Priss, Nene, and Linna all waved as Sylia headed off for her plane
to Germany.  The usually taciturn leader of the Knight Sabres was smiling
a bit ... and it wasn't what Linna had dubbed the "my, the three of you
are idiots" smile that she sometimes wore.

	It had only been a few days since the Knight Sabres had faced,
they hoped for the final time, the mad boomer mastermind Largo, foiling
his efforts to cause a meltdown at MegaTokyo's fusion power plant.  From
what Sylia had indicated, she had faced Largo, perhaps the ultimate
manifestation of the perversion of Dr. Stingray's cyberdroid developments,
in a deeply personal conflict.

	Priss, being Priss, didn't really give a hoot how Largo had been
beaten, as long as the entity that held the ultimate responsibility for
the death of ... a number of people that Priss had cared about, had at
last met its end.  Permanently this time.

	"Well, well!  The three of you in the same place, what a
coincidence ..." she heard an overly familiar voice boom.

	That Leon had figured out her own secret identity was probably not
a surprise -- the fool was, after all, mildly obsessed, and she had been
near the site of several Knight Sabres involvements.  However, his
deduction of the identities of two of the others, which he had hinted at
over coffee at one point, had forced Priss to take a step back, and
re-evaluate Leon.  Just a bit ... he was still an annoying, obnoxious,
unable-to-take-a-hint, lacking-the-brains-God-gave-a-radish, AD Policeman.
But he might just be trustworthy.

	Of course, she hadn't confirmed his suspicions.  That would
probably qualify as a violation of Rule 1 of the Knight Sabres ... the
one that Sylia had none-too-subtly indicated that she would *definitely*
enforce with Rule 11.  Priss had told Nene and Linna about the situation,
and she wasn't surprised that Leon had shared his suspicions with Daley.

	Since they were all in a bit of an euphoric state about surviving
the near-meltdown, it was decided that they would go get some lunch.  It
was further decided that Leon would pay.  (This last decision was made
without the consent of the subject, but it was otherwise unanimous.)

	Sitting in the ice cream store, Priss watched as Nene and Linna
argued over something.  The youngest Knight Sabre had grown up a lot over
the last year -- ever since that one really weird case -- but it was good
to see that she was still a little childish.  If nothing else, it gave
both Linna and Priss something to tease her over.  Meanwhile, Leon was
actually being a decent guy ... he'd only asked her out once so far, and
was appearing to not intend to repeat it ...

	Suddenly, Priss' danger sense began to signal to her that she was
being watched from the rear.  She slowly turned around to look back at the
person staring at her, hoping that it was only a fan who had somehow
recognized her out of her makeup ...

	The watcher was a woman in her mid-twenties, with silver hair,
seated a few tables away.  She was dressed in a conservative outfit, and
her dark blue eyes were puzzled.

	Suddenly, she seemed to come to a decision, got up, and walked
over to where Priss was seated.  Nene and Linna's bickering stopped
suddenly.

	"Excuse me," the woman asked quietly.  "But ... are you by any
chance ..."

	A fan, Priss guessed.  "Yeah, I'm Priss, as in `and the
Replicants' ..."

	"Oh.  My.  God."

	Priss stared at the woman, who was almost floored by the answer.
She quietly hoped that this wasn't one of those nutcase obsessed fans, the
one that she had was more than enough.

	"You're Priscilla Asagiri?  Really?"

	"Uh ... yeah.  Do I --"

	"Priscilla-chan!  It's me!"

	Priss blinked.  "Uh?" she inquired.

	"You don't remember me?  Nakajima Natsumi!  W-we were practically
sisters when we were growing up!  How ... I ... we all thought you were
*dead*!"

	Priss stared up at the woman.

	Then she did something totally out of character.

	She fainted.



	Priss dreamed, sometimes, about her parents.  It was one of the
greatest frustrations of her life that she was never able to remember what
they looked like when she woke up.

	Her memories of anything that had happened before her twelfth year
were very incoherent.  She remembered watching "Blade Runner" for the
first time when she was four or five, and a handful of other, minor
moments ... but not the face of her mother.

	When she was younger, like most orphans, she had once entertained
hopes that her parents had only faked their deaths for some obscure
reason, and that they would eventually come and get her out of the
orphanage to which she had been consigned.

	But they never did.



	Priss woke up to find that she was still slumped in her seat.  Her
friends and the woman who called herself `Natsumi' were clustered around
her.

	"Priscilla-chan, daijyobu?" Natsumi asked anxiously.

	"Uh ..." Priss informed her.

	"You really don't remember her?" Nene asked.  "She's been telling
us all about how the two of you grew up together, how you called her
`oneesama', how you both had crushes on the same teacher in elementary
school ..."

	"Nene?"

	"Yes, Priss?"

	"Stow it."  Priss turned to look at Natsumi.  "Look ... no, I
don't remember you, okay?  I don't remember a lot of what happened before
the quake."

	"Did you get hit on the head or something?" Natsumi asked
anxiously.

	"I don't *remember*!" Priss growled.

	"We lived in the same apartment building, almost next door to 
each other.  My Dad took us out of town that week.  Is anything ringing
any ..."

	"No!"

	"Priscilla, please don't yell at me."

	"Just call me Priss, dammit!"

	Natsumi stared at her, obviously upset by this.  "Nothing I'm
saying is jogging your memory, *Priss*?"

	Priss let out a sigh.  "No.  I ... I'm sorry."

	The other woman let out an even deeper sigh.  "All right ... I'm
sorry that I startled you.  I ... listen, could you do something?"

	"What?" Priss asked suspiciously.

	"If you could visit my mom ... your mom and my mom were really
good friends, and she was really broken up when we found out that you and
your folks had ... anyway, if you could pay her a call, she might be able
to help ... or something."

	Natsumi scribbled an address on a napkin.  "I gotta go, my plane's
boarding.  Please, Priscilla-chan ... Priss."

	She dashed off, and Priss stared down at the napkin, before
stuffing it in one of her jacket's pockets.

				*    *    *

	Linna knocked on the door of the trailer.  Priss hadn't shown up
for their brunch, and she was a bit concerned ... the fact that her phone
wasn't being answered added to her worries.

	No one answered the door.

	Linna checked the handle and found that the door was unlocked,
which sent her worries into overdrive.  She closed her eyes, counted to
ten, and flung the door open before leaping inside in a battle-ready
stance.

	Priss was lying on the floor, sound asleep, using a pile of paper
with some of her distinctly illegible scrawl on it as a pillow.  Her
guitar was beside her.

	Linna silently thanked Priss for helping her to make a complete
twit of herself, and went over to rouse her.

	Several cups of coffee later, Priss determined that she was ready
to face the world.

	"Feel up to a little shopping?" Linna inquired.

	Priss nodded.  "Yeah.  Actually, the new Nihon Biker magazine is
out today, and I forgot to review my subscription ... I'd better go pick
it up."  She got up and went over to get her jacket from where she'd
dropped it the previous night.

	Linna rolled her eyes.  "I think I'm starting to understand
Sylia's Rule Seven now ... nobody would ever believe that any of us just
met and became friends."

	Priss made a face as she pulled the red leather jacket on over her
white turtleneck, and flexed her shoulders to work the ache out of them.
The motion caused a piece of paper to fall out of one of the pockets.

	Linna watched it fall, and realized what it must be.  "Hey, isn't
that that --"

	"Yes," Priss replied in tones which did not invite further
discussion.

	"Have you gotten in touch with --"

	"No," she answered, glaring at Linna as she went to pick the paper
up.

	"Priss," Linna began in a tone that sounded remarkably like
Sylia's voice in lecture mode.  "It's been two weeks --"

	"I don't wanna talk about it."

	"Come on, why are you so --"

	"Look," Priss interrupted.  "When I woke up in the hospital camp
after the quake, and they told me who I was and that my parents were dead,
do you know how I felt?"

	"Upset?"

	"BZZZT!  I felt *nothing*.  The moron counselors they had there
spent days trying to get me to stop feeling guilty over surviving when my
folks had bought it, and didn't bother to listen when I told them that I
didn't feel guilty, that I didn't feel *anything* about it."

	Priss looked away then.  "I don't have anything to remember them
with, so could you please tell me why I should give a shit about some old
friend of theirs?"

	Linna looked at her sadly.  The walls were up in force.  In the
little under a year since the horrible nights when they'd lost Sylvie and
Anri, Linna had seen them come down only once ... well, twice if you
counted the hallucinations that she'd had when one of Largo's trio of
advanced boomers had absorbed her, the ones where she'd had the feeling
that she was in some sort of psychic link to the others.  <But of course,
that was just a weird dream ...> she silently insisted, knowing in the pit
of her stomach that she was wrong.

	In any event, the effort to get Priss to let down her defenses was
more than Linna was willing to spare at the moment.  So she simply
shrugged.  "No reason that I can think of.  Well, except that it might
help you to find something to make you remember them."

	Priss froze.  A moment later, she snorted.  "Like I said, I don't
*care*."

				*    *    *

	A few days later, Priss was slowly chewing her soyburger as she
read the newspaper, listening the rain fall down outside the diner.  She
shook her head as she read the editorial praising Genom's increased
production runs of A- and B-class boomers, to replace the defective,
cheaper runs that had been more or less ruined by "the Uprising" a few 
weeks ago.  It was depressing to see the old enemy start to get its wind
back after the blows that Largo had dealt it last year, and the fact that
Largo had been indirectly responsible for Genom's revitalization was
putting her in a bitter mood.

	She heard the doors to the cafe swoosh open, and suppressed the
instinct to look up as she heard Nene's yammering voice come into the
diner.  Nene was talking with her friends, and despite her general
annoyance with the girl, Priss didn't want to ruin the cute little geek's
good mood with her bad one.

	"Hey ... Nene-chan, isn't that one of your friends over there?"
came the voice.

	Priss resigned herself to the inevitable, and turned around.  Nene
was accompanied by her co-worker Naoko Kusanagi -- whom Priss recognized
from Nene's nineteenth birthday party -- and a more mature-seeming woman
who looked a bit like an older version of Nene.  "Yo, Nene-*chan*," Priss
said, laying much emphasis on the suffix.

	"Oh, hi, Priss!" Nene said cheerfully.  "How's it going?"

	"Shitty," Priss replied with the same note of cheer in her voice.
"And you?"

	She wasn't prepared for the giggling that her response provoked in
the older woman, which in turn caused Nene to look at her with a helpless
expression.  "Kaasaaaaaan!" she muttered, glaring at the giggler.

	All at once, Priss realized just who the older woman was.  "Uh ...
you're Nene's mother?"

	The older woman stopped giggling with an effort.  "Yes, I am.
Patience Romanova.  Pleased to meet you, I'm sure."

	Priss blinked.  "*Patience*?"

	She shrugged, still smiling.  "My mother had an odd sense of
humour.  You can call me Shinobu if you'd rather, I've gone by both
names."  A small giggle escaped her lips.  "I'm sorry, but when you said
that, you sounded *just* *like* Nene when she was little and --"

	"Mommm!"

	"Oh, this is funny, Nene -- when she was little, and she didn't
know about swearing, one day she came home from school, and when her
father asked her how her day had been, she replied in this *cute* little
voice --"

	Naoko was busting a gut laughing, and Priss was having the
*damnedest* time keeping her face straight.  Meanwhile, Nene's face was as
red as her hair.

	After that, of course, Priss couldn't refuse Shinobu's invitation
to join them for dinner.  <After all,> she rationalized, <I might get to
hear *other* stories about Nene's childhood ... and I couldn't pass up a
chance like that, now could I?>

	Somehow, the discussion came around from the constant inquiry of
the parents of grown children -- "So when will you give me a grandchild?"
-- to a debate about artificial insemination.  The always-touchy subject
had been brought into the limelight by allegations of dirty dealings at
MegaTokyo's largest clinic, involving genetic tampering with the deposited
material.

	Priss was a bit surprised by Shinobu's vehement disdain for
artificial insemination as well as the newly developed technique of
exocorporeal conception (the so-called "cyberwomb").

	"It's a fairly personal subject for me," she admitted.  "I don't
like the idea of mothers having children without having a father around
... largely because I went through that myself."

	Priss blinked, and stared at Nene.  "You didn't say anything about
losing your --"

	"No, no!" Shinobu interrupted.  "Nicky -- my husband -- he's fine.
But my father died before I was born, and I never knew him."  She smiled
sadly.  "Mom did her best, but I always wondered ... what kind of a man
he'd been, if he would have been proud of me -- and of his granddaughter
on the police force."  Nene blushed again.  "He was a sort of policeman
himself, you see.  Fortunately, some of his friends were able to tell me
more about him, and I also found photo-- uh, is something wrong,
Priss-san?"

	"No," Priss lied evenly, getting her expression under control.

	When the rain finally let up a few minutes later, Priss said her
goodbyes quickly, and headed out.  She hopped on her bike, and began to
ride, her thoughts ablur, without any clear idea of where she was heading.  

	<Like that's any different from the way that I always am ... No,
that's not true.  That's the way that I *was*.  Geez, it hasn't even been
three years since that night.>

	<I haven't thought about him in ages.>

	<Sylia ... dammit.  I'd really like to be able to talk to you
about this.  I -- no, you wouldn't have any time for this kind of shit. 
Stuck-up ... hell, at least you know what your parents looked like.  At
least you *could* grieve.  How can I grieve for people I can't even
remember -->

	<Am I scared?>

	<Shit, I'm *scared*.  What if I start to remember and I can't
handle it?  I should ... I should just ...>

	She automatically slowed for a stop light, and idly looked at the
street sign of the street that intersected the one she was on.

	It was the street on the address of Natsumi's mother.

	For a few moments, Priss cursed her subconscious, before turning
onto the other street.

				*    *    *

	The buzzing noise, which had been going on for quite sometime,
finally managed to drag Miyuki out of her light doze.  For a second,
disoriented, she wondered why Natsumi was taking so long to turn off her
alarm clock ...

	And then reality ran up her spine.

	Miyuki activated the smartchair's lift servos, helping her get to
her feet.  She curled the fingers of her right hand around the handle of
her cane, and hobbled over to the security panel, flicking the intercom
on.  "Yes?" she answered the buzzer in her clear voice, the only part of
her that was more or less untouched by age and care.

	"Is this Miyuki Nakajima?" came the harsh electronically processed
sound of a young woman's voice.

	"Who wants to know?" she replied, suspicious.  <This isn't the
Tokyo I knew in my youth,> Miyuki reminded herself as she activated the
video surveillance system.  The image took a second to clear --

	-- and then Miyuki's heart caught in her throat.

	"Um, your daughter asked me to come up and --"

	"*Natsumi*?" she whispered.

	"Yeah, your daughter, Natsumi," the woman who looked like her
partner, Natsumi, answered, not looking at the invisible eye of the video
viewer.

	A closer look at her revealed that Miyuki was mistaken ... there
were more differences than similarities in the features of this woman.
But her eyes were the same dark, lavender-reddish-brown colour that had
only characterized the eyes of three women that Miyuki had ever known, all
of whom were dead.

	"So, can I come in?"

	"Yes," Miyuki said dazedly.  "Please do."

	She buzzed her in, and a few seconds later, there was a knocking
at the door.  Miyuki checked the peephole, confirming that it was the same
woman, before she unlocked and unbarred the door.  She gazed at the
visitor through the crack that the chain permitted.  "Who, exactly, are
you?" she asked, shortly.

	From the young woman's expressive face, Miyuki could tell that she
wasn't quite sure of how to go about saying this.  Finally, she quirked
her lips in a smile, shrugged, and said "I'm Priss Asagiri.  I'm told you
knew me."

	If she'd claimed to be Natsumi's sister-in-law Olivia and also
claimed to have gained the secret of eternal youth, Miyuki wouldn't have
been as surprised as she was.

				*    *    *

	The old woman settled into her chair, not looking at Priss.  She
sipped her tea while Priss fidgeted on the couch.

	"Uh ... I thought Natsumi would have told you about --"

	"Natsumi, my daughter, you mean."

	Priss blinked.  "Uh, yeah."

	Natsumi's mother shook her head.  "No.  She ... she and I are
rarely on speaking terms with each other.  Whenever I try and speak to
her, it seems that we wind up arguing."

	"Well, all I know is she said that my meeting you might make you
happy."  Miyuki flinched at that, for some reason.  "Look ... I ought to
tell you right off that I don't remember much of anything that happened
before the quake.  Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, or something."

	"I see," the old woman said calmly.  "Well, that will make proving
it harder."

	"'Scuse?"

	Miyuki set down the tea cup, and met Priss' eyes for the first
time since she'd stared through the crack at her.  "Asagiri-san," she said
formally, "I must admit to grave doubts as to the truth of your claim."

	Priss blinked.  "Are ... are you calling me a *liar*?"

	"Not yet.  However, I think there are a number of things that you
should be aware of."  She took a deep breath.  "The day before the Second
Kanto Earthquake ocurred, my husband had taken my daughter and myself on a
camping expedition, and we had invited our closest friends -- the Asagiri
family -- to come with us, but they had declined.  When news reached us,
we immediately returned home, and discovered that our apartment building
had fallen into the huge rift that the earthquake had opened up.  Everyone
within had died."  

	There was a huge amount of grief and guilt in her eyes.  "I spent
the better part of a year looking for some *vague* chance that Mr. or Mrs.
Asagiri or their daughter had survived.  I was only compelled to break off
the search when my husband had his first heart attack in the early months
of 2026.  My daughter blamed me for my husband's problems, and I realized
that she also resented the fact that I was spending so much time searching
and thusly abandoning her in the face of her own grief.  By the time I
realized it, however, it was too late -- my daughter had been alienated
from me completely; when my husband had his final heart attack four years
later, she moved out immediately after the funeral ... and as I have said,
she and I are rarely on polite terms with one another."

	Miyuki took another sip of tea.  "In short, Asagiri-san, I 
suffered a great deal for chasing down leads to 'your' whereabouts.  I am
going to need considerably greater proof of your identity than just your
word."

	Priss swallowed.  She hadn't been sure exactly what she was
getting into when she came here, but this hadn't been something she'd
considered.  Her vague notions of blaming the older woman for having
abandoned her to the orphanage had fled as she'd listened to Miyuki's
patient account.  Her life had not been rosy at the orphanage, but ...
there had been moments of happiness there, moments which, from the older
woman's tale, had been almost absent from her life since then.

	"Um ... okay.  You mean like a blood test or something?"

	Miyuki nodded.  "That should suffice."

	"Just ... how did you know my mom, anyway?"

	"We were partners," Miyuki stated as she sipped at her tea.

	Priss blinked.  There were a number of ways that statement could
be interpreted, and one of them told her more information than she was
ready to deal with.

	Miyuki seemed to realize that as soon as Priss did.  "Oh!  Uh, I'm
sorry, I didn't mean ... she and I were not ... we *worked* together, you
see --"

	"Right, right!" Priss said, strangely relieved.

	"-- I drove the squad car while she --"

	The relief went away.  "Uh.  Uh, excuse me.  My mother ... was a
cop?"

	"Both Natsumi and her husband, Toshio, were police officers, yes."
Miyuki blinked.  "I take it that you're surprised by this development."

	"You might say," Priss replied, her voice muffled due to her hands
being placed over her face.

	"Asagiri-san ... you are not ... a criminal, are you?" Miyuki
asked, slowly.

	"No ... well, not exactly.  When I was younger, I ... ran with a
pretty bad crowd.  I was never actually arrested, but --"

	"A street gang?" the older woman asked, disapprovingly.

	"Cycle gang.  Something wrong?"

	Miyuki stopped coughing after a few minutes.  "No, no, it's just
that ... Natsumi was quite a motorcycle enthusiast."  Her eyes were
suddenly far away.  "She was invited to be one of the first women on the
motorcycle patrol, but ..."

	After a few moments of silence, Priss started to wonder if the
older woman had dozed off.  "But what?" she asked.

	Miyuki blinked.  "Uh ... she gave it up to go back on traffic
patrol with -- to go back to her original job."

	Priss stared at her for a moment, considering.  "Hell with it,"
she finally said.  "You were gonna say 'with me', right?  She gave up this
thing for you?"

	Miyuki glared at her.	

	"I don't get it, what's the big deal?" Priss demanded.  "She cared
enough about you to --"

	"No you certainly do not get it!" the old woman retorted.

	"Then try explaining it to me," Priss snarled.

	Miyuki closed her eyes and bowed her head.  "I wanted her to be
happy, and I thought that she *would* be on the motorcycle squad," she
said through clenched teeth.  "It was her dream come true ... and she
gave it up to stay with *me*, because I was too *weak* to do my *job*
without her!  If I'd been *stronger* --"

	"You would've been alone," Priss finished.  "But you could take
comfort in the fact that the wonderful person you'd given up your own
happiness for was doing fine, right?"

	Miyuki didn't look up.

	Priss stood up, and walked to the window.  The rain that had
cleared up earlier had returned with a vengeance.  On the ledge, a framed
photograph caught her eye.

	It was a picture of two men and three women.  One of the women was
almost certainly Miyuki, forty years younger.  Standing beside her was a
shorter girl with brown hair and big round glasses, grinning widely.  The
two men towered over the women, but otherwise they were different as night
and day.  One was a huge, heavily muscled man, with thick glasses and a
boyish smile, his hand rubbing the back of his head in the classic gesture
of embarasment.  The other man was lean and limber, with a crisp 
moustache -- actually, his clothes were so crisp that he looked as though
he'd come out of a dry cleaner -- but there was a faint bit of mischief in
his eyes.

	And the third woman was Priss' mother.

	For a second, Priss was stunned by the recognition.  But then the
details of the woman's features -- her bright lavender eyes, the shade of
her hair, and a hundred other factors -- leapt out of her.

	"It doesn't work that way," she heard herself saying.  "Love is
when someone else's happiness is vital to your own ... but it isn't really
love unless your happiness is vital to them, too."

	There was silence from Miyuki's chair.  "That's very profound,"
the voice finally whispered.

	Priss decided not to tell her that it had been something that one
of the guys she'd dated in high school had told her right before he'd
tried to get her to make the happiness of his other girlfriends and his
boyfriends vital to her own.  "So when she came back, it wasn't 'cause she
thought you were weak.  It was because she thought you weren't happy ...
and that meant she wasn't happy, either.   This is her, isn't it?" she
asked, holding up the photo.

	Miyuki turned, startled.  "Then ... you *do* remember --"

	Priss shook her head, and set the photo down.  "Not a damn thing. 
It's like when I woke up after the quake -- I knew how to speak, and I
knew how to read -- but I didn't know that what I was speaking was
Japanese, or what I was reading was kana.  Somehow ... I know that's my
mom.  I only know her name because you said it."

	"Oh," said Miyuki.

	"But ... listen, I'll tell you what.  You don't get a lot of
visitors, do ya?"  She continued without waiting for an answer.  "So, I'll
come visit you ... and you'll help me remember, okay?"

	Miyuki stared at her for a long moment.  <Come on, dammit,> Priss
thought, <I'm reaching out here.  I don't *do* that kind of thing -->

	"That would be ... nice," said the old woman, smiling.

				*    *    *

	"A cycle gangmember?" Yoriko asked, startled.

	Miyuki nodded, sipping her tea.  "I'd almost think that it
indicated something about genetics, if I don't know better."  She had been
surprised when her old friend had called her up out of nowhere, and had
invited herself over for tea.  Inevitably, Yoriko had started to tell her
about her son, the AD Police officer, and all the gossip he'd relayed to
her.

	"Well, you know, there may be something to that ... my son, the
cop?  Natsumi's daughter, the biker?  Your daughter --" Yoriko stopped
short.  She had gained, in forty years, *some* ability to hold her tongue.

	Miyuki smiled sadly, just as a buzzing noise issued from the
intercom.  "That's probably her, now."

	"I'll buzz her in," Yoriko offered, and got up off the couch to do
so.  She checked the display.  "Wow!  She's really good-looking."  The
buzz was pressed, and she turned to look speculatively at Miyuki.  "Do you
think that if we were to try and match her up with my son she'd appreciate
it?"

	"Probably not ..." Miyuki guessed as she got up to answer the
door.

	Priss was smiling ruefully when the door opened.  "Sorry about
last week ... something came up."  <Namely, dimensional travel.  I'd like
to tell you about it, but Sylia'd kill me.>

	"It's all right," Miyuki reassured her.  "Oh, I'd like to
introduce you to an old friend of mine, and of your mother too."

	"Hi!  Yoriko McNichol, pleased to meet you!"

	Priss grinned and hoped to hell it was just a coincidence.













Epilogue:  Two Months Later

	Miyuki watched as the physician gently closed her corpse's eyes,
and covered its head with a blanket.  "She's gone," the young woman said.

	While Miyuki hadn't been quite clear in her own beliefs about what
was going to happen after her body had ceased to function, she definitely
hadn't been expecting to end up simply "hanging around".

	She looked on, sad but ... distanced, somehow, as her daughter
tried to hold in her tears.  It was good that they'd been able to finally
come to terms with each other before the end.  Unfinished business was
always messy.

	She watched as Priss tried to mask her own grief with anger,
beating a fist against the wall, and as Yoriko's son -- she couldn't
remember his name; Leo, or something like that -- tried to comfort her.  
Miyuki winced a bit when Priss slugged the man in the gut, but he was
apparently tough enough to take it -- amida, the man was huge ...

	But eventually, the usual activity around the recently deceased
died down, and Miyuki was left alone as the corpse was wheeled out of the
hospital room.

	"So now what?" she finally asked.

	NOW YOU MOVE ON, said the voice.

	Miyuki blinked, and turned to stare at the Presence beside her.
She couldn't fail to recognize the source of the voice.

	But she'd been expecting someone taller.

	"Oh," she said.  "Then ... have you come to escort me to my final
fate?"	

	WOULDN'T DREAM OF IT.  SOMEONE ELSE HAS THAT JOB.  AND AFTER ALL,
said the voice, THAT ONE HAS BEEN WAITING FOR YOU FOR A LONG TIME.

	Miyuki blinked, trying to cope with the sudden shift in
perception.  She was seated in the driver's seat of a car, her hands on
the wheel.  Bright sunlight -- no, a light *brighter* than sunlight was
streaming through the windows of the car.  Everything was silent ... she
couldn't hear the faint rumble of the engine, or anything else.

	And then she turned ever so slowly to the left, and saw that
Natsumi was seated beside her, staring intently ahead.  Natsumi turned to
stare at her, just as slowly, with an expression of impatience on her
face.  But it didn't reach her eyes.  In those dark lavender pools there
was wonder and exhiliration and an endless joy.  Her lips moved, and no
sound came.  But Miyuki knew what she'd said.

	"Floor it!"	

	She did.

	And they raced towards the light.

Itsumo no egao ga suki yo          I love the smile you always have.
aritake no joonetsu de             With all the passion I have,
kimi o tameiki kara 
kitto mamotte ageru.               I will protect you from sighs.

Yuugure no machinami ga            The sunset skyline flashes past
side-mirror nagarareru.            In my side-mirror.
Yume shinjinagara                  Believing in my dreams
mainichi hashitta michi.           This is the road I drive every day.
Ame no hi mo kaze no hi mo         On rainy days, windy days,
Nagedashitakunatta hi mo           On days I wanted to throw it all away.
Soba ni ite kimi wa
hohoenda kurete you ne             You smiled as you sat beside me.

Itsumo no keishiki suki yo         I love the eternal vista,
kimi to miteru ano sora ga.        The sky that we watch together.
Dakara jishin motte                That's why I'm confident that I can
kimi ni dattara dekiru.            Hang in if it's for you.
Itsumo no egao ga suki yo          I love the smile you always have.
aritake no joonetsu de             With all the passion I have,
kimi o tameiki kara 
kitto mamotte ageru.               I will protect you from sighs.

Omoide wa tsuzueori.               Memory is a tattered fabric.
Hentetsu mo nai kedo               It's a commonplace thing,
moshi nusumaretara                 but if it were stolen
mira no hate made yuku.            it'd go to the end of the future.
Massugu na akogare de              Let's rise above the crowds
hitogami koete yukoo               with sincere desires
Kao o miteiru to                   When I see your face,
umaku ienai karedo ...             I can't say it well but ...

Itsumo no futari ga suki yo        I love the eternal pair we are,
meguri aeta kono machi ga.         and this town where by chance we met.
Dakara ahita koko de               That's why I can become
motto suteki ni nareru             even better here tomorrow.
Itsumo no egao ga suki yo          I love the smile you always have.
aritake no joonetsu de             With all the passion I have,
kimi o kanashimi kara              I guarantee
kitto mamotte miseru.              I will protect you from sadness.


                              The End


Author's Notes

	My thanks, as always, to the patient and talented Jeanne Hedge,
for pushing me to make this the best that it could be.

	"Taiho Shichauzo" or "You're Under Arrest" was created by Kosuke
Fujishima and brought to North America by AnimEigo and Dark Horse Comics.
"Bubble Gum Crisis" was created by Suzuki Toshimichi and brought to North
America by AnimEigo.  This story, while incorporating characters held
under copyright by others, is copyright 1997 by Chris Davies.

	Nobody Sue Me Okay?

Chris Davies, Advocate for Darkness, Part-Time Champion of Light.
"Damn it all, how am I supposed to sit here and wallow in self-pity and
disgust with all this racket going on?" -- Yuusaku Godai, Maison Ikkoku.
http://www.ualberta.ca/~cdavies/hmpage.html