OPERATION: LIGHTSPHERE

An Iczer/Teknoman fanfic crossover by Andrew Dynon

I'm too lazy to bother with disclaimers this time.

I am going to begin incorporating elements of the "Golden Warrior Iczer-One"
manga (the first volume of which was translated into English by Antarctic 
Press - I'm not sure if the subsequent volumes even got drawn) in this 
chapter.  These elements will be heavily based on my speculations about what
would have happened in subsequent parts of the series.  If you're lucky, you
MIGHT be able to find back issues of the translated manga at your local
comics store, but I'll try and make it so that it's not necessary to have
read them.

Also, certain scenes in this chapter may be gorier than the standard from
previous ones.  You have been warned.

As always, any & all C&C NEEDED, MSTs especially welcome.

*****
PHASE 2, CHAPTER 2

	Shara sat looking at a viewscreen, sipping a bittersweet, red-colored drink
which she had been told would help her recovery.  Iczer-One sat beside her,
staring intently at that same screen, and Shara could not figure from the
Kthulhu guardian's expression what emotions, if any, she was feeling.  Shara
herself felt extremely concerned, as the viewscreen was displaying a battle
outside Earth's Space Ring, and the participants were her two cousins, and
her brother.  She looked on in silent horror as she saw Nick scream in agony
- she knew that he had reached his time limit, and was now going to be
turned into 
one of the Rhadam's brainwashed slaves.  Iczer-One touched her hand, trying
to reassure her, but she snatched it away and glared at the android, angry
at her for not letting her know how she felt about Nick being in danger.

	Then, Shara saw Nagisa close her eyes and a relaxed, peaceful 
expression appear on her face.  She floated towards Nick and placed her hands 
on his shoulders, and for a moment Shara wondered if she had seen a brief
glow of blue light surround her cousin.  Then, her brother returned to
normal and Mizumi fled.  After that, the screen went blank.

	"Nagisa ... you did very well.  I ... don't know anyone else who could have
managed that."  Iczer-One said - it seemed to Shara that the blonde 
android had forgotten her presence.  Then Iczer-One rose and turned to her.

	"You needn't have been so worried - the transmission you saw was from a few
days ago, by Earth standards.  If anything bad had happened to Nagisa - or
your brother - I would have felt it immediately, as would you."

	Shara frowned.  "You should have told me that *before* scaring me to death."

	"I apologise, if that's any consolation.  And also, Shara, I am sorry for
not being able to stay with you longer, but I must leave this ship now.  I
have ... several people on a planet called Ishua whom I have promised to
aid."  She turned to a teenaged girl with long, blue-green hair.  "Cyan, you
are to take care of Shara in my absence.  Sister Grey is in charge of her
medical needs, but you are responsible for everything else." 

	Iczer-One turned and left the room.  After she had departed, Shara sat and
looked at another of the viewscreens.  As she watched, she saw a streak of
bright blue light head away from the ship, and thought she heard Iczer-One's
voice.

	"Shara, I promise to return soon."

*	*	*	*	*

	Nagisa  recoiled in fear from the creatures that were trying to close 
in on her, to capture her and infect her body with the parasite which would
transform her into one of their own horrible kind.  The force field around
her was holding, but she didn't know how long it would last.  Nagisa held the 
little girl she had with her close, silently wishing that the child could be
somehow kept safe, even if she herself died.

	"Mommy!  I want my mommy!"

	"It's all right.  Your mother's gone far away."  Nagisa lied, knowing that
the girl's mother had been one of the monsters' victims.

	{Even if I don't survive, I've got to protect Sayoko.} Nagisa thought 
to herself.  {But what can *I* do?  How can *I* defeat these monsters?}

	A sudden realisation began to dawn on her, restoring her courage,
strengthening her resolve. {Power... I need to find power, forces stronger
than theirs!}  Then, that realisation, the realisation that she was able to
help protect the planet she lived on, truly entered her consciousness.  She
wasn't afraid any more, and she was going to let her attackers know it!

	"ICZER ROBO!!!!!"

	The next thing she knew, Nagisa was sitting bolt upright in bed.  Opening
her eyes, she saw the sun had not yet risen, and so she remained awake in
her bed, thinking.

	{That was... was it me?  It felt so much like... no, it can't have 
been.  But it was so similar... I understood it... I'm sure I understood it
in my dream, but now I can only remember bits and pieces.  "Iczer-One"... 
that's... that's the name of the woman who sent me that vision... how does
she fit into this... I wish I understood more.}

	She continued to sit, thinking, wondering, as the sun rose and 
gradually filled her room with the light of day.

*	*	*	*	*

	"Hey, Tina, what's up?" Star asked as the new Iczelion practically rushed
into the lounge with a huge grin on her face.

	"Star, you're not going to believe this!  I've found out where my 
family is!  I've never known where they were since the invasion started, and 
now I do!"

	Star laughed with happiness.  "Wow, Tina, that's great news!  I'm so glad
you've found them."

	"And that's not the best part of it!"  Tina exclaimed with excitement.
"Jamison's given me leave - he's gonna let me go and see them!"   

	"Really?"

	"You bet!  Now I'm gonna go tell Blade!"  Before Star could respond, Tina
had run off.  With Tina's departure from the room, star was left alone 
with her thoughts.

	{Tina, I really am glad for you.  So many people have lost their families
in this war, and the person who's maybe lost the most is Blade, who we've
known personally since almost the beginning of this whole damn thing.  
I'm glad to know there's somebody who's managed to find their family again.}

	{And then there's me.} she added.  {I don't have a family.  I never 
knew my father, and I was so young when my mother died...} She had only
vague memories of her mother, among them her kind, smiling face, red hair,
and a 
vague memory of a first name... something srarting with "R"...  "Rebecca"?
No, that wasn't it.  "Raye"?... Not quite - something like it, though.
"Rachel".

*	*	*	*	*

	Raban blocked an enemy Teknoman's attack with his sword, and the impact
almost jarred the weapon from even his hands.  Rather than entering a
strength contest with hos foe, he rolled backwards, and his enemy's
teknolance passed over him.  He then swung his sword, which bit through the
armor on his enemy's lower leg, but inflicted no serious damage.

	Mira was doing little better - her enemy was not making the mistake of
allowing her to gain distance and throw her Miiruha [A.Notes - This is the
name I have given to the bladed metal boomerang she uses] and she was
reduced to evading the Teknoman's attacks.  And Raura was faring worst of
all.  As a Prime Iczelion and the princess of Ishua, the enemy Teknomen had
decided that it was vital for her to be eliminated.  She was being attacked
by two of them at once, and being badly beaten.  To make maters worse for
the Ishuans, a fifth Teknoman was hanging back in case any of his comrades
needed assistance.

	One of the Teknomen's fists slammed into Raura's body, knocking her to the
ground and stunning her.  She opened her eyes to find him standing over 
her, teklance pointed at her chest.

	"Now you die, Princess of Ishua."

	Before he could stab down with his weapon, however, a bolt of blue 
light slammed into him, sending him staggering backward.  Raura felt herself
picked up and carried away from immediate danger - her rescuer was a
blonde-haired woman in a red bodysuit.  She set Raura down a couple of
hundred meters away, and turned back towards the ongoing battle.

	"Raban, Mira, I suggest you withdraw and take care of Rau... Princess
Raura."  Iczer-One said calmly.  "I am quite capable of defeating the 
Teknomen."

	"If you're foolish enough to think you can beat us," one of the 
Teknomen replied, "then we'll be happy to let you try."  

	The five teknomen converged upon Iczer-One, who waited, suspended immobile
in the air, until the teknomen were almost within melee range.  Then, so
quickly that her enemies could barely see her, she summoned her beam sword
and sliced through two of her attackers' bodies.  The next Teknoman was
decapitated a second later, and she kicked the fourth in the chest,
shattering his armor and torso.  The final one threw his teklance at her,
which she caught and broke in half before she ran him through. 

	"Princess, are you all right?"  Raban asked.  Raura groaned in pain.  

	"I ... will live." she replied.  "Thank you for helping us, Iczer One."

	Iczer-One just smiled at Raura's words, while the pair of generals helped
their princess to her feet.  After some time, she spoke.

	"Princess, I believe I should meet with Queen Aura now."

*	*	*	*	*

	By the time Tina embarked from the aircarrier she had been travelling from
the Command Center in, it was almost sunset.  The place where she'd
contacted her family didn't exactly *look* like the cheeriest place in the 
world - full of dark gray stone houses packed close together and only having
small, high-up windows.  The chilly, creepy atmosphere of the settlement was
further perpetuated by the forest of alien spore-plants which grew around
it, and, Tina knew, would eventually bloom and entrap humans, turning them
into Rhadam slaves.

	  But none of those factors could detract from the happiness she felt 
at the knowlege that members of her family were here - {Even though Blade
*could* have been more honelstly happy for me.} she thought {really, he can
be such a stick-in-the-mud sometimes}  She had been seperated from them in what 
was maybe the very first attack on Earth by the Rhadam forces, and saved and
adopted by Commander Jamison, who, discovering her talent for computers and
communications equipment, had made her a member of the Space Knights.

	She was about to knock on the heavy, wooden door of one of the 
buildings when the door opened, and she saw a boy slightly older than
herself, with the same dark brown hair and blue eyes, dressed in jeans and a
red pullover.

	"Ryan, I've missed you so much!" Tina practically screamed with delight as
she hugged her elder brother.  "How's Julia?  And everyone else?  Are they
all here?"

	Invisible to the young space knight, a figure watched, smiling 
wickedly.

	{New Iczelion, you seem so happy to be reunited with your family.  I would
like to see how you feel after I've done what I plan to do with them.}

*	*	*	*	*	

	"Greetings, Aura, Queen of Ishua."

	"Greetings, Iczer-One, Guardian of the Kthulhu." Although Iczer-One and the
aged Ishuan queen's speech was formal, there was something about the way 
the two acted toward each other that gave an impression not of formality but
of friendship.

	"Aura, it has been a long time since we have seen each other."

	"Seventy years, more or  less." Aura replied.  "And I am certain you felt
my younger sister's death."

	"I felt it very much, Aura, and the second-greatest regret of my existence
is that I could only be with her in spirit and not body during her last days."  
	
	{Equal second, actually.} Iczer-One added silently.  {I have the exact same
feelings about Nagisa Kano.}  She knew Aura understood, even without telling
her.  As for her the *greatest* regret of her existence... nothing 
could bring shame to her moreso than the fact she had killed her own sister.

	"Iczer-One, as you know, that was only the end of her life, not of her
existence - her spirit was reborn in Younger Princess Raura the Fifth."  

	Iczer-One thought bact to the time of her awakening - escaping from the
Kthulhu ship, falling to Ishua, meeting Amu and being led to the refuge,
where she had met a young girl dressed in the fine clothing of an Ishuan
princess - a girl who, as soon as they saw each other, had said five words
to her:

	"Iczer-One... you frighten me."

	And despite the fear the girl had felt, there had grown a friendship
between them - no, more, a love between them - that Iczer One had only felt 
for one other.

*	*	*	*	*

	For some reason, Tina just couldn't sleep.  She had been so thrilled to see
her family again - especially her older brother Ryan, and her younger
sister, Julia - and had enjoyed spending the evening eating and chatting
with them so much that for the life of her she couldn't understand the
nagging feeling she had that something was extremely *wrong*.  Tina got out
of the bed and stretched, and then turned the light on.  Maybe if she went
and got a glass of water or something it would help.

	Tina turned as she heard a yawn from the bed next to her own.  "Julia?
You're awake too?"  

	Her younger sister stood up and cleared her light brown hair from in front
of her eyes. "You woke me.  What're you doing?" 

	"Just going to get a drink."

	"Can I come with you?"

	"Okay."

	As the pair travelled along the hallway to the kitchen, Tina's sense of
apprehension grew more intense.  In the darkness, she heard ... no, it must
have been her mind playing tricks on her, but she thought she had heard a
cracking noise, like an animal feeding on a dead body, breaking the bones to
get to the marrow inside.

	Then, she screamed in horror, as she opened the kitchen door to see Ryan's
body, a foot-wide hole ripped in his chest, blood and entrails lying
scattered on the floor.  Julia let out an even bigger scream, but Tina's
mood quickly changed from horror to anger.

	Space around the sisters shifted, the house they were staying in being
replaced by monochrome, square pillars of varying sizes.  Tina transformed,
while Julia began to cry in fear and confusion.  Then, man-sized creatures
began to appear - green-skinned, covered with slime, tentacle-faced and very
much resembling the things Tina had read about in the H.P.Lovecraft
compilations Jamison had kept in his library.  Everything about them made
Tina want to throw up, but she steeled herself and summoned her beam-glaive.

	{Iczel, what the hell are *these*?}

	{Parasite beasts - "Bedem" is the proper name.  I had no idea the enemy
still made use of them.}

	{Well, they just killed my brother, and they're gonna pay!} Full of anger,
Tina immediately and mercilessly sliced through the monsters with her
beam-glaive.  Soon, the last of the things had been killed, and the subspace
dimension faded, restoring her to proper dimensional space.

	{Ryan, at least I got those bastards for you.}

	{Tina, they may not all be gone.}

	"But that means..." Tina exclaimed aloud.  Grabbing Julia, she teleported
into the room where her parents were sleeping,  and immediately froze in
horror at the sight of their bodies - the torsos looked to have exploded.
Unable to control herself any longer, Tina burst into tears.  

	"Mom!  Dad!  Ryan!  Why did they do this to you??" She collapsed to her
knees, crying with an intensity that had only barely been approached by the
time she had been separated from her family in the Rhadam attack on her home
city.

	{Tina!} the Iczel sent. {I can still detect a human life sign!  There's
still someone the Bedem didn't get to!} Tina's eyes cleared, and then she
homed in on the scource of the life sign and hurried towards it.  Somehow,
she knew who it would be even before she entered the room - her grandmother,
Sayoko.  As Tina entered the room, Sayoko turned towards her, and Tina
caught sight of a silver-colored bracelet her grandmother was wearing.

	"Just like so many years ago." Sayoko said to Tina.  "The bracelet
protected me."

	"What do you mean?"

	"When I those creatures attacked me, my memory of... of a time when I was
very young was brought back.  Creatures like these have attacked Earth
before, but everyone's knowledge of it was - how should I put it? - covered
up.  Somehow seeing the Bedem restored my memory."

	"You mean aliens invaded Earth before this, and nobody knows?  Tell me what
happened!"

	"I can't tell you much, only what happened to me." Sayoko said regretfully.
"But I'll tell you what I know.  I hope you find it helpful."

	The Bronze Iczelion listened silently as her grandmother recounted her
experiences during the previous invasion.  Surely, she thought, it couldn't
just be coincidence that Nagisa Kano and her granddaughter were both so
vital to the Earth's defence in the invasions.  How as Iczer-One involved in
this?  Why did nobody know the prevoius invasion had happened.  There were
just so many questions...

	... but she decided she wouldn't worry about the answers any more than
necessary.  She was more concerned about what she could do to help.

*	*	*	*	*

	Energy seethed through the spore pod, and pockets of liquid bubbled up
under its surface, almost immediately shrinking back away to nothing, and
making the alien plant (if it could truly be called such) seem to inhale and
exhale.  The energy gradually built up, and then the pod exploded in a
shower of pink slime, revealing a black-and-red-armored humanoid figure.
The figure laughed, not maniacally, but coldly, cruelly.

	"I hope you're afraid, brother.  I now have the power to crush you once and
for all."

***********

END PHASE 2 CHAPTER 2

	NEXT CHAPTER:  I think you can all guess which villain's gonna get some
more "screen time".  Also, Shara gets a "gift" from Iczer-1, and another
major character gets her turn at some action!  See ya soon!


	AUTHOR'S NOTES:  It keeps getting harder to write this as it goes on, and I
don't think this was one of my best chapters - I'm glad it's out of the way.
In particular, I didn't like how the scenes with the parasite beasts turned
out - I guess I'm not very good at writing horror.  Hopefully I can make up
for this with my next chapter.

	Now, story notes.  Firstly, who recognised where Star's mother's name came
from?  If you didn't, don't worry, but I used it because I am thinking of
writing a crossover in this continuity someday that will involve the series
in question and Sailor Moon, as well as maybe other series (actually, I've
got the outline of an entire thousand-year-plus history in my head, but
that's not going to be done for a great deal of time).

	Second, yes, compared to the "Golden Warrior Iczer One" manga, the Ishuan
generals may seem a little overpowered (although Raban *did* take on a void
and win).  I'm assuming that as part of the initial "aid" given to Ishua,
Iczer-1 and the Kthulhu enhanced the generals' weapon skills and psychic
abilities to the point where they were able to go one-on-one with a
Teknoman.  Also, these are NOT the same people as in the Iczer-1 manga.  I'm
assuming that the generals' "names" are actually titles conferred upon them
when they are achieve said rank.

        Finally, when I said there was a "love" between Iczer-1 and Raura, I 
did not mean in a sexual context.  I was trying to indicate extremely close
friendship, which was sometimes meant by "love" in Shakespearean-era
English.  Unfortunately, in modern times, the word "love" has come to be
almost inextricably linked with sexual attraction, and AFAIK there is no
word in 
modern English for "deep friendship" (I may make up a Kthulhu word, though)

	Thanks for reading and see you next time!    
  	
_______________________________________________________________________________
"You are born with the yearning arrow, my Glynna.  It is not a happy thing
to possess... It points to the stars, and when it cannot reach them, it falls 
back to pierce your heart."
	- Wind (Isobelle Carmody, "Darkfall")

Andrew Dynon
- Eternal champion of the Iczer series
- Fan of Sailor Moon, Devil Hunter Yohko, 
     Teknoman, and many other anime series 
- RPG Player of Mekton-Z, Fuzion, AD&D and more
- Writer of fanfiction and original Sci-Fi/Fantasy
- Loyal supporter of the mighty Essendon Bombers (Australian Football League)

"Too many bakas."
- Hoshino Ruri, Nadesico (many times)