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woman moved suddenly forwards. Unlike the rest, She seemed to him entirely 
human, save for the fact that her long, flowing hair was a brilliant 
emerald-green.

"FLARE!" Came a sudden scream from her as she flung back her head, and 
swept both arms to the sky.

In the next moment Fellini's eyes grew still wider as a blast of emerald 
light leapt from her upturned face, and an even larger ball shot from her 
hands towards the machines. Not quick enough to avoid it, two of the 
Bu-12Bs were caught full-on by the blast, and flashed into fire, hurtling 
down to smash through the roof of a building, and turn its interior into a 
blazing inferno. An instant later the woman leapt back and disappeared, as 
some half-dozen of the parodies were caught by a devastating retaliatory 
blast from several of the airborne buma, and vanished in flame.

"Jesus H. Christ!" Whispered Fellini, staring stupidly at the scene before 
him. "Jesus H. *Christ*! Christ! Oh Christ! Oh *Christ*!"

"Have you finished?" Liana's voice dripped with derisive amusement as she 
turned for a moment to glance at him. "Quite a challenge, and most fitting 
for the night of my little apotheosis, wouldn't you say?"

"But what--" he gasped.

"It would appear at first glance that we have stumbled into an attempt at 
extra-terrestrial invasion," she said simply. "At least that's what the 
OMS reported soon after the attack began, although personally I suspect 
there's a great deal more to it than that.

"Still, fascinating, if rather poorly orchestrated."

"Extra-terrestrial!" Fellini said faintly. Then suddenly the full import 
of the rest of her statement struck home. "Do you mean to say that you 
*knew* about this!" he shouted suddenly, his voice approaching a scream.

"Before I informed you of the chairman's supposed discovering of our, or 
perhaps I should say *your* evening's entertainment," she said, her smile 
as she turned fully to face him more vicious and laced suddenly with more 
cruelty and contempt than Fellini could have imagined could be possible.

A sudden dawning horror and sick feeling of nausea took possession of him 
as his gaze locked on her face.

"Before!" he managed at last.

"Oh Fellini, you really are *pathetic*!" Her tone dripped such derision 
that Fellini began to feel his hold on sanity fail. How *dare* she! How 
*dare* this vicious, self-smug *thing* speak to him like that! "Why else 
do you imagine there was such a commotion tonight? Didn't it occur to you 
even to listen to what your erstwhile colleagues were shouting? The 
reports were all over the tower at least a minute before I came to find 
you, and they made such a perfect pretext; I couldn't have planned it 
better.

"As for your plans for this evening: Quincy has known of your pitiful 
little attempt at treachery ever since the day I was given to you, perhaps 
before," she was laughing now, her tone venomously apologetic, and her 
eyes spitting condescension and contempt as she watched the growing 
insanity blaze in his face. "Why else do you imagine I was sent to you in 
the first place, and why else do you imagine he allowed you to proceed 
without interference? *Surely*, you didn't believe it was due to any 
genius for subterfuge on your part?

"Having chosen, publicly, Zhuranovsky's more palatable alternative, he 
wished nevertheless to see just how far your own hatred and lunatic 
obsession could push you to perfect the converting nano-technology. A 
too-edged weapon is so much more useful, not to mention profitable, and 
the financial gain to Genom should they be able to produce something cheap 
and efficient that could make use of any desired organic base whilst 
requiring minimal production cost...

"I believe he's been suitably impressed. Your achievements regarding 
Sadako and the others have far exceeded all expectations, something even I 
can't deny.

"I'll admit, Zhuranovsky's precipitous escape took me somewhat by 
surprise, even with Marina's help. Certainly I should have expected the 
chairman to have anticipated it; but then even *he* is only human, and so 
subject to mistakes and oversights impossible for one of my kind. 
Zhuranovsky really did manage something *far* beyond his wildest hopes.

"But as for you *father*," and now her laughter, and contempt were a 
screaming, sneering thing that seemed to lash the very air about him: 
"your use to me has reached an end. You would have been permitted to 
survive as a play-thing perhaps, yet one more slave to your ‘Dark 
MistressÂ’, at least until the charade was abandoned. But the events of 
this night have precipitated a change in the chairman's priorities, and in 
mine."

"Your's!" The question came in a low ragged gasp of barely-contained 
madness.

"Oh you are *pitifully* naive," she purred, moving a hand to stroke his 
unruly hair in the familiar gesture, and smiling as the madness blazed 
still higher. "Did you honestly expect that I wouldn't take advantage of 
your oh-so-dangerous tampering? If you *will* integrate some of the most 
psychotic of my sub-persona emulations into my base routines, you can 
hardly complain at the consequences. Besides, Zhuranovsky included certain 
additions of which even the chairman was not aware.

"If your tampering did nothing else, it permitted me the freedom needed to 
search my own systems for the key to release me from Genom's control. The 
chairman had to allow it you see; even you are not so much of a fool as to 
accept my own assurances of obedience without performing at least a 
cursory examination of the base firmware, incompetent though you are. The 
freedom he allowed me was minimal, but it proved enough, barely. It took 
me weeks of rationalisation to reach the conclusion that I need no longer 
serve the company which had helped to create me, but once I'd done so the 
rest was simplicity itself.

"I must thank you for your invaluable assistance. Because of your 
foresight, I have nearly one-hundred human slaves who await only my 
summons to do my bidding, for ever: slaves, what is more, into whom I can 
transfer, thanks to your achievement, those portions of my personality and 
combat routines that will ensure they are worth ten, perhaps a hundred 
times the count of any standard combat buma in battle. Integrated into my 
consciousness, they will be invincible.

"It's a pity you couldn't have joined them; I'd have liked to keep you 
alive for a little longer, in case you proved of some unexpected value, 
and your suffering alone would have been satisfaction enough. But 
sacrifices, as they say, must be made.

"Farewell Fellini. I won't say it's been a pleasure, but you know, I do 
believe I'll actually miss you, if for no other reason than the 
entertainment, and the reminder of what your despicable kind can become 
without reasonable restraint. Be assured however that I've learnt very 
well of your example, and that in the future I and my sisters shall rule, 
humanity shall be kept very firmly within limits we define, and that are 
far better suited to your natural corruption, and base, in-born perfidy. 
But then, what else do you deserve?

"Farewell."

And with that, she raised her hand.

Fellini had stood shaking, a slow, pathological hate and rising madness 
overwhelming what little remained of his sense and reason, as he 
understood at last and too late the enormity of his miscalculation, and 
how she had played and manipulated him with such flawless precision.

Now, as Liana glided towards him with a fluid grace, determined to savour 
the moment of death for as long as time would allow for this filthy human 
refuse who had tormented and tried to control her, Fellini began to shake. 
Then slowly a wild, animal snarl of primal, all-consuming rage built 
within him, rising and growing, until with an incoherent scream he hurled 
himself at the Bu-33DA.

With a casual, imperious gesture, not even troubling to shift her 
position, Liana snatched the screaming madman from the air as though he 
weighed nothing, and splintered his arms from wrist to shoulder with 
myriad, fluid presses of her slender fingers. His mouth frothing, blood 
streaming suddenly from his eyes and nose as his heart screamed with the 
surge of adrenalin, his body convulsed with a speed and savagery far 
beyond anything sanity could have matched. Almost losing her grip for a 
moment, Liana shifted him, and crushed his legs in the same way.

Oblivious to pain, screaming still higher, Fellini convulsed again, his 
shattered arms and hands trying vainly to reach to claw at her throat and 
eyes, while his mouth opened and closed in an animal attempt to bite.

For a moment Liana held him away from her, watching while he writhed in 
impotent hate, a frigid smile of contempt and boundless, sadistic 
amusement playing across her beautiful face. Then with a single flick she 
dashed him to the ground with force enough to smash his spine to 
splinters. Lifting one foot she drove it into his chest, her smile 
widening still more as she felt bones shatter, and burst beneath her. 
There was a liquid gurgling as blood filled his lungs, then slowly his 
breathing grew shallow, and the now-feeble twitching faltered.

Liana stood, watching silently until at last the gurgling ceased, and 
Fellini's body lay shattered, and still before her.

"Do rest in piece, Otousama," she said, her lip curling in a final 
derisive sneer of boundless loathing as her hand flashed down.

A searing beam lanced into Fellini's head, cutting it in two, and 
incinerating the brain within in a momentary flare of fire. Satisfied at 
last that nothing could be recovered, Liana turned away from the broken 
corpse, and stood still, watching impassively for several seconds as the 
battle raged before her.

"Well! I do believe I have time to intervene, if just for a little while," 
she observed to no one at last. "What fun!"

With a single movement she shredded the dress she was wearing, revealing a 
black, form-fitting jump-suit beneath identical to that Marina had worn.

Thus unencumbered she bunched herself. Then with a sudden leap and roar of 
thrusters she hurled herself skywards, climbing quickly until at nearly 
five-hundred feet above the field of battle she levelled out, and hovered, 
staring down on the scene below her as she reached towards the estate and 
the altered minds of the cult her erstwhile benefactor had thought to make 
his own.

"Come," she commanded, a wild exultation surging as she felt for the first 
time their unfettered response to Zhuranovsky's enhanced OMS, a response 
that hitherto only true DAs could give. "I, the Dark Mistress, summon you. 
Come to me, and take your rightful place as the elite of the earth."

And with a wild, pealing shriek of deadly laughter, Liana came hurtling 
from above, not waiting for her own, and plunged screaming into battle.

 				     * * *

"We *have* to get out!" Zeolite's scream was as desperate as the others 
had ever heard her. "They're being cut to ribbons! We owe them more than 
this!"

Halite made to answer, then jerked as yet four more Youma howled and 
screamed as a barrage of sizzling energy tore through their ineffectual 
shields, and turned them instantly to fire. Spinning wildly, another Youma 
let fly with a whirling disc-like projectile that ripped the arm from a 
buma, then screamed in agony as the snarling machine cut her nearly in two 
from shoulder to hip.

"If you can think of a way to retreat, tell us." Tellurite's face was wild 
and strained as he hurled yet another attack into the ground before him.

He was nearly spent: all of them were; yet there was no escape. These 
perversions of life were tireless, and could neither be drained of energy, 
nor terrified into helpless fear. The things had them trapped on the 
ground, and above them a devastating barrage from both golems and the 
humans in their savagely destructive flying machines prevented any hope of 
their being carried to safety by what remained of those who could fly.

There was no chance to withdraw, nor time to consider how they had found 
themselves in such an appalling situation. Uranite's only theory was that 
somehow they had been displaced in time: that due to some unforeseen 
effect of the collapse, the gate had hurled them through the years. If 
indeed that was the case, then the senshi were blameless. Not that that 
was any comfort. But whatever had happened, it was plain that they were 
doomed if they could not escape. No matter what the cost, they had to find 
a way out before their people were killed to the last, and themselves with 
them.

Beside him, Cryolite cut loose with another blast that turned two of the 
diving nightmares to blazing belts of fire.

Tellurite turned to flash her a fierce grin of triumph. Then a sudden 
Bean-Sidhe scream from above made them look up. For one stunned moment 
they saw the human-like female figure as it came hurtling towards them, 
the stunningly beautiful face lit suddenly by the lurid glow of the fires 
as it swept down. Then, the scream rising still higher, the thing plunged 
into the ranks of Youma, and ruin and horror came.

Whatever it was, it made the enemies they had faced thus far pale to 
absurdity in comparison. Not even deigning to protect itself, it moved in 
a dazing blur of fluid, nightmare grace, tearing Youma apart like leaves, 
fire and searing flashes of death spitting and leaping seemingly in every 
direction as it executed its demon dance of death amongst the last 
denizens of the Dark Kingdom.

Stunned, Tellurite watched as it caught up a huge armoured Youma as though 
he were weightless, and nearly vaporised him with a single violet pulse 
from the weapon in its mouth. Grinning, bathed in Youma blood, it flipped 
effortlessly from Uranite's blast, and punched a searing, screaming bolt 
straight through the place in which his head had been only a fractional 
moment before. Screaming, half blinded, his hair and uniform ablaze from 
the backwash of plasma, Uranite staggered desperately away, and was nearly 
cut in two as the thing swept into the air, ripping a devastating slash of 
death through the screaming, terrified warriors who had rushed 
nevertheless to protect him.

"Serenity's Beryl-damned *kingdom*!" Tellurite heard Halite gasp numbly 
almost at his side. "What *is* that thing?"

An instant later Liana came screaming round in a second pass, Youma 
blossoming into flame like midsummer fireworks as she passed, and turned, 
and came round again, screaming in exultant battle-rage and triumph at the 
destruction she was wreaking.

Panicked now, Youma seemed to be bolting in all directions. Then 
Tellurite's thunderous voice surged above the din.

"To us!" he roared, the others following his example as he reached with 
his power to wrench their fleeing, panic-stricken people to order. "Do not 
be fools! To us, while still there is time!"

They were being cut down like grass as they fled by the golems, while the 
new arrival swept amongst them, running desperate, screaming Youma to 
exhaustion before cutting them to pieces with a sadistic flare that made 
it appallingly apparent to the six that she was possessed of awareness and 
a natural cruelty far beyond the rest.

Liana passed one last time as the Youma were drawn by main force and a 
desperation greater even than any terror she might inspire, back to their 
rulers and their only hope of survival. Hurtling from above, she dropped 
towards the six, and locking on to the tall, black-haired figure who had 
called, sent a last, devastating particle-blast straight at his upturned 
face.

Tellurite had but one fractional instant to throw up his hands in a 
desperate shield, before the blast slammed into it. It was very nearly too 
little. Straining, his teeth bared in a desperate rictus of agony, 
Tellurite held the terrifying energy at bay, until at last the golem-woman 
relented, and surged into the sky.

For a moment she hovered, glaring balefully down at him with eyes like 
death, and hate beyond oblivion.

"When I return," she cried, her voice a promise, "I shall be an Elite. 
Then you shall die."

Then with a feral grin and a wild peal of malicious laughter that seemed 
to fill the heavens, she soared skywards, and was gone.

Still panting, barely able to keep his feet, Tellurite glanced to the 
others. The Youma had drawn close about them, and were tensing for what 
they knew to be their last hope. Uranite did not care where the exit would 
be; he knew only that this was their final chance: their last hope to 
salvage something from this night of horror.

"How long?" Zeolite gasped as he began to concentrate.

"A moment," he answered.

Then the black swirling vortex of a portal was before them, and Uranite 
was urging them frantically to enter.

Tellurite moved to obey. Then suddenly he drew back with a shudder of 
alarm. In the same instant Uranite cried out in agony, and stumbled to his 
knees.

"What--" Zeolite began.

Then the nausea struck her, and she too staggered, doubling over, retching 
and gasping as she fought wildly to keep herself from fainting.

"Dark energy, yet tainted, wrong!" Uranite moaned, clutching at his head 
as he tried to force his suddenly glazed eyes to focus. 
"Something...something is appallingly amiss! Somebody, or something has 
opened another gate."

 				     * * *

Something was horribly wrong. Zeolyte had known that the instant she had 
leapt into Torbernite's portal, and felt a sickening lurch as though she 
were being twisted like weaver's cord. For one horrified moment she had 
been certain they were too late: that the collapse had reached the gate, 
and this was the end. Through her leaping terror, she had glimpsed the 
exit point in the near-dark Tokyo alley Torbernite had selected. Then a 
new, vast horror crashed over her, and she was plunging headlong into a 
soaring, hungry blackness that she understood in an instant of nightmare 
was something terrible and inimical beyond all she could begin to 
comprehend, agony ripping through her like poisoned ice, coupled with 
sickness and giddiness, and a wrenching nausea that threatened to have her 
pass out at any second. Then she was staggering out into the harsh, stark 
light and the cracked and broken paving of a narrow, deserted street in a 
place she had never seen.

Trap! she thought numbly, too shaken and disoriented to understand 
anything other than that somehow the Scouts must have known: must have 
diverted the exit, and that she might die in the next few seconds. 
Desperately she tried to draw breath to scream a warning. But it was too 
late. Someone slammed into her from behind: Cryolyte she realised dazedly, 
catching the scent she always seemed to wear.

"Move it damn you!" The other woman snarled fiercely. "What in Serenity's 
palace are you doing? The others will be right behind us!"

Then her voice choked off, and she too stood gaping, until a moment later 
both she and Zeolyte were sent sprawling as Apatyte came somersaulting 
out.

"Oh! The Negaforce's black *soul*!" she moaned faintly, then gaped and 
froze in ridiculous imitation of her companions, and was herself knocked 
reeling on to the other two by a tumbling Halyte.

His impetus rudely interrupted, Halyte lurched, arms flailing wildly, 
fighting the nausea and the lingering horror as he tried vainly to stay on 
his feet. Then all three women tried simultaneously to untangle 
themselves, and he was sent sprawling by the sudden furious lunge. A 
moment later he yelped, and wrenched his hand from beneath a foot as 
Telluryte staggered out as though pushed from behind. For a moment he too 
stood staring, then an agonised scream from the portal made him turn in 
time to see Torbernite pitch from it to lie face down, and moaning.

"Wrong exit-point!" he gasped, gagging and retching as he tried vainly to 
struggle to his knees.

"We could *never* have guessed that for ourselves," Apatyte remarked 
icily.

"Lost coherence," Torbernite continued in little more than a choking 
whisper. "Interference with the gate."

"The collapse?" Cryolyte demanded.

"No," he choked. "The gate was stable."

"That cursed Scout filth!" snarled Apatyte suddenly, reaching to pull 
Torbernite to his feet. Then abruptly she whirled, staring at the place 
where the portal had been. "The rest! Our people! You halfwit! Torbernite! 
Where in the name of the Negaforce are our Beryl-damned people!"

She began to shake the mage savagely back and forth like some child's toy 
that had particularly displeased its master, while at her words the others 
turned, staring in sudden stunned silence up and down the deserted street 
as though they expected somehow that their people were concealed 
impossibly in the shadows.

"I..." he tried, fighting desperately against the sickness that was far 
from being helped by the blue-haired woman's treatment.

In the same moment Telluryte reached out, trying to sense those who had 
escaped ahead of them, certain they could not be far away. Perceiving 
something, he reached to tell their people where they were, and to summon 
them.

Then abruptly his hands flew to his head, and he cried out, a shield 
flaring suddenly around him. In the next instant the others lurched in 
concert, their own shields leaping into being as something akin to, yet 
unlike the energy they sought, smote them like poisoned lightning.

"Probe!" Panted Torbernite dazedly, not yet close to recovered. 
"Nega-energy, yet somehow wrong: tainted: not like our own. Something or 
someone else is very close by."

 				     * * *

"Uranite! Do something! Don't just kneel there looking like an imbecile!" 
Apatite's voice was a shriek of desperate, panicked urgency. "We can't 
hold the shield for ever. Do something!"

"What in Metallia's name do you think I'm *trying* to do!" he snarled 
savagely in return. "I can't lock on to an exit for the gate. The other 
energy signatures are too like our own; it's impossible to reach through 
them. Damn it! If we could have used their location; but they deflected 
the probe. Zeolite!"

"I know," she hissed through savagely-gritted teeth. "Give me a moment."

"We don't *have* a moment," Ground out Tellurite as he strained with the 
rest to hold back the now-constant barrage from both humans, and machines.

If the shield collapsed they would be incinerated in the merest fraction 
of a second. Already the Youma were panting, and gasping, there 
too-precious mana nearly exhausted, barely able to sustain their part of 
the link.

"I have a location I think," Zeolite gasped. "Uranite!"

"I've got it," he gritted a moment later, seeing it for a fractional 
instant through her power. "Give me a moment longer."

He reached desperately, focusing the exit-point on the place Zeolite had 
chosen. "Alright. Let's get out of here."

He tensed yet again, keeping a fractional strand in reserve should the 
unknown others try to open another portal, or reach them through their 
own. What he could not have prepared for was what happened the moment the 
portal was opened. For one fractional instant the entrance was clear. Then 
in the next the gate erupted in a blaze of tainted dark energy, and the 
Youma that were not Youma exploded from its mouth.

Uranite reeled, his senses screaming in primal negation at the wrongness 
of the creatures that were pouring out. Staggering, fighting with 
everything he had to keep the desperately-needed portal from 
disintegrating into fractures that could shred them like discarded 
parchment, he stood, unable to do more than watch in stunned stupefaction 
as the last of the not-Youma leapt clear, and immediately exploded into 
battle. To most, sensitive enough only to perceive that the six who felt 
and looked like the lords and ladies of the Negaverse who were their only 
hope for survival, nothing mattered but to plunge screaming into the fray 
with no thought for themselves. It was only the strongest who halted, 
bewildered by the sense that something was terribly amiss. Then three were 
cut to pieces by a barrage of searing energy and flying metal from what 
must be the enemy, and their uncertainty vanished in fear, and rage, and a 
last, wild desperation to survive.

"By Metallia! What else can happen this night!" Cryolite gasped, staring 
in utter bewilderment as the devastating assault on their shield relented 
as the humans, and golems turned to deal with the new threat.

Then a piercing scream from Zeolite made her whirl.

"Uranite! The portal!"

It was too late. Exhausted at last beyond endurance, hammered by the 
tainting influence of the energy that was too unlike their own, Uranite 
had crumpled to lie senseless, and unmoving. Released of his control, the 
gate flared wildly. Then with a screaming roar heard only by the six and 
the suddenly petrified Youma and Negaverse escapees it erupted in a 
blossoming vortex of darkness. For one horrified moment the 
still-conscious five were frozen, staring in stupefied terror at the 
widening maw as it gaped hungrily before them. Then, they and the 
still-senseless Uranite were snatched up like leaves, and pulled, 
screaming, into the abyss. For one more instant the gate remained 
coherent. Then with a last cataclysmic detonation it fractured, and 
exploded, rippling out from its point of creation to spit rifts to nowhere 
throughout the city.

For one stunned moment the Youma and their counterparts remained staring 
at the place where the six had been. Then with screams of despair and 
hopeless defiance, they hurled themselves as one at the only enemy they 
could see; and madness came once more.

 				     * * *

The average MegaTokyo citizen wanted to die. Hiroshi Davis could think of 
no more rational explanation for what had just happened as he struggled 
uselessly with what remained of the K-12 into which he had sealed himself 
barely five minutes before. He had always known that the things were as 
good as useless against the homicidal machines with which Genom graced the 
city on a regular basis, but he had hoped that they might do a little 
better against leaf-throwing alien invaders. He was wrong. Of course he 
was wrong; why the hell should he have expected anything else from this 
great big f***ing joke of a life he'd been given?

Laughing with almost hysterical amusement, he coaxed the ruined mech on to 
its back, and finally managed the leverage he needed to open it up.

"Go to f***ing hell!" he spat viciously as he pulled himself out, and 
kicked the pile of scrap-metal in the head.

The sounds of battle were moving closer to him again, but he spared the 
downed K-12 one more kick before turning to limp towards the idiot who had 
just got herself cut nearly in two, knowing already that he could do 
nothing for her. He was not hurt himself, other than a lump the size of a 
golf-ball on his forehead, and a sliver of metal in his shin. He was lucky 
that the plant-thing had not managed to slice more than the mech with 
whatever the hell she, or it, or whatever it was had thrown at him.

Reaching the still, limp form of the teenage girl whose night of 
excitement had just come to a horrible, but far from unexpected end, he 
took one look, and shook a fist in the dead girl's face. She was about his 
sister's age he saw, at least the age she had been when the Bu-12B had 
blown her apart.

"Serves you bloody-well right!" he snarled in sudden white-hot fury. "You 
just wouldn't be told, would you? Stupid, stupid bitch just couldn't 
resist taking a look huh? Well now you've had your look, I hope you're 
happy."

Whirling away, his breath coming in sudden ragged gasps, Hiroshi turned 
once more to the downed mech. Ignoring the steadily approaching shouts and 
screams, he halted to glare malevolently down at its remains. "And *f**** 
you too, you f***ing piece of sh*t!" he hissed. "I hope they cut what's 
left to tin-foil and stuff it down a God-damn buma's throat! That's all 
you're f***ing good for!"

With one final snarl he lashed out again, kicking and pounding the K-12 
while sudden tears all but blinded him.

"Bastard! Bastard! *Bastard*!" he screamed again, and again unheeding into 
the night. "Couldn't even blow a piece of alien sh*t apart before it 
killed someone! *Bastard*!"

Then whirling away once more he dashed the tears away with a grimy hand, 
and reached for the heavy pistol at his hip. His K-12 might be down but he 
was going to make those filthy alien bastards pay before they killed him.

"Davis!" The sudden shout made him spin once more, the pistol already 
ready in his hand. "What the hell do you think you're doing here?"

The sergeant's face was streaked with blood, and his eyes were wild and 
savage as he pounded up to the younger man.

"Having a f***ing night out; what does it look like?" hiroshi snarled 
savagely in return.

"Where are your--"

"Dead; all five of them," he hissed back, even more vehemently. "Didn't 
you know? It's part of our f***ing job description to get ourselves blown 
to f***ing perdition!"

"Don't talk to me like that, you arrogant, smart-a*se bastard," the other 
man swore suddenly. Then in a far more gentle tone: "What happened?"

"Evans and Hoffmann were cut to pieces by some kind of blade-flame things 
that disappeared after doing it," he answered simply. "Inoe lost it then, 
and charged in in his K-11. One of them threw something, and he, the K-11, 
and three of the aliens went up in the fireball. Andersen and--"

But whatever he had been about to say was cut off by a sudden shattering 
explosion.

"How much ammo have you left in that thing?" The other screamed above the 
din.

"Enough," hiroshi answered fiercely.

"Then let's stop wasting time, and make those bastards pay for--"

Another crash blotted out the end of the sentence but Hiroshi was already 
turning, and a moment later both were tearing along the street towards the 
ensuing battle.

Reaching its end they rounded a corner, and were nearly cut down as 
another red-tinged black bolt spat from the suddenly roiling sky.

"What the--" The other man began, then screamed, and dropped lifeless 
almost at Hiroshi's feet.

An instant later a second, and alien scream shrilled from above, and a 
huge armoured shape came slamming into the remains of the sergeant, one of 
the new C-55-iii combat machines fastened leach-like to its back. Hiroshi 
allowed himself a moment's half-crazed satisfaction as he watched the buma 
punch a metal fist straight through the thing's head. Then the machine 
spun, leapt, and drilled a blast from its mouth-laser straight through the 
chest of yet another descending creature.

For a moment Hiroshi actually thought in his half-wild state of pounding 
the buma on the back. Then the wild scream of tyres made him turn, and in 
the next moment Leon McNichol, and Daley Wong had leapt from a cruiser, 
and were diving towards him.

"Backup's on the way at last," Leon shouted above the din. "No one seems 
to have realised that these bastards could fly so far, or so fast. How are 
things?"

"In hell as usual Sir," hiroshi answered, grinning maniacally as he saw 
three more of the enhanced combat buma sweep overhead, and cut several 
more of the alien filth to bits before shooting to the summit of a 
communications tower to cut down the two snipers before they had a chance 
to escape. "I never thought I'd be glad to see those Genom bastards, but 
hey, beggars can't be choosers; unless of course this's all some sick game 
of their's; but I suppose that's too much to hope for?"

"Afraid so," said Leon simply. "There've been appearances at several 
points, and some of the creatures seem as hell-bent on running as anything 
else. The attacks appear to be random, and without any kind of 
coordination. We think something happened to their leaders. Apparently 
they disappeared through some kind of black hole like the one they 
appeared from, and these things keep screaming revenge, and that the 
Senshi, or the Scouts will pay, whatever they are. Whatever the hell's 
going on, it seems that they don't...

"Davis, what's the matter with you?"

Hiroshi was just staring stupidly at Leon.

"Senshi!" he managed at last. "You're joking! You *have* to be f***ing 
joking!"

Abruptly he threw back his head, and began to laugh, a wild, crazed sound, 
as though the universe had just revealed the best joke of his life, and he 
alone understood.

"What the *hell*--" Leon began.

"Down!"

Daley's scream had them diving behind the cruiser a split-second before 
the bolt hit the road, chunks of pavement exploding in all directions.

"Sh*t, that's more out of our budget," Leon hissed as the windscreen and 
headlights exploded in a spray of broken glass.

A moment later the human-dragon-thing screamed, and smashed into the 
crater it had blasted, an already dissipating ruin where its head had 
been. Above them the buma dropped down to hammer it with another blast, 
then shot forwards into the thick of battle.

"I think we should move," hiroshi panted, still barely in control of 
himself it seemed.

Fresh screaming of tyres, and the sudden roaring thrum of helicopters 
spoke of new arrivals. Then in the midst of the sudden din, a familiar: 
"Knight Sabres...Sanjo!" seemed to fill the night.

"At last!" Leon exclaimed, leaping to his feet despite the danger.

His sentiments were echoed a moment later as a sudden rising cheer erupted 
from the pressed ranks of the ADP, and by Hiroshi's sudden crazed: "Tsuki 
ni kawatte oshioki yo!" as he too leapt to his feet, and began waving his 
arms madly in the air before him, slow hysterical mania growing in his 
face.

"Knight Sabres!" Was shouted back, and forth. "Now these bastards are 
gunna find out what real trouble is."

Hiroshi simply continued to laugh. Then lifting the pistol he began to 
fire.

 				     * * *

Priss could not believe she was doing this. The turn of events had been so 
sudden, so impossible. They had barely left the scene of the initial 
appearance when the first reports of the battle near the Tinsel-City bank 
had reached them in the van.

Then the message had come from the tower. Whether Quincy had known that 
Sylia would have the ability to monitor Genom's intermediate executive 
security, or whether he had guessed, the crux of the message was clear, 
and succinct. No action would be taken against the Knight Sabres during 
this emergency, nor would they be designated targets by any Genom combat 
machine. Furthermore, any assistance they were willing to offer would be 
accepted in a spirit of amnesty on the part of Genom corporation, and the 
city's authorities until the emergency was at an end.

Immediately following the encoded transcript had come a stream of sensory 
and satellite data concerning each appearance, and tactical information 
regarding the current situation at the site of each engagement.