Disclaimer and credits will be found after the end of the
chapter.




           DRUNKARD'S WALK II:  ROBOT'S RULES OF ORDER

                      by Robert M. Schroeck



7:  Didja Ever Get The Feeling You Wuz Bein' Watched?

"I had a strict rule, which I think secret services follow, too:
No piece of information is superior to any other.  Power lies in
having them all on file and then finding the connections.  There
are always connections; you have only to want to find them."
-- Casaubon, in "Foucault's Pendulum" by Umberto Eco

There is an electric fire in human nature tending to purify --
so that among these human creatures there is continually some
birth of new heroism.  The pity is that we must wonder at it, as
we should at finding a pearl in rubbish.  -- Keats


Friday, January 2, 2037.  8:10 PM

Another potential gate song.

Another failure.

And for some reason, there was an occupied police scooter
stationed at either end of the alley this time.  I had to park a
block over and do a little roof-climbing to get and from to my
arrival point without being noticed.

The scooters were positioned such that they didn't look like they
were surveying the alley, but I got the definite impression that
they were on stakeout.  The ADP was already interested in me; it
looked like they had recruited the N-Police into the effort.
Shit.

That had been three days earlier, the day before New Year's Eve
2036.  My metagift had come out of burnout on the first.  Along
with the return of the feelings of despair and depression I had
thought I'd banished on Christmas Eve.

I admit it -- I was getting lonely.

I wasn't used to hiding and secrets, not in the last almost
twenty years.  I had grown accustomed to being open and frank
about who I was and what I could do.  That hadn't been a problem
before MegaTokyo.  But now...  Now...  I would go to work at
Ganbare, and look at my co-workers talking and laughing about
sports and dates and I would think of how different my life was
from theirs.  Every morning and evening I'd rush through the
streets with the millions of other dark-suited salarymen, and
know that despite my camouflage I was different, possibly unique
in this world.  I'd sit in the window of a restaurant and eat my
lunch and watch the passers-by with my magesight:  golden beacons
of light each one, but flickering fireflies compared to the
roiling, seething pool of magical power that lay under the city.
Walking through plazas, I'd look up at the GENOM Cone and wonder
if my little acts of defiance made any difference at all.

I couldn't tell anyone about what I really thought, what I really
felt.  Partly because I and my life were *so* beyond the
experience of the inhabitants of this Earth.  And partly because
I was a fugitive, hiding from the law and the corporation both.
Opening up meant risking what little safety and security I had
managed to carve out for myself.

Or did it?  I have to admit, Lisa's offer was beginning to look
very good.  First off, she already knew *something*, and that was
half the issue settled right there.  She seemed completely
unbothered by my, um, exotic talents, and the very fact that she
had *not* used anything that she did know in an article seemed to
bode well.

But I wasn't sure.  And I didn't think I could trust my own
judgment in the matter.  I needed to talk to someone... someone
whom I knew.  Someone whose judgment I trusted more than I
trusted my own.

My apartment.  I went to the wardrobe and took out my helmet.  I
placed it on the dinette and slid open the cover that protected
the external keypad.

The keypad's a backup device, in case the voice recognition ever
goes out.  It accepts numeric codes for songs, rather than
titles.  Contrary to popular myth, I don't have the codes for
every song memorized, just a score or so:  ELO's "I'm Alive" for
a fast heal; "Lightning's Hand" from Kansas for my favorite
ranged attack; Queen's "Supersonic Man" for a fast escape with
some offensive power.  A couple others.  And the songs that
create simulacra of every Warrior other than myself.

I sat down, turned on the external speakers, and keyed in "The
Song of the Jellicles" from "Cats".

"<'Abigail?  I'm very lonely, Abigail,'>" I murmured as the music
came up.

"<Wrong musical, Doug.>"  For a moment, Kat's sweet soprano voice
seemed to come from all around, but then I heard the rustle of
cloth and leather behind me.  "<And I'm not your wife.>"  I
turned to see her perched lazily on my bed in her duty uniform.

"<Hi, Kat.>"  I rose, stepped to the bed, and bent to give her a
brief brotherly kiss.

She smiled warmly and breathed, "<Hi.  How're you doing, Doug?  I
don't see a fight, so you must just want to talk.>"  She uncoiled
from the bed, stretching in a distinctly feline fashion which
sent her long blonde hair swirling in a broad fan around her
waist.

I sat back down at the dinette and gestured at the other chair.
Kat slid lithely into it.  "<You're right,>" I said, nodding.
"<I've got a bit of a dilemma, and I need some advice on what to
do about it.>"

She leaned forward with an attentive look on her face.  "<Well,
I'll do what I can, but you know I'm only a reflection of your
own mind, so you're really just talking to yourself.>"

I nodded again.  "<I know.  But talking with my memory of you, as
expressed through this song,>" I tapped the top of my helmet,
"<is better than trying to worry through this by myself.>"

"<But you *are* worrying through this by yourself,>" she offered,
not unsympathetically.  "<This,>" and she indicated herself with
a brief head-to-toe wave, "<is only an illusion.>"

"<Yeah,>" I said, "<but you're a comforting illusion.>"

She shrugged, sending shimmering ripples through her hair.
"<It's your choice.  So, what's wrong?>"

I sighed.  "<Well, in a nutshell, I'm trying to keep a secret
identity here, but the reporter across the hall knows enough to
blow my cover sky-high.  She's hinted that she wants me to
confide in her.  The thing is, I'm *needing* someone to talk to,
and for more than three minutes a day.  No offense.>"

"<None taken.>"  Kat pursed her lips in thought.  "<So you're
wondering, should you risk talking to...  what's her name?>"

"<Lisa.>"

"<So you're wondering, should you risk talking to Lisa.  I see.>"
Kat nodded slowly.  "<Well, is she trustworthy?  What do your
instincts say about her?>"

I sighed again.  "<I'd like to think she's a friend.  She clearly
thinks of me as a friend, and maybe more... on occasion she's
been unusually forward and flirty for someone so culturally
Japanese.>"  I paused as I organized my thoughts a bit.  "<We've
also been through some nasty situations together -- life-
threatening stuff, even.>"

Kat nodded.  "<That kind of experience can bond people together
for life, you know.  Also, consider this:  if you think she
already has enough information on you to blow your cover, and she
hasn't done so already, then what difference will it make to give
her even more?>"

I thought about that.  "<That does make a fair amount of sense.
So you think it's safe to open up to her?>"

"<I don't know yet,>" she replied, shrugging.  "<Tell me more
about her.>"

"<Hmmm.  Lisa's young, just out of college last June.  She's a
bit intense and driven, especially about her job.  Or jobs -- she
hasn't said much about it, but it seems like she's got some
irregular night job somewhere.  Tenacious, too.  She can be
impatient, even demanding at times.  I know she's open to new
experiences.  She likes modern music and dancing.  Likes to go
club-hopping.  She's got a bunch of co-workers and other friends
that she talks about all the time, but whom I've never met.>"  I
counted off points on my fingers.  "<Like I said, she's *very*
culturally Japanese, particularly about etiquette, and that's
funny because she *looks* very Euro.  Hmmm.  What else?>"  I
stopped and thought some more.

"<Is she culturally Japanese about honor, too?>" Kat asked.

My eyebrows shot up.  "<Huh.  I don't know.  I suppose so.  I've
never seen her do or say anything that would indicate one way or
the other.  But I do know that except for her dedication to being
a journalist, she was raised in all ways as a proper Japanese
girl.  So, yeah, I guess that probably includes the Japanese
sense of honor.>"

She gestured with one hand, holding it palm up.  "<Well, there
you go.  If you feel you can trust her sense of honor, you can
confide in her.>"

I nodded thoughtfully.  "<That being the case, Lisa might take my
refusal to do so yet as a personal insult.>"

Kat smiled reassuringly at me.  "<I don't think you need to worry
about that.  Patience is a Japanese virtue as well as Western
one, you know.  She'll probably wait until you're ready to
talk.>"

There was a slam, and Kat and I both jumped; together, our eyes
leapt to the source of the noise:  my apartment door being flung
open.  *Oh no,* I groaned to myself.

Lisa marched in through the open door and barked, "Doug, we have
to talk!  Now!"

Then she stopped short and stared at Kat and me.  Mainly at Kat.
We three sat there like that, unmoving, for at least a ten-count.
I thought I saw Lisa's eyes narrow angrily for a moment, before
Kat broke the tableau by turning to me and saying, "<Then again,
she may force the issue after all...>"

I could only nod in agreement.

Lisa suddenly looked embarrassed; she flushed a bright red, and
she covered her face with her hands.  "Please forgive me for
barging in and interrupting," she whispered from behind them.
Her feet and legs twitched with the apparent desire to turn and
flee, but she didn't -- instead, Lisa took a deep breath, lowered
her hands, and stood her ground.  "We need to talk," she
repeated, more softly this time.

"Um..." I replied intelligently.

When that failed to resolve matters, I expanded on that with,
"Uh..."

Kat looked back and forth between Lisa and me, then rose and
stepped over to Lisa.  Holding out one gloved hand, she said, in
Japanese, "Hi, I'm a part of Doug's subconscious mind
masquerading as one of his oldest friends."

Lisa blinked.  Twice.  "Um," she started.  "Lisa Vanette.
Pleased to meet you... I think..."  Rather than shake her hand,
Lisa bowed, her eyes rotating in her head to stay focused on
Kat's face.  She seemed fascinated by Kat's masque makeup.

Kat laughed, that lovely soprano trill that Maggie says looks
like a waterfall of faceted crystal rods.  Still in Japanese, she
continued, "Pleased to meet you, too.  You can call me Kat,
that's who I look like and who I am for now."  The simulacrum of
my teammate and friend glided over to the table where I sat and
laid one hand on top of my helmet.  "Well, I can see you two have
a lot to talk about, so I'm going to get out of the way.  See you
later, Doug."  Kat bent over to brush another chaste kiss across
my lips; I heard a sharp intake of breath from where Lisa was.
Then Kat stood straight and pressed the "song off" button on the
helmet keypad.

The music stopped.  She vanished.

Lisa's eyes grew very large.  At the same time, I was hiding mine
behind my hand as I rubbed my forehead.

"Who... *what* was *that*?" Lisa whispered.

I took a deep breath.  "Just what she said she was.  Kat.  A
simulacrum.  Part of my own mind.  A creature of magic.  Take
your pick."

"No."  Lisa's puzzlement faded away into a firm (dare I say "pig-
headed"?) tone, and I uncovered my eyes to see a determined look
on her face.  "I'm *not* going to guess.  *You're* going to
explain.  *Now.*"

"I knew this was coming eventually."  I grimaced, then sighed.
"Okay.  But not here."

She narrowed her eyes again.  "Why not?"

"Well, for one, I am hungry and I don't feel like cooking right
now.  Get your shoes and coat."

                              * * *

Fifteen minutes later I parked my bike and we walked into
"Eriko's" -- an "American-style" diner near the University of
MegaTokyo.  We took a moment to brush off the snow -- it was
flurrying lightly that night -- and Lisa took the opportunity to
give the place the once-over.

"Why here?" she asked.  In her left hand she held my spare
(mundane) helmet *and* her camera; I swear, the thing must have
been sewn to her or something because she *never* seemed to put
it down.  Her right hand was busy trying to cure a bad case of
"hat hair" she'd acquired on the ride over.

I carried my regular helmet and wore my uniform jacket (with the
Harley patch instead of my insignia) over my jeans and T-shirt
ensemble.

I waved to Eriko, who stood behind the counter pouring coffee for
a customer perched on one of the stools.  Then, with Lisa in
front of me and one hand on her shoulder, I began to steer us
both around the tables full of students toward a booth at the far
end of the diner.  "Well, for one, the food is good, and
inexpensive, too.  And also, even if we're overheard, no one will
pay any attention to us at all."

"Huh?"  Lisa swiveled her head around to look back at me.  "Why
not?"

I just smiled.  "Listen," I said and inclined my head toward the
table full of students that we were passing at that moment.

"So there we were, finally talking to the captain-major," one of
them was saying.  He had a slightly maniacal glint in his eye and
was badly in need of both a shave and a haircut.  "And he looks
at us, and says in this haughty tone, '*I* report only to the
king!'  So the mage turns to the thief and says, 'Okay, let's go
break the *king's* kneecaps!'"  The table broke into laughter.

"*What*?" Lisa whispered when we'd gone past, and I smirked at
her.

"I found this diner while exploring the city last summer.  It's
*the* number one hangout for the University's role-playing
gamers."  I snorted a momentary laugh.  "You could confess to
assassinating the Emperor in here and no one would give it a
second thought."

Lisa's eyes grew very big for a moment, and then she grinned.
"Nice.  Good thinking.  And you say the food is good, too?"

We reached the booth, and I made an exaggerated bow to usher her
into the seat.  She smiled as she shrugged out of her coat.  "For
an American-style diner?  Yeah, pretty tasty."  As she wadded up
the coat and set it, along with the helmet and her camera, on the
seat next to her, I slid onto the padded bench opposite.  A
moment later Eriko, resplendent in her aqua 1950s-vintage
waitress' uniform, made her way over with a hip-swinging walk
that should have been accompanied by a burlesque show drum beat.
"Hey, Eriko."

She snapped her gum and held up her pad and pencil.  "Evenin',
Doug," she said, smiling warmly.  "Out on a date for once?"

I nodded.  "Sorta."  Across the table, Lisa wriggled and got a
pleased look for a moment.  I raised an eyebrow and asked her,
"Do you trust me?"

"To the ends of the earth," Lisa said with a dreamy tone in her
voice.  I raised my eyebrow again, and she started.  "Oh, you
mean to order?  Yeah!  Sure!"

I laughed and turned back to Eriko.  "Two coffees, one cream and
sugar, one black with way too much Nutrasweet.  A gyro, extra
tomatoes, heavy on the sauce, for the lady.  And my usual."

"Double bacon cheeseburger deluxe, hold the slaw, extra pickles,
double fries," Eriko recited from memory with a grin.

I grinned back at her.  "You got it.  Perfect as always, Eriko."

"I do my best," she replied.  She snapped her gum again, spun on
one heel, and swivel-hipped her way back to the counter, to
Lisa's unabashed astonishment.

"I think she's seen one too many American movies," I stage-
whispered to Lisa, who got over her astonishment and snickered.

Then she fixed me with a determined look and said, "Okay, spill
it.  You're the Loon."

I sighed.  I seemed to be doing a lot of sighing that night.
"Yes."

"You have super-powers."

"If you mean metagifts, well, yeah."

"You're from another universe."

That still stopped me short, even though she'd intimated that she
knew that much six weeks ago.  "How the hell did you figure that
out?"

She just gave me this knowing smile.  "Trade secret."

I looked to the sky and saw a fluorescent light.  "Remind me
*never* again to befriend a reporter while trying to keep a
secret identity."  Lisa laughed out loud.

"Don't worry," she finally said, "I won't tell a soul.  I swear
on my family's honor.  Tell me your story."

I thought for a moment.  "Well, I guess the best place to start
is my Earth."

"*Your* Earth?"

I raised an eyebrow.  "Of course.  What, did you think I came
from someplace else entirely?  No, born and bred on Earth.  Just
a different Earth from this one."

"A parallel universe!" Lisa whispered, her eyes wide.

"Not *exactly* parallel."  I smiled and waved one hand at the
view outside the plate glass window to my right.  "Our two
worlds' histories diverged in 1929."

It was at that point that Eriko came back with our coffee.   We
paused the conversation as she placed the cups before us, saying,
"Here y'go, kids.  Have fun," snapped her gum again, and wiggled
off.

As soon as she was out of earshot, Lisa looked me straight in the
eyes.  "What happened in 1929?" she asked.

"A lot of things.  But more importantly, what *didn't* happen?
And the answer is, in *this* universe, what didn't happen was
that no metahumans showed up.  Ever.  The Knight Sabers are the
closest thing this universe has to metahuman vigs, and they're
just mechanics."

Lisa looked over her coffee cup as she raised it to her lips.
"Metahumans?  Vigs?  Mechanics?"

"Oh, sorry.  Trade jargon.  Metahumans are folks who were born
with or somehow acquire abilities to do things normals can't:
fly, punch through steel, see with sonar, stuff like that --
metagifts."

"And you're one of these metahumans."

"Yeah," I nodded, sipped my coffee, then continued with the
definitions.  "Vigs are vigilantes.  Like the Knight Sabers.  And
mechanics are people who simulate metagifts with technology.
Like the Knight Sabers."

"You don't like mechanics."  It was a statement, not a question.

I shrugged.  "I don't have anything against them, really, but a
mechanic can have his 'talents' taken away and maybe used against
him.  It's a potential liability."

Lisa coughed diplomatically.  "Okay, let's move past that.  So,
what happened differently when these metahumans showed up?"

"Well, as far as I can tell from my reading here, both our worlds
had WWIIs that ran about the same -- not much surprise, until the
1950s there were maybe two dozen metas in the entire world and
the ones in the military didn't make *that* much difference on
the battlefield.  After the war... well, I think it'd be better
if I showed you."  I reached down to my helmet where it sat on
the seat next to me; I rotated the speaker housings to "on" and
thumbed the volume to low.  "Give me a moment, I have to set up
to target only you, otherwise the entire diner's gonna get this.
<System, load song 'I'll Play For You.'  Play song,>" I said
quietly to the helmet.

Seals and Croft immediately began singing, and I could feel the
magic shape itself around me.  Viewed in magesight, it would have
appeared somewhat like a lens and somewhat like a cage,
surrounding and connecting Lisa and myself.  And unlike most of
my other songs, it remained, slowly fading instead of vanishing
immediately when I shut down the playback 10 seconds later.
"<System, load song, 'We Didn't Start The Fire.'  Play song.>"

With the new song's first notes, the fading structure blazed back
to life; when Billy Joel began to sing, it focused all of the
effects upon Lisa and Lisa alone.

	"<Harry Truman, Doris Day, Red China, Johnnie Ray,
	 South Pacific, Walter Winchell, Joe DiMaggio,
	 Joe McCarthy, Richard Nixon, metahumans, television,
	 North Korea, South Korea, Marilyn Monroe...>"

Lisa found herself plunged into a storm of sound and light; it
was like standing in a hurricane of televisions, each one tuned
to a different channel.  After a moment, she realized that should
could focus briefly on the images as they rushed past her, and
began to make sense of the barrage:

A mushroom cloud, brilliant gold and white; an bespectacled man
at a podium, surrounded by a dozen people dressed in costumes out
of a comic book; a flash of a battlefield in a jungle, with
gunfire and flame and beams of searing energy.  An ancient
television commercial in black and white, with a caped and cowled
man hawking cereal; a fragment of newsreel, grainy and scratched,
showing a man and a woman in tight stars-and-stripes costumes in
front of a waving American flag; another newsreel with Cyrillic
subtitles displaying a dozen men with Slavic features who
demonstrated their metagifts for the camera.

The first metavillains, and the vigilantes that hunted them; the
first "adventuring companies" of civilian metahumans; the growth
of the peacetime metahuman military.

A wild-eyed, black-haired man in a room that might have been a
court, howling accusations at a table full of costumed heroes;
school children receiving injections; a young woman in a
voluminous red robe receives an ornate crown in a church.  A
bonfire fed by books; the lynching of a black man set topsy-turvy
when he explodes with light and kills his tormenters; a woman in
a masked costume speaking from the podium of the United Nations
General Assembly.

The images spun by, almost too fast to see.  Lisa felt as if she
were being yanked left and right, every new image pulling
fiercely upon her, drawing her in and filling her up.  Slowly she
realized that she wasn't just watching...

	"<We didn't start the fire,
	 It was always burning
	 Since the world's been turning.
	 We didn't start the fire
	 No, we didn't light it
	 But we tried to fight it.>"

A pitched battle outside the Kremlin; labor strikes in cities she
realized were European capitols; a bank robbery, and a guard is
reduced to ashes with a casual gesture from the masked robber.  A
coup in Argentina, led by a middle-aged man and a luminous woman
with the wings of an angel; prosperity in North America as a pipe-
smoking father in ludicrously antique clothing takes his family
on a picnic in a bloated, swollen automobile; the Rising Sun used
as a symbol by a growing reactionary movement that surges across
Japan.

Primitive-looking battlesuits plow their way through the jungles
of Viet Nam; Disneyland opens with a flying metahuman dressed as
Tinkerbell swooping over the crowd; a burning church, and men
dressed in white robes and hoods.  Elvis Presley on a television
screen; Nikita Kruschev pounding upon a table with a shoe;
Budapest in ruins, inhabited by thin, scuttling figures.

... she was living it.

Decades of experience, dozens of lives, sights and sounds and
touches and smells and tastes all poured into her and through
her.  She was a first-hand witness to the entire second half of
the Twentieth Century, and she had forgotten that this was *not*
the history of *her* world.  She was too many people, in too many
places, to remember the one person in the one place that was at
her core.

	"<Little Rock, Pasternak, Mickey Mantle, Kerouac,
	 Sputnik, Chou En-Lai, 'Bridge on the River Kwai'.
	 Lebanon, Charles de Gaulle, California baseball,
	 Starkweather, homicide, mutants from thalidomide...>"

A battle between metahumans over New York damages buildings and
sends deadly debris plunging into the street; the Queen of
England pinning a medal upon the massive chest of a giant man in
a costume based on the British flag; a rocket climbs into space
on a column of flame.  Metahumans with nonhuman appearances are
killed in gory public executions in the heart of Tokyo even as
more "normal"-looking ones are celebrated as pinnacles of the
Japanese race; a laboratory in which a scientist and a man
dressed like a wizard collaborate over test tubes and ancient
books; Soviet soldiers holding captive a manacled American
metahuman whose wings of energy droop and trail upon the ground.

A breakneck speed-through of maternity wards the world over as a
new generation of metahumans are born, some spontaneously, some
triggered by some outside agency like radiation or mutagenic
pollution; a wall is constructed through the center of Berlin;
the Beatles waving to the crowd at Idlewild.  JFK's head explodes
as Oswald's bullet hits; Sirhan Sirhan fires upon RFK; Malcolm X
is assassinated as he speaks from a podium.

She was hundreds of people, hundreds of viewpoints:  American,
Japanese, English, Chinese, Egyptian, Israeli, Russian,
Brazilian, Swedish, Vietnamese, Australian, and more.  She bore
witness to the greatest triumphs and failures of a century, she
took part in them all.  She only barely remembered that she was
Lisa Vanette; there were far too many others she had to be.

Freedom 7 and John Glenn; Apollo 11 with Armstrong and Grissom;
the youth movement grows in Europe and America, and metahumans
are there.  Woodstock enchants a nation and births a half-dozen
metahumans from its audience over three days; out of fear of the
youth of America, Richard Nixon attempts to cancel the 1972
elections and fails; Indochina explodes in blood and rain as the
French walkertanks crush all resistance.

Revolutions, coups, juntas; religious conservatism grows in
America and the Middle East; demagoguery and hatred abound.  The
JSDF is disbanded, and the Nationalists re-establish the Japanese
military, headed by the metahuman elite of the Home Islands;
tensions grow worldwide as economies weaken and scapegoats are
sought; the United Nations Security Council is called to session
again and again.

	"<We didn't start the fire,
	 It was always burning
	 Since the world's been turning.
	 We didn't start the fire
	 No, we didn't light it
	 But we tried to fight it.>"

The years spun by faster and faster, but there was no relief.
She lived through the rest of the 1970s, as tensions rose.  She
exploded into the 1980s, as the U.N. reluctantly took action to
halt the accelerating spiral of metahuman and military might and
international conflict.  The appointment of Warriors
International as part of the enforcement effort.  Familiar faces
began to appear:  Kat, Doug, the mysterious Maggie with her
hidden eyes... a dozen more at their side.  An Edwardian estate
under a dome of shimmering light.  Scores of metahumans of all
descriptions fighting them.  Battle after battle after battle; a
man who looked like a vampire.  The Warriors, all in black,
escorting a horse-drawn carriage bearing a casket laden with
flowers.

	"<We didn't start the fire
	 But when we are gone
	 Will it still burn on, and on, and on, and on...">

She was hurtling through a tunnel lined with images, lined with
lives, as underneath the song continued building to its end and a
brilliant light appeared in the distance.  The lives were now
flashing by too fast to grab more than fragmentary pictures, and
she was accelerating towards the light, the speed building and
the detail blurring and world rushing around her and she entered
the light and

                              * * *

Lisa was surprised to find herself still sitting in the diner
with Doug.  *Wasn't that, um, what, 50 years ago?* she thought,
shaking her head to clear it.  *No, wait... it's only been a
couple of minutes.  My food isn't even here yet.*

"Whoa," she murmured.

                              * * *

"Hell of a rush, isn't it?" I said, smiling not unkindly.  "I
don't use that song all that often, but it makes a damn good
history lesson.  I know *I* always spot something new in there."

Lisa stared into space for a few more moments, then shook
herself.  She shot a wide-eyed look at me.  "How did you *do*
that?" she demanded.

                              * * *

Back in 1993, a couple years before we figured out my metagift,
Barbara Walters built one of her specials around the Warriors.
Each of us got about ten minutes' air time, edited down from half-
hour mini-interviews she did after she finished a week's stay at
The Mansion.  Walters pulled no punches.  For instance, she asked
Hexe thorny questions about her claim to be an incarnated weather
goddess, and how that stood with various religious leaders.
Dwimanor got grilled over the uproar raised by the Southern
Baptists over the fact that he's a mage *and* Jewish.  And so on.

She introduced me as "the court jester to the royal family of
metahumanity", the sound of which I rather liked.  After she got
done raking me over the coals about my battlefield antics, she
asked the question everyone always asks:  "How do you do it?  How
does your metagift work?"

I smiled at the camera.  "Did you ever hear a song that sent
chills up and down your spine?  That raised the hair on the back
of your neck?  A song that made you feel a *power* inside your
chest that you could almost but not quite touch?  And you knew
that if you could only stretch your metaphorical fingertips that
extra millimeter and touch it, you could do anything with it --
fly like a bird, punch out trucks, lift locomotives, jump over
buildings, run forever, travel through time...  be a god?"

Walters nodded, saying, "I think everyone has, at one time or
another."

I nodded back.  "Well, I can reach that extra millimeter.
*That's* how I do it."

                              * * *

"The gods' honest truth?" I replied, and she nodded.  "I haven't
the faintest idea."  For a moment, I thought Lisa was going to
fall out of her seat.  "The metabiologists at the U.N. used to
call it a 'wild talent,' but that just meant that they didn't
know either."  I drew a deep breath and leaned back into the
padded bench of the booth.  "What a friend of mine and I have
determined is that I am what you might call a shugenja -- a mage.
Only I have a twisted and crippled version of the gift of magic."

"Twisted and crippled...?"

I nodded.  "It's a negative mutation.  I can't work magic like
regular mages.  I can't wave my hands and chant incantations and
make things happen.  I just have *no* conscious access to my
magegift.  But songs do it.  No one knows why, and not for lack
of trying.  Something about the combination of music and lyrics
feeds right into my subconscious or whatever and tells it what to
do with my magegift.  Not every song does something interesting,
and I can only use a particular song once a day, but still..."  I
shot Lisa a smirk.  "There are more than a few metabiologists and
theoretical mages who've gone bald pulling their hair out over
me.  And a couple of wizards have *politely* requested that I
never come near them ever again."

"Why?"  Lisa still looked a little shaken.

I chuckled.  "I gave them headaches.  Literally."  I tapped on my
forehead just above the bridge of my nose.  "Mil-spec migraines,
every time I used my metagift.  Anyway, I'm something of an idiot
savant when it comes to magic.  I can't learn the simplest spell,
but I can do things that are impossible even for an Archimagus.
And I don't know how I do it.  I do have the mage sight, but of
course I had to be taught how to use it, instead of coming to it
naturally like every other mage."

"But magic isn't real!" she wailed plaintively.

"The *hell* it's not.  One of my best friends is a full-bore
beard-and-pointy-hat wizard."  I paused a moment.  "Well, not the
pointy hat.  Dwimanor wears tuxedos, actually.  But that doesn't
matter," I forged on boldly.  "Magic is real.  I do magic.
Period.  In fact, magical energy is rather plentiful here."

"Really?"

"Really."

"So why aren't there any wizards here?"

I frowned.  "You know, that's a *very* good question.  From what
I've read here, your folklore is no less full of them than ours
is.  And if the node under the city is any indication, there's
certainly power to spare.  There *ought* to be someone using it,
however crudely.  But there isn't."

Eriko arrived with our food, and again we suspended the
conversation until she finished laying the plates in front of us.
She gave me a sly wink and then wandered off with her exaggerated
"boom-bada-boom" walk.  I just chuckled.

Lisa picked up her gyro and took a delicate, lady-like nibble at
the pita before shrugging and biting off a large hunk of bread,
lettuce, meat and sauce.  After swallowing, she said, "Well,
don't you need to be trained for years and years to use magic?"

"Welllll," I drawled.  "Yes and no.  The magegift is a natural
thing, and it kind of 'wakes up' on its own when its owner is old
enough.  Or when a latent gift gets triggered.  Then it gets
pretty obvious -- there are some 'spells' that anyone can do
without training once their talent turns itself on.  One of the
first signs that a person is a mage and that their gift has
awakened is apportation -- items that they need spontaneously
teleporting into their hands."

"Huh."

"Sure makes things fun around the house," I grinned, "especially
for the parents of a particularly young and powerful mage.
Fortunately, there're schools set up to handle that sort of
thing."  I took a bite of my burger.

Lisa nodded, wide-eyed, then stole a french fry from my plate.
"You said something about a latent gift getting triggered?"

I nodded, still chewing, then swallowed.  "Sometimes a person
won't have enough of a magegift for it to wake up on its own --
or perhaps some psychological or physiological trauma won't let
it.  That's called a latent gift, and it's not just the mage
talent -- just about any metagift can be latent.  Anyway,
sometimes enough exposure to mystic energies will trigger the
awakening of a latent magegift.  Like calls to like -- that's the
Law of Sympathy.  Power calls to Power."

"Law of Sympathy?" Lisa mumbled around her gyro, looking up at me
over the sauce-smeared pita.

I gestured with a french fry as I went into lecture mode.  "The
Laws of Sympathy and Contagion -- two of the most useful
principles of magic.  Sympathy means you can use the essential
similarity of two items as a link between them, for many varied
purposes.  Contagion is the principle that things that were once
together or part of the same thing always retain a, um, 'memory'
of that, kinda, and you can use that as a link, too."

"Weird..."

I shrugged.  "Not really.  It all makes sense on a quantum
physics level.  Some physicists think Sympathy works because the
whole universe is really made up of a single subatomic particle
bouncing back and forth through time, playing different roles on
each pass through.  Contagion works because atoms will always
migrate between two adjacent objects, no matter how briefly they
touch, and then sympathy effects come into play between them.  Of
course, the longer they touch, the more atoms migrate and the
stronger the effect.  Some researchers have suggested that both
effects are the result of quantum mechanical entanglement."  I
shrugged.  "They're just simple approximations, anyway.  Sorta
like Newton's version of gravity as opposed to Einstein's.
They'll work for most mages' purposes.  But if you want to do
heavy-duty stuff, you need the detail versions.  That's where
the world-class wizards and world-class physicists end up
collaborating, and accounts for their similarities.  Both require
an incredible mind for detail, an unbounded imagination, and a
huge budget for experimentation."  I took another bite from my
burger, chewed, and swallowed.  "The very best researchers are
masters of *both* fields."

Lisa laid her gyro back down on the plate.  "I thought science
and magic didn't mix."

"They do and they don't.  Magic operates by certain rules, and
the same methods that work for understanding, say, how atoms
decay, work for figuring out the rules of magic.  But below a
certain level, though, we're stumped."  I scarfed down several
french fries.  "We *know* that magic is powered by an energy
we've taken to calling 'mana'.  We don't know *what* that energy
is -- it doesn't fit into the normal framework of physics,
although it seems to follow a lot of the same rules.  Plus, magic
too often functions as though it had some kind of rudimentary
mind and common sense -- as though it were an intelligent being
in its own right.  That makes for a *lot* of confusion among
researchers, believe me."  I put down my burger and grinned.
"All I know is that it's a real rush to use it."

"Then..." Lisa began.

She was interrupted by an explosion.

Our heads both swiveled to look out the window.  Eriko's was in
the middle of one of the more Bohemian areas of MegaTokyo, thanks
to the proximity of the University.  Unlike other parts of the
city, you could be guaranteed of finding a fair sized crowd at
just about any hour of the night.

At that moment, the usual crowd was running for their lives.

Six boomers leaped, ran and flew down the street after them,
firing indiscriminately in all directions.  One turned it
attention ahead, towards the diner where we sat.

The inhabitants of MegaTokyo have excellent reflexes, I
discovered that night.  I was just starting to yell, "Down!  Get
down!", but the diner's patrons were already rushing out the
front and back doors, leaving only Lisa and myself in the place.
Lisa had slid under the table at first sight of the bots.  I saw
the red glow in the one boomer's open mouth, and decided to join
her.

The beam shot was brief, passing through the window and burning
part-way through the back wall.  It set a couple of fires, but
once the boomer had turned its attention elsewhere, Lisa and I
dashed behind the counter and, grabbing a couple of
extinguishers, made quick work of them.  Still, when we were
done, the diner was filled with choking smoke, so I motioned to
the door.

                              * * *

We exited Eriko's to the screams of the injured and dying, and
the wail of sirens.  The bots hadn't moved as I'd expected;
instead of being safely behind the lines, we were still in the
killing zone.  The air smelt of ozone and death, and to one side
I could hear gunfire, the buzz of those stupid little helicopters
the ADP used, and the occasional sharp crack of small artillery.

Down the street I could see a pair of smoking corpses, and I
hoped that Lisa hadn't noticed them.  I couldn't see Eriko or any
of the other diner customers around, and I hoped that they had
all gotten away safely.  *Damn, it's like Kuwait City all over
again,* I remember thinking.  I spared a glance down at Lisa, who
looked more determined than scared.  "This is ridiculous!  Why
hasn't anyone shut GENOM down yet?"

"Plausible deniability," she spat.  "That, and they own dozens,
maybe hundreds, of politicians, from the wards all the way up to
the UN."

"Shit."  I couldn't stand still here much longer.  There were
people in danger.  I could do something about that, so I *had* to
do something about that.  Call it a compulsion.  Call it ethics.
Whatever.  But I also couldn't leave Lisa alone and undefended,
not in the combat zone.  I dragged her into the alley next to the
diner and put on my helmet.  "You know I have to act," I said as
I fastened the chin strap and made sure the ear pieces were
seated properly.

She nodded.  "I know."

I pulled off the Harley patch and put my insignia back on.  "I
can't leave you here unprotected."

She shook her head.  "Don't worry about me.  Do it."

I smiled grimly inside my helmet, and twisted its external
speaker housings to the "on" position.  "I plan to.  But first...
<System.  Combat mode on.  'Invisible Touch'.  Play.>"  As the
intro began, I reached out with one gloved hand and tapped Lisa
on the forehead.  Under my fingertips, a rune-like tracing of
light flashed golden.  "Here.  Take this.  Defend yourself but
stay out of trouble.  And pay attention to the song -- remember,
when it ends, so does this."  Lisa's eyes went wide and her jaw
dropped open, but before she could say anything, I spun and leapt
to battle.

                              * * *

Lisa gaped as the sensation washed over her.  Power, simple,
sweet and pure.  It flooded out from the spot on her forehead
where Doug had touched her, and swept through her body, all the
way to the tips of her toes and fingers, in a fraction of a
second.  It filled her to brimming, and she almost expected to
see it shining out of the pores of her skin.

*What...* she began to think, but before she could complete the
thought, something almost but not completely unlike a voice began
to whisper to her.  It was as though a forgotten memory had
raised its head to sing sweetly to her of things she'd always
known.  How to attack.  How to defend.

The power was hers to use.

The world seemed to slow around her as Doug bounded away.  The
sensation was incredible; her senses and mind seemed to be
running a hundredfold faster.

For the first few milliseconds, wonder suffused her.  Then
indignation took over.  *How dare he tell me to stay put, after
giving me this!*  She almost took a step, before realizing, *If I
do this, I'll be awfully conspicuous.  I'm going to be noticed,
and *someone* will end up asking me uncomfortable questions.  I
wish I had some kind of disguise or something.*

The power stumbled in its whispering song, as if puzzled by her
thoughts.  It almost dissolved into cacophony, but rallied itself
and, if anything, increased in intensity.  Here, it said to her,
here is how to do it.  You are the first to ask.

Lisa's eyes widened even further, and a delighted grin spread
across her face.  Of course.  But what to wear, what to wear?
She found herself reaching for her favorite, beloved TV show.
She almost giggled to herself as she laid her camera carefully on
the ground behind a nearby dumpster, then stood in a spread-
legged stance.  She raised her hand in the air, and shouted out
the completely unnecessary activation phrase for the sheer joy
of it.

Lisa released the power and guided it into a complex web wrapped
around her body, just as the song had instructed.  A flash of
regret suffused her as she rendered her clothing down to its
component atoms in the first fraction of a second -- it was one
of her favorite outfits, after all.  *But I can just put it all
back the way it was when I'm done here,* she comforted herself.

An eyeblink and a thought later, her new outfit -- durable, yet
fetchingly attractive, and certainly evocative of certain classic
themes -- *snapped* into existence around her body.  She blinked
a couple times behind her mask, not quite believing still what
she had done.

                              * * *

It couldn't have been more than five seconds after I'd left her
there by the club's back door.  I was beelining for one of those
annoying blue mothers when I heard her yell.  I swear, she
sounded half laughing, half triumphant.  "Sailor Power Make-up!"
Then I saw my shadow flicker on the ground before of me as a
bright light flared behind.

I skidded to a halt and turned around.  I don't know what I
expected to see.  Whatever it was, it wasn't what I saw.

Lisa stood there, legs planted firmly in a wide stance, her right
hand outspread and over her head.  She was dressed in ... a
miniskirted sailor dress?

It was mostly white, trimmed extensively in a bright, almost
electric, blue.  A huge bow of the same color was positioned
strategically over her cleavage, with a glowing sapphire stone
mounted in a brooch on its knot.  A similar, smaller bow resided
in the small of her back; I could see it peeking out on either
side of her waist.  On her feet were short-heeled, knee-high
boots of blue trimmed in white, and matching opera gloves adorned
her arms.  Her face was covered by a three-quarter mask of
electric blue that left only her mouth and chin uncovered.  A
shower of silvery motes swirled around her for a second or so,
then evaporated.

Oh, and her hat-hair problem was gone.

It was, on the whole, perhaps the silliest outfit I have ever
seen.  And that's saying a lot, since I come from a world where
every nutjob with a metatalent drools at the sight of spandex and
leather.  (Your humble narrator included.)

But I was less troubled by her fashion sense than by where the
hell that damned outfit had come from.  "Invisible Touch" was
only supposed to give her simple TK -- a defensive shield and a
ranged attack.  Enough to keep her alive if anything went after
her.  That's the way it had always worked before.  It had never
done anything like this.

Maybe it was that damned node.

Unfortunately, the flash had gotten the attention of two of the
boomers, who were now heading in Lisa's direction, so I didn't
have time to ponder the situation.  She noticed the bots, but
instead of doing something sensible, like either running away or
attacking, instead, she *posed*.  Sweeping her hand in front of
her, she pointed at the bots and in a loud, clear voice that
carried very well, announced, "I am Sailor..."  She hesitated a
moment, then rallied.  "I am Sailor Loon!  Defender of justice
and protector of the weak!"

I clapped a hand to my goggles and groaned.  "What the hell does
she think she's doing?" I growled to no one in particular.

Lisa continued unabated.  "Boomers were made to serve people, not
kill them!  I hold no malice towards you poor machines, made mad
and set upon the streets, but I cannot let you continue on your
rampage.  In the name of the Loon, I will punish you!"  Then she
brought her hands together in front of her and fired a
telekinetic blast at the closer of the two boomers -- the only
vaguely familiar thing in this entire situation.  It was
practically invisible -- little more than a ripple through the
intervening air -- but it struck the lead bot in the chest,
picked it up and threw it into the one behind.  Both went down
with a dull clatter of armor plates on asphalt, but they
immediately began clambering to their feet again.

As Phil Collins piped on, I stood there, frozen by indecision --
do I rescue Lisa from her own over-exuberance, or go after the
main group of bots and maybe save the lives of dozens?  I weighed
the dilemma as Lisa -- Sailor Loon, hah! -- launched herself
telekinetically into a graceful 10-meter leap.

I cursed and turned to head off the other bots.  At least for the
next three minutes and five seconds, Lisa could take care of
herself.

                              * * *

Lisa's grin collapsed as the two boomers hauled themselves back
to their feet.  Her instinctive TK blast hadn't even scratched
their armor.  *Shit.*  They threw themselves at her even as they
dropped their jaws to reveal the mirrored disks behind.

She saw the deadly red glow building, reflected in the
collimating mirrors of the mouth cannons, and leapt.  Without
thinking about it, she added a telekinetic push as she jumped,
and found herself soaring far over the boomers' heads in a
graceful arc as their lasers seared the wall and door behind her.
Remembering her gymnastics training, she tucked in her arms and
legs, setting herself tumbling rapidly enough to make the short
skirt of her senshi uniform flutter and snap like a flag in a
high wind.

As Lisa reached the top of her arc, the two boomers beneath her
skidded to a halt and clumsily tried to reverse course.  Feeling
herself starting to drop, she snapped out of her tumble,
spreading her arms wide and kicking out her legs, arresting the
her angular momentum and giving herself just a enough spin to end
up facing her opponents.  A quick burst of TK softened her
landing; as she touched down she risked a glance that showed her
that Doug was on his way to help the ADP.  Over the distant
sounds of gunfire and sirens she heard a snippet of song in
English, as if it were being whispered into her ear:

    "<She seems to have an invisible touch, yeah,
     She reaches in, grabs right hold of your heart.
     She seems to have an invisible touch, yeah,
     It takes control and slowly tears you apart...>"

"Now *that's* an idea," she said to herself, a corner of her
mouth threatening to rise.  She let her new instincts flow
through her, and brought her hands together in front of her.
Concentrating intensely, she focussed her attack tighter and
tighter, until it was a pinpoint, a needle of pure force.
"HEARTBREAKER!" she screamed, and loosed the power.

As before, the forcebolt was virtually invisible as it ripped
through the intervening space, but this time it roared its way
there, scattering litter and dust in its wake. Once again, it
struck the lead boomer. She was not disappointed by its effect.
The cyberdroid howled as it was thrown back into the air; its
chest armor gave a brief shriek of protest, then imploded with a
shower of glass from the lenses hidden beneath.  Lisa smiled,
clenched her right hand into a fist, and lifted it to shoulder
level.

Thrashing and howling, the boomer rose into the air chest first,
yellow pus-like fluids and shattered tubing spraying from the
gaping hole in its torso.  Its self-repair systems were
desperately attempting to seal the armor breach -- she could
actually *feel* the living metal seeking a way around her grip
and failing.  She squeezed her fist and the boomer roared again
as more liquid erupted from its chest.

The cyberdroid flailed wildly as it floated helplessly in midair.
It tried to focus its mouthcannon on her, but she made a slapping
gesture with her left hand and the mirror behind its jaws
shattered.

"This is great!" she cried out as she toyed with the boomer.  "I
just wish I could take a picture of myself doing this!  It'd make
great top page material."  She began to shake the boomer, and
inspiration struck.  "Wait a second!  I *can*!"  She reached out
with the TK and scooped up her camera from its hiding place while
maintaining her grip on the cyberdroid.  Trusting to its fully
automatic settings, she sent the camera circling around the
battle site, snapping photos of herself from all sides.

The unexpected impact of a beam cannon upon her telekinetic
shield shook her out of her reverie.  Both the camera and the
boomer dropped as she lost her concentration.  *Ack!  I forgot
about the other one!  Idiot!  Idiot!* she thought as she dropped
and lay flat, more from reflex than from anything else; her
shield had protected her from most of the beam's force, and the
armor-like material of her senshi costume had absorbed a great
deal of the remainder.  *I'm still probably going to have a big
bruise and a nasty burn,* she mused as she probed her side.
*Serves me right for being stupid.*  Then it occurred to her.  *I
don't remember putting up a shield...*

As another laser glanced off the shield, she rolled to one side
and tried to get a grasp on the fallen boomer again.  It took
several tries, but she managed to force a TK "hand" back into its
chest, foiling the self-repair systems once more.  She hoisted it
back in the air and began using it as a shield, blocking the
efforts of the second boomer to reach her.  The immediate threat
to her life at bay, her natural priorities came back to the fore.

*My camera!*

A quick glance around the battle site revealed her beloved
digital camera battered but intact, perched in a pile of trash
near the diner.  She scooped it up with a telekinetic "hand" and
brought it close, inspecting the damage.  It was still
functional, but she felt the red burn of anger grow in her
breast.  With a thought she slipped the camera back into its
hiding place behind the dumpster, then turned to face the
remaining intact boomer.

"*You*!" she shouted, pointing at the boomer.  Her stance bore
the same resemblance to her earlier pose that a stalking lion
bore to a kitten.  "You made me drop my camera.  You almost made
me *break* it."  Her voice dropped into a low, dangerous tone.
"For that, I'm not going to punish you.  I'm going to *demolish*
you."

And with that, she exploded into a frenzy of telekinetic energy.
The disabled boomer whipped through the air like a club to smash
into its partner again and again as she used it to repeatedly
bludgeon the other cyberdroid.  Refusing to give her target a
moment's respite, she rained telekinetic bolts upon it too,
driving it back into the alley.  A pinpoint blast shattered its
mouthcannon.  A rapid fusillade disabled its jumpjets when it
tried to flee.  A plane of pure force sheared off most of its
hands and claws.  The unrelenting barrage of blows from the
hammer that had once been its partner battered and dented its
armor faster than its self-repair facility could handle.

Finally, Lisa had it pressed against a wall.  One of its eyes had
been smashed; the other flickered weakly, its intermittent red
glow making it look as through it were blinking back tears.  Lisa
tried to smash it one final time with her boomer-bludgeon, but
the makeshift weapon fell apart with a crash and a wet, sighing
sound.

There was a moment of silence in the alleyway.  The boomer almost
seemed to cower before her.  Yellow liquid dripped from where
she'd broken its tubing and conduits, each drop's impact upon the
ground a thundercrash roaring in her ears in time with her anger.
The pooling fluid stank in her nostrils.

Lisa gave a wordless cry of rage as she brought her hands up
before her and yanked them roughly apart, as though ripping a
sheet of paper in two.

With a howl of tortured metal, the boomer tore apart in a spray
of noxious yellow.  Its halves flew in opposite directions,
thudding dully, one after the other, into the pavement.

Lisa stood there a moment, panting, as her rage drained out of
her like dirty water dropping into a sewer.  Dully, she staggered
over to her camera's hiding place.  She knelt and retrieved it,
then wrapped herself in a fetal ball around the camera and began
to sob.  She never noticed when the power disappeared from her
mind.

It seemed like an eternity later when she found herself looking
into Doug's eyes.  His fingertips were under her chin, lifting
her head up as he pulled off her mask.  His helmet was on the
ground next to them, and concern and fear skittered across his
uncovered face.  "Lisa?" he said softly, "Are you okay?"

                              * * *

"That can't be what it's like," Lisa sobbed.

The battle was long over; the ADP had at least not been
slaughtered outright, and the Knights had shown up.  I faded away
as soon as I saw that familiar powered armor; I wasn't needed any
more and I wasn't in full uniform, and I had a responsibility to
Lisa.  I found her curled up into a ball next to a dumpster, half-
conscious and crying.  She was uninjured, and two ruined heaps of
plastic and metal testified that she had come out the victor in
combat.

"What what's like?" I asked.  We still huddled behind the
dumpster, in the damp shadows that smelt of rotting food.  I held
her like a child, and she buried her face against my chest.

"Buh-being a hero.  It's supposed to be noble, doing the right
thing because it's right."  She inhaled, a huge ragged gasp that
rattled in her throat.  "I didn't kill them because it was the
right thing to do.  I killed them because I was angry, not
because I was protecting someone or... or..." she swallowed the
end of her sentence in another wracking sob.

I shook my head.  "It's not about what you're feeling when you're
doing it," I said softly.  "A hero is someone who does what is
necessary to set things right because he can no longer stand
seeing what is wrong."  I gathered her up in my arms and held her
tightly.  "There is never nobility in the heat of battle, only
necessity.  What is noble is *why* you fight, and for whom,
ultimately.  And ultimately, you were fighting to protect people
who couldn't have defended themselves against those boomers."

"But I got so *angry*!  I didn't care about anything but making
them *hurt*!"

I began rocking her gently.  "So?  Would it have made a
difference to the nobility of the cause if you had attacked
coldly and unemotionally, or used a sword or a gun instead of
telekinesis?  Anger is just another tool, another weapon to help
you win the fight.  Just remember -- like any weapon, it can be
taken by the enemy and turned against you."

"Buh-buh-but how can you fight for good if you're *angry*?" she
moaned.

I laughed softly.  "Oh, no, not that old 'Dark Side of the Force'
crap!  'Do not give in to anger, the way of the Dark Side it
is!'" I said in a fair imitation of Yoda.  "Bullshit!  Haven't
you ever heard of righteous fury?  Of outrage at what is wrong?
These aren't negative emotions, these aren't flaws.  These are
the response of a good person confronted with evil."  I stroked
her head for a moment.  "Maybe what you're really upset about is
finding out just how dangerous and deadly you can be."

"You think?" she murmured from somewhere in the vicinity of my
Harley-Davidson patch.

"Yeah, I think," I whispered back.  "And you know what?"

"What?"

"Everyone goes through it after their first live-fire fight."

"Even you?"

I laughed, louder this time.  "Yeah, even me.  I was a wreck for
days afterwards.  Got stinking drunk, too, and I don't drink."  I
chuckled at the memory.  "There's a great big difference between
knowing what you can do, and actually doing it.  I scared the
hell out of myself."

Lisa laughed a little, which was a good sign.  "Come on," I said,
"Let's get you home."

"Okay," she murmured.

I got her up on her feet and we went back into Eriko's to
retrieve her coat (which was a little smoky-smelling but okay),
as well as my spare helmet for the ride back.  As she pulled the
coat on, I shook my head.  "And by the way, girl, just what *are*
you wearing?"

She paused in buttoning the coat to look down at the brightly-
colored miniskirt of the sailor suit, and blushed.  "I'll tell
you later."

So I let the topic drop.  I drove us home, taking the long way to
get around the remaining ADP road blocks, and I saw her to her
apartment.  I stumbled into mine, and was about to crawl into bed
myself when she knocked on my door.

"I can't get it off!" she wailed, and showed me.  While the
boots, mask and gloves were easily enough removed, that sailor
suit was another thing entirely.  The damn thing had no zippers,
no fasteners, and strangest of all, no seams.  It was all one
continuous piece.

It was also at least as tough as polykev.  It resisted tearing,
cutting and just about every destructive tool I could dig up in
either of our apartments.  To Lisa's (and *my*) immense
embarrassment, I finally had to go get my helmet and use a song
to disintegrate most of the damned thing.  Right after which she
blushed furiously, grabbed a robe and shoved me out her door.  I
did manage to grab one of the remaining scraps for future
analysis, fortunately.

And now that I think of it, she never *did* explain to me what
that "Sailor Loon" business was all about.

                              * * *

Saturday, January 3, 2037.  11:09 AM

"Katie, do you want to watch a video with Mommy?"

That was how it started, when she was only five years old.  Her
mother took out one of the aging video tapes that had been kept
well out of Katie's reach and put it in the player.  Then she and
her daughter snuggled together on the couch to watch it.  "This
was Mommy's favorite show when she was a little girl."

*I've never forgotten that -- any of it.*

"Sailor Moon".  Within a year, she had seen every one of her
mother's tapes at least twice.  By the time she was ten, she
owned her own complete set on videorom, and she had her own
Senshi uniform that her mother had made for her.  Sailor Mercury
was her favorite, because she was the smart one, and Katie was a
smart one, too.  And more than anything, Katie wanted to be a
magical girl just like the Senshi.

Katie grew up into Kate, who discovered algebra, jukus and boys,
but didn't forget the magical girls.  She managed to submerge her
otaku interests as she made her way through high school and into
college, but never lost them entirely.  Then Kate became
Katherine after she graduated and entered the business world, and
she found release from the stress of corporate competition by
going back to the last remaining joy of her girlhood.

It was an eccentricity, but a quiet, tolerated one.  One's fandom
was a private affair, provided that the respective boundaries of
fiction and reality were maintained and observed.  Katherine was
very good at that; few of her co-workers were aware of her...
hobby.  (Mr. Quincy knew; it appeared to amuse him, and he almost
seemed to approve -- but that was ridiculous.  Wasn't it?)

Katherine Madigan had been certain that there could be no
collision between her private and professional lives.

Until now.

The boomers had been deployed as a standard part of a real estate
acquisition program.  They weren't intended to level the college
neighborhood in which they'd been activated, but simply to wreak
enough damage to lower property values and "encourage" tenants to
leave.  Their eventual destruction by the ADP and the Knight
Sabers -- and of late, the Visitor -- was planned for.  *She* had
planned for it, calculating almost to the building number where
the cyberdroids would be halted, and how much property
devaluation they would cause along the way.

This time, though, something completely unexpected had
interfered.

"I <kshh> Sail<skrrshkk>oon!  Defend<krrrshkkkrsh>stice and
protec<shhhkkkrsh>the weak!"

The playback was littered with static and artifacts, the result
of the enhancement and reconstruction needed to extract it from
the demolished boomers' all-but-destroyed combat recorders.  The
picture jumped and leapt about, from both the merger of the two
records and the boomers' violent movement during the encounter.
The images were half-obscured with snow, the sound more than half-
missing, but the subject was clear.

There was a Senshi in MegaTokyo.

An impossible, ridiculous, silly, childish, magical girl.

Ridiculous, silly, childish, and *powerful*.  And very, very
real.  The shredded and smashed remains of two standard combat
boomers attested to that.

A Senshi.

Katherine Madigan didn't know whether to laugh or cry.  The dream
of her childhood.  The last nostalgic icon left to her in her
adulthood.  The dread of someone who knew that she had sold her
soul for success.

*Damn Ohara!* she snarled mentally, even though she knew it
wasn't his fault, nor IDEC's.  But six months ago the world had
been predictable, controllable, profitable.  Her future had been
assured.  Now...  Now all was chaos.

There had been no emotional element to accepting Ohara's theories
and proofs of the existence of other universes -- it had been
just a flat, intellectual thing like a stock price or a
production report:  just one more fact catalogued and correlated
with so many others.  Then the Visitor came, with his insane
abilities and insouciant, disrespectful attitude, and turned it
all from cold data to pure visceral experience -- and opened her
world up to the terror of uncertainty.  First the Visitor, and
now... a Senshi.  What next?  Out of an infinity of universes,
who or what would come next to disrupt the orderly workings of
GENOM's world, of *her* world?

Madigan shuddered.

The playback ended and without thinking she restarted it.  At
first, the technicians who had retrieved and rebuilt the recorder
logs were hesitant to turn them over to her.  But she had pointed
out the realities of their positions with GENOM; they had
rightfully yielded, and passed on to her the data units.

"I <kshh> Sail<skrrshkk>oon!  Defend<krrrshkkkrsh>stice and
protec<shhhkkkrsh>the weak!"

She was blonde, Katherine absently noted.  The hair style was
wrong, though, very wrong for either Minako or Usagi, and the
full-face mask was totally unlike the modified domino that Sailor
V had worn.  The girl bore no jewelry but the brooch; clearly no
tiara.  And the colors were more like Sailor Mercury than Venus
or Moon.  "Sail... ...oon," Katherine whispered, touching the
image on the screen with the fingertips of her right hand.  "You
can't be her.  You can't."

Katherine had long ago ceased to believe in absolute good and
absolute evil.  But if the Senshi existed, then maybe they did,
too.  And Katherine knew, with despairing certainty, which side
she had allied herself with.

"In <shhrak>ame of <kssshhk>oon, I <shhrrrsk>nish you!"

Beneath her fingers, the girl's image pushed forward with both
hands and a faint rippling *something* shot from them.  Whatever
that ripple had been, it had punched a hole through a 65C's chest
plating like a pencil going through a sheet of paper, according
to the technicians.  Not to mention the boomer that had been torn
in half.  Or the stupendous leap she had taken.  No chance that
she was an imposter, some deluded teen in a costume-shop special.

Katherine Madigan paused the recording and touched the image on
the screen once again, the image of the girl who was everything
that she herself had once wanted to be.

But it was too late for her now, she knew.

Far too late.

                              * * *

Saturday, January 3, 2037.  2:32 PM

"No!"  I was trying not to shout.

"C'mon, Doug!  You *need* this!"  Lisa was nothing if not
persistent.

We were in her apartment.  She'd taken me out for lunch, partly
as thanks for the dinner the night before (as incomplete as it
was), and partly in thanks for, as she put it, "that whole
experience."  Over the meal she seemed to be of two minds about
what she'd gone through, though, with one part of her thrilling
over having -- however briefly -- a metagift of her own, and
another part still in shock over not only the way things turned
out, but what she had learned about herself.  When we finished
and got back to our building, she then invited me in to her place
for tea.

And that's when she sprung it on me.

"Explain to me just why I *need* to have you write a tell-all
article about me."

She frowned and pouted, and I swear she almost stomped her foot
for a moment.  "GENOM's spreading lies about you.  The ADP is
after you on general principles.  God knows what the Knight
Sabers think of you.  You're the number one topic of conversation
in Japan today, you know.  We need to dispel the rumors and lies
that are springing up around you."

"Look, Lisa, I'm trying to keep a secret identity here -- major
interviews with the press are *not* part of the plan!"  The woman
could be exasperating at times, let me tell you.

Lisa huffed.  "I wasn't going to put your *name* in the article,
dummy!  I'll say that you rescued me from a boomer last night,
and I got a chance to ask a few questions before you disappeared
on me."  She got a sly look.  "C'mon.  I *know* you've got some
pithy things you've been wanting to say to people about GENOM.
This is your chance."

I grinned.  "Oh, *boy*, do I have things to say about GENOM."
Then I frowned.  "But this isn't necessarily the right way to go
about this."

Lisa set her hands on her hips indignantly.  "Then, pray tell,
what *is* the right way, if you're so smart?"

That stopped me short.  "Um, well...  um, back home I'd work with
both PR and Legal and we'd draft a press release or some other
formal announcement, and..."

"And if you just *happen* to be marooned in another universe far
away from your PR and Legal departments?"  I don't *think* she
said it with any sarcasm, but I can't be sure.

"Um..."

She sniffed.  "I thought so."  She stepped forward and poked me
in the chest with her forefinger.  "You *need* me, Sangnoir.
You're too used to working with a team, you know that?  That's
why you're trying to get on the Knight Sabers' good side, you
know."

"I am?"

She nodded.  "You are.  You're doing the fighting evil thing
you've always done, and you're looking for people to do it with,
like you've always done."

I thought about that.  Especially given what I had called up
Kat's simulacrum to talk about, that made a lot of sense.  "Damn.
You're right."  I peered down at her, a mock-ferocious frown on
my face.  "Hey.  What have you done to the oh-so-proper-and-
polite Japanese girl who used to live across the hall from me?"

Lisa snorted.  "This is my *business* side, Doug.  And I mean
business.  Like I said, you're too used to working with a team.
And if you're trying to keep a secret identity, that's going to
trip you up."  She poked me in the chest again. "So," poke,
"let," poke, "*me*," poke, "be," poke, "your," poke, "team."

"Say what?"

She rolled her eyes.  "Let *me* be your team."

"What, as a miniskirted meta-girl?"

"Get real.  I'm not *ever* going to do *that* again, if I have
anything to say about it.  I mean a support team.  Let me run
interference for you in the press, for example.  Feed you
whatever inside tips I can get my hands on.  Like that."  She
crossed her arms over her chest and tried to stare me down.

I sighed.  "And let me guess.  This interview you want me to give
is part one of your glorious plan to help bullet-proof my secret
identity?"

She smiled sweetly.  "Exactly."

I plopped down on the edge of her futon.  "Why do I get the
feeling that I'm not going to win this one?"

She crouched down in front of me with a smirk.  "Because you're a
wise and perceptive man who knows what's best for himself."

"Yeah, right."  I sighed again.  "Okay, let's get this done
with."

Lisa stood, nodding approvingly.  "Good.  There's one thing I
need to tell you about first, though."

"Oh?  And what's that?"

She didn't say anything for a few seconds, then took a deep
breath.  "Doug, there's this company called 'IDEC'..."

                              * * *

Saturday, January 3, 2037.  5:13 PM

Linna drew a deep breath as she towelled off, and let it out with
great satisfaction.  *There's nothing like a good workout.*  Ever
since Sylia had reconfigured the testing simulator so that it
could be used as a trainer as well, Linna had made frequent use
of it.  Mopping her head, she smiled slightly in satisfaction;
Priss was going to be *so* annoyed to find out that Linna had
finally made it to Level 12 -- first.

After a quick shower and an even quicker change into street
clothes, Linna was looking forward to just getting home and
collapsing.  Joel, her current boyfriend, was out of town on
business, and to her surprise she didn't mind as much as she
thought she would.  *I guess that means this one's on the way
out, too,* she thought sadly.  *When am I going to find a guy who
holds my interest for more than a month?  Or whose interest *I*
hold?*

In her preoccupation, she almost didn't notice Sylia sitting
alone in the dimly-lit records room, but the rapid staccato of
gunfire caught her attention.  She paused at the door, and looked
in to see Sylia studying the mission playback console intently.
The Sabers' leader was dressed in greys and blacks, and with the
lights all but out, she seemed cloaked in shadow.

"Hi," Linna said from where she stood, one hand on the door
frame.

Sylia started and whipped her head around to see who had
addressed her.  "Oh, Linna, hello."  Without looking back at the
console, she brushed a finger across a control, and the playback
paused.  "I saw that you were doing some training this afternoon,
but I didn't know you were still here."

Linna smiled.  "Yeah, I had the whole day free and no plans, so I
decided to come down and make Level 12 in the simulator."

Sylia raised an eyebrow.  "And?"

The dancer breathed upon the fingernails of one hand and then
buffed them against her blouse with a grin.  "Did it."

"Very good, Linna.  Congratulations," Sylia said, smiling
briefly.

"Thanks."  Linna entered the room and pulled up a chair next to
the other woman.  "So what are *you* doing inside this bright,
sunny day?"

Sylia frowned momentarily, and glanced at the multiscreened
monstrosity on the table at which she sat.  "Pondering events."

"Well, *that's* specific."  Linna leaned back and stretched her
legs out before her.

"Do you remember something you said right before the first time
we met the Loon?" Sylia asked, turning to the console and hitting
a series of keys.  There was a flicker of static and then, four
different viewpoints of a combat appeared.

"You do realize," Linna's voice echoed from the speakers,
punctuated with grunts, "that we've seen more action in the last
few weeks than we have in the entire year before this?"  Sylia
flicked her finger across a button and the playback froze again.

In her seat, Linna nodded as she recalled the moment.  "Yeah, I
remember.  So?"

Sylia pursed her lips.  "You were correct, of course.  The number
of rogue boomer incidents has skyrocketed since last summer."
She spun in her chair to face Linna.  "Why?"

"Why ask me?"

Sylia laughed gently, and relaxed.  "I'm sorry, Linna, I didn't
mean to suggest that you knew.  It's just that, for so very long
now, MegaTokyo has been in a kind of... balance.  Ever since we
stopped Largo at the fusion plant, there has been a kind of...
truce isn't the word, but it will do.  An understanding.  GENOM
does not push, and we do not push back.  Boomer events are kept
to a minimum, and most of those are truly rogues, not GENOM
operations -- or so I believe."

"Up until last summer," Linna offered, and Sylia nodded in
agreement.

"Up until last summer.  Up until the first appearances of the
Loon."  Sylia glanced back at the monitors.  In the center of the
four paused images was the familiar form in helmet and leathers.

Linna leaned in to Sylia.  "You think there's a connection."

Without taking her eyes off the screens, Sylia replied, "GENOM
claims he's theirs, but appears to be letting the ADP take their
time in 'recovering' him.  But there are rumors -- and more
reliable reports -- that say a GENOM subsidiary is actively
pursuing him."  She closed her eyes for a moment.  "Or perhaps
testing or analyzing him.  According to my sources, someone with
a lot of sensor equipment has been watching him in action."

"I wish them luck!" Linna laughed.  "They'll just end up with
what *we* got -- confused and more questions!"

Sylia nodded soberly.  "Yes.  That's what I'm afraid of.  GENOM
does not suffer frustration gracefully.  What happens when these
mysterious watchers reach their breaking point?"

                              * * *

16 Tokyo Day Times.  Sunday, January 4, 2037.  8:55 AM

While the 16 Times' city room slowly filled with the weekend day
staff, Lisa's hands flashed across the keyboard.  She gave it a
final flourish as she completed the article.  *There!* she
thought proudly.  *If *that* doesn't both obscure Doug's tracks
*and* get me back on stories with real meat to them, I don't know
what will.*

She and Doug had stayed up half the night thrashing out exactly
what was and, more importantly, *wasn't*, going into the article.
No mention of Doug's extra-dimensional origins.  A basketful of
hand-crafted half-truths specifically designed to mislead any
"hunters" on his trail.  A careful dance around GENOM's motives
in wanting him apprehended, while emphasizing his "natural"
origins.  And, as she had expected, Doug did indeed have more
than few barbed comments about the megacorp; the problem was
choosing which ones to use.  That summed up the entire project:
a surfeit of material from which she had to construct a
believable "on the run" question-and-answer session.  Working
together, though, she and Doug had built an outline of the
fictitious interview, and she had adhered closely to it while
writing the article.

She grinned to herself.  For the sake of verisimilitude, she and
Doug had gone so far as to stage part of the interview for the
microcassette recorder Doug owned.  Even after midnight, the
plaza of the Morita complex was subject to enough traffic noise
to make the tape sound suitably authentic.  And at the same time,
it was private enough for them to take a few shadowed "head and
shoulders" photos to go with the interview.

She glanced at the tape where it sat atop a stack of datadisks
from her camera.  *I don't think anyone will ask for it, but it
never hurts,* she mused.  Then she reached for the datadisks.
*Time to pick the best shots to go with the text.*

She picked a disk at random and slotted it into the system.  The
image browser opened up, and Lisa hissed.  *Oh shit.  These are
the shots I took of myself as 'Sailor Loon'!  What're they doing
*here*?  I thought I left them home!*

A hand clapped unexpectedly on her shoulder.  She squeaked in
surprise and her hands twitched, sending the stack of data disks
clattering to the floor.  "Good morning, Lisa-chan," Kiyoshi
bellowed jovially, as she dove out of her chair to gather them
up.

"Good morning, sir," Lisa blurted from the floor as she scraped
the disks into a rough pile and began to sit upright.

"Hmmmm.  What's this?" Kiyoshi asked to the accompaniment of a
series of mouse clicks.  When Lisa's eyes broke over the edge of
the desk, an all-too-familiar sinking feeling developed in the
pit of her stomach.  Kiyoshi was paging through and zooming in on
the shots of her as 'Sailor Loon'.  Worse yet, he'd opened up
windows for several photos which clearly showed her in frame with
the two boomers.  A fresh wave of panic surged through her as she
realized he was studying one of the first photos on the disk,
which showed her holding her fist out as a boomer rose into the
air.

"Very interesting, Lisa.  *Very* interesting," Kiyoshi muttered
appreciatively.  "*Another* mysterious boomer-fighter?  Where
were you when you took these shots, Lisa-chan, running around on
the roof tops?"

As she slid the unstable pile of disks back onto the desk, Lisa
tried to shrug nonchalantly.  "You know me, always climbing
around, looking for the best angle."  *He doesn't realize it's
me?*

Kiyoshi made vague approving noises as he studied the photos.
"Was this the same boomer incident that the 'Iceman' was reported
in on Friday night?"

"Um, yes?" Lisa found herself answering.

"Anyone else there taking pictures?"

"Um, no?"

"Why weren't these on my desk yesterday morning?"

Lisa swallowed nervously.  "Well, um, I was real close to the
fight and I was kinda, well, shaken up and all by it, and
well..." she closed her eyes and prayed that he would accept the
lie, "... I stayed in bed all day and didn't want to get out."

Kiyoshi clapped her on the shoulder again, almost sending her to
her knees once more.  He nodded vigorously.  "Right, came a
little closer to death than you'd like, that can be a hell of a
shock even for a grown man, let alone a young girl.  I've had
that reaction myself once or twice.  I don't blame you."  He
turned for his office, then stopped.  He looked back at her.
"Give me 2000 words to go with those photos, Lisa-chan, and I
think I can put it on the top page of tonight's edition."

*Shit.*   He started for his office again, but, thinking quickly,
Lisa called out, "Kiyoshi-san?  I have something else you might
want to print instead."

The editor turned, his eyebrows raised.  "Instead?  And what
might this be?"

Biting her lip, Lisa said, "A first-person interview with the
'Iceman'?"

Kiyoshi's eyebrows climbed higher.  "Also from Friday night?"

"Yes, sir."

"Documented?"

Lisa nodded, and snatched the microcassette off her desk to hold
up to him.  "I have most of it recorded, sir."

"Nothing from your mysterious sailor girl?"

She shook her head.  "No, sir.  By the time I got to the street,
I couldn't see her anywhere."  *More or less true, too,* she
congratulated herself.

Kiyoshi peered at her suspiciously.  "And how is it that *you*
managed to corner the mysterious Iceman?"

Lisa tried to look as embarrassed as possible, calling on every
iota of acting skill she'd picked up in college drama.  "Well,
Kiyoshi-san, it was a bit of an accident.  While taking those
shots, I got a little careless, and he had to rescue me from a
boomer.  As he got in the coup de grace, I slipped, and, well, I
sort of... fell on him."  She manufactured a sheepish grin.  "I
took advantage of the moment and his confusion."

He laughed.  "You certainly have the kami's own luck, Lisa."

"My father always said a reporter shouldn't rely on luck, but
make it for themselves," she replied with genuine feeling.

He nodded, an approving smile breaking across his face.  "Yes.
Yes, he did.  Good job, Vanette-san.  Give me *both* stories."
He turned once more to go, then looked over his shoulder.  "If I
like what I see, I just may consider different assignments for
you in the future -- at the very least so you'll be covered by
our group insurance during your... exploits."  He strode into his
office and shut the door.

As she allowed the disbelief and shock to seep onto her face,
Lisa slumped back into her chair.  *Oh dear gods.  *Both*
stories.  *Now* what do I do?*

                              * * *

Sunday, January 4, 2037.  11:27 AM

Priss' arm snapped out and struck silently, efficiently, and with
a precision surprising in someone still three-quarters asleep.
Even with her eyes closed and her head buried deep under the
covers, she was able to punch the "voice receive only" button on
her insistently-ringing telephone.

"You're going to die, whoever you are," she growled.

"And a good morning to you, too, Priss."

"Whaddafuck you want, Rick?" Priss slurred as she surfaced from
the warmth of her blankets to glare balefully at the phone's
disabled video pickup.  "Whazzat you the other two times the
phone rang?"

Priss could hear the smile in the keyboardist's voice, damn him.
"I didn't want to leave this to your answering system, Priss -- I
wanted to talk directly to you."

She rubbed her eyes and squinted at the light shining almost
vertically through her partially-closed blinds.  "Okay, you got
me.  Talk."

"Good news..."

"It had better be," she interrupted him with a snarl.

"I got a call this morning.  There was an A&R guy from Sony-
Virgin at last night's show."

Priss instantly came close to fully awake.  "Go on."

There was a pause as Rick tried to build the anticipation, and
Priss growled once more.  He laughed.  "They've been watching our
soundrom sales while we were on tour, and they decided that
between our sales and the way we work a show, we're the kind of
act they're looking for.  They want to sign us, Priss!"

"You're shitting me."  But he wouldn't.  Rick was a bit of a
wheeler-dealer and a player-wannabe, but he wasn't a liar.

"Would I kid you?  We have an appointment to meet with their
regional A&R VP tomorrow at 10 AM, and after that, we go right to
work coming up with our first soundrom for them!"

"Wait, wait, wait."  Priss shook her head to clear it.  "We have
a contract already?"

"Well, not yet," Rick admitted, "but we will after the meeting.
We just sign it and we're off."

"The hell we will.  I'm not signing anything until I read it, or
better, get a lawyer to read it.  That's how I almost got screwed
by that agent a coupla years ago."  *Gotta ask Sylia if she knows
a good lawyer.  Heh.  Like there's any doubt of that.*

"C'mon, Priss, get with the program!  You get all prickly, these
guys'll shitcan the deal."

"Not if they're legit, they won't.  Chill out, Rick.  You get all
puppy-dog over-eager on us and we're gonna look like a bunch of
idiots ready to get ripped off."

"But..."

"And if they do drop us, well, the hell with'em.  If we're good
enough for Sony-Virgin, we'll be good enough for just about
everyone except maybe GENOM Music.  It won't be long before
someone else offers us the same or better deal."

"But..."

"That's *it*, Rick.  Go back to your Casio and relax, got it?"
And with that she hung up on him.

Then she screeched with delight, kicking her feet and flailing
her arms to send her blankets flying into the air.  "Finally!"
she cried out triumphantly, then lay there basking in the sun
with a silly-looking grin plastered on her face for the next
hour.

                              * * *

IDEC.  Monday, January 5, 2037.  9:13 AM

Daniel Ohara glanced around the table at his executive staff.  "I
managed to reach Madigan last night.  She maintained that
Friday's rogue boomer event was exactly that -- a shipment of 65-
Cs destined for USSD that went haywire and took off on their
own."  He frowned and repositioned his glasses.  "They had
originally been part of a force deployed in the Polar War, and
Madigan says her technicians believe that their control circuits
failed due to accumulated combat stress."

Across the table, Hiroe Miyama snorted, much to the amusement of
the other pair present.

Daniel flicked his eyes over to rest on her for a moment.  "Well,
yes, we know how dependable GENOM's boomer technical support is,
so of course we have the greatest confidence in their analysis.
Anyway," he continued, still deadpan, as Tony and Illya coughed
and choked, "in regards to any data available from the recovered
boomer remains, there isn't any.  Madigan said that between the
ADP, the Sabers and the Visitor, no sensor recording remained
intact for us to study."

"That's impossible!" Tony objected.

Illya chuckled.  "By now you should know, Tony, where involved
the Visitor is, is not to use the word 'impossible.'"

Hiroe looked pensive.  "I've been browsing the newspages all
weekend.  There are some very strange eyewitness reports --
stranger than usual, that is," she amended as Illya smiled and
raised a forefinger.  "Last night, the 16 Tokyo Day Times
reported -- and documented with photos -- that a Sailor Senshi
appeared on Friday night and destroyed two boomers by herself."

"A what?"  Daniel frowned in confusion.

"A girl of magic from 'Sailor Moon,' a 40-year-old anime," Illya
offered.  When he saw the looks Hiroe and Tony were giving him, a
perplexed expression appeared on his face.  "What?  What?  The
videoroms I buy for my youngest!  The show she loves!"

Tony snickered.  "Yeah, right."

"What supposed to mean is that?" Illya demanded.

"Settle down, people," Daniel rumbled.  "So, what are the
implications of this... Senshi?"

"Well," Hiroe huffed, "I don't think I need to point out that
Sailor Senshi are *not* native to this universe.  We appear to
have a second Visitor.  And..."  She trailed off.

"And?" Daniel prompted.

Hiroe took a deep breath.  "It is my recommendation that we
simply ignore her."

"Explain."

Hiroe began to tick off on her fingers.  "One, Madigan and GENOM
are treating this 'Senshi' as if she didn't exist -- otherwise
we'd likely have orders by now about her.  So we are under no
extra obligation to chase after her like we are the original
Visitor.  That's the most important immediate consideration."

Daniel fixed his gaze on her.  "But there are others?"

Hiroe nodded.  "Let us assume for the moment that 'Sailor Moon'
is reasonably trustworthy as an information source.  This Senshi
is then one of a troop of similarly-powered girls, who will no
doubt be looking for her and may arrive en masse to rescue her.
The clothing she is wearing in the photos resembles the uniform
of the *weakest* of the Senshi -- and according to the article
she took out two combat boomers by herself.  Do you really want
to risk a potential hostile confrontation with almost a *dozen*
entities each of whom at the very least will equal and at worst
may well outrank the Visitor and his technology in raw power?"
She gave Daniel a pointed look.  "Furthermore, they're the good
guys in their show.  I'd rather we didn't do anything that put us
in the potential 'bad guys' category.  Their enemies had a
tendency to end up very thoroughly defeated, if not dead."

Tony and Illya silently traded glances across the table.

"Are you seriously asking me to accept an analysis based on an
ancient children's anime?" Ohara demanded.

Hiroe spread her hands.  "We're scientists.  We work with facts
whenever possible.  And all that we have that passes for facts is
this anime.  What do *you* suggest we base our plans upon?"

Daniel scowled.  "I don't like the apparent coincidence of having
yet another extradimensional visitor show up here.  In addition
to everything else we're handling these days, we're going to go
back the lab, take apart the pinhole projector, go over our
records, and make absolutely certain that nothing that we did
last June is responsible for their arrivals."

Around the table, the other three nodded soberly.

"Good."  He looked down at the papers in front him.  "Now, since
GENOM is not requiring us to chase down this... sailor girl, I'll
accept your recommendation.  Anything else?"

Hiroe cleared her throat.

"*Is* there something else, Hiroe?"

She nodded.  "Yes.  Two things.  The first is something I don't
think you've realized yet.  If this Senshi is indeed another
Visitor, we have something more than just new technologies to
consider."  She glanced around the table.  "Our little sailor
girl there kicked butt and took serial numbers.  She was most
likely at the peak of her abilities.  And that's where the
problem is."

Ohara shook his head.  "I don't follow."

Hiroe looked him in the eye.  "Daniel, the Senshi are magical in
nature.  *Magic.*  And this one certainly displayed no signs of
any kind of weakness.  Hell, one of those photos shows her taking
a boomer's laser cannon head on and *surviving*."  She took a
deep breath.  "It means all bets are off.  It means that there's
real magic out there in other universes.  It's *strong.*  And it
works *here*.  There's magic loose in our world now, and no
matter what we do, we may not be able to unravel *that*,
regardless of how many sensor sweeps we perform."

"Bull," Tony declared, as Illya looked thoughtful.  "Just because
we don't know what she did doesn't mean it's magic.  More likely,
it's just an advanced technology."

Hiroe rolled her eyes.  "'Just,' he says."

"Yes!  Why assume something unrealistic like magic when science
would do just as well?  Occam's Razor, Hiroe!  Perhaps it's
advanced gravitics of some sort, like GENOM's been trying to make
work for a decade or so now."  Tony sat back and looked smug.

"Except progress from boomer gravity gun to gravity control is
going at speed of development from fusion bomb to fusion
generator," Illya offered.  "Slower, even.  And I presume shows
no sign this Senshi does of the power pack, the hyperdense
projector unit, or even anything that might like a gravity
manipulator look.  Or any other device.  Else Hiroe would it
mention.  If this magic is not, it might as well be."

Hiroe nodded.  "Clarke's Third Law.  Still, the primary source
specifies *real* magic..."  Her forehead creased as she frowned
briefly.  "God, listen to me.  Can you just imagine telling
anything about this to Madigan?  She'd laugh her ass off and then
can us faster than we could blink."

"Thankfully," replied Ohara, "that's not yet a problem we have to
face.  At least not until this... Senshi becomes part of our
orders."  He took off his glasses and concentrated for a moment.
"Now, you said there were two things.  What was the second?"

"Right," Hiroe said.  "The same newspaper that has the Senshi
photos has an interview with the Visitor."

Daniel closed his eyes.   "Why am I not surprised?"  He opened
them again, and replaced his glasses.  "I'll want to read it, of
course."

Hiroe nodded again.  "I bought extra copies after seeing the
stories, and I've already sent two of my people to talk to the
reporter involved."

"Good."

He shuffled his papers again.  "Pending that, we need to talk
about the next attempt we will make on the Visitor."  There were
groans around the table, and he gave a sympathetic smile.  "I
know, I know.  But we have been given a large stock of boomers,
and Madigan has made it very clear that we *will* continue making
an effort, or else."

Tony looked disgusted.  "The fact is, we're having shitty luck
trying to contain him long enough to get a good analysis.  Forget
about capturing him.  He keeps pulling incredibly advanced
technologies out of his ass, and we can't anticipate what he'll
be capable of next.  I swear, the man's like some... sort...
of... magician..." He let his gaze rest upon Hiroe.  "Don't you
say it.  Don't you dare suggest..."

Hiroe shrugged.  "I don't know.  It would explain a lot, though,
don't you think?  At the very least it's another very good reason
to study him," she pointed out, and Tony glared at her.

"Yeah, *if* we can get him to stand still long enough to figure
out how what he's doing works.  We've been having notably little
success at that."

"Then," Illya said, "in one place we must make him stay."

"How?" Tony demanded.

"We the boomers have," Illya smirked.  "Make of them a, how do
you say, a dogpile?"

"Gang up on him and just hold him down?  Forget about trying to
make it look like a random boomer incident?"  Daniel's forehead
creased as he considered this.

Illya nodded.  "Why not?"

Hiroe smiled, ever so faintly.  "And we leave the PR problem in
GENOM's hands."

"Right!" Illya cried.  "But the Knight Sabers we must distract
somehow, or work it will not.  They to his aid likely would
come."

"You have an idea?" Hiroe asked.

"Sure!"  He slapped the table.  "We hire them!  On a job far away
or very difficult we send them, so that by himself the Visitor
must the boomers face.  And then on him the boomers sit, we our
readings get, and maybe him we capture.  Or at least ask him with
us to come, eh?"  He grinned.

"And we pay for this with GENOM's expense money!"  A slow grin
spread across Tony's face.  "I think I like this plan."

"But what are we going to hire the Knight Sabers to *do*?" Daniel
asked wearily.

Tony chuckled.  "Check the corp newsletter, and pick whatever
department or facility got the 'GENOM Highlight' article this
week, and have them raid it for their current big project."

"Oooh, I know, I know," Hiroe laughed.  "Have them trash
Madigan's office!"

Daniel allowed himself a smile.  "I think *that* would be
overdoing it a bit.  But a mid-range facility outside the Tower
with a secure project or two might make a believable target."

Tony had pulled out his PIMtop and was furiously scrawling on it
with the stylus.  "I'll do a little searching around for just the
right place.  I should have something by this afternoon."  He
looked up.  "Now we just need to find a way to contact them."

"No worries, friend Tony," Illya said.  "That I will do."

"How?" Hiroe demanded.

Illya smiled secretively and tapped his finger against his nose.
"I my ways have."

"Cousin Bradford?" Daniel asked.

Illya nodded, grinning.  "Cousin Bradford," he agreed.

                              * * *

Monday, January 5, 2037.  7:11 PM

"That was a very interesting pair of articles in the '16 Times',
Lisa."  Looking up from where she worked on the logs from
Friday's deployment, Lisa noted that Sylia looked even more
restrained than usual.

*This,* thought Lisa, *is a bad sign.*  Bad enough those two
geeks from IDEC spent the best part of the afternoon hassling
her.  She didn't need Sylia on her case now, too.  "Yeah, well,"
she began.

Sylia stepped closer to the desk and its hydra-headed system, but
stayed far enough away that she did not seem to loom menacingly
over the smaller woman.  "It's very curious that no one has ever
had a chance to talk with the Loon for more than a few seconds,
yet you managed to corner him for an entire interview."

Lisa felt a flush of anger surge into her.  "Are you insinuating
something, Sylia?"  *Boss or no boss, friend or no friend...*

"I'm not suggesting that you fabricated your interview, Lisa."
Sylia's mollifying words were delivered in the same rigidly
controlled voice, and whatever comfort they might have offered
bled away into Sylia's icy tones.  "I want to know how you
persuaded him to stand still for what had to be at least fifteen
minutes' worth of questioning.  And I want to know why this
information went right to your newspaper instead of us."

"I wasn't aware I was supposed to pass my news stories by you
first for approval, Sylia."  *She wants to pull this cold bitch
number on me?  Fine.  I can do it too, right back in her face.*

To her satisfaction, Sylia seemed taken aback by that.  As the
leader of the Knight Sabers paused for the merest of breaths,
Lisa mentally toted up a point in her favor.  "I was not
suggesting censoring your work, Lisa.  The Loon is of interest to
the Sabers for a number of reasons, as you know.  Any
intelligence on him should at least be *shared* with the
organization."  Her calm voice somehow managed to sound
accusatory.

Inside, Lisa seethed, but managed to keep it from her face.  "I
didn't know that I was under an obligation to do so."

Sylia pursed her lips and appeared nonplussed.  "Well," she
responded, "nothing in the *letter* of your agreement with us
actually *requires* it, but by the spirit..."  She trailed off,
leaving the rest to Lisa to fill in.  "I would simply appreciate
learning what you have discovered from *you*, not from my morning
newsfax."

"If there had been anything I thought was immediately important,
Sylia, believe me, I would have told you."  Lisa turned back to
the monitors in front of her, hoping Sylia would get the hint.

Instead, Sylia stepped closer and leaned in to Lisa.
"Immediately important?  Lisa, *anything* about that... that
person is important!  He is a dangerous unknown in the middle of
an explosive situation.  For now, he appears to be on our side,
but who knows if and when that might change?  Anything you know,
anything at all above and beyond the... the... *fan magazine
trivia* you printed about him, could make a critical difference
in a future mission!  I am *not* content to assume he is an ally
simply because he acts like one -- it is, in fact, the number one
ploy I expect GENOM to use to destroy the Sabers some day!"

"But..." Lisa began, then clamped her mouth shut in horror.
*Shit.  I almost blabbed about Doug to Sylia...  I've got to
watch myself or I'll screw up big!*

"But nothing!" Sylia continued, missing Lisa's aghast expression.
"I cannot afford to trust an ally that I myself have not groomed
or at the very least verified.  As long as he is a mystery to us,
he is at best a neutral, and at worst a possible enemy.  And
*any* information on him can make the difference between being
prepared and being the recipients of a possibly fatal surprise."
She stood straight again and neatened the hang of her bolero-
style jacket with a quick tug.  "Do you understand me, Lisa?"

That Sylia was *right* burned a cold light of realization in the
back of Lisa's mind, but did nothing to soothe her resentment;
instead it served only to enflame it.  Lisa suppressed a scowl
that she desperately wanted to wear.  "Yes, *ma'am*," she
snapped.

                              * * *

Monday, January 5, 2037.  8:17 PM

After the fifth re-read, Leon put down the newspaper.  *Well,
that's that,* he thought.  *Now he's giving interviews, and a
second new vigilante has shown up.*  He steepled his fingers and
looked out over them at the living room of his apartment.

*This is starting to get out of hand.  It was bad enough when he
was an open secret shared by GENOM and the ADP.  But now the
Loon's turning into a public figure.*  Leon shook his head and
stood, stepping to the large window from which he could look over
his neighborhood.  *I can abide by vigilantes if they at least
try to keep a low profile, like the Sabers.  Hell, some people
still think they're nothing more than urban legends!  But the
city can't have a vigilante celebrity -- it would claw away at
what little respect people have left in the authority of the ADP
and the N-Police.  And how long until the Loon makes matters
worse by turning that alleged wit of his away from GENOM and onto
us?*  He stared out over the lamplit streets below and watched
the traffic go by as a gentle flurry of snow sifted down.

"Hypocrite," he said aloud to his reflection in the darkened
glass of the window.  "What little authority we have is what
GENOM's lapdogs allow us."

"But," he countered himself, "We still do some good.  And the
public still believes in us.  That's important, perhaps more
important than anything but actually doing the job.  As long as
the people have faith in us, they have hope that things will
improve.  And anything that erodes that hope is as much a crime
as allowing a boomer to go rogue."

He stood silently for several minutes as the pedestrians and the
snow drifted by outside.  *And what if the Loon gets any more
careless about his kills?* he mused as he thought of the slagged
and ruined superboomer recovered from the bottom of Tokyo Bay,
the cause some weeks ago of flood damage all along the shoreline.

*We're going to have to take him down.  Hard.  Even if it *is*
what GENOM wants.  And to do that, I need more information than
we have already.*

He shifted his focus to stare at the reflection of the living
room, and his eyes fell upon the telephone.  *I think it's time
to call in the marker on a favor they don't know I've been doing
them.  But which one should I contact?*  He didn't want to speak
directly to their leader, not yet.  He'd be far more comfortable
with an intermediary.  That left him only two choices, really.
But which one?  He frowned at his reflection in the window as he
weighed his options.

Finally, Leon turned from the window and reached for the phone.
He almost drew his hand back from the dial at the last moment.
Then he steeled himself and punched in the number with button-
presses that were firm, decisive, and hard enough to muffle the
usual "click" with the duller "tok" of the keys energetically
hitting bottom.

He took a deep breath as it rang.  "This is the point of no
return," he whispered to himself.

The phone's video screen flickered to life as the recipient
picked up on the other end.  "Moshi-moshi?"

Leon nodded a greeting.  "Hello, Nene.  I have a proposition for
your boss.  Your *other* boss."


END OF CHAPTER SEVEN

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------------------------------------

This work of fiction is copyright (C) 2000, Robert M. Schroeck.

Bubblegum Crisis, and the settings and the characters thereof are
copyright by and trademarks of Artmic Inc. and Youmex Inc., and
are used without permission.

Douglas Q. Sangnoir, "Looney Toons" and "The Loon" are trademarks
of Robert M. Schroeck.

"The Warriors", "Warriors' World", "Warriors International" and
"Warriors Alpha" are all jointly-held trademarks of The Warriors
Group.

"Kat" and any representations thereof are copyright by and a
trademark of Kathleen Avins.

"Wetter Hexe" and any representations thereof are copyright by
and a trademark of Helen Imre.

"Maggie 'Shadowwalker' Viel" and any representations thereof are
copyright by and a trademark of Peggy Schroeck.

"Dwimanor" and any representations thereof are copyright by and a
trademark of Joseph Q. Avins.

Lyrics from "We Didn't Light The Fire" recorded by Billy Joel,
written by Billy Joel, copyright (C) 1989 by Joel Songs (BMI).
Lyrics from the alternate version of "We Didn't Light The Fire"
written by the Billy Joel of Warriors' World and copyright by
him.

Lyrics from "Invisible Touch" recorded by Genesis, written by
Tony Banks, Phil Collins and Mike Rutherford, copyright (C) 1985;
owner of copyright is unknown to me.

For a full explanation of the references and hidden tidbits in
this story, see the Drunkard's Walk II Concordance at:

	http://www.eclipse.net/~rms/dw2conc.html

Other chapters of this story can be found at:

	http://www.eclipse.net/~rms/misc.html

The Drunkard's Walk discussion forums are open for those who wish 
to trade thoughts and comments with other readers, as well as 
with the author:

        http://p202.ezboard.com/bdrunkardswalkforums

Many thanks to my prereaders on this chapter:  Joe Avins,
Kathleen Avins, Nathan Baxter, Ed Becerra, Berg, Barry Cadwgan,
Andrew Carr, Kevin Cody, Helen Imre, and Eric James.  Additional
prereaders for future chapters welcome.

C&C gratefully accepted.

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