The Starguild Presents:
A Story of Bubblegum Crisis...

Bubblegum Rush: The War of the Tiger
--Chapter 1.1--

Series Created By: Toshimichi Suzuki

Story Written By: Berk' Watkins

Advice Provided By: Speedbump

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Genaros Station
May 1, 2033

     The Doberman's arm cannon trained on the two fallen women,
its targeting scope activating to confirm the kill.  The
targeting laser stabbed through the smoke of combat to contact
the forehead of its first target, a red-haired woman.  The
woman's emerald green eyes stared right back into the Doberman's
betraying not an iota of fear, only unbridled hatred.

Target Designate: BU-33S, 'Meg'
                 BU-33S, 'Lou' (incapacitated)
                 BU-33S, 'Nam' (terminated)
                 BU-33S, 'Sylvie'
                 BU-33S, 'Anri' (incapacitated)
Mission Status: Completion 3.3 minutes

     The Doberman's arm cannon whined as it's damaged capacitors
struggled to gather the charge for a burst.

<Priority Override: Authorization Kaufman Sigma-Kappa-2343322.
<Postpone Mission: Directive Revision.
<Target Designate: BU-33S, 'Sylvie'
<                  BU-33S, 'Anri' (incapacitated)
<Recover: Contents of Shuttle Orca IV cargo bay
<Mission Status: Completion 5.3 minutes
<Mission Paused

     The Doberman paused in its destruction for the moment as F-
series Mannequin Boomers rushed to remove Nam's retired body, the
protesting Meg and the near-catatonic Lou.

<Priority Override: Authorization Kaufman Sigma-Kappa-2343322.
<Resume Mission

     The Doberman let out a feral snarl and rushed at the
shuttle.  At that very moment, Sylvie worked up the courage to
overcome her grief and launched the shuttle.  The Doberman howled
in pain as its circuits cooked momentarily.  It struggled against
the white-hot agony of damaged systems and grabbed onto the rear
of the departing shuttle.

     From his office on Genaros, Kaufman sighed as the Orca IV
engaged it's secondary boosters, frying the Boomer completely. 
"This bodes no good for me, Sir..." he said to a man leaning
against the wall.
     "I understand that Kaufman, that is why you must move
carefully; play the role of 'yes-man' to the hilt.  I am afraid I
must now withdraw my obvious support for the time-being, there
are other things I must deal with now."  He ran his hands through
his raven-black hair and turned to leave.  "But do not worry,
Dieter, I will still be in the background.  You have nothing to
fear from those peasants at Genom."  He chuckled darkly and
walked out the door.
     As the man walked to the launch bay his chuckle deepened
into a sinister laugh that seemed to echo across the void of
space.  He turned back to look back into the station proper, his
eyes glowing bright red.  "Time is the one thing that this
society does not have.  It will evolve, or it will die."  He
chuckled again and boarded the shuttle to Earth.

     "GET IN THERE AND STAY IN THERE, YOU BITCH!!!" Kaufman
roared, overpowering Meg's Boomer strength in his rage.  He
grabbed her by the arm and threw her into an empty room.
     Meg collapsed to the floor and lay there in pain.  She
looked up to the door with bruise-rimmed eyes, still smouldering
with a dark rage that knew no bounds.  "fuck you a die,
Kaufman.." she mumbled, wiping a trickle of blood from her lip. 
The door's electronic lock shifted from green's 'unlocked' to a
red 'locked.'

Internal System Status: Nominal
Note: Damage to internal frame, torso region

     She thanked Stingray the body-blows she'd taken hadn't
damaged her internal systems.  She'd be dead in a matter of days
if she'd lost her blood production system...  She staggered to
her feet and shuffled over to a filthy cot, clutching her side in
pain.  Kaufman had managed to break several ribs.  She slowly
sank onto the cot, teeth clenched in pain.  Meg closed her eyes
and reviewed the many ways she could kill the sadistic man who'd
been her bane since the day she'd first become self-aware.  She
smiled viciously at the irony.  Kaufman had wanted an aggressive
woman to play out some of his fantasies with.  The idiots in R&D
had completed his more aggressive Boomer alright, by unwittingly
stimulating the BU-55C parts of her mind.  Her mind was a
warehouse of tactical and covert operations strategies.  She
could poison him, garrote him, tear his jaw off at an 'awkward'
moment or one of a dozen other options.
     She staggered to her feet and walked over to the mirror in
the cubicle of an apartment.  She stripped off her shirt to
examine the injuries Kaufman had inflicted on her.  Ugly welts
and bruises made her back and left side a blotched quilt of blood
and pain.  She winced as a rib pulled itself back into its proper
place.  She stood there with a sort of detached interest for half
an hour watching the welts close and the bruises go from black
and blue, to brown and then yellow.  "The body heals, but the
soul still bleeds," she muttered darkly.
     Several new ways of murdering Kaufman came to mind, but she
swiftly dismissed them as impractical.  After all, where could
she possibly get jumper cables or Silly Putty on a space station? 
She put her shirt back on and went over to the cot, where she
flopped down and set her mind for light-sleep mode.

One Month Later...

     Daley stepped through the airlock and into another world. 
He noticed the vast number of mannequin-type Boomer around him
and sighed heavily.  Not a one of them were even nice to look
at...  His premonition of his assignment was beginning to come
true, he was *not* going to enjoy his trip to Genaros.  He sighed
heavily and put down his suitcase briefly to stretch.
     "Pardon me, Sir," a young woman said behind him.
     Daley turned to see a beautiful young woman in the minimum
of what could be considered decent.  Daley noted the facial
features marked her as a BU-31A, a model no longer in production
and of shady legality in most countries.  Kaufman was certainly
taking advantage of Genaros' extra-national status.
     "I have been directed to give you a tour of the station,"
she said cheerily.  She picked up Daley's suitcase and set off.
     "Why me?" he moaned.  He sighed like Hercules setting off on
a Labor and followed the android.

     Meg was on the cot, curled up into a fetal ball.  One of the
greatest punishments that could be inflicted on a BU-33S was not
physical injury, anything could be healed with time.  The one
true punishment for any Boomer of her type was removal from even
social contact with other people.  She let out a choking sob and
curled up even tighter, her mind spinning frantically in various
helpless circles.  She was a social animal, one that *needed* to
be around other people.  "make it stop..." she rasped.

     Daley eyed the door suspiciously.  He'd been playing tag
with Kaufman for the past several days, trying to find the
elusive Director of the station.  It had taken a lot of careful
planning and thought to figure out how to use the user-unfriendly
computer in his room.  After that it had taken him several hours
to track down Kaufman's office.  He calmly knocked on the door
several times and when that didn't work he pounded on the door
heavily.  "I know you're in there, so don't try to hide,
Kaufman," he said in a scolding tone.  When Kaufman failed to
open the door, he frowned slightly, almost pouting.  "Now, now,
Director Kaufman, I know you're in there..."
     Kaufman finally relented and let the Detective into his
office.
     An hour later Daley left the Director's office, an uneasy
smile plastered on his face.  The story Kaufman had told him been
both enlightening and a bit unsettling.

     "S-sir.. The AD Police were here.."
     "They made you talk?"
     "Please forgive me..." Kaufman begged.
     The man shrugged in the shadow-concealed vidphone screen. 
"All things happen at their fated time.  All I have seen will
come to pass," the man remarked.  He chuckled.  "Don't worry,
Dieter, no harm will come to you."
     Kaufman let out a sigh of relief and collapsed back into his
chair.  "I thank you for your forgiving soul, Sir," he said with
a slight lean forward.
     The Shadowed Man acknowledged him with a nod.  "I will begin
to look into an escape route for you, Dieter.  Things are rapidly
becoming.. unstable," he said grimly.  "I will keep you safe,
however.  You need not fear for anything."  He cut the
connection.
     Kaufman sighed in relief and closed his eyes, rubbing at
them absently.

     Meg's bloodshot eyes locked on the door as it unlocked. 
Kaufman stepped into the room like a triumphant god.  "Hello,
Meg, you feel like keeping in line now?"
     She gave him a poisonous glance that would've melted armor
plating.

S.D.P.C., The Matrix
July 3, 2033

     A man dressed in a bright red tuxedo rounded a corner, his
cloak swirling in the 'wind' dramatically.  He approached what
looked like a security door and frowned, pulling a cane from his
cape like an Immortal pulling a sword out of a trenchcoat.  "Do
not adjust your datajack.  We control the input.  We control the
output."  He thrust the cane through the door, shattering it into
a shower of ones and zeros.  He grinned wickedly and shimmered as
the decker equivalent of a Predator Cloak surrounded him.  He
walked through the door, seeming to be nothing more than a hiccup
in data traffic.  The blurry man crept past several guardian
programs, and even the Sysop herself before entering the main
data storage area and going about his business.
     The hacker's handle was Inferno, but he was far more than
that.  In the beginning there was Dr. Cain Dante.  The Internet
was without form, and chaotic, and Dante said, 'Let there be a
Matrix.'  And there was...  Many years passed, and Dante took
under his tutelage many a hacker.  One such student was Kai
Stuart, Inferno, Dante's chosen heir.
     Inferno rifled through a virtual file cabinet, seemingly
chosen at random.  He pulled out a file, read it and smiled. 
"Well, well, well.. what have we here?" he muttered absently.  He
sent the file back to his deck's hard drive and turned to leave.
     He paused for a moment, an faint smile on his face as he
became visible again.  "RIFT BOMB!" he roared, raising his cane
into the air and slamming the butt to the ground.  The fabric of
the Matrix unraveled, sending architecture swirling off into the
void.  Inferno nodded in appreciation of his work as he said a
single command, "Log-out."
     Kai opened his eyes in the real world and smiled.  He
removed the low-impendence cables from the datajack at the base
of his skull and hit the first button on his vidphone's speed
dial.  "Kou, you're gonna love this one..." he said cheerfully.
     The Chang family bodyguard frowned slightly, wiping some
sleep from his eyes and retrieving his glasses from the night
stand.  "It's three in the morning, Kai.  Don't you ever sleep?"
he muttered crossly.
     "Sorry..." the hacker replied, sheepishly, "This couldn't
wait."  He called up a file and put it into a subwindow on the
screen, highlighting the important data.  "Guess who Gulf and
Bradley just head-hunted?"
     Kou's eyebrows arched in interest.
     "You remember a little rumor I dug up about GOCC's planned
entry into the weapons contest last year?" the hacker asked with
a smirk.
     "The one that got scuttled because it would be too expensive
to mass-produce?" Kou asked, now completely awake.
     "It's designer just got fired from SDPC and went to work
with our good friends in Texas..." Kai gloated.  "Shall we have a
little fun with him?  Anyone that important who joins the G&B
camp *ought* to get.. initiated..."  The hacker cackeled with
almost sadistic glee.
     "Whatever, Kai...  I'll talk with Mr. Chang in the morning." 
Kou cut the connection and took off his glasses.  He laid back
down and tried very hard to fall back to sleep, the thought of
the fabled D.D.'s designer working at Gulf and Bradley was very
unsettling.

Houston, Texas
July 4, 2033


     Kai stepped out of a small Chang-owned jet and winced.  He
quickly pulled a pair of sunglasses out of his pocket and put
them on to protect his sensitive eyes.  "I keep forgetting about
that damned sunlight..." he muttered crossly, glancing up at the
cloudless sky.  He shifted his attention to an operative rushing
up to him.
     "Mr. Stuart, welcome to Houston!" he shouted over the din of
the idling engines.  "Your limousine is waiting."
     Kai wondered briefly just what Mr. Chang had told the local
Hou Bang members to deserve a limo...  He shrugged and followed
the man.  "I want to speak with Charles Giftos," Kai said with
authority, "I need to tell him the plan to.. throw a monkeywrench
into G&B's plans."


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lilin@nospam.ufl.edu
Remove the 'nospam' from the e-mail address to mail me.


-Berk' Watkins,
 A Member of Team SME,
 A Fragment of the Final Angel,
 -and-
 A Rabid Kyo Kusanagi Fan...