Subject: "OPERATIVE A: Caged!" 1/3
From: karmin.stjean@the-spa.com
Date: 12/6/1996, 3:58 AM
To: fanfic@fanfic.com

                        =Operative A=
                           "Caged!"

    The Operative staggered, semiconscious away from Tokyo Tower, his eyes
glazed with pain as he gritted his teeth and held onto his right shoulder,
the only part of that arm that was still organic and which had been badly
dislocated when his cybernetic arm had been torn off, mercifully unaware
of the gruesome death he surely would've suffered at Kain's hands if Tenchi
Masaki hadn't turn on the Jurai Energy Generator when he had.
    Kain had torn his arm off and and had gouged his muzzle.  The Class A
criminal had been reaching for his right eye when the Jurai energy had struck
Kain and caused him to drop the Operative and go after its source, his hatred
for Jurai stronger than his hatred for the Galaxy Police.
    Even though he'd been spared the gory death that fate his sought to deal
him, the Operative's wounds left him fighting shock as he stagged down the
street, trying to find shelter and this was the reason he completely forgot
to put on his mask.  Fortunately, his long and luxuriant dark auburn hair
hung in a dark auburn curtain around his face, hiding it from passerbies.
    Despite his determination, shock soon settled in.  He stood still for a
moment, some deeply set drive trying to shake off the deepening shock, then
collapsed on the sidewalk, twitching for a moment before he finally lost
consciousness.

    A man in his late forties was standing at a curb, waiting for the light
to change, when he saw the Operative collapse.  Concerned, he hurried over to
the fallen man and placed his hand on his neck, trying to find a pulse.  He
was rather surprised when he felt the short velveteen fur on the Operative's
neck.  He pulled back the auburn curtain and saw the face of the wounded
stranger.
    "A rat!" He gasped as he stumbled back from the rodentine creature
his own face a mask of horror and disgust, seeing not a proud Operative of
the Galaxy Police (of which he was totally unaware) but instead a hideous
and despicable creature worthy only of back alley garbage cans.  As he leaped
back, he overturned the unconscious Operative, exposing his rodentine visage.

    A crowd of people began to form around the oddity lying unconscious on
the sidewalk, blood running down its muzzle.
    "Shoot that thing!" One woman shouted, eyeing the Operative with the
same disgust the first man had felt when he'd discovered the Operative's
secret.
    "Do it now, before it recovers! Who knows what the monster will do to
your families!"
    "Its a rat.  It probably carries some disease.  We should burn it and
then decontaminate ourselves."
    "The lab at Tokyo University would put you on the top of their Honored
Donors' list for life if you gave that *thing* to them."
    "The freak show would pay a *lot* of money for it."
    "Yes!" The crowd agreed.  "The freak show! Sell it to the freak show!"

    A little boy had been walking home from school when he saw the crowd
and went to see what they were looking at.  He squeezed through them and
saw the Operative.  Like the others, he saw the Operative's rodentine face,
but, unlike the others, he noticed the sleeves of the Operative's jacket,
particularly the cuffs.
    His father had worked for the Tokyo Metropolitan Police until he'd died
in the line of duty a year earlier and the boy recognzed the pattern of
the cuff-fringes.  The creature, whatever it was, was a cop!
    The chants of "Freak Show!" and "Sell the rat!" grew louder and uglier.
    "No!" a little boy screamed, rushing to stand in front of the rodentine
form, like a knight guarding a damsel.  "This is an alien being.  We have to
heal him and send him home."
    "Stand aside, little boy." a stocky old man said, as he brushed the
child aside and picked up the Operative's twitching form.
    "NO!" The boy shouted as they carried the unconscious Operative off.
"You can't do that to him! You're all a bunch of meanies!! Leave him alone!!"
    No one paid him any attention.

    The boy went to the freak show with his mother that Saturday.
    As they drove toward the shabby, rundown park where the show was being
held, she turned toward him.  "You're a brave one, my son." She told him.
"When I was your age, I never went to the freak show.  It always scared me
and grandma always told me the freaks were mostly fakes, weirdos who liked
to dress up in costumes and scare children."
    The boy watched as the signs for the freak show appeared on the roadside.
"Hirimi's Freakshow", it was called, and it was rumored to house some of
'the freakiest freaks around', including a new prize exhibit which was
drawing large crowds.
    The boy had the sinking feeling he knew just what the exhibit was.
    "How do the people who run the shows take care of the freaks?" the boy
asked.
    "They don't." the mother replied, sadly.  "It's really sad, too.  When
you think about it, here's a potiential to show the beauty in nature's
diversity, and instead they treat it like its garbage."
    The boy felt tears well up in his eyes.  Surely that wasn't true! "Why
don't people stop them?" He asked.
    His mother had to admit that, for all her wisdom, she had no answer
to give him.
    His mother pulled into the parking lot and opened the car door.  She
hesitated for a moment, then saw him already running to the gates.  With
no further hesitation, she ran after him.
    At the gate, the boy's mother paid their admission price and the two
of them walked into hell.

    Deformed and disfigured people grunted in cages, like wild animals,
drooling or hopping around like toads.  Some had misshapen heads or feet,
some were simply the victims of the Thalidomide Disaster.  These were
being largely ignored.
    Following the crowds, the boy and his mother soon arrived at the special
exhibit.
    Pushing his way through the crowd the boy soon arrived at the cage
the Operative had been so cruelly resigned to.  His small fists balled with
youthful rage as he saw the horrid condition of the creature who had looked
much different only a few days earlier.  The creature's wounds had been
treated, but only superficially, in the manner of most freakshows who's
owners don't really care if their freaks live or die so long as the money
rolls in and the anti-septic, which had sat on the 'doctor's' shelf for
years, had no more potency against infection than tap-water.  His fur hadn't
been washed for days, except for the usual hosing-down given to all the
freaks, which, in itself, was an act of cruelty.  Despite the hosings, he was
infested with fleas and had clawed and gnawed away far too much fur.  His
cybernetic arm hadn't been repaired and the cables and servos had been long
since damaged by water and cold.  The combination of the massive infection on
his poorly-stitched muzzle, plus being left wet after hosings in early
December, left the Operative with severe pneumonia and the muscular frame he
had kept in top shape, which had bravely grappled with only the most
dangerous criminals in the galaxy, had been reduced, through sickness and
malnutrition, to a gangling bag of skin and bones.  What angered the boy
most, however, was the hollow look in the creature's eyes.  Only days
earlier, those eyes had shone with pride despite the pain in them, now that
had been erased by the cruelty inflicted upon the noble creature.  Seeing
this made the boy ashamed that he was human.

    Weeping, the boy stepped bravely forward until he stood beside the
cage.  He squatted down next to it and looked into the Operative's lifeless
eyes.  It was clear even to this child that the creature was dying.
    The boy began to cry.  "I'll help you." He vowed to the Operative.  "I
promise.  I'll get you out of here and hide you where they can't find you."
    The merest hint of a smile formed on the face of the stricken Operative,
and for the merest fraction of a second, at the sound of the kind voice and
it's promise, the dull eyes sparked with hope, which quickly faded as the
pall of reality settled over him.  This boy was nobler than those in the
crowd many times his age, but he was just a boy, and though he probably
believed he could, there was no way he could rescue the Operative.

    The boy quietly pushed open his bedroom window as his mother slept
in her room down the hall.  He dropped the bag of tools he'd taken from his
father's workshop out the window, wincing as they clanked ouside.  He paused
for a moment, listening for his mother's voice or footsteps, then, hearing
neither, he climbed out, catching his ankle as he went and falling into a
flowering bush.
    "Darn it." He said, quietly.
    He stood up and picked up the bag of tools.  Then, holding the bag
tightly, so he wouldn't make too much noise, he ran as fast as he could to
the freak show.
    The show was locked up for the night, but the gates were made to stop
Continued to next message

 * SLMR 2.1a * "I will pay you back!!"  ...Lady Achika to Kain