*counts on fingers* Lessee... programmable radio playlists, voice control, built in hands-free cell-phone, cruise control smart enough to stay in its lane... presumably some kind of MapQuest function, since IIRC there are cars that can do that today... Cool. I want one - any tricks that weren't needed here?

# Drivin' n' Cryin'
# "Turn It Up or Turn It Off"
# Smoke

Thank you, Pandora.

"Shades. Night mode with flash comp. Record still exposure
every two seconds," he ordered. "Mnemonic record mode." A red light
flashed in the upper right corner of his field of vision.

I have absolutely no idea why, but this is making my mind flash back to the combat helmets in David Drake's Hammer's Slammers stories... *shrug* They do do similar things, I guess...

The first thing that became apparent was that, though its
performance envelope was obviously greater than that of a regular
military or police powersuit like a K-12, the Knight Saber's suit
lacked the sheer physical power to confront a 55 head-on. Rather, its
chief advantage appeared to be its maneuverability. K-suits were
clumsy, lumbering things that had evolved from power loaders and
didn't handle much better. The Saber suit Stark was watching now was
much more agile, able to maneuver with great speed and precision.
It was also surprisingly light on firepower. Based on some
reports he'd seen, Stark had expected to see some kind of beam weapon
in action, but this suit, at least, seemed only to mount a
small-caliber chaingun - entirely inadequate against the 55's heavy
armor. As he watched the two combatants dance, Stark realized
something with a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, and a
glance back across the Camaro's roof confirmed that Zoner felt it too.

*raises hand* Umm, wasn't that what the needle guns were for? Firepower against heavy armor? Even if they didn't have more than one or two needles per tube, that's still significant. Did it not have their ammunition already loaded and Priss didn't notice? Is this starting earlier than the canon series said, and they're an upgrade that she hasn't gotten yet? Shut up and smile and not and enjoy the explosions?

It's completely off point, I know, but I can't help wondering about the relative performance that'd be gotten by taking the K-series design lineage to the same level of technical advancement as the Sabers' suits - I don't see any physical reasons (beyond the scaling issues that any mecha series ignores as a matter of neccessity, of course), why a K suit built with joint drivers as good as the Sabers' shouldn't be at least close to as fast. Obviously, its very nature will preclude the same kind of flexibility and agility, but I'd think that the increased armor protection would balance that...

The boomer whirled and lunged toward him, its head -
apparently undamaged - emerging from the cloud of smoke.
"FUCK!" Zoner cried.

About what I'd say, yep. If I was that coherent...

Everything outside the helmet was a blur. Gritting her teeth,
she forced her eyes to focus - then felt them widen in horror. Some
guy, some big crazy-ass gaijin in black denim, was throwing down with
the boomer that had just wrecked her suit. He had a set of wolverines
(funny name for a cyberweapon, that)

So that franchise is dead by 2032?

...

*cheers, then removes tongue from cheek*

"Uh-huh, give me a hand here, will you?" Stark replied. "I
should probably not be doing much heavy lifting right at the moment."

Is there a reason he's phrasing it that way, rather than 'I probably shouldn't be doing much...', or did it just come out that way?

Fight scene choreography rocked, by the way, as usual.

Across the table from Priss, Linna Yamazaki tried not to
fidget. She knew it would just aggravate Priss further, and her
volatile teammate was already annoyed enough. Still, the waiting was
tough on her too. They'd never faced a security problem like this
before in their careers, and the not knowing was the worst part. Who
had happened across Priss's fight with the rogue boomer? Who had
determined her identity and delivered who to her home?
Who now had her hardsuit?

Um, 'Who had her hardsuit now?'

Anyway, the characterisation in this scene feels spot on, even now that I'm taking a closer look at it rather than going for gestalt. Linna is her proper well-adjusted self, Priss is... Priss... Nene feels young rather than saccharine, and Sylia acts like a human being rather than a badly adjusted robot. Good job.

"Hello, Tony," he said. He didn't need to speak out loud, but
he always did - it seemed to help him concentrate, to keep everything
straight in his head.
The voice that replied was inaudible in the room itself; it
was coming from a tiny bionic speaker mounted to Stark's mastoid
bone. It had a slightly dry and tinny quality, like an old recording
of a familiar voice, and as always it chilled his blood slightly when
it replied in the remembered tones of a friend,
"Hi, Ben. What's up?"

Putting my (very) sketchy knowledge of Iron Man's backstory together with things said later in Interesting Singles, I'd guess that industrialist/researcher Anthony Stark and war correspondant Benjamin Hutchins were prisoners together in... wherever... and that things went pretty much as they did in IM canon, except that Stark's injury was inflicted on Hutchins, making him the one to do the driving of the battlesuit that was the center of their escape attempt.

"There you go," she said. "My complete dossier on Benjamin
Stark, alias Benjamin Hutchins."
Sylia raised an eyebrow. "Alias?"

Using 'alias' as a noun like that, the older name should come first. I think. Of course, whether Nene would know or care is an entirely different matter - it would make sense for her to default to the name her audience would know, I guess.

Then she faced front again and said, "Good work, Nene. Go
home and get some rest. We're going to start a surveillance operation
on Mr. Stark starting first thing in the morning, and you'll be
pulling the night shift."

In a town like Megatokyo's been set up to be, with its combination of size and corporate conflict, there's almost certain to be a thriving black/gray market in deniable mercenary and espionage services, everything from punk gangers with switchblades to freelance spies as good or better than anyone in government service. Given the kind of cash we've seen the Sabers pull in, and that they'd need to build the kind of equipment they've got, Sylia could certainly afford to hire a trustworthy outside contractor who wouldn't care that he didn't have a clue who was on the other end of the voice-scrambled phone line as long as he got his agreed pay. That is, I'm pretty sure that the Sabers are only the best-armed of Megatokyo's various mercenary groups, and that one of their more sneak-oriented would be quite willing to subcontract as needed.

I realize that that's a logic hole you inherited from the original series - just thought it could do with pointing out.

Sylia about fixing the fridge in the mobile surveillance unit again.
"Hell," she went on, "maybe they're just lonely and this whole
thing is a cockeyed plot to meet girls."
"Great," Linna replied. "Now every time I look at them I'm
going to think, 'Hey, there go the Knight Stalkers.' I hate you,
Milkman Dan."

*doesn't get the cultural reference*

Citizens' groups demonstrated outside ADP Headquarters and City Hall
waving signs and chanting slogans in support of the Knight Sabers
during the press event. One group unfurled a large banner reading
"KNIGHT SABERS 58, AD POLICE 0" before it was taken away by riot
police. The score referred to the most commonly accepted figures for
successfully-handled boomer incidents by both groups in the two years
since the Knight Sabers first appeared in Mega Tokyo.

Y'know, given the relative resources available to Genom and the Sabers, I really don't think that having this pack of vigilantes around has done the Company any noteworthy harm - at least in terms of material destroyed and assets lost. Certainly they've done a lot of good for those poor souls who would otherwise have been caught in one of those fifty-eight 'spontaneous rampages', but... There's really no support for this view of her character, but I have a hard time picturing Sylia thinking that small. Not with the kind of effort she's thrown behind the Sabers.

The small size, the continued civilian lives, and most of all the flashy color schemes, don't make sense for a real (that is, for profit) mercenary group, nor, for that matter, for a private army aimed at significantly hindering Genom using open force.

They do make sense, though, for a showpiece group - for a symbol, for heroes. They gather attention, then their mysterious MO gets John Q. Public to think about what they're doing...

And look at who their opponents are, who's making themselves the villain in the piece.

The waiter - who looked remarkably lifelike, but for the
dead-white skin and silver earcaps that recognition laws required on
humanoid boomers - inclined his head.
"With the compliments of the gentleman on whom you've been
spying all week," he said, as if it were the most ordinary thing in
the world to say.

*wince* Ooh, that must sting a bit...

"She's fine," Zoner said. "I just startled her a little, is
all. I'm not sure how I manage to sneak up on people like that - I'm
a big guy, it's not like I'm at all stealthy. How's your knee?"
"... It's fine," Priss replied after a few seconds' nonplussed
pause.

*blinkblink* Err, she didn't actually talk to them at any point, did she? I mean, given that she's a local celebrity they could probably find a recording somewhere, once they match her face, but I wouldn't think it'd be that easy... people don't sound that much alike between singing and speaking, do they?

She could hear Priss's voice, figuratively, in the back of her
head - "You idiot! You're taking -food- from -targets-?" - even as
her saliva glands kicked into high gear in anticipation.
But it looked so -good-...
"... do I eat it?" she whimpered to herself.

*dies laughing*

Now this was more like it. No worrying about the mysterious
strangers who had penetrated most (if not all) of the Knight Sabers'
secrets but didn't seem inclined to do anything about it. No dealing
with grumpy Linna or even-more-remote-and-thoughtful-than-usual Sylia.
Just Nene, her Mad Cat, and the 31st century's all-consuming warfare!
IN THE GRIM FUTURE OF HELLO NENE THERE IS ONLY WAR! A simpler,
cleaner life.

...hello... nene...

*goes away to remember how to breathe*

...

*comes back*

Okay, that was good.

"A Warhammer!" she breathed.
White Star Leader was piloting an honest-to-God -Warhammer-,
one of the original 'Mechs from the very first tabletop Battletech
game. To a modern virtual-reality MechWarrior like Nene, seeing one
on the battlefield was like seeing a Roman centurion piling out of a
SWAT van.

This entire bit of backstory had me cheering madly, if you're wondering. Personally I wouldn't have picked that mech even from among the Unseen - I like armor, firepower, and speed in that same order - but I'd be the first to admit that I'm nowhere near the kind of pilot he's being cast as.

They found each other's rhythm quickly, each getting
comfortable with the other's skill level and style of battle. White
Star Lead was a gunnery fighter. He concentrated on one target at a
time and brought it down with precision fire. Nene preferred to chip
away, using her pulse lasers to harass an enemy while her LRM racks
reloaded; Lead liked to nail enemy units with both barrels, so to
speak, pulling off extreme torso twists and the occasional dual-arm
track while using his secondary weapons to set up a twin-PPC
deathblow.

Ben's style of operation seems like it'd be fairly suitable for use in his suit - intentional, or coincidence? And, the phrasing of Nene's thoughts sort of suggests to me that their game supports melee combat between mechs - which is the number one item on my wishlist for the next real-world game...

*sigh* It'd almost be worth the boomers.

Well, okay, not even close, actually, but that's 'cause I don't want to die.

"Not my style," Stark said. "My mobile number's on the back,
call anytime," he added. "If you want someplace neutral to meet, this
place works as well as any. Plus I wouldn't mind gaming with you
again sometime."
"Really?"
"Really." He waved. "Be seeing you."

...my mind is insisting on picturing a Prisoner salute with this line...

There was a pause; then Sylia's voice returned, sounding very
faintly amused. "Very wise. I look forward to meeting you then,
Mr. Stark. Goodbye for now."
"Bye," said Stark, but she had already hung up.
"Wow," Zoner said. "She has a really sexy voice."

Hey! Another element I'm glad to see carried over!

Yeah, I'm a romantic. Sue me.

"(You sure have a way with people, Priss,)" Linna whispered as
the group followed him up a flight of wrought-iron stairs and across a
narrow balcony to one of the restaurant's private dining rooms.
"(It's my gentle, artistic personality,)" Priss replied
darkly. "(People are just drawn to me.)"

Heh.

"So... your proposal is that we cast prudence and caution
aside and trust each other without sufficient evidence that that trust
is warranted," Sylia said skeptically.
"More or less," Stark replied. "Look at it this way. We're
already showing each other some trust right now. You four could have
blown us away and gotten away with it a dozen times over the past
week. I could have plastered your faces all over the InfoWeb and had
the AD Police at your door at any hour of the day or night for the
last few days. But you haven't and I haven't. Isn't that a start?"
Sylia considered him for a long, long moment, her slim hands
folded on the table before her, her face completely impassive. She
almost seemed to be weighing him, trying to judge him, with her eyes.
Then she said, "I don't - "

I'm consumed by curiosity as to what she was planning to say, you know. ^_^

The unconventional suffix was due to the sudden sharp pain
that stabbed through his right arm near the wrist, which had suddenly
been transfixed with what looked like a foot-long needle of gleaming
steel. He stared at it for a second, then turned to see where it had
come from, and then realized that he'd dropped the grenade.

Err... wouldn't a projectile with enough kinetic energy to bury itself halfway into a 55C's armor plating just go straight through a soft target like a human wrist? Or is there something else involved, body armor or implanted skeletal reinforcement appliques?

"Those come in handy," Priss observed.
"You want a set?" Zoner offered. "It's a patented alloy. Not
available in stores!"
"I'll think about it," she said. "Cover me while I - oh boy."
"While you what - oh. Crap."

I'll agree with the others who've spoken up and say that this is a pretty funny exchange, but the real reason I like it is that it makes a nice change from the anti-cyber stance most fanfic attributes to her.

If there was one problem with the current generation of
hardsuits, she recognized that it was in the lightness of their
armaments. The concussion arrays were very handy in close combat, but
they used a lot of power. The heavy autocannons her suit and Priss's
mounted were accurate and reasonably powerful, but didn't have a lot
of armor-piercing punch, nor could they carry much ammunition. The
linear accelerators all the suits had were accurate and had good
range, but were almost completely ineffective against armored targets.
The lighter chainguns Linna and Nene had were decent antipersonnel
weapons, but again, useless against armor.

I can't speak for their veracity one way or the other, but the RPG game sourcebooks describe the knuckle bombers as being a wierd-ass application of otherwise fairly conventional anti-armor shaped charges. Certainly it's the most plausible theory I know of...

Priss looked for a moment as though she were considering which
man to kill first.
Then she gave Leon a cold glare and said, "Look, pal, I dunno
about you? But where I come from, 20,000 yen is 20,000 yen."

...meep?

It... somehow doesn't feel wrong - I can see Priss saying that... but it also destroys my brain every time I try and think about it.

Gah?

He stood near the end of a blind alley, blank brick walls
hemming him in on three sides. The buildings were too high for his
meager boost capability to jump. Going back would mean trying to get
past the ADP K-suit that was even now charging in after him - he could
hear the heavy kachung-kachung of its suspension recoiling after each
step as it approached the mouth of the alley. There was no way Iron
Man could get back there before the K-suit arrived, and once the
police unit's bulk was in the way, there would be no going around,
only through.

My only real problem with this sequence (yeah, the saving-Nene's-life bit was maybe a bit melodramatic, but it's in genre and well done so there's no reason not to let it slide) is that K-suits are much shorter than buildings. Unless his suit is a lot clunkier than I think it is, going over the guy shouldn't be that much of a problem...

Ja, -n
(now, if you'll excuse me, I feel an urge to conquer the ancient world.)