Bubblegum Zoned-Out

an irreverent fanfic parody by Martin D. Pay

(with both apologies and gratitude to
Bert "SkyKnight" Van Vliet)

			*****

	Dusk was settling over the cluster of buildings that made up 
the campus of Essex University. A heavy cloudbank rolled 
across the sky, threatening to conceal the sun even before it 
set; the air was heavy with the anticipation of a storm.

	A door flew open and a young man strode out. He was casually 
dressed; jeans, denim jacket and a red baseball cap marked 
with the distinctive 'cannon' logo of the Arsenal soccer team. 
He looked quickly at the sky, and started to walk rapidly 
across the car-park, hoping that he could make it to the club 
meeting before the weather broke. He had almost decided not to 
attend this month because of the weather forecast, but then 
the lure of a fresh piece of anime had convinced him. One of 
the members had persuaded his father to bring him back a 
'little something' from a San Francisco video store while on a 
business trip to the States. The 'something' had turned out to 
be Animeigo's first tape of 'You're Under Arrest!' - something 
new in Britain and definitely not to be missed.

	A sudden crack of lightning made him start in surprise. Damn. 
He started into a jog, trying to reach the covered pedestrian 
overpass ahead of him before the rain arrived. He could see 
it, just down the street... then another flash, almost 
directly overhead, made him break into a run. Then, just as he 
lunged into the shelter of the pedestrian overpass, there was 
a deafening roar of thunder and a lightning blast that turned 
everything white...

	He staggered, blinking furiously as he tried to clear his eyes 
of the after-effects of the lightning bolt. That one had been 
too close; he thought it might actually have hit the mouth of 
the overpass just as he'd entered it. Although on second 
thought that was obviously ridiculous. If _that_ had happened, 
someone would now be scraping his charred corpse off the 
pavement. He paused, breathing deeply, then started to walk 
onwards.

	Then he suddenly realised what was nagging at him; instead of 
a covered overpass he was walking out of a dimly lit alley. A 
quick glance round showed him towering skyscrapers that 
matched nothing he could recall and crowds that made central 
London in the rush hour look like a Brighton beach in 
February. And then something else suddenly hit him; all the 
street signs were in Japanese, and he could read them; and the 
people were speaking Japanese, and he could understand them. 
Which was pretty bizarre when his knowledge of Japanese had 
been gleaned solely from the various subtitled anime series 
with which he was familiar. He looked round wildly, mind 
numbed, trying to understand how he had seemingly been 
transported from a small English town at dusk to a vast city 
in broad daylight. *'Hallucinating. That's it. I'll bet that 
bastard Johnson spiked my drink last night... '*

	Finally, unable to think of anything else to do, he started to 
drift down the street, oblivious to the looks his clothing was 
getting. Then a large blimp drifted overhead, and he heard the 
almost desperate exhortations for recruits to the ADPolice...

	*'Wait a minute - the ADPolice? This _cannot_ be serious!'* He 
reached up and gingerly felt his head - perhaps he'd tripped 
and fallen on it. He was obviously more seriously injured than 
he'd realised.

	And then the noise of an explosion reached him, and the 
distinctive sounds of heavy-calibre weapons and the hissing 
roar of energy cannons. He grabbed at a passer-by who was 
running, clearly terrified, in the opposite direction. "What's 
going on?"

	"Baka! There's a bunch of boomers tearing up the mall, the 
ADPolice are getting stomped, and some fools in powered armour 
have just started in as well. Let go of me!" The woman jerked 
her arm free and darted away down the street.

	*'ADPolice? Boomers?... This _is_ real? Oh boy... And if I 
_am_ somehow in MegaTokyo, and there're boomers, there might 
just be... Knight Sabers?!'* Throwing caution to the winds, he 
ran towards the sounds, dodging through the fleeing crowds. 
When he reached the ADPolice cordon he stopped to examine the 
lie of the land then, taking advantage of the fact that the 
troopers had concentrated their attention inwards towards the 
fighting rather than outwards towards the street, ducked under 
the tape barrier and started to weave his way between the 
parked APC's and squad cars.

	He reached the corner of a building and paused for breath, 
panting with exertion and exhilaration. *'Maybe I'll actually 
_see_ the Knight Sabers in action... '* The sounds of battle 
were definitely getting closer, and he pushed his head round 
the corner to see what was happening.

			* * * * *

	Leon looked down at the body, an expression of mingled anger 
and disgust marring his otherwise handsome features. "That 
boomer's cannon damn' near cut him in half! Do we know who he 
is?"

	Daley Wong shook his head, sighing softly. "No. I doubt he's 
from round here, though. No local would hang around in the 
middle of a firefight involving boomers."

	"Yeah." Leon shook his head sadly. "Oh, well, better call the 
meatwagon, there's nothing anyone can do for him now. Run the 
usual checks, though I don't suppose it'll do any good if he 
came from down in the Canyon. Our best chance to ID him will 
be if someone bothers to report him missing..."

			The End


	Author's notes. I wrote this after reading Bubblegum Zone (my 
wife says I have a nasty sense of humour). Just for the record 
I like 'Zone' a lot, and mean no disrespect whatever to Bert 
Van Vliet (who's been kind enough to raise no objection) or to 
his 'magnum opus' - I'm really looking forward to Part 10! I 
just couldn't resist (cackles hysterically)...

Please let me know if there are any deficiencies in formatting etc. I write
in MS Word and am still experimenting in 'de-formatting' successfully into
ascii for posting purposes!

C&C welcome...

Martin D. Pay

"Don't talk to me about alternate universes.
I already know I live in a different one from everybody else..."