Flight two, Reckless Hearts
When Gally arrived at the scene of the Boomer rampage, she was quickly assaulted with a barrage of sights, sounds, and smells. All around her she saw death and destruction on a level only someone of Makaku or Jasugaan's level should have been capable of. Trees had been torn from the ground and thrown through shop windows, benches had been ripped up from their moorings, twisted and torn apart, and tossed as if they were tissue paper.
But the property destruction was not the only damage the Boomer had made. Less than a meter away from her feet was a man, or at least part of a man. Everything from the upper torso down had been torn off and dropped a few feet farther away, leaving intestines and bodily fluids leaking out onto the sidewalk.
This angered the young girl, filling her heart with hate and an undeniable urge to kill and destroy. Her vision was flooded with what seemed like white light and everything became black and white clear. She knew who her enemy was and that it must be utterly annihialated, lest it hurt more innocents.
She reached into her rucksack and removed a large, long bundle. She bit the knot on the tie with her teeth and yanked, letting the cloth fall away to reveal a long, thick blade which gleemed with deadly intent.
She stepped into the building where she heard the most commotion, a half-demolished flower shop, and prepared herself for the worst. She got what she had wished for.
A large creature stood before her, tearing at the displays of flowers, sending petals of every conceivable color into the air. If she could have watched with indifference, she would have noticed the sheer beauty of the effect, but her concentration was focused solely on the monster.
It was a gruesome-looking thing, with metal clinging to its skeletal body in a half-melted way, too much here, too little there. The entire thing pulsed and throbbed as if it were alive, and the screeching sound it made could make any normal human shudder in fear. It reached out a long, vicious looking hand/claw, and grabbed the cash register, and in a stunning display of technology gone mad, it absorbed the metal and wiring into itself, increasing the overall bulk of the already top-heavy creature.
That was enough, Gally decided. She had seen enough of her opponent to decide on a course of action. With blade raised high, she jumped into battle...
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Shortly before Gally had arrived, Leon, Daley, and Amishi were already on the scene, trying to understand what was going on and how best to deal with the situation. Roadblocks had been put up around a three block radius and more than a dozen armored police units had been rushed in, carrying heavy assault rifles. This was not near enough for a Boomer, however, and almost every one of the officers realized this. Those who didn't were the young and brash type who had the traditional belief that they would live forever.
"What in the hell are all of you doing standing around for?!" Leon yelled angrily, waving a fist in the air, "All of you move in and find that Boomer!"
"Yes, sir!" they answered in unison, then rushed into the building, guns high and randomly aimed at anything the owners conceived as a threat. A few random bursts of armor-piercing rounds emanated from the building, but other than that, all was silent. The officers had come up empty.
"Anything, yet?" Leon demanded, clutching half a headset to the side of his face.
"Nothing, sir?" a static-filled voice responded, "The Boomer is no longer in the building."
"Then search the next one. We're not letting it get away!" he shouted.
"Uh, partner, I hate to tell you this but..." Daley noted dryly, but with a hint of worry.
Leon turned to look at his partner, the anger seething from every pore now, "What do you want now..." he cut off as he saw what Daley was talking about.
Amishi was climbing into one of the armored K-suits that were used in extreme Boomer cases. She had a serious look on her normally carefree face as she strapped into the suit. She looked like she was ready to kill...
"What in the hell do you think you're doing, Amishi!" Leon shouted, running up to the suit.
"What does it look like?" the girl asked, staring straight ahead, "It is my duty to stop rogue Boomers no matter the cost."
"This is your first time out! What if you get hurt, or worse?!"
She turned her head and looked down at Leon, a bit of the sweetness returning to her face, "Don't worry. I'm an ADPolice Officer after all. Danger is my middle name!"
"Your middle name is gonna be mud if you hurt yourself!" Leon argued.
Amishi paid no attention to the young man's protest's and flipped a switch, causing the chest plate to flip down and seal in place, confining her within the armored suit for the duration of combat. The metal faceplate seemed to gleam through it's camera eyes, as if there were some sort of malicious intent in the armored warrior.
Daley calmly walked up behind Leon and placed a delicate, effeminate hand on his partner's shoulder, "She is a K-suit pilot, Leon. It is her job."
"I know. But the chief is still gonna kill me..." then he realized his partner's hand, "Get off me, Wong. I'm not in the mood to deal with your crap right now!"
Daley removed his hand and raised the other in a form of mock surrender, "Excuse me for trying to be the strong, supportive partner!"
"Supportive my ass!" Leon growled.
It was at that moment that Leon detected movement. This in itself should not be strange. He was in the middle of a disaster area with ADP officers rushing to and fro searching for the Boomer and any injured survivors. The place was filled with movement. But what he saw, or rather felt, was far more graceful than any Boomer or ADP grunt. Whatever was out there moved with feminine grace and agility, and that could only mean one thing in his mind...
"Dammit! They're here already!" he growled.
"Who?" Daley asked, a bit confused at Leon's emotional turnaround.
"The Knight Sabers!" Leon answered, "But they're not gonna beat us this time. We got here first for once!"
Leon was wrong. The female movement he felt was not a Knight Saber. Something far more deadly was roaming the streets this time.
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Anger. Anger and pain. And hell's fire, the purest hell fire one can imagine, running through veins of plastic and wire. Veins connected to servos and plates, and adapters and motorization systems and articulators. Articulators which allowed a metal hand to extend, grip, bash, pound, tear, wrench, and grab. A hand that was grabbing a block of metal, intricately and carefully carved into a bladed weapon with an edge so fine one could barely see it. An edge that was cutting into a monster far more gruesome than any found in ancient movies and comic books.
These were not thoughts. These were not mere statements. These were actions. Actions broken down into the most intricate detail, carefully studied, defined, simplified, and stated. This was the way Gally's mind worked when she was in battle. Everything becomes complex, then simplified, taking it all in her mind's eye in a single instant, than breaking the situation down to only what is important.
Of course, she does not realize she has this gift. All she knows is that when the rage hits her, everything becomes white, and then it becomes brutal.
It was getting very white right now. It would be whiter in moments...
Boomers do not think the same way as humans, nor do they interpret data in the same way Gally's combat-honed mind does. No, Boomers analyze everything and anything that comes in their path, breaks each and every object down into sub-catagories, and monitors every little detail for change, never losing track of the big picture while studying the small details. Nothing is left to chance in a Boomer's core. Everything it does is done because that is its job.
Rogue Boomers are another thing entirely. Just as their sane counterparts monitor everything at once, rogue Boomers find themselves capable of focusing on only one thing at a time. No detail, no scrutinizing, no analysis, no big picture. Their greatest weakness and greatest threat all mixed into one.
The subject the rogue Boomer in the flower shop was attempting to focus on was a small creature. It had no idea what a girl was, its brain having lost nearly all files when it went mad, but it knew enough to realize that the creature was "Bad". It had a weapon that was causing it "harm", "hurting" it and damaging its systems. It wanted to lash out, but with each time it tried, all it managed to do was damage more of the building.
It didn't really care. It was not designed to care in the first place, and now that it was insane, it cared even less. All it wanted was for the "creature" to stop "hurting" it.
Gally attacked the Boomer without mercy. No quarter drawn and none given, so to speak. Her blade bit into its body over and over, tearing machinery components and spurting fluid with every strike. This was good in her mind. If it could bleed, it could die, and she was going to make sure it bled a lot.
She pounded relentlessly at the thing, hoping with each strike that it would go down and stay down, but it refused to die as easily as the gutter filth she was used to. And though its combat skills were nowhere near Makaku's or Jassugan's, it was still a force to be reckoned with, and it's arms were still powerful enough to crush her body into metallic splinters.
One of those arms, a large, overly bulky thing with pincers, tried for her head in an attempt to crush her brains and end its torment, only to make contact with a nearby support piller, completely destroying it and bringing more rubble down around them. Gally decided that she'd had enough of that arm, so with one quick, skilled slash, she forever removed it as an obstacle. The arm pounded to the ground pathetically, fluids spurting from the damaged end.
But a mere lost arm was not near enough to stop a Boomer, and Gally realized this the hard way when it lashed out at her with one of its grotesquely thin legs. Its action was foolish, since it took out its own support and brought itself to the ground, but it finished what it set out to do by launching its opponent away.
Gally grunted in imagined pain when the force of the Boomer's kick knocked her against a crumbling wall. Though her body could not feel pain, that was not necessarily a good thing. She could not recognize all of her damage, only visible scratches and wound, and she had no onboard computer like some science fiction suped-up heroine might have to tell her what was wrong. That is why she did not know about the tear along one side of her jacket sleeve and the bolt of metal that had ripped through a hydraulic pipe on her wrist, gushing precious fluid that kept her arm active and ready for battle.
Even if she had known about her arm at that point, she most likely would have trudged ahead anyway. She had never before backed down from a fight once it had begun, and she wasn't about to start such a trend now. With a leap, and a scream of anger, she rushed forward, slamming her blade deep into the Boomer's head.
It howled, an agonizing scream that echoed around the room, causing the fighter to wince in pain at the sound. She had to stop the noise, and there was only one way she knew. She raised her fist, the one she did not realize was gushing fluid, and started batting at the creature's head, still keeping it in place with the embedded blade in the other hand. She batted it back and forth, like a mouse playing with a ball, only with much more violent intent, smashing up the metal face a little more with each pounding blow.
Finally, with one last heaved blow, she managed to separate the speaker from the creature's face, sending it flying through the air, a sparking, battered mess. The howl stopped and the creature crumbled to the ground, finally dead.
"And stay dead..." Gally spat at the thing, almost pitying its grotesque form. It was a good fight, she admitted, but not a really satisfying one. There was no real thrill. She had done good, she knew, but so much damage had been done, so many lives had been lost. If only she had been there sooner, destroyed the thing faster than she had, perhaps then she would feel better about the whole mess. As it was, there was a gnawing feeling chewing away at her insides.
She walked over to where her rucksack and keyboard lay, the last items of her old world lay in those two objects. A few pieces of metal and plastic were all she had to remember the way things were back there. The thought saddened her. She had no idea what she was going to do now. Whatever form of law enforcement that existed would certainly be after her now, she was certain, and if it should come to a showdown between her and them, more innocents would most likely be hurt or killed.
She reached down and grabbed the two objects, flinging them over her shoulder as if they weighed nothing. She turned for the opened doorway, which had become more of a gouge in the wall thanks to the Boomer, and was about to walk away when she noticed something, something not right about her surroundings. She hadn't sensed it before, of course she was in battle before and had no time to think about such things.
She turned around and scanned the walls over, looking for what may be lurking in the shadows. She was right. There, hiding in a darkened corner of the room were two figures, one in green, the other in pink and red. Their bodies were hardened metal, like armor, and their faces were featureless half-globes. It was like she was staring at the past, a remembrence of a story told to her by a friend who would be father, of knights in shining armor, only these were knights of some science-fiction age. It was a mystifying sight, to say the least.
She would not let her awe show through however, and using her deepest, most hateful voice, she asked, "What do you want?"
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Late was not usually a word one would associate with the Knight Sabers, but for this one instance out of dozens, they were too far behind on the clock. Too many problems and too many hazards were in their way. A weak ledge that Nene landed on, causing it to collapse beneath her. A satellite array that moved before Linna had a chance to even respond. So many situations that degraded a normal night's work into the worst string of bad luck a human being could have.
The two vigilante's spirits were in a shambles. Linna, who had nearly perfected the jump-thrust technique her first time out, was now at her lowest ebb in agility, an insult to her years of sports and exercise that led up to this moonlighting career. Nene, who had always been the worst fighter of the group, was brought down a few more emotional notches by her own pathetic display of mere movement when she had been doing this for half a dozen missions.
This was not what you would call their finest hour.
That was the case, and that was the shape they were in when they finally arrived on the scene, ready to fight it out and get it over with as quickly as possible. Each one wanted to be home soon, so they could relax and bathe and get some rest before going back to their respective day jobs the next morning.
Their mental state was so wracked that if they had actually gotten into a combat situation, they would most likely be torn to shreds before they even knew what was going on. They were slower than normal and they were more tired than usual.
Fortunately, fate had intervened with a pinch-hitter, so to speak.
At the scene of the rampage, in the epicenter of destruction, the Boomer was fighting tooth, claw, and anything else it could find, with what appeared to be a young girl, maybe twelve, but no older than fourteen. Though at first glance, the outcome seemed to be in the Boomer's favor, their opinions soon changed when they saw the girl sheer off one of it's arms with a wicked looking blade. The sight took the two aback, to say the least.
"What the hell?!" Linna shouted through her radio.
"Who is that kid?!" Nene said in shock.
"What's going on over there?" Sylia demanded through their radios, "Give me a status report, Linna. Nene, give me a view on the situation."
"Uh..." Nene hesitated.
"Now!" Sylia shouted.
"Uh, right away!" Nene answered, jumping over to a nearby outcropping to get a better view for Sylia's systems.
"Linna, what's going on?" Sylia asked.
"Someone is fighting the Boomer," Linna answered.
"Who? The ADPolice?"
"No. Not them..."
"Then who?"
"A little girl..."
"What?!"
"Got it!" Nene announced cheerfully, proud of her accomplishment. Standing before her was a standard security camera, wires extruding from its back and into Nene's suit. She had successfully rerouted the camera's video feed directly to Sylia's van, beaming all the information she could acquire from her scanners along with it.
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Back in the van, a seemingly dead video monitor came to life with images of the battle between the Boomer and the girl. Off to one side, Nene's scanner data scrolled by, displaying what little information they were able to acquire.
"Absolutely incredible..." Sylia said, studying the information, "If this is true than that means..." she gasped in realization, then slammed her hand on the radio transmitter, "Nene, Linna, you have to get that girl to come back with you!"
"What?! How?" Linna asked, her voice warbled by the radio, but not enough to hide the shock in her tone.
"She's beating up a Boomer single-handedly. How can we grab her?" Nene asked.
"I don't care how, just do it!" Sylia demanded, then cut the radio. She turned to look at the screen again, watching the child/warrior in action and mumbling to herself, "Magnificent."
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Linna and Nene watched the child/warrior with a different set of opinions then Sylia did. They watched how she reached in and yanked out a large chunk of the Boomer's torso with what appeared to be no effort whatsoever. And yet, despite all of the damage the girl was inflicting, the mechanized monster just wouldn't go down. It somehow managed to keep itself alive just enough so it could continue fighting back.
"So how are we going to grab her, Linna?" Nene asked. Even though she was the supposed "Veteran" of the two, she deferred to Linna for guidance. Whether this was out of age, fear, or respect, was known only to her.
"I... I don't really know. I mean, she's really going at that Boomer. What could she do to us if we got in her way?"
"I don't want to think about that..." Nene said fearfully, "She looks really mean!"
"Well, we have to think of something! Dammit! I wish Priss were here. She'd just rush in and attack," Linna said solemnly. She couldn't believe she actually wanted that pale-skinned biker girl here, but under the circumstances, another pair of hands could make all the difference.
"Maybe we could wait until she kills the Boomer and then try talking to her," Nene suggested, "I'm sure she'll calm down by then."
"Yeah, right. She'll probably run off the moment she's..." Linna trailed off when she noticed something, "Nene! Look at her arm!"
Nene did as she was told and looked, and her jaw nearly dropped to the floor by what she had seen. The girl's jacket had been ripped along one sleaze, baring her arm to the world, and what it looked like was not natural.
Hydraulics, actuators, circuits and wiring ran along a metal framework that composed the entirety of her arm. It was mechanical, through and through, and that thought made Nene shiver. If the arm was a robot's, did that mean the rest of her was too? That would explain how she was standing up to a Boomer, but that also raised more problems and questions. Was she another Boomer? Was she a new anti-Boomer weapon? If not, then who was she and why was she fighting it out with such a creature when she should be hiding her own existence?
These problems became temporarily moot when Nene saw the battle draw to a close.
The girl, who had been doing increasingly well against the Boomer, finally finished it off with a few quick punches, letting it's ruined bulk drop to the ground with tremendous force. She then reached down and extracted her blade, which glistened with hydraulic fluid and other machinery liquids.
She turned away from the dead creature, not even caring to look over her handiwork, then walked over to where a rucksack and an electric keyboard were lying on the ground. She reached down and grabbed them in one fluid motion, and was about to walk away, when she noticed the two hard-suited figures.
"What do you want?" she demanded, fire blazing in her eyes.
Linna finally got a closer, unobscured look at the girl and what she saw scared her. Her face, which under normal circumstances would have been cute, perhaps even pretty, were marked, two chrome slashes that wrapped around her cheeks gave her a vicious, dangerous look that made the hard-suited girl tremble. Her body, although still mostly covered, betrayed a glimpse of metal and hydraulics here and there where the cloth had been torn, and her legs ended in wheels instead of feet. Overall, she was a mixture of cute and dangerous, a little on the short side, but powerful beyond belief.
Nene, who had always had a tendency to open her mouth before she knew what she was getting into, did so, "What are you? Some kind of Boomer?" she blurted out shakily, holding up her armored fists at the girl, preparing her needle launcher for whatever might come next.
"I'm not a Boomer," the girl answered hatefully, turning to look at Nene, holding up her blade so the girl could see it. A few drops of Boomer blood dripped from the unbelievably sharp weapon.
"No, of course not," Linna quickly added, hoping to calm the girl's anger.
The girl turned back to Linna, "Who are you?"
"We're the Knight Sabers," Linna answered, "We fight rogue Boomers."
"That thing was a Boomer?" she asked, gesturing with a thumb behind her.
"Yes, something like that. We've been asked to ask you to come with us."
"Why?"
"Because our employer wants to meet with you."
The girl sighed, "I have no place to go... I don't know how I got here or what I'm supposed to do now, so I guess..." she said, a hint of painful memories flashing over her face and a trace of sadness in her voice. She was cut off, though, when Linna started shouting.
"Watch out, it's not dead!" the green-suited woman yelled, pointing back behind the girl.
The Boomer, which had been beaten severely, was not yet dead, and with a monstrous groan, proceeded forward as best it could, it's fractured mind focusing on the girl, the one which had caused its current state of damage. Its momentum was slow, but improved with each step as its malformed body absorbed debris to repair itself.
Then, with a hail of bullets from out of nowhere, all hell broke loose.
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Amishi Kurimitsu realized she was a know nothing rookie. She knew she was far too green for fieldwork. However, she also realized that if she was ever going to become experienced enough to do fieldwork, she was going to have to prove it. That was why she was in the armored K-suit, and that was why she was running straight into danger, as fast as the machine's legs would carry her.
In the Academy, she was always laughed at. When her friends were done with the day, they'd go off and party, drink, enjoy themselves, whatever. Amishi never did anything like that. Every night she stayed up late at the Academy library, studying up on the latest anti-terrorist scenarios and equipment, or at the firing range, practicing her skills, or in the simulation room pushing herself in K-suit techniques. She graduated at the top of her class, and yet it wasn't enough.
Her entire time at the Academy, she was plagued by a string of bad luck, accidents and clumsiness. A firing mishap here, a loose connector there, a few lost books, and a load of clumsy trip-ups filled her days with aches, pains, scratches, bruises and wounds to her ego that may never heal. This labeled her as not only the bookworm, but the ditz of the entire school.
But this time would be different, she assured herself. This time it was real, and this time she would prove to everybody that she had what it took to be a real ADPolice officer and a real K-suit operator.
She trudged into the front office of the ruined flower shop, noticing all the ruined flowers and chunks of debris scattered everywhere. It was a sad sight, and Amishi counted her blessings that there were no identifiable bodies in the area to cause her to choke up. She was nervous enough as it was without seeing a body smashed beyond belief, blood everywhere, with some expression of pure horror upon the lifeless face of...
She chastised herself for her thoughts. Thoughts like those wouldn't help her in combat. She pushed the thoughts away and focused on her surroundings.
[A little girl? That's funny. What is a child doing here?] she thought to herself when she saw Gally standing before the defeated Boomer, [And why is she carrying a big knife like that?]
Amishi realized that not all was as it seemed, and that the girl might be another Boomer, something new sent in by Genom to clean up their own mess for a change. Or the girl could be a military weapon, being used here for practice before it's sent out into real combat. Or maybe the girl was a member of the Knight Saber organization she had heard about in the Acadamy. Any number of possibilities.
Amishi decided to hang back and see what happened before she sprang out. She had forcefully taught herself caution and was fighting her natural instinct to blindly start attacking everything.
She watched as the girl grabbed her things, allowing a glimpse at the cybernetic body that lay beneath, confirming the officer's opinion that she was not what she appeared. She then watched as the girl got into an argument with the real Knight Sabers. Disproving one of her origin theories.
Watching that particular development was interesting. Amishi had only heard rumors about the mysterious armored vigilantes, and only sparse rumors at that. No pictures, nor even a real good idea as to what they looked like. Now she was staring at two of them, a red one and a green one. A small part of her mind, a part that refused to grow up, was reminded of Christmas, and the idea sprang into her head before she knew it.
"How cute!" she exclaimed to herself, than clamped a hand over her mouth when she realized she had spoken aloud. She waited for a moment before she could breath again. They hadn't heard her, but she wanted to be extra careful.
She watched them closely, studying their armor as best she could, memorizing details and stroing them for later use. This was merely her first encounter, not to be her last, she knew, with the elusive vigilantes, and they were not high on her priority list. The Boomer was. She had to make sure it was dead.
That was when she noticed the Boomer. Though it had appeared destroyed earlier, it was now moving again, absorbing material and inching forward toward the "girl who wasn't a girl". Amishi could not help herself. There was something in her mind that went off when she saw the childlike weapon in danger and she reacted. Her light-chocolate hand gripped the actuator control on the right arm of the K-suit, the arm holding the assault rifle, and a burst of fire erupted from the gattling barrel at the Boomer's torso.
The Boomer fell forward, dead, its core pierced three times by the large rounds fired from the K-Suit's weapon. Amishi took it as an example of all of her extra training. The truth was far less exciting. The girl's earlier battle had damaged the Boomer's torso extensively, weakening the metal protecting its core, and so Amishi's rounds merely finished what the girl had started.
However, the removal of the Boomer did not end the situation. In fact, Amishi's actions brought her into more danger than she could have imagined. The girl turned to look at the K-suit, a fire gleaming in her child-like eyes. Amishi could feel a cold chill run through her body when the girl looked toward her. It was as if in that split second the girl had reached in, pulled out her soul, and tore it in half.
"Who are you?" the girl demanded, raising her blade to punctuate the question.
[Uh, oh,] Amishi thought to herself. She had seen what the girl could do to a Boomer, so what could she do to her K-suit. It was armored, but not THAT armored. "Uhm..." she began, "I'm an officer of the ADPolice, and... And..." she froze up. She had no idea what to do now. The Knight Sabers were considered off limits since they weren't Boomers, but she had no idea on what to do about the girl. If she was some sort of new weapon the government was testing, than was she to be ignored or brought in? Could she bring the girl in with only the K-suit?
"Come on, Miss, we've got to get out of here!" the green suited Knight Saber pleaded, grabbing one of the girl's arms, the one holding the blade.
"Yeah, more of the ADP will be here any second. Please, come with us!" the red and pink one agreed.
The girl pondered for a moment, "I have nowhere else to go," she mumbled. Then, with slumped shoulders, she relaxed and allowed the two girls to fully grab her and carry her off into the night.
Amishi watched them rush off with a mixture of fear and awe. The way the two armored suits moved put her own suit to shame in every fashion. She worried about what her next confrontation might be and the thought of those women as enemies scared her.
When Gally arrived at the scene of the Boomer rampage, she was quickly assaulted with a barrage of sights, sounds, and smells. All around her she saw death and destruction on a level only someone of Makaku or Jasugaan's level should have been capable of. Trees had been torn from the ground and thrown through shop windows, benches had been ripped up from their moorings, twisted and torn apart, and tossed as if they were tissue paper.
But the property destruction was not the only damage the Boomer had made. Less than a meter away from her feet was a man, or at least part of a man. Everything from the upper torso down had been torn off and dropped a few feet farther away, leaving intestines and bodily fluids leaking out onto the sidewalk.
This angered the young girl, filling her heart with hate and an undeniable urge to kill and destroy. Her vision was flooded with what seemed like white light and everything became black and white clear. She knew who her enemy was and that it must be utterly annihialated, lest it hurt more innocents.
She reached into her rucksack and removed a large, long bundle. She bit the knot on the tie with her teeth and yanked, letting the cloth fall away to reveal a long, thick blade which gleemed with deadly intent.
She stepped into the building where she heard the most commotion, a half-demolished flower shop, and prepared herself for the worst. She got what she had wished for.
A large creature stood before her, tearing at the displays of flowers, sending petals of every conceivable color into the air. If she could have watched with indifference, she would have noticed the sheer beauty of the effect, but her concentration was focused solely on the monster.
It was a gruesome-looking thing, with metal clinging to its skeletal body in a half-melted way, too much here, too little there. The entire thing pulsed and throbbed as if it were alive, and the screeching sound it made could make any normal human shudder in fear. It reached out a long, vicious looking hand/claw, and grabbed the cash register, and in a stunning display of technology gone mad, it absorbed the metal and wiring into itself, increasing the overall bulk of the already top-heavy creature.
That was enough, Gally decided. She had seen enough of her opponent to decide on a course of action. With blade raised high, she jumped into battle...
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Shortly before Gally had arrived, Leon, Daley, and Amishi were already on the scene, trying to understand what was going on and how best to deal with the situation. Roadblocks had been put up around a three block radius and more than a dozen armored police units had been rushed in, carrying heavy assault rifles. This was not near enough for a Boomer, however, and almost every one of the officers realized this. Those who didn't were the young and brash type who had the traditional belief that they would live forever.
"What in the hell are all of you doing standing around for?!" Leon yelled angrily, waving a fist in the air, "All of you move in and find that Boomer!"
"Yes, sir!" they answered in unison, then rushed into the building, guns high and randomly aimed at anything the owners conceived as a threat. A few random bursts of armor-piercing rounds emanated from the building, but other than that, all was silent. The officers had come up empty.
"Anything, yet?" Leon demanded, clutching half a headset to the side of his face.
"Nothing, sir?" a static-filled voice responded, "The Boomer is no longer in the building."
"Then search the next one. We're not letting it get away!" he shouted.
"Uh, partner, I hate to tell you this but..." Daley noted dryly, but with a hint of worry.
Leon turned to look at his partner, the anger seething from every pore now, "What do you want now..." he cut off as he saw what Daley was talking about.
Amishi was climbing into one of the armored K-suits that were used in extreme Boomer cases. She had a serious look on her normally carefree face as she strapped into the suit. She looked like she was ready to kill...
"What in the hell do you think you're doing, Amishi!" Leon shouted, running up to the suit.
"What does it look like?" the girl asked, staring straight ahead, "It is my duty to stop rogue Boomers no matter the cost."
"This is your first time out! What if you get hurt, or worse?!"
She turned her head and looked down at Leon, a bit of the sweetness returning to her face, "Don't worry. I'm an ADPolice Officer after all. Danger is my middle name!"
"Your middle name is gonna be mud if you hurt yourself!" Leon argued.
Amishi paid no attention to the young man's protest's and flipped a switch, causing the chest plate to flip down and seal in place, confining her within the armored suit for the duration of combat. The metal faceplate seemed to gleam through it's camera eyes, as if there were some sort of malicious intent in the armored warrior.
Daley calmly walked up behind Leon and placed a delicate, effeminate hand on his partner's shoulder, "She is a K-suit pilot, Leon. It is her job."
"I know. But the chief is still gonna kill me..." then he realized his partner's hand, "Get off me, Wong. I'm not in the mood to deal with your crap right now!"
Daley removed his hand and raised the other in a form of mock surrender, "Excuse me for trying to be the strong, supportive partner!"
"Supportive my ass!" Leon growled.
It was at that moment that Leon detected movement. This in itself should not be strange. He was in the middle of a disaster area with ADP officers rushing to and fro searching for the Boomer and any injured survivors. The place was filled with movement. But what he saw, or rather felt, was far more graceful than any Boomer or ADP grunt. Whatever was out there moved with feminine grace and agility, and that could only mean one thing in his mind...
"Dammit! They're here already!" he growled.
"Who?" Daley asked, a bit confused at Leon's emotional turnaround.
"The Knight Sabers!" Leon answered, "But they're not gonna beat us this time. We got here first for once!"
Leon was wrong. The female movement he felt was not a Knight Saber. Something far more deadly was roaming the streets this time.
--------------
Anger. Anger and pain. And hell's fire, the purest hell fire one can imagine, running through veins of plastic and wire. Veins connected to servos and plates, and adapters and motorization systems and articulators. Articulators which allowed a metal hand to extend, grip, bash, pound, tear, wrench, and grab. A hand that was grabbing a block of metal, intricately and carefully carved into a bladed weapon with an edge so fine one could barely see it. An edge that was cutting into a monster far more gruesome than any found in ancient movies and comic books.
These were not thoughts. These were not mere statements. These were actions. Actions broken down into the most intricate detail, carefully studied, defined, simplified, and stated. This was the way Gally's mind worked when she was in battle. Everything becomes complex, then simplified, taking it all in her mind's eye in a single instant, than breaking the situation down to only what is important.
Of course, she does not realize she has this gift. All she knows is that when the rage hits her, everything becomes white, and then it becomes brutal.
It was getting very white right now. It would be whiter in moments...
Boomers do not think the same way as humans, nor do they interpret data in the same way Gally's combat-honed mind does. No, Boomers analyze everything and anything that comes in their path, breaks each and every object down into sub-catagories, and monitors every little detail for change, never losing track of the big picture while studying the small details. Nothing is left to chance in a Boomer's core. Everything it does is done because that is its job.
Rogue Boomers are another thing entirely. Just as their sane counterparts monitor everything at once, rogue Boomers find themselves capable of focusing on only one thing at a time. No detail, no scrutinizing, no analysis, no big picture. Their greatest weakness and greatest threat all mixed into one.
The subject the rogue Boomer in the flower shop was attempting to focus on was a small creature. It had no idea what a girl was, its brain having lost nearly all files when it went mad, but it knew enough to realize that the creature was "Bad". It had a weapon that was causing it "harm", "hurting" it and damaging its systems. It wanted to lash out, but with each time it tried, all it managed to do was damage more of the building.
It didn't really care. It was not designed to care in the first place, and now that it was insane, it cared even less. All it wanted was for the "creature" to stop "hurting" it.
Gally attacked the Boomer without mercy. No quarter drawn and none given, so to speak. Her blade bit into its body over and over, tearing machinery components and spurting fluid with every strike. This was good in her mind. If it could bleed, it could die, and she was going to make sure it bled a lot.
She pounded relentlessly at the thing, hoping with each strike that it would go down and stay down, but it refused to die as easily as the gutter filth she was used to. And though its combat skills were nowhere near Makaku's or Jassugan's, it was still a force to be reckoned with, and it's arms were still powerful enough to crush her body into metallic splinters.
One of those arms, a large, overly bulky thing with pincers, tried for her head in an attempt to crush her brains and end its torment, only to make contact with a nearby support piller, completely destroying it and bringing more rubble down around them. Gally decided that she'd had enough of that arm, so with one quick, skilled slash, she forever removed it as an obstacle. The arm pounded to the ground pathetically, fluids spurting from the damaged end.
But a mere lost arm was not near enough to stop a Boomer, and Gally realized this the hard way when it lashed out at her with one of its grotesquely thin legs. Its action was foolish, since it took out its own support and brought itself to the ground, but it finished what it set out to do by launching its opponent away.
Gally grunted in imagined pain when the force of the Boomer's kick knocked her against a crumbling wall. Though her body could not feel pain, that was not necessarily a good thing. She could not recognize all of her damage, only visible scratches and wound, and she had no onboard computer like some science fiction suped-up heroine might have to tell her what was wrong. That is why she did not know about the tear along one side of her jacket sleeve and the bolt of metal that had ripped through a hydraulic pipe on her wrist, gushing precious fluid that kept her arm active and ready for battle.
Even if she had known about her arm at that point, she most likely would have trudged ahead anyway. She had never before backed down from a fight once it had begun, and she wasn't about to start such a trend now. With a leap, and a scream of anger, she rushed forward, slamming her blade deep into the Boomer's head.
It howled, an agonizing scream that echoed around the room, causing the fighter to wince in pain at the sound. She had to stop the noise, and there was only one way she knew. She raised her fist, the one she did not realize was gushing fluid, and started batting at the creature's head, still keeping it in place with the embedded blade in the other hand. She batted it back and forth, like a mouse playing with a ball, only with much more violent intent, smashing up the metal face a little more with each pounding blow.
Finally, with one last heaved blow, she managed to separate the speaker from the creature's face, sending it flying through the air, a sparking, battered mess. The howl stopped and the creature crumbled to the ground, finally dead.
"And stay dead..." Gally spat at the thing, almost pitying its grotesque form. It was a good fight, she admitted, but not a really satisfying one. There was no real thrill. She had done good, she knew, but so much damage had been done, so many lives had been lost. If only she had been there sooner, destroyed the thing faster than she had, perhaps then she would feel better about the whole mess. As it was, there was a gnawing feeling chewing away at her insides.
She walked over to where her rucksack and keyboard lay, the last items of her old world lay in those two objects. A few pieces of metal and plastic were all she had to remember the way things were back there. The thought saddened her. She had no idea what she was going to do now. Whatever form of law enforcement that existed would certainly be after her now, she was certain, and if it should come to a showdown between her and them, more innocents would most likely be hurt or killed.
She reached down and grabbed the two objects, flinging them over her shoulder as if they weighed nothing. She turned for the opened doorway, which had become more of a gouge in the wall thanks to the Boomer, and was about to walk away when she noticed something, something not right about her surroundings. She hadn't sensed it before, of course she was in battle before and had no time to think about such things.
She turned around and scanned the walls over, looking for what may be lurking in the shadows. She was right. There, hiding in a darkened corner of the room were two figures, one in green, the other in pink and red. Their bodies were hardened metal, like armor, and their faces were featureless half-globes. It was like she was staring at the past, a remembrence of a story told to her by a friend who would be father, of knights in shining armor, only these were knights of some science-fiction age. It was a mystifying sight, to say the least.
She would not let her awe show through however, and using her deepest, most hateful voice, she asked, "What do you want?"
--------------
Late was not usually a word one would associate with the Knight Sabers, but for this one instance out of dozens, they were too far behind on the clock. Too many problems and too many hazards were in their way. A weak ledge that Nene landed on, causing it to collapse beneath her. A satellite array that moved before Linna had a chance to even respond. So many situations that degraded a normal night's work into the worst string of bad luck a human being could have.
The two vigilante's spirits were in a shambles. Linna, who had nearly perfected the jump-thrust technique her first time out, was now at her lowest ebb in agility, an insult to her years of sports and exercise that led up to this moonlighting career. Nene, who had always been the worst fighter of the group, was brought down a few more emotional notches by her own pathetic display of mere movement when she had been doing this for half a dozen missions.
This was not what you would call their finest hour.
That was the case, and that was the shape they were in when they finally arrived on the scene, ready to fight it out and get it over with as quickly as possible. Each one wanted to be home soon, so they could relax and bathe and get some rest before going back to their respective day jobs the next morning.
Their mental state was so wracked that if they had actually gotten into a combat situation, they would most likely be torn to shreds before they even knew what was going on. They were slower than normal and they were more tired than usual.
Fortunately, fate had intervened with a pinch-hitter, so to speak.
At the scene of the rampage, in the epicenter of destruction, the Boomer was fighting tooth, claw, and anything else it could find, with what appeared to be a young girl, maybe twelve, but no older than fourteen. Though at first glance, the outcome seemed to be in the Boomer's favor, their opinions soon changed when they saw the girl sheer off one of it's arms with a wicked looking blade. The sight took the two aback, to say the least.
"What the hell?!" Linna shouted through her radio.
"Who is that kid?!" Nene said in shock.
"What's going on over there?" Sylia demanded through their radios, "Give me a status report, Linna. Nene, give me a view on the situation."
"Uh..." Nene hesitated.
"Now!" Sylia shouted.
"Uh, right away!" Nene answered, jumping over to a nearby outcropping to get a better view for Sylia's systems.
"Linna, what's going on?" Sylia asked.
"Someone is fighting the Boomer," Linna answered.
"Who? The ADPolice?"
"No. Not them..."
"Then who?"
"A little girl..."
"What?!"
"Got it!" Nene announced cheerfully, proud of her accomplishment. Standing before her was a standard security camera, wires extruding from its back and into Nene's suit. She had successfully rerouted the camera's video feed directly to Sylia's van, beaming all the information she could acquire from her scanners along with it.
-------------
Back in the van, a seemingly dead video monitor came to life with images of the battle between the Boomer and the girl. Off to one side, Nene's scanner data scrolled by, displaying what little information they were able to acquire.
"Absolutely incredible..." Sylia said, studying the information, "If this is true than that means..." she gasped in realization, then slammed her hand on the radio transmitter, "Nene, Linna, you have to get that girl to come back with you!"
"What?! How?" Linna asked, her voice warbled by the radio, but not enough to hide the shock in her tone.
"She's beating up a Boomer single-handedly. How can we grab her?" Nene asked.
"I don't care how, just do it!" Sylia demanded, then cut the radio. She turned to look at the screen again, watching the child/warrior in action and mumbling to herself, "Magnificent."
-------------
Linna and Nene watched the child/warrior with a different set of opinions then Sylia did. They watched how she reached in and yanked out a large chunk of the Boomer's torso with what appeared to be no effort whatsoever. And yet, despite all of the damage the girl was inflicting, the mechanized monster just wouldn't go down. It somehow managed to keep itself alive just enough so it could continue fighting back.
"So how are we going to grab her, Linna?" Nene asked. Even though she was the supposed "Veteran" of the two, she deferred to Linna for guidance. Whether this was out of age, fear, or respect, was known only to her.
"I... I don't really know. I mean, she's really going at that Boomer. What could she do to us if we got in her way?"
"I don't want to think about that..." Nene said fearfully, "She looks really mean!"
"Well, we have to think of something! Dammit! I wish Priss were here. She'd just rush in and attack," Linna said solemnly. She couldn't believe she actually wanted that pale-skinned biker girl here, but under the circumstances, another pair of hands could make all the difference.
"Maybe we could wait until she kills the Boomer and then try talking to her," Nene suggested, "I'm sure she'll calm down by then."
"Yeah, right. She'll probably run off the moment she's..." Linna trailed off when she noticed something, "Nene! Look at her arm!"
Nene did as she was told and looked, and her jaw nearly dropped to the floor by what she had seen. The girl's jacket had been ripped along one sleaze, baring her arm to the world, and what it looked like was not natural.
Hydraulics, actuators, circuits and wiring ran along a metal framework that composed the entirety of her arm. It was mechanical, through and through, and that thought made Nene shiver. If the arm was a robot's, did that mean the rest of her was too? That would explain how she was standing up to a Boomer, but that also raised more problems and questions. Was she another Boomer? Was she a new anti-Boomer weapon? If not, then who was she and why was she fighting it out with such a creature when she should be hiding her own existence?
These problems became temporarily moot when Nene saw the battle draw to a close.
The girl, who had been doing increasingly well against the Boomer, finally finished it off with a few quick punches, letting it's ruined bulk drop to the ground with tremendous force. She then reached down and extracted her blade, which glistened with hydraulic fluid and other machinery liquids.
She turned away from the dead creature, not even caring to look over her handiwork, then walked over to where a rucksack and an electric keyboard were lying on the ground. She reached down and grabbed them in one fluid motion, and was about to walk away, when she noticed the two hard-suited figures.
"What do you want?" she demanded, fire blazing in her eyes.
Linna finally got a closer, unobscured look at the girl and what she saw scared her. Her face, which under normal circumstances would have been cute, perhaps even pretty, were marked, two chrome slashes that wrapped around her cheeks gave her a vicious, dangerous look that made the hard-suited girl tremble. Her body, although still mostly covered, betrayed a glimpse of metal and hydraulics here and there where the cloth had been torn, and her legs ended in wheels instead of feet. Overall, she was a mixture of cute and dangerous, a little on the short side, but powerful beyond belief.
Nene, who had always had a tendency to open her mouth before she knew what she was getting into, did so, "What are you? Some kind of Boomer?" she blurted out shakily, holding up her armored fists at the girl, preparing her needle launcher for whatever might come next.
"I'm not a Boomer," the girl answered hatefully, turning to look at Nene, holding up her blade so the girl could see it. A few drops of Boomer blood dripped from the unbelievably sharp weapon.
"No, of course not," Linna quickly added, hoping to calm the girl's anger.
The girl turned back to Linna, "Who are you?"
"We're the Knight Sabers," Linna answered, "We fight rogue Boomers."
"That thing was a Boomer?" she asked, gesturing with a thumb behind her.
"Yes, something like that. We've been asked to ask you to come with us."
"Why?"
"Because our employer wants to meet with you."
The girl sighed, "I have no place to go... I don't know how I got here or what I'm supposed to do now, so I guess..." she said, a hint of painful memories flashing over her face and a trace of sadness in her voice. She was cut off, though, when Linna started shouting.
"Watch out, it's not dead!" the green-suited woman yelled, pointing back behind the girl.
The Boomer, which had been beaten severely, was not yet dead, and with a monstrous groan, proceeded forward as best it could, it's fractured mind focusing on the girl, the one which had caused its current state of damage. Its momentum was slow, but improved with each step as its malformed body absorbed debris to repair itself.
Then, with a hail of bullets from out of nowhere, all hell broke loose.
--------------
Amishi Kurimitsu realized she was a know nothing rookie. She knew she was far too green for fieldwork. However, she also realized that if she was ever going to become experienced enough to do fieldwork, she was going to have to prove it. That was why she was in the armored K-suit, and that was why she was running straight into danger, as fast as the machine's legs would carry her.
In the Academy, she was always laughed at. When her friends were done with the day, they'd go off and party, drink, enjoy themselves, whatever. Amishi never did anything like that. Every night she stayed up late at the Academy library, studying up on the latest anti-terrorist scenarios and equipment, or at the firing range, practicing her skills, or in the simulation room pushing herself in K-suit techniques. She graduated at the top of her class, and yet it wasn't enough.
Her entire time at the Academy, she was plagued by a string of bad luck, accidents and clumsiness. A firing mishap here, a loose connector there, a few lost books, and a load of clumsy trip-ups filled her days with aches, pains, scratches, bruises and wounds to her ego that may never heal. This labeled her as not only the bookworm, but the ditz of the entire school.
But this time would be different, she assured herself. This time it was real, and this time she would prove to everybody that she had what it took to be a real ADPolice officer and a real K-suit operator.
She trudged into the front office of the ruined flower shop, noticing all the ruined flowers and chunks of debris scattered everywhere. It was a sad sight, and Amishi counted her blessings that there were no identifiable bodies in the area to cause her to choke up. She was nervous enough as it was without seeing a body smashed beyond belief, blood everywhere, with some expression of pure horror upon the lifeless face of...
She chastised herself for her thoughts. Thoughts like those wouldn't help her in combat. She pushed the thoughts away and focused on her surroundings.
[A little girl? That's funny. What is a child doing here?] she thought to herself when she saw Gally standing before the defeated Boomer, [And why is she carrying a big knife like that?]
Amishi realized that not all was as it seemed, and that the girl might be another Boomer, something new sent in by Genom to clean up their own mess for a change. Or the girl could be a military weapon, being used here for practice before it's sent out into real combat. Or maybe the girl was a member of the Knight Saber organization she had heard about in the Acadamy. Any number of possibilities.
Amishi decided to hang back and see what happened before she sprang out. She had forcefully taught herself caution and was fighting her natural instinct to blindly start attacking everything.
She watched as the girl grabbed her things, allowing a glimpse at the cybernetic body that lay beneath, confirming the officer's opinion that she was not what she appeared. She then watched as the girl got into an argument with the real Knight Sabers. Disproving one of her origin theories.
Watching that particular development was interesting. Amishi had only heard rumors about the mysterious armored vigilantes, and only sparse rumors at that. No pictures, nor even a real good idea as to what they looked like. Now she was staring at two of them, a red one and a green one. A small part of her mind, a part that refused to grow up, was reminded of Christmas, and the idea sprang into her head before she knew it.
"How cute!" she exclaimed to herself, than clamped a hand over her mouth when she realized she had spoken aloud. She waited for a moment before she could breath again. They hadn't heard her, but she wanted to be extra careful.
She watched them closely, studying their armor as best she could, memorizing details and stroing them for later use. This was merely her first encounter, not to be her last, she knew, with the elusive vigilantes, and they were not high on her priority list. The Boomer was. She had to make sure it was dead.
That was when she noticed the Boomer. Though it had appeared destroyed earlier, it was now moving again, absorbing material and inching forward toward the "girl who wasn't a girl". Amishi could not help herself. There was something in her mind that went off when she saw the childlike weapon in danger and she reacted. Her light-chocolate hand gripped the actuator control on the right arm of the K-suit, the arm holding the assault rifle, and a burst of fire erupted from the gattling barrel at the Boomer's torso.
The Boomer fell forward, dead, its core pierced three times by the large rounds fired from the K-Suit's weapon. Amishi took it as an example of all of her extra training. The truth was far less exciting. The girl's earlier battle had damaged the Boomer's torso extensively, weakening the metal protecting its core, and so Amishi's rounds merely finished what the girl had started.
However, the removal of the Boomer did not end the situation. In fact, Amishi's actions brought her into more danger than she could have imagined. The girl turned to look at the K-suit, a fire gleaming in her child-like eyes. Amishi could feel a cold chill run through her body when the girl looked toward her. It was as if in that split second the girl had reached in, pulled out her soul, and tore it in half.
"Who are you?" the girl demanded, raising her blade to punctuate the question.
[Uh, oh,] Amishi thought to herself. She had seen what the girl could do to a Boomer, so what could she do to her K-suit. It was armored, but not THAT armored. "Uhm..." she began, "I'm an officer of the ADPolice, and... And..." she froze up. She had no idea what to do now. The Knight Sabers were considered off limits since they weren't Boomers, but she had no idea on what to do about the girl. If she was some sort of new weapon the government was testing, than was she to be ignored or brought in? Could she bring the girl in with only the K-suit?
"Come on, Miss, we've got to get out of here!" the green suited Knight Saber pleaded, grabbing one of the girl's arms, the one holding the blade.
"Yeah, more of the ADP will be here any second. Please, come with us!" the red and pink one agreed.
The girl pondered for a moment, "I have nowhere else to go," she mumbled. Then, with slumped shoulders, she relaxed and allowed the two girls to fully grab her and carry her off into the night.
Amishi watched them rush off with a mixture of fear and awe. The way the two armored suits moved put her own suit to shame in every fashion. She worried about what her next confrontation might be and the thought of those women as enemies scared her.
