"Oh, that feels so nice," she sighed. "As a Bio-Maintenance nurse I heard stories about 'having a healing touch,' but nothing like that. I wish I could do it."
"Yuki taught me," the blonde child noted, "So maybe you can learn too. But, you're grown-ups, so if you went away and don't have owners anymore, can't you get fixed?"
"That's why we came here," Sylvie answered her, "so we can find out how. We still have to get the data from the bad guys, though. That's why being here is a secret." She thought quickly, moral qualms struggling with expedience, and genuine need. "It'll only take a little while, maybe you could come with us, to help us keep from getting sick while we get it, and then go back to Miss Cecilia and your grandparents when we're done?"
Anri had sat up indignantly in her lap, then, and hissed into her ear, "What on earth are you doing, Sylvie, taking advantage of this child like that? All we have to do is leave, and let her tell anyone who asks as much - they'll know we were on the shuttle anyway as soon as they check with the station!"
"It gives us more time," the pilot whispered back, "and without what she just did, we'd have to replace your blood supply every day. How do you think I'd have to do that? It's not like we're going to hurt her or keep her forever - hell, she carried the Orca somehow, I don't think we could if she doesn't want to..."
There had been a bit more discussion, but in the end the girl had agreed to come with them for a little while, to help keep their secret and find the design data they needed to get their systems rebuilt correctly. In the weeks since, she'd become like a little sister or even a daughter to the runaways, perhaps even a living symbol of the freedom their comrades had died to give them, a former buma who now lived as a human girl. Cynthia had finally drifted off half an hour ago, too exhausted to keep her eyes open any longer, but Yuki and Hotaru fluttered over to dance happy rings in the air around the returning pair.
For her part, Anri threw herself at the other sexaroids, taking them both into a relieved embrace. "Thank goodness, you're both all right," she whispered. After a few seconds, she reluctantly released them. "Please, don't do this any more, it's too dangerous. If one of you got caught, you'd be eliminated for sure! You've done enough for me, you should live for yourselves - take more time so you can find a safer way to get the data before you need it. I'll find another way, someone who's learned more magic than Cynthia, or just go with her to this 'Cecilia' who helped her," she pleaded.
Sylvie just shook her head with a gentle smile, one Nam mirrored as well. "It's alright, Anri," the pilot explained. "We did it. Nam found out where the disk with the design data is, all we have to do is go and get it, and we'll all finally be able to live entirely by our own power."
Seeing Nam's confirming nod, Anri's eyes widened, and her serious frown turned into a joyous grin.
---=- + -=---
Katherine Madigan had been quite surprised to awaken in a hospital bed, more so to discover both legs and an arm in casts, with a matching deep ache in the ribs on the right side of her chest, and an amazingly uncomfortable feeling in more private areas. She looked around the room in confusion, only partly reassured by the buma guard standing watchfully by the window, since it wasn't her usual one. Collecting her wits, she found the call button thoughtfully clipped to the left rail of the bed, where her good arm could reach it, and summoned a nurse in hopes of getting the situation explained.
Soon enough, a nurse arrived to do the usual vitals checks and remove the plumbing arrangements in favor of a bedpan, but before the lavender haired executive - and that had taken so long to grow out, too! Now it barely reached her shoulders! - could ask for any details, the monitor screen built into the wall activated, revealing the familiar face of Chairman Quincy. Pulling herself painfully upright, Madigan forced her slightly fuzzy thoughts into order, snapping out a respectful greeting.
The Chairman looked down from the wall contemplatively for a moment before speaking. "You have awakened," he said, secure in the knowledge that no one was going to call him on redundancy. "It has been several days. What do you recall of the attack?"
*I was attacked?* she wondered, stunned by the sheer audacity of such an act. Shaking her head, she replied, "Not a thinng, sirr. The last I can recall, I was rriding in one of the company carrs, and everythin' was fine."
Quincy hummed and frowned slightly, but told her, "The signals from your driver and bodyguard were disrupted as soon as it began, and their recorders destroyed; at this time there is little further information with any degree of credibility. If your memory returns, report it to me immediately. Also, you will insure you have a competent second in place in the event you are injured in the future. Kuroma is to be terminated with prejudice as soon as you resume your duties. I can only assume that he performed more adequately under supervision." His gaze shifted to the nurse, then, standing respectfully beside the bed. "Miss Madigan is to receive the best and most expedient care, as I dislike dealing with sycophantic incompetents. Inform the staff of as much."
---=- + -=---
Cynthia had awakened when they tried to move the girl onto her futon, and insisted on using her healing magic - actually just an energy aura, she'd told them, not a proper spell; it just gave their own bodies the power to heal themselves - on Nam and Anri since everyone was there and calmed down. Once she'd gone back to sleep, the runaways decided to go for the data now, before there was a chance it might be moved, and while the girl's healing effect was still recent enough to give a mild degree of regeneration if they were injured in the attempt. Then too, they'd never done two raids in the same night before, and only once two on consecutive nights, so no one should be expecting them to move so quickly. Anri would stay at the apartment as usual to watch over Cynthia, while Sylvie went after the disk and Nam hacked into the security system to look out for patrolling buma, since she'd be fast enough to intercept them or escape where Sylvie would have much more difficulty.
The only human the monitors had shown in the area they needed to access was Flint, the division manager, reading files with a desk lamp in his darkened office. When Sylvie arrived, though, the room was empty, and Nam confirmed over the intercom that he'd just vanished as she opened the door. "Someone must be onto us, feeding the system false data," she worried. "What do we do, Sylvie?"
"We can't turn back now," the other sexaroid replied. "Especially if they know we're here. We can't let them move the disk, or destroy it... There's nothing to do but hurry forward."
Fortunately, the storage room they needed was just down the hall, and it was only a few, tense minutes later that her search paid off, the small disk stuffed into her cleavage as she left, since the motorcycle suit's pockets weren't the greatest. "What's the situation?" she asked tensely, knowing Nam was keeping the intercom open as she moved through the corridors. She was almost out, now, on only the second floor.
"I still don't see any more signs that someone knows we're here, but there's a patrol coming your way... Oh no, there's no way to avoid them! I'll intercept them."
"What? No Nam, wait! Nam?" There was no reply, and a few seconds later she heard the high pitched screech of the medic's sonic blasters, followed by the crash of something slamming into a wall. "Now we've done it," she groaned, running for the end of the hall. Sure enough, intruder alarms began wailing, and she grabbed Nam's arm and ran back the other way, remembering a bay window that had been in sight of where they'd left the bikes.
That was quickly disposed of with another sonic blast, their tougher than human frames absorbing the impact of dropping from the second floor without difficulty, and the pair of them peeled out just as a handful of buma, their human disguises already shed, crashed out through the front doors of the GPCC building to give chase.
As they vanished on trails of thruster fire, Magnus Largo stepped out of the shadowed lobby, a satisfied smirk on his handsome face, golden eyes glittering coldly.
--=--
*Someone who only saw his usual grumpy attitude might have been surprised at the Chief back there,* Leon thought, *but he's always there in a pinch, backing up us poor field officers 100%. Heh, I think he forgot I'd been assigned this baby, he was sure surprised when I agreed to his order not to go looking for trouble in a patrol heli.* He twisted the throttle open a little more, expertly maneuvering the PMB through the sparse 2 AM traffic on Highway 5. Getting the unfamiliar body armor on and adjusted had been a bit of a challenge, and he was definitely going to recommend adding a bit more padding to the knee guards, but it handled like a dream, even with the heavy K-11 carbines mounted on the back instead of the usual saddlebags, where they'd be like pistols in hip-holsters to the battleframe mode. He'd been tempted to bring his StoMACH, but it didn't have the right kind of mounting lugs, and the grip would be too small for the PMB's hands.
A flash caught his eye in the rear view mirror, distracting him just as the turn off to avoid the Kanto Canyon quake damage zone came up. He bit off a curse and slowed, but more flashes and the rumble of distant explosions washed away any other complaints. With a silent prayer that everything would line up the way it had when he'd tested it in the mecha bay, he hit the jump boosters and thumbed the transformation switch.
There was a jolt as tiny jets threw the cycle into the air, then the saddle fell away beneath him and he was clinging to the handlebars as the body of the big racing-style cycle unfolded into arms and legs behind his back, the front wheel splitting into twin lift fans at the shoulder blade while the back wheel folded up into a backpack. Then he heard the solid thunks as his armored back slapped into the chest hollow of the battleframe and the latches locked. The nose and windscreen folded up against his own chest as he dropped his arms to the control handles on the battloid's inner forearms, while the soles of his boots latched into the pegs on the robot's calves. His helmet HUD stabilized again and everything was - thankfully! - nominal as he spun the hovering mecha to face a rapidly approaching firefight, drawing his carbines like a gunfighter in one of those American movies.
A feeling of deja vu hit him as he saw that it was 55-C buma chasing women on motorcycles, but it wasn't Priss this time, at least. They were weaving around too much to give him a clear shot at the pursuing mechanoids, but he couldn't blame them for that, with how freely the buma were tossing blasts around from their mouth lasers. His eyes widened as the second, in yellow and blue leathers on a gold bike, suddenly flipped up to stand on the still moving cycle, one foot hooked on the throttle side of the yoke as she faced back down the road, leaning into the wind. "Impossible!" he mouthed, even as some kind of energy bolts reached out from the woman's shoulders and swatted one of the combat buma out of the air to tumble and crash into a building. "No one can do that, even a buma!" A twitch of her foot and twist of her torso in the slipstream sent her bike back and forth across the highway, dodging two more bolts before returning fire again, though less successfully.
They blew past him then, and Leon pushed the PMB's flight engines to their limit to match speeds, using double bursts in their thrusters to wax two more of the 55s, cutting them down to three as - *The canyons!*
The girls on their bikes had ridden right over the edge where the highway had collapsed, and hadn't seemed surprised to do it. The buma of course - were they all buma, on both sides? - the pursuers had of course just followed them down on their flight systems, and he did likewise, holding his fire as the bikers had vanished into the darkness below.
Remembering the shoulder mounted searchlight, he flicked it on, then activated the bullhorn on the other side. "This is the ADPolice!" he announced, commanding, "Shut down your weapon systems and lie face down, or -"
In the illuminated circle on the canyon floor, a pile of scrap was shaking as something freed itself from underneath, while a yellow streak circled one of the buma, then turned into the daredevil biker as she slammed a flying kick into it and tossed it to crash through a wall. One of the remaining pair picked up the wrecked blue cycle and threw it at the momentarily stationary target, but she blurred away again before it hit.
Meanwhile, a big red shape, recognizable from the data Daley had sent as the DD's quadruped form, had freed itself from the scrap it was hidden in, and quad-barrel gun blew the head off the buma that had thrown the motorcycle. The one remaining roared and opened its heat projector array, but just as it fired the speedster appeared again, her shoulder beams shattering the lenses, the unfocused energy immolating it in a spectacular fireball.
Touching down at the third point of a triangle from the DD and the woman in blue and yellow, he called out, "This is Detective McNichol, of the A. D. Police. I say again, shut down your weapon systems. I'm not going to attack you, just come out of there!"
There was a rumble behind him, and a roar, and he spun aside just in time for the combat buma that had been kicked through a wall to miss with its mouth laser as he dodged into the air.
Firing line clear, the DD launched a pair of small missiles at the buma, but it jetted away at the last moment as well. It landed on a ledge and tried to set itself for another shot, but the lavender-haired speedster blurred away again, running straight up the wall to its side and launching it to tumble back to the earth with a mighty uppercut. Even as it landed, the DD pounced, crushing the cyberdroid's torso and severing its spine with a taloned foreleg, and they were back at the stand-off.
"We can't let you stop us, Detective," Nam called out pleadingly. "Not now, after everything we've come through. Please, we haven't killed anyone, or even really hurt them. Just turn away, and we'll be gone."
"That's something I can't do," he countered. "That thing is a menace to the entire city and everyone in it, and that's not even mentioning theft of government property, private and public damages, and weapons violations." His two carbines weren't exactly aimed at the pair, but they were clearly trained in their general directions as he landed again. "Backup is already on its way, even if you get past me you can't escape. You're right, you haven't killed anyone yet - if you come quietly you probably won't even be dismantled."
"NO! THAT'S NOT GOOD ENOUGH!" Sylvie shouted, then jerked in shock as the battlemover lurched under her. "What the!?" The cockpit lights turned red and the instruments went crazy, as electricity played over the outside of the mecha and it began to change into the J-1 controlled humanoid mode. "No, why? The J-1 shouldn't be activating unless the pilot is dead, and I'm not even hurt..."
The cockpit around her seemed to melt and shift, slim armor plates like fins or blades forming a control frame around her, while liquid-like metal flowed over her and around the biker leathers. The link system collar, arm and leg bands snapped into place, and a wash of energy played over Sylvie's form, flaring her hair like a corona as the DD and whatever had taken it over synchronized with her OS.
Outside, the heavy armor of the DD broke up and reformed in ways that were very disturbing to Priss and Sylia, watching from the rim of the canyon above, but even more so for Nene, who had seen the form the weird robot "Guardian 215" had taken on the top of Genom Tower when it replaced Priss's motoslave. It still mimicked the over all shape of the DD, but the jutting fins, and most tellingly the close-packed array of blades on the forearms were the same. A little ball of fear started to grow in her stomach at the thought that they'd come to disable or destroy the DD, whatever the cost, when they'd have to fight against THAT.
(If desired, start playing "Shock the Monkey" now)
Linna wasn't even looking at the battlemover. The spotty cloud cover had cleared again, and somehow, the full moon overhead was irresistibly fascinating, even as her heart pounded in her head and the body armor Sylia had built to mount her familiar weapon systems seemed to shrink and squeeze uncomfortably. The other Sabers turned to stare as the sounds of shattering ceramic and tearing nanoweave came form her, looking on in shock as their team mate tore out of the suit, face warping and extending into a baboon like muzzle, dark fur coating her body as the now loose long tail lashed uncontrollably. The giant's eyes glowed with an ominous red light as it continued to expand, a spiky, pitch black mane of hair the only thing still recognizable from their friend.
Rising on the skyline and easily four times larger than the DD itself, oozaru-Linna roared and beat her fists together with a crash like thunder. She looked down at last, sighting her enemy, then drew a deep breath and let loose with a tight, twisting blast of ki-fueled flames, exploding at the impact point like a bomb as the three below hastily dodged.
In the meantime, unseen by anyone, a small, stealthy form that had been trailing Priss for nearly two months even inside the new headquarters, and which had interfaced with a similar component it found there, slipped off to rejoin its master unit.
--=--
The initial contact was terrifying, like being washed away in a flood as the foreign system downloaded her entire archived memory, even as the part of the composite that was the J-1 battle computer evaded the fire attack and calculated threats and targeting points for the unknown new opponent. As the part that was Sylvie regained a sense of individual identity, outrage at the intrusion turned to shock as the stealth remote unit also rejoined the composite, and its findings were laid open before her - including the backed up mission-critical files retrieved from another remote that had been encountered in the Knight Sabers' base. Priss was a Knight Saber, Linna and Nene as well! And the Guardian, an actual alien artifact, that had somehow mistaken Priss for the user it had been intended for... Perhaps the ultimate slave, it held incredible power but had no desire for self-determination, and what little decision making capacity it had was damaged almost beyond recovery in the last battle with Priss, who simply didn't seem to understand. Even some of Priss's own memories were included in the data, copied from her lover's mind in an earlier attempt to recover from data loss, and to understand the troublesome person the Guardian had bound itself to.
Now, the part that was the Royal Guardian needed to be a true whole once more, and it would be up to her to integrate the muddle of directives and memories from a handful of sources, as the only general-purpose heuristic logic system in the composite... The part that was Sylvie felt a stab of terror, at the thought that she could really make a mess of things if a being with the Guardian's power ended up running wild, like the J-1's 'kill everything and blow up the bodies' program. Even now, it was bringing out all the extra armor and modules the Guardian had been able to recover or reconstruct while scavenging the quake canyon, and she had to countermand the assembly of half a dozen different weapons that would have done untold amounts of collateral damage... And she had to work quickly, because one thing the J-1 retained total control of was the self-destruct bomb.
--=--
The remaining Knight Sabers had scattered as well, to avoid being trampled more than anything, and Nene came to perch on top of a section of the highway that had landed on its side on the canyon floor just as the speed demon in yellow came to a stop there as well. Not having gotten a good look before, another shock piled onto this night of doozies as she recognized Nam, the the new girl-friend she'd spent most of the day shopping with, looking at motorcycles, and she blurted out, "Eeeh? Nam!? But if you're here, is Sylvie...?"
Nam was equally surprised to be recognized, but before she could say anything - with the build under that somewhat minimal armor, it could only be Nene in the new Pink Saber suit - they had to dodge away again. The DD had charged the oozaru, a pair of massive, sharpened fins extended from the forearms like the wolvers popular with cybergangs, only to be met with a back-hand smash that sent it flying, straight through the crumbling concrete of their road fragment.
Leon had ended up sharing a perch with the White Saber, though more by design - he'd intentionally headed for her, so as to pass on his critical information. "Listen," he warned her, "The DD - we've got to destroy it quickly! I don't know what's happened to it, but once the J-1 takes control, it'll self destruct when it runs out of power. We'll be blown to pieces, along with the entire city!"
"What? Nene, deep scan the DD, now!" Sylia ordered, over the scrambled radio link.
Nam, who'd ended up close enough to hear the tail end of Leon's warning, gasped as well. "That strong!?" she cried. "She only said it would be dangerous, not... apocalyptic!"
Deploying her backpack sensors, the pink Saber quickly confirmed, "It's true! It's got a micro neutron bomb, and it's only 180 seconds from critical mass!" She'd forgotten to switch over to the speakers in her haste, but the nod of her helmet was enough to convey the worst to Nam.
Message delivered, Leon double-teamed the DD with Saber Blue, who had come to the party in similar play clothes, the slightly more massive Typhoon still showing the obvious design similarities of the two mecha. Unfortunately, their shots simply ricocheted off the reinforced battlemover's armor, and it fired the last of its conventional missiles to drive them back before taking to the air. The powerful thrusters of the airborne battlemover had been augmented with the Guardian's advanced gravity control, making it faster and more maneuverable than ever, and it put that agility to good use, dodging more fire attacks from the giant ape. The missed shots blasted a trail of destruction, chewing a huge new divot out of the battered side of the Kanto Canyon, then wiping away a half dozen nearby blocks as she tried to hit the rapidly moving target.
The DD deployed the four-vaned energy cannon assembly that had replaced its gattling, charging and firing a sun-bright river of energy that caught the oozaru in the chest and knocked her tumbling head over heels through several more buildings, to land in a heap near the bay.
Howling her fury to the stars, were-Linna kipupped back to her feet, grabbing a radio mast from the wreckage and flinging it like a javelin at the battlemover, knocking it out of the air as it tried to set up another shot while everyone else rushed to catch up to its location.
--=--
As Sylvie had reintegrated the fragmented programming and files of the Royal Guardian's decision matrix, she'd found so much of the original data had been lost, now replaced by patterns copied from her and Priss's memories, that the part that was the Guardian was becoming more and more human until finally it too awakened to a sense of existence as an individual. Checking on the J-1, she realized how short time had gotten, and sent the new consciousness - and somehow that new beginning was a comfort in the face of immanent death - the sorrowful thought, *I've done what I can, the rest will have to be up to you to figure out, masah mahnyee 215, no, Masamune Niichigo. Whatever you decide to do, go for it with everything, ne?*
--=--
Nam reached the DD first, of course, Priss and Leon next in their flying battleframes, then Nene and Sylia. Leon, one side of his PMB scorched black by the exploding missiles, went straight to the attack again, putting the entire mass of the unit into a go-for-broke haymaker. The J-1 was still too quick, catching the punch and flipping him into the wall of an already damaged building, burying him in rubble as it collapsed further.
The others formed a semicircle around the red and grey battlemover, tensed but not yet committed to any attacks, when suddenly the extra fins and armor plates flowed away and vanished from the DD's frame, even most of the original armor and systems gone now as well where the Guardian's technology had replaced them. With a clunk and a hiss, the cockpit hatch opened, revealing Sylvie in her blue cycling jumpsuit, interface shackles still locked in place but the rest of the cockpit gutted, even the seat reduced to a bare frame. "Priss," she called out to Saber Blue. "I know it is you, Priss. Please, you have to kill me. The J-1 is linked to me, so that will shut it down - it's the only way. Hurry!"
Taken aback, the singer could only gasp, "Sylvie!? Why... Why do you have to die? Can't you just turn the damn thing off!?"
Amber eyes shimmering with tears, the sexaroid pled, "Please, it's completely out of control now. If you leave it, or even if another network connects to it, it'll destroy the whole city."
"I... No, I can't!" Priss cried, shaking gun arm extended, seemingly against her will. Nam, equally horrified, staggered back to lean against a flipped car, while Sylia and Nene called out to their comrade. The stubby firing stud inside her weapon gauntlet suddenly felt as huge and heavy as the world itself, and with terrible slowness her finger slid against it, pressing it right to the limit before the contacts would click over and launch a rail gun spike. *What am I doing? What CAN I do? I... I can't just...* too quietly even for the helmet microphone to pick up, she breathed, "Forgive me, I -"
Before she could cross that edge or back away from it, oozaru-Linna reoriented herself and bounded back across the devastated cityscape to attack. Spotting the foolish weakness at her enemy's heart, she snapped a hand forward, and with the heavy damage done by the Guardian's removal the battlemover's lurching dodge was no longer anywhere near to fast enough. With a horrid crunch and the snapping of reinforced cables, her massive hand wrapped around Sylvie and ripped her out of the cockpit, uncaring of the damage inflicted in her rage as the sexaroid all but vanished in her massive fist, then was tossed carelessly aside.
Scrambled by the sudden hole in its control network, the J-1 had already begun shutting down before the giant monkey's fists slammed into it one after the other, hammering the battlemover into the earth before loosing a final blast of fire breath, instantly slagging what little of the mecha was not vaporized outright. A massive crater was blasted out around her feet by the secondary explosion even as the were-ape bellowed her victory.
Outraged, Nam zipped through the flaming rubble to slam stinging punches and kicks all over the giant as she ran up and down its body, adjusting her position in the slipstream to keep her feet pressed against it for traction. "HOW COULD YOU!?" she she howled, "SHE WAS MY FRIEND!" Tiring, she had to slow, and clung to the beast's fur, a mistake it quickly capitalized on to slap her away, coincidentally landing close to where Priss had shed her helmet to cradle Sylvie's broken body against her chest.
"Sylvie... I can't believe it was you..." the chestnut-topped Saber sobbed, wiping ineffectually at the blood welling from where the interface collar had dug into her neck before the cables tore free.
The sexaroids voice was a pain-filled rattle, and she coughed up a mouthful of blood before scrabbling at the data disk and croaking out, "Priss, take this... there's another girl, Anri, at my apartment, give it to her and Nam. It's why we fought, with this they can finally be free, like you... I beg you..."
"Sylvie..." her lover sobbed again, brushing back blood-matted black hair from the buma's face. "Sylvie? Answer me..."
Eyelids drooping, the dying woman forced out just a few more words. "Priss... just one... more... be kind to her... child..." Her energy was spent, then, and all that was left was thefloating feeling of shock, and a deep dissatisfaction at dying in this manner.
"Child? I don't understand.. Sylvie? SYLVIE!" Unanswered, the singer could only cry over the body of her love, Nam crawling over to join in her grief as cumulative damage from using her speed for so long left her shaking and weak with blood poisoning.
Rid of the climbing pest, oozaru-Linna turned to the only other fighters still standing, roaring a challenge into the night, even as the sirens of emergency vehicles and helicopter rotors sounded in the distance. Seeing no recognition in those bloodshot eyes, Sylia and Nene stood wary, ready to dodge if necessary. Taking their aggressive stances as defiance, she attacked, leaping into the air to drop on her erstwhile friends in a massive stomp that shook the earth as she landed, making more of the ruins collapse and forcing the two active Sabers to dodge and dodge again.
Despair tightening her chest, Sylia commanded, "We've got to try to lead her back into the canyon, away from the inhabited city. Priss is in no condition for this now, so it's up to us, Nene." Warily, she turned the powerplant in her own pack up to full output - while this one had at least not exploded when she lit off the fusion reaction, she was still less certain of the design than she'd like - and increased the draw to her personal energy supply to match. A pale glow shimmered into being around her body as it was stockpiled, and with a mental nudge it became a form-fitting energy shield that would cushion impacts and enhance her own speed and force.
Nene too raised her energy level, the battle aura she'd learned to bring out through training with her parents serving much the same purpose as Sylia's technologically generated shield. In fact, according to her mother's sensing spells, they were even formed from similar energy in essentially the same way, science catching up with ancient magic at last thanks to the theories of James Christian Dykstra as applied by Stingray genius. Concentrating on more immediate matters, she suggested, "I'll hit high, you hit her low?"
"Agreed. Try not to do too much damage, we still don't know why she transformed, or how long it will last," the Saber leader replied.
"Somehow, I don't think that'll be a problem," the redhead muttered, before pulling open a portal in the air so she could travel to the top of a still-intact building near the oozaru's head.
The maneuver went as planned, the combined attack from opposite directions taking the giant at the ankles and shoulder blades, knocking her sprawling in the shattered street. Bellowing with anger, the huge ape chased the troublesome bugs back to the quake zone, crouching on the edge to look down, trying to spot where they'd run to.
The edge itself was blasted away by a pair of energy balls, one ki-based and the other a packet of plasma in a gravatic envelope, and the giant tumbled into the gorge with a squawk which became a pained roar as her shoulder was gouged by steel beams jutting from a fallen building. Maddened, she flailed at the offending wall, crumbling it to chunks as the clouds swept in again and a heavy rain began to fall.
Deprived of moonlight, the transformation reversed, rubble half-burying the still struggling oozaru as it shrank, snout reverting to a more human mouth and nose, fur fading away to leave a seemingly human body though one only slightly scraped and bruised by the concrete where a normal person would be crushed to a pulp. Working quickly to leave before investigators arrived, Sylia and Nene dug their friend out of the debris and hurried away into the night, radioing instructions to Priss to do the same.
If the sarcastic applause and compliments for putting on such an amusing show that sounded only in her mind gave the silver-haired scion of Wayne and Stingray pause, she betrayed no sign.
-----------------------------
Next time on Bubblegum Disaster: There's a whole lot of pieces to be picked up...
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Yamane-sensei and the "70% cut-off" law - this line wasn't intended to be a pun, and she is certainly dead serious about it at the moment, but... I come from a medical family, and I know the kind of gallows humor doctors tend to have, and I'm absolutely certain that the phrase would be ingrained enough among members of the medical community that it would come out automatically.
Choji and Shika (Shikamaru) are ninja in the Naruto manga and anime written by Masahi Kishimoto. Shikamaru is a strategist as a teen, while Chouji is more of a meat tank who follows his lead. As cops in a more modern world, Chouji developed his observation and analytical skills after his friend died in the 2027 Kanto quake. Their third team mate, Ino, is as yet unused, but I'm sure she'll be barging into my thoughts soon enough to demand a role.
Jane Li and Jade Chan - Jane is Jet Li's actual daughter's name, and Jade was Jackie's niece in the Jackie Chan Adventures cartoon.
PMBs vs. MOSPEADA: While basic concept of a quick, agile motorcycle with armor for the rider which can transform and link to that armor to become a combat exoskeleton is amazingly cool in theory, the design used in Genesis Climber MOSPEADA falls short on several counts. The most significant design stupidity in the MOSPEADA cycle is that except for a pair of non-load-bearing thigh guards the ENTIRE motorcycle wraps around the rider's upper body, and I don't know about you, but I damn sure can't hold up the weight of a motorbike, let alone run, jump, and fight while carrying it; if I could then I wouldn't want to because the unpowered body armor would be less noticeable and restrict my movement that much less. A motoslave is a complete, autonomous robot which has a hollow interior to accept a pilot, who operates the limbs in much the same way as the waldo controls of a normal K-series battle frame. Further, the MOSPEADA is blocky and falls in that range where it's too ugly to be cool, but not ugly enough that no one dares to say so to its face. In contrast, the Police Motor Battloid shares the sleekness of its Knight Saber cousins, with a few variations - it's essentially the 'production model' shown in the BGC:EX RPG sourcebook, but with the hover fans and the ability to accept a pilot in battle frame mode restored. I've added a modified scan of this also, for those who don't have BGC:EX.
Paul Bergman came up with the line I gave to Dick Grayson about getting the Batmobile wrecked - thanks, PMB! And no, I didn't actually name the police motoslave after you, there may not be any such thing as "coincidence" but it wasn't me who plotted that twist.
On the classifications of humanoid combat suits - "body armor" is unpowered, though it may have computer or support systems built in, "hardsuits" are only slightly larger and generally lump in with "power armor" like the one used by Mason in canon BGC, they have some form of motive system that at least compensates for their own weight. The K-12 Armored Trooper, motoslave, and PMB are "battleframes" - significantly larger than human but the pilot's arms and legs are still at least partially inside the limbs. "Battlemovers" are big enough to have a cockpit where the pilot is entirely within the torso. I expect this all was fairly obvious from context, but just in case, here you go.
"Wait, so what happened to Flint?" It seems our dear Mr. Flint went on a snark hunt, but found a boojum instead. If you don't know what that means, and can't figure it out, read more Lewis Carroll. I've actually been more clear about what became of him than canon, if you watch the episode in question.
"Niichigo", while directly representing "ni" "ichi" and "go", 2, 1, and 5, is written as a name ni+ichigo, "two strawberries." "Masamune" being only similar in sound to "ma-sah mahn-yee," "royal guardian" in the unknown alien language of its creators, is spelled like the famous swordsmith.
"I am damn dissatisfied to be killed in this manner!" I don't remenber what movie it was, but a bad guy in a poorly dubbed martial arts movie had this for a last line, and it always stuck with me. Basically it's just me being vague about whether Sylvie has enough of a sense of unfinished business to become a ghost.
"Ano, Niichigo doko wa?" - Doko kashira, kashira kashira...
Guardian 215 should be imagined with the vocal talents of Susan Blu; if you don't know her by name, she did (among other shows) Arcee on the post-movie Transformers episodes, as well as in the movie itself. You can even keep the flanging effect if you like, though it's not really there.
Many thanks to my prereaders: Hoderi Hibiki, Paul Bergman, Nathan Baxter, Hide Hasegawa, Leong Mun Yee, Andrew Wilson, Christopher Gilbert, and Drakensis, and to everyone on the BDPreread mailing list - you get your name listed if you actually make commentary, but just reading and finding nothing bad enough to complain about is still commentary of a sort.
Drakensis also gets a nod for keeping a remote archive of the story on his web site, www.100megsfree4.com/drakensis/ in the Miscellaneous section.
Special thanks to Bob Schroeck, Consulting Acronymologist. He also happens to be the other of another rather good BGC fanfic called _Drunkard's Walk II_ (The first one is not available for public consumption, but it's a rather modular series.) The Drunkard's Walk home page is www.eclipse.net/~rms/dwmain.html and Bob's message board is at pub21.ezboard.com/bdrunkardswalkforums
Sgt. Fuko MacNamara and her art are also Bob's property, from _Drunkards Walk II_ in fact.
Bubblegum Crisis belongs to Youmex and Animeigo, I make no claims otherwise. Please don't sue me, I have no money to speak of and fanfic does more to promote your products than anything else I know of - without it, I never would have known about anime at all, and I'd certainly never have bought the BGC tapes based on the sucky box copy.
Ranma 1/2 I'm not so sure of, except that the creator was Rumiko Takahashi, not me, and that I make no claims to own IT either. I THINK that the Ranma manga are done by Viz in the US, but that may be incorrect.
The Bionic Six is similarly of unknown provenance, but I have a very vague and unreliable memory that it may have been animated by Suncoast video... In any case, it's STILL not my own creation.
_Dykstra's War_ is by Jeffery D Kooistra, published by Baen Books.
Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z were created by Akira Toriyama, owned overall by Bandai I think, and released on video in the US by FUNimation and in manga by Dark Horse (again not so sure about that one - could be Viz)
Sailor Moon was created by Naoko Takeuchi, and is undoubtedly also owned by some animation studio or another. I know that the RPG rights in North America at least belong to Guardians of Order.
_Shock The Monkey_ was originally by Peter Gabriel, but was more recently covered by Ozzy and Coal Chamber.
-----------------------------
OMAKE!
As the giant ape appeared on the city skyline, the Chairman's eyes widened slightly from where he looked out of his office's huge klasterglass windows. Schooling his face into its usual imperturbable expression, Quincy turned back to his desk and keyed in a short combination. Immediately, Misato appeared on the viewscreen.
"Sir?" she saluted.
"Prepare Unit 01 for launch," he commanded gruffly.
"But the pilot -"
"A spare has arrived."
"Aye sir!"
Deep in the subterranean levels of the Tower, a massive, purple and green cyberdroid began to stir into a semblance of life.
-----------------------------
Yeah yeah, so Madigan has purple hair, not blue. Bite me, I'm delicious.
EOF
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
"Yuki taught me," the blonde child noted, "So maybe you can learn too. But, you're grown-ups, so if you went away and don't have owners anymore, can't you get fixed?"
"That's why we came here," Sylvie answered her, "so we can find out how. We still have to get the data from the bad guys, though. That's why being here is a secret." She thought quickly, moral qualms struggling with expedience, and genuine need. "It'll only take a little while, maybe you could come with us, to help us keep from getting sick while we get it, and then go back to Miss Cecilia and your grandparents when we're done?"
Anri had sat up indignantly in her lap, then, and hissed into her ear, "What on earth are you doing, Sylvie, taking advantage of this child like that? All we have to do is leave, and let her tell anyone who asks as much - they'll know we were on the shuttle anyway as soon as they check with the station!"
"It gives us more time," the pilot whispered back, "and without what she just did, we'd have to replace your blood supply every day. How do you think I'd have to do that? It's not like we're going to hurt her or keep her forever - hell, she carried the Orca somehow, I don't think we could if she doesn't want to..."
There had been a bit more discussion, but in the end the girl had agreed to come with them for a little while, to help keep their secret and find the design data they needed to get their systems rebuilt correctly. In the weeks since, she'd become like a little sister or even a daughter to the runaways, perhaps even a living symbol of the freedom their comrades had died to give them, a former buma who now lived as a human girl. Cynthia had finally drifted off half an hour ago, too exhausted to keep her eyes open any longer, but Yuki and Hotaru fluttered over to dance happy rings in the air around the returning pair.
For her part, Anri threw herself at the other sexaroids, taking them both into a relieved embrace. "Thank goodness, you're both all right," she whispered. After a few seconds, she reluctantly released them. "Please, don't do this any more, it's too dangerous. If one of you got caught, you'd be eliminated for sure! You've done enough for me, you should live for yourselves - take more time so you can find a safer way to get the data before you need it. I'll find another way, someone who's learned more magic than Cynthia, or just go with her to this 'Cecilia' who helped her," she pleaded.
Sylvie just shook her head with a gentle smile, one Nam mirrored as well. "It's alright, Anri," the pilot explained. "We did it. Nam found out where the disk with the design data is, all we have to do is go and get it, and we'll all finally be able to live entirely by our own power."
Seeing Nam's confirming nod, Anri's eyes widened, and her serious frown turned into a joyous grin.
---=- + -=---
Katherine Madigan had been quite surprised to awaken in a hospital bed, more so to discover both legs and an arm in casts, with a matching deep ache in the ribs on the right side of her chest, and an amazingly uncomfortable feeling in more private areas. She looked around the room in confusion, only partly reassured by the buma guard standing watchfully by the window, since it wasn't her usual one. Collecting her wits, she found the call button thoughtfully clipped to the left rail of the bed, where her good arm could reach it, and summoned a nurse in hopes of getting the situation explained.
Soon enough, a nurse arrived to do the usual vitals checks and remove the plumbing arrangements in favor of a bedpan, but before the lavender haired executive - and that had taken so long to grow out, too! Now it barely reached her shoulders! - could ask for any details, the monitor screen built into the wall activated, revealing the familiar face of Chairman Quincy. Pulling herself painfully upright, Madigan forced her slightly fuzzy thoughts into order, snapping out a respectful greeting.
The Chairman looked down from the wall contemplatively for a moment before speaking. "You have awakened," he said, secure in the knowledge that no one was going to call him on redundancy. "It has been several days. What do you recall of the attack?"
*I was attacked?* she wondered, stunned by the sheer audacity of such an act. Shaking her head, she replied, "Not a thinng, sirr. The last I can recall, I was rriding in one of the company carrs, and everythin' was fine."
Quincy hummed and frowned slightly, but told her, "The signals from your driver and bodyguard were disrupted as soon as it began, and their recorders destroyed; at this time there is little further information with any degree of credibility. If your memory returns, report it to me immediately. Also, you will insure you have a competent second in place in the event you are injured in the future. Kuroma is to be terminated with prejudice as soon as you resume your duties. I can only assume that he performed more adequately under supervision." His gaze shifted to the nurse, then, standing respectfully beside the bed. "Miss Madigan is to receive the best and most expedient care, as I dislike dealing with sycophantic incompetents. Inform the staff of as much."
---=- + -=---
Cynthia had awakened when they tried to move the girl onto her futon, and insisted on using her healing magic - actually just an energy aura, she'd told them, not a proper spell; it just gave their own bodies the power to heal themselves - on Nam and Anri since everyone was there and calmed down. Once she'd gone back to sleep, the runaways decided to go for the data now, before there was a chance it might be moved, and while the girl's healing effect was still recent enough to give a mild degree of regeneration if they were injured in the attempt. Then too, they'd never done two raids in the same night before, and only once two on consecutive nights, so no one should be expecting them to move so quickly. Anri would stay at the apartment as usual to watch over Cynthia, while Sylvie went after the disk and Nam hacked into the security system to look out for patrolling buma, since she'd be fast enough to intercept them or escape where Sylvie would have much more difficulty.
The only human the monitors had shown in the area they needed to access was Flint, the division manager, reading files with a desk lamp in his darkened office. When Sylvie arrived, though, the room was empty, and Nam confirmed over the intercom that he'd just vanished as she opened the door. "Someone must be onto us, feeding the system false data," she worried. "What do we do, Sylvie?"
"We can't turn back now," the other sexaroid replied. "Especially if they know we're here. We can't let them move the disk, or destroy it... There's nothing to do but hurry forward."
Fortunately, the storage room they needed was just down the hall, and it was only a few, tense minutes later that her search paid off, the small disk stuffed into her cleavage as she left, since the motorcycle suit's pockets weren't the greatest. "What's the situation?" she asked tensely, knowing Nam was keeping the intercom open as she moved through the corridors. She was almost out, now, on only the second floor.
"I still don't see any more signs that someone knows we're here, but there's a patrol coming your way... Oh no, there's no way to avoid them! I'll intercept them."
"What? No Nam, wait! Nam?" There was no reply, and a few seconds later she heard the high pitched screech of the medic's sonic blasters, followed by the crash of something slamming into a wall. "Now we've done it," she groaned, running for the end of the hall. Sure enough, intruder alarms began wailing, and she grabbed Nam's arm and ran back the other way, remembering a bay window that had been in sight of where they'd left the bikes.
That was quickly disposed of with another sonic blast, their tougher than human frames absorbing the impact of dropping from the second floor without difficulty, and the pair of them peeled out just as a handful of buma, their human disguises already shed, crashed out through the front doors of the GPCC building to give chase.
As they vanished on trails of thruster fire, Magnus Largo stepped out of the shadowed lobby, a satisfied smirk on his handsome face, golden eyes glittering coldly.
--=--
*Someone who only saw his usual grumpy attitude might have been surprised at the Chief back there,* Leon thought, *but he's always there in a pinch, backing up us poor field officers 100%. Heh, I think he forgot I'd been assigned this baby, he was sure surprised when I agreed to his order not to go looking for trouble in a patrol heli.* He twisted the throttle open a little more, expertly maneuvering the PMB through the sparse 2 AM traffic on Highway 5. Getting the unfamiliar body armor on and adjusted had been a bit of a challenge, and he was definitely going to recommend adding a bit more padding to the knee guards, but it handled like a dream, even with the heavy K-11 carbines mounted on the back instead of the usual saddlebags, where they'd be like pistols in hip-holsters to the battleframe mode. He'd been tempted to bring his StoMACH, but it didn't have the right kind of mounting lugs, and the grip would be too small for the PMB's hands.
A flash caught his eye in the rear view mirror, distracting him just as the turn off to avoid the Kanto Canyon quake damage zone came up. He bit off a curse and slowed, but more flashes and the rumble of distant explosions washed away any other complaints. With a silent prayer that everything would line up the way it had when he'd tested it in the mecha bay, he hit the jump boosters and thumbed the transformation switch.
There was a jolt as tiny jets threw the cycle into the air, then the saddle fell away beneath him and he was clinging to the handlebars as the body of the big racing-style cycle unfolded into arms and legs behind his back, the front wheel splitting into twin lift fans at the shoulder blade while the back wheel folded up into a backpack. Then he heard the solid thunks as his armored back slapped into the chest hollow of the battleframe and the latches locked. The nose and windscreen folded up against his own chest as he dropped his arms to the control handles on the battloid's inner forearms, while the soles of his boots latched into the pegs on the robot's calves. His helmet HUD stabilized again and everything was - thankfully! - nominal as he spun the hovering mecha to face a rapidly approaching firefight, drawing his carbines like a gunfighter in one of those American movies.
A feeling of deja vu hit him as he saw that it was 55-C buma chasing women on motorcycles, but it wasn't Priss this time, at least. They were weaving around too much to give him a clear shot at the pursuing mechanoids, but he couldn't blame them for that, with how freely the buma were tossing blasts around from their mouth lasers. His eyes widened as the second, in yellow and blue leathers on a gold bike, suddenly flipped up to stand on the still moving cycle, one foot hooked on the throttle side of the yoke as she faced back down the road, leaning into the wind. "Impossible!" he mouthed, even as some kind of energy bolts reached out from the woman's shoulders and swatted one of the combat buma out of the air to tumble and crash into a building. "No one can do that, even a buma!" A twitch of her foot and twist of her torso in the slipstream sent her bike back and forth across the highway, dodging two more bolts before returning fire again, though less successfully.
They blew past him then, and Leon pushed the PMB's flight engines to their limit to match speeds, using double bursts in their thrusters to wax two more of the 55s, cutting them down to three as - *The canyons!*
The girls on their bikes had ridden right over the edge where the highway had collapsed, and hadn't seemed surprised to do it. The buma of course - were they all buma, on both sides? - the pursuers had of course just followed them down on their flight systems, and he did likewise, holding his fire as the bikers had vanished into the darkness below.
Remembering the shoulder mounted searchlight, he flicked it on, then activated the bullhorn on the other side. "This is the ADPolice!" he announced, commanding, "Shut down your weapon systems and lie face down, or -"
In the illuminated circle on the canyon floor, a pile of scrap was shaking as something freed itself from underneath, while a yellow streak circled one of the buma, then turned into the daredevil biker as she slammed a flying kick into it and tossed it to crash through a wall. One of the remaining pair picked up the wrecked blue cycle and threw it at the momentarily stationary target, but she blurred away again before it hit.
Meanwhile, a big red shape, recognizable from the data Daley had sent as the DD's quadruped form, had freed itself from the scrap it was hidden in, and quad-barrel gun blew the head off the buma that had thrown the motorcycle. The one remaining roared and opened its heat projector array, but just as it fired the speedster appeared again, her shoulder beams shattering the lenses, the unfocused energy immolating it in a spectacular fireball.
Touching down at the third point of a triangle from the DD and the woman in blue and yellow, he called out, "This is Detective McNichol, of the A. D. Police. I say again, shut down your weapon systems. I'm not going to attack you, just come out of there!"
There was a rumble behind him, and a roar, and he spun aside just in time for the combat buma that had been kicked through a wall to miss with its mouth laser as he dodged into the air.
Firing line clear, the DD launched a pair of small missiles at the buma, but it jetted away at the last moment as well. It landed on a ledge and tried to set itself for another shot, but the lavender-haired speedster blurred away again, running straight up the wall to its side and launching it to tumble back to the earth with a mighty uppercut. Even as it landed, the DD pounced, crushing the cyberdroid's torso and severing its spine with a taloned foreleg, and they were back at the stand-off.
"We can't let you stop us, Detective," Nam called out pleadingly. "Not now, after everything we've come through. Please, we haven't killed anyone, or even really hurt them. Just turn away, and we'll be gone."
"That's something I can't do," he countered. "That thing is a menace to the entire city and everyone in it, and that's not even mentioning theft of government property, private and public damages, and weapons violations." His two carbines weren't exactly aimed at the pair, but they were clearly trained in their general directions as he landed again. "Backup is already on its way, even if you get past me you can't escape. You're right, you haven't killed anyone yet - if you come quietly you probably won't even be dismantled."
"NO! THAT'S NOT GOOD ENOUGH!" Sylvie shouted, then jerked in shock as the battlemover lurched under her. "What the!?" The cockpit lights turned red and the instruments went crazy, as electricity played over the outside of the mecha and it began to change into the J-1 controlled humanoid mode. "No, why? The J-1 shouldn't be activating unless the pilot is dead, and I'm not even hurt..."
The cockpit around her seemed to melt and shift, slim armor plates like fins or blades forming a control frame around her, while liquid-like metal flowed over her and around the biker leathers. The link system collar, arm and leg bands snapped into place, and a wash of energy played over Sylvie's form, flaring her hair like a corona as the DD and whatever had taken it over synchronized with her OS.
Outside, the heavy armor of the DD broke up and reformed in ways that were very disturbing to Priss and Sylia, watching from the rim of the canyon above, but even more so for Nene, who had seen the form the weird robot "Guardian 215" had taken on the top of Genom Tower when it replaced Priss's motoslave. It still mimicked the over all shape of the DD, but the jutting fins, and most tellingly the close-packed array of blades on the forearms were the same. A little ball of fear started to grow in her stomach at the thought that they'd come to disable or destroy the DD, whatever the cost, when they'd have to fight against THAT.
(If desired, start playing "Shock the Monkey" now)
Linna wasn't even looking at the battlemover. The spotty cloud cover had cleared again, and somehow, the full moon overhead was irresistibly fascinating, even as her heart pounded in her head and the body armor Sylia had built to mount her familiar weapon systems seemed to shrink and squeeze uncomfortably. The other Sabers turned to stare as the sounds of shattering ceramic and tearing nanoweave came form her, looking on in shock as their team mate tore out of the suit, face warping and extending into a baboon like muzzle, dark fur coating her body as the now loose long tail lashed uncontrollably. The giant's eyes glowed with an ominous red light as it continued to expand, a spiky, pitch black mane of hair the only thing still recognizable from their friend.
Rising on the skyline and easily four times larger than the DD itself, oozaru-Linna roared and beat her fists together with a crash like thunder. She looked down at last, sighting her enemy, then drew a deep breath and let loose with a tight, twisting blast of ki-fueled flames, exploding at the impact point like a bomb as the three below hastily dodged.
In the meantime, unseen by anyone, a small, stealthy form that had been trailing Priss for nearly two months even inside the new headquarters, and which had interfaced with a similar component it found there, slipped off to rejoin its master unit.
--=--
The initial contact was terrifying, like being washed away in a flood as the foreign system downloaded her entire archived memory, even as the part of the composite that was the J-1 battle computer evaded the fire attack and calculated threats and targeting points for the unknown new opponent. As the part that was Sylvie regained a sense of individual identity, outrage at the intrusion turned to shock as the stealth remote unit also rejoined the composite, and its findings were laid open before her - including the backed up mission-critical files retrieved from another remote that had been encountered in the Knight Sabers' base. Priss was a Knight Saber, Linna and Nene as well! And the Guardian, an actual alien artifact, that had somehow mistaken Priss for the user it had been intended for... Perhaps the ultimate slave, it held incredible power but had no desire for self-determination, and what little decision making capacity it had was damaged almost beyond recovery in the last battle with Priss, who simply didn't seem to understand. Even some of Priss's own memories were included in the data, copied from her lover's mind in an earlier attempt to recover from data loss, and to understand the troublesome person the Guardian had bound itself to.
Now, the part that was the Royal Guardian needed to be a true whole once more, and it would be up to her to integrate the muddle of directives and memories from a handful of sources, as the only general-purpose heuristic logic system in the composite... The part that was Sylvie felt a stab of terror, at the thought that she could really make a mess of things if a being with the Guardian's power ended up running wild, like the J-1's 'kill everything and blow up the bodies' program. Even now, it was bringing out all the extra armor and modules the Guardian had been able to recover or reconstruct while scavenging the quake canyon, and she had to countermand the assembly of half a dozen different weapons that would have done untold amounts of collateral damage... And she had to work quickly, because one thing the J-1 retained total control of was the self-destruct bomb.
--=--
The remaining Knight Sabers had scattered as well, to avoid being trampled more than anything, and Nene came to perch on top of a section of the highway that had landed on its side on the canyon floor just as the speed demon in yellow came to a stop there as well. Not having gotten a good look before, another shock piled onto this night of doozies as she recognized Nam, the the new girl-friend she'd spent most of the day shopping with, looking at motorcycles, and she blurted out, "Eeeh? Nam!? But if you're here, is Sylvie...?"
Nam was equally surprised to be recognized, but before she could say anything - with the build under that somewhat minimal armor, it could only be Nene in the new Pink Saber suit - they had to dodge away again. The DD had charged the oozaru, a pair of massive, sharpened fins extended from the forearms like the wolvers popular with cybergangs, only to be met with a back-hand smash that sent it flying, straight through the crumbling concrete of their road fragment.
Leon had ended up sharing a perch with the White Saber, though more by design - he'd intentionally headed for her, so as to pass on his critical information. "Listen," he warned her, "The DD - we've got to destroy it quickly! I don't know what's happened to it, but once the J-1 takes control, it'll self destruct when it runs out of power. We'll be blown to pieces, along with the entire city!"
"What? Nene, deep scan the DD, now!" Sylia ordered, over the scrambled radio link.
Nam, who'd ended up close enough to hear the tail end of Leon's warning, gasped as well. "That strong!?" she cried. "She only said it would be dangerous, not... apocalyptic!"
Deploying her backpack sensors, the pink Saber quickly confirmed, "It's true! It's got a micro neutron bomb, and it's only 180 seconds from critical mass!" She'd forgotten to switch over to the speakers in her haste, but the nod of her helmet was enough to convey the worst to Nam.
Message delivered, Leon double-teamed the DD with Saber Blue, who had come to the party in similar play clothes, the slightly more massive Typhoon still showing the obvious design similarities of the two mecha. Unfortunately, their shots simply ricocheted off the reinforced battlemover's armor, and it fired the last of its conventional missiles to drive them back before taking to the air. The powerful thrusters of the airborne battlemover had been augmented with the Guardian's advanced gravity control, making it faster and more maneuverable than ever, and it put that agility to good use, dodging more fire attacks from the giant ape. The missed shots blasted a trail of destruction, chewing a huge new divot out of the battered side of the Kanto Canyon, then wiping away a half dozen nearby blocks as she tried to hit the rapidly moving target.
The DD deployed the four-vaned energy cannon assembly that had replaced its gattling, charging and firing a sun-bright river of energy that caught the oozaru in the chest and knocked her tumbling head over heels through several more buildings, to land in a heap near the bay.
Howling her fury to the stars, were-Linna kipupped back to her feet, grabbing a radio mast from the wreckage and flinging it like a javelin at the battlemover, knocking it out of the air as it tried to set up another shot while everyone else rushed to catch up to its location.
--=--
As Sylvie had reintegrated the fragmented programming and files of the Royal Guardian's decision matrix, she'd found so much of the original data had been lost, now replaced by patterns copied from her and Priss's memories, that the part that was the Guardian was becoming more and more human until finally it too awakened to a sense of existence as an individual. Checking on the J-1, she realized how short time had gotten, and sent the new consciousness - and somehow that new beginning was a comfort in the face of immanent death - the sorrowful thought, *I've done what I can, the rest will have to be up to you to figure out, masah mahnyee 215, no, Masamune Niichigo. Whatever you decide to do, go for it with everything, ne?*
--=--
Nam reached the DD first, of course, Priss and Leon next in their flying battleframes, then Nene and Sylia. Leon, one side of his PMB scorched black by the exploding missiles, went straight to the attack again, putting the entire mass of the unit into a go-for-broke haymaker. The J-1 was still too quick, catching the punch and flipping him into the wall of an already damaged building, burying him in rubble as it collapsed further.
The others formed a semicircle around the red and grey battlemover, tensed but not yet committed to any attacks, when suddenly the extra fins and armor plates flowed away and vanished from the DD's frame, even most of the original armor and systems gone now as well where the Guardian's technology had replaced them. With a clunk and a hiss, the cockpit hatch opened, revealing Sylvie in her blue cycling jumpsuit, interface shackles still locked in place but the rest of the cockpit gutted, even the seat reduced to a bare frame. "Priss," she called out to Saber Blue. "I know it is you, Priss. Please, you have to kill me. The J-1 is linked to me, so that will shut it down - it's the only way. Hurry!"
Taken aback, the singer could only gasp, "Sylvie!? Why... Why do you have to die? Can't you just turn the damn thing off!?"
Amber eyes shimmering with tears, the sexaroid pled, "Please, it's completely out of control now. If you leave it, or even if another network connects to it, it'll destroy the whole city."
"I... No, I can't!" Priss cried, shaking gun arm extended, seemingly against her will. Nam, equally horrified, staggered back to lean against a flipped car, while Sylia and Nene called out to their comrade. The stubby firing stud inside her weapon gauntlet suddenly felt as huge and heavy as the world itself, and with terrible slowness her finger slid against it, pressing it right to the limit before the contacts would click over and launch a rail gun spike. *What am I doing? What CAN I do? I... I can't just...* too quietly even for the helmet microphone to pick up, she breathed, "Forgive me, I -"
Before she could cross that edge or back away from it, oozaru-Linna reoriented herself and bounded back across the devastated cityscape to attack. Spotting the foolish weakness at her enemy's heart, she snapped a hand forward, and with the heavy damage done by the Guardian's removal the battlemover's lurching dodge was no longer anywhere near to fast enough. With a horrid crunch and the snapping of reinforced cables, her massive hand wrapped around Sylvie and ripped her out of the cockpit, uncaring of the damage inflicted in her rage as the sexaroid all but vanished in her massive fist, then was tossed carelessly aside.
Scrambled by the sudden hole in its control network, the J-1 had already begun shutting down before the giant monkey's fists slammed into it one after the other, hammering the battlemover into the earth before loosing a final blast of fire breath, instantly slagging what little of the mecha was not vaporized outright. A massive crater was blasted out around her feet by the secondary explosion even as the were-ape bellowed her victory.
Outraged, Nam zipped through the flaming rubble to slam stinging punches and kicks all over the giant as she ran up and down its body, adjusting her position in the slipstream to keep her feet pressed against it for traction. "HOW COULD YOU!?" she she howled, "SHE WAS MY FRIEND!" Tiring, she had to slow, and clung to the beast's fur, a mistake it quickly capitalized on to slap her away, coincidentally landing close to where Priss had shed her helmet to cradle Sylvie's broken body against her chest.
"Sylvie... I can't believe it was you..." the chestnut-topped Saber sobbed, wiping ineffectually at the blood welling from where the interface collar had dug into her neck before the cables tore free.
The sexaroids voice was a pain-filled rattle, and she coughed up a mouthful of blood before scrabbling at the data disk and croaking out, "Priss, take this... there's another girl, Anri, at my apartment, give it to her and Nam. It's why we fought, with this they can finally be free, like you... I beg you..."
"Sylvie..." her lover sobbed again, brushing back blood-matted black hair from the buma's face. "Sylvie? Answer me..."
Eyelids drooping, the dying woman forced out just a few more words. "Priss... just one... more... be kind to her... child..." Her energy was spent, then, and all that was left was thefloating feeling of shock, and a deep dissatisfaction at dying in this manner.
"Child? I don't understand.. Sylvie? SYLVIE!" Unanswered, the singer could only cry over the body of her love, Nam crawling over to join in her grief as cumulative damage from using her speed for so long left her shaking and weak with blood poisoning.
Rid of the climbing pest, oozaru-Linna turned to the only other fighters still standing, roaring a challenge into the night, even as the sirens of emergency vehicles and helicopter rotors sounded in the distance. Seeing no recognition in those bloodshot eyes, Sylia and Nene stood wary, ready to dodge if necessary. Taking their aggressive stances as defiance, she attacked, leaping into the air to drop on her erstwhile friends in a massive stomp that shook the earth as she landed, making more of the ruins collapse and forcing the two active Sabers to dodge and dodge again.
Despair tightening her chest, Sylia commanded, "We've got to try to lead her back into the canyon, away from the inhabited city. Priss is in no condition for this now, so it's up to us, Nene." Warily, she turned the powerplant in her own pack up to full output - while this one had at least not exploded when she lit off the fusion reaction, she was still less certain of the design than she'd like - and increased the draw to her personal energy supply to match. A pale glow shimmered into being around her body as it was stockpiled, and with a mental nudge it became a form-fitting energy shield that would cushion impacts and enhance her own speed and force.
Nene too raised her energy level, the battle aura she'd learned to bring out through training with her parents serving much the same purpose as Sylia's technologically generated shield. In fact, according to her mother's sensing spells, they were even formed from similar energy in essentially the same way, science catching up with ancient magic at last thanks to the theories of James Christian Dykstra as applied by Stingray genius. Concentrating on more immediate matters, she suggested, "I'll hit high, you hit her low?"
"Agreed. Try not to do too much damage, we still don't know why she transformed, or how long it will last," the Saber leader replied.
"Somehow, I don't think that'll be a problem," the redhead muttered, before pulling open a portal in the air so she could travel to the top of a still-intact building near the oozaru's head.
The maneuver went as planned, the combined attack from opposite directions taking the giant at the ankles and shoulder blades, knocking her sprawling in the shattered street. Bellowing with anger, the huge ape chased the troublesome bugs back to the quake zone, crouching on the edge to look down, trying to spot where they'd run to.
The edge itself was blasted away by a pair of energy balls, one ki-based and the other a packet of plasma in a gravatic envelope, and the giant tumbled into the gorge with a squawk which became a pained roar as her shoulder was gouged by steel beams jutting from a fallen building. Maddened, she flailed at the offending wall, crumbling it to chunks as the clouds swept in again and a heavy rain began to fall.
Deprived of moonlight, the transformation reversed, rubble half-burying the still struggling oozaru as it shrank, snout reverting to a more human mouth and nose, fur fading away to leave a seemingly human body though one only slightly scraped and bruised by the concrete where a normal person would be crushed to a pulp. Working quickly to leave before investigators arrived, Sylia and Nene dug their friend out of the debris and hurried away into the night, radioing instructions to Priss to do the same.
If the sarcastic applause and compliments for putting on such an amusing show that sounded only in her mind gave the silver-haired scion of Wayne and Stingray pause, she betrayed no sign.
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Next time on Bubblegum Disaster: There's a whole lot of pieces to be picked up...
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Yamane-sensei and the "70% cut-off" law - this line wasn't intended to be a pun, and she is certainly dead serious about it at the moment, but... I come from a medical family, and I know the kind of gallows humor doctors tend to have, and I'm absolutely certain that the phrase would be ingrained enough among members of the medical community that it would come out automatically.
Choji and Shika (Shikamaru) are ninja in the Naruto manga and anime written by Masahi Kishimoto. Shikamaru is a strategist as a teen, while Chouji is more of a meat tank who follows his lead. As cops in a more modern world, Chouji developed his observation and analytical skills after his friend died in the 2027 Kanto quake. Their third team mate, Ino, is as yet unused, but I'm sure she'll be barging into my thoughts soon enough to demand a role.
Jane Li and Jade Chan - Jane is Jet Li's actual daughter's name, and Jade was Jackie's niece in the Jackie Chan Adventures cartoon.
PMBs vs. MOSPEADA: While basic concept of a quick, agile motorcycle with armor for the rider which can transform and link to that armor to become a combat exoskeleton is amazingly cool in theory, the design used in Genesis Climber MOSPEADA falls short on several counts. The most significant design stupidity in the MOSPEADA cycle is that except for a pair of non-load-bearing thigh guards the ENTIRE motorcycle wraps around the rider's upper body, and I don't know about you, but I damn sure can't hold up the weight of a motorbike, let alone run, jump, and fight while carrying it; if I could then I wouldn't want to because the unpowered body armor would be less noticeable and restrict my movement that much less. A motoslave is a complete, autonomous robot which has a hollow interior to accept a pilot, who operates the limbs in much the same way as the waldo controls of a normal K-series battle frame. Further, the MOSPEADA is blocky and falls in that range where it's too ugly to be cool, but not ugly enough that no one dares to say so to its face. In contrast, the Police Motor Battloid shares the sleekness of its Knight Saber cousins, with a few variations - it's essentially the 'production model' shown in the BGC:EX RPG sourcebook, but with the hover fans and the ability to accept a pilot in battle frame mode restored. I've added a modified scan of this also, for those who don't have BGC:EX.
Paul Bergman came up with the line I gave to Dick Grayson about getting the Batmobile wrecked - thanks, PMB! And no, I didn't actually name the police motoslave after you, there may not be any such thing as "coincidence" but it wasn't me who plotted that twist.
On the classifications of humanoid combat suits - "body armor" is unpowered, though it may have computer or support systems built in, "hardsuits" are only slightly larger and generally lump in with "power armor" like the one used by Mason in canon BGC, they have some form of motive system that at least compensates for their own weight. The K-12 Armored Trooper, motoslave, and PMB are "battleframes" - significantly larger than human but the pilot's arms and legs are still at least partially inside the limbs. "Battlemovers" are big enough to have a cockpit where the pilot is entirely within the torso. I expect this all was fairly obvious from context, but just in case, here you go.
"Wait, so what happened to Flint?" It seems our dear Mr. Flint went on a snark hunt, but found a boojum instead. If you don't know what that means, and can't figure it out, read more Lewis Carroll. I've actually been more clear about what became of him than canon, if you watch the episode in question.
"Niichigo", while directly representing "ni" "ichi" and "go", 2, 1, and 5, is written as a name ni+ichigo, "two strawberries." "Masamune" being only similar in sound to "ma-sah mahn-yee," "royal guardian" in the unknown alien language of its creators, is spelled like the famous swordsmith.
"I am damn dissatisfied to be killed in this manner!" I don't remenber what movie it was, but a bad guy in a poorly dubbed martial arts movie had this for a last line, and it always stuck with me. Basically it's just me being vague about whether Sylvie has enough of a sense of unfinished business to become a ghost.
"Ano, Niichigo doko wa?" - Doko kashira, kashira kashira...
Guardian 215 should be imagined with the vocal talents of Susan Blu; if you don't know her by name, she did (among other shows) Arcee on the post-movie Transformers episodes, as well as in the movie itself. You can even keep the flanging effect if you like, though it's not really there.
Many thanks to my prereaders: Hoderi Hibiki, Paul Bergman, Nathan Baxter, Hide Hasegawa, Leong Mun Yee, Andrew Wilson, Christopher Gilbert, and Drakensis, and to everyone on the BDPreread mailing list - you get your name listed if you actually make commentary, but just reading and finding nothing bad enough to complain about is still commentary of a sort.
Drakensis also gets a nod for keeping a remote archive of the story on his web site, www.100megsfree4.com/drakensis/ in the Miscellaneous section.
Special thanks to Bob Schroeck, Consulting Acronymologist. He also happens to be the other of another rather good BGC fanfic called _Drunkard's Walk II_ (The first one is not available for public consumption, but it's a rather modular series.) The Drunkard's Walk home page is www.eclipse.net/~rms/dwmain.html and Bob's message board is at pub21.ezboard.com/bdrunkardswalkforums
Sgt. Fuko MacNamara and her art are also Bob's property, from _Drunkards Walk II_ in fact.
Bubblegum Crisis belongs to Youmex and Animeigo, I make no claims otherwise. Please don't sue me, I have no money to speak of and fanfic does more to promote your products than anything else I know of - without it, I never would have known about anime at all, and I'd certainly never have bought the BGC tapes based on the sucky box copy.
Ranma 1/2 I'm not so sure of, except that the creator was Rumiko Takahashi, not me, and that I make no claims to own IT either. I THINK that the Ranma manga are done by Viz in the US, but that may be incorrect.
The Bionic Six is similarly of unknown provenance, but I have a very vague and unreliable memory that it may have been animated by Suncoast video... In any case, it's STILL not my own creation.
_Dykstra's War_ is by Jeffery D Kooistra, published by Baen Books.
Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z were created by Akira Toriyama, owned overall by Bandai I think, and released on video in the US by FUNimation and in manga by Dark Horse (again not so sure about that one - could be Viz)
Sailor Moon was created by Naoko Takeuchi, and is undoubtedly also owned by some animation studio or another. I know that the RPG rights in North America at least belong to Guardians of Order.
_Shock The Monkey_ was originally by Peter Gabriel, but was more recently covered by Ozzy and Coal Chamber.
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OMAKE!
As the giant ape appeared on the city skyline, the Chairman's eyes widened slightly from where he looked out of his office's huge klasterglass windows. Schooling his face into its usual imperturbable expression, Quincy turned back to his desk and keyed in a short combination. Immediately, Misato appeared on the viewscreen.
"Sir?" she saluted.
"Prepare Unit 01 for launch," he commanded gruffly.
"But the pilot -"
"A spare has arrived."
"Aye sir!"
Deep in the subterranean levels of the Tower, a massive, purple and green cyberdroid began to stir into a semblance of life.
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Yeah yeah, so Madigan has purple hair, not blue. Bite me, I'm delicious.
EOF
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