Bubblegum Crisis Post 2040 File 1: Dominant Species
Part 1: Stripes in the Jungle
Chapter 1: White Noise
by P. Kristen Enos (bgcpost2040@aol.com)
* * * * *
A Bubblegum Crisis Tokyo 2040 English Dub Version Fanfic. All rights belong to AIC, ADV Films and the other creative powers that be. I just want credit for writing the story. Contains spoilers! Rated PG13. Yuri warning! Nothing in here should be a shock if you've watched the episodes and paid attention. All I'm doing is filling in the gaps with my own interpretation of events! Special thanks to egret for betaing!
* * * * *
Hello, All!
This is a fanfic series I've started (originally as a lark) as a continuation of the stories in the "Bubblegum Crisis Tokyo 2040" Universe.
So for someone who has her own original novel and column to write, what exactly is it about this series that inspired me to write fanfic too? I definitely don't claim that it should be listed as one of the greatest anime of all time since I'm not blind to its faults. But it was the series that really hooked me into anime, appealing to my basic nature of being a fan first and foremost. As I once explained to someone, "It's a series about four sexy, intelligent women who can kick ass. So of course I'm going to like it!"
Linna Yamazaki is my favorite of the 2040 Women, embodying a "do the right thing" quality that I find appealing in my personal criteria of heroes, and it doesn't hurt that I believe she's a lesbian. Sylia being a close second in terms of favorites (often taking the number one slot depending on the episode, and just losing it completely when she whimped out towards the end), Nene's in third and Priss last. (It took me a while to realize that Priss was only interesting to me when she interacted with the other women, and that there was more lesbian than heterosexual vibes from her.)
I avidly consumed all of the episodes as they were released on VHS wanted to find out what will happen to these characters, even though I'm a selfconfessed DVDphile at heart. The irony is that by the end of the series, everyone had seemed to reach a closure both in their life and in their romances, except for Linna. This being a character that even the English voice actress Kelly Manison considered to be a mystery on some levels.
So as a way for me to achieve my own closure with the character (unless of course the Powers That Be decide on a sequel that will address this lingering issue - preferably in the way I want,) I've decided to write "Stripes in the Jungle." I have no idea how long it's going to be or how often I will write it, or if I'll even complete the story given that there's a chance I could lose interest without proper motivation and encouragement. I'll probably post a chapter every couple of weeks to a month, if the rest of my life permits. I've already idea-plotted at least six chapters to get through the first sub-arc. And the troublemaker in me hasn't even decided if the series as a whole is going to have a happy ending yet. At the very least, I wanted to carry Linna through her first real romance now that she's finally settled the question for herself about her orientation.
The trick of course is that I'm using characters who were created in the Original BGC universe since I think there's great story-telling potential in revamping them in "the Spirit of 2040", as I often like to say. So no, I won't be doing any self-insertion stuff, being quite content to use characters that were already created for this purpose.
Also, because this is Post 2040, it helps to have actually seen the series so I don't have to explain everything as I use spoilers left and right. But I will try to explain where it seems reasonable. And for clarification, everything is based on the English dub dialogue since there are some significant differences in which characters say what in certain scenes.
And by the way, Priss fans, she won't be showing up for a while. This is purposeful due to plot elements I have to establish before her reappearance, not just because she's my least favorite of the four - although I won't claim there aren't some influences in that area.
Hope you enjoy it. I find that the fun of this project is sharing the experience with other 2040 (and open minded BGC) fans who may feel the same way. Constructive feedback and input welcome since I'm basically writing this as I'm going along.
This series is dedicated to the English voice actresses who made watching the show so enjoyable: Kelly Manison (Linna), Laura Chapman (Sylia), Hilary Haag (Nene) and Christine M. Auten (Priss). And to egret, who encouraged me to try out the project and see if it would fit.
P. Kristen ;)
* * * * *
By the way, in case you do need a main character refresher:
Sylia Stingray: Daughter of Steven Stingray (the inventor of Boomers), seemingly non-threatening heiress with a women's clothing shop, and whose brain was the birthplace of both Galatea and Mackie. Also strategic leader and creator of the Knight Sabers.
Linna Yamazaki: As Kelly Manison describes her: "Country girl trying to make it in the big city." Newest member of the Knight Sabers. Wanted to join the Knight Sabers based on superhero ideals. Works as an Office Lady (O.L.) for Hugh Geit. Also spends the "2040" story arc coming terms with lesbianism.
Nene Romanova: Dispatcher for the AD Police. Techie at heart, acts young for her age, and in love with Mackie. Also a Knight Saber but knows her true value is her mind.
Priss S. Asagiri: Moody and hotheaded. Lead singer of a drum and bass band. Leader of the Sabers in battle.
Nigel: Sylia's love interest and talented mechanic. She designs the stuff, he makes it. Also a man of minimal social interests.
Mackie: Sylia's younger brother, and a boomer with a human heart and soul.
Henderson: Sylia's devoted butler and substitute father-figure.
Leon: AD Police officer. Spends all of "2040" mooning over Priss and finally getting her in the end.
Daley Wong: Leon's AD Police partner. The smart one.
Galatea: The villainess of "2040", and Sylia's evil twin and queen of boomers. Killed at the end of 2040. (I warned you there were spoilers!)
"Technical note": Everyone speaks Japanese unless otherwise noted. And no, I've never been to Japan or China. Everything I've learned about customs and lifestyles comes from watching anime. So cut me some slack if I decide to Americanize things just a touch. Consider it in the spirit of the "English Dub Version"!
Onward to the story....
* * * * *
Linna couldn't help but be fascinated as she stared out the airplane window at the landscape before her. True, she had seen the news shots, and heck she was even down there at its worst, but to see Tokyo from the sky like this was just breathtaking. From this high up, you would never have guessed how much destruction the city went through in the past decade, through earthquakes and a "boomer revolution".
Only three years have passed since Galatea turned the city into a jungle of twisted metal due to rampaging boomers which fused with every piece of machinery in sight. Once the threat ended as mysteriously as it began, most of the citizens returned home to sift through the wreckage and rebuild their lives, just the same way they had rebuilt their beloved city right after the disastrous earthquake. And ironically, boomers were also there to help with the work.
At first, Linna was shocked by the last fact because of all the testimonials on the news by people who had sworn off the use of boomers once their metallic janitors and waitresses attacked them. However, the necessity created out of rebuilding Tokyo as quickly and as efficiently as possible caused people to quickly overcome their fear and reluctance. When the general consensus was softened enough to evaluate the use of boomers again, public outcry and fear of liability caused everyone to agree that this source of labor would be used with the strictest safeguards possible against going rogue.
Not that that these people truly understood what made the boomers go rogue in the first place, despite Leon, Nene and Daily's brief attempt to educate the public during the Galatea crisis.
Under the new leadership of Quincy Rosenkreuz III, the Genom Corporation lead the redesigning of boomers both as a P.R. damage control maneuver as well as to regain the loss of profits Galatea's orchestrated rampage had caused. Branded as "rogue-free", the new generation of boomers were modified to become less sophisticated than the previous generation. Gone were the subroutines that reacted and responded to human social interactions. Also gone were the designs based on human anatomy structure. This new generation of boomers seemed to be a throwback to old robotics, bulky, slow machines which were good at simple tasks, and always required human supervision. Nothing about them would make a person think he or she would suddenly have his or her orders questioned or be attacked out of the blue. And none of them had gone rogue..."yet" (as Sylia would add cryptically even though Linna thought Galatea's death would have ended that possibility.)
Unfortunately, the new boomer designs had one significant flaw...at least as far as the former Knight Sabers were concerned. The crude tampering with the boomer's core (its brain), caused a high frequency squeal to constantly emanate from the machine. This sound was heard only by the four women who had been mentally linked due to both Sylia and Galatea's efforts.
Sylia was the first to notice it, which was not surprising since her brain was where Galatea (and all subsequent boomers) were born. At first, she complained of minor headaches whenever she visited Tokyo, falling back on her usual remedy of scotch and pills (much to both Mackie and Henderson's dismay.) When she visited the site of her destroyed home and shop where construction boomers were in full force, she practically collapsed as soon as she stepped out of her car, overwhelmed by the piercing pain of what sounded and felt like constantly grinding metal.
It wasn't long before the other three former Knight Sabers all felt the same symptoms. So not more than three months passed after saving their beloved city that the Knight Sabers couldn't stand to visit, much less live there. However, no one else was affected, not even Mackie, Sylia's step-brother in heart and soul but a boomer in reality.
Of course, Sylia wasn't one to let the coincidence slide, tapping her resources from the temporary home of her late mother's mansion out in the country. She and Nene raided Genom's databanks and pulled the design specs on the new core. Sylia quickly determined the cause and fix but was stymied as to how to address this problem. After all, no one alive in the new Genom Corporation viewed her as anyone other than the little girl of a brilliant scientist, not as a scientific resource herself. To maintain her low profile and privacy, Sylia had purposefully not gone to university, preferring to continue her education in private, using her father's notes as her scientific bible.
Nigel was still a scientist and mechanic on paper, even if his credibility was undermined by having a run down machine shop in the less than savory part of Tokyo. But it was agreed that it would be useless to pitch the changes to Genom Corporation when the end result meant for the company to go through the cost of recalls and modifications just because four unimportant women were suffering through chronic headaches whenever they were within 100 meters of a boomer. And with thousands of boomers rolling off the assembly line every day, the problem became even more futile.
Nene once suggested that maybe they resurrect the hardsuits, buffer against the mental assault, and spend their time modifying every boomer to get rid of what the group now termed "white noise." Everyone laughed at her suggestion, congratulating her on her joke, but Linna did notice a shadow pass across Nene's face that showed she was serious. But Nene never brought it up again, and by then the team had resigned themselves to taking a much deserved vacation, thinking that either the white noise problem [would] go away over time due to most of the construction boomers not running around Tokyo as frequently, or that perhaps the sensitivity levels in the women would build up on their own, like an immunity.
So four months after the final battle with Galatea, the women who were once the Knight Sabers went their separate ways, vowing temporarily, but one never knows.
Sylia stayed in her mother's home with Henderson, while Nigel and Mackie moved back to Nigel's machine shop in the city. Nene had transferred to the regular police department in Akihabara. Linna had transferred to the Hugh-Geit's Osaka office. And Priss went on her much longed for world tour, with a very happy and unemployed Leon in tow.
Linna grimaced to herself as that last thought passed through her mind. She tried to be happy for Priss but that connection of Leon always caused a little burn of jealousy. She had hoped time and distance would ease the wound of losing out on what "could have been" with Priss. But at the same time, she genuinely wanted to be happy for her friend no matter what her personal selfish issues were. The feelings didn't seem to get any better as the days go by.
But the twist was that Priss had become a different person after their outer-space battle with Galatea. It was as if the rage and fire in her had been put out, leaving behind a very quiet, introspective person minus her usual tension. She and Linna never really had the chance to talk about everything once all of the chaos began, especially since Leon never left Priss's side once the team was reunited.
The way Priss performed on stage changed too, as if she was taking on the persona of someone she used to be whenever she sang her more angst filled songs. The crowd never noticed though, being in awe of her on stage charisma and talent. But the change in Priss was noticeable to everyone who saw her outside of the spotlight, and no one seemed to be brave enough to openly stake a claim on whether it was a good or bad thing.
Of course, it was easy to dismiss the cause of this change in Priss as being two days of suffering from heatstroke and dehydration in the African desert. Leon and Nigel had only found her by using a tracking satellite to locate the remains of her hardsuit (due to a tip from Galatea, by way of Mackie, as a dying act of kindness). Priss had wandered so far from her initial landing area that they wouldn't have found her if a sandstorm had erased her footprints in the time it took for the men to commandeer a plane and fly out to retrieve her. And she never told anyone about her final confrontation with Galatea, stating that it was enough to know Sylia's twin was gone for good.
Linna and Nene had faired better, being dumped on a tropical island not far from Hawaii. Fresh water and coconuts sustained them in the day it took for Sylia and Mackie to pick them up. The only real inconvenience was dealing with the fact of not having any clothes, much to Nene's horror when she saw Mackie step off of the plane, causing her to try to hide behind the equally nude and embarrassed Linna. Oh sure, Nene was happy to see that Mackie was indeed alive and well, but there were other things which quickly sunk in and made the reunion bittersweet. Sylia just watched the shenanigans with her ever present amused smile, punctuated with a wink to Linna, which made the latter woman blush even deeper from head to toe.
Linna sighed and closed her eyes, trying to clear her mind of the flood of memories. So much had happened in so little time. She needed to focus on what was important right now, which was moving back to Tokyo.
Finally, a year after Galatea, Sylia had come up with a core design which corrected the white noise problem, maintained the limited capabilities of the new generation of boomers, and was more energy efficient. It was this last angle which caused Sylia and Nigel to feel comfortable pitching the design to Genom. Well, Nigel pitched it since Sylia wanted to remain in the shadows.
And sure enough, Genom snatched up the new design, anxious to deploy it on the newer boomers as well as offer upgrades to their existing clients, knowing this would add to their positive public relations spin as well as profit margins. Nigel was credited with the design and given a cut of the profits, which continued to be dumped into an untouched bank account. He'd rather have it transferred to Sylia's account, knowing she would greater use for the funds, but that would just cause too many raised eyebrows, and plus she never asked for the money. So they both agreed the funds could stay there for a rainy day - such as if another Galatea problem ever arose.
The Knight Sabers team now felt there would be an end to the white noise problem sooner rather than later, allowing them to finally come home.
Nene was the first to test the waters, making frequent visits to both see Mackie and to check on the white noise level of Tokyo. She had finally moved back three weeks ago, sending Linna phone messages and emails begging her friend to return as well.
With Nigel overseeing the reconstruction of her home and shop, Sylia herself was making arrangements to move back to the city, but probably wouldn't make it until at least another month or two.
Priss was still on her world tour, with no immediate plans of returning to Tokyo - white noise or not. Every couple of weeks, Linna would get a "Here's Where We're Playing Tonight" email, with an attached picture of Priss and her band looking like happy wandering minstrels, and Leon as the roadie/groupie. Since Priss wasn't a letter writer or phone person by nature, Linna had given up on thinking they could ever have a real conversation as long as they weren't in the same room.
And so Linna would sigh, send back a quick response of "Glad you're doing well. Hope to see you soon!" and file away the correspondence while fighting the urge to blow Leon's pixels into cyberspace with an imaginary gun.
Linna shook her head to clear her mind again. She felt the plane start its descent into the airport and thought of what she wanted to do as soon as she got there. After all, Hugh-Geit had only given her the weekend to move. She could have taken vacation time, but she wanted to save that for an extended visit to her parents later in the month. She didn't have that many belongings anyway, filling up not even one moving van. However, she thought grimly, if that van doesn't show up as scheduled, she was screwed.
And then there was the task of just rebuilding her personal life. While she had decent friendships in Osaka, she truly missed Tokyo, the other Knight Saber women, and her parents. She knew her stay in Osaka was temporary, so she purposefully kept people as arm's length.
At least, that was her excuse for the atrocious dating experiences she had with the handful of women she took a chance on. None of the dates resulted in even a good night's kiss, much less anything more serious.
Once the plane landed, Linna gathered her belongings, flashed a pleasant smile at the man who sat next to her, who weakly returned it. He had unsuccessfully tried to chat her up as soon as she sat down for the flight, clearly hoping for more meaningful plans once they reached Tokyo. She got out of conversing with him by stating she had a sore throat and was recovering from a cold. In fear of getting sick himself, the man proceeded to ignore her, much to her pleasure. She made a mental note to thank Sylia for that little travel tip.
All the while, Linna passively checked for any signs of mental discomfort and found none. And with every step off the plane, she felt herself relax as her fear proved unfounded. When she tried a visit to her parents a year or so after Galatea, she couldn't last ten minutes in the airport. And she hadn't been back before this final trip, making her moving arrangements all by phone and Internet.
Linna stepped out into the airport and scanned the waiting crowd for the familiar face who was going to be her welcoming committee. Before she was done looking around, she was immediately tackled in a bear hug by the young woman who was more petite in frame but with more than enough energy to make up for her size.
"Linna! I'm so glad you're here!" Nene squealed happily.
Linna happily returned the hug and said, "I'm glad I'm home!"
--End Chapter 1--
* * * * * *
Special Author's Note: I've decided to try an experiment by using the Private Forum feature and allow for a public discussion (with occasional input from me) on this series: update notification, discuss what's currently going on, and explore ideas for future stories. Interested? Go
here.
