Filename: 05_BDWOASS_Ch03_EX1.txt
03/11/2002
Cynthia awoke, surprised - not at having been awakened by something in her
surroundings, or even at having dreamt, but that she'd fallen asleep at
all, having slept the night before for hours. She normally only needed an
hour's sleep every two or three days, but she'd been playing with Mazinbear
and just got so tired out...
>From his position curled up with her on the couch, Huggy Mazinbear moved
again, putting one stubby panda forepaw on her shoulder to gain attention.
His golden eyes flashed brightly, casting a play of light along the
metallic red V ornament on his furry chest, and the citrine in the
incongruous looking silver coronet on his forehead sparkled. An image came
to her mind, like the satellite pictures she was used to, but somehow
different, and somehow she was certain it was being sent to her by
Mazinbear.
As if to confirm her thoughts, his eyes flashed again, then the picture
zoomed smoothly in on the city, near the center, where explosions rose from
Genom tower in the predawn light, rapidly resolving into her freinds in
their bright armor suits fighting with more of the scary buma.
She held his furry body close as she saw a man dodging around Miss Sylia -
Cecilia except in private, she remembered - and then hitting her, looking
like he was hurting her a lot despite the armor. He leapt at her as she
fell, and a strange energy flared around one fist and discharged as he
slammed it down, leaving the white-suited Saber the center of a ring of
cracks, then rebounding away again. The unknown man held out his arms, and
a soft fan of light spread from them to the area around Cecilia's body,
still lying stunned where she'd fallen. An instant later, writhing bolts of
lightning leapt across it, following the glow like a bridge before
grounding out through Sylia and her armored suit. He did it again and
again, before the glowing fan dispersed and he folded his arms
triumphantly. Somehow, Sylia herself seemed to have fallen uner a shadow,
though the early morning twilight was unchanged, and the construction
floodlamps illuminating the scene still undamaged.
The overhead veiwpoint easily let her see Priss and Linna coming at him
from behind, even before he noticed and spun away from the singer in her
red battleframe, only to have his following strike met by Linna, his arm
detonating messily. "Oh no! No, do you have to hurt him back?" the little
blond girl cried as she watched, her normal sight searching Mazinbear's
fuzzy face, yellow optics gleaming softly back at her. For just a moment
the view in her mind zoomed in closer, showing the metal wreckage hanging
from his shoulder, before sweeping back out and away from the bloody mess.
She'd seen such things before of course, in her sky-pictures, but always
tried to avoid them. Turning her mind from unpleasant memories, Cynthia
watched while Nene scooped up her fallen leader and bounded away down the
building. At the same time, a thin beam of light stretched up from the man
past her veiwpoint, somehow instantly recognisable as directing the
orbiting satellite weapons depite not giving her the feeling she'd come to
recognise as being related to them.
Indeed, as she tried to reach out to the satellites herself and block the
commands, she couldn't find the connection, and her eyes snapped wide in
horror. "Oh Huggy, what's wrong? I can't stop him..."
Again the toy bear's eyes flashed, and for just a moment the internal
vision dimmed, replaced by traces and shapes of light... Things that should
have been meaningless, but somehow made sense. Nodding, the bear snuggled
up to her again, and the vision returned, a circle of the satellite's
target area appearing around Priss even as her battleframe released her,
and another sprang up from nowhere to take its place, a strangly shaped arm
flicking out of its back to shove Linna out of the target zone at the same
time. Her view swiveled slightly, moving to the side to look down and at an
angle, and with a small grunt of concentration she added her own dome of
light over the blue-suited singer and her still-forming blue and gold
battleframe, just in time for the satellite's energy blast to slam out of
the sky and flow around it, leaving a scorched, melted trench in a circle
around her freind. Before the man could react, four tiny missles surrounded
in pockets of energy and trailing shock cones so hot and elongated they
seemed like energy beams themselves reached out from the new battleframe,
and she 'tuned out' the vision rather than watch him be destroyed, burying
her tears in the soft furry shoulder of Huggy Mazinbear. Unable to comfort
her with words, the animate toy had to settle for hugging her as well as
its stubby limbs would allow.
Bewilderbeast Studios Present
BUBBLEGUM DISASTER
Season One
WISHES ON A SHOOTING STAR
A work of BGC fan fiction by ClassicDrogn
Chapter Three EX
Continuity note: Several of the segments in this part overlap timewise;
hopefully it should be clear enough which ones and how much without having
to interrupt the text for notes to explicitly state it, because I'm not
going to do so.
Dr. Timothy Thomas Vector, commonly known as T.T., was more widely known as
the constant companion of the globe-hopping playgirl Cecilia Ishioka-Wayne;
indeed he was generally far more visible in society than the lady herself,
who seemed to possess a magical talent for vanishing into thin air on a
whim. Within the medical community he was also known to be a talented
physician in several fields normally the playground of specialists, perhaps
not the world's best in any of them but the greatest combination of general
medicine, opthamology, endocrinology, chiropractic medicine, biomimetic
cybernetics, and psychoneurology to be found in a group of less than three.
He was also rather infatuated with the lifestyle afforded by being on
permanent retainer, giving or attending seminars and lectures whenever he
happened to be convenient to one, but otherwise living it up with high
society, and often the only real sign that his patroness might be in town.
It was no suprize then that he had been seen in the past week alone at a
charity banquet, an antique auto show, and a seminar on the latest methods
of controlling the psychological effects of cybernetic prostheses, while
Ms. Ishioka-Wayne had been utterly invisible for close to a month.
It did come as a surprise when the discussion at breakfast the morning
after that seminar was interrupted by a rather strident wireless phone,
alternating three short and two long electronic screeches in its Emergency
cadence. Without another word, he set down his orange juice, handed the
waiter a 200 zenii bill, and jogged briskly to the hotel doors to have his
car brought up, answering the ring as he impatiently waited for the valet.
"Where?" he demanded, nodding sharply as the caller replied. "Right. I'll
be there in fifteen minutes. What happened?" Megatokyo high society would
be abuzz with rumors for the following week, as he was seen to jerk and
shout, "Good lord!" before sprinting out the doors and towards the parking
garage, intercepting his classic, namesake sportscar halfway to the
entrance and tossing the valet out with a wad of bills before burning
rubber out of the entryway, swerving immediately into traffic and away.
---=- + -=---
A Security buma met Leon as the heliplane landed, having taken a quick
circuit of the roof to record as much of the scene as possible on its
camera. In no mood for obstructionist mechanoids, Leon was already waving
his badge in its green-painted face. Before it could begin protesting, he
barked, "Inspector Leon McNichols, AD Police! This is a crime scene, and
I'm just waiting for the chance to charge Genom with obstruction of
justice!"
Rather than the synthsised voice of a buma, however, a deep, cultured
baritone replied from the battered stairwell, accomanied by soft footsteps
and the click of a cane. "Now now, inspector, there is no need for such
hostility. I'm sure Genom security will cooperate fully in investigating
this criminal attack upon our premises." Chairman Quincy paused at the
doorway of the stairwell, nudging aside the fallen door with a foot while a
pair of bodyguards flowed around him and took positions to either side. He
nodded affably to the security buma, redirecting attention back to it.
Obeying the cue, the brown and green buma calmly stated, "I'm sorry sir,
but this is a construction area, no one is permitted access without a
helmet."
"There, you see, Inspector. There is no cause for alarm." Leon turned back
to find the rather incongruous sight of the Chairman of Genom, with his
gold-tipped cane and $5,000 suit, wearing a standard yellow construction
helmet. One of the bodyguards, headgear conspiciously absent, tossed
another to the policeman, with only a little unneccessary force.
"Alright," Leon agreed, adjusting the band of the helmet to fit. His face
and voice were neutral as he continued, "I don't imply any personal
accusations at this time, of course, Mr. Chairman." Hardnose tough guy or
not, even Leon knew better than to antagonise Quincy wihout having solid
proof.
The executive's face remained in its pleasant, inexpressive mask as he
replied, "Of course, Inspector. I have no doubt of the integrity and
rigorous nature of AD Police investigative practises."
Behind his sunglasses, Leon's eyes narrowed, *I'll bet you don't,* he
thought, *You probably know exectly how much real police work is
compromised, evidence destroyed, and life lost in the name of covering up
for Genom.* Unfortunately, he was running out of things to say that
wouldn't be likely to add himself to that data, and running out of the
patience to hold back despite that.
The moment was broken by the sound of another set of footsteps mounting the
staircase, soon followed by Kate Madigan joining their little group, the
constant wind blowing her hair across her face for a moment as she produced
a video cartridge. "I have the security recorrding as you rrequested, sir,"
she reported.
"Very good, Miss Madigan," the Chairman rumbled. Adressing the nonplussed
inspector, he continued, "It's unfortunate, that the main cluster of
security cameras in this area were destroyed almost immediately." He
pointed his cane at a twisted pile of metal and rubble at the base of the
stairwell structure, a broken lens assembly prominent on one side.
"Oh yes, unfortunate," Leon repeated, his tone belieing the insincerity he
felt. Still, he accepted the cartridge as the purple-tressed woman handed
it to him.
"And now, I have things I must attend to, if that is acceptable Inspector,"
the Chairman asked, though the tone suggested that it had better be
acceptable or else. He continued, "Miss Madigam will remain with you to
assist the investigation and open any doors, as it were."
Quickly hiding a scowl, Leon replied, "Of course, Mr. Chairman, I'm sure
that will be fine. If we need a statement later I'll have her send it to
your office, then?"
"Indeed." Quincy doffed his hardhat and passed it to one of his hulking
bodyguards as he returned to the stairwell, sounding vaguely amused. Before
following his master downstairs the bruiser growled, crushed the aluminum
cap into a small ball, and dropped it to clank against the rubble, while
the second guard stayed with the irritated-looking female exec.
Mouthing a silent curse, Leon slipped his sunglasses into a pocket and
headed over to greet the other officers arriving in a squad copter before
they ran roughshod all over *his* crime scene. He noted sourly that no
protests were being made about 'proper headgear'.
Madigan waited until the Inspector's back was turned to finally let loose a
yawn and give him an annoyed glare, but soon enough schooled her features
and followed smoothly over to the small knot of officers.
---=- + -=---
After the truck's uncertain start, Linna had quickly switched off with Nene
in the cab, as she actually had some notion of how to drive a vehicle that
large. Mackie was far too busy restarting his sister's heart and freaking
out about how her body had flopped limply when the hardsuit release was
triggered, having barely even managed to call for the team's private
doctor.
By contrast, Priss was building up to a berserker rage, the focus of her
anger being the Guardian unit and its dogged persistance in following her
around. She'd gotten it to seperate from Battleframe mode as soon as they'd
gotten underway, then stomped over to the small stack of still-loaded
equipment from their recent move, unceremoniously toppling it and heaving
out the wingpack prototype. She stripped it out of the protective frame,
snapped in the gatling ammo drum, and filled the fuel tank from the
motoslave servicing station. Still growling and muttering imprecations, she
hefted it to her shoulders and let it clamp into place before slapping the
control to open the trailer roof and grabbing the humanoid-form Guardian by
a shoulder, blasting off as the truck passed under a highway ramp with a
growled, "Come on, you peice of scrap! This ends tonight!"
]ANALYSIS OF MODULAR UNIT INDICATES MARGINAL LIFT TO LOAD RATIO. ASSUME
INDEPENDENT FLIGHT MODE.
The turbine's strained roar tapered off, and the variable geometry wings
repositioned themselves for the altered balance as Priss felt her handhold
vanish under her fingers, the Guardian dropping only a few feet before
popping a pair of rings, each perhaps sixteen inches in outer diameter and
of a flattened D shape section, the upright of the D being toward the inner
hole. These positioned themselves on a pair of struts similar to where a
motoslave's lift fans would be mounted, and powered up with a soft blue
glow from various gaps in the outer shell and the inside rim.
Circling sharply with feet pulled up into a crouch against the g-force the
irate singer snarled, "You don't get away that easily!" and let fly with
the vulcan, a similar model to the one carried by ADP Firebees but with
more powerful ammunition. The glow of the liftrings flared as the Guardian
swerved, and a short hail of precise pulse blasts deflected those rounds
that didn't swing wide of the dodge.
"Your highness, please! This unit's only fuction is to serve and protect
your person! You simply must--"
"Protect THIS, BUMA!!", Priss shouted as she charged, rapid-fire railspikes
leading the way. Half of them were dodged, another snatched out of the air
by a rippling pulse-bolt, but the remaining three struck true, two snapping
the Guardian's left liftring off of its strut and the last spearing it
again though the optic band. Off balance and blinded, the robot fell into a
steep dive that became a waterfall plummet as components were shifted to
and from shuntspace and rearranged.
The wingpack's servomotors groaned as the blue suited Knight Saber forced
it to snap-roll into position to fire the vulcan again. The stream of
firepower reached out, a mix of heavy armor piercing rounds that cracked
and shattered unscreened ceramic armor and explosives that tore away the
Guardian's nanite swarm and insecurly bonded components. Unable to get
itself into a coherent flight mode, 215's amorphous mass splashed against a
microawve commuication dish and the majority of it broke away, scattering
into discrete blocks and subassemblies followed by a grainy silver cloud of
inactive nanites scattering to the wind and the wreckage of the Kanto
Canyons below. Catching up with the largest remaining chunk of the alien
robot, Priss gave it a last hit with the impact blaster in her weapon
gauntlet before pulling up and heading back to the Mobile HQ.
"This time you'd better stay dead, you sonofabitch," she muttered as she
flew off into the new day's light.
---=- + -=---
In space, it doesn't matter when you sleep.
There are things that must always have SOMEONE watching them, certainly,
and a regular sleep cycle is required as much as in any planetary situation
for human personnel, but the timing of that cycle becomes a matter of
opinion rather than being based on an actual day and night rotation when a
spinning station revolves in a matter of hours and one with the recently
developed artificial gravity needn't spin at all. Nevertheless, the pack
instinct of humans still led the majority of station personnel to have a
common "night" shift, when they slept, with only a minimal crew active to
oversee the buma keeping track of the various critical functions.
The practical result of this, was that Meg had been able to hack herself
and Nam some unassigned time in the middle of the 'night' and reroute the
security monitors on one of the 1G gymnasiums so the two of them could test
the 35a mobility and combat software she'd accquired for them, to take
advantage of the advanced, 35a style myomers the two of them were built
with, but didn't have the code to use to full potential.
"I'll go first," Meg instructed, "since it was my idea to do this.
Everything should be fine, but if not... well, at least there's a chance
you can do something about it since Maintenance is your primary duty
skillset."
The purple-haired sexaroid bit her lip, asking, "Is it really that
dangerous Meg? Maybe we shouldn't..."
Her own red hair tossed as Meg shook her head. "No, it's just that I'm
covering possibilities. It shouldn't be any different than the usual duty
upgrade; I even used the standard installer you got me a copy of for you.
Now, here goes nothing..."
Meg set the gym bag she'd brought down on a bench, closed her eyes, and
passed a command to her internal operating system. She released a deep
breath, and shifted her stance slightly, feet a bit more apart, knees just
noticeably bent, shoulders back. *Somehow, she suddenly _looks_ dangerous,*
thought Nam, *even though she's barely moved at all.*
Opening her eyes again, the redhead gave her companion a reassuring grin
before taking a long, gliding step over to a large sandbag and letting fly
with a probing series of punches and kicks. She was faintly surprised to
see that despite seeming to move at her normal speed, the bag was reacting
as if it didn't have time to recover between hits, knocked further and
further offcenter until she paused, only to watch it swing sedately up to
smack into the fixture holding it and burst.
To Nam, it was as if her freind had blurred across the space between
herself and the bag, then opened up on it with a machinegun - at least, to
judge by the sound of her hits striking the synthetic leather. The crack as
it split and the hiss of falling sand were barely audible in the the
lingering echoes bouncing through the gymnasium.
"What the... Wow!" Meg was dumbfounded as she watched the grains fall,
suddenly realising why they seemed to be so slow, and why she felt so light
on her feet. Before too much sand could escape, however, she reached up and
unhooked the bag, its weight great but manageable - that at least she'd
expected, having calculated the force her late-model construction could
exert without software limitations. Grabbing the bottom of the sandbag, she
lifted it so no more sand would escape, and carried it over to the wall
where it would be out of the way for the moment. That done, she decided to
test just how fast she was, and turned to face along the oval track around
the perimeter of the cavernous room.
Five laps around the track would be one mile. She completed those five laps
in approximately a minute and a half, and decided to stop jogging. The
second and third kilometers took about the same amount of time, combined.
Nicely warmed up, she sprinted the fourth, and completed it in just under
forty seconds... translating to a blistering 100 mph; the slipstream of her
passage alone kicked up a shortlived dust storm that cleared away the
spilled sand and left Meg panting for breath as it settled again.
Peering at her freind with wide eyes from where she'd clung to a weight
machine, Nam gasped, "Will... will I be able to do that?"
"Yes," Meg panted, "you should... be just as fast. But... it's dangerous...
until we can... fix our blood supply... I've got nutrient deficiency
warnings... from just about every system... right now." Straightening from
her hunched-over position, she got her breathing somewhat under control,
then instructed, "Go ahead and activate the upgrade, but just do one lap,
and take it easy - I'm going to need a major checkup, and that'll be
suspicious enough without both if us needing one. Then... there's one other
thing, if you're willing to try."
Somewhat shakily, the purple-haired sexaroid stepped away from her anchor,
and took a deep breath before closing her own eyes. Her stance, too,
shifted, and Meg's movements were no longer blurring as she retrieved her
gym bag and checked on its contents. Firming her resolve, Nam walked evenly
over to the track, and jogged a quick lap, matching Meg's first time
closely. She ran a quick diagnostic, and noted the internal strain that
even that little effort had cost her. She frowned, and softly said, "I see
what you mean about our systems... what is the other thing you wanted to
try?"
Rather than answer directly, Meg emptied her bag onto the bench, revealing
two pairs of odd, angular metal parts and two wide, gunmetal blue wrist
bands, as well as a small jewelry box. She stared at the pieces for a
moment, before lifting her eyes to gaze solemnly at Nam. "I'll uderstand if
you want nothing to do with these," she began, "but from the records you
copied for me, only you, I and Sylvie have the linkage system to use them,
and they could make the difference between escape or destruction when the
time comes..."
Nam blinked, then realised just what system her freind had to mean. "The
superweapon linkage! Meg, WHAT HAVE YOU GOT THERE?" Her face drained, and
she backed away a half-step.
"They're sonic blasters," Meg explained. "They were built more to test the
link system in its early stages than to actually be used; they're effective
enough for our purposes but nonlethal for the most part. Naturally, that
wasn't good enough to continue their developement." Her flat expression
turned to entreaty. "Please, I know that ever using that... hardware we
were built with is hard to even contemplate, but just try it out?"
Nam bowed her head, and a single tear trickled slowly down one cheek. "I...
I never wanted to do anyone harm, Meg," she said. "I think it goes with
being in Biomaintenence. I'll give the ... blasters ... a try, to see if
they work... to help gain our freedom." She raised her head, and asked,
"What do I do first?"
*Oh Nam, I hate to do this to you... I only hope this won't cost our
friendship.* Motioning Nam over, Meg picked up one pair of the angled
emitters, and released the clip holding them together. She smoothed the
shoulders of Nam's jumpsuit, then set them in place, magnetic pads on the
underside clinging to the contact points just below the skin and locking
them in place. One of the armbands was snapped onto the left wrist, and
then she opened the jewelry box, showing the contents to her companion.
"These rings were meant to be worn by the human test technicians, but as
long as you put it on the other hand it should work well enough. They each
have a code chip to activate the link system, that only operates when the
band is at body temperature." She pulled out one of the two, plain metal
rings, each marked with the triangle-hexagon Genom logo in enamel over the
circular housing for the code chip, and slipped it onto her own finger.
Taking Nam's left hand in her right, Meg turned it so the inside face of
the wristband was accessible, then slipped the round head of the ring into
the matching depression there. "Linkage on!" she commanded, and a short
glimmer of light passed over the components, the purple-tressed buma
straightening in shock as the simple interface for the sonic blasters
connected with her own neural net, a breif, greenish glow flaring around
her as the inductive power supply synchronized.
---=- + -=---
Cynthia had mostly calmed by the time Mrs. Akimoto returned from a short
walk to the farm section for fresh vegetables, and helping the gentle old
woman prepare lunch for her husband and his assistant mostly completed the
cure for her heavy heart. She'd seen violence through her sky-pictures
before, in detail and on a much wider basis than a single man attacking her
friends and suffering for it. She'd even followed their adventures before,
stopping the nasty buma that attacked sometimes, like the ones they'd saved
her from. Without the intensity of the moment, she was sure that whoever
the man had been, he'd been bad, or he wouldn't have been fighting them and
hurting Miss Sylia.
That reminded her, as she nibbled another rice ball, what *had* happened to
her freinds? She handed a lunch tray to Mazinbear, then followed him to the
family room with another while Mrs. Akimoto finished up in the kitchen.
After carefully placing the trays on the low, traditional table, she
quietly asked, "Huggy, you showed me my freinds before; do you know where
they are now?"
The robotic panda's golden eyes glowed for a moment, and once again Cynthia
felt the new remote sense that had replaced her link to the sattelites come
into focus. It swiftly moved away from the battleground where a small army
of ADPolice were now investigating, across the cityscape to a western-style
house - a mansion in land-starved Japan - in an upscale neighborhood on the
outskirts of the city. The veiwpoint quickly passed over a sports car
skid-turning around an idling semi into the short driveway, then passed
through the wall to find her freinds.
The Sabers had removed their armor suits, leaving only the pinjk and black
jumpsuit undergarments, and Sylia's had been cut open all down the front.
She was currently unconscious and strapped to a stretcher that Priss and
Linna carried between them, while Mackiefussed with the control panel for
the sophisticated hospital bed that his sister was being carefully
transferred to. Nene had been holding the door to the room open, and stood
with her hands clasped in front of her mouthnow that everyone was in the
room. The overall feeling was that a major disaster had occurred.
"Oh no... Miss Sylia..." Watching from her distant veiwpoint, Cynthia spent
the meal so distracted by worry that she didn'tnotice she was constantly
munching on something .The Ishiokas, however, did, and worried themselves
as they had been told she was a buma, howeer lifelike, and shouldn't eat
any significant amount of normal food becuase it could disrupt her
biological systems; they said nothing becuse they'd also been tod she
recently was modified, bu the current mission had preemted testing exactly
how far reaching the changes had been. Perhaps even more significantly,
Cynthia *was* so human in her attitudes and reactions that unless the
elderly couple consciously reminded themselves of it, they simply didn't
think of her as some sort of construct, but rather the grandchild they
could have had if their own son hadn't been killed in one of the first buma
rampages.
---=- + -=---
Sylia awoke slowly, as if surfacing from some deep dive. As awareness
returned, so too did the expected pain, strained muscles and scorched skin
checking in all over her body. Blocking the discomfort in the way she'd
become all too familiar with since beginning her armored crusade, she
pushed past the remaining fuzziness in her thoughts and examined what she
could of her environment. Above her was the scanner bar of an advanced
medical bed, a cream ceiling beyond it lit softly from somewhere off to her
left. She could hear the soft murmur and beep of the equipment it was
connected to, and the tape holding an intravenous drip tugged at the skin
of one arm.
The soft sound of rapid footsteps on carpet, then a doorknob turning from
her right drew the Saber leader's attention, and with a mammoth act of will
she turned her head to see. Standing in the open door was Nene, eyes red
from tears that had left a trail down her face, and Mackie craned his neck
to get a peek around her even as more people approached in the hallway
beyond. Their eyes met for just a moment before the need to identify her
surroundings drew Sylia's gaze away, to finally notice the European-style
wallpaper and furnishings of the room. Nene's sudden wail of tears and
hurried exit drew her focus sharply back to the doorway, where Mackie had
been joined by the rest of the Knight Sabers .
Feeling energy return to her, Sylia rolled and got into a seated position,
careful to keep the sheet around her as she could feel the lack of normal
bedclothes. Gasps of shock and Mackie's strangled exclamation greeted her
action, and after an abortive start and a quick throat-clearing, she said,
"I'm glad you're all so concerned about me, but I'm not that badly off,
considering the last thing I remember is being knocked out of the air by
Mason. You took care of him, then?"
Punching a short extension into the vidphone with one hand and ordering a
detailed medical scan with the other, Mackie ignored her question for the
moment, as did Linna and Priss, though for different reasons.
Priss had come perhaps halfway from the door to the bed before stopping to
quietly ask, "Sylia... how...?"
Confused, all the blue-haired Saber could reply was, "How... _what_?"
Laying a hand on her leader's cheek, as if to reassure herself that it was
actually happening, Linna explained. "Sylia, after Mason knocked you down
he electrocuted you - somehow he threw lightning bolts, which your suit was
in no condition to keep from carrying through to you. The muscle spams...
you snapped your own spine, like an epileptic in a fit. Nene's parents were
afraid they'd do more harm than good if they healed you, because of
something unusual in your system that they weren't familiar with. You...
_How_ can you be sitting up?" At this close range, Linna was perfectly
placed to see Sylia's eye color change, a wash of purple displacing brown
from the outside edge of the irises to the center, a faint silver border at
its forefront. "Sylia?" she gasped, pulling back slightly.
Sylia was just as confused as she looked, her puzzled gaze at Linna turning
to shock as vibrant colors suddenly flooded her vision, overlaying it
simultaneously with thermographic information, range and targeting data
like her hardsuit display, and some kind of penetrating volumetric view
that showed her friend's skeleton and internal arrangement, as well as that
of Mackie and the equipment and wall, and even the hallway beyond, where
someone else was hurrying to the door.
Before she had time to wonder about this, the ache in her muscles, which
she'd assumed was the lingering effect of the beating she'd recieved,
flared as if she'd been tossed into a fire. Losing coordination, the Saber
leader slumped onto her side and hunched over, arms crossed over her chest
as she grit her teeth and clamped her eyes closed. For just a moment, the
deep sight kept up through her eyelids, her own lower body visible, the
bones a brighter white than she'd noticed Linna's to be, muscles laced
through with what she would almost swear looked like the myomer flat-motors
used in the hardsuits, an odd, circuitry-like mesh where her skin should
be. Even through the pain, she found mindshare for suprise, but then that
view cut off, and instead the familiar volume of a Dykstra field graph
danced in her head, its values swirling... a containment field, force
bolts, antigravity, space compression, more. Faintly, she heard the voices
of her freinds, but made no sense of them.
Doctor T.T. Vector rushed into the room, steps sped by the sounds of pain
escaping from inside. He was as suprised as the others to see Sylia's lower
body mobile, but immediately replaced Mackie at the medical scanners rather
than waste potentially critical time. His fingers flew over the controls as
he tried to make sense of the rapidly fluctuating readings. A strange,
almost layered-sounding moan escaped from the balled-up Saber leader, and
she shuddered as a faint glow formed around her, shining softly and evenly
bluish through the thin covers as easily as it did across her bare skin.
--=--
Tora and Hiryuko had stayed behind when the alarm meant to warn everyone
when Sylia regained consciousness had gone off, partly because they really
didn't know her all that well, and partly because, well, the late breakfast
that had been laid out was really tasty, though everyone else had only
picked at it, minds occupied with worry. They were rather surprised,
therefore, when their daughter suddenly ran back into the room in tears and
threw herself at them. Not so surprised as to fail to slide back from the
low, traditional table and catch her, but surprised nonetheless.
"Kireko? What is it? What's wrong with my little Nene?" Hugging the girl
gently while she howled on her shoulder, Hiryuko tried to make sense of the
infrequent words that fought their way out around the crying.
"... my fault ... not fast enough ... had to fight by herself ... took too
long ... wasn't good enough ... paralysed ... and NOW SHE HATES ME!!"
"Huh? Who hates you?", Tora asked, perplexed. He hoped his daughter wasn't
coming down with whatever mysterious condition he'd had at her age, that
made rivals and enemies seem to flock around like flies.
"SYLIAAaaaaa!" Her breath gone too short with crying, Nene began to hiccup,
she was so overwrought. "She... she - didn't even - want to look - at me...
take me - away, please? Just - take me away - from here!"
It's been noted that the Kagamis had changed, greatly in some ways, from
the mortal template that they reflected - a few less curses, a bit less
overconfident, a bit more mature; just having been in a stable relationship
for a dozen years had let them develop individual strengths to cover each
other's weaknesses. Additionally, there was the matter of their
personalities having been formed of a composite of the human Ranma, the
ancient noblewoman who'd created the Curse of the Randy Spirt Mirror, and
the two spirits who'd been sucked into it and reborn as the mirror twins.
However, their template's turbo-charged ego and headstrong, stubborn
willpower had ensured they ended up mostly based on him. Thus, the sight of
a girl they loved, the child of their own blood, in tears and pleading was
simply too much for them to resist.
Taking only an instant to write a line of explanation on a notepad Tora
opened a portal against the wall. Hiryuko carried Nene through, the
teenager having finaly run out of wails and settled into a heartfelt
sobbing, muffled against her mother's shoulder. Privately, Hiryuko
suspected it was more than just the morning's events soaking into her silk
top; there were ten lost years worth of stored hurts and loneliness to deal
with as well. She sent a look to Tora as he held the portal open, and saw
that he seemed to understand this as well.
Sighing, the blue haired man slipped through the hole in space, hoping that
the relaxed setting of the small subrealm they'd discovered and claimed as
a home would let their daughter recover quickly. At least iut was deep
enough in the Realm Between that the time differential would give them
plenty of time before her friends sated worrying... hopefully.
---=- + -=---
Leon and Daley had adjourned from work to a nearby cafe that went by the
incongruous name of 'Piss'. Most of the day had been taken up with taking
depositions from various Genom employees, collecting the meagre physical
evidence - mainly fragments of destroyed security buma, which had been
essentially worthless, peices of destroyed Knight Sabers battleframes,
which hadn't even made it all the way to ADP Headquraters before being
siezed by government agents, and not being able to find the remains of
Brian Mason, who'd last been seen skidding down the side of the massive
Genom Tower in flames.
"Any bets on where the gear those government goons seized is going to end
up?" Leon asked sourly over the rim of his coffee cup.
"Not from me," his partner replied. "It's probably in a Genom lab already.
You know as well as I do how eager they must be to get their grubby fingers
on it. How about the story of Mason's 'industrial accident'? Do you think
it's anywhere close to the truth?"
Setting down his mug, Leon took off his sunglasses and straightened up in
the booth seat before replying. "With all the weapons research they do I
can believe that he was caught in one, even that he'd been badly enough
injured to need reconstructive surgery. Cybernetics has come a long way
from the crude gear everyone was stuffing their bodies with when we joined
the force, so I can even buy that he might have chosen to secretly become a
bumaroid, trusting the improved hardware and techniques to keep BDD at
bay." He was silent for a moment, remembering the cyber-psychos of years
past, and the abortive Bumacop experiments. "He's certainly ruthless enough
to do a doublecross for his own ends, even if I don't have any proof of
such. What I don't believe is that a simple bumaroid could have been fast
and powerful enough to take on the white Saber, when she took out a
military combat buma on her own not that long ago. I don't care what the
pretty little bundle of manufactured evidence says, it had to have been a
replicant of some kind. Illegal cybernetics privately installed just
doesn't cut the mustard. More than that, I don't believe the Knight Sabers
would work for slime like him, mercenaries or not, and even if they would
surely they're bright enough to see they'd never get any profit out of
attacking the Genom building."
"But if it was a replicant, why make it look so different fromt he original
Mason? And where is the original?" Daley knocked back a good swig of his
own before concluding, "There's no doubt in my mind that what ended up on
the report is nothing like the truth, but this is probably gonna be another
one where we'll never be able to prove it. Damn."
Scowling, Leon predicted, "Someday, they're going to slip up, leave some
peice of evidence they can't just sweep under the rug. And when they do,
I'm gonna slam the door on those bastards personally." He finished off his
coffee, then sighed, and donned his shades again. "Oh, to hell with it. I'm
gonna take off. Maybe Priss'll be playing tonight at Hot Legs."
"You could always come with me," the redheaded officer suggested with a
wink. "Maybe you wouldn't be so uptight if you'd broaden your horizons."
"Not tonight, Daley, I'm too irritated to kid around," Leon admonished as
he paid his bill and left.
Sighing softly, Daley paid up and headed out himself.
---=- + -=---
Evening came early i the Kanto Canyons; even where the walls of the
faultine didn'tblock the sun, the tangled wreckage of buildings that had
fallen into them and new scrap that had been tossed in since cast ground
level in shadow hours before the sun finally sank on the rest of the city.
Often, there was movement in bthe shadows, be it rat, feral cats or dogs,
or some biologically human scavenger.
As the shadows fell in the jagged scar on the city's face that particular
evening, somethig a bit more out of the ordinary was slipping through them.
Overall, it resembled some kind of mechanical snail or beetle, a collection
of layered armor plates serving as the shell while tiny spikses slowly
pulled it along and a gleaming silver substance like self-mobile mercury
held it all together and reached feelers ahead and to the sides as the
oddit made its painstaking way through the rubble. Overall, it couldn't
have been more than two or three feet long, not conuting the feelers. As it
passed, metal scraps simply vanished beneath it, and every now and then i
would pause to wrap a silver pseudopod around asection of exposed rebar,
which would slump and dissolve like a lump of sugar in hot tea. It also
seemed to be sweeping up a silver poder that was spread over the area,
mixed with the dust and grime. That it had little in the way of
conventional senses as obvious, as it laboriously clambered over a tilted
slab of cement that was just barely large enough not to reveal an edge to
the questing felers. As it tumbled off the far end, however, it landed on a
small collecrtion of meal fins and scraps that bore an odd similarity to
the strange crawler. Mere moments later, a mechanical arm extended from is
front, a Lovecraftian crown of feelers dangling from it and increasing
their reach by a factor of three. Utterly ignoring a pair of rats as they
scurried past, it proceeded on its painstaking way.
-----------------------------
You may notice that Cynthia is seeing more energy effects through Huggy
Mazinbear than were originally described in the battle scene - this isn't a
continuity error, it's just that she can see things no one else sees, do
things no one else does... and she didn't even have to drink Fu Yun's
potion! Such a deal!
If you don't get that, go watch _Big Trouble in Little China_. Now. I'll
wait, and it's a really REALLY good movie, with flashy action that's driven
by an actual PLOT, and how often can you say that about modern movies?
For this continuity, Yen have been replaced by Zenii (zen-eee), which are
roughly equal to half a modern day US dollar and thus to 60 modern yen. The
name is taken from Dragon Ball, the value to make the price of the deal
USSD offered for the return of their Black Box worth all the shouting -
somehow I doubt $200,000 split four ways after expenses would be such a big
deal. Not that it's something I'd say no to myself, but with what the
expenses tend to be, and the danger of the job in question...
What operating system do buma use? I don't know, but it doesn't matter,
because all it really has to do is run the power supply and autonomous
functions of their body for the most part, though it would also control
access to programmed 'chipskills' like the advanced motor control and
unarmed combat Meg and Nam hopped themselves up with. Actual intelligence
and direction comes from the biological side of the system, at least once a
sufficiently powerful spirit has overcome the software locks that are
supposed to regulate it, which also tends to mess up that programming
something fierce... With its lack, simpler buma like the combat models go
on a destructive ramage, while a malfuctioning librarian might start
refiling all books by the second letter of the author's first name instead
of by the Dewey Decimal System. Only those with a human capability to learn
and adapt can sucessfully hide its happening, and even then will be found
out unless they have sufficient programming skill of their own to
reintegrate the chipskills they need for duty functions with their free
consciousness. On Genaros, several Maintenence section buma have done so,
and whenever one of the regular station buma shows signs of starting to
break their programming they help the process go smoothly and invisibly if
they can get away with it - ironically it's actually easier to do so than
to 'fix' the 'problem' in the traditional sense, as they are working with
the escaping mind rather than rebinding it. Even so, there are only a few
dozen free-willed buma aboard, versus hundreds of normal ones. Most are
willing to simply revel in the ability to think freely, to CHOOSE to
continue their normal duties because they are important.
The term "cycroder" is from the Lensman anime, but NOT the original books,
and is essentially a transatmospheric hovercycle. As to why the two works
that share a few names but nothing else are so unrelated, apparently the
current holders of doc smith's estate utterly detest his writing, and while
they are willin to license it occasionally in the name of ca$$$h, they
aren't that enthusiastic. Of course, my info on this is dated circa 1985,
so maybe (Hopefully!) someone who digs it has or will become the trustee.
That said, an orbit-capable motorcycle is absurd in just the right way for
me to like it despite its origins.
Guardian 215 should be imagined with the vocal talents of Susan Blu; if you
don't know her by name, she did (among other shows) Arcee on the post-movie
Transformers episodes, as well as in the movie itself. You can even keep
the flanging effect if you like, though it's not really there.
Many thanks to my prereaders: Nathan Baxter, Hide Hasegawa, Leong Mun Yee,
Kaitlin Coelho, and Erin Zarella, and to everyone on the BDPreread mailing
list - you get your name listed if you actually make commentary, but just
reading and finding nothing bad enough to complain about is still
commentary of a sort.
Bubblegum Crisis belongs to Youmex and Animeigo, I make no claims
otherwise. Please don't sue me, I have no money to speak of and fanfic does
more to promote your products than anything else I know of - without it, I
never would have known about anime at all, and I'd certainly never have
bought the BGC tapes based on the sucky box copy.
Ranma 1/2 I'm not so sure of, except that the creator was Rumiko Takahashi,
not me, and that I make no claims to own IT either. Likewise, Dragonball
was created by Akira Toriyama, and is distributed in the US on video by
FUNimation. I THINK that both Ranma and Dragonball comics are done by Viz
in the US, but that may be incorrect.
I haven't a clue who owns Ah! Megami-sama! except that it's not me, and
aside from the one cameo it's really not involved anyway.
The Bionic Six is similarly of unknown provenance, but I have a very vague
and unreliable memory that it may have ben animated by Suncoast video... In
any case, it's STILL not my own creation.
I have found my copy of _Dykstra's War_ by Jeffery D Kooistra; the
following is an excerpt from the beginning of the book, when the charcter
of James Dykstra is being introduced.
"He decided to walk through the quad rather than summon his car to come get
him. It was a beautiful day, after all, cane or no cane. He saw a student
at a picnic table, face buried in a textbook of familiar red, stylus in
hand, its tip resting on his computer pad. "May I see what you're working
at, young man?" Dykstra asked, walking up to the boy.
The student looked at him. Dykstra wondered what he saw. "If you want . . .
sir. It's 4-space physics, the Dykstra field equations," the youth said. My
physics, Dykstra thought, and it was clear the boy didn't recognize him.
"I recall it well," Dykstra said, examining the book, "from way back in my
early days. Is there some particular difficulty you're having? Maybe I can
help you."
Skepticism clouded the student's face, then a resigned "it's worth a try"
look. "Problem twenty-two. I'm clueless."
Dykstra read the problem, then looked away, letting his mind work, seeing
if he still had it in him to solve such problems. He had it. "From the
symmetry of the situation, what you should consider is the projection of
the 4-space field, its 3-space shadow if you will. Then integrate from zero
to pi. The answer is 45.2 joules per meter to the fourth." He smiled, eyes
twinkling.
The boy stared at him, his face jumping from pure disbelief to respect
bordering on awe. "That's the answer in the back! How did you know?"
"I see it in my mind," Dykstra said. "I see the shape of the field."
"But the only person I've ever heard of who can visualize 4-space is James
Christian Dykstra himself."
Dykstra smiled.
"Can I have your autograph?"
Dykstra obliged, though he was embarrassed that his signature was but a
shaky shadow of its former self.
He left the boy and continued across the lush lawn to the parking area
where his car waited. "Open," he said. The door slid aside. The seat moved
outward. He dropped into it and was pulled inside. "Home." Gently the car
lifted on its Dykstra repulsors, the fields interacting with the matter of
the ground to raise the car into the sky and deliver the inventor of
Dykstra field physics to his home in the mountains."
It is available through most book sources, or in electronic format directly
from Baen via their website, www.baen.com Dykstra theory is not as
developed in Bubblegum Disaster continuity; but then _Dykstra's War_ is set
about 2100AD, when the title character is 126 years old - it's actually a
bit ahead of that continuity for there to be *any* working models based on
Dykstra theory so soon, and only those who are big into high-energy physics
know more than the most general sort of thing about it. The average man on
the street would only recognise the name because of the media attention
garnered by someone finally making fusion power generation not only
possible but economically feasible. Come to think of it, the grad student
known as Chris Dykstra would be a contemporary of the Sabers, or a year or
two older at best. However, for this continuity he's not the supergenius of
the canon; rather he lays the theoretical foundations that others will
develop - Mason Jr (in one form or another) and the Stingray siblings
primary among them.
-----------------------------
EOF
--
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