"Motivational Factors"
Why do I keep doing this to myself? Linna asked as the boomer's
particle blast knocked her skidding across the roof. Grunting with the
effort of standing, Linna barely had time to dodge the two follow up
blasts, ignoring the blinking lights on her MFD for the moment.
"A little help, please?" she asked on the Knight Sabers' general
channel. She didn't have any time to check the tactical display as she
threw her knives at the target, missing as the machine dodged. "Damn,
they're getting better each time we come out," she muttered.
"A bit busy here," Nene told her from the computer terminal, stuck in
her attempt to crack the door locks.
"Hands full," Sylia said calmly. "Give me about a minute."
Priss didn't respond as she shoulder tackled one of the boomers,
grappling the machine's oversize arms in an attempt to squeeze it into a
machine equivalent of death. She grunted as the boomer pummeled her with
its head, several vicious head butts loosening her grip.
Linna appraised her situation as she catapulted across her sector of
the roof, flinging her knives across the distance separating her and the
boomer. The knives glanced off the armor, unable to penetrate the new
polyceramic armor covering this boomer. In response the boomer's mouth
opened unnaturally, a pulsing barrel emerging.
"Shit, shit, shit" Linna groaned as the beam of light caught her across
the shoulder. The force of the electron beam itself was enough to knock
her off her feet, but the heat vaporized a good portion of her armor,
unbalancing the suit. She was three meters too close to the edge to save
herself from falling.
"Linna!" Priss yelled as she saw the green suit topple over the edge.
She had no time to save her friend as the other boomer attacked the
remaining three Knights.
Linna tumbled off the seventy eighth floor, microjets in her armor
struggling to stabilize her fall. After three seconds and ten floors,
Linna managed to orient herself, head towards the ground that loomed
below her. Her microjets cut out, their minimal fuel expended as Linna's
mind raced.
She reached for one of her knives, nearly fumbling it as the ground
closed and her rangefinder (acting as an altimeter) told her how close
the pavement was. Twenty floors had passed when before she was ready,
wrapping the wire leads of her electro knife around her hand tightly.
She threw the knife with all the force she could muster, praying it
would find purchase somewhere in the steel and glass labyrinth of the
skyscraper's structure. The blade stuck, snapping taut in a half second.
Linna's fall, following the pattern of every projectile in a gravity
well before it, was parabolic, bringing her farther away from the
building the further down she went. She was now ten meters from the wall
of the building, but the force from the wire connecting her to the
building was composed of an upward component and an inward component. As
a result, she felt as if her shoulder was wrenched from the socket and
she was rapidly accelerated towards the wall.
The last thing she thought before she impacted polymer window pane was:
what a wonderful night.
She woke in a pile of rubble, brushing off the plaster board residue.
She was in what had once been an office room, but her�nconventional
entry had jumbled it up. The room had apparently been empty even before
she's made her entrance, as there were no signs of anyone having
occupied it. Across the room was the gaping hole she'd made in the wall,
almost like those old 2d Gaijin cartoons she watched sometimes.
She checked the suit's systems quickly, noting that several portions of
her internal HUD were jumbled, the impact knocking the LCD's out of
alignment. Large portions of her hand armor had been crushed when the
wire had tightened, and most of the paint was scraped off from the
impact of the glass and the scraping across the floor.
"The Sabers," she muttered as she tried to raise the common channel.
Her diagnostics reported communications failures in most systems. Even
her transponder was inactive. She tried to pull herself to her feet,
wincing in pain as her shoulder gave out. Dislocated after all, she
thought.
Linna checked the auto doctor, hoping there wasn't anything else wrong
with her. As the computer decided she needed some painkillers, she
managed to finally reach her feet. She was alone again, her friends had
no idea where she was and she was hurt. The auto doc queried her about
her shoulder, reading off a short list of possible treatments. It boiled
down to pop it back in now or wait. Linna decided it was a better idea
to wait for the painkillers to really set in.
Stumbling over the wreckage of the office room, she repeated the
question of the day: why did she keep doing this to herself? It wasn't
like Sylia's vendetta, she thought opening the closest door, carefully
poking her head around a corner. I'm not angry at boomers in general,
she continued looking for an elevator or flight of stairs.
"And I'm not trying to be a superhero like Nene, either," she said out
loud. "Oops, painkillers must've kicked in."
She wandered around the floor for a few minutes, checking rooms and
halls before she found the stairwell. The pain was getting more remote
as the neurotransmitter cocktail the auto doc administered really set
in. A bit of giddiness followed, which was quickly overcome as she felt
a massive explosion shake the entire building.
"I guess you guys didn't give up yet," she told the floors above her,
increasing the oxygen mix inside the hardsuit. It was going to be a long
climb, she told herself.
Three floor up she realized her body was moving without any real
conscious control. She wanted to go back up there! Why? She could
understand why Sylia wanted to even things up for her father, to secure
his dream now that he couldn't. Priss' motivations as well, though they
weren't entirely apparent. Nene? Well, Nene was young and a cop at
heart, this was just an extension of her life long goals.
All Linna really wanted was a lot of money and a husband. Sure, the
money was good, but was it worth getting beat up once or twice a week?
Or watching the same thing happen to your friends? Her debate had taken
up another three floors, leaving her something like twenty five left to
go, and she was no closer to finding out why she was heading back
towards the battle.
They need me, she thought, but so did Hyuga, and I dumped him like a
stocking of coals. Dancing was fun, and she was good at it, but what was
it doing for her now? Stuck in a dead end real job and possibly stuck
dead in her second job. Exhaustion filled her slowly, draining the
energy from her limbs. Perhaps a little rest, she thought. I'll give it
a second try in a second, she added, gingerly lowering herself.
It was the dull echo of the conversation with Hyuga that snapped her to
attention. Hadn't she told him almost the same thing the day they broke
up? We'll just give it a rest, she had said, ignoring the hurt look in
his eyes or the slumping of his shoulders.
When I get tired or bored or�cared, I give up, Linna thought. That's
why I'm stuck instructing dance classes at a worthless school in a
crappy part of town. Its why I'm almost going to sleep in a stairwell of
a building that just started shaking a couple of minutes ago.
As if on queue another explosion rocked the building. This time she was
close enough to get sensor readings, which if accurate meant the battle
was happening less than six stories up. Steadying herself, she told
instructed her suit to feed her some stimulants, and to set her
shoulder.
After a brief hiss informing her that the stimulants had been
administered, Linna felt a tightening around her shoulder as the auto
doc hijacked the suits articulation systems. With an audible pop the
shoulder was reset, the brunt of the pain absorbed by the artificial
endorphins in racing through her brain. There was still a lot left.
Linna bit back a scream with most of her determination, holding her
shoulder with her good arm. Shaking her head, she started up the stairs
again, moving quickly as the sounds of battle continued. She reached the
door to the proper floor, somewhere around seventy, and paused. One of
her knives was gone, along with the wire lead connecting it to her power
systems. She hefted the other one, reversing her grip before she darted
into the hallway behind the door.
Her sensors immediately updated themselves as she hid herself in the
hall's darkness. Image amplifiers came up, boosting the light in the
room and casting an eerie glow on the scene. There were crashes and
sounds of combat coming from the other end of the hallway, so Linna
carefully picked her way towards the sounds of combat.
"The mighty Knight Sabers, eh?" a voice asked arrogantly. "One of you
is already dead, and the rest will be joining her shortly, thanks to the
brilliance of my Automatons!"
Linna heard a yell that must've been Priss, followed by a series of
loud crashes. The sound of screeching metal made Linna wince as she
edged to the doorway, cautiously poking her head across the threshold.
Priss had been tossed back after her attempt to charge, and looked to
be in as bad shape as Linna herself. Large chunks of armor were bent out
of shape, tortured components fell from her railgun and a large dent
graced her helmet, but Priss' entire stance radiated anger.
Beside her, Sylia faced a group of boomers much like the ones from the
roof. The Sabers were standing back to back to back, facing outwards in
a scene reminiscent of a Western's last stand. All of their hardsuits
were in tough shape, though neither Nene's nor Sylia's was nearly as
messed up as Priss.
In front of Linna, not more than five meters from her, was the man they
had been sent to recover, Dr. Andre Du Champ, wanted for embezzling and
theft from a major technology company in France. He was waving his hands
and shouting about how superior his creations were to the puny
intellects of whoever designed the Sabers' hardsuits when Linna snuck up
behind him and wrapped her remaining wire lead around his neck as a
makeshift garrote.
"I believe you've underestimated the resiliency of the Knight Sabers,"
Sylia said calmly, though Linna could hear the relief hidden in her
voice. "Perhaps you'd better stand down you're 'Automatons?'"
Linna flashed her a 'V,' grinning inside her helmet. It wasn't such a
bad night, after all.
Once the Knight Sabers had delivered Du Champ to Franco-Tech, they
settled into the couch at their headquarters to catch up on Linna's
adventure. Freshly showered and properly treated, Linna lounged back on
the soft couch, a massive grin on her face.
"Why do you look so happy?" Priss asked, absentmindedly tussling her
hair out of her face. Almost time for another haircut, she thought with
annoyance.
"No real reason," Linna said, though the grin seemed to double in size.
Coming down from the stimulants was proving to be a real bitch, but the
remaining endorphin was making her a bit euphoric. "Just happy I didn't
die," she added, wincing slightly as she shifted around on the couch.
"I am too, Linna. You had me worried for a while there," Nene told her,
taking on the 'concerned' tone of voice.
"All of us were worried. After we lost your transponder we couldn't get
away from the boomer to check on you. They drove us inside for Du chump
to heckle and then you showed up," Priss added as she grabbed a beer
from the fridge. "Anyone else want one?" she asked the room in general.
"No thanks," Sylia said as she sat down. The others shook their heads
as well.
"Suit yourselves," Priss said, taking a long pull from the can,
punctuating with a contented sigh.
"You've been watching more Eva reruns, haven't you?" Nene asked,
pointing a finger at the musician.
"Have not," Priss said.
"Have too."
"Children, Linna's had a long day so couldn't we keep it down a
little," Sylia asked, looking slightly uncomfortable at playing mother.
"Don't worry about me," Linna told them. "I'm fine."
And so she watched as her three friends bickered and chattered between
themselves. She had her motivation now. And more importantly, she had
three friends. Perhaps she'd call Hyuga tomorrow. If she got scared, she
always had her friends to talk to. Then exhaustion overtook her, and she
fell to sleep on the couch, her snoring eventually drawing looks from
the three other girls.
"She's so unmotivated," Nene said, exasperation evident in her voice.
Author's Notes:
I always wondered why Linna was in the Sabers, so I tried to come up
with some reason or another. I'm not too comfortable with the BGC
characters, and I have trouble dealing with all of them at once, but I
hope I did a decent job of keeping them IC. Thanks for reading.
Jerico Mele (www.brandeis.edu/~jmele or email via jmele@brandeis.edu)