Slowly, slowly, the final third of the Engine came up to
speed, moving in impossibly complex patterns, as the repair team
waited on tenterhooks.  Little flashes of colored lightning raced here
and there through the brass and steel structure of the Execution Drive
as the World-Engine began its work again.  This was the critical
point.  Any miscalculation in Skuld's recoding, any error in
fabrication or fit of any of the myriad of parts, and the whole thing
could jam, explode, or worse.
        The critical point passed faster than anyone could notice, and
Skuld's face broke into a huge grin as all the needles on all the
myriad of gauges around her spooled up to the green zone and stopped
steady.
        "All quadrants of Engine at 4,500 RPM and holding!" came Urd's
voice through the speaking tube from the power console.  "All readings
normal!"
        "All readings normal on Console too," Skuld reported, slightly
breathless.  "Ready to switch from maintenance mode to locked runtime."
        Urd nodded.  "Go."
        Skuld went around the Console to the pedestal that stood
behind the teletype, a cylindrical rostrum about three feet high with
a narrow slot and three grooves cut into the top of it.  From its
scabbard at her belt, she drew the silver sword she'd collected from
her brother-in-law before readying the rebuilt Engine for its restart,
and held it before her for a moment, studying it.
        She had forgotten that the rune sword Grayswandir, better
known to mortals as Durandal, was more than just a powerfully
enchanted blade.  It was Urd who had remembered that the circuit-like
patterns delicately traced on the blade were the patterns of the
World-Engine's most delicate control system.  And a good thing, too;
it had been so long since the World-Engine's System Maintenance Key
was needed that its cover story had become its -real- story in the
minds of almost all.  It would certainly never have been handed to a
mortal warrior, even one as highly connected as Keiichi, to wield in
the Last Battle had anyone remembered what it truly was.
        Holding her breath, Skuld turned Grayswandir in her hand,
placed its point into the slot on the pedestal, and drove the blade
home to the crossbar.  It fit perfectly, slotting into place with a
sharp, positive CLICK.
        "Switching to locked runtime... now... now... NOW."
        Two more reassuring CLICKs as she twisted it from the far
right position to the far left.  The Engine seemed to settle slightly,
a row of green and blue lights flickering across the panel to the
right of the Console.  All along the walls of the chamber, the
dynanodes hummed, flickered, and glowed a steady blue.  Skuld withdrew
the Key, returned it to her belt, and went back to the Console.
        "Awaiting final status report," she reported, trying to keep
her fists from clenching.  She held her breath as the Console's
teletype chattered madly for several seconds, then stopped with a
bright 'ding!'  Her hand shaking, she reached and tore off the
printout.

MSC 23900912

YGGDRASIL: START AT 19:43:03.3445

RUNTIME IMAGE: SKULD 2390091200

IMAGE CHECKSUM:   7812077236
RUNTIME CHECKSUM: 7812077236

YGGDRASIL: LOCKED RUNTIME MODE [NORMAL]

YGGDRASIL: READY %

READY %
READY %
READY %

        Skuld let out a whoop, waving the printout high.

        Outside, everyone who was looking toward the Golden City drew
back, raising their voices in awe, as the city was flooded with
light.  Light poured from the top of the castle's tallest spire,
filling the sky like daylight for a few seconds, and when the dazzle
cleared, the clouds were gone and the stars burst out in all their
glory.
        A cheer resounded across the plain, and Belldandy, a beatific
smile on her face, slumped unconscious in the arms of her husband.


                     Eyrie Productions, Unlimited
                               presents

                UNDOCUMENTED FEATURES FUTURE IMPERFECT
                             -=TWILIGHT=-

                       SEVENTH SEAL: COMMUNION

                         Benjamin D. Hutchins
                           Lawrence R. Mann
                               MegaZone
                             Pearson Mui
                           Kris Overstreet

         with much effort, refinement, and consultation from
                 The Eyrie Productions Usual Suspects

                (c) 2002 Eyrie Productions, Unlimited


        The lights were low in Conference Room 17, at the top of one
of Metroplex's towers.  Outside, the cleanup and regrouping was
continuing; inside, eight figures sat at the long table, looking
intently at the ninth, who stood at the head of the table with the aid
of a crutch.
        Skuld stood with her back to them for several moments, looking
out the room's wide window at the devastated plain; then she turned to
them and said,
        "This was only the warning tone.  The real crisis is yet to
come."
        Six out of the nine stared at her in undisguised astonishment;
the other three nodded in somber agreement.
        "I don't understand," said Kei Morgan.  "The universe just
came about an eighth of an inch from total obliteration, and that was
only the -warning-?"
        "As far as the general public, Midgard's societies, know,
yes," said Skuld.  "Very few on the other side of Bifrost have any
idea anything has happened.  Most who have don't understand the gifts
that allow them to know, and so don't understand what they
experienced.  Thanks to all of our hard work, determination, and luck,
the crisis was stopped before the normal people of the mortal world
could become aware of it.
        "But Surtur won't be satisfied with this stalemate.  For make
no mistake, that's what it was - a stalemate.  We won nothing, ended
no real threat, today.  We celebrate only our survival.  Understand
this, Surtur is the embodiment of evil.  He is chaos, uncreation - the
essence of cruelty given will - and he is far more devious than most
believe.  Defeated in open battle, he will turn his energies to more
subtle ends... and I believe he will target the mortal world first."
        Urd Snowmane nodded, stood, and spoke.  "For once I agree with
my little sister," she said, trading small grins with Skuld.  "Surtur
lost this battle because of the intervention of mortals.  Because of
it, my guess is he'll want to make certain of two things: That the
mortal world suffers for what its champions did here today, and that
those champions are either dead or so busy dealing with the problems
in their own world that they're too busy to intervene when he attacks
Asgard the next time."
        Skuld looked down the table to the face of Optimus Prime, who
had separated his human-size core robot from the rest of his mighty
form to attend the conference on an equal footing with the others.
"He'll especially hunger for revenge against your people, Prime; it
was one of you who stopped his final charge."
        Prime nodded, unsurprised.  "I figured as much."  He folded
his arms across his twin-windowed chest, his half-masked visage taking
on something like a smile.  "If there's one thing we Autobots are used
to," he said wryly, "it's enemies who hold grudges."
        "So what can we do?" Gryphon wondered.
        "Prepare," Skuld replied.
        "We have the Wedge Defense Force and the 3WA," said Yuri
Daniels.  "We can - "
        "They're good," Urd interrupted, "but they're not enough.
Military forces are only part of the solution."
        At the end of the table, MegaZone was nodding, had been
nodding through most of what the goddesses had to say.  He had an
intensely thoughtful look on his haggard face, his eyes focused
nowhere within the room as the gears whirled within his head, and kept
nodding agreement.  His old friends - and most of the people in the
room were such - knew what that meant, and wondered what was taking
shape.
        "Urd's right," Skuld said.  "Surtur's attacks will tend to be
more subtle, especially at first.  He won't just pop out of a rift and
attack.  He'll influence existing elements of society, existing forces
in the mortal world, and slowly use them to destabilize the societies
of Midgard.  If possible, he'll try to arrange it so the mortals kill
each other off without his direct involvement, or even that of his
near servants."
        "That won't be too tough," Kei said ruefully.  "The galaxy's a
friggin' powder keg lately.  We thought the War of Corporate
Occupation would be the end of it?"  She snorted.
        Gryphon nodded.  "Kilrah's still as active as ever, and now
Cardassia's taken a new aggressive stance.  The Klingon Empire's tried
to re-annex the Republic for the nth time.  The Romulans took that
opportunity to sink their fangs into the Klingons' imperial neck.  All
of them have their eye on the Federation next."
        "Meanwhile, inside the Federation's own borders, the corp wars
sparked by GENOM's reorg rage on," said Larry Mann.  "They're only
being kept under control by the 3WA, heavily outgunned local cops, and
our own Corporate Defense Division."
        "And let's not forget all the terrorist groups unconnected
with the corp wars," added Kei, ticking them off on her fingers in
exasperation.  "The Church of Man, the Sword of Salusia, the National
Socialist Federation Workers' Party, that bunch of paranormal wackos
who call themselves Big Fire... they're everywhere."
        "For that matter," said Yuri, "I'm not liking the looks of
some of the stuff the Federation government itself is getting up to
these days.  Have you seen the operational spec for this Psi Corps
thing they're proposing to deal with the human esper population?
Makes me glad I'm not an Earth citizen."
        "So... not to be repetitive... what can we do?" asked Kei.
        Gryphon sat up a little straighter.  "Well," he said
thoughtfully.  "First we need an information monitoring system.
Something that can keep an eye on events, trends, what's going on in
known space."
        "An information engine powerful enough to sort useful patterns
out of the news traffic of an entire galaxy?" said Prime.  "Even
Cybertron doesn't have a system as powerful as that."
        "So we'll have to invent it," Gryphon said matter-of-factly,
as though that were a relatively minor task, on a level with buying
more desks for new employees.
        R-Type nodded; he was used to thinking as big as that.  Back
in the bad old days, he tended to have projects with that kind of
scope -handed- to him, and in the old GENOM, the operative root of
'deadline' was 'dead'.  "Once we've got it working, we can use it to
keep track of what's going on in the galaxy and hopefully get a
heads-up on downward trends before they get deeply established."
        "Then what?" said Prime.
        "Then we investigate and put a stop to it," said Kei, as
though -that- were as simple as showing the new employees to their
desks.
        "Just like the 3WA used to do," said Yuri sourly, "before we
turned into insurance adjusters in hot pants."
        "You mean you weren't always?" asked Gryphon, getting himself
punched in both arms for his trouble.  "Ow.  OK, I earned that, I'll
savor it.  Anyway.  That's right.  That's what we need - a special
force, like the 3WA taken to the tenth power.  I mean, look at the
five of us, for a start," he said, gesturing around to himself, Zoner,
R-Type, and the two Trouble Consultants.  "Between us we've got over
two thousand years of experience handling dangerous and delicate
situations.  We round up more people like us, people with power,
skill, and the responsibility to use them, and form a fast-reaction
force to deal with the problems these elements are going to cause."
        "Gather our galaxy's best and our brightest," mused Optimus
Prime, "and stand them up in line against the darkness."
        Kei blinked at the Autobot commander.  "Uh... well said,
Prime!  Did you just count the five of us in the galaxy's best and
brightest?"
        Prime nodded, touched the WDF/Autobot combination shield on
his shoulder.  "Yes I did," he replied, "and I think it's a great
idea.  The Autobots will help your new organization in any way we
can."
        "Well, hey, that's great," said Yuri.  "Or it will be, when we
-have- a new organization."
        "I'm starting to get a picture in my mind of how it should
work," Gryphon said.  "It's hard to explain right now, but it's
forming.  We should be separate from the WDF - they're needed as they
are, and there are plenty of other officers who deserve a shot at the
top.  It ought to be separate from the 3WA too, and from any
corporation - its own oversight, its own sanction, everything."
        R-Type nodded.  "I'm willing to commit whatever resources I
have authority over to help out, though, with the understanding that
sponsorship doesn't mean ownership," he said.  "I know you guys are
all pretty well off, but an undertaking like this is going to take a
-load- of bread to capitalize."
        "My parents left me that house," said Gryphon without missing
a beat.  "I was -born- there."
        "You're not gonna lose the house, Ray," Mann replied.
"Everybody has three mortgages these days."
        "But at 19%, you didn't even bargain with the guy," Gryphon
protested, then shifted mental gears and went on smoothly, "That only
addresses half the problem, though - the investigation and
intervention.  Somebody's got to get the governments and nations of
the galaxy on the same page, too.  In a situation like the one Skuld's
forecasting, diplomatic relations are going to be more critical than
ever, and a high-powered galactic police force isn't very suited to
handling something like that."
        MegaZone got to his feet and spoke for the first time in the
meeting, his voice still hoarse from all the yelling he'd done during
the battle, but clearly audible in the quiet of the conference room:
        "I'll take care of that.  It'll take me a year, maybe two, to
flesh it out, but I should have it ready by the time you're ready to
move on your idea."
        Then he turned and left the room.  After a moment's awkward
silence, Yuri got up and went after him.
        After -another- moment's awkward silence, in which R-Type got
up and sat down again twice, Gryphon said with slightly forced,
slightly mock cheer, "Well!  I guess Zoner's gonna cover that part,
hopefully he'll deign to let us know exactly -how- he's covering it
sometime... "
        "Ben, I just thought of a problem with your plan," Kei mused.
She'd paid little attention to the byplay with Yuri and Zoner; after
all this time she'd grown used to her partner's constant frustration
with her incomprehensible beau, and resigned herself to her own
inability to do anything about it.  Gryphon envied her that serenity.
        "What's that?" he wondered.
        "Well, say all hell -does- break loose in the next few years.
Nobody's going to know who they can trust.  -We- know we're
trustworthy, but what about the public?  Say one of your, your
'experts of justice' goes up to Joe Citizen and wants to ask him
something or needs his help with something.  How does Joe know he can
trust the guy?  We'd need credentials that can't be forged or stolen,
and trust me, I've been in the enforcement business long enough to
know that there's no such thing."
        Skuld grinned.  "Kei, that's beautiful.  That's perfect.  I've
been standing here for the last few minutes listening to the five of
you say everything I was afraid I'd have to say for you, and you just
nailed the biggest thing I was hoping one of you would notice."  She
drew herself up and smiled, mock-smug.  "It just so happens that I
have the answer to your problem."
        Kei grinned at her.  "Do you indeed."
        Skuld smiled, nodded, and reached into the pocket of her lab
coat.  When her hand emerged, it was clad in a white glove and held a
large lenticular gemstone, perhaps an inch and a half in diameter.
This she held up by its edges, displaying its dark face to those
assembled.
        "It happens," she said, "that an Earthman wrote a series of
books back in the early twentieth century which involves a force of
galactic police who had that very problem, and this was the device
their hyperintelligent alien patrons came up with to solve it for
them: the Lens.  I made this one for a lark, back when I first read
the books, never figuring I'd need it for anything... but after the
battle, while I was working on the Engine restart code, I had a
glimpse of what's to come, and realized it would be needed after all,
so I brought it with me."
        "And you waited for us to talk it all through and realize we'd
need it," said R-Type.  "I read those books too."
        Gryphon smiled.  "Me too.  And you're a lot better looking
than Mentor of Arisia."
        "Maybe you see me as you want to see me, too," Skuld replied
with an impish grin.  "Anyway.  Here's my offer to you, heroes of
Midgard: Form your Experts of Justice.  Stand against the darkness
Surtur will send against your world.  Gather your best and your
brightest around you.  And when you do, I will test them, one by one;
and if they be worthy, then I will make them Lenses, to identify them,
to guard them against your enemies, to declare their grand purpose to
all who see."
        Urd rolled her eyes.  "Please," she said.  "Could you lay that
on a little thicker?"
        "I could have said it in Old Norse," Skuld replied.
        "Point," conceded Urd.
        "By tomorrow, I can make one for each of you here now," said
Skuld, "but in any new endeavor, there must always be one to be
first."  She smiled, a little shyly, the hint of a blush touching her
cheeks.  "Gryphon... I made this just after we parted on 03F8.  You...
you were my hero then.  After what you did for me on the Night of
Despair, after seeing you in battle against Fenris, against Surtur,
you are my hero still."  She held out the Lens to him.  "The first
Lens I made, I made with love for you in my heart... and so you shall
be the First Lensman."
        He stood, stepped toward her, his throat thickening a little.
"I... I don't know what to say," he said.
        Kei leaned over in her chair and dug him in the ribs with an
elbow.  "You say 'I love you, too, and I'm deeply honored,' you big
idiot."
        Gryphon and Skuld both snickered.
        "I love you, too," he said, "and I'm deeply honored... "  He
reached out and touched his fingertips to the Lens, and just as it
suddenly flared into brilliant scarlet life, he added, "... you big
idiot."
        Skuld laughed so hard she almost dropped the Lens before he
had a good grip on it, but he got his hand around it, and there it
was, glowing and faintly warm in his grasp.  The light played out
between his fingers, drawing parallel slashes on the wall of the dim
conference room.  He turned it in his hand and looked into its
shifting, opalescent depths.  From any distance, it seemed to glow a
uniform color, but if examined closely, if gazed into, it betrayed an
awesome complexity of hue and shading.  After a few seconds, its
brilliant gleam settled into a lower, steady glow, as that of banked
coals.
        Gryphon gazed down at it for a moment longer, then looked up
at Skuld, who had regained control of herself.
        "It's beautiful," he said softly.
        Skuld smiled.  "I'm glad you like it.  Do you remember what it
can do?"
        "Low-level telepathic identification to sentient lifeforms who
can see it," he said after a moment's thought.  "Lens-to-Lens
telepathic communication... immune to eavesdropping?"
        "As far as I know," Skuld replied.  "Before we put it into
field use it'll have to be tested.  Right now there's only one, and it
isn't mine, so there's not much testing I could do."
        Gryphon nodded.  "It has the defense mechanism?"
        "Just like in the books," Skuld confirmed.  "While you're
touching it, it's harmless; if it's out of contact and dark, anyone
else who touches it gets hurt, probably killed.  Our version is a psi
shield too.  Any psionic tries to probe you without your consent, your
Lens will throw back at them double whatever they're trying to hit you
with."
        "I get the feeling that'll come in handy," said Kei.
        "Can you whip me up some sort of a bracelet for it?" he
wondered.
        "Better than that," Skuld replied.  "Turn your right arm
over."
        Gryphon did so, regarding again the odd arm-computer-like
vambrace that had sheathed his forearm since Skuld had made new power
armor for him during the battle.
        "What is this, anyway?" he wondered.  "What did you do to me
out there?"  Despite its wording, the question was asked calmly, as
though motivated by little more than idle curiosity.
        "I'm not sure," Skuld admitted, "but... I think the
enchantment I wove on your armor affected you as well - combined it
and you into a single entity.  I'll need to study its effects on you
at some length before I can say for certain, but... it wasn't what I
was aiming for."  She looked abashed, and a little sad.  "I'm sorry."
        "That's why it feels different when I call my armor, then?
Because it's coming... coming from -inside me- instead of from an
extra-D call-space?  Some sort of energy-state cyborg conversion?"
        "I... I think so, yes."
        Gryphon shrugged.  "Cheer up, don't look so sad.  Marty Rose
has been like that for 300 years and it hasn't hurt him any."  He
laughed.  "Hell!  I've had an Autobot commission since 2005, it's
about time I finally learned how to transform."
        Optimus Prime chuckled.  "Earthmen becoming Transformers,
Transformers becoming Earthmen... "  He shook his head in mock
wonderment, then transformed his core robot to its humanoid form.
        "What's the galaxy coming to?" asked Olaf Petersson with a
grin.
        Skuld smiled.  "Thank you," she said.  "I'll still want to
study what I've done, and see if there's any way I can improve the way
it works for you," she went on to Gryphon.  He nodded.  "In the
meantime, see that blank spot?"  Gryphon looked.  Sure enough, there
was a blank spot, a rectangular space near the hand end of the
vambrace where no readout, control or decorative contour marred the
smooth flatness of the gleaming black metal.  "Put your Lens there."
        Gryphon centered the Lens on the spot, then pressed it down
with his finger like a coin.  The vambrace shivered, his wrist itched
slightly, and then the Lens was part of it, firmly embedded in the
center of that one flat spot, still glowing.
        Skuld nodded.  "There's one proof for my theory right there,"
she said.  "It's only touching the metal, but your Lens is still
active.  The brace is part of you."
        Gryphon regarded the brace and the Lens for a moment more,
then dropped his arm to his side and shook his sleeve down over it.
"Time enough to study it later," he said.  "And to plan for our new
project, as well."  He yawned hugely.  "Right now all I want is a nap,
which proves I'm still human as well as anything can... "

        In one of the many parts of Metroplex which had been converted
into a hospital for the duration, the ship's company of the WDF
Delphinus had a large room all to themselves.  Except for the four
staff officers who had been on their feet upon the ship's arrival -
the captain, the chief engineer, the ship's surgeon and the operations
officer - no one had been told where they were.  Few apart from those
four were in any condition to care; they lay sleeping in their beds,
at peace and out of pain thanks to the wondrous medicines of Asgard.
        Of the hundred people who made up the crew of the Delphinus,
only four had escaped injury in the action that had led up to the
ship's mad rush into unspace: Commander Shannon, Jordan Cochran, the
ship's chief medical officer Aeka Shannon, and Fina Brightheart, her
assistant.  Ten were dead, the rest injured, with injury levels
ranging from severe to relatively minor, with the least serious being
chief engineer Fio Piccolo's sprained ankle from falling down the
after engine room companionway.
        The walking wounded of the ship's crew had beds as well, more
for rest than recuperation.  Most were sleeping.  A couple were
looking out the windows at the Golden City and the lights of Fortress
Maximus.  Aeka Shannon was asleep in a chair near the door, worn out
by her efforts to save her crewmates.  She had been remarkably
successful; despite the horrible mauling the Delphinus had suffered at
the hands of GENOM Battle Group Three, only ten of her crew had died.
        Part of this success had, admittedly, to be attributed to
Engineer Piccolo.  For a ship of her size, the Delphinus required a
small crew; many of her systems were automated, or run by the ship's
central computer system.  That system had been slagged toward the
end of the battle, one of the several bad turns of luck which had led
to the desperate race with the biggest explosion any of them had ever
seen.
        Still, within it was a twist of luck.  If Commander Shannon
had not had that curious feeling of foreboding when setting out on
what would be the Delphinus's last patrol of the twenty-third century,
if he had not left the ship's Autonomous Cybernetic Intelligence
module behind at Crescent Station, the death toll would have been
eleven.
        Of course, Shannon mused as he walked from bed to bed, nodding
and trying to smile at the conscious members of his crew, gazing
thoughtfully at those who slept, there was no guarantee that Luna had
survived the century-plus of their absence.  If Crescent Station
had gone undetected and unmolested for those hundred and three years,
if it had suffered no random asteroid impacts or other space
disasters, she should be all right.  If.
        Kei Morgan walked behind him, half guide and half support.
She wasn't touching him, but knowing she was there gave him an anchor
of sorts in the sudden disorientation that had become his evening, and
he was glad of it.  He wished he could do as Aeka had done, and go to
sleep.  Instead, he had to wake her.  It was time for that debriefing
Kei had promised.
        Silently, he touched her shoulder.  Aeka opened her eyes, then
rose with some effort, and the three of them left, leaving the room
and its occupants to their hushed rest.
        Two other people passed them as they left - Belldandy Morisato
and her husband.  Belldandy's limiter was back in place; though she
had expended almost all of her tremendous energies holding the line
for Skuld and her team to rebuild the World-Engine, the restoration of
that Engine had revitalized her a little, and though tired, she was no
longer overwhelmed with the need for sleep.  She -wanted- to, but she
didn't -have- to, and there were other things she wanted more.  With
Keiichi at her side, she had toured the medical facilities of
Metroplex, offering words of comfort for the injured and bereaved.
        As she and Keiichi walked among the Delphinus's crew, they
both noticed the woman kneeling on the floor at about the same time.
She was at the end of one of the rows, kneeling between two of the
beds, her head bowed and hands clasped before her in an attitude of
prayer.  Belldandy paused, her face thoughtful.  Something about the
woman seemed familiar, though from the other side of the room, in the
dim light, Belldandy couldn't make out much about her - just that she
was slender and blonde, dressed in the casual jumpsuit-type duty
uniform favored by the Delphinus's crew.  This particular jumpsuit had
once been white, but that had been before a major battle.
        Belldandy touched her husband's arm and changed course,
walking to the end of the row instead of following the wall.  As they
drew near, the praying woman noticed their presence and looked up;
then she and Belldandy drew back with simultaneous gasps.
        "Verthandi!" said Fina Brightheart in an amazed whisper.
        "Seraphina!" Belldandy replied in the same tone.
        "Then I was right," Fina said.  "This -is- Asgard.  It's
changed so much... I wasn't sure.  How did we come to be here?"
        Belldandy shook her head.  "I don't know," she replied.
"You'd have to ask Skuld."  Then she smiled and embraced Fina.  "It's
so good to see you again!  Several of your shipmates came to Valhalla
back then, and told us of the fight your ship had been in when they
had passed.  When you weren't heard from again, we mourned for you,
and wondered how such heroes could have missed Valhalla.  Skuld and
her sisters of the Valkyrior searched the cosmos for you and found
nothing.  Where -were- you?"
        It was Fina's turn to shake her head.  "I don't think... we
were anywhere," she replied.  "For us, the battle ended only hours
ago.  At one moment we were fleeing for our lives from the captain's
trap for the GENOM ships... at the next, we were crashing here."
        Belldandy considered this, then passed it over.  "Skuld will
know what happened," she said.  "But however it happened, I'm grateful
that it did."  She hugged Fina again, then turned to Keiichi.  "Fina,
this is my husband, Keiichi Morisato.  Fina worked in the Relief
Goddess Office," she explained to him.  "She's a goddess first class,
limited.  One of the best wish fulfillers our office ever had... "
Belldandy smiled nostalgically, taking Keiichi's hand in hers again.
"But like me, she retired to stay with her last assignment."
        Fina gazed with troubled eyes at the figure in the bed to her
right, sighing worriedly as Belldandy made the comparison.  The elder
goddess looked and saw what troubled her.
        The most badly hurt of the survivors was the ship's executive
officer and helsman, Vyse enDyne.  He had been at the wheel when the
Delphinus rammed an Imperial-class Star Destroyer's bridge tower,
which was what had wrecked her forward stabilizer fin, crushed the
housing over the Moonstone Cannon, and destroyed her figurehead.  An
old-fashioned, swashbuckling Arcadian sky sailor, Vyse had refused to
use the helmsman's support, leaving the folding seat stowed in its
deck compartment beneath his feet.  The enormous impact had flung him
from his post, smashing him against the spokes of the wheel.  The
impact with the wheel had been exacerbated by the fact that the helm
was spinning uncontrollably at the time, causing the handle ends of
the spokes to batter his head as if he'd thrust it into a ceiling fan
until the wheel finally turned him under like a gear and smashed him
to the deck beneath it.
        Now, in his bed, Vyse looked like he'd gone ten rounds with a
Hoffmanite heavyweight boxer, though he was really in somewhat better
shape.  His thick brown hair stuck out a bit comically from the turban
of bandages his head had been wrapped in, and one of his eyes was
covered by those same bandages.  His nose was taped, and the rest of
his face was essentially one great bruise.  The rest of him wouldn't
have looked much better had a sheet and blanket not been pulled up to
his neck; he had several broken ribs and a separated shoulder for his
trouble with the wheel.
        "I've been trying to heal him," Fina said softly, "but my
strength is gone.  I used all the energy I had just keeping him and
the others alive long enough for Aeka to help them... and even at
that... I failed some of them."  A tear ran down her cheek from one
brilliant green eye and splashed against the pale blue of Vyse's
blanket.
        Belldandy put a hand on her shoulder.  "You did everything you
could, Fina.  None of them has anything but gratitude for your efforts."
        Fina looked sharply at her, surprised, then smiled ruefully.
"That's right... you've spoken to them in Valhalla, of course," she
said.  Her smile was sad as she looked back at Vyse, more tears
rolling down her cheeks.  "I'm glad they don't think ill of me... but
they still died... and Vyse... Vyse may die, too."
        Belldandy shook her head firmly.  "There will be no more
deaths here," she said.  "The Allfather has decreed it.  The wounded
will survive the night, and with the dawn, the morning revival of
Valhalla will be extended to all the City and the Great Plain beyond.
We would be ungrateful hosts indeed if we let any more of our mortal
defenders die after something as remarkable as surviving the End of
Days."
        Fina's face broke into a broad and beautiful smile.  "Oh,
Belldandy," she whispered.  "That's wonderful.  The Allfather is so
kind... "
        "Grateful is more like it," Keiichi said with a grin.  "If not
for us mortals, he'd have lost this one."
        Fina gave him a giggle, then had a serious look for
Belldandy.  "The End of... this battle was the Ragnarok?"
        Belldandy nodded.
        "Then why - the Allfather survived?"
        "We all survived," said Belldandy.  "Skuld called on a friend
of ours from Midgard; he called on some friends of his; they called on
some friends of theirs; before long, we had an army."
        "Incredible," Fina breathed.  Then she gave a fond, indulgent
chuckle and brushed at some of Vyse's stray hair.  "Vyse will be upset
that he missed it," she said.  She turned to the other of the two beds
she'd been kneeling between; this one contained a redheaded girl who
looked about her own age, also battered and bandaged, though not so
badly off as Vyse.  "And so will Aika," Fina added, passing her hand
gently over the redhead's brow.
        "They'll both be all right," said Keiichi, nodding firmly.
"It's like Bell said - we haven't come this far to lose anybody else
now."
        Fina smiled bravely.  "Thank you, Mr. Morisato," she said.
        Keiichi blushed a little.  "Call me Keiichi," he said.
"Everybody does."
        The Morisatos chatted with Fina for a little longer, then
quietly left her to her vigil, praying over both of her battered
beloved.

        Rear Admiral Kristan O. Overstreet shuddered as his bare foot
hit the cold flagstones surrounding the hot bathtub he'd spent the
past hour soaking in.  His clothes, cleaned and mended to remove all
trace of the battering they'd received in the battle, hung neatly near
the door, deposited by a very polite young man who had seemed vaguely,
and disturbingly, familiar.
        The Redneck dressed hurriedly, very chilled out of the water
and still feeling as filthy as when he'd lowered himself into the
tub.  He'd have to ask some god or other about a bathtub for the soul;
he felt as if a thin layer of spiritual sludge coated him from head to
toe, a residue of his contribution to the effort to stop Surtur.
        His mind skittered away from that; something inside him did
not care to -deal- with the fact that he'd killed one deity and
contributed to the defeat of the embodiment of entropy, much less the
mind-jarring pollution associated with Surtur's unholy fire.  Instead,
as he slipped his shoes back on, he concentrated on keeping his
balance when his eyes tried to shut themselves and his hands trembled
with nervous energy.
        Mister Overstreet, he thought to yourself, you are most
thoroughly wired.
        The Redneck stepped out of the bathroom into a broad, long
corridor that resembled what happened when you put two mirrors at
opposite sides of a room, less his own reflection.  He'd already been
told two things about Valhalla: It was, by design, infinite; and it
was impossible to get lost.  Whereas Asgard's palaces and streets were
defined and permanent, Valhalla tended to subtly redefine itself
around the visitor or inhabitant, guiding them to where they wanted,
or needed, to be.
        Redneck -wanted- sleep, but he knew full well his mind was not
going to let him shut down for hours yet.  A nice, long, tiring
stroll, he thought, might get it to change its mind, or else sort
something out in the meantime.  So thinking, he picked a direction and
began walking down the corridor towards the vanishing point.
        For a few minutes, the plan worked well enough, and he passed
room after room of barracks and the occasional private sleeping
quarter; then, he began to pass the celebration halls, where the
clatter of cutlery on plates, laughter and conversation filled the
air.  The Redneck checked his watch; the formal 'dinnertime' of
Valhalla was only just past, and apparently everyone was settling in
to a major feed before the parties.
        Noting the contents of the next great hall, and the general
undress of many of its inhabitants, the Redneck 86ed that thought and
considered adjusting his watch; obviously the parties were going on,
food or no.
        In doing this, he took his attention completely off the
vanishing point of the corridor, and when he looked back he noticed,
not all that distant, an ending.  As he stepped forward, the corridor
hit a T intersection, with a single wide open door leading into a hall
full of raucous celebration.
        The emblem above the door almost made the Redneck's heart
stop.  It was the three-jag blocky lightning bolt which represented the
Freespacer nation.
        Cautiously, almost shyly, the Redneck stepped into the doorway
and looked around at a sea of grey uniforms.  A bandstand at the end of
the hall nearest the enormous fireplace had a sextet of performers
jamming to a tune Kris recognized from three years prior; in 2387 it'd
been a hit too big for even him to avoid.
        A lieutenant, still wearing his flight suit, looked up from
the table nearest the door, saw the Redneck, and jumped to his feet,
shouting, "ADMIRAL ON DECK!"  The party and music CEASED as the vast
hall, thousands of men, women, and 'other' stood to attention; a snare
drum rolled, and at the regulation end of the roll, five thousand arms
(or appendages) snapped up into salute.
        The Redneck froze, astonished at a compliment he'd so very,
very seldom recieved in the living world, and also ashamed as he saw
the faces surrounding him.  A few here and there - the Isarugi trio,
Reina Sabre Condorcet and the original James Joseph Condorcet, Al
'Bullseye' Zott - came from the old days, but the vast, vast majority
of the faces he saw surrounding him had died in the single greatest
defeat the Freespacers had ever suffered under his command.
        "As you were," he rasped, throat choked up as massive waves of
angst added to the swaying of his body.  "I... I... I don't deserve
it..."
        "Admiral," a smiling face strode forward; Admiral Ben Janacek,
commander of the CFMF Polaris' task force, which had gone down to the
very last man.  "There is not a single man here who blames you for
what happened there."  He chuckled as he added, "There were two Daleks
and a Horta who did, but we brought them around after a while."
        At the Redneck's glassy stare, he added nervously,
"Ah... that's a joke."
        "Ben..."  The Redneck brought his own salute up slowly,
touched his brow with reverence.  "I wasn't in any condition to tell
at the time, but I analyzed the sensor logs of the surviving ships.
You could have hit warp and escaped easily, you and your entire
command..."
        "Only if we'd sacrificed you, sir," Janacek replied, "you, and
Ms.  Curtiss, and Professor Washuu, and the Defiant... and then where
would we be now?"
        Where indeed?  The Redneck nodded, stepping slowly past row
after row of quiet, attentive pilots, ship's mates, techs, officers,
smugglers and pirates, guns for hire, warriors, friends, and comrades.
His pace picked up, his carriage straightened as he stepped to the
bandstand, imperiously gestured the musicians off the stage, and
commandeered the large keyboard.
        The tune was old, had been when he was young; to many of the
dead here, it had been ancient.  He'd learned it as part of his
fascination with history, in particular the First American Civil War.
Unlike most of his favorite songs of that era, it was a Union song, a
minstrel tune mourning the loss of the USS Cumberland to the CSS
Virginia at Hampton Roads.
        The words that came from his mouth, however, were a bit
different.

Oh, shipmates come gather and hear my sad ditty
Of the terrible battle that's happened of late

        The key hung just at the upper register of what Kris was
capable of singing without falsetto; a wistful minor key, his left
hand managing to coax the bass line of the piano into a strum, his
right hand clicking slow grace riffs between upbeats.

The eleventh of August brought the day of decision
For one hundred ships and their starfighters too 
But no band of men were more true to their mission
Than Janacek's command and the Polaris's crew

Oooo, ooooo, oooo...

        The three wordless notes built slowly louder, the Redneck's
touch on the keys heavier, lending the sounds a measure of meaning; a
sound of mourning and loss beyond human language.

On that terrible day at Wilderness Station
The enemy fleet did blot out the sun
And as the Tinker descended to her last destination 
Our comrades were outgunned a hundred to one

Then the order went out to break off and scatter, 
In rapid pursuit the GENOM fleet flew;
Save the lives of their comrades nothing else mattered 
To the brave astronauts of the Polaris's crew

Oooo, oooo, oooo...

        On the second set of mourning notes, several others joined in;
behind him, the Redneck heard a guitar and violin pick up the rhythm
line, the violinist embellishing the mournful chords with occasional
major dominants, adding a note of joy beyond sadness as the Redneck
resumed the song.

They rammed her and shot her; the vessel was burning
The dead and the dying in space they did strew

        His voice grew harder and louder, the gentle sounds turning to
challenge and courage, defying the listener to mourn for it.

But the men never faltered, and her guns kept on blazing,
"We'll die at our posts," said the Polaris's crew

She fell to the guns of the ISD Moray
But as her drives died, her banner still flew

        The Redneck slowed the piano down, bringing the guitarist and
fiddler with him, softening his voice again as he finished:

And today with the names remembered in glory
We cry out the roll call of the Polaris' crew.

        Quietly, sadly, but proudly, dozens of voices joined in on the
last three notes, ringing the hall with a sound beyond mourning; the
musical equivalent of a final salute for the fallen.

Oooo... ooooo... Oooooo.

        For a long moment, the Redneck stared down at his hands, at
the keys where he'd tried to express a lot more than the song had
words for.  Although the tears were close to his eyes, he felt lighter,
less burdened, than he'd been since that godawful day two years
before.
        He pushed himself up to his feet, shouting, "WHAT'S THE MATTER
WITH YOU? I THOUGHT THIS WAS A GODDAMN PARTY!"  He grabbed a mug of
mead from atop the piano, gulped down a swallow, and shouted, "TO
VICTORY!!" as he hurled the glass dead-center into the fireplace.
        Amidst the resulting cheers and breaking crockery, the Redneck
descended the stage, accepting the handshakes, hugs, and cheers of the
fallen Freespacer heroes, including a knot of about a hundred
Condorcets, male and female which he had to work through -
individually - to get back to the door. 
        At the door, he met Dr. Lawrence Mann and Washuu, who
apparently had been watching the whole thing.
        "Hooo... boy... " he muttered.
        Dr. Mann looked down for a moment, carefully keeping his toes
just outside the doorway.  "Admiral, I believe we need to have a talk."
        "Be gentle with him, Larry," Washuu smiled, eyes twinkling
with mischief.
        Ah.  With Dr. Mann, Kris might be nervous, but he'd had long
experience with Washuu's sense of humor.  "Washuu, I'm a little too
brain-fried for mind games, okay?  What have you planned?"
        "Planned?"  Washuu tried to look her most cute and innocent,
with the usual unconvincing saccharine results.  "We were just talking
shop, right Larry?"
        "As a matter of fact," R-Type muttered, sensing an
uncomfortable confrontation in progress, "we were.  Professor 
Hakubi - "
        "Washuu-chan!"
        "Ahem.  Washuu-chan was telling me about her experiences with
buma reYOW!"  Washuu's foot had come down with surprising force across
his toes at a critical point.
        "Whoops!  How clumsy of me!"  Clumsy, hell.  Kris looked
confused, being just muddled enough not to catch the reference to May
Azland.  Washuu sensed his mood much improved over the more recent
past, and did not want it spoiled by what her Guinea pig considered
one of his greatest failures...
        R-Type, however, was more alert than the Redneck, if not alert
enough.  "What was that for?  I was only going to say we were talking
about - " Larry drew his other foot away from Washuu's descending
heel.  " - May Azland."
        The Redneck, to his credit, did not get angry; he did indeed
lose a bit of good humor, though.  "Oh," he said, managing to compact
a couple of books' worth of meaning into the single syllable.
         "I'd like to see if I could help her," R-Type said.  "Is she
still operational?"
        "She's serving with the CFMF Special Marines Unit out on the
Cardassian border," the Redneck sighed.  "I'm sorry, Doctor, but I 
honestly think it would have been more merciful if I'd let her die."
        "Kris, you know you don't mean that."  Washuu left off the
cute routine, her voice soft and supporting.  The change broke
something in Kris' attitude, and a hint of anger entered his voice.
        "Well, I'm sorry!  I just... "  The Redneck licked his lips,
gathered his thoughts, and finally continued, "Sorry, but if you knew
just how vital, how... independent... May was, before that goddamn
Killer Doll program took over... and compare that to the emotionless
ROBOT she's been ever since... "  He sighed, the anger passed over,
fatigue restoring his neutral emotional state.  "May Azland is dead,
and I don't much like talking about what's left of her."
        The silence became a bit awkward as Kris waited for a
response, R-Type tried to find a response, and Washuu frowned slightly
watching the two.  R-Type finally collected his thoughts enough to
say, "I'd still like to see what I could do to help her. Her
personality engrams may be intact, from what Washuu-chan tells me."
        "Hm," Kris nodded, looking down, composing himself. When the
silence threatened to become overbearing agian, he added, "I'll lay
off the love notes from now on. Sorry."
        "Forget about it," Larry shrugged. 
        "Although the last one is -true,-" the Redneck added. "You
need to ream your Enigma Sector sales department a new one."
        "Quit while you're ahead, Admiral," R-Type smirked wryly. "My
first order of business, upon returning home, is to learn how the
greatest secret I have became common knowledge." He raised an eyebrow
at Washuu as he said this last.
         "It wasn't easy figuring it out," Washuu offered.  "You
covered your tracks pretty well, took me about two years to finally
get your name.  Think about it - one of the two people your daughter
trusts more than anyone except you and her mother is sitting right
there... and he never knew, either, until I mentioned it."
        "Yeah," Kris added.  "It was a shocker on a lotta levels."
        "I still should have protected her better," R-Type sighed.  "I
should have been a better father than I was."
     "So does my dad," the Redneck smiled.  (Where was he anyway?)
"So do most parents.  It comes with the job, I think."
        "I guess I should be thankful," Larry sighed again.  "For all
I knew I was about to be blackmailed.  It -would- have been a deadly
blackmail weapon if that knowledge had fallen into the wrong hands..."
        R-Type's grumbling was cut off by Kris and Washuu's laughter.
"Rianna obviously didn't tell you what she did with the last blackmailer 
she ran into," Kris managed to say after half a minute.  "He was last 
seen passing through the Anoat system speeding Rimward with eight crime 
lords in hot pursuit... "
        Larry tried to figure out how much of the laughter was mutual
fatigue and how much was silliness on his part.  "Okay, so it's not
the danger it used to be," he admitted.  With his own frown, he
added, "Speaking of her... what was that about her trust?"
        "Maybe we should discuss -this- when I'm conscious?" Kris
grumbled.
        "Kris, if you aren't going to tell him, I will," Washuu said
soberly.  "Larry, I've pledged not to consummate my love with Kris
until we're married.  Therefore, I've arranged for... well, to be
blunt, lovers, to watch him until the time comes.  But Kris' parochial
little mindset won't let him discuss it." She reached up on tiptoes 
and ruffled the Redneck's hair, giggling as Kris pulled away sheepishly.
        "Ah," Larry said, and shrugged.  "Well hey, whatever works for
you."
        "Um... " Kris started, still nervous, before Washuu cut in.
        "That's not the main reason he's nervous.  My principal
surrogate - and I assure you love is involved, otherwise I'd never
permit it - is Rianna."
        Larry's jaw went slack.
        "You could have let me pick a better time - " Kris growled,
wondering if there was a shotgun in his future now.
        "If I let you pick the right time, you'd never tell him."
        "Ahem.  If I can try to explain it a bit better than my
fiancee, whom I love deeply and therefore will not kill... today," he
said, glaring at Washuu.  "First and foremost, Rianna is a friend,
someone whom I've helped out and who has helped me out many times in
the past.  I've saved her life; she's saved mine and Washuu's.  Most
importantly, we've shared each other - not just sexually, that's a
minor thing.  We've shown each other our hearts, our minds, our
memories.  Rianna is a lot more than just a sex partner.  Never think
otherwise."
        There was a long pause.
        Finally, Larry did smile.  "I'd be a hypocrite if I thought
otherwise.  Yuri Daniels means just as much to me, pretty much as you
described it."  He paused, then patted at his pockets and started
looking around the corridor.  "Now where the hell did I put my
shotgun?"
        "When you find it, lemme know," the Redneck shrugged.  "Me, I
gotta walk off these post-battle jitters.  Later, y'all."  With that,
he swayed his way down the corridor; after about thirty steps, as
Larry and Washuu watched, his form merged with the vanishing point,
and then he was no longer there.
        "Very efficient place," Washuu smiled.  "I wonder if I can
adapt this to my lab?"
        "A little -too- efficient," R-Type sighed, checking his
watch.  "I wonder what Yuri and Zoner are doing?"

        Yuri didn't know what Zoner was doing either.  For her part,
she was sitting in one of Metroplex's conference rooms listening while
Eris, goddess of chaos, answered a difficult question.
        "Where," Yuri wanted to know, "did that... -green- thing come
from?  The one that possessed Zoner, turned him into Loki?"
        For her conversations with the Wedge Defenders, Eris had
reassumed the petite, spiky-blonde form they were more familiar with,
instead of the lithe auburn-haired shape she normally wore in Asgard
(where she was known as Peorth, the Trickster).  Yuri noticed that the
shift in appearance caused a shift in personality - the blonde Eris
was perkier than the brunette version, and not as sly.
        All that got filed on a back shelf in Yuri's head, though, as
she gave all her conscious attention to the goddess's answer.
        "Well," said Eris with a sigh, "we'll have to go back a ways
to get that one answered right... "

                       SATURDAY, JUNE 23, 2334
                 IPKISS, A CITY ON THE PLANET ARCUDI

        A lone, dark figure walks down a dirty, wet street.  It is
nighttime, and this is a bad neighborhood in which to be out after
dark.  The dark figure doesn't particularly care.  He doesn't, in
fact, particularly care about anything any more, or at least, that's
what he says.  The trouble is that he -does-, and this is what really
torments him... for in recent years, he has lost everything he cared
about, and come to the point where it seems that he can never find new
things about which to care.
        His name is MegaZone.  Once, he was the leader of the greatest
force for good the universe had ever known; now, he is a wandering
vigilante, a man of no permanent name and no memorable face, doing all
sorts of jobs for all sorts of payments.  At the moment he calls
himself Stanley Carrey, and he has come to the city of Ipkiss, on the
planet Arcudi, in the Eldritch Sector, to hunt and kill a major
supplier of a particularly nasty street drug by the name of Killer
Frost.  He has a particular interest in Frost, since he is the one who
developed it, albeit for a completely different purpose than that for
which it is being used here.
        His problem is simple: He doesn't want to care.  About the
people of Ipkiss and the violence which is tearing apart their lives;
about the money which the city's government is giving him for doing
the job; about the good he will be doing in ridding the galaxy of the
man who brought Killer Frost to the Inner Sectors; about himself.  He
-does- care; but he doesn't want to.
        Now, as he walks down this street looking to get himself hurt,
he is entirely unaware that three of the most powerful beings in
creation are watching him, interested, concerned, and more than a
little worried.
        The weirdest adventure of his long and variegated life is
about to begin.
                                   
        Invisible to the man who now called himself Stanley Carrey, a
trio of women stood at a streetcorner three blocks distant, watching
his furtive approach.  One, a black-clad woman with alabaster skin and
ebony hair, tsked sadly as she watched.
        "Look at him," said Teleute to her colleagues.  "He's all
hollow inside... he's forgotten what it is he has to live for.  I
don't know... maybe it's too late for him.  Maybe... maybe it's time I
took him home... "
        "Nonsense," said another, more Asian-appearing woman, her
violet hair and disconcertingly pink eyes as at odds with each other
as with her diaphanous, insubstantial grey robes.  "I'll grant you
he's carrying quite a load of emotional baggage, but I hardly think
that -oblivion- is the answer to it.  I think he just needs - "
        "We -know- what you think he needs, Kaguya," interrupted the
third, ash-blonde, casually dressed and somewhat punk-looking.  "You
have a tendency to apply the same solution to -everything-, after
all."
        "(If the only tool you have is a hammer... )" said Teleute
under her breath, a small grin edging onto her face.
        "That may be," Kaguya replied, "but even -you- have to admit
that I have a high success rate, Eris."
        "Yeah, I do admit that," Eris replied.  "Just trust me on this
one, okay?  He's been a good follower for a long time.  I want to help
him out a little... give him a nudge back toward normalcy."
        "YOU want to help somebody be NORMAL?!" Teleute burst out.
"THAT'LL be the day."
        "Normal is a subjective thing," replied Eris, and stepped out
of the interstitial plane into reality.
        "Impulsive, isn't she?" asked Kaguya as she and Teleute
watched Eris go.
        Without looking at her friend, Teleute replied sardonically,
"Pot.  Kettle.  Black, Kaguya."
        "Hmph.  Frigid bitch."
        "Because you're my friend, I'm going to forget you said that."
        MegaZone was somewhat startled by the appearance of the young
woman by the lamp-post up ahead; he hadn't seen her come out of the
alley, and there was very little he missed.  It was almost as if she
had stepped right out of the night into the circle of light cast by
the lamp, but that was a bit on the ridiculous side, now wasn't it?
His nerves, he decided, must be getting the best of him.  Four
inconclusive and largely useless encounters with random low-echelon
members of the Killer Frost gang will do that to a person.
        It was when she started walking toward him that he began to
get... well, nervous wasn't the right word.  Concerned, perhaps.  He
sized her up, trying to do so without looking as if he were looking
intently at her, a skill he'd cultivated over the last few decades of
trying to be unobtrusive.  She didn't appear to be armed, not that
-that- necessarily meant anything... but nothing in her bearing or
gait indicated hostility, and that was a much better indicator as far
as he was concerned.  He kept his guard up, as always, but took no
action.
        As she drew nearer, he could see that she was pretty, with a
sprightly, open face, shaggy ash-blonde hair and blue-grey eyes.  She
was dressed casually, in a half-laced pair of mosh boots, tattered
jeans, a white t-shirt and denim jacket.  Around her neck, an
eight-arrowed Chaos pendant glittered.  She looked familiar, but Zoner
couldn't place her.
        "Hi," she said brightly, falling into step next to him.
        "Hi," he replied, not so much a word as an articulate grunt.
        "Say, don't I know you?" she asked.
        "Doubt it.  That kind of face."
        "Aren't we talkative."
        "Busy."
        "Well, listen, I'd love to stay and play 20 Monosyllables with
you, but I've got a pretty busy schedule.  I just came by to give you
this, anwyay."  She reached into her coat, and he nearly reacted with
an instinctive attack until she pulled out something which quite
clearly wasn't a weapon.  She had handed it to him, and he had taken
it, before he really knew what was going on, and then he had stopped
walking and she was moving on.
        "Use it when you feel the time is right," she said.  "It'll
bring some much-needed chaos back into your life.  Take care, Zoner."
        He started as if stung, but she had disappeared.  Confused
nearly beyond reckoning, he looked down at the object he had been
given.  It was a mask of a stylized human face, apparently made of
some kind of green wood, with a thin metal bar riveted down along the
bridge of the nose.  As he regarded it, he had the uncanny impression
that it was looking back at him.
        Unwilling to just toss it away - who -was- that?! - he stuck
it in his coat and kept going.  After all, he had a schedule to keep
to as well.

        Halfway to his appointed destination, MegaZone was jolted out
of his reverie - he was already considering the tactics he would use
against the distribution house he was approaching - by a shrill
scream.  His sophisticated audio system pinpointed it as having come
from somewhere to his east - that would be left.  He turned to look,
switching his optics to thermograph, and saw a familiar scenario
unfolding just beyond the opposite wall: two silhouettes, one with the
cool outline of a gun in its hand, menacing a third, slender, curved
in the right spots... Salusian, too, if he wasn't mistaken.
        "Goddamn it!" he hissed to no one.  "I don't have time for
this.  I don't care about this.  I don't... ... ... Fuck it!"
        He started to run toward the wall, then paused for a moment.
If he were seen here, he could be identified later on - a connection
could be made by the local police, who were in the Frost gang's
pocket, with the distribution house... 
        ... the mask.
        He took it out of his coat, and again it seemed to be looking
at him, almost curiously.
        "Here goes nothing," MegaZone remarked, and raised it to his
face.
        It was the least accurate thing he'd said in a long time.

        As it happened, the two gentlemen who were menacing the young
Salusian woman on the other side of the brick wall were members, very
minor ones, of the Frost gang.  They were on their way back to HQ -
the very house Zoner was planning to hit - when they saw this
unfortunate girl, a student from Salusia Tech visiting a friend who
was attending Arcudi University, lost in the wrong part of town at the
wrong time of day.  Being enterprising lads, they decided to improvise
some entertainment.
        As they moved in for that entertainment, they paused for a
moment as the wind carried them a sound over even her shrill
screaming: the sound of a grown man, crying out in pain, surprise, or
both.
        "What was that, Leroy?" one of them inquired.
        "How the fuck should I know?" replied Leroy.
        To their right, the brick wall exploded, and a weird,
gravelly, boisterous voice bellowed: 

"K I C K   O U T   T H E   J A M S ,   M O T H E R F U C K E R S ! !"

        "What in the HELL is that?!" wondered Leroy as he and his
partner surveyed the creature that was approaching them.
        It was humanoid in  shape,  and male;  it stood  perhaps seven
feet tall, with shoulders so broad they looked like they'd been padded
with a plank.  Part of that might have been the razor-pointed shoulder
pads in  the  coat of the  fluorescent  green suit the  apparition was
wearing, complete  with  matching-style fright-orange  trench coat and
fedora and a  necktie covered  with  little purple skulls.   The muddy
gleam  from the nearby streetlamp  gleamed on  its spit-polished brown
and white saddle shoes -  and its toothy grin, for  that was the  most
noticeable feature of its face.
        Its face was a leering green mockery of a human face, with
popping red eyes and a huge, grinning mouthful of teeth that were each
a good inch square.  It had no hair or noticeable ears, and a tiny
nose which was dwarfed by the huge eyes and teeth that surrounded it.
A smoldering Havana cigar hung from one side of its enormous leering
mouth.  The whole thing was, in fact, so terrifying that Leroy and his
friend forgot to scream.
        "NoW bOYs," it said, "CoRReCt mE if I'M wRoNG, buT it sEeMS To
mE ThAT yoU wEre jUst aBoUT To dO sOmethInG unPleaSaNT to tHIs yoUng
lAdy."
        "Aba - aba - aba - aba" replied Leroy.
        "WhAt tHe hEll do THEY hAve To do WiTH thIs?!" asked the
green-faced monster.  Then it shrugged.  "Ah WeLL, nO MaTteR."
Reaching into its coat, it pulled out a nine-foot steel crowbar which
had made no particular bulge before.  "hOld tHat poSe, bOyS, 'n UncLe
StAn's goNnA dO soMeThiNG UnpLeASanT To YOU."
        It was then that Leroy had the presence of mind to actually
raise his gun, draw a bead, and shoot.  The green-faced thing jerked a
few times as Leroy pumped a few rounds of 10mm Caseless through him,
staining his garish outfit with crimson splotches of blood.  Then he
grinned even wider.
        "ThAt wAsN'T vERy NIcE," he said reproachfully.  Leroy shifted
his point of aim upward and fired again; the green thing caught the
slug neatly in his enormous teeth, then shook his head.  As he did,
the cigar fell to the ground, and his eyes slanted down comically to
look at it, then back up at Leroy, brow furrowing.
        "'N NAT wZ Jst PlN iNexCuz'bL," the green thing muttered
around the bullet in his teeth, then wound up and spat it out.
        Leroy's partner jerked back a step, then crumpled to the
ground, already dead as his hand rose to clutch at the wound in his
chest.
        "LooK at thAt," said the green thing reproachfully.  "NoW yOU
weNt And kIlLeD yoUr PaL.  YoU'Re ReaLLy bAttInG a thoUSaNd TodAy."
        "S-stay away from me, you freak!!" Leroy shrilled.
        The green thing looked inestimably hurt.  "'FrEak'?" he said,
putting a splayed hand to his bloody chest.  "MoI?"  He turned to the
Salusian girl.  "DoEsn'T sEEm fAir tO me, hOw 'BoUT yOu?  I mEan,
HeRe'S thIs crEEp, oUt HerE trYinG to dRAg You oFf 'n Do WHO KNOWS
WHAT tO, 'n hE thInkS hE gEts Off cAllInG ME a fREak 'coZ I goT bIg
TeeTH.  SheEsh!  ThE nErVe'A soMe peoPlE."  He threw away the crowbar
and then took Leroy's gun away from him, pointing it straight at him
with a humongous grin.
        "So hOw MaNy shOts'S thIs chEaP LitTle poPpeR hoLd, aNywAY?"
he asked conversationally.  "Ah, No MaTTeR.  I'Ll fInd OuT."  Leroy
squeezed his eyes shut and gritted his teeth, making a high whimpering
noise as the green creature pulled the trigger.
        With a BOING sound, a little flag sprang out of the barrel and
unfolded.  It read, "BANG."
        Leroy, surprised at not being dead, opened his eyes, saw, and
then turned and ran.
        "HeY, YoU FoRgoT yoUr - Oh, neVeR MiND."  The green thing
raised the flagged gun and aimed it, then pulled the trigger again,
and with a pleasant whizzing sound, the flag shot from the barrel,
turned over once, and plunged several inches into the back of Leroy's
head.  He immediately face-faulted, skidding to a halt to lie
face-down on the dirty pavement with a little white flag reading
"BANG." gaily protruding from the back of his skull.
        "No NEeD to ThAnk mE," said the green thing grandiosely,
spinning the gun around his finger a few times and then eating it.
"I'M oNly doIng whAt anY gooD citIZeN woUld Do - iF, Of couRsE, hE
HAppEneD tO be A KiND-hEarTeD, RoManTic, heRoiC dO-goOdeR lIke
mySelF."
        The girl screamed and ran like hell.
        "HmPh," said the green thing, looking nonplussed.  Then he
shrugged, turned, and, eyes bugging several inches out of his head,
checked an enormous Mickey Mouse watch which sprang out of his sleeve
when he pushed it back, then vanished inside when he let it fall
again.
        "OmIGoSh!" cried the thing that had been MegaZone, slapping
his forehead.  "i'M lAte foR mY aPpoIntMenT wIth DoCtOR FroSt!!"
        Then he zoomed away like a little orange whirlwind.
        Behind him, Eris nearly died laughing, while Teleute looked at
Kaguya and spun a fingertip next to her temple.

        "Those were the days," said Eris nostalgically.  "By the end
of his time on Arcudi, he gave the mask back, of course.  Being
responsible for that much power scared him, he said, and I think being
that close to the source of Chaos frightened him too.  He wasn't ready
for it.  I kept it around for a rainy day.  I hate to throw things
out.  So... "  She shrugged.  "Not my best idea.  I never expected
Loki to get hold of it and use it to possess an avatar."
        Yuri looked the goddess of discord straight in the eye and
said, "He's not going to get over this, is he."  Despite the wording,
it was not a question.
        "No," Eris admitted, "I don't think he is, not the way you
mean.  He won't be able to just go back to being what he was
before... but he might be able to use it to become something better."
        "Better how?" Yuri asked, skeptical, but interested.
        "Your universe is a complex and dangerous place, and it's
showing a trend toward becoming a lot -more- complex and dangerous in
the immediate future," said Eris.  "I know because I can feel the
patterns that exist in chaos.  So can Zoner, only he doesn't
understand what they mean yet.  He thinks he's losing his sanity when
he's really gaining another sense.  He needs help learning how to
control and manage that sense, or he really -will- go mad... but if he
-does- learn to control it, it can serve him, and your world.  It's a
powerful tool, and dangerous.  Not one mortal man in a billion, a
trillion, could handle it."
        "But you think Zoner can."
        "I know he can, if he's taught."
        Yuri got up and paced away from Eris, thoughtful.  She stopped
by the window, turned, and said, "Do you want something from me?  Is
that why you're telling me all this?"
        Eris nodded.  "I want you to understand."
        "You?  The goddess of discord?"
        "Discord doesn't necessarily imply confusion," Eris replied.
"There is a clarity in chaos if you have the right combination of
brilliance and madness to walk in balance with it.  MegaZone has
that."
        "So why ask me?  Do you want my permission to teach him or
something?  I'm not his mother, for God's sake."
        "No, but he's special to you, and you to him.  He's only
recently been restored to you.  I don't want to take him away again so
soon without making you understand why it has to be."
        "I don't own him," Yuri replied.
        "Yuri, please," said Eris, rising.  "I don't want to be your
enemy."
        "You're not," said Yuri.  "I'm not angry at you.  I'm angry
at... well, nothing, I suppose.  I'm angry at fate, or destiny, or
whatever."  She sat down again, shaking her head.  "I wish my life
were simpler.  I wish we could just be happy."
        "You can," Eris said.  "You will.  But happiness has to be
fought for, Yuri, and sacrificed for.  I'm asking you to sacrifice the
short term for the long, to be patient a little while more.  You
resonate with his pattern in ways I can't even begin to describe to
you, but I can't teach him with you nearby -because- of that
resonance."
        Yuri looked at the newly blonde goddess for a long time, then
nodded, slowly.  "I understand," she said.
        "Good."  Eris smiled. "Thank you for taking the time to."
        Yuri left the conference room and went down the hall, then
took a lift to the ground level and went outside.  With all the lights
of Metroplex, Fortress Maximus, and the parked starships on, the
Golden City radiant, and the fireworks still popping off at random,
the plain - so recently the site of so much carnage - had a curiously
festive air.  Even the wreck of the Delphinus didn't look out of place
as crews of dwarves set up work lights around it.  Yuri supposed she
should go say hello to Rob Shannon and his crew, but she didn't really
feel like old home week right now.
        She almost walked into Zoner before she realized he was there.
        "Oh!" she said, taking a hopping half-step back; she and he
looekd at each other for a moment in awkward silence.
        "Uh... hi," she finally said.
        He looked a bit mournful as he said, "Eris talked to you,
didn't she?"
        Yuri nodded.  "Uh-huh."
        Zoner shook his head.  "I asked her to leave it to me, but she
thought she could handle it better... "
        "It's OK," Yuri said, "she did a good enough job.  I think I
understand as well as I ever can."
        "I'll come back, you know," he said as he enfolded her in his
arms.  "It's not like last time."
        "I know," she replied, her voice catching.  "But I won't miss
you any less."
        "Hey!" came the cheery voice of Larry Mann from somewhere
behind Zoner.  "Isn't this something?  What a night!  Hell of a lot
better than last night, for sure."  About then, R-Type got close
enough to realize in the half-light that Zoner wasn't just standing
there alone looking at the city, and his voice trailed off in
embarrassment.  "Oop.  Er, sorry, I didn't realize.  I'll, uh, go and
see how - "
        "No," said Zoner, releasing Yuri and turning to R-Type,
"that's OK, Larry, stick around.  There's something I want to talk to
you about anyway."
        "Oh?"  R-Type's glance flicked from Zoner's tired, unshaven
mug to Yuri's red-rimmed eyes.  "Uh... OK.  What?"
        "I have to go away for a while," said Zoner.  "I don't know
how long, but probably at least a year."
        "Go away?  But you just got back!"
        "I know," said Zoner, "and it isn't my first choice, but it's
something I -need- to do.  I just finished telling Yuri it isn't like
last time.  I'm not going away to destroy myself.  I'm going away to
-save- myself, to make myself stronger."  Zoner chuckled a little,
laughing at himself.  "Look, Skuld is right - the galaxy as we know it
is in trouble, Larry.  I've got an idea for a way to safeguard it, and
when I get back, I'm going to need your support to make it happen, but
before I can start I have to get a few things sorted out, and that's
why I'm leaving.  Yuri can tell you the rest when there's more time."
        "You're right," said R-Type, "that does sound crazy... but
from you, I believe it."  He straightened himself up a little.  "You
can count on me for whatever support you need when you're ready to
start... uh, whatever it is you're starting."
        Zoner's smile was warmer this time.  "Good.  In the meantime,
though, I need you to do something -really- important.  I need you to
watch over the most important piece of my world while I'm away."
        R-Type blinked at him.  "You mean - "
        MegaZone nodded and took a step away from Yuri, then held both
her hands in his and looked down into her eyes.
        "Yuri," he said to her gravely, "I don't know what will happen
to either of us in the next few years.  I don't know what we'll be to
each other by the time we see each other again.  I can't see the
future... "  He chuckled at himself again.  "... yet.  I only know
that I love you, and I trust you, and I support your decisions.  All
of them.  And I always will."  He gazed at her intently and said once
more, firmly, "It's not like last time."
        Yuri Daniels smiled through her tears and hugged the man she'd
loved for four hundred years as tight as she could.
        "Me too," she whispered in his ear.
        They held the embrace for several seconds, then separated;
Zoner held her shoulders in his hands for a moment, kissed her,
grinned at R-Type, and then turned and walked away, melting into the
darkness.
        Gone.
        R-Type and Yuri stood alone and looked at each other for a few
moments.
        Then she dashed at her tears, took his arm, and said, "Come
on, let's go see what's happening in the Great Hall."
        "Or who," said Larry, and they laughed as they crunched
through the snow toward the City of the Gods.

        The palace - in fact, the entire Golden City, and Metroplex
too - was ringing with celebration, good cheer, and wanton debauchery,
but somehow, after the emotional wringer of the past few days, Gryphon
just didn't feel up to debauching.
        Instead he was shut up in one of the celestial palace's
bedchambers, lying in the middle of a bed the size of an apartment he
had once occupied, too knackered to sleep.  The events of the last
three days tumbled through his head in a loop, too fast for him to
sort out, as they had happened too fast for him to think.  Everyone
who had come here from Midgard would be forever changed by their
experiences defending the City of the Gods.
        He raised his right forearm in the gloom and studied the dully
gleaming metal vambrace that sheathed it, and the softly glowing Lens
set into the surface of the metal.  With concentration, he could make
the vambrace go away, leaving just the Lens as though grafted to the
skin of his arm; with a little more, he could make the Lens disappear
as well.  By default, though, both were there, would be there some
good approximation of forever.  Skuld's desperate enchantment had
taken him and his armor apart at a level few mortals even understood
and put them back together as a single creature.  He wasn't worried
for his humanity.  Martin Rose had undergone a similar change years
before and it hadn't damaged his, after all.
        With a sigh he dropped his arm and looked up at the room's
vaulted ceiling.  In his day, he'd slept in some opulent places - this
room was certainly at or near the top of that list - and some absolute
hellholes - that dumpster on Warren's Planet came to mind.  It was a
rapidly developing philosophy of his that the venue mattered little in
comparison to the company.
        Speaking of which... 
        The room's door opened, briefly allowing the noise from
outside to spill in; then it closed with a clunk, and that noise was
cut back to a near-subliminal hum again.  Moments later, his face
creased into a smile as a familiar form slipped into the bed next to
him, nestling by his side with an ease and comfort born of long
familiarity.
        "Hi," said Kei softly, her breath warm against his neck.
        "Hi," he replied.  "I thought you'd be celebrating."
        "Who says I'm not?" she asked, slipping an arm round and
hugging him.  "I had this funny feeling that something was missing,
though, so I came looking for it."
        "Better keep looking, then... nothing here but me."
        "You sound depressed."
        "I am, a little," he admitted.
        "Why?"
        He shrugged.  "Ah, I dunno," he replied.  "Just the letdown, I
guess.  I've been riding one shockwave after another for the last 48
hours.  You know how I always slump a little when I get a chance to
relax after something like that."
        Kei nodded.  "Yeah, I know.  But what the hell, you can't miss
-this- party.  C'mon out and say hello to some folks, have something
to eat.  You'll feel better once you're out in the light."  She got up
and tugged gently at his arm.  "C'mon."  She grinned at him, her teeth
a white blur in the dimness of the room, and added conspiratorially,
"We can come back later if you get bored."
        He grinned back, swung his feet out, and climbed to his feet.
        "OK, sure," he said.  "Let's go mingle."

        Jordan Cochran stood in the snow, watching as the dwarves
looked over the wreckage of the ship she had called home for
centuries.  Commander Shannon stood off to the side, his hands in the
pockets of his foul-weather parka, looking disconsolate.  Poor Fio
Piccolo, the ship's chief engineer, had been beside herself with grief
when she got a good look at what had become of her treasured ship.
        Fio looked all right now, though.  She was standing next to
the squat and powerful shape of the Axalon's chief engineer, Rhinox,
pointing to various structural details of the ship.  Jordan couldn't
hear Fio talking from where she stood, but she could see clouds of
mist and knew that the engineer must be explaining to the Maximal some
finer point of the horrible pounding the vessel had taken.
        The raptor officer shifted from foot to foot, uncomfortable in
the cold but too worried for her ship and shipmates to leave.  She
clicked the talon of her forefinger against that of her thumb, a
long-established nervous habit which had long since ceased to annoy
her shipmates.  She had a habit of tapping her fighting claws against
the deck, too, but out here that didn't accomplish anything other than
to make her toes colder.
        "You shouldn't worry," a voice said from behind her - a harsh
voice, she thought, but not without compassion.  Her head whipped
around on her long, flexible neck.  It was another Maximal.  She
wasn't very familiar with them; she knew that they were small cousins
of the Autobots, mostly around human-sized, who could assume the
shapes of animals rather than vehicles or equipment, and that there
weren't very many of them in the universe, but she'd never really met
one before.  This one was big for a Maximal, big and powerfully
built.  The lines of his cobalt-blue faceplate were aquiline, as harsh
as his voice, but there was something noble about his golden helmet
and the way he carried himself.  His barrel chest and powerful arms
were scaly, covered in a hide that was not unlike Jordan's own.
        "Rhinox is one of the galaxy's finest engineers," the Maximal
continued.  He smiled at her, a smile full of needle-sharp, jagged
teeth, but the way it changed the shape of his glowing red optics was
kind and even a little mirthful.  "There are many other great
craftsmen and engineers gathered here as well.  You picked a most
fortunate place to crash.  Your ship will be well before you know it."
        Jordan gazed at him, almost unprecedently lacking anything to
say.  After a few more moments gazing at the Delphinus, the Maximal
twitched, sparking, and made an irritated growling sound.  "My damage
is not healing fast enough this way," he grumbled.  "Beast mode."
        With that he transformed, seeming almost to collapse into
himself, as metal subsided beneath more scaly hide and his shape
became more slender and quick.  Jordan caught her breath as his
transformation finished and his long, powerful tail swept the snowy
ground restlessly.  He was a velociraptor too!  And quite a handsome
one, at that...
        "I am being rude," the Maximal observed, more conversational
than apologetic.  "My name is Dinobot."
        "Uh... I'm Jordan," she said, and once she found her tongue
again, the floodgates were open.  "Senior Lieutenant Jordan Cochran
OEK Wedge Defense Force Deep Space Patrol graduate with honors Wedge
Defense Force Academy 2105 Advanced Starship Tactical School 2107
chief operations officer of the WDF Delphinus I am required by
galactic law to inform you that I am a genetically engineered
lifeform."
        Dinobot blinked his silvery eyes at her, slowly, not at all
fazed by her torrent of biographical data.
        "Indeed," he said.  "So, in a way, am I.  And have you eaten,
Senior Lieutenant Jordan Cochran, OEK?"
        "Um... "  She grinned.  "Not since 2288."
        Dinobot smiled.  "Then you must be quite hungry.  Come.
Though cold, the night teems with life.  Let us hunt."
        Without waiting for her response, Dinobot wheeled and dashed
toward the ridgeline to the east.
        Jordan stared after him for a moment, her mind whirling.
Awfully forward, wasn't he?  She wasn't that kind of girl!  And
anyway, he wasn't even a real raptor, he was some kind of robot!
        Still, he was handsome.
        And she was hungry.
        And even under the sounds of the celebration she could hear
the soft night sounds of suitable prey.
        Smiling, she ran after him.

        Fio, Rhinox, two dwarves, and Leonardo da Vinci didn't notice
her leave.  They were engaged in a discussion which ranged from a
spirited discourse on repairs and improvements to the fallen Delphinus
to one-word-from-bloodshed arguments about the feasibility or
desirability of such improvements when Thor strolled over to the
group.
        The God of Thunder, a couple of bandages still patching his
shoulder and arms, nodded amiably to the group of engineers.  "Good
evening," he rumbled quietly, his voice silencing the shouting-match
between Fio and Leonardo.   "What's the verdict on the ship?"
        "Nothing serious," one of the dwarves muttered.  "Only some
minor fracturing of the keel and cosmetic damage."
        "NOTHING SERIOUS??"  Fio looked ready to burst a blood vessel,
preferably someone else's.
        "You should see some of the ships we get back from raids to
Jotunheim," the dwarf smirked in reply.  "Most of your ship's
structure is still sound, and what isn't can be healed.  The only
question to hand is how much of your primitive equipment needs
replacing.  How many millenia has it been since your last refit?"
        "Patience, brother," the other dwarf sighed, "she's only
mortal, after all."
        Fio probably would have blistered the ears of all present
after the ensuing half-second of total silence, had the quiet metallic
thumping sound not finally made itself known to the group.
        It came from the lower rear of the Delphinus, in an area badly
crumpled by the ship's final landing.  Fio turned her head, took a few
steps, then shouted, "It's coming from the hangar bay!" and broke into
a dead run along the length of the ship.  She ducked beneath the
wreckage of the wing before coming to a spot of armor near the very
back of the ship.  Beyond the intact armor, the soft thumping could be
clearly heard.  WHONG.  WHONG.  WHONG.
        "There's nothing in this part of the ship which should make
this sound," Fio gasped.  "Brittany's in there!"
        Rhinox, for all his bulk and apparent slowness, had managed to
be the first one to join Fio.  "Brittany?"
        "Fighter pilot," Fio said hurriedly.  "The ship has - had - a
half-squadron of experimental heavy fighters, crewed by the skipper's
old fighter squadronmates.  The squadron scattered during the battle
to draw forces away from our home base's location, but Brittany's
fighter took a hit and couldn't make hyperspace; she was attempting a
crash-landing in the hangar when we made the misfold."
        "Then let's go in and get her," Thor rumbled, not even winded
by the brisk run; the dwarves and da Vinci were bent over their knees
gasping from the sprint.
        "Can't do it," Fio sighed.  "The hangar doors were demolished
by the crash-landing, and the bay was cut off from the rest of the
ship by battle damage.  It'll take hours to remove the debris, and days
to cut through the hull without damaging anything inside."
        "BAH!" Thor drew Mjollnir from his belt and began twirling it
on its leather strap.  "You want IN there?"  With a roar he flung his
arm forward, and with a crash of thunder blended with a deafening
metallic WHAM!, the duralloy armor parted like paper, shredding open
in a wide tear tall enough to admit the thunder god without stooping.
        "THERE!" Thor shouted triumphantly, stepping forward.  "You
GOT iiii... hello."  Thor's focus centered on the armed PPG pistol
aimed at his nose from a distance of perhaps five centimeters.  The
figure holding it, easily Thor's height even discounting the armor and
the elevation of the deck on which she stood, stared rock steady from
large green cat-eyes, cheetah-spotted hair running into a ponytail
behind the ruins of her helmet.  A thin cut marred her forehead,
matching the battered and cracked armor very well.  The shape of her
legs and bulk of muscle marked her as Kilrathi; the custom cut of her
armor and the slender torso marked her as a female mammal beyond all
doubt.
        "DO.  YOU.  SURRENDER?"  The voice, a melodious voice which in
better times would be prone to giggles and sweetness, had a hard,
no-nonsense edge now.  Brittany Shannon's hand didn't even twitch, her
eyes boring their way into Thor's, defiant and angry.
        Thor let Mjollnir's strap slide down around his wrist, raising
empty hands into the air.  "For such a brave and beautiful spirit as
you, any time."  He smiled warmly.
        "Good," Brittany said, nodding, slowly lowering her weapon.
"Right.  Fine.  S'long we got that... straiight..."  Brittany's eyes
rolled up, her armored form went limp, and she fell unconscious into
Thor's arms.
        Thor bent down, felt for Brittany's pulse.  Finding one, he
nodded with satisfaction, lifted her as lightly as a more mundane
kitten, and walked away towards one of the aid stations with a spring
in his step and an indestructible smile on his face.
        Fio stared after them for several moments, until she heard the
dwarves commenting about the inferior grade of armor mortals
used.  With higher-priority tasks at hand, she quite forgot about Thor
and Brittany for the moment.  The skipper would take care of it.  Brit
was his adopted daughter, after all.

        "... o/~I love you so..."
        Applause, cheering and laughter erupted from the crowd as Aya
Nakajima bowed to the crowd of Asgardian defenders who had gathered in
this particular room of the great Hall of Valhalla to eat pig, drink
mead, and rock out.  Her backup band, consisting of a GENOM gunner's
mate, two dead Japanese Imperial fighter pilots, and Freija
Lightwalker, left the instruments reluctantly, making room for new
occupants to take the stage.
        As a Royal Army drummer boy from the American Revolution took
the stage and demonstrated some licks not found in His Majesty's
Manual of Arms, Aya mingled with the more savory group of the
celebrants in the hall, graciously accepting compliments from various
well-wishers.  Near the back of the hall, the other five senior
officers of the Charlemagne waited patiently for their number one
party girl to rejoin them.
        Suddenly, Aya came face-to-ribbons with a tall man in an
immaculate white uniform.  "Pardon me," she muttered, looking up - into
the red eyes and blue face of Grand Admiral Thrawn himself.
        "Quite all right, Captain," Thrawn replied.  He smiled, a
genuinely warm smile which softened his otherwise hard, aquiline face.
        Aya found herself, for once in her life, uncertain as to what
to do or say next.  "Ah, well, ah," she muttered awkwardly, "I, ah,
wasn't expecting to see you here..."
        "And why not?" Thrawn's smile grew slightly.  "Music is, of
course, an art to be studied and appreciated like any other.  And I
quite appreciated your performance, Captain Nakajima.  I found your
selection of material to be both fascinatingly incongruous and
hauntingly appropriate.  Perhaps I shall have the opportunity to study
it more in the future."
        As Aya struggled to find some response to this compliment (if
a compliment, in fact, it was), a feminine voice behind her added,
"Allow me to add my compliments to the Grand Admiral's.  I found your
performance technically superb while also artistically gifted."  Aya
turned around to see Captain Saavik looking cooly at her.  "Have you
considered a career in singing?"
        Again Aya was left with little or nothing to say, and as she
struggled with suddenly nonfunctional vocal cords, Thrawn nodded to
Saavik.  "Ah, good evening, Captain.  My congratulations upon your
promotion."  He smiled quietly and said, "I fully expect both of you to
prosper, assuming you live."
        "T-thank you," Aya finally managed to say.  With a further
effort, she managed, "Ah, y'know, in a way it's a shame we never,
y'know, fought, or anything... "
        "Oh, I wouldn't say that," Thrawn smiled, this time with a
trace of impish amusement.  "We've met in combat before, Captain... or
should I say 'SakePrincess?'"
        Aya blinked, flushing red.  "You're... Leonardo?"
        Thrawn nodded.  "At last count, I believe I have killed you in
thirty-seven consecutive Deathmatches, Captain.  You're remarkably easy
to lure into a frontal attack."
        Aya felt about three inches tall.
        Before Saavik could make a comment about the relationships
between Cyberdoom and starship combat, a new figure took the stage. 
However, scorning the guitars, piano, horns and other instruments,
this performer had brought her own instrument, and she brought it to
play with gusto, cranking out chords and notes in a quick-beat,
swinging rhythm.  After a moment, the accordionist began singing as
well, in a drawling, blurred language, not quite French or English,
which left the audience shrugging to each other.
        Thrawn blinked, recognizing the singer but not the music.
"General Tangril... what is she singing?"
        Saavik and Aya both shrugged helplessly.
        "It's a love song," a new voice said over the music.  Rear
Admiral Overstreet walked up to the little group, looking extremely
tired but far too buzzed to sleep.  "The language is Acadienne, or
Cajun, and it hails from a small little patch of Earth known as
southern Louisiana."
        As the foursome watched, Rayna Tangril cranked out the music
and sang loud and strong, leading a large number of the listeners to
clap along with the beat as her fingers flew over the accordion
keys.  If one looked carefully, one might notice the symptoms of
overindulgence in alcohol, but the sheer energy the GENOM fighter
commander put into the music seemed to belie her drunken state.
        "Excuse me, sirs and ma'ams," another GENOM pilot, a tall,
young-looking human male with dark hair and slate-grey eyes, said,
"but when Rayna hauls out the accordion, it's time to take the bottle
away from her and put her to bed."
        Kris smiled.  "Wait a moment, Colonel - ?"
        "Stele," the GENOM pilot said, nodding.  "Maarek Stele."
        "Well, Colonel Stele," Kris smiled, "I haven't heard good
zydeco in over twenty years, so if you'll excuse me..."  The drummer
boy, clearly out of his element, had retreated from the stage, leaving
Rayna alone; Kris jumped up and moved over to the keyboard, filling in
behind Rayna's lead with a basic N'awlins blues rhythm line.  A few
minutes later, a couple of Jeb Stuart's Confederate cavalrymen and a
Navy frogman had joined in, and for the next thirty minutes or so, the
hall rang with music, ending with a hearty rendition (and two encores)
of "Jambalaya".
        Through it all, the three Midgard ship commanders uttered only
the following exchange.
        THRAWN: Your commander is a unique individual.
        AYA: So's your flight leader.
        SAAVIK: Most illogical.

        Gryphon had entered the Great Hall during the zydeco concert,
and was now sitting quietly on the edge of the stage, smiling to
himself.  A black Stratocaster with a microamp plug in its output jack
was slung over his shoulder, but he wasn't playing it, just holding
it, patiently waiting his turn and enjoying the music.  As Redneck,
Rayna Tangril, and their backup quit the stage, Redneck turned to the
Wedge Defender and bowed him onto it with a flourishing gesture.
        Grinning, Gryphon took the invitation.  Kei installed herself
behind the drum kit.  Eiko Rose - another redhead and another
guitarist - joined them, and with them too was Rhinox, who in earlier
times had been a sometime bassist for the WDF's old band, Card Number
One.
        Finally Derek Bacon and Martin Rose mounted to either sides of
the stage; they carried no instruments, but took up positions at
opposite stage-front corners, slipped on identical wraparound
sunglasses with military precision, and folded their arms imposingly.
Wedge Defenders current and former all over the hall roared with
laughter at the old inside joke.  All of them were impressed - to
their knowledge, there had never been a band with -two- Shades players
before.
        Gryphon smiled at his impromptu audience, and as he did they
somehow caught the different energy coming from him.  He wasn't
flushed and exuberant as Tangril and Redneck had been, but he wasn't
sad either - there was just a kind of wistfulness about him that
struck them all as different.  Whatever it was, it quieted the Great
Hall as he stepped up to the microphone.
        "I'm not going to stay up here long," he promised, to cheerful
jeers from Fritz Koopman and his Dragon squadron in the back.  "I just
wanted to run off a favorite lick of mine in honor of... of all those
who couldn't be with us here tonight."  He smiled again.  "Call it my
tribute to absent friends."
        "One, two, three," said Kei quietly in the background, and
she, Eiko and Rhinox struck up a simple backing beat as Gryphon walked
the Strat through a bright and bluesy intro.

You get a shiver in the dark, it's a-rainin' in the park but meantime
South of the river you stop and you hold everything
A band is blowin' Dixie double fourtime
You feel all right when you hear the music ring

Well now you step inside but you don't see too many faces
Comin' in outta the rain to hear the jazz go down
Too much competition from other places
Ah but the horns, they blow that sound
Way on down south
Way on down south, London town

Now check out Guitar George, he knows all the chords
But he's strictly rhythm now, he doesn't wanna make it cry or sing
Oh yes that old guitar is all he can afford
When he gets up under the lights to play his thing

And Harry doesn't mind if he doesn't make the scene
He's got a daytime job he's doin' all right
But he can play the honky tonk like anything
Savin' it up for Friday night
With the Sultans
With the Sultans of Swing

        There was a little riff Gryphon played at the end of every
verse, in addition to the musical commas he was tacking onto every
line, and after this verse, he put a little more energy into it than
he had been.  That increased energy was matched by his band, and it
showed in the way he sang and played through the next verse:

There's a crowd of young boys they're foolin' around in the corner
Drunk and dressed in their baggies and their platform soles
Yeah they don't give a damn about any trumpet-playin' band
That ain't what they call rock an' roll
And the Sultans
Yeah the Sultans play Creole

        This time Gryphon turned the little verse-ending riff into a
short solo, and as he did, Eiko changed her pattern too.  She never
broke out of the rhythm role, but she modified her rhythm line to
match the variations Gryphon was putting into the main theme, until he
walked it back around to where it belonged again - this time with a
-lot- more energy - and sang:

Then the man he steps right up to the microphone
He says at last just as the time bell rings
"Good night, now it's time to go home"
But he makes it fast, there's one more thing:
"We are the Sultans
We are the Sultans of Swing"

        Now the riff broke out into a full-on solo, and as Gryphon
played, Eiko got more and more creative with her rhythm-line
embellishments until finally she and he were swapping lead.  Rhinox
started getting fancier with his basslines too, and before long he was
into the solo act as well.  Kei kept kicking them all along, providing
the common thread that held everything the three axe-wielders did
together as a single song, and soon the stocky brown-haired man, the
two redheads, and the burly green-and-brown robot were rolling along
with a manic blues-rock energy that the rather subdued beginning to
their song had completely lacked.
        Elves, dwarves, gods, pilots, soldiers, tankers, Vikings,
Autobots, bugs, and assorted others shouted, and stamped, and banged
tankards on tables.  The only members of the band not totally immersed
in what they were doing now were the two shadesmen, who, truth be
told, weren't quite doing their jobs any more.  They were supposed to
stand there and scowl, but both of them were having too much fun to
keep from grinning beneath their sleek black shades.
        To the musicians it seemed to go on forever, until suddenly
they came to the place where their instincts told them, "End it."  And
end it they did, coalescing suddenly and perfectly into the original
riff, repeating it once, and ending with a single, unified note almost
percussive in its impact and finality.  For an instant afterward,
there was silence.
        Gryphon grinned and eased the strap of his guitar over his
head as the people in the Hall took care of that silence problem.
"Thank you, my friends," he said to his hastily recruited band as he
wiped away sweat from his forehead; "I think that's the best I've ever
heard that song done."
        "Any time," said Rhinox.  He took off the borrowed bass and
put it back in its stand, then regarded it with a satisfied smile.
"Forgot how much I like that," he mused.  "Maybe I ought to buy one of
those things again."  He looked around the still-cheering hall.
"Welp... think I'm gonna go mingle."
        Gryphon held up a fist; he and the Maximal engineer touched
their knuckles together like the Wonder Twins, and then Rhinox
lumbered down off the stage and into the crowd.
        Eiko put her guitar down as well, hugged the stuffing out of
Gryphon, then did the same to Kei.  While she was busy with that,
Hammer tiptoed over to the unattended microphone and eyed it, then
Eiko, his manner so exaggeratedly furtive as to be cartoon-like.
Finally, with a furious burst of energy, he whipped off his shades,
snatched the mic, and belted out:
        " o/~ Doot-doo-doot-doot-DOOT-doot-DOOT-doot-DOO-dooo!
Day-ee-TOE-naaaaaaAAGHK!"
        This last was occasioned by Eiko having grabbed hold of
Martin's cape and hauled him away from the mic by it.  She waved to
Gryphon and Kei with one hand as she slung her husband's cape over her
shoulder like a sack and dragged him away.  He waved too, with the
hand whose fingers weren't clutching his collar in an attempt to keep
his airway open.
        When Gryphon recovered from the fit of helpless laughter
-that- produced in him, he recovered the mic from where it had fallen
on the floor.  "Thanks," Gryphon said to the cheering multitude.
"That's all I wanted to say, except - wherever we all go from here, I
hope we never forget what we've done here today - because we all did
one hell of a job!"
        The Great Hall erupted in cheers again, and to them, a
glowing Gryphon left the stage much happier-looking than he had
arrived, with his first and greatest love by his side.
        Not that she stayed there all that long, right this moment;
kissing him and telling him she'd see him later, Kei peeled off almost
immediately to go join the arm-wrestling competition the Valkyrie were
starting up at one of the round tables.  Gryphon made the rounds of
the buffet table.  The kitchens of Valhalla had turned out a
surprisingly varied feed for this occasion, much more than the
expected "burnt animal and beer" offering - not that Gryphon would
have minded that, by any means.
        Certainly there was burnt animal and beer to be found in
abundance, but there were also delicacies from a thousand worlds,
including a dozen different kinds of energon, with extra supplies laid
on at the last minute for the robotic cavalry from Cybertron.  Another
table groaned under the weight of an offering brought by the Bugrom
for their War God and his friends and fellow deities, ambrosial lumps
of royal jelly and other surprisingly yummy treats from the Hiveworld.
        At the end of that table, Gryphon found Fritz Koopman and his
Dragon squadron.  Fritz greeted him enthusiastically, then introduced
his pilots, from the still-half-frozen-but-feeling-no-pain Kerliss to
one who "I think you're already familiar with... "
        Deedlit Satori Mandeville grinned and saluted as Gryphon gaped
in amazement.  Gryphon was stunned; he didn't know how to take this at
all.  Most of his deceased colleagues he'd been happy to run into
again; they'd been gone long enough - nearly four hundred years in
Fritz's case - for him to have become... well, not -comfortable- with
their absence, but at least accustomed to it.  Deedlit, though, had
died in the Second Battle of Zeta Cygni, only a little more than a
year ago.
        What was more, Gryphon held himself personally responsible for
her death.  His ship had been trying to rescue her, along with the
rest of the crew of ReRob Mandeville's starship Phoenix, but despite
the best efforts of Concordia's finest transporter operator, she'd
been lost.  Now here she was grinning at him.
        She saw the look of stricken discomfort on his face and her
grin immediately disappeared, replaced by a solicitous look.  "Are you
all right?" she asked.  "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have had Fritz spring
me on you that way.  I should have realized it'd come as a shock.  I
haven't been here - well, gone, from your perspective - for very
long."  She put a hand on his arm and led him to a quieter spot by a
wall.  "I really am sorry," she said.
        He nodded, trying to find his voice.  "It's... it's all
right.  It's just that I wasn't expecting... "  Gryphon shook his head
and tried again.  "I'm the one who should be sorry.  I let you down,
Deed.  I tried to save you all, but I wasn't fast enough."
        The Salusian pilot put her hands on her hips and frowned at
him.  "You did no such thing," she insisted.  "I felt it, you know.
Before Forseti brought me here, I felt someone trying to beam me out
of there, but I knew something was wrong.  Somehow even before I saw
Forseti I knew I'd never make it."  She sighed.  "It was a subpulse
nuke, wasn't it?" she asked.
        Gryphon nodded.  "The Vanguard was probably trying to speed up
your core breach by dumping as much subspace interference as they
could into the area.  We tried, but... "  He spread his hands, hung
his head.  "We failed.  My ship.  -I- failed."
        Deedlit took hold of his hands where he'd spread them and
said, "You tried your best, Ben.  If you failed, that means my time
was up, that's all.  How did Rob take it?"
        "Hard," Gryphon answered, "but I think he's mending.  He did a
job for me in the mini-Kilrathi War we had a few months back, and I
think whatever he went through out there went a long way toward
screwing his head back on straight."  He chuckled wryly.  "He's going
to be ticked that he turned down Terror's offer to stay with the
Eight-Balls a while when he finds out we've been -here-."
        Deedlit smiled, a little sadly.  "It'd just open his wounds
again, this soon.  Can you take him a letter for me, though?  I think
that will be all right."
        He nodded.  "Sure.  I can do that."

        MegaZone wandered the grounds outside, the sounds of the
revelries filtering out into the night to reach him.  He was
increasingly agitated, his head jerking this way and that, almost as
if he were being constantly startled.  His hands worked at the air,
tracing intricate patterns one moment, seeming to grasp for some
invisible sprite the next.  As he paced fitfully about, tracing a
course of random precision, a small figure wandered out of the
darkness to join him.
        "Zoner?"  Eris asked concernedly.  "Are you OK?"
        "YesNoMU."  Zoner replied tersely, in distraction but not
rudeness.  "Busy."
        Looking worried, Eris stepped in front of him, blocking his
path and embracing him.  "Hush now.  Shhhh.  Calm."  She whispered to
him, quietly.  As she did, his movements slowed, becoming smoother.
She reached up and tenderly caressed his cheek, then softly ran her
fingers through his hair.  "That's it, calm, quiet, focused."
        MegaZone seemed to draw into himself slightly, relaxing, his
breathing slowing and his eyes focusing on her.  "Am I mad?  These
voices...  I hear them...  I -see- them...  Patterns in everything,
but none of them make sense.  I feel like...  like a radio tuned to
every channel at the same time..."
        Eris hugged him tightly, then released him and led him by the
hand to a bench in an island of light.  "Here, let's sit for a while.
It's a lovely night."  They sat in silence, embracing one another for
some time, before she again spoke.  "You know that you can never again
be who you were?"
        "Yes," he answered resignedly.
        "What you've been through, it... changed you.  Changed you in
a fundamental way.  Like a man born blind, suddenly given sight.
There was a, for want of a better word, residue left behind from Loki,
and the mask, that is now part of you.  You've been given a great
gift, but it can be a great curse if you can't control it.  You asked
me if you were mad, the answer is no.  You are not mad."  She paused
and pulled away to look into his eyes, all the while stroking the nape
of his neck soothingly.  "But I won't lie to you, you will -go- mad if
you don't learn to control your new gift.  What you were feeling,
that's the chaos that is swirling all around us.  Random chance.
Statistical odds.  Luck.  Whatever you call it.  Those patterns have
always been there, but you've been blind to them.  Now you've been
given sight, but your mind doesn't know what to do with the new
information.  You're trying to make sense of it all in a frame of
reference based on your experiences, when they never prepared you for
this."
        Zoner looked back into her eyes, and she saw fear in his.
"It's been getting worse since it started.  Earlier, at the meeting, I
suddenly knew what I had to do.  Or, well, what had to be done...
kind of...  I don't know, it's like a shadow in my mind.  The noise
is too much to handle.  It took all I had to keep it together when I
was talking with Yuri and Larry.  Everything they said, every
movement... patterns.  I had to leave them before I broke down.  I
can't control it."  He stopped, seemed to realize something, and
smiled.  "Thank you."
        "For what?"
        "For doing whatever you're doing.  I know that I'm not
blocking it all out."
        She smiled warmly.  "It's the least I could do.  I couldn't
have my best Avatar wandering off chasing patterns.  I'm kind of
sorry that this happened to you, but at the same time, I'm not.  If
you know what I mean."
        Zoner chuckled.  "Yeah, I think I understand.  Sucks that it
happened, but now I just have to deal with it, right?"
        "No, -we- have to deal with it."  She kissed him softly.  "You
can't face this alone.  And I'm not going to let you.  I'm going to be
here for you, like it or not, until the end."
        He broke eye contact, looking into the darkness.  "Why?"
        "Why what?"
        "Why are you helping me after what I did to you?  The things I
did... I... I couldn't stop... I hurt you..."  Tears begin to streak
his cheeks.  "I don't deserve..."
        Eris laid a finger across his lips.  "Hush," she commanded.
"I don't ever want to hear that again.  -You- didn't hurt me, Loki
did.  He used you, used your body.  The things he did to me," she
shuddered involuntarily at the memory, "that wasn't your fault.  We
both have to deal with what happened.  That's something else we'll
both have to help each other with.  You're not the only one who has to
come to terms with what Loki did.  Which reminds me, Brunnhilde will
be coming with us, at least for a little while."
        "Brunnhilde?"  Guilt washed across his face again.  "Why?"
        "Because she thinks you'll... no... we'll both need someone
else to turn to as we deal with what happened.  What lies ahead will
be hard for both of us.  Also, she thinks you need to work out some of
your pain physically, so she'll be your sparring partner, I suppose.
You are still a warrior, along with everything else.  More than your
mind has been changed by the experience.  You need to heal both you
mind, and your body."
        With a hint of fear in his voice, he asked, "Am I going to be
OK?"
        "Yes, I think you will be.  I won't sugar-coat anything; I
think this is going to be very hard.  But I think you'll be fine.  We
just need to get away from all this...," she gestured airily about,
"noise.  It'll be easier for you to learn to turn down the volume a
bit without quite so much to handle.  In time you should be able to
tune in on just the pattern you need.  And, with some more work, to
create your own patterns."
        "Control the chaos?"
        "No, not control.  Influence.  Nudge.  Encourage.  Even I
don't truly control it."  She paused to let that sink in.  "Just don't
tell anyone I told you that," she added with a wink.
        They returned to their comfortable silence, and watched the
light snow falling.  At some point another figure emerged from the
darkness and entered their island of light.
        "I'm not disturbing you two lovebirds, am I?" the new visitor
asked with a grin.
        "Not at all, Tel."  Eris smiled at her friend.  "Join us."
        Teleute took up residence on the bench on the other side of
Zoner, who seemed to be thinking about something very seriously.
Several minutes passed before he broke the silence.  "Tel, I'm sorry."
        "Hmm?"  She peered at him, perplexed.
        "I'm sorry.  Sorry for all of the death."  Both of the women
began to protest, but he cut them off.  "Yes, I know, it was Loki and
not me, yada yada.  I'm still sorry.  I watched myself doing it,
causing it all, even if it wasn't really me.  I felt helpless, and
even though I *know* I didn't do it, I -feel- like I did.  Maybe, in
time, I'll be able to accept what I was a part of, however
unwillingly.  But right now," he turned to look into Tel's dark eyes,
"right now, I'm sorry."
        Tel looked back into his eyes for a moment, then hugged him
and kissed him softly on the cheek.  "Thank you."
        Turning her attention to Eris, she continued, "You take good
care of my man, you hear?"
        "-Your- man?  Honey, he's mine," Eris replied, laughing.
        Zoner was grinning, glancing from one woman to the other.
        Teleute seemed to consider something for a moment.  "We could
share," she suggested, helpfully.
        "Every other week, with special accomodation for holidays?"
        "Sounds good."
        "What about Yuri?"
        "Oh yeah, I guess we'll have to make it tri-weekly."
        "Um, don't I get a say in this?" Zoner interjected.
        "No!" the two women retorted in stereo, sending all three of
them into a fit of the giggles.  Which is just what they all needed.

        "Eh, if ya don't mind my askin', Rhinox... whaddaya doin'?"
        Rhinox turned to look over his shoulder at his confused
shipmate and smiled.  "Setting up a fluid dynamics experiment," he
replied.
        It certainly was an odd-looking construct, so odd that
Rattrap, no slouch himself in matters mechanical, was not able to
identify its function from looking at it.  Rhinox had carried its
parts in from the Axalon in a big fiberplast packing crate, which was
now collapsed to a flat panel and leaning against the wall next to the
thing.  The spot where the engineer was constructing the device was a
small, raised dais at the end of the hall, opposite the stage; it
looked like it might be a throne platform or something on normal days.
        The thing, whatever it was, was nearly the size of Rhinox, and
constituted primarily of a large glass tank atop a metal pedestal.
Several hoses led from the top of this tank to elaborate brass
nozzles, all hanging on hooks projecting from the metal ring around
the tank's base.  Rhinox had just finished fitting it together, and
was now pouring water into the tank from a large jug he'd appropriated
from the buffet table.
        "Oh, sure," Rattrap replied.  He gestured to the Great Hall
behind them and added sarcastically, "You may not have noticed, but
there's a -party- goin' on here... ?"
        Rhinox nodded.  "Yup.  That's why I'm setting it -up- here.
You'll see in a minute.  In the meantime, how about grabbing some more
of those cushions?"  Rhinox pointed to a pile of pillows and cushions
jumbled in the corner of the Hall.
        "Sure, sure," Rattrap said resignedly as he moved to obey.
"Don't tell me what's goin' on, just send me for cushions."

        Gryphon was working on a tankard of Newcastle Brown and
talking shop with a Kilrathi fighter pilot whom he had shot down in
the Seventh War when he felt a hand on his arm and lips on his cheek.
Expecting to see Kei, he turned -
        - And damn near dropped the tankard on Rekhosh Thrakhoth'ra's
foot.  He was so startled, he jumped back nearly a full yard, jostling
a Mongol who gave an annoyed yawp until he realized who had bumped
him.
        "You remembered our song," said Priss Asagiri with a wry
grin.  "That's so sweet."
        Gryphon stared at her for a second, then gave a bark of
laughter.  "Hah!  I should have -known- you'd be here!"
        "After the way I checked out?  Hell, yeah," Priss replied.
"Still drinking that snooty English brew, I see."
        "Newcastle isn't snooty," he replied.  "I suppose you're still
drinking that piss-yellow swill, whatever it's called."
        "Nah, they don't have American beer here," said Priss
disgustedly.  "I have to make do with Heineken, that's about as cheap
as beer gets in Valhalla."  She snorted with mock derision.  "And
they call this place heaven."
        They wandered out onto one of the balconies overlooking the
great plain.  The Autobots were celebrating in their own unique way:
someone had plowed a half-mile oval in the wide Asgard Highroad clear
of snow, and a group of them were racing while the rest, and a good
number of other beings, stood on the sidelines and cheered.
        "So," said Gryphon.  He would have asked how she'd been,
except that given the obvious answer, he didn't really want to go
there.  He hesitated, unsure what to ask instead.
        "Dead," she replied, and laughed, slapping him on the back.
"Yourself?"
        "Not yet," he replied.  "Got married, though."
        "Yeah, so I heard," Priss replied.  "That's about the same,
when you get right down to it."
        They laughed for a bit more, though the joke wasn't really
funny.  Then, sobering a little, she went on, "Y'know, I don't have
many regrets... "
        "Well, you're way ahead of -me-," he replied.
        "... But I do wish we'd maybe had a little more time," she
said.  "Most of the time I didn't like to admit it, but... I think we
really could've been something, if we'd had the chance."  Priss
sighed, then seemed to make herself brighten as she went breezily on,
"So who's the lucky one?  The girl who kept trying to kill you?"
        Gryphon grinned.  "The same.  She's stubborn, but in a hundred
years I can talk anybody into anything."
        "Yeah, I figure.  Is she here?  I'd... kinda like to meet
her."
        "Yeah, she's around someplace.  Last I saw her she was
arm-wrestling with one of the Valkyrie."
        "Oh, a -tough- one."
        "The toughest.  But she's got a tender side, too."  He
smiled.  "It's a type I've been known to fall for."
        "I don't know -what- you're talking about," Priss replied
airily.  Then she leaned over the balcony railing and bellowed, "COME
ON, BLUESTREAK!  WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?  TAKE THE AIR OFF THAT
LITTLE BASTARD'S SPOILER AND PUT HIM INTO THE WALL ALREADY!!"
        Gryphon laughed and leaned against the balcony rail next to
her.  "I've got 20 credits says Hot Rod takes 'em both."
        "You're on," Priss replied.  They watched the race in amused
silence for a few minutes; then she reached slowly across the space
between them and touched the grip of the longer sword jutting up
behind his right shoulder.  "You're still wearing them," she said
quietly.
        "Of course," he replied.  "With you... here... I'm the head of
the Asagiri Katsujinkenryuu."
        "No students?"
        "No.  Well, one, but... "  He sighed, suddenly weighed upon by
heavy memories.  "It was years ago, and I was a fool.  I don't know
what became of her."
        "You do have the worst luck with women," Priss observed,
shaking her head.
        "I did then," he admitted.  "And I was stupid."
        "Well... live and learn, I guess," she said, cracking a wry
grin at her weak joke.
        "I guess," he replied.  Then he heaved another deep sigh and
straightened up.  "I hate occasions like this."
        "What, these endless parties in Valhalla where you end up
talking on balconies with dead girlfriends while the Autobots race in
the courtyard?  Yeah, I could see where that kind of thing could wear
a guy down after a while."
        Gryphon laughed, his maudlin mood broken by the absurdity of
her statement.  "Something like that."
        "Thanks for the skull, by the way.  It really adds something
to the cave."
        "Yeah, I thought you'd like that.  You know, it's funny.
We've had the occasional conversation when I've visited the cave, and
yet it never occurred to me that I'd run into you here.  Shows you how
much attention -I've- been paying."
        "I wasn't sure whether I should talk to you or not," she
admitted.  "Figured it might make you gloomy.  I know how you can get
into... -moods-.  I don't want to get you down."
        "Nah, I'm OK now," he replied.  "I'm freezing, though."  They
went back inside, into the noise and bustle, and made their way
through the crowds to the table where the Valkyrie arm-wrestling
competition was being held.  Alita Ironheart - out of uniform, Gally -
was there, staying quietly out of the competition but cheering for her
fellows, as Kei trounced Gudrun Truemace two out of three.  Kei
bounced up from the table at their approach, kissed Gryphon, then
turned to Priss and grinned.
        "I bet I know who -you- are," she said.  Whatever she'd had to
drink since Gryphon had left her - and judging by the number of
overturned tankards, drained bottles, and flaccid wineskins scattered
around the table, there'd been no shortage of drink at the Valkyrie
table - hadn't blurred her speech, but had brightened her eyes to a
noticeable degree.  Lately, Kei found she preferred being a little bit
drunk to a whole lot; it was more fun, and hurt less in the morning.
        Now she grabbed a slightly startled Priss Asagiri up in an
enthusiastic hug, released her, and said, "I owe you -big- time,
sister.  Let's go someplace and talk for a few minutes."
        Priss blinked, having expected an entirely different
reception; then she grinned and said, "Sure, I'd like that.  What're
you drinking?"
        "Whatever stands still long enough," Kei replied, and off they
went, leaving Gryphon to his own devices.
        He stood for several seconds, nonplussed, got a kiss and a
card with a phone number on it from Gally as she passed him on her way
to the roast whatever-that-was, and wandered off, musing that it was
an interesting thing, his life.
        When he reached the end of the room opposite the throne, he
had to stop and just stare for a few moments.  There, installed in the
elevated niche at room's end, sitting Buddha-like amid a fortress of
cushions, tasselled pillows, and various blankets, was Rhinox.  The
Maximal engineer sat grandly, knees apart and soles of feet together,
with his elbows on his splayed knees, looking like a vizier holding
court, and standing behind him was a gigantic... -bong-, for Christ's
sake!
        Gryphon stared for four seconds and then burst out laughing.
Towering behind Rhinox was the biggest damned hookah Gryphon had ever
seen in his life.  It looked like an old-fashioned gasoline pump with
multiple hoses coming from the top of the measuring tank instead of
the single one from the bottom.  As he watched, a big milky bubble of
smoke burbled up from the bottom of the tank and vanished out the top
as Rhinox took a deep draw on the nozzle he held, his optics dimming
in appreciation.
        One of the cushions stirred, revealing itself to be Rattrap in
beast mode; he had another one of the nozzles in a forepaw and the
beginnings of a pretty good glaze in his black eyes.
        "'Ey, y'know, Big Green... this's some pretty good shit," he
announced.
        "Yup," Rhinox agreed serenely.  He blew out the smoke in a
series of well-crafted rings, then noticed Gryphon laughing at the
arrangement, indicated the unused nozzles, and asked politely, "Hey,
Gryph.  Want some?"
        Gryphon wasn't much of a recreational drug user, but on
special occasions he had been known to partake.  After all, his Detian
physiology could clean him out again at a moment's notice if a crisis
arose.  And if -this- wasn't a special occasion... 
        "Sure," he said, plopping down on a cushion between the two
Maximals, selecting a nozzle, and taking a deep hit.
        Wow.
        "Rattrap is right," he remarked.  "This -is- some pretty good
shit."
        "Yup," Rhinox agreed.  "My best yet, I think."
        "You grow it yourself?"
        "Yup.  In one of the hydroponics tanks on the Axalon."
        "Does Optimus know?"
        "Probably."  Rhinox shrugged.  "He knows I don't let my
hobbies interfere with my job.  I keep it for special occasions."
        "Yeah, 'slong as ya keep it away from Cheetor," Rattrap noted.
"Kid got inta -dis- stuff, he'd never come down.  He's got a delicate
system, y'know."
        "If Cheetor figures out a way to hack the security I've got on
Tank 24," Rhinox replied equably, "he's graduated."
        Gryphon took another puff, then ran the nozzle through the
disinfectant field thoughtfully provided on the side of the pedestal
before hanging it back on its hook.  "I better quit for now," he said,
clapping Rhinox on the shoulder and standing up.  "I've got more
people to talk to, so I'd better hang onto my language skills."
        Rhinox smiled.  "Suit yourself," he replied.  "C'mon back if
you want.  We'll be here a while."

        For a guy who didn't feel much like celebrating, Gryphon
seemed to do an awful lot of it that night.  He spent the next hour or
so, after getting mildly stoned with Rhinox, at a table with the
ambulatory members of the Delphinus's crew.  A crowded, gabbling table
in the Great Hall of Asgard, with tankards of mead passing this way
and that and various roasted things being handed around, might not be
the most formal of settings in which to conduct a debriefing, but
Gryphon figured it was good enough to get Shannon's story from him.
        It was a fairly short story, anyway, and Gryphon had half of
the particulars already from Kei, who had tried to bring Shannon up to
speed on current events earlier.  Shannon and his Deep Space Patrol
crew had been ambushed by a GENOM strike force at about the same time
as the corporation's final assault on the SDF-17.  Outnumbered,
outgunned, and unaware of all that was going on elsewhere in the
galaxy, the Delphinus's crew didn't understand why no one heard their
calls for help.  They fought a running battle with the GENOM force for
several hours, taking a terrible pounding, before Shannon finally
decided on one last desperate gamble.
        That gamble had involved a matter destabilizer, a large
asteroid, a truly enormous explosion, and a poorly plotted spacefold
operation, the last of which had apparently punched the ship clear out
of reality and into the unspace of the World-Engine's void buffer,
where they had remained until Skuld cleared the mathematical garbage
that was them out of the buffer while reinitializing the Engine.
        Gryphon, for his part, tried to fill in the gaps Kei's very
hurried debriefing had left and bring the Deep Space Patrol members up
to speed on what had happened in the rest of the universe during their
century of absence.  That was a long story, so he only hit the high
points; it was -still- a long story after that.  Eventually he'd given
them enough information that they could be at least partly comfortable
with their situation, at which point they all agreed that the rest
could be tabled for later in favor of celebrating the fact that they
weren't dead.
        Chief Engineer Piccolo, her face thoughtful, got up and said,
"If you'll excuse me, Admiral, I've just had an idea or two about our
repairs - I need to talk to Rhinox."
        Gryphon might have protested that Rhinox wasn't exactly in
working form right now, but instead, with a perverse little grin, he
decided to just let Fio find out for herself.  He nodded, and she in
turn looked to Shannon, who made a "g'wan then" gesture, waving her
off.
        "She takes her work too seriously," Shannon observed, a slight
"sh" sound making its way into a couple of spots in 'seriously'.  "But
she's a damn good engineer... "
        At that point he and Aeka, who had both known Gryphon for
centuries, lapsed into a more personal version of their what's-been-
happening conversation, catching up on the lives and deaths of people
they had known in the old Wedge Defense Force.  Shannon was especially
glad to learn that his and Aeka's children, Gina and Youshou, had
survived the Exile and were doing well.  He looked forward to seeing
them once he got back to the universe.  He was also glad his ship's
ACI had survived the Exile (though he was a little startled when
Gryphon noted that she'd tried to kill him when he'd first discovered
her).
        From there, with the food and drink still flowing freely, they
progressed to regular conversation, the conversation of very old
friends who have seen a lot of strange things and are -still- in about
the damnedest situation any of them can think of.
        Gryphon was just telling Aeka about the time during the Exile
he had spent as a prisoner of her sister Sasami, the queen of Jyurai,
when he snapped his fingers and said, "Say!  There's something I
always wanted to ask you, and I never got around to it before.  It's
been bugging me 'cause I thought you were dead and I'd never get the
chance to ask."
        Aeka blinked, slightly unfocused - the Jyuraian royal family
has never been one with a very high tolerance for alcohol - and
replied, "What's that?"
        Pointing to the carved ornamental wooden headdress the
Jyuraian princess always wore, Gryphon inquired, "Why do you wear that
on your head?"
        Aeka blinked again, then reached up and touched the headdress
with her fingertips.  Her cheeks and the bridge of her nose reddened,
an effect Gryphon (who had always been attracted to Shannon's princess
and had never made any particular secret of it) found charming.  Then
she smiled, a slow, slightly dreamy smile, drew herself up into full
and conscious regal dignity, and intoned in her best inebriated
approximation of a royal court tone,
        "Because, if I wear it anywhere else, it chafes."
        Gryphon blinked at her in his turn while the statement made
its way through his decently-lubricated brain.  Then he snorted,
guffawed, and disintegrated into laughter.  Aeka followed right along
with him, her affected royal composure collapsing entirely.  Robert
Shannon pounded on the table and howled, tears running down his
cheeks.
        "Ohhhh my," said Gryphon, wiping at his eyes as he stood up.
"I think that's a sign.  OK, kids - I'm off.  Rob, we'll talk about
your ship's status, and yours, sometime when we're less lit."
        Shannon nodded, his bulky frame still quivering with
laughter.  "Good idea," he said through continued giggles.
        "Great to have you all back," Gryphon added, slightly more
serious.  He pumped Shannon's hand and clapped him on the shoulder,
then presumed to muss Aeka's violet hair.  She got up and gave him a
kiss she'd probably be embarrassed about if she remembered doing it
later (the knowledge of which made her husband burst out laughing
again), and Gryphon moved off across the room, navigating with the
care of one who knows he's had a bit too much.
        Kei intercepted him partway across the Great Hall, flushed and
grinning but still coherent.  She took his arm, nestled close, and
murmured in his ear, "Hey.  I've had an idea."
        "Oh?" he replied in an undertone.  "What's that?"
        "Let's go find that bed you were hiding in earlier," said Kei,
"and mess it all up."
        Gryphon grinned.  "Sounds good to me."
        As they left the room, he glanced at the niche where the
Maximals had set up their fluid dynamics experiment and exploded in
laughter again.  Kei, puzzled, followed his eyes, then joined him in
hilarity.
        Rhinox, still sitting serene and smiling like a great
brown-and-green Buddha amid the tasselled cushions, had attracted a
flock, a coterie, a veritable -bevy- of women, all of them attractive,
many of them Valkyrie, more than a few of them either asleep or too
blissed to bother looking awake.  They heightened his resemblance to a
sultan holding court even more; and Gryphon was especially amused to
see that one of them, curled against the Maximal engineer's right side
with the complete unselfconsciousness of the deeply, fully comatose,
was Fio Piccolo.
        Noting the attention, Rhinox slowly looked up at the two Wedge
Defenders, who were just beginning to get control of themselves again,
and smiled.
        "It's the horn," he rumbled cheerily.  "Chicks dig the horn."
        Gryphon and Kei were still fighting off waves of laughter when
they found that bed he'd been hiding in earlier, but it didn't stop
them from fulfilling Kei's suggested mission of