Bubblegum Chakram

                                Chapter One

	Knock knock knock.

	The most powerful magician in the modern world paused in her
preprations, and muttered a choice oath.  She instructed the vast astral
computer she had spent the last month building to save her work, and then
logged out.  Pulling a bathrobe over her skyclad body, she stomped over to
the door to her sanctuary, and peered through the peephole.

	Unfortunately, the visitor was one who would not be put off by
pretending that she wasn't home.  So the magician let out an annoyed sigh,
and pulled open the door, not releasing the safety catch.

	"Hello, Priss, is something the matter?" Nene asked, trying to be
as calm as possible.

	Priss cocked an eyebrow at her.  "Is something the matter?  You
didn't make it to the weekly meeting last night, kiddo.  You're damn right
something's the matter."

	"Weekly meeting?" Nene asked, blinking.  Then, "Oh sh-- shucks,
that *was* last night, wasn't it?"

	"Oh, yeah," Priss said, nodding smugly.  "Sylia started to make
dire comments about Rule Number 8, so I covered for you.  Told her that
you'd told me that you couldn't make it, but that you *had* stayed in
touch."

	"Gee, thanks, Priss!" Nene said cheerfully.  <She'll want
something.>

	"Yeah, now could you pay me back by telling me what the hell's
going on?  I mean, I did just stick my neck out for you."

	"I'm entertaining a pair of Swedish stewardesses," Nene told her.

	"YOU'RE *WHAT*?"

	"Flashback," Nene said, flushing.

	"?*TAHW* ER'UOY"

	",sessedrawets hsudewS fo riap a gniniatretne m'I"

	".uoy rof tuo kcen ym kcits tsuj did I ,n--"

	Time reasserted its normal flow.  "--n, I did just stick out my
neck for you."

	"And I really appreciate that, Priss, but nothing's going on, I
just forgot, that's all."  Nene hoped that the immense headache that she
always felt after releasing that particular macro wouldn't last long.  She
hoped that she'd never need to use a flashback of longer than five
seconds.

	"Uh-huh," Priss replied, obviously not convinced.  "Well, you
might wanna call Sylia, and give *her* your explanation."

	"I will," Nene assured her quickly.

	"Right, I'm outta here," Priss said, and headed off.  Nene quickly
closed the door, dropped her robe, sat down in the center of her living
space and began the work again.

	Today, she was creating a macro to allow her to place and
retrieve objects in astral space.  Thus, she was experimenting with the
limits of her ability to project her consciousness into the astral plane,
in order to be able to send her physical form there as well.  That was the
reason for her nudity -- it was hard enough to send her *body* where she
wanted it to be, let alone something with only a tangential connection to
her flesh and bone.

	Okay, the fact that this was one of the few truly *sunny* days
Mega-Tokyo had enjoyed for a while also contributed to it, along with
Nene's desire to have a full body tan.  Her window was set to filter out
the UV rays that were dangerous to her skin while she "worked".

	She logged into the computer again, and began to adjust the
parameters.  Nene's hacker-sense told her that she was on the verge of a
breakthrough, and so she paused to carefully examine every section of code.
It felt *almost* right.  From another folder, she pulled up the source code
of her "conjuration" macro, which she had discovered in the first few days
of having her toolkit.  Several of its sections -- dealing with pulling an
object into and through the astral -- had been essential to the development
of her "storage" macro.  She reviewed it just as meticulously, and then gave
herself a nod.

	The conjuration also functioned as a safety net.  She set her
"contingency" macro to activate it, targeted on a woman of her exact
characteristics, bringing her to her apartment, if within five ... no,
*two* minutes of the activation of her next macro, her body was still in
the Astral.  Nene had "teleported" by conjuring herself to a familiar
location once before, and her stomach still twinged at the memory of
vomiting up everything she'd eaten in her life (or so it had seemed) in the
wake.  But better a bit of discomfort than an eternity trapped in another
dimension.

	Nene let out a long sigh.  It was time.

	Holding the icon of the macro in question firmly in her mind, she
began to slowly exert her will, pressing down on it with --

	KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK.

	The macro shattered as Nene's attention was drawn away from it
for a fraction of a second, and the only thing holding it together -- her
will -- went away.  Hours of effort ruined.

	"GO AWAY!" Nene shrieked.


                               *   *   *

	"Of arms and the warrior princess I sing, of her desperate
struggle to save that which she once did despise from the scorn of Ares.
Of the metal of Hephaestus ... no, no, no.  Too many syllables."

	Xena looked down from her horseback with a weary look on her face,
to see Gabrielle stumbling along a few feet behind Argo, scribbling on a
sheet of parchment.  "Are you still at that?" she asked.

	"Gotta keep doing it 'til I get it right," Gabrielle staunchly
replied.

	"Gabrielle," Xena sighed, "writing about that particular adventure
is worse than pointless, because nobody's going to believe it.  Armor that
no weapon could penetrate?  Weapons that could cut through anything?
C'mon!"

	"Nobody asks the bards who tell about Hercules and Iolus killing
the Hydra for proof of those deeds," Gabrielle pointed out.

	"That's because that happened years ago!  This was only last
week!  You're going to get laughed out of anywhere you try to tell that
story."

	Gabrielle smiled in a way that said, "Sure I will.  When Athena
kisses Ares and the Muses applaud."

	Xena shook her long black mane of hair irritatedly.  "And if you
ever told this story at any royal court, the king would immediately demand
to know where he could find such fearsome arms, and I doubt that he'd look
fondly on the knowledge that we destroyed every scrap of the metal of
Hephaestus that we could find."

	Gabrielle suddenly found the ground to be very intriguing at that
point.  Xena blinked.  And then a look of utter horror spread across the
Warrior Princess' face.  She hopped down from Argo's back, and grabbed
Grabrielle by the shoulders.  "Gabrielle," she said, drawing the last
syllable of her companion's last name out until it lasted nearly five
seconds.

	"It's just a butter knife!" Gabrielle said in her own defense.

	"Give."

	"You've been using it to spread butter on your morning biscuits
ever since then, and you never noticed, so --"

	"Give!"

	"But --"

	"Gabrielle, give me the butter knife, NOW!"

	Gabrielle pouted.  "I don't have it.  It's in the saddle bag with
the rest of the dishes."

	Xena released her iron grip on her partner's shoulders, and strode
over to where Argo was patiently waiting.  A few seconds of rooting
produced the spreading knife in question.  Xena stared at it with anxiety
all over her face.  "Gods, Gabrielle, do you have *any* idea how dangerous
this thing is?"

	"Oh, yeah, a real menace to breakfast spreads everywhere,"
Gabrielle muttered sarcastically.

	Xena wordlessly bent to the ground, picked up a rock from the road
they were traveling on, and started to methodically saw at it with the
mildly serrated edge of the butter knife.

	A few moments later, half of the rock fell to the ground, while
Xena showed the smooth edge that her cutting had left behind.  "You
*see*?" she asked Gabrielle.  "And for another thing --"

	"Oh ... LEAVE ME ALONE!" Gabrielle shouted.

                               *   *   *

	The power of an untrained magician can be a truly frightening
thing.  Since the magician doesn't know that certain things are
impossible even with magic, there is no reason for him or her to hesitate
to attempt them.

	The power of an angry magician can also be a truly frightening
thing.  Since the magician may be too angry to think things through
clearly, his or her power will attempt to think for him, finding
"creative" ways to accomplish his or her will.

	The power of a magician who is both untrained *and* angry is
enough to frighten an unprepared god.

                               *   *   *

	The knocking ceased, and Nene relaxed, slumping to the floor. 
Whoever it was had obviously given up gone away.

	<Geez I'm tired,> she thought.  <I haven't been this tired since I
OH SHIT OH SHIT OH SHIT OH SHIT!>

	Nene forced herself to her feet, fumbled her way into her robe,
and skittered over to the door, flinging it open.

	There was a tall woman standing there, with long, black hair and
intensely blue eyes.  She was wearing a ... leather swimsuit, or something
like that, which had metal stitchings, along with a pair of bracers on her
forearms and tight fitting boots.  In her right hand, she held a butter
knife.  There was a circular object fastened to her waist.

	She was looking around at her surroundings with a baffled
expression when she finally looked directly at Nene.  For a second, her
face was just as baffled as it was when she looked at the hallway, but
then her eyes narrowed, and her nose flared.

	<She didn't need to do that last bit, I was intimidated enough by
the eyes ...> Nene thought through her terror.

	The mysterious woman stepped forward, and Nene stepped backwards
reflexively, letting her into her apartment.  "Now, now, I think you
should just calm down and let me know --"

	The woman began to say something in a language Nene didn't even
begin to recognize, gesturing with the butter knife as she did.

	"I know, I know you're upset, but --"

	The woman continued to speak over her, and pointed the knife at
her.  Nene reached out to gently move it away from her, smiling in a way
that she hoped wouldn't be taken for panic.  She yelped as her finger came
away bloody, and promptly popped it in her mouth.

	The woman blinked as she watched Nene do that.  A bit of the anger
went out of her face, replaced by a guarded suspicion.

	<Well, Nene, it could be worse,> Nene rationalized to herself.  <I
could have summoned a demon.  I could have sent Priss to hell.  I could
have -->  She looked past the woman for one moment, and winced as she saw
the small pile of motorcycle leathers that were piled outside her door.
<I *did* ... she's gonna kill me ...>

	However, before that could happen, Nene was going to have to
figure out exactly what had gone wrong.  Which in turn meant that she
would have to explain matters to the woman she'd brought here in Priss'
place.  Nene opened up her toolkit, and poked around in it until she found
her Translator utility.  Configuring it to give the woman the ability to
speak Japanese instead of enabling Nene to speak whatever language she
spoke took a few seconds, but she implemented it fairly quickly, and
awaited the results.

	From the sound of her voice, Nene deduced that the woman asked
a question, in her original language.

	Nene's brow furrowed.  <What's wrong here?>  A quick diagnostic
revealed that the problem was that the woman possessed a *huge* amount of
inherent magical energy within her, and that Nene's utility hadn't been
able to overcome the instinctive defenses that she raised against any form
of magic, friendly or enemy.

	Obviously, the only thing to do would be to startle her so that
the defenses came down.  For a moment, Nene wondered what the best way to
go about doing that would be.  She thought about all the startling events
in her life -- learning that she could do magic, becoming a Knight Sabre,
being kissed by --

	Of course!

	Impulsively, Nene hopped up to give the woman a kiss on the lips.
The woman jerked back, startled, and Nene activated the utility again.

	"What in Hades are you doing?" the woman barked.

	"Okay!" Nene enthused.  "Now we're getting somewhere!  So, who are
y--"

	"Wait a minute.  What language am I speaking?  This isn't Greek."

	Nene blinked in surprise.  According to the documentation, most
people who were made the subject of a Translation utility didn't realize
that they weren't speaking their normal language.  Combined with the
magical energy she'd discovered in this woman, the fact that she did
recognize that fact made Nene rather intrigued.

	"Um, we're speaking Nihongo," Nene explained quickly.

	"Nihon?" the woman asked, clearly startled.

	"You've heard of it?"

	The woman nodded, almost absently.  "Lao Ma taught me a bit about
the barbarian peoples of her part of the world ..."  She suddenly shook
her head.  "That's not important!  How did I get here?!  And more
importantly, where's Gabrielle?"

	"I ... um, I'm not sure exactly how you got here --" <Just a
little white lie,> Nene assured herself.  "-- and I don't even know who
*you* are, much less who this Gabrielle person is ..."

	"My name is Xena," the woman replied, her eyes narrowed, almost as
if she could tell that Nene wasn't telling her the whole truth.

	Nene was too busy contemplating fainting at the idea of having
summoned a fictional character to life to be bothered by that sharp-eyed
gaze.

                               *   *   *

	Gabrielle stared in dumbfounded horror at the empty air where Xena
had been up until a second ago.  <I didn't want her to leave me alone
*that* badly!>

	She jerked back as a naked woman appeared in that space, her right
hand clenched in a fist and lifted up, with the knuckles facing towards
Gabrielle.  For a long moment, there was silence.

	"Nene?" the woman said, her eyes looking from one side to another.
She then looked down at herself, and let out a hollow shriek.  "Bar bar
bar bar bar bar bar bar bar bar bar bar!" she yelled in some barbarian
tongue, looking around angrily.

	Her distraction gave Gabrielle a chance to get a closer look at
the strange visitor.  Her eyes were shaped in a strange, exotic way that
reminded Gabrielle of those of Niklio, the healer who had helped her when 
Xena had ... been dead.  But they were a strange, reddish-brown colour,
and the woman's skin was shaded much like Gabrielle's own, instead of the
tanned, beige colour that --

	"Bar bar!" she shouted, suddenly noticing Gabrielle staring at
her.  "Bar bar bar bar bar bar bar bar bar bar bar!  Bar?!"

	"I'm sorry, I don't know what you're saying.  Don't you speak
Greek?" Gabrielle asked.

	"Bar bar bar bar bar bar bar?!"  Gabrielle realized, after a few
moments, that the woman had changed to a different language.  All
barbarian languages sounded more or less alike to her, though, and it
still didn't make a lick of sense.

	Gabrielle tried to use some of the Gaelic that Xena had taught
her.  "I no get what you say?" she managed.

	The woman was clearly becoming quite irate.  "Bar bar bar bar
bar!" she shouted, walking toward Gabrielle, and pointing her finger at
her in an aggressive gesture.

	The bard slid her Amazon staff into a ready grip, and gestured
defensively.  The woman sniffed, and gave the appearance of one who viewed
her opponent as nonconsequential.

	A short demonstration of Amazon staff-fighting technique later,
and the woman stumbled back, her hand clutching her bruised cheek.  "Bar
bar," she grumbled.

	"Had enough?  No?  Come on, I can take you easily!" Gabrielle
bluffed.  Inwardly, she was slightly concerned.  She'd hit the woman with
just enough force to knock her senseless.  Whoever she was, she was
obviously tougher than the average thug employed by the people she and
Xena usually wound up fighting.  She was watching Gabrielle warily,
looking for any sign of weakness.  Like an angry wolf.

	Like Xena.

	Gabrielle nodded to herself.  "Look ... I can't understand you,
and you can't understand me, but aren't you getting a little cold like
that?  I mean, it *is* pretty close to Solstice.  Wouldn't you like some
clothes instead of running around naked all the time?" She gestured to her
own, comfortable green halter-top.

	The woman gazed at her, confusion and suspicion all over her face.

	Gabrielle decided to take a chance.  She slowly moved her staff
out of ready mode, and, never taking her eyes off of the stranger's, set
it down little ways away.  She then pulled at a corner of her skirt, and
lifted her eyebrows in what she hoped was a universal expression of
inquiry.

	Understanding dawned on the woman's face, and she seemed to let go
of her own ready stance at the same time.  But not all the way ...
Gabrielle had seen enough warlords to be able to tell a partial relaxation
of one's guard from a full one.

	A truce, then, instead of real peace.

	She pointed to her face, and said "Gabrielle," in a slow, easily
audible voice.

	The woman nodded, and jerked her thumb back at her chest.
"Priss."

	"Very nice to meet you, I'm sure," Gabrielle muttered.  "And I
really hope one of Xena's spare tunics won't be too large for you ..."

                             To Be Continued.

Author's Notes

	In case you didn't know, the origin of the term "barbarian" is in
Ancient Greece, where it referred to all peoples whose native language was
not Greek.  Instead, it sounded to them like "bar bar bar bar ...".  See
any of the ancient plays -- for example, in Sophocles' "Agamemmnon",
Cassandra, the doomed seer of Troy, is initially only speaking Trojan,
represented by "OI OI OI OI OI" with interjections of "Apollo".

	It should be obvious that this is going to be lighter than the
usual Bubblegum Crisis fair.  While grim moments are common in Xena -- as
the most recent episodes clearly show -- they are outnumbered by much more
cheerful ones.

	Chronologically, this story takes place a few months after the
conclusion of Bubblegum Crash!, several months after the events of
"Bubblegum Crisis:  Apotheosis" (available on my page), and a week after the
Xena:  Warrior Princess episode "The Dirty Half Dozen".

	"Bubblegum Crisis" was created by Toshimichi Suzuki and others,
and brought to North America by AnimEigo.  "Xena:  Warrior Princess" was
created by Robert Tapert and Sam Raimi, and distributed worldwide by
Universal/MCA.  This story, while incorporating elements of motion
pictures held under copyright by others, is copyright 1998 of 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