Filename: 01_BD_WOASS_Ch01.txt
01/21/2002
It began with a shooting star.
A fiery streak burned its way across the Mega-Tokyo skyline, inspiring
people all across the city to cast wishes on it, as the piece of space junk
vaporized and shed smaller bits of itself like a trail of magical glitter.
In a well-maintained apartment, a young woman wished that the stain on her
father's legacy might one day be lifted.
A man looking out the window of a lobby wished his car was already repaired.
A girl on a scooter wished she could fight well enough to help her friends
when they got in trouble.
A drunk wished he could lay off the booze and go back to his life, as he
staggered to the next bar.
A jogger wished she'd learned more from her uncle before he was lost to her.
In a park, two lovers wished for each others' happiness.
A woman wished revenge for her boyfriend.
So many wishes, hundreds of them. With time, a few might even come true...
Bewilderbeast Studios Present
BUBBLEGUM DISASTER
Season One
WISHES ON A SHOOTING STAR
A work of BGC fan fiction by ClassicDrogn
Chapter One
Continuity note: This is set in the original 2033-era series, and while the
first few scenes are basically just prose adaptations of the OVA, rest
assured that the plot takes a hairpin left at Albuquerque before very long.
This is NOT going to be "the Knight Sabers plus Jay Random do all the same
things almost the same way," though because most of the conflicts have
their roots in events that happen before the series begins they will see
most of the initial events the same as in canon. Nor is this in any way a
self insertion, there are some new characters but the Sabers are the
protagonists, and the story mostly follows them. Things will, however,
fairly rapidly move to a higher power level than BGC canon. Also, I use
"buma" instead of "boomer" because it works better as the spoken form of
B.M.A., for Bio-Metal Android. It is both the singular and plural form,
like "moose".
A chestnut-haired woman in a red motorcyclist's jumpsuit walked out of a
club, a disgruntled expression on her face. "What a jerk. Automatically
assuming I was looking for some kind of runaway husband or something," she
muttered crossly. "Might as well call in before Sylia gets on my case about
it." Having so decided, she headed for a nearby phone booth, not noticing
or not paying attention to the two rough-looking men who'd stepped out
behind her. Just as she started to dial, the larger of them forced the door
open.
Spinning, she bit out, "Just who the hell are you?"
The big, sunglasses-clad man just let out a menacing chuckle in reply.
"Buma..." the woman in red snarled, before getting grabbed across the face
and taking a punch in the sternum that knocked her out.
---=- + -=---
She came to in the back seat of a car, as the big man asked, "So who the
hell is she, ADPolice?" He looked almost comical crammed behind the
steering wheel of the subcompact car they were riding in.
The thin man beside her answered, "No, Bogie, I don't think she's with the
police."
Bogie grunted again, then replied, "Fine with me. We'll get it out of her
in due time when we get to Aqua City."
*Aqua City...* In the back, the woman carefully opened an eye. Seeing that
her abductors didn't seem to care what she did, she opened the other and
lifted her head a little. It was a bad sign, it meant that they intended to
get rid of her and didn't have to worry about having her learn their plans.
Seeing that they were coming to a stoplight, she got ready to take
advantage of their inattention.
Accelerating again, Bogie continued, "The others are probably there already."
"Yeah," the thin man agreed, just as she saw her chance.
Grabbing his head and twisting in her best attempt to break his neck
(crammed down into a disguise like that a buma's only a few times stronger
than a human, after all) she used him as leverage to kick Bogie against the
window, making him drag the steering wheel and turn the car into the
retaining wall. Flipping onto its side, the nose of the car got clipped by
a van that had been close behind and the whole car was knocked spinning,
coming to rest upside down and crosswise to the road, half propped up on
the wall and trailing smoke from the crushed engine compartment. It had
barely shuddered to a stop before the woman kicked the rear door open,
rolling herself out and crouching for a moment as she rubbed her shoulder.
Standing, she took stock of her injuries - didn't feel any worse than a
few... okay, make that lots of bruises - and cursed her attackers. "Well
shit! Don't you assholes even know how to have an accident?" So what if it
didn't make a lot of sense, it made her feel better.
About then, the fuel tank exploded, shocking the sore woman. She turned
back and smirked, murmuring, "Thanks for the directions, though. What?"
The car's body pan began to distort with a shriek, and a blue arm punched
through it.
"Huh? Uh-oh..." She dashed for the idling motorcycle whose rider had
stopped at the nearby public phone to call in the accident, yelling "I'll
bring it back!" as she jumped on and revved the engine. She quickly swung
to face the opposite direction with a squeal from the rear wheel, then
kicked it right towards the menacing blue android that had torn its way out
of the car. Pulling the blue bike back into a wheelie, she rode right over
the mechanoid formerly known as Bogie and sped off down the highway.
Crouching with a synthesized growl, it popped open thrusters on the calves
and shoulder blades and rocketed off in pursuit.
--=--
Officer Leon McNichol of the ADPolice was patrolling in his car, one of the
special highway interceptor models, and thinking about his chance meeting
with a local celebrity the night before. He was pulled from his reverie by
the sight of a motorcyclist (looking vaguely familiar in that red outfit)
blasting past on the other side of the highway at speeds he KNEW couldn't
be any less than forty or fifty kph over the limit. That was pushed from
his mind when he saw the blue buma chasing the cyclist on a plume of
thruster-flare. "Buma!" he gulped, with an expression somewhere between the
hunter who's seen his quarry and the swimmer who just saw a waterfall
ahead. Hitting the brakes and spinning the wheel, he expertly slid the car
between two of the light poles running down the center of the road and spun
to face the correct way, then peeled out. As his speed continued to build
he activated the retractable air dams and scoop of super-pursuit mode,
winding the tachometer all the way to the top of its range as he tried to
catch up to the pair.
---=- + -=---
A streak of fire across the skyline, ending in a splash as what was left of
the meteor hit the waves of Tokyo Bay. The news services would later report
that it was the remains of a defunct, 1980s vintage communications satelite
and unidentified debris that had collided with it and knocked it out of
orbit - but this was only the surface truth. In fact, the "unknown debris"
had been an artificial construct, but one never touched by the hands of
humans; it was the remains of an alien wreck that had been drifting through
space for millennia.
The only thing more surprising than this, were it known to anyone, was the
fact that the self-contained power supply on the one intact cargo stasis
module was still operating, up to the point that it crashed into the bay.
Everything outside the stasis field was pulverized into unidentifiable
scraps instantly by the impact and thermal shock, while the cargo - mostly
small tools and parts - quickly sank into the muck of the bay floor. The
only large piece, approximately the size and shape of an earthly
industrial-size refridgerator and covered in a multitude of spikes and
fins, was protected by the collapsing field long enough that it was allowed
to settle safely to the bottom, after skipping over the water at first and
then plowing through it as it slowed to a stop, ending up within feet of
one of Aqua City's many support pylons. There it stayed, undisturbed
until...
(note: looser translations are placed in parentheses when the computer
system is writing)
](royal guardian, pronounced roughly mah-SAH MAN-yee) UNIT 215 INTERNAL REPORT
]POST-STASIS REACTIVATION CHECKS COMPLETE
]MISSION HARDWARE (100%) INTACT
]MISSION SOFTWARE (100%) INTACT
]ARCHIVES (52%) CORRUPTED OR UNRECOVERABLE, (31%) RECOVERABLE, (17%) INTACT
]ELAPSED TIME 68 (large unit of time measurement), 117 (small unit of time
measurement)
]SEEKING REGISTERED PARTNER: (ruler's child, pronounced roughly ah-SAH-ga
REE) (untranslatable name of a predator, PREE-soo)
]ERROR: PRIMARY IDENTIFICATION DATA CORRUPTED
]ERROR: SECONDARY IDENTIFICATION DATA CORRUPTED
]TERTIARY IDENTIFICATION DATA INDICATES THIS UNIT'S CURRENT ENVIRONMENT IS
UNSUITABLE TO SUPPORT OF PARTNER'S FUNCTIONS WITHOUT THIS UNIT'S
ASSISTANCE. ACTIVATING INDEPENDENT MOBILITY MODE.
The spines and fins on the oddly shaped construct began to shift, most of
them retracting into its mass while others dug it out of the partial
covering of muck, and the main section shrank considerably into a mostly
humanoid form, a green-tinted visor and numerous faintly glowing gold
traceways on its surface breaking up the brushed-metal coloration,
humanlike arms ending in five evenly spaced tentacle-digits, the "legs"
fused together like a mermaid's tail and ringed by several sets of fins,
now set in an obvious rotor pattern.
The unit spread its "fingers" and the traceways on its arms flared
brightly, causing a visible wave of force to be fired from each hand. This
lifted the torso free of the bottom, and the sets of rotors around its
lower portion whirred to life, holding its position a dozen feet above the
bay floor. A cloud of fine mud and sand was kicked up, only to clear
rapidly as the rotors pulled more clean water down from above.
]ACTIVITY DETECTED IN THE ARTIFICIAL STRUCTURE 52 (unit of distance
measurement) ABOVE THIS UNIT'S CURRENT POSITION. PROBABILITY OF REGISTERED
PARTNER BEING IN IMMEDIATE AREA: INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR CALCULATION.
]INVESTIGATING ACTIVITY
---=- + -=---
Leon skidded his interceptor to a stop at the head of the bridge to Aqua
City - he'd never quite managed to catch up to the buma, but at least it
seemed that the cyclist had escaped it... so far. The blue motorbike was
parked there too, the rider nowhere in sight. The only positive thing was
that combat buma tended to consider "subtle" to mean only one explosion,
and there wasn't any sign of massive violence that he could see either. He
opened the car's canopy and got out, pausing to retrieve one of his private
stash of heavy weapons - an electromagnetically propelled grenade launcher
- before continuing across the bridge on foot.
--=--
Aqua City was dark, almost entirely unlit. It had been meant to be a
shining example of futuristic architecture to the world, but had fallen
afoul of massive budget overruns and legal hassles, and construction had
been halted while the superstructure was only three quarters erected, with
none of the finishing work done. Every month or so a police sweep would be
done to clear out the vagrants, but other than that it saw little activity.
Truthfully, there were never many squatters, either, since the structure
was a long way from anything but factories and the mostly open platforms
provided little if any protection from the elements. Tonight, with the
sweep only a few days past, it was almost entirely abandoned, except for a
certain woman in a red jumpsuit...
She loped through the dark hallways, trying to keep up speed while
minimizing noise, searching for the little girl she and her friends had
been hired to rescue, hoping she wouldn't run into any more buma before
finding her. Finally, she came to a large open area, and spotted what
looked like her quarry drawing on a wall on the far side. "Hmm..." she
hummed. "A map of Mega-Tokyo... Cynthia?"
She'd come halfway across the open-air room by this time, and the little
blonde girl stood and faced her, stepping back timidly.
"Don't be frightened, " the woman soothed. "Are you Cynthia?"
The girl looked about before making a small, affirming sound. "Who are you,
lady?"
"I'm Priss," the red-suited woman replied. "I've come to rescue you." She
stepped closer to the girl and kneeled, reaching out. "Oh look, you've
gotten your clothes all dirty." Indeed, the girl's formerly white dress was
closer to grey, though the blue bandanna around her neck was still fairly
clean. "Are you alone here?"
Cynthia looked around again, before answering, "I don't know."
Priss narrowed her eyes. *I doubt it,* she thought. *This is feeling more
like a trap every second. I can't move too fast, though, or she'll get
spooked.*
The girl broke into her thoughts by pointing to a part of her picture and
saying, "Look at this, lady."
"Hmm? I've seen that somewhere before..." replied Priss. Looking closer,
she wondered what would posses a little girl to write 'Screw you!' under a
yuckie-face doodle... it DID look familiar, though.
"I did that," Cynthia confided with a small, upwards twitch of her lips.
*Good,* thought Priss. *Hopefully she's beginning to trust me enough to go
with me* "Well you're very talented!" she replied aloud. "Come on, let's go
home. I'm sure your Mom and Poppa must be worried about you."
A slight quiver in her voice, Cynthia replied, "I have no such people..."
"Huh? What the..." *Why would anyone kidnap an orphan? Unless she was used
as some kind of experimental subject...* "What the hell's going on here?"
Priss vocalized, distracted from her 'nice adult person' act. Then, she
noticed Cynthia's attention fixed on something behind her. With a feeling
of dread, she looked over her shoulder.
To her surprise, it wasn't the blue buma she'd escaped from earlier jumping
down from a wall, but some type she hadn't seen before, with a green visor,
numerous flat, light plates and fins instead of the normal massive buma
armor, and a network of gold tracery over much of its form, which glowed
ever so slightly in the half-light of the city sky above. Unfortunately,
that just meant it was probably some kind of extra-nasty experimental type.
Priss went for the parts of her hand-cannon and snapped it together with
practiced ease, while the robotic form stood there, examining them.
]ANALYSIS OF SUBJECT A: FORM INDICATES IMMATURE INDIVIDUAL. NOT SUITABLE AS
PARTNER. SECONDARY SCAN INDICATES THAT THIS SUBJECT IS A (term meaning the
same as "cyborg" but implying outdated technology). NOT SUITABLE AS PARTNER.
]ANALYSIS OF SUBJECT B: FORM MATCHES TERTIARY IDENTIFICATION DATA TO (88%).
APPEARS TO BE PROTECTIVE OF SUBJECT A. CROSS INDEXING (ruler's child)
ARCHIVE LISTING: DESCRIBED BEHAVIORAL MATCH: PROTECTING THOSE OF LESSER
ABILITY. ATTEMPTING (verbal) IDENTIFICATION.
]ERROR: (96%) CORRUPTION OF SPEECH SYNTHESIS LIBRARY.
Priss slapped the first magazine into the ugly little pistol she'd put
together, just as the presumed buma confronting her gurgled, "ah-SAH-ga REE
PREE-soo!" Her eyes widened as she heard it say what seemed to be her full
name, if poorly synthesized.
She kept Cynthia moving back away from the android as she narrowed her eyes
and growled out, "How do you know my name?", unconsciously flicking her
free hand at herself as she did so, before bracing to fire.
]SUBJECT B IDENTIFIES WITH REGISTERED PARTNER'S (name and title). PROCEED.
]THIS UNIT IS TARGETED BY SUBJECT B WITH (heavy pistol). THREAT ASSESSMENT:
(minimal). ANALYSIS: SUBJECT B IS WARY OF POOR SPEECH SYNTHESIS POSSIBLY
INDICATING A HOSTILE UNIT. PROCEED.
]INITIATING PARTNER LINK.
Cursing, Priss squeezed off a shot and dodged further away from Cynthia,
hoping to lure it after her. The android complied, ignoring the tungsten
cored .50 caliber slug that had embedded itself in its chest and continuing
its lunge, seemingly intent on turning her into a red smear on Cynthia's
map. Instead, at the last second the many armor plates on its front side
swung away, while rest of its mass flowed like thick liquid and seemed to
regain some of what had shrunk away in the initial, underwater shapechange.
Then, with no time for more than a short shriek from Priss, it splashed
around her and formed what had all the look of a mechanical cocoon.
"Lady...?" Cynthia clasped her hands in front of her mouth as the nice lady
she'd been talking to was engulfed by a huge (to the little girl) robot.
"Heh heh heh... well, that's one less problem," chuckled the Bogie-buma in
its now obviously synthesized voice as it stepped through a side door.
"I wanted to find out who she was working for, though," complained a woman
who entered from the opposite direction, with the thin man from earlier and
another who was quite a bit fatter.
A fourth man entered by the door Priss had originally used. "The real
question is who sent our unusual friend there," he chided, nodding his
orange-crowned head towards the cocoon, which was rearranging again, the
green visor moving into position roughly over the eyes of the woman inside
and the fins moving about again. "Still, at least Cynthia is still ours.
She is the mission objective, after all."
"Heh, guess you're right about that, Frederick." The massive blue buma
clomped over to the petrified little girl and reached out one massive hand
to grab her arm. Just before he could, though, it was severed in a hail of
laser bolts from above, and he dropped to his knees with a mechanical howl
of pain.
"Shit! Bogie, you stay here with me," ordered Frederick. "The rest of you,
get up there and get rid of whoever did that!"
With a whoosh of displaced air the woman and her two companions leapt out
of the open room and onto the platform level above. Looking around, they
quickly spotted three hardsuits, one light green and grey, with a pair of
ribbons dangling from the helmet, one pink and blue with red and white
highlights, perched cutely on a ledge, and one white with blue trim,
standing dramatically framed by the crescent moon.
"Don't tell me," sneered the woman. "Kidnapping is wrong and in the name of
the moon you'll punish us. Hah! Who are you supposed to be?"
The woman in the white suit (even armor couldn't hide -those- measurements)
calmly replied, "The Knight Sabers."
"Are we supposed to be impressed by that?" asked the thin guy, before
bursting out of his human disguise, revealing himself as another of the
blue BU-55c buma. The fat guy and the woman followed suit, though the woman
remained female styled, a BU-54c. He immediately unfolded his thruster pack
and arm blades, and blasted off towards Saber Green. She leapt to meet him,
dodging in midair to plant her hands on each side of his head and swing her
legs down to grip his neck.
*Right... there!* she thought, winding up her right fist and activating the
knuckle bombers, then slamming it down at the weak spot she'd picked out on
the back of the buma's skull. It exploded, blowing the body backwards to
fall into the room with Frederick, Bogie, Cynthia, and Priss, while Saber
Green used the shockwave to push herself back to a landing on the platform.
Meanwhile, Saber Pink had hopped off her ledge and dashed sideways, the
BU-54c keeping even with her until she stopped, then opening its heat beam
array to turn her into Kentucky Fried Knight Saber.
Saber White had activated her own flight pack, and much like Green met her
buma midair, but with an energy saber rather than a fist. The two halves of
her buma fell to rest with the bits of the BU-54c that Saber Green had just
slashed with her mono-ribbons while it was distracted by firing at Pink,
who dodged out of the way. White angled her descent to take her into the
open room, between Cynthia and her captors, which also put her between them
and the cocoon.
--=--
Priss had barely had time for a shriek as the grey android charging her
seemed to open up and engulf her, tendrils of its flowing core reaching
around her to cushion the impact with the wall.
*Ohshitohshitohshitohshitohshit...* was pretty much the sum of her
thoughts, combined with *I am sooo dead. Smothered by a melty buma, this is
embarrassing.* Thus it was a bit of a surprise to her when she felt the
touch of cool, dry air on her face, rather like her hardsuit's ventilation
system. Not much of one on top of everything else, of course, but enough
that she reflexively gasped a good lungfull of it in without pausing to
think of whether it might be drugged or poisoned.
The only thing that happened for a few seconds was feeling the weird buma's
liquid innards flow over her skull and apparently around each hair
follicle, then down, under her outfit and over the rest of her body... an
odd, cool/tingly feeling, but hardly unpleasant, and nothing like the
horror stories she'd heard about the Deep Psychology Scanner. With a sigh,
she stopped struggling against the restraining metal, since she had
absolutely no leverage, and waited for a chance to get free. *I just wish
I'd had my hardsuit when I got here, I could've gotten rid of the damn
thing before it got to me.*
]FIRST STAGE LINK COMPLETE. ARCHIVES UPDATING FROM PARTNER'S MEMORY.
REQUEST FOR PERSONAL COMBAT MODE RECIEVED.
]PERSONAL COMBAT MODE REQUIRES SECOND STAGE LINK FOR COMMAND FEEDBACK. TIME
TO SECOND STAGE LINK: 38 SECONDS. INITIATE OBSERVATION MODE IN INTERIM.
As if on her cue, a grid of the glowing traces she'd seen when the mystery
mechanoid first showed up formed in the open space around Priss's face,
then were covered by a display similar to the one in her own hardsuit. It
showed F. G. Frederick, the man she'd been hired to capture, talking to a
woman and two other men, while the buma she'd escaped from on the highway
was further away, and Cynthia stood rooted where she'd been when Priss had
been engulfed. It also showed her that the fins the grey buma was covered
in were moving around just beyond the viewpoint it was projecting, as she
caught a glimpse of one in the edge of her vision every now and then.
External audio came up just in time for her to flinch at Bogie's mechanical
scream as his arm was blown off, and she started struggling against the
mass of metal around her again, knowing her friends would need her help
against all those buma. She cursed at the lack of effect it had, and sighed
with relief, but kept struggling, as only three of them were sent to deal
with the other Knight Sabers.
]PARTNER IS BECOMING AGITATED. THREAT TO HER HIGHNESS'S COMRADES IMMENENT.
OPERATING PROCEDURES OF PREVIOUS PERSONAL COMBAT UNIT INTERPRETED,
CONFIGURING FOR PERSONAL COMBAT MODE. TIME TO SECOND STAGE LINK: 6 SECONDS
Priss felt herself being moved, from the off-balance position she'd been in
to a more natural standing posture. It almost felt like she was wearing her
normal hardsuit, except without the added height from the heels. *Not that
I ever understood why Sylia thought it would be better to have 6" heels on
combat suits anyway,* she thought with a grin. *Well, speak of the devil,*
she continued, as Sylia's suit landed in front of her. At the same time,
there was a wash of cool and tingly through her head, and it suddenly felt
like she was barely wearing anything. A voice that wasn't a voice sounded
in her head:
]SECOND STAGE LINK COMPLETE. PERSONAL COMBAT MODE ENGAGED. THIS UNIT
FUNCTIONS ONLY TO SERVE YOU, PRINCESS. WHAT IS YOUR COMMAND?
*Bwah?* Priss tried moving again. This time, it worked, feeling even
smoother than her Knight Sabers hardsuit.
Cynthia had not missed all this, as the white Saber had (she'd landed
facing the buma). "Lady?" she asked, in an even smaller voice than earlier.
"It's okay, Cynthia," soothed Priss, who now resembled a rather feminine,
and blue, version of the original humanoid form of the grey and gold
android, though a fair number of its fins and plates had been rearranged
into a set of winglike extensions from the back, rather like the Pink
Saber's suit. "Let's get you out of here."
"What?" Sylia turned sideways, to keep one eye on the buma as she checked
her back. *That is definitely NOT Priss's hardsuit, but it sure sounds like
her voice.*
Cynthia had no such reservations, though; hearing a friendly voice, even
from a weird looking robot that had scared her before, was better than the
scary men that had kidnapped her and the robot that had tried to grab her a
few seconds ago. Besides, she'd already seen some of the people she'd been
with turn into robots, so maybe Priss could too. She ran over to the
blue-suited figure, and was scooped up in her arms.
"Not bad," Frederick complimented Saber White, drawing her attention back
to him. "I'd say you're definitely superior to the Army's K-12 Armored
Troopers. You really did a number on my friends. What do you hope to
accomplish?"
Priss cut in with the comment she'd sarcastically made when the Sabers
first formed, which Sylia had added to their charter. "To defend peace and
justice, and rid the world of evil." She hoped that would convince Sylia of
her identity if her voice had not.
"Heh. A worthy objective," said Frederick, "but to achieve it, you must
first defeat me." With that, he shredded away the last of his clothes, arms
and chest keeping their human disguise except for a trio of metal cables on
each side of his neck, while from the pectorals down he was a mass of
writhing metal tentacles. Quickly feeding them into and taking control of
the headless body of the BU-55c Saber Green had killed, he brought it to
its feet.
Sylia turned quickly to the strange suit that was apparently being worn by
Priss, and ordered, "Get the girl out of here!" before spinning back to
face the buma.
Frederick countered with a command to Bogie. "After them! Don't let those
two escape!"
Sylia tried to stop the one armed buma with shots from the palm blaster of
her suit, but a telescoping fist from Frederick grabbed her arm and threw
her to the wall. He started to crush Sylia's arm, but a laser blast from
above distracted him as it blew half the synth-flesh off his face and
ruined one eye. As Sylia got back to her feet, Saber Green, who'd fired the
shot, and Saber Pink landed on either side of her. "Good shot, Linna," she
congratulated on their scrambled radio link.
Frederick just laughed and lashed out with a storm of tentacles, sinking
them into the wall when the three Knight Sabers dodged away on their jets,
starting to absorb the structure of Aqua City.
--=--
The hardsuited Priss ran through the corridors of Aqua City with Cynthia on
her arm, then pulled up short as Bogie leapt out of a cross-corridor ahead
of her and opened his heat array. Before he could fire, though, a grenade
blasted him from behind, knocking him down and scrambling his processes for
a moment. Over the groaning, orange-dripping buma, Leon asked, "Seen a
pretty singer named Priss anywhere around here? I was hoping we could go on
a date."
Sensing that its Partner now wished to hide her identity, the suit computer
scrambled her voice in much the same way her normal suit would as she
replied. "Cut the crap. I just want to get this kid out of here. Which way?"
Leon got serious again as the buma stirred, and reached for more ammo as he
replied. "Uh oh. Go that way!" He gestured along the corridor the buma had
come out of, though in the other direction, before continuing to reload.
"Thanks!" Priss chirped as she took off again. Another two shots served to
put Bogie down for good, a hole blown completely through his torso and head
gone. It was a good thing, because that was the last of his ammunition.
Leon made his way back down the corridor he'd come in.
--=--
On the open deck of Aqua City, things weren't going too well. Linna, Sylia,
and Nene were doing little more than dodging from place to place as
tentacles made the floor and walls bulge as if giant moles were tunneling
through them. Near the bridge, Priss fell afoul of a similar bulge, losing
her hold on Cynthia as she tripped and rolled away from the swelling metal
vein. Unfortunately that put her on the other side of it from the girl, and
it grew to man-height and beyond before she could do more than get to her
feet. A bunch of tentacles wrapped around a nearby crane and made it lash
out at her, scoring a deep gouge in the deck as she dodged.
Priss cursed as she heard Cynthia call out for help, then was forced to
dodge again as the crane came back for a second pass. *Dammit, I'm going to
need my suit - MY suit, that I'm familiar with - and maybe a motoslave to
get back to her!*
Reluctantly, she turned and ran, making use of the speed she'd discovered
this new... whatever it was... had to cross the long bridge in a fraction
of the time it would have taken her unassisted.
--=--
Leon made his way to the foot of the bridge just in time to see Cynthia
climbing a ladder away from the tentacles below her, while farther away a
huge mass of them rose pulsing into the night.
--=--
At the foot of the tentacle mountain, the three remaining Knight Sabers
stared up in dismay. "THIS is a BUMA?" yelled Sylia.
"That's impossible!" gasped Linna.
A giant, demonic looking buma head had formed at the top of the mound, and
roared its anger at the sky.
--=--
Mackie had been rather surprised to see an unfamiliar blue hardsuit, rather
more ornate in appearance than his older sister's designs, come running
across the bridge from Aqua city, heading straight for the "Silky Doll
delivery truck" that was actually one of the Knight Sabers' transport
vehicles. He was even more surprised to hear Priss's voice coming from it,
especially when he knew the only suit she'd be likely to be wearing was
still in the back of the truck, along with her red motoslave.
"MACKIE! Great! Break out the med-kit, I know a little girl who's probably
got a few scrapes and bumps by now, and I'll be coming right back with her
as soon as I get into my regular suit!"
She'd reached up to take off the helmet while saying this, but before even
touching it it seemed to fly apart and relocate, the fins on the sides
moving down to her shoulders, the mask and visor dropping to her chest, and
the top and rear of the helmet vanishing away, presumably to her back. She
could still feel the skullcap that had insinuated itself around her hair,
though, and she stopped dead as she realized that the HUD overlays were
still present in her vision, even without the screen. In particular, her
familiar blue and red hardsuit seemed to be getting special attention from
them. "WHAT THE HELL!?"
]ENHANCED OPTICS REMAIN ACTIVE IN COMBAT STANDBY MODE, explained the voice
that wasn't a voice. RETRIEVED DATA INDICATE SIMILAR CAPABILITIES IN YOUR
HIGHNESS'S EXISTING OPTIC SYSTEMS
*Oh no. I thought I'd just imagined that... I don't have time to go crazy
now!*, Priss thought at it with a sour expression on her face.
]YOUR HIGHNESS'S MENTAL CONDITION IS CURRENTLY WITHIN OPERATIONAL
TOLERANCES OF STABILITY.
"Gaaaah. No time now, I have work to do. Off!", she commanded, hoping she
wouldn't have to spend too long figuring out the release mechanism for this
suit.
]NEGATIVE. COMBAT STANDBY MODE IS THE MINIMUM ALLOWABLE PROTECTION LEVEL IN
CLOSE PROXIMITY TO EXTREME DANGER ZONES.
"Dammit, get OFF of me, you piece of shit! I need to get my real hardsuit!"
]THIS UNIT EXCEEDS THE CAPABILITIES OF YOUR HIGHNESS'S PREVIOUS PERSONAL
COMBAT UNIT IN ALL RESPECTS. CONFIGURATION FOR LINKAGE WITH UNIT DESIGNATED
AS "MOTOSLAVE" (a targeting ring popped into existence around her
motoslave, then vanished just as quickly) IN PROGRESS, ESTIMATED TIME TO
COMPLETION 9 SECONDS.
"This is not over," Priss muttered as she let the helmet reform around her
head and hopped onto the transformable motorcycle, revving it and heading
back to the action.
Mackie picked his jaw off the floor and shot a worried look at her back as
she sped off. "Priss?" *What was that about...?*, the boy wondered.
--=--
The Knight Sabers had fallen back to the foot of the Aqua City bridge to
regroup after Linna and Sylia had both been caught by the still-growing
tentacles and thrown into walls. "It's absorbing all of Aqua City into its
matrix!", gasped Sylia.
Movement on the one remaining unassimilated tower caught Nene's attention.
"Look, it's Cynthia! Oh no, I'm almost out of thruster fuel!"
"Me, too," Linna chimed in.
"This battle has drained my extended flight pack as well," added Sylia.
"and even if we could save her, I don't see what we could do against
that... monster-buma." *And I wish I knew what has happened to Priss, if
that was Priss. It's not like her to leave a child in a danger zone!*
"It's hopeless!" cried Nene.
Like the cavalry riding to the rescue, this was when Priss came roaring up
on the motoslave. "Hey gang, did you miss me?", she greeted as she pulled
up.
Not sparing time for further pleasantry, Sylia pointed to where Cynthia was
backed against the base of a communications array, urging, "Quick, save the
girl!"
"Right!", she replied. "You give covering fire. Ready? Let's go!" Revving
the engine again, she bounced her way up a clump of knotted tentacles and
used them as a jump, activating the motoslave's transformation in midair.
*I sure hope you were telling the truth about being able to do this, Miss
Crazy Voice In My Head*
]MOTOSLAVE LINKAGE COMPLETE was her only reply, as the over-the-shoulder
fans spun up, and she flew to Cynthia's perch. She landed and once again
gathered the girl in her arms, but before she could take off five huge
tentacles reached around the edge of the platform and grabbed the
motoslave's frame, while more of them began to assimilate the platform
itself. The whole tower was beginning to look disturbingly like an arm
sized to match the huge head, holding them up like a prize in front of it.
]WARNING! MOTOSLAVE UNIT IS UNDER ATTACK BY NANO-ASSIMILATORS!
]THIS UNIT IS NOT VULNERABLE TO ATTACK BY NANO-ASSIMILATORS.
]SUBJECT "CYNTHIA" IS VULNERABLE TO ATTACK BY NANO-ASSIMILATORS.
]THIS UNIT RECCOMENDS DISENGAGING MOTOSLAVE UNIT AND RETREAT WITH SUBJECT
"CYNTHIA"
"Great idea," growled Priss, "So glad I've got a BOARDER to tell me these
things." The clawed hand closed further, starting to crush the motoslave's
frame. Hurriedly, she commanded it to open and release her, which
fortunately it was still not too damaged to do. She vaguely noticed a dark
grey helicopter taking off from the far side of Aqua City, but ignored it
for the moment.
"Oh no! Ladeeeeeeee!", Cynthia cried as a tentacle reached for her foot.
*Why won't they leave me alone! They're bad, anyway, they're part of that
robot-man who stole me. They should be stopped!* She turned, to look at the
monstrous buma head that was perched on a mountain of tentacles, rapidly
coiling themselves into a body and upper arm connected to the hand she and
Priss were trapped by. *Stop!* She thought at it, glaring with her eyes and
with the overhead picture she saw sometimes. "STOOOOP!"
Priss got ready to jump, in a suit that had yet to demonstrate independent
flight ability, but Cynthia seemed focused on the huge metallic skull
leering at them. She stiffened, then yelled, "STOOOOP!"
In space, a satelite obeyed the commands fed to it, to find a certain
target and stop it. A blue-white beam, several hundred times hotter than
the sun, stabbed out, lighting the darkness of space with its fury. It
plunged down through the atmosphere, diminished slightly in much the same
way that a rock is diminished slightly by erosion as it's thrown through a
waterfall. Down, though the clear, high skies, through the clouds, through
the Mega-Tokyo smog, and through the forehead of the monstrous buma head
that had attracted the ire of its mistress. It stopped its roaring, and all
over the mangled Aqua City the tentacles drooped, in some cases falling to
pieces as the directing intelligence behind them lost contact. The palm of
the giant hand continued to writhe, though, and caught Cynthia's right leg
with several small strands just before Priss could jump for it. They
quickly tore through the artificial flesh and began their work.
*The satelite weapons...*, a stunned Priss thought, staring at the striken
monster-buma head.
]WARNING! SUBJECT "CYNTHIA" IS UNDER ATTACK BY NANO-ASSIMILATORS!
"What!? SHIT!", she swore. "What do I do now? Cynthia!"
]PREVENTION OF FURTHER NANO-ASSIMILATOR CONTAMINATION URGENT! PREEMPTIVE
REMOVAL OF INFECTED LIMB WILL REMAIN EFFECTIVE FOR 1.8 SECONDS!
The little girl just stared at her leg with horrified grey eyes, images
flashing through her mind - the buma that had delayed them in the corridor,
opening its chest to fire - a camera, watching her - the tentacle ripping
into her foot - the city from high above - herself, lying on a table with
cables attached all over - the tentacle again, and the pain as it invaded
her leg - the beam that had just blown through the skull on the mountain of
tentacles - the city from above again, but closer; she could see herself
and her friend. "Heeeeelp meeeeeeee!" she screamed, as she reached for the
place in her mind that she'd told to stop and mentally pounded on it. A
hellstorm of the blue beams struck out in response, pounding the mountain
of buma to pieces and toppling the huge hand towards the bay.
*She never even knew she was a buma...* Clinging for both their lives,
Priss apologized to Cynthia, "I'm sorry honey, but this is going to hurt. I
PROMISE I'll make it all better as soon as we're safe!" Blinking through
the sudden tears in her eyes, she extended one of the fins on her arm, and
slashed through Cynthia's infected leg at the thigh, quickly grabbing it
with her other hand and clamping down to prevent blood loss, not bothering
to notice that the "blood" was buma-orange as she wrapped the dirtied arm
around the shocked girl's torso and kicked off the falling hand, that was
STILL trying to crush them. It finally blew the motoslave's powerplant just
as she did so, the explosion shattering the huge hand.
>From the transport truck, the other Knight Sabers watched with horror as
their teammate and rescuee seemed to be blown to pieces. They'd fled the
area when the beamsat had started firing, not wanting to be caught in its
blasts. "Priss..." the Sabers' leader whispered, while Linna staggered back
against the truck.
"Oh, kami," Nene howled, as she dropped to her armored knees. "Nooo..." The
pink-suited Knight Saber began sobbing, not caring if she made a scene.
The circling grey tilt-rotor spiraled higher and lowered the engine
nacelles into cruise configuration. The poker-faced executive inside gave
commands into a microphone before sitting back for the ride to Genom Tower
on the other side of the bay.
Mackie jumped down from the truck and walked over to Nene, the most
obviously distraught of the three. He wrapped an arm around her armored
shoulders. "Hey, you know Priss," he comforted. "She's rough on the gear,
but always gets through in the end."
Nene didn't bother to answer, she just wrapped her arms around him and
hugged... of course, since she was still in her armor this reduced Mackie
to a strangled wheeze as he tried to breathe. Fortunately for him, that was
when Priss's strange new suit burst out of the water to land on the dock,
the whirling blades that had driven it out of the water splitting up and
returning to their positions as the fins and wings he'd seen when she came
for the motoslave, the fused legs separating, the torso and head covered in
a large bulge of the suit's material. It split open to reveal Priss still
holding the rather grey-looking Cynthia with one hand and keeping her from
bleeding out the stump of her right leg with the other. "Medical emergency,
Sylia! Get the van ready!"
Shaken out of her surprise, the white Saber scrambled into the van's side
door, hitting the emergency release on her armor even as she dropped the
ambulance-style emergency pallet from its stowed position on the wall.
Kicking the disconnected pieces of her suit out of the way, she directed
Priss to lay the girl down and let go. *I'd hoped I'd never have to use
this equipment, but it's a good thing I had it installed,* she thought as
she yanked a proper tourniquet tight. "Mackie! Get driving for the base!
Linna, get Nene in here and then radio ahead, tell Doctor Raven to get the
buma toolkit ready in the operating room!"
Priss just kneeled next to the pallet and held Cynthia while Sylia worked
with what limited supplies they had that would help with a damaged buma.
Finding out whether the girl was totally artificial or just a
high-percentage bumaroid would have to wait. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I had
to do it honey, we'll fix you right up," she gasped, over and over.
---=- + -=---
In a residential district devastated by the Great Kanto Earthquake of 2026
and still unrecovered, a man with bright blue hair and a woman with bright
red hair, both looking to be in their early twenties and carrying massive
travel-packs worn over long, black coats, stepped cautiously through the
darkened streets. They moved like they were expecting trouble, but without
fearing it - like great beasts on the prowl. Finally, they stopped in front
of a partially collapsed boarding house, not significantly different from
anything on the rest of the street.
The pair seemed to concentrate for a moment, standing facing slightly
different directions as they scanned their surroundings, but apparently
found no sign of what they were looking for. The man turned to his ...
sister? cousin? wife? ... with a hopeful look, but she shook her head.
Drooping slightly, he put an arm around her shoulders, and they continued
off down the street. They had noticeably less spring in their steps than on
the approach, but just before turning another corner the woman slipped her
arm up behind his pack as well.
-----------------------------
Yeah, yeah, I'm evil, deal with it. It's not like the next chapter isn't
coming right after this one, you know, I'm waiting until I've written the
whole thing before starting to post.
I know that Priss hates buma. I know she's not acting like it in regards to
Cynthia and especially the alien hardsuit/robot/whatever she's so calmly
wandering around in. Rest assured, it will be addressed in the next
chapter. No, she's not ACTUALLY an alien princess, the antire civilization
that created the suit is most likely gone (I haven't decided) and if you
consider that a great ape is a 97% or so match for human, an 88% match for
species (aka, 'tertiary identification data') isn't all that exact. If I
was going to make her an alien princess, her last name would be "Kotobuki"
and she'd be blonde.
Many thanks to my prereaders: Patricia Kostan (who knew nothing of BGC, and
helped make sure the story was understandable to people who were not
familiar with the series), Nathan Baxter (who sent me liberal doses of that
most underestimated of useful things, Unbridled Excitement), Hide Hasegawa
(who also helped with Japanese), and Kaitlin Coelho.
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.
EOF
--
________________ ___ ___ ________________
\_________ \ \__\__/__/ / _________/ Our Lady of the Blessed
\________ \__~o\/o~__/ ________/ Acceleration, guide my throttle
\____________\ /____________/ and grant me traction, give me my
A A R D || V A R K daily kick in the ass! VROOOOOOOOOM!
.---Anime/Manga Fanfiction Mailing List----.
| Administrators - ffml-admins@anifics.com |
| Unsubscribing - ffml-request@anifics.com |
| Put 'unsubscribe' in the subject |
`---- http://ffml.anifics.com/faq.txt -----'