DISCLAIMER: Relatively standard stuff. Existing characters are properties of the people who made them up. Other, original, characters are mine, and so's the story, hence ownership and copyright of them belongs to me. Contact me at domino@netaccess.com.au if you want permission to use anything I've written for whatnot purposes.
NOTE: This story includes major spoilers for the series Saishu-heiki Kanojo. If you don't want to know how the series ends, or anything that happens in it, I'd suggest stopping reading now.
Love Song of Tomorrow
By
Raymond Cooper
Chapter 1
** The Last Memory **
My last living memory is of a huge tsunami gushing towards me like a locomotive.
Or like one of the many warplanes we all had seen more and more often in these last days of our world.
Regional wars, spreading like wildfire into big, huge global conflicts. Or so I guess from what little my girlfriend had told me in these last days. "It's really bad on the other side of the world," she had said. I guessed, seeing how bad things were here in Japan, that she was understating things somewhat.
But watching my home town, where I was born, grew up in, lived, loved, and I guessed about to die in... watching it destroyed by earthquake then tsunami... all the while, the last of the foreign invader forces trying to smash their way into the city, what they perceived as safety.
Only safe because of Chise. My girlfriend.
She'd stopped the war from touching here as best she could. We'd had the occasional wake-up call... the bombing raid in nearby Sapporo, the enemy jet that crashed into the hills... and now this... the last elements of humanity fighting for a foothold on what they saw as the best, last place to survive.
And it wasn't to be.
The massive spires my girlfriend had become... huge suborbital chunks of metal emanating from a source high above the clouds... they defended, protected what they could. Huge swathes of energy flashed down with purpose, cutting down the invaders before they could touch ground. Dozens of enemy jets, possibly now the last in the world, were dashed against her mobile columns of inorganic living matter.
Chise would protect me. Of that I had no doubt.
But the tsunami... that made me doubt.
She tried to protect me. I remember, as the wave bore down on my position, an inarticulate shout, a scream of protest, then an iceburg of living metal shifted across my vision. I sighed in relief, knowing I was safe.
Alive, I remember nothing after that.
******
We're here together now, wherever here is. Maybe it's heaven, maybe it's hell. I'm with Chise, though... and she's with me, and all's right with the world. She was saved within me. When the world was destroyed, she saved me and I saved her. How, I'm not sure. But she said my heart was big enough to contain both of us, and so here she is. She was surprised at that, but then she'd forgotten a lot before the end. She'd made herself forget, so she could fight more, protect me and our families.
Wherever here is, it looks like our world.
We're here at school, sitting in the playground, watching the sun rise on our first day together... by ourselves. We both feel a curious sense of dislocation - the fact our souls appear to be conjoined lets us feel more of what the other is feeling - and look about. But everything is as it should be. Chise's eyes have tears glistening around the edges - nothing new, but the faint smile on her face suggests to me that she's tearing up like this because she's happy also. Like I am. I can feel that, deep down.
She turns back to me, and snuggles into my chest. I wrap an arm around her, draw her in tighter, closer, taking what comfort I can from her nearness, her warmth.
"I can feel your heart," she whispers. "Toki... toki... toki... it sounds big enough for both of us."
"I can feel yours, too," I say by way of reply, looking above her head towards the horizon. "Soft. Small. A counterpoint to mine... beating when mine does not. Almost like we cover for each other."
"This is true," she says, and draws herself in closer to me. I don't mind. My other arm comes up and wraps around her as well, I just can't help it. We may be very lonely here together... wherever we are... but we will be happy. No longer does Chise have to worry about destroying the world, or cities, or killing... no longer does what Chise became have to be so cold-hearted and living only to kill. Both have moved on... and if this Chise is my Chise... the one I cherished in my mind... the Chise of my mind, the one she was at the end, rather than the Chise that my original girlfriend became when the weapon inside of her took over... then we will be extremely happy together.
I feel so sad, though, that only we two survived the catastrophe that devastated the planet. We will be very lonely. yet, Chise does not seem to be worried. She has a curious smile on her face as she continues to listen to my heartbeat.
"Chise...?"
"Yes, Shuu-chan?"
"Why are you smiling? Aren't we dead?"
"No, Shuu-chan."
"Then... what has happened here?"
"That is classified information," she says soberly, but in a light tone, as when my old Chise used to become whatever it was that existed within her.
"If there's no one else left alive but... us," I had been about to say 'me', but that didn't seem very diplomatic, even if we both knew it to be true, "then surely secrets no longer have meaning?"
She snaps back to herself. "But Shuu-chan... we're not really alive anymore."
******
I ponder on that for a while as the sun rises. It seems to be majestic today... a huge globe of red flame rising from the calm blue waters of the ocean. So we are dead. That seems to be what she's saying right now. That is depressing... when she'd said I was the last alive, I'd thought that was true. The last alive in the world. But perhaps I did die.
******
My last living memory... gagging on water as it poured around Chise's form.
******
So I had died. And I just don't know it. It doesn't feel like I'm dead... but then not knowing what being dead feels like...
But this does feel like I'm alive. Everything's like life... except there's only Chise and I, sitting in the schoolyard. Almost like there was no war, no death, no destruction. Everything's so peaceful, I can't believe everything's gone and this is only a memory. I can feel Chise beside me... feel the softness of her breasts beneath one of my arms. I'm dying to touch that again... I remember our last night together. Passion, comfort...
Right now, I feel I need nothing but comfort. If everything really is gone... I need reassurance that nothing between us has changed. That we're still here for one another. But she's just smiling that strange smile... confident in whatever she's thinking.
Something occurs to me right then. "Chise... you knew this was going to happen. How did you know?"
"I'm the prototype of the device that's been causing the earthquakes."
"... Prototype?"
"Planned human evolution. The last hope for the survival of our race."
"Like... you? A human weapon system?"
"Mmm-hmm." She lifts her head from my chest, and looks out at the sun, just having cleared the horizon completely. It's completely red... no yellows, no orange. "And now we remain here until needed."
Needed...? "The sun's all wrong," I say by way of conversation.
"That's good... for you," Chise says.
And then, it all goes away,
******
and come to, standing in the doorway of the class. It all has to be a dream... Akemi's sitting in a chair, staring at what looks to be a transfer student. Atsushi, he's peering out a window with Toke... staring at something below. Nori's even here, staring at the ceiling, but nowhere near Take.
And then I see Chise. She's sitting by herself, vacant expression on her face. Something seems different about her... I'm not sure what. At the sound of me shutting the door to the class, though, she turns to face me. Her expression... there are no tears. There's no sign of an apology on her lips... she's just staring at me. There's a chair next to her, and I take it.
There's utter silence in the classroom as I do so, conversations falling quiet all around like I've just done something incredibly stupid.
I reach out... and rub her head. "Morning, Chise," I say.
She just stares at me.
And then I realise that I'm feeling another huge sense of dislocation. And I can't feel Chise within my heart any longer. And right now, everything just seems to weird. The world imprints itself over my senses, and I see this isn't Chise. She doesn't even look the same - blue hair, red eyes, alabaster skin - but then I catch sight of something in her eyes. A flicker of memory? A glimpse of recognition?
It's gone as soon as I see it. But everyone still is silent. I get the feeling I've done something really weird. This girl - she can't be Chise, but I've seen weirder things from her in the last few months. So I made a mistake. But... I realise I know this girl. I know this... young woman. She's younger than Chise, but I'm younger than me, too.
What's going on? I want to cry, but find I can't. I'm still staring, shocked, at the girl I thought was Chise.
I start noticing more similarities about her. Her hair style. The blush that's come to her cheeks with my touch. The hand that creeps up, shaking, and touches my chest haltingly.
Then she leans toward me, tips over her chair, her desk, falls onto my chest, ear pushing against me hard. "Toki, toki, toki," she whispers. "You sound so scared... Shin-chan."
"Ayanami! There won't be any of that behaviour in this class!" Akemi announces as she pounces to her feet. The Akemi girl. Looking now, she looks nothing like Akemi. But there's something wrong with me. My heart beats faster and faster -
******
And again, I know nothing. But I remember.
I remember everything.
******
My first living memory is of me, standing in a deserted city. Why I was here, I had no idea. A quick check of my clothes turns up an envelope, with Shinji Ikari written as the address. No street number or name, no city. Just a name. My name, I guessed. I turned around and around, but could see no one. Almost like my home city now... after the tsunami... after the quakes, the water, the death, the destruction.
I felt something behind me, and I jerked about. Several blocks down the street, I saw her. Chise. Metalic angel wings sprouted from her back, hovering just above the surface of the roadway. She looks at me so sadly. A distant thud caused a group of nearby pigeons to take flight, and I glanced at them for a moment, but when I turned back, Chise was gone. And more, I couldn't feel her any longer in my heart. I just couldn't feel her presence any longer. That's when I began to feel fear.
I could hear a car in the distance, but little else. Then some kind of advanced stealth gunship swung low over the rooftops, and I forgot about the car, forgot about Chise. It headed for a hill that flanked a nearby lake - another hill anchored the other side, much further away. I heard that thud again, felt it in the ground. What was it?
Two gunships flew backwards from the opening between the hills, firing missiles in a ripple-volley from wing-mounted pods at something approaching them, that was some considerable distance above the ground.
And then it stepped into view. The thought 'planned human evolution' leapt into my mind unbidden, and I felt horror beyond belief. I hadn't known such things could exist in this world.
But was this my world? Or was this another? There was no Chise here, at least not with me, and not saving the city. Maybe she was somewhere else, fighting more of these creatures? Perhaps. If she's been ordered to, she would have. That was my girlfriend.
This thing, though... was like something from a nightmare. It stepped like something from a Gojira movie, but in slow motion. Stick-limbs carried the matte-black creature, how I'm not certain, but they carried the weight of the being. The arms ended in a series of wicked claws, claws I saw that acted as fingers moments later when the arm lashed out lightning fast and grabbed one of the gunships from the air, crushing it into fragments. My mouth went dry. The face of the creature was an inanimate mask of white ivory. Like one of those Italian drama masks we'd covered in history as some point... that I've forgotten the name of. But the sad one. It looked so sad.
It looked like Chise. Forced into acting because it had no other choice. This was what it was, was doing what it was made to do. I felt pity for it.
It had gotten much closer than I'd realised while I was struck with horror, and when the foot crashed down little more than half a block away, I was shaken from my reverie by the shards of broken glass that zapped about the street from shattered windows. The creature's head turned down to face me, and I was struck again my an intense sense of dislocation, that it wasn't just that this creature resembled Chise but in some sense WAS Chise. I began to fear as it reached for me.
But the car I'd heard earlier, and forgotten about, hadn't forgotten me. It came along one side of me, slowing rapidly, spun about in front of me and the occupant threw open a door so I could climb inside, and sped off again as the fingers dug deep into the concrete and steel of the roadway behind me. The car bounced and wobbled dangerously, but nothing too serious. In shock, I stared at the woman sitting opposite me. She was hunched a little determinedly over her steering wheel, and so I decided not to bother her for the moment. But I promised to ask what was going on as soon as the car stopped bouncing.
She glanced sideways at me eventually. "Shinji Ikari?" I nodded, dumbly, not knowing what else to do. "Misato Katsuragi. Sorry I'm late, your father will have a fit. You think we can keep my lateness out of this?"
She sounded like Akemi... the old Akemi I remember, almost, anyway. Not the crippled, bleeding thing that had been my best friend since I was a child. That beautiful woman, lying in her bed, so sad and ashamed that I could only see her as something so blasted and sliced. I nod at this woman again, still silent. What could I say? 'I'm sorry, but you've got the wrong person? This Shinji Ikari is still somewhere out there in the city?' But I wanted to live. Wanted so dearly to live. I kept silent.
Besides, I remembered the letter in my pocket. Addressed to Shinji Ikari. Perhaps that was who I was. Perhaps Shuuji was simply a dream, a bad dream... but perhaps this was the dream. I just ddn't know. The woman was eying me strangely.
"Are you hurt or anything?" she asked, and I shook my head. She pulled over onto the side of the road so she could check me for injuries, and even being so completely embarrassed, I couldn't help that healthy response. She either didn't notice, or ignored it, for she gave no sign of noticing a few extra bulges in my trousers. I, for one, wished I could curl up and die.
But I knew I already had. Standing on the lookout, over the city, as the wave crashed in. Watching my home be destroyed, the school, Akemi's house and family, the few remaining friends of mine still alive... my past, my present, my future. Gone.
Eventually, Miss Katsuragi was satisfied I wasn't damaged, and she smiled at me. I gave her a hesitant smile back, and watched her friendly expression change to one of horror. "No!" she shouted, "They're going to use an N2 mine!"
Her face went white, followed quickly by the world, and once more, I thought I had died again.
To Be Continued...
Notes: Had this idea this morning, but it's taken most of the day to get something workable storywise. Hope people enjoy it. If it's well-received, will definitely continue... if it's not... then prolly not continued quite as fast as the other two major fics I've got underway atm.
NOTE: This story includes major spoilers for the series Saishu-heiki Kanojo. If you don't want to know how the series ends, or anything that happens in it, I'd suggest stopping reading now.
Love Song of Tomorrow
By
Raymond Cooper
Chapter 1
** The Last Memory **
My last living memory is of a huge tsunami gushing towards me like a locomotive.
Or like one of the many warplanes we all had seen more and more often in these last days of our world.
Regional wars, spreading like wildfire into big, huge global conflicts. Or so I guess from what little my girlfriend had told me in these last days. "It's really bad on the other side of the world," she had said. I guessed, seeing how bad things were here in Japan, that she was understating things somewhat.
But watching my home town, where I was born, grew up in, lived, loved, and I guessed about to die in... watching it destroyed by earthquake then tsunami... all the while, the last of the foreign invader forces trying to smash their way into the city, what they perceived as safety.
Only safe because of Chise. My girlfriend.
She'd stopped the war from touching here as best she could. We'd had the occasional wake-up call... the bombing raid in nearby Sapporo, the enemy jet that crashed into the hills... and now this... the last elements of humanity fighting for a foothold on what they saw as the best, last place to survive.
And it wasn't to be.
The massive spires my girlfriend had become... huge suborbital chunks of metal emanating from a source high above the clouds... they defended, protected what they could. Huge swathes of energy flashed down with purpose, cutting down the invaders before they could touch ground. Dozens of enemy jets, possibly now the last in the world, were dashed against her mobile columns of inorganic living matter.
Chise would protect me. Of that I had no doubt.
But the tsunami... that made me doubt.
She tried to protect me. I remember, as the wave bore down on my position, an inarticulate shout, a scream of protest, then an iceburg of living metal shifted across my vision. I sighed in relief, knowing I was safe.
Alive, I remember nothing after that.
******
We're here together now, wherever here is. Maybe it's heaven, maybe it's hell. I'm with Chise, though... and she's with me, and all's right with the world. She was saved within me. When the world was destroyed, she saved me and I saved her. How, I'm not sure. But she said my heart was big enough to contain both of us, and so here she is. She was surprised at that, but then she'd forgotten a lot before the end. She'd made herself forget, so she could fight more, protect me and our families.
Wherever here is, it looks like our world.
We're here at school, sitting in the playground, watching the sun rise on our first day together... by ourselves. We both feel a curious sense of dislocation - the fact our souls appear to be conjoined lets us feel more of what the other is feeling - and look about. But everything is as it should be. Chise's eyes have tears glistening around the edges - nothing new, but the faint smile on her face suggests to me that she's tearing up like this because she's happy also. Like I am. I can feel that, deep down.
She turns back to me, and snuggles into my chest. I wrap an arm around her, draw her in tighter, closer, taking what comfort I can from her nearness, her warmth.
"I can feel your heart," she whispers. "Toki... toki... toki... it sounds big enough for both of us."
"I can feel yours, too," I say by way of reply, looking above her head towards the horizon. "Soft. Small. A counterpoint to mine... beating when mine does not. Almost like we cover for each other."
"This is true," she says, and draws herself in closer to me. I don't mind. My other arm comes up and wraps around her as well, I just can't help it. We may be very lonely here together... wherever we are... but we will be happy. No longer does Chise have to worry about destroying the world, or cities, or killing... no longer does what Chise became have to be so cold-hearted and living only to kill. Both have moved on... and if this Chise is my Chise... the one I cherished in my mind... the Chise of my mind, the one she was at the end, rather than the Chise that my original girlfriend became when the weapon inside of her took over... then we will be extremely happy together.
I feel so sad, though, that only we two survived the catastrophe that devastated the planet. We will be very lonely. yet, Chise does not seem to be worried. She has a curious smile on her face as she continues to listen to my heartbeat.
"Chise...?"
"Yes, Shuu-chan?"
"Why are you smiling? Aren't we dead?"
"No, Shuu-chan."
"Then... what has happened here?"
"That is classified information," she says soberly, but in a light tone, as when my old Chise used to become whatever it was that existed within her.
"If there's no one else left alive but... us," I had been about to say 'me', but that didn't seem very diplomatic, even if we both knew it to be true, "then surely secrets no longer have meaning?"
She snaps back to herself. "But Shuu-chan... we're not really alive anymore."
******
I ponder on that for a while as the sun rises. It seems to be majestic today... a huge globe of red flame rising from the calm blue waters of the ocean. So we are dead. That seems to be what she's saying right now. That is depressing... when she'd said I was the last alive, I'd thought that was true. The last alive in the world. But perhaps I did die.
******
My last living memory... gagging on water as it poured around Chise's form.
******
So I had died. And I just don't know it. It doesn't feel like I'm dead... but then not knowing what being dead feels like...
But this does feel like I'm alive. Everything's like life... except there's only Chise and I, sitting in the schoolyard. Almost like there was no war, no death, no destruction. Everything's so peaceful, I can't believe everything's gone and this is only a memory. I can feel Chise beside me... feel the softness of her breasts beneath one of my arms. I'm dying to touch that again... I remember our last night together. Passion, comfort...
Right now, I feel I need nothing but comfort. If everything really is gone... I need reassurance that nothing between us has changed. That we're still here for one another. But she's just smiling that strange smile... confident in whatever she's thinking.
Something occurs to me right then. "Chise... you knew this was going to happen. How did you know?"
"I'm the prototype of the device that's been causing the earthquakes."
"... Prototype?"
"Planned human evolution. The last hope for the survival of our race."
"Like... you? A human weapon system?"
"Mmm-hmm." She lifts her head from my chest, and looks out at the sun, just having cleared the horizon completely. It's completely red... no yellows, no orange. "And now we remain here until needed."
Needed...? "The sun's all wrong," I say by way of conversation.
"That's good... for you," Chise says.
And then, it all goes away,
******
and come to, standing in the doorway of the class. It all has to be a dream... Akemi's sitting in a chair, staring at what looks to be a transfer student. Atsushi, he's peering out a window with Toke... staring at something below. Nori's even here, staring at the ceiling, but nowhere near Take.
And then I see Chise. She's sitting by herself, vacant expression on her face. Something seems different about her... I'm not sure what. At the sound of me shutting the door to the class, though, she turns to face me. Her expression... there are no tears. There's no sign of an apology on her lips... she's just staring at me. There's a chair next to her, and I take it.
There's utter silence in the classroom as I do so, conversations falling quiet all around like I've just done something incredibly stupid.
I reach out... and rub her head. "Morning, Chise," I say.
She just stares at me.
And then I realise that I'm feeling another huge sense of dislocation. And I can't feel Chise within my heart any longer. And right now, everything just seems to weird. The world imprints itself over my senses, and I see this isn't Chise. She doesn't even look the same - blue hair, red eyes, alabaster skin - but then I catch sight of something in her eyes. A flicker of memory? A glimpse of recognition?
It's gone as soon as I see it. But everyone still is silent. I get the feeling I've done something really weird. This girl - she can't be Chise, but I've seen weirder things from her in the last few months. So I made a mistake. But... I realise I know this girl. I know this... young woman. She's younger than Chise, but I'm younger than me, too.
What's going on? I want to cry, but find I can't. I'm still staring, shocked, at the girl I thought was Chise.
I start noticing more similarities about her. Her hair style. The blush that's come to her cheeks with my touch. The hand that creeps up, shaking, and touches my chest haltingly.
Then she leans toward me, tips over her chair, her desk, falls onto my chest, ear pushing against me hard. "Toki, toki, toki," she whispers. "You sound so scared... Shin-chan."
"Ayanami! There won't be any of that behaviour in this class!" Akemi announces as she pounces to her feet. The Akemi girl. Looking now, she looks nothing like Akemi. But there's something wrong with me. My heart beats faster and faster -
******
And again, I know nothing. But I remember.
I remember everything.
******
My first living memory is of me, standing in a deserted city. Why I was here, I had no idea. A quick check of my clothes turns up an envelope, with Shinji Ikari written as the address. No street number or name, no city. Just a name. My name, I guessed. I turned around and around, but could see no one. Almost like my home city now... after the tsunami... after the quakes, the water, the death, the destruction.
I felt something behind me, and I jerked about. Several blocks down the street, I saw her. Chise. Metalic angel wings sprouted from her back, hovering just above the surface of the roadway. She looks at me so sadly. A distant thud caused a group of nearby pigeons to take flight, and I glanced at them for a moment, but when I turned back, Chise was gone. And more, I couldn't feel her any longer in my heart. I just couldn't feel her presence any longer. That's when I began to feel fear.
I could hear a car in the distance, but little else. Then some kind of advanced stealth gunship swung low over the rooftops, and I forgot about the car, forgot about Chise. It headed for a hill that flanked a nearby lake - another hill anchored the other side, much further away. I heard that thud again, felt it in the ground. What was it?
Two gunships flew backwards from the opening between the hills, firing missiles in a ripple-volley from wing-mounted pods at something approaching them, that was some considerable distance above the ground.
And then it stepped into view. The thought 'planned human evolution' leapt into my mind unbidden, and I felt horror beyond belief. I hadn't known such things could exist in this world.
But was this my world? Or was this another? There was no Chise here, at least not with me, and not saving the city. Maybe she was somewhere else, fighting more of these creatures? Perhaps. If she's been ordered to, she would have. That was my girlfriend.
This thing, though... was like something from a nightmare. It stepped like something from a Gojira movie, but in slow motion. Stick-limbs carried the matte-black creature, how I'm not certain, but they carried the weight of the being. The arms ended in a series of wicked claws, claws I saw that acted as fingers moments later when the arm lashed out lightning fast and grabbed one of the gunships from the air, crushing it into fragments. My mouth went dry. The face of the creature was an inanimate mask of white ivory. Like one of those Italian drama masks we'd covered in history as some point... that I've forgotten the name of. But the sad one. It looked so sad.
It looked like Chise. Forced into acting because it had no other choice. This was what it was, was doing what it was made to do. I felt pity for it.
It had gotten much closer than I'd realised while I was struck with horror, and when the foot crashed down little more than half a block away, I was shaken from my reverie by the shards of broken glass that zapped about the street from shattered windows. The creature's head turned down to face me, and I was struck again my an intense sense of dislocation, that it wasn't just that this creature resembled Chise but in some sense WAS Chise. I began to fear as it reached for me.
But the car I'd heard earlier, and forgotten about, hadn't forgotten me. It came along one side of me, slowing rapidly, spun about in front of me and the occupant threw open a door so I could climb inside, and sped off again as the fingers dug deep into the concrete and steel of the roadway behind me. The car bounced and wobbled dangerously, but nothing too serious. In shock, I stared at the woman sitting opposite me. She was hunched a little determinedly over her steering wheel, and so I decided not to bother her for the moment. But I promised to ask what was going on as soon as the car stopped bouncing.
She glanced sideways at me eventually. "Shinji Ikari?" I nodded, dumbly, not knowing what else to do. "Misato Katsuragi. Sorry I'm late, your father will have a fit. You think we can keep my lateness out of this?"
She sounded like Akemi... the old Akemi I remember, almost, anyway. Not the crippled, bleeding thing that had been my best friend since I was a child. That beautiful woman, lying in her bed, so sad and ashamed that I could only see her as something so blasted and sliced. I nod at this woman again, still silent. What could I say? 'I'm sorry, but you've got the wrong person? This Shinji Ikari is still somewhere out there in the city?' But I wanted to live. Wanted so dearly to live. I kept silent.
Besides, I remembered the letter in my pocket. Addressed to Shinji Ikari. Perhaps that was who I was. Perhaps Shuuji was simply a dream, a bad dream... but perhaps this was the dream. I just ddn't know. The woman was eying me strangely.
"Are you hurt or anything?" she asked, and I shook my head. She pulled over onto the side of the road so she could check me for injuries, and even being so completely embarrassed, I couldn't help that healthy response. She either didn't notice, or ignored it, for she gave no sign of noticing a few extra bulges in my trousers. I, for one, wished I could curl up and die.
But I knew I already had. Standing on the lookout, over the city, as the wave crashed in. Watching my home be destroyed, the school, Akemi's house and family, the few remaining friends of mine still alive... my past, my present, my future. Gone.
Eventually, Miss Katsuragi was satisfied I wasn't damaged, and she smiled at me. I gave her a hesitant smile back, and watched her friendly expression change to one of horror. "No!" she shouted, "They're going to use an N2 mine!"
Her face went white, followed quickly by the world, and once more, I thought I had died again.
To Be Continued...
Notes: Had this idea this morning, but it's taken most of the day to get something workable storywise. Hope people enjoy it. If it's well-received, will definitely continue... if it's not... then prolly not continued quite as fast as the other two major fics I've got underway atm.