Street Samurai.

--
He turned around to reach the cover of the blast shields, and noticed that she had been waiting for him. She'd thought him too lucky, too quick.


 The sky was pierced with rain, and the streets were awakened by the lingering scent of ozone.


The vastness of space - flashes of motion sprung before his eyes. Beneath his feet, a field of cloud-tops stretched across the skyscape like vacant fields tinged pink and gold. He felt like skydiving right to the front lines, where the action was. It was a fleeting thought, so perfect for an instant, like waves riding sandscapes on faraway beaches.


Great sloshing arms reaching out from the great emerald deep, and each head of seafoam bubbled and gestured atop the water like stray radio-waves. Deadened overcast ripped at thoughts, a comforting thunder wrapped in bulging gray castles in the sky. It was in a safe place, never to be lost or damaged again, never to be trodden on or incinerated again. The simple seal was enough to obliterate the stone creaks and steel dams rooted like menacing teeth in calcified skulls. Some kind of joker-alien from outer-space. Where were the scepters, and the spheres? The room was empty, just as it had been left before, and the dust covering the floor was ankle-length.


'We have no business here,' he said, trying to avert indifference. 'But it will be done.'


 It was waned away, sight after sight, never quite as barren as before.The liberation had shifted in the face of daring, zoned in and zoned out.


 Her expression was mute, and she eyed him from behind a quicksilver visor.


She would have fractured his ions and spat them back all over the map like a goddamn atom smasher, right then and there.


A billion screens of static from dead televisions.
--