Hey everyone. 's down... but by the time I'm done with this, it should be back up again. Sorry for the delay, but it's been a looong week...

I'm just glad 's taking wordpad documents now...

To the reviews:

V Guyver: Hey man. Good to see you here. Oddly, Tiger hasn't reviewed... and she's been incommunicado on her AKS story recently. Maybe someone kidnapped her for money (looks vacant and thoughtful at the same time)... Hmmm... nah...

(tied up Tiger being carried off is seen in background as Silverlocke continues talking) Anyway, thanks for reviewing. And thanks too for your notes on the prejudice theme of the story... truth be told, prejudice is a big thing to me, simply because it is so illogical and stupid. People hate and hate for no good reason.... There is a difference between hating someone for something they can change (which is perfectably justifiable in some cases), and for something they cannot change (like race). I live in a fiercely racist area, where most people hate and despise blacks. I personally believe that everyone IS created equal, and challenge anyone who differs to give me a good reason why. Blacks, whites, asians, we are all HUMAN, and it is the acts we choose to perform, not the parameters of our body, that determine who we are.

There is a black person I despise at my school, but that's because he's a jackass.... it has nothing to do with his race :).

Thanks for noticing the theme in the story- I tend to have trouble with themes, since they are long, drawn-out things to orchestrate and I tend to be a "scene by scene" type guy...

And as for the Mishiyama Corp., let me say this: There is another corporation at work here, one whose size, power, and might dwarf the Mishiyama Corp. and make it look like an ant next to a whale. And yet, this corporation is very different... you'll see what I mean in the next BR story.

And it's NOT a wanzer.

Kohryu: Thanks for reviewing!

Enough with that already, it's....

"SHOWTIME!"

Chapter 11

Cast Into Darkness

Park, about five blocks from Our Holy Mother Medical Hospital, Tokyo, Japan. 3:17 a.m., Night of the Mark.

Yugo backs up against the dumpster, pressing himself up against it and feeling his heart catch up to his throat. He fairly yelps in fear, reverting to his wolfish ways in human form, pressing up against the wall and the dumpster and tensing so hard that his neck muscles scream in pain. Twin lights flash from the Heaven Breaker, and both circle and circle where Yugo once stood.

From inside comes the sound of a man saying "What was that?"

" Don't know," someone else admits.

" It looked like a man..."

" Probably just a drunk bum. C'mon, let's go. This place gives me the creeps."

" Driving this damn tank gives me the creeps..."

And so off they go, the men inside talking still, while soul after soul spins and screams and whirls about the Heaven Breaker. They especially seem to swirl around the smaller gun, as if this place is special to them, maybe even a part of them. Around the rest of the tank they float and swirl around the outside, sometimes flowing down to it's surface and landing on its surface, flattening as they touch it, transforming themselves into screaming, melted puddles for a few seconds before flowing off like melting plastic peeling from a tube and resuming flight. And yet, on the small gun, they do more than just touch briefly on it, they flow through it, spin all around it and seem to caress it like an old lover before resuming their shrieking flights. While touching it, the screaming spirits calm momentarily, as if touching the gun brings them fond memories. But if that were true, why the look of sadness on their faces?
What the hell are these things?

Let's go. I don't believe any of us want to stick around here any more than we have to. Yugo is still crouched behind the dumpster, whimpering in fear and some residual pain (his wounds are flaring up, worse than they were a few seconds ago, as if the fight with Kohryu were but a second ago and not several minutes into the past) but the tank and its drivers didn't notice him, and the spirits didn't notice us as far as we know (none of them turned and looked at us, so we must assume that we were invisible to them) so there is nothing more to see here.

We take wing and fly.

Our Holy Mother Medical Hospital, in heart of Tokyo, Japan, five blocks from Park. 3:19 a.m.

We come back to the hospital we so recently vacated, and find many bystanders milling about on the street outside, near where the robot Kohryu lies dead. His body still twitches sometimes, and the odd question of whether or not he will suffer rigor mortis flows through our minds, but that is a question for later tonight, if ever. As we gaze up at the great height of this hospital, we see the hole in the wall (small from down here, but quite large up there) where Bakuryu and Kohryu went tumbling out. The window was almost big enough, but not quite- Bakuryu and Kohryu had weakened the supports of the window when they went through, and a few minutes after their fight Yugo had squeezed through, creating even more of a weakening of the support structure. The window finally caved in a couple of minutes ago, causing an exasperated cop squad to merely stare at it as it went tumbling out towards the street below. A few of the chunks had hit Kohryu's dead form... they'd reverberated rather loudly and scared some passerby when they did so.

We briefly consider flying up and looking at the police officers performing the clean-up, but that's a side story and unimportant to our main quest. We head on inside, looking for the emergency rooms.

As we flow between the walls, we rush past windows, doors, and drapes, searching and seeking for the door that leads to the ICU. We find it... but not before an interesting event occurs.

As we rush through the halls towards the Intensive Care Unit, we take a wrong turn and end up in a different corner of the hospital. This in itself is not so strange- after all, if we were all powerful all knowing beings, we wouldn't have been scrambling for cover on the rooftop of the Mishiyama Corp. after being attacked by the Tabula (and, in fact, if were omniscient & omnipotent, we wouldn't have to bother with this journey at all) - but what we find is strange. That man who had been watching Alice is here now, and as he puts his hand on a telephone that seems to disappear in his meaty grasp, we find what it is about this man that is so shocking. Part of it is his eyes- they look like blurry knives, as if daggers had been stuck underneath the surface of a running stream- but it is also the way he acts, moves, looks around, the way he tries to hide himself despite the fact that he is so large that hiding is nearly impossible. And yet he does it anyway. Somehow this man is able to disappear in a room without ever changing so much as a hair on his head. It is a scary ability, and hints at some past connection with either law enforcement- probably work undercover- or more likely, a past as a drug dealer or other criminal whose most valuable talent is always the ability to disappear at will. Even now, hunched up against the phone, he seems to squash himself into the narrow cubicle and place his entire upper body in it even though we know he can't possibly fit. The people walking by him completely ignore his huge frame. Somehow, as we slide up to him, he is managing to make himself look not ridiculuous but rather inconspicious. Even the small twitches in his legs and the movements of his body indicate a man calling home because a tragedy occured at the hospital. He doesn't look like a doctor, nor is he dressed like one (he is wearing a brown overcoat and brown pants, complete with brown shoes and a brown hat) but he is the right size and width to be a rather effective bodyguard, and he could possibly pass as a patient in the minds of the passersby. His face is invisible in the booth, which would surely spark notice in the eyes of the Japanese here- this man is British in his looks, very Anglo-Saxon. We slide over to hear what he is saying.

" I'm still checking the place out... I saw the needles, but didn't find any medicine... The patient's bed looks all strapped in, though."

The man listens some more to a man telling him goodbye (with a thick Russian accent) and then turns around. As he does so, we see part of his overcoat slip, the part that hangs over his left shoulder. He is wearing a tank top underneath it, and as the overcoat slips slightly we can just make out a few letters tattooed on his arm:

BI

As we ponder what "bi" coudl stand for, the man turns and walks off. We follow him a ways, but unfortunately for us this man doesn't mutter as he walks, and as we wish rather ineffectively that the man was a nutcase of some sort who did talk to himself, we pass the ER ward and hear voices inside. Reluctantly leaving the man behind, we slip inside to listen to Alice and Jane talk (in hushed tones, of course; one can never be sure who might be listening). The room is bright white and full of nurses and doctors checking in on the patients. Alice and Jane have pulled off to a private corner to talk. When she left to find out what had happened in Room 350, Alice had told Jane to stay in the ICU until she came back. She'd half expected Jane to follow her, but Shina is an old soldier, and not given to bursts of irrational feeling or sensitivity. She stood where she was, cool and composed, until Alice returned. Shina has never been one to act in any manner other than that of a cold, detached observer.

" I'm not quite for sure," Alice says, " but I think Yugo, Kenji, and Uriko got away. I think they jumped out the window and made it away..."

" Were they okay when they left?" Shina asks. Even now, whispering about the fates of her friends, her voice is dull and emotionless. She absent-mindedly rubs her left chest with her right hand, and though Alice's sharp eyes notice this, she does not really compute it as meaning anything- after all, Shina has a nasty looking set of claw marks on her chest right there. She files the information away, however, in a corner of her mind, an old habit that comes from the long days she spent hunting for everyone who had been in Tylon's laboratories after they had escaped during Japan's Awakening. Alice, much like the rabbit form inside her, notices almost everything that goes on around her, and is an expert at gathering information, as the questions she asked and disguised tonight aptly proved.

Alice says, " I don't know. The bystanders... most of them only saw the last part of the fight. They all saw Kenji in his..." she looks about, then says the hated words, " beast form take Kohryu out the window. Kohryu's dead... his corpse is outside, in the parking lot. He dropped all the way down..."

Shina nods and says, " Anything else?"
" After Kenji left, Uriko leapt out the window. Yugo followed her a few seconds later... and that's all I know. There's not much blood up there, surprisingly. I don't think anyone was terribly hurt other than Kohyru." She sighs, letting her breath flow out, and all her self-control seems to flow out with it. " Jane," she says, using Shina's common name, " I'm so scared..."

Shina, her face still calm and composed, says, " I'm sure they're fine. Yugo has faced tougher opponents, and Kenji is very powerful... even your sister has some skill. Don't worry. They are fine."

" But what if they're not?" Alice says, shaking her head. " You don't get it. I'm not worried about the battle. I'm worried about what will happen if they're found. What if the police find them? What will they do? Will they kill them on sight? Will they drag them to jail? Oh God, Shina, you just don't understand! They're out there, somewhere, and I can't do anything about it!"

" Then don't worry," Shina says calmly. " If you can do nothing, then you are unable to affect anything, and might as well stay calm."

" How can you say that?" Alice asks, her voice fierce even though she remembers to keep quiet. " How can you be so damn calm?"
" I've been this way my whole life," Shina says, shrugging. " I see no reason to change now."

" Oh..." Alice bites back her first reaction, which was to say "Damn you!", and instead walks over to where Long and Gado lay. Shina, unperturbed, follows behind.

" Long, Gado," Alice says, "are you two alright?"
"We're fine," Gado says. "Just a few bumps and bruises."

" Where are the others?" Long asks, concerned. He is in somewhat worse shape than Gado, but he always puts the needs of others before his own. "Are they alright?"

" I don't know," Alice says. "I can't leave the hospital to look for them..."

" I'll go," Shina says. "No one will notice me in the chaos. I'll slip out and hunt for them."

" Where will you start looking? It won't help if you go out and we lose track of you too," Gado says.

" I'll begin by searching the area around the hospital for scent trails," Shina says. "After that, I'll simply follow them. I know Uriko's scent pretty well, so I should be able to follow her."

Gado nods and says, "Be careful."

Shina nods and leaves. We follow after her, quick and silent as the night.

-R & R please!