Greetings folks! :)

What the heck, everyone else is doing it, so I might as well. If nothing
else, it'll add some variety to the Ranma ones.  ^_^

Of course, in keeping with my usual writing style, this isn't the shortest
'shortfic' you'll be seeing. -_^

This is my first attempt at a first-person perspective, so no flames please.
^_^

                                        ****
        Yawning hugely, I leaned back in my chair, coming dangerously close
to tipping it over backwards as I stretched weary muscles. I pulled off my
glasses and rubbed at my eyes, which had started feeling like they were
nestled in beds of gravel. Too much staring at the computer screen, I
surmised, stifling another yawn as I glanced at the clock. Well, that was
enough for the night then; the rest of Bubblegum Zone #10 could wait until I
had some free time tomorrow.
        I replaced my glasses and saved my work to my overburdened
harddrive, and started my PC's shutdown procedures. I took another
appraising glance at the clock as I killed the power to my machine; just
enough time to have a quick snack before bed, and then....
        A faint droning whine caught my attention from outside the house,
and I glanced out the window of my room from sheer reflex. Unfortunately,
all I saw was the reflections of my room lights on the glass.
        Muttering at myself for forgetting about the darkness outside, I
hesitated a moment, then grabbed my jacket. I could use the fresh air that
looking outside would give me; I'd been sitting glued to my computer for far
too long today. I flicked off the room lights, closed and locked my door,
and went to the stairs leading from my basement apartment. Four long strides
up the stairs later, and I was standing outside, gratefully breathing in the
crisp Autumn air of the early evening.
        As I stood there drinking in the coolness of the air, I heard that
distinctive droning whine again. Frowning to myself, I turned towards the
direction it had come from. It sure as heck didn't sound like a jetliner,
which had been my first assumption.
        My curiosity piqued, I started walking towards the back yard of the
house. It was an eerily silent night. It was so quiet, you could even hear
the humming from the streetlights.
        I froze as I suddenly realized that the hum I was hearing was *not*
coming from the streetlights, but from behind the gate to the back yard. It
was very definitely an electrical humming, like that produced by high
voltage circuits. Fear of the unknown surged through me, and I started to
back away from the gate; whatever it was back there, I didn't really want to
meet it.
        I spun around, took two steps preparatory to launching into a sprint
for the front door, and stopped dead in my tracks, my jaw dropping almost to
the ground. There, silhouetted against the lights of the street, were four
armoured shapes with distinctly feminine curves to their plating.
Unmistakable to any anime fan, and even more so to me.
        The Knight Sabers.
        I stood dumbstruck for a moment or so, my mind somewhere between
utter delight at seeing the subjects of some of my most cherished daydreams
in front of me 'in the flesh', so to speak, and vague alarm. The alarm
stemmed mostly from the fact that this couldn't really be happening; the
Knight Sabers didn't exist, not in this universe. Well...one could always
hope that they'd exist in the future, but that was beside the point right now.
        Once the initial shock of seeing the hardsuited foursome had worn
off, I found myself asking why they'd decided to look me up. Somehow I
doubted it was a social call. Gathering what I could find of my courage, I
cleared my throat.
        "Umm, uh...good evening, ladies," I tried tentatively. "Is there
something I can do for you?" The helmet on the shortest of the four
hardsuits, Nene's I presumed, turned towards the other three.
        "That's him," the electronically filtered voice of a young woman
confirmed. "He matches the description and my scans perfectly." At her
words, the lead hardsuit stepped towards me, and it was all I could do not
to step back a pace; in her hardsuit, Sylia was at least as tall as I am,
and the white armour did look just a bit menacing....especially now that I
was looking at it in person.
        "You're Mr. Bert Van Vliet, correct?" Even with the electronic
distortion, Sylia's voice sounded cool and calm, almost exactly like I'd
imagined. Her visor tilted as she cocked her head at me, awaiting my reply.
Well, I couldn't very well lie to her; that's not my way.
        "Um, yes, that's me," I said slowly, my eyes going from her to the
rest of the Knight Sabers, who were slowly advancing to stand even with her.
"May I ask what this is about?"
        "You may ask," Sylia replied equably, and for a moment, silence fell.
        "Uh, well?" I said timidly as the silence became oppressive. "What
is this about?"
        "I said you could ask," the white hardsuited woman replied. "I
didn't say I was going to answer you."
        I stood uncertainly for a moment, not really sure if that had been a
joke or not.
        "You're here about my writing, aren't you?" I finally asked.
        "Damn straight, buster," Priss snorted, crossing blue-armoured arms
across her chest as she presumably glared at me. "I owe you at least a
couple of broken arms for what you've put me through."
        "Hey, what about me?!" Nene complained. "I'm the one who keeps
getting kicked around by uprated boomers and having to be rescued all the
time!!" The red-pink hardsuit jabbed an accusatory finger at me. "Do you
have any idea how humiliating that is?!"
        "And you've been ignoring me most of the time," Linna added, her
hands on her hips. She gave an irritated toss of her head, the motion
sending ripples through the long monomolecular-edged streamers trailing from
her helmet 'ears'. "Although I guess I should be thankful, considering what
you've been doing to everyone else," she noted a moment later.
        "Well, I...it...I didn't mean anything by it," I tried weakly
defending myself. "I was just writing for the fun of it..."
        "Fun?!" Sylia interrupted me. "I did *not* find it 'fun' being
forced to lose my temper all the time, and swear at SkyKnight. Nor did I
find it fun to have to constantly keep an eye on him and keep him under
control..."
        "Wait a second." Cold sweat started rolling down my face. "SkyKnight
isn't real; he's me. You can't have been swearing at him!! I haven't been
there!!"
        "For someone who's supposed to be an engineer, he isn't too bright,
is he?" Priss observed to the rest of her teammates.
        "But he's not real!" I started to protest again, missing entirely
the fact that I was arguing the merits of reality with supposedly fictional
characters, when someone behind me tapped me on the shoulder. Someone with
very hard fingers, almost like they were wearing armoured gauntlets.
        My stomach plummeted into my shoes like a lead brick in a bucket of
water. I knew what it was that I was going to see when I turned around, and
I really didn't want to turn around.
        "Good evening," a deep-toned electronic voice came from behind me.
Sighing deeply, I turned around, and looked up. Up into a brightly-glowing
V-shaped red eyeslot, set into a silver helmet with blue antenna wings.
Stray flickers of light glinted off of silvery armour plating as I numble
stood there looking at my armoured alter-ego come to life. Some faint
capacity in the back of my mind noted that SkyKnight's hardsuit was every
bit as impressive in person as I'd described in my fanfics. 
        "Hi," I finally replied, suddenly resigned to my apparent imminent
demise. "I guess you've got some complaints as well?"
        "You might call them that," the silver hardsuited mercenary nodded,
almost absently cracking armoured knuckles under my nose. I started backing
away from him, then remembered the four hardsuited women behind me. As I
tried to sidestep them all, I found myself with my back to the wall of the
neighbour's house, ringed by   five suits of powered armour.
        "I don't suppose we could discuss this reasonably?" I pleaded. "I
really didn't mean....I mean I didn't know that...."
        "That someone really was going through what you were writing about?"
Sylia asked calmly, raising her visor. It was hard to see her face in the
dim illumination of the night, but she looked stern. "Well you thought wrong."
        "The pain and discomfort were one thing," Priss added, "but was all
that angst that went with it really necessary?"
        "Well it made for a good story," I said lamely.
        "It made for a lot of pointless anguish!" SkyKnight retorted. "It
was bad enough when I was doing most of it, but then I had to start
listening to it as well! Couldn't you have just kept breaking my ribs and
left it at that? At least the agony from that was over reasonably quickly!"
        "And you ran me through an emotional wringer, just so you could get
your 'good story'," Nene interjected, sounding hurt. "And I thought you
liked me!"
        "I do!!" I protested again. "I like all of you!! Honest!!"
        "Could've fooled me," Priss snorted again. "I'd sure as hell hate to
see what you'd have done if you hated us."
        "So what....what are you going to do to me?" I asked through a
suddenly dry mouth.
        "Well we're not here to kill you, if that's what was worrying you,"
Sylia told me. I sighed in relief, relief that vanished when she added
cryptically, "That would be letting you off too lightly."
        "What do you mean, 'too lightly'?" I asked warily.
        "Well, you've always wanted to get into a hardsuit," SkyKnight
answered me, shrugging. "So we brought one along for you to try out."
        "Me?! In a hardsuit?!" I was caught between conflicting emotions. On
the one hand was screaming elation at the thought of actually being able to
wear a functioning hardsuit. On the other hand, fear and caution were urging
me to be careful in what I wished for. "What's the catch?"
        "Then we're gonna see if you're as good at actually being IN a
combat scene as you are at writing them." I didn't need to be able to see
Priss's face to tell what her expression was. Based on the tone of her
voice, she was sporting a very nasty grin right now.
        "I thought you said you weren't going to kill me?" I croaked
        "We're not," Linna spoke up. "Mostly because we're not sure what
that would do to us, SkyKnight in particular. But at the same time we
figured that if we maybe gave you a REAL idea of what we go through, you'd
be less inclined to put us through hell again."
        "SkyKnight, you can help him into his suit," Sylia stated, reaching
up and closing her visor as she turned towards  the taller silver suit.
"You've got ten minutes."
        "Now wait a minute!!" I tried protesting, as my armoured alter-ego
firmly grasped my shoulder. "This isn't fair!! I don't know a thing about
how the hardsuits work!!"
        "That wasn't my impression," Sylia told me. "In fact, I'd say you
understand them pretty well."
        "You came up with most of the design ideas," SkyKnight reinforced
her statement. "The technology curve really took off when you started
playing with it."
        "But I didn't know what I was doing!!" I burst out. "I made it all
up!! I dug out my old physics textbooks to make sure I wasn't lying my ass
off on some parts, and I made the rest up!!"
        "Precisely," Sylia said simply. "You created it, so you should know
how it works better than anyone." She nodded to SkyKnight, and he dragged me
off into the back yard.
        "Oh boy, this is gonna be great!" I heard Priss gloating as I was
dragged off to prepare for my doom.
        "But I can't use the suit!!" I raved, thrashing around. "I can't
fly!! I'm scared of heights!! I...."
        "Would you please shut up?" my alter-ego requested, releasing his
grip on my shoulder. "You're not getting out of this, so just put this on,"
he tossed me a softsuit, "and climb into that," he pointed at another silver
hardsuit standing a few feet away from the two of us. The silver armour was
open, waiting for the sacrificial victim to be stuck inside of it.
        "Look," I tried pleading again. "You can't do this! I'm you!! I mean
you're me!! I mean...You wouldn't really hit yourself, would you?!"
SkyKnight raised his visor as he sighed. The light spilling from the back
windows of the nearby houses illuminated his face, revealing an older
version of my face. It was an eerie feeling to be looking at an older and
more careworn 'me'.
        "Whining isn't going to help you," he told me, not entirely
unkindly. "We all have to accept the consequences of our actions, and this
just happens to be yours. Now suit up and take it like a knight." He flipped
his visor back down, and folded his arms across his chest, waiting.
        "I just know I'm going to regret this," I moaned, looking from the
softsuit I was holding to the empty hardsuit a few feet away.

        ***Epilogue***

        I could barely move. Aches and pains shot through every single
muscle in my body as I rolled over to lay on my back, gasping an panting for
air. I felt like a parcel that had survived Canada Post's handling: battered
and mauled. 
        The nearly dead weight of the battered suit of powered armour I was
wearing didn't help any. Wearing a hardsuit sure hadn't proved to be the
marvelous experience I'd envisaged. It was heavy, hot, and very sweaty
inside, although a lot of the sweat had come from exertion, and panic.
        It certainly hadn't taken the Knight Sabers all that long to
demonstrate to me why they were an elite combat team. Allof my escape and
evasion attempts had been easily thwarted, which of course meant that all
I'd done was basically provide them with target practice for the night. At
least they hadn't really been seriously aiming for me...If that had been the
case, I'd have had a lot more than an impressive bruise collection.
        "Well, I think that'll do for tonight," Sylia's voice intruded on my
exhausted contemplations. Lifting my head with an effort, I directed the
gaze of my hardsuit's sensors at her white hardsuited form as she walked up
to stand over me. "Make sure you've fixed your suit for next week's session."
        "Wait a minute! Next week's session?!" I blurted. "What are you
talking about?!"
        "You didn't really think this was the end of it, did you?" the
leader of the Knight Sabers asked me. "This was just one night out of your
life; you've written about us in a fanfic that covers nearly three
megabytes, and almost four or five years of our lives. One night isn't going
to be adequate recompense for that."
        "How....how long am I going to have to look forward to this?" I
asked, dreading the answer.
        "I'll let you know when I've finally decided," Sylia told me as she
walked away. "In the meantime, I'd exercise some more; you need it."
        "Welcome to hell, buddy," Priss's voice floated over to me. "And
enjoy the ride."


                        End


==========================================
Bert Van Vliet   SkyKnght@sentex.net
[http://www.jurai.net/~skyknght/index.html]
[Alias SkyKnight: Knight-in-Shining Armour, Punster at large, Die-Hard
 Bubblegum Crisis Fan, and writer of Really Long Fanfics!]
 "Trust me.  I know what I'm doing!"