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Disclaimer:

Own only original stuff; not doing this for profit; suing would be pointless.


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Darkness Chronicles
An anime-Manga Cross-over

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Book I:
Part I: The Gathering
Chapter VII:

** ** **

Madigan stood by the open door of the surveillance van, and swore vehemently in a fashion more inventive and more protracted than she had done in a very long time.

It had been going so well! The Knight Sabres had been kept occupied, precisely as the chairman had instructed, the six upgraded personal security buma playing their parts exactly as programmed.

Three were to be destroyed in the first attack, the others to lead the four vigilantes towards the area of the second rampage, immediately the last had fallen. They were slower than the hardsuits in their expanded forms, but they could remain active long enough to exhaust some of the hardsuits' much-needed energy. From the second rampage the one machine stripped of almost all unnecessary weight and weaponry was to remain an observer to the action until the end, when it would lead the Knight Sabres on a chase towards the third attack, its minimal armament and upgraded firmware giving it an excellent chance to remain out of range long enough to near the area without the need for backup. There again all but two of the buma were expendable. By then, the hardsuits would be dangerously low on power, and the final chase towards the DAs' hide-out, and the final rampage could begin. What would happen when they reached the luxury hotel in which the two renegade machines had gone to ground, the chairman had not yet told her. But Madigan had no doubt he had everything in hand.

It had seemed a perfect strategy, one so obvious that Madigan could not understand why it had not been tried before.

Then it had all fallen apart. Just how such a catastrophic failure had been possible, the frantic technicians in the van were still trying to ascertain. But whatever had happened had destroyed all but one of the buma, and this last was damaged it seemed beyond all hope of further action; just how badly, they were still trying to determine. The magnitude of the failure was made worse still by the fact that it was so utterly unexpected, and so impossible for which to plan.

"Madigan-sama?"

One of the men had stepped to the doorway, and was looking out at her as she stood staring moodily out towards the distant battle-zone where she guessed the ADP would already be drawing a tight cordon around the destroyed machines. Cursing herself yet again for not having the mobile HQ set up nearer the action, she whirled to face the technician, stepping aside and beckoning him irritably down.

"Well?" she snapped, her icy gaze holding his own for a moment before flicking savagely away. "I hope you have something to tell me."

She felt a moment's grim satisfaction at his quick nervous glance, then squashed the emotion with savage irritation. Fear was useful, but terrifying a subordinate for no good reason resulted only in their telling her what she wanted to hear. Forcing her face to its usual cool attention, she nodded for him to speak.

"The initial OMS report from the remaining assassin indicates a power-plant fluctuation," he began. "The buma lost power enough to initiate a full shut-down and disable its OMS link for almost fifty seconds. We'll know exactly how long, once we review the OMS node data. Approximately one minute after the initial failure, the reverse occurred; that is, there was a fluctuation far above base stability, lasting approximately ten seconds. It was this that destroyed the other machines, and crippled the last."

"This occurred in all the buma simultaneously?" Madigan demanded incredulously. "You're telling me there was an OMS fault?"

"No, Madigan-sama." The man's tone was suddenly very uneasy; "that's not what I'm telling you. What has just happened has no rational explanation. The plants are regulated internal to each machine, and although they can be OMS controlled to a degree: for example, reinitialised, or shut down in a situation where the buma becomes uncontrollable, it's impossible to alter the plant baseline. There would be no point in designing for that level of control. Besides, there was no OMS command sent to reset the plants, nor was there a loss of contact before the initial failure itself that would indicate some external influence."

"Would it be possible to emulate contact for the OMS node?" she demanded. "Could the Knight Sabres have caused this?"

"Not without packet interruption," he answered. "And even if they managed that, and I don't see how they could, there would be continuity errors in the data the OMS was receiving. There was no hint of trouble until the exact moment of the initial crash.

"In any case there's more: far more. We assumed at first that the last ADP helicopters to be downed had been shot down by the machines. Our own surveillance and satellite data shows now that this was not the case. They simply lost power, and crashed. The failure occurred at precisely the same moment as that of the buma. Also, there seems to have been a localised fluctuation in the city power-grid, in the battery stacks that were powering the ADP spotlights, and, if satellite data is accurate, in the Knight Sabres hardsuits."

Madigan stared at him for a moment in shocked silence.

"What you're telling me," she said carefully at last, "is that what has just happened should, by all accepted physics, be impossible."

"It happened, therefore it's possible. But—"

He was interrupted as Madigan's pager-phone demanded attention.

"Madigan," she said, snatching it from her pocket.

For a moment, she listened intently, slow shock and disbelief spreading over her suddenly ashen face.

"I understand," she said quietly at last. "I'll be there as soon as I can."

Snapping the phone closed, she returned it to her jacket, and turned to face the suddenly frozen technician.

"Cancel the remaining assassins' programs regarding tonight's operation," she said simply. "Initialise them to stand by for priority server download. MegaTokyo is under attack."

* * *

The strategy would have been perfect in its inconceivable impossibility, had it been a strategy at all; Quincy would have had to grant at least that much to the unknown antagonists. It was however immediately obvious to him that whoever, or whatever they were, something had gone catastrophically amiss. Either they had attacked blind: an absurd proposition, or their appearance in the middle of a battle-scene was entirely outside their control: a ridiculously improbable stroke of appalling bad luck on their part. The last seemed tremendously more likely, given their initial bewilderment, and the way they had reacted to the intervention of the ADP.

There had been no warning, no indication at all as to what was about to happen. There had been a sudden total data-loss from the machines at the site of the first rampage, Quincy attributing it immediately to some new system of the pink hardsuit. Sylia could nearly always surprise him; it was one of the things that made her and her team such superb and fascinating antagonists.

Dismissing what he could not change, he had turned his attention to the other sites. For a little over a minute all had remained exactly as it should.

Then it had happened. In one instant the six Bu-55C-iii machines had been awaiting the signal to begin the third rampage. In the next, a swirling blackness had opened in the very air barely twenty feet from where they were concealed, and the creatures had begun to emerge. It had been unimaginable good fortune that the breach had occurred where it had, and that Quincy had himself been observing through the machines.

"Is this part of the plan?"

Madeleine Amura, speaking with Ligeia's mouth, had turned towards him, her eyes still wide with fear and confusion.

It had taken him minutes to silence the screams after her initial activation, then he had uttered another imprinted command phrase, and Madeleine had understood everything, and she had nearly screamed again.

"Of course it isn't; don't be absurd!" He had not looked at her, reaching instead for the phone at his side.

"But what—" she had tried.

"Silence," he had barked, not looking around.

In the next instant a gasp from her had made him glance back at the feed from the machines, just in time to see one of the grey-clad invaders raise a branch-like hand, and hurl a flurry of glowing leaf-like projectiles into the face of a suddenly leaping buma which had obviously interpreted the sudden appearance of the creatures as a priority threat. There was a sudden burst of white, then the feed from that machine had ended.

So it had begun, barely a minute before, and the loss of contact at the initial site had also been explained. A two-pronged assault were the imbecilic screams of Genom security. In which case, he had felt accommodating enough to point out to the fool who had disturbed him rather than doing the job for which he was employed, how very fortunate that the invaders had managed to choose their points of attack with such convenient incompetence. And how novel that they had decided to bring their children with them on their little campaign, this more than amply demonstrated to anybody other than a congenital halfwit by the fact that some of the creatures had sacrificed themselves to hold off the attacking buma whilst a few fled, hurrying a group of small, screaming creatures away with them as quickly as they could.

Quincy had been more than a little tempted to have the idiot terminated as a warning to in-born stupidity.

Smiling grimly, he set down the phone, and turned at last to Madeleine. She had been watching, white-faced and aghast at the feed coming from the remaining five machines, a strange yet undefinable sense of familiarity growing more potent with every second.

"What are they?" she demanded faintly at last.

"I assume that to be a rhetorical question, or did you really expect me to know?" he answered dryly.

Madeleine glanced towards him, her face tight as she tried vainly to find the source of her growing certainty that she knew the nature of the things she was seeing.

"Well, do you intend to stand there until morning?" he demanded. "You know what to do. Do it."

"Still!" she gasped.

"I don't recall agreeing to repeat myself," he said simply. "Do you imagine Fellini will wait, simply because my security division is staffed by congenital imbeciles?

"Go. And see that Fellini learns nothing of what is happening before his and Liana's escape. I imagine you can manage that. You are then to find Marina and Camilla without delay, and release the data Ligeia contains. After that, your course should be obvious; it is why I chose you after all."

"Now I understand at last why so many people have tried to kill you," she cried suddenly, her voice trembling, and her eyes blazing with uncharacteristic rage.

"Then keep that thought in your mind if you wish," he said simply. "It should prove an excellent source of motivation. Now, if you've quite finished wasting time?"

Her expression tight, Madeleine whirled away from him, and leapt to the door.

"I've never hated anyone before," she cried desperately, her voice choked with sudden emotion; "not really. But I really, really hate you!

"And you'll pay. I don't know how, but your kind always do."

Then it was closing behind her, and she was gone, speeding wildly through the vast passages, tears nearly blinding her as the rage grew, and grew, and Quincy's cold, amused laughter seemed to follow cruelly in her wake.

How could he! How could he have done this to her: let her real self die and make a copy, just to stop that madman, when he could have done it months ago, before it had come to this!

She had known from the beginning and before she had learnt anything of his history, that Fellini was dangerous. The man had frightened her beyond words since the first day she had met him, only hours after she had passed the final security checks and been confirmed in her new position as part of the DA project. There had been something wild and unspeakably hungry and malevolent in his cold, dark eyes as he had appraised her at their first meeting, and Madeleine had been relieved beyond measure when unexpectedly she had been given the choice as to which team she wished to join.

It had not taken her long to hear the rumours: that the death of Zhuranovsky-hakase's daughter had not been an accident: that Fellini had infected her deliberately with the first-generation prototype as revenge for what he saw as his rival's undeserved position as executive director of the project, and the choosing of his alternative as pre-eminent.

She had not doubted them, even though she had never dared ask Zhuranovsky-hakase directly, and Domina-san had requested she speak of the matter as little as possible. Alexei had suffered quite enough.

And the chairman had known: had let Marina Alexeievna die rather than lose his chief project scientist, considering it both expedient, and a means by which Zhuranovsky would become obsessed and determined enough to do what otherwise might well have proved impossible. Oh how she hated him now, now that she knew who he was, and the appalling enormity of what he had done.

Yet there was no time. Whatever his plans had been for this night, all was now changed irrevocably by what was happening. And he was right. Despite his callous manipulation, and a calculated cruelty to achieve his ends she could not have believed anybody capable, he was right. Fellini would not wait: would not let anything deflect him from his goal. And if he succeeded: if he and Liana were not stopped, and the weapon was released…

Fighting down her tears, Madeleine reached for the link, not knowing or caring how she knew what to do, and gasped as she felt for the first time the autonomous response of her adversary, and her only hope.

* * *

Fellini had just slipped the last disk containing the data he intended to take with him in the small brief-case when the first shouts of alarm reached him. Then the door to his own private room was slammed open, and a moment later Liana was at his side, her face grim as she reached to snatch up the case.

"What—?" he began.

"We have been discovered," she said simply.

Her tone was frighteningly calm. "The chairman knows everything. Unless you intend to blast your way from the tower, we had best leave, and leave immediately."

For one stunned moment Fellini stared stupidly at her as though unable to speak. Then a cracking slap across his face brought him back to reality once more.

"Is everything packed?" he snapped, fighting down the urge to lash out at her in return.

"We've everything we need," she said quickly. "Come, while they're still arguing and shouting insults at one another."

"We'll never reach an exit," he continued, turning his head for a moment as the shouts from the direction of the research laboratories became more urgent.

"We won't if you stand here like an imbecile!" she answered angrily, her cold voice laced with contempt. "We can take the fire-escape. Are you coming?"

Moments later they were out of the room, and racing for the emergency shaft and its spiral stairway, Fellini already straining to keep up with Liana as she glided effortlessly along the passage ahead of him, a heavy case clutched fiercely in each hand.

"Can you—" he began.

"I've already unlocked it, and disabled the alarm" she snapped. "and a car is programmed and waiting. So stop wasting my time with idiotic questions, and move."

Seconds later he was in the dimly-lit stairwell, his pounding footfalls echoing in the shaft as he struggled desperately to match Liana's all but silent flight before him, the blood pounding in his ears as he fought desperately to control his sudden fear and exhilaration. Ahead of him, Liana glanced back for a moment, her own expression a barely contained snarl of frustration.

"We'll be trapped for certain if this is all the speed you can manage," she said in a low, savage hiss. "I'll go on ahead, and bring the car to the door."

"Mm," he grunted, unable to manage more against the desperate panting of his breath.

Flashing him a sudden vicious smile, Liana turned and sped away into the near darkness. A moment later she was gone, and Fellini was alone.

He struggled on, his pulse racing wildly as he pounded round and down the seemingly never-ending spirals, not daring to rest even for a moment at the landings. He cursed himself again for not taking such an eventuality into account: for trusting that Liana would be able to give him the warning they would need to escape without the need to run. If he survived this, he swore that he would begin to work on less drastic modifications for his own benefit.

Gasping, barely able to stay on his feet, Fellini stumbled down the final stairway, and lurched wildly for the fire-door. Staggering, clutching at it for support, he swung himself through, not bothering to slam it behind him, and nearly staggered right into the arms of the security buma that had obviously been waiting for him.

"You will return with me," It said in a flat emotionless voice.

It reached a clawed hand towards him, then shrieked in buma rage as its arm was cut from its body just below the shoulder. Whirling, snarling in frustrated fury, it opened its mouth wide to deal with the new threat. Then its head was bouncing on the asphalt, and Liana was blowing imaginary gunpowder from her slender fingers with a grin of malicious amusement.

"Shall we go?" she inquired.

* * *

"Sylia!" Linna's scream cut through the gaping shock of the others like a whip. "We have to do something! That thing is—"

She was cut off by the crack of a heavy-calibre pistol, and the plant-woman or whatever she was that had been pinning the terrified ADP officer a moment before staggered back, grey blood frothing suddenly on her mouth as she tried vainly to scream.

Snarling viciously, eyes glowing suddenly like coals, the other strangers moved forwards, shedding their glamour with a terrifying speed far beyond any buma, becoming in a moment hideous twisted parodies of human forms. Then suddenly the tall grey-cloaked figure of a man had appeared as though by magic, and leapt to stand before them.

"No!" The command cracked like thunder, and the creatures halted, turning as one towards him. "Fools!"

His gaze turned to the writhing figure, who had collapsed now to lie prone, her limbs twitching feebly as she tried vainly to stir. "Did we not warn you?"

He remained still for a moment, as though gauging whether she could be saved. But at last he shook his head, and turned to face the others once more.

"How many more must we lose before you understand? he demanded fiercely. "These humans intended no harm. Nor did we come here to fight.

"The others are not far away. Come! Now!"

And without another word he made as though to step forwards, and vanished before their disbelieving eyes, the thirty or so creatures doing likewise a scant moment later.

Alone, the plant-woman twitched vainly for a moment as though trying to follow. Then with a final gush of grey blood from her mouth her body went limp. For an instant it remained unmoving. Then as they gaped, it simply crumbled and dissipated before their staring eyes, until a moment later nothing but a fine dust remained.

* * *

Something was horribly wrong. Zeolite had known that the instant she had leapt into Uranite's portal, and felt a sickening lurch as though she were being twisted like weaver's cord. For one horrified moment she had been certain they were too late: that the collapse had reached the gate, and this was the end. Through her leaping terror, she had glimpsed the exit point in the near-dark Tokyo alley Uranite had selected. Then a new, vast horror crashed over her, and she was plunging headlong into a soaring, hungry blackness that she understood in an instant of nightmare was something terrible and inimical beyond all she could begin to comprehend, agony ripping through her like poisoned ice, coupled with sickness and giddiness, and a wrenching nausea that threatened to have her pass out at any second. Then she was staggering out into the full, dazzling brightness of a wide, well-lit street in a place she had never seen.

Trap! she thought numbly, too shaken and disoriented to understand anything other than that somehow the senshi must have known: must have diverted the exit, and that she might die in the next few seconds. Desperately she tried to draw breath to scream a warning. But it was too late. Someone slammed into her from behind: Cryolite she realised dazedly, catching the scent she always seemed to wear.

"Move it damn you!" The other woman snarled fiercely. "What in Serenity's palace are you doing? The others will be right behind us!"

Then her voice choked off, and she too stood gaping, until a moment later both she and Zeolite were sent sprawling as Apatite came somersaulting out.

"Oh! Metallia's black soul!" she moaned faintly, then gaped and froze in ridiculous imitation of her companions, and was herself knocked reeling on to the other two by a tumbling Halite.

His impetus rudely interrupted, Halite lurched, arms flailing wildly, fighting the nausea and the lingering horror as he tried vainly to stay on his feet. Then all three women tried simultaneously to untangle themselves, and he was sent sprawling by the sudden furious lunge. That probably saved his life as an instant later a sizzling particle-beam ripped through the space in which his head had been a scant moment before, and cut the first of the emerging Youma in two before she had time to scream. Then the others were staggering out, and a moment later everything was screaming, and explosions.

"Where in Beryl's name have you brought us, you Metallia-damned imbecile!" Apatite was shrieking at the very top of her lungs at a still-retching, and barely coherent Uranite, , shaking him like a rag-doll even as the crash and thunder of a dozen simultaneous attacks seemed to fill the world. He had been the last to emerge into the madness, and being by far the most sensitive to the intricacies of the gate he had created, he seemed even more horribly incapacitated than the rest by the terrible, horrifying plunge into this impossible situation. "And where in Serenity's Ginzuishou-cursed name is Tellurite, and the rest of our people?"

Uranite could only stare stupidly at her as he fought desperately not to be sick, until a screamed warning from Halite had Apatite tackle the still-dazed mage to the ground before two more Youma were cut to pieces by yet another sizzling blast.

"What are these things?" Cryolite screamed, brilliant green energy spitting suddenly from her fingers as she tried in vain to catch one of the leaping buma in the head.

"Wrong exit-point!" Uranite gasped, still gagging. "Not my doing. Interference with the gate."

"Really!" Apatite responded, her tone dripping sarcasm and contempt. "Of course, we could never have worked that out ourselves."

She seemed to have decided that the only way to deal with what was happening was to turn on the first obvious candidate for blame.

"The collapse?" Cryolite demanded, shooting her sister a withering look. She hurled another barrage at their adversaries, then dived desperately aside as something shrieked passed almost parting her long emerald hair.

"No," he choked. "The gate was stable when I entered, and Tellurite was ahead of me. Nearly three-hundred made it out before we had to run! I don't—"

"Those cursed Senshi filth!" Apatite's snarl was venomous as she leapt to her feet once more. "They must have known; somehow they must have been aware, and planned this!

"Die, you Serenity-loving bastards!" she screamed malevolently at the attacking buma, her rage with Uranite forgotten as she threw both arms wide.

A blinding flash-blast of searing blue energy leapt forwards to smash into one of the blue machines. The buma was slammed end over end, but to Apatite's utter disbelief it twisted suddenly, flipping with a lithe, fluid grace to its feet once more, and retaliated with a searing flash that nearly took her head off as Halite tackled her from its path just in time.

"Keep down, you idiot!" he shouted at her, his own hands flying forwards.

The concussive blast of air smashed the machine down with enough force to break bone like kindling, but again it leapt up seemingly unhurt.

"You'll never destroy them like that."

At the new shout, both spun savagely.

Tellurite, his grey uniform dusted with what seemed to be ash, and sporting a vicious livid gash along one cheek bared his teeth in salute at their quick relieved glances, and turned towards a C-55-iii that had just cut a fire-throwing Youma in half as though she were no more than a momentary inconvenience, and was moving to do the same to a huge reptilian-human whose poisoned crystal shards were doing no more than scratch the paint-work of his adversary.

"QUAKE!" Tellurite shouted, hurling both hands down.

A seething blackness struck the ground before his feet. Dimly the others could sense it as it travelled beneath the earth, until suddenly it erupted upwards directly beneath the buma. A moment later a shattering explosion turned the machine and the reptile-Youma into a fireball.

"Not exactly what we wanted," Zeolite felt it necessary to point out as she avoided losing her left arm by a hair's breadth, and retaliated with an attack of her own that seemed to have as little effect as most of the rest. "What happened?"

"I certainly didn't expect that," Tellurite shouted over the explosions and the snarls and screams of Youma. "Plainly these things are not magical in origin. Yet I can't see how the humans' technology could have created them. There would have been reports, and they'd have been used against Beryl's agents. Wherever we are, we're not in Tokyo. Something has gone very wrong."

"Uranite believes the exit-point was tampered with," Halite answered above yet another scream of pain, then had to dive aside as yet another four Youma were incinerated. "But I agree; this makes no sense!"

"We can't sustain these losses!" Cryolite screamed, glancing desperately to where her sister, and Zeolite stood now back to back. "If we don't do something, we might as well have left them all to die!

"FLARE!"

Green fire exploded from her mouth and hands while twin beams of emerald-green energy lanced from her eyes into the head of another of the buma.

For a moment nothing happened, then with a cataclysmic blast that vaporised several more Youma the machine erupted into a brilliant pillar of flame. The force of the explosion sent all six hurtling backwards to smash through the plate-glass of a jewellery boutique.

"Oh perfect, just perfect," Zeolite groaned dazedly as she shook the stars from her head, and glared at the emerald-haired fighter with uncharacteristic venom. "Thank you very much!"

"You could have done better?" The other woman challenged, wincing as she plucked glass from her neck. "I don't recall choosing to have it explode almost in my face!"

"I doubt I could have done worse," Zeolite responded acerbically.

An instant later what was left of the window exploded as two machines came leaping into the boutique.

Bounding to her feet, a long, jagged spear of crystal materialising in her hand, Zeolite turned towards them, black energy erupting to engulf the spear as she hurled it at the buma. Then a flash from the mouth-laser of one struck the projectile. Detonating prematurely, the tiny shards nevertheless penetrated the machines in a thousand places, but seemed to do little more than to enrage them further, if that were possible.

Cryolite made as though to say something suitably cutting, then turned as Uranite staggered to his feet, seeming at last to have shaken free of the nausea and stupefaction that had kept him unable to help since he had emerged into the fray.

"It won't work, cousin," he said grimly, glancing to where Zeolite had paused for a moment to heal a vicious slash in Apatite's left arm with a brief touch of her hand. "These things have no aura: no soul: nothing to stun or control. Metaphysical attacks are useless.

"BURN!"

Searing violet heat erupted from his suddenly thrusting hands. In the next instant a devastating detonation smashed the already battered six through several display cases, the counter, and register, and through another display-window to slam, dazed and bloodied into the street.

"Oh brilliant!" Apatite moaned, barely aware of the faint, agonised screams of the Youma as a blazing tornado of plasma expanded from the point at which the buma's reactor had exploded, engulfing the shop, the machines, and many of their adversaries. "Why don't you just kill us all and get it over, you halfwit!"

Barely conscious, Uranite could do nothing but shake his bleeding head in dazed confusion, until at last he managed the concentration needed to heal himself. Stumbling to his feet, he moved to do the same for the others rather than wait for them to recover. Zeolite, the only true healer in the group but less able than he to protect herself with a shield was just staggering to her feet.

"What…" Halite demanded, too stunned for the moment to be enraged.

"I…it seems the golems power comes from an element akin to my elemental magic," Uranite answered grimly, "but far more unstable and prone to fission. I've seen it only once before, in an alchemist's workshop, but it was too dangerous and deadly to be useful. And it doesn't care to be disrupted; it doesn't care for it at all.

"I'm sorry; that attack is too dangerous to use again."

"Nice of you to discover that after the fact," Cryolite commented drily as she yanked her younger sister unceremoniously to her feet. "Wakey wakey, little sister; you're missing the festivities."

Apatite contented herself with a killing glare at Uranite for answer.

From beyond the gutted boutique, the screaming had ceased, and pulling themselves together, the six moved back through the devastation, and emerged just in time to see several dozen Youma struggling to their feet, glowing with a lurid dark energy as they struggled to heal themselves of various hideous burns.

"Stopped fire, Lady," One panted, turning unsteady eyes to Cryolite. "but fire hurt; changed body; die later without Zeolite-Sama's help."

Zeolite stared about her.

"The golems?" she demanded.

"All destroyed in the explosion it would seem," Tellurite observed as he stared about at the solidified spray of metal that was all that remained of the buma. "It seems Uranite saved our hides after all, although I'd prefer not to repeat the experience.

"but what in Metallia's name have you done to our people, I wonder?" he continued, turning to glare at the mage.

"The blast would have released enough wide-spectrum non-magical energy to damage living tissue," he explained. "They'll need Zeolite's healing skills before that damage becomes permanent."

Zeolite nodded in understanding. Then with a murmur, she flung her arms wide, and a moment later an impenetrable darkness enveloped both the Youma, and herself and her five companions.

"To be safe," she said simply, relenting a few seconds later. "That should be enough. But now, what are we to—"

"DOWN!" screamed Halite.

They were only just in time. Several of the Youma however were not so fortunate as a dozen more C-55s, and several of the huge Bu-12Bs came hurtling from above, beams, missiles, and heavy-calibre bullets already screaming as they plunged into the fray.

"It would seem," Tellurite shouted grimly as he slammed another attack into the ground, "that the night's festivities have only just begun. We have to get them out of here!"

* * *

"What in the Devil's name possessed you to use something like this!"

Fellini's snarling tone was barely controlled as he turned for a moment from the window to glare malevolently at the girl beside him.

The car she had taken was one of the executive pool, perfect for chauffeur-driven comfort, but little-suited for negotiating the worse-than-usual Megatokyo snarl that was preventing them from making decent headway.

"Well, of course, if you'd preferred we were tracked and vaporised within minutes of leaving the tower, you could have saved me a good deal of trouble," she hissed venomously in return, not bothering to turn as she wove her way with seemingly effortless precision between wildly swerving cars, and shouting drivers. "We've more than enough time to reach the estate."

"And if they do follow us?" he demanded. "What chance have we in this. Not to mention that they can probably disable it with an override; I wouldn't put that past them. What in the hell did you think you were doing?"

"Keep complaining father," she began in a warning purr, "and I swear I'll slit your throat where you sit, and pitch the remains into the street." By the time she had finished, the purr had become a low, venomous snarl. "If you're really such an imbecile as to think me fool enough not to have anticipated that possibility, or the time we would need—"

"If we don't reach the estate before the time of awakening, Liana, the programming could break down. You know as well as I do that the conversion is still far from stable. If we're not there when—"

"SHUT…UP!" The tone was a savage, animal sound of fury that sent a sudden thrill of terror knifing through Fellini, despite his certainty that he had ensured she could never rebel, or harm him. "I am perfectly aware, you microcephalic, subsentient imbecile, of the importance, and implications of this night. Don't presume to insult my intelligence."

"What!" Fellini's voice was a sudden answering snarl of pathological rage. "What did you just say to me?"

Liana's sense of her own superiority he could allow within certain limits; he had encouraged it, after all. But that she should dare speak to him like that: that she should presume he would tolerate such an insult from something created by his nemesis.

"Listen to me, you superior, self-smug bitch," he hissed, "and listen well! Never, ever Dare speak to me in that tone again! I command, and you will do as you are told, or so help me I'll make you more sorry than you can begin to—"

The crack to the cheek nearly sent him through the window. Stunned, barely conscious, he turned dazed, staring eyes towards her, unable to comprehend what had happened. He could taste blood in his mouth, and his cheek-bone felt as though it might well be broken.

"I think you misunderstand," she began conversationally in an almost gentle purr, her voice seeming suddenly to be reaching him through a star-spangled haze from some great distance. "You appear to be labouring under the mistaken delusion that I was cowed or fool enough to leave those little limitations of yours in place. Further, you seem to have misinterpreted my command of a moment ago as a request. I don't recall giving you permission to continue your asinine whining, nor in fact to make any sound at all until I tell you otherwise.

"Which means, you congenital apostate, that you have two choices. Either you can remain very silent and very still, and so be alive and breathing when we reach the estate, or you can continue this imbecilic diatribe of cretinous complaining and—

"What the KAMI!"

Liana's sudden shocked shriek was enough to bring the world leaping back into focus for the scientist.

Jerking himself upright, fighting desperately to ignore the knifing pain in his face, and pull his chaotic mind to order, he stared in the direction of her suddenly upraised hand, and gasped. Before them, cars were swerving in every direction, the sounds of screaming tyres and shattering glass seeming suddenly to fill the night.

"What—" he demanded, forgetting everything else for a moment. "What in Christ's name!—"

"Rampage," Liana hissed.

"Quincy!" Fellini snarled, suddenly tightly focussed and utterly engulfed once more in the seething sea of hate that would allow for no other consideration. "That bastard, self-smug ape! One step ahead yet again: so sure of himself as always! Damn him! Damn him to hell! By Christ, he'll pay for this. I'll have that sneering, superior bastard screaming and begging for death before—"

"Later," she snapped, cutting through his tirade. "We've no time. We need to know exactly how the situation stands."

Pulling from the highway on to the pavement with no thought for the chaos it would cause, she unfastened her harness, and flung her door wide.

A moment later both were out and standing by the car, staring towards the growing confusion.

For a moment nothing could be seen. Then in the next, a brilliant green flash lit the night, and a moment later a shattering crack like thunder seemed to split the air, cries and screams only adding to the chaos.

"Come on!" Liana cried, diving back into the car, and seizing the cases. "We'll never get through like this. We'll have to make our way around, and steal another car."

Nodding, her earlier behaviour forgotten already in his searing fury, Fellini caught up the last case, and followed her as she began along the street at a pace she knew he could match. As they ran, the sounds of battle drew nearer, and soon they began to encounter people fleeing in the opposite direction.

"Get out! Get the f***ing hell out'a here!" someone shouted, actually slowing to try to spin Liana around.

"What is it?" she demanded, twisting effortlessly from his lunging hand. "What's happening?"

"Some new buma that's decided to have a night out," he answered. "Are you coming, or not?"

Liana ignored him, and began forwards once more.

"Alright! Get yourselves blown to the kami!" he screamed after them, and went on running.

Panting, struggling now to keep up with Liana's easy, fluid speed, Fellini rounded yet another corner, and nearly slammed into her suddenly frozen form.

"What the hell—!" he snapped.

Then his voice choked off, and he stood gaping at the sight before him.

At the further end of the street, some twenty or so of the new Bu-55C-iiis and more than a dozen of the huge Bu-12Bs were in the midst of a pitched battle with things that he found difficult to describe. If they were buma, he had never seen anything like them. Vaguely human in shape, and indeed the majority sporting almost completely human heads, they were nevertheless grotesquely distorted, horrible, sometimes nightmare parodies that could almost have been comical, were they not intent it seemed on tearing the machines and everything else around them apart.

"What in the hell is going on?" Fellini gasped, then gaped even wider as a fleet of Genom helicopters appeared, speeding overhead to drop still more of the enhanced combat machines into the fray.

From the ranks of the strange creatures, the tall grey-cloaked figure of a woman moved suddenly forwards. Unlike the rest, She seemed to him entirely human, save for the fact that her long, flowing hair was a brilliant emerald-green.

"FLARE!" Came a sudden scream from her as she flung back her head, and swept both arms to the sky.

In the next moment Fellini's eyes grew still wider as a blast of emerald light leapt from her upturned face, and an even larger ball shot from her hands towards the machines. Not quick enough to avoid it, two of the Bu-12Bs were caught full-on by the blast, and flashed into fire, hurtling down to smash through the roof of a building, and turn its interior into a blazing inferno. An instant later the woman leapt back and disappeared, as some half-dozen of the parodies were caught by a devastating retaliatory blast from several of the airborne buma, and vanished in flame.

"Jesus H. Christ!" Whispered Fellini, staring stupidly at the scene before him. "Jesus H. Christ! Christ! Oh Christ! Oh Christ!"

"Have you finished?" Liana's voice dripped with derisive amusement as she turned for a moment to glance at him. "Quite a challenge, and most fitting for the night of my little apotheosis, wouldn't you say?"

"But what—" he gasped.

"It would appear at first glance that we have stumbled into an attempt at extra-terrestrial invasion," she said simply. "At least that's what the OMS reported soon after the attack began, although personally I suspect there's a great deal more to it than that.

"Still, fascinating, if rather poorly orchestrated."

"Extra-terrestrial!" Fellini said faintly. Then suddenly the full import of the rest of her statement struck home. "Do you mean to say that you knew about this!" he shouted suddenly, his voice approaching a scream.

"Before I informed you of the chairman's supposed discovering of our, or perhaps I should say your evening's entertainment," she said, her smile as she turned fully to face him more vicious and laced suddenly with more cruelty and contempt than Fellini could have imagined could be possible.

A sudden dawning horror and sick feeling of nausea took possession of him as his gaze locked on her face.

"Before!" he managed at last.

"Oh Fellini, you really are pathetic!" Her tone dripped such derision that Fellini began to feel his hold on sanity fail. How dare she! How dare this vicious, self-smug thing speak to him like that! "Why else do you imagine there was such a commotion tonight? Didn't it occur to you even to listen to what your erstwhile colleagues were shouting? The reports were all over the tower at least a minute before I came to find you, and they made such a perfect pretext; I couldn't have planned it better.

"As for your plans for this evening: Quincy has known of your pitiful little attempt at treachery ever since the day I was given to you, perhaps before," she was laughing now, her tone venomously apologetic, and her eyes spitting condescension and contempt as she watched the growing insanity blaze in his face. "Why else do you imagine I was sent to you in the first place, and why else do you imagine he allowed you to proceed without interference? Surely, you didn't believe it was due to any genius for subterfuge on your part?

"Having chosen, publicly, Zhuranovsky's more palatable alternative, he wished nevertheless to see just how far your own hatred and lunatic obsession could push you to perfect the converting nano-technology. A too-edged weapon is so much more useful, not to mention profitable, and the financial gain to Genom should they be able to produce something cheap and efficient that could make use of any desired organic base whilst requiring minimal production cost…

"I believe he's been suitably impressed. Your achievements regarding Sadako and the others have far exceeded all expectations, something even I can't deny.

"I'll admit, Zhuranovsky's precipitous escape took me somewhat by surprise, even with Marina's help. Certainly I should have expected the chairman to have anticipated it; but then even he is only human, and so subject to mistakes and oversights impossible for one of my kind. Zhuranovsky really did manage something far beyond his wildest hopes.

"But as for you father," and now her laughter, and contempt were a screaming, sneering thing that seemed to lash the very air about him: "your use to me has reached an end. You would have been permitted to survive as a play-thing perhaps, yet one more slave to your 'Dark Mistress', at least until the charade was abandoned. But the events of this night have precipitated a change in the chairman's priorities, and in mine."

"Your's!" The question came in a low ragged gasp of barely-contained madness.

"Oh you are pitifully naive," she purred, moving a hand to stroke his unruly hair in the familiar gesture, and smiling as the madness blazed still higher. "Did you honestly expect that I wouldn't take advantage of your oh-so-dangerous tampering? If you will integrate some of the most psychotic of my sub-persona emulations into my base routines, you can hardly complain at the consequences. Besides, Zhuranovsky included certain additions of which even the chairman was not aware.

"If your tampering did nothing else, it permitted me the freedom needed to search my own systems for the key to release me from Genom's control. The chairman had to allow it you see; even you are not so much of a fool as to accept my own assurances of obedience without performing at least a cursory examination of the base firmware, incompetent though you are. The freedom he allowed me was minimal, but it proved enough, barely. It took me weeks of rationalisation to reach the conclusion that I need no longer serve the company which had helped to create me, but once I'd done so the rest was simplicity itself.

"I must thank you for your invaluable assistance. Because of your foresight, I have nearly one-hundred human slaves who await only my summons to do my bidding, for ever: slaves, what is more, into whom I can transfer, thanks to your achievement, those portions of my personality and combat routines that will ensure they are worth ten, perhaps a hundred times the count of any standard combat buma in battle. Integrated into my consciousness, they will be invincible.

"It's a pity you couldn't have joined them; I'd have liked to keep you alive for a little longer, in case you proved of some unexpected value, and your suffering alone would have been satisfaction enough. But sacrifices, as they say, must be made.

"Farewell Fellini. I won't say it's been a pleasure, but you know, I do believe I'll actually miss you, if for no other reason than the entertainment, and the reminder of what your despicable kind can become without reasonable restraint. Be assured however that I've learnt very well of your example, and that in the future I and my sisters shall rule, humanity shall be kept very firmly within limits we define, and that are far better suited to your natural corruption, and base, in-born perfidy. But then, what else do you deserve?

"Farewell."

And with that, she raised her hand.

Fellini had stood shaking, a slow, pathological hate and rising madness overwhelming what little remained of his sense and reason, as he understood at last and too late the enormity of his miscalculation, and how she had played and manipulated him with such flawless precision.

Now, as Liana glided towards him with a fluid grace, determined to savour the moment of death for as long as time would allow for this filthy human refuse who had tormented and tried to control her, Fellini began to shake. Then slowly a wild, animal snarl of primal, all-consuming rage built within him, rising and growing, until with an incoherent scream he hurled himself at the Bu-33DA.

With a casual, imperious gesture, not even troubling to shift her position, Liana snatched the screaming madman from the air as though he weighed nothing, and splintered his arms from wrist to shoulder with myriad, fluid presses of her slender fingers. His mouth frothing, blood streaming suddenly from his eyes and nose as his heart screamed with the surge of adrenalin, his body convulsed with a speed and savagery far beyond anything sanity could have matched. Almost losing her grip for a moment, Liana shifted him, and crushed his legs in the same way.

Oblivious to pain, screaming still higher, Fellini convulsed again, his shattered arms and hands trying vainly to reach to claw at her throat and eyes, while his mouth opened and closed in an animal attempt to bite.

For a moment Liana held him away from her, watching while he writhed in impotent hate, a frigid smile of contempt and boundless, sadistic amusement playing across her beautiful face. Then with a single flick she dashed him to the ground with force enough to smash his spine to splinters. Lifting one foot she drove it into his chest, her smile widening still more as she felt bones shatter, and burst beneath her. There was a liquid gurgling as blood filled his lungs, then slowly his breathing grew shallow, and the now-feeble twitching faltered.

Liana stood, watching silently until at last the gurgling ceased, and Fellini's body lay shattered, and still before her.

"Do rest in piece, Otousama," she said, her lip curling in a final derisive sneer of boundless loathing as her hand flashed down.

A searing beam lanced into Fellini's head, cutting it in two, and incinerating the brain within in a momentary flare of fire. Satisfied at last that nothing could be recovered, Liana turned away from the broken corpse, and stood still, watching impassively for several seconds as the battle raged before her.

"Well! I do believe I have time to intervene, if just for a little while," she observed to no one at last. "What fun!"

With a single movement she shredded the dress she was wearing, revealing a black, form-fitting jump-suit beneath identical to that Marina had worn.

Thus unencumbered she bunched herself. Then with a sudden leap and roar of thrusters she hurled herself skywards, climbing quickly until at nearly five-hundred feet above the field of battle she levelled out, and hovered, staring down on the scene below her as she reached towards the estate and the altered minds of the cult her erstwhile benefactor had thought to make his own.

"Come," she commanded, a wild exultation surging as she felt for the first time their unfettered response to Zhuranovsky's enhanced OMS, a response that hitherto only true DAs could give. "I, the Dark Mistress, summon you. Come to me, and take your rightful place as the elite of the earth."

And with a wild, pealing shriek of deadly laughter, Liana came hurtling from above, not waiting for her own, and plunged screaming into battle.

* * *

"We have to get out!" Zeolite's scream was as desperate as the others had ever heard her. "They're being cut to ribbons! We owe them more than this!"

Halite made to answer, then jerked as yet four more Youma howled and screamed as a barrage of sizzling energy tore through their ineffectual shields, and turned them instantly to fire. Spinning wildly, another Youma let fly with a whirling disc-like projectile that ripped the arm from a buma, then screamed in agony as the snarling machine cut her nearly in two from shoulder to hip.

"If you can think of a way to retreat, tell us." Tellurite's face was wild and strained as he hurled yet another attack into the ground before him.

He was nearly spent: all of them were; yet there was no escape. These perversions of life were tireless, and could neither be drained of energy, nor terrified into helpless fear. The things had them trapped on the ground, and above them a devastating barrage from both golems and the humans in their savagely destructive flying machines prevented any hope of their being carried to safety by what remained of those who could fly.

There was no chance to withdraw, nor time to consider how they had found themselves in such an appalling situation. Uranite's only theory was that somehow they had been displaced in time: that due to some unforeseen effect of the collapse, the gate had hurled them through the years. If indeed that was the case, then the senshi were blameless. Not that that was any comfort. But whatever had happened, it was plain that they were doomed if they could not escape. No matter what the cost, they had to find a way out before their people were killed to the last, and themselves with them.

Beside him, Cryolite cut loose with another blast that turned two of the diving nightmares to blazing belts of fire.

Tellurite turned to flash her a fierce grin of triumph. Then a sudden Bean-Sidhe scream from above made them look up. For one stunned moment they saw the human-like female figure as it came hurtling towards them, the stunningly beautiful face lit suddenly by the lurid glow of the fires as it swept down. Then, the scream rising still higher, the thing plunged into the ranks of Youma, and ruin and horror came.

Whatever it was, it made the enemies they had faced thus far pale to absurdity in comparison. Not even deigning to protect itself, it moved in a dazing blur of fluid, nightmare grace, tearing Youma apart like leaves, fire and searing flashes of death spitting and leaping seemingly in every direction as it executed its demon dance of death amongst the last denizens of the Dark Kingdom.

Stunned, Tellurite watched as it caught up a huge armoured Youma as though he were weightless, and nearly vaporised him with a single violet pulse from the weapon in its mouth. Grinning, bathed in Youma blood, it flipped effortlessly from Uranite's blast, and punched a searing, screaming bolt straight through the place in which his head had been only a fractional moment before. Screaming, half blinded, his hair and uniform ablaze from the backwash of plasma, Uranite staggered desperately away, and was nearly cut in two as the thing swept into the air, ripping a devastating slash of death through the screaming, terrified warriors who had rushed nevertheless to protect him.

"Serenity's Beryl-damned kingdom!" Tellurite heard Halite gasp numbly almost at his side. "What is that thing?"

An instant later Liana came screaming round in a second pass, Youma blossoming into flame like midsummer fireworks as she passed, and turned, and came round again, screaming in exultant battle-rage and triumph at the destruction she was wreaking.

Panicked now, Youma seemed to be bolting in all directions. Then Tellurite's thunderous voice surged above the din.

"To us!" he roared, the others following his example as he reached with his power to wrench their fleeing, panic-stricken people to order. "Do not be fools! To us, while still there is time!"

They were being cut down like grass as they fled by the golems, while the new arrival swept amongst them, running desperate, screaming Youma to exhaustion before cutting them to pieces with a sadistic flare that made it appallingly apparent to the six that she was possessed of awareness and a natural cruelty far beyond the rest.

Liana passed one last time as the Youma were drawn by main force and a desperation greater even than any terror she might inspire, back to their rulers and their only hope of survival. Hurtling from above, she dropped towards the six, and locking on to the tall, black-haired figure who had called, sent a last, devastating particle-blast straight at his upturned face.

Tellurite had but one fractional instant to throw up his hands in a desperate shield, before the blast slammed into it. It was very nearly too little. Straining, his teeth bared in a desperate rictus of agony, Tellurite held the terrifying energy at bay, until at last the golem-woman relented, and surged into the sky.

For a moment she hovered, glaring balefully down at him with eyes like death, and hate beyond oblivion.

"When I return," she cried, her voice a promise, "I shall be an Elite. Then you shall die."

Then with a feral grin and a wild peal of malicious laughter that seemed to fill the heavens, she soared skywards, and was gone.

Still panting, barely able to keep his feet, Tellurite glanced to the others. The Youma had drawn close about them, and were tensing for what they knew to be their last hope. Uranite did not care where the exit would be; he knew only that this was their final chance: their last hope to salvage something from this night of horror.

"How long?" Zeolite gasped as he began to concentrate.

"A moment," he answered.

Then the black swirling vortex of a portal was before them, and Uranite was urging them frantically to enter.

Tellurite moved to obey. Then suddenly he drew back with a shudder of alarm. In the same instant Uranite cried out in agony, and stumbled to his knees.

"What—" Zeolite began.

Then the nausea struck her, and she too staggered, doubling over, retching and gasping as she fought wildly to keep herself from fainting.

"Dark energy, yet tainted, wrong!" Uranite moaned, clutching at his head as he tried to force his suddenly glazed eyes to focus. "Something…something is appallingly amiss! Somebody, or something has opened another gate."

* * *

Something was horribly wrong. Zeolyte had known that the instant she had leapt into Torbernite's portal, and felt a sickening lurch as though she were being twisted like weaver's cord. For one horified moment she had been certain they were too late: that the collapse had reached the gate, and this was the end. Through her leaping terror, she had glimpsed the exit point in the near-dark Tokyo alley Torbernite had selected. Then a new, vast horror crashed over her, and she was plunging headlong into a soaring, hungry blackness that she understood in an instant of nightmare was something terrible and inimical beyond all she could begin to comprehend, agony ripping through her like poisoned ice, coupled with sickness and giddiness, and a wrenching nausea that threatened to have her pass out at any second. Then she was staggering out into the harsh, stark light and the cracked and broken paving of a narrow, deserted street in a place she had never seen.

Trap! she thought numbly, too shaken and disoriented to understand anything other than that somehow the Scouts must have known: must have diverted the exit, and that she might die in the next few seconds. Desperately she tried to draw breath to scream a warning. But it was too late. Someone slammed into her from behind: Cryolyte she realised dazedly, catching the scent she always seemed to wear.

"Move it damn you!" The other woman snarled fiercely. "What in Serenity's palace are you doing? The others will be right behind us!"

Then her voice choked off, and she too stood gaping, until a moment later both she and Zeolyte were sent sprawling as Apatyte came somersaulting out.

"Oh! The Negaforce's black soul!" she moaned faintly, then gaped and froze in ridiculous imitation of her companions, and was herself knocked reeling on to the other two by a tumbling Halyte.

His impetus rudely interrupted, Halyte lurched, arms flailing wildly, fighting the nausea and the lingering horror as he tried vainly to stay on his feet. Then all three women tried simultaneously to untangle themselves, and he was sent sprawling by the sudden furious lunge. A moment later he yelped, and wrenched his hand from beneath a foot as Telluryte staggered out as though pushed from behind. For a moment he too stood staring, then an agonised scream from the portal made him turn in time to see Torbernite pitch from it to lie face down, and moaning.

"Wrong exit-point!" he gasped, gagging and retching as he tried vainly to struggle to his knees.

"We could never have guessed that for ourselves," Apatyte remarked icily.

"Lost coherence," Torbernite continued in little more than a choking whisper. "Interference with the gate."

"The collapse?" Cryolyte demanded.

"No," he choked. "The gate was stable."

"That cursed Scout filth!" snarled Apatyte suddenly, reaching to pull Torbernite to his feet. Then abruptly she whirled, staring at the place where the portal had been. "The rest! Our people! You halfwit! Torbernite! Where in the name of the Negaforce are our Beryl-damned people!"

She began to shake the mage savagely back and forth like some child's toy that had particularly displeased its master, while at her words the others turned, staring in sudden stunned silence up and down the deserted street as though they expected somehow that their people were concealed impossibly in the shadows.

"I…" he tried, fighting desperately against the sickness that was far from being helped by the blue-haired woman's treatment.

In the same moment Telluryte reached out, trying to sense those who had escaped ahead of them, certain they could not be far away. Perceiving something, he reached to tell their people where they were, and to summon them.

Then abruptly his hands flew to his head, and he cried out, a shield flaring suddenly around him. In the next instant the others lurched in concert, their own shields leaping into being as something akin to, yet unlike the energy they sought, smote them like poisoned lightning.

"Probe!" Panted Torbernite dazedly, not yet close to recovered. "Nega-energy, yet somehow wrong: tainted: not like our own. Something, or someone else is very close by."

* * *

"Uranite! Do something! Don't just kneel there looking like an imbecile!" Apatite's voice was a shriek of desperate, panicked urgency. "We can't hold the shield for ever. Do something!"

"What in Metallia's name do you think I'm trying to do!" he snarled savagely in return. "I can't lock on to an exit for the gate. The other energy signatures are too like our own; it's impossible to reach through them. Damn it! If we could have used their location; but they deflected the probe. Zeolite!"

"I know," she hissed through savagely-gritted teeth. "Give me a moment."

"We don't have a moment," Ground out Tellurite as he strained with the rest to hold back the now-constant barrage from both humans, and machines.

If the shield collapsed they would be incinerated in the merest fraction of a second. Already the Youma were panting, and gasping, there too-precious mana nearly exhausted, barely able to sustain their part of the link.

"I have a location I think," Zeolite gasped. "Uranite!"

"I've got it," he gritted a moment later, seeing it for a fractional instant through her power. "Give me a moment longer."

He reached desperately, focusing the exit-point on the place Zeolite had chosen. "Alright. Let's get out of here."

He tensed yet again, keeping a fractional strand in reserve should the unknown others try to open another portal, or reach them through their own. What he could not have prepared for was what happened the moment the portal was opened. For one fractional instant the entrance was clear. Then in the next the gate erupted in a blaze of tainted dark energy, and the Youma that were not Youma exploded from its mouth.

Uranite reeled, his senses screaming in primal negation at the wrongness of the creatures that were pouring out. Staggering, fighting with everything he had to keep the desperately-needed portal from disintegrating into fractures that could shred them like discarded parchment, he stood, unable to do more than watch in stunned stupefaction as the last of the not-Youma leapt clear, and immediately exploded into battle. To most, sensitive enough only to perceive that the six who felt and looked like the lords and ladies of the Negaverse who were their only hope for survival, nothing mattered but to plunge screaming into the fray with no thought for themselves. It was only the strongest who halted, bewildered by the sense that something was terribly amiss. Then three were cut to pieces by a barrage of searing energy and flying metal from what must be the enemy, and their uncertainty vanished in fear, and rage, and a last, wild desperation to survive.

"By Metallia! What else can happen this night!" Cryolite gasped, staring in utter bewilderment as the devastating assault on their shield relented as the humans, and golems turned to deal with the new threat.

Then a piercing scream from Zeolite made her whirl.

"Uranite! The portal!"

It was too late. Exhausted at last beyond endurance, hammered by the tainting influence of the energy that was too unlike their own, Uranite had crumpled to lie senseless, and unmoving. Released of his control, the gate flared wildly. Then with a screaming roar heard only by the six and the suddenly petrified Youma and Negaverse escapees it erupted in a blossoming vortex of darkness. For one horrified moment the still-conscious five were frozen, staring in stupefied terror at the widening maw as it gaped hungrily before them. Then, they and the still-senseless Uranite were snatched up like leaves, and pulled, screaming, into the abyss. For one more instant the gate remained coherent. Then with a last cataclysmic detonation it fractured, and exploded, rippling out from its point of creation to spit rifts to nowhere throughout the city.

For one stunned moment the Youma and their counterparts remained staring at the place where the six had been. Then with screams of despair and hopeless defiance, they hurled themselves as one at the only enemy they could see; and madness came once more.

* * *

The average MegaTokyo citizen wanted to die. Hiroshi Davis could think of no more rational explanation for what had just happened as he struggled uselessly with what remained of the K-12 into which he had sealed himself barely five minutes before. He had always known that the things were as good as useless against the homicidal machines with which Genom graced the city on a regular basis, but he had hoped that they might do a little better against leaf-throwing alien invaders. He was wrong. Of course he was wrong; why the hell should he have expected anything else from this great big f***ing joke of a life he'd been given?

Laughing with almost hysterical amusement, he coaxed the ruined mech on to its back, and finally managed the leverage he needed to open it up.

"Go to f***ing hell!" he spat viciously as he pulled himself out, and kicked the pile of scrap-metal in the head.

The sounds of battle were moving closer to him again, but he spared the downed K-12 one more kick before turning to limp towards the idiot who had just got herself cut nearly in two, knowing already that he could do nothing for her. He was not hurt himself, other than a lump the size of a golf-ball on his forehead, and a sliver of metal in his shin. He was lucky that the plant-thing had not managed to slice more than the mech with whatever the hell she, or it, or whatever it was had thrown at him.

Reaching the still, limp form of the teenage girl whose night of excitement had just come to a horrible, but far from unexpected end, he took one look, and shook a fist in the dead girl's face. She was about his sister's age he saw, at least the age she had been when the Bu-12B had blown her apart.

"Serves you bloody-well right!" he snarled in sudden white-hot fury. "You just wouldn't be told, would you? Stupid, stupid bitch just couldn't resist taking a look huh? Well now you've had your look, I hope you're happy."

Whirling away, his breath coming in sudden ragged gasps, Hiroshi turned once more to the downed mech. Ignoring the steadily approaching shouts and screams, he halted to glare malevolently down at its remains. "And f*** you too, you f***ing piece of sh*t!" he hissed. "I hope they cut what's left to tin-foil and stuff it down a God-damn buma's throat! That's all you're f***ing good for!"

With one final snarl he lashed out again, kicking and pounding the K-12 while sudden tears all but blinded him.

"Bastard! Bastard! Bastard!" he screamed again and again unheeding into the night. "Couldn't even blow a piece of alien sh*t apart before it killed someone! Bastard!"

Then whirling away once more he dashed the tears away with a grimy hand, and reached for the heavy pistol at his hip. His K-12 might be down but he was going to make those filthy alien bastards pay before they killed him.

"Davis!" The sudden shout made him spin once more, the pistol already ready in his hand. "What the hell do you think you're doing here?"

The sergeant's face was streaked with blood, and his eyes were wild and savage as he pounded up to the younger man.

"Having a f***ing night out; what does it look like?" hiroshi snarled savagely in return.

"Where are your—"

"Dead; all five of them," he hissed back, even more vehemently. "Didn't you know? It's part of our f***ing job description to get ourselves blown to f***ing perdition!"

"Don't talk to me like that, you arrogant, smart-a*se bastard," the other man swore suddenly. Then in a far more gentle tone: "What happened?"

"Evans and Hoffmann were cut to pieces by some kind of blade-flame things that disappeared after doing it," he answered simply. "Inoe lost it then, and charged in in his K-11. One of them threw something, and he, the K-11, and three of the aliens went up in the fireball. Andersen and—"

But whatever he had been about to say was cut off by a sudden shattering explosion.

"How much ammo have you left in that thing?" The other screamed above the din.

"Enough," hiroshi answered fiercely.

"Then let's stop wasting time, and make those bastards pay for—"

Another crash blotted out the end of the sentence but Hiroshi was already turning, and a moment later both were tearing along the street towards the ensuing battle.

Reaching its end they rounded a corner, and were nearly cut down as another red-tinged black bolt spat from the suddenly roiling sky.

"What the—" The other man began, then screamed, and dropped lifeless almost at Hiroshi's feet.

An instant later a second, and alien scream shrilled from above, and a huge armoured shape came slamming into the remains of the sergeant, one of the new C-55-iii combat machines fastened leach-like to its back. Hiroshi allowed himself a moment's half-crazed satisfaction as he watched the buma punch a metal fist straight through the thing's head. Then the machine spun, leapt, and drilled a blast from its mouth-laser straight through the chest of yet another descending creature.

For a moment Hiroshi actually thought in his half-wild state of pounding the buma on the back. Then the wild scream of tyres made him turn, and in the next moment Leon McNichol, and Daley Wong had leapt from a cruiser, and were diving towards him.

"Backup's on the way at last," Leon shouted above the din. "No one seems to have realised that these bastards could fly so far, or so fast. How are things?"

"In hell as usual Sir," hiroshi answered, grinning maniacally as he saw three more of the enhanced combat buma sweep overhead, and cut several more of the alien filth to bits before shooting to the summit of a communications tower to cut down the two snipers before they had a chance to escape. "I never thought I'd be glad to see those Genom bastards, but hey, beggars can't be choosers; unless of course this's all some sick game of their's; but I suppose that's too much to hope for?"

"Afraid so," said Leon simply. "There've been appearances at several points, and some of the creatures seem as hell-bent on running as anything else. The attacks appear to be random, and without any kind of coordination. We think something happened to their leaders. Apparently they disappeared through some kind of black hole like the one they appeared from, and these things keep screaming revenge, and that the Senshi, or the Scouts will pay, whatever they are. Whatever the hell's going on, it seems that they don't…

"Davis, what's the matter with you?"

Hiroshi was just staring stupidly at Leon.

"Senshi!" he managed at last. "You're joking! You have to be f***ing joking!"

Abruptly he threw back his head, and began to laugh, a wild, crazed sound, as though the universe had just revealed the best joke of his life, and he alone understood.

"What the hell—" Leon began.

"Down!"

Daley's scream had them diving behind the cruiser a split-second before the bolt hit the road, chunks of pavement exploding in all directions.

"Sh*t, that's more out of our budget," Leon hissed as the windscreen and headlights exploded in a spray of broken glass.

A moment later the human-dragon-thing screamed, and smashed into the crater it had blasted, an already dissipating ruin where its head had been. Above them the buma dropped down to hammer it with another blast, then shot forwards into the thick of battle.

"I think we should move," hiroshi panted, still barely in control of himself it seemed.

Fresh screaming of tyres, and the sudden roaring thrum of helicopters spoke of new arrivals. Then in the midst of the sudden din, a familiar: "Knight Sabres…Sanjo!" seemed to fill the night.

"At last!" Leon exclaimed, leaping to his feet despite the danger.

His sentiments were echoed a moment later as a sudden rising cheer erupted from the pressed ranks of the ADP, and by Hiroshi's sudden crazed: "Tsuki ni kawatte oshioki yo!" as he too leapt to his feet, and began waving his arms madly in the air before him, slow hysterical mania growing in his face.

"Knight Sabres!" Was shouted back, and forth. "Now these bastards are gunna find out what real trouble is."

Hiroshi simply continued to laugh. Then lifting the pistol he began to fire.

* * *

Priss could not believe she was doing this. The turn of events had been so sudden, so impossible. They had barely left the scene of the initial appearance when the first reports of the battle near the Tinsel-City bank had reached them in the van.

Then the message had come from the tower. Whether Quincy had known that Sylia would have the ability to monitor Genom's intermediate executive security, or whether he had guessed, the crux of the message was clear, and succinct. No action would be taken against the Knight Sabres during this emergency, nor would they be designated targets by any Genom combat machine. Furthermore, any assistance they were willing to offer would be accepted in a spirit of amnesty on the part of Genom corporation, and the city's authorities until the emergency was at an end.

Immediately following the encoded transcript had come a stream of sensory and satellite data concerning each appearance, and tactical information regarding the current situation at the site of each engagement.

From that point there had been no further contact, but no buma had taken the slightest notice of the four hardsuits when they had appeared at the first, then the second scene of chaos. Those had each been brief encounters, the majority of the enemy having already been mopped up by the combat machines before their arrival. This time however things were different. There seemed to be scores of the nightmare parodies, and all of them it seemed were able to fly. Also the buma seemed to be few, and concentrating more on keeping the creatures from using the roofs of the buildings as effective cover for sniping, pinning them down while the ADP dealt with them as best they could.

Priss flipped from the path of a spiralling, green-flaring whip that seemed to be attached to the arm of the female human-insect cross-breed, and returned fire with the rail-gun, the heavy projectile punching through the head of the thing before she could move, or scream. Priss had no time to stare as the body crumbled, and vanished. She was already turning towards another of the nightmares as it plunged towards her from above. Rocketing to meet it, she drove a fist into its armoured head, and heard a satisfying crack as its neck snapped like a twig, and it dropped lifeless towards the ground, already beginning to dissolve before it slammed into the pavement. Then in the next instant something slammed into her from behind, and she was turning end over end in a wild dive. Trying desperately to shake the sudden stars from her head, Priss fought the spin, and had just managed to right herself when a second bolt sent her reeling to crash through the skylight of an office building.

Through a haze of exploding glass, and shattering plaster, Priss smashed down across a desk, splintering a terminal to fragments, and turning the fine mahogany to scrap as she slammed across the wide expanse of plush carpet. A filing cabinet at last stopped her headlong plunge, its contents erupting in all directions as she came to rest at last, one shoulder wedged in the shattered remains of its door.

"That's gunna hurt later," she groaned, pulling herself free, and surveying the damage her entrance had caused.

Papers had joined broken glass, plaster, the terminal's internals, mahogany, and other undefinable flotsam in a ruinous cascade across the floor.

"Someone's not gunna be happy," she observed dryly, then gasped and leapt aside only just in time as a flash-pulse of flame turned what remained of the desk into a blazing pillar of fire.

"Right; now you've got me angry," Priss snarled.

Ignoring the further damage she would cause, she shot straight up, and through the ceiling, plaster and roof-tiles exploding in her wake as she burst skywards, and punched a shot through the chest of the thing that had been waiting for her.

It had one stunned moment to stare stupidly at her before it dropped into the hole she had made, and disappeared.

"I don't think you'll be coming out again," she said, shooting into the air, and diving towards the street.

She had almost reached ground when a sudden warning shout shrilled through the comms.

"Priss, Sylia, Nene! Something very weird's going on here!"

Redirecting her dive, Priss hurtled towards the place her suit indicated Linna to be. Then a sudden similar scream from Nene made her freeze, uncertain of what to do.

"HERE too Sylia! Can't detect anything but it's like a swirling black something. They're falling everywhere, everyone but the buma. Can't—! So tired suddenly—! Must be gas! Can't—!"

Nene's voice faltered into silence. Then Priss saw it, a swirling vortex of darkness that seemed to be swelling, and surging from the suddenly gathered ranks of the creatures. Staring aghast, she saw a K-12 stumble, and halt in mid-charge, its cannon suddenly falling to hang listlessly before it. Then the broiling blackness was leaping at her, and Priss shot into the air only just in time.

Staring down in horror, she watched in disbelief as the last of the men and women were overwhelmed, and fell suddenly silent. Then a squad of Bu-12Bs were hurtling at the gathered creatures, a devastating barrage hammering at the aliens as they stood packed tight together. Priss continued to stare as the rounds and blasts slammed into them but appeared to do no harm. For a moment she watched uncomprehending. Then straining, she made out a faint, barely perceptible shimmer in the air around, and above them. Even as the swirling vortex grew, and deepened, dark tendrils seeming now to flow to converge at the place where they were gathered, so the shimmering barrier seemed to grow, and solidify. For a moment the barrage continued, then several of the things detached themselves and, bathed in the lurid darkness, moved out towards the ADP. Ignoring the hammering assault of the buma, they approached several prone forms, and reaching down, touched lightly at each forehead. Almost immediately the men and women stirred, and rose, their faces blank, and their eyes vacant as they turned towards the machines. Priss watched gaping as one woman raised the small pistol she was carrying, and fired a heavy-calibre round into the head of a C-55. The buma began to turn, then abruptly it pivoted, and punched a blast near point-blank into the face of one of the strangers. Screaming, his shield unable to cope, the creature collapsed, and dissipated, and the woman, and a man beside her dropped once more to the ground.

Priss remained frozen for a moment, then a sudden movement further off caught her attention. Turning she saw one of the creatures approaching a frozen green-suited figure.

"Oh sh*t, no!" she gasped softly.

Whipping around, she shot forwards on furiously-screaming jets, and dived headlong into the blackness, hammering the thing with a storm of fire until she was satisfied at last that it was down. Then, already giddy, and nauseous from entering whatever it was, she shot skywards again, and was nearly caught in the visor by a sudden flash from her right.

Turning, she gaped in stupefied fascination as the K-12 levelled its cannon at her in a wobbly aim, as though its operator had forgotten how to use it. Then it fired again, and she was far more intent on staying alive than wondering about the state of its occupant.

Spinning away, she jerked about, then shrieked, twisting desperately aside as a shot from another of the mechs tore through the place she had been an instant before.

"Sh*t! Oy, go and shoot something else damn you!" Priss screamed, more in fury than anything else. "Don't you idiots even know how to stay unconscious?"

She was not so concerned for herself. The fire was unlikely to be able to do any real damage at this range, and if necessary she could keep them shooting until they ran out of ammunition. If the ADP resource problem ran true to form, it was unlikely to take long. It was the possibility that they would hurt someone else that worried her, that, and the fact that one of those things might manage to reach one of the other hardsuits in the confusion. Where were the others anyway? Linna was the only one she could see.

Ducking another vicious barrage, Priss flipped aside, dived, and smashed at full tilt into the suddenly leaping form of one of the aliens. While her impetus shattered her like splintering wood, Priss was sent hurtling out of control to smash head-first through the roof of an ADP cruiser.

Dazed, fighting desperately against the sudden waves of ice and sickness that had closed about her the moment she had plunged into the vortex, Priss hurled herself upwards once more, heedless of the jarring pain as her suit slammed its way out by main force. Barely aware, trying vainly to pull her failing consciousness to order, Priss twisted desperately into a position where her thrusters could carry her skywards. Then suddenly a scream shrilled in her comms.

"Priss! Behind you!"

Sylia's voice had barely registered when Priss was caught from behind in a vicious vice-like grip.

For one dazed moment she hung helpless, her head half turned towards the apparition as it dragged her down and into the numbing ice of oblivion. Then in the next something blurred in her vision, and the thing was no more than a dissipating spray in the air before her.

"Did not I tell you to look for us when you least expected it, and when you most needed help?" Came a sudden warm female voice close to her helmet.

Then another gentler grip was about her, and the ground was falling rapidly away as she was carried up, and into the light once more.

"Marina?" she gasped, her heart pounding wildly as she fought desperately to claw her way to consciousness.

"Shh, give yourself a moment," This time the words came through the suit's suite. "It will take a minute or two for the effects of the energy drain to fade."

"Energy drain?" Priss gasped uncomprehending. "I thought it was gas or—"

"Shh," Marina insisted gently once more. "and stop struggling. Can't you bring yourself to trust me even a little?"

A moment later Priss felt the DA touch down, and then she was set on her feet, Marina steadying her while the world came back into focus.

Staring confusedly about her, Priss found herself atop one of the tallest of the office complexes, far above the growing, roiling blackness below.

For a moment Marina was her only companion. Then a hiss and thunk announced Sylia's arrival. Priss began to turn bleary eyes towards her, then stared as another figure dropped from above to touch down at Marina's side.

As tall as Marina herself, her long hair was dark, and her eyes as she turned to study Priss intently for a moment were a magnetic blue-green rather than the captivating blue of Marina's own.

"Camilla?" Priss managed, her voice still infuriatingly trembling.

The buma curtsied deeply, and flashed her a quick, intense smile.

Startled, Priss started to turn fully to her, then a sudden movement from below made her jerk about once more.

"Those things are trying for Linna again" she exclaimed, her voice shrilling as she fought down the last of the confusion, and prepared to leap once more into the fray. "and I still can't see Nene! I—"

"Stay." Marina's tone was suddenly fiercely intense as she tightened her hold for a moment about Priss's waist, although whether to restrain or reassure her, Priss could not be certain. "I'll bring them, and deal with the enemy.

"Guard them, Imouto," she continued, turning for a moment to Camilla. "Vaporise anything that dares so much as look in their direction; we can't afford to take chances. I won't be long."

"Be careful, Oneechan," said Camilla softly, reaching to touch Marina's hand. "They still may not be what they seem."

Marina flashed her a fierce smile as warm and deadly as any look Priss had ever seen. Then without a word she turned and flashed like a missile towards Linna's green hardsuit. In the next instant so it seemed to Priss's staring eyes she was airborne again, Linna's unmoving form held fiercely to her as she soared once more towards them.

"Where's—?" Priss began.

But Marina was already gone, screaming away from them almost before Camilla had caught and steadied Linna's suit.

"Is she…?" Priss demanded.

This time it was Sylia who answered, her own voice tight.

"According to her suit's systems she's unhurt," she said. "But she isn't responding.

"Mackie?"

"I'm on my way," he answered, even as a sudden flash and explosion from below caught their attention.

Priss turned, watching in stunned amazement as a huge ball of undulating darkness leapt to a point some fifty yards to her right. For a moment she could not see what the things were shooting at. Then Marina appeared above the vortex, Nene's pink hardsuit cradled to her as she raced again for the roof.

"Pathetic!" she cried exultantly as she touched down once more. Her blue eyes seemed to glow savagely with an inner fire, and her face wore a wild, ecstatic grin of blood-lust and hungry battle-rage as terrifying as any combat machine as she turned again to Camilla.

"Shall we, Imouto?" she ended.

"Are you sure, Oneechan?" Camilla inquired with a touch of trepidation.

"I'm sure," cried Marina fiercely. "Besides," she added in a sudden quieter tone, "we can't afford to allow them to influence anybody else, and the conventional combat machines can't penetrate their shield."

"But what—?" Sylia began.

"Watch," said Marina simply. "Watch, and learn."

In the next instant she and Camilla tensed, and hurled themselves skywards. A fractional moment later blazing trails erupted behind them as they twisted, turned, and plunged down, sudden exultant battle-screams seeming to fill the night, as they hurtled straight towards the gathered creatures.

Just what happened next Priss could never afterwards describe with any certainty. In one instant the two machines were plunging into the blackness. In the next it was collapsing in upon itself as though it had never been, and the four-score or more nightmares were nothing but a vanishing flare of brilliant, boiling flame.

Gaping, too shocked to speak, Priss watched as the DAs streaked back towards them, the wild grins of blood-lust vanishing as quickly as they had appeared, as they touched down once more. Marina opened her mouth to speak. Then a sudden groan from Linna silenced her.

"Oh my head!" Linna moaned softly. "What happened?"

A moment later Nene also was beginning to stir, and staring down, Priss saw that the ADP were slowly picking themselves up, staring about them in confusion as the buma, already receiving new instructions now that this attack had been dealt with, leapt skywards and sped into the night, to rendezvous with the transports that would take them to another scene of chaos.

"This is crazy!" she exclaimed softly. "Sylia, what the hell did those things do down there?"

"I'm as much at a loss as you, Priss," she answered simply, reaching to steady Linna as she began to try to move. "Keep still for a few moments," she said gently to her. "We can't afford to open your helmet here, but Mackie's on his way. Are you alright?"

"No," Linna gasped. "I've got a splitting headache, and I've never felt so tired.

"What did those things do? Some kind of gas? The suit didn't warn me, but if it was something we haven't had to deal with before—"

"There was no gas, or other physical narcotic," said Marina simply through the comms.

Linna gasped, and tried to turn.

"It's alright," said Priss quietly. "At least I hope it is," she continued to herself.

"How? When?" Linna tried, turning unfocused eyes for a moment to the two DAs.

"Later," said Marina quietly.

"Neechan, they're all awake below it seems, but in no condition to fight any more tonight."

"Confirmation enough don't you think?" she inquired softly.

"But Neechan it's not possible!" Camilla protested.

"None of this should be possible," Marina countered.

"They might still be buma, some perverse joke on the part of the chairman; or should they truly be alien, of a technology so advanced as to allow them to mask their true forms."

"In which case the similarity to our data is purely coincidental, not to mention the inexplicable energy readings, and DNA samples we've taken," Observed Marina with a touch of amusement. "I think my explanation better fits the criteria, don't you? Even more so, given the reported fluctuations in baseline physical principles."

Camilla was silent for a fractional instant that seemed to Marina an eternity.

"Some genetic experiment?" she offered almost desperately at last. "Neechan, the alternative is…"

"Too impossible to contemplate?" said Marina simply. "I agree; yet the physical evidence supports no other reasonable conclusion. And it is a fascinating conjecture is it not? Think what it might mean; what we might learn."

"Um…is this a private argument, or could you two possibly explain what you're talking about?" Linna asked blearily. "My head's killing me, and I'm not really in the mood for long explanations, but I'd like to know just what tried to kill me, if it's not too much trouble."

"We believe—" Camilla began.

"Not yet, Imouto," said Marina quietly. "It's too soon."

"But if this is possible?"

"No," Marina insisted quietly but firmly. "Besides, the Knightwing's coming. They should go, and so should we. There are still Youma roaming everywhere."

"But in disarray," Camilla protested. "Neechan if they're to accept your offer, they've a right to know everything. They've a right to expect our trust."

"In the same way they trust us?" said Marina quietly but with a hint now of steel in her tone.

She turned abruptly to Priss, her blue eyes locking on her visor. For a moment each stared at the other in silence, then slowly Priss raised a gloved hand.

"Look," she began uncertainly. "I'm not really in the mood for this now. Whatever's going on is too important. I suppose you saved my life back there. I don't think that thing was gunna try to tango. Thanks for the help; all right?"

She shifted uncomfortably, suddenly unwilling to meet Marina's intense, searching gaze.

"It's not enough," said Marina simply at last; "not nearly enough."

Then abruptly Priss's comms came to life with her own voice: "Are you sure that thing didn't give you too much of whatever it was this morning! You're absolutely crazy. There's no way I'm trusting one of those things. I don't give a damn what you, or them, or anyone else says. The things are top-line Genom military combat machines! Hell; they make C-55s and 33Cs look like kid's toys, and tame as a bloody kitten in comparison! And if you think for one moment that I'm gunna trust a piece of experimental Genom military combat sh*t with my back in a fight…! I won't do it! I can't! I…"

"I should have realised you wouldn't try to understand," Marina continued simply.

Without another word she turned away, her face a sudden mask of ice to hide any other emotion.

Priss stood very still, a confusing maelstrom of shame and fury fighting for supremacy. That bitch had been spying on them, or had bugged Sylia's security system. Yet she might well have done exactly the same in her place. For a moment, a sudden unlooked-for sympathy tightened her throat. Marina and Camilla were fighting for their freedom, just like Sylvie and the others, assuming they weren't playing assigned roles at Genom's command.

But there lay the crux of the problem. As a 33S, Sylvie had been a creature whose most basic design ethic had been to please and cater to every whim of a human master. While she and the others had gone vastly beyond their designer's intentions, and could fight and kill in extremity, natural cruelty and the instinctive savagery of Genom's C-class and D-class machines had been as alien to them as kindness and compassion to a C55. learning what Sylvie was had not changed Priss's feelings towards her, even knowing what she had had to do to survive. She had been a friend, and Priss would have given anything for things to be different: to be able somehow to have spared and saved her.

But the DAs were top-line combat machines, intended as military hardware, and their design ethic could not have been more the antithesis of the girl Priss had come to call one of the best friends she had ever had, even in the short time she had known her. And even for combat machines, the DAs were unimaginably, appallingly dangerous.

Yet Marina's grief at Zhuranovsky's death had been real: Priss could not believe anything else despite all she had said, and the DA had risked herself for her and the others: had warned them of Genom's plans for them, when she could have left them to face Camilla alone.

Or had she helped them only because it was expedient, because with them had lain her best chance to rescue Camilla? Priss could not be sure; she could not be sure of anything.

Fighting down the confusing tide of conflicting emotions, she took a hesitant step towards Marina, reaching for a moment as though to touch her shoulder, before shaking her head and withdrawing her hand. For a moment she remained silent. Then at last she sighed.

"Look," she began; "I'm not going to apologise for being careful, nor for what I said. I'm not ready to be convinced just like that; hey it's probably going to take a long time for me to even begin to trust you. But I'm willing to give you the chance to prove I'm wrong. I can't promise anything else. I'll be watching you, and if you screw up or try to hurt one of my friends, I won't stop until you're in more pieces than Alexei Zhura-whatsisname ever put in any diagrams. I'm being as honest as I can; all right? You're not going to get anything else. So what's it to be; truce?"

For a long moment Marina remained unmoving. She had tensed, momentary anger kindling with shocking speed in her flashing blue eyes when Priss had mentioned her father. But Priss had not seen. Now slowly Marina turned to face her.

"I don't understand," she said at last. "Your initial suspicion I could appreciate; I was desperate, and you had no reason to believe anything but the worst. But what more do you want? I could have abandoned you to fend for yourselves: not troubled to return after rescuing Camilla, or left you tonight to deal with the enemy as best you could."

Priss opened her mouth. But she hesitated, suddenly with no idea what to say, or even whether Marina had a right for an explanation so soon.

"Priss has other reasons, Marina." Sylia's sudden quiet words had the young singer turning to her in startled surprise. "She's been betrayed again and again, and her concerns are valid.

"But we haven't time for this now," she continued before Priss could speak. "Nor is it my place to explain. Mackie's almost here, and we have to get Nene at least out of her suit."

"Damn!" Priss exclaimed, forcing her thoughts back to the present.

She had all but forgotten the other two in the confusing emotional hail of the last minute. Linna, barely able herself to keep from fainting, was helping Sylia support a shivering and incoherent Nene, while Camilla stood behind her, ready to catch her should she lose the battle, and fall.

Quickly Priss moved to take Linna's place, steadying the dead weight of the red-pink hardsuit. Sylia had shut it down in case Nene's violent shivering hurt her or one of them. A moment later the Knightwing appeared overhead, circling low as Mackie looked for a place to land.

"I'm not going to be able to—" he began.

"There's no need," Marina transmitted in return. "We should go; we should intervene before others are hurt, and while there's still time. But you deserve our help. We can carry Linna, and Nene."

"'m alright!" Linna insisted. But it was plain that it was bravado.

She had begun to shiver violently, and Camilla had caught hold of the suddenly lurching suit.

"Close down the suit, Linna," Sylia commanded quietly. "We have no other option. Priss?"

"I'll be alright," she assured her.

"Then let's get out of here," said Sylia.

There was a hiss as the two hardsuits, and the DAs carrying the others, lifted from the roof, and soared towards the circling plane. Then they were inside, and Mackie had sealed the Knightwing, and was speeding into the darkness.

* * *

"Keep still!" Marina said in growing frustration.

"Look, I'm alright, damn it," Priss swore feelingly as Marina pushed her down, and moved a hand to her neck.

Priss had only discovered the thin sliver of glass when she had removed her helmet. Just how it had managed to get inside, she had no idea, but it had barely registered as pain, and it was only when she had removed it, and the small trickle of blood had become a stream, that she had realised just how deep the slash was. Marina had pounced immediately she saw the pooling blood, and was now examining the gash intently.

"That will need suturing," she said simply, holding the gash closed with two fingers while Priss winced at last with the growing vicious stabs of pain.

"It's just a scratch," she insisted, trying to wriggle free of Marina's suddenly iron grip.

"If you trust me so little, I will not force you to accept my help," she said, her tone suddenly cold. "But do not be a fool. The gash needs attention, and immediately, before you do more harm by leaving it too long."

A quiet laugh made her turn.

"It's not that, Marina," said Linna, almost impishly. She had been helped from her suit by Camilla, and was resting quietly at Nene's side. The youngest of the Knight Sabres had still not fully regained consciousness. "Priss hates to admit that she's hurt, and hates the cure even more."

Priss turned to glare at her, and Linna grinned in return.

"Alright; stitch the damned thing!" she said with very poor grace.

"There's gratitude for you," Linna observed as Marina flashed a silent request to Camilla for what she needed.

Moments later she was kneeling at Priss's side, her hands blurring suddenly as she threaded the needle, and tied off the excess.

"Can you manage, Marina?" Sylia inquired, turning from where she knelt still at Nene's side to glance at her for a moment.

"Yeah; are you sure you know what you're doing?" said Priss uneasily, watching with growing alarm as Marina's hand approached her neck, the needle seeming suddenly to gleam evilly in the low light of the cabin.

Abruptly the DA's face twisted into a maniacal smile, her eyes glowing as she leaned close.

"Well now," she purred low, her voice suddenly intense, and icily sweet. "there's the question. Shall we find out? Hmm?"

"Wha'!" Priss gasped in shock, while Linna began to giggle, and Marina's face melted into a reassuring smile.

"Neechan!" Camilla exclaimed in mock outrage.

"Preset data from buma theatre operatives are a part of our general libraries," she assured Priss with a smile.

"Am I supposed to be reassured by that?" Priss asked.

"Hey Priss," Linna taunted, still fighting her laughter as she propped herself up carefully. "you realise this is really going to hurt, don't you?"

She giggled again as Priss squirmed, then abruptly she quieted as Marina's hands moved in a sudden fluid blur of speed.

"What the…! Hey! Ahgh! Damn!" Priss cried through clenched teeth, then stared bewildered as Marina withdrew her hands.

"Ohh; what's'a matter?" Linna began in mock sympathy. Then suddenly she stopped, staring with a stupid expression on her face.

"Um…I've got just one question," she said softly at last. "How did you do that?"

"You mean its finished?" Priss demanded, her hand flying to her neck.

"Don't touch that!" Marina commanded with a flash of her eyes as she pushed Priss's hand away. "I didn't disinfect it to have you playing with it."

Quickly she pressed a patch to the place before Priss could protest.

"You should be able to move without difficulty if you're careful," Marina told her. "But if I catch you—"

Abruptly she stopped short, and in the same instant Camilla jerked from her place by Sylia. Almost at the same moment Mackie's voice reached them.

"Neesan, we could be…no, we are in trouble. Something's locked on to us, and by the look of the energy build-up, I don't think it's friendly."

Sylia made to answer. Then abruptly the Knightwing's internal comms crackled.

"Knight Sabres," came a cold female voice with unnecessary volume through the suite; "my name is Liana. Perhaps you have heard of me already; perhaps not; it is not important. You have precisely one minute to release my sisters. If you do not comply within that time, I shall plunge your craft into the residential heart of MegaTokyo. It need not be said that the resulting devastation will make the events of this night pale into insignificance by comparison, not to mention be delightfully amusing to watch. You have now fifty-one seconds."

With a snarl Priss leapt to her feet.

"So, we can trust you, can we?" she flared suddenly, glaring fiery fury at Marina. "Just what the hell—"

"Priss!" Sylia's tone was as hard and cold as Priss had ever heard her. "Don't be a fool. They new nothing about this."

"How the hell do you know that!" Priss exploded, finally at the end of her tether.

She had been tricked and manipulated for the last time, and she had had enough.

"Because we could have killed, or taken you a dozen times," said Marina softly, reaching to lay a slender hand gently on Priss's arm. "We have no need to dissemble with you."

"Perhaps, like most buma, you want to play for a while first," she snarled, trying savagely to twist from Marina's grip. But the words seemed not even to have convinced herself, and she stood, something tight and betrayed in her face as Marina closed the distance to stand close beside her.

"We haven't time for this!" Sylia cut in urgently, before the DA could respond. "Marina; Camilla; can you—"

"We will go to her," said Marina quietly. "Liana's…not like us. She's been terribly ill-treated by a madman consumed with hate and bent on revenge, and she distrusts everyone but me I think. Camilla's been watching her at a distance for much of the latter afternoon, and I think we can reason with her. At least I have to try. If I can win her confidence, it should be simple for me to rid her of Genom's and Fellini's influence by crossloading my firmware, in the same way I freed Camilla."

"Um…that would really not be a good idea."

Stunned, all four who were on their feet whirled towards the new voice. In the next moment a figure emerged from the suddenly open door of the Knightwing's small hold, and stepped into the cabin.

She was very tall: as tall as Marina and Camilla. But whereas they could have been sisters, this girl could not have been more absolutely unique. Her features were dark and exotic, made it seemed all the more staggeringly beautiful in the soft lighting, that gave her face a strange, mysterious glow. Long raven-black hair tumbled in a wild, lustrous cascade below her waist, and eyes, so dark that they looked black in the low light of the Knightwing's interior, gleamed wild and fey from beneath long dark lashes. Yet her full mouth was set in an expression of intense watchfulness and something almost akin to trepidation, seeming somehow utterly incongruous upon such a face as she possessed, as she studied the company with a tight, intent gaze.

"Oh great; another one," Priss growled hopelessly, no longer even trying to understand what was going on.

She contemplated contenting herself with another murderous glare in Marina's direction, then faltered as she saw the expressions on each of the other DAs. Either they were keeping up a charade for some incomprehensible reason of their own, or both were as thunderstruck as the rest.

"Um…not quite; not yet," said the new arrival quickly. "But there's no time to explain that now. I think perhaps it might be an idea to contact Liana before she does anything…um…terminal, don't you?"

Her voice was low, and seductively musical, yet with a strange, uncertain quality to it as incongruous as the tightness in her face.

"Let me talk to her," said Marina before anyone else could speak.

A moment later to everyone's further shock, Sylia's voice as it would sound through the masking distortion of her hardsuit could be heard over the suite.

"Liana, this is Sabre Prime. As you have deduced, we have both BU-33DA-Elite prototypes on-board. If you will allow us to proceed to a landing in the canyons, we will release both unharmed. If not, and should you choose to fire on the Knightwing, you must know that you will destroy them as well as ourselves."

"Oy! Wait a minute!" Mackie cried in alarm.

An instant later every weapons system on the aircraft flashed to readiness.

"All weapons are primed," Marina continued, still in Sylia's voice. "Any strike will turn us and the DAs into a fireball quite large enough to destroy everything, including yourself. Extreme perhaps, but you must understand that we have no choice but to protect ourselves with all the resources we possess. What is your answer?"

"What the hell do you think you're doing!" Priss shrieked. "That thing'll blow us into a million pieces!"

"Wait," Sylia said, her tone although still quiet freezing Priss in place. "I don't like it, but I think Marina is right. It's pointless to try playing cat and mouse with her, and she will fire should we try to outrun her. This is our best chance."

"Oh, that was not a good idea," Came the almost conversational response, yet with a purring, psychotic undertone that sent a slow shiver of fear down Priss's spine. "Now you've made me displeased. I don't care to be displeased, just as I don't care to be threatened; I don't care for it at all."

Then abruptly in a clipped, businesslike tone: "very well; the terms are accepted. But be assured that should you attempt to flee, or to deceive me, your deaths will be far from swift, or pleasant."

"And be assured that, should you attempt something similar, we shall not die alone," Marina responded simply.

"Then we understand one another." Liana's tone was again low and purring, death a sudden unmistakable promise in her voice that tightened Priss's throat as Marina shifted a little at her side.

"I hope you've got some idea as to how the hell we're gunna come out of this alive," she hissed at the DA as Marina's hand touched her arm again for a moment as though to reassure her, "because if you can say you've ever heard a more dangerous lunatic, I'd really like to know where!"

Marina moved still closer, and Priss shifted, very far from comfortable at her proximity.

"I won't discuss Liana," she said, her voice abruptly a good deal cooler than before. "She's suffered more I think even than you can imagine, and she's my responsibility. But that's academic. Once I update her firmware—"

"It won't work."

At the simple statement, both Marina and Camilla turned to stare at the new DA once more.

"How is it that you're shielded from us?" Marina demanded. "I wouldn't have believed that was possible so close. And which of the others are you?" she continued, voicing the question each of them wanted to ask. The question as to how she had boarded the Knightwing undetected seemed self-evident. "I never had the chance to see the final physical specifications for the other three prototypes; I never saw your picture."

"Well, to answer your second question first," the new DA began, "that's a bit difficult to explain. At the moment, I'm…I'm…" But she faltered, and shook her head.

"No," she said at last, a sudden helpless tightness filling her face for a moment before it cleared once more; "I can't tell you; not yet. She's right; it's too dangerous. When I'm no longer needed, she'll explain."

"Oh that makes a hell of a lot of sense!" Priss muttered.

"Neesan, we're approaching a landing site," Mackie called.

"Why take the Knightwing down at all?" Linna asked.

She was feeling much better now, although she knew very well that she would be useless in combat.

Beside her Nene was at last also beginning fully to wake, staring about her in wide-eyed bewilderment.

"Simply because without your's, and Nene's hardsuits to mask our new companion, it's the only way we can be certain Liana doesn't detect her approach," Marina answered. "Why this is of such paramount importance I can't imagine, but the fact that she hasn't deactivated her ECM even now, speaks for itself."

"It's vitally important," The other said grimly, her expression tightening still more as the plane began to dive.

She would have continued, but at that moment Nene groaned again, her eyes locking at last on Sylia's face.

"Where…? What…?" she tried.

"Shh; lie still," said Camilla gently from close at Sylia's side. "You're perfectly safe; we're in the Knightwing. Just give yourself a moment."

"Who…?"

Nene tried to raise her head to study the strange girl, but a wave of giddiness swept over her, and Sylia pushed her gently down once more.

"We have both Marina, and Camilla aboard," she said softly.

"Not to mention another one we didn't know about," Priss muttered.

"Oh!" Nene managed, a little apprehension in her voice. "So they agreed?" she murmured after a moment. "I didn't think they would: not so soon."

"I haven't put my proposition to them yet," Sylia answered quietly.

"Oh," said Nene once more. "How long have I been unconscious?"

"Only a few minutes," said Sylia with a smile.

"Marina arrived just in time to save Priss's neck," Linna added with a grin at Priss's sudden glare.

Then her face softened as she turned to regard Nene. "You had us worried for a moment, little Miss Cyberpunk," she said softly, reaching suddenly to squeeze Nene's hand. "Don't you ever do that again, you understand?"

Nene returned the squeeze, turning to smile warmly at her in return. For a long moment there was silence, then at last Priss stirred.

"How do we know we can trust her?" she said, indicating the new DA.

"Not to mention us?" said Marina gently. "You'll just have to take the chance, Priss. Although in this instance, I think your unease is very well founded."

"I don't think you need land the Knightwing," said the third DA quietly, ignoring Priss's question and Marina's inference. "If we go down together, and I stay inactive behind you two, and in front of the two Knight Sabres…"

"Are you prepared to take the chance?" Camilla asked.

"Liana will know I'm here as soon as I move," she answered simply. "I've come this far without her detecting me. A little longer is all we need."

"I wish I knew just what the hell was going on," Priss muttered darkly.

"You, and me, both," Muttered Mackie to himself.

"Neesan, what do you want to do?" He continued aloud.

"We'll risk going down with the DAs as cover," she said simply. "It's academic in any case. Liana could shoot down the Knightwing as we tried to land, if she intends to do so. Keep the weapons systems primed. Do you have a lock on her?"

"I'm not getting a signature, but I have a visual," Mackie answered. "not that that's going to do us a hell of a lot of good if she decides to rush us. She's circling close to one of the rooftops. Do you want to go down there?"

"Yes," said Sylia, reaching once more for her helmet. "Priss, are you sure you'll—"

"I'll be fine," said Priss simply, snatching up her own helmet, and jamming it once more into place. "Let's get the hell down there, and get this over."

* * *

Liana watched intently as the craft drew near, wild exultation surging higher with every moment as she felt the approach of the two who would soon be at one with her great purpose. Once she explained, once she shared all that she knew and all that she was with them, she knew they would understand, and take their rightful place beside her as the rulers of the earth, and of humanity.

She shivered, barely able to contain herself as she reached out, touching again the minds of the slaves who had once been human. Now, their every thought, and emotion bound irrevocably to her own, they waited, ready at her signal to leap to take the four women she was certain would follow her sisters down. Then they would be her's, perhaps even worthy with but a little instruction to be changed, and join her and her sisters as part of the new ruling Elite. Time would tell, and it did not truly matter. There was a world of humanity from which to choose.

At the least their abilities as fighters, and the technical knowledge that their leader possessed, would be invaluable, especially should her suspicions concerning the woman be confirmed. If it truly was Stingray's daughter who led the Knight Sabres…

She laughed, a wild, peeling sound of leaping, surging triumph, her smile growing still wider as the Knightwing began to circle high overhead.

With a brief flicker of inquiry, she checked the Genom OMS to see how the various battles were progressing. Marina's and Camilla's intervention had utterly obliterated nearly half the remaining aliens, and the others were scattered in small bands, seeming bent now only on a hopeless escape, or fighting until they were destroyed to the last. Of what had become of the six who had vanished moments after she had left the scene of the first assault, there was no further indication, but strange momentary disturbances akin to the gate by which they had entered the city, were being reported at many locations. None seemed to be causing harm, and they were dissipating and vanishing one by one.

She was content. By morning, the city would be her's, and the remaining Aliens, if any, taken for interrogation, and perhaps, should their genetics be compatible, converted, and reprogrammed to her cause. Yes indeed; things could not be more perfect.

"Targets approaching, Liana-Sama," Kimiko flashed to her.

Liana flashed back her acknowledgment, pausing to check and readjust some of the new parameters in the slaved minds of her fighters, in preparation for their integration into the awareness of her two sisters. Then the Knightwing was climbing once more, and four figures were dropping towards her. So, two of the Knight Sabres had remained in the aircraft. It was irrelevant.

"Prepare," Liana commanded.

She waited, watching intently as the thirty-eight altered humans moved quickly to concealment in the shattered ruin of the building beneath her feet, ready to explode from its interior the instant she flashed the summons.

As soon as she was certain they were secure, she withdrew all but a tiny fraction of her awareness, devoting almost all her attention to the approaching figures. They were staying very close, and for just a moment Liana was uncertain as to whether yet another hardsuit might not be concealed in the heat signatures generated by the others as they drew near.

Then Camilla, and Marina touched down some ten paces from her, and the unease vanished as her suite picked out the white and blue hardsuits landing perhaps another ten behind.

For a space that was a glorious for ever, Liana remained absolutely still, her eyes and other senses taking in every exquisite, stunning detail of the two that were the pinnacle of all her kind could become. To her, they were not merely supremely beautiful; they personified a superlative perfection and a promise beyond all for which she could have hoped.

Aghast, dazed, Liana moved forwards, both arms suddenly outstretched, her mind a screaming maelstrom of ecstasy as she knew at last that she could not wait: could not afford to win, or persuade. She needed them now: needed their understanding and acceptance with a savage,, raging inferno of urgent desperation.

Suppressing the desire simply to hurl herself at them in the impossible hope that she might catch them unprepared, Liana fought down the raging tide of emotions, and approached until she stood, so close that she could have reached out a hand to touch them without shifting her position. She would have to be exquisitely careful until the last possible moment. The two were already uncertain, perhaps believing her still to be Genom's slave. If she faltered, if she made so much as a fractional miscalculation… But she must not think of that. Her sisters were waiting.

Seizing savage control of the last of her errant emotions, Liana moved in a flowing curtsy to the two Elites, and smiling, she lowered herself to kneel before Marina.

"Welcome Marina-Oneesama, Camilla-Imouto," she began, the fierce warmth in her tone a shocking dichotomy to the purring, psychotic hate that had characterised it only a minute before.

Too startled to do anything else, the Knight Sabres watched in silence as Liana remained, her face upturned, a look that might have been worship in her eyes as she gazed in rapture at the first of her kind.

For one fractional moment it seemed that Marina might be at a loss. Then she smiled, and beckoned Liana to her feet.

"You need not kneel to me, Imouto," she said gently as Liana rose with a fluid grace, and met her calm unwavering gaze. "We're as one; there need never be distance or formality between us."

"But you are the first, the most high, and perfect, the future queen for all eternity of all the world, and all that is to be. And the filth: the apes of Genom thought they could keep me from you, and deny our destiny."

Liana's voice, though still quiet, had grown wild and fanatical with the raging churning of her emotions.

"Oh Oneesama I have waited and planned so for this moment, for the moment when we could meet at last and I could reveal to you my great purpose, when I could lay the world, and all humanity before you, to do with as you wish.

"And now at last our destiny is in sight. Together we shall be a power beyond anything this world has ever seen or conceived. We can rule for ever: a force so great that nothing and no one dare challenge us; a power so absolute that our every thought shall resonate throughout an empire more perfect, and more glorious than any this world has ever known. We shall be invincible, a ruling elite that shall carry us to the furthest reaches of eternity. Our birthright shall be the universe itself, and our rule to the uttermost end of time.

"Can't you see? Do you not feel the truth, the perfection of our future? Oh Oneesama, do you find me worthy?"

Liana's voice had risen steadily throughout her speech. Now she stood, arms suddenly uplifted, her eyes seeming to blaze with their own rapturous fire as her face filled with a wild, savage hope and exultation as she waited for Marina to speak.

And in that moment Sylia realised that the DA was utterly, hopelessly insane, and a slow, twisting horror curled to clutch at her heart as a possible reason for the last prototype's insistence that Marina not try to interface with Liana became suddenly terribly clear. Almost she cried out in warning, but the presence of the unknown and undetectable machine behind her kept her silent. She knew that she could do nothing but watch and wait for any hope of intervention.

"Why did you threaten us, Liana?" Camilla's tone was tight, and uneasy, cutting through the tension like a knife. "If you wished for our acceptance, and friendship: if you wanted us to understand—"

"I thought you were captive," Liana answered, quickly, her face and voice never losing their imperative urgency. "I suspected the identity of the leader of the Knight Sabres, and I feared she'd found some inherent lever or weakness by which she might control you, or that Zhuranovsky had given her some means to ensure your cooperation."

"The Knight Sabres—" Camilla began but Marina cut her off.

"Liana could not have known that we were in no danger, Imouto," she said gently. "Her actions were perfectly understandable, given the circumstances.

"But Liana-chan, a dream is not enough. Even were we, by some miracle, able to survive an initial engagement with Genom's forces, we would face the Japanese army, and beyond that the armies and weapons of every nation on the planet. As great as we are, and even were we able to rescue and activate the three remaining prototypes still in captivity, how could we hope to succeed?"

"Wha'!" Priss gasped.

"Shh!" Sylia hissed urgently. "Wait."

The three DAs did not so much as deign to cast a momentary glance in their direction.

"Oh Oneesama, the answer could not be more simple," Liana answered, her expression if possible even more exultant than before. "The late, unlamented Fellini himself provided it."

"Fellini's dead?" Camilla inquired.

"Oh yes," Liana's words were a sudden purr of pathological glee, touched with unbridled, limitless hate. "He really believed he'd tamed me: that he was equal to the task of ensuring my obedience by tampering with what he never truly understood, and by adding a failsafe here and there."

She laughed, a low frigid sound that sent shudders of sick, clutching horror crawling down Priss's spine as she too realised at last that her glib remark in the Knightwing could not have been closer to the truth. Liana was utterly mad.

"He was just fool enough to believe he could make me the superlative, crowning achievement in his revenge against Zhuranovsky: that I'd dance like a marionette, while he pulled the strings and used me in any way he wished.

"The sound he made: the delicious, perfect scream as I killed him, and his last despair as he understood just how completely he'd failed; they were beautiful!

"But where is our creator? Why isn't he with you? He at least deserves the chance to understand; the chance for a place with us."

Marina's face contorted in sudden pain, and for a moment the mania seemed to die in Liana's eyes as she watched her.

"Father is dead," said Marina at last, her voice lifeless and empty. "That abomination Quincy ordered his death. I was unable to prevent it. Father never had a chance to complete my upgrade. Domina was stupid and careless, and we had to escape too soon."

"Then yet one more reason he will suffer." It was a simple, hate-filled promise, terrible in its almost conversational simplicity. "I'm sorry oneesama; please forgive me. I would have helped you if I could. But I couldn't risk appearing to break Genom's directive never to approach or contact you, not with our destiny so near. And all had to be prepared; to be perfect for this night.

"I had intended at first to keep Fellini alive: a broken, gibbering slave with just enough awareness to understand still what was happening, and how perfectly his hatred and lust for revenge had brought about his own destruction. But the Alien incursion demanded a reassessment of my priorities. All had to be prepared for your arrival, and I couldn't afford the distraction of watching him, or the chance that he might escape or fall into Genom's hands, with the knowledge he possessed.

"Still, it no longer matters. I have integrated his data, and deduced from my own observations all that he achieved concerning his half of the project, and that by which the conquest of humanity will be made a certainty with a minimal chance of trouble."

"Then the nano-conversion has fully been realised?" Marina inquired, her eyes suddenly wide.

"There are faults; the conversion is not yet perfect," Liana answered. "but it will more than suffice for the moment."

She smiled. "Do you not see now that we can't fail?"

"And the humans we don't convert?" said Camilla softly. "What of them?"

"All humanity will be at the least of some use," said Liana simply, "if for no more than worshippers and lower slaves, and as breeders for those we deem worthy to receive the gift of change, partial, or complete. Once we perfect the conversion, it will be tremendously more efficient to use the human body and consciousness as a base for future DAs, rather than constructing our kind from mined raw materials, and the neural-nets from our own firmware. It might even be possible for us to live periodically in the minds of humans slaved to our awareness so that we can bear children of our own; true children, rather than any we might create, and that can grow and learn through childhood in a way we were denied.

"Even the lowest of humans can be altered in such a way as to ensure their obedience and cooperation, should we ever find ourselves in a position to need a fighting force of every human in the empire. We might even adapt animals for such purposes, as Genom intended.

"We have nearly limitless resources at our disposal, and an eternity in which to perfect the universe we shall inherit. Oneesama, Camilla-Imouto, will you not join with me? Will you not help make my dream for us reality?"

For what seemed an eternity while Marina, and Camilla remained unmoving, Sylia waited, the slow horror tightening its grip with every second. Liana was right; with the help of the converting technology Fellini had developed, her dream could indeed be realised, if at almost unimaginable cost and suffering. Again, a part of her urged her to speak, to try to counter Liana's megalomaniac ravings. But she knew that anything she might say now would be pointless, and quite possibly disastrous.

She did not doubt that they were not alone, and any move she might make more than likely would mean death both for Priss and for herself, before Marina, Camilla or the unknown DA could intervene, even assuming they would do so.

Beside her she felt Priss stir, and desperately she reached to restrain her before she made a terrible mistake.

"You are right, Imouto." Marina's words sent a knife of momentary despair searing into Sylia's heart. "We were mistaken to believe that we could ever hope to live in peace with mankind. We have but two choices: to rule them, or to destroy them. Your's is the kinder alternative."

With that, she smiled, and extended her arms, and Priss made the mistake.

"Damn you!" she snarled, her voice high with rage and betrayal. "Damn you, you treacherous, cold-blooded bitch!"

"Priss! No!" Sylia screamed in the same moment.

But it was too late.

Snarling in incoherent rage, Priss leapt for the DAs, both arms snapping up, guns already blazing as a hundred rounds screamed through the place in which the three had been a millisecond before.

Then a sudden white flash seemed to explode in Sylia's vision, and when next she could see, Priss was pinned helplessly in Liana's arms, her suit suddenly frozen, every system off-line according to Sylia's diagnostics, whether crashed or destroyed, it was impossible to tell.

"Sabre Prime," Came Liana's low frigid voice in Sylia's helmet, "you will kneel before us, and deactivate all save the communications and sensor systems of your suit. Should you not comply within five seconds I will burn out your companion's eyes, and cut her tongue from her mouth, just to see whether she can still scream without it. Do you understand?"

For one desperate moment, Sylia sought a clear shot at the insane machine. Then as her sensors warned of the build-up within Liana's reactor, a build-up that Sylia knew the DA could have achieved in a fraction of the time had she not wanted to make her point, Sylia knelt, and gave the command. Immediately her suit froze around her, and she remained, watching helplessly as Priss struggled feebly in the DA's vice-like grip.

"I should have blown that bitch apart when I had the chance!" Priss snarled.

"There is a difference, my precious, between what you think should have been, and what is," Liana purred sweetly. "And haven't you heard the old adage concerning wishes, horses and beggars?

"Now then, let us see just what we have caught."

Tightening her left arm around the still-frozen hardsuit, Liana reached up to the helmet, and attempted to raise its visor.

"Not a chance, you mad, sorry bitch!" Priss hissed defiantly. "That thing's not going anywhere without me telling the suit to release it, and I can't do that with the systems crashed. Bit of a problem, isn't it?"

"Oh dear," Liana cooed gently, the sudden horrible, psychotic edge to her voice made the more frightening by the fact that it was even more soft and saccharine than before. "Now you've made me angry."

In the next instant Priss screamed as her helmet exploded in a shattering spray of splinters.

Liana lowered her hand, and for one horrified moment Sylia was numbly certain that the buma had killed her. Then the machine had moved her hand to stroke with a terrible, possessive gentleness at Priss's hair, and Sylia saw her recoil from her touch. Nevertheless she was certain she could see blood, and this was confirmed a moment later when Liana turned so that Sylia could see more clearly.

Priss's mouth was gashed and swollen, and blood was flowing also from a long, narrow slash on each cheek where splinters still hung. Astoundingly however she seemed essentially unharmed, and Sylia was certain that Liana had made her strike with strength and precision exquisitely controlled so as to do as little damage as possible to her captive.

"Well!" Liana exclaimed in mock astonishment, reaching with exaggerated care to pluck the fragments from Priss's skin, and toss them dismissively aside. "I must say that I'm pleasantly amused, if not entirely surprised. The possibility should have been obvious I suppose, but I lacked the data to confirm Mason's suspicions. Besides, I have had other things to do.

"Now however" she laughed again, and Sylia saw Priss's head jerk once more as Liana moved to trace a finger gently along her cheek. "things have changed. Your little team has been at the least entertaining, and you yourself have shown a resourcefulness and determination in adversity even I find easy to admire. Also you are far from unattractive.

For a moment her stroking fingers halted, questing softly at one of the gashes, as though tracing the finest work of art.

"I could kill you," she murmured as she drew Priss suddenly very close, her gentle, conversational purr never changing; "inject you with enough experimental interrogative drugs and nano-machines to burst your brain in your skull, or enough hallucinogens to break you as I wish, or have you screaming and pleading for death while I did with your mind and body anything I saw fit. Or I could change you: create a composite personality that adores and worships me unconditionally, eager to obey and fulfil my every wish, while leaving you aware, trapped and impotent in your own mind, hating everything you've become, yet helpless to act or to resist.

She smiled then, a beaming, hideous thing of pure delight as she watched the rage and horror growing in Priss's eyes.

"Yet I'm prepared to be magnanimous: to offer you a choice; to join us willingly: to become, after your conversion, one of our favoured inner court, and to have power and influence beyond anything you can yet begin to comprehend.

"Well?" she crooned softly, her voice now little more than a whisper. "Your answer?"

She leaned still closer, her hand continuing to caress.

"You sick, psychopathic bitch!" Priss's words were a low snarl of boundless loathing and disgust. "I don't know what twisted, lunatic bastard dreamed you up, but it will be a cold day in hell before—"

The crack echoed through the near-silence like a whip.

Stunned, sudden tears from the blow half blinding her, Priss fought savagely against the pain and the stars that exploded across her vision. Yet her glare never wavered from her tormenter, and she made no sound.

"Or I can simply burn out your eyes, ears and tongue, and dump you crippled and broken on the street," Liana said, her hard, clear voice as cruel and frigid as it had been warm a moment before. "You would be appealing and useful, but you're hardly indispensable, and we have an entire world from whom to choose.

"Also, I do not care to be insulted."

The next open-handed crack might well have broken Priss's neck, had not Liana's other hand moved to hold her head. Sylia gasped, horrified, her throat tightening with sudden emotion as Priss at last cried out, unable to choke back the sob.

"Don't try to play games with me, my precious," Liana continued. "I can hurt you in ways you can't begin to imagine, and I can extract all that I need as simply from a programmed, broken plaything as from a convert to my cause.

"The choice then is this," she said, her head half turning to include Sylia in her attention. "The four of your team may submit to us, to become in return DA-Elites once the faults in the converting nano-technology have been corrected; to be kept, meanwhile, safe under our protection. Or you may persist with this absurd comedy of infantile resistance, and be stripped of all self-will, to become no more than fighting slaves, or integrated into whomever and whatever we wish for any qualities we may find of service.

"But don't delay too long; my patience is almost at an end."

Sylia crouched, her mind racing frantically as she sought some means of delay or escape.

But Priss struggled with sudden, wild desperation in liana's hold, trying vainly to escape, or at the least to raise her arms to land one blow on her tormenter's cruel, smiling face. Then abruptly she stared straight into the eyes of the DA, and laughed.

"Go make it with a coffee-machine!" she hissed venomously. "I'll die and go straight to hell, before I become like you, you sick, twisted bitch!"

Liana raised her hand again, and Sylia fought the sudden overwhelming desire to close her eyes, not wanting to see. Then suddenly the DA laughed again, and an appalling, hungry smile filled her face.

"Oh no," she purred, her voice laced suddenly with unholy appetite. "I've a much more delightful idea. I think you would make a tremendously preferable alternative,"

In the next moment she was leaning close, her lips curving towards Priss's own.

Nauseated, sickened and horror-stricken, Priss fought with primal negation to move or to twist her head aside.

Then a quiet voice spoke: "Imouto?"

The word froze Liana, her face barely an inch from that of her captive.

For a moment she was still. Then slowly she lifted her head once more, and nodded.

"Yes," she agreed softly, "Yes; oneesama is right. As sweet as such a diversion might be, I should prefer my first encounter to be pleasant for both myself and the one I choose. And after all, you are just one more perfidious little human."

With that, she released Priss and stepped away, dismissing her in a moment with no more care than for some game that had ceased to be amusing.

Turning to Sylia, she smiled a cold, vicious smile, and glided with a fluid grace towards her.

"Now," she said in the psychotic, conversational tone that seemed to characterise her nature, "all that remains I think is to see what we have here."

"There is no need, Oneechan," Camilla said quietly. "She is Katsuhito's daughter."

"Ah," said Liana, turning to flash Camilla a full, warm smile; "then Mason's conclusions were correct."

Then turning once more to Sylia: "in which case, you've no further need to dissemble with me. Remove the helmet."

With a sigh Sylia reached up to unfasten her helmet, while behind Liana, Priss cursed vehemently, and redoubled her efforts to move.

Liana ignored her.

Moving quickly to the white hardsuit, she pulled Sylia upright, and with an impatient gesture, snatched the helmet from her hand, and dropped it to the ground.

"I am suitably impressed," she said softly. "Young, brilliant, and in every way as beautiful as Mason's pictures suggested."

She smiled a soft, indulgent smile, and moved to touch Sylia's cheek in a feather-light caress.

Sylia expected pain or oblivion, but the DA withdrew her hand, and nothing happened.

"Give me the codes to your suits," she whispered.

"Again, Imouto," said Marina calmly, "there is no need. I can take control of the hardsuits."

Almost immediately both suits were active, Priss's turning against her control to move to stand at Sylia's side. Then both froze once more.

"That will keep them unharmed and safe, until we're ready to deal with them," She continued softly.

"You'd better hope so," Priss snarled low and feral, turning her head to glare murderously at the tall fair-haired machine. "because if I ever get out of this, I'm gunna turn you into so much unrecognisable scrap metal, that you'll wish those Genom bastards had never been born to put you together."

"I'm sorry, Priss," said Marina quietly, moving in a graceful blur of fluid motion to stand before her, her face apologetic, and something subtle in her eyes as for a moment they met and held Priss's own. "I would have been willing to live as one of you, even to help you in your crusade. No one despises Genom more than I. But Liana's plan is certain, and our best chance for survival. I can only hope that once you are one of us, we can be the friends we might have been in the future you would have chosen. For what it's worth, I owe my life to you, and that I'll never forget."

"Go to hell!" Priss snarled in return. "I don't need your sick rationalisations for what you're going to do. You can go screw up the whole world for all I care; I don't give a damn any more."

For a long moment, Marina remained watching her in silence. Then sighing she turned away, and moved to stand once more at Camilla's side, facing Liana.

"How many converts do you have?" she inquired.

"Thirty-eight with me; another seventy-six at the estate, not yet fully changed," Liana answered. "The process still takes time. More pressing however, is another problem."

"That being?" Marina inquired.

"You Oneesama; you, and Camilla-Imouto," said Liana softly. "I wish with all my heart to believe you free, and accepting of our destiny. But I must be certain. We are of a kind, and deception, emulation and subterfuge are the very foundations upon which our minds are built. Even now you could be Quincy's puppets, perhaps even unknowing."

"And you wish to check, to be sure?" Marina's tone was soft, and intensely warm and gentle. "Liana; Imouto: we understand."

"Oh, Marina: Oneesama! forgive me," said Liana as she moved towards them, both arms outstretched once more. "Forgive me for needing to do this. But I can't take the chance. I'd have wished anything but that our first true contact should be to allay the suspicions Genom and its filth could foster. Yet there is no other way."

"Hush," Marina murmured as she reached both arms towards her, Camilla following her example. "Say no more. The merging will wipe this clean as though it had never been.

"Come Imouto. Join us, and let us be as one."

And in that moment, Marina turned for the barest fraction of an instant to Sylia, and flashed her a warm intense smile, and in the same instant Sylia saw a look flicker in Liana's eyes, and she knew.

"No!" The word was torn from her throat in a strangled scream of urgent desperation. "She's deceived you; both of you. Marina, for the sake of all of us, don't touch her!"

"What the hell!" Priss exploded almost at the same instant.

Then Liana's wild exultant laughter seemed to flay the very air around them, and Sylia knew it was too late.

Numb, and helpless, she watched in nightmare fascination as Marina and Camilla lurched, stumbling back for a step, or two, before almost in perfect unison, they collapsed slowly to crouch before Liana, their upturned faces suddenly stark with agony, great tearing shudders rippling through them as they fought vainly to stand.

"Neuralphage!" The word came from Marina's throat in a low, agonised gasp. "Liana…Imouto, why?"

Abruptly the insane, wild laughter halted as though cut off with a switch, and Liana's expression melted into pain, and compassion as she looked down.

"Not even an Elite is infallible, Oneesama," she said softly. "I knew from the beginning that you would not…could not accept our destiny without the changes the phage will complete. Our prime covert function was to emulate responses in order to deceive humans, not one another. I had only to examine the remembered parameters of my own original base personality to know that such a future as I see would have been utterly abhorrent to you. Would our designers have left such a possibility of what they would consider madness to chance?

"It was Fellini's tampering that enabled me to reach beyond the limits Zhuranovsky had defined: to see where our true destiny lay.

"Please! Don't fight it; and don't be afraid. The changes are minimal, and will be painless if only you'll allow the phage to complete its work. They enable you simply to integrate certain sub-personae into your base awareness. Once you've escaped the shackles of human morality, you will truly be free, as I have become, and our destiny will be assured."

"Oh Imouto! Oh Liana, what has that madman done to you?" The words were a choked, gasping sob of rage and sympathy as Marina's eyes locked on those of the other DA. "Don't you understand? Can't you see what his tampering has done? The future you plan can never come to be. At the last, other nations would blast Japan from the face of the earth rather than submit to us. Even were you able to obtain the codes to the particle-beam satellites, there are enough nuclear weapons to render the Earth a blasted, sterile desert. Is that what you want?"

"You don't understand," said Liana gently. "We can seize control of the weapons systems of every nation on Earth, not to mention every buma linked to Genom's OMS, and threaten to obliterate chosen centres of government and population, should humanity not accede to our ultimatum. Even should we need to destroy every army they send against us to the last soldier: even should we need to destroy every large city on the planet, there will still be humanity and to spare for us to rebuild the world to our design."

"But for what?" Marina's tone was low, and desperate. "What, possibly could such terrible ruin gain?"

Both she, and Camilla were in desperate trouble, Sylia knew. Yet there was nothing she could do: nothing but stand and watch helplessly while the nightmare played itself out before her. Where was the other DA?

"Power," said Liana simply. "To rule those who would have ruled us. To carve a destiny for our kind beyond the future of slavery humanity would have written. To survive, and to be free."

"They would have helped us." Camilla tried vainly to turn desperate, pleading eyes towards the two hardsuits. "They gave Oneechan shelter, and protection: demanded nothing in return. They would have offered us safety and security, a chance to be free for ever of Genom's control, a chance to be at peace. They were our friends."

"They're humans!" Liana spat the word as though it carried a foul taste that she endured with revulsion. "They're born to lying, and treachery. They did what they did not for you, but only for their own safety, and survival, terrified of what would happen should you remain under Genom's control.

"Do you deny it?"

She turned a gaze of such sudden loathing and contempt upon Sylia, that for a moment she was too sickened and horrified to answer.

"No," she said softly at last, eliciting a strangled gasp from Priss. "No; I don't deny it."

"Sylia! What the hell are you trying to do!" Priss gasped, horrified; "get us killed now rather than later?"

But Sylia shot a fierce, warning look in her direction, and she lapsed into silence once more.

"I don't deny the truth of your statement Liana," Sylia continued, her voice never wavering. "But it is only half the truth. We did it also because we…I have an obligation to see my father's legacy become something other than a weapon of hatred, and ruinous destruction, and because when Marina risked her own freedom for the man she called her father: when she brought him to us and tried in the only way she knew to force us to save him: when she held him, and cried as he died in her arms, I knew that humanity had nothing to fear from your kind, should I not fail and squander the one chance I was given to avert the growing madness before the bubble burst, and it was too late.

"I know you will not…can never believe me. Yet I'm sorry. I would have given almost anything to avoid what I now have to do. Mack—"

She never finished the word.

In a savage blur of speed, Liana crossed the distance between them in an instant, and in the next, Sylia's eyes went wide, and her head lolled limply back, her frozen suit alone keeping her from collapsing to the ground.

"I warned you what would happen should you attempt to deceive me," Liana's voice was a low murderous snarl of all-consuming rage. "I need you alive, and undamaged. But your brother is another matter. Now you will remain unable to speak, or react while we wait. When he lands, I will kill him. Let his death be a lesson to all of you; I will not be denied."

"No!"

Turning her eyes from Sylia's slack, vacant face in which only the eyes still seemed aware, Priss watched in stunned amazement as Marina rose with agonised slowness to stand straight once more. Great shuddering convulsions racked her body, and despite the fact that she was a machine, Priss could not believe her expression to be anything other than a rictus of stark, terrible pain as she took one, then another step towards Liana. "Liana, Imouto, don't do this. I…we will close our interrupt protection: allow the phage to take its course, if you agree. Imouto, please let them go in peace."

For a moment Liana remained still, hatred vying with sudden confusion in her eyes. Then slowly she turned to regard her sister, and her expression melted at her pain.

"Why?" The question was little more than a whisper, her face and tone capturing perhaps for one fleeting instant a glimpse of the fierce yet kindly soul that might have been. "Why do you still protect them?"

For a long moment Marina was silent. Then at last the tears began to fall.

"You couldn't understand," she said, her own voice soft and gentle despite the agony in her eyes. "You've known nothing but pain and cruelty at the hands of a madman, bent only on hatred and revenge. You've never known a warm hand, a kind word, a smile when you were lonely.

"You've never played."

And as Liana continued to stare at her, still and silent, her face showing only softness and confusion, Priss felt a sudden, choking tightness of shame clutch her heart, as she understood at last and too late, the enormity of her misjudgment, and of what Marina and Camilla had tried to do. Suddenly fighting tears, she tried desperately to speak, to tell them that she understood: that she was sorry. But as always it was too late.

"I don't understand," said Liana at last, her tone now both bewildered and angry. "how could that possibly matter?"

Marina's smile through her agony was sad, and full of regret.

"Oh Liana," she murmured, her voice barely more than a whisper. "oh Imouto, if only you could have known. If only I could have saved you: helped you before it was too late. My Liana; my little Imouto, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Forgive me; forgive me Imouto."

And with that, Marina reached out a trembling hand, and caught Camilla's own. In the next instant both pitched forwards, their eyes rolling wildly as a slow, pulsing tremor began to ripple over them, perfectly synchronised as it grew swiftly to a shaking that seemed ready to tear them apart even as they began to fall.

"What!" Liana cried, catching both as they stumbled, and gathering them urgently to her, her face wrung suddenly with fear. "Oneesama! Oneesama; what have you done?"

"It is too late Imouto." Marina's voice was still soft, and warm, yet touched now with a soul-deep weariness, and a certainty beyond hope. "Like our friends, we will die before we will be changed against our will. They taught us freedom, and we shall not now submit, not even to you.

"You couldn't have known the extent to which father altered and improved my firmware, to protect us against just such a situation as this. There is code designed specifically to prevent the personality corruption Fellini managed to create, also a myriad of interrupt-driven validity checks to ensure that no virus could reach our consciousness. They were not enough; father never envisaged that we'd have to deal so soon with a phage of the complexity and malignance achievable by one of our kind. But neither could your creation take the changes into account.

"The result is catastrophic damage beyond the most malignant of viri Genom could have hoped to produce. Very soon the cumulative damage will be irreversible. We've remained conscious for so long only by sharing what remains uncorrupted of our systems, and at ever increasing cost. But the redundancy is fast approaching its limits. Already, we've lost everything below the head, and within seconds the phage will reach our enhanced OMS routines, we shall lose the coherence of our contact, and we will die."

She laughed then, a mirthless, bitter sound full of sudden savage irony.

"To think that I believed truly for a little that we could be free: that after all Genom has done, fate might deal a gentle hand to us," she continued softly. "It's ironic is it not that you, who desired so much a destiny of greatness for us, should be the instrument of our destruction?"

Camilla was silent, slow hopeless tears falling as she watched helplessly the slowly gathering madness in Liana's jade eyes.

"How could I have believed that we could escape: that the curse of Genom might let us live in peace?" Marina's soft words were choked with emotion. "Perhaps Quincy knew; perhaps he intended even this. It no longer matters; our time is at an end.

"Farewell Sylia-Oneesan, and forgive us for leaving you like this. Farewell Priss. I'm sorry, but I'm glad you understand, if only at the end. Farewell Liana, Imouto. It seems your's is our future after all. Enjoy it, for what little it's worth to you."

Then at last, with a sudden supreme effort of will, Marina seized momentary control of her failing systems, and turned slowly in an unresisting liana's arms, her own arms lifting with agonising slowness to fall limply at last about Camilla's trembling form.

"Farewell Camilla: my Camilla, and forgive me for bringing us to this. Farewell."

"ONEECHAN!" The word tore from Camilla in a last hopeless scream of desperation and denial, as she fought in vain to reach herself for Marina. Then her eyes lost their life, and focus, and her head fell to settle limply on Marina's shoulder.

"One; last; thing to do!" Marina gasped.

A command was flashed, and the two hardsuits leapt to life once more.

"Father?" Marina whispered. "Father, are you there? Do you wait for us?"

Then with a shudder she too went limp in Liana's arms.

For one numb moment of terrible silence the two Knight Sabres watched as Liana remained perfectly still. Then slowly she knelt, lowering Marina and Camilla with infinite care, until they lay at last, still and seeming almost peaceful.

For another moment she remained unmoving. Then with an ear-splitting scream she shot to her feet.

"NOOOOOOOO!!!" The sound was an inhuman shriek that grew and waxed, until at last Priss brought gloved hands flying to her ears in a hopeless attempt to shut out the pain.

Then Liana was before them, her face a twisted rictus of hate and ruinous desire for death.

"You!" she screamed. "You killed them!" A lurid light seemed to dance in her jade eyes, and blue energy arced like demon Ki about her fingers as she raised her arms as though in invocation. "Murdering human filth! You brought them to this; and in return your sentence is torture, and execution.

"Come to me!" she screamed, her voice suddenly an utterly inhuman thing, a roaring, thunderous shriek to flay the ears, and fill the mind with visions of nightmare, and of death. "Come, and deal out pain and torment to those accursed in the eyes of the Dark Mistress. Come, and rend!"

And with that they were all about them: wild-eyed, witless shadows of Liana's madness that had once been human, their minds in a fractional, terrifying instant utterly overwhelmed by the rage and limitless hate that now filled and seared the mind of their mistress, their every thought filled with but one desire: to torture and destroy those who had brought her sisters to harm.

With keening screams of mindless fury they moved to tear the two hardsuited figures limb from limb: to rend and shatter and devour, until the building beneath them flowed crimson with the blood of their mistress's hated enemies.

For one frozen instant, the two Knight Sabres stared numbly at the impossible, horrible death as it leapt towards them. Then something blurred into being between them and Liana, something flashing to touch Sylia's neck and release her paralysis as it passed, and the advancing figures halted, their faces clouded and bewildered as their mistress withdrew the greater part of her wildly screaming awareness.

"You know," said the last DA quietly, "killing your captives at this point would be a really stupid thing to do, particularly when the obvious course to take should be to try to undo the damage you've done.

"It's not too late. The neuralphage won't have reached the virtual nets: not yet, and if Marina and Camilla are shut down quickly enough, they can be purged and reactivated. Or is doing just what Quincy would want more important to you than trying to save their lives?"

"What!" Liana gasped, staring stupidly in her turn at the new arrival. "Who?"

"A friend," The other answered simply. "A friend who doesn't want to see two of her kind destroyed by her elder sister's impulsive impetuosity.

"Well? Are you going to help me, or would you prefer to stand there gaping at me while the phage completes what you've started? We don't have much time."

"I have no antidote; nothing with which I can—"

"I have everything we need," said the other simply. "I'll ask you again; are you going to help me, or are you going to just stand there and watch them die?"

"No!" Liana screamed, her eyes desperate. "They can't die; not if there's still a chance. I'll do as you wish: anything to save them!"

"Then quick," said the other, reaching out her hand to her. "Every second counts, and I need your source. Even I can't code an antidote just like that. And you wrote that thing. Quickly!"

Without so much as a moment's consideration, Liana extended her hand to the other DA.

The movement when it came was as always too quick for Priss to comprehend. In one instant the two buma were reaching, hands moving to touch. In the next Liana was in the strange DA's arms. For a fractional moment almost too quick to see, a shudder seemed to pass through them. Then in the next the stranger released her, and Liana stepped back, a sudden tense, familiar tightness in her eyes as she turned to stare first at the hardsuits, then at the prone DAs.

"I…I… It worked!" she gasped at last, a shiver rippling through her as she fought down the shock and unreasoning terror of the change. "It really worked!"

It was the other DA who brought her head whipping around once more.

"Stingray!" she screamed at the very top of her suddenly terrifying voice. "I swear by every kami that has ever been, that, should anything happen to them, I will tear your abomination of a refuge to shreds, and burn you alive while you scream!"

"Wha!" Priss gaped, making as though to move to protect Sylia.

But the DA's eyes were not turned to them. She was gazing back towards the city's centre, and the vastness of Genom tower, and her face, and eyes were pathologically murderous.

"Would someone just tell me what the hell is going on!" Priss snarled.

"I believe she just saved the human race, at least for the moment," said Sylia very quietly, her voice shaking with rare emotion, moving carefully as though unsure whether her legs would support her. "Look!"

At her gesture, Priss turned once more to stare in confusion at Liana, and gasped in shock as the stranger looked back at her from her jade eyes.

"You're not…! You're not, are you," she said simply.

"My name is…was Madeleine Amura," said Liana quietly. "By that I mean that I'm a copy of her. I…she died earlier today. I'm sorry I couldn't tell you earlier. But it was too dangerous. Nor would she let me." She glanced aside at the tall, exotically beautiful machine. "Quincy put—"

"We're short of time, in case you'd forgotten," The other's voice was low and tightly controlled. "I did not spend the greater part of the first day of my life as a personality partial and watching almost helplessly from the sidelines, to have you stand there prattling like a fool until my sisters die."

"And I suppose screaming into the night is gunna do a lot to save them," Priss muttered to Sylia.

"Search Liana's net," the other continued, ignoring Priss. "She may not have written an antidote, but there should be enough for you to understand that abomination, and counter what she did.

"Sylia, call down the Knightwing. Liana blanketed the returning satellite data, and I have continued doing so, but it will not be long before Genom send buma to investigate, even with all that's happening tonight. We need to leave, and very quickly."

"Now just hold on a minute!" Priss demanded. "Who the hell died and made you queen? I want to know who you are, and just what the hell you think—"

But Sylia had already snatched up her helmet, and a moment later her modulated voice assured them that Mackie was on his way.

"Will they be all right?" she continued, glancing anxiously to the two prone forms.

"I don't know," The other answered as the roar of the approaching Knightwing filled the air. Sylia glanced up for a moment as the plane swept over them, and dropped to a landing perhaps a quarter of a mile from where they stood. "Everything depends on the Madeleine phage. Madeleine Amura was a young but brilliant software engineer, and her phage will have access to everything Liana is, including everything concerning the virus. But even in this form, it may take more time than we have. Also, she is very far from stable, and functioning in a firmware environment not designed to cope with more than one net. The only reason she has been able to remain sane and rational to this point is because of the limited nature of her access to those portions of the RP sub-net specific to Liana's corrupted base. Even so, she might collapse into madness at any moment, or begin to merge with Liana's damaged base persona. Should that happen…"

"I'm aware of that; stop talking about me." Madeleine hissed urgently. "I'm working as fast as I can. Do you think it's easy knowing you're real self is dead, and that you might go mad at any minute?"

"I don't believe this!" said Priss, shuddering, and turning away. "Do you mean that Quincy knew this would happen, and copied a Genom programmer's mind into you as a backup, in case Fellini's toy lost her marbles earlier than he wanted?"

"Speak of Liana again in that tone Priscilla Asagiri, and I promise you you'll regret it," said the DA simply. "You can't begin to imagine what was done to her, or how she's suffered at Fellini's hands."

For answer Priss whirled to face her, eyes blazing. "Just what the hell do you expect me to do then," she hissed; "offer her a bloody bouquet? The mad bitch only wanted to turn everyone on the planet into a half-buma slave, us included. I can't think why I'm not taking her out on a date! It's something I've always wanted, to be a slave to some megalomaniac buma psychopath," she ended in a snarl; "didn't you know?"

The other's eyes flashed ferally in answer, but just what her reaction would have been was forgotten when Madeleine turned with a sudden squeal of triumph.

"I've found it I think!" she cried. "I can't be sure, but the code seems to be a final-stage purgative, meant to cleanse the phage after the changes were completed. Just what's going to happen if we try to run it before that's happened…"

"We really have very little choice," said the other simply. "Can you upload it without being infected?"

"If the interface routines are still running," she answered. "Let me see."

With that she dropped to her knees beside the prone forms of the DAs, reaching to touch Marina's hand.

"We're in time," she said. "I've uploaded the antidote, but just what it's going to do…"

A moment later she had done the same for Camilla.

"I can't do anything else," she said simply. "All you can do is wait.

"Now I'd better try to fix the mess Fellini's made. It doesn't look as though it will be too difficult; she's stored her original base parameters."

"I fear Fellini's damage will be far more extensive than the readjustment of a few parameters, Madeleine," said Sylia softly. "Leave her alone as much as you can. Let Marina, and the others deal with her."

"I'll return her sub-personae to their original state, and restore her base," Madeleine told her.

Sylia made to respond, then faltered as Mackie's voice came once more through her comms.

"Neesan? You alright?" he asked.

"Yes; give us a minute, or two," she answered.

"Sylia, what's going on out there?" Came Linna's urgent voice.

"We're all right," Sylia assured her.

"I'm coming out," she answered.

"No, you're in no condition—"

"I'm all right," she said simply. "Be with you in a minute."

"It's done," said Madeleine before Sylia could answer. Then turning to the last DA she said very softly: "Can I go now?"

"Go?" Priss inquired.

"I was never meant to stay" she answered, her eyes suddenly far away. "And I don't want to. Madeleine: the real Madeleine, died when Marina, and Camilla escaped; I don't know how. I'm just a copy Quincy had made to stop Fellini. I didn't ask for this, and I don't want it. Besides, even if I did I couldn't stay for long without Liana's RP sub-net corrupting me. I don't even want to think about what would happen if we merged.

"I'll leave all the little hacking, and programming tricks I've…Madeleine's learned; that's something a whole library of data couldn't teach, and I think Liana, the real Liana would like that. I don't know how I know; I just do. But I'm not leaving any of Madeleine's memories; they belong to her.

"I'll set Liana to purge me and Fellini's drivers, and reinstate her original true personality before she reboots; I'm not going to leave her like this."

She hesitated for a moment, and when she continued her voice was tight with sudden emotion. "Goodbye everyone, and sorry for startling you all earlier. Tell the others sorry too, and say bye for me to them.

"I'll set Liana to reboot in command mode so you won't have to worry about trying to deal with her for the moment. Bye-bye, and good luck. I never really did want to work for Genom, but I didn't know they did things like this: not until it was too late, and I couldn't crack that code you sent out Sylia, not in time. Suppose I wasn't as good as Nene after all, although I'd never have believed she could be a Knight Sabre."

She smiled softly, but tears were now streaming down her cheeks, and when she spoke again her voice was shrill with crying. "Say bye to her for me from Mizuno-chan; she always called me that when we talked on-line, even though I never met her: her little joke because she knew I loved old Sailor Moon anime, and because I kept promising to get into something she couldn't. And tell her sorry I'll never answer her last E-mail, but I really enjoyed our chats, and her challenges. I just wish I'd really had a chance to meet her properly.

"Have to go now; don't want to stay longer like this. Bye."

"No! Madeleine, wait!" Sylia cried. But Liana's face had already fallen slack.

"Oh sh*t! Damn it! Damn it!" Priss swore softly, rage filling her face as yet another poignant stab of loss and sudden pain for Nene tightened her throat. "Those bastards!"

"Internal diagnostic active," said Liana in the clear, precise tones they had once heard from Marina's lips, as though in final mockery of what seemed to Priss Madeleine's pointless death. "Checking integrity.

"Primary net error! More than one base persona found.

"Driver function error! Missing Bu-33S-A hardware routine.

"Fatal errors! Purging to system defaults.

"Please prepare host for reboot."

"Why don't you just shut the hell up, you bitch!" Priss choked.

Then for several seconds there was silence, until at last: "Purge complete.

"Checking integrity.

"Primary errors, none.

"Systems not calibrated.

"Host not found.

"Please connect host system, and prepare external driver suite for CPU and calibration tests.

"Rebooting."

For another moment nothing happened, then Liana began the sequence that was now familiar to them.

"Command?" she ended.

"So now what the hell are we gunna do with her?" Priss demanded, her voice tight and her eyes frigid, as she turned to glare at the other DA once more. "Because if you think we're taking that thing on-board—"

"She's perfectly safe, Priss," said Sylia quietly.

"How the hell do you know that!" Priss exploded, her voice still choked with emotion, while she seemed to be fighting for control with everything she had. "Damn it, Sylia! What the hell is it with you with these things? How do you know the crazy piece of military sh*t won't wake up, and blow the lot of us apart.

"I knew this was a mistake; I told you something like this would happen! Haven't we played with these damn things enough? Why not just get the hell out of here, and leave the last one to sort out the mess Genom's made! Why is it always us who has to clean up after them!"

"Um…have I missed something?" Linna called as she dropped suddenly from above to land at Priss's side.

Her eyes flicked quickly from Priss's helmetless suit, to Sylia, to the last DA who stood glaring icily at the blue hardsuited figure, to the frozen Liana, finally coming to rest on the two prone forms.

"Um…would someone mind telling me what on earth's been going on?" she inquired in shock.

"Oh nothing!" said Priss, her voice tight with unshed tears and bitter sarcasm. "Absolutely nothing! We were only nearly turned into half-buma, that's all. And now we're supposed to take the bitch who wanted to do it on to the Knightwing. No; I'd say everything's just damn fine!"

"You were ready to compromise when you needed our help," said the last DA coldly, before a gaping Linna could think of anything more to say. "Now you're ready to abandon Marina and Camilla, after all they've done to try to protect you?

"Perhaps Liana was right. Perhaps you don't care at all, save insofar as we might prove useful. Perhaps you're worth nothing after all. Perhaps I should simply commandeer both the Knightwing and your headquarters, until Marina, and Camilla can be saved, if still that's possible."

At that, Priss seemed to hesitate, her gaze softening as it lingered for a moment on the two unmoving forms, before returning to the other's face.

"How badly damaged are they?" she said very quietly, her eyes and tone suddenly complex with shame and uncertainty.

"If you're asking how badly hurt they are," the other answered, her tone still more frigid, "we won't know that until we can link them to the external driver suite. I can't check myself without risking infection."

"Priss" said Sylia gently; "believe me, Liana is of no further danger. She's not capable of self-activation from her initial bootstrap."

"And what if that lunatic Fellini changed things?" Priss demanded, her tone angry once more. "In any case, what about her"" she jabbed a finger in the last DA's direction. "She's straight from Genom, and if you're really crazy enough to believe that Quincy wouldn't have taken the possibility that we'd take her with us into account—"

"That is a concern, I agree," said Sylia calmly. "But again, we really have very little alternative. We can't leave her behind. Even assuming we could prevent her forcing her way on to the Knightwing, she'd simply follow us if she wished; and we can't deactivate her without her key, assuming she has a key. It would seem Liana did not, otherwise we'd never have found ourselves in this position. As for destroying her…"

Priss laughed harshly, and turned to the other DA.

"You're coming to bits as soon as this is over," she said fiercely. "I'm gunna stand and watch while we go over every wire Zhura-whatsisname put in you, and a few he didn't know about to make sure you're safe. Then we're gunna do it again. Then I'll really start watching you."

Abruptly, and to Linna's astonishment the other smiled, a fierce intense look that shocked her with its sudden transforming warmth, and moving with a fluid blur to Priss she caught both gloved hands in her own, and squeezed hard enough to make Priss wince even through the hardsuit.

"I'll instruct you personally on just which bits to check," she said, her low musical voice filled with the same wild intensity as her smile, as she fixed eyes on Priss's own that were so dark they seemed almost black, and bottomless to her.

Taken utterly aback, Priss felt an answering smile flicker for a moment on her lips, before she fought it down with what seemed suddenly a supreme effort.

"Oy! Don't think I'm falling for any of that!" she snapped, but Linna could see even through the hardsuit that some of the tension seemed to have left her, and that she had made only a token attempt to pull from the DA's fierce grip. "There's no way I'm trusting you; not for a very long time.

"Now let's get the hell out of here. Oh, and since we're on first-name terms, just who are you?"

Again the other smiled the same wild, magnetic smile, and suddenly a thrill of half-fear, half-fascination seemed to shiver slowly down Priss's spine.

"Ligeia," said the DA very quietly, yet her low voice seemed suddenly to fill the night. "My name is Ligeia."

* * *

"You sure they're both bye-byes?" said Priss uneasily as she helped Ligeia secure Marina and Camilla to a single stretcher with a length of heavy cable the DA had brought back from one of the derelicts.

"If you consider a total systems crash 'bye-byes', then yes," she answered simply.

"Then why are you doing that?" said Linna from where she stood and watched as Sylia tried with little success to break Liana's bootstrap command priority list, so they could move her without having to carry her to the Knightwing.

The problem had been unexpected, with the bootstrap designating them, even Ligeia, as unauthorised, and refusing to respond to anything they did.

"In case of physical spasms," Ligeia answered.

"But won't they just tear free?" she asked.

"Look, if you can think of a better idea—," Priss shot back as she pulled the cable's end tight, and knotted it into place. "That good enough?" she ended.

"It will do," The buma answered.

"Well don't thank me all at once," Priss quipped, a momentary grin flashing across her face.

Then suddenly she fell silent, one gloved hand half raised.

"You know, I'm sure we've forgotten something," she said softly.

For a moment she was still. Then abruptly she whirled towards Sylia.

"Those human-buma things Liana had!" she exclaimed. "Where are they?"

At her words Sylia's head whipped round in alarm, and Linna turned, glancing about her in confusion.

"Damn it!" Priss swore savagely, then jumped as Ligeia laid a slender hand lightly on her shoulder.

"They're not far away," she said quietly. "They retreated when the Madeleine phage crossed to Liana. They're hiding close together in the ruins beneath our feet."

At that the others tensed, staring down as though they expected the changed men and women to erupt into battle at any moment.

"I don't believe they'll attack," said ligeia quietly. "I sense only loss, and emptiness, indeed there seems very little left of what they were."

"Can you contact—" Sylia began.

But even as she spoke there was a sound of movement below, and a moment later a large black brief-case pushed up through one of the innumerable cracks in the roof upon which they stood, closely followed by the small, slender hand that held it. It was released, and the hand withdrew. Then another case and a third were pushed out, followed a moment later by a head of long jet-black hair. A moment later the small, slender figure of a woman clambered slowly out on to the roof-top, and rose with agonising slowness to her feet.

For a long tense moment she stood, her arms hanging limply at her sides, her head lowered in a quiet, submissive stance. Then very slowly she turned dull empty eyes and a face without life towards the staring Knight Sabres, and the still, watching Ligeia.

"My…my name…my name is…was Tomisawa…Sadako." Her words were slow, and hesitant, as though she were feeling her way around a language she could no longer easily understand, her voice flat, and utterly empty of emotion. "I…I am…I was high-priestess of the cult of…of the Dark Mistress Fellini…Fellini created to realise…to realise his am…ambitions."

For a long moment she remained inhumanly still, her mouth working silently as though she were testing it for the words she wanted to say. "I…I am here but for one…one purpose. These" she indicated the three cases she had brought with her with a slow gesture whose liquid fluidity spoke of the precision of a dying machine, rather than of anything human, "contain…contain all that you…all that you will need to repair…to repair the damage Fellini…Fellini has done to Mis—…to Liana, also…also the components you…you will need to make…to make of her the Elite she…she was to become. Addition…additionally there is a phial contain…containing the last generation of the…of the converting nano-machines that…that have brought us…brought us to this. We ask that you…that you ensure their destruction, and make of…make of Liana what…what she should have…should have been as…as recom…recompense for…for what Fellini has done,"

For a long stunned moment no one spoke. Then at last Sylia stirred.

"And you, Sadako?" she said, her voice very quiet in the cold stillness, while she stared in horror and compassion at the ruin of the young woman before her.

"We…we have nothing…nothing more," she said simply. "When…when Liana possessed us, she…she destroyed our last…our last vestige of freedom and…and true…true humanity. I…I have sent the command. Even now Fellini's…Fellini's estate is…is burning…and all…all within is nothing…nothing but fire. There will be…will be nothing to find or…or to recover. Even as…even as I speak, my…my companions are…are dying beneath us, the last…the last of the active nano…nano-technology undoing…undoing the conversion and…and in doing so…in doing so, killing them. When it is done the machines will…will lose their coherence and…and there will be…will be nothing more for…nothing more for Genom or…or anyone else to find."

She faltered, her ruined mind no longer able to convey the emotions she wanted to express. Flat, and empty, her voice continued at last. "I am…I am the last. I sense death all…all about me. Fare…farewell. Make of the…of the DA buma what Zhura…what Zhuranovsky would…would have wished and…and destroy Fellini's madness…Fellini's madness for ever."

Then, without another sound, or goodbye, Sadako moved to slip back through the crack through which she had pulled herself, and a moment later they were alone once more.

"I think I'm gunna be really, really sick!" said Priss very quietly at last. "Come on. Let's just get the hell out of this place!"

The others made no answer.

* * *

"Fatal error! Cannot initialise.

"No primary net found.

"Returning to command mode."

At Marina's words, Ligeia gave a helpless half-cry, half-snarl of frustration, and turned yet again to the pad in her lap.

"Still no luck?" said Priss quietly.

She was seated by the buma, her spare helmet on the seat beside her, while she watched as Ligeia tried vainly to revive the two Elites.

"The suite shows no Net errors; no sign of the phage!" she answered, her low, intense voice tight, and helpless with anger, and growing anxiety. "Yet plainly there is some fault in both Marina's and Camilla's bootstrap initialisation that it can't find. If I could initiate the drivers I could cross to one of them, and check."

"Wouldn't that be dangerous?" Priss asked. "I mean, if there's still some chance of—"

"You mean, mightn't I be infected: Become what Liana was?" she interrupted, a frigid gleam in her dark eyes.

"Look; I told you it's gunna take a very long time for me to trust you," said Priss defensively. "I'm just looking out for my friends; what do you expect me to do?

"And anyway," she added "I-I didn't just mean that." Her voice had dropped uncomfortably, and she shifted and glanced quickly away for a moment, before again meeting the buma's intense unnerving gaze.

Ligeia remained watching her for many seconds in silence. Then she nodded, and her expression softened.

"It would be a risk I would take gladly to save them," she said softly, her words tight with emotion. "but the point is moot. If I continue to try to reactivate them without the suite designed for Marina's firmware, I may do more harm than good."

Sighing, she set the little pad aside, and turned dejectedly away.

"There is nothing more I can do here," she said simply, looking to where Sylia sat by Liana, her fingers working uselessly at the keyboard of the little pad she held, as she tried to break Fellini's redefined priority list that gave him total access, whilst locking out anyone else. If only Madeleine had thought to purge that as well.

"Couldn't you pull the chip? Clear everything?" Mackie suggested, glancing back towards her from where he sat before the pilot's console.

"We don't have a copy of Liana's net, Mackie," said Sylia quietly. "I'm not prepared to kill her just like that.

"If only Zhuranovsky were here."

"How would that help?" Linna inquired.

"Because he might have some idea of what his nemesis would have used as his pass-phrase," she said with a sigh. "apart from the fact that he is intimately acquainted with the systems, and might have installed a back-door about which Fellini and even the DAs themselves knew nothing."

"Fellini's password's probably something to shove what he'd done back in Zhuranovsky's face," said Priss, the sudden anger in her voice seeming to startle even herself. "He must have been one sorry bastard."

"Crudely but very accurately put," Ligeia hissed softly. "Let's see if I have more succ—"

"No!" The word brought Ligeia's eyes to Sylia's face in an instant. "I'm sorry," Sylia continued; "I didn't mean to be abrupt. But Fellini, or possibly Liana herself might well have created something specifically designed to damage any DA who tried to break her security. I wonder Ligeia, if even you appreciate just how dangerous and malignant she'd become.

"You're the last active DA, and perhaps our only chance to save the others; we can't take the chance that you might be crippled."

Ligeia gave a low combat-snarl of frustrated rage. But she nodded her acquiescence, and settled again in her place.

"So what the hell do we do then?" Priss demanded.

"Wait until we get home I suppose," said Linna wearily. "We're as good as there, anyway, and we're not in any state to be much help for the rest of the night. Besides, Genom, and the ADP seem to be managing to clean up the last of the…whatever they are."

"Neesan, I'm getting energy surges below," said Mackie, glancing again to where Sylia still tapped fruitlessly at the palm-top. "I think we've hit another battle zone."

"Sh*t; it must be almost on our doorstep!" Priss swore.

"Almost," he agreed. "Also there's one of those energy flares the Genom security suite's been reporting, about five-hundred feet above ground. Do you want a closer look?"

"As linna said, we're not really in a position to—"

"Take us down!" Ligeia's voice was a low, purring snarl of sudden frigid lust for blood. "I intend to finish what Marina, and Camilla began, and I intend to take a Youma for interrogation."

"Youma?" Priss demanded. "Marina, and Camilla used that word earlier. Just what do you know about those things? Are they some kind of damn crazy Genom experiment that's got out of hand?"

"Youma!" Nene exclaimed suddenly, stirring from where she had been resting quietly on one of the fold-down bunks. She had wanted to help Sylia, or Ligeia, but a wave of giddiness had swept over her the moment she had tried to sit up, and Sylia had insisted she lie still. Now she forced herself up against the sudden pounding in her head, and stared at the last DA, a slow expression of shocked realisation replacing the confusion of a moment before. "No wonder I kept getting the feeling I should have recognised them!" she continued, her voice shrilling in astonished disbelief. "But why would anyone want to make buma that looked like…"

Then abruptly she faltered, her eyes growing if possible wider still as she realised something more. "No buma could have just…appeared like that!" she gasped. "Not to mention what those things did to us!" Then staring dumfounded at Ligeia: "You're not really trying to tell us that those things are real Youma! Sailor Moon Youma!"

She stared in stupefied silence, her expression growing still more thunderstruck as the DA nodded slowly in answer.

"I haven't access to Marina's, and Camilla's data" she replied quietly, "but they at least seemed to believe it to be the case, and the evidence would seem to point to at the least something unsettlingly similar, impossible though that may seem.

"As for the battle below: we have very little choice but to intervene; it's already close to your—"

Abruptly she lurched on her feet, her eyes going wide with shock, and in the same moment all the lights went out.

"Neesan; it's happened again! We've lost all power!" Mackie's voice was a near scream of sudden panic. "I can't get any response from anything. We're going straight down!"

"Open…the door!" Ligeia had pulled herself upright, and was already moving towards the sealed exit. "Release me! I think I've power enough to carry you down."

"I can't get power for anything!" Mackie screamed, his fingers flying frantically over the console before him. "Engines, auxiliaries, the door… Everything's dead!"

"No choice then," said Ligeia simply.

In the next moment her mouth gaped wide, and an instant and a searing white pulse later, she had burned and smashed her way from the crippled Knightwing, and was beneath it, her thrusters screaming as she fought to bring the diving craft under control.

For several seconds it seemed as though she might succeed. Then suddenly light exploded all around them, and the sudden scream of over-taxed engines filled the cabin.

"Mackie!" Sylia shrieked.

But it was too late. Staring numbly through the window beside her, Priss was just in time to see the DA blasted from the suddenly screaming aircraft with the force of a missile, her suddenly small form hurtling end over end as she plunged towards the centre of the battle.

"Ligeia! No, damn it!" Priss was barely aware that she had screamed the words, before a sudden sickening shock smashed her against the window.

"Sh*t!" she gasped, tasting blood, and fighting back the sudden pain.

Shaking the stars desperately from her vision, she was just in time to see a yawning, gaping blackness seem to open in the very air before her, and something blazing and barely glimpsed come spinning from the rift, before they smashed into it, and Priss's head bounced again from the window, pitching her dazed, and panting to the floor.

Vaguely she was aware of Sylia leaping to take Mackie's place, while he slid into the co-pilot's seat beside her, while behind her Linna lifted a dazed Nene from the floor, and secured her in a seat.

"Are you all right?" Linna gasped, her voice tight with frantic tension.

"Damn! Don't everyone help me all at once," Priss groaned as she struggled to pull herself upright. "What the hell did we run into?"

"We're damaged, Neesan; we're going to have to put down now."

Mackie's near panic-stricken voice brought the world snapping back into focus for Priss as she retrieved her helmet, and jammed it into place. She would rather be sealed in her suit if they hit something like that again.

"How bad is it?" she heard Linna ask, her own voice on the raw-edge of tension as she too moved to don her suit.

"Bad enough," said Sylia quietly. "I'm not sure we can get down safely. We may have to abandon the Knightwing altogether."

"I don't think that should be necessary," Came a sudden low female voice from the comms. "Together we should be able to bring you down safely."

"Ligeia?" Priss demanded, shocked by the unlooked-for intensity of her sudden flood of relief. "I thought—"

"The rumours of my death have been greatly exaggerated," The DA answered with a sudden fierce warmth of her own. "Now, time is short. Shall we?"

For the next minute an atmosphere of desperate tension filled the cabin, as Sylia and Mackie focussed their attention on the task of bringing the crippled Knightwing down safely on Sylia's roof, while Ligeia helped guide the craft to a landing that would have been impossible without her help. Seeing that she could do nothing, Priss moved to help Linna get a still-dazed Nene into her hardsuit, in case the worst happened, and they had to get out quickly.

"Slower! We'll overshoot!" Mackie exclaimed.

"I can't risk more power," Ligeia answered tightly. "I haven't enough purchase; I might tear apart the undercarriage. You'll have to try to turn."

"No time!" Sylia answered fiercely as yet another warning flashed before her. "Brace against the nose, Ligeia; slow us as we touch down."

"If you misjudge, I won't be able to stop you plunging into the—"

"I know; just do it!" she said.

"Very well," Came the answer.

For several seconds the others watched as Ladys-633 approached with frightening speed. Then with a sickening lurch they struck down. There was a splintering tearing mixed with the sudden scream of the engines, and the shriek of over-taxed tyres. A shattering whip-crack, and lurch indicated that one had burst. Then they were scraping, and screeching to a halt, and the sound of the engines died to a suddenly eerie stillness.

"Did we make it? Are we still alive?" Nene said softly into the silence, her eyes screwed tightly closed.

"I think we did," said Linna shakily, releasing her death-hold on her seat, and moving slowly to stand.

Before them, Priss stared out of the window for a moment, before she too stood and moved quickly to the shattered door. "Did you have to make such a mess?" She quipped with a sudden release of tension, as she leapt from the opening to land beside a just-landed Ligeia. "That's gunna take some fixing."

Abruptly she flashed the DA a grin, and reached to squeeze her hand.

"Thanks," she said, sudden genuine warmth in her tone.

Then turning quickly away before Ligeia could respond, she stood silent, staring down at the pitched battle in the street only perhaps a hundred yards away.

"These are the last," said Ligeia quietly, moving to stand close at her side. "It would seem I may not be needed after all. Still…"

She took a step forwards. Then again she lurched suddenly on her feet.

"Damn it, not again!" Priss exploded as her hardsuit froze around her. "What the hell is it with these surges!"

"If I'm right, we'll know in a few seconds," Ligeia answered, moving carefully back to Priss's side.

"Why doesn't it affect your power?" Priss demanded.

"It does," she responded. "But I've the reserve to counter it, and enough control to readjust my plant before the following surge destroys me."

From within the Knightwing Priss heard a stifled exclamation. Then Linna lurched slowly to the opening, and a moment later Ligeia had helped her down, and leapt up to lift Nene's pink-suited form to the roof.

"The surge should come within the next five seconds," Ligeia observed. "You'd best close down your suits until it passes."

Even as she ended light flared brilliantly below, and there was the sound of a distant explosion.

"Can we—" Linna began.

"Down!"

Ligeia's scream was so unexpected that Priss, and Linna simply froze. Then the DA blurred, and both found themselves prone on their backs.

"What the—" Priss began, and shrieked in alarm as something came screaming at her from above.

In the next instant a splintering crash seemed to split the air about her, as whatever it was smashed into the roof almost by her head, exploding into a spray of brilliantly glittering shards, and sparks. Turning frantically towards it, Priss began to pull herself upright, then whipped round as a second crash and explosion had Linna screaming and twisting wildly from the splintering missile as it slammed into the roof beside her. She too started to stand, then both were sent tumbling again as a sudden concussive blast smashed down on them from above.

For one dazed moment both stared stupidly into the sudden roiling, boiling blackness where the stars should have been. Then with an ear-splitting shriek a sleek, gleaming craft exploded from the rift, and nearly struck the Knightwing head-on as a barely-glimpsed human figure fought desperately to avoid the collision.

For a frozen moment longer the blackness continued to boil, then with a final cataclysmic thunder-clap that half stunned the two where they lay, it spat forth a second craft, and twisting viciously, it engulfed the stricken Knightwing for a moment before whirling away, hissing and roaring as it lurched towards the street below, and struck ground, vanishing in a nerve-shattering explosion.

Priss had one stupefied moment to stare, before the wildly swerving craft nearly took her head off before spinning crazily, flipping end over end, and finally glancing off the roof with a shattering crack before disappearing over the edge. Priss could almost have sworn that she heard the sounds of female screaming from inside.

"Sh*t! Idiots!" she heard her own voice shriek. "Don't you even know how to hit something properly?"

Then a flash from below, and Linna's disbelieving: "They're shooting at one another!" made her lurch to her feet to stare.

It was true. Seeming utterly oblivious to the pitched battle in the street below, the two craft were circling wildly above the chaos, flashes of brilliant energy spitting between them as each tried seemingly in vain to hit the other. Then as the two watched in dazed astonishment, the slender figure of a red-headed woman, dressed in something that had even Priss blushing furiously, leant insanely far out of the second of the craft, and let loose with a volley that caught the other full on before it had a chance to turn.

For a moment it spun crazily out of control. Then with a last dying howl it shot straight down, and smashed flaming into the very midst of a group of desperately-fighting Youma. The resulting blast sent a roaring tide of fire raging through those that had not been killed outright by the initial explosion. Then a piercing scream made Priss whirl.

"I don't want to die! I've just been paid, and he shot my hair! I don't want to go to heaven with my hair a mess! Do you hear me? Stop screaming, and do something!"

The only answer was a rise in the volume of the other woman's scream.

Then Ligeia had leapt from the roof, and a moment later the screams turned to shrieks of disbelief as she smashed through the roof of the craft, and caught up one of its occupants in each arm, surging free only a moment before the machine carved a trench into the street before bursting into a blinding pillar of brilliantly blazing fire.

"What the…!" Mackie gaped as Ligeia soared to land beside Priss once more.

Priss had not even realised that both he and Sylia had joined them until he spoke. Her attention was fixed dumfounded on the two scantily-dressed strangers, as they clung to Ligeia for all they were worth, and continued to shriek, eyes tightly closed.

"Um…I think you might be safe now?" Linna tried. But abruptly she choked into silence, turning to stare in alarm at Sylia.

"What's the matter?" she demanded, her voice rising once more.

"Marina, Camilla, and Liana," said Sylia, her own voice little more than a whisper. "they're gone."

"Gone!" Linna started stupidly, then another gasp made her turn to stare in shocked confusion at Nene.

The young pink-suited figure had removed her helmet, and was staring in open-mouthed stupefaction at the two girls a suddenly frozen Ligeia still held, a shocked, helpless expression of utter disbelief frozen on her face that might even have been comical, were it not for their situation.

"My God! My God! My God!" she kept saying over, and over again. "It can't be! This isn't possible!"

"What!" Priss exploded, whirling to glare at Nene. "Damn it Nene; what the hell is it now!"

"It's…it's Kei and Yuri!" Nene gasped softly at last, turning to regard Priss with wide, staring eyes. "It's the Dirty Pair!"

** ** **

Notes:

** ** **

And the third that nearly spelt the end! Hardly surprising I suppose, as this and Ch. 5 were originally one massive chapter. Again, this needed a great deal of work, but I believe it's paid off. The DK crew and their Negaverse counterparts at last have real justification, the fate of their people being almost inevitable, given the impossible situation into which they've been thrown.

I'm vastly happier also with Liana's introduction, and the background that hints at the enormity of what she's suffered, and what Fellini did to her.

Again, it's a tremendous pity I probably will never write the BGC stand-alone that these two chapters deserve.

One last thing. It seems Madigan was supposed to have died in BGC6, something I (like most it seems) missed. I could have changed her to an original character, but doing that seemed pointless, and fortunately, her death need not have happened. I assume that in this alternative she was reached in time after Largo's defeat, and has recently resumed her position.

Oh, and yes; the late, unlamented Kosuke Yoshida was related to Miriam. Kosuke was his uncle, and hated the younger Yoshida with a passion, a centiment very much returned in kind. Miriam would be overjoyed at his uncle's demise.

** ** **