HAIBANE-RENMEI: CORPORATION

Chapter 15

Moths to a Flame

By R. A. Stott

"Ow! Owwww!" Amethyst yelled as he plunked the child he was carrying down to the ground. "Stop biting me, brat!"

The possessed form of Koni glared up at the suit and tie. "Show some care on how you put a toddler down!" the soul of Miho barked back from inside her. "Where are we? Why did you bring me here?"

"Yes, why did you bring her here?" they heard before Amethyst could reply. They found Bloodeagle seated nearby in a lotus position, or what had been one, as the ruckus of their arrival had broken her concentration. She was peeking at them with her left eye from under her mask. "And why is Miho inside the baby?" she added.

"Filthy barbarian, do you live here?" he groused at the crossed legged ex-Haibane. "I brought her here because I need the body, but not the soul that's currently inside it." He gave Bloodeagle a wave of his hand to shoo her away from her position over Sinner's Rock, but found his added psychic jolt wrapping around and passing her by. A tree behind her violently shook, with numerous branches breaking loose and tumbling away into a field behind it.

Bloodeagle saw a message come up on her mask's data relay – 'VIOLATION' blinked merrily away in an annoyingly red glare that would cause seizures in some if watched too long. She tapped the side of the mask to make it stop.

"Uh oh, you're in trouble now!" she growled at the Celestial as she gathered Koni/Miho up after the child scampered over to her. There was a clap of thunder behind her where the mangled tree stood. When she looked back, she found a blond-haired woman in robes standing there with an extremely cross look on her painted face. Her forehead and cheek markings glowed, and she spun a stick about that grew into a double-ended mace staff that she stamped on the ground with sparks flying.

"Aw great, look what you did now," Bloodeagle grumbled. "You brought in a goddess."

"Hlin the Protector," Amethyst growled. "What brings the second in command of the Seventh down to this lowly place? Where is your leader?"

She spun her staff around and pointed it at the Celestial. "You triggered a class 2 alert, Amethyst," she said in a calm but angered tone. "You are in violation of the Treaty of Set. And as for my mistress, she is busy with the catastrophe you stole this child from."

"See?" Bloodeagle harped. "You were a bad boy! Stealing this poor child away from her protectors!"

She heard the staff tap the ground behind her lightly and looked back. The goddess was shaking her head no.

"That is not what he violated," she stated. Bloodeagle slid her mask to the top of her head and blinked at her.

"That isn't?" she asked. "Then what did he do?"

"He attacked you with an energy wave in an attempt to move you aside," she pointed out. "You and your brother are not allowed to be hindered in your duties in any way by either side's representatives."

It took Bloodeagle a moment to figure out who 'her brother' was – when it dawned on her, she felt a bit ill to think of Washi in that way.

Amethyst sighed and looked at the back of his right hand. "Hlin, I am on a mission for the Phoenix Guild, and what I do while on it IS covered by the Treaty of Set.

She stamped the staff again. "That is for the Phoenix to decide, not its underling," she replied.

"Oh dear," the suit said. "A stalemate. Then I suggest that we contact our leaders for better clarification."

"Agreed," Hlin said. She placed her attention in the direction of the starship and concentrated.

Katherine looked up. She was still in the lounge with her counterpart and the children from Old Home that had been rescued from the collapse.

"Hlin?" she asked aloud. Gabrella took notice.

"Great, if having a demon hunter poking about wasn't bad enough," the demon goddess grumbled. "What's the Shield of the Seventh want?"

"Shield of the what?" Koi asked. Gabrella tossed a thumb towards the goddess beside her.

"Hlin the Protector," she casually stated. "Her second in command of the Seventh Realm."

"Seventh Realm?" which perplexed the boy. "She is the leader of a realm?"

Gabrella snickered. "Now wouldn't that be a sin? No, that's the name of her division of troops she leads. 'The Seventh Garrison of the Holy Father and Domain' I believe the proper name for her group is. They go by the name 'Seventh Realm' in honor of the seven sections of that place they're from."

Katherine turned away from the others and concentrated. She sighed and looked back on the Basement's rep.

"Hlin reports that Amethyst violated the Treaty of Set in some way and they need a decision on it," she said in an exasperated tone. She saw a smile pass over Gabrella's face, which worried her.

"Oh, there's your chance to cozy up with that Celestial!" the demon goddess giggled. "You were looking for a reason to meet up with him, weren't you?"

"WE were looking for information out of him, not for me to pass judgment," Katherine glared at her. She sighed again and tweaked her chains that dangled from her ear. "Very well, Hlin – transfer up here and I'll come down there… we can't have both of us there at the same time."

"Whoa!" Koi said as the shape of the goddess seemed to simply change from the regal-looking garbed leader of the Seventh to the slightly larger bob-cut warrior that now stood before them.

"Madame Secretary," Hlin said to Gabrella with a nod.

"Protector," the demon replied. "Where is your staff?"

Hlin still had her right hand in the position of holding something. "I left it down there for my leader to use in my stead."

Gabrella gave her a wary eye. "Has she ever used a staff like that?" she asked. "She is kind of a newbie at these things, you know."

Due to her height being slightly smaller than her second in command, and that she had not expected the pole-like weapon to be there still, the staff fell over like a newly cut tree as Katherine attempted to grab at it. As it pounded the ground, the two ends extended to twice its original length, nearly clipping the feet out from under Amethyst.

"Oh! I'm terribly sorry!" she exclaimed as she bent down to pick up the errant weapon. "I did not expect my second to have left this for me!"

"Oh tut tut," the man in the suit said and he assisted in lifting it up, allowing the rod to shrink back down to its smaller, less cumbersome size. "Accidents will happen!"

"Thank you," she said as she looked up at the man. This was the first time she had actually met Amethyst face to face. He was tall, wore an immaculate suit and had the most amazing green-blue eyes.

"Tut tut?" Bloodeagle asked out of the side of her mouth. She had seen plenty of this ego-in-a-suit Celestial, and 'tut tut' was not in his normal vocabulary. Neither was 'accidents will happen' – at least, not in the way he was now saying it. She slipped her mask down and examined the glowing pair.

"Huh," she said, turning the mask's filter up to twelve as she had before to be able to even look at Amethyst. Both of them were radiating energy, though the Celestial's had turned a decided blue over the freakishly bright red it had been. But it now seemed to also be entangling itself with that of the goddess', which was a pale yellow. A green haze was starting to surround the two of them as the energies mixed.

Hlin twitched. "Uh oh," she said.

Gabrella looked closely at the goddess. "What now?" she moaned, not really needing more trouble at this moment. She saw her tapping on a necklace that was dangling around her neck. "What is that, one of those Doorknob things?"

Hlin nodded. "I knew I was going to be confronting a Celestial when I was summoned by the breach of the treaty, so I put this on. M'lady Katherine is not wearing one!"

"A Doorknob?" Koi the reporter asked.

Gabrella smirked. "A device the folks from this ship we're on came up with so that energy-based creatures like us don't interfere with each other. I take it, she's being interfered with?"

Hlin again nodded. "I must return to my leader's side! I request permission to violate the treaty to do so."

"Aren't you already in violation by just being here?" Koi pointed out.

Gabrella pointed to the floor. "This ship is neutral territory," she stated. "Give me that thing – I'll go down," she told the Protector. "It's less of a violation if I do it."

Hlin looked down at her unit hanging from her neck. She then stepped over to the wall to a small red square and tapped on it. "S.A.M., request two Doorknob units, this location."

"Verification?" the computer asked.

"Hlin, second ranked, first class license, level delta," she told it.

A small door slid open on what looked to have been a solid wall. Two new necklaces were inside.

"Two?" Gabrella asked. Hlin handed them to her.

"Unless you want a headache when you arrive, you'll want to be wearing one of these," she told her. "I understand, Madame Secretary, that your type tend not to mix well with Celestials."

Gabrella looked at her with a bit of wonder. She quickly snatched one of the units and slung it over her head and turned it on. Instantly she no longer 'felt' the presence of the goddess before her.

"I'd say to turn it down slightly," Hlin suggested, "but the feeling I'm getting from down there, best you keep yours maxed."

Gabrella looked at her with wide eyes. She gave the control on it a slight turn lower and felt about. There was a serious energy spike brewing below them, which made her quickly turn it back up. She took the other necklace from Hlin and stepped back a bit.

She then grinned. "This I've gotta see!" she laughed, and vanished in a puff of smoke.

Hlin sighed knowing that was not the best choice to make, but was less of a violation of the treaty by sending her. She looked over at the children in the room with her.

The new lady seemed to tower over them. The small boy and girl continued to cling to the teenage boy, who was simply scowling at her. She returned to the red square on the wall and tapped on it.

"Anyone hungry?" she asked them.

Gabrella arrived at Sinner's Rock to a slightly shocking sight. Amethyst and Katherine locked in an embrace – and KISSING!

"Wow," she said. "I wish I had a camera…" She snapped her fingers and instantly had one. "Oh, there it is!" and cheerfully started clicking pictures of the pair.

"Gabby, what the hell is going on?" she heard. She looked over at the pair on the ground.

"What is the baby doing here?" she asked Bloodeagle. She pointed to the man who was still sharing an extra-long snog with the goddess.

"Mr. Suit decided to kidnap her to find out what his master wants her for it would seem," she told her. "He would have easily done so as well, if Miho wasn't in her right now."

Gabrella stepped over to them and glared down on the child. "Miho, first you're in Koi up there, and now you're in Koni?"

"Well, when I left him, I found something closer than Sinner's Rock to transfer into," the baby said. "And, it would seem I can communicate while I'm in here."

Gabrella looked closer at Koni/Miho. "Yes, but right now, you're STANDING on Sinner's Rock. It should have slurped you up as soon as you stepped on it, which is probably why he brought you here. Not that I should ask you to do so, but can you vacate her?"

Miho looked about. The two powerful people were still at it behind the demon, and seeing her tiny feet standing on the marble slab that Sinner's Rock lay below, the strangeness of it all was starting to play on her. She reached down and pressed her hand against the dirty stone plank and concentrated.

"Oh my!" she exclaimed. "I'm stuck!"

Charm was looking at the path Rakka was taking them. Was she mad?

"Please be careful, Rachel!" the Haibane called back to her as she started up the trail that barely looked like a foot wide ledge along a rock face. Many yards below was the river that split this valley. And now she was sliding along with her back to the wall, creeping along and not looking down.

"Rob, only for you," Charm/Rachel whispered to herself. She started behind Rakka.

"This is nuts!" she declared with a slight laugh. "Hasn't anyone ever thought to digging this path into the wall a bit to make it slightly easier to use?"

"I get the feeling that the Renmei left it this way on purpose," Rakka replied. "It's quite the deterrent to those that shouldn't be up here."

"How often do you have to take this path?" Rachel asked her as she watched some of the edge fall down into the river below.

"Daily," she said. "I normally work down in the tunnels below the wall. My primary access is the entryway up here at the Temple."

"This is crazy!" 'Rachel' yelled, and heard a repeat of herself come from the other side of the gorge.

"Oh! That's neat!" Rakka exclaimed. "I never thought of yelling here before! Listen to that echo!"

"...listen to that echo!" came back to her delight. Charm groused.

"Tell me Rakka, how much stuff do we need to carry back?" she asked her guide.

"One of us needs to carry the halo mold, while the other carries the light leaf paste materials," she explained. "I could do it by myself, but it's always better to go in pairs."

"Go in pairs," 'Rachel' mumbled. She looked at her feet. "This is a freakin' leap of faith!"

"Oh, speaking of leaps of faith," she heard Rakka muse. "Watch your step here."

Charm looked at where her new friend was going, and saw her straddling a section where the little path they were shimmying up had broken away and was now in the water below.

'THIS IS FREAKIN' CRAZY!' rang through Charm's head. She took a deep breath to compose herself. 'This is for Kinza, this is for Kinza…' she began to repeat to herself.

A half hour later, and she saw as they came around a bend, the waterfall next to the Temple – WHICH WAS ON THE OTHER SIDE!

"How… how do we get to the Temple? We're on the wrong side!" she yelped.

Rakka pointed to the bottom of the now descending path. "There's a rope bridge down there!" she shouted over the roar of the falls. "Aw what's he doing?" she then added.

"What?" 'Rachel' asked. Looking over Rakka's head, she could see that someone was coming up the path they were taking. She then saw her start gesturing with her hands.

"What are you doing?" she asked her. "Who is that?"

"It's one of the Toga from the Temple," Rakka explained while signing. "They speak in hand gestures."

Charm saw the man waving his hands about. This brought on a flurry of swatting motions from Rakka, who seemed to be loosing her cool.

"He's telling us that we have to backtrack and let him by," she explained to 'Rachel'.

"Is he nuts? He's only a few yards into the path! Tell him to go back!" She watched as the man continued to advance.

"I'm trying, but he's being stubborn," Rakka said while continuing to flap her hands about. "We are on a special mission for Washi," she began to say as she signed. "Let us by!"

The man stopped a few yards away. Now all he was doing was pointing back up the trail, trying to get the girls to go back so he could proceed. Charm snorted at this imbecile.

"WE HAVE the right of way!" Rakka demanded with her hands. The Toga shook his head, pounded his chest and again pointed for the girls to go back.

"Oh for the love of…" Rakka heard 'Rachel' growl. She then saw a shadow pass over her head. As she looked up, she saw her partner doing a back flip over her. She landed on the path directly in front of the Toga, making him take a step back.

"I DON'T CARE IF I'M NOT SUPPOSED TO TALK TO YOU!" she shouted at the gagged man. "GET YOUR BUTT BACK DOWN THERE!" She proceeded to spin him about and kick him back down the path.

"Rachel, please!" Rakka pleaded. "You'll get us in trouble with the Renmei!"

"Then I'll have a few choice words for them as well, if this is how they treat the Haibane!" 'Rachel' yelled between punts. At the bottom of the hill they got off the trail, and Charm bid the man with the sore tail-end the use of the path.

"You'd better not be on it when we come back!" she added. She looked behind her to see a wide-eyed Rakka staring at her.

"How did you jump over me like that?" she asked her in awe.

"I took gymnastics," 'Rachel' lied. Sometimes her Team Rocket training came in handy. It came into play again when her sharp scrutinizing eye noticed something behind Rakka. "What is that?" she asked.

Rakka looked back behind herself. "Umm, bushes," she said.

"No, behind the bushes," 'Rachel' said as she climbed through them.

The opening of a tunnel greeted her. She walked a few feet in past a curve and looked down its maw towards the far end. It was only a speck at this range, but it obviously was daylight at the far end.

"Aw, you've GOT to be KIDDING ME!" she shouted. She looked behind herself to see Rakka coming up as well, who squeaked in shock.

"W-where did this come from?" she asked. "They've had me risk that path when there was this all along?"

"Somehow, I get the feeling that they may have forgotten it was here," 'Rachel' stated. "Otherwise, why would a Toga be venturing up the path like we did?" She looked down and saw tire tracks – something two wheeled, and rapid from the smudging of the dusty ground. "Someone knows of it though," she added.

Rakka looked at the tracks. "That's our scooter!" she exclaimed. "What was that doing here?" She then remembered back when Striker Aries had been forcibly released from his captivity in the wall, Professor Ptolemy, who had just returned to them as a hatchling from a cocoon, had driven up here on the Vespa.

"It was Pop-pop!" she yelped. "Why didn't he tell me about this? Then again, Cinder had ridden with him, and she didn't say anything either. Oh well, it had been a rather busy day… but really…" She saw 'Rachel' shading her eyes as she stared down the long straight shaft. "What is it?" she asked her.

"I'm trying to figure if this is up hill or down," she said. "Notice how it looks like it goes down?"

Rakka squinted. "You're right," she agreed. "We're at the bottom of the path, and we know we descended. That must be an optical illusion."

"Right, which means one hell of a climb," 'Rachel' noted. "That might be a reason why no one uses this."

"It's still safer than that path!" Rakka said with conviction. "Come on, we've got to get to the Temple."

Charm huffed at the tunnel – at least getting back should be easier for her, though probably not for Rakka. Her android legs could easily climb that steep incline, but Rakka certainly did not have that luxury. She then noticed a track running the length of the left side of the tunnel near the floor. It led into a door that was just before the curve. She looked about to see if Rakka was still about. Seeing that she was clear, she attempted to open the door. When it failed to budge due to rust and age, she gave it a sharp yank and popped the lock. Inside was a cart that when pulled out engaged the rail. To her surprise, when she pulled back on the single handle, it lurched up the rail as the small dash lit up.

"Rachel?" she heard Rakka call. "Oh, what is that?" she asked as she came back around the corner.

"A service cart," she explained. "I guess this answers if this is an uphill climb." She closed the locker with a shove that popped the lock back into the door frame. "Let's get going."

Leaving the tunnel and looking at their next adventure made Charm wish she had not said those words. A storm up stream was making the falls dump more water than normal, as it was sending a constant wash across the center of the rope span.

"Oh, I hate it when it does this," complained Rakka. "It makes the middle so slippery." She started across. Charm gave her a few yards lead before following. She stuffed her tablet/book under her shirt in an attempt to keep it dry.

Rakka gingerly placed her feet flat against the slats as she approached the center of the span. She could feel the algae squish out from under her shoes.

"Are you okay up there?" she heard from behind.

"I hate this, I hate this, I hate this!" Rakka mumbled to herself. "Careful!" she shouted back to 'Rachel'. "I feel my feet compressing into the boards up here!"

"It makes me wonder if they have a safer way past the falls like they have for the path back there!" 'Rachel' called back. "What's that behind the falls up there?"

Rakka looked over her shoulder. 'Rachel' was looking at an opening closer towards the top of the falls. "Oh, that's just the opening to the tunnels that run through the walls. That's where I work!"

Looking up like that where Rakka was walking was a bad idea as she failed to put her foot down flat against the boards. It slipped forwards, and she found herself falling back first onto the slats, which caused her to loose her grip on the rope sides. The bridge's recoil flung her up slightly in the direction of her step, and she was tossed over the edge.

"OHHH-OOPMF!" she yelped as she suddenly was snagged by her belt. She attempted to look over her shoulder and found 'Rachel' hauling her back up to the slats while hanging over the bridge. She grabbed at the rope line as she cleared the slats and sat down gasping for air.

"Are you alright?" 'Rachel' asked her. Rakka nodded as she put her head over the bridge's lower rope and breathed hard. "My fault," her savior said in a pant. "I broke your concentration on where you step on this stuff…" Charm actually did not need to catch her breath like that, but needed to keep the act up.

"Oh, do I owe you!" Rakka heaved. She then looked down between her legs. She turned to 'Rachel' with teary eyes.

"Hey, it's okay," 'Rachel' told her. "That was quite a fall!"

"It's not that," Rakka whined. "I'm sitting in green slime, and I can feel it coming through my dress!"

Charm quickly hauled Rakka back onto her feet and steadied her on the slats. She pulled her dress away from her to allow the green stain that she now wore to not cling to her. "Hopefully that next section we need to go through will wash some of this off!" she told Rakka, seeing that part of the bridge was getting a good spray off the flowing waters.

They gingerly continued forwards, getting quite drenched in the process, but allowing the goo to wash away, much to Rakka's relief. She spun and hugged her new friend.

"Thank you, Rachel!" she cried. "If you hadn't been there…"

"You wouldn't have fallen," she reminded her. "I'm just glad I was there to help."

"You're incredibly strong, you know that?" Rakka said with a smile.

"Heh, that's what happens when you're raised on a farm," Charm lied as she pumped her fist. "You wind up strong as an ox, and you can kick like a mule!"

"I'm sure that Toga learned that earlier," Rakka giggled.

Ten minutes later as they climbed the winding stairs up to the Temple, they started to hear commotion ahead. It did not take Rakka long to see why, as a cocoon greeted her as they got closer.

"What is this doing here?" she asked. She looked about as the two girls reached the landing at the top of the stairs. There were at least a half dozed orbs along the columned path into the Temple. Inside the domed section were yet another batch, including one ON the dome itself. Rakka saw the old Communicator examining one of the gray balls with his mono-eye.

"Washi!" she called out. "What is going on here?"

"It would seem that the Temple has once again become a nursery," he said. "It has happened before."

"Is this because of this rainfall event I'm hearing about?" she asked as she looked at some of the spheres around her. She saw that the old man was looking at her. "Excuse me," she attempted to retract her question. "Did I say something wrong?"

The Communicator sighed and shook his head. "You have been listening to those from the starship, haven't you?" he asked. He saw her nodding while looking at her feet. "You are correct," he told her. "And truth be told, now is not the time to keep such knowledge to one's self. I am told that you require the Halo Mold and supplies."

"Yes, yes," Rakka exclaimed. "It is vital to save Nemu!"

Washi looked about. He seemed to be looking to the south, and then up at where the ship would be if the Temple did not block his view. "They did not tell me why it was needed. Please explain," he asked of the Haibane.

Rakka cleared her throat. "We had a collapse of the main section of Old Home when a huge cocoon sprouted on the second floor over the nursery. Nemu and some of the Little Feathers were there when it fell." Tears started to fall as she continued. "She… she was crushed by the ceiling…"

She looked up to see that the old man was crying as well. "The children," he whispered. "How many of the children were there?"

Rakka shook her head. "I'm not sure… there were quite a few… but the crew of that ship up there are working to repair their bodies…"

"They are what?" she heard. She looked at Washi to find him staring at her. "That… that is a treaty violation!" he said in a tone she had never heard him speak before. He had done so loud enough that some of the Toga nearby took notice. He turned aside and tapped the side of his mask.

Ptolemy felt the rumble of his replacement cell phone. He saw who the caller was as he flipped it open. "Brother," he said so that Plato would know who it was. His boss only looked at the ceiling.

"Claudius, am I to understand that we are in violation of the treaty?" he asked.

Ptolemy drew in a long breath as he watched the readings on his boards. "Negative," he told him. "A good friend is taking responsibility."

"Responsibility!?" Washi barked as he paraded back and forth. "Who is this person who is willing to fate death for the sake of my children?"

Ptolemy looked at his phone. "I don't understand," he said. "Isn't he there with you?"

The Communicator looked at the girls standing beside him. "All I have here are young Rakka and a town person… you are…?"

"Rachel," Charm fibbed. "I'm taking over the eggs and chicken supplies services from Mr. Moffat."

Washi looked at her in confusion. "Ah," he said. "But you're not the one taking responsibility for the care of my children, are you?"

"Oh, no, no no!" Rakka exclaimed. "She's just here to help me carry the supplies. Mr. Kinza is waiting for us down at the Gideon Span. He injured his leg the other week, and it fell out from under him as we started up here. Rachel volunteered to help out when he couldn't make it."

Charm stood in a slight panic, as she could see that the man's mask was a scanner of sorts. She was quickly going through the diagnostics of her body, attempting to make sure it registered as human only, and not the bio-mechanical it was.

"Kinza's not there?" Ptolemy asked having heard the girls in the background.

"It would seem not," the old man said. "Why do they need the halo mold then?"

Ptolemy was getting a bit exasperated in his brother. "You're asking too many questions, and time is short!" he rumbled. "Just give them what they need!"

"Very well," he replied and tapped the mask again, terminating the call. "Come with me," he then told the girls.

A new room had been set up for the storage of the halo supplies which now included a glass dispensing tank of light leaves for the paste that made up the rings. Rakka noticed the amount in the container and then looked out at all the cocoons.

"That is never going to be enough for all of those," she commented.

"Possibly," Washi said. "We will need to thin it out a bit, as we did long ago. But for now, the person who needs a halo must get the proper amount."

Rakka drew in her breath. "Then you better give us the correct amount for Nemu," she told him.

Washi dropped the spoon that was used to measure out the binding agent. It clattered about.

"N-Nemu?" he quivered. "You mentioned her before… Why Nemu?"

Rakka stared at the dropped utensil. "Nemu's halo was destroyed in the collapse. They said that there wasn't anything to find."

The old man reached down and snatch the spoon. "But that's not how it works! You just can't make a new halo and expect it to take over from where the old one left off!"

"Mr. Kinza said something about being able to fix that problem," she explained. "They were going to try and make one of their own, but Miss Katherine and Miss Gabrella insisted that it had to be from the Halo Mold."

Washi stared at her. "He has the blessings of both the Attic and the Basement?" he asked bewildered. "I must meet this man someday."

Charm smirked internally. 'If only you knew,' she told herself.

Rakka scraped the floor with her toe. "Well, he is a male," she stammered, "but he's not a man…"

The Communicator put the spoon down. "This is the alien who crashed landed near you… who has been recuperating with you at Old Home, and found the baby Haibane?"

"Sounds like he gets around," 'Rachel' noted.

"He's a security chief on board that ship," Rakka told her. "I'm sure its only part of his nature." She saw that the old man was now feverishly making up the dry stock for the halo.

"An alien willingly risking everything to save my children," he said as he poured the contents into a large glass jar. The final ingredient was the light leaves. "I must meet him. I must thank him."

"He does seem to be a hero," Rakka sighed as she cradled the jar. "After all, he did save Hikari and me when those demons dragged us down to hell the other day with Koni… What?"

Washi had his hand on her forehead and was brushing her hair back to stare at her. "Contamination… contamination… good I see none," he said as he stood back. "He rescued you from the Basement?"

"Well, yes… but he had help from Miss Katherine and Miss Gabrella… oh and there was Mr. Nightwatch."

Washi took two steps back and bounced into the wall behind himself. "The released saint and the head of communications for the Basement worked TOGETHER to get you out of there? They are… they are on opposing sides, and they were IN the demon's lair! They BOTH helped?"

Rakka nodded and looked up at the ceiling while tapping her chin with a finger. "By the end of it, they seemed to be friends, especially after they took out that army that was lobbing fire balls at us."

Washi found a chair and sat down. "They both took out the Twelfth Dragoon's Artillery Division? Why?"

Charm just stood back and listened to all this and smirked. Watching the old man squirm was almost enjoyable. But a glace at her wrist watch told her that time was running out. "Well maybe it was because they were also tossing the fireballs at Miss Gabrella as well? She didn't seem too happy about that!"

'Rachel' tapped Rakka on the shoulder and pointed to her watch. "Oh! We have to get going!" she yelped. "Where is the mold?" she asked Washi.

He looked cooked himself. He was leaning forwards looking at the floor, obviously trying to take all this information in. "In the cabinet under the mixing table," he said with a wave of his hand towards it.

Rakka opened it up and put the jar down. She pulled out a leather pouch and slid the jar into it, handing it to 'Rachel'. She then hauled out the Halo Mold and an ornate set of tongs.

"I have to carry this," she told her friend. "Only a Haibane may hold it." She slid a covering over the exposed metal parts and tied it shut. She then bowed to the Communicator.

"Thank you for lending this to us!" she sprightly said. She quickly turned and dashed out the door. Charm slowly followed while watching the old man ponder reality. She finally ran off as well.

They tried tapping, patting on the back, even shaking, but Miho remained entrenched in Koni. Gabrella stood back and shook her curly locks.

"Yup, you sure are stuck in there," she said.

Bloodeagle scanned the child. "It is strange… I still see the two souls there, so Miho hasn't absorbed her. It looks like that hole that they were trying to put in it has her trapped. We might have to find that Haibane Rakka to get her out of this."

Gabrella considered this. "She was the one who slapped Miho out of that Koi kid, isn't she?" She noticed Koni rubbing her cheek and glaring up at her. "I think we'd need to see if she can do it again without as much pain," she added.

Behind them, the two love birds were still locked in what had to be the longest kiss any of them had ever witnessed. Gabrella looked at the necklace she was holding and snorted. "We need to break these two apart," she said. "At least to let them breathe!"

She stepped up to Katherine. Neither seemed to notice her. She had to figure out how to get this over the Goddess' head. At the moment, trying to do so would only let it hang over her nose, which would be a bit undignified, and she did not know if it would work. She found that it had a magnetic clasp, which she pulled it apart.

"Good thing it has one of these," she mumbled. "I don't think I'd be able to reconnect a normal slide clap with these finger nails." She reached around Katherine's neck and reconnected the chain, dangling the pendant across her back.

"Well, here goes nothing," Gabrella said as she tapped on the device's on switch. A jolt shocked her back a bit as the two Doorknobs bounced off each other.

Katherine opened her eyes. Amethyst was in her face! She jumped out of his grasp and snagged the pole that had again been dropped to the ground. She pointed it at the man in the suit as he shook his head to clear the dancing goddesses out of it.

"What happened?" she shouted. "How dare you touch me like that!"

"Ahemm…" she heard. She looked down at Bloodeagle, who was pointing at her. "You kissed him first," she said.

Katherine's eyes grew wide and small. Amethyst was wiping his mouth and trying to straighten himself out.

"I'll admit, she is a lovely creature, but what the hell was that?" he barked.

"Did you enjoy yourself?" Gabrella asked coyly. This drew another shocked glare from Katherine and a grunt from Amethyst. She held up her own Doorknob device and showed it to her friend. The goddess noticed the chain around her throat and yanked it around to bring her medallion to her front. "You might want to…" the demon added as she put her hands in her own hair and flipped it up to allow the chain to be under it. Katherine put the staff down and did the same.

"What happened?" she asked Gabrella.

"You tell me," she told her. "You're the one who told me what happens when your type meets up with a Celestial or a Denivan." She pinched her fingers together and gave a wicked grin as she drew them in a chaotic path between the two of them. "It was the original moths to a flame!"

Both looked at her with shocked expressions. They looked down at Bloodeagle and the baby, both of whom were sitting on Sinner's Rock crossed armed.

"You kissed him, his eyes rolled back in his head, it was rather disturbing."

"Yuck!" the baby added.

"Yes, disturbing is a very good way to describe it," they then heard from above them.

"Ohooo, what's she doing here?" Miho asked as Koni pointed.

Gabrella froze. She studied the shadows along the ground and finally saw the wings and tail.

"Phoenix!" she hissed.

"This is odd," the bird said. "I do not sense you two… but I do sense that Miho is in the baby… Amethyst, please explain…"

"M-mistress?" he asked.

"Why were you copulating with this… thing?" it asked in a disgusted tone.

Amethyst looked down at Katherine. "Thing? She is a Goddess, not a thing!"

"Wait a minute," Bloodeagle mumbled to Miho, "is he defending her?"

"It would be the honorable thing to do," the baby said.

"SHE IS A THING!" Phoenix exploded. "A FILTHY, DISGUSTING THING, AS IS THAT OTHER ONE THAT IS HERE! I would have GLADLY wiped the cosmos of BOTH OF THEIR KIND, if it weren't for THAT BLASTED TREATY!"

Being described as being a disgusting thing brought Gabrella enough strength to look up at the bird. What she found was not what she had expected. It was now three times its normal size, and its body was completely ablaze.

"I feel the need for another purge," it growled as its fires grew.

"KATHERINE!" Gabrella shouted. "GET HIM OUT OF HERE!" She spun and grabbed the two on the ground and vanished in a puff of black smoke.

Amethyst stood in shock as he saw his master/mistress about to smite him down, until a blond woman of immense power flung herself into his mid section and teleported them away.

Kinza sat waiting for Rakka and Charm/Rachel to get back, when the other side of the river exploded. He found himself being bowled over by a fast burst of wind. When he looked up, he saw the far bank had fallen into the river, and all the trees were flattened. Above it all was a mushroom cloud of fire rolling away from the detonation site. The nearby rope bridge now was in the water. He pulled out his scanning rod to check for radiation and found none.

"That was just one hell of a bang," he said as he tapped his patch. "Kinza to Forrestal…"

"Kinza! Are you alright?" the com officer called back.

"I'm still here, Marcy" he told her. "The other side of the river from me just exploded for no apparent reason."

"I think we know what that blast was," Commander Button cut in. "Keep an eye out for a burning bird."

Kinza started waving the scanning rod about when a fiery dash shot out of what was left of the fireball. It flew off to the north and then vanished.

"What the scragg was that?" he asked himself. He then felt a tapping on his shoulder, which caused him to jump. He looked back to find Dickenson and Foley calling to him, but not hearing what they were saying.

"Guys! Guys! GUYS!" he yelled at them. "Why can I hear my communicator, but not you?"

The two men looked at each other. Dickenson then bent down below Kinza's knees and asked, "Can you hear me now?"

"Yea?" he tentatively replied. "What's going on?" He watched as Foley ran scans over him.

"You've got flash burns all over your body," Dickenson told him. "If it wasn't for that thick fur you're covered in, you would have fried with the rest of this side of the river."

"I'm not scanning any damage to his ears," he could just hear Folly report. "It looks like they only need to be cleared."

Kinza groused at them. "You're gonna shave my ears?" he grumbled.

"It could be worse," Dickenson suggested. "You could be deaf now. Besides, we can grow it back quickly enough with a bit of stimulation from a wound healer. And honestly, I can't take talking to you from down here forever."

The Tomassamassa gave him a grumpy smile. He then remembered something and started looking around. "Hey, what about the girls? They should have been coming back from the Temple down that crazy path along the hill edge when that blast went off!"

"Easy, easy," Dickenson calmed him. "Charm said that they're taking the tunnel."

"Tunnel?" Kinza asked. "What tunnel?"

Foley, who had been setting up an electric hair trimmer took a few steps back to a slightly fried bush. He gave it a kick with his foot, snapping it off at its base, and exposing the tunnel.

"THAT tunnel," Dickenson finished.

"How the scragg did I miss something that gaping huge right behind me?" Kinza mused. "By the way… you just called her Charm."

Dickenson smiled. "The Admiral told us of your chat," he said as he examined other burns on the Security Chief's fur. "Just remember, when she gets here, she's currently 'Rachel', right?"

Kinza snorted. "I don't remember Charm being a master of disguise before," he grunted. "I'd ask how far in the future you four are to me, but I know I'd get a ding from S.A.M. if I did." With that, his chest patch complied with a chime. "See?"

"Let's just say she's not exactly the Charm you remember on the PokeWorlds," Foley said close enough that he could hear him. "Now hold still while I shave ya!"

Kinza gritted his teeth. "You two were hiding behind blast shields, weren't you?"

"Yup," Foley said, now a bit clearer now that the fused fur had been partly removed from his left ear.

"Scragg, I hate it when someone already knows the future and I don't… Oh, this is gonna itch!" Kinza grumbled.

A ring opened up on the deck plate on the lower landing deck of Forrestal. As the flight crews and ramp jockeys watched, two bodies flung out of it - A man and a woman. The man saw the rapidly approaching ceiling and spun them around so that he would take the brunt of the blow they were about to have. He formed a small energy wall to lessen the strike, but it still was enough to knock the wind out of him. They now plummeted to the deck seventy-five feet below.

"Crash bags NOW!" the deck boss called out. The computer quickly calculated which deck plates needed to pop. Four sections slid aside and a series of air bags deployed just as the pair was about to literally hit the deck. The cushions quickly deflated, leaving the pair to attempt to regain their breath.

"Why? Why did you do this?" Amethyst asked as he gasped for air while helping the goddess to right herself.

"Gabby told me to," Katherine smiled. "But honestly…" She kissed him on the cheek.

"I didn't want to see you get killed by that creature," she finished.

Amethyst looked at the deck plates. "That creature was my reason for living," he told her.

"Since when?" Gabrella asked while holding Koni. "I see you came here for the same reason I did," she added toward Katherine. She smiled and nodded in agreement.

"Ea?" Amethyst asked.

"One, neutral territory," Katherine stated. "We can be here at the same time without breaking any treaty."

"Two," Gabrella added. "This ship is made of a metal that should hide us from Phoenix. She might figure out where we are, but I'm pretty sure she won't attack something this powerful. And as for that 'reason for living' trash, forget her! She has done more damage to the Celestials over the years than the plague did to man! You owe her NOTHING!"

"You might want to listen to her son," they then heard. They turned to find a large ball with arms and legs standing at the doorway with a security detail behind him.

"Commander Button," Gabrella acknowledged. "Nice to see you again."

"Likewise," he cautiously replied. "Now just what the hell happened down there?"

Janice was feverishly working to control her board. She had been attempting to judge where any rejects were going to fall after the initial terminal launch from the terrorist attack in Paris. Now she was trying to stabilize one of the holy site's coordinates due to a shift in its magnetic field.

"Does anyone have an explanation yet on what just occurred?" she shouted. "Glie is now ten degrees off kilter!"

Ptolemy was across from her examining a monitor that read the injectors for the site. "Every one of these are out of alignment now!" he yelled. "What the…"

His cell phone rang, and he quickly popped it open. "Ptolemy," he barked.

"Forrestal Command Com," a computerize female's voice chimed. It was quickly replaced by that of the ship's second in command.

"Ptolemy, this is Button… you need to recalibrate all of your injectors to two – one – one – seven point four - eighty-two!"

"Two – one – one – seven point four - eight - two," he scribbled on a Post-it. "Thanks. What the hell just happened?" As he listened, he started in on the readjustments.

"Our friendly neighborhood Phoenix happened," Button told him. "Seems she was attempting to kill Amethyst and blew up a chunk of soil directly over Glie's Sinner's Rock. It looks like it's still there, but scans show that it's now exposed, and a piece might be missing from it."

"Oh, I can say that a piece is most definitely missing if its making me do this much recalibration. How bad is the damage?"

"That's pretty close to the wall at that point," Button noted. "The concussion wave reflected off it. The Gideon Span is in the water, the forest around the blast site is flattened for at least a mile running south along the river – the Scar's Village took some shock damage with most windows blown in - two dwelling have collapsed, though we don't scan any fatalities – we've sent some rescue crews in to help out and assess – the Temple seems to have taken a shot as well, though minor in damage to the structures, three of the cocoons up there have burst."

Ptolemy looked over at Plato, who was bringing up the landings of seedlings in Glee. Three of those around the Temple were showing red Xs over them – the one on the Temple's dome and the two near the entrance.

"How far along were they?" the director asked. An assistant shook her head.

"Less than a day," she said. "Anything that may have been starting did not stand a chance of survival."

"Murderous bird!" Ptolemy spat. "She just violated the Treaty!"

Plato snapped his fingers to get an assistant's attention. "Get Justinian on the line – I want him to check if the Treaty is now void! Quickly!"

"We need an internal scan for lost souls!" Ptolemy called out. "Is Bloodeagle available?"

"She is here on Forrestal," he heard his phone say.

"How did she get there?" the scientist asked.

Button looked behind himself at the second Communicator of Glie as she sat cross-legged with a piece of marble in front of her. "It would seem that Gabrella evacuated her and Koni up here prior to the blast. Katherine followed with Amethyst. And, by the way, just to add to our mounting pile of issues, Miho seems to be inside the baby."

"Miho is in Koni?" Ptolemy asked in a stunned way. "What did she do? Use the hole that quack Talos poked in her?"

"I get the feeling that she could have entered her even without that hole," he heard Gabrella state. "But there's a good chance it's holding her in there."

"In what way?" Ptolemy asked as he finished with his adjustments. A quick thumbs up from his wife told him that stability had once again been made.

"Remember when Koi started acting strange around Jester?" she asked. "It turns out that he did so when Miho found a way to enter his body, being a sensitive. But now that she entered Koni's body, even directly touching Sinner's Rock didn't allow her to escape."

Ptolemy thought about this. "Tell me, has her wings changed color?"

Koni looked over her shoulder the best she could, but found that a toddler's neck just did not turn that way. Gabrella turned her about and looked for her.

"They're still white, but the root ends seem to be turning Haibane gray," she said. She saw a scanning rod being waved over the child's head. Mr. Button looked at his readings.

"I'm showing signs of cranial energy starting," he said.

Ptolemy nodded. "That sounds an awful lot like they're starting to merge."

"What about the baby's soul?" Miho asked through Koni's mouth. "I do not want to force it out! That is just wrong!"

"Is there any way to remove her?" Plato asked. Ptolemy shrugged his shoulders.

"Miho was forced out once before," Bloodeagle told them. "The girl Rakka, to get Koi under control during his fight with Jester, slapped him in his face. Miho was ejected then." The baby scowled at her and rubbed her cheek.

"I'm a sensitive," Mr. Button said. Everyone looked at him in disbelief. "Hey, I'm the most sensitive here! I can sense you two even with those Doorknobs on and turned up to max like that. And I even have MINE on!"

"Just how sensitive are you?" Gabrella kidded him with a pouty and trembling lower lip. Button glared at her as he held out his huge hand. Even as a larger toddler, the Lif Sphare's single hand still easily held the child. He turned his shoulder towards her.

"Turn this thing off," he said as showed her his Doorknob, which was mounted like a patch at where his arm met his body/head.

"Umm, I can't touch it," she told him. "Sparks and all, you know…"

"Ah," he said. He then found the baby reaching up to give the unit a twist.

"I'm in control here, remember?" Miho said. "So, what do I do?" She found Button winking at her, but not in a cute way, he was in pain.

"Gabby, would you please stand back?" he grunted. "There's just too many of you energy folks about, and the landing bay is kind of concentrating your energies on me!"

"Maybe you should try the observation room," the deck boss offered him. He nodded.

"Not a bad idea," he said with a grimace. "Close the door on me when I get in there."

As the door slid shut behind them, the psychic pressure dropped. "OH! That's better!" he sighed. "Okay kiddo, let's see what can be done."

"I hope he knows what he's doing," Gabrella said as she watched the door. Looking back at Bloodeagle, she noticed she was not in a happy mood. "Trouble making contact?" she asked her.

The Communicator of the Flightless snatched the piece of marble off the ground and slipped it back in her hidden pocket. "I can't tell," she complained. "This was a chunk off the old mantle piece that was used as a conduit to the main rock. I'm pretty sure that it's probably so much rubble now."

"Well, at least we know that Sinner's Rock is still there," Gabrella noted. "We'll just have to… WHAT are YOU TWO DOING!?"

Bloodeagle looked at where Gabrella was glaring at, and saw Katherine and Amethyst kissing again! She lowered her mask to see if the same reaction was happening as before. She saw the green intertwined energies getting larger, even with the shielding of the Doorknob!

"Power levels are rising," she said as she adjusted her mono-eye. "I'm pretty sure that the only reason they broke away before was the momentary break that thing you hung on her did!"

"No!" Gabrella yelped. "That's not all! Mr. Button just mentioned it! This room is concentrating our energies! And Amethyst isn't wearing one of these!"

She then saw something that chilled her to the bone – Katherine reaching up to turn her unit off!

To Bloodeagle's view, the room had just become all green. To Mr. Button's senses, even with the wall between them, he was floored.

In the waiting room up by Sick Bay, Hlin had the computer raise a table from the floor, and had served the children a meal and desserts, and had even provided them with toys and games.

"This is great!" the boy exclaimed as he played with an electronic gaming device.

Koi laughed at the children, who had taken a liking to the tall warrior goddess. "Are you always this nice to people you've just met?" he asked while nibbling on a piece of cake.

She giggled as she was eating some cake as well. "I am Hlin the Protector," she said while pointing her fork at herself. "I'm protecting!"

Her plate then clattered to the table. She held her forehead and propped herself up.

"Whoa! Are you alright?" Koi asked her as he came to her aid.

"Something… something is happening to my leader!" she gasped. She looked down at her pendant. "This is not strong enough! Computer, give me the Mark Two model!"

The small magical door that had been dispensing all the wondrous goodies all afternoon slid open with a new necklace. Dangling from it was what really looked like a Doorknob. She quickly slipped it over her head and removed the old one while giving the new one a hard twist. There was a pop as the old one flipped away from her by the clashing of two energy fields slapping into one another. She picked it up now that it was well fried, and tossed it into the opening in the wall, which slid shut again. She looked at the children.

"I must tend to my leader," she told them as she produced a staff out of thin air. "Stay here, stay safe." With that, she vanished.

Bloodeagle raised her mask and watched the pair. She no longer needed the mono-eye to see the green haze that surrounded them as it was now swirling about in normal space.

Gabrella shielded her eyes. "Why is it green?" she asked.

"His is blue, hers is yellow," Bloodeagle stated. "Combine the two, you get green."

Hlin appeared next to her and gasped. "They're copulating? Here? How undignified!"

Gabrella shook her head while trying to fathom what the second goddess had just said. "Phoenix said pretty much the same thing… All they're doing is kissing!"

Hlin looked at her in a questioning way. "Madame Secretary, you of all people should know that we are a people of energy. How else would we reproduce but to combine our energies?"

The demon goddess shrugged. "I mated with my mate. When I had my daughter recently, it was au natural!"

Hlin nodded to her as she stepped up to her leader. "Congratulations," she said as she placed her staff between the two people. "I did not know you had a child." She then started to pry Katherine away, which was being hard to do.

"This is how you mate?" Gabrella asked as she got behind Amethyst to help out, but was sparked away by her Doorknob.

"Yes… and… NO!" Hlin grunted. "A mutual mixing of… UH!… energies are used to… UH!… form a matrix which… YRRRRGH!… then coalesce into a child! But… UUUUUUUH!… you don't need this MUCH! They're tapping into each other too much!"

Gabrella was trying to figure out just how she could touch these two to help out when a round figure stepped in front of her and grabbed Amethyst around his belly.

"Ready?" Mr. Button asked Hlin. "One, two, THREE!"

Hlin, for all her strength, was nearly hauled with Button as her side refused to break away at first. Finally, she managed to separate Katherine from Amethyst and she walked her to the other end of the landing bay. Button plunked his load on a service cart.

Hlin reached down and was attempting to turn on her leader's Doorknob when a hand dropped on hers.

"No! Wait!" Katherine cried. She raised her hands to the ceiling and started chanting. Bloodeagle dropped her mask down.

"She's drawing the energy to her!" she reported.

"Wait… What?" she heard come from Amethyst. A quick glance from under her mask told her that he was still trying to figure out what his name was.

Gabrella stood and watched her counterpart gather up what visible green light there was into an orb. She watched Bloodeagle look about with her mask. "What do you see?" she asked her.

"The room is still pretty green," she said. "This is going to take a while."

"Wait a minute!" a groggy Amethyst yelped as he attempted to stand up. "I d-d-don't want a ch-ch-chiiild!" he stumbled along. "I'm – I'm – not rrready to be a f-f-f-father!"

"No no, you've done quite enough there, laddie," a man in a long dark blue P-Jacket said. He stepped up from behind him and pressed a hypo against his neck. It hissed, and Amethyst slowly fell to the floor.

Mr. Button looked down on the heap of Celestial at his feet, and then up at the man in the heavy jacket. He noticed the upturned collar and Federation cap that obscured his facial features.

"He go sleepy-time for a couple of hours," the man told him, "long enough for her to complete what needs to be done for the future."

"Ah," the second in command said. "Just how long have you been there?"

"Long enough," the man said with a tip of his cap. "I'm surprised that you didn't sense me, Mr. Button."

Button looked up and pointed around with his finger. "The area is a bit over-saturated in energies," he noted. "So, just how far do you out-rank me?"

The man pulled on his jacket's sleeve to show him his rank bars.

Button raised an eyebrow. "Admiral, in that newfangled system they want to roll out to the rest of the fleet soon."

"An advantage to running a training ship," the Admiral said. "You get to wear your old style clothes… The new uniforms look more like we're wearing pajamas."

Button smirked. "I take it that you're under a one one zero one as well?" The Admiral bowed to him yes. "So you're not at liberty to tell me why you did that, or its consequences."

"That is an affirmative," he said as he looked over at the Goddess who was collecting the green energy. "You know, she probably doesn't even know why she's doing that… It's simply instinct."

Button looked back at the Admiral and found him clutching his hands and fidgeting. "Are you alright?" he asked.

"Oh, yes," he said. "I've seen this before. I actually MADE this happen before… and on this very deck as well." He sighed as the green energy started to coalesce into an orb in Katherine's lap. He saw Hlin bent over her leader, telling her to breathe over and over again. Gabrella was kneeling on her other side rubbing her back and watching what was coming forth.

A small hand appeared from the orb and took hold of her mother's thumb. Katherine shivered, but then smiled and relaxed as the energy continued to fall in on her.

"I much prefer bringing life into this world than taking it, don't you?" the Admiral stated with crossed arms. "Keep an eye on her," he added. "Unlike the other time, when the mother was working with surplus energy, this is drawing from our two hosts."

Button snapped his fingers to get the deck boss' attention. "Get a medical team down here, if any are available… energy depletion protocol. Since the medical department is currently busy, you may want to get the emergency techs from security." The DB saluted and headed for a com station.

"By the way, weren't you trying to separate Miho's soul from Koni?" the Admiral reminded Button.

"There was too much interference in here," he commented, but found when he looked back that the Admiral had vanished. "I need to find out just what type of transmat he's using to do that without triggering our scans."

The cart they were riding in slowly chugged up the tunnel. It obviously was designed to haul things and people up the deceptively steep slope the corridor had as Charm had surmised. But at nearly the halfway point, the walls shook, and they saw things passing by the entrance, and the girls wished that it moved faster. Rakka had even tried to get out and run, but was soon back in her seat exhausted.

"Are we there yet?" the backseat rider wined. Charm smirked as she continued to pull on the handle that made the cart roll.

"It doesn't look like it has a faster gear," she told her. "Just be glad it got us this far. Besides, how long do you think it's been since this thing was used last?"

Rakka looked at her driver and sighed. "You said that you were in the junkyard earlier looking for parts for some of your machinery up on the farm… are you mechanically inclined?" she asked.

"A bit," 'Rachel' lied, knowing it would probably be some of her assistants who would do that sort of messy work.

"Maybe you could have someone look into cleaning this thing up – maybe greasing its gears. It does look like it's coming out on your property. What do you think powers this thing?"

'Rachel' leaned over and looked at the driving wheel, and the grinding sounds they were making. "It's obviously some sort of electric motor running a traction gear of some sort," she said, but then pondering how she knew that.

"Maybe I should get Kana up here to look at it, and have her bring some of her clock grease with her," Rakka suggested. "I can smell the motor a bit."

"Almost there," 'Rachel' said as a flat area was coming up, and the wall track ended at another door. The cart reached this point and started to pivot in, as the metal hatch swung inwards. A small sign in an unreadable text pointed at a point where the handle to move the cart would hit if they had continued.

"Ah, I get it," she said as they got out and emptied their packages beside it. "It's a loop, see? This sends the cart back down to the other end. The ceiling is just low enough to hold the handle back to drive it back – I was wondering why it pulled back to go forwards, and why the knob on top spun like a wheel." She pulled the handle back and set it into the wall slot. Once the handle was under the swinging metal door, she backed away and they could hear it rolling away on its own.

"I'd hate to be in that cart if you had forgotten to get out just then," Rakka observed. "It would have taken our heads off!"

'Rachel' had to agree on that one. "Old tech is notorious for not thinking of safety ahead of functionality. Come on, let's see what all that noise was about."

"Well it's about time," they heard as they exited the tunnel into the daylight. They needed to squint, seeing the darkness they had just come out of had dilated their eyes. Once their vision had cleared, the sight that beheld them shocked them.

"W-where's the other side of the river?" 'Rachel' asked.

"Where's the Gideon Span?" Rakka added.

"Kablooie!" Kinza stated, using his fingers to make a mushroom cloud. They also noticed that he was being tended to by two uniformed officers from the starship.

"Who are these two?" Rakka asked, and then noticed his condition. "Mr. Kinza! Are you alright? Look at your fur! It's covered in little beads!"

"Yes, well, it was quite hot!" he noted as he looked over his singed uniform as well. "Mr. Dickenson, Mr. Foley, this is Miss Rachel and Miss Rakka," he introduced.

"Rachel, did you touch anything while you were over there?" Rakka asked as she looked over the devastation that the far bank had taken.

"I was over there in the junk yard, not up there," she pointed out the difference between where the hole in the ground was and where she had been. Oddly, the big oak tree was still there, though it seemed to be missing some of its branches that faced towards the blast zone.

"Well it's a good thing you two found that tunnel," Kinza told them. "You would have been blown off that outer wall path if you'd been on it!"

"The Toga!" Rakka yelped.

Charm looked back up the trail that led to the Temple. "You didn't see anyone pass by here while you were waiting for us, did you?" she asked Kinza.

"Not that I remember," he told her. "Did someone take the trail after you?"

She glared at the path. She handed the satchel with the light leaf materials to the Tomassamassa. "You two stay here and take care of Mr. Kinza," she told Dickenson and Foley. "Rakka, you get back to your friend that needs this – I'll go check on that idiot."

"Hey!" she heard. She looked back and saw Kinza holding something out to her.

"This is a com unit," he told her.

"I-I don't understand," she lied, which made Kinza smirk a bit.

'Good girl, keep that cover,' he thought. "It's a communication device like a wireless telephone. Just press the button inside it if you need any help."

'Rachel' opened the lid and looked the thing over as if she had never seen one before. "Thanks!" she said and started up the path.

"Thank you Rachel!" Rakka called to her new friend. "I hope to see you in town soon!"

"Fresh chicken and eggs, straight from the farm!" she called back with a thumb's up.

Without Rakka in front of her, Charm now could put her ninja skills to work running up the path once she cleared the curve in the wall so that she was no longer visible to those she left behind. She also chose to switch her shape to that of her own face and body, dressed in her casual blacks that now bore an AC/DC logo – at least it was not a glaring red R like it had been before.

Half way between the far end of the trail and the start of it down by the falls she found the Toga. He was hanging from the ledge, having been blown off by the concussive force of the blast. He seemed to have missed out on the radiant heat it had put out, unlike Kinza had taken. She reverted to the 'Rachel' persona and stood over the dangling man.

"Brother, aren't you lucky that I kicked your butt earlier!" she said as she hauled him up.

Rakka tingled all over as the transmat finished its cycle. Once again she was in the world of technology. She watched as Kinza stopped at the monitor in the room to get an update on the situation.

"No further incidents on the planet – good," he mumbled. "What are Gabrella and Katherine doing in the lower landing bay?" He looked back at Marshall and asked him, "Did something happen while we were away?"

"You mean other than that flakey bird trying to blow up that Celestial?" the engineer replied.

"I was at ground zero for that," the Security Chief grumbled. "Was that what it was all about?"

"Yea," he snorted. "You'll notice that I cleaned yer fur of those little beads the flash did to ya, and replaced yer singed uni with a new one."

"Umm, fresh," Kinza said with a sniff to his sleeve. "Did you make the oven I requested?"

"I have it ready to be res'ed up," he said, "but I held back actually making it until I saw what this mold looked like." He saw Rakka start to unwrap it. "Huh, it looks like a doughnut-shaped bedpan," he mumbled.

"Um, Mr. Kinza, we normally just use it with our stove," Rakka pointed out.

"On top? Open flame?" he asked. She nodded yes. She watched as the engineer measured the mold with a pair of digital calipers and tap his readings into the controls of the transmat.

"I still think an oven design is more functional and practical than cooking on a stove top," he told them. "I'm gonna make two units – one that runs on their electrical services, the other will be gas fired. I get the feeling that they're gonna need it with all these landings they're having."

"You might want to do the same for the other sites as well then," Kinza noted. "I know they're diverting quite a few to them."

Marshall nodded as he engaged his transmat. Two stand-alone ovens materialized on the pads.

"There," he told Rakka. "See how it fits."

She looked at the standing boxes. "In the middle slot, right?" she asked. She then inserted the mold into the slot. "If fits like a glove," she exclaimed.

"Umm, that's good, though be careful not push it in too far," he told her. "You don't want the wooden handles to be under the burners. I might want to add some stops to the mold so that won't happen."

Rakka withdrew the mold and hugged it. "You're going to modify the mold?" she asked him.

"Huh? No, not that one," he said. "These…" He started up his transmat again and produced three molds each for the ovens. Each now had a slight flare where the handles met the metal. Marshall took one and inserted it into the oven, where it clanked up against the face of the heating elements and prevented the unit from going any further.

"But… they haven't been blessed by the Renmei," Rakka noted.

"Which is why we'll be using yours," Kinza told her. "We can always get the new molds blessed later. But, honestly, considering what is landing in Glie, you'll need more than just that one mold. It will never survive this."

Rakka noticed Marshall examining the jar of material she had brought along. "How much of this stuff do you use in that thing?" he asked her.

"Usually, all of it," she said, "though that does look a little more than usual."

"Remember, it was measured out from Nemu's halo size," Kinza said. "It may have been larger or thicker."

"It's mostly binding agent," Marshall said. "I see some iron oxide, a bit of potassium and sulfur, whatever this binding agent is, and these weird golden flakes."

"Those are the light leaves," Rakka said as she took the jar she was handed. "They move out and coat the outside of the ring once cooked."

"Uhh, that I would love to see," the engineer said, "but I'll be down here working my magic on the old transmat. Good luck to ya!"

"Thank you," Rakka bowed to him.

"Okay, you've got your mold, your tongs, here, I'll take the jar," Kinza rattled off. He then tapped his patch and barked, "Katherine and Gabrella to sick bay – Katherine and Gabrella to the sick bay!" He then pointed to the ovens. "You've got one of these up there?" he asked.

"Already there and plugged into the ship's power supply," Marshall replies with a grin. "It's a bit more complex than these two, since we need to match Nemu's old one. It has a computer interface that will tell you when to remove it. NO PEEKING until it has completed its baking cycle!"

"Yes sir!" Rakka said in a whisper. She and the Tomassamassa started up the hallway for sick bay.

"My, haven't we made ourselves at home!" Kinza said as they entered the waiting area.

"Ohh, Mr. Cat Man, there was this neat lady who showed up who showed us how to use that magic door in the wall!" the boy started rambling. He was showing signs of a sugar rush.

Koi was on his feet and to Rakka's side. "What happened? Where did you go?" he asked her. He then noticed what she was carrying. "Why have you got the halo mold?"

Rakka's lip trembled as the weight of the moment was suddenly falling down on her. "N-Nemu… lost…"

The door to the operating room slid open. McManus popped her head out and saw who had arrived.

"In here quickly!" she ordered as she tugged on Rakka's shoulder. She found herself being moved behind a draped area where the mold oven had been set up. "Please Rakka, I need you to be a brave young lady and concentrate on the matter at hand, okay?"

"Yes ma'm," she said taking in the depth of what was going on. "I'll start making the halo. Mr. Kinza?" She reached for the jar he was holding.

Just then the ship shook. The jar popped out of his paws. She dove and grabbed it before it hit the ground.

"What the scragg was that!?" Kinza barked as the light dimmed slightly. The ship again rocked back and forth.

"All systems, alert! Alert!" the intercraft started to call out. "Battle stations!"

"This is bad," Kinza grumbled as he slapped his com patch. "Bridge, what's going on?"

Tolefson was the Officer in Charge at the moment as Mr. Button was not on the bridge. The helmsman tried to get a response from any of his control to no avail. "Mr. Kinza, some strange bird is attacking us with plasma bolts that are nearly as powerful as our own! And because we're under a one one zero one lockdown, the computer has control! We can't even raise our shields!"

"Great – hang on," he told them. "Even without our shields, the hull of this ship can take it. Be right back!" He tapped his patch again as the ship lurched to another strike. "S.A.M. Control!"

A four tone musical theme played, followed by "S.A.M. System One Forrestal."

"S.A.M., quickly," Kinza barked. "The One One Zero One command – which one are you following? Mine or the Admirals?"

"There are TWO going on right now?" McManus asked with concern.

"Long story," Kinza replied. "Come on S.A.M.…"

"The ranking officer on board at this time is the One One Zero One that must be followed," it said. "The Admiral is not on board."

"Great!" he said in relief. "The ship may return to space normal functions until further notice – One One Zero One."

"Understood," it responded.

"Raise shields!"

"Shields up!"

A whistle piped through the ship. "Bridge to Kinza," Tolefson was calling. He tapped his patch.

"Go ahead," he said as he returned to Nemu's side with his scanning rod. He did not like what he was reading.

"Sir, all systems are now available, but our lower shields are dangerously close to the tops of the tallest building in the center of Glie."

He growled, "Blasted thrust drag," he complained. "Our station keeping is pushing them lower. Bring us up another thousand five hundred feet."

"Yes sir," he replied. "Sir, is it possible for you to come up here? Mr. Button is indisposed down in the lower hanger bay and is unavailable."

"I'm in sick bay, pretty much the same way," Kinza said.

"What about Mr. Marshall?"

"He's in the transmat room about to help me here in sick bay," Kinza snorted. "Don't worry, Tolly. That bird can do whatever she likes now. She won't get through the shields. Just keep her level and still, okay?"

"Yes sir," he replied. "Standing by…"

To confirm that they were now safe, they could hear the wrath of the Phoenix as it would tap on the shields and deflect away - So much for that distraction.

"Where are Gabby and Kate?" Kinza grumbled. "How is it going Rakka?"

She was looking around her little corner of the room for supplies. "Umm, I could use something to stir with, and I need water!" they heard.

"Water?" Abby asked.

"It's a paste, remember?" Kinza pointed out as he got a large beaker and a plexiglas rod as a stirrer and handed it behind the drapes to Rakka. He pointed at a fluid dispenser on the wall beside her. "The binding agent is probably water activated." He returned to Nemu's side and continued to watch the readings he was getting off of her and groused at himself for not speeding things along earlier. He had not expected the lack of her halo to cause such an energy depletion issue as it had. Her wings were showing serious molting issues. Hopefully, the transmat would fix most of these problems. But only…

He tapped on his patch again. "Katherine and Gabrella, please report to the sick bay!" he barked, this time loud enough to rattle through the deck plates. "Sorry," he apologized to those in the room with him for the deafening blast. The door slid open… and someone NOT Katherine entered with Gabrella.

"Hlin?" Kinza asked. "Umm, not to say I'm displeased to see you here, but where is Katherine?"

The tall goddess cleared her throat. "Mistress Katherine is… taking care of her daughter," she said.

Kinza dropped his scanning rod. "She's what?" he nearly whispered. Even Rakka was looking past the drapes at this new Goddess in the room.

Hlin needed to clear her throat again. "There was an incident with Amethyst that required her attention," she began. "We swapped locations – she would determine what to do about Amethyst's treaty violation, while I would wait here. What I failed to realize was that she was not wearing one of these." She pointed at her Doorknob.

Amethyst – Celestial

Katherine – Goddess

Kinza slapped his paws across his mouth as he felt like screaming. "She didn't!" he yelped behind them. "THEY didn't!"

"They sure did," Gabrella said with a smirk. "I've got the pictures to prove it!"

"What were you doing down there?" Kinza angrily questioned the demon. Hlin raised her hand for him to calm himself.

"She did it for me," she told him, which only befuddled him more. "It is less of a violation of the Treaty if a demon were to go down than to have two goddess' there at the same time."

"Besides, Amethyst doesn't do anything for me," Gabrella admitted with a sneer. "So I get there and they're locked together as if they were using a vacuum pump. Bloodeagle tells me that their energies are merging. So I break them apart using a second one of these" She flicked at her own Doorknob. "So, Phoenix arrives," she continued. "I guess since the situation required arbitration from both sides, Amethyst had called his boss. But that's when things got bad."

"As in explosively bad?" Kinza asked. "I was across the river from that when it happened!"

Gabrella looked at him in shock. "And you weren't fried?" she asked.

"Yes I was, thank you very much! And nearly deafened too! Let me tell you just how much fun it was to have the insides of my EARS shaved!"

"Well there wasn't much I could do!" Gabrella complained. "It was Phoenix who went all nuclear! First she wished that all gods and demons would just die, and then she told Amethyst that she was considering a new purge! That's when I grabbed Bloodeagle and Koni and high-tailed it up to here!"

Kinza looked around as if he had missed something. "Wait a minute, what was KONI doing there?"

"Amethyst brought her to Sinner's Rock to try and get Miho out of her," Gabrella told him. He pinched his eyes.

"Who the scragg is Miho?" he asked with gritted teeth.

"Girl 194," Dr. McManus said, which made him turn completely around. "She's the soul trapped in this Sinner's Rock that takes over Koi from time to time."

"True!" Gabrella agreed. "Katherine and I found her in Koi earlier today. But the hull of this ship prevented her from taking him completely over, so they finally got to talk with one another."

"Well, that must have been fun for them," McManus said.

Gabrella smiled. "You know, I like that kid now," she said. "Koi wants to help her. He might be a demon hunter, but he's got a good heart."

"Bully for them!" Kinza interrupted. "Why is this Miho inside my Koni?"

"Oh, well it would seem that when she vacated Koi, rather than returning to Sinner's Rock, she was drawn to Koni. And that silly Dr. Telos' experiment on her soul seems to have her locked in there! I watched her stand right on top of the rock, and she could not budge."

Kinza scowled at the ladies. "Anything else I should know?" he asked.

Hlin tapped her fingers as she counted out what was left. "Well, your second in command is down in the landing bay attempting to remove Miho from Koni, seeing that he is a sensitive possibly capable of doing it, otherwise they may want to use Miss Rakka."

"Me? Why me?" she asked from behind the curtains.

"You just keep working back there!" Kinza ordered. "We'll figure out the rest later."

"Oh look! She has an Easy-Bake oven back there!" Gabrella kidded her. "Can you make some brownies?"

"GABBY!" Kinza barked. He looked at Hlin. "Anything else?" he asked her.

"Miss Katherine can not leave the hanger until she has gathered all the energy she and Amethyst generated while down there," she reported. "Bloodeagle is using her mask to keep tabs on it."

"Wait a minute," Kinza said while waving his paws about. "How did she wind up in the lower landing bay? And why was all this energy with her?"

Gabrella scratch her ear. "Well, when I was evacuating Koni and Bloodeagle, she grabbed Amethyst and teleported to the same location I did, though with a bit more enthusiasm."

They all stared at her.

"She slammed them into the bay's roof."

"Ow," Kinza said.

She nodded. "Amethyst actually protected her, and your crew saved them both by using something they called Crash Bags?"

"Ah," Kinza said. "Good to see the Deck Boss was alert."

Gabrella shrugged. "Yea, but the next thing we know, those two are lip-locked together again. Bloodeagle said something about the entire bay had been saturated in energy. So when Hlin and Mr. Button finally got them apart…"

Kinza gawked at her. "It took Button to pry them apart?"

"And some old dude in a dark blue jacket to send Amethyst to beddy-bye-ville with a hypo spray." Kinza scowled at her again.

"So that's what the computer meant by 'the Admiral is no longer here'," he grumbled. "Anything more?"

The ship shook violently. His com unit chirped.

"What's she doing?" he asked the bridge who had beeped him.

"She is detonating much like she did down at Sinner's Rock," Tolefson told him. "She gets as close as she can to the shields and explodes. Sir, she's actually making headway through them. And if she were to do one of those on our hull, she could punch holes in us. Sir, request permission to defend ourselves?"

"Negative, negative," Kinza groused. He saw both Hlin and Gabrella agree with his orders. "She might be violating or trashing the treaty, but we still need to uphold OUR side of it."

"Mr. Kinza is correct, Mr. Tolefson," they then heard. "WE will take care of this."

"Yo, Roy!" Kinza finally smiled. "What took you? Where are you?"

A giant bird of many colors and a fiery lion with wings slowly flapped in a hovering pattern. "We are aft the ship, roughly five hundred yards above your location," the bird said. "I have Gather Damon with me. We shall take care of the rouge Phoenix."

"Okay!" Kinza yelled. "That leaves us to get to work!" He pointed at the two deities. "Do we have the blessing of the Attic to proceed?"

Hlin swallowed. "Under the knowledge that you, Elb Kinza Farley, take responsibility for the actions that you now take?"

"Oh, I forgot about this part," he growled. "Yes, yes I do!"

She bowed to him. "We allow you to proceed."

He looked at Gabrella. "Do I have permission from the lords of the underworlds?"

Gabrella walked over and kissed him on the lips. Kinza stood in shock for a moment. Rakka stared at his expression. McManus laughed.

"You've been wanting to do that for a while, haven't you," she ribbed the demon.

She winked at Kinza. "I figured that Katherine shouldn't be the only one kissing someone today! Besides, he didn't call us 'the basement' – that deserves a kiss!"

"Scragg," he mumbled. "Okay, I'll take that as a yes, and all that involves. Marshall, are you ready?"

"I thought you guys had gone to sleep up there!" he replied. "Buffer Number One, ready."

Kinza pointed at the bed furthest from Nemu, and nearest Rakka. McManus nodded. He picked up his dropped scanning rod and readied the first child.

"Rakka, what's your situation?" he asked.

"Cooking," she replied. "There's a timer on this unit that says something about twenty one minutes."

"Okay, you'd better come out of there for a moment," he told her. She stepped out of the curtains. Kinza was there, and he put his paws on her shoulders.

"Now… this could get nasty," he told her. "Do you want to stay, or wait outside?"

She looked beside the curtains. The distorted figure of a boy greeted her, and she held her breath. She swayed a little bit at the sight of a Little Feather in such a condition. She swallowed and said, "Someone has to keep an eye on the Halo Mold. I'll stay."

"Good girl," he said. "You stand back here though for this first one, seeing that it's right outside your curtain. Okay Marshall, the ball's in your court."

"Transmatting," he said over the coms. The boy on the table vanished.

"Stasis field off," Kinza ordered. "Ready."

"Reintegrating," Marshall called back. The form now looked like a normal boy caught in mid run, but lying on his back.

"Huh!" he said, the flopped back down on his table with a blank stare at the ceiling.

"SCRAGG!" Kinza cursed. "Cardio stimulator!" he ordered.

Rakka clutch her face as the device was placed on the boy in three locations. "Charge!" McManus ordered. "Fire!"

The boy jerked and twisted, which made Rakka chirp. But there still was no signs of life.

"Marshall, why is it sending back the child dead?" Kinza snarled. He could hear buttons being pushed rapidly over his com.

"That shouldn't be… That SHOULDN'T BE!" Marshall was yelling. "Wait… I've got something… remove the stimulators, they're messing with my lock."

The nurses quickly removed the devices and the boy again vanished.

Nothing returned.

"Marshall?" Kinza warily called out.

"Would someone send some of the nurses down here to the transmat room?" they heard him call back. "There is a very confused young man wanting to know why he is not in the nursery."

McManus tapped three in the room with them to head down to the transmat room with scanners. Kinza stuck his head into the waiting room.

"Koi," he called. "I need you to go with these nurses down to the transmat room. There are some Young Feathers being teleported down there, and I'll need you to keep them calm."

"On it!" he said until he looked back at the pair with him.

Kinza saw the delay. "Well, go with him!" he told the children. "Go see the rest of the ship!"

"Yaaaay!" they chorused. Kinza looked at the ceiling as he returned to the operating room.

"Okay Marshall," Kinza asked. "What went wrong on the first attempt?"

"It's these strange Haibane bodies they have," he said.

Hlin cocked her head. "The vessels?" she asked. "Why? What happened?"

Marshall tapped on some of his controls. "What you received the first time was the child as the buffers had them the moment the scanning disks caught them, like a photograph."

"But photos aren't truly living," Kinza said. "They're just a still image."

"Correct," Marshall agreed. "But what I found was that when I sent the recomposited body back to the table I took it from, it left an energy signal back here."

Kinza stared at Gabrella. She was biting on a nail at the description he had given. "What?" he asked her.

She shook her curly hair. "What he described there… That's what Sinner's Rock does. He was holding a soul within the circuits of this ship!"

Marshall looked at his buffers. "Well now, that's creepy…" he mumbled. "Do you want me to proceed?"

"And you say that if you send them directly to the pads, they come out whole?" McManus asked.

"It was the transmatting back to the sick bay that caused the separation," the engineer said.

Kinza nodded. "You have a go," he said.

"Transmatting," they heard over the com. The little girl on table two vanished. Kinza shut down the stasis field that had held her.

The room filled with an ear piercing squeal of a little girl screaming in fear.

"Wow," Kinza complained. "I just got my hearing back for that?"

"That sounded like little Siki," Rakka said. "She screams if you look at her funny."

"Siki, what are you yelling for?" they heard over the com. Koi had arrived in the room.

"Two more kids?" they heard Marshall ask.

"Shall I get you some ear muffs?" Kinza asked.

"Already got a pair here," he grumbled. "Ready for the next one."

Two more children retrieved. It was now Nemu's turn.

Rakka opened the mold with a hiss. The ring was hot and glowing. She looked down on her friend, at how beaten up she looked, even though most of her injuries had been healed. She pried the ring out of the mold with the tongs and held it up.

"Umm… how are we going to place it over her head?" she asked.

Kinza pointed to a metal platter beside Nemu's head. "We don't have to have it hanging," he told her. "It just has to match mass wise to what she had before."

Gabrella looked at the Halo Mold in Rakka hands and the ring she had just place on the dish. "Are you telling me that all we really had to do was match the chemical components that made up that… thing?" she asked with a quivering finger point at that over-sized golden washer.

"I told you we could have made our own," Kinza said in a huff. "The only thing we would have needed to get were the Light Leaves, which don't fall under any known material we have available without synthesizing it."

"And how would you have done that?" Hlin asked.

"By the same method we'll be reintegrating her with her new/old halo," Kinza pointed out, "by transmat. We just have to match the right mass. Since the transmat is basically resetting her to a minute before the collapse, we'll get not only a perfectly healthy Nemu, but now that I think more about it, an unharmed and original halo, with all data intact! I won't have to rerecord anything! Clever me!"

"Don't get cocky, chief," McManus warned him. "First this has to work."

"You're full of good vibes, aren't you?" the Tomassamassa griped. "How are we doing, Marshall?"

He looked over his mass readings. "Is she missing any feathers?" he asked. "Her wings are not reading the correct mass."

Kinza looked at his feet. "Oh scragg, she's molted all over the floor," he said as he and the doctor got down on their hands and knees to collect them. Hlin and Gabrella found strays by their feet as well, and Rakka found one had got caught in the tongs. They piled them on the same tray as the halo.

"Is this really that finicky?" Gabrella asked as she found the feather she had picked up refused to let her finger go.

"It can be," Kinza said as he plucked the obtuse feather that had snagged the demon's claw.

"Okay," they heard from Marshall. "Everything is starting to settle in, buuut… damn, the halo is still not right."

Rakka clutched the mold to her chest. "But I made it to the right measurements!" she yelped. Kinza held his paws up.

"I was expecting this," he told her. "You could have made a dozen halos, and no two would have been the same. This system you use is impossible to get them exactly the same as the last one. It's just too analog."

"So how do we fix it?" Gabrella asked.

"Marshall, what's off?" he asked. "And worse, is anything over?"

He was watching all the eyes who were watching him, as the room was full of Little Feathers waiting to see their Nemu magically appear before them. "Nothing is showing over," he reported. "There are two deficiencies that need to be addressed before the system will give me a green light."

"Okay?" Kinza asked. "What's needed?"

"Two grams of potassium," Marshall told them. "And four and a half grams of iron oxide."

Kinza stared at the speaker. "Seriously? We're being held up by a banana and some rust?"

"That's what it says," he heard as Kinza stepped over to a small red square on the wall and pressed it.

"Computer, I need two grams of potassium and four point five grams of iron oxide on paper plates," he asked it. A hidden door slid open on the wall beside the square with the requested materials. He placed them in the accumulation pile on the metal tray. "Compensate for the paper plates, Marshall," he told the com.

"Compensating… we have a green light on the board," the engineer smiled.

"Very good," Kinza said. "I believe Miss Rakka would like to be there when Miss Nemu arrives. You might want to wait a minute while she gets down there."

"We're waiting for her," Marshall called up. Rakka beamed at him.

"Thank you!" she said with a hug to Kinza. "I'll see you in just a moment, Nemu!" she added to the body on the table. She ran out the door.

"Now then," Kinza told those left with him, "there was another reason why I just sent her away. I'm pretty sure you have something you want to say," he directed to Hlin.

She bowed to him as the body shimmered and vanished. "Elb Kinza Farley, I must now place you under arrest for grievous violation of the Treaty of Set."

Then Kinza looked over at Gabrella. "To which you're going to say…"

The demon goddess stared at him. "You can't do that?" she asked with confusion.

"Why is that?" Hlin asked. She found Kinza pointing at the floor.

'This is neutral territory,' he mouthed but did not say it verbally. "And as long as I don't set foot off her, I can't be touched, unless my Captain says otherwise."

"Which he has in the past," McManus added. Kinza shrugged.

"It's his call," he admitted. "But I also have a feeling that the Treaty is about to become moot anyway."

Rakka moved to the front of those gathered in the small transmat room next to Koi. Marshall grumbled about needing elbow room. He then pressed a button, and the door slid open.

"Okay folks, only those who need to be here CAN be here!" he barked. "You're all too close to the chamber, and the system has locked down. Will the nurses please take the children outside."

There was a chorus of "Awww," and "But I wanted to see Nemu pop out of the floor!"

"I'll leave the door open!" the Engineer yelled back. The board showed green again. "Okay, reintegrating… converting mass to model… feeding buffer to model… and bringing her in for a landing."

Nemu yawned as she finished taking her step she had been caught doing, and then looked about startled by the new surroundings. She saw Rakka kissing a gruff old man on the cheek, Koi stepping up to her with arms reaching out to her, and a flood of Little Feathers all rushing through a door that did not look like it belonged in Old Home.

"What?" she asked. "What happened? Where are we?"

"We're in Mr. Cat-Man's home!" one of the Young Feathers cheered. "Isn't it neat?"

Nemu looked at the back wall of the room. In large letters a sign said 'Welcome aboard – U.N.S. FORRESTAL – F2-662'

"What am I doing here?" she asked as she received a body hug from Rakka. Koi had taken her right hand into his.

"It is a very long story," he told her. "Safe to say though, Mr. Kinza saved you and these four."

Rather than a look of puzzlement though, the two senior Haibane got a look of fear and trepidation from Nemu. She grabbed Koi by the shoulder and shook him.

"What did he do?" she demanded. "What did he save me from? I need to know the whole story!"

Just then, the ship rocked hard from an explosion. Unlike the previous hits, this one sounded like it had done damage, and everyone was taken off their feet.

"That bugger just went for one of the main drives!" Tolefson yelled.

"Status!" Button called out as he entered the bridge. He was carrying the baby in his hand. He put her down in his normal seat at the science station and continued up to the Captain's chair. "You be a good girl and just wait there," he told her.

"I wasn't planning on going anywhere," she stated with a huff. This drew a series of odd looks from the crew of the scanning deck, who witnessed the baby speaking.

"The Captain and Gather Damon have been keeping the Phoenix busy, but she managed to slip through and detonate one of her hyper-blasts within our port side engine's thrust chamber," the helmsman reported.

Button brought up details on his monitors. "That normally shouldn't have done much," he said aloud.

Tolefson shook his head. "It caused a backwash through the system, and made the egg-beaters pause momentarily."

"Ah, she's getting tricky," Button noted. "I didn't realize she was a tech head."

"Okay, I'll ask," he heard from his station. "What are egg-beaters?" the baby asked.

"Our drive units in the back," Button told her while bringing an image of them up in front of their stations, "have a pair of intertwining power conduits that rotate against each other just before the thrust chambers. The magnetic field of one will push down of the conduit of its mate, which follows by using the same field to push down on the next conduit, thus making them spin."

Miho looked up at him. "Okay, what is an egg-beater?" she asked.

Button stared at her momentarily. "You used chop sticks to stir up eggs, didn't you?"

"Doesn't everyone?" Miho asked.

"I use a hand whisk," Erin in the Scanning Crew said.

Button rolled his eyes. "Anyway, Phoenix is using a weakness in our defectors against us," he said. "While the ship is moving forwards, the thrust chambers can't have defectors running behind them as that would hinder our thrust. Besides, if we were actually using forward thrust, she would be simply blown away."

"But we're at station keeping," Tolefson noted.

"Which means…" Button asked him.

Tolefson looked about in confusion.

"RAISE THE DAMN SHIELDS AROUND THE DAMN ENGINE BELLS!" Erin shouted at him. "WE'RE NOT USING THEM!"

"Ensign," she heard from above. She looked up at Mr. Button. "He is a Lieutenant," he reminded her.

"He sometimes acts like a cadet," she grumbled.

Phoenix flew up from under the ship and bounced off the shields now covering the main drives. She screamed at the energy barrier as she pulled away from a swipe of claws that Gather Damon's Pyrlion had attempted. But she could not avoid the slamming of bodies when Roy's Battle Phoenix crashed into her, sending them both towards the ground in a tumbling spin.

On a rooftop near the west side of town stood a man. He flung his arms wide. The falling firebird changed into a pillar of flames which were drawn into the man's chest. He then jumped off the edge of the building and vanished in a teleport move.

Battle Phoenix gathered himself and called out "EL KAH!" Instantly the bird landed on the same roof in the form of Captain Strom. He was then joined by Gather Damon.

"We need to contact the Phoenix Guild, now," Strom seethed. "Their leader is officially out of control."

Bloodeagle sat near the motionless Goddess as she watched the last of the green energy flow into her body. She looked to her left and saw a bright image next to her. She lifted her mask to see Amethyst standing there, arms limp and head down, slowly walking towards Katherine. He stepped up to her and then sat down beside her in the same position she was in.

"This is not what I was expecting to do today," he whispered. He touched Katherine's hair and placed his palm on her cheek. She looked at him with a tear rolling down to her mouth.

"I'm sorry… so so sorry," she whispered. "I had been warned about this, and I failed to take proper precautions."

"Shhh," Amethyst said to her as he wiped the tear aside. "Don't be sorry about this. This is glorious. She shines like a star! She is beautiful, just like her mother."

Katherine looked at the man in shock. "How… how are we not…" The words escaped her.

"Not frying each other's circuits?" she heard. Bloodeagle was now standing over them with her mask down, and its filters up full. "That's an interesting question," she told them. "You don't have that thing around your neck turned on right now, right?"

Katherine looked down at the Doorknob device. It was turned off.

"And you," the Communicator directed towards the Celestial, "you're exhausted. As a matter of fact, you're both exhausted. Considering how you two filled this entire bay with your energies, I don't think either one of you are going to be doing any heavy powers for a while." She then tapped the side of her mask and looked harder at Amethyst.

"What?" he asked. "What do you see?"

"It's what I don't see," she told him. "That hole in your soul, the one you used to transport that feathery idiot? It's not there anymore."

Amethyst snorted. "One must will a hole like that," he said. "I no longer am wanted or needed by the Phoenix. Someone else now holds my soul."

Katherine stared at him in shock as he took her free hand and caressed it to his cheek. She looked at the floor in front of her and gasped for air.

"I… I appreciate what you're saying, Ama… Amethyst," she said with a tremble in her voice, "I only just met you! I'm not even sure what my superiors will say… about her."

"They will say what a lovely baby," she heard. They looked up to see Roy Strom bending down to look at the child in the Goddess' arms. He then looked over at the man and huffed.

"So what brought down the wrath of the Attic on you?" he asked him.

Amethyst was not ready for a calm Denivan Supreme squatting beside him. "I, umm, I attempted to move the Communicator of the Flightless aside to gain access to the Glie Sinner's Rock."

Roy looked between the threesome around himself. "What, did you use an energy wave or something?" he asked. Amethyst simply nodded. "You know if you had simply asked her to move aside, you wouldn't have violated the Treaty."

"I know, I'm sorry," he said, making Strom sit back on his haunches. He looked up at Bloodeagle and tapped his face where she wore her mask.

"What hue is he right now?" he asked her.

Bloodeagle looked out from under her mask at the Captain. "You mean what color is he emanating, he's blue. He used to be a garish red."

"And she is yellow?" he asked. Bloodeagle nodded in agreement. "And you saw the combined energy?"

"Heh, they turned the whole bay green," she laughed.

He looked about his lower hanger deck. "That's a lot of energy. What shade?" he then asked.

"Shade?"

"Light green, dark green, chartreuse?"

"It was a bright green," Bloodeagle said. "Kind of like the color the baby is still glowing in."

Roy looked over the child in Katherine's arm again as it suckled the energy it was being given. "A touch to the yellow side," he noted. "That's to be expected."

"Captain," Katherine asked, "how did you… handle… I mean…"

Roy pointed between the two on the floor and himself. "You mean what did I do when this happened to me?" he asked her, which drew a look of awe from Amethyst.

"You've had a relationship with a goddess as well?" he asked. Katherine snapped him a look.

"Relationship?" she questioned. Amethyst cowered away slightly from the glare she was giving him.

"Hey, hey!" Roy called to her. "It take two to tango here, and you both did something wrong that brought this new life to the fore. Now my situation didn't wind up going this far, and probably never would have, even though we do care for one another deeply."

"You actually had a relationship with a goddess?" Amethyst asked. Roy sat down in front of the pair and sighed.

"Have," he corrected him. "We have a relationship. I had been just made a Supreme, and was reporting for duty for the first time up there. While I was there, I met this wonderful lady, who happened to have this streak of impishness that caused her to stand out among the other goddesses – I had just finished with a battle to save my ship and my crew, and was weary and need of rest. Our shore leave was meant to get us some rest and relaxation. What I got was near expulsion from the Denivan just as I had been made its leader."

He pulled his Doorknob out from under his collar and held it up. "This was one of the results of that encounter," he told them. "Granted, they weren't created specifically for meeting up with goddesses and demons, but this extra strong one was."

"A portable shield generator?" Amethyst asked.

"Well, it can be used as one, but more a psychic shield generator," Roy explained. "If I had this on back then, we would have wound up merely as good friends. But I didn't have anything on, when the Denivan Council allowed me full power, and she was nearby at the time."

Amethyst and Katherine sat back, knowing what probably happened next. They sighed. "Locked together like a pair of leaches," he said, making Katherine wince.

"Like A leach, not a pair," the Captain corrected. "I didn't go energy drunk like she did."

"What?" Amethyst yelped.

"No fair!" Katherine agreed. "Why?"

Roy plunked his hands on his knees and leaned in on them. He gestured towards Katherine, stating, "You're a creature of energy. You drained roughly one half of your available life force into making that baby. And you," he directed at Amethyst, "gain your energy via contact with the cosmos, in a way I kind of get mine to a degree, which is why we are stronger, power wise, than deities, which allow us to be cops, sort of. In the long term, they of course have more power, especially if they remove their limiters." He gestured to the ear piece Katherine was wearing. "But since it drains out quicker than ours, we have the stamina and lasting power."

Amethyst bobbed his head. "Makes sense, I think… But what is the difference? Why didn't you get energy drunk?"

Roy poked him in the shoulder. "You store your energy," he said. "That's the major difference between our two types. Celestials have an internal power reserve while members of the Denivan get theirs via a direct feed. We stream our powers."

Amethyst thought about that. "Is there an advantage to that?" he asked.

"My power is constant – technically," the Captain started to count off, "I can direct more of it to where it is needed, and since I'm not storing it, I never deplete myself or tire. You though, transferred nearly half of your available reserves into this joint venture as well, so you're still trying to regain your strength. And trust me, you're down right now, otherwise you both would be at it again, since she has her Doorknob off."

"Should I turn mine on?" Katherine asked. Roy reached over and stopped her from touching the device.

"No!" he told her. "Not while you're still feeding energy to the baby. If anything, you might want to give it to him, so that he can recharge and not cause you two to… you know…"

Seeing she only had one hand available, Bloodeagle stepped behind the goddess and released the magnetic clasp on the necklace. The pendant dropped into Katherine's free hand. She handed it to Amethyst, who cupped her hand into both of his.

"Thank you," he told her. He clipped the two ends together and slipped it over his head. He looked at the medallion. "So what do I do now?" he asked.

"Just tap it on the back," Strom said. He did so, and bent over holding his belly. He drew in a deep breath and held it.

"What… what is this pain I am feeling?" he asked. "It's not outright hurtful, yet I feel… loss." He looked at Katherine and shuddered. "I don't feel you now!"

"Hang on," Roy said as he moved in to adjust the device. "You've got it set too high. You're actually feeling a bit of withdrawal." With the dial turned down, his senses started to come back to him, and he felt the goddess' presence again. He then noticed that Roy was looking at it and back at Katherine.

"You had this thing pegged, and you still felt the urge to link with him?" he asked her.

"She actually reached up and turned it off while connected to him," Bloodeagle noted. "That's when the whole room went green."

Katherine blushed. "I'm not sure what happened," she nearly whispered. "The moment I saw him, I felt a connection."

"That was before Gabrella put that thing around your neck," Bloodeagle stated.

Roy thought a moment. "That's pretty much is what happened to me as well," he said. "I had not been given full power clearance yet, having made another blunder a few weeks prior."

"A blunder?" Amethyst asked. If he had done so prior to these event, the question would have been more scathing. As it was, this had been asked in wonder.

Strom smiled and tapped the floor beside him. "Before I was fully aware of my power source, which is shared, by the way, I rebuilt my ship using Dytrillium Alloy, a transmat made metal, and strongest in the known universe. The trouble is, I didn't use a transmat."

"Ooh, ouch!" Amethyst winced, guessing correctly that Strom had used his powers.

Roy rubbed his head. "Yea, fifteen members of the Denivan flat on their backs as their new leader rebuilt his ship. That did not go over very well! So the council shut me down to minimum powers. During this time, we brought Forrestal to the attic for a mandatory first visit. While they were still debating over when to release everything back to me, I was just me – no or extremely limited powers. So, while I waited for judgment, I spent my shore leave with my lovely partner."

Katherine blinked. "You haven't mentioned her by name," she pointed out. She got a glare from Roy for that.

"I'm not ALLOWED to mention her name," he said. "There is an agreement in the documents attached to this event that bar me from mentioning her name, mostly for privacy issues. Besides, we've both moved on. We both love and respect one another, but we also understand that we are barred from meeting up again if one or both of us are not wearing our Doorknobs."

"So what happened?" Amethyst asked.

Roy sat back and crossed his arms. "We were strolling arm in arm through the Gardens of Yggdrasil when the council decided that I was clear to receive my powers, and allowed flow. I never felt a thing, but the act alone caused her to become aggressively enamored, and the next thing I know is she's spun me around and has clamped onto my mouth."

Amethyst felt around his face. "That must have hurt," he said. "My face still feels a bit sore, so I can imagine what it was like for you." Katherine blushed and stared at the floor. Honestly, her jaw was aching too.

Roy pointed at him. "Yes, but also remember that I'm also not power drunk, so what's going on is more than a bit alarming to me. Plus, as I'm looking about, I can see that whatever it was that was causing this, it was starting to draw other goddesses into the event field. I tried to teleport us away, but I thought I didn't have the power yet. Was I wrong! We shot out of the Gardens and directly into the heart of Yggdrasil, causing greater mayhem as the power emanating from me was distributed throughout the Attic. It was just about then that the Council decided to contact me and tell me that my powers had been restored. Fortunately for me, I didn't need my mouth to talk to them, and ordered an immediate shutdown of those powers." He stood up and started to walk around in circles. He shook his head.

"I nearly killed her, you know," he said. Katherine gasped and he nodded to her. "I may not have felt the flow of energy, but it was still doing what yours did today, but tenfold. And it was white, not green, not red, not fuchsia – white… pure energy. Even if she had been able to collect it, it was not of any use… it could not be mixed as yours did. It was as if she had connected herself to a raw live wire. It nearly burned her out. She spent nearly a year recovering from it, and in that time, I was ordered to forget about her, and to never be with her again." He drew in a breath as he looked back at them. "I never had a chance to have a child, even if it had been an accident. But I would have loved to have had one with her. I hope that you two understand that even though this was an accident as well, you have a duty to what has come out of it. Cherish it. Love her. I'd say that you should bring her up in peace, but I'm afraid that's probably not going to happen, but at least we can strive for it."

"My, we're into our speeches today!" Gabrella said as she sauntered into the bay. She was carrying something in her arms and she walked over to Katherine's side and sat down. The goddess stared at the bundle.

"Gabrella, where did you get that baby?" she asked. The demon goddess laughed.

"I told you before that I'm mated," she snorted. "I had her a few weeks ago."

"You never told me," Katherine said as she examined the small red child. She had tight black curly hair with two tiny nubs of horns above her forehead. "She's beautiful!"

"Well, I needed to check on her, so I thought I'd bring her up for her to meet her new best friend, yes I did!" Gabrella reached into the bundle and rubbed noses with her child.

"What, are we running a nursery down here?" they heard. ANOTHER Gabrella along with Hlin, Mr. Kinza and Doc McManus were coming through the doorway. "What are you doing here with her?"

"Getting ready to breast feed her?" the one next to Katherine said. "You might want to get down to Grandma Soltarn's and rescue her? She's about to try and feed her ground lizard again!"

"Honestly, that lady is gonna make me move to heaven!" the Gabrella next to Kinza said and then vanished.

"And now I'm here!" she grinned as she opened a flap on her left breast.

"Going for the natural approach?" Kinza asked.

"Of course," she smiled. "There's nothing better for an infant than mommy's milk!"

"So, when did you have time for her?" McManus asked as she scanned the child.

Gabrella rolled her eyes. "Well, you know, it was a cold night in hell, and Soltarn was chilly. A couple months later, whalah! It certainly didn't happen recently. He's still in the hospital after what I did to him for lobbing fireballs at us!"

"He's not going to live that one down, is he?" Kinza snickered.

"Not in my lifetime," she agreed. "But even he's getting a bit of revenge via his mother."

"Oh?" McManus asked as she moved to the next child. A member of security handed her earlier readings they had made on Kinza's orders. "Other than trying to feed her things I wouldn't feed to my adult children, let alone my baby?"

"What? I like diced lizard," Gabrella mumbled. "No, I have to deal with the bickering over the fact that I haven't named her yet. Have you come up with one for her yet?" she then asked the Goddess.

Katherine was still watching in a bit of shock the fact that Gabrella was breast feeding her child right in front of her, which seemed not to faze anyone else in the room – well, maybe Amethyst, as he had a strange bewildered expression on his face. The look she saw made her smile and pull her child up to cuddle it.

"I believe I have," she said. "Amethyst said she shown like a star… So I shall give her the Angelic name of Puuru…"

"Puuru?" Gabrella asked with a look on her face like she had smelled something bad.

"Yes, it is the Angelic word for star," she replied as she gave her baby a kiss on the forehead. "Her human name… her human name…" she pondered.

"Human?" Kinza asked. "What, she gets a second name?"

"Well of course," the goddess smiled. "I go by my human name Katherine, but as you know, my Angelic name is Bakuu, which means Moon."

Gabrella snickered. "So that means that you two would be the Moon and the Stars?" That brought on giggles between the ladies.

"So, as for a human name…" she pondered.

"How about Meghan Gwyneth?"

The ladies looked at Amethyst. He was looking at his hands that were in his lap. "My mother… she was named Meghan Gwyneth," he said. He looked up at the surprised look he was getting from Strom.

"You're human?" he asked. "With a name like Amethyst, I wasn't quite sure… and of course, being a Celestial, your actual heredity is shielded from us."

He smiled. "Amethyst was given to me by Phoenix. I no longer wish to use it. My name is Michael James Moriarty."

Kinza and Strom looked at one another. "Seriously," Kinza said. "Moriarty?" He gave the Tomassamassa a questioning look.

"Yes. Is that a problem?"

Strom crossed his arms while Kinza scratched the back of his head. "I'm gonna loan you a set of books that Roy loaned to me about a detective named Holmes."

Moriarty gave them a grumpy look, but was shocked out of it when Katherine gave him a kiss on the cheek.

"I think Meghan Gwyneth is an excellent name," she said. She sat back and saw a rather evil look crossing over Gabrella's face. "What are you thinking?" she asked with a bit of trepidation.

"I have a name for my baby," she grinned. "Xuru!"

Katherine got an amazing twisted look on her face, and then burst out laughing. "Oh! Oh! I love it!" she squealed.

"I think I missed something," Kinza said. He looked up at Hlin, who was pinching her eyes and shaking her head.

"Well, she didn't," Roy noted by the other goddess' reaction. "Care to clue us all in?"

"Oh, my mother-in-law will HATE it!" Gabrella wickedly smiled. She held up her baby triumphantly exclaiming "Your name is XURU!"

"Which means Star in Demonic," Hlin explained.

"I still don't get it," Kinza said out of the loop. But his Captain seemed to.

"She just named her demonic child Star," he told him. "What DON'T they have down in Hades?"

Kinza drooped his ears and gave an "Ah!" in response. "Isn't that like shouting out 'I name thee punching-bag!' if you're about to grow up in a world like that?"

"Maybe," the demon goddess sneered, "but she'll be stronger for it!"

"You might as well name her Head-Butt Smash, and cut out the middleman," he commented. "So, does Gabrella mean Moon in Demonic?"

She gave him a narrow-eyed glare. "No, it means Gabrella," she bluntly said.

The librarian pointed at a door on the side of the room. "She's in Number Two," she told the red woman.

"Thank you," she politely replied and headed for the shown room. She opened the door and heard sobbing coming from inside.

"Puuru?" Xuru asked. "Yo, girl, what gives?" She quickly closed the door and made sure that no one had heard the goddess crying. She came over to the table her friend was seated at and saw what she had up on a computer station's readout.

'FLIGHT LOG – U.N.S. FORRESTAL – LOWER HANGER DECK - SCANNING DISK 374-AG-87473 – DATE 08145.72' read across the top of the monitor. Below it was a still image of both of their mothers seated on the deck next to one another. Her mother was holding a baby over her head.

"How did you get access to this footage?" Xuru exclaimed. "I thought this was a locked file!"

"I got it for her," a voice in the corner of the room said. "I'm not locked out like you two are for some reason."

"Charm?" Xuru asked. "How did you get in?"

She snorted. "The system sees me as dead," she told the demon. "It can't lock out a dead person. Besides, I also have a key." She held out her hand and changed two fingers into electronic probes. She plugged them into the console and made the image spin around until the view was now a three shot of Gabrella, Katherine and a man.

"Who is that dude?" Xuru asked, which only made Puuru sob more.

"Puruu's father," Charm said. "She asked me to show him to her."

"I never knew my father," Puuru cried. "He named me! He named me, Xuru!" She cried into her friend's shoulder.

Xuru looked puzzled at Charm. "I thought her mother named her," she said over the tears.

"She did," Charm stated with a shrug. "He gave her human name to her."

Xuru stood shocked with her friend against her chest. "Which means the name she gave her child…"

Charm nodded. "Meghan was named after the name given to Puuru by her father."

A knock came from the door. It opened revealing a man in a long dark blue P-jacket. He sighed as he looked around at the three girls and the display on the monitor.

"You should have asked me before playing that back, young lady," he groused towards Charm.

"Would you have shown it to her?" she shot back.

"Maybe, with a little less blunt-forced trauma," he replied. "Come on, you three, let's take a break." He handed a gloved hand to the Goddess, who took it to be guided out of the dark room. Charm followed behind.

Xuru looked at the screen. "Ghost clone," she said. A vision of her materialized next to her. "Follow them," she told it. "Don't do anything stupid."

"Yes, ma'm," it replied and walked out of the room, closing the door behind itself. Xuru sat down at the monitor and looked at the controls. She pressed PLAY and watched.

"No, it means Gabrella," her mother said to Mr. Fuzzy. She always loved when her mother would get sarcastic.

Wait… something just appeared in the far corner of the room. She froze the image and made it zoom in and clean up. She sat back and stared in disbelief.

"Edward?" she asked aloud. "Puuru's husband?"

His eyes were glazed, and he seemed not to be in control as he stood just staring ahead of himself. As she set the image playing again his picture was blocked by what seemed to be something coming out of his belly. Again, Xuru froze the image, and backed it up a second or two. She then backed it off to get a full view.

"Beelzebub's horns!" she exclaimed as the picture was played again as she watched Phoenix launch out of his chest and quickly fly right back into it carrying something. Edward then vanished.

"Too close," she grumbled as she backed it up again, pulling the image back further to show the gathered on the deck. She started the play again.

Phoenix burst out of the man's image, darted across the room past the stunned onlookers, spun about and gored its beak into Amethyst's chest, dragging him along as it reentered Edward, who then vanished.

"Satan's pit!" she sat with her mouth agape. "Puuru can't ever see this! Edward killed her father!"

oOo

Captain Roy Strom, Doctor Abigail McManus, Commander Button, Lieutenant Shaun Tolefson, Admiral Robert North, The Observers, Nightwatch, Gather Damon, Elb Kinza Farley, Koni, Scanning Rods, GENUINE Doorknobs, U.N.S. FORRESTAL, S.A.M. & S.A.M. System, Battle Phoenix, Ensign Erin Mackey ©2018 Denivan Media Services – Used With Permission
Phoenix, Edward Furgesson ©2018 C. Reuster/TiredGamer/Brightblade Productions – Used with Permission
Lady Bloodeagle ©2018 S. E. Nordwall – Used with Permission
Gabrella, Meghan, Puruu, Xuru, Dickinson & Foley ©2018 The Lugia Project/DMS – Used with Permission
Android Charm ©2018 Charm/R. A. Stott/DMS
Pyrlion ©2018 S. E. Nordwall/R. A. Stott/DMS – Used with Permission
Team Rocket ©1996, 2018 The Pokemon Company/Nintendo/Creatures/Game Freak
Vespa ©2018 Piaggio & Co. S.p.A
AC/DC ©2018 AC/DC
Easy-Bake Oven ©1963, 2018 Hasbro

References to Ah! My Goddess! ©2018 Kosuke Fujishima/KODANSHA

Characters from Haibane-Renmei & Serial Experiments Lain ©2018 Yoshitoshi Abe

Haibane-Renmei: CORPORATION ©2018 The Golden Halo Project/DMS

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