I have a message from another time... Eyrie Productions, Unlimited presents UNDOCUMENTED FEATURES FUTURE IMPERFECT - SYMPHONY OF THE SWORD No. 2 - Second Movement: Blue Moon Serenade Benjamin D. Hutchins with Anne Cross Kris Overstreet (c) 2001 Eyrie Productions, Unlimited WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 31, 2405 9:17 AM DEEDLIT SATORI MANDEVILLE MEMORIAL INSTITUTE JERADDO, REPUBLIC OF BAJOR As she had every morning for the past week, Utena Tenjou woke up, sat up, and briefly wondered where the hell she was. The room she was in wasn't the beige-cinder-blocked familiarity that had been Morgan 412, which the part of her mind that was in "back-to-school" mode was still unconsciously expecting. It also wasn't the little cabin aboard the One-Hit Wonder where she'd spent half the summer, or the comfortable little bedroom in Skuld Ravenhair's cottage on Tomodachi where she'd spent the other half. This room was large and round, with a large picture window dominating one side, a high ceiling, and walls of reddish-gold stone. The window looked out over a lovely little lake with a cozy town tucked up against the far bank, huddled at the foot of a range of impressive, craggy mountain peaks, but the heavy drapes were closed right now, blocking the view. Because of the shape, the room always made her think for an instant that she'd somehow woken up back in the White Tower at Ohtori Academy, though that was clearly absurd. That room had been smaller, and mostly blue, and the window there had been much taller than it was wide. Then, and only then, did she reach a high enough level of consciousness to remember that she was in her new home - Room 501, the Castle (true to Wakaba's prediction, it never had managed to acquire a proper name for itself). Four days left until classes began; tomorrow was course registration day. But today... Today, Utena Tenjou decided to sleep until noon. Kaitlyn Hutchins, her roommate, woke up about half an hour later, climbed out of bed and into her slippers, and padded across the room to the window, yawning. Careful not to let daylight fall across her sleeping roommate's bed, she peeped out the window and saw to her delight that it was another beautiful day. As it happened, Utena woke up anyway, and, noting that Kate was up, decided to abandon her sleep-til-noon plan. She got up too, and, seeing that she'd risen, Kate smiled and opened the drapes, flooding the room with light. It was, as Utena had noted to herself before, a large room, occupying as it did the entire inside diameter of the Castle's West Tower. It went from wall to wall without interruption, except for the furniture; the only permanent feature was the spiral staircase which entered from below and continued on up to the roof. Utena, who over the course of the summer had found herself (to her great surprise) becoming interested in astronomy again, was thinking about putting a telescope up there. It was a far cry from Morgan 412, that relentlessly beige, rough-brown-carpeted, much-abused, rather cramped enclosure with its balky little window, its boring, battered industrial furniture, and its glaring fluorescent light. The floor here was covered with a cluster of nice Oriental rugs, including the one that had graced Morgan 412, which had pride of place in the center. The lights were torchiere halogens, which filled the room with a warm glow when Bajor-B'hava'el couldn't provide that same service through the bay window. The furniture had been built by Kaitlyn and a Minbari friend of hers named Chenann. It wasn't fancy - Kate called the style "Shaker" - but it was sturdy, and there was a certain elegance in its simplicity that the WPI standard issue had entirely lacked. There were two desks - big, sturdy ones with drawers that could actually hold things - next to each other along one side, their back edges curved to conform to the wall. There was a pair of large wardrobes, each flanked by a chest of drawers. Much of the remaining wall space was occupied by shelves, some holding books, others Kate's stuffed tiger collection (what wasn't on her bed) and Utena's teacup collection, except of course for the upright piano. The acoustic damper web Kate had built for Morgan 412, to keep the piano from disturbing the neighbors, wasn't necessary here; there was no one above them or to either side, and, thanks to the thick stone floor, you could have a fully-amped rock concert in 501 and it would be completely inaudible in 401, the single-bed room wedged into the corner directly beneath the tower. Kate could play the piano, or her guitar, or any of her impressive number of electronic instruments, and not be in danger of disturbing anyone but Utena, as long as the windows were closed. All in all, the atmosphere of the new campus reminded Utena (again, as Wakaba had predicted) much more of Ohtori Academy than of the Worcester Preparatory Institute. WPI had been converted from an abandoned college, deliberately reconstructed and maintained as a Working Historic Site in its late-twentieth-century configuration, and though adequate, its facilities had always had a certain... well, soulless industrial flavor. DSM was brand new and had been designed with the aid of people who had struggled with WPI's physical limitations for years, the school's administrators. The WDF Corps of Engineers Third Battalion had worked closely with President Tiefeld, Dean Montaigne, and the on-hand students (mainly, the Duelists' Society) to make the new school answer all the shortcomings of the old. The campus was spacious, green and beautifully landscaped, not wedged into the middle of a post-industrial city. It had a full range of athletic facilities, a student center which boasted an honest-to-God BALLROOM, a performing arts complex that didn't resemble a small converted church, and a dining hall which was actually -elegant- as well as functional. Inside, the student accommodations (except for the Castle, which was on a whole separate level) looked more like bedrooms in someone's home than dormitory cells, with nice views, windows that worked, non-40-grit carpet, and furniture designed for the use of actual human beings. Being handmade by the person whose room it was, the beds in Castle 501 were atypical - they were fully queen-sized! - but even in the regular residence halls, they were doubles, not WPI's accursed 36" 'narrow twins', and they had proper box springs. Such touches did not go unnoticed by the incoming students or their parents, many of whom wanted to know what they were paying for before they sent their children off to be educated in the wilds of a Bajoran moon. Nearly all of them left satisfied. Many of them left lamenting that -they- couldn't have gone to a place as nice as that. The students themselves were, by and large, enthralled - especially those returning from WPI's historic austerity. At any rate, because of all that it struck Utena as much more similar to her old school, Ohtori Academy, than WPI. That didn't mean she disliked the place; true, she had some bad memories of Ohtori Academy, but she also had good ones, and there had never been a time when she didn't think the place was a beautiful setting, however troubling the story playing out in it was. She had the same attitude toward DSM, and a much more optimistic view of her future there. In the week since she'd been back from deep space, she'd spent a lot of her time exploring the campus, and at every turn she saw another thing about it that delighted her and made her think, Himemiya will like that. That thought ran through her head again as she stood next to Kate in the window bay and looked out at Lake Jeradar and the craggy peaks of the Forlein Mountains. "You know," she said wryly, "I think we've done all right for ourselves, for a bunch of displaced fugitives." Kate grinned. "Mm," she said. "I th-think." They went downstairs, showered, then came back up and got dressed for the day; this was the one inconvenient thing about living in Castle 501, and it was a small price to pay for that view. Then, ready for the world, they went downstairs, and Utena gleefully put to use -another- of the many improvements in their living situation that had come with the translation to Jeraddo: The Castle had a -kitchen-. Utena Tenjou was a good cook, had been for years. It one of her favorite hobbies, probably the most domestic thing about her, and the trait people who had just met her - bold, forthright manner, sword, boy's uniform, and all - least expected. She didn't see any particular discontinuity in it, herself. A person wanted to live well, she had to eat well, and the best way to ensure that you had good food to eat was to cook it yourself. Besides, at the Academy, she'd been cast adrift in an empty dorm without a domestic staff, so it was either cook, shlep clear across campus to the Dining Commons, or starve. (Or - shudder - let Himemiya cook... ) Over the previous summer, she'd spent a lot of time, when not out roaming the galaxy on practical skill exercises, at Corwin Ravenhair's Aunt Belldandy's house on Tomodachi. Aunt Bell was a cook of legendary ability, and Utena had become something of an apprentice to her in this arena, as she was Corwin's in spaceflight. Utena had come away with even greater respect for the craft, broadened culinary horizons, and an itching need to put her new training to use; it had made her look forward to getting at the Castle's kitchen all the more. "W-w-what's on the m-menu this m-morning?" asked Kate with a little grin as Utena hung her jacket on a peg, rolled up her shirtsleeves, and put on an apron. "Waffles," Utena replied. Duelists wandered in, one by one, drawn by that strange radar-like sense that all true chowhounds have, which can rouse a person from a sound sleep and send them drifting to the kitchen even if they couldn't smell the food cooking from where they started out, and as they arrived, Utena fed them. Kyouichi Saionji, who had spent half the previous school year making breakfast for -her- in his capacity as Morning Grill Guy at the Morgan Hall snack bar, had encountered the reversal of roles with puzzled equanimity last Friday, Utena's first morning in the Castle. Somehow, in two years of knowing her, he had managed not to learn that she -could- cook. "Pancakes?" he inquired as he entered the combination kitchen/dining room just off the dojo. "Waffles," Utena replied. "Bacon or sausage?" "Bacon," said Saionji. Yawning, he went to the percolator and got himself a cup of coffee. "Last of the students should be arriving today... " "Yep," said Utena as she busied herself with the next waffle pour. "Isn't Liza supposed to get in this afternoon?" "Mm," said Saionji, dropping a couple of sugar lumps into his coffee. "T'skaia and I are planning to take the bus up to B5 and greet her." "S-sounds like a g-good idea. I th-think I'll j-join you." "What the hell, I've got nothing better to do," said Utena, flipping bacon into a skillet. "Mind if I tag along too?" "Why not? The more the merrier," Saionji replied. He took a seat at the long table, sipped his coffee, and added, "I wonder what sort of change her summer of adventure will have made in her." "I shudder to think," said Utena dryly. "Morning everyone!" chirped Azalynn dv'Ir Natashkan as she trotted in. She took a sniff. "Pancakes?" "Waffles," said Utena. Azalynn was informed of Saionji and Sky's plan, and eagerly invited herself as well. She had unfinished business with Liza from the fall before, and was keen to have it out of the way. Before Utena was finished cooking, three more Duelists came in. All of them tried to guess; two of them guessed wrong, leaving Miki to wander in last, speculate, "Waffles?" and receive in reply, "Waf - ... yeah." "You don't have to cook for us like this, y'know," said Azalynn. "You could make us get our own breakfast." Utena shrugged. "I don't mind," she said. "Maybe when classes start and I'm actually in a -hurry- in the morning," she added with a grin, "I'll make Saionji do it again." Saionji tried to look put-upon, but failed. After breakfast, the others pitched into help clean up the kitchen, and then they all went outside, just for the sake of being out on such a nice day. As they walked down the path to the main campus in a small, chatting group, the soft roar of an incoming spaceship caught Wakaba's ear. "Was Corwin going to come by today?" she wondered, pointing at the dark blip in the morning sky. It wasn't the One-Hit Wonder, however, nor was it Daggerdisc; what it was, was a grey and brown monstrosity nearly three times Daggerdisc's length, vaguely resembling a trilobite with a stack of ion thrusters sticking out from its shell. It bore down steadily on the newly built campus until, with a loud roar of engines, it buzzed the buildings, rattling a few windows as it soared off to the horizon to make a leisurely circle back to the spaceport. The ship, although going respectably fast, had been slow enough for the Duelists to see the golden thunderbolt flag painted on its bow, and the markings CFA NO BULL CFA-5290 beneath. "M-M-Mac," Kate murmured, remembering a Cessna plane buzzing Moose's van in upstate New York. There hadn't been a single Freespacer ship at Port Jeradar since the Home Fleet departed the system. "Who?" Wakaba asked. "McKenzie? I didn't think he was that crazy." "Ask G'Kron about it sometime, if you want an earful," Miki smiled. "My only question is, where did Mac find enough money for a spaceship?" "Th-that wasn't a s-s-spaceship," Kate muttered, "th-th-that w-was a f-f-fossil." The answers came later, when Mac McKenzie rode up on the shuttle bus, looking much less stressed out than he usually did after an interstellar voyage. "Morning," he said. "Has Housing opened up yet?" "Was that -your- ship?" Wakaba asked. "The one that nearly broke every window on campus?" "Hyperbole," Mac said, "and I steered well clear of the castle, anyway. That was my summer's income," he added. "The hull of an old Corellian Star Cab - it's nearly two thousand years old, but they built the things THICK back then - reinforced with scrap duralloy plating from the shipyards, refurbished engines - she'll do sixty-eight megalights sublight and a flat factor one in h-h-h-hyperspace," (he added with a shudder,) "and all the basic amenities. It's amazing what you can buy for five thousand credits, if you know where to look." "WHY?" three people asked at once, and Mac shrugged. "I need income," he said, "during school breaks and on weekends. I was flying bush on Earth, into and out of the Badlands, but there's noplace to fly -to- on this moon. The Noble," he grinned at his own pun, "can haul freight; it can haul people; and it can haul a respectable little bit of ass." "No," Wakaba asked, "why -that-... that -beast-?" Mac shrugged. "Cheap." Then he looked down and noticed his hand trembling slightly, and he said again, "So how about that housing, hm? The adrenaline is wearing off, and I could really use a lie-down about now." Chenann took charge of getting McKenzie to the Residential Life office. Others wandered off in various directions, just enjoying being outside and free to do whatever. Saionji, Kate, T'skaia, Azalynn and Utena piled into Vlad the Impala and headed down to the bus stop, thence to Babylon 5 to greet Liza Broadbank. Liza was an interesting case. For years, she'd been Kate's self-appointed arch-foe. Well, "self-appointed" wasn't really accurate; she'd been appointed by her father, a powerful corporate executive who hated the semi-formal immortal cadre who, on paper or not, pretty much ruled the Republic of Zeta Cygni. Since that cadre quite prominently featured Kaitlyn's parents, Ephram and Alicia Broadbank had very carefully produced three children - one who would be in the same school year as Kaitlyn; one the same as her younger brother, Leonard; and one for their younger siblings, the twins, Guy and Priss. (The sheer amount of ruthless calculation these acts embodied sometimes left Utena, when she stopped to think about it, grappling with a grudging mixture of awe and loathing.) These three daughters, Elizabeth, Clarissa, and Marietta, found themselves indoctrinated from an early age into their parents' hatred of Kaitlyn's (and the others of their social class), and each was sent to the same schools as whichever contemporary she had. In two out of three cases, they had succeeded. Liza had grown from a spoiled, petty child into a spoiled, petty adolescent, fixated on Kaitlyn but too craven to attack her directly most of the time. Clarissa was even worse, but she had a larger group of opposition - Leonard had a lot of contemporaries, including his half-brother Corwin, because of the timing of the Ragnarok and the celebrations which followed it. Toward the end of the previous school year, though, Liza had overextended herself and very nearly paid for it by spending the rest of her life in thrall to the Earth Alliance's shadowy Psi Corps. Unknown to herself, she harbored a rare and powerful psionic talent, one for which the Corps did not find itself above brainwashing and perjury to get hold of, even if its holder were a citizen of a nation which did not recognize their authority. The experience, and the awakening of her power, left Liza a wreck; and then, at her darkest moment, the people she had spent her life hating and scheming against, the people from whom she could least expect kindness, gave her exactly that. Between them, Saionji, T'skaia and Kaitlyn had shown her forgiveness and a new direction, and Liza had latched onto them with both hands, eager to make something better of what remained of herself. She'd spent the summer aboard a deep-space trader operated by Sky's Barsaivian t'skrang trading house, Ishkarat, as a bottom-ranked spaceman - a position usually held by t'skrang in the grip of kaissa, that species' excruciating version of adolescence. The Spirit of the River was due at Babylon 5 in one hour, so the four Duelists and friend went to the Marche Movenpick in the Zocalo, got some bread, cheese and sodas, and staked out one of the table to wait for the announcement of the t'skrang vessel's arrival. The hour passed without any announcement; then another; then another. Finally, Sky said he would go and inquire of the station's recently-installed Ishkarat trading office as to the reason for the delay. While he was gone, an uneasy silence settled over the four remaining at the table. It was Utena who finally said what they were all thinking: "I hope nothing's... wrong." Kate nodded, but she looked as if she suspected that hope was a vain one. Sky returned a few minutes later, looking disconsolate. He stopped next to the table, his tail making an uneasy circle on the deck behind him, and said, "I just spoke with the head of our trading delegation. She has informed me that the Spirit of the River... broadcast a distress call this morning at 11:41 local time, saying that she was under attack by unknown pirates near the Cardassian border. The message was cut off. Since then... nothing. Other Ishkarat ships are making for her last known location, as is the Challenger, but... nothing will be known for some time." He sighed deeply, hanging his head. "The honored delegate recommends that we go home. There is nothing to be gained by lingering here." The uneasy silence matured into a full-fledged gloomy one. Saionji stared blankly at his hands, slack on the table in front of him. Kate closed her eyes as if she had felt a sharp pain. Utena looked concerned for her roommate, fidgeting in obvious frustration with the straw in her spent drink. Azalynn looked as though she were about to cry. "Shazrad jakhaii," she murmured. "It's not -fair-. She'd only just started becoming who she really was... " "We don't know her fate yet," said Sky gently. "There are survivors of most pirate raids. And the Spirit of the River was a good, strong ship. It's possible they fought their attackers off but lost their communications equipment. We shouldn't jump to conclusions yet... " The t'skrang slumped a little. "... but I'll admit, it doesn't seem promising." "So what do we do?" asked Utena. "Take the delegate's advice and go home? Wait it out here? Kate? What do you think?" But it wasn't Kaitlyn who answered; it was Azalynn, her voice smaller still and quavering. "I want to go home." Saionji pulled himself back from wherever he'd gone and looked at the Dantrovian, who was looking down into the melting-ice dregs of her soda and looking even more like she would cry at any moment. "Azalynn... are you all right?" he asked, his voice surprisingly gentle. "No, I'm not," Azalynn replied in a whisper. "I want to go home. Now." "Let's go, then," said Saionji, rising. "The others can stay here if they wish. I'll walk with you back up to campus from the shuttle stop." "N-no," said Kate, breaking her long silence and standing as well. "The d-deleg-gate's right. There's n-nothing we c-can do h-here. Let's g-go back. M-Maybe we'll h-hear something l-later." Sky nodded. "The office has promised to call me with any news," he said. "It need not be said that I'll pass it on to all interested parties. For that matter, the school's administration - Dean Montaigne, at least - should be notified." "R-right... l-l-let's go d-do that, th-then," said Kate. The five of them were a bit crowded in Dean Montaigne's new office, which was a little smaller than her old one. They conveyed their unsettling message, promised to keep her posted as new information came in, and then left her to draft an announcement to the school community about their missing classmate. Slowly, downcast, the five filed out of Miss Montaigne's office, Kaitlyn in the lead - then pulled up short as Kate stopped, startled, in the hallway. Coming out of the Admissions Office was a girl in a green striped dress who looked a lot like Liza Broadbank. "What's the matter?" asked Saionji. "Th-that g-g-girl... that's C-Clarissa B-B-Broadb-bank. L-Liza's younger s-sister." "The one who's even worse than Liza used to be?" Utena asked. "Corwin's told me some stories about her." Kate nodded. "The s-same. W-what's she d-doing here? D-does she know?" Clarissa noticed the little group standing near Miss Montaigne's office door and trotted over, light and carefree, to meet them. "Well, hello, Kaitlyn," she said, smiling. "And how are you this fine, fine day? Beautiful institution your daddy's friends have built for you here, isn't it?" Kate, in no mood, refused to rile. She just folded her arms and gave the younger girl the "what do you want" look. "My good-for-nothing sister was supposed to get in today, wasn't she?" asked Clarissa as if she hadn't asked her previous question. "Do you know if she's here yet, Katie darling?" The younger Broadbank's smile became smug as she sang with a nasty glint in her eyes, "I've got an ul-ti-ma-tum from Daddy for her!" "Your sister is missing," said Saionji, his voice cold and eyes like slate. "Her ship was attacked by pirates this morning. There's been no further word. The IPO is investigating." Clarissa's blue eyes widened. "Pirates, you say? So she's either dead, or dragged off to the Outer Rim to be sold as some Hutt's plaything, or the like, then." The blonde considered this for a moment, then shrugged. "Well, what a shame," she said, with the most sublime lack of sincerity Saionji had seen since the last time he saw Touga. "That's all you have to say? Your sister's missing, maybe dead, and all you can do is bat your little blue eyes and say, 'Well, what a shame'?" Utena demanded. "What am I supposed to do?" Clarissa replied. "Wring my hands and wail? She was an embarrassment to the family anyway. I suppose it's only fitting that she should have such a scandalous end. Daddy will be even angrier knowing what a spectacle that'll make. I suppose it'll be announced to the whole school and they'll make a Federal case out of it. Memorial service and all that boring nonsense." Azalynn came out of nowhere, as though she had somehow teleported from the back of the group to the front; she moved so fast that the air made an audible WHUMP as it scrambled to get out of her way, and then she reared back and unloaded a full-blooded slap to Clarissa Broadbank's right cheek, knocking the blonde flat on her back in the hallway. "Never speak ill of the dead in my presence," snarled the Dantrovian in a voice that was barely recognizable as her own. Then she turned and stalked away, off up the corridor. After standing there a moment with a peculiar mixture of amazement and concern on his face, Saionji followed her. Utena stared dumbfounded after them for a moment, then turned her attention back to Clarissa again. The blonde slowly raised her hand and wiped away the trickle of blood the blow had left at the corner of her mouth, her eyes venomous and fixed on Kate. "You'll pay for that, Katie," she said softly. "You and all your little pals had better watch out from now on, because I'm taking over for my worthless dead sister, and you are -all- going to pay." Behind her glasses, Kate's soft brown eyes hardened. She glared down, meeting Clarissa's poisonous stare, then turned on her heel and went off down the corridor after her friends, not saying a word. T'skaia gave the blonde a rather pitying look and followed; Utena lingered a moment longer, alternating between wanting to get in some last comment and wanting to get the hell away from Clarissa, then went after Kate as well. "Oh - and tell your Trading House they'll be hearing from Daddy's lawyers, lizard boy!" Clarissa shouted after Sky. They sat in the Castle's library/game room, not saying much, for almost half an hour: Kate, Utena, Juri Arisugawa, T'skaia, Wakaba Shinohara, Miki Kaoru, and Dorothy Wayneright, scattered in the various armchairs and couches, some listlessly trying to read and not succeeding very well. Up on the mantelpiece above the fireplace, Lesser Mazinger and Tiny Robo tried to concentrate on their card game, but kept glancing worriedly at their owners and losing their places. Presently the door opened and Saionji entered, his long, lean face drawn and looking even leaner. "Mr. Kaoru," he said hoarsely, "your assistance is required." Miki looked up from the book he hadn't been reading, then nodded and got to his feet. Pausing, he glanced at Dorothy; the dark-eyed girl nodded with a faint expression that somehow combined a thoughtful smile with a worried frown, and Miki nodded back and trotted out. "D-d-dammit," said Kate bitterly. "Sh-she was f-f-feeling so much b-better, t-too. W-why the h-h-hell did C-Clarissa have to sh-show up and... " She gestured meaninglessly in frustration, then sighed under her breath, "(F-f-ff-fuck it.)" Nobody disagreed. Upstairs, in Room 304, Mia Ausa was unaware that any of this had happened. She was sorting out her room, unpacking the last of her things, which she'd recovered from storage the day before. B'Elanna Torres, the Duelists' Society's half-Klingon semi-mascot, was sitting on her desk. The reason she was sitting on the desk was because the chair was too low to the floor for her taste, and she couldn't sit on Mia's bed. Having been raised Minbari, Mia preferred sleeping on an incline, which made her bed more or less impossible to perch on and have a conversation. "What's -that-?" B'Elanna asked as Mia removed an item from one of the last plastic packing crates. It looked like a stuffed animal of some kind, but of what sort of animal, B'Elanna couldn't be sure. Some kind of fish, maybe? It was roughly the size and shape of a basketball, but it had stubby little fins and an unusual number of little googly eyes on stalks, and another single eye, huge and staring, dominating most of its front side. Most of it was made of a sort of vivid green corduroy, with lurid round pink spots on its body and fins of bright purple satin. Mia turned around, grinning, and hugged the disturbing item to her chest. "It's Gorgon Ghidra!" she said. "Isn't he just the cutest thing you've ever seen?" "Um... " B'Elanna was no stranger to bizarre-animal pets; back on Qo'noS she'd had a neighbor who had a pet targ, which, by human standards, was about the most loathsome quadruped around. Still, it wasn't as if Krovor had ever claimed his targ was cute, or even particularly pleasant to have around; he'd liked it because it was disgusting and violent, much like its master. "Oh, just look at him!" Mia cajoled her, holding out the toy. "His round, pudgy body, his beady little eyes... " She squeezed the stuffed monster in her arms again, which caused it to emit a rather disturbing 'squeek!' "Oh, he just makes me -melt-," Mia went on, cuddling the gorgon. "O... K," said B'Elanna. "Well, fine," said Mia with mock annoyance. She gave the gorgon a last squeeze and put it on a shelf near her bed. "-You- don't have to hug him, then." Humming a happy little tune, she went back to unpacking her books. As she did so, she came to one - a large, leather-bound, metal-strapped volume, of a type of which she had several - and paused, looking at it with an interested expression. "What?" said B'Elanna. Mia carried the book across the room and laid it down on the end of the desk B'Elanna wasn't sitting on, then started leafing through its heavy, yellowed pages, her tongue wedged in the corner of her mouth. Miki and Saionji were back in the library in an hour, looking worn but relatively pleased, under the circumstances. "How is she?" Utena asked quietly. Miki let himself fall into an armchair, checked his stopwatch, and replied, "She's very upset. She never took the time to talk to Liza after... everything that happened last spring. Before we went to Dantrov, she was still holding onto too much anger, and when we got back, of course, Liza had gone. Azalynn thought she'd have the opportunity to make everything right again when Liza got back, and now... " He spread his hands. "Now she may never get the chance." "And she's upset with herself for getting so angry with Clarissa. It's a vicious cycle she's not sure how to break," added Saionji, rubbing his face with both hands. Miki nodded agreement. "She's sleeping now," he said. "We persuaded her that, perhaps, a nap would improve her perspective, or at least bring her better news when she wakes." "No joy yet," T'skaia said glumly. Mia Ausa trotted in then, carrying a large metal-strapped book with her and looking excited about something. B'Elanna was right behind her, also looking pleased, but the both of them came to an abrupt halt as they felt the atmosphere in the game room. "What's the matter?" asked Mia. Sky told her. "Oh... that's awful," said Mia, looking downcast. She closed the heavy book on her thumb and said, "Never mind." "No, t-tell us," said Kate. With a wry smile, she added, "W-we all n-need some ch-cheering up... " "All right," Mia replied, a bit hesitantly. Then she laid the book down on the pool table and said, "I knew this building looked familiar when I first saw it, but I couldn't place it, because I hadn't looked at this book in a couple of years." As the Duelists crowded around, she opened the book to the page she'd marked - - And there was the Castle, drawn across the two-page spread in black and pastel inks, slightly faded against the yellowing parchment but still quite clear. Around it were markings, text in some swooping, curved and flourished script that looked a little like Arabic. "Wow," said Utena. "What's the book?" Mia smiled. "It's an ancient Atlantean text about the Order of Jedi Knights. They were an order of mystic warriors that flourished during the previous epoch, the last cycle of great galactic civilizations - headquartered on Atlantis, but their influence was felt throughout the galaxy. They fell at about the same time as Atlantis itself, before the rise of Corellia and Salusia, but some say there are still a few of them, out on the Outer Rim, passing the techniques down and keeping some vestige of the Order alive." Kate nodded. "O-one of the f-f-founders of the Asag-g-giri K-Katsuj-jinkenr-ryuu was a J-Jedi Knight. He l-lived in the m-mid-t-twenty-first c-century." Mia looked interested. "Really? Did he leave behind any writings?" "A f-few. You'd h-h-have to ask D-Dad." "Mm. Next time I see him, I think I will. Anyway - at the height of their power, the Jedi Order built temples all over the galaxy. Most were destroyed in the wars that led to the collapse of the Epoch, but a few survived, mostly on Outer Rim worlds, and there are images in the books of the time." She tapped the picture with a fingertip. "This building is an ancient Jedi temple. They must have had a presence on Bajor." "Mm, that's not surprising," said Miki. "I've been reading a bit about Bajor - Major Kira gave me a very interesting book on the planet's history. Their civilization's continuity of history goes back almost -twenty-five thousand years-, to the Epoch -before- Atlantis. So to them, a Jedi presence during the last Epoch would have been a passing fad. Bajorans didn't even -live- on Jeraddo back then." "(They practically don't now,)" Saionji observed in a dry murmur, causing Miki to give him a wry little grin. "So," Miki went on doggedly, "it's not too surprising that, when they -did- come, no one knew what this old building had been. Despite having had starfaring technology for millennia, the Bajorans have only very recently come to take an interest in the worlds beyond their own." "So... " said Utena thoughtfully. "The reason the big room downstairs feels so much like a dojo... " "Is because it -is- a dojo," said Mia, nodding. "It must be the room where the Jedi practiced their fighting techniques. They fought with projected energy swords - lightsabers, they were called. I saw one once - there's one in the Great Library, preserved from the days when there were Jedi on Minbar. They're incredible pieces of technology. Lightyears beyond the modern mass-produced beam sabers." Kate nodded. "D-Dad has one. It's s-supp-posed to have b-belonged to T-Talar Kem, the J-Jedi who helped T-Tetsuo Asagiri f-found the K-Katsujinkenr-r-ryuu." "Well," said Saionji. "That seems an auspicious bit of news for our Society." "Shame it had to come on such a dark day, though," said Mia glumly. "Actually, I think it's good," said Miki. "It gives us a bit of light, so that the day won't have been completely given up to sadness." "(grr,)" said Tiny Robo with a grave little nod. Utena absently patted him on the head. Mia nodded. "That's a good way to look at it," she mused softly. "Well... if you have any news... please let me know? I'll be upstairs, putting away the last of my books, then meditating upon the crystals." Course registration day dawned rainy, grey and dreary, one of the first really lousy days they'd had since coming to Jeraddo. It suited the general mood fairly well, as students dressed in the black rain capes or trenchcoats of the DSM uniform made their way around the suddenly sodden campus, forming long lines in the Student Center's Grand Ballroom to sign up for their A-term classes. There was something amusing, Utena decided, about a thousand soggy teenagers standing around in bank-teller-like lines in a grandiose, high-ceilinged, chandeliered, hyper-elegant room like this one, dripping onto the plastic sheeting which had been laid down over the magnificent mosaic floor with its grand reproduction of the DSM Seal and its motto ("Nolite accipere ullos ligneos sestertios"). For the first two terms at the Deedlit Satori Mandeville Memorial Institute, the uniform of the now-defunct Worcester Preparatory Institute would be acceptable garb for those former WPI students who had made the transfer to DSM. By Christmas, everyone was expected to have switched over to the new standard. Not that there was all that much difference; both uniforms specified a black and grey checked skirt, black V-neck sweater vest, and white shirt for girls, and black dress shorts or trousers with black suitjacket for boys. Both had red accents - socks, tie for boys, neckerchief for girls. The main differences were in the boys' uniforms: DSM had chosen to dispense with the charcoal-grey dress shirt in favor of a more conventional white, and the jackets were double-breasted instead of single. Shoes were still left up to the students' discretion, within limits, as were headgear and accessories. As at WPI, there was no actual school rule specifying the girls' uniform exclusively for girls' wear, or the boys' for boys'; and so Utena Tenjou stood in line for class registration (right about on the "u" in "ullos") wearing a double-breasted jacket and black shorts, her tie neatly knotted, hands in her shorts pockets pinning back the tails of her trenchcoat, with galoshes over her usual black and white saddle shoes and a non-regulation black fedora hat on her head. "The hat's a good choice," Wakaba Shinohara informed her. "Without it, the trenchcoat and the jacket would give you kind of an 'Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS' look." Utena rolled her eyes. "Where'd you get that hat, anyway?" Wakaba asked. "Sort of a present from Corwin, last New Year's," Utena replied, smiling fondly at the memory. "He was wearing it when the bunch of us left the house to go downtown for the big New Year's Eve bash they have in New Avalon every year. I complained that if he was wearing a hat, I couldn't fuss with his hair, so he took it off and plunked it on me instead." "At which point," said Dorothy Wayneright with a hint of amusement, "it became yours forevermore." "How romantic," said Wakaba dryly. "Don't you think it suits her, though?" asked Dorothy. She, like Wakaba, had opted for the usual girl's outfit; with a bit of an autumn chill in the air to ring in September, both, like most girls on campus today, were wearing the optional black leggings for warmth. Dorothy didn't really need them, but she liked the effect they presented. Like Utena, she was wearing a hat, in her case a neat little round one with a broad brim. Wakaba's onion of hair was looking a bit wilted because she'd decided not to wear one or put her rain cape's hood up for the dash from the Castle to the ballroom. "Oh, definitely," Wakaba agreed, nodding and giving Utena an appraising look. Then she glanced next to the pink-haired Duelist (who was looking comically put-upon) and saw that Kaitlyn was frowning at something across the room through her slightly-fogged-up glasses. "Something wrong, Kate?" she asked. "You're quieter than usual this morning." "That's C-Clarissa," Kate murmured, as if to herself. "D-d-damn!" Wakaba and Dorothy turned to look; Utena didn't have to. Clarissa Broadbank was indeed standing in one of the other reg lines, chatting with returning sophomore Carol Alverson, one of Clarissa's sister Liza's former brigade. As the four Castle-dwellers watched, the two girls shared a laugh about something. "Looks like she's taking over right where Liza left off," said Wakaba unhappily. "Just like she said she would yesterday," Utena added glumly. "I hoped she was just trying to get Kate's goat, saying that... " Kaitlyn looked at the two in the other line for a moment longer, then shrugged slightly. "W-we'll h-h-handle her," she said. In the line on their other side, a few places back, G'Kron of Narn found himself bumped by someone who was slipping through the line on his way across the room, a pink special-reg form - requiring him to consult with one of the guidance counselors on the far side - in his hand. "Pardon me," said the bumper, "but - Great Maker! G'KRON!" G'Kron blinked, then drew back until he bumped the person behind him. "MARMO!" he bellowed, causing many people, including Kate and her party, to turn and look. Standing face to face with G'Kron, his arms outstretched to mirror the Narn's gesture of surprised, pleased welcome, was a tall, broad-shouldered young man with the characteristically upstanding, fanned-out hairstyle of a Centauri belonging to a family of some importance. The hair in the fan was a dull red, a bit streaky, as if it had been partially highlighted. The Centauri himself had a rather patrician nose and a prominent chin. Centauri and Narns generally didn't like each other very much; the Centauri Republic had conquered and occupied Narn for a good bit of the previous century, and there were still a lot of hurt feelings about the whole affair. So there was a good bit of tension in the room, as the two young men stood staring at each other; but then they crashed together into a vehement, back-slapping embrace, and it seemed that all would be well, so most of the room lost interest. "Who's -that-?" Wakaba wondered. "Search me," Utena told her. "Beld M-Marmo," said Kate. "G'K-K-Kron's old r-roommate. He l-left W-p-p-PI last Ch-Christmas." "Ah, the whole Psi Act thing," said Wakaba, nodding. She'd heard all about it, over fifty students from nations which had decided to protest the expansion to the Psionics Regulation and Protection Act by pulling their nationals out of the Earth Alliance, gone for the previous school year's holiday break and never returned. "Indeed," said a soft, pleasant voice from next to them. "Many of us who were lost to the Institute at that time have accepted President Tiefeld's invitation to rejoin the community we were forced to leave." Wakaba turned to see who was speaking, and found herself face to face with a rather sharp-faced young man who had short-clipped black hair, slightly greenish skin, and pointed ears. He nodded cordially to her. Kaitlyn smiled. "S-Strom," she said. "W-w-w-welc-c-come b-b-back." Strom inclined his head to Kate as well and replied, "Peace and long life, Kaitlyn Hutchins. It is agreeable to see you again." That was pretty effusive for a Vulcan, and brought a little smile to Kate's face as she asked, "S-S-seen P-Prof-f-fessor S-S-S-St-Stuv-vek?" "Yes," Strom replied. "He is in his office, unpacking his books. I believe he would also find it agreeable to see you again," he added with just the faintest touch of humor. "Ah. My line moves. I must keep up or be left behind. Live long and prosper, Kaitlyn. I trust I will see you when Professor Stuvek's classes recommence." Kate nodded, smiling, and gave Strom the Vulcan split-fingered salute, which he returned with grave solemnity before slipping back into his place in his own line. "Why is a Vulcan taking Vulcan classes?" Wakaba wondered. "P-Professor Stuvek t-teaches l-l-literature, too. Or at l-least he d-d-did at WPI." On Friday, word came back from the ships which had gone to the Spirit of the River's last known position: they'd discovered nothing but a lot of wreckage, some unidentifiable, most from a t'skrang trader of the Spirit's class. Two bodies were recovered, both t'skrang. The Spirit's log buoy had not been found; the search continued, but not much hope was held out. Friday night in the Castle's beautiful dining hall degenerated into a kind of impromptu wake for Liza Broadbank, and not even Utena's masterful execution of Corwin's grandfather's lasagne recipe could save the occasion from becoming miserable and maudlin. ("To Liza," said Azalynn, raising her glass at one point: "The only enemy I never tried to befriend, and the one I most should have. Takhai malath'thani, Elizabeth. You were beautiful." Then she drained her glass, threw it into the fire, and went to her room to cry some more.) The weekend passed, rainy and dreary, and the Duelists and their friends remained disconsolate. It was a sit-around-watching- rain-run-down-the-windows kind of weekend, where the sudden, unseasonal, damp cold seemed to seep through the stone walls of the Castle and fight a winning battle with the building's modernized heating systems to give everything a faint, slick edge of chill. Monday morning, though, dawned clear and sunny, the warmth of August coming back to take a curtain call in the first days of September. It was as though Jeraddo itself didn't want them to inaugurate the first day of classes in this new and beautiful school with such feelings of gloom hanging over them. Kaitlyn and Utena rose, showered, dressed, and headed downstairs in time to start setting up for a good, hearty group breakfast for the Castle-dwellers, a gesture of solidarity before plunging headlong into their junior year of high school here on this lovely blue moon... but when they got to the kitchen, they found somebody already at work there. "Aunt Urd?!" Utena blurted. "What the hell are YOU doing here?" Urd Snowmane, Norn of Yesterday and self-proclaimed favorite aunt of Corwin Ravenhair (though she knew full well that Bell was his favorite - Bell was EVERYONE's favorite, and Urd had long since gotten over that), turned around at the range and grinned at Utena. "Is that any way to talk to your House Guide?" she inquired with a cheery wink. "House Guide?" said Utena, still confused. Urd shook her head and tutted with mock disapproval, wagging a finger at Utena. "You didn't read your new Student Handbook, did you?" "Only to make sure they didn't fix the uniform rule on me," Utena admitted sheepishly. "Well, if you -had-," Urd informed her, "you would know that one of the changes here at DSM is that all residence halls will have, in addition to student Resident Advisors - " "We don't have an RA here," Utena interjected. "Dean Montaigne decided that since we're mainly a club residence, the officers could - " "Don't interrupt me!" Urd cut in, then recomposed herself and went on as though she hadn't been interrupted, "All residence halls will have, in addition to student Resident Advisors OR THEIR EQUIVALENT - " (with a pointed smirk) " - an adult House Guide, to whom students will be expected to take any problems too serious for a peer to handle, including but not limited to inter-roommate violence, sexual harassment, serious injury, suicide threats, or other major crimes, and concerns over drinking, drug use, cybernetic interface addiction, or unplanned pregnancy." "... You memorized that part of the Handbook," said Utena, giving Urd a half-lidded, skeptical look. "Of course I did," Urd replied, drawing herself up importantly. "I'm your House Guide!" "They made -you- a House Guide?!" Urd did her best to look offended, though she knew Utena was teasing her. They'd become fairly good friends over the course of the summer, with a special understanding cemented during Utena's brief, unplanned vacation in Asgard a few weeks before. "That they did, and I intend to do a bang-up job at it, too, so you'd better just watch yourself, Missy!" Urd declared. "Now have a seat - the pancakes will be - " "B-burned," Kate observed, thoughtfully sniffing at the air. "What?!" Urd whirled. "Oh, dammit! Bell makes this look so -easy-... " Utena chuckled, dropping her attitude of mock antagonism. "Here... let me," she said, and nudged the goddess out of the way. "Why don't -you- have a seat," she went on, starting to clean up the mess Urd had made, "and -I'll- make the pancakes." Day 1 went well for the Duelists and their company. The first day of classes was never particularly challenging, and the reconstituted faculty of WPI, with a few local additions, seemed to be enjoying the new setting every bit as much as the 60% of the student body who were also transplants. The 'new' students, those who hadn't been to WPI, didn't have as much of an adjustment to make, and so perhaps they didn't have quite the same level of appreciation for DSM's luxuries, but they liked it all the same. At lunchtime, they gathered at Table 11 in the new dining hall and had the first meeting of the Institute Band Geeks Federation. The state of the student orchestra was discussed, as was the somewhat unstable condition of Kate's own band, the Art of Noise. Azalynn was feeling somewhat better today - she was still rather subdued, but she didn't look like she might burst out crying at any moment. She was game to start Art of Noise rehearsals as soon as possible, so that the band's two new members - drummer R. Dorothy Wayneright and rhythm guitarist Miki Kaoru - could start getting up to speed. There was hope, though not really ambitious hope, that they might be able to have their first performance during the fall break between terms A and B. That afternoon, when classes were done but before dinnertime, Kate met Utena at the main entrance to the Castle, smiling her I-have-a-surprise-for-you smile, and led her puzzled roommate back in the other direction. "R-remember before you l-l-left with C-Corwin," Kate asked, "y-you said w-w-we had enough m-motorheads in the I-d-d-DS, it w-was too b-b-bad there aren't any r-roads on J-Jeraddo?" Utena nodded. "Nobody seemed to think I was serious." Kate's grin got a little wider as they reached her antique Impala convertible, parked in the corner of the student lot at the bottom of Castle Hill. "We w-were k-kind of p-preocc-c-cupied," said Kate. She put her hand on the top of the Impala's driver's door and vaulted into the driver's seat without opening it, which made Utena smile a bit; there had been a time, not all that long ago, when Kate wouldn't have done a thing like that. She was chuckling to herself about it as she opened her own door and climbed in. Kate gave her a querying look as she fired up the engine. "Nothing," Utena said, still smiling, to the unspoken question. "You were saying?" "I was s-saying," Kate said patiently, "th-that we d-did take you s-seriously." She guided the big car onto the twisty road that wound through the campus, saying as she did so, "So w-we t-talked to M-Major Clanton, and h-he talked to P-P-Prylar Otano, and h-h-HE talked to V-Vedek B-Bareil... " The Impala curled up the sweeping turn around Comins Observatory and started picking up speed, heading for the hedge fence which marked the edge of campus. On the plans of the campus Utena had seen before leaving for her tour of space training, the internal road had ended here in a small parking lot/turnaround. As they drew near, though, she saw that it didn't; in fact, it left the campus, heading off into the wooded hills to the south. Kate threw a shift and accelerated as they passed the fence, her face almost glowing with anticipation and enjoyment, and soon they were roaring through the hills on a shiny new strip of two-lane blacktop. As they charged along, taking the turns with tidy precision and swooping up and down the slopes, Utena began to realize that she'd seen something like this road before. It was almost more like a racecourse - it had progressive corners, and low, striped curbs flanking the bends, and the occasional sand trap off to the sides of the sharper turns. And, she saw as they flew deeper into the woods, it had an on-ramp. An on-ramp which led to a six-lane, elevated, divided superhighway. She turned to Kaitlyn and had to shout to be heard over the Impala's slipstream as the brown-haired Duelist leader ran the big black car up to a hundred twenty, grinning fiercely. "You conned the Corps of Engineers into building a HIGHWAY COMPLEX? On JERADDO?!" she cried. Kate smirked, reached down to the dash, and punched a key above the radio. Instantly the roar of the wind was muted by the car's climate management field, reducing it to a conversational level without removing that open-road feeling. "We c-call it 'D-Die Autob-b-bahn'," said Kate with a grin. "It w-was actually W-Wakaba's idea." Utena grinned wryly. "That figures," she said. "It d-does technically have a p-p-purpose, or the M-Major wouldn't have b-been able to s-s-swing it," Kate went on. "The f-f-freeway p-part c-connects the m-main c-c-campus with the r-recreation c-complexes at B-Botrell B-B-Beach and the K-Karkasus Mountains, and the s-s-surface r-roads are b-backup routes." Utena's grin widened. "Ah, so -that's- why Wakaba was so enthusiastic about it. She loves beaches. Any excuse to go to the seaside, she'll take it." "K-K-Kyouichi-kun was p-pleased too," Kate informed her. "He's app-parently a fan of c-c-camping." Utena nodded. "He used to go camping in the Forest of Secrets sometimes. It was against the rules to leave campus during the term without special permission, but being on the Student Council, he could go into the Forest anytime he liked." She chuckled. "Weirdo." Kate shrugged. "It'll h-help when the t-t-time c-comes for his w-wilderness s-s-surv-vival training." "That it will. Are you going to take him out into the woods, drop him off, and tell him if he's not back in a week, you might consider looking for him?" "W-worked for D-D-Dad and me," replied Kate unconcernedly. "By the way - it's SUPER-surreal to hear you call him 'Kyouichi-kun'," Utena observed. "And not just because nobody uses Japanese tags in Standard except Tomodachiko schoolgirls and zaibatsu executives." Kate shrugged. "K-Katsuj-j-jinkenr-ryuu is a J-Japanese form," she said. "He c-calls me 's-s-sensei'. You w-want to t-talk about a s-sur-real feeling," she added wryly. "Anyw-way, it's only f-f-fair." "Bet he gave you a funny look the first time you said it to his face," said Utena. Kate grinned. "W-Wakaba thinks it's c-cute. He d-doesn't t-t-take it as w-well from her, th-though," she added with a wink. Utena leaned her chin on her fist, elbow on raised knee, and regarded her roommate with a smile. "You're really enjoying yourself, aren't you?" she asked. "Not just right now, I mean in general. You've really been up since I got back... well, except for the times like last night, anyway." Kate nodded, a shadow flickering across her face. "Mm," she said. "I th-think we've b-been o-over-r-reacting a little," she went on thoughtfully. "I m-mean, the inf-formation we have s-so far is p-p-pretty s-sketchy. D-Dad and the t's-skrang are still inv-v-vestigating, and p-people s-survive p-pirate attacks all the t-time. Even if she was c-c-captured, not all p-pirates are s-slavers... " Utena nodded. "Yeah, I was thinking about that too, last night, after we went to bed. The way I figure it, the attackers were probably specifically after an Ishkarat ship, so even if they were after the crew, they aren't going to be interested in a human." She grinned. "They'll probably either ransom her or dump her on the Outer Rim someplace. She'll hitch a ride back with a Freespacer trader or something and be here in time for B-term, and I bet she'll be pissed off, too," she added with a grin. Kate chuckled at the image. "I h-hope so," she said, more soberly. "If they d-do ransom her, her f-f-father probably w-won't pay," she mused. "Then we will," Utena replied. "Or we'll find out where they've got her and go get her." Kate gave her a smiling, askance look. "D-Duelists to the r-r-rescue?" "Of course," Utena replied. She drew herself up importantly and said, "I -am- a Prince, you know. It's my duty to rescue young ladies in distress. Even bitchy ones," she added, dropping the pretentious pose and grinning. "Anyway," she went on as Kaitlyn giggled, "I was just noticing that you're... -brighter-, since I was away. Just... little things. You shine more. It's hard to explain." Kate nodded. "I kn-know what you m-mean. I d-didn't r-realize it showed on m-me. But I h-have a lot to be h-h-happy ab-bout," she said. "I h-have so m-many g-good friends... I have a b-beautiful school to c-call home, and a b-b-beautiful home to g-go b-back to when it c-closes... a f-family that b-backs me a h-h-hundred p-percent... a s-student of my o-own... " Her cheeks pinkened, and she added softly, "... and s-s-someone to l-love... " Utena's smile became softer, nostalgic; she leaned back in her seat, hands folded behind her head, stretched, looked up at the flickering play of light and shadow that the afternoon sun made through the trees flanking this stretch of highway, and said, "Nice feeling, isn't it?" Kate's own smile faltered a little. She reached across the bench seat and held out her hand, and said in an apologetic tone, "You'll g-get her b-b-back. I kn-know you w-will." Utena glanced at her, then took her hand, squeezed it, and said, "Yeah, I know. Don't worry. Don't apologize for your good fortune just because I've had some bad luck." She chuckled. "It won't hurt my feelings if you don't share my loneliness," she said lightly, trying her best to make a joke out of it. "Anyway," she went on, the lightness in her voice less forced now, "I have some good friends to see me through too, y'know." Mia Ausa finished her first day's reading for Professor Ford's Intermediate Comparative Religion class, closed her textbook, and pushed her chair back from the desk with a yawning, stretching sigh. "I don't see how you can stand that stuff," said B'Elanna Torres from the sofa she'd scrounged for the room, the bed being useless for the traditional dorm-room accommodation of seated guests. "It's so -dull-. None of it has any practical value." Lying on her stomach with her chin propped on her hands, she flipped a leaf in her Electrodynamics text and continued offhandedly, "Besides, I'd have figured you'd have had enough of that kind of thing on Minbar." Mia turned her chair and smiled patiently. She didn't particularly mind having acquired a sidekick, but sometimes B'Elanna got the -oddest- ideas about things. "Not every Minbari prays for a living," she said. "Admittedly, my mother belonged to the Religious caste, but there was a good deal more to -my- life on Minbar than religion." "Mm," said B'Elanna skeptically. "To hear Chenann tell it, there's -sewers-, too." Mia laughed. "Well, sewers are important," she said. "More important than religion, by some standards." "Anyway, if it's so nice there," B'Elanna asked, "why'd you leave?" Mia's smile slipped a little. She looked pensive as she replied, "Well... that's a good question. I guess, when you get right down to it, my situation wasn't so different from yours. That's one of the reasons I took your uncle's attitude toward your future so... personally." B'Elanna grinned. "And that's why you whomped him so hard?" Mia's smile returned, with a hint of mischief, as she replied, "Well, mostly that was because he cheated." (And tried to kill me, she didn't add.) "But I challenged him because of that, yes. He reminded me of the reasons why I left Minbar." "Oh yeah?" The half-Klingon girl shut her book, sat up, and looked eager. "Like what?" Mia gazed at her just long enough to make her uncomfortable, then said, "All right... I'll tell you about it." /-- MONDAY, DECEMBER 6, 2404 11:31 AM YEDOR, MINBAR Mia adjusted the cuffs of her best robe's sleeves again, though there was nothing wrong with them, and patted at her thick, wavy black hair, though no one else on Minbar would ever know if it looked right or not anyway. She knew they were just nervous habits, but they were better than pacing, so she didn't try to stop herself. Her uncle Davonn, tall, slender, spiky-crested, smiled at her from the bench along the anteroom's wall. -He- looked calm, calm enough to make Mia want to hate him, just for a moment. She could never, of course. He was her only blood relative who would speak to her, after all - except for her father, who wasn't allowed to see her. "Be calm, Mia," he told her in his soft, smooth voice. "It's only a formality." Mia nodded. "I know, Uncle," she said. "Still... the Grey Council!" Davonn smiled a little wider, but before he could speak, the door before them opened silently onto darkness. "Go," said Davonn softly. "Your mother will be watching you. Speak from your heart." Mia nodded again, then turned, squared herself up, and went through the doors. There was a single spot of light shining on the bare floor; in the darkness, it was impossible to tell anything about the room, not even its size. Something in the air gave it an unconscious sense of vastness, though; vastness and immense age. Mia walked into the spot of light and stopped, her eyes searching the blackness around her. Then, without warning, there they were, standing in a circle around her, each illuminated by his own similar light from the invisible ceiling. They wore identical grey robes and their faces were downturned, hidden in the shadows of their hoods. Mia looked from one to the next, but it was impossible to tell which of them was the only friend she might expect to have in this room. There was one who definitely wasn't, though - the tall, broad-shouldered one who bore the staff of the Council's leader. Mia knew him on sight, identified him by his size and by his staff, though she could not see his face. Her uncle had often spoken of him, for he held the highest position in Davonn's caste, the Warriors. Neroon, the leader of the Grey Council, spoke the ceremonial words that opened any and every gathering of that council, describing its foundation by Valen Himself, its composition, its purpose, in language ancient and elegant. Then he reached up, pushed back his hood, and turned his cold, patrician face and sharp, perceptive eyes on Mia. "Mia, child of Lemia, late of the house of Ausa," he said. "You have a petition you wish this Council to hear?" Mia forced her voice not to quaver as she nodded her head respectfully and said, "I do." "Then speak," said Neroon, in a tone which came just politely short of implying that she was wasting his very valuable time. "As the Council no doubt knows," said Mia carefully, "I have just passed the fourteenth anniversary of my birth, on the Old Calendar. I feel that the time is right for me claim the name of my mother's house, and decide the course of my future." Neroon looked first to one side of Mia, then the other, managing to pass his eyes over her in the process without giving the impression he had actually seen her, and nodded. "The name is yours by birthright," he said; in his voice was an undercurrent of reluctance which Mia did not fail to pick up. "And what of your future, Mia of Ausa?" he went on, sounding faintly mocking. Mia felt herself tremble inside, quashed it fiercely. She wouldn't let him get her down, make her embarrass herself in front of the Council. Of course he had nothing but disdain for her; it was Neroon who had called her "the shame of all Minbar" at her birth, her impossible birth, the child of a Minbari woman and the Earthman she had loved illegally, never dreaming that a child could result. That complacency had cost Lemia of Ausa her position as assistant to a Satai, her standing in society, the regard of all but one of her relatives, and, in the end, her life - and Neroon, Mia knew, Neroon had stood over her deathbed and declared her fate justice for the disgrace she had brought to Minbar. All that, knowledge no one else in the world knew she had gathered, knowledge her beloved uncle had tried to protect her from and still believed that he had succeeded, flashed through her mind in an instant as Neroon's mocking tone bit into her, and for an instant, just an instant, she felt her fists clenching. It would be so easy to make Neroon pay for his arrogance, his bigotry, his callous dismissal of her mother's suffering and death as "justice", his never-veiled contempt of her uncle Davonn for the young warrior's belief in the ancient ways of the Anla'shok. Neroon never would have dreamed that her family's neglect could have had a positive outcome; but an intelligent, inquisitive girl all but abandoned in the greatest storehouse of knowledge the modern universe boasted could learn all -manner- of fascinating things... Mia caught herself in a nanosecond and forced herself back into the composure she had never visibly lost. Never had the temptation to abuse what she had learned in her endless solitary hours in the Library been so strong, and never had the responsibility that knowledge carried with it been more clearly etched on her soul. In that respect, then, this was a valuable experience - something, she thought with bitter humor, to thank Neroon for. "The calling of my heart is clear," said Mia, making herself meet his cold, uncaring eyes without flinching. "My path is my mother's. I seek admission to the Religious caste, to devote my days to the study and the glory of the Word of Valen." Neroon's mocking smile almost lost its veneer of cordial impartiality, and even as he spoke, Mia felt her heart sinking, knowing that the fix was in: "Mia, of the house of Ausa, has made clear her wishes. How speaks the Council?" And all around Mia, one by one, the lights revealing the members of the Grey Councilors went out, until only one, aside from Neroon, remained. Well, some part of Mia's mind said wryly while the rest of her raged in silence, now you know which one is Delenn. "Unfortunately," said Neroon in a voice that left no doubt that he found it anything but, "there is no place for you among those of the Religious caste at this time, Mia of Ausa. However," he went on charitably, "Valen teaches us that no... Minbari... shall lead a life without purpose. A place has been prepared for you in the caste of Workers. You will report to the Guildhall of the Sanitary Legion tomorrow and begin your training as a cleaner." He smiled benevolently. "Perhaps you will be placed in charge of maintaining the cleanliness of the Library," he said, as if offering a condolence. He banged the end of his staff upon the stone floor, a clear dismissal, and waited for her to leave; but Mia Ausa did not leave. Instead she stood looking at the floor for a moment, her lip trembling, willing herself not to break, not to give him the satisfaction. "The Council has made its decision plain," said Neroon in a warning voice. "All... Minbari... must abide by those decisions." He said it with that pause again, that poisonous pause which silently added, "And those nameless things that presume to call themselves Minbari, too." As the pause and the subvocal sneer came, something inside Mia did break, but it wasn't her heart or the dam holding back her tears. Her shoulders stiffened, her hands at her sides flexing again; then she raised her tearless eyes to Neroon's and said, "Then the Council leaves me no choice." "I am glad you see it that way," said Neroon mock-pleasantly, but Mia wasn't done talking, and her voice, suddenly clear and hard, cut him off, echoing in the vastness of the chamber. "I had hoped I would not have to do this," she said. "Despite everything, I love Minbar, and had hoped for the chance to live out my days here, in study and contemplation of the truth of Valen. But Valen's law says that a Minbari's first obligation is to the calling of her heart, and my heart does -not- call me to the Worker caste. It is a noble and honorable calling," she added for the benefit of the three Workers who belonged to the Council, who were still here, even if the snuffing of their lights in the vote had made them invisible, "but it is not mine. If this Council cannot see fit to honor Valen's teachings and grant me the future on Minbar I choose, then I am forced to choose a future -away- from Minbar." Neroon actually looked taken aback. "-Away- from Minbar?" he said, his tone still mocking but now puzzled atop that. Then, becoming indignant, he went on, "Nonsense. The Council has spoken! Your place is prepared, Mia of Ausa, and you will -not- presume to educate the -Grey Council- as to the meaning of the Word of Valen!" "My father," Mia informed Neroon sharply, "as you and so many others never tire of holding over my head, is an Earthman. Under galactic law, I am therefore entitled to claim citizenship of the Earth Alliance as well. The petition, backed by a tie of blood, is automatic and cannot be denied." She took a deep breath, let it out, and said with much greater calm than she would have believed possible, "If this Council insists on denying me the place my heart dictates for me on Minbar, then I hereby -renounce- Minbar! You have told me all my life that I am not Minbari - fine, then, I am not! I am an Earthwoman, and as an Earthwoman I demand that the Minbari government grant me passage to my -homeworld-." She put an extra twist on the last word, digging it in, using it against Neroon and his supporters the way they had always used the word 'Earthman' to hurt her, pretending they didn't know she could hear them. Neroon stared at her as though she'd suddenly grown a second head, all trace of his usual contemptuous cordiality wiped away for a moment by sheer surprise. Then he gathered himself in and sneered at her, "Out of the question. This foolishness will not reflect well upon you in the future, Mia." "You deny my right to Earth citizenship? You would disregard the international laws of the United Federation of Planets and cast a citizen of another sovereign nation into involuntary servitude?" Mia demanded, her voice thick with outrage, no longer contained. "You are many things, Satai Neroon, but I did not think you a common -slave trader-." Neroon's eyes widened with shock; the haughty warrior was struck absolutely speechless by that claim, leaving Mia an opening to continue in a more reasonable tone of voice, "However, there is an avenue open to us besides useless name-calling. I claim that I have certain rights under international law. You dispute that claim. Under the Pact Babylonica, which you yourself signed two years ago, there is a clear path to resolution of this disagreement: We must refer the matter to the International Police for arbitration." Mia saw Neroon's face freeze and knew she had him. She was right; a matter such as this was tailor-made for IPO arbitration. But to bring an International Police arbiter here, to lay this whole sordid matter out in front of him - to admit on the public record, before the eyes of the galactic press that such a case would draw like flies to Minbar in the arbiter's wake... Slowly, stiffly, Neroon conceded defeat. "Very well," he said reluctantly. "You will collect your belongings and leave this world within forty-eight hours. But know this, Mia of Ausa: As an Earthwoman, you will not be welcome on Minbar ever again." "I never have been," Mia replied coldly. Without acknowledging her further, Neroon extinguished his light. Somehow, Mia could sense all around her the Councilors leaving, though their movements were as silent as they were invisible. As she turned to go, Mia saw with surprise that one Councilor yet remained; and as Mia faced her, Delenn of Mir reached up and pushed back her cowl, then gestured for Mia to walk with her. "Very few," said Delenn carefully as the two left the Council chamber, "have ever spoken to Neroon in such a fashion." "Perhaps that is his problem," Mia replied. Delenn permitted herself a very small smile and said dryly, "Perhaps. In any event, I am sorry it's come to this, Mia. I, too, had hoped that you would be granted your request." "I never really expected I would," Mia told her. "I only hoped... but they forced my hand, and here I am. Or, rather, here I go." Delenn nodded. "As it happens," she said, "I will be leaving Minbar myself before much longer. I've been named ambassador to the Babylon station." She looked concerned and asked, "Do you know where you will go?" "Earth," said Mia, "as I said I would. My father can arrange citizenship for me, and after that... I imagine I'll have to go to school somewhere. There are some good schools on Earth. Dad will probably have some ideas." She shrugged, a human gesture she'd learned from her infrequent, surreptitious visits with her father. "I'll find a new path." Delenn smiled, more openly this time, and said, "I wish you good fortune and peace in your search for it. Be well until I see you again." "And you, Satai Delenn," said Mia, and they took their leave of each other. Mia wondered just when she would see Delenn again. She supposed that, if the elder woman were taking a position on Babylon 5, Mia could visit her there; the station would be a public port once it was operational, free for all to enter, if they could afford passage. Aunt Delenn. Mia called her aunt, but of course she wasn't. Mia's mother had been her assistant, years ago, before the tragic love affair with John Trussell of Earth. Aside from Davonn and his Anla'shok peers - dismissed as crackpots and fools by almost everyone on Minbar - she was the one Minbari adult who -liked- Mia; and so Mia called her aunt, at least privately. It was Delenn who had used her influence to ensure that Mia got to know her father as she grew up, seeing him twice or three times a year in some neutral location, usually by a rendezvous of starships. And now, she would be appearing in his life, unceremoniously, full-time. She wondered how he would take that, if he would welcome her or resent the intrusion into his routine. Then again, if she went to boarding school, that would be mitigated; they wouldn't have to learn how to live with each other at this late date. Perhaps that would be for the best. Nonetheless, it was with a nervous heart that she went to find where her uncle had wandered off to and ask his help in arranging things. --/ As Mia finished her tale, B'Elanna sat on the couch and gazed at her wide-eyed, her face bearing a look of wonder. "Wow," said the half-Klingon in amazement. "'A common slave trader.' That'd be... that'd be like me telling off Chancellor Krojaar in front of the High Council... except on Qo'noS, what you did would have gotten you killed." She grinned. "Good thing Minbari are a bunch of peace-loving wimps." Mia would have remonstrated with her, but the impish grin on B'Elanna's face made it clear that she was only joking. "Well," Mia said, "at the time, it seemed like the right thing to do." "So that's why you went all -house- on Uncle Klayvor," B'Elanna mused. "You were just doing to him what you wanted to do to that Maroon guy." Mia laughed. "Neroon," she chuckled; then, sobering, she said, "I don't want you to get the impression that Satai Neroon is an evil man. He isn't. He's just... blinded by his prejudices. He has a cruel streak, but reserves it for those he views as enemies. Unfortunately, he hates my father, and so he considered me his enemy from birth." She sighed. "As a warrior and a leader, he's very well-regarded. He would never have made the cowardly final attack your uncle tried." B'Elanna nodded. "Uncle Klayvor talks a good game," she said, "but deep down inside he's just a piece of - " "B'Elanna!" said Mia with laughing admonition, and the two girls giggled for a few moments before B'Elanna became serious and said, "Listen... I never thanked you for what you did. I really think... you saved my life. If I'd had to go home with him, try to fit back into the life he and Mother wanted for me... I'd never have made it. One way or another... " Mia got up from her chair, crossed the room, and sat down on the couch, patting B'Elanna's hand. "You're welcome," she said. "Anyway," she added lightly, "there were at least a dozen other people in that room who would have done it if I hadn't. Utena was about ready to run him through right where he stood. He really shouldn't have called her a cupcake." B'Elanna snorted. "Yeah, I thought for sure he was gonna get it right in the gut for that one. He would have if I'd've been her." Mia smiled, then glanced at her watch. "Well. You'd best run along - your lesson with Professor Kraalgh is in five minutes." B'Elanna looked at her own watch. "Oh yeah. Thanks, Mia - he gets so grumpy when I'm late." She hopped up from the couch, gave her hostess a cheery farewell, and left. Mia sat on the couch for a few more minutes, then went to her bookshelf and drew out one of her ancient texts. It had been beyond thoughtful of Delenn to slip several of Mia's favorites - titles of which the Great Library had duplicates, of course, but still - into her luggage before the girl had left Minbar to begin her self-demanded exile. She put the book down on her desk, then switched on her dataterminal, called Babylon 5, and made an appointment with an excruciatingly earnest young attache named Lennier to dine with Ambassador Delenn on Friday evening. /* R.E.M. "1,000,000" _Chronic Town_ */ The resurgent summer hung on for two glorious weeks, and then tumbled almost overnight into fall, which was even more glorious. The snap in the air reminded Utena pleasantly of her visit to Asgard, where it always feels a bit like October when it's not doing its best impression of February, and the foliage along Die Autobahn was magnificent. Classes went well; so did the business of the Duelists' Society. After their experiences over the spring and summer, they'd started really living up to the wording of their charter, testing themselves and each other in a meeting of diverse styles of combat, learning from each other and drawing a collective strength from their diversity. In the second week of the term, while summer still clung, they acquired a new member - Beld Marmo, a student of the traditional Centauri swordfighting form, which utilized short, broad swords not unlike Amanda Dessler's Gamilon k'tayyl blade. Marmo's flamboyance on the dueling floor almost equalled that of T'skaia, which made them very interesting to watch together. He declined the Society's offer of a place in the Castle, though, preferring to move into Room 218 in Hannibal Hamlin Hall across campus, where G'Kron had eagerly and Mac had indifferently made room for a new roommate. Truth be told, G'Kron was starting to get a bit fed up with Harcourt McKenzie - not "one of us has to go" fed up, but "that guy's going to kill himself" fed up. By G'Kron's lights, McKenzie was working himself to death. Between his advanced studies, his weekend freelance-pilot job, and all the time he had to spend working on the ancient excuse for a spacecraft he plied that job with, Mac had taken up a new mantra, to which he clung with all the fervor of a Kalidorian: "Sleep is a luxury." By October, G'Kron was considering the purchase of a large-animal tranquilizer gun to rein in his overworking roommate. Beld just shrugged and said, "A man has to do what a man has to do, eh, G'Kron?" - which wasn't a very helpful attitude at all, if you asked G'Kron. Meanwhile, Kate pieced her orchestra back together; the influx of new students in the new freshman class, returning from the political 'exile' of the previous C and D terms on Earth, and joining the school's other grades outright balanced out the loss of all the Earther students. By October, they were rehearsing a fall pops program, Kate's own Symphony No. 1, and some other works-in-progress by Kate and Miki with satisfactory progress, if not quite as much cohesion as she would have liked. She consoled herself with the knowledge that this would come in time. Clarissa Broadbank had slipped easily and smoothly into her sister's old role, taking command of the remnant of Liza's clique which hadn't remained behind on Earth with consummate ease despite the fact that, as a freshman, she was younger than any of them. She'd revived the Beacon, the former WPI's "alternative" newspaper, and set its editorial policies contentiously against those of the DSM official student paper, the whimsically named Institute Intelligencer. She'd claimed her sister's place on the Student Council (which may or may not have been a legitimate thing to do) and made a pain of herself at its functions, reminding Utena intensely of someone she had known in days past. (She was, Utena reflected, even the right age; but Nanami had had her moments - sometimes she was smart and sometimes she was funny - and there just wasn't anything clever or humorous about Clarissa Broadbank.) Still, the middle Broadbank hadn't really -done- anything yet; she'd settled in and taken over most of her sister's old functions, but she hadn't taken any direct action against anyone yet. They all knew it was coming, but so far, Clarissa seemed content to settle in, get her bearings, and wait. In fact, the Duelists had already frustrated her in one way, before the promised new war ever began. By the time Clarissa got around to joining the Fencing Club, her sister's most jealously guarded old preserve, it had already been invaded by Duelists, as Juri Arisugawa and Miki Kaoru had assumed that club's presidency and vice-presidency. This was all quite legitimate - the old club's vice-president hadn't come to DSM, and Liza, as president, had left an eeriy prophetic note indicating that, if she didn't return from her summer's adventure on time, she was to be replaced until she -did- return by Juri. As acting president, Juri could then appoint anyone she cared to have as the old VP's replacement. Clarissa could grit her teeth and try to oust the redhead at the next officers' elections in January, but there was little more she could do about that, for the time being. The only three blots on the vista of the school year, as A-term wound down into mid-October and the evening shadows lengthened, were the unencouraging lack of news about the Spirit of the River, the ongoing troubles of the Art of Noise, and the sudden resignation of one of the history professors, which left a bit of a gap in the faculty at an unfortunately timed juncture, a week before finals. Of the first, there wasn't much to tell; the joint IPO-Ishkarat investigation turned up little evidence, and all of it unencouraging. The discovered wreckage had been analyzed and found to account for about half of the Spirit of the River's mass, most of it hull plating and drive components. It seemed clear that the other half of the ship wouldn't have been going anyplace on its own with that kind of damage... so where was it? So far, there were no leads, and there didn't look like being any terribly soon. Azalynn continued in her funk for a week or so, but seemed to snap out of it after the Festival of the Falling Leaves, which she conducted as an overnight excursion deep into the thick forest at the feet of the Karkasus Mountains. With Miki, Dorothy, a curious Saionji and Wakaba, and Mia Ausa in attendance, it was the most populous Falling Leaves Azalynn had ever conducted off Dantrov, and she seemed mightily pleased with the result when they all returned to school the following morning. Seeing how cheerful they all were when they got back, Utena almost wished she'd gone with them, even if she -didn't- want to know the details. As for the second problem, the travails of the Art of Noise, that was a stickier tangle. The main problem, as Miki Kaoru saw it, was Miki Kaoru. He'd only taken up the guitar earlier in that same year, after coming to Midgard, and though he was a prodigy and had mastered the technical aspects of the instrument in fairly short order, he wasn't satisfied with his ability to play as part of an ensemble - especially a rock band. A pianist by training, he was accustomed to being a soloist or duet player. Even an orchestral pianist is essentially a soloist who happens to be playing at the same time as an orchestra. Playing guitar - especially rhythm guitar - in a rock band was a whole different experience, and as the term went on and rehearsals continued, Miki became more and more frustrated with what he felt was a serious deficiency in his ability to 'click' with the rest of the group. Amanda Dessler, the previous rhythm guitarist of the Art of Noise, had honed her own abilities in that regard by playing rhythm to the lead guitar line of her beloved elder brother Garon in an impromptu band composed of the two siblings and their Dragonaar bodyguards. She'd had years, and the powerful motivation of her sheer adoration of her brother, to perfect that craft, and perfect it she had. Amanda was now the Gamilon Ambassador to nearby Babylon 5, and as such, she was local, even if she was too busy to remain in the band. She visited a couple of rehearsals, offered Miki a few tips and a generous helping of encouragement, but admitted when pressed to be blunt that no, he wasn't as good as she had been. She hastened to add that she thought his performance perfectly serviceable, though. Miki might have become less intense and neurotic since coming to this world, but he was still a perfectionist about his music, and "perfectly serviceable" wasn't damned well good enough. He felt he was dragging the band down, and was starting to consider suggesting to Kate that her band would be better served if she found someone else to take over, despite the insistence of everyone involved that things would be fine if he would just relax and let it come at its own pace. This problem, as it turned out, would be solved by the solution to the third problem. MONDAY, OCTOBER 17, 2405 Several of the Duelists and their extended circle of friends, including Kate, all the Cephireans, G'Kron, and Moose, were members of Mr. Kesselring's Galactic History 301 class, 10 AM every weekday but Wednesday in Parkinson 117, the new history building's big ground-floor lecture hall. All of them entered that hall wondering exactly what would await them on this, the last Monday before finals. They all liked Kesselring, a cheerful man with a comical German accent who claimed to be a descendent of the World War II general, and were sad that he'd had to go so suddenly back to Niogi to see to a family crisis; but more than that, they were wondering what was to become of their term's work so far. Could a reasonable replacement for a galactic history teacher be found on such short notice, so close to the end of the term, in this still-rather-remote location? Would one of the other history professors have to take up the slack? How would that affect the program? They needn't have worried. As they and the sixty other students who made up the double-sized lecture class took their seats and arranged their notebooks, the doors down at the front of the lecture hall opened, and a woman entered, carrying a brown leather satchel. She was dressed in a green cable-knit sweater and woolen skirt, and had a great deal of long, golden-brown hair that was pulled back from her pretty oval face in a great thick braid, tied with a gold ribbon. She didn't look much more than five years or so older than the students in the class, and as she put her satchel down on the desk, opened it, and took out the teacher's edition of their textbook, half the boys and a couple of the girls in the class fell instantly and hopelessly in love with her. Utena and Kaitlyn, on the other hand, were just staring at her in dumbfounded amazement. "Good morning, class," said the substitute teacher in a voice that was at once soft and pleasant, but clearly audible everywhere in the room. She smiled benevolently at the class and said, "I'm Mrs. Morisato, and I'll be taking over for Mr. Kesselring starting today." Mrs. Morisato - better known to Kate and Utena as Aunt Bell - stopped by the Castle in the early evening, just in time for dinner. She insisted on helping in the kitchen, and unlike Urd's well-meaning but inept efforts, her help actually helped. Bell had met many of the Duelists the previous February, when she'd visited WPI to help Utena with a bit of a problem on the same day that Juri Arisugawa had appeared on campus. Those she didn't know were introduced, and any worries they might have had over being visited by a faculty member and relation of the president's were immediately put to rest by Bell's sweet and unassuming manner. After dinner, Moose MacEchearn arrived from Hamlin Hall, where he now shared a room again with his old WPI roommate, Davy Crockett from Tencton. He carried with him his usual good cheer, and his bass guitar, slung over his back in a gig bag. The Castle's second floor contained a number of large rooms, though not as large as the main dueling room below. These had probably been used as exercise rooms and smaller dojos by the Jedi who build the place, millennia ago; for this purpose the Duelists used them also, except for the one which had been staked out by the Art of Noise as their rehearsal room. Here, various mebmers of the Society tended to sit on one of a couple of old couches the WDF Engineers had donated, and listened to the band rehearse. The couches had been put here for the benefit of the band, during breaks, but they also served to house the ever-fluctuating peanut gallery. Every Duelist had, at some point or another, stopped by to watch their president and her band hone their craft. Utena rarely missed a rehearsal, and indeed, she was there now, over in the corner, with her calc homework spread out on half of the couch and a pen stuck behind her ear as she grappled with a particularly sticky integral. Idly, she scratched behind the ears of Dorothy's pet cat, Peril, while she worked. Normally she'd have had Miki Kaoru to help her with the math; but he was up on the riser, trying once again to get it together with the band, so all she had for assistance was Tiny Robo, who could stand there on the arm of the couch looking impressive and supervising, but not offer much in the way of actual math help. Juri Arisugawa was there, too, sitting on the opposite end from Utena and her chaos of paperwork. She was supposed to be reading a novel for her advanced literature class, but she was spending more time looking at Kaitlyn. It wasn't that Kate was particularly dolled up - in fact, in old jeans and a sweatshirt, with her hair pulled back into a loose ponytail, she was lookin decidedly casual - but she looked so pleased with things that Juri's eye kept being drawn back to her smile. One of the main reasons Kate was happy was at the sound board, making the band's mix sound right for the first time since Miki gave up the board for the rhythm guitar. The board was an old one, and a bit temperamental; if not constantly tended it was prone to wander out of true. The fact that he was no longer tending it gave Miki -another- reason to feel like he was letting the band down, until Dorothy told him that if he didn't stop worrying about that, she would be forced to smack him. Besides, now Aunt Bell was on the scene, and she had a way of talking to the balky old board so that it gave its best effort. If Juri hadn't heard the previous version of the band at the absolute peak of its ability, she would never have thought that there was anything amiss with the group as it currently stood. As it was, they still sounded good to her as they attempted one of the old group's standards, the song with which they'd opened every show of theirs she'd attended. Midway through the song, they stopped; Miki, looking frustrated, sighed. "I think I've figured out what the problem is, anyway," he said. "It's trying to take my lead from two different places at once." Moose nodded. "Taking your lead from Dorothy and me, and trying to counterpoint Azalynn at the same time?" "Yeah. It's a lot tougher than Amanda made it look," said Miki, looking hangdog and sheepish. "I'm sorry, Kaitlyn. I don't think I'll be ready for a Fall Break show." Kate shrugged. "It's O-k-k-K, M-Miki," she told him. "R-relax. It t-t-takes m-m-most p-people years to get as g-g-good as you are. A l-lot never g-g-get that g-good." Miki nodded, but he still looked down as he said, "Mm... but still... maybe it would be best if I went back to the board and you found someone else?" "At the risk of seeming snippy," said Moose, "which I certainly don't intend to be - where would you suggest we -look-?" Belldandy slipped off her headphones and said, "Perhaps what you need is a teacher." Miki blinked, not having expected her to address him, and turned. "Beg pardon, Mrs. Morisato?" "Please, Miki, we're not in class - you can call me Bell, if you like. Or Aunt Bell, if you want to be like most of Corwin's friends," she added with a puckish smile. "At any rate, what I'm getting at is this: You've been taught to play the guitar, and you've become quite good at it, but has anyone ever actually taught you how to play -rhythm- guitar, in a band?" Miki shook his head. "No... Amanda doesn't have time to do that, and she's the only rhythm guitarist I know... " Belldandy smiled. "Well, there you go, then. How can you expect to become a truly good rhythm guitarist without a mentor?" "I see your point, Mrs. - uh, Aunt Bell," said Miki. "But where am I going to find one? As I said, Amanda doesn't have time." "Amanda isn't the only rhythm guitarist in the system," said Bell. She pointed an admonishing finger at the mixer board and told it sternly, "Now you stay just like that, all right?" (Standing next to the board, Lesser Mazinger folded his arms and nodded, as if to indicate that it had damned well better.) Then she stood up, brushed down her skirt, and climbed up onto the riser next to Miki. "-You're- a rhythm guitarist?" he asked her, disbelief plain in his voice. Bell grinned at him, her eyes twinkling. "Back in our college days, my husband, my sisters and I had a band. We still play sometimes, just for old times' sake. I bet I haven't lost the touch." She smiled at Kate. "Would you mind if I joined you, Kaitlyn?" Kate smiled back. "P-please," she said. "If it g-g-gives Miki some c-confidence... " Bell nodded, and, still smiling, folded her hands over her chest, eyes closed. >Come to me,< she murmured, in that same language which Corwin Ravenhair sometimes used: >DOUBLE Z!< The thin, diamond-shaped mark on her forehead glowed, and suddenly, with a rush of air and an involuntary "Whoa!" from Moose, she was surrounded by a swirling vortex of white mist that obscured her completely from view. When she reappeared again, she was dressed completely differently, and in a manner that made Miki blink at her in utter astonishment. It wasn't all that different from the sort of things Amanda used to wear on stage - black leather pants that looked like they were for motorcycle racing, an unfastened jacket to match (with "NIT MCC" emblazoned in big white letters down the arms), and a t-shirt with the Nekomi Institute of Technology seal. Her hair was out of its braid and in a thick sheaf, sprigs of it flying free all around her face. Slung over her shoulder was a scarlet Fender Stratocaster guitar, similar to Kaitlyn's black one, but right-handed. "I think I'll say that again," said Moose dryly: "Whoa!" Bell smiled. "It's been a while since I wore these clothes," she said. "I think I still remember, though." She hooked up, tuned up, and conferred briefly with Kaitlyn. Kate could be heard to murmur, "A-are you s-sure?" but Bell seemed to convince her, because with a smile, the bandleader went and got her own guitar as well. Then the band gathered themselves up and, following Bell's cue, Dorothy launched them into another song. /* Boston "I Think I Like It" _Third Stage_ */ It didn't quite come off with the razor-sharp precision they'd played it with in Toronto, but it was good, damned good. Bell seized the rhythm line with both hands, counterpointing Kate and Azalynn's competing leads and at the same time staying in lockstep with Dorothy and Moose - turning her scarlet Strat into the glue that held the whole band together. Juri, who had been watching this byplay with some interest, blinked in amazement. She never would have guessed that Aunt Bell was a hard-rock fan. Utena, who had spent a decent part of the summer under Bell's roof, grinned and went back to her homework. -She'd- heard the goddess singing "I Wanna Be Sedated" soft and sweet under her breath many a time while helping her in the kitchen this past summer. When they finished playing, Bell regarded her guitar with some satisfaction and said, "Mm, yes. Was that useful, Miki?" Miki blinked. "Um... very. Wow. I... I'm not sure I could ever play like that... " Bell gave him another of her bright, gentle smiles and said, "Of course you can. It'll just take a bit of time and effort, that's all." She turned to Kate. "If you're open to it, Kaitlyn, I can take Amanda's place for now. I'll be here at the school, in Mr. Kesselring's place, for at least the rest of this calendar year, and I can have Miki ready to take over from me by Christmas if he applies himself. In the meantime, he can teach someone else to take over for him on the sound board." "That's f-fine with m-m-me, if M-Miki d-doesn't mind b-being ousted," said Kate with a grin. Miki shook his head vigorously. "Absolutely not! I'm - I'm at your feet, Mrs. - Bell." Kate gave Bell an indulgent smile and told her confidentially, "You'll b-b-break him of it ev-ventually. He h-hardly ever c-c-calls me 'Miss K-Kaitlyn' any more." "So we're back on for a gig over break?" said Moose laconically. "If w-we can f-f-find one without D-Devlin," said Kate, a trifle glumly. "Well, that's a relief," said Moose, "'cause I got us one. We'll have to truck a little way to do it - it's at a club on New Hokkaido - but a little bird tells me the place is nice and they get good crowds. We're the main act for Saturday night, November fifth." Kate tried to look outraged and failed because of her grin. "N-nice of you to w-w-warn us!" she said. Moose shrugged glacially. "I just did." "I think," said Dorothy calmly, "we have a lot of work to do." Kate nodded. "So l-let's get t-to it. R-ready on the b-b-board, Mr. K-Kaoru?" Miki looked up from the knobs and sliders, grinned, and said, "Ready!" THURSDAY, OCTOBER 20, 2405 The interior lights of CFA No Bull shone brightly from the bridge viewports, casting beams into early-hour October morning fog. Inside, just below the plates of the cargo deck, Mac McKenzie tinkered with a small motor by the light of a hanging shop lamp. His pilot's headset rang not with the buzz of any ATC channel, but with the recordings of the previous day's lectures, turned up loud enough to penetrate the sleep-deprivation fog closing in thicker around Mac than the real fog outside. Mac had not yet achieved the ultimate stage of sleep deprivation - the point where you begin hearing messages from the Banana God - but he was getting there fast. The only regular sleep he got was Friday and Saturday nights, and that only because of Federation regulations requiring that pilots get a minimum of six hours sleep before any twelve-hour shift of flying. This particular week (the day was Thursday, or would be when the sun rose), he'd had three hours sleep Monday morning and stayed up all Monday night into Tuesday morning either studying or working on a particularly troublesome arpeggio sequence for his guitar ensemble (Beginner) class. He'd spent Tuesday night sealing the barrel of the starboard bow laser, before being dragged to bed at 2 AM by a worried, upset, and verbose G'Kron, waking at 6 to study for an 8 AM pre-finals quiz. In the past sixty-nine hours, he'd had a total of six hours, thirty minutes sleep, and now Mac was journeying in lands where not even the foul, viscous stuff he brewed for coffee could guide him. Checking the alignment of a couple of wheels one final time, Mac tightened the bolts, sealed up the engine, and carefully walked around the cramped chamber placing the safety covers back onto the rotary track. Inside the circle sat a largish gun turret, flexible ammo tubes running up from the gun itself to magazines concealed under the cargo deck plating. With the details of fluid-state electronics echoing through his ears, Mac crawled out of the maintenance tube surrounding the turret and lowered himself into the turret's control chair, strapping himself in before flipping it upside-down. The transparent-aluminum turret windows revealed only the steel-grey of the ejectable hull panel that hid the turret from outside view; that panel also hid the sight of Mac hanging down against the harness, switching on the small gravity shield and bringing the rail gun's magnetic accelerators on-line. The primitive but deadly RebelTech rail gun turret was standard issue for the underbelly of every CFMF warship as a defensive shield-ripper to deter attacks from below; it would be the most powerful gun on Mac's little ship, if the repairs were successful. The ammo chambers were empty, so that red light was still burning on the gun's status board. Mac keyed the turret to test mode, and the red light winked out, leaving the board entirely yellow. Pulling his Advanced Calculus book from his jumpsuit, Mac keyed in a basic test sequence and read along with the voice in his headset as the turret smoothly rotated through seven hundred twenty degrees, then rotated back again, then shook in short back-and-forth sweeps like an old clothes washer agitator. The program made a much more limited test of the vertical-axis rotation (to avoid hitting the camo plate), then drew a handful of nonferrous test-bolts from the auxiliary ammo feed and, with satisfyingly loud BLATs, verified that the accelerators were in perfect working order. Mac didn't look up for a couple of minutes after the test had ended, engrossed in either five-dimensional set factoring or the formulas for electrical resistance in duotronic units. When he did look up, only three yellows remained, all concerning the main ammo feed; every other system on the gun was green. Mac yanked off his headphones and whooped with delight. The rail gun rotor had been the last weapons system repair left to the No Bull, or the Beast as the Duelists had taken to calling it. All that remained was to cast a few thousand iron bolts for the mass driver, secure some tibanna gas from the grey market for the blasters, and the No Bull would no longer have to rely on it speed (which it had) or its maneuverability (which it didn't) to evade attack. It took a little while for Mac's laughter and celebration to die down enough for him to hear the patient knocking of someone against the hull. Blinking away the sudden mental image of Duke Blenk, the Phantom Pirate (spaced by his crew centuries ago and still wandering space begging to be let aboard another ship), Mac powered down the turret, righted himself in the chair, unstrapped, and walked down to the passenger airlock. The silhouette hanging just outside the reach of the airlock lights gave Mac one second's terrified thought that the ghostly pirate captain had come for him after all. Then Azalynn dv'Ir Natashkan stepped into the light, and the broad shoulders of the pirate were revealed as a thick blanket hung, rolled up, over Azalynn's shoulders. "Good morning, Mac," she said with a smile. "Are things going well with you?" "Superb!" Mac replied, stepping down from the airlock onto the grass of Port Jeradar's broad airfield. "I've fixed the short in the Number Three-Four ion drive's control circuit, installed the sound system for the passenger berths, tuned up the h-h-hyper, hyper, the thing," Mac shuddered reflexively, "and now the weapons systems are just two steps away from being completely operational!" "That's nice," said Azalynn, nodding. "Meanwhile, G'Kron sent me looking for you three hours ago, with this." She held up the blanket and removed from its folds a spare school uniform. "He's threatened to chain you to your bunk for Finals week. And Professor Stuvek asked me to tell you that, although he is intrigued by your insights into the continuation of pre-Reformation literary themes into post-Surak writings, he found them much more coherent on his ride with you to B5 last week than at any point during his classes in the past month." Mac scratched his head, smiling sheepishly. Stuvek's Vulcan Literature class was the only one Mac shared with any of the Duelists for A-term. "I'm, um, usually preoccupied during the week," he said, adding reluctantly, "Lately I get more rest flying than anywhere else." "You know," Azalynn said slowly, "I never have been inside your ship before." None of the Duelists had yet. Although Mac listed his ship on the Student Union travel board and made one shuttle run on the B5-Bajor-Jeraddo triangle run any Saturday and Sunday he had no charter, the Duelists had chosen the slightly more expensive shuttle service for their infrequent visits to B5. A couple of them avoided Mac's ship out of fear - G'Kron especially, after his one experience with Mac's love of barnstorming - but most, Azalynn thought, were staying away out of plain good taste. "Would you like to show me around?" Mac blushed a little bit, and his mouth said something his brain normally would never have let loose: "I thought I wasn't your type, Azalynn." Azalynn giggled and threw the blanket and clothes at Mac. "Just the half-credit tour, please, and nothing else, silly." Mac walked Azalynn through the ship, first to the cargo hold and engineering deck, pointing out the rail gun turret he'd been working on and the two laser emplacements tucked between the four ion drive exhausts; anyone looking for a blind spot in the engine area would recieve a nasty surprise. The cargo area itself was not exactly spacious - about the size of a large bedroom, with a large, new bulkhead sealing off the upper portions. "That's for the extra heads and shower," Mac said. "I had to expand those when I added the two extra passenger berths." From there it was up to the main deck, which to Azalynn's intense disappointment did not look different from the cargo deck. The floors were bare steel, the wall panels either industrial grey, warning red, or in a couple of places missing altogether, baring the wiring conduits behind. The narrow berths had a broad couch with harness that, along with an overhead foldaway, could be converted into twin bunks. Three-quarters of the bunks' vid screens were blown out - all of them centuries old- - and the upholstery in them all had been replaced with a random patchwork of fabric remnants, poorly applied. The bridge was the worst of the lot. The control panels were obviously cobbled together, even to Azalynn's inexperienced eyes. The four crash seats for pilot, co-pilot, comm officer and forward gunner had not been reupholstered, and the ancient leather had cracked and split in so many spots that the chairs looked more white than black. Azalynn noted the thick rolls of duct tape slipped over each arm of the pilot's chair; Mac had apparently been using it on something -besides- the chairs. Azalynn resolved there and then that, should she ever return to the No Bull, it would be at the head of a crack team of combat guerilla interior decorators. Mac, meanwhile, was trying to keep himself from babbling, with the result that he was babbling in short, blunt sentences. "Got the weapons control system salvage out of a Sullustan patrol ship. Hardly used. They'll go through an inch of duralloy plate at half a klick in two shots. God I wish they'd been ready when I got here." It took a moment for Azalynn to realize that Mac's tour, or at least his running commentary, had ended with that statement. "Why's that?" she asked, more as a conversational place-holder than anything else. Mac slowly lowered himself into the pilot's chair, invited Azalynn to sit beside him, and said, "Broadbank. Didn't spare much thought for her over the summer. I'm ashamed to admit that, when I first heard about her, I felt a bit gratified - just what she deserves, right? "But then I thought, here now, she's trying to mend her ways and make a new start. I've grown up believing that new starts are a -right-, if you're really committed to changing. It seemed really unfair, then, that someone dedicated to a change should lose their chance at it like that." Azalynn nodded to herself, slouching down in the copilot's chair. That was part of her own thought process on the subject as well, when she wasn't feeling guilty about rejecting Liza herself. The wound from Liza's disappearance had closed over since, but it was still tender, still subject to twinging when it was prodded... like now. "And when I thought that, I very nearly jumped back into the Noble again. I wanted to just fwoosh! Off to the Cardassian border, and do my own looking for her. But I couldn't, because without guns this ship couldn't -do- anything about it if I -did- find the attackers, or if the Cardies took exception to my presence. "And now it's too late. Trail's gone dead cold. IPO doesn't know where. T'skaia's people don't know where. Debris field's scattered to hell and gone now, or else scavengers have grabbed it. No ransom, no slave market, no release, no body, no -nothing-. For all we know, Liza and all those unaccounted-for t'skrang have been teleported to Tiki's Little Neighborhood." Azalynn couldn't help giggling at that. When Mac glared at her, she smirked and said, "I'll bet she -wishes- she was in the slave pens, then." Mac snorted, not seeing the humor in his own sarcasm. "So now all I can do is pretend Elizabeth Broadbank never existed, and go on with my life." He stared out the viewport at the dark mist, obviously dissatisfied with the prospect. His left hand twitched a ragged beat as he leaned his chin against his right fist. "Damn, damn, damn." "Oh, I don't know," Azalynn said with a twinkling grin. "Then you'd have to forget how you taught her to appreciate Pak'led opera." Mac's chin shot up off his fist, his body going rigid as he stared at Azalynn. "You knew??" "You can't expect to hide nighttime raids from a nocturnal creature," Azalynn chided him gently. "Especially a -bored- nocturnal creature. I'm probably the only one who knows what you got Kate for her birthday... or whose bra and panties were stitched to the WPI flag the first day of C-Term finals." Mac couldn't help chuckling at the memory. "Liza never did claim those from Dean Montaigne," he said. "And I, for one," Azalynn said with a grin, "can't wait to see what you have planned for dear little Clarissa." "Well," Mac said, stifling a yawn, "I haven't decided. Broadbitch version 2.0 has not yet discommoded Ms. Hutchins, the Duelists, the Art of Noise, myself, or much of anyone else as yet. Waiting 'til she does." "You know," Azalynn said slowly, "I wouldn't mind helping you with that, if there's a chance for it." When Mac grunted agreement, she continued, "I think I prefer your method. Mysterious, anonymous cosmic justice, never anything permanent, just something embarassing or inconvenient. A strong hint that maybe what she's doing is wrong." Azalynn sighed and leaned back in the chair, shifting a bit to avoid a particularly rough edge of split leather. "One of the ancients said that the true measure of one's love is in one's power to make the unloving return love. I really wish I'd had that chance with Elizabeth. The chance to make things right with her, to bring her into our little family... I wish I hadn't written her off as unreachable when it's so obvious now that she -could- have been reached, if I'd just tried harder. But," she went on, shrugging, "maybe I'll have that chance yet. The spirits work in means beyond our perception, you know. Perhaps next time Liza will rescue -us- from the forces of evil. I'd like to see that, wouldn't you, Mac?" Mac had passed out asleep in the pilot's chair. With a smile, Azalynn closed the blinds on the cockpit viewports and wrapped the blanket around Mac's body. "Normally they don't fall asleep until -after-," she giggled to herself, before skipping off to inform Professor Stuvek and Mac's other teachers that Mac wouldn't be showing for his Thursday AM classes. A few moments later, she returned to the cockpit, found the alarm clock stashed by the comm unit, and turned it off before rushing out again. Final examinations at the end of A-term weren't generally too bad at WPI - maybe it was just because the students' reserves of energy hadn't yet been tapped, but they never seemed to be as drained by the first finals of the year as they were by the ones at the end of, say, C-term. The pattern seemed to be holding at DSM; on Friday night, the student body was feeling conscious and active enough to muster quite a good showing at the Halloween dance, the first school function (aside from the opening ceremonies) to be held in the new Grand Ballroom. As in previous years at WPI, much of the student body missed the point of Halloween. They showed up for the dance in their finest formalwear and wore silly little domino masks as a concession to the fact that it was billed as a masquerade. And as in previous years, the IBGF/Duelists' Society clove instead to the occasion's true spirit and came in costume, much to the disgust of Clarissa Broadbank and her slowly expanding power base. There were a lot more of them this year than last, and so their costumed panoply made a great deal more of an impression - especially since, as the dance was held in the Grand Ballroom, Professor Kraalgh could once again act as chamberlain and announce the guests as they arrived. In most cases this was done normally (once again putting the lie to the dance's billing as a masquerade), but the Duelists and their friends wouldn't have that, and so they presented special information to Dean Montaigne when they arrived, and it was passed on to Kraalgh, who got into the spirit immediately. Standing at the top of the Grand Staircase, attired in the scarlet, white, and gold regalia of a Persian prince (burnoose, scimitar, pointy shoes and all), the Klingon professor boomed, "The Honourable Moltar, King of the Lava Men!" The figure that emerged from the doors, passed Kraalgh, and began descending the stairs was enormous, and made even larger by the fact that he wore the bulky, heavily insulated encounter suit of a Magmaloran Lava Man - green, brick red and brown, with a mirrored visor and what looked like a little respirator module. This immense figure inclined his helmeted head to the professor as he passed and then made his way in stately dignity to the dance floor. The buzz spread among those already in attendance immediately. They knew who he was, of course - with those proportions, he had to be Moose MacEchearn, and that meant that the Band Geeks and Duelists were at it again this year. Many of the regular students looked forward to seeing what the others had come up with. A few, off in the corner, were shaking their heads in sad dismissal. How old was MacEchearn now? Sixteen, seventeen? A junior, anyway. Surely old enough to know better. One by one they came, and one by one they were announced by a Kraalgh with a completely straight face. There was "Kaitlyn of Avalon", a woad-bedecked Pictish warrior in tartan and linen, with a bronze-headed spear; "Saionjius of the First Legion", an ancient Roman centurion (with green hair?); "Urthr Snowmane, Norse Goddess of Love" (please! even the Castle's token adult was making a juvenile spectacle of herself - although they did have to admit that her elaborate, navy-blue, tiger-trimmed vestments were quite eyecatching). And, of course, Samurai Wakaba, her golden and crimson-lacquered armor clacking and gleaming, the very picture of a feudal Japanese warrior. Azalynn, persuaded not to dress as the Dantrovian Wolf Princess for the third year running, instead had found some fuzzy, stretchy fabric somewhere, acquired a pair of gag Salusian primary-ear prostheses, dyed her tail, and come as a yellow housecat, albeit an unsettlingly nubile one. Miki and Dorothy were back in their old Toronto goth gear, going around being mockingly crushed by the weight of their ennui. Peril, fully into the spirit of things, had been rinsed black and dressed in a little tuxedo vest, and was lounging on Dorothy's shoulder looking suitably bored and batting at one of her crucifix earrings. T'skaia had pulled out all the stops; after being for some time stuck for an idea, owing to his rather odd (by human standards) construction, he'd acquired some metallic makeup and odd bits of armor plating and had come as Swoop, the Dinobot bombardier. Belldandy Morisato was slightly hampered by the fact that, however she dressed, she looked the same. She'd come dressed as a twentieth-century biker-gang member - black leather, torn jeans, studs, chains, etc. - but she just ended up looking like the Blessed Madonna dressed as a twentieth-century biker. (A TEACHER?! They dragged a TEACHER into this silliness? Well, Clarissa Broadbank pointed out cattily, she -is- Kaitlyn's half-brother's aunt. Oh, yes, that family is just -rife- with bizarre liaisons. Did you know she has a younger full brother who is almost -exactly- the same age as that half-brother? Honestly! Good Lord!) Utena Tenjou, with Bell's connivance, came as a Valkyrie. Not a modern Valkyrie, in a black, silver and scarlet dress uniform, Luger opposite the Thorn of the Rose on her belt, jackboots clicking on the hard tiled floor, winged skull and thunderbolt glinting on her peaked cap - but a Valkyrie of legend, with her glossy pink hair tied back into a pair of heavy plaits, a glittering golden helmet, armor of leather and cold black iron, tightly laced fur boots, a steel roundshield emblazoned with the Duelists' rose crest, and a fighting spear, its wicked point and edges shielded by a black plastic safety guard. Corwin Ravenhair, her invited guest, who actually -was- a Valkyrie, had nearly fallen down at the sight of his dear friend in such a getup. He himself was dressed as a Napoleonic-era British naval officer, tricorner hat, dress saber and all, and was announced by the chamberlain as "Admiral Sir Corwin Ravenhair, R.N., K.C.B.", much to Kaitlyn and Utena's delight. Accompanying him was a tiny, black-striped, bright-orange creature who claimed only the name "Tigger". ("You, my d-d-dear dragon," said Kaitlyn admonishingly as Nall jumped from Corwin's shoulder into her arms, "a-are a sh-shameless snuggleh-h-hound." "You know it, honeypie," Nall replied smugly.) G'Kron appeared in the guise of his revered uncle G'Kar, currently the Narn Regime's ambassador to Babylon 5. Unfortunately, that primarily consisted of dressing in elaborate leathern clothing whose distinct significance, compared to G'Kron's -own- formal, traditional Narn garb, was only apparent to well-schooled Narns. As such, the effect was somewhat lost on the assembled gathering. Beld Marmo, getting cheerfully into the spirit of things, had taken his hair -out- of its accustomed Centauri fan and let it just fall lankly behind his head. Combined with his naturally bushy eyebrows, his prominent chin, the elaborate black plate armor he'd acquired somewhere and the fur-edged cape he wore over it all, he made a decent likeness of a younger version of galactically renowned crackpot Lord Wolfgang Amadeus von Fahvergnugen. Janice Barlow, Hannibal Hamlin 2nd's intrepid Resident Advisor, demonstrated her unshakable commitment to the social and mental well-being of her charges by putting on a ballgown and getting Mrs. Morisato to do her hair up, all to trump Harcourt McKenzie's evasive claim, "I'd go as the Dread Pirate Roberts, except that I don't have a Buttercup." Mac had figured he'd be safe enough with that evasion, but he was game about it, and except for the wrong hair color, he made a quite passable Dread Pirate. "Or possibly Zorro," Azalynn mused. "I have a hard time keeping track of Earth's masked mythic heroes. There are so many of them." "I want a picture," said Mac. "Dad will go absolutely spare when he sees this." Beld furrowed his brow. "You keep using that word," he said. "I do not think it means what you think it means." Mac declined to explain Standard dialectic drift. The next two to arrive were announced by Kraalgh as "Belann of Minbar and M'Iia vestai-Ausa of Qo'noS", and the perfection of their costumes startled even the catty disparagers into silence. Not only had Mia Ausa somehow managed to change herself, alabaster complexion, crest and all, into an extremely authentic-looking, twilight-skinned, dreadlocked Klingon warrior-maid (traditional armor and bat'leth included), she'd also contrived to change dusky B'Elanna Torres into a perfectly convincing, hairless, white-skinned, smooth-foreheaded, bone-crested Minbari priestess in white and silver robes. Chenann, who had been sort of stuck for ideas and so had come dressed, most irreverently, as a Grey Councilor, first burst out laughing and then, as she got closer and saw -how- perfect a job it was, stared in awe. "Wow, you two," she said. "That's incredible work. How'd you ever do it?" "Oh," said M'Iia airily, "it's really just an extension of borrowing each other's clothes." Juri Arisugawa had just smiled whenever anyone asked her what she was going to do for Halloween, and hadn't shown signs of actually preparing. Miki Kaoru, who had known her longest, predicted that she wouldn't be masquerading; that if she came to the dance at all, it would be in her old Ohtori Academy dress uniform, perhaps with the usual domino-mask concession to the holiday. Azalynn had insisted that Juri just wasn't that boring. Juri had resolutely refused to comment, only smiled a surprising little I'm-up-to-something smile. On Thursday afternoon, after finals, she had mysteriously taken the shuttle up to Babylon 5 on her own, stayed there for an hour, then returned with a package, on whose contents she refused to comment. Now, all eyes turned to the top of the Grand Staircase, where a tall, slim figure had just entered and paused next to the chamberlain to be announced. And announce this figure Kraalgh did, with a great, booming flourish: "The Terror that Flaps in the Night!" The figure standing next to Kraalgh was certainly dressed the part, all in violet, from the peak of her broad-brimmed slouch hat to the cuffs of her razor-creased trousers. The buttons on her neatly tailored double-breasted jacket were shining silver, and her wingtip shoes were gleaming black, but all the rest was purple. Her cape, lined in a lighter purple that matched her hatband, was furled over her shoulders, and a violet silk scarf masked the lower half of her face. The very picture of Hammer... except that with that lesser height, that wasp-waisted figure, and those merriment-filled, sparkling green eyes, she was definitely and absolutely -not- Martin Rose. Kaitlyn stood at the bottom of the Grand Staircase and stared up at her in blank-faced (and slightly unfocused - Pictish warriors don't wear eyeglasses) astonishment for several seconds. Then she burst out laughing, and would have fallen over if Utena and Corwin hadn't caught her under the arms and held her up. She laughed for a solid minute, tears of mirth streaking the woad on her face, giving Juri plenty of time to pull her scarf down below her chin, descend the stairs, and stand there smiling at her. This, of course, made Kate break again every time she calmed down enough to focus on Juri again, until finally she was laughed out, panting for air, and trying to congratulate the redhead on her triumphant costuming job. Up above, in one of the ballroom's skylights, Juri's sharp eyes caught a flicker of motion as she accepted these congratulations, and her smile widened ever so slightly. Marty hadn't wanted to intrude on the moment, but it would hardly have been fair to make him -miss- it when he'd been the one to make it possible in the first place. Juri only wished Garak could have been here as well, to witness the triumph of his emergency alterations. The grand entrances over with, the Duelists and their friends danced, snacked, and talked, circulating among their schoolmates, generally enjoying the evening. Juri and Kate spent a few minutes over in one corner, where Juri carefully repaired the damage her entrance had done to the intricate pattern of woad on Kate's face. She got a little of the blue stuff on her fingers, but that was all right; by the end of the evening, careful observers would note that she ended up with a little on her -face-, too. Corwin, who had been dispatched to the buffet table to procure drinks for himself and his not-date, had to stand there for a few moments in amazement as he was served by two tiny figures, costumed as Gigantor and an AS7-D Atlas-class assault Destroid, respectively. Once he'd recovered (and wondered if they'd done the costumes themselves, or been "helped"), he turned around and bumped into a black-haired girl dressed as a firefighter, nearly dousing her with the pair of water glasses he carried. "Oops!" he said, "sorry - MOM?!" The last word came out as a startled shout, which drew the attention of a sizable number of people all around. Skuld Ravenhair tipped back her yellow fireman's helmet and grinned at her son. "Aw, you figured it out!" she said with mock petulance. "Love the uniform," she replied, running a playful fingertip down along the row of brass buttons that held his waistcoat closed. "Mom, quit it," said Corwin under his breath, reddening a little, as he slapped ineffectually at her hand. "What are you doing here?" Skuld looked slightly indignant. "Just taking advantage of the downtime before B-term starts to get accustomed to the place." Kaitlyn, attracted by the shout, came over and asked, "D-does that m-m-mean you're t-t-teaching here n-next term?" Skuld nodded. "Visiting professor of Applied Sciences!" she beamed. "I took a sabbatical from NIT; I'll be taking half of Division A into a second division so that everybody can get more lab time." She grinned at Corwin's expression, which was midway between pleased surprised and worried surprise. "Don't worry, Corwin, I'll stay out of your way on the weekends," she said. "Well, uh... that's great," said Corwin. "Are you staying here, or commuting?" "Oh, I'll commute, like Bell. Poor thing, she'd go crazy without me close by to help out around the temple." Corwin declined to comment on that, instead congratulating her again. She smiled, gave him a whack on the shoulder, and moved off to hobnob with some of the other students. It was fun to do that - most of them didn't realize she wasn't a new student, since she still looked about senior-age. Off on the other side of the room, Utena missed all that, and was starting to wonder what was keeping Corwin with the water when she felt a hand on her shoulder. She stiffened instinctively - no one she knew around here would just grab hold of her like that - and turned - To find herself looking down into the bright green eyes of Vigdis Brightblade. The littlest Valkyrie was done up in her full dress uniform - the authentic one, with sidearm and sword, though she'd foregone the hat, her wavy flame-orange hair cascading free down her back over her silver-lined black cloak. The silver brocaded pattern on her black overtunic glinted in the overhead chandelier light as she glared up at Utena with what looked a lot like anger to the surprised Duelist. "Oh, uh, hi!" said Utena, trying to put a good foot forward. "You're Vigdis, right? We met briefly in Asgard - I'm Utena Tenjou," she added, putting out her hand. With her jaw set, Vigdis slapped the offered hand casually aside. "I know who you are," she replied, her voice flat with hostility. "What's the meaning of that... that -getup-?" she demanded. "Do you really think you could be one of us? Think maybe you could even replace me?" The little redhead folded her arms. "Well, think again." Utena blinked, shaking her mildly-stung hand. "... What?! This is just a costume. You know, Halloween? Dress up as something you're not?" "You'd best not let Corwin's mother see you that way," Vigdis replied with a smug look. "I don't think she'd be amused that you're mocking our traditions that way." Utena began to get annoyed. "Where do you think I got the helmet?" she snapped. "Listen, kid, I dunno what your problem is, but - " Vigdis's emerald eyes went cold and she replied stiffly, "I'm -sure-. You'll excuse me," she added peremptorily, with a grown-up gravity that would have been funny if it wasn't so insulting. "I have business to attend to. Business between -real- Valkyrie," she added rather huffily, and then she turned and stalked away. Utena stood, a very bewildered look on her face, and watched as, out of earshot, Vigdis met Corwin on his way back, corraled him expertly, and led him protesting off in another direction, hanging onto his arm. "Sheesh!" Utena muttered. "What the hell's -her- problem?" "Isn't it obvious?" Saionji mused quietly, nearly startling the life out of Utena as he seemed to suddenly appear next to her. Ignoring her protest that he not -do- that, he on thoughtfully, "That girl hates you, Tenjou." Utena put her hands on her hips and scowled at him. "Well, thank you, Professor Positive. You're a real ray of sunshine. What possible reason would she have to hate -me-?! We've only met once!" "She hates you," said Saionji, his thoughtful eyes still on Vigdis as she smiled and chattered inaudibly at an increasingly- irritated-looking Corwin, "for the same reason I did." Utena gave him a funny look. "... What?!" "Think about it," said Saionji, and then he turned and moved off into the crowd in search of Wakaba. After the dance, Skuld dragged Vigdis off to her room - to Utena's growing sense of dread, the youngest Valkyrie was enrolled in the freshman class from B-term on - because, the Norn insisted, it was past Vee's bedtime. Thus freed from her clinging, chattering presence, Corwin was able, rather sheepishly, to rejoin the Duelists, and then the pack of them went trick-or-treating at Kaitlyn's insistence. Since that couldn't be done in Port Jeradar - the hour was late, and anyway the Bajoran locals wouldn't have understood what the hell they were doing, they might even have gotten arrested - they piled into the One-Hit Wonder and went to Babylon 5 instead. There, they found Commander Johnson on his command deck, dressed as a barbarian chieftain (fur hauberk, iron axe, and all), which looked pretty comical on his skinny frame, especially combined with the bunny rabbits on his shoulders and his blue and raspberry striped hair. Susan Ivanova was still in her Starfleet uniform, resolutely pretending that her commanding officer was -not- going around dressed as a primitive, axe-toting plainsman who responded to every mention of "Jer the Barbarian" with a hearty "I'm huge!" She and Major Kira seemed rather bemused that this pack of high schoolers (and an adult House Guide, -and- two faculty members!) wanted to go around trick- or-treating on the station, but Ivanova had no actual -objection-, and the commander thought it was a great idea, so Kira told Lieutenant Reed to make sure they stayed out of trouble and bade the kids have a good time. Just as they were gleefully turning to leave the command deck with their amused (in a very buttoned-down British sort of way) escort in tow, the costumed Duelists were met at the doors by Captain Derek Bacon. Bacon, too, was in costume, his WDF commbadge and rank bars discreetly attached to a bright green lab coat. He had a round mirror strapped to his forehead and a stethoscope around his neck. Spotting the Duelists, he grinned in greeting; then he caught sight of Utena, grinned more broadly, held out a hand to indicate her like a game-show presenter, and boomed in a vaguely musical manner, "Spear and magic HEL-met!" Jer the Barbarian popped out his office door and chimed in, "Magic HEL-met!" From the hallway behind Bacon, a bald, broad-shouldered, vaguely cynical-looking man in a World War II US Army paratrooper's uniform shouldered past the WDF captain (no mean feat) and added, "Magic HEL-met!" Things became very operatic in the Babylon 5 Command Center for a few minutes, while Susan Ivanova sat at her station, buried her face in her hands, and looked very much like she might be thinking about crying. Behind her, a smiling Kira Nerys put a sympathetic hand on her shoulder and said nothing. /* Warren Zevon "Werewolves of London" I'll Sleep When I'm Dead */ Once that was over with, Bacon transacted some simple business with a recovered Lieutenant Commander Ivanova, then introduced his ship's Chief of Security (one Michael Garibaldi). The captain and Garibaldi then joined the Duelists' party ("Because hey! Free candy!"). As they roamed around the station, beeping doors and making their ritual demands, Bacon and Garibaldi recruited other adults, including a very confused Ambassador Delenn ("I have no 'costume'." "Oh, don't worry - you can come as a Minbari diplomat." "I -am- a Minbari diplomat!" "Well, that makes you more convincing!") into the cadre. By the time they were done, there were almost thirty of them: Duelists, friends, a House Guide, two teachers, two WDF officers, three members of the diplomatic staff, several IPO Security officers, four off-duty maintenance technicians, two members of the crew of the IKV HoSghaj, and a couple of crewmen from a Cyberman trading vessel that happened to be in port. The sorts of things such a pack of trick-or-treaters gets when making the rounds of a diplomatic space station are left as an exercise for the reader. The first week of Fall Break was spent, by the new Art of Noise, deep in final rehearsals for their much-anticipated return to the stage on the following Saturday. On Friday morning, they packed their gear into Moose's van, rode it down to the spaceport, and loaded it aboard the One-Hit Wonder, which Corwin had loaned to Utena for the trip. She, grinning widely at the thought of her first solo stint in command with a proper destination, flew them to New Hokkaido by metaspace, which took the better part of the day. It was like their old trips to Toronto on a grander scale. The band, their sound man and rhythm guitarist in training, and the Beautiful & Talented Road Crew of Utena, Wakaba and Juri Arisugawa (who had replaced Dorothy when the robot girl joined the band) slept in orbit that night to save on parking fees. The next afternoon they put down in the city of New Sapporo (real original types, the first New Hokkaido colonists) and disembarked, destination: the amusingly-named Club HeavyHeavy. The HeavyHeavy was a big, garishly lit, weirdly upholstered club, but it handled the heavy crowd noise in such a way that Kate suspected it would have good acoustics, and the stage looked spacious and comfortable to play. The patrons were a cheery enough crowd and the manager was pleasant and polite. All in all, it looked like a pretty good place to play. Unfortunately, the Art of Noise wouldn't find out tonight, because, the manager informed them sheepishly, they wouldn't be playing. Half an hour ago, the call had come in from the the media conglomerate which owned the company which owned the club, informing the manager that the media company's record label's hot new number-one-single-holding rock group, the Superconducting Supercolliders, would be playing a surprise show at his club tonight, and was that all right with him? Well, of course it was all right, it had to be, but... The opening acts had been local; they had been informed of the change in plans by phone, all but one of them called off. The Art of Noise had already been in transit, though - already at the spaceport, by that point in time. There'd been no time. The poor man was sweating and nervous, so apologetic he seemed almost ready to offer to commit ritual suicide for the dishonor of having dragged them all this way not to play a show. Could he at least offer them free admission to the Colliders' show, and some complimentary refreshments, for their trouble? As it happened, Kate liked the Colliders; their #1 single, "Strange Attractor", got frequently stuck in her head when she cruised Die Autobahn with Vlad the Impala's radio tuned to Babylon 5's Armed Forces Radio station. So, since they -were- already here, she might as well listen to them play. She did her best to give the manager a reassuring smile, turned to Juri, and gave her a nod. Juri nodded as well, though she didn't dare smile at the poor man - he'd probably take it as predatory and either wet himself from fright or pass out. At any rate, she didn't really -feel- like smiling at him. She knew that it wasn't really his fault, that he was being jerked around by the corporate masters of the corporate masters of his own direct employers, but still, did he have to be so -spineless- about it? "This is not good business," she told him coolly, "but we accept your attempt at compensation in the spirit in which it's offered." "Oh, thank you, thank you," said the manager, bowing. "Please pick a table, any table." As they left the bar and started looking for a table, Moose grinned wryly and said, "Maybe we should make -you- the band manager." Juri gave him a little smile and replied, "Well, I -have- been told that I'm persuasive." There were enough of them that they actually had to take two tables, up close to the stage. They sat around for a few minutes, discussing this irritating turn of events while they should have been setting up, and while they were doing this, the stage door opened and another small group of people emerged onto the stage, equipment in hands. The crowd in the club didn't pay them much attention - after all, this was a surprise show, they weren't looking for one of the #1 bands in the galaxy to appear on stage. They thought they knew who was playing already - the usual crop of college bands, and some kind of wunderkind band from that new private school near Bajor. Corwin, his mother, his half-brother Leonard, the Shannon twins, Nall, Fuu Hououji, Saionji, Urd, Mia, and B'Elanna Torres arrived shortly thereafter. Koopman Memorial High in New Avalon, where Corwin, Nall, Len and the Shannons went to school, wasn't on break, so they'd had to wait for classes to get out today, then come to New Hokkkaido separately via Daggerdisc's fold drive. They were dismayed to see the band not setting up, and when Juri explained the reasons why, Corwin's face darkened and he slammed a fist into the opposite palm. "Clarissa," he snarled. "What?" said Juri, puzzled. "The Supercolliders are signed with Ziggurat Records," said Fuu, nodding in agreement with Corwin. "And guess who owns Ziggurat?" asked Len. Kate glanced up at him, then nodded slowly, her face taking on a look of dark understanding. "Azt-t-technology," she said. As if summoned, Clarissa Broadbank and a few other students from DSM - Carol Alverson and that boring young man she was dating, Student Council treasurer Marcus Finch, and, Corwin was disturbed to notice, Vigdis Brightblade - entered the club, smiling and chatting with great private amusement about something. Seeing Kate and the others up front, Clarissa made a great show of smiling broadly and waving in a friendly way at them before she and her party went to a booth back in the corner to sit down and continue their conversation. Vigdis seemed to feel Corwin's surprised eyes on her; she looked up, made brief eye contact with him, and went red, then glanced to his side, scanned the table he was next to, and scowled before pointedly turning away, ignoring him. What was -that- all about? he wondered. "This bites!" said Nall indignantly. "Who do these jerks think they are? Just because they've got a number-one single, they think they can come in here and push out the Art of Noise?" One of the young men setting up equipment on the stage, a spiky-haired, toffee-colored man in his mid-twenties, paused, looked up, and then came over to the edge of the stage and crouched down. "Excuse me," he said. "Did your cat just say 'the Art of Noise'?" "I'm not a cat, you gig-stealing - " "Nall!" Corwin snapped, closing his fist around the little dragon's muzzle. "Shut UP!" "Mnnnggff!" declared Nall indignantly. Kate looked down at the table, then back up, and said softly, "Um... y-y-y-yes... w-w-w-we're the A-A-Art of N-N-N-N-Noise... " The young man sat back on his heels, pumped a fist in the air, and said, "AWESOME!" They all stared at him in amazement. "Mark Ramsey," said the spiky-haired man, leaning down from the stage to shake Kate's hand. "Lead singer of the Supercolliding Superconductors - I mean, Superconducting Supercolliders. Damn, I do that every time," he added with a sheepish grin. "I shouldn't've let Fermi pick out the band name, no matter -who- he's descended from. Anyway, you must be Kaitlyn Hutchins. I'm really pumped to meet you." Kate blinked. "M... mm... me?" "Yeah. I've got a crystal of your Toronto show from last March, a buddy of mine sent it to me on the net. I think you know him, Joe Graf?" "Y-y-y-you kn... kn... kn-know J-Joe?" "Oh yeah - I was a senior at Toronto U when he was a freshman, eh? I taught him that wanky C-minor-7th transition he uses in half his damn songs," he added with a broad grin. "You guys come out here to catch the show? I thought it was supposed to be a surprise. Hell, -we- didn't know we were playing here until tonight. We were up in the hills skiing when our A&R guy calls up. 'Go play the HeavyHeavy. Favor for the Big Boss.' Sure, OK, whatever." He mimed hanging up a phone. "So what brings you to New Sapporo?" "We were supposed to be headlining here tonight," Dorothy Wayneright told him bluntly. Ramsey blinked. "... Oh!" he said. "And they bumped you for us? Man, that sucks!" "Mark, what's up?" asked a slim Andorian girl, coming up behind him. "Got those monitors hooked up yet?" "Giina - this is the Art of Noise," said Ramsey, gesturing to the table. "They were supposed to be playing here tonight and we -bumped- them." Giina's antennae straightened in surprise. "No kidding? That sucks!" "I was just saying that!" Ramsey agreed, sounding indignant. He turned. "Hey! Ricky!" A tall, wire-thin white guy with no hair, a jet-black goatee, and rose-colored sunglasses looked up from where he was plugging together a keyboard setup. "Yeah?" "Go get the manager." "Why me?" "Because you're perfect!" "... OK." "Um," said Kate, "w-w-w-we r-r-r-really d-don't w-w-w-want to c-c-c-c-cause any t-t-troub-t-trouble... " "Hell with it," said Ramsey, gesturing dismissively. "I'm in the same room with the band that did 'Alive Again', I'm damn well gonna hear 'em play!" He grinned, winked, and said, "What's the use in selling a million records an hour if you can't push the record company around a little?" And so it was. Clarissa Broadbank got to sit in the corner booth at the Club HeavyHeavy and watch and listen with dismay as the universal brotherhood of musicians defeated her inaugural scheme. The Art of Noise played a shorter set than they'd anticipated, having been changed from the headlining act to one of two openers, but it was enough to qualify as a triumphant return, and besides, they were opening for the SUPERCOLLIDERS, for Pete's sake. She was in a terrible mood for the rest of the break. B-term opened uneventfully. Professor Ravenhair's Applied Science division quickly became -the- hot ticket in junior-class registration. Students were jockeying for position, currying favor with the professor and the Registrar's Office, even trying to hack the registration computer in order to get seats in the C- and D-term installments of the class after hearing about all the fun they were having with forcefields, model rocketry, robotics, and remote- controlled weapons in Skuld's Division B. Utena, who had found herself in that division out of either serendipity or sheer nepotism - she'd never asked which - could bear out all the legends. It was the most fun she'd ever had in school. In the second week of the term, B'Elanna Torres got tired of shlepping up and down the hill three or four times a day, applied for, and received permission to move from the fourth floor of Hannibal Hamlin Hall to the Castle. Though not a Duelist yet - she'd only started training with Professor Kraalgh two months before - she was part of the community, so, the logic went, she might as well live there. Mia Ausa, who hadn't found single-room life so much restful, as she'd anticipated, as boring, had gladly taken her as a roommate. (Ironically, Mia had tried the single experience the year before, when she moved into Galaxy House. Then, too, she'd decided it wasn't for her and moved next door, rooming with T'skaia. When the assignments had been made for rooms in the Castle, she'd decided the larger in-building community would offset the single-room effect; she was wrong, and so she was happy to have a roommate again now.) If there was one sour note in B'Elanna's life, it was that she couldn't take junior-level Applied Science yet, and by the time she was old enough to, odds were that Professor Ravenhair - who was, after all, only a visiting instructor - would have left the Institute and returned to NIT. On the other hand, if her college classes were that much fun, then B'Elanna knew what college she was going to! If there was -another- sour note in B'Elanna's life, it was that, as the Duelist community's only freshman, she had to attend classes with Clarissa Broadbank and Vigdis Brightblade. Clarissa more so; Vigdis wasn't actually nasty to B'Elanna. She usually seemed preoccupied with something else, and generally didn't pay the half-Klingon girl any mind at all. Still, she hung around with Clarissa so much that, whenever the little redhead appeared, B'Elanna knew that the snippy blonde couldn't be far away, and Clarissa -was- nasty to B'Elanna. Vigdis's association with Clarissa was cause for concern throughout the small corner of the Duelist community who knew about the Valkyrior and Corwin Ravenhair's connection with them. She hadn't spoken to Utena since the Halloween dance, but that was, perhaps, not all that unusual - freshmen and juniors didn't cross paths much during the course of the term. Vigdis didn't try to join the Duelists' Society; she joined the Fencing Club, where, Juri and Miki reported, she was a bit irritable, but followed the rules. Kaitlyn passed her concerns on to Skuld, who sighed and said she hoped it was just a phase the littlest Valkyrie was going through. To those closer to the issue than the visiting professor, it was fairly obvious what the problem was; every Friday, when Corwin appeared on campus for his weekly non-date with Utena, Vigdis would seem to materialize out of nowhere and try to intercept him with some cockamamie excuse or another. Every week, one or another of the clued-in Duelists would in turn intercept -her-, diverting her just long enough for the beleaguered friends to make their escape. Every week, Vigdis would twig to the dodge just a bit too late, then stomp off to Hamlin to sulk. Slumped in the corner booth at Celestial Pizza ("Jeraddo's Best Pizzeria!" - also Jeraddo's _only_ pizzeria), Utena sighed and said, "I don't think I can take much more of this." Corwin nodded, mirroring her sigh. "What is -with- her, anyway?" Utena gave him a look. "Corwin, don't be an idiot. She's got a huge crush on you, she thinks I'm your girlfriend, and she's jealous as hell." Corwin blinked. "What?! No, no, no. I explained all that. The whole Valkyrie thing - it's a joke. She's just doing it to tick me off. But," he said plaintively, "why doesn't she -realize- it's not -funny-? I didn't think she was this dense." Utena's shoulders slumped. She gave the top of her soda an exasperated look and muttered, "(Not half as dense as -you-... )" "Huh?" said Corwin. "Nothing," Utena replied. "Look, even if it is a joke, why don't you play along? Call her bluff, take her out. If she's kidding, she'll get scared and back off. If not... " She shrugged, giving him a sly look. "... Then you might just -get- yourself a girlfriend." (It gave her kind of a funny, empty feeling to say that, but she put it down to hunger. Where the heck was their pizza, anyway?) "I don't -want- a girlfriend," Corwin replied testily. He'd picked up his straw, still wrapped, and was rolling it between his fingers in a complex dance that briefly threatened to mesmerize Utena before she shook her head and forced herself to focus on the matter at hand. She really -was- very hungry. "So tell her that," she said. "Not the way you have been, but seriously. Sit her down and lay it out for her. If there's even a chance she's serious, then the longer you let this go on, the worse it'll get for her; you've got to let her down before she ends up with too far to fall. And if she's not serious, maybe you telling her so seriously will clue her in that what she's doing isn't OK." There was a pause while Corwin considered her words. Then, before she could stop herself, she said, "Anyway, I don't know why you don't at least -consider- it. I mean, she -is- awful cute." Corwin stopped fidgeting with the straw. Carefully, deliberately, he unwrapped it, put it in his soda, bent it, and took a drink; then he looked steadily at her with his blue eyes calm and rather sad, and said softly, "You know why I don't." The uncomfortable moment hung there for a second, foreboding and acrid, like a cloud of smoke that's just issued from a computer under repair; and then it was dispelled by the sudden appearance of a large pepperoni and Canadian bacon pizza, which plopped down onto the table between them with the abrupt finality of a slamming door. "Celestial Pizza!" declared the tall, apron-bedecked, blond waiter with a grin. "Delivered on the Wings of Angels!" "Thanks, Zach," said Utena, grinning. "You're not delivering tonight?" "I am if we get any delivery orders," Zach Stephens replied. "It's been dead. Not cold enough to keep people inside - they're just comin' on down if they want a pie." He glanced up, saw someone signaling from one of the other tables, and said, "Eat in good health. Lemme know if you need anything." Celestial Pizza was a small wonder story nestled in the coda of the big wonder story that was the relocation of the Institute to Jeraddo. Under the ownership of bald Bill Hanson, with the help of his irrepressable deliverator Zach Stephens and a rotating staff of student help, it had been a Worcester fixture for years, delivering pizza to the desperate students of WPI. When the Institute went under, Hanson had considered retiring - but instead, at Zach's urging, he'd embarked on a grand adventure instead, picking up his establishment and moving it to Port Jeradar. Zach had promptly thrown himself into learning every road, street and back alley in the Greater Port Jeradar Area. Given that, even with the rapid growth sparked by the Institute, the population hadn't yet topped 5,000, this task wasn't all that difficult for a deliveryman of Zach's caliber. When the Deedlit Satori Mandeville Memorial Institute opened its doors, Celestial Pizza was there waiting for its hungry students' calls - and the students had not failed to respond. As the local population discovered pizza - not unknown on Bajor itself, which was becoming more cosmopolitan every day now that Babylon 5 was online, but heretofore utterly unknown on Jeraddo - business had gotten better and better. Now it wasn't uncommon for Celestial pizza to make its way up to the station itself by way of the regular shuttle runs, nor was it far out of the ordinary for crewmen from the Challenger, HoSghaj, or Derek Bacon's WDF command, the battleship Pennsylvania, to beam in for dinner on non-patrol nights. Celestial had been one of Corwin and Utena's favorite Friday-night haunts last year; to eat there this year too had a certain faintly but pleasantly surreal feeling, like eating in the Marche on B5 and not knowing, for a moment, whether they were on the Zocalo or the concourse of the Entire State Building in New Avalon. The pizza was damn good, too. "Sorry," said Corwin as he reached for the grated-cheese shaker. "She's just got my nerves on edge. I mean, I -like- Vee. I really do. She can be sweet when she's not being a pain in the ass, and she really cares about her work... but she's got an arrogant streak. Doesn't think much of mortals. I think it really squicks her that Aunt Bell - Lady Verthandi of the World-Tree - is married to one and lives with him in Midgard. Notice how uncomfortable she's been around Bell since she got here?" Utena nodded. "I was wondering about that," she said around the tip of her first slice. "If what you're saying is right," Corwin went on, "she probably holds that against you as much as anything else. It's always bugged her that Mom's raised me to think of myself as belonging to both worlds." Utena gave him a quirky grin. "Funny that she'd have such a major crush on you," she said, "seeing as you're half mortal yourself." "Well, the Midgard-Knight slew Fenris," said Corwin importantly. "That makes him... barely acceptable," he added wryly, dropping the pretense. Utena sighed. "Great. So she's a snob -and- the jealous type. Reminds me of somebody I used to know." "At least I'm not her brother. Ew." "There is that." /* The Beatles "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" _The White Album_ */ They got back up to campus after spending most of the evening, after eating, walking around Lake Jeradar and talking about random things. The far side of the lake, equidistant from the campus and the town, was very dark, but neither was afraid of the dark, so that didn't bother them. It was, in fact, a perfect place to be if you wanted to look at the stars. Which, to her continued surprise, Utena Tenjou did. From here, when Bajor was less than a quarter full, a sharp-eyed observer who knew where to look could spot Babylon 5 on a clear night, its solar panels winking in the darkness. With binoculars, you could even see the metagate working, and occasionally catch Bajor-B'hava'el's rays winking off the iridescent hull of the Challenger as she patrolled the inner system. As for the stars themselves, Epsilon Eridani was close enough to Sol that many of the familiar constellations looked more or less the same. Corwin knew them from Earth, Tomodachi, and Zeta Cygni, and was fast learning the differences here. Months ago, before she'd known him well enough to trust him with the reasons why, Corwin had stubbed his toe on Utena's history with astronomy. They'd been standing up near Bancroft Tower in late March, and he'd suddenly pointed into the sky and said, "See that red star there? That's - " "I'm not interested in stars," Utena snapped. "Don't talk to me about them." Corwin, astonished, skidded to a halt, spreading his hands in surrender. "OK," he said softly. "OK. Sorry." He hadn't mentioned it again until after she'd told him the abridged version of her story, which had included the fact that Akio Ohtori had claimed to be an astronomer as part of his campaign of deception. Corwin still didn't know the details of that part; he'd only been told that Akio had pretended to be a friend and turned out to be a deadly enemy. That was enough, though, to make him retroactively apologize for having tried to point out a star; it was just that he really -was- keen on astronomy, and so it was a natural thing for him to think of mentioning... His earnestness had touched her; and, that summer, when he'd had to teach her cosmography as part of her starflight training, that same earnestness, and his real passion for the subject, had been like a bandage on that particular wound in her heart, sealing it up, helping it heal. She'd found herself warming to the subject again, rediscovering the genuine interest that she'd felt before. The stars here were different - hell, the -cosmology- was different - but that was all to the good; it meant that, her initial, reflexive revulsion overcome, she could learn it without painful reminders at familiar places, because there weren't any. Come to think of it, Corwin had done that, without really meaning to, for a -number- of the wounds her time with Akio had left in Utena Tenjou. Fast cars. Stargazing. Illusory reality. Confiding in and trusting a handsome, attentive fellow. One by one, Corwin had taken the threat out of all of them, shown her the real magic that lay beneath the deceptive veneer, given her the power to take them and appreciate them for herself, on her own terms. He was like a balm, like an -antidote-, methodically undoing the damage that silver-tongued bastard had left in his wake. And that, Utena concluded as they reached the DSM front gates, was a big part of why she... ... liked him so much, dammit. Vigdis Brightblade was waiting for them at the gate. Resolutely, Utena acted as though the glaring little Valkyrie weren't there. She hugged Corwin good night, just as she would have on any other day, kissed him on the cheek, just like any other day, and then trotted up the hill to the Castle, turning once to wave to him, just like any other day. He waved back, then put his hands in his pants pockets and stood there, his breath puffing into a cloud in front of him, regarding Vigdis. "Vee," he said, "this has to stop." "You're right," replied Vigdis softly. "I'm glad you've finally come to your senses." Corwin looked puzzled. "Huh?" "You broke up with her, right?" said Vigdis. "That's why the long walk after dinner, why you left her here instead of walking her all the way to the Castle. Right?" Corwin shook his head. "I didn't walk her to the Castle because she's a big girl and she can make it from the gate to the Castle without my help. And because you were here, and I wanted to talk to you, now. I didn't break up with her. I -can't- break up with her." "Why not?" "Because there's nothing to break up!" said Corwin, throwing his hands up in frustration. "Utena and I are -not dating-. OK? We're not boyfriend and girlfriend. We're not anything! We just like to hang out together. We have a lot of common interests. Jesus, Vee, I go out to dinner sometimes with Achika Shannon, are you going to start stalking her too? Maybe you should go after Aunt Yuri while you're at it, and Fuu. And don't forget Buttercup Utonium. On second thought, stay the hell away from Buttercup. You copped an attitude with her like you did with Utena at the Halloween dance, she'd hit you so hard the All-Father would feel it." "You still insist you're not dating her." "I do. I'm not," said Corwin flatly, his hands on his hips. "Then why won't you go out with me?" Vigdis asked. "Because - " Corwin sighed. "Dammit, Vee, this stupid joke has gone on long enough. Go back to Asgard and tell Hildy I goddamned well don't think it's funny any more, will you? Tell her from me that I've had just about all I'm gonna take." Vigdis stared at him, her eyes shining in the muted light of the gate lamps; then she sniffed, then sniffed again. "Why do you hate me?" she whispered. Corwin blinked. "-Hate- you? I don't hate you, Vee, I... " He trailed off as she still struggled not to cry. "Aw, dammit," he murmured, and put his hands on her shoulders. "Vee... you're -not- playing the Valkyrie game, are you." "N... n... no!" she wailed, and threw herself against him. Not knowing what else to do, he put his arms around her and patted her back. "Aw, Vee," he muttered. "Dammit... I'm sorry. I thought you were just playing the bet-board game, like all the other girls. I never figured you were serious." "Well I -was-," said Vigdis into the comfortingly rough corduroy of his fluffily padded jacket. "I -am-." The words spilled out of her now, as though she were afraid that, if she didn't get them out fast enough, they would spoil inside her and poison her. "I'm not playing anybody's game, and if that girl's really not your girlfriend, then -I- want to be!" "Aw, Vee," Corwin repeated, rocking her a little on her feet. "I'm sorry. I know how you feel. I really, really do. You can't imagine how well I do. But... you can't be. You just... you can't. I'm sorry." She wrestled herself out of his arms and confronted him, her face sad and angry at the same time. "Why -not-?!" she demanded. "If you don't have one and you don't hate me then WHY NOT?" Corwin kept his grip on her shoulders, looked down into her angry, teary eyes and said softly, "I don't think I can explain it, Vigdis, so that you'd understand it." She wrenched herself out of his hands and spat, "Don't treat me like I'm a little kid, damn you! DON'T you DARE tell me I'll understand when I'm older!" Corwin put his hand behind his head and chuckled wryly. "I don't see why you should," he told her. "I'm older and I don't." "Now you're just making fun of me. You DO hate me." He spread his hands. "No, Vee, I don't," he said pleadingly. "Please - listen - I can -try- to explain, but - " "Save it!" Vigdis shrilled. "You know what, Corwin Ravenhair? It's OK if you hate me. BECAUSE I HATE YOU TOO!" Then she whirled and sprinted away, bound for Hannibal Hamlin Hall, the hollow sounds of her cries echoing behind her. Well, thought Corwin as he stood alone at the gates of the school and looked at his watch, I could've handled -that- better. Then he turned around and started walking dejectedly back down to Port Jeradar and his bed aboard the One-Hit Wonder. /* Big Country "Broken Heart (Thirteen Valleys)" _Peace in Our Time_ */ Vigdis slammed into her room, still alternately sobbing and raging, tore off her coat, kicked off her shoes, and threw herself onto her bed. She wasn't sure how long she stayed there, pounding the mattress with her fists and wishing one of the three of them - at this point, she didn't care which - would just die. When she looked up, cried out for the moment, she saw Clarissa Broadbank sitting in her desk chair, looking at her with a concerned look. "Bad date?" Clarissa asked solicitously. Vigdis snorted derisively, which didn't work very well, since she was stuffed up from crying; it turned into more of a honking cough, then sent her fumbling for a tissue. Clarissa thoughtfully provided one from a pack she carried in her pocket, then waited patiently for Vigdis to clear her tubes and start over. Some people around here - mostly Corwin's half-sister Kaitlyn, the Pink Menace's roommate, and her stuck-up band friends - seemed to dislike Clarissa, but Vigdis thought she was nice. She'd helped the young Valkyrie get acclimated to the differences about the Surface World faster than her orientation manual or Skuld had managed. Of course, Skuld was a bit distracted, what with her new teaching job and all, and part of the point of a Surface World training assignment was to get accustomed to dealing with Midgard and its inhabitants on their own terms. Well, Clarissa had been a big help in that regard. She was smart, and more than that, she was -wise-; she knew the way things worked down here, and how to turn the flaws inherent in the system to one's own advantage, and she was willing to share that information. All a person had to do in return was be a friend to her, and Vigdis had been more than willing to be that. Sure, Clarissa was a mortal, and so somewhat limited - it was Vigdis's considered opinion that they couldn't feel true passion, for example - but within those limitations she was helpful to know. Now she listened quietly as Vigdis poured out the whole sorry tale, start to finish - edited, of course, to fit within the cover story mandated by her Surface World assignment. She and Corwin were childhood playmates - true - and Vigdis worked for his mother - true, she was Skuld's student assistant - and they had always been very close - stretching a point a little, maybe, but not in Vigdis's mind - until this pink-haired interloper had driven them apart. And the worst part of it was, he wasn't even receiving anything from her in return for snubbing his one true love, Vigdis Brightblade. The Menace kept him wrapped around her finger and didn't give back the love she'd forced him to give to her. She believed Corwin when he told her that part, the last time he'd told her. There was no way he could have that look in his eyes and be lying... so why... what was the POINT of it? Clarissa nodded sagely. "Some women like to do that kind of thing," she said. "Just for the joy of making others suffer." "But why - why does he put up with it? He's so handsome and strong and... and GOOD. Why doesn't he just tell her to leave him alone?" "Maybe he can't," Clarissa suggested. "Can't?" Vigdis replied, looking confused. "Maybe she's bewitched him," said Clarissa. "There is magic in this world, you know. You've said so yourself." Vigdis blinked. Why hadn't she ever thought of that? It was the obvious answer, of course! The girl, Tenjou, she was living with Corwin's Aunt Urd, a notorious meddler and alchemist, the good-for- nothing black sheep of the Norns. Urd must have taught her the forbidden arts, and she'd used them to bind Corwin's heart in thrall. That was why Corwin had kept saying "I'm sorry," why he couldn't explain -why- he couldn't accept Vigdis's love. "Of course," she whispered. "You're right, that has to be it. Thank you, Clarissa. I don't know how I could have missed it. It was right in front of my face." Clarissa nodded, smiling. "You're welcome," she said. "Well... good night, Vigdis." She got up and left the single room, closing the door behind her. Vigdis sat thinking for a few moments, then nodded to herself, turned out her light, got undressed, and got into bed. Of course she's bewitched him, she thought. It's the only explanation that makes any sense. Don't worry, Corwin. I'll get stronger, and then I'll -break- the spell she holds you under! Hold on! Wait for me! Don't give in! She drifted off to sleep thinking heroic thoughts like that. As she went down the hall to her own room, Clarissa Broadbank chuckled. What a simpleton that girl was. Magic, indeed! If she really did think that Tenjou had put a spell on Kaitlyn's half-brother, well, then this ought to put the cat among the pigeons. Clarissa bedded down with a smile on her face, anticipating the fun. The next week of classes was the abbreviated one preceding the short Thanksgiving vacation. Most of the Institute's students, not being from Earth, didn't really understand the motive behind the Thanksgiving holiday. Oh, the concept was easy enough to grasp, and noble enough - a day to gather one's friends and/or family and give thanks for all the things that were going right. But why was it on the fourth Thursday in November, particularly? And what was the deal with the turkey? Nobody complained about having a couple of extra days off in the middle of B-term, though. Some even went home, those whose families lived near enough by to make it worth the trip. None of the Duelists nor their inner circle did, though, and on this particular Thanksgiving Day, November 24, they were all present for the first major snowstorm to hit the DSM campus. And it was a big one, too. It was fairly warm for a snowstorm day, not far below freezing, and there was very little wind; the snow just came straight down, big, heavy wet flakes, and blanketed the campus, the forest, and Port Jeradar in detail-erasing white. It was the kind of snowstorm that muffled sound and made one feel as though the world itself were shrinking, each person in his own little universe as he slogged through the deepening snow on whatever errand drew him outside on such a day. Clarissa Broadbank was in just such a little universe as she struggled across campus from Hopkins Hall, the physics building, back to Hamlin. She cursed Professor Mikelewski - "Oh, Miss Broadbank, if you're not leaving for the holiday, that gives you a chance to make up the lab you failed" - and the stupid schoolmates of hers whom she could see, dimly, through the curtain of white, out and apparently -enjoying- the day around her. The first person to hit her with a misdirected snowball was going to pay, and pay dearly. All she wanted to do was get back to her dorm, take off her boots, and read Daddy's robot secretary an excerpt from the riot act for stranding her in this Godforsaken place over the holiday. Insulated by the snowstorm's world-shrinking effect and her own preoccupation, she completely failed to notice the grey-cloaked figure standing in the middle of the Common until she'd collided heavily with it, rebounded, and plopped down on her back in the snow. "Aaagh!" Clarissa snarled. "Idiot! Why can't you watch where you're standing?" The figure, shrouded head to toe in a heavy grey hooded cloak, stood looking impassively down at Clarissa for a few moments. At least, Clarissa thought it was looking at her; it was hard to tell with no visible face. Then it chuckled softly and walked past her and away. Grumbling, Clarissa struggled to her feet, brushed herself off, and made a mental note to extend the riot act excerpt. The cloaked figure walked up the hill to the Castle and stopped in its front court, looking around at the damaged battlements and snow walls left behind from a recently-completed inter-Duelist snowball war, the heavy falling snow already obscuring the traces of what must surely have been an epic struggle. With a satisfied nod, it stepped up the stone stairs, unceremoniously thrust the doors open, and barged into the entrance hall. A short gust of wind swirled wet snowflakes around the stranger in the cloak, making the grey cloak ruffle, before the doors shut with a bang and cut it off. There was no one in here, but from the archway leading to the main dueling hall, the sounds of clashing steel and conversation could be heard, so the figure stamped the snow from its boots and proceeded through the arch. On the main dueling floor, several pairs of Duelists were scattered here and there. No actual duels were in progress - only sparring matches and technique demonstrations. Near the middle of the far wall, Kaitlyn and Utena were sparring, Kate's zatoichi sheathed, the edge of the Thorn of the Rose covered, while Juri Arisugawa and Miki Kaoru sat with their backs against the wall and watched. The figure made straight for them, stopping at a safe distance. It took Utena and Kate, occupied as they were, a moment to realize that they were being watched by an interloper. When they did, they stopped sparring, bowed reflexively to each other, and turned to face the figure in the cloak as Juri and Miki got to their feet and curiously approached. An arm emerged from the cloak, a gauntleted hand holding an exquisite rose of worked metal - it looked like gold. With a negligent gesture, the figure tossed the rose to the floor at Juri's feet. "It would seem my destiny was not to find Ohtori Academy on the Rim," said the stranger in a soft, husky, faintly amused murmur. "So I shall have to content myself by asking you to fall for the same trick twice - even if it's not Fate's." Juri picked it up, weighed it in her hand with a thoughtful look, and then smiled. She passed the rose to Utena, then collected her sword. "I accept," she answered. "Let's see if your technique has improved, Liza." The figure doffed her cloak as everyone (except Juri, who began stretching slowly) stared at her. Her long blonde hair was pulled tightly back from her head into a golden braid, woven through with royal blue and royal purple ribbons that escaped from the braid at artistically placed intervals. Painted - or tattooed? - on her right cheek just beneath one beautiful blue eye was a vivid purple lightning bolt, arching across her right cheekbone and ending just before reaching her ear. Silver chains dangled from an earcuff and ended in red crystals. She wore a purple silk shirt, with the full blousy sleeves and pointed collar that made it scream "swashbuckler!" to every viewer. Black leather fencing gauntlets, skin tight, with red chevrons on the back, covered the cuffs. A red long-vest (with what looked like some sort of rank insignia on the shoulder) of heavyweight work-fabric, but woven with black block spirals around the hem, neck, and shoulders, further accented the atmosphere of piracy. A double-wrap black leather belt with a silver buckle worked in the shape of a dragon held a pair of swords, one long, one short, both with grey-leather-wrapped hilts, at her left hip. Her black trousers had red block spirals down the outer seams, and were tucked into calf-high heeled purple boots with folded tops and black-and-silver accents. Tucked into the top of her right boot, just visible, was a dagger hilt, wrapped in grey to match the swords. Utena looked from the rose in her hand to the girl who had brought it in blank astonishment, then blurted, "LIZA?!" B'Elanna Torres and Mia Ausa trotted over from where they had been stretching, Mia astonished, B'Elanna curious. "Liza who?" B'Elanna wanted to know. "Broadbank," Mia told her. "Clarissa's sister." B'Elanna looked confused. "The one who died?" Liza laughed. "In a manner of speaking," she said cheerfully. Then she drew the longer of her two swords, a golden blade which seemed to have about half katana and half scimitar in its lineage, and bowed with a flourish of her blade. "Elizabeth R'tas Shustal, late of the Ishkarat trading vessel da'Shivoam, at your service." "Elizabeth -wha-?" said Utena. "I'll tell you all about it later," Liza promised her with a grinning wink. "Right now I have business with the redhead." Corwin parked his Griffon in the visitors' lot - at least he -thought- it was the visitors' lot - and clambered out into the snow, shoving the door shut behind him. "Ahh," said Nall delightedly from the collar notch of Corwin's heavy black wool overcoat. "What a beautiful day." Corwin would have given the dragon a funny look, but a) he was used to Nall making pronouncements like that, and b) it's awfully hard to give any sort of a look to someone who's tucked into the front of one's own coat, since it puts his face below one's chin. Instead he stuck his hands in his pockets and slogged up to the castle. There was nobody in the entrance hall, but the fast-filling tracks he'd seen approaching the doors and the melting snow on the mat indicated that someone had entered recently. Through the archway to the main hall, he could hear what sounded like a duel in progress, and a lot of cheering. Corwin grinned and trotted up one side of the grand double stairs, then through the doors at the top into the dueling hall's second-floor observation gallery. /* George Thorogood & the Destroyers "Who Do You Love" _Move It On Over_ */ Most of the Duelists' Society was there, leaning over the rail and watching avidly, as Juri Arisugawa and a garishly garbed, blonde-plaited figure Corwin didn't immediately recognize had at it while Kate, Utena and Miki stood off to one side down below and watched. Utena noticed the dark smudge of Corwin's overcoat in her peripheral vision, looked up, and waved cheerfully to him, then returned her attention to the duel. Corwin unbuttoned his coat and slipped it off (Nall moving to his shoulder in the process), hanging it over his arm, then leaned against the rail and tried to figure out who Juri was fighting. Whoever she was, she was good. She fought in an unorthodox style that looked a little like fencing, a little like kendo, and a little like the way the Society's one t'skrang member fought, with a lot of theatrical flourishes and errol-flynnery. Juri's rather formal style, though it had acquired a certain flair from her periodic trading of notes with Sky, looked very regimented and plain next to her opponent's wild flamboyance. Given such a disparity in style, it was hard to tell just by looking who was winning. The blonde was familiar-looking, though, and her voice struck Corwin as familiar too, since as she fought she peppered her lunges and ripostes with appreciative little exclamations and encouraging comments, as though she were cheering on her own opponent. Still, he couldn't put his finger on it. She wasn't any of the Valkyrie - he thought for a moment one of them might have stopped in - nor any of the warriors of Frey Lightwalker's Capital Defense Forces. She wasn't anyone he recognized from his father's bewildering bevy of old friends and acquaintances. But he couldn't help but feel that he'd -seen- her, and heard her voice, somewhere before! "Hey!" said Nall in a voice unintentionally louder than he'd meant it to be. "Isn't that Liza Broadbitch?!" Down below, the blonde heard; she caught Juri's next thrust, twisted away from it, and called gaily up to the gallery, "Not any more!" before pressing a sizzling counterattack. The fight ranged from one side of the room to the other and all around, using every bit of space available. A couple of times, Miki, Utena and Kate had to slide out of the way as the clash unexpectedly barrelled in their direction. Neither combatant backed down, slowed up, or faltered until the very, very end - - when, in a ringing clash of steel, -both- roses scattered to the floor, ending the duel in a draw. "Well," said Liza, slightly out of breath, as she returned her sword to its scabbard and bowed in a grandiose way. "That's 50% better than I did the last time! Most satisfactory." Juri gave her a mildly sardonic look and a very small smile. "Your technique is even sloppier now," she told the beaming blonde, "but your spirit is much improved." "Ah, well, before I was only playing at a hatchling's sword game," Liza replied. "This time, you faced a Swordmaster of the First Circle!" Juri Arisugawa rarely looked impressed, even when she was; but now she did, if only slightly. She nodded, acknowledging the achievement - she'd spent enough time discussing the Barsaivian Swordmaster discipline with T'skaia to understand what it represented. Then she turned and handed her sword to Miki, who, following a routine ingrained through years of fencing together, had trotted up with a towel in hand to make the usual exchange. "Where's Sky?" Utena wondered. "He -has- to see this." As it happened, the t'skrang in question, T'skaia Vorokoshiga'ar Ixtixtaaqitl't'chl'Vraihelt Ishkarat, had missed the whole thing, because he was up in his room on the fourth floor painting. The Castle's stone floors and walls made it impossible to hear what was going on in the main dueling hall from anywhere not connected to that hall by open air - even the bedrooms directly above parts of the hall, like Mia and B'Elanna's, were dead quiet when there was a fight raging in the hall. (Not that the Duelists' internal clashes ever really "raged", but.) So Sky was entirely unaware that anything in particular was going on down in the dueling hall, and even if he had been, he would probably have passed it off as a standard internal thing. After all, on a day like this, they were unlikely to be getting visitors from the outside. He had just put the finishing touches on the painting he'd spent the last week or so working on when there came a knock at his door. He stepped back from the canvas, surveyed his work, then nodded with satisfaction and went to the door. Mia Ausa was there, smiling. She smiled a little wider at the sight of him; she'd roomed with Sky for a couple of months back in Galaxy House, and the sight of the gas-flame-blue t'skrang in his smock and beret, smeared here and there with different colors of paint, never failed to amuse her. (Not least because a pteranodon- faced, crest-headed t'skrang wearing a beret is always an entertaining sight.) "Ah, hello, Mia. What brings you by?" "Well, I - oh! Is that your new painting? Sky, it's lovely." "You think so?" Sky turned and surveyed the canvas with a self-critical eye. It was a painting of Liza Broadbank, as she had appeared just before she'd left for her summer aboard the t'skrang trading ship Spirit of the River. The likeness was startling, for Sky hadn't left anything out, hadn't glossed over anything for the sake of making it a "better" portrait. The lovely, regular lines of her face were there, and the clear blue of her eyes, painstakingly matched from the t'skrang's extremely good visual memory. Her great mane of very curly blonde hair, cascading down over her slim shoulders, had been rendered with loving detail. But the hollows in her cheeks, the nervous, haunted air of those eyes, and the dark circles around them - he'd depicted all of those, too, exactly as he'd seen them. It was a portrait of a young woman who was on the brink of a great change, and who had almost been smashed to pieces getting there. There was fear in it, but also hope; pain, but also the anticipation of pleasure. Mia thought it was quite moving, all the more so because Sky had clearly painted it as an elegy to the friend he thought he'd made and then lost so quickly. She smiled all the more, waiting while he got into some better clothes (t'skrang having no nudity taboo nor particular reason for one, she didn't have to leave for that - it was the main reason they'd been allowed to room together the year before), and then led him down to the library. There, Liza sat in the big blue velvet wingback next to the roaring fire, her hair down from its braid and cascading in its familiar riot of little curls, regaling a semicircle of raptly attentive listeners who included Miki, Juri, B'Elanna, Wakaba Shinohara, and Dorothy Wayneright with a story that seemed to have something to do with the theft of a large gemstone from a Hutt crimeboss. Sky froze in the doorway as he caught sight of her, his red-rimmed black eyes going wide, and just stared at her for a moment, his long, pointed jaw agape, the tip of his thick, mobile tail pattering excitedly against the floor. Then he burst out, "ELIZABETH!" in a voice that made almost everyone jump. Liza glanced up, grinned, then got to her feet and covered the space between them in two great bounds before catching the t'skrang up in an embrace that probably would have bowled him over backward if not for his tail. "Yatai kyaapas, T'skaia, you tail-stealing pirate!" she declared, sounding absolutely delighted with herself. She planted a big kiss on his snout (which he didn't really know how to take), then dragged him over to the couch and plunked him down. "You're just in time for the really good part." "Good part of what?" asked Kyouichi Saionji as he entered the room, still brushing snow from his coat. He'd been outside shoveling the side paths. That was rather pointless, since it was still snowing like the dickens, but Kaitlyn-sensei told him go shovel the side paths, and so he went and shoveled the side paths. In a couple of hours, he would probably do it again. Such was the life of a kenjutsu novice. Saionji was content. A moment later, he was getting his own whirlwind hug and big deep kiss (brief but, as firefighters like to say, "fully involved") from Liza, which left him with rather wide eyes and elicited an indignant "Hey!" from Wakaba. "Hm?" said Liza, releasing the green-haired Duelist and turning to Wakaba. "Oh, I'm sorry," she said, and then grabbed Wakaba up in her arms and gave -her- a kiss as well. "Gah!" said Wakaba, stumbling back a bit. "That's not what I meant!" Liza smiled sweetly. "You don't mind when Tenjou does it," she said. "I never did it -that- enthusiastically," put in Utena wryly. "I can teach you," said Liza encouragingly. "Um... pass, thanks," said Utena. "Your loss," Liza replied with a breezy shrug. Wakaba, unable to speak, just stood there and sputtered, making sharp, percussive little noises that might have been the beginnings of actual words, but were too compressed to come out that way. "Oh, now you've done it," said Saionji dryly. "She can't even speak." "It's actually kind of restful," said Utena, and then "Ow!" as Wakaba kicked her in the ankle. A moment later, the library door opened again, and Azalynn dv'Ir Natashkan walked in, looking rather snow-encrusted. She'd been out for a walk, and there was still unmelted snow caught in her thick, wiry grey hair. Her coppery cheeks were faintly darkened with the chill of the outside air. "Hello, everyone," she said cheerily. "It's a beautiful day outside - almost like being back on Dantrov! I - " Just what 'she' would never be determined, because before she got any farther, Liza had swooped down upon her, fast enough that she didn't get a good look before the blonde was too close to see. Azalynn's eyes went wide, then half-hooded - she didn't know who was kissing her, but whoever it was, they were doing a good job, so what the hell? When in Rome, and all that. The scent was familiar, but her nose, numbed a bit from the cold air, couldn't quite make it out. She was warming up in a hurry with this kind of motivation, though. She had just been thinking about how her lips were cold, and wondering who, inside the Castle, she might sneak a kiss from to warm them up - Then it hit her where she'd smelled that scent before. It was different, subtly but definitely so - but there could be little doubt about it - Azalynn struggled a bit in the arms that held her, pushed herself back, and focused on the face of her osculator. Her golden eyes went wide with surprise again, blinking once, as a ruddy-cheeked, tattooed(?) Liza Broadbank grinned back at her. The stunned Dantrovian opened her mouth to say something - probably Liza's name in an astonished tone of voice - but Liza occupied it again, and she couldn't say anything more for some time. The Duelists looked at each other with varying degrees of discomfort (except for Miki, who was looking at his stopwatch with a little piper's smile, and Dorothy, who didn't seem to care one way or the other), and most of them were starting to slip out of the room when the door opened again and Belldandy came cheerily in, a kitchen apron tied on over her sweater and bell skirt. "Utena, dear, we should - " The goddess paused, seeing that she'd nearly walked smack into a quite-involved pair of kissers. Some of the people present who didn't know Bell terribly well winced, expecting her to be upset or embarrassed, but she merely smiled benevolently and said, "Oh, I see we have another guest. Well, that's all right, plenty for everyone. We should really get started if we want to have dinner ready at 7," she finished, turning back to Utena. "Uh... yeah," said Utena, nodding. "Good idea." She sidled past Azalynn and Liza and out into the hall, gratefully following Belldandy to the kitchen. "You know, Aunt Bell," she said, "you would think I'd have gotten used to having surreal days by now." Bell smiled mildly and replied, "You're young yet, dear. My Keiichi can give you some tips if you'd like." "Every little bit helps," said Utena wryly. Back in the library, Liza finally released Azalynn and returned to her chair, grinning from ear to ear. Azalynn fumbled for words, blushing in a most un-Azalynn-like fashion for several seconds, then burst out all at once, "Wow! Where'd you learn to -kiss- like that?" Liza smiled enigmatically and said airily, "Ahh, Azalynn - that's a story for a smaller crowd." For the next several hours, Utena and Belldandy barricaded themselves into the Castle's kitchen, did not emerge, and allowed no one else entry. It was critical that inveterate moochers like Nall and Azalynn be kept out; it was -more- critical that people like Corwin and Kaitlyn, who would try to -help-, be kept out. While the self-appointed cooks toiled, Professor Ravenhair arrived, House Guide Urd came down from her eyrie in the South Tower, and the two of them set the great, long table in the Castle's rarely-used formal dining room for the Thanksgiving feast. As they worked, Skuld confided to Urd in a quiet undertone that she was very worried about poor Vigdis Brightblade. The girl had flatly -refused- to join her mentor at the Castle's first Thanksgiving, instead choosing to exercise her option, since school was out, to return to Asgard and spend the afternoon with the rest of the Valkyrie. "All this past week she's been in a funk," Skuld murmured. "Stays in her room when she's not due in class or helping me. I'm afraid this Surface World assignment just isn't working out for her... but she wanted it so badly, I hate to call it a failure so soon and send her back." Urd shrugged. "Maybe she's hung up on some guy," she said. "You -always- think everyone's problems have something to do with -sex-," Skuld grumbled. "Um, news flash, sis? Most of 'em -do-." Skuld sighed. "Vigdis is too young to be having that kind of problem yet." "Oh? Like you were?" Skuld glanced up from arranging a plate at the head of the table and fixed her sister with a look. "What's that supposed to mean?" she asked. Urd smiled. "Just this: Corwin may have been born in 2391, but he was an idea a looooong time before that." Skuld gazed at Urd for a few silent seconds, then sighed, conceding the point, and went back to setting the table. "Well, I'll talk to her after the holidays," she said after a few more moments. "We'll go back to Asgard for New Year's and I'll sit her down and have a long talk with her then. I guess I'd -better-," she added, giving Urd a wry grin, "before -you- take it into your head to do it." Urd said nothing; she just went on putting down forks and knives. Not until she was clear at the other end of the table, well out of Skuld's earshot, did she murmur to herself, "Under the circumstances, I don't think I -could-." Thanksgiving dinner at the Duelists' Castle was a rousing success. At six that evening, Amanda Dessler, Rina Dragonaar, and - most welcome surprise for all - Devlin Carter beamed down from Amanda's personal starship, the Lorica. There was an awkward moment when Amanda and Liza found themselves confronted with each other - but only a moment, as Liza went far too easily now to keep it that way. Amanda looked Liza up and down, taking in her different clothing, her new bearing, and the formerly-absent sparkle in her eyes - - and smiled, saying only, "Interesting." -Rina- and Liza circled each other like sharks for a couple of minutes. Rina had heard all about how Liza had nearly gotten Amanda and Devlin, the two most important people to her in all creation, killed back in May, and she wasn't therefore inclined to be pals with the blonde now. On the other hand, Amanda seemed to be satisfied with her, and Devlin had forgiven her -before- they'd gone their separate ways, she to the t'skrang fleet, he to the International Police Organization's psionics academy on far-flung Jyurai. He greeted her now quite cordially, gave her a flower that he'd plucked out of nowhere, and seemed geninely pleased with the changes in her - so Rina eventually let her suspicious attitude drop and allowed herself to be pulled into the general flow of things. Liza, who had only been on the defensive because Rina looked like she might want to start something, relaxed immediately. She wasn't interested in another fight today. At seven, then, the Society, most of their closest friends, the Norns, Janice Barlow, and a couple of random classmates who had been trapped here over the holiday break sat down at the long table (which could easily have held at least ten more) and feasted on turkey with all the usual trimmings. Table service was provided by a cheery Belldandy (she wouldn't let Utena help, shooing the pink-haired Duelist to her seat between Kaitlyn and Corwin), with the assistance of her elder sister and two small robots in extremely comical bow ties and aprons. Compliments and toasts flew round the table, most of them welcoming Liza back to the land of the living and wondering where she'd been all this time. She declined to tell that story, saying that it would be rude to monopolize the dinner conversation so completely - she was, after all, a guest. Instead, while some of the Duelists stewed in an agony of wondering, she graciously yielded the floor to the others. Devlin told them about his first semester at the Psionics Academy, drawing near to a close now. He couldn't really go into much detail on the training itself; it would have been kind of hard to follow for anyone but another telepath (which only Liza was), and parts were classified. Still, there were some funny stories from his training days (like the time he and three classmates almost burned down the chemistry lab - "But what we DIDN'T know, NONE of us, was that Crichton was pyrokinetic!"), and Devlin generally looked happier than he had in years. After dinner, Skuld saw the guests from other dorms back safe to their beds with the aid of a whimsical device she referred to as "Snow Sentry Banpei RX-17", then returned to spend the night in one of the Castle's spare rooms, as Bell was also doing. The Duelists and their overnight guests then installed themselves in the library. Corwin stoked up the fire, Aunt Bell brought them all hot cocoa, and they all burrowed into the couches and chairs under blankets and quilts while the snow still came down outside the tall, narrow windows. Once everyone was comfortable, Liza sat up straight in the wingback chair she'd claimed and told her story. It was a long one, and it took Liza most of the night to tell it, but she made the telling a good one. She did voices, she did sound effects, she got up and re-enacted (sometimes with T'skaia's bemused-but-game assistance) some of the best parts. The whole thing was so wild that some of the Duelists found themselves wondering how much of it was strictly true and how much the storyteller's embellishment. Still, she'd gotten those swords, those clothes, that new attitude and those tattoos (my, but that was an odd place to have the alchemical symbol for mercury inked upon one's person!) someplace, and the tale she told to account for herself from June to November certainly covered enough ground to account for them all. She told them of the months before the ship's destruction (for she had been destroyed, the noble da'Shivoam, but not without a fight, oh no!) - the drudgery, the back-breaking labor, the surliness and constant complaints of her kaissa-ridden bunkmates. For the first week, she'd cried ever night, certain that her eagerness to undertake this was a mistake, certain that if the work didn't kill her, the isolation would. These creatures were so... -alien-... and she had never been so alone. But then she'd realized, with the aid of her emerging empathic talents, that the t'skrang weren't really so different. Oh, physiologically they were, certainly. Liza didn't have a tail, nor a crest, nor could she breathe underwater for fairly extended periods. At first she felt as strange to them as they were to her; but once she stopped crying and started -talking- to them, she realized that wasn't the case. There were humans on Barsaive, the Outer Rim world whence the t'skrang came - indigenous humans, one more example of the remarkable parallel evolution that had made Earthpeople, Corellians, Zardons, and several other independently-evolved races all but identical. And there were other races, too - in all, nine distinct and separate races of what Barsaivians called "Name-givers", sentient beings, living and working together on that remote but resource-rich world. To Liza's crewmates, it was -odd- that a human should choose to become a khamorro (literally, "deck-scrubber" - the lowly, menial position traditionally held by t'skrang in kaissa), but not disturbing. Just strange. The first real human connection she'd made with a t'skrang aboard the Spirit of the River wasn't with one of the crew, though, but with a passenger, a traveling follower of the Swordmaster discipline (like T'skaia, and yet how unlike Sky had she been!) who was more worldly by far than the Ishkarat crew. F'thaka Mindlina Antoine-Jezebel R'tas zha'Kalarosh was, by Liza's account (which was the only one the Duelists were likely to get), a remarkable individual, even for a t'skrangish Swordmaster. In Liza's limited off-duty time, she'd slowly befriended the ship's lone, mysterious passenger over the course of their long slog to the Outer Rim, which had occupied most of June what with all the stops they had to make. Then the ship had suffered drive problems, and when they'd reached Barsaive, Captain Ariane had chosen to put in for repairs. The khamorro had been reassigned to other ships, continued labor being critical to distract the sufferers in kaissa - except for Liza, who was given permission to go with F'thaka and assist her with an "errand". That errand had turned out to be the aforementioned theft of a Hutt crimeboss's biggest gem. This was a complex and dangerous operation, made more complex and more dangerous by F'thaka's rather curious idea of what constituted a proper theft, and it occupied two weeks; the two barely made it back to the Spirit in time for her departure from Barsaive, by which time Liza had become F'thaka's apprentice in the Swordmaster discipline. More than that; she was also learning F'thaka's rather unique take on all of t'skrang philosophy, and anyone who had spent any significant time around T'skaia could tell you that the t'skrang had a lot of philosophy. The rest of July and all of August were, then, even harder work than June had been, for now, in addition to her duties as a khamorro, Liza had her training as a Swordmaster to attend to; and yet, in the face of such adversity, she not only bore up, she flourished. When she and F'thaka parted on Cardassia Prime (Liza didn't know what her teacher was doing there, and didn't want to), Liza left as a Swordmaster of the First Circle - reinvented, retooled, clear-headed, in the best shape of her life and ready to take on the whole galaxy if need be. She'd even changed her name: "Shustal" for the t'skrang expression meaning "nothing more need be said", from which had been derived her crewmates' joking nickname for her, "Lishustai" - "Liza-says-little" (among t'skrang, the joke went, Liza was the taciturn one); "R'tas" from her mentor and the architect of her rebirth. "Elizabeth" was a fine old name, her grandmother's name, and her grandmother had never been part of the family politics; so she kept that to honor Grandma, and all the rest went in the dustbin with yesterday's hatreds. And then, on the very morning of her anticipated, triumphant return to Jeraddo, disaster had struck Liza. She had been working in the after cargo hold at the time, and never had managed to learn what the hell had happened, in detail - but someone, some pirate force, had attacked the Spirit of the River, crippling her engines with a lucky shot, overwhelming her shields, and boarding her. Liza and the rest of her cargo-bay crewmates had found themselves suddenly locked in desperate combat with a ragtag gang of humans, Malons, and assorted other humanoid riffraff, all of them armed with blasters and vibroshivs. They were doing pretty well, too, until the Spirit started to break up. In the desperate scramble that followed, Liza had found herself in a leadership role, mainly because nobody else had bothered. She and the survivors from her cargo crew had linked up with survivors from the engine room and other areas of the ship and fought their way to the lifeboats. From there, it had been a wild ride to the surface of the nearest class-M planet - a charted-but-ignored wilderness world on the fringe of the Federation, unclaimed by any of the Federation's sub-polities, devoid even of a useful name. The next two months had been spent living wild on the beautiful but harsh planet. The survivors of the Spirit's crew were scattered all over one hemisphere by the shower of lifeboats and escape pods that had heralded their vessel's destruction. Some of the pirates had come down as well, and their mates, while hauling away what remained of the Spirit, didn't come looking for them; abandoned, they banded into gangs and, rather than try to survive on their own, had sought out the t'skrang and tried to take their supplies. September and October were thus occupied mainly by an effort to link up and gather together all the scattered Spirit survivors and forge them into a force that could successfully oppose the stranded pirates - which was done, and done gloriously, on Halloween. Some of the surviving pirates joined Liza's crew - they were Liza's crew now, the officers all down with the ship or captured by the pirates, no one knew for sure - and set about looking for a way off the planet. No one was liable to come looking for them; they were a long way from where the battle had taken place, and this world didn't even appear on most charts, including those of the Ishkarat trading house. However, as luck would have it, they'd discovered that there was someone already there. Someone with spaceflight capabilities in place. Someone who hadn't the faintest inkling of the guerilla war that had been happening on the planet, right next door to their hiding place. Someone who wasn't supposed to be here. The Cardassian Obsidian Order had established a secret base on this planet within Federation space, and they were aiming enormous passive sensors at Babylon Five from its unmolested vantage point. "You have never seen a humanoid life form look so surprised," said Liza, chortling with the memory, "as those Cardies did when forty-two t'skrang, six Malons, and a human breached their defense perimeter, screaming 'The Spirit of the River demands a gift!' at the top of our bloody lungs." T'skaia convulsed, grabbing at his middle, his jaw swinging wide in a silent t'skrang laugh as his tail pounded the floor. "(... What?)" Juri asked him in an undertone when he'd calmed down a bit. "(It's a complicated two-language pun,)" Sky told her, wiping at his eyes. "(I'll tell you about it later if you remind me - right now I wouldn't interrupt Lishustai's story for the world.)" Juri nodded, smiling her Vulcan smile. "(All right.)" Liza's eyes glittered in the firelight as she smiled an almost feral smile, relishing the memory. "It was pure chaos. They were soft, complacent - they never dreamed they'd be discovered, and even if they were, they'd have plenty of warning from an incoming ship's warp or hyper signature. The planet was supposed to be uninhabited - where had all these maniacal lizard men come from?! You could see the whole thought process cross their ugly faces, and while they were thinking about it we came over the walls and we ate their hearts!" she declared, raising a triumphant fist. "Ate... their -hearts-," said Utena skeptically. "Well, no, not -literally-," Liza said, smiling at her. "Most of them lived. We tried not to kill any more than we absolutely had to. The survivors are on their way back to Cardassia Prime in the one small ship we let them keep, preparing Shivoam only knows what story to explain their failure to their superiors. As for the rest - the Malons got ten percent, the Spirit's crew took the largest ship and the valuable sensor equipment and headed back to Barsaive, and I flew one of the Cardies' scouts here." "What about the planet?" asked Miki. Liza grinned. "Well... it lies within the Federation's borders, but was unclaimed by any Federation member state. The Cardassian outpost was clearly illegal... so I suppose it belongs to -me- now." Utena let out a low whistle. "I guess you won't have to worry about having lost your allowance from Daddy anymore," she said with a grin. "I guess not," Liza replied, smirking. "I've been thinking of opening a resort. The Cardies were using the place as an illicit little Club Med - the facilities in the base are really quite nice, though being Cardassian, they'll all have to be repainted in some less ghastly colors, of course." She drew her feet up, assuming a sort of lotus position in the chair, and leaned forward with her elbows on her knees, grinning. "Now, tell me - what is my darling sister Clarissa doing here?" Kate snorted. "P-p-pissing me off," she replied. "W-what else?" "Ahhh, what else indeed?" said Liza, nodding her head. "Of course. Daddy treats everyone like an employee. I get fired, Claire gets promoted and transferred... and what about poor little Mary? She never had any stomach for the game in the first place." Corwin looked up, blinking. Sitting in the middle of one of the couches between Utena and Aunt Bell, bundled up in a soft quilt, he'd started to doze off after the story wound down, but he came fully back to wakefulness and answered that one: "She quit." Liza cocked an eyebrow. "Quit, you say?" Corwin nodded. "To hear the twins and Guy tell it, once your dad disowned you and sent Clarissa here, he and your mother stepped up the pressure on Mary to get in line and start pulling her weight. Pick up the slack now that she was the only one left in New Avalon." Liza scowled, the merriment vanishing from her eyes in an instant. "Typical," she spat. "Typical Daddy." "So she put up with it for a couple of weeks, and then your dad gave her an ultimatum: Stop being friends with Guy and the twins, or get out of the house." "Don't you mean 'Sylvie and the twins'?" asked Utena. "No," Corwin replied with a small grin, "I mean exactly what I said. Anyway, that was the deal; so Mary called his bluff and walked." "Only it turned out it wasn't a bluff," Liza finished for him. "He cut out her keycode, locked her bank accounts - everything he did to me." Corwin nodded. "Son of a bitch," Liza snarled, some vestige of her old, vindictive look coming back into her eyes for part of a second. "What did she do? What happened to her?" Corwin grinned. "Relax. You think Priss, Sylvie and Guy would let anything bad happen?" He chuckled indulgently at the thought of his youngest half-siblings' adventure. "They shuttled her around between Dad's house, Zoner and Yuri's place, the Larry Lair, Chez Rose, the Jyuraian Embassy, Apostrophe House and Utonium Labs for the better part of a -month- before the grown-ups put the puzzle together and realized that Mary had been on an extended sleepover tour since Labor Day." Liza laughed, the merriment coming back to her eyes. "Oh, that's precious. Not your cousin Hiroshi's house?" Corwin shook his head. "Sylvie had this terrible fear that if they let Aunt Bell see them, she'd ask, 'What are you kids up to?', and Guy would blurt the whole plan out from 8 o'clock Day 1 onward." Bell chuckled indulgently; Liza laughed outright again, then became more serious and asked, "So what happened?" "Well, when Dad found out, he was pretty ticked off - not at the kids, at your father. He and all the other adults involved had a kind of war council. They thought about prosecuting - I mean, Mary's twelve, that's -abandonment-... but all the law could really do is force your parents to take her back, and Mary didn't want to -go- back. So Marty Rose went over to your father's office and made him sign some kind of paper, and now... " Corwin made a vague gesture toward his aunt, who smiled and picked up the thread. "Mary lives with me now, Liza, and my husband Keiichi and our children, on Tomodachi. We decided it would be best if she lived away from New Avalon, for a while at least." Liza nodded. "Out of reach of my father's corporate goons," she said. "That's perfect. I'm in your debt, Mrs. Morisato." Bell's smile widened to 'beaming'. "I think you can call me Bell, Liza. After all, I'm raising your sister now. Would you like to see her?" She glanced at her watch and then went on, "I'm sure Keiichi's put her to bed by now, but I don't mind bending the bedtime rule for this." Corwin glanced in surprise at his aunt, but she just smiled and patted his knee. Liza looked surprised, then said, "Well... if it's somehow possible... yes, I'd like that." Bell got up, smoothed down her skirt, and held out her hand. "Well, just come with me, then," she said; and Liza, looking puzzled and a bit meek, took the outstretched hand and let herself be led out of the room. Corwin watched them go, then shook his head in amazement. "(What?)" Utena murmured as the rest of the group around them broke up into individual little conversations about what they'd just heard. "(The ones who don't know Bell much,)" Corwin told her, "(think she's just taken Liza off to make a vid call or something... )" Utena nodded in a "yeah, well, she is" sort of way, then gasped softly, her eyes going wide. "(You think she's taking her there? Through the mirror?)" Corwin nodded. "(Bet on it. The look in her eyes. Aunt Bell's got a project,)" he said with a wry grin. Utena considered it, then shrugged. "(Well, more power to her... I'm just amazed at the whole thing.)" "(Mm, me too. Who ever thought -two- of the Broadbank girls would turn out OK?)" Bell and Liza came back a few minutes later. Liza was looking a bit shaken and a bit teary-eyed; she hugged the goddess gratefully, and they whispered back and forth for a few moments before Liza went to her chair and Bell returned to the couch. That drowsiness was overtaking the warm, well-fed crew as the evening grew late and the storytelling wound down was obvious; in the time it had taken Bell to take Liza to visit her youngest sister, several of the Duelists, including Utena and Corwin, had fallen asleep. Bell went around gently rousing them and packing them off to bed, one by one. As House Guide, Urd (once she herself was woken) took Liza to one of the unused rooms on the third floor and told her that they'd sort the rest of the stuff out over the course of the weekend, you need anything I'm in the South Tower, etc., good (yawn) night. Liza stood at one of her room's three tall windows, not particularly tired, looking out over the sweep of the campus. The streetlamps glowed, each individual lamp its own little round ball of yellow light in the still-falling, though lighter, snow. The clock in the Admin Building's clocktower was just striking eleven. Corwin's long black car was completely buried, just an oblong lump down in the visitors' parking lot. No tracks were visible anywhere in the smooth white snow. She turned and regarded the comfortable-looking double bed, then blinked as there was a knock at her door. She went to open it, and there was Azalynn, looking unusually serious. /* Sarah McLachlan "Fumbling Towards Ecstasy" _Fumbling Towards Ecstasy_ */ Liza smiled. "Hello, Azalynn," she said. "Come in, won't you? Listen... I'm sorry if I disturbed you with my, ah, greeting," she went on, grinning. "I just had to." Azalynn nodded. "No," she said, "not... not -disturbed-, exactly. But I was... very surprised." She chuckled. "A lot of things about you have 'very surprised' me today." Liza smiled again, climbed up onto her bed, and sat cross-legged at the head. Azalynn sat down on the foot end and looked thoughtful for a moment before saying, "Liza... before you left, I never got a chance to tell you I was sorry for writing you off the way I did. And when you disappeared, I thought I might never get the chance, and that tore at me. I'm a Dantrovian; we're supposed to forgive our enemies - love them, if they give us any chance at all - and I never tried with you. I just wrote you off, callously. I... " She shook her head. "I let myself hate you," she said softly. "And I'm sorry." Liza knee-walked to within arm's length, put out her hand, and placed it on Azalynn's shoulder. The Dantrovian was surprised at the sensation of heat which came from that small contact, and looked up to meet Liza's clear blue eyes with her gold ones. "Azalynn," said Liza quietly, "do you remember the night, months ago on Earth, when I was taking Kaoru's notebook to Olin Hall to burn it, and you and Amanda Dessler stopped me?" Azalynn nodded. "Of course. That's just the kind of thing I'm talking about." "When we were alone, after Amanda walked away... when you touched my neck, whispered in my ear and left me sitting on the icy ground... I couldn't get up for almost ten minutes. For a long time, I thought about the reasons for that. At first I just assumed I was terrified, weak with fear of your claws and your anger, and had to take some time to gather myself. But out in space, with nothing to occupy my mind but the fatigue and the soreness, I thought about it some more, and I realized I was wrong. I wasn't afraid of you. I was afraid of Dessler, when she threatened me, because I knew that she could and would do what she said she would do... but... " She paused, taking a breath and letting it out in a sigh. "I wasn't afraid of you. The feeling inside me when you left me there was something else." Azalynn blinked. "Something else?" she murmured, puzzled. Liza grinned and moved her hand to cup one side of Azalynn's face. They began, slowly, slowly, moving toward each other. "I want you to understand something," Liza said softly. "What's that?" Azalynn whispered, her eyes beginning to close. "I'm not interested in your religion," Liza breathed. "I don't want a new spiritual experience. I just want -you-." "That's a refreshingly honest approach... " mused Azalynn, just before their lips met. The next day, Liza requested Duelists' Society membership from its officers, and received it, on the weight of her clash with Juri. She took official possession of room 311, where Urd had put her for Thanksgiving night, and promptly ceased to use it much. The Duelists were summarily amazed at the relationship - hell, the -romance- - that sprang up between Azalynn and Liza. It was certainly an odd one; true to her word, Liza wasn't interested in the Dantrovian spirit religion, and paid it very little mind. That extended to staying out of things when Azalynn had an observance that involved someone else, like Miki Kaoru and, occasionally, Dorothy. The mental disconnect involved in separating Azalynn's religious encounters from their own relationship seemed to cost the newest Duelist no particular effort or stress; she just sailed on as usual, serene and grinning. Before all that got really entrenched, though, on that first Monday when classes resumed, Liza exploded onto the Institute's scene with all the color and impact of an artillery shell, and about as much subtlety. Her younger sister, whom she had carefully avoided alerting to her presence until her enrollment was confirmed, was first stunned, then appalled, by her elder sister's new name, her new look, and her new attitude. Her old clique recoiled in terror, as though they feared she might infect them with whatever madness had overtaken her. Vigdis Brightblade, emerging from her funk only with the greatest of reluctance, actually thought she was rather fun - she reminded the Valkyrie of one of her compatriots, Gudrun Truemace - but she learned quickly not to mention that in front of Clarissa, who would go cold and silent at the very name of her "lost" sister. /* Big Country "Harvest Home" _The Crossing_ */ B-term was a write-off, with only three weeks remaining, so Liza audited Kaitlyn's classes and prepared for the ordeal of testing her way back into the Class of 2407 with a take-home exam over the holiday break. Of all the things about the New Liza that startled everybody and horrified her old "friends", more than the clothes (she didn't have to wear her uniforms yet, she wasn't a student!), more than the tattoos, more than the public liplocks with the rodent from Dantrov, it was the fact that Liza Shustal, in a complete reversal of Liza Broadbank's position, was hanging around with Kaitlyn Hutchins. She lived in the Castle, she went to all the same classes, she played ice hockey with Kate, her tomboy roommate, and some of the other Duelists once the lake froze over. There was even talk that she was learning how to run the sound equipment for that silly -rock band- of Kaitlyn's. Some of Liza's old cronies wondered if this might all be part of an -extremely- elaborate plot to finally bring about the downfall of Kaitlyn, the Band Geeks Federation, and the Duelists' Society... but as the term drew to a close and nothing happened, that hope faded. No... it looked like she really had gone mad, completely mad, and decided that the stuttering four-eyed Duelist cliqueleader was her -friend-. Stunned and disheartened, they turned to Clarissa for leadership... but Clarissa was dumbfounded, completely at a loss. This was an almost intolerable reversal, more devastating than Liza's original disgrace. Then, Liza had simply failed - catastrophically, unpardonably, but still, she had only failed. THIS was an outright DEFECTION! Along with Mary's, that made two out of three! The middle Broadbank daughter - the only Broadbank daughter left - retreated into a shell of concentrated disbelief and seemed determined to ride out B-term that way. That suited the Duelists fine; it kept things quiet. For the weekend before B-term finals began, Corwin came as always, and he bore with him happy tidings. In years past, when Kaitlyn was just a little girl and those who came after much too young to remember, her father had held a massive party every Christmas, inviting everybody he could think of to come to his vacation home, his beloved castle on a seaside mountain on Titan. As the Babylon Project and the International Police Organization had grown in complexity, its demands had increased, and the Hutchins clanleader had been forced to discontinue the practice in favor of quiet family Christmases at his home in New Avalon. But now, with Challenger and Babylon 5 both fully operational, he felt the time had come to revive the tradition, and Corwin's news was that the Duelists and their friends were all, anyone who wasn't heading home for the holidays and cared to make the trip, invited. Titan, though in the Solar system, was not part of the Earth Alliance. Rather, it fell within the notional borders of the Republic of Zeta Cygni, owing to the fact that, thanks to a clever real-estate deal prosecuted in the smoking aftermath of the War of Corporate Occupation, it belonged wholly to one of that Republic's most powerful men... who had promptly built a vacation castle on it. Therefore, even though many of the Duelists were still personae non gratae on Earth, they could make the trip to Titan for Christmas at Castle Eyrie without fear. Liza considered begging off - the Duelists had accepted her, but all those adults might find her conversion hard to believe - but Kaitlyn wouldn't hear of it, and neither would Azalynn. Besides, Kate insisted, Dad will -love- the story of how you and your t'skrang stuck it to those Cardassians. And anyway, Aunt Bell, Keiichi, their kids and Mary will all be there, and you know Mary would love to spend some time with you. Convinced, Liza spent Finals Week studying for her re-placement test, then packed a bag and joined the rest waiting for transport to Challenger and thence Titan. Elizabeth Caroline Broadbank would have been horrified at the thought of spending this most festive holiday in the very bosom of the family she'd been raised to hate; but Elizabeth R'tas Shustal was very much looking forward to it, now that she'd been convinced that she'd be welcome. Sitting on the front steps of the Castle, she put part of her heavy traveling cloak around Azalynn next to her, squeezed the Dantrovian in one arm, and said, "You know, I'm very much looking forward to the look on Kate's father's face... " Azalynn giggled. "That ought to be something," she agreed. Then she shook her head and said, "A lot of changes... " Liza grinned. "Indeed. But you know... I think I like it." /* Boston "I Think I Like It" _Third Stage_ */ Eyrie Productions, Unlimited Something presented Changing for me inside UNDOCUMENTED FEATURES Took a long time FUTURE IMPERFECT Now - Symphony of the Sword No. 2 - There's Second Movement: Nothing for me to hide Blue Moon Serenade I'll say what's on my mind Changes The Cast Making me see the light (in order of appearance) I Utena Tenjou Finally see wrong from right Kaitlyn Hutchins Now I can see every sight Kyouichi Saionji Azalynn dv'Ir Natashkan Ooh! Miki Kaoru I think I like it Wakaba Shinohara I think I like what I'm feeling Harcourt M. McKenzie Even though it's such a surprise Chenann But you know T'skaia Vorokoshiga'ar Ooh! Ixtixtaaqitl't'chl'Vraihelt Ishkarat I think I really like it Claudia Montaigne I think I like what I'm feeling Clarissa Broadbank Changes really open your eyes Juri Arisugawa R. Dorothy Wayneright Oh Lesser Mazinger Look at the world we make Tiny Robo What have we begun? Mia Ausa People B'Elanna Torres Living for what they take G'Kron All for Number One Beld Marmo Changes Strom Making me see the light Urd Snowmane I Davonn Finally see wrong from right Neroon Now that it's all said and done Delenn The Hon. J. Maurice MacEchearn Ooh! Belldandy Wishbringer Morisato I think I like it Peril I think I like what I'm feeling Kraalgh vestai-Kalaan Even though it's such a surprise Corwin Ravenhair But you know Nall Silverclaw Ooh! Janice Barlow I think I really like it Skuld Ravenhair I think I like what I'm feeling Vigdis Brightblade Changes really open your eyes Jer Johnson Susan Ivanova (ass-kickingest guitar solo Kira Nerys in the world) Malcolm Reed Derek Bacon Oh Michael Garibaldi Doesn't love say enough Soichiro Tanaka When you realize Leonard W. Hutchins III People Fuu Hououji Try to come off so tough Mark Ramsay All to fantasize Meth'Tangiina Tal'Thlanik Changes Rick Fermi Taking me through the night Zach Stephens I Elizabeth R'tas Shustal Finally see the light Amanda Elektra Dessler I've opened my eyes Kitarina Telaia Dragonaar Devlin Carter Those changes can open your eyes... Special Disappearing Guest Martin Rose Arranger Benjamin D. Hutchins Mac Wrangler Kris Overstreet Miss Shustal's Wardrobe by Anne Cross Iron Chef Pittston John Trussell Grammar Gaffer Kelly St. Clair Typo Grip Rob Shannon DSM Motto Concept MegaZone DSM Motto Translation Jer Johnson and of course The Usual Suspects F'thaka Mindlina Antoine-Jezebel R'tas zha'Kalarosh created by R. Eric Reuss In Memoriam George Harrison Stuart Adamson The Symphony will return with "Another Christmas Rose"