Fifteen parts of this fic currently exist, spread over six chapters, corresponding to the first six OVAs of the anime, or at least the relevant timeframes as they diverge more widely. As some are exceptionally long and even the shortest are still big enough to be a good-sized FFn chapter, they will be posted EVERY OTHER day instead of daily. This will also conveniently fill the month of November out. It's a pity I started writing this version of the fic back in 1998, and previous takes further than that, or it'd be a cinch for NaNoWriMo. As matters stand, I count myself as doing well if I write a single scene in a month's time. Ah well, here we go!
01_BD_WOASS_Ch_01
2011-10-31 - fixed scene breaks and added a few notes above
2009-11-27 - added four words to 2nd paragraph for continuity's sake.
2005-09-21 - decided to re-read what I have to get back into the setting, and made quite a few changes in phrasing along the way
01-15-2005 - finally fixed phrasing that's been bugging me forever
12-12-2004 - very minor grammar corrections
It began with a shooting star.
A fiery streak burned its way across the Megatokyo skyline, inspiring people all across the city to cast wishes on it as the piece of space junk vaporized and shed smaller bits of itself like a trail of magical glitter cascading into Tokyo Bay.
In a well-maintained apartment, a young woman wished that the stain on her father's legacy might one day be lifted.
A man looking out the window of a lobby wished his car was already repaired.
A girl on a scooter wished she could fight well enough to help her friends when they got in trouble.
A drunk wished he could lay off the booze and go back to his life, as he staggered to the next bar.
A jogger wished she'd learned more from her uncle before he was lost to her.
In a park, two lovers wished for each others' happiness.
A woman wished revenge for her boyfriend.
So many wishes, hundreds of them. With time, a few might even come true...
Bewilderbeast Studios Present
BUBBLEGUM DISASTER
Season One
WISHES ON A SHOOTING STAR
A work of BGC fan fiction by ClassicDrogn
Chapter One
Continuity note: This is set in the original 2032/2033-era series, and while the first few scenes are basically just prose adaptations of the OVA, rest assured that the plot takes a hairpin left at Albuquerque before very long. This is NOT going to be "the Knight Sabers plus Jay Random do all the same things almost the same way," though because most of the conflicts have their roots in events that happen before the series begins they will see most of the initial encounters the same as in canon. Nor is this in any way a self insertion, there are some new characters but the Sabers are the protagonists, and the story mostly follows them. Things will, however, fairly rapidly move to a higher power level than BGC canon. Also, I use "buma" instead of "boomer" (the official translation) or "booma" (what we see on Sylia's computer screen) because it works better as the spoken form of B.M.A., for Bio-Metal Android. (Or as a direct acronym for "Big Ugly Mother****ing Android, if you prefer.) It is both the singular and plural form, like "moose."
A chestnut-haired woman in a red motorcyclist's jumpsuit walked out of a club, a disgruntled expression on her face. "What a jerk. Automatically assuming I was looking for some kind of runaway husband or something," she muttered crossly. "Might as well call in before Sylia gets on my case about it." Having so decided, she headed for a nearby phone booth, not noticing or not paying attention to the two rough-looking men who'd stepped out behind her. Just as she started to dial, the larger of them forced the door open. Spinning, she bit out, "Just who the hell are you?"
The big, sunglasses-clad man just let out a menacing chuckle in reply.
"Buma..." the woman in red snarled, before getting grabbed across the face and taking a punch in the solar plexus that knocked her out.
She came to in the back seat of a car, as the big man asked, "So who the hell is she, ADPolice?" He looked almost comical crammed behind the steering wheel of the subcompact car they were riding in.
The thin man beside her answered, "No, Bogie, I don't think she's with the police."
Bogie grunted again, then replied, "Fine with me. We'll get it out of her in due time when we get to Aqua City."
*Aqua City...* In the back, the woman carefully opened an eye. Seeing that her abductors didn't seem to care what she did, she opened the other and lifted her head a little. It was a bad sign, it meant that they intended to get rid of her and didn't have to worry about having her learn their plans. *Looks like I'm going to have to take out some trash,* she mused. *Crammed down into a disguise like that a buma's only a bit stronger than a human, after all.* Seeing that they were coming to a stoplight, she got ready to take advantage of their inattention.
Accelerating again, Bogie continued, "The others are probably there already."
"Yeah," the thin man agreed, just as she saw her chance.
Grabbing his head and twisting in her best attempt to break his neck she used him as leverage to kick Bogie against the window, making the oversized buma drag the steering wheel and sideswipe the car against the retaining wall. Flipping onto its side, the nose of the car got clipped by a van that had been close behind and the lightweight vehicle was knocked spinning, coming to rest upside down and crosswise to the road, half propped up on the wall and trailing smoke from the crushed engine compartment. It had barely shuddered to a stop before the woman kicked the rear door open, rolling herself out and crouching for a moment as she rubbed her shoulder. Standing, she took stock of her injuries - didn't feel any worse than a few... okay, make that lots of bruises - and cursed her attackers. "Well shit! Don't you assholes even know how to have an accident?" So what if it didn't make a lot of sense, it made her feel better.
About then, the fuel tank exploded, shocking the sore woman. She turned back and smirked, murmuring, "Thanks for the directions, though. What?"
The car's body pan began to distort with a shriek, and a blue arm punched through it.
"Huh? Uh-oh..." She dashed for the idling motorcycle whose rider had stopped at the nearby public phone to call in the accident, yelling "I'll bring it back!" as she jumped on and revved the engine. She quickly swung to face the opposite direction with a squeal from the rear wheel, then kicked it right towards the menacing blue android that had torn its way out of the car. Pulling the blue bike back into a wheelie, she rode right over the mechanoid formerly known as Bogie and sped off down the highway.
Crouching with a synthesized growl, it popped open thrusters on the calves and shoulder blades and rocketed off in pursuit.
Officer Leon McNichol of the ADPolice was patrolling in his car, one of the special highway interceptor models, and thinking about his chance meeting with a local celebrity the night before. He was pulled from his reverie by the sight of a motorcyclist (looking vaguely familiar in that red outfit) blasting past on the other side of the highway at speeds he KNEW couldn't be any less than forty or fifty kph over the limit. That was pushed from his mind when he saw the blue buma chasing the cyclist on a plume of thruster-flare. "Buma!" he gulped, with an expression somewhere between the hunter who's seen his quarry and the swimmer who just saw a waterfall ahead. Hitting the brakes and spinning the wheel, he expertly slid the car between two of the light poles running down the center of the road and spun to face the correct way, then peeled out. As his speed continued to build he activated the retractable air dams and scoop of super-pursuit mode, winding the tachometer all the way to the top of its range as he tried to catch up to the pair.
A streak of fire across the skyline, ending in a splash as what was left of the meteor hit the waves of Tokyo Bay. The news services would later report that it was the remains of a defunct, 1980s vintage communications satellite and unidentified debris that had collided with it and knocked it out of orbit - but this was only the surface truth. In fact, the "unknown debris" had been an artificial construct, but one never touched by the hands of humans; it was the remains of an alien wreck that had been drifting through space for millennia.
The only thing more surprising than this, were it known to anyone, was the fact that a self-contained power supply on the one intact cargo stasis module was still operating, up to the point that it crashed into the bay. Everything outside the stasis field was pulverized into unidentifiable scraps instantly by the impact and thermal shock, while the cargo - mostly small tools and parts - quickly sank into the muck of the bay floor. The only large piece, approximately the size and shape of an earthly industrial-size refrigerator and covered in a multitude of spikes and fins, was protected by the collapsing field long enough that it was allowed to settle safely to the bottom, after skipping over the water at first and then plowing through it as it slowed to a stop, ending up within feet of one of Aqua City's many support pylons. There it stayed, undisturbed until...
(note: looser translations are placed in parentheses when the computer system is writing)
](royal guardian, pronounced roughly mah-SAH MAN-yee) UNIT 215 STATUS REPORT
]POST-STASIS REACTIVATION CHECKS COMPLETE
]MISSION HARDWARE (100%) INTACT
]MISSION SOFTWARE (100%) INTACT
]ARCHIVES (52%) CORRUPTED OR UNRECOVERABLE, (31%) RECOVERABLE, (17%) INTACT
]ELAPSED TIME 68 (large unit of time measurement), 117 (small unit of time measurement)
]SEEKING REGISTERED PARTNER: (ruler's child, pronounced roughly ah-SAH-ga REE) (untranslatable name of a predator, PREE-soo)
]ERROR: PRIMARY IDENTIFICATION DATA CORRUPTED
]ERROR: SECONDARY IDENTIFICATION DATA CORRUPTED
]TERTIARY IDENTIFICATION DATA INDICATES THIS UNIT'S CURRENT ENVIRONMENT IS UNSUITABLE TO SUPPORT OF PARTNER'S FUNCTIONS WITHOUT THIS UNIT'S ASSISTANCE. ACTIVATING INDEPENDENT MOBILITY MODE.
The spines and fins on the oddly shaped construct began to shift, most of them retracting into its mass while others dug it out of the partial covering of muck, and the main section shrank considerably into a mostly humanoid form, a green-tinted visor and numerous faintly glowing gold traceries on its surface breaking up the brushed-metal coloration, human like arms ending in five evenly spaced tentacle-digits, the "legs" fused together like a mermaid's tail and ringed by several sets of fins, now set in an obvious rotor pattern.
The unit spread its "fingers" and the traceries on its arms flared brightly, causing a visible wave of force to be fired from each hand. This lifted the torso free of the bottom, and the sets of rotors around its lower portion whirred to life, holding position a dozen feet above the bay floor. A cloud of fine mud and sand was kicked up, only to clear rapidly as the rotors pulled more clean water down from above.
]ACTIVITY DETECTED IN THE ARTIFICIAL STRUCTURE 52 (unit of distance measurement) ABOVE THIS UNIT'S CURRENT POSITION. PROBABILITY OF REGISTERED PARTNER BEING IN IMMEDIATE AREA: INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR CALCULATION.
]INVESTIGATING ACTIVITY
Leon skidded his interceptor to a stop at the head of the bridge to Aqua City - he'd never quite managed to catch up to the buma, but at least it seemed that the cyclist had escaped it... so far. The blue motorbike was parked there too, the rider nowhere in sight. The only positive thing was that combat buma tended to consider "subtle" to mean only one explosion, and there wasn't any sign of massive violence that he could see either. He opened the car's canopy and got out, pausing to retrieve one of his private stash of heavy weapons - an electromagnetically propelled grenade launcher - before continuing across the bridge on foot.
Aqua City was dark, almost entirely unlit. It had been meant to be a shining example of futuristic architecture to the world, but had fallen afoul of massive budget overruns and legal hassles, and construction had been halted while the superstructure was only three quarters erected, with none of the finishing work done. Every month or so a police sweep would be done to clear out the vagrants, but other than that it saw little activity. Truthfully, there were never many squatters, either, since the structure was a long way from anything but factories and the mostly open platforms provided little if any protection from the elements. Tonight, with the sweep only a few days past, it was almost entirely abandoned, except for a certain woman in a red jumpsuit...
She loped through the dark hallways, trying to keep up speed while minimizing noise, searching for the little girl she and her friends had been hired to rescue, and hoping she wouldn't run into any more buma before finding her. Finally, she came to a large open area, and spotted what looked like her quarry drawing on a wall on the far side. "Hmm..." she hummed. "A map of Megatokyo... Cynthia?"
She'd come halfway across the open-air room by this time, and the little blonde girl stood and faced her, stepping back timidly.
"Don't be frightened, " the woman soothed. "Are you Cynthia?"
The girl looked about before making a small, affirming sound. "Who are you, lady?"
"I'm Priss," the red-suited woman replied. "I've come to rescue you." She stepped closer to the girl and kneeled, reaching out. "Oh look, you've gotten your clothes all dirty." Indeed, the girl's formerly white dress was closer to grey, though the blue bandanna around her neck was still fairly clean. "Are you alone here?"
Cynthia looked around again, before answering, "I don't know."
Priss narrowed her eyes. *I doubt it,* she thought. *This is feeling more like a trap every second. I can't move too fast, though, or she'll get spooked.*
The girl broke into her thoughts by pointing to a part of her picture and saying, "Look at this, lady."
"Hmm? I've seen that somewhere before..." replied Priss. Looking closer, she wondered what would posses a little girl to write 'Screw you!' under a yuckie-face doodle... it DID look familiar, though.
"I did that," Cynthia confided with a small, upwards twitch of her lips.
*Good,* thought Priss. *Hopefully she's beginning to trust me enough to go with me* "Well you're very talented!" she replied aloud. "Come on, let's go home. I'm sure your Mom and Poppa must be worried about you."
A slight quiver in her voice, Cynthia replied, "I have no such people..."
"Huh? What the..." *Why would anyone kidnap an orphan? Unless she was used as some kind of experimental subject...* "What the hell's going on here?" Priss vocalized, distracted from her 'nice adult person' act. Then, she noticed Cynthia's attention fixed on something behind her. With a feeling of dread, she looked over her shoulder.
To her surprise, it wasn't the blue buma she'd escaped from earlier jumping down from a wall, but some type she hadn't seen before, with a green visor, numerous flat, light plates and fins instead of the normal massive buma armor, and a network of gold tracery over much of its form, which glowed ever so slightly in the half-light of the city sky above. Unfortunately, that just meant it was probably some kind of extra-nasty experimental type. Priss went for the parts of her hand-cannon and snapped it together with practiced ease, while the robotic form stood there, examining them.
]ANALYSIS OF SUBJECT A: FORM INDICATES IMMATURE INDIVIDUAL. NOT SUITABLE AS PARTNER. SECONDARY SCAN INDICATES THAT THIS SUBJECT IS A (term meaning the same as "cyborg" but implying outdated technology). NOT SUITABLE AS PARTNER.
]ANALYSIS OF SUBJECT B: FORM MATCHES TERTIARY IDENTIFICATION DATA TO (88%). APPEARS TO BE PROTECTIVE OF SUBJECT A. CROSS INDEXING (ruler's child) ARCHIVE LISTING: DESCRIBED BEHAVIORAL MATCH: PROTECTING THE WEAK. ATTEMPTING (verbal) IDENTIFICATION.
]ERROR: (96%) CORRUPTION OF SPEECH SYNTHESIS LIBRARY.
Priss slapped the first magazine into the ugly little pistol she'd put together, just as the presumed buma confronting her gurgled, "ah-SAH-ga REE PREE-soo!" Her eyes widened as she heard it say what seemed to be her full name, if poorly synthesized.
She kept Cynthia moving back away from the android as she narrowed her eyes and growled out, "How do you know my name?", unconsciously flicking her free hand at herself as she did so, before bracing to fire.
]SUBJECT B IDENTIFIES WITH REGISTERED PARTNER'S (name and title). PROCEED.
]THIS UNIT IS TARGETED BY SUBJECT B WITH (heavy pistol). THREAT ASSESSMENT: MINIMAL. ANALYSIS: SUBJECT B IS WARY OF POOR SPEECH SYNTHESIS POSSIBLY INDICATING A HOSTILE UNIT. PROCEED.
]INITIATING PARTNER LINK.
Cursing, Priss squeezed off a shot and dodged further away from Cynthia, hoping to lure it after her. The android complied, ignoring the tungsten cored .50 caliber slug that had embedded itself in its chest and continuing its lunge, seemingly intent on turning her into a red smear on Cynthia's map. Instead, at the last second the many armor plates on its front side swung away, while rest of its mass flowed like thick liquid and seemed to regain some of what had shrunk away in the initial, underwater shape change. Then, with no time for more than a short shriek from Priss, it splashed around her and formed what had all the look of a mechanical cocoon.
"Lady...?" Cynthia clasped her hands in front of her mouth as the nice lady she'd been talking to was engulfed by a huge (to the little girl) robot.
"Heh heh heh... well, that's one less problem," chuckled the Bogie-buma in its now obviously synthesized voice as it stepped through a side door.
"I wanted to find out who she was working for, though," complained a woman who entered from the opposite direction, with the thin man from earlier and another who was quite a bit fatter.
A fourth man entered by the door Priss had originally used. "The real question is who sent our unusual friend there," he chided, nodding his orange-crowned head towards the cocoon, which was rearranging itself, the green visor moving into position roughly over the eyes of the woman inside and the fins moving about again. "Still, at least Cynthia is still ours. She is the mission objective, after all."
"Heh, guess you're right about that, Frederick." The massive blue buma clomped over to the petrified little girl and reached out an equally huge hand to grab her arm. Just before he could, though, it was severed in a hail of energy bolts from above, and he dropped to his knees with a mechanical howl of pain.
"Shit! Bogie, you stay here with me," ordered Frederick. "The rest of you, get up there and get rid of whoever did that!"
With a whoosh of displaced air the woman and her two companions leapt out of the open room and onto the platform level above. Looking around, they quickly spotted three hardsuits, one light green and grey, with a pair of ribbons dangling from the helmet, one pink and blue with red and white highlights, perched cutely on a ledge, and one white with blue trim, standing dramatically framed by the crescent moon.
"Don't tell me," sneered the woman. "Kidnapping is wrong and in the name of the moon you'll punish us. Hah! Who are you supposed to be?"
The woman in the white suit (as Nene had once put it, even armor couldn't hide -those- measurements) calmly replied, "The Knight Sabers."
"Are we supposed to be impressed by that?" asked the thin guy, before bursting out of his human disguise, revealing himself as another of the blue BU-55c buma. The fat guy and the woman followed suit, though the woman remained female styled, a BU-54c. He immediately unfolded his thruster pack and arm blades, and blasted off towards Saber Green. She leapt to meet him, dodging in midair to plant her hands on each side of his head and swing her legs down to grip his neck.
*Right... there!* she thought, winding up her right fist and activating the knuckle bombers, then slamming it down at the weak spot she'd picked out on the back of the buma's skull. It exploded, blowing the body backwards to fall into the room with Frederick, Bogie, Cynthia, and Priss, while Saber Green used the shockwave to push herself back to a landing on the platform.
Meanwhile, Saber Pink had hopped off her ledge and dashed sideways, the BU-54c keeping even with her until she stopped, then opening its heat beam array to turn her into Kentucky Fried Knight Saber.
Saber White had activated her own flight pack, and much like Green met her buma midair, but with an energy saber rather than a fist. The two halves of her buma fell to rest with the bits of the BU-54c that Saber Green had just slashed with her monoribbons while it was distracted by firing at Pink, who dodged out of the way. White angled her descent to take her into the open room, between Cynthia and her captors, which also put her between them and the cocoon.
Priss had barely had time for a shriek as the grey android charging her seemed to open up and engulf her, tendrils of its flowing core reaching around her to cushion the impact with the wall. *...* was pretty much the sum of her thoughts, combined with *I am sooo dead. Smothered by a melty buma, this is embarrassing.* Thus it was a bit of a surprise to her when she felt the touch of cool, dry air on her face, rather like her hardsuit's ventilation system. Not much of one on top of everything else, of course, but enough that she reflexively gasped a good lung full of it in without pausing to think of whether it might be drugged or poisoned.
The only thing that happened for a few seconds was feeling the weird buma's liquid innards flow over her skull and apparently around each hair follicle, then down, under her outfit and over the rest of her body... an odd, cool/tingly feeling, but hardly unpleasant, and nothing like the horrific rumors she'd heard about the Deep Psychology Scanner. With a growl, she stopped struggling against the restraining metal, since she had absolutely no leverage, and waited for a chance to get free. *I just wish I'd had my hardsuit when I got here, I could've gotten rid of the damn thing before it got to me.*
]FIRST STAGE LINK COMPLETE. ARCHIVES UPDATING FROM PARTNER'S MEMORY. REQUEST FOR PERSONAL COMBAT MODE RECEIVED.
]PERSONAL COMBAT MODE REQUIRES SECOND STAGE LINK FOR COMMAND FEEDBACK. TIME TO SECOND STAGE LINK: 38 SECONDS. INITIATE OBSERVATION MODE IN INTERIM.
As if on her cue, a grid of the glowing traces she'd seen when the mystery mechanoid first showed up formed in the open space around Priss's face, then were covered by a display similar to the one in her own hardsuit. It showed F. G. Frederick, the man she'd been hired to capture, talking to a woman and two other men, while the buma she'd escaped from on the highway was further away, and Cynthia stood rooted where she'd been when Priss had been engulfed. It also showed her that the fins the grey buma was covered in were moving around just beyond the viewpoint it was projecting, as she caught a glimpse of one in the edge of her vision every now and then.
External audio came up just in time for her to flinch at Bogie's mechanical scream as his arm was blown off, and she started struggling against the mass of metal around her again, knowing her friends would need her help against all those buma. She cursed at the lack of effect it had, and sighed with relief, but kept struggling, as only three of them were sent to deal with the other Knight Sabers.
]PARTNER IS BECOMING AGITATED. THREAT TO HER HIGHNESS'S COMRADES IMMANENT. OPERATING PROCEDURES OF PREVIOUS PERSONAL COMBAT UNIT INTERPRETED, CONFIGURING FOR PERSONAL COMBAT MODE. TIME TO SECOND STAGE LINK: 6 SECONDS
Priss felt herself being moved, from the off-balance position she'd been in to a more natural standing posture. It almost felt like she was wearing her normal hardsuit, except without the added height from the heels. *Not that I ever understood why Sylia thought it would be better to have 6" heels on combat suits anyway,* she thought with a grin. *Well, speak of the devil,* she continued, as Sylia's suit landed in front of her. At the same time, there was a wash of cool and tingly through her head, and it suddenly felt like she was barely wearing anything. A voice that wasn't a voice sounded in her head:
]SECOND STAGE LINK COMPLETE. PERSONAL COMBAT MODE ENGAGED. THIS UNIT FUNCTIONS ONLY TO SERVE YOU, PRINCESS. WHAT IS YOUR COMMAND?
*Bwah?* Priss tried moving again. This time, it worked, feeling even smoother than her Knight Sabers hardsuit.
Cynthia had not missed all this, as the white Saber had, having landed facing the buma. "Lady?" she asked, even more timidly than earlier.
"It's okay, Cynthia," soothed Priss, who now resembled a rather feminine, and blue, version of the original humanoid form of the grey and gold android, though a fair number of its fins and plates had been rearranged into a set of wing like extensions from the back, rather like the Pink Saber's suit. "Let's get you out of here."
"What?" Sylia turned sideways, to keep one eye on the buma as she checked her back. *That is definitely NOT Priss's hardsuit, but it sure sounds like her voice.*
Cynthia had no such reservations, though; hearing a friendly voice, even from a weird looking robot that had scared her before, was better than the bad men that had kidnapped her and the robot that had tried to grab her a few seconds ago. Besides, she'd already seen some of the people she'd been with turn into robots, so maybe Priss could too. She ran over to the blue-suited figure, and was scooped up in her arms.
"Not bad," Frederick complimented Saber White, drawing her attention back to him. "I'd say you're definitely superior to the Army's K-12 Armored Troopers. You really did a number on my friends. What do you hope to accomplish?"
Priss cut in with the comment she'd sarcastically made when the Sabers first formed. "To defend peace and justice, and rid the world of evil." She hoped that would convince Sylia of her identity if her voice had not.
"Heh. A worthy objective," said Frederick, "but to achieve it, you must first defeat me." With that, he shredded away the last of his clothes, arms and chest keeping their human disguise except for a trio of metal cables on each side of his neck, while from the pectorals down he was a mass of writhing metal tentacles. Quickly feeding them into and taking control of the headless body of the BU-55c Saber Green had killed, he brought it to its feet.
Sylia turned quickly to the strange suit that was apparently being worn by Priss, and ordered, "Get the girl out of here!" before spinning back to face the buma.
Frederick countered with a command to Bogie. "After them! Don't let those two escape!"
Sylia tried to stop the one-armed buma with shots from the palm blaster of her suit, but a telescoping fist from Frederick grabbed her arm and threw her to the wall. He started to crush Sylia's arm, but a laser blast from above distracted him as it blew half the synth-flesh off his face and ruined one eye. As Sylia got back to her feet, Saber Green, who'd fired the shot, and Saber Pink landed on either side of her. "Good shot, Linna," she congratulated on their scrambled radio link.
Frederick just laughed and lashed out with a storm of tentacles, sinking them into the wall when the three Knight Sabers dodged away on their jets, starting to absorb the structure of Aqua City.
The hardsuited Priss ran through the corridors of Aqua City with Cynthia on her arm, then pulled up short as Bogie leapt out of a cross-corridor ahead of her and opened his heat array. Before he could fire, though, a grenade blasted him from behind, knocking him down and scrambling his processes for a moment. Over the groaning, orange-dripping buma, Leon asked, "Seen a pretty biker anywhere around here? I was hoping we could go on a date."
Sensing that its Partner now wished to hide her identity, the suit computer scrambled her voice in much the same way her normal suit would as she replied. "Cut the crap. I just want to get this kid out of here. Which way?"
Leon got serious again as the buma stirred, and reached for more ammo as he replied. "Uh oh. Go that way!" He gestured along the corridor the buma had come out of, though in the other direction, before continuing to reload.
"Thanks!" Priss chirped as she took off again. Another two shots served to put Bogie down for good, a hole blown completely through his torso and head gone. It was a good thing, because that was the last of his ammunition. Leon made his way back down the corridor he'd come in.
On the open deck of Aqua City, things weren't going too well. Linna, Sylia, and Nene were doing little more than dodging from place to place as tentacles made the floor and walls bulge as if giant moles were tunneling through them. Near the bridge, Priss fell afoul of a similar bulge, losing her hold on Cynthia as she tripped and rolled away from the swelling metal vein. Unfortunately that put her on the other side of it from the girl, and it grew to man-height and beyond before she could do more than get to her feet. A bunch of tentacles wrapped around a nearby crane and made it lash out at her, scoring a deep gouge in the deck as she dodged.
Priss cursed as she heard Cynthia call out for help, then was forced to dodge again as the crane came back for a second pass. *Dammit, I'm going to need my suit - MY suit, that I'm familiar with - and maybe a motoslave to get back to her!*
Reluctantly, she turned and ran, making use of the speed she'd discovered this new... whatever it was... had to cross the long bridge in a fraction of the time it would have taken her unassisted.
Leon made his way to the foot of the bridge just in time to see Cynthia climbing a ladder away from the tentacles below her, while farther away a huge mass of them rose pulsing into the night.
At the foot of the tentacle mountain, the three remaining Knight Sabers stared up in dismay. "THIS is a BUMA?" yelled Sylia.
"That's impossible!" gasped Linna.
A giant, demonic looking buma head had formed at the top of the mound, and roared its anger at the sky.
Mackie had been rather surprised to see an unfamiliar blue hardsuit, rather more ornate in appearance than his older sister's designs, come running across the bridge from Aqua city, heading straight for the "Silky Doll delivery truck" that was actually one of the Knight Sabers' transport vehicles. He was even more surprised to hear Priss's voice coming from it, especially when he knew the only suit she'd be likely to be wearing was still in the back of the truck, along with her red motoslave.
"MACKIE! Great! Break out the med-kit, I know a little girl who's probably got a few scrapes and bumps by now, and I'll be coming right back with her as soon as I get into my regular suit!"
She'd reached up to take off the helmet while saying this, but before even touching it it seemed to fly apart and relocate, the fins on the sides moving down to her shoulders, the mask and visor dropping to her chest, and the top and rear of the helmet vanishing away, presumably to her back. She could still feel the skullcap that had insinuated itself around her hair, though, and she stopped dead as she realized that the HUD overlays were still present in her vision, even without the screen. In particular, her familiar blue and red hardsuit seemed to be getting special attention from them. "WHAT THE HELL!"
]ENHANCED OPTICS REMAIN ACTIVE IN COMBAT STANDBY MODE, explained the voice that wasn't a voice. RETRIEVED DATA INDICATE SIMILAR CAPABILITIES IN YOUR HIGHNESS'S EXISTING OPTIC SYSTEMS
*Oh no. I thought I'd just imagined that... I don't have time to go crazy now!*, Priss thought at it with a sour expression on her face.
]YOUR HIGHNESS'S MENTAL CONDITION IS CURRENTLY WITHIN OPERATIONAL TOLERANCES OF STABILITY.
"Gaaaah. No time now, I have work to do. Off!", she commanded, hoping she wouldn't have to spend too long figuring out the release mechanism for this suit.
]NEGATIVE. COMBAT STANDBY MODE IS THE MINIMUM ALLOWABLE PROTECTION LEVEL IN CLOSE PROXIMITY TO LIVE FIRE ZONES.
"Dammit, get OFF of me, you piece of shit! I need to get my real hardsuit!"
]THIS UNIT EXCEEDS THE CAPABILITIES OF YOUR HIGHNESS'S PREVIOUS PERSONAL COMBAT UNIT IN ALL RESPECTS. CONFIGURATION FOR LINKAGE WITH UNIT DESIGNATED AS "MOTOSLAVE" (a targeting ring popped into existence around her motoslave, then vanished just as quickly) IN PROGRESS, ESTIMATED TIME TO COMPLETION 9 SECONDS.
"This is not over," Priss muttered as she let the helmet reform around her head and hopped onto the transformable motorcycle, revving it and heading back to the action.
Mackie picked his jaw off the floor and shot a worried look at her back as she sped off. "Priss?" *What was that about...?*, the boy wondered.
The Knight Sabers had fallen back to the foot of the Aqua City bridge to regroup after Linna and Sylia had both been caught by the still-growing tentacles and thrown into walls. "It's absorbing all of Aqua City into its matrix!", gasped Sylia.
Movement on the one remaining unassimilated tower caught Nene's attention. "Look, it's Cynthia! Oh no, I'm almost out of thruster fuel!"
"Me, too," Linna chimed in.
"This battle has drained my extended flight pack as well," added Sylia. "and even if we could save her, I don't see what we could do against that... monster-buma." *And I wish I knew what has happened to Priss, if that was Priss. It's not like her to leave a child in a danger zone!*
"It's hopeless!" cried Nene.
Like the cavalry riding to the rescue, this was when Priss came roaring up on the motoslave. "Hey gang, did you miss me?", she greeted as she pulled up.
Not sparing time for further pleasantry, Sylia pointed to where Cynthia was backed against the base of a communications array, urging, "Quick, save the girl!"
"Right!", she replied. "You give covering fire. Ready? Let's go!" Revving the engine again, she bounced her way up a clump of knotted tentacles and used them as a jump, activating the motoslave's transformation in midair. *I sure hope you were telling the truth about being able to do this, Miss Crazy Voice In My Head*
]MOTOSLAVE LINKAGE COMPLETE was her only reply, as the over-the-shoulder fans spun up, and she flew to Cynthia's perch. She landed and once again gathered the girl in her arms, but before she could take off five huge tentacles reached around the edge of the platform and grabbed the motoslave's frame, while more of them began to assimilate the platform itself. The whole tower was beginning to look disturbingly like an arm sized to match the huge head, holding them up like a prize in front of it.
]WARNING! MOTOSLAVE UNIT IS UNDER ATTACK BY NANO-ASSIMILATORS!
]THIS UNIT IS NOT VULNERABLE TO ATTACK BY NANO-ASSIMILATORS.
]SUBJECT "CYNTHIA" IS VULNERABLE TO ATTACK BY NANO-ASSIMILATORS.
]THIS UNIT RECOMMENDS DISENGAGING MOTOSLAVE UNIT AND RETREAT WITH SUBJECT "CYNTHIA"
"Great idea," growled Priss, "So glad I've got a BOARDER to tell me these things." The clawed hand closed further, starting to crush the motoslave's frame. Hurriedly, she commanded it to open and release her, which fortunately it was not yet too damaged to do. She vaguely noticed a dark grey helicopter taking off from the far side of Aqua City, but ignored it for the moment.
"Oh no! Ladeeeeeeee!", Cynthia cried as a tentacle reached for her foot. *Why won't they leave me alone! They're bad, anyway, they're part of that robot-man who stole me. They should be stopped!* She turned, to look at the monstrous buma head that was perched on a mountain of tentacles, rapidly coiling themselves into a body and upper arm connected to the hand she and Priss were trapped by. *Stop!* She thought at it, glaring with her eyes and with the overhead picture she saw sometimes. "STOOOOP!"
Priss got ready to jump, in a suit that had yet to demonstrate independent flight ability, but Cynthia seemed focused on the huge metallic skull leering at them. She stiffened, then yelled, "STOOOOP!"
In space, a satellite obeyed the commands fed to it, to find a certain target and stop it. A blue-white beam, several hundred times hotter than the sun, stabbed out, lighting the darkness of space with its fury. It plunged down through the atmosphere, diminished slightly in much the same way that a rock is diminished slightly by erosion as it's thrown through a waterfall. Down, though the clear, high skies, through the clouds, through the Megatokyo smog, and through the forehead of the monstrous buma that had attracted the ire of its mistress. It stopped its roaring, and all over the mangled Aqua City the tentacles drooped, in some cases falling to pieces as the directing intelligence behind them lost contact. The palm of the giant hand continued to writhe, though, and caught Cynthia's right leg with several small strands just before Priss could jump for it. They quickly tore through the artificial flesh and began their work.
*The satellite weapons...*, a stunned Priss thought, staring at the stricken monster-buma head.
]WARNING! SUBJECT "CYNTHIA" IS UNDER ATTACK BY NANO-ASSIMILATORS!
"What! SHIT!", she swore. "What do I do now? Cynthia!"
]PREVENTION OF FURTHER NANO-ASSIMILATOR CONTAMINATION URGENT! PREEMPTIVE REMOVAL OF INFECTED LIMB WILL REMAIN EFFECTIVE FOR 1.8 SECONDS.
The little girl just stared at her leg with horrified grey eyes, images flashing through her mind - the buma that had delayed them in the corridor, opening its chest to fire - a camera, watching her - the tentacle ripping into her foot - the city from high above - herself, lying on a table with cables attached all over - the tentacle again, and the pain as it invaded her leg - the beam that had just blown through the skull on the mountain of tentacles - the city from above again, but closer; she could see herself and her friend. "Heeeeelp meeeeeeee!" she screamed, as she reached for the place in her mind that she'd told to stop the monster and mentally pounded on it. A hellstorm of the blue beams struck out in response, pounding the mountain of buma to pieces and toppling the huge hand towards the bay.
*She never even knew she was a buma...* Clinging for both their lives, Priss apologized to Cynthia, "I'm sorry honey, but this is going to hurt. I PROMISE I'll make it all better as soon as we're safe!" Blinking through the sudden tears in her eyes, she extended one of the fins on her arm, and slashed through Cynthia's infected leg at the thigh, quickly grabbing it with her other hand and clamping down to prevent blood loss, not bothering to notice that the "blood" was buma-orange as she wrapped her dirtied arm around the shocked girl's torso and kicked off the falling hand, still trying to crush them. It finally blew the motoslave's powerplant just as she did so, the explosion shattering the huge hand.
From the transport truck, the other Knight Sabers watched with horror as their teammate and rescuee seemed to be blown to pieces. They'd fled the area when the beamsat had started firing, not wanting to be caught in its blasts. "Priss..." the Sabers' leader whispered, while Linna staggered back against the truck.
"Oh, kami," Nene howled, as she dropped to her armored knees. "Nooo..." The pink-suited Knight Saber began sobbing, not caring if she made a scene.
The circling grey tilt-rotor spiraled higher and lowered the engine nacelles into cruise configuration. The poker faced executive inside gave commands into a microphone before sitting back for the ride to Genom Tower on the other side of the bay.
Mackie jumped down from the truck and walked over to Nene, the most obviously distraught of the three. He wrapped an arm around her armored shoulders. "Hey, you know Priss," he comforted. "She's rough on the gear, but always gets through in the end."
Nene didn't bother to answer, she just wrapped her arms around him and hugged... of course, since she was still in her armor this reduced Mackie to a strangled wheeze as he tried to breathe. Fortunately for him, that was when Priss's strange new suit burst out of the water to land on the dock, the whirling blades that had driven it out of the water splitting up and returning to their positions as the fins and wings he'd seen when she came for the motoslave, the fused legs separating, the torso and head covered in a large bulge of the suit's material. It split open to reveal Priss still holding the rather grey-looking Cynthia with one hand and keeping her from bleeding out from the stump of her right leg with the other. "Medical emergency, Sylia! Get the van ready!"
Shaken out of her surprise, the white Saber scrambled into the van's side door, hitting the emergency release on her armor even as she dropped the ambulance-style pallet from its stowed position on the wall. Kicking the disconnected pieces of her suit out of the way, she directed Priss to lay the girl down and let go. *I'd hoped I'd never have to use this equipment, but it's a good thing I had it installed,* she thought as she yanked a proper tourniquet tight. "Mackie! Get driving for the base! Linna, get Nene in here and then radio ahead, tell Doctor Raven to have the buma tool kit ready in the operating room!"
Priss just kneeled next to the pallet and held Cynthia while Sylia worked with what limited supplies they had that would help a damaged buma. Finding out whether the girl was totally artificial or just a high-percentage bumaroid would have to wait. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I had to do it honey, we'll fix you right up," she gasped, over and over.
In a residential district devastated by the Second Kanto Earthquake of 2026 and still unrecovered, a man with bright blue hair and a woman with bright red hair, both looking to be in their early twenties and carrying massive travel-packs worn over long, black coats, stepped cautiously through the darkened streets. They moved like they were expecting trouble, but without fearing it - like great beasts on the prowl. Finally, they stopped in front of a partially collapsed boarding house, not significantly different from anything on the rest of the street.
The pair seemed to concentrate for a moment, standing facing slightly different directions as they scanned their surroundings, but apparently found no sign of what they were looking for. The man turned to his ... sister? cousin? wife? ... with a hopeful look, but she shook her head. Drooping slightly, he put an arm around her shoulders, and they continued off down the street. They had noticeably less spring in their steps than on the approach, but just before turning another corner the woman slipped her arm up behind his pack as well.
Next time: Brian J. Mason jr. is a power-obsessed snake in the grass. See him walk down the path of destiny... a slightly altered destiny, anyway... in the award winning feature fic _What About Brian?_ Oh, wait, that's actually the next chapter of Bubblegum Disaster.
I know that Priss hates buma. I know she's not acting like it in regards to Cynthia and especially the alien hardsuit/robot/whatever she's so calmly wandering around in. Rest assured, it will be addressed in the next chapter. No, she's not ACTUALLY an alien princess, the entire civilization that created the suit is gone, and if you consider that a great ape is a 97% or so match for human, an 88% match for gross anatomy (aka, 'tertiary identification data') isn't all that exact. If I was going to make her an alien princess, her last name would be "Kotobuki" and she'd be blonde.
Many thanks to my prereaders: Patricia Kostan (who knew nothing of BGC, and helped make sure the story was understandable to people who were not familiar with the series), Nathan Baxter (who sent me liberal doses of that most underestimated of useful things, Unbridled Excitement), Hide Hasegawa (who also helped with Japanese), and Kaitlin Coelho.
Bubblegum Crisis belongs to Youmex and Animeigo, I make no claims otherwise. Please don't sue me, I have no money to speak of and fanfic does more to promote your products than anything else I know of - without it, I probably never would have known about anime at all, and I'd certainly never have bought the BGC tapes based on the sucky box copy.
EOF