This story takes place in Spring 1987 (between the events of the movie and Rafterman's proposed script for the sequel, from which it takes a few plot cues). It's written from Reno Nevada's point of view much after the fact, which seemed the best way to avoid getting flamed by folks who own the book, and lets me pick up a few details from there more easily as well.

Characters and concepts related to Buckaroo Banzai belong to one or more of the following, as indicated: Movie/DVD -- Banc Generale, Nederlan and/or MGM; Television -- Polygram Entertainment and Fox Television are working on this; Print Media -- Simon and Schuster, via their Pocket Books division. In any event, the author has no intent to make any money hereby and is just having fun. Don't complain if details here don't coincide with the TV pilot/series; this was started before the pilot script.

Plot elements are copyright 1998-??? and characters are copyright 1990-infinity, respectively, by Replay, except T-Bear, who belongs to Lynx, himself, Trouble, and several cats at last check. ArcLight has permission to archive the text version of this story as part of the newsletter. Strike Team Renegade has permission to include an HTML version in their archives on a delayed basis. All others should e-mail me at [email protected] first. Comments and questions should be routed to the same address.

This version of the story has been HTML-enhanced. Additional windows will only open if you click on the links to read the footnotes. Pictures of characters beyond those from the movie will be added as they become available.

BTW, the title comes from a song of the same name by Rush, from their 1987 album, Hold Your Fire.

Lock and Key

It will doubtless be charged by our usual critics that the following material is little more than a sorry attempt to keep our names in the popular press. Were that the case, I fear I would have done better to emulate the trend at present ubiquitous to the film industry and placed photos of the actual devastation throughout; however, those of you in the St. Louis area no doubt recall the news reports of the day quite well enough without my feeble reminders. Likewise, there are those who will criticize Wayback soundly, when the facts of the matter so clearly indicate his lack of foreknowledge was no fault of his own. Indeed, it has only been recently that we learned of some of the occurrences herein, and if I have taken any liberties, it is to recreate certain conversations which no one now alive will testify in regard to. That conversations on the subjects occurred is beyond doubt, but the language representing them herein is my own interpretation of how they must have gone, based on the evidence of events themselves. I have, as usual, attempted to be as faithful as possible to events as they actually happened, and would particularly like to thank certain of our gypsy residents, without whose assistance this document would be a much poorer work.

Reno

***

Chapter One

No one who'd ever spent a full 24 hours at the Institute in the last few years would have been at all surprised to hear Perfect Tommy playing a Metallica tune; ever since Jet Lightfoot had first turned over her Stratocaster on permanent loan, he'd been expanding on his guitar skills to the point that he could have played lead in any band but the Cavaliers. That Buckaroo would admit to knowing the same song, however, might well have turned some heads. Not that he would have noticed under the circumstances; his full and not inconsiderable attention was entirely for his patient rather than his voice.

Another time and place, a different set of circumstances, and he would have been sitting watch on Replay in the Institute infirmary, using prerecorded music to keep her relatively quiet. It was a trick he'd learned in dealing with our non-human wounded, but one that seemed to work with almost any psychic so long as you didn't offend their ear in the process. In the aftermath of an attempt on all of our lives, he was doing the best anyone could have expected from anyone short of Jesus Christ Himself with what we had to work with. Given our present need for much tightened security, what we had wasn't a lot.

A bit of background may be helpful for our younger readers. Replay is hardly your average intern; although there are those who say no such thing exists, we do consider some talents or degrees of ability beyond normal expectations. As a rule, you don't come across even amateur parapsychologists every day, and when you do, they aren't usually anxious to tell you whether they're in that field for personal reasons or just out of curiosity. With this particular intern, the answer was decidedly both. By education and inclination an ethnomusicologist and anthropologist, she took up studying the occult at a very early age in an attempt to figure out her own peculiar talents, which she was evidently quite forthright with Buckaroo about on the occasion of their first encounter. While she'd been one of us for a considerable length of time at this point, she held Hanoi Xan personally responsible for the fact that she hadn't yet made Residency. To her credit, most of us agree with her reasoning, but I get ahead of myself. I should also note that she's fond of almost all genres of music, but some much more than others, and that this was the first time she'd been in a position to come along on tour with us.

Had things gone as planned, we would still have been staying in a downtown St. Louis hotel, with three shows behind us and a two-day seminar to do at SLU before moving on to Chicago. Instead, we'd been checked in for less than five hours when Replay, either clairvoyant or close enough to seem so for once, had ordered an emergency evacuation. Rawhide had taken her very seriously, to the point of seeing the entire building cleared except for a few of our demolitions-qualified personnel. It was her misfortune to locate the bomb first, and she hadn't been able to clear out in time. As a result of the blast itself, our rooms were in shambles and a fair amount of our equipment a total write-off, both of which proved to be the least of our worries.

To delay further incidents and to keep bystanders out of any potential crossfire, we'd been forced to relocate hastily. As a result, we were now holed up in a former Catholic girls school on the outskirts of the metropolitan area, with little more in its favor than it's low profile and the fact that the utilities were still turned on. The concerts we'd originally been scheduled to play had been postponed indefinitely, as much at the request of local authorities as by our own reluctance to appear publically without Buckaroo, who himself had strayed little more than a few dozen feet from his patient from the time we'd found her among the wreckage with hundreds of tiny needles protruding from her hands, arms, and face. Removing the shrapnel had been a considerably higher priority than figuring out immediately why it took that particular form. Only after we'd set up in the former school had anyone realized that we might be safe from further attack from the outside for awhile.

Sometimes it seems that we know considerably more about Xan than even Interpol does. For years, we'd been aware that he was given to using the nerve poison Talava, which I have described in some detail elsewhere. Not content with merely destroying our rooms and killing people, on this occasion Xan had devised something more dastardly -- a shaped charge meant to direct most of the blast against the building itself, but also to spray any survivors with thousands of projectiles coated in that poison. Thanks to the warning she'd given us, only Replay had been exposed, but that was bad enough.

According to Interpol records, no one has ever actually died of Talava poisoning. That sort of thing just doesn't happen. We have to concur that there are currently no deaths recorded as directly related, but disagree with that official estimation of the possibility. While it is true that in most people, Talava improves physical health but leaves only a kind of zombie, we have cause to believe that a certain Agency of the federal government conducted experiments during Vietnam which involved Talava combined with a number of other drugs. Our own early research into one such possible case, backed up by work at another lab in California, has proven sufficient cause to believe that Talava can be addictive under the proper conditions, and very possibly fatal if stopped cold turkey. Some of that research had proven vital to keeping Replay alive the first time she'd been exposed to the drug, and to clearing most of it from her system. Paranoid that she either was or would become one of Xan's puppets and therefore a danger to us because of it, she'd departed the Institute as soon as she was well enough to travel. We'd had word of extensive consultations with some of Jet's folk in the months since, although little seemed to have come of it apart from repeated assurances, and it had only been in the last six weeks that she'd become convinced we might be safe if she returned.

More concerned that we'd lose her this time than that she was suddenly more dangerous to know than before, Buckaroo had put himself directly in the path of any trouble she was still capable of. Wherefore he was sitting there in the chemistry lab turned makeshift isolation ward, singing for an audience of one as though nothing else mattered. He'd been in there for the last three days, apart from brief moments spent dealing with such logistics issues as even Rawhide couldn't cover for him on; if he'd slept at all, he'd done so close enough to Replay that he would have been one of the first things she noticed if she'd regained consciousness. Always he'd been in earshot; she was far too much like some of our gypsy residents in that regard, and we had more than adequate experience with the reactions of a panicky telekinetic to want her left alone for more than a few seconds at a stretch if she was wounded and out of it. That Buckaroo hadn't let any of us take some of the watch duty for him was more than sufficient indication of how worried he was. Likewise, the way he was careful not to push his voice; Replay was easily as much of an audiophile as any of her "cousins" in California, and as given to critique a poor performance from any resident rather harshly. Instead, he'd called on a few specific interns in to back him in rotation with those of us who are Cavaliers, so that she was never completely alone. So far as he was concerned, she was and had always been more dangerous to all concerned while sick or hurt if there wasn't someone at hand to at least warn her of incoming trouble, if only by getting in its way.

As a result, Perfect Tommy had a front row seat when she finally began to regain consciousness, and he was wise enough not to call attention to himself immediately for once. This was a slow and painful process, something she rarely had to deal with. Generally the times she'd had to fight sedatives in order to wake up, it was either slow or painful, not both; on this occasion, she was dealing with her own exhaustion rather than soporifics, which she didn't properly appreciate until much later. Buckaroo finished the last verse much aware that she was close to rejoining the world of the living, willing to give her all the time she needed so long as she either opened her eyes or fell asleep.

Ultimately, she chose the former. "How do you feel?" he asked, speaking in the quiet tones of a man who expects to be dealing with someone else's hangover. As soon as he said it, he began to worry again. Something wasn't right.

Only when she'd blinked a few times and focused properly did he begin to realize what it was. "Like I've been washed over a sharp reef a dozen times or so," she answered, but it was an answer without any real expectation he'd take her at more than face value. "How long was I out?" she asked in return, looking into his eyes for any reaction at all.

That was the last place Buckaroo would have expected her gaze to fall; it wasn't that Replay didn't look people in the eye, just that she didn't do it that directly or for that long. He had the distinct impression that she'd deliberately opted to tell him the truth where she might have lied. "Almost seventy hours," he said, choosing bluntness himself. "We're not sure if you tried to disarm or contain things."

She didn't know what he was talking about. Didn't remember it, if the look in her own eyes was any indicator. "Don't ask," she said, but it was a bluff, and he wouldn't have been surprised if she realized he knew that. "Any other wounded?" That came out a bit more tentative sounding than he would have expected if he hadn't been suspicious already.

"Just you," he assured her. "New Jersey and I pulled a couple hundred flechettes out of your hands and forearms before we lost count." The name meant nothing to her, which only confirmed his fears, but she wasn't obvious about letting on. He could probably count on at least some of her training being intact. She was sounding him out, looking for clues as much as he was if not more, following his lead to a degree. "You only chased one intern out, if you're wondering." She couldn't be, but it ought to let her know he was on her side.

She actually took a moment to look around and sample the air before she replied, and to her credit, she was truly a bit embarrassed when she caught the faint aroma of wet ashes where the sprinkler system had put out a trash fire she'd inadvertently started. "Sorry," she said, meaning it; "I didn't damage anything serious, did I?"

That was too much for Tommy, whose fingers trainwrecked on the Stratocaster's strings as he laughed. "Only his ego, Lady. The way he came out of here, you'd have thought his hair was on fire." Farther away than Buckaroo, he hadn't been at the right angle to have caught all the hints that things were still amiss.

She took the surprise much better than Buckaroo would have expected, for it was immediately apparent to him that she really hadn't noticed the blond in spite of the evidence of her ears. Her "Oops," was as unrepentant as he remembered her ever being, and as little thought out, but the sudden wariness in her eyes was quite another matter.

"I wouldn't worry about it," Buckaroo said, hoping to reassure her as much as in truth. Around the Institute, there are few egos of sufficient size that sudden deflation is much of a hazard, Perfect Tommy quite possibly excepted. "Wayback's been startled before."

"He wasn't expecting me to set things on fire?" Even Tommy could hear how tentative she sounded this time.

"He'd just told us you were headblind when you started in with the harmonics," said Buckaroo. She might not want to know, but she had to hear it eventually; if she was half as together mentally as she seemed, she'd be able to deal with hearing it now. "Then the monitor screen blew. The trash was just collateral damage."

"I'd expect all the local talent'd know better than I do where my head is," she admitted. "I guess we don't belong in the same room, huh?" Oddly enough, she seemed more relaxed. Later she'd admit that being told her psychic abilities were gone was comforting, as it was the nearest thing to proof she was among friends she could have asked for safely with another, unknown and evidently disturbing, psionic on the premises.

"I've got five hundred on you," said Tommy. "You fight dirty."

"So I've been told," she said, "but my reflexes are in the basement just now, and I'd rather sleep. Hell of a note, huh? Seve nty hours unconscious, and I'm tired; go fig."

"We expected that," Buckaroo told her. "Tommy, you'd better go tell the guys she's awake, but there probably won't be time for any visiting. Have Reno get back in touch with SLU and Contemporary and see what they come up with; have him take Wayback along to watch his back. Then see who you can line up to do overwatch here."

"You got it, Buckaroo. And I tell Wayback he's keeping one open for Xan, right?"

"Make sure they're in armor while you're at it."

"Right." Perfect Tommy got up and gave Buckaroo the Stratocaster. "You, I'll see later," he told Replay, ruffling her dark hair fondly before she could think to worry about whether it was an attack. "Be good."

"Too tired not to be," she admitted. There didn't really seem to be any reason to avoid the truth, after all. If they knew she shouldn't be headblind, these two rated at least a level 5 clearance, and her instincts said they were at least as much on the side of the angels as she was. That meant they were either allies or friends of the family at worst. Certainly they were no real threat, though she wouldn't put any of them past doing cosmetic-grade damage. And at the moment, she'd be much happier with the other psionic well out of range long enough for her to have a good idea how much of a threat Wayback might be. Right now, she was operating on a lot less information than she was comfortable with, and a frame of reference for most of it that could barely be said to exist. She wasn't about to be bad immediately, even if she'd really felt up to it.

Something about the blond's hand bothered her, though, and she reached for it intending to have a better look. Instead, she found herself pressing the back of his fingers lightly to her own lips as though complimenting him greatly. At that range, she felt more than she should have if Wayback was right about her psionics; the man had played his fingers bloody and was writing it off as cramping from a too-long session if she was any judge of character at all. Her own hand ached in sympathy for a moment, then her vision went psychedelic for a moment and when the colors settled back to normal, that phantom of his injuries was gone as well.

"That's the nicest thing anyone's said to me all week, " Tommy said, acknowledging the contact. He was probably at least as surprised by it as she was, but his ego wouldn't allow him to admit it.

"Don't get used to it," Buckaroo advised. "I haven't certified everything yet." Even with that caveat, Tommy departed with one of the biggest grins on his face that any of us had seen for some while.

"We need to talk," Buckaroo said, laying the Strat aside. Tommy was well out of earshot by now, which seemed important. "It's not uncommon to lose several hours immediately surrounding a traumatic injury, but I think you're missing more than that."

"Bring me up to speed first," Replay prompted. "I haven't got a lot to go on here."

"I was afraid of that. I didn't want to let Perfect Tommy in on it; Wayback's a pretty good telepath. You'd rather this stay lower profile than that, at least for now. As long as he thinks you're headblind, he'll try hard not to read you until we can tell if it's permanent, and he can't read me very well except at close range when he's the subject."

"Good. I got enough problems."

"Does 'Talava' mean anything to you?"

"I haaaaate detox," escaped before she'd intended to say anything. When she'd had another second or two to consider her words, though, she had more. "Yeah. I remember some kid name of Indigo; he'd been exposed incountry. Nasty stuff, almost got himself killed repeatedly right after the company stopped the experiment. Near as we can tell, that wasn't completely something he was trying to avoid at the time."

Buckaroo nodded. "You were dosed with the pure stuff several months back," he told her. "Last time you were here, more or less." He proceeded to explain the poison's usual effects and why she wasn't subject to them, and how Indigo had prevented the situation being fatal by taking things a couple steps further than mere detox. Told her as well how and why she'd fled, and the little we knew that had come of it. "Wayback's only been with us for about four months, and he's not too fond of who he thinks Indigo's boss is." Maybe our intern telepath wasn't inclined to try to eavesdrop on this conversation, but the oblique reference seemed safest, and he hoped it would tell her something he didn't dare say outright without panicking her. "As near as I can tell, he can't understand why she'd go to the effort of making Residency just to go back to her own people.

"Unless we've missed something, Xan didn't even know you were back when he set up this attack. I think he was trying to drop the roof on as many people as he could, and hit the rest of us with Talava. If he caused as much chaos as he possibly could, it would probably make it a lot easier to slip at least one agent in without us noticing. You told Rawhide something about being on the verge of half crazy that something was wrong and we needed to get out; he said evacuate. That was about it."

She considered all of that for a long moment. "Rawhide? Big guy, cowboy, quiet type. Grin that could blot out the moon when he bothers to use it. Pianist, maybe." Buckaroo nodded; given her present mind, that was much more than he'd expected to get from her. "Can't remember why, but there's a pencil sketch with that handle written on it on one of my walls around the ranch."

This was definitely getting stranger. He'd seen that sketch once, years ago, within hours of her drawing it. Rawhide had still officially been dead in those days. She'd seen him for the first time in the middle of the night, without lights in a place he shouldn't have been without her noticing earlier than that; the sketch was her first impression of him from that brief glimpse and better than a number of our photographs. It was common knowledge among the Residents exactly where that sketch was currently hanging, and how it had come to have anyone's name written on it. It was also common knowledge that it was the only sketch she'd done of any of us which she'd ever ended up keeping.

"He insisted you keep it," Buckaroo reminded her. "Said something at the time about some days remembering who he was that didn't make a lot of sense to me. You seemed to get it, though."

"It's a quote from Miami Vice. Gina asks Sonny if he ever forgets who he is when he's undercover so long at a stretch, and he answers her, 'Darlin', sometimes I remember.' -- too apt by half around some of us."

"But not right now."

"That's about the size of it. I have holes in my memory, not a wholesale gap. I could tell you anything you want to know about the ranch, and I've got a good clue you're at least a level 6 clearance, but I can't say much for certain about you."

"Try."

"The blond called you Buckaroo. You play guitar, too; people who don't just don't handle one the way you were holding that Strat. If you're being as straight with me as I think, you're at least a medic, and I'd guess maybe a surgeon from those fingers. You've been involved with intel to at least some degree for awhile now, enough to have at least one price on your head and a healthy respect for body armor. You've dealt with me personally being wounded before, or Tommy wouldn't've been in here playing; he's done it before or both of you would've noticed he was bleeding."

"How'd you do that?" So he hadn't been imagining things.

"Haven't got a clue, unless I only toggled something that was already in place. If it was me that did it."