Eyrie Productions, Unlimited presents UNDOCUMENTED FEATURES EXILE Futureshock Benjamin D. Hutchins (c) 2003 Eyrie Productions, Unlimited THURSDAY, JUNE 20, 2340 NEKOMIKOKA, TOMODACHI The new GENOM Tower in downtown Nekomikoka wasn't finished yet. It wouldn't be, in fact, for nearly a year more. Though the skeleton of the building rose to its full height, only one floor was complete with its skin of metal and duraglass and all its interior fittings; the rest were bare structural steel, the early evening wind (it lacked perhaps half an hour of nightfall) moaning through the open girders. Oddly, that one completed floor was the -top- one. It was a quirk of GENOM's corporate culture that the top floor was always the first floor finished in a Tower, that designation being reserved for planetary headquarters buildings. That was done so that the Master of the Corporation could survey his new domain from the fully finished comfort of his office as soon as possible. He had an office on the top floor of every Tower, and all the offices were the same. Maximilien Largo, the aforementioned Master, stood at the huge panoramic window behind his huge panoramic desk and looked down at Nekomikoka. It wasn't the biggest or most significant city he'd ever conquered, but it would make a good addition to his empire all the same. This planet was one of the centers of personal electronics development -and- consumption in the galaxy, and it was long past time for GENOM to control it. He'd have been here five years earlier, but for the trouble on New Japan... but that was all in the past now, that situation pacified, the master plan moving ahead. No sense getting all riled up about it again. Delays were delays, but there was progress to be made now, and it was well past time. Across the street, a girl in a school uniform - dark blue blazer, ribbon tie, pleated skirt - stood with her hands folded in front of her, looking up at the skeletal building. It was empty and silent, for the most part. Work was still going on, of course; the construction Buma used by GENOM for all the company's work, disdaining local construction workers (or -any- construction workers, for that matter) never stopped working. There was, however, only one demonstrable life form inside... which suited the girl in the school uniform just fine. Constructed with GENOM's usual stunningly boring architecture, the tower stood 750 stories high, making it by far the tallest building on the planet. That, too, was by design, and she knew it. She knew a great deal about GENOM's corporate habits, and the twisted intelligence which shaped them. More than she ever wanted to know. Behind that one mirrored window, far up on the top floor, that one window now glinting with the orange light of sunset, that intelligence stood looking down, possibly looking right at her. It would, she knew, be considering her one of the planet's billions of insignificant inhabitants, no better than insects, if that were the case. It would be wrong. With a soft whickering noise, a dark blur shot past her head, barely missing one of the two heavy tails of night-black hair she wore, and embedded itself with a sharp CHINK in the concrete facade of the building she stood by. The girl in the school uniform didn't flinch or look around to see where it had come from. Instead, she slid her brown eyes sideways, turning her head only as much as she had to in order to see the object stuck in the wall. It was a nine-pointed shuriken of cold black steel. Hanging from a ribbon through the hole in the center was a small slip of paper which read simply, "TASK COMPLETE." The girl smiled slightly, reached into her pocket, and took out a small silver cylinder which somewhat resembled a lipstick. Except for the large red button on top, which she proceeded to press down with her thumb. It glowed brightly under the pressure, and did not go out when she released it. From down in the bowels of the GENOM Tower, there came a series of reports, audible to the girl across the street only as a ripple of quiet popping sounds. Up on the 750th floor, in an office designed to be occupied while the rest of the building was still under construction, they made no sound at all. The first indication Largo had that something was out of the ordinary was the sudden failure of the power, knocking out the lights and the computer systems on his desk. "Wha - ?" he murmured, and just as he did so, he felt the vibration in the soles of his feet. Vibration and a faint -falling- sensation... Ten blocks away, on the 410th floor of the Palace Downtown Hotel, Dr. Lawrence R. Mann stretched out on the bed in his luxury room and yawned. He didn't see what he had to be on Tomodachi for; the building wasn't even finished yet, which was why he was in a hotel room instead of an office. Sure, it was a -nice- hotel room, but on the whole, he'd rather have been back on New Japan, keeping an eye on his pet projects. This "special assistant to the Master" gig was really starting to get stale. He felt it before he heard it, a strange vibration running up through the structure of the hotel and shaking his bed slightly. For a moment, he thought it might be an earthquake - was Nekomikoka in a fault zone? He knew Tomodachi was a seismically active world - but as he got to his feet, the subsonic rumble changed to a very audible metallic clamor, then an almost indescribable din. R-Type raced to the window and looked to the west, and then, despite all the things he had seen and done in his long, artificially prolonged life, his jaw dropped. The Tower was falling. The unfinished structure of the Tomodachi GENOM Tower fell neatly into itself, its supports sheared away according to a precisely calculated pattern. The building was mostly air, its central mass incomplete. It compacted tidily into the hole its base was built in, one floor's working steel deck smashing into the next, the forces mounting as the upper floors accelerated downward at thirty-one feet per second per second. The completed top floor, by far the heaviest single level of the building, drove the skeletal lower floors before it, falling straight down and then smashing cataclysmically into the tangled heap of steel that filled up the basements. The effect was similar to what might happen if a person dropped a cinder block squarely onto the top of a tower built of matchsticks. When the dust cleared - which took a not-inconsiderable length of time - all that remained of GENOM's newest planetary headquarters was a jumbled, more-or-less-level two-acre field of rubble only slightly higher than the street, with the occasional bent girder or piece of pipe jutting upward out of the mess. None of the surrounding structures were so much as scratched, except for a few windows on the lower levels blown in by the final shockwave. "Holy -shit-," R-Type murmured, gaping at what had been, a moment before, the newest jewel in his employer's crown, or whichever boilerplate platitude this particular groundbreaking's brochure had used. For a few minutes, there was an eerie silence, except for the wail of approaching sirens as most of Nekomikoka's emergency services raced to the scene. As the police and firefighters approached, they suddenly found their path to the disaster scene blocked by a coruscating curtain of light which seemed to explode up from the street. Viewed from the air, the curtain would have been the outer edge of a gigantic magic circle drawn carefully around the GENOM Tower construction site - but of course, no one -could- view it from the air, because the light gently but definitively repulsed aircraft as well. Inside the circle, a piece of the rubble vibrated, then shifted, then tumbled aside, and Maximilien Largo crawled out of what had been his office. The Master of GENOM was not his usual suave, urbane self. His customary black mandarin-collared suit was in tatters; his normally slicked-back hair was in considerable disarray. Also, his skin was blue and his eyes were burning red coals. Not many people -knew- that Maximilien Largo wasn't human - that he was, in fact, a unique mechanoid, the ultimate expression of GENOM's Bio-Utility Mechano-Android technology. He called himself a Hyper-Buma, when he wasn't calling himself something loftier and more mythological-sounding, and he was one of the single most physically powerful humanoid beings in the galaxy. The last time he'd used that power in actual battle, he'd killed one of New Japan's best and toughest fighters and defeated two others. Now he pulled himself free of the tons of wreckage which were all that remained of his office, raised himself to hands and knees, and focused his eyes on... ... a pair of brown oxford shoes, topped by blue-banded white knee socks. Slowly, he sat back, panning up a reasonably nice set of legs, past a knee-length plaid skirt, up a sharply cut blue blazer, and to a slim, Nordic face framed by the free sprigs of long, twin-ponytailed black hair. The face had odd blue markings on cheekbones and forehead, and large brown eyes which glared at Largo with a sort of hatred the GENOM Master wasn't accustomed to seeing in teenage schoolgirls. "Now that I have your attention," the girl said in a calm, cold voice, "I have a request to make. -Get off my planet.-" Largo, his face wearing a look that mingled puzzlement and outrage, rose to his feet, reached up, grabbed hold of the tatters of his suitjacket, and tore them away like a normal man would brush lint from his lapel. "Shit. He's still. Alive. Fuck," R-Type muttered to himself, zooming in his cyberoptics to get a better look at his disheveled boss. Almost unconsciously, he completed the ancient quote, "Now he's probably gonna record another double live album, goddammit!" Then, his forehead furrowing, he zoomed in a little more and mused under his breath, "Where have I seen that girl before... ?" The girl in the blazer shook her head thoughtfully. "Actually," she said, "it's not a request so much as a command. "You'll have to excuse me. I've only been Class One for a few weeks; I'm not used to commanding lesser beings." Largo's glowing eyes narrowed; his fists clenched. His cybernetic command net performed a search of the area, noted one active transponder, and keyed it. The only 99-series security Buma which had survived the collapse of the building heaved itself up out of the wreckage a few dozen yards away, exploding out of its human guise as it did so. It had lost an arm, but was still a potent fighting machine as it charged toward the impassive figure in the school uniform. She let it come, looking vaguely unimpressed; then, as it drew almost within striking distance, its bayonets popping out of its remaining arm, she raised one hand and pointed her index finger squarely at the hulking, scarlet-armored mechanoid's head, nearly touching it. <> she ordered, and the charging Buma faltered, froze, reeled backward, and then exploded. "... Whoa," said R-Type. "Who the hell -are- you?" Largo demanded. "What do you -want-?" The girl smiled coldly, reached into her pocket, withdrew a small white card, and tossed it to Largo, who caught it without really intending to, then looked down at it. In a stilted, rather runic-looking script, it read: SKULD RAVENHAIR Aes - Chooser of the Slain She Who Severs the Thread of Life "That's who I am," she told him. "As for what I want, I already told you. I want you off my world. I want you to leave Tomodachi and never come back." Largo chuckled, regaining his composure. He reached up with one hand and smoothed back his hair while crushing the card in the other. "Why would I do that?" he asked. "Because," Skuld replied calmly, "I command it." Largo's eyes narrowed slightly once more. "No one commands Largo," he told her in a cold voice. "I am She Who Builds Tomorrow, Maximilien Largo," Skuld told him. "Tell me, do you believe in gods?" Largo cocked an eyebrow at her, mockingly. "I? Believe in gods? You foolish child." Spreading his arms to better display his android perfection, he declared grandly, "I -am- a god!" Skuld's lips quirked in a cool half-smile. "Are you indeed," she said, and suddenly Largo was experiencing an agony such as he had never felt before. A mechanoid's equivalent of pain is damage indications. Suddenly, without warning, without -reason-, every component of every system in Largo's extremely complicated body began to report every possible failure state and error, however contradictory, all at their highest possible level, all at the same time. The Master of GENOM screamed and fell to his knees, his entire body quivering as systems fought against each other, synthetic muscles pulled their hardest in opposite directions, micropumps reversed, energy flows were disrupted. Lightning crackled over his skin, his eyes alternately glowing like furnace vents and then dimming almost to complete deactivation. And then, as suddenly as it began, it was over, and everything was back to normal. Largo collapsed forward to elbows and knees, then levered himself up again and glared at Skuld. "I'll enjoy," he said softly, "taking you apart to find out how you did that." Skuld made a disappointed "tch" noise. "And they say Buma positronic networks can learn," she said, shaking her head sadly. Then she jumped backward and up, landing neatly on the point of a jaggedly broken girder which jutted upward out of the rubble field. As she touched down, she was suddenly surrounded by a nimbus of bluish-green lightning. Her hair, caught up behind her head in two long ponytails, suddenly collapsed into a tight French braid, its great length clubbing up as if manipulated by skillful, invisible hands. Through the dancing light, it almost looked as though oblong scales of metal were extruding from beneath her clothing to sheath her body in black. As the scaling spread over her whole body, down to the tips of her fingers and up her slender throat to surround her face, the oblongs expanded and merged with each other until the seams were eradicated and the covering became a true suit of armor. The light faded away, vanishing into the few seams remaining in the girl's sleek black armor. "Come ahead, tough guy," she said mockingly to Largo, and then a faceplate which looked like a stylized death's head snapped down over her face. Thrusters on her back screamed as she launched herself at Largo. /* Bad Religion "Destined for Nothing" _The Process of Belief_ */ For some time now, Lawrence Mann's fondest wish had been to see his boss get his ass righteously kicked. On June 20, 2340, that wish was granted by no less a personage than one of the three Norns, the most powerful goddesses of Asgard. All of Largo's incredible power and speed didn't do him any good against an enemy who could appear and disappear at will, who moved like a searchlight beam through smoke, and who hit like a space cruiser. He would send a shockwave rippling toward his opponent; it would flow around her like water around a bridge piling and shatter a tangle of girders behind her. Her counterblow would send him skidding across the field of wreckage to plow into a heap of twisted metal which had been one of the rooftop air conditioning units. He would lunge and try to get a grip on her; suddenly her armor would be covered with writhing scarlet energy which would catapult him back, trailing smoke from his hands. Everything he did, she seemed to have a ready countermeasure for. Everything she did came from a direction he wasn't expecting, at a time when he wasn't quite ready. A couple of times, it looked like he might be rallying, might have figured her out, but those occasions quickly proved to be simply setups for harder counterstrikes. R-Type stood at his window, thumping a fist repeatedly against the duraglass, daring to hope that she just might kill Largo before this was all done. Indeed, for a moment there, it looked like she might. Inside Skuld's Talon's combat visor, a holographic warning flashed against her retina. The warding circle she had erected to keep her dance from being interrupted was nearing the end of its effective life; it was time to wrap this thing up. Largo took advantage of that momentary distraction to get in his one good hit of the night, a charging body blow which crumpled part of Skuld's armor over her abdomen and sent her tumbling end-over-end through a jumble of girders and roof beams. Rubble flew in all directions as she fetched up against a still-intact roof section tilted vertical, hitting it with enough force to crush a Talon-shaped dent in it. Then, the wind knocked out of her, she slumped to one knee, her gauntlets going flat against the ground as she labored to start breathing again. Largo, heartened by this reversal, walked toward her, his gait now an easy stroll. Spying a piece of concrete reinforcement bar, he tipped it up with his toe as he passed and hefted it. Skuld got her breath back, raised herself to her feet, and looked up just in time to see it swinging toward her face. It struck the faceplate of her Talon with a resounding WHANG and a bright yellow spark; she staggered as her displays went momentarily to static, and Largo pressed his advantage, driving all the power he could muster to his arms and swinging the bar faster than the eye could see. While R-Type watched, aghast, from ten blocks away, Largo rained blows on the suddenly reeling Valkyrie, driving her back, pounding at her helmet and her upraised arms until it seemed they must shatter before the onslaught. Then, just as she faltered and began to fall to one knee again, she seemed to coil back a bit. Something glinted on her right forearm, and suddenly, there was a weapon in her hand too - a red-and-white mallet-like hammer with a long, thin handle. The hammer whipped around in a gleaming scarlet arc; there was a sound like thunder, and Largo and his length of rebar flew in opposite directions. He tumbled, rolled, and came up on his feet, wiping a smear of orange fluid from his chin. Skuld, facing him, muttered, "Right. It's time to finish this." She collapsed Bjarnnil's handle and flipped the mallet back into its storage compartment on her arm, then powered up her Talon's close combat systems. Largo could almost feel the focus of her consciousness on him as she gathered her own divine energies as well, channelling them into the most devastating personal attack she knew. The attack, which was only of use to her when she was wearing her Talon, was one she had learned from her adopted sister, the cyborg Valkyrie named Alita Ironheart. Alita was a master of one of the cyborg combat forms known collectively in Midgard as the Panzerkunst, the "Armored Arts", and in the years since her adoption into the Valkyrior she had taught her new sisters how to use some of her techniques. As a powerful cyborg, Alita could use them anytime; the other Valkyrie could only use them when armored for full battle, but that was enough. She raised her right fist, which glowed with a harsh scarlet light, then splayed it outward to her side. "HELL - " she declared, then repeated the process with her left hand, whose glow was a gentle blue-green. " - and HEAVEN!" The blue-green light seemed to explode outward, surrounding Skuld and her adversary in a whirling corona of light. Largo snapped rigidly upright, his eyes bulging; he tried to move, but it was as though his skin had become a single fused shell of tritanium. Opposite him in the sudden "arena" of green light, Skuld bent into a combative crouch, forcing her gauntlets toward each other as she chanted a series of syllables he did not understand. Lightning crackled in the space between them as she drove the clearly-opposed forces closer to each other, until, with another thunderclap crack, they passed some invisible trigger point and slammed together into a tight double fist. Then the thrusters on Skuld's back roared to life and drove her forward, and while both she and Largo screamed, he in something astonishingly like terror, she in rage and defiance, Skuld's armored fists plunged square into the center of Largo's chest. She halted her charge as they exploded out of his back, something blue and glowing clutched between them; then she reversed herself, wrenching back with all the augmented strength of her back and shoulders and tearing the glowing object out through the front. Largo, released from the force which had held him still as the green corona dissipated, collapsed onto his back, all motor functions completely disrupted. Skuld's black armor sizzled and disappeared, leaving her standing over him in her school uniform again. In the palm of her right hand she held the core of Largo's being. The "Hell and Heaven" maneuver had come to the cyborg form of the Panzerkunst from a sister art developed by the Transformers of Cybertron. With it, a warrior could literally extract the spark, the living essence condensed into a crystalline point of light, from an enemy - without damaging it. Largo was not a Transformer, but his laser core did contain his equivalent of a spark, and now Skuld held it - still connected by pulsing cables to the rest of him - in her hand. He could only watch with wide eyes as she studied it for a moment; then the mark on her forehead glowed with a high-pitched noise, and Largo felt an extremely strange, not at all pleasant sensation wash over him. Then she bent down and shoved it roughly back into his body, to the approximate place where it belonged. Largo's damage estimates told him that he could, amazingly enough, be repaired in this condition. The damage to his exostructure was tremendous, but his internal components were intact, the core itself and its vital connections entirely undamaged. He was in no danger of losing function. "If you're wondering what that sensation is," Skuld told him conversationally, "I've just made a slight modification to your Spengler flux. From now on, for the rest of your existence, anytime you come to Tomodachi; or hear your subordinates make any suggestion about Tomodachi; or consider coming to Tomodachi, or sending agents to Tomodachi, or in any way influencing life on Tomodachi, you'll feel that pain you felt at the beginning of our little dance." She smiled coldly and added, "And when you do, I hope you'll think of me." Largo glared up at her with a mix of fear and hatred which was made all the sharper by the fact that he had never truly feared anything or anyone before. "I'll beat this," he rasped. "I'll find a way around it." Skuld snorted dismissively. "Yeah. Let me know if you find some viable way of replacing your spark." Then she crouched down and said in a softer, deadlier voice, "I'll be watching you, J-2073-D-2670-S-1871." Largo's eyes widened. She knew his designation! NO ONE knew his designation. The only place it was written down was ON HIS SKULL! "I know what you did to the man I love," she went on. "I'll never forget that. I'll never forgive you. You are a technological abomination. A blight upon my Word." "Then why don't you finish me?" Largo snarled. "Because it's not the time for that," she replied, shaking her head, "and I'm not the person to do it. But," she added with a satisfied little smile, "know this: You are already chosen. Muspelheim awaits you. I count the days." She leaned closer and whispered in his ear, "You should count them too." It was the first thing anyone had ever said to Maximilien Largo which, by words alone, filled him with dread and terror. Skuld raised herself up, brushed dust from her skirt, and said dismissively, "Be seeing you, J-2073-D-2670-S-1871. Remember: Stay away from Tomodachi." Then, paying him no further mind, she strolled away and disappeared up a side street. Ten blocks away, R-Type watched her until she vanished among the buildings into the darkness of the new-fallen Tomodachi night. The circle of light surrounding the wreckage of the Tower vanished a moment later, and the penned-up fire trucks and police cars raced toward the scene. I wonder who that girl was? he mused. And why didn't she kill him? And why... ... why do I feel like I should know her? Belldandy Morisato looked up from the sweater she was knitting to see her younger sister Skuld entering the living room of their home, a converted temple on the other side of Nekomikoka, near the Nekomi Institute of Technology. "Hello, Skuld," she said, smiling benevolently. "You're home late tonight." Skuld nodded. "I had a few things to take care of." "Well, I hope everything's all right," said Bell. "As right as they can be, under the circumstances. I'm sorry I missed dinner... " Bell got up. "Don't worry about that," she said. "There's plenty left, I'll just heat some up. How was school?" Skuld sat down at the table to wait for her dinner and smiled as she answered her sister's cheerful small talk. As right as they can be... /* Dire Straits "So Far Away" _Brothers in Arms_ */ Eyrie Productions, Unlimited presented UNDOCUMENTED FEATURES EXILE Futureshock THE CAST (in order of appearance) Maximilien Largo Skuld Ravenhair Lawrence R. Mann Verthandi Wishbringer-Morisato Architect Benjamin D. Hutchins Cleanup Crew Lawrence R. Mann Kelly St. Clair Rob Shannon Site Security The Usual Suspects E P U (colour) 2003