Elsewhere
Jinsei pushed open
the heavy metal door to the dark cell in which he
held Nagura Scott, the former base administrator of
Blizzard Base Zero, captive. The cell was dark; its
stone walls contained no windows or other openings,
and there was no source of artificial light. Attached
to one wall of the chamber was a metal bar, to which
Dr. Nagura was handcuffed.
The doctor struggled
against his bonds, but despite his best efforts to
wrench the bar free from the wall, he succeeded only
in sending a loud clanging sound echoing
around the room.
"Stop that,
Nagura," Jinsei said. "You'll do yourself
an injury."
"What do you...
want?" Nagura asked.
"The master
will be ready to utilise your skills soon,"
Jinsei explained. "Miko is out collecting the
last of the items you asked for. At least... she will
be, after she takes some 'Miko time'. It seems
she really hates you and would like to see you linger
here as long as possible."
"I'm not... her
biggest fan... either."
"You're a funny
man, Nagura." Jinsei stepped further into the
room and allowed the door to slam shut behind him.
"There you are, locked up and at our mercy. You
know there is a control bug inside your head and that
I can make you do anything I wish as well as cause
you extraordinary pain - yet you still try
to keep your dignity."
"It has nothing
to do with... dignity," Nagura said. "It
is... hatred."
Jinsei raised an
eyebrow. "Oh?"
Jinsei took a moment
to consider the situation. He served a master
possessed of incredible power, but Jinsei had a
number of powers of his own, including the ability to
control and speed up the evolution of all living
things. If you wanted a rabbit with wings, or a rose
with teeth, Jinsei was the person to go to.
But his powers were
not without their limits; he had found that every
living thing contained certain potential evolutionary
branches, which changed only with breeding and the
process of natural evolution. There were
things he simply could not create - or, if he did
manage to create them, things that would not actually
work.
Despite those
limits, Jinsei's powers were incredible. Still, he
could not hope to compete against his master; so he
was always on the lookout for new opportunities to
advance and increase his own strength - he was always
looking for ways to evolve.
"See," he
said, "I know you and Miko have a history, but I
don't know what it is. What did you do to
her, Nagura?"
Dr. Nagura shook his
head.
"Oh, come
on," Jinsei told him. "Avoid the pain.
Tell me willingly."
Dr. Nagura turned
his head and spat at Jinsei's feet. For a moment,
Jinsei was filled with absolute rage. He was too
'cool' to admit it, but he hated Nagura almost as
much as Miko did - for months, in order to carry out
his master's plan, Jinsei had been forced to disguise
himself as 'Doctor Smith', an assistant to Nagura on
Project: Roboman at Blizzard Base Zero. He had
struggled to maintain the facade of an educated
bioroboticist, but had struggled even more greatly
maintaining an existence in the wholly unnatural
environment of the Antarctic base.
Someone like Nagura,
so determined to develop technology which could be
used in place of - or even to change -
natural processes absolutely disgusted Jinsei, and it
was all he could manage not to horribly torture the
man while he had him at his mercy.
"Fine,"
Jinsei rolled his eyes. "We will do it the hard
way. Tell me what happened between yourself and
Miko."
"N...no...!"
Nagura struggled to speak. The moment Jinsei issued
the command, Dr. Nagura felt intense pressure against
his right temple. He immediately tried to resist the
impulse to respond to Jinsei and ease the pain - but
the more he resisted, the stronger, the more intense,
the pain became.
"Tell me,"
Jinsei repeated.
"No!" Dr.
Nagura shouted.
"Tell me!"
"Ack-k-!"
Dr. Nagura slouched forward and started to cough
violently. He pulled hard against the handcuffs
attaching him to the wall, but had no more success
than when Jinsei first entered. He continued to
cough, and in the darkness of the cell Jinsei could
only hear the dark blood spill from the
prisoner's mouth and splatter on the ground.
"Hmmmm..."
Jinsei rubbed his chin. "If you keep resisting,
I think you might just die. Whatever Miko
did... is keeping it a secret that important
to you?"
Dr. Nagura spat
again, but it was not an act of aggression. With his
mouth free of blood he swallowed loudly before
speaking: "Miko... the witch... Miko killed my
son!"
Science
Island
Rose Brachis frowned
as she approached the office of Satoshi Kakeru, the
director of all operations on Alpha 7. She had never
been a fan of the man, his goals, or his
methods - in fact, she downright despised him,
but she could never totally escape dealing with him.
As Head of Security on the artificial island, Dr.
Brachis had to report to him every second day, and it
never became any less of a struggle.
She knocked on the
door to the director's office and waited for a
response. She had found that he never answered
immediately, even when she knew he had nothing else
to do - and that annoyed her even more.
"Enter."
She pushed the door
open, stepped through, and closed it quickly behind
her. The office was bare, decorated only with a black
desk and two chairs in its centre and one artificial
light directly above the furniture. Despite his
responsibilities, Satoshi never seemed to have a need
for paperwork, files, or even a computer - but it was
not Brachis' place to question him.
"Sit
down," Satoshi told her.
"I'd rather
stand, sir."
Satoshi smiled. He
had heard Brachis' deputy speak the exact same words
only a few minutes earlier, and he finally understood
why Brachis thought so highly of him - he was her.
"I
insist," Satoshi said. Dr. Brachis nodded and
took the only empty seat in the room, facing Satoshi
across the desk. "I have made my decision
regarding Operation: Guardian."
Brachis smiled.
"Oh?"
Satoshi nodded.
"I will be moving ahead with Damien
Sinclair."
Brachis scowled.
"But Sinclair has failed on every mission I have
given him! Even yesterday, in New Orleans - !"
Satoshi raised a
hand to silence her.
"Don't even try
it, Dr. Brachis," he said sternly. "We both
know you have deliberately set him up for failure so
that you could freely promote your deputy. I have
overlooked it for this long because Senshi has
performed so well since his arrival on Alpha 7, but I
can overlook it no longer."
Brachis opened her
mouth, closed it, then opened it again. "I...
admit that I have favoured Senshi for a number of
reasons... but even so, Sinclair is not the
best candidate. I am concerned that by selecting him
you are setting yourself up for
failure."
"The choice is
mine," Satoshi reminded her. "I agree that
Sinclair is not as ideally suited to Operation:
Guardian as Senshi, either physically or mentally,
and that factored into my decision - after all, we
would not want to risk losing our superstar security
operative."
"Sir - !"
"No,"
Satoshi interrupted. "The decision has been
made, and the Earth Defence/Leadership Directorate
notified. Sinclair will be the Guardian
operative."
Brachis did not
reply.
"You may go,
Dr. Brachis."
New Orleans
Sei stepped through
the plastic flaps separating the back rooms of 'Hey,
Pizza!' from the main restaurant and returned to his
friends. Kiko sat at the counter where he had left
her, slowly picking at a pizza, while Ikku assisted
the store owner, Trick, with washing dishes in a
basin within the food preparation area. He had asked
Kageki to remain by the television at the back of the
store, leaving him to speak freely:
"Miss Sato,
Ian," he said. "Sorceress Miko is in New
Orleans. She is in the process of robbing a
bank."
Kiko quickly slid
off her stool and rushed to Sei's side. "This is
our chance! We can find her, and make her take us to
Dr. Nagura!"
Sei nodded. "We
will need to move quickly. Sorceress Miko has at
least two pixies with her. We will be in for a
fight." He looked at Ikku, who had not
responded. "Ian?"
"Ikku!"
Kiko called out. "Are you coming?"
Ian slowly put down
his dishcloth and leaned against the edge of the
basin.
"Hah!" he
laughed.
Kiko frowned.
"Ikku...?"
Ikku turned quickly,
winked, and vaulted over the shop counter to stand
beside Kiko and Sei. "Of course I'm coming! I
was just waiting for you two to get the talking out
of the way. Let's go squish some pixies!"
They ran out the
front door of the pizza shop a moment before Kageki
emerged from the back room of the store and
approached Trick. He saw the front door swinging and
raised an eyebrow: "Where did Sei-tachi
go?"
Kiko and Ikku
followed Sei as he led the way through the darkened
city streets. As they put some distance between
themselves and the pizza store, they began to hear
the sound of police sirens and shouting through a
megaphone and knew they were heading in the right
direction. They rounded a corner and saw, at the end
of the street, six police cars parked outside a bank,
where two pixies hovered in the air, one on each side
of a tall, slender woman in pink and white tights.
"That's Miko?"
Kiko whispered to her allies. "I could so take
her."
"We will wait
for the police to make their move, then assess our
options," Sei told her.
"Hey!"
Ikku protested. "Who died and made you
leader?"
Sei closed his eyes,
took a deep breath, turned to Ikku and opened his
eyes again. "What would you have us do,
Ian?"
"Henshin, grab
our weapons and hit her until she falls down!"
Sei turned away.
"I think you
just made him leader," Kiko whispered.
Ahead of them, the
police kept their weapons - a combination of
small-calibre handguns and shotguns - trained on
Miko, who smiled seductively at the officers as she
stood, unguarded, on the steps outside the bank. The
two pixies flickered out of view momentarily, and
when they reappeared - surrounded by a dull blue glow
- each carried a beige sack bulging with money. The
sacks were larger than the pixies themselves, and Sei
realised that meant they were supernaturally strong.
One police officer
raised a megaphone to his mouth and spoke loudly into
it. "Drop the money and put your hands above
your heads!" he demanded. "The Black
Battalion is on its way! We will not hesitate to fire
on you!"
"We cannot
wait," Sei whispered. "We will need to get
to Miko before the Black Battalion arrives."
Kiko and Ikku nodded
in agreement.
"So what do we
do, boss?" Ikku asked.
"We henshin and
move quickly. The two of you will deal with the
pixies while I confront Miko. We will need to strike
before the police have a chance to react. I am not
sure how well the robosuits will protect us from
shotgun blasts."
"Okay!"
Ikku said. "Let's do it!"
"Let's go, Robo!"
Energy crackled
around their bodies as the already-familiar sensation
of their transformations began. They felt the
circuitry embedded beneath their skin pulsate as it
sent the signals instructing the robosuits to allow
metal shards to pierce the thin fabric and re-form as
shiny silver chestplates, gloves and boots.
They were not
concerned as the same metal covered their faces and
the back of their heads to form thick but malleable
helmets. Commands came into focus on the inside of
the two-way mirrored visor that opened in the front
of the helmets.
It surprised Sei how
easily his two teammates had come to accept their
transformation. Only a day and a half earlier they
had been simply a developing scientist and the son
of a scientist, respectively. In that short
time, they had adapted to their new powers; they
certainly weren't experts when it came to using the
robosuits, but they had learned far more than he ever
imagined they would.
"Electro
Blaster!"
Kiko shouted. She ran forward and jumped onto the
back of a police car before the officers surrounding
it could stop her. Blue mist fell around her right
hand as the handgun-sized weapon took shape, and she
lifted it quickly, aimed it at one of the two pixies
and fired. A burst of jagged yellow energy arced from
the barrel of the gun and struck the pixie's chest,
causing it to freeze in mid-air.
"Yes!"
Kiko cried.
Sorceress Miko
turned to her remaining pixie and began to speak.
"Go, now, bef - "
"Chaos
Sword!"
Ikku
pushed two police officers aside as he charged the
steps of the bank, his black-and-silver hilted,
translucent-red-bladed sword in hand. He swung it
upward at the still-moving pixie, which tried to fly
to safety - but as the sword moved, it seemed to
everyone present that there were several Ikku's, each
with a sword of their own, attacking from different
directions. The pixie dodged one illusory strike
after another until, finally, the true Ikku struck.
The blade passed through the pixie easily and it
exploded into blue dust.
"You
monster!" Miko shouted.
She
turned her attention to Ikku and raised her right
hand to strike - but paused as silver-gloved fingers
wrapped around her wrist. Sei stood behind her and
held her tightly; he had no intention of letting her
escape.
Miko
kicked her leg backwards and struck Sei's left knee,
and he reflexively released her arm. She jumped down
the remaining steps as the police began to fire on
her - yet as she fell toward the pavement her body
was consumed by the blue energy cloud Sei, Ikku and
Kiko knew preceded any attempt at teleportation, and
by the time the ammunition of the police's weapons
reached where she had been standing, she was
already gone.
Sei
had to think quickly. He could teleport as well;
what's more, if he moved quickly enough, he could
follow Miko's trail. However, he knew he had only
enough power remaining to teleport one more time -
could he risk becoming stranded?
He
rushed forward to stand where the energy left behind
by Miko continued to fall toward the ground and
closed his eyes. He concentrated, and the same blue
energy poured from his hands and washed over his
entire body; a moment later, he was gone.
Elsewhere
Sei
reappeared in a dim, deserted corridor that seemed
familiar. It was deserted, and a very thin layer of
dust and grime suggested it had been for some time.
Light fittings were set into the wall at regular
intervals, but the lights were switched off.
He
had been there before.
I
know this place, Sei thought. This is...
Science Island!
NEXT: Revelations!
