[Author's thingy to follow]
"Old Scars"

	A ghostly figure stood above the Tachibana Corporation's headquarters
in Mega Tokyo, visible only when flashing lights of one of the
advertisement blimps back light it. The office was nestled into the
financial section of Mega Tokyo, between a bank and an investment firm,
benefiting from the security of both. Below, the entire street was
patrolled by security boomers and closed off to traffic after hours. 
	The figure above Tachibana's headquarters pulled itself from the
shadows, melding in with the background so well that it was all but
invisible. It crawled down the face of the metal and glass building,
stopping at the seventh floor. Prior observation had yielded it the
schedule of the boomer patrols inside the building, and it was taking
advantage of the fact that the next sweep of this area was not for
several minutes. 
	The figure drew an object from a small compartment in its thigh, and
placed against the window. A brief, muted glow signaled the heating of
the coils, and the device melted a hole just large enough for the figure
to reach inside. After disarming the alarm, it quickly opened the door
and stepped into the waiting hallway. 
	From rooftop to seventh floor, the operation had taken a little under a
minute. According to the schedule, there were two more minutes before a
pair of SS 12b Heavy Security Boomers entered the room. The figure
placed a small box against the door that lead into the main computer
banks. Then it scattered a number of small pellets across the floor on
either side of the door.
	Try as it might, the figure could find no way to open the door short of
what it was about to do. Leaping to the ceiling, it triggered the bomb
against the door. The explosion blew the door off the hinges and into
the lab, shattering the windows all the way down the hallway as a side
effect. Alarms went off immediately, with boomers not far behind.
	Not waiting for them, the figure dropped from the ceiling and darted
into the lab, a silent command activating the pellets in the hall.
Stopping in front of the massive supercomputer, the figure looked at it
silently for a moment. Then it drew a sword from a concealed compartment
along its back. Knowing that the fire alarm disabled the electricity on
this floor at least, it stabbed the sword into the computer. As if
following the blueprints, the figure cut something out of the computer. 
	Explosions from the hall indicated that the bouncing betties were
holding the boomers for the moment. After securing the memory core in a
small, rigid rucksack, the figure darted back out the door, casually
slashing the one remaining patrol boomer. As more boomers entered the
hall, the figure leapt out the window, the confused boomers missing
entirely.
	It landed with little noise, feet pressing a few millimeters into the
asphalt. The patrol boomers on the street proved little challenge to the
nearly invisible thief. In less than a minute, a full six before the
police would be on scene, all the boomers on the street were
incapacitated. Turning towards another building, the figure found one
thing in its way.
	"Where do you think you're going?" Priss Asagari asked it from behind
her helmet. From her vantage point across the street she had watched the
figure dispatch the boomers, and was quite unwillingly impressed. The
movements had seemed too human for anything but a power suit. None of
her sensors could make it out clearly, and the targeting computer was
rewarding her with a NO LOCK message, but Priss was confident that she
could hit the target unaided. 
	The figure focused its attention on her for a moment and her electronic
warfare package registered a strong sensor pulse, from radar to focused
UV. In response, Priss charged the capacitors that drove her rail gun. 
	The black figure began raising its hands as Priss leveled the gun on
it. The arms made it as far as straight out before a single round from a
concealed weapon in the figure's wrist shot out. It ricocheted off
Priss' visor, bright flash of phosphor activating the flash suppressors
in her HUD. She shot once blind on pure instinct. 
	In the instant she was blind, the figure moved with astonishing speed,
disappearing completely by the time Priss could see again. The stream of
expletives that found their way out of Priss' external speaker would
have shocked a veteran seaman. 

	In a random parking lot across the city, the figure slid from shadow to
shadow. The layer of polychromatic cells on its skin blended the suit in
with the surroundings, but the man within was far from overconfident.
The hard suit he had faced outside Tachibana Corp had him in both
strength and firepower. It was only by speed and cunning that he had
avoided a real fight. To make matters worse, the design seemed almost
familiar. 
	A laser pulse from the suit opened a door in a battered delivery truck
parked in the corner of the lot. Slipping inside quickly, the man sealed
his home. With a tired sigh, he pulled off his helmet and strode across
the shop inside. He settled himself on the repair throne, opened the
seals to his suit with a hiss as the overpressure inside equalized. He
pulled himself to his feet with a tired sigh and retrieved the rucksack
from his suit's back.
	A chill passed through him as he sat at a work table, causing him to
reach across the table to grab a battered old gray sweatshirt. Pulling
it on over the matte black body suit, he reached under the desk and
pulled a bottle of cheap rum out from the debris. A few moments later
and the man had shakily poured himself a rum on the rocks. 
	Taking a few seconds to sip from his drink, the man focused on the
memory core he removed from the rucksack. His face wrinkled, old worry
lines adding nearly a decade to his apparent age. Two other similar
memory cores were already on his desk, partially hidden underneath a
nest of wires. He stripped the shell off the memory block and plugged a
pair of fiber optic cables into the waiting ports. After running another
couple of wires to ground the memory core he turned to a small flat
screen on the desk.
	The data scrolled down the screen, the LCD adding a ghostly green tint
to the dank shop. The man's green eyes glinted as he saw design
schematics for hard suits. He slapped the LCD screen off when he saw a
familiar circuit diagram display itself on his screen.
	He stood and stormed off to a cot in the front of the truck. Forgotten
on the desk, under piles of other junk, was an engineering journal. The
cover shot was a younger, brighter version of the man, superimposed over
a portion of the circuit that had, moments before, been on the little
screen across the table.

[Author's Drivel]
	This is a result of watching the first Bubble Gum Crisis OAV series
(and parts of the second) and feeling that I couldn't be 'real' fanfic
writer unless I did either BGC or the Dirty Pai- Ahem, Lovely Angels.
Since I tried the DP in a less than spectacular manner earlier, I
figured I'll try again with the fascinating world of BGC. The black
power suit stemmed from an idea I've been batting around for a while on
what a ninja would be with nifty futuristic toys (I've got a strange
imagination). Feel free to yadda yadda yadda me at:

Jmele@brandeis.edu
www.brandeis.edu/~jmele

Jerico Mele is a wholly owned subsidiary of Genom, Inc. and should be
treated as such.

He's also still working on the 'Great Minds' thingy, but part 3 isn't
finished yet. After he stops refering to himself in the third person,
he'll probably work on it.