Singularity Tokyo By Battlekrome Disclaimer: Ranma 1/2 is property of Rumiko-sama And yes there's gonna be Ranma BGC is property of Youmex and whoever's making 2040. Chapter 3: Now in my haste to get to the boomer rampage I broke a couple things I shouldn't do. One, I exceeded the speed limit by double digits. Two, I was in my armor the entire time. This identified to any cop with half a brain that A: I was a knight Saber. B: I was running from something that was assumed to be more police. Thus I managed to acquire a few cops on my way. "Aika, What's your ETA to scene?" Nene radioed. "About two minutes. What about the AD police?" I replied. "They're a couple minutes behind you." "What about the ones chasing me?" "Well those are going to get there as soon as you are." "K, noted." Stepping on the gas, I accelerated onto the freeway. Weaving in and out of cars as I passed them. The streetlights seemed to zip by almost like strobe lights. My HUD had popped up a small radar to show where the cops were, how close the rampage was and what route I had to take to get there. A glance at my speedometer put me at over 200kph. Shifting down to pull down the off ramp. A quick skid turn later and five blocks away was the rampage. "Um.. Nene, what was count on the boomers?" I radioed. "Well most accurate count puts it at ten to twenty." "TEN TO TWENTY!?" "Yes, it should be no problem for you. Yuri's ETA is half a minute after yours and Priss will drop in soon after that. Try to keep the cops out of it." The Cops behind me saw the rampage up ahead and decided to form a perimeter around the surrounding blocks instead of following into the ruckus. The Boomers at this point noticed me. Shots were fired at me. 'Ah, man' I thought. A shot impacted just before my front tire, and I lost control of the bike. Spinning and sliding, my bike and I landed in a conveniently placed pile of garbage. Now fighting is one thing, garbage is another but scratching my bike is a big NoNo. I charged towards the boomers, and the battle began. Time seemed to slow as I neared the first boomer. Leaning to the side, I stopped a punch just past my head, and then my other hand thrust upwards through its elbow, smashing the joint completely. Then with my other hand, I removed its brain from its chest the quick and easy way. Out the back from the front. Jumping upwards to avoid a five boomer pile up, I flipped in midair. I aimed my landing at a boomer's head. Landing behind the boomer, I swept out its feet and then snapped off a blast towards one of the approaching boomers. Flipping backwards to get some distance, I popped another shot at the boomers, which took an arm off one of them. Pulling back, I checked the ETA of my 'reinforcements.' Twenty secs 'till Yuri showed. Gritting my teeth, I decided some evasive maneuvers were required. I charged the nearest boomer. As I closed to close combat range, the boomer opened wide and prepared to blast me with its mouth cannon. I fired before it could acquire a lock on me. The resulting blast took the head off the boomer. It stumbled and slumped to the ground. Flipping over it as I went past, I fired a shot in its chest to finish it off. Three down, a whole lot more to go. The rest of the boomers decided to rush me. A booster assisted jump put me on top of the roof of a nearby building. Mouth cannons fired on me as I ran along the top of the building. Jumping up to clear the gap between the next one, I landed behind the lip at the edge of the rooftop. Rolling as I landed, I pulled to a stop on the other side of the roof. Leaning over the lip I fired a few shots to get the boomers' attention. With a flip I was over the lip and heading towards pavement. After I hit, I stood and let loose a shot that I had been charging up. The football sized blast tore through two boomers before exploding against the side of a building. "Hey, Aika ever heard of Skeet shooting?" crackled Yuri's voice over the radio. "Yeah, isn't the thing with pigeons and yelling pull?" "One metal pigeon coming up." and with that a boomer suddenly was launched up into midair. Quickly aiming, I popped a shot off that removed its brain from its chest. With Yuri now here, things became much less hard. With her bulldozing her way through and me dancing along after her covering her back, The boomers were a lot easier to take down. Yuri lifted the boomer in front of her over her head, and with a roundhouse kick, I removed its head. Then Yuri punched the brain out. This continued for a couple boomers. Then Priss showed up, and the fun began. With three of us, the boomers were no match. Each of us could take down them one on one. Smashed boomer bits began to litter the ground as their numbers dwindled. Then there were three. The fight seemed to pause as the three of us stood opposite the three boomers. Then the AD police decided to join in. Unfortunately for us they were more for shooting at the general direction of the boomers rather than aiming. As if the start of AD police fire was a starting gun, we leapt forward. Retracting my claw I began a series of flips toward the boomer. The flips ended with a switch from a flip to a roundhouse kick, then a shot to the boomer's chest to finish it off. Still under fire from ADP, I dashed to my fallen bike. Kick starting it, I quickly accelerated down a side alley. Up ahead was an AD police car parked blocking the alley. "Damn it" Accelerating faster, I sped toward the cop car. Popping a wheelie as I reached the car, I ignited my jump pack. Sailing over the surprised cop behind it, I skid turned as I landed. Giving the cop a salute I raced off down the street. Deciding to go the stealthy approach home by the time I had reached the highway I was dressed normally for a biker and going just under the speed limit. ---- Now I would like to think that working for the Knight Sabers changed my life, but it hasn't as much as I thought it would. I still did the things I did before. Two of the few changes was getting back into motorcycles again and being on call for the knight Sabers. My netsurfing leads me to strange and wonderful places. Weird sites that haven't been updated since god knows when. One of em wasn't updated for almost 30 years. It had a page on what seemed to be a popular series back then. It was about this guy who dies then comes back with a neat suit. Weird huh? Now the thing that makes me remember about it was how cool the suit looked and some of the neato properties. Also he just looked evil and dangerous. I was during looking down one of the art pages that I noticed something. My clothes were changing to what costume of who I was looking at. My response to this was 'man I'll never have to dress up for Hallowe'en again'. Then I realized I was hungry. Not wanting to get up, I thought about how nice it would be to have something, and then I turned my attention back to the screen. It was later when I was stretching that I knocked over a can of pop on my desk. 'How did this get here?' I thought. The can was unopened which meant I hadn't gotten it myself. Since usually I open and drink cans before I get back to my desk. 'Who could of put this here?' I puzzled. Deciding to now find out some of the limits of my suit's costume making abilities. Shifting to the Spawn costume (1) I stood looking at all the attachments and such. The neat cape, that fluttered in the breeze. Wait a second, breeze? I'm indoors. The cape was moving by itself! 'I must be moving it then' I thought. With that I tried to control it mentally. The cape shifted by itself. "Neat" I said. With that I went through all of the costumes I had seen recently. Except for the electronic equipment and weapons systems I was able to imitate them flawlessly. Well, compared to my memory. Switching back the Spawn costume, I tried to see how realistic I could make it. The cape fluttered in a non- existent breeze, the chains moved how I told them. This was too cool. Switching to my armor, I tried adding the cape and chains to it. My skin crawled as the suit changed. My armor now had a chain belt that I could use as tentacles and a cape that I also could control. Now I looked like death himself though. Switching to the original midnight blue with red stripes color scheme I attempted to switch colors. The Color shifted along the spectrum till it reached a matte black then shifted to white. Then down along the spectrum until it reached blue again. I remembered Nene telling me that it had thermoptic camouflage as well. At this the suit seemed to vanish to my eyes to be replaces with a green outline. Looking into a convenient mirror I saw nothing. Wondering how good it was I switched to various forms of visual enhancements and checked for the concealment. Infrared proved to be a disappointment. I showed up equally well cloaked as I did uncloaked. Oh well, it was quite good for visual trickery. ---- Nene had called me into Knight Sabers HQ. Seems we were meeting a new client of ours. They were hiring us to do some corporate espionage or that's what Nene seemed to think. Deciding to sneak up on Nene. I shifted invisible and snuck into the computer lab and stood behind her. Five minutes later, after I had seen her glance at her watch, I reached out and tapped her on the shoulder. Nene leapt a good two feet out of her chair. I couldn't help myself; I started laughing and de-cloaked. "Aika! Don't scare me like that!" This fell on deaf ears as I was still busting a gut laughing. "Sorry, Nene, but the look on you face." I managed to get out between laughs. "Humph," Nene humphed "So you want to know what we're doing?" "Sure. Any word on who we get hired by?" "N-Corp." She replied. "The N-Corp?" "Yep" "Good lord. I thought they were just a myth." "Most people do. They were bought out by Genom fifteen years ago. The head of it left a shell Corp that got taken over and took everything with them." "So what have we been hired for? I take it they don't need bodyguards." "They need us to investigate and depending on findings destroy or disrupt it." "So a smash and grab?" "So to speak, Aika. The only prob is Genom has some heavy ICE around its computers." This discussion went on for quite a while. I don't want to bore you with the details but needless to say Nene and I were up till early in the morning batting ideas back and forth about how and where to hack in. "What about the bug in the OS that involves the FTP server?" "Naah, they fixed that." See told you so. This ended with a pizza, and Nene and I finding places to sleep for the rest of the day. That night we were at it again. This time though we had slightly more information. Linna had gotten from one of her sources that it was probably physically located in a computer in a Genom factory that seemed to now have a negative output of boomers now. Now with well, a target to aim for. Nene and I redoubled our efforts. That is to say we began living like true hackers yet again. That being Eat, sleep, computer. With little of the first two and lots of the last. This went on for a week before we had a full plan. Now the real hard part telling someone who doesn't know a thing about hacking the plan. This we first tried on Priss. She was skeptical. "So let me get this straight. We smash our way in. Hold off god knows how many boomers so you two can hack this thing and then get out?" This we nodded at. "And how much are you two going to fight in this?" "Well, we were hoping we wouldn't have to. With my stealth and Nene's ECM, we were hoping to be able to sneak in with a diversion from you and Yuri." "Oh so Yuri and I are the decoys now?" "No, it just you get all the action." I replied. "Yeah you get to kick butt, Priss." Nene added. This planning stage went well considering whom we had to convince. Then we went on the major dam to get this working: Sylia. This went better than Nene and I expected. "Yes, go a head but I want you two to talk to N-Corp first." This was nothing short of amazing. ************************ It seemed routine a boomer rampaging down the street. The only problem for us that it was rampaging along at over 200 kph. Now on foot for Yuri ,Priss and I that was easy, but we couldn't bring sufficent firepower to bear to dent the sucker. Thus we tried our nice shiny motoslaves as are motorcycles were properly called. Down the Highway we rode like devils coming from the bowels of hell itself. Man, when'd I take english lessons? As I was saying, we chased after the boomer unable to put a dent in this thing. The AD police had set up multiple roadblocks but they had been nothing heavy enough to stop the boomer. What the boomer couldn't smash through it blew up with a mounted cannon it had acquired. "Damn it. Yuri, any of your weapons do anything more than scratch the paint job?" "Can't you just blast it?" "Can't, too busy keeping it from hitting me with that pea shooter it has. Going to try motoslave's weapons" With that I put the pedal to the medal and sped ahead. When I reached a safe distance. I slowed and stopped. Bringing the bike around to face where the boomer was zooming toward me. Then I realized I had no clue on how you transformed let alone use one of these things. "Um.. Nene?" "Hey, how's the boomer bashing coming?" "How do you transform the Motoslave?" "Oh, that well? Blue button beside instrument panel." "And to fire?" "Same as you usually do." "Thank you remind me to get you some ice cream when this is over." "Yaah!" With that I pushed the blue button. My Bike seemed to shift upwards and envelop me. My view was obscured for a second as the Motoslave began to interface with my suit. The wheels ended up over my shoulders and the bike body itself formed extra armor over my chest, legs and arms. My HUD came alive as three new weapons came online: A pair of SRM-2s and some sort of cannon. The armor itself seemed to mold itself seamlessly to my suit. Stopping myself from drooling I concentrated on the task at hand. Three targeting reticules popped up on the HUD. Zooming in a bit, I was able to clearly see the boomer. It was an ugly one. With a face that only Quincy could love. Well maybe that's stretching it. "Yuri, drop back I'm going to blow this sucker away" "Roger, Aika" Seeing Yuri slow and drop back, I aimed and fired off the SRMs. The four missiles arced to the target and detonated with a satisfying boom. "Oh crap" Minor to superficial damage. Either my missiles were duds or something or the boomer was really tough. Aiming the main cannon. It swiveled from behind me to peek over my shoulder. Aiming it, as it came on target a little warning light popped up on the HUD "Brace?? Oh!" With that I crouched slightly and brace myself for the recoil. With that done I fired. The cannon, seemed to cough and then recoil almost knocked my on my rear end. The shot itself flashed down the highway to its target. The resulting blast blew the boomer almost in half. "Wow, I like I like!" Then as if by magic, the boomer seemed to partially reform and began accelerating towards me again. It swiveled its peashooter towards me and began firing. Bracing my self again. I aimed, fire one, fire two! This time the recoil did knock me off my feet. 'God this thing was powerful'. Finally getting back to my feet I looked toward where the boomer was. Boomer bits splattered the highway for almost a kilometer. The boomer's head had rolled to a stop right beside me. With a casual stomp it became one with the roadway. "Aika to Yuri" "Yuri, here. It dead?" "Oh yeah. I like these Motoslaves." With that, sirens in the background reminded us of the ever vigilant if slightly incompetent AD police. Present company excluded of course. Transforming the Motoslave back into bike form. We rode off into the sunset. Not really, but it's a nice image. ************************ To celebrate our blasting of yet another boomer the gang and I went to one of Nene's favorite ice cream parlor. I had a float, Nene a Banana split, Yuri and Priss shared a large dosage of ice cream, sprinkles and cherries. "Well Nene, you're really packing it in. You going to put on another inch?" "Priss! I do not eat too much," Nene mumbled the rest. "What was that Nene?" I needled. "Yeah Nene, we couldn't hear you" Yuri added. "Ok. Ok. So sometimes I eat to much." "Nene, you just need to exercise more." Priss said. "Yeah, If you'd just do something other than sit at your desk and surf the net." I added. "Come on Aika, you know what I'm like." Nene whined. "Yeah, Yeah. I know. I know. I too was once a lardbucket like Nene," I admitted. "Hey" "Well that was before I got this job. Nene you must exercise some?" "Not really, I'm too busy." Nene added. "Well as soon as I can get time I'm sticking you on the Hacker's exercise routine!" I declared. "What's that?" Nene asked. "Moving your computer to the top of the building and having you take the stairs up to get it." I finished. That got a laugh out of most of us. As we dispersed to go our separate ways. I caught hold of Nene afterwards. "Nene, I'm sorry it's just that you do need to exercise more." Nene sniffed. "I know. It's just I have so little time considering I have two jobs to do." "Yeah. You know what I'll help you get some regular exercise. Every Tuesday we'll go for a short run. Yours not mine." "Ok. Well see you Thursday for that meeting with Nabs." "Sure. See you later." ************************ Now Nene had debated this for a while on how to show up. I thought Nene should go in her hard suit and Nene disagreed. "But, what happens if we have a boomer go rampaging?" "Yeah, but.. How are we going keep me from attracting attention?" "Ummm." That did stump me. "We'll roof hop." "What about my power supply. It'll only last a hour?" "Well.. Ok then we'll go incognito." Thus the debated ended and I ended up driving Nene and myself to the meeting point. Added onto my bike was a thousand round drum and machine gun for the Motoslave that masqueraded as a really heavy toolkit. Nene at first was suggesting the bus. This led me to point out that nothing but Yuri could catch us on this bike. That won her over. Well that and an offer of ice cream later. We pulled up to what looked like a abandoned building that looked like it was on the edge of being condemned. After Nene got off I pulled the bike over to one of the walls and engaged it's thermo-optic camo. Then with Nene we entered the building. Looking around revealed nothing but empty rooms and a seemingly non-functional elevator. "There's nothing here," I snorted. "We haven't tried upstairs." "Nene, you know even when I'm not got my suit on my sensors still work. There's nothing upstairs." With that Nene leaned against the wall and the elevator call button and Silently the doors opened dropping me onto the floor of the elevator car, as I'd happened to be leaning on them. "Well I'll be..." "What button should I press?" "There's nothing upstairs so the down one." "There doesn't seem to be a down button." The closing of the doors ended our debate. As if on cue the elevator slid downwards. "Well, this NCorp sure is thrifty." "They've been evading Genom so they decided stealth over luxury." Then the elevator stopped and opened onto a simple lobby. There sitting at the security desk was. "Linna!!" "Oh, hi Nene. The CEO will see you in about five minutes." Deciding to rest while waiting I took a seat on one of the comfy chairs that were scattered along the walls. "You quit the Knight Sabers to join NCorp??" "Not really. It's just that I can't endanger myself anyone." "Linna, so this is your day job a secretary?" "Actually, Aika, the only reason I'm doing this is cause you two were coming in to visit today. Usually it's the contact for the party. That happens to be me for you two." "So, you're a glorified doorman and the rest of the time?" Nene interjected. "Well, the CEO has me keeping an eye on Genom and generally liasoning between them and Sylia." "Oh." Then the phone on the desk beeped and Linna picked it up. After a quick glance at us, Linna waved us towards the large double doors at the end of the lobby. "I'll see you two after this." ************************ My first impression of the CEO was that instead of the supposed guy they were female. Their bob cut hair that ended just below the ears was streaked with grey. She motioned for us to take seats. Sitting down Nene and faced off against one of the best businesswoman in Mega-Tokyo. "Call me Nabiki." She offered. "Now you two are here to explain a plan to get certain information from a Genom mainframe." Nene and I were awed if half the things we'd heard about NCorp were true then this lady had faced down Genom more times than Priss had an injury fighting boomers. Turning she pointed a remote at one of the walls. It slid down to reveal a screen covering the entire wall. Various schematics of the factory popped up. "So what's your plan?" Nabiki asked. Nene and I had rehearsed the plan of attack for us and Yuri and Priss's part in it. Well not physically but simulations and such. Thus we were able to say what would happen in almost any situation and how we'd get the data and out of there. After the presentation as it were. She said, "When are you planning to do it?" "Well..." Nene paused to consider when would be the best time. "Tonight" "Tonight?" Nene and I chorused "Our inside source on this project who we've been unable to convince to get us the data has given tomorrow as soonest completion date. So that means tonight. Any problems?" "Well, other than telling everyone else not really." "So I expect to have the data no later than next Tuesday. Linna knows where to send it." Nabiki finished. Author notes: That's all for this chapter folks I'm not going to end up at the climax in the third chapter hope I can delay till at least the fifth one. Also sorry about no Ranma in it as promised but, (1) Cool costume it is and property of Todd Mcfarlane