Scribbler's note:

Back from the politics and back to the action.







Aiko paused again. She really should have brought her mother, or a friend. No; that probably would just make her more nervous. She touched her hair self-consciously, brushed yet again at her skirt. "Zoom In" was the hottest new talent agency in Tokyo. Once her picture was in their files, her chances at getting placed soared.

There was always a demand for "Tarento." The word came from the English "Talent," and usually meant young, fresh-faced girls who could hold up sample products or sit on television programs nodding and smiling at everything. Aiko knew far too well that tarento were expendable, the source inexhaustible. But there was always a Rie Miyazawa or a Namie Amuro; a biijin tarento who went on to real success. Look at the present Mayor; Aoshima Yukio had been a member of a comedy team!

Aiko's dream was simpler. She just wanted to be known. She wanted to be recognized. She would be just as happy to become a campaign girl for a mobile phone company as she would be if she were to be ushered into Tesuya Komura's hit-making studio. She wanted to be in front of the cameras. She wanted proof of that truth her in-most heart told her; that she was special.

It would help if she wasn't so nervous and so shy. She brushed at her spotless clothes yet once more. She was at the door of the photo room already. Behind her was the excited chatter of the other girls there this morning. In her hands was the application she had already filled out.

The door opened and she all but tip-toed inside. There was a big photographer's backdrop tacked on the wall behind her, reflector-hooded studio lights on all sides. Someone was already efficiently placing her on her marks, tilting her head, giving a final fussy touch to her hair with a silver comb. She wasn't sure if the person was male or female; her attention was held by the camera on the tripod. It was big and heavy with attachments and spidery on its tripod legs and looked like some alien insect crouching there.

The camera stared blindly at her. Aiko's nervousness crested. She might be shy, and she might be driven by her dream, but she wasn't an idiot. Something was wrong here. She didn't know what, but it seemed to center on that camera. She took a step back before she even knew she was going to do it.

The flash came from the camera itself. It was an evil gleam, and the blind lens of the camera continued to glow. Except that Aiko was already scrambling backwards. "It's them! she screamed. "It's the Negaverse!"

Aiko was scrambling, screaming, trying to get to the door. The camera was lurching up, unfolding in some strange way to become bigger and more massive, wrenching itself from the ground to stalk towards her on long metal legs. Her fingers found the door handle. She pulled...and the green light found her. It yanked her back from the door and across the cable-strewn floor. Then green fire was all around her. The camera knelt, fixing that blind eye on her as it drank her life-energy like some sort of mechanical mosquito.

Until a lance of red light flamed across the room. The door smashed back on its hinges. A tall girl in a leather jacket was there, a weapon in her hands.

"Their dreams of stardom are not fodder for the Negaverse's appetite!" the girl declared. "I am Lita Kino, and you, you nasty shutterbug, have taken your last picture!"

Lita didn't wait for it to turn. She started firing. Pictures, backdrops, reflectors, stands, all came shattering down. She fired methodically, over and over again, devastating the studio.

The Shutterbug screamed like a motor drive loading an oversized roll of color film. It dropped Aiko. Then it whipped one tripod leg around so fast it almost cut the tall girl's cheek. Lita threw herself to one side. The leg came around again; Lita's hand found a broken bit of light stand and held it up to block -- but her gun went flying.

Now the eye was within range. The green light reached out. Aiko gasped as her rescuer was caught and held by the green beam.

"You...don't...get...me...that...easily!" Lita gasped out. The tendons stood out in her neck as she struggled to push herself off the floor. As Aiko watched, a glowing symbol began to appear on the tall girl's forehead. Shivering with the effort, the tall girl got up on her elbows, then to one knee.

"Lita! Here!" Aiko cried. She slid the strange gun across the floor.

It all happened in a split second. The green light blinked for a moment as the Shutterbug glanced at Aiko. The gun fairly leapt into Lita's hands. As the Shutterbug whipped back towards her a ruby beam lanced through the middle of the glassy lens. It froze, then toppled in a clatter of broken parts.

Lita let herself fall on her back. They lay like that for a moment, panting for breath, in the shattered remains of the studio. Then each rolled her head far enough to share a grin. "Yeah!" Lita said. "Dusted!"






SEARCH FOR THE MOON PRINCESS

Episode Seventeen : The God Gun



Sirens were outside in the night, blocks away but getting closer with their electronic wails. A helicopter whispered overhead, blades cutting the heavy warm air of early evening. It was already July, warm with the promise of summer vacation just two weeks away.

Before they left the ruined studio Lita made sure every girl there had a good look at the shattered heap of the Negaverse creature. They found a Polaroid and used up every film pack in the place, and each girl took a handful of those as well. The days of treating this like a private war were OVER.

Lita walked briskly to the nearest bus stop and took the first Eastbound she saw. When she got out she was almost in the Roppongi. She slipped the transit pass back into its case. It was a nice evening for a walk and she had thirty minutes still to get to the Crown Arcade.

There was a bit of excitement in front of Roppongi Station. Lita strolled over there. She heard the amplified voice even before she saw the two black sound trucks parked there. There was a small crowd listening and even more people ignoring the speaker, two policemen standing in a relaxed way nearby, and the whisper of a helicopter circling slowly overhead. Lita shaded her eyes against the bright lights of the Roppongi and looked up, but she couldn't spot the helicopter. She shrugged.

"What are Murayama and the LDP thinking?" The right-wing harangue was already in full swing as Lita approached. "Selling us out to the Koreans -- pure appeasement, that's what it is. It wasn't enough that our government gave them tears...did they have to give them a billion yen and four shiny new reactors, too? Does North Korea really need more nukes? Those Nodong-1 missiles are already," and here he pointed dramatically at a movie marquee across the plaza, "A Clear and Present Danger! Do you want them to be able to reach our homeland with nuclear warheads as well?"

Lita stopped for a moment and rested her forearms on a bike rack. This speaker was better than most. A plump man with sweat-shiny face and the woolen belt of a laborer beneath his cheap suit, he looked more the part then the Yakuza guards and drivers of the black sound trucks behind him.

"Why do we let the Clinton White House dictate our foreign policy? Are they so good at it? Look at Saddam Hussein...already he has rebuilt his army and won't let U.N. inspectors near his weapons labs. And that's exactly what the Diet wants to do with Kim the Younger; pay him off now so he can be a bigger problem later. So they promised to stop their nuclear weapons programs. What on earth will prevent them from starting up again once our backs are turned?

"We have enough to do here at home. Kobe still needs help rebuilding. Our streets and our subways are not safe."

Lita shivered at that last, herself. The poison gas attack in the Tokyo Subway had been only three months ago.

"We do not need the outside world and their International Whaling Commissions, and their nuclear testing, and their riots, massacres and civil wars. The business of government is not in Burundi, Bosnia, or Burma. It is here on our streets, in our failing economy, in the apathy and the laxity of moral standards and the thinning of Japanese blood by..."

Lita tuned him out there. The whole "Purity of Japan" thing struck her as terribly silly, and not a little distasteful as well. It was one of the touchstones of the right wing; a xenophobic "Japan for the Japanese" that distorted their thinking on everything from economic policy to education reforms. Fortunately the fanatical right-wing had been far from power since the end of World War II. Unfortunately, even with the LDP back in power they were at their strongest yet.

Politics wasn't something that much interested Lita. Amy had told her a few things, though. Lita shook her head wryly. When did that girl find time to sleep?

In another fifteen minutes she was in Azabu-juuban. Kosuke was waiting for her at the corner. The wiry young gang-member was leaning against the sleek fairing of a large motorcycle. A Kawasaki Ninja, Lita saw as she came up to it. It was black with red pinstriping and looked mean and powerful.

"Bo...bo...bosozuku!" she said, hiding her mouth with her hand.

"Don't be cute." Kosuke came to his feet. "It isn't stolen -- I'm borrowing it from a friend."

The note of the helicopter changed as it made a sharp turn somewhere above them. Kosuke and Lita were silent for a moment, listening to it. "That's the same helicopter I heard before," Lita said. "I've been hearing it since I left that studio."

Kosuke's face changed. "Get on," he said.

"Kosuke?"

"It's got to be the gun. They're tracking you, Lita -- you have to lose that helicopter! Don't go home. Meet me at Akihabara Station, electronics arcade side, at ten. And whatever you do, don't power up the gun!"

Lita didn't waste time switching mental gears. She swung on to the bike. The electric starter whined for less than a second before the engine caught. As it coughed and stuttered she quickly killed the choke. The moment it stabilized she levered it off the stand and let out the clutch.

"Ken," she murmured as memory caught at her. He had taught her how to ride. Then the black motorbike was roaring into action. She felt the front fork lifting and quickly leaned, fighting the front wheel back to the ground. The engine was already whining and she shifted quickly to the next gear.

The note of the helicopter changed, too. Now it was obvious they were in pursuit. They would be in radio contact with something on the ground...someone or ones in cars who would attempt to cut her off. Lita grinned into the slipstream and leaned in. She was bare-headed to the wind and she had to squint her eyes against tearing up.

Salaryman work ethic or no it was too late for most office workers; the streets she traveled now were as vacant as anything in crowded Tokyo could ever be. The bike purred, the liquid-cooled OHC shoving her up to sixty KPH and the progressive rear suspension taking the road smoothly. She shot through the canyons between office buildings, through intersections without slowing, city lights flashing across the glossy fairing like shooting stars.

The helicopter was still behind her. It still showed no lights, and it's engine noise was strangely muted, leaving mostly the sword-swish of displaced air from the spinning blades.

Lita cut into an alley. She had to whip through a series of rapid s-bends, shifting her weight completely off the seat, to slip past piles of crates and parked vehicles. She grinned more broadly. She had ridden before, with Ken, but not like this!

She fishtailed a lot more then she liked as she pulled out of the alley. And she had lost quite a bit of speed, too. The helicopter wasn't fooled by any of this; it was now almost on top of her.

Lita leaned in again, sliding back into the seat until she was lying across the gas tank. She was in the warehouse district now, with lots of clear road ahead of her. She worked up through the gears until she was in sixth, opening up the throttle until the gauge flickered just below the 14,000 RPM redline. The wind tore at her like a large, furry animal. Her own hair was a lash, whipping across her face so hard she was sure it drew blood.

And she held it there. The coolant temperature rose slowly but steadily. The motor screamed into the night. To the late-night delivery drivers or lost post-work drinkers she would be a phantom, a low-flying fighter plane, a banshee that whipped out of sight almost before it was seen in the first place.

She pulled ahead, well ahead. She kept going until she couldn't hear the note of the rotor blades any more. Then she quickly braked to head off in a different direction. It was a little too quickly. The handlebars twisted in her hands, catching her injured wrist by surprise. She fought them back but too far -- the bike went sideways on her. She wrenched her weight back and laid it down before it could flip her; sparks sprayed around her as it slid.

She went almost ten meters on her side. Then the night was silent again, nothing but the ticking of overheated metal and her own panting breath. Lita tugged and wriggled and got her leg out from under the fallen bike. Her jeans leg was shredded to mid-thigh and blood was oozing from a couple scrapes -- but it didn't look serious.

Lita stood. Wrenched the bike back up and popped the center stand to hold it. She'd jammed the gearbox and the engine had died -- but nothing seemed permanently damaged there, either.

"Whew!" she said. Then she shouted it into the night. "Whoo-hoo!"

Then she threw her leg back over, started the engine again and headed off into the shadows.






The Akihabara. Neon and crowds. The largest and most esoteric electronics mart in the world and the only place in Tokyo where you were allowed to haggle. It was night now, and the wide low awning on this side of the JR station was crawling with technical sounds. There seemed to be an awful lot of serious-looking young men about, and few of them had tans.

"Lita!" Amy waved from near the ticket machines. She turned her chair about briskly and headed towards the tall girl. Lita noticed she no longer seemed confined to it...more like she was simply sitting in it for the time being.

Kosuke materialized in that way he had. "I have contacts here," he said.

"Amy's with me," Lita said. It seemed necessary to remind him.

They pushed through the main arcade, the wiry little gang-member in the lead. Racks of portable televisions and walkmans, stacks of hard drives and floppy drives and VCRs, boxes of recordable media and software, bins of components. Flashing lights, day-glo price stickers, cryptically technical descriptions on small pieces of paper and scrawled across masking tape. Amy looked with bright eyes, taking in motherboards and RAM chips and multi-legged CPUs with their backbones of bright heatsink, miniature cameras and FM crystals and lithium power cells in bubble wrap.

They reached the back of one stuffed and junky-looking little shop. A serious and seemingly balding young man opened a tiny plywood door plastered with invoices. They passed through. It was a storeroom crowded with boxes crammed right up to the ceiling. There was just room for Amy's chair, which was good, because Lita would just as soon not have to annoy them by throwing their stock out into the arcade.

At the back of the room was another door. Amy murmured dryly, "Curiouser and curiouser."

Inside was a large wooden table strewn with loose parts. Oscilloscopes and power supplies and soldering stations sat everywhere. Tall shelves covered every wall and on them was a gluttony of mysterious components. Three were seated about the table. One young man was plump and had a white Comdex t-shirt. One was thin as a rail, with bad skin and a "Dirty Pair" t-shirt. The last had long hair and wore all black and his shirt read "Doom-II."

"Kosuke," one said without getting up. "She have the gun?"

"Who's the chick in the wheelchair?" another asked.

Amy smiled brightly. Lita raised her eyebrow briefly. She wondered how her friend would handle this. "I just came along for the ride," Amy said. "I might look for some parts for my new computer on the way out."

"Let me guess," said the large one. "You got a shiny new Compaq to surf the internet."

"Naw," Amy said lightly. "I let the server deal with searches. It has the firewall and the RAID array. I'm building my own high-power portable."

"Want a P54C mobo? I could get you one of the 100 Mhz chips." It was a challenge; prove she knew what she was talking about or shut up.

Amy smiled again. "Are you kidding? The Pentium still has trouble dividing by zero. Besides, the 603e runs at least as fast for half the power and a quarter the heat -- even when clock-chipped."

Lita glanced from one to the other. It was all Geek to her.

One of the boys gave a low whistle. "I take it you aren't building a stock winbox," he said with a grudging admiration growing in his voice.

"Let Microsloth near my baby? It's going to be a 'nix box, probably the Linux 1.2.0 until I get around to compiling my own kernel," Amy said. "I'll be mostly running a rapid-access database with an intelligent search algorithm I've been working up in LISP."

"Whoo!" The one with the "Doom" t-shirt stood up and offered his hand, palm up. Amy slapped it. "Chibi, Megane, Heya," he pointed around the room. "Is she super-geek too?" he looked towards Lita.

Amy grinned. Lita was beginning to see that was a very, very dangerous expression on her black-haired friend. "She hits people," Amy said. "She's good at it."

"Oh," the boys said. They sat for a long moment, looking at Lita, taking in just how big she was and how confidently she stood, and digesting the idea that she might be just as good at what she did as Amy was at what she did. The room finished tilting, and now it was the boys who were looking uphill.

"May we see the gun?" Kosuke asked for them.

The weapon looked even more technical under good light. It was heavy, two-handed, and looked like it came off the set of the last Star Wars movie. Chibi, the big one, opened it up carefully. "Well looky here," he said. "See how these components are just epoxied in? And how that mount there was filed off? This thing's a tool-up prototype. Not the first working model. But one of the first attempt to run it out in production numbers."

"That means they might have more of these?" Lita asked.

"In time," he answered. "This has government contract written all over it, and that slows the pipeline a lot. Figure three years or more before testing is done even on the prototype. Oh, wow!"

"What?"

"The damn thing has a fuel cell! No wonder it seems to run forever."

"A fuel cell?" The others crowded in. "Cool!"

"Any idea how it works?" Amy asked.

"No idea at all. And from the looks of that discharge tube, neither do they. Typical engineer thinking...if it works, scale it up. Let someone else worry about the theory behind it."

Chibi bent a magnifier over the gun, and spread out a clean t-shirt on the workbench. Soon his friend was handing him tools and recording parts as he dug into the gun's innards.

The guy with the long hair and the "Doom" shirt drew Amy aside while the others worked. "I saw some things last week that could be the start of a real dream machine -- if someone had the cash to put it all together," he said.

"That would be?" Amy asked.

"Some mil-spec titanium cases out of a canceled US Air Force project. Also have a friend who might be able to get his hand on a variant of the tsunami motherboard they use for running benchmarks at Motorolla. Fit those together and you'd have a start on a laptop that would make a 530c 'Blackbird' look like the Spruce Goose."

"I'll get you the cash," Amy said. "I can do the soldering side, but I don't have the tools for case modification."

"Be glad to help. This sounds like fun!"

"Hey, you guys," Lita called. "I think we've found it."

"Here's the transmitter." Chibi pulled a component out of the guts of the gun. "Nasty business. It went into transmit mode when you fired the gun. Typical government paranoia; they don't even trust their own people."

"They were tracking you by radio, Lita," Amy said. "If you hadn't ridden out of range on that bike they would have grabbed you by now."

"Whew," Lita said. "Good time to smash it."

"Wait." Amy held up a hand. "Let's not. This could be an ace in the hole if we use it right."

"Hey, I just realized..." the three boys went into a hurried discussion. They came up smiling. "We think we've got just the parts you need to turn that transmitter back on the guys who made it..."






He knew what was going to happen.

That was a simplification. The future wasn't like a book, Greg thought. It was more like a weather forecast, and for roughly the same reason. He had attempted to explain it to Amy once.

"Chaos Mathematics," the super-smart girl had said back to him. "The slightest random variation multiplies geometrically over time. A butterfly flaps its wings in Burma. Two weeks later there's a monsoon in Madagascar."

There were patterns, flows. From day to day, moment to moment the patterns changed around him, reacting to every random fluctuation. But some events persisted. They might change slightly as to the cast, or the date, but they seemed all but inevitable.

Queen Beryl and the Moon Princess. They had to meet. They had to play out this last endgame of a conflict that had started when she was but a child. And in most of his visions, the Moon Princess would already be the Queen's prisoner when they met at last.

"Greg?" the friendly, helpful doctor said gently. Greg looked up, but just to be polite. He could see this friendly unassuming room with the big table, the scattered brightly-colored toys, and the unassuming file cabinet quite well in the sight of his mind's eye.

"My parents told you I was having bad dreams," he said to the child psychologist.

"Would you like to talk about them?"

The visions had been getting stronger and stronger by the day. Greg moved now through a dream world, a thousand shadows chasing every moment. They were most disconcerting when they revolved around his own actions. As they did at this moment. He knew why they were getting stronger, of course. He knew the thing that lurked inside him and longed to be removed. And he welcomed what would happen -- no living thing could see the future as he did and remain sane for long.

This moment. A choice had crystallized. A path he had never seen before. Down the old path he saw himself change. He saw himself end suddenly in a number of horrid ways -- but in too many of those paths, not before he had killed Amy.

But now was a new path, narrow and treacherous. It lead to pain, himself writhing on a steel table, perhaps dying there. But somewhere beyond that table lay a slim chance of a hope greater than any he had ever seen before.

Pain lay on that path. Excruciating pain, pain enough to drive someone mad. But on this path lay no chance that he would come to bring death to the serious girl with the midnight-black hair.

"I would like to talk about my nightmares," Greg told the child psychologist. Not a bad man at all. Not a man who even guessed that what he wrote about his patient would trickle higher and higher into the secret networks until someone at Department Six saw something they understood -- and sent their men out after Greg.

He told the man what was needed. Then went back to school. And marveled how calm he could be, and how bright the sunlight was, when he knew his doom so well; to the hour, to the smell of the anesthetic they would use, to the first bite of their cold steel instruments.






Amy was sweating freely. She pulled at one leg then the other, using a bath towel for leverage. The Wagner frames had been removed recently but her legs were still terribly stiff.

The first days had been the hardest. It took most of her strength and will just to face her fear and get out of the chair and try to move her mangled legs again. And it had been as bad as she had feared. Maybe worse. She couldn't even straighten her legs completely. Her ankles were like wood. And the moment she tried to force her legs a little past those limits the pain had been sharp and hot.

Not even her mother knew the tears she had shed. And not even Amy knew how she had managed to keep at it anyhow. To push against fear and pain and to try against all hope to get her legs to move freely again. But after the first few days it became easier. She could see and feel the difference every day. And she knew that she would once again, one day, walk.

It was early evening now, and her mother was already home. The house was warm and clean and she knew the bath was already hot and waiting for her. Amy went through everything on the Xeroxed sheet the hospital's physical therapist had given her. It still wasn't easy for her, and she gritted her teeth and held back her fears and doubts with both hands. The left leg was still giving her trouble -- it wouldn't reach full extension. Amy massaged the back of her thigh, digging her fingers into the great muscle there. She stretched the leg as far out on the tatami as it would go. Took a deep breath. Then pushed down at her own knee with both hands.

Her cry of pain brought her mother running. "Amy! You're overdoing it!"

"I'm not!" Amy's face was streaming with tears, but she was smiling. "That was a good pain...I broke loose some real scar tissue there. It's moving a lot more easily now." She looked up at her mother. "I know what I'm doing, mom. Trust me."

"I...I do," she said. Her face held mingled pain and pride. Pride in her daughter, and the pain any mother feels when she understands she can't protect her child from everything. She made an effort and smiled. "However," she said as lightly as she could manage, "in my professional opinion you've done enough for one day,"

"I concur, Doctor," Amy grinned in return.

"Catch your breath, dear, then take your bath. I'll have dinner ready."

"Mother..." Amy said. It was time. It was the moment.

"Amy?"

"Mom, you do trust me. You know I've never lied to you. And you trust my quality of thinking. Mom, I'm going to tell you something, but I need for you to think of me as a trained observer...not as a child spinning tales."

"I'm not sure I understand," her mother said. "Please go on."

"April," Amy said. "The first rash of cases of a mysterious ailment. No pathogen, nothing ever showed up on bloodwork, but people were falling over in the street. A few even died."

"Amy..." Doctor Mizuno said warningly. "I remember those. It was decided it was public health business. It was decided at the highest levels that no action was to be taken locally."

"You mean it was decided to cover it up," Amy said simply.

Her mother just looked at her. Her eyes narrowed as her gaze went inward; remembering, analyzing. "Go on," she said.

"There were also creatures sighted. Never a good eye-witness, never a photograph."

"I...remember. I still hear gossip about those things. One of the nurses in my department claims to have seen one."

"I met my first one at the Crystal Academy cram school," Amy said. She took a deep breath. "I fought and destroyed it."

"Amy?" Her mother knelt by her and took one hand in her own. She looked searchingly into her daughter's eyes. Her gaze flickered towards her daughter's injured legs.

Amy gave the slightest nod. "I'll get to that," she said. "I fought another at Osa-P. Serena Tskuino was there with me. And Molly. There was already another girl who had started fighting the things. A Shinto Priestess at the Hikawa Shrine."

"Raye Hino," her mother said quietly. "She vanished, when the shrine was closed."

"We learned, bit by bit, that these things were just soldiers. The first sorties from an enemy from somewhere else. Another, parallel reality we've been calling the Negaverse." Amy sighed. She reached into the purse on the low table near her. Fished out something that glittered.

"That wasn't the whole story," she told her mother then. "The Negaverse had attacked once before, a long time ago. There were...defenders...who had beaten them back." She held up the transformation pen. In her eyes new tears sparkled. "I'm your daughter. Nothing will ever change that. But once, in another time and place, I was also the Princess Mercury...defender of the Silver Imperium."

She saw the doubt growing in her mother's eyes. "Mom," she said in a low voice. "Remember who is telling you this. Remember that you trust me. Remember all the other things you have heard, and seen, and could not help wondering about."

"It would help...it would help if there was some concrete proof," her mother said doubtfully.

Amy held the pen sadly, her hand open, the pen on the open palm. "I can't use it now," she said. "I'm not strong enough yet."

"Amy, Amy," her mother shook her head. "I can believe all this. I don't want to but I can. It makes too much sense; it explains too many things that I have seen but tried to ignore." She sighed. Then she cupped her hands around her daughter's face. "What I can't accept is you out there battling against it. I've never lived in wartime. I don't know what it is like to have a child sent into the Army, going out to war. You are my child, my sweet girl, and I am not ready to see you as a soldier."

"I...I understand," Amy said. "I knew this was going to be hard for you."

"Does Mrs. Tsukino know?" she asked suddenly, sharply.

Amy's face twisted a little in pain. "I don't think so," she said. "I tried to protect her daughter, mom. I tried to keep her out of it. But I can't. Serena is important to this somehow. I got hurt after I shut her out."

She sat up, uncurled her legs with a wince. Put her weight on the edge of the table. "All young people are involved in this whether we want it or not. The Negaverse prefers us for its victims. And it is too fast, too fluid for the normal authorities to shut them down. We'll take all the help we can get, mom -- but like it or not this is our battle too."

"Amy!" her mother said. She held one hand in front of her mouth. Then dropped it, slowly. Her mouth curved slowly into a grin as wide as any of Amy's. "Amy....you're STANDING."

She caught her daughter just before she fell.






Yamamura looked moodily over the dark water of Tokyo Bay. It was a clear night and very pretty and it didn't suit his mood, not at all.

They'd picked him for Department Six because he was a certain kind of cop. Yamamura recognized that now, and it wasn't a flattering recognition. They'd picked him because he was idealistic, old-fashioned, even a little stodgy. A cop that insisted on doing things by the book even when looking the other way would be better for the department...or his own promotion.

He was also the only kind of cop that could function out here without supervisors or clear orders. A youngster of unblinking loyalty who followed orders with a snap would fall apart without them -- or lose all care and all morality in his uncontrolled freedom. And why was Yamamura on his own? Plausible deniability, like they said in the spy movies. He was out here with just enough support to get the job done. If something went wrong Department Six would vanish back into the shadows and all that was left would be a cop who'd exceeded his orders.

If all went well the "monsters" and "anti-monsters" his contact had spoken of would take each other out, and he would clean up the evidence. No more problem, and no public outcry either. If it went badly, though?

He looked at the sparkle of the Rainbow Bridge and the late-night traffic. The "Yurikamome" monorail was just sliding around the flamboyant sight-seeing curve before it headed over the water towards him.

Amy. In a wheelchair. He couldn't remove the image from his eyes. A lively young girl crippled in this secret war of theirs. She could be his child. Could he stand by and let that happen again, to another?

"Inspector." The voice was low, the man hidden in coat and in shadow. Yamamura wasn't entirely surprised to see him, even though he had come out here on a whim, making no prior contact with anyone.

"I can't...." Yamamura said. "You have to stop them. For their own good."

"Hm?" The man made an interrogative sound.

"The children. They've gotten it into their heads that they are responsible for fighting this thing. It isn't right! That's why we have police, that's why we have public health agencies and Self Defense Forces! How can we be one of the most advanced nations in the world yet let children fight our battles for us?"

"I understand how upset you are, Inspector."

Yamamura stiffened. This wasn't the man he had met with before.

"You are right," the man said then. "This is no longer something that should be in private hands. As a matter of fact, we've been having some trouble locating these children you mentioned. Perhaps you could help?"

Yamamura didn't like the sound of any of it. "There is a school involved," he temporized.

"We know all about that school," the man said bluntly. "Names, please, Inspector." When Yamamura continued to hesitate, the man said, "Now."

The skin was crawling on the back of his neck. Primitive fear-reaction. He couldn't see a weapon, but he knew one was there. Yamamura's own gun was at the back of his belt, below his coat. He'd never reach it in time. And maybe this was for the best anyhow. Official interest, official orders, the children ordered away from their rash path.

He could try to tell himself that, but he didn't really believe it. He opened his mouth. The right names, or a convincing lie?

Something "chuffed" ever-so-lightly over the sound of the water. Then the man in the overcoat slumped over.

Yamamura watched, not moving, as a second figure strolled nearer. This man's coat was open, worn loosely, and he felt in his pocket for cigarette and lighter as he strolled. This was the man Yamamura had met before. "Haven't you ever watched a spy movie, Inspector?" he said sarcastically as he neared. "You never go to the same spot twice." He shrugged and pointed with the cigarette in his mouth before he lit it. "He's just knocked out. Which is a lot better than you were going to be."

"What in blazes is going on here?" Yamamura burst out. He was shaking from his brush with death. And filled with anger now that it was over.

"Call it a jurisdictional squabble," his contact said. "The real story is far more complicated. But then, so is anything the government does. Your young friends have been raising quite a stink of late." By this time he was near enough to lower his voice. "Some people high in our organization want it stopped before the smell gets to those responsible for funding."

"So it's the old story of look active to save your job?" Yamamura asked with heavy humor.

"Worse." The cigarette flared, and there was enough light for Yamamura to see the anger the man was making no attempt to hide. "The pressure's on to get results, and they don't care what methods they use."

"You don't mean..."

"I don't make war on children!" the man spat. "There's something called the 'Functional Plans Committee,' Inspector. Ever hear a more puerile organizational name? They aren't what they sound like. What they are is the late Shin Taki and men like him. And they've taken a child already. A boy they think has some link to these Negaverse things."

"I...I understand," Yamamura said. "I'll pass on the warning."






"Nuts to that!" Lita said loudly.

"I agree," Amy said with a voice that was calm but way too flat.

Inspector Kenjiro Yamamura looked from one to the other. He had never felt older that at that moment. Here he was, the previous generation, the ones that thought they knew how things ought to be done. And here were two vibrant, confident young women willing and able to take care of themselves and turn the rest of the world on it's ear while they were at it.

He tried again, anyhow. "Don't you see how ridiculous it is?" he asked. "A couple of fourteen-year old girls running around after dark, trying to do battle with some sort of nightmare creatures? What do you hope to do against them?"

"I have Shin's gun," Lita offered blandly.

"That's nice," Yamamura said sarcastically. "And you?" He swung on Amy. "That frost giant creature sent you to the hospital. I can't imagine why you would want to risk yourself again!"

"Inspector." Amy's voice had a clear, calm tone that cut right through what he might have been about to say. "I'm afraid you have not been entirely in the loop." She set her hands in front of her, fingers laced, in a quite unconscious parody of the functionary Yamamura had met weeks ago at the Metropolitan Government Offices.

"This isn't about creatures roaming the streets," she said bluntly. "This isn't even a local problem. What we have here, Inspector, is the prelude to invasion."

For the second time in far too few hours the skin prickled at the back of his neck. "Invasion?" he echoed.

"Those Generals we've met recently," Amy said. "They are vanguards of the invasion force. All of this activity has been to gather energy; energy they will use to crack the dimensional barriers. According to my calculations they will reach their goal within weeks. Perhaps less."

"You mean...hundreds more of those things are on their way?" Yamamura shuddered.

"Many more than that," Amy told him. "They mean to make this world theirs."

Lita snorted. Amy looked at the tall girl, and Lita shrugged. Old argument, it seemed. "Greg believed..." Amy started to say.

Yamamura stiffened. "That was the name," he said slowly, "of the boy." He watched Amy's face, dreading her reaction.

Amy didn't say anything. It looked like she couldn't. The tall girl stood abruptly. She slapped the table, palms down, then leaned forward. "We already decided we were going to rescue the boy," she said fiercely. "This just makes it personal."

"We don't even know where they are holding him," Yamamura said.

"Right, then. I'm going to see the Oyabun."

"I'm cracking the Ministry's mainframe." Amy had found her voice.

"First one that learns anything call in." And Lita reached over to press Amy's hand. "We'll find him, Amy. We'll find him."






Already the garden was changing. No wild thing could stay so free and untamed forever, not within the confines of the great city. As in so many other things compromise had to be accepted. To save it from developers the gumi had taken it. Now there would be yakuza parties in its quiet spaces. And more blood had been shed for it...if perhaps just bloody noses on a few that needed convincing to take the deal Shimizu had offered.

The garden was dark, wet from night fog, and smelled of wet earth and mildewed wood with a slight but definite touch of decay. The cottage that had been the old gardener's had been stripped bare and had the sweet tang of pine cleansers. The sliding screens were open to the garden's darkness.

The yakuza boss was seated on the bare tatami, clad only in kimono. He didn't seem to mind the darkness. Neither did Lita. She could hear his breathing, hear the rustling of fabric, sense the warmth of body heat, smell the presence of more than one man in the room. She moved as if she were the blind swordswoman out of a samurai movie, her sneakers almost silent on the old wooden boards.

Shimizu nodded gravely. For neither of them was darkness a hindrance. Neither would it be to the bodyguards that lurked somewhere behind him.

She sat and they contemplated the darkened garden.






Amy was in a darkness of her own. Monitors gleamed around about her. The LEDs on modems and the racked hard drives blinked rapidly in a REM of their own. Amy's fingers moved rapidly across the keyboard, needing no light to find their place. The mainframes were as permeable as she expected them to be. Hacker paranoia was paying off -- for the hackers. Everything had password protection now, but once you cracked that level, there was little security behind it.

She selected a minor official at random. There was no time for a subtle hack or a work of art. There was only time for a brute-force approach; one that would be uncovered within days. She reversed the official's email to find his account, then threw his wife's name at it for password. No go. Amy remembered a little detail and opened up another connection to check a kennel club BBS. Back again with the name of the politician's dog.

Once in she browsed his account and came up with the location of the local sysadmin. She didn't hesitate at the next challenge, but typed in "god." And as in so many cases, God was root...and vice-versa.

Amy noticed she had typed "whoami" more than three times in the past few minutes. She hooked up another keyboard and got another physical machine out there with it's own i.p. address. Of course everything was passing through multiple systems; she was bouncing through a server in a college in America and another in an internet start-up in Singapore, among others.

She started a new government department, the "Mare Imbrium Water Quality Control." Applied for and using her new sysadmin privileges granted herself an account in the Shinjuku mainframes. Backdated everything, and roughed in a six-month history. Then set her new department making inquiries and data searches within the internal network, while backdating all of them with her sysadmin's privileges. Of course none of this would hold up if the back-up tapes were pulled.

Then she started trolling tidbits. Sleeping sickness among water workers, first. Then sea monster rumors.

She was waiting for something else to bite. Something outside the Ministry computers. Something that watched for just this sort of rumor.






"Those bodyguards of Ehara's," the Oyabun told Lita, "Were supplied by Kanegawa-gumi. We've touched before, on other issues."

By taking the garden under his protection, Lita realized, Shimizu had put himself in opposition to another gang.

"It was going to happen soon enough," the Oyabun told her bluntly. Lita understood. Obliquely, he was telling her that whatever he did, he would always be guided by the best interests of the gumi.

Then he chuckled, lightly. "Did you really think you could beat up four of them at once?" he asked.

Lita shrugged in the darkness. "I didn't worry about it," she said. "I just fought."

"We can't help you find this missing boy," the Oyabun said then. It wasn't the jump it seemed -- everything he had said so far had lead up to this point.

"Amy will find him," Lita said. She hoped so, for her friend's sake.






Only the fire burning in her kept her awake. She was still too weak, her energies drained with the task of rebuilding her ruined legs. She could not fail this time. She would not.

No faceless agencies, no hot-heads looking for quick and dirty solutions, no political game-players looking for the most expedient answer, could be trusted here. They had proven it now, by taking Greg. That was the way outside agencies would react; by simplifying, by going after obvious targets, by squashing whatever made the most noise -- not whatever was the real threat.

A response. A quick flashing of codes. Amy jumped at it. What she found was such a kludge she was annoyed she hadn't found it before. It was pry-barred into the database with so little finesse and so much waste she should have bumped against it while trying to move around in there.

She started tracing back. And stopped. One eyebrow went up, Spock-like. There was a tap on the tap. Something so tricky and neat it was pure chance she had spotted it. She read the logs. Tentatively, she started a tracert.

And sat back, blinking, as it dropped smoothly off the net. Whoever this was, whatever this was, had skills to burn.






"What do you think of Sampai and Kosuke?" the Oyabun asked Lita.

She took her time about answering. The garden had grown chill, and a sliver of a late-rising moon brushed the wet grass with a pale silver.

"They're no motorcycle gang," she said at last. "They work for you, don't they."

The yakuza boss moved just slightly. It had an impatient sound, though.

"Kosuke has some fighting skills," Lita said then. "He's tough. I'm not sure I understand his deference. And Sampai? I really don't know what to think about him."

"The gumi can not involve itself," the Oyabun said bluntly. "Not now, at least. But I will send you soldiers. And they will be armed. They will answer to Sampai until the boy has been rescued."






Amy closed her eyes. Opened them again, with an effort. Then she bent over, fumbled at the Velcro on her braces until they were fastened again. Got her crutches into her hands. Lurched upwards, then waited for the darkened computer room to stop swimming -- for gleaming monitors to stay in place instead of wandering across her vision like an obscure screen saver.

She made it to the bathroom intact. Got some fresh water on the way back. The one geek trick she had never adopted was the bottomless appetite for Diet Pepsi.

On her monitor was something new. Someone...someone had hacked her. Expertly. And stopped just short of the last firewall, as if in some strange gentlemanly courtesy. There was a message, now...a message imbedded in a code stream, not a mere email. But a message utterly clear for all of that.

"Amy. Glad to see you are recovering. What you seek is at Building 19, Nuke City."

And at the bottom, a single signature;

"Jarod."






Four black vans moved swiftly through the night. Four vans with stolen plates, with filed-down chassis numbers, and with contents that would make a motorcycle patrolman turn white.

Amy was sleeping like a child, curled up on a seat with the braces loosened on her legs and someone's jacket tucked around her. Crowded into the van around her were hardened yakuza, bold with tattoos, in dark clothing and leather jackets, callused hands with missing fingers and noses that had been broken at least once in the past.

Not one of them would harm a hair on her head. The Oyabun had been very clear with them, of course. But as the vans moved down the long freeway out from Tokyo and across the Kanto Plain more than one battered yakuza face had taken on a softer expression; already Amy was less a charge to them, and more like an adapted daughter of the gumi.

Lita didn't care. She sat with long legs drawn up, relaxed but ever-alert. It wasn't a matter of trusting the gumi, or not trusting the gumi. Amy was her partner and her friend and anyone or anything that wanted to mess with her would have to go through Lita first.

One hundred and thirty kilometers north-east of Tokyo was the coastal town of Tokaimura; the town they called "Nuke city." Between Sumitomo and others there were over fifteen nuclear-related facilities there. Breeder reactors. Labs. Experimental reactors. Test facilities. There were government fingers everywhere and far more was classified than was not.

It would take them over two hours to get there. It was already three AM. Lita didn't struggle against sleep. She just didn't think about it.

On the seat in front of her Amy twitched, then cried out softly in her sleep. Nightmares, Lita guessed. Probably remembering the moment when that giant had almost killed her. Had shattered her legs. A man with a long red cut across his face patted the sleeping girl's shoulder comfortingly, and tucked the borrowed jacket back around her.

Lita didn't have nightmares any more. She no longer woke up in the middle of the night to go walking through the apartment trying to find her parents.

There were over twenty men between the four vehicles. And two women besides themselves. One was small, very quiet and, Lita suspected, very deadly. The other had medical training and might have once been Shimizu's mistress. Lita understood why they might need a doctor when they found Greg. She didn't think about that, either. Not much.

Amy was going to be a bad influence, Lita mused wryly. She wasn't in the habit of worrying about what if's. She wasn't much in the habit of planning ahead, either. But Amy's habits of thought were already starting to wear off on her. Already, Lita was beginning to worry about what the future might bring.






At last they were there. The freeway exit sign had a cartoon drawing of Albert Einstein. The four black vans cruised purposely down Atomic Research Street, turned left at Bohr Ave, crossed Pauli Lane, then turned left again at the curving stretch of Oppenheimer. "I have become Shiva, destroyer of worlds," Amy murmured. It was obscure even for her. "Oppy said that after they set off the first hydrogen bomb," she said, but not as if she were explaining.

On the horizon were the cooling towers of Sumitomo's reactors numbers 1 and 3. To the right, the low gray buildings of a waste-treatment plant, sealed since an accident in late '91. Most of the street corners here had large, 1950's loudspeakers up on poles.

The plan was not a complicated one. The gumi meant to go in fast and get out fast. There wasn't really a point in trying trickery or disguise. Besides, Lita found herself thinking, even government goons came from a certain social circle. It was old money, it was Tokyo University, it was Shinjuku and the Tokyo hills. Yakuza, for all their samurai dreams, were blue collar. Old Edo, farmer stock from Kansai, resident Koreans. They might wear fake uniforms or carry fake badges, but they would be found out quickly.

Sodium-vapor lights lit the concrete sides of Building 19 in yellow-green light. Windblown dirt and leaves were across the parking lots, and most of the narrow windows were boarded. Industrial barbed-wire fencing wrapped across the drives and "Keep Away" signs were spaced at intervals along it. The lone pick-up truck of a night guard or caretaker was parked in front.

The vans turned on to a rutted side road. They detoured around the facility, around more low buildings, a long-abandoned rail spur, a yard with rusting shipping containers padlocked and abandoned. The illusion was not so good on the far side. The gate had a gleaming new electronic latch and several cars and vans with low-numbered plates were parked within.

They put a thin copse of poisoned trees between them and Building 19. The small woman left immediately, vanishing almost instantly into the darkness. Sampai gave terse orders, with Kosuke close by murmuring advice. The boy's broad brow was furrowed and he was obviously unhappy to be there. Equally obvious, Kosuke was unhappy he was there.

"Sonoda, Ohtomo; you're with us," Sampai said. "We'll move out the moment Ikeda signals." He looked at the walkie-talkie in his hands. "The rest of you know what to do."

"And you're staying here," Lita told Amy. Firmly.






The first sound to split the quiet was the thermite grenade Ikeda had chucked into the transformer shed. It hissed and burned and sent out a shivering white light. Then a much louder sizzle eclipsed it in a sudden arc-light as the main power feeds to the building shorted out.

Lita was impressed. Yakuza were as a rule better at intimidation and leg-breaking, not at coordinated military action. She glanced again at the two bosozuku. This had to be Kosuke's guidance. She wondered again what his history was.

The security inside was alert enough. Two ran out almost immediately. There was a sharp crack from the treeline and one fell, clutching his leg. This was going to be bloody: once again Lita was glad Amy was back by the vans.

The yakuza moved into the fray. Their job was to engage the security and keep them occupied. The young people, and the two soldiers assigned to them, would be going in to the building.

"Time," Lita said. She left the cover of the trees and started a broken run towards the low gray building. Already other yakuza were within. The gate had fallen to another of Ikeda's thermite grenades. Another yakuza moved among the parked government cars with a short knife, gleefully spiking tires.

Lita shouldered her way through the door. She found she was on a short, low mezzanine looking over a loading dock. The obvious way deeper within was straight ahead. Straight ahead she went, at a jog, the god gun held across her chest.

A security man popped out of a doorway. Lita swung at him with the god gun and pushed past. Kosuke and Sampai would take care of him. She saw the elevator bank and the big open freight elevators. Ignored them to tackle the stairwell. Greg would be held on one of the lower floors.

They clattered down the long concrete stairwell, hands barely brushing at the steel safety rails. Emergency lights flickered; many weren't on at all. Kosuke had a pencil flashlight that leapt unerringly to whatever Lita needed to see next. She kept her hands on the gun and kept going.

She pushed open the door at the bottom of the stair and two guards fell on her. Lita was knocked flat. Before she could flip over a heavy body landed full-length on her. The gun, and her hands, were trapped under her.

Sampai bellowed and swung on something behind her. More feet were clattering and more men had arrived. Not guards; the shoes she heard were hard-soled, dress shoes that would go with business suits and young government types. A pistol cracked from one of the suits. Sonoda shouted and clapped a hand on a wound.

The man pinning her had started wrenching at her elbows. It seemed he wanted to pull her arms behind her back. Lita let him have his fun, and focused on standing up. She heard a surprised grunt as she made her feet. Then she ran backwards into the wall. The man's head made a satisfying thud as it hit. His hands went lax.

Sampai was doing his best to make a good account of himself but it looked to Lita like he was pulling his punches, afraid of inflicting real damage. She kicked the back of the man's knees then kicked his head as he fell.

"Deal with them!" she ordered the two yakuza. Then she and the two boys were heading for the large armored door that dominated the end of the corridor.

Kosuke got out a lock pick. Lita shouldered him back and triggered the gun. Red needled out and the door flamed. With steel smoke sifting out in an acrid cloud the heavy door swung ajar.






As far as Amy was concerned, the battle was a wild confusion. She was safe by the vans. She watched with infrared binoculars that could pierce the darkness, with walkie-talkie and scanner beside her. She was hooked in, focused, like an armchair general with his maps and charts following the battle from afar. And she hadn't the faintest idea what was going on.

It was painfully obvious that she wasn't a warrior type. Somewhere out there in the darkness Lita was charging around, half-winded, mostly blind, but in all her limited vision more alert to the needs of the fight at hand then Amy could ever be.

She sighed. She didn't like finding there was something she didn't do well.

She wondered if the tanks were doing any good. With any luck they had added to the confusion. They were certain to make the escape easier. Crawling around the area in completely random patterns were twenty toy tanks. Duct-taped to each was a cheap radio transmitter, and each was now loudly pretending to be the gun that Lita carried.

Amy checked her watch. Only six minutes. They had at least twenty before local cops and fire department showed up. They would show up in force, though, in full hazmat gear; in a place crawling with reactors and nuclear experiments the emergency services liked to respond fast and strong.

A car. Someone had responded already. The vans were hidden in the brush, at least. Amy turned the binoculars that way. A very narrow, flexible man snaked out of the car. He was dressed in a black suit with a black shirt and his face was pale with stretched-looking skin. He moved like the woman with the thermite, like the young bosozuku Kosuke, like Lita. Like a well-trained martial artist.

Amy shivered. In his hand was a small box with a loop antennae. He turned around in a slow circle then zeroed in on the nearest signal. One slender hand snaked into his coat to briefly lift a weapon in an instinctive movement, making sure it moved freely in it's holster.

There was a tiny sound not far away. A little electric motor, cheesy plastic gears. "Oh, no," Amy murmured. One of the toy tanks was heading in her direction. "Shoo," she whispered hopefully. It kept coming, its little random mechanism picking exactly the wrong direction.

The pale man with the radio direction finder walked deliberately. Following the signal. Heading towards her.






It was the three of them now. Lita held the god gun with an extra grimness. Sampai and Kosuke were supporting Greg between them. The boy was only semi-conscious. That was probably a good thing.

She wasn't thinking real hard about what they had found, and how he had looked when they found him. But she had used the gun quite a bit before they had left that cold steel room in the bowels of this "abandoned" facility. And she wished some of the doctors who had tended him were in her sights now.

Her walkie-talkie clicked three times. "No!" Lita said aloud. "It's Amy. Someone must have spotted her!"

They were still deep in the building. Far too deep. They didn't know how many goons were still between them and the entrance. "I have to stay with Sampai," Kosuke said.

"I know." Lita's face twisted. "You're his bodyguard, Kosuke. He's the son of the Oyabun."

Kosuke only nodded.

"I owe the Oyabun. But Amy...Amy is my first responsibility."

"I understand," Kosuke said quickly. "Don't worry about it. Go!"

Lita went.

She took the stairs two at a time. Her breath was coming in gasps and her chest was burning by the time she made it to the loading dock. Now it was across the open space in the rear of the building. She plunged into the trees and ran blindly, depending on luck more than sense of direction.

At last she reached her friend. Her weapon snapped up. Her breath echoed in her ears and her vision was swimming. The fingers that held the god gun were numb from oxygen deprivation.

The pale, dangerous-looking man in black was still, gun pressed into Amy's temple.

Lita kept going. She didn't stop, she didn't join his offer of a Mexican standoff -- she kept running until they slammed together, all three of them, in a tangle of arms and legs and weaponry.

Lita saw a pale face floating before her and started punching. She was shaking. It seemed a very long time before slim hands pulled at her and a soft voice was speaking with an odd precision in her ear.

"Stop it, Lita! He's down. Stop hitting him!"

Lita let herself be convinced. She let her friend guide her up, then to a seat in the open door of one of the vans. "We found Greg," she got out between panting breaths. "The bosozuku are bringing him out. They hurt him, Amy. They hurt him."

"It's all right, Lita. You did it. You rescued him."

"You found him, Amy. I'm no good at detective work. All I do well is hit things."

"Lita Kino!" And Amy took her face in both hands, turned Lita to face her. "Come off it, friend. You're a genuine hero. Now pull yourself together and let's finish what we started."

"O..okay," Lita said. She took a deep breath. Suddenly smiled. "We kicked butt, didn't we?" She jumped back to her feet. "First step," she said. She strode to the man in black. "You!" she said.

"Urr?" The man was still a little dazed. Around them, the yakuza were returning to the vans. Some had been injured. None were missing.

"Take a message," Lita said. "Tell Department Six it's hands off from now on. We're running the show now."

When she came back to the van the bosozuku were there and Amy was holding Greg close.






"Stop here," Greg whispered. He was conscious.

"Wha...?" They were barely within the outskirts of Tokyo; still far outside the area circumscribed by the Yammanote Loop.

"Stop the van," Greg said weakly. "You have to let me off."

"Nothing doing," Lita said promptly.

"You don't understand," Greg gasped. He levered himself up, sitting up despite his injuries. He was pale and shivering, still, but determination burned in his eyes. He reached out and took Amy's hand between his. "You did it. Both of you," he said. "You made it this far. Now you have to finish it."

"Are you crazy?" Lita blurted out. "You can't even stand!"

"I can stand long enough," Greg said. "Zoicite is waiting."

"No!" Both girls leapt to their feet. The van lurched then, and Amy fell back against one of the yakuza. Lita grabbed at a seat. "What makes you think we'll turn you over to her!"

Greg tapped his chest. "This will kill me if you don't," he said.

"Greg?" Amy gasped.

"The seventh Rainbow Crystal. I'm the last of the crystal carriers." Greg formed a small smile. "I think that's where my visions came from." His smile dropped. "I expected to die back there."

"I understand," Amy said in sympathy.

"That's not what I meant! I mean all the probable timelines ended for me there. I thought...I thought it was better that way. I'd never become that monster. I'd never hurt you, Amy, or you." He sat up fully. His feet were on the floor.

"Death is the only end of hope," Amy said softly.

"Yes," he said as softly. "I realized that when I saw you there...when you and your friends had gotten me out of that place alive. Dying ends all options. While I am alive, there is still a chance. Amy, Lita," his voice took on new strength, "the two of you broke the odds. You made the impossible possible.

Lita shrugged. "Long odds are better than none." She signaled. The van began to slow.

"Lita! What are you doing?"

"This is the only safe way it can happen. I've seen it, Amy. If Zoicyte reaches me within the city you will die. At her hands, or at mine!"

"I..can't...I won't..!" She clenched her hands. She was shaking.

"I know," Greg said wryly. "There's no time. You don't know how you feel about me. There's no time for you to figure out your feelings, no time to share them. Amy, I've heard you say all the words you need to. In a hundred alternate timelines I wake earlier, or the van stops later. You are more certain, or you hate me, or we are already..." He stopped himself. Managed to force a grin. "Annoying, isn't it?"

The convoy came to a halt. Everyone got out. The city was cold and dark about them, bleak in concrete and stucco. In silence the yakuza formed a semi-circle, a solemn salute to the wan boy in his bloody bandages as we walked slowly away from them. Lita held Amy tightly to her. "While there is life, there is hope," she hissed in Amy's ear. "Remember that!"

Greg turned at the edge of darkness. "With the last Rainbow Crystal recovered the Silver Imperium Crystal is ready to emerge. You've already beaten the odds," he said then. "The Moon Princess will be found. She will face Queen Beryl. But it doesn't have to end as it did the last time."






Next -- the next episode takes place on top of the Tokyo Tower and Sailor Moon fans know what THAT means. Tuxedo unmasked! The Silver Imperium Crystal found! Lita goes mano-a-mano with Zoicite! Don't miss our next episode: "334 Meters Over Tokyo"....be there and I'll show you!






Scribbler's Notes -- The Special Edition:


I'm trying an experiment here, and putting in some footnotes regarding the research that went into this chapter. Readers will agree it might have been better to put all the research here -- and leave it out of the story!

Lita's Night Ride: All the data on the Ninja came from Kawasaki's own web site. I have friends who have told me about high-speed lay-downs, but I've never ridden myself. I don't even know where the clutch is!

I also played fast-and-loose with Tokyo geography, and the time of day. Somehow Lita was able to go from an early-evening ambiance to a late-night ambiance and back to a mid-evening ambiance all in the space of three scenes.


Right-Wing Politics: Everything mentioned in the speech is from the period; the Kobe earthquake, the Aum Shinryo subway gas attack, even the detail about Saddam Hussein booting UN inspectors, or the Tom Clancy film showing at the local theater. The stuff about Korea came mostly from a recent Time article, but the reactor project, and the incident in which Japanese dignitaries cried openly while making apologies for Japan's wartime treatment of Korean nationals, were mentioned in many other places as well. However, I do not think these things would have been said in the manner I described within the context I described. Only in the most general terms was that a description of a right-wing stump speech; in detail it was almost certainly inaccurate. Two things, however; those black sound trucks are a fixture of Japanese politics, and the ties between yakuza and right-wing are well known.

The original manga was written at the height of the "bubble economy" when Japan was at the top of the world and the future looked bright. By the time the series aired (in 1991) the bubble had collapsed and the market was plummeting. I have chosen to set my tale in 1995; the date of the American dub release. By that date Japan is deep in recession, the Berlin Wall is down, and wars and ethnic conflicts have broken out across the globe. Even "Kimpachi Sensei" (the long-running "I love teacher" TV show) has dealt with gang activity in the classroom and knife attacks on teachers. It is a darker, crueler world I describe, with the Negaverse on the verge of victory and the need for the hope and heroism of a Sailor Moon never greater.


The Akihabara: Description was based almost entirely on what I observed myself on a September evening in 2001. I bought a minidisc recorder in the arcade there. And I haggled.


Geek Mythology: The little contest Amy gets into was "dumbed down" a bit for the general reader. I spent two oddly enjoyable evenings browsing dates for such things as battery technology and laptop models. You have to keep in mind that this scene takes place in early 1995; the "Pentium Pro" has yet to reach the market in significant numbers, and the FDIV bug is so well known it reached the Wall Street Journal. Intel's handling of the problem lost them the trust of many people -- and the techie community had a field day with "Pentium math" jokes.

1995 was labeled by many as the "Year of the Internet." Over a few short years there was an explosion of computer use; the introduction of the Power PC and the Pentium, of Windows 95 and of Linux, of the Netscape browser and java, of laptops with the power of desktops, of computer games like Command and Conquer and Quake. If I had left the story in 1991, Amy would be running on DOS and Melvin would have to download his jokes from a BBS. Pity, though; Amy would have made a good "Phone Phreak."

By the way, the three geeks were named after the "Lum fan club" in Urusai Yatsura -- except that I made up the descriptions first so "Pama" (pomade) became merely "Heya" ("Hair" in katakana).


Working it Out: Almost entirely based on the painful recovery I went through after being shot in the shoulder. Also a friend of mine broke his leg in six places and was in a Wagner frame for months.

This may not be the place, but much of Amy's medical and psychiatric history came out of those experiences. The technical details are mostly from a little red book called "Current Therapy of Trauma-2." I have compressed her recovery time greatly...although she has spent a half-dozen episodes in a wheelchair, in story time less than six weeks have passed.


Spies Like Us: I've been in that waterfront park. I took a picture of that scaled-down Statue of Liberty. I can't quite point to it on a map, but it's somewhere between the Maritime Museum and O-daiba, in Rinkai Fukoshodin out in the middle of Tokyo Bay. There's actually a scene in the first "You're Under Arrest!" that takes place in that area, too.

If you don't recognize "Cigarette-smoking man," you are not paying attention. If you made it that far, though, you might also realize Greg is "Chess-Playing Boy." By the way, I've always thought of Yamamura as looking a bit like the older Ken Takakura (he was in the Ridley-Scott "Black Rain," among many others.) But seedier, with a lot more of the detective that haunts the corners of the "Patlabor" movies.


Greg-O-Vision: You really don't want to hear me explain Chaos theory. The old butterfly/thunderstorm analogy has been used before, however. Few of the people who have admired those wonderful "fractal" patterns see them as a mathematician sees them; on one side of that twisting line is simple math that resolves to rational numbers. On the other side, "Here there be Monsters."

But, really, the idea of Greg living in multiple shifting visions is pulled directly from the experiences of Paul Maud'dib and his descendants in Frank Herbert's marvelous "Dune" novels.



Amy the Hacker: A complete and utter fake from start to finish. I don't know a DNS from the INS. That said, "god is root" is a frequent quote around UNIX people -- and shows up far too often as the ID of the local sysadmin. "whoami" is the only UNIX command I know...is used to figure out your current log-in name so you can try to remember what permissions you currently have.




Jarod: I have no intentions of bringing Jarod back again. He was just cute to use for this episode, as a sort of coda to his previous appearance. I was never a great fan of the TV show "The Pretender," but he did make an intriguing walk-on.



Nuke City: It exists, and roughly how I described it; the many reactors, the safety issues, some street names. After that everything is made up, mostly from my own hazy memories of far too many Army posts and a few late-night rambles on the wrong side of security fences.

The thin snaky martial artist is based on a guy from some of the great Hong Kong action movies. I'm sorry I don't have his name. The comedy routine of the weapon coming back at Amy is an old one...I was thinking in particular of the bit with the toy cannon in one of the Buster Keaton films.

Do I really have to mention that all those yakuza are named for manga artists? Ken'ichi Sonoda (Gunsmith Cats), Katsuhiro Ohtomo (Akira) and Riyoko Ikeda (creator of The Rose of Versailles, known to the fans as "Beru-bara.") Kosuke and Sampai got their names partly to hint at the Kohai/Sempai relationship between them...except that the subservient bodyguard is more like a teacher to the gang-leader's son.

Okay...the streets were named for Niels Bohr, who pioneered the energy-level model of the atom, Wolfgang Pauli, of the "Pauli exclusion principle" in quantum mechanics, and Robert J. Oppenheimer, father of the H-bomb. They are there because that is the hidden real threat in this episode; not the Negaverse, but the dangers of technology, especially in government hands -- characterized in this episode by the nuke.



The God Gun: Back when I was a young sergeant I was sent to the world's biggest game of Lazer Tag, run by the US Army. They got little lasers on every weapon. You need to fire blanks just to trigger a single blink, and the things are coded so you could fire a rifle all day at a tank and never make it go "beep."

They had referees; they called them Evaluators. They'd go strolling around with a special flashlight. This was no blinking laser...this was a big broad flashlight beam of death. It didn't matter if you were a soldier a tank or a helicopter; they shine that light on you, and your Lazer Tag -- sorry, "MILES" gear -- goes off. The Evaluators called it ...The God Gun.




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