FanFic - UF/DP - Ronin, An Undocumented Features Interlude
MegaZone
on the remaining UF stories... Of the three parts left two are now done...
Watch for the next post...
Anyway, Ben is here this weekend. He came down for the Def Leppard show... It
was awesome... anyway, this little tale, Ronin, belongs between Solitude and
Altered Appleseed in the UF time line.
All the stories are available via anon FTP to 130.215.24.1 cd /anime/FanFiction
the chronology is
dp.undocument.1.Z Undocumented Features
dp.undocument.2.Z The Long Road
dp.undocument.3.Z Out In the Cold
dp.uf.solitude.Z Solitude
dp.uf.ronin.Z Ronin
dp.uf.altered.Z Altered Appleseed
dp.uf.secrets.Z Secrets (The one that isn't quite out yet... soon)
dp.undocument.4.Z Crossroads
dp.uf.tech.file.Z The WDF Tech File
BTW, the response on the printed UF volume was great. So as life permits we
will be working on it. I won't be posting anymore updates to
alt.cyberpunk.chatsubo, I'm moving them to alt.cyberpunk in light of a few mild
complaints...
Anyway, on with it.
Eyrie Productions, Uninc. presents
RONIN
A Tale of Gryphon's Years in Exile
Mega Tokyo, capital city of New Japan, in the Vega Sector of the Federation
December 7, 2333
It seemed to be a perfectly ordinary day at the Southend
Bank...until, of course, the guy with the large pistol had come in and
started waving it around. The bank was a small one, and couldn't
afford Buma guards; everyone in the bank froze in terror as the
wild-eyed, black-haired youth produced the oversized revolver and
demanded that everyone lie down. Everyone, of course, did, with the
exception of one, whom the robber immediately turned to confront.
He wasn't an overly tall man, perhaps five feet eight inches
tall, and weighing around a hundred seventy-five pounds. He was
dressed in a long grey belted coat made of a heavy wool-like
material--it was wintertime in Mega Tokyo--and a wide-brimmed grey
hat; he had soft grey sneakers of a popular brand on his feet, and
black trousers which no one could see much of because of the coat,
which came almost to his ankles. His hands were shoved deep in the
pockets of his coat. A brown ponytail hung down beyond his shoulder
blades, a similarly colored beard hid his jaw, and mirrorshades were
perched on the top of his unremarkable nose. All in all, not terribly
impressive--but there was something in his stance that made George
Tanaka very nervous--as if he wasn't nervous enough already, trying to
pull a bank job. He was standing there, staring down a guy with a gun
pointed right at him, and he didn't even look remotely scared. And
that made George scared.
"Get down on the fuckin' floor!" George shouted, pointing the
gun even more emphatically at the little dude in the grey coat. The
man in the coat did not move. It was then that George noticed the two
objects jutting above his right shoulder, the ends of objects strapped
across his back. The pommels of swords, with simple eelskin wrappings
and ornately carved end caps. He thumbed back the hammer of his gun,
which made a satisfying click that resonated across the blue thunder
roaring around in his nerves and made him feel much better. He smiled
vaguely, then narrowed his eyes and thrust the weapon forward again.
"I said get down!" he ordered.
"Or what?" the man in the coat replied in a flat, featureless
voice, almost a whisper. "You'll shoot me?" He took a step toward
George.
"This is your last warning, man--"
"And this is your first," the stranger cut him off. "Put that
thing away and leave. Right now. Or you're going to get hurt."
"'S you that's gonna get hurt, pal," George replied, and shot
him.
The gun roared, and the bullet took the little man high in the
left shoulder with a heavy FWAP, rocking him back on his heels and
twisting him a good twenty degrees to port. He returned to his
original orientation, and a hint of a smile quirked one side of his
mouth. There wasn't so much as a smudge on his coat. George heard a
sharp tac as the mashed bullet struck the tile floor. George fired
again, this time hitting him right dead center in the chest. The
impact drove him back a step, and again the bullet ticked to the
floor. George wasn't stupid (well, not very); he raised his point of
aim and fired again.
The man in the grey coat ducked under the shot, took two long
steps forward in a crouch, and came up underneath George's gun arm.
One of his hands--they were clad in fingerless, black leather
gloves--caught the gun hand, and the other came up, heel-first and
hard, underneath George's jaw, driving his head up with a sharp snap
as his teeth closed. The revolver clattered to the floor. George
fell right next to it, the grey-coated stranger coming right down on
top of him, knee to his chest.
"You're not worth killing," the small stranger said to George,
and smiled. Then he reached up and took off his mirrorshades, and
clear, ice-blue eyes bored into George's own. "I'm cutting you a
break this time. Take off, and get off the thunder. Get straight,
get a job, and don't do this kind of shit any more, because the next
time I catch you, you're meat. Got me?"
"Y-yessir," George replied, and quit thunder, renounced crime,
and became a practicing Catholic right then and there.
"Good." The little man replaced his shades and hauled George
to his feet, then turned him and propelled him out the door with a
foot, calling behind him, "Beat it."
Then he turned around, picked up the gun, and examined it.
"Wow," he muttered. "A Webley .455. Where the hell did he get one of
these?" Tucking it into his overcoat, he turned around and walked out
into the cool afternoon, leaving the patrons of the Southend Bank to
look quizzically at one another and wonder who the hell they had just
encountered.
Across the street, two women sat in an ancient car and watched
the stranger leave the bank, turn left, and head down the street.
"You see?" said Nene. "He's been acting like this for a month
now. Ever since..."
"Yes," Sylia said, cutting her off before she could actually
voice the painful truth. Ever since Priss died. "He's getting close
to the Edge."
"I'm worried," Nene admitted. "I've already lost one friend.
I don't want to lose another."
"I'm afraid you may already have," Sylia replied, putting the
Mercedes in gear and pulling out to follow Gryphon. "He's always been
like this, to an extent; always had the rage in him, so close under
the surface of his skin. I think that's one of the reasons he and
Priss got along so well--and why her loss hurts him so much more than
even a tragedy like that should."
Gryphon had found a couple of punkers trying to lift his bike,
cuffed both of them onto the sidewalk, given them a short lecture, and
ridden off; Sylia blended with the traffic and followed. He rode
aimlessly around the inner streets for a while, then got onto an
expressway and opened his machine up, as if he was trying to lose
himself in the speed. Sylia's Mercedes kept pace, several lanes over
and about a quarter mile back, as her radar kept him in sight even
when she and Nene didn't.
He was riding like a maniac, cutting in and out of traffic,
lane-splitting, zipping through gaps barely wide enough for his knees,
wielding all the power he could get out of the beat-up old Cyclone for
all it was worth. In his ears, an old Terran song called "Ana Ng"
blasted out of earbud headphones. A tear rolled from behind his
mirrorshades, and his slipstream blew it back onto his earlobe, just
above where the short chain from his ever-present triangular purple
earring began. He remembered the day he lost his best friend again.
He had arrived too late. That was all there was to it. When
it became clear to Priss that her battle with Largo was getting out of
hand, she had signaled for help. Gryphon had been in the lab with
half of his hardsuit strewn across the worktable at the time; he had
pulled it together and headed out as fast as he could, but it wasn't
fast enough. By the time he arrived, Largo had been driven off, and
the others were gathered around Priss, and she was dying.
"Shit," he had declared, pulling off his helmet and letting it
fall. "Priss..."
"Shh," she replied, and tried unsuccessfully to get up. "This
is nothing. I'll...I'll be back on the street in a week." She knew,
he realized. She had to know. There was no way to get that badly
hurt and not know you were fucked up. She was putting on the brave
front for his benefit, and he wasn't buying. He dropped to his knees
next to her.
"Damn it, not again..." he whispered. "Everywhere I go,
people die..."
"Everybody dies someday," Priss replied, putting a hand on his
head. "I've just got my usual lousy timing, is all." She tried to
laugh. It didn't work, and she ended up coughing up more blood than
Gryphon thought he had ever seen. "Listen, lover, I need you to do me
a favor."
"Anything."
"Take my sword."
"What?"
"You heard me. I'm the last of my line; it's my duty to pass
on the family weapons to someone who's worthy of them. You taught me
that, remember?"
"Yeah," Gryphon admitted, "but I always figured you'd be
passing them off to your kids, someday way off in the future."
"Me? Kids? What a ridiculous thought." This time, the laugh
worked. Maybe there just wasn't any blood to cough up. "Sometimes
you say the silliest things. Give me your sword."
Gryphon silently complied, drawing his katana from the
scabbard he had built into his hardsuit's back. The sword was a new
one; he had made it himself, from titanium steel, folding and
hammering just like the ancient way, except that the process was a bit
harder because of the materials involved. Its grip's pattern echoed
the old Wedge Defense Force's insignia at every crossover. Priss took
it in her left hand and tried to reach her back with her right. The
attempt failed.
"Take mine," she said. Gryphon hesitated. "Please!" she
said, grabbing his hand and looking almost imploringly at him. He
reached out and took hold of the grip of her own katana, a simple
eelskin arrangement with an ornately carved end cap, and a guard
carved in the form of a serpent eating its tail, and drew it.
Somehow, it had survived the ordeal unbroken, a tribute to the skill
of its maker, whoever the fourteenth-century genius had been. It was
an ancient blade, the clansword of the House of Asagiri, a warrior
house going back to Terran Japan before the Middle Ages. Its
companions, wakizashi and tanto, were back at her flat; he had seen
them there before, standing in their decorative rack. The long sword
was the only one she ever carried.
He was the one who had taught her of her history, teaching her
what he knew after emerging from the badlands of New Japan in 2331, a
roaming samurai master with her history in his head and on his back,
Takanaka's last gift. She had not even known that she was the last
scion of a warrior house whose lineage could be traced across parsecs
and millennia until he told her and gave her the weapons that were
rightfully hers.
And now she held his sword in her hand, and she was dying.
"Put it away," she said, and he did, sliding it into the
scabbard on his back, hearing the guard click home against the
magnetic lip of the opening. "Later on...go back to my place and get
the others. I want you to bury me with yours."
He tried one last time to put up the brave front. "No one's
going to be buried--"
"Don't slot me that garbage," Priss cut him off. "For
Christ's sake, don't lie to me now, of all times." She clutched his
hand tighter. "Take me to the cave where you learned all that you
know...and lay me to rest there with your swords. You understand me?"
Gryphon nodded. "So ka."
"Good." She shivered as if suddenly cold. "Gryphon, come
here." She reached up and pulled at his shoulder, half-sitting up.
He leaned over her.
"What?"
"You know something?" she asked him. He was so close now he
could smell her, sweat, burned circuitry, the remaining hint of the
clean scent of her shampoo...and blood. A lot of blood. He added a
few tears to the mess.
"No," Gryphon replied, "I know nothing."
"Well, then, learn something," Priss replied with a
half-smile. "I love you."
"And I love you," Gryphon replied, holding her against him for
a moment. "You're the one who taught me how, again. I thought I
couldn't."
"Well, you learn something new every day." She shivered
again, and pushed him away slightly, to look at him again. "Kiss me?"
He did. Their lips met and he tasted blood in his mouth,
sharp and salty and metallic and almost sweet. She pressed herself
against him, holding him with all the strength she had left, and then
it drained away, and she slumped in his arms, their last kiss breaking
as she fell.
He let her gently down and got to his feet. Her blood was
everywhere; on his arms, on his lips, smearing the chest of his clean
hardsuit. He looked down at it. It had cost Priss her life, and
everyone there knew it. He had been in the lab working on it, and he
couldn't've responded until he'd fixed it. And in the time it had
taken him to fix it...
Gryphon ducked between two trucks, opened the throttle a
little more, and roared down an off ramp, heading onto the J-43 and
out of Mega Tokyo, into the badlands. Sylia and Nene followed him.
He knew they were following him, but it didn't particularly concern
him. They couldn't stop him from doing what he had planned. He had
been at the bank to close out his accounts and get his funds, and had
lingered after transacting to read a brochure about the nifty new
economic opportunities opening up in the Enigma Sector, when George
Tanaka had come in. He was leaving New Japan, and he didn't need the
services of a spaceport to do it.
"Ana Ng" had ended and the tape had gone on to "Free Falling."
Gryphon settled back in the saddle and clipped the throttle open. The
bike knew the way; it had been there often enough. He felt the weight
of his helmet on his head, remembered the shape of another helmet in
his hands as he picked it up off blackened asphalt. He put on the
helmet and gave a mental command; it shivered away into quantum
unreality, leaving him standing on the blasted rooftop in his lab coat
and black fatigues. The ancient sword of Asagiri now rode in the
conventional scabbard strapped to his back.
"I'll never use that suit again," he muttered to himself.
"Never." He walked to the edge of the rooftop, feeling the open
vastness of the space below underneath his toes, the hard edge of the
surface under the balls of his feet, and thought of freefall. It had
been so very long since he had experienced true freefall. He opened
his arms out from his sides, holding them even at shoulder height with
his palms down, closed his eyes, felt the city winds blowing in his
long brown hair, and imagined flying.
"Gryphon!" came a concerned voice. It was Leon. He almost
smiled. Of course, it would have to be Leon, wouldn't it? Leon, who
had been such an active pursuer of Priss in all that time when he
stood to the side with his sword in his hand, her shidoshi and teacher
of wisdom, never even suspecting that she had something to teach him.
Was it not strange how it had all worked out in the end? Was it not
strange how it always worked out? In the end, Priss had taught
Gryphon how to love again, an ability he had thought forever lost, and
Leon had found happiness with someone else, someone none of them even
knew. In the process, Leon and Gryphon had become the best of
friends. Privately, Gryphon had always thought that his old, cryptic
shidoshi, Henzo Takanaka, would have been amused greatly by the whole
thing.
And now, Leon's hand was on his shoulder, as if determined to
either pull him back from the edge or go over with him.
"Don't worry, Leon," Gryphon said calmly. "I'm not going to
jump, or fall. I'm just enjoying the feel of the wind on my face and
reminiscing a little." He hummed a little bit of "I'm Going Slightly
Mad" to himself. "You know, I feel strangely calm. I figured I'd go
right off the brink. Guess old Master Takanaka was right...it will
take a lot to break me."
"I think you're broken already," Leon declared, pulling
Gryphon back from the edge of the roof and holding him in a grip that
was half brotherly embrace and half threat of a sleeper. Gryphon
smiled and gently freed himself.
"I'm fine, Leon," he said. "I don't know why, but I'm fine.
Just fine," he muttered, ducking between a couple of heavy industrial
haulers toward his exit. He wasn't going to actively try to ditch
Sylia, but why go out of his way to make it easy for her?
Priss's funeral had been two days later, a small affair out in
the Badlands--right around where he was headed right now, as a matter
of fact. Six people attended besides Gryphon: Sylia, Linna, Nene,
Leon, Daily, and Mackie. The tiny cave where Gryphon had spent thirty
years learning from Henzo Takanaka had become a crypt, and when the
simple Bushido service was finished, Mackie had sealed it by putting a
large boulder in its opening with a M.A.D.O.X.-05 and welding it in
place with a laser torch; then Gryphon had carved her name and the
years of her birth and death in it with a laser etcher.
Gryphon had performed the ceremony in fine style, decked out
in his best robes and wearing all three of the weapons of the House of
Asagiri as he laid its last daughter to rest. He had seemed
remarkably together, in contrast to Linna and Nene, who had been
complete basket cases. Afterward, at the Irish wake Leon had thrown,
Sylia had buttonholed him in a corner and demanded to know if he was
all right.
"Of course I'm all right," Gryphon replied. "Why wouldn't I
be?"
"You're blaming yourself."
"I am not. I am merely taking responsibility for the
consequences of my inaction."
"Shut up. You're blaming yourself. What happened was not
your fault. It was a battle she knew she couldn't win, but she
pursued it anyway, for the good of the others. You would do no
different in her place--none of us would."
"If I had been there, things would have been different."
"Oh, yes. We'd have buried both of you in that cave this
morning." She wasn't all that steady, and Sylia was almost never this
emotional--Gryphon realized then that she was pissed, just like
everyone else at the wake. Nene and Linna hadn't stopped crying all
day. Gryphon found himself suddenly possessed with the overpowering
urge to curl up and go to sleep somewhere. He also felt like smacking
Sylia, but he restrained himself. She was, after all, drunk. Much
like himself. So he smiled instead and slugged back some more
peppermint Schnapps.
"Sylia," he said, and she was startled, because he almost
never called her by her first name, "I am completely drunk, and so are
you. Neither of us is in any condition to argue the finer points of
Bushido right now. I'd love to contrast your view of my culpability
in this with yours, but I'm afraid I haven't the brain power. Besides
which, if I'm this blitzed, I'm liable to notice--despite my artfully
concealed grief and pain--what a handsome woman you really are, and
that would undoubtedly make me do something stupid, were I to remain
here, something which both of us would regret for the rest of time.
So, if you'll excuse me..."
He gave her a quick kiss and wandered away, leaving Sylia
standing in the corner muttering, "What the hell did he mean by that?"
He pulled the Cyclone to a halt in the clearing next to the
cave, sparing a few seconds for a glance at the boulder with its
fresh-cut markings.
PRISCILLA SONODA ASAGIRI: 2311-2333
He gave a deep, frosty sigh and climbed off, sticking a
triangle of plyplast under the kickstand to keep it from digging into
the frozen sod and toppling the machine over. It was a short hike
from here to his destination, up into the mountains a short way. He
wondered if everything was still in order. It had been when he had
left it there, to trek to Mega Tokyo and seek his fortunes among
people for the first time in almost three decades, but that had been
three years ago. Much could happen in three years.
He heard a car behind him and didn't bother to turn around.
He heard a door close, another. Footsteps. Two of them. One had to
be Sylia, and the other...light tread, incautious. Fiberplast soles.
Nene, then, in uniform. Probably just out of work for the day. The
bank was rather near the ADPolice building. He turned around. Sylia
looked concerned, and Nene looked on the verge of tears, her big green
eyes misted over and quivering. Gryphon's soul twitched inside him,
and he found himself wishing Linna were here too. He loved all the
Knight Sabers, each in their own way. His capacity to love astonished
him sometimes. He had decided long ago that his epitaph would be
"here lies Gryphon, who loved not wisely but too well." Especially if
Kei finally got him.
Instead, he said simply, "Yes?"
"Where are you going?" Sylia asked.
"Why is it any of your business?" replied Gryphon. "You're
not my boss anymore."
"No," she replied, "but I'm your friend. You've been close to
the Edge for a long time. It's cold out there on the razor."
"Are you afraid I'll freeze?" He laughed. "I've been on the
Edge since before your grandmother was born."
Nene couldn't handle it anymore. She burst out crying and
rushed right at him, crashing into him and beating against his chest
with her little fists, shouting, "Damn you, Gryphon, don't you dare go
away and leave us now!"
Instinctively, he put his arms around her, stroked her hair,
made soothing noises. Then he said, "I have to go, Nene-chan."
"No!" she cried, pushing away and looking up at him. (He was
a short man, but still taller than she was.) "Why do you have to
leave? What waits for you out there that's so damned important?"
"My destiny," he replied. "Someone has died here. That, to
me, is a sign that I've lingered too long. I've killed someone. It's
time to move on, and hope that in the next place, I leave before I
cause anyone's death."
"Unacceptable," Sylia said flatly.
"I beg your pardon?"
"That is unacceptable. I have told you time and time again
that you were not responsible for Priss's death, but you refuse to
believe me."
"Why should I believe you when I know damned well it was my
fault? I'm the one who was too busy playing with my toys to save her.
I owe her so much...and I couldn't even help her in her time of need."
He stepped away from Nene and kicked a rock savagely. "Everywhere I
go, people die. Death can't take me, so She follows me around and
takes the people I care for instead. One of these days, it'll come
down to the wire, just me and Her, and I'll do my best to balance the
books before She finally takes me."
"Don't talk like that!" Nene cried. "You scare me when you
get this way. You were so happy once. Don't you see? We have to get
on with our lives!"
"She's right, you know," Sylia added. "Do you think she wants
us to beat ourselves for what happened to her? Do you think she would
want you to give up the fight? Hell, no. She would want us to mourn,
but not grieve. She would want us to use the experience to bind
ourselves together even more, and she would definitely want the fight
to go on."
Gryphon touched the canvas with the brush again, looked, shook
his head and rubbed part of it out with the sponge, then nodded. It
was two days after the wake; he had not seen anyone since the wake
until now. Linna had come to see him, and found him here, in his
dojo, painting to the sounds of an ancient Terran blues recording she
had heard him play before, an artist he had told her was named Eric
Clapton. She had not known he could paint until now. The picture on
the easel was about three-fourths done, and depicted Priss in one of
her quieter moods, sitting on the floor in the manner of a patient
student, feet folded under her and hands crossed in her lap, and the
sun coming through the window behind her--the window the easel was
facing right now. Linna thought it quite exquisite work, and said so.
"Thank you," Gryphon replied. "It's a recreation of an actual
event. We were here one afternoon sparring and training...she was in
an unusually quiet mood that day, and sat down over there to listen to
whatever I was saying, and the sun was setting. I happened to glance
over...the image froze in my mind and I've been meaning to paint it
since. Now...it's kind of forcing itself out of me. I don't think I
could stop if I wanted to."
"It's lovely," said Linna. "Are you all right?"
"What do you mean, am I all right? Everyone seems obsessed
with my answer to that question these days."
"We care about you. You were closer to her than any of us,
and you didn't seem to take it very well, and..."
"Well, I'm touched by the sentiment, but I'm just fine. I may
have said some ill-considered things at the wake, but that's Leon's
fault, for stocking peppermint Schnapps. No, I'm fine, really."
"Are you sure?"
"I'm sure. But Linna...thank you. Thank you for caring."
"You're welcome," she replied, getting up and walking over to
him. She put a hand on his shoulder and said, "If you need anything,
or anyone to talk to, you know where you can find me. I'll come by
tomorrow to check on the painting. Goodbye, Gryphon." She bent and
kissed his forehead, and then she was gone.
Gryphon paused for a moment, as if lost in thought about
something, and then went on with his painting.
"You're pretty sharp, Dr. Stingray."
"Sylia."
"Beg pardon?"
"You called me Sylia, once. I...liked it. I'd like you to
keep doing it."
Gryphon raised an eyebrow at that, but said nothing, merely
shrugging. "Doesn't matter much, I suppose. I'm not staying here."
He half-turned to go.
Nene reached under her uniform jacket and pulled her service
automatic, a Colt Delta Elite. "If you try to go, so help me, I'll
shoot out both your kneecaps."
Gryphon's other eyebrow rose. "You're that adamant that I
stay."
"Yes," she replied. "Damn you, Gryphon! We need you here.
Priss is dead, but there are still people here who love you!"
Gryphon looked into the barrel of the 10mm automatic, then
back along the top of its slide through its rear sight and into the
eye of its wielder. "That's an interesting way to show your love," he
said with a half-grin.
She laughed and lowered the gun slightly. "Please don't go,"
she said.
He stood motionless for several minutes as the wind blew, and
it began to snow. He looked up at the flat white sky and wondered
about the future, about what lay beyond the atmosphere and out of the
sector, about where Kei was, and what she was doing, and if she was
thinking of him and planning to try to kill him again. He thought
about the progress he had made on his all-consuming project before
burning out and disappearing into the wilderspace of New Japan and
winding up a samurai master. He thought about the four women he had
encountered in Mega Tokyo after walking out of the bush and back into
the throbbing urban scene he had loved so much in eons past, and how
special they each were.
He heard a footstep and looked away from the sky. Sylia had
come closer, and was holding out her hand.
"Please," she said, "come home."
Inside the biogenetically re-engineered powerplant that was
Gryphon's brain, a hundred trillion neurons flashed communications
among themselves and formed a response that made a decision.
He took her hand. It was cool, and strong, and he felt
stronger just for touching it. Then Nene's hand, smaller, warmer,
took his other hand, and the two of them took him into a clumsy group
hug (which he never would have even suspected Sylia capable of). He
started up his bike and let them lead him home.
Perhaps there was yet more to be done here.
And perhaps it was not just his imagination that, in the back
of his mind, no matter how fervently he discounted any belief in an
afterlife, Priss was smiling.
Either way, it felt right.
That, unfortunately, was not the end of Gryphon's troubles,
but then, Sylia was quite aware that one couldn't just flip a switch
and get over someone's death. He seemed in better spirits, almost
fully recovered, but he still fought and sparred with that manic,
frenetic energy that threatened to consume him. The rage was still
there, and it wasn't finding an outlet like it should. For a month,
he disappeared into his lab, refusing to let anyone in, refusing to
tell them what he was doing. Then he emerged, saying his job was
done, and all seemed well for a time.
A week later there came a rogue Buma alert. A Model 12, the
ugly, crablike combat model, was running berserk in section fourteen,
and, as usual, ADPolice couldn't wangle authorization to use their own
battlesuits from their high command. A brave group of people, but
handicapped by their own bureaucracy. Gryphon, for one, felt sorry
for them.
He happened to be the one loitering round the computer room
that day, monitoring the fight, when the phone rang. He picked it up
and said noncommittally, "Oi."
"Oi," Leon's voice replied. "Gryphon?"
"Yeah."
"We could use some help out here."
"I noticed. I was about to give the call myself." He reached
over and tagged three of the five switches that were arrayed in a line
atop the console; they immediately started flashing. "Probably be ten
minutes. Try not to get any more of your people killed, eh?" He hung
up and stood, heading into his lab.
"Where the hell is Gryphon?" Linna wondered as she worked her
way into her hardsuit undergarment. "Didn't he say he was going back
on operations this week?"
"Yes, he did," Sylia replied, "but perhaps he's changed his
mind. He did say he wasn't going to use his hardsuit anymore."
"He built a new one," said Nene, getting into her suit and
locking the legs together.
"How do you know?"
"I hacked into the surveillance camera in his lab. It's
incredible, just wait until you see it."
"Why wait?" Gryphon's voice, muffled and slightly amped by a
hardsuit's helmet, said from the doorway. The Knight Sabers turned to
see him standing in the doorway. Nene was right; his new hardsuit was
incredible. It was smaller than the Griffin suit had been, its armor
not as thick, and no huge particle cannon took up its left hand. The
grips of his swords jutted above the right shoulder, and a tanto's
hilt showed, ensconced in an armored housing, on his left hip. The
suit was somewhat ornately painted in the colors of the House of
Asagiri, red and black, and constructed to resemble a high-tech suit
of samurai's armor, stylized and angular, but with an echo of
traditionalism. The flares on the helmet's brow were probably
antennae, and the winglike protrusions from the shoulder flanges had
to be EMP generators. One of them had an insignia painted on it, an
eight-ball. There were three railgun ports on the left wrist and a
chaingun on the right. Hell, he'd probably even hidden missile
launchers in there someplace.
"Wow!" Linna exclaimed, picking up her helmet. "What do you
call it?"
"RON-1N," Gryphon replied. "Ronin."
"It fits," Sylia declared, putting her helmet on. "I thought
you weren't going to do this anymore."
"I'm not going to use the Griffin anymore," Gryphon replied.
"In my search for more and more power, I made it too complex. This
thing can go from field-strip to fully functional in less than two
minutes. The Griffin took half an hour. Ronin's a lot simpler."
"I notice you've made it backward compatible," observed Sylia
as the four of them ran toward the garage. Ronin had, concealed in
the design, the standard lockup hardpoints for his Cyclone, as well as
the usual surfaces for using snap-on weapons pods and Motoslaves.
"Why mess around with adaptors?" Gryphon replied as he climbed
up into the truck and arranged himself in his customary launch cradle.
"It's simpler this way. That's the whole idea."
"Good design. Have you tested it yet?"
"I am now."
The Model 12 Combat Buma turned in annoyance at the sound of
yet another approaching engine. How many of these insects did it have
to kill before they got the idea? It raised its weapon arm as it
sighted in on the oncoming truck, but before it could fire, something
odd happened.
Gryphon threw the launch lever and the cradle blasted him free
of the side of the truck; applying his own vernier jets and using the
main thrusters in his back for boost, he pivoted parallel to the
truck's course and closed. His own targeting system tagged the Buma
in less than a second; he brought his left arm up and fired, putting
three spikes into the Buma's left shoulder. It shouted its annoyance
and fired a bazooka blast at him.
He ducked aside, cutting the thrusters and grounding in a
shower of sparks, rolling several times and coming up crouched. He
opened up with the chaingun, but, as he expected, it had no
significant effect. That was quite all right. He powered forward on
servo-charged legs, his hands going to his back, and drew his swords.
They weren't his steel blades, although he could get those if he
wanted them; instead, they were focused-particle-beam sabers, like the
ones he had experimented with for the Griffin. Most of the month in
the lab had been spent finally making these damn things work. They
sizzled into life as they met the power couplings in his gauntlet
palms; the saber in his left hand was shorter than that in his right,
and both were slightly curved. He hit the boosters again and hurtled
toward the M-12 with a thump to his back from his armor. The other
Knight Sabers had disembarked as well, but hung back at Sylia's hand
wave. Gryphon seemed to have the situation in hand.
So he did; his charge intersected that of the Buma. There was
a crash of metal against metal, and the combatants parted. They both
landed on their feet; Gryphon immediately pivoted and set for a
countercharge. He needn't have; the Buma half-turned, then split in
half along the saber cut near its waist and exploded.
Gryphon let the power drop; the two sabers flickered out, and
he replaced them on his back. A lot of cops were coming, and he
didn't want to deal with that right now.
In the next few weeks, he did not improve. He fought
savagely, with little care for his own condition at its end, acted
recklessly. He never endangered the others with his conduct--that
would have been unacceptable to his standards--but it became
increasingly obvious that he didn't care whether or not he died.
Perhaps he even hoped that he would. It was as though each Buma he
killed was a measure of personal revenge, and each wound he incurred a
measure of penance for what he thought he had done.
The other Knight Sabers were extremely concerned, but any
attempt to talk to him about it produced a withdrawal into himself so
abrupt it left a bow wave, or an explosion of rage that propelled
Gryphon right out the door. Again, he never threatened to hurt anyone
else--his standards of conduct would not allow it--but he was
unapproachable. The wall was getting taller and thicker, and those
who remained with him were getting more and more worried.
"Let's get to work," Sylia announced. "I called you here to
fill you in on our next job."
"Wow," Gryphon observed, "we actually got one in this joke of
an economy?"
"Such as it is. We're to bodyguard a scientist."
"What kind of scientist?"
"A researcher from Gulf and Bradley, the Neo-Texan robotics
firm."
Gryphon slapped his forehead. "This is a GENOM thing, isn't
it?"
"Not entirely," Sylia replied. "G&B wants us to watch this
man," she went on, and called a picture of J. Random Late-Middle-Aged
Scientist to the screen across the room. "Someone tried to kill him
on Neo-Texas a couple of weeks ago, and he's come to Mega Tokyo to
look over a couple of labs here that are using his principles."
"GENOM labs," Gryphon intuited.
"Well...yes."
"I won't do it."
"Gryphon, be reasonable. It's not actually a GENOM job, and
it's worth fifty million Salusian."
"I don't care. The guy's a roboticist, and he's here for
GENOM, which means he's building them a new kind of Buma, probably
illegally, since they've set up this bogus `review of facilities'
cover story. He's working for Largo. I won't help him--I'd just as
soon take his head."
"Gryphon, I've accepted the contract already. We're just
going to have to go through with it."
"Whatever happened to Article Three?"
"I think it died around the same time as Article Seven."
"Touche." Gryphon sighed. "All right. I'm being childish,
and that won't do. Very well. If I'm contracted to watch this guy,
I'll watch him. Protect him with my life if I have to." He laughed.
"Funny how Bushido works out sometimes..."
"This is not entertaining," Gryphon remarked, settling back on
the floor in the hot, cramped little surveillance room where he and
Sylia kept watch over McLaren. "It's like hiding in a steam room."
"It has to be done."
"I know that. I said I was bound by honor do this job; I
never said I liked it." He yawned. "I should've brought a book."
"Something's wrong," Sylia announced, looking quizzically at
the monitors. "There's something weird about that ambulance.
Gryphon, check it out."
"Right." Gryphon got up and climbed into Ronin, locked it
down, and went outside, where he jumped on his Cyclone (repainted in
black and red so as to not look all that stupid when he was using it
over Ronin), and rode away.
The Mercedes pulled up to the curb near the empty ambulance;
Sylia got out and looked it over, and muttered, "Shit."
Gryphon appeared, staggering out from behind the ambulance and
tottering toward her. "I was defeated," he rasped unnecessarily. His
left arm hung limp at his side, and the armor on it was crushed. One
of his sabers was missing. "It was embarrassing." He managed to get
almost all the way to her before passing out and falling against her.
"Well, this is wonderful," Nene groused. "Linna's gone
missing, Gryphon's got a broken arm...this is just great."
"I'm okay," Gryphon replied, sitting up and regarding his arm.
"Oh, for Pete's sake. Who put this cast on me? Someone get me a cast
cutter."
"Are you crazy? You've only been out a couple of hours."
"You should rest, Gryphon," Sylia agreed. "You lost a lot of
blood."
"I've got it back," he replied cryptically, finding the cast
cutter himself and sawing the cast from his arm. He flexed the elbow
a couple of times, wincing slightly, and rotated the wrist and
shoulder. "Not bad...the bones are knitting nicely, and the muscle
tearing is almost totally repaired. I should be as good as new in
half an hour or so."
"How do you do that?" Nene asked.
"How have I lived for four hundred years?" Gryphon replied.
"It's a kind of magic." He got up and put on his bathrobe, then
walked over to the heap of hardsuit in the corner. "Ouch. That arm
is severely fucked up. I wonder if I made any extras."
"Gryphon, don't push yourself," Sylia cautioned.
"Shut up," he replied, a bit too sharply, causing her to draw
back. "Linna's the one with problems--I've been much worse and kept
running." He picked up Ronin and, manipulating the modular catches,
removed the mangled left arm. "Shit," he remarked, examining it.
"Well, at least the shoulder housing wasn't damaged, and the rest of
the suit is fine, if a little dinged up. I can fix the cosmetic shit
later...if I only have another left arm." He disappeared into his
laboratory. "Damn!"
"What's the matter?"
"I can't get a firing solution on the bastard!" Gryphon
shouted. "It's moving too fast!"
"Well, there's not a lot I can do about that," Linna replied.
"I'm a bit busy myself."
"I realize that," Gryphon replied, ducking under a missile
spread. He spread the EM wings from his back and activated them; the
missiles streaking away behind him suddenly turned around and streaked
past him again in a boiling swarm. This had two effects; their vapor
trails obscured his location, and the missiles were now heading at the
battlemover that had fired them. He kept the corner of one eye on the
display in the corner of his HUD, the one that read 154 and was
counting down. The missile spread hit home, doing minor armor damage
across the board and knocking a knee joint out of alignment. That
would slow it down a little.
"Aha!" Gryphon cried, kicking his maneuver jets and streaking
down, extending the bayonet from his left forearm. He had located the
D.D.'s main computer nexus--disabling it should shut down its systems,
and preserve the life of its pilot. If he could only get to the
bastard. The most expedient method would be to put a railgun spike
through it, but it wasn't obliging him by sitting still for a proper
firing solution, necessitating this messier approach.
The target zone pulsed blue on his HUD against the red of the
battlemover's paint,, growing as he powered down. The fire-warning
system screamed a warning; he told the AMS to deal with the incoming
missile spread and kept going. A couple of them got through the field
of point-defense laser fire his shoulder-mounted pulse lasers put out,
but they didn't make it through his outer armor, or deviate his
course. He was on target--
One of the D.D.'s fists came out of nowhere. There was a
terrific clang, and he was flying head over heels into oblivion.
When he came to, the battlemover was down and its pilot was
dead. He was in Sylia's bed, a bandage wrapped around his head, and
life wasn't looking really great. It was the first time he had blown
anything in a major fashion here. Sylvie's death had started Priss on
the cycle of reckless, self-destructive behavior that had led to her
own death, and Gryphon couldn't help but feel it was his fault. If he
had seen the fist coming, he could've done something about it, but he
was too fixated on his target, too secure in his automatic defenses.
That was the reason Ronin didn't have any automatic defenses.
Or very heavy armor. He didn't want to get complacent again. The
consequences were too grave. He set the damaged battlesuit down on
his worktable and rummaged in the parts cabinet, and managed to locate
an armature, some armor plating that could be tailored to suit, and
the appropriate wiring harness; he could fabricate a functioning arm
in maybe fifteen minutes. But there were no railguns.
He stood looking into the cabinet for what felt like a long
time, perhaps a minute and a half, and came to a decision. He already
carried her swords...
Twenty minutes later, Ronin was whole again. The three
railguns riding in the new left arm were from Priss's new hardsuit,
the one she had never had the chance to wear. In fact, the whole
lower arm module had been adapted, from the elbow down, and repainted.
If anyone noticed when he came back out of the lab suited up, no one
chose to mention it.
When he found Linna locked in the small outbuilding and the
whole story came out, Gryphon couldn't help but be struck by Vision's
story. It rang bells in his mind. Vendetta, it said to him.
Reckless abandon. The death of a soul of beauty. He could almost
hear his old master chuckling in that infuriating way he had before
saying, "That, nestling, is why you must always be good to yourself."
Nestling. Takanaka had been so amused by his nickname. When he at
last proclaimed Gryphon a master, he did not use the word: instead, he
called him "eyrie lord".
He pushed the visor of his helmet up so she could see him
smiling, thanked her, and hugged her briefly before handing her the
bag containing hardsuit and undergarment, turning, and boosting into
the air. Reika Chang's story had kicked loose the wedge holding up
the dam which contained all his emotions of late, and they were all
flooding into each other now, drowning out the little town of doubts
and trolls that had sprung up in the valley of his mind. The world
looked pretty. He did a couple of barrel rolls and admired the
clouds. He even laughed.
Then his jaw set grimly and he straightened his course,
kicking in his booster jets and streaking straight for the artificial
island. He had a mission. He had to save Vision from doing exactly
what Priss had done, what he had almost joined her in. One was
enough, two nearly too much. Three would have been totally
unconscionable.
It was over, and Linna told Vision as much. Predictably, with
the obstinate helplessness of someone who has been carrying her
vendetta for so long she has forgotten life without it, Reika
protested.
"It's not over until Quincy dies," she said, and Linna slapped
her. Kou took a step forward, but Sylia waved him back, and even
Captain Master Ninja seemed unwilling to tangle with her, armed as he
was with just a pistol.
Vision fixed Linna with a hurt look. "You don't understand."
"She understands all too well," Gryphon interjected, walking
over and putting a hand on her shoulder. "You see, over the last
couple of months, she's watched one of her friends self-destruct in
exactly the same way, and another get precariously close to
following." He pushed his helmet visor back. "You're getting
dangerously close to the Edge, Reika. I've been there. Balanced on
the Edge and listened to the cold winds howl around me for longer than
I care to think of. It's not pleasant. Look at the marks it's left
on me. Hm? Do you want that? Do you want to spend your life empty,
searching, bitter? Do you want your life to end, suddenly, violently,
and for no good reason? Let it end. Please. Let it end."
She looked into his eyes and saw nothing there but raw truth,
and plea.
"Miss Vision," Leon said formally as Gryphon turned and closed
his helmet for decorum's sake. "You have enough time to get back to
the Tokyo Dome before your concert, and my partner and I would be
honored to escort you, if you like."
Vision considered for a long moment, then smiled and said,
"Yes, I'd like that. Just a second, please." She stepped over to
Gryphon and touched his shoulder; he turned. "Thank you," she said.
"You're welcome," Gryphon replied.
"Please, before I go...tell me why you did this for me."
"It was my duty," Gryphon replied. "Besides, you remind me of
someone I once knew."
"I see." She turned, then turned back for a moment. "I'll be
seeing you."
"Pardon?"
"I'll find you."
And then they were gone.
Gryphon could almost swear that, in the back of his mind, he
could hear Priss laughing.
It was dark in Gryphon's dojo; the sun had gone down and he
had not seen fit to turn on any lights. Besides, light would have
interfered with his contemplation. He lay on the hardwood floor in
the center of the room, his eyes closed, hands steepled on his chest.
He heard the door to his apartment open; he didn't lock it
when he was home. Quiet tread through the kitchen and living room.
He didn't move. The dojo's wood-and-paper door slid open. Without
opening his eyes, Gryphon could tell who it was. Breathing, tread,
even a hint of heartbeat in the dead silence of the dojo; a hint of
perfume on the air, lilacs or some such scent.
"Hello, Vision," he said, and he could hear her start. "It
didn't take you long to find me."
"I'm sorry," she replied. "I'm interrupting your meditation,
I can come back."
"That's not necessary," Gryphon replied, coming to a seated
position. "Just a second." He struck a match and lit the oil lamp
which sat near him. The orange glow illuminated the room dimly, and
gave it a warm, rich feeling. Reika walked over and sat down near
him. "What can I do for you?"
"I understand you are samurai," Reika said.
"This is true."
"I also understand you are a master."
"You don't want to be my student," replied Gryphon.
"I do."
"No. You do not."
"Why not?"
"My last student died in my arms. I won't be having any
more."
"Linna told me about her. She must have been very special."
Gryphon nodded. "She was...the most special person I have
known in decades. She gave me back abilities I had thought forever
gone."
It was Reika's turn to nod. "I know about your past. The
Wedge Defense Force. Musashi. Everything."
"Ah. Do you say yea or nay?"
"Nay."
"Why? Why, when the rest of the universe says yea? Even the
people I shared three centuries of my life with?"
"Because of what you did for me. That was not the act of a
crazed killer of children."
"It's a pity the universe at large will never believe that I
did it."
"I believe in you, Gryphon," Vision declared, taking his hands
in hers. "I believe you are a good, decent, noble man. I believe
you'll someday clear your name and take your place in the universe's
defense again. I want to know you better. I want you...to teach me
your wisdom."
"I have no wisdom. Takanaka...he was a man of wisdom.
I...I'm just a ronin."
"I don't care about that. You serve a higher lord than
others."
"Who might that be?"
"Justice."
"You have a singular way with words."
"Will you teach me?"
Gryphon sighed. "All right. It's against my better
judgement, but I'll do it."
In the back of his mind, he almost thought he heard Priss's
voice. "I love you, Gryphon. Don't forget that, but don't let it
keep you away from others. I taught you to love, not just to love me.
Good luck, and good hunting, shidoshi."
He smiled. "Shall we begin?"
Gryphon left New Japan two years later, bound for parts unknown, after
Largo left the planet as well. In that time, Vision had become a
member of the Knight Sabers. He never returned in their lifetimes,
but he was not forgotten; when he returned to visit the Stingray
Institute of the Technologies in 2390, Gryphon discovered his painting
in the lobby of that institution's administration building, Hutchins
Hall, and a plaque on the outside of the same building, dedicating the
construction of the Institute to him and calling him "shidoshi,
comrade, and beloved friend".
Written, produced and directed by Benjamin D. Hutchins
Some events based on mutated forms of various episodes of BUBBLEGUM
CRISIS
Some characters created by Kenichi Sonoda
THE CAST
In order of appearance:
George: George Tanaka
Gryphon: Benjamin D. Hutchins
Nene: Nene Romanova
Sylia: Dr. Sylia Stingray
Priss: Priscilla S. Asagiri
Leon: Inspector Leon McNichol
Linna: Linna Yamazaki
Vision: Reika Chang
AUTHOR'S NOTE: The original text of this story was produced in a
single session lasting approximately three and a half hours, in the
wee hours of a cold February day in Millinocket, Maine. I had just
watched most of Bubblegum Crisis, and the basic plotline, such as it
is, had been in my mind since I made allusions to it toward the end of
Crossroads: Undocumented Features Volume Four. Its disjointed style
owes much to the speed with which the tale formed itself and forced
itself out of my head, but upon rereading it, I decided to do only
minimal editing and revising, since I decided I liked it the way it
had been born. I hope you do too.
Oh, one more thing: read the painting scene to Eric Clapton's "Tears
in Heaven". I did.