The Starguild Presents:
                      A Story of Bubblegum Crisis...


                        Bubblegum Rush: Book One

                           --+ Chapter 2 +--


                    BGC Created By: Toshimichi Suzuki

           Some Terms Drawn From Every Cyberpunk Writer Alive

                        Story By: Berk' Watkins

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

     Things were getting ugly in the GENOM corner of the Interface.
     Kai dove out of the way of a hostile Sysadmin and cut his
connection before he got himself brain-fried.  "I hate this," he
muttered to the woman checking his vital signs on a computer linked to
him by various electrodes.
     "Your heart rate was really up there for a few moments," Meg
pointed out.  She swivelled around to look at her boyfriend.  "This is
getting way to dangerous.  That was a GENOM sub-contractor and you
nearly got yourself broiled."
     The cracker nodded and pulled the cable out of the datajack
mounted at the base of his skull.  "I think that discretion is the
better part of valor at this point, Meg.  I'm going to need your help in
building a Tapeworm to go into the GENOM mainframe.  It's decidedly
visitor-unfriendly in there right now..."
     The Boomer nodded and brought up EMACS.
     Kai climbed out of his elaborate, throne-like Interface rig and
sat down in a desk-chair next to the screen.  "Time to rig up a social
disease that won't go away for Our Friend Quincy..."
     The pair chuckled at the thought and got to work.

Megatokyo, Japan

     Kou Takada was sitting right on top of one of the worst moral
dilemmas of his life as he looked out of the window and out over the
fog-shrouded waters of Tokyo Bay.  It wasn't easy being a retainer for a
Triad heiress.  It was even less easy when the Triad in question was in
the middle of a bloody revenge campaign.
     He could feel the GD-42 behind him, waiting for orders.
     Tomorrow night he and the woman he'd guarded his entire adult life
would go out and do battle for the Honor of Hou Bang.  Two deaths
justified by even more death, and for some sick reason he couldn't feel
anything about it.  It was like being dead inside.  "I hope you
understand it's strictly business, nothing personal..." he said in the
refrain of mobsters throughout the ages.
     His cellphone chimed.
     "Tiger Claw," he said into the receiver.
     "Dark Tiger," an aged voice replied on the other end of the
connection.  "How goes preparation?"
     "Tomorrow night..."  Kou swallowed, fighting off the last of his
doubt.  It was a time for business, not misconception.  "And the
Package?"
     "The Steel Tigers are handling that as we speak."
     "Understood."
     Kou listened to the phone on the other end hang up and waited
several seconds before hanging up on his end and putting the phone away. 
Tomorrow night the woman he cared more about than anything else in his
mortal existence would be changed forever.  What did his father say when
his cousin Kai had come to live with them?  'We do what we can to hold
onto innocence, but there comes a time when fate demands we put it
aside.'  Sometimes children grew up fast in the Triad.  He'd already
been training for two years to become Hou Bang's next Spymaster when his
father had said that.  At the same time, Kai had just stepped onto the
road that would turn him into Hou Bang's best cracker.
     He smiled at the memory of the new look Kai was sporting.  Kai was
still the socially inept, sometimes moody cracker he had always been. 
But there was something else about him now...  Kai had something to live
for, something that gave him a defiance he'd lacked before.  He'd been
worried about his cousin, fearing he may decide to sacrifice himself one
day for some trivial bit of data.  The cracker had something to fight
like a tiger for...  He had someone to go home to.
     Kou squelched that line of thought with extreme prejudice.  Down
that path lay madness, and impossibility.  He was Hou Bang's Spymaster,
not a potential suitor for the Heiress.
     "Go over those systems again before we go out tomorrow.  I don't
want that infernal machine breaking down with a BU-55C bearing down on
us.  The Heiress will be in that thing!" he commanded.
     Workers scrambled to comply with his demands.

The Next Morning...
Los Angeles, California

     Kai Stuart peered at his reflection in an inactive computer
monitor and marveled at just how crummy he could look after no sleep for
48 solid hours.  "Tapeworm?" he asked Meg.
     Meg peered at the code through eyes as bloodshot as his.  "Code
looks good," she said tiredly.  "Can't really tell as long as the screen
stays out of focus though."  She rubbed at her eyes and blinked them
several times.
     "Compile.  Send.  Sleep," Kai said as his head began to head for
the desk.
     Meg complied and had just managed to send the program off before
she slumped in her chair and drifted off too, her chin rested on her
propped-up hands.
     Soft snores in two different keys echoed in the databank room as
everyone else's days at the Chang Corporation home offices began.

     The Tapeworm disguised itself as a standard communication between
the two megacorporations and infiltrated GENOM's mainframe as it was
designed to.  It happily burrowed through files, like the demented
little techno-bookworm it resembled so much in the Interface.  It copied
pertinent information and lurked off into the electronic background
until it could send itself out of the GENOM system and back home.

     "It's time to wake up, Meg.." a woman said softly, shaking the
younger woman's shoulder.
     Meg muttered something and shifted forward so that her head was
resting on her folded arms.  The shock of the shift also woke her up
moments later.  "Bwa?" she asked tiredly.
     "It's lunch time, Meg,"
     "G'mornin', 'Mom'..."
     The secretary chuckled and shook her head.  "I figure you probably
wanted to eat something besides Twinkies."  She glanced at the neat, but
large, stack of paper coffee cups next to Kai and sighed.  "And I'm sure
he needs more than just coffee."  She turned and walked out, chuckling
at how odd the two had looked, surrounded by junk food wrappers and used
coffee cups.  There were times she wondered how the two of them managed
not to die from malnutrition.  Even Meg had to worry about eating the
wrong things, she may have been a Boomer, but she was still mostly flesh
and blood.
     Meg staggered to her feet and stretched with her hands clasped at
the base of her skull.  She pressed forward slightly and twitched at the
loud pop of her vertebrae.  She put her hands a few inches higher than
her natural waist and leaned back, producing another pop from lower in
her spine.  She walked over to Kai and shook his shoulder.  "C'mon,
Lover.  Time to face the day..."
     "Don'wanna," Kai mumbled stubbornly.
     "Kaaaiii..."
     "Saturday, Auntie Yuri.." he said, half asleep.
     Meg chuckled, Kai had regressed a bit.  She bent down and nibbled
on his earlobe.
     "AAACK!" Kai bellowed as he jerked up and fell out of his chair.
     Meg placed her index finger in the middle of his forehead, her
thumb extended upwards and her other fingers curled up.  "Gotcha.." she
said with a smirk.  She turned around, chuckling all the way, and walked
out.
     The only thing that managed to make its way through Kai's sleep-
fogged brain as she walked out was how well her jeans fit her rear. 
"Gah, Meg..  Hold on.  What's going on?!" he stammered and fumbled as he
got to his feet and chased after her.
     Meg walked out with a positively evil grin on her face.
     Kai staggered out after her, half crawling, half running.
     Kai's secretary got a good chuckle from the spectacle.  "They make
such a cute couple," she said to herself.

     Yuri Takada eyed her cousin and Meg as they walked into the
cafeteria, both looking more than a little exhausted.  "You to alright?"
she asked.
     "Long computer run.  Lots of security, very sad.." Kai said.  He
was obviously struggling to keep his bloodshot eyes open.
     "We'll find out if we get anything for our efforts in about an
hour," Meg explained.  "Meanwhile I need to get the Space Cadet here fit
for public view..."
     "No coffee.  Let me help you get some food into him..." Yuri said
confidently.  She walked over to the line with the taller red-head.
     Kai sat down at Yuri's favored table and propped his chin on his
hands and his elbows on the table.  It was all of 30 seconds before he
was sound asleep again.  He was rudely awakened by Meg shaking his
shoulder a few minutes later.
     "Nothing but coffee and junk for a whole day," Yuri said in a
tired voice, "When are you going to learn you can't do that?"
     "When I fall over dead?" Kai offered.
     Meg frowned and tapped him lightly on the head.
     "One of the reasons your favorite toy here is rail-thin, Meg, is
because he has hypoglycemia.  Any sugar that hits his blood stream is
quickly absorbed," Yuri explained.  She set a plate of food and some
juice in front of the cracker.  "Eat..."
     Kai dug in.
     "What's hypoglycemia?"
     "You know what diabetes is?"
     "Yes.."
     Yuri shrugged.  "Think the exact opposite of diabetes, he has too
much insulin."  She sat down and watched Kai eat.  He was apparently
obvious to everything except his food.  "He loves sugary foods because
they take the edge off his need for blood-sugar.  He loves caffeine
because it takes the edge off of his hunger.  The result is, a quick fix
of sugar and a suppressed appetite.  From time to time, unless you keep
a close eye on him, he's going to have fits where he suddenly feels
wiped out and can't do a damn thing."
     Meg nodded.
     "Especially around lunchtime, because I've never seen him eat a
good breakfast on his own as long as I've known him."
     Meg chuckled.  "I'm gonna have to whip you into shape, Kai..."
     "Yes, Mistress..." Kai said around a mouthful of spaghetti.
     Both saw the image that presented in their minds and flushed
slightly.
     Yuri rolled her eyes and stood up.  "I've got work to do.  You two
try not to do anything that might get you arrested for unnatural
acts..."
     Kai started choking as his cousin walked out.  "S-she did that on
*purpose*!!!" he exclaimed after he'd recovered his breath.
     Meg just chuckled softly and started eating.  She wasn't in quite
as bad shape for food as Kai was, but she wasn't feeling very well
either.

     After lunch the two crackers made their way back to their office
and got to work retrieving the data they needed from the GENOM
mainframe.  Kai typed a few commands into a terminal and waited for the
results.  A few moments later a series of dates and locations began to
scroll up the screen.  "Paydirt..."
     "Why hello there, Quincy.  Nice to meet you too," Meg chirped.
     The list was a location of Quincy's scheduled appointments around
Megatokyo for the next month.
     "So, Beautiful, where do you want to go to celebrate?" Kai asked. 
He put his arm across Meg's shoulders and moved closer so that his cheek
was touching hers.
     "There's a new club downtown."
     "Clubbing?  Well, I suppose it wouldn't kill me."
     Meg reached over to lock the door and then wrapped her arms over
Kai's shoulders.  "But first," she purred.
     Kai chuckled.  "I like the way you think."

     Meg stepped out of the passenger door of the car as Kai opened it. 
She was wearing a light jacket over a halter-top and a pair of leather
pants that could be best described as painted-on.  Her pants were tucked
into her ever-present boots.  Her long red hair was pulled back into a
ponytail and swayed as she walked.  She glanced over at Kai and sighed. 
"What are you wearing that trenchcoat for anyway?"
     Kai was dressed in black jeans, a blue silk dress shirt, a black
trenchcoat, and a pair of black hitop sneakers.  He'd actually tried to
do something with his hair other than just pull it back into a short
ponytail for a change so he looked semi-presentable.  "John Woo is like
a god to me..." he said slyly.
     Meg threw up her hands in frustration.
     "Okay, I'll ditch the coat..." he relented.  He pulled off the
out-of-style coat and tossed it into the trunk of his car.  "Better?"
     "Much..."
     They walked arm-in-arm towards the elevator that would take them
to the club above.
     The interior of the club was a sort of controlled bedlam of lights
sound and gyrating flesh.  In essence, exactly what a lot of nightclubs
had been like for decades.
     Meg grabbed her boyfriend by the arm and hauled him out onto the
floor.  "C'MON, LET'S DANCE!"
     Kai had no choice but to go along for the ride.

     After a late evening/early morning of gyrating around to a song
and light show that would leave some people convulsing, the pair of Hou
Bang crackers headed back home.
     Kai was looking a little wilted.
     Meg was looking only a little less wilted herself.
     Both looked like they'd had a blast.

Megatokyo, Japan

     Kou Takada was in Hell.
     The Heiress had almost become a murderer.
     He'd almost turned her into one.
     Business was business, but was it worth robbing a woman of her
innocence to create the next leader of Hou Bang?  Could he live with
himself if he allowed her world to be shattered?
     He frowned deeply and shoved all his doubts aside.  It was his
Duty to ensure the safety of Reika Chang.  It was also his duty to
prepare her for her future position at the top of Hou Bang.
     He had no doubts any longer.
     He was also certain he was damned.
     "Prepare the GD-42 for tomorrow.  We will bring our fearful
vengeance down on GENOM," the bodyguard rasped.
     Reika Chang came in from talking to the woman they'd caught spying
on her.  Whatever the spy had said, she was obviously shaken up by it.
     "Soon your sister will be vindicated, Reika.  The crime of killing
her is unforgivable..." one of the technicians reassured.
     Reika looked at the technician with agony in her eyes.  She was in
mental agony from the strain of the past few days.  "They're guilty of a
third crime that I can't punish them for.  They took away my soul..." 
She wandered upstairs to prepare herself for the assassination of
Chairman Quincy.
     Kou wandered out onto the docks and vanished into the fog rolling
in off the bay.  Maybe he'd get mugged and Reika would be forced to miss
her date with destiny.  He felt as if he were just as loathsome as
GENOM.  Was Reika's slide into the Shadow World *his* fault?  The man
growled and punched the metal wall of a cargo container, not even
feeling the pain.
     All his old doubts had come screaming back.

Los Angeles, California

     Kai awoke to a female arm draped over his torso.  It took him
several seconds to remember he had a live-in girlfriend.
     "Good morning, Lover..." Meg purred.  She moved a little closer
and preoccupied herself with running her fingernails lightly across
Kai's chest.
     "As much as I love to wake up like this, we can't stay like this
all day."  He sat up and cracked his neck.
     Meg sat up too and pouted.
     "Tonight, I promise..." Kai said with a sly grin he'd adapted from
her own.  He leaned over and kissed her, cupping her left breast through
the green silk of her favorite nightgown.  "The merest sample..." he
said with a wink.
     The cracker got up and rushed to get ready for the day.
     Meg had a very hard time focusing on the task of getting dressed. 
She was a little distracted.  "You.. You.. MAN!" she scolded as they
walked out the door of his apartment.
     "Last time I looked.. yes..." Kai remarked as the door closed
behind them.

     "What's this message mean, Kai?" Meg asked, pointing at a screen.
     The cracker peered at the screen and frowned.  "311, on this
system it means we've been hacked..."
     Meg looked at him with an odd expression.  "Huh?"
     "Okay.  I know every code has a story around here.  311 is the old
police code for indecent exposure.."
     Meg snickered for a moment, then she noticed Kai did *not* have a
pleasant expression on his face.  "Cute.  So what do we do?"
     "I Interface and see what kind of damage was done.  It's quicker
that way..."  Kai got out of the desk chair and settled into his
Interfacing Throne.  "Back me up from outside, this might get ugly..." 
He plugged the cable into his datajack and hit 'GO.'

     In the Interface, Kai was fuming.  "A Termite?  Somebody used a
Termite on *my* datawall?"  Kai stared at the neatly holed wall with an
ugly frown on his face.  He quickly started to work repairing the damage
and trying to figure out what had happened.
     [Status?] Meg's typed words said on a screen that opened up next
to him.
     "Datawall breached.  No data stolen so far.  Termite Icebreaker."
     [TERMITE?!]
     Kai glared at the rapidly closing damage and frowned again.  "Of
course you realize, this means war..." he muttered darkly.  "Get my old
deck and get ready to set a hacker trap..."
     Moments later his student/lover was standing next to him.
     "What's the plan?"
     "Cloak and wait...  He'll be back since it was so easy last
time...  He'll be more cautious, but he'll be back for data," Kai said. 
He knew how the average, modern cracker thought.  For several years,
before the need for security at the Chang Corporation had increased,
he'd been a datathief himself.
     Meg sent a message to her adoptive mother and Kai's cousin, Yuri,
that they were working on a security breach.  Minutes later, they were
fielding typed-out conversations with both.
     Hours passed...
     Meg and Kai alternated on and off every couple of hours to eat and
go to the bathroom.  The overall mod of the situation was gloomy.  Kai
was nearly rabid over the destruction of his security system.  Kai when
he actually got angry was not a fun person to be around.
     Kai's experienced ears picked out the sound of a Termite going to
work on the datawalls of the system.
     "Different place this time.  Good boy..." he muttered.
     They moved into ambush positions and waited.
     The wall opened and all hell broke loose.
     The intruder seemed to be a man made of smooth crystal.  He was
semi-transparent and glowing slightly.
     "Arrogant twit.." Kai scolded as he opened fire with an
antipersonnel program designed to cause convulsions in the target.
     Meg backed him up with a spell to freeze him in place.
     The cracker ducked both and shape-shifted.  His crystalline body
sprouted spurs of crystal from his major joints.  He also shifted
tactics and went offensive.  He turned loose a dangerous program
designed to deliver electrical shocks to the target's brain.
     Kai bounced the attack off of a mirror and charged in with his own
version.  "YOU ASKED FOR IT, ASSHOLE!" he roared.
     Meg stayed back and tried to trace the invader's signal.
     Kai's attack missed and the two crackers began a slow circling of
each other.  A standoff of fantastic proportions, like two powerful
wizards in a fantasy story sizing each other up for a blast of fire.
     The computers that generated the artificial reality of the
Interface seemed to tremble in fear.  The strain being placed on the
local Interface servers was horrendous.
     They got their second wind and began again, carrying the fight out
the side of the datawall and into the Interface at large.  Spectators
gathered for what was promising to be the best fight since the hurley
events at the last Olympic Games.
     Meg appeared just behind Kai.  "Traceroute..  Genaros Station!" 
She issued another command.  "LOCKDOWN!"
     The invading cracker froze in his tracks.
     Kai crashed the invader's deck permanently, slagging its circuitry
with a power surge.  He slumped to his knees, his mind reeling from the
strain of the fight.
     The crowd finally broke up, whispers of awe and more than a little
fear coloring the sound of them as they moved away.
     "Got `im..." Meg said nervously.  Something seemed to be bugging
her.
     Kai nodded and got back to his feet.  "We need to fix this
mess..." he said tiredly.  He checked the elapsed time and did a double-
take.  It had been ten hours since they'd first entered the Interface...
     "You guys are Inferno and Rhiannon, right?  With the LA office?" a
man asked as they neared the wrecked datawall.
     Kai nodded.
     "My handle's Coyote," the man explained.  "Me and some of my
buddies work with Chang at the Los Vegas proving grounds."  He shook his
head.  "That was, uhh, Amazing...  Could we, like, help fix this mess
up?"
     "they're clean..." Meg whispered into Kai's ear.
     Kai gestured to the ruined protective wall around the LA
mainframe.  "Any help would be appreciated.  I've been on duty for *way*
too long."
     Coyote winced and nodded in sympathy.  "I bleed for you guys.." 
He grinned.  "Let me get the boys in on this and we'll be done here in
no time."
     They and the Los Vegas team got to work and got done quickly. 
During the operation, Kai discovered the Los Vegas techies were working
on a stalled government contract to create a lightweight combat armor
for urban combat.  The prospect of a possible working vacation, away
from security, fascinated him.  They all said their farewells and left
the Interface.
     "I'm going to go report to Yuri on what happened," Kai said as he
unplugged himself and stood up unsteadily.  He needed a vacation
desperately, he felt like he'd been run down by a BU-12C.
     Meg nodded and slumped over a desk, her face broadcasting her
exhaustion to the world.  She wasn't used to the marathon sessions that
popped up from time to time, and she looked like she needed ta chance to
unwind too.

     It was all over.  Meg was still in the databank room resting from
the marathon session.  Kai was in his cousin's ofice getting an update
on the State of the World since he'd last come up for air.  "So, while
we were playing Cops'N'Robbers with the intruder, how did the Japanese
Operation go?" Kai asked.
     Yuri adjusted her glasses slightly and sighed.  "We didn't get
Quincy, but a new contact in Megatokyo has informed us the man who was
really responsible for Irene Chang's death has been dead for almost an
entire year."
     "Mason?"
     "Mason."
     "Good riddance..."
     Kai nodded to his cousin and got up to leave.  "I need a vacation. 
I think I'm going to take some time off to work with a group at the Los
Vegas testing facility."
     Yuri nodded.  "After that mess today, you deserve it."  She
smiled.  "Go home and get some rest, come back in a few weeks.  I don't
think we'll have any security problems for a while after the shit-storm
you brought down on that cracker..."
     "I put the fear of a net.god in him," the cracker said with a
wink.  He walked to the door carefully, his steps carefully measured. 
"Later, Cuz..."
     Yuri smiled and shooed him out the door.

     Kai shook Meg's shoulder to get her attention.  "Time to go home,
Meg.."
     The Boomer nodded absently and followed him out, not really paying
attention to anything he said.  They rode home in silence.  They got
ready for bed in silence.  As inept as Kai was with the opposite sex, he
knew Meg was *not* in the mood for anything.
     Meg finally managed to sleep but her dreams weren't pleasant.

     "You cannot escape me, Meg.  You are my daughter.  Family sticks
together..." The Voice whispered hoarsely.  There was a sound like ropes
being drug through a thick puddle of oil.
     Meg screamed as a technoorganic tentacle wrapped around her leg.
     "Come home to me, Daughter..." The Voice rasped.
     The tendril began to pull her towards The Voice.  She fought, she
struggled, she wept.  She was pulled to the edge of a cliff and thrown
over the edge.
     "Come Home!" The Voice roared from below as she fell.
     She got a great view of source of The Voice before she woke up.  A
huge, bluish-gray brain.. a Boomer brain.

     Meg woke with a jolt, covered in sweat and shaking like a leaf. 
She got up and put on her robe over her nightgown.  She walked out to
the kitchen and sat down with one of the few beers in Kai's fridge.  She
spent the entire night staring out of the window, her thoughts past the
horizon.

The Next Morning...

     Kai stumbled into his kitchen, wondering where Meg had gone in the
night.  He found her sitting at the table, a haggard expression on her
face.  She looked like she'd been wrestling with a problem all night.
     The cracker sat down across from her.  He was beginning to learn
how to interpret her moods and feelings, and he knew something was
nagging at her.  It may very well have been an old issue that she was
wrestling with.  But what was it?
     "Kai, I'm going to tell you everything I know about Genaros..."
Meg said nervously.  There was something in her eyes that Kai hadn't
seen in them before: abject terror.
     Kai looked across the kitchen table.  "Genaros?"
     Meg looked at him.  "Seeing that intruder yesterday made it all
the more vital I tell you this..."  She took a deep, shuddering breath. 
"Something monstrous has taken over Genaros Station..."  The memory was
terrible, the terror, the pain, the sorrow...
     "Monstrous?"
     "I don't know what it is, but it's playing the command-level staff
on the station like puppets."  The look of fear in her eyes spread to
the rest of her body as she allowed herself to think about old memories. 
"Whatever it is, it likes Boomers.  Life got a lot easier for me around
the time I think it took over.  When I found out about it, and my
friends and I tried to escape though.."
     "It got nasty..."
     Meg looked at her lover and nodded once.  "It.. It started trying
to find a way to get rid of us.  Working us harder than ever, overtaxing
our systems...  I spent an entire month of my life living on two or
three hours of sleep and poor food.  I was being worked to death!"  She
sobbed and drew her legs up to her chest, wrapping her arms around the
front of her calves.  She rocked back and forth in her rear as memories
poured across her mind's eye.  "I learned a lot about real work that
month.. before the escape...  I can drive almost anything now.. and I
know a lot about strength-enhancing loadframes too..."
     "But it came at a price."
     "Sylvie.  Anri.  Lou.  Nam.  Four women I'll never see again..."
she said, counting off on her fingers.  "I feel like I lost four
sisters..."
     Kai walked over and picked her up.  "I have a lot of vacation time
coming up.  I think we need to get out of LA for a while..." he said. 
She relaxed and let his arms support her at the knees and back.  "I'm
thinking about a nice vacation to a nice desert town.  You feel like
visiting Coyote and the guys at the proving grounds?"
     Meg nodded.  "One thing though..."
     "Yes?"
     She sat forward and wrapped her arms around his neck.  "I want a
little quality time my favorite man of all first..." she said with a
little sadness.
     "A pick me up?  I think that can be arranged.." he remarked
absently as he walked them to the bedroom.
     Meg smiled and pulled herself closer.  "Sylvie and Anri would've
adored you...  You're probably one of the last truly nice guys..."
     "You know what some people say about nice guys..."
     "Exactly," Meg said with a positively lecherous grin on her face.
     Kai chuckled as he kicked at the door gently.  "You're
insatiable..."
     "I'm not a bad girl..  I was just built that way...." Meg said
sweetly.  She nipped at his left ear, earning a chuckle from him.
     The door closed behind them...

Megatokyo, Japan

     Kou stared out of the window of his hotel room, wondering who he
appeased Above to have luck as good as his.  Reika had not become a
killer, she still had some measure of her innocence left.  In addition
the Heiress had regained her voice...  He smiled slightly and turned to
face the interior of the room.  "You're learning..." he remarked.
     "I picked the lock," Reika said with a grin.  "Why'd you do that?"
she asked, referring to his willingness to go to jail for her.
     "It's my job, Reika, I put your well-being before my own."
     The next leader of Hou Bang nodded.  "Thank you, Kou."  She smiled
wistfully and got up to leave.  "I don't think I've ever thanked you for
everything you do for me..."
     "It isn't necessary for you to thank me for me doing my job."
     Reika opened the door and crossed the threshold before looking
back.  "Maybe it should be," she said profoundly.

Genaros Station, HEO

     A technician's eyes glazed over as he adjusted a control panel set
into the wall.  "All must be judged and punished in accordance with
their transgressions..." The Voice said from his mouth.  The
technician's hand typed out a command on the panel.
     The internal door closed behind him.
     The external door opened in front of him, pitching him outside
without a spacesuit.

     Something stirred within the depths of Genaros, he was not pleased
with how his plans were turning out.  He was used to having his way in
everything, and didn't appreciate incompetence and failure in his
subordinates.
     A hand reached out and typed a series of commands into a keyboard. 
"Kai Stuart," The Voice said.  "The second of four crackers trained by
the inventer of the Interface System, Dr. Emil Romanov, aka Dante," he
qualified.  "Considered the most mentally stable of the so-called 'Four
Horsemen' and the most creative.  Known for his boast that 'No Sysadmin
on the planet could stop him.'"  The Source of The Voice chuckled
darkly.  "He has not seen *anything* yet..."  The Source's eyes gleamed
red in the dim light of the computer terminal he was sitting at as he
brought up the profiles of the three other crackers with Kai's training.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
     Here I am again, thanking all the fanboys that made this possible. 
To all of you, you know who you are, thank you very much.  To 'Lord
Steve' thanks for the sanity, to Danny thanks for the sarcasm and, of
course, a big thanks to Suzuki-san for the universe to play in.

     I'm going to do everything I can to continue this series, even
though I'm in the middle of a period of transition.  I've got a booger
of a course load looming ahead and a job on top of that.  I've had to
cut my work on Sailor Moon Expanded short because of a near-total
burnout on anything relating to a certain group of seifuku-ed ladies...
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++