[PSP] Guardian Sentai RoboMan #13

[utsukushuu.dreamer]

>From PSP:
http://www.night-jaeger.net

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GUARDIAN SENTAI ROBOMAN #13
"Girls' Day Out"
Component 05.1
March 15th, 2010
by Adrian J. Watts



New Orleans

Kageki lay flat on his stomach across the main counter of 'Hey,
Pizza!', staring at the two-inch tall robot which stood just a few
centimetres from his face. The robot, Cog, tried her best to ignore
him - but since he took up her entire field of vision, that was almost
impossible. It wasn't the first time she had found Kageki unable to
take his eyes off of her, either; the boy was obsessed.

She tried to make her way further down the counter, but Kageki
followed until she reached the very end and, with nowhere left to
turn, she decided to confront him.

"Kageki!" she shouted, but due to her size it came out as barely the
equivalent of a regular person's voice. "Can you please leave me
alone? Just for a little while?"

Kageki pouted until he felt a strong hand take him by his green collar
and pull him off the counter. His expression changed from one of
whining to one of surprise. "Trick-san!"

Trick Star stood over him wearing a black t-shirt, black pants, black
shoes and a white apron. He smiled and shook his head, then looked
sternly down at Kageki.

"Kageki, you work here now," Trick said. "I can't have you bothering
visitors to the store, even if they are tiny, intelligent,
technologically-advanced robots. Do you understand?"

Trick offered his hand to Kageki who took it and laughed as Trick
helped him to his feet. Kageki bowed to Cog and moved around the
counter into the kitchen to return to his real reason for being in the
store - to wash the dishes in preparation of the early morning
breakfast rush.

Two plastic doors led from the back of the kitchen area into a small,
crowded back room where Sei, Ikku and Kiko stood and listened to the
playful exchange going on outside.

"It was nice of Trick to let Kageki finally work here," Kiko said.

"I'm surprised the kid didn't have a heart attack!" Ikku laughed.

"I do not think Trick had much of a choice," Sei said. "Kageki knows
who and what we are. Trick has realised that we need to keep him close
to make sure he does not reveal our secret to anyone else."

Kiko bit her bottom lip.

"Trick's been so good to us," she said. "It's been two weeks since our
last fight and he's had no problem with letting us stay here, even
though he has had to hire Kageki and feed us."

Ikku frowned. "I wonder how long it will last."

"What do you mean?"

Ikku shrugged.

"If I had three people taking up room, eating my food and costing me
money, I wouldn't keep them around very long," he answered.

"Maybe we should try to help out?" Kiko rubbed her chin thoughtfully.
"But how? Kageki works pretty hard - I don't think Trick needs anyone
else around the store."

"Jobs?" Ikku asked.

Sei shook his head.

"No," he said. "I do not think we will be here very long. Doctor
Brachis will contact us, or the United States or Japanese governments
will make a decision regarding the Earth Defence/Leadership
Directorate and we will be called in. As Miss Sato said, it has been
two weeks since we last heard anything. They must be close to making a
decision."

Kiko looked at Sei.

"I'm not sure jobs are a bad idea," she said. "We need to repay Trick
somehow and I really need - " She stopped mid-sentence and threw her
hands over her mouth.

"What?" Ikku asked.

"Nothing!" she answered quickly. Her face turned bright red and she
turned away from the boys, took a deep breath and faced them again.

Ikku raised his eyebrows, scratched his head and turned to Sei for a
clue. He had no idea what Kiko was suddenly so embarrassed about. Sei
ignored Ikku and simply stared at Kiko for a few moments before
finally speaking.

"Miss Sato has realised that as a woman she will need things which
Trick is unlikely to have available."

"Sei!" Kiko cried.

Ikku scowled. "Like what?"

"Ikku!"

Kiko's face turned red again and she ran through the plastic doors,
allowing them to flap back and forth behind her. She almost bumped
into Kageki, who only barely managed to jump out of the way. Without a
word she scooped Cog up from the counter with her right hand and made
her way out of the store and down the street.

In the back room, Ikku smiled.

"Oh!"

Then he looked at Sei, and frowned.

"Ewww!"


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Elsewhere in New Orleans

Miko walked through the lavishly-furnished hallway of her house in New
Orleans with only one thing on her mind: she had to get rid of Jinsei.
For two weeks he had made himself at home in her lounge and she was
getting sick of it. The man himself was not the problem; she had
become used to, and even come close to enjoying his nearly naked,
physically perfect red-skinned form relaxing around the place.

What concerned her was his affinity for nature. Animals, most recently
insects, seemed especially attracted to him and while Miko had no
specific issue with them, she was a sorceress. Magic was her game, and
magic required concentration, concentration that was difficult to
maintain with tiny creatures flittering past her eyes every few
moments.

Ornate vases and busts rattled on tables as her pink-booted feet
stomped past them and her black cape fluttered behind her, striking
almost everything that was unaffected by the initial passing of her
body. It was not until she rounded a corner and one of her six-inch
'pixies' landed on her arm and began to flap its wings furiously that
she began to slow down.

"What happened to you, little one?" Miko asked.

She looked down into the pixie's eyes, which were identical to her
own; in fact, everything about the pixie was identical to Miko, except
for its size. Even its thoughts, feelings and memories were broadcast
on the same 'wavelength', created and maintained by identical
biological processes - and it was because of this that Miko found that
although her pixies did not speak, she could still communicate with
them, by focussing her senses on their mental processes and
interpreting them with her own brain.

The pixie on her arm was concerned about one thing in particular. It
was so frantic with worry that even if it could speak it would have
struggled to find the right words, and Miko found herself almost
overwhelmed by the complex images and emotions that flooded her mind;
they weren't just memories of the events that bothered the pixie -
they also included images of how the pixie wanted to respond, and
those were not pleasant.

"JINSEI!" Miko shouted.

The walls rattled and the paintings and tapestries which hung from
them shook. Some fell.

"JINSEI!" Miko called again.

There was no response, but instead of storming through the house
searching for him, Miko paused to allow the pixie on her arm to crouch
and lay its palms flat against her wrist. They both concentrated and
were surrounded by shimmering blue energy. Miko again attuned her mind
to that of the pixie and focussed on the location in which it had last
seen Jinsei. Slowly, their bodies faded away, only to reappear in the
low-roofed attic of the house.

Jinsei sat cross-legged in the centre of the attic with spiders and
flies darting quickly around him. Directly in front of him a single
pixie fought for its life; its wings were crumpled and pressed flat
against its back, and its only weapon was a broken fork. It swung the
fork out again and again at the attacking creatures, but even when it
hit them it did little damage - the tiny pixie was simply not strong
enough to hurt or scare her attackers away.

"JINSEI!" Miko shouted a third time.

"Wait..." Jinsei muttered. "Watch this. It's really cool."

"Jinsei, you have ten seconds to - "

"Shhhh!"

Without warning, one of Jinsei's spiders lunged forward. With one hair-
covered arm it struck the pixie's hand, causing it to drop its single
weapon. The spider almost seemed pleased with itself as it scurried
across the floor to where the pixie cowered and sunk its fangs into
its leg.

"JINSEI!"

Miko raised her right arm and prepared to strike Jinsei from behind,
but the red-skinned man leaned forward and placed one hand each on the
spider and the pixie. He closed his eyes and concentrated - sparkling
red energy gushed from his left hand and covered the pixie, while
green energy emerged from his right and surrounded the spider. In only
a few instants, the bodies of the pixie and the spider fused together
to leave a pixie with six hairy arms and long fangs sticking out of
its mouth.

As Miko and Jinsei watched, the pixie grew - one foot, three feet,
then up to six feet tall, easily equalling the height of those who
observed it - and started to thrash about violently. In its new state
it seemed to Miko to lose all self-control... and what was worse, she
could no longer align her brain patterns with those of the pixie and
sense what it was thinking.

It was a pixie no longer.

"You monster!" Miko snarled at Jinsei. "How dare you do that to one of
my girls?"

She tensed her right hand into a fist and blue energy surrounded her
arm. She pullled her fist back and lurched forward to punch Jinsei in
the side of the head - she had no idea what would happen with the
combination of her teleportation power and the sudden impact between
her hand and Jinsei's face. Part of her hoped to see the flesh
teleported off his skull, causing him unbelievable pain.

Jinsei, however, calmly leaned to the left; Miko stumbled and fell,
and her energy-charged fist instead struck the transformed pixie,
which faded away in a shower of blue mist.

"That's something I've been meaning to ask about," Jinsei said as the
blue energy faded from Miko's arm. "Where does your teleportation
power come from?"

"Get out!" Miko yelled.

"No," Jinsei replied, "and don't try to bully me, because I know it
takes time for you to recharge your powers. So why don't you just
answer my question?"

"No!" Miko snapped. She gestured with her left hand and two more
pixies flew up beside her. "I may not be able to send you away right
now, but they can."

Jinsei smiled.

"I will come back. Wherever you send me, I'll come back. If you just
answer my question, I promise to leave you alone."

Miko did not answer straight away. She thought about what Jinsei was
saying, and realised that all she knew about him was that he had the
power to force and direct the evolution of living creatures - how
could she know, if she was to transport him into space or the heart of
a volcano that he would not suddenly develop an ability to survive
there?

"Very well," she said finally. "My pixies produce raido shards."

"What are raido shards?"

Miko smirked. "I answered your question. Now go!"

Jinsei nodded.

"Fine," he said. "Could one of your pixies save me the trouble of
walking? Maybe send me somewhere warm and green? The Amazon, perhaps?"

Miko nodded at one of the pixies, which flew forward and rested on
Jinsei's bare shoulder. It placed its hand on his neck and focussed
all of its power into him. The pixie's body glowed blue briefly as it
transferred all of its raido energy into Jinsei's body and the man
began to disappear.

"Uh-uh!" Jinsei waved his index finger, as if he was warning a small
child away from something dangerous. "Not so fast!"

He reached up with a rapidly-fading hand and wrapped his fingers
around the pixie. Suddenly, the pixie began to disappear as well and,
a moment later, they had both completely vanished.

"Damn him!" Miko snapped. Still, at least he's gone. He will never
learn how to get the raido shards from that pixie - and if he does, he
will never be able to use them...


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Kiko finally stopped running and allowed herself to slump onto an
empty seat before she looked around and discovered where she was.
Somehow, she had made her way into a large, busy shopping centre
which, she realised, was the opposite of where she wanted to be - she
had wanted to be alone... or at least away from the boys.

She opened her right hand and looked down at Cog, who stared up into
Kiko's face but remained silent. Kiko waited for the tiny robot to
speak, but when she realised that was not going to happen, she
blushed.

"I'm sorry!" she said. "You must have been so frightened."

Cog shook her head.

"No!" she replied. "Doctor Nagura trusted you, so I know I can trust
you!"

Kiko smiled.

"I just had to get away from those boys! It's been two weeks! Two
weeks of staying in one smelly room with two smelly boys and using
Trick's smelly bathroom!"

Cog tilted her head to the side.

"What?" Kiko asked.

"Kageki smells... but that isn't why he annoys me!"

Kiko frowned, then began to laugh. Cog was a girl - the only girl
other than Sorceress Miko and her pixies who she had met since she
first arrived at Blizzard Base Zero a little more than two weeks
earlier - but she was a robot girl, who did not seem to understand
that it wasn't the actual scent of their male friends that was getting
to her.

Kiko looked up and saw, a few meters away, two people - a man and a
woman - staring at her and realised that to anyone who glanced her
way, it would look like she was talking to herself. She turned red,
again, and subconsciously looked down at her own body.

She was wearing a pair of loose black pants, white running shoes and a
thin yellow sweatshirt, which hardly portrayed the image she wanted to
show the world, but she did not have much choice - she needed to
conceal her robosuit, and it was not easy to do that in style,
especially when she had no money... and the bulky communicator
strapped to her left wrist did not help her look fashionable, either.

"Kiko? What's wrong?" Cog asked.

Kiko sighed.

"Cog... did you ever leave Blizzard Base Zero before you came to New
Orleans?"

Cog shook her head.

"Well," Kiko explained, "I never really got out much before I went to
work with Doctor Nagura. My whole life was spent at home studying,
then at school studying... I never really had the chance to socialise
very much."

Cog nodded.

"Now..." Kiko continued. "Now we're stuck with all these boys, and
you're the only girl I know, and the more time I'm stuck in the dirty
back room with those dirty boys and that dirty - "

"I get the idea!" Cog interrupted. "'Hey, Pizza!' is dirty!"

Kiko smiled.

"The more time I spend stuck there with them, the more I feel the need
to do girly things, things I never cared about before. Like shopping.
Anything that lets me be separate from Ikku and Sei!"

Cog frowned.

"Don't you like Ikku and Sei?" she asked.

"I do!" Kiko answered quickly. "Of course I do! But... they're boys,
and I'm a girl. I need to do some things differently... I don't mind
eating pizza and watching TV with Ikku, but I need my own stuff as
well... Do you understand?"

Cog nodded.

"Yes! And... I'm a girl, too! Doctor Nagura explained that to me!" Cog
said. "Is that why you brought me with you? So we can do girl things?"

Kiko looked up and saw the couple still staring at her.

"I didn't think about that at the time," she replied, "but maybe - "

"AHHHHHHH!"

Kiko looked up again and saw the couple running away. They had turned
pale, and the man did not stop screaming until he was completely out-
of-sight. Kiko looked in the opposite direction and saw what she
immediately recognised as one of Sorceress Miko's pixies... with a few
extra arms.

"Miko!" Kiko snapped. She carefully placed Cog down on the seat. "I
think I'd better deal with this, Cog!" She stuck her hands out to her
sides, then directly above her head. "Let's go, Robo!"

Yellow and blue energy crackled around Kiko's body as, for an instant,
she was seemingly transported to a world all her own. She felt the
circuitry embedded beneath her skin come to life as thick, jagged
metal came through the pores in her robosuit and fused together to
form silver boots, gloves, a chestplate and helmet - which was not
exactly the fashion statement Kiko was hoping to make.

"Wait!" Cog called as Kiko ran toward the monster. "Don't fight it
alone! Use your Alert Bracer!"

Kiko did not hear the tiny robot's voice, and a moment later she stood
only a few feet away from the pixie who, up close, she realised had
taken on spider-like characteristics.

"Electro Blaster!" Kiko said, and after a momentary blue flash the
yellow, handgun-sized weapon appeared in her right hand. She lifted it
in front of her face and aimed it at the approaching monster.
"Freeze!"

The monster did not reply, except to hiss at shoppers who quickly
moved out of its way.

I don't want to shoot this thing! Kiko thought. The Robo Rifle's stick
mode would have been a better option, but I couldn't -

She did not have time to finish her thought as one of the pixie's
additional limbs flashed forward and knocked her off her feet.
Sprawled on her back on the shopping centre's linoleum floor she tried
to raise the Electro Blaster again to take aim at the pixie, but it
was too fast; it scuttled erratically across the floor, prodding Kiko
with its extra arms, keeping her off-balance and unable to
concentrate.

BANG! BANG!

Kiko heard two gunshots ring out from somewhere behind her. The spider-
pixie paused, and pale red - almost pink - blood began to seep out
from two holes near the centre of its chest. It hissed angrily and
stared down at Kiko.

Kiko knew that it was her one chance to strike at her attacker, but
she could not take her mind off the source of the gunshots. Was it a
security guard? she wondered. Where are they now? Did Sei follow me?
Is Miko trying to stop her own creature? How did a pixie become -

BANG!

A third shot struck the pixie further down its torso. It looked up and
scanned the distance for any sign of its unseen attacker, then looked
at Kiko again... and slowly started to back away. It turned back and
forth suddenly and snarled at anyone who came too close. As Kiko
picked herself up, the spider-pixie lashed out with three arms and
smashed a large window, which it jumped through and fled across the
shopping centre car park.

Kiko relaxed and the metal components of her armour vanished, leaving
her in just her yellow-and-black robosuit. People stared, but she no
longer cared about what they thought when they saw her; her mind was
focussed on only two things: getting back to Cog and reporting what
had happened to Sei and Ikku, and wondering who had helped her and why
they had not exposed themselves.

She hurried over to the bench on which she had left Cog and realised
immediately that the tiny robot was no longer there. In her place was
a small slip of paper, folded in half, with her name written on one
side. Her full name: Sato Kiko.

Kiko,

I have the robot. Meet me by Lake Pontchartrain tonight to get it
back.

We need to talk.

- Sato S.

Kiko gasped and stepped backwards. The note dropped from her hand as
she covered her mouth and quickly scanned the crowd that had gathered
to stare at her for any sign of the person who had left it.

He can't be here! she thought, on the verge of panic. Not after all
these years! Not now!

Suddenly, panic turned to anger. He had taken Cog! He could have just
approached her and asked to speak. She would not have turned him away.
Not immediately. But threats and blackmail?

I'll meet you, onii-san - and once I've got Cog back, I'm going to
kick your -