There are secrets in the universe that may never be fully explained.
Where there are mysteries, there are always three kinds of people connected to them. One is the kind of people who want to seek the mysteries out to their fullest.
The other are the people who are out to destroy any secret they believe threatens their security or positions of power.
The third type are the defenders of mysteries.
This is the tale of several such defenders.
Outcast Legends: And Outlaw Star fanfic
The Legends
Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters from the original Outlaw Star TV anime. I'll make a list of those characters and concepts I do own at the end of the fic, if there are any.
Chapter 1- Legends Revealed
Timeline data: Approx. one year after the Galactic LeyLine encounter
The planet Helios-2
Suzuka walked silently towards her destination. Helios-2, once dominated by only a few clusters of highly developed cities barely four years previous, now was a mecha of technology and space ports. Disguised in a simple long dark-brown cloak to hide her identity, for not only was it nessasary to keep her presence unknown in a place this populated; but this place had seen so many weird and often shady characters that no one even really noticed, Suzuka walked quickly but not quite urgently. Sunset was at least an hour away, which meant she had a good amount of time to locate her target and prepare to do what she did best: eliminate quickly and efficiently, then collect her payoff.
From what she had gathered, 'Cracker Jack' had been hiding out in a warehouse for the past two weeks, somewhere in the west of town. Remembering her last encounter with the low-level bomber, she knew he shouldn't be a problem to defeat and then get what she needed as proof of her deed: his signature face mask. She got to the warehouse in less than fifteen minutes, then began the process of checking the area and deciding how best to do her job with minimal effort.
Suddenly, though, something didn't feel quite right. She'd learned over time to trust her hunches and, taking a quick look around, backflipped away from the building and onto a balcony a good dozen or so feet behind her.
Moments later, the building exploded like a supernova. Suzuka shielded herself from the flying flames and debris with her cloak. Suddenly, she sensed movement just behind her. Apparently the balcony she'd landed on was where whoever set the bomb off had been keeping lookout from, because no sooner had Suzuka spun around, thrown off the cloak, and readied her sword did two of Cracker Jack's hired help burst open the balcony door and leveled handguns at Suzuka. In a blur of motion, the guns were knocked clean over the side of the balcony and the thugs with them. Suzuka quickly proceeded inside, sword ready but confident of her readiness. Five more nondescript ski-mask-wearing thugs were waiting immediately inside and attacked without thought or much real aim either. Suzuka was able to dodge the haphazard barrage with ease, and like a human blur easily eliminated all five with one impossibly swift strike. For a minute, she just stood there, sword drawn as all five stood there, unmoving, then one by one they slumped to the ground with varied thuds.
"Someone's going through an awful lot of effort to hide from me." She mused to no one in particular. "OK, Cracker Jack," She challenged in a calm voice. "You might as well come out and die with honor."
A door on the opposite side of the dark room quickly opened and Cracker Jack emerged, a mischievous, psychotic smirk on his face. Suzuka turned casually in his direction and remarked his grin with only slight curiosity .
"So, we meet again, Twilight Suzuka. I had a feeling you'd be comin' after me sooner or later; after all, you've got yourself a reputation for never failing to remove a target."
"Last time I wasn't hired to kill you. You were merely a pest that needed to be dealt with." Suzuka returned.
Cracker Jack burst out with insane laughter. Suzuka presumed that the thought of death had made Cracker Jack lose his sanity, until he revealed the custom sleeveless jacket he was wearing underneath his shirt.
It only half surprised Suzuka to find out that this psycho had strapped himself up with bombs. He held a detonator in his hand, his thumb clamped down on the button.
"Have you lost what little mind you had left?" Suzuka inquired.
"You even so much as get close to me, and if my finger releases this trigger we're both dead. So you have two options, Twilight Suzuka: let me live and save your own life, or attack me and I'll forever be known as the man who killed the galaxy's most notorious bounty hunter, Twilight Suzuka!"
For a minute, Suzuka just stood there. Then, she slowly smirked.
"I believe you've underestimated me."
"Huh?"
But by the time he'd uttered that one word, his last, Suzuka was once again standing on the balcony, and in far less time than it took Cracker Jack to release the trigger, Suzuka had sent a gale force blast of wind straight at him. Cracker Jack crashed into the back wall at the exact same time as Suzuka was in mid-air of a backflip to take her safely to the ground. At practically the moment she landed, fiery explosions blossomed outward from the building, shattering the balcony and windows. Cracker Jack had inadvertently released his hold on the detonator at the moment he'd slammed into the wall, and it hadn't taken long for the explosives to do what they'd been made to do.
It had been slightly more difficult than she'd planned on. She hadn't expected to have to use any more effort than was nessasary to swing her sword around. And she also hadn't gotten the mask. She cursed under her breath as sirens resounded in the distance.
She quickly retrieved her cloak and made her exit. Hopefully the exploding building would be enough to satisfy her employer. If not, there were always other jobs people would pay her to do, other people she could be hired to kill. It was a nasty business, she admitted to herself. It was a nasty business but it was the only way of life she knew. Stopping for just one minute to check her location relative to the Outlaw Star's landing platform, she was bounding across high-up rooftops in minutes in that direction.
Suddenly, she heard something. Nanoseconds later, an intense, supersonic blast of sound shot past her left ear, sensing her hair whipping about violently.
"What the heck-!" She exclaimed, and instantly spun to see where the sound had come from. Her expression was one of complete surprise and utter disbelief,... considering that the last time she'd truly been snuck up on had been...
There was no one there!
Wait! Barely visible, but Suzuka could detect the movements of a pair of figures. A pair of ownerless shadows danced and darted at each other with combat intensity on a rooftop nearby, and almost at the moment Suzuka spotted them several more sounds, slightly resembling laser blasts, were heard. For a minute, Suzuka was purely and completely baffled. The sounds would have been outside the range of hearing for most human beings, and those shadows were almost translucent in a strange way. Were these some kind of ghosts or demons?!
Suzuka didn't know, but as the two phantoms continued their bizarre invisible dance, she drew her sword in defense and began to slowly, silently walk towards the two invisible creatures.
Instantly, both phantoms froze in mid-step.
Suzuka stopped too, waiting silently in preparation for any movement by either shadow.
Suddenly, one of the two dashed at her with inspiring speed, and almost before she knew what was happening the creature shadow was on the roof top in front of her, running straight at her. Suzuka, having never fought invisible foes before, quickly thought her options over in her mind and immediately decided on a long range special technique. The razor blade of blue energy grew from being the length of her sword to three times that as it neared her target. The shadow didn't move and the attack passed straight through where Suzuka had estimated it to be, just as if all the phantom was was thin air, which was exactly what it appeared to be, exploding against a nearby collection of communications equipment on another rooftop. Before Suzuka could brace for a counteroffensive, she felt an invisible arm clamp violently around her neck in a stranglehold. She gasped for air and thrashed violently, but nothing worked. Suzuka's eyes went wide as the thought occurred to her that this could be how she died, strangled to death by an opponent she couldn't even see or attack.
Several nervous, drawn out minutes passed during which the second invisible creature seemed to just stand there, several feet away, starring at her perhaps. Meanwhile, it's companion still had it's arm locked around Suzuka's throat, Suzuka only barely able to force in air as the grip suddenly tightened.
Then, without explanation, the phantom holding her on the edge of death let go. Taking one huge breath before spinning to track her assailant, she saw the shadow of the bodiless nightmare seeming to run at top speeds across the rooftop, vanishing when it reached the edge. Suzuka took a minute to catch her breath, then turned towards the other phantom.
Only it wasn't a phantom anymore. To Suzuka's astonishment, a person had materialized where the second invisible ghost shadow had been moments before.
"Are you alright?" The late-teenage girl inquired, walking over to her. She had short-cut dark purple hair that strangely seemed to be a natural color for her, light purple eyes, and pale but tan skin. She wore what appeared to be some kind of reflexive body armor, a dark green, over a black jumpsuit of some kind. She had a pair of hand weapons holstered at her sides the likes of which Suzuka didn't recognize, and had a bluish rectangular visor over her eyes. She also had some kind of device attached to her wrist, a little bigger than a watch, and her belt looked to be full of advanced technology. Suzuka nodded slowly, her breathing returning to normal. The girl then looked briefly at where the other shadow had vanished. "Dang it, I lost him again." She muttered to herself. "This isn't over Cerpa. You can count on that."
"What just happened??" Suzuka exclaimed. "How come my special techniques didn't work? And just who are you and what's going on here?"
"HQ," The mysterious warrior was now talking into the device on her wrist. "This is Bluestone and I've got a code 12-A down here, and Cerpa got away. Requesting instruction."
"Blue," A masculine voice from the comm unit stated. "Proceed with 12-A procedures and then go after Cerpa. Do you need reinforcements?"
"Dawn Sword, I can handle this assignment on my own. Over and out." She huffed.
The look on Suzuka's face was one of true and utter disbelief.
Had she heard right?!
Was Dawn Sword alive?!?
"OK, just hold still." Bluestone instructed, reaching for one of her guns.
Suzuka wasn't interested in holding still.
"Hey, what the-!" Bluestone exclaimed as Suzuka suddenly swiped the girl's legs out from under her. Suzuka was on her feet in nanoseconds and had her sword aimed at Bluestone before the mysterious girl's head could hit the rooftop.
"Dawn Sword is alive?!" Suzuka demanded. "How?! You'd better tell me everything about what's going on if you value your life, little girl."
"What do you think you're doing?!" Bluestone exclaimed, but Suzuka prodded her in the stomach with her sword to show she wasn't kidding around.
"I asked you for answers, now talk!" She demanded.
In a blur of motion, Bluestone quickly pushed a button on her cyber-tech belt. To Suzuka's surprise, Bluestone quickly became nothing more than a shadow. An invisible foot suddenly kicked Suzuka's sword out of her hands, but before the now-invisible Bluestone could follow up on the strike Suzuka had backflipped over to where her sword hand landed, picked it up, and leapt down in between buildings. Bluestone attempted to follow, but by the time she got down into the alley, Suzuka was gone. The girl known as Bluestone sighed in unbelief, then reactivated her communicator and, with a voice no longer audible to the rest of the world, transmitted the news of what had happened to her mysterious HQ and even more mysterious leader.
"HQ, this is Bluestone. Make that a code 12-B. Requesting assistance. Over."
"Jean!" Suzuka exclaimed as she raced towards the Outlaw Star. Jean, who minutes earlier had been looking over something written on a computer pad, looked up as Suzuka, out of breath, raced over with a panicked expression on her features.
"Suzuka? Are you OK?"
"Jean, we've got a problem." She exclaimed, still trying to catch her breath.
"What? Something went wrong against Cracker Jack?" Jean half-sighed, then muttered under his breath. "Now how are we supposed to pay for these repairs?"
"This has *nothing* to do with Cracker Jack!" She exclaimed, slight desperation in her voice. She paused for a minute to collect her thoughts. "You're not going to believe a word I say, but listen to me anyway Jean. There were two of them; they were like phantoms or something. All I could see was their shadows, they didn't *have* bodies; my special techniques passed right through them; and Dawn Sword-!"
"Whoa! Suzuka, slow down!" Jean exclaimed. "Are you telling me you're seeing ghosts?"
"This isn't funny; I barely made it out of there *alive*!" She stated, half desperate, half angry. "Not ghosts; the one I saw had this device on her belt, it transformed her; I don't understand it, she was invisible, nothing could touch her, but the other one had me in a stranglehold and-"
Suddenly, Suzuka stopped in mid sentence. She was afraid of this; she sensed movement behind her. Not heard, but just felt. When she spun around, it was what she and Jean saw that confirmed Suzuka's worst fears. Ownerless shadows, three of them.
"What the-!" Jean exclaimed, but Suzuka cut him off.
"Get down!" She shouted, pushing Jean to the ground. Nanoseconds later, a trio of strange metallic darts imbedded themselves on a repair tower right behind where she and Jean had been standing. Jean and Suzuka quickly dodged another set of materializing darts, jumping behind a bulkhead for protection. Jean reached for his blaster but Suzuka stopped him.
"Don't waste your ammo; nothing hurts them." She instructed, frantically searching the area around her for more shadows.
"Well what am I supposed to do?!" Jean exclaimed.
"How should I know?!!" Suzuka returned, then muttered under her breath. "They must have followed me here somehow."
"Jean," Gilliam's voice came in over Jean's comm gear. "What's happening down there? Audio sensors picked up-"
"Let's just say we're fighting ghosts, Gilliam!" Jean exclaimed, dodging a near-miss dart.
"Oh my."
"Gilliam, engage all security measures. I want you air-tight in five seconds."
"Affirmative, Jean."
"What do they want with you, Suzuka?!" Jean asked as the two bolted at top speeds for a nearby door into the ship.
"How should I know?!" She returned as the hatch closed and bolted a half second after they entered. She quickly spun around and looked at the door. "Don't assume that will stop them."
"Gilliam," Jean instructed. "Warm up the reactors. If we have to, I wanna be able to blow this place in less than five minutes."
"I'll do what I can Jean, but I can't go anywhere without Melfina."
"Dang, that's right!" Jean exclaimed. "They haven't gotten back yet; what are we gonna do?"
"Stop asking rhetorical questions." Suzuka muttered.
Suddenly, an all-too familiar form materialized right behind Suzuka. Fortunately, Suzuka was quick enough to send the gun out of Bluestone's hand with a spin kick. Jean spun around in surprise as Suzuka leveled her sword at the mysterious phantom agent.
"Don't even try to touch that button or you're dead." Suzuka instructed. "You should've stayed invisible."
"Oh really?" Bluestone asked. Jean tapped Suzuka on the shoulder, and Suzuka instantly realized the reason Bluestone had materialized had been a setup. Two ownerless shadows stood just behind her and Jean, likely with their guns locked on Suzuka and Jean.
"Why are you doing this?!" Jean exclaimed, trying to talk to the two shadows.
"Don't waste your breath; you can't hear what they say when they're invisible." Bluestone stated. She then looked at Suzuka. "Nothing personal; this is all for your own good."
Suzuka was speechless for a second, then in a move of desperation-
"I know Dawn Sword." She stated suddenly. Bluestone looked at her disbelievingly, but Suzuka's expression was dead-serious and truthful. "We fought one on one four years ago. I didn't think he was still alive, but if he is I need to talk to him immediately."
Bluestone looked at her skeptically.
"It's a matter of utmost importance." Suzuka added.
Bluestone wasn't entirely convinced.
"Alright," Bluestone questioned. "If you actually know Dawn Sword, . . . tell me what he looks like."
Suzuka quickly realized that she didn't remember much about what Dawn Sword looked like. But one thing she did remember was-
"His sword;" She interjected. "The handle was designed to look like an angel; the hilt was made of bright blue metal; it was double-edged. I don't remember much of what he looks like, but I do remember his sword."
Bluestone was strangely silent for a long moment.
After breathless moments, she nodded to the two invisible warriors behind Jean and Suzuka.
"OK, I believe you. But exactly what is so important?"
"It's ... personal." Suzuka replied. "That's why I said I need to see him right away."
Bluestone considered that for a long moment.
"Alright, listen." Bluestone instructed. "By when will you people be completely ready for takeoff?"
"Approximately two days." Gilliam interjected.
"Gilliam..." Jean muttered angrily under his breath.
"We'll be waiting for you in orbit." Bluestone instructed. "We'll escort you to Dawn Sword, but if this is some kind of a trick-"
"Believe me, it's not." Suzuka stated.
Bluestone nodded again to her two invisible companions, then pressed the button on her belt and disappeared. Suzuka watched as the girl's shadow walked over, retrieved her gun, which became invisible at her touch, and then Bluestone and her two companions' shadows vanished through a nearby wall like ghosts. Jean quickly turned to Suzuka.
"What was that all about?"
When Aisha, Melfina, and Jim got back, Jean and Suzuka told them about what had occurred. It was hard to convince even Melfina, but in the end all three accepted what had happened based upon Gilliam's affirmation of Jean and Suzuka's story. Suzuka also scoured the area around the ship in search of one of those darts Bluestone and company had been shooting, but found nothing. Even Gilliam was unable to find any trace of the darts themselves, although micro-sized holes were found in the moorings that the darts had impacted. Even Aisha was on edge about all these impeccably strange happenings, but no one seemed more nervous or jumpy than Suzuka. Even in her dreams, which over the two nights before takeoff became nightmares, she couldn't escape...
Her dreams were plagued with flashbacks of how it had all begun...
"You shall know me as Dawn Sword."
"He prefers to battle only at dawn's first light, thus how he got his nickname. If you really want to meet him, it will have to be at dawn."
The battle was fast and furious, Suzuka's sword weaving it's way evasively past Dawn Sword's weapon whenever possible, and Dawn Sword strangely preferring to attack with his fists and feet and let his sword do the blocking. Suzuka leapt over his head into the air, sending a bolt of nearly invisible energy into the ground below her. Dawn Sword was able to leap out of the way just as the ground below where he'd been standing exploded upwards in a rush of dust and rock. In a blur of motion he was on the offensive again, throwing barely-dodged punches and kicks at Suzuka, forcing her to block and parry sometimes even with the use of her sword. Suddenly, he somehow managed to catch the weapon in one hand and, eyes glowing with strange white power, sent a surge of electricity through it and into Suzuka. Suzuka reacted swiftly, cutting her injuries by activating a light shield that instantly sent the electricity surging through her sword straight back to sender, throwing Dawn Sword to the ground. Taking a deep breath to catch her second wind, Suzuka unleashed another secret technique, sending a whirlwind of energy headed towards the fallen Dawn Sword. But before the attack could hit and before Suzuka barely knew what was happening, he was attacking again, leaping forward at her with a jump kick.
Dodging the kick and then using his momentum to throw him, resulting only in Dawn Sword landing effortlessly on his feet about a few meters away, Suzuka quickly decided she was getting tired of being on the defensive. Rushing forward at her opponent and then at the last second front flipping over his head, she unleashed in mid-air a third, nearly desperate secret technique: a long, thin line of energy aimed not at Dawn Sword but the ground several feet ahead of him. The razor-thin line of energy sliced cleanly through the cliff side, and for a long moment after she landed there was total silence. Dawn Sword stood there, seconds from when the ground below him would inevitably fall out, . . . and almost seemed to be smiling. A warrior's smile, Suzuka could tell, for it was not the wide-mouthed grin of laughter or scorn, just a simple slight look of approval like a warrior uses when he or she has won a battle or secured a victory. It puzzled Suzuka,. . . it was almost as if Dawn Sword was telling her that she had somehow... proven herself.
Then the side of Dead Man's Sheer fell out as one giant piece, gravity reasserting it's control as a dominant force in the universe. He stood still even as the shattered edge dropped downwards towards the long drop below, his gaze never ceasing to be straightforward even as he dropped out of sight below the cliff's new horizon. Suzuka quickly rushed to the edge and was just in time to hear the amputated ledge shatter as it's foremost side crashed downwards against the underside of the still-solid cliff. Minutes later, sounds like explosions shattered the early dawn silence, the sun now barely over the horizon and flooding Helios-2 with it's light.
After waiting for some kind of retaliatory strike, for him to
somehow reappear upon the cliff as if by magic, Suzuka turned
and went down the hill's path, back towards the city it
overlooked.