New Orleans
Kageki lay flat on
his stomach across the main counter of 'Hey, Pizza!',
staring at the two-inch tall robot which stood just a
few centimetres from his face. The robot, Cog, tried
her best to ignore him - but since he took up her
entire field of vision, that was almost impossible.
It wasn't the first time she had found Kageki unable
to take his eyes off of her, either; the boy was
obsessed.
She tried to make
her way further down the counter, but Kageki followed
until she reached the very end and, with nowhere left
to turn, she decided to confront him.
"Kageki!"
she shouted, but due to her size it came out as
barely the equivalent of a regular person's voice.
"Can you please leave me alone? Just
for a little while?"
Kageki pouted until
he felt a strong hand take him by his green collar
and pull him off the counter. His expression changed
from one of whining to one of surprise.
"Trick-san!"
Trick Star stood
over him wearing a black t-shirt, black pants, black
shoes and a white apron. He smiled and shook his
head, then looked sternly down at Kageki.
"Kageki, you work
here now," Trick said. "I can't have you
bothering visitors to the store, even if they are
tiny, intelligent, technologically-advanced robots.
Do you understand?"
Trick offered his
hand to Kageki who took it and laughed as Trick
helped him to his feet. Kageki bowed to Cog and moved
around the counter into the kitchen to return to his
real reason for being in the store - to wash the
dishes in preparation of the early morning breakfast
rush.
Two plastic doors
led from the back of the kitchen area into a small,
crowded back room where Sei, Ikku and Kiko stood and
listened to the playful exchange going on outside.
"It was nice of
Trick to let Kageki finally work here," Kiko
said.
"I'm surprised
the kid didn't have a heart attack!" Ikku
laughed.
"I do not think
Trick had much of a choice," Sei said.
"Kageki knows who and what we are. Trick has
realised that we need to keep him close to make sure
he does not reveal our secret to anyone else."
Kiko bit her bottom
lip.
"Trick's been
so good to us," she said. "It's been two
weeks since our last fight and he's had no problem
with letting us stay here, even though he has had to
hire Kageki and feed us."
Ikku frowned.
"I wonder how long it will last."
"What do you
mean?"
Ikku shrugged.
"If I had three
people taking up room, eating my food and costing me
money, I wouldn't keep them around very long,"
he answered.
"Maybe we
should try to help out?" Kiko rubbed her chin
thoughtfully. "But how? Kageki works pretty hard
- I don't think Trick needs anyone else around the
store."
"Jobs?"
Ikku asked.
Sei shook his head.
"No," he
said. "I do not think we will be here very long.
Doctor Brachis will contact us, or the United States
or Japanese governments will make a decision
regarding the Earth Defence/Leadership Directorate
and we will be called in. As Miss Sato said, it has
been two weeks since we last heard anything. They
must be close to making a decision."
Kiko looked at Sei.
"I'm not sure
jobs are a bad idea," she said. "We need to
repay Trick somehow and I really need - " She
stopped mid-sentence and threw her hands over her
mouth.
"What?"
Ikku asked.
"Nothing!"
she answered quickly. Her face turned bright red and
she turned away from the boys, took a deep breath and
faced them again.
Ikku raised his
eyebrows, scratched his head and turned to Sei for a
clue. He had no idea what Kiko was suddenly
so embarrassed about. Sei ignored Ikku and simply
stared at Kiko for a few moments before finally
speaking.
"Miss Sato has
realised that as a woman she will need things which
Trick is unlikely to have available."
"Sei!"
Kiko cried.
Ikku scowled.
"Like what?"
"Ikku!"
Kiko's face turned
red again and she ran through the plastic doors,
allowing them to flap back and forth behind her. She
almost bumped into Kageki, who only barely managed to
jump out of the way. Without a word she scooped Cog
up from the counter with her right hand and made her
way out of the store and down the street.
In the back room,
Ikku smiled.
"Oh!"
Then he looked at
Sei, and frowned.
"Ewww!"
Elsewhere in
New Orleans
Miko walked through
the lavishly-furnished hallway of her house in New
Orleans with only one thing on her mind: she had to
get rid of Jinsei. For two weeks he had made himself
at home in her lounge and she was getting sick of it.
The man himself was not the problem; she had become
used to, and even come close to enjoying his nearly
naked, physically perfect red-skinned form relaxing
around the place.
What concerned her
was his affinity for nature. Animals, most recently
insects, seemed especially attracted to him and while
Miko had no specific issue with them, she was a sorceress.
Magic was her game, and magic required
concentration, concentration that was difficult to
maintain with tiny creatures flittering past her eyes
every few moments.
Ornate vases and
busts rattled on tables as her pink-booted feet
stomped past them and her black cape fluttered behind
her, striking almost everything that was unaffected
by the initial passing of her body. It was not until
she rounded a corner and one of her six-inch 'pixies'
landed on her arm and began to flap its wings
furiously that she began to slow down.
"What happened
to you, little one?" Miko asked.
She looked down into
the pixie's eyes, which were identical to her own; in
fact, everything about the pixie was identical to
Miko, except for its size. Even its thoughts,
feelings and memories were broadcast on the same
'wavelength', created and maintained by identical
biological processes - and it was because of this
that Miko found that although her pixies did not
speak, she could still communicate with them, by
focussing her senses on their mental
processes and interpreting them with her own brain.
The pixie on her arm
was concerned about one thing in particular. It was
so frantic with worry that even if it could speak it
would have struggled to find the right words, and
Miko found herself almost overwhelmed by the complex
images and emotions that flooded her mind; they
weren't just memories of the events that bothered the
pixie - they also included images of how the pixie
wanted to respond, and those were not pleasant.
"JINSEI!"
Miko shouted.
The walls rattled
and the paintings and tapestries which hung from them
shook. Some fell.
"JINSEI!"
Miko called again.
There was no
response, but instead of storming through the house
searching for him, Miko paused to allow the pixie on
her arm to crouch and lay its palms flat against her
wrist. They both concentrated and were surrounded by
shimmering blue energy. Miko again attuned her mind
to that of the pixie and focussed on the location in
which it had last seen Jinsei. Slowly, their bodies
faded away, only to reappear in the low-roofed attic
of the house.
Jinsei sat
cross-legged in the centre of the attic with spiders
and flies darting quickly around him. Directly in
front of him a single pixie fought for its life; its
wings were crumpled and pressed flat against its
back, and its only weapon was a broken fork. It swung
the fork out again and again at the attacking
creatures, but even when it hit them it did little
damage - the tiny pixie was simply not strong enough
to hurt or scare her attackers away.
"JINSEI!"
Miko shouted a third time.
"Wait..."
Jinsei muttered. "Watch this. It's really
cool."
"Jinsei, you
have ten seconds to - "
"Shhhh!"
Without warning, one
of Jinsei's spiders lunged forward. With one
hair-covered arm it struck the pixie's hand, causing
it to drop its single weapon. The spider almost
seemed pleased with itself as it scurried across the
floor to where the pixie cowered and sunk its fangs
into its leg.
"JINSEI!"
Miko raised her
right arm and prepared to strike Jinsei from behind,
but the red-skinned man leaned forward and placed one
hand each on the spider and the pixie. He closed his
eyes and concentrated - sparkling red energy gushed
from his left hand and covered the pixie, while green
energy emerged from his right and surrounded the
spider. In only a few instants, the bodies of the
pixie and the spider fused together to leave a pixie
with six hairy arms and long fangs sticking out of
its mouth.
As Miko and Jinsei
watched, the pixie grew - one foot, three feet, then
up to six feet tall, easily equalling the height of
those who observed it - and started to thrash about
violently. In its new state it seemed to Miko to lose
all self-control... and what was worse, she could no
longer align her brain patterns with those of the
pixie and sense what it was thinking.
It was a pixie no
longer.
"You monster!"
Miko snarled at Jinsei. "How dare you
do that to one of my girls?"
She tensed her right
hand into a fist and blue energy surrounded her arm.
She pullled her fist back and lurched forward to
punch Jinsei in the side of the head - she had no
idea what would happen with the combination of her
teleportation power and the sudden impact between her
hand and Jinsei's face. Part of her hoped to see the
flesh teleported off his skull, causing him
unbelievable pain.
Jinsei, however,
calmly leaned to the left; Miko stumbled and fell,
and her energy-charged fist instead struck the
transformed pixie, which faded away in a shower of
blue mist.
"That's
something I've been meaning to ask about,"
Jinsei said as the blue energy faded from Miko's arm.
"Where does your teleportation power come
from?"
"Get out!"
Miko yelled.
"No,"
Jinsei replied, "and don't try to bully me,
because I know it takes time for you to recharge your
powers. So why don't you just answer my
question?"
"No!" Miko
snapped. She gestured with her left hand and two more
pixies flew up beside her. "I may not be able to
send you away right now, but they can."
Jinsei smiled.
"I will come
back. Wherever you send me, I'll come back. If you
just answer my question, I promise to leave you
alone."
Miko did not answer
straight away. She thought about what Jinsei was
saying, and realised that all she knew about him was
that he had the power to force and direct the
evolution of living creatures - how could she know,
if she was to transport him into space or the heart
of a volcano that he would not suddenly develop an
ability to survive there?
"Very
well," she said finally. "My pixies produce
raido shards."
"What are raido
shards?"
Miko smirked.
"I answered your question. Now go!"
Jinsei nodded.
"Fine," he
said. "Could one of your pixies save me the
trouble of walking? Maybe send me somewhere warm and
green? The Amazon, perhaps?"
Miko nodded at one
of the pixies, which flew forward and rested on
Jinsei's bare shoulder. It placed its hand on his
neck and focussed all of its power into him. The
pixie's body glowed blue briefly as it transferred
all of its raido energy into Jinsei's body
and the man began to disappear.
"Uh-uh!"
Jinsei waved his index finger, as if he was warning a
small child away from something dangerous. "Not
so fast!"
He reached up with a
rapidly-fading hand and wrapped his fingers around
the pixie. Suddenly, the pixie began to disappear as
well and, a moment later, they had both completely
vanished.
"Damn
him!" Miko snapped. Still, at least he's
gone. He will never learn how to get the raido shards
from that pixie - and if he does, he will never be
able to use them...
Kiko finally stopped
running and allowed herself to slump onto an empty
seat before she looked around and discovered where
she was. Somehow, she had made her way into a large,
busy shopping centre which, she realised, was the
opposite of where she wanted to be - she had wanted
to be alone... or at least away from the boys.
She opened her right
hand and looked down at Cog, who stared up into
Kiko's face but remained silent. Kiko waited for the
tiny robot to speak, but when she realised that was
not going to happen, she blushed.
"I'm
sorry!" she said. "You must have been so
frightened."
Cog shook her head.
"No!" she
replied. "Doctor Nagura trusted you, so I know I
can trust you!"
Kiko smiled.
"I just had
to get away from those boys! It's been two
weeks! Two weeks of staying in one smelly room with
two smelly boys and using Trick's smelly
bathroom!"
Cog tilted her head
to the side.
"What?"
Kiko asked.
"Kageki
smells... but that isn't why he annoys me!"
Kiko frowned, then
began to laugh. Cog was a girl - the only girl other
than Sorceress Miko and her pixies who she had met
since she first arrived at Blizzard Base Zero a
little more than two weeks earlier - but she was a robot
girl, who did not seem to understand that it
wasn't the actual scent of their male
friends that was getting to her.
Kiko looked up and
saw, a few meters away, two people - a man and a
woman - staring at her and realised that to anyone
who glanced her way, it would look like she was
talking to herself. She turned red, again, and
subconsciously looked down at her own body.
She was wearing a
pair of loose black pants, white running shoes and a
thin yellow sweatshirt, which hardly portrayed the
image she wanted to show the world, but she did not
have much choice - she needed to conceal her
robosuit, and it was not easy to do that in style,
especially when she had no money... and the bulky
communicator strapped to her left wrist did not help
her look fashionable, either.
"Kiko? What's
wrong?" Cog asked.
Kiko sighed.
"Cog... did you
ever leave Blizzard Base Zero before you came to New
Orleans?"
Cog shook her head.
"Well,"
Kiko explained, "I never really got out much
before I went to work with Doctor Nagura. My whole
life was spent at home studying, then at school
studying... I never really had the chance to
socialise very much."
Cog nodded.
"Now..."
Kiko continued. "Now we're stuck with all these
boys, and you're the only girl I know, and the more
time I'm stuck in the dirty back room with those
dirty boys and that dirty - "
"I get the
idea!" Cog interrupted. "'Hey, Pizza!' is
dirty!"
Kiko smiled.
"The more time
I spend stuck there with them, the more I feel the
need to do girly things, things I never cared about
before. Like shopping. Anything that lets me
be separate from Ikku and Sei!"
Cog frowned.
"Don't you like
Ikku and Sei?" she asked.
"I do!"
Kiko answered quickly. "Of course I do!
But... they're boys, and I'm a girl. I need to do
some things differently... I don't mind eating pizza
and watching TV with Ikku, but I need my own stuff as
well... Do you understand?"
Cog nodded.
"Yes! And...
I'm a girl, too! Doctor Nagura explained that to
me!" Cog said. "Is that why you brought me
with you? So we can do girl things?"
Kiko looked up and
saw the couple still staring at her.
"I didn't think
about that at the time," she replied, "but
maybe - "
"AHHHHHHH!"
Kiko looked up again
and saw the couple running away. They had turned
pale, and the man did not stop screaming until he was
completely out-of-sight. Kiko looked in the opposite
direction and saw what she immediately recognised as
one of Sorceress Miko's pixies... with a few extra
arms.
"Miko!"
Kiko snapped. She carefully placed Cog down on the
seat. "I think I'd better deal with this,
Cog!" She stuck her hands out to her sides, then
directly above her head. "Let's go,
Robo!"
Yellow and blue
energy crackled around Kiko's body as, for an
instant, she was seemingly transported to a world all
her own. She felt the circuitry embedded beneath her
skin come to life as thick, jagged metal came through
the pores in her robosuit and fused together to form
silver boots, gloves, a chestplate and helmet - which
was not exactly the fashion statement Kiko was hoping
to make.
"Wait!"
Cog called as Kiko ran toward the monster.
"Don't fight it alone! Use your Alert
Bracer!"
Kiko did not hear
the tiny robot's voice, and a moment later she stood
only a few feet away from the pixie who, up close,
she realised had taken on spider-like
characteristics.
"Electro
Blaster!" Kiko said, and after a momentary blue
flash the yellow, handgun-sized weapon appeared in
her right hand. She lifted it in front of her face
and aimed it at the approaching monster.
"Freeze!"
The
monster did not reply, except to hiss at shoppers who
quickly moved out of its way.
I
don't want to shoot this thing! Kiko thought. The
Robo Rifle's stick mode would have been a better
option, but I couldn't -
She
did not have time to finish her thought as one of the
pixie's additional limbs flashed forward and knocked
her off her feet. Sprawled on her back on the
shopping centre's linoleum floor she tried to raise
the Electro Blaster again to take aim at the pixie,
but it was too fast; it scuttled erratically across
the floor, prodding Kiko with its extra arms, keeping
her off-balance and unable to concentrate.
BANG!
BANG!
Kiko
heard two gunshots ring out from somewhere behind
her. The spider-pixie paused, and pale red - almost pink
- blood began to seep out from two holes near
the centre of its chest. It hissed angrily and stared
down at Kiko.
Kiko
knew that it was her one chance to strike at her
attacker, but she could not take her mind off the
source of the gunshots. Was it a security guard? she
wondered. Where are they now? Did Sei follow me?
Is Miko trying to stop her own creature? How did a
pixie become -
BANG!
A
third shot struck the pixie further down its torso.
It looked up and scanned the distance for any sign of
its unseen attacker, then looked at Kiko again... and
slowly started to back away. It turned back and forth
suddenly and snarled at anyone who came too close. As
Kiko picked herself up, the spider-pixie lashed out
with three arms and smashed a large window, which it
jumped through and fled across the shopping centre
car park.
Kiko
relaxed and the metal components of her armour
vanished, leaving her in just her yellow-and-black
robosuit. People stared, but she no longer cared
about what they thought when they saw her; her mind
was focussed on only two things: getting back to Cog
and reporting what had happened to Sei and Ikku, and
wondering who had helped her and why they had not
exposed themselves.
She
hurried over to the bench on which she had left Cog
and realised immediately that the tiny robot was no
longer there. In her place was a small slip of paper,
folded in half, with her name written on one side.
Her full name: Sato Kiko.
Kiko,
I
have the robot. Meet me by Lake Pontchartrain
tonight to get it back.
We
need to talk.
-
Sato S.
Kiko
gasped and stepped backwards. The note dropped from
her hand as she covered her mouth and quickly scanned
the crowd that had gathered to stare at her for any
sign of the person who had left it.
He
can't be here! she thought, on the
verge of panic. Not after all these years! Not
now!
Suddenly,
panic turned to anger. He had taken Cog! He could
have just approached her and asked to speak. She
would not have turned him away. Not immediately. But
threats and blackmail?
I'll
meet you, onii-san - and once I've got Cog back, I'm
going to kick your -
