Youma Blues 
Jadeite Days 8: Technomancy 101
       Okay, so I was considering joining up with the Youma underground.
You may be wondering why.
        Answer's simple: I've seen how Beryl runs her kingdom.  I'll be
honest - 
I don't really care that B wants to kill the Senshi - revenge, jealousy and
hate are 
motives I understand well enough, even if I don't advocate them - but her 
organizational skills leave lots to be desired, and I firmly believe that
when you 
rule a nation you have a responsibility to it's people to see that they
live at least 
as well as they can.
        Beryl never saw things that way.  She considered everything in the
Dark 
Kingdom her property - to do with as she wills.  And frequently she willed
that 
some of the people there die - just because.  Sure, she called it a
'testing' but 
really, it's just her form of amusement.
        Personally, that makes me furious.  Even if you own a thing, you
have a 
responsibility to keep it in good shape, if only to get the best use out of
it - and 
Beryl couldn't even be bothered to do that.  She just used the mass of the 
Youma as toys. For example - the entire system of humanics being in controll 
was instigated, I think, just so she could amuse herself by watching the 
backstabing amongst the uppercrust.
        Of course, Beryl (with Mettallia backing her) was so godawful
powerful 
that she didn't really NEED an army - without mage's or Senshi to oppose her, 
the governments of earth would have lasted maybe two days, tops - but she 
*did* form one - so she should have taken care of it.
        Instead she purposefully bred corruption, bureaucracy, and political 
infighting on a level I've not seen outside the US congress.    For
evidence I put 
up the fact that over half the positions in the command ranks of the army
(and 
hence, the Youma most encountered by the Senshi, interestingly) were there
only 
because of rampant favoritism, nepotism, and patrimony.
        And don't even get me started on how she treated the children of the 
lower class Youma.   By that point I'd already murdered people for less
that she 
did to them.
        It was that point that I meditated on as I made my decision, and
tried to 
throw off the spies Cat had sicked on me.
        To no avail, of course, but that was okay.  I was only going to magic 
practice. 
        I intended to pump Nephrite for as much telepathic magic as I could, 
because while Jadeite had gone back to Juban to carry out his latest scheme- 
the cruise ship thing - I had another problem. 
        Miss Mizuno had tried to hack into my school records and, while I had 
planted sufficient back-trail records in other data-bases, I still needed
hard 
evidence of Sora's existence in the form of people who remembered him - 
Mercury, I felt, would be through in checking me out (which ment calling 
'home', once she got the other records and broke my encryption.  Don't tell
me 
you think she couldn't, with that computer of hers..).
        Of course, by this time I'd run away from the Senshi often enough
that 
they were all familiar with my Youma form - and it was getting devilishly
hard to 
recharge my reserves without running into them, unless I teleported somewhere 
far away. I was already teleporting at least twice a day as it is, hence the 
recharging I was doing - and going dark-kingdomwards and back is *HARD*.   
They seemed to be getting better and better at tracking me - If I'd acted
as two 
dimensionaly villainous as most of the Youma Jadeite sponsored, I'd have been 
dusted for sure, but instead, I tended to the 'smash and grab' technique.
        Get there. Gather energy *fast*.  If Senshi show up, TELEPORT.  
Never hit the same place twice.
        I timed things: The Senshi could show up in Juban in around 5-10 
minutes, in Japan in about 20-30.
        If they didn't 'happen' (Oh, thank you, Sestuna-chan.) to be there at 
the beginning.
        Twice I ran into Tuxedo Kamen and very nearly bit it - He's much more 
impatient than they are - doesn't do speeches for one thing.
        By this point I think they were *very* tired of me - especially
since I 
made less of a target than Jadeite, and succeeded more often.
        I really needed a new source of energy.   I had a few ideas, but
they'd 
have to wait...
        Meanwhile, I'm being stalked in both worlds, and forced to sleep in
the 
dark kingdom three days a week.
        And I hated sleeping there, because of the dreams.
        In my dreams I'd see the dark kingdom as it was in the time of the 
millenniums, a shining place, a center - one of two - of trade and culture,
the 
lord-gem of the Jewels of earth, Atlantis and Mu.
        It was so...it can't be described;  The magic of the place - an
entire 
island crafted and sculpted by the power of it's mage-kings - was incredible;
Mercury may have produced the greatest scientists, Venus the greatest
artists, 
Mars the wisest seers, and Jupiter the strongest warriors;  Saturn mastered 
death, Uranus may have mastered the earth,  Neptune the waves, and cold, 
lonely Pluto mastered time itself - but it was Atlantis that mastered Magic.
        The moon may even have mastered the power of the stars themselves 
with their silver crystal, but they could still never match the royalty of
Atlantis in 
the art of enchantment.
        And in my dreams I saw it destroyed.  Saw the corruption, the 
darkness, as Beryl and her sorcerers called up first the seven, and then
Mettallia 
herself...saw all the skill and mastery snuffed out, turned into crude
hatred, 
clumsy revenge...
        Once, Atlantis had been the moon's chosen..the night jewel, to 
Ameratsu's land of the sun, but Beryl wanted more...her jealousy of the light 
destroyed everything beautiful about the kingdom...I know, because I was 
there, in dreams.    Ironic, that today it is the moon that is remembered
as the 
enchanted amongst the millenniums, and Atlantis the force of darkness,
though it 
was the Moon's sky that was first black..
        But as bad as those dreams were, there were others that were worse.
        I never clearly remembered them - always they would fade as I awoke, 
but I recall that they were terrible, nightmares of loss and blood, a
shattered city 
of crystal and a woman dying in my arms as I wondered weather she was a 
friend or foe....
        I didn't understand what they were, but I knew they were more than 
mere dreams.
        Now?  Now I know.   Which was memory..and which foretelling, 
which was mine....and which a projection from the land itself.
        I wish I didn't

Elsewhere the aggravation was being shared...
        "Luna, Usagi, please be quiet! I'm trying to think!"  Ami Mizuno
isn't 
usually the shouting type, but just this once, she made an exception.
Having the 
girl voted 'most Bubbleheaded on campus' two years running in the room while 
she tried to do things with her mother's computer that were illegal in most 
modern nations - at least, illegal if you didn't work for the nation in
question - 
was probably a mistake.
        In fact she only had them here to give her advance warning if her
mother 
was coming home, because the mercury computer wasn't very cross compatible 
with earth networks, and she was forced to use her mother's laptop as a 
'terminal' for it to steal records with.
        The fact that the records she was trying to steal belonged to someone 
who she found cute, intelligent, smart and generally fun to be around
didn't help.
        The fact that he already had a girlfriend didn't bother her one
bit.   She 
was absolutely certain it didn't.   
        It was mostly the possibility that he might turn out to be a
villain that 
bothered her.  In order to check and make sure that he wasn't (or rather, in 
order to prove to Rei that he couldn't be, never mind her own doubts) she was 
busily trying to acquire his records, and question his family.   
        The minions of the dark kingdom, after all, wouldn't have earth 
family...she hoped.  Anyway, she'd managed to get all his school records, but 
his national records were American, and hence, required her to hack into U.S. 
government databases.  The fact that such an action essentially constituted
an 
act of war, or at the very least espionage and terrorism, had crossed her
mind, 
but she wasn't going to let that bother her..at least until she was finished.
        Regardless, if Usagi and Luna didn't stop arguing she was going to do 
something she'd regret.

But that was her problem.
        My return to Juban was somewhat complicated: I had a visitor,
before I 
could leave.  
        Unfortunately for me, my last encounter with Sinhalite had pushed the 
other humanic a bit to far.
        Now he wanted revenge.   He was going to get it, to.
        It was, I have to admit, a bang up ambush - Sinhalite came out of the 
shadows just as I was entering the remnants of the building I knew as the
other 
jump point for earth wards, but didn't yet know as the Altlantean Magisters 
tower..more over, he came out of the shadows beyond the candlelight near the 
door, timed just right so that I was almost nightblind, but something, some 
instinctive warning impulse, prompted me to dodge.
        To this day I'm not sure what warned me.
        If something hadn't, I'd be dead right now; Catlin (ever the ruthless 
mundanist) maintains that I must have heard him coming, but however I did
it, I 
mostly avoided the energy bolt he threw at me.
        Mostly.
        The bit that clipped me was still almost enough to kill me, more than 
enough to send me flying;  I think I landed fifty feet from the door, but
I'm not 
sure; I mostly remember the impulse to move, a dangerous seeming shadow, 
and then an explosion of pain as I was smashed into the rotten muck where I 
landed.
        I certainly don't remember 'flying'.  I sat there for a whole
eternity that 
Catlin insists wasn't more than a breath or two, while Sinhalite recovered
from 
the effort of the bolt, and I tried to reestablish a firm hold on
consciousness.
        He got better first.
        The next thing I clearly recall from the incident (aside from some
rather 
pointless but interesting phantasms I would later recognize as
Precognition), is 
Sinhalite hauling me up by the lapels of my jacket.
        "Well? Any last words?"  His voice came to me as if from a great 
distance - I was still to dazed to fight back effectively, and he knew it.
        "Hm. It seems mute.  Perhaps the human is simply frozen in terror at 
having confronted a true Youma?"  He slapped me - and damn, but that hurt -
and continued, "It certainly doesn't do a very good job of impersonating one."
        That's it, I thought..Sinhalite...keep talking just a bit longer,
and I'll be 
able to show you frozen in terror..
        Even though I was dazed I was recovering fast; Already my thoughts 
were semi-intelligible...  
        "Hey.  Sin." I choked, "Something, to...say.."  He leaned in to
listen to 
my 'last words'.
        Big mistake.
        "GET LOST!"  The scream I let out was accompanied by a blast of raw 
force that caught him square in the stomach - if I'd had more time to
recover it 
might actually have killed him.
        As it was it just bought me time to throw myself away from my
original 
landing place before Sinhalite retaliated with an energy blast that stirred
up an 
enormous amount of the heavy, rotten dust that composed the majority of the 
dark kingdom's soil, as well as splattering the wet muck I'd landed in 
everywhere.
        "Ha. Sinny, you missed!" I needed to find my sword, and fast - I
didn't 
have energy to waste on this idiot - I was cutting it close in the energy 
department if I wanted to get home as it was... 
        Another explosion reduced the wall I'd been hiding behind to rubble, 
and I had to move -fast-.  Sinhalite was keeping me on the defensive, which 
was bad - because he was stronger than I was in the magical department, and 
(more telling) had more energy at his disposal.
        I did manage to get my blade(by tripping on it) while I used the
still 
settling dust and smoke as cover but decided that in my present condition
that 
discretion would be the better part of valor, and that heading home had
priority 
over tussling with rage-boy.
        I'd just made it to the d-point - Um, maybe I haven't explained about 
that yet.
        The D-points are the places where the dark kingdom is 'close' to
Terrra 
- sorry, earth - and teleporting to and from the Dk is possible.
        Not necessarily easy, just possible.  The best one is Beryl's throne 
room, but, for obvious reasons, I don't use it.
        Anyway, I'd just gotten there, and was preparing to jump when I 
detected a Very Bad Thing (tm).
        Sinhalite was sitting on my jump point.
        Smiling like the cat that got the proverbial cream.
        "I don't suppose," I muttered, as I brought my sword up to guard,
"that 
we could talk about this like rational adults?"
        He just grinned and attacked me with one of his crystal swords.  All 
things considered I was just glad he'd run out of energy by throwing those 
overkill scale fire bolts - he was still enough better than me that my edge
in 
speed only served to keep me alive, but he was fresher, less hurt and more 
concerned with wearing me down than defending. 
        There was hope though.   Through the ruined doorways and windows 
that lined the magisters tower, I spotted a suspiciously Catlinite shaped
shadow 
sneaking towards the door, but only when Sinhalite had his back to the 
openings..and that was enough to give me a plan.
        I didn't need to win, after all.
         I just needed to keep from dying to soon.
        Sinhalite kept me on the defensive, but I was happy to stay there -
I like 
having all my limbs intact, thank you - and tried to maneuver him to where
his 
back was to the wall, figuring he'd never let me.
        He didn't, of course, and wound up with his back to the door.   This 
turned out to be a mistake on my part: I now had *my* back to the wall, and 
couldn't dodge or parry nearly as effectively in the cramped tower interior
as I 
had been able to in the doorway.
        That cost me a dozen or so shallow cuts before Catlinite slid in
the door 
like a wraith and stabbed Sinny in the back.
        Cat knifed him in the back twice, but he teleported before the third 
blow landed.  She scowled at my scorched, slashed, and generally not great 
condition and growled, "We seem to have bad luck with this one."
        I moaned from where I'd sunk to my knees, and then forced myself up 
and snarled "If we sit here yacking all day, he'll be back with
reinforcements.  
Want that?" In a possible parody of her voice. 
        To make a long story short, we left there and retreated to my place
to 
talk and attend to wounds.

        Waking up was a pain.  Not a 'hey, you need to cut back on the karate 
moves' type pain, but more of a 'Hey, you: You might be dead' type pain.  The 
half a dozen alarms going off at once  on my computer system as my records 
were broken into didn't help.
        I'd set up 'watchdog' programs to keep track of my records, and 
somebody had tripped one of them, so it was time to get up and get hacking 
already.
        I threw myself out of bed with a curse (vaguely noting that
Catlinite was 
nowhere in the house..) and hit the keys.
        It helped that the records in question were actually 'mine' - or more 
properly, they belonged to the 'me' native to this reality. (The occurrence
of 
such a person - an exact duplicate of myself, pre youmization - was more
than a 
little startling.  I hadn't ever contacted the guy, simply because, well,
what would 
I say?  'Hi I'm an alternate you who's now a demon who finds you absolutely 
useless' doesn't cut it...)  Anyway, the point is that the records were
already 
protected by the U.S. security programs, to which I'd added my own counter 
measures....
        Unfortunately those hadn't proved to be enough.  Someone had broken 
through all the defense walls and summarily stolen them.
        Given the ease they'd done so with, I could make a couple of guesses 
as to which hacker had done so - that little bitty compact has some *serious* 
processing power to it.
        "Shit.  Damn. Gonna die, Mercury has my files, they've found me out 
and I don't have my other id even half set up yet...I'm gonna die...Okay,
calm 
down....idea, idea, how can I stall her....um...It won't take her long to
crack my 
encryption with that thing...shit.." I had to gasp for breath by that point
- I was 
hyperventilating - and stepped back, trying to calm myself.
        "Okay. Okay. There has to be something..if I could get them out of
her 
hands for a few days...but how to do that...okay. My computer..no way can I 
hack her.  Not sufficient. Computer talk is basically just symbolic idea 
transfer...the telepathy spells work by transporting one person's idea's to 
another.  Maybe if I modified those spells I can get into her computer..."  
Obviously by the 'dumb' factor of the idea, my calming routine hadn't worked 
much.
        "Now lets try this..."  It took me five tries, actually, and quite
a bit of 
cached energy, to change the telepathy spell to work on computers...I
attribute 
my success more to desperation than anything else...and by the time I did, 
Mercury was downloading the last of my files.
        
        The way I do it, telepathically induced cyberspace looks very
strange - 
imagine, if you will, a computer of limitless power, capable of running every 
program on your computer simultaneously.
        Cyberspace (well, a modern cyberspace) looks a little like that - a
big 
(or rather, most of the time, *Small*, a pc only has so much storage)black
zone 
littered with all the programs you have - every .Gif, every .jpg, every
.txt file, 
and every executable, all active at the same time, just as they would look 
normally - on a screen sized to what you're used to.
        The size of the 'black space' indicates how much storage there is
in the 
computer you are 'in'.  Moving programs are 'active' - and they tend to jump 
around a lot, or hover, if they're just 'sitting' without someone using
them, while 
stationary things are 'stored' files
        Outside lines are white 'holes' and are (mostly) tiny.   
Maybe someday they'll be 'highways' or 'doorways' but for now...lets just say 
that a 28.8 connection is a bit of a squeeze for a human mind.  Hell, even
a T-3 
is a squeeze, a 28.8 is torture.   Data comes through those things in
'burps' as 
bits of hacked up files arrive, and get fitted back together by other 
programs(bloody little rats..).
        That being said, Mercury's computer looked nothing at all like it.
        Imagine, if you will, a maze carved completely out of ice, guarded
by a 
legion of razor taloned ice statues.
        The entire place was also home to a network of fast moving little
lines of 
light - Programs, I think.
        It was easy enough to get in - I 'just' rode the 'connection' up to
the 
'checkpoint'.
        Staying there was another story.  It was guarded by about a dozen of 
those 'guardians' - ice statue Mercury's with ten razors for fingers.
        They flew, to.  Bad news.  I got through the checkpoint mostly on 
supprise and extensive use of the 'mind fry' spell I'd cobbled together -
sort of 
an 'overwrite with static' thing.  It worked something like a sledgehammer
on the 
'golems'.
        Finding what I wanted (or rather wanted to remove) theoretically
should 
have been easy - just look for the most primitive files in the computer.
        In practice this proved somewhat difficult.  Comparatively, the 
computers I had been in before were broom closets...compared to a planet.
        Yes, you heard right. Mercuries computer has a cyberspace the size of 
a planet.  Okay. It's a small planet.  It's still frigg'n huge compared to us.
        I almost immediately got lost.  Then the (if you will pardon the
triple 
pun) 'ice' closed in.
        Faced with umpteen zillion guardians, and having totally lost my
quarry, 
I was up the proverbial creek, so I decided to fall back on youma tradition: 
cause havoc.  Hopefully it would keep the computer busy for at least a few 
days cleaning up the mess I made.
        Instead of dropping the spell like a sensible person (actually
that's kind 
of difficult to do...and dangerous too.  The sensory distortion can really
hurt you 
when you switch from cyber telepathy to Physical sensing without heading back 
to your body first), I jumped to the top of a Ice wall and charged, smashing 
down as much of the 'maze' as I could.
        I eventually did find the cache of files (and well scrambled them
with a 
hit from my 'mind hammer' spell). Unfortunately, to do so I over stayed my 
welcome, and some of the ice caught me in a frost and ice crossfire.  I 
immediately dropped the spell.
        Of course, by that time they'd already hit me. 
        I came back to the world in a rage of frost and pain that faded to
black 
accompanied by Catlinites terrified face...
        
        I next awoke to frigid cold and a fading madness of hallucinations
to see 
Catlin looking down at me from very close range with a concerned expression.
        "What happened to you?"  She just whispered and pulled me closer to 
the 'warm' side of the universe.  (At the time I was to busy shivering to
wonder 
how I'd wound up in bed with her, but I certainly noticed.) 
        "I....Ttttttt...tried to get into Mercuries computer..."  That got
her 
attention...
        "The Senshi?  They were here? Are you mad bringing their attention?"  
        "Nnnn no.  I u-used the mind reading spell to g-go from my stuff to 
hers..they were connected..I hh-had to trash hh-er copies of my files....bbbb-
but hers had ddefenses..I..gggot caught."   There are extremes to which one
can 
be pushed at which little things like being in bed with the girl of your
dreams on 
makes you glad for the warmth.  I was at that point;  
        Or maybe that's just the time when I started believing I actually
had a 
chance.  She'd saved my life - obviously, Mercury's computer had been able to 
send a magical attack back along the spell connection...I'd probably have 
succumbed to hypothermia if she hadn't intervened.
        "You attacked them? You are crazy..."
        Of course, I *was* her ride home, so it was strictly within her self 
interest to do so...but still, things like that can leave quite an
impression on a 
guy.... 
        "I-I won.  That's all that matters..."
        ...it would probably have made more of an impression if I'd noticed
her 
lack of clothes before falling asleep.


Gamlain@airmail.net
Gamlain, transuniversal courier & Hero for rent
Sorcerer to the three great Anime demonesses: Ryoko, Marller, and Ifruita 
"So then I shot a goon and I cut the head man's throat, and after that
things got violent." - Tarnkep Protree
Of course, my homepage is at
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