FAILED PROJECT FRIDAY: 13 pitches for DIRTY PAIR short stories (pt. 1 of 4)! (Patreon)

As I flailed about desperately for a post this morning, I dug up an old Word doc from the early 2000s which rattled off 13 different plots for Dirty Pair stories, back when I had access to the DP English-language license and was trying to get something new off the ground with Dark Horse. After a grueling and unpleasant experience grinding out the artwork for the final published DP miniseries, Run from the Future, I no longer had any interest in drawing the Lovely Angels' adventures, but was very much interested in writing more such stories. Needless to say, this effort came to naught for a number of different reasons I don't have the time to detail this morning.

Note that I have a sneaking suspicion that I already posted this content years 'n' years ago on this here Patreon, but didn't have the energy to go back through the site's sprawling archives and find out for sure. Hope these story concepts are indeed "new to you," kind Patrons!

Let's get started:

THIRTEEN SINGLE-ISSUE DIRTY PAIR STORIES

Yes, folks, the following are thirteen different “one-shot” tales of the Dirty Pair, thirteen being an unlucky number and therefore appropriate when dealing with our ill-starred protagonists. It’s quite a mixed bag o’ narratives, ranging from straightforward and entirely linear shoot-’em-up (or beat-’em-up) adventures to more absurdist and weirdly structured fare. Most of the stories are relatively light and whimsical, while some are admittedly rather on the “harsh” side. A little something for everyone, I hope.

Here, in no particular order, are synopses for the thirteen stories. Needless to say, these are all provisional “working” titles, as some of them sound somewhat goofy…

“REVERSAL OF MISFORTUNE” (later renamed DIRTY PAIR: QUICK AND DIRTY")

[Note: This plot was, in fact, adapted into an unpublished 48-page story in proto-Empowered "tight layout form" and given the title Dirty Pair: Quick and Dirty by me; this was a peculiar and unsuccessful attempt by me to get Dark Horse interested in doing more DP stuff written by me, but presumably drawn by other artists. The complete DP: Q&D story was serialized here years ago under a hashtag of that same name, which you can click on below and peruse at your leisure.]

In a grim ’n’ gritty city on some barely-terraformed planet, the Dirty Pair have been assigned to capture the wily and elusive head of some vast and well-financed criminal operation (hereafter referred to as “Vast Conspiracy,” or “VC” for short). So far, though, things haven’t been working out very well; after a long day of failed contacts and little progress, Kei and Yuri have returned to their hotel room in a foul mood. The VC’s minions, in the meantime, have extensively “bugged” the hotel room with ultra-high-tech surveillance equipment (“video fleas” and “audio mites” and so on), and are monitoring the hotel from a nearby “hovervan” of some sort.

So, when the story opens, the VC surveillance team is remotely observing Kei and Yuri fuming in their hotel room. Suddenly, to the observers’ amusement, the situation starts getting a wee bit strange: the Lovely Angels’ dispute regarding exactly who is at fault for their mission’s failure abruptly turns violent! They start slapping each other around in a weirdly exploitative catfight, with plenty of wrestling and tearing of clothes and so on, leading to an over-the-top spanking incident (well, maybe not). The men monitoring the scene from the surveillance van, needless to say, are lapping this stuff up, downloading recordings to their vidfiles, looking at slo-mo replays, etc. One observer, however, equipped with libido-suppression software to enable “purer” observation, begins to voice doubts about the enfolding melodrama they’re watching…

BUT IT’S TOO LATE! As it turns out, the Dirty Pair used even higher-tech countersurveillance microgear to seize control of the VC’s “bugs”, backtracking the gadgets’ signals while transmitting a false (and highly distracting) monitor feed to the drooling surveillance team. Now, even as their faked images catfight on the teams’ screens, Kei and Yuri burst into the van and (nonlethally) make short work of the poor lads. Yay! Now, they have a good link to the Vast Conspiracy, right?

BUT WAIT! As it turns out, the surveillance van was a trap to lure the Angels into a deadly ambush! They step out of the van, only to confront a looming force of dozens of very heavily armed goons, glaring at them from the video lenses of powered armor. “You’re outta luck this time, ya damn lesbos,” snarls the squad leader.

“LESBOS?” cry Kei and Yuri in unison. “Why, that’s ridiculous! We never… uh…” Then, as if seeing each other in THAT light for the very first time, they suddenly sweep into a ludicrous bit of spontaneous infatuation (“Oh, Kei, I never KNEW…”), whirling into each others’ arms and so on. This, of course, is yet another exploitative attempt to distract and confuse the bad guys, which doesn’t work quite so well this time. The goons merely snort derisively, and open fire on the impromptu couple.

BUT WAIT! As it turns out, the Dirty Pair have hacked into the squad’s cyber-gear, inserting false images to their helmets’ video feeds. Now, the Angels disable the poor lads’ exoskeletal power armor electronically, perhaps forcing them to beat each other up or something. In the midst of the mayhem, Kei queries Yuri (via neurolink) if she “isn’t just a little bit attracted to me, in that way?”

“Give me a break,” Yuri transmits back, annoyed. “You’re not even vaguely bisexual, Kei! You’re just grenade-fishing for compliments, like the affirmation junkie you are!” Anyway, now they’ve clearly got the Vast Conspiracy on the run, don’t they?

BUT WAIT! Cut to the remote, deeply hidden, well-nigh-impregnable secret headquarters of the Vast Conspiracy, buried deep within the bowels of a crowded space habitat orbiting the planet. There, the VC’s repulsive, posthuman cyborg of a Great Leader is monitoring the goings-on far below via a neural interface “direct line” to a rooftop surveillance drone. With a smile of satisfaction, the Big Boss Critter triggers a low-yield nuclear weapon built into the drone; as he watches from recon satellite feeds, the hapless Dirty Pair, his witless minions, and most of the city below are spectacularly vaporized. “This is a bit far to go just to kill a few 3WA agents, but what the heck?” he rationalizes. “Why be in a Vast Conspiracy if you can’t act a bit flamboyantly?”

BUT WAIT! As it turns out, The Dirty Pair have used countersurveillance microgear to seize control of the Great Leader’s surveillance drone and (more importantly) its cybernetic “direct line” to his jacked-in brain. Now, after feeding him the earlier false imagery of nuclear destruction, Kei and Yuri have neuroelectronically projected themselves up said direct line and have seized control of the Great Leader. He’s under arrest, cyberspace-style, and is being forced to surrender himself, break up his criminal empire, and so on. Mission accomplished! Yay!

BUT WAIT! As it turns out, the highly-paranoid Great Leader of the Vast Conspiracy secreted numerous other nuclear weapons aboard his orbiting lair, autonomously wired to explode in the event of anything untoward happening to him. As the Dirty Pair look on, stricken, from the planet below, the night sky lights up with the thermonuclear incineration of the Great Leader, the doomed space habitat, and the innocent thousands aboard it… Oops.

“ONCE MORE, WITH FEELING!”

(Nothing like a Kentucky Fried Movie reference to bring in today’s readers, lemme tell you.) Now, this story’s definitely on the harsher side, I’m afraid…

The narrative opens during what seems to be the climax of a longer DP plotline: amidst the collapsing, fantastically high-tech ruins of an explosively disintegrating space station, a grim tableau unfolds. Yuri lies sprawled, bloody and lifeless, while a battered and grim-looking Kei confronts a formidable-looking opponent. Said foe is a rather short but fierce-looking lout of a bad guy, his impressive, bloated musculature well-displayed by a skintight jumpsuit-like costume. He’s triggered some kinda “null-field” gadget, which has disabled all of Kei’s electronics, from her handguns and grenades to her cybernetic reflex-boosting and pain-blocking implants. “Now,” the clearly stronger thug crows, “it’s all gonna be hand-to-hand, little girl!”

With that, a climactic fight scene (with no lead-in, admittedly) ensues, as Kei and the Thuggish Lout commence beating on each other. The emphasis here is on, er, “real” martial arts, involving complicated moves, combination strikes, savage infighting, tricky grappling and the like, as well as a fair bit of Jackie Chan-style “use of environment” stuff. Little or no dialogue, maybe a few shouted kiais and cries of pain. Pretty brutal material, especially since Kei is obviously outmuscled, and possibly outclassed, here… Plenty of interesting storytelling approaches could be used for this battle, from glowing color streaks and motion blurs to unusual pacing and portrayal of “subjective perception” effects like tunnel vision and tachypsychia (altered perception of time).

Now, here’s where the narrative gets a wee bit unusual… During the ongoing battle, the story occasionally flashes back to relevant martial arts-related incidents from Kei’s life that connect to that particular moment in the fight scene. Unfolding chronologically, the one-page flashback anecdotes include: as a child, Kei fighting with her obnoxious older brothers (“You can’t beat me, sis, you’re just a little girl!”); sparring between adolescent Kei and Yuri, showing the limitations of the former’s “hard” martial arts approach; the first time, during 3WA training, that Kei’s nose was broken, as an unsympathetic teacher lectures her about pain control; an incident contrasting computer-generated fight simulations with real-world beat-downs, and so on. In other words, an attempt to introduce rudimentary “character moments” into an issue-long fight scene. In particular, we try to play up the pathos of Yuri’s apparent demise… Perhaps we show an anecdote wherein Yuri, virtually sparring with the slightly inferior Kei, refuses to apply lethal “finishing moves” to her defeated friend, despite an instructor’s furious insistence to “FINISH her, damn it!”

In any event, after a long and bruising battle (chock full o’ moments designed to make the reader say “Ouch!”), Kei manages to defeat the Thuggish Lout. Maybe she prevails in an Inspiring Moment, or more likely she uses a Dirty Trick. The vanquished Lout sprawls limply to the deck, and his jumpsuit suddenly “deflates” to the shape of a clearly female body. His bruised and ugly face splits apart, revealing (surprise, surprise) Yuri’s own countenance! No, she wasn’t dead. Yes, she and Kei were actually battling in a holographically spruced-up arena of some sort… Though, it becomes clear, the fighting (and its consequences) was real-world, not simulated, sparring. It’s Miller time, or the 22nd-century equivalent, as our bruised but happy heroines stagger out of the arena…

“GUNFONDLERS ANONYMOUS”

Yet another story that starts as the action is already well underway (or, in media res, if you prefer)… This time, the Dirty Pair have stumbled onto a dicey scenario indeed. In an asteroid-belt locality fraught with military tensions between neighboring space colonies, a political VIP from one side has seemingly gone insane! No! He’s broken into a huge military arsenal (during a political inspection tour of some kind), and has unleashed all kinds of “smart” (self-aiming) weaponry and mech “wardrones” as he seeks to gain control (cybernetically?) of the arsenal’s top-secret weapons of mass destruction and attack the enemy colony with ‘em…

While military and political crisis discombobulates the panic-stricken habitat’s social order, Kei and Yuri blaze into action… but with a big-time dilemma. If they don’t stop the VIP, he will trigger a catastrophic thermonuclear (or antimatter, or whatever) exchange between the colonies; however, due to rampant paranoia and political instability, the same thing may well happen if they actually kill the VIP! Later in the story, Yuri manages to tag the VIP with a remote-controlled “surgical micromissile,” and discovers that the VIP is suffering from… a brain tumor! (Gasp!) But this particular tumor is no medical accident: it’s a parasitic, self-aware tailored cancer, hooked into cyberspace and quite aware of the Dirty Pair’s dilemma. Thus, Yuri is forced to battle the tumor inside the VIP’s body, operating the surgical micromissile via virtual reality, as time runs out and catastrophe looms…

Meanwhile, though, Kei and Yuri become ridiculously outgunned as more and more computer-controlled ordnance is deployed against them. Many incidents of high-tech gun wackiness ensue! Opponents snipe at each other from five miles apart with hypervelocity “railgun” sniping rifles! Thousands of “smart bullets” home in on the DP, even as the ladies frantically deploy high-tech ECM (electronic countermeasures)! Special energy weapons mess with human neurochemistry (my personal favorite: the LUV RIFLE ™)! Multiplexed gunships shoot at their targets through buildings, using shared sensory data to hit out-of-sight targets! And it gets worse than that! By the end, our beleaguered heroines are pinned down by overwhelming odds, about to get “mollywired” to tiny, wet pieces even as Yuri remotely battles the VIP’s sentient tumor… What will happen? Do this project, and you’ll find out!

(Note: looking over this synopsis, I have to say that this story may need two issues, not just one… Oh, well. They’d be two low-panel-count issues, though.)

Anyhoo, that's three Dirty Pair story concepts down, and 10 more left to go! I'll straggle out the rest of these puppies over next month (assuming they weren't already posted), okay? 

NEXT TIME ON THIS HERE PATREON: No idea, TBH, but something should be coming up in the next M/W/F slot. Let's find out together, shall we? 

UPDATE: Ehh, looks like I still need to get some mandatory Life Drawing and Distressed Damsels content out before the month's end, along with the Exclusive Monthly Bonus Post for the $10 & $20 tiers. Should be a busy g-d week, folks!