Shadows Under Starlight
Episode 2
"Tragedy Part II"
By Adam Christopher Leigh
Distributed by Tempest Creations
A Crossover of Epic Proportions
***
The figure was lined up perfectly in his sights. A
quick shot to the heart would score him a down and he could
authorize the use of these guns in his unit. After that, it
would be open season on the scum who dared crossed his path.
Squinting one eye, he looked down the barrel at the
target. The trigger was said to be extra sensitive, and he
was annoyed to find he had to press harder than his normal
sidearm. With an audible click, the trigger completed it's
function, causing the hammer in the back of the gun to
strike the shell...
*BAM*
"Eh, you're a little off to the left there, Leon."
The figure fell like a brick and the shooter looked up
from the gun to the man standing behind him. "Whatta mean,
Daley? I was right on."
"Not according to the targeting recorder," Daley said
raising an eyebrow and moving over to the target return
panel. Gently pulling the last lever in the set of six
there, a mechanical arm dropped from the ceiling, picked up
the cutout target, and began towing it back to Leon.
"Hmph," Leon snorted, examining the target which indeed
did have a bullet hole a little left of the heart. "The
sights on the gun must be off."
"Or you're getting a little rusty," teased Daley.
"Feeling a little frustrated with your lady love, lately?
Maybe you should come over after the shift and I'll ease
your pains."
"Uhnn, maybe later, Daley, I've got big plans tonight."
"Oh yeah, who with?"
"Who else?" Leon shot Daley a suave grin.
"Oh," nodded Daley understandably then suddenly
stopped. "Uh, who with?"
"Very funny," said Leon. "I think Priss has finally
seen me as more than a resource of information. She agreed
to come to dinner with me tonight."
"Going to someplace formal?"
"A biker-chick and a roadster cop at a formal
restaurant? You're dreaming, Daley, we're going a bar."
"How..." Daley struggled, then deadpanned, "romantic."
"Naturally," boasted Leon. "Anyway, read me off the
damage meter."
"Hmm," he deflated. "Eight-six percent on the C scale.
Goes down from there."
"Shit," Leon cursed, unloading the clip from his gun
and replacing the bullets in it again. "Hey Daley, I don't
suppose you want to tell the Chief how the hundred and sixty
thousand rounds of armor piercing ammo we got isn't armor
piercing."
"Not unless you're planning on taking me to dinner
tomorrow."
"I might consider it."
"Uhn-uh, Leon, this was your gambit, you tell the
Chief."
"Great," said Leon, looking down at the pair of clips
of ammo resting on the counter next to Leon's custom Boomer
Killer. He placed the magnum in his hand on the counter and
holstered his revolver, still looking at the pair of strips
of black colored steel. Picking up the clips, he shoved
them in his pocket to return to show the Chief.
"Hey Leon, don't forget to replace the target," Daley's
trailing voice yelled from by the exit of the firing range.
Leon grunted, pushed the magnum off of the pile of new
targets, hung one, then ran off after Daley.
***
"Nice try, Knight Sabers," yelled Quincy, a good
portion of his face blown away showing the shiny metal
beneath. "But I would hardly come all the way here merely
to see a shipment of boomers delivered."
"Typical," Priss grunted through her radio to the other
Knight Sabers, already suited up for combat.
"I'm picking up weird energy fluctuations coming from
the reactor," Nene's voice came through over Priss's. "Some
sort of large neutron flux, it was probably caused by the
first explosion."
"Watch out Knight Sabers!" Sylia yelled over the radio
and over her external audio speaker. The four armored
warriors leaped away from their previous position as a trio
of boomers landed there. Red eyed and laser mouthed, they
flew out after Nene, Priss, and Linna leaving Sylia standing
along against the mechanical Quincy.
"There goes the money," Sylia muttered to herself.
"Just you and me, Saber Prime?" asked Quincy, who was
now slowly expanding out of his skin. Tears sped their way
across his strangely tailored suit, leaving rags hanging
from his pulsating, blue steel body. "Time to end this."
"I'm ready," Sylia announced, leaping forward towards
the Quincy look-alike, readying her knuckle bomber. The
boomer gave her that menacing grin that they all had after
they shed their skin, and grabbed her arm before it could
impact against his shoulder as she had planned. She gasped
suddenly but brought her other hand to bare, extending her
monoblade and shoving it deep into the confines of the
mimic. The thing's chest exploded outwards, clouding the
area in smoke.
***
"Listen Chief..." Leon began as he walked into the main
office.
"McNichol!" screamed the Chief back causing Leon to
wonder if he was telepathic. "There are you are! What are
you still doing here?"
"Huh?" was all Leon could muster.
"There's some sort of a boomer riot going on at the
Tokyo Atomic Plant. Quickly, get on it!"
"Right, Chief!" quickly replied Leon as he dashed to
his desk, pulled out his badge and keys and ran out of the
office. Daley followed him shortly after.
***
"Oooohhh, go awaaaaaay!" screamed Nene dodging the
speeding fist from the boomer before her. Her sensor data
indicated that it was an enhanced C-class boomer, nothing
really extraordinary. Of course, Nene was never able to
handle ordinary, so she was having problems.
The blue giant quickly kicked after retracting it's
hand and hit Nene in the chest, sending her flying into the
wall of large drum. She slumped out of the impression she'd
made in the wall, wrenching her head upwards to look at her
enemy.
The C-class opened it's mouth wide, exposing the laser
cannon within. It's eyes glowed an extra dark shade of red
before the cannon charged and fired. Nene barely got out of
the way with her life, her arm had been badly scorched and
had fastened itself to her side.
The boomer turned to face the panting, melting, Nene
again. It readied it's cannon again and was about to fire
when the large drum exploded outwards from the weakened hole
made in it by the first shot. A gush of scalding hot water
poured out of the hole drenching the boomer as it made
screams of agony.
Using the data from her senors, she calculated the most
likely position of the azure demon given it's mass, current
stance, and the speed and duration of the water exploding
from the drum. She aimed her working arm right at the
boomer's head and fired.
Inside of the misty cloud of vapor, the sound of
wrenching metal was heard shortly before a second, orange
colored cloud began tainting the vapor.
***
Leon wrenched the wheel to the side suddenly causing
his Patrol Car to skid to a stop in front of the main
entrance to the Tokyo Atomic Plant. Jumping out of the car,
he reached into his blazer and pulled out his sunglasses,
slipping them effortlessly onto the bridge of his nose.
He glanced around, surveying the damage. He'd gotten
here before the rest of the AD Police, thanks to his
expertise in driving and the rest of the Police's lack of
it. He cursed inwardly and pulled out his gun. A large
plume of smoke seemed to be rising up from the West side of
the plant as evidence of a recent fight.
The sudden explosion from the same area convinced Leon
he had not been too late and dashed off into the Factory in
a western direction.
"Fuck backup," he said as he ran.
***
Linna landed right next to Priss and they stood back to
back, looking at the pair of boomers to either side of them.
The boomers snarled a tinny growl and Priss gave them the
finger.
"I saw you were having fun," Linna said. "I thought I
might join you."
"Why not," replied Priss. "The more the merry. You
take the one on the right I'll take the one on the left."
"My right or your right?"
"My right."
Linna sighed. "Why are you always right?" There was
an explosion in the distance and in a streak of blue, one of
the boomers was gone.
"Later," Priss said with a chuckle and leaped after the
boomer. Linna shrugged as the remaining boomer lunged at
her and she nimbly stepped to the side. The boomer hit the
ground with a clatter and the scraping of metal on metal.
Swinging her head around, her monomolecular whips
sliced up the ground and one of the boomers arms before it
jumped away.
***
"Come on ugly," Priss yelled into the open area of the
Plant. "I know you're out there, come out and play." As if
to emphasize the point, she charged her knuckle bomber.
The sounds of combat rose in the distance and Priss
made a fist with her gloved hand. "Great, I'm out here
chasing chickens while everyone else is having fun. Where
the hell are ya?"
An explosion much closer rung out as one of the large
cylinders on the floor collapsed and flooded the area in a
dense mist. Priss blinked as her visor began displaying
gibberish, suddenly overloaded with targets. She lifted her
visor and peered out into the fog.
"I don't need an enhanced sensor package to kill you,"
she announced. The area seemed to get suddenly quiet, aside
from the low hum her own suit made when it was active.
Something fell off to the left and she spun on her foot
and fired off her railgun. She listened for the sound of a
boomer hitting the floor but there was only silence.
Nervously, she glanced around, trying to make forms out of
the eerie shadows in the mist.
Another noise. She held her arm out in the direction
it came from and waited for the figure to form. She
squinted to see through. When there was no noise
afterwards, she slowly dropped her arm to her side.
That's when the mechanical fist slammed into her gut.
***
Sylia clutched her shoulder where the look-alike had
stabbed her. A thin trail of blood leaked down her armor to
form a puddle on the floor. The android didn't look much
better, though. It was missing it's hand where one of
Sylia's knuckle bomber attacks hit, smoking from the entire
chest area after her monoblade attack, and dripping an
orange fluid from it's leg unit.
Quincy opened it's mouth and readied for a laser cannon
attack just as a heap of twisted metal fell onto it's back,
crushing it to the ground. Linna landed next to Sylia as
the two surveyed the pile of scrap boomer parts.
"Are you okay?" Linna asked.
Sylia straightened herself and dropped her bloody arm
to her side. "I'll be fine," she said, slightly strained.
"Ooooooh!" came a overly cute voice over the radio as
Nene ran up to them. "I hate boomers! Look what they did
to my arm!"
"All right, Nene," said Sylia. "We'll fix it when we
get back to base. Where's Priss?"
"I don't know," Linna said, suddenly sounding worried.
"She ran off after one of the boomers we were fighting. But
something is obscuring my visor in that direction."
"It's the radiation," Nene supplied. "And it's getting
worse, I wonder if one of those attacks damaged the core."
"What?!" yelled Linna. "If there's a meltdown it could
destroy the whole city!"
"Calm down," Sylia soothed. "We'll keep that from
happening. Nene, find the core room and see if you can get
the rods to descend. Linna, see if you can find Priss.
I'll try to find a way to dampen the explosion if it
happens." She looked to Nene and Linna who nodded in turn.
"Move out!"
***
"Fucking boom--uurggh!" Priss grunted as she kicked
away the boomer. She landed in a heap, holding her stomach
as if it were about to fall out. The boomer stood over her,
almost scoffing her attempts.
"Laugh this up," Priss yelled as she slammed her fist
into the boomers leg and fired three rails into it. The leg
buckled and the boomer quickly shifted it's weight to avoid
crashing into the ground. Priss took this moment to roll
away and scamper into the mist.
Eventually she found something hard enough to lean up
against and she looked down to examine the cracks in her
chest plate. The boomer had done a good deal of damage to
the armor, but the functions were still okay, and she could
deal with the piercing pain in her stomach for the time
being.
She looked up into the mist again. If only her visor
were working, she could see right through this mess and
shoot a rail into the boomers ass. The dull thud of
footsteps alerted Priss to the proximity of the boomer. She
rolled off the wall and stumbled to her feet.
Tracing the wall to the corner, she wedged herself in
and readied her rail gun, moving it from side to side,
waiting for the first sign of movement. Suddenly the
metallic sound of footsteps increased to a running pace and
got louder. Priss aimed her arm in the direction of the
sound.
The boomer emerged from the mist like a raging bull.
Priss fired as many rails as she could into the gut of the
beast before it grabbed her neck and lifted her up against
the wall. She choked as the boomer opened it's mouth, ready
to fire.
Then its face fell out as a gunshot rung through it's
artificial skull. Orange fluid spurted from the wound and
covered Priss's faceplate. She fell to the ground as the
boomer released her and one final shot was heard, followed
by the familiar sound of a boomer death.
Priss tried to pant but found that her helmet was
closed around her throat. She ripped off the helmet,
tossing it to the side as the mist began to clear. She
breathed deeply then coughed several times before she heard
footsteps again.
In reflex she jumped to her feet and held out her arm,
ready to fire. She almost refused to believe the form
before he was Leon, but with that goofy grin and the way he
was holding his gun like it was his only friend in the
world, it had to be.
"Leon," she breathed as she fell to her knees.
Suddenly, he was there beside her, trying to hold her, and
the heavy hardsuit, up. She looked to his face, now filled
with concern instead of ego. "Leggo of me, I can support
myself."
"That's the problem with you," Leon said. "You always
think you can handle everything that's coming your way.
Sometimes it takes more than courage to win." He lifted her
fully to her feet and started walking her away from the
bleeding boomer.
She pushed herself away from him and stood by herself.
"What do I need, then? You?" she asked sarcastically.
"Well, I'd say I'd do," he replied, holstering his gun
again. "But I was only going to say, `help'."
"Hmph," Priss said.
"Priss!" came a voice as a woman in a green colored
hardsuit ran up to the two of them.
"I've already got help," Priss said with a small smile.
"I've been looking for you," Saber Green said when she
reached them. "There's something wrong with the reactor,
this place is gonna blow!"
"What?!" Leon said.
"Are you sure?" Priss asked.
"The ... uh, the other Knight Sabers are working on a
way to stop it right now."
"Then lets go, co--Ow!" Priss clutched her stomach
again.
"Come on, you," Leon said putting one of Priss' arms
around his neck. "Some date this turned out to be," he
muttered.
"It was just gonna be dinner, Leon, not a date," Priss
grunted.
"Oh yeah, and you're just a idol singer, not a Knight
Saber," Leon countered.
***
"Nene," Sylia said putting the final scrap of lead she
could find on the pile, "Report."
"I've got the rods to descend," came Nene's worried
voice. "But the reaction is continuing, I think it's still
going to blow."
"Can you contain the radiation?" asked Sylia.
"I think so, there appears to be an emergency dump
cycle just for this occasion."
"Good, activate it and get out of there. Oh, what's the
rating on the explosion?"
"I dunno, a kiloton, maybe less."
"Alright, hurry up," Sylia finished, turning away from
the cylinders and heading for the exit. On the way, Linna
landed beside her.
"I've found Priss," Linna said. "She's on her way. She
had a little problem with a boomer but Leon handled it."
"Leon?" asked Sylia.
"Yeah," Linna said hesitantly. "There's one more
problem though."
"What?"
"Priss lost her helmet," Linna explained. "Leon
knows."
Sylia stopped in her tracks and looked back once over
her shoulder. Slowly, she looked back and nodded. "I
understand."
"You know, it's really not that bad, I mean, Leon's a
big help anyw--"
"Not now," Sylia silenced her and started running
again. "Right now, we deal with this problem."
"SYLIA!" screamed Nene in Sylia's ear. She flinched
and responded.
"What is it, Nene?"
"It's really BAD!" Nene tried to explain. "We have to
get out of here right now! Less than a minute!"
"Understood," Sylia responded, and opened up her jet
wings. "Where are you now?"
"I'm on my way out, there's an exit in the back here,
I'll use that. See you on the other side."
Sylia nodded to no one in general, then looked to
Linna. "We've got no time left, lets go." She activated
her jets and shot off towards the exit. Linna hesitated for
a second then flew off after her.
***
"I was supposed to be carrying you," Leon commented as
Priss dashed through the Plant carrying Leon on her back.
"I thought you were injured."
"I am," Priss struggled to say between breathes. "But
we have no time left for your antics, I'll just go see a
doctor after this."
"Priss? See a doctor? No way!"
"Shut up or I'll leave you behind," Priss yelled.
She jumped down from a raised platform as she entered
the main floor. Dashing towards the exit, she could hear
the sounds of emergency klaxons going off all over the
plant. "Sound bad," Leon commented.
Something exploded suddenly, neither of them saw what,
that sent the both of them flying to the side. When Leon
finally managed to struggle to his feet, he saw Priss,
unconscious, bleeding heavily from her stomach.
"Damn," he said as he rushed over, put her arm around
his neck again, and started dragging her towards the exit.
"So much for speed."
***
"What the hell is taking Priss so long?" Linna asked
nervously for the eighth time. She and Sylia were standing
on a nearby building watching the exit of the Plant. The AD
Police were swarming around the area, so they couldn't get
any closer.
"I'm going after her!" she finally decided and go ready
to jump off the edge of the building. Just as she was
bending her legs, she felt her arm jerked away from the edge
and she stumbled back to see Sylia holding her arm. "What
the hell are you doing?! I have to go save her!"
"It's too late," Sylia said softly.
"What do ya mean, it's too late?! It's NEVER too late!"
The Tokyo Atomic Plant chose this time to explode,
sending shockwaves through the city, pushing the cars of the
AD Police back, and sending Sylia and Linna flying to the
other end of the building.
Linna struggled to get up and crawled to look over the
edge of the building at the Tokyo Plant. There was a small
crater and the giant, concrete encrusted, lead lined
depository that the rods were being held in. Nuclear
fallout had been adverted. But for Priss and Leon...
It had been too late.
-End Chapter 2-
Authors Notes:
Before you go off on me, of COURSE, Priss and Leon are
not dead. They will be reappearing in chapter 4 when I get
into the main story. As for Sylia's obviously heartless
actions concerning Priss, well, she had her reasons.
Reasons that I may decide to go into in a side story to this
universe, but that's theoretical. Sylia isn't critical to
the plot, this may be the last you see of her for a long
time.
"Bubblegum Crisis" was created by Suzuki Toshimichi and
is c1987 by A.I.C., Inc. & Youmex, Inc. Licensed to AnimEigo
by Youmex, Inc. for English Translation, Dubbing, and
manufacturing. While this story contains characters and
situations from this anime and used without permission, this
work is c1999 Adam Leigh. Not for sale or trade. All
rights under copyright reserved.
Adam Christopher Leigh
Omicron@sprynet.com
http://dogbert.simplenet.com/shadows