"On the first day of the first month of some distant year, the whole sky froze golden. Some said it was the aftermath of the radium bomb, while others told of a final retribution, a terrible revenge of the gods." --Led Zepplin The day the war began, when the world changed forever, life proceeded as it normally did for the vast majority of the people then living on Earth. They went about their normal, mundane lives with as much or as little fuss as they cared to give them, never knowing that their lives were becoming subtly -stranger-. Even though the war had begun with the arrival of a man in black on the road to Vegas at dawn, the participants didn't have a hint of what was about to happen until the man in black's activities were picked up on CNN around midmorning... ---------------------------------------- Illuminati International Pictures presents a tale of the JIHAD UNIVERSE 3.0 The Return S. Malaclypse Breen Dan DeRosia Katrina A. "Kat" Templeton Patrick Stewart Aris Merquoni (c)2004 The Jihad to Destroy Barney ---------------------------------------- /fear & loathing in las vegas/ Las Vegas, Nevada 03/09/2004 11:00 AM Tilden Alexander Owsen strolled down the Strip, with a song in his heart and a sword on his belt. Combined with the black shirt, coat and jeans - he made a mental note to track down a kilt as soon as he could; jeans were serviceable, but they were too... confining for his taste - Owsen tended to draw some stares, but that was mostly from the tourists. The locals had gotten used to strangely-dressed people wandering down the Strip. The guy was probably just another costumed flunky for one of the big theme casinos. Owsen didn't mind the stares. In fact, he was enjoying the attention. After three years trapped in limbo and then another five preparing for his triumphant return, Owsen was extremely happy to be back on Earth (even if he hadn't arrived in the green hills of his homeland) and to have a job to do. It is nice, Owsen thought expansively, to be wanted. He smiled a friendly smile at a middle-aged couple that had stopped to gawk at him. The couple paled slightly and hurried back on their way. Owsen stopped smiling as if a switch had been thrown; -that- wasn't a polite reaction, oh no. Well, no matter. He had bigger fish to fry than to chase down a couple of tourists and... chastise them. Owsen shifted the weight on his belt around. The sword felt right, just as it always had, but he missed the familiar feel of his Alpha and Omega pistols. He didn't -need- the pistols, not anymore, but he -missed- them, and it never hurt to have a backup handy, right? Obviously the originals were long gone, so he'd need to get another pair of guns to replace them. But where? There were plenty of pawnshops around, of course - this was Vegas after all - but a pawnshop gun wasn't what Owsen was interested in. Most of them were too small, too low-powered. To replace the Alpha and Omega, he needed something big and state-of-the-art, something he couldn't find in a pawnshop... Owsen's eyes happened to light on a big banner out in front of the Sands hotel. The blue-white banner read "WELCOME TO THE 23RD ANNUAL VEGAS GUN EXPO" ...but maybe he could find it in there. Having come to the conclusion, he altered his course and set off in search of weapons. ~***~ The gun show was great, Dee thought. The year before she'd been busy doing a rush job for one of her motorcycle customers, but now... well. The people were great too, for the most part... the novelty of a little girl who knew the hardware as well as they did. Perhaps better in some cases, but because she had the cute thing down no one seemed to get too bent out of shape. Something about a 5'2 girl who looked like she was 15 cheerfully and kindly correcting people twice her age and three times her size about fine points of weapon design took the sting out of it. Especially since she was almost always right. "Well, it's true that a trigger like this won't usually last on a combat pistol," she was gleefully explaining to someone looking at one of the Athena Heavy Industries modified sidearms. "So we've switched over to some high performance alloys and very precise heat treating. In fact, most of the pistol uses non-standard alloys. There's hard-ceramic coatings on most of the wear surfaces too, so it can survive even having no lubrication." "Geez. It's heavier than your carry pistols though." "Yup. Combat pistols are supposed to be reliable over everything; they won't wear out under any reasonable amount of use. The carry pistols are a titanium alloy; they're lighter but you can eventually wear out the slide and frame. Still takes a while. Both are very accurate too, but you'd expect that." "How durable is the combat 1911?" "You effectively can't break it even with handloads unless you're being stupid. We tried. Chamber pressures started at 45 Super range and then went up... eventually we had to custom make steel cases to avoid bursting them. We got up to almost 50% higher than 45 Super before we ran out of room for powder, so then we put it in a durability test fixture. It was around 5,000 rounds before something broke... so that area got reinforced." "Damn... that's absurd." "Yeah. The combat pistols are as close to indestructible as we can manage without adding much mass." "I'm impressed... thanks!" The guy took a brochure and wandered off. Dee leaned back in her chair and brought up the CAD program on the computer in her artificial right arm. An image of Athena's latest project, a combat shotgun designed from scratch, superimposed itself on her visual field. She played around with a few minor design details before grumbling and shutting it down. "Hey Andrew," she said to Damo. "I'm going to go look for souvenirs. I'll send a message if I find anything cool." "All right, I should be able to handle things," he said sardonically. Well, okay, so most of the people had only been there for long because Dee tended to get excited and talk a lot. Dee got up and stretched, before all but running out of view, turning a corner before he could change his mind. --- "Excuse me, I'd like to buy some guns." "Sure," the dealer smiled toothily. "What were you looking for?" "Pistols, automatic, the largest caliber you've got." "Well, I've got a pair of custom Desert Eagles I was holding onto for a buyer who backed out. Nice guns, the Desert Eagles, biggest handguns in the world, you know." "Yes, I'm quite aware," said Owsen dryly. "Mind if I take a look at them?" "Knock yourself out, fella." The dealer reached under the table and brought out a case, opened it, then showed the contents to Owsen. Inside were two heavily-chromed large pistols. Owsen took one out of the case, checked the sightlines, and twirled it around his finger experimentally. "Not bad," he said. The dealer nodded. "Yeah, they're a real beauty, aren't they? Still functional too, even under all that chrome. The whole deal comes with a shoulder holster for the pair, too; real tooled leather. Very nice package." Owsen pondered, then shook his head and smiled. "I'll take them. Thank you." "My pleasure doing business with you!" The dealer got out the necessary paperwork. As Owsen mulled over which series of damned lies he should put down, the dealer eyed his customer. "Say," he began, "if you don't mind my asking, but you're not from around here, are you?" Owsen looked up. "No," he said pleasantly, "I'm in town on business on my way to everywhere else. Why do you ask?" "Well, it's..." the dealer looked uncomfortable. "It's just your accent. It sounds European-" the man's own accent made this sound like Yerpean "-and I was thinking, well, aren't you gonna have trouble with that when ya go home?" Owsen shrugged. "I wasn't expecting to worry about it." "Y'aint some kind of... well, bad guy, are you?" Owsen grinned happily, causing the dealer to flinch and involuntarily back off. "Oh my friend, I assure you," he said grandly, then leaned in to whisper dramatically, "I am the very -worst- of bad guys. I am The Villain, the Boogeyman, the King of the 21st Century.... the black sheep of the family." The dealer gaped as Owsen swept up his purchases and went off in search of ammunition. --- Things in the show ran the gamut from boring and cheap to fantastically cool or creative. Much like any convention, she supposed. One of the first really neat things she saw was a pump action grenade launcher, like an oversized shotgun. The action was stiff and clunky though, but in fairness it *was* a direct copy of an underdeveloped prototype the Navy played with back in the 60s. She took a picture of it with her arm computer to remind herself of it later. No external cameras; since the computer tapped into her nervous system in several places anyway, it just took the image from her right eye and shrunk the resolution. A crude programming hack, but it worked well enough. Heckler and Koch had a booth as well, and someone was nice enough to take a few pictures of her with various weaponry, including the brand new rifle they were developing for the Army. Her favorite though was one of the belt-fed machineguns, the HK21E. There was no way she could actually fire it from anything but a bipod or tripod, much less the hip, but a little girl with a big machinegun made for a fun photo according to a passerby. She went wandering a bit more and then caught something. "Oh my god," Dee exclaimed as she stopped in front of a booth. "You guys are making these again!" She was gaping at what looked like a slimmed down tommygun, but with an ammo drum on top. American 180, she knew it was called, a 22 caliber submachinegun. The man behind the booth, a balding middle-aged guy wearing a camouflage jacket, chuckled at her reaction. "You must be Dee Greist, reputation precedes you." She grinned. "Sorry, I've just wanted one of these for a loooong time. Full auto I can use without knocking me on my scrawny ass." "Well, do you have any real questions?" Dee was practically vibrating. "How much with the standard barrel?" The main laughed at the easiest sell he'd ever had. "Show special... and to you guys... thousand for the gun and a pair of the big 275 round drums. I know Athena's a class 3 dealer, so you just have to fill out the paperwork." "Deal. Do you take Visa?" The man nodded and passed over the various paperwork in exchange for her card. Dee started on it as quickly as she could write, and shortly afterwards were fed into a fax machine. She took her card and the receipts back and stuffed the paper into a coat pocket as she practically skipped away. "Hey Damo, I bought an American 180!" she mentally sent through her arm, as a text message to Damo's cell phone. --- A few rows over, Owsen found a stall specializing in bullets of all makes. "Excuse me," he said to the dealer, a tall, lanky man with the Confederate flag tattooed on his left arm, "but I'm looking for some shells suitable for a Desert Eagle." The ammo dealer scowled at Owsen. "We only sell to Americans, buddy." He grunted. Owsen blinked. This was a radical change of pace. "Excuse me?" "You heard me, we only sell to Americans. Now take your foreign commie ass away from my table and fuck off back to France." Owsen blinked again, then frowned. "You really shouldn't talk to me like that, friend." "Don't you 'friend' me, you foreign bastard! You bitch about America all day, then you wanna buy our stuff? I oughta pop you right in the mouth for even thinking about it!" By now this little drama had gathered a small crowd. Most of them were wondering what the guy with the case and - is that a sword?! - was going to do next. Owsen stood there for a minute, looking at the dealer. Then, carefully putting his shiny new guncase on the floor, he spread his arms and smiled. "Go ahead, pop me right in the mouth," he said. The dealer was taken a bit aback by the offer, but nationalism overcame natural caution and he lashed out, fist flying towards Owsen. Owsen ducked smoothly, grabbing the man's wrist and using the momentum to yank him clean over his table. Owsen spun around, grabbing the man's ankle as he flailed, then whipped him back into his own display, sending boxes of bullets flying everywhere. Owsen sighed happily. "That was fun," he said, looking at the aghast crowd. "Anybody else want to play?" Two security officers, attracted by the commotion, took this opportunity to plunge out of the crowd to arrest Owsen. One stood in front of him while the other grabbed Owsen's shoulder. That turned out to be something of a mistake. Owsen turned to face the man holding onto him, all the good cheer draining out of his face. "You dare?" he whispered. "You -dare- seize the Herald?" Without warning, Owsen drove a fist into the unlucky guard's face. "YOU DARE!?" screamed Owsen as the security guard fell backwards. The other guard reached for the billy club at his belt, but before he could unhook it Owsen lashed out and kicked the man square in the stomach, then grabbed him by the front of his uniform and threw him across the aisle into another display case. Owsen roared in fury, drew his sword, and began slashing at anything stupid enough or inanimate enough to not get out of his way. The crowd dispersed, running in a panic for the exits and inciting more chaos elsewhere. --- "We don't have much 22LR at home," Damocles sent back after a short delay. Dee nodded to herself and looked up to take note of what row she was in before turning towards where the ammo venders were clustered. She could probably get a deal on a couple cases of 22LR here, not that it wasn't cheap as is. She turned in the right row and blinked at the crowd clustered around a man in black and one of the vendors... Ron, she remembered. The stereotypes about gun owners all being racist rednecks often weren't true, but in his case they were all perfectly dead on; Ron was a complete asshole. She was just there in time to see him take a swing at the man in black... and him taking Ron's hand and throwing him over the table before reversing him and throwing him back into the ammo that was displayed. She started edging back at that, to get out of the way by the time the security guards came. The man in black said something as a guard placed a hand on his shoulder... then spun and drove a fist into his face hard enough Dee could hear bone cracking from where she stood. "YOU DARE!?" he screamed, then kicked the other security guard in the stomach and threw him into another display case. He drew his sword - "how'd I miss the sword?" part of Dee wondered - and roared in fury. "Okay, this is serious... it can't hurt to..." another part of Dee's mind said and she started reaching towards the pistol concealed under her jacket when a shot rang out. Evidently someone had had the same idea but took it to its logical conclusion; a fat man with a blued 44 Magnum revolver, part of Dee's mind resolved. She thought she saw the bullet impact the shoulder of the maniac with a sword, but she might have been mistaken. The world seemed to slow at the shot, and go silent... she saw the man's sword come around as if in slow motion and swing upwards at the gun. Instead of merely batting it aside though, it cut cleanly through it, lengthwise. And through the man's fingers. The gun and fingers slowly flew away and there were tiny drops of blood already flying upwards. "This can't be happening," said part of her mind. "You can't cut a gun like that. Another part had started taking pictures around the time when he punched the security guard and took another one; that part commented that it was good she hadn't drawn her pistol. A third thought came up, perhaps the most useful one yet. "Run," it simply said. It seemed like a good idea. The world came back all of a sudden. There were screams of course. Some might have been hers. Her feet were working again though, so she ran. She heard another gunshot or two come from behind her, and more screams. Her mind was back to working properly after 3 or 4 steps and she quickdialed Damo's cellphone through her arm's computer; she didn't trust text messaging to go fast enough. "What's going o..." he started to answer. "Man with sword," she replied, more than a tinge of panic in her voice. "Attacking people. He cut through a Colt Anaconda." "Colt makes shitty wheelguns," Damo replied and Dee almost laughed. "Are you safe?" "I don't know, I should be... he's a couple rows back." "Good. Meet you at the South emergency exit." Which was coincidentally where she and the rest of the crowd around here were headed. And sure enough he spotted her, more by the hole in the crowd than anything. He was carrying a lack hard case that she knew would have their display items inside. "Seemed like the show was pretty much over," he explained after they were a ways away from the hall. "Rest of the stuff is just cardboard." "Right... right," Dee nodded. "C'mon, I'll buy you a drink." ~***~ Tolman Hall, UC-Berkeley 03/09/2004 11:40 AM Katze walked into the office and set down her folders containing her section's papers. Mikiko Tanaka, her other officemate, looked up. "Good afternoon, Katze-chan." "Domo arrigato, Mikiko-chan," Katze replied. Mikiko started laughing. "Your accent is horrible." Katze smiled back. "That's what I get for not speaking Japanese from birth." "Yes. I probably have an accent too." "It's not bad, really. But you've been speaking English longer than I've been trying to speak Japanese." Katze was quietly pleased she still had a horrible accent. If she'd wanted to speak Japanese faster, it wouldn't have been hard. However, she was pretending to be normal and it was important to keep in mind that normal people didn't learn languages overnight, so Katze had been very careful to keep herself to only a few stock phrases. As an undergraduate, she'd been less careful, and had confused her Russian teacher by speaking the language like a native halfway through the semester. "Laura said Josh finally proposed." "Yeah. I'm pretty happy right now." "I can tell. And here I am with no boyfriend." "Aw, Mikiko, somebody will someday. I didn't expect it to be Josh, honestly, but that's the way it works out." "I will be happy for you. When is the wedding?" "We don't know yet, it's not been something we discussed yet, it was a busy weekend. None of my students have come by, have they?" "Nope. I'm guessing they must have caught you after class judging by how long it took you to get here from the lecture room." "Yeah, they had their midterm today. So I stayed late to let the stragglers have a bit of time to finish." "Ah, your students must love you." "I don't know if 'love me' is the proper wording. Probably hate my guts for other reasons, you know." "You are a good teacher, I have watched you. If I could teach as half as well as you, I would be happy." "Aww, thanks, Mikiko." Katze sat down at her desk and pulled out a book. She really didn't feel like working on her thesis at the moment, but she was obliged to sit in the office for another fifteen minutes or so for students who might want to show up to office hours. After that, she pondered seeing if Josh was free for lunch, because the weather was too gorgeous to be working in an office all afternoon. The two of them sat there, Katze reading and Mikiko working on a problem set of some sort, and it was all well and good for the next little bit, until they were interrupted by Tobias "Toby" Harrington, another fellow graduate student, bursting into their office. "Katze, Mikiko, there's breaking news on CNN." Mikiko sighed at Toby. "Just because there's breaking news does not mean that the whole building has to know right this second." "You never know when it's going to be another 9/11," Toby replied. "Well, yes, you don't, but most of the time, it's not. So calm down. What's the breaking news?" Katze said, trying to keep Toby and Mikiko from going after one another. "Some guy trashed a gun show in Vegas," Toby said. "That is it?" Mikiko sighed. "Yeah. It's just really weird, though, he did it with a sword," Toby said. The last word hung in the air. Katze frowned. "Mikiko, you can stay here if you want, I'd like to check this out." "It is probably Toby being overexcited again, but you know what is best," Mikiko turned back to her desk. "I will stay here and finish this assignment and then I will go to class unlike certain other people in this department." Katze followed Toby back to the graduate lounge. There was a small cluster of people watching the footage from Vegas. Katze watched the figure wander through, randomly knocking things over, and she wondered why there was this tickle in the back of her mind that the guy looked familiar. But it wasn't for sure. She needed more than that nagging feeling to do anything, and it was probably best just to leave it alone, and see what happens. She was about to leave, when the anchor on the TV said, "This just in, video footage from the floor of the show. The reason the footage was being shot is unknown, but we'll play it for you." Katze watched the footage. The man came closer to the camera, and Katze was struck by a memory. The face...the man...she remembered him pinning her Ensign insignia and shaking her hand. So it was Grand Admiral Owsen. But why would he trash a gun show? Hell, why was he in Vegas? Wasn't he missing and presumed dead? Katze struggled to keep her face neutral as the anchor chattered about calling the Vegas police with any information on the suspect. Katze had no intention of calling the Vegas police, though. They'd never be able to contain Owsen. No, this qualified as an emergency. She stepped out of the lounge and back to her office. Mikiko had apparently left in the time Katze was watching the news. Katze hung the "Private Consultation -- Do Not Enter" sign on the door, thanking Laura quietly for the idea. Then she pulled out her cellphone and called up the number. She hesitated a second, wondering once more if it was enough of an emergency to call, and after taking a deep breath, pressed the call button. The phone rang across the distance, and then somebody picked up. "Spiral executive ombudsman's department, this is Minerva. How may I direct your call?" "Good afternoon, Minerva, this is Katze. Can I talk to Mal? It's rather urgent." "Okay, hang on." ~***~ Spiral Building Denver, Colorado 03/09/2004 Malaclypse the Seeker looked around at his board of directors. For the most part, they were like him, former Jihaddi who'd decided to come help him change the world. Two were mundanes, but had skills impressive enough for Mal to bring them into the inner circle of the company. "All right folks," he said, "We've got a lot of work today, so let's get this meeting started, eh? Now, concerning our operational schedule, I'd like to see the market share for our Armadillo 2004 line increase by the end of the quarter, if possible. We'll need to get a larger ad buy-in while-" Just then the intercom buzzed. "Excuse me boss," came the voice of Minerva Fnord, Mal's "executive assistant" in the company and (unknown to everybody else, even the board) part-time AI, "but there's a phone call for you from a Ms. Brenner. She says it's an urgent matter regarding the Gemstone file." Mal blinked. He immediately knew who Ms. Brenner was - there were only a handful of people who had his private reach-anywhere number, and only one of them still spent most of her time on Earth. But a Gemstone matter? "Gemstone" was a private code, used whenever something involving the Jihad came up in a mundane setting. They hadn't used Gemstone in almost three years, since Mal had to fix a few things for ex-Jihaddi trying to leave the country after 9/11. Something must be up, and serious enough for Katze to contact him. "I see." Mal rose from his chair, the board members doing likewise. "Ladies and gentlemen, I'm afraid I'll have to take this. We'll reconvene in an hour and a half, and I apologize for the inconvenience. If any of you have something critical scheduled for that time, you may be absent, now, if you'll excuse me..." Mal walked swiftly out of the board room and back into his private office where Minerva waited, holding the phone. She handed the receiver over to Mal. "This had better be an emergency." "Hello to you too, Mal. Does Owsen trashing a gun show count as an emergency?" Okay, this was pretty serious. "Owsen? The same Owsen who's been -dead- for the last seven years?" "He didn't look that dead on TV." "TV? He's on TV?" Oh, -great-. Mal could feel the familiar sinking feeling settle around him. It's always something... "You don't know?" The surprise was clearly audible in Katze's voice. "I've been in a meeting. What's this about TV?" "Check out CNN." Mal covered the receiver with his hand and said "CNN." Minerva waved her hand at the terminal on Mal's desk, and the screen lit up with the Headline News report for that hour: "In our top story today, officials in Las Vegas are still looking for the unknown man who entered the 23rd Vegas Gun Expo and began destroying exhibits with a sword. Several people were injured in the assault, most of them security guards trying to subdue the man. A camera crew captured these pictures of the assailant, and Las Vegas police are requesting that anybody with any information call the number listed below. Police are advising that the suspect is armed and considered extremely dangerous...." Mal turned his attention back to the phone. "Son-of-a-bitch," he swore softly, "Owsen's alive, and causing property damage to boot..." "There's more.." Katze hesitated for a second, then told Mal about her midnight trip to her old VRDET apartment several days earlier. "Interesting," mused Mal. "Sounds like something had advance warning..." "So this qualifies as an emergency?" "Yeah... yeah, I'd say it qualifies as an emergency. We'll need to talk, and soon. Preferably face to face. How quickly can you get out here?" "About five, ten minutes. Where should I show up?" "Can you manage the elevator lobby on the top floor? "I think so.." "Make it there, then. Minerva will be waiting for you." "See you in a few," Katze said, and hit the disconnect button on her cellphone. She filed the phone back in her pocket and scrawled a note to any late stragglers that she had a sudden errand to run. That done, she shoved her laptop into her backpack, hoisted it over her shoulder, and went to find a quiet place to make the jump. She poked her head in the grad lounge, only to see Toby watching CNN. "Anything new?" "Naw, same ol', same ol'. Still an interesting choice of weapon." "Yeah, seems really funky. Anyway, I just got a phone call, Josh needs me to run a sudden errand. If any of my Psych 1 students show up, and they've got a question you can answer, do you mind helping 'em out?" Toby shook his head yes and turned back to the TV. Katze assumed that meant that he didn't mind and fled to quieter pastures -- a normally unused seminar room on the third floor. Sure enough, it was in that state now, and Katze slid into the room, feeling somewhat like Clark Kent searching for a phone booth. But no mind, concentration. Going someplace new involved a bit of a trick, sorta like flyfishing, only without the rod and the reel. Cast out, find one's destination, and pull oneself through... ...into a rather quiet elevator lobby. Unfortunately for Katze, she'd made a minor misjudge of the height at the far end compared to the near end, and came into being an inch or two too high. Trying to make up for the sudden lack of floor where she was expecting it, she overcompensated and ended up tripping over her own feet and sprawling to the floor. "Ow," she muttered to herself, pulling herself back to her feet, which were now on the ground where they belonged. "I'm rusty, that was a stupid mistake." She shook her head trying to get her bearings back, which was always a small problem trying to jump to somewhere you've never been. As her head cleared, she realized there was another person in the room. She hoped she hadn't been careless in making the leap and jumped right in front of, god forbid, a mundane. Delgado would be rather upset if that was the case. She hoped she might recognize the other person. Hmmm...woman, mid-twenties, about a half-foot shorter than herself, and ... something was off, but Katze couldn't place it for the life of her. Rendered was the verb coming to mind, but Katze shoved the thought away. And then the person spoke. "Good afternoon, Katze." The *voice* was familiar and Katze said, "N'kanyu tiri...err, wrong...wow. Goddamn. Mal said you'd meet me but this wasn't what I was *expecting*. Wow, Minerva, you're looking good." So Mal had apparently been very busy in the four years since she'd seen him last. Katze should have recognized that the glasses as being the same as the ones her fellow VR founder wore, but...Four years. Dammit, had they really gone that long without saying much, and not seeing each other? Minerva smiled. "You like it? I had it custom built, and it's almost paid for." Katze blinked. "Uh, what?" "Long story," Minerva said airily. "It's good to see you too, Katze. It looks like college life agrees with yo- hey!" Minerva grasped Katze's left hand and examined her ring. "He finally proposed! Cool! When did this happen?" "Last week, on my birthday." A small part of Katze's mind wondered exactly *what* Minerva meant when she said "finally," and exactly how *much* everybody knew about her and Josh. The rest of her was surprised by the feel of Minerva's hand. It actually felt *real*, not like a projection or something artificial. Minerva sensed Katze's surprise and looked up at the taller woman. "Let me guess, you were expecting a hologram, right? Or maybe a plain boring old robot?" Minerva grinned. "Dad never did like that Star Trek gag with the holograms, and I didn't want to be stuck in another bloody metal shell. This is pure 100% human genome, right down to the bone. Except what's in here," Minerva tapped the side of her head, "that's nothing but VRDET original optical computer. I've got to maintain standards, you know." Katze shook her head. "I.. wow. Color me impressed. I didn't know Mal could do stuff like that." Minerva laughed. "Neither did he, at least until we got started." She guided Katze towards the lone door waiting at the end of the lobby. "C'mon, we can catch up on old times later, the Boss Man awaits." They went through the only other door in the lobby, and stepped into a rather well apportioned office, with windows everywhere. Katze blinked at the view. It wasn't her beloved San Francisco, but it was rather picturesque at that, and she'd grown fond of Colorado in her years of service to the Cause. "Goddamn," she said. The chair rotated around so the figure in it could face her. Mal always did have a sense of showmanship. "It *is* rather striking, no?" he said, and the voice was right but the general figure was wrong. "Gah," Katze said, trying to find words. "I mean...I *know* that's you, but I'm still not used to it being you, even though I see you on the news all the time with that face..." She dropped off, figuring she'd get used to it at some point in time. "Hmm? Oh...sorry," Mal said, and did something that rather surprised Katze, even when she thought she could no longer be surprised by anything her old cohort was capable of. He *changed* back into the face she was familiar with right then and there in what appeared to be the space of an eyeblink. "Is that better?" he asked. "Showoff," Katze said, with a smile and a hint of admiration. "Although I'm going to take a wild guess and figure that's how you managed to play Lyran in Marraketh." Mal smirked. "That old gag? Nah, that was just a mask and a cheap bathrobe," he said. "I didn't get the face-changing thing set up until right before the stand down. Figured it might come in handy when playing CEO." Mal stood up and crossed the room to a minifridge standing by the north wall. "I'm being a poor host. Would you like something to drink?" "Sure, a Coke if you've got one." "Hmmm, Coke, Coke, where did you- aha!" Mal pulled out a can of Coke for Katze, selected a root beer for himself, then returned to the desk and sat down, handing his guest her drink in passing. "Min, you sticking around for this?" Mal asked. Minerva shrugged. "I probably should, since it's old business." She sat down in a chair opposite Katze. Mal opened his root beer and took a drink. "Okay," he said, "so what do we know?" "Owsen, who is supposed to be dead, isn't." Katze said. "And that he trashed a gun show in Vegas." Mal nodded. "Yeah, and that's not normal behavior, even for Owsen. So the question becomes; what's he going to do besides trashing gun shows?" "You think he might try to go home? To the Jihad, I mean?" Minerva asked. "It's a possibility," agreed Mal. "Certainly that would be my first guess; if he's just got back from... wherever he's been for the last seven years, then he might be heading back to TRES Corps. Problem is, he doesn't know that the Corps - and the Jihad - is gone. If he's got his Linker on him, we could trace him and maybe contact him that way, but-" "But with the network offline, even if he's still got a Linker we won't be able to connect to him that way." Katze finished the thought. "Right. Hm. Okay, first order of business is to get the Net back up. That way, if Owsen does call in, we can be ready for it. If he doesn't call in, well... we'll cross that bridge when we get there." "All right. Now, how do we do that?" "Pretty simple really. We'll call into Blanca and have Aris activate the local hub. Most of the relay satellites are still in orbit and functioning, so once we get the hub running the Net will be back up and functional enough for people to call in." Katze looked skeptical. "Great, but how do we call Aris without the Net?" Mal smiled. "Oh, that's easy. I've got a dedicated line." He picked up the phone and started punching in numbers. "You didn't really think I would just leave the place there without a way to get in, did you?" "No," Katze laughed, "I guess I didn't." "Damn straight. Now," Mal muttered as he continued dialing the connection for the long-abandoned Jihad base, "if I don't dial this right, I'll probably end up buying fifty pizzas for some poor sap in Singapore. Or maybe selling the company to the Russian mafia by mistake--" "A gun show," Minerva said softly. Mal and Kazte looked up. Mal dropped the handset back onto the phone. "What was that, Min?" asked Mal, concentration broken. "Why did Owsen go into a gun show? Why not one of the other hotels? Or a bar, or a restaurant, or even a gas station? There's hundreds of places for Owsen to have wandered into on the Strip. Hell, he could have even gone to the TRES Vegas safehouse, but he didn't. So why did he end up at that show? Something doesn't add up." "Maybe he grabbed the sword there?" Katze suggested. Minerva shook her head, frowning. "No, the kinds of swords on sale at a show like that are display pieces. Stuff you'd put on your wall. From what I remember of Owsen's psych profile, he'd rather fight bare-handed than with a cheap display sword." "Okay, then what would he be after?" "Well, the obvious thing would be -guns-." Minerva pointed out. Katze blinked. "I didn't think Owsen -used- guns," she said, slightly puzzled. "I mean, he had the Barney-Slayer..." "He had two," Mal interjected. "They were modified .45s, and I think DeadLock ended up with them after Pacifica." He frowned, tapping at the desk. "I don't know what happened to them after that," he added. "I imagine that they're locked inside the TRES underground along with the rest of their gear." Minerva nodded. "Okay, so if we make the assumption that he stopped to get some guns, then that means he's expecting trouble. Which begs the question: what -kind- of trouble is he expecting?" "Yeah," agreed Katze. "Is he expecting trouble with the Wyrm, or..." Katze trailed of, letting the unspoken assumption hung in the air. Owsen had, in the past, a tendency to monomania when he started out on a mission. It was one of the things that had made him such a terror on the battlefield, not to mention the reason he was given the Slayer in the first place. But if Owsen's intensity had been turned on something that -wasn't- the Wyrm... ...and it -was- known that the last time anybody had seen Owsen alive, he was in the company of the Lyran leader and High Mage. The silence stretched for a few more seconds as the three contemplated that possibilities, then Mal picked up the phone. "Okay," he said, "we'd better get things rolling, then." ~***~ 1320h, March 9, 2004 Lacroix's apartment, Denver, Colorado United States A dose of unseasonably nice weather broke the monotony of the past week as Lacroix absently channel-flipped. In the name of getting the most out of his break, Lacroix had half burned himself out being unnecessarily productive since Friday, and found himself staring most of a week of no professional obligations whatsoever in its gorgeous face. This explained why, at almost half-past one in the afternoon, Joseph Lacroix was still waiting for his pre-consciousness pot of coffee to kick in while flipping aimlessly through television channels. Lacroix's apartment had a decent cable package as part of his lease, in an oddly generous turn of events. Normally he wouldn't argue, but the inverse channel law was in effect - eighty-five channels, and the most interesting thing he'd seen so far was a documentary on the history of flax. Only able to take a certain level of boredom at any given time, he flipped through the channels some more. It was a Tuesday afternoon, but there was always the chance someone made a mistake and was broadcasting something interesting. Something caught his eye suddenly while flipping through. Flipping back, he was presented with CNN. In the new environment of the twenty-first century, Lacroix was used to CNN blaring FUD about one thing or another, but the typical Breaking News! thing was still a little rare. Checking it out, he sat a little dumbfounded by what he saw. "...veral people were injured in the assault, most of them security guards trying to subdue the man. A camera crew captured these pictures of the assailant and Las Vegas police are requesting that anybody with any information..." "Well, *this* is different," Lacroix thought, looking at the footage of the oddly familiar man tearing up the exhibition hall he was in - with a sword, no less. A close-up shot of the man's face appeared, and a shock of recognition hit Lacroix in the stomach. The man trashing the expo in Vegas looked familiar for a reason. Lacroix remembered him from his Jihad days. Usually a figure off in the background, glanced at a distance on base or during the odd interminable review session, speaking briefly to some of the TRES members, then recruits, late in his training in Alpha... Joseph Lacroix gaped at the screen as he watched Lord Tilden Alexander Owsen take a small piece of Las Vegas to shreds. "...What's going *on*?" Lacroix said aloud. Not only was the man one of the Jihad's greatest heroes, but he was also supposed to be *dead*, killed in single action against Charn'El (or so the rumours went) in that astonishing battle during the Pacifica operation. Not only was it Owsen, but it was Owsen with the Slayer - or was it? The blade in his hand looked like the famous sword, and every Jihaddi had at least seen a picture of the thing. However, it was a matte black instead of the silver-white of its odd alloys. During his time in TRES, Lacroix was low-ranked, not even commissioned by the time of Owsen's death. He knew enough to recognize the former Grand Admiral, however, and he knew enough to know something was very, very wrong with at least one Jihaddi. He also knew that there was *no* possibility of a Maenad being apprehended by police unless he wanted to be; Owsen would be out and about as long as he damn well pleased. Lacroix stared at the TV in shock for a few more moments, flipping to a couple of other channels to see if the other talking heads had different spins on what was going on, and then put the remote down. "Seigneur," he breathed. A strong sense of duty and attachment still linked Lacroix to the Jihad, gone these five years. Every one of those strings tugged at him right now, and Lacroix was filled with conflict. All that could go through his head was the fact that one of the most senior of the Jihaddi - who was *supposed* to be *dead*, dammit - had apparently gone quite mad, Lacroix desperately wanted to get in touch with any other Jihaddi to figure out what was going on, and he had no viable means of doing so. His first thought went to his 'Linker, until he realized the power cells in it were almost certainly dead by now. He could try that, but chances were good that he had nothing. "Seigneur," he said again. "What is going on?" ~***~ VRDET Blanca Mountain Base Costilla County, Colorado 03/09/2004 Blanca Mountain had a few vehicle hangars, large empty open spaces where once private planes and vehicles retuned for hidden military purposes had been stored. The entrance to the outside had been completely blocked off with rubble, sealing the empty, echoing halls in from outside air. One of these hangars was still occupied. A television stood in one corner, hooked up to a single VCR. Next to the VCR were several neat stacks of Red Dwarf episode tapes. Next to the VCR was a metric ton of empty Powerbar wrappers. On the other side of the hangar was a snoring mountain of blue scales. The scene did not change for a long time. On March 9, 2004, a shrill beeping started in the hangar. For a few seconds, nothing else changed. Then the mountain shifted, curled, and resolved itself into a living dragon, somewhat cognizant of the world around her. She scratched the ridges behind her head, then reached underneath her wing and delicately retrieved a small personal data assistant from the interdimensional portal she kept there. "The hell?" she asked, before poking it with a claw. "Commander Merquoni speaking." A couple of seconds later she said "What?", and then "WHAT?" And a few seconds after that, "Shit. Okay, I'll see what we have here and get back to you." She poked the PDA again, turning it off, and replaced it in her pocket. Then she closed her eyes and shifted into a tall human woman wearing very little besides a backpack. She took off the backpack, retrieved a black unitard from it, and put it on. Then, sparing one last look at the television, she left the hangar behind. -- "So, what *do* we have?" Aris sighed and tucked her 'linker in the crook of her neck. "Not much, boss. All the vehicles were dismantled, the weapons the same; the only thing that really works down here is the passive security system. Mal even took the fuel out of the Gate, so that's down." "Can you get it up again?" "Sure, given time. It's got enough power to reload." Aris spun around in her office chair and punched another console. It came to life, flashing angrily. "The software's all here, but all our monitoring stations are kaput, so we're not getting any readings. I can still patch into US and EuroMil, but they're not calibrated for the kind of stuff we need. Maybe we can get one on the next Shuttle launch--" "Shuttle's still grounded." Aris scowled. "Since when?" "Since _Columbia_ went down." "Ack, I have been asleep a while." She moved back to the first console. "I have the 'Linker station back up, so you should be able to dial in." "Yeah, I'm getting it." Aris opened a geographical map of all active JihadLinkers and whistled. "What happened to everyone? Active listing is down to like nothing." "I think most everyone just turned their 'Linkers off and stashed them. The war *did* look over." "I thought you weren't supposed to turn these things off." "Yes, but you can. Or they might have left them on and let the batteries drain." "Dammit. Is there any way to send a remote electric shock to everyone who turned their 'Linker off?" She didn't wait for an answer. "And I've finished checking the base logs. Nobody came down here but you and me, which isn't surprising, since there's almost no way in here." "Great. Is the system online yet?" "Still warming up. Without Minerva it's a bit of a bitch. Uh, there might be some stuff on Sublevel 2, but I think Mal dropped a small black hole in there when the base went down, so I don't really want to look. We certainly don't have any more than four guns in the whole base, and one of those is mine." "Don't go down there. Bring the system up and start going over data to see if there are any other options. I'll call you back." "Right." Aris clicked off the 'Linker and typed a final command into her console. "Shit. The last thing I wanted to deal with this month was an angry Maenad." -- "So." Aris fiddled with her headset to get her microphone in place and adjusted the monitor in front of her. "What do we know, exactly?" The monitor was covered in data. The upper left corner had a map of the continental United States, Owsen's last known position and the positions of all known activatable Jihaddi marked and labeled. The upper right had the CNN video on replay, volume muted and closed captioning running along the bottom. The bottom left of the screen had a checklist of everything that was supposed to be left in Blanca Mountain, a depressingly small amount of text. The bottom right had an open text file. Into it, Aris typed, 'Things we know.' "He's been presumed dead for the last seven years," Mal grumbled. Aris dutifully typed 'Ows presu. dead 7 yrs' "He ransacked a gun show," Katze added. "He's up to something, and it involves firearms." Aris added, 'plans with guns' to the file. "And he hasn't attempted to get in touch with anyone yet," Aris added as an afterthought." "Well, most of the phone numbers he would have had are no longer working," Mal pointed out. "But yes, this doesn't bode well." 'Mal worried, bad shit,' Aris typed. "Agreed," Katze said grimly. 'Katze, too. And me.' "So... what sort of a problem is this?" Aris asked as she typed. "I mean, what should we *do*? Call Ghostbusters?" "You should have a list of call-anytime numbers for the Maenads there on the server," Mal said. "They probably have the best immediate chance of figuring this out and stopping him." Aris started a new heading for 'To-do List' and added 'Call Maenads. Present assumed to be contactable: Nemesis, Windigo.' "All right. I'll get on that as soon as I can." Aris scrolled down the list of known material in Blanca's stores, frowning. "Mal, is there *anything* in this base that isn't on this list? A McGuffin, anything?" "Nothing that isn't on the list. There should be enough equipment down there to get the Gate back online, though. That should be priority number one, in case we have to move people in a hurry." Aris hummed softly. "I'd like to get in touch with with either Mel or Shad before I do that. Both, if possible." "This isn't Jihad business. Not yet," Mal pointed out. "But getting in touch with them is a good idea anyway. If this turns out to be a false alarm, all the better, but if something really is going on..." "Right. Let me try and get them on the link. And Felton." "All right." Mel's 'linker didn't send any response, and neither did Felton's. Within twenty seconds, however, Shad's voice came on the line. "What's going on?" "Shad? It's Aris. And Mal, and Katze. Have you been watching the news?" "Yes, in fact, I was just about to call. Who else have you contacted?" "Nobody, so far." Aris scowled at the list of numbers on the screen. "We're still trying to find the other Triumvirs." Shad was silent for a moment. "Are we active again?" "No," Mal said. "Not yet, anyway." "But I'm going to open the Gate again," Aris said. "We're not official or anything, but I thought it would be a good idea to at least get two-thirds of the Trium on the same page." "No answer from Melanie, huh?" "Nope. I assume she and Felton are still barcrawling Western Europe." "And there are enough pubs around that nothing short of buzzing every city, town and hamlet in dragon form would find them. All right. I'm coming over there." "The Gate is going to be a while. I have to refuel and recalibrate." Aris sighed. "I'll get started on that as soon as I run down the list of Maenads. In the meanwhile, you can't get in the base." "That's fine. I'll start groundwork in Denver while you work," Shad said. "Which reminds me. Mal, is your delightfully charming and almost indecently talented daughter online? I need to ask her a favor." "Flattery will get you... Quite a distance, actually. What do you need?" Minerva's cheerful voice cut in. "Nothing much. It's just that I don't have any US passports any more and I'd have to have to explain how I got in without a visa. Could you work your magic over the government records and insert me an identity? Preferably a sufficiently out-of-the-way place that I'm not likely to run into anyone who should know me..." "Sheesh, ask me a tough one already... Here we go. Chad Houben, of Montgomery County, state of Maryland. Date of birth, June 5 1982, not married. Anything else? A credit card?" "I was about to ask. Won't need it for much, but..." "As good as done." She rattled of a series of numbers. "Can you memorize those, or do you need me to write you a sticky note?" "That'll do. Minerva, you're a smart girl. "I bet you say that to all the girls." "All right." "Be careful with the hydrogen when you refuel," Mal said to Aris, ignoring the byplay entirely. "I will. Look, I'm going to leave this conference running and start calling the Maenad list. I'll check in when I'm done and then see what needs to be done for the Gate." "All right, Aris," Katze said. "Good luck." Aris changed over the channel on her headset and opened the Maenad contact list. Not one answer. She tried again. Nope... not one. She left a message at Felton's office and checked in with the others. Still no conclusions on what Owsen was up to. The instructions on refueling the Gate were a hundred pages long and covered in safety warnings. Aris printed out a hardcopy and headed for the stairs. The Explorations offices were just a floor up from the R&D level, which was where the Gate generator itself was located. Aris stepped into the darkened room and gazed over the collection of circuits, wires, and power sources. She'd first seen the generator in 1997, preparing to leap into pan-D space after Katze. Since then, most of the exposed wiring and circuits had been packed away into impressive steel boxes covered in now-dim flashing lights, but the Van der Graf generators and Tesla coils still stood in an irregular procession around a central staging area large enough to hold a couple trucks. Aris flicked on the lights. The generator looked no less imposing, but somewhat better lit. Taking a seat on the edge of the stage, she started reading the refueling instructions. 'Stage 1: Return facility power. Without facility power, the loading mechanism for the metallic hydrogen will not--' Blink. "So that's what Mal was talking about. Damn." '"Make sure the loading arm is connected to power. Run test cycle A on loading arm before attempting hydrogen insertion...' Great." Aris stood and looked for the large silver box labeled 'Loading arm.' There was indeed a large silver box labeled 'Loading arm'. On the back was a thick black cord running to the wall, connected to a panel labeled 'High Voltage Power Supply.' Aris nodded to herself and flipped the switch. There was a cracking sound and an angry spark. Aris scowled. "Shit. This better not be broken." After a thorough examination, she found the circuit breaker and reset all the switches. Then she tried the power again. Another crack and no power. The breaker was tripped again. After several more repetitions, she discovered the dial on the power supply. Grumbling mightily, Aris turned the dial to zero, hit the power, and then slowly raised the input to full. "Stupid nonintuitive human devices," she grumbled, and set about reading the next direction. ~***~ Spiral Building 03/09/2004 12:30 PM After Katze had returned home, Mal sat behind his desk for a while, looking out the west window towards the mountains. The wheels of his mind turned over the facts, looking for the hidden implications of Owsen's sudden return. This was a skill learned through long association with the Illuminati, and one of the reasons Mal was so highly prized as an asset. Mal sighed. The Illuminati; what to do with them? The implications Mal had come up with spelled nothing but trouble on the long-term, and the last thing he needed was to be blocked by the Five during the early stages. Getting back in might prove too difficult later. He pushed the intercom talk button. "Minerva, a moment please." Minerva poked her head through the office door. "You rang?" Mal motioned her in. "Min, I have decided on a course of action. I want you to cut the data links with Agharti. A hard cut, too; break the lines." Minerva blinked, then looked around. "Boss? Are you sure you want to," her voice dropped to a whisper, "go rogue?" "I'm not going rogue, Min. We're at a delicate stage with this Owsen situation, and I don't want to be interrupted or pulled out until we've solved the problem. Cutting the link will buy us time, and it's easier to ask forgiveness than permission anyway." "They won't be happy about being left in the dark." "I know, I know. But if they're on top of the Vegas thing then they've probably rolled the dice the same way I did, and nothing comes up good there. We'll see. In any case Min, I still want you to cut the lines. I'd rather not be saddled with some junior investigator sent out to keep a leash on me." "Okay, I'll go unplug the lines right now." Min turned around and walked towards the door. Before she opened it, she stopped and turned back to look at Mal. "I sure hope you're right about this," she said. Mal chuckled. "So do I." ~***~ Oakland Tribune newsroom 03/09/2004 11:45 AM Miranda Delgado sat at her desk in the newsroom of the Oakland Tribune, attempting to translate her notes into a story, but she was getting nowhere on it. The weekend's events had brought home just how long it had been. She could still recall the first time she'd seen Wraith in person -- had it been eight years ago now? -- in a Memphis restaurant. And now, Wraith was engaged. Who'd have thought it? Delgado stared at her monitor screen, trying to find words, but only found more pensive thoughts along those lines. The next time she had to go to LA was at Easter, and she dreaded it. It wasn't because she hated to see her family, God knew they were close, but Delgado's mother was just so, well, traditional. Maria Delgado believed a Latina's place was in a marriage, and the first question out of her mouth come Easter was going to be the same as it was every other time Delgado went home: "Mira, have you found a good man yet?" And if she dared challenge her mother's question, she would get compared to Lupe. Dear Lupe, the good daughter, marrying her high school sweetheart instead of going to college and out into the world... Lupe hadn't had to worry about saving the world, though. Delgado decided she was just feeling melancholy because even Wraith seemed to have fit into the civilian world quite well while Delgado was still leading a double life waiting for the other shoe to drop. That work, as well as keeping a civilian identity and career, had left her with little time to pursue a social life. That problem would have to be rectified, she suspected. She looked up at the television that the newsroom staff kept tuned on CNN for breaking news, expecting to see the financial news, or whatever inanity CNN broadcast at this time. She wasn't expecting to see some looney suddenly going ballistic with a sword in some place she couldn't make out. A caption appeared, citing the place as the "Las Vegas Gun Show", which answered the question of...wait a second, some looney with a *SWORD*? She walked closer to the television, trying to get a better glimpse at who said lunatic was. She had been analyzing intelligence for years, which let her make quick judgments, and she wasn't liking the fact that the quick judgment she was coming to right now was that the other shoe had dropped. She stared up at the television, hoping that she wouldn't recognize the face. No such luck, of course, the general build and facial features just about matched her memory of Grand Admiral Owsen, which caused more problems than it had solved. If it had been somebody who was alive, the grouping of former Jihaddi intelligence agents could have probably handled it. But the Grand Admiral? Coming back from the dead? This was a nightmare. She backed up to her desk to grab her cellular phone. Perhaps Shelton would have a clue what to do. Shelton had been her partner in coming up with the grouping of former Jihaddi intelligence agents -- they'd called themselves the Ancient and Honorable Order as a joke, although it wasn't much of a joke at the moment. Maybe Shelton could figure out how to end this nightmare. He technically outranked her, once upon a time. The phone rang as she picked it up. The caller id said 'Shelton'. Seems Shelton had the same idea as she did. "Delgado." Shelton's rich baritone rang out over the line. "Hey, Delgado, I'm sorry to bother you at work, but have you seen the news lately?" "Yeah. Actually I was just about to call you." He laughed, but quickly turned somber again. "Actually, I was wondering if you had any idea how to handle this one?" Delgado slid back in her seat, looking around. Most of the newsroom seemed interested in the television, and there was nobody in range to overhear. "No clue. No clue at all." Shelton sighed at the other end of the phone. "Same here. You think we ought to get Curtis in on this?" Delgado frowned. Curtis was the third person who'd helped create the Order back when he and his whole JAO used pseudonyms. But since the disbandment, he'd asked to simply be called Curtis, his civilian surname. "Probably not," she said. "Curtis is simply going to remind us that this mess doesn't concern the Dobes, and he's right." "Damn. I was hoping he'd have some idea of what to do." "We should start at the source. Who do we have down there?" There was the sound of clacking keys as Shelton typed something on the other end. "McAllister and Youngman, it looks like. McAllister actually works for the Vegas cops, it looks like." "Good. Can we trust their discretion?" "I think so. At least McAllister. I don't know how good Youngman's going to be for this problem." "Alright. It will have to do for the moment." Delgado frowned. "It's funny, really, Wraith was worried about something coming down the pipes this weekend. Wonder if this is what she had in mind?" She caught the confused tone in Shelton's voice. "Who's Wraith?" "Brenner. Alpha." "You're still in touch with Brenner? Gee." "Yeah, we're old friends. It's not important, though, I was just musing." "I'm just worried, Delgado. I don't know if we can handle this." "I don't know if we can either, but we've got to try. Because if we don't..." Shelton sighed. "I know. If we don't try, we could lose everything we've built up since we disbanded. But it doesn't mean I have to like it." "I don't like it either, Shelton, but we don't really have a choice in the matter. I guess, get McAllister to see what he can do, and we'll just keep watching to see what happens. Maybe this was an accident." "Yeah. I'll talk to you later." "Adios." Delgado hung up the phone and looked around the newsroom, her story temporarily forgotten. She stared at the phone and then dialed a set of numbers memorized from dialing them often, and was surprised to be immediately dropped to voicemail. She hung up the phone without actually leaving a voicemail. After all, what could Wraith do to help in this situation? ~***~ Las Vegas, Nevada 03/10/2004 2:13 AM Dee rolled over and fell off of the narrow hotel bed, onto the floor. She cursed slightly, then realized that hurt her head... then realized she had run to the bathroom. She must've been drinking. Yeah, waking up enough to remember, she had. Four drinks; need to remember that she thought as she cleaned up and went back to bed. She lay in place for a while before remembering something and calling up a message client seldom used in the last few years. "ATTN: Intel," she wrote. "Dee Greist here at Las Vegas, in town for the gun show. Some fuckstick trashed the place, any ID? Photos enclosed." She attached a couple of the images she'd taken of the maniac with the sword and posted it through the JihadLinker feature before trying to fall back asleep. ~***~ Austin, Texas 03/12/2004 10:13 PM Through the nighttime streets of Austin a werewolf stalked. Well, not exactly a werewolf anyway. The tall, rangy guy with close-cropped blond hair didn't think of himself as a werewolf, but when you change from human to an inhuman creature with some distinct lupine features at the drop of a hat, you might as well consider yourself a werewolf. This particular not-a-werewolf-really was known by his old friends as J-Rock. He'd spent the better part of the previous decade fighting the good fight with his friends in the Jihad to Destroy Barney. When the Jihad went bust in '99, J-Rock was left at loose ends. Having nothing better to do with his time, he went back to his home in urban Texas, picked up a smallish job and lived off the proceeds of a stipend set up for retired Jihaddi. He was coming home from a concert, where a couple of his mundane friends had been opening for one damn numetal band or another - J-Rock never could remember which numetal band was supposed to be which - and was in the process of shortcutting through the park near his apartment when he noticed that a man in a black coat was following him. J-Rock sighed, as he prepared to face his stalker. This happened at least a couple of times a year - muggers thinking they found an easy target got the mortal shit beaten out of them by an angry Maenad. The cops had no idea who was doing it, but since the incidents always involved lowlifes they tended to ignore the cases where a mugger got shoved up a drainpipe. J-Rock figured that this wasn't breaking cover per se, but a necessity for survival. Besides, it wasn't even sporting to damage normals; too much like killing spongin. He had turned halfway, not bothering to shift into his redcap form, when the stalker spoke in a low, menacing but damnably -familiar- voice that froze J-Rock in his tracks. "Hello, -Slider-," said the stalker, "did you miss me?" J-Rock's instincts screamed out, breaking the trance just in the nick of time. He lunged sideways, hitting the asphalt bare tenths of a second before the black sword swung through the space where his neck had been. J-Rock rolled and came up in a fighting stance, his shape changing from human to Maenad instantly. "I know I missed -you-," mused the stalker, contemplating the Maenad standing in front of him. "Just now, in fact. But even before then, oh yes. Yes indeed. I -missed- you." J-Rock growled, this babbling stranger had just called him by his Maenad name - one he hadn't used in almost five years - tried to kill him, and now was taunting him! "Who the hell are you?" he snapped. Disappointment laced the stranger's voice. "Oh, you don't recognize me," he noted, "I suppose that's understandable, it's been a long time, and the visibility here is poor. Let me... illuminate things for you then." As he said it, the stranger's sword hand flared with violet-white light, bringing his face into relief. For the second time that night, J-Rock felt himself freeze, rooted to the spot, as he gazed into the pleasant, cheery face of Tilden Owsen. "Ow-Owsen?" he stammered, unsure if this was real or some sort of strange hallucination. "You.. you're supposed to be..." "Dead?" Owsen said cheerfully. "Oh, I was. For years and years. Blind, deaf, mute, floating in darkness, unable to do anything." Owsen grinned disturbingly. "All I had for comfort was the thought that my fellow Maenads would come and rescue me. Or that the Holy Albino would come for me." Owsen's grin widened and his eyes brightened, making J-Rock twitch nervously. "Of course," he went on, his cheerful tone becoming more manic with each word, "that turned out to be nothing more than a -lie-, didn't it? You went along well enough without me, and Feral Jackson never showed even the slightest interest in my whereabouts, did he? No, poor old Owsen got to be locked in limbo for the rest of eternity and nobody cared. Poor, poor Owsen. Well, -somebody- took pity on poor Owsen, and -he- let me -out-. And now..." Owsen raised his sword, the light coming from his hand glowing so bright that J-Rock was forced to squint. "Now, I have the chance to get little of my own BACK!" Owsen screamed the last word, swinging his sword down towards J-Rock in a viscous overhand arc. The blade never touched J-Rock, but the arc of violet light streaking from the tip -did-, throwing the Maenad back ten yards to crash into a tree. The impact smashed the tree's trunk and knocked the wind out of J-Rock's lungs. As the tree fell backwards behind him, J-Rock fell to his knees coughing. Owsen bellowed unintelligibly and charged, waving his sword out in front of him like a man who meant to cut something. J-Rock, still winded by the first blow, barely managed to duck the first swing. Unsheathing his claws, he parried the followup strikes. "Owsen," he panted, trying to stop this before somebody got hurt, "it wasn't like that-" "YOU LEFT ME TO -ROT-!" Owsen roared, eyes blazing. "I SPENT TWO YEARS IN THAT HELL, AND YOU FORGOT COMPLETELY ABOUT ME! YOU -SUPPLANTED- ME! -ME!- DESTROYERS AND URSURPERS!" He pressed the attack, forcing J-Rock back with each strike. Owsen's black sword sparked when it hit J-Rock's claws (And where, J-Rock wondered, did he get a sword that would stand up to owsenite?) as the pair battled their way across the park. Sensing an opening, J-Rock tangled Owsen's blade in the claws on his left hand, then wrenched it towards him. Off balance, Owsen stumbled. J-Rock took the opportunity to swipe his right hand across his opponent's upper chest. The strike left long bloody furrows in Owsen's flesh. For his part, Owsen only winced and pulled back. Fingering the gashes, he grunted and looked up at J-Rock. "First blood," he smirked. J-Rock's eyes widened as the light in Owsen's hand flared again and the wounds repaired themselves, leaving only smooth skin showing through the tears in his clothing. "Not bad. But I've got -better-!" He charged at J-Rock, who prepared to block Owsen's sword once again... ...only to get Owsen's boot planted square in his face. J-Rock could feel his nose break under the blow as he tumbled backwards. Out of fighting position and slightly stunned, he couldn't move fast enough as Owsen swung his blade in another overhand strike, letting the light lash out and catch the Maenad in the side. J-Rock flew through the air, almost knocked completely cold by the last hit. He landed painfully in the sandpit of a playground. He lay there for what seemed like an agonizingly long time, weakly coughing blood (A part of J-Rock's mind noted that he'd broken more than he'd originally thought.) as Owsen walked, almost casually, towards him. Mustering the last fragments of his willpower, J-Rock hauled himself to his feet and approximated a fighting stance. "Oh very good," mocked Owsen. "The very picture of a servant of the Holy Albino. Bloodied but unbowed, fighting until the bitter end!" "Shut up," J-Rock mumbled. "Must do you good, knowing that you're about to die in the service of a lie." "Shut. Up." "He won't save you, you know. He didn't save me, the prophesied one, so why should he bother with -you-?" "SHUT UP!" J-Rock screamed, "SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP -SHUT UP-!!!" He lunged at Owsen, claws out and ready to rip this damnably grinning imposter of his old friend, this twisted homunculus, this -fake- into little fragments. Owsen dodged the blow, stepped cleanly to one side, and brought his sword down on J-Rock's left arm. The blade passed through the Maenad's toughened flesh as if through air, neatly severing J-Rock's left hand just above the wrist. J-Rock screamed again, this time a wordless sound combining rage and pain, and collapsed on the ground clutching the stump of his arm. The pain and the damage caused by the previous injuries caused his concentration to slip and he reverted to human form, the transformation shooting new waves of pain through his body and rendering him almost comatose from the shock. Owsen grabbed J-Rock by the hair and pulled him roughly to a kneeling position. Owsen stared at the broken Maenad with the same distant cheerfulness he had started the battle with. J-Rock, battered and bleeding on the edge of consciousness, looked back at Owsen, eyes barely focused. "You should thank me, you know," Owsen mused. Even in his condition, J-Rock's face flickered with utter incomprehension. He managed to croak out "...why?" Owsen's stance shifted, readying his blade for the coup de grace. "Because I am the Herald of the Scourge, and now you won't live to see it." Owsen lunged, driving his sword through J-Rock's collarbone down into his chest. The Maenad convulsed for a second, then slumped. Owsen yanked the blade out of his opponent's body, carefully wiped it clean, then sheathed it. He strolled away from the corpse, whistling nonchalantly as he went looking for his next target. "You really should have thanked me," he called over his shoulder. TO BE CONTINUED */ Bad Religion "American Jesus" _Recipe For Hate_ /*