I have a message from another time...

                     Eyrie Productions, Unlimited
                               presents

                UNDOCUMENTED FEATURES FUTURE IMPERFECT
                      - SYMPHONY OF THE SWORD No. 4 -

                 Second Movement: A Night to Remember

                         Benjamin D. Hutchins
                           with Anne Cross
                             Pearson Mui
                           Kris Overstreet
                            Martin F. Rose

                (c) 2002 Eyrie Productions, Unlimited


                         FRIDAY, MAY 22, 2409
                               6:17 PM
                         WORLD WIDE BUILDING
                        NEW AVALON, ZETA CYGNI

        Corwin Ravenhair looked at himself in the mirror, smoothing at
his hair.  At the same time, Kozue Kaoru peeked over his shoulder as
she reached around from behind him and adjusted his tie, and
R. Dorothy Wayneright secured his handkerchief in his breast pocket.
Then he stepped back, turned around, and asked, "Look OK?"
        "I'm not an unbiased observer," Kozue replied, grinning, "but
you look pretty good to me."
        The television on the wall behind her flickered and the face
of Corwin's kit-built cybernetic intelligence appeared.  She had
turned out better than he had expected; for a system intended to be
used basically as a toy, she'd proven to be surprisingly useful.  The
added burden of operating real systems, especially those as extensive
as those of Corwin's underground workshop and the World Wide Building,
occasionally made her a little erratic, but by and large he was
satisfied with her performance.
        He was also reasonably pleased with the way her icon had
turned out.  The range of options available in the icon design tool
wasn't the widest in the world, but Fuu Hououji's Holoshop skills had
helped make up for that.  The Virtual Companion XL's icon's hair was
honey-gold (and, by default, done up in a fat braid) because Fuu had
modeled it after her elder sister Kuu's.  Her bright green eyes were a
Hououji shade as well, though the shape of her face was one of the
stock Virtual Companion options with just a little tweaking for
individuality's sake.  Not a bad effort, Corwin thought.
        He just wished he'd managed to come up with a name for her.
He'd intended to, but during the development and testing process he
and Fuu and his cousin Hiroshi, who was interested in the project as
an acquaintance of the chief developer, had referred to the developing
proto-CI by the name of her primary object file, "XL" - and it had
stuck.
        Now Excel grinned out of the TV and gave him a thumbs-up.
"Yow!  Lookin' SHARP, Chief!" she declared, and Corwin thought of the
one other thing about her design he'd like to improve - he wished she
had a mellower voice.  The one she had was kind of... grating.
        "Your hair won't stay under control for more than an hour,"
Dorothy informed him, "but it should be good enough for the photo
session, anyway."
        "Are you sure you want me to do this?" he asked Kozue again.
        "Of course I'm sure!" Kozue said.  "It's her last chance."
She grinned again.  "Anyway, you're taking me to the Tenjou Academy
dance next week - that's enough for me."
        Corwin smiled and kissed the blue-haired girl.  "You're a
rare find, Kozue," he told her.  Then he grabbed up his big, heavy
wristwatch from the top of his dresser and hurried out, calling behind
him, "Excel, hold my calls... "
        "Have a good time," said Dorothy as he vanished into the
turbolift.
        "You BET, boss!  Don't worry about a thing!" the CI cried,
waving frantically.  "Your Excel will hold your calls 'til the COWS
come home!  Why, you won't EVER have to worry about a call not getting
held when EXCEL's on the job!"  Then she paused, looked around, and
put her hand sheepishly behind her head, rather like Corwin's own
habit.  "Eheh... I got too excited again, didn't I."
        "You'll grow out of it," said Dorothy.
        Kozue didn't pay much attention; she just smiled after Corwin
for a while, then gave a self-satisfied sigh, flopped back on the
couch and turned on the radio.  Friday night was Oldies Night on WZXQ,
and she had a book to finish reading... life was good.

        Corwin popped up at street level inside the phone booth at the
corner of Morgan and Rush, walked up Morgan Lane to the Roses' front
yard, went next door, and stopped on the stoop of number 110, the
odd-looking white house with the two round windows on the second
floor.
        There he paused for a moment, brushed imaginary lint from the
lapel of his tuxedo (a modern Salusian style with a three-quarter-length 
jacket and the inevitable silver piping), resisted the urge to touch his 
hair, checked his watch, and rang the bell.  After a few moments, the
door opened and the open, square-jawed face of Professor Hank Utonium
smiled out at him.
        "Why, Corwin!  What a pleasant surprise," said Utonium
heartily.  "And you're all dressed up, too.  But I suppose you're on
your way to the prom, eh?  What can I do for you?"
        "Hello, Professor.  Uh... is Buttercup at home?" he asked,
realizing that he'd feel pretty stupid if it turned out she'd gone out
to work off her frustration on patrol or something.
        "She sure is," said Utonium, "but I should warn you - she's in
a pretty bad mood."  The professor leaned a little closer and said in
a confidential tone, "A fella could get hurt, if you know what I
mean."
        "All the same, Professor, I'd like to talk to her for a
minute, if I could."
        Utonium chuckled paternally as he ushered Corwin into the
living room.  "It's your neck, young man," said the Professor
cheerfully.  "Wait here and I'll see if I can get her to come down."
Utonium, still wearing a lab coat despite the fact that it was 7:30 in
the evening, went upstairs.  For a few long moments, Corwin stood
waiting, listening to the muffled sounds of voices through the
ceiling; then they stopped, and someone came down the stairs.
        Despite having grown up alongside the three Utonium sisters,
having been their longtime pal, having been with them under conditions
as varying and hostile as any that could be found in New Avalon, and
having considered himself more or less spoken for throughout his soon-
to-be-concluded high school career, Corwin Ravenhair had to catch his
breath.
        She'd obviously been crying (or at least trying not to cry)
quite recently, but Theodora Utonium, known to friend and foe alike as
Buttercup, looked lovely nonetheless, in a dark green dress of a
velvet so fine it was iridescent.  A tomboy to the core, Buttercup was
not often to be found in such a garment.  This one had been made
especially for her by her sister Theresa, universally known as
Bubbles, and it fit her trim, athletic frame perfectly.  Corwin was
justifiably proud of himself for not goggling outright as she came
into view on the stairs.
        "Professor said you wanted to see me," Buttercup said.  Her
voice was always a little husky, but now it was harsher than usual,
both with the aftereffects of her recent activity and her forced
casualness.  She was determined not to appear as though there were
anything bothering her whatsoever.
        "That dress," said Corwin, "is the single best use of green
velvet I've ever seen."
        Buttercup looked skeptically curious.  "How many others have
you seen?"
        "One," Corwin replied, "and I gotta tell you, the pool table
didn't look nearly as good."
        She folded her arms and scowled.  "Is there something you
want?  I'm really not in the mood for your jokes."
        Corwin grinned.  "Well, y'know, if you're not too busy... I
thought maybe you'd like to go to the prom with me."
        Buttercup snorted.  "Yeah, right, like I'd want to go to
-that- stupid thing.  Besides, you've already got a date."
        Corwin shook his head.  "Nope.  Kozue cancelled."
        Buttercup's green eyes widened a little.  "Why?" she asked,
pretense dropped in favor of complete surprise.  She came the rest of
the way down the stairs to confront him.  "What happened?"
        "Well, I'll tell you," he said, rubbing the back of his head
with a boyish grin.  "I was supposed to come up with some kind of
clever story, but how long have we been friends?"
        "Twelve years," Buttercup answered.  "All my life."
        "Right.  So you know I can't tell you a clever story.  Kozue
heard it on the jungle drums that you'd been dumped, and dumped hard,
and she sent me to save your formative years from ending on a wrong
note."
        Buttercup's eyes hardened.  "Feh," she said, making a
dismissive gesture.  "I didn't even want to go to the stupid thing in
the first place.  I only agreed to go because Blossom and Bubbles were
making such a big -deal- out of it.  'You didn't go last year,
Buttercup, and you missed all the fun.'  'You won't get another
chance.'  I was -glad- when I found out I didn't have to go."
        "Buttercup," said Corwin, "how long have we been friends?"
        She looked hard at him for a second, then smiled, just a
little.
        "So you're my knight in shining armor, then, is that it?"
        "Something like that," Corwin said, nodding.  "If I don't do
my damnedest to make this the best night of your life, Kozue's gonna
have my hide for a lampshade."
        "Oh.  Well," said Buttercup, feigning grudging acceptance, "I
suppose if it'll keep you out of trouble I'll go to your dumb prom
with you."
        "That's the spirit," said Corwin.
        "Wait here a second while I go wash my face," said Buttercup.
She disappeared back upstairs, and Corwin forced himself not to pace
or glance at his watch.  The Professor descended a moment later, his
square, reliable-looking face wreathed in smiles.
        "I suppose I'd better give you the same speech I gave your
cousin and the Shannon boy," he said.  "Have a good time tonight, but
I want to either see her at home or have approved where she is at
midnight, and -no funny stuff-, understand?"
        Corwin grinned.  "Professor, if I tried any funny stuff,
Buttercup would break my arms while Dorothy broke my legs.  (And I
don't even want to think about what Kozue would do.)"
        "Yes, well, some young men these days are probably -into- that
kind of thing," Utonium replied absently.  "Anyway, don't -you- try
it."
        "No sir," Corwin replied.  "I won't."  He came to attention and
saluted with the tip of his pinkie finger tucked under his thumb.  "On
my honor as one of the Aesir, I won't try any funny stuff."
        Utonium nodded.  "Well, good, I'm glad that's settled.  Ah,
here she is now!"
        Corwin's grin broadened when he saw that Buttercup had not
only washed her face, but applied just a bit of makeup to it - a skill
he hadn't known she possessed - and combed her hair into a neater
version of her accustomed pageboy style.  (When younger, she'd preferred
a Jackie Kennedy flip, but some deep-rooted instinct had informed her
at about twelve that this hairstyle was really pretty goofy-looking,
so one day, without comment, it had gone.)  She'd put on elbow-length
gloves that matched her dress, too.
        "Wow," said Corwin and the Professor simultaneously.
        "Well, c'mon," said Buttercup, maintaining her mock-grudging
attitude as she took Corwin's proffered arm.  "Let's get this over
with."
        "Have a good time, you two!" said Utonium as he waved them
through the door and down the walk.  "And remember, Corwin, no funny
stuff!"
        "I GOT it already!" Corwin called back from the curb, and the
door of 110 Morgan Lane closed on Professor Utonium's indulgent
chuckles.
        "No limo, huh?" said Buttercup nonchalantly as she surveyed
the empty street.
        "No indeed," Corwin replied with a twinkle in his eye.
        "Works for me.  Those things are tacky."
        "I'm so glad we agree," he said.  "I've got something -much-
more stylish for us to make our entrance aboard."  With a flourish, he
raised his left arm, brushing back his jacket and shirt cuffs to
reveal his watch.
        "You're NOT gonna - " Buttercup began, laughing in a
combination of amusement and shock.  She thought she knew what he was
going to say - but she was wrong:
        "Armored Knight G-KAISER!  Let's GO!"
        With a high-pitched sound, a bright green squared-off "G"
glowed behind the face of the watch, not the collapsing blue circle
Buttercup had been expecting.
        Half a mile away to the north, one of the many hills which
composed the wooded landscape north of the city shivered, then split,
light pouring out from the crack into the gathering twilight.  The two
halves of the hill rumbled apart on concealed tracks, and then, with a
whoosh and a rush of orange-red light, something shot up from within
it like a missile.  That something banked over, homing in on their
position, and then landed in the middle of Morgan Lane with a great
rush of hot wind.
        Buttercup stared up at it, unbelieving.  It was an enormous
robot, perhaps six or seven stories tall, easily dwarfing the houses
on this usually-quiet residential street.  Its styling was powerful
and at the same time a bit comical, with massive rounded arms and legs
and a barrel chest adorned with an enormous golden V.  The whole thing
looked liked what an assault-class Destroid would have looked like if
it had been a 1957 Cadillac, mostly dark blue but covered with chrome
and gold accents and the occasional piece of red trim.  Scarlet wings
jutted up from its back on either side of a double rocket thruster
that looked a bit like a set of giant aqualung tanks.
        This giant creation lowered itself smoothly to one knee,
making surprisingly quiet mechanical noises, and then extended one
enormous hand, palm up, down to ground level.
        Corwin grinned at Buttercup.  "Up you go," he said, and they
climbed up onto the hand.  G-Kaiser raised it smoothly and steadily
once they were safely aboard, then held it at chin level in front of
his huge metallic face.  The sloping silvery plate where his mouth
belonged split at the peak in the middle and slid open to either side,
revealing a spacious cockpit with a command seat and smaller jump
seats to the left and right.  The walls were covered with display
screens, gauges, and readouts.
        "After you," said Corwin.  He handed Buttercup into the
cockpit, then followed her in and bowed her into one of the jump seats
with a broad smile.
        "You made this?!" Buttercup demanded.
        "Yep," Corwin replied.
        "What happened to Big O?"
        "Nothing," said Corwin.  "G-Kaiser here is a present for
somebody else.  I'm just doing the final field trials, and I figured
this would be a nice low-impact way to get some time on the systems."
        He settled himself into the command seat, put his feet on the
pedals, then gripped the twin joysticks.  At the same time, he settled
his head back into the wraparound rest, which glowed with a soft green
light.
        The hatch hissed shut, sealing with a thump like a giant
refrigerator door.  For a moment the cockpit was dark except for the
gauges; then the display screens pulsed to life all around them,
showing a coruscating green pattern (Corwin's brain patterns, but
Buttercup didn't know that).  White light filled the cockpit and all
the displays changed, showing a panoramic view all around the huge
machine.  Corwin grinned as holographic subdisplays rezzed up all
around him, pointing out various important details and showing him the
status of the machine's internal systems.
        "G-Kaiser!" he commanded.  "Flight mode!"
        Smoothly the Armored Knight rose to its feet, then launched
itself into the air with a roar of its twin thrusters.  Corwin glanced
over at Buttercup as he guided the machine toward Koopman High.
        "Having fun yet?" he asked.
        She grinned at him.
        "Beats reheating lasagna and going to bed early," she
replied.  "I don't have a flower or anything, though."
        "G-Kaiser!" Corwin ordered.  "Deploy corsage!"
        A small hatch opened on the instrument panel to Buttercup's
right, and a small mechanical arm extended out of it.  The hand at the
end of this arm was gripping a lovely green-and-black orchid, which it
deftly affixed to Buttercup's right wrist; then it retracted away.
        Buttercup surveyed the flower with obvious delight, then said,
"Boy, you think of everything, don't you?"
        "That's the way it appears," Corwin confided, "but really, I
have a dedicated staff of experts to make sure I look good at all
times."

        They were indeed a little late, so the parking lot at Fritz
Koopman Memorial High School was already mostly full.  Corwin
momentarily considered landing G-Kaiser in the pool out back, but
decided the ensuing cloud of steam would probably ruin his hair ahead
of schedule.  He could already feel parts of it escaping from the
vicious hold Dorothy and Kozue had forced it to submit to with a
copious amount of the stiffest gel they could find.  The white shock
at the front would not be denied and had sprung free, but was still
weighed down by the gel and hung Superman-style in a comma down his
forehead.
        Instead, he put the giant machine down right smack in front of
the entrance hall, dropped it to its kneeling position, and they
disembarked the same way they'd boarded.  Then, safely on the ground,
Corwin activated his remote and directed G-Kaiser to the tennis
courts, to wait for his call in standby mode.  No one was going to be
playing tennis -tonight- of all nights.
        They entered the hall to thunderous applause, both for their
entrance and their mere appearance.  The rumor mill at Koopman worked
fast, and nobody had really expected to see Buttercup there - they all
knew she'd been given the heave at the very last possible instant.
But here was Corwin with Buttercup on his arm instead of the person
they'd all -expected- to see him with, and he didn't look the
slightest bit disconcerted.
        "Why, Corwin!" said Clarissa Broadbank cattily.  "Wherever is
that delightful girl you've been joined to for the last three years?"
The blonde socialite took on a look of mock horror, touched his arm in
mock sympathy, and asked, "She didn't -dump- you, did she?"
        "Of course not," Corwin replied breezily, betraying no iota of
the annoyance that Clarissa inevitably created in him.  "Don't be
silly.  She just couldn't bear the thought of missing the 'Law &
Order' season finale.  Fortunately for me," he went on, "Buttercup
took pity on me, and here I am anyway."
        "Oh, my, yes," Clarissa replied with mock agreement.  "How
lucky."  She and Buttercup shared a brief glance of unremittant mutual
loathing.
        Fortunately, the day was saved by Buttercup's sisters, who
spotted her and bustled over, beaming, to admire the way she'd turned
herself out for the occasion.
        "Oh, wow, Buttercup," little blonde Bubbles gushed.  "Your
dress looks even better on you than I thought it would."
        "And how," Blossom agreed.  The tall, well-built redhead
elbowed Corwin in the ribs and grinned at him.  "You shine up pretty
well yourself, for such a bad penny."
        "It's his dedicated staff of experts," Buttercup said.  Her
sisters were wearing dresses and gloves pretty much identical to her
own, save for the colors.  Bubbles had made them all in the colors
which had been their traditional favorites, which meant hers was a
lovely pale blue and Blossom's was a nice rose pink.
        "Your hair could use some help, though," Blossom observed.
She opened the small bag she was carrying, took out a handkerchief,
licked it, and scrubbed vigorously at his forelock for a few seconds.
"There.  The gel wasn't doing it, so it's better standing up like it
ought to instead of drooping into your face.  At least you'll look
like Corwin in the photos," she added with a grin.
        "Hey!  Achika's here!" said Buttercup suddenly.  "How 'bout
that?"
        Corwin smiled.  "Yeah."  He nodded in the direction of his
classmate in question, who was dressed in an insanely elaborate
kimono-like gown, one of those Jyuraian affairs that looked like it
must have taken the Wedge Defense Force Corps of Engineers to set it
up.  Achika was smiling on the arm of a slightly nervous-looking young
man in a clearly rented tuxedo.
        "The hardest thing," Corwin went on, "was convincing her that
Nobuyuki really likes her, and wasn't just asking her out because he's
sorry for her."
        Bubbles sighed sadly.  "Poor Achika.  She's still all broken
up about Len... "
        "Yeah," Blossom agreed.  "But she's getting better at hiding
it.  How many times did Nobuyuki have to ask her, Corwin?"
        "Eleven," Corwin replied.  "I'll say this for him, he's
persistent.  He's a good guy.  A little dull for somebody who's used
to running with a crowd like us, but that might be what she needs.
We'll see."
        "Well, well, Mighty One," said Chip Mui as he approached their
little group with a grin.  "This is unexpected."
        Fuu Hououji, on his arm, glanced around to make sure Clarissa
was out of earshot, then leaned toward Corwin and inquired softly,
"Was what you told Miss Broadbank true, Sir Corwin?"
        "Not exactly," Corwin replied, smiling, "but basically, yeah.
This is by way of being a rescue."
        Fuu's face brightened with pleased understanding.  "Oh.  Well,
good.  I'm very glad you haven't had a... problem."
        Corwin chuckled.  "Kozue doesn't like dressing formal anyway,"
he said; then he took in Fuu's dress with a more critical eye and his
smile broadened.
        The Funkotroni ambassador's daughter was dressed very
formally... for a Funkotroni ambassador's daughter, a native-born
daughter of Coolsville and a lifelong, devout Presleyterian.
        She twirled on Chip's hand, making her full pink poodle skirt,
complete with a glittering white sequined poodle (with sparkling green
emerald collar) and shimmering white petticoats beneath, stand out
from her slender waist like some odd glittering flower.  She had on
black and white saddle shoes (not unlike those usually worn by Utena
Tenjou, but lacking her trademark red laces) and green bobby socks
that matched the poodle's collar, and a ruffle-fronted blouse made of
a startlingly iridescent, almost metallic-looking material.  Over it
all she wore a heavy black leather jacket, studded with chrome and
loops of chain and scuffed just enough at the elbows to show that it
really was a motorcycle jacket.
        She'd done her hair up in a bouncy blonde ponytail with a
green ribbon at the back of her head, and in that ponytail her
normally-gently-wavy hair had been coaxed into a mass of perfect curls
that bounced as she twirled.  And, for the first time Corwin could
remember since seeing her in her formal Knightly armor, she had taken
off her glasses.
        "Whereas you, on the other hand," Corwin went on, "have
clearly kicked out all the stops."
        Fuu blushed.  "This was my mother's prom dress, when she and
Father were at Our Blessed King of Rock 'n Roll High School in
Coolsville.  They were the king and queen of the Senior Court."
        "Well, you're a rock 'n roll angel, Angel," said Corwin.
        "If they play swing tonight, would you like to dance?" Fuu
asked cheerfully.  "Charles has never developed a taste for that sort
of music," she added as Chip looked slightly sheepish.
        "Are you being smooth to somebody else's date, rocket boy?"
came a familiar voice.  Corwin turned to see Nall Silverclaw and his
date, Uum'y R'yuu-z'ky.  Like Fuu, they were dressed in traditional
formalwear from their homeworlds.  Well, in Nall's case, the garb was
actually Asgardian, since the formal accoutrements of a Great Dragon
of Alfheim would have required him to be inconveniently large rather
than wearing, as he did now, the form of a young man.  His outfit,
which looked more like a military uniform than a suit with its trim of
silver braid and the dwarven-made greatsword (currently peace-bonded)
on his back, stood out vividly against the black of most of his male
classmates' tuxedoes.
        Umi was similarly distinctive, for any number of reasons.  She
was Hyelian, with long, pointed ears and a great wealth of sea-blue
hair that matched her wide, thick-lashed eyes.  She was tall for a
Hyelian of her age, and her slender elven build and erect, graceful
carriage made her look taller still.  Her clothes were as much a breed
apart as she was, a mixture of flowing white and rich royal blue
fabrics, white leather, and gleaming bronze-edged armor inlaid with
lapis lazuli and blue-and-white enamel.  The garb would have been
antiquated even on ancient, hidebound Hyeruul, and it served to make
her look otherworldly and fey - elegant, yet a bit wild and dangerous.
        "That is definitely a different look for you, Umi," said
Buttercup, impressed.
        "SPEC-tacular," Corwin agreed, which made the Hyelian's face
color just a little.  Over her years among humans, she had grown
accustomed to being found intriguing, sometimes even fascinating, by
them.  Some kind of weird quirk in their cultural background, it just
so happened that Hyelians fit some archetype in their collective
unconscious that drove some of them... well, a little crazy, really.
Her usual reaction was to become that much more distant, though
occasionally that had the unfortunate effect of heightening whatever
the weird reaction was in the first place.
        From her friends, though, she accepted admiration, because she
knew it was meant sincerely and had something behind it more
substantial than a coincidence of cultural factors.  Corwin in
particular had the habit of not concealing his aesthetic appreciation
of anything he liked the looks of, and it had taken Umi a little while
to get used to the idea that she was on the list.  She knew his great
loyalty to his friends and his bonds, though - who better to know that
than one of the Rune Knights of Cephiro, who had watched him take on
that world's ultimate burden for love? - and, over time, she had
learned to be comfortable with it.
        Her blush, then, was simple pleasure, for she had stepped back
from her usual, somewhat subdued school persona for this occasion and
deliberately chosen the most vividly distinctive outfit her mother
could find.  She was feeling bold and daring tonight, more than
usually alive.  Humans, and New Avalon for all its cosmopolitan
breadth was still primarily a human city, had a preconception of
Hyelians as cool, restrained, and conservative which Uum'y R'yuu-z'ky
normally did little to dispel.
        Tonight she wanted the world, or at least her classmates, to
catch a glimpse into her other side, the side that knew it came from
an ancient land where wonders were commonplace and magic still walked
the waking world.
        Besides, she thought with a private little grin, I had to live
up to the dragon, didn't I?  And he certainly wasn't going to show up
wearing some boring tuxedo.
        "Hey," said Corwin as a thought struck him.  "You're here,
Fuu's here... where's Hikaru?"
        Umi's ears flicked back and a scowl marred her lovely face.
"She's not coming," she said.
        "WhaAAT?!" Bubbles Utonium squeaked, making Fuu fear for the
structural integrity of the lobby windows.  When everyone was finished
wincing and stifling curses, she continued in a slightly less
bat-attracting tone, "Why not?!"
        "Because her stupid brothers threw Nate in the lake, that's
why not!" Umi snapped.  "It seems he wasn't suitably -warlike- when he
came to pick her up, so they tossed him off the island - literally."
        Corwin dropped his face into his palm.  "Oh, -man-," he
moaned.  "Poor Hikaru.  I was really hoping Masaru and Kakeru had
learned their lesson after last year."
        "They're not very bright," noted Nall.  "They probably need a
refresher.  We don't know anyone who's available for a rescue, do we?"
        "Unfortunately, I can only... " Corwin began, but then he
trailed off.  Then a slow smile spread across his face, and he turned
to Fuu.  "Angel, get Hikaru on the Lens and tell her to get dressed
stat and stand by.  I just had a -great- idea."
        "Are you going to share it with the rest of the class?" asked
Buttercup pointedly.
        "You'll see," said Corwin.  He looked at his watch and smiled
a little wider.  He had nine minutes until the photo processional
started.  Plenty of time.

        Kakeru Shidou, the youngest of the three Shidou brothers,
turned at the sound of a door to see his little sister Hikaru coming
into the living room.  For a moment, he cringed inwardly, expecting
her to expend a bit more wrath on him and their brother Masaru.
Hikaru was a girl with a sunny disposition and a never-say-die
attitude, but sometimes she failed to understand that everything her
brothers did was for her protection...
        ... but she was smiling now, looking her usual upbeat,
pleasant self.  And, Kakeru noticed with faint puzzlement, she'd put
her prom dress back on.
        "Uh... Hikaru?  What are you doing?" he asked.
        "Waiting for my prom date," Hikaru replied cheerfully, as
though that were a perfectly obvious thing.
        Masaru looked up in puzzlement from the book he was reading
across the room.  "What?" he said.  "Hikaru, we - "
        He was interrupted by a knock at the door.  "Ah!" said
Hikaru.  "That must be him now.  Quick, how do I look?"
        "You look wonderful," Masaru replied with off-guard honesty
(and she did, in her flame-red Kumbari-style gown with its white fur
accents, her scarlet hair down from its usual braid), "but if you
think we're going to let you - "
        Before Masaru could finish the statement, his elder brother
Satoru (who had remained aloof from the whole discussion with a faint,
faint smile) had opened the door.
        The young man on the threshold wasn't the one the two younger
Shidou brothers had pitched into Lake Daniels earlier in the evening.
That had been a skinny, slightly awkward sophomore specimen, a boy by
the name of Nathan Mowes.  Nathan was a good kid; he ran on the
Koopman High cross-country team and, thanks to the position of his
name in the alphabet, had always had the locker and homeroom seat next
to Priss Morgan's (who had put him up to asking Hikaru to the prom).
        A good kid, but no fighter, and though he'd bravely caught the
ferry to the Cranberry Isles and bravely knocked at the Shidou door,
his bravery alone hadn't been enough to keep him out of the lake.
Satoru had fished him out with a boathook and put him on the ferry
back to town with an apology for the rough treatment but not for his
brothers' policy.  Hikaru had been furious with all three of them, a
rare event which should have frightened them more than it had, and
though she'd cooled down, she still intended to keep her silent vow to
make it up to poor Nate somehow.
        Anyway, the kid on the doorstep now wasn't Nate Mowes.  In
fact, Hikaru didn't recognize him for a few moments, because she
hadn't seen him in over a year and BOY had he changed.
        He had been tall for his age, and now he was even taller, slim
of build and with a straight carriage and a sense of quiet grace that
made him seem strong even without being bulky.  He had a lot of yellow
hair pushed back behind his ears and little square eyeglasses which
gave him a thoughtful, studious air - an air somewhat at odds with the
black-trimmed dark-gold uniform he wore, with its braid and key, and
the jeweled, curved sword slung on his back on top of his black
overcloak.
        "Hello," he said in a calm, pleasant voice.  "I'm Mitsuru
Tsuwabuki.  Is Hikaru Shidou at home, please?"
        Kakeru moved up behind his eldest brother and go as far as
"Who wants - uh... " before he realized that the newcomer had answered
that question already.  He shifted gears and replaced it with a rather
lame, "Why?"
        Tsuwabuki smiled in a friendly way.  "Why, because I'm here to
take her to the Koopman Memorial prom, of course."
        Satoru opened his mouth to say something, but before he could,
Masaru had crowded in next to his brother and pushed the eldest clean
out of the doorway (a lapse of manners he would be horrified at, if
he'd realized he'd done it), pointing an imperious finger at the
visitor.
        "Hold it right there, buddy!" he snapped.  "I'll tell you the
same thing I told the -other- guy: We've got some rules around here!
If you wanna take our sister out, that's fine - but FIRST you've got
to beat BOTH OF US!" he declared, throwing an arm over Kakeru's
shoulders.
        "In SINGLE COMBAT!" Kakeru added, nodding firmly.
        Hikaru closed her eyes and briefly considered stuffing the
pair of them into the rain gauge out front.
        But Tsuwabuki merely smiled again and said, "Fair enough."
Then a look of mild concern crossed his face, and he checked his
watch.  "Except - I've only got six minutes, so I'm afraid I'll have
to take you both at once.  Is that OK?"
        Masaru and Kakeru blinked, looked at each other, then grinned
nastily.
        "Oh, a tough guy, huh?" said Kakeru.  "Sure, pal, it's your
funeral."
        Hikaru blinked too.  Both of them at once?  Sure, she knew
Tsuwabuki was a Duelist of the Order of the Rose in Cephiro, but she'd
never actually seen him fight.  He was only 14, despite his growth
spurt.  Did he really think he could take on both of her bonehead
brothers at once?  They might be insensitive (if well-meaning) clods,
but they were great swordsmen.  Not as great as Satoru, but
fortunately, he refused to play their silly game... 
        Tsuwabuki didn't look worried, though, as he went out into the
yard.  Kakeru switched on the floodlight on the front of the house,
lighting up the whole stretch of ground from the house to the
lakeshore, and then he and Masaru grabbed their swords and ran out to
confront the interloper.
        "You take him on the left," Masaru said, "and I'll take him on
the right.  We'll teach this guy a lesson about coming over here and
acting like he owns our cute little sister!"
        Kakeru nodded.  "You bet!  He can't be as tough as Corwin."
(The brothers Shidou were still smarting a little bit from the one
date they'd been forced, under their own rules, to let their sister go
on, the year before.)
        "Whenever you're ready, boys," said Tsuwabuki pleasantly.  He
looked at his watch again.  "I've still got four minutes."
        "Jerk!" Kakeru growled.  "C'mon, Masaru - let's take him!"

        Ninety-four seconds later, Mitsuru Tsuwabuki crossed the yard,
calmly returning his scimitar to its scabbard on his back.  As it
clicked home, he offered an elbow to Hikaru and said with a smile,
        "Shall we?"
        "Sure," said Hikaru, taking it.  "Boy, you're really good!"
        "Practice, practice, practice," Tsuwabuki replied, grinning.
"It does help when dueling -is- your social life.  Reduces conflicts."
        Hikaru giggled.  "So - how are we going to get to Koopman in
two minutes?"
        "Magic!" said Tsuwabuki brightly; and a moment later the
island was empty, except for Hikaru's dog Hikari, dozing by the fire
in the house, and Satoru, who stood on the rock by the boat cove and
listened to his brothers splashing indignantly back to shore.

        Beginning at precisely seven PM, under the brisk direction of
Mr. Fujisawa and Principal Strickland, the students formed up for the
photos.  Two by two they posed under the ceremonial arch (actually,
the decorated entrance to the gym, but you can't have everything) to
have themselves and their formalwear immortalized for posterity and
the 2409 yearbook: Corwin and Buttercup; his cousin Hiroshi Morisato
and Blossom; Tenchi Shannon and Bubbles; Tenchi's twin sister Achika
and Nobuyuki Masaki; Reiyna Mui and her date, a young man from the
Chess Club named Gary Waitzkin; Chip and Fuu; Umi and Nall; and Hikaru
Shidou, beaming on the arm of the dashing dress-uniformed figure of
Mitsuru Tsuwabuki, President of the Tenjou Academy Student Council,
Apprentice to the Master Mage of Cephiro, and Seneschal of the Order
of the Rose.
        With that task taken care of, they went into the gym itself,
fully prepared to have a good time.  At least Blossom was, until she
noticed the figure standing on the stage at the far end of the room,
skidded to a halt, pointed an accusing finger, and cried,
        "WHAT is HE doing here?!"
        The figure on the stage, a short, squat, hairy native of
Heston's Planet with a cape and elevator boots, threw back his
metal-domed head and laughed raucously, then straightened and declared
into the microphone before him,
        "Good evening!  Permit me to introduce myself: I am the
scourge of the universe, the most nefarious criminal scientist of the
known galaxy: I am Mmmmmmojo Jojo!  Muahahahaha!"
        "Don't sweat it," Buttercup said, cracking her knuckles.
"We'll just clobber him after his speech like we always do," - but the
next thing the evildoer said left her and her sisters blinking in
surprise.
        "I will be the Master of Ceremonies tonight," Mojo Jojo
intoned darkly.  Then he grinned and explained, "Meaning that inasmuch
as there will be ceremonies, I shall be their master, as one day I
shall be the master of EVERYTHING!  For the moment, however, the
ceremonies are the only things of which I will be the master.  (At
least, the only things with which you need concern yourselves at the
moment.  Muaha.)"
        "I don't beLIEVE this!" Buttercup blurted.  "Who the HELL
thought it would be a good idea to hire MOJO freakin' JOJO to MC the
freakin' PROM?"
        "I will also be acting as disc jockey!" Mojo Jojo declared
grandly.  "When the band is taking breaks there will be records
played, and as disc jockey, I shall be the one who plays the records
which are played when the band is taking a break!
        "Some of you already know me... those would be the ones
readying weapons.  But have no fear!  Do not worry!  Experience no
trepidation!"  Holding up a conciliatory palm, Mojo Jojo went on, "For
I have pledged to higher authorities than this school's administration
that I shall commit no evil acts!  Tonight.  (Except perhaps to make
you all dance the Time Warp.)"
        This led to a chorus of horrified protests:
        "Noooo!"
        "You FIEND!"
        "You WOULDN'T!"
        "SILENCE!!!" Mojo Jojo roared.  "Or it shall be the Macarena!"
That silenced his opposition, leaving him free to say, "And now, to
provide you with live musical entertainment this evening during the
times when I am not playing the records which I will play when the
live musical entertainers are taking a break and thus not able to
entertain you with live music, may I present the original, the
unstoppable, the excruciatingly EFFECTIVE singing do-gooders your
miserable authorities call the CLAY PIGEONS!"
        "Oh," said Blossom as the crowd of students roared and the
tall, caped form of Martin "PCHammer" Rose took center stage.
"-That's- why Mojo's so docile tonight."

 - ONE HOUR EARLIER
        While the Clay Pigeons set up their equipment, their tall,
thin leader crossed the stage to confront the evening's MC, who was
fiddling with the playback setup he would use in his secondary
capacity as band-break DJ.
        "Pleasure working with you, Mojo," said Marty Rose affably,
extending a hand.  "And by 'pleasure working with you,'" he added with
the same good cheer, "I mean 'you put one toe out of line and I'm
gonna yank that tin dome down so hard you'll be able to start a new
career as a fire hydrant.'  Get me?"
        "Fear not, for the pleasure is all mine," said the Hestonian
with a toothy grin as he took the offered hand.  "And by 'the pleasure
is all mine' I most assuredly do not mean 'I may remain within the
boundaries and limitations of legality this evening, but I shall one
day wreak my terrible and fearsome vengeance upon all who oppose,
suppress, and otherwise prevent me from achieving my rightful rule
over this and every other world.'"
        "Good," said Rose with a firm nod.  "Glad we understand each
other."
        The tiny horned girl setting up the hi-hat blinked in
confusion.  "We do?"
        "...Go back to the drums, Dani."

 - RETURN
        "Yeah, must be," Buttercup agreed.  "Well, I guess that's OK,"
she added reluctantly.  "I suppose kicking Mojo's butt would probably
mess up my dress."

        The 2409 Fritz Koopman Memorial High School Junior-Senior
Promenade was an unqualified success.  Even Principal Strickland was
seen to smile at a few points, which filled those students who
happened to glimpse him thus with terror.
        Masamichi Fujisawa, much-beloved language-arts and literature
teacher, was persuaded to demonstrate his fabulous Kryptonian strength
by lifting a banquet table with all the junior and senior class
officers and their dates sitting on it over his head, which he did
with one hand while eating a slice of pie with the other.  The
resulting photo would be the highlight of the 2409 yearbook's candids
page.
        To the surprise of no one whatsoever, the Shannon twins were
elected King and Queen of the Senior Court, causing most of the girls
in the audience to shriek like Beatles fans meeting the Fab Four's
plane at La Guardia as Tenchi was elevated to that exalted status.
Buttercup made a snide comment about the Class of 2409's royal family
tree being a bit linear, which confused Bubbles, scandalized Blossom
and made Corwin choke on punch.  Hiroshi merely noted that if he could
bottle whatever it was Tenchi had, it would make him a very, very rich
man indeed, and wasn't it a great pity.
        The gathering received a visit from no less a personage than
Grand Admiral Noriko Rose Takaya, Commander in Chief of the Wedge
Defense Force Navy.  As an alumna of Koopman High herself, Noriko had
notched the single most meteoric career rise in the history of the
institution, having graduated one day and assumed her present command
the next.  Admittedly, she had cheated a bit by spending her senior
year regaining the use of several centuries of space warfare
experience, but still, the school didn't hesitate to brag about her.
        Most of the students present didn't recognize her immediately,
though, since she was dressed not as the second-highest officer in the
entire WDF, but rather as the band's intrepid backup dancer.  Some
members of the audience who hadn't figured -out- that Grand Admiral
Takaya was the same Noriko from "Thunder Force Forever" had it
suddenly hit them like a ton of bricks; others experienced a similar
effect just from watching her dance.
        The Clay Pigeons played three sets, incorporating into their
show both original material, old favorites of their own, and covers
from Old Earth bands, their WDF Golden Age contemporaries Card No. 1,
and galactically popular acts like the Art of Noise and Cthia.
        Corwin kept an eye on all his friends as the evening
progressed, and was pleased to see that they were all having a good
time.  Tsuwabuki and Hikaru seemed to have hit it off perfectly, which
he'd been hoping for; Achika was having a genuinely good time (and
Nobuyuki was just about levitating); even Buttercup was having fun and
not being bashful about showing it.
        She disappeared during the third intermission, while Mojo Jojo
was cackling nefariously and subjecting the room to a highly
repetitive twenty-first-century dance number called "Where's Your Head
At" (having been threatened with death if he played any more
Thrusterbusters "songs").  Corwin didn't immediately notice, since he
was over by the drinks table talking to Nall.  When last he'd seen
Buttercup, she was thoroughly (and unwittingly) intimidating Reiyna's
date Gary by revealing her own interest in chess, a game most people
would have assumed was too slow-paced for her to like.
        "Looks like the band's getting ready to do their last set,"
Nall remarked.  "You'll excuse me, rocket boy?"
        "But of course," said Corwin.  "Hmm.  I wonder where my date's
got to?" he added, glancing around and not seeing Buttercup anywhere.
There was Gary, talking to a bemused-looking Reiyna, but...  Corwin
shrugged.  Probably in the bathroom or something; she'd turn up.
        The band paused a little longer in their pre-set consultation
this time, and when they separated and headed for their instruments,
Corwin saw why - and also got the answer to his question.  Buttercup
was on stage with the Pigeons.  In fact, she was moving toward the
center microphone Hammer used on songs without keyboard parts.
        Corwin glanced to his left and saw Blossom blinking at the
sight of her sister on stage.  He glanced to his right and saw Bubbles
taken similarly aback.  Over near the corner of the stage, Mojo Jojo
looked like somebody had hit him with a fish.  All of them were
thinking the same thought:
        Buttercup is going to SING?

/*  E.G. Daily  "One Way Love (Better Off Dead)"  _Better Off Dead_  */

        She didn't say anything; she just went to the microphone and
waited for the band to play.  And play they did.  Dani laid down the
rhythm, quick, upbeat, and four bars later, Hammer joined her on the
keyboards while Dund brought in the rest of the rhythm section behind
him.  Buttercup stood at the microphone, head bowed, one heel tapping
to the beat.
        Then, at exactly the right spot, she raised her face to the
crowd and started to sing:

"Never know if you're the victim or the fool
Only know I can't stop thinking 'bout you
Love was good and you take it on the run
But I fell too hard, I guess I ain't the one

Starin' the night away
Don't know where you are
Callin' out your name
This crazy feeling of a one-way love"

        Her voice wasn't polished, but it wasn't bad, either.  She
could hold a tune, and if her singing had the same throaty undertone
as her speaking voice (almost as if she'd recently strained it), the
effect actually added something to her performance.
        That, and the energy she put into it.  Clearly, this was a
song she loved - if the others hadn't known better, they would've
thought she was really singing about what the lyrics were describing -
and her stage presence was remarkable given that she'd never done
anything remotely like this before, excepting the one time her sisters
had cajoled her into appearing in the fourth-grade Christmas pageant.
(And a lot of people here still remembered what a disaster that was.)

"Thinking back, you said you were out for fun
Took me home, I didn't think, second to none
Face to face I had no secrets to hide
I talked of love, you ran, I could have died

Are you running just from me?
Who really has your heart?
Have you felt the pain
Of this crazy feeling?"

        As she swung into the chorus, Buttercup was very careful not
to look at anyone in particular out in the sea of faces watching her.
Indeed, she kept her eyes closed for most of the song, belting the
refrain out with all her considerable strength:

"I'd rather be a fool
I'd be lost with someone new
I'd be better off dead
Than to live without you

I've been searching every day
Trying to find another way
I'd be better off dead
Than to live without you"

        While Hammer and Dani slammed Tom through a short bridge solo,
Buttercup danced with the microphone stand, clearly lost in her own
performance.  Corwin, who had seen his sister Kaitlyn (shy, retiring
Kaitlyn, who still had to be talked into swimming in anything less
than a one-piece that would pass a school uniform inspection board)
get this involved in countless musical performances of her own,
grinned.
        It was a side of Buttercup he'd seen before, on long-ago
nights when she'd gotten this much into -listening- to music, down in
the basement at 105 Morgan Lane; but she'd never shown it to anyone
but her very closest friends before, and to see her up there rocking
out in front of the whole junior and senior classes was most
gratifying indeed.  If he hadn't thought coming to her rescue was
worth it before - and he had - this would have changed his mind.
        Buttercup rode the windout from the bridge back to the main
beat and repeated the refrain twice more, getting more and more
involved as she went.  For the last repetition, she was almost
screaming - but she was doing it -tunefully-, which was more than
almost everyone there expected she'd be able to do.

"I'd rather be a fool
I'd be lost with someone new
I'd be better off dead
Than to live without you

I've been searching
I've been searching
I'd be better off dead
Than to live without you!"

        She drew the last word out into a cry as the band slammed to
a halt around her, and for a moment there was complete silence in the
Koopman High gym.  Buttercup stood frozen where she'd finished the
song, microphone in both hands, head thrown back...
        And then, as her classmates erupted in cheers, she seemed to
realize where she was, put the mike stand down, and, blushing
furiously... 
        ... smiled, then took a bow before turning to thank the band
and then quitting the stage.  As she passed Mojo Jojo on the stairs,
she gave the still-bewildered evildoer a smirking high-five, which he
returned out of reflex more than anything else.
        "She sang?" Jojo was muttering to himself as he mounted to the
stage.  "She -sang-?  Buttercup -sang-?  She performed an audible
melody, rendered a melodic vocalization?  INconCEIVable!"
        "You keep using that word," PCHammer noted to him as he went
up to take his mike back.  "I do not think it means what you think it
means."

        The rest of the occasion went just as well as it had begun,
and when it broke up at 11:30, Corwin and Buttercup had time for a
short walk up in the quiet, wooded hills of the Heights before
Professor Utonium's deadline.  They left G-Kaiser parked at the
school, where Corwin, having no such time restriction, could retrieve
him later.
        They didn't say much until they were actually up at the
highest clearing on the ridge, sitting on the boulder, looking at the
spectacular view of the city.  Then Corwin said,
        "I never knew you could sing."
        Buttercup chuckled, though she seemed slightly preoccupied.
"Neither did I," she said, "but I had to try."
        "Interesting choice of song for your very first public
performance," Corwin noted with a smile.
        "Yeah, well," said Buttercup offhandedly, "it was either that
or just come right out and tell you I've had this huge crush on you
since the second grade, and you know what a big coward I am."
        There was a long, somewhat awkward silence.
        "........... Oh," said Corwin.

        Having disposed of her date in the most expeditious possible
fashion, Clarissa Broadbank returned home at about the same time.  She
went not to her family's mansion in the Heights, but downtown, to the
penthouse apartment she maintained at the Hotel Monolith.
        Ephrem Broadbank didn't know his daughter had an apartment at
the Monolith.  No one did, since the place, about a quarter of the
hotel's top floor, was officially rented to a company called Marolo
Imports.  No one at the hotel had ever seen Clarissa there; the
discretion of the Monolith's penthouses was legendary, and each had
its own private corridor and elevator.  Even the staff was none the
wiser.  They thought the place was used by an import company for
entertaining visiting dignitaries and rewarding salespersons for high
achievement.
        They -certainly- didn't know about the modifications she'd
made to the place over the last two years.  If they had, something
unfortunate would have happened to them by now.
        The curly-haired blonde was smiling as she entered, locking
the door behind her, and took off her shoes.  She went to the bedroom
and changed her clothes, not into a nightdress or more casual street
clothes, but into a very particular set of clothes kept in a special
locked compartment behind the wardrobe.  Once she'd taken care of
that - tying back her hair, fitting on her gloves, checking her
blaster pistol, making sure her jackboots were buffed, all the usual
stuff - she went into the living room and submitted to a thumbprint
and retinal scan by the Frederic Remington sculpture copy on the
mantelpiece above the fireplace.
        The western-style living room reconfigured itself in a matter
of seconds into a sleek, gleaming modern command center, complete with
weapons racks, a massive control computer and a tactical holotank
dominating the center of the room, where the coffee table and sofa had
been.
        Clarissa, smiling below her black silk Zorro-style kerchief
mask, went to the control console, sat down, and punched keys.  A few
moments later, the central display screen rezzed up a head-and-shoulders 
image of a man in a red suitjacket, yellow bow tie, and scarlet sack 
hood with eye and mouth holes like a ski mask's.
        "Good evening, Q-Boss," said Clarissa pleasantly.
        "Good evening, Agent A," replied the hooded man with a smile.
        "Is everything ready?"
        "Yes, ma'am," said Q-Boss with a positive nod.  "All seven
K-units are in place and ready for activation on your signal.  My
battalion is fully mustered and ready to begin support operations."
        Clarissa's smile broadened and acquired a hint of cruelty.
        "Excellent," she said.  "Your signal to begin should be coming
shortly.  I trust you will find it unmistakable."
        Q-Boss grinned under his mask.  "We'll be ready, Agent A."
        Clarissa raised her right hand, arm stiff and straight; on the
screen, Q-Boss did too, and the two chorused in unison, "Together!
Allegiance or death!  BIG FIRE!"
        Then they shared a dark chuckle before Clarissa closed the
connection, reached to another part of the panel, and smashed the
glass over a large red button marked "ACTIVATE".  The button flashed
in a most satisfying manner and an alarm began to whine as, one by
one, seven dark lights over the button's housing flicked to bright
green life.
        Still chuckling, Clarissa turned her chair and sent it running
along the powered track to the side of the tactical situation
holotank.  She didn't want to miss a moment of this.

        A few minutes earlier, Buttercup said slowly, "All that time,
I dunno... I guess I assumed... that someday it'd be you and me.  But,
you know, there wasn't any hurry.  I figured it'd just... happen,
someday."
        "Well, I wish you'd have -said- something," Corwin grumbled.
        "It wasn't a -conscious- assumption," said Buttercup.  "And
anyway, it wouldn't have mattered.  You'd still have gone to pick Kate
up... and that would've been that.  It just would've made everything
harder for you than it already is."
        Corwin frowned thoughtfully.  He was close enough to Buttercup
to know that she wasn't just the damage machine her public persona
made people think she was, but still, that was more insight than he'd
been expecting from her.
        Then he smiled sadly, put a hand on her shoulder, and said in
a quiet voice, "I'm sorry... believe me, I know the situation you're
in.  But, hey, look at my life now - it's possible to get past that
kind of thing.  Right?"
        Buttercup gave him a look that seemed to indicate she was
feeling a little sorry for -him-, which was puzzling; but though she
shook her head, looking down, what came out of her mouth was a soft,
"Right.  Yeah... "  Then she straightened up, looking a little fierce,
and said, "Look, I don't want to come off like I'm asking for
something here, or laying a guilt trip on you, or anything.  It's just
that you'll be going to Tomodachi this fall, and I didn't want to just
-leave- this.  I don't expect you to do anything about it... I just...
wanted you to know.  OK?"
        Corwin smiled.  "OK," he said.  He got up from the rock;
Buttercup did too, and then embraced him, careful not to hurt him with
her great strength but still give him the tightest hug she could
muster.  He gave it back, and when they separated, he could see her
eyes shimmering in the city's nightglow above the wavering line of a
good try at a smile.
        "So, hey," she said, her voice very quiet.  "Don't be a
stranger, right?"
        "'Course not," he replied; then he sighed and said, "I hate it
when I make you cry."
        That, an oblique reference to a thing that had happened
between them many years before, got a (slightly ragged) chuckle out of
her, as he'd hoped it would; but after that, the moment became a
little awkward, as they stood with his hands on her shoulders and hers
in the bends of his elbows, looking at each other.  Corwin found
himself wondering, in an oddly detached kind of way, if he was, in
fact, about to kiss her, and if so, just precisely -how- unwise that
was going to be.
        A moment later, there was a tremendous explosion down in the
city.
        Corwin and Buttercup both turned and stared in disbelief as
six more followed in rapid succession, each one demolishing a block of
warehouses and cargo handling facilities down in the ring of
industrial zones separating downtown New Avalon from the outlying
boroughs.  They were weird explosions; they didn't seem to burst
outward as much as they should have and they sent up almost no smoke.
It almost seemed as though something was sucking the debris back toward
ground zero right after the initial blasts...
        In the darkness, as the two astonished teenagers watched,
monstrous shapes moved within the craters where the destroyed
buildings had been.
        "WHAT the... ?" Corwin murmured.
        For a couple of minutes, the two of them stood there, gaping,
too startled by the utter incongruity of what they were seeing to
actually -do- anything about it.  Then faint sounds started reaching
their ears, penetrating the layer of shock which had paralyzed their
minds and bringing them back to the present.
        Corwin couldn't quite make them out, but Buttercup, whose
hearing (like most of her other physical abilities) was superhuman,
could; she cocked her head with a scowl and then said, "Gunfire...
blasters... people screaming."
        Another, smaller, ordinary explosion blossomed along one of
the shop-lined streets of central Crescent Heights.
        "All -right-," Buttercup growled, her face shifting from
amazement to a dark smile.  "-This- I know how to handle!"  She turned
to Corwin.  "Thanks, I had a great time at the prom tonight," she said
hurriedly, then gave him a very quick little kiss and added, "We'll go
deal with whatever's going on in the Heights, -you- get to handle the
giant monsters this time.  Can you call the Professor and tell him
it's not your fault I won't be home by midnight?"
        A moment later she was gone, leaving behind nothing but a
shimmery noise and a fading streak of bright green light.
        Corwin stood watching her incandescent trail as she shot down
to their neighborhood, saw it joined by the pink and blue wakes of her
sisters as it vanished into the streets, then grinned.
        "Yeah," he said to no one in particular, "I think I can manage
that."  He raised his watch, pushing back his sleeve, and called for
G-Kaiser again - 
        - but the sound that came back was not the ping of
acknowledgement.  Instead, it was a low "blat" that could only have
meant an error message, followed by Excel's voice:
        "Sorry, Chief, but somebody's already using that robot!  Can I
send you one of the others or would you rather use your usual one?
Only if you're going to do that I hope you're not someplace where a
huge hole in the ground will be a -problem- for anyone.  Have you
considered changing the way that works?  CAN you change the way that
works?  I'm just a computer, y'know, I don't really understand how
stuff like magic works, but it seems to me you ought to be able to do
SOMETHING about that, I mean after all, you ARE the god of robots,
and... "
        Corwin blinked at his chattering watch in great puzzlement.

        A few minutes earlier, Noriko Takaya was helping the Clay
Pigeons tear down their gear and pack up.  This was a thing that she
had done many times - but none of them recently; the combination of
that factor and the lingering atmosphere of the very successful dance
had her in a very good mood indeed as she worked.
        "Well, Mojo," said Eiko Rose cheerfully as she slung her
Marshall stack onto her shoulder, "thanks for behaving yourself
tonight."
        "Yeah!" Dani agreed.  "It would've been a major buzzkill if
we'd had to mess you up."
        Mojo Jojo, coiling patch cables, smiled darkly.  "There is no
need to thank me," he said.  "My cooperation was ensured by means
beyond your understanding, which you could not comprehend even if you
knew about them, which you do not, which is just as well since you
would certainly not be able to grasp their true implications anyway."
        "Which means," said Noriko cheerfully as she helped Dani
disassemble her drum kit, "that you're just as scared of the
Subcommittee on Student Recreation as everybody else."
        Jojo hesitated, as if weighing some lengthy denial or
elliptical admission that could never be proven as such.  Then he
simply nodded once and grunted, "... Yes."
        "You are a wise monkey, Mojo Jojo," noted Tom with a grin.
"Galaxies can be overthrown, planets can be destroyed, but -nobody-
messes with those four."
        "Indeed," Martin Rose agreed.  "Although, jokes and slams
aside, we really do appreciate your - "
        The floor of the gym suddenly shook under their feet,
violently enough that one of Dani's cymbal stands fell over with a
mighty clash that almost but not quite obscured the sound of the
distant explosion.
        " - qu'est-ce que hoek?!" Rose went on without a pause.  He
directed a glare at Mojo Jojo, only to see that the Hestonian looked
just as surprised as the rest of them - and Mojo Jojo was a lousy
actor, so Rose knew it had to be genuine.
        They all piled outside to see pillars of smoke rising in the
distance and gigantic shapes moving within them.
        "Mo-JOOOO... !" growled Eiko, shoving up one of her sleeves.
        "I assure you, Mrs. Rose, this is none of my doing," said the
scientist in reply; he was too startled to expound upon that statement
as he normally might.
        "Well, I guess - " Martin began, but again he was interrupted,
this time by the shriek of tires as a fleet of black vans appeared on
the streets of Crescent Heights.  Three of them skidded to a halt in
the now-empty Koopman Memorial parking lot while the rest roared off
into other streets, fanning out through the neighborhood.
        "Oh, NOW what?" Eiko demanded - and a moment later she had her
answer, as the back doors of the vans opened up and a small horde of
black-suited goons piled out, each carrying a submachinegun or blaster
carbine.
        Mojo Jojo identified them first, his voice quivering with
horrified outrage: "BIG FIRE!"
        "You're, ah, -sure- you're not involved with this, Mojo?"
asked Martin conversationally.
        "Absolutely NOT!" Jojo sputtered.  "I have had nothing to do
with that pack of jackals since we parted ways ten years ago!  A
decade has passed since my last involvement with Big Fire.  I walked
away from them in 2399 and have not looked back, because I have no
regrets about having - "
        "I heard you got kicked out," Dani piped up.  Mojo turned and
glared at her, then turned back with a noncommittal grunt and watched
the thugs approaching the school building.  They were headed for the
main entrance, not the gym, and hadn't noticed the little group
standing by the gym doors.
        "Well, kids, it looks like this is something we should maybe
deal with," said Martin Rose thoughtfully.
        Noriko eyed the giant creatures beginning to make their way
downtown, then glanced over at the tennis courts and smiled slowly.
        "You guys go ahead," she said.  "I'm gonna go see about
something else... "
        Rose smiled.  "Just be careful, 'Riko," he said, and Noriko
waved an acknowledgement as she sprinted across the corner of the
parking lot.  "OK, well, how 'bout the rest of you?"
        "Right with ya, boss," said Tom, nodding.
        "Let's do it!" Dani added.
        Let me at 'em, signed big, silent Dund.
        "I can hardly wait," said Eiko, cracking her knuckles with a
grin.
        "Yes," Mojo Jojo agreed.  "Let us, as you say, get dangerous."
        "Now you're stealing my lines," Rose complained.  "How rude.
You're saying the things I should be saying, except you're saying them
before I get a chance to say them, so that I cannot say them because
you have already said them... oh, the hell with it."  He raised his
Lens and concentrated, switching to his working clothes; then, from
behind his scarf, he said in his "business" voice, "Let's go to work."

        Noriko scrambled up the side of the giant blue robot standing
on the tennis courts, having figured out the system of hidden
handholds in fairly short order.  Arriving atop the golden V on the
machine's barrel chest, she found the activator for the main hatch and
pressed it, hoping she'd just accomplished something other than
working up a light sweat.
        The hatch hissed and opened for her, revealing a cockpit dimly
lit by standby monitors.
        "Hmm," she mused as she climbed over the threshold.  "Type S
controls, not my favorite, but I guess it'll have to do... "  She
slipped into the seat, leaned forward to examine the master control
panel, and murmured, "Now if I can figure out where the activator is -
I just hope Corwin left the keys in it... aha!"  She pressed the key
she figured was the main activator, and the cockpit powered up around
her.
        On the main display panel in front of her, the "Armored Knight
G-KAISER" test pattern blinked and vanished, replaced by marching
white text:

      OPERATOR DETECTED: OPERATOR RECOGNIZED: TAKAYA, NORIKO R.
                - CONTROL CONFIGURATION W INITIATED -

        Noriko yelped in surprise as the seat suddenly contracted
beneath her, memory-plastic straps extruding from various ports to
secure her arms, legs and torso firmly to the comfortably padded
structure.  A moment later, most of that structure fell away,
flattening and retracting into the floor, as the banks of monitors and
controls around her all moved back against the walls and shifted
upward slightly and the holographic projector panels angled to a
position closer to true vertical.
        What remained of the seat was a waldo framework which gently
but insistently moved her into a standing position that matched
G-Kaiser's.  She glanced down in surprise as the straps at her wrists
deployed branches which ran down her fingers and wrapped her
fingertips.  There was an instant of disorientation as the neural
interface system in the headrest energized, blending her own sense of
balance and body presence with that of the robot.
        Noriko was out of practice, having been primarily a
conventional naval officer for the past several years, but she was
still an extremely experienced and naturally talented Type W robot
pilot.  She was ready to go the instant the transition blur left her
senses, and she couldn't stop the smile that flowed onto her face as
she felt the power in G-Kaiser's massive limbs.
        Around her, the displays brightened and rezzed up exterior
views, surrounding her with a bird's-eye view of the Koopman Memorial
campus.  Floating in front of her where the master monitor had been
came a few more status messages.

              ARMORED KNIGHT G-KAISER POWER ON SELF TEST
       NEUROSYSTEMS FULLY SYNCHRONIZED - CONTROL TEST COMPLETE
           ALL WEAPONS SYSTEMS READY - ARMOR INTEGRITY 100%
      GS RIDE REACTOR FULLY ENERGIZED - ALL WEAPONS OPERATIONAL

                      CAST IN THE NAME OF GOD...

        Noriko's eyebrows went up a little bit at the completion of
that last message; then the text cleared, combat-information overlays
rezzed up, and G-Kaiser quivered slightly, as if eager to get started
with the day's work.  Outside, the robot's optics flashed, that
squared-off 'G' icon visible behind the right one.
        Noriko, her grin ever wider, pressed down with one foot, and
G-Kaiser stepped off the tennis courts into the parking lot, heading
for downtown.
        A second later, she heard something that sounded like a phone
ringing, and after a moment's consternation, she shrugged mentally and
said, "Hello?"
        "Noriko?!" a familiar voice inquired as the words "AUDIO ONLY"
appeared over in the corner of her main combat-info overlay.
        "Got it in one," she replied cheerily.  "Is that you, Corwin?"
        "Yeah," came the slightly breathless reply, and Noriko
realized that he was running, talking into his wrist communicator as
he went.
        "I hope you don't mind, but I needed to do -something-," said
Noriko.  "Your friend here seemed to know me already."
        "Uh, yeah," said Corwin.  "There's a reason for that, but we
can copy notes later.  Listen, there's an online help function if you
need it, and - the controls shifted to Type W for you?"
        "Sure did.  Almost startled me out of my skin," Noriko added
with a chuckle.

        Corwin, running down the trail from the Heights to street
level as fast as he could, spared the breath for a chuckle of his own
before replying, "OK, great.  There are weapons controls on the
joysticks - the thumb wheel on the right one is a mode selector for
the right trigger, and the left has a thumb and finger trigger for the
two main attacks.  Or you can stow the joysticks and use the neurovocal
command system."
        "Neurovox command!" came Noriko's happy reply.  "You know they
took that out of the newest RX series?  And you can't even get a Neo
Gundam with Type-W controls any more, either.  What's the world coming
to, I ask you?"
        "Pretty sad," Corwin agreed.  "Anyway, uh... I'd hoped to make
this a little more formal, but needs must at times like this... I hope
you like him."
        "Pardon?" Noriko replied, sounding slightly confused.
        "Well, it's a little early," said Corwin, "but... happy
birthday!"
        A pause, the faint sound of a muffled G-Kaiser footfall, and
then Noriko's voice said, "Oh, you are in for -such- a kiss, young
man."
        Corwin laughed.  "I'll hold you to that, Admiral," he
declared, emerging from the woods onto Belvedere Drive and running for
the N station at the corner.  "'Bout time for me to get to work
myself," he added.  "Good hunting, 'Riko!"
        "You too, Corwin.  See you on the battlefield.  G-Kaiser out."
        Smiling slightly, Corwin took the stairs down into the
Belvedere N station on the jump.  The trains wouldn't be running, of
course, but there was a nice, big window on the front of the ticket
booth.
        On the way, he remembered to call Professor Utonium, who took
the news with his usual slightly clueless equanimity.  It was
comforting, thought Corwin as he energized the ticket window, that
there were some solid constants in the universe... 

        John Trussell was just resting his eyes.  He wasn't asleep in
his office on Babylon 6.
        As such, he was not awakened, but merely alerted, by Nanami
Jinnai grabbing him by the shoulder and shaking him.
        "Wha!" said Truss, starting violently.
        "Nap time's over, champ," said Nanami briskly.  "Grab your
stuff and let's get going."
        Blinking rapidly, Truss swung took his feet off his desk,
swung his chair to the upright position, and asked, "What?  What is
it?"
        "Big, bad mojo going down in New Avalon," said Nanami as she
rummaged through the equipment closet at the back of the room.  "I'm
taking a couple of these data cartridges, just bill our account.
C'mon already!  We're missing all the action.  Jung's already waiting
for us on the Swordbreaker."
        Truss and Nanami weren't actually, technically, co-workers.
Truss was a reporter for Network 23, a galactic television network
based on Salusia, whose award-winning news department's bailiwick
spanned Known Space.  Nanami, on the other hand, -was- the
award-winning news department of Big Time TV, a Bajor-based network
whose entire staff consisted of two beings and an antiquated broadcast
droid.
        Big Time and Network 23 didn't compete on any appreciable
level; aside from its news coverage, Big Time showed music videos and
old Hong Kong action movies, while Network 23 had broad-based
timeslot-sensitive programming including original dramas, situation
comedies, and the television debuts of recent Major Motion Pictures.
Big Time was also not seen beyond the Bajor-B'hava'el system, except
on the Wedge Defense Force/International Police Co-Operative Personnel
Entertainment System, and didn't compete with Network 23 for
advertisers because Big Time showed no advertisements.  And, finally,
the two networks' viewership demographics barely overlapped at all.
        Because of all this, the Powers that Be at Network 23,
President Ben Cheviot and News Director Edison Carter, had decided on
an alliance between Network 23 News and Big Time TV News.  This
alliance took the form of a working arrangement between Network 23's
Babylon 6 bureau chief, John Trussell, and Big Time's News Director,
Nanami Jinnai, whereby Truss gave Nanami rides to galactic hot spots
aboard his personal starship and the two reporters shared sources and
footage.  Occasionally, on the really big stories, they even reported
collaboratively, complete with a nifty BT/N23 combined logo designed
by Truss himself.
        Now Truss followed Nanami down the corridor, trotting to keep
up with her brisk walking pace and smiling to himself.  Nanami was
very young by the standards of an immortal from the twentieth century
like Truss.  She'd started out in television at the age of sixteen as
a weathergirl in her native Japan, on Earth, had joined the
Interstellar News Network a year later, and at nineteen had just
started with ISN's Paris headquarters bureau when the Earth government
declared martial law and seized control of the media.
        She'd met Blank Reg, the Klingon expat who ran Big Time TV,
while making her escape from the beseiged city in the company of
Edison Carter, whose nose for trouble had landed him smack in the
middle of the crackdown.  Though she'd been initially dubious about
the wisdom, career-wise, of accepting a job offer from an outfit
as... well, scruffy, as Big Time, but the idea of being a news
director, even of a department of one, had been intriguing; so, backed
with an offer of a job from Carter if the experiment didn't work out,
she took the job.
        Now, at twenty-two, she'd never looked back.  Nanami Jinnai's
drive, determination, journalistic instincts, and camera presence had
made Big Time's news department a genuine player in galactic news.
Its scope was necessarily limited by the fact that Nanami could only
be in one place at a time, but there was a growing segment of the
population in Big Time's broadcast area which considered the Big Time
Report to be the essential companion piece to Network 23 Action News
with John Trussell.
        At any rate, Truss enjoyed his network's deal with Big Time.
He liked Nanami, liked working with her, and found himself inspired by
her drive and determination and impressed by her instincts.  She
wasn't hard to look at, either, which helped, even though their
relationship was kept on a strictly professional level in the field.
        She led the way to the transporter room and gave the order to
beam the two of them to Truss's ship without hesitation.  The
transporter tech, familiar by now with this pattern, gave Truss a
private little grin as he energized the beam.
        "Welcome aboard!" said the cheerful green-haired hologirl form
of Canal, the good ship Swordbreaker's machine intelligence majordomo,
as two out of the ship's three human crewmembers descended the
platform at the other end.  "We're in a hurry today, I see," she added
as she followed them into the corridor.
        "A big one," Nanami agreed before Truss could say anything.
"We're going to need the fold drive."
        "Oh my!" said Canal, impressed.  "Who's going to pay for
that?"
        "Carter and I can argue about that after we've won our Emmies
for this report," replied Nanami with a grin.
        "Captain Trussell?" asked Canal.
        Truss chuckled.  "Well, I'm glad -someone- is curious about
my opinion," he said wryly.  "Judging by the way she's acting, I'd say
if it's half as big as Nanami thinks it is, it'll be worth it."
        Canal nodded.  "I'll power up the drive array and have Jung
start getting clearances."

        Near the Marshall Center stop on the Gold Line, Major Dan
Dastun, a senior patrol officer with the New Avalon Police Department,
directed twelve New Avalon cops with half a dozen cruisers in the
formation of an impromptu roadblock.  Dastun wasn't really sure what a
baker's dozen cops with pistols and six low-slung Ford patrol vehicles
was going to do about the giant monster lumbering down Marshall
Boulevard, about ten blocks distant, but he felt obligated to try.
        As Dastun worked at organizing the roadblock, he saw something
he'd never have expected: A teenage kid in a tuxedo, emerging from the
N station.  How the hell'd he get down there?  Where'd he come from?
The trains weren't even running, they'd been sent to the ends of the
lines and stopped as soon as the civil emergency was declared!
        While Dastun was digesting that, the young man paused, noting
the presence of the cops, and then walked out into the middle of the
street, turning to face the oncoming monster as if considering it.
Dastun, his confusion giving way to a sort of officious irritation to
which he was prone, grabbed a megaphone and bellowed,
        "HEY!  KID!  Get outta the way!  Can't you - "
        Corwin didn't have time to be diplomatic.  Without turning
around, he raised his arm so that the face of his watch was visible to
the cop and replied, "Grey Lensman.  Move your officers back four
blocks, Major."
        "... Dammit," growled Dastun; then he turned and hollered to
the cops under his command, "OK, everyone, fall back to Avenue Victor
Hugo and reform line!  Move!  MOVE!"
        Corwin listened to them clear out, watching the monster as it
moved slowly forward.  Within a minute he was standing alone in the
middle of one of New Avalon's wider streets while the titanic monster
approached, intent on... well, on something behind him, apparently.
        He stood and watched it approach for another moment or two;
then he raised his watch and said the four words that always gave him
a little thrill, even after dozens of battles:
        "BIG O!  It's SHOWTIME!"

 /*  Rui Negai  "Big-O!" (TV-size)  _Big-O: Original Sound Score_  */

        Four blocks back, Dastun looked through his electrobinoculars
and muttered to himself, "What the hell's that kid doing?"
        A moment later, the street vibrated under the cop's feet, a
sensation not unlike that of a train passing.  Then a manhole cover in
the center of the street, just behind the young Lensman, blew straight
up into the air with a tremendous POP, flew a hundred feet or more in
the air, turned over lazily, and caved in the whole damn street when
it hit the ground.
        Or at least that's what the last part looked like for a
second, until Dastun realized that it was just an illusion created by
the fact that the street caved in just as the manhole cover was
reaching it.  With a shocking suddenness, a sinkhole-like depression
the full width of the street in diameter quivered, sank, and then
crumbled away entirely, plunging into a great black hole.  Dastun's
last sight of the black-haired Lensman was of the young man plummeting
into the hole along with everything else, arms folded, unconcerned.
        A moment later, a great black shape erupted from the sinkhole,
showering broken chunks of pavement to the ground and shattering
windows all around.  It was a robot, the biggest one Dastun had ever
seen, fully the size of the gigantic invader that was stalking down
the street toward their position - and standing on top of its
copper-helmeted head with his arms still folded was the Lensman.
        "Holy - !" Dastun blurted; then the young man jumped down into
the huge robot's upheld hand and vanished.  As a distorted reflection
in a warped office building window off to the side, Dastun saw him
jump from the hand into an opening below the robot's head, which then
sealed with a copper-plated hatch.  A few moments later, the robot's
eyes glowed bright yellow, and it stepped out of the rubble-strewn
crater and started marching down the street to meet the attacker.
        "What in the name... ?" Dastun murmured.  The radio on his
belt crackled and the Lensman's voice emerged.
        "I don't want to tell you how to do your job, Major," he said,
"but if I were you, I'd see about taking those men up to Crescent
Heights.  They need all the help they can get up there, and, no
offense, but you won't be able to help me."
        Dastun's instinctive response was to balk, to grab his radio
and bark, "Who are you to give me orders, kid?"  After a moment's
thought, though, he realized the kid was right.
        Without acknowledging the transmission - the pilot of that
robot would have plenty to do in a moment without pointless comm
traffic from cops - Dastun waved his men to their cars and piled into
the lead cruiser.
        "I don't know if we can get to the Heights with all this going
on, sir," said his driver, "but I'll do the best I can... "
        The six cruisers switched on their lights and sirens and
peeled off down 95th Avenue, leaving Big O alone to confront the
monster.

        Chip Mui sighed contentedly.  Tonight had been, without a
doubt, one of the best nights of his life.  Everything seemed to have
fallen into place: The prom was a success, his sister was happy with
her date, he'd taken plenty of pictures... and best of all, he had the
honor of dating the sweetest girl in the school.
        "You seem rather pleased with yourself, Charles," Fuu noted.
He was driving her home in his father's car.  They weren't in any
particular hurry, since her house was only 15 minutes away - less, if
Chip used the car's alternate mode.  They were one of the last couples
to leave the school.
        "Call me a softy, Fuu, but... I dunno.  Tonight it feels like
nothing can go wrong.  I know that I shouldn't say that, but... heck,
even Clarissa didn't act up more than normal."
        "Is that all?" she asked as he stopped to make a turn.
        "Well, no," he admitted.  "I also have the pleasure of knowing
the sweetest, kindest, prettiest, most brilliant - do you want me to go
on?"
        "Exaggerating again, Charles?" she asked softly with a smile.
        "Not this time," he replied, and leaned in to give her a
quick kiss - 
        - when three black vans zoomed by.  All of them were unmarked,
and apparently headed back the way they'd come - toward Fritz Koopman
Memorial High School.
        "What the hell?" he muttered.
        The warm mood evaporating, they craned their necks to get a
view of the vans.  Fuu seemed a bit concerned, but Chip's gaze turned
sharp, almost hard.  It appeared that he was expecting trouble.
        "Why do I get the feeling that they're not going to clean up
the gym?" he mused.
        "It does appear rather suspicious," Fuu admitted.
        "Let's see if I can't get a long-range scan," Chip's fingers
flew over a keypad, and he frowned.  "My scans are bouncing off
whatever's on those vans."
        Fuu looked thoughtful.  "A sensor-reflective coating,
perhaps?"
        "I think we may be a little late getting you home.  Unless, of
course, you want me to drop you off and - "
        Fuu looked at him somewhat incredulously.  "Charles, you know
I'm not one to play the helpless maiden," she said with faint reproach.
        He grinned almost wolfishly.  That was exactly what he
expected her to say.  "Check them out it is, then."  He toggled yet
another switch, and a phone keypad appeared on the HUD.  "Might want
to call your parents and let them know that you'll be late coming
home.  First things first, you know," he joked.
        Chip hadn't anticipated trouble, but he was far from
unprepared, a trait he'd inherited from his father.  Flipping a few
switches, the air around them shimmered briefly as shields came
online.  Another switch rotated the tires ninety degrees, and with a
brief jolt, they were boosted some distance above the road.
        "I never knew that your father's car could do this," Fuu
remarked with admirable sangfroid.
        "Yeah, I'm lucky that he let me borrow it for tonight."  he
replied conversationally.
        Fuu used the phone to alert her parents to the situation; she
advised them to stay low and out of trouble.  Unlike Hikaru Shidou's
brothers (from whom the Salusian girl had carefully concealed it) or
Uum'y R'yuu-z'ky's parents (who were so laissez-faire about everything
that they'd never bothered to find out), the Hououjis, parents and
sister alike, knew the full extent of the changes Fuu had experienced
during the time three years ago when she'd been missing.  Her father
told her to stay frosty and not get punctured, and that was pretty
much all that was required.
        "Hey, Mom?"
        Elana Smythe-Mui looked worried on the HUD.  "Chip, where are
you?"
        "Well, Fuu and I were just about to head out when we found out
that someone had a sale on guys in black hoods.  They're headed for
the school, so Fuu and I decided to stay and help out.  Is everything
okay there?" he asked, jerking the car to the left to avoid a rocket
blast.  It appeared the gentlemen in black had noticed their tail.
        "Everything's fine here.  Reiyna came home a few minutes ago,
and Gary's sticking around here for obvious reasons."  She looked
rueful for a moment.  "I always thought that your father's security
system was overkill, but it's actually come in quite handy."
        "How... ?"
        "Let's just say that nobody's gotten past 5039 Chambers yet.
Of course, there'll be quite a cleanup in the morning, but... anyway,
you and Fuu just be careful, all right?"
        Fuu leaned into the camera view.  "We will, Mrs. Mui."

        Clarissa Broadbank watched the situation unfold on her
tactical monitor with a smile.  The K-units were performing just as
expected.
        It had taken a great deal of time, effort and expense to
smuggle the cores of seven K-units into New Avalon, but for a debut
and field test site, Big Fire could ask for no better.
        Adapted from a Big Fire study of all available data on the
Heterodyne, extradimensional aliens which had attacked Earth in the
mid-twenty-first century, the monstrous bioroid creations called
K-units would - if successful - revolutionize Big Fire's terror
operations methodology.  A K-unit's core (before activation) was the
size of a large suitcase, and could, with a bit of effort and
ingenuity, be smuggled almost anywhere with much greater ease than a
conventional war robot or kaiju-class attack bioroid could be.
        The K-core was programmed with what was for now only a simple
program: basic tactics of giant-size combat, how to deal with air
attacks, armor, and enemy robots; very simple instructions, such as
how to recognize and destroy a particular landmark or item; and some
rudimentary identify-friend-from-foe information.  K-units weren't
very bright, but they were fearless and relentless, traits not always
to be found in robot pilots.
        When activated, a K-core would send out a tuned multiphasic
energy wave which would demolish everything within a radius of about
four hundred feet, pulverizing most inanimate matter to dust.  (For
some reason it had no effect on life forms; Big Fire's scientists
believed the energy wave was somehow repulsed by Spengler radiation, a
fascinating but ultimately useless discovery.)  The energy field would
then collapse, coalescing the pulverized material into a specific
programmed shape.  All the K-units involved in this test would assume
a humanoid configuration.
        These units also had the capacity to recognize many items
which could be used as weapons and exclude them from the destruction
wave.  Instead of being pulverized and used as base material, the
weapons would be integrated functionally into the K-unit's final form.
For this reason, it was considered good practice to site K-cores near
sources of readily assimilated weapons.  All the units set off for
this test had been placed in an industrial area, providing them with
an abundance of dangerous objects, including the cannon and missile
systems from several New Avalon Police Department ED-2900-series
robots which had been patrolling the warehouse districts.
        Agent A watched with glee as her seven giant servants oriented
themselves and then began moving inward, heading downtown.  She had
been given great operational latitude on this mission, a more or less
free hand to select targets; all the Magnificent Ten cared about was
that the units prove their value and inflict as much damage and terror
on the citizens and authorities of New Avalon as possible.  Once they
knew that their vaunted City in the Sphere wasn't the invulnerable
fortress they assumed its location made it, perhaps the masters of the
International Police would be more willing to negotiate with the
eventual rulers of the galaxy.
        Clarissa was a firm believer in killing as many birds as
possible with any given stone, so the K-units were programmed to
destroy things in New Avalon she wanted out of her life anyway.  Plus,
while most of the city's defenses were concentrated on stopping the
K-units, Q-Boss and his men would sack Crescent Heights, merely for
the sheer satisfaction of Agent A.
        As she watched the growing red zones indicating the boundaries
of the chaos and destruction sown by the forces under her command,
Clarissa laughed.  Life was good.

        There were distinct advantages to having a date who was
considered an adult by his society, Uum'y R'yuu-z'ky decided as she
and Nall walked along the cable of the Highway 29 bridge over the
Oxbow River at midnight.
        It meant, among other things, that she didn't have to worry
about -his- parents demanding he come home by curfew, and her parents
had been so delighted that she was going to the prom that they hadn't
bothered to set her a curfew either.
        Unlike some people's brothers she knew...
        It didn't strike Umi as at all unusual that she and her prom
date were walking up the cable of a suspension bridge, five stories
and rising above the black water of the Oxbow.  It didn't even occur
to her that normal people would find it strange - not to mention
paralytically frightening - to be doing something like this.  Her only
thought as she reached the top and the flat steel of the bridge's
central pier was of what a pleasant night it was, and how good the
view was from up here.
        "How -did- you find this place, dragon?" Umi asked as he
helped her (gallantly) up to the top of the pier and then scrambled up
beside her to look out at the twinkling sparks in the darkness.  The
wind blew quietly off the Heights, tugging gently at her hair without
actually making it into a tangled mess that would take hours to comb
out later, and she absently pulled it aside so that Nall wouldn't
-sit- on it by mistake.
        "I can fly," he answered cheerfully, tucking his cape around
her shoulders and flashing her a glowing-red-eyed cat grin.  "Dragons
like high places with commanding views."
        Umi thought about that, and then started to ask what other
such spots he had found in the city, when several large explosions and
the sound of gunfire rattled the night below them.
        "WHAT the - !?"
        Umi started to scramble to her feet to see if she could see
what was making the noise.  Nall grabbled her arm and nearly yanked it
out of its socket dragging her down.
        "OW!" she yelped, glaring at him.
        Undaunted by the glare, he hissed, "Don't stand up, you idiot,
you'll get SHOT!"
        She glared at him for a moment, trying to think of a snappy
comeback before there was a soft *phfwpt!* of air and he collapsed
back into his cat shape.
        "Wait here," he said, and scrambled over the edge, vanishing
straight down the green-painted pier in a flash of white fur that was
quickly lost in the darkness.
        "Wait here," she growled.  "Or you'll get shot, he says.  I'll
show him -shot- when he gets back here, the little..."  She trailed
off as something startling caught her eye: Off past the cityward end
of the bridge, -giants- had appeared out of the smoke pillars of the
biggest explosions.  "Noyyj'ttat," she murmured, "what in the
-world-... ?"
        Shaking her head, Umi started to follow Nall, staying low to
the steel, but her formal gown's skirt caught on the protruding head
of one of the bolts holding the cable bracket to the top of the pier.
        "T'ch'nn-k'luongo!" she growled.  She focused her attention on
her Lens for a moment, and whispered in a voice like the waves,
>Knight of the Sea.<
        Her clothes flowed around her and then faded into a blue-
paneled, short-skirted dress with a dark blue and gold breastplate and
pauldrons over it.  Her boots rippled and became strong white leather,
rising to mid thigh, and the ornaments in her hair from earlier
disappeared.
        Putting one hand to her Lens, she drew the Heart of the Sea,
the blue-enameled mystic rapier that she had earned when she won her
Knighthood.  Thus equipped, she slithered down the cable, utterly
unmindful of the height and fully as quiet as her draconic date,
except for her quiet muttering: "Rotten dragon, if you get hurt I'll
kill you."
        Thirty seconds later, Nall was back in a flash of white wings,
and he was panting from flying -fast-.  One wing was missing two
feathers.  Umi opened her mouth to gripe at him as he gasped, "Good,
you ditched the stupid dress."
        "It was -not- stupid!" she snarled.
        "It is if you're going up against a whole crowd of guys in
black hoods with machine guns and heavy explosives!" he yelped, and
ducked.
        Bullets rattled across the cable sheathing below, and Umi
ducked reflexively, pressing herself to the steel.  "I'll kill you
-after- this," she growled.
        "Oh, good," Nall gasped.  "That means I'll live long enough to
catch my breath!"

        As Big O squared off against the nearest of the monstrous
creatures that had been born in explosions down in the warehouse
district, Corwin sized it up as best he could.
        He had a hard time telling just by looking at his opposition
exactly what it -was-.  It looked like a robot at first glance, its
structure covered in segmented armor which gleamed a dull grey-black
in the streetlights; but through the gaps in the armor, some paler
grey material could be seen, and the creature moved very fluidly.
Corwin had seen pure machines move that smoothly - the Rune Gods of
Cephiro moved like living things, especially Celes, God of the Sea -
but there was something just slightly uncoordinated about this thing's
motions which combined with the smoothness to make him suspect he was
looking at some kind of bioroid.
        Bioroids didn't usually have a pair of autocannons built into
their shoulders like that, though.  They weren't much of a threat -
Big O's armor shrugged off their shells like a tin roof sheds hail,
with almost the same noise - but they still weren't the sort of thing
you tended to find on a bioroid.  Now that Corwin looked at them, they
and the housings they were built into looked distinctly like the arms
of a New Avalon Police Department ED-2900-series police droid.
        Corwin flicked a weapon selector and triggered Big O's optic
blaster array.  The twin yellow beams lashed across the space
separating the two giant combatants.  The monster backed off, arms
crossed in front of its "face" (though it didn't really seem to have
one), and the yellow energy washed over it, spilling over as the beams
fractured like interrupted streams of water to tear chunks out of the
road and the empty office building behind the creature.
        "Oops," Corwin muttered.  "Tougher than it looks... "
        That was about as far as he got on the enemy analysis; the
creature, its armor smoking and pitted, reached a hand forward, and
tentacle-like silvery cables whipped out from its fingertips to
entangle Big O.
        "-What- the - ?" Corwin wondered, and a moment later, energy
started pouring down the cables, overloading his robot's power systems
and starting a massive drain on Big O's reserve cells.  As the Rune
God fell to one knee, Corwin gritted his teeth against the sympathetic
pain and kept one wary eye on the flickering needles of his power
gauges.
        "What power!" he muttered, impressed in spite of himself by
the sophistication and strength of... whatever this was.  Even Big O,
the single mightiest Rune God in terms of plain strength, was fast
losing that strength under the terrible assault coming down those
cable-tentacles.  Corwin strained against the joysticks, trying to
muster enough power from Big O to break the cable pinning the Rune God's
arms, but there just wasn't enough left.
        Thinking fast, he glanced at the weapons panel.  There might
be just enough energy to summon up a second or so of optic-beam fire.
That might be just enough to sever the main tentacle, free Big O's
arms, and cut the punishment level enough for his reactor core to
regenerate his reserves - but only if he got a line of fire and did it
NOW -

/*  Mephisto Odyssey featuring Static-X  "Crash (The Humble Brothers Remix)"
               _Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker_  */

        A bolt of brilliant energy slashed down from the sky, carved a
line of glowing ruin across the street, and parted the cable.  Big O
stumbled backward, suddenly freed; Corwin worked the pedals and
stabilized the machine before he could crash into the building
opposite, then looked up to see what had come to his rescue.
        A sleek blue aerospace fighter howled up the avenue at rooftop
level, its cannons peppering the K-unit (though Corwin didn't yet know
what it was) with blasterfire as it came.  Behind it, one to the left
and one to the right, came two others of different configurations, one
red and one yellow, adding their firepower to the attack as well.
        One of Big O's many display screens flickered and brightened,
and there was Kozue, teeth bared in a triumphant grin as the three
fighters peeled away as one and streaked skyward.
        "Kozue!" Corwin blurted.  "Wha - who's flying the others?"
        "Nobody," Kozue replied cheerfully.  "Or I am, since you based
the drone-pilot algorithms on me.  I know, that'll only give me access
to one mode, but what the hell - against these guys I don't think I'll
need more than one."  The blue fighter twisted in midair and plunged
back down for another run, its automatic mates following in perfect
formation.  The Big Fire creature turned around and returned fire, its
assimilated autocannons chattering, but the three fighters avoided the
streams of tracers easily before returning to their tight formation
and carving up the street and the robot's armor a bit more.
        A slow smile crept onto Corwin's face as he watched Big O's
power status gauges work their way back into the green zone.  He
squared up to take on his opponent while his back was turned, but then
an explosion off to the right caught his attention.
        "You go and deal with that," Kozue's voice crackled over the
comm net.  "I'll handle this joker.  More help's on the way."
        Corwin thought that over for half a second, then pivoted Big O
and plunged down the side street.  His erstwhile opponent noticed the
movement and whirled, lashing the building behind where the Rune God
had just been standing with another cable; then the street rang with
the amplified sound of a girl's voice:
        "No, no, pal.  -I'm- your opponent now."
        The monster shifted its stance, readying its cannon array.  It
would have a surprise for that ragtag fighter wing when they made
their next pass...
        But they didn't make another pass.  Instead, they came tearing
down the street at rooftop level again, then abruptly pulled up and
went vertical, shifting from their triangle formation to single file,
first blue, then yellow, then red.
        Four blocks west and accelerating as Big O's power levels rose
steadily toward full, Corwin grinned broadly as he heard Kozue's shout
over the tac net:
        "CHANGE!  GETTER - _RYGER_!"
        The Big Fire kaiju watched in uncomprehending surprise as the
three fighters -collided-, their formation telescoping violently.  For
a moment it assumed that the pilots had made some terrible error, that
the radical shifts in the colliding fighters' configurations meant
they were breaking up in a horrible crash - but there was no fireball.
Instead the three fighters merged, their shapes shifting almost
organically, armor flowing like hot wax to sheath new forms...
        ... and it was as a single unit that the three Getter Machines
returned to the ground: the blue-armored, spindly, lightning-quick
form the spec sheets called Ryger.
        Kozue was not an experienced kaiju-class robot pilot.  She
preferred aerospacecraft, and had only learned to pilot the Getter
series in order to help Corwin test it; but Getter Ryger handled so
much like a fighter itself that she had few problems mastering it.
She had also, to Corwin's amusement, picked up the habit (acquired
from exposure to a cultural heritage stretching from the cartoons of
Old Earth right up through "Thunder Force: The Animated Series") of
announcing maneuvers as if her machine were voice-controlled.
        "Ryger DASH!" she declared, and the rocket thrusters at the
ends of the slim wings jutting up from Getter Ryger's back flared,
driving the machine down the street.  The Big Fire bioroid's weapons
chattered, but the beast's primitive battle intelligence wasn't
leading nearly enough for an opponent of Ryger's speed. 
        "This'll be - easy!" Kozue crowed, driving in for the kill - 
        - but the creature reacted faster than she expected, adapting
its tactics to close quarters without missing a beat and slamming one
huge fist into Getter Ryger's chest.  Ryger staggered, its charge
aborted, and crashed back against the building across the street.
        Kozue shook her head.  "OK, so, not -that- easy," she muttered
with wry chagrin.

        Hikaru Shidou found herself thwarted by a lack of explosions
to follow.  The first loud BOOM from the Crescent Heights area had
sent her charging up the hill away from the ferry stop and back
toward the school, even though it meant she'd be very late getting
home - dawn, even.
        Her rotten brothers could wait, and they couldn't really do
anything to Mitsuru (who, unthinkingly, she was leaving far in her
wake) given how he'd handled himself earlier.  It'd serve them right
for being such overprotective twits.  And anyway, she was the Knight
of the Flame!  She had to help out in a situation like this!
        Except that she wasn't quite sure what the situation was, and
she couldn't -find- it without noise to follow.  Now, granted, the
lack of noise meant fewer people were getting hurt, but she hadn't
heard any police sirens either and -
        The sound of gunfire cut off her train of thought and sent her
sprinting down a block and around a corner.
        There, she found herself twenty feet from a bunch of thugs in
black hoods shooting up the side of a ten-story appartment complex,
blowing out windows and cursing above the noise.  All of the windows
of the building were dark, and sheeting down to glass.
        Across the street, a couple of small, dark blocks about the
size of shoeboxes were nestled up against the wall of one of the local
Mom-and-Pop hardware stores.  Red wires trailed away from the boxes
out to the center of the street, where it looked like the Black Hoods
had been working on them until...
        Until what?  This didn't make sense.
        But if those boxes were explosives, then fire magic was
-right- out.
        Well, she had other weaponry.  With a grim smile, Hikaru drew
the Heart of the Flame from her Lens, and launched herself at the
nearest distracted Hood with a Salusian roar that had panicked more
experienced warriors than these thugs.
        They all jerked in surprise, their guns sputtering to a stop as
they turned to see her cut the first of their number down.
        "What the hell?!" one of them yelled.  She lunged forward in a
move she'd learned from Umi and gutted the second one on the point of
her sword.
        "How -DARE- you hurt innocent people and destroy their
livelihood?" she demanded in a furious scream, charging a third.
        "Sonofa - SHOOT!" yelled the third guy, backpedaling furiously
and bringing his tommygun up to point at her.  She dove to one side,
anticipating the pounding her armor was about to take, and then heard
a single shot.
        There was a scream, and she came out of her roll to see that
the guy who had yelled was down, and the two remaining Black Hoods
were turning back to face the windows they'd been pummelling with
slugs earlier.
        Hikaru took advantage of their inattention to slice across
one's unprotected back.  She felt her sword lodge in his spine and
gave a heave to pull it out, as the remaining one pulled the trigger
on his tommygun and started to turn toward her, spraying lead out at a
fantastic rate.
        Then he was down before he had even turned to face her all the
way, and the street was silent.
        She stood in the dead quiet street, panting, and then a voice
above her called out, "Hikaru, are you OK?"
        It took her a second to recognize the voice and her location.
"Nate?!"
        "Um, yeah, I'm OK.  I think."  There was a pause, and then she
looked up and saw Nathan Mowes leaning out a window, hunting rifle in
hand.  "I've... never killed anybody before... "
        Hikaru felt suddenly light-headed as she realized how close
she'd come to getting filled with lots and lots of lead.  "Nate, will
you go out with me next Saturday?" she asked, feeling a bit giddy.
        Nate blinked at the utter incongruity of this question under
the circumstances.  "... Won't your brothers just throw me in the lake
again?" he inquired after a moment's thought.
        "You're not asking me, I'm asking the guy who just saved my
life.  And if they try, I'll throw -them- in the lake myself."
        There was a long pause as she looked up at him, and then he
grinned weakly. "OK."

        Corwin was pleased to note that the enemy he was closing in on
was larger than the one he'd just been fighting, and didn't seem to
have absorbed a pile of power cables.  It didn't seem to have any
weapons at all, in fact, and was just slogging through police
roadblocks and gunfire with straightforward brute force.  As Corwin
rounded the corner onto Allard Boulevard - the thing seemed to be
headed for the heart of downtown - he saw it tear a light pole from
the sidewalk, heft it, and take a swipe at one of the New Avalon
police aerodynes.
        Corwin triggered Big O's optic beams again, carving two
glowing scars in the enemy unit's back armor.  The K-unit turned, the
light pole falling from its hand.
        Without hesitation and without a sound, it charged,
streetlights sparkling on its grey-black armored hide.  Corwin threw
Big O into an opposing charge, and the two machines met with a titanic
crash in the middle of the 2700 block.  The K-unit tried to bring its
fists down on the Rune God's shoulders in a crushing blow, but Big O
slipped underneath the attack and the K-unit's fists glanced
harmlessly over his armored shoulders.  Big O's fist slammed into the
creature's midsection, sending it skidding back several yards.
        Faster than Corwin had expected, the creature wrapped its arms
around Big O, pinning the Rune God's arms, then set about trying to
crush him.  Corwin felt the joysticks quivering against his hands as
the monster's strength warred with Big O's.  He kept a wary eye on the
fluctuating power gauges, feeling the vibration under his seat
increase as Big O's power output kicked up to meet the challenge.
        10 seconds into the contest, something blew up off to the
west.  The explosion seemed to distract the creature; Corwin felt the
pressure of its grip fluctuate and threw his strength against the
joysticks.  Big O broke the monster's grip, regrouped, and threw a
roundhouse punch at the K-unit's head.  Again the K-unit was faster
than it looked; it ducked the blow and drove its shoulder into Big O's
midsection.  Big O faltered, then fell backward, slamming to the
pavement.
        "Slag!" Corwin snarled.  He brought Big O's legs up to kick
off the creature's follow-up attack, then got the Rune God to his feet.
"Too much going on - how many of these things -are- there?"
        "Looks like seven," came a voice over the IPO tactical
communications band.
        "Janice?" Corwin inquired.  "Where are you?"
        "Up at the top of the Entire State Building," the voice of the
IPO agent replied, "with a map and a radio.  With the HQ division's
bluesuiters scrambling the TOHO maser trucks and the cops all up in
the Heights, I think I'm about the best battlefield coordinator you're
gonna get, so tie your tac computer in and let's rock and roll.  HQ
com-cen says my radio sign for this one's 'Hawkeye 6'."
        "Seven?!" Corwin blurted as he dodged a punch from the monster
and returned one of his own.  Big O's spiked fist crushed part of the
creature's armor, sending fragments spilling to the street, but it
didn't seem terribly inconvenienced by the damage.  "What else have we
got for comparable assets?"
        "You and the Admiral and - is that Kozue? - uh-huh, are it
right now," Janice replied.  Corwin hadn't acknowledged her question;
he realized that she had her communications relay set up so that he
could only hear her end of the other conversations.  After a few
seconds of blank air, Janice came back with, "OK, Kozue says there's
more help on the way, ETA about a minute, and the WDF has a Judicator
wing inbound from HQ.  Wait five while I bridge together this comm
band so you can all talk to each other, and I'll try and figure out
what these guys are up to."

        Clarissa watched the situation markers on her tactical
holodisplay move for a moment, noted the size of the red zone in
Crescent Heights, and frowned.  She stabbed a key on her panel and
snapped, "Q-Boss, report!"
        "We're hitting heavier resistance than expected down here,
Agent A," Q-Boss's voice replied.  In the background, Clarissa could
hear gunfire and a lot of shouting, then a strange harmonic noise
which she took several seconds to place as the sound of a Transformer
in action.  "It's not very -organized- resistance, except for the
cops, but there's something weird going on up here.  Demolition Team 6
at the bridge hasn't reported in; DT 4 got off one call, something
about a sniper and a kid with a sword - probably one of the local
Duelists - then nothing!"
        "What about the terror squads?"
        "My main team's got the biggest problem - I think we're up
against Thunder Force."
        "Well, that was to be expected," Clarissa noted.
        "Acknowledged," Q-Boss replied, "and we're holding our own so
far.  The wing squads have problems of their own.  Information's very
sketchy so far, but it sounds like they're having more trouble with
the Duelists than expected."
        "Dammit, Q-Boss!  The Duelists are children with swords.  Your
troops are grown men and women with ranged weapons!  WHY is this a
problem?"
        "They may be children with swords," Q-Boss replied with a
touch of rueful humor, "but they're -tough- children with swords.
Hell, one of 'em's a Jyuraian princess, don't forget.  Anyway, we knew
all this going in.  Everything's still within tolerances."
        "Very well," Clarissa replied.  "Proceed.  Agent A out."

        Up on the northeast corner of the Entire State Building's
observation deck, high above the action, Janice Barlow sat on the
balcony rail (no fool she, attached to the rail by a safety cable
affixed to her Ragolian powered protection frame) and made a survey of
the battlefield.  She had an eye patch on over her natural eye so that
she could concentrate on the input she was getting from her cyberoptic, 
and right now she was panning that optic across the half of the
battlefield she could see from her vantage point.
        With that done, she made a small cybernetic adjustment, and
suddenly the -other- half of New Avalon jumped into her field of view
instead, rendered in ghostly shades of green and overlaid by a faint
octagonal grid.  Following her mental commands sent back along their
sub-ether link, Mitra, her faithful Mag, also panned across the
vista before him.  Between the two of them, they could cover the whole
city.
        Janice switched her optic back to normal mode, flipped up the
eyepatch over her real eye, and looked at the map of New Avalon tacked
to her kneeboard.  Then she keyed the IPO tac band radio built into
her Frame and said, "OK, Hawkeye 6 to Robot Response Team.  We've got
seven kaiju-class hostiles on the ground, spread out around the city.
They're all making their way more or less downtown from the band of
industrial zones outside Highway 29.  I'm not sure what their targets
are yet, but they look to be heading for -something- pretty
purposefully.
        "IPO Tac Div HQ Division's heavy weapons battalion is
deploying to the south along Allard and McQuarrie Drive; they should
be able to hold three of 'em for now.  Big O, you're up against the
one I've got flagged as K-2; G-Kaiser is moving to engage K-7 and
Getter Ryger's throwing down with K-1."
        "Where's that extra help Kozue promised?" Corwin inquired as
he ducked Big O under a thrown bank branch.  Oh well; SphereBank
was a bunch of jerks anyway.  2 credits just to use one of their
freaking teller machines?
        "I don't know," Janice replied, "but GENOM CORPDEF looks like
they could really use it over by Technology Circle.  K-4 is headed
right for them down 217th Street, and I don't think those DD5
battlemovers are going to be much of a help.  They're set up to defend
the building against commando raids and crap, not giant monsters."
        "Acknowledged, Hawkeye 6," came a new voice on Band 3.  "217th
and Technology Circle.  ETA 30 seconds."
        Janice blinked.  "That voice sounds familiar," she said, "but
I can't place it.  Who is this?"
        The only answer she got was the sudden change of the
streetlights at the corner of 217th Street and Technology Circle from
white to bright red and the distant howl of emergency sirens.  The
crosswalks bracketing the square of pavement where the two streets
overlapped began to flash as well, the word "DANGER" appearing inside
each one.  Janice blinked.  The New Avalon Civil Defense Transport
System was in USE?!
        A second later, the street parted with a hiss and a cloud of
rapidly dissipating steam, and the square formed by the overlap of
217th and Technology slid open, revealing a shaft leading down into
the underpinnings of the city.  Below the streets, below the utility
lines and the subway, another network of tunnels spiderwebbed the
substrate beneath New Avalon, one with priority access shafts leading
to the surface every four blocks.  They had been laid out and
constructed during the pseudocontinent's original creation, and then
never used for their intended purpose of transporting defense
equipment rapidly around the city... 
        ... until now.
        A gantry assembly on a magnetically accelerated platform shot
up out of the ground, slamming to a halt with its base plate at street
level and its cargo towering over the corner.  Automatically, cables
popped away from the giant structure contained by the gantry as the
gantry itself collapsed and folded away into the street below.
        Facing the oncoming K-4 (an unusually spiky, vicious-looking
specimen) at a range of six city blocks was another giant robot,
similar in styling to G-Kaiser but red and black instead of navy blue,
and a bit simpler-looking in construction.  It stood impassively for a
moment, its massive form at rest, and then the voice which had
acknowledged the GENOM troopers' need sounded over the IPO tac net
again.
        "Dai-Guard, take off," said R. Dorothy Wayneright calmly.  In
answer, the retrofitted antique machine's blue-green optics flashed.
The robot strode purposefully off the platform, which immediately
retracted back into the street, hatchway closing behind it.

        "Lorna!  Lorna, wake up!"
        Lorna Endou opened one eye slowly and tried to make out
something about her surroundings, but they were still in pitch
darkness - which was very odd for a sane hour of the morning to be
waking up.
        The obvious conclusion - that it was not a sane hour to be
waking up - did not occur to Lorna, because she was too groggy.  She
was awake enough to realize that she wasn't at home - she generally
didn't sleep in the back seats of antique cars at home - and that fact
in turn reminded her that she was in the clubhouse of the Nekomi
Institute of Technology Motor Club - but abstracts like "time" were
still beyond her capabilities.
        And if she had anything to say about it, they would continue
to be for some time.
        "... ohhhh... what -is- it, lisa?" she muttered, trying to
burrow back into her sleeping bag.  "... bad enough you talked me into
sleeping over here... initiation... can't even join the club 'til next
year... "
        "C'mon, get up!" Lisa Sakakino urged her friend, joggling
Lorna's shoulder again.  "You've got to see what's on TV!  It's the
coolest thing -ever-!"
        "... nnnnn... not another steve mcqueen movie marathon... "
        "No, no!  WAY cooler'n that!  C'mon, get UP!"

        On the other side of the city from Corwin, G-Kaiser dove from
on high, swooping down on the spindly shape of K-7.  The tallest of
the enemy creatures, this one had a peculiarly gaunt shape with
disproportionately long arms and very long, claw-like fingers.  It
turned to watch the blue-and-gold robot diving down on it, but didn't
look too concerned.  Noriko overflew it, then landed her new robot a
block down the street.  Janice's tactical plot showed that this one
was probably headed for International Police Headquarters.
        "Help, weapons," she said, and G-Kaiser's computer responded
with a menu in her forward combat information overlay.  "Let's see,
let's see," she murmured, running down the list.  "What've we got
here... some kind of energy beam... 'G-Bomb', I wonder what that
does... ha!  Rocket punch!  Yeah, you can tell a -guy- designed this.
Well, I guess I might as well find out what that does... "
        Setting G-Kaiser as if preparing to throw a punch, despite the
fact that her enemy was a block away, Noriko drove her right hand
forward and declared firmly, "ROCKET PUNCH!"
        At the forward peak of the punch, right where a person would
have expected impact with a normal punch, G-Kaiser's right forearm
blew away at the elbow, streaking down the street on a blue-white
shock cone of thruster fire.  To Noriko, through her neural interface,
it felt very strange - as if her arm had suddenly become much, much
longer, the fist at the end shooting forward.  The flying fist smashed
into K-7's narrow chest, bowling the creature over backward; then it
pulled up in a long, picturesque arc, circling back to G-Kaiser and
mating with his upper arm with a CLANG and a burst of sparks.
        Noriko flexed her elbow and wrist, examining both her own arm
in person and the robot's through the monitor, then shook her head.
"Dunno if I like that... " she mused.
        The K-unit got to its feet and charged, breaking her out of
her reverie; she put G-Kaiser in motion as well, running down the
weapons list with one eye and keeping the other on the decreasing
range.  She was just about to try one of the energy weapons when the
K-unit took a swipe at her, still too far away to possibly connect - 
        - and a beam of white energy, the blade of an industrial
plasma cutter, leapt from the palm of its hand, closing the gap in the
blink of an eye.  Noriko's well-trained, well-honed reflexes saved
her; with a cry of "Whoa!" she threw G-Kaiser backward, reversing his
run with a great crash of his giant feet against the street.  The
cutter beam flickered across G-Kaiser's chest, falling just short, and
for a second, Noriko thought she'd gotten away with it.
        Then a triangular bit just at the very tip of the golden V on
G-Kaiser's chest quivered and fell off, embedding itself point-down in
the street with a percussive "chink".
        "Whoops," Noriko muttered ruefully.

        On Tomodachi, Utena Tenjou entered the living room of her home
at 1140 Wildwood Road in Nekomikoka and grinned at the sight of her
housemate Kaitlyn's novice kenjutsu student, Anne Cross, glued to the
TV.  Juniper had turned into a devout bookworm since her introduction
to Kaitlyn's library, and had solemnly sworn (as only a teenaged girl
can) that she would watch TV only when there was something on worth
watching, so it was a rare and amusing sight to see her so raptly
attentive to the tube.
        "You should get to bed, kiddo," said Utena, plopping down in
her favorite chair.  Then she noticed what was on the screen and
realized that the girl must be playing a game, not watching TV - at
which point her concentration on the screen made a bit more sense.
        "Hey," she said, "where'd you get a GameZark robot battle game
with Big O in it?"
        Juniper didn't answer for a moment, as the very realistic
image of Big O slugged it out a little more with a giant grey monster
against a backdrop that looked like New Avalon.  Then she seemed to
shake herself, turned awe-widened eyes to Utena, and said,
        "This isn't a game - I watching the New Avalon Symphony and
they cut in with this!"
        Utena blinked and leaned forward.  "What?!  ANTHY!  KATE!
C'MERE!"

        "Oh ho," mused Agent A as she saw the four blue triangles
denoting New Avalon's giant impromptu defenders appear on her holomap.
"Resistance!  So much the better - it'll make for an even more
effective test.  One of those must be Corwin's new toy, and the
others... "  She manipulated a control which gave her the view from
K-unit One, the first to be engaged, and smiled at the sight of Getter
Ryger entangled in its electrified cables.  "Well, whoever this is, it
doesn't look like they'll be a problem much longer... "

                 /*  (a bit more of "Crash" here)  */

        Kozue, squinting against the brightness of the bleed-over
discharge crackling across her main displays, reached forward through
the lightning storm, braced herself, and seized one of the many
control levers arrayed before her.  She grunted in pain, teeth
gritted, as the energy raced up her arm, but through a great effort of
will, she was able to order the arm to pull back anyway.  As she did
so, she forced her jaws apart and delivered a defiant cry:
        "OPEN - GET!"
        The K-unit's rudimentary consciousness felt something like
satisfaction as it saw its enemy's structure collapse under the
energized constriction of its cables.  In the space of half a second,
Getter Ryger had lost even the semblance of a humanoid robot,
separating into three pieces almost as if it were melting - 
        - and a moment later, the separate Getter Machines' thrusters
screamed online.  All three aerospacecraft slipped through the
slackened gaps in the cables and made for the sky, driven by plain
brute thrust.  K-1 stumbled back in surprise, retracting the cables,
and looked, up trying to track its prey.  They vanished into the
darkness above New Avalon's nightglow, the pinprick lights of their
exhausts converging into a single sudden flash.
        Getter Ryger screamed down from an altitude of twenty thousand
feet, left arm extended.  Overlaying the howl of the Getter robot's
main drives was the higher-pitched keening of Ryger's main weapon, the
great drill which comprised its entire left forearm.
        "DRILL DIVE!" Kozue yelled triumphantly, and a moment later
Ryger plowed into the K-unit, drill tip first, at five hundred miles
per hour.  The drill bit deep, shearing through K-1's amalgam armor as
if it weren't there.  It plunged deep into the monster's chest, and,
though Kozue didn't know it, bored right through the K-core.
        Instantly, the unit's cohesion vanished, and before Ryger hit
the street, the rest of the monster's body melted away.  Kozue, who
had been expecting to meet somewhat more resistance, uttered a
surprised cry as she and her mount smashed into (and through) the
street, penetrating all the way to a Green Line subway tunnel before
the startled pilot could shut down the drill and yank back the power
control levers for the thrusters.

        "WHOA!" Utena Tenjou blurted.  "Bit of a control problem
there, wouldn't you say?"  She grinned and elbowed Miki Kaoru, who was
perched on the arm of her chair.  "That must be Kozue."
        "I wouldn't doubt it," the blue-haired young man replied,
tripping his stopwatch without looking at it.
        The atmosphere in the living room at 1140 Wildwood was
half-festive, half-worried as an ever-increasing concentration of
Duelists and their friends accrued by ones and twos.  The room was
jammed with people, alternately kibitzing the fights and reminding
each other to breathe.
        The views were coming from cameras all over downtown New
Avalon; some of them usually acted as traffic cams, others as website
skyline cameras, a few even as security cameras for businesses.  John
Trussell and Nanami Jinnai were trading off somewhat breathless
commentary, which was the only reason the Duelists had bothered
keeping the sound turned up.
        
        "What the hell?" Janice Barlow blurted.  "All units on Band 3,
this is Hawkeye 6 - Getter Ryger just destroyed one of the enemies,
and, uh... it looked easy.  Ryger, what's your status?  I can't see
you anymore."
        "Uh... I'm OK," Kozue's voice crackled back.  "Just showing
off a little for all my fans."  A second later, the heap of what
looked like -dirt- the K-unit had collapsed into shifted and Getter
Ryger emerged.  "I dunno what happened exactly.  It felt like the
drill maybe -hit- something inside it somewhere, but it all happened
so -fast-... it just... -disintegrated-."
        "Weird," said Janice; then she shook herself a little and went
on briskly, "Anyway, there's still six of 'em left.  Ryger, your
nearest opponent is K-5, eight blocks southwest.  I make its
destination... well, I'm not sure.  Looks like it might be headed for
the Colosseum, although that doesn't make much sense as a target."
        "I'm on it," said Kozue, and Ryger launched into the air.

        "Damn!" snarled Clarissa.  "A lucky shot.  Whoever that is
probably doesn't even realize what he just did."  She switched to Unit
4's view and laughed.  "And what does this one hope to accomplish with
-that- museum piece?" she wondered, marveling at the spectacle of a
twenty-first-century combat machine taking on the fruits of Big Fire's
very latest research.

  /*  The Cobratwisters  "Back Alley Spaceboy"  _Terrestrial Defense
                      Corporation DAI-GUARD_  */

        Dai-Guard was just a dumb machine.  Dorothy knew that.  The
giant robot had no intelligence at all, unless you counted the expert
system which did tactical analysis and energy management.  It
certainly wasn't built to have a personality.  It was just a big chunk
of metal and electronics, like a mass-production Destroid or a car.
        For some reason she chose not to explore, R. Dorothy
Wayneright felt a strange empathy with the giant machine anyway.  When
Corwin had asked her if she'd mind doing a little test piloting during
his development of G-Kaiser's weapons, she'd been a little dubious
about the concept, but she'd played along because the request came
from him, and it would be a decent way to spend more time with him.
She'd surprised herself by enjoying the work almost from the start,
and eventually she came to be quite fond of the old robot.
        She worked the controls with the same calm, purposeful
precision with which she did almost everything, and Dai-Guard moved
with a very similar sort of spare, economical grace under her
command.  He dodged K-4's lunge and struck back, his fist caving in
part of the creature's chest armor and crimping up a plate corner.
Capitalizing on that opportunity, Dorothy had him seize hold of that
plate and tear it off.
        Underneath, in a dark recess, something twinkled, and an alarm
Dorothy had never heard before howled in Dai-Guard's cockpit.  On her
master display, a red target information block suddenly surrounded the
dark hole in the reeling monster's chest, and giant red letters
scrolled across the display:

                            !! WARNING !!
                         HETERODYNE DETECTED
                            !! WARNING !!

        Dorothy raised an eyebrow and opened a radio channel.

        "A -Heterodyne- detection alarm?!" Corwin replied,
incredulous.  "These things -can't- be Heterodynes.  Dimensional
crossover conditions haven't been right for anything to appear from
their home dimension since 2030!"  He ducked another roundhouse punch
from K-2, spun Big O, and drove the Rune God's fist solidly into the
monster's midsection.  "Dai-Guard's target detection software must be
malfunctioning."
        "Perhaps," Dorothy replied noncommittally.  "In any event, the
alarm didn't appear until I exposed some part of the creature's
internal structure.  Stand by."
        Dorothy moved Dai-Guard smoothly away from the K-unit's next
attack, but no