Prologue: Founding of the Layer

8 year old Eugenie padded the aisles of Tomoeda Medical Center's Level 4 Ward B softly, eyes darting from door to door in search of the one that held resident consultant and her father Dr Thomas Kluize. The man had sent for her, saying that he had something to show her.

"Quite the nerve!" Eugenie thought in indignation. "First you missed my birthday party when you promised to come, now you drag me all the way out here just to show me something?"

The girl was trying to get herself worked up to give the good doctor the cold shoulder that she had kept up ever since that party a fortnight ago. However, many good things happened in school and she was in a particularly good mood, plus the secretive short message mailed to her cellphone had genuinely aroused her curiosity. But she was determined to keep up the act and refocused herself on the search.

She did not know the meaning of the words but she could manage, by dictation, the spelling of "Magnetic Resonance Imaging"; the room which the kind lady at the counter said the girl could find her father. The receptionist had also mentioned that the door leading to the studio would also bear a squarish sign board with the silouettes of a knife and a screwdriver that declared "No metal beyond this point". The young Kluize side-stepped a trolley being rolled out of a Class A ward and weaved through a pair of chatting attendents before arriving at the said door. Eugenie took a deep breath, put on her fiercest pout, and rapped on the door until she got a reply.

"Dr Kluize is busy for crying out loud!" said as a nurse as swung the door ajar in agitation, expecting to see another intern looking for his/her mentor. Upon finding none, she looked down. Eugenie waved back at her rather indignantly, a little vericose vein popping out from the side of her head.

"Oh sorry! Haha..." The lady in white turned back. "Dr. Kluize? Your daughter's here."

Eugenie heard a barely audible "Okay I'll get it" and saw the nurse disappear back into the studio. The little girl glimpsed through the space to see on the monitor placed at the back of the room a boy being moved about on a large machine. He was lay motionless and awake, but there was something about his blank upward stare into oblivion made her heart go out to him. Then her father's square frame blocked all view once he filled the space vacated by his assistant. As expected, his obisidian black hair was in as much a mess as his crumpled lab coat and baby-blue shirt and his eyes were as blood-shot as ever. He squatted down to the girl's eye level and greeted cheerfully, "Hi honey. How's school today?"

Eugenie was not eager to engage in pointless small talk and, placing her hands on her waist, said in a rather angry tone, "This better be good. It's a long detour from school you know, Dad."

Tom laughed a little. His little angel was turning out to be just like her mom. Which also meant that he knew exactly how to defuse the situation. "You got me there Miss. Here you go."

The doctor handed over the egg-shaped container that he had been holding behind his back, noted Eugenie lighting up briefly before the girl remembered that she should be sulking. She eagerly flipped the egg around a few times, her finger tracing the embossed lettering that proclaimed it was an "Angel Egg". Her jaw hung open unconciously as her birthday wish miraculously came true. And the father couldn't help but flash a victory grin, which Tom quickly made scarce when Eugenie looked up.

"You... knew?" The girl tried to maintain her tone but, to her dismay and his triumph, failed miserably.

"Anna told me that you were rattling on and on about the game-play and specs of Angelic Layer and what your angel would be like." On top of quite a tongue-lashing for never being around to notice, the man thought as he sweat-dropped inwardly.

Eugenie took another deep breath and tried again, sounding happier instead. "How did you get it?"

"That's a secret. They're going to do an official launch tomorrow and I want you to have the first one," winked the smiling man. "Happy birthday, honey."

Eugenie bit her lip as she examined the amnion-suspended doll, letting the words sink in a little more as she found herself feeling sadder for once. An autographed poster of the girl's favorite mecha pilot had come in his stead back then. On a normal day it would have been greeted with cheer but that evening it did nothing to make her feel any less disappointed; for she hardly ever saw the man around the house, sometimes for whole weeks at a time as he'd leave before she got up and only returned long after her mother had put her to bed. But she also understood her father's work, and that his patients needed him more than she did, so, reluctantly, she gave Kluize a one-armed hug, the other clutching her unborn angel tightly.

"Thanks Dad..."

Dr Kluize nodded silently and spoke once they broke apart. "Tell you what. Since you came on time today and I've got no appointments for tomorrow, I'll push back any new orders and take you to the Piffle Princess opening launch party. How about that?"

All of Eugenie's heavy mood suddenly vaporized. "Really?"

Thomas smiled in reply. "It's the least I can do for missing your birthday, sugar."

The little girl stuck out her pinkie. "Promise?"

The doctor curled his narled finger around Eugenie's and shook it. "Promise."

"Cross my heart and hope to die. Stick a needle in my eye."

Dr Kluize got up and watched his daughter skip down the corridor for a while more. He went back into the scanning room only after she had disappeared into the main lobby.

"How's the scanning coming along?"

The nurse named Shizumi who had been assisting him replied without looking up from her terminal. "We've almost got everything now. A few minutes more and Ichiro-san should have what he called for."

The doctor nodded in reply and noted Shizumi shifting her gaze to the limp shadow of a boy lying on a thin mattress being passed back and forth through the doughnut-shaped MRI scanner in the next room. Both studios were separated by only some keyboards, a couple of screens on a long workstation and a glass wall. Kluize sighed inwardly. The calmness displayed by the boy at the moment hid the fact that he has full-blown multiple sclerosis (MS); just a couple of hours ago the doctor had just barely managed to stave off a massive seizure. Even then, the kid had already ceded control over speech, motor and bowel systems to the neural disease in an unprecedented rapid collapse that took every trick in the book to halt its progress. But the neurosurgeon gotta hand it to the kid; most MS sufferers at this stage of disease would have been in some form of clinical depression but everyday Thomas would come to work, greet his regular patient and get a fiery reply in the kid's red pupil gaze. The boy never gave up and the doctor could see that for as long as he had a breath of life in him the kid was not going down without a fight. And there was the other patient under his charge: One Suzuhara Shuuko who had come to the facility three years back. Her case was not too bad, just some intermittent loss of control over her legs. Her eagerness towards the whole procedure and the kid's amazing will to survive was just what the doctor needed to keep working at a cure.

He was not alone in his fight. He had a magnificent team: Hibiya Chitose who specialises in mechanical engineering, Mihara Ichiro with a masters in Bioengineering, architect Hououji Fuu who handled the robotics, his beautiful wife Anna and his own angels Edmond, Eugenie and baby Edouard who always stood by him, intern Masaharu Ogata and his magnificent coffee-making skills, just to name a few. With their research, they had intended to create a way for the brain to move and control limps and tissues that have their neural connections severed, be it disease or trauma. That was how the experimental droids dubbed "Angels" were born. But like the doctor always said, "When you think you've got everything covered, the brain will think of something else." There was always something to be learnt every day, and Thomas was confident each day would bring them closer to a cure. Until the hospital they used to work for decided to pull the plug citing budget and financial problems, that is.

Kluize closed his eyes and let his mind travel back to that night of agony. He tried his best to fight for the project but in the course of that he pit himself against another senior doctor also trying to get funds for his own research. It irked him that a rookie fresh out of his degree in neurosurgery had received more attention than he did and was backstabbing and seizing every chance to discredit Kluize's group. . Kluize pushed himself and everyone to the limit to race against time to find a breakthrough, but the Board of Directors ran out of patience first. The senior doctor had won the war. Thomas remembered how his blood boiled when the old geezer gloated as he left the boardroom and broke the news to his disheartened force. Dr Kluize resigned from the hospital that very night and the research team packed up their gear. As he made one last look at the hospital which saw the start of his career, Tom met Shuuko in the hallway. He knew not how to break the news. But the lady knew, and led him to the kid's room. There, to the doctor's amazement, he heard the boy breath, "Gam-bat-te..."

The doctor felt his blood rush once again. Nothing seem impossible to Tom when the kid gave his blessing. Kluize remembered how the energy came back to him as he practically sprang back to the research lab and vowed to everyone that he, by the pride of the Kluizes, was never going to give up. The coming days were a blur of activity. Even Shuuko chipped in as Kidou Tenshi Gotei or Mobile Angel Team, as the band of fighters had come to christen themselves, made frantic calls to every and any medical facility in the region as well as banks for credit to run their research. In the end, in one of the many gatherings of friends, family and alumni Fuu organized, Chiharu, Ichiro's cousin, came up with the brightest idea: To market the prototype Angels themselves as a new kind of toy. It was radical and Kluize felt that it would not take off as the market was already saturated. But it was the entire team against his one opinion so he let them go ahead. He even went so far as to get his wife's approval to use a portion of their own savings as part of the capital needed to set up the company. Most of his team became involved with the running of the new firm. Kluize, however, was no businessman and opted to remain behind to run the treatment center.

Mobile Angel Team had a lot of beginner's luck. Thomas moved their research and treatment headquaters to Tomoeda Medical Center with the help and recommendations of an anonymous good samaritan he only knew as Mr Reed. As for the new firm, it started as a small cottage production operating out of Chitose's basement, but the Angels sold out on the first day and the rest as they say was history. Now with a full factory running and their first outlet about to open, Kluize could only be proud of his team and how far they have gone. As for that old doc and the dingy old hospital, he last heard that the geezer had been convicted for malpractice and the whole joint had long imploded from debt.

"Will he ever be okay?" Shizumi spoke up after a while interrupting the surgeon's thoughts.

Kluize nodded firmly, his resolve renewed by his memories. "All of us are still working on it. But I give you my word, I'll have him up and about in no time. Shuuko-san as well. Meanwhile..."

Thomas "Captain" Kluize turned to face the CRT monitor to his left and watched its unending dance of rapidly-transitioned MRI scans. "...Let's see where this data would lead us..."

Little did he know that Mobile Angel Team, officially known as Kidou Tenshi Engeriku Reiya (Angelic Layer) Incorporated,was to create history and set the trend for years to come, in more ways than one...

------

Author's Note

It's everyone's favourite Cleric! How! Haha...

This fic has been in planning for a while but it took a backseat given all the research time that I dumped into my Enchanted Runes series for CCS. But I decided to take a break when things started to log jam a little. I then got onto Angelic Layer as there was evidence for it to be the next part of the great CLAMP universe I'm hoping to build.

It all started with a question to why Mihara Ichiro was dealing with multiple sclerosis when he seemed to only have an engineering degree? With that in mind I started a thought experiment and soon the other unsung pioneer members of KTAL fell into place. As you can see from the make up you can expect CLAMP-style crossing in the coming chapters! I'm using the pairings and most events that occur in the anime mostly, but where i see fit I'll try to fit in things that are unique to the manga.

The title seems kinda strange, but I assure you the first chapter will give a sufficient explanation. In the meantime, guess! Please read and review this and the coming chapters. Also, the post for beta is also open so if you want to help out, please do! The next chapter will begin 8 years after the above mentioned events, and 4 years after the end of the series, when Team Misaki would be 16 and Hatoko would be 10. Just the right ages for some fun:) See you next Fight!

Angels, FALL IN!