Nirvana
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Nirvana
A Bubblegum Crisis 2040 vignette by regie27
Standard disclaimers apply
Beta Reader: Carrie Asagiri
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The primal roar of the mechanical beast echoed through
the silence of the still of the night, yet she felt she had been gearing all
her life for this very moment. Nothing she had experienced in her life up to
this instant could compare to this excitement, to this exhilaration.
She could still recall with clear mind the first
time she had donned her hardsuit. How the utter dread
that had grabbed the pit of her stomach had then given way to a sensation that
was equal parts enthusiasm, fear and pleasure. She had been almost scandalized
to realize just how well the hardsuit fitted her, covering
every inch of her body, molding and caressing her skin in a way so intimate it
was almost like a lover’s touch. She remembered pondering just what might had been
Sylia thinking when she designed her suit but
something at the back of her mind told her she would rather never find out what
had been behind Sylia's almost predatory glances.
The voomer moved surprisingly
quickly for a hulking heap of flesh and metal and she reminded herself to leap
before the beast's claw pinned her to the hard concrete. An opening, she just
required one chance and it would be all over. With the corner of her eye she
saw Nene firing at the voomer's
head, allowing her the chance to get into a strike position. Her mind flashed
another image, this time of a blue-clad knight in glimmering 21st Century
armor, delivering the fatal blow to the chest of a voomer.
A clenched fist penetrated deep until the whole arm was sunk almost to the
shoulder inside the beast’s innards until her hand found the beating heart of
the creature. Five fingers wound up around the beating core and in an instant
it was no more, the dark substance that stuck disgustingly to her hand the only
evidence of the deed.
"Priss". That was the name of the
avenger and executioner that roamed the streets of Tokyo in a search and destroy mission against
rogue voomers. It was the name of the person she had
come to idolize and the person she now wished to surpass. Priss
Asagiri was both her idol and her rival. Priss
created and embodied the standard she wished and fought to crush. Her admiring
glances might had been misinterpreted and misunderstood by many as attraction
towards the tough as nails Knight Saber, yet it was none of that sort. It was
something even more insidious and primal that pushed her to prove herself
against the dark-haired singer, to jump as high and to kick as hard as she did
and then some. It had been the same motivating strength that pushed her over
and over to the edge against her school rivals on the track no matter how sore
or out of breath she felt. "Citius, altius,
fortius." Faster,
higher, stronger. More than just an aspiration, these words were her mantra,
her life ethos. They embodied the same reason that had brought her from her
sleepy town to the city of Tokyo, just to be closer to her heroes and maybe,
just maybe, even aspire for the once in a lifetime chance to become one of
them, to become a Knight Saber.
A surge of adrenaline ran down her spine. The beast
was staring right at her covering her with its menacing shroud, but what the voomer didn't realize is that the one with the upper hand
was really the female warrior that dared face it. A sly grin curved on her lips
beneath the helmet and before the abomination could react and swat her away,
her clenched fist sunk deep into the creature’s thorax. A loud screech burst
from the beast as the Knight Saber’s hand clung to the core and held it tightly
until it beat no more.
Sweat drenched her forehead and slipped down her
eyebrows. A flash of light burst over her eyes and inside her conscience. As
the defeated voomer slumped down with a loud racket, Linna Yamazaki found herself reaching at the gates of the
much sought Nirvana. She understood then why she fought, why the others fought,
putting life and limb on the line, risking losing the gamble on a five-second
delay. It was because life would never taste as sweeter as it did when she
survived each battle still in one piece, when the trial by fire proved her
victorious. In her plainclothes she was just another anonymous face in the
crowd, but in her armor she was larger than life, a voluptuous heroine that
brought god’s judgment upon man’s arrogance personified by the voomers. As a Knight Saber she became a demigoddess and
each defeated prey spun her into a righteous rapture.
Her senses recovered from the overload of neural
electricity and adrenaline, the deity giving way to the human once again. With
a leap, she abandoned the latest makeshift battleground of a city that was
becoming a huge battlefield in of itself every day that went by. For her it was
time for retreat and to return to the daily grind and to a sense of normalcy
that bordered on boredom. But inside, she will be waiting, always waiting until
the shadows beckoned her as they revealed their true nature and the lethal masquerade
began all over again.
To taste life at the edge of death, such was her
destiny.
~Fin~
