Prelude

Disclaimer: Bubblegum Crisis is owned by ADV and JVC/AJC. Dirty Pair owned by ADV and Takachiiho & Studio Nue/Sunrise Future.

-Future

"Yuri?"

"Yeah."

"If you play that song one more time, I am going to kill you."

"Nope, I like it. It speaks to me somehow."

"Me too. It says 'play something else'."

"Humph. Kei, you're a Philistine."

-Past

"Priss?"

"Yeah."

"Please play something else."

"Nope. I'll get this thing right, then someday it'll speak to people."

"Yeah, 'play something else'."

Priss flipped Nene a bird as she studied the old style sheet music.

-Future

"Acton Base, this is the Lovely Angel."

"Errrr… Hi, Lovely Angel."

"Request landing vector."

"Certainly is a nice day, isn't it?"

"We're in freakin' space, a nice day and a bad day look about the same." There was a pause. "Say, you married?"

"No."

"Good. No, Kei, I saw him first. Look, I'll meet you for dinner when we land."

Before the two WWWA agents could get into a fight, the ground-based radio operator interrupted. "Excuse me, what is the nature of your business on Acton?"

"Cutie, if you were on duty twenty minutes ago, you might have remembered a Dreadnought vectoring in."

"Yes." The 'and' was implicit.

Looking upward for strength, Yuri continued, "It happened to be the property of the Dread Pirate Roberts. We've been following him for weeks…"

"I see." The screen clicked off.

"Damn, I hate when that happens." There was a long silence.

"Look at the bright side, Yuri."

"What's that?"

"Dread Pirate Roberts' ship is so big that it could scarcely sneak away."

"Yeah…" She ducked out of the bridge, "I guess we'll just have to board her to catch him alive. I'll be in the armory."

-Past

"Okay, Nene, what'cha got?" Priss opened a can as she sprawled back on the couch.

"Well, the AD Police just got this briefing on the new boomers, and since they seem to run away before we - the Knight Sabers - show up, I thought these tapes should be useful."

"Haven't you seen them?"

"Nope," she fluttered her fingers at Linna, who shook her head amusedly as she cued up the tape.

Nene took a look at the time codes and began narrating. "Okay, I remember this one. Linna, you were the only one able to get there." The picture was obviously from a helicopter snoop, and the sound was coming from the radio units on the police. Like most boomers, it was ugly, fast and strong. One officer hosed it down with a SAW (Squad Automatic Weapon) until he ran out of ammo. The boomer seemed to grin before cutting him in half. Others opened up with sticky bombs, napalm, and screamers, though for all the good it did they may have been throwing paintballs at it…

Suddenly Linna's voice came over the speakers, "Unit Three, I'm in position."

Priss raised an eyebrow at Nene, as Sylia spoke. "That was our computer, I trust?"

Linna continued, "I was here," she indicated a rooftop where the figure of her hard suit could just be made out, peering around an air conditioning unit, making a primary assessment. "Now watch this."

As Nene restarted the recording, the lone boomer fired at the still standing ADP officers, driving them to cover; then fired at the figure on the roof, saturating the air around her with shells and ricocheting pieces of roof and air conditioner. Linna avoided the attack, but before she could get back to position, it flowed into a manhole and disappeared.

As the snooped tape ended the ADP officers were poking around the manhole, as a scanner operator reported over the TAC net that the Boomer's sensor trace had just faded out…

A talking head started analyzing the fight from the ADP point of view as the Sabers fell to their own discussion. "Okay, what did you notice, Priss?"

"It's damn good. The ADP didn't stand a chance. And it ran the minute Linna showed up. "

"Linna?"

"Like Priss said, it's good. And it didn't run when it saw me, but when I first radioed in."

"I noticed that, too."

The Knights Sabers' attention was suddenly riveted to the screen, as the briefing officer spoke. "In short, ladies and gentleman, this new boomer is trouble. If you see one, hold position and monitor it, until we get some heavy firepower concentrated on it."

Nene added, "Until we figure out how to engage them, hopefully really heavy firepower, operated by suicidal maniacs."

Everyone avoided looking at Priss.

-Future

"Yeeehaaa!!!!!!!!!"

"Kei, you're having entirely too much fun, you do know that?" Yuri called to her partner as she lined up a shot. It hit true, as a line of sparks flared off around the bridge of the pirate ship.

"Kei, I need a sensor report."

"You hit, there's a lot of damage, and he's… he's… he's mostly dead,"

"Mostly dead?!?!"

"Well, there's some kind of energy leak that makes it hard to read what's going… Oh, oh!"

"Oh, oh? Is that the bad sort of oh, oh? Kei, I don't like the bad sort of oh, ohs."

There was no answer, and then an instant later there was no Lovely Angel. Nor a pirate ship for that matter, Nor a sixty-kilometer in diameter hole in planet Acton.

-Present

"Ooohhhh, my head. Yuri, I think we can definitely call that a bad sort of oh, oh. " Kei flipped a switch and flipped on the view screen. "Oh, oh."

To be continued.

Webmaster: Larry F
Last revision: May 21, 2007