I have a message from another time... Eyrie Productions, Unlimited presents UNDOCUMENTED FEATURES FUTURE IMPERFECT - SYMPHONY OF THE SWORD No. 4 - Second Movement: A Night to Remember Benjamin D. Hutchins with Anne Cross Pearson Mui Kris Overstreet Martin F. Rose (c) 2002 Eyrie Productions, Unlimited FRIDAY, MAY 22, 2409 6:17 PM WORLD WIDE BUILDING NEW AVALON, ZETA CYGNI Corwin Ravenhair looked at himself in the mirror, smoothing at his hair. At the same time, Kozue Kaoru peeked over his shoulder as she reached around from behind him and adjusted his tie, and R. Dorothy Wayneright secured his handkerchief in his breast pocket. Then he stepped back, turned around, and asked, "Look OK?" "I'm not an unbiased observer," Kozue replied, grinning, "but you look pretty good to me." The television on the wall behind her flickered and the face of Corwin's kit-built cybernetic intelligence appeared. She had turned out better than he had expected; for a system intended to be used basically as a toy, she'd proven to be surprisingly useful. The added burden of operating real systems, especially those as extensive as those of Corwin's underground workshop and the World Wide Building, occasionally made her a little erratic, but by and large he was satisfied with her performance. He was also reasonably pleased with the way her icon had turned out. The range of options available in the icon design tool wasn't the widest in the world, but Fuu Hououji's Holoshop skills had helped make up for that. The Virtual Companion XL's icon's hair was honey-gold (and, by default, done up in a fat braid) because Fuu had modeled it after her elder sister Kuu's. Her bright green eyes were a Hououji shade as well, though the shape of her face was one of the stock Virtual Companion options with just a little tweaking for individuality's sake. Not a bad effort, Corwin thought. He just wished he'd managed to come up with a name for her. He'd intended to, but during the development and testing process he and Fuu and his cousin Hiroshi, who was interested in the project as an acquaintance of the chief developer, had referred to the developing proto-CI by the name of her primary object file, "XL" - and it had stuck. Now Excel grinned out of the TV and gave him a thumbs-up. "Yow! Lookin' SHARP, Chief!" she declared, and Corwin thought of the one other thing about her design he'd like to improve - he wished she had a mellower voice. The one she had was kind of... grating. "Your hair won't stay under control for more than an hour," Dorothy informed him, "but it should be good enough for the photo session, anyway." "Are you sure you want me to do this?" he asked Kozue again. "Of course I'm sure!" Kozue said. "It's her last chance." She grinned again. "Anyway, you're taking me to the Tenjou Academy dance next week - that's enough for me." Corwin smiled and kissed the blue-haired girl. "You're a rare find, Kozue," he told her. Then he grabbed up his big, heavy wristwatch from the top of his dresser and hurried out, calling behind him, "Excel, hold my calls... " "Have a good time," said Dorothy as he vanished into the turbolift. "You BET, boss! Don't worry about a thing!" the CI cried, waving frantically. "Your Excel will hold your calls 'til the COWS come home! Why, you won't EVER have to worry about a call not getting held when EXCEL's on the job!" Then she paused, looked around, and put her hand sheepishly behind her head, rather like Corwin's own habit. "Eheh... I got too excited again, didn't I." "You'll grow out of it," said Dorothy. Kozue didn't pay much attention; she just smiled after Corwin for a while, then gave a self-satisfied sigh, flopped back on the couch and turned on the radio. Friday night was Oldies Night on WZXQ, and she had a book to finish reading... life was good. Corwin popped up at street level inside the phone booth at the corner of Morgan and Rush, walked up Morgan Lane to the Roses' front yard, went next door, and stopped on the stoop of number 110, the odd-looking white house with the two round windows on the second floor. There he paused for a moment, brushed imaginary lint from the lapel of his tuxedo (a modern Salusian style with a three-quarter-length jacket and the inevitable silver piping), resisted the urge to touch his hair, checked his watch, and rang the bell. After a few moments, the door opened and the open, square-jawed face of Professor Hank Utonium smiled out at him. "Why, Corwin! What a pleasant surprise," said Utonium heartily. "And you're all dressed up, too. But I suppose you're on your way to the prom, eh? What can I do for you?" "Hello, Professor. Uh... is Buttercup at home?" he asked, realizing that he'd feel pretty stupid if it turned out she'd gone out to work off her frustration on patrol or something. "She sure is," said Utonium, "but I should warn you - she's in a pretty bad mood." The professor leaned a little closer and said in a confidential tone, "A fella could get hurt, if you know what I mean." "All the same, Professor, I'd like to talk to her for a minute, if I could." Utonium chuckled paternally as he ushered Corwin into the living room. "It's your neck, young man," said the Professor cheerfully. "Wait here and I'll see if I can get her to come down." Utonium, still wearing a lab coat despite the fact that it was 7:30 in the evening, went upstairs. For a few long moments, Corwin stood waiting, listening to the muffled sounds of voices through the ceiling; then they stopped, and someone came down the stairs. Despite having grown up alongside the three Utonium sisters, having been their longtime pal, having been with them under conditions as varying and hostile as any that could be found in New Avalon, and having considered himself more or less spoken for throughout his soon- to-be-concluded high school career, Corwin Ravenhair had to catch his breath. She'd obviously been crying (or at least trying not to cry) quite recently, but Theodora Utonium, known to friend and foe alike as Buttercup, looked lovely nonetheless, in a dark green dress of a velvet so fine it was iridescent. A tomboy to the core, Buttercup was not often to be found in such a garment. This one had been made especially for her by her sister Theresa, universally known as Bubbles, and it fit her trim, athletic frame perfectly. Corwin was justifiably proud of himself for not goggling outright as she came into view on the stairs. "Professor said you wanted to see me," Buttercup said. Her voice was always a little husky, but now it was harsher than usual, both with the aftereffects of her recent activity and her forced casualness. She was determined not to appear as though there were anything bothering her whatsoever. "That dress," said Corwin, "is the single best use of green velvet I've ever seen." Buttercup looked skeptically curious. "How many others have you seen?" "One," Corwin replied, "and I gotta tell you, the pool table didn't look nearly as good." She folded her arms and scowled. "Is there something you want? I'm really not in the mood for your jokes." Corwin grinned. "Well, y'know, if you're not too busy... I thought maybe you'd like to go to the prom with me." Buttercup snorted. "Yeah, right, like I'd want to go to -that- stupid thing. Besides, you've already got a date." Corwin shook his head. "Nope. Kozue cancelled." Buttercup's green eyes widened a little. "Why?" she asked, pretense dropped in favor of complete surprise. She came the rest of the way down the stairs to confront him. "What happened?" "Well, I'll tell you," he said, rubbing the back of his head with a boyish grin. "I was supposed to come up with some kind of clever story, but how long have we been friends?" "Twelve years," Buttercup answered. "All my life." "Right. So you know I can't tell you a clever story. Kozue heard it on the jungle drums that you'd been dumped, and dumped hard, and she sent me to save your formative years from ending on a wrong note." Buttercup's eyes hardened. "Feh," she said, making a dismissive gesture. "I didn't even want to go to the stupid thing in the first place. I only agreed to go because Blossom and Bubbles were making such a big -deal- out of it. 'You didn't go last year, Buttercup, and you missed all the fun.' 'You won't get another chance.' I was -glad- when I found out I didn't have to go." "Buttercup," said Corwin, "how long have we been friends?" She looked hard at him for a second, then smiled, just a little. "So you're my knight in shining armor, then, is that it?" "Something like that," Corwin said, nodding. "If I don't do my damnedest to make this the best night of your life, Kozue's gonna have my hide for a lampshade." "Oh. Well," said Buttercup, feigning grudging acceptance, "I suppose if it'll keep you out of trouble I'll go to your dumb prom with you." "That's the spirit," said Corwin. "Wait here a second while I go wash my face," said Buttercup. She disappeared back upstairs, and Corwin forced himself not to pace or glance at his watch. The Professor descended a moment later, his square, reliable-looking face wreathed in smiles. "I suppose I'd better give you the same speech I gave your cousin and the Shannon boy," he said. "Have a good time tonight, but I want to either see her at home or have approved where she is at midnight, and -no funny stuff-, understand?" Corwin grinned. "Professor, if I tried any funny stuff, Buttercup would break my arms while Dorothy broke my legs. (And I don't even want to think about what Kozue would do.)" "Yes, well, some young men these days are probably -into- that kind of thing," Utonium replied absently. "Anyway, don't -you- try it." "No sir," Corwin replied. "I won't." He came to attention and saluted with the tip of his pinkie finger tucked under his thumb. "On my honor as one of the Aesir, I won't try any funny stuff." Utonium nodded. "Well, good, I'm glad that's settled. Ah, here she is now!" Corwin's grin broadened when he saw that Buttercup had not only washed her face, but applied just a bit of makeup to it - a skill he hadn't known she possessed - and combed her hair into a neater version of her accustomed pageboy style. (When younger, she'd preferred a Jackie Kennedy flip, but some deep-rooted instinct had informed her at about twelve that this hairstyle was really pretty goofy-looking, so one day, without comment, it had gone.) She'd put on elbow-length gloves that matched her dress, too. "Wow," said Corwin and the Professor simultaneously. "Well, c'mon," said Buttercup, maintaining her mock-grudging attitude as she took Corwin's proffered arm. "Let's get this over with." "Have a good time, you two!" said Utonium as he waved them through the door and down the walk. "And remember, Corwin, no funny stuff!" "I GOT it already!" Corwin called back from the curb, and the door of 110 Morgan Lane closed on Professor Utonium's indulgent chuckles. "No limo, huh?" said Buttercup nonchalantly as she surveyed the empty street. "No indeed," Corwin replied with a twinkle in his eye. "Works for me. Those things are tacky." "I'm so glad we agree," he said. "I've got something -much- more stylish for us to make our entrance aboard." With a flourish, he raised his left arm, brushing back his jacket and shirt cuffs to reveal his watch. "You're NOT gonna - " Buttercup began, laughing in a combination of amusement and shock. She thought she knew what he was going to say - but she was wrong: "Armored Knight G-KAISER! Let's GO!" With a high-pitched sound, a bright green squared-off "G" glowed behind the face of the watch, not the collapsing blue circle Buttercup had been expecting. Half a mile away to the north, one of the many hills which composed the wooded landscape north of the city shivered, then split, light pouring out from the crack into the gathering twilight. The two halves of the hill rumbled apart on concealed tracks, and then, with a whoosh and a rush of orange-red light, something shot up from within it like a missile. That something banked over, homing in on their position, and then landed in the middle of Morgan Lane with a great rush of hot wind. Buttercup stared up at it, unbelieving. It was an enormous robot, perhaps six or seven stories tall, easily dwarfing the houses on this usually-quiet residential street. Its styling was powerful and at the same time a bit comical, with massive rounded arms and legs and a barrel chest adorned with an enormous golden V. The whole thing looked liked what an assault-class Destroid would have looked like if it had been a 1957 Cadillac, mostly dark blue but covered with chrome and gold accents and the occasional piece of red trim. Scarlet wings jutted up from its back on either side of a double rocket thruster that looked a bit like a set of giant aqualung tanks. This giant creation lowered itself smoothly to one knee, making surprisingly quiet mechanical noises, and then extended one enormous hand, palm up, down to ground level. Corwin grinned at Buttercup. "Up you go," he said, and they climbed up onto the hand. G-Kaiser raised it smoothly and steadily once they were safely aboard, then held it at chin level in front of his huge metallic face. The sloping silvery plate where his mouth belonged split at the peak in the middle and slid open to either side, revealing a spacious cockpit with a command seat and smaller jump seats to the left and right. The walls were covered with display screens, gauges, and readouts. "After you," said Corwin. He handed Buttercup into the cockpit, then followed her in and bowed her into one of the jump seats with a broad smile. "You made this?!" Buttercup demanded. "Yep," Corwin replied. "What happened to Big O?" "Nothing," said Corwin. "G-Kaiser here is a present for somebody else. I'm just doing the final field trials, and I figured this would be a nice low-impact way to get some time on the systems." He settled himself into the command seat, put his feet on the pedals, then gripped the twin joysticks. At the same time, he settled his head back into the wraparound rest, which glowed with a soft green light. The hatch hissed shut, sealing with a thump like a giant refrigerator door. For a moment the cockpit was dark except for the gauges; then the display screens pulsed to life all around them, showing a coruscating green pattern (Corwin's brain patterns, but Buttercup didn't know that). White light filled the cockpit and all the displays changed, showing a panoramic view all around the huge machine. Corwin grinned as holographic subdisplays rezzed up all around him, pointing out various important details and showing him the status of the machine's internal systems. "G-Kaiser!" he commanded. "Flight mode!" Smoothly the Armored Knight rose to its feet, then launched itself into the air with a roar of its twin thrusters. Corwin glanced over at Buttercup as he guided the machine toward Koopman High. "Having fun yet?" he asked. She grinned at him. "Beats reheating lasagna and going to bed early," she replied. "I don't have a flower or anything, though." "G-Kaiser!" Corwin ordered. "Deploy corsage!" A small hatch opened on the instrument panel to Buttercup's right, and a small mechanical arm extended out of it. The hand at the end of this arm was gripping a lovely green-and-black orchid, which it deftly affixed to Buttercup's right wrist; then it retracted away. Buttercup surveyed the flower with obvious delight, then said, "Boy, you think of everything, don't you?" "That's the way it appears," Corwin confided, "but really, I have a dedicated staff of experts to make sure I look good at all times." They were indeed a little late, so the parking lot at Fritz Koopman Memorial High School was already mostly full. Corwin momentarily considered landing G-Kaiser in the pool out back, but decided the ensuing cloud of steam would probably ruin his hair ahead of schedule. He could already feel parts of it escaping from the vicious hold Dorothy and Kozue had forced it to submit to with a copious amount of the stiffest gel they could find. The white shock at the front would not be denied and had sprung free, but was still weighed down by the gel and hung Superman-style in a comma down his forehead. Instead, he put the giant machine down right smack in front of the entrance hall, dropped it to its kneeling position, and they disembarked the same way they'd boarded. Then, safely on the ground, Corwin activated his remote and directed G-Kaiser to the tennis courts, to wait for his call in standby mode. No one was going to be playing tennis -tonight- of all nights. They entered the hall to thunderous applause, both for their entrance and their mere appearance. The rumor mill at Koopman worked fast, and nobody had really expected to see Buttercup there - they all knew she'd been given the heave at the very last possible instant. But here was Corwin with Buttercup on his arm instead of the person they'd all -expected- to see him with, and he didn't look the slightest bit disconcerted. "Why, Corwin!" said Clarissa Broadbank cattily. "Wherever is that delightful girl you've been joined to for the last three years?" The blonde socialite took on a look of mock horror, touched his arm in mock sympathy, and asked, "She didn't -dump- you, did she?" "Of course not," Corwin replied breezily, betraying no iota of the annoyance that Clarissa inevitably created in him. "Don't be silly. She just couldn't bear the thought of missing the 'Law & Order' season finale. Fortunately for me," he went on, "Buttercup took pity on me, and here I am anyway." "Oh, my, yes," Clarissa replied with mock agreement. "How lucky." She and Buttercup shared a brief glance of unremittant mutual loathing. Fortunately, the day was saved by Buttercup's sisters, who spotted her and bustled over, beaming, to admire the way she'd turned herself out for the occasion. "Oh, wow, Buttercup," little blonde Bubbles gushed. "Your dress looks even better on you than I thought it would." "And how," Blossom agreed. The tall, well-built redhead elbowed Corwin in the ribs and grinned at him. "You shine up pretty well yourself, for such a bad penny." "It's his dedicated staff of experts," Buttercup said. Her sisters were wearing dresses and gloves pretty much identical to her own, save for the colors. Bubbles had made them all in the colors which had been their traditional favorites, which meant hers was a lovely pale blue and Blossom's was a nice rose pink. "Your hair could use some help, though," Blossom observed. She opened the small bag she was carrying, took out a handkerchief, licked it, and scrubbed vigorously at his forelock for a few seconds. "There. The gel wasn't doing it, so it's better standing up like it ought to instead of drooping into your face. At least you'll look like Corwin in the photos," she added with a grin. "Hey! Achika's here!" said Buttercup suddenly. "How 'bout that?" Corwin smiled. "Yeah." He nodded in the direction of his classmate in question, who was dressed in an insanely elaborate kimono-like gown, one of those Jyuraian affairs that looked like it must have taken the Wedge Defense Force Corps of Engineers to set it up. Achika was smiling on the arm of a slightly nervous-looking young man in a clearly rented tuxedo. "The hardest thing," Corwin went on, "was convincing her that Nobuyuki really likes her, and wasn't just asking her out because he's sorry for her." Bubbles sighed sadly. "Poor Achika. She's still all broken up about Len... " "Yeah," Blossom agreed. "But she's getting better at hiding it. How many times did Nobuyuki have to ask her, Corwin?" "Eleven," Corwin replied. "I'll say this for him, he's persistent. He's a good guy. A little dull for somebody who's used to running with a crowd like us, but that might be what she needs. We'll see." "Well, well, Mighty One," said Chip Mui as he approached their little group with a grin. "This is unexpected." Fuu Hououji, on his arm, glanced around to make sure Clarissa was out of earshot, then leaned toward Corwin and inquired softly, "Was what you told Miss Broadbank true, Sir Corwin?" "Not exactly," Corwin replied, smiling, "but basically, yeah. This is by way of being a rescue." Fuu's face brightened with pleased understanding. "Oh. Well, good. I'm very glad you haven't had a... problem." Corwin chuckled. "Kozue doesn't like dressing formal anyway," he said; then he took in Fuu's dress with a more critical eye and his smile broadened. The Funkotroni ambassador's daughter was dressed very formally... for a Funkotroni ambassador's daughter, a native-born daughter of Coolsville and a lifelong, devout Presleyterian. She twirled on Chip's hand, making her full pink poodle skirt, complete with a glittering white sequined poodle (with sparkling green emerald collar) and shimmering white petticoats beneath, stand out from her slender waist like some odd glittering flower. She had on black and white saddle shoes (not unlike those usually worn by Utena Tenjou, but lacking her trademark red laces) and green bobby socks that matched the poodle's collar, and a ruffle-fronted blouse made of a startlingly iridescent, almost metallic-looking material. Over it all she wore a heavy black leather jacket, studded with chrome and loops of chain and scuffed just enough at the elbows to show that it really was a motorcycle jacket. She'd done her hair up in a bouncy blonde ponytail with a green ribbon at the back of her head, and in that ponytail her normally-gently-wavy hair had been coaxed into a mass of perfect curls that bounced as she twirled. And, for the first time Corwin could remember since seeing her in her formal Knightly armor, she had taken off her glasses. "Whereas you, on the other hand," Corwin went on, "have clearly kicked out all the stops." Fuu blushed. "This was my mother's prom dress, when she and Father were at Our Blessed King of Rock 'n Roll High School in Coolsville. They were the king and queen of the Senior Court." "Well, you're a rock 'n roll angel, Angel," said Corwin. "If they play swing tonight, would you like to dance?" Fuu asked cheerfully. "Charles has never developed a taste for that sort of music," she added as Chip looked slightly sheepish. "Are you being smooth to somebody else's date, rocket boy?" came a familiar voice. Corwin turned to see Nall Silverclaw and his date, Uum'y R'yuu-z'ky. Like Fuu, they were dressed in traditional formalwear from their homeworlds. Well, in Nall's case, the garb was actually Asgardian, since the formal accoutrements of a Great Dragon of Alfheim would have required him to be inconveniently large rather than wearing, as he did now, the form of a young man. His outfit, which looked more like a military uniform than a suit with its trim of silver braid and the dwarven-made greatsword (currently peace-bonded) on his back, stood out vividly against the black of most of his male classmates' tuxedoes. Umi was similarly distinctive, for any number of reasons. She was Hyelian, with long, pointed ears and a great wealth of sea-blue hair that matched her wide, thick-lashed eyes. She was tall for a Hyelian of her age, and her slender elven build and erect, graceful carriage made her look taller still. Her clothes were as much a breed apart as she was, a mixture of flowing white and rich royal blue fabrics, white leather, and gleaming bronze-edged armor inlaid with lapis lazuli and blue-and-white enamel. The garb would have been antiquated even on ancient, hidebound Hyeruul, and it served to make her look otherworldly and fey - elegant, yet a bit wild and dangerous. "That is definitely a different look for you, Umi," said Buttercup, impressed. "SPEC-tacular," Corwin agreed, which made the Hyelian's face color just a little. Over her years among humans, she had grown accustomed to being found intriguing, sometimes even fascinating, by them. Some kind of weird quirk in their cultural background, it just so happened that Hyelians fit some archetype in their collective unconscious that drove some of them... well, a little crazy, really. Her usual reaction was to become that much more distant, though occasionally that had the unfortunate effect of heightening whatever the weird reaction was in the first place. From her friends, though, she accepted admiration, because she knew it was meant sincerely and had something behind it more substantial than a coincidence of cultural factors. Corwin in particular had the habit of not concealing his aesthetic appreciation of anything he liked the looks of, and it had taken Umi a little while to get used to the idea that she was on the list. She knew his great loyalty to his friends and his bonds, though - who better to know that than one of the Rune Knights of Cephiro, who had watched him take on that world's ultimate burden for love? - and, over time, she had learned to be comfortable with it. Her blush, then, was simple pleasure, for she had stepped back from her usual, somewhat subdued school persona for this occasion and deliberately chosen the most vividly distinctive outfit her mother could find. She was feeling bold and daring tonight, more than usually alive. Humans, and New Avalon for all its cosmopolitan breadth was still primarily a human city, had a preconception of Hyelians as cool, restrained, and conservative which Uum'y R'yuu-z'ky normally did little to dispel. Tonight she wanted the world, or at least her classmates, to catch a glimpse into her other side, the side that knew it came from an ancient land where wonders were commonplace and magic still walked the waking world. Besides, she thought with a private little grin, I had to live up to the dragon, didn't I? And he certainly wasn't going to show up wearing some boring tuxedo. "Hey," said Corwin as a thought struck him. "You're here, Fuu's here... where's Hikaru?" Umi's ears flicked back and a scowl marred her lovely face. "She's not coming," she said. "WhaAAT?!" Bubbles Utonium squeaked, making Fuu fear for the structural integrity of the lobby windows. When everyone was finished wincing and stifling curses, she continued in a slightly less bat-attracting tone, "Why not?!" "Because her stupid brothers threw Nate in the lake, that's why not!" Umi snapped. "It seems he wasn't suitably -warlike- when he came to pick her up, so they tossed him off the island - literally." Corwin dropped his face into his palm. "Oh, -man-," he moaned. "Poor Hikaru. I was really hoping Masaru and Kakeru had learned their lesson after last year." "They're not very bright," noted Nall. "They probably need a refresher. We don't know anyone who's available for a rescue, do we?" "Unfortunately, I can only... " Corwin began, but then he trailed off. Then a slow smile spread across his face, and he turned to Fuu. "Angel, get Hikaru on the Lens and tell her to get dressed stat and stand by. I just had a -great- idea." "Are you going to share it with the rest of the class?" asked Buttercup pointedly. "You'll see," said Corwin. He looked at his watch and smiled a little wider. He had nine minutes until the photo processional started. Plenty of time. Kakeru Shidou, the youngest of the three Shidou brothers, turned at the sound of a door to see his little sister Hikaru coming into the living room. For a moment, he cringed inwardly, expecting her to expend a bit more wrath on him and their brother Masaru. Hikaru was a girl with a sunny disposition and a never-say-die attitude, but sometimes she failed to understand that everything her brothers did was for her protection... ... but she was smiling now, looking her usual upbeat, pleasant self. And, Kakeru noticed with faint puzzlement, she'd put her prom dress back on. "Uh... Hikaru? What are you doing?" he asked. "Waiting for my prom date," Hikaru replied cheerfully, as though that were a perfectly obvious thing. Masaru looked up in puzzlement from the book he was reading across the room. "What?" he said. "Hikaru, we - " He was interrupted by a knock at the door. "Ah!" said Hikaru. "That must be him now. Quick, how do I look?" "You look wonderful," Masaru replied with off-guard honesty (and she did, in her flame-red Kumbari-style gown with its white fur accents, her scarlet hair down from its usual braid), "but if you think we're going to let you - " Before Masaru could finish the statement, his elder brother Satoru (who had remained aloof from the whole discussion with a faint, faint smile) had opened the door. The young man on the threshold wasn't the one the two younger Shidou brothers had pitched into Lake Daniels earlier in the evening. That had been a skinny, slightly awkward sophomore specimen, a boy by the name of Nathan Mowes. Nathan was a good kid; he ran on the Koopman High cross-country team and, thanks to the position of his name in the alphabet, had always had the locker and homeroom seat next to Priss Morgan's (who had put him up to asking Hikaru to the prom). A good kid, but no fighter, and though he'd bravely caught the ferry to the Cranberry Isles and bravely knocked at the Shidou door, his bravery alone hadn't been enough to keep him out of the lake. Satoru had fished him out with a boathook and put him on the ferry back to town with an apology for the rough treatment but not for his brothers' policy. Hikaru had been furious with all three of them, a rare event which should have frightened them more than it had, and though she'd cooled down, she still intended to keep her silent vow to make it up to poor Nate somehow. Anyway, the kid on the doorstep now wasn't Nate Mowes. In fact, Hikaru didn't recognize him for a few moments, because she hadn't seen him in over a year and BOY had he changed. He had been tall for his age, and now he was even taller, slim of build and with a straight carriage and a sense of quiet grace that made him seem strong even without being bulky. He had a lot of yellow hair pushed back behind his ears and little square eyeglasses which gave him a thoughtful, studious air - an air somewhat at odds with the black-trimmed dark-gold uniform he wore, with its braid and key, and the jeweled, curved sword slung on his back on top of his black overcloak. "Hello," he said in a calm, pleasant voice. "I'm Mitsuru Tsuwabuki. Is Hikaru Shidou at home, please?" Kakeru moved up behind his eldest brother and go as far as "Who wants - uh... " before he realized that the newcomer had answered that question already. He shifted gears and replaced it with a rather lame, "Why?" Tsuwabuki smiled in a friendly way. "Why, because I'm here to take her to the Koopman Memorial prom, of course." Satoru opened his mouth to say something, but before he could, Masaru had crowded in next to his brother and pushed the eldest clean out of the doorway (a lapse of manners he would be horrified at, if he'd realized he'd done it), pointing an imperious finger at the visitor. "Hold it right there, buddy!" he snapped. "I'll tell you the same thing I told the -other- guy: We've got some rules around here! If you wanna take our sister out, that's fine - but FIRST you've got to beat BOTH OF US!" he declared, throwing an arm over Kakeru's shoulders. "In SINGLE COMBAT!" Kakeru added, nodding firmly. Hikaru closed her eyes and briefly considered stuffing the pair of them into the rain gauge out front. But Tsuwabuki merely smiled again and said, "Fair enough." Then a look of mild concern crossed his face, and he checked his watch. "Except - I've only got six minutes, so I'm afraid I'll have to take you both at once. Is that OK?" Masaru and Kakeru blinked, looked at each other, then grinned nastily. "Oh, a tough guy, huh?" said Kakeru. "Sure, pal, it's your funeral." Hikaru blinked too. Both of them at once? Sure, she knew Tsuwabuki was a Duelist of the Order of the Rose in Cephiro, but she'd never actually seen him fight. He was only 14, despite his growth spurt. Did he really think he could take on both of her bonehead brothers at once? They might be insensitive (if well-meaning) clods, but they were great swordsmen. Not as great as Satoru, but fortunately, he refused to play their silly game... Tsuwabuki didn't look worried, though, as he went out into the yard. Kakeru switched on the floodlight on the front of the house, lighting up the whole stretch of ground from the house to the lakeshore, and then he and Masaru grabbed their swords and ran out to confront the interloper. "You take him on the left," Masaru said, "and I'll take him on the right. We'll teach this guy a lesson about coming over here and acting like he owns our cute little sister!" Kakeru nodded. "You bet! He can't be as tough as Corwin." (The brothers Shidou were still smarting a little bit from the one date they'd been forced, under their own rules, to let their sister go on, the year before.) "Whenever you're ready, boys," said Tsuwabuki pleasantly. He looked at his watch again. "I've still got four minutes." "Jerk!" Kakeru growled. "C'mon, Masaru - let's take him!" Ninety-four seconds later, Mitsuru Tsuwabuki crossed the yard, calmly returning his scimitar to its scabbard on his back. As it clicked home, he offered an elbow to Hikaru and said with a smile, "Shall we?" "Sure," said Hikaru, taking it. "Boy, you're really good!" "Practice, practice, practice," Tsuwabuki replied, grinning. "It does help when dueling -is- your social life. Reduces conflicts." Hikaru giggled. "So - how are we going to get to Koopman in two minutes?" "Magic!" said Tsuwabuki brightly; and a moment later the island was empty, except for Hikaru's dog Hikari, dozing by the fire in the house, and Satoru, who stood on the rock by the boat cove and listened to his brothers splashing indignantly back to shore. Beginning at precisely seven PM, under the brisk direction of Mr. Fujisawa and Principal Strickland, the students formed up for the photos. Two by two they posed under the ceremonial arch (actually, the decorated entrance to the gym, but you can't have everything) to have themselves and their formalwear immortalized for posterity and the 2409 yearbook: Corwin and Buttercup; his cousin Hiroshi Morisato and Blossom; Tenchi Shannon and Bubbles; Tenchi's twin sister Achika and Nobuyuki Masaki; Reiyna Mui and her date, a young man from the Chess Club named Gary Waitzkin; Chip and Fuu; Umi and Nall; and Hikaru Shidou, beaming on the arm of the dashing dress-uniformed figure of Mitsuru Tsuwabuki, President of the Tenjou Academy Student Council, Apprentice to the Master Mage of Cephiro, and Seneschal of the Order of the Rose. With that task taken care of, they went into the gym itself, fully prepared to have a good time. At least Blossom was, until she noticed the figure standing on the stage at the far end of the room, skidded to a halt, pointed an accusing finger, and cried, "WHAT is HE doing here?!" The figure on the stage, a short, squat, hairy native of Heston's Planet with a cape and elevator boots, threw back his metal-domed head and laughed raucously, then straightened and declared into the microphone before him, "Good evening! Permit me to introduce myself: I am the scourge of the universe, the most nefarious criminal scientist of the known galaxy: I am Mmmmmmojo Jojo! Muahahahaha!" "Don't sweat it," Buttercup said, cracking her knuckles. "We'll just clobber him after his speech like we always do," - but the next thing the evildoer said left her and her sisters blinking in surprise. "I will be the Master of Ceremonies tonight," Mojo Jojo intoned darkly. Then he grinned and explained, "Meaning that inasmuch as there will be ceremonies, I shall be their master, as one day I shall be the master of EVERYTHING! For the moment, however, the ceremonies are the only things of which I will be the master. (At least, the only things with which you need concern yourselves at the moment. Muaha.)" "I don't beLIEVE this!" Buttercup blurted. "Who the HELL thought it would be a good idea to hire MOJO freakin' JOJO to MC the freakin' PROM?" "I will also be acting as disc jockey!" Mojo Jojo declared grandly. "When the band is taking breaks there will be records played, and as disc jockey, I shall be the one who plays the records which are played when the band is taking a break! "Some of you already know me... those would be the ones readying weapons. But have no fear! Do not worry! Experience no trepidation!" Holding up a conciliatory palm, Mojo Jojo went on, "For I have pledged to higher authorities than this school's administration that I shall commit no evil acts! Tonight. (Except perhaps to make you all dance the Time Warp.)" This led to a chorus of horrified protests: "Noooo!" "You FIEND!" "You WOULDN'T!" "SILENCE!!!" Mojo Jojo roared. "Or it shall be the Macarena!" That silenced his opposition, leaving him free to say, "And now, to provide you with live musical entertainment this evening during the times when I am not playing the records which I will play when the live musical entertainers are taking a break and thus not able to entertain you with live music, may I present the original, the unstoppable, the excruciatingly EFFECTIVE singing do-gooders your miserable authorities call the CLAY PIGEONS!" "Oh," said Blossom as the crowd of students roared and the tall, caped form of Martin "PCHammer" Rose took center stage. "-That's- why Mojo's so docile tonight." - ONE HOUR EARLIER While the Clay Pigeons set up their equipment, their tall, thin leader crossed the stage to confront the evening's MC, who was fiddling with the playback setup he would use in his secondary capacity as band-break DJ. "Pleasure working with you, Mojo," said Marty Rose affably, extending a hand. "And by 'pleasure working with you,'" he added with the same good cheer, "I mean 'you put one toe out of line and I'm gonna yank that tin dome down so hard you'll be able to start a new career as a fire hydrant.' Get me?" "Fear not, for the pleasure is all mine," said the Hestonian with a toothy grin as he took the offered hand. "And by 'the pleasure is all mine' I most assuredly do not mean 'I may remain within the boundaries and limitations of legality this evening, but I shall one day wreak my terrible and fearsome vengeance upon all who oppose, suppress, and otherwise prevent me from achieving my rightful rule over this and every other world.'" "Good," said Rose with a firm nod. "Glad we understand each other." The tiny horned girl setting up the hi-hat blinked in confusion. "We do?" "...Go back to the drums, Dani." - RETURN "Yeah, must be," Buttercup agreed. "Well, I guess that's OK," she added reluctantly. "I suppose kicking Mojo's butt would probably mess up my dress." The 2409 Fritz Koopman Memorial High School Junior-Senior Promenade was an unqualified success. Even Principal Strickland was seen to smile at a few points, which filled those students who happened to glimpse him thus with terror. Masamichi Fujisawa, much-beloved language-arts and literature teacher, was persuaded to demonstrate his fabulous Kryptonian strength by lifting a banquet table with all the junior and senior class officers and their dates sitting on it over his head, which he did with one hand while eating a slice of pie with the other. The resulting photo would be the highlight of the 2409 yearbook's candids page. To the surprise of no one whatsoever, the Shannon twins were elected King and Queen of the Senior Court, causing most of the girls in the audience to shriek like Beatles fans meeting the Fab Four's plane at La Guardia as Tenchi was elevated to that exalted status. Buttercup made a snide comment about the Class of 2409's royal family tree being a bit linear, which confused Bubbles, scandalized Blossom and made Corwin choke on punch. Hiroshi merely noted that if he could bottle whatever it was Tenchi had, it would make him a very, very rich man indeed, and wasn't it a great pity. The gathering received a visit from no less a personage than Grand Admiral Noriko Rose Takaya, Commander in Chief of the Wedge Defense Force Navy. As an alumna of Koopman High herself, Noriko had notched the single most meteoric career rise in the history of the institution, having graduated one day and assumed her present command the next. Admittedly, she had cheated a bit by spending her senior year regaining the use of several centuries of space warfare experience, but still, the school didn't hesitate to brag about her. Most of the students present didn't recognize her immediately, though, since she was dressed not as the second-highest officer in the entire WDF, but rather as the band's intrepid backup dancer. Some members of the audience who hadn't figured -out- that Grand Admiral Takaya was the same Noriko from "Thunder Force Forever" had it suddenly hit them like a ton of bricks; others experienced a similar effect just from watching her dance. The Clay Pigeons played three sets, incorporating into their show both original material, old favorites of their own, and covers from Old Earth bands, their WDF Golden Age contemporaries Card No. 1, and galactically popular acts like the Art of Noise and Cthia. Corwin kept an eye on all his friends as the evening progressed, and was pleased to see that they were all having a good time. Tsuwabuki and Hikaru seemed to have hit it off perfectly, which he'd been hoping for; Achika was having a genuinely good time (and Nobuyuki was just about levitating); even Buttercup was having fun and not being bashful about showing it. She disappeared during the third intermission, while Mojo Jojo was cackling nefariously and subjecting the room to a highly repetitive twenty-first-century dance number called "Where's Your Head At" (having been threatened with death if he played any more Thrusterbusters "songs"). Corwin didn't immediately notice, since he was over by the drinks table talking to Nall. When last he'd seen Buttercup, she was thoroughly (and unwittingly) intimidating Reiyna's date Gary by revealing her own interest in chess, a game most people would have assumed was too slow-paced for her to like. "Looks like the band's getting ready to do their last set," Nall remarked. "You'll excuse me, rocket boy?" "But of course," said Corwin. "Hmm. I wonder where my date's got to?" he added, glancing around and not seeing Buttercup anywhere. There was Gary, talking to a bemused-looking Reiyna, but... Corwin shrugged. Probably in the bathroom or something; she'd turn up. The band paused a little longer in their pre-set consultation this time, and when they separated and headed for their instruments, Corwin saw why - and also got the answer to his question. Buttercup was on stage with the Pigeons. In fact, she was moving toward the center microphone Hammer used on songs without keyboard parts. Corwin glanced to his left and saw Blossom blinking at the sight of her sister on stage. He glanced to his right and saw Bubbles taken similarly aback. Over near the corner of the stage, Mojo Jojo looked like somebody had hit him with a fish. All of them were thinking the same thought: Buttercup is going to SING? /* E.G. Daily "One Way Love (Better Off Dead)" _Better Off Dead_ */ She didn't say anything; she just went to the microphone and waited for the band to play. And play they did. Dani laid down the rhythm, quick, upbeat, and four bars later, Hammer joined her on the keyboards while Dund brought in the rest of the rhythm section behind him. Buttercup stood at the microphone, head bowed, one heel tapping to the beat. Then, at exactly the right spot, she raised her face to the crowd and started to sing: "Never know if you're the victim or the fool Only know I can't stop thinking 'bout you Love was good and you take it on the run But I fell too hard, I guess I ain't the one Starin' the night away Don't know where you are Callin' out your name This crazy feeling of a one-way love" Her voice wasn't polished, but it wasn't bad, either. She could hold a tune, and if her singing had the same throaty undertone as her speaking voice (almost as if she'd recently strained it), the effect actually added something to her performance. That, and the energy she put into it. Clearly, this was a song she loved - if the others hadn't known better, they would've thought she was really singing about what the lyrics were describing - and her stage presence was remarkable given that she'd never done anything remotely like this before, excepting the one time her sisters had cajoled her into appearing in the fourth-grade Christmas pageant. (And a lot of people here still remembered what a disaster that was.) "Thinking back, you said you were out for fun Took me home, I didn't think, second to none Face to face I had no secrets to hide I talked of love, you ran, I could have died Are you running just from me? Who really has your heart? Have you felt the pain Of this crazy feeling?" As she swung into the chorus, Buttercup was very careful not to look at anyone in particular out in the sea of faces watching her. Indeed, she kept her eyes closed for most of the song, belting the refrain out with all her considerable strength: "I'd rather be a fool I'd be lost with someone new I'd be better off dead Than to live without you I've been searching every day Trying to find another way I'd be better off dead Than to live without you" While Hammer and Dani slammed Tom through a short bridge solo, Buttercup danced with the microphone stand, clearly lost in her own performance. Corwin, who had seen his sister Kaitlyn (shy, retiring Kaitlyn, who still had to be talked into swimming in anything less than a one-piece that would pass a school uniform inspection board) get this involved in countless musical performances of her own, grinned. It was a side of Buttercup he'd seen before, on long-ago nights when she'd gotten this much into -listening- to music, down in the basement at 105 Morgan Lane; but she'd never shown it to anyone but her very closest friends before, and to see her up there rocking out in front of the whole junior and senior classes was most gratifying indeed. If he hadn't thought coming to her rescue was worth it before - and he had - this would have changed his mind. Buttercup rode the windout from the bridge back to the main beat and repeated the refrain twice more, getting more and more involved as she went. For the last repetition, she was almost screaming - but she was doing it -tunefully-, which was more than almost everyone there expected she'd be able to do. "I'd rather be a fool I'd be lost with someone new I'd be better off dead Than to live without you I've been searching I've been searching I'd be better off dead Than to live without you!" She drew the last word out into a cry as the band slammed to a halt around her, and for a moment there was complete silence in the Koopman High gym. Buttercup stood frozen where she'd finished the song, microphone in both hands, head thrown back... And then, as her classmates erupted in cheers, she seemed to realize where she was, put the mike stand down, and, blushing furiously... ... smiled, then took a bow before turning to thank the band and then quitting the stage. As she passed Mojo Jojo on the stairs, she gave the still-bewildered evildoer a smirking high-five, which he returned out of reflex more than anything else. "She sang?" Jojo was muttering to himself as he mounted to the stage. "She -sang-? Buttercup -sang-? She performed an audible melody, rendered a melodic vocalization? INconCEIVable!" "You keep using that word," PCHammer noted to him as he went up to take his mike back. "I do not think it means what you think it means." The rest of the occasion went just as well as it had begun, and when it broke up at 11:30, Corwin and Buttercup had time for a short walk up in the quiet, wooded hills of the Heights before Professor Utonium's deadline. They left G-Kaiser parked at the school, where Corwin, having no such time restriction, could retrieve him later. They didn't say much until they were actually up at the highest clearing on the ridge, sitting on the boulder, looking at the spectacular view of the city. Then Corwin said, "I never knew you could sing." Buttercup chuckled, though she seemed slightly preoccupied. "Neither did I," she said, "but I had to try." "Interesting choice of song for your very first public performance," Corwin noted with a smile. "Yeah, well," said Buttercup offhandedly, "it was either that or just come right out and tell you I've had this huge crush on you since the second grade, and you know what a big coward I am." There was a long, somewhat awkward silence. "........... Oh," said Corwin. Having disposed of her date in the most expeditious possible fashion, Clarissa Broadbank returned home at about the same time. She went not to her family's mansion in the Heights, but downtown, to the penthouse apartment she maintained at the Hotel Monolith. Ephrem Broadbank didn't know his daughter had an apartment at the Monolith. No one did, since the place, about a quarter of the hotel's top floor, was officially rented to a company called Marolo Imports. No one at the hotel had ever seen Clarissa there; the discretion of the Monolith's penthouses was legendary, and each had its own private corridor and elevator. Even the staff was none the wiser. They thought the place was used by an import company for entertaining visiting dignitaries and rewarding salespersons for high achievement. They -certainly- didn't know about the modifications she'd made to the place over the last two years. If they had, something unfortunate would have happened to them by now. The curly-haired blonde was smiling as she entered, locking the door behind her, and took off her shoes. She went to the bedroom and changed her clothes, not into a nightdress or more casual street clothes, but into a very particular set of clothes kept in a special locked compartment behind the wardrobe. Once she'd taken care of that - tying back her hair, fitting on her gloves, checking her blaster pistol, making sure her jackboots were buffed, all the usual stuff - she went into the living room and submitted to a thumbprint and retinal scan by the Frederic Remington sculpture copy on the mantelpiece above the fireplace. The western-style living room reconfigured itself in a matter of seconds into a sleek, gleaming modern command center, complete with weapons racks, a massive control computer and a tactical holotank dominating the center of the room, where the coffee table and sofa had been. Clarissa, smiling below her black silk Zorro-style kerchief mask, went to the control console, sat down, and punched keys. A few moments later, the central display screen rezzed up a head-and-shoulders image of a man in a red suitjacket, yellow bow tie, and scarlet sack hood with eye and mouth holes like a ski mask's. "Good evening, Q-Boss," said Clarissa pleasantly. "Good evening, Agent A," replied the hooded man with a smile. "Is everything ready?" "Yes, ma'am," said Q-Boss with a positive nod. "All seven K-units are in place and ready for activation on your signal. My battalion is fully mustered and ready to begin support operations." Clarissa's smile broadened and acquired a hint of cruelty. "Excellent," she said. "Your signal to begin should be coming shortly. I trust you will find it unmistakable." Q-Boss grinned under his mask. "We'll be ready, Agent A." Clarissa raised her right hand, arm stiff and straight; on the screen, Q-Boss did too, and the two chorused in unison, "Together! Allegiance or death! BIG FIRE!" Then they shared a dark chuckle before Clarissa closed the connection, reached to another part of the panel, and smashed the glass over a large red button marked "ACTIVATE". The button flashed in a most satisfying manner and an alarm began to whine as, one by one, seven dark lights over the button's housing flicked to bright green life. Still chuckling, Clarissa turned her chair and sent it running along the powered track to the side of the tactical situation holotank. She didn't want to miss a moment of this. A few minutes earlier, Buttercup said slowly, "All that time, I dunno... I guess I assumed... that someday it'd be you and me. But, you know, there wasn't any hurry. I figured it'd just... happen, someday." "Well, I wish you'd have -said- something," Corwin grumbled. "It wasn't a -conscious- assumption," said Buttercup. "And anyway, it wouldn't have mattered. You'd still have gone to pick Kate up... and that would've been that. It just would've made everything harder for you than it already is." Corwin frowned thoughtfully. He was close enough to Buttercup to know that she wasn't just the damage machine her public persona made people think she was, but still, that was more insight than he'd been expecting from her. Then he smiled sadly, put a hand on her shoulder, and said in a quiet voice, "I'm sorry... believe me, I know the situation you're in. But, hey, look at my life now - it's possible to get past that kind of thing. Right?" Buttercup gave him a look that seemed to indicate she was feeling a little sorry for -him-, which was puzzling; but though she shook her head, looking down, what came out of her mouth was a soft, "Right. Yeah... " Then she straightened up, looking a little fierce, and said, "Look, I don't want to come off like I'm asking for something here, or laying a guilt trip on you, or anything. It's just that you'll be going to Tomodachi this fall, and I didn't want to just -leave- this. I don't expect you to do anything about it... I just... wanted you to know. OK?" Corwin smiled. "OK," he said. He got up from the rock; Buttercup did too, and then embraced him, careful not to hurt him with her great strength but still give him the tightest hug she could muster. He gave it back, and when they separated, he could see her eyes shimmering in the city's nightglow above the wavering line of a good try at a smile. "So, hey," she said, her voice very quiet. "Don't be a stranger, right?" "'Course not," he replied; then he sighed and said, "I hate it when I make you cry." That, an oblique reference to a thing that had happened between them many years before, got a (slightly ragged) chuckle out of her, as he'd hoped it would; but after that, the moment became a little awkward, as they stood with his hands on her shoulders and hers in the bends of his elbows, looking at each other. Corwin found himself wondering, in an oddly detached kind of way, if he was, in fact, about to kiss her, and if so, just precisely -how- unwise that was going to be. A moment later, there was a tremendous explosion down in the city. Corwin and Buttercup both turned and stared in disbelief as six more followed in rapid succession, each one demolishing a block of warehouses and cargo handling facilities down in the ring of industrial zones separating downtown New Avalon from the outlying boroughs. They were weird explosions; they didn't seem to burst outward as much as they should have and they sent up almost no smoke. It almost seemed as though something was sucking the debris back toward ground zero right after the initial blasts... In the darkness, as the two astonished teenagers watched, monstrous shapes moved within the craters where the destroyed buildings had been. "WHAT the... ?" Corwin murmured. For a couple of minutes, the two of them stood there, gaping, too startled by the utter incongruity of what they were seeing to actually -do- anything about it. Then faint sounds started reaching their ears, penetrating the layer of shock which had paralyzed their minds and bringing them back to the present. Corwin couldn't quite make them out, but Buttercup, whose hearing (like most of her other physical abilities) was superhuman, could; she cocked her head with a scowl and then said, "Gunfire... blasters... people screaming." Another, smaller, ordinary explosion blossomed along one of the shop-lined streets of central Crescent Heights. "All -right-," Buttercup growled, her face shifting from amazement to a dark smile. "-This- I know how to handle!" She turned to Corwin. "Thanks, I had a great time at the prom tonight," she said hurriedly, then gave him a very quick little kiss and added, "We'll go deal with whatever's going on in the Heights, -you- get to handle the giant monsters this time. Can you call the Professor and tell him it's not your fault I won't be home by midnight?" A moment later she was gone, leaving behind nothing but a shimmery noise and a fading streak of bright green light. Corwin stood watching her incandescent trail as she shot down to their neighborhood, saw it joined by the pink and blue wakes of her sisters as it vanished into the streets, then grinned. "Yeah," he said to no one in particular, "I think I can manage that." He raised his watch, pushing back his sleeve, and called for G-Kaiser again - - but the sound that came back was not the ping of acknowledgement. Instead, it was a low "blat" that could only have meant an error message, followed by Excel's voice: "Sorry, Chief, but somebody's already using that robot! Can I send you one of the others or would you rather use your usual one? Only if you're going to do that I hope you're not someplace where a huge hole in the ground will be a -problem- for anyone. Have you considered changing the way that works? CAN you change the way that works? I'm just a computer, y'know, I don't really understand how stuff like magic works, but it seems to me you ought to be able to do SOMETHING about that, I mean after all, you ARE the god of robots, and... " Corwin blinked at his chattering watch in great puzzlement. A few minutes earlier, Noriko Takaya was helping the Clay Pigeons tear down their gear and pack up. This was a thing that she had done many times - but none of them recently; the combination of that factor and the lingering atmosphere of the very successful dance had her in a very good mood indeed as she worked. "Well, Mojo," said Eiko Rose cheerfully as she slung her Marshall stack onto her shoulder, "thanks for behaving yourself tonight." "Yeah!" Dani agreed. "It would've been a major buzzkill if we'd had to mess you up." Mojo Jojo, coiling patch cables, smiled darkly. "There is no need to thank me," he said. "My cooperation was ensured by means beyond your understanding, which you could not comprehend even if you knew about them, which you do not, which is just as well since you would certainly not be able to grasp their true implications anyway." "Which means," said Noriko cheerfully as she helped Dani disassemble her drum kit, "that you're just as scared of the Subcommittee on Student Recreation as everybody else." Jojo hesitated, as if weighing some lengthy denial or elliptical admission that could never be proven as such. Then he simply nodded once and grunted, "... Yes." "You are a wise monkey, Mojo Jojo," noted Tom with a grin. "Galaxies can be overthrown, planets can be destroyed, but -nobody- messes with those four." "Indeed," Martin Rose agreed. "Although, jokes and slams aside, we really do appreciate your - " The floor of the gym suddenly shook under their feet, violently enough that one of Dani's cymbal stands fell over with a mighty clash that almost but not quite obscured the sound of the distant explosion. " - qu'est-ce que hoek?!" Rose went on without a pause. He directed a glare at Mojo Jojo, only to see that the Hestonian looked just as surprised as the rest of them - and Mojo Jojo was a lousy actor, so Rose knew it had to be genuine. They all piled outside to see pillars of smoke rising in the distance and gigantic shapes moving within them. "Mo-JOOOO... !" growled Eiko, shoving up one of her sleeves. "I assure you, Mrs. Rose, this is none of my doing," said the scientist in reply; he was too startled to expound upon that statement as he normally might. "Well, I guess - " Martin began, but again he was interrupted, this time by the shriek of tires as a fleet of black vans appeared on the streets of Crescent Heights. Three of them skidded to a halt in the now-empty Koopman Memorial parking lot while the rest roared off into other streets, fanning out through the neighborhood. "Oh, NOW what?" Eiko demanded - and a moment later she had her answer, as the back doors of the vans opened up and a small horde of black-suited goons piled out, each carrying a submachinegun or blaster carbine. Mojo Jojo identified them first, his voice quivering with horrified outrage: "BIG FIRE!" "You're, ah, -sure- you're not involved with this, Mojo?" asked Martin conversationally. "Absolutely NOT!" Jojo sputtered. "I have had nothing to do with that pack of jackals since we parted ways ten years ago! A decade has passed since my last involvement with Big Fire. I walked away from them in 2399 and have not looked back, because I have no regrets about having - " "I heard you got kicked out," Dani piped up. Mojo turned and glared at her, then turned back with a noncommittal grunt and watched the thugs approaching the school building. They were headed for the main entrance, not the gym, and hadn't noticed the little group standing by the gym doors. "Well, kids, it looks like this is something we should maybe deal with," said Martin Rose thoughtfully. Noriko eyed the giant creatures beginning to make their way downtown, then glanced over at the tennis courts and smiled slowly. "You guys go ahead," she said. "I'm gonna go see about something else... " Rose smiled. "Just be careful, 'Riko," he said, and Noriko waved an acknowledgement as she sprinted across the corner of the parking lot. "OK, well, how 'bout the rest of you?" "Right with ya, boss," said Tom, nodding. "Let's do it!" Dani added. Let me at 'em, signed big, silent Dund. "I can hardly wait," said Eiko, cracking her knuckles with a grin. "Yes," Mojo Jojo agreed. "Let us, as you say, get dangerous." "Now you're stealing my lines," Rose complained. "How rude. You're saying the things I should be saying, except you're saying them before I get a chance to say them, so that I cannot say them because you have already said them... oh, the hell with it." He raised his Lens and concentrated, switching to his working clothes; then, from behind his scarf, he said in his "business" voice, "Let's go to work." Noriko scrambled up the side of the giant blue robot standing on the tennis courts, having figured out the system of hidden handholds in fairly short order. Arriving atop the golden V on the machine's barrel chest, she found the activator for the main hatch and pressed it, hoping she'd just accomplished something other than working up a light sweat. The hatch hissed and opened for her, revealing a cockpit dimly lit by standby monitors. "Hmm," she mused as she climbed over the threshold. "Type S controls, not my favorite, but I guess it'll have to do... " She slipped into the seat, leaned forward to examine the master control panel, and murmured, "Now if I can figure out where the activator is - I just hope Corwin left the keys in it... aha!" She pressed the key she figured was the main activator, and the cockpit powered up around her. On the main display panel in front of her, the "Armored Knight G-KAISER" test pattern blinked and vanished, replaced by marching white text: OPERATOR DETECTED: OPERATOR RECOGNIZED: TAKAYA, NORIKO R. - CONTROL CONFIGURATION W INITIATED - Noriko yelped in surprise as the seat suddenly contracted beneath her, memory-plastic straps extruding from various ports to secure her arms, legs and torso firmly to the comfortably padded structure. A moment later, most of that structure fell away, flattening and retracting into the floor, as the banks of monitors and controls around her all moved back against the walls and shifted upward slightly and the holographic projector panels angled to a position closer to true vertical. What remained of the seat was a waldo framework which gently but insistently moved her into a standing position that matched G-Kaiser's. She glanced down in surprise as the straps at her wrists deployed branches which ran down her fingers and wrapped her fingertips. There was an instant of disorientation as the neural interface system in the headrest energized, blending her own sense of balance and body presence with that of the robot. Noriko was out of practice, having been primarily a conventional naval officer for the past several years, but she was still an extremely experienced and naturally talented Type W robot pilot. She was ready to go the instant the transition blur left her senses, and she couldn't stop the smile that flowed onto her face as she felt the power in G-Kaiser's massive limbs. Around her, the displays brightened and rezzed up exterior views, surrounding her with a bird's-eye view of the Koopman Memorial campus. Floating in front of her where the master monitor had been came a few more status messages. ARMORED KNIGHT G-KAISER POWER ON SELF TEST NEUROSYSTEMS FULLY SYNCHRONIZED - CONTROL TEST COMPLETE ALL WEAPONS SYSTEMS READY - ARMOR INTEGRITY 100% GS RIDE REACTOR FULLY ENERGIZED - ALL WEAPONS OPERATIONAL CAST IN THE NAME OF GOD... Noriko's eyebrows went up a little bit at the completion of that last message; then the text cleared, combat-information overlays rezzed up, and G-Kaiser quivered slightly, as if eager to get started with the day's work. Outside, the robot's optics flashed, that squared-off 'G' icon visible behind the right one. Noriko, her grin ever wider, pressed down with one foot, and G-Kaiser stepped off the tennis courts into the parking lot, heading for downtown. A second later, she heard something that sounded like a phone ringing, and after a moment's consternation, she shrugged mentally and said, "Hello?" "Noriko?!" a familiar voice inquired as the words "AUDIO ONLY" appeared over in the corner of her main combat-info overlay. "Got it in one," she replied cheerily. "Is that you, Corwin?" "Yeah," came the slightly breathless reply, and Noriko realized that he was running, talking into his wrist communicator as he went. "I hope you don't mind, but I needed to do -something-," said Noriko. "Your friend here seemed to know me already." "Uh, yeah," said Corwin. "There's a reason for that, but we can copy notes later. Listen, there's an online help function if you need it, and - the controls shifted to Type W for you?" "Sure did. Almost startled me out of my skin," Noriko added with a chuckle. Corwin, running down the trail from the Heights to street level as fast as he could, spared the breath for a chuckle of his own before replying, "OK, great. There are weapons controls on the joysticks - the thumb wheel on the right one is a mode selector for the right trigger, and the left has a thumb and finger trigger for the two main attacks. Or you can stow the joysticks and use the neurovocal command system." "Neurovox command!" came Noriko's happy reply. "You know they took that out of the newest RX series? And you can't even get a Neo Gundam with Type-W controls any more, either. What's the world coming to, I ask you?" "Pretty sad," Corwin agreed. "Anyway, uh... I'd hoped to make this a little more formal, but needs must at times like this... I hope you like him." "Pardon?" Noriko replied, sounding slightly confused. "Well, it's a little early," said Corwin, "but... happy birthday!" A pause, the faint sound of a muffled G-Kaiser footfall, and then Noriko's voice said, "Oh, you are in for -such- a kiss, young man." Corwin laughed. "I'll hold you to that, Admiral," he declared, emerging from the woods onto Belvedere Drive and running for the N station at the corner. "'Bout time for me to get to work myself," he added. "Good hunting, 'Riko!" "You too, Corwin. See you on the battlefield. G-Kaiser out." Smiling slightly, Corwin took the stairs down into the Belvedere N station on the jump. The trains wouldn't be running, of course, but there was a nice, big window on the front of the ticket booth. On the way, he remembered to call Professor Utonium, who took the news with his usual slightly clueless equanimity. It was comforting, thought Corwin as he energized the ticket window, that there were some solid constants in the universe... John Trussell was just resting his eyes. He wasn't asleep in his office on Babylon 6. As such, he was not awakened, but merely alerted, by Nanami Jinnai grabbing him by the shoulder and shaking him. "Wha!" said Truss, starting violently. "Nap time's over, champ," said Nanami briskly. "Grab your stuff and let's get going." Blinking rapidly, Truss swung took his feet off his desk, swung his chair to the upright position, and asked, "What? What is it?" "Big, bad mojo going down in New Avalon," said Nanami as she rummaged through the equipment closet at the back of the room. "I'm taking a couple of these data cartridges, just bill our account. C'mon already! We're missing all the action. Jung's already waiting for us on the Swordbreaker." Truss and Nanami weren't actually, technically, co-workers. Truss was a reporter for Network 23, a galactic television network based on Salusia, whose award-winning news department's bailiwick spanned Known Space. Nanami, on the other hand, -was- the award-winning news department of Big Time TV, a Bajor-based network whose entire staff consisted of two beings and an antiquated broadcast droid. Big Time and Network 23 didn't compete on any appreciable level; aside from its news coverage, Big Time showed music videos and old Hong Kong action movies, while Network 23 had broad-based timeslot-sensitive programming including original dramas, situation comedies, and the television debuts of recent Major Motion Pictures. Big Time was also not seen beyond the Bajor-B'hava'el system, except on the Wedge Defense Force/International Police Co-Operative Personnel Entertainment System, and didn't compete with Network 23 for advertisers because Big Time showed no advertisements. And, finally, the two networks' viewership demographics barely overlapped at all. Because of all this, the Powers that Be at Network 23, President Ben Cheviot and News Director Edison Carter, had decided on an alliance between Network 23 News and Big Time TV News. This alliance took the form of a working arrangement between Network 23's Babylon 6 bureau chief, John Trussell, and Big Time's News Director, Nanami Jinnai, whereby Truss gave Nanami rides to galactic hot spots aboard his personal starship and the two reporters shared sources and footage. Occasionally, on the really big stories, they even reported collaboratively, complete with a nifty BT/N23 combined logo designed by Truss himself. Now Truss followed Nanami down the corridor, trotting to keep up with her brisk walking pace and smiling to himself. Nanami was very young by the standards of an immortal from the twentieth century like Truss. She'd started out in television at the age of sixteen as a weathergirl in her native Japan, on Earth, had joined the Interstellar News Network a year later, and at nineteen had just started with ISN's Paris headquarters bureau when the Earth government declared martial law and seized control of the media. She'd met Blank Reg, the Klingon expat who ran Big Time TV, while making her escape from the beseiged city in the company of Edison Carter, whose nose for trouble had landed him smack in the middle of the crackdown. Though she'd been initially dubious about the wisdom, career-wise, of accepting a job offer from an outfit as... well, scruffy, as Big Time, but the idea of being a news director, even of a department of one, had been intriguing; so, backed with an offer of a job from Carter if the experiment didn't work out, she took the job. Now, at twenty-two, she'd never looked back. Nanami Jinnai's drive, determination, journalistic instincts, and camera presence had made Big Time's news department a genuine player in galactic news. Its scope was necessarily limited by the fact that Nanami could only be in one place at a time, but there was a growing segment of the population in Big Time's broadcast area which considered the Big Time Report to be the essential companion piece to Network 23 Action News with John Trussell. At any rate, Truss enjoyed his network's deal with Big Time. He liked Nanami, liked working with her, and found himself inspired by her drive and determination and impressed by her instincts. She wasn't hard to look at, either, which helped, even though their relationship was kept on a strictly professional level in the field. She led the way to the transporter room and gave the order to beam the two of them to Truss's ship without hesitation. The transporter tech, familiar by now with this pattern, gave Truss a private little grin as he energized the beam. "Welcome aboard!" said the cheerful green-haired hologirl form of Canal, the good ship Swordbreaker's machine intelligence majordomo, as two out of the ship's three human crewmembers descended the platform at the other end. "We're in a hurry today, I see," she added as she followed them into the corridor. "A big one," Nanami agreed before Truss could say anything. "We're going to need the fold drive." "Oh my!" said Canal, impressed. "Who's going to pay for that?" "Carter and I can argue about that after we've won our Emmies for this report," replied Nanami with a grin. "Captain Trussell?" asked Canal. Truss chuckled. "Well, I'm glad -someone- is curious about my opinion," he said wryly. "Judging by the way she's acting, I'd say if it's half as big as Nanami thinks it is, it'll be worth it." Canal nodded. "I'll power up the drive array and have Jung start getting clearances." Near the Marshall Center stop on the Gold Line, Major Dan Dastun, a senior patrol officer with the New Avalon Police Department, directed twelve New Avalon cops with half a dozen cruisers in the formation of an impromptu roadblock. Dastun wasn't really sure what a baker's dozen cops with pistols and six low-slung Ford patrol vehicles was going to do about the giant monster lumbering down Marshall Boulevard, about ten blocks distant, but he felt obligated to try. As Dastun worked at organizing the roadblock, he saw something he'd never have expected: A teenage kid in a tuxedo, emerging from the N station. How the hell'd he get down there? Where'd he come from? The trains weren't even running, they'd been sent to the ends of the lines and stopped as soon as the civil emergency was declared! While Dastun was digesting that, the young man paused, noting the presence of the cops, and then walked out into the middle of the street, turning to face the oncoming monster as if considering it. Dastun, his confusion giving way to a sort of officious irritation to which he was prone, grabbed a megaphone and bellowed, "HEY! KID! Get outta the way! Can't you - " Corwin didn't have time to be diplomatic. Without turning around, he raised his arm so that the face of his watch was visible to the cop and replied, "Grey Lensman. Move your officers back four blocks, Major." "... Dammit," growled Dastun; then he turned and hollered to the cops under his command, "OK, everyone, fall back to Avenue Victor Hugo and reform line! Move! MOVE!" Corwin listened to them clear out, watching the monster as it moved slowly forward. Within a minute he was standing alone in the middle of one of New Avalon's wider streets while the titanic monster approached, intent on... well, on something behind him, apparently. He stood and watched it approach for another moment or two; then he raised his watch and said the four words that always gave him a little thrill, even after dozens of battles: "BIG O! It's SHOWTIME!" /* Rui Negai "Big-O!" (TV-size) _Big-O: Original Sound Score_ */ Four blocks back, Dastun looked through his electrobinoculars and muttered to himself, "What the hell's that kid doing?" A moment later, the street vibrated under the cop's feet, a sensation not unlike that of a train passing. Then a manhole cover in the center of the street, just behind the young Lensman, blew straight up into the air with a tremendous POP, flew a hundred feet or more in the air, turned over lazily, and caved in the whole damn street when it hit the ground. Or at least that's what the last part looked like for a second, until Dastun realized that it was just an illusion created by the fact that the street caved in just as the manhole cover was reaching it. With a shocking suddenness, a sinkhole-like depression the full width of the street in diameter quivered, sank, and then crumbled away entirely, plunging into a great black hole. Dastun's last sight of the black-haired Lensman was of the young man plummeting into the hole along with everything else, arms folded, unconcerned. A moment later, a great black shape erupted from the sinkhole, showering broken chunks of pavement to the ground and shattering windows all around. It was a robot, the biggest one Dastun had ever seen, fully the size of the gigantic invader that was stalking down the street toward their position - and standing on top of its copper-helmeted head with his arms still folded was the Lensman. "Holy - !" Dastun blurted; then the young man jumped down into the huge robot's upheld hand and vanished. As a distorted reflection in a warped office building window off to the side, Dastun saw him jump from the hand into an opening below the robot's head, which then sealed with a copper-plated hatch. A few moments later, the robot's eyes glowed bright yellow, and it stepped out of the rubble-strewn crater and started marching down the street to meet the attacker. "What in the name... ?" Dastun murmured. The radio on his belt crackled and the Lensman's voice emerged. "I don't want to tell you how to do your job, Major," he said, "but if I were you, I'd see about taking those men up to Crescent Heights. They need all the help they can get up there, and, no offense, but you won't be able to help me." Dastun's instinctive response was to balk, to grab his radio and bark, "Who are you to give me orders, kid?" After a moment's thought, though, he realized the kid was right. Without acknowledging the transmission - the pilot of that robot would have plenty to do in a moment without pointless comm traffic from cops - Dastun waved his men to their cars and piled into the lead cruiser. "I don't know if we can get to the Heights with all this going on, sir," said his driver, "but I'll do the best I can... " The six cruisers switched on their lights and sirens and peeled off down 95th Avenue, leaving Big O alone to confront the monster. Chip Mui sighed contentedly. Tonight had been, without a doubt, one of the best nights of his life. Everything seemed to have fallen into place: The prom was a success, his sister was happy with her date, he'd taken plenty of pictures... and best of all, he had the honor of dating the sweetest girl in the school. "You seem rather pleased with yourself, Charles," Fuu noted. He was driving her home in his father's car. They weren't in any particular hurry, since her house was only 15 minutes away - less, if Chip used the car's alternate mode. They were one of the last couples to leave the school. "Call me a softy, Fuu, but... I dunno. Tonight it feels like nothing can go wrong. I know that I shouldn't say that, but... heck, even Clarissa didn't act up more than normal." "Is that all?" she asked as he stopped to make a turn. "Well, no," he admitted. "I also have the pleasure of knowing the sweetest, kindest, prettiest, most brilliant - do you want me to go on?" "Exaggerating again, Charles?" she asked softly with a smile. "Not this time," he replied, and leaned in to give her a quick kiss - - when three black vans zoomed by. All of them were unmarked, and apparently headed back the way they'd come - toward Fritz Koopman Memorial High School. "What the hell?" he muttered. The warm mood evaporating, they craned their necks to get a view of the vans. Fuu seemed a bit concerned, but Chip's gaze turned sharp, almost hard. It appeared that he was expecting trouble. "Why do I get the feeling that they're not going to clean up the gym?" he mused. "It does appear rather suspicious," Fuu admitted. "Let's see if I can't get a long-range scan," Chip's fingers flew over a keypad, and he frowned. "My scans are bouncing off whatever's on those vans." Fuu looked thoughtful. "A sensor-reflective coating, perhaps?" "I think we may be a little late getting you home. Unless, of course, you want me to drop you off and - " Fuu looked at him somewhat incredulously. "Charles, you know I'm not one to play the helpless maiden," she said with faint reproach. He grinned almost wolfishly. That was exactly what he expected her to say. "Check them out it is, then." He toggled yet another switch, and a phone keypad appeared on the HUD. "Might want to call your parents and let them know that you'll be late coming home. First things first, you know," he joked. Chip hadn't anticipated trouble, but he was far from unprepared, a trait he'd inherited from his father. Flipping a few switches, the air around them shimmered briefly as shields came online. Another switch rotated the tires ninety degrees, and with a brief jolt, they were boosted some distance above the road. "I never knew that your father's car could do this," Fuu remarked with admirable sangfroid. "Yeah, I'm lucky that he let me borrow it for tonight." he replied conversationally. Fuu used the phone to alert her parents to the situation; she advised them to stay low and out of trouble. Unlike Hikaru Shidou's brothers (from whom the Salusian girl had carefully concealed it) or Uum'y R'yuu-z'ky's parents (who were so laissez-faire about everything that they'd never bothered to find out), the Hououjis, parents and sister alike, knew the full extent of the changes Fuu had experienced during the time three years ago when she'd been missing. Her father told her to stay frosty and not get punctured, and that was pretty much all that was required. "Hey, Mom?" Elana Smythe-Mui looked worried on the HUD. "Chip, where are you?" "Well, Fuu and I were just about to head out when we found out that someone had a sale on guys in black hoods. They're headed for the school, so Fuu and I decided to stay and help out. Is everything okay there?" he asked, jerking the car to the left to avoid a rocket blast. It appeared the gentlemen in black had noticed their tail. "Everything's fine here. Reiyna came home a few minutes ago, and Gary's sticking around here for obvious reasons." She looked rueful for a moment. "I always thought that your father's security system was overkill, but it's actually come in quite handy." "How... ?" "Let's just say that nobody's gotten past 5039 Chambers yet. Of course, there'll be quite a cleanup in the morning, but... anyway, you and Fuu just be careful, all right?" Fuu leaned into the camera view. "We will, Mrs. Mui." Clarissa Broadbank watched the situation unfold on her tactical monitor with a smile. The K-units were performing just as expected. It had taken a great deal of time, effort and expense to smuggle the cores of seven K-units into New Avalon, but for a debut and field test site, Big Fire could ask for no better. Adapted from a Big Fire study of all available data on the Heterodyne, extradimensional aliens which had attacked Earth in the mid-twenty-first century, the monstrous bioroid creations called K-units would - if successful - revolutionize Big Fire's terror operations methodology. A K-unit's core (before activation) was the size of a large suitcase, and could, with a bit of effort and ingenuity, be smuggled almost anywhere with much greater ease than a conventional war robot or kaiju-class attack bioroid could be. The K-core was programmed with what was for now only a simple program: basic tactics of giant-size combat, how to deal with air attacks, armor, and enemy robots; very simple instructions, such as how to recognize and destroy a particular landmark or item; and some rudimentary identify-friend-from-foe information. K-units weren't very bright, but they were fearless and relentless, traits not always to be found in robot pilots. When activated, a K-core would send out a tuned multiphasic energy wave which would demolish everything within a radius of about four hundred feet, pulverizing most inanimate matter to dust. (For some reason it had no effect on life forms; Big Fire's scientists believed the energy wave was somehow repulsed by Spengler radiation, a fascinating but ultimately useless discovery.) The energy field would then collapse, coalescing the pulverized material into a specific programmed shape. All the K-units involved in this test would assume a humanoid configuration. These units also had the capacity to recognize many items which could be used as weapons and exclude them from the destruction wave. Instead of being pulverized and used as base material, the weapons would be integrated functionally into the K-unit's final form. For this reason, it was considered good practice to site K-cores near sources of readily assimilated weapons. All the units set off for this test had been placed in an industrial area, providing them with an abundance of dangerous objects, including the cannon and missile systems from several New Avalon Police Department ED-2900-series robots which had been patrolling the warehouse districts. Agent A watched with glee as her seven giant servants oriented themselves and then began moving inward, heading downtown. She had been given great operational latitude on this mission, a more or less free hand to select targets; all the Magnificent Ten cared about was that the units prove their value and inflict as much damage and terror on the citizens and authorities of New Avalon as possible. Once they knew that their vaunted City in the Sphere wasn't the invulnerable fortress they assumed its location made it, perhaps the masters of the International Police would be more willing to negotiate with the eventual rulers of the galaxy. Clarissa was a firm believer in killing as many birds as possible with any given stone, so the K-units were programmed to destroy things in New Avalon she wanted out of her life anyway. Plus, while most of the city's defenses were concentrated on stopping the K-units, Q-Boss and his men would sack Crescent Heights, merely for the sheer satisfaction of Agent A. As she watched the growing red zones indicating the boundaries of the chaos and destruction sown by the forces under her command, Clarissa laughed. Life was good. There were distinct advantages to having a date who was considered an adult by his society, Uum'y R'yuu-z'ky decided as she and Nall walked along the cable of the Highway 29 bridge over the Oxbow River at midnight. It meant, among other things, that she didn't have to worry about -his- parents demanding he come home by curfew, and her parents had been so delighted that she was going to the prom that they hadn't bothered to set her a curfew either. Unlike some people's brothers she knew... It didn't strike Umi as at all unusual that she and her prom date were walking up the cable of a suspension bridge, five stories and rising above the black water of the Oxbow. It didn't even occur to her that normal people would find it strange - not to mention paralytically frightening - to be doing something like this. Her only thought as she reached the top and the flat steel of the bridge's central pier was of what a pleasant night it was, and how good the view was from up here. "How -did- you find this place, dragon?" Umi asked as he helped her (gallantly) up to the top of the pier and then scrambled up beside her to look out at the twinkling sparks in the darkness. The wind blew quietly off the Heights, tugging gently at her hair without actually making it into a tangled mess that would take hours to comb out later, and she absently pulled it aside so that Nall wouldn't -sit- on it by mistake. "I can fly," he answered cheerfully, tucking his cape around her shoulders and flashing her a glowing-red-eyed cat grin. "Dragons like high places with commanding views." Umi thought about that, and then started to ask what other such spots he had found in the city, when several large explosions and the sound of gunfire rattled the night below them. "WHAT the - !?" Umi started to scramble to her feet to see if she could see what was making the noise. Nall grabbled her arm and nearly yanked it out of its socket dragging her down. "OW!" she yelped, glaring at him. Undaunted by the glare, he hissed, "Don't stand up, you idiot, you'll get SHOT!" She glared at him for a moment, trying to think of a snappy comeback before there was a soft *phfwpt!* of air and he collapsed back into his cat shape. "Wait here," he said, and scrambled over the edge, vanishing straight down the green-painted pier in a flash of white fur that was quickly lost in the darkness. "Wait here," she growled. "Or you'll get shot, he says. I'll show him -shot- when he gets back here, the little..." She trailed off as something startling caught her eye: Off past the cityward end of the bridge, -giants- had appeared out of the smoke pillars of the biggest explosions. "Noyyj'ttat," she murmured, "what in the -world-... ?" Shaking her head, Umi started to follow Nall, staying low to the steel, but her formal gown's skirt caught on the protruding head of one of the bolts holding the cable bracket to the top of the pier. "T'ch'nn-k'luongo!" she growled. She focused her attention on her Lens for a moment, and whispered in a voice like the waves, >Knight of the Sea.< Her clothes flowed around her and then faded into a blue- paneled, short-skirted dress with a dark blue and gold breastplate and pauldrons over it. Her boots rippled and became strong white leather, rising to mid thigh, and the ornaments in her hair from earlier disappeared. Putting one hand to her Lens, she drew the Heart of the Sea, the blue-enameled mystic rapier that she had earned when she won her Knighthood. Thus equipped, she slithered down the cable, utterly unmindful of the height and fully as quiet as her draconic date, except for her quiet muttering: "Rotten dragon, if you get hurt I'll kill you." Thirty seconds later, Nall was back in a flash of white wings, and he was panting from flying -fast-. One wing was missing two feathers. Umi opened her mouth to gripe at him as he gasped, "Good, you ditched the stupid dress." "It was -not- stupid!" she snarled. "It is if you're going up against a whole crowd of guys in black hoods with machine guns and heavy explosives!" he yelped, and ducked. Bullets rattled across the cable sheathing below, and Umi ducked reflexively, pressing herself to the steel. "I'll kill you -after- this," she growled. "Oh, good," Nall gasped. "That means I'll live long enough to catch my breath!" As Big O squared off against the nearest of the monstrous creatures that had been born in explosions down in the warehouse district, Corwin sized it up as best he could. He had a hard time telling just by looking at his opposition exactly what it -was-. It looked like a robot at first glance, its structure covered in segmented armor which gleamed a dull grey-black in the streetlights; but through the gaps in the armor, some paler grey material could be seen, and the creature moved very fluidly. Corwin had seen pure machines move that smoothly - the Rune Gods of Cephiro moved like living things, especially Celes, God of the Sea - but there was something just slightly uncoordinated about this thing's motions which combined with the smoothness to make him suspect he was looking at some kind of bioroid. Bioroids didn't usually have a pair of autocannons built into their shoulders like that, though. They weren't much of a threat - Big O's armor shrugged off their shells like a tin roof sheds hail, with almost the same noise - but they still weren't the sort of thing you tended to find on a bioroid. Now that Corwin looked at them, they and the housings they were built into looked distinctly like the arms of a New Avalon Police Department ED-2900-series police droid. Corwin flicked a weapon selector and triggered Big O's optic blaster array. The twin yellow beams lashed across the space separating the two giant combatants. The monster backed off, arms crossed in front of its "face" (though it didn't really seem to have one), and the yellow energy washed over it, spilling over as the beams fractured like interrupted streams of water to tear chunks out of the road and the empty office building behind the creature. "Oops," Corwin muttered. "Tougher than it looks... " That was about as far as he got on the enemy analysis; the creature, its armor smoking and pitted, reached a hand forward, and tentacle-like silvery cables whipped out from its fingertips to entangle Big O. "-What- the - ?" Corwin wondered, and a moment later, energy started pouring down the cables, overloading his robot's power systems and starting a massive drain on Big O's reserve cells. As the Rune God fell to one knee, Corwin gritted his teeth against the sympathetic pain and kept one wary eye on the flickering needles of his power gauges. "What power!" he muttered, impressed in spite of himself by the sophistication and strength of... whatever this was. Even Big O, the single mightiest Rune God in terms of plain strength, was fast losing that strength under the terrible assault coming down those cable-tentacles. Corwin strained against the joysticks, trying to muster enough power from Big O to break the cable pinning the Rune God's arms, but there just wasn't enough left. Thinking fast, he glanced at the weapons panel. There might be just enough energy to summon up a second or so of optic-beam fire. That might be just enough to sever the main tentacle, free Big O's arms, and cut the punishment level enough for his reactor core to regenerate his reserves - but only if he got a line of fire and did it NOW - /* Mephisto Odyssey featuring Static-X "Crash (The Humble Brothers Remix)" _Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker_ */ A bolt of brilliant energy slashed down from the sky, carved a line of glowing ruin across the street, and parted the cable. Big O stumbled backward, suddenly freed; Corwin worked the pedals and stabilized the machine before he could crash into the building opposite, then looked up to see what had come to his rescue. A sleek blue aerospace fighter howled up the avenue at rooftop level, its cannons peppering the K-unit (though Corwin didn't yet know what it was) with blasterfire as it came. Behind it, one to the left and one to the right, came two others of different configurations, one red and one yellow, adding their firepower to the attack as well. One of Big O's many display screens flickered and brightened, and there was Kozue, teeth bared in a triumphant grin as the three fighters peeled away as one and streaked skyward. "Kozue!" Corwin blurted. "Wha - who's flying the others?" "Nobody," Kozue replied cheerfully. "Or I am, since you based the drone-pilot algorithms on me. I know, that'll only give me access to one mode, but what the hell - against these guys I don't think I'll need more than one." The blue fighter twisted in midair and plunged back down for another run, its automatic mates following in perfect formation. The Big Fire creature turned around and returned fire, its assimilated autocannons chattering, but the three fighters avoided the streams of tracers easily before returning to their tight formation and carving up the street and the robot's armor a bit more. A slow smile crept onto Corwin's face as he watched Big O's power status gauges work their way back into the green zone. He squared up to take on his opponent while his back was turned, but then an explosion off to the right caught his attention. "You go and deal with that," Kozue's voice crackled over the comm net. "I'll handle this joker. More help's on the way." Corwin thought that over for half a second, then pivoted Big O and plunged down the side street. His erstwhile opponent noticed the movement and whirled, lashing the building behind where the Rune God had just been standing with another cable; then the street rang with the amplified sound of a girl's voice: "No, no, pal. -I'm- your opponent now." The monster shifted its stance, readying its cannon array. It would have a surprise for that ragtag fighter wing when they made their next pass... But they didn't make another pass. Instead, they came tearing down the street at rooftop level again, then abruptly pulled up and went vertical, shifting from their triangle formation to single file, first blue, then yellow, then red. Four blocks west and accelerating as Big O's power levels rose steadily toward full, Corwin grinned broadly as he heard Kozue's shout over the tac net: "CHANGE! GETTER - _RYGER_!" The Big Fire kaiju watched in uncomprehending surprise as the three fighters -collided-, their formation telescoping violently. For a moment it assumed that the pilots had made some terrible error, that the radical shifts in the colliding fighters' configurations meant they were breaking up in a horrible crash - but there was no fireball. Instead the three fighters merged, their shapes shifting almost organically, armor flowing like hot wax to sheath new forms... ... and it was as a single unit that the three Getter Machines returned to the ground: the blue-armored, spindly, lightning-quick form the spec sheets called Ryger. Kozue was not an experienced kaiju-class robot pilot. She preferred aerospacecraft, and had only learned to pilot the Getter series in order to help Corwin test it; but Getter Ryger handled so much like a fighter itself that she had few problems mastering it. She had also, to Corwin's amusement, picked up the habit (acquired from exposure to a cultural heritage stretching from the cartoons of Old Earth right up through "Thunder Force: The Animated Series") of announcing maneuvers as if her machine were voice-controlled. "Ryger DASH!" she declared, and the rocket thrusters at the ends of the slim wings jutting up from Getter Ryger's back flared, driving the machine down the street. The Big Fire bioroid's weapons chattered, but the beast's primitive battle intelligence wasn't leading nearly enough for an opponent of Ryger's speed. "This'll be - easy!" Kozue crowed, driving in for the kill - - but the creature reacted faster than she expected, adapting its tactics to close quarters without missing a beat and slamming one huge fist into Getter Ryger's chest. Ryger staggered, its charge aborted, and crashed back against the building across the street. Kozue shook her head. "OK, so, not -that- easy," she muttered with wry chagrin. Hikaru Shidou found herself thwarted by a lack of explosions to follow. The first loud BOOM from the Crescent Heights area had sent her charging up the hill away from the ferry stop and back toward the school, even though it meant she'd be very late getting home - dawn, even. Her rotten brothers could wait, and they couldn't really do anything to Mitsuru (who, unthinkingly, she was leaving far in her wake) given how he'd handled himself earlier. It'd serve them right for being such overprotective twits. And anyway, she was the Knight of the Flame! She had to help out in a situation like this! Except that she wasn't quite sure what the situation was, and she couldn't -find- it without noise to follow. Now, granted, the lack of noise meant fewer people were getting hurt, but she hadn't heard any police sirens either and - The sound of gunfire cut off her train of thought and sent her sprinting down a block and around a corner. There, she found herself twenty feet from a bunch of thugs in black hoods shooting up the side of a ten-story appartment complex, blowing out windows and cursing above the noise. All of the windows of the building were dark, and sheeting down to glass. Across the street, a couple of small, dark blocks about the size of shoeboxes were nestled up against the wall of one of the local Mom-and-Pop hardware stores. Red wires trailed away from the boxes out to the center of the street, where it looked like the Black Hoods had been working on them until... Until what? This didn't make sense. But if those boxes were explosives, then fire magic was -right- out. Well, she had other weaponry. With a grim smile, Hikaru drew the Heart of the Flame from her Lens, and launched herself at the nearest distracted Hood with a Salusian roar that had panicked more experienced warriors than these thugs. They all jerked in surprise, their guns sputtering to a stop as they turned to see her cut the first of their number down. "What the hell?!" one of them yelled. She lunged forward in a move she'd learned from Umi and gutted the second one on the point of her sword. "How -DARE- you hurt innocent people and destroy their livelihood?" she demanded in a furious scream, charging a third. "Sonofa - SHOOT!" yelled the third guy, backpedaling furiously and bringing his tommygun up to point at her. She dove to one side, anticipating the pounding her armor was about to take, and then heard a single shot. There was a scream, and she came out of her roll to see that the guy who had yelled was down, and the two remaining Black Hoods were turning back to face the windows they'd been pummelling with slugs earlier. Hikaru took advantage of their inattention to slice across one's unprotected back. She felt her sword lodge in his spine and gave a heave to pull it out, as the remaining one pulled the trigger on his tommygun and started to turn toward her, spraying lead out at a fantastic rate. Then he was down before he had even turned to face her all the way, and the street was silent. She stood in the dead quiet street, panting, and then a voice above her called out, "Hikaru, are you OK?" It took her a second to recognize the voice and her location. "Nate?!" "Um, yeah, I'm OK. I think." There was a pause, and then she looked up and saw Nathan Mowes leaning out a window, hunting rifle in hand. "I've... never killed anybody before... " Hikaru felt suddenly light-headed as she realized how close she'd come to getting filled with lots and lots of lead. "Nate, will you go out with me next Saturday?" she asked, feeling a bit giddy. Nate blinked at the utter incongruity of this question under the circumstances. "... Won't your brothers just throw me in the lake again?" he inquired after a moment's thought. "You're not asking me, I'm asking the guy who just saved my life. And if they try, I'll throw -them- in the lake myself." There was a long pause as she looked up at him, and then he grinned weakly. "OK." Corwin was pleased to note that the enemy he was closing in on was larger than the one he'd just been fighting, and didn't seem to have absorbed a pile of power cables. It didn't seem to have any weapons at all, in fact, and was just slogging through police roadblocks and gunfire with straightforward brute force. As Corwin rounded the corner onto Allard Boulevard - the thing seemed to be headed for the heart of downtown - he saw it tear a light pole from the sidewalk, heft it, and take a swipe at one of the New Avalon police aerodynes. Corwin triggered Big O's optic beams again, carving two glowing scars in the enemy unit's back armor. The K-unit turned, the light pole falling from its hand. Without hesitation and without a sound, it charged, streetlights sparkling on its grey-black armored hide. Corwin threw Big O into an opposing charge, and the two machines met with a titanic crash in the middle of the 2700 block. The K-unit tried to bring its fists down on the Rune God's shoulders in a crushing blow, but Big O slipped underneath the attack and the K-unit's fists glanced harmlessly over his armored shoulders. Big O's fist slammed into the creature's midsection, sending it skidding back several yards. Faster than Corwin had expected, the creature wrapped its arms around Big O, pinning the Rune God's arms, then set about trying to crush him. Corwin felt the joysticks quivering against his hands as the monster's strength warred with Big O's. He kept a wary eye on the fluctuating power gauges, feeling the vibration under his seat increase as Big O's power output kicked up to meet the challenge. 10 seconds into the contest, something blew up off to the west. The explosion seemed to distract the creature; Corwin felt the pressure of its grip fluctuate and threw his strength against the joysticks. Big O broke the monster's grip, regrouped, and threw a roundhouse punch at the K-unit's head. Again the K-unit was faster than it looked; it ducked the blow and drove its shoulder into Big O's midsection. Big O faltered, then fell backward, slamming to the pavement. "Slag!" Corwin snarled. He brought Big O's legs up to kick off the creature's follow-up attack, then got the Rune God to his feet. "Too much going on - how many of these things -are- there?" "Looks like seven," came a voice over the IPO tactical communications band. "Janice?" Corwin inquired. "Where are you?" "Up at the top of the Entire State Building," the voice of the IPO agent replied, "with a map and a radio. With the HQ division's bluesuiters scrambling the TOHO maser trucks and the cops all up in the Heights, I think I'm about the best battlefield coordinator you're gonna get, so tie your tac computer in and let's rock and roll. HQ com-cen says my radio sign for this one's 'Hawkeye 6'." "Seven?!" Corwin blurted as he dodged a punch from the monster and returned one of his own. Big O's spiked fist crushed part of the creature's armor, sending fragments spilling to the street, but it didn't seem terribly inconvenienced by the damage. "What else have we got for comparable assets?" "You and the Admiral and - is that Kozue? - uh-huh, are it right now," Janice replied. Corwin hadn't acknowledged her question; he realized that she had her communications relay set up so that he could only hear her end of the other conversations. After a few seconds of blank air, Janice came back with, "OK, Kozue says there's more help on the way, ETA about a minute, and the WDF has a Judicator wing inbound from HQ. Wait five while I bridge together this comm band so you can all talk to each other, and I'll try and figure out what these guys are up to." Clarissa watched the situation markers on her tactical holodisplay move for a moment, noted the size of the red zone in Crescent Heights, and frowned. She stabbed a key on her panel and snapped, "Q-Boss, report!" "We're hitting heavier resistance than expected down here, Agent A," Q-Boss's voice replied. In the background, Clarissa could hear gunfire and a lot of shouting, then a strange harmonic noise which she took several seconds to place as the sound of a Transformer in action. "It's not very -organized- resistance, except for the cops, but there's something weird going on up here. Demolition Team 6 at the bridge hasn't reported in; DT 4 got off one call, something about a sniper and a kid with a sword - probably one of the local Duelists - then nothing!" "What about the terror squads?" "My main team's got the biggest problem - I think we're up against Thunder Force." "Well, that was to be expected," Clarissa noted. "Acknowledged," Q-Boss replied, "and we're holding our own so far. The wing squads have problems of their own. Information's very sketchy so far, but it sounds like they're having more trouble with the Duelists than expected." "Dammit, Q-Boss! The Duelists are children with swords. Your troops are grown men and women with ranged weapons! WHY is this a problem?" "They may be children with swords," Q-Boss replied with a touch of rueful humor, "but they're -tough- children with swords. Hell, one of 'em's a Jyuraian princess, don't forget. Anyway, we knew all this going in. Everything's still within tolerances." "Very well," Clarissa replied. "Proceed. Agent A out." Up on the northeast corner of the Entire State Building's observation deck, high above the action, Janice Barlow sat on the balcony rail (no fool she, attached to the rail by a safety cable affixed to her Ragolian powered protection frame) and made a survey of the battlefield. She had an eye patch on over her natural eye so that she could concentrate on the input she was getting from her cyberoptic, and right now she was panning that optic across the half of the battlefield she could see from her vantage point. With that done, she made a small cybernetic adjustment, and suddenly the -other- half of New Avalon jumped into her field of view instead, rendered in ghostly shades of green and overlaid by a faint octagonal grid. Following her mental commands sent back along their sub-ether link, Mitra, her faithful Mag, also panned across the vista before him. Between the two of them, they could cover the whole city. Janice switched her optic back to normal mode, flipped up the eyepatch over her real eye, and looked at the map of New Avalon tacked to her kneeboard. Then she keyed the IPO tac band radio built into her Frame and said, "OK, Hawkeye 6 to Robot Response Team. We've got seven kaiju-class hostiles on the ground, spread out around the city. They're all making their way more or less downtown from the band of industrial zones outside Highway 29. I'm not sure what their targets are yet, but they look to be heading for -something- pretty purposefully. "IPO Tac Div HQ Division's heavy weapons battalion is deploying to the south along Allard and McQuarrie Drive; they should be able to hold three of 'em for now. Big O, you're up against the one I've got flagged as K-2; G-Kaiser is moving to engage K-7 and Getter Ryger's throwing down with K-1." "Where's that extra help Kozue promised?" Corwin inquired as he ducked Big O under a thrown bank branch. Oh well; SphereBank was a bunch of jerks anyway. 2 credits just to use one of their freaking teller machines? "I don't know," Janice replied, "but GENOM CORPDEF looks like they could really use it over by Technology Circle. K-4 is headed right for them down 217th Street, and I don't think those DD5 battlemovers are going to be much of a help. They're set up to defend the building against commando raids and crap, not giant monsters." "Acknowledged, Hawkeye 6," came a new voice on Band 3. "217th and Technology Circle. ETA 30 seconds." Janice blinked. "That voice sounds familiar," she said, "but I can't place it. Who is this?" The only answer she got was the sudden change of the streetlights at the corner of 217th Street and Technology Circle from white to bright red and the distant howl of emergency sirens. The crosswalks bracketing the square of pavement where the two streets overlapped began to flash as well, the word "DANGER" appearing inside each one. Janice blinked. The New Avalon Civil Defense Transport System was in USE?! A second later, the street parted with a hiss and a cloud of rapidly dissipating steam, and the square formed by the overlap of 217th and Technology slid open, revealing a shaft leading down into the underpinnings of the city. Below the streets, below the utility lines and the subway, another network of tunnels spiderwebbed the substrate beneath New Avalon, one with priority access shafts leading to the surface every four blocks. They had been laid out and constructed during the pseudocontinent's original creation, and then never used for their intended purpose of transporting defense equipment rapidly around the city... ... until now. A gantry assembly on a magnetically accelerated platform shot up out of the ground, slamming to a halt with its base plate at street level and its cargo towering over the corner. Automatically, cables popped away from the giant structure contained by the gantry as the gantry itself collapsed and folded away into the street below. Facing the oncoming K-4 (an unusually spiky, vicious-looking specimen) at a range of six city blocks was another giant robot, similar in styling to G-Kaiser but red and black instead of navy blue, and a bit simpler-looking in construction. It stood impassively for a moment, its massive form at rest, and then the voice which had acknowledged the GENOM troopers' need sounded over the IPO tac net again. "Dai-Guard, take off," said R. Dorothy Wayneright calmly. In answer, the retrofitted antique machine's blue-green optics flashed. The robot strode purposefully off the platform, which immediately retracted back into the street, hatchway closing behind it. "Lorna! Lorna, wake up!" Lorna Endou opened one eye slowly and tried to make out something about her surroundings, but they were still in pitch darkness - which was very odd for a sane hour of the morning to be waking up. The obvious conclusion - that it was not a sane hour to be waking up - did not occur to Lorna, because she was too groggy. She was awake enough to realize that she wasn't at home - she generally didn't sleep in the back seats of antique cars at home - and that fact in turn reminded her that she was in the clubhouse of the Nekomi Institute of Technology Motor Club - but abstracts like "time" were still beyond her capabilities. And if she had anything to say about it, they would continue to be for some time. "... ohhhh... what -is- it, lisa?" she muttered, trying to burrow back into her sleeping bag. "... bad enough you talked me into sleeping over here... initiation... can't even join the club 'til next year... " "C'mon, get up!" Lisa Sakakino urged her friend, joggling Lorna's shoulder again. "You've got to see what's on TV! It's the coolest thing -ever-!" "... nnnnn... not another steve mcqueen movie marathon... " "No, no! WAY cooler'n that! C'mon, get UP!" On the other side of the city from Corwin, G-Kaiser dove from on high, swooping down on the spindly shape of K-7. The tallest of the enemy creatures, this one had a peculiarly gaunt shape with disproportionately long arms and very long, claw-like fingers. It turned to watch the blue-and-gold robot diving down on it, but didn't look too concerned. Noriko overflew it, then landed her new robot a block down the street. Janice's tactical plot showed that this one was probably headed for International Police Headquarters. "Help, weapons," she said, and G-Kaiser's computer responded with a menu in her forward combat information overlay. "Let's see, let's see," she murmured, running down the list. "What've we got here... some kind of energy beam... 'G-Bomb', I wonder what that does... ha! Rocket punch! Yeah, you can tell a -guy- designed this. Well, I guess I might as well find out what that does... " Setting G-Kaiser as if preparing to throw a punch, despite the fact that her enemy was a block away, Noriko drove her right hand forward and declared firmly, "ROCKET PUNCH!" At the forward peak of the punch, right where a person would have expected impact with a normal punch, G-Kaiser's right forearm blew away at the elbow, streaking down the street on a blue-white shock cone of thruster fire. To Noriko, through her neural interface, it felt very strange - as if her arm had suddenly become much, much longer, the fist at the end shooting forward. The flying fist smashed into K-7's narrow chest, bowling the creature over backward; then it pulled up in a long, picturesque arc, circling back to G-Kaiser and mating with his upper arm with a CLANG and a burst of sparks. Noriko flexed her elbow and wrist, examining both her own arm in person and the robot's through the monitor, then shook her head. "Dunno if I like that... " she mused. The K-unit got to its feet and charged, breaking her out of her reverie; she put G-Kaiser in motion as well, running down the weapons list with one eye and keeping the other on the decreasing range. She was just about to try one of the energy weapons when the K-unit took a swipe at her, still too far away to possibly connect - - and a beam of white energy, the blade of an industrial plasma cutter, leapt from the palm of its hand, closing the gap in the blink of an eye. Noriko's well-trained, well-honed reflexes saved her; with a cry of "Whoa!" she threw G-Kaiser backward, reversing his run with a great crash of his giant feet against the street. The cutter beam flickered across G-Kaiser's chest, falling just short, and for a second, Noriko thought she'd gotten away with it. Then a triangular bit just at the very tip of the golden V on G-Kaiser's chest quivered and fell off, embedding itself point-down in the street with a percussive "chink". "Whoops," Noriko muttered ruefully. On Tomodachi, Utena Tenjou entered the living room of her home at 1140 Wildwood Road in Nekomikoka and grinned at the sight of her housemate Kaitlyn's novice kenjutsu student, Anne Cross, glued to the TV. Juniper had turned into a devout bookworm since her introduction to Kaitlyn's library, and had solemnly sworn (as only a teenaged girl can) that she would watch TV only when there was something on worth watching, so it was a rare and amusing sight to see her so raptly attentive to the tube. "You should get to bed, kiddo," said Utena, plopping down in her favorite chair. Then she noticed what was on the screen and realized that the girl must be playing a game, not watching TV - at which point her concentration on the screen made a bit more sense. "Hey," she said, "where'd you get a GameZark robot battle game with Big O in it?" Juniper didn't answer for a moment, as the very realistic image of Big O slugged it out a little more with a giant grey monster against a backdrop that looked like New Avalon. Then she seemed to shake herself, turned awe-widened eyes to Utena, and said, "This isn't a game - I watching the New Avalon Symphony and they cut in with this!" Utena blinked and leaned forward. "What?! ANTHY! KATE! C'MERE!" "Oh ho," mused Agent A as she saw the four blue triangles denoting New Avalon's giant impromptu defenders appear on her holomap. "Resistance! So much the better - it'll make for an even more effective test. One of those must be Corwin's new toy, and the others... " She manipulated a control which gave her the view from K-unit One, the first to be engaged, and smiled at the sight of Getter Ryger entangled in its electrified cables. "Well, whoever this is, it doesn't look like they'll be a problem much longer... " /* (a bit more of "Crash" here) */ Kozue, squinting against the brightness of the bleed-over discharge crackling across her main displays, reached forward through the lightning storm, braced herself, and seized one of the many control levers arrayed before her. She grunted in pain, teeth gritted, as the energy raced up her arm, but through a great effort of will, she was able to order the arm to pull back anyway. As she did so, she forced her jaws apart and delivered a defiant cry: "OPEN - GET!" The K-unit's rudimentary consciousness felt something like satisfaction as it saw its enemy's structure collapse under the energized constriction of its cables. In the space of half a second, Getter Ryger had lost even the semblance of a humanoid robot, separating into three pieces almost as if it were melting - - and a moment later, the separate Getter Machines' thrusters screamed online. All three aerospacecraft slipped through the slackened gaps in the cables and made for the sky, driven by plain brute thrust. K-1 stumbled back in surprise, retracting the cables, and looked, up trying to track its prey. They vanished into the darkness above New Avalon's nightglow, the pinprick lights of their exhausts converging into a single sudden flash. Getter Ryger screamed down from an altitude of twenty thousand feet, left arm extended. Overlaying the howl of the Getter robot's main drives was the higher-pitched keening of Ryger's main weapon, the great drill which comprised its entire left forearm. "DRILL DIVE!" Kozue yelled triumphantly, and a moment later Ryger plowed into the K-unit, drill tip first, at five hundred miles per hour. The drill bit deep, shearing through K-1's amalgam armor as if it weren't there. It plunged deep into the monster's chest, and, though Kozue didn't know it, bored right through the K-core. Instantly, the unit's cohesion vanished, and before Ryger hit the street, the rest of the monster's body melted away. Kozue, who had been expecting to meet somewhat more resistance, uttered a surprised cry as she and her mount smashed into (and through) the street, penetrating all the way to a Green Line subway tunnel before the startled pilot could shut down the drill and yank back the power control levers for the thrusters. "WHOA!" Utena Tenjou blurted. "Bit of a control problem there, wouldn't you say?" She grinned and elbowed Miki Kaoru, who was perched on the arm of her chair. "That must be Kozue." "I wouldn't doubt it," the blue-haired young man replied, tripping his stopwatch without looking at it. The atmosphere in the living room at 1140 Wildwood was half-festive, half-worried as an ever-increasing concentration of Duelists and their friends accrued by ones and twos. The room was jammed with people, alternately kibitzing the fights and reminding each other to breathe. The views were coming from cameras all over downtown New Avalon; some of them usually acted as traffic cams, others as website skyline cameras, a few even as security cameras for businesses. John Trussell and Nanami Jinnai were trading off somewhat breathless commentary, which was the only reason the Duelists had bothered keeping the sound turned up. "What the hell?" Janice Barlow blurted. "All units on Band 3, this is Hawkeye 6 - Getter Ryger just destroyed one of the enemies, and, uh... it looked easy. Ryger, what's your status? I can't see you anymore." "Uh... I'm OK," Kozue's voice crackled back. "Just showing off a little for all my fans." A second later, the heap of what looked like -dirt- the K-unit had collapsed into shifted and Getter Ryger emerged. "I dunno what happened exactly. It felt like the drill maybe -hit- something inside it somewhere, but it all happened so -fast-... it just... -disintegrated-." "Weird," said Janice; then she shook herself a little and went on briskly, "Anyway, there's still six of 'em left. Ryger, your nearest opponent is K-5, eight blocks southwest. I make its destination... well, I'm not sure. Looks like it might be headed for the Colosseum, although that doesn't make much sense as a target." "I'm on it," said Kozue, and Ryger launched into the air. "Damn!" snarled Clarissa. "A lucky shot. Whoever that is probably doesn't even realize what he just did." She switched to Unit 4's view and laughed. "And what does this one hope to accomplish with -that- museum piece?" she wondered, marveling at the spectacle of a twenty-first-century combat machine taking on the fruits of Big Fire's very latest research. /* The Cobratwisters "Back Alley Spaceboy" _Terrestrial Defense Corporation DAI-GUARD_ */ Dai-Guard was just a dumb machine. Dorothy knew that. The giant robot had no intelligence at all, unless you counted the expert system which did tactical analysis and energy management. It certainly wasn't built to have a personality. It was just a big chunk of metal and electronics, like a mass-production Destroid or a car. For some reason she chose not to explore, R. Dorothy Wayneright felt a strange empathy with the giant machine anyway. When Corwin had asked her if she'd mind doing a little test piloting during his development of G-Kaiser's weapons, she'd been a little dubious about the concept, but she'd played along because the request came from him, and it would be a decent way to spend more time with him. She'd surprised herself by enjoying the work almost from the start, and eventually she came to be quite fond of the old robot. She worked the controls with the same calm, purposeful precision with which she did almost everything, and Dai-Guard moved with a very similar sort of spare, economical grace under her command. He dodged K-4's lunge and struck back, his fist caving in part of the creature's chest armor and crimping up a plate corner. Capitalizing on that opportunity, Dorothy had him seize hold of that plate and tear it off. Underneath, in a dark recess, something twinkled, and an alarm Dorothy had never heard before howled in Dai-Guard's cockpit. On her master display, a red target information block suddenly surrounded the dark hole in the reeling monster's chest, and giant red letters scrolled across the display: !! WARNING !! HETERODYNE DETECTED !! WARNING !! Dorothy raised an eyebrow and opened a radio channel. "A -Heterodyne- detection alarm?!" Corwin replied, incredulous. "These things -can't- be Heterodynes. Dimensional crossover conditions haven't been right for anything to appear from their home dimension since 2030!" He ducked another roundhouse punch from K-2, spun Big O, and drove the Rune God's fist solidly into the monster's midsection. "Dai-Guard's target detection software must be malfunctioning." "Perhaps," Dorothy replied noncommittally. "In any event, the alarm didn't appear until I exposed some part of the creature's internal structure. Stand by." Dorothy moved Dai-Guard smoothly away from the K-unit's next attack, but not quite far enough. Some of the GENOM CORPDEF troops covered their ears as one of the monster's spikes screeched agonizingly across Dai-Guard's armor. On its next lunge, the K-unit used both hands, as if hoping to catch the robot in a bear hug like the one K-2 had used on Big O. With its spike-covered, powerful limbs, K-4 could hope to do a lot of damage to an opponent with an attack like that; but Dorothy was too quick for it. Dai-Guard's hands intercepted the monster's. Their fingers interlaced and the two giants locked together, palm to palm. It quickly became apparent to Dorothy that this creature's strength exceeded Dai-Guard's design limits. The old robot began losing ground almost immediately, servos quivering and whining with the effort of holding the monster back. Alarms began to sound in the cockpit warning of potential structural failures if the stress on Dai-Guard's joints wasn't reduced immediately. The armor plating on one of his forearms began to buckle, breaking up into its component three-foot-square plates as the stress deformed his exostructure. His feet skidded backward on the street, rolling up pavement behind them like a rug. One of the disadvantages that the Dai-Guard robot series had possessed in its twenty-first-century form was the fact that its power management system was hopelessly baroque. Lacking the budget or the technology for an automated power handling system, the machines had instead required a crewman whose only job was to shunt energy around to the various systems as required. Even simple tasks like walking required considerable skill and effort by the robot engineer, constantly refining the energy distribution to the machine's limbs and balance mechanisms. Though the pilot's station contained duplicates of the engineer's controls (and those of the second crewman, a sensor and communications officer), making it theoretically possible for a single person to operate Dai-Guard, in practice the task was just too complicated. No human could make the necessary power adjustments and control the machine's motor systems as the same time. One attempt was made, and everything the robot did was so slow and uncoordinated that it was completely useless. Corwin had taken care of that in his modernization, replacing the human engineer with an expert system; but the manual controls remained, and during her time as a test pilot, Dorothy had become so familiar with Dai-Guard's idiosyncrasies (and Dai-Guard had a LOT of idiosyncrasies) that she'd become more adept than the expert system at anticipating the robot's power requirements. No human could operate the power management and robot direction controls at the same time; but R. Dorothy Wayneright was not human. Now, locked in this all-out contest of strength with a very powerful opponent, Dorothy bypassed the auto-engineer and started making the power management adjustments herself, refining the tolerances of the robot's delicate energy balance. As she did so, the machine's new GS-Ride power core, a remarkable engineering achievement that used the mystic power of Cephirean gaolith to generate energy based on need, increased the amount of power she had to work with. Gaolith (or G-stone), a Cephirean mystic mineral, produced the quasi-magical energy known in Midgard as Getter radiation. Getter rays could power all manner of mechanism, and there was one very intriguing thing about them: They reacted to sentient emotions. Pieces of Getter-powered equipment had been documented doing things -well- beyond their engineered performance limits in response to deeply-felt needs from their operators. R. Dorothy didn't show her emotions much to anyone outside the select membership of her inner circle, but that didn't mean she lacked them. On the contrary, she felt them very deeply - just privately. Right now, her determination not to be defeated, not to fail in front of everyone, in front of Corwin, flared within her like a volcanic eruption. Deep within Dai-Guard, the boulder-sized G-stone that formed the heart of the robot's GS-Ride reactor responded, pouring Getter rays into the collectors arrayed all around it. All of which meant that, just as actual plates of Dai-Guard's armor began to fall to the street, his eyes suddenly glowed bright emerald and his whole body quivered. For a moment, nothing else happened; then jets of green steam exploded from the cooling vents on the robot's back, just inboard of his stubby gold wings, and he straightened, forcing the K-unit back. K-4's semiconsciousness experienced some dim analog of shock as its opponent, which it had thought seconds from collapse and defeat, suddenly drove it back with strength that had at least doubled, possibly tripled. Something in the K-unit's right shoulder snapped, and as the arm came away from the rest of the creature's body, it lost all structural integrity, crumbling to dust. Dai-Guard's right arm sheared away at the elbow as his hand and forearm structure collapsed, but the K-unit came away worse; as the mangled remains of the robot's forearm whanged to the street, K-4 staggered back against the facade of the office building on the corner. Janice Barlow, watching through Mitra's optic while she listened on the tac band, was momentarily shocked to hear the voice of R. Dorothy Wayneright actually utter a cry of what sounded like defiance as the one-armed Dai-Guard lunged forward, his remaining hand plunging into the rent on the K-unit's chest. For a second, the monster struggled, its left hand seizing Dai-Guard's arm and trying to crush it; but Dai-Guard's eyes flashed again, another jet of steam blew from his cooling vents, and the robot reared back, tearing away some internal piece of the K-unit with a great ripping crash. The instant that piece came away in Dai-Guard's hand, the K-unit quivered, then melted into what looked like a big pile of dirt, just like K-1 had done. "Holy SHIT!" Janice blurted. "Dai-Guard, what's your status? Dorothy? You OK?" For a moment, there was no reply; then Dorothy replied, her voice perfectly calm, "Affirmative, Hawkeye 6. Dai-Guard is operational. I have removed an internal component from the enemy designated K-4 which I believe to be its structural core." "YEAH! All RIGHT!" cried Utena. "Who do you suppose is piloting that one?" wondered Juri Arisugawa thoughtfully. "Look at the way it moves - got to be Dorothy. Besides, we know she's been helping Corwin test it - that's Dai-Guard, right?" "I think so. That would make the blue one G-Kaiser... " "M-more p-p-popcorn, Utena?" Kaitlyn offered. "Don't mind if I do. Damn, I wish there was something we could do to help... " "By the time we could get there, it'd be all over," Juri pointed out. "Yeah, I suppose you're right, but -damn-!" "Damn!" Clarissa snarled. "Well, we -knew- basing them on the Heterodynes would give them the same core weakness. Memo to development team: Future models of K-core must be programmed to incorporate stronger armor into final unit structure protecting core and preventing such removals." Drawing his right armsword, Hammer straightened up and fired off a pair of energy-blades in quick succession. The first intercepted an inbound rocket-propelled grenade, detonating it only halfway to its target; the other continued on through the blast cloud and caught the rocket's source completely off-guard. The hood's hood only barely covered the momentary look of surprise on his face as the second RPG in his launcher exploded just inches behind his head. With that handled for the moment, Hammer paused to get a grip on the tactical situation. Only a few blocks behind him sat Koopman High, along with a few dozen prom stragglers and thousands of hastily evacuated Crescent Heights residents. That school remained a safe island in a sea of street fighting, as the Black Hoods surrounded the area around the school and pressed ever inward against the thin defenses, made up of the Crescent Heights police, the reunited-for- the-evening Thunder Force and a certain number of exceptional students. He crouched back behind the police barricade and focused on the Lens embedded in the back of his left hand. >Grey Lensman Rose calling IPO HQ,< he signaled. >I need a status update on reinforcements. The situation is stable but perilous.< A moment later, the answer came back: >Blue Lensman Bialucha here. New Avalon PD's attempting to break through the enemy rear at the 17th Street Bridge. They've got a pattern blocker on so we can't beam backup to your position; we'll have a starfighter escort for landing, ETA fifteen minutes.< "Crap on a crap cracker," Martin grumbled aloud, then shook his head and sent a quick >Acknowledged< through the Lens, hoping his other response had only been verbal. With who knew how many thousand Black Hoods turning Crescent Heights into a Swiss cheese barbeque, reinforcements were less an option and more a dire necessity. At least the defense lines around the school were holding for the moment, thanks in no small part to the more unusual students of Koopman High. The Shannon twins were in action, Jei energy blades flashing, a block to the east, deflecting blaster fire and bullets with ease. Off a block in the other direction, the Morgan twins and Sylvie Daniels formed the center of the defensive barricade holding back Big Fire from the main driveway to the school grounds. Fuu Hououji was moving from point to point, using a mixture of healing spells and blasts of magic-driven wind to shore up weak points. Hammer wasn't sure where the other two Rune Knights were, but Hikaru Shidou's date, the young man from Tenjou Academy, was now with Fuu, guarding her with his wickedly curved sword and what looked like combat magic as she did what she could for the wounded. Even some ordinary students like Chip Mui had picked up small arms from wounded Crescent Heights cops and joined in the defense... although Chip was a bad example, since he fired his camera five times for any time he fired a gun. Of course, Martin's merry band wasn't exactly hanging back. Noriko was off to deal with the kaiju problem as soon as the alarm went up, while Tom and Danilia had taken to the rooftops of the stores and apartments around the school, combining recon and sniper roles to great effect. Dund, his fingers too large to use the blaster rifles taken from the Black Hoods, had improvised some grenades from the power supplies instead. He could hurl the buggered magazines over a hundred fifty yards with great accuracy, although he whiffed the angle on his first lob and took out a local Starbuck's. Idly, Hammer wondered where Mojo Jojo had gotten off to. The last time he'd seen the Hestonian, Mojo had been off on the left flank beating back a Big Fire thrust with some kind of nasty-looking raygun, but the sound of his stentorian laughter had faded off into the distance. Martin wondered if the monkey had run out on them. "Yo-ho! Dund!" Dani sang down from a nearby roof. "Don't use up all the clips! We could use a few more up here!" Her shouts attracted a few bursts of Black Hood gunfire, and she and Tom swiftly moved to the next building as Dund tossed some unmodified power supplies up to the roof. Concentrating for a moment, Hammer could hear them over the din of battle, stowing away the fresh clips and reloading the rifles. "I'm surprised," Dani was saying. "This is some good hardware -" she paused just long enough to pluck a quartet of Big Fire anti-sniper troopers off a roof across the street. "Rapid-fire capable -and- accurate from a distance. Gotta wonder why they just dumped 'em in the hands of a bunch of untrained clowns." "They -were- trained, actually," Tom replied, facing in the opposite direction and dropping a lone Black Hood from a window two buildings away. "Just not enough." Martin had to disagree, at least in the privacy of his own head. Big Fire goons varied wildly in quality, but these troops held discipline excellently when attacking their positions. Although their fire accuracy was nothing to write home about, it soared above the normal, abysmal rate of the typical Black Hood. A quarter of Crescent Heights' finest were wounded, along with a handful of students who wandered a bit too close to the front at the wrong time. "Inspector Rose!" One of the wounded cops had taken over the field dispatch unit and was working communications for Hammer's outpost. "Spotters report a Hood attack wave coming up Bel Air Drive towards the school!" Hammer considered for a moment, and nodded. "Right, it's covered," he replied, and sent a quiet summons through his Lens. A few blocks away, something made a loud clanging sound, followed immediately by a substantial BOOM. An instant later, Black Hoods began flying up, left and right, as something made a rapid beeline for Martin's barricade. A blink of camera flash told Hammer that Chip Mui could now add to his collection, and possibly the Crescent Heights Elementary yearbook, an image of first grade teacher Eiko Magami Rose jogging at a dawdling 45 miles per hour, wielding her quarter-ton warhammer like a golf club on the unsuspecting Black Hoods in her way. Eiko hopped the barricade with a showy tuck-and-flip and landed flat-footed, cracking the pavement with her landing. "You rang?" she smiled, looking radiant despite her surroundings. "They're making a push from the other side of Koopman," Hammer told her immediately, pointing back towards the school. "I need you to grab Tom and Dani, see if you can't round up Mr. Fujisawa and Ms. Mishtal, and go teach them the value of a good education." "Won't that leave you short-handed here?" she asked, now visibly concerned. "We'll manage," he shrugged. "I'll call Sylvie over here a while, she can take over as our -" He was interrupted yet again - something that was happening quite frequently tonight - by the scream of turbine engines, and he looked up just in time to see a large, roughly spherical object with a fishbowl top soar down from the night sky, landing in the middle of the schoolyard on two titanium-ringed legs. Long, flexible arms emerged and extended from either side of the robot, creating a familiar silhouette even in the darkness, and its dome opened briefly to admit a short caped figure into its control panel. "A Robo Jojo!?" Eiko blurted. "Great," Hammer groaned, "one -more- headache." Mojo Jojo sent his robot into a full forward run, feet thundering towards their position. From loudspeakers set in the robot's sides, Mojo's diabolical laughter rang through the streets as the robot picked up speed. Eiko raised Storm-Breaker with renewed defiance in her eyes, and Hammer braced himself to meet Mojo's charge - - all to no effect, as the Robo Jojo booster-leaped gracefully over the barricade. It landed with a mighty THOOM halfway down the block, right in the middle of a Big Fire counter-blockade, squashing or knocking over Black Hoods on all sides. A parabolic dish lowered from the underside of the robot and began spraying hot electric death across the massed Big Fire forces, as they fell back screaming under the sudden onslaught. That onslaught ended five seconds later when three brightly colored streaks of light (pink, green, blue) screamed through the night and slammed into Mojo's creation, knocking it to the ground and taking one arm completely off at the shoulder joint, accompanied by a familiar cry: "NOT SO FAST, MOJO JOJO!" Martin, Eiko, and several hundred others on both sides watched in bewilderment as Blossom, flanked on either side by Bubbles and Buttercup - all three still in their prom dresses - glared down at the Hestonian scientist through the dome of his robot as the dust of their first strike settled. "All right, Mojo," Blossom spat testily, "we don't know what your scheme is THIS time, but - " "I HAVE no scheme!" Mojo shouted back, his voice accompanied by a winceworthy screech of feedback from the Robo Jojo's PA system. "Oh YEAH?" Buttercup asked, picking up the Robo Jojo's severed arm and waving it meaningfully. "Then how did you just HAPPEN to have one of your evil robots handy on our prom night, huh? Answer me THAT, Smart Guy!" "I ... Well ... I ..." Mojo cast a spiteful glare off to one side, harrumphed mightily, and grumbled, "I was going to use it to attack you at your graduation." "You remembered our graduation?" Bubbles smiled. "Aww, that's so -sweet- of you!" "BUBBLES!!" Buttercup barked. "Sorry," the blonde replied, looking downcast. Mojo worked the controls on his robot to bring it back to its feet; with that accomplished, he could now rant more properly, which he proceeded to do. "Now my plans for tainting the greatest moment of your scholastic careers with a crushing defeat at my own hands have been rendered totally unworkable and are completely RUINED! Thanks to these inCOMpetent, moRONic, CRETinous - " "Blackballing," Martin volunteered. " - (yes, thank you) BLACKballing Big Fire henchmen, your graduation shall now be too securely protected for even ME to launch my scheme with even a remote hope for success! I cannot allow such an affront to my carefully laid plans which I have planned so very carefully to go UNCHALLENGED!" Blossom regarded her longtime adversary with a dumbfounded, quizzical look, and finally asked, "So ... you're -not- attacking the school?" "NO, I'M NOT ATTACKING THE SCHOOL!!" Mojo roared. "Oh," Blossom said, blushing a little and holding her hands behind her back bashfully. "Oops. Um, sorry... our bad." "That's quite all right. Now, IF you will give me back my arm!" Mojo Jojo's good robot arm grabbed the loose one away from Buttercup and slipped it back into its socket. A couple of test rotations and snaps of its claw-hand showed it working good as new, and Mojo set his ride in a dramatic pose. "Now I shall return to recommence to begin again my righteous vengeance against those upon whom I have sworn re - Hey," he paused, noting the wreckage on the corner of the next street up, "what happened to the Starbuck's?" "Um, well, Dund kind of whiffed his first grenade toss," Martin admitted, and the mountainous mute signed a sheepish apology. "CURRRRSEEEES!!!" the Hestonian bellowed, even louder than before. "He -said- he was sorry," Martin muttered, but Mojo was beyond hearing, launching the robot with renewed fervor into the paralyzed Big Fire troops. Flanked by the Utonium sisters, he quickly had the enemy in full flight, leaving the defensive perimeter all but deserted. "Uh ... d'ja get a picture of that, Chip?" Martin asked the young man nearby. "Sorry, Mr. Rose," Chip replied, "I had to change the crystal." "Ah, nutbunnies," Hammer groused, slumping his shoulders for a moment; then he opened one eye and regarded the young man with something like incredulity. "Say, that's a lot of pictures," he noted. Chip shrugged with a fainly sheepish smile. Hammer righted himself and clapped his hands together cheerfully. "Well! I'd say this front is handled. Honey, go take care of that thing we were talking about before. Joe, get the other forces on this side of the school assembled here, ASAP. We're going to try a breakout." "Be careful, hon," Eiko smiled, stretching up and meeting her husband with a kiss. "You know how I hate it when you get goon stains on your good clothes." "Don't worry about me," he smiled down to her, "just make sure the guys back there get a warm reception." "I'm on it," she waved, and then she was a blur, leaping up to the rooftops to collect Tom and Dani. Dund snapped his fingers twice to gain Martin's attention, and he gestured a quick query. "Nah, it's all good," he replied, shaking his head. "Once word of Mojo's intervention gets out, I think our lifelong anniversaries'll change their minds about any more attempts." And if they don't? Dund signed. "Oh," Hammer smiled grimly, "I don't think that'll be a problem." As she turned Dai-Guard around, facing the GENOM defense barricade, R. Dorothy saw the troopers of the Headquarters Defense Group waving and cheering, and she couldn't help but smile slightly. She looked down at the small object held in Dai-Guard's remaining hand, zoomed in, and examined it closely. "The device I removed from target K-4 is a metallic object the size of a small car," she reported to the tac band. "At its center is what appears to be a gemstone approximately one foot in diameter. The device is dormant, no energy readings. When I removed it from the target, the rest of the creature's body disintegrated into a grey, granular substance." "Then they -are- like Heterodynes," Corwin's voice crackled back, muffled with effort, the sounds of his own continuing clash audible in the background. "That thing must be the core, like a Heterodyne's fractal knot." "I don't know what you guys are talking about," Janice chipped in, "but when Getter Ryger drilled through K-1's chest, it fell apart the same way, and Kozue said she felt the drill hit something." "That must be it," Corwin said. "OK, then. All RRT units, this is Hawkeye 6. Target your enemy's center chest and use penetrating weapons if you have them. Believe the enemy units have an artificial core module and will collapse if that module is destroyed." "Penetrating weapons," Dorothy mused. "Dai-Guard, you have a drill attachment, don't you?" In response, the robot's central status monitor displayed the blinking red text: < WEAPON SELECT: DRILL ARM > < PLEASE STAND BY > "I thought so," said Dorothy. Clarissa, still scowling at the holotank, made a decision. "All K-units," she ordered, knowing the battle computer in her control station would translate her words to instructions the units' primitive "minds" could understand, "abort primary assignments. Increase aggression level to eight and attack the nearest kaiju-class target." Then she frowned at the holotank for a moment. "They must be getting coordination and control information from somewhere," she mused as she watched the blue triangles squaring off against her K-units. "They can't be coordinating this battle so well by just sharing the information they can see for themselves... but who's guiding them, and from where?" "Hey," said Nanami as she bent over the small mixer-editor panel built into the back of her antique PZ-61 mobile studio droid. "Did you see that, Gene?" G-3N3, a Neimoidian enhanced battle droid who frequently served as Truss's cambot, turned his snouty head and inquired in his single-sideband voice, "Do you mean that interference spike?" "Yeah! Somebody just transmitted a powerful subcomm pulse on a band near ours, I think. Peasy, can you isolate it and figure out where it came from?" "I'll try, Miss Nanami," the old droid replied. Truss, standing near the edge of the office building's roof with the city as his backdrop, was on camera and couldn't ask them what they were talking about, but he was intensely curious, all the same. "Is it just me," Corwin inquired of his colleagues in the Robot Response Team, "or did these things just get a whole lot meaner?" "Roger that, Big O," Janice replied. "All units are reporting an increase in enemy aggression. Looks like they've given up trying to get to wherever they were headed and are concentrating on just whacking you guys. UH-oh! G-Kaiser, look alive, you've got two more of them closing on you. I repeat, K-3 and K-6 just broke off their course and are vectoring toward you! Any RRT unit, G-Kaiser needs backup at 124th and Robinson!" "On my way," came Dorothy's voice. "Dorothy, your robot's lost an arm, and the other one's not looking too healthy," Janice cautioned. "Are you sure you're up to it?" Before Dorothy could reply, the crosswalks flashed again, and the defense tunnel delivery system sent up another platform. This one was not a launch gantry, but rather a simple flatbed platform - one with a giant, gleaming drill in a housing of black and red strapped down on it. Unhurriedly, but not slowly either, Dai-Guard put K-4's core down on the platform; then he picked up the drill. The twisted stump of his right forearm dropped to the street with a clang, and Dorothy carefully fitted the drill in its place, then spun it a couple of times to make sure the power coupling was connected. Then she straightened the robot up, turned it southeast, and said in an uncompromising voice to Janice, "Roger. Dai-Guard, OK." "... OK, if you're sure," said Janice dubiously. "Hawkeye 6, what's the ETA on those Judicators?" Kozue inquired, then added a muttered, "(Dammit!)" which Janice presumed was probably not for her. "Any second now!" Wedge Defense Force Veritech Attack Squadron (WDF Lexington) VVA-116, the Mailed Fist - squadron crest, a boxing glove with a cancelled postage stamp on it - was at that moment inbound at an altitude of 10,000 feet from the northeast at an indicated airspeed of 600 knots. The Fists flew the venerable VA-1 Judicator Veritech attack fighter, a contemporary of the legendary VF-1 Valkyrie aerospace superiority fighter and the largest, most powerful single Veritech craft ever designed. From a distance, the Judicator looked like a Super Valkyrie with the transatmospheric booster package and supplemental armor installed. Up close, the differences became obvious, the primary one being the VA-1's 50% size advantage. The boosters and extra armor weren't modular on the Judicator, either; they were a permanent part of the airframe. Major Francesca Davis, a 25-year veteran of the "new" Wedge Defense Force who had fought as a green junior lieutenant in the Second Battle of Zeta Cygni, was proud to be a Judicator pilot. All the pilots in her squadron were. They'd volunteered to fly the second oldest operational front-line fighter in the galaxy (after the Kilrathi KD-6 Dralthi medium fighter) for the simple reason that they liked to blow things up, and very little in the WDF's inventory of aerospacecraft was better at doing that than the good old Judge. None of them had ever imagined that they'd be blowing things up in downtown New Avalon. The Fists received their orders from the impromptu city defense force's ground controller, and the squadron split up, each of its five craft heading for a different one of the five surviving targets. The sky over New Avalon was streaked with missile contrails as each Judicator released its load of heavy missiles at its assigned target. Those defending giants who were engaged with one target or another disengaged and moved back with perfect timing as the missiles boiled in, blanketing each K-unit with explosions; the VA-1s followed that up with strafing runs from their heavy plasma cannons, then pulled out and streaked away. The smoke cleared, and the Judicator pilots, accustomed to leveling anything they were sent after with their mighty machines, were disappointed to see that all five K-units were still operational. Battered, bent, scorched, pitted, and in one case missing an arm, but operational, all the same. "Hawkeye 6, this is Fist 1," said Davis. "Munitions expended. We'll go to battroid mode and back up the RRT - " "Negative, Fist 1," Janice replied. "These things are giving our heavies trouble, you wouldn't last five minutes on the ground." Davis considered that, then decided she would probably just have to swallow it, much as she hated to. As she banked over, observing the situation below through her fighter's high-visibility canopy, she saw one of the creatures wind up and knock Big O, a machine which had destroyed an entire company of Destroids at the Battle of Titan, flat on its ass. The Judicator's battroid form made for a surprisingly heavy Destroid, all things considered - but it wasn't up to taking on something like -that-. "Roger that, Hawkeye 6," she replied grudgingly. "Mailed Fist Squadron, form up on me. We're heading back to the Lex to rearm. Hawkeye 6, we'll be back in 15." /* Toshihiko Sabashi "Stand a Chance" _Big-O: Original Sound Score_ */ As the little image of Big O on the TV screen forced the K-unit up and back, Utena rose from her chair as if rising with it, fist clenching, a heartfelt cry welling up from deep inside her: "YyyYYYES! ATTA boy!" She mimed a punch, nearly hitting Kyouichi Saionji in the back of the head. "TAKE 'im down!" Instead, Big O slipped on the crushed remains of a car, faltered, and was slammed against the facade of the Avalon Centre Galleria. "NO!" Utena declared. "What're you DOING?!" "OK, buddy," Corwin muttered. "I've got your number. That's about enough out of you." He reached to his right and punched a couple of keys on the weapons management console, then heaved the semi-recumbent Rune God back onto his feet. He looked for an instant at the tactical plot shown on one of his sub-displays, then grinned and threw both joysticks full forward, thumbing the triggers atop them. As Big O's fists both swung forward, the silver pistons in his elbows drew back, then slammed forward in unison. With the K-unit several dozen yards away, the double blast of supercompressed air didn't do the damage it would have had the rams been used (as they were designed to be used) as contact weapons; but they -did- have the effect Corwin actually wanted, which was to slam the K-unit violently back another few dozen yards and knock it off-balance. While it was regaining its bearing and preparing its next attack, Corwin would have the window he'd been waiting for. Big O, his cast-iron face impassive as always, raised his hands flat, curled them back into fists, lowered them, and slammed them together in front of his chest. From the full forward surface of the glittering coppery "helmet" on his head came a bolt of stark white energy, similar to his optic beams but hundreds of times more powerful. This was the Chrome Buster, Big O's most powerful weapon, and Corwin had been very reluctant to use it up until now for the very simple reason that it -was- so powerful. It was almost certain to overpenetrate its target, and a beam like that could do tremendous damage to the city beyond - - except that Corwin had carefully maneuvered his opponent onto Kenmore Boulevard, a broad, flat street which, from here, ran as straight as an arrow to the shore of Lake Daniels. There was nothing between Big O's helmet and the horizon except a huge amount of empty space... and K-2. The K-unit had begun to disintegrate before the beam had even fully passed. "Overkill, Corwin," Janice Barlow chided him, though there was amusement in her tone. "Maybe," said Corwin, running a full diagnostic on his Rune God even as he turned toward the nearest remaining target, "but I owed him." /* Propellerheads "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" _Decksandrumsandrockandroll_ (Begin at 03:27) */ Kozue Kaoru was thoroughly enjoying her first experience with real giant robot combat. She hadn't expected it to be this much fun. Certainly she hadn't expected it to be anywhere near as much fun as an asteroid race, or a starship battle at the helm of the Valiant. Compared to that sort of thing, robots, even Getter Ryger, moved so -slowly-; how could combat with them ever be exciting? She knew better now. The elements of battle, of maneuver, exploiting advantages, minimizing disadvantages, were the same anywhere. This was like a blend of the best aspects of a face-to-face duel and an aerial engagement, and just as in both, there was that moment of immense satisfaction in knowing that one had one's opponent -just- where one wanted him, and the ending might as well be written in stone. "A-HA!" Kozue cried as that moment came in her battle with K-5. Triggering Getter Ryger's primary weapon once more, she sent the blue robot lunging forward with all its considerable speed, thrusters screaming, with a cry of "DRILL HURRICANE!" The tip of Ryger's drill struck the curve of K-5's chest armor - - and deflected with a jarring WHANG, showering the street below with sparks. "WHAT the - ?!" Kozue blurted; the exclamation blurred into a cry as K-5 smashed Ryger with a full-force backhand, sending the spindly robot careening across the street to utterly demolish a branch post office. "Getter Ryger, what happened?" Janice's voice asked from the comm system as Kozue sprawled, stunned, over the controls. "Kozue! Are you OK?" "Unnngh... I think so," Kozue replied, shaking her head. "Sucker punch... caught me off-guard... " "What the hell happened? It looked like you had him cold!" "I don't - " Kozue began, but then she saw the flashing red status diagram and she -did- know. "Slag!" she cursed, unconsciously imitating Corwin from long association. She jerked at the main weapon control a couple of times, to no avail. "The drill didn't engage! I must have broken something when I hit the street or the subway tunnel, the mechanism's -jammed- or something." "Ryger, get out of there, K-5 is heading in after you!" Janice cried. "What - oh, no!" Kozue yanked back levers and jammed her feet down on the pedals, getting her Getter Robo to its feet, but too late. K-5 had reached into the wreckage, seized Getter Ryger by the head, and now the robot was flying through the air like a rag doll again, slamming into the apartment building on the opposite side of the intersection. "SONofa - any RRT unit, this is Hawkeye 6! Getter Ryger has a major weapon malfunction and needs help! Repeat, Getter Ryger needs IMMEDIATE assistance! Somebody get to Cordon and Abernathy fast or she's gonna get -creamed-!" "Roger that, Hawkeye 6 - Big O is on the way, ETA - dammit! - I don't think I can get there much faster than five minutes! Kozue! Just stay out of its reach and -hang on-, I'm coming as fast as I can!" Too busy to acknowledge the transmission, Kozue drove Ryger to its feet again and watched on the master monitor as K-5 made its unhurried way across the intersection to deal out some more punishment. Again she tugged at the drill lever. Somewhere inside the robot's structure, something ground, mechanism straining; the drill jerked once, turning about an eighth of a turn, and then stuck fast. Getter Ryger's main weapon was out of commission for good. Of course, the Getter Machines had been designed with this sort of contingency in mind; that was why they could combine into three different forms, each with different weapons, different strengths and weaknesses. The three forms complemented each other, making a complete Getter Robo a very flexible and deadly weapon. But in order to function at its full capacity, a Getter Robo had to have three pilots, one in each of its component Getter Machines. Only the pilot of Getter Machine #2 could activate and control Getter Ryger, and so forth. With Getter Machines 1 and 3 in drone mode, the other two modes were unavailable... and all of Ryger's agility and speed weren't going to bring this monster down by themselves. /* (04:45) */ Kozue closed her eyes for a moment and concentrated, her mind racing. What were her options? Oh, sure, she could run away and let Corwin deal with it... ... but in the meantime, Noriko was getting triple-teamed over in the North Canal district, and from the sounds of her traffic with Janice, not having an easy time of it. Dai-Guard and Big O were on the way to her aid, but without flight systems they were slow in transit. Four enemies left, four defenders to deal with them - Corwin was much nearer to G-Kaiser's position than he was to hers... Her eyes snapped open, her face setting into a look of fierce determination as she reached to the comm panel and opened a direct channel. "Negative, Big O. Back up G-Kaiser and Dai-Guard. I've got this guy under control." "What? Kozue, without your drill - " "GO, Corwin!" Kozue snapped. "I SAID I'm HANDLING this!" A crackling pause as Corwin left his mic open while he pondered; then he replied quietly, "Roger that, Getter Ryger... good luck. Big O heading north to support Dai-Guard and G-Kaiser." Kozue grinned, thumbed the channel shut, and watched K-5 lumbering toward her. "OK, you big bastard," she said to it, "let's see how you like -this-. OPEN GET!" The three Getter Machines broke apart in a split-second and headed for the sky. Kozue turned to a sub-console and punched in a series of commands for Getter Machine #1's dog-brain autopilot, left #3 on semi-auto, and then kicked lateral thrusters and pushed her own #2 into a shallow dive. Then she unstrapped herself from the control seat, switched on Getter Machine #2's autopilot, keyed open the cockpit canopy, and stood up. "... what the fuck is she doing?!" Janice Barlow muttered as she followed Kozue's progress through Mitra's eye. "Almost looks like... holy SHIT!" /* (06:43) */ Without a moment's hesitation, her teeth gritted against Getter Machine #2's roaring slipstream, Kozue Kaoru braced herself against the cockpit coaming and hurled herself into space. For five exhilarating seconds, she swan-dove through the New Avalon night, listening to the roar of Getter Machine #2's thrusters as it arced away from her, the whistle of her slipstream in her ears, the rustle of her clothes snapping in the wind, and the faraway metallic sounds of the great clashes happening far below her. Then she tucked into a ball, turned halfway over, and landed with a soft "whump!" in the pilot's seat of Getter Machine #1. Just like skydiving. Easier than falling off a log. Would have had an added margin of safety if she'd thought to bring her New Avalon Police thrusterpack with her, but it would've been very uncomfortable falling into the seat with that thing strapped to her back... /* (06:52) */ Without wasting time on congratulating herself, Kozue strapped into the seat, switched off the autopilot, thumbed the key to close the canopy, and banked the scarlet aerospacecraft over, aiming its pointed nose at the slightly-confused-looking K-5 far below. She grinned like a shark as she noted the blue and yellow blips of Getter Machines 2 and 3 falling neatly into train behind her on the tactical display. "Surprise," she snarled through that grin at the K-unit as she reached and yanked back a main control lever. Half a mile away and getting further at top speed, his heart full of misgivings, Corwin Ravenhair was first startled, then shocked, then filled with a combination of relief, amazement and powerful affection as he heard Kozue's voice blare across the tactical net: "CHAAAANGE! GETTERRR - _DRAGON_!" K-5's confusion bled into the Big Fire command center as the much burlier, spikier, red-and-white form of Getter Dragon initially registered as a completely new hostile. The battle computer was as puzzled as the K-unit's own tiny mind by this development. Had the components of Getter Ryger retreated and been replaced by this reinforcement unit? If so, who was piloting it, and where had it come from? Clarissa figured it out before the computer, and there was grudging admiration in her tone as she muttered, "Clever design, Corwin. Very clever. K-unit number five, go to aggression level TEN and DESTROY NEW TARGET!" "There it is again!" PZ-61 declared. Nanami looked through a pair of electrobinoculars in the direction of the new combatant's fight. "And one of the grey things is changing - just like last time! I think someone's sending instructions to these things. Peasy, anything on the signal trace?" "I think I have it this time, Miss Nanami. Wait a moment while I cross-reference my vector with a city chart... yes... yes! The transmission originated from the Hotel Monolith!" Before Kozue's eyes, target K-5 did a bit of changing of its own. It seemed to hunch in on itself and shiver slightly before abruptly growing several new protrusions, wicked spikes on its fists and elbows. It actually looked like it had grown a bit -larger-, though Getter Dragon's sensors reported no increase in mass. Without hesitation, it lunged, and Kozue remarked the change in its demeanor to herself at once. Where before it had been aggressive, but still somewhat deliberate in its movements, now it looked almost -frenzied-, its motion so quick as to be almost spastic. Well, two could play at the all-out frontal assault game. Kozue was getting pretty damn fed up with this thing. She threw Getter Dragon into a run of its own, charging toward the K-unit as it charged toward her. "Getter - TOMAHAWK!" she cried, yanking a weapon lever into battery, and Getter Dragon reached up and drew a pair of wicked-looking short-handled axes from housings on its shoulders. The two giants passed each other at top speed with a flash of green light, continued at speed for several paces, then slowed, stopped, and turned to face each other again almost as one. A dark streak marred the white armor of Getter Dragon's midsection. K-5's left arm sloughed away into crumbly grey dust. Kozue laughed and worked a lever, making Getter Dragon toss one of the axes end-over-end in the air and catch the handle again. "C'mon. Is that the best you can do?" The K-unit regrouped and began another charge. Instead of countercharging, Kozue's robot took a half-step back, then hurled both axes, their blades glittering with emerald Getter energy. They left looping streaks of light in their wakes as they spun through the air; then each one chunked heavily into one of the K-unit's shoulders, stopping its charge's momentum in an instant and sending it reeling back. Before it could recover and resume its approach, the central horn of Getter Dragon's crown of spikes glowed, and both the IPO tac net and the space around the red-and-white robot rang with Kozue's gleeful voice: "GETTER BEEEEEAM!" A bar of coruscating green light connected the two giants for a second; and then there was only one giant, folding its great red arms impassively across its chest as its twin axes fell to embed themselves heavily in the street, handles angled up toward the sky. /* (end) */ "Oh YEAH!" was the chorus cry in the jam-packed living room at 1140 Wildwood. "Word UP, sucka!" added Wakaba Shinohara, pumping a fist. Saionji gave her an odd look and mouthed silently, "(Word up?!)" Wakaba went a little pink and muttered, "(Re-watched 'Thunder Force on Funkotron' yesterday... )" Saionji nodded, enlightened. "Dammit," said Utena with half-mock petulance. "I want to try that. I'm the -only- Rune Knight without a giant robot. It's not -fair-." "I'm sure you'd be good at it, dear," Anthy agreed. "(grr!)" remarked Tiny Robo, sharing a tiny high five with Lesser Mazinger. "I wonder where the others are," mused Shiori Takatsuki thoughtfully. "They must be stuck on the ground dealing with whatever's going on up in the Heights," Utena speculated. "Must be," Wakaba agreed. "Sucks to be them." "Mm." Truss signaled back to the Swordbreaker, where his machine intelligence controller/director, Al, was braiding together the data streams coming in from the New Avalon camera network and the Network 23 ethercam held by Gene into the program that was going out over the air. Al acknowledged and took the show to downtown cameras. Then the blue-haired reporter crossed the roof to Nanami and asked, "What's going on?" "Somebody's controlling these things from the Monolith," Nanami told him. "What?! How did - never mind, tell me later. Let's see if we can get over there." Nanami grinned. "Aggressive investigative journalism?" "Damn right!" "What about the other ones?" said Juniper to the television. "C'mon, show us G-Kaiser." Obediently, the TV switched to a view of the Armored Knight, which was looking a bit battered and scuffed and was surrounded by the remaining three K-units. All of them were damaged as well, having been pounded by the Judicators of VVA-116 and taken their own lumps in battle against G-Kaiser - but all three remained fully operational, and they were giving the defending robot's pilot a run for her money. As the breathless audience on Wildwood Road watched, the three grey-black creatures backed the blue and gold robot into a corner. While two of them pinned G-Kaiser's arms, the third - the spindly one with the plasma cutter - reared back and prepared to spear the robot through the chest. Noriko Takaya, sweat dripping down her face, chest heaving with exertion, remarked to herself that she had seen robot battles which went more her way. Part of it she could chalk up to her unfamiliarity with G-Kaiser; even when she took Gunbuster into combat the first time, when neither she nor the robot had been ready, she'd had some training and was familiar with her ride's capabilities. There was nothing wrong with the robot himself, she was fully prepared to acknowledge that. G-Kaiser was a marvel of engineering, so powerful and responsive that he answered her commands almost before she gave them. She just wasn't comfortable enough with his capabilities and shortcomings to exploit the former and ride right to the edge of the latter the way she'd been able to with a Machine Weapon or Gunbuster. Between that and her complete lack of information about the enemy, she'd gotten into trouble, and a glance at her tactical display showed her that, even with the best will in the world and Janice Barlow's urgent shouts to spur them on, her comrades weren't going to reach her in time to help. She struggled against the two creatures holding her machine in place, but their grip was unshaken. As the third unit, K-7, drew back its (one remaining, thanks to the Mailed Fist) hand and fired up its plasma cutter again, Noriko realized what the K-units' plan was. A small part of her mind was impressed by their ability to cooperate, since they weren't piloted and hadn't shown any evidence of advanced intelligence in any other regard. The rest was concentrated on a single thought: After everything I've been through in my life, I will be -damned- if I die like -this-! /* Capcom "Tatakae! Kikaioh!" _Choukosenki Kikaioh_ */ The "G" in "G-Kaiser" stood for "Gao". Dai-Guard's GS-Ride reactor was a prototype for the one buried deep in the Armored Knight's body. G-Kaiser's eyes flashed, the right one again revealing that square-G icon, and the robot surged forward, his power suddenly doubling. K-3 and K-6 staggered aside as the Armored Knight shrugged them off like a cheap raincoat. As K-7 began its forward thrust, G-Kaiser leaped up with a burst from his back-mounted flight thrusters, jumping over the attack. Then he descended on his overextended opponent like the famous ton of bricks, one leg extended to full length, surrounded by a whirlwind of green-tinted coolant steam, to the accompaniment of Noriko Takaya's defiant voice: "Kaiser KICK!" K-7, hit full-force by the attack (which opened a crater in the street), fell back, its plasma blade sputtering; but half a block away, it regrouped, raised the weapon, and began a new charge. Noriko glanced over the weapons menu and noticed three new options down at the bottom, flashing in green, made available by the robot's new power level. Her face lit up with a beautiful grin as she noted the one at the bottom. "SUPER SOLAR BLAZER!" she cried. G-Kaiser set himself, spreading his arms with elbows bent defiantly, and a torrent of yellow-white energy burst from the golden V on his chest, washing over K-7 like a flash flood over a boulder. Though tremendously powerful, the Solar Blazer was a broad-beam, short-range weapon, unlike Big O's Chrome Buster; its range barely reached the far end of the block. The K-unit disappeared entirely within the brilliance of the beam - - and emerged, trailing smoke, its forward armor almost completely melted away but its structure still operational. It pounded toward G-Kaiser at top speed, plasma blade still glowing. Noriko reacted without thinking about it this time, the weapon's name springing to her lips like an instinct, and G-Kaiser's rocket punch roared out on its cone of thrusterfire. Except this time, as the fist streaked toward the center of K-7's chest, Noriko grinned broadly and opened her outstretched right hand into a claw shape. G-Kaiser's forearm exploded through the K-unit's back with the core clutched firmly in his powerful hand. By the time the fist had returned to the Armored Knight with its cargo, the rest of K-7 had crumbled to dust, except for the oblong shape of the now-powerless plasma cutter and the cables strung out from its ports. "Huh," Noriko mused, looking down at the gleaming core in G-Kaiser's hand. "I might just get to like that feature after all." /* White Zombie "Electric Head Pt. 1 (Satan in High Heels Mix)" _Supersexy Swingin' Sounds_ */ K-3 and K-6 regrouped and charged in unison, one coming from one side and one the other. G-Kaiser whirled, dropping the inactive K-core to the street, and Noriko braced herself to be smashed into, probably bowled over, by the charge before the Solar Blazer could recharge enough to be fired again. Instead, K-3 suddenly pulled up short, its limbs flailing comically, as a spike-knuckled black iron hand closed around its head from behind. K-6 kept coming, its structure rippling and growing more and nastier spikes as it came, and it drew back its fist for a punch. Noriko took a half-step back and cocked G-Kaiser's right fist low, intending to make a low counterattack as the giants came together. G-Kaiser's audio pickups brought Noriko the distinctive tchunk-WHAM sound of one of Big O's concussion blasters, and the head clenched in the Rune God's hand exploded into a cloud of greyish dust. Then another noise reached the Armored Knight's cockpit, this one a sound she couldn't readily identify: It was a sort of high-pitched keening wail with what sounded like the roar of rocket thrusters behind it. A second later, the mystery was solved as Dai-Guard's drill arm plunged out of an alley intersecting K-6's course, thrusterfire streaming from four ports on the back of its housing. It wasn't flying independently, though, like G-Kaiser's rocket punch; instead, it was dragging the whole damn robot along behind in a headlong run that didn't look all that controllable from Noriko's perspective. The K-unit whirled, its spikes elongating still further, and it set itself to receive the charge, but too late. Dai-Guard's drill rammed into the monster's midsection, boring a hole completely through it before the cuff of the drill housing smashed against the armor surrounding the hole and flung the creature backward. It seized and crumpled Dai-Guard's right pauldron with its left hand, jammed its right hand underneath the red-and-black robot's chin, and shoved with all its strength. Dai-Guard's optics flickered as the stresses mounted on his neck joint. Above her, R. Dorothy could hear the creaking and popping of the overstressed joint. Her status monitor informed her of that which she already knew, that Dai-Guard's head would be torn from his body very shortly unless something was done to prevent it. With his head tipped back that way, optics aimed uselessly at the sky, Dorothy couldn't see the thing she was fighting any more. Working with sheer instinct, she threw the drill motor into reverse and backed off, shoving Dai-Guard's right arm sideways in the process in hopes of doing more damage. The K-unit came right along with her; the monitors' view of the sky fuzzed ominously with static as the creaking in Dai-Guard's neck grew louder. A second later, the world spun and tilted crazily as, with a tremendous noise, Dai-Guard was jerked violently around to the right by a terrific impact. Noriko had thrown G-Kaiser into a dead run down the street and hit the K-unit with a titanic shoulder block, sending it skidding up the street on its back, throwing sparks from the point of every spike dragging along the pavement. Dorothy worked the controls faster than the eye could follow, somehow keeping the staggered Dai-Guard on his feet, and checked her condition monitors with a critical eye. Severe stress damage to the neck joint, but it was holding; crushed and torn armor on the right pauldron, but no internal damage; right elbow joint sprung by the sudden sideways wrench to the drill, but joint and attachment still working. Noriko's face appeared on one of the sub-monitors. "You OK, Dorothy?" she asked. "More or less," Dorothy replied. "Let's teach this creep a lesson," said Noriko with a nasty grin. Dorothy smiled, just slightly. "I'm with you," she replied. "Doesn't -need- its head," Corwin grumbled as he dodged a very spiky punch from a very angry-seeming K-3. "Why does it -have- a head if it doesn't need one?" One of Getter Dragon's axes whirled through the air and embedded itself in the spot where K-3's head had until recently been. "A question for the ages," said Kozue on one of Corwin's side monitors, "to be sure." "You just about stopped my heart with that little stunt you pulled," Corwin replied, slamming home a body blow to the K-unit that shook the street. "Hey, it worked, didn't it?" asked Kozue as the red-and-white Getter Robo dropped from the sky, its cloaklike flight wing retracting into its back. "Yeah, it worked," Corwin admitted. He worked the pedals, rocked Big O back, then delivered a mighty kick that drove the headless K-unit back a few dozen yards, taking out his exasperation on the enemy. "And don't you -ever- do it again!" "Q-Boss, this is Agent A. Our little exercise is drawing to a close. Wrap up your operation and get out with whatever you can salvage. ... Q-Boss? Q-Boss, acknowledge." Dead air crackled back on the Black Hood communications band. "... Damn," she muttered. Her thumbs pricked; something had gone wrong, aside from all the things they'd expected and allowed for in the operation plan. For one thing, she never had been able to figure out how the defenders were getting their tactical coordination, though she was increasingly sure they had to have it. Something to prioritize during the analysis of the test data, to be sure. Clarissa was beginning to feel extremely uneasy on some instinctive level, and she trusted her instincts. "Computer, package test and operation data for transmission to Central. Hard backup." "Test incomplete," the computer noted. "Two K-units still operational." "Not for long," Clarissa replied briskly. "Stream transmission of remaining K-unit data to Central, but I want the block package sent and backed up -now-." "Block package prepared. Transmitting now. Remaining test data will be streamed on Sideband 2." Clarissa's anxiety eased slightly as a silvery datacrystal containing the hard backup of the block report package popped out of the writer socket on her console. She took it and tucked it away, then sat back to watch the destruction of her last two K-units before shutting down the command center and resuming her other life. Suddenly, she heard a sound she never expected to hear: Someone was sounding the apartment's doorbell. "Well, either we're wrong about the source of the transmission," Truss noted, "or they're not interested in opening the door. You do realize we should have called the police rather than coming over here ourselves." Nanami made a dismissive noise and gesture. "The cops are too busy to deal with this," she said. "Besides, would Edison Carter call the cops and sit around waiting for them to come in, declare the place a crime scene and keep the press -out-? I think not!" Truss chuckled. "Well, News Director Jinnai, what do you propose we do about this locked door?" Tapping on it with a knuckle, he added thoughtfully, "Locked, and somewhat more substantial than you would expect a hotel door to be... " Nanami said, "You didn't see me do this," then punched the manager's passcode into the security keypad next to the door. Nothing happened. "What the - ?! They've locked out the override code?" "OK, at this point I'm thinking we're -definitely- in above a couple of reporters' heads," said Truss, but only as a matter of form, because he knew exactly what Nanami's next move was going to be. "Hell with -that-," she said. "Gene, Roger, blow the door." "Roger roger," the battle droids replied, not even bothering to look to their supposed owner for confirmation. Truss sighed inwardly and reminded himself that the two droids really needed a memory wipe. Clarissa felt faintly incredulous, and a little bit (though she knew it was absurd) indignant. Who the -hell- was -blasting down the door- to her secret headquarters?! She punched a code sequence into her console. There was no time to convert the place back and play innocent; she wouldn't be able to get everything shut down and reconverted before the door came down. Even reinforced as it was, it wouldn't hold up long against precisely volleyed fire from a pair of what sounded like heavy blasters. She pressed a control on her wristwatch, then drew her blaster pistol, turned, and destroyed the big picture window which gave the apartment a panoramic view of the New Avalon skyline. From outside, along with the faint sounds of the last stages of the dwindling battle and the distant sirens of what sounded like every emergency vehicle in the city, came the sound of distant thrusters. The door came down a second later, and Nanami piled through with Truss, Gene and Roger on her heels. The reporters paused just inside the doorway, amazed by the sight that met their eyes - all the consoles, displays and monitors, the big holotank in the middle... ... and the woman in the black mask, standing at the edge of the shattered window with her curly blonde ponytail strung out behind her in the wind. Truss jumped aside with a yelp of surprise and dismay as the blonde put a blaster bolt straight into the lens of his ethercam. Gene and Roger returned fire. "Wait!" Nanami cried, stopping the droids from shooting. "Who -are- you? What's the meaning of all this?" The blonde just laughed, turned, and jumped out the window. "What - she - " Nanami blurted. A moment later, with a whine of repulsors, a small aircraft - actually, on closer examination, a flying car - rose from below the window to hover just outside with the woman standing on its hood. "It's about this!" she replied, gesturing to the cityscape behind her. "New Avalon is burning tonight - and this is only the beginning!" She gave a familiar stiff-armed salute and added in a gleeful shout, "TOGETHER! ALLEGIANCE or DEATH - BIG FIRE!" Then, laughing, she jumped over the windshield into the car's open cockpit, slid down behind the controls, and zoomed away. Nanami made as if to run across the control room to the window and look out after her, but as she took the first step, Roger suddenly stiffened with visible alarm. He seized Nanami's arm as Gene seized Truss's, and both droids roughly propelled their human companions toward the door. "Get - " said Roger. " - DOWN!" Gene added, as the four somehow passed through the door at more or less the same moment to sprawl, humans underneath, in the hall. "OW!" Nanami yowled as the relatively lightweight but not at all cushioned form of R-06R crushed her into the carpet. "Roger, what the - " A moment later, the top floor of the Hotel Monolith exploded. K-6 spasmed, writhed as though trying to escape its predicament, quivered... ... and disintegrated, its structure sloughing away into a heap of that same material that looked almost comically like highway sand. That material fell away from the core, which gleamed in the light of the streetlamps as it hung suspended far above the street - tidily pincered between two unyielding metal points. G-Kaiser smoothly, carefully withdrew the point of the giant sword he held, drawing it from the neat hole the blade had punched in the center of the K-core and leaving the core pinned like a bug at the very tip of Dai-Guard's drill arm. "Nicely done, R. Dorothy," remarked Noriko Takaya as she relaxed her grip and let the Kaiser Sword flicker back into its subspace storage pocket. She let out a breath and raised her arm to wipe sweat from her forehead (G-Kaiser comically imitating the gesture thanks to the Type W controls). "Don't mention it, Admiral," Dorothy Wayneright replied. She worked a couple of levers carefully, and Dai-Guard gingerly plucked the core from the tip of his drill and weighed it in his hand. "The hell is it doing, trying to get away?" Corwin wondered as he drove Big O at top speed after the fleeing K-3. "If so, it's in for a disappointment," Kozue replied. "Getter WING!" Getter Dragon leaped into the air, anti-gravity "cape" deploying from his back, and took a shortcut over the next block as the K-unit rounded a corner and headed deeper into downtown. "Better step on it, Getter Dragon, I think that thing's headed this way, and I left my Justy at home," said Janice Barlow. "No problem, Hawkeye 6," Kozue replied. "Soon as I clear the bank and get my line of sight back, he's - " A beam of blue light slashed into the sky from the street below, and as Kozue cleared the top of the bank in question and got that line of sight back, she blinked in puzzlement to see K-3 speared on that beam. A second later, the beam blinked out and the last K-unit disintegrated. Down at the end of the street, right at the base of the Entire State Building, the crew of IPO Tac Div Tactical Operations Heavy Ordnance Maser Truck Company #109 cheered and slammed high-fives. "Hot damn!" said Janice on the tac band. "Good shooting, you guys!" Kozue put Getter Dragon down in the street, not far from the pile of debris left behind by K-3's annihilation, and made the robot give the TOHO truck crews a thumbs-up. "Well," said Corwin as Big O rounded the corner behind the Getter Robo, "I think that's everybody, isn't it, Janice?" "Roger that, Big O. All kaiju-class hostiles destroyed." "What's the story up in the Heights?" Kozue asked. "NAPD and Thunder Force have the situation under control - with a little help from the Koopman High Duelists' Society," the Ragolian reported. "They're mopping up the last of the Black Hoods now... " Janice's voice trailed off as though she'd been distracted. "Hey. I wonder what that aircar's doing... " The top floor of the Hotel Monolith exploded. In what had been the corridor of the Monolith's penthouse level, some of the smoking rubble shifted, then fell aside, and the scuffed and soot-streaked shape of R-06R straightened up. "Are you all right?" the droid asked the person underneath him. Nanami Jinnai sat up, put a hand to her head, and gingerly tested the range of motion in her neck. "Guh," she replied. "I think so... thanks, Roger." She turned to look at the wreckage around her. "Truss? Gene?" Another heap of debris a few feet away shuddered and collapsed, revealing G-3N3 hunched protectively over a dazed but uninjured John Trussell. "I think I'm alive," Truss reported. "Al? Are we still transmitting?" "Audio only since the blonde pegged your camera," Al replied. "Hoo hoo boy, ratings are through the -roof-, and PZ-61's about to have kittens down in the lobby." "Tell him he's lucky the five of us were too much for the elevator," said Truss. "He'd never have survived the explosion." He looked across at Nanami and shrugged. "I guess Big Fire equips their secret hideouts with self-destruct devices." "Good to know," Nanami replied dryly, getting carefully to her feet. "Good grief - how are we going to get down from here?" A moment later, the battered but unbowed form of G-Kaiser rose past the shattered remains of the floorline with a roar of rocket thrusters, and as he extended one huge hand toward them, his PA system crackled and said in the voice of Noriko Takaya, "Could you guys use a lift?" Hiroshi Morisato really had no idea why he was with the lead group of fighters chasing the routing Black Hood troops. Granted, his mother was a goddess, his aunt was head of the Valkyrie, and his circle of friends could kick nine different kinds of ass before breakfast, but he himself had never really taken to fighting, not in any detail. He preferred puttering around in his workshop (mostly with Corwin when they were kids, more often alone through high school), creating devices capable of blowing up city blocks, to actually -using- them. Still, he had come running back to the school in the initial attack, surprising a Black Hood, taking his weapon (where did these guys get the latest model GENOM blaster carbine? Not even all the White Legion units had these things yet), and blasting his way through to safety with Thunder Force. He'd hooked up with Achika and Tenchi, and he'd remained with them, doing very little shooting. With the Shannons around, he didn't need to. First there was Achika, elder by minutes, displaying a combination of kendo and Jei battle techniques to deadly effect. As Hiroshi watched, she leaped over a volley of Big Fire blasters, turned a double somersault, and sent her glowing blue Jei blade through the rough redoubt the Black Hoods had thrown together. A moment later, the screams ended, and Achika was moving forward again. Then there was Tenchi, the one person in the old 'Ragnarok Wave' of kids more of a wallflower than Hiroshi. Hiroshi didn't understand what Tenchi had with girls, but if any of them besides Achika had been around to see Tenchi parrying blasters and bullets with his own Jei sword, that mysterious 'something' would have doubled in potency. For someone who disliked adventures and excitement as much as Tenchi did, his skill in fighting was surprising... except to the Koopman High Duelists and Hiroshi, who all knew how serious Tenchi was about his Jei training. At the moment, the three were alone, driving something between a platoon and a batallion of Black Hoods in full flight down the streets. Mojo Jojo and the Utoniums had charged off down Tempest Avenue and vanished, except for the occasional massive explosion, blur of neon light, and burst of maniacal laughter. Uncle Marty, Priss, Sylvie and Guy had taken a different route, pursuing reports of whisker-laser transmissions from a mobile base. The remaining Crescent Heights cops had, for the moment, dispersed, leaving the three of them facing the Oxbow River, less than a half mile distant. A block away, the street fell away down the high slopes of the banks surrounding the Oxbow. Just across the river Hiroshi could see streaks of light - possibly the Powerpuffs, definitely blaster fire - and New Avalon police cars and tanks. Any Black Hoods who made it to the river would have a choice: swim, surrender, or die. A bullet bounced off of empty air about a foot from Hiroshi's ear, and with more luck than skill he took out the Black Hood aiming at him. He spread the bursts around, breaking up an attempt by a few of the goons to regroup, and scrambled to catch up to Achika and Tenchi. The twins, energy blades at the ready, were sidling towards the corner of a four-story brick building facing onto Ridgeway Boulevard, preparing to clear the last intersection before the riverbanks of any Big Fire welcoming committees. Unfortunately, three people is not enough to secure a city street, and Hiroshi looked back just in time to see a straggling Black Hood raise a rocket launcher and, with a maniacal grin, fire it in the general direction of Tenchi and Achika. The rocket wobbled, picked up speed, and blew up several meters behind the twins, knocking a large hole in the building and stunning them both. Hiroshi emptied the last few bursts of power from his scavenged blaster rifle into the Black Hood and scrambled towards the Shannons. As he ran, he heard the building groan above him; he looked up to see the upper stories of the building leaning forward, the facade toppling down onto Tenchi and Achika. With a final burst of speed, he threw himself on top of the twins, grabbed his tuxedo's cumberbund, and twisted something as hard as he could. The bricks came thundering down, stopping about six feet above the ground, held up by a loudly sparking blue energy field. Those outside the diameter of the dome-shaped field crashed to the ground, sending up a thick cloud of dust. Tenchi pushed himself up just enough to see the sparks running over his head. "Hey, Hiroshi, what is this?" he asked, pointing at the forcefield. "My newest invention," Hiroshi gasped, struggling to regain his breath. "Miniature shield generator - same rating as an ISD's main array. Built into my cumberbund." "Hiroshi, get off me," Achika grumbled, pushing the skinny Morisato off of herself. Gingerly, they got to their feet and took stock of their situation. They were standing inside a ring of broken masonry about twelve feet in diameter; clear space surrounded them, giving a clear view out to the street over that ring of wreckage. The only problem, then, was the several tons of rubble sitting on -top- of the dome, above their heads. "Do you mean to say you wore a personal shield projector to the Senior Prom?" asked Achika. "Sure. Doesn't everybody?" Hiroshi asked with a flippant grin. "So," Tenchi asked, looking up at the dark pile of bricks hovering just over their heads, "how much battery power does this shield have?" The field gave a sudden, deafening CRACK of static discharge and shrank six inches, causing the rubble over their heads to drop suddenly. "Not much," Hiroshi muttered nervously. "When you came in here to save us," Achika inquired, "didn't you have some kind of plan for getting out?" "Not really," Hiroshi admitted. "Well, that's just great. OK, Tenchi, I guess it's up to us... " The shield sputtered and an entire brick fell through, smashing on the ground between Hiroshi and Tenchi. "Get ready," Achika added, raising her blade and bracing herself for a very difficult bit of interception work. Personally, she gave them one chance in ten, but at least she had to try... "You kids - LOOK OUT!" a familiar voice bellowed just as the shield flickered out entirely, and something struck the three students hard - but not nearly as hard as the rubble would have. They sprawled in the street with cries of surprise and pain, then scrambled up and watched in horror as the rest of the building collapsed on the one who had thrown them to safety. "Oh my - Mr. Fujisawa!" cried Tenchi. Followed closely by the other two, he began to move forward, but before he got two steps the newly settled pile of rubble first quivered and then burst, scattering bricks partway into the street. Masamichi Fujisawa uttered a satisfied yell as he heaved himself free of several tons of bricks and other assorted building materials, then brushed dust from his lapels. "You kids OK?" he inquired. "Fine, thanks to you," said Hiroshi. Fujisawa nodded. "Good. Glad to hear it. " He reached into his inside pocket, took out a pack of Camels, shook one out, and lit up. "What a night." He looked around, combing fruitlessly at his hopelessly mussed hair with his fingers. "Looks like we've about put the run to the bad guys, though. What do you say we go get some ice cream?" Hiroshi followed the Shannon twins and the English teacher down the rubble-strewn street. The surreality of the situation failed to register on his consciousness, though, because his mind was racing with an idea he'd just had. Obviously, his shield design was a success: It had kept him intact through the firefights and retained enough power to hold up most of a large building for a full minute. Unfortunately, it didn't have any offensive capabilities. It was just a vaguely adjustable spherical field with ground-effect limiters. But supposing... supposing the shield could be configured into an offensive device? Suppose it could be constructed as a vectored body shield, conforming closely to the wearer's surface and boosting his strength? Such a shield would have to be an entirely new design, as yet unknown to science. The possibilities, though... A force field, holographic projector, strength booster, repulsorlift, all in one package... "Hiroshi, come ON!" Achika shouted, and Hiroshi trotted along, concepts already tumbling through his mind. Sparks flew through his brain as blueprints laid themselves across his cortex, rearranged themselves, and repeated. From deep within his throat, a chuckle, then a laugh, then a high-pitched hysterical giggle rose, filling the air around him until Achika brought her wooden Jei focus down onto his head. Hard. Even in silence, the wheels in Hiroshi's head continued to turn. Dawn, and the fires were mostly out. Smoke and dust drifted over the city, making the first rays of sunlight blaze in orange and pink as they spread out over the towers of New Avalon. Martin Rose stood on the observation deck of the Entire State Building, his cape snapping in the morning breeze, and surveyed the damage with a critical eye. "Man," said a familiar voice behind him. "What a mess." Rose turned to see the IPO's chief of operations, his old friend Ben "Gryphon" Hutchins, looking glum with his hands in the pockets of a drover coat. "I was just thinking the same thing," said Rose, nodding. "Preliminary estimates are already coming in," said Gryphon as he leaned against the railing and looked out at the wounded city. "The lowest one so far is half a billion credits." "Mm," said Rose. "Still, for that amount of damage we did pretty well. Six lives lost, not counting Big Fire's casualties. The Black Hoods did a lot of damage, but we were able to bottle them up and keep them away from most of the citizens. The bluesuiters and NAPD did a great job with the downtown evacuation when the kaiju alert went out, too." "Skuld is analyzing the parts of the creatures that the Robot Response Team captured," Gryphon told him. "Trying to figure out how this could have happened here." He sighed, shoulders slumping a little. "This is my fault; I designed the city with a defense network, and then decided it wouldn't be needed. If I'd stuck to my original plan, there would have been a full battalion of armored cavalry to deal with those things - but I decided the city was well enough protected by its location that it didn't need to be defended." "Judging by the footage I've seen of the fight those things gave Corwin and the others," Rose said, "I'm not sure your battalion of 'Mechs would have accomplished anything other than to spread out the collateral damage more." He sighed and thumped a hand down on Gryphon's shoulder. "Anyway, live and learn. We'll be better prepared next time, if there is a next time. The city'll bounce back from this." Gryphon nodded. "Yeah," he agreed. "The kids did a good job too," Rose added. "The Koopman chapter of Duelists and their friends helped us out a lot, keeping the lid on up in the Heights, and the RRT's performance speaks for itself." He chuckled. "And I haven't seen 'Riko that happy in years. You should have seen the kiss she laid on Corwin when they finally climbed out of those robots." That got an answering chuckle out of Gryphon. "I saw your report on Truss and Nanami's debriefing," he mused. "Shame they didn't get a decent picture of the Big Fire agent they flushed out of the command center." "Well, I'm sure we'll be seeing her again," Rose said with resignation. "One thing about Big Fire's higher-end agents, they always come back. On the other hand," he added in an optimistic tone of voice, "I think I finally understand what Corwin really sees in the Kaoru girl." "What's that?" Gryphon inquired. "She's 100% batshit crazy," replied Rose matter-of-factly. Gryphon, who had reviewed the same report, laughed. "No argument there. That was an old-fashioned vintage Kei stunt." Rose laughed too. "She must be mad she missed this." "You're not kidding. You know who else is pissed." "Surprise me." "Gojira Nakajima. I had to listen to him moan about being on assignment this week -all- the way here from B6." Both men laughed, and given the vista they were looking out at and the kind of day they'd had, it felt awfully good. Up at the clearing at the peak of Crescent Heights, four figures stood and watched the shadows of the buildings shorten as the sun rose over New Avalon. The Koopman Memorial High Subcommittee on Student Recreation (whose membership coincidentally overlapped one-to-one with the officers of the Class of 2411) surveyed the damage to their neighborhood and to the city beyond with thoughtful eyes. The assessment went on for several minutes before one of them summarized the full situation in clear, precise detail. "Well, shit," said Vice-President Sylvie Daniels glumly. "This -sucks-." "Yeah, no kidding," replied President (and Subcommittee Chairwoman) Priss Morgan. "After all the trouble we went to to put on a cool prom, this had to happen right after. Probably no one will even -remember- the prom itself after -this-... " "Indeed," agreed Treasurer Mary Broadbank. "It will be difficult to top this. It's certainly been a night to remember." "Well," mused Secretary and Token Guy Guy Morgan with a smile, "we'll just have to try harder next year." "My goodness, girls," said Professor Hank Utonium cheerfully. "You look like you've been through the wringer!" "I worked so -hard- on these dresses," said Bubbles miserably. "And they looked really good, too, when we needed them to," Blossom consoled her teary-eyed sister. "Didn't they, Buttercup?" For once, Buttercup played along without even sounding grudging. "They sure did. Corwin said mine was the best use of green velvet he'd ever seen." "Did he really?" Bubbles squeaked, perking up. "But it's all ripped and dirty now," she added, looking glum again. Blossom cracked a tired grin. "He might like that too. Corwin's got funny taste in girls. I mean, look at Kozue." "Yeah," said Buttercup. She was too tired to glare at her redheaded sister, especially since Blossom didn't even know she'd said something that stung. "Well, we've done enough damage for one day," she added with an exaggerated yawn. "I'm gonna take a long bath and hit the sack." "Me too," Bubbles agreed. "Count me in," said Blossom. "I believe that sounds like a most excellent plan, one which I will be happy to - ... no, on second thought, I will simply retire to the couch. Yes, the sofa will do most adequately indeed," mused Mojo Jojo as the three sisters all gave him looks combining incredulity and warning. Having made good her escape in the confusion that followed the battles and the explosion at the Monolith, Clarissa Broadbank sent her aircar back to its hiding place and took one of several covert routes to her family's home in the undamaged portion of the Heights. No one would be able to prove that she hadn't come straight home after the prom and hidden from the marauding Black Hoods in the security of the Broadbank compound, like any normal person would have done. Clarissa had changed into street clothes in the car, and now that she was home she took those off and showered, then put on a nightdress. It had been a long night. She emerged from her private bathroom into her bedroom and immediately noticed that something wasn't right. The little green lights on the acoustic damper modules installed here and there about the room were on, but she hadn't turned the damper web on when she came home - She dove to the floor, rolling, and came up into a kneeling ready stance at the foot of her bed with her KYD-21 blaster pistol in hand, leveled squarely at the chest of the intruder who was standing by her bedstand. The threatened figure merely chuckled. "Good reflexes, Agent A," he said in a deep, sardonic voice. Then he moved, metal clicked against metal, and a flame flared up from one of his hands, illuminating a swarthily handsome face marred somewhat by an obvious cyberoptic mount as he lit a cigar. Clarissa rose to her feet, the blaster disappearing somewhere in her nightdress as a blush appeared on her cheeks. "Lord Alberto!" she whispered. "Isn't this dangerous, sir?" Don Alberto Casanegra de Nueva Castilla, better known to the International Police as Shockwave Alberto, chuckled and blew out a puff of smoke. "You don't have to whisper," he told her in a normal voice. "This damper web is the finest money can buy, and at any rate, your parents and the servants are all sleeping peacefully." "Not permanently, I hope," said Clarissa with a trace of severity. "Oh, no," Alberto assured her. "That would attract far too much attention. Anyway, I'm not staying long," he added. Clarissa remained silent, attentive, and Alberto smiled and sauntered across the room toward her. "We've been watching your progress with great interest these last three years," Alberto observed as he approached her. "Hanzui, Jujoji and I are particularly impressed. We were speaking of you over lunch the other day, and all of us agreed that if you continue as you are, you may be offered a place among us someday - and not some very far-off day, either." Clarissa blinked, the color coming back into her cheeks again. "Among - you mean the Magnificent Ten?" Alberto grinned slyly and tossed his cigar casually into the ash tray standing on the bedstand, a dozen feet away. "It could be done," he said. "I'm flattered, my lord," Clarissa said, "but we both know I lack the necessary... special capabilities... to be eligible for membership in your elite circle." Alberto's sly grin widened slightly. "There are ways of dealing with that," he said enigmatically, putting his hands on her shoulders. "But that's for a later date. For right now, Agent A, please permit me to be the first to congratulate you on the complete success of Operation Hardshell." "Thank you, Lord Alberto," Clarissa whispered as she rose on her tiptoes to kiss him. Kakeru Shidou, stationed by the little window next to the door, spotted her first, a red and white smudge in the distance, trudging up the long driveway from the ferry dock with a taller gold and black shape beside her. "She's back! Hikaru's back!" he cried, then flung the door open. He and Masaru nearly trampled each other trying to get out the door at the same time, and then Hikari knocked them both down as he barged out, barking, and ran to meet his mistress. The brothers stood by the house (Satoru joining them silently) and watched as Hikaru paused a hundred yards away to kneel down and be greeted by Hikari. Then she turned and embraced the tall gold figure of Mitsuru Tsuwabuki - it looked like she might have kissed him, but they were too far away to be sure - before he vanished in a spray of silvery light like the two of them had done when leaving the island the night before. The dog trotted alongside Hikaru as she walked slowly the rest of the way to the house, and as she neared, her brothers caught their breath. She wasn't wearing her prom gown any more; instead, she had on a peculiar outfit which featured red-enameled, gem-studded armor plates, a pleated skirt, and white leather boots and gauntlets. The armor was criscrossed everywhere with scratches and dents, and the fabric beneath was torn and cut in dozens of places. Hikaru herself was also sporting numerous cuts, most of them on her arms and legs, one under her right eye. None was bleeding now, but she was streaked with blood, not all of it, judging by the patterns it made on her clothes and her skin, her own. Her hair was a mess, its flame scarlet darkened in places with matted blood, the long part normally kept in her braid tangled and dirty. None of that was what really gave the brothers pause, though. Her -bearing- was different, entirely different, from the Hikaru they were used to. She moved as though she were totally exhausted, slowly and deliberately. The look on her haggard, blood-spattered face was also completely alien to their experience. They had seen Hikaru happy often, angry occasionally, even very infrequently sad... but they'd never seen her -haunted- before. Her deep red eyes spoke of experiences that her brothers couldn't even imagine. All three of them suddenly realized what should have been obvious to them three years before in Asgard, except that they'd been too happy just to see her again, and she'd hidden it from them so carefully. Our little Hikaru's grown up, Satoru mused to himself. Kakeru took a step forward, his eyes wide, and started to say, "Hika - " He stopped short as Masaru seized his arm and yanked him back. Turning indignantly to his brother, Kakeru started to form some kind of protest - - but Masaru shook his head somberly, and the look in -his- eyes stopped the youngest brother cold. Not now, Masaru's expression said. Hikaru stopped in front of them, looked them over, and then said in a very soft voice, "You guys were unbelievably rude to Nate -and- Mitsuru last night. I hope you'll to apologize to Nate when he picks me up next week." "When - " said Kakeru, utterly mystified; then his face went suddenly expressionless as he realized the full implications of what he was seeing and hearing, just a few seconds behind his brothers. "We will," said Masaru, bowing his head. Satoru finally spoke, his deep voice hushed. "Do you need help dressing your wounds, Hikaru?" "No, thank you," Hikaru replied. "It's not as bad as it looks. I'm just going to take a bath and go to sleep." Satoru inclined his head. "As you wish. Welcome home, sister." Hikaru nodded acknowledgement - she was too tired, and too emotionally spent, to do much more - and started to step past them; but Kakeru put out a hand, and she paused, looking at him. "Hikaru, I... I'm sorry," he said, on the verge of tears. Hikaru smiled tiredly, looking suddenly much more like her old self, and hugged the youngest of her brothers (carefully, so as not to hurt him with the edges of her armor). "Don't be so sad, Kakeru," she said, ruffling his hair. "I'm still your sister." Corwin Ravenhair sat in a chair in Hangar 1 of his underground workshop complex and heaved a deep, deep sigh. Behind him, on a display panel next to the elevator door, the face of Excel appeared, looking worried. "Uh... Chief? Why don't you go to bed? It's all over." Corwin turned his chair around to face her. "Just thinking about all the work I'm going to have to do... " he replied with a sigh, rubbing a hand down his face. Arrayed in the hangar were Dai-Guard, G-Kaiser, and the three Getter Machines. All of them were damaged, Dai-Guard the most severely. Even with Corwin's improvements, the antique robot hadn't really been up to the battle he had been put through. Part of the young god's mind was already running down the list of things he would have to do to not only repair Dai-Guard, but bring him up to spec for modern kaiju-class combat, possibly against more of the things they'd fought today. It would be a hell of a lot of work, but seeing how Dorothy's rapport with the old robot had translated into combat performance had convinced him that it would be worth it. G-Kaiser wasn't badly damaged, just battered, scratched, and with a bit of his chest wing missing. He wouldn't take long to repair, and that Noriko was satisfied with his performance was not in doubt. Corwin's cheeks colored a little at the memory. The Getter Machines had had a full and true wringing-out, and aside from the failure of Getter Ryger's drill, they'd done well. They needed maintenance and minor repairs; the real work there would be analyzing all the data from their excursion. They were, after all, still test vehicles; he'd never expected them to see combat any more than Dai-Guard. The memory of Kozue's little stunt switching from Getter Machine #2 to #1 still chilled him a little. "Well," said Excel pragmatically, "you don't have to do it all right -now-. I say sack out and worry about it tomorrow. Uh, later today. Or maybe tomorrow if you sleep that long... " Excel paused. "Wait wait wait, hold that thought. You've got a phone call." "No more reporters," said Corwin wearily. "No sir, this is somebody you -want- to talk to or my name's not Excel XL!" "Your name's -not-," Corwin began to protest, but she vanished and was replaced by the face of an entirely different girl. Corwin smiled through his fatigue. "Hey, beautiful," he said. "C-Corwin, are you all r-r-right?" Kaitlyn demanded, ignoring the flattery altogether. "W-we've been w-worried sick over h-here... " Corwin nodded. "I'm fine. Dead beat, but otherwise fine. You may've heard that I had a hell of a long day yesterday," he added with a tired grin. "Do you need us to do anything?" asked Utena Tenjou, pushing into the frame next to Kate. "We can be there in a little under - " Corwin shook his head. "No, no - you stay right where you are. Get some sleep, you look like you need it as much as I do," he added, still grinning. "A-are you sure?" Kate asked. "We w-wouldn't m-m-mind... " "No, seriously," said Corwin. He rose from his chair with a weary groan and said, "All I really need right now is sleep, and you guys can't really help me with that, right?" Utena sighed. "I suppose that's true." "W-well... s-sleep well, C-Corwin," said Kaitlyn, sounding unconvinced. "Oh, believe me, Kate, I will," Corwin replied. "Hey, is Anthy there?" "She's out in the garden," Utena told him. "You know - standard way of working off nervous energy... " Corwin smiled. "Fuss over the roses," he said, nodding. "Well, when you see her, tell her I'll be there tonight." Utena looked surprised. "You will?" "'Course," he replied. "It's Saturday." She smiled. "OK, I'll tell her. See you tonight, Corwin. Sleep well." "I will," he repeated. "No doubt in my mind. Love you guys. G'night - so to speak... " The two girls waved, smiling, and the connection broke, returning Excel to the screen. "Keep these guys under control, Excel," said Corwin, gesturing to the battered, deactivated robots. Excel saluted. "No problem, Chief! They won't be going anywhere while your Excel's on the job." Corwin yawned. "Thanks. G'night, Excel." Then he went into the elevator and rode it up to the top of the World Wide Building. The windows were darkened against the sunlight, as was standard after an all-nighter, but enough light came from the strategically placed nightlights to allow Corwin to navigate across the large studio apartment to the corner that was curtained off as a bedroom. He paused for a moment in the middle of the room to smile down at Dorothy, who was curled up asleep on one of the black leather sofas, the spare blankets wrapped around her. She'd really come a long way since her first experiments with sleep; now she was virtually indistinguishable from a sleeping human. She even snored, very lightly, and murmured occasionally. In her early attempts, she'd achieved the right mental state, but hadn't given any thought to what to do with her body, and so she'd just lain there, inert, in exactly the same position, not breathing or stirring even the slightest bit. Her first lover, Miki Kaoru, had pointed out to her that this gave her the unpleasant semblance of a corpse, which was an unnerving thing to share a bed with. She had taken this message to heart and carefully mastered the fine art of sleeping like a human. Corwin smoothed her auburn hair affectionately back from her pale forehead, went into the bathroom, and changed for bed. As he had expected he might, he found Kozue in the lower of the bed-corner's two bunks today, which was the accepted signal that she didn't want to sleep alone. He climbed in beside her, looping an arm around her, and she hummed pleasantly and reached up to touch his hand. "'M sorry I scared you," she murmured sleepily. "It's OK," he replied, kissing her gently behind the ear. "I'm sorry I yelled at you." "We did good today, didn't we?" "We sure did. -Damn- good." Anthy Tenjou was in her garden behind the house on Tomodachi, but she wasn't fussing over the roses. Instead, she was standing near one of the bushes, deep in the back of the greenhouse. Her golden shears were hanging loosely from one hand; in the other, she held a bloom that she'd just snipped from the bush she stood before. It was a beautiful and unusual flower, even among the many special roses which grew here in this greenhouse. At its heart it was a deep, rich royal purple, but the tips of the petals were silver. Not grey, nor even white (like the petals of the roses on the bush right next to this one), but silver, a smooth and lustrous silver, as though the flower's edges had been dipped in the metal, or hammered out of it. Anthy had been standing here contemplating this flower since the television coverage of the New Avalon incident had assured the viewing audience that the crisis was over. She'd seen Corwin disembark from Big O, seen him congratulate and be congratulated by his fellow pilots. She knew he was all right... ... but how near had it been, outnumbered that way? She'd seen the Rune God brought low by the first creature, the one with the cables on its hands, and her heart had nearly stopped. The fear had remained with her for the rest of the night, though she'd hidden it well and smiled for her friends as they watched the rest of the incident together. How near... She clenched her fist on the stem of the silver-tipped rose until the thorns drew blood from the palm of her hand, stood unknowing and uncaring as the scarlet liquid dripped from the cut end of the stem to the floor of the greenhouse. "Soon," she murmured to herself, head bowed over the rose. "It has to be soon... " /* Bill Conti "Yeager's Triumph" _The Right Stuff_ */ Eyrie Productions, Unlimited presented UNDOCUMENTED FEATURES FUTURE IMPERFECT - Symphony of the Sword No. 4 - Second Movement: A Night to Remember The Cast (in order of appearance) Corwin Ravenhair Kozue Kaoru R. Dorothy Wayneright Excel XL Prof. Henry J. Utonium Theodora Utonium Armored Knight G-Kaiser Clarissa Broadbank Theresa Utonium Blossom Utonium Achika Shannon Nobuyuki Masaki C.P. Mui Fuu Hououji Nall Silverclaw Uum'y R'yuu-z'ky Kakeru Shidou Hikaru Shidou Masaru Shidou Satoru Shidou Mitsuru Tsuwabuki Masamichi Fujisawa James Strickland Hiroshi Morisato Tenchi Shannon Reiyna Mui Gary R. Waitzkin Mojo Jojo Q-Boss John Trussell Nanami Jinnai Canal Vorfeed Dan Dastun Rune God Orihalcon Rick Geraldine Elana Smythe-Mui Getter Robo G Nathan Mowes Janice Barlow Dai-Guard Lorna Endou Lisa Sakakino Utena Tenjou Anne Cross Miki Kaoru Juri Arisugawa Kaitlyn Hutchins Priss Morgan Gai "Guy" Morgan Sylvie Daniels G-3N3 PZ-61 Francesca Davis Kyouichi Saionji Wakaba Shinohara Tiny Robo Lesser Mazinger Shiori Takatsuki R-06R Benjamin D. Hutchins Mary Broadbank Alberto Casanegra de Nueva Castilla Anthy Tenjou with The New Avalon Police Department The International Police Tactical Division Headquarters Branch GENOM CORPDEF HQ Division and featuring THE CLAY PIGEONS Martin Rose Eiko Magami Rose Tom M'krelth'nyr'knet Danilia M'krelth'nyr'knet Dund Wollern with the sublime gyrations of Noriko Rose Takaya Event Organizer Benjamin D. Hutchins Miss Hououji's Couturier Anne Cross Musical Guest Martin F. Rose Infantry Coordinator Kris Overstreet Crowbar Operator Pearson Mui Suspicious Person Reports The Usual Suspects Title borrowed from Walter Lord "One Way Love (Better Off Dead)" by Rupert Holmes The Symphony will return with "On the Road Again" E P U (colour) 2002