The Neon Knight Sabers
A Multiple Crossover / Alternate History
By Ammadeau
Roy.Fokker@UNSpacy.org
http://members.tripod.com/~Ammadeau/fanfiction.htm
Program 2b
(2c to follow)
Rei, Ranko, and Ami all sat around Rei's apartment to share
what they had found out, which was basically nothing. They had
managed to narrow the search area from the information that the
USSD had given them, along with some help from Ami's computer
search. A few people had seen those they were looking for, but the
leads had been too cold to follow up.
Ami had speculated as to why the USSD were willing to
pay so much for finding a former employee and what was guessed
to be his daughter. Why were they looking for the girl at all?
Ranko was of the opinion that the guy had stolen some top-secret
plans or something, but that just didn't sound right to Ami. There
was more to this than they were being told. Rei had said nothing.
Keiichi sat monitoring all police frequencies, though he
was paying more attention to Belldandy serving dinner.
Unfortunately, Ranko happened to be between them and the young
goddess assumed her new boyfriend was watching that red-head.
Belldandy wasn't fond of Ranko; she was brash, rude,
unfeminine, and worst of all Keiichi had admitted to having a huge
crush on her. Belldandy could not reveal that Ranko was in
actuality a boy with a gender-altering curse even by accident, no
matter how much she may want to. It would cause too much hurt
to let that be known, and not just to Ranko. She did not know the
red-head's history, but seeing as she spent so much of her time as a
girl, Belldandy had concluded that Ranko was seeing this as her
true gender, despite how she had been born.
For a goddess Belldandy thought herself rather plain. How
could she hope to compete with an overdeveloped red-head with
absolutely no sense of shame? It didn't even matter that Ranko had
shown no interest in Keiichi, in fact this playing hard to get might
make Rei's brother even more interested in her. The goddess was
starting to consider contacting her older sister Urd for help. No,
things weren't that desperate yet.
"So, does anyone know what happened to Mihoshi?" Ranko
finally asked the question they had all been wondering, an almost
undetectable trace of concern in her voice. According to Keiichi,
the blonde in question had called in a few times, and then her calls
just stopped. It was already well past the time when they were
supposed to meet back at the apartment. Mihoshi, despite her other
faults, was usually punctual.
"I told her to call in regularly," Rei stated with a touch of
irritation.
"Maybe she's following a lead and can't call in right now?"
Ami said, sticking up for her teammate. Mihoshi might be a ditz
and trouble magnet, but she was also a friendly and good-natured
person. The former senshi was used to sticking up for people like
that.
"Come on now, this is Mihoshi we're talking about," Ranko
stated. "She wouldn't know a lead if it bit her in the �"
"It is possible," Rei said, cutting Ranko off. "We should
give her the benefit of the doubt."
"We're going to take you for a little ride," the thug told
Mihoshi as she got in the car.
"Okay, but can I use your phone first? There's a really
important call I have to make."
The thugs looked at each incredulously. "Do you realize
that we're kidnapping you?"
"You are?"
The thugs nodded.
"Does this mean I can't use your phone?"
The thugs nodded again.
"Kidnapping a Galaxy Police officer is a federal offense!
Wait just a sec and I'll read you your rights."
Mihoshi reached in her jacket to pull out her storage cube.
The one thug who hadn't spoken up to point, completely
misinterpreted this gesture and shouted, "She's got a gun!"
He was considerably nervous since he was sitting only
inches from her and decided to pull out his own firearm.
Mihoshi had finally located her control cube and was
currently trying to find her info pen by the process of elimination.
"That's not it. This isn't it either. What is this doing here?" The
item in question was a pool ball with the number eight neatly
printed on it. She tossed it away.
The thug next to her had become very nervous when the
woman had started pulling strange objects out of nowhere and
tossing them all around the back seat of the car. This was causing
him to unconsciously tighten his grip on the gun, finger inching
closer to the trigger. He was so caught up in Mihoshi's display that
he didn't see the eight-ball until it hit him square in the face.
The gun went off, hitting the driver in the back of the head.
Since the driver was a boomer little damage had been done,
however the force of the impact drove the boomer's head through
the steering column and drove his feet through the car, which was
now out of control.
That's it, the thug thought when he regained consciousness,
that little bitch is going to die! He took careful aim, but the car
swerved suddenly and he blew off the door handle instead, causing
the door to open. Mihoshi, who had been frantically looking for
her blaster once the shooting had started, tumbled out the door to
land on a old mattress.
The two thugs and boomer weren't so lucky, as the car
finally ended its erratic path by crashing into a wall.
Mihoshi looked back mournfully as the car went up in a big
fireball. It would have been nice to arrest someone. She hadn't
done that for a while. She wanted to join the AD Police, but Ami
was very against it for some reason, and Rei had agreed with her.
Mihoshi yelped in fear as a massive, insect form suddenly
pulled itself from the wreckage of the still burning car. It was just
like that American movie she had watched on TV last week,
Terminator. That had been a scary movie. The big robot just kept
coming and coming. Mihoshi thought about trying to find her
blaster, took another look at the boomer that was even closer now,
and decided to make a run for it instead.
A man was getting back on his bike after just making the
call. Mishoshi was too panicked to see anything but the bike.
Knocking the man off, she hopped on and drove away as fast as
she could.
The bug-boomer sprouted wings and flew after her.
"Dispatch, this is officer Rally Vincent. I've just sighted a
boomer pursuing a woman a bike who keeps shouting 'help me,
help me, help me.'"
Everyone there thought 'Mihoshi?' Rei answered for them
all, saying, "I could be anyone."
"The blonde woman must be really panicked," Rally
continued. "She's swerving all over the road, causing about a
dozen accidents already. I can't believe that she can cause so much
damage without crashing herself."
Everyone back at Saber HQ sweatdropped.
"That just has to be Mihoshi," Ranko stated the obvious.
Everyone else nodded solemnly.
Rei nodded and said, "Let's go."
Mihoshi picked herself up and dusted herself off again.
She was fine, but the motorcycle was a total loss. Going over
60mph straight into a stone wall had crumpled the bike into a mess
of metal. The explosion afterwards hadn't left much that could be
recognized. Mihoshi was feeling a little irritated with whoever had
made the bike. Did they know that they forgot the brake pedal? It
was a good thing that she had fallen off onto that old couch when
she had taken that turn or she may have been driving around
forever. She was just happy that she had lost that big robot bug
some time back.
Mihoshi looked around, but, seeing that everything still
looked unfamiliar, reasoned that she was still lost. She was out in
front of some big, darkened building by the sea. Well, Mihoshi
thought, a building that big just has to have a phone or two. She
went inside.
Mihoshi eventually stumbled upon a large empty room,
where a little blonde-haired girl was writing on the walls with
chalk. She was wearing a Sailor V jumper and drawing crude
dipictions of anime characters, usually engaged in some sort of
violent activity. Mallets seemed to be the weapon of choice. Even
Sailor V held a hammer high over her head.
A lightbulb went off in Mihoshi's mind, one that said 'Isn't
there something familiar about the girl? Haven't you seen her
somewhere before?' However, it was too dim for Mihoshi to
notice it.
"Ano?" Mihoshi said to her.
"Hai?" the little girl replied.
"You wouldn't happen to know where there's a phone
around her, would you?"
The little girl shook her head.
What else? Mihoshi thought. She knew that there were
other things that she was supposed to be looking for. Then she
remembered the list she had made and took it out.
"Do you know where I can get a blender?"
The girl shook her head again.
Mihoshi took out some pictures and gave them to the little
girl. "Well, do you know where I can find the people in these
pictures? The little girl is named Sana, who used to work for the
USSD, and the man is her son which she kidnapped." Rei had told
Mihoshi something like that anyway.
"This one," said the little girl, pointing to the picture of the
little girl, "is me."
Mihoshi took the picture back and looked at it closely.
"Wow, you're right!" Well, with such poor lighting in there it was
hard to tell.
"And this one," Sana said again, pointing at the picture of
the blonde woman, "is you."
Mihoshi took that picture and looked at it closely. It was a
picture of her in a swimsuit and straw hat that Rei had found when
she had confiscated her brother's hentai photo collection. How did
that get in there?
"And this one," the girl continued, pointing at the last
picture, "is that guy over there."
Mihoshi turned to face the guy she had been looking for,
along with several others, standing in a doorway. She also noticed
the boomer who had been chasing her for the past half hour had
finally caught up. It was one of those new insect types, oddly
painted orange and black. There was also a red symbol on its
forehead that she couldn't make out.
The bug-boomer made some odd chittering noises. The
guy responded, "No, we can't kill her now. Lord Jinnai wants to
know who she's working for first."
"I work as an aerobics instructor as Ozaki Fitness,"
Mihoshi told them, trying to be helpful. She wasn't going to tell
them she was also a Knight Saber. Rei had told Mihoshi that if she
ever told anyone that, Mihoshi would never get to eat any ice
cream ever again. She wouldn't like that at all. They didn't have
anything like ice cream on her home planet, or sake either.
"Why were you looking for me and the girl then?"
"Because the USSD hired us to," Mihoshi said, thinking
that this should be pretty clear to anyone.
"Why would they hire an aerobics instructor to find us?"
"I don't know. Maybe they thought you were starting to get
flabby and needed to get back into shape."
The bug-boomer started chittering again. It sounded oddly
like begging. The man thought for a while, before replying, "No,
we need to find out exactly what she knows. Tell us everything."
"Everything?" Mihoshi asked, sounding very surprised.
The man nodded.
"Well, it all started when . . ."
Saber-Blue, Saber-Purple, and Saber-Red all rushed to the
scene, only to find Mihoshi sitting there talking in her sleep while
a little blonde girl curled up in her lap. Various thugs were
gathered around her snoozing. Even one of the new-type boomers
was out cold on the ground.
"Then I slipped on the hot chocolate, knocked into Kiyone,
and we both fell into a huge vat of ice cream with sprinkles. It was
rocky road with rainbow sprinkles. Kiyone . . ." Mihoshi
muttered.
"Just what the hell is going on here?" Saber-Red shouted.
She had raced all this way to save someone who she wasn't sure
she wanted to save in the first place, only to find everyone
sleeping. She wanted action, battle, chases, explosion, mayhem;
not nap time.
"Perhaps you shouldn't have shouted so loud," Saber-Purple
told her. There was the man and the little girl that they were
looking for. If they just grabbed them while everyone was
sleeping, they could do the job without any trouble. It would be so
nice to actually get paid for once.
Unfortunately, her warning came a little too late. The bug-
boomer snapped awake and the thugs were already stirring.
Mihoshi and the girl in her lap remained asleep however. She was
muttering something about Tenchi and heavenly hash.
The bug-boomer took one look at Mihoshi and lunged for
her with an odd chittering battle cry. Saber-Red managed to block
its path, but it was having a hard time keeping the enraged bug-
boomer at bay. This model was even stronger than the one they
had fought last night.
Ami shook Mihoshi and whispered to her, "Wake up
Mihoshi." They had to get Mihoshi to the truck and into her
hardsuit quick before the bug-boomer broke free of Ranko. At
least stop her mutterings, they were starting mess with Ami's mind.
Sana's eyes snapped open and she shouted, "Oh no, I'm late
for school!"
Mihoshi only muttered something about space pirates, Jurai
princesses, chopped nuts, and pinaples.
Sana looked around a bit. "Huh? This isn't my room. Who
are you?"
"We are the Knight Sabers," Rei told her. "We've been
hired by the USSD to find you."
Ranko was having a hard enough time fighting the one
boomer, when the guy they were supposed to be looking for
shouted, "Destroy them! For the glory of Genom and Lord
Jinnai!"
Then the three thugs did the 'burst outta the skin' trick to
reveal one bug-boomer and two normal ones. Damn, Ranko
thought, this is not going to be easy. She gritted her teeth and
psyched herself up for another Chestnut Fist. The last time hadn't
done more than cause a few dents, but maybe this time she'd get
lucky. She should be able to take out one of the normal boomers at
least.
Ami shook the blonde woman violently and shouted,
"Come on Mihoshi, wake up!"
"Just five more minutes Mom," Mihoshi responded without
opening her eyes.
Rei knelt down and whispered in her ear, "Mihoshi, you're
missing your favorite TV show."
Immediately, Mihoshi's eyes snapped open and she said,
"What? 'Go, Go AD Police Policeman' is on now?"
"Ami," Rei ordered, "take Mihoshi and the little girl to the
truck while I help Ranko with the boomers."
"Hai," Ami answered and hauled the two confused girls
away. Mihoshi was complaining that she hadn't got to the part
where Tenchi had fallen into the vat of mashmellow topping and
everyone dove in to save him yet. Ami decided that she did no
want to know what the blonde Knight Saber was talking about.
Rei jumping in was a great relief to Ranko. She didn't like
to admit it, but she wasn't doing too well against four boomers.
Actually, it was all she could do not to end up seriously hurt.
Thankfully, only two of the boomers were the new insect types,
while the others were the old humanoid types which were much
easier to deal with. Unfortunately, her special moves would leave
her too open for a counterattack.
Suddenly, one of the bug-boomers broke free from the
fighting and charged after where Ami and Mihoshi had gone.
Ranko was about to spring after it when Rei told her, "Let it go.
Ami should be able to hold it off long enough for Mihoshi to get
suited up."
Ranko didn't question Rei's confidence in Mihoshi. It
seemed that whenever she was in a fight, the only people who got
hurt was everyone else. Ranko was starting to think that there was
something very unusual about the blonde Knight Saber.
"Just who are you?" the remaining bug-boomer asked in
perfect Japanese. It was bigger than the other, colored yellow and
green, but it had the same red mark on its forehead, of a triangle
with a dot in the center.
"We are the Knight Sabers," Rei told it.
"Yeah, and we're going to kick your butt in the name of the
moon," Ranko added.
There was a moment of silence in which Saber-Blue turned
to face Saber-Red. Ranko shrugged helplessly. She had no idea
why she had said that. Ami must be rubbing off on her.
Meanwhile Ami, who was carrying Sana, and Mihoshi
managed to make it to the truck before the boomer caught up with
the fleeing Sabers. Keiichi and Belldandy were waiting inside.
Keiichi had tried to convince the young goddess that it would be
too dangerous for her to go, but she had insisted on staying with
him.
"Belldandy, you take care of the girl," Ami ordered,
unaware of how much she sounded like Rei at the moment.
"Keiichi, help Mihoshi suit up. I'll hold off the boomer."
Ami knew that she wasn't good at direct, hand to hand
fighting, but she didn't have a choice in the matter. The bug-
boomer tried to charge past her, but she blocked its path.
"You'll have to get through me first!" she told it, fist
upraised. There was no way she was going to let this thing hurt
one of her friends.
The bug-boomer snarled as it lunged at her. Ami dodged,
but not fast enough to avoid a deep scrape in her suit's armor. It
was nothing serious, but Ami knew that if she had taken it full on
she might have been cut in half. While her hardsuit enhanced her
reflexes about as well as her old fuku, these new boomers were
tougher than any yoma or daimon she had ever faced.
"Mihoshi-san," Belldandy said to the Knight Saber as she
was finishing suiting up.
"Hai?"
"Here, take this, it might help you fight those boomer
things." Belldandy handed her what looked like no more than a
toy hammer. The goddess thought it was appropriate. The
hammer was meant for hunting down bugs after all.
"Um, Belldandy," Keiichi said to her. "I don't want to
sound judgmental, but isn't that a little small to use on a boomer?"
"Just push the button on the handle and it will get bigger."
Her sister had added that feature to be used on really big bugs.
When Mihoshi's finger inched towards the button,
Belldandy stopped her, alarmed. "No, not in here, wait until you
get outside."
Mihoshi thought about it for a moment, then smiled and
nodded. After putting her helmet on, she saluted Belldandy with
the hammer, accidently bonking herself in the head, and left.
Belldandy wondered if she had just made a big mistake.
Ami ducked and weaved the best she could, trying all of
her suit's weapons on the thing, but they were having little effect
on the bug-boomer's armor. She knew that her suit had the
weakest weapons, but she should have been doing some damage.
The situation was starting to get desperate. If something didn't
happen soon, then she might die, again. Only there wasn't an silver
crystal to bring her back this time.
Just then a voice rang out from somewhere above them.
Ami looked up in surprise to see Saber-Black posing dramatically
on the top of the truck. For a moment Ami saw another blonde
standing there instead, one with a ridiculous dumpling-head hairdo.
She blinked and the vision was gone.
"Giant insects fighting people is just evil! I, a beautiful,
graceful, and extremely competent first class detective, will not
allow it! In the name of the Galaxy Police, I will squash you!"
The bug-boomer began to laugh when it saw the tiny
hammer that the Knight Saber was shaking in its direction. Its
laugher died abruptly when the hammer suddenly grew to ten times
its original size.
Mihoshi hefted the giant hammer high above her head and
with a flying leap brought it down on the head of the boomer,
crushing it flat with sounds of grinding metal and squishing
organics.
"Eww! Yucky!" she declared as she shrunk the hammer
back to its original size and saw what was left of her opponent. A
boomer pancake, gross.
Mihoshi handed Belldandy back her hammer before joining
the others. "Thanks so much!"
Belldandy accepted it hesitantly. It was still dripping with
a pinkish slime. "Ah Keiichi, do you have a rag that I can use?"
By the time Saber-Purple and Saber-Black had rejoined
their fellow Knight Sabers, two of the boomers had been
destroyed. Only the advanced insect boomer remained and even it
had not survived so long unscathed. Its carapace was covered with
scrapes and gouges. One antennae was broken at the end, while
the other was completely missing. An arm was twisted at an
unnatural angle even for a bug and it was favoring its right leg.
Ami noticed that Rei and Ranko looked nearly as bad.
Strangely, though, when the boomer saw the other two
Knight Sabers, it threw back its head and laughed. "You puny
humans cannot hope to defeat me, Lord Jinnai's greatest creation!
Now I will show you my true power! Behold your doom!"
That was when the boomer started to melt. The Knight
Sabers thought that this was some sort of malfunction, but then
they saw that it had actually absorbed the remains of the other two
boomers and gotten bigger. Then it started absorbing the floor.
"Attack, now!" Rei ordered.
The Knight Sabers used every weapon at their disposal, but
the best they could do was slow down the thing's fusion with the
room. It had already filled up most of the space by the time Rei
ordered a retreat.
Most of the Knight Sabers stood stunned in awe as the
building they had just been in began to reshape and reform itself
into a giant bug. Ami was starting to feel like an extra in an old
giant robot anime. She was hoping that this wouldn't one where
most of the characters die at the end.
Rally stood by her car as she watched Aqua City melt and
reshape itself like clay in the hands of an invisible craftsman. A
craftsman with very odd tastes, she thought as the giant form began
to clearly resemble a insect. Rally had held back when she had
seen the Knight Sabers arrive, but this might be too much for even
them to handle. She opened up the trunk and pulled out a very
large gun, faint smile on her lips.
"Ami," Rei ordered in a sharp tone that got Saber-Purple's
attention, "use your computer to scan the boomer for weaknesses."
"Hai," she replied and quickly began the scan. The
hardsuit's sensors greatly enhanced the range of her Mercury
computer. "The weakness is in the mouth. The thing's throat leads
right to the boomer's true brain. A single shot to the exposed brain
should kill it."
"But wouldn't one of you have to actually go down that
giant insect's throat just to shoot at it?" Belldandy, who had been
listening in on the truck's radio, commented. "How horrible!"
"I'll do it," Ranko said evenly.
"No, Ranko," Rei told her, "Your suit is too damaged.
Mihoshi would be a better choice."
Unfortunately, Ranko had either turned her suit's radio off
or wasn't listening, because she had already made a massive jump
for the creature's mouth before Rei had finished speaking.
Rei sighed. She couldn't let the girl go and kill herself.
"Ami, go after Ranko. Mihoshi and I will distract the boomer in
the meantime."
Ami nodded and the Knight Sabers went to work.
Ranko had only been truly frightened a few times in her
life. The first had been the cats, then the several times she had
thought to be stuck permanently as a girl. The worst time of all
was during the battle with Saffron when Akane had nearly died.
This boomer had scared her badly and the only way she knew to
overcome that fear, to defeat it, was to destroy the thing herself.
So she fell down the throat of the beast, bouncing off the
'walls' to slow her descent, while dodging tentacles that sprouted
from all over the place, until finally she had reached the exposed
brain. Ranko raised her gun to fire, only to have it jam on her.
Looking closely, she noticed that it seemed one of the tentacles'
near strikes had damaged the firing mechanism. Damn.
Ranko tried to get in close enough to nail the brain with a
chestnut fist, but the tentacles effectively kept her at bay. She only
had one option left. She'd never tried to do this with the suit on
before, but there was a first time for everything. "Moko
Takabisha!"
The ki blast struck the brain dead center, destroying it, but
there was some sort of painful, searing feedback that made her
hands hurt like hell. There was also the added problem of the giant
bug-boomer falling apart all around her.
Outside, the other Knight Sabers were surprised when the
giant bug-boomer that they had been fighting suddenly started to
disintergrate.
"Huh?" Mihoshi said, summing up everyone's thoughts at
the moment.
"Ranko must have done it," Rei said.
"Yeah, but where is she?" Keiichi asked. "I can't find her
on any of the monitors."
"Ami, did you locate her?"
"Negative. I couldn't even get close enough to the mouth
with those tentacles it kept sprouting. I'll try to � Aarrgghh!!"
"Ami, what happened?" Rei asked. "Ami, please respond."
After there was only silence, Rei asked her brother, "Do
you have any idea what just happened to Ami?"
"There was a chopper in the area for a moment there,
though its gone now. It might have shot her down."
"What is her current location?"
"Unknown. The bug-boomer's slow death is putting out too
much interferance to detect anything on the ground. I'll send your
suit her last known location."
"Mihoshi," Rei addrressed the Knight Saber next to her,
"I'll go after Ami, you try to find Ranko."
Mihoshi nodded seriously and they both left.
Rally watched in awe as the giant boomer started to come
to pieces around her. Guess the Sabers didn't need my help, she
thought as she hefted her cannon, but it was nice to get to use this
thing even if it didn't do much good.
That was when Rally came across Saber-Red, who
stumbled through the wreckage only to fall flat on her face. She
didn't stir for several moments after. Rally shouldered her weapon
and ran up to the fallen Knight Saber.
"Hey, you all right?"
"I don't think I can stand up right now," Ranko answered
slowly, as if the words were coming through clenched teeth.
"Let me help you then."
"I don't need nobody's help."
Not only is she stubborn, Rally thought, but she has bad
grammar as well. The ADP detective wrapped her arm around the
armored torso and did her best to help the Knight Saber to stand.
She almost fell on her backside. Those suits were heavy and slick
to the touch.
"Hey�"
"Stuff it," Rally told her in anger. "Bet your legs sprained,
maybe even broken. If I don't help you out of here, than this
place'll be your tomb. You need my help."
After a few moments, Saber-Red nodded.
Ranko looked up at her rescuer as they hobbled their way
out of the danger zone. That was when she realized that it was the
AD Police officer she had spoken to earlier when she was out
getting the food, Rally something or other. She thought that with
the short hair this woman resembled a slightly older version of
Akane. Yeah right, Ranko thought, that tombody wouldn't offer
me help if I was sinking in quicksand. Besides, she said that she
liked my music. She doubted that anyone back home would
understand that even though it started out as a way to make money,
Ranko had some to love making music almost as much as she
loved martial arts. Ranko began to smile a little, despite the pain
she was in.
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