Bubblegum Crisis Tokyo 2040 Fan Fiction ❯ Conspiracies and Lies ❯ Training Begins ( Chapter 2 )

A slight breeze sent papers tumbling across the busy street and brought with it the strong scent of fried chicken. Priss walked on, hands in pockets, clearly ignoring the world around her. She'd hit the brakes on her bike a `little' too hard the other day at a `slightly' high speed, so it was in for repairs. Therefore, she was walking to the Silky Doll, which was considerably slower than her bike, but what could she do? A possible choice came riding up behind her on a rather noisy blue motorcycle.

 

“Hellooo, Priss,” said Leon McNichol. He slowed down until he matched Priss' pace, dragging one foot along the ground to stay upright. Her heart skipped a beat when she heard Leon's voice, but she glanced coolly at him, then went back to looking straight ahead. What the hell? We broke it off two and a half YEARS ago, so why should I feel… wait. What IS this even? Nervousness? Excitement? Ah-who cares? An idea had just come to her. He seemed to be in a playful mood, so two could play at that game. Priss threw him a seductive look, which made him blush brightly and take his foot off the ground which, in turn, caused him to -CRASH! - fall straight over. Priss sighed and looked at him, bored once more.

 

“I'll give you points for effort, but the presentation sucked.” And thus, she carried on walking to the Silky Doll, leaving poor Leon McNichol in a heap of bike and blinking confusion. Briefly, Priss wondered why in the world she had done that, and decided in the end that everything had changed in the past three years and, even though she had tried to resist it, she had changed, too.

 

* * *

 

The purple-blue armor felt strange and foreign after so long. The max power levels of… well, everything, were lower and the boomer intelligence seemed to distrust her as much as she distrusted it. It was almost like meeting an old friend only to discover that that friend wasn't at all who you remembered. With a shake of her head, Priss decided two things: One, that she really didn't like the old armor, and two, that she would MAKE it remember who she was. Grinning inside her helmet, she gave Mackey in the control booth a thumbs-up. A door slid open almost immediately and she found herself staring at a perfectly white room.

 

Everything- the floor, the ceiling, the walls- was covered in white tile. Along the left wall were a series of square lights, all of which were green at the moment. The right wall held four other doors, and two were open. One contained Nene in her old pink and red armor and the other was empty. Where's Linna? She's supposed to be here, too. Ah well, looks like I'll be doing this alone since Nene won't be much help… Straight across, the rectangular room was divided in half by metal bars, like a cage. Inside this cage were twenty-something boomers. Regular boomers, not rogue. No doubt, Mackey and Nene had whipped up another crazy training program. Mackey's voice suddenly rang out through hidden speakers.

 

“Nene, where's the disk?”

 

Nene gasped and covered her mouth with her hands, or so she would have had she not been wearing a helmet.

 

“I left it at Linna's! I stayed at her apartment last night and I brought it to put a few last minute touches on it and…” she sighed, clearly distressed. Priss just put her hands on her hips and rolled her eyes.

 

“I was right…” she mumbled. “This IS going to be a long day…” At that same moment, it seemed the day would be even longer than she thought, for the third unexpected thing just so happened to happen. Leon walked through one of the other doors, holding a round disk in one hand, and walked straight into the other door.

 

* * *

 

Mackey almost laughed aloud, for when Leon walked through the door below, Priss' heart rate spiked. The `boy' shook his head, but didn't have any time to think about it because the elevators in the Silky Doll were almost unnecessarily fast. Not to mention that he wasn't even a full story above the room.

 

“Believe it or not,” Leon said, coming to stand beside Mackey at the control panel. “Linna called me up out of the blue and said Nene had left `two important somethings' at her apartment. She's not feeling so great, so I picked them up.” He held up the disk.

 

“What was the second thing?” Mackey asked. Leon hit a button, which brought up a display of the control room down below. Leon reached into his pocket and brought out a stuffed white ferret.

 

“Mr. Weasel!!” Nene squeaked. “I was looking all over for him!” Leon chuckled warmly. Something halfway between a sigh and a groan came through the speakers.

 

“Can we just get on with it?” Priss was sounding extremely annoyed, which was odd. She usually had more patience, even when dealing with Nene.

 

“Alright, alright.” Mackey typed in some rather complicated looking equations and inserted the disk into a slot by one of the many holographic screens. A new screen popped up carrying a display of a boomer. One of the boomers below stepped to a wall and plugged itself in.

 

“The way this works,” Mackey explained to both Leon and Priss. “Is one of the boomers plugs in to the system. We load almost a virus into its core, which will, in a minute, turn it rogue. In the time before, however, it goes through the door in the bars to where you- Priss and Nene- are. The bars are electrified so the boomer can't absorb them and the others are given the order to stay clear.”

 

Sure enough, down below, the boomer went through a door to where Nene and Priss stood. Leon saw sparks run up along the bas separating the room and the remaining boomers shuffled to the back away from the bars. Suddenly, the boomer dropped to all fours and let out a screech like nails on a chalkboard. Its `skin' bubbled and swirled ominously. The metal ran down its body until the monster was nothing but a blob of liquid wires and steel. Then, slowly, it started to take form. A neck grew, sprouting a head that reminded Leon of something like a tiger's. Six legs, three on each side, exploded out and reached to the ground. They each ended in a resemblance of a human hand. A wicked tail sprouted last, covered in spikes that gleamed in the bright lights.

 

“Oh…” Nene whispered in a voice several octaves higher than normal.

 

“It's a boomer, Nene.” Priss said calmly. “It looks like shit but it dies just the same as always.”

 

“Oh, sure!” Nene retorted. “You fought the biggest, most insane boomer ever, while the most I'VE done is plug a cannon!”

 

“This isn't the time to fight!” Mackey interrupted. “If I don't hit the button fast enough, that thing could kill you.” Nene whimpered and Leon could actually see her starting to shake.

 

“Well,” Priss began. “Now that Nene's reassured, let's kill this thing!”