------------------------------------ */ 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 Line in the Sand written by S. Malalcypse Breen, Dan DeRosia, Kirk Felton, Rens Houben, Aris Merquoni, Patrick Stewart, Warrior Tang, and Kat Templeton Directed by S. Malaclypse Breen (c)2005 The Jihad to Destroy Barney ------------------------------------ KINGMAN, ARIZONA MONDAY, APRIL 5, 2004 9:02 PM LOCAL TIME "Nemesis," Dee muttered to herself. She had, in truth, left not long after the Maenad was stabilized at Mt. Blanca. All the people clustered around him highlighted the fact that she had no idea what to do. Being useless had never sat well with her. Fortunately, Minerva knew her well enough to understand, and had opened her a gate back to Athena Heavy Industries after she had slipped away. Right now, she was reclined in a swivel chair, pondering the situation. "The Slayer's been... touched almost definitely," she spoke to herself. Slowing her thoughts to the speed of speech gave her plenty of time to ponder all the implications of every aspect of her words. Besides, it was night and Damo was off... somewhere. "Ergo... them around... likely." She was afraid to call the Lyrans by name, as if doing so would invoke their appearance. "Thus, definitely need to cook up something to kill them, as one Maenad is only maybe enough." Put that way, it was a research problem, which she knew full well how to deal with. She thought a moment, then opened up a direct JihadLinker communication to Minerva. "Konban-wa, Minerva," Dee thought through the link. "Is there any news on Felton?" She knew that Mina would know from her tone what she needed, perhaps why. Dee and the AI were very good at reading each other's minds like that, a fact that may have impressed Malcalypse if he knew. "Konban-wa, Dee," Minerva replied. "Felton seems to be recovering, though he may be out a while. The encounter with Owsen before he arrived seems to have taken a lot out of him. What can I do for *you*?" Dee smiled at her 'sister' cutting to the heart of the matter. "Well, thinking about some old friends of ours," Lyrans, though she still wasn't going to say the word. "I'm trying to figure out some stuff that I can make in a hurry that would be unpleasant to magic users, so I need to access some of the more esoteric databanks. My files are a bit spottier in that area than I'd like." "You do realize that we have magic users too?" Minerva asked with the hint of an edge to her voice, as if to warn her to be careful about what she proposes. "Right, of course. Which is why I'm looking for stuff with experimental data already done, so I don't have the risk of failed field experiments. Mostly just after a force multiplier vs. a single target, not anything with larger areas of effect." "I figured, but I had to ask. All right, VRDET's back open for your perusal plus some of the boss's private files that are relevant. We don't have copies of JPV's or Zeta's files though, unfortunately." "And I've got my own sources too, of course." "Of course." "Let Mal or I know when you come up with something, and I'll let you know if anything comes up in the meantime. Good luck." "Thanks, later Min." Dee checked that the computer in her bionic arm was finding the new data over the network before triggering off a smart search to find anything relevant and summarize it. She shifted her feet on her desk, inadvertently knocking some papers to the floor, and semi-patiently waiting. Her arm's mp3 player had only gotten through its first two songs before useful results started trickling in. She scrolled the summaries and blinked. "Hey, does that work? Whoa, hum, that's just about what I had in mind..." she paused. "Yeah, we have some of that in storage for raw materials from that one guy..." she swept her boots off the desk and flew downstairs to the machine shop, busily getting to work. "Guh, hell, stupid brittle iron," Dee muttered to herself. The main project she was working on were cold iron bullets, and it just happened that some strange person had gotten ahold a piece of meteoric iron that he had wanted milled into gun parts. Order never came though, so here she was turning it into bullets. Or rather cutting into rectangles and turning down those on a lathe into bullets. It was the 12th successful one, and would fit the plastic sabots perfectly. There was a lot more metal, but... if it didn't work, not much point. She sipped her coffee and grimaced at the mess she'd made. Only one beer over the night, but she'd been up a while. Have to pick all that up before Damo gets home. Or hell, let *him* do it. She started cutting crossed lines on the tips in a star pattern with the computer controlled setup, fine lines that she knew would expand and break into little sharp bits upon hitting something. That process started, she reviewed something that had come up last night in researching mana-reactive metals. Between her own files and Mals, there was most of the analysis of the original Barney Slayer, made back in the day and responsible for Jihaddium alloy among other things, though the Owsenite remained unique. But a comparison of those materials data vs. the data of the new blade fragments would perhaps provide some clue what was going on. "Hey, Minerva?" She opened up the JihadLink connection without thought and tried to get her sister's attention. "Found two things." "Ah? Which one of them qualifies as the bad news?" "Heh. Well, the first is I've put together some bullets that... well, should cut through magic, or something like that. I don't claim to understand why, but they should. The second..." "Spill it." Dee fidgeted. "Well, while I was thinking about metallurgy, I was thinking about the Slayer. Between Mal's files and mine I pieced together most of the reports on its study, and on Jihaddium, the offshoot. Only thing is... well, when that hit its opposite it blew up. And now we have the Owsenite opposite and..." "We don't have nearly as much data on it. I don't disagree about that." "Right, but I wanted to know if I could get authorization to take a fragment of the dark Slayer to Spiral; I know the Blanca has most of the good R&D labs cannabalized, and that Spiral should have a big Black department." There was a pause. Minerva stopping to think, or maybe getting ahold of Mal. "That could be important. I'll ask him when he gets in. But in the mean time, *you*, young missy, are going to get some sleep." Crap, of course Minerva could tell when she had pulled an all-nighter. "But oneechan..." "Sleep, at least a couple hours. I'll ring after I talked it over with Mal." "Haiii..." Dee trailed off before curling up on her desk and closing her eyes. VRDET HQ BLANCA MOUNTAIN, COLORADO 10:00 PM LOCAL TIME Aris hadn't moved her stuff from the dark nook at one end of the hangar, and was starting to think it might be a good idea. Still, while it was there, she wanted to take advantage of having a wide area marked off as personal space and practice a little bit. Practicing meant casting wards, which took a while. The last thing she wanted was to damage the facility. She was supposed to be its guardian, and Mal would be angry if she broke anything. Once the walls, floor, and ceiling had been adequately (she hoped) magicproofed, Aris adhered an old powerbar wrapper to the wall, stepped back to the middle of the room, and started launching fireballs at it. Katze stopped just outside the limit of the chalked wards and watched the dragon's progress. Aris had a slightly befuddled look on her face, and there was a spiralling array of black spots on the opposite wall. None had come closer than a foot to the powerbar wrapper. Aris looked over and grinned sheepishly. "You know, I hit an acetylene torch on my first try once." "And they're not much bigger than two meters?" "Something like that." Aris stared at her target and frowned, almost a pout. "This is getting silly." "Maybe you need to relax a bit. You know, feel the energy flowing through you." "Easy for you to say. You've *never* missed with that bow of yours." Katze grimaced. "I missed that guy in the park." "Okay. Once. Still." Aris flipped her ponytail back, then reached back and started re-wrapping it in her scrunchie. "At least I'm getting better at casting. I think I can actually be useful in a fight now, as something other than a really bad Third-Gunner." Katze jerked a thumb at the elevator. "I think KJ got the targeting range working again, if you want to practice with an X-Rifle or your sword... gun... thing." "Yeah, that's probably a good idea." Aris looked around and sighed. "I should probably clean up this crap, too. I've aired out my old rooms, so there should be room there for everything." "Want a hand with the videos?" "Sure," Aris said, as she started to scuff out the wards. Katze bent down and picked up a couple of the Red Dwarf casettes. "They have these on DVD now, you--" *SNARL!* *THUD* Katze looked up to see Aris flat on her face a few feet away. "Um," Aris said into the ground. "That was uncomfortable." Katze put down the tapes and stepped forward gingerly. "What just happened?" "Uhhh... dragon instinct took over, and I forgot I was human. Overbalanced." Aris looked up, moved her arms around so she could prop her chin on her hands. "I didn't even realize I'd started hoarding stuff." "Hoarding stuff?" "Different dragons hoard stuff in different ways." Aris started picking herself off the floor. "My particular race gets it in waves, sort of like brief obsessions. They start coming on after maturity, and the time spent on one hoard gets longer as a dragon gets older. My mom's got the best collection of Phil Folglio porn of anyone in the multiverse." Katze blinked. "It can be tragic, too, though, if you hoard the wrong stuff. I remember mom telling me about dad--Galactic dragons don't tend to keep the male in the family, you know, it's all matrilineal, so I never knew him--but apparently he was hoarding Hostess snack cakes in the wrong dimension and got captured by a group of superheroes." "I... um," Katze said. "Here," Aris said, picking through the Red Dwarf. "Why don't you take the Series 7 tapes? That should be okay." "Why don't I just get a library cart or something? Or better yet, why don't we put everything in your backpack?" Aris brightened at the second suggestion. "That's a really good idea. Why didn't I think of that?" "Too busy falling on your face?" "Right." Aris took off her backpack, opened it, and scooped the tapes inside, followed by the TV. She zipped the pack closed and shouldered it. "Cool. Dinner?" KINGMAN, ARIZONA 10:00 AM LOCAL TIME That orange marshmallow was beeping strangely, Dee thought... oh no, it was about to explode! But then she remembered that it was just the message dialog telling her that Minerva was calling back. Dee groaned and flopped backwards into her chair, brushing papers off her face. "Braiiiins." "Good morning to you too, zombiehead. Mal wanted to talk to you about the idea in person so I'll send a gate to pick you up... in 20?" "That should be enough," Dee muttered, rolling out of her chair and remote controlled the coffee maker to start through her arm while simultaneously staggering towards the showers in the locker rooms that were set up. "Any objections did he have?" She was still talking to Minerva, even standing under the spray of hot water. "Minor stuff... some precautions. Normal stuff." "Right, normal." She turned off the shower and stepped out, drying off before getting dressed. Her standard pistol rig went on under her standard motorcycle jacket and she grabbed the important looking briefcase she used when traveling so that people wouldn't feel put-off at her having no notes or references or anything. It was loaded with something far more useful; a couple changes of clothes, a bag of Cheetos, and a couple bottles of Powerade. "Also might have a chance to do some testing on the new stuff so pack that too." Nodding to herself and gulping down the cup of boiling hot coffee, Dee wandered into the shop and boxed up the 2 dozen loose rounds that she had finished making from scratch. Both they and a holstered matte silver Smith & Wesson revolver fit in the case without much problem... a good thing she wasn't flying. She grabbed the coffee and took a gulp of the steaming liquid. "Okay, let's do this," she transmitted to Minerva, walking through the gate as soon as it formed. "All right, Minerva gave me the gist of things. I want to hear it from you." Dee sipped her coffee and tried to hide her apprehension; talking to Malcalypse alyways made her nervous. "Well, I was working on metallurgy for another project and the thought came that maybe from analyzing the fragments we could figure out a bit more about why Owsen needs the real Slayer. And what might happen if he had it." "Right, and you thought there was some sort of 'black' lab at Spiral that would have more working equipment than there currently is at Blanca?" He paused a beat, long enough for Dee to start worrying. "Of course there is. Hidden in plain sight, really." "Oh... good. Minerva said you had a couple conditions?" "Right. Keep the fragments near you at all times, for obvious reasons. Don't do anything you think will blow up without precautions... again for obvious reasons." "Well, that's obvious enough." Mal nodded. "Don't get the normals involved, they know better than to ask some questions. Take notes in case something does blow up. And be careful." He thought a moment. "Oh, what did you come up with about the other thing?" No question if she had come up with anything. "Ah, right..." She set the briefcase on his desk and flipped the catches, making sure to open it such that he had no view of the contents. She pulled a bullet out of one of the boxes and passed it over. "Meteoric iron... some weirdo placed a strange order and never followed through with the rest of the payment. Tried various methods of getting it into shape. It's in a plastic sabot so as to not wreck the gun, and is prefragmented." Mal nodded and passed it back. "We may have a way to test that. But let's get you on with the Slayer analysis first." The man at the front desk might have wondered why he was giving Dee an unlimited access ID badge to Spiral. The girl was wearing a plain black motorcycle jacket over a plain white shirt, black slacks over black boots that clicked on the floor as she walked. She looked like someone's kid, there on a 'take your daughter to work' day. On the other hand, she carried herself like a suit, someone who knew intrinsicially that she belonged there, and the brushed aluminum briefcase lended credence to that. "I just need you to to confirm your identity, maam. Please put your eyes up by the scanner." Not that he was thinking too hard about things. The fact that instructions came down from on-high to issue the pass to this gi... woman, he corrected himself, meant that he probably shouldn't be wondering about it at all. Dee let the machine take a scan of her retinas and then got her badge from the guard. She was overall pleasantly surprised by the security; she'd expected far worse after Mal had suggested gating in from across the street and walking in the front door. The retinal scanner being fairly standard also impressed her. The elevators, though... the elevators were just cool. As she stepped in and the doors closed, the transciever package in her artificial arm picked up a burst transmission and an answering one from her badge. A touchscreen displayed the floors she was authorized for, presumably all of them, but it was obvious that there could well be more and she'd never know. It did make her wonder though, what would happen if people with different security levels were on the elevator. Mentally shrugging, she pressed the button for sublevel 2. The lab, she was relatively unsurprised to see, was laid out almost identicially to how the Verthandic labs had been since... well, it really made sense to clump related research together, and the openness made perfect sense when everyone had the security to know about each others projects as people could go try to lend an idea. What was more surprising was some of the projects she glimpsed as she walked past. Breadboard circuits tapping into systems that used the same carriers as the JihadLinkers had, energy storage setups similar to the power cell designs used in some heavy energy weapons of the Jihad, even some rudimentary pseudo-musculature work. None of it actually Jihad tech, as she could tell from subtleties in the designs, but derived from technology beyond mundane for sure. Not that it mattered much, as she crossed to a seperate elevator and descended into the true black labs. "I could have worked here," she muttered under her breath as she passed by some of the labs. Down here they were a lot more closed off, but she couldn't resist peeking in on a few as she went by and saw some high energy experiments; a refined X-Rifle plasma generator featuring in its capable role of a holepuncher through increasingly durable materials. She was more than a bit tempted to take some time and investigate further but curiosity over that warred with curiousity over the corrupted Owsenite and lost. The materials science lab was currently unoccupied, as she had been told it would be. Dee considered the gathered equipment and nodded to herself, setting the case with the fragments on a table before taking off her jacket and shoulder holster and folding them on another table. "Let's see what you can tell us," Dee muttered to herself before preparing the first part of one of the samples to go through a mass spectrometer, the first of a battery of tests. 7:00 PM LOCAL TIME Dee stifled a yawn as she walked into Malcalypse's office after a good while spent commiting acts of technology upon metal fragments. In the end she'd found out more than a bit, but not exactly what she wanted to know. "Well, there's bad news and kind of interesting news," she began before being prompted. She'd been up too long and she knew it, so some of the usual modes of behaviour of being intimidated by Mal and stuff could take a temporary shelving. "You've no idea what will happen if it's combined with the real Slayer," Mal stated. "Yeah, that's the bad news. The other news is that it's definitely Owsenite, though it's different in some mundane ways." "Howso?" "Well, it's got the same molecular composition but it's packed differently... some of the fragments are densely packed and aligned like ceramic, while others are... well, foamed. At a guess, it's the best way to make use of a severely limited amount of material; the edges are ceramic while the rest is just foamed filler. Should be harder and lighter, but more brittle... thus why it left little shards behind." "Interesting, but doesn't really answer a lot of the questions we had." Dee nodded tiredly. "Yeah, I know. Probably need a magic user to really tell how it's kinked..." she commented in a way that sounded more like a question. Mal nodded. "I managed to get ahold of Katze Brenner, and she should be able to help tomorrow." "Ah good, that should be interesting." This time she did yawn. "Get some sleep, Dee." "Yeah, I know... eesh, you and Min both," she commented with a chuckle as she turned and walked out of the office. VRDET HQ BLANCA MOUNTAIN, COLORADO 8:00 PM LOCAL TIME "All right, here we go." Lacroix breathed in and started dealing eleven cards out to each of the five players: Damocles, Dee Greist, Miranda Delgado, Tangaroa, and himself. Delgado finished a swig of her drink and turned to ask a question of the new ally who was introducing them to this game. "So, Tangaroa, you're with the Doberman Empire?" "Yeah", he replied in a calm tone. "I'm in Intel." "Oh." Delgado's face blanched a bit. If this guy was anything like the other Dobe from Intel that she knew... "Do you know a DobeIntel officer named Curtis?" "Not personally", Tang said, picking up his cards and shifting them upright. "Curtis, huh?" he asked, his voice picking up a hint of emotion. "I might have met him once or twice." Dee withdrew a card from her hand and laid the rest face down on the table. "I'm pulling from Joe this round, right?" "Joseph", Lacroix corrected her on the pronunciation, stressing the second syllable rather than the first. "And yes, I think you are." Dee handed the card across the table to Lacroix, who picked it up and winced emphatically. He drew out his best card in the same suit and grudgingly handed it over. "That was a good hand, too." Lacroix considered the remainder of his hand. "I'll bid two. I can still make two tricks out of this." "That's still a good hand." Tangaroa said. Damocles gave up staring at his twelfth card, the 8"x5" with the rules written on it, and followed with his bid. "I'll take two." Dee added Lacroix's card to her hand, set aside her copy of the rules from her bionic vision field, and bid. "Three". Delgado noted that it was her turn. "I should bid, shouldn't I." She took up her cards and sorted through them. Tangaroa continued his conversation with Delgado. "So this Curtis, do you know him?" "We meet every so often for coffee," Delgado said succinctly, folding her cards. "Three." "Three, huh?" Tang gave a last glance at his hand and ruled out the possibility of going nil. "I'll take one, and that wraps it up." "And I start this off too, don't I?" Lacroix asked. "Yep," Tangaroa said. "Well, here we go." Lacroix tossed out a ten of spades. "Anything between you two?" Damocles asked Delgado suggestively. Delgado's cheecks flushed pink for a moment. "Oh, no, nothing. We just keep each other up to date on Jihad stuff." "Is he all right?" Tangaroa asked. "I haven't seen him around here, and I'd expect anyone in the Jihad--" "Oh, no," Delgado interrupted, "he's all right. He just doesn't want to get involved." "With Owsen running around, I can't blame him." Dee said. "Me either," Lacroix agreed, and examined the table. "Let's see..." He turned to Dee. "You take that one." "Looks like you two are partners again," Delgado said. "I played the eight, and you played the queen," she motioned to Tangaroa, "so we're partners this round." Dee turned to Damocles. "And that makes you the Ronin, Damo." "That's a good thing, right?" Damocles asked, looking at his rulesheet again. "In general," Tangaroa said vaguely, his face showing a hint of mischevious amusement. As Dee led off the next trick, the television droned on in the background, tuned into a 24-hour news channel. "...and in a shocking new development in the Woodsborough murder case, Frank Lancer's second mistress took the stand today..." Damocles muttered. "They're going on about Woodsborough again?" Lacroix shrugged. "It beats news about our people getting killed." "Yes, but people are killing people all the time," Damo explained. "Owsen could be killing people and they won't tell us because they're only interested in Woodsborough. I want to know if anything has happened to our people." "We all do," Delgado said. "Miss Lancer was somebody's people, too," Tangaroa mused. "She had a family." "Yes," Damo agreed, "but four hours of news coverage a day at the expense of everything else?" Tang unneccesarily looked back over his shoulder to address the base's artificial intelligence system. "Hey, Minerva, anything new on the newsfeeds?" A disconnected voice responded over the intercom. "I'd have told you if there was." Delgado grabbed the remote. "Let's see if there's anything on the other stations." The TV flipped over to another 24-hour news station, this one featuring a political talk show. "...and the *problem* with you and *your* people is that you're nothing but *partisan* *liars* whose *only* interest is money and *making* *themselves* *rich*, and you engage in these *ad *hominem* attacks, attacking other people's *character* instead of their *arguments*. You are *slime*! You know what I think should be done..." Before Delgado had lowered the remote, everyone else said in unison: "Turn it back." They didn't really need to ask. "...and Woodsborough continues to be a town in shock 238 days after the horrifying discovery..." Damo looked down at his cards and grumbled. "I don't know why they even highlight every little thing about the case when he's so obviously guilty." "There's a problem, you've already convicted him," Lacroix said. "They're still having the trial." "Yeah, but I can think what I want." Delgado threw out a spade and returned to chatting with Tang. "So what kind of work do you do in the Empire?" Tang grinned in embarassment. "Well, it's not the sort of thing we're supposed to talk about. Here, have a trump." "If he tells you, he'd have to kill you," Lacroix chuckled. "It's not as if there are any secrets any more," Delgado said. "The Jihad's long gone." "I don't like that trump," Damocles said, throwing down a joker. "Bastard," Tang muttered, then objected. "Wait, you're Ronin. You're supposed to go last." "Oh, that's right." Damo withdrew his card. "I wouldn't say the Jihad's long gone," Lacroix mused, "we're right here and we are fighting against.. something which is making Owsen do what he's doing." "I still don't like that trump," Damo said, throwing down the joker again. "Bastard." Tang smiled. Dee pulled in her second trick and tossed out a three of hearts. "I'd better play this now." "The reason I'm asking", Delgado continued to Tang, "is that I worked in Intel myself, for TRES, and maybe there's something we do differently between TRES and the Dobermans that we can learn from." "Perhaps." Tang said. "Aris told me she's glad you've been here on the night shift. She might have been in hibernation the past three years, but the 24-hour days were starting to wear her out." Tang chuckled. "I've been pulling the night watch because I'm still on East Asia time, and we don't get any sunlight down here to reset my body clock for Colorado." Delgado nodded. "That's the same reason Rens is on the third shift, though it's kind of odd that that's night time for Europe." "That's Rens," Tang said simply. "You know him?" Lacroix asked. Tangaroa nodded. A few moments later, noticing that the other players were waiting for a deeper explanation, he started talking. "The Empire sent me to Europe to start my intel career. Since we didn't have many European assets and TRES did, we had sort of a cooperative exchange cross-training program. Shad was one of the ones who helped train me." Lacroix smiled. "I served under Captain Houben for a time. He's a good officer. A good man. I didn't know he was into intel." "He's more.. operations than the back-end intel stuff that Delgado and I do, though he can obviously do the back-end stuff too, as we've... damn." "Sorry." Lacroix smiled as he took the trick. Tang sighed and leaned back. "That was the last card of mine that was going to take." Lacroix tossed out a jack. "And now I take my last trick." Dee slouched low, and Tang tossed out a joker. "No you don't." "Damn." Damo looked at the table in mild astonishment. "Hey, I made my bid." He gathered in the cards and led off the next trick. Delgado played a card and turned to Tangaroa. "Now, hold on, Tang. Did you just describe yourself as some kind of back-room analyst and paperpusher?" "Yeah, sort of," Tang said. "Why?" "I work in Intel." Delgado smirked. "We've heard about some of the things you've done, especially after the war." "What did he do after the war?" Lacroix asked. "Enh.." Tang shrugged. "Blew a few things up." "Half of Moscow?" Delgado asked wryly. "It wasn't half of Moscow," Tangaroa explained, "just a few Mafia businesses in one quarter." "So what did the Mafia ever do?" Dee asked. Damo snickered. "What'd the Mafia do?" he asked sarcastically. "Pissed me off." Tang said. "They're the Mafia," Damo smiled. "Use your imagination." "Guess you don't want to talk about it," Lacroix surmised. Tangaroa nodded. "It's under wraps. National security." Delgado was surprised. "You went into international relations? Jihaddi aren't supposed to do that." Tang gave half a smile. "International relations went to me. I sort of had to extricate myself from the situation." "So that's why we didn't hear from you for four years." Tang nodded and tried to change the subject. "So, what have you been doing since the war?" Delgado idly tossed out a trump and replied first. "I do some reporting for the Oakland Tribune." "Did you break any big stories?" Dee asked. "No.. actually, I'm thinking of quitting, but I haven't made up my mind yet. When I'm not being sent out on some utterly useless fashion assignment, it's just boring desk work." "What are you thinking of doing instead?" Delgado sighed and pulled in the trick. "I haven't made up my mind yet. That's part of the reason I haven't made up my mind yet on quitting. So, have you gotten any new designs working?" Dee smiled. "I've been working on some power armour, but I haven't finished getting the stress tolerances in the knee joints to acceptable levels. I think I'll have to use titanium bearings instead of steel." Some of the other players stared at her after she mentioned her hobby project. Not just for a young girl to be working on something that advanced, Jihaddi generally weren't supposed to be taking their skills into the private sector. "Is that... kosher?" Delgado asked with more than a slight edge to her voice. "Oh!" Dee chuckled nervously. "Yeah, don't worry. It's a hobby... not that I *couldn't* make Jihad-tech stuff, but if I make a setup completely out of mundane technology I can take it out in public and play with it." "Play with it how?" Delgado asked, expecting to be horrified at the answer. Dee grinned. "Ah, well, Damo found a 20mm autocannon from a crashed fighter, so I was going to rig it up like a giant rifle and truck it to the Knob Creek machinegun shoot to make people really jealous. Thing can do 30 rounds per second on full auto, and I should be able to get ahold of some HE shells for it." There was another uncomfortable pause as the other players seemed to be trying to figure out what to think about that. "Everyone needs a hobby," Lacroix said, breaking the silence. "What about you, Damo?" Damocles spoke next. "Dee and I have a machinery shop out in Arizona. Athena Heavy Industries. Maybe you've heard of it? We do customizations of weapons and motor vehicles, build our own models-" "Weapons and *fun* motor vehicles," Dee interrupted her business partner. "Or vice-versa." Damocles shrugged. "Okay, *she* does bikes too." Dee objected. "I hardly think being behind last year's winning AMA Superbike team was anything to sneeze at..." "It's still not our main business though," Damo replied. The bickering had the feel of a well-worn joke being brought out for form's sake, but Lacroix broke in to head things off. "So what kind of things do you guys turn out?" he asked. Dee and Damo stopped arguing back and forth and Dee gestured slightly for Damocles to tell it this time. "Mostly custom jobs, reworking pistols and stuff. We made a name doing some competition Colt 1911s but have expanded out to all sorts of other high-end stuff. We're working on introducing a shotgun of our own design though." "That's acually why we were at the gun show in Vegas when Owsen..." Dee trailed off uncomfortably, before lamely adding "well, you know." A few heads nodded sympathetically. "But yeah," Damo cut in. "We had similar interests so we've been out in the middle of the desert playing with toys since VR closed down." Dee swallowed and nodded. "Beats working for a living, eh?" she commented with a slightly forced grin. "So what about you, Joseph?" Lacroix gave a quick grin and answered. "Well, after the war, I went to college, got my teaching credentials, and I'm now an English teacher at Skyview High in Denver." "You too, huh?" Tangaroa said. "I teach English myself. Just private one on one tutoring, English as a second language for Japanese children and any other subject they need help on. Actually, I only have one student at the moment, a high school girl. She's a nice girl, and the family's nice." Damocles couldn't help but notice a certain twinkle in Tangaroa's eye. "Tang, you're not, um.." His face scrunched a bit in disbelief. Tang blushed, shook his head, and laughed. "No. Her sister. A businesswoman in her mid-twenties, named Natsuko. *She*'s a nice girl." "Okay, so you're not a total pervert." Damo chuckled as the whole table broke into laughter. "Yare yare," Dee muttered in Japanese and rolled her eyes. "" she continued in the same language. Tang blinked slightly; the girl's Japanese came as easily and rapidly as if she were a native speaker, though there was still a hint of an accent. "Your Japanese is quite good," he remarked. She smiled, more easily than the forced grin a few minutes before. "Thank you. I grew up in VR and it was quicker than waiting for anime to be translated." He looked taken aback by the statement that learning a new language was so easy to the point where Dee chuckled. "" she continued in Japanese. "" Dee tapped her forehead with her natural left hand meaningfully. "" She grinned impishly for a moment. Lacroix coughed politely. "Sorry to interrupt, but it's not very polite to be carrying on conversations in languages other people don't speak." "Oh, you're absolutely right, I'm sorry." She winked at Tang in a not particularily subtle way and flipped her last card onto the table. "Merci", Tangaroa smirked at Lacroix, extracting grins from Delgado and Damocles. Delgado took the last trick. "I get the over and I'm pulling from you this time," she nodded towards Tang. "Actually," Damocles said as he started to rise, "we'd better be getting back to the shop. We have orders to fill." Lacroix also excused himself. "I really need to get my grading done; as far as Skyview's concerned, I'm not exactly here. If there's nothing going on that I'm needed for, I'd better be going myself." Tang nodded in agreement. "I need to get some sleep before my shift. It's been fun playing with you all." "Great game," Delgado added as they all shook hands and exchanged parting pleasantries. THE SPIRAL BUILDING DENVER, COLORADO TUESDAY, APRIL 7 10:07 AM When she showed up for another day's round of tests on the sword fragments, Dee wondered what Mal was thinking, having her working with a mage. And not just any mage - Kazte Brenner was one of the founders of VR -and- the JPV, after all. That kind of reputation was a bit awe-inspiring, and it was with that in mind that Dee walked up to the security desk where Katze was waiting and said, "Uh, good morning Ms. Brenner." Katze blinked at the slightly awkward formality in Dee's voice, but otherwise replied calmly. "Morning, Dee. I think we're going to the same place, so could you lead?" "Sure thing." The two Jihaddi crossed the lobby to the bank of elevators. On the ride down Katze attempted to come up with something that could break the ice between them. She mentally composed and discarded a half-dozen openings by the time they got from the elevator to the doors of the top-secret lab where Dee had been working the day before. Katze shrugged inwardly and just asked, "Something the matter, Dee?" Well, okay, that may not have been the best opening. Dee winced at the sound and looked uncomfortable. "No, ma'am." Kazte suppressed a sigh and tried again. "Call me Katze, okay? VR closed down a long time ago, and it's not like I'm your superior officer anymore - not that I think I ever *was* technically." She continued, "If anything, you know more about this stuff than I do right now." "Um, well... old habits die hard?" Dee offered, a bit lamely. Katze smiled. "C'mon, I can't possibly be -that- intimidating," she said. Dee didn't say anything, only ducking her head a bit. "...Really, I can't. Can I?" "Well..." "You're seriously intimidated? By -me-?" Katze looked incredulously at the diminutive engineer, unsure whether or not she should be amused or outraged. "I'm not scary like Mal." Dee shook her head. "Well, not for the same- forget it, let's get to work." Thankfully for Katze, the next four hours of work loosened Dee up considerably. While they hadn't started off very well, it seemed that the very act of working together made Dee feel more comfortable with the older woman, reputation or not. Unfortunately, the subject of all their work didn't seem to warm up in the same way. They had made progress on analyzing the Owsenite, if only in the sense that they knew what -wouldn't- work. The problem was, they were running out of available options to try, and they weren't coming up with any good answers. Their mutual frustration was climbing, and when Katze heard Dee's almost inaudible growing at the shards, she figured it was time for a break. "Lunch?" Katze inquired. Dee looked up from the microscope she had been using to examine the shards for the thirtieth time and blinked. "Huh, what?" she asked, a bit out of it. "Lunch," Katze repeated patiently. "It's the meal that happens between breakfast and dinner..." "Oh. Oh! Right! Sure, that makes sense. This isn't going anywhere." "Okay, great. What's to eat around here?" "Well, there's a whole bunch of places on 16th..." Dee broke off, looking thoughtful. "Actually, before we head out, there's an experiment you could help me with." "Oh?" Dee nodded. "Yeah. I've been doing some research on developing ways to cut through magic." Katze gave her lab partner a skeptical look. "I'm not entirely sure I like where this is going." "Well, cold iron seems to do the trick according to all the stuff I've read, but I'm not sure of the exact criteria." Dee rummaged through her briefcase, pulling out a large Smith & Wesson revolver. "So I made up a few bullets..." Katze began sidling for the door as Dee started loading the revolver. The tech looked up and blinked, realizing that Katze had gotten the wrong idea. "Oh no, no no I'm not planning on shooting you," she said hastily, "I just need a spell or something to test on them, and well, we're kinda short on mages - and Maenads too, for that matter..." "I get it. Hm. How about I cast a shield spell on a target and you try to shoot it?" "That's perfect! We ought to move over to the ballistics lab, though." the short tech pocketed the case with the Owsenite samples and led them to another lab that resembled a firing range more than anything else. She set up some soda cans at the far end of the range and jogged back. "All right, that should do it," Katze said as a blue glow appeared around the cans momentarily. Dee nodded and fed cartridges into the revolver, snapping the cylinder closed and aiming at the first in the row. "Might want to cover your ears." Dee squeezed the trigger and let off the first round. Obligingly, it passed straight through the shield and can without slowing down, as did the next shot and can, though the third shot only went through one side and the last three simply knocked the cans over with no holes. Dee sighed. "Figures, it just had to be the cold -worked- ones..." "Problems?" "Nah, not really. Just that the ones that worked are the hardest to make." Dee shrugged philospohically. "Can't make the job too easy, I guess. C'mon, let's go get some lunch." The two wandered off from the Spiral Building to a Mongolian barbecue a few streets away from Coors Field. Not being well-versed in the joys of Central Asian food, the two played it cautious and ordered nothing too unusual. After a meal of relatively-ordinary stir-fried chicken, rice and tortillas, Dee and Katze left the restaurant for the walk back to Spiral. "Well," said Katze, "shall we wander back towards Spiral, and see if we've overlooked anything in the shard analysis? Or maybe just bang our heads against the lab bench for another couple of hours?" "Headbanging sounds like a plan," Dee said, "for all the good it'll do. Not that Owsenite is your everyday material to begin with. I know somebody in the old Skunk Works went and did a full analysis on it back in the day, but all that data went poof." Katze nodded. "Worldwalk?" she asked. "Mm, yeah. The Blood Jihad got hit pretty hard by it. We lost a lot of stuff..." Dee trailed off, staring into space for a second before adding in a soft voice. "Not to mention my mom." Katze blinked. "... Oh," she said, a bit lamely, unsure as to what else to say. Dee shrugged and continued, her voice deceptively light and calm. "In a lot of ways, it was worse than if she'd gotten killed. I mean, if that'd happened, then at least we -knew,- you know? But it didn't, she just... never met us. She was out there - she's -still- out there, as far as I know - but..." She shook her head. "Dad went looking for her, not long after. I don't know if he found her or not, but that wasn't long before Arsenal left, so I guess not." "Must have been tough," Katze said. "Yeah..." Dee paused, then continued speaking in a much more casual tone of voice. "Anyway, that Owsenite data would've been really handy about now. They came up with the data on equipment that's a couple of years older than the stuff we're working on." Katze nodded. She recognized the change of subject for what it was, and didn't pry. "They probably had a lot more time to analyze it, too." "There's got to be -something- there." Dee mused. "From what I've heard, Owsenite wouldn't leave splinters in something as wimpy as brick." "Yeah, that's kind of surprising. Plus what Aris found out, that the thing's got -holes- in it. I wish we could figure out how it was done." Dee frowned, an idea forming in her mind. "Maybe it was something like a composite layup," she said, "like it could only regrow so quickly, so it's just a solid shell on the outside, and the inside's foamed to fill the volume." "That sounds like a possibility." Katze agreed. "Part of me is curious how much of -our- Slayer's grown back since we last saw it." "I'm not sure I -want- to know until this whole thing is over." Katze raised an eyebrow. "Oh?" "Well... one of the things we got out of analyzing the Slayer in the old days was Jihaddium. It was kind of a cheaper copy," Dee chuckled. "'Cheaper' meaning we could make it at all. But the other side managed to make an equivalent, we called it B'harnium. If the two metals hit each other, they exploded." Katze blinked. "... Wow." she said. Dee nodded. "Yeah. I'm pretty sure that I don't want anything as heavily magicked up as the Slayer to explode. That would suck." "I see your point. But if Owsen's looking for our Slayer, it makes you wonder what he's planning." Dee paused. "Shit. You don't think there's something to my idea, do you?" she asked, suddenly worried. Katze shrugged. "I don't know. Owsen's not exactly sane these days." "Can't argue with that. This whole thing is crazy." "Tell me about it. It's been almost five years since the end of the war, and now here's Owsen, back from the dead. And it looks as if he's a Lyran pawn. So, why is he showing up -now?-" Dee flinched at the casual use of the name 'Lyran,' but soldiered on. "Well... I've got a theory, but I don't know if you want to hear it." "Try me. It's got to be better than Josh's theory." Katze smiled. "Okay. Well, we know that we managed to at least -hurt- Charn'El. And the Slayer shows signs that it's been forcegrown. I can't help wondering what they've been up to in the last few years. I'm pretty sure this means that they haven't forgotten us." Dee said. "So what was Josh's theory?" "Oh, he's convinced that it's all his fault." That caught Dee off guard. "You're kidding," she said, more statement than question. Katze shrugged. "Nah, see, he thinks he upset karma by proposing. Five days after, Owsen showed up." "Hey, that's great! Too bad about the timing, though." "No worries, we'll get there eventually." Katze paused, then returned to her original train of thought. "As for Charn'El, ponder the idea that he got out of... whatever it was the Maenads put him in on Pacifica." Dee let out a sound that was half chuckle, half sigh. "Great, something I'd rather ponder my lack of a love life than contemplate." Katze nodded, not really paying attention to anything but the question at hand. "Uh-huh. But what if he found the sword -and- Owsen in the void, and escaped? It makes sense with everything we know, except why Owsen wants our Slayer." "Hm. I'm on weak ground here, but. How about this: assume something big happens when the two Slayers meet." Dee frowned thoughtfully, trying to work the problem out. Katze nodded. "I can believe that." "Okay, now what -kind- of big things? Explosion? A beacon for an invasion? Reopens the Babylon Road? Locusts, famine, another decade of 'Friends?'" "Out of that list, I'd prefer the explosion. At least it'd be over quickly." "Mm." Dee agreed. The two Jihaddi walked down the street a little longer in silence, both wrapped up in their own thoughts. As they turned the corner approaching the Spiral Building, Dee finally broke the reverie. "Um?" "Yes?" "I was just wondering..." Dee began hesitantly. "Oh?" "What do you think of Mal?" Katze blinked. That was a bit unexpected. "Eh? How do you mean?" she asked, unsure as to where this was going. "Well, it's just... after all this time, he's still so... well, -Mal-! I can sorta talk to him and stuff moreso, but..." "Er." "I mean, that is--" "Wait, are you trying to say..." "But it's like--" "...You're interested? In Mal?" "I.. um, well... yeah. Kind of have been for a long time." "Wow. Just... -wow-." "I thought it went away and that I'd outgrown it. You know, just a schoolgirl thing... not that I ever really -went- to school much, but you know what I mean... but now he's around and we can actually -talk- about stuff and I don't feel like he's talking down to me... well, not that he ever did that much, but..." Dee trailed off, suddenly realizing exactly -what- she'd been saying, and to who she'd been saying it. "I'm sorry," she mumbled, face burning. "I shouldn't have said anything." "Hey, it's okay," Katze reassured her. "I'm good at listening, and it sounds like you needed to say it to -somebody.-" "It's just.. I don't know what to do here. I mean, I -like- Mal and we share a lot of interests. But we're both so busy and I don't think he notices me... well, like that." "To be utterly frank, and I really shouldn't speculate, but I don't think Mal notices -anybody- 'like that.'" Dee nodded dejectedly, as Katze continued. "And who knows? Maybe you'll find somebody who isn't a Jihaddi. After all, it's my oldest friend that ended up proposing to me." "Yeah... but that limits it in my case a lot. Besides, I don't think Minerva's all that interested, either." "Well, what I'm trying to say is that there's a big world out there, and you're still young." Dee sighed. "I know. Thing is though, aside from Damo, I don't realy hang around with people all that much. Like today, I was going to go sit and figure out how to deal with the data we got today after we split up, and bascially do that or work in the lab until something came up." "My guess is something's bound to come up pretty soon now." Katze shurgged. Dee's attitude towards the situation was getting a bit repetitive, and Katze's dormant matchmaker complex was beginning to surface. "What about Damo?" she inquired, trying to keep the question as innocent as possible. Dee laughed. "That'd be -way- too weird. Don't get me wrong, he's a nice guy and we get along great, but it'd be like dating an older brother or something." "If there's an age problem," Katze noted with a slight frown, "you know there's a reason we call Mal the Old Man." "Despite being short, I -am- legal," Dee muttered. "Not doubting you. But if Mal had -grandkids-, they'd probably be your age. Or older." "Damn. So there really is something to all those stories about him being older than he looks?" "I don't know exactly. He's pretty close-lipped about his past, but... well, probably." "Yeah. I was afraid of that. Oh well, maybe in another twenty years or so." Dee shook her head and chuckled darkly. "What a life, fate of the world on your head and nobody to date..." "Speaking of fate of the world stuff, is it just me or are we being followed?" Dee blinked as she caught a reflection in a window, suddenly tensing as she walked. "Yeah, Katze, I see them too. Pretend we don't notice them and turn right at the next corner. It could be a coincidence." She had noticed a wireless security camera on the corner of a building and very quickly brought up the sorfware on her arm's computer to find the signal and crack its mild (even by mundane standards) encryption. She watched the feed overlayed in part of her visual field as they turned the corner. "Damn," Dee muttered a few seconds later, closing the video once she'd seen the group of 3 follow them around. "Now what?" Katze asked, quite reasonably. Dee quickly flicked her eyes across the street and found an answer. "First car on our side; go by the passenger door and pretend you don't know I can steal cars." She extended a narrow bundle of micromanipulators from the tip of her artificial thumb and shoved it into the lock cylinder before Katze could object. Running the SkeletonKey program she'd written for emergencies like this that automaticially controlled the bundle, she was astonished that it diddn't open the lock instantly. "Uh, Dee? They're running now... is this wise?" "Just another second...." It was just a Toyota Solara, albeit a new one, but nothing should have this good of a lock. She watched in horror as SkeletonKey scrolled up to lock types that were only theoretical. "They're getting closer," Katze mentioned, shifting her posture. Closer was an understatement, it was another few seconds before the trio would be upon them. Whose car is this thing, Dee wondered as the program finally found the right key to pretend to be and opened the car doors. Both the ladies jerked open their doors and got in, Dee having the presence of mind to fasten her seat belt while Katze took the far more useful option of hitting the door lock. The men running after them tried the door handle an instant before Dee got the engine started, and had begun to draw a pistol out from under his jacket as Dee mashed the gas. "Get down!" she yelled to the 6 foot tall former basketball player as the car weaved, trying to make a harder target. There were a pair of pinging noises and then they made it around the corner. "Where am I supposed to have gotten down to?" asked Katze, quite reasonably. "Also, it seems to have been unnecessecary." Dee glanced to where the bullets had hit the back window, only to flatten themselves harmlessly without making more than a slight smudge. "Oh... kay. Katze, could you try to figure out whose car we just stole?" Dee was just adjusting her seat when a green conversion van ran a red light and almost hit them. "Asshole!" Dee instinctively screamed, only to have it mutate into "oh shit" as the sliding door flew open and someone raked the Toyota with automatic rifle fire. She turned the wheel to dodge down a side street, her unplanned turn taking out a newspaper box in the process. "Every time I go out with Jihaddi lately, I swear," Katze muttered as she pulled open the glovebox, distracting herself by figuring out the owner. The first thing in it made her pause. "Uh, Dee? There's a pistol in here." She pulled it out and held it where Dee could see. The tech blinked at what she recognized as an X-Pistol, which were so far just in prototype stages, and started to get a sudden sinking feeling. What she found around another corner didn't make things any better, a brown sedan moving to give chase too. Katze frowned as she found the Toyota's title. "Jonathan Fnord," she stated flatly. "We stole Mal's car," Dee remarked in shock. She paused, unfortunately in the middle of a turn, though the crunch of side-swiping a parked car brought her back to her senses. "Right. Well, maybe we can finish this before he finds out and put it back." Right about then the man in question, Malcalypse the Seeker, was walking out of the pleasant little sandwich shop he had gone to for a late lunch. He crossed to his car and had gone so far as to take out his keys before he realized that his car wasn't, in fact, actually there. Against all odds, someone had taken his car. Considering the situation for a moment and clamping down on the irritation that the whole thing was causing, he casually reached into his pocket for his cell phone. Dee and Katze almost blinked in unison as the phone built into the car started ringing. Neither made any move to answer it at first, but after the third ring Katze picked it up. "Hi Mal... uh yeah, about that... it was an emergency and..." at that instant the car sounded like it had been struck by a giant hammer and slewed sideways, Dee working franticially with the wheel and pedals to retain control. The burning smell told her what had happened even before Katze glanced back at the fist-sized hole punched in the driver's side rear door. "... look, we're kinda busy, can we talk about this later?" she said into the phone before hanging up. "Uh, Dee, there's a hole in the car." "Yeah, they probably hit us with a grenade launcher. Notice how well the climate control system is dissipating the stink?" she replied casually, mind racing. Probably an old M79, she thought, meaning that they would have to manually reload it and would be getting off a second shot about... now. A monumental crashing sound happened as she jerked the wheel to one side and crashed through part of a glass storefront which fortunately didn't have anyone in that part of the store. A cloud of glass and underwear flew up behind the car... oh, that was a Victoria's Secret, part of Dee's mind thought. Pity, but at least we're not dead the thought continued as the errant explosive blew a parked car in half. "This is insane," Katze commented rather more calmly than one should talk about a car chase of this sort. "I agree. Going to see about getting us a gate out of here," Dee replied in mid-jink, the next grenade carving a brand new pothole for city planning to ignore. She instantly called up the JihadLinker package in her arm and got ahold of Minerva. "Emergency, accidentally stole Mal's car and am in a car chase with people shooting at us, how accurately can you do gates on the fly?" Dee transmitted as one giant run-on sentence at the speed of thought. Min didn't even pause. "Need a couple seconds to get a fix to a new location." "Shit, that's too long. Be ready to open one to some coordinates I give though; we'll probably be coming through with a lot of delta-v." Dee closed the link, barely two seconds passed in real time. "Can't just gate where we are... have to predict where we'd have to be too accurately not to get shot." "So why don't we just run then if we can't get a gate." Dee shook her head. "Can't go too fast in city streets, not many pedestrians now, but also going straight would make us a good target." A series of jinks and turns kept the next grenade from plowing into the Toyota as Dee flogged it for all it was worth. "Just need to get creative... at least they're not coordinating that well... shit," she broke off just as the green van pulled across the side-street in front of them and again opened fire. The bullets spraying across the windshield seemed to be working better, small cracks appearing here and there. "Hang on," Dee yelled, resisting the urge to duck down or veer away from the van, instead pressing harder on the gas pedal. Katze and the gunner figured out what was about to happen at the same time and their reaction was much the same, both covering their face with their arms and tensing in anticipation. The Toyota slammed into the van with a sickening crunch, the whole event taking place far too fast for even the adrenaline-hyped perceptions of the people involved to see it actually happen. "Urgh," Dee muttered, taking note of the ruined van wrapped around the car which was miraculously still running. She shook her head to clear it as the airbags deflated and, unusually packed themselves back away. "Can we not do that again?" Katze pleaded as Dee noted the brown sedan with the bigger stick come around the corner. Dee growled an expletive under her breath and slammed the gearshift into reverse. "I make no promises," she muttered as the car lurched backwards in a cloud of tiresmoke, irritatingly taking the van with it. In her adrenaline fueled state, Dee saw the breech of the grenade launcher click closed and come bearing down at them. She snapped the wheel to one side with the accelearator still to the floor, the mass of the van snapping both cars around just in time to interpose itself in the way of the explosive shell. The blast was even nice enough to dislodge the van. Dee took in the surroundings as quick as she could and slapped the gearshift into drive, making for the gate to a parking garage. "Okay, I think I've got it now," the tech muttered as she kicked the car around the concrete spiral ramps heading upwards. "Got what? Isn't the top a dead end?" There was silence, except for screeching tires for a second. "Well, isn't it?" "Not... exactly." She opened a connection to Minerva and very quickly gave her coordinates for a gate portal as they came to the top, open level of the parking structure, the brown sedan hot on their tail but far too busy driving to try for a shot. "You're not..." Katze noticed the edge of the roof coming up, over a back alley away from the main streets. "Yep," and the car crashed through the chain-link fencing on the edge, Dee tapping the brakes to orient the car properly. Behind them the people in the brown sedan continued on, not realizing what was happening until an instant too late, plowing through the hole that the Toyota had made. The results were far different, the Toyota dropping straight down the alley while the sedan flew across the gap to slam into the side of a neighboring building. There were screams as the car fell towards the pavement, and another crash that Dee's consciousness decided to edit out. Back in the Mt. Blanca hangar bay, Mal stood and watched the area where Minerva was opening the gate to. He was rather curious to hear what explanation the two would have to offer, and also somewhat interested to see what shape his car was still in, though he didn't place too much importance on that by comparison. It was just a car after all. Events proved that that was a fortunate attitude for him to have. The gate opened and there was an incredible crunch as his car fell out and hit the concrete floor at probably 80 miles per hour. The front end crumpled and air bags had gone off, but the fact that the car impacted with the body verticially was worthy of comment. It resembled less a car and more a piece of abstract art, some strange monolith that had planted itself in the bay. Even as he strode over to check, there was a thumping and the passenger door opened and fell off, clattering to the floor. "I still say that could have gone better," Katze said to the interior of the car as she jumped down, looking disheveled but unhurt. "Any crash you can walk away from," came Dee's reply as she climped out of the car and then noticed Mal standing nearby watching them sternly. "Uh oh. Uh... I suppose you want an explanation." "That would be helpful, yes," was Mal's reply. Dee nodded, then winced as behind them the car fell over onto its roof, with a crash and tinkle of all its remaining windows shattering. "... right." VRDET HQ BLANCA MOUNTAIN, COLORADO 3:00 PM LOCAL TIME He awoke slowly, and immediately regretted it. Everything hurt. His entire body was one congruous ache. Breathing was a chore, and each lungful of air might as well have been liquid fire. He cracked an eye, and bright, pale light stabbed into his retinas. "Nngh?" Felton hazarded. "Ah, good, you've returned to the living," said a familiar voice, in a tone of well-practiced patience honed by a career dealing with people ill-equipped for keeping up with his thought processes. Felton shielded his eyes from the overhead lamp and squinted toward his feet. His vision swam for a moment, but eventually he managed to focus dully on the figure at the end of his bed, where Malaclypse sat calmly, hands folded over his crossed knee. "You're lucky to be, even by your standards." Felton tried in vain to swallow, but his mouth felt like he'd been sucking on cotton balls. "W'time s'it?" he managed to choke out. "Tuesday." "... Oh." He tried to sit up, but a firm and gentle hand on his chest held him down. He rolled his eyes to look into Keili's softly smiling face. "How are you feeling?" she asked. "Like the worst bloody hangover of my life, only I didn't get to enjoy getting there first." He tried to glare at the light, but only succeeded in making his eyes sting. "Why's it so bloody bright in here?" Mal slid off his chair and moved to the dimmer switch on the wall. When he could see comfortably again, Felton picked at the bandage around his left shoulder. The gash beneath was still angry and red and oozing. He could move the arm in its sling a little, but it took a lot of effort and discomfort. "The autodocs managed to suture you up fairly well," Mal said, moving his chair to the side of the bed and sitting back down. "You're not quite back up to speed yet, but you managed to do a several weeks' worth of healing in only a couple of days. You should be lurching around the facility in no time." Kirk tried to wiggle his feet, but a searing pain around his ankles made him quit the attempt. "Great," he said, rubbing two days' worth of sleep out of his eyes. "Okay. Somehow I doubt you're just here to wish me well. What's up?" "I think you know." "Yeah... Owsen?" Mal shrugged. "He's fallen off the radar. Either you dealt him a pretty serious blow or he just can't find anymore Maenads to kill." That comment made Felton grimace slightly. "Seems he's learned a few new tricks," he said. "I wouldn't count on him being down for long." "You got a good look at the sword?" Mal asked. "Closer look than I would have liked," Felton mused, rubbing at his shoulder with a wince. "Looked just like the Barney-Slayer, but black." Mal nodded. "We suspect that it doesn't just look like it. That it's actually the regenerated missing half." Felton started to look a little alarmed. "I think I can believe that. It smelled like Owsenite. Hell, it /bit/ like Owsenite. But it also smelled... no, /reeked/ of Lyran magic." "That we've also suspected, but were hoping wasn't the case." Mal produced an enlargement of one of Dee's photographs and put it in Felton's hands. "Can you read this inscription?" The Maenad studied the photograph. "Well, tell you the truth, I've hardly mastered the language, but..." He looked at it thoughtfully in silence. "I recognize the root word. I think it means 'irony' or somesuch. Doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but..." he hesitated. Mal cocked an eyebrow. "What is it?" Felton handed the photo back to him and then pointed at the line of scrawl in the blade's furrow. "You see that glyph at the shoulder of the blade? As far as I've been able to tell, it's not a standard character of the Lyran alphabet. But it's been on many of the texts we pulled out of Pacifica." Mal twirled his finger in an impatient "get on with it" gesture. Felton grimaced. "It's a personal mark. A signature. It belongs to Charn'El." Now it was Mal's turn to look alarmed. "This could be more serious than we expected," he said, rising to leave. "Get some rest. I have a feeling we're going to need everyone in top condition in the coming days." He hesitated for a moment, and then stated the question that was bugging him, but wasn't important enough to pose until now. "Weren't your eyes green?" Keili took Kirk by the chin and turned his head to look. "It's happened again," she said. His eyes, in fact normally green, had become streaked with dark red. "It'll pass," Felton said, dismissively. "Happened once before, after we moved the 'Slayer to the JPV campus. But there's something else, Mal. Owsen said something about a 'Scourge' coming. To purge this world of its filth." Mal scowled. "The connotations of that are unsettling. Especially if Charn'El has managed to find his way back to this plane." Felton nodded. "Aye. I'd really like to know what Owsen is up to right now..." EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND 11:00 PM LOCAL TIME The man quietly occupying the corner table of a nondescript Edinburgh pub was drawing a lot of curious glances. Not because of his clothing, though even in Scotland the kilt as daily wear was a bit out of place. Nor was it really the scraps of armor he wore, but their battered, slightly charred and apparently well-used state certainly did nothing to deter it. Rather, it had a lot to do with the broadsword laid casually across the table next to his pint of Guinness. It had a certain sinister feel about it, but above all it looked quite a sharp, serviceable weapon. No one had mustered up the nerve to ask him to remove it. Tilden Owsen was flustered. Things were moving along so nicely until his encounter with Nemesis. It was bad enough that the pup had proven so difficult to track in the first place, but he had had the means to the sword in his grasp and had foolishly allowed it to slip away. He had lost the scent again, and God knew how long it would take him to pick it up. Worse yet, there was still no trace of the other three, which led him to believe that they were no longer a part of this world. To Owsen this might have been good enough, but he couldn't be certain his master would be in agreement. In all, his mission had reached an impasse, and it made for rather sour spirits. So he was doing what came naturally to an Irishman in a foul mood: he was attempting to get drunk, to varying degrees of success. He was focused on his drink when the dull hum of background conversation suddenly ceased, as though the atmosphere had been sucked right out of the house. Owsen looked up curiously. ATTEND. The command resonated through his pysche, booming impossibly loud in his ears for words spoken without sound. He bolted to his feet, knocking over his pint, and dropped to one knee with his head bowed. "I am here, Great One." THE HUNT PROGRESSES? "Y... yes, Great One. I have located the youngest of the cubs..." DO NOT PRESUME TO CONCEAL TRUTH FROM ME, OWSEN. "The eldest and her mate elude me yet, Great One," Owsen said hurriedly, face twitching. "I battled the one called Nemesis, but he has escaped your wrath. He claims to know the location of the sword, my lord, but I fear the trail has grown cold." YOU ARE MY HERALD, OWSEN. FAILURE WILL NOT BE ACCEPTED. "Yes, Great One. I will not fail you." There was a brief, puzzled silence. WHAT HAVE YOU FOUND? "Found, Great One?" Owsen asked. It took him a moment to understand. "Oh... a mere trinket, my lord." He retrieved the medallion from his pocket. SHOW ME. Owsen frowned. Show? Shrugging, he held the medallion up, allowing it to dangle in front of his eyes. He then felt it -- a cold, sharp presence, like being stabbed in the brain with an icecicle. The feeling was not unlike trying to share the view through a knothole in a fence, only the fence this time was his body. It was a touch disconcerting. WHERE DID YOU FIND THIS? "Around the neck of Nemesis, my lord. What is its significance?" Owsen asked. He heard a chilly, broken hissing sound, like freon escaping from a punctured hose. He realized that his master was chuckling. SEE. His mind exploded. Dark and disturbing images flooded into his consciousness, memories he didn't have that forced their way in. Memories of Lyran biomancy in dark places, of experimentation to change human beings into... something else... Of helpless women, held fast by fleshy tendrils and unconscious, implanted with, no, infested with... Of vague shadows, at once so human and yet not... Of burning villages, stalked by monsters wearing small amulets not unlike the one in his hand... Of the mages' victory turned defeat as the monster-men ultimately self-destruct. The waking-dreams gradually faded, but the memories lingered. "I understand, Great One," Owsen said, squeezing his eyes shut until the invasive memories faded into a dull throb in his skull. "But what use is device for tracking if it is no longer around his neck?" DO YOU QUESTION MY INTELLIGENCE, OWSEN? Owsen bowed his head deeply, a tremor of sudden fear shuddering his body. "No, Great One. Forgive your servant's tongue, for it has been affected by drink." INDEED. There was a thoughtful pause. LEARN. Another storm of memories, all magical rites and symbology. It had seemed hopeless, but now he understood. He knew what he had to do. And then he was alone. Except for the rest of the pub's patrons, who had found themselves very interested in the lunatic kneeling on the floor in the midst of some sort of psychotic episode. Owsen stood up, brushed off his knees, and took notice of the stares. "What? Have you not seen a man communing with his god before?" he said, and lifted his sword from the table. Suddenly nobody was interested in him anymore. He nodded in approval, and left the pub, sliding the black sword into its scabbard at his hip. He grinned up to the afternoon sun, which somehow seemed brighter. It would all be over soon, he was certain of it, and this made him happy. The last Maenad of the Holy Albino left on this wicked earth would be dead, and in the process he'd have the means of getting back what was once his. And then the Scourge would begin. It was going to be a good day, after all. BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA WEDNESDAY, APRIL 8, 2004 Katze ran her finger along a row of books, looking for the one that was in English. She had figured it wouldn't be hard to find, she stuck it specifically in with the few books Josh and her had in foreign languages so that she could find it on quick notice, but it wasn't coming up. She could have sworn she'd stuck it in between the Russian-language copy of the Brothers Karamazov and the history of Marraketh Rene had given her. But there wasn't any book there, which both puzzled and worried Katze. She stood there, staring at the bookshelf, when a voice over her shoulder said, "Well, look who's actually at home." Katze turned, only to find Josh standing there, still in his work clothes, and she wondered why she hadn't heard him coming in downstairs. "I was looking for something," she offered, and instantly regretted it. It came out sounding somewhat lame. She hadn't really offered Josh an explanation of her whereabouts over the last week. Not that it was necesary, of course, but if they were going to build a relationship on trust, it was something she ought to do. "A book, I would assume," Josh said, with a hint of a smile. Katze frowned. She didn't understand why Josh seemed to be playing with her, unless he was actually angry with her and wasn't admitting it. "I'm sorry," she said. "The whole Owsen mess is picking up speed, and I'm not sure how long it's going to last." Josh nodded. "I figured as much," he said. "It's what I get, I guess, for falling in love with a do-gooder." His eyes sparkled at the last line. "But it would have been nice if you'd told me beforehand. As it was, I had to find ways to amuse myself." "You would have had to find ways to amuse yourself whether I had told you or not," Katze said. "But with that said, I had a book here that I need to find, and I could have sworn I put it right here." "Well, the project I started working on was sorting and rearranging the bookshelves. I did find a book over here, but I thought you had just misfiled it. It was in English in the middle of the foreign language books." "Yeah. I did that on purpose so I could find it. What did you do with it?" Josh frowned in thought. "I threw it in the box of books I took back to Moe's last night." Katze took a deep breath and tried to control her temper. Josh didn't quite realize how important that book was, and it wasn't his fault he had boxed it up and taken it back to the used bookstore. "Then I guess we're just going to have to go to Moe's and see if we can find it, aren't we?" she said. "Why are you mad at me?" Josh asked. So much for attempting to keep her temper, Katze decided. Josh continued. "I only put books we had more than one copy of in that box. We talked about doing this when we moved. You know that." "That book was important, Josh! It was the only clue I had..." What Josh had said sunk into Katze's head, and she stopped her tirade. She stood silent for a moment and then said, quietly, "More than one?" "Yeah. I have two copies of _Colour of Magic_, because one is a first British edition signed by Pterry himself. And then one for reading, because I don't want to destroy the one by repeated rereadings. I figured we didn't need a third copy. When did you get interested in the Discworld novels anyway? I thought fantasy reminded you too much of home." Josh frowned. "If I had known you were so interested in it, I'd have lent you my books, you didn't have to go get a new copy." Katze stared at him dumbly. "Discworld? Fantasy? Pterry? Err?" "You didn't read it, did you," Josh said. It was definitely a statement and not a question, but Katze nodded anyway. "So if you haven't read it, why did you have it?" "You're not going to believe the story," Katze said. "Lesse. My fiancee is the liberator of my homeworld, killing my father in the process of doing that work, and in her spare time, when she's not busy pretending she's as normal as everybody else despite the fact that she is very much not, works as part of a team that fights things the rest of us should not know about. And I believe all that." Josh looked at Katze. "What are you going to tell me that could top the utter unbelievability that is your story, Kats?" "Touche," Katze said. "Okay, then. A friend of mine, at the closedown, relocated himself and a good chunk of the property of his JAO to somewhere else, and the only clue I have as to where he went was the copy of that book. He said to read it and that's where he is." Josh's mouth fell open, and it took a few moments before Katze reached up and tapped him on the chin. He closed his mouth, and then said, "Wow. I didn't expect that." "I *told* you it was a bit of an unbelievable story," Katze said. "Now, the point of this whole thing is, what can you tell me about this Discworld? Because, if that's where this book is set, then that's probably where my friend is. And it's rather important we check on him, because he's in possession of something important." Josh nodded sagely. "How much detail do you want? I know a lot of it." "Just enough to give me some idea where to go. I'm not even sure Mal can find this place, let alone get me there." "Hmmm, I'm going to guess your friend is a mage, going to Discworld wouldn't make much sense otherwise." "Right on, oh wise one." Katze smiled after saying it, and Josh couldn't resist smiling back before his face settled back in a serious expression. "Okay. Discworld is a flat disc, hence the name, that is carried by four elephants on the back of a turtle. They've all got names, but we'll not worry about that now. On this disc, there's a city called Ankh-Morpork, and that's where Unseen University is. That's the wizard's college. He's probably somewhere near there if I don't miss my guess." He walked over to a bookshelf and pulled a small paperback novel out. "Here, this is my reading copy. Don't lose it." Josh flung the book at Katze, who caught it. He then came back to her, smiling. "I hope that helps," he said. In response, she kissed him, and said, "I don't think I'll be back tonight. I have a trip to make." And she disappeared before he could say anything in return. Josh stood there for a second, and then slapped his head. "I forgot to tell her that the wizards at Unseen are going to boggle over a girl on campus." He turned around and grabbed a book off the bookshelf and smiled to himself. _Equal Rites_ seemed like good reading material for the night. VRDET HQ BLANCA MOUNTAIN, COLORADO THURSDAY, APRIL 9, 2004 Katze appeared in the middle of the lab. Malaclypse didn't even look up, instead continuing to ready the 'Gate. He did, however, point towards a garment bag hanging on some random piece of machinery. She opened up the garment bag. Inside were petticoats and a frilly dress. She looked at them incredulously and turned towards Mal, who was wrapped up in getting the 'Gate ready. "You can't be serious," she said. Mal continued to work, smirking slightly. "Well, from what I can tell, based on a quick reading, is that you're looking at Victorian. From that, the only other option I can see is dressing as a man." He turned to another console and typed some commands. He paused for a moment. "You sure you want to do this?" Pulling on the dress, Katze said, "With Owsen running around like this, I need to make sure that the 'Slayer... the -other- 'Slayer is still fine. When I know that it's safe, I'll feel much better. I'm sure you will too." She smoothed out the dress. "So, what do you think?" Mal looked up. "No, you're right. I--" "What," she said. Mal adjusted his glasses. "Well, you probably aren't going to want to wear those jeans under the skirt." THE DISCWORLD Katze stepped onto the grass. She set a metal suitcase on the ground and unlocked it. She pulled a canvas sack out of the case and set it on the ground open. Looking up briefly, she noticed a cow staring dumbly at her. It chewed on some cud, blinked, and bent back down to eat some fresh grass. Katze removed some small taped bundles from the case and placed them into the sack. She opened the last one in the case and placed the contents in her-- Wait. She didn't have any pockets. She looked all over the dress, but couldn't find anywhere to put the small silver coins. Taking a quick check of the area, when she was satisfied no-one was around, Katze put the coins in her bra. She pulled out a book and consulted a small map in the front cover. She looked around and started walking towards a road in the distance. It is a cliche about cities that they never sleep. Even in the depths of the night, something stirs and cities take on a life and a personality of their own. Whether this is a function of the collective unconscious, or just inanimate objects being endowed with the spirit of the idea behind them is unknown, but cities live. Ankh-Morpork, Katze decided, not only suffered from multiple personality disorder, but also a case of attention deficit disorder, antisocial tendencies, halitosis, and some creeping skin infection one really didn't want to think too hard about. Add to this the sheer general feeling of being one step too close to the edge to back away, and Katze was generally rather sorry she had decided to come looking for Pupp in the first place. She didn't have the first clue as to where to find Pupp other than what Josh had told her. One would think it wouldn't be that hard to find a university, but among Ankh-Morpork's charming habits was the tendency to put things in the least bloody obvious place, and after wandering through the streets, Katze found herself completely lost. She sighed and continued walking, idly wishing she'd actually bothered to read the book Pupp had given her before this whole mess came to this. It couldn't be helped, she thought. She was here now, and bloody-minded enough to find Pupp and do the errand she had been sent on. In the meantime, she was trying to find a soul who could possibly give her directions, but nobody really seemed to be all that welcoming, let alone friendly and helpful and all those other adverbs, which just served to frustrate our lost adventurer even more. As it was growing dark, Katze figured she would try her luck at one of the taverns by the river -- if you could call that a river. It looked something much more akin to an industrial waste accident happening in slow motion. Even Cleveland got the hint when its river caught on fire, Katze thought, and then realized she'd actually compared something to Cleveland in a manner in which Cleveland came out favorably. This realization did not help Katze's opinion of the place, but as she was still trying to do her duty, she picked a tavern at random and pushed open the door. There are certain places too dodgy to be called disreputable, and the Mended Drum in Ankh-Morpork was one of these fine establishments. Of course, our heroine, being ignorant of what passed as culture on the Disc, didn't realize that the Mended Drum was probably one of the best places to practice stuff like your beating up somebody with a table leg or axe flinging from fifty paces or other related skills as opposed to what people normally go to taverns for -- this being the wine, whiskey, and song. So it probably should not have come as a surprise that the Mended Drum was full on engaged in the middle of one of the greatest bar fights in its history (which happened every other night and twice on Thursdays) when Katze walked in. "Excuse me..." she started to say, but was rudely interrupted by the sounds of a dwarven battle axe whistling through the air very close to her left ear and thudding into the door she just walked into. Before Katze's conscious mind could catch up to the fact that yes, there was a rather large and heavy axe wobbling gently next to her head, her subconscious mind reacted in self-defense. Long buried instincts reared up and, sensing danger, lashed out. Even for the Mended Drum, the bang was quite impressive. Much later, after the dust had cleared, people from as far away as Pseudopolis would claim to have seen the flash, and unscrupulous traders of all sorts would market bits of charcoal they found lying around as "genuine debris from the Great Explosion." UNSEEN UNIVERSITY AN HOUR OR TWO OF QUIETLY SNEAKING AWAY AND ASKING DIRECTIONS LATER Katze walked through the open gates to the courtyard. Awestruck, she paused and stared at the abstract tangle of towers, parapets, balconies and mobius loops of Unseen University. "Wow. Pupp sure knows how to pick 'em." She continued through the courtyard, not noticing the shocked stares and muted exclamations following close behind. As she approached the door she was grabbed around the shoulders. "Aye wouldn't go that way, may gel!" The large woman aimed her towards the side of the main building. As they were walking, she talked about this, and that, and how the Dean was doing that, and how they were doing that with this, and oh yeah, the Bursar. See, he was fighting with the ArchChancellor and they-- Right. Anyway, Katze was shown to a non-descript side entrance from which she was guided into the kitchen. Some kitchens are prominent in their distinct lack of use. You know, the squeaky clean pots, perfect floor, empty sink, and the acute lack of smells. Not this one. The University kitchen was full of smells, some good, some bad, some unintelligible. The only way to tell that the black dripping mass hanging from the ceiling was pots would be to use a metal detector. A broom was pushed into her hands and she was directed to a hallway. She tried to protest but trying to get a word in while the woman (who Katze found out was Mrs. Whitlow) talked constantly about all the goings-on in the University was like trying to nail a noodle through a two-by-four. "Now you just go ahead and start sweeping this hallway, gel! If you see hanything that might disturb you, just close your eyes and hwait a few moments." Mrs. Whitlow turned and strode back down the hall. Katze looked at the broom, then at the rapidly moving figure of Mrs. Whitlow. "Wait, but--" The older woman fluttered her hand and continued walking. "You will be fine may gel! Don't warry, aye know you'll do me proud!" She faded into the distance. The hallway was empty. Katze shrugged and started sweeping. At least no-one was going to question what she was doing there if she was cleaning. She leaned the broom against a wall and lifted the canvas sack off her shoulder. Katze reached inside the sack and pulled out a JihadLinker[tm]. She punched in Pupp's address and hit 'trace.' I hope he's left it on, she thought. Underneath a large stuffed alligator, left behind by the room's previous occupant who as the result of an unfortunate magic misunderstanding, the Unseen University's newest faculty member carefully positioned a medicine dropper over a bubbling cauldron. The slightest wrong move could be highly inconvenient. He wiped a stray sweat droplet from his forehead. Carefully... caaaaarefully... almost... aaaand... "PUPP!!" ...ohshit. *WHOOMPF* Lifting the blanket off of Pupp's head, Katze cautiously smiled, "So.. bet you weren't expecting to see me, were ya?" She handed him a mug full of what she was hoping to be water, which he promptly poured over his head, dousing his still-smoldering hair. "Katze? Wha-- Kat! What're you doing here?" Pupp grabbed her and hugged Katze tightly. He let go and held her at arms' length. "This has to be the first time i've ever seen ya in a dress... not too shabby!" He paused for a moment. "Wait. What ARE you doing here," he said. "Well... it's a long story." Katze explained the situation, putting extra emphasis on the parts involving the Owsen's rampage and subsequent multiple killings of Maenads. "Wait. Owsen? Big guy, kilt, really awful accent?" Katze nodded, "that's the one. I don't know if you remember him or not, but he disappeared in a nicely vague puff of smoke when all the mucky-mucks tossed Charn-el out of this dimension on Pacifica." Pupp was recruited into the jihad in the brief period immediately after Operation:Phoenix and just before Pacifica. He remembered hearing through the grapevine about the events on that island, but never got many details, even after having become a Trium Adjunct. The only solid thing he knew about the operation was that it was where the BarneySlayer was shattered, bringing about the events leading to his and JPV's holding on to the remaining half of the sword. He reminded himself to slide by the vault and check on it, as he hadn't really been worried about it since he'd arrived on the Disc. He showed Katze around the office, and tried to answer her questions about why he chose a medieval culture to call home. "You see, THIS is why I chose this particular reality to hunker down in," Pupp explained. He very casually flicked his wrist. A small, bewildered rabbit appeared in his outstretched hand. "On Earth, i'd merely create an illusion that there was a rabbit. The ambient magical energy in our universe is very faint." He stroked the rabbit between the ears, calming the animal, who now started looking around the room looking for food. With another flick of the wrist, the rabbit was gone, leaving nothing but a small puff of purple smoke. "This world is absolutely SATURATED with magical energies, so rather than create just the illusion that a rabbit is in my hand, I actually can create a living creature where before there was nothing." He rolled his eyes, correcting himself, "Well, not exactly nothing. It's actually pretty complex involving base elements from the surrounding area and chemistry and such, but because of the heavy magic saturation, it's no effort at all." Katze had noticed from the first moment she stepped onto the Discworld that she was utterly enveloped by magic. Stepping out of the 'gate, it felt kind of like walking into a heavy fog which you can't see, can't smell, and which has the effect of making a mage feel like they're taking a constant methamphetamine shower. "I noticed." She let him go on for a few minutes, but ultimately, the reason she was on the Disc was to check on the 'Slayer. She interrupted Pupp in the middle of a demonstration of how he was able to pull a hat out of a rabbit, a pretty bad pun once she stopped and thought of it. "Pupp. I need to make sure the 'Slayer is fine. Could you take me to it? She noticed his face drop when she stopped him. "I'm sure it's okay," she said. I mean, you have been checking on it, right?" "Uh.. yeah. It's just fine." He looked off into the distance. "Checked on it.. oh, last week or so." "Great. Let's go. I gotta get back to Earth, and I want to know that it's safe," Katze said. Pupp nodded and headed for the doorway. "It's at JPV HQ. We can take a coach." He stopped at the door. "You sure you don't want to relax a bit first?" Katze was puzzled. "Uh, no. I need to see it now." She had a moment of suspicion, and decided it wouldn't be too soon before she saw the 'Slayer. They walked out of the office and headed for the JPV campus. The coach pulled up at the main building of the JPV campus. Pupp tipped the driver with a single Ankh-Morpork dollar. Katze was struck with how over-run the buildings were. What looked like years of plantgrowth had moved in on the Praxeum's space. It looked like a ghost town. "Pupp, where is everybody?" She noticed a raccoon peeking out of the window of what was her office when she was helping him get the fledgling JAO off the ground. "I know you went to the University, but didn't anyone stick around?" He nodded, "yeah, some of them stuck around for a few months, but those of them who didn't come with me to the 'U' went out on their own. Last I heard some went to other countries, and some have just camped out in small villages and towns." He sighed. He pulled some vines out of the way of the entrance to the main building. "It's still down here in the vault. There's no electricity, of course, so..." He snapped his fingers, and a ball of light appeared in front of them. the light revealed the main entrance to be just as overgrown as the outside. Katze grabbed Pupp's arm. "Tell me you've actually checked on the 'Slayer. This looks like no-one's been here for years!" She couldn't believe that he would leave the Jihad's single weapon supposedly able to kill the Purple Bastard unguarded. Her temper flared. "Pupp. You KNOW how much B'harnii and the Lyrans want the BarneySlayer! HOW COULD YOU LEAVE IT LIKE THIS!?" She disappeared. Puppeteer leaned up against the wall of the entrance. "But.. you don't..." He stepped towards the stairs. "Kat, wait!" Katze appeared in the vault. She stomped over to the platform where it rested. She couldn't believe it. The glass was completely covered with dust and dirt. It was obvious that no-one had been in the room since Pupp had brought the JPV to Discworld. She heard Pupp opening the locks. Katze brushed off the dirt. The door opened and Pupp practically fell into the room, breathing heavily. "Kat, look... I mean, I know I haven't, you know... kept WATCH on it, but the 'Slayer's been safe! Look, I'm sorry, I..." He noticed Katze staring at the BarneySlayer, mouth agape. "What?" Pupp peered into the case. "The fuck? You've gotta be kidding me." Katze opened up the case, reaching in to remove the sword. Pupp just stared, not believing what he was seeing. The sword was whole, like nothing had ever happened to it! Katze pushed it into his hands. "Here. From this moment on, this sword stays in your possession at all times." She rubbed her forehead. "The Lyrans grew Owsen's shard into a full replica of the original sword. Now we have our own. You need to protect it with your life, you understand?" He took the sword from her grasp. All Pupp could do was to nod silently. As Katze turned and left the room, over her shoulder she said, "please don't let me down." The ride back was filled with deafening silence. As they approached the South gate of Ankh-Morpork, Pupp tried to apologize, but Katze cut him off. "Look, you don't have to apologize. I'm not mad." She looked into his eyes. "But i'm very disappointed. I never would have imagined that I couldn't trust you in this. And what's worse is that I don't have any choice but to trust you again. I have to go back." She tapped the Barney-Slayer, which was sitting next to Pupp on the seat. "I already asked you once, but just to make sure, please do not let it leave your sight. Don't disappoint me again." She disappeared, leaving Puppeteer alone with the Barney-Slayer. "Fuck. Now what?" KINGMAN, ARIZONA FRIDAY, APRIL 10, 2004 Dee blazed across the pavement on the back of a bike, lost in thought. The bike was for a customer, a brand new Yamaha, and ostensibly she was taking it out to flog the hell out of it before she completely disassembled it. She always reserved the right to do that. Customers knew that she was a capable rider, and it was far easier to get a feel for how to improve things once you'd ridden them to the limit and experienced their shortcomings yourself. Obviously it was also for the fun of getting to ride a lot of top-end sportbikes, as all her customers knew, but noone could argue with some of the results she could achieve. That was only part of why she was out here though. The dry streambed was one of what she thought of as a personal course, twisting and winding through scrubland. It was quite good when she had found it, but she'd gradually and painstakingly laid a layer of real concrete over the concrete-like surface the mud had baked into, turning it into a budget test-track. She often came out here to clear her head; over the last couple days she'd been out here as much as she could. Which wasn't to say she wasn't getting useful data about the bike, but it was far from the only thing on her mind. "Okay, we ran," she muttered to herself, clicking the shifter down two gears, then leaning into a corner and getting on the throttle again. The bike screamed. "They had guns and it was in public. How the hell did they know where we were?" It was that last part that had been really bugging her. They hadn't been followed, she knew that, and for them to have been found after randomly wandering the city was too much of a coincidence. Several more corners flashed past, brush and occasional trees lining the sides forming into a blur. 135 miles per hour she knew, the bike's instruments piped directly into her sensorium via her right arm. Not too bad, but she scrubbed some speed off for the long sweeping left-hand corner, leaning all the way into things. And then in a flash she saw the truck, parked across the width of the lane and concealed by the brush until she was right on top of it. Dee struggled to change directions and slow down, but had just enough time to straighten up before the front of the bike slammed into the bed of the pickup, sending her flying. Well fuck, she had plenty of time to think as she sailed through the air. The world had slown down to a snail's pace and more than anything she felt an intense wave of irritation. Her mind instantly connected the truck to her attackers a few days earlier and to, of course, the Owsenite shards she still carried in her jacket in anticipation of getting back to work on analysis Monday. They must have some way of tracing them. Then she noted the ground about to run into her and wondered exactly how much this was going to suck. The first bounce sent her flying an additional 20 feet, her forearms scraping into the ground from where they had instinctively come up to protect her head. While she was wearing state of the art - Jihad state of the art - riding gear, a type of synthetic fabric that hardened to the stiffness of steel on impact and resisted abrasion, the impact still hurt. A lot. The next bounce was off the bank of the stream and the one after that into a few small trees which she probably destroyed; Dee wasn't too keen on paying attention by then, though. In fact, it seemed a fair place to rest a little while. It was less than a minute later that she heard rustling through the bushes. Dee raised her head enough to see the figure approaching, and recognized it as one of the three men who had chased herself and Katze in Denver. "Fuck," she muttered. The man spotted her and called out to his companions in some language she'd never heard before, then grinned slightly as she raised her right arm towards him, interpreting it as a pleading gesture from a battered foe. There was a loud explosion, and he looked downright surprised as the shotgun blast took him full in the chest. Dee started hyperventilating, smoke rising from the hole the concealed one-shot gun in her arm had blown in the palm of her glove. Then she very quickly regained her senses, tore off her once shiny chromed helmet and scambled towards the brush and concealment, staying low so any others wouldn't see her. They came running, crashing through the brush and making it dead simple for her to tell where they were. Amateurs, part of her mind said. You are too though, another replied, to which the first told it to shut up. Smiling grimly, Dee reached inside her jacket and pulled the Sig P210 she always carried out of its shoulder holster. She clicked the Swiss pistol's safety off, started the targeting software specificially for it, and took a couple deep breaths to calm herself. Here goes, she thought to herself as she quickly pushed herself to her feet. There were two of them, both by the body of their comrade. Both were scanning the area alertly, on guard for whatever had fired. One was facing her and shouted, bringing his pistol to bear. 103 feet away, the targeting software calculated from watching through her eyes. In his excitement, his first shot went wide, passing at least a foot to the side of Dee's head. Her return shots didn't go wide. The incredibly powerful computer in her bionic arm used a variety of algorithms to calculate exactly where the gun needed to be pointed and fine-tuned her aim, an electricially driven finger stroked the trigger twice, and the man went down with a pair of hollowpoint bullets destroying his heart. The second one had barely started to spin to face her at the warning; her next two shots took him in the temple and he fell as well. Dee lowered her pistol and opened up a JihadLinker connection to Mal. "Hi, just so you know, I just got attacked by the same people as in Denver. I don't need medical assistance, but I have three corpses, a wrecked bike, and a truck that need disposal." She sounded far too calm to herself, even given that it was transcribed directly from her thoughts. "Right," Mal replied. "KillJoy just showed up; I'll gate him through to help clean up." "Thanks." She closed the connection and then, all of a sudden her nerves caught up to what had just happened and she threw up in the bushes. VRDET HQ BLANCA MOUNTAIN, COLORADO SATURDAY, APRIL 11, 2004 2:13 AM He had to admit, as he strolled down the darkened corridor at god-knows-how-early in the morning, that he was rather impressed with what these kids had going for them. TRES HQ had a pretty substantial underground facility, but it was nothing compared to this compound-under-the-mountain. Still, in the end, it wasn't going to be about who had the best toys, was it? The man in black tossed his head from side to side, chuckling at the irony of that thought, because, really, there was one toy that really mattered, wasn't there? Say true, because if that wasn't so, he certainly wouldn't be here right now, in this inevitable tomb that they all so cleverly dug for themselves. And the security! Well, it was certainly impressive. He was sure he saw all manner of automated defences on his way in, all sorts of nifty little high-tech gadgets that stared blankly at him with their all-seeing eyes that somehow did not see him. And all that rock and debris in the access tunnel? Well, that was certainly bothersome, but the master had shown him a rather clever way in. He smiled and waved cheerfully at the camera watching him as he walked casually through another one of those interesting laser grids that were no doubt meant to trip an alarm or something worse when someone crossed them. Very clever. Well. We shouldn't let ourselves get distracted now, should we? Now, let's see... ah, of course. Hospital. And rightly so, he imagined that the little pup was probably still a bit broken, and it served him right, didn't it? A little suffering for not dying on schedule as he should have. The wild-eyed spectre couldn't help but smile at this. He almost didn't notice when the door a few paces down the hall slid open, and out strode this giant of a man. He quickly spun around a corner, drawing his sword with his back to the wall. This could get quite a bit messy, couldn't it? Good, very good. He grinned, flexing his fingers around the grip, tensing, ready to strike... KillJoy strode on by without a single glance, disappearing down another corridor. Oh. Well, just as well. He was here for a purpose, after all. Now, where was he? Ah, yes. Sheathing his sword, he skipped off briskly into the hospital wing. Not far away, in one of the many recovery rooms, former Grand Admiral Kirk Felton slept, and dreamt. This in itself was not unusual, but it was the first time in several days that he had what one might call a 'conscious' sleep. In it, a chilled wind caressed his skin, and he felt the reassuring solidness of the haft of a wood-axe in his hand. It whistled through the air, thumping into the log stood on the block, splitting it neatly in two. He left the axe embedded in the block and turned. Sure enough, below the short but steep ridge on which he stood squatted a small cottage erected almost haphazardly from stone, white smoke curling from the rough chimney poking through its thatch room. He was home. He rolled his head back, closing his eyes to the cloudless blue sky. He inhaled a lungful of the crisp air, heightened Feral senses detecting on it the faint scent of blooming heather. It was familiar, all of it, and in spite of that he couldn't supress the faint smile that touched his lips. It was the day when everything changed. He half-ran, half-stumbled down the incline to the threshhold of the house, pausing with his fingers splayed on the weathered wood of the door. He looked at it thoughtfully, knowing what he might find inside, but shook his head with a small sigh. No, things had indeed changed, and even in dreams it was better to allow some ghosts to remain buried, no matter how much they were once loved. His tiny little homestead was only a brisk twenty minute walk from the edge of town, a walk that would be relished on a day like this. It was a walk which passed quickly, such as they always do in these sort of dreams, and as he crossed into the muddy lanes of the little community, the wind once more picked up, caressing his skin, only this time carrying on it the faintest sound, whispers on the breeze. Curious, he thought, and then the pain seized him. Keili was awakened by her husband's stirring next to her, not entirely surprising given how tiny the bed on which she lay next to him was. She rolled over muzzily, slipping an arm around his waist and kissing him lightly on the back of the neck. She cracked a sleepy eye, and what she saw started her to instant lucidity, lunging for the dagger she kept sheathed near the bed. She deftly drew, but before she could stab into the grinning spectre's neck, it pressed a finger to its lips and gave her a soft shush. As darkness overtook her, her eyes rolled back in their sockets and she flopped limply into her pillow, the slim stiletto slipping from her fingers and clattering onto the floor. Tilden Alexander Owsen watched her fall unconscious, and turned his attention back to Felton, and leaning close enough to the Maenad's ear to kiss it he whispered into his dreams. Felton convulsed and stiffened as the final syllables fell from the lips of the fallen Feral. Faint traces of violet light wound themselves across the surface of his skin, forming intricate patterns like luminous tribal tattoos, eldritch in design and purpose. His eyes fluttered open, unseeing, glowing red. Owsen smiled with satisfaction, briefly, but then his face grew deadly serious. "Now, me boy... where is what's mine?" Red. The color of passion. Of life. But also one of violence, of hate. Also a color of death. It filled his mind, it filled his vision, it filled his soul, even in this dream-place. And a horrible liquid warmth, tasting of tin and copper, filled his mouth, coated his throat. It was a taste that he had not experienced, had not allowed himself to experience in a long time. He'd killed since, yes, and feasted, oh certainly, but never this, never did he allow what little shreds of humanity he could hold onto in such a state to slip this far from his grasp. This was human blood. Memory gave way to nightmare. Fingers of orange fire scrabbled for the skies as the fresh corpse, still warm in his hands thumped wetly to the ground. He felt like a puppet, strings pulling unresponsive limbs. Trapped in his own body, experiencing everything but controlling nothing. He bellowed at the sky in animal rage... or was it simply terror? He couldn't be certain. The village in Felton's mind was now ablaze. This isn't right, he thought to himself as he snagged one of his kinsmen in taloned claws and tore off his head with ease. This didn't happen, this was not as he remembered it. This wasn't memory, anymore. Not his own. And as he raged, struggled against his traitorous dream-body, somehow, while he knew it wasn't right, it FELT right. Good. Full of purpose. And that was what horrified him most of all. People fled from his monstrous form, brown alligator-skin slicked with blood, and he pursued with glee (horror!), slashing them to ribbons with great swipes of his talons, scorching them to ash with the merest effort of thought. He was bred for this, he felt somehow, as he pounced upon a woman fleeing a burning house. he turned her to face him with teeth poised to tear out her throat and glimpsed her face. The face of his wife. Keili. No! And as his fangs closed around her soft throat, the world swam away from him, blurring, ripped away from his thoughts and memory. A wave of nausea ran through his dream-body, seizing his guts like a clenching fist, and for a fleeting moment, as a fog overcame him, he felt once more attached to himself. And he heard that voice again, that presence, probing at him, at his mind. Searching for something. Clarity returned. And that sense of riding back-seat in his own body. And now his fingers were clenched around a Lyran's throat, fingers that ended in talons gleaming like steel in the afternoon sunlight. This was memory again, real memory this time, and not long ago. He ripped the mask away from the mage's face, revealing the terrified visage beneath. With detached curiosity, he noted a sensation of prodding, as though his brain were a book and eager fingers were paging through his memories. And then sense of satisfaction flowed over him, satisfaction not his own. He knew, as the Claws flashed and flayed the Lyran's chest open, that Nemesis, at this point of the kill, wasn't capable of that sort of satisfaction; his was much more animal. Feral. Closer, was the impression he was feeling. Closer to what? The world sucked away again, recollection of seconds ago already fleeting. It grew dark. Acrid odors filled his nostrils, the smells of fresh paint and new carpets, and yet something else; it had a faint copper scent, a greasy texture to the air that wasn't tactile and yet felt nonetheless. Magic, he reckoned. His ever-betraying puppet-body turned, leaning his weight against a vault door which seemed chillingly familiar. What he glimpsed inside as the door swung close with a thumb alarmed him greatly even in his detached state. The shards of the Barney-Slayer. A sense of alien delight filled his mind, delight that was also not his. He began to understand now, with growing terror as he turned to face Puppeteer in his full Arch-Chancellor regalia. Delight became urgency, and he lashed out against his metaphysical bonds as he experienced that paging sensation and his memory swam... Control. He had to have it. Concentrate. Steer the memory if you can. Resist! Pennsylvania. Where in Pennsylvania? More urgency. No! By God, if he wants it, you sure as hell aren't going to hand him a roadmap! You want to know where your damned sword is? Well, here you go, me bucko! See it well! The JPV campus. Closing ceremonies. He wants to know where it is. It's overwhelming, the need, the desire. So strong! Isn't he going to be surprised? Joke's on you, me boy! The campus vanishes. The sword with it. It's gone, you sick fuck! GONE! RAGE. And that moment, that one fleeting moment where emotion subverts control, that's all he needed. Felton awakened. No, that's not precisely correct. He did awaken, but it was Nemesis that looked Owsen in the face as the magic scrawlwork faded from his skin. "You," he hissed. "Me!" Owsen said with a spiteful cheer that masked his anger far too well. Nemesis lunged from the bed, his healing body screaming in agony as he did so, Claws sliding from his fingertips as his arms closed to catch Owsen in a deadly bear-hug. Instead he got himself a face full of a glass-faced cabinet. He sprawled in the broken glass, bleeding freely from fresh lascerations on his head. He rolled over, slashing up his hands and elbows, trying to focus on Owsen through the stars that swam in his vision and the blood that was running into his eyes. How did he move so damned fast? He tried to shake the cobwebs from his head, and already whatever recollection he had of the dream just a few minutes ago was slipping away. He tried to stand, but his tendons still refused to support his weight. "W-what...?" he started. His head throbbed something fierce. "What was I doing? Oh, just learning something new." There was a soft moan behind Owsen as Keili began to awaken. "I'd love to stay and kill you, but I have someplace I need to be and I have a feeling it's going to get rather crowded here soon." Owsen tapped his forehead in mock-salute and with an unnecessary flourish of his greatcoat, zipped off into the hall. Nemesis managed piece his thoughts together enough to form a coherent order as Charn'El's Herald fled. "Minerva! Intruder alert!" "...I'm not detecting anyone out of the ordinary," came a response from a loudspeaker. "Just bloody do it!" Of course, Mal was in an extraordinarily foul mood when he stepped out of the elevator. Naturally, it was a scant fifteen minutes ago when he'd finally been able to relax enough to doze off for the first time in God knew how long, and so by the rules of whatever cosmic joke was being played on him something was bound to go wrong. And the klaxons were beginning to give him a migraine. "Shut the damned noise off," he grumbled, rounding the corner into Felton's room. The sirens went mute. He shouldered his way through the small crowd that had gathered there, rubbing a palm over his tired face. "All right. What's going on?" "Owsen," Keili said. Mal froze in mid-yawn. "Owsen? You're sure?" "Crazy eyes, stringy hair, beard, bad breath, kilt? Yeah, I'm pretty fookin' sure it were him," Felton said, dabbing at the cuts on his brow. They seemed to be fading already, so there was at least some good news. A vague sort of panic was starting to settle in and the Jihaddi were growing restless. The thought of Owsen running loose in the mountain was not a pleasant one. "How the hell did he get in?" asked Lacroix. "Teleport?" suggested Katze. "No," said Tangaroa. "It would have tripped the alarms. Shad and I would have seen something in the situation room. And the proximity sensors registered nothing either." "Look, guys," said Felton. "He was pokin' in me brain. I don't think I have tae spell out the urgency of the situation fer ye." Mal pinched the bridge of his nose. "All right. The only way in or out of the mountain is by teleport or by Gate. Which means he's got to still be inside somewhere. Min?" Minvera stared thoughtfully at the wall for a moment, head tilted to one side. "I'm still detecting nothing." "Shit," Mal said. It wasn't a particularly eloquent statement, but it summed things up quite well. "Okay, so he's either found a way to mask himself from our defense network or he's found another way in and out. We're going to have to confirm it either way, which means we're going to have to do it the old-fashioned way..." "You've got to be kidding," Dee groaned. There was a lot of base to cover on foot and so few of them to do it with. "No, I'm not. KillJoy, Dee, Damo, you take this level and sublevel one. Min, Katze, you're with me on level two and three. Tang, Aris, Rens, you take four and five. Lacroix, Keili, Delgado, you take the rest of the sublevels. I doubt he'd go deeper into the mountain, but it's best to check it out anyway. Oh... and avoid sublevel two. If he's gone in there our problems are probably over." "The old man is insane, thinking he can keep us up all hours..." Katze mumbled. "If I'm miserable, -everybody's- miserable." "Owsen probably isn't too goddamn miserable right about now," Lacroix said, turning to leave. "So let's correct that." Mal clapped his hands together. "All right. Arm yourselves and move!" The Gate room was clear, as were the labs. He wasn't entirely surprised. Owsen probably wouldn't have figured out how to work the Gate anyway. Mal grimaced at the daunting task ahead; having to search the Library. "Main access tunnel is secure," KillJoy's voice rumbled over the comm-link. Not surprising. "Gardens clear," Dee reported. "Garage is clear," said Lacroix. Mal sighed. "All right, ladies. Back upstairs. Get ready for a nice jog." "Hold up, I've got something," said Minerva, slowing to a trot behind Mal and Katze. "Owsen?" "No... multiple contacts... they've breached the main access road." Mal swore. The timing was impeccable. He clicked on his vox. "Tangaroa, Lacroix. Change of plans. You two meet me in the situation room. The rest of you keep looking." He clicked off his comm and looked at Minerva and Katze. "You two as well. And be careful." He ran for the elevator. Owsen smiled as he opened his eyes. Well, that certainly was very educational, wasn't it? And how they scurried around looking for him! Of course, their first mistake was assuming he was there at all and not actually a handful of miles away, but if they knew, it wouldn't have been such a clever trick, would it? He stood and dusted off the seat of his pants, snatching up the Dark Slayer and sliding it back into its sheath. Well. The little diversion he'd arranged should keep them occupied for a little while. As for himself, well... he had a date with destiny. TEN MILES NORTHWEST OF BLANCA MOUNTAIN 4:00 AM LOCAL TIME The middle of the night usually isn't a terrific time to be traipsing through the forest. The middle of the night, when winter was just starting to realize that it was supposed to be spring, was an even worse time to do so. The dead of night, in sub-freezing temperatures, while tracking an unknown number of armed spongin who seem far too connected to a renegade Jihaddi who goes through Maenads like tissue paper? That, now - that was in a category all of its own. "You gotta hand it to the man," Tangaroa mused, "he really knows how to shake up an evening." "Mmm," Lacroix half-responded, picking his way around a denser spot of brush. "That's one way of putting it, anyway. This is getting ridiculous." The night had been frantic, to say the least. Not two hours earlier, Owsen had somehow managed to infiltrate Blanca, assault Felton, and get out mostly undetected. After the first bits of panic over the breach calmed down, most of the Jihaddi on-base started scouring VRDET HQ from top to bottom. Just in case things weren't confused enough, the proximity alarms by the base entrance started going off a few minutes later when an unknown number of armed, uniformed people tripped some sensors. When it came to figuring out who would shadow them to see what was up, Lacroix and Tangaroa ended up picking the short straws. More to the point, the short straws were picked for them when Mal ordered them out after the unknowns. "You know, we were kinda rushed out the door to track these guys," Lacroix said, as much to himself as anything. "What should we do if these guys turn out to be Mundanes? Civvies, say, or maybe US Army?" "I'd track them anyway," Tang replied. "The timing was way too convenient for it to be a coincidence. From what I saw of the prox sensors, they definately aren't US military, though. Wrong uniforms. The weapons were different too; definately not hunting rifles, but they didn't look like American weapons either." "I suppose," Lacroix finally added after a couple of minutes. "I just wish Owsen could have picked some other day to send us off into the wilderness. I was hoping for Mass and a nice, quiet afternoon today, but noooo.." "Oh yeah," Tang said. "Uh, happy Easter?" "Mm," Lacroix mmd. "I think this is the first one I'll have ever managed to miss, unless we find those guys soon." "I'll add it to the list of grievances," Tang said, a sympathetic tone underlying the wisecrack. "Oh, it's four." "Huh? Oh, it is," Lacroix said sheepishly. Reaching for the once-again-familiar weight of his Linker on his belt, he called back to Blanca to report in. "Sitrep normal," Lacroix said formally. There was a snort on the other side of the line - Damocles, this time. "Nice to know *someone's* is, at least. One of the outlying sensors picked up movement, by the way - a couple of guys northwest of your position, moving in the same direction. We're pretty sure they're the guys you two are after. Keep moving." "Right. How's Admiral Felton holding up?" "About as well as you'd expect," came the reply. "Owsen didn't seem to physically harm him, but he seems more shaken up than he's willing to let on." Lacroix heard an irritated, accented "I'm *fine!*", sounding like it was coming from the room next to the one Damo was in. "Of course, Admiral! Uh, yeah. The situation appears stable here, though. We haven't found anything. Let us know if you two turn something up." "Right, Sir," Lacroix said, closing the connection after the usual formalities. "How's Felton?" Tang asked, having caught up to Lacroix while he was on the Linker. "Loud," Lacroix replied, which drew a reassured laugh from the Doberman. "We're headed in the right direction; the outliers caught our friends headed northwest." "Then lead on," Tang said, grandly gesturing ahead into the darkness. "Oh no," Lacroix said. "You take point for awhile. It's your turn to go tripping over stuff you can hardly see, so I'll know what to avoid." "Pfft," Tang said, but he went ahead anyway. Lacroix envied Tang his ability to move so silently. Time passed, more or less in silence, as the two continued through the woods. Lacroix found himself falling into the mindset of the patrol as he got more used to it. Through the occaisional bursts of smalltalk between him and Tang, fewer and fewer things nearby went unseen or unheard, and even his own movements began to get closer to the ghostlike silence some of the other Jihaddi always seemed to take for granted. Lacroix noticed that it was becoming easier to see after awhile, and was almost startled to realize the sun was coming up. "Think we're gaining on them?" he asked shortly afterwards, moving past Tang to take point. "We gotta be by now," Tang replied. "We can't tell obviously, since we passed the outer prox sensors, but they'd have to be almost as nuts as we are to still be moving after this long. Sooner or later they're going to have to settle someplace." "Yea - huh," Lacroix said suddenly with a jolt of recollection. "Where are we...?" he said to himself, taking out his Linker and checking the map of the area. "Duh," he muttered, putting the Linker away after a moment. "What's up?" Tang called from a few paces behind him. "The maps of the area are pretty detailed," Lacroix said. "VR managed to chart just about everything larger than an outhouse that's built by humans in the area, and I just remembered something. We're headed almost in a straight-line route towards a small building, probably some kind of cottage, that was put up a few miles away about the same time I was posted to Blanca. What do you wanna bet our friends are heading that way?" "That works as well as anything else," Tang allowed. "How far out is it?" "Few more miles, I think. We can probably get there by two or so if we keep up the pace, but if that's where they're going we should start keeping more of an eye out a bit before that." "We should probably call home, let 'em know what's up." "You're right, at that," Lacroix said, doing so. "That sounds like our best lead," Mal said over the Linker when Tang and Lacroix filled him in. "Check it out. We're still busy here, so you two are on your own." "Right. Any instructions in case it's them?" "Again, you're on your own. If they're hostile and you don't think you can take them, then observe and get clear, and we'll gate you back home. If you think you can, though, then go ahead. I've got a lot of questions that need answering, and I'd like to have someone or something that *will* answer them, instead of just shooting back, for a change." "Right," Lacroix said again. "We'll let you know once we start approaching the site. Lacroix out." He closed the connection and put the Linker away, and the two Jihaddi continued tramping further into the forest. 3:25 PM LOCAL TIME Lacroix peered up over the small ridge, looking down through the trees into the hollow a couple hundred meters away. There it was, alright. The cottage looked rough but comfortable, a log-built affair that was somewhat larger than most of the cabins you'd see out in the woods these days. It also had the look of something that had seen several seasons come and go, rather than being at all recent. Was this some civvie's building that had gotten co-opted, or did the spongins actually have a presence this close to Blanca during the war? He hoped it was the former, especially when he saw the pair of antennae sticking out of the roof, the two covered jeeps parked near the building, and the guards. He checked his watch. Tangaroa was probably in position on the other side of the clearing by now, but it couldn't hurt to be sure before going on. It would suck to have spent three days tracking the spongin only to screw it up or have to call it off. The plan was to plan things out with their Linkers, but Lacroix felt uneasy about the antennae - were they for listening or sending? - on the cottage's roof, and so he decided to be both cautious and minimalist about the whole affair. Lacroix took a few deep breaths to steady his nerves and quietly pulled out the linker. He decided to give Tang a few more minutes, taking a mental tally of the number of spongin in and around the building. There was a good deal of movement - they were obviously unpacking something - so it wasn't easy at a glance to figure out how many were there. A few were obvious guards, staying at certain spots and looking around with sentries' eyes, and most of them were armed. After a short time, he thought he had a good count, pulled up the 'Linker, and started typing. "7-10 5-8A G Y/N" he typed quickly, sending in burst mode. "Y" came the reply a few seconds later. "U/I1?" Lacroix thought a moment. Tang obviously wanted someone to do the diversion thing; against those odds both Jihaddi going at once would probably be less than bright. Going in sequence would be less than bright anyway, but the Jihad wasn't about playing it safe as much as it was playing it in the least suicidal manner. "U1," Lacroix sent back. Waiting a few more seconds for Tang to get ready, wherever he was on the other side of the clearing, he pulled out his XRifle and got it ready for action. Some activity in the clearing down below; someone had noticed something being sent and was consulting with the guards. Some days, being right about a guess really sucked. "Shit," Lacroix said to himself, quickly typing "G!" before putting the Linker back on his belt and preparing his rifle. They might have been quick off the mark, but with luck they were still just spongin. A few seconds later, he noticed another commotion in the clearing, and the hint of rustling in the trees on the other side. The guards looked around to place the sound, did so, and two of them started walking to the north to look. Lacroix brought his rifle up a bit more, staying behind cover, waiting to see what Tangaroa had in mind. When the two spongin got close enough to the tree line, all hell suddenly broke loose. The amount of ambient light in the area of the tree line picked up, and suddenly the spongin were pelted with small bits of debris - acorns, small branches, and the like - blown off the trees. The rain of debris wasn't major or harmful, but it was proof that something more than a breeze was kicking up. The spongin shouted something to their buddies in the cottage, split up, and started pushing their way into the woods with their weapons up. The rain of debris abated at the same time, and Lacroix thought he saw movement heading deeper into the woods. The spongin saw it too, and the pops of rifle fire began to sound across the clearing as two more spongin began to race up to support their friends. Lacroix winced and shuddered a bit despite himself at hearing that sound again, feeling the memories gnaw around the edge of his conscious. He gritted his teeth and forced it down; there was no time for that anymore. He waited a few more seconds to be sure the spongin were interested in Tangaroa, started hearing the deeper boom of Tang's own pistols in return, and moved. Bringing his rifle up to his chest, Lacroix vaulted the edge of the ridge and started moving down the slope as fast as he could. There was a good amount of cover, and he made his way from bush to tree to boulder, almost halfway down the slope, before being noticed. One of the spongin still watching the cottage noticed him, shouted something he couldn't quite make out, and started firing from the shoulder. Lacroix hit the ground before the first shot was fired and rolled, watching rounds clip the leaves above his head uncomfortably close to where he was. Rolling a bit more, he pulled his rifle up, popped up from behind the boulder he found, and fired a couple of shots. The whining hiss of the XRifle brought back a number of memories as well. The shots missed, but they made the spongin he was shooting at get his own head down. Lacroix took an instant to listen to things. Shouting in the foreground; still can't recognize it. Tang fires off two rounds in the distance; good, he's still out there. Lacroix charged the grenade launcher on his rifle, popped up for an instant, and fired before diving for cover behind another bush. The arc was low, the round fast; almost before the *chunk* of the grenade's firing left the air, the crump of the explosion took its place. Pumping a second grenade into the launcher's chamber, he rose quickly to look around. The shot was maybe a bit too accurate, but that worked too. Snapping off a few more shots from the shoulder at the spongin who piled out of the cottage to join the action, he ran forward to a fresh piece of cover. The spongin were panicked somewhat by the ferocity of this attack coming from one side, and their shots were wide off the mark. One of Lacroix's bursts went stray, hitting one of the jeeps, lighting it off in a large fireball. The confusion bought him time to rush closer, during which he fired another grenade wildly, kicking up a fountain of dirt, snow and rocks. Another pillar of flame appeared briefly, off in the woods, followed by some more pistol shots; Lacroix felt thankful that it wasn't later in the year when the woods were dry. Gunshots kept firing on Tang's side of things; he thought he heard fewer of the spongin rifles than before. Two long bursts tore up the trees nearby; those had to use most of someone's magazine. Almost to the treeline, four guys ahead, one down, four in the woods. That was probably all of them. Trying to get some space between himself and the spongin working to the treeline, he charged a smoke grenade, fired it into the ground, and used the cover to run off to one side. Diving behind a boulder, he waited a few moments while the spongin charged "him" in the smoke cloud. Pulling up again, twenty feet to their right, he fired off a long burst, hitting three of them, setting some small fires in the brush. The fourth hit the ground, pulled the pin on a grenade, and threw it at Lacroix. Less than ten yards away, even a spongin couldn't be too far off. The blast of the grenade was mostly absorbed by the ground and cover, but Lacroix was still tossed a couple of yards, his rifle a few more. "Shit," he said; he didn't feel injured, but his rifle being out of reach pissed him right off. Rolling across the ground as fast as he could, hearing the spongin rushing up behind him, he reached his weapon. By the time he was turning around, the last spongin was rushing around the rock, with an honest-to-god _bayonet_ on his weapon, either out of ammo or wanting to finish it up close. Snarling something at Lacroix, he brandished his rifle like a spear and picked up the pace. Rolling a bit more to try and get fractions of a second, Lacroix grabbed his rifle and came to his knees as the spongin was on him, pulling the rifle back for a thrust. Out of reflex, he swing his own XRifle, deflecting the thrust of his foe's bayonet, and planted the butt of the rifle squarely in the spongin's stomach. Bringing his weapon up and around as the spongin dropped his own rifle, Lacroix brought the butt up again, this time into the spongin's face. The guy went down hard, not going anywhere for awhile. Lacroix brought his rifle back to firing position and looked quickly around him. Nobody in sight who was a threat. Aside from the rustle of the trees and the crackling of the burning jeep, the forest was silent. "Tang?" he essayed, shouting towards the woods up north as he walked cautiously towards the cottage. "I'm here," came the shout back across the woods. "Four down," he added, stepping cautiously into the clearing from the other end. "Same here," Lacroix replied, "and one more who'll be getting up later." He gestured with his rifle at the unconscious spongin and realized he should restrain the guy. "You're hit," Tang said as Lacroix bent to tie up the napping spongin. "Right arm." He kept an eye around the clearing and the building, reloading his pistols as he did. "Rea -? Shit," Lacroix said, more to himself than anything as he checked. A round had clipped his arm sometime during the firefight, just enough to make a mess without being bad enough for him to notice right away. "Shit," he said again, more in an "I was using that shirt" tone than a "there's a gouge missing from my arm" sense. "Prolly looks worse than it is," Tang said, obviously not finding it bad enough to worry too much. Lacroix nodded, finished tying up the spongin, and gestured at the cottage. "We should check inside in case anyone's still there." "I agree," Tang said. "This time *you* go first." Lacroix carefully walked into the cottage, his X-Rifle leading the way. He carried himself in a way that showed he was starting to feel his injury, but seemed to be handling himself alright. Tangaroa followed, his pistol ready. The cottage entryway branched off into several other rooms. Lacroix started into the room on the right, and turned back to Tangaroa. Tangaroa waved him forward, and turned to the room on the left. It was a kitchen. Seeing nothing interesting there, he walked through it into an adjoining room, where a computer system was connected with wires leading up to the roof, probably to the rooftop antenna array. Tang was curious to examine it, but felt it was something that Shad or Mal should have a look at first. Tang went back to the kitchen and looked around. It looked like most other kitchens a decent-sized cottage would have, except that it was far neater than most kitchens, and infinitely neater than any kitchen ten men used should be. It seemed to fit with the discipline of the spongin, anyway, although Tang also found it oddly disturbing. Looking into the cupboards and fridge, he found nothing unusual. The fridge just had normal food, the cupboards normal groceries and dishes. Closing each, Tang picked up a notebook sitting on the counter and opened it, expecting the notes in poorly-written English which were common on most spongin facilities. Instead, he found page after page of an elegantly-written, vertical script he was not familiar with. This would be going back to Blanca. He heard voices from the other side of the cabin then, and one of them wasn't Joseph's. Tang drew his gun again, and hurried through the cabin. "Tang?" Lacroix called out, but not urgently. Tangaroa calmed and lowered his pistol as he entered the room. "What's up, 'Sep?" Walking in, Tang saw what was up glare at him. "I've got a bit of a problem here." Lacroix waved towards the new captive. The spongin had taken a burst from Lacroix's X-Rifle, and his right arm was a charred ruin. He wasn't putting up a fight. "Looks like he's got the problem, if you asked me," Tang quipped. The bit of a problem reacted angrily - and unintelligbly. "Y'khadiji, toduki-khatanlakh fai dhalyr'el telyx," he jabbered in what would have been a threatening tone, had all his limbs been intact. Tangaroa raised an eyebrow. "I see." "Can you make out what he's saying?" Lacroix asked hopefully. Tangaroa couldn't, but by now had a fair guess at the language. "Unless I miss my guess, your friend is speaking Lyran." "Entralakh Lhi'ireli tisheibal otasaiel fthei!" the spongin spat furiously as soon as Tangaroa said the word 'Lyran.' He rose up from the chair he was sitting in, a picture of perfect anger. Despite the rifle, Lacroix actually started back a step before remembering what he was holding. Lacroix shook his rifle at the spongin to make it clear who had the gun and where it was pointed. The spongin almost audibly bristled, Tangaroa was also taken aback by the angry response. Apparently he'd touched a nerve. He didn't mind touching it again. "Yep, definately *Lyran*," he said, stressing the word. The spongin ground his teeth, but didn't seem suicidal enough to attack. "So what should we do with him?" Lacroix asked. "And the other guy out back, of course," he added. "Well," Tangaroa said, "this guy we're definately taking in. Cover him for me so I can restrain him, and then we'll take a good, hard look at this place before heading back. We should call Blanca right away and let them know what we've found here, too." Lacroix spoke up as Tangaroa searched the captive. "Anything interesting in the rest of the building, by the way?" "Oh, you could say that." After getting the flaming ruin that used to be the jeep out front under control, Tang and Lacroix did what they could for the wounded spongin, dragged the unconscious one indoors, and started looking through the cottage in more detail. The building looked like a bigger find than anyone had expected, with several more notebooks filled with what appeared to be Lyran handwriting, to say nothing of the computers and gear. Things had calmed down enough back at Blanca that Shadur could talk Tang through checking through the computers, and they confirmed that the spongin were able to intercept Jihaddi communications near Blanca. The computer software, at least, was in English; the earliest recorded dates on some of the intercept files were in 1998, which was a sobering hint that B'harne's forces weren't all noisy and incompetent. The fact that the cabin had sent some kind of brief transmission during the firefight itself wasn't just sobering, it was alarming. "We don't have time to figure out what they sent just yet," Tang said, and the two continued looking around. One of the other jackpots was in a set of locked drawers in one of the cabin's three bedrooms. On top of the normal mix of outdoorsy stuff and military gear and a few other books of Lyran writing, Tang found a pile of manila folders, flipped through them, and started wearing an "oh, shit" expression. "Tang?" Lacroix prompted, seeing the look on the Doberman's face. Tangaroa handed the folders to Lacroix, who opened the first one. Inside was what looked like a detailed dossier on Mal - Jihad connections, aliases, public history, and some guesswork at things the enemy didn't know during the war that were entirely too close to the mark. The other folders contained similar things: a history of Felton's company; grainy photos of Dee and Katze, taken during the car chase the previous week; a folder with some information on Damocles which apparently fell together after someone had examined Dee's business connections. After a few minutes, Lacroix closed the folders and handed them back to Tang, who simply nodded at the pollaxed look on his face. "At least we're not in these yet," Lacroix said heavily, thinking about how recent - and how accurate - much of the information in the dossiers was. "Yet, anyway," Tang said, with the cynicism of an intel operative. "They did transmit *something* before we got in here, and we caught those security cameras while going through the place." "You so lighten my mind," Lacroix muttered. Tang gave an ironic bow. "One thing's for certain, anyway," he continued: "I don't think they're just gunning for the Maenads anymore." Tang could only nod. VRDET HQ BLANCA MOUNTAIN, COLORADO 4:14 PM Tangaroa and Lacroix lead the two captured enemy through the portal. "Welcome back", Aris said. "We got room for guests?" Tang asked cheerfully. Killjoy, hearing the commotion, walked into the room and noticed the prisoners. "Good job," he said. "This guy's the hero", Tang pointed his thumb at Lacroix. "He captured both these guys and he saved my neck out there." "I wouldn't say that," Lacroix protested. "We were split up, and you fought your own way out." "Yeah, but if it hadn't been for you, it would have been ten on one instead of four on one. Someone get Mal on the horn so we can tell him the good news." "Mal's already on and waiting to hear more from you two." "Great. Let's keep the prisoners separated, in separate rooms, so they don't bolster each other's morale." As Killjoy started to march the prisoners off to their cells, Tangaroa continued. "First off, if we have anybody who speaks Lyran or whatever it is they're talking, put them in there and see if we can get something out of them early. And don't feed them just yet." "Mal?" KJ asked from the hallway. "The spongies," Tang shouted back, then continued to the present group. "Or whatever they are. I don't think they're spongies, to tell the truth. I'm not sure what they are, but I'll find out for sure. Does this base have an MP3 library that can be piped into the intercom in their rooms, or does someone at least have a CD player and and some Good Music?" "Of course." Mal said. "It's a Jihad base." "Good." Tangaroa pulled a handful of $20 bills from his pocket and flipped through them, double-checking his finances. "We'll start by saturating them. I'd also like to run their prints, run their DNA, and see if we can find out who they are, when they disappeared from society if they ever did. Find out who owned that ski lodge. By all appearances, there's more to this than it appears." "Our primary concern is still Owsen", Malaclypse reminded Tang, "and he's out there moving right now. I don't think you're going to learn enough from digging into the prisoners' past in time to stop him." "Yes, well, we sort of know where Owsen's going and why, but the prisoners are more of a question mark. I'll get what I can from the prisoners. Maybe Owsen has a weakness they know about or we can get him back somehow, or maybe they've laid a trap for us that we can find out about." Tangaroa stuffed the money back in his pocket. "Aris, I'd like Portal into town to make a quick run for some equipment and things. I'll call in for retrieval in an hour or so." "You're awfully eager to use the portal again," Mal said dryly. Tang smiled. "I'm glad to find a teleporter that doesn't have a fifty-fifty chance of killing me when I use it. It's a wonderful piece of equipment you have here." Mal didn't smile. "Tang, we didn't totally decommission the base, so all the equipment you need should be right there. Besides, Splitting up now while Owsen is out there is a bad idea, and I don't want to see a repeat of what happened the last time you went running around in a city." Tang stood in stoic thought for a moment. "Understood." Mal continued his lecture. "Besides, according to your own 'Linker report, you're not convinced they're Spongin, -and- we can't communicate with them, so it's a waste of time to even try." "That's merely a strong assumption at the moment. I want to be 100 percent sure." Mal rubbed his chin. "Give it a try, but don't fuck it up." "It's scavenger hunt time. Do we have lunch here?" A FEW HOURS (AND LUNCH) LATER... Tangaroa waved the B'harnii doll at the captive. "Do you know who this is?" He was squeezing the doll's skull so tightly that its facial features were stretched to an amusing level of distortion, but it was recognizable enough for a Spongin. The prisoner, however, did not respond. Tangaroa noticed his grip and relaxed it. Still nothing. Usually a Spongin would have asked to hold the doll by now, but this one just kept sneering at him. This guy had been doing a lot of sneering. "Fine." Tangaroa said. He dropped the doll and kicked it around the floor a bit, looking over to see the prisoner's reaction, waiting for the inevitable "don't hurt Barney!" whine. Nothing. Tang set it on fire. Still nothing. The smoke made him cough, so he turned the fire out. Yes, setting fires in an underground base is a dumb idea. Tangaroa shoved the doll in a drawer so he wouldn't have to look at it anymore and made a note of the prisoner's reactions or rather the lack thereof. He then reached into a large paper bag and pulled out two smaller paper bags from a local burger joint, setting them on the table where the prisoner could see them. He reached into one bag and drew a wrapped burger. Making sure the captive was watching, he slowly unwrapped and took a big bite into the bacon double cheeseburger. "Mmmmm!" He savored the greasy flavour far more publicly than he normally would. He reached into the bag with his free hand, pulled out a few fries, and popped them in his mouth. "Mmm, these are good. Y'hungry?" He held up the second bag. "There's one for each of us." A short while later, Lacroix walked into the room and gestured at the empty table. "Hey, where's my lunch?" Tangaroa looked up at Lacroix quizzically, having delivered Joseph's lunch to him earlier. "Kidding", Lacroix smiled. Tangaroa surrendered a slight grin, then narrowed his eyes and got to business. "How's our one-handed friend?" "He's not talking. Well, not in anything I understand." "Same here. At least he's eating. Any luck on your end?" "Yeah. They'll eat UnHellthy Snacks, but it doesn't have any effect." "I'll call Mal and give him an update." "We haven't gotten anything out of them yet." "Yes, and he'll want to know that." They walked out into the hallway, and Tang turned on his JihadLinker. "Hey Mal, this is Tang. Nothing significant since the last report. They're still acting stuck up and won't talk English. Unhealthy snacks and good music haven't had any effect, though I've been enjoying 'em. Also, they don't seem to care about our favourite purple bastard, so these guys are definitely not your old fashioned Spongies." "First off, I don't care what you're enjoying. Second, I told you from the start not to waste time treating them like Spongin. Since it should be obvious by now, even to you, that what you're doing isn't working, I'm putting Mr. Lacroix in charge of the interrogations." "Thanks," Tangaroa said without a hint of sarcasm. "I'll keep you up to date." He shut off the linker and turned to Lacroix. "Well, you're in charge now." "Okay..." Lacroix started. He had never run an interrogation before and, outside of the police dramas he'd seen on television, he didn't have any idea how to conduct one. "So what do we do now?" "Keep trying to get something out of them," Tangaroa said unhelpfully. "It's up to you if we kick their ass or not." "No." Lacroix said, surprised that Tang would make such a suggestion and surprised again when Tang seemed to relax a little at his denial. "How do you usually handle interrogations?" he asked. Tang chuckled. "We usually despongify them and they'll say everything once they're free of B'harnii's grasp. I always had other people handle anything different, and I never really took part in that directly. We didn't have very many of those to begin with." "So we're both working off a blank slate." "Not entirely blank. Want me to work on the other prisoner?" "Sure." "So let's see Captain Hook." Lacroix's eyes went wide. He lived through way too much carnage -- seen it happen to his friends -- to find any amusement in Tang's levity. In his shock and in the interest of tact, he did not complain. Tangaroa leaned towards the one-armed prisoner. "So, do you speak English?" Not getting nor expecting an answer, he bemusedly continued. "Sprechen Sie Deutsche? Nihongo o hanashimasu ka? Chosonmal hal su issuseyo? Govorish po Russki? Se habla Espanol? Parlez vous Francais?" "No, and definitely no on that last one," Lacroix said, having already attempted to interrogate the prisoner on his own. "At least, he's not going to tell us if he does." Tang took another glance at the printout in his hand, then turned to the prisoner and smiled again. He essayed a bunch of Lyran- sounding noises, picked from the ones he remembered from the firefight. "Nakhad Lhi'ireli entralakhjas, Yi'khadij," the prisoner snarled. "Could you repeat that?" Tangaroa asked, scribbling wildly on the paper. "Ekh, ail-rekhidja," the prisoner said in a disgusted tone. "And that was an 'ekh ail-rekhidja,'" Lacroix quipped. Tangaroa flipped over a few papers while looking for the translations, then stopped and raised an eyebrow. "This could take us a while," he said, pulling some sheafs from the bottom of his stack of papers and giving them to Lacroix. "Here, maybe you could help me out with this. Hey, Minerva, could we have some help here?" "Tang," the AI replied, sounding just the slightest bit tired, "I have already told you that I don't have any language files for spoken Lyran. I have a few bare notes that Admiral Felton transcribed into the JihadNet archives before the shutdown, and those are all for -written- Lyran. So for the last time, I can't help you." "Could you at least save and repeat what the prisoners say, or give us transliterations?" "I can do that, but I don't know how much help it'll be..." Katze walked into the small observation room, only to find Tangaroa and Lacroix slumped against the wall, looking very tired and frustrated. One of their charges sat alone in the interrogation room, looking defiantly at her. Katze knew he couldn't see any of them as they were behind one-way glass, but the glare was unsettling. She looked away from his gaze and asked the two, "How's it going?" Lacroix looked up, blinking, as if he'd been in the process of drifting off to sleep. Tangaroa didn't even bother looking up and muttered something under his breath that Katze didn't quite catch. She frowned and spoke, "I'll take it that it's not going well. What's the problem?" Tangaroa pulled himself to his feet. Lacroix stretched out his arms, and then joined Tangaroa in a standing position. The three of them stood there looking at one another, and Katze, despite the fact that she was usually careful to keep herself shielded from other people's thoughts and feelings, could feel just how tired they were. She had managed to grab a nap that afternoon when they were busy, but their fatigue was starting to make her feel tired too. Finally, Tangaroa spoke up. "We can't speak Lyran, and they either can't or won't speak English." Katze nodded. "That's a problem." She stood there for a moment, thinking about options, and not finding one coming to mind. "And there's nobody around here who knows Lyran and can converse with this guy." It's too bad there's nobody around here who can learn a language fast, Katze thought to herself, and then suddenly smiled. Of *course* there was somebody around who could. "I might have a solution. I don't know for sure if it'll work, but I don't think we have any other options." Lacroix looked puzzled, which amused Katze to no end. Tangaroa said, "What do you have in mind? We've tried everything we can think of, including having Minerva play translator, and nothing's worked." "Allow me to demonstrate," Katze said, and then faced Lacroix. "Lacroix, if I recall correctly, French is your native language, right? Could you please start speaking in French and not stopping until I tell you to?" The startled look on Lacroix's face amused Katze. "What do you want me to say?" he finally asked. "I don't care. Talk about your childhood or your university days. I don't really care what you're saying, I just want you to say it in French." Lacroix looked baffled, but started to speak in French. Katze closed her eyes, paying attention to the cadence and rhythm of his voice more than the words, and dropped her mental shields, allowing the full strength of what Lacroix was saying and thinking wash over her. After about five minutes had passed, Katze opened her eyes and interrupted Lacroix midsentence. She delivered her line with a perfect Quebecois accent. "Merci, Lacroix, ca suffit. Vous pouvez arrêter maintenant." Tangaroa spoke up. "I don't get it. You know French. How is that going to help with our language problem?" "I didn't know French when I walked down here," Katze said, switching back into English. "And I've never been to Quebec." "It was perfect. You didn't even have an accent. How'd you do that?" Lacroix asked. "It's the way you speak the language," Katze said. Then she waited for the two of them to realize just what she did. Lacroix got it a second before Tangaroa did, and whispered under his breath, "Calisse!" "So you're going to suck the language out of his head," Tangaroa said, gesturing towards the prisoner in the other room. "Then you're going to speak to him in it." "Well, that's a rather inelegant way of putting it," Katze said. "But it's accurate enough. I don't know if it will work, though; I've never tried to do it with a language that isn't from Earth or Marraketh. But it's better than anything else we've got, right?" Lacroix and Tangaroa both nodded their assent. Katze said, "Okay, then. What we're going to need to do is keep him speaking. Again, I don't really care what he says; I'm more concerned about catching the cadence of the voice as a focus. When we go in there, I don't want you guys to refer to me in any fashion, just let me sit in a corner and concentrate. When I think I'm ready to go, I'll just start speaking. It could take a while, so don't panic at first if I'm utterly silent." Lacroix smiled. Tangaroa turned towards the door and said, "Let's do it." Time. It was the one thing Katze didn't have enough of. Given days, getting this language would have been easy. But she didn't have days -- she wasn't even sure she had hours. Every minute counted, and Katze was counting every single one somewhere in the back of her mind. It had been difficult to get pegged on the subject she was trying to draw the language from. Tangaroa had to throw out a lot more words than she had really been expecting to get him to say anything, and whatever extension of herself she used to do this was finding itself distracted onto his thought pattern as opposed to the prisoner. Granted, the prisoner didn't even know she was here. Lacroix had brought in two folding chairs and set one up behind the prisoner. Then he sat down on the other chair in plain view of the prisoner. Their captive had shown no interest in the other chair at all, something Katze had been thankful for. Tangaroa started by saying random combinations of sounds that made Katze wonder if he was just tossing out phenomes hoping they would make words. She had ported in a moment later. The prisoner was still glaring at Lacroix and Tangaroa and had not noticed the third presence in the room. It was the last thing that had really gone right in this whole farce. She looked up from her concentration to see Lacroix, a worried expression on his face, checking his watch. She glanced at her own. Half an hour, and nothing to show for it. Lacroix looked up and gestured at his head. Katze shook her head in response to that and went back to trying to concentrate. Tangaroa had to be blocked out somehow. It wasn't his fault; he was doing as she had asked. But she couldn't afford to keep getting distracted onto his mind. There was one more thing she could do, but it carried a risk that Katze wasn't sure Mal would want her to take if he were able to hear the options. She could focus all her attention and concentration on the prisoner, but it left her vulnerable to an outside attack. It wasn't easy to pull back. More importantly, though, was the fact that if she failed, the whole thing would backfire, and the strong beliefs the prisoner held would become her own. The thought made Katze shudder involuntarily. She would rather be dead than a Lyran thrall, but if she made the decision to throw all her concentration at the subject, she wouldn't have a chance to make that decision. But if she didn't do it, then they'd be no closer to being able to get this captive to tell them where Owsen was, and Owsen was looking for the Slayer. Katze knew it wasn't in this world, but she recalled that it took a rather large magical spell to get it and everything else to leave this world, and if Owsen happened to stumble across that spot...well, there might still be a signature from that spell there which would lead him directly to Pupp and the Slayer. That couldn't be allowed. Owsen must not find where the Slayer had gone. That decided, Katze took as deep of a breath as she could without the prisoner hearing her, squeezed her eyes tightly closed, and shoved her entire focus on the captive in the middle of the room. At first, it didn't seem to be working, but the sounds and the tactile sense of air flowing in the room diminished and then disappeared. It was just Katze and this oddly mellifluous melody that, after a second or two of confusion, she recognized as the language the prisoner spoke. Katze saw. Images didn't need language to be understood, and the captive seemed to be both aware she was in there and feeding her images that showed his powerful status. Behind it all, the pattern of the language fluttered and twirled. It would be alright if she gave in. There were worse things to be than a servitor to the greatest race in the universe. The Lyrans really weren't all that bad when one got to know them. All one had to do was give in -- give up that old unhappy life and let us in. Katze pulled her sense of self into as tight of a ball as she could and dug her fingers into it as if she was a rock-climber digging for the only traction between her and a painful fall. The captive apperantly knew that Katze was not bending to his will, and the language became, instead of a soft and soothing melody, an angry storm that was determined to knock her from her precarious perch. She was trapped. If she tried to pull back, it would give the other a split second in which to take over. If she stayed here, that storm would eventually penetrate the tight boundaries of self. Either way, she was about to become a thrall of the damned Lyrans and there was nothing she could do about it -- except wait and try to hold on. Lacroix looked at his watch. It was now forty minutes since this had started, and Katze still showed no signs of having grasped the language. She was sitting there with her eyes squeezed shut, and looking as if she was concentrating deeply on something. Maybe she'd have it soon. He turned his attention back to the prisoner in the center of the room. Despite the fact the captive had lost an arm in the fighting, he still glared defiantly at the both of them, as if he could take them both if he just had a moment. Lacroix found himself somewhat admiring a fighting spirit like the prisoner had. Tangaroa had taken to repeating back anything the prisoner said, trying to get him to say more things. Lacroix, being the subject of Katze's little demonstration, didn't think it took as wide a vocabulary as Tang seemed to be trying for, but Katze hadn't given any indication that she knew the language yet. He looked back at Katze, only to find her crouched in the chair, her hands over her head, grasping for something he couldn't see. He couldn't quite make out the expression on her face, but her eyes were still screwed shut. Lacroix wasn't quite sure what was going on, but he was getting the feeling that Katze was in some trouble and might need help. Tangoroa had stopped. He apperantly saw the same odd gestures Katze was making, because he bent down and whispered in Lacroix's ear, "What's going on? Why hasn't she gotten it?" Lacroix whispered back, "I don't know, but I think she's in trouble. Keep our friend busy while I call for help." Tangaroa nodded, and went back into his standing position, loudly speaking a string of syllables as he went. He must have said something appropriately nasty, because the captive spit a bunch of syllables back at Tangaroa. Lacroix ducked out the door, pulled out his 'Linker, and said, "Min? Is somebody around that might be able to help Katze?" There was a moment of silence, and Lacroix wasn't sure his question had been heard, when Min's voice came on the line. "Grand Admiral Felton is on his way down." Lacroix gulped. "Tell him to come on into the room when he gets here," Having done that, he pocketed his Linker and went back into the interrogation room. The captive glared at him again, but he wasn't really concerned with that. Katze had somehow managed to get herself in an even tighter ball despite the folding chair, and her hands were now clenched into fists and jammed in next to her forehead. He had no idea what was going on, but he was worried. Hopefully, the Grand Admiral would arrive soon. He had been able to walk again with the aid of a cane for only a few hours now when Minerva's call had come down, and most of those few hours had been spent pacing his recovery room nonstop, fueled by a heady mixture of anxiety, anger and guilt. Now he was hobbling through the base's labyrinthian corridors, his cane tapping out an unsteady rhythm as he made his way to the brig. Felton had been on edge since he awoke to find Owsen's intangible form looming over him. He knew what the former patriarch of TRES Corps was looking for, but it was killing him not knowing just how much he had let slip, and even though he knew the Barney-Slayer was no longer on this plane he couldn't be sure it was safe anymore knowing that the High Mage of Lyran had snaked himself back into existance. He had grown even more antsy when he heard that Ensign Lacroix and that Doberman fellow, Tangaroa, had brought back a pair of captives. He had been good about not getting in the way -- these were, after all, quite capable individuals he was working with, so there was no reason for him to go poking his nose into their work. That's what he told himself, at least, until the page had come through. Now he was beating a hasty path down there, as fast as his sore legs could manage. Though thankful for the excuse to get personally involved, he wondered what could be going on that they needed him for, and moreover, what he would do when he got there. Beat the answers out of them, if necessary, thought the base part of him. "No," he answered aloud. "That's no' the way." Yes it is, Nemesis thought. It's always the way. If you can't break their minds, break their bodies. "Shaddup," Felton hissed. It'll be our fault, you know, if Owsen gets his hands on the Barney-Slayer. Maybe we don't know where Schneider took it, but if he finds the JPV site... "Yes, I know, dammit," he growled, coming up to the door into the brig. "Ye dinna think I ken that I might hae screwed the fookin lot o us o'er jus tae buy time fer me own neck? I goddamn ken, a'right?" Felton paused in front of the one-way glass, looking into the room. His reaction was triggered by a combination of things: His anger with his own self; the sight of Brenner, curled into a ball and obviously suffering; the helpless expressions on the faces of Lacroix and Tangaroa; and most of all, the smug, disinterested look the prisoner was wearing. In spite of his tender ankles, he raised his steel-toed boot, and kicked the door in. The maelstrom screamed around the borders of her consciousness, howling for blood and a way in. Katze wasn't even concentrating on language anymore, because every bit of her strength was going to hold her sense of self in as tight a ball as she could manage. But she wasn't going to be able to hold out for much longer. At some point she would have to let go. She was trying to hold off for as long as she could, but it had come down to a matter of moments. A hand slipped. Katze braced for a fall, trying desperately to hang onto anything that might undo what was about to happen, but her thoughts only fell on Josh. She felt like such a miserable failure, because she knew she had promised him that she would stay with him unless it was absolutely necesary to save others, and here she was, about to enter the service of the enemy, and even though it was totally involuntary, she still felt guilty. Good and faithful Josh, and she was going to leave. If she hadn't made the dumb decision to give her entire attention span to the captive, this wouldn't be happening. The other hand slipped. Katze scrabbled for purchase anywhere, but the boundaries were starting to blur, and she waited for the darkness to overtake her sense of self. But the darkness never came. Instead, a bright light did, and when it cleared, Katze was surprised to find that she was still herself. Or at least she thought she was still herself. Is that what minions thought, that they were still themselves? She tested herself, running her mind over the phrase 'damned Lyrans', and found that it still was a perfectly accurate description of what she felt about those too smug bastards. The second thing was that she could hear another voice mumbling, and it was in English. Katze remembered that she had been trying to acquire the captive's language, and instead she had broken through to a part of his brain that thought in English? This seemed impossible from everything she'd learned about language acquisition, but she wasn't about to question it now. Instead, she just marveled at the long string of insults the prisoner was thinking up about Tangaroa. And the prisoner didn't even seem to know she was there. That seemed rather odd, too, considering the sheer malevolence of what she had just been up against. Could the language be that malevolent? Languages were a tool. They couldn't be malevolent. The whole thing clashed with everything Katze had learned. But before she could really ponder the oddness of everything she was picking up and attempt to fit it in, she found she was having troubles breathing. Or the captive was, and Katze was feeling it. She pulled back, having no trouble doing that, and blinked a bit as she found herself back in the room with Tangaroa and Lacroix...and Felton, who was strangling the captive, demanding the captive tell him where Owsen went. She stood up, formulated the thought of what she wanted to express, and yelled it at DS. Only instead of the English words 'Knock it off!' that she was expecting, the sounds she made were at the same time foreign and familiar. After a second, it dawned on her that the spongie had never thought in English at all, it's just that her understanding of his language was such that it seemed like he was thinking in English. Or something was protecting her from the malevolency that had nearly drug her under. Even now, as Katze thought about it, she could feel that malevolency lurking in the back of her head, associated with this language, but it was a mostly harmless monster -- she knew its tricks now. It was definitely better than the maelstrom she had lived through. She looked around the room. Lacroix and Tangaroa were both wearing stunned looks, Lacroix more than Tangaroa. The prisoner, having been released from Felton's grasp, looked somewhat worried, and Felton himself wore the strangest expression she had ever seen on another's face. But she was even more surprised when Felton spit out something in Lyran right back at her. At first, it hadn't even occurred to him that he had spoken anything out of the ordinary. He snapped at the girl, of course, but he was desperate for answers and growing more angry by the minute, and the angrier he got the easier it was for Nemesis to become the dominant will. And so he had yelled back at her. "Hold your tongue, woman!" was what he had intended. It took a moment for the red-haze of angered impulse to clear for him to realize what had emerged was "Ail-rekhad, alish!" It took him another moment to realize that it was Katze to whom he responded in kind. He stared at her with his red eyes, not sure what to say next. Katze's face screwed up in concentration as she tried to grind the mental gears necessary for speaking English. "I didn't know you spoke Lyran," she finally managed. "Do I?" Felton asked, still slightly dazed from the experience. Katze nodded. "And... you do too?" he asked. "Sorta... it's complicated," she replied, coming around to face the prisoner. He was rubbing at the welts around his neck from where Felton's fingers had dug in, wearing an expression of bewilderment that was fading back into distain. "I'll explain later," she said, thoughtfully watching the captive as he glared at the Feral, shifting her mental processes with a bit more ease now. she asked him. Doesn't hurt to start with the basics. the prisoner spat. "How friendly," Felton said, patting his pockets down in search of a cigar. He produced one, which he lit with a flicker of fire from his index finger and gave it a few experimental puffs. "Fook his name. Ask him where his boss has gone tae." Katze sighed. The prisoner sneered at Katze with unmitigated contempt. The prisoner glared at her with seething hatred and then looked away, unresponsive. Felton leaned down, his face only inches away from that of the prisoner. He smiled, not in a friendly way, but with the sort of twitchy cheshire grin meant to mask barely restrained rage. It didn't help that his teeth seemed to have developed extra points. he said in the Lyran tongue, words carried on a cloud of bluish cigar smoke that caused the captive to gag. hissed the prisoner, shrinking back irritably from the smoke. "No? You should." A dull red glow burned behind Felton's pupils. His skin turned ashen and somewhat leathery. There was a soft metallic sound, like the blade of a knife cutting through silk as his Claws slid out. He brought up one long steely talon to prod the prisoner gently under the chin. "I'm a Cub of the White Death." The color rapidly drained away from the prisoner's face. Felton smiled. This was the response he was looking for. The thrall found if difficult to think, sitting face-to-face with the boogyman younger Lyrans are taught to fear and elder Lyrans taught to loathe. His answer was, at least in theory, completely truthful. Felton's smile melted. He stood, and his hand flashed in an arc that Katze was sure would remove the prisoner's head; instead, it swept shallow furrows across his cheek and nose, barely deep enough to draw blood. There was a sense that the next one would be less generous. Felton rumbled. "Sir..." Katze began to protest in English, but the look in Felton's eyes caused the words to catch momentarily in her throat. She glanced past him at Lacroix, whose hand had instinctively moved for his gun; his hand wrapped its grip, thumb resting on the hammer, but he hadn't yet drawn. He seemed to be fighting an inner struggle, and Katze had a feeling that whatever Felton did next would be something everyone was going to regret. Tangaroa just stood impassively, arms folded. He seemed to have a more pragmatic outlook on the Maenad's interrogation methods. "Lacroix, Tangaroa, maybe you guys should take a break. You've been at this for a while," Katze said. Lacroix opened his mouth to protest, looking at Felton, but she just nodded. Tangaroa just shrugged and shuffled out, Lacroix finally resigning and following him in silence. After they had left, Katze looked levelly at Felton. "Sir, we're after information, not happy revenge fantasies. We aren't going to learn anything if he's dead." "We've got a spare," Felton said, smiling bitterly. "Fine," he said, stepping back and sheathing his Claws. He thrust his hands into his pockets and watched, cigar rolling anxiously between his teeth. Katze closed her eyes and did her mental acrobatics. She turned back to the prisoner. she asked in the prisoner's alien tongue. He didn't answer. He just sat, eyes locked on Felton, petrified with terror at having felt the Maenad's talons graze his flesh. There had been no pain, just the sensation of the cold metal slicing effortlessly through his skin. His righteous anger had been siphoned away by that touch. The small part of his mind still capable of cogitation wondered if this was how his masters felt when slain by the Claws; no pain, just a freezing sensation of having been drained of life. Katze looked over her shoulder at Felton. "I don't think we're going to get anywhere as long as you're standing there," she said. "I can make him talk," he responded, bristling at the unspoken suggestion. His hands came out of his pockets. "No, I think we've got his attention now. Let me give it another try? Alone?" Felton bit through the end of his cigar, jaw muscles tensing in fury. He looked as though he were ready to tear everyone in the room apart, but with some effort the rage subsided. He spat out the stub of tobacco in his mouth and wiped his lips with the back of his hand. "Fine. But I'll no be goin' far." He turned for the door, throwing a spiteful glance over his shoulder, and then left the room. Katze said, once the door had closed behind him. The captive sat silence for several moments after the Feral left the room, and eventually the color started to come back to his face. The gradually warming sting of the cuts on his face served to bring his mind back to coherency. He blinked a couple of times, focusing on Katze, and then the look of contempt returned. Katze just smiled gently. she asked. the prisoner answered, looking at the mirrored window as if trying to gauge whether the Maenad was just outside. Katze allowed herself to enjoy the small victory. Now she was getting somewhere. The prisoner looked at her. There were the fires of hate once again in his eyes, and more... there seemed to be amusement. he hissed. She recoiled slightly at the glare. He just smiled spitefully and looked back at the mirror, as if challenging the Maenad to come back in. she asked, tongue stumbling a bit over the mix of English and Vulgar. No response. She watched him for a few moments, but he never deigned to make eye contact again. She sighed and stood. "Alright. I've tried to be nice. I even sent the Maenad away, and you've rewarded me with nothing. I'll just go and let him know that he can do what he will." As if to punctuate that note, there was a loud crashing from the room next door, and the shattering of glass. Both of them had the sense that Felton had gone to see the other prisoner. The captive looked at Katze with wide-eyed panic. Katze came out into the hall a few minutes later. Felton was leaning against the wall, cane next to him, puffing quietly on another cigar. Mirrored glass was scattered around his feet and a mangled stool lay in the doorway. "Oh no... you didn't," she said, hurrying to look in the other interrogation room. The one-way glass was busted out, but the prisoner looked unharmed, if terrified. "Nah, he's okay," Felton said, smiling with satisfaction. "He actually caved as soon as he saw me. That was for YOUR benefit." He nodded at the window. "Owsen is moving on Pennsylvania," Katze said, turning quickly back to Felton. "He knows the sword was moved to the JPV campus, and he knows it was moved off-world." "Aye," Felton said, nodding. "But he doesn't know where it was moved to, and he doesn't know exactly where the campus was. But if he finds the campus, I don't think he'll be ignorant for long." "Alright," Katze said. "It sounds like the info is good. It's time to brief the others." Katze stared over the length of desk. There had been many times she'd been here before, usually being lectured by Mal over one screwup or another. She never expected when the closedown happened that she'd ever find herself standing there again, and though this time she was relaying information, that feeling of deja vu was still awfully powerful. Felton stood next to her, finishing up a short briefing on what they'd discovered by interrogating the prisoners. Mal was, of course, sitting behind the desk, listening intently to what Felton was saying, and processing all of it. Nothing got past Mal. Probably, by the time this was all over, Mal would know exactly what to do. It was an oddly comforting feeling, Katze thought. Felton finished. Mal frowned. "Alright, Owsen knows the sword isn't here. So why is he searching in Pennsylvania for it?" There was a moment of silence before Katze realized that Felton was looking at her like this was her question to field. She took a deep breath and started. "Early in 1999, a couple enterprising young mages at the Praxx came up with the idea of forensic magic. The short of it, they noticed that magic use left signatures that one could use to figure out what happened somewhere and who might have done it, and spell parameters." She stopped for a moment, to let what she'd just said sink in, and judging by the sour expression on Mal's face, he came to the immediate conclusion. She let it settle a second longer and moved on. "The little bit we figured out is that this signature lasts in proportion to three variables. The biggest one is length of time since the spell has been cast, but the area affected and the power invoked both play a very important part in how long a signature lasts and how effective it is. Is there still one there? I honestly couldn't tell you. But the big rule at the Praxx when it came to researching is to assume that the Lyrans could do it already -- and it seems wise to me to do the same with Owsen." Mal nodded. "Right." He fell silent, as if pondering all the options. Felton waited quietly, and Katze tried her best not to fidget. Mal rose from his chair. "Min, would you mind everybody together in the situation room? I think I know what to do." "Even Tang and Lacroix?" Min asked. "Both of them are sleeping." Katze looked at Felton, remembering the moment in the interrogation room where she'd sent them both away. Mal looked as if he was about to tell Min to wake them when Felton said, "Let 'em sleep, we can brief 'em later. They've been going for a long time and need the rest." The entire gang, minus Tang and Lacroix, gathered in the conference room. There was some grumbling about how Mal was calling yet another meeting, but that was silenced when the subject of their grousing walked through the door looking like the proverbial cat who'd eaten the canary. He took his place at the front room, looked around the table as if running through his mental checklist, and then spoke. "Thanks to some good work, we finally know where Owsen is, what he's looking for, and most importantly, *how* he's looking for it. This gives us an advantage. It might even bring this whole sordid mess to an end." He let that news sink in around the table, and then turned his gaze on Dee. "Dee, I need the fragments of the Dark Slayer back from you. All of them." The diminuitive techie blushed, and then reached into her jacket pocket. She took out the small box the shards had been kept in and looked at it mournfully before sliding it across the table to Mal. Mal left the box in front of him, barely even looking at it. Dee frowned, and everybody else stayed very quiet, wondering what devious plan Mal had come up with this time. Mal looked around once more, and then began. "We know that Owsen is looking for the Slayer. We also know that Owsen knows the Slayer is off-plane. Thus, he is looking for the last place it was on this world, which is the former JPV campus in Pennsylvania. Thus, we are going to meet him at the JPV campus and lure him into an ambush." He paused, waiting for the rest of the Jihaddi to catch up with this news. Delgado, having much experience in figuring out where the implications in a briefing were going, asked a question. "No offense, sir, but how do we know Owsen hasn't found the site and has already gone through? Do we have some way of tracking him that we didn't have before?" "He doesn't know where the JPV went to when they left," Minerva noted. "In order to find that out, he'll have to trace the spell from where it was cast. And before you ask, we know he hasn't done -that- yet. If he opened a planar gate, I'd see it. So far he hasn't, which means he's still here, and still looking." Mal nodded. "Precisely," he said. "We're finally a step ahead of him. We know where he's headed, even if he doesn't. And we have the tools," here he tapped the box of mutated Owsenite fragments, "to use his monomania against him." He turned to Aris and Katze. "Step one, what do you two know about aura enhancing spells?" Aris and Katze exchanged quizzical looks. "Well, a little bit," Aris answered cautiously. "I'm pretty sure we could come up with something." "Excellent. Then that's what you're going to do to these. We're going to incorporate the fragments into a quickly-forged copy of the original Barney-Slayer, then enchant it until it glows." "A decoy." Damocles said. "Spot on. If it looks like the Slayer and has a similar enough aura, we can divert Owsen from trying to follow the JPV and bring him to wherever we want to. Which brings us to Step Two." The holographic projector in the center of the meeting table flared to life, displaying a neatly-rendered model of what looked like an abandoned town. "This is Dry Well, Nevada," Mal narrated as the model spun around on the table. "It was originally created back in the early 1950s by the Army to test nuclear bomb damage on the Typical Small American Town. Not that the Typical Small American Town was ever in any danger of being nuked, but whatever. The place was built, blown up, and then rebuilt several times before aboveground testing was banned in the '60s. Ever since then, the place has been completely abandoned. It's literally out in the middle of nowhere, and nobody will object if we start firing off weapons out there. "Kirk, you're field lead for this part. Take KJ, Damo and Shad with you, set up some sniper positions centered on the middle of town. Delgado, you're going to be our designated spotter for this, pick a spot as you will. Once you guys are on your way, we'll proceed to Step Three." Mal turned to Dee, who was still looking mournfully at the box of Slayer fragments. "Dee, once the decoy's in the hands of the mages, you and Min are going to head out to the JPV site and lay down some early-warning sensors. Nothing fancy; just enought to warn us. Once you're done, join the party in Dry Well. Min, you're coming back here to run the Gate. "Once Owsen is on final approach, Katze and I will take the decoy out to the JPV site and get his attention. Once he's aimed at -us- instead of the JPV, we'll kick him through a Gate portal so he ends up right in the center of your crossfire. Owsen's a notoriously tough critter, but even he can't stand up to heavy weapons crossfire when he's not expecting it." Mal paused. "Oh, and when Tang and Lacroix wake up, somebody needs to brief them and get them out to Nevada. "Okay, there's the plan. Any objections?" Mal looked at the group. A ragtag gang of weirdos they might be, but they were still consummate professionals when it came down to it. Nobody said a word otherwise. "Okay then. We're on a short schedule. Let's get to work." SOMEWHERE IN EASTERN PENNSYLVANIA SUNDAY, APRIL 11, 2004 7:35 PM LOCAL TIME The sun dropped, painting a large swath of the countryside with pinks and reds. In the fading twilight, the sound of hooves striking pavement brought the man walking along the side of the road to a halt, looking up to see what danger may strike. An Amish family, on their way to something, or maybe on their way home, was approaching in their buggy. The man stood by the side of the road, watching as the buggy passed, and nodded imperceptively to the driver of the buggy, who was probably the father of the family. The driver, perhaps aware of the honor that had been bestowed on him, gave the slightest of nods back. The buggy passed, and the clop-clop-clop of hooves striking pavement died into the heavy dusk air, leaving the man on the side of the road to continue wandering, lost deep in his thoughts. Lord Owsen was not happy. The information that he had gathered from the cub the night before was woefully incomplete. Nemesis knew where the sword had been, but not where it was -now-. Sifting through the information he'd grabbed from the cub - who was also apparently one of his master's failed experiments, oh the irony - revealed that the sword, HIS sword had left this world for another long ago. Where that was, Nemesis had no clue. Remembering the cub's bewilderment, Owsen's anger grew stronger and stronger. His sword, the one great treasure of his life, his entire raison d'etre, was in the hands of some meddling, interfering -weak- human on another plane of existence altogether. Somebody still on Earth knew where the sword was, though. That much he had managed to grab from Nemesis' brain, that and the information that he hadn't accidentally killed the one who knew in a fit of pique. Owsen made a low growling sound as he replayed the encounter in his mind. That was twice now that the last of the white death's cubs had defied him, cheated him out of both his sport and his rightful possessions... At least, he thought suddenly, the Scourge will take him even if you cannot. The thought cheered him a little, but not much. So now he was here in Pennsylvania, a place Owsen had had very little experience with in his life... before. This was the last place the sword had been on Earth, and Owsen was sure, absolutely positive, that if he could find exact spot he could track the sword. After all, was it not his? He and the Barney-Slayer had a bond that transcended all other things; when he got close, it would call to him, and he would go to it like a moth to a flame. And when he had it back, he could complete his revenge on the White Death, summon the Scourge, and end this for all time. But Nemesis - may all the Ascended curse his misbegotten hide! - hadn't known -where- in Pennsylvania the damned place was. All he knew was that is had resided near one of the large cities in the southern end of the state, but not -which- one. Owsen had started his search near Philidelphia, only to come up utterly empty. Now he was stuck, marching along these back roads, moving back and forth over all this monotonous farmland looking for something that didn't exist anymore, all because one weak-willed cub had managed to trick him, betray him, distract him from getting the last piece of the puzzle... The building wave of anger finally reached the high point. He bellowed into the evening sky, whirling his black blade out its scabbard and jabbing it in the direction of the setting sun. "BASTARDS!" Owsen screamed, waving the sword around, "TRAITORS! YOU CAN'T HIDE FROM ME FOREVER! I'LL FIND YOU AND DESTROY YOU FOR WHAT YOU'VE DONE! SEE IF I DON'T!!" Glowing with power, Owsen leapt upon the nearest large object, which happened to be a perfectly ordinary elm tree sitting by the roadside. Striking the tree again and again, Owsen raged incoherently against his enemies and everybody else on this thrice-damned planet who DARED stand against him and hide his prized possession from his sight, the poor pitiful monkeys who would all be obliterated when the Scourge came down on top of their unsuspecting heads and no doubt they all had it coming, the useless ignorant scumbags they were, and the pitiful Jihaddi who tried to stop him and they'd all pay oh yes they would pay with blood and fire and ice and steel they wouldn't die in the Scourge they'd SCREAM FOR A THOUSAND FUCKING YEARS BEGGING FOR MY MERCY... Owsen collapsed to his knees, panting, as the red fog lifted from his sight. The elm tree he'd chosen to work out his frustrations on was now nothing more than a smoking stump, splinters of wood scattered around it gently smouldering as if the tree had been struck by lightning. Slowly, he levered himself back to a standing position and shook himself. Sighing, he slid his shadowy blade back into its scabbard, then smiled. "You know," he remarked casually to the blasted tree, "I really needed that. Thanks." Owsen's lips quirked into a small smile, and he continued on down the road, heading west, following the faint siren call of the Barney-Slayer. THE DISCWORLD The room was dark, the only light being what bits of fire in the fireplace were reflected off the metallic things in the room. In a chair pulled close to the fire, a mage sat, staring into the fire, a sword propped against his chair. The metal of the blade and his face both reflected the chaotic mumblings of the fire as the mage wrestled with one of the hardest questions he had ever faced -- whether to return to the world he had abandoned five years ago or not. Puppeteer had been happy on the Disc. For the first time he could really use the powers he had been born with instead of struggling and hiding. But when Katze had shown up, he found that he had missed the world he had come from. Plus, what Katze had said... He pulled the sword into his lap and examined it again. He could barely believe the blade was whole again -- it had been broken for almost as long as he had been a Jihaddi. It took a bit of mental rearranging to account for it being in one piece again. But that wasn't the question he was pondering. Maybe there came a time to return home again. It wasn't as if Katze had said not to come back to Earth, had she? She'd just said to keep the sword close. And while none of his colleagues seemed too surprised at the sword that had come out of nowhere, he was getting tired of the constant assumption he was doing some research on it instead of just being a glorified babysitter. Yes. He could go home, hike to a phone, and help the Jihaddi figure out their Owsen mystery. And he could bring the sword so they would have it when they needed it. They could probably use all the help they could get, right? Pupp stood. It was decided, he thought. He would go help with this mess Katze had mentioned and then he could decide what to do from there. And a missing wizard at Unseen wasn't exactly front page news, so he wasn't worried about his colleages' reactions. VRDET HQ BLANCA MOUNTAIN, COLORADO SUNDAY, APRIL 11, 2004 9:02 PM LOCAL TIME "Soooooo..." Katze turned to Aris, setting the claymore down on the workbench. "So?" They were standing in one of Blanca's smaller R&D workrooms, with nothing besides the claymore and a few shards of the Dark Slayer. The claymore itself was a jihaddium copy of the original Slayer. Rather, it looked a great deal like it. But Katze could feel the difference, and she wasn't attuned to it the way Owsen was. Might be. "So I was wondering, do you do any sort of setup for your magic? Because all my non-extemporaneous spellcasting is of the chalk-and-candles variety." Katze blinked. "Oh. No. I don't need any setup." "Okay. Do you think if I put stuff up it'd interfere with what you do?" "It shouldn't." "Great." Aris pulled a sharpie out of her bag and started doodling runes on the table around the fake Slayer. "So, you've seen the original a lot more recently than I have. D'you think you can handle the resonance stuff while I bind these babies--" she picked up the silk bag full of shards, "into the handle?" "Sure, if you don't mind shielding everything from outside." "Gotcha." Aris finished her scribbling, then pulled the two largest splinters from the bag and lay them on the crosspiece. "Okay. Bind, resonate, block. I'm ready when you are." Katze nodded and held her hands over the blade. "Let's go." She felt a swell of power as Aris closed her eyes and started chanting in a purring, raspy language. The splinters of Dark Slayer blurred and sank into the metal, leaving a purple tinge on the surface. The color spread outward like blood in water, fading as it eluted down the blade and across the hilt. A minute passed and the color was washed into every corner, diluted by the original silver until only an afterimage of the indigo remained. "All right," Aris said, and Katze felt the dragon pulling her energy back, creating a wall around the room. "That should take care of half the resonance." Katze nodded, lowering her fingertips to the blade. *Please,* she asked the metal, *Can you feel like we need you to? Can you make this impression on the universe?* The answer came back hard and fast. *THE BLADE WAS BROKEN THE SLAYER WAS BROKEN THE HERALD IS COME AND THE BLADE IS NO MORE* Katze gritted her teeth. *Please,* she urged again, tightening her focus. *THE BLADE SINGS THE HERALD SINGS THE WIND SINGS THE BLOOD SINGS THERE IS NO MORE THERE IS NO BLOOD THERE IS NO WIND THERE IS NO HERALD THERE IS NO BLADE* *But we _have_ a blade!* *THE BLADE BREAKS THE SONG BREAKS THE LINE BREAKS THE UNIVERSE BREAKS* *I'm not going to take this from a hunk of metal.* *THERE IS NOTHING HERE* *But there is!* Katze pleaded. *There is something here!* The presence wavered. Katze pressed. And suddenly, the resistance crumbled. Katze opened her eyes and pulled her hands back. Aris was staring down at the softly glowing sword. "Is it supposed to do that?" she asked. Katze reached for the hilt and picked it up. The glow faded until it was barely noticable. "I think it's just residual. It sure feels like the Slayer, though." "Cool. Nice job." Katze looked at Aris out of the corner of her eye. The dragon didn't seem to be aware of the negotiation she'd just had with the sword. "Thanks. Let's go show off our pretty to Mal." JUST OUTSIDE MEADERTOWN, PENNSYLVANIA MONDAY, APRIL 12, 2004 5:02 AM The goddamn dogs were barking again. Zeke Bauer sighed and pulled himself out of bed to see what phantom they were barking at this time. A farmer's life meant early mornings, but Zeke had hoped that he might be able to sleep until dawn this morning. But that was not to be. Damned dogs. His wife stirred a bit. Zeke looked over, but saw that she wasn't awake yet. Too bad, he could have used some coffee. Sure, he could buy one of those automatic coffee makers, but Zeke preferred the way his wife made it. He pulled his overalls on over his night shirt, and looked out the window in the first light before dawn. The fields his window overlooked were being prepared for planting, and he saw nothing out there that would have attracted the attention of his dogs. Maybe somebody had made a wrong turn up his driveway. It wouldn't be the first time city folks had mistaken his driveway for a 'quaint country road', as the last couple had told him. But just in case there was a fox raiding the hen house, or other predators afoot, he grabbed some shells for his shotgun from the drawer next to his bed, and headed downstairs to whee the shotgun was kept, hanging over the kitchen door. He loaded the gun, and then stepped outside to see what was occupying the dogs. The black Labrador, Missy, stopped barking the moment he stepped outside, but she was still watching something off in the direction of the wheat field. The other dog, a mixup mutt he'd found some years ago and named Joker, was tugging frantically at the end of the rope and still barking. "Okay, okay, calm down, we'll deal with it," he said to Joker as he untied the knot holding the dog from taking off. Joker, the second he was free, bolted towards the wheat field. Zeke, curious as to what had gotten into that damned mixup mutt this time, followed him. Missy tailed behind him, having learned from a few duck hunting trips not to bolt before her master released her. The wheat field sat in a small hollow visible from just around the corner from the kitchen porch. Joker, barking loudly the whole way, had covered most of the ground from his tether to the field already. And sure enough, there was somebody out in the middle of his wheat field, swinging something through his wheat. The light wasn't good enough for Zeke to make out exactly what he was swinging, but whatever it was, it was sharper than the scythe that Zeke would have used to cut the wheat. He'd already sliced himself a good trail most of the way through the wheat from the far end of the field. Missy quivered next to him. "Stay, girl," he muttered to her, understanding that she wanted to go and join Joker in scaring off this stranger. But he couldn't afford to lose her. The crazy mixup dog hadn't cost him anything, but he'd paid good money for a good hunting dog. Joker plowed his way into the wheat field and disappeared from view. The weird guy in the wheat field just kept slicing through the wheat as if it were warm bread straight from the oven. Zeke stood there, not quite knowing what to do until he remembered the shotgun he was carrying. Just as he was about to raise and fire it, he heard snarling and barking coming from the wheat field. He couldn't quite *see* Joker, but he was sure the man was hurting his dog. "Get out of my wheat!" he yelled. The man stopped in his progression through the field, and then disappeared out of sight. Joker was still snarling and barking up a storm, so he was still out there somewhere, and he hadn't been hurt yet. Zeke raised the shotgun and fired a shot in the air as a warning. "Get out!" he yelled again. "Or I'll be shooting to kill on the next shot!" The shot finished echoing, and Zeke was struck by how quiet the morning was, other than Joker's frenzied barking and snarling. The man still hadn't reappeared, and Zeke decided to go down into his wheat field to figure out what the hell had happened and then deliver on his threat. "Heel," he commanded Missy. He stood there for a second, reloading his gun, and then set out for the field, Missy a shadow at his heels. Zeke knew his way well through his fields, and it seemed like no time at all when he burst through the wheat into the man's scythed path. In front of him kneeled the strange man -- and strange he was, who the hell would wear a kilt and armor in modern Pennsylvania? Especially with a trenchcoat? -- looking at Joker, and going, "It's okay, doggie, I'm not going to hurt you. You're a pretty doggie." Joker, for his own part, was having nothing of this stranger, and was snarling and barking just out of the stranger's reach. Next to the stranger on the ground was a sword, black as night. It might as well be the devil's sword, as Zeke wasn't sure Satan himself could find a sharper blade. That was what the man had been swinging to blaze this trail through the wheat. This whole thing was entirely too strange and Zeke found himself wishing that he was still in bed asleep, because that would make more sense than this being reality. Despite that, he raised the shotgun to make good on his threat. But just as he was about to fire at the man's head, Missy bounded forward to the man and licked him on the cheek. Zeke wasn't about to shoot at a man with his prized hunting dog in the way, so all he could do was stand there with his shotgun aimed, watching as the man laughed and stroked Missy. Joker edged forward, his fear of the stranger in conflict with the attention Missy was getting. The stranger looked back over at Zeke's mixup mutt, and then back at Missy, and said, "See, I'm friendly. I just want to pet you, cute doggie. Just like this one. See, this doggie likes me." Zeke was angry now. The stranger was making friends with his hunting dog, after destroying a good chunk of his wheat. He said, coldly, "I warned you to get out of my field, you son of a bitch." The man spun as he stood up, picking that accursed blade off the ground and wielding it like he knew exactly how to kill Zeke with it. Zeke backed up a step in fear as he'd never been so close to a minion of Satan's before, and instinct took over. He squeezed the shotgun trigger, hoping that he'd aimed well enough to score a hit. The sound was a deafening roar. When his ears stopped ringing, he was astonished to find that the stranger was still standing there, with a chest wound that would have killed a man. "Oh. That wasn't nice. That wasn't nice at all," said the stranger, sounding as if he had been insulted and not wounded grievously. "You really ought to be more careful with that." And before Zeke could move at all, the stranger swung that sword through the air and sliced Zeke's shotgun in half, right next to where his trigger finger had been. Zeke stared at his two hands, his left clutching the long barrel and his right holding the butt end. He looked back up at the man, and blinked again. Whereas a moment ago he would have sworn on a stack of Bibles that the stranger had a well-placed shotgun wound right where his heart should have been, it now appeared to be mostly healed. Zeke wondered what deal this stranger had made with the Devil to have such powers, and prayed to God that this man wouldn't find that he would be much easier to split in half than his shotgun. Missy whimpered and pawed at the stranger. The stranger looked down and grinned widely before scratching Missy on the head. "You're a good doggie, yes you are, and you just want attention, yes, you're a cute doggie..." He looked up at Zeke, sheathed the sword, and gave him a huge smile. "I was going to kill you," he said. "But since you have two adorable doggies, I think I'll let you live a little while longer. Tata!" He waved, then walked past Zeke down the trail he had cut into the wheat. Missy looked about to bound after him, but then looked up at Zeke and sat instead. Zeke blinked, and then slowly made his way through the wheat and back up to the house. Missy and Joker both tailed after him, and he didn't yell when they slipped through the door into the kitchen in front of him. Normally, the dogs weren't allowed in the house, but today would be an exception. He sat the two pieces of the shotgun down on the table, pulled out a chair, and just stared at the clean cut that separated the two of them. "Ezekiel Bauer, what are these dogs doing in the house?" a voice called out from the other room. His wife, still in her bathrobe and her hair up in curlers, burst into the kitchen, followed by the dogs. She stopped short when she saw his shotgun on the table in two pieces. "The dogs saved my life," Zeke said, not totally sure he believed what had happened. "He could have done that to me and not to my shotgun." "Done what?" his wife asked. Zeke explained the crazy events of the morning to her, and she stared at the cut, as smooth as if a skilled metalworker had done it. The two of them sat there in silence. Finally, Zeke said, "Who would believe it?" THE DISCWORLD Pupp stood and dusted his hands off. The sword he was babysitting stayed propped against one of the walls in his laboratory, but the floor and a good chunk of the walls were covered in the arcane magical symbols he would need to be able to get himself home. SOMEWHERE IN PENNSYLVANIA 4:00 PM LOCAL TIME Thel'Akhai hated this planet. Hated the smell, hated the decor, hated the creatures (ah, but what they could become when they were forced! He did like that), hated everything about the place. There had been none happier than he when they'd all been recalled home. He had hoped to stay there for a long time, but alas, it was not to be. Word had come from on high that the Herald was reaching his goal of finding the second sword. That there might be resistance. That it would be prudent if he, Thel'Akhai, were to personally accompany the Herald to the sword, to make sure the relic was recovered for the greater glory of His Omnipotence. And to make sure the Herald didn't outlive his usefulness, of course. So here he stood. On this planet. In the smells. He didn't want to think about what he must be standing in. Uncontrolled organic matter. Disgusting. The Herald was coming this way. The noise was enough of an indication, but the subtle glow that wafted along the limp ley streams of this planet was a more definite telltale. Thel'Akhai stood still, unnoticed by the local fauna, until the Herald was only a few feet away, cursing loudly in his own language. "Herald. Attend." Owsen whirled, eyes narrowing. The sword came up in a swift arc until its point hovered inches from Thel'Akhai's mask. The Lyran eyed the point, debated moving, and decided it wasn't worth the effort. "What the bloody fuck are you doing here?" Thel'Akhai expended enough energy to raise his left hand gracefully in threat. "More politeness is expected toward your benefactor. I am here to help with your search." Owsen crumpled, the tip of the sword dropping. "I don't need any help," he whined. "I'll find it myself. And RIP IT FROM THEM!" The Lyran ignored the spittle flying from Owsen's mouth and made another gesture. "I brought assistance. For our amusement." The Herald took his time looking over the Saetherans and the human minions. Finally, he nodded. "I get to kill Nemesis," he growled. "With my own hands, I get to kill him. I'm the Herald, and it's my duty, and he RAN from me. From me. His friend. His brother. HE RAN AWAY. And I'm going to kill him. And get it back." Thel'Akhai considered for a moment. Then he lowered his hand and nodded consent. DRY WELL, NEVADA 1:00 PM LOCAL TIME The worst part was always the waiting. Once the fighting itself began, things would go smoothly. They always had. But that blank time before the battle would always be every soldier's private hell - especially if that soldier was more or less alone. Joseph Lacroix willed himself not to fidget, having already done everything he needed to do to prepare. After that, he willed himself to stop shaking from pre-battle nerves. Mal had sent everyone to different points around Dry Well with vague enough instructions: they were to wait until Owsen appeared, and bring him down when he got into a position to get nailed by a crossfire. It was simple enough; everyone had scattered about, checked their weapons, set up a little extra cover in whatever spot they chose to fire from, and they were ready. Inside of five minutes, the town was silent again, everyone down behind cover. Waiting. Lacroix checked the charge on his XRifle for the seventh or eighth time, saw that it was exactly the same as it had been the previous six or seven times, and glanced about him at the materiel he had on-hand. XRifle; some extra magazines for it; Linker; just in case, several grenades, a pistol, and in his belt, a combat knife. He chuckled despite himself at the latter; what was he thinking, even accepting the possibility of taking a knife to a Maenad? Movement in the street; Lacroix looked up to see Mal pacing up the street, checking everyone's firing positions. He waved out the window, recieved a curt nod in return, and settled back into his firing position. After today ("if we survive this," a part of Lacroix's mind thought; another part thought "shut up!" just a little louder), it wasn't going to be over. He knew that much. It wasn't "just" a case of a Maenad going postal anymore; the Lyrans were involved, at the highest levels. That meant that the war was back on, even if the Jihaddi hadn't officially declared the fact and started reconvening yet. Lacroix started to think about how to get out of his job at Skyview for the semester, and briefly amused himself trying to think of how outlandish an excuse he could pull off. "Everyone in position?" Mal's voice came over the Linkers. Everyone was, in fact, in position, and said as much before settling back to waiting. Lacroix took a couple of deep breaths to steady his nerves, checked his gear, and started scanning the street again, alone with his own thoughts. This was the first time in years that he found himself under cover, a rifle in his hand, waiting for a powerful enemy to come to do battle. It was different this time - the enemy was only one man - but last time he'd had thousands of his own friends alongside him. For the briefest of instants, his view of Dry Well changed. He was no longer on the ground floor of an abandoned, dusty duplex, gazing into a deserted, desert village from a long-broken window in complete silence; he was instead leaning on the firing step of a snow-filled trench, a cliff face behind him, the uncountable enemy marching towards him with their battle hymns competing with the howling wind in a contest of volume. The image was gone almost before he noticed it, but notice it he did. Taking another deep breath, Lacroix tried to stop the shakes again. Dee distractedly drummed her fingers against the stock of her rifle. It was one of her personal Jihad-tech weapons, what had started life as a TRES railgun action but had been reconfigured to be enough lighter and smaller that she could actually carry it. Barely. Probably overkill against people, even a Maenad, but that beat the alternative. Damocles was waiting with a scoped M-14, a more traditional choice, and between them was a belt fed machine gun set up around sandbags... because neither actually expected things to go smoothly. For similar reasons, the interior of the building had been sown with booby traps; they were on the roof of one of the taller buildings and should have had a decent view around. In most aspects, this wasn't the first time Rens had been in such a position. Crouched next to a window on the shadow side of a building, overlooking an open area, with a sniper rifle on its tripod next to you, looking on and waiting for your target to stray into your sights so you could shoot him -- while it would hopefully never become a comfortable feeling, it was at least familiar, like an ill-fitting garment that you've had to wear so often you've gotten used to how it chafes. Of course, all the other times, the target in question hadn't been one of the most respected Jihaddi, much less his one time supreme commanding officer, and he didn't much like the prospect of- *Stop that.* Rens mentally glared at his partner. *I know. He's gone over the edge, killed who knows how many good people, would have managed to do the same to us if Mal hadn't managed to port us away... It's just that..* Shad's mental "tone" was as derisive as he'd ever heard the dragon get during their internal dialogues. *It's just that you're STILL thinking that somehow there's a way to save what's left of him from what he's become, and underneath all your cynicism you're too much of an idealist to want to, as you call it, "give up on him".* *Dammit, he's one of our own, or at least he was! If there's any way to get him back, we owe-* Shad's "voice" went cold, flat. *There isn't.* *Dammit, you don't know that!* Rens raged. *Yes, I do - and so do you. From the debriefing, Nemesis tried his hardest to snap Owsen out of it, and nearly got gutted in the process. And you're insulting most of the rest of the Maenads if you believe that none of THEM cared enough for, as you call it, "one of their own" to try, and look where it got them. Who died and appointed you God? Who anointed you with the destiny to succeed where they failed?* *I... No. You're right. I just wish you weren't.* *... So do I.* And behind a window in an empty building in Dry Well, two beings sharing one body crouched and prepared to shoot someone they at one time had called "friend". FORMER SITE OF THE JIHAD PRAXEUM VENEFICUS PENNSYLVANIA 6:00 PM LOCAL TIME Katze stepped through the gate behind Mal and blinked in the sunlight. A part of her wondered offhand where the campus she was so familiar with had gone before her memories caught up with sense impressions. But there was more to be done than boggling over how little had changed at the site since she was last there. Two things were paramount over everything else -- find the spell remnants and clean it up if possible and at the same time keep Owsen believing that the sword Mal carried was the real one. Given what had transpired at the enchanting, Katze didn't trust the false blade enough to let up on it, but it would definitely make the first task harder. The two tasks together seemed much like trying to juggle chainsaws while doing fine watchwork, she thought, but what had to be done was going to be done. Between those two tasks, she had to hope that Mal could hold Owsen off while she tried to work. And it had to be done as fast as possible on top of it. She set a small part of her concentration to keeping an eye on the enchantments on the sword, and then set to work on the spell remnants. It was really the worst possible news. Yes, the spell still had a remnant, which she had feared, but it was just garbled enough that she couldn't tell offhand if there was still useable information there. Yet there was something dynamic happening in the middle of it. Katze frowned. That was unusual. She dismissed her concentration and blinked at Mal. He seemed to be concerned about something else, and she hated to give him yet more bad news. "It's hard to say what's still there," she said. He nodded. "And Owsen brought company." Katze turned slightly, and looked over her shoulder. "Well, fuck," she said, wondering just how she could stop a Lyran. Probably couldn't, but they had to try. "I'll do what I can." She concentrated again and noted that dynamic bit had changed from the last moment. If she didn't know any better, she'd almost say that somebody was incoming. But the only person who would do that would be...but Pupp wouldn't. She'd told him not to. But it was definitely an incoming transport spell. She frowned and traced the new lines of the incoming spell. They all congregated right about...there. Where the outgoing lines roughly converged. That couldn't be a coincidence. Which meant... Katze sighed, released everything she was concentrating on, and bolted for the convergence point. He would -- and he was. And all she could hope for was to beat Owsen to him. /Incoming wormhole!/ Mal blinked. "-What?!-" he demanded out loud. /There's an incoming planar gate forming near your position!/ Min's voice sounded through his lace. /I don't know who it is, tracing now./ Mal turned to look at Katze, but she was already gone. Owsen and Thel'Akhai felt the prickling sensation of the portal opening at the same time. They turned, Owsen gleeful while the Lyran maintained his bland composure, and saw the shimmering bubble of the portal coalesce into a human shape. Thel'Akhai held his position while Owsen took off, running at full speed towards the figure now standing only bare yards away. Puppeteer felt the last bits of the transfer spell drain away and sighed wistfully for the world he'd left behind. He hated to leave, but if the gang needed the Slayer, then he had no other choice, did he? Pupp hefted the Barney-Slayer and looked around. He was going to have to get in touch with everybody, and the nearest phonebooth was a good walk away from the old campus. Oblivious to the charging man in black directly behind him, Pupp squared his shoulders and prepared for a hike. Owsen charged, dark Slayer held high. The call of the light drowned out all other sounds. The robed fool in front of him had the object of his desires, and now nothingnothingNOTHING would get between him and his prize anymore... Mal snarled the vilest curse he could think of and drew his X-Pistol. His line of sight was terrible, and any attack was sure to draw attention, but there was nothing to be done about it. Gritting his teeth, he lined up on Owsen and let off a burst. Pupp took one step towards the old access road when his world suddenly went topsy-turvy and he hit the ground rather hard. Stunned, it took him a second to realize that he'd been tackled and thrown to the ground - rather hard, in fact - by a girl. Some small part of Pupp's brain noted that this was the first time in a while that he'd been tackled by a girl - Unseen University tended to discourage such behavior on the part of students and faculty - while the rest of it went blank with shock at the identity of his tackler. "Katze!?" he blurted. "You -idiot!-" that worthy individual hissed, her face a mask of wrath. Before Pupp could come up with any rebuttal, she grabbed him, grabbed the sword, and they vanished. Owsen skidded to a halt as his quarry vanished in front of him. He snarled in frustration, the song of his sword singing in his ears louder than he had ever heard it. He must have it had to have it wasn't going to let anything get in his way of hunting it down -- when a bolt of plasma scarred the ground before his feet, setting the grass on fire. He turned, smiling. Mal charged, waving the faux Barney-Slayer over his head while firing blindly towards Owsen and his group. Skidding to a halt on the grass, he drew his arm back and flung the sword at Owsen, sending three feet of sharp steel in a glittering arc right at the former Maenad's head. Owsen, for his part, seemed unconcerned, swatting the spinning blade out of the air with a casual sweep of his Slayer. The sword shattered on contact with the dark blade, spraying fragments all over the soft Pennsylvania soil. "Nice try," Owsen noted absently, then grinned. "Now, let's talk about the retrieval of my property." He stalked forward, purple flames bursting to life on his skin. Mal held his ground, readying his guns as if preparing to make a fight. Owsen could see the determination in his opponent's eyes. Then, he did - to Owsen's experience - a most remarkable thing. He ran. A disk of blue light opened up behind Mal, who lunged backwards and through it before Owsen could react. Owsen charged, but the portal snapped shut seconds before he reached it. He skidded to a halt, snarling at the empty air. Owsen could feel the sword now, feel its presence on this plane like he never had been able to before, so finding them was going to be no great difficulty. Owsen grinned. More fools they, to think that they could escape the Scourge. He concentrated, focusing the power he'd been given towards a goal. He may not have been able to open holes in space, but he could move quickly. With a roar of purple fire, Owsen lifted off the ground and streaked westward, homing in on the faint call of the Barney-Slayer. DRY WELL, NEVADA MONDAY, APRIL 12, 2004 3:07 PM LOCAL TIME The portal opened in the center of town, just like Mal said it would. The waiting Jihaddi tensed, weapons ready, waiting for Owsen to appear and then open up. A nice and simple takedown. The portal rippled, the target was coming through-- /HOLD FIRE! HOLD FIRE!/ --and instead of Owsen, Mal tumbled out of the light, which cut off as he rolled in the dust. Mal popped up, checked to make sure that yes, he was not getting shot into tiny fragments, and then looked out at the sniper-laden main street. "Change of plans, folks," he said, his neural lace carrying through to the Jihadlinkers. "Digest version: Pupp's here, he's got the sword and Owsen knows it. Ah." Mal broke off as an abashed Puppeteer appeared in the street, accompanied by a furious Katze carrying the Barney-Slayer. "Okay, Owsen'll be tracking the sword now, so he's on his way. We can put this to our advantage. Pupp, get some ranged attacks ready and move to assist Aris," he pointed towards the building where the dragon was stationed, "Katze, hand over the shiny." Katze hesitated fractionally, then shrugged and gave the sword to Mal. "Great. Now, find a nice quiet spot and get your bow ready. Here's the plan: I'll use the sword to keep Owsen in one spot, and when I say ready, you guys blast him. "Places, people! Owsen can't be that far behind. Let's -move!-" Owsen flew through the sky, a purple-tinged comet of pure rage. No longer caring if anybody saw him or felt the power he wielded, he flew on, willing the purple fire surrounding him to move still faster. The ground blurred as he passed the sound barrier and continued to increase his velocity. The image of the Barney-Slayer burned in his mind, the presence of the mystical blade guiding him, the urge to combine the swords and summon the Scourge blinding him to everything else. Owsen could feel the sword's presence directly ahead of him, down in the desert. He shifted his course, not bothering to reduce his speed... Above the long-abandoned test town of Dry Well, a purple comet appeared. It arced through the sky, accelerating, until it hit the ground right in the center of Main Street with a flash and a terrible roar. The shockwave of the comet's landing caused the buildings surrounding the epicenter to crumble, filling the air with dust. A figure stepped out of the cloud of dust and debris, purple fire arcing off his limbs, a mad glow in his eyes. "WHERE IS IT?" Owsen bellowed, "WHERE IS WHAT'S MINE? GIVE IT TO ME!" There was no response from the silent buildings. Owsen snarled, and cast a bolt of purple energy into an abandoned ice-cream parlor, rendering it into a pile of dessicated splinters. "WHERE?!" Owsen yelled again. This time, there was an answer. Mal stepped out of a building half a block away. He was idly swinging the silvery blade of the Slayer at his side as he marched out to the center of town and faced Owsen. "Looking for this?" asked Mal. Owsen stared at his opponent. "You... I know you, but you're not a Maenad.." His eyes widened slightly in recognition, then narrowed. "Of course. The scientist. One of DeadLock's friends. What was your org? 'Evil Geniuses Something Something.'" Owsen grinned his happy grin. "Consider me impressed that you'd face me like this. Doesn't matter, I suppose. You're just as -dead- no matter what you were. Now give me my sword, and I'll make this as painless as possible." Mal grinned a happy grin of his own, and flicked his wrist. The Barney-Slayer glowed blue and vanished out of his hand. "Sorry," said Mal, "but it doesn't belong to you anymore." Owsen shook his head. "Oh, you shouldn't have done that," he said sadly. "You really shouldn't have. Now I'm going to have to rip you apart, piece by piece, until you bring it back. That's the -hard- way. Why couldn't you have done this the -easy- way?" Owsen swung his dark blade in a mocking engarde salute, then charged at Mal. Mal stood his ground, and just as Owsen prepared to run him through, he stepped smoothly aside, ducking the blade. Calling his quarterstaff out of hyperpark, he shifted into a defensive stance as Owsen whirled and lashed out. Thel'Akhai glanced up sharply from his scrying trance. The Herald had arrived at his destination. Once he had stopped moving, Thel'Akhai was able to determine the location to send himself and his... reinforcements. The masked wizard gathered the not-inconsiderable energies afforded to a Lyran of the seventh circle and cast the teleport spell, translating himself and his charges to the Herald's location. The Lyran reinforcements appeared with a shimmering effect on the outskirts of the immediate combat zone. In the center, the Herald and one of the accursed yi'khadiji were engaged in battle. Thel'Akhai could -feel- the other yi'khadiji scattered about the area, waiting for the right moment. A negigible gesture imparted the information to his $neos and Saetherian soldiers, and without a word they scattered, hunting for their targets. Thel'Akhai's orders were to eliminate the yi'khadiji, recover the swords and then reopen the road to Lyra. If the Herald was too badly damaged in the fight, or proved reluctant to part with the blades, then that was simply too bad. Kirk Felton crouched on one of the rooftops watching Mal and Owsen clash, sniper rifle ready and waiting for the signal. The Maenad noted that it didn't seem terribly sporting to fill a brother's head full of high-velocity depleted uranium. But fuck it, sometimes you've got to do what you've got to do. As he pondered this, Owsen slipped an attempt by Mal to sweep him off his legs, and shot forward with a vicious lunge. For the briefest of seconds, Owsen was off-balance and completely vulnerable. Felton saw his chance, and his finger tightened on the trigger... ...when the wind shifted and brought him new data. Felton inhaled sharply as he recognized the scent. There was a Lyran here. It was too much to bear. He had no choice but to give in to the overwhelming force of instinct, the fire in his veins that threated to rip him apart. The rifle slipped from his fingers as he slumped backward, writhing violently as the throes of the holy warp-spasm contorted his body. The sound of his Feral howl echoed across the faux rooftops. Perfect. It wasn't a word Rens liked to use in this context, but the conditions were as close to such as he'd ever had when making a shot. Owsen was standing with his back towards him as Malaclypse taunted him with the Slayer. No time left for niceties. Maenads were tough almost beyond comprehension; any hit that didn't kill him instantly would be brushed off, and people - his friends - would wind up dead. He took a deep breath and concentrated, lining up the crosshairs on his scope with the back of Owsen's head, held his breath, finger tightening on the trigger... *DODGE* The imperative from his partner went through Rens' mind like a thunderbolt and he threw himself away from his position, rolling across the floor and getting to his feet just as a sword slashed down into the floor where he'd just lain, neatly bisecting the rifle. There wasn't any time to think, however, as a second sword came sweeping toward his neck in a flat horizontal arc and well-honed reflexes took over. He ducked under the slash, trapped the arm holding the sword and threw its owner to the ground before taking a step back and studying his opponents. It was dark in the room, and while that hadn't posed a problem to him in years the dim glow coming from his opponents' eyes suggested it wouldn't pose a problem for them either, which was an unwelcome surprise. Rens took another step to move out of the center of his two assailants, noting from the corner of his eyes that the one he'd thrown had managed to roll with the throw and keep a grip on his sword without hurting himself. *Obviously Tang wasn't exaggerating when he described those guys he and Lacroix tangoed with. Equally obviously, they've got more of them. And we didn't even think about it. Stupid, stupid, STUPID.* His standing opponent remained where he was with his sword in ready position between them, obviously waiting for his partner to get back to his feet before engaging an opponent with reflexes this good. *And stupid they most certainly aren't. Don't even THINK about trying them on barehanded, Rens.* *No room to transform either. Time to burn a trump.* Even as he responded to his mental partner, Rens flexed his left hand in a very specific pattern, which was picked up the microcircuitry in his glove that sent a mild tingle to the nervous receptors is his palm to indicate it had received the command and was ready for retrieval. Rens studied the shifting sensations while the hyperspace storage/retrieval system cycled through the list of items he'd prepared for just such an emergency. Pistols would be useless - at best he'd be able to shoot one of them while the other ran him through. *therefore--* He dove to the side just in time to barely dodge the sword strike that came slashing from above, kicked the wielder against the inside of the leg for good measure, rolled away from the other's followup, and then his left hand closed around the sheath of his katana as the retrieval system pulled it out of hyperpark. There wasn't time to draw - yet - so he caught the first enemy full on the solar plexus with the pommel, eliciting a "whoof!" and a backwards stagger but nothing more - definitely armored - then reversed and rammed the butt of his sheath into the second one's groin. That worthy squeaked and went down on a knee, and yet became now as Rens took a long step forward to get inside his first opponent's guard, ducking under the incoming slash and unsheathing his own sword in a reverse draw that dragged the cutting edge along a diagonal path across his enemy's torso, cutting through his armor and shallowly through his flesh, from right hip to left shoulder, before laying the back along his forearm and reversing the arc in a horizontal cut at neck height, slashing through both jugulars in a single stroke and finishing off with a kick to cause the body to fall away from him instead of on top of him, then half-turned and stabbed behind him in an underhand low arc, burying his katana in his other opponent's stomach until the hilt-guard ran flush with his sternum. Time returned to normal as Shad looked over his shoulder, meeting his erstwhile opponent's gaze as that worthy started realizing what had happened and that he was dying, and feeling the weight on his blade increase as the dying man's legs failed to support him any longer. He pulled his blade back out, reversed and decapitated his foe with a single strike, letting the body topple to the floor as he shook the blood of his katana and resheathed it. *Only two? I think I'm insulted.* *They'd have had us if you hadn't warned me at the last instant. Don't get overconfident.* *... True. We'd better ca-* Shad's internal monologue was interrupted by the twin noises a collapsing building and the shrieking roar of a Saethrian. Of three of them, he mentally corrected himself as he heard Killjoy's answering growl. *Shit.* Fortunately, the roof was only one stairway higher. Killjoy stood next to the second-story window across the street from Felton, his bazooka held in the ready position. He'd picked up the rather ungainly weapon from the cache Mal had dumped here earlier, and held onto it despite suggestions from the others to get a different weapon. The expert system that ran KJ's mind had a fondness for the overkill, so it kept the bazooka. As the battle in the street raged, KJ waited patiently for the right moment to tag Owsen with an anti-tank weapon. Suddenly, KJ's brain sensed... something happening elsewhere. Something big, and something -bad-. KJ slung the bazooka over his shoulder, crossed to the oppiste side of the building, and silently exitied through another window. In another building across the way from where Mal and Owsen were fighting, Aris Merquoni and Puppeteer were waiting, weapons drawn. Well, Aris had her trademark gunblade drawn; Puppeteer wasn't one for weapons per se. His magical abilities made him a fairly formidable opponent in a scrape, but other than that he liked to consider himself just this guy, y'know. Still, the erstwhile mage was wondering what his role in this thing really -was-. So far he'd done nothing more than screw up (Pupp was expecting to get a serious chewing out from Katze, to say nothing of the others, when this was all over.) and his role in Mal's plan seemed dubious, at best. Ranged magical attack wasn't really his thing, and if Owsen had magical backup... Wait. Something pricked at the back of Pupp's mind. Magical backup. If they were right behind Owsen, then that meant bad things were afoot. And if he could stop them... well, then maybe he'd get to save the day yet. Pupp got up from his position near the window and began moving towards the rear exit, hoping Aris wouldn't notice. Naturally, Aris turned at just the right moment to see Pupp sidling towards the door. "Pupp?" she whispered. "I have to go," he replied. "Something's wrong." "Bwah?" "Something's not right here, I need to figure it out. Be right back." Pupp reached the door and stepped through. Aris glanced back at the battle on the street, then ran for the door herself, cursing mercurial magicians all the way. Barreling out the door, she saw Pupp carefully making his way down the side of the building. "Pupp!" Aris yelled, "Get back here, dammit!" She dashed over to the truant mage and grabbed the sleeve of his robe. "We've-" Aris didn't get to finish explaining what "we've" was. At just that second, a group of five heavily-armed men rounded the corner. The group of Jihaddi and Lyran servants stared blankly at each other for a few seconds, then with a yell of something incomprehensible the five servitors brought their weapons to bear on Aris and Pupp. Aris yelped and threw a fireball at the group, hitting a servitor near the center of the group square and causing him to burst into flames. As the servitors reacted to this new development, Aris grabbed Pupp and hauled him back behind the corner. "Nice job on the one guy," Pupp noted. Aris scowled. "I was aiming for the guy in front, dammit." Something shifted in the wind, or perhaps it was a shift in the ether that Tangaroa felt. He tensed and raised a finger, ready to cast a seeker spell to watch his back, before hesitating. That could give away his position and the plan to Owsen, assuming that Owsen couldn't already sense him and the others. Given that what was left of Owsen's mind seemed to be focused for now on the sole task of retrieving the Barney-Slayer, it would be best to avoid the possibility of revealing the snipers' existence through casting magic, so Tangaroa performed reconnaissance the old-fashioned way. He turned around and looked out the back window. He almost wished he hadn't. Tangaroa dropped his rifle, text-relayed an SOS over his JihadLinker, and cast as many seekers as he could. Then he jumped out the back and cast a flame sword in one hand to prepare for the fight, leaving the other hand free to cast a shield or grab his pistol if he needed to. The profile of the nearest Saethrian grew larger as it came closer. And came closer. And kept coming. Tangaroa shivered as he remembered that his earlier tangle with one of these creatures had been with a juvenile one... Then there were footsteps, of several people approaching fast from around the corner. Friend or foe? There weren't supposed to be any other snipers positioned for a few score yards around. Best to assume foe. "Yi'khadiji?" Tang asked in a poor approximation of aLyran, using one of the few words he'd picked up from the servitor prisoners, that only because it was was itself an approximation of an English word. "Ni'kha?" came the confused response, and the footsteps kept coming. Tang glanced at the Saethrians to determine they were still a few seconds off, drew his pistol with his free hand, and charged around the corner. The risky gambit worked, as to his fortune the group of servitors was smaller than he expected and he caught them by surprise, quickly and permanently incapacitating them with his fire and a single gunshot. Tangaroa turned around in time to throw up a shield to block the first Saeth to leap down upon him, canceling his fire spell to do so. The creature slammed into the shield, its limbs and extremities wrapping around and brushing against Tangaroa, but it was too disoriented from the impact to use them to effect. Tang pistol-whipped it in the jaw as its head jolted forward from the collision, then shot it in the mouth, dropping the shield as the creature recoiled backwards. Jogging backwards to open up some space, Tang raised his gun and fired two shots at the next Saeth. The flying alien flinched slightly as the bullets hit and adjusted its dive to compensate. Noting the uselessness of that, Tang dropped his pistol and fired a force beam into the Saeth's face, then adjusted the attack to hit lower on the beast's belly. This lifted the diving Saethrian, causing it to overshoot him and crash into a building down the way as it tried to turn around. Meanwhile, the first Saeth was starting to get up, spitting fluid from its wounded mouth. Tang rushed forward and cast his flame sword spell, plunging the firey weapon into the skull of the fallen Saethrian. The unharmed creature whipped out tentacles at Tangaroa's ankles. Tang sliced off the appendages before it could drag him down, then recast the fire into a thinner spear of energy and shoved it into the Saeth's eye. As the beast retracted its arms, Tang jumped on its back and rushed forward across it, ordering his seekers to track the other creature. The beast didn't appreciate having its eye scorched out or being used as a carpet, and squirmed to throw Tangaroa off. Tang stumbled slightly as he landed, but kept to his feet as the Saethrian rose and leapt at him. He threw up a shield for it to smack its face into again and swung his sword at one of the creature's extremeties. It reeled backwards as the sword seared into a forearm, giving Tang the opportunity to run around it. He felt the seekers behind him tell him that the other Saethrian had gotten up and was charging. Tangaroa dashed forward, scrambled around a corner, and dissipated his sword to swing himself through an open first-floor window. With both Saethrians now on one side of him and some time as they tore into the building to reach him, he cast fire swords in both hands and merged the two columns of flame together into a single weapon white-hot at its core. Mal did his level best to keep Owsen focused on him as he backed off into the street, biding his time until he was right in the center of the fire zone. A quick glance around assured Mal that he was almost at the right spot, and Owsen's madness kept him from noticing that he was being set up. Mal mentally thumbed open a communications link on his neural lace. /NOW! Hit him with everything you've got!/ Silence. /Um, guys? Crossfire? Where's my killzone?/ "Something the matter?" Owsen asked mockingly as he pressed his attack. "Nothing I can't handle," Mal lied smoothly, while trying to find out where the hell his backup went. /Where are you!? Respond, dammit!/ /We've got problems,/ replied Delgado, the designated spotter for the operation. /Owsen's backup from Pennsy just showed up! We're trying to keep them away from you, but things are kinda hectic right now.../ /Acknowledged,/ Mal sent back, /I'll try and keep Owsen busy until you've dealt with his minions. Good luck./ "Okay," he said out loud, "time for Plan B." Owsen quirked an eyebrow as the two clashed. "Oh, this should be precious," he remarked. "And what, pray tell, is Plan B?" Mal smirked. "Well, it's THIS!" As he said it, Mal parried Owsen's swing, knocked his sword hand out of position, stepped inside Owsen's reach, and drove his foot straight into Owsen's crotch. Owsen staggered back, bellowing in pain, and Mal scrambled for some distance, scattering miniature landmines behind him as a deterrent. It wasn't much, of a deterrent, really, Mal thought bleakly, but at least it was *something*. He ducked into the shell of an office building and waited for his next shot. Lacroix took a deep breath and stared down the sight of his rifle. A short distance away, Mal and Owsen were locked in a furious duel, nearly at the killzone the group had established when they set up. Then things had gone wrong. Very early in the duel, it was obvious that Owsen had brought help, as the sounds of scattered firefights and alien screams sounded across the town. Torn between trying to help out his companions and staying on the mission, Lacroix chose to stay focused on Mal. As Owsen came closer to the spot he'd ranged on his XRifle, Lacroix began to tighten his finger on the weapon's trigger. One way or another, this would be settled shortly, and he could go to help his friends. Lacroix's 'Linker, close at hand, suddenly beeped with the tone of an incoming message. "This is it," he thought, lining up his shot. Movement in the storefront across the street, where there weren't any Jihaddi. Letting survival instincts take over, Lacroix glanced at the movement to be sure. As soon as he turned his head, a stutter of automatic weapons fire began punching into the wall uncomfortably close to him. Cursing, Lacroix ducked and rolled over to the next window, popping up long enough to fire a short burst back. "Um? Guys? Crossfire? Where's -" Mal's voice came over the linker. It was interrupted by a second burst of gunfire, which punched through the wall where Lacroix had been, shattering the communicator. Across the street, a constant suppressive fire was being kept up. Worse, it was coming in what sounded like phases; there were at least four of them over there, leapfrogging their way towards Lacroix's building to make him keep his head down. Cursing a blue streak in French, Lacroix began working his way towards the back door of the room he was in, throwing a grenade out the window to slow them down. As soon as he heard the muffled explosion, he got up and bolted for the stairs, trying to get some high ground. After about a minute of quick searching, KJ located the source of his driving intuition. There were a full dozen of them, all armed with a handful of pistols and assorted melee weapons. They tensed, completely surprised by the sight of the immense man bearing down on them. The Lyran servitors recovered quickly, and with a blood-curdling alien battle cry charged towards KJ. For his part, KJ was utterly unconcerned. He carefully unslung the bazooka from his shoulder, but instead of bringing it around into firing position, he got a firm grip on the rear end of the tube, bringing the bazooka into a position more suited for a baseball bat than a rocket-propelled weapon. The first servitor to reach KJ, instead of running the Jihaddi through like he'd expected, got a face full of bazooka instead. The impact lifted the servitor off his feet and whirled him around to collapse in the dirt face-down in a profound state of unconsciousness. The other serivtors fared little better, as KJ and his impromptu weapon battered their way through the ranks of his enemies. The ones with more sense than battle lust stood off and tried to bring the giant down with their pistols. The Lyran agents were not, it must be said, the best shots out there; despite extensive training in the arts of Lyran magic and tactics, firearms were not something they were well versed in. Still, despite the deficit in their training, hitting a target that was over six feet tall at almost point blank range was relatively easy. Unfortunately, the pistol shots didn't seem to do much more to their target than annoy him. Despite a series of hits to the torso that would have brought any other human down, KJ continued to swing his makeshift club around, battering the handful of servitors still functional enough to charge him. The fight, such as it was, ended up being rather short. When KJ filed to drop after being shot multiple times, any advantage the servitors had quickly evaporated. One by one, each servant fell to the might of KJ's impromptu meele-adapted bazooka. Three frantic minutes of startled exclamations in Lyran and muffled clanging sounds later, KJ lowered his bazooka and glanced around at the ring of broken enemies scattered around him. "Huh, that it?" he wondered. In answer to his question, the building to his left exploded in a shower of wooden splinters and masonry. From the cloud of dust and rubble emerged a trio of giant, tentacled serpents, each tentacle grasping a different weapon. The serpents slithered out of the destroyed building and each unfulred a pair of monstroud bat wings. Thus arrayed for battle, the Saetherians roared, waiting for their target to make the next move. KJ's reaction to this was, like every other reaction KJ made, short, succinct and to the point: "Aw, -crap-." Back behind another row of houses, Tangaroa continued his solo duel with the two Saethrians. The beasts' aggressive charges were easy for Tang to anticipate and avoid or deflect with a well placed shield or force beam, and with the array of seekers he'd cast around him, he didn't need to keep an eye on both of them or watch his back. Tangaroa wasn't letting the Saethrians get close enough often enough for either of them to score strong hits on the other, but the otherworldly monsters were steadily running out of wings, appendages, and facial features. Though he was starting to get physically tired from the constant dodging and running, Tangaroa wasn't starting to feel short of magical energy at all, even while holding and casting several spells at once with more effort than he'd spent in years, if ever. He started to wonder how long he could keep up the magic and whether he would run out of power in a slow depletion or sudden stop, then forced the thought out of his mind. The Saethrians, for their part, were starting to slow down their attacks and consider different angles of attack as their target wasn't going down as easily as he looked like he ought to. A badly wounded one was now actively holding back, limping around the edge of the battle and hissing while the other took on Tang. That one started to lunge forward and found itself scrabbling in the dirt, going nowhere as Tangaroa force-beamed it head-on. The badly wounded one picked this time to attack. It swiped at one of Tangaroa's seeker spells as it arced through the air, disrupting the small ball of energy out of existence but also notifying Tangaroa of its exact position. Tang dropped the force beam and concentrated more power into his magic sword, which had weakened as he cast the beam. Having chosen this tactic for his defense, he got out of the way of the simple ballistics of a giant worm falling at him and brushed his sword along the beast's side, burning a another shallow furrow in its plating. A shield cast at the Saethrian's side kept it from then rolling over and crushing him, but as a side effect glued his feet to the floor and weakened his sword at the second Saethrian leaped at him. Tang dropped the shield and dived out of the way as it crashed into the Saeth on the ground. The Saethrian rolled from the impact to find itself facing Tangaroa, and sprung forward to attack again. Tangaroa hurriedly threw as much energy as he could muster into his fire sword in the short time after he scrambled to his feet and charged to meet the Saethrian, dodging aside at the last second as he held his sword out to attack. The sword cut a deep slice in the Saethrian's face before the massive beast's body brushed against Tangaroa's shoulder. Tang spun as he was hit and lost control of the sword, which reverted to a simple arc of loose flame spinning around his body and dissipating. As the Saethrian wrapped a tentacle around Tang, he regained control of the sword, violently freed himself, and counterattacked, running down the creature's side and chopping off its limbs. A tentacle caught Tangaroa from behind and lifted him into the air. He quickly chopped it away and saw the other Saethrian's jaws snap inches above him as gravity dragged him to the ground. The creature lunged for its lunch again and bit its jaws into Tang's shield, then reared back as its face was suddenly engulfed in a wave of magic fire. Tang crawled to his feet and backed off defensively, glancing up and quickly jumping aside another attack. The one he'd run the gantlet on was doing the Saethrian equivalent of whimpering and crawling away on its remaining legs, but the other was pressing on Tang and had the stumbling Warrior at a serious disadvantage. Worse, Tang's seekers were gone from loss of concentration but he was in such distress that he didn't bother to watch his back in case the badly wounded Saethrian decided to attack again. Dodge, dodge, strike. The Saethrian ignored the strike and kept going, whipping its tail at Tang. Tang blocked the attack with a shield and seared a minor gouge in its tail, then both turned to face each other head on and attack. Tang's sword came close enough to the creature's remaining eye that it reared back from the heat, affording Tangaroa the time to fall sideways a few steps and cast another handful of seekers. The Saethrian with the singed tail spun and leaped at Tang. Tang ran forward under it and raised a shield above his head for it to land on, then thrust his flame sword up into its body. As that didn't do much, he concentrated and increased the flame's power until the Saethrian shuddered in pain, then he dropped the spells and rolled away before the other one could hit him. The wounded Saeth collapsed to the dirt and didn't make any effort to get up. Tangaroa now faced down the last Saethrian, which climbed over its fallen comrade and charged at him. Tang sent the seekers to watch his back in case anything else showed up, then turned to the enemy in front of him. Down to a one on one fight against an already severely wounded enemy, he fought this one closer in and more aggressively, concentrating power into his attacks and burning one gash after another in its extraterrestrial chitin until enough attacks went through to bring it down. Then two of the seekers behind Tang bounced away from a sudden wave of magic appearing between them, probably a Lyran teleporting in to back up his pets. Tang spun and swung. Katze phased into existence and shrieked as Tang nearly took her head off. "Oh!" Tangaroa quickly cancelled his fire sword spell mid-swing and glanced around to make sure there were no more enemy. "Sorry about that." Still in too much shock to say anything, Katze put a hand to her neck, which had been warmed a bit but was not damaged. Tang watched with concern. "You're okay? Good." "You almost killed me!" Katze blurted out. "Sorry," Tang apologized. "I thought you were a hostile." Hearing gunfire elsewhere around town, he started heading out. "There are more of them out there?" Seeing one of the Saethrians rise to attack, Katze raised her bow and fired, sending the arrow through its heart by way of a hole Tang had earlier punched in its armour. "Thanks," Tang said, looking back. "Maybe we should finish these ones off first." Three small, blue, glowing balls of energy sped along about five feet above the the dusty streets of the empty city, splitting and dashing off in three directions as they came to an intersection. A tall bowswoman suddenly blinked into existence on the top of a corner building, then disappeared just as quickly. Katze crouched and peered down the streets from her newest high vantage point. There were no enemy in sight other than the ones who had {allies} pinned down a few blocks away. She tapped out a 'linker message to Tang and teleported to another rooftop closer to the action. Tangaroa ran through the intersection and stopped to lean against a wall to catch his breath. He put down the rifle he'd lifted from a servitor's body and flipped on his JihadLinker. Trusting Katze's report that the streets were safe, he cancelled the seekers so as not to alert the enemy and continued on towards the sounds of battle. Katze notched an arrow into her bow, aimed for the back of one of the servitors, and waited. After a while, she nervously glanced around to see that there was no one behind her, especially to be sure that there weren't any of those giant flying things in the air anymore. It took another half a minute before the rifle shot rang out and a servitor fell over to report that Tang was finally in position. Katze quickly readjusted her aim, fired, drew another arrow, and continued her relatively silent surprise attack, the two of them quickly cutting down the doubly flanked enemies. Then Tang stopped firing for some reason. A few survivors noticed the arrows, found her, and aimed their guns in her direction. Katze quickly 'ported down to the street behind the building before they could fire. Tangaroa cursed at his jammed rifle and felt for his pistol, but he'd dropped it in the fight with the Saethrians. He threw a force beam at one servitor aiming at him, but other servitors took aim as the target struggled through it. He saw others aiming off to the side and up before he spun behind the corner, moments before the bullets arrived. Katze was in trouble. He cast several seekers and larger energy balls and sent them towards the enemy, using the seekers to guide the larger balls around those approaching his position and into the servitors who were standing further back, harassing them away from aiming at Katze. Lacroix surveyed his new vantage point on the third storey of the building, firing back across the street at his opponents while moving from window to window. It looked like there were at least six of them after all. Three were still across the street, firing at him from two different windows; one was lying in the street, victim of Lacroix's grenade and very dead. And, from the sound of it, two of them were in the building, pounding their way up the stairs. Nice one, Sep. Lacroix took his two remaining grenades and threw them through the door of the upstairs office. They bounced down the stairs and exploded, spectacularly loud in the cramped quarters. Voices shouted downstairs - two of them, sounding more affronted than injured, dammit - and they began moving for the staircase. Remembering the wounded "spongin" from the cottage outside Blanca, Lacroix lowered his rifle and fired a long burst through the floor, hoping the building wouldn't burn too readily. A shout downstairs hinted that he'd gotten one, but two sets of footsteps continued to pound up the stairs. Getting out of line of sight of the windows, Lacroix took aim at the doorway and waited. These guys were good, but the first one screwed up for the first and last time. He didn't know what hit him as he charged into the room, only to turn left when he should have turned right to survey it. A burst of rifle fire cut him almost in half and he dropped. Lacroix waited for the second one to come in, but he didn't. His first sign of his other enemy was a thump sound on the wall, uncomfortably close to his head. On reflex, he dove for the opposite corner of the room and rolled behind a desk just as a breaching charge exploded, collapsing a large part of the wall near where he stood. Before the dust cleared, the other "spongin" charged into the room, assault rifle at the hip and blazing. He loosed a long burst through the room at chest height and then stopped, briefly puzzled. Slowly, he stalked through the remnants of the room, trying to find Lacroix as he fumbled to reload his rifle. As he came towards the desk, Lacroix began raising his rifle to fire. His target noticed too soon, though, and threw a kick at the rifle as he snarled something in Lyran. Lacroix's shots went wide into the ceiling as he lost his grip on the weapon. The Lyran minion quickly threw another kick, this time at Lacroix's face, but he caught the boot and rolled, twisting. Losing his balance, the minion stumbled and fell headlong to the floor, his own rifle clattering out of reach. Lacroix tried to get to his feet, but was met with a third flailing kick, which *did* connect with his face this time. Knocked back into a kneeling position, briefly stunned, Lacroix gave his opponent time to get back to his feet. Snarling something in Lyran again, he drew a long, angry-looking knife from his belt as he rose. Lacroix blinked, stumbled up himself, and reached for his own, only to realize it was downstairs. "Figures," he groused, and charged the minion. His opponent was good; almost too good. Sidestepping his attempt at a grapple, he swung with the knife, scoring a deep cut on Lacroix's left arm. Cursing, Lacroix closed, grabbed the servitor's knife hand by the elbow, and threw a wild punch with his free hand. This time he connected solidly. The minion reeled back towards the wall, dropping his knife, and gave Lacroix the opportunity to follow up with a second punch. He recovered quickly, however, and in moments the two opponents were back on the floor, trading a very unscientific flurry of punches, kicks, knees, elbows and foreheads at one another. Lacroix wasn't sure who had the upper hand. Sometime during the brawl, a huge blast sounded from below and the building lurched. The combatants were too preoccupied to notice, but the second blast a few moments later broke through their business. This blast was not only louder, but the building was lurching again, far more unsteadily than before. Creaks and cracks sounded from all around as the third storey began to admit it was about to let go. Lacroix and his foe stared at each other, with mutual looks of confusion rapidly moving towards dismay as another lurch made the floor tilt sickeningly to one side. "Um... shit," Lacroix offered. "...Hakhai," the minion said. It sounded like agreement. Light outside the window. A third blast sounded, directly beneath them, and the building gave up any pretenses of being a building. Suddenly, they were falling through a flurry of debris and crashing noises. Something struck Lacroix hard on the side of the head somewhere between then and the ground. Things got pretty unconscious for awhile after that. "Come out, come out, little Jihaddi," Owsen called. "I know you're around here somewhere, and I'll gut you like a trout when I fiiiinnd you! You can't hide from me and you can't hide from the Scourge. It's coming and it'll destroy you and all your loved ones and there's nothing you can do about it! Now be a good little boy and come out and take your mediciYARGH!" Owsen's rant was cut off in the middle when, intent on his taunting, he stepped on a landmine that had been hastily placed in his path. The mine's location had been pretty obvious, but Owsen's mind had been too busy mocking his opponent to pay much attention to his surroundings. The blast threw Owsen flat on his back, causing little damage to anything but his dignity. Mal dashed out of the building he was hiding in and took cover behind another across the street. "God DAMN but you hairy freaks like to hear yourselves talk," he muttered as he crouched behind the red brick facade. The downed Feral scrambled to his feet, a wide grin on his face. "Oh my," he crowed. "My my -my-! You're the most fun I've had in all of my hunts, little Jihaddi. I'm going to enjoy killing you. The others were for business, but this one is just going to be -fun-." "Shut the hell up and fight, goddammit," Mal growled, adjusting his grip on his staff. "Let's see now... eeny meeny miney MOE!" Owsen let fly a blast of energy from his hand, punching through a nearby storefront. Mal winced as bricks and glass flew uncomfortably close to his position. "No? Well how about... THERE!" Another explosion ripped through the building, this time further away from Mal's hiding place. The building, now missing large chunks of its base, began to creak ominiously. "Hm... not there either. Well, split the difference." Owsen let fly a third time, this time punching straight through the center of the storefront. The already-wrecked building gave way under the assault and collapsed. As the building started to crumble, Mal dove out of his hiding position and into the street, rolling to a stop ten yards in front of Owsen. His X-Pistol sizzled into life in his hand as he rose to a firing crouch and let three shots fly. One grazed the Feral low on his left side. The other two plasma bursts missed entirely. Owsen bellowed with pain and let loose a great gout of purple light that quickly filled the street. Mal dove for cover, just barely missing getting chopped in two by the energy wave, rolled to a stop in a side alley... ...right in front of a grinning wyrm-minion with a fist full of nasty-looking gun. "Well, -shit-." Mal said. The minion's grin widened as he leveled his weapon at the stuck Jihaddi. He said something that Mal didn't understand, but the context was clear: try anything funny and die. Not taking his eyes off Mal, the minion called out to the street. "My Lord Herald, I have him!" "Good," Owsen called back. "Hold him there!" Mal saw the flash of light reflect off the minion's face and waited for the next blow... ...but instead the energy flowed around him and caught the unfortunate minion square in the chest, hurling him straight into - and partially -through- - the brick facade of the building sealing off the alley. The minion lay crumpled halfway through the new opening, covered in broken bricks. Mal leaped up and whirled around. Owsen was standing ten feet behind him, staring mildly at the wrecked wall and minion. Owsen shrugged. "Shouldn't get between a dog and his meat," he remarked. "Now, let's see, where were we..." Thel'Akhai heard the Cub's cry from his vantage point near the outskirts of the city. For the briefest of moments his blood turned cold - this was his first true combat, and the first time he had been anywhere near the White Death. The fear passed, and the Lyran mage quickly cast a few of his specialities before turning to cast a detection spell. The Cub was nearby, Thel'Akhai knew that much, but it was proving difficult to find using the normal means. No matter; the mage turned back to observing the battle, confident that if he could not find the Cub, it would find him. A minute later, he was right. With a deafening cry, Nemesis the Feral leaped from the roof of a nearby building and dove towards the Lyran, claws extended and ready to grab the seemingly unsuspecting mage. The roar of the Albino's rage echoed in Nemesis's ears as he went in for the kill, everything else drowned out. Two feet away from the Lyran's head, Nemesis's claws hit solid air with a tremendous ringing sound. Concentric hexagons rippled outward from the point of impact as the Maenad bounced off the shield spell and tumbled to the ground. Scrambling to his feet, Nemesis snarled at the Lyran. Thel'Akhai gazed placidly at the Maenad, waiting for his next move. Nemesis sprang towards Thel'Akhai again, only to bounce off the shield a second time. The Lyran socreror, for his part, made no sound, only standing as if rooted to the spot. Again and again, Nemesis battered at the shield seperating him from his prey, only to fail to break it. Thel'Akhai broke his silence, cocking his head as Nemesis regrouped for another assault on the shield and said blandly, "You're persistent, I'll give you that. But you lack tactical skill. You see," he mused, "while I am immune to your attacks, -I- can hurt -you-." As he said it, Thel'Akhai cast a simple lightning spell and hurled a bolt at his opponent. Nemesis howled as the electricity washed over his body, sparking off his claws and scorching his hair. The howl trailed off as Nemesis fell to his knees, gasping in pain. The Lyran continued to watch, impassively. "Now," Thel'Akhai mused, "you have a choice. You can accept the natural order of things and submit, or I can kill you. Decide quickly; there's much to be done today and I don't have the time to wait for your little animal mind." Nemesis rose to his feet and stared at the Lyran for a long second. Then he did something that made Thel'Akhai's bland expression freeze. He grinned. Nemesis let out an ear-splitting roar and lunged forward like a cobra. Instead of slamming into Thel'Akhai's shield and rebounding like before, this time the enraged Maenad's claws caught in the center of the field and held there. Thel'Akhai retreated a single step, surprise evident in his posture, as Nemesis pried at the shield like a man trying to force open a pair of sliding doors. The Lyran recovered his compsure quickly and cast another lightning spell, this time twice the strength of his last salvo. This time, the lightning seemed to have no effect. The blue-white sparks washed over Nemesis's body without scorching his skin. For his part, Nemesis continued to pry at the shield, completely ignoring the attack. The spell finally gave under the intense pressure, and with a sound like shattering glass the shield disintegrated. Thel'Akhai stumbled back in shock, left arm raised in an attempt to cast another warding as Nemesis launched forward again. The Maenad's claws flashed out, and Thel'Akhai's outstretched arm was cut off at the elbow. The Lyran screamed, more out of shock than pain, as hs grasped the bleeding stump and saw Nemesis approaching at full speed. A second later, it was over. Nemesis the Feral stood triumphant over the bloody ruin of Thel'Akhai's body, his raised fist clenched around the Lyran's heart. Nemesis cried out in triumph. Then, like generations of wild beasts before him, he began to feed. The crunch of gravel and sound of an action being racked was the first sign that anything was wrong. "Shit," Dee called, ducking across the peak of the roof to the other side as bullets started whining past. Damo was already across, flinging a pair of grenades in the direction of the fire to get people to put their heads down. The machinegun, in its nice sandbagged area, was on the other goddamned side of the roof in view of the squad that had infiltrated the area. "Yup," Damo replied casually, aiming a pair of shots at a soldier who had rushed up as they'd been fired upon to keep him from coming around a corner and firing on their piece of roof. Dee pulled the revolver out of the thigh holster and snapped off a shot at someone thinking about coming around the other side. "Whoever these guys are, they're not bad," Dee muttered. "Stalemate though, kinda. You pin the snipers down, then try to shoot at them... and if that fails..." A gunshot rang out from inside the building. "Yup." "Don't you just love those tripwire shotgun shell things?" Damocles commented with a grin. Dee fired a pair of shots and nodded. "Yeah, but..." there was an explosion. "The great trick was counterweighting a couple so that a frag grenade goes off if you cut the wire." "Don't brag, that just means stalemate, and there's more of them. Figure out a way out of this..." "Ah, crap," KillJoy muttered. There had been a tradeoff in toting a rocket launcher and forgoing additional weapons and armor. On the one hand, he had managed enough additional speed to intercept the troops looking to flank the fight between Mal and Owsen. On the other, he had one shot to use against three Saethrians. He took it, a gout of flame spewing out the back of the launch tube. The pineapple-sized explosive obligingly blew the rightmost Saethrian apart, but the other two objected, swooping down on him, until a huge black blur blindsided the leftmost one, barrelling landing them both on the ground and erupting in a flurry of black and purple fangs, scales, claws, and blood. Trusting that Shad's dragon form had that Saethrian where he wanted it, the huge man dropped the bazooka tube and jumped the remaining monster while it was still confused about the sudden change in odds. Moving with a sudden speed, KillJoy rolled backwards at the same time as he hooked fingers of one hand between segments of the giant bug's carapace, then a moment later kicking up from the ground with both booted feet. With a thud, it changed course, smacking into a building before it could stabilize itself. KillJoy came off not much better and instant later though when, despite its momentum, the second plunged a harpoon into his back as it flew past. The added momentum screwed up the former Lieutenant's movement of flipping back to his feet, but the barbed point sticking out the front of his stomach displeased him even more as he slammed face-first into the ground. "Sonofoabitch," he muttered as he pushed himself back to his feet, breaking off the shaft protruding from his back and then grasping the spearhead and pulling it the rest of the way out. Ignoring the spurts of blood before his body sealed the holes, he spotted the two Saethrians. The first was still lying stunned in the street, while the second was just starting to circle around for another pass. Scooping up a rifle from a fallen enemy, he sprayed that one with fire. The bullets did little to penetrate its heavily armored body, but did hit several of its tentacles and the root of its left wing. With a roar of pain and rage, the giant centipede finished its dive by slamming into KJ. It's been theorized by some in the Jihad that grappling with a Saethrian is one of the dumber things possible. The large mass, large teeth and 4 tentacles and made it a poor dance partner. As it simultaneously wrapped around his lower body with one tentacle, repeatedly stabbed him with the long curved knives in the other two functional ones, and rolled around trying to crush him with its body mass, anyone watching would have concluded that conventional wisdom was right. What was less obvious was that the balance of the damage was going the other way. The knives were glancing off the bone shell under the skin of the former wrestler's chest without doing much more than flesh wounds. In exchange he had stiffened the fingers of his right hand into a point and driven them into a gap between carapace segments, using that to hold himself stable while he pistoned his left fist again and again into another area, the blows beginning to crack an area the size of a dinner plate. Both roared. Realizing full well the way things were going, the Saethrian twisted its mouth around and caught KillJoy's left arm in it before the next blow fell, then started to shake him like a wolf with a rabbit. Jagged teeth tore muscle from his arm, but very quickly the insect realized the downside of biting into something with highly corrosive blood. It spat out the morsel of food and quickly started into the species equivalent of retching in pain. Rolling to his feet, face twisted into a grimace and blood sizzling to the ground, the Jihaddi grabbed a traffic sign with his good hand and pulled with all his might. The decades-old concrete cracked and pulled out in a rough cone about a foot in diameter. Improvised club in hand, he waded back into the fight. His adversary was still trying to spit out the acidic chunks of KJ and barely saw the first blow before the 40 pound chunk of concrete slammed into its head. It didn't see the next dozen as the enormous humanoid bellowed in fury and pounded it one-handed. When it had finally stopped twitching entirely, he looked up from the bloody mess just in time to see a vicious claw swipe tear out most of what passed for the other Saethrian's throat, and it went down. Shadur did not give it time to get back up and leapt into the air, neck curling back then lunging forward like a striking serpent, vomiting forth a torrent of flame and incinerating his opponent. The dragon looked over at him and nodded in acknowledgement, then wheeled around with a sweep of his wings and flew towards the town center. Dee frowned and fed a speed loader into her Smith and Wesson, her last six rounds aside from the speed loader with the special iron rounds she really didn't want to use. Then it was her normal Sig P210 and its two spare magazines, which didn't have the range of the revolver. They had, despite a few casualties, far more ammunition and thus time. If the stalemate went on, the enemy would win... if only there were some way of eliminating the cover factor. "Hmm... hey, got an idea." Dee opened up a her arm computer's warcracking suite, and tabbed to a list of government intelligence providers, some of the most heavily encrypted information around... but at least 5 technological generations below her own computer, kept up to VRDET's state of the art up until it dissolved. "What're you doing?" Damo yelled as he swung his M-14 to fire at a target that should have been hers. She muttered and awkwardly drew her Sig out from her shoulder holster with her left hand. Her right arm, magnum clamped in its grasp, was frozen in place... the cracking program, given top priority, was using enough processing power that even very basic level functions such as movement weren't working. "Sorry, burning a metric shitload of CPU power," she apologized, aiming and firing with her off hand. The recoil, something she'd gotten used to ignoring because of the bionic arm's far greater strength, brought the muzzle up and made her miss the second shot. She bit back an expletive. "You might have to cover my area a bit; I'm temporarily lefty." "Right-o." A minute passed, then the feed from the first satellite came up, remarkable in its clarity despite being taken from orbit. Deciding that since it was watching a town in California it probably wasn't doing anything too important, she sent the intrusion program to get the last few minutes of feed and loop it. She then slewed the cameras to about their current location and brought up both thermal and visible light readouts. "Neat. Okay, I've got sat reece now," she muttered, starting the next part of her idea. "Cool, that mean you're done? I need to reload." Dee fired her magnum in cover as he replaced magazines on his rifle. "Nope, not quite... another half minute." The tech fired another shot with her revolver, then opened up the full suite of programming tools and turned her full attention to the computer. Statistics on the satellites gave her the distance between the cameras, which combined with the angles gave her the distance. Current magnification scales combined with approximate rifle sizes gave a correlation to get the vertical location of things to within about a foot. The next trick was to combine that with Jihad-linker signals to distinguish friend from foe, and finally use all that data to figure out relative positions. Another pair of shots from her left hand; the program was compiling so she could divert her attention. "Almost..." The compiler finished and she ran the program. "Okay!" She squeezed off the last shots from the magnum, holstered it, then swapped her automatic to her right hand and holstered it as well. "Now what?" Damo asked. Dee grinned at the green rectangle superimposed over his torso, then unlsung the cut down railgun that had remained unused since the first mad dash to cover. Chambering a round, she brought it to her shoulder an aimed at one of the red rectangles. Her companion raised an eyebrow at the fact that she was apparently aiming at a random part of the roof that they were sitting on. "Let's hope I got this right is what." There was a crack ad a flash, then in an instant a fist-sized hole appeared, heading straight through the building. Silence followed for a second, then screaming. Dee frowned and opened up the programming tools. "Did it work?" "Mostly, took off a leg. Gimme a sec to code something to correct for shooting through buildings, then we should be able to retake the beltfed." Pupp and Aris were not having the best posisble day. They were crouched down behind the remnants of a low wall, exchanging bullet and magical fire with a small gang of servitors. Neither the Jihaddi nor their enemies had hit much of anything except the landscape, despite several minutes of constant activity. "Goddammit," Aris grumbled, "we're never going to get out of here!" Pupp nodded in agreement, popping up over his cover to throw another fireball... ... when a stray bolt from the blue clipped off the top of Pupp's pointy wizard hat. The battlefield seemed to come to a complete stop for the second it took for the scrap of cloth to flutter to the ground. Pupp blinked as he looked down at what used to be the top of his hat. There was a brief pause in the action as the mage reached up and fingered the charred edges at the top his hat. He scowled and stepped around the wall, right in front of the assembled servitors. "Allright," Pupp growled, pushing up his sleeves, "I've had JUST about ENOUGH of this horseshit! Time for me to unleash my SECRET WEAPON!" The servitors smirked mockingly and readied their weapons. Aris hung back, gunblade at the ready. Pupp jammed his left hand into his coat pocket and rummaged for a second. His hand closed on his secret weapon, pulling it out of the pocket and moved as if to lob a fastball at his enemies. "THINK FAST!" Pupp yelled as he let his secret weapon fly. Everybody tensed as it flew through the air, then tumbled to the ground in a could of dust. When the dust settled a bit, friend and foe alike stared as Pupp's secret weapon proved itself to be a small, yellow apple. The servitors tensed yet again, waiting for the fruit to explode or hatch into a monstrous servant or open a portal for the White Death or whatever. Five seconds passed. Pupp stood there smugly, arms folded, while Aris stood behind him utterly nonplussed. The servitors realized that nothing was happening and burst out laughing. The leader stooped to pick up the fruit, all the better to throw it back at the upstart human idiot before resuming the attack. As the servitor reached out for the apple, though, so did the other three. The four servitors collided, the impact knocking the back. Again, they scrambled for the fruit, only to almost run into each other a second time. Angry-sounding Lyran words filled the air as the four confronted each other, arguing over who got to pick up the apple. The leader barked something in Lyran and pointed his sword at his comrades. Another snarled and drew a pair of wicked long knives from his belt. The third said nothing, but greenish lightning crackled around his fists. The fourth fingered a battleaxe and eyed the leader speculatively. For a moment there was no sound at all, then a sudden gust of wind hit the apple and made it tip over. Things got a bit hectic at that point. Aris eeped and dove for cover as the general area seemed to explode into a whirlwind of black magic and extremely sharp metal. Pupp however remained completely unfazed by the sudden burst of activty, and continued to stand unmoving admist the chaos. Thirty seconds of frantic battle later, and it was all over. The four servitors lay strewn across the street, most of them not entirely in the same configuration they started in. The apple lay undisturbed in the exact center of the devastation. Pupp strode calmy through the wreckage, paying no heed to the ruined servitors. Picking up the apple, he dusted it off on his sleeve. "You know," he mused, sticking the apple back in the pocket from whence it came, "I wasn't -entirely- sure that would work..." Aris picked herself off the ground and stared at Pupp. "And just what the hell was that?!" she demanded. Pupp grinned. "My secret weapon, of course." Aris shook her head. "Right, whatever. Now c'mon, we've wasted enough time as it is. Let's go find out what everybody else is doing." Malaclypse was in a world of pain. Over the years of often-baroque adventures he'd had the opportunity to be injured by professionals several times over. He'd been hurt worse, but not often. The part of his mind not occupied with trying to force down the pain and reknit cracked bones noted ruefully that this was the first time in... oh, ten years or so that he'd been used as a building demolition tool by a deranged parahuman. Of course, the buildings that time had been made of less sturdy material, too. Shaking off the force of the impact, Mal stood and attempted to square off again. Owsen, for his part, was standing five yards away, sword ready and a little half-smile on his face. "Well," Owsen said, "are you going to give me what's mine now? Or do I have to keep it up?" Mal cocked his head a little. "Well," he said with exaggerated thoughtfulness, "after considering the options, I think it's better that you don't get the sword." Owsen sighed. "Pity." His aura flared as he drew back the dark Slayer. Mal tensed, readying himself for the inevitable leap and attack, when Owsen surprised him. Instead of jumping to the attack like he usually did, he swept the dark Slayer out in front of him in a great arc. The violet light of his aura whipped off the sword and lashed out towards the wreck of the building standing next to Mal. Dark magic hit brick with a terrible crashing noise, and Mal looked up, surprised by the sudden change in tactics, to see the wall falling down towards him. The dark Maenad regarded the pile of debris. It wasn't exactly what he'd intended to have happen, but in the end the Jihaddi -did- ask for it. Owsen sighed again, noting that now he'd probably have to dig the information on how to get his sword out of his opponent's corpse, but that was probably easier than continuing to try and beat it out of him... Cecrops Tangaroa had just rounded the corner after dispatching a pair of servitors, just in time to see the building fall on Mal. In the sudden stillness that followed the building's collapse, Tang could clearly see Owsen standing alone in the street. Nobody else appeared to be in the area. Tang ran through his available options, then came to a decision. Owsen had to be stopped, and if nobody else was there... Tang stepped out into the street. "Owsen!" "Hm?" Owsen stopped and peered over his shoulder to eye the intruder. It was a man in black with a few scratches in his face and clothes, someone already weary and wounded who didn't look like much of a threat. Then this one cast a spell, and Owsen got the feeling that he might be fun after all. Tangaroa smiled. Got his attention, now to keep it. He assumed a fighting stance and leveled his fire sword at Owsen. "Lord Tilden Owsen. I am Warrior Cecrops Tangaroa of the Doberman Empire. You killed my commander. I will avenge him." Owsen laughed and turned around to face his challenger. "Will you, now. I'll tell you what, Iniego Montoya; you run away now and I'll let the Scourge take you. Otherwise, hold that thought and I'll be killing you in just a second." "Could we talk about that?" Owsen spit at the unexpected question. "Talk?" he laughed. "No." "Really? 'cause I mean, it seems like there's a lot we could--" "I've done enough talking!" Owsen shouted. "There's nothing more to explain. There's what is which will not be, and *you* will not be!" With that, Owsen raised his sword and charged forward with superhuman speed, a dark purple aura surrounding him. Tangaroa always fought battles with the doctrine of attacking with overwhelming force, but he had never been on the defending end of it. He rose a hand to fire a force beam at the attacking madman, who jumped aside to dodge the expected attack before Tangaroa even launched it. Tang started stepping backwards to keep some of the quickly diminishing distance between the two, then aimed and fired a beam. It hit Owsen squarely, not slowing him down or appearing to affect him at all. Owsen swung the Barney-Slayer at his target, who wisely dodged out of the way. Tang dodged again and risked losing an arm to cast a weak shield in the sword's path. As Tang expected, the enchanted sword cut through the shield as if it wasn't there. As Tang jumped back from another swing, Owsen growled. "Are you going to fight back, or just keep running away like a coward? Tang dodged again. "I prefer to avoid getting hit," he answered, attempting to sound less paniced than he was. "And what of your vengeance for your commander?" "I think he'd want me to win." Tang reached inside his coat as he dodged another swing and fired his pistol from the hip, through his coat, until it clicked, out of ammo. "Fuck." Owsen momentarily glanced down at the already closing holes in his torso, then looked up at Tangaroa and grinned. "My turn." Tang again assumed a fighting stance with his flame sword and tried to exude his best air of false confidence. "Let's see it." He was just about out of tricks, but still had one of his oldest and best. So many fighters in close combat have made the fatal mistake of thinking they could use a physical weapon to block a sword made of magical energy, and Owsen didn't seem like the type to think over such possibilities. Of course, Owsen was also swinging the great sword so quickly and skillfully that it was a minor miracle Tang had survived this far, and Tang might not get a chance to test this theory. Tang ducked low under Owsen's swing and rushed forward, reaching out his free hand to cast a shield to block Owsen's hand from swinging the Slayer back down on him, and rose his flame sword high. Owsen punched him under the arm so hard that Tang was thrown out of the range of Owsen's follow-up swing. Tang coughed and scrambled to his feet, ignoring the pain in his ribs. "Could we try tha-" he started, then quit to dodge as Owsen came upon him. He re-cast his flame sword between dodges and, when he got the chance, tried a swing at Owsen's free hand. Seeing that Owsen saw it coming and not really having the fullest range of motion in that arm anymore, Tang commanded the flame to leap from one hand to another, reforming the blade in his other hand. Owsen hesitated a bit to consider this new development, and Tangaroa struck. Owsen intuitively brought up the Slayer to block Tangaroa's attack. What Tangaroa had hoped to be a kill shot left only a pink streak on Owsen's face which soon cleared to pale flesh. "That was a mistake." Owsen steamed. "Yes. Yes it was." Tangaroa agreed. Owsen charged again, and Tang desperately tried to come up with a new course of action while he more importantly tried to stay alive in the immediate term. Being so afraid of the sword, Tangaroa didn't react quickly enough to throw up a shield when Owsen feinted and punched him in the face. Owsen followed up with a roundhouse kick that threw Tang through the air, landing him some distance in the dirt. Owsen twirled his sword around and calmly stepped towards the fallen Dobe, whistling as he approached. Tang glanced up, and seeing that Owsen wasn't attacking, took his time getting back on his feet. Owsen smiled as the Dobe straightened himself to stand toe to toe with him. He idly poked the cursed Barney-Slayer into the dust and looked his weary opponent in the eye. "If you don't mind, I'm going to kill you now. Even if you do mind, actually." "Why?" Owsen made a frustrated noise. "They always ask that," he growled. "In your case it's because you were STUPID and you got-" He drove the fist holding the dark Slayer straight into Tang's stomach, knocking the wind out of him. "-in-" Owsen followed it up by bringing his other hand, clenched in a fist, up in a right cross to the Doberman's jaw. "-my-" He shoved the stunned Jihaddi backwards and opened his empty hand, his aura of purple light flaring up. "-WAY!" Owsen let a surge of power rush out from his hand, creating a concussion wave that picked Tangaroa up and threw him down the road. He landed in painful tangle of limbs, tumbling head over heels until he came to a stop on his back ten yards away from where he started. He stalked over to Tang's landing spot and glowered at his fallen foe. "Hmph," the dark Maenad grunted, "they just do -not- make Dobermans like they used to." Finally, Owsen stood over Tangaroa's battered body, preparing to strike the final blow. "Any last words?" Owsen inquired. "Speak now or forever hold your peace." "Just a minute." the Dobe groaned. "You don't get a minute." Tang glowered at Owsen. "Ah. Then go to hell." Owsen smirked. "Been there," he replied, "done that." He lifted his sword in order to cleave the meddling Jihaddi's head right down the middle. Tangaroa, for his part, attempted to maintain eye contact with his attacker through the red haze of pain. "Ah well," said Owsen, "one less human for the Scourge to ta-WAGH!" Owsen's statement broke off in mid-sentence as a black blur slammed into his right side in a perfect tackle, throwing the deranged Maenad to the ground. The dark copy of the Barney-Slayer tumbled to the ground only inches from Owsen's grasp as he struggled with his opponent. The two rolled away from Tang, finally breaking apart several yards down the street. Owsen pushed himself to his hands and knees, and blinked, surprised, at the battered, dusty face of his opponent, who had come to a fighting crouch in the middle of the street. "Pick up your blade, you Irish fuck." Malaclypse the Seeker growled as his staff reappeared in his hands, "I am not finished with you yet." Owsen thrust out his arm, his violet aura flickering into life for an instant. The dark Slayer twitched, then flew from its resting place to land in Owsen's outstretched hand. "You'll regret your insolence, whelp." he muttered as he stood. "Well, come ahead if you're going to, Owsen." Mal taunted. "Unless you'd like to stand there like the -puppet- you are." Owsen stiffened, his aura flaring up. With a roar of rage, he launched himself forward. At the same time, Mal sprung out of his crouch, letting Owsen's first wild swing pass harmlessly over his head, then let his staff sweep out across the enraged Maenad's feet, tripping him up. Using the momentum from the now-falling Owsen, Mal grabbed his opponent's leg and swung, hard. The ultimate effect of this was to send Owsen headfirst into the pile of rubble that used to the the general store. "Guh, argh, rrr..." Owsen sputtered, as he attempted to right himself. "When I get out of here, I'm... I'm..." "Getting old?" Mal inquired, a cold smile on his face. Owsen went rigid again. Mal shifted his stance, waiting for the next berserker attack, but instead Owsen did something that surprised him. Owsen laughed, a loud, deep laugh. "Oh," he chortled, "when we're done with this dance, I am -so- going to enjoy carving all of your insults onto your hide. We'll have hours of fun, you and I. But first..." The deranged Maenad's aura flared violently into life, scorching the rubble as Owsen levitated out of the pile and returned to face his enemy. "First we have to finish this little charade. Now -give me what's mine-." The deranged Maenad threw himself towards his enemy, throwing all of his Lyran-given energy into the attack. Mal parried frantically, trying to keep his guard up as the attacks rained down faster and faster. Owsen had fought well before, but now he fought like a man posessed - which, a small corner of Mal's mind mused, was probably pretty accurate. The battle continued for some minutes, Owsen's strength seeming to build even as Mal started to get tired. The other Jihaddi, fresh from wrapping up their own combat with Owsen's reinforcements, emerged from the wreckage of the city and watched silently as the duel raged. Mal managed to get strikes in from time to time, but the ferocity of Owsen's attacks kept him from following up on them. The battle continued like this for another few tense moves, as the spectators waited for somebody to make a mistake. The mistake finally happened when Mal overextended on a parry and left himself wide open. Owsen saw it a split second before Mal realized it and prepared to relieve his opponent of his head. Mal saw the rage on Owsen's face change to glee, and realized what he'd done. Mal jerked his head back hard, just enough to keep from losing his head, but not far enough to avoid the tip of Owsen's sword. The blade carved a narrow line across Mal's left cheek, bare milimeters from destroying his eye. Mal roared in sudden pain, falling out his defensive stance. Owsen cackled with triumph and unleashed his magical power on his adversary. Mal had just enough time to realize that his head wasn't indeed going to spit in two when a wall of violet light hit him like a speeding truck, picked him up, and threw him to the ground. The battleground was still for a long note as the dust cleared, revealling Mal, obviously stunned by the blow, wobbily rising from the ground. Owsen hauled Malaclypse up by his shirt and held him off the ground. "What's the matter, -boy-?" Owsen sneered. "No glib remarks? No pithy comebacks? No defiance in the face of your death? I'm disappointed. I expected more from a Jihaddi." Mal's unfocused expression evaporated as he straightened and locked eyes with Owsen. Mal smiled viciously. "What's the frequency, Kenneth?" he said, and he triggered his last trick. The microscopic laser array concealed in the rims of Mal's eyeglasses activated, focused on what Mal was looking at, and fired. Several thousand tiny beams of coherent light shot out from around Mal's eyes and concentrated right inside Owsen's pupils. The beams burned through his retinas and impacted directly on the optic nerves, blinding him instantly. The charge lasted only a thousandth of a second, but it was more than enough. All Owsen saw was a flash of blue light, then darkness and incredible pain as his nervous system caught up to the damage. Owsen shrieked, a high, piercing sound, dropping Mal and his sword as he brought both hands up to clutch at his eyes. Mal tumbled to the ground, rolling back a few yards into a fighting stance, recalling his staff. Owsen continuted to stumble around blindly, back to Mal. "ARRRRGHDAMN you... GODDAMN you..." Owsen growled, groping for his sword. "KILL you... EAT you, eat your FAMILY, eat your CHILDREN, eat EVERYTHING... Eating life, shitting SKULLS. You'll PAY, damn you." His hands found the hilt of the sword, and with a flash of violent light he spun. His eyes were hidden behind pools of violet light, the same light now surrounding him like a corona. Owsen bared his teeth - no longer grinning, this was the gesture of a beast. He screamed and charged towards Mal, sword held high. Mal held his ground. Drawing his twin plasma pistols, he thumbed their overcharge switches. The whine of the guns' capacitors charging to well over their rated limit blended with the deranged Maenad's howling. Mal straight-armed both pistols, aiming carefully, then closed his eyes. Owsen continued to close the distance. And then Mal pulled the triggers. There was a flash of white light and a terrible, sudden roar. There was a terrible, sudden silence. The dark copy of the Barney-Slayer fell from Owsen's hands. Owsen's headless body pitched forward, landing on top of the sword with a muffled thud. Mal dropped to his knees in a seiza-like stance, limply holding onto the guns. The other Jihaddi emerged cautiously from the combat zone, eyes and weapons ready for any stragglers. They slowly gathered around the tableau in the center of the street. Mal opened his eyes and looked into their faces, one by one. He smiled faintly. "Well done, my friends," he said softly. "Well done indeed. We've all done very well today." VRDET HQ BLANCA MOUNTAIN, COLORADO 7:50 PM LOCAL TIME The mood at Blanca that night was distinctly odd. There was the post-battle thrill of surviving, coupled with a good deal of straight-up fatigue and pain. Added to that was the fact that they'd killed one of the original Seven. However much of a good thing it had been, there was still that wrinkle. The first place most people had headed was the infirmary. Nobody had come out of the battle unscathed, though some reacted better than others. KillJoy reached for the duct tape, Aris started pounding N!!thren'das, Lacroix was trying to ignore the ringing noise in his ears and Mal waited with disquieting good cheer as Minerva and the automatic medical facilities stitched, bandaged, and epoxied him up. Since everyone was clustered around for one injury or another, that's where Mal decided to hold the post-catastrophe meeting. "Question one should be," he said as soon as everyone had been patched up enough to gather around, "What have the Mundanes seen?" "I'm picking up a little chatter," Minerva said. "The sheriff’s department is out there taking a look, but so far nobody else." "What are they saying?" "They're confused, but not dangerously so. The money's on asteroid impact right now." "What I want to know," Damocles said, waving a bandaged arm, "is what we're going to do with *that*." *That* was the dark Barney-Slayer, propped against the wall next to Mal. Its bright twin was scabbarded and lying on a shelf next to it. Dee cleared her throat and said nervously, "I hope the Lyrans can't trace its location." "I gave it a scorching before we brought it here," Pupp said. "That should have broken any links. I think. I haven't had too much experience with Lyran-corrupted Owsenite." Everyone winced a bit at that. "The Lyrans already know where we are," Mal reminded them. "Or at least Owsen did. Nonetheless, we should put it somewhere secure, and this is as secure as we get. I'll put it in storage in Sublevel 2. That should fool even a Lyran tracking spell." "So what do we *do* with it?" Damo demanded again. "Hey," Aris said, staring at the two swords with childlike interest, "Maybe we should try putting them together. Then maybe they'll merge and turn into a super-claymore ultimate weapon with lasers or something!" There was a brief, awkward pause. "It's possible," Mal said thoughtfully. "It's also possible that they could react like matter and antimatter and blow up the state." Aris' face fell. Mal smiled. "Tell you what. I'll file it as Proposal Form Blazing Sword and we'll hang onto it as a last resort, okay?" "Groovy." "So we're just gonna keep it?" Damo said. Mal nodded. Katze piped up, "It's probably better to have it under surveillance. And we definitely want to keep the original. Just in case..." She trailed off. Nobody really wanted to think just in case *what*. Shadur cleared his throat and adjusted his sling. "I move we formally reconvene the Jihad." Felton shot him a glance, then looked around. "We're still missing Mel." "Right," Aris said. "Pupp, you're promoted." "Guh?" Puppeteer said, nearly rocking back out of his seat. "But... but Katze's been here longer than I have!" "Point." Aris looked over. "Katze?" "Uhh..." Katze blinked a couple of times. "Well, he's right, I do have more experience. But shouldn't Mal... I mean," she said, turning to Mal, "you had the job before." "Not interested." That tone brooked no argument. Aris and Shad traded a look. Shad nodded silently. "Great," Aris said. "Katze, you are hereby raised to the position of Triumvir Praetor, with all the powers and responsibilities inherent in the office. Pupp, you're Katze's adjunct now." Aris grinned. "Shad requested we reconvene. I vote yes." Katze took a deep breath. "Yes." "Yes," Shad said. "Adjuncts?" "Yeah, sure," Pupp said. "Aye," Felton said. "That makes it official." "Great," Tang said sardonically. "So what does that mean in real terms?" "For one that we can order you around," Shad said. "He's right, though," Katze said. "We don't have any sort of official structure any more. And some of us have lives." "Okay, so we take a break." Shad looked at Aris sideways. "We just reconvened the Jihad, and you already want to take a vacation?" She spread her hands. "I'm serious. Those of you with actual lives need some time to get things in order. The rest of us can do cleanup, try and get some surprises in place in case the Wyrm does come back, and do intel work. In the meantime, keep eyes open and come back here every so often to exchange notes. Now that the Gate's up, that'll be a lot easier." "Are we recruiting people again?" Dee asked. "Good question," Katze said. "We don't know if the Wyrm is actually back yet," Mal said. "If I can suggest a course of action, we should determine that before opening our doors to members again." "Okay. So we should spend some time trying to figure that out," said Katze. "How about we meet here in a couple months to formally compare information and hash out a new plan of attack?" "That long?" Dee asked, blinking. "Life-patching-up and information-gathering takes time," Aris said. "And in an emergency we can all Gate in here." "I have to get to Japan and back," Tang said. "Though with the Gate, it'll be a bit easier..." "Right. We all have things to do and new cover stories to invent," Katze said. "I'm going to be needing one of those," Lacroix said. "If I'm going to have to be on duty here at all, I'm kind of going to have to explain why I'm skipping out on teaching for the rest of the semester. Or irregularly during it, for that matter." "Oh, that's easy,” Minerva said. "What were you going to do over the Easter holiday?" "Well, I had planned on catching up on the Pile," Lacroix said, alluding to the mountain of as-yet ungraded assignments and other busywork every high school teacher had to deal with. Minerva's facial expression went distant for a moment; she was either deep in thought or interfacing with the base computer network. "No, you hadn't," she said at length. "Uh?" Lacroix uhhd. "Yes I -" "You went back home to – Quebec, right? – for the holiday to meet with some friends and relatives," Minerva said, a tone of amusement in her voice. "Unfortunately, while you were there you got involved in a tragic and spectacular car accident. Everyone will come out of it alright, but it seems that you're going to be bouncing between a few hospitals and specialists for the next, oh, three months. You'll be back by the start of the next school year, of course, apologizing for the timing." Lacroix gaped at Minerva. "But -" "Joseph, you're a Canadian citizen and a Canadian citizen only in reality. *To* reality, you're an American ex-Marine Gulf War veteran with a Purple Heart. Considering the Jihad managed to slip twenty thousand fictitious lives without a slip-up, do you *really* think it's going to be hard for me to fake a car accident?" Everyone laughed at Lacroix's somewhat sandbagged expression. "Well... point. Go for it, as long as I don't have to *actually* break anything," he added with a chuckle. "That's one settled," Katze said. "If anyone else needs a cover, we know who to ask. In the meantime, let's all get some sleep, and make sure the Mundanes didn't pick up on that fight before we all decide to go home." "All right, people, time for drinks and Red Dwarf in the officer's lounge!" Aris crowed, levering herself off her bed. She then collapsed in a heap as her knees gave out. "Erm," she said as Shad gave her a hand up. "Maybe we should just call it an early night instead." The next afternoon everyone kept an eye on the news as they prepared to take off for home. Aris and KJ turned out the stores in order to find equipment for everyone; replacements for lost 'linker chargers and light body armor were the biggest requests. It wasn't until two that Minerva announced she'd started seeing mentions on the news. The Jihaddi headed to the briefing room, clustering around the display as CNN ran down the list of events. "This is Chet Hugelarge reporting from Dry Well, Nevada," babbled the newsmuppet, "where government officials are reporting that an asteroid hit this ghost town and destroyed most of its center. The object was seen by a number of people streaking over the western United States before it finally came to rest here, just near the center of town. As you can see behind me--" Mal turned off the screen. "Well, it looks like the Secret remains a secret for another day. That was a close one." The other Jihaddi nodded. Either the authorities hadn't realized that the blast patterns looked very little like a meteor strike, or they weren't telling. "So," Mal said. "We can start Gating people home as soon as you're ready." He swept a stern glare over the assembled. "Keep your 'linkers with you and charged up. They're the best means we have of locating you in an emergency." A chorus of "Yes, Mal"s answered him. As the others headed out the door, he leaned back in his chair and breathed a small sigh of relief. "Boss?" He looked up to see Minerva, a slightly worried expression on her face. "Yes?" "About Agharti?" Oh, yes, that. "Leave things as they are." Minerva looked even more worried. "Until September?" "Oh, it won't be all that bad." He smiled reassuringly. "I know what I'm doing." OFFICES OF THE STATE DEPARTMENT WASHINGTON, D.C. THURSDAY, APRIL 15, 2004 Laurel Eisenhower had a new large stack of paper on her desk. This wasn't too unusual; her desk was the dumping ground of the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, the place that weird casefiles went to die. And ever since the DHS has suggested a few reforms to streamline intelligence gathering, her desk had become the dumping ground for the rest of the US intelligence world as well. The one time she'd managed to get moved to an active unit after three years of poking through files filled with UFO sightings, she'd watched a man jump off a building and turn into a dragon. At that point she'd decided to go back to digging through other people's dementia instead of trying to deal with her own. So here were a bunch more UFO sightings for her to look through today. Bright purple comets sighted in small towns from Pennsylvania to New Mexico. And speaking of New Mexico, here was a summary of what the FBI had pulled out of the buildings in Dry Well after that meteor strike. Scorch marks? Bullet holes? Men turning into dragons? She got out a map of the United States and started plotting all the towns where the sightings occurred. When she was done she had a picture of a bright purple object moving at the speed of a ballistic missile from Pennsylvania towards Dry Well, Nevada. The next file was thankfully unconnected with bright lights in the sky. It involved an eyewitness report of monsters in the sewers of New York City. Large, gray, scaly lizard monsters. Apparently one of them had asked the sewer worker where the rest of the "Zuh-hurk battle force" was before he'd turned and fled. Laurel sighed and picked up the next report. It was going to be a long night. FAR, FAR AWAY... "The Herald is dead." Silence. The servitor knelt, trembling, in the darkness, hoping that his master would not simply strike him down for the news. AND THE OTHERS? Relief. Although his master's voice always conjured fear, the servitor would have at least a few more fleeting moments of life. "We have... news, my lord. Of a few living. But we did not find any great number of them." The servitor knew better than to look up, but he got the faint impression that his master was pleased with the news. GOOD. WE WILL PROCEED. As the servitor scurried out the door, Charn'El, High Mage of Lyra, leaned back on his throne and smiled. TO BE CONTINUED */ Masamichi Amano "Preview Of The Next Episode" _Giant Robo I_ /* NEXT EPISODE: The treasonous Lord Owsen may have been dealt with, but what other devilish devices will the High Mage unleash on our heroes? The Jihad to Destroy Barney wil face off against their toughest foe ever, when a conspiracy at the highest levels brings them face to face with the darkness! Tune in next time for THE DAY IT FELL APART, coming soon to http://www.jihad.net/