"YOU BECAME THE BOSS! YOU ARE GREAT!"
- Streets of Rage
The doors of Eclipse's office were blown open in a powerful explosion. The sound of gunfire and more distant explosions rocked through the lower floors of the building. Eclipse, Armbrust, and all of GOTT's top ES agents were gathered in the central headquarters trying desperately to push back the invasion, but all of their efforts were failing.
Soldiers of an unknown faction stormed into the room. They were uniformly clad in army gear and tactical masks that kept their faces hidden. The flood of anonymous foot soldiers parted in the middle so a pair of more colorful young women could walk through.
Eclair stood with her hand on her hip. She was wearing a long white combat dress that was open in the front, revealing her midriff and her black nylon shorts. Her long brunette hair was tied into a braid on her left shoulder.
Lumiere stopped just beside her partner and tipped her head respectfully toward Eclipse. Her hair was styled in a bright violet bob cut. She was wearing a short blue dress with white leggings and a white shawl.
A-ou and Un-ou instantly recognized these as the forms they had used when the four of them fought on a certain space colony decades ago.
No one in GOTT had heard from the two ES agents since they disappeared in the middle of investigating an interplanetary kidnapping ring. This was not the sort of contact Eclipse was hoping for. She turned toward her GOTT colleagues with a concerned look.
"Who are they, Alv?"
Hidden sensors placed all over the office had extensively scanned Eclair and Lumiere's bodies as soon as they entered into the office. Alv and Dvergr were interpreting the information together and appeared to be confused.
"Their bioreadings are an exact match for Lumiere and Eclair," Alv replied. "But…" Her voice trailed off.
"But what?" Eclipse asked.
"Their brain scans are toast," Dvergr said. "Mentally, the ID system has no idea who they are."
"Do you guys like our new look?" Eclair asked cheerfully. "Well, new-ish, at least."
"We've lost the ability to generate new appearances for ourselves," Lumiere politely said to the GOTT defenders. "But we're still able to reset to previous forms we've used when we need to go undercover. It's a good thing you stored all of that in our Nano-DNA. These bodies were the most suitable for a military coup operation."
"And Lumiere and I always did like these the best," Eclair said, playfully brushing her gloved fingers through her braid. "I think we'll keep them on for a while."
Lumiere cut the reunion short. Her artificial smile quickly changed to a stern look of contempt.
"The people we're helping have opened our eyes toward all of GOTT's injustices," she said to Eclipse and the others. "This organization has forced their will onto the galaxy for long enough."
"We're here to end it," Eclair added. Her fists began to glow as she removed her Power limiters.
Eclipse and her ES agents had no choice but to fight.
The office had been reduced nearly to ruins in the battle. The GOTT members were strewn motionlessly across the carpet. Those who weren't already dead were on the brink of dying.
Eclair leaned back in Eclipse's former chair with her left arm tucked behind her head and her light brown boots crossed over Eclipse's former desk. She was casually fixing her lipstick.
Lumiere stood at Eclair's side with an innocent smile on her face and her hands elegantly folded over her waist. The rest of the invading soldiers were guarding the office door.
Eclair's tiny earring flickered. After she finished putting the cap back on her lipstick, she touched her forefinger to her ear.
"Agent Eclair reporting."
She paused as she listened to the voice in her head. Then she replied.
"That's right, sir. GOTT Headquarters has been secured."
She briefly paused again. Her eyes scanned over the carnage on the floor.
"Naw, I don't think we'll be needing any more backup," she said. "Let's stick to Plan A. Lumiere and I will coordinate things from here while the rest of the syndicate works on liberating the other planets."
She lowered her hand from her ear when the conversation ended.
'Liberating' in this case meant quietly replacing the heads of each world with puppet governments and brainwashing all of the children as future political sleeper agents, creating an endless galaxy-wide era of secretive control and manipulation. Eclair and Lumiere saw this as an improvement compared to GOTT's more violent and destructive ways of going about business. Their mental conditioning had taken their pesky moral reservations out of the equation.
One of the white-colored shapes on the floor started to move. Tweedledee rose to her feet with a weak groan. Her eyes widened when she saw Tweedledum's mangled and charred corpse lying beside her. Turning toward Eclair and Lumiere, she grit her teeth in rage.
Tweedledee charged at the desk and screamed.
"You won't get away with this, you bi-…!"
Lumiere placed herself in front of Eclair in a flash. She cut off Tweedledee's attack with a swift knee to the gut.
"Don't worry about your partner, Tweedledee. I'll be sure to scrub your brain extra carefully," Lumiere whispered as the pain-stricken Tweedledee stumbled into her and slowly collapsed back to the ground. "Tomorrow you won't even remember him."
Tweedledee could see Lumiere looking down at her with an evil grin just before her world went black.
"So what do you say we should do with these guys, Lumiere?" Eclair asked from her desk with a yawn.
"I think we should have any surviving lower level ES members wrapped up and shipped off for Mind Sterilization. Their combat abilities will make them useful as our support staff," Lumiere answered in a polite and official manner. "But sentence the remaining higher-ranking GOTT commanders to execution. Their political ties will just bog down the efficiency of our operation."
Eclair nodded and cleared her throat.
"You heard the lady," she said to her masked subordinates at the office door. "Get this junk cleaned up."
