"A job?"
Turns out that Sylia had called a meeting because we had been hired to do some work for somebody. Linna said that the Knight Sabers had been hired for many different types of jobs, ranging from bodyguarding to tracking down missing people to tracking down the D.D. I wondered what kind of work we'd have to do for this particular job.
"It seems that the Japanese government has hired us to do some work for them," Sylia said.
"The government?" Nene exclaimed. "I never thought the day would come that they would turn to a vigilante group for help."
"As you all have probably heard, there will a be a summit in two months over what to do about the Boomer problem in Tokyo. And to make sure everything goes smoothly, the government has hired us to watch over the summit and make sure there are no terrorist or Boomer attacks."
"How ironic that only a few months after they started going nuts again, they're having a summit over the whole problem," I groaned dryly.
"It's been planned for a long time. Even before Boomers started malfunctioning again, they were going to call it to discuss whether we really need them."
"So when does the summit start?" Linna asked.
"March 10th, and it will run till March 20th."
I turned to Mom. "That's just a few weeks before your tour, Mom. What're you going to do about all those planned meetings?"
"I'll take care of it," she said. "It's not your place to worry about that stuff. Don't get a migraine over it, ok, Yume?"
I grinned. "I'll try not to. But you've been working on the tour for over a year, and it'd all go to waste if something happened to us during the summit, like a Boomer attack."
"I told you, it'll be ok. Tours aren't a top priority on my list, anyway."
"Sylia, how much is the job going to be paying?" Linna asked, skeptical. "This doesn't really sound like a job you would take unless you were offered a lot."
"It's a bit more than our usual 20 million fee," Sylia admitted. "If the job is completed successfully, we'll be paid 80 million."
I had been sitting on the arm of the couch, and when I heard that, I fell off in surprise. "80 million?? Jesus Christ, that's a LOT!!"
"You ok, Yumeko?" Nene laughed.
"I'm fine. But 80 million just to do some bodyguarding?" I exclaimed, whistling my surprise.
"That IS a lot of money," Mom agreed. "Sounds like a trick to me. Why would they offer us so much money for a simple job like this if they weren't planning to draw us into a trap or something?"
"You have a point there," Nene said.
"I had Fargo check it out. There's no tricks involved," Sylia replied.
"So…the summit begins March 10th, right?" I asked.
"Yes. What of it?"
"HAD to be when I'm supposed to be studying for my finals, didn't it," I said, laughing nervously.
"I've never seen you actually care about your schoolwork before," Linna pointed out, smiling.
"I don't," I said, "but I can't take off ten days from school in a row without everyone getting suspicious."
"You won't have to worry about missing any school, Yumeko," Sylia pointed out. "The summit won't start each day until noon, and by then, we'll already be on our shifts watching over it."
"Shifts?" Mom asked.
"We'll all be taking turns on who will be watching over the summit," Sylia explained. "For example, for one hour, you and Linna keep watch, and the next hour, Yumeko and I will keep watch."
"And Nene gets to monitor things from the equipment van again, I'm guessing?" I inquired.
"Yes. In case something happens, the two on watch will need to be able to fight, and, well, Nene doesn't have many weapons on her hardsuit."
"Rub it in, why dontcha," Nene mumbled.
"You're part of the defense, Nene," Linna said. "So naturally you don't have many weapons."
"I do need more weapons than just a little laser gun though."
While Nene was complaining about her lack of weapons and Sylia was going over the schedule for the summit, I leaned against the couch and closed my eyes. I didn't like this job one little bit. Why should we be guarding some lousy politicians, anyway? They were some of the main people responsible for why the world was how it was right now. Without them, the world would probably be a much better place. What would it matter if we let a few of them get killed?
As I looked over my homework, I yawned and drummed my fingers on the table. Mom had a good point about whether the job was a trick or not. The amount of money was suspicious enough, but another thing was bothering me besides that: why would the government hire us two whole months in advance? Didn't really make sense to me.
"Whatcha working on, Yume?" Mom asked, sitting down at the table.
"Homework," I mumbled.
"Which classes?"
"Calculus, history, and Japanese. I'd rather take on seven BU-33B Boomers than do this."
"Be careful what you wish for," she joked.
"I know, I know," I grumbled, finishing up a worksheet. "One class done, two to go…" I laid my head down on the table, sighing.
"How about you come with me for a while? Gonna go get some burgers for dinner," Mom said, winking. I jumped up and eagerly grabbed my jacket. "I'm assuming that that's a yes?" she asked and laughed.
We both hopped on our motorcycles and drove down to the nearest fast food restaurant. Mom decided to get a hamburger, fries, and soda, while I opted for a veggie burger and milkshake. When we sat down to eat our food, I saw a familiar redhead walk in.
"Nene!" I yelled with a mouth full of burger and waved to her.
"Yumeko, Priss!" she exclaimed and ran over to our table, taking a seat. "Didn't think I'd see the two of you here!"
"Where else would you find Mom and I pigging out?" I quipped, swallowing my food. She laughed.
"That's quite true," she grinned, then lowered her voice. "Anyway, I was talking with Sylia today, and I convinced her to power up my laser gun, at least."
"Wow, now you might be able to do some damage to a Boomer," Mom joked.
"I dunno," I added. "I still think her screaming does more damage."
Nene's face turned red. "Do you two have nothing to do other than to tease me?" she yelled.
Suddenly, I heard my pager go off. A second later, Mom's pager and Nene's pager went off too. The other people in the restaurant looked at us strangely at the sound of three pagers going off simultaneously. I blushed with embarrassment and turned off my pager.
"As a matter of fact, I do have something more important to do," Mom said, standing up and turning off her pager.
"Whoohoo!!" I cheered. "Time to go back to work!"
Nene groaned and rolled her eyes. "Greeeeeat."
For the first time in a month and a half, I was finally going to be on the battlefield again. I couldn't wait to get back out there, so I ran downstairs to suit up as fast as I could. Mom and Nene told me to slow down, that I should save my strength for the battle, but I couldn't contain my excitement.
When we got downstairs, Linna and Sylia were just stepping into their hardsuits. They both looked at me curiously when I practically burst my way through the door and changed into my innerwear.
"Excited?" Linna asked, smiling.
"It's been six weeks!!" I exclaimed. "Can't wait to get out there again!"
As I stepped into my hardsuit, Sylia filled us in. "It appears to be two BU-33B Combat Boomers. They're wreaking havoc in Ginza district, so hurry and suit up."
"That's the shopping district, isn't it?" Nene gasped. "Think of all the people that're gonna be hurt!!"
I slipped on my helmet and immediately ran to the equipment van. Once in, I decided to take a look at the dark purple motorcycle that was stored there. I ran my finger over the body of it, my eyes widening with interest. Should be fun, using this in battle, I thought, smiling slyly. Mom, in her hardsuit, walked up behind me and asked why I was looking at it. I looked up at her, grinning behind my visor, and said, "Well, I thought I might give this thing a test run."
"Sylia's told you how to use it, right?" she asked.
"Yeah."
"Just be careful when you're having it transform. The last thing we need is someone getting injured by her own Motoslave," she half-joked.
"I'll be ok! With this thing, I could probably take on both of those Boomers."
"I had a hard enough time taking on a BU-12B with my Motoslave. I don't know how you'll fare against two BU-33Bs."
"That's why I'm gonna try it out."
"Let's get going," I heard Sylia say as she, Linna, and Nene climbed into the van. As the van starting moving, I climbed onto my motorcycle, ready for the word to deploy.
"Using your Motoroid, huh?" Nene asked, flipping up her visor and looking at me intently.
"Yeah," I said, grinning.
She looked down at her feet. "I'd use mine, but…even with it, I still can't fight. I'd still just be a punching bag," she said, flushing.
"That's why there's a thing called practice," I pointed out wryly.
"Get ready, Yume," Mom said as we approached Ginza, and hopped on her bike as well. Suddenly, I noticed the walls of the van open up, and gasped when the hydraulic booms attached to the bikes deployed outside. What the…?!, I thought as I sat there on the bike, hanging there above the ground. Sylia's planning to drop us like this?!
"Knight Sabers…" I heard Sylia say over the comm, "GO!"
And with that, the hydraulic booms released their grip on the bikes, and Mom and I went dropping to the street, me almost losing my balance when I hit. As Mom and I went speeding ahead of the van towards the Boomers, Sylia, Nene, and Linna leaped off the top of the van and went by air.
"Nene!" I yelled over the comm. "You try to get the people out of here, ok? This could get ugly real quick."
"Roger!" she responded.
"Let's do it!!" Mom yelled out as she made her motorcycle transform. I stopped and looked around at the scene. I would never get used to seeing this scene; mutilated bodies in the street, cars and stores on fire, and scores of people trying to run and hide. Again, I felt the nausea rise into my throat, but I managed to keep from throwing up all over my faceplate.
"Yumeko! Watch it!" Linna warned me. I looked ahead and barely dodged a Boomer charging at me, ducking its laser blasts.
"You son of a bitch!" I cursed, starting up my bike again and riding towards it while Mom was fighting the other one. She looked like she had the upper hand against it, but then again, she always made stuff look easy. As she blocked some punches from the Boomer, she fired her huge gun at it, putting several nice-sized holes in it, but the wounds weren't slowing it down much.
Right when I reached my target, intending to run it over, it went and grabbed my bike by the front tire, then threw me over its head. I yelled in surprise, still clinging to the bike as a bunch of info went flying across my HUD.
"Where is it?" I asked myself aloud, still in mid-air. "Where's that Transform Mode, damn you!?" Right when I said that, it appeared on the HUD. "There it is!" I exclaimed, grinning ear to ear as the motorcycle started to change shape underneath me. I held my breath and squeezed my eyes shut as the bike seemed to come apart; at first I thought it was literally falling to pieces, but then it started to come back together around my hardsuit, augmenting it and enclosing itself over my torso and arms. All RIGHT!, I thought as it completed its transformation. And then, I hit the ground hard, landing on my back because of the fact that the Motoslave had transformed practically upside-down.
"Get up!" Linna yelled as she ran to help Mom, who I noticed wasn't exactly doing as well as I'd hoped, getting pounded by the BU-33B but thanks to the Motoslave protecting her, probably wasn't actually getting beat up too bad. I jumped to my feet and turned to the other Boomer, which Sylia was fighting alone. Running to help her, the Boomer immediately noticed me and swatted Sylia aside, turning to me.
"Bring it on!" I shouted, getting into a fighting pose, which was a bit awkward with all the extra armor around me. I tried to activate the thrusters so I could attack, but this being my first time working the Motoslave, I couldn't figure out how to activate them. Crud, I thought, swallowing hard as the Boomer slammed into me with full force and knocked me back onto the ground. While I was trying to get up, it lifted up its huge foot and stomped on the armor where my stomach would be if not for the Motoslave.
This just isn't my day!, I thought as I tried to get up, only to get stomped on again.
Just then, a barrage of lasers hit the Boomer from the side. As it yelled in rage, I turned in that direction and saw Nene standing there, aiming her laser gun. About time she did something useful, I groaned in my head, slowly picking myself off of the pavement.
"Weren't you supposed to be getting people out of here?" I scolded.
"Well, you looked like you could've used some help," she said, crossing her arms over her chest. "And besides, I needed to try out my upgraded laser gun."
Our little conversation was interrupted when Sylia came out of nowhere and jabbed her lasersword into the Boomer's head. It howled in anger as it grabbed her by the arm and threw her into Nene, making them both fly to the ground. Then it turned around before I could react, grabbed me by the arms, and pinned me down on the asphalt.
"I am NOT letting that move get the best of me again!!" I cried out as I bent the mechanical legs of my Motoslave, brought them up to my chest, leaned back, and let out a double kick at the Boomer's torso. Being that it had still been trying to hold me to the ground, the kick was so hard that the arms became separated from the rest of its body, and the Boomer fell to the ground, ahem, unarmed. I stomped over to where it was, flailing about on the ground, trying to get up. Then I jumped in the air and landed on the Boomer, smashing it beneath the Motoslave's feet.
"Are you ok?" Nene asked.
"Yeah," I panted, opening up the cockpit and slowly climbing out. "Man…what a ride."
"Now you know why I never use my Motoslave," she said, grinning behind her visor, I'm sure.
"Don't…blame you for not using that thing."
"You handled all right for your first time, Yumeko," Sylia said. "But next time, perhaps you should pay more attention when I tell you how to pilot it."
I flushed. "I suppose so."
"Where's Priss and Linna?" Nene suddenly asked, looking around.
"There they are," Sylia said, pointing behind Nene. She and I turned around and saw Linna and Mom both delivering the final blows to the Boomer, Linna with her Knuckle Bomber, Mom with the Motoslave's fist.
"And here I was thinking that Mom made stuff look easy," I chuckled. "It took her AND Linna longer to kill that one than it took me to kill the other one singlehandedly."
Linna walked over and slapped me playfully on the helmet. "You had a bit of trouble yourself, you know," she said coyly.
"I was kidding," I said, holding my hands up in front of me as if in surrender. Mom climbed out of her Motoslave and slapped me across the head like Linna had just done. "Hey, don't need BOTH of you ganging up on me," I laughed.
"Sometimes the 'veterans' of this job have trouble too," Mom said, half-joking.
Mackie pulled up in the equipment van. "C'mon, we gotta get going."
As Sylia, Linna, and Mom climbed into the van, I stood and watched as Nene scribbled the Knight Sabers insignia into the asphalt with her laser.
"Veterans, my butt," I joked, aiming the comment at her.
She looked up at me and grumbled. "You say something?!" she yelled, giving chase. I cackled as I ran from her and hopped into the van just before it pulled away. "It's not my fault I can't fight as well as everyone else, you know!!"
"Yeah, you just need to exercise, eat right, and lose a few kilos," I laughed.
"You are asking for it!!" she said, pissed off but almost laughing at the same time. "And I'm not the only one here who could stand to lose a few."
"Whaaaaa?" I drawled. "I do NOT need to lose a few!! I weigh a trim 46 kilos, thank you."
"Yeah, and that's about 46 too many!"
As Nene as I (mostly in play) threw insults at one another, Linna and Mom were holding their stomachs, they were so doubled up in laughter, Sylia sat there with a smile on her face and chuckled, and Mackie was trying to keep an eye on the road AND listen in on the argument at the same time while laughing his head off as well.
"Morning, sleepyhead," Mom greeted me with as I shuffled into the kitchen the next morning to get myself a cup of coffee.
"Morning," I said, scratching the side of my head while I poured myself a cup.
"Nice hair," she quipped, pointing at my hair; it was a mess from the rough night I'd had, all mussed and tangled. My only response was to yawn loudly as I sat down next to her at the kitchen table.
"I can't believe I actually stomped on that Boomer with my Motoslave," I said aloud, grinning.
"Which reminds me, are you gonna be using that thing more often?"
"No way. That thing's too hard to handle."
"Well, if you had paid attention while Sylia—"
"I know, I know…'while Sylia was teaching me how to use it,'" I finished for her.
"Exactly. In a real battle, if you don't know how to use it, you'll end up getting yourself killed."
"What do you mean a REAL battle? What about the ones we've been in so far these past few months? Those aren't real battles?"
"Compared to some of the ones we've been in, yes." I groaned. Guess I can't complain about getting a broken wrist, burnt back, and shot shoulder then.
"I know you've been against a fusion Boomer, the D.D., Largo – a couple of times – and some of his Boomers," I rattled off. "But you're still alive, aren't you?"
Mom sighed. "Yes, but that was mostly because I wasn't willing to give up, and because I'm just stubborn that way."
"Thank God you're my mom," I smirked. She laughed.
"Yeah. But you just have to remember to keep your cool, try not to let the pain, anger, or whatever cloud your judgment, and also remember that it's not your fight alone. It's everyone's fight, ok?"
"I'll try to remember," I said, thinking at the same time that she was contradicting herself. Don't let my anger cloud my judgment, eh? Ha, she should've been the one to talk…
The days drifted by, one by one, and the day of the 'Boomer summit,' as Mom and I called it, drew ever closer. And with each day that passed, my dread grew. Why should we even bother guarding these big-name politicians? It would be a waste of our time, even if we were gonna be paid eighty million yen upon completion. We could get money for any old job, any old time, but this…this was a crock of shit! If the government wanted bodyguards, they should've just hired some Secret Service-type guys, not a band of vigilantes like the Knight Sabers. Sylia said it wasn't a trap for us, but I was quicker to trust Mom's word on it than hers. If Sylia couldn't see a trap from ten kilometers away, Mom could.
"Stop worrying about it so much," Linna told me when I told her about it. "If anything happens, we'll take care of it. The summit isn't for another month." She smiled. "And besides, you're still only sixteen, right? Teenagers aren't supposed to be worrying about this stuff. If you're going to worry over anything, it should be your schoolwork and your social life. Go out and enjoy it while you can."
And when I told Nene about it…
"If you can't stop worrying about it, Yumeko, do what I do! Just lock yourself in the bathroom, and take a nice, long, hot bubble bath. All your worries will just melt away and you'll come out feeling a hundred times better than you were when you went in."
Oh, those two just didn't understand. We were gonna be risking our asses for some damn bigwigs, and they said not to worry, just let the event run its course?! And of course, I couldn't go to Michiko about it; she'd hardly believe that I was a Knight Saber, let alone this…
One day, I decided to go to Linna's aerobics gym to let off some steam. Maybe if I worked out a bit, I could stop thinking about it so much. When I walked inside, it was fairly crowded, but when I saw that the uneven parallel bars weren't being used, a mischievous smile crept across my lips. After I changed into my green leotard and tied my hair back, I walked over to them and looked up. The lower one was about two meters up, the higher one was about three meters up, and they were about two meters apart. It was similar to what I was on at the Japan Gymnastics National Championship the year before. I closed my eyes and remembered that feeling of glory, when they called out my name and announced that with a 9.85 score, I had won, over all the other gymnasts from all over the country!!
Opening my eyes, I took a few steps back, stretched my arms and legs, and ran towards the bars. I jumped up and grabbed the lower bar and swung myself up and over it, let go, did a somersault in mid-air, and grabbed it again from the other side. I swung around and around the bar a couple of times before letting go and, doing a double twist, grabbed onto the higher bar. Swinging my body backwards, I reached my legs up between my arms, did a front flip, and grabbed onto the bar again. I more or less repeated the maneuvers over and over, until my arms, legs, and back cried out in pain from the moves, my face covered in perspiration. After releasing the high bar, I did a triple twist in the air and landed, panting for breath.
"Ah…that felt good," I said to myself, practically wheezing, then looked up. "Huh?"
Everyone else in the gym had gathered at the parallel bars to watch me perform my stunts; I'd been oblivious to the crowd the whole time, and now everyone was clapping and cheering. I wiped some of the sweat off my forehead and smiled.
Linna walked up from behind the crowd, clapping with everyone else. "That was great, Yumeko!!"
"Aw, it was nothing special," I said, grinning from ear to ear and scratching the back of my head.
At an outdoor café a short while later, while Linna and I were drinking cappuccinos, she said, "You looked better than you were at the Nationals last year! You should start training for the Olympics."
"Those aren't till next year."
"It's never too early to start. And besides, they're being held in Nairobi! You wouldn't want to miss a chance to go to Africa, would you?"
"I've been to Nairobi before, when Mom had a concert there," I replied, sipping my cappuccino.
"I know, but it's been what, four or five years since you were there last?"
"Yes, but I don't know if I want to go all the way to the Olympics. It's a lot of pressure for one, and besides, there's our duty as Knight Sabers. That should come first, don't you think?"
She nodded and clasped her hands together. "You're right. But you can't have the Sabers be your whole life. You have to go out and at least live a little bit. You can't be obsessed with them like Priss is."
I frowned at that last remark. "If Mom's obsessed with anything, I think it's over trying to protect me, and not killing Boomers, or her singing, either."
"That's true, too."
"I've been wondering, also, what Mom's going to do about her tour. It begins only a couple weeks after the Boomer summit ends, but if she goes on the tour, then there'll be one less Knight Saber to help fight the Boomers…" I fidgeted in my seat at the thought.
Linna leaned over the table towards me. "You know Priss better than any of us. She's your mother. You should know what she'll do about the tour."
I looked away. "I don't know about that. It's hard to tell what's going through her head sometimes."
She sighed and leaned back in her seat, looking up at the sky. "I know what you mean. It's hard to tell what she's thinking about just by looking at her, but sometimes, even when she doesn't say anything, her eyes give away the whole story.
"I remember the first couple of weeks after she gave birth to you, Yumeko. She was so attached to you, so loving and caring, so doting. You could almost say she was overprotective of you. She'd be there watching you every second, making sure you didn't get smothered in your blanket, or fall off the couch if you happened to fall asleep there. But every time she looked at you, I could tell that she couldn't get the way you were conceived out of her mind. Even now, I know she thinks about it all the time, just from looking at the expression on her face whenever she looks at you."
"Has she told you anything about the attack?" I asked, my eyes getting wide. She shook her head.
"Priss hasn't told anybody hardly anything about it, even Sylia. When we first found out about the attack, she'd only say she got 'beat up,' and left it at that. But when we found out she was pregnant…" Linna got a faraway look in her eyes when she said that. "…when we found that out, we knew she hadn't just been beaten up, like she said."
I sighed. "I've tried getting her to talk about it, but she says I wouldn't be able to handle it."
"Well, maybe she's right. Sometimes people think they can handle the truth, but it turns out to be so brutal, they never recover from the shock. In Priss' case, I think she's just trying to protect you. I think that she thinks you're better off not knowing about it."
"She could at least tell me who my dad is," I grumbled. "I could handle that."
"Think about it!" she said, almost yelling at me. "Would you want your daughter to know who exactly the man that beat and raped you is?! What if you actually know the guy, Yumeko? What if the man that did it was the nice man next door who always opens doors for people and washes their cars? You'd never recover from the shock!!"
I sat there, trying to fathom what Linna had said. She was right, I suppose. If it turned out to be a guy I knew, whether only in passing or not…I'd probably be so far in shock, I'd never come back.
"You…have a point," I said slowly, finishing my now-cold cappuccino.
"I'm glad you see it," she said, sighing. "Now how about I give you a ride home? It's getting a bit late."
After Linna and I paid for our cappuccinos, we hopped in her car and drove to my apartment building. When we got there, I noticed Mom's motorcycle wasn't in the parking lot. Probably at another one of her meetings, I thought glumly. After I said goodbye to Linna, I walked up to our apartment, and saw a note that Mom had left on the living room table. It read:
Sorry, had to go to another damn meeting. I should be home for dinner, but if I'm not, eat without me. I bought some spaghetti for you to cook.
Love ya, Mom
I sighed and set the note down on the table. Linna was wrong about one thing: I had no idea what Mom was going to do about her tour. True, there would still be the rampaging Boomers here, but she had been planning it for over a year. She hadn't planned on the Boomers coming out again right in the middle of her planning. If she suddenly called the whole thing off for a reason she couldn't explain, there would be a huge uproar; her concerts had been sold out for months already. How could she pull off a cancellation without explaining it? And if she decided not to cancel, how would the rest of the Knight Sabers and I manage without her?
"May I ask why the HELL are we planning this now?!" I yelled. Planning the setup of the lights and special effects a whole month and a half before the Replicants' tour was to even begin?! Give me a break. This meeting was a waste of my time and everyone else's as well. As far as I was concerned, we didn't have to worry about this shit until two weeks before the tour, not a whole month and a half in advance!
"Miss Asagiri, our company is on a tight schedule," the supposed sound director said. "We had to move this up so we wouldn't have to worry about it later."
"You didn't have to call us up here to do it! We were gonna do it on our own time anyway, you jackass!!"
He winced at the words. "It's best to take care of it now. We all know how you tend to procrastinate things until it's too late, so we're doing it now to spare us all some time."
I snorted and walked out to the stage. Looking up at the lights, I yelled to the man changing the bulbs and said, "Turn 'em on!!"
"What?!" he yelled back down. "I'm still changing them!!"
"So hurry it up, already!!"
While the lights were being changed, I walked over to the drum set and tested them out to make sure they were in good shape. Then I tested the electric guitar, and winced when I heard some of the notes were out of tune. After tightening some of the strings, they were in tune again. Then I went to the microphone and tested that by singing a few lyrics into it.
"Arashi no highway hashiri-tsuzuketa togireta yume no yukue sagashite…" The sound came out loud and clear on the speakers.
"Finished, Miss Priss!" the man yelled, turning on the lights at the same time. Some of the bulbs were red, while others were orange and blue. The combination of those different colors of lights coming down on me was too much. It was horrible. I winced and put my hand up in front of my eyes to block it out.
"Get those red and orange ones outta there!! Get the green bulbs in there!!"
"What?! I just spent an hour changing them, dammit!!"
I put my hands on my hips. "I don't care, change 'em again!!"
"Well, shit!!" he cursed, and began to remove the red bulbs. I sighed and went to retrieve my jacket. As I yanked it on, the sound director ran up to me.
"Where do you think you're going, Miss Asagiri?" he inquired.
"I'm going home, what does it look like?" I grumbled.
"You have to help us plan the setup!! You know what looks good and what doesn't!!"
"You're a director, aren't you? So direct!!" I snapped, shoving him out of the way and strided to my motorcycle. As I drove away, the director looked like the cat had gotten his tongue. He just stood there and fumed.
As I walked in the door to my apartment, I peeled off my jacket and threw it onto the couch. I noticed a pot sitting on the stove, and when I walked over to it, I saw there was spaghetti in it. Next to the sink was a half-eaten plate of it, and I sighed when I saw it. Yume mustn't have been feeling good; usually she'd eat two or three plates of it instead of just half of one.
"Hey. Yume," I said in a low voice when I opened the door to our bedroom. But she wasn't even awake. She just laid there curled up under the covers, snoring away. I smiled and walked over to her bed. I swept her bangs out of her face and ran my fingers through her dark brown hair. The poor girl, I thought. She's been through so much already. I almost wished that Sylia hadn't asked her to join the Knight Sabers in the first place. Yes, she was very athletic, and she had that energy of youth, but she was still a kid. She hadn't even been in a real fight other than the brawls she got into at school. Yume didn't really have a clue about what she was getting herself into when she agreed to join, even after I showed her the scars I got during some of the battles. Before that female Boomer had attempted to kill her, she hadn't even seen a Combat Boomer before; she'd only seen the waitress Boomers and garbage Boomers. And yet…only six months after she was asked to join, she already seemed more mature than she had been. She didn't seem to sweat the small stuff as much.
Just as I was pulling off my boots, the familiar beeping of the pager made its presence known. I rolled my eyes and pulled the boots back on.
"Yume, we gotta get going," I said, shaking her gently. She didn't stir. I repeated her name and shook her again. Then, I decided to take my still-beeping pager out of my back pocket, and held it to her ear. After a few seconds, she moaned and her eyes fluttered open.
"Hwah…?" she said, sitting up and wiping away the drool dribbling down her chin with the back of her hand. "What's going on?" she asked sleepily.
"Duty calls," I said, turning off my pager. "Get dressed and let's get going."
After she pulled on some jeans, a sweatshirt, and her tennis shoes, we hurried downstairs to our motorcycles. When Yume stepped outside, she immediately hugged herself and shivered.
"It's snowing?!" she yelled as the flying snowflakes got caught in her hair and eyelashes.
"It's February, of course it's snowing," I answered, pulling on my helmet. "Just get onto my bike with me. We'll save time."
"Ok!" She pulled on her helmet and hopped on behind me, wrapping her arms around my waist. After starting up the bike and letting it warm up for a minute, we were off.
