Continued from 1 of 2

                                                           ****

"He's crazy," Priss thought.
     She watched the black motorcycle in front of her weaving in and out
of the spotty traffic, as she and Blackie made their way towards Bayside
Park on the rain-soaked main highway. For only the second time in her life-
she was having a hard time keeping up with a vehicle in front of her. She
hoped that the bike rider wasn't as crazy as the Griffon's creator had been.
     "Hurry up!" came Blackie's voice to her ears amid the whine of  her own
bike's accelerating engine. Her bike shot forward, the front wheel lifting
briefly off the road, while the rear tire jogged a little to one side as it
struggled to grip the slick pavement. The black bike in front of her had
slowed a little, and soon she was riding with Blackie side-by-side.
     "What's the rush?" Priss shouted, to be heard over their bikes. Her
helmet's visor was now flipped up to reveal a slightly annoyed look.
     Blackie turned and grinned at Priss from behind his own helmet. "Having
trouble keeping up?"
     "What?" Priss replied with a mocking tone, then glanced at Blackie's
bike. "With that old thing? Give me a break."
     Blackie flashed a grin at Priss again. "Old huh? I see . . ."
     Priss's smirk was short-lived, as the black bike and its rider bolted
ahead suddenly, then quickly accelerated past the cars in front of her.
"Shit! Stupid son-of-a-"
     Priss slapped her helmet visor down and applied the throttle to her own
bike to give chase, hoping beyond hope that Nene might have been assigned to
traffic duty on this stretch of road.
     She watched, first in disgust, then in amazement, as the black bike
wove in and out of the thickening traffic at a high rate of speed that left
her struggling to keep up. The slippery road and the random pattern of cars
turned the pleasure ride into a workout of constant braking and shifting,
and produced several sudden jolts of adrenaline, as her bike threatened more
than once to slip out from underneath her.
     As the traffic thinned out again, Blackie opened up the throttle, and
leaned down under the wind-shield. He had entered a long, straight section
of highway, and was bent on pushing his bike to its limits. Lost to him in
the blur of the scenery racing by, a Tokyo Highway Patrol cruiser sat idly
at the side of the road, its driver somehow oblivious to Blackie's flight. A
few miles further along, a second THP vehicle neglected to give chase, the
officer heavily engaged in negotiating dinner plans over the radio with his
female partner in the patrol car a few miles back.
     Blackie took a long look into his rear-view mirror that oscillated
rapidly from the bike's high-speed vibrations but clearly displayed the
image of a red bike that was slowly gaining on him. With a flick of his foot
and a quick wrist motion, his bike surged forward, the engine whining in
protest as it approached its top speed.
     Still, the red bike was gaining.
     Blackie smiled, his hand tightly gripping the throttle at max though he
knew it was only a matter of seconds before she overtook him. "Seems Pops
has made some improvements over the years," he thought to himself. But a
second quick glance in his mirror showed that Priss had suddenly fallen
back. He swung his gaze forward again instinctively, but it was too late. An
ADP cruiser was suddenly at his side, seemingly coming out of nowhere.
     Priss could not stop grinning as she watched Blackie's motorcycle slow
down, and then pull off the road, followed closely by the police cruiser.
She pulled in behind the two vehicles, turned off her bike's engine, and
flipped up her helmet's visor, then sat back and waited. Out of the corner
of her eye she could see Blackie glancing over at her, as she stared out at
the rain pocked waters of Tokyo Bay making sure her grin was still plainly
visible on her face.
     When the blue and white police vehicle swung back onto the highway,
Priss casually restarted her bike, and slowly rode forward until she was
idling next to Blackie.
     "Damn! Where the hell did he come from anyway?" Blackie queried their
surroundings in disgust as he stuffed the speeding ticket into a pocket.
Priss said nothing. He turned to look at her, met again by the knowing grin
that still hadn't left her face. Blackie stared at her for a long moment,
his eyes betraying a hint of anger, but the emotion faded the longer he
gazed at her, until he was grinning himself. "Okay. Lead the way."
     Priss's grin flowed into a sly smile as she nodded, then pointed her
bike into the traffic.
     To their left, the bay spread out as far as their eyes could see, its
surface reflection-less, mottled by the downpour. The late morning sun was
no more than a dull opaque presence, hidden by the overcast. After a half
hour of steady riding, Priss pointed ahead of her, and motioned to Blackie
to pull over. Blackie looked ahead for a moment, then nodded.
     Soon, the two cyclists were seated on a dry metal-form bench under the
rusting tin roof of an abandoned kiosk that looked out over the bay. Several
vending machines stood sentry-like across the street, their slightly rusted
and cracked exteriors showing signs of aging and vandalism. Priss sighed as
she stared at the soda dispensing machine through the rain and the "OUT OF
ORDER" sign that hung from its credit slot.
     Her gaze drifted out across the bay, then up the hills to her right,
rising higher and higher until the sweeping ridge met the burned out
skeleton of a small man-made mountain. The building's remains still dwarfed
its natural surroundings despite its blackened state; the Genom Corporate
Research Center, destroyed in a single moment by a laser-armed satellite.
     Priss stared in a dream-like state at the charred ziggurat, until
Blackie's hand on her arm startled her.
     Blackie quickly withdrew his hand. The sudden look in Priss's eyes was
a warning that did not bear repeating verbally. His thoughts drifted back to
the night before, when she had grasped his hand in hers, and how much it had
affected him. He had assumed that she had reached out for a comforting
touch. It suddenly occurred to him how little he knew about his own
emotions, and the emotions of those around him.
     He sat back against the bench, crossed his arms, and watched her
thoughtfully, as she turned to stare across the street at something.
Oblivious to his gaze, Priss ignored the rain's mist that swept under the
thin metal roof above them. As they sat there, the fine droplets collected
slowly at the ends of her brown locks to drip hypnotically. Her eyes were
locked on some point out there, no doubt blurred and unseeing as her
thoughts carried her away with the gentle hush of the rain. He smiled, and
thought to himself, "She's just like me."
     "Priss?"
     Priss turned slowly to face Blackie, her eyes refocusing. "Hm?"
     Blackie paused for a moment before continuing, the words jumbled in his
mind. "What were you thinking about just now?"
     Priss turned back to stare out into the rain. "Nothing much," she lied,
her thoughts lost in the past . . . again.
     Blackie cracked a smile, then laughed nervously. "Okay, okay, so I got
caught speeding. Go ahead and say it; 'I told you so'."
     Priss smiled briefly. "Ah, I wasn't thinking about that."
     Blackie processed the response, then picked the first reply that came
out of the murk of his nervous thoughts into the light. "Oh . . . well you just
seemed to be somewhere else there."
     An awkward silence ensued, as each struggled for something more to say.
Blackie stared out into the curtain of water, one question rising to his
lips above the inner cacophony of endlessly looping small-talk trigger
phrases. "Why do I get the feeling that this ride up here wasn't just to
wash our bikes? Was there something you wanted to talk about?"
     Priss turned away, her eyes suddenly lit with a fear Blackie couldn't see.
She had wanted to *ask* him about something, but now that they were here,
she wasn't sure that she should.
     "Priss. . ."
     "Yes," Priss began haltingly. "I did want to talk to you-- ask you--
about some things."
     Blackie waited, seeing the struggle in Priss's darkened eyes as she
looked down at her boots.
     "Who are you Blackie?" Priss finally said. She was staring directly
into Blackie's eyes as she said the words, the calm, almost accusative look
of the night before returning to unnerve him. "I don't know what to think of
all this. You come out of nowhere last night to drop into the middle of that
scrap with those boomers, with a hard-suit no less, then claim to be Sylia's
long lost brother. Okay, so you have a data unit that looks like Sylia's,
and you even look a *little* like Mackie; but how am I supposed to know this
is for real? I mean, it's all pretty wild, you have to admit."
     Taken aback by the bluntness of the question, Blackie hesitated, then
composed himself. "I've often wondered that myself Priss," he began. "I
never really knew my father that well, and my mother wasn't around long
enough to even form a lasting memory of. I can't seem to remember much of my
childhood, and the last few years of my life seem like a blur. But I assure
you, everything I told Sylia last night is the truth. And you can ask Pops
about me if you like. He took care of me after my father died, until I left
to live on my own."
     Priss nodded slowly, absorbing the convincing piece of evidence, but
inside her there were still doubts. Nagging doubts, that seemed to be
unfounded in any way, but still they gnawed at her. And those doubts had
never been wrong before. The questions she really wanted to ask now spun in
her mind, the answers to which were the only things that could erase those
doubts.
     "But why?" Priss asked imploringly, her red-brown eyes narrowing, her
voice questioning. "Why, after all these years, did you decide to try and
find Sylia? And why did you build that hard suit?"
     The rain hissed around them steadily as Blackie thought about the
question. It was a long moment before he answered. "I needed answers Priss.
I used to think it was a good idea to keep my mouth shut, and just carry on
with my life. But I watched Sylia and the Knight Sabers battle against Genom
and I *knew* why she was fighting. Because I feel what she feels. The pain,
the loss, the anger, the desire for-"
     Priss studied Blackie's face as he struggled with the word.
     "Revenge," he finally uttered. "And that's why I built the hard-suit. I
was going to use it to set things right. Or at least, what I thought was
right. But Sylia beat me to Mason, and when I heard he was dead, I didn't
feel all the things that I thought I'd feel. I just felt empty, like there
wasn't anything left to do."
     Priss nodded quietly, unable to look at Blackie.
     "So a few more years went by, and I watched as Genom crumbled, and the
Knight Sabers faded from the public eye. My need to get answers to my
remaining questions faded; until last night. I honestly wanted to help you
last night, and for a moment it filled that emptiness inside."
     Priss finally looked over at Blackie, their eyes locking and exchanging
a knowing look.
     The rain continued to fall steadily, the rhythmic pattering on the tin
roof above them sending Priss deep into thought, while Blackie stared at
their bikes a few feet away.
     Priss suddenly broke the silence, her words full of uncertainty, but
the need to say them overwhelming now. "I've been here before . . . a long
time ago . . . with a friend."
     Blackie turned back to face her. "So this is kind of a special place
for you?"
     Priss looked up at Blackie and nodded. "You could say that. Anyway,
this friend was killed . . ."
     Blackie started to reach out for Priss's hand again but stopped short.
"I'm sorry-"
     "No need to be. It wasn't your fault," she interrupted him. "It was . . .
mine."
     "Yours? What do you mean?"
     Priss looked out into the rain again, her eyes slowly filling with an
unfamiliar moistness. It had been five years since she'd ridden with Sylvie
to this very spot. "I'm free" she'd said. It hadn't made much sense at the
time she'd said it, but now it made perfect sense. Too perfect.
     Five years since Sylvie's death too, and yet it seemed she still hadn't
dealt with the guilt. Her friends would go on telling her long after, that
she'd had no other choice but to kill the sexaroid boomer she knew as
her friend. If she hadn't, *no-one* would have lived to even think about the
right or wrong thing to do. Sometimes though, being alive to think about
such things didn't seem like such a great choice.
     "I . . . I killed her Blackie," Priss finally spoke.
     "You?!"
     Priss looked Blackie squarely into his widening eyes, and nodded twice.
     Blackie looked away from her sober stare, the words even harder to put
together now, then looked back. "Why?! What happened?"
     "She was a boomer. I had . . . no other choice at the time."
     "I see," came the thoughtful response. Blackie looked around wildly,
for anything to fix his eyes on as he thought about what to say, his hand
still instinctively wanting to reach out for hers. The hills . . . the gray
mist above them . . . and beyond the mist- the Genom Research Center. "You
couldn't save her?" he finally said.
     Priss just shook her head, her eyes staring away from him, back into
the rain again, salty moisture starting to burgeon on the edge of her lower
eyelids. She fought the tears the only way she knew how; with a clenched
fist. "I wanted revenge too Blackie," Priss half whispered, half spat in
anger. "And it filled me up until I couldn't see straight. I had to step
away from the Knight Sabers to deal with it, but eventually it caught up to
me, and I sought my revenge. . . I got it, but like you I felt empty
afterwards."
     Blackie saw the watery eyes, the balled up fists, and again his hand
reached out, then retracted. His mind reeled, the confusion, and the desire
to say something locked in mortal combat. This was something he didn't think
he was prepared to deal with. What to say, what to say . . .
     "Couldn't the police help at all?"
     Priss turned, her eyes suddenly full of fury. Blackie cringed. "The
police?!" Priss shouted, "Gimmee a break! The police are-"
     Priss cut herself off suddenly, and looked carefully at Blackie's face;
the withdrawn look, the confusion.
     Bristling, and ready to unload, she checked her angry discharge
instead, and sat back against the bench with an audible thump. Wincing, she
rubbed her still sore back, and after a moment she continued, her voice now
slightly calmer. "Okay, let me explain something you may not know about the
*police*. We all know they're pretty incompetent, despite shutting Genom
down. Hell, if the government hadn't stepped in *we'd* still be dealing with
Genom's problems." Inside her, Priss could not help but wonder what things
would really be like now, if the government hadn't stepped in. Blackie's
inquiring look cut her internalizing about an alternate future short. She
completed her point with an angry tone. "And, I suppose you were too busy
showing off to see the two THP cars you passed that sat there as you sailed by?"
     Blackie gave a startled look that confirmed her suspicions.
     Priss shook her head and continued. "If you think the police are bad
now, you should have tried asking them for help a few years back."
     Blackie looked into Priss's eyes and saw the quelled rage. Something
deep inside, deeper still than her confession to the murder of her friend.
The look in her eyes caused him to think back, to a moment in time when he
wanted more than anything to get answers. Answers to the mysteries
surrounding his father's death.
     "Priss . . ." he began, startling her with his sudden, hushed tone. The
softness of his voice caused all the rage inside to suddenly drain out of
her. She looked away for a moment, knowing that whatever he was about to say
was something he had held within him for a long time. She'd used the very
same tone of voice when she had begun their conversation.
     Her gaze suddenly swung back to meet his, as his hand closed around
hers. She didn't resist, but his touch made her nervous.
     "Priss- after my father was killed . . . several years passed, and Pops-
Dr. Raven-  kept telling me to let it go, to leave the investigating to the
police. I didn't understand at the time why Pops felt that way, but I
couldn't wait any more for the police to figure things out. And by this time
they had pretty much given up on the case anyway. I needed to know exactly
why and how he had died. Like I said before, I needed answers, but the
evidence from the Uizu Lab's security cameras on my data unit wasn't enough."
     Priss stared at the man before her, and then looked down at his hand,
loosely clasped around hers. The urge to pull away slowly eroded from within
her, as she listened intently to hear his words over the hissing rain.
     "So I went to the police. With the data unit," he continued.
     Priss's eyes widened. "You didn't show it to them did you?"
     "No. I never got that far," Blackie replied, the roles reversed now,
with his voice full of long buried emotion. "Instead of listening to what I
had to tell them, they asked me questions about my father's work, and about
the people he worked with. Then they started asking questions about where I
lived and, well . . . suddenly it seemed like I had made a mistake in going
to them. They weren't interested in what I had to say, they just wanted
answers to their questions. And their questions got more and more accusative."
     "So you split," Priss said, a hint of understanding in her voice, as
the hand around hers faded from her thoughts.
     "I ran. And they nearly caught up to me too. But I ended up at a
friend's place for a few days where a lot of biker gang members hung out."
     Blackie paused, suddenly feeling Priss's hand tense a bit. "The police
showed up a few days later and raided the place. I'm still not sure if they
knew I was there or not. Anyway, I took off out the back door. I got back to
the garage okay, but later on I heard a rumor from the guy who owned the
place, that the cops had shot someone that looked a little like me . .
.Well, someone who looked like me the way I looked back then. But, what I'm
trying to say is, I understand how you feel about the police . . ."
     Blackie stopped. Priss had slipped her hand out of his, and was now
standing facing the road, her back to him. He reached out to touch her arm,
but then changed his mind, the confusion of her action robbing him of his
momentary confidence. "I'm sorry Priss. Did I say something wrong?"
     Priss said nothing, her thoughts suddenly thrust back into the past.
She thought of Jesse's face the night he had died, her memory of it etched
forever in her mind. The pain, the fear, the confusion; frozen like a mask,
and underneath the mask . . . his innocence.
     "What was his name Blackie?"
     Blackie stuttered a bit, thrown by the unexpected question. "Um, Jesse
something I think. I can't remember exactly."
     Priss sighed, and closed her eyes tightly, mentally comparing Jesse's
face to Blackie's. More than a passing resemblance; now she understood what
it was that had drawn her to him the other night in the bar.
    "I take it from your reaction that you knew this guy?" Blackie asked.
     Priss nodded. "Yeah," was all she could say.
     "Oh," Blackie said, the realization of the coincidence's odds not lost
on him. Suddenly he was struggling to remember the faces of everyone he'd
seen that night he'd run from the police.
     As the painful memory faded a bit from Priss's mind, a thought suddenly
occurred to her. Something didn't make sense with this new information. She
turned to face Blackie, her eyes narrowed. "You said this friend of yours
told you the *police* had shot someone who looked like you?"
     "Yeah," Blackie replied.
     "But that doesn't make sense! The police told me that Jesse had been
shot by an unidentified man in a car!"
    "Well," Blackie went on solemnly, "there's more. I used Pops'
computer to find out a little more about the shooting."
     Priss turned slowly to gaze intently at Blackie. Computers. She'd
forgotten he was a Stingray.
     Blackie continued, his audience now fully captivated. "I was able to
get hold of a copy of the ballistics report from the ADP's database. I
needed to know why this guy was shot, and according to the report, the
bullet that killed your Jesse wasn't standard police issue."
     Priss nodded.
     Blackie went on. "The bullet *was* of Genom manufacture, as was all the
ammunition used by the TPD and ADP then, but this particular caliber and
make was never used by the police. They had pretty strict policies about
their weapons and ammunition."
     Priss thought about the non-regulation revolver Leon toted around. Her
voice still betraying her emotional state, she decided not to argue the
point, and asked the next question that came to her mind. "Okay, that makes
more sense, but what does it prove?"
     "Besides the fact that the police didn't shoot anyone that night,"
Blackie began, "not much. But . . ."
     Priss sat back down next to Blackie, her patience wearing thin as a
sixth sense told her she was about to find out the identity of Jesse's
killer. "Yes?"
     Blackie spoke the words dramatically, "I'm pretty sure I know who
killed him."
     "Who?" was all Priss could manage to say between tightening jaws.
     Blackie sat back against the bench and sighed. "The same man who is
shown on my data unit killing my father, who used the same type of gun to
kill your Jesse. An ambitious Genom executive named- "
     "Brian J. Mason," Priss finished for him.
     "Yes," Blackie replied, his surprise quickly vanishing as he remembered
who Priss worked for. He continued, his voice more excited as he raced to
assemble the final puzzle piece. "I don't know how, but Mason somehow
managed to learn about me and my visit to the police, no doubt through
hacked files, the same way I got the police reports. Priss, he was after me
and my data unit for some reason, and mistook your Jesse for me."

     Blackie watched, the feelings inside him suddenly before him like
looking into a mirror, as Priss stood and stepped out into the rain to face
the destroyed Genom Research Center in the distance, and shout. "Lay down
and die you son-of-a-bitch!!! Just die, for god's sake. . . Just die . . ." 
     Priss's shoulders suddenly slumped, and her arms fell loosely to her
sides, the fists unclenching slowly to lay flat against her thighs. Her
chest began to heave in fits as she cried, all her willpower cast aside by
the futility of wanting Jesse back . . . of wanting Sylvie back. Blackie
stood slowly, and stepped into the rain next to her. Not knowing what to do,
he simply stood beside her as she sobbed, hoping his nearness might make her
stop, but wanting more, to take the pain away.
     Instead, Priss reached out and took his hand in hers, then grasped his
arm, then finally fell against him, her arms reaching behind him to draw him
close. Blackie hesitated, his thoughts stricken by a mild panic. But as she
held him, and showed no signs of letting go, instinct took over, and he
slowly wrapped his arms about her and held her, as her tears washed away in
the rain.

END Chapter 14


-----------------------------------
"BG Cross", "Dark Traveler", "The Dragon's Tower"
http://execulink.com/~askuse/bgcross/
Raven's Garage:
http://execulink.com/~askuse/ravengar.html