-------
*** PRISS ****
-------

Welcome to chapter four of my little weird fiction. Take it as an introduction
to the next main part of the story.

P.S. Feedback is always welcome... contact me at anterion@gmx.net

------
Chapter Four

+> 'Rock me' <-


If there was one thing a town like Osaka One had no shortage of, it was bars.
Dirty, smokey but cheap bars. Most customers of those places were homeless bums
who had begged or found a little money and decided to trade the harsh reality
for a few hours of merciful drunken slumber. So the barkeeper was quite
surprised when a young attractive woman had entered his bar. Although she had
looked somewhat miserable with her wet hair, the dirty face and the partial
burned motorcycle suit she was a hardly what he would call a regular guest. The
brown haired girl had sat down at the far corner and ordered one glass of his
strongest brew after another. Right now she gulped down the remains of the ninth
glass and was already giving him a sign to refill. The small and overweight man
sighed and walked over to her. He was about to tell her that she had enough when
he caught a glimpse of her eyes. They looked shiny and clear without any trace
or drunkenness.

"Well Lady, you sure can take a good drink, but can you pay for it?"

Wordless she opened the zipper of her suit a little bit an reached inside while
the barkeeper tried to peek inside her clothes. When her hand came out again she
held something that immediately turned his attention away from the cleavage she
had revealed. It was a Cred-Chip, something he rarely saw. Most of his customers
paid in cash or stolen goods. One man had even offered him a blow job as
payment. But Cred-Chips meant larger amounts of money. He took it from her and
ran it through his dusty reading unit. He nearly chocked when the display showed
an estimated creditability of several thousand credits. He charged her drinks,
double even, and gave it back along with another refill. While she quickly
quaffed it he quietly walked over to another of his customers.

'The tenth glass so far and I don't feel the slightest effect. Ha, if someone
had told me a week ago that I would become super strong and couldn't get drunk I
would have either laughed or thought that it would be cool.'

For the thousandth time she examined her hand. Only four hours ago she had
carried Marrows dead body to the graveyard and had forced the grave digger to
bury him instantly. Since then she had walked through the streets, soaked from
the rain. She had been glad that it had rained, this way she didn't know herself
if the water on her face was rain or tears. And now she sat here, drinking
strong stuff like water, with still the feeling of huge strength in her body. A
few unlucky guys had tried to rape her on the way here. She assumed them all
dead by now. Not many people could survive been lifted by the throat and thrown
to stories into the air or been slammed against a wall hard enough to crack it.
She thought that this would have calming effect on her, but she had felt
nothing, not the slightest hint of satisfaction.

'It was way too easy.', she thought. 'I could have killed them with my pinky. I
wasn't even in any danger so it was nothing really accomplished. So what is all
this strength good for, if my enemies are either so weak I could have beaten
them even without it or they're so strong that I can't do anything to them
without help.

"DAMN!" she kicked lightly against the counter but her foot still made a deep
dent. She looked around for the barkeeper and found him talking to a man that
made Marrow look like midget.

'Boomer?', she thought. But the man wasn't wearing any glasses so she would have
seen red glowing eyes if he had been.

The barkeeper whispered something into the man's ear. She couldn't understand
what he said but the way this man-mountain looked at her made clear that they
had agreed about a financial transaction. A transaction that involved Priss'
money. The huge man nodded and stood up, a movement that caused more muscle to
move than three normal men possessed. As he walked over to her he became
slightly confused. Normally his victims looked intimidated or even frightened
when he approached them, but that chick was too damn relaxed. She didn't even
blink when he bowed over her.

"Listen girly! The boss here says you carry more money around than is healthy
for you. So I'd suggest you just hand over the chip and leave. The alternative
isn't nearly as nice."

Instead of doing anything he told her she just smiled at him.

"Dude, you just made the worst mistake of your life. My friends kind of turned
their back on me, another friend was just murdered right before my eyes, a few
weaklings tried to put the moves on me, I tried to get drunk and failed and now
I'm looking for somebody to beat up. And YOU are more than qualified." With
these words her hand grabbed his collar and pulled him down until their faces
were on the same level. "It's just not your lucky day."

The brute wasn't anything if not fast. His huge fist slammed into Priss stomach.
A smile cross his face as he saw woman double over. Now he would take her money
and perhaps he would... His short minded plans were disturbed by Priss as she
began to giggle. She straightened her upper body and looked at him, still
smirking.

"I hope that wasn't your best punch. That would be really disappointing. But
perhaps you prefer using your HEAD".

With these words she slammed her forehead against his with such force that he
stumbled a few steps back holding his nose. It had been quite some time since
someone had hit him that hard. Let alone with a headbut. He quickly shook his
head to clear it and was surprised to see the girl standing right in front of
him still smiling. Slowly she ran two fingers down his broad chest.

"Nice to see you still standing. Looks like you can take a little bit more than
those losers." Her smile turned into an evil grin. "Good!"

In the meanwhile her hand had grabbed his belt and the brute suddenly felt his
feet leaving floor. With his huge hands he grabbed her slender arm and pulled
but he felt no give whatsoever. Around the two the other guests and the
barkeeper got restless as they saw the woman holding a man of three times her
weight at arms length of the floor. The whispered word 'Boomer' could be heard.

"Say Chuck, you like flying?", she asked before with a flung of her arm she
tossed him across the room. People escaped from his landing spot as he hit some
chairs hard and grunted. But as dumb as he was he wasn't a pushover and soon he
was on his feet again. Priss was walking up to him when he suddenly turned
around, a gun in his hand. Only a split second later the gun fired and Priss
felt a sharp pain in her left leg. It wasn't very deep but still hurt like hell.
But as a fighting member of the Knight Sabers she had felt worse. Her right hand
flashed out and ripped the gun out of the brute's hand.

"That was your second mistake today, buster!" she growled through clenched
teeth. The anger and the shock of being shot pushed large amounts of Adrenalin
into her system, amplifying her strength even further. She released the ammo
clip from the gun and then began to slowly crush it in her hand. The syntho
metal was stronger than any normal cast metal but it proofed to be too weak for
the young woman's grip and the gun was soon reduced to a useless, bizarre formed
lump of distorted metal. It landed on the flower just before Priss pulled the
man to his feet by his collar again and brought his face close to hers. His eyes
were now wide in terror and a silent whimmer could be heard.

"Now don't look at me that way, buddy. You were asking for this."

---

Outside Motoko Kusanagi and Batou sat in an old car and watched the bar
entrance. They had considered to even enter it but decided against it. The young
woman they had put under surveillance by their own accord had went into the bar
some time ago now.

"Don't you think we should have helped the poor fellas back in that ally,
Lieutenant?"

"They were already dead, Batou, and besides I personally think they deserved it."

"Maybe, but our job to protect the law."

"And sometimes we break it to do so. Remember the last drug gang we busted? We
knew that they had uncovered our undercover agent and yet we sent him back
without telling him. There isn't such thing as innocence for people like us. And
besides, did you want to confront the girl after you saw what she was capable
of?"

The two fell silent again. A few seconds later the door of the bar flew open,
literally. It was ripped from its hinges as something that appeared to be a
truly large man flew through it and halfway across the street before it the
ground really hard. The man's body was in bad shape as it could be. He face a
bloody pulp and his partly ripped clothes showed bad bruises. A split second
later the brown haired girl emerged from out the doorway and leaped towards him.

"Down, Batou. She might recognize you", Kusanagi pushed her partner down in his
seat.

In front of her the girl pulled the bully back to his feet yet again. He seemed
barely conscious. Kusanagi could see that the girls left leg was soaked with
blood.

'He must have shot her. No wonder she's so pissed.' She could see how the girl
whispered something into his ear, raised him even higher into the air with just
one hand while slowly drawing back her other fist for another devastating punch.
It never came. The brute had suddenly gone limb in her grasp, finally
unconscious from the beating he had taken. Disgusted the girl dropped him to the
flower and turned to walk away.

"Batou, stay here for a while. I'll contact you." Kusanagi got out of the car
and began to follow her. To her surprise she walked quite fast without a sign of
pain. One moment, she saw her reaching down to her leg and the throwing
something away. When Kusanagi got to the point she found the object. She picked
it up, making sure the girl didn't turn around, and examined it. To her it
looked like a small calibre partly deformed bullet. It was still covered with
some drops of blood.

'Seems like it didn't go very deep. Still it's amazing that she hardly seems to
feel the pain.' She resumed to shadow her. To a trained woman like her it was an
easy task because the surrounding gave her a lot of opportunities to hide when
necessary. After an almost one hour walk the young woman entered something that
could hardly be called an apartment building. Kusanagi opened a mental comlink
to her partner. 'Batou, I've found the place where she lives. Track my signal
and join me.'

'Ok, Lieutenant. I'll be there in a few minutes.', Batou answered the request.
As usual it had sounded more like an order than anything else. Sometimes he
wondered if Kusanagi had not only her body replaced by something artificial. He
didn't know if she had always been so cold and analytical.