'Aaron/Kendra' spoke:

  When the plant was finally still, C-koH extracted herself from its
embrace and rose to her feet.  She turned toward the dojo, hoping that she
hadn't missed anything in her distraction, only to see the mutant creatures
feasting on her brownies (and dying horribly).  She also noticed that her
tranq rifle had been knocked over the edge of the roof during the fight, and
had shattered upon the pavement below.
  "Chikuso!" she swore.  How could this happen?  Neither the weird plant
nor whatever those dead-looking things were fit with Panda's modus operandi.
Already mildly paranoid by nature, the coincidence of the timing of the two
events spelled only one thing to C-koH--a new player had entered the game.
  She considered her options.  Setting out more food would likely only
attract more of those things.  If she remained on the rooftop here, a new
enemy might appear--one she would have more trouble dispatching.  And if she
were to be distracted again, her prey might escape.  In fact, he might have
already during her fight.  Only one thing to do, she decided.  Much as she
hated to beard the enemy in his den, she would have to break into the dojo
and find Panda, hoping that he wasn't *too* well protected.  She mentally
reviewed the data she had memorized about Panda and Vixxy's fighting
methods, and made her way to the street again.  Locating one of the secret
entrances she had spotted earlier, she checked it carefully for alarms and
traps.  Finding an alarm wire, she carefully deactivated it.  Opening the
concealed door, she slipped inside, melting into the darkness within.
Silently, using every trick she knew to conceal her presence, she made her
way to the central portion of the dojo, and there witnessed her prey
conversing with the other hunter she had spotted earlier.
  _There you are,_ she thought to herself, her face expressionless.  _Now,
I need to take him alive, and I suppose Foxtrot might be perturbed if I
killed her employee, but I think they can take a little punishment...._
Raising her arm, she concentrated on the events that had turned her earlier
life into a living hell, and spoke the words.
  "Shishi Hokodan!"
  The ki blast streaked toward her targets.

And slammed into a figure in strange purplish armor, knocking her through
the wall and cutting off her scream of "PANDA-CHAN!" midway.  She had
noticed some pretty lights from one of the rooftops and had become slightly
distracted by some mice who were running away from what...LOOKED like some
brownies, but made some other strange looking mice who were eating them die
horrible, painful deaths...The others didn't fare too well either, but at
least she made up for missing half of lunch.  As she pulled herself out of
the wall, she did a check of her armor...tech shields down, magic shields
severly drained and about as useful as  a shell of plastic...Not good, she
thought as she righted herself, looking for the origin of the blast, her
sensors forgotten and relying solely on her cat-enhanced senses.  She
spotted a figure in the deep in the shadows, just barely and let loose a
rapid-fire volly of tennis-ball-sized energy spheres, not noticing the
quarry and the assist slipping out the back in her anger at being attacked.

Meanwhile, in Stargazer's op-center, several scanners started screaming to get
his attention.   "What the...? Ki-balsts, explosions?  Something is going on
at the dojo."  He 'ports into the dojo, and just barely missed getting hit by a 
stream of small energy spheres. "Hey what do you think your doing?"  He fires
a few quick rounds of plasma, but because of his surprise and unaimed shot,
he missed.  The sudden flare of light blindes everybody in the room who doesn't
have any sort of flash protection for their eyes, which Stargazer does have,
knowing what effect the brightness of Plasma can have.  However, he is 
distracted from getting revenge by something he sees in the glow.  "Panda,
hold where you are.  The Taskmistress whishes to talk to you."  Panda, of course
tries to run away.  "they never want to do things the easy way, do they?"
Stargazer gives a small evil grin as he goes to  take Panda down.

-- 
+---------------------------+
|  Wayne Pillion            |
|  stargaze@world.std.com   |
|  Stargazer                |
+---------------------------+