Sylia was having dinner when the alarm sirens blared, the sky outside turning a sickly green. Despite blast shutters closing along the windows, she
continued eating at her current pace. Whatever the emergency, Sylia had no plans to rush inelegantly from a meal if it was unnecessary, especially considering
the number of heroes in the city. Sylia Stingray was many things, but unnecessarily inelegant was not one such.
Finishing her food, she set her silverware down and strode to the small internal room of her building that housed the armory. As she suited up, she noted a
blip that indicated Nene was already in the field and en route, which got a chuckle from her. The girl was enjoying being combat effective far too much. As
much as her old role had been necessary in the Knight Sabers, Sylia admitted she was rather proud to see Nene acclimating to direct combat as well as she did.
It was one of the few things she could thank Crey for.
Walking upstairs to the roof, Sylia once again considered alternative methods of exiting the building. Eventually, someone would notice her exiting here and
suspicion would mount. Tunneling underground was possible, but impractical. Perhaps some way of exiting the roof too fast to be seen? She pondered this as she
jumped off the roof , leaping to the next in a burst of recessed thrusters, headed for the disturbance.
***
"I'm tellin' ya. This job? Safest thing you could hope for in Crey," the truck driver noted to his security guard companion. "I drive
this thing through the city, drop off the container, and beat feet immediately. Heroes always have bigger problems to deal with than me, so I never get
arrested, and they can't prove I'm connected to anything. Seriously, it's the bes-" he cut off as the skies went green and sirens blared.
"Oh, come on…." He grimaced, putting the pedal to the metal as the truck accelerated towards its designated drop off point. After a while, he let out
his breath, looking over at his companion, who chuckled. "Guess the heroes are taking care of them somewhere els-"
Neither Crey employee had time to notice the Rikti bomb land directly in front of them before it detonated, the blast reaching out like an invisible boot
and kicking the truck straight in the grill, causing the vehicle to tumble end over end due to its own momentum, eventually landing at rest on its wheels…in
time for another Rikti bomb to go off and tip it over on its side.
Inside the trailer, the storage capsule being transported was mostly saved by being clamped to the floor of the vehicle. However, the person inside was not
quite as lucky. Bounced about like a marble in a test tube, even the stasis commands attempting to keep her asleep couldn't prevent Priss from waking up to
all the abuse. Eventually, it stopped, leaving her with a headache worthy of an all night bender….and then the truck tipped over, dropping her to the side
again.
"Ow! What the fuck kind of driver is…wait a minute, where the hell am I?" she wondered, looking around. She was still in her hardsuit, as
far as she could tell, but this stasis tube seemed…odd. A flash of a briefing from Sylia came to mind, about buma growth tubes. Which meant GENOM, wherever she
was. And that meant they'd made a serious mistake in leaving her in her armor. Checking her controls, she slammed an armored fist into the glass several
times to little effect. Frowning, she located the joints of the panel, aiming at them instead. This proved more successful as she saw cracks spidering out from
the area…until both gave way at once, dropping her out onto the wall of the truck as the armored glass stopped holding her in her current position.
Grumbling to herself, Priss pulled herself to her feet, punching the door open and blinking in surprise at the odd green sky.
***
Standard Rikti tactical doctrine for a bombing raid was to overwhelm the enemy with air superiority and wide area detonation munitions. Following this, the
highest threats were to be met with calculated force, taking them out with as little risk to the overall strike force as possible. However, the Rikti's
inherently cautious nature meant that whereas a human would prefer overwhelming force, the Rikti tended to consider raw numbers, trickling in a "By The
Book" amount of troops based on the number of threats visible. This had only been further increased by the loss of reliable reinforcements from the
Homeworld, leading the Rikti to put further emphasis on the survivability of their troops, even if it was at the expense of their overall tactical plans. Lost
conscripts needed combat experience to adjust to their new Rikti forms, and the raids, overseen by veteran soldiers, provided that so that the soldiers could
be properly prepared for Hro'Dtohz's master plans…whenever the Lord of War deigned to tell the rest of the Lineage of War what they were, anyway.
In the meantime, Squad Alpha-48 was being deployed to investigate a power surge that seemed to be consistent with human combatants of the power armored
variety. The area had just suffered significant damage from the bombing, and the target was stationary. With no confirmed hostiles just yet, Squad Alpha-48 had
been primarily detailed a Guardian officer and a few drones, as well as their commanding officer in his Gunner armor. As a blue form stumbled out of the
wreckage, the Rikti trained their weapons…
***
"Unidentified human: surrender!" a harsh voice barked as Priss looked over her shoulder. A series of oddly proportioned humanoids with weapons
were drawing aim on her, the closest looking like some sort of bizarre anorexic buma. However, their body language definitely said "unfriendly", and
the oddly phrased order similarly made her unwilling to abide by their given commands. Plus, if those were buma, she wouldn't want to surrender to
them, odd speech patterns or not.
And, of course, there was the little part of her that Sylia had tried to train out of her but had never quite succeeded in doing so: that part of her that
heard someone tell her to go "right" and immediately swerved to the left out of sheer contrariness.
"Who's gonna make me?"
***
Sylia was the first to see the scene that neither she nor Nene had expected to find when they followed the smoke from a crash likely caused by the bombing.
And despite all her training, for a brief moment, Sylia just froze, unable to believe what she was seeing.
In the middle of a horde of Rikti, a familiar if slightly modified blue armored form was giving the alien hordes utter hell. Armored fists and feet swung
out like hammers, cracking armor and shattering bone. A conscript tried to fall back, only for Priss to slam an armored elbow into the Headman beside her,
knocking his breath out before whirling around him, jumping towards the Rikti soldier in a single improbable bound. The Rikti opened fire, but wildly and
inaccurately, her sudden approach having rattled him. Priss wasn't so inefficient, stepping under his line of fire and knocking the blaster out of his hand
with a kick. A fist hit his solar plexus like an oncoming car, cratering the armor there before a shoulder knocked him staggering backward, a right hook
shattering his translator and mouthpiece before a powerful uppercut lifted him bodily into the air and dropped him like a sack of potatoes.
It was brutal, short, and powerful, but the fighting style was undeniably that of one of her Knight Sabers, and the scattered, broken bits of armor,
weapons, and drone pieces showed that Priss had been holding her own long enough for the Rikti to have medicomm'd out at least one full wave of their
soldiers. Shaking herself, she popped the blades on her armor, diving into the fray herself as she intercepted a group heading towards Priss's back.
"You look like you could use a little help," she noted, sounding calmer than she felt at the moment, as Priss's head whirled like a shot as
another Rikti crumpled under her barrage of violence.
"Sylia?!"
"Yes, Priss, it's me."
"What the hell's going on here?" she asked, sounding utterly baffled, and Sylia restrained a laugh at the fact that Priss, having no idea what
the situation was, had dived into a brawl without hesitation.
"We're under attack. The details aren't important, but once Nene gets here, we can probably pull back long enough for me to explain it to
you."
"Right," Priss said, and if any doubts on Nene's utility against these things was present in her mind, it didn't show in her voice.
A few seconds(and one wave of reinforcements later), a red blur bounced from a nearby rooftop, landing near Priss, as the War Walls slowly spooled back up,
the battle slowly dying down. Priss looked up as she dropped a soldier to the ground unconscious. "Just in time, Nene. We finished without you," she
smirked.
The red armored figure sniffed audibly in dismissal. "I'll have you know I've gotten a lot better at fighting while you've been locked
up."
"Well, when you're at rock bottom for skill, I guess the only direction to go is up," Priss pondered, as Nene bristled.
"Priss, Nene really has improved while you've been…away…" Sylia began to say, before Priss laughed.
"I'm sure she has, if you've had to rely on just her instead of me or Linna."
Sylia frowned, before Nene started to speak but changed her tone in an instant. "Priss, down!"
Priss ducked out of instinct, just as a Rikti energy blast went through the air where her head had been, and Nene raised her hands, crackling bolts of
ionization ripping out from her gauntlets in eye searing brightness to impact the Rikti, electrocuting the alien into unconsciousness. Priss stood up slowly
afterwards as Nene relaxed, looking at her, then back over at the Rikti behind her teleporting out in alien medicomm. Nene sniffed. "Seems someone's
lost some of their edge being locked up in a dumpster for a few months. Since the alert's done, Sylia, I'm going to get back to my date," she
noted over the private comm band, before bouncing away to a nearby roof.
Priss turned, staring at Sylia. "….when did she start throwing fucking lightning bolts?!"
Sylia nearly laughed, but repressed the instinct. "Since you've been gone. I told you she'd improved," she said, mixing in just a slight
hint of reproach in her tone.
Priss glanced back at the rapidly departing red figure, before looking back at Sylia. "….I guess so."
Sylia shook her head, not really looking forward to what was coming next. "Anyway, if you'll come with me, we can find some place to talk. I imagine
you have a few questions."
"Heh, that's for sure," she admitted, still glancing in the direction where Nene had disappeared. "Not least how clumsy little Nene's
picked up more tricks than making a computer sit up and dance…"
***
As expected, the debriefing had gone well enough until Sylia had had to explain how they'd gotten here…and the implications of such.
"Sylia, I never pegged you for having a sense of humor, but this is not fucking funny," Priss noted darkly, scowling at her
Sylia sat back in her chair, her expression an odd mixture of sympathetic and reluctant that would've stood out on the usually cool and controlled woman
to Priss had she not been as agitated as she was. "Through some unknown method, someone with access to GENOM's production facilities recreated the
four of us using -33S model buma technology. My memories stop at a certain point before I woke up here. So do Nene's, and so, I imagine, do yours. Detailed
medical scans have confirmed significant differences between myself and Nene compared to what's standard in a normal human body. That, and Crey had files
on hand at the facility I escaped from seeking a way to reverse engineer the technology that created us."
"I don't care how you put it, or how much evidence you have. I am not a fucking boomer," Priss growled. "It's not fucking
possible. I'm me. I remember who I am, where I grew up, my friends, my family. There's no way GENOM could duplicate that. No one knows all the
things that I know, not even you. I'm not some fucking boomer copy. Look for other answers, because that's not me!"
Priss stood up, Sylia rising behind her and putting a hand on her shoulder. Priss hissed and jerked away, glaring daggers at the older woman.
"Priss, if you go out there without knowing who these people are and why they want us back, you're going to be putting yourself in danger. Danger
you may not walk away from. You need to believe me."
"I will, when you start talking something that makes sense. Until then, just stay the fuck away," she growled, stalking away and slamming the door
behind her with an audible bang that sounded like a gunshot.
Sylia stood there for a moment, the logical half of her running in circles trying to figure out how to convince Priss of a truth she didn't want to
believe as she let her composure recover from that tirade. Part of her noted she'd gotten too used to Priss's gradual softening towards herself and the
other Knight Sabers back home. She should've expected the tirade.
Coming up with nothing, she pulled out her phone, dialing Riot Force's base number.
***
Priss's mood didn't particularly improve as she talked down the streets of Steel Canyon. Not having her armor with her, she avoided the large clumps
of green monsters that Sylia'd identified as Trolls and the packs of powered thugs known as Outcasts. However, the further she walked, the more she stewed
about the things Sylia'd said. A boomer? Her? Yeah, right. If this Crey was anything like GENOM, she doubted anything Sylia'd found could be trusted at
face value. And GENOM monitoring their minds? Yeah, right. And next thing you knew, particle beams would be falling from the sky at total random.
So caught up in her growing anger, Priss didn't notice until a second late when a Reaper fired one of his tranquilizer darts at her. The dart struck her
in the shoulder, jerking her out of her reverie at the pain of the thing. The Reaper gave a command to the two walking cadavers with him, sending them forward
to pick her up. Priss, yanking the dart out, growled. "Whoever you weirdoes are, you picked a bad day to mess with me. But I'm grateful. I've
really wanted to punch something!"
The lead cadaver swung at her, Priss ducking the clumsy blow with practiced skill. The two of them were barely any threat to her, even unarmored, with their
lumbering attacks, but Priss hissed as a stream of corrosive vomit just missed her arm. She whirled, slamming a fist into the necrotized flesh that sent the
cadaver stumbling back with the sound of something snapping inside its torso. Priss didn't notice as she whirled a kick into the next one's leg,
knocking it off balance and simply pounding into the thing. Utterly blitzed, the cadaver didn't have time to try to attack with its vomit spray as it was
pummeled into non-functionality, and the next one didn't do much better. Priss looked up as another tranq dart hit her in the shoulder, slamming her knee
into his groin, a right cross to his face, and then following up with an overhead smash to the head that left the groaning Reaper too unconscious to realize
the pain he was in.
Looking at the blood leaking out of the Reaper's smashed nose, Priss briefly stared at it before hearing a grinding noise as one of the Cadavers'
arms sparked, the beating she'd delivered to it having ripped part of the dead skin open, revealing wires and metal inside the corpse. Priss wrinkled her
nose before continuing on. As she did, a part of her mind kept going back to the Reaper's unconscious form and the blood. Although part of her was yelling
at her that she didn't need to prove anything to anybody, Priss made her way towards the local hospital. Stepping through the doors, she sidestepped a hero
apparently in a hurry to leave the premises. The nurse gave her a sympathetic smile as Priss walked up.
"Welcome to Steel Canyon Medical Center, ma'am. How may we assist you?"
Priss considered walking away, but frowned. She'd never backed down before. She wasn't starting now. "I'd like to donate some blood,
actually."
The receptionist nodded politely. "Well, we aren't doing a drive at the moment, but if you still want to, we can set you up quickly enough. If
you'll just fill out this form and head to room B-28, a nurse should be with you shortly."
Priss nodded, heading to the room and sitting down. As she waited, she ran song lyrics through her head to keep herself distracted from the implications of
what she was doing. She was halfway through the second bridge of a new song when the nurse came in and delicately extracted a sample of her blood with a
syringe to test. Priss looked at the fluid as it was drawn, partially reassured at the fact that it was as red as anyone else's blood. However, as the
nurse left, she frowned at the fact that Sylvie'd bled red as well when… she shut off that line of thought almost immediately. The last thing she needed to
be doing was breaking important medical equipment out of frustrated anger right now.
After a decent wait, the nurse came back in, this time holding a clipboard. She looked somewhat apologetic, which was Priss's first clue before she
spoke up. "I'm sorry Miss Asagiri, but I'm afraid we have to defer you as a potential donor at this time," she said.
"Defer?" she asked.
"Well, after an analysis of your blood, we've been unable to come up with a matching recipient."
"Matching for what?" Priss asked, the hair on the back of her neck rising slightly.
"Well…any known blood type in our immediate records. Certain other hospitals deal in more exotic blood types outside the normal human genome, and we
can send your results to them to see if you match up as a donor there, but there are no recipients available currently that're compatible with your blood
makeup. This happens occasionally, usually with heroes that've undergone some sort of change to their physiology, or their children that inherit it.
I'm sorry for the inconvenience."
"No…no, it's alright," Priss said, feeling slightly light-headed, and she knew it wasn't because of the blood loss. Oh god…Sylia was
telling the truth… "I'll…come back later then," she said, getting up. The nurse nodded slightly, leading Priss out of the back rooms to the
lobby, before watching with slight concern as Priss wandered out the front door. The receptionist looked at her coworker.
"What, was she a druggie or something?"
"No, but I don't think she knew she was anything but normal until just now…"
***
Considering getting ready to go out for a night's patrol, Sylia turned slightly as she heard the door of her apartment open, spotting Priss out of the
corner of her eye.
"Oh, Priss, you're bac-"
"Fuck you! Why didya have t'tell me?!" Priss snarled, throwing a sloppy punch that Sylia easily diffused with a palm to her wrist and a pivot,
sending the other woman stumbling another step but otherwise keeping her from collapsing on the floor entirely. Sylia sniffed slightly and wrinkled her nose at
the overbearing scent of fresh alcohol. Nene'd been called in for an interview with the PPD about halfway through her surveillance of Priss, so Sylia'd
had no advanced warning about Priss hitting one of the local bars.
Not that she was especially surprised.
Priss staggered forward again, eyes a mix of drunken bleariness and anger-tinged fierceness. "I coulda just gone on…bein' normal….but no. No, miss
fuckin' know-it-all haddta go'n meddle. I coulda just been like everyone else! Why couldn't you jus' leave it, Sylia?!" she yelled, before
her knees about gave way. "Why'd you have t'tell me I wasn't human? That'm just a fucking boomer….fucking thing…" she said,
the anger segueing abruptly into tears as Sylia noticed the moisture leaking down Priss's face in far more amounts than she'd ever seen Priss have
outside of that one time by the DD.
"…because you deserved to know," she said softly, feeling that last small piece of detachment she'd had left after all these years wither and
die, and not particularly mourning for it. "It would have come up eventually. Either from Crey, a medical examination, or something else. You would have
found out eventually. I thought it best that it would come from me," she said, stepping closer.
Priss jabbed at her own face angrily, wiping at her eyes as she glared at Sylia. "…damn you, Sylia….damn you….why do you have t'be right all the
fucking time? Why do we have to have this happen?" She looked as if she was about to try to punch Sylia again, before just letting a sob break through and
staggering. Sylia caught her before she fell entirely, but didn't let go, letting the other woman struggle to regain her composure in the embrace. Sylia
rested her arms around Priss's waist as neutrally comforting as she knew how, before speaking up.
"I don't know why this happened, at least in a grand cosmic reason that'd make it all alright. I'm just grateful to find you girls again. I
don't expect I could have handled it alone."
"How the fuck did you handle it?" Priss choked. "You knew from just after you woke up. You said so. How did you deal with
being…being a boomer?"
Sylia idly considered telling Priss at least part of the reason why, but decided that now wasn't the time for such a revelation with her friend so
obviously distraught. "At first, it was because I had to escape, and from there finding a place to hide. I distracted myself with the goal of finding you
girls, but the distraction didn't last. In a way, though, you're responsible for me keeping a level head."
Priss looked up at her in confusion, and Sylia pulled out a handkerchief from her pocket to wipe at her face. "I used to think like you did. That buma,
no matter how intelligent they seemed, were nothing more than highly advanced machines. Things that could pass for human. Then you met Sylvie. I admit, I had
you followed, suspicious of this new person who could so quickly sneak into your circle of friends. My sources couldn't find anything about her, and I
wanted to be sure she wasn't a trap. That was how I became aware of when the two of you became…intimate," she said cautiously.
Priss's expression almost shifted to angry again, before she deflated. "…I guess I can see why you would," she said in a voice almost too
quiet for her.
"Yes…eventually, I stopped the surveillance. I'm not my brother, after all. And it was clear that, if anything, Sylvie was just another lost soul,
that'd found someone that matched her in you. I was as shocked as you when we found out what she was, though I'd had my suspicions given reports of
escaped sexaroids. But the fact that she'd done all of that, risked and lost her life, just to protect you and her friend…Anri, I think you said her name
was…that wasn't the thoughts, the objectives of a lifeless machine. Sylvie was as much a person as you or I," she said softly.
Priss nodded, tears leaking out of her face again for a different reason this time, looking up at her. "But what's all that got to do with…."
she started to ask, before Sylia saw the slight light dawn in Priss's crimson eyes.
"Yes. We're the same as Sylvie. We have the memories of the original Knight Sabers, who may be going about their lives right now, but we're not
them. We're copies built with 33S technology. The same technology that created Sylvie. That made her a person, regardless of her origins.
You're not a thing, Priss. No more than she was. You're a person who has other people that care about you very much, and don't want to see you like
this," she said.
Priss blinked at the gentle tone, before becoming suddenly aware of their position and stepping back, slight color in her cheeks. "…yeah, I guess
you're…right. I'd just…it's hard, y'know? I only knew Sylvie was…shortly before she died. And after that, all we knew were more of GENOM's
combat boomers…"
"I understand," Sylia said, nodding. "That said, do you have any place to spend the night?" she asked. When Priss shook her head, Sylia
nodded slightly. "You can use the guest bedroom then. I wouldn't really think you're quite ready to go out among the gangs at night like this just
yet, much less find a place to stay with minimal funds," she said.
Priss looked disgusted through her obvious exhaustion as the beer and emotional exertion caught up with her. "Hey, I'm not some china doll, okay?
I'm perfectly fi-" she managed, before passing out onto the floor with a thud.
Sylia blinked, before sighing slightly and shaking her head. Bending down, she lifted Priss somewhat, grateful for the slightly above human average strength
her new body had as standard. Carrying and/or dragging her to the spare room, she laid Priss onto the bed, pulling off her somewhat dirty biking boots to keep
the linens mostly clean and putting them into a corner. She watched Priss sleep for a moment, smiling slightly to herself, before checking her watch and
realizing she had to get going. Writing a note with how to contact herself or Nene, Sylia went into the armory room, sliding into her hardsuit and heading up
to the roof to catch up with the rest of Riot Force's late night patrol. Now they just had to find Linna, and her family here would be together again.
Finally.
---
"Oh, silver blade, forged in the depths of the beyond. Heed my summons and purge those who stand in my way. Lay
waste."
continued eating at her current pace. Whatever the emergency, Sylia had no plans to rush inelegantly from a meal if it was unnecessary, especially considering
the number of heroes in the city. Sylia Stingray was many things, but unnecessarily inelegant was not one such.
Finishing her food, she set her silverware down and strode to the small internal room of her building that housed the armory. As she suited up, she noted a
blip that indicated Nene was already in the field and en route, which got a chuckle from her. The girl was enjoying being combat effective far too much. As
much as her old role had been necessary in the Knight Sabers, Sylia admitted she was rather proud to see Nene acclimating to direct combat as well as she did.
It was one of the few things she could thank Crey for.
Walking upstairs to the roof, Sylia once again considered alternative methods of exiting the building. Eventually, someone would notice her exiting here and
suspicion would mount. Tunneling underground was possible, but impractical. Perhaps some way of exiting the roof too fast to be seen? She pondered this as she
jumped off the roof , leaping to the next in a burst of recessed thrusters, headed for the disturbance.
***
"I'm tellin' ya. This job? Safest thing you could hope for in Crey," the truck driver noted to his security guard companion. "I drive
this thing through the city, drop off the container, and beat feet immediately. Heroes always have bigger problems to deal with than me, so I never get
arrested, and they can't prove I'm connected to anything. Seriously, it's the bes-" he cut off as the skies went green and sirens blared.
"Oh, come on…." He grimaced, putting the pedal to the metal as the truck accelerated towards its designated drop off point. After a while, he let out
his breath, looking over at his companion, who chuckled. "Guess the heroes are taking care of them somewhere els-"
Neither Crey employee had time to notice the Rikti bomb land directly in front of them before it detonated, the blast reaching out like an invisible boot
and kicking the truck straight in the grill, causing the vehicle to tumble end over end due to its own momentum, eventually landing at rest on its wheels…in
time for another Rikti bomb to go off and tip it over on its side.
Inside the trailer, the storage capsule being transported was mostly saved by being clamped to the floor of the vehicle. However, the person inside was not
quite as lucky. Bounced about like a marble in a test tube, even the stasis commands attempting to keep her asleep couldn't prevent Priss from waking up to
all the abuse. Eventually, it stopped, leaving her with a headache worthy of an all night bender….and then the truck tipped over, dropping her to the side
again.
"Ow! What the fuck kind of driver is…wait a minute, where the hell am I?" she wondered, looking around. She was still in her hardsuit, as
far as she could tell, but this stasis tube seemed…odd. A flash of a briefing from Sylia came to mind, about buma growth tubes. Which meant GENOM, wherever she
was. And that meant they'd made a serious mistake in leaving her in her armor. Checking her controls, she slammed an armored fist into the glass several
times to little effect. Frowning, she located the joints of the panel, aiming at them instead. This proved more successful as she saw cracks spidering out from
the area…until both gave way at once, dropping her out onto the wall of the truck as the armored glass stopped holding her in her current position.
Grumbling to herself, Priss pulled herself to her feet, punching the door open and blinking in surprise at the odd green sky.
***
Standard Rikti tactical doctrine for a bombing raid was to overwhelm the enemy with air superiority and wide area detonation munitions. Following this, the
highest threats were to be met with calculated force, taking them out with as little risk to the overall strike force as possible. However, the Rikti's
inherently cautious nature meant that whereas a human would prefer overwhelming force, the Rikti tended to consider raw numbers, trickling in a "By The
Book" amount of troops based on the number of threats visible. This had only been further increased by the loss of reliable reinforcements from the
Homeworld, leading the Rikti to put further emphasis on the survivability of their troops, even if it was at the expense of their overall tactical plans. Lost
conscripts needed combat experience to adjust to their new Rikti forms, and the raids, overseen by veteran soldiers, provided that so that the soldiers could
be properly prepared for Hro'Dtohz's master plans…whenever the Lord of War deigned to tell the rest of the Lineage of War what they were, anyway.
In the meantime, Squad Alpha-48 was being deployed to investigate a power surge that seemed to be consistent with human combatants of the power armored
variety. The area had just suffered significant damage from the bombing, and the target was stationary. With no confirmed hostiles just yet, Squad Alpha-48 had
been primarily detailed a Guardian officer and a few drones, as well as their commanding officer in his Gunner armor. As a blue form stumbled out of the
wreckage, the Rikti trained their weapons…
***
"Unidentified human: surrender!" a harsh voice barked as Priss looked over her shoulder. A series of oddly proportioned humanoids with weapons
were drawing aim on her, the closest looking like some sort of bizarre anorexic buma. However, their body language definitely said "unfriendly", and
the oddly phrased order similarly made her unwilling to abide by their given commands. Plus, if those were buma, she wouldn't want to surrender to
them, odd speech patterns or not.
And, of course, there was the little part of her that Sylia had tried to train out of her but had never quite succeeded in doing so: that part of her that
heard someone tell her to go "right" and immediately swerved to the left out of sheer contrariness.
"Who's gonna make me?"
***
Sylia was the first to see the scene that neither she nor Nene had expected to find when they followed the smoke from a crash likely caused by the bombing.
And despite all her training, for a brief moment, Sylia just froze, unable to believe what she was seeing.
In the middle of a horde of Rikti, a familiar if slightly modified blue armored form was giving the alien hordes utter hell. Armored fists and feet swung
out like hammers, cracking armor and shattering bone. A conscript tried to fall back, only for Priss to slam an armored elbow into the Headman beside her,
knocking his breath out before whirling around him, jumping towards the Rikti soldier in a single improbable bound. The Rikti opened fire, but wildly and
inaccurately, her sudden approach having rattled him. Priss wasn't so inefficient, stepping under his line of fire and knocking the blaster out of his hand
with a kick. A fist hit his solar plexus like an oncoming car, cratering the armor there before a shoulder knocked him staggering backward, a right hook
shattering his translator and mouthpiece before a powerful uppercut lifted him bodily into the air and dropped him like a sack of potatoes.
It was brutal, short, and powerful, but the fighting style was undeniably that of one of her Knight Sabers, and the scattered, broken bits of armor,
weapons, and drone pieces showed that Priss had been holding her own long enough for the Rikti to have medicomm'd out at least one full wave of their
soldiers. Shaking herself, she popped the blades on her armor, diving into the fray herself as she intercepted a group heading towards Priss's back.
"You look like you could use a little help," she noted, sounding calmer than she felt at the moment, as Priss's head whirled like a shot as
another Rikti crumpled under her barrage of violence.
"Sylia?!"
"Yes, Priss, it's me."
"What the hell's going on here?" she asked, sounding utterly baffled, and Sylia restrained a laugh at the fact that Priss, having no idea what
the situation was, had dived into a brawl without hesitation.
"We're under attack. The details aren't important, but once Nene gets here, we can probably pull back long enough for me to explain it to
you."
"Right," Priss said, and if any doubts on Nene's utility against these things was present in her mind, it didn't show in her voice.
A few seconds(and one wave of reinforcements later), a red blur bounced from a nearby rooftop, landing near Priss, as the War Walls slowly spooled back up,
the battle slowly dying down. Priss looked up as she dropped a soldier to the ground unconscious. "Just in time, Nene. We finished without you," she
smirked.
The red armored figure sniffed audibly in dismissal. "I'll have you know I've gotten a lot better at fighting while you've been locked
up."
"Well, when you're at rock bottom for skill, I guess the only direction to go is up," Priss pondered, as Nene bristled.
"Priss, Nene really has improved while you've been…away…" Sylia began to say, before Priss laughed.
"I'm sure she has, if you've had to rely on just her instead of me or Linna."
Sylia frowned, before Nene started to speak but changed her tone in an instant. "Priss, down!"
Priss ducked out of instinct, just as a Rikti energy blast went through the air where her head had been, and Nene raised her hands, crackling bolts of
ionization ripping out from her gauntlets in eye searing brightness to impact the Rikti, electrocuting the alien into unconsciousness. Priss stood up slowly
afterwards as Nene relaxed, looking at her, then back over at the Rikti behind her teleporting out in alien medicomm. Nene sniffed. "Seems someone's
lost some of their edge being locked up in a dumpster for a few months. Since the alert's done, Sylia, I'm going to get back to my date," she
noted over the private comm band, before bouncing away to a nearby roof.
Priss turned, staring at Sylia. "….when did she start throwing fucking lightning bolts?!"
Sylia nearly laughed, but repressed the instinct. "Since you've been gone. I told you she'd improved," she said, mixing in just a slight
hint of reproach in her tone.
Priss glanced back at the rapidly departing red figure, before looking back at Sylia. "….I guess so."
Sylia shook her head, not really looking forward to what was coming next. "Anyway, if you'll come with me, we can find some place to talk. I imagine
you have a few questions."
"Heh, that's for sure," she admitted, still glancing in the direction where Nene had disappeared. "Not least how clumsy little Nene's
picked up more tricks than making a computer sit up and dance…"
***
As expected, the debriefing had gone well enough until Sylia had had to explain how they'd gotten here…and the implications of such.
"Sylia, I never pegged you for having a sense of humor, but this is not fucking funny," Priss noted darkly, scowling at her
Sylia sat back in her chair, her expression an odd mixture of sympathetic and reluctant that would've stood out on the usually cool and controlled woman
to Priss had she not been as agitated as she was. "Through some unknown method, someone with access to GENOM's production facilities recreated the
four of us using -33S model buma technology. My memories stop at a certain point before I woke up here. So do Nene's, and so, I imagine, do yours. Detailed
medical scans have confirmed significant differences between myself and Nene compared to what's standard in a normal human body. That, and Crey had files
on hand at the facility I escaped from seeking a way to reverse engineer the technology that created us."
"I don't care how you put it, or how much evidence you have. I am not a fucking boomer," Priss growled. "It's not fucking
possible. I'm me. I remember who I am, where I grew up, my friends, my family. There's no way GENOM could duplicate that. No one knows all the
things that I know, not even you. I'm not some fucking boomer copy. Look for other answers, because that's not me!"
Priss stood up, Sylia rising behind her and putting a hand on her shoulder. Priss hissed and jerked away, glaring daggers at the older woman.
"Priss, if you go out there without knowing who these people are and why they want us back, you're going to be putting yourself in danger. Danger
you may not walk away from. You need to believe me."
"I will, when you start talking something that makes sense. Until then, just stay the fuck away," she growled, stalking away and slamming the door
behind her with an audible bang that sounded like a gunshot.
Sylia stood there for a moment, the logical half of her running in circles trying to figure out how to convince Priss of a truth she didn't want to
believe as she let her composure recover from that tirade. Part of her noted she'd gotten too used to Priss's gradual softening towards herself and the
other Knight Sabers back home. She should've expected the tirade.
Coming up with nothing, she pulled out her phone, dialing Riot Force's base number.
***
Priss's mood didn't particularly improve as she talked down the streets of Steel Canyon. Not having her armor with her, she avoided the large clumps
of green monsters that Sylia'd identified as Trolls and the packs of powered thugs known as Outcasts. However, the further she walked, the more she stewed
about the things Sylia'd said. A boomer? Her? Yeah, right. If this Crey was anything like GENOM, she doubted anything Sylia'd found could be trusted at
face value. And GENOM monitoring their minds? Yeah, right. And next thing you knew, particle beams would be falling from the sky at total random.
So caught up in her growing anger, Priss didn't notice until a second late when a Reaper fired one of his tranquilizer darts at her. The dart struck her
in the shoulder, jerking her out of her reverie at the pain of the thing. The Reaper gave a command to the two walking cadavers with him, sending them forward
to pick her up. Priss, yanking the dart out, growled. "Whoever you weirdoes are, you picked a bad day to mess with me. But I'm grateful. I've
really wanted to punch something!"
The lead cadaver swung at her, Priss ducking the clumsy blow with practiced skill. The two of them were barely any threat to her, even unarmored, with their
lumbering attacks, but Priss hissed as a stream of corrosive vomit just missed her arm. She whirled, slamming a fist into the necrotized flesh that sent the
cadaver stumbling back with the sound of something snapping inside its torso. Priss didn't notice as she whirled a kick into the next one's leg,
knocking it off balance and simply pounding into the thing. Utterly blitzed, the cadaver didn't have time to try to attack with its vomit spray as it was
pummeled into non-functionality, and the next one didn't do much better. Priss looked up as another tranq dart hit her in the shoulder, slamming her knee
into his groin, a right cross to his face, and then following up with an overhead smash to the head that left the groaning Reaper too unconscious to realize
the pain he was in.
Looking at the blood leaking out of the Reaper's smashed nose, Priss briefly stared at it before hearing a grinding noise as one of the Cadavers'
arms sparked, the beating she'd delivered to it having ripped part of the dead skin open, revealing wires and metal inside the corpse. Priss wrinkled her
nose before continuing on. As she did, a part of her mind kept going back to the Reaper's unconscious form and the blood. Although part of her was yelling
at her that she didn't need to prove anything to anybody, Priss made her way towards the local hospital. Stepping through the doors, she sidestepped a hero
apparently in a hurry to leave the premises. The nurse gave her a sympathetic smile as Priss walked up.
"Welcome to Steel Canyon Medical Center, ma'am. How may we assist you?"
Priss considered walking away, but frowned. She'd never backed down before. She wasn't starting now. "I'd like to donate some blood,
actually."
The receptionist nodded politely. "Well, we aren't doing a drive at the moment, but if you still want to, we can set you up quickly enough. If
you'll just fill out this form and head to room B-28, a nurse should be with you shortly."
Priss nodded, heading to the room and sitting down. As she waited, she ran song lyrics through her head to keep herself distracted from the implications of
what she was doing. She was halfway through the second bridge of a new song when the nurse came in and delicately extracted a sample of her blood with a
syringe to test. Priss looked at the fluid as it was drawn, partially reassured at the fact that it was as red as anyone else's blood. However, as the
nurse left, she frowned at the fact that Sylvie'd bled red as well when… she shut off that line of thought almost immediately. The last thing she needed to
be doing was breaking important medical equipment out of frustrated anger right now.
After a decent wait, the nurse came back in, this time holding a clipboard. She looked somewhat apologetic, which was Priss's first clue before she
spoke up. "I'm sorry Miss Asagiri, but I'm afraid we have to defer you as a potential donor at this time," she said.
"Defer?" she asked.
"Well, after an analysis of your blood, we've been unable to come up with a matching recipient."
"Matching for what?" Priss asked, the hair on the back of her neck rising slightly.
"Well…any known blood type in our immediate records. Certain other hospitals deal in more exotic blood types outside the normal human genome, and we
can send your results to them to see if you match up as a donor there, but there are no recipients available currently that're compatible with your blood
makeup. This happens occasionally, usually with heroes that've undergone some sort of change to their physiology, or their children that inherit it.
I'm sorry for the inconvenience."
"No…no, it's alright," Priss said, feeling slightly light-headed, and she knew it wasn't because of the blood loss. Oh god…Sylia was
telling the truth… "I'll…come back later then," she said, getting up. The nurse nodded slightly, leading Priss out of the back rooms to the
lobby, before watching with slight concern as Priss wandered out the front door. The receptionist looked at her coworker.
"What, was she a druggie or something?"
"No, but I don't think she knew she was anything but normal until just now…"
***
Considering getting ready to go out for a night's patrol, Sylia turned slightly as she heard the door of her apartment open, spotting Priss out of the
corner of her eye.
"Oh, Priss, you're bac-"
"Fuck you! Why didya have t'tell me?!" Priss snarled, throwing a sloppy punch that Sylia easily diffused with a palm to her wrist and a pivot,
sending the other woman stumbling another step but otherwise keeping her from collapsing on the floor entirely. Sylia sniffed slightly and wrinkled her nose at
the overbearing scent of fresh alcohol. Nene'd been called in for an interview with the PPD about halfway through her surveillance of Priss, so Sylia'd
had no advanced warning about Priss hitting one of the local bars.
Not that she was especially surprised.
Priss staggered forward again, eyes a mix of drunken bleariness and anger-tinged fierceness. "I coulda just gone on…bein' normal….but no. No, miss
fuckin' know-it-all haddta go'n meddle. I coulda just been like everyone else! Why couldn't you jus' leave it, Sylia?!" she yelled, before
her knees about gave way. "Why'd you have t'tell me I wasn't human? That'm just a fucking boomer….fucking thing…" she said,
the anger segueing abruptly into tears as Sylia noticed the moisture leaking down Priss's face in far more amounts than she'd ever seen Priss have
outside of that one time by the DD.
"…because you deserved to know," she said softly, feeling that last small piece of detachment she'd had left after all these years wither and
die, and not particularly mourning for it. "It would have come up eventually. Either from Crey, a medical examination, or something else. You would have
found out eventually. I thought it best that it would come from me," she said, stepping closer.
Priss jabbed at her own face angrily, wiping at her eyes as she glared at Sylia. "…damn you, Sylia….damn you….why do you have t'be right all the
fucking time? Why do we have to have this happen?" She looked as if she was about to try to punch Sylia again, before just letting a sob break through and
staggering. Sylia caught her before she fell entirely, but didn't let go, letting the other woman struggle to regain her composure in the embrace. Sylia
rested her arms around Priss's waist as neutrally comforting as she knew how, before speaking up.
"I don't know why this happened, at least in a grand cosmic reason that'd make it all alright. I'm just grateful to find you girls again. I
don't expect I could have handled it alone."
"How the fuck did you handle it?" Priss choked. "You knew from just after you woke up. You said so. How did you deal with
being…being a boomer?"
Sylia idly considered telling Priss at least part of the reason why, but decided that now wasn't the time for such a revelation with her friend so
obviously distraught. "At first, it was because I had to escape, and from there finding a place to hide. I distracted myself with the goal of finding you
girls, but the distraction didn't last. In a way, though, you're responsible for me keeping a level head."
Priss looked up at her in confusion, and Sylia pulled out a handkerchief from her pocket to wipe at her face. "I used to think like you did. That buma,
no matter how intelligent they seemed, were nothing more than highly advanced machines. Things that could pass for human. Then you met Sylvie. I admit, I had
you followed, suspicious of this new person who could so quickly sneak into your circle of friends. My sources couldn't find anything about her, and I
wanted to be sure she wasn't a trap. That was how I became aware of when the two of you became…intimate," she said cautiously.
Priss's expression almost shifted to angry again, before she deflated. "…I guess I can see why you would," she said in a voice almost too
quiet for her.
"Yes…eventually, I stopped the surveillance. I'm not my brother, after all. And it was clear that, if anything, Sylvie was just another lost soul,
that'd found someone that matched her in you. I was as shocked as you when we found out what she was, though I'd had my suspicions given reports of
escaped sexaroids. But the fact that she'd done all of that, risked and lost her life, just to protect you and her friend…Anri, I think you said her name
was…that wasn't the thoughts, the objectives of a lifeless machine. Sylvie was as much a person as you or I," she said softly.
Priss nodded, tears leaking out of her face again for a different reason this time, looking up at her. "But what's all that got to do with…."
she started to ask, before Sylia saw the slight light dawn in Priss's crimson eyes.
"Yes. We're the same as Sylvie. We have the memories of the original Knight Sabers, who may be going about their lives right now, but we're not
them. We're copies built with 33S technology. The same technology that created Sylvie. That made her a person, regardless of her origins.
You're not a thing, Priss. No more than she was. You're a person who has other people that care about you very much, and don't want to see you like
this," she said.
Priss blinked at the gentle tone, before becoming suddenly aware of their position and stepping back, slight color in her cheeks. "…yeah, I guess
you're…right. I'd just…it's hard, y'know? I only knew Sylvie was…shortly before she died. And after that, all we knew were more of GENOM's
combat boomers…"
"I understand," Sylia said, nodding. "That said, do you have any place to spend the night?" she asked. When Priss shook her head, Sylia
nodded slightly. "You can use the guest bedroom then. I wouldn't really think you're quite ready to go out among the gangs at night like this just
yet, much less find a place to stay with minimal funds," she said.
Priss looked disgusted through her obvious exhaustion as the beer and emotional exertion caught up with her. "Hey, I'm not some china doll, okay?
I'm perfectly fi-" she managed, before passing out onto the floor with a thud.
Sylia blinked, before sighing slightly and shaking her head. Bending down, she lifted Priss somewhat, grateful for the slightly above human average strength
her new body had as standard. Carrying and/or dragging her to the spare room, she laid Priss onto the bed, pulling off her somewhat dirty biking boots to keep
the linens mostly clean and putting them into a corner. She watched Priss sleep for a moment, smiling slightly to herself, before checking her watch and
realizing she had to get going. Writing a note with how to contact herself or Nene, Sylia went into the armory room, sliding into her hardsuit and heading up
to the roof to catch up with the rest of Riot Force's late night patrol. Now they just had to find Linna, and her family here would be together again.
Finally.
---
"Oh, silver blade, forged in the depths of the beyond. Heed my summons and purge those who stand in my way. Lay
waste."