The name Bubblegum Crisis and characters within and copyright of Artmic & Youmex. A short happy story! ******************************************************************************************** Knight of Despair Blink! Light... Blink! Dark... Blink! Light... The slow repeating neon light of the "Silky Dolls" advertisement board threw the room into a stark relief of light and darkness, as the woman sat alone staring out into nothing. The empty silence of the room was a stark reminder of the category of failures in her life that had ended with tonight. This room, so full of noise and excited anticipation only a few hours before, now only echoed with the woman's shallow breath, and the faint dripping of blood that ran down the deep gash in her right arm. Drip. Pause... Drip. Pause... For a moment, the woman glanced down at the steadily growing red pool on the floor. Her arm was now numb and cold; she could no longer feel any pain from it at all. "Shock and blood loss," she coldly noted. Blink! Light... She dismissed the wound from her mind. She no longer cared, all those who had ever meant anything to her were dead. She had killed them, her carelessness had killed them, and now she sat alone; sat alone, in a dark, empty, cold room that symbolized everything. Blink! The artificial light hit upon a small, protective helmet. The type that was used for riding small, low powered motorbikes. A helmet, that had once belonged to a bubbly, innocent young redhead. A helmet that had been carefully placed where the owner had expected to retrieve it later that night. She had been expecting to go to a show with her best friend. A show, the woman noted, that had started well over several hours ago. A show to which the redhead would now never be going. The woman closed her eyes in pain as the dying scream of the redhead once more replayed itself through her mind. She could still see the shock and disbelief that had flashed through those once bright green eyes before the bullets tore her apart. Blink! The helmet vanished into the darkness of the room as the woman silently wept. "Nene-chan..." she cried. "Forgive me..." Blink! Beyond the helmet, lay a small coffee table on which rested a number of keys. One of those keys belonged to a small newish car parked downstairs in the Silky Dolls garage. The dark haired owner of that car had only bought it a month or so ago. She had been very proud of the fact that it had not yet broken down once. Something that was completely different from the older car that she had finally been forced to replace. It had been the dark haired dancer who had first realized that something was wrong. The dancer, who had tried to scream out a warning to the others before the SVN battle boomer had so causally torn her apart. The same dancer who had cautioned the woman only a few hours before that this situation seemed too good to believe. That the offer from her contact might be a trap. She, however, had ignored that heart felt warning. She knew her contact. She knew she could trust him. Why after so long would he betray her? She had smiled at the dancer's warning and assured the worried girl that everything was fine. Assured her that finally tonight, they would see an end to it. She had never been wrong before, why should this be any different... The screamed warning, and the blood curdling terror that had so briefly followed had shown her now wrong she could be. Her mistake had cost Linna everything. Blink! Darkness.. "Linna-chan," the woman whispered into the darkness. "I should have listened..." Blink! The woman's eyes looked for one final item. She could not help herself. It filled her morbid sense of right, that she carry out this self-torture before the end. Carry it out as a reminder of what her failure had bought to the others she had loved like a family for so many years. Finally, she spotted it. The oddly colored wig that turned the deep, moody young woman into the star that was almost her alter-ego. The woman had always admired the fighter that the singer had turned out to be. The violent, unstable person that everyone always associated with the singer was only a mask. It covered a deep, loving and caring personality that would do anything to protect those select few who had touched the singer's heart. That statement had never been proven truer than by the singer's final act tonight. Screaming with sorrow and loss as her two "sisters" had been brutally killed before her eyes, the singer had pushed the wounded woman out of the way and with a scream of "RUN!" she had given her life to save her only remaining friend. The woman could only watch in utter disbelief as Priss had finished her life with an act of love that summed up everything that the singer was. Priss's suicidal attack had destroyed the mad SVN boomer and herself in one last explosion. Blink! "Priss..." "Nene..." "Linna..." "FORGIVE ME!!" Sylia screamed out the words, giving voice to the dark blackness that was eating at her soul. Her family was gone, dead, because of her... and now... Now it was time for her to pay... Blink! The woman stood up and walked over to a small drawer. She paused for a moment as if to gain some internal strength from some inner resource, and slowly she opened it. For a moment she looked down at the small silver object that lay within. A shudder of guilt passed through her, and she reached down and picked the small object up. Blink! The woman turned back from the drawer and walked slowly over to the window to look one last time over the dark city that lay beyond. "I tried to help you," she whispered to all those sleeping souls. "I tried to save you, as I tried to save them. I failed both of you... Forgive me..." Blink! The woman took a few shuddering breaths and slowly raised the gun. Blink! She closed her eyes and as the tears flowed down her smudged white cheeks, she whispered one last time into the darkness. Blink! "Forgive me..." Bang!! ****************************************************************************************** -- The end of "Knight of Despair" --