I have a message from another time... Eyrie Productions, Unlimited presents UNDOCUMENTED FEATURES FUTURE IMPERFECT - Symphony of the Sword No. 3 - Lion of Avalon Benjamin D. Hutchins (c) 2003 Eyrie Productions, Unlimited SATURDAY, AUGUST 16, 2408 ZANTOKU, AUTOZAM, CEPHIRO The 2408 Art of Noise summer tour was the first one to feature more than one date in Cephiro. In 2407, they'd played the Grand Amphitheatre at Tenjou Academy to a very enthusiastic reception. This year they were spending a week in the Tenth World and playing four towns in addition to the academy: the shrine cities of Shalhara and Urabe; Tenchuu, the Holy City; and Zantoku, capital of the industrial kingdom of Autozam. After the Zantoku show, they would rest for a day before returning to Midgard to resume their tour at Babylon 6. Zantoku reminded Guy Morgan of Ohji, the capital of the Morita Empire on Ishiyama, except the buildings were taller. Ohji sprawled around a river delta, and the tallest building in town was the Emperor's Palace, which was a relatively small building by the standards of the Inner Galaxy. Zantoku was more like an Inner city in that it had towers. The tallest buildings in Cephiro were here, black and silver towers reaching for the blue-silver sky. The two cities were similar, though, in that a great deal of the everyday technology was styled in a retro sort of way, made of materials considered archaic back in Midgard, and powered by antique energy sources. The internal combustion engine was still fairly common in Midgard, but here in Autozam, it was still -the- source of power for personal vehicles. Steam was also common here, as it was in no place back home other than Ishiyama nowadays. Steam-powered trolleys and old-fashioned-looking cars filled the streets and telephones still had bells. Corwin's stamp as the new Pillar of Cephiro was most obvious in the rise of Autozam to a position of prominence and importance in the Tenth World since his investiture. Under Emeraude, Autozam had been a bit of a backwater. Most of Cephiro's heavy machinery and almost all of its electrical power came from Autozam, but the kingdom was considered dirty and uncouth, a necessity best kept in the background. Magic and technology were essentially in conflict under the last Pillar, and despite the fact that technology was winning, its cradle was shunned and resented by most of the people of Cephiro. Under Corwin, magic and technology were united, working together to power Cephiro's future, and Autozam suddenly leaped to the fore. The two great kingdoms of modern Cephiro were Nihonia at the center of the world, where Tenjou Academy, the Master Mage, and the heart of magic were located; and Autozam in the far north, home of the great power plants and factories which handled the technology side of Cephiro's dynamic new way of living. Guy and his friend Mimi Shinguuji, who was from Ishiyama, were visiting the Cephirean Technology Museum in downtown Autozam. As they looked at the displays of artifacts recent and ancient - some of them so ancient that Autozam's archaeologists were unsure just what civilization they had arisen from - they talked about the kingdom's similarities to Mimi's homeworld. "Of course, I grew up mainly in Sendai," Mimi pointed out, "which is a lot smaller town than this. But I was born in Ohji - much to Mom's chagrin," she added with a chuckle, "and you're right, this place does remind me of the Imperial Capital. It has that same... -energy- about it. What in the world... ?" Guy, who had been looking across the tiled walkway at what appeared to be a steam-powered printing press ("CIRCA THE REIGN OF PILLAR SKYLINE", said the sign next to it, which was little help to Guy), turned to ask what had prompted Mimi's last comment, which had been prefaced by a gasp of surprise, but there was no need. As soon as he turned to face her, it was obvious what she had been talking about. They had reached the center gallery of the museum, a room about the size of a good-sized movie theater which was lit primarily by a very large skylight which took up most of the ceiling, three stories overhead. It was the sort of room which, in a natural history museum on Earth, would have contained the Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton, a room designed around one central exhibit which was the biggest, most impressive item in the museum's collection. That item here was... ... Guy wasn't sure -what- it was, other than impressive. At first glance it looked like a sculpture, like the stylized Art Deco lions which lounged on the concrete piers flanking the stairs up to the New Avalon Public Library's main entrance, except that it was -huge-, probably fifty feet long and scaled proportionately. Then Guy took a closer look with the purpose of the museum in mind and realized it wasn't a sculpture - it was a technological artifact, a giant machine in the shape of a lion (or whatever the Cephirean equivalent was). It was clearly ancient, as well; its sloping armor plates and curved alloy claws were dull and dingy, the whole machine encrusted with the grime of ages which left it all in shades of grey. It lay with its head on its forepaws, its optics dark. Guy scratched unconsciously at the back of his left hand, which had started to tingle, and stared at the giant mechanical beast as if expecting it to move, to raise its great head and regard him. Nothing happened, but he couldn't shake the feeling that, but for some missing factor, it might. Mimi looked back at him, noting the rapt expression on his face and the way his right hand was closed around his left, covering the green glow which always shone through the skin on the back of that hand. Guy had once been saved from certain death by the efforts of a sorceress, an anodyne, and a mystic gemstone from Cephiro, and the experience had left its mark in more ways than one. "Guy? Are you OK?" the raven-haired girl asked, concern evident in her voice. Guy blinked, seeming to return from a long way away. "Uh... sure," he said. "Sorry. Lost in thought for a second there. Does the sign say what this is?" "Not really," Mimi replied, gesturing to the placard on a stand in front of the velvet ropes which cordoned the lion off from those viewing it. ANCIENT GUARDIAN MACHINE Era Unknown This magnificent machine was found on a pedestal before the ruins of the ancient temple complex at Ryu Zan Paku in the mountains of northern Autozam. Its exact provenance and even its precise age, like those of the temple itself, are unknown, but it is believed to be at least twenty thousand years old. Its function is also unknown for certain, but it is believed to have served as a temple guardian. Though it is intact, no one has ever determined a way to activate it, and it is believed that whatever sorcery powered it is long extinguished. "Wow," Guy mused. "That's cool. I'll have to remember to mention this place to Corwin - he'd like this museum, and he'd love to get a chance to check this out. He could probably find out what it was really for and how old it is." "Probably," Mimi agreed. They left the museum an hour later and started walking down Main Street. People walking around them, most of them in suits with the odd high collars that marked Autozam corporate fashions, paid them little mind - two young people in slightly unusual clothes, probably foreigners, but hardly threatening-looking. Foreigners weren't so strange in Autozam now that the kingdom was one of the centers of Cephirean culture, anyway. Guy was fifteen and had, after lagging behind his twin sister Priss for the first couple of their teenage years, finally overtaken her rate of growth. Priss had leveled out - she was apparently destined to be petite in a way that both of her parents were not - and her brother was now nearly six feet tall, his build slim but powerful. He had bright blue eyes somewhat darker than Priss's (which were so pale that they looked silver in some light), but his red hair was lighter than hers. He had a great sheaf of it, only its length keeping it from being fully as unruly as his half-brother Corwin's famous jagged shock of black, and it was a color which was very near to safety orange - naturally so, much to some people's surprise. The fairness of his skin and the brightness of his hair were offset by the fact that Guy tended to dress in black. He wasn't a goth - far from it, with his naturally open, cheerful personality; he just liked black. His tight-fitting, long-sleeved black shirt and black jeans, their dark tone offset by a yellow utility vest whose pockets contained various useful items, made him look even taller and slimmer than he really was. Mimi was two years older, the same age as Corwin and his various contemporaries at Koopman High in New Avalon, but her Japanese ancestry gave her a small-boned frame which, coupled with her pageboy bob haircut and her fine-featured, wide-eyed face, made her look rather younger than the rangy redhead. She accentuated this effect deliberately by dressing in a style traditional to her upbringing in rural Ishiyama. Most women's fashions from old Japan tended to minimize the wearer's impressions of both size and age. Though small of build and delicate-looking, Sumire Shinguuji was no hothouse flower. The sword she wore at her side wasn't just for show. She had been trained since she was able to stand up in her mother's family's kenjutsu ryu, the Shinguuji Hokushin Ittouryuu, and her father was no slouch with a blade either. Mimi was the heir to the Shinguuji legacy, confirmed this past spring before His Radiant Majesty the Emperor of Morita, and she had the sword and the Lens to prove it. All these facts were to prove most fortunate for the citizens of Zantoku on this particular day. "What's all the commotion up ahead?" Mimi wondered, pulling Guy's attention back from idle thoughts about the ancient mecha-lion back in the museum. He looked, and sure enough, there was a milling crowd on the sidewalk ahead, spilling into the street. No, on second look, it wasn't milling. It was moving toward them, and moving purposefully - Guy and Mimi ducked into a doorway as the crowd streamed by, a mass of panic-stricken people making for safety as fast as their legs would carry them. Mimi tried to get a couple people's attention and ask them what was going on, but they ignored her and kept on running, men in suits holding their hats on with their hands, mothers with children in their arms, schoolchildren clutching their bookbags. A moment later the crowd thinned down to a stream, individual people pelting past as fast as they could go. The two Valiant crewmembers stepped back out onto the sidewalk. They looked questioningly at each other, shrugged, and started heading in the opposite direction, toward whatever had made these people flee. There were giants coming down the street. Not "giants" in the metaphorical sense of very large regular people, like Guy and Mimi's friend Moose MacEchearn, who was from Hoffman and topped seven feet and five hundred pounds. Nor "giants" in the common sense of huge humanoid constructs, like Destroids and kaiju-class battle robots. No, these were literal giants, humanoid creatures forty to fifty feet tall. Four of them, walking down the middle of Main Street, dressed in black iron armor over grey paramilitary uniforms and carrying giant melee weapons - two maces, a truly impressive axe and a sword which was only short in proportion to its wielder. "Trouble," Guy said. "Look down at their feet." Mimi looked, and then made an irritated noise. At the giants' feet came a phalanx of normal-sized people, similarly dressed. Some of them carried melee weapons, some more modern equipment, but all of them looked mean, and as they came up the street they were smashing store windows, shooting up the facades of buildings, and generally wreaking havoc. "Oh, -now- what the hell," Mimi said, the disgruntled words sounding odd in her unusually sweet voice. The two ran down the street. Mimi alerted the others via her Lens as they ran, and received the disheartening news that no one seemed to be sure where Corwin (who could, after a fashion, teleport) was. It would take anybody else in their group at least ten minutes to get down to this part of town. That didn't deter them - they were heroes, after all. "Hey!" Guy shouted when they got within earshot of the front rank. The man in the lead, a heavyset, rather scarred specimen with a spiked flail and a machine pistol, gave them a faintly incredulous look, like a construction worker who's just had a wetlands protection activist lie down in front of his steam shovel. Not really knowing how else to react, he stopped walking, holding up a hand for his battalion to halt, and replied, "What?" "What do you think you're doing?!" Mimi demanded. The scar-faced man laughed. "What does it look like we're doing, missy?" he inquired. "We're wrecking this place!" "I can see that, but - " Mimi began, but then she had to pause in order to dodge a burst from his machine pistol. "(Oh, the art of conversation is dead,)" she muttered as she drew her sword. Guy jumped out of the line of fire as well, kneeling behind the dubious cover of a mailbox. He looked across the street, saw Mimi crouched behind a fire hydrant, and as they made eye contact, both nodded. "G-Armor!" Guy barked. "E-QUIP!" As he spoke, he raised his left fist in front of his chest and concentrated. The green glow spiked, surrounding a squared-off capital G etched in light beneath his skin. Golden light shimmered and sparked around him, drawing new shapes in the air. A moment later, he burst out from behind the mailbox clad in sleek, gleaming golden armor sections over his clothes, topped with a shining half-helmet. The headgear framed his face, crowned his brow with a golden V, and left his orange hair to trail behind him like the wake of a lightcycle as he charged out and leveled the scar-faced squad leader with a spectacular left hook that drew a shining arc of emerald light behind it. One of the men on the left flank snarled and leveled his submachinegun, but before he could finish squeezing the trigger, Mimi sprang out from behind the meager cover of her hydrant and, to his immense surprise, cut the gun in half with her sword. What happened next was little less than total havoc - havoc controlled and carefully metered by the two flashing figures who beset the gang in grey fatigues. Darting here and there, moving so fast they occasionally seemed to disappear, Guy and Mimi relieved troopers of their weapons and of consciousness with equal dispatch. Oddly, while they were engaged with this activity, the giants just stood there watching, not taking any role at all. They seemed more bemused than anything else. Guy and Mimi made short work (no pun intended) of their human-scale companions, ending up three-quarters back to back in the middle of the street, looking up at the foremost of the giants. "Now what?" Mimi wondered. "Maybe they'll give up," Guy replied with a sardonic grin. Instead, the sound of applause suddenly echoed across the street. Around one of the giants' legs came another man. This one wasn't wearing a grey uniform; he was dressed in ornate robes of various dark fabrics leaning toward the red end of the spectrum. He had an aquiline face which wore a smile much more sardonic than Guy's, skin almost as dark as Moose's, and ears like those sported by their mutual friend Uum'y R'yuu-z'ky, who was from Hyeruul. Having been briefed on the races of the Nine Worlds by Corwin, both Guy and Mimi recognized his species, or at least developed a strong suspicion. "Svartelven sorcerer?" Mimi hazarded. "Looks like one," Guy replied. "OK, pal, what's the idea?" Mimi asked the man in the dark robes. The sorcerer smiled. "Just testing out a new moneymaking venture," he replied in a calm, soft voice. "I suppose," he added, looking around in mock dismay at his scattered troops, "that I should have expected something like this to happen. This world is supposed to be rife with hero types. Ah, well; that -is- why we do test runs." He smiled coolly. "It just goes to show you." Then he snapped his fingers, and... -things- erupted out of the street. They looked sort of like a cross between samurai and deep sea divers, ornately armored figures with faces hidden behind spherical helmets sporting opaque little round windows, and there were -dozens- of them. "You should never," the sorcerer informed them sardonically, "send a man to do a monster's job." Then he gestured negligently at the city's two impromptu defenders and said, "Kill them." Mimi blinked, drawing in a sharp breath. "What?" Guy murmured, leaning closer to her. "Nothing," she replied. "They look... they look like the Roots of Evil, the Invaders who attacked my homeworld, back when my mother first knew your father. Except they're too small - the Roots of Evil were Kohbu-sized. That's why they -made- the Kohbu, to fight them more effectively." Guy nodded. "Can you handle them?" "I think so. Why?" "Because I'm going to be -busy-!" Guy cried, then lunged forward and, to Mimi's amazement - and she'd seen him fight before! - CAUGHT the blade of a giant's downswinging axe between the palms of his hands. His feet dug into the pavement as, grunting, he stopped the giant's swing, the G-stone glowing through the back of his hand like a torch. "Oh," said Mimi. Then she took a half-step back, drove the point of her sword into the street to free both her hands, reached into her sleeve, and whipped out a length of white cloth ribbon. Catching one end of it in her teeth, she wound it around her body and knotted it, tying the long sleeves of her light purple kimono-like top with their dark violet decorations up out of her way. Then she seized her sword, drew it back out of the pavement, dropped into a half-crouch, and sprang toward the nearest of the charging monsters. /* Queen "Headlong" _Classic Queen_ */ It would be one of the few regrets of Mimi Shinguuji's young life to date that she missed seeing Guy take down one of the giants with his bare hands, despite the fact that she was right there when it happened. Unfortunately, she was much too busy to pay attention to what was going on up above her head. Looking over the scene later, paying special attention to the dents in the lampposts and building facades, she would piece together that Guy had jumped from side to side of the street, kicking off from various bits of masonry and metal before they really had a chance to realize that they couldn't support his weight, and finally connected with the giant's face at a considerable speed. There were times when she envied Guy his ability to do things like that. Her mother could do them, sure, but she was a high-level esper with decades of hard-fought battle experience. According to that authority, Mimi could expect to reach that level, if she attended to her training and did not shy from battle when it offered, but not for another five to eight years. On the other hand, she wouldn't have wanted to go through what Guy had to endure in order to get there faster, even if the end result -was- a body supercharged with the incredible power of Cephirean gaolith. Sure, he could fight on a level only seen in the very highest-level espers and top combat cyborgs - he was powerful enough that he could learn the Panzerkunst, that legendary cyborg battle art, even though he wasn't a cyborg - but to get there he'd had to get something like 40% of his original body disintegrated in a disruptor overload. Too chancy for Mimi's taste. She'd stick to the slower path. Anyway, she might not have superhuman leaping ability just yet, but Mimi was no slouch in close combat; while Guy played tag with the giants up above, leaping from building to building and never giving them a still target while he waited for another opportunity to build up his power and clobber another of them, she danced through the horde of mechanical monsters like a summer breeze, leaving ruin in her wake. The sorcerer who had apparently caused all this chaos stood off to one side behind a protective screen of his creations, watching the battle with interest. He'd heard that Cephiro had dangerous fighters in it, but he'd also heard that they were fairly thin on the ground and concentrated mostly in Nihonia, far from Autozam. These two were putting the lie to -that-; but still, if there were only the two of them... ... his eyes narrowed as the girl dressed in different shades of purple slashed one of the monsters in half, then paused briefly at the end of the follow-through, half-crouched with her sword extended full-length before her. For an instant, she was still enough that the sorcerer could get a good look at the blade. It was a fine blade and its edge was glowing with a dull violet radiance, but neither of those caught the sorcerer's eye. All his attention was drawn to the runic engraving marching along the gleaming metal just above the temper line. CAST IN THE NAME OF GOD, it said, YE NOT GUILTY. The Valkyrie creed! This girl was no Valkyrie; being a svartelf, the sorcerer knew all their names and faces. She must know one of the Valkryie weaponsmiths, though, and be well-regarded by them to have been given a blade made fit for a Valkyrie's use. That explained her prowess against the Mechanoids. And her friend was clearly some kind of warrior-mage, to judge by the soft green glow which surrounded him as he led the giants a merry chase. Why, he'd dropped Brjofgar Glassjaw with one punch, and Brjofgar might have a glass jaw legendary enough to have ended up as his name, but he was still a son of Jotunheim! Perhaps, the sorcerer mused, it's time to take a more active role. Guy was reasonably pleased with himself; he'd never fought opponents nearly ten times his own size before, and so far they hadn't come close to touching him. Meanwhile, he'd knocked one of them out of action, at least for the moment, and it was only a matter of time before he had one of the others lined up. Possibly, if he played his cards right, he could even get a couple of them to take each -other- out. That would be sweet - He was extremely nonplussed when, in mid-leap across the gulf between two rooftops on opposite sides of Main Street, he suddenly stopped. This was not the result of running into some interposing object, such as a giant; there was nothing in his path and he felt no impact as he halted. He also didn't fall; he just hung there, as if the air around him had suddenly become solid. "What the - ?!" he blurted. He glanced down and saw the man in the reddish-black robes looking up at him, one hand crooked in a curious gesture. Then he saw the man's face twist into a very nasty smile. Thinking that -that- couldn't possibly be good, Guy looked up. Just in time to see one of the giants' maces coming toward him like a freight train. Oh well, he thought, at least they didn't think to use the sword... Impact. "GUY!" Mimi cried as her friend was catapulted in the opposite direction, his orange hair streaming behind him like a comet's tail. If Guy had really had time to think about it, he would probably have noted with some surprise that that hurt a lot less than he expected it would. Although, to make up for it, it was probably going to hurt -more- than he thought it would when he came down. As he plowed through the skylights of the Technology Museum, Guy instinctively fell back on the telepath-assisted combat training he'd received as a member of the Valiant's crew and sent out a desperate mental SOS, though there was no one around who he could reasonably expect to pick it up. The G-stone radiance from his hand spiked with a high, keening sound as the adrenaline reaction made the falling glass around him seem to glitter and spin in slow motion. Far below, something ancient glimmered and stirred. Mimi whirled, trying to follow Guy's aerial progress, but with his sudden removal from the battlefield, she became the only member of her team, and so she couldn't spare the attention to watch and see where he finally came to rest. She only hoped it wouldn't be a -permanent- rest. Gritting her teeth, Mimi kicked her own fighting efforts into overdrive. Her aura brightened visibly, to the impressed surprise of the elven sorcerer, as she plunged into the main body of his guard force. It began to dawn on the sorcerer that she might just be able to get through. From his vantage point, all he could see was various parts of various mechanoids flying up into the air, which was a behavior they didn't exhibit when things were going normally. He started readying another spell in case she -did- get through, but before he could finish drawing it to mind, the mechanoids closest to him fell away like the walls of a collapsing house, her sword reaching for him - - one of the mechs from the outer circle loomed up out of the smoke sent up by the inner ring's destruction; its right-arm autocannon was sparking, inoperative, but it still had the blade on its left arm as it lunged toward her. Smoothly, she redirected her blade, releasing it with her left hand, reversing it in her right, and driving it back without looking. It drove squarely into the center of the creature's chest. Transfixed, it froze, twitching spasmodically, unable to complete its attack. In that half-second, the sorcerer saw his opening and started concentrating on the spell again. In that half-second, Mimi's free left hand was suddenly full of blue steel, and the sorcerer found his concentration broken again, this time by the sudden realization that his left eye was looking straight into a metal tube with several spiral grooves cut into the inside. "Flinch and you'll be chasing your head down Fifth Street," Sumire Shinguuji snarled, thumbing off the safety of her antique Webley-Fosbery auto-revolver by way of emphasis. Behind her, the remaining mechanoids all turned and trained their autocannons on her head. "I'll take you with me," the sorcerer replied calmly. "Maybe," Mimi replied, her eyes steady and unmoving on his. "How lucky do you feel?" Hey, thought Glongar Steelhead. That little is pointing a boomstick at the boss. I should probably do something about that. As the giant raised his mace and prepared to lower it again, some tiny voice in the back of his rather empty head tried to note to him that, if he did that, he would probably smoosh the boss as well; but he didn't really hear that voice, except to remind himself that the boss was a -wizard-, and as such, not subject to getting smooshed like any old -ordinary- little. Not all giants are stupid - some of them are quite bright indeed - but Glongar Steelhead was very, very stupid. So he raised the mace, and started to bring it down. Then he was distracted by a very loud sound, and in the process of looking toward that sound, he missed his aim and smashed the building instead of the little attacking his boss. Shattered masonry rained down, huge chunks of broken brickwork and decorative concrete falling toward the cluster of smaller figures on the street corner. Mimi's glance flicked upward, gauging its fall; then she traversed her old Fosbery a couple of inches to the right and fired. The sorcerer reeled, screaming and clapping a hand to his ear; the bullet had gone into the wall an inch to the left of it, touching no part of him, but the roar of the weapon firing right next to his head hit him like a fist, filling his consciousness with a terrible pain and a piercing ringing sound. In that instant, Mimi was gone. The sorcerer, his concentration on a counterspell absolutely shattered, nevertheless had enough presence of mind to duck as well. He was fortunate in that most of the rubble landed on his own Mechanoid servants, which otherwise would have riddled him with cannon fire in an attempt to follow his last instruction and shoot Mimi. Mimi rolled out of her dive, sword and pistol ready, and whirled to see the giants all standing there looking befuddled while their boss writhed on the sidewalk. Then she heard the sound again, the one she hadn't dared look away from the sorcerer to investigate the first time. Turning, she looked down the street toward its source, then gasped and almost dropped her weapons. The mechanical lion she and Guy had seen in the Technology Museum was standing on top of a building a half-block down, its eyes glowing a familiar bright green color. Standing on top of its head - his arms folded across his chest, his hair blowing behind him in the wind, the G-stone radiance in his left hand almost blazing - was Guy Morgan, and he did not look amused. "I think it's about time you guys picked on someone your own size," he declared. Then he gathered himself and -leaped- from the mecha-lion's head, arcing high up into the air. As he reached the peak of his leap, he filled his lungs and bellowed, "GALEON! FUUUUUSION!" The mecha-lion roared again, crouched, and sprang, its fanged mouth swinging wide. Mimi gasped again, raising the fist that clutched her sword to her lips, as the machine extended its leap with rocket thrusters built into its hips, intercepted Guy's arc... ... and he disappeared into its mouth before its jaws slammed shut. "GUYYY!!" Mimi screamed, but the vowel sputtered out into a sound of amazement as the mecha-lion... -changed-. Its parts moved, reorganizing themselves into a different configuration rather like the Veritech mecha she'd seen. In the process, the crusted dirt of ages sloughed away at the movement points, revealing dingy white armor and tarnished gold. When the mechanoid slammed down onto the street a quarter-block from the three dumbfounded giants, it was a humanoid robot about their height, its feet decked with the lion's golden claws, the lion's face snarling out of its chest. Its humanoid head had a face like a Transformer's, flex-metal, realistic, set in a triumphant smirk which was absolutely Guy Morgan's is-this-cool-or-what look. On its brow gleamed the biggest G-stone Mimi had ever heard of. The robot which had been a lion raised its arms and then pulled them sharply down, fists cocked, into a martial-arts ready stance which was also one of Guy's, a stance he'd learned from Alita Ironheart as part of his Panzerkunst training, and when it spoke, it spoke in an amplified, slightly metallic version of Guy's voice: "GAIGAR!" The lion's foreclaws, which were folded up alongside the robot mode's forearms, swung down and clanged into position over the backs of the hands, ready for battle. "C'mon, you guys," Gaigar said, his face molding into a sardonic grin. "Let's dance." The giants blinked. "DON'T JUST STAND THERE, YOU IDIOTS!" the sorcerer yelled, partly out of rage and partly because he was trying to speak loud enough to hear himself. "KILL THEM BOTH!" The giants blinked again, then looked at each other, and then charged. They were frost giants, sons of Jotunheim, the most powerful humanoids in the Nine Worlds; but against Gaigar, they were like regular men trying to go hand-to-hand with a normal-sized combat droid. Only the collateral damage level was different. Gaigar had no ranged weapons, but it didn't matter; Guy was a well-trained martial artist, and his new body was immune to the giants' melee weaponry. The ending was never much in doubt. By the time it was over, the block at the corner of Main Street and Fifth Street was an alMIGHTY mess. The svartelven sorcerer watched his biggest minions get the stuffing kicked out of them by... whatever it was... and decided that this particular experiment had gone about as far as it could go. Time to head back to the magic anchor he'd left and get the hell back to Svartalfheim. The raiders-to-Cephiro gig might not be as easily profitable as he'd initially thought... He turned, and then felt a powerful sense of deja vu as he found himself looking down that same spiraled metal tube again. " " said the angry-eyed, black-haired girl behind it. "WHAT?" the sorcerer demanded. "forget it," the girl shouted back, and a moment later, a paddy wagon full of burly Zantoku city cops pulled up behind her. I'd have gotten away with it, too, the disgruntled sorcerer mused to himself as he was driven away in handcuffs to the city jail, where, hopefully, a healer-mage would see to his ear. If it wasn't for those meddling kids and that... relic. By the time Corwin Ravenhair arrived on the scene, it was all over but the shouting. He got there just in time to see the huge, rather grubby mechanoid shift back into its base mecha-lion form and lower itself to a sphinx position on the street in front of a worried-looking Mimi Shinguuji. "Mimi," said Corwin as he ran up. "What's going on?" "Good question," Mimi replied. "Where's Guy?" Corwin asked. Mimi gestured, and a second later, the mecha-lion's mouth opened. There was a light source in there, a light too bright for anything else to be seen of the interior. After a moment, a shadow moved within that light, and then Guy, his armor back in standby mode again, strolled down the robotic beast's lower jaw and hopped down to the street like a man disembarking from a bus. "GUY!" Mimi cried. She ran to him, catching him up in her arms and turning him completely around. "You're OK!" "Sure," Guy replied. "Never better. You all right?" "I'm fine," Mimi replied breathlessly. "I just - when that giant hit you, I thought you were - I'm just glad you're OK," she said, and then, rather to his surprise, she kissed him. She'd kissed him before, on the cheek - they were pretty good friends - but this wasn't one of those, no sir. Most definitely not one of those. Guy did the only reasonable and prudent thing under the circumstances, and lost consciousness immediately. He might be excused, however, as he had just used up his entire personal energy reserve reactivating a millennia-idle guardian robot. As Mimi uttered a number of confused, startled sounds and lowered the smiling, peacefully sleeping Guy carefully to the ground, Corwin stood rubbing at the back of his head and looking up at the impassive leonine face of Galeon. "Would someone please tell me what the hell is going on?" he asked, but no one was listening. SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2408 WORLD WIDE BUILDING NEW AVALON, ZETA CYGNI Guy Morgan entered his brother Corwin's apartment with a smile on his face, not only because he was normally to be found smiling anyway, but also because of the sight that greeted him. The top floor of the World Wide Building was always a congenial place, but doubly so on Saturdays after lunch. Kozue Kaoru was curled up on one of the couches watching a baseball game on cable; Corwin, who only watched baseball if the Knights were playing, was in an armchair, drawing on a sketchpad - not the furious scribbling that said he was in the throes of a capital-I Idea, but the leisurely, smiling doodling that meant he was just trying something out to see what it would look like. What really made Guy smile about the tableau was Anthy Tenjou, who always visited Corwin (or the other way around) on Saturdays. She was standing behind Corwin's chair, leaning against the top of it, and as he drew, she was idly toying with his hair. Guy had noticed that a lot of the women in Corwin's life like to mess with his hair, which was perpetually tousled anyway, but what made him smile about Anthy was that she was different. When she fidgeted with Corwin's hair, she was always engaged in the sisyphean task of trying to tidy it up a bit. Hearing him enter, they all turned and greeted him. Corwin, grinning, put aside the sketchpad and got up. "Guy," he said. "Thanks for coming. C'mon, I've got something I want you to see." Kozue got up, looking eager about something, and she and Anthy followed the two young men into the elevator, into which Corwin keyed a special code. This code took the car well below the building's lowest level, the basement parking garage, and down into the network of defense tunnels under the city where Corwin made his workshop. They emerged into one of the small access hallways that led between the main complex tunnels and hangars, and Corwin's grin of anticipation got wider as he led Guy down the hall toward the double doors at the end. "You remember the scrap you got into with that svartelf sorcerer and his goons in Zantoku last month?" he asked. Guy gave him a look, to which Corwin chuckled. "Well, they sure remember it in Zantoku, I'll tell you that," he went on. "Not only was it the first time a group of Outside raiders attacked a major settlement, it was the first time anyone had really shown them what for. And," he added with a slightly rueful look, "it was the first time anyone brought it to the attention of the Trinity." He cracked his knuckles and shared a meaningful little smile with Anthy. "There won't be any more of -that- foolishness coming out of Svartalfheim." "That's good," said Guy. "I'm glad I was able to help, and I'm sure Mimi is too." "Well," said Corwin with a knowing grin, "the people of Zantoku are grateful. Mayor Stanley wanted me to let you know that, and convey to both of you gifts from a grateful Autozam. Mimi's will have to wait until fall break, when I have time to go to Ishiyama and deliver it, but as for yours... " They reached the doors at the end of the hall just as he said that, and they obligingly hissed open to reveal one of the complex's many hangars. Crouching in its usual resting sphinx position in the middle of the hangar, illuminated by the ceiling lights and a circle of work lamps, was - "Galeon!" Guy blurted delightedly. The mecha-lion looked almost completely different than it had the last time Guy had seen it. For one thing, it was -clean-. Someone had very painstakingly removed all the eons of built-up grime and dirt from it and then carefully polished the entire massive machine until it gleamed in the hangar lights. Most of its armor was a shining white, with black accents and brilliantly glittering golden plates on face, mane and claws. Its appearance in the streets of Zantoku, covered with untold generations of grime and soot, had only hinted at the power and majesty of its true form, and even Guy, who had gotten closer to it than anyone else, was awestruck. He walked slowly toward it, then noticed an envelope taped to one of the machine's gleaming foreclaws. He reached out, pulled it off, and looked inside. There he found a shiny silver medal in the shape of a gearwheel on a chain. "'For Gai Morgan, the peerless Lion of Avalon, from the grateful people of Zantoku and all of Autozam,'" he read; then he turned it over and continued, "'In Council this Twelfth Day of September, Standard Year 2408.'" "Nice touch of theirs, putting the Standard date on," Corwin pointed out. Guy turned to his brother in disbelief. "They... they -gave- it to me?" he asked. "But... it's a priceless historic artifact. The plaque said it dates to before Cephiro's current civilization. If anything happens to it... " Corwin grinned. "Well, in Autozam they have a saying: 'If it still runs, drive it.' You're the only one who's ever gotten Galeon here to do anything. Since you left Zantoku again, he's been just as inert as before. Hell, even -I- couldn't get a rise out of him," he added, looking mock-rueful. Guy looked impressed in spite of himself. "Really?" Corwin nodded. "Really. 'Course, I wasn't trying -that- hard, but still... he followed you home, so I think you have to keep him." "But remember, Guy," said Kozue in an admonishing tone, "a huge... robotic... lion thing... is a big responsibility!" "(Thank you, Kozue,)" Corwin muttered, stifling a snicker. Guy smiled and crossed to Galeon's head, which lay on the floor between his forepaws in a posture that amusingly reminded Guy of his sister Kaitlyn's pet tiger Sergei. As he drew even with its massive metallic snout, he tentatively reached out his left hand. As he touched it, the G-stone glow inside his hand pulsed. As it did, so did Galeon's optics; the mechanoid beast stirred and emitted a soft grumbling noise, then settled back down to 'sleep'. "You see?" Corwin said. "You have a friend." "Well, I... wow," said Guy. Corwin walked around Galeon, looking thoughtfully up at it, and said, "I'd like to run some performance tests out on Battery Island sometime if you're up for it," he said. "Those giants didn't really give you a run for your money, and anyway, Galeon's core crystal was badly degraded, it was so old." He grinned, rubbing at the back of his neck. "He has a GS-Ride reactor, by the way, which makes me feel like a little bit less of a Genius Inventor. Sort of like inventing the telephone and then finding one in the Great Pyramid," he added with a chuckle. "Anyway, the core crystal was pretty well shot - almost all the energy to operate him last time came from -you-, which is why you up and passed out afterward. I've put in a new one, so I don't think you'll find operating him as exhausting as you did the first time, and it'd be useful to find out just what he and - what did you call your joined form?" "Gaigar," said Guy automatically. "Where'd you come up with the name?" Kozue asked. "And how did you know its name was Galeon?" "I don't know," Guy replied, and next to Kozue, Anthy smiled and nodded, having suspected as much. "When I fell through the skylight into the museum, I called for help, like Imra trained us to when we were doing telepath-assisted boarding drills - just out of habit, I suppose - and... he answered." "Huh. Interaction between your gaolith-enhanced bioenergy and his power control circuits, I suppose. At any rate, either then or when you Fused with him, your identities linked on a level -I- only understand because I'm a Weaponsmith. You know how Utena's swords are part of her being?" Guy nodded. "Well, in a way, Galeon here is part of yours now. Or you're part of his. Take your pick." Guy looked up at the gleaming, sleeping form of the mecha-lion, then grinned at his brother. "I think I can live with that." Corwin returned the grin. "I thought you might. So - you want to do some performance tests sometime?" "Sure. I'm not doing anything tomorrow, or is that too early?" "That's fine. The earlier we get that done, the sooner I can start thinking about the next phase." "Next phase?" said all three of the other people in the room at once, which made Corwin smile. "While I was cleaning and repairing Galeon, I noticed something very interesting about his construction. He has hardpoints and conversion points for attachments of some sort, extra components which I think were intended to boost his power. If I'm reading the layout and construction of the hardpoints right, they may boost his power quite a -bit-. "Unfortunately," he went on, "they weren't found with him at Ryu Zan Paku, and there's no record of what they -looked- like; but if I can get good solid baselines on his power in his stand-alone configurations, I may be able to design a set of my own. They won't look like the originals, and they may not work exactly like the originals... " He grinned. "But they'll do -something- cool, I guarantee you that." "Are you sure you'll have time for that?" Guy asked. "I know you're still working on refining your own GS-Ride system, and laying the groundwork for the Getter Robo prototypes, and... " His grin widening, Corwin threw an arm around Guy's shoulders. "Don't worry about it," he said, gesturing expansively with his free hand. "It'll be a good exercise in dissimilar engineering, and a detailed study of Galeon's systems may teach me things that will make my version of GS-Ride and the Getter series even better. Anyway, I have a promise to keep." "A promise?" Guy asked. "Sure. Didn't I tell you, if you became a big-time hero, I'd build you the strongest robot in the world? OK, maybe it's cheating a little bit, but I always say, you have to work with the materials you have... " Guy blinked, then remembered that Christmas - the first Christmas with Utena Tenjou around, it seemed so long ago now! - and laughed. Kozue turned to Anthy with a quizzical expression, but Anthy only smiled and winked. Kozue grinned, shook her head in fond exasperation at the lot of them, and the four headed back toward the elevator. In the hangar, Galeon slept, eternally patient. The Brave King had come after more than fifty millennia. What would another few months matter? /* Joe Satriani "Chords of Life" _Strange Beautiful Music_ */ Eyrie Productions, Unlimited presented UNDOCUMENTED FEATURES FUTURE IMPERFECT - Symphony of the Sword No. 3 - Entr'acte: Lion of Avalon The Cast (in order of appearance) Gai "Guy" Morgan Sumire Shinguuji Galeon Outworld Raiding Party #7-A Corwin Ravenhair Kozue Kaoru Anthy Tenjou Factory Manager Benjamin D. Hutchins Ishiyama Consultant Rob Shannon Floor Gang Kelly St. Clair Kris Overstreet James Rinehart Cleanup Crew The Usual Suspects Guy based on Gai Shishio (OVA version) and Galeon from "King of Braves Gaogaigar" by Sunrise Nope, that sorcerer really didn't have a name, did he? The Symphony will return E P U (colour) 2003