08_BD_WOASS_Ch_05b.txt
2007-06-11 - continuity edit
2007-06-07 - the typical just-posted-it-why-didn't-I-see-that-before errors fixed, including a couple of fairly major continuity glitches and numerous spelchekz
2007-06-04 - added a look in Priss's head to clarify while facing down Sylvie, and vagued something else up
2007-06-02 - FINISHED! First draft anyway, now Ijust need to get it online somehow...
2007-06-01 - yatta! fixed Cynthia/buma flashback & got to The Big Twist.
2007-05-31 - split the chapter into two files as it was becoming inconveniently large, with six scenes completed (from Ride Free) and one partial (Nam & Sylvie return)
Continued from 08_BD_WOASS_Ch_05a.txt
---=- + -=---
The observation room was dark as Leon and Nene entered, despite the bright skies outside - it had to be, to keep those inside from showing through the two-way mirror to the psych ward room beyond. Dr. Yamane waved them to take seats at the desk within, and the redheaded policewoman gratefully complied, folding the keyboard out from her tablet to type notes - even with three decades of refinements and her own improvements, the handwriting recognition was still a bit dodgy. Seeing her nod, the doctor gave her observations.
"The patient's name is Naota Watanabe, after hours security officer for Kisaragi Cyberdroid Service Center in the Kawasaki district. Last night, it appears he was attacked by this 'Bakemono Burglar' that has the papers in an uproar. Like the previous victims, he reports only getting a glimpse of the person involved, and even under hypnosis the only description he can give is that they were slight, like a woman or a young boy, and had brightly glowing red eyes after taking off a visor or possibly motorcycle goggles. After that, he fell unconscious, and didn't revive until the fire department arrived after the Kisaragi shop exploded."
On the far side of the glass, Watanabe shuddered and clutched at his bedcovers, as a burly male orderly entered with a meal tray. They could see him stammering a frightened challenge and the man's soothing response, but soundproofing prevented the conversation from carrying to the observation area since the microphones were turned off.
Yamane ran a hand through her short black hair, before continuing, "Mr. Watanabe's mental trauma from the incident is severe, easily the worst of the victims so far. He becomes distraught if a person matching the assailant's build is present, especially if their eyes are uncovered - as you saw, the orderlies have to borrow a pair of goggles from the lab to bring his meals, or he's too agitated to eat. He was moved to this ward after becoming violent with the intake nurse when she tried to check his pupil response with the light in her opthalmascope, and had to be sedated. I've had to limit my contact with him for those reasons, but my colleague Dr. Shelby is out sick today, and as head of the department he's been keeping me up to date."
"As I said, the patient was severely shaken by his experience, and seems to have suffered some sort of supernatural nightmare while unconscious, though he avoids any questions on the subject at best, more often becoming incoherent, muttering about monsters, ghosts, and wizards controlling his mind with the jigan. Since his previous psychological records list him as being somewhat excitable but well grounded in reality, it's Dr. Shelby's professional opinion that this nightmare is the effect of the current media frenzy acting as a suggestion to his unconscious mind."
Leaning against the back wall, Leon scoffed and quipped, "Monsters, wizards, and the Evil Eye? Of course it's just a delusion, none of that stuff is real, right Nene?"
Caught off guard by such a question, and wondering just how he'd react if she contradicted him, Nene stammered, "Buh-ah, of course they're not real, eh heh..."
Attention more on his thoughts than her reply, he grunted contemplatively, then asked Dr. Yamane, "Those previous reports, they're from his cybernetics post-operation counseling? Is there any sign of BDD?"
The psychiatrist's eyes flared as the frowned, giving him a stern glare. "I assure you, Mr. Watanbe's condition with regards to his cybernetic arm and lower leg remains in the top .5 percentile - in fact, the familiarity of talking about them with a professional without worry or awkwardness is one of the ways Dr. Shelby has found to calm him when he becomes too upset about this more recent trauma." Yamane's gaze turned even more steely as she concluded, "Even if he were experiencing difficulties with his prosthetics, Mr. Watanabe falls well blow the 70% cutoff point, Inspector."
Nene eeped at the steel in the other woman's tone, and even Leon flinched back in his seat. *Looks like Yamane-sensei doesn't approve of the 70% law,* the pink-haired Saber thought, grinning in spite of herself at the sight of her brash senior cowed by the petite doctor.
Striving to regain his composure, Leon waved his hands placatingly and temporized, "No one's looking for trouble, Doc, but it's my job to be concerned when someone with cybernetics is having mental problems. I'm sure I speak for everyone in the AD Police when I say we'd be happy if your department could put ours out of business."
Still far from reassured, the doctor softened her glare from piercing to merely skeptical.
--=--
The ride back from the hospital was mostly silent; Nene paying attention to the slightly unfamiliar task of driving a car rather than her scooter; Leon churning over the few leads they had. Finally, as they neared the station, he grunted in dissatisfaction and leaned back, the seat back tilting with a thunk as he released the catch.
Familiar enough with her coworker to know that meant he'd set the problem aside for the moment to let his subconscious chew on it, the redhead shot him a quick glance and asked, "I've seen the newsfax, of course, but do people really think it's some kind of oni? I didn't think the old myths were believed much any more."
"Eh, just the usual crazies," Leon drawled, adjusting his shades. "That's what I like about this town, it's never dull. It's mostly the newshounds chasing the excitement of the moment, but some folks are going off the deep end. There was a call for the N-Police yesterday when a crowd at some shrine started getting rowdy after they ran out of wards to sell... But it's strange, none of the men at the places that were attacked have gotten anything worse than a few bruises consistent with falling off their feet, and as far as we can tell from the wreckage nothing seems to be missing." Peering over the top of the wraparounds, he quipped, "Maybe the bakemono only likes to eat girls."
Nene, with certain knowledge that such things were not only possible but increasingly common as word of Kami-sama's death spread through the underworld, gave it rather more serious consideration than he'd intended, speculating, "My dad told me a story once about an eight headed dragon that only ate girls, and if he swallowed a boy by mistake he'd spit him back out." Grinning suddenly, she mused, "I should keep an eye out as well, that sounds like a fun fight!"
"Ha!?" The chestnut haired Inspector flipped upright in surprise, sunglasses sliding off to dangle from one ear as he gave her an incredulous look.
Suddenly, realization struck. "Eh heheh, I mean it would be a fun fight, uh... for a ... martial artist ... movie, yeah. You know, like 'Jane Li vs. Jade Chan in _Attack of the Bakemono Burglar!_'" she backpedaled, deepening her voice and giving it a melodramatic tone. She laughed nervously and kept her eyes assiduously on the road, hoping her more skeptical sempai would buy it.
Her silent prayers appeared to be answered; Leon collected himself and leaned back once more, dismissing the whole supernatural aspect with a snort as he settled his shades comfortably again. "Given the destruction and the descriptions the guards have given, it's a lot more likely that it's a buma, looking for something we haven't figured out yet."
"A buma?" Nene protested. "Buma can knock people out with eye-beams!?" Certainly, no buma the Sabers had ever faced could do such a thing... Or were their suit visors protection against it? Lots of buma had glowing eyes, now and then, for sure.
"It might," he replied, "if it was a 33-S type buma, that had a hypnotic function. Of course, none of them are around any more, since it was the one model that was completely banned."
"I'll admit, it's a little easier to picture you chasing a strange buma in a K-suit than some fire-breathing oni," Nene remarked.
He smirked, then sighed resignedly. "There's a lot of pressure from above to solve this one quickly, since they're targeting Genom-affiliated businesses. At the same time, it seems none of them are actually big enough to make it worth Genom's time to send their bully-boys in, when a quiet word in the right ear gets us out in force. Not that we'd let anyone get away with it, but it would be nice to do without the pressure."
The car was silent again for a few minutes, as she pulled off the highway to return to the ADPolice building. "Oh, drop me off at Hangar Three, would you?" Leon requested. "They're giving me some new patrol bike to test." At her nod, he gave the redhead his best 'Nice Guy' smile and wink and invited, "If you like action movies like that, you should come to my squad's barbecue party on Friday evenings, Nene. They're a little rough, but a good bunch at heart." Then it was her turn to boggle, at least until he shouted to watch out for the turn-off.
---=- + -=---
Nene had passed the Inspector's theories on to Sylia, and admitted that since her parents hadn't found traces from an active demon, they looked like the most probable explanation. "I've done some checking, and there's a few traces as if someone was doing some cracking from the businesses that were attacked, too well hidden for the regular ADP computer team to find. But, I'm still not sure why the 33-S was banned," she added.
"It became troublesome when external weapon linkages from combat-class buma were added to them," Sylia explained, a blush lighting her fair features as she continued, "Their use before that was scandalous enough. It was a sexaroid type."
Wide eyed, Nene repeated, "A sexaroid?" She ducked her head and hid a matching blush behind one hand as she squealed, "So they really do exist!"
"I thought you weren't interested in perverted things like that," Sylia scolded, tapping her finger against the monitor over her younger friend's nose.
"Whyyy nooot?" the policewoman whined, before a different train of thought brightened her over-dramatic sulky expression. "I wonder if they're as pretty as the girl I met yesterday?"
Accepting the topic change, the steely haired Saber inquired, "Oh? Who's that?"
"One of Priss's biker friends. Her name's Sylvie, and is she hot! She's got a body to die for, and her other friend Nam isn't far behind," the redhead enthused while clasping her hands, suffused with romantic bliss, before leaning in conspiratorially to wink and share, "Priss gets along with her unusually well."
"With Nam?"
"No, Sylvie. Nam let me ride on her cycle to see what it was like while they raced to the restaurant after leaving Hot Legs."
The Saber leader hummed noncommittally, then concluded, "Sounds like someone I might like to meet. Anyway, inform me if something else happens, all right?"
"You got it!" Nene chirped, before shutting down the link.
The frown Sylia had been hiding behind her usual calm front settled onto her face, and she was left to contemplate the implications of a 33-S on the loose at the same time as a battlemover designed for operation with a synchronized pilot.
---=- + -=---
In a low rent, single room loft, Nam and Anri were stirring about quietly, going about their morning routines. They'd found themselves to be quite compatible as room mates, having similar tastes for the most part, though Anri didn't share the other buma's passion for Transystyr Systyr, especially at high volume, preferring the more laid back style of reggae or ska in her more energetic moods. The local retrothrash band whose leader Sylvie and Nam had befriended seemed to be a happy compromise solution, and the demo chip she'd gotten for them was playing quietly as Nam slipped into her underthings and pulled the nightgown off over her head.
Thinking about Priss and her friends brought other questions to mind, and she decided finally to just come right out with it. "Ne, Anri," she queried, "do you mind if I ask you a question about Sylvie?"
Looking up as she slipped on her brassiere, the green-haired sexaroid blinked and hummed negatively, "Mhm-m. What is it?"
"Um... well, doesn't it bother you that she's been spending the night with someone else?" the medic buma asked.
"Don't think badly of Sylvie," Anri explained. "She and I are the best of friends, close enough to keep each other company when the night's too lonely, but we're not really... you know, romantic. I just don't like girls that much, the way Sylvie does. I'm happy for her, really Nam, and she'd be happy for me if I find a guy I like."
"I... I guess I understand," the speedster replied. "I never really cared either way, I just wanted to find someone to share feelings with."
Catching her room mate's phrasing, Anri grinned mischievously. "Wanted to? Have you found someone, then? Maybe that cute redhead you mentioned..."
Blushing and stuttering, Nam could only stammer incoherently for a moment. "N... No!" she finally forced out. "It's nothing like that, we're just going to look at motorcycles since she liked riding behind me the other night!"
"Ooooh," Anri teased, nodding knowingly. "She likes you from behind, then!" She laughed merrily as Nam buried her beet red face in her hands and curled up in embarrassment.
Fortunately for her, any further teasing was preempted by the faint sounds of the other bed's occupant waking up, and the two of them hastened to finish getting dressed.
--=--
Lady Miyaumoto paused in her morning promenade, looking over the visitors in her domain speculatively as they arrived on two of the smaller sort of annoying-loud-wheely-thing humans were so fond of. The red-furred one proceeded toward the food dispensers nearby, while the other, blue and white dappled nearly as splendidly as the Lady's own brown and white, partook of the fresh breeze and admirable view. Miyaumoto approved, a healthy regard for the necessities of life in one, and a fine sense of aesthetics for the other.
As she herself was returning from a jaunt to the shore, where there had been a delectable bit of crab leg left in a crevice by one of the gulls, the Lady padded over to the red one, calling for attention as the two of them seemed caught up in their own discussion. Honestly, humans were so silly sometimes! Who gave a hairball about buma or the Genom Production Control Center on the skyline when there were sandwiches to be had? Reminded of the more important things, the red one bowed down to her, and rendered tribute in the form of a hearty helping of the still-warm fast food burger, but withheld the remainder most rudely when asked for a second helping. Ungrateful creature, and to think, Miyaumoto had deigned to strop against her leg earlier!
Here the Ungracious One's companion interceded, showing the true nobility of dapple-coats as she offered the entirety of her own hamburger to compensate. Lady Miyaumoto magnanimously decided to forgive the pair in light of the gesture, and even allowed herself to be held and stroked by the Noble One when she had finished her repast. Ah, a superior patterned coat, the scent of life and healthy energy, and talented hands as well! Letting bygones be bygones, she sang her appreciation, the low throaty tones of a premiere soloist.
Watching as her lover cradled the stray, Priss gave a lopsided grin of amusement. "Looks like it likes you, Sylvie. I almost thought it was going to attack me when I wouldn't give it any more of mine." The grin widened as she reached out to stroke one of the other woman's shoulders and teased, "I guess you've just got the magic touch, ne?"
Sylvie blushed slightly as she hugged the purring moggie closer, turning back to look out over the bay. "Ah, Priss, don't exaggerate," she replied. *Even this cat is free,* she thought happily, basking in the morning sun.
Finished with her own food, Priss wadded up the wrapper and tossed it in a nearby bin with her cola can, then swung onto her bike. "Well, let's go," she prompted, explaining, " I've got a rehearsal coming up, and a sound check after we set up at the club."
Sylvie set down the cat, with a final stroke as it rubbed affectionately against her knees before wandering off. "Ah?" *But it's so nice here, and we didn't leave Genaros just to start following new orders,* she thought, waffling for a moment. The sheer joy of self-determination made up her mind, and she replied easily, "I think I'll stay here a little longer."
Priss straightened on the saddle, smarting at the brush off, and the buma woman tried to explain. Unfortunately, the amazing, intoxicating feeling of freedom after a life of servitude was just too big to put into words, and all she could do was blurt, "I, am... free. I'm free now! You see?" She spread her arms, trying to indicate the unbounded world of possibilities all around them, just waiting to be explored in any direction.
No more enlightened, the singer could only repeat, "Free?"
Sylvie gave her a megawatt smile, and a flirty wink from one amber eye. "Right!"
Still puzzled, Priss could only figure it must be a personal space thing - she understood that, at least. "I don't know what you're talking about, but I'll catch you later." Helmet strapped on, she started the bike and kicked off, a farewell shout of "Call me!" tossed over a shoulder as she let the clutch out and merged into the slow mid-morning traffic.
Sylvie waved energetically, but was saddened by the thought that her lover probably didn't even really understand her own freedom, or how precious it was. Then again, she'd rather no one ever had to go through a life like her own, even if it meant being so oblivious to what they had. With a melancholy smile, she leaned against the rail once more, watching the gulls and the ships in the bay.
---=- + -=---
Since his cruiser still hadnt been replaced, and two bikes would fit in his parking place at home, Leon had just used the new motorcycle unit he'd been assigned to commute - he was supposed to be testing the thing anyway, right? Even better, it saved trying to find a spot in the cramped police parking garage, since he could just return it to Hangar Three where the support equipment for the prototype had been set up. As he shut it down and undid the clasp on his helmet strap, Kenty Yeager, the head mecha technician, slipped out of the partially disassembled K-11 she was working on and headed over to greet him.
"Hey Leon, how do you like the new toy so far? Had any chances to open 'er up?" she asked.
"I only got it from you last night, you know. You didn't even explain what the heck the thing is, except that it's more than just a bike," he complained.
"Eh?" She blinked and cocked her head at him, a grease stain on one cheek making her look absolutely adorable - he certainly hoped Yeager appreciated her, the lucky bastard, and given that the brunette's pregnancy was just starting to show he damn well better. "I sent you the user manual a week ago, as soon as you were picked to test one."
Leon thought about the stack of coffee cans competing with his inbox for a height record, and concentrated on maintaining his cool look.
Relenting, Kenty shook her head at the vagaries of of detectives, and launched into a quick summary, pointing out controls and display items as they were mentioned. "It's called a Police Motorcycle Battloid, or P. M. B. for short, and it's Genom R&D's latest answer to our need for better equipment to use against rogue security and military buma - though judging by the photos I've seen, not to mention the evidence materials that have been taken by various government agencies 'for further study' it's probably as direct a copy as they can manage of the motorcycle-based units your Knights in shining hardsuits like to use, and you'll need to be wearing the special body armor that you left behind last night in order to pilot it in battleframe mode."
Here she gave the Inspector a stern look. "Without it, the unit can still transform and accept voice commands if you dismount, but it doesn't use a buma brain so it's not very smart at all, not even as much as a trained animal. With the suit, it's still a little less armored than a K-11, but far beyond their specs, even the new K-12S, in just every other way - speed, strength, agility, even the combat computer that drives the heads-up display can track more targets more accurately and actually predict what known enemy types are likely to do, as well as where hits will land and tracking the origin and path of gunfire."
She started going into the specifics then, Leon paying close attention as it seemed he'd greatly underestimated the bike's capabilities before, having thought it was just some attempt at a cost saving measure over cruisers when the ADP rarely arrested anyone - even in cases of normal civilian models that went rogue due to being misused or poorly maintained, the owners were more likely to be fined than detained, and if they did need to be taken anywhere it was usually in an ambulance.
Not to mention, he just loved piloting, on those occasions he had the chance to get in some Armored Trooper time. If the department wanted to give him one of his very own, he sure wasn't going to complain!
---=- + -=---
Mackie had gone looking for his sister, needing authorization for the new design he and Dr. Raven had worked out before they started ordering parts and materials. He found her in her office talking on the videophone, one hand still holding a pen, and the customer copy of a delivery invoice in front of her for the trailer that had been delivered around mid day - one that held the wreckage of the Batmobile, which had been confiscated by the police but eventually sold at auction after investigations found that it held no leads to finding the Sabers, who weren't actually wanted on charges more serious than disturbing the peace and flight from crime scenes anyway, and far from giving any insight on their advanced technology, was built with components and techniques over two decades outdated.
If it wasn't for the fact that it was his logical, unflappable sister he was talking about, he'd almost have said... *Wait... No, no way! She can't be...* The teen's thoughts trailed off as Sylia finally capped the pen and stuffed it in a pocket before wiping at her eyes and actually *sniffling.* "Sis?" he asked, quietly. "Are you okay? I mean, you're..."
Sylia jumped, for all her advanced senses still having been too distracted to notice him approach. "Still human despite it all, it seems," she replied, voice trembling. "It's silly of me, and illogical, but... The Wayne money, and companies, and even the estate in America, none of that was ever Daddy's true legacy to me... All of that was just what he used as a disguise, the mask he hid behind. The real Bruce Wayne was the one who had a secret underground base, who put on a kevlar suit almost every night and went out to stand between the bad guys and the people of his city, the one who had the most amazing car in the world. Mother -"
She choked up, and had to wipe at the tears over running her eyes again. Mackie looked helplessly at the grey-haired man on the screen, who shrugged and mouthed "I was there too," before waving his attention back to Sylia. After making use of a hanky, the words flowed on, as unstoppable as the tears, or the tremors shaking her like a rag doll in her brother's embrace. "Mother once told me that as a baby, sometimes the only way to get me to quiet down at night as to go for a ride in that car, with its engine that rumbled and purred like a huge cat, none of the normal ones would do the trick. And now..."
Stuffing the balled up kerchief back in a pocket, she choked off a derisive laugh before it could become a sob. "It wasn't even this car, the one she talked about got replaced years before he died. But it's still... I just..." Worlds failed her, and all Sylia could do was hold and be held by her only remaining blood relative.
"It was a fine car and a great loss, but how many did your dad lose this way? Remember that it was made to be used; a tool like your suits," the man on the screen told her. "In fact, I remember taking you on some of those rides with your mom; that car got wrecked in a chase with the Joker when he used an exploding cream pie launcher built into the back of the one that nut was using at the time." Seeing Mackie's alarmed look at the pickup when he'd casually mentioned "suits" the stranger assured him, "Not to worry, it's a secure line, and like I said I've been in the family business for a while. Dick Grayson, once called Robin, then Nightwing up until I had to retire. You must be Mackie. I've heard a lot about you."
"Yeah, that's me. Uh, I guess I've heard about you, too. If you're retired, though, then who's..."
"The current Batman? Well, I really shouldn't say, I am still in on the background end of things, though. Anyway, I've go to go, time difference in the US and all. Just keep helping Cee out, okay? Bruce adopted me before even meeting your mom, so she's my sister too, you know?"
---=- + -=---
Patchy clouds on the horizon still floated like purple and orange ghosts of the sunset, but the storm front due sometime after midnight was still well out to sea, so those few stars bright enough to make it through the city's glow were as clear as they ever were over most of Megatokyo that evening. At one of the large, automated depots for the still ongoing Kanto Earthquake Recovery Zone, they were blocked by something still less permeable - plumes of smoke from the security buma that had been stationed there. The low-grade construction buma that were based at the facility had continued to function obliviously, at least until their control link to the GPCC mainframe had been taken over for other purposes.
The one human evening overseer was slumped in a corner of his office unconscious, while at his terminal Nam's fingers moved so quickly they seemed to have disappeared as she abused their stolen access while it lasted, relentlessly hunting down the data they desperately needed. Just outside, Sylvie held the DD Battlemover ready to take off at a moment's notice - they'd made too much of a disruption to go unnoticed for long, but hacking the control connection alone would have seen to that so there was no point to subtlety this time. She could hear sirens in the distance, and was about to call for Nam to abandon the search and go when she heard the lavender-haired sexaroid's triumphant cry, then there was a blur of color as she zipped out and up to a perch on the DD's back. Not waiting for anything to go wrong, she fired the battlemover's thrusters and took off into the night.
---=- + -=---
In his temporary quarters on Genaros, Daley Wong shut off the videodisc player, a disgusted look still on his face. He'd barely seen Kaufmann into the airlock of a shuttle, handcuffed and escorted by a pair of SSPD officers, before someone had nudged him from behind and shoved it into his hands, vanishing into the crowd of rubberneckers before he could even turn around. He'd seen some truly nasty things in a his time as a cop - just working cleanup after a buma rampage could see to that on any given day, thanks to the difference between their strength and durability and that of a human - and he'd always figured you couldn't really be in the ADP and think of buma as people per se, but that hadn't made it any easier to watch - he hadn't even been able to tell it was a buma on the operating table in the first scenes until enough of the skin was off to show the reinforced rib cage, and that would have been bad enough on its own, even if the perp had been sitting in a cell in front of him.
It was the murderous looks the nurse had thrown at the man doing the job whenever his back was turned, and the tears that even crappy low-quality surveillance camera footage could catch as she cleaned up afterwards that were the worst, because that said the bastard had at least some misuse of authority that let him get away with doing things like that, and making others take part. The fact that it was almost certainly another buma... It didn't really matter, not this time.
Then, that clip had ended, and the next one showed the buma who'd been tortured - he had to go back to the beginning, to where her face was intact enough to recognize, to make sure, but it was her - toting a submachine gun, standing beside another buma (though that wasn't apparent at first, either) with several more people unidentifiable in the background as the same man confronted them, and the second woman blurred with superhuman speed to knock him against a wall. The former victim then proceeded to empty the gun's large clip into him, less than a minute later being cut in half herself by debris when one of the float-cars exploded.
That hadn't been the end, though - as he knew all too well, buma were damn hard to kill, and apparently that extended even to sexaroids. In the next clip, she was back on an operating table, screaming as some kind of heat-sealing tool was used to fuse her skin to the cruder synthetic of a mannequin-class hip and leg assembly, while that utter asshole Kaufmann directed the process in between interrogating her about the other sexaroids and the shuttle they'd stolen, without much luck.
That still wasn't quite the end, though - there had been one more scene, of the poor girl in some kind of isolation cell, naked except for old blood around the marks of a brutal beating, and copious amounts of fresh being coughed up uncontrollably until it had literally pooled around her huddled form. The mannequin-class parts seemed oddly warped, and he wondered about that for a moment. There weren't really any sensors in most of a mannequin's shell at all, so it was unlikely to be a result of the abuse she'd still been undergoing. Of course, expecting the kind of slime who'd do such a thing to make rational decisions was its own kind of folly, but still...
It was only when the wall beneath her had torn away, leaving behind a fringe of ropy cables fluttering in the escaping atmosphere that he realized it was similar to the way scavenged materials looked when a one of the more recent buma types used them to add a weapon or patch their armor as the nanites worked on it, a guess confirmed by the last part of the disk.
It was an audio-only recording of a voice with the metallic overtones of an active-mode security type, leaving a message for him personally. It said, "Hyatt was one of the gentlest souls any of us ever met - no one could believe it when she was the one who gunned down Barnaby. Believe this Inspector if you believe nothing else I say: she was only his last victim, one of many, and if anyone deserved to die it was that bastard. She'd been used as a testbed for fusion nanites similar to the ones now incorporated into the BU-55C, but it never worked before the incident you saw. She has already died three times for nothing more than the quest for her own freedom; please, if she somehow makes it to Earth after all this, and ends up in your area, just let her be."
That was it, finally, and the black screen had turned to static until he shut it down. The hell of it was, as a police officer he couldn't condone murdering a man, but as a person he couldn't begin to pretend that Hyatt deserved any more punishment that she'd already received, buma or not. He ejected the disk and scowled at it for a minute or so, before shattering it under a boot heel.
Enough. He still had to check a few last leads, then contact Leon and warn him about what he'd discovered about the DD. There was police work to be done, and it had nothing to do with any 33-S except the one piloting the battlemover.
---=- + -=---
Magnus Largo glided into Flint's office like the specter of death itself, smooth and collected and radiating an icy hatred that would make the coldest winter days, when the snow squealed underfoot and every breath made the lungs and teeth ache, seem like a vacation in Hawaii. "Tell me, Flint," he commented scathingly, "Is there ANYONE competent in your organization at ALL? First the bungled assassination last week, now it seems that Kaufmann has been arrested, for arranging to smuggle the DD."
Ignoring the executive's outraged sputtering, the tall, white haired man with the gold-on-black eyes stalked over to the desk and hauled him out of it by the collar, eliciting a startled squawk from Flint, along with a desperate glance at the two bodyguard buma still standing obliviously by the door.
"They can't see me," Largo explained, "or hear me, or you, or anything else I don't want them to detect. As far as their senses can tell them, you are still sitting right here, reading files, and in just a moment you're going to tell them to leave, because you're about done for the night." At this the older man tried again to protest, only to be cut off with a sinister glare. "Your cooperation is not required, and believe me, you are quite finished. We're going to go for a little trip, you and I. Now."
Behind them, the frames of the office windows warped and slid aside, and a hazy blue sphere of energy formed around Magnus and his unwilling companion then lifted them out and away, the windows again closing behind them. Shortly after, the bodyguards acknowledged words that only they could hear, and quietly left the office to head back to their maintenance cycle cubicles.
---=- + -=---
It was about 10 PM by the time Sylvie and Nam got back to the loft, but Anri had stayed up waiting for them, too worried to rest, and their other house guest, the former buma Cynthia, had stayed up with her, alternately telling the sexaroid that she could see them and everything was fine, and pleading with her to just sit still so she could heal the daily blood degradation her damaged mechanical systems were unable to slow. The little blonde had joined them right after they bailed out of the Orca IV, flying to meet the airborne battlemover in a bubble of light after helping the shuttle along far enough that it would crash in the next valley over, instead of in the horse field.
As if that hadn't been strange enough, she'd been accompanied by a pair of actual fairies, beautiful tiny girls that fluttered along on butterfly wings shimmering with all the colors of the rainbow, and when they'd landed and she learned that Anri was hurt, Cynthia had conferred with them for a bit, then bathed the comatose buma in a differently hued glow, making the barely scabbed-over wound heal as they watched. Sylvie had still been holding her partner in her lap in the opened cockpit, and had caught enough of the fringe of the effect to feel revitalized as well, the fatigue of the nerve wracking manually controlled approach falling away like mud under a hose.
Anri had awakened then to find the child peering earnestly at her, then explaining with a smile, "Hi! I made you better, but your buma part is still broken. You should go back with me to Miss Cecilia! She can fix it for you."
Bewildered, the green-tressed sexaroid had turned to Sylvie, who was still clutching her as if afraid she'd run away. "This is Cynthia," the smiling pilot introduced. "Cynthia, this is my partner Anri. I don't know how you healed her, but thank you. Are you some kind of buma? Is Cecilia your owner?"
The little girl giggled and bounced happily on the fallen tree she'd sat upon. "I used to be, but Miss Cecilia fixed me when the giant robot attacked and Priss-oneesan had to cut it away from my leg, and then she took me to see a nice man who took all the metal out so I could be a normal girl. But he died then, so he can't take your metal out." The fairy in white, who had short, silvery hair, inserted a comment, using an audio datasquirt the sexaroids couldn't quite catch. "Yuki says I could learn to do magic like the nice man did," the blonde continued, "but it's really hard so it would take a long time. Are you sure you can't let Miss Cecilia fix you? She's not my owner, because normal people don't get owned. She's the boss for Nan and Grampa Akimoto, and everyone there is my friend!"
Sylvie shook her head. "We have to make it a secret that we're here. Can you keep a secret?"
"Uh-huh. I hafta keep lots of secrets, because of I see things that are private, even if I'm not trying sometimes. Nan Akimoto taught me it's important to keep what other people do private unless it's hurting somebody or they say it's okay. But Miss Cecilia is really good at keeping secrets too, so I'm sure it would be okay." This time it was the dark-haired fairy who chimed in, the light one just chirping agreement. "Hotaru says Anri-neesan really needs to have her parts fixed, or else get healed like that every day," Cynthia finished worriedly. She looked over at Nam, who'd slumped against the tree stump and was very pale, thanks to the use she'd had to make of her 35-A patch during the escape, but who had followed the conversation with a wide eyed wonder, having always had a love of magic and fairy tales. "You're kinda sick too, I think, like the way Anri-neesan was because her metal stuff is broken. I can help you too, I think, but your metal parts all seem okay."
"Our systems weren't built that way," the speedster replied, after a moment of shock. "Even working properly we still get sick like this, because the men who made us wanted to make sure they could stay our owners. It happens faster with me, but Sylvie would need maintenance in a few months, as well. We just want to be normal people too."
Cynthia gasped, "That's horrible! Just hold still a minute." She gathered power again as she spoke, then plied the same radiance over Nam, who sighed in relief as the status alerts from her diagnostics died down and the logy, sick feeling in her body was replaced by an amazing energy.
SERVO: Loook *deeeeply* into my eyes... Tell me, what do you see?
CROW: (hypnotized) A twisted man who wants to inflict his pain upon others.
For the next 72 hours, Itachi intoned, I will slap you with this trout. - Spying no Jutsu, chapter 3
"In the futuristic taco bell of the year 20XX, justice wears an aluminum sombrero!"hemlock-martini
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows
2007-06-11 - continuity edit
2007-06-07 - the typical just-posted-it-why-didn't-I-see-that-before errors fixed, including a couple of fairly major continuity glitches and numerous spelchekz
2007-06-04 - added a look in Priss's head to clarify while facing down Sylvie, and vagued something else up
2007-06-02 - FINISHED! First draft anyway, now Ijust need to get it online somehow...
2007-06-01 - yatta! fixed Cynthia/buma flashback & got to The Big Twist.
2007-05-31 - split the chapter into two files as it was becoming inconveniently large, with six scenes completed (from Ride Free) and one partial (Nam & Sylvie return)
Continued from 08_BD_WOASS_Ch_05a.txt
---=- + -=---
The observation room was dark as Leon and Nene entered, despite the bright skies outside - it had to be, to keep those inside from showing through the two-way mirror to the psych ward room beyond. Dr. Yamane waved them to take seats at the desk within, and the redheaded policewoman gratefully complied, folding the keyboard out from her tablet to type notes - even with three decades of refinements and her own improvements, the handwriting recognition was still a bit dodgy. Seeing her nod, the doctor gave her observations.
"The patient's name is Naota Watanabe, after hours security officer for Kisaragi Cyberdroid Service Center in the Kawasaki district. Last night, it appears he was attacked by this 'Bakemono Burglar' that has the papers in an uproar. Like the previous victims, he reports only getting a glimpse of the person involved, and even under hypnosis the only description he can give is that they were slight, like a woman or a young boy, and had brightly glowing red eyes after taking off a visor or possibly motorcycle goggles. After that, he fell unconscious, and didn't revive until the fire department arrived after the Kisaragi shop exploded."
On the far side of the glass, Watanabe shuddered and clutched at his bedcovers, as a burly male orderly entered with a meal tray. They could see him stammering a frightened challenge and the man's soothing response, but soundproofing prevented the conversation from carrying to the observation area since the microphones were turned off.
Yamane ran a hand through her short black hair, before continuing, "Mr. Watanabe's mental trauma from the incident is severe, easily the worst of the victims so far. He becomes distraught if a person matching the assailant's build is present, especially if their eyes are uncovered - as you saw, the orderlies have to borrow a pair of goggles from the lab to bring his meals, or he's too agitated to eat. He was moved to this ward after becoming violent with the intake nurse when she tried to check his pupil response with the light in her opthalmascope, and had to be sedated. I've had to limit my contact with him for those reasons, but my colleague Dr. Shelby is out sick today, and as head of the department he's been keeping me up to date."
"As I said, the patient was severely shaken by his experience, and seems to have suffered some sort of supernatural nightmare while unconscious, though he avoids any questions on the subject at best, more often becoming incoherent, muttering about monsters, ghosts, and wizards controlling his mind with the jigan. Since his previous psychological records list him as being somewhat excitable but well grounded in reality, it's Dr. Shelby's professional opinion that this nightmare is the effect of the current media frenzy acting as a suggestion to his unconscious mind."
Leaning against the back wall, Leon scoffed and quipped, "Monsters, wizards, and the Evil Eye? Of course it's just a delusion, none of that stuff is real, right Nene?"
Caught off guard by such a question, and wondering just how he'd react if she contradicted him, Nene stammered, "Buh-ah, of course they're not real, eh heh..."
Attention more on his thoughts than her reply, he grunted contemplatively, then asked Dr. Yamane, "Those previous reports, they're from his cybernetics post-operation counseling? Is there any sign of BDD?"
The psychiatrist's eyes flared as the frowned, giving him a stern glare. "I assure you, Mr. Watanbe's condition with regards to his cybernetic arm and lower leg remains in the top .5 percentile - in fact, the familiarity of talking about them with a professional without worry or awkwardness is one of the ways Dr. Shelby has found to calm him when he becomes too upset about this more recent trauma." Yamane's gaze turned even more steely as she concluded, "Even if he were experiencing difficulties with his prosthetics, Mr. Watanabe falls well blow the 70% cutoff point, Inspector."
Nene eeped at the steel in the other woman's tone, and even Leon flinched back in his seat. *Looks like Yamane-sensei doesn't approve of the 70% law,* the pink-haired Saber thought, grinning in spite of herself at the sight of her brash senior cowed by the petite doctor.
Striving to regain his composure, Leon waved his hands placatingly and temporized, "No one's looking for trouble, Doc, but it's my job to be concerned when someone with cybernetics is having mental problems. I'm sure I speak for everyone in the AD Police when I say we'd be happy if your department could put ours out of business."
Still far from reassured, the doctor softened her glare from piercing to merely skeptical.
--=--
The ride back from the hospital was mostly silent; Nene paying attention to the slightly unfamiliar task of driving a car rather than her scooter; Leon churning over the few leads they had. Finally, as they neared the station, he grunted in dissatisfaction and leaned back, the seat back tilting with a thunk as he released the catch.
Familiar enough with her coworker to know that meant he'd set the problem aside for the moment to let his subconscious chew on it, the redhead shot him a quick glance and asked, "I've seen the newsfax, of course, but do people really think it's some kind of oni? I didn't think the old myths were believed much any more."
"Eh, just the usual crazies," Leon drawled, adjusting his shades. "That's what I like about this town, it's never dull. It's mostly the newshounds chasing the excitement of the moment, but some folks are going off the deep end. There was a call for the N-Police yesterday when a crowd at some shrine started getting rowdy after they ran out of wards to sell... But it's strange, none of the men at the places that were attacked have gotten anything worse than a few bruises consistent with falling off their feet, and as far as we can tell from the wreckage nothing seems to be missing." Peering over the top of the wraparounds, he quipped, "Maybe the bakemono only likes to eat girls."
Nene, with certain knowledge that such things were not only possible but increasingly common as word of Kami-sama's death spread through the underworld, gave it rather more serious consideration than he'd intended, speculating, "My dad told me a story once about an eight headed dragon that only ate girls, and if he swallowed a boy by mistake he'd spit him back out." Grinning suddenly, she mused, "I should keep an eye out as well, that sounds like a fun fight!"
"Ha!?" The chestnut haired Inspector flipped upright in surprise, sunglasses sliding off to dangle from one ear as he gave her an incredulous look.
Suddenly, realization struck. "Eh heheh, I mean it would be a fun fight, uh... for a ... martial artist ... movie, yeah. You know, like 'Jane Li vs. Jade Chan in _Attack of the Bakemono Burglar!_'" she backpedaled, deepening her voice and giving it a melodramatic tone. She laughed nervously and kept her eyes assiduously on the road, hoping her more skeptical sempai would buy it.
Her silent prayers appeared to be answered; Leon collected himself and leaned back once more, dismissing the whole supernatural aspect with a snort as he settled his shades comfortably again. "Given the destruction and the descriptions the guards have given, it's a lot more likely that it's a buma, looking for something we haven't figured out yet."
"A buma?" Nene protested. "Buma can knock people out with eye-beams!?" Certainly, no buma the Sabers had ever faced could do such a thing... Or were their suit visors protection against it? Lots of buma had glowing eyes, now and then, for sure.
"It might," he replied, "if it was a 33-S type buma, that had a hypnotic function. Of course, none of them are around any more, since it was the one model that was completely banned."
"I'll admit, it's a little easier to picture you chasing a strange buma in a K-suit than some fire-breathing oni," Nene remarked.
He smirked, then sighed resignedly. "There's a lot of pressure from above to solve this one quickly, since they're targeting Genom-affiliated businesses. At the same time, it seems none of them are actually big enough to make it worth Genom's time to send their bully-boys in, when a quiet word in the right ear gets us out in force. Not that we'd let anyone get away with it, but it would be nice to do without the pressure."
The car was silent again for a few minutes, as she pulled off the highway to return to the ADPolice building. "Oh, drop me off at Hangar Three, would you?" Leon requested. "They're giving me some new patrol bike to test." At her nod, he gave the redhead his best 'Nice Guy' smile and wink and invited, "If you like action movies like that, you should come to my squad's barbecue party on Friday evenings, Nene. They're a little rough, but a good bunch at heart." Then it was her turn to boggle, at least until he shouted to watch out for the turn-off.
---=- + -=---
Nene had passed the Inspector's theories on to Sylia, and admitted that since her parents hadn't found traces from an active demon, they looked like the most probable explanation. "I've done some checking, and there's a few traces as if someone was doing some cracking from the businesses that were attacked, too well hidden for the regular ADP computer team to find. But, I'm still not sure why the 33-S was banned," she added.
"It became troublesome when external weapon linkages from combat-class buma were added to them," Sylia explained, a blush lighting her fair features as she continued, "Their use before that was scandalous enough. It was a sexaroid type."
Wide eyed, Nene repeated, "A sexaroid?" She ducked her head and hid a matching blush behind one hand as she squealed, "So they really do exist!"
"I thought you weren't interested in perverted things like that," Sylia scolded, tapping her finger against the monitor over her younger friend's nose.
"Whyyy nooot?" the policewoman whined, before a different train of thought brightened her over-dramatic sulky expression. "I wonder if they're as pretty as the girl I met yesterday?"
Accepting the topic change, the steely haired Saber inquired, "Oh? Who's that?"
"One of Priss's biker friends. Her name's Sylvie, and is she hot! She's got a body to die for, and her other friend Nam isn't far behind," the redhead enthused while clasping her hands, suffused with romantic bliss, before leaning in conspiratorially to wink and share, "Priss gets along with her unusually well."
"With Nam?"
"No, Sylvie. Nam let me ride on her cycle to see what it was like while they raced to the restaurant after leaving Hot Legs."
The Saber leader hummed noncommittally, then concluded, "Sounds like someone I might like to meet. Anyway, inform me if something else happens, all right?"
"You got it!" Nene chirped, before shutting down the link.
The frown Sylia had been hiding behind her usual calm front settled onto her face, and she was left to contemplate the implications of a 33-S on the loose at the same time as a battlemover designed for operation with a synchronized pilot.
---=- + -=---
In a low rent, single room loft, Nam and Anri were stirring about quietly, going about their morning routines. They'd found themselves to be quite compatible as room mates, having similar tastes for the most part, though Anri didn't share the other buma's passion for Transystyr Systyr, especially at high volume, preferring the more laid back style of reggae or ska in her more energetic moods. The local retrothrash band whose leader Sylvie and Nam had befriended seemed to be a happy compromise solution, and the demo chip she'd gotten for them was playing quietly as Nam slipped into her underthings and pulled the nightgown off over her head.
Thinking about Priss and her friends brought other questions to mind, and she decided finally to just come right out with it. "Ne, Anri," she queried, "do you mind if I ask you a question about Sylvie?"
Looking up as she slipped on her brassiere, the green-haired sexaroid blinked and hummed negatively, "Mhm-m. What is it?"
"Um... well, doesn't it bother you that she's been spending the night with someone else?" the medic buma asked.
"Don't think badly of Sylvie," Anri explained. "She and I are the best of friends, close enough to keep each other company when the night's too lonely, but we're not really... you know, romantic. I just don't like girls that much, the way Sylvie does. I'm happy for her, really Nam, and she'd be happy for me if I find a guy I like."
"I... I guess I understand," the speedster replied. "I never really cared either way, I just wanted to find someone to share feelings with."
Catching her room mate's phrasing, Anri grinned mischievously. "Wanted to? Have you found someone, then? Maybe that cute redhead you mentioned..."
Blushing and stuttering, Nam could only stammer incoherently for a moment. "N... No!" she finally forced out. "It's nothing like that, we're just going to look at motorcycles since she liked riding behind me the other night!"
"Ooooh," Anri teased, nodding knowingly. "She likes you from behind, then!" She laughed merrily as Nam buried her beet red face in her hands and curled up in embarrassment.
Fortunately for her, any further teasing was preempted by the faint sounds of the other bed's occupant waking up, and the two of them hastened to finish getting dressed.
--=--
Lady Miyaumoto paused in her morning promenade, looking over the visitors in her domain speculatively as they arrived on two of the smaller sort of annoying-loud-wheely-thing humans were so fond of. The red-furred one proceeded toward the food dispensers nearby, while the other, blue and white dappled nearly as splendidly as the Lady's own brown and white, partook of the fresh breeze and admirable view. Miyaumoto approved, a healthy regard for the necessities of life in one, and a fine sense of aesthetics for the other.
As she herself was returning from a jaunt to the shore, where there had been a delectable bit of crab leg left in a crevice by one of the gulls, the Lady padded over to the red one, calling for attention as the two of them seemed caught up in their own discussion. Honestly, humans were so silly sometimes! Who gave a hairball about buma or the Genom Production Control Center on the skyline when there were sandwiches to be had? Reminded of the more important things, the red one bowed down to her, and rendered tribute in the form of a hearty helping of the still-warm fast food burger, but withheld the remainder most rudely when asked for a second helping. Ungrateful creature, and to think, Miyaumoto had deigned to strop against her leg earlier!
Here the Ungracious One's companion interceded, showing the true nobility of dapple-coats as she offered the entirety of her own hamburger to compensate. Lady Miyaumoto magnanimously decided to forgive the pair in light of the gesture, and even allowed herself to be held and stroked by the Noble One when she had finished her repast. Ah, a superior patterned coat, the scent of life and healthy energy, and talented hands as well! Letting bygones be bygones, she sang her appreciation, the low throaty tones of a premiere soloist.
Watching as her lover cradled the stray, Priss gave a lopsided grin of amusement. "Looks like it likes you, Sylvie. I almost thought it was going to attack me when I wouldn't give it any more of mine." The grin widened as she reached out to stroke one of the other woman's shoulders and teased, "I guess you've just got the magic touch, ne?"
Sylvie blushed slightly as she hugged the purring moggie closer, turning back to look out over the bay. "Ah, Priss, don't exaggerate," she replied. *Even this cat is free,* she thought happily, basking in the morning sun.
Finished with her own food, Priss wadded up the wrapper and tossed it in a nearby bin with her cola can, then swung onto her bike. "Well, let's go," she prompted, explaining, " I've got a rehearsal coming up, and a sound check after we set up at the club."
Sylvie set down the cat, with a final stroke as it rubbed affectionately against her knees before wandering off. "Ah?" *But it's so nice here, and we didn't leave Genaros just to start following new orders,* she thought, waffling for a moment. The sheer joy of self-determination made up her mind, and she replied easily, "I think I'll stay here a little longer."
Priss straightened on the saddle, smarting at the brush off, and the buma woman tried to explain. Unfortunately, the amazing, intoxicating feeling of freedom after a life of servitude was just too big to put into words, and all she could do was blurt, "I, am... free. I'm free now! You see?" She spread her arms, trying to indicate the unbounded world of possibilities all around them, just waiting to be explored in any direction.
No more enlightened, the singer could only repeat, "Free?"
Sylvie gave her a megawatt smile, and a flirty wink from one amber eye. "Right!"
Still puzzled, Priss could only figure it must be a personal space thing - she understood that, at least. "I don't know what you're talking about, but I'll catch you later." Helmet strapped on, she started the bike and kicked off, a farewell shout of "Call me!" tossed over a shoulder as she let the clutch out and merged into the slow mid-morning traffic.
Sylvie waved energetically, but was saddened by the thought that her lover probably didn't even really understand her own freedom, or how precious it was. Then again, she'd rather no one ever had to go through a life like her own, even if it meant being so oblivious to what they had. With a melancholy smile, she leaned against the rail once more, watching the gulls and the ships in the bay.
---=- + -=---
Since his cruiser still hadnt been replaced, and two bikes would fit in his parking place at home, Leon had just used the new motorcycle unit he'd been assigned to commute - he was supposed to be testing the thing anyway, right? Even better, it saved trying to find a spot in the cramped police parking garage, since he could just return it to Hangar Three where the support equipment for the prototype had been set up. As he shut it down and undid the clasp on his helmet strap, Kenty Yeager, the head mecha technician, slipped out of the partially disassembled K-11 she was working on and headed over to greet him.
"Hey Leon, how do you like the new toy so far? Had any chances to open 'er up?" she asked.
"I only got it from you last night, you know. You didn't even explain what the heck the thing is, except that it's more than just a bike," he complained.
"Eh?" She blinked and cocked her head at him, a grease stain on one cheek making her look absolutely adorable - he certainly hoped Yeager appreciated her, the lucky bastard, and given that the brunette's pregnancy was just starting to show he damn well better. "I sent you the user manual a week ago, as soon as you were picked to test one."
Leon thought about the stack of coffee cans competing with his inbox for a height record, and concentrated on maintaining his cool look.
Relenting, Kenty shook her head at the vagaries of of detectives, and launched into a quick summary, pointing out controls and display items as they were mentioned. "It's called a Police Motorcycle Battloid, or P. M. B. for short, and it's Genom R&D's latest answer to our need for better equipment to use against rogue security and military buma - though judging by the photos I've seen, not to mention the evidence materials that have been taken by various government agencies 'for further study' it's probably as direct a copy as they can manage of the motorcycle-based units your Knights in shining hardsuits like to use, and you'll need to be wearing the special body armor that you left behind last night in order to pilot it in battleframe mode."
Here she gave the Inspector a stern look. "Without it, the unit can still transform and accept voice commands if you dismount, but it doesn't use a buma brain so it's not very smart at all, not even as much as a trained animal. With the suit, it's still a little less armored than a K-11, but far beyond their specs, even the new K-12S, in just every other way - speed, strength, agility, even the combat computer that drives the heads-up display can track more targets more accurately and actually predict what known enemy types are likely to do, as well as where hits will land and tracking the origin and path of gunfire."
She started going into the specifics then, Leon paying close attention as it seemed he'd greatly underestimated the bike's capabilities before, having thought it was just some attempt at a cost saving measure over cruisers when the ADP rarely arrested anyone - even in cases of normal civilian models that went rogue due to being misused or poorly maintained, the owners were more likely to be fined than detained, and if they did need to be taken anywhere it was usually in an ambulance.
Not to mention, he just loved piloting, on those occasions he had the chance to get in some Armored Trooper time. If the department wanted to give him one of his very own, he sure wasn't going to complain!
---=- + -=---
Mackie had gone looking for his sister, needing authorization for the new design he and Dr. Raven had worked out before they started ordering parts and materials. He found her in her office talking on the videophone, one hand still holding a pen, and the customer copy of a delivery invoice in front of her for the trailer that had been delivered around mid day - one that held the wreckage of the Batmobile, which had been confiscated by the police but eventually sold at auction after investigations found that it held no leads to finding the Sabers, who weren't actually wanted on charges more serious than disturbing the peace and flight from crime scenes anyway, and far from giving any insight on their advanced technology, was built with components and techniques over two decades outdated.
If it wasn't for the fact that it was his logical, unflappable sister he was talking about, he'd almost have said... *Wait... No, no way! She can't be...* The teen's thoughts trailed off as Sylia finally capped the pen and stuffed it in a pocket before wiping at her eyes and actually *sniffling.* "Sis?" he asked, quietly. "Are you okay? I mean, you're..."
Sylia jumped, for all her advanced senses still having been too distracted to notice him approach. "Still human despite it all, it seems," she replied, voice trembling. "It's silly of me, and illogical, but... The Wayne money, and companies, and even the estate in America, none of that was ever Daddy's true legacy to me... All of that was just what he used as a disguise, the mask he hid behind. The real Bruce Wayne was the one who had a secret underground base, who put on a kevlar suit almost every night and went out to stand between the bad guys and the people of his city, the one who had the most amazing car in the world. Mother -"
She choked up, and had to wipe at the tears over running her eyes again. Mackie looked helplessly at the grey-haired man on the screen, who shrugged and mouthed "I was there too," before waving his attention back to Sylia. After making use of a hanky, the words flowed on, as unstoppable as the tears, or the tremors shaking her like a rag doll in her brother's embrace. "Mother once told me that as a baby, sometimes the only way to get me to quiet down at night as to go for a ride in that car, with its engine that rumbled and purred like a huge cat, none of the normal ones would do the trick. And now..."
Stuffing the balled up kerchief back in a pocket, she choked off a derisive laugh before it could become a sob. "It wasn't even this car, the one she talked about got replaced years before he died. But it's still... I just..." Worlds failed her, and all Sylia could do was hold and be held by her only remaining blood relative.
"It was a fine car and a great loss, but how many did your dad lose this way? Remember that it was made to be used; a tool like your suits," the man on the screen told her. "In fact, I remember taking you on some of those rides with your mom; that car got wrecked in a chase with the Joker when he used an exploding cream pie launcher built into the back of the one that nut was using at the time." Seeing Mackie's alarmed look at the pickup when he'd casually mentioned "suits" the stranger assured him, "Not to worry, it's a secure line, and like I said I've been in the family business for a while. Dick Grayson, once called Robin, then Nightwing up until I had to retire. You must be Mackie. I've heard a lot about you."
"Yeah, that's me. Uh, I guess I've heard about you, too. If you're retired, though, then who's..."
"The current Batman? Well, I really shouldn't say, I am still in on the background end of things, though. Anyway, I've go to go, time difference in the US and all. Just keep helping Cee out, okay? Bruce adopted me before even meeting your mom, so she's my sister too, you know?"
---=- + -=---
Patchy clouds on the horizon still floated like purple and orange ghosts of the sunset, but the storm front due sometime after midnight was still well out to sea, so those few stars bright enough to make it through the city's glow were as clear as they ever were over most of Megatokyo that evening. At one of the large, automated depots for the still ongoing Kanto Earthquake Recovery Zone, they were blocked by something still less permeable - plumes of smoke from the security buma that had been stationed there. The low-grade construction buma that were based at the facility had continued to function obliviously, at least until their control link to the GPCC mainframe had been taken over for other purposes.
The one human evening overseer was slumped in a corner of his office unconscious, while at his terminal Nam's fingers moved so quickly they seemed to have disappeared as she abused their stolen access while it lasted, relentlessly hunting down the data they desperately needed. Just outside, Sylvie held the DD Battlemover ready to take off at a moment's notice - they'd made too much of a disruption to go unnoticed for long, but hacking the control connection alone would have seen to that so there was no point to subtlety this time. She could hear sirens in the distance, and was about to call for Nam to abandon the search and go when she heard the lavender-haired sexaroid's triumphant cry, then there was a blur of color as she zipped out and up to a perch on the DD's back. Not waiting for anything to go wrong, she fired the battlemover's thrusters and took off into the night.
---=- + -=---
In his temporary quarters on Genaros, Daley Wong shut off the videodisc player, a disgusted look still on his face. He'd barely seen Kaufmann into the airlock of a shuttle, handcuffed and escorted by a pair of SSPD officers, before someone had nudged him from behind and shoved it into his hands, vanishing into the crowd of rubberneckers before he could even turn around. He'd seen some truly nasty things in a his time as a cop - just working cleanup after a buma rampage could see to that on any given day, thanks to the difference between their strength and durability and that of a human - and he'd always figured you couldn't really be in the ADP and think of buma as people per se, but that hadn't made it any easier to watch - he hadn't even been able to tell it was a buma on the operating table in the first scenes until enough of the skin was off to show the reinforced rib cage, and that would have been bad enough on its own, even if the perp had been sitting in a cell in front of him.
It was the murderous looks the nurse had thrown at the man doing the job whenever his back was turned, and the tears that even crappy low-quality surveillance camera footage could catch as she cleaned up afterwards that were the worst, because that said the bastard had at least some misuse of authority that let him get away with doing things like that, and making others take part. The fact that it was almost certainly another buma... It didn't really matter, not this time.
Then, that clip had ended, and the next one showed the buma who'd been tortured - he had to go back to the beginning, to where her face was intact enough to recognize, to make sure, but it was her - toting a submachine gun, standing beside another buma (though that wasn't apparent at first, either) with several more people unidentifiable in the background as the same man confronted them, and the second woman blurred with superhuman speed to knock him against a wall. The former victim then proceeded to empty the gun's large clip into him, less than a minute later being cut in half herself by debris when one of the float-cars exploded.
That hadn't been the end, though - as he knew all too well, buma were damn hard to kill, and apparently that extended even to sexaroids. In the next clip, she was back on an operating table, screaming as some kind of heat-sealing tool was used to fuse her skin to the cruder synthetic of a mannequin-class hip and leg assembly, while that utter asshole Kaufmann directed the process in between interrogating her about the other sexaroids and the shuttle they'd stolen, without much luck.
That still wasn't quite the end, though - there had been one more scene, of the poor girl in some kind of isolation cell, naked except for old blood around the marks of a brutal beating, and copious amounts of fresh being coughed up uncontrollably until it had literally pooled around her huddled form. The mannequin-class parts seemed oddly warped, and he wondered about that for a moment. There weren't really any sensors in most of a mannequin's shell at all, so it was unlikely to be a result of the abuse she'd still been undergoing. Of course, expecting the kind of slime who'd do such a thing to make rational decisions was its own kind of folly, but still...
It was only when the wall beneath her had torn away, leaving behind a fringe of ropy cables fluttering in the escaping atmosphere that he realized it was similar to the way scavenged materials looked when a one of the more recent buma types used them to add a weapon or patch their armor as the nanites worked on it, a guess confirmed by the last part of the disk.
It was an audio-only recording of a voice with the metallic overtones of an active-mode security type, leaving a message for him personally. It said, "Hyatt was one of the gentlest souls any of us ever met - no one could believe it when she was the one who gunned down Barnaby. Believe this Inspector if you believe nothing else I say: she was only his last victim, one of many, and if anyone deserved to die it was that bastard. She'd been used as a testbed for fusion nanites similar to the ones now incorporated into the BU-55C, but it never worked before the incident you saw. She has already died three times for nothing more than the quest for her own freedom; please, if she somehow makes it to Earth after all this, and ends up in your area, just let her be."
That was it, finally, and the black screen had turned to static until he shut it down. The hell of it was, as a police officer he couldn't condone murdering a man, but as a person he couldn't begin to pretend that Hyatt deserved any more punishment that she'd already received, buma or not. He ejected the disk and scowled at it for a minute or so, before shattering it under a boot heel.
Enough. He still had to check a few last leads, then contact Leon and warn him about what he'd discovered about the DD. There was police work to be done, and it had nothing to do with any 33-S except the one piloting the battlemover.
---=- + -=---
Magnus Largo glided into Flint's office like the specter of death itself, smooth and collected and radiating an icy hatred that would make the coldest winter days, when the snow squealed underfoot and every breath made the lungs and teeth ache, seem like a vacation in Hawaii. "Tell me, Flint," he commented scathingly, "Is there ANYONE competent in your organization at ALL? First the bungled assassination last week, now it seems that Kaufmann has been arrested, for arranging to smuggle the DD."
Ignoring the executive's outraged sputtering, the tall, white haired man with the gold-on-black eyes stalked over to the desk and hauled him out of it by the collar, eliciting a startled squawk from Flint, along with a desperate glance at the two bodyguard buma still standing obliviously by the door.
"They can't see me," Largo explained, "or hear me, or you, or anything else I don't want them to detect. As far as their senses can tell them, you are still sitting right here, reading files, and in just a moment you're going to tell them to leave, because you're about done for the night." At this the older man tried again to protest, only to be cut off with a sinister glare. "Your cooperation is not required, and believe me, you are quite finished. We're going to go for a little trip, you and I. Now."
Behind them, the frames of the office windows warped and slid aside, and a hazy blue sphere of energy formed around Magnus and his unwilling companion then lifted them out and away, the windows again closing behind them. Shortly after, the bodyguards acknowledged words that only they could hear, and quietly left the office to head back to their maintenance cycle cubicles.
---=- + -=---
It was about 10 PM by the time Sylvie and Nam got back to the loft, but Anri had stayed up waiting for them, too worried to rest, and their other house guest, the former buma Cynthia, had stayed up with her, alternately telling the sexaroid that she could see them and everything was fine, and pleading with her to just sit still so she could heal the daily blood degradation her damaged mechanical systems were unable to slow. The little blonde had joined them right after they bailed out of the Orca IV, flying to meet the airborne battlemover in a bubble of light after helping the shuttle along far enough that it would crash in the next valley over, instead of in the horse field.
As if that hadn't been strange enough, she'd been accompanied by a pair of actual fairies, beautiful tiny girls that fluttered along on butterfly wings shimmering with all the colors of the rainbow, and when they'd landed and she learned that Anri was hurt, Cynthia had conferred with them for a bit, then bathed the comatose buma in a differently hued glow, making the barely scabbed-over wound heal as they watched. Sylvie had still been holding her partner in her lap in the opened cockpit, and had caught enough of the fringe of the effect to feel revitalized as well, the fatigue of the nerve wracking manually controlled approach falling away like mud under a hose.
Anri had awakened then to find the child peering earnestly at her, then explaining with a smile, "Hi! I made you better, but your buma part is still broken. You should go back with me to Miss Cecilia! She can fix it for you."
Bewildered, the green-tressed sexaroid had turned to Sylvie, who was still clutching her as if afraid she'd run away. "This is Cynthia," the smiling pilot introduced. "Cynthia, this is my partner Anri. I don't know how you healed her, but thank you. Are you some kind of buma? Is Cecilia your owner?"
The little girl giggled and bounced happily on the fallen tree she'd sat upon. "I used to be, but Miss Cecilia fixed me when the giant robot attacked and Priss-oneesan had to cut it away from my leg, and then she took me to see a nice man who took all the metal out so I could be a normal girl. But he died then, so he can't take your metal out." The fairy in white, who had short, silvery hair, inserted a comment, using an audio datasquirt the sexaroids couldn't quite catch. "Yuki says I could learn to do magic like the nice man did," the blonde continued, "but it's really hard so it would take a long time. Are you sure you can't let Miss Cecilia fix you? She's not my owner, because normal people don't get owned. She's the boss for Nan and Grampa Akimoto, and everyone there is my friend!"
Sylvie shook her head. "We have to make it a secret that we're here. Can you keep a secret?"
"Uh-huh. I hafta keep lots of secrets, because of I see things that are private, even if I'm not trying sometimes. Nan Akimoto taught me it's important to keep what other people do private unless it's hurting somebody or they say it's okay. But Miss Cecilia is really good at keeping secrets too, so I'm sure it would be okay." This time it was the dark-haired fairy who chimed in, the light one just chirping agreement. "Hotaru says Anri-neesan really needs to have her parts fixed, or else get healed like that every day," Cynthia finished worriedly. She looked over at Nam, who'd slumped against the tree stump and was very pale, thanks to the use she'd had to make of her 35-A patch during the escape, but who had followed the conversation with a wide eyed wonder, having always had a love of magic and fairy tales. "You're kinda sick too, I think, like the way Anri-neesan was because her metal stuff is broken. I can help you too, I think, but your metal parts all seem okay."
"Our systems weren't built that way," the speedster replied, after a moment of shock. "Even working properly we still get sick like this, because the men who made us wanted to make sure they could stay our owners. It happens faster with me, but Sylvie would need maintenance in a few months, as well. We just want to be normal people too."
Cynthia gasped, "That's horrible! Just hold still a minute." She gathered power again as she spoke, then plied the same radiance over Nam, who sighed in relief as the status alerts from her diagnostics died down and the logy, sick feeling in her body was replaced by an amazing energy.
SERVO: Loook *deeeeply* into my eyes... Tell me, what do you see?
CROW: (hypnotized) A twisted man who wants to inflict his pain upon others.
For the next 72 hours, Itachi intoned, I will slap you with this trout. - Spying no Jutsu, chapter 3
"In the futuristic taco bell of the year 20XX, justice wears an aluminum sombrero!"hemlock-martini
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"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows