"Hello one and all! Yes it is I, the mighty Sean talking to you, the reader! (Ok, I'm not that mighty, but I am indeedly Sean) As you may have guessed from the chapter title this is only a sneak preview of the LONG overdue chapter four. I apologize profusely for it having been so long, and yes I know that so far this little project of mine has blown up bigger then I thought it would if nothing else and that you want more! Writer's block is the true child of evil, I can personally attest to that. But for now please enjoy this preview of chapter four and bonus material from the very rough chapter five! Also, please understand that though I am a slacker I will finish this fic, and you have my personal permission to beat me with sticks if I don't."

"Without further talking from me, enjoy."

~~~

"I'll start looking into these Children of Gaia people. We can find their base tomorrow." Luna said over Sean's vid-link as he walked out of the Global Cortex hanger. It was time for his bodyguard duties.

     "Right. Before that though I want you to talk to Silver. Let him know what's going on, I'd like to have some back-up before waltzing in on these tree huggers."

     "Got'cha, see you later." With that the link closed and Sean took to the air. He had about four minutes to get down to the research and development level of Layered where most of the corporate laboratories were. It didn't take long, being a registered Raven he had access to the Layered's freight elevators. He took it down then flew across the shallow domed, dim lit R&D level towards Commence's laboratory. Right on time he picked up a light blue circle on his radar. Normally things showed up on his radar as upside-down triangles, so there wasn't much chance this was anything but Remilia Trevorlich.

     He found it kind of strange that a relative (he was guessing daughter) of Jackson Trevorlich was heading up this project, but then again Trevorlich struck him as the type to keep things as close to himself as possible, especially an important project like this.

     Remilia left the lab and got into a car, drove to the train that went up from here and got on. Sean took another elevator up and beat her train to sector 2, and continued following her. He had done this enough times it was becoming almost automatic. She couldn't take her car on the train obviously, so now she was on foot. This always struck Sean as a rather roundabout way to get home, but it was probably the fastest way to get from there to here.

     Sean yawned, and took his usual perch upon the Reclilon Office building, which at this hour was pretty much empty. He knew he should be on his toes in case the Children of Gaia picked tonight to make an attempt on her life, but the only thing that would get him to perk up right now was another no-doze or something really interesting happening.

     "Hmm…" and that there might qualify as something interesting. He nearly missed it but across the street two men, probably in their late twenties, were looking, and pointing at seeming to be talking about Remilia. It didn't take long for them to cut across the street and start following her as nonchalantly as possible, but at a quick enough pace they would catch up with her in a minute.

     He was tempted to sigh, but as things were he'd rather have this happen then nothing. A little light pressure on the booster pedal brought him into the air and to a hover, and just about then the two men made their move, running up to Remilia and grabbing her around the arms to drag her into an alleyway. Sean thumbed on his Overboost and was pushed hard into his seat with the force of the thrust quickly propelling him down to the street. He killed the OB and used his normal boosters to fly up and above eye level to the ally they had pulled her in to. He caught sight of them just in time to watch Remilia get hit in the head with something and fall to the ground.

     Sean made his move just as one of the men started grabbing at Remilia's dress coat. He let of on the booster and fell like a rock into the ally, hitting hard enough to fragment the concrete and crush flat a garbage dumpster his foot happened to land on. He was kind of sideways in the ally with his right side towards them, but that just made it a little more dramatic as he whipped his Karasawa up and pointed it roughly at them. It was close enough that they could see down the smooth bore barrel into the rifles guts.

     Though at this point most people would have pissed themselves (robots falling out of the sky and pointing guns the size of busses at you will do that) but still Sean felt obliged to flick on his loudspeaker "Freeze." They did anything but that though and bolted into the darkening back alleys. The lights were coming down so he decided that trying to chase them would be futile (and besides that he'd probably scuff his paint trying to navigate these narrow back streets) so he grabbed his left control glove and pulled it on, then dropped to a crouch and popped the hatch.

     Recently Luna had insisted that he get his control gloves upgraded to the new model, and he was glad that she did now. The new ones could be used remotely and be activated with buttons on the back of the glove. He fired it up once out of the cockpit and the left arm came alive. He maneuvered it around so he could step into its open palm and he lowered himself to the ground. Once down he locked the hand in place and jogged over to Remilia.

     She didn't look too bad. Whatever they had clubbed her with hadn't left any kind of injury he could see. Probably the worst that had happened was her jacket was open and her blouse was ripped enough to show more cleavage then was polite. He picked her up and went about the task of getting her home.

                                                      *                *                *

About fifteen minutes later Remilia woke up suddenly. She found herself in her own bed with the lights on. About the only thing she could think about was that her head hurt, but shortly after that she wanted to know what had happened. She looked around her bedroom and saw a brown-haired man wearing mostly black that she vaguely recognized sitting in her reading chair. He had apparently nodded off and his head was propped up on a fist.

     She got up and looked at herself in a long mirror she had on her wall. Her cloths were a mess and the white blouse she had on was ripped a little. Quickly she buttoned her jacket back up to hide that fact then turned towards the man in her chair. She didn't know what was going on but she'd venture a guess it was his fault.

     The first thing she did was walk over and swat his hand out from under his head, which woke him up rather rudely "What the… Oh, good you're awake." He yawned, then looked over at the clock on her nightstand "Looks like your door guard is running late." He commented.

     Remilia's mouth worked a couple times, like she was trying to say something before the words came to mind "Who in the hell are you?!" Was what finally came out.

     He yawned again "I'm Maverick, one of Jackson Trevorlich's hired hands. He wanted me to keep an eye on you."

     "A pilot?"

     "Raven, to be precise."

     If that fact impressed her then she didn't show it. In fact she still looked quite agitated "Just what exactly happened to me?"

     "Well, a couple of guys drug you into an ally and clubbed you. You were knocked unconscious so I brought you here."

     "Oh." She looked a little more worried now. She sat down on the edge of her bed "Do you know who they were?"

     "I image just some street punks."

     "Not Children of Gaia?"

     Sean chuckled "So, you do know how deep you're in all this. No they weren't, Children of Gaia strike me as fanatical enough that they wouldn't have ran from me. You were just in the wrong place at the wrong time."

     Remilia let out a relieved sigh "Good."

     "You know, Mr. Trevorlich thought you wouldn't be happy having a guard following you around, but you seem to be taking this rather well."

     Remilia brushed some of her hair back "I expected he'd do something like this, I just didn't think he'd bring in a Raven so soon." Then she stood up. For the first time Sean realized that she was almost as tall as he was, probably 5'11 and a half. "Go out into the living room. I'm going to change, then I want to talk to you for a couple of minutes."

     Sean did as he was requested, then let out a sigh as soon as she'd shut the door behind her "Great…" He was thinking in the back of his mind I do a little extra curricular work and now I'd bet she thinks I'm her lap dog.

     The only bright stop of this situation was she didn't take long in getting dressed, just a couple of minutes. Now she was wearing a pair of gray sweatpants, a hooded sweatshirt of the same color and white sneakers. It wasn't terribly flattering, but she didn't seem to care.

     "For starters, I want to know how long you have been following me. Wait a second, you were that irritating man in the bar weren't you?"

     Sean managed a chuckle "Guilty. I'd been following you for about two days before that."

     "You're real name is Sean then?" He nodded and she sighed, but whatever she was going to say next was cut off by a knock at the door. Remilia went to the door and opened it a crack "Yes?"

     The man on the other side wasted no time. He kicked the door hard and Remilia lost her grip on it but didn't lose her balance, and was now straight in front of him. He was a Hispanic fellow wearing blue jeans and a faded jean jacket. He also had a silver pistol in his right hand. He lifted the gun up and leveled it at Remilia's head.

     She wasted no time. Her left hand came up even before the gun was lifted all the way and swatted his hand to her right, then grabbed and pinned his wrist with her right hand. She caught the corner of the door with her toe and flipped it into her waiting hand, then slammed the man's arm in the door hard, hard enough in fact that Sean winced as he heard the bones snap. He dropped his gun and Remilia slammed the door shut and with a couple keystrokes on the security panel next to the door and several heavy "clunks" marked the locks sliding into place, making the door about as likely to come open as the wall next to it.

     She picked up the gun and checked it quickly "Wow." Sean found himself mumbling.

     "Shit. This thing has a biometric lock on it." She muttered, then pulled the clip out of the handle. Semi-auto pistols had evolved very little since their invention, save for locks on them that, when set, made it impossible for anyone but the registered owner to fire it. Remilia seemed to be trying to fix that problem at the moment though, and she had pulled several wires and a small set of microchips out of the pistol.

     Time wasn't in her favor though, and the windows behind the couch Sean was sitting on were broken in and two black clad assassins leapt in. Sean was no expert in unarmed combat but, as the guard on his left discovered when the back of Sean's fist hit the side of his head and knocked him against the wall six or seven feat away, he made up for it with his "Plus" status.

     The assassins were however very skilled, Sean had just caught the first off guard. The assassin struck Sean in the throat with the edge of his open hand, the while he was reeling grabbed the front of his jacket and hurled him into the center of the room and drew his handgun in one motion.

     Sean only heard the shots, but he didn't feel the hot kiss of the lead bullets tearing him up. He dared to look and saw the man slumped on the couch, bleeding from the four gunshots he'd taken to the chest.

     Remilia lowered the handgun. Besides the grip on the left side being missing and something black dangling out from the bottom hanging by some wires it seemed to be in good working order "Damn, what don't you do?" He asked somewhat dumbfounded.

     Remilia ignored him "We have to get out of here."

     "You… Won't be going anywhere…" The assassin Sean had taken down mumbled. Remilia drew her sights on him.

     "What did you do?" She asked and ordered at the same time.

     "See you in hell." He replied, and the wall next to him burst in. The crack of AC or MT size weaponry followed after it, like thunder following lighting. The huge rounds started tracking along the wall, destroying the apartment. Sean managed to scramble to his feet and grab Remilia's arm. He pulled them into back into the bedroom just as several rockets burst through the walls and detonated. The wall between rooms shielded them from the blast, but this room was next.

     Sean didn't think twice and punched out a window next to her bed. Ignoring the cuts it left on his hand he pulled Remilia out with him. Once the two were freefalling Sean realized that the fire escape was next to the other window, but fortunately they were only on the third floor. Sean wasn't fazed by the fall, but Remilia was.

     "You bastard!" She spat at him "What made you think that was a good idea?!" She tried to resist him pulling her to her feet but she'd sprained both her ankles bad enough on the landing she couldn't stand on her own.

     "I thought it was a good idea…" Sean said as he basically drug her down the ally back to where his AC was parked "When they started firing explosives through the damn walls."

     Despite her earlier show of competence Remilia overall wasn't very good at this sort of thing. As she gimped along with Sean's help she fired the pistol at the MT's behind them. Of course a gun that size couldn't put more then a scuff mark on a MT, but it did get their attention, which was soon apparent when they shifted their fire towards them.

     Sean didn't bother telling her that was a bad idea, she figured that out quickly enough. Weapons of that scale weren't meant to shoot at things as small as humans, especially at a distance of two hundred and fifty feet, give or take, but the shrapnel was leaving bruises and welts on both of them. Finally they made it around the corner of the building to the glorious sight of Sean's beloved mechanical partner.

     He'd parked close enough to a fire escape on this side that they had a ladder to climb to the cockpit, though he had to more or less carry Remilia up it. Normally it'd have been a burden Sean would just as soon do without, but with the sound of the MT's closing in it didn't seem so bad. He let her go next to the hatch and got it open quickly, then dropped down into the seat "Come on!" He waved his hand at her to get in after him.

     "N… No!" She seemed offended by the very idea of having to sit on his lap. Well Sean wasn't going to take no for an answer at the moment, and grabbed her by the wrist roughly and pulled her in on top of him.

     "You're a lot heavier then you look." He agitatedly commented as he tried to untangle himself from her and get Maverick started up at the same time. Somehow he managed the later at least, and all systems came up green.

     "Main system, engaging combat mode." Maverick said calmly despite the chaos in his cockpit, and Sean managed to get settled enough to get his feat on the floor and his hands on the sticks, so he hit the jump pedal and fired the boosters. They gained speed and altitude quickly, and once they had reached the rooftop height he hit his overboost. He didn't get far, staying in the air while overboosting was hard since the powerful boosters were built in between the AC's shoulders, so just from their position they would push you into the ground, so you had to use normal boosters as well to stay level. It did propel them out of the combat zone though, but not by much.

     When they hit the street hard Remilia nearly ended up on the floor, and she quickly scrambled up into a sitting position "That went well." Sean said.

     "What do you mean "Went well"?" She said harshly, jabbing Sean in the ribs with her elbow at the same time. He immediately winced as she hit the still broken bone.

     "That's not a very nice way to thank your bodyguard." He said through the stabbing pain in his chest.

     "I didn't ask for your help."
     "And I'm starting to regret giving it, there are you happy now?"

     They both stayed quiet for a moment as Sean jogged towards the elevator heading up "Where are we going?" Remilia asked him.

     "Global Cortex. There are some people I need to talk to, and it'll probably be the only safe place in the city for you in a short while. Those Gaia's Children are really tenacious if nothing else."

     "So why didn't you just light those bastards up? Or is that big gun just for show?" She asked him, pointing at the Karasawa she could see in his AC's hand through the main view screen.

     "I'm trying to stay in their good graces." Sean replied. Right about then they reached the elevator shaft. A quick keystroke and it opened up. He stepped on and it automatically started upwards.

     "What?! Tell me why!"

     Sean laughed "I've already told you to much."

     That infuriated Remilia even more "Don't give me that bull shit! Tell me what your connection is with them now!"

     "Look," Sean was beginning to lose his cool "You're seriously over-estimating my attachment to this contract, which, might I add, had been far more trouble then it's worth so far. If you want out then by all means take a hike, and good luck with those MTs." Though Remilia might not have liked it, occasionally she did realize when someone had her beat.