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                     EYRIE PRODUCTIONS, UNLIMITED
                               presents

                UNDOCUMENTED FEATURES FUTURE IMPERFECT
                       Aegis Florea, Part Two:
                       Commander Moreau Reprise

                         Benjamin D. Hutchins

                (c) 2002 Eyrie Productions, Unlimited


                       TUESDAY, AUGUST 8, 2395
                           105 MORGAN LANE
                        NEW AVALON, ZETA CYGNI

        Looking at the attic, Kei Morgan mused, you'd think we'd lived
here for fifty years, not seven.  Granted, Ben had lived there for
several years before she'd come back to him, but even so - he hadn't
exactly been overwhelmed with possessions when he'd come in from his
long time out in the cold.  So where had all this -stuff- come from?
        She moved around various boxes and things, poking through
their contents, feeling a mild exhilaration like a little kid on a
scavenger hunt.  She wondered if Ben would mind that she was rooting
through his stored things, then remembered again his insistence that
he would hold no secrets from her and decided, given that, he couldn't
mind -too- much.
        Here was a battered collapsible pasteboard box full of old
documents and manuals - things from the shelves in his old Utopia
Planitia-side offices, cleaned out and put into storage after the
collapse of the WDF in 2288.  Where he'd reclaimed them from or why,
she would never know.  Next to it, a smaller plastiboard box
containing a battered, threadbare blue duffel bag, his traveling bag
from his days in exile.  It still held a pair of clean socks, a
toothbrush, a small tube of toothpaste, and a fake Terra Novan
passport in the name of John Crichton.
        Next to that was a yellow plastic storage crate marked with
the name of a self-storage center on Iyobi Prime.  Scrawled on its lid
in black Magic Marker were the words "ISHIYAMA, 2350-2355".  The light
fixture in Kei's head flicked on: here was an explanation for the
amount of stuff of Ben's that seemed to have survived the Exile - he'd
occasionally pause in his flight and stash stuff in self-storage
bins.  That fit - he was an inveterate pack rat, prone to invest
almost anything with sentimental value, and if there was a way to keep
from throwing stuff out, even under the most desperate of
circumstances, she could easily see him doing it.
        She removed the lid from the box and delved into its contents
with a faint thrill of the forbidden, even given her conclusion that
he wouldn't mind her looking.  The box was full of things, most of
them wrapped in grey preservative fabric; the attic was too cramped
and dim to unpack it, examine its contents, and pack it back up.
Grinning, Kei put the lid back on it and carried it downstairs to the
den.  There, she put it on the coffee table, sat down on the sofa, and
started looking.
        The first item she took from the case was quite heavy and felt
hard under the grey cloth.  She unwrapped it carefully and found that
it was a weapon, a heavy, long-barrelled automatic pistol in an old
style, tucked into a dark, polished, carved-wood holster.  She took
the gun out of the holster, checked that it was unloaded, and examined
it.
        It was a copy of the old Mauser 1896 cavalry pistol, called
the "broomhandle" because of its short wooden handle (the magazine was
in front of the trigger, not behind it as in almost all later
automatic pistol designs).  The Mauser broomie was quite famous, even
in 2395; copies of the basic design were available in modern steels,
chambered for modern cartridges, from a dozen manufacturers, and even
a blaster version was available (BlasTech's DL-44, itself venerable
now).  This, though, was a version Kei had never seen; its steel was
of a remarkably deep and beautiful shade of blue, and it had Japanese
markings on one side.  It had a detachable box magazine and the bore
looked small, perhaps .30 caliber or .32.
        She turned it over in her hands, looked at the other side, and
nearly laughed out loud, for neatly engraved in Roman letters on the
other side were the words:

KANZAKI WEAPON WORKS
MAUZAA BORUMUHANDARU
CAL. 7.65mm ENHANCED

        Kei looked the gun over for a few more moments, then put it
back in its holster and set it aside.  Next was a soft bundle;
unwrapping this revealed it to be a swallow-tailed jacket of dazzling
white, with twin rows of three brass buttons and some odd brass-like
fitments around the shoulders.  She regarded it for a moment, then
folded it and put it aside as well.
        Next was a stack of framed photographs; she unwrapped them one
by one.  The first one was a portrait of a lovely Japanese girl with
long ebony hair, perfect skin, and big brown eyes; her hair was tied
behind her with a big red bow, and she was grinning at the camera with
a beautiful, impish smile.  It looked like a publicity photograph, and
was signed, "Dear Commander - Remember always to believe in the power
of Love & the inevitability of Justice!  Keep fighting!  Good luck!
Love, Sakura Shinguuji," in a bold and graceful hand.
        Kei gazed thoughtfully at the girl's face, then put the
picture aside and looked at the next one.  This was a similarly
composed shot, but of a completely different girl.  This one had
straight and perfect auburn hair held back to frame her face with a
sprung band over the top of her head.  Her face had a gorgeous
felinity, with a beauty mark a bit to the left of her slightly
sardonic black eyes.  Where the other girl's expression was cheerful
and pleasant, this one's smoldered with a subdued, sophisticated, but
gleeful sensuality.  Written in the bottom corner in a tidy,
regimented script was, "My dear Commander Moreau, Your apology will be
gladly accepted at any time.  ^_- Sumire Kanzaki".
        It was a bit of a shock to Kei, seeing such an informal symbol
in the middle of such a neatly-written passage, and she wondered at
the subtext for a few moments before putting the picture on the stack.
        Next came a comely Salusian girl with a round, open,
pleasantly freckled face and huge circular eyeglasses that made her
brown eyes seem even bigger than they really were.  She had a thick
mop of purple hair that she'd wrestled into a pair of heavy braids
with a lawless tousle on top.  In the portrait she had a rather shy
smile, the smile of a girl who wasn't entirely convinced she was
pretty.  Certainly, Kei thought sympathetically, in the company of the
previous two, it would be natural for this one to feel a little
overshadowed.  Her picture was signed, "For Commander Moreau, Thank
you for all your support!  I'll never forget all you've done for me!
Love always, LI KOHRAN" in a barely-legible Vindari Salusian scrawl.
        "Huh," Kei mused to herself.  The next photo was of an
unbearably cute little girl of perhaps ten years old, with abundant
and gorgeous golden hair, big blue eyes and a winning smile; one of
her eyes was closed in a cheery, conspiratorial wink.  Along the
bottom of the page, in a careful, square English script, was written,
"Big Brother,  Be careful!  Remember the good times!  Jean-Paul and I
wish we could go with you... IRIS".
        Isn't -that- ironic, thought Kei; and I wonder who Jean-Paul
could be?
        She shrugged and moved on to the next one.  This was an older
woman than the others - Kei guessed her to be in her early twenties -
with an aquiline face and what Kei thought was a rather ironic smile.
Her short, thick fall of ash-blonde hair completely hid her left eye.
The visible one was green and, like her smile, it held a rather sad
sort of gentle, mocking irony.  Kei found herself identifying with
this woman.  She had a guilty secret of some kind, or thought she did,
one that colored everything she did.  She had signed her photo in
Cyrillic letters; it took Kei with her long-rusted schoolbook Russian
several minutes to puzzle out that it said, "Commander: I have been
proud to fight alongside you.  Someday, God willing, we will do so
again!  Ever your friend, Maria Tachibana."
        Kei put that one on the stack and turned her attention to the
last of the framed portraits.  She had to blink at this one; she and
the woman in the picture could have been related.  They had the same
golden skin tone, the same fire-engine red hair (the woman pictured
even had hers cut in a similar rather careless wolf cut), and even
similar faces, though the pictured woman had blue eyes instead of
brown and her face was a bit sharper than Kei's.  The portait was a
head-and-shoulders shot, and from it Kei could see that the woman had
very powerful shoulders.  She also had a cocky, engaging grin and a
bright sparkle in those blue eyes.  Kei liked her immediately.  Her
handwriting was as bold as her grin; with great broad strokes she had
slashed, "To the only non-Hoffmanite who ever had the guts to spar
with me - Good luck & keep punchin' - KANNA" across the bottom of the
image.
        A Hoffmanite!  No wonder she had such broad shoulders.  Kei
revised her estimate of Kanna's size - in a head-and-shoulders
portrait it was impossible to tell her height, but if she were a
Hoffmanite she must be well over six feet, which made those shoulders
all the more impressive.  Few men or women from any other
human-settled world -would- dare to spar with a martial artist
gengineered to live and work in Hoffman's three-plus Gs.
        Kei put Kanna's portrait on the stack and delved into the box
again, coming up with a handful of loose, unframed photos.  Sitting
back on the couch, she put her feet up on the edge of the table and
flicked through them.
        Here was the Salusian girl, Kohran, in a somewhat improbable
combination of a Chinese-style red silk dress and a white lab coat, a
pen tucked behind her ear, the tip of her tongue just visible in the
corner of her mouth as she adjusted a bolt on some mechanical item too
large to fit recognizably in the frame.
        Iris, the little blonde, in a dress and pinafore that made her
look even more like a doll, proudly holding up a teddy bear (could
that be Jean-Paul? Kei wondered) and grinning ear to ear.
        Maria, the Russian, in a black fur coat and ushanka, a wisp of
condensed breath rising from her smiling lips, holding a bullseye
target with a five-leaf clover punched in the center of it in one hand
and a blue steel revolver - could that be an Enfield Number Two? - in
the other.  The target was marked "12.22.2353 - 50 YD. - STRONG HAND
STANDING".  Kei blinked.  She was quite a markswoman to hit -anything-
with an Enfield No. 2 at 50 yards, let alone to put up a group like
that!
        Kanna, the redheaded Hoffmanite, grinning like a fool with her
right fist driven through what appeared to be a two-inch-thick
hardwood door.  If the door were the usual size, that would make Kanna
about six-six - Zoner's size.  Kei was a bit surprised; six foot six
was rather small for a Hoffmanite.
        Sumire, dressed in a purple off-the-shoulder kimono-style
dress and white leather boots, on what appeared to be a stage.  She
had a naginata in her hand and had apparently been caught in the
middle of a blade dance; the blade end of her weapon was slightly
blurred and her hair was suspended in the midst of a swirl around her
face.
        Kohran again - she apparently had a fondness for Chinese-style
clothes, this time she had on a shirt and pajama-like pants under her
lab coat - standing next to a bright red motorcycle with what appeared
to be a steam engine where its motor belonged, giving the camera a
thumbs-up and a wink.
        Sakura, kneeling in seiza on the same stage Sumire had been
photographed on.  Her eyes were closed and her face serene; her hands
were a blur of motion and the glitter of fast-moving metal extended
from them.  It took Kei a moment to realize that the girl was a
swordswoman, and that the photo had been taken just as she'd exploded
into motion at the beginning of an iaijutsu maneuver.
        Here was the first evidence that Gryphon had actually known
these people; it was a different stage, dressed as a hotel room.
Gryphon, in a tuxedo with the bow tie undone and the collar open, was
sitting on the edge of the bed looking miffed; Sumire, in a black
dress and pearls, was glaring at him and pointing accusingly.  On the
back of the photo, in Gryphon's familiar scrawl, had been felt-tipped,
"'Maybe I'm on nobody's side.' - Sendai Theater - 1.04.2354".
        Next was a group shot, taken in what appeared to be a bedroom
of an old-fashioned Japanese-style house.  Gryphon was stretched out
on the floor, bundled up in a heavy blue quilt from chin to toes.  He
looked rather ghastly, pale and sporting dark eye-rings, and Kei
guessed he must be sick or injured.  Sitting cross-legged on floor
just beyond him was Li Kohran; she looked stunned, her eyes invisible
behind the silvery discs the camera's flash had made of her glasses.
To the right of the frame was Maria Tachibana in a fuzzy black
bathrobe and slippers, caught and startled in the middle of stifling a
yawn.  Frame center was little Iris in a long flannel nightdress with
a big pink bow on the front, her teddy bear under her arm.  On the
left was Sumire Kanzaki in a hastily-belted blue kimono, her hair
rather comically askew; her face had a look of mixed dawning horror
and dawning outrage.  Kei chuckled, imagining the scene.  She wondered
who had taken the picture, and decided it was probably Kanna.
        Here was an 8x10 leather folder like a diploma folder; on one
side was a commission certificate for one Lieutenant Peter Moreau of
the Imperial Morita Navy.  The other side held a glossy studio
portrait of Gryphon in a spotless white naval uniform, the Kanzaki
Mauzaa at his side, katana and wakizashi jutting above his shoulder,
chin held high with a military bearing, and a gleaming new medal on
his chest.  Kei smiled fondly to herself; he cut quite a figure as a
naval officer.  He'd lately let himself age into his late twenties,
thinking it gave him distinction, but Kei thought he was so damned
handsome at eighteen that it was a crime.
        Next was another snapshot of Sakura.  This time she was
wearing what appeared to be a uniform: a pink swallowtailed coat like
the white one Kei had found, a cravat at her throat, a wide brown
leather belt, tight-fitting white riding trousers, and soft pink-dyed
leather boots.  She had a katana thrust through her belt, samurai
style, and white leather finglerless gloves.  She'd been caught in a
corridor someplace and was half-turned toward the camera, her face
just beginning to break into a smile.
        There were several dozen more, all snapshots of the six girls
taken in various places and at various times, sometimes on stage,
sometimes doing everyday things, occasionally on outings of various
sorts.  Sometimes Gryphon was in the pictures; usually he wasn't.
There was one picture of all seven of them which must have been a
timer shot; they were all in uniform and all standing in front of an
arched stone bridge with a sunset behind them.  The back of that one
was labeled "Teikokukagekidan Hanagumi, Empire Bridge, 5.11.2353".
Another was a picture of Kohran with her face covered in soot and her
hair blown even wilder than usual; she was holding a blackened beaker
in one hand and the broken stub of a test tube in the other.
        The general effect was one of easy camaraderie.  Kei had no
idea what chronological order the undated photos belonged in, so she
had only a general feeling for it, but she got the impression that
strong bonds of friendship had formed along the course of the
approximately three years over which these photos had been taken.  The
signatures on the portraits bore that out, too - from their tone, they
had all been signed when some circumstance had forced him to leave.
She wondered what had happened.
        Thank the gods it hadn't been -her- wrecking his life for
once, anyway.
        She stacked the photos as neatly as she could, given their
range of sizes, and put them aside.  The next thing she found in the
box was a man's nightshirt with a saucer-sized burned spot on the
chest.  She wondered what its significance was, folded it and put it
with the uniform jacket.
        After that was another framed photo.  This one showed Sumire
Kanzaki as a younger girl, maybe fifteen or sixteen years old; she was
wearing a frilly, girlish frock and standing proudly in front of
three... well... Kei guessed she would have to call them
battlemovers, vaguely man-shaped mecha about twice as high as a
person, with barrel-shaped bodies and thick articulated limbs.  They
were painted in bright colors, one white, one purple and one orange.
A little brass plate riveted to the frame below the picture read, "THE
THREE COLORFUL PANSIES".
        And so, here was another, this one featuring seven of those
things standing in a V formation.  The center one was white; purple
and pink flanked it; green and yellow flanked that; and black and red
were at the edges.  Kei pondered that for a moment and then remembered
the color coding of the uniform jackets she'd noticed while riffling
through the snapshots.
        TEIKOKUKAGEKIDAN HANAGUMI, the brass plate on this one said.
Imperial Floral Assault Group, Flower Division, or something like
that.
        Kei put that one aside and fished out the group photo of the
seven of them in front of the bridge.  She was still gazing
thoughtfully at it half an hour later when Gryphon got home.

                       THURSDAY, AUGUST 17, 2395
                        OHJI, MORITA, ISHIYAMA

        Admiral of the Fleet Ichiro Shinguuji of the Imperial Morita
Navy stood in the bathroom of his townhouse on Fujishima Avenue, a
block west of the Imperial Theater, and muttered about the distortion
of the natural order of things that was taking place in his home.
Thanks to an overlong meeting at the Admiralty, he was so far behind
schedule now that by the time he finished shaving, there was a good
chance his wife would be ready to go for the evening - which, of
course, was quite backward from the way married life was -supposed- to
work.
        But then, Ichiro Shinguuji - who had been Ichiro Ohgami before
he married Sakura Shinguuji - should have been accustomed to that kind
of thing by now.  That fact didn't stop him from muttering
good-naturedly about it as he scraped at his left cheek with a hand
razor.  Years of naval service had ingrained the habit of shaving
with a blade so deep within him - the electric power aboard His
Radiant Majesty's ships was not always reliable - that he still did it
ten years after coming ashore for the last time.
        "Well," came Sakura's voice drifting in from the bedroom
behind him, "at least I didn't have to worry about -this-."
        "What's that, dear?" asked Ichiro as he turned and stuck his
head out of the bathroom door.
        Sakura was standing front of the full-length mirror on the
back of the bedroom door, turning this way and that, and brushing
imaginary lint from the sleeves of her old Hanagumi uniform.  She
turned to face her husband as he emerged from the bathroom in boxers
and undershirt, soap still foaming the right side of his face, and
smiled at him.
        "I said at least I didn't have to worry about this - the old
uniform still fits just fine.  How do I look?"
        Ichiro grinned.  "You're still as beautiful as the day I
married you," he replied.
        Sakura's raven head bobbed in a gesture of faint embarrassment
as she reminded him, "Um, that's because I don't age, darling."
        "Shh," said Ichiro, holding a fingertip to his lips.  "Let an
old man have his moment."
        Sakura gave her husband a look.  "Ichiro, you're hardly an old
man.  Sixty-two is not old in this day and age - the Emperor is a
hundred and ninety-six!"
        "That may be," Ichiro replied wryly, "but my hair doesn't know
that."  He ran a hand through his perenially unruly thatch of black
hair, now going white at the temples and acquiring a sprinkling of
salt throughout.
        "I think it makes you look distinguished," said Sakura
impishly, walking over to him and kissing him carefully on the
already-shaved side of his face.  Then, taking a half-step back, she
met his eyes and asked seriously, "Ichiro - are you sorry you married
me?  You knew when you asked me to that I would outlive you... but I
suppose we were both so young then that we didn't realize what that
really meant."
        Ichiro's grin vanished, and he said earnestly, "God, no!
Sakura, how could I ever regret that?  I sometimes wonder if -you-
regret it, knowing that in a few more decades you'll be saddled with
this decrepit old relic... "
        Sakura looked shocked.  "Don't say that, Ichiro.  I love you.
I'll always love you, even when you're old and grey."
        "It's not 'grey' I'm worried about, it's 'invalid'.  I
remember what poor old Gonji went through - I hate the thought of
putting you through all that again."
        She put her fingertip to his lips.  "Shh.  Why dwell on it?
We've many years yet before we have to worry about that.  When the
time comes, I'll do what I must.  I'm your wife.  Wives have outlived
their husbands for the length of recorded history, Ichiro.  We endure
because we remember the good times, and honor that memory."
        Ichiro looked at her with a thoughtful expression.  "You've
been thinking about this too, haven't you?"
        "I thought about it once, a few months ago," she admitted,
"but I made my conclusion and I haven't let it haunt me."  She leaned
close and kissed him; he offered her the towel in his hand to wipe off
the smear of foam she picked up in the process.  "Now finish shaving,
and let's go -have- one of the good times."
        He nodded.  "All right.  Sorry I was morbid."  He went back
into the bathroom and resumed shaving.
        When he came out, his white and blue Imperial Floral Assault
Group uniform was laid out on the bed; he picked up the jacket and
admired it for a few moments, then said, "I hope it still fits."
        "It'll fit," Sakura replied, playfully slapping his behind.
"You keep in good shape for an old man."
        "I have to, to keep up with my teenage mistress," he replied
sarcastically, working his shoulders into the uniform's stiff-fronted
blue shirt.
        "You shouldn't talk about her when I've got my sword out,"
Sakura said, wiping down the Spirit Sword Arataka before returning it
to its scabbard at her side.
        "Looks like it -does- fit," said Ichiro, buttoning up the
shirt without difficulty.  "You know what I always hated about this
uniform?" he went on as he sat down on the edge of the bed to put on
the trousers.
        "What's that, dear?" asked Sakura, putting the finishing
touches on her light makeup job at the vanity mirror.
        "The damn boots being part of the pants legs," Ichiro replied,
pulling one leg on.  "Always made me feel like I was going into battle
dressed in Dr. Denton jammies."
        Sakura looked, then laughed.  "I never thought about it that
way.  I always used to concentrate on how good they made your butt
look."
        "Yeah, well, I was always frustrated that those damn jackets
were cut so that I could never -see- yours," said Ichiro as he stood
up to buckle his belt.
        "I hope you weren't disappointed when the time came."
        "We're still married, aren't we?" he said, knotting his
cravat.
        "Your cravat's crooked, dear," she replied.
        "I hate these things too," he said, untying it with quick,
irritated movements.
        "Here, let me," she said, and walked around the bed to help
him.
        "You know," she said conversationally as she worked, looking
at the knot rather than his face, "if you're really worried about
aging, we could ask Gryphon about it while he's here."
        "I don't know as I'd feel right about that," he replied.  "You
have to be something pretty special to get that treatment from them,
don't you?"
        "You -are- something pretty special," Sakura said, deftly
completing the knot.
        "To you, sure," he said, "but on a galactic scale?"
        "He'd do it for me."
        "That's a hell of a favor to live down.  No, Sakura - thanks,
really, but no.  I'm content with what I've been assigned by nature.
I'll do it if you want me to, but if it were left up to me, I'll
pass."
        "Of course it's up to you.  It's your lifespan."
        "I want you to understand, it's not that I wouldn't love to
spend the rest of eternity with you - but I wouldn't be able to enjoy
it if I didn't feel I'd earned it... "
        Sakura nodded gravely.  "I understand."  Then, brightening,
she stepped back and took him in.  "There!  That's much better."
        "Good," said Ichiro, shrugging into his heavy, brass-fitted
white leather jacket.  "Shall we, then, General?" he asked, offering
her his arm.
        "Indeed we shall, Admiral," she replied, taking it and
nestling her head against his shoulder.
        Ichiro Shinguuji chuckled as he and his wife left the room.
"At least," he mused philosophically, "I'll have the cutest nurse in
the Old Sailors' Home... ow!" he added as she punched him in the
shoulder.

        "How you feeling?" Kei asked the mass of tension beside her as
the taxi worked its way through the streets of Ohji.
        "Fine," Gryphon lied.
        "Really?" she asked.
        "No," he replied.  "I'm nervous as hell."
        "Why?"
        "I haven't seen any of these people in forty years."
        "So?"
        "So I'm nervous as hell."
        She sighed at his circular logic.  "They're all really looking
forward to seeing you."
        "I'm looking forward to seeing them too," Gryphon said.  "What
about this new guy that took over after me?  I hope he's not a total
pain in the ass."
        "From what you've told me about these women," Kei replied
dryly, "they'd have killed him by now if he was."  She looked out the
window of the cab and smiled.  "Pretty town," she said.  "Lots of
troop movement, though," she mused, noting the green military trucks
moving here and there with the rest of the traffic.  "Are they
planning a war or something?"
        "Huh?" said Gryphon, aware that he had been asked a question
but not what it was.
        "Forget it," said Kei with a smile.  "Just thinking out loud.
We're here... "
        The cab stopped in front of the Imperial Theater; Gryphon
climbed out, paid the driver, and held the door for Kei.
        "Aren't -we- courtly tonight?" she murmured in his ear as they
ascended the front stairs.
        "Sh," replied Gryphon, holding the theater door for her as
well.
        They were early; the theater lobby had not quite cleared out
from the afternoon's matinee performance.  Over in the corner, a knot
of young fans, mostly girls, stood clustered, talking animatedly among
themselves and with somebody who was hidden from the entrance by their
bodies.  Apparently one of the actors had come out and was signing
autographs or something.  Gryphon shrugged it off and walked across
the room, looking around at the fixtures, marveling at how little it
had changed.  It was like stepping back in time.
        Suddenly, a voice rang out above the concentrated burble of
the group of fans in the corner, a high, clear voice calling out a
single piercing Japanese word:
        "ONIICHAAAN!"
        As Gryphon and Kei both turned, startled, toward the shout, a
lithe and lovely blonde in a frilly blue and white dress burst out of
the crowd of theatergoers and ran skipping across the lobby, arms
outstretched, a mane of golden air flowing behind her.  As Gryphon
stared in utter astonishment, the blonde crashed into him, whirling
him completely around as she wrapped her arms around him.
        When the spinning stopped, she took a half-step back, grinned
at him with sparkling blue eyes and perfect white teeth, and chirped,
"Welcome back, Big Brother!"
        "I... I... I... IRIS?!" Gryphon gasped.
        "(No, you Ben,)" Kei whispered, leaning close to his ear.
"(-She- Iris.)"
        "(Thanks so much,)" Gryphon muttered sarcastically.  "Iris,"
he tried again, "I - wow!"
        Iris de Chateaubriand giggled, blushed a little, and twirled
once around, making the petticoats of her dress rustle.  "I told you
I'd grow up some day!" she said with a conspiratorial wink.
        "Who's -that- guy?" several of Iris's momentarily-abandoned
fans wondered among themselves.
        With the ease and grace of long experience, Kei reached over
and deftly raised Gryphon's lower jaw back into battery.
        "Uhm," said Gryphon, flustered.  "Iris, this is my wife, Kei
Morgan.  Kei, um, Mademoiselle la Vicomtesse Iris de Chateaubriand."
        "Enchante," Kei said.
        "Oh!" said Iris, pleased.  "You speak French?"
        "No," Kei admitted sheepishly, "but I can say 'Enchante'."
        "Heh!" Iris chuckled.  "At least your prounciation's better
than his," she said with a grin, pointing with a thumb at Gryphon.
        Gryphon tried for a mock scowl but couldn't make it happen.
        "You're early," Iris admonished them.  "The others aren't even
here yet, but Yuri, Kasumi and Tsubaki are all here.  Why don't you
make yourselves comfortable in the library, and I'll finish up here
and round them up?  We can have a drink or some coffee or something
and chat while we wait for the rest."

        They sat in the theater's large and pleasant library, chatting
and drinking tea.  The room was just as he remembered it.  It was as
if, Gryphon thought, as though no time had passed at all.  Except for
Kei at his side and the distracting vision Iris had become, he might
still have been Peter Moreau, sitting here reading a book in a spare
hour before dinnertime.  Yuri, Kasumi and Tsubaki, the Three Daughters
of the Imperial Theater Company, crowded into the room within a minute
of his arrival, and even Tsubaki's tea was just like it had been in
the old days.
        "I wanted you to meet Noriyuki," said Iris with a mild pout,
"but he had to work today."
        "What does he do?" asked Kei.
        "He's an army officer," Iris replied, "on General Yanagi's
Capital Defense staff."
        "In fact, he's General Yanagi's son," Tsubaki noted with an
impish grin.
        "Tsubaki!" said Iris.
        "But don't hold that against him," said Kasumi.  "He's not an
old sourpuss like his jerk of a father."
        "And he's -so- handsome," Yuri chimed in.
        "You can say that again, Yuri," Tsubaki agreed.
        "You guys are terrible!" Iris cried, but she couldn't keep the
smile off her face.  "Anyway, the Capital Forces are on alert today.
I'm not sure why.  I tried to find out, but... "  She sighed.  "It's
none of my business anymore.  I'm just an actress."
        The five of them had only been chatting there for a few
minutes when the door opened and in came a couple of figures from the
past, just as unchanged as the room.  Like the library, Kanna and
Maria were just as Gryphon remembered them.  He was most of the way
out of his seat, intending to greet them, before Kanna bounded across
the room and scooped him up like a doll.
        "CHIEF!" she blared, her embrace forcing the breath from him
in an explosive WHURF!  "How the HELL are ya?  I couldn't believe it
when Sakura told us you were comin' back.  I figured you'd gotten so
important out there," she added, making a sweeping gesture that took
in the galaxy beyond Ishiyama, "you'd forgotten about us."
        While he was still unable to reply for want of breath, Maria
slipped in, "It is good to see you again, Commander."
        "Good to... see you... too, Maria," Gryphon said as he got his
wind back.  Then he turned a sheepish grin to Kanna and said, "I
-have- been pretty busy.  Mainly, though, I didn't know if you guys
would want me coming around.  You've all got your own lives... "
        "Commander," said Maria reproachfully.  "You were -part- of
those lives for three very important years.  How could we not be
pleased to see you again?"
        "Yeah, what kind of a thing is that to say?" Kanna agreed.
"Wouldn't want you coming around.  Jeez!"
        "Oh, you know how Big Brother is," said Iris airily.  "He's so
shy."
        Kanna laughed.  "Sure."  Then she turned to Kei, still
smiling.  "You must be the Chief's lady who was always trying to kill
him."
        Kei grinned.  "That's me," she said.  "Kei Morgan.  And I've
seen all your pictures - you're Kanna."
        "Can't help it," Kanna agreed.  "Nice t'meetcha."  She looked
Kei over speculatively.  "Say - you think we could be related?"
        Kei's answer was prevented by a cry from the doorway:
"COMMANDER!"
        Gryphon looked past Maria to see Li Kohran standing in the
doorway to the library, lab coat, red silk dress, pigtails, freckles
and all.  Her eyes were huge behind her big round glasses, her whole
face lit up with happiness.  Seeing him grin at the sight of her
seemed to jolt her back into motion; she ran across the room and all
but threw herself into his arms.
        "Welcome back!" she said, and Gryphon noted that her Vindari
accent had gotten a lot softer in the four decades since he'd last
seen her.  She almost sounded like a native now, though with her
crayon-purple hair and reddish Salusian primary ears, that was one
thing she could never quite pass for.
        He returned her hug for as long as she was inclined to give
it, which was quite a while; then he introduced her to Kei.  Kohran
seemed slightly embarrassed by the enthusiasm of her greeting when she
realized that the Commander's wife was present, but Kei laughed it
off and told her not to worry about it.
        "It's nice to meet you," Kei said.  "I've heard so many nice
things about all of you.  Don't worry about me, just go on like you
would if I weren't here," she added with a slightly conspiratorial
grin.
        Kanna chuckled.  "Be careful what you wish for," she noted,
then nudged Kohran with an elbow.  "You know Miss Wizard here was the
first one of us who ever kissed him."
        Kohran went red from her collar to her secondary ears and
looked away, but Kei only laughed.  "Somebody's always got to be the
pioneer," she said.
        Gryphon might have commented, but he was interrupted by a
pleased gasp from that same doorway.  Looking up, he saw Sakura
Shinguuji in her pink-jacketed Hanagumi uniform, just like he
remembered her, and accompanied by a middle-aged guy with a shock of
just-greying black hair.  She left her companion by the door and
dashed across the room, her raven hair flying behind her, arms flung
wide, joy on her face.  Gryphon grinned and spread his arms to receive
her, as he had Kohran -
        - but just before she reached him, Sakura caught a toe on the
edge of the rug her old commander was standing on.  In an instant she
was in freefall, arms still thrown wide, the joyous smile on her face
transmuted to an expression of surprise and dismay, and
        WHAM Gryphon was flat on his back with the Destroyer of Evil
sprawled on his chest.  After gathering his wits for a moment, he
raised his head and inquired, "Uh... you OK?"
        Red with embarrassment across the bridge of her nose, Sakura
put her hands down on either side of his body, raised herself somewhat
from his shirtfront, and said with a sheepish smile, "Sorry... "
        Gryphon laughed.  "My fault entirely.  What was I thinking,
standing right by the edge of the rug like that?  My instincts have
gotten rusty."
        Sakura blushed and swatted at his chest.  "Commander, you're
-awful-!" she giggled.  "Uh... hi!  Welcome back!  I've missed you."
        "I guessed that," said Gryphon wryly.  He looked up at the
circle of faces surrounding them, whose expressions ranged from
"amused but struggling to be polite" (Iris) to "unable to breathe,
nearly collapsing from mirth" (Kanna).  "Who's your friend?" he
inquired, pointing with his chin to the extremely bemused-looking
fellow with the black hair, who was currently receiving the "eh, what
can you do?" grin from Kei.
        Sakura looked momentarily confused.  "My... friend?  Oh!"  She
scrambled to her feet, reached down, and pulled Gryphon up.  "I'm
sorry, how rude of me.  Ichiro, this is... "  She paused, then
laughed.  "You know, I'm not sure what to call you!"
        Gryphon grinned and stuck out a hand.  "Ben Hutchins.
Gryphon.  Peter Moreau."
        The other man returned the grin and shook the hand.  "Ichiro
Shinguuji.  You were a tough act to follow, Commander Moreau!  Some of
these girls -still- compare me to you in some respects."  He cast a
sly smile at Sakura.  "Don't you, Sakura?"
        Sakura blushed and muttered, "i-CHI-roooo... " while Kanna
gave up and collapsed to the floor in her laughter.
        A moment later, the library door opened again and the big
redhead's laughter stopped as if someone had thrown a switch.
Everyone except Gryphon and Kei stiffened slightly, like a cold wind
had blown through the library on this warm summer evening.  Gryphon
glanced at Kei, saw that she'd felt the sudden, radical shift in mood
as well, and looked at the doorway.
        "Well, I'll be damned," Kanna murmured, almost inaudibly.
"She actually came."
        Just like the rest of them, Sumire Kanzaki looked just like
she always had, just like he remembered her.  She was even wearing the
purple kimono-like dress he always remembered her in, just like the
one he'd destroyed on a very odd day many years before.  Of all the
Flower Division, Sumire was the one whose memory gave him the keenest
pang of regret.  Especially in that dress (which had been her favorite
style), she reminded him of that old Thomas Dolby song.  "You came
close - close but no cigar... "
        She crossed the room with her usual cool, graceful elegance,
but something about her bearing rang an alarm bell in the back of
Gryphon's head.  There was something -too- perfect about the way she
moved.  She was almost like a machine, a robot programmed with some
console jockey's idea of the way an elegant woman moves.  She glided
to a stop in front of Gryphon and looked him over.  He noticed with a
shock of something like horror that her black eyes, which he always
remembered as sort of sly and privately amused, were just... -blank-.
Like chips of onyx.  No feeling in them at all.  She wasn't glad to
see him; she wasn't upset to see him.  She wasn't anything.
        "Commander," she said, her voice polite and formal but utterly
lacking any nuance or warmth.  "How nice to see you again."  She
turned her head and greeted each of her former colleagues with the
same lack of inflection - except Kohran, over whom her blank gaze
passed as though the Salusian weren't even there.
        Oh, -this- is going to be a cozy dinner party, thought Kei.
        "Uh... well," said Sakura, her massive discomfort evident in
her voice.  "Now that we're all here, let's get dinner started.  I'm
sure Com - Gryphon - and Kei are hungry after their long trip out
here... "

        Dinner was, as Kei had expected, awkward.  The Three Daughters
and some of the Hanagumi all seemed sort of grimly determined to make
it a success despite the glacial presence of Sumire; but Kanna was
uncharacteristically silent, her gaze constantly tracking to the
violet-garbed figure with an expression almost like heartbreak, while
Iris steadfastly avoided looking at Sumire at all, because she knew if
she did she would burst out in tears.
        Three times Li Kohran tried to engage her in conversation or
offer her one of the dishes from the table, and three times Sumire
ignored her utterly, wilting the unfortunate Salusian with her
crushing indifference.  She engaged in precisely correct table talk,
but didn't join into the reminiscences of old times and gave the
distinct impression that she was barely aware of her surroundings, and
yet still wished she were somewhere else.
        As soon as it was decently polite, Sumire rose and said
calmly, "You'll excuse me, Commander, Admiral."  Not waiting for an
answer, she turned and left the room.
        "Sumire, wait!" said Iris plaintively.  She got up, ran to the
door the auburn-haired woman had left through, and watched her glide
down the hall and enter one of the studies.  Iris then turned back to
those left in the dining room, her eyes swimming with tears, and gave
them all a helpless, rather pitiful shrug.
        "Ah... perhaps we should have our coffee in the library," said
Ichiro Shinguuji uncomfortably.
        "I... I suppose you're wondering what's happened to Sumire,"
said Sakura to Gryphon once they were all back in the comfortable
chairs of the library.
        "You could say that!" Gryphon replied.
        "Well... to be honest... so are we," Sakura replied.
        "It isn't a side effect of my last fight, is it?" asked
Gryphon.  "She seemed all right when I left."
        "It might be," Sakura admitted.  "It might just have taken a
while to surface.  It started in 2359, four years after you left and
Ichiro took your place.  Under his command, we finally confronted the
source of the Invaders who had ravaged our world and drove them out.
It was our greatest moment, our finest hour.  We were the perfect
team, fueled by a single will, unbeatable."  She paused, looking down,
and a tear dripped onto her hand where it lay in a loose fist on her
knee.  "And then... it all fell apart."
        "What happened?" Kei inquired.
        "They disbanded the Teikokukagekidan," said Ichiro.  "We cost
a lot of money to operate, and with the Demon Invasion categorically
ended, what was the point?  They kept us around as the Imperial
Theater Company, and paid lip service to keeping us on standby, but we
knew we didn't have any real standing in the defense establishment
anymore.  It was about the time that that really started to sink in
that Sumire started to act... strange."
        "Wait a second," said Kei.  "Back up.  What about Ben's last
fight?  Why did he leave you, anyway?  It's obvious just from tonight
that you were all really close, and for once it wasn't -me- chasing
him away from a life he'd learned to love, thank God - so what?"
        Gryphon sat back, folded his hands on his chest, and sighed.
"I should probably have told you all this before we came," he said,
"but the others will probably be able to fill in details I miss... "

        I'd been with the Hanagumi for almost three years at that
point - it was closing in on Christmastime, 2355.  As it was every
year, Ohji was decked out for the holiday in spite of the ongoing
Invasion.  That's one thing I've always liked about this city - you
just can't keep it down, no matter what.
        Anyway.  We were doing... what was our Christmas show that
year?  Was that the year we did 'A Christmas Carol' with Sumire as
Scrooge?  Right, and General Yoneda making his stage debut as Bob
Cratchit - what a hoot that was!  I think people even forgave us for
not doing a musical.  We were rehearsing on Christmas Eve when it
happened.
        ("You have to understand," Sakura put in, "back then it was a
secret that the Imperial Theater Company was also the Imperial Floral
Assault Group.  People didn't -know- that the seven of us were also
the pilots of the Kohbu that protected the city from the demons.  So
when we were in the theater, we never expected anything to happen to
us.  It was our safe haven, where we could try to forget that the fate
of the world lay on our shoulders.")
        Yes, exactly - so we were shocked and unprepared when, in the
middle of our rehearsal, the attackers came through the skylight.  In
fact, we were surprised two different ways: once that someone would
attack us in the theater, and once that the attackers were -men-, not
demons.  They wore black uniforms, like SWAT cops or a special ops
assault force, and they came down from the skylight on ropes.  They
didn't announce themselves, or make any demands; they just attacked.
        Still, we were handling them pretty well until they used the
gas.  Within a minute, Kohran and I were the only ones standing, and I
wasn't feeling any too good.  Fortunately, Kohran had one weapon at
her disposal that they didn't know about and couldn't have made
contingency plans for if they had - the theater itself.
        See, we had a lot of elaborate stage gimmicks back then -
lifts, trapdoors, moving lights, all kinds of mechanical stuff to
enhance our shows - and Kohran knew them all like the back of her
hand, because she'd built most of them herself.  (One time she even
built a transforming set, but the stagehands' union didn't like that
much.)
        Anyway, I was in no shape to fight off that many attackers, so
I led them a merry chase through the theater instead, and Kohran used
the various tricks the building had to neutralize them one by one.
Eventually they gave up and cleared out.  If they'd only stuck around
for a few more minutes, I'd have dropped and they could probably have
isolated Kohran, but, luckily, they didn't know that... 

        Moreau stirred, then sat up, groaning, and looked around.  He
was in the Teikokukagekidan infirmary, part of the special military
complex hidden beneath the Imperial Theater.  The room was dark and
mostly quiet, except for harsh breathing and the occasional soft moan
of discomfort.  Slowly, carefully, Moreau got out of bed and stood
up.  He felt slightly dizzy at first, but it passed quickly.  He made
his way around the room, pausing next to each blue light that
indicated an occupied bed.  The infirmary had a dozen of them, and
fully eight beside his own showed occupied.
        His patrol showed Moreau that the people in those beds were
who he thought they would be: everyone else who had been in the
theater when the men in black had attacked, except Li Kohran.  Yuri,
Tsubaki, Kasumi, Maria, Kanna, Sakura, Iris, Sumire, even Major
General Yoneda.  All of them looked terrible, though Moreau hoped the
effect was exaggerated by the dim blue lighting in which he saw each
of their faces.  They were drawn, sunken-eyed, tossing fitfully and
sweating profusely.
        He paused at Iris's bedside.  The littlest Hanagumi had grown
considerably in the last couple of years, but she'd clung stubbornly
to mannerisms and clothes that made her look like she was still a
little girl.  It made it all the harder for Moreau to see her brought
to this, her angelic face given the maturity she'd long resisted
through suffering.
        It was hard to see all of them this way, of course, because he
cared so much for each.  Maria's cool reserve, Sakura's unending
optimism, Sumire's cool refinement, Kanna's bonhomie - all were
erased.  God, even Kanna laid low by this... 
        At Sumire's side, he reached to smooth some of her tangled,
damp auburn hair away from her sweat-dappled forehead, then jerked his
hand back, startled by the fever heat radiating from her.
        "My God, she's burning up," he whispered.  This was no little
fever, no side effect of a cold or flu.  This was the kind of fever
that killed people.
        He whirled and ran, his initial unsteadiness forgotten, in
search of anyone else who might be conscious.  He found Kohran in the
medical lab, bent over a microscope, scribbling notes with one hand
and muttering in Vindari.
        The other Hanagumi had known Moreau was really Gryphon for
more than a year at this point, and since they were alone together, he
didn't bother concealing knowledge that a twenty-five-year-old naval
officer who had never been off Ishiyama wouldn't have.  As such, he
addressed her in her native language:
        <<Kohran!  What's happened to the others?>>
        She turned, blinking, then put on her glasses and replied,
<<I'm not sure yet.  It's some kind of biochemical agent, terribly
persistent, tailored for humans.  I wasn't affected because I'm
Salusian, and you resisted it because you're... well, because you're
-you-... but the others... >>  She gave a troubled shrug.  <<It's
killing them, and I don't think there's anything I can do about
it.>>  Looking miserable, she added, <<I'm not even a real doctor... >>
        <<Where's everybody else?  The support units?  The medical
staff?>>
        <<Locked out,>> Kohran replied.  <<We're under quarantine until
the General Staff is satisfied that the agent isn't contagious.>>
        "Jesus H. -Christ-," Moreau muttered, slipping back to a
dialect acquired in his New England childhood.  "There are no
universal constants more reliable than the stupidity of army general
staffs.  Who the hell -were- those guys?"
        Looking more troubled still, Kohran reached to the worktable
next to her and handed him an optical disc.
        Moreau regarded it for a moment, then went to the
steam-powered videocon in the corner of the lab and slotted the disc.
The machine clicked, chuntered, and whirred for a moment, then
released a small puff of exhaust and showed him the face of a
black-clad human male in the prime of life, a dark-faced, sardonic man
with a neatly trimmed little black goatee and truly impressive
eyebrows.
        "Good evening, Commander," said the man in a cruel voice.  "I
congratulate you on your defense of the Imperial Theater tonight.  I
had hoped you wouldn't force us to use the bioagent, but your
companions' persistent defense made it necessary.  Do try to keep them
as comfortable as possible in their last hours, and don't bother
looking for a cure; you probably know already, but there isn't one for
RD-775.
        "The fact that you stayed on your feet when we used it did
confirm one thing for us, of course, and for that we're grateful.  We
would have felt awfully silly reporting back to Master Largo that you
were, in fact, just some punk kid in charge of a boondock planet's
capital defense force."  The man smiled.  "You may be aware that if
there's one thing a Manhunter hates, it's looking silly in front
of the boss."
        Gryphon uttered the absolute dirtiest word he knew (which,
coincidentally, happened to be in a Salusian dialect) and slammed a
fist down on the bench next to the videocon, making beakers and test
tubes jump and clatter.
        "Now you've got two choices, Commander Hutchins," said the
Manhunter leader with a cold smile.  "You can either come to that big
plaza in the middle of town at midnight, alone, and take your
medicine... or I'll report our findings to Corporate and the fleet
will come reduce this little mudball to a cinder.  Your choice.  See
you at midnight."
        Gryphon turned, the look on his face so furious, so
-murderous- that Kohran (still a bit red from overhearing the
obscenity he'd unleashed) drew back.  He seemed to realize that and
made an effort to moderate the look, doing his best to smile though he
couldn't remember the last time he'd felt less like doing so.
        "Manhunters," he told her.  "They work for GENOM.  Ostensibly
a public service of the corporation, you know... "
        Kohran nodded.  "What will you do?"
        "Only thing I can do," he replied, clenching a fist.  "Avenge
our friends."
        "There must be a way to save them," Kohran insisted.
        "Not if it really was RD-775," said Gryphon.  "I know that
one.  It's a terror weapon, they call it the Red Death.  It can wipe
out entire populations.  The General Staff was -right- to quarantine
us; once the gas disperses, the area it was used in isn't
contaminated, but it -can- be passed on from person to person.  No
human can survive it.  There's... "  he paused, tears coming to his
eyes.  "There's no way to save them."
        Kohran gazed at him for a few moments, her eyes filling too;
then she blinked the tears away, shook her head violently, and said,
"No!  There -is- a way!  -You- survived.  We can save the others.  All
we have to do is make them... like you!"
        Gryphon looked up, a faint spark of hope kindling behind his
eyes; then it died away again, and he shook his head sadly.  "I don't
have a supply of the virus with me.  Never did.  Edison was the only
one who had a stock of it... "
        "Of course you do," Kohran said.  "You have it - all through
you!"
        The immortal shook his head again.  "It doesn't work that way,
Kohran," he said.  "Omega-2 doesn't stay resident once it's done its
job; it just rewrites the subject's DNA and then dies off.  That way
it can't be passed on in transfusions or isolated from a blood
sample."
        "It left - "  Kohran struggled with her still-incomplete
knowledge of the local language for a moment, then gave up and
switched back to Vindari.  <<It left a tangible result behind - the
changes to your genetic structure.>>
        Gryphon blinked at the audacity of the idea, then shook his
head once more.  "It's a good idea, but I don't think it'll work," he
said.  "Omega-2 was designed to resist that kind of reverse
engineering.  Some of the biggest, best-equipped labs in the galaxy
have tried.  Hell, duplicating Omega-2 has been GENOM's fondest wish
for more than 300 years, and they have more money, more facilities and
more researchers than God."  He put a hand on her shoulder.  "I know
you want to save them.  I do, too.  But... "  He hesitated - what he
was about to say might be cruel.  "... You said it yourself -
you're not a medical doctor, you're an engineer."
        Kohran brushed off his hand, looking up at him through her
glasses with a fierce expression that he wasn't used to seeing on her
cute, freckled face.
        "I - can - do - it!" she said, enunciating each word as slowly
and deliberately as possible.
        He opened his mouth to explain the colossal scale of the task
she was taking on.  She'd have to decode his entire genome, isolate the
parts of it which were expressions of Omega-2's modifications, encode
a retrovirus which could make those changes to a normal person's
genome, guard against mutation and unexpected side effects, actually
-make- that retrovirus - and all in the distressingly short time that
the others had left to live.
        But before he spoke, he decided there was no point.  He knew
that look, had seen it on his own face before.  It was the look of a
person who wasn't going to take no for an answer.
        "OK," he said, rolling up his sleeve.  "There's no harm in
trying."

        Manhunter Lead had just decided that the yellow bastard wasn't
going to show when the civil defense alarms howled and the
streetlights turned red.  This was a fairly common occurrance in Ohji,
and the people bustling in the square and on the streets took it in
stride.  Some reported to the shelters; others, as they almost always
did, took to the surrounding rooftops, the best seats in town when the
Hanagumi came out to fight.
        Those who did got a show unlike any that the city had ever
seen before.  The first sign they had that something odd was going on
was the fact that there were none of the strange creatures around that
the Capital Defense Forces usually fought, the ones whose hideous
appearance had gained them the local nickname "demons".
        Instead, as the city square emptied of citizens, the black
shapes which appeared at one end of it were mechanoids, devices
clearly of human manufacture.  Some of the people lining the rooftops
were even familiar enough with offworld machinery to recognize them.
They were GENOM DG battlemovers, powerful military machines midway
between powered armor and Destroids - half a dozen of them.
        They were mostly black, but the one in the lead had gold
stripes, and its hatch was open, revealing a human pilot.  What in the
-world-?  Was some offworld power invading Ishiyama?  If so, they'd
chosen a mighty peculiar way of going about it.
        The second surprise for the spectators was the fact that the
Hanagumi didn't come out to confront these attackers in their usual
colorful group.  Instead, after a few tense moments of waiting while
City Hall's clock struck twelve, a single barrel-shaped Kohbu dropped
out of the sky, slamming down on the cobbled courtyard with a burst of
orange sparks.
        "It's the Hanagumi command unit!" cried some of the people
lining the rooftops.
        "But he's alone!  Where are the others?  Where are the
Hanagumi?"
        The white Kohbu took two strides forward, then stopped, facing
the lead DG at a distance of about thirty yards.  The hatch hissed,
outgassing, and then swung open, revealing the Hanagumi leader in his
dazzling white uniform.  No one on the rooftops could make out his
face, but they saw the uniform, and like the Kohbu itself, it
reassured them.  The Hanagumi would stop this new threat.  The
Hanagumi never failed.
        "All right, Manhunter," said Moreau over his Kohbu's public
address system.  "I'm here."
        "And at the helm of such a quaint contraption, too," said the
Manhunter leader sardonically.  "Do you plan to climb out and
surrender quietly?"
        Peter Moreau smiled coldly.
        "Not hardly," he replied.  Then his hatch swung down and
sealed again with a crash, the Kohbu's twin optics sliding back and
forth on their tracks as the sensor system recalibrated.  At the same
time, the Kohbu's road wheels deployed beneath its feet, increasing
the machine's height by several inches.
        "Let's get it on!" Moreau barked, and his Kohbu exploded into
motion, the rapid-fire twin-barrel autocannon on its left forearm
opening up on one of the flanking DGs as the steam-powered assault
machine charged down the GENOM formation.

        What followed was, everyone who watched it from Ohji's
rooftops agreed, the most righteous asskicking a member of the
Hanagumi had suffered since the time the red one had tried to take on
an Invader terror party all by itself.  Moreau was a brilliant
fighter, and his Kohbu-handling skills were among the best in the
Hanagumi - but the GENOM battlemovers were monsters, designed for
close mecha-to-mecha combat, and their pilots were no slouches
either.
        Moreau made them know they'd been in a fight; in an hour of
furious hit-and-run fighting, he destroyed three of them, littering
Ohji's Central Precinct with their wreckage.  Eventually, though, the
rest bracketed him, pinned him.  A shot from the DG leader's particle
beam cannon destroyed one of the white Kohbu's legs, crippling it, and
then the rest of them closed in.

              /*  Rammstein  "Feuer Frei!"  _Mutter_  */

        "You put up a good fight, Commander," said the Manhunter
leader as he leveled his main weapon.  Behind him, his two remaining
subordinates did the same - and then, on the rooftop behind him,
another half-dozen DGs appeared, their particle batteries glowing
softly blue as well.
        "But," the lead Manhunter added, "it's over now."
        He squeezed the trigger - 

                            /*  00:10  */

        - and with a tremendous CRASH, his unit's right arm blew off
at the elbow, sending the twisted wreckage of the particle cannon
clattering down the street.
        "Wha - ?!"
        The maimed DG pivoted, its body language mirroring its pilot's
shock, and looked in the direction from which the impact had come.
        A black Kohbu stood on the low, flat roof of the bank down the
street.  Its entire right arm was a bell-mouthed howitzer.  Smoke rose
from the muzzle in a lazy grey curl.
        "Bang bang," Maria Tachibana muttered under her breath.
"Hanagumi - TAKE THEM!"
        Suddenly there seemed to be Kohbu -everywhere-.  On Manhunter
Lead's right, Manhunter Three, angling for his own shot on the downed
white one, suddenly reeled back as a purple Kohbu dropped out of the
sky in front of him, wielding a vicious-looking blade on the end of a
pole.  This swept down, its edge trailing fire, to burn off his unit's
left arm as if it were made of papier-mache.  Manhunter Four, to the
leader's left, was similarly confronted by a fire-engine-red steam
mech which drove the DG back with sheer brute force.
        The reinforcements on the rooftops retrained their main guns,
charging them to 120% for supporting fire - and then suddenly
disappeared in a boiling swarm of small missiles as a green Kohbu
appeared on the roof of the building opposite, behind the fallen white
unit's position, multiple-launch racks on its shoulders salvoing
furiously.
        "You OK, Chief?" asked Kanna as she drove her Kohbu's
reinforced right fist clean through Manhunter Four's forward armor and
into the machinery space below the cockpit.
        "I'll live," Moreau replied, utter disbelief in his voice.
"But - "
        "I told you I could do it!" Kohran's gleeful voice crackled
over the Hanagumi tactical radio band; then, in Vindari, she cried,
<<Where do you think YOU'RE going?>> as more missiles streaked by
overhead.
        "Iris!" Kanna ordered as she blocked Manhunter Four's photon
lance with one arm, then crossed him up and ripped the arm clean off
his DG.  "Fix 'im up!"
        Iris de Chateaubriand's psychic gifts were by far the
strongest of the Hanagumi members'; with enough concentration, she
could do things that even psychic authorities said shouldn't be
possible.  Like, for example, mend the damage to Commander Moreau's
Kohbu with a wave of her hand and a blaze of yellow-white light.
        Or, with another wave of her hand, send Manhunter Eight
hurtling headlong down Tanaka Boulevard and into the river.
         It began to occur to Manhunter Lead that he might be up
against a more credible threat force than he had initially
anticipated.  While the main target was still regaining its feet and
the yellow one was busy dealing with Manhunter Eight, he pivoted his
one-armed DG and kicked in the wheel-drive system, making for the end
of the street while signaling for a tactical retreat to regroup.
        Suddenly, the mouth of the street was blocked by still
-another- Kohbu, this one pink.  In its two-fingered hands, it held
what looked like a giant katana, similar to the one the white Kohbu
had had until it'd ended up wedged in Manhunter Two's powerplant.
        Manhunter Lead put on more speed, kicking in his unit's
back-mounted boost thrusters.  He couldn't take to the air, or he'd be
cut down by the green one's missiles, but if he hit the intersection
going fast enough, there was no way that - 
        It didn't really register on him that his DG had been cut in
half until the part he was still sitting in skidded powerlessly to a
halt against the opposite corner.
        Being a reasonably quick-thinking individual, he blew the
hatch and vanished down an alley before any of them could come after
him, radioing as he went for the rest of his reserve group to come to
full alert.
        Their opposition having momentarily abandoned the field, the
Hanagumi regrouped in the square.
        "You're sure you're all right?" Moreau asked them, still
sounding a bit shaken and unbelieving.
        "Never better, Chief," Kanna replied.  "I don't know exactly
what Kohran -did-, except that it blew up half the medlab, but
whatever it was, it worked."
        "I still can't believe Mr. Gene Resequencer exploded," said
Kohran, sounding faintly disconsolate.  "I was so proud it worked.  I
wanted to show it to you... "
        "Well, it -did- work, Kohran, and that's the important thing,"
said Maria.
        "Should we chase them?" Iris wondered.
        "In just a second," Moreau cut in.  Then, his voice becoming
softer and slightly sad, he went on, "Listen, everyone... I think you
know what it means that they're here.  These guys are going to be the
next plague of Ishiyama for as long as I'm here.  They might even call
in the GENOM starfleet, and we all know what kind of a disaster that
would be."
        Sakura's Kohbu drooped.  "Oh, no," she said.  "You mean... "
        "I'm afraid so."  Moreau straightened up his Kohbu and said,
"It looks like it's time for Peter Moreau to die."

        ... So that's what we did.  We drew the Manhunter
reinforcements out of the city, faced them down in the big plain to
the east, and then we made them think they'd killed me.  They had no
idea of the kind of power Iris has.  They had no way of knowing that
when their leader tagged my Kohbu's boiler and the unit cooked off, I
was half a mile away.
        The rest of the Hanagumi mopped up the others, and then I
packed my things, said my goodbyes, and hit the road, back on the run
again.

        Kei sat for a moment and took that all in.  Then she said,
"Must've been tough."
        "The toughest parting I faced back then," Gryphon confirmed,
nodding.  "But if I hadn't gone, GENOM's spies would have known that
Peter Moreau wasn't really dead.  As it was, I found out from R-Type a
couple years ago that not only did they think I was dead, the home
office concluded, from the incomplete reports they got off, that that
Manhunter team had the wrong guy.  According to GENOM's records I was
never on Ishiyama."
        "You should've seen your funeral," said Sakura with a
nostalgic smile.  "We didn't have to pretend to cry, because even if
you weren't really dead, you -had- left us for what, at the time, felt
like it would be forever."
        "They sent me in the week after," Ichiro told him.  "I'd
scored almost the same as you on the evaluations that got you the job,
but your name came before mine in the alphabet."  He chuckled.
"History is made of things like that... anyway, I won't lie and say I
was received with open arms, but I think I did eventually win -some-
regard from my new unit," he added with a grin.
        "It was tough," Kanna admitted.  "We knew working with you
wouldn't dishonor the Commander's memory, but all the same... well, I
know -I- didn't really want any new friends that week.  I'm afraid I
was kind of a jerk to you for a while there."
        "It was a hard situation," said Maria.  "But eventually we
overcame it.  Even Sumire, who seemed to take your leaving especially
hard.  She put on a brave face for you, but as soon as you were gone
she withdrew.  It took Captain Ohgami almost a month to draw her out
again."
        "Who?"
        "Oh," said Ichiro, chuckling as he patted Sakura's hand, "that
was me."
        "Ah," said Gryphon, nodding.  "Sorry, Maria, go on."
        "There is not much more to tell.  We recovered as best we
could; we fought on to make you proud, even though we knew you were
not really dead.  We kept your secret, even from the Captain, until
after the war when he married Sakura.  In fact... it was at the
wedding that Sumire began to... to come undone."
        Iris nodded, her eyes still full of tears.  "She sang for
Sakura and Ichiro, and then she said, 'You have all been great friends
to me, and I will miss you.'  None of us could understand what she
meant, and she wouldn't explain it.  But... she started getting
distant, after that.  Our lives drifted apart without the Hanagumi to
keep us together, but even so, she went out of her way to avoid us."
        "Eventually she stopped coming out of her little world
altogether," said Kanna.  "She inherited Kanzaki International a
couple of years after the wedding and turned into... what was the name
of the guy on Old Earth, the twentieth-century industrialist?  Richest
guy in the world, went totally nuts?"
        "Bill Gates?" said Kei.
        "No, before him - Hughes!  Howard Hughes."
        "Oh," said Gryphon.
        Kei tapped thoughtfully at her chin for a few seconds, then
said, "'Scuse me a minute.  Got to find the little girls' room."
        Several of the Hanagumi gave her directions at once, and off
she went down the hall.  Meanwhile, Gryphon sat in his chair, hands in
his pockets, deep in thought.
        "I wonder... " he murmured.
        "So do we all," Maria agreed.  "I was frankly not expecting
her to come tonight.  Iris was barely able to get her to acknowledge
that she'd been invited."
        "She just sits in her office and looks out the window," said
Iris sadly.  "She runs the company, and runs it well, but she has
no... no -human- connection to -anything-.  And she doesn't seem to
-want- one."
        "I'm afraid she might want to kill herself," Sakura mused
hesitantly.
        Tsubaki Takamura nodded.  "I think you're right.  Or at least,
she might want to die.  The difference is slight, but... "  She
shrugged gently.  "I don't know... "
        "I gave up on her years ago," Kanna grumbled with exaggerated
carelessness.  Gryphon knew it was fake.  For all that they'd argued
almost constantly, Kanna and Sumire had been very close, often sharing
the leads in the Imperial Theater Company's productions - Sumire as
leading lady, Kanna often making up for the fact that they had only
one male player by crossplaying as leading man.  Iris had been very
fond of the heiress too, but Kanna had been her contemporary in the
early days, before Iris grew up.
        For Kanna to give up on a friend that close must have taken a
long time and a lot of painful failure - particularly painful for a
character as open and kindhearted as Kanna's.
        Gryphon sighed deeply.
        "Damn," he muttered.
        Kanna nodded.  "Yeah," she said.  Then, brightening with an
obvious effort of will, she said, "Hey, remember the time she tried to
kill you?"

        "Hey," Kei said quietly from the doorway to the study.  "Are
you not feeling well?  Do you need any help?"
        Sumire Kanzaki sat in a chair near the study's fireplace,
fingertips to her forehead in the aspect of a woman with a bad
headache.  Without looking toward the doorway, she replied, "No, thank
you.  Please leave me alone."
        Kei frowned.  As she had expected, the situation would require
her to be insufferably rude.  However, when the cause was just, Kei
was a grand master at being insufferable, a champion in the art of
rudeness, and when the two disciplines were combined she admitted to
no equal.  She put a smile on her face, entered the room and sat down
in the chair opposite Sumire.  "You look like you spend enough time
alone as it is," she said bluntly.  "Why don't you tell me what's
bothering you?  You'll feel better."
        Sumire opened her eyes and gave Kei a cold stare, replying
flatly, "I don't wish to discuss my personal feelings with anyone,
least of all a total stranger."
        Kei's friendly grin remained unshaken by Sumire's coldness;
she said, "Total strangers are easier to talk to.  Try me."
        "Fine, then," said Sumire with resigned gravity.  She got to
her feet and sniffed.  "If you won't leave me alone, then I'll leave
-you- alone."
        "Nuh-uh," said Kei cheerily, getting up and blocking her path
to the door.  "I'm not letting you out of here until you tell me
what's bugging you."
        Sumire looked Kei over with an expression of exasperated
wonder.  "Are you related to Kanna, by any chance?" she wondered.
"Your atrocious manners remind me painfully of hers."
        "Well, I did have a cousin who married a Hoffmanite a couple
hundred years ago," Kei replied with a thoughtful look, "so I suppose
it's possible."  With that question settled, she grinned and said,
"Now dish."
        Sumire took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and said
stiffly, "If you -must- know, I do not find myself comfortable among
my... fellow veterans."
        Kei's face took on a look of mock astonishment.  "I'd never
have guessed -that- from the way you snubbed poor Kohran.  What'd she
ever do to you?"
        "Nothing," Sumire replied.
        "Oh, I get it," said Kei, scowling.  "You're just naturally
cruel.  Well, let me tell you something about that girl, hon - she did
the -impossible- so that you could sit out there and make her feel
worthless tonight."
        "I know," said Sumire, "and I do not enjoy being reminded of
the fact."
        "Why, for heaven's sake?" Kei burst out.
        Sumire stared her down, her eyes as blank as stone, and
replied, "Because I died that day."
        Kei looked puzzled.  "Um, I hate to be the bearer of good news
here, but, no."
        Sumire shook her head.  "Yes.  I died that day.  It took me a
while to realize it, but eventually it dawned on me that what has
happened since is a dream.  I am a ghost that lingers on, suspended
between life and death, unchanging, while the world goes on without
me."
        Kei made a disgusted, dismissive noise.  "You remind me of a
guy I knew in college," she said scornfully.  "Black hair dye, white
makeup, listened to Einstuerzende Neubauten a lot.  He thought he was
some kind of vampire.  I thought he was full of shit, and I think
you're full of shit too."
        Sumire blinked, startled.  "... Excuse me?"
        "You heard me, I said you're full of shit," Kei replied.  "'A
ghost that lingers on,' indeed.  Can you feel your heart beating?  Can
you hear your breath in a quiet room?  You're alive, Sumire, alive and
well, young and beautiful, and it's not Li Kohran's fault you're
wasting that life."
        A faint touch of color came to Sumire's cheeks; her eyes
narrowed just a tiny bit as she replied with exaggerated dignity, "I
will not be spoken to in such a fashion."
        "Why not?" Kei asked.  "You won't do anything about it.  That
would require you to -care- about something, and oh goodness no, you
can't do -that-!"
        Sumire drew herself up, folded her arms, and said icily,
"Get.  Out."
        Kei snorted.  "Yeah, fine.  I'm wasting my time trying to talk
to you anyway.  Your friends give you the greatest gift imaginable -
forever and the health to enjoy it - and you repay them by turning
into a whiny goth-chick wanna-be.  O brave new world that has such
people in it!"  Kei scowled at the younger woman, her expression
mixing disappointment with disgust.  "You're nothing but a spoiled
little child.  Good night."
        For the first time in forty years, Sumire Kanzaki found
herself absolutely livid with rage.  A tiny, detached part of her
consciousness noted with amazement that it felt rather good, as she
stood so speechless with fury that Kei was able to walk all the way
across the sitting room and leave it by the door before Sumire found
her voice.
        "You... you... you... COME BACK HERE!" she bellowed, running
after the redhead.  Sumire charged into the corridor and turned right
just in time to see Kei turn and enter the library again.  Sumire,
disregarding the fact that everyone else was in there too, ran after
her, burst through the door, and fixed her furious gaze on the first
person she saw - who happened to be Gryphon.
        "Commander!" she barked out of sheer force of old habit.
        Gryphon blinked, taken utterly aback; out of the corner of his
eye he saw Kei throw him a grin and a wink.
        "Um, yes?" he replied into the utter silence Sumire's
explosion had left in the room.
        "Your wife has offended me," said Sumire imperiously.  "I
desire you to secure her apology, or, failing that, offer your own."
        "I'm not saying anything," said Kei smugly.
        "Wait a minute, why should -I- apologize?" asked Gryphon,
confused.  "I didn't even -do- anything!"
        "You brought that woman here," Sumire seethed.  "You're
responsible for her conduct."
        Gryphon looked from Kei's grinning face to Sumire's
rage-blanched one and back a few times, his puzzlement deepening with
every second; then he shrugged resignedly.
        "In that case, I'll have to stand behind my wife.  Whatever
she's done, I must support it."
        "Will you apologize?" Sumire demanded.
        "I will not," Gryphon replied flatly.
        "Then I can see only one path to satisfaction," said Sumire,
and she slapped him full across the face.
        Sakura Shinguuji felt a moment of profound deja vu.
        Gryphon resisted the temptation to finger his stinging cheek,
fixed her with a wounded look, and said, "I came here in friendship,
Sumire, but if you're set on it, then I accept.  As the injured party,
you may choose the venue."
        "The stage.  Right now."
        "Fine.  For my weapon, I shall use my long blade,
Ryuu-no-tsume.  You may choose any weapon you like."
        Sumire gritted her teeth and forced out the reply prescribed
by formality: "Sir is far too kind."
        Then she turned on her heel and stormed out of the room.
        Gryphon waited until she had gone, then slumped slightly with
an outrushing sigh and touched his face.  Turning to Kei, he asked
incredulously, "What the hell did you -say- to her?!"
        Kei grinned, apparently unconcerned that she'd just placed her
husband in mortal peril.  "Oh, just a little girl talk," she replied
airily.

*/  Seat Belts  "Tank! (Luke Vibert Remix)"  _Music for Freelance_  */

        Gryphon took his place at stage left, doing what he could on
such short notice to limber up.  The whole situation was surreal.
He hadn't had a chance to even start getting his head around the
horrible change in Sumire's personality and think of what he might try
to do about it before she'd suddenly performed a -complete- reversion,
to the worst of the way she'd been in the old days: hotheaded,
haughty, imperious.  Sakura had told him she thought Sumire might be
suicidal.  Did she hope that he would kill her?
        But no, that didn't ring right.  She'd had real fire in her
eyes and voice when she'd challenged him - just like the last time.
Whatever Kei had said to her had really, truly sparked something in
there.  As he stretched his shoulder muscles, he glanced at Sakura,
who stood with the rest of the group in front of the front row of
seats, looking worried - but as he caught her eye he could see that
she looked hopeful too.  This had the potential to be something
good... if it didn't turn into something awful.
        Sumire finished her warmup maneuvers and came to a ready
stance, the butt of her naginata ringing against the stage to signal
her readiness.  Gryphon made himself stop thinking about anything in
particular and moved himself into position, gripping his sword's haft
gently, not locked rigidly into his ready stance.  Like the last time,
he let Sumire come to him; and like last time, she didn't disappoint.
        But it was different this time.  This time there were no
probing attacks, no feints, no testing of his defenses; she came at
him full-on from the outset, making full-strength attacks, defending
only as absolutely necessary.  She struck with all the power she could
muster, which was considerable for her slight-looking frame.
        Gryphon gave all his energies to defense for a few moments,
and saw that this wasn't a surge of power that would settle into a
more regular pace.  Sumire was fighting for keeps; she wasn't going to
slacken her pace until one of them tired - which would be a long time
with two Detians in battle - or the current of energy arcing between
them played itself out.
        Well, he thought, two can play at that game, and he threw
himself onto the attack as well.
        Over the next few minutes, the two of them treated their ten
observers to a fantastic display of their respective martial arts, as
practiced by psychically gifted and magnificently trained masters of
the forms.  Sumire might have abandoned the world, but she hadn't
neglected her training.  In very short order their abandon to the
battle reached the point where their auras spilled over into the
visible spectrum; colored light sparked and crackled around their
weapons whenever they met, which was very often.
        It was interesting to watch their contrasting styles: Sumire's
motion was all fluid circles, her long sleeves whirling in her wake to
describe her movements in sound as well as sight; Gryphon was more
solid, depending on his footing, rarely lifting both feet at once
except to jump over low strikes.  His arms did most of his work, where
Sumire controlled her weapon with her entire body.
        Of the ten observers, half had seen the original duel between
these two.  All of them remembered it vividly, and all of them
immediately noted the difference.  Originally, Sumire had been angry,
offended, and had fought vigorously - but that had been nothing
compared to this.  Now she moved and fought like a woman possessed.
All the fear, the dread, the frustration - it all poured out in a
torrent of rage, and to her, the opponent she faced was not an old
friend, not even a man, but the spectre of all those wasted years.
        She seethed with anger, anger at Kei's effrontery, anger at
Gryphon for bringing her, for coming back himself, anger at the sheer
unfairness of the world; anger at herself, for the way she'd treated
Kohran, good, patient, faithful Kohran, all these years, and everyone
else, too.  Every cold and dreary feeling that had shackled her soul
for forty years turned into white-hot rage and gushed out into this
one duel.
        And yet, as the battle went on, something changed.  Rage can
only be sustained for so long, even with an act of will, and as it
faded and some semblance of lucidity returned to Sumire's mind, she
began to realize that she was -enjoying- this battle, just as she had
come to enjoy the last one.  She -could- feel her heart beating - it
was pounding, in fact, pounding like a steam hammer behind the cage of
her ribs.  She -could- hear her breath; as a sweat broke out on her
forehead she was puffing like a steam hammer too, the shortness of
breath brought on not so much by exertion as emotion.
        Gryphon saw the blind rage fade from her eyes; his own were
all but locked on them, his defense and counterattack as automatic as
a well-remembered dance.  All at once Sumire's eyes cleared, and she
faltered for the briefest of instants - not long enough to put herself
at risk, but a momentary break in the flow of the fight, just enough
to be noticed by the onlookers.  Then she renewed her efforts, but her
eyes remained changed.  Where they had glowed with the dull fire of
anger, now they glittered with the onset of elation.
        And again the difference from the original duel was marked.
Before she had fought her rising pleasure in the fight, struggled to
stifle it and stay focused on honor, until finally she could spare the
energy to do so no longer and the smile broke out piece by piece upon
her face.  Now she lit up like an arc lamp, her mood changing so
abruptly and thoroughly that her aura's color shifted to a brighter
shade, and the grin that stretched her lips showed her teeth as she
spun through Gryphon's guard and drove the blunt end of her naginata
against the nerve cluster in his left shoulder.
        He staggered, turned the blow into a fall and roll, and as
Ryuu-no-tsume fell from his numbed left hand he rolled past it and
plucked it from the floor with his right, whirling it into position to
block her counterblow as she had instinctively known he would.  Now it
-was- a dance, a dangerous and exhilarating one in which the slightest
miscalculation could bring the newborn high spirits of the combatants
to a sudden, bloody end.
        In a strange convergence of timing that seemed to the audience
to happen in slow motion, the two stopped circling at exactly the same
moment, set themselves, and lunged past each other with weapons
outstretched.  The blade of Sumire's naginata barely missed Gryphon's
right ear, its edge parting the material of his shirt at the shoulder
with a whisper audible only to the two of them.  A bright stinging
pain illuminated that shoulder, but the cut was not deep, for the arm
retained its strength.  Ryuu-no-tsume hissed smoothly past Sumire's
flank, biting through the side of her dress and barely touching her
flesh.  The equally superficial wound felt more cold than painful, as
though the dull back of the blade had been drawn across bare skin.
        Blood had been shed and, technically speaking, honor
satisfied; the duel could now be called a draw without loss of face to
anyone.  As they passed their closest convergence, though, Sumire
suddenly dug in with her leading foot, stopped short, and reversed her
naginata, whipping the butt end up and around to slam it high across
Gryphon's chest.  His charge suddenly and violently interrupted, he
was carried off his feet, back and down, as his blade continued on
without him and clattered off into the stage-left wings.
        Gryphon didn't intend to go down alone, though; as he fell, as
the blade flew from his right hand, he reached up with that hand and
grabbed a fistful of Sumire's dress.  With his left hand, which was
just recovering its strength, he seized her right wrist where her hand
held the shaft of the naginata against his chest.  Overbalanced,
Sumire fell with him, but it was his back that took the impact of both
their bodies against the stage.  They crashed down with a double
WHUMP, him to the floor and then the softer sound of her to him.
        This put them nose to nose - in fact, just about everything to
everything.  In the sudden, shocking silence after the double impact,
the only sounds were their breathing - harsh, ragged breathing, high
and low parts in a natural syncopation.  Gryphon grinned up at her
flushed and beaming face; a drop of sweat dripped from the tip of her
nose to the tip of his, then ran down across his cheek like a tear.
        "I'm alive," she murmured, grinning from ear to ear.
        "I'll say you are," he replied breathlessly.  Heat radiated
from her as from an incandescent light.  Her eyes, which had been as
flat and dull as glass at the start of the evening, were bottomless,
sparkling wells.  Gryphon could almost feel the force of her elation;
it was as though she had just been reborn before his eyes.
        "Well?" Sumire panted.
        "All right," breathed Gryphon.  "All right, I apologize.  I'm
really, really - "
        "That's enough," murmured Sumire, and she silenced him gently
but urgently with her lips.  While he was occupied with that, she
worked the naginata out from between them and discarded it.  She
didn't care a bit that there were observers; she'd forgotten all about
them.  (With one slightly smirking exception, they were all just
goggling silently anyway.)  All she cared about right now was that
this was a piece of unfinished business, and she was by God never
going to leave any business unfinished, ever again.
        And then, the civil defense sirens started howling.
        Startled,the two pulled slightly apart and froze for a long
breath, listening, eyes wide.  Then Sumire seized Gryphon's head and
planted a last long, hard kiss on his mouth.
        "We'll finish this later," she murmured huskily; then she
jumped up, snatched up her naginata, and dashed out of the auditorium.
        Gryphon remained on the stage for a few seconds, then hitched
himself up on his elbows, rubbed at his disarrayed hair, and said
bemusedly, "So, uh, what's with the sirens?"
        His and Sumire's erstwhile audience, which had collectively
forgotten to breathe, seemed to hear the sirens for the first time
when addressed directly.  As one they jumped and said, "Huh!"
        Sakura shook herself back to the here and now and replied, "I,
I don't know.  Some sort of emergency, I suppose."
        "Where did Sumire go?" Iris wondered.
        "Probably to take a cold shower," said Kanna with a smirk.
"Heh heh... "
        "Kanna!" Maria admonished.
        "Hey, more power to her," Kanna shrugged.  "Though I suspect
the Chief's missus must have something to say about it," she added
with an inquiring look at Kei.
        "I observe and record," Kei replied with a pious grin, "I do
not interfere."
        "... Weird," said Kanna.
        "Um, hello, the sirens?" wondered Gryphon.
        "Uh!" said Ichiro.  "Right!  Wait here, everybody, I'll find
out what's going on."
        Sakura did not, of course, wait there; she followed him out to
the lobby and stood right behind him as he opened the front door of
the theater.
        As such, she was almost knocked down as he recoiled and shut
the door again in a hurry.
        "Looks like half the army is out there," he said, and a moment
later, an amplified voice cut through the theater doors:
        "General Shinguuji, this is Major Yoshi Takeda of the Imperial
Army!  I have orders from the Imperial General Staff to take you into
protective custody.  Please come out of the theater with your hands in
plain sight."
        Ichiro blinked and turned to Sakura, who looked just as
baffled as he was; then they both turned and ran back to the
auditorium.
        "The army has the theater surrounded.  They want me to
surrender to 'protective custody'," said Sakura breathlessly.  "What
in the world is going on?"
        Kohran, who seemed to be listening to her wristwatch, looked
intensely thoughtful for a moment; then she lowered her hand, turned
to the others, and said, "It's a coup!"
        "WHAT?!" the others blurted.
        "Listen for yourselves," she said, and turned a dial around
the watch's face.  A moment later, a voice familiar to all but one of
the listeners crackled from a tiny speaker: 
        " - peat, this is General Ikki Yoneda to any loyal unit!
The Imperial Army is staging a coup attempt.  They have seized the
Ministry Building in Ohji and are massing on the plain south of the
Emperor's summer palace.  The Imperial Guard is gravely outnumbered
and cannot hold!  Any loyal unit within the sound of my voice, please
respond!"
        "Well, what're you waiting for?!" Kanna demanded.  "Answer
him!"
        "I can't," Kohran replied.  "This is only a receiver."
        "Well, that's just - "
        The Imperial Theater's intercom system clicked, then whined
for a moment with feedback before its operator adjusted the gain.
Then Sumire Kanzaki's voice rang from the speakers:
        "Are you all waiting for an engraved invitation?  Surely you
remember where the special wing is.  I'm waiting... "

        "When the government closed down the Teikokukagekidan," Kasumi
Fujii explained breathlessly as the group of them marched down the
corridor toward what had been the secret wing, "the Ministry of
Defense allowed all the 'special works' underneath the Imperial
Theater, along with the theater itself, to return to the ownership of
the original contractor."
        "You mean - "
        "Exactly!" said a familiar voice from the far end of the
hall.  Sumire Kanzaki stood with her back to the big oak doors which
kept theater patrons from wandering into the secret area.  "It all
belongs to Kanzaki Heavy Industries - which means, effectively, that
it all belongs to -me-!"
        Sumire gestured grandly, and with a hiss of steam actuators,
the bank of doors slammed open behind her, revealing a round room
whose curving wall was studded with circular hatches.
        "All RIGHT!" Kanna crowed.  "Now we're gonna show those army
pukes what for!  I've been wanting a crack at that General Yanagi ever
since he wrote that book that said our accomplishments were 'seriously
overrated.'"
        "Why, Kanna," said Sumire in a tone of dry amusement.  "I
wasn't aware you could read."
        Kanna's face went completely blank.  For a second, everyone's
did, as they all stared at Sumire in horror.
        Then the purple-clad woman's sardonic smile changed in an
eyeblink to one of sly warmth, and she winked one twinkling black eye
at the redheaded giantess.  The silent message was clear: Gotcha!
        Kanna threw back her head and laughed.  "Ha HA!  My GOD, I've
missed you, you prickly little bitch!  C'MERE!"  So saying, she
grabbed the much smaller woman up in a massive embrace, mussing at her
auburn hair.
        "Agh!  Get -off- me, you ape-woman!" Sumire protested,
struggling ineffectively but unable to keep the genuine smile off her
face or the delighted giggle out of her voice.  "I'm not your type!"
        "We're all glad you're, uh, feeling better, Sumire," said
Kohran hesitantly.
        Breaking free of Kanna's grasp, Sumire turned to face the
Salusian girl, her look of delight becoming immediately downcast.
"Kohran... I... I... "
        Kohran grinned.  "Forget it!" she said.  "We don't have time
for you to think of what to say right now anyway," she added,
winking.
        "So," said Kei.  "What's the plan?"
        "We'll go to the Emperor's summer palace, of course," said
Sakura.  "If we can keep the conspirators from capturing him, the coup
will fizzle.  The people of Morita will never submit to a change in
government without the Emperor's approval."
        Through the windows along the top of the corridor, the voice
of Major Takeda sounded tinnily, this time giving General Shinguuji
(who, he noted, was completely surrounded - how original) one minute
to surrender before the army would be forced to come in after her.
        Gryphon glanced at Kei, who nodded.
        "You guys take care of that," he said.  "We'll handle things
here."
        Iris looked downcast.  "You're not coming with us?"
        "Iris, my Kohbu is scrap iron."
        Sumire chuckled.  "Is it, now."
        Gryphon blinked, then looked at Ichiro Shinguuji, who grinned.
        "I've always wanted to see my predecessor in action," he
said.  "I hear he was quite something."
        The Expert of Justice blinked again, then turned to Kei.  She
grinned, and with a crackling snap, the gleaming golden length of the
Cosmic Rod appeared in her hand.
        "G'wan with your posse, Commander Moreau," she said, producing
a pair of green-tinted tanker's goggles from her pocket and settling
them on her head.  "I'll handle these clowns."
        "You sure?" Gryphon asked.
        "'Course," Kei replied.  Then she leaned, kissed him, and told
him, "Don't get killed, now.  You've got business to take care of when
it's over!"
        Then she was sprinting back down the corridor toward the main
entrance, shouting back behind her, "Good luck, Flower Division!"
        Kanna stood watching her go with a puzzled expression,
scrubbing idly at her similarly-cut, similarly-colored hair.  "That's
a strange, strange woman you've got there, Chief," she said.
        Gryphon laughed.  "You think I hadn't noticed?" he asked.
"Well, c'mon, Hanagumi - what're we standing around for?"

        Major Yoshi Takeda privately believed that General Yanagi had
done him no great favor by giving him this assignment.  He accepted
that, as the ancestral protector of the Imperial throne, the current
head of the Shinguuji family had to be neutralized for the coup to
succeed; but the officer who wrecked the Imperial Theater to drag that
prize out from inside it would win no friends with the public.  Such
a thing was liable to be remembered long after the rest of the change
in power had been accepted as the natural order of things by the
people of Morita.
        Still, it had to be done.  For the Emperor's fall to be
secure, the Shinguuji had to be neutralized.  Ichiro Shinguuji was a
prime target too - as Fleet Admiral of the Imperial Navy, he might be
able to rally those elements of the navy not loyal to the
revolutionary forces - but he was not nearly as important as his wife,
the hereditary Shinguuji, the one who had the Emperor's ear.
        And the Emperor had to fall, there was no doubt about that.
The things the old man was talking about lately were madness.
Alliance with Kaneko?  Even a possible one-world coalition government
to apply for Federation membership?  The only way Ishiyama would be
united under one government would be on the day when Morita's forces
finally ground Kaneko's ruling junta underfoot!  -Then- perhaps the
Federation; not before!  General Yanagi was adamant about this, and
Yoshi Takeda was a true believer.
        Which was why he was willing to commit the extemely unpopular
act of having his tanks blow down the doors of the beloved Imperial
Theater and lead his battalion in there to drag one of the symbols of
the old regime out by the hair if necessary.  She was a swordswoman of
great renown and had been one of the legendary (but overrated,
according to General Yanagi) Hanagumi, but she was still only one
woman.  She couldn't stand up against an entire battalion of special
infantry.
        Just as Takeda resigned himself to giving the order, the
central door of the great theater opened and a woman came out - but
that woman was not Sakura Shinguuji.  From his briefing on the
Hanagumi, Takeda briefly thought it was Kanna Kirishima, but no, this
woman was much too small to be Kirishima.
        This woman wasn't any larger than Takeda himself; she had red
hair in a careless wolf cut with a long braid thrown over her shoulder
from the back, and she was dressed in casual street clothes, jeans and
a denim jacket over a t-shirt.  In one of her hands she held a
gold-colored metal rod about as long as she was tall, with a peculiar
bend in it about three-quarters of the way up and a strange hooked
head.
        "General Shinguuji's not available right now, boys," she said
in a faintly mocking tone.  Then she reached up and flicked her
goggles down over her eyes.  The motion revealed a glittering gemstone
on a band around her left wrist, and all those in the group of
soldiers who saw it, including Takeda, drew back with a gasp of
recognition.
        "Red Lensman!" one of the riflemen to Takeda's left murmured.
        Kei grinned sharkishly at them and energized the Cosmic Rod,
its nearly-hypersonic whine raising the little hairs on the backs of
their necks.
        "Would you care to leave a message?" she inquired pleasantly.

        "You kept all this in standby ready condition all these
years?!" Kanna Kirishima demanded as the personnel chute delivered
her, in uniform, to the Hanagumi ready room deep beneath the Imperial
Theater.  "Why?!"
        Sumire laughed, adjusting her cravat slightly as she kept pace
with the Hoffmanite's long strides toward the equipment room.
"Because I was crazy, Kanna, what do you think?  I -have- been
compared with Howard Hughes before, you know."
        "You - how did you - " Kanna sputtered, but Sumire only
laughed again.
        "It must have cost you a fortune," Maria observed.
        "At least one," Sumire replied, unconcerned.  "But it's all
worth it now, isn't it?  I mean, how long do you think a military
government would let a company like Kanzaki International function
unmolested?  If we don't save the Empire, why, I stand to lose
-everything-!"
        "So this is all motivated by profit," said Ichiro skeptically.
        "Of course, Captain," said Sumire airily.  "It has nothing at
all to do with the fact that I've dreamed for more than thirty years
of going back into battle at the sides of my dearest friends in the
world."  As they all skidded to a halt before the stairs down to the
Kohbu bays, she turned, tweaked Ichiro's nose, and told him in an
overly patient tone utterly belied by the broad smile on her face,
"It's - all - business!"
        Kanna guffawed and clapped her on the back, almost bowling her
into Ichiro's arms.  "Suuure," she said.  "Hey, whatever makes you
happy."
        Indeed, Sakura noted to herself as she watched Sumire vault
into the pilot's seat of her violet Kohbu, she -was- happy, -glowing-
with happiness.  It was like the best of the old days back again -
better, because they had Peter -and- Ichiro on their side now, two
gleaming white Kohbu, one with Moreau's distinctive black accents, the
other a sleeker, newer model sporting Ichiro's glittering gold trim.
The two white-coated commanders, one dressed in a male version of
the swallowtailed standard Hanagumi uniform, the other in something
more like navy whites, jumped the crash bars and twisted to land in
their control seats with almost the same motion, a sight that made
both Sakura and Iris laugh with delight before they sprang into their
own machines.
        Gryphon slipped easily back into the routine, becoming Peter
Moreau again without even having to think about it.  It was as
automatic and as comfortable as putting on a favorite winter coat for
the first time after a long, hot summer.  He flicked switches and
powered up his Kohbu as though he'd last piloted one the day before,
feeling the strength shiver into its limbs as its back-mounted steam
plant began to grind and puff.
        As the monitors rezzed up around him, he glanced to his left
and right and saw the other eight Kohbu of the Hanagumi stiffening in
their storage brackets, puffs of smoky steam issuing from the exhaust
stacks of each.  Their optics switched one way, then the other, as
they all did the same things he was doing.
        Then the voice of Tsubaki Takamura crackled in his speakers:
"All Kohbu-kai powered up and ready.  Stand by for transit loading."
        A thrill ran up Moreau's spine at the words, because if they
were going all the way out to the Emperor's summer palace, he knew
damned well what that transit was going to consist of, and he could
not -wait- to experience that again.

        At the northern edge of Ohji, a detachment of renegade
Imperial Army elements moved into position to block the special rail
line linking the capital with the Emperor's summer palace complex some
miles to the north.  They did this through the simple expedient of
parking four "Dragon"-class steam-powered tanks on the tracks.  The
hundred-ton monsters with their twin 200mm steam cannon should give
any enterprising rail engineer pause to consider his course before
trying to bull his way through.
        As Lieutenant Soichiro Shigumi maneuvered the last of the
Dragons into position with its cannon facing toward the capital, one
of the infantry soldiers in the support company stood off to the side
and examined the makeshift fortification with a jaded eye.  He was an
old soldier, grizzled and somewhat portly, and he frowned portentously
as he looked at the formation of tanks parked on the tracks.  He was
the only soldier in this detachment old enough to remember the Demon
War firsthand.
        Now he shook his head and intoned in a gravelly voice to no
one in particular, "That won't stop Goraigoh."
        "What was that, Sgt. Burr?" asked one of the younger soldiers
near him.
        Burr heaved a sigh.  "Nothing," he replied, and walked away.
        Five minutes later, Lt. Shigumi spotted a plume of steam
approaching along the line from the city.
        "Look at that," he remarked to his gunner.  "Some fool's
actually trying to get to the palace.  Well, he'll stop when he sees
us.  Hit the lights!"
        The Dragon's driver did as instructed, and the tank's forward
floodlights snapped on.  They didn't cast beams in daylight, but they
were certainly bright enough to be seen from head-on at that
distance.  Shigumi smiled and listened for the squeal of steel on
steel as the approaching train's brakes locked up.
        Instead, all he heard was the pounding, steadily loudening
roar of a modern steam locomotive running flat-out.
        "What the - doesn't the idiot see us?" Shigumi grumbled.  The
train was still a mile or two out.  The young officer raised his
binoculars to get a better look, and then nearly dropped them.  "What
the - ?!" he repeated, this time completely astonished.
        He had never seen anything like the locomotive that was
bearing down on them.  It was a great bronze streamliner, glittering
in the afternoon sun, and it was -huge-, so big it seemed closer than
it really was.  It bore down on the tank formation without slackening
its pace, streaming white condensate from ports all along its flanks,
the great floodlamp set back in an armored housing on its bullet nose
glaring out, the pattern of interlocked bars in its cowcatcher
snarling at Shigumi like bared teeth.
        And, oddest of all, it wasn't hauling a troop train or an
armored company, like Shigumi would've expected of any reinforcements
from the capital; it pulled only a single car, fully as big as it was,
but still far from sufficient to carry any significant armored force.
        "He's not stopping, sir!" said Shigumi's gunner, a note of
panic creeping into her voice.
        "Explain it to him!" Shigumi barked.  A moment later, the
Dragon's cannon spoke, first one, then the other, launching twin
high-explosive shells down the track at the rapidly approaching bronze
streamliner.  The train vanished in the resulting cloud of smoke and
shrapnel -
        - and then plunged out of them without a scratch and without
slackening its pace.  If anything, it seemed to -accelerate- out of
the shell-bursts.  From somewhere along its sleek armored flank, a
steam whistle that belonged on an ocean liner bellowed an earsplitting
challenge as the monster train barrelled on toward Shigumi's position,
a steam-age shinkansen from hell.
        "Sir!!" cried Shigumi's driver.
        "ABANDON TANK!" Shigumi shouted, scrambling up out of his
cupola and hurling himself down the side.  The other three members of
his crew followed, as did the four-man crews of the other three
Dragons, all of them pelting away from the tracks as fast as they
could go.
        Goraigoh plowed into the formation of tanks at nearly two
hundred miles per hour, its whistle howling.  Above the deafening
blare of the whistle came the titanic sound of the crash, a tremendous
BANG underlaid with the horrible shriek of tearing metal as the
train's bullet prow tore the lead Dragon apart.  The tanks' boilers
cooked off as the monster ripped them to shreds, sending shrapnel and
whole chunks of machinery flying in all directions; the support troops
screamed and threw themselves into any convenient ditch or hollow.
        For a few terrifying moments, it rained metal in the general
vicinity of Lt. Shigumi's blockade, accompanied by a cacophony like an
entire hardware store was falling from the sky.
        Then, as suddenly as it began, it was over, and Shigumi and
his troops picked themselves up off the ground and surveyed the
devastation.
        All four Dragons were total losses; three of the four were
completely unrecognizable, reduced to shattered wreckage strewn over a
half-square-mile area.  The fourth was bent nearly in half, lying
upside down twenty yards from the tracks, its cannon barrels pointing
pitifully into the air as one of its bogey wheels turned lazily with a
monotonous clicking sound.  Incredibly, only one of Shigumi's soldiers
was injured, a private who had taken a nasty wallop on the head from
what looked like a steam pressure gauge.
        Of Goraigoh, all that could be seen was a glimmer of bronze
and a plume of steam off in the northern distance.
        "My -God-," Shigumi murmured.  "What -was- that?"

        General Hideki Yanagi stood in the cupola of his command tank
and surveyed the palace defensive line.  His force and that of his
opposite number, General Michie Fuchida of the Third Armored Regiment,
the Emperor's Guards, were arranged against each other across a plain
about a mile wide.  Behind Yanagi was the Ohji River; behind Fuchida
was the Emperor's summer palace and the sea.
        On paper, Fuchida had the advantage by a long way.  She had
one hundred eight tanks to Yanagi's thirty-six, plus about twice as
many infantry in support.  She also had the benefit of slightly higher
ground, since the summer palace was on a seashore rise.  She lacked
advanced support, but so did Yanagi; he had managed to keep most of
the army tied down with conflicting orders and confusion among the
officers, but for his assault force itself he had only suborned the
bulk of the Capital Defense Forces, which had no artillery and no air
support.
        In the Capital Defense Forces, though, Yanagi had his trump
card, the one which would give him victory.  He had conceived this
plan after being handed the blueprints for the weapon he was about to
be the first to employ, a weapon devised by the Honokaze Industry
Group as a hedge against the return of the Invaders in a world without
the Teikokukagekidan.
        The weapon in question was useless for that, of course,
because the Invaders -weren't- coming back; Hideki Yanagi believed in
looking to the future rather than hedging against a half-remembered
past.  To tell the truth, he was tired of all the hype about the
Imperial Floral Assault Group.  Yanagi had been a young soldier in the
last year of their campaign against the demons, and he remembered them
as troublemaking interlopers who'd had no business playing at being
soldiers.  They were flashy and popular, but they hadn't been
warriors; they'd been a bunch of actresses playing a role.  Their
subsequent elevation to the status of folk heroes disgusted Yanagi,
and this corrupt emperor had made it worse by doting on them.
        Well, all that was over now, and Yanagi felt a certain poetic
justice in the fact that he was using a weapon devised to replace them
to depose their precious emperor.
        "Order the Javkiel into position," he snapped to his
adjutant - and from the rear of the CDF formation they came, marching
around the tanks in eerily precise lockstep.  A full regiment of
robotic steam armor units, three hundred twenty-four strong, their
flat-planed, blocky armor gleaming factory new, formed up in the van
of Yanagi's assault force and waited patiently for the order to
attack.
        The general waited for Fuchida to surrender.  Fuchida didn't
oblige him, which made him smile.  He hoped she survived the battle,
so he could congratulate her on her loyalty to her emperor before he
had her shot.
        Just as Yanagi was preparing to give the order for his
magnificent robots to dismember Fuchida's forces, he noticed something
in the sky.  Eight tiny specks had appeared on one of the fluffy
clouds coasting above the battlefield.  As he watched, they grew
larger, eventually resolving themselves into objects under trios of
big round parachutes.  The colors began to imprint themselves on his
memory before he recognized the shapes of the objects... 

        "Javkiel," Kohran said over the group's tactical band as the
Kohbu floated down on their chutes.  "AI-driven unmanned steam armor,
developed by a competitor of Kanzaki Heavy Industries.  On an absolute
scale, they're slightly more powerful than our Kohbu-kai."
        "But," said Sumire in an unconcerned tone, "they're -very-
stupid."
        "Just be glad the Honokaze engineers never got the flight mode
to work.  If they could fly, like the original spec called for, we'd
be in big trouble."
        "In position," came Ichiro Shinguuji's voice.  "Release!"
        As one, the Hanagumi released their parachutes and crashed
down onto the field itself, up on the rise about a hundred yards ahead
of Fuchida's defensive force.
        "What in the -world-?" wondered Yanagi's adjutant.
        "Isn't that the Hanagumi?" another of the general's younger
staffers asked.
        "I thought they were disbanded years ago," the adjutant
protested.
        "What do they expect to accomplish with those museum pieces?"
        The pink Kohbu in the center of the formation, flanked on
either side by a white unit, took a step forward and pointed an
accusing finger at the Capital Defense Forces as a voice known to
every soldier of the Empire rang from its public address speakers:
        "Whenever danger threatens our beloved country, we will be
there!  The Army may have forgotten its duty, but our hearts never
will!  We cannot fail, for our cause is the cause of Justice!"  The
machine reached to its side and drew its giant sword, aiming the point
straight at General Yanagi's command tank.  "You who seek to depose
our rightful emperor, beware: The Imperial Floral Assault Group has
arrived!"
        "(Very nice,)" Ichiro Shinguuji remarked over the tac band.
        "(Just like old times,)" Peter Moreau agreed.
        "(It gave me chills,)" Sumire Kanzaki added.
        "(Oh, stop,)" replied Sakura in a faintly embarrassed whisper.

        Off on a ridgeline overlooking the battlefield from the east,
a Capital News Network live broadcast team glanced at each other in
disbelief.  They thought they'd come up here for the gloomy job of
recording the slaughter of the Emperor's Guard, the last story they
would ever transmit before the new military government seized control
of the media.  Instead... 
        "Make sure you get this, Kearney!" the reporter declared.
"This is going to be -good-."
        "Count on it, Mr. Tokioka," the cameraman replied.

        For a few seconds, the Hanagumi and the Capital Defense Forces
stood staring at each other.
        Then, as the Javkiel units tensed in response to an invisible
signal, Ichiro Shinguuji spoke on the Hanagumi private band:
        "Commander Moreau, you're senior by date of commission; I
would be pleased if you would lead off the attack."
        Moreau grinned.  "Admiral Shinguuji, I'd be honored."  He
stepped his Kohbu a pace out of the line.
        "Teikokukagekidan Hanagumi: Check your fires!" Moreau barked.
        "Burning!" the seven others chorused in unison.
        "Check your pressure!"
        Seven pairs of eyes flicked to the next gauge on the panel;
seven voices confirmed together, "Nominal!"
        "Check your weapons!"
        There came a variety of clicks, clatters, hisses and whines.
        "Ready!"
        Moreau smiled and raised his eyes to the master viewer.
        "Then let's show these disrespectful punks how we do things
downtown," he said before raising his voice to shout:
        "Teikokukagekidan Hanagumi: SANJO!"
        Eight Kohbu burst into motion as one, bearing down on three
hundred twenty-four of their advanced-technology replacements in line
abreast.  General Yanagi was forced to conclude that their pilots were
either suicidal, stupid, or insane.
        As the eight plunged into the Javkiel' ranks, Sumire Kanzaki
made an adjustment to her unit's radio set, patching into all the
frequencies on which the set could transmit; and as she swept a
Javkiel's arm from its body with a sweep of her naginata and pivoted
her Kohbu away from another's cannon burst, she raised her voice in
song for the first time since the wedding of Sakura and Ichiro
Shinguuji:

"Hikisaita yami ga hoe, furueru teito ni
Ai no uta takaraka ni odorideru senshitachi!"

        With a short burst of static, Kanna Kirishima (currently
pulverizing the flat forward armor of a Javkiel on the flank) joined
her for the next part.

"Kokoro made koutetsu ni busou suru otome
Aku wo kechirashite seigi wo shimesu no da!"

        Everyone in Ohji - in fact, almost everyone in Morita - was
was watching this spectacle on live television courtesy of Tokioka's
broadcast team.  Everyone watching could hear the Hanagumi break into
song.  A recent motion picture dramatizing the end of the Demon War
had imprinted the Imperial Floral Assault Group's battle hymn on the
minds of an entire new generation of Moritajin, and so when the eight
of them all broke in for the chorus, though they couldn't hear it,
pretty much the entire country was singing with them:

"Hashire! Kosoku no Teikokukagekidan!
Unare Shogeki no Teikokukagekidan!"

        The song flowed out of the Hanagumi, and they fought as though
they'd never left each other's company.  One by one they took up the
line, blending back together for the chorus.  The destruction of the
Capital Defense Forces' "advanced" armor units was wholesale and
awe-inspiring as the eight warriors ranged around the field, working
separately and yet always a team, trading off and pairing up and never
quite where the Javkiel AIs expected them to be.

"Machi no hi ga kiehatete obieru teito ni
Niji no iro someagete odorideru senshitachi!
Akatsuki ni gekijou wo terashidasu otome
Aku wo horoboshite seigi wo shimesu no da!

Hashire! Kosoku no Teikokukagekidan!
Unare shogeki no Teikokukagekidan!"

        "They're splitting up to try and flank us!" Ichiro declared.
"Commander Moreau, Sumire, Kanna, Kohran, take the left!  Sakura,
Maria, Iris, you're with me!"
        "Ryoukai!" the other seven answered - it seemed so natural to
Moreau, who hadn't fought a battle in Japanese in years - and peeled
off into their subgroups to thwart the robots' flanking attacks.
        As they did, Sakura took up the song again, her clear, sweet
voice carrying the third verse out to (though she didn't know it)
almost everyone in Morita:

"Yume sae mo chigiretobi itetsuku teito ni
Ai no hi wo dakitomete odorideru senshitachi!
Inochi sae koutetsu ni chikaiau otome
Aku wo kirisutete seigi wo shimesu no da!"

        Once more they all came together for the chorus, their voices
braided together in a triumphant cry as the Javkiel fell and the
strength of Morita itself powered the spirit-driven limbs of their
Kohbu.

"Hashire! Kosoku no Teikokukagekidan!
Unare shogeki no Teikokukagekidan!
Hashire! Kosoku no Teikokukagekidan!
Unare shogeki no Teikokukagekidan!"

        In five minutes, the Hanagumi had eradicated nearly half of
General Yanagi's force, and now, emboldened by the spectacle before
them, General Fuchida's tanks opened fire from the ridgeline in
support of the Kohbu.
        "Armored battalion, return fire!" Yanagi ordered.
        "But, sir, we'll hit some of the Javkiel - "
        "So what?" Yanagi demanded.  "They're not manned anyway."

        Peter Moreau leveled a Javkiel with a burst from his left arm
autocannon, whirled, stepped through a sleet of machinegun fire from
another before cutting it down with his long blade, then set and drove
his short blade backward through the foreplate of a third which had
tried to take him from behind with its vibro-axe attachment.
        "I see you haven't lost any of your technique with a Kohbu
either," came Sumire's voice.  He angled his Kohbu's visual sensor to
the right to see her block a Javkiel's axe blow with her naginata,
then whirl and cleave the robot clean in half.  "One day perhaps I
should face you with both your blades."
        Moreau chuckled.  "Anytime," he told her, then whirled as a
threat alarm sounded.  A group of Javkiel, perhaps two dozen of them,
had massed and were now rushing as one toward his position - and so
was another group from the opposite direction, attempting to crush the
two Kohbu in a pincer maneuver.  "Sumire!"  he snapped, and the purple
Kohbu's pilot finished her last opponent and turned to see the
oncoming attack.
        The mental and spiritual synchrony which had allowed them to
push the limits during their duel rushed over the two of them again,
just as it had in long-ago battles against the Invaders following
their original clash.  Responding to it, panels and vents on both
Kohbu popped open, readying the units for an extreme flow of spirit
energy.  The two units went back-to-back, their ranked exhaust stacks
locking together as both steam reactors went into supercharge mode and
each added pressure and heat to the other in a symbiotic loop.  In
both cockpits and on Kohran's master monitor panel, the spirit energy
gauges for Moreau and Sumire's Kohbu rounded to full, then rounded
again, glowing brighter than the rest of the panels combined.
        "Flame of my heart!" Sumire called, lowering her Kohbu's
naginata into battery, its butt clashing against the ground.
        "Speed of my blades!" Moreau replied, presenting both long and
short swords to the oncharging enemy.  A flame-orange glow surrounded
both Kohbu as their boiler casings began to heat cherry red,
blistering the decorative paint that covered them.
        "Let this union bring destruction to our foes!" both cried as
one; and then, as their Kohbu burst apart in a great explosion of
purple steam, their voices howled in unison,
        "PHOENIX - HURRICANE!"
        The two flame-shrouded Kohbu streaked apart as though they had
been fired from cannon, each plunging into one of the attacking
concentrations of Javkiel.  Their three blades moved so fast it was
like each of them wielded a thousand, and each one ablaze with a
white-hot flame.  Burning, shattered Javkiel fell in all directions
as the twin comets tore through their ranks, circling in an elegant
dance of destruction that ended with the two Kohbu once again back
to back, semicrouched and wary, their optics sliding back and forth
fitfully as they scanned for any enemy lucky enough to have survived
the onslaught.
        There were none.  At the edge of a cleared circle fifty yards
wide lay a ring of burning wreckage; it was all that remained of the
groups which had tried to overwhelm them.
        One of Yanagi's tanks took a potshot at the white Kohbu now
that it had stopped moving.  Moving with a fluidity that was shocking
from such an ungainly-looking machine, the purple one slid into the
shell's path and, with an almost casual sweep of its weapon, sent it
hurtling back.  The hit didn't destroy the tank, but it jammed the
turret rotator and wrecked the barrel of one cannon.

        Yanagi cursed and pounded in frustration on the coaming of his
cupola.  Then he snatched up the command radio from his adjutant and
barked into it, "Ikeda!  Move up to reinforce before these blasted
antiques break my line!  Ikeda!  Come in!  ... What do you mean you're
pinned down?!"

        Ten miles to the southeast, Colonel Hiroshi Ikeda's Second CDF
Brigade, complete with its full complement of Javkiel, had just been
preparing to respond to the expected order to move in when the rain of
steel started.
        "I don't know!" Ikeda bellowed into the command radio.  "We're
taking heavy artillery fire from SOMEwhere, heavy enough that - " He
flinched and shielded his eyes from the flash as a Javkiel vanished in
a cloud of shrapnel-laced orange flame.  "It has to be naval gunnery!"
        "How the hell can it be naval gunnery?!" Yanagi's voice
crackled back.  "Admiral Ueda gave me his personal guarantee that he'd
keep the fleet in port."
        "Tell whoever's SHELLING us that - " Ikeda began, but his luck
ran out just then; his command tank took a direct hit from an
18.1-inch battleship shell and, quite simply, ceased to exist.

        On the flag bridge of the His Radiant Majesty's battleship
Colonel Kazuma Shinguuji, Rear Admiral Kiyone Moriyuuki stood with her
arms folded and watched with satisfaction as the shells from her
flagship's massive main battery fell beyond the coastal ridgeline.
Out of sight of the sea was not necessarily out of range for a ship
like the Shinguuji; those who dismissed the old battleships as
'relics' would, she thought, do well to remember that.
        She turned with a smile to the young man in the army officer's
uniform who stood next to her.  "Thank you for the warning,
Lieutenant, and the coordinates.  You've done a great service for the
Emperor today."
        Lieutenant Noriyuki Yanagi smiled.  "Least I could do,
Admiral, when I found out what my father was up to.  I only wish I
could've found out in time to prevent more of the - "  He paused for a
moment as the thunder of the Shinguuji's #2 turret made any human
sound impossible, then went on, " - destruction."
        "You did well just reaching me before Admiral Ueda locked down
the fleet," Moriyuuki noted.  Then she turned to the slightly older
naval officer on her left.  "Captain?"
        "Spotters report our fire is being quite effective, Admiral,"
replied the Shinguuji's commanding officer, Captain Katsuhiko Kuroda.
        "Excellent.  Keep it up.  I don't want those bastards going
anywhere," replied the admiral.  She just wished that Yanagi's group
was in range.  She'd had a score to settle with that misogynistic
prick since 2375.

        Watching his line crumble as the Hanagumi, the apparently
unstoppable, unbeatable Hanagumi, carved through the Javkiel like
Tinkertoys, knowing that some naval vessel had escaped Ueda's lockdown
and was pinning his reinforcements, General Yanagi realized that the
time had come to cut losses.
        He still had a trump card beyond the disappointing Javkiel,
one which could guarantee him victory.  The only problem was, it came
with some less-than-ideal outcome conditions.
        For one thing, it would kill the Emperor rather than see him
captured.  This would make it harder, though not impossible, to
convince the people of Morita that he had approved the transfer of
power to Yanagi and his military government.
        For another, it would destroy the summer palace, a very
pleasant place Yanagi had been looking forward to using as his own
residence.
        For a third, it might kill him along with Fuchida's troops,
the Emperor, and the cursed Hanagumi.
        Still, if a thing was worth doing at all... 
        He picked up the radio and called, "Tengu 1, this is Sword
6.  Autumn Wind.  I repeat, Autumn Wind."
        A moment later, a pillar of fire slashed down from the sky and
carved a river of glass across the battlefield, barely missing the
black Kohbu with the howitzer arm.

        "CHTO - ?!" Maria Tachibana yelped (her comrades, not
accustomed to hearing her yelp, were brought up short in an instant)
as the slash of annihilation nearly vaporized her in her Kohbu.
        "Mother of God!" Moreau's voice crackled.
        "Phaser fire!" Li Kohran cried.  "They've got a warship in
orbit giving them fire support!"
        "So that's the game, is it?" Kanna snarled.  "They can't take
the palace, so they'll just vaporize it from orbit?  This bastard
fights dirty!"
        "Look out!" Sakura shouted, diving her Kohbu to the left and
knocking Ichiro's unit out of the path of another haphazard finger of
death as it drew its random-looking pattern across the battlefield.
        "Where did these sons of bitches learn how to shoot?!"
demanded Kanna indignantly.
        "Atmospheric lensing effects, beam diffusion - hitting a
surface target with an orbital phaser is a lot harder than it looks,"
Kohran noted.
        "What can we do?" Sumire wondered.
        "Not a lot!" Kohran replied.
        "That, uh, wasn't the answer I was looking for."
        "I know, sorry," the Salusian replied.  "We don't -have- a
weapon that can engage a target in orbit!"
        "Don't be so sure," a familiar voice told her, and all the
Hanagumi blinked at their comm panels in surprise.

        "Correct, point five north," Yanagi barked into his battle
radio.  "You're just raking the battlefield, you're nowhere near the
palace!"
        The next burst slashed up the lawn of the summer palace, blew
up two of Fuchida's tanks, and disintegrated part of the main gate
before it winked out again.
        "There!  Perfect.  Now set for wide-angle saturation and FIRE
FOR EFFECT!"
        Nothing happened.
        "Tengu 1, fire!  FIRE!  Damn you, Akahori, why don't you
fire?!"
        Instinctively, though he could hardly have expected to -see-
the contract-built Miranda-class cruiser that had until moments before
been ranging down on the battlefield with its phaser banks from orbit,
Yanagi looked up - 
        - and saw a bright, star-like flash flare and then die above
the blue of the summer sky.
        "What the - Akahori?  Akahori, are you there?  What happened?"
        His only response was static, until his shock-widened eyes saw
a speck appear in the sky above.  That speck grew larger, and larger,
and larger, almost acquiring definition before a passing cloud blocked
his view of it... 
        ... and then it descended through that cloud like a submarine
surfacing in reverse, trailing wisps of vapor from its vast
superstructure as it sank until it loomed over the battlefield like an
upended Inner Galaxy office tower hanging in the sky.
        Of all the outlandish stories about the incredible unused
defense projects of the past that Hideki Yanagi had heard in his
career, the one he had believed the -least- was the fantastic tale of
His Radiant Majesty's Flying Battleship Mikasa.  This was ostensibly a
warship designed to take on a GENOM Executioner-class Star Destroyer
if necessary, should the Corporate Wars happen to swing toward
Ishiyama - a ship so secret that few had ever seen it.
        But here it was now.
        The radio in his hand crackled, and then the voice of his
arch-nemesis in the General Staff, retired General Ikki Yoneda, said
cheerfully, "Good evening, Hideki!  If I were you, I would surrender
now."
        Yanagi bolted up out of the cupola, standing on the top of his
tank's turret, and barked into the microphone, "You bastard, Yoneda!"
        "Harsh words coming from a man who just tried to overthrow his
lawful ruler," Yoneda replied affably.  "General Shinguuji will be
over presently to take your surrender, as soon as she and her friends
have finished breaking the rest of your toys.  Mikasa out."
        Yanagi threw down the radio and turned to survey the
battlefield.  Indeed, the Hanagumi were making short work of the
remaining Javkiel, and now Fuchida's tanks were coming down from the
heights to help with the mopup and move into position to engage
Yanagi's pitifully understrength armor company, now shorn of its
robotic reinforcement.
        "Driver!" he snapped, slipping back down into the cupola.
"Get us out of here.  Back to General Staff Headquarters - no!  To the
Navy Yard.  Ueda still controls the fleet."  At the driver's
hesitation he said, "Don't be an idiot - the Hanagumi are still
engaged and a starship's weapons aren't precise enough to hit us
without risking them.  Go!"
        "Yessir," the driver replied.  He put the tank in gear,
pivoted it, and pressed the accelerator.
        The tank moved for about a dozen yards, and then a pencil-thin
beam of yellow light slashed down out of the sky and very neatly cut
it in half, side to side, tidily avoiding anything that might
explode.  The two halves stayed together for a moment, and then
jackknifed, the front almost overrun by the more massive rear section
before it swung out of the way and overturned.
        General Yanagi scrambled down from the turret, pistol in hand,
still determined to make a run for it.
        At least, he was before a -flying woman- dropped from the sky
to land in front of him, level the crackling head of her strange
staff-like weapon at his head, and inquire cheerfully, "Going
somewhere, stud?"
        Beaten at last, Yanagi dropped his pistol and raised his
hands.
        The coup attempt was over.

        The Imperial Theater rocked that night like it hadn't rocked
in forty years.
        The Hanagumi returned there in triumph, met by cheering
throngs of Ohji's citizens who had caught the whole thing on TV.  The
crowds sang the Teikokukagekidan battle hymn as the eight pilots,
General Yoneda, and their Lensman ally rode through the streets in the
back of a two-and-a-half-ton army truck, the Kohbu following each on
a truck of its own.  It was like being in a parade, except without the
fire engines.  Reporters lined the route and mobbed the steps of the
Imperial Theater, snapping pictures and shouting questions.
        "Admiral Hutchins!" one of them called as Gryphon jumped down
from the truck in front of the theater.  Gryphon gave him a
hold-that-thought gesture and, grinning, caught Sumire as she stepped
down like an heiress alighting from a train; then he turned to the
reporter and said,
        "I'm not an admiral any more, pal - if you have to have a
title you can try 'Lensman'."
        "All right, then, -Lensman- Hutchins," the reporter corrected
himself cheerfully.  "What are you and Lensman Morgan doing on
Ishiyama?  How did you come to fight alongside the Hanagumi?"
        Gryphon looked first at Sakura, then at Ichiro; both of them
smiled and nodded.  Then he turned to the reporter, grinned, and told
him, "Well, there were no good pictures of me, 'cause we were secret
back in my day, but I'm no stranger to Ishiyama -or- the Hanagumi.
You just knew me by a different name back then."
        The reporter blinked.  "I don't under - "  Then he did.
"HOLY... !  You mean... that old rumor was TRUE?"
        Gryphon's grin widened.  "The crazy ones always are.  Now, if
you'll excuse me, I came here to have dinner and catch up with some
old friends, and General Yanagi's little party interrupted mine."  He
offered his arm to Sumire, who took it with a broad smile; the
reporter snapped off a photo, then another when, to his great
surprise, Li Kohran took the First Lensman's other arm, and the three
of them ascended the Imperial Theater steps as the vanguard of the
rest.
        Following them came the Shinguujis, also arm in arm, and then
Kanna Kirishima with her arm companionably around Kei Morgan's
shoulders, the two women laughing and elbowing as they half-jokingly
persisted in trying to figure out how they were related.  Maria, Iris,
and General Yoneda brought up the rear, the general looking positively
smug with one of the blonde warriors on each of -his- arms.
        Kasumi, Tsubaki and Yuri met them joyfully inside, having
monitored the whole battle from the theater's command center (with
help from a perfectly mundane TV set).  They went to the library for
refreshments, congratulating each other like a victorious sports team,
and whooped it up for half an hour to work off the bulk of the nervous
energy.
        Then, as they settled to a mellower state of satisfaction,
they realized that the crowds were still outside.  They could hear
them chanting through the theater windows.
        Sakura looked from one of her old comrades to the next,
smiling, and each one of them picked up on the look and nodded,
smiling back.
        Then, without saying a word, the reformed Imperial Theater
Company got up and headed for the dressing rooms while the Three
Daughters went out to start selling those cheering crowds tickets to a
very improvised victory show.
        It was the least-rehearsed show in the history of the Imperial
Theater, and also the most successful.  Sumire Kanzaki (who many of
the people in the audience thought had died) and Kanna Kirishima
brought the house down with their back-and-forth comedy routine,
ad-libbing hilarious disagreements about the most outlandish
subjects.  Sakura Shinguuji and - my God, GRYPHON is PETER MOREAU?! -
dazzled onlookers with a demonstration swordfight that was a better
show than a lot of real ones.  Iris de Chateaubriand's display of
psychic feats and magic tricks and Maria Tachibana's beautiful reading
of classic Russian poetry went over equally well, as did the whole
troupe's ad-hoc rendition of "Shounen Red vs. the Crimson Lizard",
starring Li Kohran as the heroic Shounen Red and Sumire (-way- over
the top) as the villainous Crimson Lizard.
        It was part talent show, part village fair, and all healing
for the startled and unnerved people of Ohji (and again, thanks to the
TV cameras present here too, almost everyone in Morita).  Once again,
danger had threatened their country.  Once again, the Hanagumi -
though most Moritajin had thought them lost into history - had come
through.
        It was true what the old people said, the younger generation
now knew.
        The Hanagumi never failed.
        And neither did the Imperial Theater Company.

        The wrap party lasted until 2 in the morning, by which time
Ichiro Shinguuji knew that he was a fool.  He would be expected at the
Admiralty at 9 AM sharp to start untangling the mess that fool Ueda
had made of the Navy by throwing in with Yanagi's coup, and at this
rate, he wouldn't get to bed until 3 - and God only -knew- when he
would get to -sleep-.
        "I'm just lucky Mimi is in Sendai," he mused as he shook hands
with Gryphon.  "You'll have to meet her before you leave Ishiyama, if
you have time.  She's heard a great deal about you from her mother.  I
think Sakura said you have a son the same age?"
        "Two, actually," Gryphon replied.  "And it looks like I'll
probably be staying around for a while," he added.  "The official
reason is that the Morita government has requested an International
Police office here in Ohji, which I'll be setting up."
        "And the unofficial reason?" asked Ichiro with a knowing
smile.
        "Kei hates it when I leave business unfinished," said Gryphon
with a reasonably straight face.
        "You're a lucky man, Commander Moreau," said Ichiro, shaking
his hand again.
        Gryphon glanced at Sakura as she came up beside her husband
and put her hand on his arm; then he grinned.  "So are you, Admiral
Shinguuji," he replied.
        "Believe me," said the elder-looking man, "I know it.  Good
night.  It was good to meet you and even better to fight alongside
you."
        "Likewise.  Good night, Ichiro.  Sakura," he added, nodding to
her.
        "Don't think you're going to get away with just a nod," she
said with a smile, then embraced him.  "-So- good to see you again.
And I'm glad you'll be around for a while.  Has Ichiro told you that
you have to meet Mimi?"
        "I'm looking forward to it."  He gave her a squeeze and a kiss
on the cheek, then told her good night, and the Shinguujis went on
their way with waves and hugs for everyone.
        Kei appeared at his side next, grinning with that bright-eyed
look that said she'd had a little to drink.  "Hey," she said.  "Me 'n
Kanna aren't tired, so we're gonna go see what kind of trouble a
couple of girls can get into in this town.  You be OK without me?"
        "I, uh... I figure," said Gryphon.
        Kei cackled and punched him in the shoulder.  "Don't do
anything I wouldn't do!"  Then she darted a sidelong glance across the
room at Sumire, who still wore her Crimson Lizard costume as she
laughed at some shared joke with Li Kohran, and added, "And, just in
case you wonder, -I- definitely -would-!"
        She grabbed him around the shoulders, gave him a slightly
sloppy kiss, and said, "Seeya sometime later this week, Lensman!  Be
brave!" before heading off to do mischief.  Kanna gave her old Chief a
bone-rattling backslap and a cheery g'bye, then stopped by the other
end of the room to make a complete mess of Sumire's hair before she
followed her presumed cousin out into the still-partying city of
Ohji.
        Iris saw her young gentleman (whose army career was probably
over, but who seemed satisfied to have done the right thing) to the
trolley out front, then bade everyone a sleepy but bubbly goodnight
before retiring to her room - unlike the others, she still lived at
the theater.  Maria congratulated those who were left on a fine job,
surprised her first commander with a hug, and excused herself for
home.  Tsubaki fell asleep right there on the couch in the library and
had to be carried to bed by Yuri and Kasumi, neither of whom could be
classified as particularly sober.  General Yoneda was long gone,
zonked out right on the pool table.
        Gryphon sat on the arm of a chair, watching Kohran and Sumire
talk across the room, not wanting to intrude.  Presently, Kohran took
off her glasses and wiped at her eyes with her sleeve; then the two
shared a hug before crossing the room.
        "Good night, sir," said Kohran, who was beginning to wobble
visibly on her feet from fatigue.
        He hugged her, half because he wanted to and half to hold her
up, and said with a smile, "You don't have to call me 'sir',
Kohran... "
        She chuckled.  "Sorry - force of habit.  It's been really good
seeing you again."  She backed up, adjusted her glasses, and grinned.
"Next time don't stay away for so long!"
        "I won't," he promised; then he kissed her on the forehead and
said, "G'night, Kohran."
        Blushing a little, the Salusian said goodnight to both of
them, and then they were alone.
        "So," said Sumire with a smile.  "Going my way?"
        "I could be persuaded," Gryphon replied.  She leaned closer, a
hand on his chest, and her eyes slipped closed as he bent his head to
meet her - 
        - General Yoneda shifted in his sleep with a raucous snore,
and both of them disintegrated into helpless giggles.
        "Well," she mused as she wiped at her eyes.  "That certainly
sets a mood.  Would you care to show a lady to her room, First
Lensman?"
        "I'd be delighted," Gryphon replied, offering his arm.  "You
still keep a room here?"
        "Of course!  I own the building, after all.  I haven't -used-
it in years... "
        "... but you insisted that it be kept ready for action, just
like everything else?"
        She laughed as they left the library.  "Something like that,
yes."  Then, becoming serious, she said, "I owe you more than I can
ever repay.  You know that, don't you?"
        "Pssh," said Gryphon, waving a hand.  "Debts are for
businesses, not friends.  Just seeing you alive again is payment
enough."
        Sumire accepted that silently, not knowing anything she could
say to it; then, as they reached the door to her old bedroom, she
said, "Kei is... a remarkable woman.  I hope one day I can have the
sort of serenity she has."
        Gryphon smiled.  "It took her a long, long time to get there,
and a lot of pain... but maybe you'll be luckier."
        "Will you help me?  I feel a great deal better than I did, but
I know I have a long way to go."
        "'Course.  Anything I can do.  Hey - can I tell you
something?"
        "You can tell me anything."
        "I have -all- the Crimson Lizard movies on bootleg
datacrystals."
        "Really!  You know, as the rights holder, I could sue you for
that," she said impishly.
        "Release them on some standard format and I'll recant."
        "Make it worth my while."
        "That sounds like a challenge... "
        The door closed.
        Somewhere off in the depths of the theater, a bell rang.
        Then, except for General Yoneda's snoring, all was silent in
the halls of the Imperial Theater.

             /*  Seat Belts  "Tank!"  _Cowboy Bebop_  */

                     Eyrie Productions, Unlimited
                              presented
                        UNDOCUMENTED FEATURES
                           FUTURE IMPERFECT
                        Aegis Florea, Part 2:
                       Commander Moreau Reprise

                               starring

                         Benjamin D. Hutchins
                              Kei Morgan
                               and the
                      TEIKOKUKAGEKIDAN HANAGUMI:
                           Sakura Shinguuji
                            Sumire Kanzaki
                           Kanna Kirishima
                              Li Kohran
                           Maria Tachibana
                        Iris de Chateaubriand
                       Ichiro Ohgami Shinguuji

                                 with
                           Yuri Sakakibara
                             Kasumi Fujii
                           Tsubaki Takamura

                              featuring
                            J. Alan Raeder
                            Hideki Yanagi
                           Nobuyuki Yanagi
                           Soichiri Shigumi
                             Yoshi Takeda
                            Hiroshi Ikeda
                             Jim Kearney
                           Hidenori Tokioka
                           Katsuhiko Kuroda

                                 and
                           Kiyone Moriyuuki
                             Ikki Yoneda

                          special guest star
                             Raymond Burr

                       Disastrously Underslept
                         Benjamin D. Hutchins

                          Visiting Professor
                            John Trussell

                        Big Sakura Taisen Fan
                             Rob Shannon

                         Usual Suspect Stuff
                          The Usual Suspects

                       Sakura Taisen characters
                         created by Sega/Red
                             designed by
                           Kosuke Fujishima

                      "Geki! Teikokukagekidan!"
                            by Ohji Hiroi

                    The Crimson Lizard will return

                         E P U (colour) 2002