A Certain Point of View Chapter 9, a bubblegum crisis fanfic

Straitening his tan cashmere jacket Quincy walked through the rotating door and into Lady's 666. He could, he supposed, have taken the lift straight up to Stingrays flat but that would have been a tad too presumptuous. As it was she wasn't going to want to see him and no matter what the cost he had to see her! Of course he had his ace in the hole but if she wouldn't talk to him at all it was going to be useless. And damn it all to hell he HAD to have her willing cooperation! Pushing his anxiety to the bad of his mind, the undisputed power on the GENOM throne walked towards the cash register.

Like a careful predator his eyes focused on the woman behind the counter. Long red hair falling in waves framed a perfect face with stunning emerald green eyes. Almost involuntarily Quincy felt himself begin to respond to her before he clamped down viciously on it. Something was wrong here… Ah, perhaps… His eyes narrowed slightly, as he concentrated. Senses more acute than a martial artist could develop in a lifetime came awake. As he'd thought, she was too perfect. Such symmetry simply wasn't found in nature and of course the altered pheromones were a dead giveaway. He relaxed slightly. The only question was why someone who could afford such an expensive procedure would be working in a lingerie shop. He brought his mental processes to halt and filed the question away for later perusal. Such considerations were hardly germane to the situation at hand. He gave the redhead another look. Perhaps later, he mused.

Nene finished ringing up the last of Iris's packages and smiled brightly at one of her favorite customers. "You really have to promise to come in next week," she confided to her friend, "The Fall catalog is coming out."

Iris blushed slightly and hid a smile. "Isn't that the one you modeled for?" she asked shyly. Nene had been mentioning it for weeks and she was really looking forward to seeing it.

The redhead nodded vigorously as she reached under the counter for another box. "Yeah. We just finished the other day and I can't wait to see how the shots came out." Her practiced hands slid the almost transparent silk undergarments into layers of tissue and finally into the Lady's 666 box. "Besides we…" her breath came up short and her stomach went cold and sullen as she caught sight of her next customer. She made a heroic effort and brought her fear under control.

"Besides we?" Iris gave her a funny look. "Are you okay?"

Nene waved away the look. "Sorry, just remembered something. Anyway we're going to be having a sale on the summer stuff and I know you don't want to miss it."

Quincy tried to look casual as he blocked out the rest of the conversation. Interesting, while not unknown to the media his was hardly a well-known face. However the young woman had not only identified him from a quick glance she'd been afraid. The shadier side of GENOM was scarcely public knowledge and the few brushes he'd had with the public had never provoked anywhere near this reaction. Yet, for some reason she was actually afraid of him. Perhaps his earlier question was pertinent after all.

Matter Over Mind Productions

Presents

Mega-Tokyo 2033

The Knight Sabers

"A Certain Point of View."

Chapter 9 "Revelations"

Sylia heard the alarm buzzer and limped over to the video-com. What could Nene be having a problem with… HIM! A flood of anger charged adrenaline poured into her bloodstream. Sharply she studied Quincys image as she worked to damp her emotions. What did HE want? She forced her tense shoulders to relax a little. He didn't seem to want trouble anyway. The way he stood said all too clearly that he was aware that he was being watched. She cursed softly under her breath. She'd never felt the need for more than minimal security in the store and didn't have the sensors down there necessary to scan him in detail. She examined him carefully. Quincy was no fool and more than one anti-GENOM would be assassin had been tricked by a carefully produced boomer double. It seemed unlikely he'd send a duplicate to her though. Despite appearances to the contrary, anyone who did some checking would know that she kept up with the latest in boomer technology. Indeed it would be suspicious if she hadn't given the family history. So he couldn't reliably expect her to be fooled by a duplicate. For the same reason he'd be unlikely to send a boomer assassin. Plus, she admitted to herself, if that bastard had really wanted her dead she would be. She stifled a grin that threatened to escape her rigid control, well aware that the head of GENOM enterprises was blatantly trying to manipulate her through the camera… and succeeding. So that probably really is him down there pretending to sort through a bin of bargain priced panties. Slowly she headed towards the lift. While maddening; this promised to be out of the ordinary.

Relaxing on a bar stool beneath a flickering neon-sign Tatsugawa Ryoda 'call me Ryo' scanned the scurrying crowd as they made their way along the Paradise Loop. For a place that wasn't supposed to exist and that no one was supposed to know about the Loop got a lot of nighttime foot traffic. Casually leaning back he sipped his beer and eyed the women walking past. After a hard day walking tall steel he deserved a little R&R and it wasn't like looking was a crime. His eyes scanned left and caught a flash of silver. Like a scene from a movie the rest of the world faded out. There in front of him were the two most beautiful women he'd ever seen. Almost involuntarily his eyes dropped to the floor to begin a quick pan from toes to hair. Perfect, he decided, absolutely perfect. Dressed immaculately in matching skirts and blouses the pair hadn't a flaw between them as they navigated the crowd with poise and precision. Either one could have come off a Milano catwalk only seconds ago and their contrasting coloration served to set them off perfectly. Sighing gratefully as the pair walked hand-in-hand out of sight Ryoda turned back to his beer. Sometimes, if you were good, life threw you a little bonus.

Immaculately dressed in matching metallic silver skirts and blouses, Anri and Nam walked down the neon-lit tunnel section of the Paradise Loop towards their destination.

Meg paced relentlessly back and forth across the three sexaroids small apartment. She was losing them. She could feel it. Why couldn't Anri and Nam see that the apes weren't worth grieving over? The whole species could be wiped from the face of existence and never a bitter tear would be shed. Shrugging irritably Meg grabbed her purse and moved to the door. Reaching into her bag she fingered the knife she'd obtained just a few days ago. The former ape had been stupid enough to pull it on her after she'd stolen his wallet. In the end she'd relived him in quick succession of his wallet, his knife, and his life. She still shivered in pleasure at the memory. After that it had grown into what she knew was a dangerous obsession. Every night when Anri and Nam went out to conduct their business she prowled the edges of the Loop looking for those apes stupid enough to travel alone in such a dangerous place. Despite the danger of discovery she'd kept the ID of each of the twenty-five humans she'd killed. In a place like the Loop few people questioned one more body and noone had yet noticed that each was down a quart of blood. Shaking herself out of her reverie Meg slung the heavy purse over her shoulder and exited the shabby apartment. Maybe she should spend some of the money on a better place.

A few moments after the angry Meg had left the screws holding the air vent in place on the wall unscrewed and fell to the ground. With hardly a noise the vent was pushed out by metallic tentacles and set aside. With a high pitched noise an almost organic looking cleaning boomer wheeled into the room and over to the now vacated bed. Tentacles carefully lifted the mattress and a mechanical eye looked over the spread of IDs lying there. A mechanical tabulation was made and the mattress carefully replaced. Wheeling back though the vent the tentacles replaced the screws and all was silent in the room once more.

Not far away a raging intelligence took note of the new information and if it had bother with something as 'spit' human as an eveil smile it would have done so. Soon now the sexaroid known as Meg would join the cause.

Mackie sat worriedly in a well-padded armchair outside of the meeting room his sister had appropriated for her meeting with Quincy. Through the double paned, frosted-glass he could see the shaky silhouette of Sylvia as she angrily paced back and forth in the small room on the other side. With every few trip back and forth in front of the table the distorted image of his sister would stop and harangue the calmly sitting figure at the other end of the table.

He'd raced over from Doc's as soon as soon as he'd gotten word from Nene. Not that he'd apparently missed much. Despite the soundproofing of the room in question he could still hear his normally cool sister venting her anger at the Chairman of GENOM through the walls. Surprisingly, he'd yet to hear Quincy raise his voice loud enough to be heard. Given what the teen knew of the much older man's personality that could only mean that what he had to say was too important to allow himself anger over. This analysis didn't salve Mackie's fears, as he couldn't conceive of ANY reason this side of the end of the world that would be THAT important. He was so wrapped up in his thinking and listening to the one sided argument through the walls that he missed the approach of his redheaded girlfriend bearing a tray of sandwiches.

Nene, winced as yet another yelling fit came through the glass. Whatever had brought Quincy here hadn't seemed to cool Sylvia's anger one bit. In fact, she doubted the man had even managed to tell the daughter of the man he'd had killed the reason for his visit. It looked like he was just sitting there and taking it until the near-homicidal rage ran its course. If it ran it course. Nene had been up here twice in the past hour before Mackie came back and the inferno of anger hadn't seemed to even cool a bit. Shaking her head the gorgeous hacker moved up behind Mackie and deposited the tray on the coffee table in front of him. Mackie thanked her idly and she wondered if his conscious mind had even really noticed her. Pulling up another comfortable chair Nene sat down and smoothed out her tan pants before taking Mackie's hand in her own. She'd left messages for the rest of the team and handed over the Silky Doll to one of the other sales-girls before heading up. For the pair waiting impatiently outside the meeting room it was now just a matter of time.

Sitting solidly behind his antique Napoleon desk Chin eyed his daughter and her lover/bodyguard through tired eyes. The trio had been pounding away at possible approaches to the GENOM issue for the past three days with only caffeinated beverages and snacks to sustain them. The initial actions they'd taken had been easy. Within 24hrs they'd grabbed every contract broken by GENOM. Factories, directly and indirectly, owned by the Hou Bang had already begun gearing up and the situation looked to provide a windfall of legitimate business to the quasi-legal conglomerate. Everything from spider-tanks to vacuums would provide a bounty of profit through the foreseeable future. The question was, 'what kind of future?'. Irene and Kou had gone over the info again and again with no great insights.

Chin wiped a hand down his ancient, lined face and pressed his fingertips to his temples before sighing wearily. Perhaps it was time he passed control over to his daughter. In the past couple months she'd come farther, faster than he could have dreamed just a year ago. With the more than loyal and extremely able Kou beside her she'd make a fine leader for the Hou bang. For the first time in years he FELT old. Money and power had bought the finest medical care that could be provided and he'd always prided himself on taking care of his health. However, the last few days were beginning to wear on him. Shaking off his wandering thoughts he sipped his ginseng tea and leaned forward to address the younger couple pouring over the computer displays.

Taking a deep breath he then cleared his throat. "We're thinking in circles; aimless tracks that lead nowhere we haven't already been. A nights rest would do us a world of good and time might provide more food for thought."

Irene brushed her hair away from her face and sat back in her chair rubbing her lower spine. "Grandfather's right Kou." She yawned and stretched as she continued the thought, "Maybe we should take a break finally and pick up in the morning with fresher outlooks."

Kou made a half-hearted final peck at his keyboard and then started the hibernation cycle. "Agreed. Nothing is likely to come up in the next couple minutes that we can't deal with in the morning." Standing up the handsome if slightly rumpled bodyguard made his way over to help his employer from his chair.

Irene reached for keyboard to begin shutdown and stopped. A search macro she'd set up a couple of days ago had finally yielded some results; interesting ones. Debating whether it was worth forgoing sleep to investigate more she decided on just a quick check. With nimble fingers she typed in a short query. The returned information stole her breath. She sat heavily. "You two might want to sit back down." Leaning over Irene hit the intercom. "More coffee, tea and donuts please."

Kou released Chin and made his way to look over his lovers shoulder. "What do you have?"

Irene gestured at the central holographic display as an image began to take form. "I noticed early on that although GENOM was canceling contracts and support subsidies right and left they doubled the amount of donations going to deep space research and observatories both ground based and orbital." She sipped at her cold coffee and made a face. "So, I set up a program to dig into the latest space shots on the off chance there was something there."

Kou sat down at his keyboard and brought it back up. "It came up with something?"

Irene's fingers typed a couple quick commands. "More like it came back with nothing. There's been no space shot of a certain area of inter-system space posted anywhere for the past couple weeks. It's like the entire planet has decided to turn a blind eye towards it." The display centered on the Earth and then pulled back and highlighted the area in question.

Kou looked askance. "What about the UN's anti-meteor watch? Surely they've looked at it."

Irene looked at her father as the older man leaned in to take a look at the holo-display as if he could fathom its secrets with closer examination. Looking back at Kou she answered his question. "No. For the past week they've been complaining of 'hardware problems'." She snorted. "But they've assured everyone that they'll be up and running by Friday and that nothing was likely to appear before then."

Chin looked up. "A smokescreen then. What do we have that can give us a look there?"

Irene punched up another screen and began a search on Hou Bang assets. "We've got a couple of satellites normally used for other things that could possibly get a look in about ten minutes. We'll have to retask them though." She looked up at her grandfather. At a confirming nod from the leader of the Hou Bang Irene sent the command. Somewhere a group of technicians were scrambling to hurriedly prepare a satellite normally spying on the Earth below to spin and look at the Heavens above. "We'll know if this was a wild goose-chase in a few minutes." She shrugged and got up to grab a cup of coffee from the refilled silver service being brought in by an impeccably dressed secretary. Sipping the bitter brew she smiled gratefully at the exiting man before the door closed behind him. Turning she was worried to see Kou sitting nervously in front of his machine. Pouring him a cup of coffee she moved up behind the large man.

Kou, hunched over his own computer watched the clock as the seconds ticked down. He could feel Irene standing behind but despite his best efforts he couldn't get his shoulders to relax. It'd been a while since he'd felt this nasty tingle of danger running up his spine. It wasn't logical or reasonable but paying attention to this creeping sense of danger had kept him alive more than once. He was hoping that he was wrong but he was afraid that whatever had spooked Quincy was in that section of space and moving closer.

Placing her hand on her lovers tense shoulder the heir-apparent to the Hou Bang looked over at one of the men she respected most in the world. Unsurprisingly, he was sitting there calmly waiting for the information. Long ago her grandfather had mastered the art of doing nothing when there was nothing to do. Leaving the coffee for Kou, Irene poured a third cup and placed it in front of her grandfather.

Chin smiled up at his granddaughter with pride and love. She was such a good girl; much better in some ways than an old man liked him deserved. Once again he lamented that her parents had lived to see her blossom into the woman she was becoming. He moved his hand to cover hers and gave a squeeze of affection.

Kou gave an exclamation of surprise and punched up the incoming 2-D images onto the viewer. Chin and Irene leaned forward to get a better look. It didn't look like much; just a black circle against the backdrop of stars. One by one Kou punched up each additional image as they came in; enhancing some and blowing up details in others. From the limited angle the satellite provided the object looked perfectly spherical with a radius of a little over two kilometers. It had a flat albedo but was radiating slightly in the infrared spectrum.

Chin leaned back in the chair and gathered his thoughts while the two younger people continued to gather more information. So far every bit of data they had suggested that, whatever it was, it wasn't natural. Preliminary computer models suggested that it was going to arrive in an almost perfect orbit between the moon and Earth in a couple days. So whatever it was it wasn't a weapon itself. Simply dropping something that big on the Earth from orbit would effectively end life on the planet. So something or someone was coming visiting. Given Quincy's reaction to it the chairman of GENOM didn't expect whatever it was to be friendly. Despite their differences Chin was inclined to agree. Any species capable of putting that monster into space would no better than to try to sneak into an even reasonably advanced cultures sky without some kind of warning.