Another Fortunate Accident

Ch. 20 – Terms of Embitterment

By Analogk37


The road blurred before the brown eyes of the biker, her thoughts now reduced to a mere jumble of emotions. No matter how hard she tried to hold them back, they wouldn't stop fluctuating across the opposite corners of her broken heart. All the revelations of the evening threw whatever "plans" she might have had for recovering to the wind. Now Priss realized there was only one way to beat the madness threatening to overwhelm her… face it head on. Normally, that's exactly how the Knight Saber preferred to tackle her problems. However, this problem might have been much easier to handle had it not been for the appearance of one person in particular… the one person she had used as a mental crutch against the growing anarchy within her corrupted mind.

The sight of Linna in the lounge had proved so much more than she could rationally deal with at the time. It was hard enough going back to see Sylia once again, her mind steeled against her former "employer" trying to coax her back into the Knight Sabers once again. But she needed Sylia's help, and thus had found herself walking through the door into the temptress' lair once again… except she hadn't made it all the way through at first. All the pent up rage stored away in her blackened soul exploded out in the instant she laid her eyes on the betrayer of her trust… transmitting itself into pure hatred that had seemingly crippled Linna's injured body with one single blow.

Priss found herself fighting back the hint of a smile, but not because of the damage she had inflicted on the woman she had struck. She found it hard not to admire the fact that Linna had gotten back up yet again, still fighting against everything she had thrown at her. Not that Priss was smiling at the time… Linna's counterattack had thrown whatever she had been holding back into the fray as well. The end result was having all three Knight Sabers lying on the floor, injured from her assault. However, after the 'revelations' began to come out, their internal conflict dissolved under the weight of the responsibility they now bore together. Thus they had all finally entered the lounge together, listening to Sylia's somewhat cryptic explanation of events.

Priss could easily tell Sylia was still hiding something, but she never got the chance to confront her about it. The light haired woman had started off by talking about an experiment gone wrong… an experiment that produced the phenomenon her father named Galatea. But just as she had begun filling in the gaps left by Nene's discoveries, a sudden migraine halted her explanation. Then, just as suddenly, Linna had abruptly walked out, still covering her injured abdomen. Priss recalled that Linna hadn't said a single word the entire time. After Linna, a concerned Nene trailed after her following close behind. Henderson had then helped Sylia to her room to try and recover; leaving Priss all alone in the lounge… a position she didn't revel in at all at the moment despite her usual isolationist attitudes.

Thus, the biker decided to head back out to the open highway to try and straighten out her thoughts. But even as she had walked out of the Lady 633 building, her mind shifted back to the woman who had suddenly up and left, withdrawn behind her own emotional shell. The growing similarity between the outsider and her own past gang-ridden life played in the back of her mind as she pulled up in front of the familiar run down trailer she called home. It wasn't until she stepped off the bike and began searching for the kickstand that Priss realized her mistake. "Shit! Leon…"

The distracted woman remembered the injured ADP officer calling her from his apartment and asking to bring him some medicine, and her verbal promise to come see him later… if not the unspoken promise to stay there for the night. She hopped back on Leon's unfamiliar two-wheeled cycle and headed back towards his apartment… with a couple of stops planned on the way.


Leon discovered he would make a terrible housewife. He looked over at the clock next to his bed and noted with a smirk that it was exactly two minutes since the last time he had checked. This is crazy… He knew Priss should have been back a long time ago, but she was definitely her own person… not that it made it any easier to wait on her.

The sound of the door opening brought him immediately from his worries. "Priss? Is that you?"

The subject of his concerns made her presence known by walking in the bedroom and tossing a box of pills in his direction. "Who else did you think it was?"

"I guess it could have been Daily. But he's already annoyed enough with me for waking him up today while he was trying to get some sleep for his shift. So how'd it go?"

Priss didn't immediately answer his question, instead just staring at the floor, wondering why she felt as if she even needed to answer his question in the first place. It's not like I owe him anything really The problem was, she didn't necessarily agree with her own thoughts. He had helped her through her nightmares and had also helped with her recovery from Linna… although the circle seemed to be closing in on her once again on that little problem.

"That good, huh?"

"What? Oh, sorry," Priss said almost apologetically, pulling back from her indecision. "It… It could have gone better."

"So did they have any idea what's happening to you?" Leon questioned, the concern audibly showing through despite his tired voice

"Yes," the Knight Saber started, still unsure how to explain everything that had happened in the evening. "'They' think something is behind it… something that we've got to stop."

"What is it?"

She paused for a moment to consider how much more to reveal about the operation considering the importance of it… and Leon's tendency to get involved in things he shouldn't. "I… I can't say much," she cautioned.

"Let me guess… it's because I'm with the ADP." Priss' silence answered the question for him. "When you said 'something we've got to stop'… are you saying you're back with them now?"

"Until this is over, yes," Priss answered, welcoming the change of subject.

"So all three of you are going out to try and do this by yourselves?"

"Four actually," Priss corrected, rubbing the side of her face that Linna had connected with on her surprising counterattack.

Within the dimly lit bedroom, Leon finally noticed the fresh bruise on the side of the biker's face, a flash of concern crossing his own pained features. "What's that from?"

The biker's face turned cross at the mental image of the answer. "Someone I didn't expect to see tonight," she answered cryptically.

The resentment underlying her words led Leon to one name… "Linna?" Once again, silence reaffirmed his suspicions. Sudden anger filled his own heart at the angst filling his lover's soul over that name. "Priss, this is nuts! You can't go back to the Knight Sabers with her there…"

"I don't have a choice!" she fired back at him. "This damn thing's ripping me apart from the inside out! The only way to stop it is to kill it… and that's exactly what I'm going to do… Linna, or no Linna."


The dark corridors wailed with the whipping wind howling through the crumbling ruins, the eerie setting chilling the woman almost to the bone for some unknown reason. She flashed her head back and forth to gather her bearings once again. She knew she was looking for that thing… the phenomenon that had forced Genom to level Tokyo with an earthquake device to stop before. Where is it? Where is she?

An icy gust through the shadowy tunnel shivered the woman's arms to the point of distraction, forcing her to look down at her armored arms… except the metal coating didn't protect them as she expected. "My… my hardsuit? Where…"

A piercing shrill from the passage behind her spun the fearful woman around… and directly into the burning red eyes of a rogue boomer.

Before she could even scream out the monstrosity engulfed her body with its snakelike tendrils, pinning her arms and legs together, hauling her into the air. Then she screamed… a terrifying, blood-curdling scream that flooded the tunnels with her fear.

As the echoes of the scream died away, the hollow tapping of approaching footsteps drew out of the windswept hallways. The woman cocked her head around hopeful that one of her comrades had somehow heard her cry for help. A lone figure emerged from the shadows cast from the darkness, the shape resolving into one of her fellow teammates. "Priss!"

The figure dressed in her signature biking leathers stopped at the recognition of her name, pausing momentarily behind an emotionless charade worn over her pale features.

Suddenly, the boomer shifted the woman around to face her teammate. It growled out an unrecognizable message that sent fresh shivers through its captive's spine.

Priss' façade cracked, revealing a hellishly evil grin that preceded her battle cry as she charged into the prone woman held immobile by the boomer.

"Wait! Priss, NO!"

The woman blinked in the face of the attack, her eyes reopening to the impossible transformation of the formerly unarmed Priss into a gleaming blue hardsuit, rocketing directly for her stomach. The woman had an agonizingly perfect view of the death strike… the knucklebomb sinking directly into her unprotected midsection with sickening force… lungs expelling their last gasp under the forceful assault. Breathless, the shocked woman lifted her face into the eyes of her attacker visible through the opened visor on her blue helmet… the brown globes illuminated by the fiery rage glowing from within her blackened soul.

"See you in hell," the she-demon promised, triggering the charge on the knucklebomb with a bellowing cackle that rang in the woman's ears even as she braced against the inevitable doom buried deep in her body. Her insides instantly exploded…

… tossing Nene onto the floor as she screamed out once again, holding her scorching abdomen as if to keep her intestines from spilling out. Slowly her shouts died away enough to hear the phone ringing off to the side… its calming tone drawingher from the trapping visions of nightmares and into the reality now surrounding her. "M… My room…" Nene squeaked out, her eyes slowly focusing on the familiar day lit surroundings of her apartment. "A dream… just a dream…" she gasped heavily, lying on her side as her body continued to shake almost violently.

The persistent ringing finally urged the woman on to crawl along the floor, one hand still covering her midsection, until she reached the vidphone. Dragging herself up into the chair, she punched the answer button reflexively, answering the call with a groaned out "Hello."

The tired face of Linna sheepishly looked in from the other end of the connection. "Um, I'm sorry for bothering… NENE! Are you OK? You look like…"

"Please, don't say it," the teenager cut her off before she could bring up any inadvertent references to the painful nightmare.

"I'm really sorry. I forgot you'd be sleeping now until after I had already dialed…. I just figured I'd leave a message. I didn't wake you, did I?"

"No, not really. Someone else took care of that already," Nene replied darkly, finally managing to contain her shaking as her nerves slowly calmed.

"Who? Did Sylia check up on you again?"

Nene hesitated through her lingering fear of the dream. "No. It was… I had a pretty bad dream, that's all."

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"Well… It… I think I was looking for Galatea…"

"That's enough to give anyone nightmares Nene," Linna added out of her misunderstanding.

"That wasn't the worst part. A boomer attacked me… but I didn't have my hardsuit on anymore. But then, it didn't try and hurt me. It just held me up… then Priss showed up."

A gasp of understanding filtered through the speakers of the phone as Linna's face showed the deep concern and understanding she now knew. "Oh Nene…"

"At first I thought she was going to help… but then…"

"She did hurt you pretty bad yesterday."

"I don't think that was everything though," the teenager added, trying to put together the pieces of the puzzle that had made up her dream. "Y'know, I never did hear exactly what happened a couple of weeks ago from Priss or Sylia."

"The accident? I remember… you were telling me in the hospital that you didn't really know what happened either. They never talked to you about it?"

"No," Nene answered, as a sly grin grew out of the lingering pain still visible on her face. "But I grabbed the hardsuit files from the incident. Yours wasn't much help… I think the blow that gave you the concussion knocked out the video feed. On the other hand, Priss' video…"

Linna cut her off with wide eyes. "So you saw it? The whole thing?"

"Yes. I think that's why I had the nightmare… sort of a twisted mix of the past." She then remembered Linna's own questions at the hospital, causing her own thoughts to turn back to her friend. "I'm… Maybe… Would you like to see it sometime? Assuming you still don't remember what happened."

The brown haired face in the screen looked away, deep in introspection for a few moments before turning back to the camera. "No, I don't think I want to relive that part of the past again... not that I even know exactly what happened. I… I just want to move forward… and find this "Galatea" Sylia talked about last night."

Nene nodded her affirmation of the importance of the search wordlessly, but her thoughts drifted back to the she-demon in her dreams… and just why she had acted that way in the first place. "Linna?"

"Yes Nene?"

"I… I wanted to ask you this yesterday, but I knew you were still pretty upset... after walking out on Sylia and all… But… Why… Why did Priss attack you? She said something… something about not coming back to Tokyo again. What was that about?"

Linna looked away from the screen as soon as Nene had started to speak. She knew exactly what the inquisitive girl wanted to know, but had no idea how to explain it to her… not that she had any real intentions of discussing that particular issue in the first place. "I really don't want to talk about it."

Nene could sense the pain her friend and teammate was still in, but her unending curiosity eventually won out. "But, it was like she wanted to kill you almost. The last time I saw her, she seemed so full of guilt about it. What could have changed her so much?"

Linna's vision shifted away from the screen again, losing herself in memories of the past dredged up once more.

Nene's questions continued to sprout in her young mind, and she found herself unable to turn off the endless flow coming from her mouth. "But you knew… you corrected her, didn't you? You said that Priss told you she never wanted to see you again. Did that happen at the hospital? I never found out what happened there other than what the hospital files said before they were deleted… and what Sylia told me… which wasn't much."

The woman sighed heavily on the other end of the connection. "No, it wasn't at the hospital. Priss came to see me. She came to apologize, although she tried to run out."

"What do you mean 'tried'?"

"I… well… I tried to stop her, but just wound up falling out of bed instead. I pulled out some stitches too, but I didn't know it at the time."

"So Priss helped you back up?" she guessed.

"Actually… she caught me."

"Gee, falling into her arms… that almost seems romantic…" Nene spoke without thinking. She looked back into the screen to discover Linna's face now shaded beet red. More questions immediately popped into the teenagers mind, but she somehow managed to hold those at bay.

"Umm… yeah, well… my parents came in shortly afterwards and pointed out the blood on the hospital gown," the embarrassed country girl stammered out at first before finally recovering.

"Blood? Oh, form the stitches?"

"Yeah. I guess… I kinda… fainted when I saw it," Linna half-smiled, holding the back of her head with one hand.

"So, what happened with Priss and your parents?"

"Nothing. Priss left… and I… I never really found out why."

"But… that doesn't explain why she attacked you. Did something else happen later?"

"Nene… I… I just don't want to talk about it anymore, OK?"

"I'm sorry Linna. I just want to help…"

"I know… I know Nene. But I don't think anything can help in this case."

"Well, what are you going to do for the rest of the day? We aren't supposed to start the search again for another couple of hours."

"I don't know," Linna answered honestly. She thought for a moment about what she had been able to accomplish since recovering her source of transportation the night before from the Lady 633 building. "I already ran errands today since I've got my scooter back now, but I don't feel like going out and doing anything else. I'm just so anxious to get this over with…"

"Me too. Hey, why don't we start now?"

"But I thought that the daylight…"

"Nah! Don't worry! Nene Romanova, Girl Genius is on the case. I've got some special places to sneak underground now that I've been doing this for a week. I'll meet you in the pit in 45 minutes, OK?"

A genuine smile crossed Linna's face as she nodded her head in agreement. "How can I refuse that offer? All right, see you then."

The screen winked out, leaving Nene to her thoughts and the revelations of the phone call. I still wonder what could have happened between those two… why do they hate each other so much now… Her curiosity resolved to find out those answers sooner rather than later…


Sylia walked to the secluded office in back of her storefront to receive the call. She didn't want to chase any of her loyal customers away, and she knew the face on the other end of this call would probably draw some very unpleasant comments. "What do you want now?" she answered the vidphone with anger sifting through her vocal cords.

"Just to make sure that everything was in order on your end… and to see if any further assistance was required to help 'motivate' your team," the pale-faced man on the other end of the connection smirked.

"I think you provided enough 'motivation', as you call it, to last a lifetime," Sylia sneered bitterly. "Did you find it necessary to kill two people in cold blood?"

"I'm afraid that couldn't be helped as the directives for the operative were already set," Mason explained calmly. "It would have unnecessarily delayed things to reprogram the code… and wouldn't have been nearly as effective I might add."

"You haven't changed one bit. The end still justifies the means with you."

"But you've changed so much Sylia, my child. I'm curious though… you're not 'using' any members of the team… you're being completely honest with them about your intentions?"

"The internal workings of my group are no concern of yours so long as they are following my orders," Sylia defended herself with a stern voice.

"Well, I just thought you might have a small problem with trusting them… since two members of your team are starting the search early."

"Early? What do you…" Sylia started before catching a security camera view of the store, revealing two familiar young women walking over to a certain changing booth, cautiously checking to make sure no one else was watching or following them. She growled out her displeasure, momentarily losing her control. "I must be going. I have some other issues to address now."

"Before you go," Mason interrupted, hiding his victorious smile. "I wanted to ask what you intend to do exactly when you find the object of your search?"

"I've taken appropriate precautions to ensure that when we do find her, there won't be enough molecules to scrape together to even consider pursuing my father's research ever again."

"So does that mean you've incorporated the latest setting adjustments from Dr. Chang?"

Sylia's face lit up with the shock of discovery once again before her eyebrows burrowed against Mason's incessant taunting. "Yes, now there's no possibility of failure in stopping Galatea. Now if you'll excuse me."

"Certainly," Mason answered with smug confidence. "I'm sure our mission will be quite successful now." The screen cut off as the executive leaned back in his chair and let out a single triumphant chuckle. "Of course, Dr. Chang was very unhappy with my insistence on those changes. But we couldn't take the chance of the sonic cannon doing any unintentional harm, now could we my child?" he asked of the chilled air surrounding him.

That air failed to respond to the question, but that didn't prevent Mason from cackling out a hideous laugh borne from the madness corrupting his own calculating mind… the madness long since imbedded into his darkened soul from years of past pain and suffering… suffering from a childhood scorned by so many others… others that had now grown into adults… adults who would now receive their just rewards for his suffering… the vicious circle of prejudice borne from childhood ignorance about to be played out on a stage of the largest scale…

Mason's laugh continued to echo throughout the room as he carefully maneuvered all the players in place on his stage, the fiery stage of bloodthirsty revenge.

To be continued…