessions; they're meant to gradually
condition your muscles and bring them back to normal
strength.  By doing all that extra exercise, you haven't
been giving it a chance to heal.  You're your own worst
enemy sometimes, you know that?"
     "I didn't have a choice," she said tightly.  "I've got
to get this leg back into shape, and I figured exercising it
would help."
     "Why? What's the rush?" he inquired.  "It's not like
we've had a lot to do lately."  Priss didn't reply, her
expression turning tight.  She turned away from him
slightly, folding her arms across her chest, a look of
anguish crossing her features.  Bert squeezed her shoulder
gently, reassuringly.  "Priss?"
     "My...band has a concert in two weeks," she said
quietly.  "We've been practicing a bit, but with my leg the
way it is, I can't get up on stage.  If..." She swallowed,
starting to tremble a bit, then clamped some ironclad
control on herself, forcing her voice to remain steady.
"If...if I can't ... perform by the concert date, then ...
they're going to have to find someone else to sing lead."
Bert wordlessly hugged her again, and this time she hugged
him back immediately, seeking reassurance in the warmth of
their embrace.
     "You won't have to worry about that happening," he told
her, giving her a brotherly squeeze.  "If you get your leg
looked at, and take it easy in the interim, I'm sure you'll
be fine."
     "I sure hope so," she replied morosely, sitting up and
pulling away from him.  Singing was one of her great joys,
and losing that on top of everything else would be an awful
blow.  She suddenly looked lost and alone as she sat there
contemplating her future.
     Almost before he realized he was doing it, Bert reached
out, tilting her chin up gently with his hand, leaning
forwards while pulling her a bit closer at the same time,
and softly kissed Priss 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, and her arms came up, sliding around him
in a hug.
     After what seemed like a long moment or so, he pulled
back, and she flushed a deep red colour, releasing him,
suddenly feeling embarrassed and awkward for some strange
reason.  He appeared to be in a similar state, turning a
bright crimson colour, quickly looking away from her.
     "I, um, I'm sure everything will be fine," he told her,
flushing again.  "Just, uh, don't do overdo it anymore,
okay?"  He quickly retreated before she could do anything to
stop him, and fled 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.


[A lot later....]

     Leon ducked frantically as blazing energy streams
slashed the air around the police lines; troopers either
yelled and dove for cover, or dropped dead in their tracks
as they were blasted by a stray shot.   All over the street,
police vehicles became airborne with shattering explosions,
being propelled by rapidly expanding blossoms of flame and
smoke.  Steel scrap and shrapnel shrieked through the air in
a deadly projectile storm.
     Leon swore bitterly again, ducking with one arm up,
shielding his face from flying debris while fumbling for his
handgun.  Yet more names to add to the `killed in the line
of duty' roster, and he knew with a sickening certainty that
it wasn't going to be the last time, either.  A nagging
voice in the back of his mind, one that had become
increasingly more vocal lately, asked him just what the hell
he thought he was doing.  Here he was all over again,
ducking imminent death from rampaging biomechanoids, while
more good men bought it around him.  WHY?!  Why the hell did
he stay with such a lousy job, when all it did was come
within an ace of always getting him killed, and bring
nothing but unending bullshit from the bureaucracy?!
     Energy screamed through the air, and Leon gasped in
pained surprise, jerking aside just a fraction of a second
too late to prevent his jacket sleeve from getting burned
off.  The stink of charred cloth and crisped hair filled his
nose, and biting, stinging pain from his right arm made his
eyes water, and almost caused him to drop his pistol.
Swearing again, Leon dropped flat to the pavement, trying to
avoid landing on his seared arm, and rolled over and over
until he found the dubious protection of a concrete bench
near what had been a bus stop shelter.  He came to stop with
his back propped slightly up against the side of the bench,
wincing as his arm complained about the movement.
     Gasping for breath in the smoky haze that was slowly
crawling along the street, Leon gritted his teeth and
glanced at his arm; the skin was extremely red along his
forearm, up to his elbow, and there were more than a few
white blisters and welts that were forming.  Some blood was
trickling from where he'd unknowingly ripped the skin by
dropping and rolling, but it didn't look nearly as serious
as the burns.  As if looking at the damage had been a
signal, the nerve endings in his injured arm trebled their
anguish, almost making him black out from the pain.
     Gulping and clenching his teeth to keep from throwing
up, the ADP inspector tore his gaze away from the burned
flesh.  Eyes closed, he took several deep breaths, trying to
steady himself.  While it looked serious, the fact that he
could feel pain from it meant that it wasn't a very deep
burn, thank God.  He set his gun across his leg long enough
to wipe suddenly sweaty hands on his pants, and again
grasped the butt.  Bracing himself, Leon lifted the gun, and
rolled over to his elbows; sweat broke out on his face as he
managed to keep from yelling out loud, and he carefully
peered past the end of the bench.
     And found himself staring at a crimson-armoured leg.
     Leon yelped in surprise as he lunged to his knees
instinctively, falling over backwards in his haste to get
away.  He was just barely in time, as a downward-driving,
artificially-muscled arm drove a wide blade of some kind
into the asphalt where his chest had been.  The knuckles of
the red boomer's hand crunched against the pavement a second
later.  Leon crabbed backwards frantically, his gun
skittering away as he forgot everything, even his wounded
arm, his only thought survival.
     Yellow eyes flashed, as the killer biomechanoid grinned
evilly; it pulled its arm back from the binding pavement,
the long arm blade scraping free of its concrete sheath with
a nerve-grating scraping noise.  A rumbling growl, almost
like a mechnical purr, rolled out of the boomer as it slowly
advanced on the wounded ADP officer.  It disdainfully
ignored the scattered weapons fire from the few remaining
ADP troopers, the jacketed slugs whining uselessly off of
its metallic carapace into the night, and continued to
remorselessly advance on the retreating inspector.
     Leon felt his guts shrivel in fear as the boomer loomed
over him, his mouth going dry.  A second arm blade deployed
from the boomer's other arm, and both of its arms swung up
and back in what was obviously intended to be a double chop
at the sprawled officer.
     Leon tried to scrabble away again, but found he'd run
out of room to maneuver as his back touched the blasted
concrete of a building wall.  Weary resignation suddenly
filled him; after several years, it appeared like he was
finally going to die at the hands of a rogue boomer.  His
eyes found the glittering edges of the boomer's arm blades,
and watched with morbid fascination as they started to
descend.  A booming voice suddenly overrode the crackling
fires and explosions, crashing into the scene like a rock
thrown through a plate glass window.
     "Mind if I cut in?"
     At the question, the crimson biomechanoid spun in mid-
strike, blades whistling through the air towards where the
electronic voice had come from; there was a grinding, steely
crash, and sparks flew through the air as they were blocked
by another pair of long blades, blades that were attached to
a towering, silver-and-blue armour suit's arms.
     "Now that wasn't very hospitable," SkyKnight remarked
mildly.  "In fact, I'd say it was downright unfriendly."
The red eyeslot on his helmet flared brightly, then subsided
into a deep, burning red colour.  "Suits me just fine."
Leon could hear the suppressed eagerness in the Knight
Saber's voice, despite the electronic filtering; he wanted a
fight, badly, from the sound of it.  Leon tried to keep calm
as he realized things hadn't necessarily improved with
SkyKnight's arrival.
     "Identity confirmed: SkyKnight," the red combat machine
suddenly stated in grating tones.  Leon stiffened, staring
at the hulking boomer that was standing toe-to-toe with the
smaller battlesuit; it was the first time he'd ever heard a
combat boomer speak, a precedent he would have been quite
happy not to have been witness to.  The boomer continued its
verbal analysis. "Procedure: Exterminate.  Estimated Threat
Level: Moderate."
     "That's all?" SkyKnight rumbled back.  "Let's see if I
can't make you re-evaluate that appraisal."  The silver clad
warrior suddenly spun slightly, dropping to his right knee,
while kicking out with his other leg.  The kick connected
solidly with the boomer's leg, just below its knee.  Caught
by surprise, the boomer crashed heavily to the asphalt on
its knees as its leg folded under the unexpected blow.
     SkyKnight belted the crimson boomer backwards with a
roundhouse right to the head, using the momentum generated
by the punch to spin himself back to his feet as the boomer
clanged onto the pavement on its back.  Moving with blurring
speed, SkyKnight dropped under a particle beam shot from the
supine boomer, and seized its feet.  With a grunting heave,
the silver-blue hardsuit jerked the boomer up from the
pavement, and whipped it through the air, over his head, to
slam it facefirst into the burned pavement of the street.
Having succeeded in clearing the boomer away from Leon,
SkyKnight flipped into the air on hissing jets, and landed
again in the center of the street, a few meters further up
from the boomer.
     Roaring in mechanical fury, the red boomer surged
upright, and began stomping after the silver hardsuit.  It
was stopped in its tracks momentarily by a thundering blast
of red-white energy that clawed holes into its armour, but
it resumed its implacable forward advance a moment later,
narrowing the gap between it and the waiting silver
gladiator.  SkyKnight dropped into a ready crouch, his left
side towards the boomer, feet set shoulder-width apart, with
his left arm extended  towards the boomer, ready to parry
incoming strikes, and his right arm held back to deliver a
response to whatever the boomer might try.
     What the hell is he waiting for?!, Leon's hazy mind
wondered; it was becoming difficult maintaining his
concentration on what was going on, and he dimly realized he
was going into shock.  He blinked his eyes, squinting at the
scene in front of him, trying to figure out SkyKnight's
tactics;  the ADP officer had seen enough to be able to
recognize his posture as preparing to meet someone, or
something, in hand-to-hand combat.  Why the hell didn't he
just shoot the goddamn thing?!  The dimly-lit scene in his
vision swam and then blurred; darkness flooded across his
sight in a rushing torrent, and he realized he'd lost the
battle to retain his grip on consciousness.
     Just before Leon dropped into the black softness of the
void, he heard SkyKnight address the rogue biomechanoid.
     "Okay, you bastard:  Let's dance."
                            ****