LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 03/10/2004 11:47 AM "Ugh, good god... what happened to my head?" Dee groaned and quickly downed the Advil and glass of water some thoughtful person had set on the end table to the left of her hotel bed before flopping back down. Really, a rhetorical question... she remembered exactly what happened, of course. As she waited for the pounding in her head to ease off and the world to stop being so utterly wretched, she punched up the internet to check for news. Her arm computer had automatically found several wireless networks to tap into and combined the bandwidth, so it was only a matter of a few seconds to find that the gun expo had been canceled. No fatalities, miraculously, though there were quite a few people hospitalized... both because of the nutball and because of people accidentally shooting each other. Damo must've woken up early and gone to pack up the rest of the stuff. "Shower," she muttered before sliding off the bed and getting to her feet. "Shower, then food." It was a couple hours later, and she and Damocles were in the shop van heading back towards Athena Heavy Industries, in Arizona. They'd been more or less silent for the last half hour, Dee curled up in the passenger seat and Damo driving down I93. "That was pretty much your first time with that sort of thing, wasn't it." Neither of them had moved, and Damo said that in an even tone of voice. "Yeah... pretty much." "It gets better, in a way." "That's horrible!" "Yeah, probably. At least no one died this time." There was silence for another few minutes. "I sent a request for info through the JihadLinker last night... figured that they'd know if anyone did, especially with as weird as this was. Still no reply." "Patience. There's probably not too many people with working Linkers anymore, and they probably don't check too often. "Yeah, I guess... it's probably unrelated anyway." ------------------------------------ */ Marco Beltrami, "Main Titles" _Hellboy_ /* Illuminati International Pictures presents a tale of the J I H A D U N I V E R S E 3 . 0 Investigations written by S. Malalcypse Breen, Dan DeRosia, Kirk Felton, Rens Houben, Aris Merquoni, Patrick Stewart, Warrior Tang, Kat Templeton and Jim Yearnshaw Directed by S. Malaclypse Breen (c)2004 The Jihad to Destroy Barney ------------------------------------ SPIRAL BUILDING DENVER, COLORADO 03/13/2004 7:50 AM Despite Owsen's sudden reappearance on Tuesday, the rest of the week had proceeded without incident. That alone was enough to put Mal's nerves on edge. So far Owsen hadn't made any attempt to contact the Jihad; he hadn't been seen near the old watch stations or the site of the TRES base, and the rudimentary reestablishment of the JihadLinker network hadn't seen any sign of Owsen's Linker signature. After his performance in Vegas, Owsen had simply faded out of sight. Easy jokes about Vegas and obscurity aside, for somebody as naturally flashy as Owsen to vanish like that worried Mal, and he had spent the last week waiting for the other shoe to drop. When Minerva came in carrying the newspaper, he knew from the expression on her face that the shoe had finally dropped. "Take a look at this," Minerva thwapped the newspaper down unceremoniously on Mal's desk. "Page 6." Mal turned the page and quickly found the article Minerva was referring to. The headline said it all: "Mystery slaying in Austin leaves police baffled." The content was par for the course, part AP wire report, part local reporter trying to spice up a story. Mal scanned the lead for details as to where Owsen fit in with the murder. His eyes came down to a name he hadn't seen in a number of years, the civilian identity of one of the oldest Jihaddi at the time of the stand-down. "J-Rock?" Mal murmured, eyes going wide. He looked up at Minerva, who nodded grimly. "I raided the police database after I read that," she said. "There's no doubt about it, that is... was J-Rock." "Shit," said Mal, leaning back in his chair. "Shit shit -shit-." "At least now we know what Owsen's up to." Minerva offered. HOUSTON, TEXAS 03/13/2004 9:00 PM Owsen stood at the back door to the house and contemplated his options. Should he go in subtle, like a thief in the night, or should he be loud and cause lots of damage? Decisions, decisions. Owsen pondered, then kicked in the back door with enough force to shatter the lock, the doorknob and break the door clean off the hinges. "Honey, I'm hooome!" he called. Subtlety, Owsen thought wryly to himself, is highly overrated. The inside of the house was dark and quiet. Owsen stalked through the kitchen and towards the master bedroom. He was puzzled; the amount of noise he'd made coming in should have awakened somebody. Hell, the sound of the door breaking should've had every neighbor for three blocks calling the police. So where was BlackBlood? Owsen threw open the door to the master bedroom, only to find it empty. A quick check of the adjoining rooms indicated that the place was unoccupied. Stopping for a second in the living room, Owsen noticed a picture hanging over the fireplace. On closer inspection, it was a photo of the TRES and Doberman command staff during a meeting. From the look of things, it was taken before the X'hirjq invasion. So, this was BlackBlood's house, but the Maenad in question wasn't in. Owsen's rage, already simmering on low during the search, finally built to a boil as his frustration increased. Roaring, Owsen drew his sword and proceeded to rip apart everything in his path. Fragments of house and furniture flew everywhere as Owsen unleashed his frustrations. Finally, the faint sound of approaching sirens pierced the red veil of rage that covered Owsen's mind. He stopped in mid-demolish, listening to the sirens for a few seconds. Realizing that he'd overstayed his welcome, Owsen sheathed his sword and fled the house. ATHENA HEAVY INDUSTRIES KINGMAN, ARIZONA 03/13/2004 "Dammit Dee, are you working on that thing again?" Damocles yelled out of the shop. It was mostly a rote protest really, as it was her own free time, and it had been quite a while since she'd had an opportunity to tinker on the thing. "Yeah, I think I may be close to getting it to move. Maybe." She had the access panel open on the oversized thigh of what looked like a power armor suit sitting in front of the shop, and had her upper body disappearing into it. It was a pet project, trying to make a power armor suit workable with modern technology. She'd had the basic plan for two years, but working intermittently it had taken that long to assemble and troubleshoot. It made a great lawn ornament though. Really, she was just avoiding thinking about the maniac who'd trashed the gun expo. It had been a couple days and still no response had come. Patience and all that be damned, she wanted to know if there would be an answer coming at all, much less when it would come and what it would be. "Gah, fuck!" she swore as one of the hydraulic fittings broke and spewed hydraulic fluid all over the inside of the leg. Dee all but leapt out of the hatch as it creaked and started to sag. It shifted forwards and down a couple inches as the weight moved from being supported by the legs to supported by the gantry that had been set up to prevent her getting crushed to jelly under it. "Piece of shit!" she yelled as she aimed a kick at it, her boot clanging slightly off of the armor. It was still unnamed but she had taken to calling it the stupid metal bastard. She stormed into the shop. "Problems?" Damo quipped as he tossed her a bottle of water. Dee grabbed it out of midair with her artificial right hand and wiped her brow with the other. "Just fixing mistakes... should have gone and used Aeroquip fittings from the start. Now I'm slowly rooting out all the weak points in the thing but... well, at least I don't have to mop up hydraulic fluid in sand." "I know you wanted to get it done in time for the Knob Creek machinegun shoot..." "I will." She downed her bottle of water in one long pull. "What did the truck drop off?" "Lots of good stuff..." Damo seemed to be working on suppressing a grin. "Like what?" "Well... that." He gestured at the wooden crate on the floor, about six feet long and two wide. "Open it up and see?" The shit-eating grin told her something was up, but she ignored it and grabbed a crowbar. It was a few minutes to get the crate open but it was worth it. She gaped at the contents. "Hooooooly shit," she finally exclaimed. It was a big conglomeration of moving parts but the whole thing was vaguely cylindrical. The barrel extended out another three feet; obviously a gun, and a big one. A Pontiac M39 autocannon, she knew. 20mm, with a rate of fire of 25 rounds per second, mounted on various lightweight fighter aircraft. How the hell he'd gotten it was completely beyond her. "Pretty good, huh? I found someone who salvaged an F-100 Super Sabre back in the day, and got a deal. Think that'd work for your metal beastie?" "Hell yes. Can we get ammo?" "Yup. I was going to surprise you with it after the expo but..." Damo shrugged. "Five years since we decided to make this place." "Thereabouts." Dee looked embarrassed. "I have something for you too actually. It's, well... that chopper thing I was having you help work the kinks out of?" Her partner chuckled. "I thought that didn't seem like the normal sort of bike you made. And that much input from me was a clue too." "Speaking of bikes, did the last of the bits for my big project come in yet?" "Well, there's a box from Italy." Dee found the box and checked the address, grinning at the fact that it matched one of the powertrain labs for Ferrari's racing team. Opening the cardboard box revealed a black briefcase... inside that, set in individual recesses of impact absorbent foam were 10 pistons. Dee gingerly pulled one out and inspected it... a work of engineering art, precisely made from the finest materials with no expense spared. She'd traded some design work to the race team in exchange for them, and they were slated for a project of hers. "... wow. Hey... Damo?" "Right, I know, I'll take the unimportant calls for the next couple days." "Thanks a lot." NEW YORK CITY 03/09/2004 9:00 PM It had been something of a long day for KillJoy... it turns out that it wasn't all that easy to turn over half of one's bank account to a charity, plus the day before some press people had been asking him about all sorts of things... plans to come back to the WWF and things like that. He stayed in character for all of that, of course, and said that he'd be watching everything and would be back when he thought that there were other people who were his equal. Of course that wasn't true; he barely watched TV at all and even then not much besides the news. The dinner that had been provided at the meeting had been large, even for someone who ate as much as he did, and he sat in the hotel room that had been provided for him and got ready to go to bed early. He pushed the button on the TV first though, and the news came on. "... and in other news today, an unknown man attacked crowds at a Las Vegas gun expo with, according to reports, a sword. The number of peop..." he turned the TV back off as soon as he saw the picture of who it was. KillJoy then casually walked over to the end-table by his bed and picked up his cellphone, dialing the number of the lady who was in charge of his travel while he was with the WWF. "Hi, Jessie? I need a flight to Denver as soon as possible... yeah, I'd like this off-record. Thanks, the red-eye would be perfect... sorry to bother you this late. Thanks again." He hung up, and started packing the meager amount of belongings he'd brought with him. DENVER, COLORADO 03/10/2004 It was quite obvious to anyone looking at him wedged in the seat for the flight out that airliners were never intended for people of KillJoy's size. Nevertheless, he bore the flight without complaint. He'd slept in a cheap motel for a few hours afterwards, paid in cash. He'd ended up pulling a lot of money out of his bank account, actually... the kinds of things he was going to be buying would *NOT* be approved of by nearly anyone. The first though, was a truck. The one he found was an '80s Chevy, though he didn't bother to look into things even that far. There was more than a bit of body rust, but that really didn't matter. It ran, and ran well, plus the owner had been an avid off-roader so the truck had many modifications to that end. The owner was sort of annoyed at waking up that early in the morning, but being paid his asking price in cash allayed that. He even pretended to not recognize KillJoy, though the trailer the man was living in did mark him as likely to be a wrestling fan. Next were the remainder of the normal supplies; a heavy 4-wheeled cart, a water carrier, an independent air supply, a pair of heavy duty drills, flashlights, and "food" in the form of a couple boxes of concentrated energy bars. This seemingly random assortment of gear went into the bed of the pickup truck, and KillJoy roared out of the city, heading west. London Mines, Colorado was a ghost town, about an hour south-west from Denver. Opened in 1861 during the gold rush, it was now completely empty, nothing but a scattering of deserted buildings, thrown together out of rough planks. KillJoy pulled up to one of the buildings in particular, sitting over the main shaft. He got out of the truck and stood in the fierce wind for a moment before walking towards the building. It was less windy inside, but not much... over the years, there had been many gaps made in the wooden walls and obviously no one to repair them. The floorboards creaked ominously beneath his weight before he was onto bare rock. The entrance to the mine was easy to find, and finally out of the wind. KJ clicked on the flashlight every so often as he strode through the inky darkness of the mine shaft, but he could see no sign that anyone had ventured this far down inside. Subtle markers he had left years before told him this; a seemingly accidental scuff here and there on the main path standing out from where he'd cleaned his tracks more than four years ago. Finally, he found what he'd come for; a side-shaft that was blocked off by a series of large boulders, deep in the mine after an uncounted number of twists and turns. Each of them probably weighed in the neighborhood of 200 pounds, far more than any casual visitor would deal with even if there had been any. KillJoy walked up to them and started moving them, grunting with the exertion of moving almost a ton of rock in a matter of minutes. Eventually though, he got to what he'd come for. He opened the large duffle bag and turned on the flashlight to check. The beam of light played off of a smooth ceramic breastplate painted in camouflage. TRES-issue body armor, with the light blue and forest green highlights marking it as Omega squad. Pulling the armor out he checked his issue X-Rifle, which he probably wasn't supposed to have. It was loaded of course, and even had a pair of spare magazines, but there was no charge in them, the electricity long used up to keep the hydrogen fuel cooled. The grenade magazine *was* loaded, with a quartet of high explosive armor piercing rounds, but there had been no chance of sneaking any others out. Of course, there was the general issue JihadLinker, but it had no more charge than the plasma magazines for the rifle. Of more immediate use were the conventional firearms, both a pair of the large issue Heckler and Koch sidearms and a pair of semiautomatic shotguns cut down until they were a foot and a half long; oversized pistols to someone strong enough. The boxes of ammo for both of those were still sealed, and various other lesser tools were there as well. He grunted as if satisfied and exampled the axe leaning against the wall of the tunnel. A full sized fire axe, with an axehead on one side and a pick on the other and a steel haft, the edge seemed to be unaffected by the storage. KillJoy grunted again and zipped up the duffle bag before setting the axe on top of it and dragging it all back out into the sunlight, heedless of the fact that the path through the mine wasn't obscured any more as he wouldn't be using it again. He put the bag in the back of the truck with the axe underneath it, and drove off to his next stop. "Is it too late to get something to eat? I'm starving." KillJoy was at the Buford Saloon, pretty much a small, dingy bar. Not that he was here for the food or ambiance. "Nah, I can do that. Whaddya need?" The guy behind the bar was more than a bit on the side of obese, and was wearing a flannel jacket over a grey shirt. A shaggy grey beard covered his face, and he was wearing a faded black baseball cap. He didn't seem to take any note of the giant who had walked into his bar as anyone special. "Two of the half-pound burgers, fries, and a coke." "Shit, you are hungry... gimme a bit on that." The man started up the grill and got to work as KillJoy glanced around the bar. It was completely empty other than the two of them. "You Eddie?" The man glanced back. "I know you? Big bastard like you I'd remember." "Are you?" There was a slight edge in KillJoy's tone, and Eddie chose to not push things. "Yeah, that's me... why?" he replied, a little nervously. "I need some stuff from you." "Who the hell are you, feds? Cops? You have to tell me if you are, you know, it's entrapment if you lie about that." "Templi Resurgentes Equites Synarchici. Omega." Eddie froze where he stood, and KillJoy helpfully made flipping motions with his hand to remind him of the burgers. "I thought all you fuckers retired," he commented after a few moments of silence aside from the sound of sizzling meat. "Some more than others. Or are you unable to get fireworks anymore?" "Do you have any bonafides?" "I've got an X-Rifle in the truck, plus a couple mags and issue body armor in my size. That work?" "Yeah. Yeah, I can still get stuff," he replied as he set a pair of plates on the table in front of KillJoy. KJ quickly got to work on the food as Eddie cleaned up. "What do you need?" "M118 Composition 4 blocks. I need two cases; 40 of them, and don't tell me you can't get a hold of them. Also, a bunch of commercial-grade stuff... blasting gelatin or the like, around 200 pounds. Blasting caps too." He started devouring his second burger. "Holy shit. I'm not even going to ask what for... you guys don't have a line of credit anymore you know, even if you were good backers." KillJoy pulled out the wad of money he hadn't spent and set it on the counter as he ate, a fat sheaf of hundred dollar bills. "Two more of those when you deliver." "Two days." "Of course. See you then." OUTSIDE BLANCA MOUNTAIN COSTILLA COUNTY, COLORADO 03/12/2004 1:00 PM The pickup truck was starting to make funny noises, which maybe was why the owner had sold it in the first place. It had been a drive of quite a few miles, over broken mountainous terrain, so it was understandable. And, in the end, it didn't matter at all. KillJoy stopped the truck and got out, unpacking the drill from the back. It was a hard couple hours of work making a line of holes in seemingly arbitrary locations, but eventually it was done. He carefully filled the holes with charges of blasting gelatin and set up blasting caps and fuses for the whole system... before finally lighting the sucker off at around 4pm. When they were built, it would have been nearly impossible to get into any of the access tunnels to the Mt. Blanca stronghold of VRDET. Things changed though, when much of the surrounding area was collapsed to seal the base. In this particular instance, there was a slope near one of the tunnels, a ravine actually, with much of the rock covering protecting the tunnel having been eroded. The charges exploded and separated that chunk of the landscape, sending yet more rock and dirt sliding downhill. Gravity cleared the debris out of the way more efficiently than bulldozers would have. Of course, that was nowhere near enough to get close to the tunnel. It would take at least three more sets of charges. Even before the landslide from the first blast had stopped, KillJoy was working on boring the next set of holes. INSIDE BLANCA MOUNTAIN 1:02 PM Aris put down the instructions and stared at the half-repaired fuel cycler. "Damn," she muttered. "So much broken stuff, so little of it actually my fault." The diagnostics, at least, were complete. She didn't need to putter around in the computer any longer to determine what the problem was. She just needed to rebalance the loading chute and adjust the pin widths, and reconnect three circuit boards. It wouldn't take very long, but she'd been working all day and her head hurt. "Shower first, I think," she said. "Then finish this." She'd gotten back into the habit of talking to herself, too. "Warning," the base computer announced. That startled her. "What?" "Warning," the computer repeated in the inflectionless female voice that was all the backup AI could handle. "Seismic activity detected just offsite of Blanca Mountain." Aris scowled. "Okay, what flavor of seismic activity? Do you mean explosions?" "Explosions detected." "Great." Aris headed to the stairs, taking the steps two at a time until she reached her office. "Show me," she said, plopping down in her chair and tweaking her monitor. The monitor displayed a graphic interpretation of the blast, its force, and its epicenter. The results didn't make Aris any happier. "That's... right above the garage access tunnel, isn't it?" "Yes." "Someone's trying to break in." The computer didn't answer. "Are there video cameras in that tunnel?" "Confirmed. Three cameras operable." "What's the status?" "Standby status." "Okay, bring them to active. Hey, what security did Mal leave down there?" "Maximum security systems active." "Great." Aris shook her head. "Well, whatever it is, hopefully it'll convince our friend to give up." 03/13/2004 2:00 AM It had been quite a bit of work to crack open the access tunnel, even with most of the work being done by high explosives. The last of the blasting gelatin was setup to collapse the tunnel behind him. Now, wearing his body armor and KillJoy made ready to head down the tunnel. Most of the weaponry and gear was on the heavy duty 4-wheeled cart pulled behind him, only the pistols and shotguns being in holsters attached to his armor. This was fortunate, as all the rest would have been rather bulky. But it would have been well into the realms of the absurd to carry all of his supplies in a backpack, considering that he not only had enough powerbars for 3-4 days, 5 gallons of drinking water and a 100 cubic foot capacity air tank, but also 80 pounds of C4 plastic explosive, in 2 pound blocks. Of course there would be security systems, thus the preparation. The initial hole in the side of the tunnel seemed to have knocked out a few cameras and things around it, but there hadn't seemed to be much else in that section of tunnel. KillJoy was being careful to watch for more though as he unrolled the fuse for the charges at the entrance, but it seemed to be a harmless section. He lit the fuse and a matter of a few seconds later there was a crump of the explosion, his ears popping from both the explosion and the rock filling in that part of the tunnel. Continuing to watch for traps, he pulled his cart through the tunnel. There was plenty of room, as it was around ten feet diameter with a flat floor. A slight bend in the tunnel, probably to go around some terrain feature, and he came to a blast door. Solid steel and completely unmarred by the passage of time, it must have been several inches thick and looked like it would be impassable. After knocking on it a few times with his fist and listening to the reverberations, he went back to the cart and started precisely packing explosive on it. "Security systems engaged." Aris put down the welding torch and frowned. "What security systems?" "Hangar tunnel security systems engaged." Aris stood, brushed her hands off on her lab coat, and headed up to her office. "What's happening?" A display of the hangar tunnel came up, with a big blinking red box labeled "1". "Blast Door 34 Closed," flashed a warning right underneath it. "Any chance I can see what countermeasures are in that big red box?" "Classified," the computer said. Aris spelled out her name, rank, and personal code. No dice. "Thanks, Mal," she grumbled. "How many blast doors are there?" "70," the computer answered. Aris blinked a couple times. "So there are 36 more in between this guy and us?" "Affirmative." "Fine. Tell me if he gets through this one." */ The Seatbelts "Gotta Knock A Little Harder" _Future Blues_ /* Striding through the smoke and debris thrown up by the explosion, KillJoy immediately smelled something beyond the normal acrid fumes from the explosive. Gas poured out from hidden ports on the ceiling; tear gas he would have realized if he were affected by it or if he cared. "Attention intruder," came a synthesized voice from a hidden speaker. "Unauthorized entry is prohibited. Further incursion will be met with deadly force, up to and including nerve agents. This is your final warning." KillJoy kept striding forwards as the voice spoke, ignoring it and the gas. There was a sharp corner, and then an electrical whirring sound. The tunnel after the next bend had several cylindrical shapes pop out of the ceiling and walls; his first shotgun slug impacted one before it had completely extended and made it freeze there, but the others immediately started shooting. Strobing muzzle flashes lit the tunnel for the first time in years, a deafining cacophony as machinegun fire raked the area. KillJoy stood his ground, ignoring the bullets whining past or smacking divots into the concrete tunnel around him as he fired his left hand shotgun now, hitting a turret in the joint between the body and gun. The volume of bullets was reduced but tracking closer, now rounds actually impacting KillJoy himself, first one in the shoulder and another in the right leg and several in his abdomen. None penetrated the armor and none prevented his next shot, eliminating the targeting sensor on the next turret. The final turret managed to pound five more rounds into his torso armor before both guns vomited lead at it and silenced it. The first of the shotgun shells bounced off of the concrete floor of the tunnel at about the same instant the final turret was silenced and the others followed shortly, the whole firefight having taken less than a second. The speaker ironically gave another warning, this one no more useful than the last. "Attention intruder. Deadly force has been authorized and VX is now being released. Have a nice day." More gas was vented out of ceiling ports as KillJoy fed spare shells into his guns and walked down the tunnel, oblivious to excessive amounts of one of the most deadly chemical weapons invented by man filling the tunnel. Aris stripped off the heavy chemical protection gloves and adjusted her monitor. "He's made it through another door?" "Affirmative." "Do we have any camera footage yet?" "Affirmative." Aris sighed. "Display camera footage." A blurry few seconds of video played. Aris watched it a few times, then froze a frame and ran enhancement. "Well, at least it's not Owsen. Run this face through the entire Jihad and look for a match, starting with VRDET and then TRES, the Doberman Empire, and all the others in order of greatest enrollment at time of disbandment." Aris put her feet up on the desk and rubbed her eyes as the computer fed through the data. After a minute, she sincerely wished Minerva was still onsite. "Match found." "Whozit?" "Lieutenant KillJoy, TRES Corps, Omega Squadron." "One of Felton's." Aris stared at the tunnel display and the big blinking red box. "He'd probably be mad if I let this guy die. Can I turn off the intrusion countermeasures from here?" "Negative." "Why not?" "Countermeasures cannot be disrupted from this workstation." "Can they be turned off at ALL?" "Negative." Aris sighed. "Dammit. I'm going to finish loading the caustic and see if the Gate turns on. How many more doors does this guy have to break through?" "Five." "He should be here by this evening, then. Right. I'll tell Mal." Hours passed. How many were unimportant, really; the only breaks in the tedium being every hundred yards or so when he came to another blast door and had to blow it open. He had come to a section that was literally laced with claymores, their tripwires crisscrossing the area in an impassable maze. After pausing to eat a couple of the wretched tasting energy bars and drinking some water, he set about disarming them. All of them in fact, placing the dozen plastic covered fragmentation mines on the cart as well. It was another right angle bend before the next blast door, obviously more to make things harder to break in than anything else. Like so many times before he set the charges and backed off to a safe distance of 20 yards before lighting it off. A *CLANG* and the door had a rectangular hole blasted out of it. He slipped the mirrored goggles he always wore down over his eyes for no reason he knew and strode through the hole. A burst of flames washed over him, not just flames but napalm. He very quickly ducked backwards through the hole and threw his shotguns back away from him but a further twist in the plans happened when a heavy machinegun turret, much large caliber than the previous ones, opened up on him. The thumb-sized bullets added insult to injury by punching through his body armor in several places... some of them finally being stopped by his unnaturally tough skin, but two continuing on, one into his left lung. Very concerned with all of this, KillJoy propelled himself around on the ground to try to smother the jellied petroleum flames coating his body, eventually succeeding. Grumbling, he got up and dusted himself off, poking a finger in the holes in his body armor. His blood was dissolving the ceramic slightly around the edges of the holes, but both were already sealed over. He coughed a few times, spitting out some gobs of blood and pieces of bullet fragment, already starting to dissolve. He coughed again to clear the last of the blood and retrieved the shotguns, before taking the X-Rifle off of the cart and racking a grenade into the action... */ Leonard Cohen "Everybody Knows" _Pump Up The Volume_ /* SEATTLE, WASHINGTON 03/14/2004 4:30 AM The Undisclosed Location was one of who knew how many smoky little hole-in-the-wall bars scattered around the greater Seattle area. The bar was reasonably well-appointed, keeping with the owner's desire to allow the patrons to have a drink without anybody bothering them. It also allowed the patrons to conduct business that might not go over as well in the harsh light of day, or the overly homey lighting of the upscale, yuppified bars elsewhere in the city. The owner was, in fact, concluding a bit of business just along those lines when the early-morning hum of activity was interrupted. A man dressed in a razor-creased black suit - looking far too sharp and confident for four-thirty on a Sunday morning - stepped through the front door and into the glare of the pinlight which illuminated the Location's only well-lit area. The bar's owner looked over the suit and came to a certain conclusion. "Guys," he said, turning back to his guests, "we're going to have to finish this later. I think," he added, "I have a visitor." The two men nodded and got up. As soon as they passed through the light and out of the bar, the suit turned around from his spot at the bar and, smiling like he was in love with the world, ambled up to the owner's table. The man in the suit slid into the chair and locked eyes with his quarry for a brief second. "Hello, Mr. Yearnshaw." The man sitting opposite him kept his face carefully neutral as he replied, "No." "Associates of mine asked me to contact you," the suit continued, blithely ignoring the denial. "I believe you were... formerly acquainted? They have a job for you." Yearnshaw shook his head. "War's over," he muttered. "The job is something they feel you are... -uniquely- qualified for, given your particular talents and past." The suit flashed a quick smile as he said it, noting the sudden glimpse of irritation in his target's eyes. "What is it about Illumination," growled Yearnshaw, "that affects the ears so you people can't hear things like 'no' or 'get the hell out, you son of a bitch' anymore?" He sighed. "This is about Las Vegas?" he inquired. The suit nodded, his smile slightly strained after Yearnshaw's outburst. "Good, you can still keep yourself informed. This is exactly why my... associates requested I contact you." The suit's smile vanished again. "And please, this isn't a place for language like that." Yearnshaw suppressed a smirk. The suit and his people never liked it when he used the 'I' word in a public place. "The answer's still no." "My associates are offering compensation," the suit pressed, "compensation similar to that which you received for your previous service." He pulled a PDA out of his coat pocket and placed it on the table in front of Yearnshaw. "Quite handsome compensation really, for the scale of the service my associates need performed." Yearnshaw picked up the PDA and browsed through the files stored there. The "compensation" was indeed quite handsome, money and technology that wasn't available to most militaries, much less on the street. He studied the information on the device for several minutes, half of which he spent trying to make the suit sweat. /Max,/ Yearnshaw sent on his communications implant, /you get all this?/ /It appears viable,/ replied Yearnshaw's AI companion, /and it is highly probable that it would have at least one immediate benefit./ /I thought so./ Yearnshaw grumbled mentally, keeping his thoughts hidden behind a mask of blank concentration. /These bastards always did know where to come at a person./ Yearnshaw put the PDA back on the table and slid it over to the suit, who was still waiting expectantly for an answer. "This could be worth my time after all," he said. "Just what is it that the Five want?" The suit twitched slightly as Yearnshaw invoked the name of the true rulers of the planet, and in doing so chalked up another score on his imperturbable facade. "It's a small thing, really," the suit replied smoothly. "My associates would like you to contact a former colleague of yours. He has closed their normal channels of communication, and they wish to press the issue." The suit picked up the PDA, twiddled the controls briefly, then set it back on the table. Yearnshaw picked it up again to find, instead of columns of text on the display, a single still picture of a bearded man. Yearnshaw goggled at the sight for an instant, then let out a short bark of laughter. "Him?" he demanded, "You've actually -lost contact- with -him-?" He handed the PDA back to the suit, who swiftly pocketed it. "Yeah, sure. I'll do it." The suit nodded and stood up. "The issue is somewhat... time sensitive," he said. "My associates will want a report within a week." And without another word, he turned on his heel and strode out of the bar. Yearnshaw sat there for a few minutes, sipping his beer and apparently lost in thought. /Is Stack still at Spiral, Max?/ Yearnshaw inquired of his AI. /I'm going to need some updated intel./ /Ms. Sewell is still employed by the Spiral Corporation,/ Max acknowledged, /though she may be reluctant to provide any data./ /Of course she'll be reluctant, but she'll still come through. Get in touch with her./ Yearnshaw ordered as he went back to the bar for a fresh pint and to tell the bartender to keep people from bothering him, the beginnings of his plan already starting to gather. OAKLAND TRIBUNE NEWSROOM OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA 3/13/04 2:00 PM Miranda Delgado returned to her desk, throwing her notebook the last few inches onto her blotter and sighed. She hated her job. Well, that wasn't quite true, she didn't hate the job, per se, it's just that she hated the drudgery of covering grand openings and other events of that nature. Even getting to interview the former California governor turned mayor of Oakland, a normally interesting and delightful task, had seemed like simple drudgery today. Delgado wondered if the events of Tuesday had contributed to this latest round of 'I hate my job'. It was true, being a newspaper reporter was nowhere near as interesting or fun as being a Jihad intelligence officer had been, but it paid the bills. And, thankfully, her editor was pretty good when Delgado called randomly and said, "I won't be in this afternoon; I'm chasing a lead." as long as she made her assigned deadlines. This suited Delgado perfectly, because it allowed her the freedom to react to crises that needed the attention of the Ancient and Honorable Order. She looked back down at her notebook and the rest of her workspace. She wasn't sure how she was going to balance this latest crisis with her job. Shelton was flying in, supposedly for a sudden business trip, but Delgado suspected that was simply Shelton trying to cover his tracks. His wife didn't know about his Jihad career, and while Delgado approved of the secrecy, it made juggling this crisis that much harder. She sighed again and sat down. To relax herself, she decided to check the AP wire for any interesting stories, and so she cleared the screen saver and sat down to poke. Usually, after poking at some of those stories, it helped her clear her head enough to be able to write even the most boring of stories. It was a comfort that, while the world was falling apart at the seams, it was doing it under its own power, and not that of B'harne and the Lyrans. She poked through the feed. It was the usual assortment of crime, politics, and human interest stories she had come to expect. It made Delgado feel somewhat better that the world was still as predictable as ever. She scrolled through the list of stories when one jumped out at her -- "Mystery slaying in Austin baffles police". It wasn't so much that the headline was so unusual, it was just that the synopsis of the story contained a name she knew. It took a second before she placed it, and she stared at it in horror, willing the name on the page not to be the name she knew. The name stubbornly stayed the same. Delgado shook her head and read the article the feed attached to, trying not to let the emotions she was feeling show on her face. A grand opening wasn't the sort of thing to feel shock and horror over, after all. But if the other shoe had dropped Tuesday -- then this meant awful news for the home team, of course. She printed a copy of the story for Shelton, and then settled down to write. It wasn't her best work, she thought, but who would expect one's best work in the mood she was in? The world needed saving, again, and the only ones who knew and were in a position to do something about it were a newspaper reporter and an IT consultant. It would have to do. KINCAID'S BAYHOUSE JACK LONDON SQUARE OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA 6:00 PM Delgado walked into the restaurant, scanning for Shelton. The maitre'd stopped her and she explained who she was looking for. The maitre'd smiled at her, and escorted her back to the table that Shelton was occupying. Well, Shelton and another man, whom Delgado instantly recognized as Curtis. What was Curtis doing here? She was struck once again by the contrast between the two men. Shelton was tall, with black hair and an angular face. In contrast, Curtis was short with a rounded face, grey-haired, and starting to go bald on top of it. It struck Delgado than none of them were particularly young anymore. She refrained from sighing at the thought. Curtis looked up and smiled at her. "Good evening, Miranda," he said, with a bit of a southern drawl to his speech. "'Tis good to see you again, it's been a while." Delgado took a seat across from the two of them. "It's good to see you too, Curtis. And you, Shelton. I take it you called Curtis after all." Shelton stiffened a bit before speaking. "I wanted his opinion. You and I didn't have a clue what to do," he said in that familiar baritone Delgado had been so used to hearing in the offices at TRES. "Not that we have any other information." "We don't?" Delgado asked. "What about McAllister?" "The number was disconnected," Shelton said. "I couldn't get a hold of him. Youngman was, as I predicted, not useful to this situation. And no, I asked him if he'd heard from McAllister, and nothing." Delgado frowned. This was even worse. Did she dare depress them all with her news? Probably best to put it on the table so that Shelton and Curtis had all the facts. "I hate to be the bearer of more bad news," she said. "But I found this on the AP wire today." She handed the piece of paper over to Shelton, and watched Curtis pull out a pair of glasses so that he could read it as well. Shelton, who had never been quite as good at hiding his expressions as Delgado was, had a look of sudden horror on his face before he could hide it. Curtis took the piece of paper and read it himself, only frowning slightly. Shelton took a sip of water. Finally he said, "So Admiral J-Rock is no longer among the living." Delgado nodded. Shelton looked around the table. "Damn, I wish I had some wine now," he said. "That's a bitter pill to swallow." Curtis put down the printed article. "I am still not seeing where y'all think I should be involved in this," he said. Delgado glared across the table at Curtis. "Yes, that's right, he wasn't a Dobe, so thus you don't have to care. Thanks, Curtis." Curtis looked up at her and blinked, his eyeglasses magnifying his eyes. He looked puzzled. "That didn't come off quite right. My condolences to you two and to what's left of TRES, but so far this involves two TRES officers, neither of whom hold commissions in the DE, and thus I'm not sure why Shelton called me the other day. My apologies." Shelton sighed. "I called you, Curtis, because neither Delgado nor I had a clue what to do. I still don't, and this just makes it worse." Curtis looked at the article again. "Well, let's start with the obvious question. What makes you so sure that Admiral J-Rock's death is directly attributable to Lord Owsen? That's the question that needs to be answered before we can get anywhere." "Maenads are hard critters to take out. You know that, Curtis." Delgado thought for a moment. "I mean, their mission is taking out Lyrans, and you know Lyrans are tough critters. And if it wasn't Owsen who took J-Rock out, then we have to figure out what *did*. And frankly, that possibility scares me." "Me as well," Shelton said. "And we know Maenads are capable of taking one another out, so Owsen as J-Rock's killer would make sense. And there's a bit of what Delgado said. If it isn't Owsen, then what *is* it? Are the Lyrans back?" Curtis twitched at the mention of the Lyrans. "There's a scary thought -- there's no way we could take on the Lyrans now. But there's no evidence that an invasion's on. I think we'd notice. So, I accept your hypothesis, but that brings me right back to my first question. I don't see my place here. What do y'all want me to do? Because right now, with this not involving the Dobes, I'd like to get back to Atlanta and my work." "We have to do something," Delgado said. "We have to get rid of Owsen. Or at least find out why he killed J-Rock. Because something tells me, it's a guess based on limited evidence, but Owsen's after Jihaddi for some reason. Sure, it's J-Rock today. But what if it's Samhain tomorrow, Curtis? What if it's you or me?" Shelton looked frightened. Curtis took off his reading glasses, folded them neatly and put them back in their case, and then looked back at Delgado. "Those are all hypotheticals, Miranda. I can't do anything unless I have real proof that there's a threat to Dobe personnel. Y'all agreed to that when we set up the Order." "Fine. I'll keep that in mind the next time some Dobe goes crazy and goes after another Dobe," Delgado snapped. "Shelton? Are you in?" Shelton's eyes darted around the restaurant. Finally, he started fiddling with the fork on the table. Delgado waited for him to say something, and Shelton finally spoke up. "No," he said. "I have a wife and a six month old daughter, and neither of them know about this. I can't put my life on the line at the moment." Delgado sighed. "Fine, fine. This is only the biggest threat to everything we've worked to keep so quiet and neither of you want to do anything about it. I, on the other hand, am not going to sit around idly. You two just sit quietly and go back to your lives." Curtis looked up at her. "So, you're going to get a sniper rifle and go after Owsen?" Delgado stood. "No. But I'll find some way. You two enjoy dinner, I have things to do." She grabbed the printout that she had brought to the meeting and left her two fellow intelligence officers sitting there blinking, wondering what fire had gotten into Delgado as of late. Delgado frankly didn't care. Something had to be done about this Owsen situation, and she was the only one who wanted to bother. As she walked to her car, her mind flashed back to Wraith worrying about something about to happen a week ago. Wraith had mentioned having another Jihaddi's phone number in that talk. Who was it? One of the VR folks -- right, Malaclypse. She'd stop in after church tomorrow, since she would be in Berkeley for that, and see if Wraith had a way to contact him. She hated bringing non-Intel officers into this matter, but it was over her head. Way over. But something had to be done. BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA 03/14/2004 2:00 PM It was a quiet Sunday afternoon at the new home of Katze and Josh. Katze was in the room they'd established as the library listening to Selection Sunday basketball news and working industriously on her thesis before she headed out to Colorado for the afternoon. Josh was in the living room, making his way through the Sunday paper section by section. The rain was pouring down outside, which made both of them happy that they were safe inside. There came a knock at the door. Josh looked up from where he was reading the paper, and went to answer it. There stood Miranda Delgado, soaking wet from the downpour. Josh quickly let her in and had her sit down. "I'll go get Katze." Katze came down rather quickly. "You hear the news? Cal women's hoops got the five seed in the East." "Not bad. Not as good at the three seed we found back in 1996, but not bad. What's the chances?" "Hmmm. Well, Tennessee got the one seed in that division, so not good. But I think we can hang on until then." "Figures. Vols got us in 1996 too." "Don't have to tell me that. Granted, part of that might have been the power forward sleepwalking that day." "Yeah, yeah, you'd think some officer of some secret paramilitary organization had kept her out all night or something." Katze smiled at Delgado. That had been both the start of her Jihad career and her friendship with Delgado, and she was appreciative of both. But Delgado probably didn't come over unannounced in the rain for this conversation. "I'm guessing you didn't really come over here to talk about the state of Cal woman's hoops." "You're right. I didn't. But..." Delgado looked around. "I hate asking Josh to leave, it's his house too, but..." "I know about the Jihaddi who went nuts," Josh said, without looking up at his paper. Delgado blinked and then glared at Katze. "Why does he know that?" Katze sighed. "Miranda, I am going to marry the guy, which means that I think he's capable of keeping his mouth shut. Besides, it isn't just you Intel folks who can identify faces -- Owsen did pin my ensign pins on." "Okay. And you know that Admiral J-Rock's no longer among the living?" It was Katze's turn to look shocked. "Wow. Fuck. Owsen?" "Can you think of anybody else that might be able to take out a Maenad?" "Right. Gee, I hope Mal knows this latest." "Mal's on this?" "Yeah, I drug him into it back on the ninth. Don't worry, I'm sure we've got everything under control." "That's what I'm afraid of." Delgado got up and paced across the living room. "The problem is, this is too big for the Ancient and Honorable Order; we've been panicking since Tuesday, and Shelton and Curtis finally decided it's over our heads. So I need to get you non-intel folks in on this. As much as I really don't want to trust you, I'm going to have to hope. Because somebody has to do something. But..." "But?" "If things get too hot, Wraith, I want in on it." "Okay, then. There's a rudimentary JLink network back up, I want you on it. If we can use you, I'll get in touch." "Best I can ask for, I suppose." BLANCA MOUNTAIN 3/14/2004 4:00 PM Aris' linker rang as she was surveying a VTOL aircraft in the hangar, the only major VRDET vehicle still in storage. She unclipped it from her belt, checked the incoming signal, and answered, "Hey, Katze. What's up?" "Nothing major. I just thought I'd come by and see how you were doing." "Sounds great," Aris said. "I haven't actually seen a human being for far too long." Pause. "Well, close enough to count, right?" Katze chuckled. "Close enough to count. How's the Gate coming along?" "It's calibrating right now. Call it two more days to fully functional, but all the mechanics are in place. Oh, and you know, you're a TRES-ie... we've got a Lieutenant KillJoy on his way into the base." "Hmm. I don't know him personally, but... what do you mean on his way into the base?" "He's breaking in through the access tunnel to the garage. So far he's managed to get past all the security stuff Mal put there, whatever it is." Aris could hear Katze facepalming. "Aris... why didn't you just ask Mal or me to come down and turn off the defenses?" Blink. "That never actually occurred to me." "Argh. Okay, I'll be there in a minute." "I'm in the hangar." "Okay." Katze signed off the other end, and Aris clipped the 'Linker back to her belt. "Why don't I just turn those off now," Katze said from behind her a few seconds later. "Katze!" Aris said, turning around and sweeping her CO into a hug. "Urk," Katze said, then "Good to see you too, Aris. How about getting me to a console so our Lieutenant KillJoy doesn't get messily dead?" "He's been taking good care of himself so far," Aris said, putting Katze's feet in contact with the floor again. "Still, we should be polite to our guests," Katze said, heading for one of the small desk clusters in the central pathway of the hangar. "And the less of our security he destroys, the better." "Point." Katze woke the computer and typed in her identification and an override. "There, that should take care of the actual defenses. We'll need to go upstairs to open the door." Aris gestured overdramatically at the stairs. Katze grinned and led the way up. Another set of charges crumped, blowing caustic chemical smoke past KillJoy as he stood waiting, munching on a powerbar. He swallowed the remainder and kicked the tottering segment of steel over; he was doing his best to conserve explosive now, as even after sitting and picking the steel BBs out of the claymore mines, he was just about out. The steel *CLANGED* into the tunnel and he stepped out, snapping off a shotgun blast and the turret that had just started to extend... but for some reason, that turret and the others retracted back away. Not trusting them at all, he fired into each one in turn as he passed and came to yet another door. He walked back to the cart and took one of the claymores, picking steel BBs out of it with a leatherman pliers as he walked back towards the latest blast door, and was about to place it when the door clunked loudly and started opening. "Good afternoon Rear Admiral Brenner, Commander Merquoni," he said before the door had completely opened. "I apologize for the mess, though the tunnel is resealed back where I got in." The sight that greeted the two women when the door opened the rest of the way was staggering; a giant man, clad in body armor and festooned with guns who looked to have been through a war. His armor was pocked with bullet scars, some opening to reveal not the expected bloody results of projectiles but undamaged skin. His uniform was charred, and much of his hair was either gone or ragged, blackened ends. Still, he seemed in once piece, and he cracked a grin as he added, "Sorry it took so long to get here." OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA 03/14/2004 4:30 PM Miranda Delgado dug through the boxes she hadn't bothered to unpack in several years. She thought it funny, really, how she'd been quietly helping coordinate what was left of the Jihad, but yet hadn't bothered to unpack the boxes she'd had shipped to California for fear that if she did, the Wyrm would return. And now, while the Wyrm himself wasn't back, Owsen was, and it didn't look good for the home team. Besides, she had to go through these boxes. Her Linker was buried somewhere in one of these boxes, along with everything else from her quarters at TRES. The last bit of packing had been done in a hurry, and she didn't quite remember in which box she put her Linker and the cabling to connect it to her computer. She pulled her jackknife out of her pocket and slit the first box open, smiling that the box was addressed to Wraith. She hadn't had a Bay Area apartment at that point yet, and Wraith did, so they just shipped everything there. And when she'd gotten a place, she'd just put these boxes in the closet, counting on them to protect them all by staying contained. It had to have been luck that the Linker was in the first box she opened, and all its cabling contained in a small container next to it. First order of business, she decided, was to get a charge back on it. Four years in a box, even though she made sure it was off before tucking it in, probably meant that there was no charge left on the thing. So she drug it in the kitchen and sat it next to her laptop, letting it charge as she made her dinner. As she sat down at the table, the Linker beeped as if she had waiting messages. That surprised Delgado, the only person who knew she was on the network was Wraith, and Wraith would just pick up the phone and call her. She flicked the Linker on, dinner forgotten, and flipped through the messages -- it looked mostly like random chatter from Wraith and Malaclypse and Captain Houben and Commander Merquoni. She thought of adding her two cents, but decided it was better to watch at the moment and only make her presence known when Wraith asked her to join in. She flipped upwards to see the earlier messages, and was surprised to see one marked "ATTN: INTEL" with a date stamp of that prior Wednesday. That seemed strange. Who would invoke Intel when they knew there was nobody on the link? The name attached to the mail -- Dee Greist -- wasn't ringing any bells with her, but TRES folks usually attached their rank, which probably meant she wasn't TRES. Still, it was interesting it was on the link, and Delgado went ahead and opened it. The first thing she noticed was that there were picture attachments. She could view them on the little screen of her Linker, but it was probably best to hook it in on a bigger screen. She pulled the cables out and quickly hooked everything together. Delgado was slightly surprised the network could still recognize when a computer didn't have the proper software and install it, but tonight she wouldn't worry about it. It saved having to dig her old laptop out. She pulled the pictures up, and was shocked to find they were pictures of Grand Admiral Owsen at the Vegas Gun Show. This Dee Greist person must have been there and had thought to grab a few shots. Delgado whistled as she flipped through them. If there had been doubt before, it was erased now -- Grand Admiral Owsen was definitely back. And one of the photos had a clear shot of the sword as well, and Delgado gasped. It looked like the Barney Slayer. But the Jihad had the Barney Slayer, or so Delgado seemed to remember, and Owsen's blade was the wrong colour for it to match. She looked closer at the sword, and frowned a bit more. She enlarged the photo a bit to check her suspicions. It was hard to tell from the grain of the compression, but it looked like there was writing on the blade? Did the Slayer have writing on it? She couldn't remember, it had been a very long time since she'd seen anything but pictures. But this, added with J-Rock's death, meant that things were very bad for the home team indeed. She saved the shots, and decided that Wraith couldn't wait to know about this. She started to go hunt for her cellphone when she realized she had a much better way to contact Wraith connected to her computer. And sure enough, Wraith responded right away. "Katze." "Hey, Wraith, this is Delgado. Got something for you." "Is it important? I'm kinda in the middle of something." "Well, I found some pictures of Owsen sent to the intel alias, and you might want to take a look at them. What happened to the Slayer?" There was some silence on the other end, and then Wraith responded, almost as if she was hedging, "It went with JPV when they left." "You sure?" "I said goodbye to it before it left." Delgado frowned. It wasn't like Wraith to out and out lie, she tended to tell as much of the truth as she thought she could get away with. And something smacked of 'not the whole truth' here. "Why do I suspect there's a piece of the story you're not telling me?" Wraith sighed. "Believe me or don't believe me. I don't care. But yes, for your information, there are some things I know that you don't, and you know damn good and well there are things I'm not supposed to tell -- even to you, even now. Let me get to a computer and I'll have you throw those pictures at me." "Where are you, anyway?" "Blanca. Give me five minutes, and I'll be back. Turn on video when I ring you." Katze clicked her linker shut and looked at Aris. "That was my friend Delgado. I have to go upstairs and do something. If you need me, I'll be in my old office." Aris looked at Katze, and then back at their guest. KillJoy stood there, rather unperturbed despite what he'd been through that afternoon. Aris said, "What do you want me to do with him?" "Ummm...good question," Katze said. "I don't quite know. Keep him busy or something, I really need to deal with this." Katze closed the door to her office, and breathed a deep breath. Things were dusty in here, but they were still familiar, and it was hers. She collapsed in the chair, flicked on the terminal, and adjusted the video camera. She then rung Delgado. Delgado appeared in the upper right corner of her monitor, the kitchen behind her, and an ignored dinner off to the side of the picture. "Whatcha got for me?" Delgado reached forward, towards where her keyboard was. "Check this out." A window popped up on Katze's computer, in which the message with forwarded attachments appeared. Katze pulled up the pictures and just stared for a second before finally muttering, "N'kanyu tiri, we're really in it deep." "Wraith?" "Your kitchen clear? As a landing space, I mean?" "Yeah. What's up?" "Something I need to discuss with you, but I don't want to do it over the Linkers." Delgado blinked. "Okay..." "Coming through..." Katze shut the connection down, locked her terminal, and leapt, landing in Delgado's kitchen. She watched Delgado blink. "I'll never get used to you doing that," Delgado said, "even though I know what you're capable of." Katze smiled. "Good. It means you're thinking of me as a mundane, which is always good." She sat down across from Delgado. "What I'm about to tell you...you're technically not supposed to know. But it might help things make more sense." "So why are we in it deep?" Katze took a deep breath and said, "We suspected the other half of the Slayer ended up with Charn'El, but we couldn't prove it. Not until now." "Err, slow down, Wraith, what do you mean 'other half ended up with Charn'El'? There's two...oh, no. No." "Yeah. That battle where Owsen died, in Pacifica? The Slayer was busted in half. The Maenads salvaged most of the blade, and that's what's with JPV. They couldn't find the hilt." Katze watched Delgado's facial expressions. They weren't usually this expressive, she noted. Delgado finally sputtered, "And you all chose to keep this a *secret*?" "Yes. I didn't find out until I found myself in the Adjunct's chair. And I reacted mostly the same way you just did." Delgado shook her head. "So now what?" "Now? I think we tell Mal." And the two friends and former Jihad officers looked at one another before Katze rose from the table. "I'll go tell Mal. You eat your dinner." Delgado looked down and blinked at the plate. When she looked back up, Katze was gone. SPIRAL BUILDING DENVER, COLORADO 6:00 PM MDT "This is a new complication." Mal dropped the photos on his desk, scattering color shots of Owsen's rampage all over the polished wood surface. "So that explains what happened to the rest of the Slayer, at least. Remarkable," he added thoughtfully. "I'd read the reports from JPV that the blade seemed to be regenerating, but I hadn't thought to extrapolate it to the hilt. We'd all thought that it went to the bottom of the ocean along with the rest of Pacifica. I wonder where it's been since then..." Katze frowned. "I thought it was obvious." "Not necessarily. Since we assumed the hilt sank with the island, it was possible that someone else recovered it. Though seeing as it's now in the hands of our erstwhile comrade..." Mal looked closely at one of the photos. He rummaged around his coat pocket for a second before pulling out a magnifying glass. "Hm," he hmmed, "this is interesting. Here, take a look at the blade, near the hilt." Mal offered the photo and the magnifying glass to Katze. The shot itself was a picture of Owsen in mid-swing. When Katze looked at the blade through the magnifying glass, faint lines and impressions could be seen running up the center of the blade, almost like... "Writing?" Katze said, glancing up at Mal. "So it would seem," Mal replied. "And I've seen that writing before." "Oh?" Mal nodded. "We recovered several books with writing just like that during the Pacifica mission." Katze blinked. "-Oh-. I guess that's confirmation." "Probably, though I'd like a second opinion, just to make sure my memory isn't going strange." Mal sighed. "Felton was the resident Lyran expert, I've only got the basics. Dammit, we're going to need him if this -does- turn out to be Lyran-related." He leaned back in his chair and looked at Katze. "Still no word?" "None at all. For all we know he's on the Moon." "Ah well." Mal thumbed through the photos again. "So where did we get these from? They're a hell of a lot better than the security videos." Katze blinked. "You know, I didn't think to look at who sent it; it came in to the Intel dead-drop alias, but beyond that..." Mal turned to the computer on his desk and quickly called up the mailbox for the dead-drop in question. "Well that's easily checked. Let's see, the mail came in the middle of the night on the 10th, lucky us that we'd gotten the network up then, huh? And our mystery witness is..." Mal trailed off. "Well," he said, "wasn't expecting that." "Huh?" "It's Dee." "Dee?" Katze blinked, trying to remember who Mal was talking about. The only Dee that she could remember was... "Wait a minute, Dee -Greist-? The quiet kid who hung out with R&D?" "The one and the same." Mal smiled. "Knowing Dee, she was shopping when the deal went down. Well," he said, opening his Linker's phone tools, "ought to let her know that her pictures are being put to good use." "If you're going to do that," said Katze, standing, "then I'm going to head back to Blanca and help Aris out with getting stuff working." Mal nodded absently, and Katze jumped back to the VRDET base. ATHENA HEAVY INDUSTRIES KINGMAN, ARIZONA 12:00 PM "About time some of the toys showed up," Dee muttered as she worked on cleaning grit out of the silencer baffles of one of the toys in question. It was a VSS Vintorez, a highly unusual Russian sniper rifle. Silenced and with a specially designed subsonic bullet, it was highly sought by special forces because unlike most weapons that had silencers grafted on later, it retained all the power of a real rifle. Unfortunately, some bastard hadn't cleaned this one in ages. Athena Heavy Industries had received a crate of half a dozen of the sniper rifles and half a dozen SR-3 Vikhrs, a very short assault rifles using the same round. There was also a lot of the special ammunition and magazines, which was fortunate as there was nothing close in this country. Best of all, it was even perfectly legal for Athena to receive them. She and Damo had immediately tested the things out, and one of the Vintorez rifles jammed incessantly... and now she knew why. "Look at this thing! They threw in a demo model. With the way the silencer is, I should just build a new one." "Not a bad idea anyway," Damocles commented from where he was assembling a custom pistol. "Baffle design's not bad but dated." "Yeah, point. Hm." She considered for a moment and shrugged. "Ah well, I'm going to the clean room to get a start on the engine now that the parts are all finished." "All right," Dee's partner replied absently. Dee stood up from the workbench and walked over to a heavy door set into part of the wall. She pulled open the latch and swung it open, walking into the first clean room. It resembled nothing so much as a small workshop; a steel workbench against one wall with tools all in their proper places, concrete floors, work lights, sink, and a few compressed air fittings. The only really unusual features were the heavy doors on either end, the filtered air circulating around, what looked like a dishwasher, and the impeccable cleanliness. Dee closed the first door and carefully washed her hands before opening the thing that looked like a dishwasher. It *was* a dishwasher actually, but modified to use a separate water source, one with additives such that it wouldn't rust anything. She carefully took engine parts out one by one, checking for any remaining dirt from machining, or any tiny imperfections before hand drying them and setting them on a metal cart. People might think of this sort of thing as obsessive, Dee thought as she stripped out of her shop coveralls and donned a set of disposable tyvek scrubs. They didn't produce as good of engines as she did though, she thought with a smirk, so they could think whatever they wanted. She pulled the inner door open and a series of fans came into action, blowing air down across the doorway to form a barrier to dust and dirt. The second room was a testament to the extent of her obsession with putting things together perfectly. A white cube, metal walls and concrete floor providing nowhere for dirt, parts, or spills to remain hidden. Fluorescent lights and vents ringed the top of the walls providing, she knew, the only air circulation when the door was shut. She held the room to tighter standards than many surgical suites, as much work as that was. Wheeling the cart of engine parts ahead of her, Dee closed the door and paused before wheeling it over to a fixture in the middle of the room. To this she bolted the engine block, threading bolts into it and then picking up a wrench from the workbench without needing to look. She returned it to the spot where she picked it up, a precisely aligned row of tools comprising exactly what was needed to assemble the engine, all of them clean enough to perform surgery with... if one could perform brain surgery with a wrench. "Okay," she muttered as she considered the parts with a certain amount of trepidation. This engine was unique, a design from scratch to compete at the top levels of motorcycle racing. The parts were either made from scratch or obtained from favors. There were enough of them for three engines and no way to get any spares beyond that; the bike would have to win races and attract sponsorship for that. Thus, she was more than a little concerned about making any error whatsoever in assembly. This contemplation took about a minute before Dee nodded to herself and started the mp3 player in her right arm's computer. As the first notes of the song were piped into her consciousness she opened up the checklist file. Though her memory was perfect and she knew every last detail of the engine, she was taking no risks; every single operation to assemble the engine was documented. Turning the engine upside-down on its stand, Dee took the first of the main journal studs from its place on the cart. She applied two drops of thread locker to the end of it and started screwing it into the block. The torque wrench she picked up transmitted readings directly to her arm computer which superimposed the image on her vision, but for redundancy's sake pressure sensors in her arm's hand also computed the torque. Going as exactly to specs as the readout would display and marking off each step as she went, Dee then repeated the process on the next one. Quite a few hours later and the engine was becoming more and more complete. Dee was maybe a third of the way through the checklist, but all the big bits were in the beginning. Right now she was taking what amounted to a break, sipping a liter bottle of Powerade. It was good timing actually; the 'incoming message' icon blinked on the lower edge of her vision, which had happened a few other times that morning. Damocles was handling the phone traffic, but some people had motorcycle questions he didn't know the answer to so he transferred them. Or maybe he was asking about dinner, she thought as she noticed the fact that the time had mysteriously advanced to the evening, also realizing she'd forgotten about lunch. She opened the comm function with a thought, not bothering to check the sender. "Athena Heavy Industries, this is Dee," she answered. The communications went straight from thoughts to the network, allowing her to do such things as answer the phone while drinking something. "Hello Dee, it's been a while," said a voice that she instantly recognized. It was a good thing that the link didn't pick up sound as it would have transmitted the sound of Dee choking for several seconds on a mouthful of blue flavored quasi-juice. "Malaclypse?" she asked in the midst of coughing, again fortunately not transmitted. The sender ID checked out too now that she looked, and it was from a JihadLinker source. "... uh... er... hi?" "We got your JihadLinker message," Mal said simply. "A lot of other people noticed that on the news, but you send a lot better quality pictures than they did. Were you and Damo okay?" Oh gosh, he actually asked if she was okay, and he went and called... "Uh, oh... yeah. Yeah, our booth was away from that and... I... ran away pretty fast." Stupid, why'd you put it like that? "Sensible thing to do, given. Well, to get to the point, we know who that was as he's someone fairly famous in the Jihad. That 'fuckstick', as you so colorfully put it, is Owsen." There was a pause for a moment, as Dee processed this information. "Lord Tilden Owsen. Who died on Pacifica." "Apparently he didn't." "Why the hell did he go and trash a gun show?!?" Dee sputtered. "We don't know. There's more though; he's also been killing Maenads. We don't know why about that either. The writing on the blade of the sword in the pictures you sent might provide a clue though." "I have higher res stereo versions if you want," she replied in shock. "That wouldn't hurt. We're getting a hold of some people but haven't managed too many so far." "I'm in. Damocles too probably." Jihad business being as close to family business as she had, of course she was involved. "Okay. We're probably going to have a meeting in Blanca within a week. I'll send a gate." With that he cut off the connection, leaving Dee to ponder this bizarre new turn of events. Eventually she opened up a connection to the shop's phone network. "Damo?" she said as he picked up the phone. "Something odd has come up..." BLANCA MOUNTAIN 3/14/2004 10:00 PM Katze had said goodbye and popped back to Berkeley an hour ago, and Aris had decided to bring KillJoy in on her pet project: trying to get the busted VTOL craft working again. In the meantime, they'd all eaten, KJ had cleaned himself off and buzzed away the rest of his charred hair, and found a spare set of Omega fatigues in his size. *Where* he'd managed to find them Aris didn't know. He'd also fixed the elevators. "I can't really fix this," KillJoy commented as he poked around inside the fuselage of the gunship. "Could you hand me a 10 millimeter socket?" "Why do you need a socket if you can't fix it?" she asked as she handed the enormous man the tool. He pulled out the ratchet wrench he was using and swapped sockets, then snaked his arm back inside the access panel and worked on unbolting something hidden from view of either of them. "Well, the main flight control computer's fried, and I can't fix that. But it can be replaced." "Ah, okay. Do we have spares?" "Yup. Actually, could you go get one? Black box about the size of a hardcover book, part number TZ53279 dash v... should be in storage room 203, right over there." He gestured with his left arm at some of the reinforced doors around the perimeter of the hanger. "You're making that up," Aris commented. "2 rows left from the door, then 5 racks away from the wall the door's in. Should be on the 3rd shelf from the top." Aris looked even more incredulous and KillJoy chuckled slightly. "5 bucks says it's right there." Aris just shook her head and walked off towards the storage room to retrieve the control box. Astonishingly enough, it was exactly where she'd been told to look. Then again, he'd been able to find everything else around the place without asking. And of course there was the incredibly improbable matter of his finding the one access tunnel that had shifted towards the surface in the first place. None of this was made any better by the fact that records showed he'd never been to Blanca before. "Thank you," he said as she handed him the replacement module. There was one looking exactly like it, though dirtier, on the floor. "I told you," he commented with a faint smile as he started bolting the new part in place. "How do you do that?" "Hmm?" "Well, you knew where the control module was exactly, and that it was what was burned out. You knew your way around here perfectly, you know who Katze and I are... you found the access tunnel in and there's no possible way you could have known that." "You're right, I didn't." Aris looked at him sideways, as if trying to figure out if he was being sarcastic. He shrugged. "I just do these things." No one said anything for a moment. "What, that's it?" "Yup." "Haven't you wondered how you can do that?" Aris asked, exasperated. "Nope." As if sensing that elaboration was needed, he added, "I just do things, like I said. I don't think. Brain doesn't work that way... some of the TRES techs that did the standard psych evaluations said I'm probably not even sentient. I get by though, which really made them mad." There was an awkward pause at that because, really, how do you reply to that? The relative quiet made Aris notice something, a faint whistling that had been showing up every few seconds. "What's that sound?" "When I breathe?" KillJoy asked in response. Aris nodded. "I had a couple machinegun rounds hit me coming in here. One went through a lung." "Holy shit! And you're working on this and haven't bothered to patch yourself up first?" "It's just a hole, it'll close up in a day or so." He took his arm out of the access panel and set down the socket wrench before reaching back in to attach some wires. "Argh... just... what the..." KillJoy nodded to himself and stood up. "I'll go patch myself up now. The VTOL just needs the access panel and insulation put back." He started to walk off. "Hey, the medbay's not that way." Aris commented as she started putting the panel back on. "I know." He went out of view and a few moments later there was a distinctive sound of tape being peeled off of a roll. "Are you just using duct tape on yourself?" "Yep." DOWNTOWN DENVER, COLORADO 03/14/2004 2:32 PM Joseph Lacroix wandered through downtown Denver, trying to collect his thoughts. Since the news a few days before, he had attempted a few times to try and find some other former Jihaddi to get in touch with. There wasn't much luck in that, of course. His Linker was, he confirmed, quite dead from a few years of non-use, and a few phone numbers for old war buddies he'd kept in touch with had since fallen out of use as people moved across the country trying to find civilian life again. After a few days of effortless trying, Lacroix grew frustrated. He knew he wanted in on whatever was going down (despite the obligation to Skyview; he was going to have to figure out what to do about that if he *did* make contact with anyone), but there wasn't much luck happening at the moment. Rumour had it that one of the senior VRDET emeriti was running a high-tech firm somewhere in town. Lacroix was pretty sure it was Spiral Corporation, which had gone up like a rocket in the past four years or so, but he wasn't sure enough and didn't quite feel up to taking the chance of being wrong and written off as a mental case. So here he was, taking his usual Sunday walk through the downtown core. Lacroix did that every week anyway. It was a habit he'd built up since returning to civilian life, ending up as something of a weekly affirmation that he *could* be blatantly out in the open without anyone giving him a second glance. Anyone who *did* notice him would see the consistent and appropriately Mundane history given to him by one Jihad intelligence plant or another. So even if he *was* looking around now and then to see if he recognized anyone, he was taking comfort in the fact that he was anonymous. The walk had become part of his routine, a comforting reminder that the war was over. Too bad it seemed like one might have just started up. Lacroix was lost in thought as he kept walking, so he almost didn't notice the odd-looking man on the other side of the street. When he did, however, he pulled to a stop for a second to double-check. The man walking the other way across the street would stick out in most cases anyway, as he was both taller than usual and dressed almost entirely in black. That happened now and then anyway; there were only so many combinations of clothes people could wear. His walk, however, was... different. The man didn't walk so much as glide along the sidewalk, with an unusual, curious motion that wove him through the crowds with more grace than most people could muster. Lacroix had seen that stride before, in his other life. Maybe this guy was someone who would have a better idea of what's going on, Lacroix thought, as he changed direction and tried to catch up with the guy. It took a few minutes; the other man kept a quick pace, considering the other pedestrians didn't slow him down at all. Eventually, though, Lacroix caught up with him, coming up alongside his right side. The glove on his right hand seemed to confirm suspicions. "Excuse me, sir?" he asked. The man slowed a bit to let him catch up, but didn't stop. He sized up Lacroix with a pair of dark blue eyes. "Can I help you?" he asked, with a hint of a European accent Lacroix couldn't place. "...Captain Houben?" Lacroix ventured cautiously. This time the man *did* slow to a halt. "A veteran, mm?" he asked - rather lamely, Lacroix thought, before realizing that they *were* still in something of a crowd. Lacroix nodded. "Yeah; Ensign Joseph Lacroix, Alpha," he volunteered. Houben nodded more this time, finally having a face and name to tie together. "I was wondering if you'd heard." "Oh, you could say that," Houben said, nodding up the sidewalk to get them moving again. "Those of us who're still on the network have been chatting up a storm about it the past couple of days, but there's a whole lot of silence from some people who should be talking. I came to Denver on a hunch that I'd find *someone* in the know. Things seem more than a little confused as is." "That's what I was guessing, although it's not like they can just call us all back again," Lacroix said. "How many people are in the know so far?" "Aside from everyone who was watching CNN last Tuesday?" Houben asked. "I couldn't tell you. There's about a half-dozen of us who're actually in contact with each other so far, though." This time it was Lacroix's turn to stop in his tracks. "Half a dozen? You've kidding." At its height during Operation Phoenix, the Jihad fielded sixty thousand men, women and equivalents; by its dissolution five years ago, it still boasted a third of that total. Only a few of them took their Linkers with them, and most of *those* were almost certainly dead by now, since Mundanes couldn't quite reproduce the power cells yet, but even so... "I wish I was," Houben replied. "We've got a few senior folks, mostly VR, a couple guys with TRES connections, but that's about it. No Maenads in sight - except for, well, you know." "So just what are we gonna -" "Not here," Houben interrupted, "it's a bit public for that. Know anyplace out of the way?" "My apartment's a couple blocks from here," Lacroix said. He gestured in the right direction, and they started walking. 2:50 PM "I was starting to wonder if anyone was out there at all. I haven't been able to get in touch with anyone I worked closely with in TRES or VR, not that many of us kept much in the line of contact information." "Mm," Houben mmd. "For the most part the upper echelons sorta stayed in touch - even that's been drifting off, though - and most of the rank and file just went off to look for a home. Between that and folks not taking good enough care of their Linkers to make sure they were still working -" Lacroix winced a bit, and hoped the Zeta Squad alumnus sitting across the room from him didn't notice - "we were probably lucky to get as many people as we have so far. Oh, I'm sure thousands of us have heard about Owsen by now, but not many of the veterans are going to be in a position to do anything." "Right," Lacroix agreed. "Who has answered any pings so far, anyway?" "We're sort of lucky with VR," Houben said. "We managed to get a hold of most of the command staff, and so everyone's starting to gather back at Blanca. Other than that, not much. Myself, of course, and two or three others from TRES and VR. That's pretty much it." "Maenads?" "Not a one," Houben replied. "Merde," Lacroix said under his breath. "I suppose at least it isn't Windigo or Shardik who's out running amok. But still. That's all we got?" "That's what it looks like. It's still early yet; we'll probably find some more Jihaddi who haven't completely fallen off the map. Anyone we can get a hold of who we can also pull out of Mundane life will be needed to deal with this." "I want in," Lacroix said. Houben nodded approvingly as he went on. "It'll take a bit of doing to figure out what to do about my life here, though," he finished, gesturing around the living room. "Problem?" Houben said. Lacroix couldn't tell if it was annoyance at having any caveats about coming back to the Jihad, or genuine concern. "Well..." Lacroix said, casting about a bit for words. "I've taken years after being demobilized to build the life I've got going now. See, I've become a teacher. High school English, three classes this semester. We've all got responsibilities in our Mundane lives, yeah, but there's eighty-eight minds over at Skyview, most of whom are doing pretty damn well right now. This gives me a bit of a problem. See, the Jihad was a fight to try as much for the planet as the minds on it. I'm still in that second part right now..." "...And you're worried about blowing it for seven dozen people in case this turns out to 'just' be Owsen going stark raving nuts, and not B'harneii coming back by proxy," Houben finished. Lacroix nodded. "I've got a feeling it's not the first of those two," Houben continued. "You and I both know that Owsen shouldn't be here to go nuts in the first place. You've heard the stories, and Admiral Felton and the other Maenads witnessed it - Charn'El *took Owsen down* on Pacifica. The man's supposed to be dead, and yet here he is, somewhere in Nevada, raising hell. "What's worse was the fact that the last time Owsen was seen, Charn'El was in the room, putting a spell on him or striking him with his staff or something. If he's back now, it has 'Lyran' written all over it." Houben sighed. "And *that* means the war is probably back on." "Don't get me wrong," Lacroix said. "I'd had most of that in mind already. I'm just trying to figure out what to do about getting in contact with what's left of the Jihad without leaving my students hanging. I have responsibilities on both sides of this line, and my Mundane ones aren't worth dismissing totally out of hand." Lacroix was a bit surprised with himself at the fact that he was actually wavering on the issue. The kids in his classes had become *important* to his life, and in a way more meaningful than simply a paycheck like so many of the other teachers out there. _Whichever side of the line I'm on, I always seem to have a stake in the future,_ he mused to himself. "If they'll be okay, then you've got someone here." Houben thought for a moment. "You have a point there. I'll pass word; we should be able to do something, but either way the kids should be taken care of. If the guys can pull something off, are you in?" Lacroix pondered just a moment. "I'm in." BLANCA MOUNTAIN 03/15/2004 2:00 PM Aris was spending a lot of time eyeing Lt. KillJoy sideways. It wasn't that he minded staring, it was that she felt self-conscious about how much of it she was doing. He was big, for a human; that was one thing. And he was built. And his eyes were creepy as hell, which made her glad that he kept his goggles on almost all the time. But he was a wizard with machinery; he got the VTOL online in an afternoon. And then the autorepair. And then figured out how to boot up the nanofacs. Then he'd gone to attend his sucking chest wound and left Aris scratching her head. Now, a couple days later, Aris was watching the clock tick down on the calibration for the Gate and watching Lt. KillJoy out of the corner of her eye. He was standing, relaxed, in the middle of the stage, dressed in slightly rumpled TRES fatigues with all the required tagging sewed onto the shoulders. Aris had pulled a pair of dress khakis and a vest over her leotard, figuring that she wasn't going to spend much time in dragonform for a while. Bother. And it had felt good to have claws for such a long time. "Here we go," Katze said from her other side. Katze had teleported in at one o'clock, fresh from Berkeley. Aris looked down at the readout, the numbers rapidly spiraling down from ten seconds. Katze was grinning. "Cross your fingers." The seconds ticked down. Three... two... one... Bink! Aris held her breath until the green light came on. "Calibration successful. Gate fully operational." "HELL yes!" Aris crowed. "We got ourselves a GATE, boys and girls!" She flipped open her 'linker and sent a signal to Minerva. "Good news, Min: Blanca is back online!" "Great!" Minerva said. "I'm going to connect with the relays over there. Mal will meet you in a couple minutes, soon as I double-check everything." "Okay." Aris suddenly noticed her body complaining that it hadn't had anything to eat yet. And it was two in the afternoon. "Uh... actually, have Mal meet us up in the situation room? I need to grab something to eat, and that way we'll have all the data in front of us." "Sure, I'll tell him." Aris looked at Katze inquiringly. "Lunch? I'm paying." Katze snickered and gestured at the elevators grandly. Aris turned to look at KillJoy straight on. "Er... join us, Lieutenant?" "Sure." KillJoy shrugged, resembling a mountain rearranging itself. Aris nodded and wondered if they'd all manage to fit in the elevator. 2:15 PM Mal stepped through the Gate and back into Blanca for the first time in nearly five years. The first thing he noticed was the dust. Everything in the Gate room had a thin layer of greyish dust covering it. Apparently the automated maintenance systems either had failed since the closeout, or somebody - read: Mal - had forgotten to turn them on in the first place. Still, despite the shabby housekeeping, it felt good to be back home. Mal stepped off the portal entry stage to keep it clear for the next arrival, and surveyed the room. The dust was the only thing that seemed out of sorts with the room. Even if the housekeeping systems hadn't worked, there weren't any signs of water damage or structural problems. All the equipment had worked perfectly, and nothing seemed out of order, even after five years of inactivity. The only thing missing was the background hum of the Rangers going about their daily duties. Mal sighed. Some things changed and didn't change back. But there was no use in moping endlessly about the past, so Mal strode off towards the elevators in the rear of the Gate room, bound for the upper levels and the situation room. Katze had already shown up and was chatting amiably with Aris, who was nursing a Coke and a sandwich. Off to one side stood the biggest white guy Mal had ever seen, just sort of leaning against a console and doing his part to keep the wall upright. The two women looked up as Mal came through the door and waved him over to the long table in the center of the room. "Afternoon, ladies," said Mal as he walked around to the end of the table. "It's been a while." Aris gestured towards the wall-propper. "Mal, meet Lieutenant KillJoy, TRES Corps. He's been a big help in getting stuff running again." KillJoy nodded his head ever so slightly. "Sir," he said. Mal nodded back. "I hear you caused a bit of trouble in the old access tunnel." "Wasn't much, really." "Uh-huh. And how did you know to open it up right there, anyway?" "I didn't." Mal blinked. "You... didn't," he said, nonplussed. "Nope. Just did it." Aris shook her head. "Forget it, he's always like that." Mal gave both Aris and KillJoy odd looks, then shrugged and sat down. "Okay, so what's our status?" "The base is in good shape. The surface tunnel's pretty much shot to hell, but other than that all the major stuff is operational and powered up. The nanofacs are running on idle, so if we need gear that's all good." "Good, good... we'll have to seal off the tunnel a bit more permanently, but that shouldn't be too difficult. How about our externals?" Aris sighed. "That is a totally different story. Most of our orbital stuff is long gone; there's maybe two communications relays still working, everything else burned up years ago." "What about the ground sensor network?" "Don't know, haven't tried it yet. I've been a little -busy-, remember?" Aris added pointedly. "Hm. Let's see what's working at the moment." Mal typed a series of commands into the console in front of him. The view on the main screen changed as he did so, shifting from a global view to a close-up of the desert on the California-Nevada border. "Back when the Road was open, we had a whole bunch of sensors placed around it. It was an early-warning system; if somebody had tried to make a move through we could know about it and counterattack before they oriented themselves. Now, if the sensor net is still... aha!" Flashing red brackets appeared on the screen, just west of Las Vegas. "The detectors are pretty degraded, so that's as good as it gets, but," Mal said with some satisfaction, "that is our boy's entry point." "Great," said Katze dryly, "so how does that help us?" "The entry point isn't on the Babylon Road," replied Minerva. "Which means that the direct line between us and the Lyrans is still closed. Considering we're short on anti-Lyran defenses at the moment..." "Okay, I suppose that qualifies as a good thing, then." Mal shrugged. "Any good news is still good news, no matter how small," he said. "So, how are we doing for personnel?" Aris shrugged. "Well... once we had the network up I started pinging as many Linkers as I could. So far I've gotten about two thousand positives. Of those, half are coming from inside the old bases - I figure people just dumped them in their quarters and forgot they were still running or something. Anyway, out of all the folks who still have their Linkers, so far the only ones who've responded to the ping are, well, us." "We're not quite that bad off," said Minerva. "Shadur's out there, remember. And we managed to get a hold of Dee Greist and Damocles. And Shad said he'd run into another Ranger, so that's four more. And I'm sure we can scare up a few more people before too long." Mal nodded. "Okay, so we're dangerously short on personnel, but we've picked up some of the better ones. And at this point, we don't have to crack out the droid soldiers or anything," he added with a faint grin. "It's just Owsen we have to deal with, not a full-fledged invasion force." Aris snorted. "'Just' Owsen, he says. Yeah, right." They deliberated long into the afternoon, setting up a vague schedule for getting the rest of their wayward band together and up to operational speed. Katze told the group she had prior engagements waiting for her "back in the Old Country" on the 21st. Some of the others were stuck in mundane holding patterns until the weekend - the situation, while critical, wasn't bad enough to justify abandoning their lives just yet - so by general consensus, the five Jihaddi agreed to hold the first all-hands meeting at Blanca on the upcoming Saturday. In the meantime, Aris would stay inside the base and keep trying to get hold of any active Linkers that showed on the network. KillJoy volunteered - or at least he shrugged and grunted noncommittally - to stay with Aris and help get the rest of the base operational again. Mal and Minerva had their corporation to run, but promised to keep in regular touch until the meeting could be arranged. When they finally broke for dinner, the group had come up with the first faint glimmerings of a plan of attack. What happened next would be dealt with at the meeting on Saturday. TAYLOR, MICHIGAN 03/15/2004 8:00 PM The man who the Jihad knew as Ozzy the Feral strolled down through the hall of his office building with a song in his heart. After retiring from the Jihad six years before, Ozzy had been at something of a loose end for a while; retiring from the ultimate battle of good versus evil to a mundane life took some getting used to, but he'd adapted. Putting his experiences to good use, Ozzy had signed on as a freelance writer of role-playing games. His star took him to the top of that (admittedly niche) market, and now Oswald Feralson (The alias he'd decided was appropriate after much deliberation.) was the top writer for Palladium Books, churning out book after book to the acclaim of powergamers the world over. Life was good for Ozzy the Feral, yes indeed. As he stepped out of the side door to the building on his way to the parking lot, Ozzy heard a familiar voice call out "Hello, goodbye, hello, goodbye!" Ozzy turned, and his brain had just enough time to register Tilden Owsen's grin, a flickering shadow, and the feel of something touching his neck before his consciousness switched off forever. DENVER, COLORADO 03/16/2004 12:00 AM *click* "Yeah?" "We've got another one, Boss. Guy in Michigan got his head chopped off coming out of work. The police IDed the guy, and it looks like it was Ozzy." "... Allright. I'll grab somebody in the morning and go check it out. Thanks for letting me know, Min." "No problem, Boss. Pleasant dreams." "Tell me about a decapitation and then tell me 'pleasant dreams.' Cute. Goodnight, Min." "Night, Boss." *click* TAYLOR, MICHIGAN 03/16/2004 7:00 AM "I really, really hate this," grumbled Aris as she adjusted her clothes. "This cheap government-issue polyester itches." "Oh relax," said Mal as he straightened his tie and adjusted his Ray-Bans. "We're going to do this nice and quick, check the scene out and see if Owsen left any clues behind." "I still really, really hate this." "Hush." As they approached the crime scene, they were stopped by a uniformed cop guarding the area. "I'm sorry folks, police only," he said, holding out a hand. Mal took off his sunglasses, locked eyes with the cop and held up a blank square of paper. "Special Agent Charles, FBI, this is Agent Taylor. Our {number/date/official/see numbers} ID. We're {trustworthy/a little strange/to be expected} here to investigate the crime scene as we think there might be a connection to terrorism involved. {recent memory/old Tom Clancy novels/happy to be a little scared} It's probably nothing, but you know how the bosses can be {affable/understanding} sometimes. We'll just be a few minutes {appropriate} and be on our way {confidential/tell nobody}." The cop blinked a couple of times, then smiled. "Of course, happy to help out the feds," he said, stepping aside. "Most everything's already been carted away, but it hasn't been cleaned yet. You just yell if you need anything." Mal assured the officer that they would call for assistance if need be, and then the two "FBI agents" entered the taped-off crime scene. "What the hell was that you used on the cop?" Aris asked. Mal smiled slightly. "Old Injun trick." The scene of Ozzy the Feral's demise was like much any other crime scene anywhere else in the country. The area was blocked off with the traditional yellow tape, and the spots where the bisected Maenad had fallen were also taped off. Like the cop had said, the evidence - consisting mainly of Ozzy's corpse - had already been removed, but there were still plenty of bloodstains scattered about the area. Mal dropped down and examined the bloodstain on the pavement. He pulled a small sampling device out of his jacket pocket and used it to scrape up a bit of dried blood. "Here we go, this should take care of the ID," he said. Aris, meanwhile, examined the cut in the wall where Owsen's sword had glanced off. "Guy's got a hell of a backhand," she noted. "Mm," agreed Mal. The sampler pinged softly. Mal picked it up and hooked it to his JihadLinker. "Let's see, got enough DNA for a match, and... yep, it's Ozzy all right. Or was, anyway." "So, what now? Do we go and check out the body?" "No, that might cause more problems than it's worth, especially if the -real- Feds take an interest. Let's case this for another minute or two, then we'll head back and get some actual breakfast, deal?" "Deal." That settled, the two checked out the general area of the crime scene. Mal surveyed the cut Aris had been looking at earlier, when he noticed something stuck inside the furrow. It was a tiny matte-black sliver of metal that had gone unnoticed in the initial investigation. Mal got out a pair of tweezers, carefully pulled out the sliver, and deposited it in a sample tube. He whistled and waved Aris over. "Got something?" Aris asked. "Yeah, I think I got a chunk of Owsen's sword. Let's get this back to the lab and us to a Denny's or something." "Denny's" turned out to be Chicago deep-dish pizza picked up in person between a stop in the Blanca R&D lab and crashing in the situation room. Minerva joined them as they waited, stealing a slice of pizza every few minutes and looking into the middle distance while she chewed and monitored the analysis simultaneously. Aris attempted to ask Mal about what Spiral was doing, but got lost halfway through the first answer and asked about recent politics instead. "Wait a minute. So you're saying they found out who was behind the attacks, got a good idea of where they were based, then gave up after trashing the place and invaded Iraq? Why?" "Many reasons," Mal said dryly, which was his standard setting, "most of them having nothing to do with terrorism or the attacks on the World Trade Center. The biggest reason was because they *could*." "Auuuuugh," Aris gurgled, head in hands. After a few seconds, she looked up again. "Anything good happen? Did the Giants win the World Series?" "They lost in Game Seven to the Anaheim Angels," Minerva said without looking. "Never mind." "I'm getting some results," Minerva said. The status board flickered, changed to show an enhanced image of the sliver, overlaid in several different colors. "It definitely isn't Owsenite any more." "But it was?" Aris asked. "As far as I can tell, it used to be. But these stress responses are all wrong. And here," a section of the view was enlarged, to show a piece of the sliver riddled with holes like a particularly choice mafia informer, "See these? They've got residue from a lot of magic being poured through them. So much, in fact, that there's no particular signature, just noise. But this extends enough that it looks like the entire blade must have been bathed in it." Mal looked completely unperturbed at this perturbation. He turned to Aris and raised an eyebrow. "Theories?" Aris shrugged. "Some enterprising Lyran picked it up and tried to destroy it, causing it to... do whatever it did?" "Possible." Mal looked back at the screen and frowned. "That is possible. It could be a remnant of a growth medium, also." "Bwah?" "Well, the Slayer we have - had - wasn't growing very fast at all; a small fraction of an inch every month at most. If Owsen's Slayer was regenerating at the same rate, an enterprising Lyran would have had to try and force-grow it back into an actual weapon." "Huh." Aris shrugged again. "I guess we'll have to ask Owsen when we catch up to him." CHICAGO, ILLINOIS 03/18/2004 1:00 AM J. FoxGlov grunted as he slammed up against the brick wall. Battered and bleeding, the former Jihaddi had been surprised when he was jumped by a kilted madman, and even more surprised that, despite all of J's parahuman abilities, the kilted madman was -winning-. Attempting to get on the offensive, J pulled his strength together and let fly a barrage of lightning from his fingers. His opponent parried the lightning easily, almost languidly, his sword absorbing what he didn't dodge outright. The flashes lit up the kilted figure's face, and J was stunned to see Tilden Owsen's features, twisted in mockery, on his attacker's face. "Owsen!?" J said. "The HELL!? Where, how, why..?" "Why?" Owsen said. "They always ask that question... Does it really -matter- why? Because I was -bored-. Because you left me to ROT on that stinking island so many years ago. Because a great dark voice on the edge of nothing spoke to me and said you all have to die." Owsen lunged forward like a cobra, driving the point of his blade through J's throat. "THERE IS NO WHY!" SPIRAL BUILDING 03/19/2004 9:00 AM "Sir, I'm sorry," the receptionist repeated for what felt like the hundredth time that morning, "but you can't see Dr. Fnord. He's cancelled all appointments and requested that visitors be turned away. Now," she added flatly, "if you don't leave, I'll have to call security." Jim Yearnshaw looked over the receptionist and quietly collected the admiral's rank pin he'd set on her desk as his "invitation." He concentrated, tapping his cane on the hard stone floor of the lobby for effect as he worked his magic on the wires and chips inside the phone. The hard SMACK of the cane hitting granite blended nicely with the loud BANG coming from the receptionist's phone. Distracted by the noise and the smoke, the receptionist turned away from Yearnshaw, who smoothly slipped around the reception desk and towards the bank of elevators at the back of the lobby. A moment later, the receptionist realized her visitor had given her the slip, and she called out behind him. A moment after -that-, the on-duty security attachment, attracted by the smoke and noise, moved to intercept. Just as the first security officer managed to touch Yearnshaw's elbow, and that worthy was preparing to send Spiral's insurance premiums skyrocketing, the last elevator door opened to reveal Jonathan Fnord, stepping out calmly as if altercations happened in the company lobby every other day. "Sir!" the receptionist called, sprinting up behind Yearnshaw and his security escort. "I'm very sorry sir, my phone... I don't know what happened, but I'll have Security escort him out." Fnord shook his head. "That's okay, Janet," he said reassuringly, waving the guards back, "no need to do that. This won't take long." Fnord gestured towards the still open elevator. "Shall we?" Yearnshaw was silent through the ride up to Fnord's office. Reaching the office, he dropped into a chair and stretched out. "So, what's up, Doc?" Mal smiled thinly. "Jim," he said. "It's been a while. I haven't seen you since the stand-down conference." Mal's eyes flicked for an instant to Yearnshaw's cane, the question obvious in his eyes. Yearnshaw's face remained carefully neutral. "Well," he replied, ignoring the questioning look, "some mutual friends of ours wanted me to get hold of you. Seems," and here he chuckled slightly, "you haven't been checking your voicemail." Mal blinked, surprised more at the nature of the messenger than the message. "I had wondered who they'd send after me," he mused. "Why -you-, though? You never had any special loyalty to the Five or the Project. As I recall, you wished a plague on all our houses and vanished into thin air. Quite vocally and with the appropriate special effects, to boot." "I hope you liked the toads," Yearnshaw said with a sardonic grin. "Designed 'em just for you." Mal gave his guest the same thin smile. "They were a nice touch." Yearnshaw shrugged. "Why they picked me? You'd probably know that better than me. We did manage to reach an agreement, though. Goods for services, that kind of thing. Now," he said, leaning forward, "You have something I can tell them?" The former Jihaddi turned Illuminatus turned Jihaddi again looked at his erstwhile comrade for a minute, weighing all the options before mentally shrugging and saying "Our old friend Owsen's back... somehow, and he's been causing some trouble." Yearnshaw nodded. "Yeah, I watch the news too. That's it?" "No, that's not it. He's carrying around a Lyran artifact - or a very good knockoff of one - and he's already killed two Maenads with it, as far as we know." Mal sighed. "I've been looking into it. If this was just Owsen behaving loopy, I'd have passed it on up to the Five and to hell with him; this project-" Mal gestured at the office "-is more important to the Project than one supernatural nutbar. But... I have a feeling that the War may have just restarted." Yearnshaw raised an eyebrow. "Offing Maenads, huh? Well, let's just get up as quick as we can and stop him, then." "This could run deeper than that. Either way, that should be enough to let your make your report and get the Five off your back." "Yeah. I'll keep in touch." And with that, Yearnshaw stood and made his way out of the office. Mal watched him go, then leaned back in his chair with an explosive sigh. Why do these things keep getting more and more goddamn complicated? BLANCA MOUNTAIN 03/20/2004 3:28 PM /This is almost everyone,/ Minerva told Malaclypse as Damocles and Deidre Greist walked into the conference room. /Houben and Lacroix are coming through the gate now./ /And then there were nine,/ Mal replied, more to himself than anything. /Wonderful! We'll have ourselves a little fellowship! Send them up here as soon as they're through, of course./ /Right, Boss,/ Mal made sure not to let his emotions show as he surveyed the group. The Jihaddi present came from most walks of the organization. Some members of the senior staff were present; Katze and Damocles were VRDET Directors, Merquoni a commander and former member of the Triumverate Council (with another member en route to the room at that moment), and of course Mal himself. Some of the Jihad's newer blood was present as well, with KillJoy, Delgado and Greist present, and another VRDET junior officer coming up with Shad. A nicely varied mix of ranks and talents, to be sure. Too bad there weren't a few orders of magnitude more of them. At that moment, the door to the conference room opened, and the last two members of the meeting walked in. Houben simply nodded at those he knew and beelined for a seat as Lacroix double-took, realizing how many members of the Brass were present and snapping to attention. "You might want to use less starch," Mal said dryly as Katze chuckled and waved him to a seat, "the uniforms are all in storage. Besides, we're a bit few for hierarchy right now." Lacroix nodded, endeavoured to look a little less pollaxed, and took a seat next to Captain Delgado. "Now that we're all here," Mal said with a hint of a rolled eye, "we might as well get started. Min?" Minerva set into a summary of what had been up for the past week and a half, giving a report that involved a lot of speaking without saying much. Suffice to say, everyone was pretty sure Owsen was alive and acting even odder than he traditionally did. Most of Minerva's information was piecing together confused news reports and theorizing. At last she came to the pictures Dee had taken, displaying them on the conference room's main viewer. "I'm kind of curious about the sword," Lacroix said after a moment. "It looks almost like a copy of the Slayer, but I know that thing isn't it. Any ideas?" "There's, um, a few," Katze said after a moment of uncomfortable silence. Lacroix looked at her questioningly and found her looking another question at Mal. After a moment, he nodded and straightened in his seat. "Our best guess," he began, "is that Owsen's weapon *is* the Slayer - or at least is derived from it. This probably goes back to the Pacifica operation, where the Maenads battled Charn'El. When Charn'El struck Owsen down, he also snapped the Slayer in two." Mal ploughed through the choking sounds from Damocles, Dee and Lacroix. "We recovered two feet of the blade, which are in Pupp's care at, uh, wherever he is right now. The section we recovered has been slowly regenerating since it was broken, and we've assumed the other section is doing the same. "Unfortunately, the hilt and the bottom foot of the blade vanished with Charn'El. Even crippled, we can't even guess at his power; he could probably have rebuilt the Slayer in a matter of months if he escaped. And, well," Mal sighed, "we were never sure if Owsen *died* at Pacifica. Now we are. "Owsen might have gotten the Slayer on his own, wherever he was sent to when Charn'El was exiled, but he also might not have. All we know for sure is that he's here and has a weapon that looks to be made from what the Slayer's hilt. I've got some guesses as to what's going on, but they're only guesses." After a few moments of silence, Damocles straightened in his seat. "Just who was in the know on this? I know *I* wasn't. When did you plan on telling -" "The Triumverate and the Maenads knew," Mal interrupted, "as did a few of the command staff present at Pacifica, and select members of the Admiralty." "So what you're telling me is that the War came to an end with the ultimate weapon broken, with the other half *not* lodged in B'harne's chest? What the fuck?" "What would you have us do?" Mal shot back. "Drop a secret that would send the entire goddamned Jihad's morale into the pit by telling them the one sure way to win the War was gone?" "I'd at least let the senior JAO staff know!" Damo responded. "Obviously we have to keep some things from the rank and file, but -" "And just as obviously, some things have to be kept from even the brass," Mal replied. "Security was a *sieve* back then. We'd lost forty percent of our manpower, another ten or twenty was messed up in one way or another, and we couldn't predict where a Jihaddi would be in six weeks, much less a few years down the road." "He's right," Captain Delgado spoke up quietly. "Things were too chaotic to be sure who we could trust that kind of information with. Keeping it to the Maenads, who have most of the Lyran-related experience, and the Triumverate makes sense. I only found out last week myself." Damocles glanced at Delgado and then glared at Mal a moment, obviously wanting to continue the argument, before letting out a sigh, nodding, and settling back in his seat. "What are our resources, sir?" Lacroix asked, desperately trying to wrench the subject back onto something practical. A few of those present shot him a grateful look. "Welllll..." Mal said, before waving vaguely about the room. "There's us, for starters. As well, the resources of VRDET HQ are at our disposal; the nanofacs should be up and running by now. We've got a couple of other contacts as well - a Dobe intel guy is on his way in, and we're trying to get a hold of Felton." "There's no one else?" Katze asked. "It doesn't seem that way," Minerva interjected. "Obviously we weren't the only people who put two and two together - anyone who made it into the Jihad isn't going to be that blind about the rest of the world. So yes, there are others, but for one reason or another we can't get in touch with them. I would guess there are somewhere between a few hundred and a few thousand Jihaddi out there, trying to figure out what's going on with their own devices, but who can't get in touch with anyone else. In short, we've got to assume that we're it." "So," Captain Houben said, "let me see if I can get this right. Right now, we've gotten a hold of maybe one Jihaddi in a thousand, our resources are all but gone, and one of the most powerful Jihaddi to exist has gone rogue. I suppose it's not all that bad, then - I was worried things were starting to spiral out of control." "The situation is already out of control," Malaclypse said, his "cut the joking" tone restrained yet obvious. He paused a moment to let the sentence sink in. "Owsen is out there somewhere," he continued. "He's killing every Maenad he can find, and we don't know why. Let that sink in, boys and girls - he's *hunting* *Maenads* like game, and taken out at least two that we know of so far. He's either gone rogue, or someone else -" he let the implication hang in the air without pausing, somehow - "has been giving him both power and resources. B'harne and the Lyrans have been gone for five years, but this has either or both of those groups written all over it." Mal almost sighed. "I hate stabs in the dark and wild guesses, but I've got to assume that Owsen is working for the Enemy, either directly or indirectly. Whatever's going on, he's a threat to all of us right now." "Well," Dee said. "That's all. For a moment I thought we were in trouble." Mal looked at Dee, seeming unsure whether to smile or glare at her and settling on an ostentatiously expressionless expression. Dee smirked nervously. "So," Houben added, trying to match Dee's tone of voice, "what do you expect us to do about it?" "It's simple, really," Malaclypse replied. "We'll just have to do what we do best. We'll track him down, figure out what he or his patrons want, and then..." he trailed off. "And then...?" Katze prompted. The answer was obvious to everyone. But it was *still* *Lord Tilden Owsen* they were talking about. It was *still* a man who was a living legend to all but a few of the Jihaddi since the Hidden War started. Every time in the past where Jihaddi turned on Jihaddi, both sides were perverted by B'harnate or Lyran influence. This time, Owsen seemed a tool - but the men and women crowded into Mal's office had total control of their own perceptions right now. Mal nodded to Katze, confirming what they all knew to be the answer. "And then," he said softly. KALLISPEL, MONTANA RIGHT THAT SECOND... Owsen looked up from his chess game with Ferg the Feral and blinked. "My ears are burning," he announced. "Somebody must be talking about me somewhere. Something wicked this way comes, perhaps?" he added with a sly grin. Ferg didn't answer. Owsen shrugged. "Ah well, I suppose I should be happy that people remember me. Being away like I was for so long, well... it's nice to know I still make an impression in people's lives." Again, Ferg remained silent. Owsen leaned forward over the chessboard. "You know," he said with sudden intensity, "I've really enjoyed our time together, I really have. We never did talk much back in the old days; I was too busy and you, well, frankly I thought you were a bit of a prat. But absence does indeed appear to make the heart grow fonder. All of the others didn't want to converse, but -you-! Oh, you have been so helpful in getting this confused old man up to date with the rest of the world. For that," Owsen continued, rising to his feet and sketching an elaborate bow, "I thank you." Ferg continued his impassive silence. Owsen cocked his head suddenly, as if hearing a distant sound. "Hm," he mused. "It appears I have overstayed my welcome in this town. I do so apologize for having to run, but duty calls!" He leaned over the chessboard and moved his queen off to the side slightly. "Checkmate." Ferg didn't say anything as Owsen gathered up his guns and sword and ducked out a side door. It would have been difficult for him to say something, after all, with his head sitting upright in his lap, eyes still looking quizzically towards the edge of his dining room table. BLANCA MOUNTAIN 4:06 PM The meeting continued well into the afternoon, as a mix of tentative briefings and less-tentative speculation became the order of the day. The analysis of Owsen's sword seemed to settle it for most people that something Lyran was involved, but what specifically was more up for grabs, as was what to do about it. "Even if Owsen's the only enemy we've got on the planet right now," Lacroix said, still sounding slightly hesitant to call his former commander a foe, "He's still an enemy here on behalf of the *Lyrans* of all people. I know this is everyone we could get together in a couple of weeks so far, but why do we have to stop now? Shouldn't we go all-out trying to track people down and try to reform the *whole* organization?" There was murmured agreement, but Mal shook his head. "If we could do so easily, I'd be for it. However, a lot of us, especially the senior staff, simply don't want to be noticed by the general public." "Right, Mister CEO," Minerva chirped. "Hush, you," Mal responded. "The fact is, a lot of the officer corps is probably hidden well enough that we'd have an easier time finding Owsen. To make our time worth it, we'd have to get a good fraction of the whole organization, and I can't think of a way we can *quickly* do that which doesn't involve making the Jihad public. We don't want that. Unless anyone else can think of a way to get more of us in here...?" The question was asked with genuine concern. Those present in the room glanced at one another and slowly shook their heads. "There's another factor," Mal continued. "Owsen may not know - and if he doesn't, the Lyrans certainly don't - that the Jihad has been disbanded. This could be a scouting mission as much as an actual invasion. If their scout - powerful as he is - is sent to Earth only to go silent after a few weeks, they just might assume that we're still a going concern and stay away longer. "What this *does* show us is that the Lyrans want to come back, and that we can't dismiss them like we did back in 1999. However, unless they actually do arrive in force again, we have to push them onto a backburner for awhile. Owsen is here, *now*, killing off some of the best among us. We have to deal with *him* first, and then worry about what to do next." "So we've got to try to track down Owsen," Houben said, speaking into the silence. "How do we go about doing that? The man's hit Maenads in Texas and Michigan in a single 24-hour period. If he can hit two guys in opposite sides of the country in two days -" "That we know of," Minerva interrupted. Houben Looked, rather than merely looked, at her as she continued. "The United States is not the smallest and most-organized country out there, and a lot of things can slip through the cracks. We know these two for sure, but..." "Owsen hasn't been subtle so far," Aris noted. "These aren't drive-by shootings or whatever. Both Slider and Ozzy were obviously done in with a sword, and that sort of thing catches more notice than other types of murder here for some reason. Between stuff like a slice being taken out of the wall where Ozzy died, and the scorch marks on Slider's body, even the feds wouldn't think these were everyday things." "You're right, I think," Mal replied, "which is why we're going to be focusing on that so far. We can't predict where he'll be yet. All we can do is wait for the next hit and see what we can learn from it. Aris and I have already taken a look at Ozzy's scene in Taylor; Slider's was cleaned up by the time we got there. We'll have to get ready for the next ones and see what we can do from there, which means some of us will have to spend some time impersonating the Feds. See if we can get a look close up at some of the scenes, catch things they wouldn't know to look for." "Who's going to be doing that?" Lacroix asked. "Why, Joseph! Thank you for volunteering!" Mal said brightly. Houben feigned stifling a yawn to hide his half-grin, something Aris didn't even bother to do. "You can help Mr. Houben and Ms. Merquoni see what they can see!" Lacroix snorted as his two co-conscripts groaned. With that assignment, the last major item of the meeting was out of the way. As meetings are wont to do, however, this one kept going a little longer, with assorted administrivia and some generic catching-up. When the Jihaddi realized they had little else to cover with what they had at their disposal, they decided to call it quits for the day. With a reminder to keep their Linkers handy ("And *charged*," Houben grumbled at all present), the fellowship dispersed. 6:19 PM "All right," Aris said, plopping down behind her computer at her desk. Lacroix perched on a chair some distance away, and Shad leaned over her shoulder to watch her type. "Obviously, it would be a lot nicer if we could find people before Owsen does, and failing that if we could find them before the local law enforcement does. Our best resources are the Gate, of course, and a four-year-old listing of where all the Maenads were going at the time of The Big Shutdown." She sighed. "So far, we have Ozzy and Slider confirmed dead, Slider in Austin, Ozzy in Michigan. Taylor, Michigan. I... should really be doing useful things with this computer." "Let me," Rens suggested helpfully. Aris poked him in the ribs, then brought up a map of North America, scattered the last known Maenad locations on it in yellow blips, red blips for Slider and Ozzy, ran a line between the cities and drew a big circle with that radius around Ozzy's death point. "That," she said when she was done, "Is how far Owsen got in three days." She looked up at Lacroix. "Can you see from over there?" Lacroix sheepishly dragged his chair closer, and Aris adjusted the screen. The three of them stared glumly at the picture. "And this is assuming that he can't teleport or whatever," Lacroix added, which just made the situation more depressing." "Aris?" Minerva's voice came over the speaker on her computer, causing everyone to jump. "Yeah, Min?" Aris asked when she'd regained her balance. "More news. You're going to want to see this." The police report popped up on top of the map. "J-Fox is dead." CHICAGO, ILLINOIS 3/21/2004 8:30 AM "....Really, really -" "I expect you'll live," Houben said, interrupting Aris' tirade against the evils of Suit wear. "Besides," he added brightly, "it looks good on you." "I didn't ask your opinion," Aris groused. "I can't understand why you two aren't complaining about these things." "We've all been voluntold to go along with this," Lacroix said, "so let's just get it over with and see what we can find. So, who's taking the lead here?" he asked, looking at his fellow Jihaddi. "You're the American," Houben said don't-pick-meingly. Lacroix looked over at Aris. "You're the Terran," she said, in a similar tone. Lacroix threw up his hands. "Rank hath its privileges, indeed," Lacroix sighed under his breath. "Okay, let's do it." The three took a moment to straighten their gear and airs of authourity, and strode around the street corner towards the scene of Foxglov's death. To Lacroix's mild surprise, there were still a couple of police officers around the scene despite the murder happening on the eighteenth. Swallowing any surprise and not a little nervousness, he walked up to the ranking officer, Houben and Aris flanking him. The police officer looked torn between dismissal of, and intimidation by, the three people approaching. Lacroix pulled some excellently-forged identification and documents from inside his jacket, presenting them to the cop just as he was opening his mouth. "Good morning, officer," Lacroix said, barging on into his shtick, "I'm Special Agent Quinn, FBI. These are my associates, Agent Mackenzie -" a gesture to Aris - "and Agent Black. We're here to take a look at the crime scene." "Uhh," the cop uhhd, "you're more than welcome to do so, but we've already gone over the alley with a fine-toothed comb. Anything you need to look at, we already have covered top to bottom." "I think I will be the judge of that, son," Lacroix said, carefully failing to note the fact that the cop had at least ten years on him. He tossed a couple pages he had produced from his pocket at the cop, who caught and began looking at them right when he was about to get flustered. "There's something going on here the Bureau wants to take a very close look at, and we need to see in person. Now, if you'll excuse us..." Not waiting to see if he'd be excused or not, Lacroix walked around and past the police officer and into the alley where Hanover the Feral, a.k.a. Admiral Foxglov, TRES Alpha, had died. "Smooth," Houben muttered as they began looking over the alleyway, the two cops watching them from the sidewalk. "Mal's was cooler," Aris said, taking a sample of the dried blood from the ground to test as Lacroix and Houben looked around further. "Speaking of people who lack subtlety," Lacroix said, pointing at the wall above Aris. A gash - more of a pit, actually - was dug into the brick wall, between two of the bricks in a way that it wouldn't be noticeable to most. "Guy seems to hate walls too," Aris mused, confirming Foxglov's DNA in her sampler. "Here's something else," Houben said. Lacroix and Aris turned to where he was pointing vaguely at the walls of the alley, and a dumpster down one end. Scattered scorch marks played up and down the walls further down the alley, A section of the dumpster was hit by whatever caused the marks, too - it was actually welded shut at two points along the closed lid. Lacroix paced down the alley slowly, running a finger along one of the scorched patterns (and, as an afterthought, taking a small sample, just in case) before coming to a stop at the dumpster. Two inch-wide spots were molten shut along the side of the lid, with fainter patterns along the side where the paint had bubbled or burned. Lacroix looked at the scorched dumpster for a long moment and sighed. "At least he went down fighting," he said. "I think Owsen must have deflected something big from the admiral. The place he would have been standing is the only part of the alley without *some* damage." "Well, we've figured out that he can deflect something like Hanover's lightning," Aris said, "but almost every mage or TK in the Jihad could do that to an extent. There's no more slivers of the sword in the wall - at least that I can see, that hole's a foot deep - though. I'm not sure if we've really found anything new here." "We've found one thing," Lacroix said bitterly. "We've found that Admiral Foxglov is dead for sure." Aris nodded, looking a little pollaxed herself. Houben looked at Lacroix for a moment before it registered. "You were - you served under the admiral while in TRES, didn't you?" Lacroix nodded. "Calisse," he said under his breath, as he began walking out of the alley, the other two Jihaddi following. He only just remembered to slip back into FBI mode long enough to get his papers back from the cop and stress the confidentiality of the federal part of the investigation. If Agent Quinn seemed more aggravated coming out of the alley than he did going in, the police officer didn't even bother to ask why. 8:50 AM They found J's body in the morgue, nicely toetagged for identification. Aris pulled out the drawer and pulled down the sheet. "Well," Shad said a moment later, "I'm no specialist, but my guess is single sword thrust to the throat." "Mmm," Aris agreed, slightly green around the gills. Lacroix frowned. "I'm no expert, but wasn't Admiral Foxglov... well, a fox?" "Yeah, some sort of kitsune," Aris agreed. "But if he was in human form when he died, I guess he stayed this way." Lacroix had the camera out, one that Minerva and Dee had both assured him would record in as many spectra as they had use for. He took a couple wide shots and three of the throat wound from different angles. As he looked for more nicks to photograph, Aris poked around the stab wound magically to see if she could find any more traces of the sword. "Well, it either didn't shed any more pieces, or the cops picked everything out," she said when she didn't find anything. "Speaking of the cops, we should probably get out of here," Shad said. Lacroix pocketed the camera, Aris replaced the corpse, and the three investigators hightailed it back to Blanca before anyone noticed they were there. BLANCA MOUNTAIN 9:40 AM "I couldn't find anything in the soot you collected," Minerva told Lacroix over the intercom as the once-and-now-again Jihaddi collapsed into a convenient chair with a sigh. "It's just scorched brick." Lacroix nodded. "It might not have been, though," Minerva continued on, not quite taking the hint. "It was worth a shot." "Yeah," Lacroix said noncommittally. "I should start getting my stuff together, anyway; I still have my civilian life to deal with on Monday. Could you get the Gate up at noon?" "Sure thing," Min replied, closing the channel. At that moment, Aris came into the room, back in her usual attire (Lacroix remained in the suit, as one of the few Jihaddi who didn't despise them; Katze had considered recording Lacroix saying that as proof that such a Jihaddi could exist.) and obviously still in a foul mood. Lacroix began to rise to his feet, both to greet someone who was still, nominally, his superior, and to save a second or two getting to the door if she didn't want company. Houben came in a few moments later, as Aris sat at one of the workstations, pulling up the map the three had consulted the previous evening. Aris simply stared at the map for a few seconds before deleting J. Foxglov's old location in Raleigh and adding a new red dot and date next to Chicago. "Shit," she said. "I mean, shit. We have to take this bastard down." "Like there wasn't any incentive before?" Shad said. "This is personal." Aris shook her head. "Okay, I didn't really know Slider. And I met Ozzy once or twice when I was in TRES--" "You were in TRES? Wait. You were in TRES. I keep forgetting." Shad shook his head. "Sorry. Go on." Aris gave him a look before continuing. "Anyway, Ozzy never made much of a good impression on me. Neither did DeadLock, for that matter. J-Fox was the only guy who really made me feel at home there. And now this asshole's gone and killed him. I am not happy." "You and I both," Lacroix grumped. "The admiral was my CO through my entire time in the Corps." "You're at least a homo sapiens," Aris said, still glaring into the monitor. "Didn't have to worry about people like Admiral Bond or - JFox managed to keep that shit down, at least." (Lacroix shot a question at Houben, who winced at the mention of Admiral Bond, but mouthed "I'll tell you later" at him.) "And now Owsen decides to go traitor and - argh!" Aris suddenly came to her feet, causing both Lacroix and Houben to jump slightly. "I know," Lacroix said. "We need to figure out what to do about this. I know *I* just felt a little more personal incentive slip into all this." He shook his head. "I think this crime scene stuff just became a lot more voluntary. I want to find this guy and - well, we'll figure that part out when we get there. I think I want a piece of this, though." "I called dibs, so you can just wait your turn," Aris said curtly, though it was obvious she had cooled at least a little from earlier. Lacroix found himself wishing his own fuse burned that quickly. "Oh, of course - rank hath its privileges," Lacroix said. "Let's get what we learned this morning together, anyway, and then we can see what has to be done next." "If you're serious, we should probably figure out some way to get you unshackled from your day job," Houben cut in, speaking to Lacroix. "Owsen doesn't strike me as the type to stick to evenings and weekends." "Augh, yeah," Lacroix muttered. He knew about his obligations to Skyview, but with the past day his priorities were getting rattled. "I'll see if I can figure out something inconspicuous, and if not I'll talk to you guys about any better ideas." He sighed. "Just one more thing on the plate." SOMEWHERE IN KANSAS WALKING ALONG I-70 HEADING EAST 03/23/2004 12:00 AM Owsen strolled along the edge of the highway, whistling a happy tune. Traffic this time of night was nonexistent, and Owsen was making the most of the isolation. His mission had taken him on some unexpected turns, but it wasn't anything he couldn't handle. For the moment, there was just him and the road, and that was more than enough. He finally knew where his next target was, and that he'd be stationary for a bit longer. Then all of a sudden, Owsen was joined by another presence. OWSEN. The voice echoed hollowly in Owsen's skull. OWSEN. ATTEND. Owsen immediately dropped to one knee, bowing his head. "Great One! You honor me with your presence!" THE HUNT? "It goes well, Great One. I have already eliminated a number of the Ferals. The eldest and her mate still elude me, though. No matter; her time will come, now or during the Scourge." INDEED. AND THE SWORD? "I do not know as yet, Great One. None of the prey have given me any hints as to where the Jihaddi hid it." YOUR HUNT TAKES UP MORE TIME THAN YOU WOULD LET ME KNOW, I THINK. Owsen seemed ready to object, but the voice cut him off. NO MATTER. ATTEND, OWSEN. YOUR SOLDIERS WILL AWAIT YOU IN THE NEXT TOWN. YOU WILL SEND THEM TO LOOK FOR THE SWORD, WHILE YOU CONTINUE TO HUNT. "Of course, Great One. I thank you." OF COURSE YOU THANK ME. AM I NOT YOUR LORD? Sure enough, when Owsen walked into the mostly-empty truck stop at the next exit, they were waiting for him. Seven of them, standing in a loose semicircle outside the main building, each one keeping their backs upright and eyes forward with a vaguely military bearing. Owsen chuckled softly as he approached; these new soldiers of his reminded him of the soldiers he used to command, so very earnest in their presentation. The man in the center of the semicircle noticed Owsen first. He took three steps towards the swordsman, then went to one knee on the tarmac. Behind him, the other soldiers followed suit. "Lord Herald," the soldier said formally, "We are charged to aid you in your quest by the High Mage himself. Will you accept our aid?" Owsen gestured for the soldiers to rise. "I accept with gratitude," he replied. Owsen took the opportunity to look his new charges over. "Are there more of you?" he inquired. The leader nodded. "We were the closest to your position, but there are another two dozen of us scattered across the continent. They will gather when you call for them, but for now we will relay commands if you see fit." "Good, good." Owsen looked his new troops over. "We have a lot to do, and not much time to do it in if we're going to be ready for the Scourge." He motioned towards the truck stop. "So let's get some coffee and start making plans. Your job will be to hunt for the light while I eliminate the Albino's pups..." SIOUX CITY, IOWA 03/25/2004 6:45 PM He had to admit, he was a little disappointed. It was, after all, common courtesy to show up after you'd accepted an invitation. He would make a show of checking his watch, had he worn one, to make sure he was here on time since his prey obviously wasn't. Instead, a dozen robed figures stood in Owsen's path, and one lay at his feet in a spreading pool of crimson. One of them spoke. "Lord Owsen... what you are doing is madness." "Ah, the priests of Grimace," Owsen said, fidgeting with his sword as he looked them over. "It's a pity that Blackblood sends someone else to do his fighting for him. I always recall him being more of a trodair, but people change over time. Of course, time is not something we have when the Scourge is coming." He bright his sword up, flexing his fingers around the hilt as he prepared to strike. "What is the Scourge?" the lead priest asked, interested in any hint at Owsen's motives. "The Scourge?" Owsen lowered his sword and relaxed. It was always nice when someone took an interest in your work. "Oh, that's when the Earth will be purged of the wicked," he said cheerfully, more than happy to notify the priests of their impending demise. "Purged?" asked one priest. "At what cost?" asked a second. "Who decides? Who is wicked?" asked a third. "Hm? Yes, I suppose that most of the population qualifies as 'wicked' to one degree or another. Oh well, you can't make an omelet without breaking six billion eggs..." One of the priests shouted angrily. "We will defend the Earth from whatever threatens our world!" "Oh, no, there is no defending against the Scourge. You're all going to die, and really soon now. Sooner than soon, in your case. It is easier for you this way." There was a flicker of calculated malice in Owsen's eyes as his lips broke into a mad grin. "Even Grimace can't save you from the Scourge, you know. Has he helped you at all here?" he asked. The lead Brother's voice faltered. This wasn't part of Grimace's fight against B'harnii, but an intra-Jihad matter. Grimace was unlikely to show himself again until B'harnii did. The priest shut away his doubts and tapped an inner well of resolve. "We will stop you, Lord Owsen!" "I'm afraid that's not possible. Like I said, it's easier this way. You'll thank me when you're dead." The priests gripped their staves nervously. On the leader's signal, they rushed forward. Owsen raised the dark Barney-Slayer high and charged into the morass. The priests were talented but no match for Owsen, his great sword-slashes breaking staves and their wielders in two. While invigorating, the fight was over all too briefly, and he looked over their fallen bodies with scornful disappointment. Behind him, a human shape stepped out of a shadow wherein the keenest observer would have sworn there was nothing. Owsen sensed the footsteps of someone approaching him from behind, but he didn't need to turn around to know who it was; the stink of one of the Albino's chosen permeated the room, and he smiled, turning around slowly. "Blackblood. I'm glad you could make it. You're a little late to be late, but better late than never." "Tilden. I'm sorry I couldn't be here. I had some things to take care of--" Samhain looked beyond Owsen at the crumpled forms of his brethren, and the glistening red film coating the Jihaddi's sword. He stared aghast, jaw working in a futile attempt to loose the words of some sort of response. "What are you doing?" "Killing you." Owsen charged forward. Samhain sidestepped the coming attack, bringing out his own swords with a singing of steel. Owsen pivoted, bringing his sword around, and the Slayer clanged into his wakizashi. "Tilden. -Jace-. End this," Samhain demanded. "Oh, I'm trying, but you're not letting me." Owsen swung the dark Barney-Slayer with such force that Samhain needed both swords to block the overhand chop, opening a hole in his defense. He saw this weakness and continued hammering against Samhain's crossed blades, raining great blows that pressed him back. Samhain gave ground, deflecting the kick aimed at his abdomen with his wrist. The dark Slayer came down again, but this time Samhain was prepared. The blades clashed again, and the black Barney-Slayer leapt from Owsen's hands, tumbling end-over-end through the air and clattering on the ground. The assault had the intended effect, though. Samhain had been driven outside into the sunlight where his strength would be lessened, and with his rage reaching the boiling point at his precious sword being removed from his grasp, Oswen charged at him bare-handed. The fury of his attack caught Samhain off-guard, and Owsen struck blindly, loosening a couple of Samhain's molars with his fist. Owsen leapt at him, fastening his fingers around the Fleet Commander's throat, and then he felt the pain in his abdomen. He staggered back, eyes lowering to the sight of the wakizashi struck through his torso. He grimaced, and wrapped his fingers around the hilt, pulling the blade out with some effort. It hadn't seemed to pierce anything extremely vital, and on the upside, it left Samhain with only once sword with which to defend himself. Owsen smiled. "Touche," he said, and struck again, this time with Samhain's own short sword. Samhain deflected the slash with his katana, but with the daylight beating down on him his reactions felt sluggish. He glanced skyward as he parried another attack; there was potential in the scattered cloud cover, if it could be nudged... He reached out with his mind, probing the clouds, a muttered incantation rolling off his tongue. As he refocused, he realized a lull in the assault, but too late; Owsen charged up, swinging at him with his great black blade, and Samhain parried. With a ringing snap, the ancient-forged steel of his katana was broken. The sky darkened, urged into a piling storm by his spell. He was without his swords, but with the sunlight blotted he was not defenseless. Owsen slashed and hacked at Samhain, but the dark Slayer met only shafts formed of the stuff of the shadows themselves. Each swing splintered the vague dark forms, and Owsen pressed forward through the defenses, until the blade of his sword swept through the Fleet Commander's neck. Except that Samhain was no longer standing there. The head toppled off of the illusion formed of darkness, and a shadow scuttled beneath Owsen's feet. He turned as Samhain's form rose up from his own shadow, and as it did, its fingers lengthened into long Claws. As shadows coalesced into Blackblood's obsidian Maenad form, a cold win began to blow in, and a light rain began to patter on his glassy skin. "Your parlor tricks are growing tiresome," Owsen said. He raised his hand and muttered a few harsh syllables, and the area was bathed in a bright, diffused violet light that chased the shadows away. "Your shadow puppetry won't work with no shadow. You have nowhere to hide now, so why not make this easier on yourself?" "Why not you?" Blackblood retorted, flicking his Claws as he waited for the Irishman's next attack. Owsen smiled. "As you wish." The air shimmered bluish-purple as Owsen's magic reacted with the remnants of Blackblood's storm spell. Suddenly, the obsidian Maenad was engulfed in violet flames. The increasing rain beat heavily upon them, but did nothing to quench the magical fire. Owsen stepped forward and casually thrust his sword into the quivering inferno. "Pity," he said. "I was hoping you'd be more fun, but you asked politely and you -are- my friend." Samhain slumped forward as the sword was twisted and withdrawn from his sternum. Oswen raised the black Slayer to deliver the coup de grace, and as his flesh cooked away, the last of his life draining from his body, Samhain sought with his mind and touched the sky... The air was torn asunder by a streak of blue-white lightning, drawn to Owsen's uplifted sword. It slammed through his body, vaporizing the soles of his boots, and he was hurled, smoldering lightly, through the air. He hit the ground hard, rolling limply into a heap. His sword bounced to the ground a few yards away where it stopped, clinking softly as the metal cooled. When the thunder peal had died away, a surviving Brother came out into the rain and stepped carefully toward the two bodies laying on the ground. The Fleet Commander was lost, there was little doubt of it. He looked over to Owsen. The fallen Maenad was pushing himself to his feet, stunned, but not defeated. Unbelievable. This could not be permitted. The Brother rose up his staff, running forward to bring the length of oak down upon the base of Owsen's skull. A gunshot rang out. A puff of blood erupted from the Brother's throat, followed by a crimson trickle from the hole left in its wake. He staggered forward, dropped his staff, and collapsed. Owsen looked up. A short distance away, voices spoke Lyran words. FAIRBANKS GENERAL HOSPITAL FAIRBANKS, ALASKA 03/29/2004 11:30 PM The man in room 2401 of the city hospital was simultaneously the most famous and most anonymous man in Fairbanks. Nobody knew who he was; he'd been dumped outside the emergency room by persons unknown in the late spring of 1999, comatose and horribly injured. The local police had gone completely crazy trying to find out who had beat this man to within an inch of his life and where it had been done; they never did figure it out. He had remained in a coma for the last five years, completely unconscious despite showing no signs of extended brain injury. The doctors couldn't figure it out. Some series of anonymous benefactors kept paying the hospital for the mystery man's room and board, so they kept him there. The man in room 2401 had slept through the last five years, and continued to sleep through the sight of the man in black silently opening up his window and climbing through. Owsen reflected that the last time he had seen DeadLock, the Maenad had been a great deal livelier. "No, this won't do at all," he muttered, his eyes flashing violet. "I need him able to talk." Owsen placed his hands above DeadLock's head and concentrated. His hands glowed and sent a pulse of energy into the comatose Maenad. DeadLock stirred for the first time in years, his eyes opening. Still unfocused, their gaze fell on Owsen's face. "Hiya, DeadLock," Owsen said happily, "did you miss me?" Before the Maenad could reply, Owsen lunged, grabbing DeadLock by the throat and slamming him up against the outer wall. "We need to talk," Owsen continued, his tone never changing. DeadLock, still not entirely conscious, could only stare, eyes wide, at the grinning apparition in front of him. "Wha?" he croaked. "You and I need to talk," said Owsen, "about my sword." "Your-" "My -sword-, DeadLock. The Barney-Slayer. You know where it is, don't you?" Recognition finally flooded DeadLock's memory. "Owsen? How-" he began, but Owsen cut him off with a rough shake. "'How' isn't important, DeadLock. What -is- important is you remembering where you put my sword." Owsen gave him another shake. "I don't really want to make this as painful as I could, my boy. But if you don't start talking, I'll make you wish that you were still in a coma." "I-I don't know, dammit! They took it away from me... the sword, my rank, everything. Go find those damn loose cannons, -they- ought to know!" Owsen's grin widened. "Not a good answer, my boy. Now I'm going to have to get... rough." Something in the back of DeadLock's mind realized that, no matter what he said at this point, Owsen (or whoever it was impersonating him, since Owsen was supposed to be -dead-) was not going to let him get out of this unscathed. With this realization in mind, DeadLock concentrated furiously. As he did so, Owsen's clothing began to smolder. Owsen blinked. "That's right, I had forgotten you had that neat little trick," he noted, his grin never slipping. "But I've picked up a few tricks since you sent me into Limbo..." Owsen's eyes flashed violet once again, and flames the same color began to lick around DeadLock's torso. The pyrokinetic tried to absorb the flames and use the heat against his opponent, but to DeadLock's shock, the purple fire refused to obey him. Moreover, it -hurt- him! Gritting his teeth, DeadLock continued to will the flames to attack Owsen. The flames continued to disobey him. Owsen continued to hold DeadLock pressed to the wall, grinning. "Come on, DeadLock," he urged, "tell me where the Slayer is, and I'll stop hurting you." "Don't - aigh - know..." "Have your way, then." Owsen's purple fire increased in intensity, covering DeadLock's entire torso, slowly covering his arms and legs. DeadLock gasped in pain as the fire began to consume him. "Last chance." "I - IIIIIEEEAAAAA!" Owsen shrugged. "Oh well," he said, as the flames covered DeadLock's head, "so much for mercy." The Maenad shrieked in Owsen's grasp, thrashing around as the magical fire burned away his flesh. The thrashing lasted a few seconds, ceasing as the fire finally burned the life out of DeadLock the Feral. Once the thrashing had stopped, the purple fire vanished, leaving only a charred ruin in its wake. A second after the end, two orderlies burst through the door, attracted by the screaming coming from inside DeadLock's room. Owsen gave them a jaunty wave, dropped the Maenad's body and threw himself backwards out the window. By the time the orderlies could get there, he had vanished in the night. ROUTE 66, NEW MEXICO 04/01/2004 8:51 AM Tangaroa poked a few buttons on his Jihadlinker and dug into his personal notes. Fleet Commander Samhain's address, at least as of four years ago, was there. He pushed a few more buttons and checked the link to see if there was any information about why the Jihad was reactivating. There was nothing new, at least nothing that his permissions gave him rights to read. He put the Linker back in his pocket and stared out the bus's window at the desert expanse. He had hoped to find leisure, not duty, upon his return to the States. He might have scrambled to get here today, but come to think of it, this trip was years in the making. He would relax and enjoy it. HOUSTON, TEXAS 04/01/2004 12:55 PM Tangaroa walked down the row of houses until he arrived at what he thought to be the right address. He stopped and checked this against the address he'd copied to his JihadLinker four years ago. This was the right place. Time to see if it still was. There was no answer to Tangaroa's knock on the door. It was the middle of the day. Perhaps they were out. He tried looking in a window, but the shades were down. He walked around the house, looking for a sign that this was still the right place. When Tangaroa reached the backyard, he knew something was wrong. There was no back door. The remains of one were in pieces under the doorframe, which still bore the telltale signs of having been barricaded with police tape. Tangaroa dodged a fleeing cat as he stepped into the house to find the insides were torn to pieces as well. Furniture was chopped open and walls were ripped into. The place was a mess and from the look and smell of it, had been a mess for a few weeks. Whoever or whatever had done this had to have been very powerful to get away with it in Samhain's own house. It didn't look like a battle scene, though. There was no blood, and things were smashed where they stood rather than being upended and tripped over. The glint of glass on the fireplace mantel caught Tangaroa's attention. It was the pieces of a demolished picture frame which someone, after the fact of its destruction, had placed on top of the photograph it once held to keep the picture in place. Tangaroa pulled out the near part of the photo, which had apparently been cut in two pieces with the frame. It showed a young Samhain sitting alongside former Fleet Commanders Augustus and Serbeus and some TRES and MAUL officers who Tangaroa didn't recognize. There was a soft padding noise as the cat jumped back into the house, drawing Tangaroa's attention away from the picture. He looked up and heard the heavier sound of footsteps outside. "Sam?" Tangaroa called out. It wasn't Samhain. "This is the FBI! Come out with your hands up!" Damn it! Tangaroa had just started thinking he didn't need to run away from the police anymore, but here he'd stumbled into them. Or were they even looking for him in particular? He wasn't going to stick around to find out. The worst thing he could do was to try to fight his way out. If he started leaving a body count, that would just get him in more trouble. The next dumbest thing he could do was go out the front door, but with the back exit covered, the only other options were to surrender or go out a window, which would be just as bad. He ran for the front door, hearing someone start running after him. If there was little chance of getting away from whatever was out there, then he might consider giving up. Tangaroa swung the door open and ran out, expecting the worst but seeing nothing. The coast was clear. He ran out into the street, thinking escape a possibility. A black car with tinted windows turned a corner on his far left and drove towards him. Tangaroa looked back over his shoulder and saw it. Bad news. He ran away from the car, looking up just in time to see another car shoot out into the intersection in front of him and turn in his direction. The driver saw Tangaroa in the middle of the road and tried to spin away from him, but it wasn't enough. With only a second to react, Tangaroa quickly cast his shield spell at the oncoming vehicle. The spinning car slammed its side into the shield and stopped with a rocking bounce. Tangaroa turned and ran down a side street, glancing back. The car that had been behind him stopped to avoid hitting the one he'd just nearly been creamed by, and people were getting out to asses the damage. Good. Tangaroa got off the street and started going through properties and side roads, intending to get out of view of everybody so that he could calmly walk onto a main street and disappear into the crowd. Someone's backyard gate was padlocked. Tangaroa cast his fire blade spell and chopped through the lock, then ran through the yard. A pair of dogs charged and barked at him, and he waved a flaming sword to keep them at bay. The shorter one stayed clear of the fire, but the larger one looked willing to be broiled to defend its territory. It also looked... "Heel, soldier!" Tangaroa shouted at the dog. It stopped its charge and sat down. Tangaroa saluted and kept going. They didn't call it the Doberman Empire for nothing. That dog was one of theirs, trained well and sold or given away to a good home. Tangaroa kicked a hole through the decrepit wooden fence at the far side of the yard and ran down a side alley, only to find it blocked off by a chain link fence. Not that that was a problem. The alley opened to a main road. Tangaroa crossed it as calmly and quickly as possible and took the first side alley he came to. Then he started running again, but it wasn't long before his breathing grew heavy and he stopped. After living a sedentary life the past three years, he wasn't in a shape to run like this. He heard footsteps behind him. From the sound of it, it was someone who was very much in a shape to run like this. Tangaroa started running again and turned a corner. Whoever was chasing him was closing the distance quickly, but it was only one person. He might be able to take him. He looked around. This was a quiet place between tall buildings. There would be no witnesses, but if he killed the guy, he'd be in a pile of trouble. He had a spell that might work. He formed a ball of energy, putting more and more power into it as it grew to the size of a beach ball and larger. The footsteps were getting closer. When he thought it was enough, he rose the ball several feet up into the air and waited. His chaser turned the corner, saw him standing nonchalantly, and drew a gun. Tangaroa smiled at the agent. "That was a nice jog. Let me catch my breath a minute and we can go on for another lap." The agent wasn't amused. "You're under arrest, smartass." Tangaroa didn't resist. He was amazed at how quickly and efficiently he was taken down, but didn't have time to admire it. He commanded the energy ball to strike. It hit the agent squarely in the back of the head, and the man's heavy body collapsed on him. "Get off of me." Tangaroa pushed the unconscious agent away and stood up. He heard new footsteps approaching. It was someone much slower, but he didn't want to wait around to see who it was. Besides, he didn't know how long the agent would be out. He ran out the alley into the street, and if he'd been a little more careful and less panicked, he might have been able to dodge the car. Tangaroa rolled off the side of the hood that hadn't been crushed when it hit his shield. This time the car had actually hit him -- while the shield took the brunt of the force, the bumper bent under the shield and struck his ankle. It didn't feel broken, but there was sure to be a bruise. The driver, a nerdy-looking little slip of a guy, came around to look over the damage to the car and gawked at finding the person he hit still in one piece after a collision at that speed. "Are you okay?" he asked. Tangaroa looked up. "I'm still thinking it over." He rose to a knee. Didn't seem too bad. The driver spoke into a little handheld radio. "I think the guy I hit is all right." Another voice spoke back. "That might be him." The driver stepped back, drew a gun from his jacket, and aimed it at Tangaroa. "Sorry. I am a federal agent, and you are under arrest. Please make no sudden moves." Tangaroa grumbled and lifted a hand at the driver. "Another one." He fired a force beam at the agent, knocking the man on his back and sending his gun and radio skittering across the road. "Sorry." Tangaroa got up and tried running. His ankle held. Behind him, the befuddled agent sat up. "Hey! Stop!" Tangaroa's ankle was getting worse, but he finally got to a main street and slowed to a walk. Safety... then he saw a very familiar car screech around a corner and speed in his direction. Damn it again. He couldn't run far with the bruised ankle. He looked around for a place to hide or escape. There was a McDonald's a short distance away. Given the design, it had been built by the Brothers of Grimace. Every McDonald's built since 1994 has either an old-fashioned tunnel or a teleporter somewhere in the back, and Empire soldiers are trained to recognize McDonald's architectural styles. This would be his escape. Tangaroa dashed into the building and rushed into the kitchen before anyone could confront him. "This is a surprise inspection!" he announced, adding "I'm an inspector." He looked around for signs of the escape passageway that should be somewhere around here. He tried the walk-in freezer. Here it was... damn it. It was a teleporter. Tangaroa hated teleporting. His natural magic defenses played havoc on attempts to teleport him, and it was only a matter of time before he was dumped off in the middle of something or at a fatal height. If that wasn't bad enough, it hurts him like hell. However, he didn't have much of a choice here. He summoned his powers together and started casting the teleportation spell as all Doberman mages are trained to do. Glowing runes appeared in a circle on the floor. Tangaroa stepped inside and continued spellcasting. He felt the first twinges of discomfort as the spell began to wrap around him and his body fought back. He tried to feel out for destinations. Home base should be a magical bright spot, clearly visible to a mage, but it wasn't there... that's right. Delta had been closed down. In fact, there weren't very many spots at all. Tangaroa picked one at random and finished the spell. A twinge of sharp pain came over him. He tried to dampen his resistance and maintain the spell at the same time, but the pain was getting worse and he was losing focus on the destination. He didn't know if he could hold on... ------------------------------------------------------------------------ # ANANOVA [Home|News|Entertainment|Sport|Business|Video Reports|Weather|TV Guide] News search: ________________________ [GO] News Ananova: Latest Headlines Freezer Bum: Homeless Man Seeks Quirkies Shelter in Fast-Food Freezer Eccentrics Quirky Gaffes A surprise was literally in store for Scottsbluff, Strange Crime Nebraska McDonald's worker Julio Hernandez who Sex Life found a homeless man sleeping the night in the Animal Tales restaurant's walk-in freezer. The half-frozen ------------------------------------------------------------------------ SCOTTSBLUFF, NEBRASKA 10:55 PM 04/01/2004 Tangaroa blinked his eyes. "He's awake", someone said. Tangaroa looked up and found himself in what appeared to be a hospital room, with people who appeared to be doctors or nurses watching over him. His initial disorientation faded within seconds and he sat up, surprising his keepers. "How are you... how are you feeling?" one asked, startled to receive a non-verbal answer so soon after the patient woke. "You should lie down." another said, putting a hand on his shoulder. Tangaroa obliged for the moment. He was still not sure whether this was really a hospital or a set created by people who had captured him. One man who appeared to be a doctor began asking questions. "What is your name?" So many to choose from! Tangaroa spoke the first one to become clear in his mind. "Jack Cole." Oops. That one had an arrest warrant attached to it. However, "Jack" and "Cole" are common enough names and the doctor wasn't speaking Czech, so it was unlikely that this name's past would catch up with him here. "Are you homeless?" the doctor asked. "Yes." Tangaroa had abandoned his apartment in Japan without any plan to continue payments. Within the next two months he could expect the landlord to notice he wasn't there, pawn the items he left, and rent it out again. His quarters at Base Delta, at last report, were under a few tons of rubble. Tangaroa felt it was time for him to start asking the questions. He reared up on an elbow, surprising the nurse who had earlier begged him to lie down. She did not argue this time. Tangaroa's first question was, in fact, two. "Where am I, and how did I get here?" The name of the hospital was unfamiliar to him. For the second part, they gave him a line about finding him in a McDonald's freezer and how he was lucky he hadn't caught hypothermia or frostbite. Did that mean the teleportation spell hadn't worked, or had he been teleported to another McDonald's constructed by the Dobermans? There was no mention of a police chase, criminal investigation, or anything like that. In fact, there was a conspicuous lack of an officer present in the room or by the door. This suggested to Tangaroa that the spell had worked, but he still didn't know where he was. He could find that out later. For now, he wanted to get out. Asking the name of the town might make them question his mental competence, as if being found unconscious in a fast-food freezer didn't already do that. He had to play it straight and confident. "Am I free to go?" Technically, he was. The hospital's policy was that they could not force anybody to submit to treatment they did not want. From a medical standpoint, however, his leaving did not seem like a good idea, and the staff tried to persuade him to stay. "We'd rather you stay the night. We might want to run some tests to make sure you're alright." "I'm fine." "But.." "I'm fine." Tangaroa repeated, stepping out of bed to press the point. The medical staff had not changed him into a hospital gown but had kept him in his clothes for fear of hypothermia, and this became a great symbolic support in arguing for his discharge. "Get me a bill and I'll send the money to you." "It's the middle of the night. Do you have a place to stay?" "I'll find a place." Tangaroa looked around and felt his pockets. He was still in his clothes, but... "Where are my things?" After talking the local police out of his JihadLinker, Tangaroa stepped out on the street and reported in on his present location and what had happened in Texas. "FC not home. House ransacked. Cops all over. Was seen. Used magic. Not sure how serious. Where to now?" A reply came quickly. Someone was burning the midnight oil. "Get out of sight and stand still. I'll portal you in to Blanca." Tangaroa responded in the extreme negative. "Like hell you will. I'm taking the bus." Tangaroa knew that Blanca was in Colorado, but didn't know where. He'd just take a bus into the state and call in or directions from there. He wasn't aware that there were no directions, as Blanca was under three miles of mountain with no entry points other than a hidden, seven mile long tunnel rigged with booby-traps, but it was a nice plan in theory. His JihadLinker rang. Being back in full civilian mode, he had left it turned on and on receive. It was a message telling him to go to "Spiral". What's Spiral? Tangaroa started typing out such a response, and paused to look up. He saw a billboard advertising a high-powered low-power laptop computer from Spiral Corporation, with their inspiring slogan: "Limitations are Obsolete". That's right. After disbanding, someone at VRDET had pulled together a bunch of the Jihad's R&D shops into the technology business. He had forgotten about it, but evidently they'd made it a success. Using his Linker to access the Web, he found that Spiral headquarters was located in Denver. He was already headed right towards it. SPIRAL BUILDING 04/02/2004 10:13 AM Maria Juarez was a recent addition to the Spiral Corporation family, having only been on the front reception desk for the last three months. She'd been enjoying her job; one of Dr. Fnord's quirks was that all his visitors had to check in at the front desk before going up, which meant that the fresh-out-of-college receptionist got to buzz in famous people of all stripes, up to and including movie stars, the governor and Vice President Robinson. Recently, though, the visitors had been... different. A seemingly steady stream of people had been moving in and out of Dr. Fnord's office at odd hours, and most of them had been slightly strange themselves. Her supervisor had told Maria that this sort of thing was normal for Spiral, that the Old Man had bouts of weirdness and that this too will pass, but Maria had her doubts about the whole thing. Those doubts were magnified as a young man dressed entirely in black walked in through the big glass doors, looked around, then marched straight up to her desk with a decidedly military bearing. The man cleared his throat and inquired, "Excuse me, but I'm looking for a Dr. Fnord. I understand you could direct me to him." Maria just looked at him blankly for a second. How could somebody walk into the offices of the -Spiral Corporation- and -not- know who Dr. Fnord was? "I'm sorry, but Dr. Fnord is very busy, and he doesn't take visitors without an appointment." She fixed the stranger with an icy glare. "Especially people who just walk in off the street and don't even know who he is." "I do have an appointment." Maria stifled a derisive snort, instead choosing to roll her eyes at the statement. "No, you don't." "I was invited." Maria pulled up the doctor's schedule on her computer and glanced at it. "I'm sorry, -sir-," she said, putting as much ironic emphasis on the word as she could, "but Dr. Fnord doesn't have any appointments today." "I insist." The receptionist sighed heavily. "And you would be?" "Mr. Tang." "You don't look Asian." "I get that from time to time." Maria picked up her phone and dialed the number for Dr. Fnord's office. "Hello, Doctor? There's a Mr. Tang here in the lobby to see you. He says he has a meeting, but I don't see anything on your schedule and he's very insistent, and you've had a lot of guests like that recently... okay." She hung up. "The Doctor is waiting to see you. Take the elevator to the thirtieth floor, first door on the left." Mr. Tang nodded. "Thank you." Tangaroa did as instructed. Riding in the elevator, he was mildly surprised to hear a light pop tune that he recognized as a big hit in Japan. Tangaroa blinked, then shrugged mentally. He reached the office without incident and cautiously opened the door. Inside, sitting in front of a wide panoramic view of the city and the surrounding landscape was a large wooden desk strewn with papers, and behind the desk was a older man with white hair, intently scribbling on a sheet of paper. Tangaroa entered the office and sat down quietly in one of the chairs reserved for guests. The white-haired man finished whatever he was writing, then looked up. "Ah. Warrior Tangaroa," he said. Tangaroa nodded once. "Dr. Fnord, I hear that you can get me in contact with Malaclypse the Seeker. I need to speak to him." To Tangaroa's surprise, the white-haired man sitting at the desk in front of him changed. In the blink of an eye, his hair changed color, wrinkles vanished, subtle angles in the shape of his face changed, and before Tangaroa had time to register the changes, the old man had been replaced by the well-known features of Malaclypse the Seeker. "I suppose that I can get you in touch with him," Mal said dryly. "Now, I suspect you have questions, yes?" Tangaroa's jaw flapped open for a second in shock, before he gathered his wits and pressed on. "Sir, "I couldn't find the Fleet Commander -- from appearances, he was long gone - and I don't have any leads on the other Doberman command personnel. We could try going to WEDJEE and seeing if there's anyone there." "You've been pulled off field duty for the moment, Warrior." Mal said flatly. "Specifically, I called you here because, as your little escapade with the FBI showed, having field operatives blundering around without coordination is just begging for trouble, especially these days. Also," he continued, "your search has been rendered irrelevant." The last part of Mal's statement failed to register immediately with Tangaroa, as he was intent on addressing the rebuke of Mal's first sentence. "Sir, I had -no idea- that they were watching the house. How was I supposed to know that..." He trailed off, as what Mal had said earlier started to sink in. "Irrelevant?" Tang said faintly, guessing the answer but still holding onto a small thread of hope that he was wrong. Mal nodded. "We've confirmed that Fleet Commander Samhain was killed several days ago. The confirmation only came last night, otherwise we would have informed you earlier. For what it's worth, I'm sorry." Tangaroa stared off into space, not really seeing anything. "Samhain, -dead-?" he murmured. "Yes. Samhain, along with - we think - most of the Church of Grimace and a hundred acres of Iowa real estate. I don't have details, but it's pretty obvious that he put up one hell of a fight." "I..." Tangaroa shook his head and looked at Mal. "We have to find Windigo." "Windigo is somewhere else. Exactly where, we're not sure, but if we can't find her, neither can anybody else." "Cerberus, then. He's powerful enough to help us." Mal shook his head. "He's offworld, has been for the last three years." A note of desperation sounded in Tangaroa's voice and he said, "The JPV. Puppeteer and his mages-" "Are likewise unreachable." "The Maenads!" exclaimed Tangaroa. "What Maenads do we have?" "Right now, none. So far, almost all of our casualties have -been- Maenads. We're still looking, however. "Will the dragons help us?" Tang persisted. Mal nodded. "Captain T'Kharn and Commander Merquoni have been with us since day one. As for Zaphyre, we haven't been successful in reaching her." Tangaroa's brain skidded to a halt, completely out of ideas. "What do you need me to do?" he asked, all the frantic energy of the last few minutes drained out of him. Mal leaned back in his chair and gazed thoughtfully at the Doberman warrior. "Right now, you'll need to be briefed on the situation and meet with the rest of the team. From there, you'll be on call until we need somebody with commando experience." Tangaroa nodded once, sharply. "I understand. I need to know what's going on." Mal nodded. He opened a desk drawer and pulled out a manila folder filled with photographs. Mal thumbed through the folder, then selected a photo and placed it on the desk in front of Tangaroa. "Recognize this guy?" Mal asked. Tangaroa leaned over and looked at the photo. The subject was a man in his late thirties with wild orange hair and beard. He was glaring at something off-camera, and his right arm was raised as if swinging something. What the man was swinging wasn't obvious from the photo, but Tangaroa judged it was probably the dark blur behind the man's head. The Doberman looked up, slightly puzzled. "Isn't that Lord Owsen?" Mal nodded again. "It is indeed Lord Owsen." "Didn't he die on the Pacifica mission?" Tangaroa inquired, still uncomprehending. "I mean, that was before my time..." "We -thought- he'd died on the Pacifica mission, but apparently we were wrong. He showed up at the beginning of last month; this picture is one of several taken by one of our people." Tangaroa nodded in relief. "That's good. We could use his help fighting whatever's out there killing Jihaddi." Mal shook his head. "You don't get it. -He is- what's out there killing Jihaddi." Tangaroa's eyes went wide, but his face betrayed no other emotions as Mal went through the story: Owsen, the copy of the Barney-Slayer, his rampage through the ranks of the Holy Albino, all of it. The shock of learning of Samhain's death had suddenly been compounded, magnified by the revelation that the likely culprit had been -Owsen- of all people! Even the Dobermans knew about Lord Owsen; to think that one of the founders of the Jihad itself and a powerful Maenad to boot could possibly turn on his comrades... Maybe, Tangaroa reflected bleakly, he'd have been better off ignoring his Linker and staying the hell in Japan. "..and that's what we know right now," concluded Mal. "As for the rest, we'll have to call a meeting, open up some quarters for you at base, and generally get you resettled." Tangaroa nodded. That made plenty of sense. "Okay. Where are we holding the meeting? Here?" "Mm? No, we've got the Blanca base back operational, so it'll be there." "Great. How do I get there?" Mal blinked. "The only way into Blanca is through the Gate portals. It's a security measure." Tangaroa blanched. "Portal?" He asked, swallowing hard. "You mean, like teleportation?" "Not really," said Mal, puzzled. "It's a spacefold, like stepping through a door." "Um, are you sure that I can't call on a dragon or something to get in? Teleportation... doesn't agree with me." Mal raised an eyebrow. What the hell was this cheeseball's problem with teleporting, he thought. "First of all, it's not a teleporter. Second of all, there's no other viable access. Third," he continued, "I'm not going to call a meeting of the entire group elsewhere simply because you've got a mental hangup. Now, are you going to do this or not?" "I.. um, I..." Tangaroa sat there, looking equal parts nervous and apologetic. Mal swallowed a sigh, and opened up a communications line on his neural lace /Min? Open up a gate to the office and send KJ through, would you? And keep the portal open./ /Sure thing, Boss./ A second later, just ahead of the door to Mal's office a softly glowing blue disc appeared hovering in midair, and a second or two after that an immense man with black eyes ducked through the circle and walked nonchalantly into the office. "'Sup?" the man inquired. Mal gestured. "KJ, this is Warrior Cecrops Tangaroa, Doberman Empire. Tang, Lieutenant KillJoy, TRES Corps. A pleasure, I'm sure. Now. KJ, can you do me a favor?" "Sure." "Great. Can you pick up Tang here and toss him through the portal you just came through?" KillJoy shrugged. "No problem." Moving swiftly and with fluid grace, KillJoy stepped to Tangaroa's chair, picked up the Doberman and before he could utter a single squawk of protest, was slung over the giant's shoulder like a sack of potatoes. KillJoy paused. "You want me to just toss him, or..?" "You can go on back, I'll be through in a minute or so. Let 'em know that I'm calling a meeting." "Allright." With that bit of business concluded, KillJoy took a few steps and ducked back through the portal with his cargo. Tangaroa expected to be in serious pain when he passed through the portal. Considering what happened the -last- time he'd used a JAO's teleporting system, it wasn't a bad assumption. However, he was mildly surprised to find that, instead of feeling the usual searing pain throughout his entire body, the transition passed without complaint or incident. Well, aside from being draped over somebody's shoulder at any rate. Once the initial surprise of the transit wore off, he made his displeasure at the current state of affairs known at top volume and in all the languages at his disposal. KillJoy, for his part, walked through the corridors of Blanca Base unconcerned that he had a fully-grown man swearing at him in five different languages slung over his shoulder. Some small part of the tactical expert system that comprised his brain took note of some of Tangaroa's more colorful expressions, filing them away for future use if necessary. The pair crossed into the main situation room just as Tangaroa was getting into an extended Korean curse on KillJoy and all his ancestors. Inside, Minerva and Shadur looked up from their card game to see what all the yelling was about in time to watch as KillJoy deftly pulled the complaining Doberman off his shoulder, flipped him around, and dropped him unceremoniously into a seat beside the meeting table. "Malaclypse said he's calling a meeting, just so you know," announced KillJoy, who crossed the room and went back to his favorite leaning spot against the wall. The meeting itself didn't take very long; Tangaroa was introduced to the handful of fellow Jihaddi who had answered the recall (that worthy visibly having trouble feeling comfortable with the level of brass in the room), brought up to speed on the latest intelligence (no sign of Owsen after his dramatic execution of DeadLock in Alaska), and then packed off to the BOQ on Level 4 with the instructions to grab a room and let the housekeeping systems get his measurements for uniforms and other clothing. Once Tangaroa was taken care of, most of the Jihaddi turned right around and left, either to cover their mundane lives or to proceed with trying to locate Owsen. By noon, the only people left in Blanca were the Doberman, Minerva (who had stayed to run a few checks on the Gate systems), Katze (who didn't have much of anything to do that afternoon), and Aris. 12:00 PM "So, Aris, you bored of hanging around Blanca yet?" Katze asked. "Why do you ask?" "Well, it's a nice sunny day in San Francisco, at least it was when I left, and I managed to score these," Katze said, laying two tickets to that night's baseball game. "The heretics have gone and renamed Pac Bell to SBC Park, but it's still the Giants. And they're in the right field arcade." Aris looked at the tickets, and then up at Katze, and finally said, "And there won't be any fighting over who has to do the invisibility spell." "Yeah, and we won't have to sit on the coke bottle. And there won't be any spongin attacking us in the Goodyear blimp or otherwise." "Right. Better not be, Leonard's not on the job anymore." Aris paused for a moment. "Oh, by the way, when were you planning on telling me that the Giants made the World Series and then lost it?" "I thought you knew," Katze said, blinking in surprise. "And I was depressed for weeks. We should have won the Series, but Dusty couldn't manage his pitchers. And starting Livan in game seven? Just *stupid*. Should have started Woody..." Katze stopped and frowned. "Err, sorry for the rant." Aris smiled. "Well, at least I didn't miss the Giants *winning* the World Series." Katze laughed. "True, true! Anyway, let's blow this popsicle joint. The game's not until this evening, so let's just roam around SF. As I said, it's gorgeous out there." "What if Mal calls? What if something goes wrong?" "Well, Mal can deal if we decided that we wanted to go on vacation, and you know that Owsen was last seen in Alaska, I really doubt that he's either going to be in San Francisco or be after us. But I guess we could set the computer to forward important messages to our 'Linkers." "Okay, this could work. So are we just going to hang around in San Francisco all afternoon?" "Yeah, I don't know what all we can do, but I'm sure we'll find something." GOLDEN GATE PARK SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA 11:50 AM (PST) Katze backed a bit, trying to get some room in between her and Aris. She kept her sword in a ready position, waiting for the space to make her next attack. They'd been at each other for some twenty odd minutes now, and Katze was starting to feel the strain of large amounts of exercise. That, and it was a bit warm for an early April day. They'd gotten a bit far from their backpacks in the sparring too, Katze noted, and somebody probably ought to get them. And just as she thought that, she saw Aris give the hand signal that she intended to stop, which meant that Katze could relax as well. Aris turned to get the bags, and Katze dropped the ready position she held. Katze was about to sheathe her blade when a voice very close to her said, "You and your friend aren't bad at all." "Thanks," Katze said back, and turned to see who had given the compliment. It was a man, average build, and wearing a kilt and a sword of some kind. Something in the back of her head twinged a bit -- this person seemed awfully familiar. He asked, "Do you mind if I take a look at your blade? I have some interest in swords." "Uh, sure," Katze said, and handed him her blade, not too worried, as she could always call it back if she needed it. The familiarity bothered her, as her efforts to place this person continued to be frustrated. He looked down the blade, "It looks to be a good blade, but, alas, not the one I'm looking for. Where did you get it, might I inquire?" "Family heirloom," Katze answered, near automatically. It was the standard answer she gave about her blade and its uniqueness to people who wouldn't understand Marraketh. He nodded and handed it back, looking at her for the first time. With the first look, she knew, and tried very hard not to give any hint that she recognized him. It was one thing to see the guy on TV when he was very far away and it was another to come face to face with him. She didn't think he'd recognize her, it had been a very long time since he'd met her in the first place, but she was never sure. "Would you perhaps like to spar with me?" he asked. Katze tried to quiet the parts of her brain that were gibbering about the identity of this person and the stupidity of getting into a fight with him. Even if it seemed merely a sparring match like Aris and her had been doing, it was probably still dumb. She was talking to a guy whole had managed to kill a rather good percentage of the Maenads so far. "Oh, no, sir, I appreciate the thought, but you seem like you would be a far better swordsman than my friend or me." A smile crossed his face. "Pity, but yes. Yes, I am the very best." About this time, Aris had wandered back across the field, carrying two backpacks and a water bottle. She came up next to Katze, and took one good look at who Katze was having a conversation with, and nearly dropped everything. "Ows...OW!" she yelled, as Katze had the presence of mind to stomp on her foot before Aris got the whole name out. "Dammit, Katze, you didn't have to do that!" A string of other interesting sounding curse words that Katze couldn't place followed this declaration. "It was nice talking to you," the man suddenly said, and he tipped his finger to his head as if he would have tipped his hat, before wandering off across the field Aris and Katze had been sparring on. Katze sheathed her blade, and Aris, still upset, laid into her. "You know that was *Owsen*, right? You know, the guy we've been keeping track of for the last month?" "I'm well aware who that was, and I was trying not to hint that I knew! And then you nearly went and blew it! And keep your voice down," Katze said, pointing down field to where the source of this panic stood, as if waiting for something. "I don't like this," Aris said. She frowned. "Maybe we should kill him." Katze sighed. "This is the guy that's killed *Maenads*, remember? And last I checked, neither you nor I were anywhere close to being on that level. What chance do you *honestly* think we'll have?" Aris shrugged. "Uh... none. No, really, we can't even attempt it now. But I want to know how he got here from Alaska so fast." Katze couldn't help but keep the sarcasm from entering her voice. "Yeah, but if we ask him, he'll know we're watching him." Aris took her chance to sigh at Katze. "Ask him? Katze, I'm not quite that dumb. But maybe follow him? See if he 'ports out and how he does it?" Katze thought for a moment. Actually, that wasn't a bad idea. "It could work. Let's..." A crack broke through the air, and a whistling sound passed very near the two of them. Katze froze and Aris yelled, "Shit! That was a bullet!" The word bullet spurred Katze into action. She started to make a dash towards a low stone wall running across one edge of the field. Aris looked back in the direction only to see Owsen surrounded by a bunch of other people, and then took off running after Katze, carrying both bags and her water bottle. A few more shots whizzed by them as they covered the distance, and before they knew it, they were leaping the wall and taking cover. "Dammit, I thought the people shooting things at me was OVER!" Katze yelled over the sound of firing. "Join the freaking club!" Aris yelled back, and pulled her blade out of her bag. Katze was trying to figure out how much good a sword would do until she forgot that Aris' sword doubled as a gun. Katze took a deep breath, and traded her blade for her bow and a few arrows. She notched an arrow in her bow, and nodded to Aris. "On three!" Aris said, and Katze nodded. "One...two...three!" The two popped up from their hiding spot, Aris firing in the rise, and Katze drew back her bow and sent an arrow flying in the direction of Owsen and his friends. Then they both crashed to the dirt behind the wall as the group around Owsen returned fire once again. The two peeked over the wall, and Katze was disgusted to see that she'd *missed* and gotten Owsen instead of one of his friends, at least given the way he'd just cracked an arrow in half. Probably hadn't gotten him anywhere close to a vital, either. Rather sloppy, all things considered. "Damn," she muttered, and notched a second arrow. "We didn't get anybody," Aris said. "I think I got Owsen. But he didn't flinch!" Katze said. "Do we try again?" "We're outnumbered," Katze said, and peeked over the wall again. "And they're charging our position." "Back to Blanca then? I don't think I want to go to the game knowing he's here." "Yeah, works for me. Got everything?" "My bag, your bag, my sword, my water bottle. Go." Katze reached over, touched Aris and concentrated on avoiding rather large pan-dimensional trucks, and they faded, just as the first of Owsen's friends came tumbling over the wall. BLANCA MOUNTAIN 1:05 PM (MST) Katze and Aris tumbled to a halt right at the feet of Mal. "How was the game?" he simply asked. Aris looked sheepishly up at her boss, and Katze shook her head to clear it of the combination of adrenaline and the wonkiness of 'porting Aris. "We got shot at!" Aris said. "Shot at? At a baseball game?" "No, the game wasn't until later tonight," Katze said. "So we decided, big open area was a nice place to play with live blades and we went to Golden Gate Park." "And we ran into Owsen!" Aris said. Mal groaned. "Why do you two always get in trouble when you decide to go to San Francisco?" Katze shrugged. "At least I didn't take his offer to spar." "Okay..." Mal said, trying to handle this disjoined way of telling a story. "Why don't we begin at the beginning?" This time Katze and Aris managed to relay the story with minimal diversion and interruption. Mal frowned thoughtfully through the retelling, interjecting occasionally to get more detail on specific parts. When the pair had finished their report, Mal leaned back in his chair and scowled at the ceiling. "Okay," he said, "let me make sure I have this right. He specifically said he was looking for a sword?" Katze nodded. "He liked mine, but it wasn't the one he was looking for. That's what he said, almost exactly." "Hrm. Dammit. That's bad." Mal sat up, his thoughts plainly written on his face. "You realize what sword he's looking for, right?" "Oh yeah." "You'd think he'd be happy with the one he already has," Aris quipped. Mal looked at her without expression, until the dragon finally ducked her head and mumbled a quick apology. Mal drummed a quick riff on the desk. "Okay, we're stepping up the alert level a notch or five. Min?" Minerva's holographic icon blipped into existence, hanging upside-down between the visitor's chairs, her head level with Katze and Aris. "You rang?" Mal blinked. "... Why are you upside-down?" Min shrugged eloquently. "I was bored." "Ah. Of course. Silly of me to ask, really." Mal shook his head, then continued, "Min, call everybody back if they've gone out. We've got some new information and we need everybody to hear it. Also, let 'em know that we're going to be doing status meetings daily at this point." "Roger roger." Min saluted sharply, then let her icon fade as she worked the communications systems. "More meetings?" Aris groaned. "Great." Mal shrugged. "We need everybody to know what the hell's going on. I know it's not that much fun, but it's necessary. Hopefully," he added wryly, "we can figure out a plan of attack before something else goes horribly wrong." OFFICES OF PEGASUS COMMUNICATIONS SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA 04/03/2004 12:45 AM Earl Walters kicked his feet up on his desk in the lobby. The graveyard shift was usually dismally uneventful, and he was preparing to take the opportunity to launch a full frontal assault on an unsuspecting corned-beef-on-rye. At least, until an obnoxiously piercing warble interrupted his after-midnight snack. Someone was leaning on the door buzzer. Walters sighed-- the engineers, when they actually remembered to eat, were always leaving their keycards at their workstations when they left the building. He heaved himself out of his seat, and grabbing his flashlight he made for the lobby door. "I'm comin', I'm comin'!" he shouted, trudging warily up to the smoked-glass. Well, it wasn't one of the engineers, nobody he recognized at least. Probably some vagrant, by the look of his dirty greatcoat and long, snarled hair. Whoever it was waved jauntily at him as he approached, never letting up on the door buzzer, even as he opened the door. "Ease off the button, willya?" Walter said, shining his flashlight in the man's face. "What's the problem, buddy?" A slightly manic grin looked back at him. The vagrant gave the buzzer a few more presses for good measure and then stepped up to the door. "Wanna buy some Girl Scout cookies, mister?" he chirped. Great. One of /those/. "You don't look like any Girl Scout I've seen." Walters scanned the man up and down with his light. "'Cept for the skirt. Shove off." The man in the skirt appeared to wilt, shoulders slumping in disappointment. "Well... I didn't have any cookies anyway." His hand shot out, grabbed Walters by the shirt, and pulled the security guard's face into his outthrust forehead. Walters' world went bright and then faded into unconsciousness as his nose splintered against his assailant's skull, and he slid bonelessly into a heap on the ground. "It's called a kilt, ye craven bastard," said Tilden Owsen, and he stepped over the unconscious guard. Owsen whistled as he strolled through the hallway, dragging a deep furrow along the wall with the tip of his sword as he went. His list was nearly complete, and these last four were making themselves very, very hard to find. He was close now, though, to the youngest of his estranged fellows. He could feel him here. Pale blue-white lighted spilled from beneath the doorway of the corner office as he came to the end of the corridor. With a manic grin, he raised a boot and applied liberal blunt-force pressure onto the center of the oaken panel, causing it to tear away from the frame and collapse forward into the office. "Heeeeeeeeere's Johnny!" he announced, stomping in after it, sword raised and ready. The night janitor panicked, looking around frantically for an exit that wasn't blocked by bulk of a grinning, sword-wielding maniac. That failing, he dropped the duster in his hand and bolted past Owsen, the fury of his hasty withdrawal such that it caused the Irishman's coat to stream out behind him as he passed. Owsen looked around the vacated office with a sigh. He strolled over to the mahogany desk, running his fingers along the finely polished grain. He turned the high-backed executive chair with its supple black leather on its swivel and took a seat behind the desk, sword laid across his lap. He folded his hands together, index fingers tapping pensively together as he assessed this situation. His prey wasn't here. He tracked the scent all the way to San Francisco from Alaska, and yet his prey wasn't here. This made him... unhappy. He calmly and deliberately gripped the edge of the desk, and with a sudden roar of unrestrained fury he heaved and sent it tumbling across the room. He snatched up his sword and began to hack blindly at anything within reach. He smashed shelves, chopped papers to shreds, ripped apart the executive chair and hurled it through the broad smoked-glass window in a shower of glass. He had reduced the desk to splinters and carved epithets into the wall with his blade before his rage began to subside. He dropped to one knee, leaning on the sword for leverage, panting in exhaustion when his eyes settled on a small, smashed picture frame amidst the piles of debris. He picked it up, shaking broken glass off of it; it was a picture of a young man with his lady, sitting next to a pond in front of a stone house in what might have been the Scottish countryside. And Owsen smiled. ARGYLL, SCOTLAND 04/05/2004 2:20 PM The world knew him as Kirk Felton. Another, more secretive world once called him DarkSide. But here, in his home, the land of his birth, he was just Gregor Lamont, Scottish expatriate, born over three hundred and fifty years ago. He was a veteran of many wars, and the latest one nobody ever knew had happened. He was enjoying a long vacation during his well-deserved retirement from fighting the good fight, and currently he was hanging from a stirrup on the second story of his small tower house, levering a stone into the wall. He smiled. He and Keili, his wife, had purchased the tiny castle on the Cowal Peninsula almost five yeas ago, but even after the Jihad had shut down life had been busy. He hadn't expected being a full-time CEO would in itself be such a chore, because the operation had more or less run itself when it was just a front for the TRES Corps communications network. At any rate, he was glad to be taking a few months of to do some actual restoration work on the building. It felt good to do simple, hands-on work. The cellphone hanging from his belt buzzed. He wedged his trowel between two stones and unclipped the phone from his belt. "Felton," he answered. It was Cathy, his administrative assistant. "I'm sorry to bother you on your vacation, sir," she said, "but the board thought you should be made aware... we had a break-in a couple nights ago. Your office was ransacked." Felton frowned. Tucking the phone under his chin, he started lowering himself to the ground. "Anything missing?" he asked. "Not that we can tell. Your files were scattered all over, but it looks like they're all there. It's mostly just property damage. But-- get this-- it looks like whoever it was went through the place with a sword." A sword? Something about that set off alarms in the back of his mind; your average industrial spy didn't go around toting medieval weaponry. "Alright. Keep me posted on the investigation. Thanks Cath." He hung up, and stared thoughtfully at the phone for a few moments. Well, he had been dragged out of his blissful ignorance of the business world, he might as well check his office voicemail. His mind wandered as he listened to several project reports and numerous requests for charitable donations, and then an oddity struck him. He repeated the last message. "Hey, it's Aris. Something's come up. Call me at the old home number." He flipped the phone closed. Aris? The name was familiar but... nah, it couldn't be. He shoved the phone in his pocket and went inside. Keili met him at the door with a kiss. "Something wrong?" she asked, noting his slightly distant look. "Break-in at the company," he said, wrapping his arms around her. "Trashed my office. An' something else..." "What is it?" she said as he slipped away from her and headed toward the study. He kept it in a trunk with the other memorabilia of his past lives... hopefully there was some charge left in the power cell, because he hadn't left it on the charger for a couple years now. He pulled his JihadLinker out from under his TRES Corps dress uniform... just enough charge left in it. And sure enough, the Jihad commnet, at least part of it, was up and functioning. Following the hunch, he got on the old VRDET channel to Blanca. The channel chirped open. "Blanca. This is Aris. Where the hell have you been? Don't you check your messages? It's been a month... a MONTH." Kirk blinked. "I've been on vacation. That usually implies a general desire tae remove oneself from business calls. What's goin' on? Why's the JihadNet active?" "It's Owsen. He's come back from the dead. And he's systematically killing every Maenad he can find." It took him a moment to respond to that. "... say that again?" "Owsen's -alive- and killing Ferals. We think he's trying to locate the Barney-Slayer. Look, we hadn't heard from you and nearly presumed you were dead!" "...How many?" "Windigo, Shardik and Maeve are still unaccounted for. DeadLock, Blackblood, Slider... everyone else is dead. Some of us have managed to regroup and we could use all the help we can get to do something about him. How soon can you get here?" Kirk paled. Nearly all of them... "...DS?" "I'm not coming," he said finally. "You're what?!" "He's kin, Aris, and right now I stand the best chance of at least slowin' him down. I'm stayin' here and lettin' him come tae me." He heard what sounded like a brief scuffle on the other end of the link, and the voice changed. "Are you fucking crazy? What is it with you Maenads and your stupid delusions of invincibility?" "It's good to hear ye again too, Malaclypse," Kirk said. "I've made up my mind. Ye'll hear from me again." "Don't be stu--" Kirk closed the link. As he pocketed the 'Linker, he turned to find Keili standing in the doorway of the study, her face a mask of abject horror. "Don't do this," she pleaded. He came to her, and cupped her face in his hands. "I have tae. Listen tae me, I want ye tae pack some things and head into Dunoon for a few days. It's no gonna be safe here for ye." "No. I'm not going." "He's a Maenad gone rogue, love. Ye don't have the power tae stand against that." She pushed from him and turned away. "And you do? Weren't you listening? He's killed the other Maenads. Ones that were more senior and probably more powerful than you. What makes you think you can do any better?" She looked at him forlornly. "Don't do this. Let's join the others." Kirk shook his head. "No. If he's managed tae kill off all of my kin, then the only way anyone else is gonna be able tae stop him is with full force. At least I might have a chance tae subdue him. Maybe he's gone bonkers, but he's still a hero and a brother. I dinnae want tae see him killed if it can be avoided." "The war's over. Hero or not he's become a murdering bastard. He's not worth risking your life over." "I know what it's like tae be turned against our own. I have tae try, love." Keili nestled her head against his chest. "You're my world. You know I couldn't stand to lose you." "I know," he answered, quietly. "Then you know I'm not going anywhere." "...aye." They sat in silence in the study, watching the dying flames dance around in the fireplace. The old grandfather clock behind them seemed to thunder in the deathly quiet. An air of impending doom hung around them like a thick woolen blanket. Kirk moved to get up, but Keili's arms around his shoulders held him fast. Smiling, he brushed his fingers reassuringly across her cheek. "I'm just going tae fetch some wood for the fire. I won't be gone long." She heaved a sigh and released him. "Hurry back," she said. The sky was fading into the deep purple of dusk when he stepped out into the evening air. He padded through the grass, across the tiny courtyard to where several cords of wood were neatly piled next to a chopping block. He wrenched free the woodaxe that was lodged in it, and placed a small log upright in its place. He raised the axe to chop, but paused, and then lowered it again. "I was wondering when ye were going to show up," Felton said, without turning around. The woodaxe hung loosely at his side. He had scarcely heard the footfalls approach behind him. "Oh, I didn't know I was expected. I would have brought something. Maybe a basket of fruit, or a nice Merlot." There was a silken singing of metal on metal as Owsen drew his sword. Felton turned around slowly. There was a faint red flicker in the depths of his eyes as his Feral side raged against his restraining will. "I dinnae think ye'll find me as easy a target as the others," he said. Owsen shifted his grip on the sword, and grinned. "We'll see about that, now won't we?" "I dinnae want tae have tae kill ye, Owsen," said Felton, body contorting and changing into something much more bestial as Nemesis asserted its will on his shape. The sword came up. "Ah? Pity it's not a sentiment I share." And he charged. "Bloody thickheaded Irishman," Nemesis said, a tall, gray, spined demon-kin standing where the man once stood, and lunged forward to meet Owsen head-on. */ Tomoyasu Hotei "Battle Without Honor or Humanity" _Kill Bill_ /* The first punch landed by Nemesis struck Owsen square on the jaw with enough force to shatter a cinder block, but the sudden fire in his side bore testament to Owsen's armored kneecap snapping a rib or two. The two combatants tumbled out of the air with the force of their combined blows, collapsing to the earth. Nemesis was the first back on his feet. "Look at ye," he said, shifting the woodaxe to his fighting hand. "Have ye been ensourceled, lad? The stink o' the Lyran magick is all o'er ye." Owsen swung his sword, and Nemesis brought the axe up to parry it without much effort, but the feint had the desired effect and Owsen's boot caught him in the kidney driving him sideways. The sword came around again in the follow-through, this time drawing a long slash across the demon's chest. Nemesis staggered backward. The bloodflow had stopped as soon as it had begun, and already the flesh of his wound was knitting back together. "I'm not the same grunt ye knew back on Pacifica," he said, looking up from the rapidly fading scar. "Ah?" said Owsen, advancing forward. He dabbed at the trickle of blood forming at the corner of his mouth with his sleeve. "And I'm not the same man YOU LEFT FOR DEAD back on Pacifica!" he bellowed. He contrived to look almost embarrassed for a moment at the outburst, and then flourished a bow. "Pleased to make your acquaintance." Owsen's sword swept in an upward arc aimed at his face, but Nemesis deflected the blow with the axe. Its head landed with a dull thud a few yards to his left, and he held the severed handle up for scrutiny. "Well, shite." The sword again stabbed at his face, and unthinkingly he knocked the lunge aside with his arm. The black blade slid along his sleeve, slicing easily through the leather of his jacket and into the flesh of his forearm, cutting deeply to the bone. Nemesis roared with pain, eyes flickering with fire as he bared rows of fangs at the fallen Maenad. He clutched the wound, restraining the desire to tear Owsen apart. "Look at you, the wicked Feral beast," said Owsen, circling around Nemesis. "Where are the claws, the bravado? Aren't you going to go into the throes of your Holy Warpspasm and cut me to ribbons without a second thought?" He stopped, grinning manically. "Here stands one of the mighty warriors of the Holy Albino, his chosen, and yet my limbs are still attached. For all the agrandization, for all the laud, you're nothing but a useless whelp." His grin turned into a sneer. "I can't believe you were chosen over me." The daemon flexed his hand as the wound to his arm healed. "I've never born me Claws against a fellow Jihaddi, an' I'm no about tae start now. Ye're kin, Owsen. Ye've had ye mind scrambled, but ye're still kin." "Well," said Owsen, smiling, "you know how it goes. You only hurt the ones you love." He whipped his sword at Nemesis in a tight arc, but the Maenad moved quickly, ducking inside his reach and delivering a quick jab which shattered the cartilage of the Irishman's nose. Owsen staggered back in a slight daze, blood flowing fresh from his nostrils. "You bastard," he said, dabbing it with the back of his hand. His eyes flared with violet light and the bleeding stopped. "You're going to -hurt- for that, my boy." "Let's be reasonable, Tilden," Nemesis said, fists raised, dancing around like a boxer. "Put the sword away. Let's talk." "No no no. Talking will just get in the way of dying." Owsen slashed his sword, and with a sound like ripping fabric an arc of violet energy scythed through the air, catching Nemesis in the chest and hurling him backward. He slammed into the stone wall, cloth and flesh alike split open. Owsen charged after him, sword swinging in an overhead chop. Its dark blade sparked against the stone, carving a shallow furrow in the wall where Nemesis had been just a second before he ducked out of the way and behind the Irishman. He felt a slight tug at his belt as the demon passed, and he turned to meet the dual crack of his pistols in Nemesis' taloned hands. The slugs slammed into either of his shoulders, driving him back against the wall. With a howl of mixed pain and rage, Owsen's boot lashed out at the Feral, catching him just below the sternum with preternatural strength, lifting him into the air and sending him smashing through the small stone arch above the courtyard's entryway. Nemesis tumbled to the earth outside the walls amongst a rain of stone, Owsen's pistols bouncing merrily along the turf outside of his reach. "That's not a very cordial way to treat a long-lost friend," Owsen said, sauntering though the gate. "Shooting him with his own guns. Not very nice at all." Nemesis started to push himself upright. His wounds were already healing up again, but slower this time. "Why, Owsen?" he wheezed. That kick had broken several ribs. "What is it you want?" "What do I want?" Owsen said, tapping his chin thoughtfully. "Oh, I want what everyone wants... a nice, long life, and happiness." He grinned, and grabbed Nemesis by the hair, dragging him to his knees. He drew back the Maenad's head to expose his throat to his blade. "Both of which were taken from me. But I got one back, oh yes, no thanks to any of you, and happiness will come soon enough, once the Ferals are all dead and the Scourge has come and purged this world of its filth. And once I have the light, of course." "The light?" Nemesis asked. His adam's apple bobbed self-consciously in the air. Owsen's expression soured. "The sword, you moron. I have the dark, I need the light. Is it really such a hard concept to grasp?" He leaned down until his mouth was mere inches from Nemesis' pointed ear. "You don't know where it is, do you? None of the others did, but one of you must. How could you not? Yes? No? Pity." He stood up, bringing his sword back, and swung. The dark blade rang out against five feet of ebon steel that had materialized between it and Nemesis' throat. "Enough," Nemesis growled. He rose, pressing Owsen back. The swords hissed as their blades caressed each other. "I'm no gontae ask ye again," Nemesis said darkly, taking a few steps back and bringing his massive Claidheam into a ready position. "Lay down yer sword. Let me help ye." Owsen gave this due consideration. "No," he said politely. Nemesis growled. "So be it." He struck, and his sword ripped through the air with a feral snarl, but such a weapon was not meant for one-on-one melees and Owsen deftly avoided it. The broad blade struck the ground, kicking up a small cloud of earth and grass. Owsen's follow-through stroke swiped across his back, carving through his thick hide. The Maenad jerked his sword free and swung it around in a wide arc that would have cleft the Irish warrior in twain at the waist had he not brought his own blade down to deflect the blow. The blades rang out, and the weight of the larger sword sent the impact jarring up his arm and numbing his wrist. He whipped the dark Slayer up and around through a tight arc aimed at Nemesis' neck, but the demon managed to angle his sword to catch it. And so it went. Each clash of blades sent psychic screams of pain up Nemesis' arms and into his subconscious as the corrupted Oswenite bit chunks out of whatever mystical steel his Claidheam was composed of, such was the bond he shared with it. Neither seemed to gain the upper hand, Owsen apparently tireless and so much swifter the warrior, but Nemesis was older and a more seasoned veteran. But the combat was wearing on him. Though few physical blows had been landed on him, the damage inflicted on his sword was fraying his nerves, enough that he was caught off guard. Owsen gashed him twice across the chest in quick succession, then chopped onto his right shoulder, cutting in deep and splitting his collarbone. Nemesis' sword dropped from his hand, and even before it had hit the ground, Owsen had spun around behind him. The dark Slayer swept low, and with a silken sound it sliced neatly through his Achilles tendons. Losing the support of his legs, Nemesis toppled onto the grass. He had barely any fight left in him, and this seemed to disappoint Owsen somewhat as he strolled cheerfully around the prone demon, swinging his sword lazily. C'est la vie, though, such was the work that had to be done. A savage kick rolled Nemesis over, and Owsen's boot pressed down on his sternum, causing his shattered ribs and collarbone to scream in agony. The Irishman brought his black sword up for a backhand swing intended to finish Nemesis off. "It's been fun," he said, "but I've got things to see and people to do and I can tell you're not going to be any help. Are you prepared to die?" Nemesis grimaced up at him. "Get bent." "Ah. Defiant to the last, even when faced with the inevitability of your own death. Some might find it admirable. Personally, I think it's just a shame." "I know where it is," Nemesis croaked. Owsen hesitated. "You what?" Nemesis smiled inwardly through the pain. /That's right, I've got your attention now. Now I've just got to hold it for a minute.../ An observant individual would have noticed his right hand clenched white-knuckle tight, and the yellow-orange light seeping between his fingers shifting rapidly to white. But Owsen's attention was riveted on his words. "The sword. I know where it is," Nemesis repeated. "I'm..." His eyelids fluttered as he nearly blacked out. It was going to take all that he had left, and he hoped it was going to be enough. "I'm the only one. Kill me, and you'll never find it." Owsen's wild eyes glared down at him, and he brought the sword down, driving it through the Feral's shoulder and into the ground. He leaned upon the pommel, and every small motion sent new waves of pain searing through Nemesis' torso. "Tell me. Now." "Nghrghh," Nemesis gurgled as he once more nearly passed out. A light breeze was whipping up around them, an artifact of a lot of oxygen being used up in the immediate vicinity. The air began shimmer around them like asphalt on a hot day. Owsen twisted the dark Slayer in Nemesis' shoulder and wrenched it loose, grabbing the Feral by the throat and slamming his skull repeatedly into the ground as he tottered on the edge of total psychosis. "Tell me! Tell me where it is now, before I SPLIT OPEN YOUR SKULL and RIP IT FROM YOUR BRAIN!!!" he bellowed, spittle flying like a rabid dog. And then he felt a sharp pain, between his shoulderblades, accompanied by the silken sound of metal piercing flesh. Owsen turned, the handle of the dagger still protruding from his back, to face Keili, who was carefully retreating backward. "That... -that- wasn't very nice -at all-," he said, following after her, his sword scything lazily through the air. "I think I'm going to have to make an exception for you, lass, and do something altogether -unpleasant-." It was then that he noticed the tingle in his fingertips. He scrabbled for the dagger in his back, but found his limbs moving as though weighted with lead as Keili's poison seeped through his body. His advance faltered, and he fell to one knee, sword slipping from his numbing grasp. "Oh, yes," he hissed, seething with hate and contempt for this insignificant creature. "Very unpleasant INDEED." Gathering his strength, he rocketed back to his feet, scooping up the sword in one smooth motion and bringing it up for an overhead swing meant to cleave the woman's skull in two. "Tilden," said a voice behind him. He turned. And Nemesis' fist hit him square in the chest, releasing into the blow the pinpoint of white-hot energy he had been building up. Keili threw herself to the ground an instant before the firestorm which engulfed the two Maenads washed over her. Keili lay in the grass for some time, trying to gather her wits. The smell of burnt hair and flesh filled her nostrils; rolling over onto her back, she noted with thanks that most of it wasn't her own. She levered herself upright on the scorched turf, looking around. The damage radiated for several more yards past her, and at its epicenter was the hunched form of Nemesis, slumped unmoving on the seared-bare earth. She didn't see Owsen anywhere. He wasn't breathing when she shifted him upright. His clothes, what where left of them, were still smoldering and the artificial fabrics had fused to his flesh. She had never seen this before; never seen him actually looked /burnt/. Whatever aura it was that had once protected him from fire and heat had to have been nearly drained by all of that energy he channeled into a single blow. She cradled his head to he chest until she finally she felt him draw one long, stuttering breath. "Welcome back," she whispered, as he tried to focus on her face. "O..wsen?" he rasped. Each breath crackled as he painfully drew it. "Gone," she said, checking his wounds. They were already starting to heal, but he'd received a lot of them. Nemesis tried to get to his feet. The pain was nearly overwhelming. "Got to go," he said. "You're in no shape for travel," Keili protested, steadying him with her shoulder. He tried to make a good show of it by straining himself upright. "No time. Gotta go now. Think I can -just- pull it off." "No, you're not going to--" "Unauthorized inbound teleportation!" screamed Minerva, igniting nerves that were already on edge. The assembled Jihaddi drew weapons, training them on the pinprick of light that was forming on the floor. "--try to teleport," Keili said, as the swirl of cerulean fire deposited the two of them. She looked at the assorted firearms aimed in her direction. "Oh." "I think I've slowed him up a bit," Nemesis wheezed, steadying himself against her. "Now, what do we want tae do about him?" And then he collapsed. The still waters of Felton's pond began to ripple as a charred, blackened hand scrabbled for purchase on its bank. Another hand followed suit, releasing the sword it clutched only long enough for the sizzling, scarred figure to drag itself from the water. Lord Tilden Owsen grinned. It was not because he was particularly happy, but rather because his face lacked the necessary musculature, or indeed much face at all, to engage in any other expression. His clothes hung from his frame in burnt tatters, and the rest of him hadn't faired much better. He sighed. This would not do. A violet aura flared to life around him. With some effort he managed to get upright on legs that resembled raw hamburger but even now were beginning to heal. Bits of charcoal flaked from his fingers as he bent over and wrapped them around the hilt of his pristine sword, which he laid across his shoulder. His other hand opened, revealing a small, black medallion nestled in his palm. The scrollwork on it was familiar, but he couldn't quite place his finger on it. Well, that wasn't important. What was important was that he was that much closer to getting back what was his. And this pup of the Albino was going to make it entertaining. */ Zamfir "The Lonely Shepherd" _Kill Bill_ /* TO BE CONCLUDED... Illuminati International Productions presented JIHAD UNIVERSE 3.0 ** Chapter 1: The Return of Owsen ** Part 3: Investigations Starring (in order of appearance) Deidre Greist Andrew Wyatt Malaclypse the Seeker Minerva Fnord Lord Tilden Alexander Owsen KillJoy Eddie Stomponato Aris Merquoni James Yearnshaw Mr. Morden Miranda Delgado Robert Curtis, Doberman Empire (ret.) John Shelton, TRES Corps (ret.) Katze Brenner Josh Schnider Joseph LaCroix Rens Houben Ozzy the Feral J. FoxGlov Ferg the Feral Charn'El, High Mage of Lyra Fleet Commander Samhain, Doberman Empire (ret.) DeadLock the Feral Cecrops Tangaroa Special Agent Mike Hardy Special Agent Zhen Pu Agent Maurice Jones Agent Laurence Abraham Agent Wade Vicks Agent Carlton Schulyer Maria Juarez Earl Walters Kirk Felton Keili Felton Directed by S. Malaclypse Breen 2nd Unit Directors Kat Templeton Dan DeRosia Aris Merquoni Patrick Stewart Warrior Tang Rens Houben Kirk Felton Special Visual Effects DarkSide Studios Not-So-Special Visual Effects by Your Mind Feral transformation effects by WETA Workshop (we wish, but hey, perchance to dream...) Soundtrack available on Illuminati International Records Filmed on location in Colorado, Texas and California MAGICAL LEGAL BOILERPLATE: The previous work of creative fiction is in no way meant to represent nor misrepresent the Lyons Partnership, L.P., or their property Barney® the Purple Dinosaur or any other intellectual properties of the aforementioned Partnership, implicitly or explicitly. The fictional, demonic entity referred to as "B'harnii", "B'harne" and other nomenclature, only loosely based on the Barney® property, is not meant to represent nor tarnish the reputation of the Barney® property. Any potential use of the Barney® name falls within "fair use" as provided by 17 USC 1 § 107. Keep Circulating The Tapes The Jihad will return in "Line In The Sand" (T J A B) 2004