Note: Here we are at the end, at last! Thank you to everyone who reviewed - you kept me sane and focused on the finish line. :)

There may be a sequel and there may not, but if there is, it will be because I came up with (what I feel to be) a worthy idea, and not because folks pestered me into submission. So don't pester me. LOL

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I've got an answer
I'm going to fly away
What have I got to lose?

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Of all the places to sulk aboard the Leviathan, the officers' mess is probably the least effective.

Still, it's where Newkirk finds himself that morning, picking morosely at his breakfast. It may as well be his last meal, although they won't be landing until the day after tomorrow at the very earliest. The thought of what lies ahead makes everything tasteless, anyway.

Diplomacy. Hours and hours of it. And with his luck, they'll all be speaking Japanese.

"Good morning, Mr. Newkirk," a voice says behind him, and so obnoxiously cheerful that he has to turn around to see if it really is who he thinks it is.

"Mr. Sharp," Newkirk says, bewildered, as the other middy drops down to sit with him. "What's going on?"

"Good morning," says the loris on Sharp's shoulder.

Newkirk instinctively moves to cover his food, but Sharp has no qualms about eating with a beastie shedding all over his plate. The other middy does give Newkirk a funny look, however, as he begins to tuck in. "What d'you mean? I'm eating breakfast, ninny."

"But you're… happy." Newkirk squints. "You've been miserable as a wet cat all week, and you look dead knackered now. Why are you happy?"

Sharp shrugs. There are shadows under his eyes and he's yawning every few bites, but the smile seems glued to his face. "What have I got to lose?"

Newkirk gives up. As much as he likes and respects the boy, Dylan Sharp seems to always be running five steps ahead of him. "That doesn't make any sense."

Another careless shrug. "Maybe not to you, aye?"

"Happy," says the loris.

Newkirk tries not to let it show, how much the creature rattles him. Those enormous staring eyes, the spidery fingers and toes, that inhuman little voice… it's perfectly horrid. "I suppose. Here now, Mr. Sharp, could you not have left that thing with the prince?"

Sharp hmphs. "Monkey Luddite. It's just a loris."

The beastie stares at him, eyes practically glowing, and Newkirk abruptly loses his appetite. "Not all of us want to eat our breakfasts with a loris."

"Too bad for you, then. Oh, but I've some good news," Sharp adds around a mouthful of food. "Alek's had a word with the lady boffin. I'm on, you're off."

It takes Newkirk a moment to understand that. Then, when he does, he can't help but let out a whoop entirely unbecoming a junior officer of the British Air Service.

Sharp rolls his eyes. "Aye, that's what I thought you'd say."

Some of the officers are looking. Embarrassed now, Newkirk ducks his head and says in a low voice, "I can't ever thank you enough. All that standing about and talking -!"

The other middy starts to reply, but is cut off by a sudden dark shadow falling across the table.

"Mr. Newkirk," Dr. Barlow says, cool and polite as always. She looks down at Sharp, her own loris curled about her neck. "And Mr. Sharp… I believe you and I need to have a few words, at your very earliest convenience."

"Mr. Sharp," the lady boffin's loris says, delighted.

"Don't call him that," Sharp's loris says, scolding, sounding exactly like Alek. Er, the prince.

"Precisely," Dr. Barlow says, voice several degrees more chill. "In point of fact, we shall talk now, Mr. Sharp."

Newkirk hides his wince, but can't blame Sharp for going deathly white. Indeed, he thinks, finishing his coffee as the lady boffin marches Sharp off somewhere - indeed, that woman's the most fearsome weapon Britain has.

He's barking glad he's not going into Tokyo with her.

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END