The late afternoon sun was slowly sinking in the west as two young men struggled and strained to get several large black cases through the doors to the Arts Lecture Hall. It was not going well; the doors seemed determined to close at exactly the moment where they would catch on some of the handles on the cases. At last, they got the last case into the building, and trundled them on baggage carts to room #116. After some more strenuous effort, they carted the cases down the stairs to the bottom of the vaguely amphitheater-like room, and began unpacking them. A huge speaker, stereo equipment, and video projector arrangement began to take shape, with the tangled maze of electrical cables leading to the central desk. At the desk, the wires were connected to a stack of laserdisc players and VCRs. A huge projection screen deployed from the ceiling at the push of a button. One of the men, a young man in his early twenties dressed in blue jeans and a white T-shirt finally straightened up, grimacing at the twinges from his back. Sweeping his blond hair back from his face, he shoved his glasses back onto his nose, looking at his companion. "That it?" he asked. His cohort shook his head. He was also in his early twenties, brown haired, wearing blue jeans and a blue T-shirt. "One more piece of equipment," he said. "It's in that last box over there." "I sure hope this is worth it," the blond man panted as they heaved what looked like a super-complicated amplifier console into position. "Hey, YOU were the one who volunteered to do the sound for the movie night," his buddy wheezed back. "We could have used the Audio Visual Centre equipment, but nooooo. You just had to try out your stuff." "Don't worry, it'll work," the blond man said defensively. He quickly attached the appropriate cables, and turned on the power to the equipment pile. The amplifier panel lit up in a flare of LED lights, as the speakers began to hum ominously. The brown-haired man watched, shaking his head disbelievingly. "Keith," he said, "you've got to be the only person on campus who's taking all those physics and electronics courses just so you can build a better sound and video system. Most people have loftier goals in mind." "This is a lofty goal," Keith retorted. "I'm going to entertain people. Besides, it's more noble than taking Philosophy just so you can meet girls." His friend reddened, then changed the subject. "So what movies are they watching tonight?" he asked. Keith looked over at him in exasperation, twiddling knobs and dials. "Come on, Jeff! They've only had posters about it up for three weeks now! Look at one; you might find reading for a change a novel experience." Jeff stalked over to a billboard, muttering under his breath. Keith could hear him as he read aloud. "Bubblegum Crisis #2 to #4, Project A-Ko, Moldiver, Riding Bean, and a few others. Not bad! Sounds pretty good to me," he remarked, walking back over to where Keith was making some final adjustments. Jeff frowned at the controls, noticing something. "What the hell is this switch for?" he asked, pointing. Underneath a button labeled `Dolby Surround Sound' was another labeled `Multi-Dimensional Effects". Keith glanced at it, and shrugged. "I dunno," he replied. "It was on there when I bought the parts. Probably nothing." He didn't notice as Jeff tabbed the switch. Nothing happened. Jeff shrugged himself, and turned to loading the VCRs and laserdiscs for the show. At length, the two men finished setting up. Jeff looked at his watch, which told him it was 11:00 am.. The show wasn't due to start until 4:30 pm. "Come on," he said. "I think we've got time for a couple of beers at the Bombshelter before we start everything. I'm buying." His friend grinned at that, and the two left, locking the door to the lecture hall behind them. Once alone, the strange amplifier unit began to glow an eerie blue-white colour. A strange, pulsating hum throbbed from the speakers, and LED lights flashed erratically from the front display. Blue lightning arced over the amplifier, lashing out to caress the VCRs and laserdisc machines. Their displays flickered, and their internal mechanisms spun briefly. The lightning changed colour, becoming reddish, as it crackled all over. The room was briefly filled with coruscating red light as the bolts forked out, splattering into the walls and ceiling of the lecture hall, writhing around the walls and ceiling like electrified snakes. Abruptly, silence and relative darkness returned to the room. On the main display screen of the amplifier, a small readout message flashed repeatedly: "MULTI-DIMENSIONAL EFFECTS ENABLED". SkyKnight Productions Proudly Presents A NonTechnical Film "The Bubblegum Zone" Weirdly Warped Reality or A Truly Twisted Tale Copyright (c) 1995 - Bert Van Vliet "They just don't build them like they used to," SkyKnight complained to no one in particular as he watched a blue C-55 boomer crumple into a shattered heap. Off to his right, a blue hardsuit with red helmet and leg stripes snorted at his observation, as the C-55 it had been fighting collapsed sparking and twitching. The tail end of several railgun spikes were protruding from between its eyes. "You poor fella," Priss said in patently false sympathy. "That's only been your eighth boomer of the night. Maybe if you cut back a little you'd get more enjoyment out of it." "Hah!" he replied, snorting himself. "You just want me to cut back so you can have the leftovers for yourself!" "Do we really have to listen to you two hash over that argument again?!" Nene asked as she walked up to them. "Give it a rest, please!" SkyKnight chuckled and bowed to her. "Your wish is my command, O fairest of ladies," he stated extravagantly, straightening up. "This humble knight but wishes to ...... OOOF!" He doubled over again, involuntarily this time, as Priss irritably elbowed him in the stomach. "Hey!" Nene protested. "What'd you do that for?! He was just getting started!" "We've heard it before," Priss retorted disgustedly. "I don't need to listen to the `honourable knight-in-shining- armour' routine again." Linna laughed as she walked up to them. "You're just jealous that I don't talk to you that way," SkyKnight wheezed as he forced himself upright again. He dodged Priss' irritated swipe at his head as she spluttered indignantly. "You two are worse than a pair of kids at times," Sylia told them as her white hardsuit emerged from the darkness and walked up to them. "He/She started it!" SkyKnight and Priss chorused defensively, pointing at each other. Sylia shook her head ruefully, and decided to not fan the flames any further. "Come on, let's get out of here," she ordered. The Knight Sabers began walking through the deserted construction site. As they walked along, what sounded like thunder rumbled sullenly in the distance. SkyKnight looked up, but saw only clear sky. The thunder rumbled ominously again, sounding closer. "Odd," he remarked. "Thunder, but no clouds." Linna shrugged. "Weather forecasts are hardly ever right," she observed. "Maybe it's from a small cloudbank somewhere." Nene suddenly spoke up. "Um, Sylia?" she said nervously. "I'm picking up an awful lot of ionization in the air suddenly, and it seems to be localized to this area." Sylia's helmet swung to regard Nene's red-pink hardsuit. "Any ideas what's causing it?" she queried. Nene's helmet shook negatively. "Let's get out of here then," Sylia ordered again, uneasy now. She broke into a sprint, suddenly anxious, and the rest of the Knight Sabers followed her. As they sprinted through an area interlaced with exposed steel girders from unfinished building work, it happened. The air between the girders suddenly became alive with crackling red lightning bolts. The bolts sizzled and spat, arcing and forking between all the beams and girders, fencing the Sabers into a small square area as they skidded to a halt. The temperature of the air shot up, becoming uncomfortably warm. The harsh red light flickered wildly as the stunned hardsuits stood staring at the leaping energy streams. "What is going on?!" Priss, Linna, and Sylia all shouted in unison over the electrical noises, looking at Nene. "I don't know!!" she wailed. "All my sensors are going crazy!!" SkyKnight stood amazed and silent, staring at the strange lightshow. It was unlike anything he'd ever seen before, but it was also causing some weird, undefinable suspicions to form in his mind. With a sudden, deafening thunderclap, several crimson lightning bolts lashed out from the seething energy vortices, striking each of the Knight Sabers. A moment later, the strange electrical display disappeared. Silence fell, and a faint breeze mournfully blew some scrap papers and dust through the area where the Knight Sabers had been standing mere seconds earlier. **** Birds twittered in the trees, as the wind rustled pine needles and leaves in a gentle caress. Squirrels scampered playfully along the paved paths between brown brick buildings, leaping into and out of the hedges and plant beds, occasionally begging for handouts from passers-by. A few people wandered aimlessly along, backpacks slung over their shoulders, enjoying the cool breeze. The occasional racing bicycle whizzed past the pedestrians, momentarily breaking the serenity of the early afternoon. Over on a bench, a short, bespectacled, black-haired young man pulled a textbook out of his knapsack and started reading. The quiet of the afternoon was destroyed irrevocably by a shattering blast of sound that pealed through the air, scaring the birds into flight and driving the squirrels into hiding. The stunned pedestrians in the area watched as a jagged, red rift suddenly appeared in mid air. Displaced air howled as crimson lightning bolts crackled, and five figures were spat from the rift. Five futuristic-looking armour suits crashed into the hedge next to the Biology building with a clattering bang. The rift abruptly disappeared with a roaring implosion, and the air became still again. The five figures stirred, while most of the witnesses in the area fled in panic; what they had just witnessed violated their comfortable notions of reality, and they didn't want to confront anything else like that. A hardy few remained, gaping in amazement as a silver-and-blue armoured suit dragged itself out of the greenery and began helping the other armour suits up. There were five altogether, white, green, blue, red/pink, and of course, the silver-and-blue one. It was the only male, the other four were obviously female. The suits climbed over the small stone wall separating the hedge from the sidewalk, and leaned against it to catch their breath. "Owwww," Priss groaned, rubbing her neck. "Somebody get the number of that truck." She stretched cautiously, making sure everything was intact. "What happened?! Where are we, anyway?" Linna asked groggily, also stretching. Sylia shrugged, looking around at the brick buildings and trees. SkyKnight, however, was standing in stunned amazement, his head swiveling around. "Almighty God," he breathed, sounding more like he was praying than swearing. "What is it? What's wrong?" Nene asked. His red eyeslot swung to regard her. "I know where we are," he said, still dazed-sounding. "Well then where the hell are we?!?!" Sylia and the rest all chorused. "You're probably not going to believe this," he paused, looking around again just to be sure, "but we appear to be on the campus of the University of Waterloo, Canada." Stunned silence fell for a few moments. "But ....but ... but that would mean that ..." Priss stammered. "We all got dimensionally displaced," he finished for her. Having had it happen to him once before, he was handling it a little better than they were. "I don't think I can handle this," Linna said faintly. "How did we get here? And why?" Bert shrugged. "Search me," he replied. "All I can say is that I am positive that this is my old university." "Well we can't sit here all day and discuss it," Sylia interrupted. She was looking at the small crowd of amazed students gathering nearby. "Is there anywhere we can go to talk this over and decide what to do next?" She seemed to be handling the sudden inversion of reality better than the rest of the Knight Sabers. Bert nodded. "I know a reasonably good spot," he replied. "We can even get something to eat at the same time. I think we could all use something to settle our nerves a bit." They agreed, and everyone stood up and followed SkyKnight as he strode off towards the north through the tangle of nearby buildings. They stuck fairly close to him as he walked, and he pointed out the buildings as they passed, sounding like a tour guide. "We landed next to Biology over there," he said pointing. "That's Earth Sciences over there, the Chemistry Building, the Davis Library ...." Sylia noticed something peculiar as they marched along: most of the students weren't even twitching an eyebrow at the appearance of a group of armour suits walking around the campus. "Don't you find it strange that no one is even raising an eyebrow over our appearance here?" she asked Bert. He shrugged. "Not really," he replied. "University students are used to weird things happening on campus." He was interrupted by two bulky figures running past them. Both appeared to be weaing a strange combination of plastic, steel, and leather that resembled medieval armour. They were carrying what looked like shields, and padded sticks made to look like swords. "C'mon!!" the one shouted to the other as they ran clanking by. "We're going to be late for fighter practice!!" Sylia stared in disbelief at the retreating armoured figures. So did the other Sabers, except SkyKnight. He acted as if it was a normal occurrence. "See what I mean?" he asked. "Like I said, there's all kinds of stuff going on all the time." "Who were those guys?" Nene inquired. "SCA members." "Huh?!" "Sorry," he apologized. "The SCA is a group that recreates a lot of the stuff from the middle ages like arts and crafts. Some of them also recreate the armour and fighting of the period. They build themselves some period armour, and then thump on each other with sticks." "You were involved with that, right?" Priss asked. He nodded. "I was involved in some of the events, although I never did get the chance to try the fighting out. Too bad, though; it always looked like fun." "You," Priss told him, "are crazy." He chuckled. They walked past a large building that had some kind of plaza built at the north end. At the south end, a patio stuck out from the building, and several tables with parasols sat around it. Music was blasting from the open doors, and the raucous clamour of students drinking blared out with it. The refrain of the music playing at the moment was REM's "It's the end of the world as we know it!", and Bert had to fight off the shudders that the thought produced. "What's that place?" Priss asked. "The Bombshelter. It's a bar," he replied, stating the patently obvious. "Hey, I could really use a beer right about now," Priss said, veering towards the patio. Sylia reached out and snagged her arm before she could stray too much. "Later," she said firmly. "If we have time, we'll all stop by." They followed Bert as he continued to clank along, towards a distant set of brown buildings. **** "You actually used to eat this stuff all the time?" Linna asked as they carried their trays through the cafeteria doors into the relatively empty blue dining room of the Village One residences. The `stuff' in question was, of course, cafeteria food. Bert nodded. "It wasn't always bad," he replied. "This was just one of their not-so-good nights." They sat at an unoccupied table. The women suddenly seemed unsure of what to do next; they were still wearing their helmets. Bert merely reached up and pulled his off, setting it over on the next chair. He looked over at them. "I don't think you need to worry about your identities here," he told them. He didn't bother telling them that anyone who watched anime would know them anyway. He also didn't mention the one other peculiarity he'd noticed: everyone was speaking English, perfectly. It was the same sort of thing he'd noticed when he'd ended up in MegaTokyo: the ability to speak and read the language just appeared out of nowhere. He wasn't complaining, since it saved a lot of trouble. They sighed and pulled off their helmets, Priss and Nene shaking out their hair in relief. They started eating, although Linna and Priss seemed less than enthusiastic about their meals. Bert didn't comment; he'd warned them about trying the cafeteria pasta. Complicating things was the fact that the hardsuits really weren't meant to be worn as dinner attire. They persevered though, and managed to finish most of their dinner. "The cashier seemed a little shocked when we walked through," Nene suddenly commented. Bert grinned at her. "A lot of strange things happen in residence," he replied, "but I think this counts as a unique experience." She nodded, smiling wryly at his statement. "Oh, it's unique all right," she agreed. Silence descended on the group for a moment. Priss suddenly jumped out of her chair as her remaining spaghetti started slithering off the plate. She turned green-looking, and looked like she was about to throw up. Bert looked at the roaming pasta, then calmly reached over and thwacked it with a spoon. The slithering noodles whimpered, retreated to the plate, and curled up again. "You just have to know how to handle these things," he explained as they stared at him incredulously. "You should see what the Jello does sometimes." Priss turned even greener, covering her mouth with her hand. Sylia, Linna and Nene didn't look too good, either. "Shut up!" Priss gagged. "I don't want to know!!" A mildly evil grin spread across Bert's face. "Of course," he noted, still grinning, "I guess I should warn you about the ...." He ducked as a fork sped past his head, and shut up. Priss glared at him as she shakily sat down again, keeping some distance between her and the strange spaghetti. She was about to speak when they were interrupted by a voice. "Heeyy! Howzabout you and me going somewhere and having some fun, sexy?" it asked. A rather large, slightly intoxicated individual wearing a football sweater staggered up, and leaned on Priss' armoured shoulder. At his proposition, Priss began to turn red and her eyes narrowed dangerously. Before she could seriously cripple or kill the poor bugger, Bert slapped his leftover piece of lemon meringue pie into the guy's face. The football player jerked back in surprise, trying to pull it off. Unfortunately, the rubbery, gluey mass was stuck tight, and after a few moments, he collapsed from lack of air. Bert leaned over, peeling the pie piece off; his hardsuit strength made it relatively easy for him to accomplish, although he almost took the guy's face with it. He briefly regretted the fact that he didn't have the time to fully analyze the polymer properties of the pie, and chucked it into the garbage can. "I was quite capable of handling that," Priss told him frostily. "Sorry," he apologized, "but shooting someone in the cafeteria is a little frowned upon, here at least." "Interesting method you used to shut him up," Sylia commented. He grinned, but restrained the observations on cafeteria food that sprang to mind. Silence returned for a few moments. "So, now what do we do?" Linna asked. "I'd say wander the campus some more and see if we can figure out what's going on," Bert replied. Sylia nodded. "It sounds about the best," she agreed. "Besides, you know more about this place than we do." "Let's go then," Priss said, grabbing her helmet and jamming it on. "I'm going to stop by the Village Grill first and pick up a couple of things," Bert spoke up as everyone else stood. "It might not be a bad idea to carry a drink or something along with us." Everyone put on their helmets and followed him out of the dining room, dropping their trays on the return counter as they left. As the last hardsuit left the dining hall, the dormant noodles stirred, then slithered off the plate, crawling across the table. The starchy mass started crawling across the carpeted floor to the doors, leaving a trail of tomato sauce behind it. **** "What the hell is `Jolt'?" Priss asked, looking the pop counter over. A gleaming forest of multi-coloured aluminum cans looked back at her. Bert grinned as his helmet swung over to regard her. "Jolt is the student's answer to needing sleep," he replied cryptically. "It's pop that has about six times the normal caffeine and sugar of normal pop. People who have to stay up late and study consume it by the gallon. I think the record I've seen is about fifteen cans in one night, but I've never tried it myself." Priss shuddered and moved on, looking through some of the other merchandise. SkyKnight looked at the pop cans for a moment, then grabbed a couple of cans of Jolt, sticking them in a bag. Paying for his purchases, he left, Priss following along, going outside to where the remainder of the group loitered. They were all leaning on the wall of the building, trying to look inconspicuous, without much success; several students were walking by, staring wide-eyed at the hardsuits. "Let's go," Sylia said as they came out of the store, and everyone moved off. **** Keith and Jeff crouched next to the humming amplifier and audio-visual equipment, waiting for the signal to start rolling the films. The lecture hall was crammed to capacity; approximately two hundred rabid anime fans were sitting in their seats, impatiently waiting for the films to start. Down in the front of the hall, the president of `Ctrl-A', pronounced `Control-A', the university's official anime club was welcoming everyone, and giving a quick spiel on what the club was about for the newcomers in the audience. As they waited, Jeff suddenly noticed something. "Hey!" he whispered, pointing. "Look! The amplifier screen says the `multi-dimensional effects' are working! What's that mean?" Keith shrugged impatiently. "How the hell am I supposed to know?!" he whispered back irritably. He cut off further discussion as they got the signal to start. The laserdisc player hummed softly as Keith hit the switch, and the opening notes of "Mad Machine" began to boom in the lecture hall. No one noticed the faint red sparks that were arcing around the rear connections of the amplifier. **** "Come on," Linna said disgustedly. "We've been wandering for hours now, and we still haven't found anything. Maybe there's nothing to find." "Don't say things like that!" Nene snapped. The prospect of being stranded years and miles from home was scaring her. Bert placed an arm around her shoulder reassuringly; he knew how she felt, having had the same problem when he'd first shifted dimensions. "Don't worry," he said soothingly. "I'm sure something will ...." A flaring red flash cut him short. The Knight Sabers were caught flat-footed and knocked sprawling like bowling pins as a massive red boomer shot through them. Everyone rolled over and got to their feet as the boomer swung around and dropped to the ground to confront them. "Oh SHIT!!!!" Priss exclaimed. "It's the Super Boomer!!!!!" It was indeed the huge red boomer with the blue eyes that had been fitted with the black box control mechanism for the orbital satellites. The crimson biomechanoid snarled at them, its armoured form towering over the surprised Knight Sabers. "That's impossible!!" Sylia exclaimed. "We already killed it once!" "So it's the Super Boomer," SkyKnight snorted, shrugging carelessly. "Big deal. There aren't any orbital beam satellites here for it to ....." He stopped speaking as, with an earth-shattering scream, a brilliant blue-white shaft of light from the sky blasted the nearby East Side Mario's bar/restaurant in the small shopping plaza next to the university into a smoking, burning pile of rubble. "Forget I just said that," SkyKnight said after a moment of shocked silence. "Kill the bastard!!!!!!" The Knight Sabers surged towards the awesome boomer. **** "Okay folks," the club president announced. "Our next two films are Bubblegum Crisis #3, and Project: A-Ko. Relax and enjoy the show." Keith and Jeff punched buttons, and twiddled knobs. The laserdiscs whirred again, and again red sparks flitted around the back of the amplifier. **** "Is everyone okay?" Sylia asked, as the headless red boomer toppled to the pavement. Everyone answered affirmatively. At least this time, they didn't have to flee an exploding factory, she thought to herself. As they watched, the boomer's body slowly faded away. "Hey!! What the hell is this?!" Priss demanded. "Yeah!" Linna added. "Just what is going on here?!" They all looked at SkyKnight accusingly, and he put up his hands to ward off the glares he could feel, if not see. "Don't look at me!!" he protested. "I'm as much in the dark as you are!" "Knight Sabers, welcome to your deaths!!!" a familiar, cold voice spoke from behind them. The Sabers spun, and found themselves faced by the all- too-familiar dark grey and black GENOM battlesuit last worn by Brian J. Mason. For a dead man, he looked remarkably healthy. His visor was up, and he was glaring at them with that cold, haughty look he'd perfected. "Mason!" Sylia gasped. "Impossible! You're dead! You have to be!" Mason's eyebrow twitched upwards. Behind him, a red-haired girl in a blue and white school uniform of some kind streaked past, running at superhuman speeds. SkyKnight stiffened in shock as he recognized her. Mason was about to speak further, when a girl's voice bellowed a war cry through the air. "AKAGIYAMA MISSILES!!!!" it shrieked. "OH SHIT!!! HIT THE DIRT!!!!" SkyKnight yelled, catching all of the other Knight Sabers in a sweeping tackle, as a hailstorm of missiles hit Mason and his suit. There was a shattering explosion, and Mason pitched over backwards with a clang, minus his head and a good portion of his torso armour. "If he wasn't dead before, he sure as hell is now," Priss noted as she untangled herself and picked herself up off of the ground. As the rest of the hardsuits stood up again, Mason's body disappeared, and a girl in a very risque purple suit of armour with long, dark-coloured hair went flying by. "Stop the world, I want to get off!" SkyKnight groaned. A-Ko and B-Ko, he thought to himself. Great, just great. There wasn't going to be a campus left by the time those two were finished. From what he remembered of the movies, they weren't going to be able to just shoot them to stop them, either; they were both able to handle incredible amounts of damage. Some faint capacity in the back of his mind was protesting the absurdity of what was happening, but he ignored it. "We've got to stop those two!" he declared. "They'll wreck the whole goddamn town if we don't!!" "You know who that was?" Sylia asked. "Yes!!" he replied. "That was World War Three that just passed us! I'll explain later!!" SkyKnight's flight wings snapped up, and he took off on snarling jets after the duelling girls. After a moment, the other Knight Sabers followed him. **** There was a brief pause in the program as Jeff swapped laserdiscs and VCR tapes. The audience muttered restlessly as he examined the old discs, and inserted the new ones. "Am I imagining things, or is that a burn mark on that disc?" he asked Keith under his breath. Keith examined the disc, frowning. "Yeah, it is," he replied. "I don't know how it got there, though. Use the other machine for now. What's next, anyway?" "Moldiver, Crisis #4, and Riding Bean." **** "You aren't paying me enough for this shit," Bert told Sylia as he pried himself out from under the slab of concrete that had landed on him. Across the parking lot from the now ruined Engineering 2 building, A-Ko and B-Ko pounded on each other with reckless anger and enthusiasm, destroying cars and pavement. The rest of the Knight Sabers were crawling out of the wreckage of the building around them, shoving aside pieces of masonry, and coughing in the dust cloud that had resulted from the building's destruction. "As I recall," Sylia told him tartly, "you were the one who wanted to stop them, not me, so don't start griping about pay! Besides, this is an unpaid excursion, not a mission!" Another explosion boomed across the campus, cutting her off. "Aw no, not the Chemistry Building!!!" Bert groaned, as the building collapsed inwards with a spray of dust and bricks. Across the horizon, there was another flare of red lightning. Bert had noticed that each flare preceded the appearance of something new, and was trying to reach some kind of conclusion as to what was happening. So far, he hadn't had much success. The Knight Sabers got to their feet, and prepared to go after A-Ko and B-Ko again. At the exact same time, an echoing voice rolled across the campus. "METAMORFOOOOOOOOORCE!!!!!!!" a girl yelled. "Oh my God," Bert whined, "not her too!!!" Sylia was about to ask what he was talking about, when a leggy young girl with long brown hair appeared. She had on a really strange looking outfit; a red helmet with a blue visor, a red cape that looked like a blanket tied on, a white top, and a pink skirt. She looked across at the rampaging A-Ko and B-Ko, frowning, while the Knight Sabers stared at her. "This has got to stop!" she declared. She flew over towards the two duelists, somehow, and stepped between them. Without missing a beat, A-Ko and B-Ko both swung at her, angry at being interrupted. There was a white flash and a thunderclap. When the air had cleared again, the strangely clad girl was unharmed, while A-Ko and B-Ko had vanished. "Oh God, why me?!" Bert was saying, not quite to himself, in a strangled voice. "Why Moldiver?!? Why not something reasonable, like a dragon or something?!?!" **** "When's the Lodoss War tape coming up?" Keith whispered. "Not for a while yet." **** SkyKnight went sailing backwards, smashing through the wall of the building behind him. Dust and bricks flew everywhere amidst a loud, rumbling crash. He hit the floor on the other side of the wall, skidding along the slick surface. The battered hardsuit came to a set of stairs, and bounced helplessly down them to land in a clanging heap at the bottom. As he dazedly rolled to his feet, Moldiver stepped through the hole she'd made with him, and followed him, flying slowly down the stairs. "All right, where is he?" she demanded as she approached. "Where's the professor?" "I keep telling you I don't know!!! We don't work for him!!!!" Bert snarled. It figured, he thought disgustedly. Mirai had automatically assumed that the armour suits of the Knight Sabers meant that they were working for the wacko Professor who called himself the `Supreme Technologist'. She wasn't believing his protestations of innocence, and was wiping the floor with him, trying to get answers. Bert didn't figure he had the time to wait for the 666 second time limit on her Moldiver unit to expire. He suddenly turned and blasted through the front door on his jets in an explosion of glass and metal. He hadn't made it too far when Mirai tackled him, grinding him faceplate-first into the asphalt surface of the road outside the building. Why me?! he complained to himself as she pulled him upright. A sudden idea flashed; it was absolutely ludicrous, but given what was going on at the moment, he figured it had a good chance of working. Cranking his suit musculature systems to overdrive briefly, Bert spun and caught Moldiver by surprise with a throw, pitching her back into the semi-wrecked building. The two cans of Jolt he'd bought earlier popped from the arm- guard slots in his armour. He'd discovered earlier that they actually fit into the storage slots, making it much easier to carry them than carting a bag around. Shaking the two cans furiously, he pitched them with all the power he could at Mirai, who was walking back out of the building. He followed the cans with a quick particle laser shot. There was a tremendous explosion, and a flare of flames and smoke accompanied the blast. SkyKnight was knocked over by the shockwave, and the building that had been Needles Hall, home of the Registrar's office, collapsed in a rumble of grinding masonry and crashing glass, as a massive mushroom-shaped cloud of smoke and flames belched into the sunny afternoon sky. A blackened figure with wide, white eyes, and crisped long hair stood in the middle of the wreckage for a moment, then faded away. SkyKnight started chuckling to himself as he stood up. "The one thing even Moldiver can't withstand," he chortled. "Jolt cola!" He was still laughing his head off as Sylia and the other Knight Sabers came running up. "What happened?!" Sylia demanded. "Where'd that girl go?" "How'd you stop her?" Linna added. It was too much; Bert fell over, crashing helplessly to the asphalt, laughing maniacally. "Caffeine overdose!!" he howled, gasping for air. "I love it!!!!" "That's it, he's finally flipped out," Priss declared, shaking her head. **** Once SkyKnight had recovered enough to walk, the Knight Sabers moved south along the sidewalks, still trying to locate the source of the strange phenomena that had been taking place. Nene's sensors were picking up strange energy readings, but nothing definite enough to trace. They were walking quietly along, minding their own business, when Priss was just about flattened by a drag-racing pair of bicyclists who were using the sidewalk instead of the road. "Watch where you're going, you dweebs!" they shouted at the group of hardsuits as they veered onto the road and continued racing up it. "Why those lousy...." Priss sputtered. "Watch where you're going yourself, you assholes!!!" she shouted after them. "Somebody ought to teach them a lesson," Linna commented. At the exact same time as she said that, there was another red flash. The Knight Sabers stared as a sleek, black armoured car shot up Ring Road towards the bikers. Propelled by a massive jet turbine in the rear, the black car caught up to the cyclists, and rammed them off the road. The hapless bikers ended up flying into the small pond located just in front of the Health Services building, while their bikes were mulched into crumpled scrap by the big car. Turbine roaring, the car shot around the curve of the road, heading north, and disappeared. "That wasn't quite what I meant," Linna remarked, "but hey, it worked!" "That was the Griffon!!!" Priss gasped. She nervously backed away from the road, memories of her first ill-fated tussle with the killer car coming back. SkyKnight flew over to the small pond and fished the semi-conscious bikers out of the water, dropping them on the doorstep of the nearby Health building. He flew back to the group, and landed neatly, his flight wings folding down with a metallic- sounding clack. "This is weird," he noted. "It's almost like someone is methodically going through the Knight Sabers' background and finding things to resurrect." "How do you explain the other appearances then?" Nene asked. "We've certainly never seen anything like them before." He shrugged. "I can't," he responded. "But I'm working on a theory." He was prevented from continuing by a sleek red racing car that pulled over to the curb near them. The car looked almost like a souped-up Mustang, and it had Illinois license plates. It was the kind of car that students can only dream of affording, and tend to drool over when confronted with one. The driver's window rolled down, and a big man with a wild crop of black hair, sunglasses, a red headband, and a brown leather jacket leaned out the window. A young, blond-haired woman in a light brown outfit was in the passenger seat next to him, and SkyKnight could see the butt of a rather large automatic pistol sticking out of her jacket. "Excuse me," Bean Bandit called over. "Can any of you tell me just where the hell this place is?!" **** "We're going to have a short break now, folks," announced the club president. "It'll be about ten minutes before the films start again." The loud murmur of two hundred people talking began reverberating in the lecture hall. Keith and Jeff quickly loaded the last battery of VCR tapes and laserdiscs. Jeff held up an unlabeled tape. "What's this one?" he asked curiously. Keith frowned. "I'm not sure. I know I was recording over it before, so it's a mix of stuff. Pop it in and we'll take a quick look." Jeff nodded, and inserted the tape. The VCR started whirring. They watched, keeping the picture on the small display screen, not projecting it onto the big screen. "Hell," Jeff said disgustedly. "It looks like you goofed somewhere when you recorded it. It's Star Trek T.N.G. episodes taped over Star Wars and some anime!" **** "I don't BELIEVE this!!!!" SkyKnight shouted over the scream of blaster bolts. Across the campus, scores of white armoured stormtroopers charged through the buildings, spraying a withering cascade of red laser bolts. They were destroying shrubs, trees, lightposts, squirrels, and taking pieces out of the buildings, but they couldn't seem to hit the running people they were shooting at. The Knight Sabers dodged around in the confusion, also avoiding the energy blasts. The Univerity campus was slowly dissolving into utter chaos. The minute the first stormtrooper had appeared, the Roadbuster had roared off along Ring Road, but had encountered the Griffin. The two supercars were now drag racing around the circular road as if they were in the Indy 500, each trying to bash the other off of it. They had succeeded in smashing several innocent drivers off the road already, including two police cars. Topping that off, several C-55 boomers had appeared and were either mindlessly rampaging across the campus, or blasting the hell out of the few stormtroopers who'd decided to shoot at them. In the skies above, a squadron of about ten Veritech fighters screamed through the air, being pursued by a howling mob of TIE Interceptors that were busily spitting green laser bolts after the dodging ships. It was a bloody nightmarish scene from some demented imagination. "Oh man!! This is going to be a hot scoop!!" a woman's eager voice carried over the battlefield din. For a moment, it almost sounded like Sylia had spoken. As SkyKnight watched incredulously, a young, black-haired woman in non- descript brown clothes, carrying some kind of kit bag and a portable video camera ran by, frantically filming every laser shot that filled the air. Sybel?! his stunned mind noted. It was bloody impossible, like everything else that was happening, but as long as no M-66 robots appeared, he wasn't going to complain. A loud, eerie hum pulsed through the air, distracting him. Bert spun around towards the source of the strangely familiar noise. As he watched, six columns of light appeared, gradually resolving into six people dressed in Starfleet uniforms. The leader was none other than Jean-Luc Picard, the French captain with the English accent. He stepped forwards, raising a hand in greeting, apparently oblivious to the raging firefight going on around him. "Hello there!" he said. He didn't get a chance to continue, as SkyKnight finally snapped from all the strange events going on. "NOOOO!!" he bellowed. His arms snapped up and he started firing his lasers wildly in the general direction of the Starfleet personnel. "Go away!!! You don't belong here!! Beat it!!! Scram!! GET LOST!!!" They jumped around frantically avoiding the beams as Picard slapped his communicator. "Mr. O'Brien!!" he shouted. "Emergency beam-up!! The natives are going crazy!!!" The starfleet officers disappeared in a blue sparkle of light as Sylia and Linna tackled the raving SkyKnight to try and get him back under control. After a few moments of wrestling and rolling around, he did calm down. The two hardsuited women hauled him upright while the stormtroopers and the boomers contined their wild firefight, heedless of the chaos they were causing. "We have really got to find out what is going on here," Sylia noted. "Repent!!! The end of the world is near!!!!" a running young man screamed as he ran by, throwing his backpack one way, and a sheaf of religious pamphlets the other. "That sounds about right," Priss said, ducking as a fusillade of blaster bolts scorched the air near her. Her railgun spat in reply three times, and three white armoured shapes folded, then vanished. As they did so, a tall, black- armoured figure appeared around the corner of the Physics building. Two metres tall, the large shape was clad in black body armour, topped by a strange-looking black helmet with two large eye-lenses, and a triangular breathing vent in the front of the mask. A flowing black cloak swirled around it as heavy booted footsteps carried the ominous apparition closer to the startled Knight Sabers. Heavy, mechanical breathing could be heard coming from the dark figure, and as it approached, it pulled a cylindrical device from where it had been hanging at its belt. With a crackling snap-hiss, a red-white blade of humming energy sprang into being. "Now you will learn the power of the Dark Side of the Force," Darth Vader intoned, his lightsaber swinging towards them with deadly intent. With an identical hissing snap, a blue-white blade flicked out, stopping the incoming red one with a crackling flash and an electric sizzle. SkyKnight braced himself behind his humming energy weapon, staring up at the slightly taller figure in front of him. The tableau held for a very brief moment. "Sylia!!!" SkyKnight yelled, as Vader came alive to level a devastating series of slashes and cuts at him, which he just barely parried. Electric crackling noises cut through the air as he attempted to defend himself. "Get everyone out of here, and try to find out what's causing this!! I'll deal with this!!" "ARE YOU NUTS?!" Nene shrieked before Sylia could reply. "You can't....yipe!!!" The red-pink hardsuit ducked as a wild series of ripostes and parries turned the air around the armoured duelists alive with hungrily searching plasma blades. Linna grabbed Nene and dragged her back out of range. "He's right," Sylia reluctantly decided, as the saber- fighting started to move away from them in a series of crackling blazes of blue and red light. "Nene, scan for that energy you picked up earlier; we've got to shut down whatever is causing this." **** "The goddamn tape is stuck!!" Jeff grunted, reefing on the VCR face and the wedged tape. "Jeff!! Take it easy for God's sake! That's not our VCR!!" "Well we need to get the damn tape out for the next movie!!" **** "You are not a Jedi, boy," Vader told him, as he smashed the silver Knight Saber with another series of punishing sword strokes; SkyKnight dodged and deflected the incoming energy blade frantically. "You don't know how to use the Force; you are foolish to think you can defeat me." "That's funny," SkyKnight panted, wishing he could wipe the sweat from his face. "It seems to me like I'm using plenty of force right now!" God, Vader was strong!! He hadn't thought that dueling with lightsabers would be hard, but it was proving to be anything but easy. The energy blades acted like solid swords when they contacted each other, imparting some of the shock of their collision to the wielder; SkyKnight was getting pounded badly, and he couldn't seem to pound back. Vader was diverting his attacks almost before he'd made them. He began to dimly realize that he was fighting more than just an armoured guy with a sword, and the first stirrings of his temper prodded him; it just was not fair! "Join me," Vader offered, stepping back for a moment, his saber coming up to a guard position. SkyKnight gasped for breath, staggering backwards. "You have potential; give in to your anger, and feel the power of the Dark Side." "F...f...forget it," SkyKnight wheezed, weaving on his feet from exertion. "I'm not going to get sucked up the pipe like you were." "Then feel the power of the Dark Side in a way you will remember...for the rest of your miserably short life." Vader's gloved hand came up and clenched into a fist. SkyKnight's air immediately cut off, as what felt like icy cold talons clamped a remorseless grip around his throat. His lightsaber snuffed out, as he grabbed at his neck, choking. There was a cold, clammy feel to the air around him suddenly; it was deathly cold to the touch, and pulsed with hatred and evil. The vile chill began to eat into him as his sight began to fade. SkyKnight crashed to his knees, trying frantically to breathe as his strength began to fail. **** The VCR finally spat out a tangled mess of semi-melted plastic and ruined magnetic tape. Keith sighed mournfully; so much for his Star Wars mix. Sighing again, he stuck the `Record of Lodoss War' tape into the backup VCR; they'd have to check the other machine out before using it again. As he pressed the play button, every light in the auditorium died, including the projectors. "Aw hell!! We blew a fuse!!" Jeff snarled, fumbling around in the dark, trying to find the flashlight. There was a dissatified rumbling from the audience as they waited for the movies to resume. As he was looking around, Keith suddenly spoke up. "Uh, Jeff?" he asked, sounding worried. "If we blew a fuse, then why is the amplifier still working?" Jeff looked, and his hair tried to stand on end. The amplifier console was still flickering, and a faint red glow was coming from inside it. As they watched, the glow became brighter. Before the amazed eyes of two hundred anime fans, red lightning bolts began to arc around the room, originating from the amplifier. One bolt struck the VCR containing the last movie of the night, and then a new bolt shot from the VCR to the large screen. The entire screen filled with flickering crimson light. With terrifying abruptness, a huge, clawed paw shot through the screen, followed by a large, fanged muzzle. Flames licked around the edges of the jaws as an ugly reptilian head began to emerge, seemingly coming through the back of the lecture hall. That did it; while most of the anime fans in the auditorium would normally have loved to have characters from their favourite films enter their reality, a real, live, fire-breathing dragon was NOT on their list of preferred dinner guests; probably because the dragon would have them AS dinner if they stayed around for too long. As one, two-hundred-plus students bolted from the lecture hall in a howling torrent, including Keith and Jeff. The panicked human flood poured out of the doors, and in seconds the hall was deserted except for a glowing pile of hi-tech entertainment gear, and the fiery saurian form that was emerging from the back wall of the lecture hall. **** SkyKnight drew in shuddering gasps of air gratefully as he shoved himself off of his hands and knees. He didn't know why Darth Vader, and his Dark Side attack, had suddenly disappeared, but given how close they'd come to killing him, he wasn't about to complain. The silver-garbed hardsuit weaved to his feet, and looked around. The campus had become ominously silent; the stormtroopers had disappeared with the Dark Lord, and so had the boomers. A few timid squirrels began peering around the hedges at the smoking devastation that was now scattered around the campus. A few daring students were still walking openly around, although the nervous glances they kept shooting over their shoulders spoke volumes about their actual state of mind. SkyKnight couldn't see where his friends had gotten to, however. "SkyKnight to Saber Prime, come in please," he radioed. He quickly flipped off the comm channel again as screeching static filled his ears. For whatever reason, all the communications bands appeared to be overloaded with background radiation emissions of some kind. Damn. A sudden grin stretched across Bert's face; he did have another way of searching available, and he'd always wondered what it would be like to fly over the campus. "Up, up, and away!!" SkyKnight proclaimed grandly, as his flight wings snapped up; split-seconds later, jet turbines lofted the silver-and-blue armour suit into the air with a droning roar. **** "That building right there, Sylia," Nene reported. Her red-armoured arm pointed at a low building of white stone and brown-painted metal siding. "The source of the emissions is there; The energy readings just peaked, and they're off the scale now." "Okay, let's go then. Full readiness, everybody," Sylia ordered. The Knight Sabers fanned out into a roughly wedge-shaped formation, Sylia in the lead, and advanced towards the large edifice. The four hardsuits were almost at the door when it happened. "GANGWAY!!! COMING THROUGH!!!! HEEEELLLPP!!! LOOK OUT!!!!" a chorus of assorted screams and yells volleyed from the Arts Lecture Hall as the front doors flew open under the impetus of scores of wildly-running students. The hardsuits disappeared under the wave of panicky people, being trampled underfoot in the dust cloud that rose. **** "Hey, Jeff!!! Didn't that look like the Knight Sabers back there?! Let's go take a look!" "Screw off!!" Keith's friend panted hoarsely as he tried leaving the now-shaking building behind him WAY behind him. "I'm not going back to be an appetizer for that goddamn dragon!!" "Aw, come on!! Don't you wanna get Priss's autograph?!" "You're nuts! I'd sooner try and make nice to the dragon!" **** "Offhand, I'd say this has been a really shitty day," Priss groaned, slowly picking herself up off the ground. Her hardsuit had protected her from any serious harm, but she still felt battered and bruised. There were footprints all over her blue-enamelled armour as she stood up. "Owwww," Linna agreed, as she straightened up, cautiously checking her back; it still bent in the right way. "What were they running from, anyway?!" Sneaker tread marks were all over everyone else's suits, as well. "I-I-I'd s-s-say that's a g-good start," Nene quavered, pointing and backing away, one hand on her helmet in apparent fear. Priss turned around, and found herself staring at a wall of gleaming ivory spikes. Teeth, she suddenly realized. Looking up, she saw evilly glowing, blood-red eyes staring at her from a massive, reptilian head. A wave of hot, fetid breath washed over her from the monster's jaws. As she stumbled backwards in shock, the front of the building exploded in a spray of bricks and powdered mortar as the dragon forced the rest of its body out the door, following its head and neck. Metal siding buckled, and was wrenched from the building walls as the massive creature finished emerging from the now ruined building. "I think we've got problems," Sylia announced, also backing up. The Knight Sabers scattered as the huge, green- scaled, lizard-like monster loomed over them. Leathery wings unfurled from its back with a booming, minor thunderclap, disspating the cloud of dust. The dragon threw its head back and roared, a brutal, penetrating bellow that rattled everything on the university campus with the shock of its release. Incandescent orange flames gouted into the sky briefly, then the fanged head swung back towards the armoured shapes on the ground, appearing to grin hungrily. "Uh, Sylia?!" Priss gulped, getting ready to run. "What do we do now?!" "I'm open to suggestions!" Sylia snapped, also getting ready to run as the dragon's head swung around as if picking which Knight Saber to snack on first. She wasn't even sure if their weapons could affect something that...that...BIG! She ducked as a sudden blast of flames crackled through the air, and melted a huge hole in the asphalt nearby. "Nene!" Sylia suddenly called, flipping backwards through the air on her flight pack as the dragon swatted almost playfully at her with a clawed paw. "If you get a chance, get into that building and see what the source of that energy is and shut it down!" "ME?!?!" the red-haired girl wailed, frantically ducking a tail swipe from the saurian menace. "Why me?! Why do I have to do it?!" "Because you've got all the sensor gear!!" Sylia yelled, trying a quick shot at the dragon; the shot bounced from the creature's scaly hide. "You've got the best chance of analyzing it and shutting it off!! Quit arguing, and do it!!" "O-o-okay S-Sylia," she stuttered nervously. "W-w- whatever you say." Gulping in fear, the red/pink hardsuited girl jumped over the dragon's tail again, dashing into the devastated building behind it. The rampaging monster ignored her, trying instead to squash the leaping and twisting, green-shelled annoyance that had just cut it with some strange, slightly-glowing antennae. **** "Oh..My...GAWD!!!" SkyKnight swore in stunned shock as he swooped around the huge sugar-cube-like shape of the Dana Porter library. Some distance away and below the soaring silver suit, a gargantuan, fire-breathing, four-legged lizard with huge wings, serpentine neck and tail, and fanged head was roaring, spraying the surrounding campus with white- hot flames. Three armoured shapes were dancing around the monster's claw and tail swipes, avoiding the raking flame blasts as they returned fire, to no avail. He recognized Sylia, Priss and Linna's hardsuits, but couldn't see Nene's anywhere. Another apocalyptic blast tore through the air, and struck the nearby Arts building, melting brickwork, and starting the unfortunate building burning. SkyKnight realized that he had to give his friends a hand, and that they had to stop the creature before it inflicted any further damage on the already-suffering university. "Oh great, just great," he sighed to himself. While he'd always wanted to be a real knight, he hadn't really wanted to try the dragon-slaying part of the job description. Okay, sure, it LOOKED glamourous, but getting barbecued while being heroic wasn't high on his list of priorities. It hadn't been much of a danger, actually; up until now, dragons had been very scarce. "Guess I'd better quit draggin' my feet," he noted out loud. Grinning to himself, he cranked his particle lasers to full power, and began diving down towards the rampaging reptile. **** "Ummm, the red wire?! No, that's not it...let's try green..." Nene muttered to herself, trying to ignore the coruscating crimson glow that was coming from the amplifier unit next to her. She couldn't understand why the unit was glowing like a Christmas tree, when it wasn't physically connected to any power source that she could detect. The energy emissions she'd been detecting were definitely coming from the strange gizmo, but she couldn't find a logical reason for it. Since logic wasn't working, in desperation she'd decided to try hotwiring it, hoping she'd find something that would short it out. So far, she was having a notable lack of success. The red-and-pink enameled hardsuit continued to work away at the maze of microchips, transistors, and wiring as red light kept flashing and forking around the shattered lecture hall. **** "Thou shalt not win, vile beast!! Begone I say!! Cease and desist from harrassing those fair ladies!!" "Oh Good God, NO!!" Sylia groaned to herself, ducking as four searing beams of crackling red-white energy smashed into the side of the snarling dragon's head. The dragon snarled angrily, apparently unaffected, and spat a howling firestorm at the silver suit that had dropped down from above to confront it. SkyKnight flipped nimbly aside in mid-air, and again lambasted the large creature with another salvo of laser fire. The rest of the Sabers quickly regrouped, taking up a position behind a low, nearby wall as the dragon ignored them to go after its new antagonist. SkyKnight swooped around, lashing out with another laser bolt; it also bounced off the dragon's skin. "Come on, lamebrain lizard!" he taunted the scaly being. "Let's see what you've got!" The silver-clad Knight Saber ducked under another liquid stream of fire. "Breath problems, I see," he noted, lofting himself backwards, out of the way of a clawed paw. "I'd recommend either Listerine or Scope for that. Laying off of the spicy foods might help, too." The dragon's eyes narrowed as it stalked ponderously after the silver hardsuit, and Sylia realized with a start that the monster was intelligent, and that it also understood the insults. "Is he goddamn nuts, or what!?" Priss asked incredulously from beside her. "He's goading that thing into following him!!" They watched as the dragon attempted to bite SkyKnight in half; he sideslipped the attack, and again pummeled the dragon's face with red energy beams, again retreating as the dragon rumbled after him, dodging another swipe of a clawed forepaw. "Nice try, fang-face," SkyKnight quipped. "But I'd get that overbite looked at. I can recommend a good dentist...Oh shit!" The silver-clad hardsuit shot straight up into the sunny afternoon sky as another sheet of crackling flames shot forth from the enraged animal; in the area behind where SkyKnight had been standing, what was left of Needles Hall disintegrated completely into flying ashes. The angry dragon roared deafeningly, and then seemed to gather itself, bunching its leg muscles. With a fantastic, springing jump that shook the ground, the massive behemoth threw itself into the sky on flapping wings, pursuing its elusive, silver-coloured quarry. The remainder of the Knight Sabers watched as the saurian menace thundered off after SkyKnight, leathery wings booming like thunderclaps. "Well, we can't help him now," Sylia sighed. "Let's go see if Nene needs help." She made a mental note to speak very firmly to Bert again about taking foolhardy risks, and about the awful jokes. Not that it had done any good in the past, a voice in the back of her mind reminded her wryly. The white, blue, and green harsuits turned and sprinted into the wreckage of the Arts Lecture Hall. **** "Oh good GOD!!!" Jeff moaned, face paling as he stared into the sky. "Here it comes!!" Keith and Jeff, along with most of the other anime club members watched from the dubious safety of far side of the road encircling the campus, as the massive saurian monster rumbled up into the air, great wings flapping, displacing the air with rolling booming noises. Behind it, smoke curled into the sky from the burning portions of the campus. Fire suddenly gouted through the skies, a searching stream of raging flames that the dragon seemed to be aiming at something. "Hey!!" someone behind them exclaimed. "The dragon's chasing something! There's something silver in front of it!!" Everyone peered closer at the flying lizard. As they did so, the sudden flurry of red beams that seared through the air over the campus helped to locate the flying figure. "What the hell is that?!" several people muttered. "That almost looks like a hardsuit," Jeff said, puzzled. "But I don't remember seeing it in any of the BGC books or tapes." He was staring into the sky, squinting intently, one hand shading his eyes so he could see better. "Maybe somebody re-wrote the scripts when we weren't looking," Keith joked. **** SkyKnight ducked another flame blast, weaving an impossibly complex evasion loop through the air as the dragon whipped its head around, trying to sear him with the burning stream. He fired another pointless round of laser bolts at the snarling monster, and again ducked the volcanically-hot breath that hungrily streaked after him. "Okay, now what genius?" he muttered to himself, ducking and twisting though the air, trying to avoid fiery annihilation. He'd succeeded in drawing the dragon off from the campus buildings, but now he had no idea what to do next. He couldn't just fly around forever, hoping for a lucky shot; his power reserves wouldn't allow it, for one thing, and the dragon was apparently impervious to his laser cannons. Okay, then what would a real knight do in a situation like this?, he asked himself. His mind raced, searching for a method of dealing with the dragon. The answer hit him suddenly, but it wasn't exactly the answer he'd been looking for. "Surely you joust," he sighed, shaking his head and ducking another fire blast. He couldn't believe he was actually seriously considering what he was about to try. SkyKnight swooped around in a curving arc, banking sharply to avoid the dragon's persistent flame barrages. As he swung around, a cylindrical handgrip device deployed into his right hand, extending out from the arm armour. With a hissing snap, a long bar of bluish-white energy stretched out from the device. SkyKnight stretched his arms out in front of him, gripping his right gauntlet wrist with his left hand, extending his lightsaber blade out in front of him, pointing towards the looming dragon. "May fortune favour the foolish," Bert muttered to himself, throwing full power to his flight system. With an exultant, supersonic-sounding engine scream, the silver-and blue bedecked battlesuit blasted towards the marauding saurian shape, the crackling energy blade it held slicing the air before it eagerly. With a rolling bellow, the dragon belched forth more incandescent flames... **** "I don't KNOW why it's doing it!!" Nene hissed angrily. "There's no logical reason for this thing to still be working!!" Behind her, the humming amplifier unit continued to bathe the room in harsh, red-lit radiance. It had been completely diconnected from the rest of the audio-visual equipment, and from the electrical sockets, but it still continued to send crackling bolts of energy lancing into the air occasionally. "So what the hell are we going to do then?!" Priss demanded in frustration. "How can we unplug the damn thing, when we don't even know what it's plugged into?!" Nene shrugged helplessly, spreading her hands. "Well we have to think of something," Sylia said, pacing back and forth, deep in thought. "I don't know how it did it, but this device is obviously the same one that is responsible for our being here. Hopefully, shutting it down will allow us to return home." "What if it doesn't?" Nene asked timidly. "What do we do then?" Other than the humming amplifier, the room was silent for a moment. "We're going to have to chance it," Sylia finally said, sighing. "It's our best option. Nene, start scanning again, and if you can, try to isolate individual components of that thing." "Okay," the young girl replied. She turned back to the glowing apparatus, and her backpack sensor antennae extended out from her suit. The red-pink suit started to hum itself as Nene put all her effort into analyzing the amplifier. Sylia and Linna moved up a bit behind her, watching. Priss turned away from the glowing box, and started pacing moodily. She wouldn't admit it out loud, but she was more than a little scared at what had happened to them all, and she just wanted to go home. The fact that there wasn't an easily identifiable, or understandable, for that matter, source to the problem was just adding to her frustration. She paced back and forth across the front of the lecture hall, as Nene kept fiddling with the amplifier unit. The blue-hardsuited woman suddenly paused in her pacing, looking towards the front row seats; she could have sworn she'd heard something moving just now, almost like a....slithering noise? Arming her weapons, she cautiously approached the rows of chairs, peering carefully around. With something like a snarl, a small creature of some kind shot up from between two of the seats, and struck Priss square in the faceplate of her helmet. She toppled over backwards with a scream as she felt something wrap multiple, stringy-feeling tentacles around her neck as if trying to strangle her. "AAAAAHHHH!! GET IT OFFA ME!!! GET IT OFF!!!!" she howled, clawing at whatever it was that had assailed her. Sylia and Linna spun around to see Priss' blue hardsuit flopping around on the ground as she wrestled with some strange, lumpy-looking thing that had attached itself to her. As they ran forward to help, Priss succeeded in tearing her attacker off of her neck, and she hurled it across the room, angrily rolling to her feet at the same time. Her hurtling attacker landed on the floor a few feet away with a squishy-sounding plop, and Priss got a good look at her assailant for the first time: it was a small, writhing mass of sticky red-smeared noodles. Spaghetti with some traces of tomato sauce left on it; her dinner from earlier. As she stared incredulously at it, it began slithering swiftly across the floor towards her again. That was the final straw, and Priss snapped. "AAAAAHHH!!!! KILL IT!! KILLLLLL IT!!!!!!" she yelled hysterically, opening fire with her railgun and laser cannon. Red-orange energy bolts and railgun spikes tore through the air towards the animated pasta in a furious cascade as she hosed the room down, trying to halt the advance of the renegade noodles. "Priss!!! Be careful!!!" Sylia shouted. "You might hit the...." She never got a chance to finish her sentence, as a railgun spike flashed past the skittering spaghetti, and speared deep into the innards of the glowing amplifier. The red light died instantly, but the hum from the machine suddenly increased sharply in pitch. Nene hastily scrambled away from the amplifier unit. "I think it's gonna blow!!!" she shouted. "RUN!!!!" "Oh shit, I think we're in troub....." was all Priss had time to say before the amplifier burst apart in a blinding flash of blue-white light that enveloped the whole room. ****