Bubblegum Chakram
By Chris Davies
Chapter Three
Something was horribly wrong.
It had been surprisingly easy to adapt to divinity. She wasn't quite sure why that was; before she'd died, she'd never given a damn about the gods, and was quite convinced that they had felt the same about her. She had certainly never aspired to godhood. Her first steps in that direction had been a simple matter of self-preservation, not any belief that taking on immortality would make it any easier for her to accomplish her task.
And so, the ease with which she took up the powers of a god might have startled her, if she'd had any time to be startled. But there had not been time, and soon she had found herself wrestling with an opponent with equal powers.
Fortunately, she'd had the advantage of insanity.
Perhaps that was the secret.
And so, buried beneath the river of lava, she grappled with the bitch. The irony of the situation was unbelievable -- in order to keep Velasca from stealing her vengeance, she had to remain down here, placing it out of her own reach. She might have laughed, if she'd had lungs, a voice box, and a breathable medium to make doing so possible.
But lately ... something was horribly wrong. The urge to laugh wasn't there anymore.
Ares had taken it on himself to explain a few of the finer points of divinity to both of them, lecturing even as they wrestled ceaselessly. And one of the more salient points had been how to read the ambience, so that they'd know if a situation ever arose which might give them cause to end their strife. (Neither had found the possibility likely, but the idea was sound.)
And the flow of the ambience was strange, lately. It was almost as though ...
No.
... as though the most important person in the universe was gone. The only other being that truly mattered, to her.
No. Xena, you cannot have died while I am stuck down here!
The ambience seemed to be indicating just that.
IT'S NOT FAIR! Callisto shrieked the thought.
* * *
"I still don't know what you were thinking, introducing her to those two," Leon fumed as he drove the car into the almost vacant lot where Priss' trailer was parked.
"That she was looking at Harlan and Ellison with interest, and that she knew that I knew them, and that I wanted to keep my lungs," Daley replied calmly.
Leon hmphed as he parked the car a few meters away from the trailer's front door. "She's not that bad."
"Forgive me, Leon-chan, for not having the guts to deal with macho women with guns --" And powered armor, he carefully did not say, since he wasn't a hundred percent sure that the car wasn't bugged. "-- when I lack any hormonally driven reason to do so."
"Right, whatever," Leon said as he hopped out of the car and headed for the trailer. He felt a bit badly about being so rough on Daley, but Priss' non-appearance for her new band's first gig last night had him greatly concerned. He'd overheard one of the guitarists complaining that she hadn't given them any indication of what was going on. Combining that with her recent choice of companions -- and Leon was honest enough to admit to himself that there might be a bit of jealousy in there -- gave him a great deal to be concerned about.
"Oi! Priss!" he yelled, thumping on the door. "Are you in?"
No response. Not even a "Leon, you putz, I'm BUSY!" followed by masculine or feminine moans. Leon's worries intensified. He thumped harder on the door. "Priss! Are you okay? Come on, talk to --"
The door was yanked open.
The woman who was standing in the doorframe was considerably taller than Priss, and only stood a head shorter than Leon himself. The fact that she was taller than Priss was born out by the fact that she was wearing a nightgown that Leon had been fortunate enough to see Priss in at one point, and it had gone down to her knees. It hovered at mid-thigh on this strange woman. Her raven black hair was in a bit of a mess, and her arctic blue eyes glared daggers at him. "What do you want?" she bit out.
Leon stared at her for an eternity, before he finally opened his mouth.
Which was suddenly blocked by a hand reaching up from behind him. Daley smiled nervously as he wrestled Leon back to the car. "Sorry 'bout this!" he said. "Go back to ... whatever!"
The woman rolled her eyes, and closed the door.
"Daley, what the hell are you doing?" Leon shouted as he finally twisted his head free of Daley's grip. His partner still managed to get him into the passenger's seat.
"Okay," Daley said with a calm he didn't feel. "Now, let's consider the situation. Priss doesn't answer the door of her trailer, instead some other woman does, wearing skimpy negligee. What does this suggest to you, Inspector?"
Leon's eyes bugged out. "You mean ... that woman ... and ..."
The temptation to say `No shit, Sherlock,' almost overwhelmed Daley, but he nodded instead.
Leon's face took on a determined expression. "Okay. Then there's only one thing to do about this."
Daley slammed the brakes as the patrol car started to pull back from the trailer. "If you say, `I'll have to lure her back to the straight and narrow path', you're walking the rest of the way, buster."
"Of course not!" Leon said, looking hurt. "Come on, you know me better than that."
"Yeah," Daley said, ashamedly.
"I'll just have to date with them both."
The ominous clouds that had gathered that morning chose that moment to begin to rumble with thunder.
* * *
Xena watched the vehicle pull out of the lot. Whoever that strange fellow had been, it was pretty obvious that he had noticed that the woman who normally lived in this place -- the woman who had been "exchanged" for Xena -- wasn't following her normal routine.
The plan that Stingray had concocted the previous night -- to have her stay at Priss' trailer, so as to prevent vagabonds from making off from any of the absent woman's property -- was not really working out. Xena had also developed a suspicion that the real purpose of the plan was to have her in a place where she could be easily observed -- either by magical means or by more conventional ones. The sensation that she was being watched was almost overpowering.
It would be nice if she could figure out which of the many incomprehensible devices that she'd found in the -- building? -- was responsible for her feeling of being watched. Unfortunately, all of them were equally incomprehensible, except for the vibrating phallus. That, she understood completely.
There was a sudden bell-like noise. It paused, then repeated. The tone seemed designed to be annoying. After a moment, the warrior figured out the source of the noise -- it was coming from a black oblong-shaped object that was near the bed.
After five repetitions, there was a clicking noise, and a woman's voice could be heard. "This is Priss, you know the drill. And Leon? Be sure and tell Daley thanks so much for introducing me to those two `friends' of his. I'm sure the three of us will have many laughs ... and other things."
There followed a beep, then a different woman's voice. "Um ... hello? If anyone's there, could you please pick up?"
Xena frowned, but decided to take the chance. She reached out and lifted the object. She was surprised to note that it was modular, and part of it slipped out of her hands, although it remained connected to the other part by a cord of the same material.
"Hello?" she said.
"Um ... hi. Is this ... uh, Sena?"
"Maybe," Xena replied.
"Right. Uh, this is Linna Yamazaki ... I'm with the people who set you up in the place where you're at now."
"The roof leaks. Pretty rainy day, isn't it?" Xena said casually, using the code phrase that Stingray had given her earlier.
"Won't rain all the time," the other woman said, just as casually giving the countersign.
Xena nodded to herself. "All right, enough small talk ... what is it?"
"I'm coming by to pick you up in about five minutes -- the chief wants to talk to you. Acceptable?"
Xena considered asking if she actually had a choice in the matter, then decided that sarcasm wouldn't get her anywhere. "Sure. I'll be ready."
"Glad to hear it. See you then!" There was a clicking noise, and then a humming. Xena dropped the object -- obviously, it was some kind of far-speaking device -- back onto the other part of it.
"Now," she muttered to herself, "about clothes ..."
* * *
"... and so, the Warrior Princess did save the bard from the embrace of Bacchus, and all was set to rights once more," Gabrielle concluded, to mixed applause. Most of the tavern audience weren't really comfortable with the story -- the mere thought of the Lord of the Bacchae tended make `normal' people anxious -- but she'd stayed away from most of the gross and gory bits.
"Cute story," the woman named Priss opined as the bard made her way back to their table.
"Thanks!" Gabrielle replied, sifting through the collection of coins that the listeners had deposited in her bag of donations. "I really like to tell that kind of story, but Xena doesn't like me to do that when she's around ... I don't really understand why not, I mean, why shouldn't she be proud of her accomplishments, after all?"
Priss stared at her for a second. "You're trying to tell me that happened?"
Gabrielle stared right back. "You think I'd make something like that up? I was the bard! It was frightening! I --" She paused, then went on in a slightly accusatory manner. "You still think this is all some vision you dreamed up after eating some kind of nutbread, don't you?"
The other woman shrugged.
"Aargh. Come on! Don't you think it would have worn off by now, if it was like that? Yes, I know that your sense of time can go funny after doing that, but -- really, is your world that much more unbelievable than mine? You haven't even said what it's like."
Priss hefted her drink. "The air isn't as clean," she commented before she started to swallow.
"Okay, that's a good start. There's a lot of dust storms, then? Do you live in a desert?"
Priss let out a sigh and looked away.
Gabrielle was actually used to this level of unresponsiveness. Xena had been almost this bad when they'd first met. The problem was that Xena had also gotten better as time had passed and the two of them had grown closer. So Gabrielle was a bit out of practice.
"What do you do, there?"
Let's see ... do I tell her that I'm an obsessed seeker of vengeance or that I'm a singer? "I sing," Priss replied.
Gabrielle's eyes widened. "You're a bard?" Priss opened her mouth to loudly reply in the negative, when Gabrielle rushed onward. "Oh Gods! Why didn't you say so before?! You're probably missing a performance right now!"
Well, that was true. `Priss and the Nexus-7' had had a booking for -- last night? Sometime today? -- which had been a while in the making. The guys were probably gonna be pissed off, and for a moment, Priss worried that when she got back, she'd be the veteran of two band breakups. It had been hard enough getting a few of the Replicants back together with some new talent to make the new one ... if she blew this --
Well, on the upside, I could wind up dying because I've been in this dimension too long -- or never waking up from whatever drug somebody slipped me -- and so not have to worry about it, Priss thought cheerfully.
"Listen," Gabrielle interrupted her musings. "Would you like to do something here, instead? Would that make it up to you?"
Priss blinked. "Whaddayamean, here? I don't have my --" She briefly wondered how to explain electrically amplified and tuned musical instruments to someone whose idea of amplification was lifting your voice, then gave up. "-- my tools, or --"
"You use tools to tell your stories?"
"Well, yeah."
Gabrielle nodded, decisively. "Listen -- there was this one guy at the Athens Academy of the Performing Bards --"
"You're shitting me."
The bard pressed on, ignoring the comment. "-- who did the same thing. Whenever he went up to tell a story, he always had to have these little blocks of wood with him, which he clapped together when there was a really dramatic scene happening. Do you know what he was told by the professor?"
"Try cymbals?"
"No," Gabrielle replied seriously. "When he did that, the attention of the people who were listening to the story went to the blocks, not to what he was saying. They were a crutch to this guy, but instead of helping him to walk, they kept him standing still. What matters is the heart ... the soul of the bard. Do you understand what I'm saying?"
Priss blinked. "Oddly enough ... yes."
"So? Do you have a story to tell?"
She opened her mouth to reply, 'Nope', shoot the little idiot down, and get on with business ... and then the story came to her.
She rejected it angrily ... and found that it wouldn't go away.
"Yeah," Priss said, at last. "I've got a faerie tale for these guys. You won't like it. They won't like it. But if you're insisting, I'll tell it."
Gabrielle grinned, and stood up. "Um," she announced. "I don't know if I mentioned this or not, but my colleague, here, is a bard in training -- and she'd really like it if she could tell her first story to such a friendly bunch as you."
The woman has no shame, Priss thought, looking over the village toughs who'd congregated in the taproom. Still the response seemed fairly positive -- in a 'heh, fresh meat' sort of way -- so Priss shrugged, got up, and walked to where Gabrielle had stood, to tell her story.
She took a deep breath and began.
"Once upon a time, in a city far away ... there were wizards. Evil wizards. And one day, they decided that they weren't happy ruling over only mere mortals, oh no. Mortals have oh so many disadvantages ... they get sick, they get hungry, they get dead.
"They get dead real easy. Maybe you've noticed.
"So these wizards hired one of their smarter but stupider brethren to make them some better slaves. And sure enough, he did. He made -- let's call them robots -- that wouldn't get sick, wouldn't get hungry, and wouldn't get dead nearly as easily. And the wizards used the robots to make their city even better. For them.
"But one day one of the robots went crazy and killed the wizard who'd created them, and his daughter ... his daughter realized that something had to be done about the other wizards. So she started a revolution. A small, quiet revolution -- just five people against all the wizards in the city."
And then Priss smiled. "And it came out pretty much even."
The smile died. "One of ... these revolutionaries was a warrior. No one could touch her when it came to fighting the robots -- and she wouldn't let anyone touch her any other way."
There was a low rumble of amusement from the crowd.
"Because she'd cut anyone who tried.
"But ...
"One day ... she met someone. A person ... whom she wanted to let a little closer. And she saw that this person ... wanted to get closer to her, too.
"Isn't it a shame she didn't know that the person was really a robot?"
Sudden confusion.
"Oh, didn't I tell you? Even though the wizard who'd actually gone and made the robots was dead, his brethren were still making improvements. Most of the robots ... you could tell that they weren't human. But some of them were so close ... you could look at them, and you'd never know. You could touch them, and you'd never know. You could l-- you would never know ... and maybe they wouldn't either.
"But this robot did. And it ... didn't want to serve the wizards anymore.
"It wanted to be free.
"But ... in order to get to be free, the robot had to steal a ... magical item from the wizards. And to do that, the robot had to use a magical chariot, pulled by a firey horse.
"And on the night that she stole the item, the horse went mad. The chariot ran wild -- and a bunch of warriors came out to stop it. Any way they could.
"And one of them was the warrior who loved the robot.
"'Kill me,' the robot screamed when sh-- it saw the warrior. 'Kill me or the chariot will destroy the city!'"
And Priss drew a deep breath.
"And the warrior wanted to scream back, 'To hell with the city, it deserves to die, who cares about it, I'm gonna save you or die trying and maybe both!'"
Dead silence.
"But she didn't. She took up her javelin ... waited for the right moment ... and plunged it into the robot's heart.
"Because that was the weakness of the robots. The more human they were, the easier they died.
"And the robot died.
"And since this is a true story, not a faerie tale, nobody lived happily ever after."
Dead silence greeted the conclusion of the story. Priss looked out over the audience for a moment, then snorted and got the hell off the stage. As she walked towards the table where Gabrielle sat, the younger bard snapped out of whatever trance she'd fallen into, and for a moment it looked as though she was about to start clapping -- but then thought better of it.
Priss dropped into the seat, not meeting Gabrielle's eyes.
"Um ..." the bard began. "That was a nice story!"
"You suck at lying," Priss replied mildly.
"I liked it! Really! Um. It was a little unbelievable, though. That's okay though, most of the myths are ... but you always know that there's a tiny kernel of truth, covered by ages of retellings --"
"It happened a year ago."
"Oh. You know the person who -- uh ... never mind."
I'm gonna tear Nene's liver out with a spoon. Just for starters.
* * *
"And this," Sylia explained as she guided their "guest" into the simulation chamber, "is where we undergo our training."
Linna Yamazaki didn't understand the situation one bit. First this person had shown up in Nene's apartment, and Linna'd been called in to do sniper duty -- a job Sylia usually either took for herself, or delegated to Priss. Then her fearless leader had stated that the woman -- Xena -- was going to be staying at Priss' trailer `for the duration'. (Sylia didn't specify which duration, let alone speculate on how long that meant.)
And now, Sylia was giving her a guided tour of their facilities in Raven's Garage. True, she was mixing quite a few bald-faced lies about the Sabres' operations into what she revealed, but it was completely out of character for her to be telling anything to anyone from outside.
`Xena', if that was in fact her real name, grunted in response as she surveyed the simulation chamber. "So who do you fight?"
"I believe that I discussed that earlier --" Sylia began.
"No, I mean, who do you fight in there?"
Sylia pursed her lips, apparently considering something. After a moment, she nodded. "We train ourselves against holographic opponents -- a sort of illusionary image, which cannot actually cause direct injury."
Linna stared at Sylia. Why did she just go into that much detail explaining what a hologram is?
`Xena' snorted. "That's pretty dumb. What's the point in training for a fight and not training to deal with injury?"
"The armour we wear provides protection against the majority of our adversaries use," Sylia said mildly. Someone who didn't know her would never recognize the frost in her tone. "As for the rest -- well, one can hardly train someone to deal with a potentially lethal injury. And I believe that the training program is rather effective." She paused. "Would you care to try a run?"
Linna believed that she understood. Everything -- the tour, the revealed secrets -- had led up to this; an opportunity for Sylia to evaluate `Xena's' abilities. On the other hand ...
The woman shrugged. "Sounds interesting." She sounded far too blase.
Sylia directed `Xena' over to the changing room, and settled herself down at the control console. Linna watched as her leader carefully adjusted the settings, putting the challenge of the holographic opponent at the eighth level -- the same level that Linna and Priss had worked their way up to over the last four years.
Linna gulped as she caught a glimpse of the grim smile on Sylia's face. `Xena's' comments on the lack of danger involved in the training program weren't quite accurate. At level eight, the skin suits delivered a mild electric shock to parts of the body `struck' by the holographic opponent. It didn't compare to actually being hit in combat, but it did hurt.
A few moments later, `Xena' emerged wearing a spare skinsuit -- and causing its `one-size-fits-all' fabric stretch alarmingly over her frame. Unlike any of the Knight Sabres, she didn't deign to tie her hair back -- it hung down past her shoulders in disarray. "Any time you're ready," she announced.
Sylia silently flicked the switch, and a trio of holographic `blobs' appeared around `Xena'.
And then the woman began to move, and the bottom dropped out of Linna's stomach. She had never witnessed a comparable display of prowess, not even when she'd seen the Grand Master of the Reformed Shaolin Temple give a brief demonstration at some half-forgotten festival years before. That man had moved like mercury -- none of the dozen bravos who had volunteered to "assist" him could touch him, but he had been just as hard- pressed to score damaging blows on them.
`Xena' moved like molten quicksilver. What she struck, died.
Roughly ten seconds after the beginning of the simulation, she finished level eight and moved onto level nine -- something that Linna didn't anticipate doing for another year or so. More blobs attacked, and they operated with even greater levels of tactics. And the shock potential of any hit increased as well.
It took `Xena' four and a half minutes to clear the level.
For some strange reason, Linna felt as though a soundtrack should be playing. "Sylia --"
"Quiet."
"But --"
"I'm aware that she has moved onto the level I train on, Linna, now be quiet."
The simulation chamber resembled a blizzard of blobs. As far as Linna knew, Sylia had only ever survived three minutes on this level.
Four minutes later, `Xena' showed no sign of slackening her pace.
"Sylia, who the hell is she?"
"Obviously, she's Xena the Warrior Princess."
"Be serious!"
Sylia restrained her impulse to snarl, `I am,' at the child.
"What happens when if she clears level ten?" Linna demanded.
"I don't know," Sylia replied quietly.
"What do you mean, you don't know?! You designed this --"
"No, actually, I didn't. Doctor Raven did. I'm not even certain if it goes to eleven."
Linna slowly began to edge back from the console, as visions of explosions and electric discharges leaping from the controls danced through her head. She jumped two feet when she heard a sudden beeping noise -- then realized that it was only the intercom on the board.
"Yes?" Sylia snapped.
Sylia is on edge, Linna realized. We're all going to die, aren't we? Sylia is on edge!
"Sylia, I believe that we may have a situation on our hands. According to your surveillance units, there are a number of large vans parking in strategic locations around the shop." Dr. Raven's voice seemed tense but controlled.
All the blood ran out of Sylia's face. "No," she whispered. "No, they can't ..." At once, her hand darted out and stabbed the shutdown switch for the training lab.
The holograms faded instantly, and `Xena' paused where she stood. "Is that the best you can do?" she sneered.
"I've hardly even worked up a sweat!" She lied -- a faint sheen of perspiration could be seen on her face and neck.
"Dr. Raven, get down here at once!" Sylia called into the intercom.
"I can slow them down --"
"NO."
"All right then," the old man soothed. "Just a moment."
It only took him a few minutes to get down into the basement chambers, time that Sylia used to call up her surveillance displays on the practice chambers computers. Her heart sank as she noted the absence of license plates on the vans in question -- and the oddly uniform appearance of the men who stepped out of them, an element that went beyond the men-in-black attire they sported.
Boomers. Genom SpecOp boomers --
And then the last passenger stepped out of one of the vans, and Sylia frowned. There was something disturbingly familiar about the woman with magenta coloured hair --
Father, no. She's supposed to be dead.
Sylia pushed herself back from the console and stood quickly enough to cause vertigo in a frail human. "This facility is compromised," she announced. "We are leaving, now!"
"Uh -- hold it," Xena interrupted. "I --
Sylia turned to glare at the dimensionally displaced woman. "Our adversaries have apparently tracked us to this location because of your presence in this dimension," she all but roared. "I do not care who you may be in your own place and time, but right now you are a liability and I am suffering your presence only because you are essential to the continued survival of one of my operatives. We are leaving! NOW!"
Xena took a single step back.
Dimension? Your own place and time? Continued survival? Huh? Linna thought confusedly.
Sylia whirled and headed towards a blank wall, tapping a button on her blouse as she did. The wall opened up to reveal an elevator shaft. "Go," she snapped. "I will follow you."
Dr. Raven beat Linna into the shaft only by seconds. It was a short drop to a firmly padded bottom, and they half-stepped/half-rolled out into a small room with metal walls, dominated by a large, black streamlined oblong artifact.
Xena looked briefly at Stingray. "You're making a mistake," she said shortly.
"Yes," Sylia agreed. "I did. Move."
Without another word, Xena stepped into the shaft. Sylia paused for a brief check of the surveillance -- the boomers had only entered the outermost areas of the building -- before heading into it herself.
In the room below, she tapped on a certain section of the capsule's skin and the side silently opened up. "Get in," she ordered, and entered it herself. The others followed, sitting on the cramped seats in the interior while Sylia examined the control panel. One switch activated a dull green internal light, while another sealed the door -- and pressurized the cabin.
She then took a deep breath, and tapped a much larger switch over her head.
The metal wall that the capsule faced began to bend backwards and up -- and sewer water flooded the chamber. Another button caused a low whining noise, and the capsule began to move forward slowly.
Sylia closed her eyes. "I'm sorry, uncle," she whispered in English.
She felt his hand rest gently on her shoulder. "Do what you have to do," Dr. Raven murmured in the same language.
She yanked back on the steering mechanism while twisting a button on her blouse sleeve.
The tiny submarine barely outraced the explosion that engulfed Raven's Garage.
After a long moment, Sylia spoke up again. "I apologize, Ms. Amphipoli. I shouldn't have become angry with you for my own mistake in bringing you to one of our facilities."
"The mistake I was referring to," Xena said slowly, "was not letting me go back for my clothes. Or at the very least, the butter knife I brought with me."
* * *
Madigan knew that it was wrong to take such joy in pointless destruction ... but she couldn't help it. Fear me, apprentice. I am coming for you, she thought as she surveyed the wreckage of the building.
"Madigan-sama," called one of the boomers who had avoided being blown up. "Sensors indicate an anomaly in this sector of the ruins."
She carefully walked through the rubble to where the boomer was excavating. "What sort of an anomaly?"
The boomer stood, and handed her a butterknife.
She stared at it a moment ... and then, on an impulse, cast a simple spell.
And then Katherine Madigan smiled for the first time in nearly a year.
To Be Continued….
Return
to the Bubblegum Stories
Author's
Notes:
Let me be forthright. Xena could kick any anime character's ass. She wouldn't have been in serious trouble until the trainer went up to fifteen. But Sylia can be a hell of a lot scarier.
Bubblegum Crisis was created by
Toshimichi Suzuki and others, and brought to North America by AnimEigo. Xena:
Warrior Princess was created by Robert Tapert and Sam Raimi, and distributed
worldwide by Universal/MCA. This story, while incorporating elements of motion
pictures held under copyright by others, is copyright 1998 of Chris Davies.
Nobody sue me, okay?