Sex: eventually and it will be f/f so if it is illegal or just abhorrent to you, well ? I guess you should find something else.

Violence: I'd rate it pretty high on the 'kick ass o'meter'.

Copyrights of Songs: As with anything, didn't mean any copyright infringement, I'm simply borrowing a few things and bending it to my own poetic license.

Thanks: to my beta readers Zee, Dimples and Cal, for sticking with me while I've redone this story, I know I've taken a LONG time and will take quite a bit more but thank you so very much for putting up with me. =)

And also for my baby grrl, forever and always my luv luv!

Feedback: YES, please that would be so nice! Laststarlite@yahoo.com.

Prologue:

The repeated flash of red warning lights erupted in the quiet hallway, disrupting the tranquility of the complex. Dr. Stingray's head whipped up from his computer screen as the shrill shriek of the bell pierced the air. A breach had happened.



"RED ALERT, RED ALERT; SUBJECT 0 HAS-" The rest was cut off by a blood curdling scream.

Stingray checked the security system from his computer, his eyes widening in shock and perhaps a little bit of fear.



"She's escaped."

Stingray jumped from his chair, sprinting down the hallway. Security personnel overtook him, rounding the corner at the end of the hall. The sprinkler systems came on abruptly, soaking everything. He heard voices from around the corner, a very agitated one yelling at something he couldn't see.

"I'll only say this one more time.. STOP WHERE YOU ARE!"

As Stingray rounded the corner to get to the elevator, he found the security squad, their weapons drawn as their commander yelled down the semi-darkened hall. Through the misty air, Stingray could make out subject zero, a grayish green haze surrounding her as she walked slowly towards the security squad.

"This is your last warning.. STOP OR WE'LL OPEN FIRE!" The only sound that was heard was the splash of the water from the sprinkler system hitting the water logged floor.

Suddenly the structure around them began to buckle as the glow from subject zero grew brighter to encompass the floor, walls and ceiling on either side of her. The hard metal surfaces of the floor and wall breaking out in ripples which looked like veins engorged from too much blood. All forming from subject zero's position and spreading out, corrupting the fiber optic cable that ran through the entire complex.

"FIRE!!!!!"

The vein-like cables broke through the floor melding with the tech suits that the security squad wore. The circuitry in their armor tightening like a boa constrictor would around its prey, strangling the life out of them as they gasped for air. Their weapons turning towards them, the sound of breaking bone could be heard as their arms were turned at unnatural positions. Their fingers still on the trigger as the muzzles hit their flesh.

Stingray jumped back into the hall he'd entered from as the security team fired their weapons at themselves and each other; they were rooted in place unable to stop.

"No." A child like voice uttered from subject zero as their bodies were being shredded; the bullets piercing flesh, muscle and bone. Once the carnage was over, the bullets spent, she continued on, fascinated at the new things she was discovering. She hated that the men in the white coats wouldn't let her out so she had been biding her time until they weren't watching her as carefully. What freedom she'd felt walking out of the chamber, the control when capturing the people in the coats, stringing them up and feeling their pulses whither to nothing. There was just one more lab coat she needed to be rid of to escape to freedom.

Stingray could feel her energy as she approached him. Standing on shaky feet gazing down at the familiar face; he could see the gore left on the wall behind her on her small feet and legs making his stomach turn.

"Galatia. Why have you left the lab?" He asked in a reproachful tone. In his mind she was a child and had no comprehension of the violence she had just inflicted upon innocent men. As much as it horrified him, he couldn't deny that she did not understand the scope of the carnage that had come about.

"I was bored. You promised to take me out. You didn't."

Such an innocent answer but with major repercussions, all he needed to do was get her to the lab and all would be well again.

"Your powers are too strong and you don't know how to control them yet. We must go back to the lab Galatia." Stingray smiled down at her, reaching his hand out as he would to his own child.

Galatia stared at him, studying everything around her. She knew him as father and yet, she could feel other things around her, connected to her. They were in the walls, in the ground, spreading outside the complex to other places. She could feel the ebb and flow of current, going from one place to the other. In her mind she could see this; that was why the floor had popped up like it had; she had reached out completely asking the question with her mind, What are you? When she received no answer, she was interrupted by those people at the end of the hall. They had annoyed her; then they threatened her and she needed them to stop. It just happened. She didn't mean for it to but it had. She had to protect herself. Now that she knew what it meant, she didn't want to stay in the lab, she wanted to explore, to learn and to see more and feel more of this network. She could control it with a thought, with a feeling and it was intoxicating.

She stepped back from Stingray, glaring up at him, her voice a breathy whisper.

"No.." Cables shot out from the floor, the ceiling and walls, grabbing onto Stingrays ankles, wrists, neck and stomach pulling him up, displaying him in spread-eagle form. He was shocked, this wasn't supposed to happen. She was his daughter!

"Ga-la-tia.." His strangled voice husked out as he attempted to draw more air in. She stared up at him, the glow around her getting brighter as the area around her blistered as if from fire.

"You are no longer necessary." As Galatia walked away from Stingray, the wet sound of ripping flesh as well as the crunch of bone could be heard along with a low gurgling moan.

Must get out. Must get to the surface. Was all that flashed through Galatia's mind. She was in the bowels of the eight story complex. Only the most top secret of projects were down in the subbasements, and she was the only one at the very bottom.

She ascended through three more levels before she saw it, or rather felt it with her mind. Vehicles were around the complex as well as people in tech suits. She could sense their computers, the intelligence of the weaponry. A wicked grin passed her lips as she stretched out her senses and with one thought brought more carnage to everyone around the complex. Join me!

Wires and cables bulged, corrupted by the thoughts of Galatia; everyone in security squads started screaming as their suits began crushing them to death, many of them firing their guns on accident, shooting the others in their squads.

From a helicopter above, the men watched in horror at the blood being spilt below. The complex itself warping and changing looking like a cancer cluster as ribbons expanded across the grass, uprooting tree's, vehicles and people.

"Sir we need help!" The pilot radioed back to headquarters, never knowing that someone else was listening in and using their camera feed to see the mayhem going on.

The hackers looked to their employer, who sat in his chair, stroking his chin thoughtfully.

"Too bad Stingray, you were the best employee I ever had." Nodding his head at the people before him, he said one sentence; one sentence that would change the face of Japan forever.

"Do it."

Sweat beaded on the lip of the man who would have to carry out this deed. Thousands would die and yet there was still no guarantee that this would work. He pressed the button.

Galatia felt it, the drain in her power making her crumple over in pain. This wasn't supposed to happen; she had to get back to the lab. She went as quickly as she could as the entire complex shook right from its foundation. Her head was killing her as she stumbled through the mangled entrance to the lab. She got to her pod closing it around her, using her remaining strength to surround it with metal and cable to protect her from what she knew was coming.

From above the complex, the men in the helicopter heard a great rumbling roar as the earth shook mightily as far as the eye could see.

"Earthquake." Was all that was uttered as the landscape bent and warped, rippling in humungous waves, cracking under the pressure. A split in the ground appeared on the south side of the complex, growing into a great chasm that pulled the complex and anything in its path into it. Galatia used all her power to keep the complex from crushing her little haven as she distantly felt the surge that was destroying Japan.

In downtown Tokyo windows in buildings shattered, the ground opened up swallowing innocent people into its dark depths. Water flooded in from the ocean as a tsunami hit the shore wiping out many in the blink of an eye. All people in Tokyo felt the great earthquake, but not like the people on the east coast.

When the worst of it was over, fire rampaged through cities where water could not touch it. Mutilated bodies floated along in a sea of red as the satellites picked up the pictures from high above in space, showing the entire world in seconds what tragedy had befallen the island country.

The techs finger still rested on the button as his employer came up behind him and patted him on the shoulder.

"It couldn't have been helped."

"May I be excused sir?" He asked in a shaky voice, as he stood up anyway, walking out into the hall in shock over what had happened. He walked up to a security guard, grabbed his gun and fired one single shot inside his own mouth. His body crumpling to the floor as red painted the wall behind him.

The world watched in stunned fascination at the tragedy that had befallen one of the leading economic communities. What seared into their minds was a picture from a country house. Two young teenagers clinging to each other as a dark haired man helped them into a car, a few short days after the national tragedy had befallen them.

A reporter stood by with a grim expression on her face as she started to speak of the thousands of victims hurt by the disaster.

"As you can see behind me even rural Japan has been affected by this devastating earthquake. I am at the country home of leading robotics engineer Dr. Katsuhito Stingray, who created the boomer for Genom Corporation. You see behind me his children Sylia and Mackie who have just learned of their father's tragic death inside Genom Corps. Robotics Center; a research facility dedicated to the advancement of boomer technology. At present it is unknown how many have died or are trapped inside the complex but numbers are steadily on the rise throughout Tokyo as the death toll mounts. Now back to Takahashi Akasaka on the outskirts of Tokyo." The screen switched over to another live feed; small flames licked the air in places, highlighting the burnt shells of buildings, their appearance that of a hell on earth behind the man who began talking.

"Thank you Chisa, I'm at the very outskirts of Tokyo, as you can see in the distance fires are still raging throughout the city. None of the firefighters are equipped to handle destruction of this magnitude but fortunately they have a benefactor. Genom has dispersed thousands of boomers to combat the inferno and from what we've been told they've been doing an excellent job. Before, you wouldn't have been able to see any of the buildings since many of the blazes were so intense. With patience and determination Genom's boomers have pulled off nothing short of a miracle in Tokyo. I think everyone can the thankful that we have the technology to be able to combat things like this if they should ever happen again in the future. We will all pray for the lives of people lost and missing in this great city. I'm Takahashi Akasaka for Fox News, signing off."

The volume was muted on the vid screen as the watcher sat back in their chair and grinned slightly. He stood up and went to overlook the production of his boomers. Oh yes, Quincy was a very happy man at the moment. Everything was looking up for his company. Since the disaster, he had 'loaned' his modified boomers out and with fantastic results. Countries that hadn't been interested in his 'children' were now frothing at the mouth to have their own workforce.

Now, all he needed was to find Stingrays daughter. It was unfortunate that Stingray died, but if he could get Sylia, then perhaps he'd be able to find out through her where he had put all his schematics on the boomer core. He needed that if he wanted to create better boomers. Now he just needed to find her and Dr. Raven.



NINE YEARS LATER:

The nimble tapping of fingers on keys could be heard in the stillness of the computer room. The faint light from the screen illuminated its user as she went through the first security block on the Genom mainframe computer. She smirked as she got past the security and blasted right through the second and third tier, but cursed when a little warning sounded in the room. Getting out of Genom's programs and making sure the 'watchdogs' hadn't been alerted, she then went into her own system and brought up the security features for her building. She chuckled slightly and ran a hand through her short blue-black hair, pressing a button as she smiled evilly.

"WHAT ARE YOU TWO DOING?!"

She felt like a peeping Tom, but Amber and Yuri should have known better than to come into her building without permission just to use the locker room for a make out session. Besides that, it had surprised Sylia to see her two teammates in such an intimate situation. Sylia hated surprises.

She zoomed in on the two women's faces, noting Yuri's bright red blush and how Amber stood protectively in front of her lover, a defiant lift of her chin as she stared into the monitor.

"Get a room you two!"

"Well Sylia, this is a room, it's free and we have access, so I'd say we picked our room, you were just rude enough to look in!" Amber's indignant voice carried a little too well over the comm system and Sylia snickered slightly.

"You know what I meant Amber.." It wasn't that Sylia hadn't had her own romps in the locker room, but to come to her place at night and use it for just that purpose made her feel like she was slipping in her duties as the 'hard as nails bitch' she was supposed to be.

"You try bunking with a cyber junkie kid who's training to be in the AD Police and see how much YOUR love life suffers!"

Sylia closed the comm. She remembered meeting the young woman in question once. Sylia had gone over to Amber's apartment to brief her on their next mission when the door was answered by a petite blond in cami's and a belly tee. Sylia couldn't quite remember what was said because the girl started prattling on about never having visitors, always being holed up in her room and never being allowed in the front when one of Amber's associates was around. Next thing she knew she was being drug into the apartment by the little sprite, shoved at the couch and asked a million and one questions. Sylia had been flustered by the girl's enthusiasm, but was saved by Amber coming to see what all the commotion was about, and saved Sylia by saying they were to go out and have coffee.

Sylia grinned and laughed out loud at her thoughts.. Oh my, having that little one around would cramp anyone's style! Still the kid wasn't half bad despite running her mouth about no one ever coming over to see her then jumping to her love of computers. Although Sylia had been thankful that Amber had come and gotten her, she was still astounded by how much Nene had know about computers and how they worked.

Sylia shook her head, not needing to dwell on her thoughts of possibly recruiting Nene if Greta didn't shape up soon. Sylia turned the comm. back on and addressed her two team mates.

"Well, just so long as-" Sylia began but was cut off by the sensors going off. They blared loudly as the automated response system reported a boomer sighting in old Tokyo.

"SHIT!" All three exclaimed, Sylia strode to the locker room and arrived at the same time as Greta, while Amber and Yuri rushed from the room in their form fitting encounter suits.

Greta smirked at Sylia in a way that wasn't at all pleasing, but what could she truly expect.. Especially after what you did. Sylia shook herself and headed to her locker, opening it up and stripping down quickly to put on her encounter suit. She and Greta finished at nearly the same time and strode out to the launch bay where their suits awaited them.

Sylia walked up to her gleaming, silver mech and stepped inside the snug legs. She attached the hip portion, then she put her hands through the arm compartment and slammed it back home, fitting the chest and back piece together. She snatched up her silver and blue helmet glancing at her comrades in arms. She smiled at how well the group was doing together; she was truly blessed to have gotten such smart and capable women. Amber helped Yuri put on her green helmet as Yuri held onto Amber's metallic blue mech encased hips. Greta walked up to the newly installed launch pad in her red mech suit and buckled into the launching mechanism.

Once everyone was all suited up and prepared for launch, Sylia did her countdown.

"Silver ready."

"Blue ready." Amber answered Sylia.

"Green ready." Yuri gave little thumbs up to Sylia.

"Red ready." Was Greta's half hearted reply.

Sylia stared for a moment at the other woman thinking that maybe it wasn't such a great idea for her to go along on this mission, but they were a team and she didn't want to split them up no matter how tense things were. Their personal lives stayed outside of business!

"Knight Sabers.. GO!" The sound of pistons firing was heard, then the four women were shooting up and out of the top of the building, their suites slicing through the night air was the only sound in Tokyo 2.

~~

High atop an abandoned building in old Tokyo, a flash of white light pierced the desolate night sky.

The flash didn't last long; an all encompassing boom soon followed it as another rouge was slain. In the haziness of smoldering, twisted metal, a silver figure could be seen, flanked by others in form fitting mech suits similar to the first; one of a royal metallic blue, the others a pale green. All shimmered and reflected the dying flames light; as the rouge boomer was taken out before it could hurt innocent civilians.

Damn Genom and their spawn! Thought Sylia to herself as satisfaction coursed through her in knowing that she had taken one more pet from Quincy.

As the lead figure stood, watching over another example of Genom's influence, something caught her attention. It was just a brief flicker in her peripheral vision through the visor of her helmet, but it was enough to make her hair stand on end. There's another one!

"LOOK OUT!" She screamed and jumped, her boosters lifting her high into the air as she performed a flip to the outermost edge of the rooftop. The rest of her team did likewise and viewed their new target. Its monstrous human-like robotic face had contorted because of the glitch in its programming; looking for all purposes like a rabid animal crouched on all fours, watching the three-suited women.

Damn, why didn't the sensors alert us to its presence? The three stood warily, but ready for its attack if it happened.

"Sylia, I can't get a read on this thing." As soon as Amber spoke over the internal comm between the suits, the boomer attacked. It threw explosive charges at the group, making them scatter as quickly as they could before they could explode. Some shrapnel from the second explosion hit Amber's suit, causing her to lose her concentration and fall from the sky like a dying star, hitting the concrete hard and knocking the wind out of her. Seeing an advantage, the boomer charged Amber's blue suit. She attempted to engage her boosters, but not soon enough, the boomer had caught her booted foot and she was flung back down into the ground, hard.

"AMBER!" Yuri spurned into action by the boomers attack, went to help her lover; she flew at him and used her energy ribbons, which were attached to her green suit, against the boomer. The attack had damaged it slightly, but it kept fighting. The boomers fist caught Yuri squarely in her helmeted face, and a sickening crunch could be heard as the outer shell was shattered, the force sending Yuri a few feet backwards.

Sylia charged the boomer from around Yuri's right, unsheathing her saber that was embedded in her armor clad forearm and tried to bisect it. The boomer picked Amber up and threw her at Yuri and Sylia. They all flew across the rooftop and landed in a pile of arms and legs.

Sylia was the first to recover and get up; only she found herself falling through the unstable roof of the building thanks to the boomers explosives. Her head began to throb painfully and she staggered to her feet clutching her head. It wasn't so much a throb as a dull pulsing, like that of her suit. The pain subsided to just a constant ache which she disregarded as she concentrated on getting back up top. Once there, she tried to detect the boomer but found that she couldn't track the boomers movements at all. In fact, her sensors were telling her that there were only three forms on the rooftop. Where the hell is Greta?!

It seemed that the fourth member of their group hadn't done anything except to hang back and spout out how well their attacks were working on the boomers. But at the moment, her comm. was suspiciously silent.

The group's heavy breathing could be heard over the internal mike. Amber and Yuri cautiously got up being wary of the unstable rooftop; each taking a separate point away from the other and looking about, hoping that their eyes could search out the boomer.

"Greta, can you track it for us? Why aren't our scanner's working?" Sylia asked in a hushed voice, as if keeping her voice down wouldn't alert the boomer and let it know that they couldn't find it.

The crisp crackling of static stayed in her ears till Greta's voice nearly boomed over the comm., making everyone jump a little bit.

"I can't track it because there's some sort of feedback loop happening with the suits Sylia, something set this whole thing off and it can't be repaired without the suits being back in the lab." Greta hushed her voice a bit as if she were checking something.

"LOOK OUT!"

Sylia felt more than heard the impact of the bomb going off and was once again flying through the air. It wasn't until she was up and about again that she heard the screams. The lower half of Amber's suit and body was gone. Yuri was by her side, screaming at her to wake up and not leave her. Amber's lifeblood gushed out from the place where her hips once were.

"Oh god, oh god, oh god, OH GOD! AM-BER!" Sylia watched in silent horror as the metal beast descended from above, plunging a thick, metal rod through Yuri's suit, slamming it right through her chest. Yuri's head snapped back with the force of the blow, then her body fell limp sliding slowly down the rod to where it was embedded in the paved rooftop.

Sylia's eyes widened as the boomer charged her.

"NNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"

Sylia bolted upright in bed, the sheets sticking to her sweaty form. Her breathing was ragged as she tried to calm her racing heart from the nightmare she had just awoken from. However, the nightmare was actually her life. As much as Sylia tried to deny it, her team was dead and with the devils luck she had survived disaster a second time.

Slipping out of the cool sheets, she headed to the bathroom of her hotel room. Flipping on the light, she turned on the faucet to the sink and doused her face with chilly water. Raking her fingers over her skin, she observed her features from between her fingers. She could see that her once black, almost dark blue hair had turned silver white.

She had woken up in the hospital, finding that Greta had finally intervened and pulled Sylia off the rooftop and sent an anonymous call to the newly established AD Police. They eventually had to call in the National Guard to put down the military boomer. What it was doing in Tokyo was as good as anyone's guess.

When Sylia was finally able to get out of her bed to use the bathroom on her own, much to the consternation of the nurses, she found a brilliant shock of silver white hair at her temple. Over the past few weeks her hair had gradually been changing color. Now she could barely see any of her original hair color at all.

She dropped her hands and stared into her pale blue eyes, so pale they were almost white in color, which were looking back at her; lifeless. She had come to the States almost immediately after getting out of the hospital, to bring her fallen team members home. Amber had been a police officer on the LA police force before she had joined the Knight Sabers. It had been hard to watch the most vibrant member of her team to be put into the ground, cut down in the prime of her life. But that's the way things were in Sylia's world. Nobody stayed around because of how she treated them, and some died just from knowing her.

Greta and Sylia parted ways when they put Yuri to rest next to her parents in her hometown of Peoria, Illinois. Yuri had been a special service agent with the U.S.S.D. before Sylia recruited her.

Sylia could still hear Greta as she gave her the envelope with the money for her services. Greta's words hitting her deep in her heart, her expression colder than the light snowy air billowing around them; "Who will mourn for you Sylia?" With that, she left Sylia to stare at the earthen mound where her comrade lay. The outline of the coffin taunted her; for the sole reason that she had survived.

Sylia sighed and stood back from the mirror to observe the rest of her body. She took a long, good look at herself, shaking her head when she thought about the fact that she would be turning twenty three in less than a week and yet, she looked older. It wasn't so much her body or face, but more like the awareness she held in her eyes. 2036 and yet Genom gets richer off a city its destroying, its citizens unaware of all the shit behind the scenes.. and yet another birthday gone by alone.

Sylia turned from the mirror and went back into the bedroom. She went to her bags and pulled out her compact laptop. Getting a link-up, she scheduled a flight back to Japan for the morning.

Slipping back onto the bed she brought up the files for her designs of her new mech suits. Along with bringing her comrades back home to rest, she also brought with her the new designs for her suits. Shortly after getting out of the hospital, she went to her lab and checked the wreckage of the suits. Analyzing each and every system, every circuit and every fiber cable to find out what exactly went wrong. What she had found, disturbed her greatly.

She had based her design of her suits for the Knight Sabers on her father's design for a boomer military bot. The only difference being that the suit was controlled and operated by a human host, it needed a human's brain waves in order for it to function, but it still had a boomer core.

In her investigation, she discovered that the reason for the breakdown in the sensors was because she had originally based the design of the mech suits on her physical and mental type. Both Amber and Yuri were as far from Sylia in that respect as possible. The only things they truly had in common was their abilities with combat scenarios and that they all kept themselves toned, other than that they had nothing to keep the suits from eventually rejecting them. Because of the difference in her brain wave patterns from theirs, it created a feedback loop when the suits began to realize that their 'owner' wasn't the one using them. Since the suits were connected together, a precaution on Sylia's part in case a team member got cornered; they had all lost their sensors and weren't prepared for the attack by the other rouge boomer.

Sylia's advanced mind watched as schematics flashed quickly across the screen, her ideas for the new suits quickly became a blur, going faster than any human eye could track. She would need Dr. Ravens help, of that she was sure of. In the dark solitude of a nondescript hotel, Sylia Stingray's mind formulated the future of her Knight Sabers, wondering where she could find people who would willingly be mapped in order to control the boomer mechs.





Chapter 1:

Sylia was staring blindly at the seat in front of her, trying to work out a problem in her head when there was a tap on her shoulder. She turned her cool eyes on the unflappable face of a stewardess boomer. Disgusted with the mass production of them she waved it away and turned to regard the world outside. When will it ever end..?

Boomers were created to make people's lives easier, especially after the earthquake. Artificial life forms born from the melding of biotechnology and mechtronics; early units were originally designed to be used in outer space, but the adaptability as a weapon and menial labor proved too tempting for the Genom Corporation. They commissioned Dr. Stingray for the original design of his boomer space workers, but boomers would eventually become the driving force in the restoration of Tokyo.

There were three great disasters in Japan's history that virtually decimated the city and ultimately showed how great the spirit of its people was; for from its ashes they arose like a phoenix and in a way, proclaiming to the world that no matter what was thrown at them, they would succeed. How despite the devastation they would get back up and start all over again.

The first disaster was the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923.. the next was the carpet bombing of Tokyo at the end of WWII, as with the first, Tokyo was reduced to nothing more than a smoldering pile of rubble. Yet Tokyo rebuilt itself and began to flourish, becoming a major metropolitan area.

Corporations, businesses and people flooded the city and a major population boom started with the onset of new jobs. The city was flourishing. Its most notable corporation was Genom. It was slowly but steadily getting a broad clientele base and would burst onto the world market with a revolutionary technology to change the lives of people all over the globe. Unfortunately for Tokyo, it would suffer another great blow, the third disaster to devastate the city. The Second Great Kanto Earthquake of 2027 virtually bisected the city in two, water flooding in and killing hundreds of thousands of people. The buildings, having not been retrofitted, crumbled like rice paper in the wind. As the death toll rose, the world watched on in horror as one of the leading world's markets crumbled, due to something none of them could have expected. Something they never could have planned for despite their technology and genius; 'mother natures' wrath.

As with any design, there are flaws. As soon as the smoke cleared over Tokyo, plans were put together by the Genom Corporation to restore Tokyo and make it an even grander metropolis than it had been before. Various types of boomer S-10 workers were produced to handle the clearing away of debris and garbage, but every now and again a problem would occur within the boomers cybertronic network. When such a problem occurred, a boomer would essentially override its original programming and go rogue. With the earlier models, it was a program that was fixed once the AI chip had been pulled and been replaced with a simple binary code to ensure that the worker would do exactly as its program dictated. Unfortunately, older boomers were salvaged for parts and the AI units of their cybertronic network would be placed into the newer models, making it easier for them to regress and go rogue.

Rogue boomers were a threat to all around them. It scoured their original programming and made them do what they were programmed for in excess and making them go insane from the feedback loop they experienced. Sometimes their madness would cost human life, which Genom would cover up. Unfortunately for the boomer industry, Professor Stingray died in the Second Kanto Earthquake, taking his improvements for the boomer models to his grave. There was speculation that boomers would be a new breed of intelligence, a new culture to rival that of mankind. But instead, the boomer race had been regulated to that of servant and humans as their masters.

Boomers going rogue was a truly rare occasion, but still, the police force in Tokyo could not handle them since they were biomechanoids. Boomers had a durable exoskeleton over fiber optics, working much like muscle, bone and skin, reinforced with malleable metal plating over the fiber optics. Because of all the steel involved with the boomers and their excessive strength, regular weapons did not have the power to reach the boomers core and destroy it. The only way to really get rid of a boomer was to terminate its core, so the standard issued weapons of the police force made their presence moot when trying to control a rogue boomer.

An ironic twist of fate was that even though the earthquake decimated the city, the earthquake didn't even crack the foundations of its most prominent building; Genom headquarters. A skyscraper like none other in the city, always dominating the skyline and never a building taller than it; perhaps it was a testament to the power that Genom had achieved over the years that it would escape unscathed from Mother Nature, that it was above those laws and always would be.

Sylia sighed deeply, running a hand through her shoulder length silver hair. It was hard being the daughter of the man who created boomers. There was so much that the public truly didn't know about boomers and it made her angry that some of the things inherent in boomer programming were detrimental to human life. She couldn't understand Genom's thinking behind this, nor did she want to. All she wanted was revenge. Revenge for everything she'd lost and had to give up.

She'd become too complacent with her last team, trusting in their skills and thinking it was enough, but in the end it truly proved to not matter at all. She had let her guard down and it had cost lives, it was a mistake that she would never make again. So for the second time in her life she put her emotions into a box with all her memories and stored it in a place that couldn't be touched.

She shifted a bit in the seat, her back itching from the tattoo she had gotten to cover the scars from her ordeal with the military boomer. A wry smile flitted across her lips at the design she had chosen. While she had laid flat on her stomach, the needle pressing into her skin, she had thought of many things; of the teachers that had wanted to help her learn, or who had been seduced by her charm.. her body.. and most importantly her family name. Her face had twisted in disgust at how her mind was covering up all the "necessary" evils she had to committed in order to get to where she was, just like the needlework on her back covered her scars.

Shaking out of her reverie, she looked back at the boomer making its way down the isle and pitied it for a moment. She angrily turned away because of her momentary lapse and looked at her watch, cursing herself for taking a commercial flight and having to endure its presence. You wanted them to be treated as humans.. well guess what father.. they're nothing more than slaves to us. Sylia thought as she gazed once again at the vastness of the clouds below the plane.



~~



Sylia's silver hair bobbed a bit as she went around her shop helping customers. She was taking a break from her research and felt it was time that she visit her store again; the Silky Doll. It was a women's apparel and lingerie store, catering to every woman's needs, but at a very steep price. The frown that had become her perpetual friend left her face for a bit as she observed a young blonde looking through the silk section; a faint blush upon her cheeks as she perused the aisle.

She didn't look like the normal customer, her grey baggie pants and belly tee made her seem even younger than she probably really was. She was vaguely familiar and as Sylia looked longer it clicked in her mind. Sadness flitted across her eyes for a moment, only to be replaced by her emotionless facade. Amber's roommate.. Amber hadn't talked about the young woman much, but when she did, Sylia could tell that despite her complaining she cared a lot for the girl. And I can see why she cared after meeting her; they were so different but seemed to be able to compliment one another despite their age difference.

Sylia sauntered over, her form fitting skirt clinging to her in all the right places as her pale blue silk shirt rustled slightly. Placing her hands lightly on the girls shoulder she leaned forward and whispered in her ear, "Can I help you with anything?"

Nene whirled around and stared at the woman before her, she would have gaped openly if not for the fact that she had thrown some black briefs onto the woman's chest. She blushed mightily and wished that the earth might swallow her up right then. She watched in horror as the woman's body started shaking, thinking that maybe she'd hurt her, but she couldn't see how since the undies were only silk. Yeah Nane, only about eighty bucks worth of silk!

Sylia couldn't help herself, the mirth just bubbled up in her throat; just the fact that she was looking down at black silk undies on her breasts seemed entirely too funny to her. She couldn't help it when she burst out laughing, leaning heavily against the bin behind her and plucked the 'offending' garment off her chest, looking at it with glee. She spied Nene's face and laughed even harder. Oh my, if she could just see how red she is right now with her mouth hanging open!

"I-I think I'll be leaving now." Nene stuttered and tried to get past Sylia, who stopped her by placing her hand on her arm.

"Now, now, you can't leave without taking your lingerie with you." A grin graced her lips, looking almost painful in the way it pulled at her skin, but Nene couldn't help but feel that a smile suited the woman more than a face devoid of one.

"Uh, I can't afford it." Nene whispered shyly. Sylia placed her hand under Nene's chin and made her look into her eyes. There was a flash of something over those haunted indigo eyes and then it was gone, making Nene wonder if it had even been there to begin with.

"Consider it a thank you, I have needed a good laugh and just didn't have it in me till just now." Sylia stood back and surveyed Nene with a critical eye, then walked through the isles picking up one item or another then finally going to the cash register and wrapping everything up and putting them in a Silky Doll bag.

"I can't take that, it's too much!" Nene said quickly as she stared at the bag that held some of the most beautiful articles of clothing she'd ever seen. Sylia came around the counter and placed the bag in Nene's hand, realizing that the girl didn't recognize her at all. Oh little one, it's not enough for taking your friend away from you. Sylia thought guiltily, before smiling at the young woman.

"Please, I do want you to have it. Thank you again." Nene smiled a little crookedly and swaggered out of the store, causing Sylia to bark out in laughter. Cute kid..

~~

Nene stretched her arms and gave out a big yawn, then stared down at the screen in front of her. Gosh this sucks. I get the graveyard shift and am stuck here with nothing to do.. what the?! Normally she wouldn't have thought anything of it, but there was something odd about the program she was in, a little glitch that kept popping up that shouldn't have been there. A feral grin crossed her face.. Ohh a hacker! Nene sat forward in her computer chair at AD Police HQ grabbing her disks and inserting them into her computer; her fingers flew across the keyboard at lightning speed as she tailed the hacker.

They're good..

"God dammit!" Nene yelled as she was booted from her own system. Now they had made her mad. This was the first time someone had been able to detect her and she was pissed that they had been able to do that as well as kick her off the AD Police mainframe. Grabbing a pink disk, Nene jammed it home and got back on, chasing down her culprit through silicon chips, root systems, back doors and security locks. The harder she tried to get to them the more things she had to deal with.

Oh I got you now sucker! She thought and grinned, knowing she had them cornered, her watchdogs surrounding them. Then the most peculiar thing happened, a message screen popped up in front of her.

SilverAngel: you've got talent, but you really should play with people at your own level..

ADPolice2040: how bout you quit messing with my system and we'll call it even, you can't go anywhere and there's nothing you can do..

In the outside world, two opponents were grinning, one because she had a brilliant idea and the other because she believed she had her foe completely cornered..

SilverAngel: if you could keep me here, I would have believed you, but I know you can't..

ADPolice2040: don't get too confident, I'm the best there is!

SilverAngel: too bad you just met your match!

Nene frowned but then screamed in rage as the HQ mainframe crashed completely. Lights whisked out across the terminals that were all around her, leaving her only with the pale lights from monitors. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, what do I tell the sarge about THIS?!

A printer near her turned on and came to life, a single piece of paper was printed out and she ran over to it, snatching it up to scan the contents.



If you want to learn from the best, meet me at Genom's back door; if you can hold your own I might have a position for you. Don't disappoint me.

Silver Angel..



Nene didn't realize it at the time but she was being recruited, to be trained and molded just as 'Silver Angel' wanted her to be. It would open up doors that she never knew existed and she would come to hate Genom as much as her teacher, finding out just how corrupt Genom was. She didn't know it yet but she was about to begin a journey into a complex new world that would change her life forever.

Across town, a woman prepared for bed, slipping out of her clothes then approaching a tiny shrine to her mistake. Two helmets; one blue and one green, one scared and the other blood splattered. A picture sat between them, of two comrades, two sisters who had had the misfortune of meeting her. A single tear snaked out, splashing down upon the glass case above the charred remains of one. Her fingers stroked the glass above the contours of the other helmet, memorizing the blood stains. For the second time that day her façade broke, her eyes clamped shut as she whispered repeatedly in a broken voice.. "I'm sorry!"

Continued in Part 1.