The glass ceiling exploded inward with a deafening crash, raining down razor-edged splinters on the wooden floor below. A torrent of dry, baked air roared in through the open roof, tossing paper and glass fragments and knocking over the stacks of boxes, scorching the wooden rafters a charred black. Mai looked up, face into the scalding hurricane, though it could do her no harm. Overhead hung a bulbous shape, like a deformed, tailless hammerhead shark, two giant egg-shaped pods on the stumps of severed fins and similar, smaller objects on the sides of its iconic head. Engines, downward-pitched, throwing out so much pressure that Mai felt her feet slipping on the wooden floor from a good ten or fifteen metres away. "What the fuck is that thing," yelled Natsuki, but it was lost in the howl of the jets. The flat rear wall of the craft hinged up and out, revealing a series of metal rails built onto the smooth black inner surface. A small device like an overhead winch truck slid out along one rail and stopped, a thick black cable trailing loosely back into the interior of the aircraft. Out jumped a thickly armoured figure in a black combat suit. First came a pair of knee-length heavy-duty black boots that hit the wooden floor with a resounding thud. The figure itself from the calves up was covered in thick padding, giving a slightly overweight appearance, panels of material wrapped around the body in sections like foam cladding round a network of pipes, all in the same dark matte grey. Around its waist was a sturdy black belt, no visible catch, laden with a single row of uniform rectangular pouches. The only other prominent feature was the helmet; jet black and bulbous, face obscured by a thick mask with a circular grille vent around mouth level and one luminescent green eyehole, the other instead a blunt cone of technological hardware protruding several centimetres from the face. It was carrying in both hands what was undeniably an automatic shotgun. Mai was already turning to run back toward the staircase back to the apartment when the first shot came. Thankfully, it was Natsuki who fired first. A sharp splinter of blue light ricocheted off the muzzle of the unknown figure's weapon, jarring it up and to one side. There was an impossibly loud boom, and then everything went silent. Mai twisted as she pitched forward, her equilibrium scrambled by the sheer noise. A shower of hot pellets chewed a wide gash into one wall and blew out the adjacent window. Everything was ringing. She scrambled to find her footing and just managed to summon up a protective barrier before the second shot belched forth, scattering shrapnel wildly about the room. The figure fired again, and again. A flurry of blue slivers arrowed into the figure's left shoulder, leaving softly steaming gouges in the thick armour cladding. Natsuki hit feet-first with all the force of a small truck, knocking the armoured figure end over end across the room. She ducked her head down and somersaulted through the manoeuvre as a spray of bullets raced across the floor a hair's breadth behind her. Her shoulder hit the floor first, turning her tumbling into a sliding roll that brought her to the far wall on her back, upside-down, both weapons now drawn and trained up towards the new skylight. A second figure was already careening down the cable towards them, hefting a compact black submachine gun in one hand as it clutched the line with the other. Two more followed but seconds behind, both focused on other problems. They didn't wait for their own boots to reach wooden floor before opening fire. Lead chewed into the floor and across the wall in a scattered pattern, tearing the stacked cardboard boxes into paper shreds and spilling their shattered contents about the room in pieces. One window went, then another. Several shots pinged against the metal staircase. One bullet caught Mai in the hip, throwing her sideways like a well-swung bat to her side. The rest was a blur. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mai felt a searing bolt of pain in her left hip. It was almost as if someone had cut through the skin and stuck a red-hot metal plug into the gap. Which, she supposed, was technically accurate. Being shot was not an enjoyable experience in any way, she noted. She would have to avoid it in future. "Mai!" There was a sudden pressure about her upper region. Mai had to blink several times against the blinding sunlight in her eyes and the pain running in her veins before sight resolved itself from the blurred mess it had become. She found herself on her backside on the bare wooden floor, propped up against a wall, blood oozing out of the wound in her side and forming a slowly growing puddle beneath her. It was cold, but something soft was wrapped loosely around her, most likely a towel. Natsuki drew back quickly, with an expression that completely betrayed the deep concern that threatened to overcome her. She swiped away the trailing moisture from the redhead's cheeks with the back of two fingers, a touch that lingered slightly longer than it should have. "Shit," she cursed, biting her lip. "For a minute there you had me worried, you bitch." "Excuse me," Mai pouted. A finger in her breastbone silenced any further comments. "You got shot in the side, Tokiha. I watched you fly like a beanbag. I have a right to be a little perturbed by something like that. Mai could only chuckle. "Must have looked pretty silly. Never could jump very far by myself." "Only because you'd give yourself a black eye," retorted Natsuki, poking the redhead's chest again. She tried to hold the self-conscious humour on her face, but her eyes refused to stop watering. "What?" Mai blinked. "What is it? I'm not dead, am I?" What happened next was no fault on either of them. At first it had been simply an instinctive release of emotion, the sudden surge of anxiety that rushed around Natsuki's brain overwhelmed her momentarily and urged her body into motion before she knew what it was doing. Their lips met for a moment or two, urgent, but unyielding. A tension she hadn't even been aware of came rushing out all at once, like a cistern full of crippling emotion being flushed away. It broke away after a moment's pause and the two of them were left staring dumbly at one another with a shared expression of relief, Mai's tinted by a faint pink across her cheeks. As if that were the end of it. "Don't look at me like that. You know what..." Natsuki startled to find her hand now against the other woman's head, cupped behind one delicate ear. She couldn't stop herself if she tried, and she certainly wasn't trying. She kissed Mai hard and furious, but adrenaline and shock quickly gave way altogether. Soon she was kissing just for the sake of the contact, and it was wonderful. Her heart had stopped pounding like an over-stimulated squirrel and her head wasn't spinning any more. They separated much more slowly, almost reluctantly, lips parted slightly. Moisture stretched across the gap for just a second, as if trying to hold them together. Natsuki felt rational thought slipping away from her like a dream evaporating in the daylight. She slid her arms completely round the redheaded woman's body, heedless of the towel that was now coming loose again. They kissed a third time, neither quite sure who had started it, much more slowly and gently than the first two, inching forward experimentally with eyes half-lidded until their noses touched and then tipped aside. Head twisted slightly, Mai uttered only a soft breath of a sigh before her mouth was suddenly too busy to do anything else. Again, they parted. This time, the dark-haired woman leaned back onto her ankles, giving them at least an arm's length between them. Mai opened her mouth to protest as a palm cupped softly at her cheek and found no words to say stop. The first kiss had abruptly sent all the years of mental blocks and self-assured reasoning crumbling away like a pile of leaves in a strong wind. The second had set her on fire somewhere deep inside, a sensation she hadn't felt in a long time indeed. "So..." Mai was still lost to that lingering burn deep within, warm and slow, like a fiery blanket wrapped around her insides. She almost missed what was said. "Sorry," she answered, blinking off the hormone-induced haze and trying to stifle her blushing. "What was that?" "A hotel," Natsuki repeated, not hiding her own reddened cheeks. "We're going to have to find a hotel." "Oh." Mai giggled self-consciously, rubbing a hand to the back of her head. "I guess we are." "Erm..." Natsuki scrambled for something valid. Her head was suddenly empty. For all of the excuse, the arguments and apologies she'd worked on in the back of her mind for who knew how long, when the moment came, nothing seemed quite the right thing to say. "I...just glad you're okay." Mai nodded quietly, her gaze falling to her injured hip. The shallow wound was already sealing itself up before her eyes, and a small lump of softly glowing metal sat like a squashed egg on the wooden floor, a patch of charred blackness surrounding it. The redhead blinked. "Wow. Okay, that's new." "What's new?" "I can melt bullets," chirped Mai enthusiastically, with that stupid little feline grin on her face again. "Bullet-proof Mai!" Natsuki gave a sigh half relief and half exasperation. "Idiot." ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It was midday, or thereabouts, judging solely from the position of the sun in the sky, and all was not well. Then again, that was to be expected. Whoever those strange men were, they weren't very good shots. Not that it would have mattered if they had been when they were trying to chase down an android and two not quite humans. In any case, none of that was important any more, as Nina was rapidly discovering. The mechanical woman had been leading the two of them through the fairly deserted park behind the hotel at a truly frightening speed with several ominously black, unmarked cars in close pursuit. Every now and then, an innocent plant would meet a rather unpleasant end in a burst of hot lead. Contrary to common sense, which would usually dictate that running around in public shooting randomly would be a bad idea, those mysterious men with the automatic weapons were very keen on using them given the slightest encouragement. The only way to tell if they were gaining any ground on the strange men was a brief moment of quiet between barrages. Nina felt like her lungs were trying to escape through her throat and her heart seemed just about ready to explode inside her ribcage. Every time one foot hit the ground again it sent a tremor right through her body all the way to her ears, which were already ringing so loudly that hearing even the gunshots was getting difficult. Thankfully, the android woman had offered no further instructions, and Arika had stopped screaming several minutes earlier. Just run. Run and run and keep running. Run till your legs fall apart. And in the end, it was futile. Stay on the ground, and they'd eventually be caught. Take to the air and they'd still be caught, if not simply shot down on sight. Miyu had very briefly mentioned a defence system of some kind, and Nina decided she really didn't want to find out what it did. And she ran. She threw herself forward onto each foot with all her strength just to keep going. How big was this stupid park anyway? No time to look around to see where the other two had gotten to, not that she could see much at all past the tears in her eyes, now that breath of fire shooting up and down her spine every time she took another step. She never saw the cliff. Before she knew what was going on, Nina was barely an arm's length away from the edge of the world, looking out over the ocean far below. Only a short metal barrier marked the precipice, nowhere near tall enough to stop her now. Her knees collided with the corrugated metal sheeting with a horrible crack that made her whole body tingle, and over she went headfirst past the barrier. Nosedived over the edge of the cliff, a face-full of cold sea air, opal blue filled her vision. And then... ...and then, something really weird happened. Time melted. Reality collapsed on itself and sucked her in along with it. Darkness became light, then infinity. The universe undulated around her like a giant bowlful of jelly during an earthquake. Something went pop. Nina hit the ground nose-first, and yelped as pain erupted across her face. The rest of her body followed obediently as gravity took hold and she landed on her belly on cold concrete with a weak thump. She lay there for a good long while, curled up on her side with both hands over her face. Perhaps just to make sure that the universe wasn't going to do anything else really...weird. Just what it was that had happened was still beyond her. Perhaps that was for the best. She finally looked up. They weren't coming for her any more. Those strange men with the guns were gone. The park was gone too. It was dark, and there was concrete beneath her, reassuringly solid. Her vision was still a little hazy from the running, from the pain, from that strange trip through the universe. Arika was gone. The android was gone. Everything. Everything was gone. Nina curled herself up into a ball, arms wrapped around her knees tight to her chest, head down, trying not to hyperventilate. Her heart gradually stopped hammering away in her chest like a demented hummingbird, and her diaphragm relaxed. Her thighs were starting to cramp now, but it didn't matter. Eventually, she passed out. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Nina woke up again some indeterminable time later with the worst headache she had ever experienced and a horrible sensation in the back of her mind, like something really bad had just happened but she couldn't quite say what. Before she could really give it much thought, Arika landed on top of her. They were safe. It was late evening. An apartment. Arika was wearing a short green dress. Miyu appeared to have disappeared again. A television played quietly to itself in one corner of the small, cheaply furnished room. "Where," Nina began, cut off again. She reached up to put her hands on the redhead's shoulders and gently pushed her back far enough to give herself a little breathing room. "Where is this," she repeated. Arika kissed her again anyway before replying, "I'm not sure. Miyu brought us here." Her mouth moved silently for a moment, and then closed again. She turned and settled herself onto the bed beside Nina with a hand in her lap; the other invariably reached out to run the tips of her fingers up and down along Nina's arm. "You were asleep for a long time," she muttered at last. "You're okay now, aren't you?" "Of course," Nina insisted. She turned her attention to the wall as her face became hot. "Good." Nina blinked. The tone of Arika's voice wasn't as energetic or cheerful as usual. The redhead was staring down at the floor while her fingers played over Nina's skin with an absent-minded lightness. Her head bowed in silent contemplation, eyes on the grey stone floor under her feet, the normally tightly bound mass of orange-red hair fell down in a thick sheet, obscuring Arika's face. "A...Arika?" Nina levered herself up on one hand and reached up to brush that hair aside with the back of her fingers. Her nails whispered across the redhead's cheek. "Arika," she repeated more firmly. "Mmm," replied Arika absently. "Is there something wrong?" Arika turned slowly toward her, eyes still unfocused. Nina met her gaze as her palm touched the redheaded girl's cheek. For a moment, something uncomfortable passed between them, and was gone in an instant. "I guess I just..." she began, trailed off, fell silent once more and averted her gaze. Nina, rather surprisingly, cupped her partner's cheek and turned the girl's face back to her, until their eyes were level once again. She felt the heat under her palm, Arika's face turning a soft shade of pink. "I just..." "I'm sorry." Arika blinked, confusion reading clearly on her face. "Fo...why?" "For not saying it when I should have," replied Nina with the best resentful smile she could manage, given that her face felt like it was on fire from her hair to her collarbone. Arika only gave a soft, half-hearted whimper of an answer, and put her arms loosely around the dark-haired girl's neck. She buried her face into the edge of Nina's shoulder and breathed heavily. "I know it's stupid," Arika mumbled after a while. Her face was still pressed against the other girl's shoulder region, roughly, though she had shifted her head several times over the course of some minutes and now her chin was just resting above the edge of Nina's breast. She closed her eyes again and rubbed her cheek against that smooth skin, clutching slightly tighter around Nina's neck. "I don't even know why, I just suddenly...I guess it just struck me all at once. I got so scared." Nina put her arms around the redhead's shoulders and rested her cheek against the top of Arika's head, her nose buried into that thick red-orange hair; she remained silent. "I just...didn't have time to really stop and think about it before...I'm not sure I like this place. It's not safe here, for either of us." She paused. "For you." "I'm just as strong as you," Nina argued, briefly wondering why. Arika put a hand to her chest in a fist. "I don't care," she stuttered. "I can't stop thinking about what might happen if they find us again. I don't want to lose you..." At something of a loss for words, Nina improvised with whatever she could think of. Her hand moved back to Arika's cheek, gently tipping the redhead's face up to look her in the eye again. She couldn't bring herself to give the kind of reassuring smile she had seen so many times, but she could feel her face glowing red well enough. Sapphire eyes sparkled with moisture. "Ni...Nina..." the words escaped her lips. A shiver up her spine. "I love you." Arika closed her eyes as a tear rolled down her cheek. Her lips were caught before she could show a smile. Her hands gripped tighter around Nina's neck, and she kissed back with a passion. "Ni-na..." ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It was dark, it was hot, and it was raining. It was dark because it was insanely early in the morning, somewhere between midnight and what was referred to mainly by the military as "stupid o' clock." Not a trace of sunlight to be seen; not to the west out across the roiling ocean waves that hissed as they swept up and down the beach like the breathing of a giant snake. Not landward, over the ragged mountain range that lurched up away from the coastline, a giant row of serpent's fangs piercing up out of the sea. The forest was silent in the black of night, not a bird or insect to be heard, only the rustle of wind and the incessant hissing of torrential rain through the ancient treetops. It was hot because it was late summer and the island was in a sub-tropical weather zone a good deal south of mainland Japan. The forest floor was mostly a thick carpet of detritus, primarily dead leaves and decaying plant life. The air was much warmer and wetter here, south past the tip of Kyushu Island, days from any real civilisation in the wilderness of one of the smaller China Sea islands. A well kept, though seldom used roadway curved around the sheer concrete wall that had been built up on the ocean's edge and wound its way right around the island, serving as sole connection between the commercial harbour on the side closer the mainland and the small village nestled in the depths of the forest on the ocean-bound shore. It was raining because, well, nature was just a bitch like that. The sky was an infinite plain of featureless black, dark clouds packed into a thick layer that blanketed the earth in every direction for as far as the eye could see, blotting out the vast starscape beyond. Like an ocean of black, rolling waves of cloud mirrored the treacherous waters below. Flickers of blinding light crackled and spat, racing across the sky like wild animals; momentary bursts of brightness that cast horrible shadows through the trees below. Thunder boomed in the distance like the footfalls of a crazed dancing giant. The rain was hissing down in thick sheets, drenching everything, turning the forest floor into a disgusting sludge, flooding the road in several places so deep that passage would be impossible, misting up the air like a thick fog until visibility was all but nil. Midori put her face to the ground and tugged the hood of her cape up tight over her head again as another wave of rain came over her, hammering into her back through the thick waterproof material and turning the ground on which she lay into a churning swamp. She had probably picked the single worst spot from which to observe; facedown on the bare forest floor a hundred metres or so up the side of a hill. On the other hand, they'd have even less chance of ever spotting her up here, where the brown-and-green mottled cape blended with the background so perfectly, disguising her as part of the dense undergrowth. When the worst of the torrent had passed and the rain was easing off again, she raised the binoculars to her eye and tracked back on her target. Down below at the foot of the hill, right down at the water's edge, the artificial cliff that ringed the whole island had been extended a good few hundred metres inland, all solid concrete in a wide semi-circle upon which stood roughly a dozen buildings of varying shapes and sizes. Most were straightforward, flat-roofed blocks of the same ugly grey concrete, squat and roughly squared in shape, with few windows, heavy metal doors, ensnared in webs of black piping and cables. There was a water tower on one side of the compound, a narrow three-storey building covered in air-scoops like giant silvery seashells all facing down towards the water, and a high wire fence running all around with a checkpoint at either end of the road through; just a small concrete hut with a wooden barrier. There were no outdoor lights, and no signs of life. Beyond the southern point, nestled in a steep natural cove surrounded by towering mountain on all three sides, was another artificial compound a good deal bigger than the village. A rectangular section had been cut out of the beach and up through the coastal edge, lined with thick concrete walls, deepened down until it could comfortably dock any ship of reasonable size. Beside the wet dock was a large two-storey building that defied identification, being simply utilitarian and formless, and separate by a hundred metres or so across the road was a small hangar. The fence around the whole compound was two layers thick, with a deep trench in the intervening space, and high-rise metal frame towers at regular intervals around the perimeter. "Piece of shit." Midori fiddled with the binoculars some more. Damn but if they hadn't tried their hardest to make the things impossible to use. She had almost considered actually reading the handbook, but on reflection it had probably been better not to. Time was a luxury she could not afford to waste. The world became green, and Midori grinned. At least the low-light function worked. What she saw was definitely a military ship sitting in the dock, tethered in place by several thick cables along one side. Probably too tall for a frigate according to the recognition patterns she had programmed into her PDA. Just over two hundred metres bow to stern and from the waterline to the deck had to be at least ten, perhaps twenty at the most. It was difficult to see just how wide it was being at such a horrid angle, but the deck was easily visible. At first sight, the top deck was mostly a single flat rectangular plane that covered the entire hull. Halfway along the starboard side sat a block shaped tower, like a thick grey slab bolted to the deck on its end, adorned with all manner of pipes, cables, aerials and antennas of various shapes and sizes. A single row of windows stretched right around the upper quarter of the tower, tinted glass revealing nothing in the feeble morning light. What must have been a radar dish perched atop the tower on its own extended pylon, spinning constantly, along with several other bits of technological paraphernalia cluttering up the drab metal roof. It was easy to see, comparatively small stature aside, that it was certainly no conventional aircraft carrier. At either fore corner, stretching out a short ways past the prow itself, a small platform not more than a few metres across supporting what looked suspiciously like an upright oil drum painted a lacklustre off-white, set into a pivoting cradle. Two more flanked the rear of the ship, and a fifth was set on a similar platform on the side opposite the tower. Only a single track ran the length of the ship; a precisely straight path from bow to stern marked out with two white lines and a central furrow cut into the metal, looking barely wide enough to accommodate most light aircraft. The rest of the space was taken up by six large squares cut into the deck set with concentric rings of slowly pulsing green lights, and two large rectangular blocks each the size of a small truck, topped off by a mosaic of uniform white square caps. Presumably missile tubes. Two of the landing bays, those square sections of deck with what must have been landing lights on them, were empty. One was missing completely, just a square gap in the deck leading down into the dark unknown, or more likely, the hangar deck. The other two were currently occupied by a most peculiar aerial vehicle Midori had definitely never seen before. It looked like some sort of bizarre mutant hammerhead shark at first, just the front half, fins and eyes alike removed and replaced by omni-directional engine pods, larger in the back than up front. Instead of obeying normal aircraft convention, the upper surface was flat, while below the craft started off thin and sloped smoothly downward to become a bulbous oval shape at the back, as if someone had turned the vehicle upside-down. The design left it looking dangerously over-balanced, but it rested quite comfortably on four fat, stumpy hydraulic legs that extended from the floor of the cargo section, with only two skinny, retractable poles to keep it balanced in front. A long darkened panel set into the front ventral section of the craft presumably served as a cockpit, directing a pilot's attention forward and down instead of upward. The only visible armament was a small rotary cannon affixed via a circular a-frame turret under the left hand "wing" that looked completely out of place, as if it had been slapped on as an afterthought. The recognition program in Midori's PDA drew a blank. She cursed under her breath, wary of being too verbose lest she end up with a mouthful of muddy rainwater. Not that it mattered anyway; she was already soaked through underneath the cape, wet clothing adhering to her skin like paper in the hot, muggy tropical air. She brought one hand up to her head while the other held the binoculars trained on her target. Wrapped around her left ear like a small black plastic crescent moon was a headset communication device; a blunt conical plug inserted into her ear and a small, wire-thin retractable antenna stood up through Midori's soaking hair along the side of her head. Midori pressed two fingers to the device and got a quiet blip in reply. "Testing," she muttered in a very low voice, almost inaudible. Her own words echoed back faintly in her ear from the stick-thin microphone arm that practically adhered to her face, curving down from her ear to just below the corner of her mouth. "Can you hear me out there?" The earpiece gave a hissing crackling noise for a moment, and then a voice warbled through, broken and distorted but recognisable. "Your signal is coming through one hundred percent. Go ahead." "You'd better be recording this." There was a short pause before the reply. "Go ahead." Midori breathed deeply. "Okay, I've been here about four hours by now, no signs of activity on the ground. Got a ship in dock, looks like a Marine carrier. Can't get a good look but it doesn't look like there's a flag or any insignia anywhere." Her fingers fumbled over the top of the binoculars for a moment, searching over several rows of small buttons until she found the right one. "Okay, I'm uploading the feed to you right now. Something really top secret going on here and I have no idea what those things are." There was a brief pause, processing lag, before the reply came. "Experimental aircraft for the military. Could this be a NATO taskforce? Perhaps the JASDF are buying foreign equipment as well now?" "It could be them." "It would probably be wisest not to jump to costly conclusions." Midori snorted derisively. "If you are unable to give a positive identification, perhaps measures should be taken to obtain more information before casting ungrounded assumptions." Midori sighed reluctantly. "I suppose you're right. There are forces at work here that go beyond the District." The thought sent a shiver down her spine. "Whatever's going on here involves people within the UN armed forces. There aren't many people who even know about the project with that kind of influence." "There may be one or two I can identify, at that..." Midori interrupted with a silencing hiss. Through the incessant roar of the rain and the crackling of thunder overhead came another noise, one that was most definitely artificial. At first, it was the sound of a distant jackhammer, a clamour of rapid-fire bangs that melted into a single constant roar. The noise hammered into Midori's skull like a bad headache as it approached from somewhere behind her, rushing over the nearest hill like the droning buzz of an angry swarm of wasps, louder and louder with every passing second. Soon enough, it was practically on top of her, so intense that it made her ears hurt. It swooped overhead like a gigantic bird of prey diving on an unsuspecting meal, with the droning roar of its engines trailing behind. As soon as the overpressure lessened to a bearable degree, Midori stuck her head up again and focused the night-vision binoculars to the sky. The strange craft looked, for all intents and purposes, almost identical to those odd vehicles that sat on the carrier now inert, all but for a few small cosmetic differences. Where the others were all a uniform shade of dull silver-grey, this one was jet black, so dark that it was difficult to keep track of even with night-vision to aid feeble human eyes. The only way to really spot the thing as it flew over the island was the blindingly hot wake it churned into the turbulent air, bending the tops of trees and throwing up huge clouds of dead leaves from the forest floor. It was moving at considerable speed across the canopy, barely metres above the trees, bobbing and weaving lazily along its flight path much like a bird, twitching its way from side to side to stay on course. With the very manner in which it moved, swerving away from any particularly high tree in its path or the constant minor course corrections, it was easy to forget the thing was artificial; it moved almost like an oversized bird. The other striking difference between the other aircraft and this one individual was the engines, or what Midori assumed were engines. They could have been anything really; they looked like four short, fat, segmented tubes, two smaller at the front and larger ones at the back, which blended seamlessly into the strangely shaped fuselage, furthering the organic appearance of the thing. Each one was curved to a slight bulb at the end, forming a circular aperture from whence came belching forth high-speed jets of scorching hot air. Each aperture could be widened or constricted by flexing the walls of the bulbous segment, resulting in all kinds of shapes no doubt to influence the flow of exhaust in various ways, demonstrated as the craft narrowly avoided a collision with a tall treetop by gliding round in a smooth diagonal drift. Midori watched in silence as the aircraft descended on the awaiting carrier, nose dangerously low, not even bothering to slow its approach. The deck crew were nowhere to be seen at that point, but there was a small cluster of people standing by the tower, watching the incoming craft. A smudge of dark lime-greenish shapes resolved into crystal clarity; five bodies, all tall enough and muscular enough to be military stereotypes, following on in a loose arrow formation. They were led by a surprisingly short figure in what looked like a Hawaiian shirt and loose shorts, a thick mop of lightly coloured hair set in an unruly spiked mess. That short, pointed nose and narrow eyebrows that gave a slender, boyish face a hint of devilish mischief were all too familiar even at a glance. Scarlet gaze turned a misty pale green-grey from the low light binoculars drifted leisurely skyward. As always, the first expression to grace the young boy's lips was a playful grin, obscuring a most sinister smirk behind the fa‡ade of youthful innocence. The incoming aerial craft lurched downward, dropping toward the deck as if its strings had just been cut. It pitched violently backward, nose rising almost to forty degrees as its fore engines flared in wide, hot jets of flame. The short rear pneumatic feet expressed from its rearward underbelly and hit the deck plating, pivoting the aircraft forward to rest horizontal. Two more feet spread out from beneath, short, powerful suspension stocks with wide pads, emerging from the forward edge of its lower body instead of the ungainly spindle legs of the other craft. As it settled, the lack of blatantly artificial gear maintained the organic appearance even further, regardless of how overbalanced it looked at first glance, as if ready to topple forwards at any moment. The rear door pivoted upward, and then folded in on itself concertina style in three neat sections. The young boy with the well-armed and military trained entourage spared no glance about the carrier or its surroundings as he stepped up into the craft. The grunts shuffled in after him, single file, and the door quickly flicked itself shut. A string of obscenities hissed from Midori's lips. "That little..." "What's wrong?" "It's him," she growled into the microphone. "He's here." ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- At a time far too early to be considered sane, the sun was rising once again over the city of Tokyo. It was a truly incredible sight; the rays of blinding golden light towering skyward from the horizon, illuminating the landscape in sharp relief. The city was a playground of shadow and light, sparkling gold and deepest black, twisting and turning, a shifting battle in slow motion as the sun crawled higher and higher in the early morning sky. Away in the distance was the city centre, a gathering of monoliths vast and ancient, rising from the cluttered sprawl of insignificant armies asleep at their feet, indomitable towers of artificiality standing dark and defiant against the abrasive sunlight. Mai watched in silence, half-awake and caught entranced by the spectacular display. Her eyes filled with fire, drinking in the incredible light like a black hole sucking down a star. Violet turned slowly to crimson, a deep burnished golden orange, then yellow as the sun itself. Then white, a vibrant glow of inner luminescence. At last, she blinked against the harsh sunrise, and the dazzling light show suddenly became a headache-inducing mess of greens and blues on the back of her eyelids. She brought a hand to her face to shield the sunlight pouring in through the wide caf‚ window and lowered her eyes to the table in front of her, trying to banish the annoyingly vivid display of neon colour assaulting her vision. That was when it happened. Suddenly, she felt dizzy. Colour, so sharp and clear it was almost blinding, blossomed behind her eyes. The golden-yellow glare of sunlight streaming down through the tall buildings surrounding the caf‚ exploded, swept away the deep morning shadows with all the intensity of midday sun. Light spots swarming in her vision faded away, replaced by impossibly vibrant colour, as if someone had switched all the world's contrast filters all the way up. A dim, faded indigo sky turned a loud sapphire blue; the greyish concrete, speckled with golden sunlight, became a perfect white; the burnished bronze tablecloth in front of her shone like a miniature sun. Then someone walked past the caf‚ window and Mai's world exploded all over again. She could make out every detail, every millimetre of cloth, every tiny flake of skin on the man's body as he strolled obliviously past. Even the murky brown-grey of his suit was so bold, so clear, so powerful that it looked every bit as bright as the blazing tablecloth. But beyond that, in some way she couldn't quite grasp, Mai saw colours. Colours she couldn't even name, a hazy glow that was beyond red, a shimmer of purple that defied explanation, emanating from that unsuspecting human body like an oversized firefly. She blinked. Slowly, softly, the world returned to normal, but only if she concentrated. The insane colours dimmed to nothing and light crept back to where it was meant to be, away from her sensitive eyes, away from the shadows and gloom around the buildings. Compared to the headache-inducing image she had just received, Mai found the high contrast glare of the rising sun almost relaxing. Her eyes were watering, she noticed, and reached for a napkin. Only then did it fully occur to her that that arm was still stuck in place, wedged between the back of the booth seating and a surprisingly heavy, dark-haired woman. Natsuki snorted loudly in her sleep as she was shoved forwards, shifting against the redhead's side with an incoherent mumble. Mai felt a smile coming on. A good one. She hadn't felt that in quite a while now, not with the recent chaos in her life, having to balance work, fighting and looking after an incredibly demanding young girl. She threw the discontent aside and reached up her free hand to brush along the side of Natsuki's shoulder with a finger. "Yukariko's going to eat you for breakfast if you don't get up soon," she told the sleeping woman in a half-whispered voice. It was something of a struggle not to laugh. Natsuki shot upright in a second, still semi-conscious, eyes unfocused, and yelped something completely incoherent in horrendously garbled English. Then she blinked. Someone was laughing somewhere behind her and she had a good idea who it was. "Bitch," she barked at the redhead, and punched her in the arm. "You're an evil person, Tokiha." Mai ignored her and kept on laughing, rubbing her upper arm with one hand. "You're just so easy to tease, Natsuki," she breathed between gasps. "It's not my fault it's funny!" The hiccupping giggles eventually boiled down to a snicker, while Natsuki focused her attention resolutely on the tablecloth in front of her, fuming silently. "You're evil," she insisted, pouting in a way only she knew how. Mai draped an arm over her shoulders again and leaned in close, cheek almost touching Natsuki's ear. "You really never change, Kuga, not in ten years." She let out a long sigh and shook her head, trying to calm herself down again. Her spare hand landed limply on the table next to five empty cups of coffee and a plate smeared with cheese sauce and thinly scattered with crumbs of pasta. "Neither do you," replied the dark-haired woman in an oddly reminiscent tone of voice. She brought a hand up and caught Mai's hand on the table, fingers intertwined slowly. "Thank you." Mai blinked. "For what?" "For being the only predictable thing around." The redhead beamed back at her, even if the statement had brought an awkward redness to her cheek. "My job," she stated proudly, and squeezed Natsuki's hand in what she hoped was a reassuring gesture. "E...excuse me..." Both women looked up quickly at the intruding voice. A waitress was standing at the end of their table; a frightfully ordinary yet attractive young girl just a head shorter than either of them, in the universally coveted maid's outfit, a clash of black-white monochrome and splashes of cool blue and bright yellow. Natsuki averted her gaze, trying to hide the sudden flush in her cheeks with the usual deeply annoyed expression. Mai refused to let go of her hand, or remove herself from her partner's physical presence. The situation was an oddly familiar one, and infuriating, though strangely enjoyable. "Is there something wrong," asked the redhead in reply, putting on her most cheerful face. Hiding her own embarrassment was something she'd had years of practice at. "Well..." The waitress shuffled her feet and looked awkwardly back toward the kitchen where several others of her fellow staff were waiting, trying to look casual. "It's just," she stuttered, "...erm...how long did...I mean..." For a brief while, she said nothing at all, just looking flustered and uncomfortable. "Would...would you like to order something," she offered at last, looking rather pathetic. Mai giggled, which only made the poor girl jump. "I think we'd like to see the breakfast menu, if that's alright? What do you say?" She gave Natsuki's shoulder a nudge. The dark-haired woman responded with a dismissive grunt, refusing to face either of them. The waitress bowed deeply, very deeply, until Mai could see a vast window of cleavage as the front of the dress fell open slightly. She made a highly suggestive noise and couldn't hold in the laughter as the poor young girl retreated with a flustered squeak. "You love doing that, don't you," muttered Natsuki, irate. "You're going to get thrown out for sexual harassment if you keep that up." "Oh, don't be silly. I only do it because she's so obviously attracted to you." Natsuki span round to face her and fixed her with an angry glare. "What are you talking about," she barked. "Stop making up..." "I'm not," Mai interrupted, her smile fading slowly. "You really didn't notice?" Natsuki blinked, halted mid-protest. "You didn't notice the way she keeps looking at you whenever she comes over here?" Mai slid her arm from around her partner's shoulders and reached out over the table to catch a little plastic spoon between her fingers, flicking it around in little circles. "She likes you, Natsuki," she sang, a smug grin overtaking her features. "She's just like little Yumika, remember?" "Yumika was gay," Natsuki protested. The crimson in her cheeks immediately darkened. "They were all gay, and so were you," Mai pointed out in her annoying 'I know what I'm talking about' voice. "Except the ones who were just there for the money. I swear, that place must have just been...just...built out of pure...gayness. And it made anyone who stayed for too long turn homosexual. Or something." Natsuki gave her a very odd look. "What?" "One of these days, you're going to say something that actually makes sense." Mai just giggled and slid an arm round Natsuki's waist again, leaning in closer until their shoulders touched. "Well even if she is batting for you..." "Excuse me," protested the dark-haired woman with one eyebrow up and a not too pleased expression. She prodded a finger sharply into Mai's ribs. "...she can't take you away while I'm here to stop her, can she? So don't worry." Mai beamed down at her in that impossibly cheerful way. "Somehow," Natsuki sighed lethargically, "that doesn't make me feel better." She stretched both arms up over her head and arched her spine up high, wincing at several dull cracks from her lower back. "In any case, I don't think we should just stay here all day." Mai cocked her head to one side, looking down at her partner lopsidedly. "Why not," she muttered with obvious resentment. "That car came back again," Natsuki explained with a tilt of her head towards the window. Mai followed her gaze out across the street to where a forest-green sedan was sitting edged up onto the pavement. It had been there for almost five hours, not that anyone had taken any particular notice. It was a perfectly ordinary car; four doors, a design that was less than striking in any way, tinted glass in the windshield, two parallel black ridges along the smoothly sloped roof where a rack could be fitted. Double-wipers had been fitted on the front and back, and two small bolt-on washers just above the front bumper to spray water over wide square headlights, denoting a rather active lifestyle. A few patches of dried mud along the sides and splattered around the front wheels. The only occupant was a perfectly ordinary Japanese man with a slightly narrow nose and short-cropped hair, face hidden behind a pair of dark glasses that didn't look out of place at all on a sunny summer morning in Tokyo. Mai tried not to look directly at him as he took a small black box about the size of a coffee mug from somewhere behind the dashboard and inspected the device for a moment before returning it to its place. She let out a long, heart-felt sigh and rested her chin atop folded arms on the table. "And I was beginning to like this place, too." "I'll get the bill," said Natsuki rather redundantly as she slid another credit card from a pocket inside the dark blue jacket she was wearing. "I just hope we don't run out of cards," she continued as an aside, voice hushed. "If we keep this up, it won't matter how rich I am, either they'll trace my card or we'll run out of accounts to use." Mai rolled her head over to the other side to look up at her sidelong with a bored expression. "We could always just use mine." "Dummy." "Hm?" Mai sat up. "Who're you calling dummy," she protested. "What makes you think they don't have your personal life under surveillance already, idiot?" The redhead blinked. "Oh. Right." Then she sank back down to her previous position, chin on the tablecloth. "Curse you and your inscrutable logic." Natsuki left her to her own devices and focused on waving down one of the few passing waitresses. Now that the early hours had passed and the city was coming to life again, the caf‚ was starting to get noisy again. The diminutive night shift were quickly becoming inadequate with the sudden influx of customers, and a queue was slowly gathering around the door. "I just hope Shizuru hasn't been having the same trouble." "Still blocked," replied Mai automatically. Her voice was oddly distant. "Damn phone company. Whoever these people are, they've got connections in all the wrong places." Mai wasn't listening. The man in the green car was moving. He was switching the engine off. Getting out. Reaching inside his jacket. "Shit..." "What?" Mai was on her feet before her brain even had time to process the situation fully. The man was now walking away and leaving the car open behind him. "Get under the table." Natsuki looked up at her with an incredulous expression. "Don't argue, just do it!" The strange man was taking his glasses off with one hand while the other was full of metal. He tossed them onto the pavement and ran straight across the road, heedless of the traffic, aiming an automatic pistol at something that Mai couldn't see. Someone screamed. Mai felt the air thicken around her as it happened again. Her vision exploded into vibrant colour. The man with the gun became crystal-sharp beyond the limits of human eyesight, wreathed in a thin bubble of deep red-orange haze like steam. For a moment, the metal of the pistol gleamed brightly in the morning sun. He took aim... The window of the caf‚ exploded outwards with an ear-splitting bang, throwing a shower of razor shards out into the road. The man held an arm up over his face and turned away from the sudden onslaught. "Fuck!" Mai turned her head briefly back to her partner. "Stay down," she yelled at the dark-haired woman crouched under the table. Her lavender eyes flickered brightly. Steam hissed from her nostrils as she panted, open-mouthed. Whatever it was, it was taking hold. Hard. A wild combination of fear and confusion and excitement set Natsuki's heart racing and her senses on overload. She clutched her fingers tight around her weapons as they materialised obediently in her hands. Heat radiated in waves from the redheaded woman now standing atop the cluttered table. The caf‚ patrons were all yelling at one another and scrambling back and forth, or cowering under tables, or trying to see what was happening. A mysterious figure in a heavy brown cloak walked in front of the blown out caf‚ window. The figure ignored a rather irate Mai glaring at the gun-toting man still standing in the middle of the road and turned to the agent himself instead. A lightning flash of pink shook Mai from her narrow-minded fury. The man with the gun staggered backwards, clutching at his stomach. Blood squirted between his fingers. "Mai!" The figure turned. The hood of that thick, dark cloak was completely black inside, obscuring any facial features. Mai blinked. A hand was tugging urgently at her left leg. She looked down and saw Natsuki's face behind her, mouth agape, yelling something at her. "Mai, get off the-" "Tokiha!" Mai watched wide-eyed as a swarm of writhing pink limbs spewed out from the folds of that thick cloak and started reaching towards her. The hood flew back to reveal an unnervingly familiar face. "Shiho?" "Bitch," screamed the pink-haired girl, and leapt towards her. Her hair lunged out like a tangle of angry tentacles. "Run, idiot!" A sharp cobalt flash sliced across the cloaked girl's flight-path, stopping Shiho in her tracks. Mai shook her head, staggered backwards across the table. "What..." Natsuki shoved her right off the table, sending the redhead sprawling on the floor. "Run!" She fired off across Shiho's nose again. So Mai ran. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "Ni-na." At least they had actual shoes now, so no running around barefoot in the city. Besides the fact that it hurt after very long, it also looked awfully suspicious to the average passer by to see two teenage girls running around with bare feet in the middle of Tokyo. "Ni-na..." The black flat-soles made a rhythmic taptaptap on the pavement as they walked briskly along the street, keeping themselves toward the early morning shadows. Arika's soft shoes were more or less silent, but her mouth made up for that by a good margin. "Nina," she whined for about the tenth time. "Where are we going?" "We have to get away." Nine kept her head down and her feet moving. "From what?" "I don't know, just...just be quiet and walk!" In the end, they had ditched most of what had been salvaged from the hotel room. A pair of rather baggy blue jeans that didn't quite fit right and a pale yellow short-sleeved blouse fit Arika neatly in with the crowd, with the flip-down shades and the white soft-soled shoes that made her look like any decent fashion-accessory teenage girl. A narrow blue pouch belt sat lopsidedly across her hips, bulging with what little money she had left and whatever else she could stuff into it. The rest, food, map of the city, compass, day ticket for the metro trains, and other assorted items, were all crammed into the smallest olive green backpack that would fit, weighing heavily on Arika's slender young shoulders. A canteen dangled from a clip on the side, whacking her in the back now and again. "Okay, why are we running?" She was whining. She didn't care; it was definitely a situation worth whining about. "Because..." Nina hesitated, though she didn't slow down. The thin fabric of a dark aquamarine dress swished around just below her knees. She had wrapped herself up in a light, sea green button-up sweater to keep the sun off her bare shoulders and arms. Her own bag at least meshed a little better with her outfit; an underarm bag in a slightly paler grassy shade of green hanging down against her right hip. She was sweating lightly under the cool dress, so that the back of the skirt tended to cling to the backs of her thighs on occasion. "Look, just trust me, okay?" Arika tried not to stare at the view of Nina's rear end through the thin fabric and kept walking. "It's not that I don't trust you," she reasoned with the usual pout in her voice. "I just don't really understand why we're running away without telling Miyu where we're going." "I don't trust that woman," Nina replied quite bluntly. Arika blinked and halted for a moment. "What...why not?" Then she noticed the dark-haired girl was getting away from her and hurried to catch up again. "I've already told you, she's a friend! She wouldn't be misleading us or anything, I promise." Nina sighed. "Not everyone can be as openly trusting as you, Arika. I wish I could..." A terrific BANG tore through the peaceful morning air, sending a flock of pigeons roosting in a nearby tree into a frenzied scramble of wings. Both girls froze in their tracks. Arika felt her heart beating faster already as she turned to identify the source of the offending noise. "That...what was..." "Over there!" And just like that, the redhead was dashing away across the street, leaving her companion somewhat bewildered behind her. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- They arrived just in time to see a man in a dark suit collapse to the ground in a puddle of blood. A few random people were beginning to crowd round, despite the gun that now lay not a metre distant on the black ground. Someone yelled for an ambulance. Arika already thought she could just hear sirens in the distance. They emerged from an alleyway leading back between two small storefront buildings to the next street over. A dark green car was parked right across the alley with one wheel edged up onto the curb, and the driver's door hanging open. "What's going on?" Nina shook her head. "Looks like someone was shot, or something?" She sidestepped back past the car and turned to leave when something caught her eye. "Well that's just weird," Arika postulated aloud. "I mean, what was that man doing with a gun anyway? Is he some kind of police or something?" She held up one finger. "I know! It's like...some sort of television show or something! Maybe they're filming a movie, yeah." Silence from her partner. "Um...Nina?" The redhead turned with a mildly worried expression. "Nina? Are you okay?" "Arika," replied the dark-haired girl very slowly, and pointed to the car. "What is that?" Sitting on the back seat of the dark green mud-speckled car with the heavy-duty wipers and the multipurpose roof rack was something that looked, in some subconscious way that Nina didn't quite understand, as if it really didn't belong there. A large rectangular arm-bag took up one seat, looking ominous enough all by itself. On the other side was a setup that vaguely resembled a child's safety chair, securely fastened to the seat by a framework of legs that dove between the cushions. Instead of a seat, however, there was a brushed silver metal cube about a hand span across with an assortment of buttons and knobs and switches. Several thin rubberised wires lead to a device fixed to the top of the box that looked oddly like a miniature satellite dish. "Um..." was Arika's only suggestion. "That doesn't really look..." A bleeping sound interrupted Nina mid-sentence. She looked around, momentarily startled, until Arika tapped her on the shoulder and pointed her towards a small black box-like device sitting in a cradle on the panel between the front seats. A hand-held satellite phone, of course, would explain the dish in the back seat, but not the bag. More worrying... ...it was ringing. Nina looked around. No one seemed too concerned with two young girls poking their noses around a strange car, for the time being, but the distant flash of police car lights along the road a ways were gradually getting closer. "We should go, Nina." Arika gave her sleeve a good firm tug. "C'mon, let's just leave it." She couldn't. Nina was overcome by a feeling she couldn't put into words, as if she was meant to pick up that phone. As though it was for her that it was ringing. She leaned into the car through the open passenger window, reached down to clutch the phone in her fingers and lifted it out of its cradle. The bleeping cut off with a sharp blip. She brought the thing to the side of her head and took a deep breath. "Hello?" "Good morning, Miss Wang," answered a soft, deep voice on the other end. She didn't know if she wanted to throw the thing away and run or just burst out laughing. This was getting weird. "Who..." She licked her lips, her mouth suddenly dry. Arika was still clinging to her sleeve with an urgent look on her face. "When is the president not the president?" Nina blinked. "What?" "When is the president," said the androgynous voice patiently, "not the president?" "Erm...I..." Nina shook her head. "What's going on, Nina? Who is it?" Nina put a hand over the mouthpiece and looked back at her redheaded companion with a troubled expression. "I don't know, it..." Her brow furrowed in thought. "I think..." "You think...?" Arika cocked her head slightly and gave her a decidedly bewildered look. "What do you think?" "I don't know," said Nina to both of them equally. "When is the president not the president?" Was she really playing a word game with an anonymous caller? And the day had started off so very normal. The caller chuckled. Nina pulled the phone away from her ear and looked at it, as if it had just spontaneously turned into a banana or some other such bizarre thing. "What the..." "What what what, what is it?" Arika was now bouncing on her toes impatiently. "What's going on?" "I don't know...but I'm sure I recognise that voice from somewhere, I know I do." Nina sighed, and took the phone to her ear again. The chuckling had stopped. "Well?" "Well what," she replied. "Whoever you are, why won't you answer me?" "Hm?" Nina put a hand on her forehead and tried not to get angry. "When is the president not the president?" When the reply came, the amusement in that mysterious voice was dark, sinister, chilling. "When she's a spy." The phone clicked. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- In a better light, she might have been an attractive young woman; she was relatively tall for her age, and of such slight build that one might dismiss her at first glance. Her face was as slender as the rest of her, with high cheekbones and a delicate, slightly upturned nose that gave her a demure, refined appearance. She was, from head to toe, a nubile young creature long in limb and in body, whose joints were almost bony and whose more blatantly feminine features had yet to develop past the athletic waif's figure of her youth. Her chest like her face was held high and firm out in front. Had she been so compelled, a seductive posture would look almost natural on her. But she wasn't. She stood with her feet a short distance apart, shoulders forward and her head dipped, eyes peeking out from behind sheer curtains of vibrant pinkish hair like a wild animal ready to strike without warning. Thick shadows overlapped across her semi-naked body, obscuring her features, breaking her silhouette like a camouflage pattern to the point that she appeared at least partly insubstantial, as if she wasn't really all there. The only clothing she wore was a single spiral of fabric that started at her left ankle and ended at her right wrist. It began as a thick-soled sock on her left foot, purest black, slithering up her calf like a snake as it slowly thickened and changed colour. Even the texture was different by the time it reached her hips, a smooth emerald green leather strip a hand span wide that swept once across the backs of her thighs just below her buttocks, and then around her far hip to cross her groin region and continue upward, leaving her with what was inarguably the briefest skirt ever designed. From there it caressed its way up once, twice, thrice around her thorax as it ascended, much narrower strips of wafer thin fabric melting from a soft pink over her abdominal muscles to a pale blue across her lower ribs just under the curve of her breasts. Modesty had not been a primary concern, it seemed, as the strange fabric only barely managed to cover both nipples, each one crowded to the very edge of the diagonally slanted material that curled across her chest as a smooth, flexible opal strip. When it stretched across her shoulder blades and reached her right shoulder at last, it flowed straight out and began a similar coiling path down that arm, a uniform crimson down to her wrist, whereupon it swelled into a fingerless skin-tight glove. The overall effect, between the constantly moving shadows playing across her body and the winding fabric clearly not designed with concealment in mind, was almost migraine inducing in its hypnotic quality, furthering Shiho's passive camouflage by making it almost impossible to focus on her for any period of time without feeling dizzy. Her hair just made the whole problem worse, of course. She had never cut it, not in the last ten years at least, as far as the eye could judge, for it flowed down her back in a single thick, pink mass to pool on the ground. That is, it would have, had she left it to its own devices. As it was, Shiho had gathered the whole mess up and tied it into four identical tails, condensing into itself so tightly that it formed four thick, curving pillars of solid pink colour. Two in front, two behind, they emerged from the imaginary corners on the top of her head and turned downward sharply. Just past her hips, all four broke apart into dozens of slender pink tendrils, like the tentacles of some bizarre squid creature, and even more disturbingly they seemed to be moving, constantly writhing and wafting, coiling around one another like a nest of vipers. Not a single end touched the ground on which she stood, all upraised around her thighs like a pack of dogs begging after their master. Her eyes, though, were the worst. A vicious grin twisted her lips upward, displaying a row of stark white teeth all pristinely cleaned and straightened, and drawing attention up to her eyes. Those eyes, burning with a terrifying maniacal glee; they were the eyes of a girl gone utterly and irrevocably insane. Shiho tossed back her head, her hands upraised towards the sky, eyes wide, and screeched out a demonic laugh. "Nowhere left to run now, Tokiha!" Her eyes sparkled with insane joy. "What do you want, Shiho? Why are you after me?" "Silence," Shiho shrieked. "You know what you have done! You will pay for your crimes!" A lightning flash of pink sent Mai sprawling across the dark, dirty alley floor with a yelp. The concrete cracked under the incredible force of the impact. Mai rolled until her shoulder hit the wall, crouched down low, her fingertips glowing with unnatural orange light. "Shiho, stop this! Please." "Die!" The pink-haired girl dashed toward her, the writhing tentacles of her hair reaching forward like razor-tipped tentacles. "Mai!" Cerulean shards peppered the ground in front of Shiho's feet, driving her back a step. Shiho turned her attention to the source of the interference and hissed savagely at the dark-haired woman aiming two large handguns in her direction. "Stay out of this," she spat. Natsuki answered with another burst of gunfire, sending the crazed girl hopping backwards. "Mai, get up! Just run! We can't afford to..." "Die, bitch!" Shiho leapt at her opponent again, reaching out with both hands and all twelve limbs. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "Fuck!" "I warned you something like this would happen, but did you listen?" "I don't want to hear it! I've had just about enough of that smug, superior attitude of yours! If you're so all-powerful and all-knowing, why couldn't you do something about this yourself?" "There are rules to my job, idiot." "...fuck it. Okay, fine, whatever." "Look, what matters here is far more than just the girls themselves, or what they are." "Hah! You can say that, but if Prometheus' advanced nanotechnology ever got the media's attention there'd be serious trouble. You know what people like Lockheed or Beretta would do with that kind of stuff, not to mention if the FBI ever got their hands on-" "-Shit, don't even joke about something like that. That'd be pretty much World War Three, except...worse." "It's already getting to be near enough impossible keeping attention away from the Child project in the States and in Europe and now NATO are poking their noses in over this disappearing fleet business and...what? What's funny?" "You're not seeing the big picture." "It doesn't really get much bigger than NATO having cybernetic enhancement technology, and that's assuming they don't figure out what the HiMEs really are." "Who made the wide-spectrum guidance systems for the JSDF's brand new anti-missile defence network? And who put the GTSD satellites in orbit? And who built the new marine carriers for NATO's Pacific Fleet?" "...wait...you mean..." "I'll give you three guesses, but you're only going to need one." "Shit! Okay, fucking...shit...damn it, whatever it takes, just get them back! I'll deal with Nagi in the mean time. And I suppose only the Prime Minister himself can do anything about BAE right now." "Good luck." "...you too." ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Midsummer sun baked the city, but it might as well have been the dead of night in that tiny avenue, dark, cramped, cluttered and dirty. Wedged between two high-rise apartment buildings, all but identical in their utter lack of architectural appeal, dull greyish brown slabs of concrete several dozen storeys high. The walls became cliffs, a sheer vertical face on either side of a depressingly narrow and abysmally dark chasm, rough surfaces that rose up endlessly towards the distant sunlight. There were no windows, no view so desirable as to warrant such extravagance, so the canyon walls were bare rock laser-cut to an impossibly deep trench, sheer and unforgiving. High overhead, eternally far from the dank, cold dirt on the ground, streams of golden sunlight played through the crests of cloud-breaking buildings. Down here, it was always midnight. The darkness was so thick that it swallowed everything, from the scratched and battered overflowing dumpster behind the restaurant, the ancient collection of abandoned mechanical spare parts left heaped up against the back wall of a bar like a pack of homeless dogs huddled loosely together, even the ground was nearly invisible through the gloom. At either end of the alleyway, sunlight streamed across, illuminating the streets outside, but never did it dare enter and pierce the profound darkness hanging cancerous within. "You're not the only one with orders." Midori thought her voice sounded much weaker than usual, muffled, swallowed up by the darkness instead of echoing around the narrow alley walls the way it should. She shifted her footing and mentally winced at the horrible feeling that brought as her feet moved through the...whatever it was covering the ground. "You can't seriously expect to get away with something like this." "Ha!" Shiho cackled, amused if nothing else. Her maniac grin had turned to an expression of leisurely amusement, still that unpredictable fire playing behind her eyes. "Petty words are no threat to me, and neither are you." A cracking noise brought Midori's focus sharply downward again. Her eyes flicked between the insane creature before her and the concrete ground below with well-practiced ease. Shiho had merged the ribbon of compressed fabric around her left foot into the ground, sucking up the concrete surface itself like a vacuum. Tendrils of matter swirled and spiralled inward to form a rapidly condensing disk about a hand-span across, a deep crimson glow contained within like molten iron. "You shouldn't be doing this." "I'll do what I have to," Shiho snapped at the redhead, her own pink locks flicking irritably about her waist. "Whatever it takes, I swore my life." Midori ground her teeth together, trying her damnedest to bite back on all the scathing comments that sprang to mind. "Let her go, damn it," she insisted. Her fingers brushed anxiously at empty air beside her right hip. "You don't need her! I can find someone else for you..." "Mai is mine now," hissed the pink haired girl as her dainty hands closed into fists so tight her knuckles turned white. Her hair began to boil, tendrils of her furious essence that coiled and writhed and squirmed their way upward until they hung in the air all about her head lending her an even more menacing appearance. "She'll make a perfect bargaining piece, don't you think?" Midori replied only with a dismissive grunt. Shiho glared daggers at her. Fingers closed around nothing. "Then you die!" Shiho let loose a wild screaming laugh as the disk of molten substance coagulating beside her foot split open and out poured a nest of wildly flailing yellow-orange tentacles, each thigh thick, each blazingly hot; molten concrete limbs rushing across the gap between the two women with frightening speed. Midori brought her right hand up across her body in a lightning arc, instantly severing a dozen of the attacking tendrils. "Let her go," she demanded once more, voice slow and deep. The sword materialised in her grasp with a blink, silver blade gleaming even in the dark alleyway. Shiho stuttered. Her foot slipped back a step, the visage of insane rage faltered for but a moment. "Interloper," she spat. Then she gathered her resolve, squared on to her adversary with a narrowed gaze. "Does she really mean that much to you?" "I shouldn't have to answer that." "Yet I still have to ask," replied Shiho in a voice that was not her own. "I was under the impression that the dragon was your only concern in this." Midori ignored the question. "Why must you twist the poor girl's mind like this?" Her tone was still low and deadly serious; her opponent answered with an angry hiss. "She brings out your most territorial instincts," it commented almost offhandedly, glancing back to the red-haired body lying slumped up against the wall of the alley nearby. "Daughters do that," replied Midori in a carefully level voice. "Daughter?" Shiho, who was not Shiho, laughed uproariously. "You know as well as I do that you can never have that...pleasure." The words rolled from her tongue as if contemptuous, mocking. Midori gave half a smirk in reply. "You'd be amazed what a little technology can do these days." Again the strange voice on Shiho's lips spoke, this time a darker, softer tone, both wary and calculating. Her eyes fell upon Mai's prone body, still unconscious. "So...an artificial birth...Kagutsuchi?" She cocked her head slightly to one side, a look of bewilderment overcoming her features. "A hybrid?" Suddenly, it was fire in her eyes and in her face, hatred most malevolent. "Intolerable." "That's quite enough," growled Midori, sword streaking already. "Back where you belong." It felt rather like biting down on a sheet of foil with a mouthful of fillings, oddly enough. As usual, there was the sudden burst of static that shot up Midori's spine and made her hair stand on end like a giant puffball. The tip of the sword plunged effortlessly through the barrier surrounding Shiho's body and skewered the youngster neatly through the torso, in right between two ribs just left of her breastbone and out the back with not a trace of blood, bisecting her heart. The blade shone a brilliant blue for a moment, and Shiho let out an earth-shattering scream. Then a silent explosion of light turned the darkness of the alleyway into a barren white plain. The flowing concrete at Shiho's feet froze into place, like some impromptu public art sculpture. The twirl of fabric wrapped around her body began to fray and soften, and her hair untied itself into a single vast pink mass. Midori felt the sword abruptly wink out of existence between her fingers and then watched the pink-haired girl crumple into a heap on the dirty ground with a muffled thump. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- We are all agreed, then. She has simply gone too far this time. This is way beyond her usual intimidation. She has destroyed our only vessel, but she cannot possibly imagine that this will limit our overall influence on Earth. Identifying a replacement should pose little difficulty now. Withdrawal is not an option at this stage, unfortunately. If we are to succeed in our infiltration, it is imperative that we apply ourselves totally to this endeavour, every one of us. This is no time for divided loyalties; humanity is still unaware of our presence here but that will not last long. These few have already begun to understand. We cannot allow them to stand in the way, now or ever. The more subversive options are being closed off one by one. Soon a covert infiltration will be all but impossible from our position here. Yes, the child is a problem. One we had not anticipated. The possibility of this hybrid is dangerous not only to our plan but to all of us. The Collective should recognise that whether or not they agree with our methods. Regardless, right now the most dangerous aspect of this entire operation is deployment. If the right pieces are not in their correct positions at exactly the right time, the consequences will be dire. A rupture is bound to occur if the boundary remains under this level of stress for any length of time. Even we should not entertain notions of such a catastrophic event. We should concentrate on silencing her as our primary goal for now. If she cannot be eliminated physically, then she must be removed from the situation entirely. Force her into a corner. We now have a powerful bargaining tool; even if she were bluffing, she would never allow us to harm the child. Her mind is filled with her own delusions of self-righteousness. This construct, this "android," this should be our highest priority. This is the only weapon the humans have against us. We cannot allow its existence to continue. We have been monitoring the humans' progress with their "Child" project. This should serve our purpose well enough. It has already been decided which of us was to be chosen for this duty. Our entire operation will depend on you. Do not fail. Commandeer the unit. Destroy the facility. Then...start killing. She will have no choice but to play her part exactly as planned. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It was midnight somewhere in the vast wilderness of the Arizona desert. It was the time for life in the unforgiving wasteland to be up and active above the dry, dusty ground. The baking heat of the sun had long since leaked away into the cold, clear night sky. Out in the desert, there were no flocks of night birds to fill the air with their calls, only the occasional insects chirping here and there, a few small rodents dashing about the rocky faces of giant steep-walled mesas rising hundreds of feet into the air. In the dead of night, the desert was a sea of black, dotted here and there with clusters of broad rocky islands, flat shapes floating on an unmoving ocean reflecting slivers of moonlight that utterly lacked the softly undulating quality of such reflections on real water. With such clear air and no light pollution from any nearby cities, the sky was empty of clouds on most nights. Normally invisible stars lit up the night; an immense black shroud adorned with billions of wildly scattered candles all shining from some impossible distance. The thick bright blur of the Milky Way was clearly visible stretching right across the sky from one horizon to the other. To the far north, low in the sky shone Polaris, a heavenly lighthouse suspended a million miles above the Earth. From the outside, Prometheus looked like the eternally clich‚d old military base-come-research facility that science fiction was so fond of, with its utilitarian grey single-storey concrete buildings arranged in small clusters around the large main compound, surrounded by a ten foot high wall running around the perimeter. An abandoned runway stretched along the northern edge of the compound, the tarmac faded and cracked from age and neglect. The control tower had been dismantled long ago and only the steel framework skeleton of a modest hangar building remained. A helipad had been put in place much later in one corner of the main courtyard, a hundred feet from anything, nestled in against the rigid outer wall of the compound. The surface gleamed like polished obsidian in the moonlight, with the stylised P.R.L. logo sharply defined: Prometheus Research Laboratories, a formality upon which the CEO had been oddly insistent. The seven rectangular buildings arrayed in a neat column wedged into one corner of the facility could have passed for a large barracks seen from the air. Corrugated metal freight doors, twenty-four-hour guards and the sheer bulk of pipes, cables and other assorted supply lines all siphoned into one end from the various separate processing areas of the compound might have seemed a little excessive, however. In truth, the main building was merely a fa‡ade, the tip of an enormous subterranean iceberg almost twice the size of the surface compound and far more densely packed with labs, offices, machinery and everything else the facility needed. The only things that were ever brought in from outside were the regular food deliveries, water from outside pipelines and from the experimental condenser tower, auxiliary energy from a nearby wind farm, and the occasional material or equipment samples from various international donators. A hundred feet below the sand, sealed behind lead-reinforced concrete walls a metre thick, was hidden a miniature nuclear reactor. A ten-foot-wide cube with a dozen pipes and cables leading in and out, the top face covered in a pattern of circular holes into which slotted the control rods, set on a retractable panel that could be raised and lowered as required with ease even by hand. The cube gave a constant hum that resonated through the sturdy metal bracings securing it in place at one end of a long rectangular room the size of an aircraft hangar. Between the reactor itself at one end and the single enormous reinforced door at the other, there was a broad metal catwalk suspended several feet above the floor. On either side at regular intervals were spaced three-metre tall glass cylinders filled with a viscous translucent green fluid, each one encircled by a thick metal belt just level with the catwalk itself, and covered in screens and panels and buttons and switches of all kinds. In all, there were twenty cylinders, ten on each side of the room arranged in a staggered formation. At the end of the room, with the reactor in the centre, a large space had been left between the tubes and the back wall, allowing for an immense bank of computer equipment to the left of the reactor complete with several bolted metal chairs and keyboard consoles. Opposite, protruding halfway out of the wall, was a single gigantic black sphere. It was almost seven metres across, not that anyone besides the original construction team had ever seen it in full. Perfectly black, perfectly smooth, perfectly seamless. The only imperfection was a single oval window four feet across set into the side that allowed a view of the interior. Inside, a mysterious crimson substance glowed dimly with its own inner warmth, like a hot ball of iron. The designer had called it the Creation Engine. It had just gone midnight, and only two people were left inside the vault room. The usual system technician was busy tapping away commands into a console with incredible speed, filling one screen up with line after line of code while his eyes were busy with another. The huge panel screen up above was showing a three-dimensional representation of what might have been a nuclear fusion reaction system, or perhaps a very interesting screensaver. The other man was a theoretical particle physicist by nature, and couldn't really tell. "What's taking so long?" The man in the lab coat looked at his watch again, for about the fifteenth time in an hour. "It shouldn't take this much just to alter the transcription codes." The technician gave him a humourless look. "Do I tell you how to manipulate quantum probability?" He turned back to the task at hand without waiting for an answer, not that one would come he knew. "This equipment takes a lot of tweaking to get it right, and it's my job to make sure it's tweaked right. Or would you rather we let off a nuclear explosion in the middle of a crowded workplace?" "Inside a chamber that's been explicitly designed to withstand twice the explosive force that reactor is capable of, not to mention the radiation." The physicist sighed again, and rifled his papers, again. Click. That wasn't the sound of a finger on a key. The man in the lab coat blinked. At first, he turned to look, to find out just where the odd sound had come from. It had certainly been loud enough to hear over the tapping of fingers, and sharp enough to be unusual. But then, somehow, a feeling of overwhelming urgency came over him, forcing him to stay put, as if turning round was probably the worst thing he would ever do. Instead, he cleared his throat. "Did you..." He blinked again. It would sound stupid, but... "Did you...hear something?" The technician looked up for a moment, opened his mouth to reply with something else derogatory. Before he could say anything, there was another click noise. His fingers froze in place at once, and his eyes widened. "That...that wasn't you, was it?" "You heard it?" There was an agonisingly long moment of silence. Both men stood, or sat, respectively, almost frozen in place. They had both definitely heard something, quite what they could not say, but whatever it was certainly...felt bad. Then it happened. The Engine spoke. Deep within the microscopically modelled womb of the Creation Engine, a hundred billion machines no bigger than a single atom all sprang to life at once. The reddish fluid that made up most of the constituent soup was inert, but the high concentrations of hydrogen and helium gases suspended in the mixture made easy prey, disassembled into their components within seconds. Once the fluid had been reduced to a sea of sub-atomic particles, the red tint turned instantly opaque. Pressure rose at a phenomenal rate, setting off warnings and triggering alarms in the huge bank of computers. Nothing the computer did could stop it. The paste itself was no longer under the control of the central processor; a spherical globule of nano-robots capable of replicating themselves into infinity, all now working towards some unknown goal with incalculable efficiency. The Creation Engine gave an ear-splitting crack as its skin split neatly in two, rending a fissure a foot deep straight through the incredibly strong metal structure. Nano-robotic paste squirted from the crack at high pressure, spraying all over the walls like red rain, coalescing on the floor into a rapidly growing pool. The catwalk began to dissolve, along with the high-tensile ceramic shell of the Engine, and the computer consoles, and the glass tubes, and the surfaces of the reactor, and everything else the paste touched. More and more, consuming everything from the two bewildered humans to the very air inside the room, the machines replicated over and over a thousand-fold, a million, until there were enough to create what they had been ordered to create. And then, just as the huge semi-conscious network intelligence that the nanomachines had formed began to realise that there would never be enough sheer energy to perform such an incredible task...the reactor casing fractured. The room contained the fifteen-kiloton blast just as it had been designed. It did not contain what came after.
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