This merry tale first appeared in Issue #1 of Animism, my fanzine (which won best fanzine at Decontanimate in Birmingham UK last year, and best editorial of 1994 in Anime UK). Issue #1 is now out of print, so I thought I'd share the tale with you chaps & chappesses on the net. Aren't I just yummy? Anyway, here it is.... - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - DIRTY CATS NEWS NETWORK BULLETIN - 032.2141 Dominion Police confirmed today that the arch-criminal Buaku has finally been apprehended. He has been transported directly to Phobos Prison to await trial. While the majority of the Buaku gang were killed or arrested, the notorious Puma twins evaded capture. WWWA BRIEFING - OPERATIVES CODENAMED "LOVELY ANGELS". As you will be aware, Buaku has been transported to the secure facility on Phobos. His trial has been brought forward as far as regulations allow, so he'll only be there a week. The prison authorities have requested additional support, and the Central Computer has assigned the two of you to this mission. Don't screw up. MISSION REPORT - KEI - 033.2141, 18:15 hrs Ho-hum, another boring job. How come we haven't had anything interesting since that BIOHAZARD job? Yuri says I should put down all the flight times and arrivals and fuel consumption and probably how many pockets there are on my flight suit but I really can't be bothered. Okay, Central Computer, we got there and checked in. As the door hissed shut behind them, Kei threw herself face down on one of the beds. Yuri dumped their bags on the floor and glowered at her partner. "You could have been just a little nicer to him, Kei!" she grumbled. "I mean, he's head warden here, we've gotta work with him for the next week." Kei dug her head further into the pillow and groaned. "Uss wu wuuk th lng" she mumbled. "What?" said Yuri, sitting down on the other bed. "I said," Kei moaned as she rolled over, "that it's one week too long. There's nothing to DO here." "Oh, I don't know..." said Yuri softly, gazing into midair. Kei sat up sharply and stared at her for a second, then her face split into a grin. "You're upset that I was rude because you fancy him!" Yuri flushed. "Do not." "Do too!" "Do NOT!" Yuri's got a cru-ush, Yuri's got a cru-ush, Yuri's got -OW!" Five clicks south of the prison sat a small ATV, made almost invisible against the Phobos rocks by its dull gray paintwork. The extremely high-tech, expensive, and illegal jamming equipment probably helped. The occupant held a pair of binoculars to her eyes in one hand, a communicator in the other. "I'm lined up with the gates, so any time you're ready" she said into it. There was no crackle before the reply; the device had so many anti-interception circuits built into it that only governments or crooks could afford or get hold of them. "We'll go in at sunset, I think." "Why, will there be less defences you think?" "No, but it's more dramatic." The ATV's occupant lowered her binoculars, ears twitching. "Always the showwoman, Anna." "You bet, Uni." MISSION REPORT - KEI - 033.2141, 20:30 hrs Yuri is currently "liaising" with Edward, the head warden. I am standing at the window of our room and I am so bored. Bored, bored, bored. I'm so bored I'm beginning to see shapes in the sky and on the ground. That one looks like an ATV, an' that one looks like a spaceship on... an... attack... run... OH HELL With an ear-knackering roar, the sleek black spacecraft swooped low over the prison building, cannon blazing at the prison gates as it passed. The gates exploded in a shower off molten metal, seconds before the ATV bounced through the newly created gap. The spaceship snapped off four further shots at the prison buildings, hitting the 'Lovely Angel', the prison transport craft, the communications dome, and a particularly ugly gray building which the Governor would have been really happy about since he'd never liked it, but he was currently too busy hiding under his desk to appreciate the finer points of Annapuna's shooting. The ATV was not as hideously beweaponed as the spaceship, but more than made up for this in sheer volume of fire as Unipuma blasted away at everything that moved, everything that didn't, and anything that looked as if it might move but then didn't and so got shot to teach it not to try and be clever like that again. Anyone listening in on the catgirls communicators would have heard this: "Ha Ha Ha!" "Boom, bang, pow!" "Wheeeeeee!" Anyone listening to Kei as she stormed along the shaking corridor would probably have turned bright red and wandered off mumbling something along the lines of 'Young girls today, such language, I'm shocked.' Kei rounded a corner, and skidded to a halt with one final expletive as she almost cannoned into a group of prisoners. "Well, look what we got here," rasped the biggest man. The others loomed behind him, licking their lips and laughing dirtily. "I warn you, I'm a trained trouble consultant," snapped Kei. "Now get back in your cells before I have to hurt you." The big man laughed. "I ain't goin' back in there. Leastways, not unless you come in with me!" He lunged at Kei. Kei dusted her hands together. "Hmmph!" she snorted contemptuously. A frown crossed her brow. "I hope Yuri isn't in that kind of trouble...." Yuri was backed up in a corner. "Let me go, I'm a trouble consultant..." "Uh-uh. You're staying here." "...I'm fully trained in over twenty-six forms of combat..." "I don't care, you're not leaving." Yuri sighed. "Look, Edward, it's my job, I've got to go out there." "It's too dangerous, babe. You stay here while I check it out." Yuri paused, considering, then smiled. "Okay then. But let me give you a kiss for luck first." Edward grinned, stepping forward. "Well, okay!" He slid his arms round her waist, she raised her hands to hold his head, pressed firmly on a certain point on his neck, and then let go as he slumped unconscious to the floor. "Chauvanist pig," she muttered. "Don't know what I ever saw in him." Pausing only to land a swift kick between his legs, she raced from the room. A trail of unconscious guards marked the route the puma twins had taken to Buaku's cell. Now one girl kept watch while the other hooked a lockbusterTM up to the doorlock. The device began to whine as it sent exploratory signals into the lock. The lock countered by generating a series of confusing patterns. The lockbuster told the lock to open. The lock refused. The lockbuster explained to the lock what a series jolt of power would do to the lock's circuitry. The lock considered this. The lockbuster began to step up its power output. The door hissed open, rather more rapidly than such doors generally did. Unipuma peered in. "Buaku? You in there?" "'Course I'm in here, why, d'you expect me to've gone for a walk? A little sightseeing tour round the prison?" Buaku's squat form lumbered out of the cell to stand between the two girls. "So, you got me a gun?" "Right here, Buaku," Annapuna passed him a heavy pistol. Buaku turned it over in his hands, inspecting it, then swiftly bashed the two girls between the ears with it. "Owwwww!" "Owww, hey what'd you do that for?" Uni sniffed. "That's for taking so long to get me out. Three days in jail is far too long. C'mon, let's get out of here." Kei and Yuri met up outside the prison armoury. Luckily the convicts had already broken into it so they didn't have to waste any time dealing with guards, locks, authorisation, and the unnecessary and beaurocratic connections between them. "Did they leave anything?" Yuri called from her position outside the door. Kei's voice floated out." "I'll say! I found me an Ingrams K-57 phased plasma bazookannon, laser sighting, guaranteed waterproof, bombproof, shockproof..." "Idiotproof?" muttered Yuri to herself. "...capable of working in zero-gravity and/or in a vacuum!" finished Kei as she reappeared clutching a weapon that would not have looked out of place on the gun turret of an Imperial Intergalactic Starstuffer Heavy Cruiser. Yuri's eyes widened. "What'd you get for me?" she asked eagerly. "Oh, yeah, I got you this pistol thingy," said Kei, tossing Yuri a tiny pistol that would not have looked out of place in the Admiral of an Imperial Intergalactic Starstuffer Heavy Cruiser's wife's handbag. Yuri gazed down at the teeny-weeny handgun. "Oh, great." "C'mon Yuri, let's move it!" Kei called from halfway down the corridor. Yuri was still grumbling when they reached the exit to the prison courtyard. From the doorway they had a good view of the puma twins' black spaceship, sitting only a couple of hundred metres away on the wreckage of the prison gymnasium. Buaku and the twins were already halfway to the spaceship. The Lovely Angels stepped out into the courtyard. "Freeze!" yelled Kei, striking a dramatic pose. "We're the Lovely Angels, and you're under arrest!" The twins looked them up and down. Unipuma sniffed. "Is that the best the 3WA can do? I'm not impressed and that's a fact." Annapuna nodded. "Girls of our calibre deserve a better class of cop. These can't even shoot straight." "They're fat as well." "Yeah, 'specially the redhead." Kei sputtered. "Who's fat!" she screamed, raising the bazookannon. Suddenly... "Yuri, look out!" yelled Edward, bursting from the doorway and diving at Yuri to knock her to the ground. Yuri toppled, arms flailing into Kei, who stumbled as she fired, and hit the watchtower, which collapsed to the ground between the two groups in a cloud of dust and rubble. From the other side came the roar of engines as the black ship rose from the courtyard, hovered mockingly for a moment, then turned and sped off into the night. Kei and Yuri watched it go. "Awww, no!" "Not us again, why us?" MISSION REPORT - KEI - 033.2141, 21:12 hrs ...and so I think you'll agree from my report that me an' Yuri did everything we could to stop the breakout but we were just unlucky that things turned out like they did and IT WASN'T OUR FAULT! Stu H.