% Finally got to this too. Again, C+Cing as I read.


Cycle Two

     When the Lovely Angel took off from the hanger at the 3WA Central
Field
Office, everyone who saw breathed a mental sigh

% Breathing a mental sigh. Interesting. ^_^

 of relief. Where the Dirty
Pair went, chaos and destruction followed closely, like scantily clad
horsewomen of the Apocalypse.

% Heh. As good a comparison as I've ever heard.

     Sakura Tenjo and Natsumi Ogawa, sitting side by side on a take-off
couch
on the Lovely Angel, sneezed almost simultaneously. They glanced at each
other and shrugged, followed closely by the trademark tensing of the
muscles
as the ship's interior switched over from normal-G to Low-G,

% Either 'Normal-G' or 'low-G'

     The pink-haired girl smirked at her wobbling friend. "Says you,
Wingnut." She grew more serious. "Natsumi, I've been thinking�and

% odd character there, not sure what it was supposed to be.

scared."
     Sakura kicked at her lightly and answered, "Am not! I'm just being
serious. One of us has to, after all�God knows that Kei and Yuri will be�"

% Same here. They seem to be popping up throughout the fic.

     She trailed off at the sounds of combat from the hallway. Both girls
instinctively looked for a weapon. But before they could do more than
consider what could be swung hard enough to do damage,

%That sentence is a bit awkward. I can't think of a way to reword it right
now though.


 the airlock shot open
and the Lovely Angels tumbled through, locked in a fierce tangle of
flailing
limbs and blunt objects. After a brief squall of activity, they broke
apart
and revealed their weapons: matching flight couch pillows. Kei smacked
Yuri
hard enough to bounce her head over heels across the room. Kei stuck her
tongue out at her and taunted, "That'll teach you to goose me, you
pervert!"
     Yuri flipped Kei off and shot back, "Don't flatter yourself! I
mistook
your butt for a grav-couch and tried to hang on!"
     The red-haired Angel raised her pillow threateningly. "You saying I
have
a big butt?"
     Yuri pulled one lower eyelid down and stuck her tongue out again.
"Are
you kidding? When you walk it looks like two mastiffs fighting over a
steak

% Hehehe. Cute dialogue.

straps on the seats of the couches. A low humming emanated from the ship
as
it created a field of normal Earth gravity in it's

% its

     At this, Sakura stood up, eyes wide, and exclaimed, "I have to make
sure
Le Papillion is okay!"
      Yuri wrinkled her brow as she tried to recall some of the French she
had learned in college. Finally the word she was searching for came to
her.
"The Butterfly?" She asked dubiously.
     Natsumi rolled her eyes and nodded. Kei, intrigued by the young
girl's
excitement, asked, "You have a pet butterfly? This I have to see�"

% Somehow, I don't think it's that simple.

*****
     "THAT is 'Le Papillion'?!"
     "Yup! Isn't she pretty?"
     The Dirty Pair and their two new partners stood in the loading hold
watching in amazement as Sakura presented Le Papillion. Rather, Yuri and
Kei
were staring and Natsumi was smiling and shaking her head. Le Papillion
was a
bright lavender rocket launcher a good five feet long. With long-practiced
ease, Sakura lugged it from it's case and began expertly disassembling and
cleaning it. Kei was more than a little interested, so she squatted down
beside the younger girl and ran a finger over the side of the
cheery-looking
weapon of mass destruction. "What kind of launcher is this? Anti-Tank?"
     Sakura shook her head without looking up and began oiling the firing
mechanism. As she did, she explained. "No, it's primarily Anti-Personnel,
though I can adapt it to load Anti-Tank or even Anti-Aircraft rockets
pretty
easily. Basically, it's just a souped-up LAWS launcher. I reinforced the
tube
and added a removable five-round clip, and put on a stronger shoulder
harness. It already had a pair of legs for freestanding firing, but I took
those off to make room for a gyro-mount system. See that socket back
behind
the rear grip? That can fit into any of the standard 3WA Gyro-mount suits
currently in use. The only other thing I changed was putting in a better
targeting system."

% So if Natsumi is 'Wingnut', that means Sakura is 'Gunnut'?

     Yuri and Kei were already in motion, running down the corridor. Over
her
shoulder Kei yelled, "Distress call on the radio! Meet us up on the
bridge!"
     After teaming up to disassemble

% disassemble, or reassemble? I thought Sakura had already taken it apart.

Le Papillion, the two girls raced up to
the bridge. By the time they got there, Kei and Yuri were at the
transmission
station sending a response of some sort Sakura

% sort. Sakura

Yuri sent another message and turned to look at them with a worried
look. "I'm not getting any response Kei.

% response, Kei.

deliberation, she turned to Natsumi and Sakura. "Okay, look you two," She
said, "I hate to just toss two new agents fresh from their Academy bunks
into
combat like this, but I have a feeling this may get a bit nasty, and we'll
need all the help we can get. Have you two been issued your regulation
side-arms yet?" Both girls nodded. "Well, go get them. We have some flak
jackets you can wear if you really want them."

% And not be scantily-clad? Perish the thought. ^_^

      Mightily resisting the urge to make a joke about the lower portions
of
Kei and Yuri's outfits, Sakura nodded. Natsumi asked as she popped a clip

% Not a clip. A magazine, or 'mag' for short. It's a common error.

into her Electromag, "Where are your guns?"
     Yuri drew an Electromag identical to theirs from her thigh holster in
response. Kei grinned and stepped out into the hall, returning with a much
larger gun.

% Naturally.

 Hers was a short rifle, as long as her arm, and bore a
pump-action grenade launcher as well. It also had the phrase, "Mr.
Antisocial" emblazoned on its side.

% Hehehe.

 At Sakura and Natsumi's startled looks,
she said, "12mm auto-rifle with a 10-round M-120 mini-grenade launcher.
You
three can keep your wimpy little Electromags, I prefer something with a
bit
more�kick." This said, she slammed a clip

% mag

the main docking area. With Kei and her rifle in the lead, moving back and
forth in wide sweeps to cover the entire area, the other tree

% Tree? What tree? You never said anything about a tree. ^_^
% 'three'

backed her up,
waiting for something to move. But except for the flames, nothing moved.

% '...move, but except for the flames, there was nothing.'  (the two
'move/d's were redundent.)

     Someone or something had hit the aqualogy hard, that much was
obvious.
Most of the onsite vehicles had been blasted by some fairly heavy
artillery,
as had a few groups of barrels, which apparently had been holding some
flammable chemical. Whatever it was, it had spread over most of the
docking
area and started a number of blazes.

% Sounds destructive, all right.

 But the worst part was the bodies.
     Kei nudged one of the dozens of corpses on the docks, this one
dressed
in the white coveralls of a technician.

% Dozens on the docks? Sounds like they might have been rounded up, or
were killed before they had a chance to make it to cover.

     Sakura stared at a pile of four bodies heaped against the door of a
fire
hose casement. "Most of these people are dressed in black uniforms. What
does
that mean?"
     Yuri came up and eyed the bodies. One of them had had its head blown
away completely, with nothing but some ragged bone shards and a lot of
gore
above its Adam's apple. "The ones in black are aqualogy security. It looks
to
me like whoever did this was trying to avoid wasting the technicians in
favor
of the security.

% Ah, it was a line of defense. That makes sense.

     The others came around to look at what she had found. It was a small
black ship, sleek and totally unmarked. Kei walked up to it and rubbed a h
and
over its side. She whistled appreciatively and rubbed her hand on her hip
unconsciously. "Wow," She said, "Totally frictionless. This thing was
built
to move! I wonder what it is..?"
     Natsumi stepped up to it and rubbed her hand over its wheel strut
lovingly and said, "It's a Bolo Mark Ten Stealth�it's been striped

% stripped

down for
speed and radar avoidance. This thing could do a planetary orbit in about
three minutes without making the reactor sweat." She looked at Sakura
plaintively. "I want it."

% Best to remove something important from it that makes it move (instead
of destroying it outright). That makes sure no one doubles back and uses
it to take off from the planet and escape, which is what usually happens
when you leave escape vehicle lying around and in perfect working order.

     Sakura explained to Kei and Yuri, "Natsumi is something of a speed
freak. She has this perverse need to get a hold of any fast vehicle she
can
find and crash it at top speed. I can't explain it, personally."

% Heh. If you're going to crash, do it with style. ^_^

     Natsumi shot her an outraged look and continued stroking one of the
ship's wings as she replied, "I don't mean to crash them! I just get
distracted easily when I'm going fast, that's all�"
     Kei shook her head amusedly. "Let's go ladies. Natsumi, you can
finish
molesting that poor ship later. There are bad guys to shoot."
******
      The four girls entered the reception area across the dock, stopping
only twice to remove the videodisks from two security cameras they passed.
Once the disks had been secured under flaps in Sakura's flak jacket,

%Heh. True. It's not like the DP have anywhere on their uniforms to secure
anything.

they did
a hard entry into the reception area. Yuri and Natsumi stood on either
side
of the smoking area with guns ready. Sakura laid on the ground on her back
to
the left of the door and slid a small mirror on a rod along the concrete
until she could see in around the corner. With the help of the mirror, she
could see a bloody figure slumped over at the desk, as well as another on
the
floor by it. She nodded to Kei, who stood over her. Kei knelt and pumped
the
grenade launcher on her rifle. In one smooth motion she rolled across the
opening and fired a grenade into the room, continuing her roll to safety
on
the other side.

% So they just blindly fired a grenade in a room where there might be
civilians still alive or wounded? Likewise this just announced their
presense to anyone in the area, and since whoever it was had left their
ship, it's safe to assume they are still in the area.


 The other three pulled back as the small charge detonated,
belching smoke and debris out of the edifice at them. This done, all four
rushed in, ready to do some damage.
     Inside, there was no movement. The receptionist, a pretty young
woman,
had taken one of the large rounds of ammo through the chest, making her
decidedly less pretty.  So had the security guard sprawled in the
passageway
to the left, who hadn't even had time to draw his gun.

% That's odd. I would assume the destruction started from the docks and
worked its way in. Both of these people should have had more than enough
time to react, the secretary to get to some kind of cover and the sec
guard to have his gun drawn. An inside job, maybe?

guard our backs. Actually, I'd prefer it that way."
     Sakura shook her head. "Thanks, but no thanks. What happens if
there's a
small army down there?

% The DP will kill them, like they always do . ^_^

Besides, if we get separated, it'll be that much
easier to overwhelm us. We'll go with you guys."
     Natsumi nodded her agreement as she popped a few pieces of gum into
her
mouth and began chewing. Kei shrugged and chambered a grenade. "Suit
yourself. Going down, ladies." She hit the call button on the elevator.
*****
     As the elevator, a large freighter,

% I don't think the call freight elevators, 'freighters' unless that's one
big elevator. I think I'd reword it as, 'As the large freight elevator
sank....'

     Yuri scowled and fingered her pistol. "Dammit, am I ever going to
live
that down? Look, Jehovah's Witnesses look a hell of a lot like terrorists
in
a low-light scenario! And they were acting pretty aggressive. How the hell
was I supposed to know they weren't hostiles? They were packing heat, for
God's sake!"

% Hehe.

     Kei clicked her tongue reprovingly and said to Sakura and Natsumi,
"Yuri
never did learn the Jehovah's Witnesses are authorized to pack a sidearm
when
they're passing out those books. But it's pretty easy to tell a Jehovah's
Witness by his pistol: the only use those little girly guns; y'know, the
Chance Defense two-shots?

% I know it's a bit morbid, but it's still amusing.

     For a fraction of a second, all four of the girls were frozen by the
beauty that surrounded them. They were inside a huge transparent tunnel
suspended a mile below the surface. All around them huge fish swam and
rubbed
against the warm transparent plastic walls. But the beauty of the
shimmering
fish and crystal-clear water were erased by the presence of a small group
of
figures down the hall. A group of people in black rubber body suits,
insectoid face masks and odd-looking helmets surrounded a pair of service
vehicles. At the four agents' entrance, they had all frozen and looked up,
and were now watching them silently.

% For a group that managed to eliminate dozens of security personel, they
didn't leave a someone up top to watch for any ships that might land, and
alert the others?

     Kei grinned and asked, "Gonna pull a Super-Soldier, check? I'm on
it!"
     The red-headed Lovely Angel stood and began blasting away with her
rifle, ignoring the return fire that zipped around her. Sakura stood as
well,
a gun in each hand. She opened fire, roaring like a mad woman, blasting
away
with both guns. The one she had wounded took five bullets to the face, and
went over the side of one of the vehicles, legs kicking madly in his death
throes. A second one went down after taking a whopping six bullets
stitched
up his left side from knee to throat. A third caught two rounds from Kei's
rifle and was driven back against the clear wall hard enough to make it
shake
all the way down its length before sliding to the ground. A fourth tried
to
snipe from behind the closer vehicle, but Sakura emptied fourteen rounds
of
ammo into his shoulders, throat and face. He fell from sight without a
sound.
The other three looked at each other and dived into one of the vehicles
and
roared off in the opposite direction at top speed.

% Yikes! That's Ryu Saeba's shooting.

      Sakura released the breath she hadn't been aware she was holding in
a
slow hiss from between her teeth as she squeezed the grips of the two
guns,
making the empty clips

% mags

 fall to the floor. Yuri stood and dusted herself off.
"Where the hell did you learn to shoot like that? I don't think you missed
once."
     As she handed back the borrowed gun, Sakura said absently, "Three
times.
Bullets one, two and nineteen. The others all hit."

% Oh, never mind. Ryu would have hit each time. ^_^

     Yuri shook her head and slid a second clip

% mag

     Kei and Yuri forced themselves to stop staring and examine the
corpses.
While Kei admired Sakura's shooting, Yuri examined the head-set of one of
the
corpses. She lifted the head of the least cranially-impaired

% interesting terminalogy.

     Almost as an after thought, Kei hefted a rifle and tossed it to Yuri.
When she caught it, she looked at Kei questioningly. "It sure as hell
beats
that Electromag." Kei said, "There are extra clips

% mags

     Natsumi responded only by shaking her head. They whipped past a
flaming
wreckage,

% 'a flaming wreck' or 'flaming wreckage'

     Natsumi crawled from under a pile of smoking wreckage and staggered
to
her feet, a loopy grin plastered on her face. Scattered around were pieces
of
the two loading vehicles and several crushed Tac-Int soldiers. "That was
cool." She

% cool," she

remarked to anyone who might have cared.
     It had been an especially exciting crash. The idea to ram them that
way
had been absolutely divinely

% Drop one of the adverbs. 'divinely' would probably be the best to axe.

 inspired. For a few moments Natsumi

% 'moments, Nastumi'  I think

thrilled
over the memory of the crash. But reality reinserted itself in the form of
a
Tac-Int soldier with a mangled leg punching her in the back, hard. Natsumi
flew three feet and slammed into the wall painfully. She gasped and turned
around. The black-clad thing made a husky growling sound and put his right
hand to his left wrist. Natsumi looked around, realizing she had dropped
the
nifty rifle she had picked up, and fumbled for her pistol. The soldier
hooked
his middle finger through a ring in the wrist of his left gauntlet and
pulled
away. With a faint buzzing, a gleaming wire attached to the ring and glove
unraveled out, making a wicked-looking garrotte wire. Natsumi cursed and
continued struggling with the clasp on her holster. He advanced on Natsumi
slowly, dragging his crushed leg.

% He lost his backup piece?

     As he lunged at her with the wire, Natsumi screamed and yanked her
gun
free just in time to bring it up in front of her face. The soldier's wire
coiled around the barrel of her gun as he lunged for her throat. In swift
succession, Natsumi drove an inner-heel kick into his kneecap on his
wounded
leg, followed swiftly by a knee to his chest when he staggered. He reeled
back, pulling on his wire as he did. There was a faint scraping sound as
the
wire neatly cut the Electromag's barrel in two.

% nice wire.

     Kei and Yuri came up, both looking rather battered and burnt. Yuri
smiled kindly as she smacked Natsumi across the back of her head. At her
pained exclamation, she said, "If you ever think of pulling a move like
that
again, do two things first: warn us, and make sure your will is written
out."

% heh

them. All four of them held their breath as the tinted viewing window
lightened, revealing�a book. The book was three hands high and one and a
half
wide, with a carved wooden cover, darkened with age. Strange writing
sprawled
across the front cover in an odd, looping language. Sakura gasped. "This
is
Old Earthian Arabic!"

% Hmm. Not what I expected.

     Sakura nodded and asked, "What about these books?"
     Yuri answered, "We just load them up on the transport and�" She
trailed
off as she remembered a fairly important fact. She, Kei, and Sakura looked
over at the ruined loading vehicles and the scattered corpses of the
Tac-Int
soldiers. They wordlessly turned and stared at Natsumi. At their looks,
she
slapped the floor with her hands and wailed, "I'm sorry!"

% Heh.

*****
profile, giving them a decent look at him. He had shoulder-length black
hair
and wore chromed glasses and a permanent sneer. Yuri and Kei shook their
heads when asked if they recognized him. They watched as the man returned
to
the black ship. When Garza paused it, Kei pounded her hand into her palm
and
cursed. "I can't believe we didn't think to check inside that ship!"

% What did I tell you. ^_^


     Foley motioned for the four of them to come with him off to one side.
Once they were gathered around him, he said in a low tone, "Okay, look. I
take it you didn't get a chance to look at your mission disk." They all
shook
their heads. He went on, "That's fine. I'm officially reassigning you to
this. It turns out that those books were the collection of one Nakamura
Shuichi, an antiquities collector who died about sixty years ago. These
books
had been lost when he was transporting them while they were being
transported
to his new home.

% two 'transporting's too close together. I'd reword it as '...lost when
he had them transported to his new home."

The ship apparently crash-landed here. According to the
aqualogy's records, the ship's wreckage was found a few miles away from
here,
in a silt pit. The important part is that he left them to a museum that
the
3WA has a controlling interest in. I don't know how or why, but the BTR
wants
these books too. They're sending an official out here to seize them. Aside
from the fact that I have a deep and meaningful loathing for all things of
the BTR, I have a feeling these books are important."

% In light of the team they sent to collect them, I would say so.

     Kei and Yuri looked at each other. Kei shrugged and nodded. Yuri
looked
at Foley and said, "We'll take them. But now you owe us."
     Foley smiled and answered, "Good, good. I took the precaution of
having
them loaded on you ship in advance."

% Heh.


blended right in with the other girls.
     Tate blew his nose into his hanky and said, "Yes, well as ready I

% ready as I

*****
     As they stood at the base of the hatch of the Lovely Angel, the four
girls smiled at each other and shook hands. Kei, shaking Sakura's hand,
said,
"I must say, you did impress me with your shooting. I haven't seen that
good
of shooting from anyone but, well, me!"
     While Sakura tried not to roll her eyes as she thanked Kei for the
compliment, Yuri said to both of them, "Seriously. Now that we've seen you
in
action, I think we'll get along. I hope you're willing to stay with us for
the whole mission."

% That could be dangerous. ^_^

     Foley watched the Lovely Angel take off. He smiled as he cupped his
hand
around a match and lit a cigarette. As the ship flew off, a dripping wet
Tate
came up and stood with Foley. He glared at him and rubbed his head. "Was
that
performance really necessary?"
     Foley chuckled and answered, "There was no other way I could think of
to
guarantee they'd take those books.

% Ohhh. How wicked. ^_^


% Aside from minor gripes about the behavior of the Tac-Int team, nice
work. The action moved at a good clip and the dialogue kept things moving.
We learned a little more about the new characters as the action
progressed, and the new information flowed pretty seemlessly in with the
story. nice work and I hope to see more soon.

D.B. Sommer