Friendly Hopes (TTR)

by DeTroyes

This Time Round universe. A really, really bad day leads to a moment of epiphany.

This fic was originally posted on the Alt.DrWho.Creative newsgroup.
For more of my offbeat fanfiction, check out my homepage The End of the Phoenix.

NOTE: This is another piece of insanity based in the This Time Round alternate universe, and is yet another installment of To Die For (aka Psycho Nyssa). If you don't know what This Time Round is or aren't sure about some of the characters and subplots, I suggest you check out the unofficial TTR FAQ.

Well, here it is. Finally. Yes, I know how long I have been promising this story. There comes a point where you have to decide it's time to stop trying to fine tune and just let the sucker loose. Well, I think this one has reached that stage.

An extensive Author's Afterword follows, so most of the pre-story comments you'd expect to find here are actually way back there. But before going any further, I do have a few things to mention:

1) This entry is the first of a sequence of three or four (I haven't decided which) very interrelated stories. Therefore, there will be a few threads that aren't followed up on in this outing, but are instead meant to set up developments later on.

2) SPOILER WARNING #1. This story contains a MAJOR spoiler for the anime OAV series Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket. If you have not seen this series and don't want to know how it ends (it's supposed to run on Cartoon Network sometime this year), DO NOT READ THE FIRST SECTION OF THIS STORY. I mean it. It will ruin the entire series for you.

3) SPOILER WARNING #2. There is also a spoiler for the end of this year's season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. By this time anyone who actually cares probably already knows what the spoiler I'm talking about is, but if you still don't know and don't want to find out, then DO NOT READ THE LAST SECTION OF THIS STORY. You too have been forewarned.

All others, read on. The usual C&C would be much appreciated, but flamers will get an airstrike called upon their position. If anyone wants to MST this work, give me an email first before going ahead; I probably won't object, but I do like to know who I'm being mocked by. :-)

--DBK

*****

Friendly Hopes
A This Time Round: To Die For fiction

*****

Blackness. Slate-black, clear as obsidian.

The Great Beyond.

If there was one thing he really hated about the afterlife, Adric observed, it was the fact that it always seemed to come up with something new to make existence truly annoying to those that chose to stick around. Or not, as the case may be.

His usual agent hadn't been there after he'd expired. Instead, some mummified flunky of indeterminate gender and with bandages hanging in strips (not to mention the odd bone protruding from its shoulder) had directed him to the dead pool, where the recently deceased were being corralled for processing. Meaning another irritating delay while he waited to be processed out and back to the world. And to make matters worse, the undead underlings were agitating again, unhappy that the negotiations on their new contract weren't going the way they wanted them to. Ever since Jimmy Hoffa had gotten sent there, he'd heard more than one complaining entity remark, there'd been no end of trouble.

It must be a prompting mechanism, Adric surmised to himself as he waited in line. Meant to persuade those that can't go back that sticking around wasn't all that great either, and maybe it was better to just Walk Into the Light and take your chances with whatever came next. Of course, just because you had the ability to go back to the Land of the Living didn't always mean you had to, as he had on more than one occasion contemplated. But yet, he still found himself hanging on, still willing to exchange the punch of a card for another go at life. For whatever reason. Although lately, he'd begun to wonder what the point truly was anymore.

There was a tap at his shoulder from behind, and Adric turned to its source.

A young man stood behind him -- about his age, maybe a year or two older. Short, sandy hair, red jacket, beige shirt and slacks. He had the lean, slightly haunted, sorrowed look of a worn soldier, but otherwise didn't seem that much out of the ordinary. He looked at Adric with curiosity, as if searching his memory and failing to find where the Alzarian was placed. "Uh, what's going on?" he asked, hesitantly. "Do you know what's taking them so long to process us?"

Adric nodded, and pointed to one of the zombies whose duty it was to corral the non-living. "Labor dispute, I should think. They're in negotiations and the union doesn't much like how it's going, so they've decided on a work slowdown to make their point."

The young man looked uncertainly at Adric, trying to determine if the other was putting him on or not. "Labor dispute? Here?"

Adric nodded. "Welcome to the afterlife. Not only is it not what you expect, but it's a lot less than you can expect."

The other young man shook his head and looked around him. "I'll say. No clouds, no pearly gates, not even pitchforks and burning sulphur." He sighed. "It's almost a little disappointing."

"Yes, well, perhaps that comes afterwards. If you choose not to stick around and just walk into the Light -- like they really want you to, but can't make you -- maybe that's what you'll find on the other side."

"Walk into the Light?" the other asked, uncertainly.

"Yeah. It's supposed to be the entranceway for whatever happens next. No one really knows what happens when you do it, just that when you do you never come back. Ever. At least, if anyone does, not with any memories." Adric smirked. "Maybe that's where you'll find your Pearly Gate and clouds," he suggested.

"Yeah, right." The young man guffawed. "With my luck I'll get Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here."

"Or there could just be nothing. That's another of the theories running about around here."

"Nothing?" the young man asked, uncertainly.

"Yes, nothing." Adric reiterated. "Complete, conscious less, eternal nothing."

The young man gulped, as the realization sunk in. "Oh."

The line began to move, and the two slowly shuffled forward.

The young man nervously thrust his hand toward Adric. "Um, I don't think I've actually introduced myself. My name is Wiseman. Bernard Wiseman, but you can call me Bernie."

Adric took the other's hand and shook. "Adric," he said, "just Adric. No last name."

Bernie looked at him, confused. "Huh? What do you mean by...?"

"They wouldn't give me one." Adric said, distastefully. "About the closest they ever got was noting where I came from. Really annoying to have to explain every time I need to get an ID card or something."

Bernie nodded, confused, not knowing who 'they' happened to be, but pretending to understand what it was the other was talking about. Not that it made it any more clear.

The line stopped moving, and Bernie turned around to look in the far reaches of the corral area, where other recently arrived members of the newly departed set were joining the line. After a few moments of this, he stopped with a sigh and returned to his new found friend. "Sorry," he mumbled apologetically, "Just... looking for someone."

"No problem." Adric nodded, not quite comprehending, but understanding the general sentiment.

Bernie looked him over once more, with a gaze that thought he were still uncertain about something. "Um, Adric... pardon me for asking, but is that some kind of Zeon uniform you're wearing?"

Adric gave him a short, guttural laugh as he glanced down at his infamous yellow tunic and green-sleeved monstrosity, the blue star still dangling from its place at the red pocket. "You know, I never noticed it before, but I guess my outfit does look something like a Zeon soldier's uniform. A bit on the loose side, I suppose, but the colors are close... but no, I'm not Zeon, not by a long shot."

"Oh." Bernie said, in a voice that didn't sound like disappointment, but yet managed to convey some kind of regret. "I noticed some Fed pilots elsewhere in the line, but I was hoping to see..." He let the sentence trail off, unfinished.

"The Powers That Be like to mix groups up for processing. Don't ask me why, they just do. Sometimes not even caring what time periods or universes they take them from."

Bernie looked confused. "Universes?"

"Uh huh. Universes. There's more than one, you know. I take it from your mention of the Zeon that you're from one of the Universe Century universes, am I correct? Zeon? Federation? Gundam Mobile Suits? That sort of thing?" Adric noted a sharp twitch at the mention of 'Gundam', but set it aside.

"Uh, yeah." Bernie said, uncertainly.

"Ok, well over there," (Adric pointed to a group of black-uniformed soldiers talking among themselves) "those guys are from a similar universe to yours, but their time system counts from something called 'After Colony' rather than your 'Universe Century'. That universe has colonies and mobile suits, like yours, but the political situation and the principal figures are all different."

Bernie looked at them for just a moment, then tore his eyes away. "So, in other words, everyone here is mixed in from wherever, and not everyone is from the same place or even time, correct?"

"More or less."

"Oh. Wonderful." Bernie said this last without the least bit of enthusiasm for the news. "So, the odds of actually meeting someone you know are..."

"Unless they actually came in with you, practically nil."

Bernie took that bit of news heavily, but started to examine the young Alzarian carefully. "You seem to know quite a bit about what goes on here." Bernie observed.

Adric shrugged. "Well, I've been hanging around for some time." he said, vaguely. He decided at that moment not to mention the Mortality Deferment Card in his pocket; some of the single-lifers took exception to those lucky enough to have passes back to the living world, and Adric's survival instincts told him fervently that all-in-all it was better not to advertise his possession of one.

"So, if you're not from my universe, how come you know so much about it?" The question was asked more with curiosity than anything.

"Oh. Friends." Adric responded, vaguely. Blithely, he supposed that mentioning offhand the fact that he'd occasionally played poker at Ucchan's with Amuro Ray or Bright Noah was probably not the best move at this moment, especially considering that he was beginning to suspect that they and Bernie probably hadn't been on the same side in that particular fracas.

"Must be some friends."

"You'd be surprised."

The line began to shuffle some more. And just as assuredly the moment some space was created at line's end, more shades arrived to take up the vacuum left behind. Bernie looked them over, but with decidedly less enthusiasm than he had before. For a moment he seemed to look depressed, deflated, staring intently at what passed for floor thereabouts. Then he lifted his head.

"So, what brought you to the hereafter?" Bernie asked, in his best small-talk voice.

Adric grimaced. "Girl trouble."

Bernie actually perked up when he heard that. "Girl trouble?"

"Uh huh." Adric said, bringing to mind the events of the final hours of his most recent shift at This Time Round. "I sort of, um, got in the crossfire between two equal but opposite attractions."

Bernie laughed. "Both fighting over you?"

Adric shook his head. "Well, you see, that's the funny part. I think one was actually fighting for me, but if that were the case I don't understand why the other even bothered."

Bernie grinned. "Perhaps because she's more interested than you think."

"Not this one. Trust me on this, she wouldn't care one way or the other."

"So you say." Bernie flashed him a lopsided smirk.

The line began to move once more, and again they shuffled along.

"Did you like either of them?" Bernie asked.

Adric gulped. How to explain the intricacies of his current personal life, he wondered, in as clear a picture as possible, without all of the confusion. Especially his. "Err, umm, yeah... I don't know, I guess so." he said, unconvincingly.

But something in his voice perhaps betrayed more than his answer, because Bernie's next questions were: "Did you tell her that? Either of them? Before you died?"

Adric shook his head glumly, but said nothing.

"Bad move." Bernie whispered.

As if to underscore something, the Zeon soldier looked back up toward the back area, searching again in the faces of the newcomers. The line stopped moving, and for a moment each stood there, wrapped in their own thoughts.

"That was my mistake, you know." Bernie whispered, with melancholy in his voice. "I never told her. Even though I'm sure she was interested, even though I think she wanted to hear it."

"I'm sorry to hear that." Adric said, and found he meant it. "Was she... a friend?"

Bernie smirked. "Technically, an enemy. A Feddie mobile suit pilot."

One of Adric's eyebrows arched. "A Fed? I thought you were..."

Bernie snorted a short, humorless laugh. "I told her I was in the army. I just didn't tell her which one."

"Oh. That must have been... interesting." Adric said.

"'Interesting' isn't the word for it. I didn't even find out until, um, afterwards." Bernie responded, then with an ironic sigh, said: "She killed me."

Adric's other eyebrow shot up, but if Bernie noticed the other young man didn't show it. "K...killed you?" the Alzarian sputtered.

Bernie nodded, humorlessly. "Yeah. We ended going up against each other, not knowing who was in the other mobile suit." He shook his head, still unable to believe what had happened. "As far as she knew I was just another Zack pilot, and as far as I knew, I was just fighting a Gundam. So we blasted each other to bits, blew our 'suits to kingdom come, and..."

"And you got killed."

"Yeah."

"Did she...?"

Bernie shook his head. "No, thank goodness. I hung around spectrally long enough to hear the EMS guys say she'd pull through, then my shade got yanked and I wound up here." Pause. "Good thing, too. I'd probably hate things even more if I had killed her."

Adric indicated the back of the line. "Then who are you looking..." he began, but then thought better of it. "I'm sorry, I just assumed..." he apologized.

Bernie waved the apology aside. "Don't sweat it. Yeah, I keep looking back there, seeing if she's right behind. I know, it's selfish of me. I'd rather she were back out there, enjoying everything life has to offer. Not here, not waiting around for eternity." He sighed once more. "But that still doesn't mean I don't keep wishing, keep hoping she'll walk through that entranceway, just so I'll finally have a chance to say what I wanted to back there."

Both young men stared at the floor, each lost in their separate thoughts.

"Do you know what the hardest part is?" Bernie declared suddenly.

"What?" Adric asked, curiously, turning again to the other.

The fair-haired boy's voice was barely a whisper now, his eyes with a pained, far-away look on them. "She'll never know." he said, as if it were the greatest secret ever divulged. And for him, Adric realized, it might very well have been.

Adric stared as the young man continued.

"She'll never know." Bernie repeated. "Time will go on, and she'll forget I even existed. She won't know that this crazy guy who lived next door to her for a few weeks actually cared for her, really did care. Cared enough at any rate to do what he thought would save her, her family, her friends, regardless of the consequences. Cared enough... to want to sacrifice his life, so that they might have one."

Bernie coughed, but Adric continued to silently stare at him.

"She'll go on, find someone else, maybe vaguely remember that I was there, but probably not. Not recalling, not knowing what I did, what I was prepared to do. You know, I can take dying. I was a mobile suit pilot, after all. A Zack pilot, cannon fodder for the glory of Zeon. You get trained knowing that the moment you strap yourself in, you spins the wheel and you takes your chances. But this..." he shook his head once more, in palpable, frustrated sorrow. "To be forgotten, to know that you probably won't even be remembered by someone you wanted to be close to... I think that hurts more than any of this."

Adric felt his mouth go slightly agape, but Bernie proceeded to not notice his companion's expression.

"I just wish... I just wish I'd had the sense to say something, anything, when I had the chance. Nothing much, just enough to confirm what we were both thinking. That way, at least she'd know. I could accept that, even accept that she had no choice but to kill me. At least that way, maybe she would think about me from time to time, wonder what might have been. But now, now I won't even get that."

Bernie made one last, painful, sorrowful sigh.

"I'm sorry," Bernie said finally. "I didn't mean to unload on you like that."

Adric shuddered, as if coming out of a trance. "Um, no... No, that's quite all right. Obviously, umm, you needed to get it off your chest... uh..."

Bernie shrugged. "Yeah, I guess I did. I guess I did at that. If I can't tell her, at least I can tell someone." He smirked. "Not that it'll do any good now..."

"You never know." Adric pointed out, soothingly. "Maybe, umm, maybe sometime she'll turn up and, umm, you can..."

"Yeah, maybe." Bernie agreed, without any real conviction. "Maybe I will at that."

Both young men went back to staring at the thousand yards that weren't there.

"What about you?" Bernie asked, hesitantly. "Do you regret..."

A soft, melodious voice sounded, and both young men looked up startled, surprised. "Your punchcard, please." the voice asked, helpfully, to Adric.

The voice belonged to a strikingly beautiful woman in a slinky, black dress, who in turn stood before them with all of eternity yawning behind. Both of the young men looked around, stunned, surprised that they had somehow reached the front of the line while deep in their conversation. But yet, there they were, the next to be processed.

The young woman held out her hand toward Adric. The fingers were long, almost bony, but at least they appeared to have some skin on them. Reluctantly, Adric reached into his pocket, pulled out the slip of paper with the almost microscopically small numbers printed on it, and wordlessly handed it over. The woman took it without comment, theatrically produced a hole puncher from out of thin air, and snapped off another digit from the card. She handed it back, and gave him a little smile as she did so. "Well, that's that. Off you go, then."

Adric looked sheepishly at Bernie. The other young man didn't seem too perturbed about finding out what his new friend had possessed -- indeed, Bernie looked as if he had already guessed what the purpose of the card was, and it's powers. But the revelation didn't seem to faze him; if anything, it seemed to lift the young Zeon's spirits slightly.

Adric turned to the woman. There was something, after all, that was bothering him. "Um, just one question, please." he asked. "Do you have any idea when He'll be back?"

"Probably later." Death said, confidently. "I understand He's just on some business elsewhere."

Adric sighed in relief. For some reason, he felt most uncomfortable whenever he had to deal with someone other than his assigned agent. Considering his past experiences with temporary stand-ins, it was no wonder. Still, this one seemed a pleasant sort. A far cry from that last temp agent he'd had to deal with. "Good. No disrespect, but... I sort of prefer my regular guy."

Death nodded understandingly. "Most of the repeat customers do. I suppose when you've reached the end, its nice to see a familiar face on the other side to help things along." The woman smiled again. "Which reminds me. Say hello to the Doctor for me when you get back over. He's one of my regulars."

"Will do." The Alzarian responded, nodding once more. "Thanks." And with that, he turned again towards his new found friend. "Er, it looks like I have to go now." Adric held out his hand. "Good luck?"

"Good luck to you too." Bernie said, taking the hand with a thoughtful smile.

Adric nodded, let go, and regretfully turned away. But as he did so, Bernie spoke.

"Hey, Adric!"

Adric stopped, and faced Bernie one last time. "Yeah?"

For a moment there was an insightful look on the other's face, then he said: "Remember what I told you. Don't make the same mistake."

Adric smirked, then nodded in acknowledgment. "I'll remember." he promised, then stepped forward into the darkness... and vanished.

Death, who had been watching the exchange intently, stood there silently as Bernie marshaled his thoughts. When it appeared the young man was finished, she spoke to him. "Have you decided what...?"

Bernie nodded. Somehow, he didn't need to have his options explained to him, now. Somehow, he already knew what they were. "I want... I want whatever comes next." he told her, firmly. "I'd rather not stick around. I just want to move on, go with whatever plans you have for me."

Death looked at him, coolly. "Is that your final decision?" she asked, observing the rule even though she already knew what his answer would be.

Bernie nodded. "Yes. Yes, it is."

A tall, bright column of light suddenly appeared behind her. With a flourish, she stepped aside to allow him a clear path to it.

Bernie gulped, but resolutely stepped forward into the light...

No one else was there to see what happened next. Not even those in line behind, even though the nearest still stood obliviously directly beside him, wondering when it would be their turn. Only Death saw, and even then only a glimpse. After this point, after all, it wasn't any of her business.

But yet, she liked to think that she'd seen and heard correctly, before the light faded away and took with it one Bernard Wiseman, late of the Zeon Mobile Suit Corps. A flash of long, red hair, followed by the startled, surprised, and distant cry of "Chris?" in Bernie's voice, before the light faded completely.

Yes, Death thought, that would be the most appropriate. For once...

*****

Bernie's story was still on his mind when Adric finally returned to the 'Round, although admittedly, probably not in the way the Zeon soldier had intended. In his mind he carefully turned it over, examining it in relation to another, similar tale of cruel ironies and lost chances. One he could recall all too well.

It was well past midnight and bordering on what some would call the wee-hours of the morning. Not surprisingly, the main pub area did have a few customers; equally not surprising, most of them were unconscious and didn't much seem to be interested in being anything but. Brooding, he scanned the room, looking for either of two certain faces, but they were not present. 6Doc, however, was present, snoring away at his usual corner bench. Also present were a pair of Royal Military Policemen, busily trying to stand Sgt. Benton and Cpl. Bell on their feet (without much success). And at one table, a white-colored Dalek stood silently, its protrusions drooping in powered-down mode and an empty bottle of Dos Equis Amber Lager before it. All in all, it was a fairly typical extremely early morning tableau at TTR.

Adric's gaze fell to the pub counter, and finally identified one friendly face -- or rather, lump -- laying their head against the counter, using their arm for a pillow. He smirked. Well, it wasn't who he'd hoped to find, but at least she was a friendly face. And somehow, he thought, he needed one of those right about then. Perhaps she might be able to tell him what happened after his, ahem, departure.

He walked to the bar and perched on the seat beside her, greeting Chang Lee behind the counter as he did so. Lee merely waved at him absent-mindedly as he approached, the boy's attention fixed rather on guiding a scantily-clad police woman on the television screen in the task of blowing away zombies.

"Yo! Ryoko! Wake up!" Adric prodded the sleeping space pirate girl.

A soft, catlike mew arose from her lips. "Tenchi?" they asked, softly.

"Uh, no, Ryoko... It's me, Ad..."

One of Ryoko's hands shot out and grabbed Adric's arm. "Oh, Tenchi!" the girl mumbled, almost incoherently, her head still cradled in the inside of her elbow. "I've wanted you for so long..."

"Um, Ryoko..."

"Oh, Tenchi!"

Adric turned to the bartender. "Um, Chang? Can you help me here a bit? Conqueror's Choice, black?" Adric asked.

Chang Lee wordlessly nodded, paused the game, and put down the control. "Sure thing." the Chinese boy confirmed, and immediately began fishing for a clean stainless steel cup and a pair of iron tongs.

Ryoko's grip, meanwhile, was strengthening. "Tenchi, lets go up to my room..."

"Ryoko, I'm not..."

"I'm sure we can find something to do up there..."

"Ryoko, you're dreaming..."

Ryoko giggled, which to anyone who didn't know her sounded deeply disturbed. "Of course, silly. You're all I dream about..."

Adric tried frantically to break her grip. His arm was beginning to turn purple.

"We can be all alone with no one else to bother us..."

That gave Adric an idea. With a clear, mock-surprised voice he spoke up. "Oh, hello Ayeka! Fancy meeting you here..."

Adric would concede a few minutes later, about the time Ryoko regained her full senses and realized that the object she was repeatedly slamming into the counter was not the face of her hated rival, that that particular idea hadn't been one of his best.

But, at the very least, it got the job done.

*****

"So, they both disappeared afterwards, then?" Adric asked, using a washcloth to dab away at the cuts on his face. His voice was somber.

Ryoko nodded, and took a sip from her third cup of Sontaran java. "Before your corpse was cold and your brains had been cleaned up from the floor."

"Oh." Adric said, faintly disappointed.

"So," Ryoko asked, "why did you do it?"

"Do what?"

"Put yourself between them."

Adric shrugged. "I was barman on duty. It was my job to keep order in here."

"Uh huh. Right. Two girls brandishing automatic weapons, and you just had to step between them to keep the peace."

"Someone might have gotten hurt, Ryoko. I was trying to prevent that."

"Someone did get hurt, Adric. You didn't prevent that."

"Part of the job. Better me than a customer."

"Uh huh. Sure." Ryoko took another sip of caffeinated cardiac soup. "From where I was sitting, it looked like Ember clearly had the drop on her..."

"I didn't notice."

"...and would have pressed the advantage if you hadn't stepped in."

"The only pressing that happened was the muzzle to my head."

Ryoko nodded, conceding the point. "If it helps matters, I think Ember was as stunned as anyone when it went off."

"She still ran away." Adric observed, dismally.

"Not initially. She looked more like in shock, at least for a moment. Then she ran away."

Adric considered that piece of information. "What about...?"

"Her? Well, she just took off out the door, before Ember. Didn't say a thing, just got up off the floor and ran."

"And neither were seen the rest of the night?"

"Nope."

Adric sank in his chair. "All right, Ryoko. You're the girl. You tell me what I should do now."

Ryoko finished her cup, and placed it back on the table. "Well, of course you're going to have to find a way to apologize again."

Adric looked confused. "Even though it wasn't my fault?"

"Especially because it wasn't your fault. Haven't you figured that one out yet? Even when it's not the guy's fault, it's always the guy's fault."

"Oh. I just thought that was my normal state of affairs."

"This is different." Ryoko answered, but failed to elaborate. She looked up at the pub clock. "Too late to do anything about it tonight, though. I guess we'll just have to wait until morning to come up with a plan." Ryoko smirked, as her eyes betrayed something of her train of thoughts. "Wish we knew how to get a hold of Ember, though. It would help matters greatly if we had a reliable way to get in contact with her. Unless you've managed to...?"

Adric shook his head negatively. "I've tried, but she seems to always side-step the issue. Never explains why, either. For whatever reason, she doesn't want a way for any of us to contact her." Adric frowned. "She did say once it probably wouldn't do us any good, though. Whatever that means."

"She told me the same thing." Ryoko confirmed. "Most curious."

"Yeah. It is."

Ryoko looked him over, her eyes narrowing in thought, noting that his attention seemed in part to be on something else. "You okay?" she asked.

"Huh? Oh. Yeah, I am. Tired, I guess. Long day and a less than stellar night." The Alzarian stretched his arms then, and failed entirely to stifle a hearty yawn.

The space pirate watched as he did so. Then she levitated from the bar, reached into her cleavage, and pulled a few coins to toss onto the counter. "Well, none of this can be helped now." she added, and turned to float towards the entrance of the 'Round. "We'll have to just leave it for the future."

"Yeah." Adric mumbled quietly. "The future. What there is of it."

"Pardon?"

Adric vacated his barstool. "Nothing. Nothing at all." he grumbled, following her.

"Going to go back to your room in that funny-shaped blue box?" Ryoko asked over her shoulder.

"The TARDIS?" Adric considered. "I guess I don't have much of a choice tonight."

The two were passing the white Dalek at this point. Unnoticed by them, the eye stalk had raised slightly, and was slowly tracking them as they passed.

"Sure you do." Ryoko said. "You can come over to Tenchi's house with me. We've always got an extra bedroll lying around for visitors."

Adric looked uneasy at the prospect. "Are you certain it would be all right?"

"Sure, no problem." Ryoko assured him. "You won't be the first out-of-town visitor to drop in, you know. Besides, mom says she's got something that might help you and wants to try it out."

Adric chuckled. "'Mom'? You're calling her 'mom' now?" he chided.

Ryoko put a single finger to her lips. "Shhhh. Don't tell her."

"Uh huh. What's it worth to you?"

"Well, lets see. I could tell everyone how you leapt to your lady love's defense when she was about to be killed by an Uzi-wielding..." Ryoko said this just as she passed (literally) through the front door of the establishment.

Adric grabbed at the handle frantically and flung the door open. "Hey! That's not what happened!" he said, desperately, taking off after her.

"Looked that way from where I was sitting..." came the distant reply.

Then the door slammed shut, and This Time Round was left back in the hands of its snoring and inebriated customers.

*****

Well, not quite.

One customer wasn't snoring, although they were led to understand by others that they were quite gifted in that skill; nor were they inebriated, although that was not for lack of interest. No, this inhabitant was completely (if slightly hazily) awake, and almost entirely (if reluctantly) sober.

Not to mention pissed-off as hell. With themself, mostly. At the universe partly, but still mostly at themself.

Oh yes, and slightly confused. Mustn't forget the confusion. Although at that point, it pretty much felt indistinguishable from the anger, in a weird mixed-up sort of way.

Number One (male) lit up another cigarette, took a long drag, and watched on the monitor as the door shut firmly behind... swamp rat... and his floating friend. He briefly considered powering up the rest of the white Dalek's systems and trundling along after them, but just as soon dismissed the idea. He knew where they were headed, after all, and since nothing else was likely to be happening tonight, he'd rather take the few minutes and try once more to make sense of the preceding few hours.

He massaged his legs, and found his muscles were yearning to be flexed. He'd forgotten how cramped the Dalek unit could be, especially with all of the enhancements he'd dumped into it. It had, after all, been some time since last he'd used it -- embarrassingly, when he had gone to retrieve the unit from the nearby self-storage it was locked in, it had taken him a few minutes to even remember the combination on the padlock. He'd eagerly climbed in then, and had been surprised that the unit actually felt roomier than before, the smaller cursed body making better use of the space and giving him more elbow room to work, except for the fact that the tiny seat pushed on both sides against his rounded butt in a very uncomfortable manner...

Well, actually, her butt, he forcefully reminded himself. For at the moment, he was beginning to think that it might be better if he sometimes thought of... her... in that sense, namely as a different person. No matter that they shared the same body, memories, thoughts, experiences; she also was showing an unnerving tendency to take actions and express opinions that felt... different... from what he thought they normally should be. Yes, it might be better overall if he started to draw that distinction, Number One believed. Why, he wasn't sure, but the idea did make him feel a little better.

The cigarette extinguished itself at the filter. Mechanically, he dropped ashen rod and butt into the small receptacle reserved for that purpose, pulled another from the ubiquitous pack, and lit.

But anyway, he reminded himself, all of that was irrelevant. He'd donned the spare dungarees he kept secreted in the locker area, heated up some water with a coiled element kept handy for that purpose (although, admittedly, intended originally for nothing more than the occasional packet of Folgers), and come back here to await the return of Adr... err, the enemy. Why? Because things had finally reached a breaking point tonight, he decided, and it was high time radical steps were taken to seize control of the situation. And so he'd angrily done what he should have done in the first place -- gone to the 'Round as Number One, dedicated servant of her Gloriousness, the most Holy One. Not as Ember Ashe, the... friend... of all that his faith held in contempt, and most certainly not as he had done earlier in the evening in that misplaced and disastrous attempt at... at... whatever it was he'd been attempting.

She'd been attempting.

He had to remind himself of that fact. Firmly. Repeatedly.

The cigarette went out again. Once again he reached over to the pack, but this time found it empty. What the? he thought. He'd just opened that pack.

He fished into the glove compartment, found another pack, removed the cellophane, and extracted another blunt instrument upon the cellular structure of his lungs.

Anyway, where was he? Oh yeah, he was Number One, and no sniveling third rate hell demon or officious feline Human Resources Director was going to tell him any different. They could take their Operation Cupid's Arrow and shove it (point first) where it would do the most damage. Slowly. With as many serrated edges as possible. Twirling and twisting all the way inside. They certainly had no idea what kind of fire they were playing with, and by damn one of these days she was going to make certain...

...he was going to make certain...

Damn, Number One thought, how many hours have I been up?

His brain took that as a signal that permission to yawn had been granted.

"Gotta get some sleep." Number One mumbled to himself. "Not thinking straight. Gotta be able to think straight. Been too long of a day." He snorted. "Getting too confused, too much fatigue." He thought about what he had just overheard. Ryoko had hinted at something in development, and considering the most likely identity of who it might involve, it probably bore looking into as a potential future problem. Ordinarily, he'd assign one of those incompetent minions of his to stand around and just observe, but for some reason this time he was suddenly filled with the urge to take charge and do it himself. And so, as he just as suddenly decided, that was what he would do -- take charge of the operation, and once more do something constructive. Yessir, go back to fighting the good fight in Her Holiness' name. Not like he'd done that evening, no sirree. No, nothing like what he'd been guilty of that evening. He needed to firmly reset his priorities, get back on the right track. Atone for the sins he'd committed. Nearly committed.

He trembled at the memory.

It was bad enough that he'd recently prompted himself into a sword fight with Her Holiness. But to think that last evening, spurred on by nothing more than a few taunting words, she should, in a flash of raw emotion, contemplate the unthinkable? The unmentionable? And then, stopped only because The Dweeb had stepped into the line of fire? It was unheard of! It was almost too devastating to contemplate! He, Number One, one of the most preeminent knights in Her eternal defense, had almost damned himself eternally in that unforgivable crime of... deicide?

No, not him. Remember. Her. She almost did all that. Not you.

Yes, remember. It's very important to remember that distinction.

If anything, this should make him more resolved than ever to continue striving against The Demon Spawn from Alzarius, he quickly asserted to himself. The spawn's baleful influence was enough to test even the most pure of heart, so obviously the kid must be countered at any and all cost. Yes, that was what he told himself, the kid had to be neutralized, for the good of all that was Most Holy. At any cost. Yessir.

He tried to puff on his cigarette, but tasted only cold, damp filter.

Get some sleep, he thought eventually, and go out there tomorrow on a recon. See what math nerd and his evil cabal are up to. If we're lucky, it'll be enough to render Cupid's Arrow superfluous. Then I can go in on the pretext, forget all this subtlety, and just kick some good 'ole fashioned therapeutic ass. Sounds like a plan to me.

You'll have to tell Buck-o what you're doing, a part of him reminded.

Leave a note through the usual channels but be vague, another part responded. That'll give you a little time.

Screw him, another suggested, which also prompted an involuntary wince. This is your op. Don't let him muscle in.

Still gotta tell him. Them's the rules. You don't gotta like 'em, just gotta obey 'em.

Fine. But no Ember. She stays out.

Agreed. She is too... unreliable.

Number One chewed on his cigarette butt, not noticing that it was starting to acquire a certain ground, fiber consistency.

Some time in the country, that's what he needed. To get things back into perspective. Taking a hike out to the Masaki shrine in the morning should do that. At the same time, he could also do something constructive against his enemy, take some positive steps toward salvation.

And make Ember disappear, for a time.

Yes, make Ember disappear.

*****

There is a room in a certain office building. The building is of the modern, nondescript, concrete-and-glass, utterly bland variety. Only a prominently displayed address number sets it apart from other buildings along the Virginia highway it is buttressed against.

The room is on the second floor, and offers a spectacular view of the building's parking lot. In actuality, however, that particular attribute was the room's only drawback. Because the curtains to the room were usually drawn shut, this wasn't a particularly major drawback.

The room was painted a reflective white, and was also very well lit. This last was mostly because the room's primary occupant liked it to be bright. The walls themselves were sparsely decorated, but what adornments there were were all tastefully arranged and were of reasonably high quality. The most expensive of these adornments was a Law Degree, which sat hanging amid a cluster of other degrees and licenses to practice law in various jurisdictions. This was noteworthy because the person whose office this was currently held duties not normally associated with those of a practicing attorney.

There were also other things about the office of some note. The walls inside were strengthened with a steel wire mesh that was constantly under power, rendering the entire room essentially one big Faraday cage; the windows were of polarized, highly reflective glass, nearly impervious to telephoto lens snooping, casual or otherwise; the windows were triple-paned set with an inch of space between glass sheets, the outer void of which was supplemented by a small white noise generator, the inner void of which was pure vacuum, all to prevent vibration-sensitive monitoring; the monitors -- and there were quite a few -- were all of the flat-panel gas-permeable LCD variety, an effective counter to the VanEyk-phreak.

Underneath the desk were a button and, hanging from the underside on an articulated arm, an automatic shotgun with most of the barrel sawed away. The button was to summon a cadre of U.S. Marshals at a moment's notice; the autogun was there in case the office's occupant didn't have an extra moment. The shells were loaded with a customized mixture of pellets: lead, gold, silver, iron, hardwood and platinum, with the gaps in the mix filled with tiny industrial diamonds. The man behind the desk had never heard of anything that was specially vulnerable to platinum or diamonds, but he figured it couldn't hurt. Liven up the Medical Examiner's day, at any rate.

In one corner of the room was a dart board with the picture of a sleazy-looking Martian Ice Warrior upon it, a number of darts firmly imbedded in various sensitive parts of its otherwise thick-skinned anatomy.

The room's primary occupant was, at that time, examining a report on his display, making notes on a pad of yellow, legal paper before him, and making under-breathed comments on the efficiency of Japanese police departments and the subordinates who blunder into them. As he continued his review, the phone at his elbow rang. Reluctantly, he picked up the receiver, mostly because it was the only way he knew how to get the damn thing to stop ringing. "William Starr's office." the man said into the mouthpiece, then: "No relation."

"Bill, this is Doug. We got orange?"

Starr smirked, put down his pen and glanced down at the phone. Sure enough, the orange light on the handset was flashing. "Go ahead, Doug. We're secure. Are you back on station?"

Starr heard some creaking noises from over the line, of what sounded like a chair being leaned back upon and the framework groaning in protest. "Yeah, I'm back. Got in from London late last night, missed some more fireworks, then crashed. Spent the morning getting the AAR's done; I'm uploading the latest reports and data-files to you as we speak."

"Good, because State is still raising hell. Nerima didn't do us any favors, you know. Now they're watching us like a hawk."

"Yeah, I figured."

"What about Alpha One? What's his status?"

Starr could feel the frustration in the other's voice. "Zilch. After everything is said and done, we've still got a no-go out here."

Starr shook his head. "Damn, that's frustrating."

"Tell me about it."

"Want me to dispatch an IMF team in there to help out?"

"Tempting, but the only one I'd trust would be Hunt, and I understand he's out on assignment now, right?"

"Doug, you know I can neither confirm nor deny that..." said Starr, acknowledging the formula even though both knew the question had, in fact, just been answered. "How are the reinforcements we sent up working out?"

"Gamma's doing fine, though I would have preferred it if they'd have spent more time at Quantico before being deployed. Can't be helped, I suppose."

"What about Rainbow? They're in your zone, and probably could help out."

"Nah, leave Clark where he's at. Manpower isn't a problem right now. Susannah and Paul should be here the day after tomorrow, and that will bring Alpha up to full. In fact, I think I've got more people on the hammer end of things than I have uses for. There's only so much running around in camo and carbines that you can do without attracting too much attention. And we're certainly attracting more than our fair share right now."

"Ain't that the truth. Ok, well... you're the man on the spot."

"Uh huh, and that's the way I like it." Starr heard a heavy sigh from the other end. "The main reason I'm calling, Bill, besides just checking in, is to see if you'd gotten anything on those friends of ours. Especially the redneck."

Starr stuck the phone in the crook of his neck, and reached out with that hand for a manila folder that had recently been plopped on his desk. He opened it and glanced at the summary, even though he pretty much already knew the details. "Sorry, but not much. We got ID's on the four horse-asses of the apocalypse, but nothing on your Alabama suspect. I'm having the report bundled and sent to you, so you should have it by no later than tomorrow."

"Care to give me the highlights?"

"In short, everything is a negative. The four stooges look to be nothing more than that -- really, really, cerebrally-challenged fanboys. The most any of them have are speeding tickets and a warning for expired tags. Other than that, they're clean. No records, wants or warrants." Starr shuffled some paper, and stopped at a xerox. "I got an incident report here, though. From the hotel security at some Cleveland establishment. Seems they were bothering some convention guest at the hotel, and were ejected by security. That's about the worst."

"Any indication that they're too clean, that all of that is just some kind of plant?"

"If they are, then they've been undercover for a hell of a long time. Hell, we even managed to find one of their ex-girlfriends. Everyone who knows them had just two words to describe them: weird and pathetic."

The voice at the other end sighed. "Ok, what about our friend Number One."

"Zilch. Nada. No evidence the person even exists. No driver's licenses, no Class 3 firearm owner's ID, not even a goddamn high school yearbook."

"What about the fingerprints I lifted from the beer glass?"

"Nothing. Ran 'em through FBI, CIA, NSA, 50 different DOMV's and DOT's, and just about every ID database we know of, criminal or otherwise. Not a single match. This person's a real enigma. You sure that accent of his is real?"

"If it ain't, he's the first non-Alabaman I've ever met to master it." A pause. "Whoever he is, then, he must have some pretty good connections in order to cover his tracks like that."

"You mean this Brotherhood of his?"

"Possibly. No, scratch that, likely. I take it you're still nada on that as well?"

"Uh huh."

A sigh. "Ok, send what you've got over. I'll have a look at it when it comes in, see if I can make any more sense out of it. Oh, by the way, that reminds me. In the Nerima after-action report, I've noted someone by the name of Ember Ashe. I'd like a dossier built up on her as well."

"How does she fit in?"

"No idea, but at this moment she looks to be a player. Her presence has the potential to disrupt our plan, so I'd rather have the information on hand rather than be blind-sided."

"Ok, fair enough." Starr closed the report. "Anything else?"

"CCD helmets."

"Dispatched. Should arrive tomorrow at Hereford."

"Product samples from PanTex."

"Still trying to get those released. Whitehall wasn't very thrilled with the request."

"I'm not surprised." Another pause. "Better imaging. The fabled weather around here is playing havoc with satellite surveillance."

"HDRI?"

"I was hoping for something a little more sophisticated. Heather's working on a specialized PLOT-hole detector, but says she needs to be able to bounce the scan over a satellite to get a decent spread."

"That's probably something a little more sophisticated than your average spy satellite. I'm not sure we have anything that would..."

"What about that movie mogul friend of yours?" Doug interrupted. "Doesn't he, umm, have access to a particularly sophisticated eye-in-the-sky?"

Starr leaned back in his chair. "Say, that's a thought." He considered for a heart beat. "Yeah, I think I can work out something with Ed... Mind you, he's always looking for ways to upgrade his capabilities..."

"Think he'd be interested?"

"He's usually willing to play ball, so long as you're willing to trade something in return."

"Ok, then. See what you can do. In the meantime, find out what you can about Ember Ashe. As for us, hopefully I'll be able to report some movement within the next few days."

"I sincerely hope so. See 'ya, Doug."

"See 'ya, Bill."

The line went dead.

Starr thought for a moment, leaning back in his chair and staring at the wall. He picked up the pen on the legal pad before him, scribbled a few numbers, and started to tap on the pad with the ink ball point, trying to weigh a decision. Then, he reached across the desk to an old-fashioned rolodex. He flipped a few cards until he found the one he wanted, dialed the number on the card, and waited for international long distance to connect.

After a few tones, a pleasant voice came on the line. "Harlington-Straker studios." the voice said cheerfully, "How may I direct your call?"

William Starr smiled, gave the young woman the name of the studio's head, and prepared to get down to some good ol' fashioned horse trading.

*****

Early afternoon, with a fresh, sea-tinged breeze drifting in over the mountains. The kind that one wanted to gulp at greedily, because it tasted so good.

Adric stood on the lawn and found himself looking uncertainly at the space pirate girl not ten meters away, while a small crowd of onlookers watched nervously. "Ryoko..." he asked cautiously, "are you certain this is safe?"

The cyan-haired young woman slapped a magazine into her ZF-1, then checked the counter display on the control panel. Good, a fully functioning ammo pack. She never really trusted these cheap Groaci knock-offs, but they were all that her arms VAR had available, so she didn't have much of a choice. Even so, she examined the display warily; just because the magazine checked out didn't mean the first cartridge would fire properly. After all, she'd had entire generic manufactured clips empty themselves automatically before, not one firing correctly because the first one had been a dud. Too bad Zorg-branded ammo was so hard to come by these days, what with their buy-out and all. The new owners just didn't care about customer service, and had left Zorg's loyal customer base high and dry and without proper product support.

"Yeah, I'm certain. But if anything goes wrong, I'll make sure it's quick and painless." She hefted the weapon, and aimed it at the young Alzarian. "Ready?"

Adric gulped, and closed his eyes. Tightly. "Ok, ready."

"OK, on the count of three. One... two..." (One corner of Ryoko's mouth upturned) "two-and-a-half... two-and-three-quarters..."

"RYOKO...!"

"Three!"

Ryoko pulled the trigger, sending a finely-woven net of extremely tough polymer in Adric's direction. Even before the net fully enveloped him, she had switched to gun mode and watched clinically as the first round fired and hit the Alzarian squarely in the chest. Then the other rounds all followed suit, landing more or less in the same area the first had struck, this despite the fact that the recoil had pushed the muzzle upwards and in a direction above the young man's head. It didn't matter, though; the bullets knew immediately where the first one had struck, and so the others all zeroed in on the same target no matter which direction they were initially heading. A missile volley came next, followed by the raft of poison darts. As soon as those magazines had emptied, Ryoko switched the weapon to Fire 'n Ice (tm) mode, first aiming a long jet of reddish-orange Insta-Flame (tm), followed by a blast of white-gaseous Insta-Freeze (tm). Then she hit the bolo release, and a trio of stringed objects ejected from the weapon and at the frozen figure, impacting at the neck and wrapping themselves relentlessly until there was no rope left to continue, at which point the bolos impacted against each other and consequently exploded.

Ryoko took a deep breath, and waited for the smoke to clear.

After a few seconds, the outline of a figure could be seen. The figure took a hesitant step forward, stopped, stumbled forward again, than collapsed into the grass.

Sasami was the first to reach him, followed by a small, brown, mewing cabbit. Ayeka and Tenchi were a few steps behind. The cabbit hopped toward the young man, then uncertainly began to sniff, but reacted unkindly when its nose brushed against the very faint bluish sheen that now enveloped the Alzarian.

"Adric-sama!" Sasami shouted at the figure, shaking the young man's shoulders and ignoring the faintly electric feel beneath her fingers. "Wake-up! You must turn off the force field! Adric-sama!"

"Ryoko!" Ayeka blurted irately (but daintily) as she came to her sister's side, "You didn't have to do all of that to make the test! A few bullets would have done just as well."

The aqua-haired girl flew over and landed beside the group. "Hey, you don't know who he's up against. Trust me, that was nothing compared to what the Psycho usually throws at him. Besides..." Ryoko produced a small control in her palm, then hit one button. "I can always do this..."

For a split second, the bluish sheen became more pronounced, then collapsed entirely. As soon as it was gone, a long, deep, but very urgent wheezing sound issued from Adric's mouth. His chest and stomach heaved with the intake of precious oxygen.

Minutes later, Adric was sitting up and breathing regularly again. "I told you to take a deep breath before turning it on." Ryoko commented. "It's a forcefield, dang it! It's not supposed to let anything through."

"Yes, but you could have warned me you were going to take that much time. I thought a few moments, not two minutes worth." He took another deep breath, and massaged the back of his neck. "With everything you were throwing at me, its no wonder I passed out."

"Does she ever let up when she can't get you on the first shot? OK, then." She looked him over. "Other than that... did you feel the impacts? Did it insulate you well?"

Adric nodded. "Well enough. I felt the bullets impact as little pin pricks. Neither the flame nor the cold were really noticeable, though."

"Good. Unless she's going to throw a hovertank at you, you should be all right "

Tenchi looked dubiously between the young Alzarian and his space pirate friend as a rather obvious thought struck him. "Umm, Adric... You're suppose to use this to last long enough to ask her out, right?"

The two nodded.

"So... how are you going to be able to ask her if the force field is covering your mouth?"

There was a slightly stunned silence as everyone digested that piece of logic.

"Umm, Ryoko?"

"Back to Washuu?"

"I think that would be appropriate, yes."

*****

In a gathering of trees along the gentle mountainside slope above the Masaki Shrine, a dark-haired man in jeans and a black Lynyrd Skynyrd t-shirt lowered his binoculars and began to consider his next options. While Number One did so, he spat out the long-extinguished cigarette butt from his lips, then drew another white sliver of cancer death from the pack at his side. He lit it and took a few puffs. It helped his thinking.

He watched the group of people turn toward the white house with red shingles. He watched as the two older girls -- the blue-haired troublemaker and the purple-haired quiet type -- exchanged barbs and insults at each other. He knew they were barbs and insults, because he could hear them from all the way down there.

He blew a long thin jet of smoke in their direction.

Forcefield, he thought. Bad news. And if the person he thought was the one who designed it, that was even more bad news. Then the little, um, creep could turn it on and Her Holiness could plug away at him all day and still not cause a scratch.

They obviously hadn't perfected it yet, though. When the smoke cleared, Swamp Thing had keeled over unconscious, and Ryoko had had to turn off the shield by remote. But that diminutive little egotist had enough of a reputation that he doubted the problems would last for long. So, what to do about it?

He scanned the house and the grounds with his binoculars. The others had by now gone into the house, so the area was almost vacant of people. A middle-aged man was busy sweeping the grounds underneath the arch; by the ease and grace with which the man moved, Number One doubted it would be wise to tangle with that one in a fight. He turned to another area, and found two young ladies in another corner of the grounds, both with guns drawn and evidently involved in some kind of target practice. The blonde-haired one seemed visibly upset about something, but the darker-haired one was just rolling her eyes in exasperation.

He zoomed the binoculars in on a jacket one of them had dropped to the ground, and got a good look at the insignia. Crap, he thought. Galactic Police. Stay away from those two if at all possible.

He turned the binoculars back to the house, then to the area where the test had occurred.

A hint of dark plastic in the grass caught his eye, and a tentative grin spread across his face.

No, he thought. It couldn't be that easy.

But even as he said it, he made out one red button and a small, stubby electronic rod, enough to confirm his preliminary ident. The grin switched to becoming hardly tentative.

The binoculars came down. He shoved them into the backpack at his feet, then looked around to carefully plan not only his approach but his exit strategy.

Don't go out the same way you came in, he thought, and keep to the tall trees for as long as you can before breaking out into the open.

And, he reminded himself, watch out for the damn mountain springs.

"Why?" A faint, soft voice asked, more out of amusement than curiosity.

"Shut-up." Number One mumbled. "I'm not talking to you."

*****

There is a school of thought that says extremely long-lived beings eventually come to a point where they grow bored of their existence.

The Doctor(s) had talked about it periodically. After a few millennia, some beings find that they've essentially done everything they can think of, and the rest of their time is spent looking for something else to stimulate them, something new to try that they've never tried before, something different to experience. Generally, this works for a few more centuries, until those new things, too, have become old. Eventually, they tend to grow so apathetic that they do one of three things: 1) kill themselves out of shear boredom and lack of anything better to do; 2) put themselves into a sort of "waking trance", waiting in vain for a new sensation to come along to experience; or 3) try to conquer the universe, because even after 12-14 billion years of existence, no one has quite been able to accomplish that particular feat. So universal was this fate that the Doctor had sometimes quipped, "Don't ever trust anyone over 30,000".

Washuu hadn't yet reached 30,000 (probably -- no one was quite certain how old she really was, although she did once boast of having "dated" Rassilon), but by all the signs had yet to reach anything approaching ennui with the universe. Nor was she ever likely to, Adric surmised. She was one of those beings that just seemed to always be finding something interesting wherever she was, always finding some new activity that she could devote her attentions to wholeheartedly. In short, she was the kind of multi-millennial being he expected the Doctor to eventually grow into. She certainly had his ego.

No, scratch that. The Doctor's ego still needed a few more centuries of seasoning.

The ancient woman, of course, looked hardly ancient at all. According to Ryoko, she had cultivated a preference for her current look some millennia before and had never quite gotten around to changing it. Something about treating it as a private joke, was the way the space pirate had phrased it. After all, most beings wouldn't expect someone who usually looked like a ten-year-old girl to be "the greatest scientist in the galaxy" (just ask her). The reddish-puce hair, though; that did tend to make her stand out.

At the moment, Adric was watching Washuu gleefully examine the forcefield generator before her with all the abandon of, well, a ten-year-old with a new toy.

"So tell me, sonny. How is the old fart doing these days?" Washuu asked him conversationally, examining her latest technological marvel with a magnifying glass and a Black & Decker sonic screwdriver.

"Depends upon which old fart you're referring to. At the moment there are anywhere between eight and thirteen or more of them, depending upon who does the counting."

"Sounds like a timelord. No clue what they want to be when they grow up, so they try to be everything." Washuu leaned further into her workbench. "You did tell them I was in the neighborhood, didn't you?" she asked over her shoulder.

"I did casually mention it, yes."

"And what did they say?"

"They all coughed, laughed nervously, and changed the subject."

Washuu laughed, the grin on her prepubescent-looking face spreading wildly. "Oh, they did, did they? Well, then. I'm just going to have to drop by sometime. Catch up on my 'old friend'." The grin didn't go away.

"Oh. Try coming on a Friday night, then."

"Why Friday?"

"Because I usually don't work that shift, and one of the writers is trying to revive Friday Night Crossover Poker."

Washuu nodded, the grin still solidly etched. "Good idea." she laughed, then concentrated on a display screen on the bench. "Well," she pronounced, "I don't think I can lower the field threshold enough to let adequate oxygen in, not without severely undercutting its effectiveness as a shield. I may have a way around that -- phased neutrons in quantum flux, for instance, might work just as well -- but then you'd probably have to worry about someone finding the phase frequency and penetrate that way. And from what you've all been telling me about your friend, I wouldn't put it past her to think that one up."

"But isn't that the reason why you're not using something from off the shelf?"

Washuu shrugged. "Your call, I suppose." The smallish woman put her magnifying glass down, snapped shut the back panel of the device in her hand, and began to secure it with a soft hum from the screwdriver. "I guess I could redirect the forcefield so that it covers everything but your mouth when you're talking, but then you'd be vulnerable to attack every time you spoke."

"That's the story of my life." he sighed. With a grimace, he waved his hand resignedly. "Ok, do whatever you think will work best."

From behind a monitor on the other side of the lab, Ryoko spoke. "How long will it take for you to make the adjustments?" she asked, without looking up from the display, as if watching something carefully. A couple of quick clicks on the keyboard sounded.

"Give me a day or two, and I should have something worked up that you can use. All you need are a few minutes, right?"

"That's the general idea."

"Then I'll let you know when I've got it finished."

The Alzarian nodded. "Thanks." he said, without any real enthusiasm. He turned towards the cyan-haired girl. "Um, Ryoko. It's getting late, and I'm suppose to be on-shift soon..."

Ryoko nodded, but continued to examine the display. "Hey, no prob." she responded, her voice trailing off in a manner that displayed less than full attention. "I just need to finish... up... something... here..."

Unconsciously, she leaned toward the display, watching intently. Suddenly, her mouth took on a malicious, nasty grin. "Come 'n git it, you bastard..." she whispered.

Adric stepped up to the display. "What are you...?" he asked, cautiously. He attempted to get a glimpse of what her monitor showed, but the space pirate hit the power off switch before he could get anything more than a vague look.

"Oh, nothing." she said, waving one hand dismissively. "Just something I needed to take care of. Nothing big." She stood, and put her hands on her hips. "Ready to go?" she asked.

Adric nodded and moved to follow his friend, while at the same time trying to make sense of the brief image he had seen, of the grounds outside and of someone bending down to pick something up from the grass. Probably nothing important, he thought, though a distant unease remained.

These days, it seemed that little of what was going on around him appeared to be inconsequential.

*****

"You seem a little distracted."

They were moving slowly along the pathway towards the 'Round. Adric was spending much of the time staring down at the crushed gravel and absent-mindedly kicking at the larger pebbles.

His eyes glanced up toward the space pirate, who was floating about a foot off the ground and keeping an even pace with his slow gait. "Nothing," he mumbled. "Just... still tired. Between yesterday and everything else... Didn't sleep well last night."

"Oookay." was Ryoko's response, not sounding like she quite believed it. She stole a glance at the Alzarian, and wondered what was going on in his head.

Ever since the previous night, she'd observed, something had changed in him. She wasn't quite certain what it was, but the change in his demeanor was palpable. He seemed more detached, withdrawn than he usually did, as if he had mentally put himself on cruise control and was now just going through the motions.

All in all, Ryoko thought, it wasn't a good sign. The whole purpose of this exercise had been to make him feel better, not worse.

"You're worried about what they think of you, aren't you?" Ryoko blurted, taking a stab in the dark.

Adric kicked a stone and sent it forward, but said nothing.

"You're worried that they'll always be like this, that you'll always end up between them, and you're afraid to choose?" she ventured again.

The stone skipped forward a few more feet, prompted by Adric's toe.

"You're worried that you're starting to prefer one over the other, and you're afraid she's the wrong one?"

Adric's toe missed the stone, but he didn't seem to notice.

"You want some hot, lurid, trampoline action and you don't know how to ask?"

That stopped the Alzarian cold. "Ryoko... " he said, teeth gritted.

Ryoko rolled her catlike eyes skyward. "Hey, he reacted. That means he's not brain dead after all." She smiled. "So, which is it? What's got you so uptight right now?"

Adric sighed again. "I don't know if you'd understand."

"Try me."

Adric took a deep breath. "Do you ever think about your future?" he asked. "Think about where you'll end up, what you'll end up doing, who you'll end up with?"

"All the time." Ryoko admitted, wondering where this was going. Their pace picked up again. "I wouldn't be on Earth if I didn't."

Adric nodded. "Yes, I know. And I know why, too." He took a deep gulp. "But do you ever think about what your future will be like, if it doesn't have Tenchi in it?"

That stopped Ryoko cold. "What does Tenchi have to do with this?" she asked, coolly.

"Everything, for you and your future." he said, and continued. "Do you ever think about what your future will be like, if it turns out that your destiny is to be another Ukyo? To always be on the outside, looking in on someone that you wish more than anything to be close to, but knowing that it'll never be allowed? That your fate is already decreed, and they're not in it?"

To her credit, Ryoko managed to control her emotions long enough to at least appear thoughtful. "Yes, I've thought about it." she said, weakly. "I've thought about it a lot. But until it actually happens, there isn't anything to be done except hope and work to make sure it doesn't happen."

They resumed their pace.

"Ryoko..." Adric said, after some moments of silence, "I don't have that luxury. I'm only here on a technicality, remember? It's easier for them to reanimate me than to keep having to pull new ones in from outlying reality planes."

Ryoko considered that, and chose her next words carefully. "But nevertheless, you're still here, which means there's still some hope. Besides, there's no guarantee it'll always be that way. You know as well as I do that there's always the possibility they'll reverse themselves, that there'll be a change of heart. I mean, how many times should Davros be dead by now? Besides, you keep pointing out yourself: you aren't actually shown to die, just that it's heavily inferred.

"Yeah, right." Adric responded, sarcastically. "And in Mad Larry's next book, I'm the new Grandfather Paradox. Ryoko, realistically, you know what the likelihood of that ever happening is. Two words: 'Fat' and 'chance'."

"But the point is, there's nothing that says it won't happen." Ryoko pleaded. "It has happened elsewhere, with even less validity. Why not here, why not you? That's what you've got to keep hoping for."

Adric took another deep sigh. "I used to. Now I'm not so certain it's even worth it to kid myself."

They reached the edge of the car park, the 'Round looming nearby across the auto and TARDIS-crowded asphalt. Ryoko decided to try another tack. "Then forget about the psycho and concentrate on Ember." A knowing smile crept across her lips. "Unless, of course, Ember isn't who you meant when you referred to looking in at someone from the outside."

Adric's face reddened. "That's not what I..."

"Agreed. Your total lack of elaboration was most glaring."

The glower he gave her was withering. His pace suddenly picked up as he made a beeline toward the entrance. "I'm running late." he mumbled, putting much effort into achieving a small degree of distance between them.

Out of long habit, his eyes had now also started darting from side to side, looking for any tell tale sign of an imminent ambush. Thankfully, nothing seemed readily apparent. He managed to make his way to the pub's doorway, but before he could reach the handle, the door began to open. The young Alzarian took a step back and to the side, to be out of the way of whoever was on their way out.

He grimaced at the sight that now greeted him.

A line of three people were stepping out, one after the other. From the look of their t-shirts and the other regalia they wore, they were probably fans -- two male and one female. The female was heavy-set and sporting an "I (heart) Turlough" button; the other two were smaller and thinner, one with longish, slightly greasy hair and wearing a 4Doc scarf, the other with slightly effeminate posture, a thin goatee, and wearing a Dalek MOMI t-shirt. The three had begun to file past Adric and Ryoko when suddenly they stopped, smirked, and gawked openly at the young Alzarian.

"Why, look." Greasy-hair-with-scarf said in an oddly whiny voice, pointing at Adric. The smell of alcohol was plainly apparent. "It's the nuis... I mean, it's Ah-dwic!"

The three giggled. Adric rolled his eyes and simply tried to take a step towards the door and away from them, but found the heavy-set woman in his way. "Pardon me," he said tersely, "but I have to go through..."

"What's your hurry?" the woman said, with a degree of taunt. "Need to find out if you were right?" Another giggle.

"Boom!" said effeminate-with-Dalek-shirt. All three burst into uncontrolled laughter.

Adric took three deep breaths, but said nothing. From the corner of his eye, he could see Ryoko's face meaningfully but ever-so-slightly contort. Her smile became one thin, straight, nasty line, one hand clenching into a fist, the other moving into the grip one would expect if one were about to handle an energy blade. The Alzarian reached behind him and placed his hand on her arm to dissuade her from going any further.

He met their stares with one of his own. "Please pardon me," he repeated, evenly, "but I do have to go inside." In his mind he added, *for your sake, because I don't think Ryoko will take it kindly if you refuse.* On the other hand, a part of him was actually hoping they would refuse.

But the woman simply stepped aside. "Of course." she smirked, and with mock exaggeration, presented him with the doorway.

It was only then that the three actually noticed the young woman hovering beside Adric, especially the fact that she was A) dressed in an outfit tight enough to leave little to the imagination, and B) curvaceous enough to leave imaginations running rampant. Ryoko took one look at their surprised faces, and immediately decided to pull a page from Ember Ashe's playbook. She gave them her best innocent smile and wrapped her arms around the Alzarian. "Come on, Darling." she said aloud, sweetly and dreamily. "We have so much to do together tonight..." She promptly pushed him through the doorway and past the threesome's startled faces.

Once inside, Adric and Ryoko managed to catch the three's parting comments, in which the words "dickwad", "pathetic", and "sucks" figured prominently. The door finally shut behind them.

Adric gave a long exhale. Somehow, he looked even more melancholy than he had before.

"Who were those jerks?" Ryoko asked, letting go as soon as they were safely inside.

"Fans."

"Them? They acted more like assholes."

"In some corners, that's much the same thing."

Ryoko shook her head. "Why did you just let them...?"

Adric turned grimly towards her. "And what would have been the point?" he responded tersely, without letting her finish. "What have we just been talking about, Ryoko? Trust me, I've been dealing with their kind for long enough." He stormed off towards the bar. "I'll always be the obnoxious dead kid to them, end of story. I can't change their minds, I'll never be able to change their minds, so I don't even try to bother anymore. Just leave them alone, and they usually leave you alone. That's just the way things are."

Ryoko watched him evenly as he disappeared behind a door that said "Employees Only", and once more shook her head.

This wasn't going the way they'd been hoping, she thought.

*****

Outside, the three fans were getting into their car -- a brand new red Toyota Corolla. They were still laughing over their encounter with the Annoying One and couldn't wait to tell their friends about how thoroughly they'd "stuck it" to the most universally despised character in all of fandom, when the sound of a bang and a metallic crunch rattled their little vehicle. It rocked rapidly for a few seconds. The three stopped, and looked at each other curiously.

Then the woman, who was sitting in the driver's seat, carefully turned the key in the ignition. A few clicks sounded, but nothing happened.

She tried again. Still nothing happened, not even a groan from the engine. The only thing that could be heard was the clicking noise in the steering column.

They got out of the car, and curiously began to walk around it, trying to figure out what was wrong.

It was the effeminate one who found the hole. It was barely larger than his finger, but was still warm when he touched it. The hole was on the passenger side of the car, toward the front and just below the level of the hood. The impact appeared to aim inwards and straight toward the engine block, an appearance which was later confirmed by an amused mechanic, who eventually managed to extract a .50 caliber armor-piercing slug amid the shattered remains of the vehicle's cylinder head.

*****

"Good shot, Alpha Seven."

"Thank you, Sir."

*****

The Round was as peculiarly active as it always was, and Adric was once more on-shift bartending. Relative safety for a few hours, he thought.

But relative to what?

It had thus far been a boringly eventful evening. Turlough had done a fairly credible Linda Blair impersonation (complete with head spin, levitation, and pea soup), for which they were still cleaning up the mess. A dazed and slightly stunned Katarina had shown up for work and had found a large number of robed beings standing outside, all of whom hailed her as a savior and a heroine (she greeted them all embarrassedly, but declined to elaborate to anyone else what it was all about). The Doctors were all arguing among themselves as to who should have the honor of attending the Barrayaran Emperor's wedding (the invitation clearly specified only one Doctor and one companion, but didn't specify which). 4Doc had been caught making another prank call on the pay phone. Oh yes, the Lenny Henry-Doctor and the Dave Allen-Doctor both made rare appearances, each pointing out that if the Atkinson-Doctor, Lumley-Doctor, Grant-Doctor(s), and Broadbent-Doctor were being allowed in, then they should as well.

But two female faces were nowhere in sight, and hadn't been all evening.

Considering the events of the previous day, Adric didn't know whether to be concerned or relieved. At least, he thought, the work was steady enough to keep his mood off the other thoughts that had been creeping in ever since.

He finished mixing a coconut rum for the Henry-Doctor, and pushed it toward that patron. The timelord gently waved away some of his strands of shoulder-length dreadlocked hair, and wordlessly took the drink and departed. The gap was filled by a very slender, red-haired young woman wearing a Cisco Systems sweatshirt and carrying a stack of papers.

"The usual?" Adric asked Melanie Bush, his hand already reaching underneath the counter for the bottle of carrot juice. Mel nodded but didn't look up from the papers in her hand. "Yes, that's fine." she said, intently examining one sheet. Adric grabbed a glass and poured her a drink, his eyes wandering toward the stack of pages.

One eyebrow slowly raised. "Story assignments?" he asked.

Mel nodded once more, still not tearing her attention away from them. She took a drink from her glass. "Uh huh. They just came in. I'm trying to sort everything before I pass them all out." She shuffled a few pages, then tapped them vertically against the counter to straighten the stack out. A slight look of bemusement spread on her face. "Some unusual pairings in this batch. Should be interesting."

Adric was about to open his mouth to ask the obvious question, but was beaten to it by Ace, who happened to be shuffling past at the time. "Oi, are those assignments?" she asked excitedly. "Anything in there for me?"

Mel handed her a few sheets. "A novel and a couple of audios, plus all the usual small stuff."

Ace grabbed the papers gleefully, but by that time word had quickly spread and Mel began to be inundated with similar questions.

"Just wait a moment, just wait a moment, I'll get to everyone if you'll all just hold on... Jo, you and 3rd Doctor, as usual... Hmm, this one's mine... so's this one... Anji, Fitz, here are yours... Sarah-Jane, you and 7th Doctor -- remember to pack a kevlar vest; it's a McIntee... Evelyn, here. You've even got a novel appearance in this lot... Steven... Dodo... Jamie... Turlough -- no, it's not Christopher Bulis this time... Leela... Charley... pardon me, but could you please pass these over to 6th Doc and 4th Doc? Thank you... Peri... Romana..." Her voice trailed off as the stack became increasing light, until only a couple of sheets remained.

Finally, she carefully offered the bartender one sheet, face-down. "Um, sorry, not much this time. Just a piece of fanfic, I'm afraid."

Adric looked at the proffered paper hesitantly. "Print, ADWC, or RADW?" he asked cautiously, but taking the paper anyway.

Mel grimaced. "RADW."

Adric smirked, but did not bother to so much as glance at the sheet. "Oh. Lovely." he muttered, then folded it up and placed it in his chest pocket, unread.

Mel thought she caught a ripple of something cross his face. "Yes, well..." she low-voiced cautiously, "I suppose not everyone..." She bit her lip to kill the words she was about to speak, then changed her tone to something a little more cheery. "Well, there's always next time... you never know."

"Right, there's always next time." he agreed, tonelessly. But once more, she thought she could detect that flicker of something pass across his features. "There's always hope."

"Yeah, there's always hope."

A moment of silence. Adric's attention seemed to be... somewhere else, far off into the distance behind her.

"Refill?" he asked finally, abruptly, as if suddenly coming to his senses. He pointed to her glass.

"Yes, please." Mel confirmed, but her attention was now solidly affixed on the young Alzarian across the counter. She observed him intently as he poured more dark orange liquid into her glass, searching his face for any sign of the flickers she had momentarily thought she'd seen. But whatever it was had seemingly now passed; he poured the liquid stiffly but professionally, not once taking his eyes off the glass.

"So, who's left?" he asked conversationally, indicating the last remaining assignment sheet.

So intent with watching him was she that, without thinking about it, she handed Adric the assignment page for a look -- and immediately regretted it. The Alzarian took it and began to read, and once more Mel detected that flicker of something she couldn't quite define, only now more intense than it had been previously. And mixed within it, she thought, was just a hint of dismay.

"Well, well..." he muttered, his voice somewhat low. "'Asylum', hmmm? 4th Doc and her. A real novel, even. I assume this'll be a post-Terminus version of her?"

"From the looks of the assignment, yes." Mel answered evenly.

Adric handed her back the sheet, his face now a mask. "As you said, an unusual pairing. Should be interesting."

"Yes, it should." She took a sip of her drink. "Maybe you'll get a few days rest out of it, too." Mel suggested, trying to come up with something positive to say.

Adric merely nodded. "Yes, perhaps. One can hope." He began to polish the counter with a wet rag, cleaning up some of the minor spills. As he did so, Mel heard one last set of whispered, deadpan words as he turned away. "One can always hope." the words were, the irony in the voice not the least bit consistent with the sentiment.

Mel watched as he went on to a few of the other patrons, mechanically filling their requests and keeping his small talk to a minimum. She watched silently, contemplatively, as he answered the calls of "Dead Boy" without comment, filling glasses and mixing drinks and never once saying more than what was absolutely necessary. Keeping his distance now, she realized. Away from everyone else, as if glad that the presence of the counter could act as a barrier, keeping them all at arm's length. And, most distressingly, not one person there so much as noticing, much less caring, that there was a perceptible change in him.

Not one, she thought. Not a single one.

Not a single goddamn one of them.

*****

Normally, Ryoko rather enjoyed spending time in the 'Round, mostly because of the vast and expansive list of alcoholic beverages available for consumption, many of which she previously had no idea were even available anywhere in this galactic sector. But now was not being one of those nights. In fact, she had barely touched the drink that bubbled and steamed before her all evening.

She was also trying desperately not to think about Adric's earlier point about Tenchi, but found that banishing the thought was not nearly as easy as she wanted it to be.

A Polly-shaped shadow crept across her table, and she looked up. "Name and universe?" the blonde-haired young woman asked.

"Huh? Oh, Lt. Uhura, Star Trek universe." Ryoko said, automatically, more because it was the first name that came to mind.

Polly nodded, and made a check on the liquid crystal display of the slate in her hand. "Right, got you. Welcome back." Polly looked at the ersatz Lt. Uhura curiously. "Um, pardon me for asking, but you look a little different than last time..."

Ryoko nodded. "I dyed my hair." she said, in a complete deadpan.

"Oh, that it explains it, then." Polly smiled, taking the explanation into account. "Have a pleasant evening." And with that, the local continuity cop made an about face and moved to intercept a leather-clad, short-cropped blond haired vampire that had just stepped into the entrance.

Wesley and Lucas showed up just then, both looking glum.

"No sign of Ember, huh?" she asked them as they slunk down next to her. Katarina came over to take their drink orders.

"Nope, not a clue." Wes answered. "It's like she's completely disappeared."

Lucas nodded in slow confirmation. "Which, after last night, I'm not surprised."

Ryoko grimaced. Ember may be a nice kid, she thought, but the girl had a frustrating tendency to come and go without warning.

"Any sign of, err, Psycho Bitch?" Lucas asked.

"No. She hasn't been around all evening, either."

Wesley grunted. "So, what do you think? Mutual Assured Destruction? They both killed each other fighting over Adric?"

"Do you think that's what his problem is?" Lucas suggested. "He's got two girls fighting over him now, and he doesn't know which one to choose?"

"No, it's not that." Ryoko said. Her gaze was still on her friend across the room, who at that moment was silently drawing a pint for the 6th Doctor. "It's deeper than that." In as few words as possible, she then tried to explain their earlier odd conversation.

When she was finished, Wesley nodded. "I'm actually not surprised he said that. I think it's pretty obvious that he's always been more disappointed by how things turned out than he lets on."

There was a scrape on the floor in front of them, and a short, thin shadow stepped forward over the table's edge, casting itself upon three surprised faces.

"Umm, hi." Mel asked, looking at each one of them in turn. "Err, do you mind if I sit here? I think I need to talk to you people about Adric..."

*****

Once, he thought, all he'd wanted was nothing more than to fit in. To belong somewhere, to be a part of something. To not be an outsider.

Now, he looked around the pub, and he was beginning to realize how utterly stupid that desire had been. Stupid and illogical, given the evidence the quasiverse was forever foisting upon him. Like now.

"Benny, you're drunk." he told the galactic archeologist, by way of explaining why he was refusing to grant her request for another pint of Romulan Ale, or anything else for that matter. Normally, dealing with an unruly patron was Francois' job, but the Ogron was at that moment outside dealing with a gang of "yoots" who had somehow gotten the notion that TARDISes were an ideal place to spray-paint their tags, and was therefore acting appropriately. Thus Adric had been left in charge of the counter, with all the responsibilities that entailed.

"And you're pathetic." the drunken Bernice retorted, with a finger-pointing, face-scrinching, alcohol-driven giggle. "And tomorrow morning, I'll be sober. And you'll STILL BE PATHETIC!"

And sometime later that day, Adric thought, someone might come around -- probably not her, but one of her associates -- and apologize on her behalf, and say she didn't really mean it, that she was drunk and didn't know what she was saying, etc. And he'd have to accept that apology, because there was really not much else that could be done. And he'd have to let them go away, thinking that they'd cleared their conscience. Until the next time, when it would happen all over again. And as for him, he'd just have to endure it, endure all their other jibes. Drunken or not.

Every day. Every kharak-cursed day.

*****

"Sure, take a seat." Wesley said, motioning at some of the vacant pub chairs.

Without looking, the red-haired woman reached behind her and grabbed a seat from another table, not noticing that a recently recovered Turlough was about to sit down upon it. The Trionite fell to the floor with a thud. Mel sat down in the chair, oblivious to the howls of protest coming from behind and below her.

She looked in turn at each one of their faces, noting especially their dour expressions.

"Look," she whispered, "I need to talk to you all about Adric. He's been acting kind of erratic lately, and well, today he's gone absolutely manic-depressive. And I think I just made matters worse with that last set of story notices I handed out." She looked at each one in turn. "You're his friends. Do any of you know what's been happening with him?"

Ryoko snorted, but it was Wesley who answered her question. "Yeah, sort of." he confirmed. "We've been, umm, trying to..." (A not-so-subtle cough came from Lucas, which Mel could hardly fail to note.) "...er, help him get through a few things."

"Make existence a little less morbid for him..." Lucas tried to clarify, failing miserably.

"And maybe keep him choosing this side of the life line rather than the hereafter..." Ryoko finished. She was eyeing Mel suspiciously.

Mel nodded, hunch confirmed. "But it hasn't been going the way you'd hoped, right?"

"Not exactly." Wesley said, to which the others made grim faces and Lucas added a "To put it mildly."

Mel nodded once more, and some of the recent pub gossip came to mind. "Let me guess. You set him up on a date with someone, and it didn't quite go very well, did it?"

"What's it to you?" Ryoko muttered, from behind her tankard of noxious beverage. Wesley's elbow shot out and tried to dig itself into the space-pirate's side, but if that action was meant to dissuade her, it didn't seem to work. "It's not like any of you ever give a damn..."

"Ryoko..." Wesley low-voiced, teeth clenched.

"All right, all right, I'm shutting up." she muttered, taking a long draught from her drink but still continuing to eye the red-haired woman skeptically.

"Sorry," Wes apologized to Mel, now suddenly realizing he had become spokesbeing for the three by default, "but sometimes she gets a little, err, snippy with people."

"No need to apologize." Mel acknowledged, guiltily. "For what it's worth, I think she's probably right. There are too many here who would rather put blinders on than be even halfway decent towards him." She sighed. "Sometimes I wonder why he even bothers to stick around, the way he sometimes gets treated."

*****

"Hey Dead Boy!" a voice called for his attention. He looked over his shoulder, to find Roz and the Lenny Henry-Doctor sharing mirthful, slightly inebriated, laughter with each other. "One Adric's Demise, Bartender!"

Wordlessly, Adric gathered the ingredients, which were among the items that were usually left easily accessible. He slapped a glass down on the counter before them, then looked up into their faces with a blank expression...

...and met their eyes with an intense glare of his own...

...and poured the ingredients into the glass without once watching, yet still managing to mix everything in the proper proportions...

...and lifted the little ice figurine of himself an arms-length above, and let it fall into the glass with a "plop"...

...and pushed the concoction across the counter to the customer...

...without once either tearing his gaze away from them, or even blinking.

"Your drink, ma'am." he said, without a hint of inflection.

*****

"You can always tell when he's really bothered, because that's when he starts trying to act defiant to their jibes." Mel pointed out. "The problem is, they don't see that what they're doing is wrong in the first place, so when he acts that way, it just reinforces their opinion of him."

Wesley nodded his head in agreement. "So, in other words, he's damned if he does and damned if he doesn't."

"Pretty much."

Ryoko put her glass back down, still eyeing Mel distrustfully. "Yeah. And if it had been me at that one Christmas, everyone there would have been dead meat when I got back. You can't do that to someone all the time and expect them not to feel anything."

Mel nodded in somber agreement. "A lot of that has stopped, but I'm afraid that's probably more due to the fact that the ADF takes such an exception to it rather than any real change..."

*****

"You know what this place needs?" Sabalom Glitz suggested to the 6th Doctor. "Another good Competition Night. Why not bring those back, eh? They always were good for a lark..."

6Doc looked slightly uncomfortable. "Um, Glitz... I don't think you should..."

"Oh, why not?

Sabalom heard a click, and felt a gentle tap on his shoulder. He turned around... and found a rather varied assortment of gun muzzles aimed quite definitively at his head, all held by a group of twitching fatigue-clad individuals.

"Because we say not." Diane said, quite cheerfully.

"Things could get quite messy." Charlie quipped.

"And Francois doesn't like it if things get messy." Heather observed pleasantly.

"So you wouldn't want him to get angry at you now, would you?" Vick3ie ended, a cheerily insane expression on her face.

Glitz's mind fixed itself on the fact that the large number of muzzles aimed at him was roughly equal to the number of fingers on triggers. Twitching fingers on triggers. "Err, umm, I suppose I could be wrong, you know..."

*****

"You know," Melanie said finally, after due consideration, "if it weren't for the fact that she's an absolute psycho, I'd say just go ahead and try setting him up with..." The sudden look on their faces stopped Mel cold. She looked at each in turn as they all tried very hard not to meet her eyes. Suddenly, Mel glanced down at the single remaining assignment sheet, still in her hand and still undelivered. And then she knew what it was that had been on the Alzarian's face, back at the bar. "Oh my god," she inhaled, recalling that pained look. "That's exactly what you three have been trying to do, haven't you? Set him up with..."

"What makes you think that?" Wesley said, a little too quickly, then cursed himself for the speed of his retort.

"Because, given their track record lately she's the one that makes the most sense, and, well... because he didn't seem to react too well to this." Mel handed the assignment sheet over to Wesley, who took it with some curiosity. But that was followed very quickly by a short string of muttered, choice curses.

"What is it?" Ryoko demanded.

Wes handed the sheet over to her. "It's a story assignment for our favorite psycho." he pronounced. "She's going to be in a novel that takes places sometime after she left the series. In other words, she's about to have the semi-official addition of a few years of character growth..."

*****

A pariah, he thought bizarrely. He was a pariah. An undesirable. An outcast from polite society. No, what was that term Anji had used, to describe a similar group of people? Untouchable, that was it. He was an untouchable. The bottom rung of the local caste system.

"Hey Dead Boy! Another pint!"

"I have a name." he muttered, but the patron acted as if he hadn't heard him.

"Hey Dead Boy! Two more glasses!"

"I have a name." he said to the two on the opposite side of the counter, but they were too busy celebrating their upcoming novel to take any notice.

"Hey Dead Boy! Another round for these blokes!"

"I have a name." he told the group, but they continued to joke among themselves, ignoring him.

"Oi, Dead Boy! More at this end!"

"I have a name." he stated, matter-of-factly, in no uncertain terms.

The young woman wrinkled her nose. "Yeah, whatever. I need some service here..."

*****

"Fundamentally, it doesn't change a thing." Mel assured them. "A lot of fans don't take the novels as canon anyway, and so character amplifications established in them aren't necessarily firm."

Lucas looked confused. "But, I thought that if your Writer Mafia say something..."

"It's only set in stone if you're from the books." Wesley pointed out. "If you're originally from the TV series, expansions like this are considered optional. Trust me, we encounter this in the Trek universe all the time."

"Not to mention the fact that there's always alternate universes," Ryoko agreed. "At the moment in my corner, we're up to three different official continua, each slightly different from the other." (And, she silently mused, she was no closer to getting Tenchi in any of them).

Lucas, however, looked even more confused. "Well, OK, but if that's the case, then why would this be a problem for him?"

"Because to him, it's one more piece of evidence that she's out of his reach." Wesley explained. "Think about what Ryoko told us earlier. He already thinks the gulf between them is too wide to cross. Well, now it's about to get even wider."

"She has a future." Mel nodded slowly in understanding. "He doesn't. It's as simple as that."

*****

Once, all he'd wanted was to fit in.

"Yo, Dead Boy! Another round!"

Whispered, in the background: "...did I hear correctly? She called him pathetic?"

"Another pint, Dead Boy!"

Whispered, in the background: "...I just can't see what that Ember girl sees in him..."

"Over here, Dead Boy!"

Whispered, in the background: "...he's getting obnoxious again. Honestly, all evening he's..."

"Oi, Dead Boy! Do hurry up!"

Whispered, in the background: "...and blew his brains out! It was so hilarious..."

"Hey, Dead Boy! More!"

Whispered, in the background: "...Naaaa. She may be a psycho, but she's way too smart to get involved..."

"Hey, Dead Boy! Two glasses!"

"Hey, Dead Boy! No ice!"

"Hey, Dead Boy! Over here!"

"Hey, Dead Boy! Over here!"

"Hey, Dead Boy! Over here!"

"Hey, Dead Boy!"

Now, he thought, what he could really use was to be left alone.

*****

"Look." Mel told them. "I know I probably haven't been the best friend of his around here, but I like to think I'm at least a friend to him. And I know what he's going through, because I'm usually the only one to get stuck with more votes for Least Liked Companion than he does. I want to help, whatever you've got cooking. He's way overdue for having something good happen to him for once, and I'd like to make sure it actually does happen this time. Besides... I still have a few axes to grind with fandom myself. Watching them choke at the thought of those two getting together would just about make my day."

Wes turned to his other two friends. "Well?" he asked.

Lucas shrugged, while Ryoko grimaced skeptically, but otherwise seemed to raise no objection.

The Starfleet wunderkind made a command decision. "OK, if you want to help, fine." he whispered. "But it's more complicated than just putting the two of them together, and we can't continue to talk here. Too many ears, not enough white noise, if you understand my meaning."

"Let's head for Ucchan's." Lucas volunteered. "That's sympathetic ground. We can talk safely there."

A sound from the front of the pub caught Ryoko's attention. "Hold your horses." the cyan-haired girl said. "Guess who just walked in the door."

All heads at the table turned to the front as two familiar faces stepped in, one holding the door for the other, and both dressed in clothing which one would assume had been meant for a nice night on the town. The young woman for whom the door was being held thanked her partner, who said nothing, but nevertheless watched her pass with eyes wide open, frozen like a deer caught in the headlights.

"Oh great. NOW she shows up." Ryoko muttered. "Just what he needs, tonight of all nights."

"Yeah," Melanie agreed. "But what's Mike Yates doing with her?"

*****

Activity at the bar was now slowing off from its peak, as celebratory drinking gradually came into contact with the outside limits of local driving sobriety laws. But it was still busy, busy enough that at first he didn't notice her standing pointedly at one end of the counter. Much less the fact that someone else was standing very closely behind her.

He had just filled the brooding vampire's empty glass with more scotch and was about to leave the undead to his grief, when he heard another male voice call for his attention. He turned to its source... and froze.

Even though her head was turned away from him, he recognized her immediately. Those soft, brown curls of hers were hard to misplace in his memory, after all, although he'd never seen them sitting atop a black dress quite like that before. But what made him freeze was not her attire (although, to be quite frank, a certain segment of his subconscious did file that image away for later perusal), but the identity of the person directly behind her. And his proximity. And the fact that he had his hand on her almost bare shoulder. And the fact that he was dressed almost equally appropriately.

And that she was having a light, humorous conversation with that person, and hadn't once so much as declined to acknowledge his presence.

Mike Yates' mouth opened and words evidently were issued, but for the life of him, none of them registered on the Alzarian. Just the fact that she was there, that Yates was there, and that the two of them seemed to be enjoying themselves. Everything else seemed to have fallen off his level of consciousness.

Adric forced himself back to reality. "I-I-I'm sorry," he stammered, "what was that again?"

Yates pointed to the taps. "I said one stout, please."

The E-space publican cleared his mental fog, and gave a quick indication toward Yate's companion. "And...?" he said, carefully. Unconsciously, one hand had already begun reaching underneath the counter for the first Demise ingredients.

But that particular order didn't come. Instead, she simply responded "Oh, just a Sprite will do." to Yates' quick inquiry, and did so directly to her date and not the person behind the counter.

"Did you get that?" Yates questioned the bartender.

Adric nodded grimly. "Yeah. I got that."

*****

"Right. That's it." Mel declared flatly, watching the exchange at the counter from across the room. "I've reached my limit. It's one thing when those two can't decide what they want. It's another when they start doing real damage to each other." She rose to her feet, as did the others. "If we don't do something now, those two are going to end up taking actions they'll both regret."

"What are you going to do?" Lucas asked, as Mel was about to step away.

She indicated the other end of the room, where Yates was leading the Trakenite to a secluded corner. "I'm going to see if I can talk to Mike privately, see if he understands just what sort of minefield she's dragging him into. And why."

Ryoko nodded, and turned to her co-conspirators. "Lets just get Adric out of here tonight, see if we can talk him into going away for a few days. I think what he needs more than anything is to unwind from it all."

*****

'She's just trying to get back at you for Ember,' he told himself firmly. 'You've been practically expecting her to do something like this ever since Nerima. It doesn't mean a thing.'

But knowing this didn't make it any easier.

Glumly, he watched them from the counter as they sat at a table, achingly aware of the bottomless feeling that felt to be opening up inside.

'They seem to be enjoying themselves,' he told himself. 'Mike's being very gracious, and she seems to be enjoying his company.'

The universe gaped open, and something felt like it was plummeting.

'This just proves once more that she doesn't care,' he thought. 'She delights in finding ways to hurt you. No rational person would go to these lengths to constantly find ways to hurt someone. Therefore, she doesn't really care, and here's the proof. She can only hurt you if you let her. Don't let her.'

Vertigo. Falling. Small. Very small.

'He's taller than you are,' a voice echoed. 'He's also older, better spoken, better built. He has better sartorial sense, is more charming, and has a far more interesting job. Better than yours. Better than they've given you. Better than they'll ever give you. Better than...'

Stop it.

A hard tug at his sleeve brought him around. "Haven't you been listening to anything I just said?" an exasperated voice asked. Adric immediately identified it as belonging to one of the Chris Cwejs.

Adric shook his head absently. "I'm sorry, what was that again?"

Chris read again from the sheet of paper before him. "I said I need two martinis, dry..."

'You're stuck here, and there's nothing you can do about it.'

"...two packets of crisps,..."

'No matter what you do, you'll never get your chance again, because they'll never let you.'

"...a chili-potato, one pint of... hey, are you even listening?"

'Never be able prove yourself to them. To anyone. Especially to one.'

"I've got an order, here! Come on, Adric, wake up!"

'Never be able to go forward. No future, no hope.'

"HEY DEAD BOY!!"

'Just... continuity.'

"COME ON, I HAVEN'T GOT ALL..."

A pea-green sleeve shot toward Chris' throat, its hand grabbing at his collar, instantly drawing it tight. It dragged the young Adjudicator halfway across the hardwood counter top.

The Alzarian's head leaned toward the other's.

"Chris?" Adric snarled evenly, "Shove it up your ass."

Then he pushed the older man away, untied the apron from around his waist, and retreated from the counter, pausing only to declare to Francois that he was on break and leaving a number of stunned, slack-jawed faces gaping in his wake.

*****

She was nice, Mike Yates had to admit to himself, but overall not his type. Something about this penchant for wanting to turn virtually every conversation into some discussion or another on weapons just didn't sit well with him. Although, he had to admit, he'd never before had the pleasure of making the acquaintance of so knowledgeable an expert in such pleasing a form.

"...the .308 ammo always makes it sound like a heavy magnum," she was telling him pleasantly, "but the muzzle brake Armalite sells is quite effective, and really does help maintain the sight picture."

Mike Yates smiled vacantly. "You don't say..."

"But best of all, a number of the accessories they make for the AR-15 also fits the AR-10, including, I might add, the DPMS ambidextrous selector switch..."

"Wow. I didn't know that..."

"Which of course means that... oh, hello Mel! How are things with you this evening?"

Melanie Bush stopped at their table, slightly uneasy. But as she did so, she could have sworn she saw a wave of relief cross Yates' features. "Oh hello, umm, you two." Mel said, conversationally, eyeing each of them carefully. "Everything's fine. How are you this evening?"

"Oh fine, fine." Mike confirmed. "We just went out for a little dinner and, um..."

"...came here afterwards." the Trakenite added, with a slight emphasis on the last word.

Mel nodded. "Good, good. That sounded, um, pleasant." The red- haired woman seemed to consider something, bit her lower lip, then reached a decision. "Uh, Mike. Can I talk to you for a moment, please? It's, umm, rather important and, umm, rather private." As a courtesy, she then added a "Do you mind?" to Mike's date.

The younger woman waved her hand. "Oh, no. Not at all."

Mike's expression was somewhat confused, but he understood enough of Mel's look to decide that it was probably in his best interest to play along. He got to his feet. "Sure, Mel. No problem." He gave his date a pleasant smile. "We won't be long."

"Take your time." the Trakenite said cheerily, and watched briefly as Mike Yates and Melanie Bush retreated towards the door of TTR's LAN room, of which Mel (being the 'Round's resident sysop) had almost exclusive control.

For a long moment she sat quietly at her table, pointedly not looking at anything other than her half-finished glass of clear fizzy liquid. No, she thought, no need to look anywhere else. No need to acknowledge that she was having anything but a good time. Yes, a very good time. No need to check what was going on at the bar, either. No, not at all. Especially not there. The bar was entirely irrelevant. Two can play at this game, after all. Not that she cared, mind you. No, not at all. She didn't need him to...

He wasn't behind the bar, she realized.

Those three annoying friends of his were standing there, though, trying to get Francois' attention while the latter was evidently having a "discussion" with Chris Cwej. But he was nowhere in sight. Most curious.

Wait, she thought. Those friends of his were here. Which obviously meant that trampy, little... hussy... couldn't be far behind, since she always seemed to hang out with them. And if he wasn't there now, that could only mean...

Her nails began to dig into the palms of her hands.

*****

Fitz and Anji were both standing beside the time clock when Adric walked up to it. "Excuse me." he muttered, and grabbed for his time card.

Fitz's eyes went wide. "Uh, what are you doing, Adric?" he asked apprehensively.

"Punching out." And with that, he pushed the card into the punching mechanism.

Fitz and Anji each glanced at the other, mouthed the words "Oh, shit!", and hurriedly began to put as much collateral damage safety between themselves and the Alzarian as they could manage.

With a wry smirk, Adric turned toward the pub and began to make his way into the thickest of the crowd. Word that he was now off the clock seemed to be spreading quickly, because the scramble of people getting out of his way was quite amusing to watch. And strangely, oddly satisfying...

Strange, he thought. Their table was vacant.

*****

"Is new rule." Francois was calmly telling the crew cut, blond-haired future cop. "Treat wait-staff with respect, or Francois might make mistake when mixing drinks. May mistakenly substitute hydrochloric acid for vodka. Learn new definition of rotgut, yes?"

Chris could only nod the acknowledgment. The pressure on his throat from the Ogron's hand, after all, was strong enough that he barely kept conscious.

"Good. We understand. We like when understanding is made." The Ogron lowered his arm, bringing the human's feet back into contact with the ground. "Francois want all people to understand. Think be much unfortunate if having misunderstandings."

A chorus of voices fervently agreed to this proposition.

"Hey, Francois!" Ryoko cried, after the commotion had died down. "Have you seen Adric?"

The Ogron shook his head. "Dead boy go, want rest. Long, difficult night, so Francois think dead boy need break." Francois' voice lowered. "Especially now with psycho girl pushing buttons."

"Any idea where he went?" Wesley asked.

"Is around. Not think too far. Maybe out..." Francois' voice cut abruptly, as he focused his attention on something in the crowded room. "Uh oh. Francois think irresistible force about to meet immovable object."

There was a bump, a yelp, and the sound of two surprised voices as they crashed to the floor.

Four sets of eyes watched the commotion with all the fascination of a train wreck in slow motion.

"So, what do you think?" Lucas observed dryly. "Is it time to say 'It can't possibly get any worse' yet?"

*****

"Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to..." the Trakenite muttered, slightly dazed.

"My fault, I wasn't..." the Alzarian said, equally disoriented, and at just the same moment.

Then they recognized their voices.

"Watch where you're going, swamp rat!" she spat.

"ME? You're the one who ran into..." came his retort.

They were both on the floor, but now each was trying frantically to get back up. Around them (although neither seemed to have as yet noticed), the crowd had thinned considerably, creating a void surrounded by a wall of disinterested viewers.

As Adric scrambled back to his feet, his hands furiously groped for a handhold, any handhold, with which to steady himself. Not looking, one hand came to rest on something to push against. A soft something.

A small, mound-shaped, very soft something.

His brain had just made the stunned identification when he felt the slap across his jaw.

"You... you... PERVERT! You!" she snarled, her other arm over her chest in a vague attempt at protection.

Adric finished hauling himself back to his feet. "For that, I'm sorry." he mumbled, wiping away the single red trickle that came from one nostril, ironically with the same hand. "THAT was an accident."

"Oh, please." she said, furiously. "Save your apologies for someone who cares." She returned to her feet and began dusting herself off.

"Nevertheless, it's the truth." he responded, emphatically, his fists tightly clenching. "I was just... oh, never mind, what's the use? I might as well not even bother." He returned to the direction he'd come from and took several angry steps.

"The point is, I was having a good evening until you came along, and now you've ruined it," She said, also turning away, intending to go back the way she had just come. "Keeper, I swear. I wish you'd just stay dead for once and out of our misery..."

Adric halted, cold. His brow furrowed, as a thought took hold and refused to leave.

Then he turned around.

"All right, this time I'll bite." he declared to her retreating form. "Why?"

"What?" she said, stopping, facing him again. For a split second, he thought she seemed surprised that the question had even been asked.

"Why? Why do you wish I were dead? What did I do to make you hate me so?"

Her jaw dropped. "Simple... uh, you...errr..."

"You know, that's the one thing I've never been able to piece together. I mean, I usually know when I've made a mistake, because everyone oh-so-freely keeps pointing it out to me for days afterwards. But with you, there's nothing I can point to that makes any sense..."

*****

"What do you think, guys?" Ryoko asked. "Wade in there and hope we can get him out in one piece?"

"He's doing that hand motion thing again." Wesley observed. "He only does that when he's either excited or in earnest."

*****

"So what was it?" Adric continued, teeth clenched and waving his left hand like an axe. "Was it something I did, something I said? Something I didn't say? What?"

"Ii...it should be obvious." she stammered, but then quickly recovered. "But of course, to someone as dense as you are..."

"Enlighten me."

"Well, just look at you." she said, wrinkling her nose. "Your whole person is objectionable. You dress stupidly, you have no sense of decorum, you look funny, your voice is irritating..."

"Ah, I see. So you object to me on purely aesthetic grounds."

"...you're always whining, always complaining..."

"What? Because I object to having my brains blown out all the time?"

"...but most of all, you're bloody incompetent -- you couldn't even try to save Earth without getting it completely backwards!"

"Note to self: Do not make any snap, life-threatening decisions without first making certain everyone has remembered to inform me of all pertinent pieces of information. If there's no time to determine, stand aside and let genocide happen. Got it. Anything else?"

She began to count off more points with her fingers. "You're clueless, headstrong, disrespectful, and completely lacking in social manners, and in such a way, I might add, that can in no way be endearing to anyone. In short, you are as completely and thoroughly unimpressive a person as I have ever had the misfortune to encounter, and your continued existence is nothing more than a blight upon the multiverse."

"Completely?"

"Utterly."

"I see." Adric began to pace back and forth. "So, if I'm so irrelevant in your eyes, why even bother? Why pay even the slightest bit of attention? Why not just ignore me completely? That's what everyone else does, after all."

Her face reddened. "Because... because the only thing you are good for is getting killed. It's the only thing about you that's the least bit interesting. You shouldn't even be here, but yet you keep coming back, even when everyone else has all but shown you the door." She gave a short, humorless laugh. "You should actually be thankful to me for finding a purpose for your miserable existence. Something so clearly appropriate to your most outstanding abilities. Otherwise, you'd be so completely irrelevant, no one would pay the least attention to you at all."

"So, I'm just a guinea pig, then? A convenient scapegoat, a target of opportunity? Nothing more?"

"Less than nothing." she said, her voice quite serious. "Face it, Adric. You're a gutless, pathetic loser who will never amount to anything. I've given your sorry life the only meaning it can possibly have."

The Alzarian stopped pacing. "The only reason. That's it?"

"The only reason." She declared, firmly.

From meters away he searched her face, looking for something.

He reached to one side for a vacant chair, pulled it behind him, and sat down facing her. The Trakenite watched him, unsure of what he was doing.

"All right, then." he said, his voice quiet as he took the seat. "In that case, let's not waste any more time, shall we?"

She gave him a confused look. "Waste what time?"

"For you to kill me. That's what you're going to do, isn't it? I'm going to give you a free shot, here."

*****

"Like I said," Mike Yates was telling Mel, "I just assumed that since he'd evidently given up and moved on to someone else, she was now fair game."

Mel nodded. "That's reasonable. But from what I've been able to gather, the date Adric and that girl went on sounds more like something their friends put them up to than anything else."

"Those must be some friends." Yates observed, chuckling. "Wish my friends would fix me up like that." And with someone who looked like that, he didn't add.

"So there's no problem?"

Yates shook his head. "If he wants to try for her, I won't stand in his way. Of course, after one evening's worth of conversation, I'd say he'd have to have a screw loose to even think about it."

"Well, we'll certainly soon find out." Mel agreed, feeling very relieved. She made a mental note to have a talk with Tegan at the earliest opportune moment, to see about coordinating conspiracies.

Yates looked at his watch. "C'mon, I'd better get back to the table. Whatever the future, I'm still responsible for her tonight..."

"It's only been a few minutes." Mel pointed out. "I doubt anything could have happened in the meantime."

Mel opened the LAN room door. The two of them stepped into the pub main room... and saw immediately the two figures in the eye of a storm.

"I could be wrong, though."

*****

"Come on, I know you've got a weapon somewhere in that dress you're almost wearing..."

Her jaw set firmly. "Why should I even bother? I know you won't believe me when I tell you, but killing you is not something I think about all the time."

"That's not what it sounded like a moment ago."

"You are quite mistaken, I assure you."

"Fine. Then here are three reasons why. One -- as you say, it's all I'm good for; Two -- also as you say, I've completely ruined your evening; and Three -- I'm off the clock, so I'm about as wide open a sitting target as you can hope to find. Oh, and Four -- I've had an absolutely crappy night, and that would just about be the most appropriate way to end it."

"Nice try, but I don't do requests." Her eyes narrowed, and her voice became a sneer. "If you're that desperate to commit suicide, why don't you ask that little wench of yours? I'm sure she'd be more than willing to fulfill all of your sad, swamp rat fantasies."

Adric opened his mouth, but cut off the retort he was about to say. Instead, his tone became considerably lower. "I doubt she would. Not that request, at any rate."

"Oh? She seemed quite willing to be your replacement executioner yesterday."

"That too was an accident -- not that you'd ever believe it, I suppose." He met her sneer with one of his own. "You, on the other hand, might have been Swiss cheese if I hadn't stepped forward..."

*****

"This is getting bad." Lucas chafed apprehensively. "Listen to him. He's so angry, he's not thinking straight."

"He's going to ruin whatever chances he's got if he keeps this up." Wesley agreed. "Ryoko? We've got to step in and stop this."

Ryoko bit her lower lip. "No." She finally pronounced.

Wesley and Lucas stared hard at her, dumbfounded.

"Look at him carefully. He's pissed, but he's forcing himself to keep calm. I've seen him do this before. He's up to something, I'm sure of it."

Both of the young men looked at her as if she were crazy, but Ryoko ignored them. The space pirate girl continued to watch Adric intently, hoping she was right.

But she prepared herself for a flying grab-and-teleport, just in case.

*****

"If you think I should be grateful to you for your interference, you are sadly mistaken." the Trakenite pronounced. "Your pathetic friend would have been dead where she stood."

"Oh, possibly. Maybe even probably." Adric acknowledged with a nod. "I've seen you in action, after all. I know there was a good chance you'd have pulled something out and turned the tables on her, maybe even have made it very fatal. You excel in that sort of surprise turnabout. No, no, I'm not suggesting that you owe me anything."

"Good, because I don't. And neither will I ever." she said curtly, and abruptly made a tight about-face and began to stomp away.

But the Alzarian was not fazed. "I mention that," he continued, his voice steadily rising, "by way of explaining that I'm not intimidated by you anymore."

That stopped her. Cold.

The room went almost deathly silent.

"You know," Adric continued, in an almost pleasant tone of voice, not even noticing that he had the room's undivided attention, "repeat something enough times, and one can get used to just about anything. Even death. Even pain. Especially pain. After awhile you learn, if you'll pardon the expression, to live with it. It becomes part of the landscape, a fact that you simply have to contend with." His voice lowered significantly. "But as long as you refuse to let it get to you, it won't control you."

He watched her carefully from behind, noting that her fists were starting to clench into demure balls.

"Whatever you... or anyone else, for that matter... thinks of me, know now that I've got at least enough self-respect to not play this game anymore. Now, gods know I can't stop you from killing me, so I guess I might as well not even try. But I can attempt to make you understand that, whatever your reasons are, it won't do you any good. In short, you've lost. I no longer fear you, I refuse to be afraid of you." Adric took a deep breath, but continued to look at her back squarely. "If anything... I pity you, because you won't see what it is you're doing to yourself."

At his last words she spun back toward him, her face furious... and in one hand holding a small, compact phaser which had been hidden somehow, somewhere, on her person. She leveled the energy weapon at the seated figure across the clearing.

"Good." Adric said, watching carefully as she began to step once again towards him. "Now we're getting somewhere."

*****

"Oh hell." Wesley whispered. "There goes everything." Lucas shook his head in agreement.

Only Ryoko remained expressionless.

*****

If looks could kill, hers would have been banned by several intergalactic peace treaties as a weapon of mass destruction.

"I don't care about your pity." she sneered, her voice emphatic as she advanced on the Alzarian. "And I certainly don't care whether you're afraid of me or not. You're nothing more to me than an insignificant, whiny lab rat with delusions of importance. You are nothing, do you understand that? A complete and utter nothing!!"

"Oh, I don't think so." he said casually, but with a slight edge to his voice. "And what's more... I think a part of you doesn't think so either."

For a second, and only a second, her weapon's hand dropped.

"You think incorrectly." her voice declared, but louder than it had been. She stopped quite close to him, holding the weapon level to his head. She leaned forward, as if about to shoot. "There is nothing in me that would make me care the least." she hissed.

"Is there?"

The weapon became aimed at his forehead, squarely between the eyebrows. Nevertheless, his eyes looked up and continued to lock onto her directly.

"Go ahead." he said quickly, the words coming out as fast as he could voice them. "Squeeze the trigger. Put more distance between yourself and the person you once were. That's what you want, isn't it? To have a sense of power, of control, over something you don't have any control over." He leaned closer toward the weapon, until it was almost touching. "But in the process, you can't see what you're doing to yourself. You like it too much to want to give it up."

Her hand was rock-steady, but the gun did not fire.

Adric's voice was now barely a whisper. "I stepped between you and Ember because I couldn't stand by and watch a friend get hurt. Any friend. The same goes here." He gulped. "For whatever reason, you've decided that killing me is preferable to facing what you're unwilling to face. But you know where this is going to lead you, don't you? You know it, but yet you still won't stop."

The gun pressed against him, but still the fire did not come.

"If this is what it takes for you to realize that you are destroying yourself, then so be it. But you must understand that you will not find what you're looking for if you continue to travel down this road. You can shoot me, you can skewer me, you can chop me up into little bits and use me To Serve Man. But in the end it will not change the fact that you are running away. And unless you actually face that fact, it will only get more bleak."

His eyes met hers, piercingly. "Do you really want that kind of a dark future? Do you really want that kind of loneliness?" he asked. "Do you... Nyssa?"

Nyssa of Traken stared back at him. "You can have no understanding." she whispered, quietly, from behind firmly pressed teeth.

Adric of Alzarius continued to lock gaze. "Then why haven't you fired already?"

The two were locked in silence, while all around a multitude of beings held their breath.

For a moment, it looked as if she was in the midst of backing down. Her arm went slack, losing some of its statuesque hardness, and some took that as a sign to begin breathing again.

Then, she fired.

*****

For a long moment, she stared at the ashes that had once been a person sitting on a chair. Then she lowered the phaser to her side.

The noise in the pub returned to its previous level. A few whispers, a cough, and maybe a chuckle or two were all the apparent signs that anything out of the ordinary had happened in the last few minutes, although from time to time an odd, questioning glance could be noticed cast in the young woman's direction.

She didn't notice.

"Insolent... callous... ungrateful... weasel!" she muttered to herself, with as much vehemence as she could muster. But the words refused to carry the weight she felt they should. Instead, they seemed unusually hollow, almost meaningless, said more in form rather than substance. Rather like the void she felt that had suddenly opened up inside.

She brushed away the single drop of moisture traveling down one side of her cheek, and turned away. Back to Mike, she thought emptily. He should be a lot more entertaining than...

She almost didn't notice that Mel was standing in front of her. Open mouthed, looking somewhat in shock, as if she were seeing something for the first time. Or someone. Behind Mel, Mike Yates too stood looking at her, but his gaze was stone-faced. It didn't last long, though; he tore himself away, and pointedly marched off in another direction.

"Until this moment," Mel said, her voice strained and stunned, "I still wasn't certain if it was all just an act or not. But it isn't, is it? You really are that cold and heartless, aren't you?"

The Trakenite's jaw dropped. "I beg your pardon?!??"

"You have no idea what just happened, do you?" Mel continued. "No idea whatsoever? Did you actually listen to anything that was just said?"

"Now see here," the Trakenite demanded, indignantly. "You cannot consider the incoherent ramblings of a... a..."

But Mel wasn't listening. "You're not prepared to let anyone get close, are you? You'd rather push them away as thoroughly as you can than risk even the possibility that you might get hurt?"

The younger woman tried to stammer a reply, but found she couldn't.

Mel shook her head once more in disbelief, then started turning to step away. Suddenly, the red-haired woman felt the need to get as far from the other as possible. But before she could do so, she suddenly remembered the piece of paper that was still clutched in her hand.

"Here." Melanie said, handing the Trakenite the assignment sheet. "This is yours. Congratulations. From the sound of things, it should be everything you're hoping for." And with those words, Mel stormed off and made her way toward the three friends of Adric's, who were at that moment whispering between themselves and Francois.

Nyssa watched her leave, still mystified as to the entire exchange. Surely, she thought, the woman wasn't seriously suggesting what she thought she was suggesting...

She turned her attention to the piece of paper that had just been handed to her. It was folded, and looked somewhat worse for wear, as if it had been handled by a number of people in a short period of time. She unfolded it, and began to read the summary where she stood.

She re-read it again, just to make certain she had read it correctly. Then, with increasing dread, she read the notes section, which provided an outline for the background they were proposing to add.

"No." she mumbled to herself, "Please, Keeper... no."

Then she looked up from the sheet and over to where the ashes were piled, now about to be swept into a dustpan...

...and once more, felt the emptiness inside.

*****

A couple of hours later, four friends arrived at Ucchan's, one of whom was shaking so badly that he almost had to be carried by the other three. They sat him down at a table, promptly produced a cold, silvery can of Sapporo, and poured it into a glass in front of him.

"I can't believe I actually did that." he was jabbering breathlessly. "I can't believe I actually said that. I'm afraid that I've just made the biggest mistake of my life! I feel like I've just made the biggest mistake of my life!" He turned to his three friends. "Please tell me I haven't just made the biggest mistake of my life!?!" he pleaded.

Ryoko patted his shoulder. "Calm down, Adric. Relax. No, I don't think you've just made a mistake." She shook her head. "But... I don't quite know what you've done. It's so completely out of left field that..." Her voice started to trail off, uncertainly.

"Whatever you did," Lucas interrupted with a chuckle, "you've certainly made an impression on everyone there they won't soon forget. Hell, you should have seen the looks on their faces."

"Yeah." Wesley agreed, almost but not quite laughing. "Everyone was looking at you, listening, and thinking 'Who the hell are you, and what have you done with Adric?' It was priceless!"

"I wish I could feel that good about it." Adric said glumly. He then chugged most of his Sapporo to calm his nerves.

"Adric," Ryoko asked not much later, after the Alzarian had stopped shaking, "just one question. Where the HELL did all of that come from?"

"I didn't plan it out, if that's what you're asking," he said. The quick, rapid-fire of his speech had by now slowed down somewhat, but it hadn't completely come back to normal. "It just sort of, well, happened. One thought led to another and then another and then... I guess it was a whole bunch of things -- ideas and thoughts and frustrations, things people have said, things you guys have said, that all just suddenly rolled up together at once."

The look the others were giving told him that more elaboration was needed.

Adric took a deep breath. "A couple of days ago, I met someone in the afterlife. He was lamenting the fact that he'd never told someone he cared for how much they meant to him, and now that he was dead, they'd never know." A pause, while Adric idly began to run one finger tip along the rim of his glass. "Not too long ago I met a vampire who'd fallen in love with a human, but one who he knew would never return that love. Still, he at least took the chance and told her. Then she died. Toward the end she was at least willing to treat him something like a friend. He told me it helped him deal with the grief, that at least she knew, even if nothing would ever come of it. At least he took the chance." A pause once more. "Then I remembered me."

They looked at him intently.

"I remembered the first time I died. I was on that stupid freighter, looking down at the planet it was about to hit and knowing there was a bomb on board that I couldn't stop. And I remember looking down at myself and thinking, 'This is it. I'm seventeen years old, and it's all over'. I'll never be able to be what I want to be, I'll never grow up and grow old and raise a family, I'll never be able to make plans or apologize or anything. It was all over, barely after it had begun.

"Then I came here.

"I know what the score is like. I've seen enough of the other realities to know that most of the time, I don't even get this far. I certainly almost never get another chance. But rather than recognize Outside as a second chance, I kept brooding over the results of my first. Over the writers who would rather abuse me than genuinely use me, over the stupid fans and their petty grievances, over not having a future to live up to, over everything that I could possibly have done wrong -- real or imaginary. I forgot what it was like to be young and frightened and rebellious and a little cocky, and instead just let myself be defined by everyone else's low expectations. Until, that is, tonight.

"Suddenly, I looked at things and realized that there were two paths in front of me, each going in different directions, but each mutually exclusive of the other. One path was the easy one, where I could accept things as they were and just try to live with it. Safe and complacent, but no challenges, nothing changing, everything staying exactly as it was, the only opportunities being whatever was handed out. The other path was not as easy, not as certain. Not safe, not complacent. Nothing was given away, everything had to be striven for, sometimes by making difficult choices. But... the potential would be far more satisfying. A future of some kind, not of their making but my own.

"I decided tonight that I couldn't live any longer with the way things were.

"And the only way I could see to put me on that path, to make sure they all understood I wasn't going to take it anymore, was to make the one confrontation everyone assumed I didn't have the guts for. They have to understand, really understand, that I'm serious. It's not a strength or weakness thing, it's... I refuse to be treated as anything less than an equal, by any of them. For any reason. My name is Adric, not 'Dead Boy'. And they have to recognize that. All of them."

He sighed, resolutely.

"Somehow, someway, I'm going to find a way out of this mess. I don't know exactly how, yet, but someday I'm going to find a way and take it. Forget continuity, forget canon, forget what everyone else thinks is or is not acceptable. I'm going to go forward despite them all. I've got to. It's the only way I can live with this. If they can't handle the simple idea that I refuse to be what they think I am, well, that's their problem, not mine."

"But what about...?" Wesley asked.

Adric shrugged his shoulders, but seemed to deflate somewhat. "I imagine she's rather angry with me at this moment. Probably furious. I've just managed to put a severe dent in her entire rationale, after all, and I doubt she'll appreciate it " He sighed, and gazed down at the table. "But... it had to happen. She especially has to understand that the old days are over. I will not be a victim any longer, hers or anyone else's. And I have to find a way to make her understand that, to get her to start thinking of me as a real person, not as an abstraction. Otherwise..." He sighed. "If it's ever going to happen, that's the only chance there is to make it work..."

He suddenly looked up from the table and at his friends, and realized they were all grinning at him.

"Don't take that to mean..." he said, hurriedly.

"Uh huh." Ryoko assured him. "Don't worry, Adric. You know we'll only take it to mean exactly what you think it means."

Adric rolled his eyes, and wished he could at least learn to keep his big mouth shut.

Wesley looked up, just as the door to Ucchan's slammed shut. The look on his face changed noticeably. "Um, sorry guys. Someone just came in I'd like to say hello to," he said, and without much more explanation, got up from the table. The three watched as he trotted over toward a young girl with long, very dark hair and goddess markings on her face, who in turn had just arrived with her two older sisters and one of those sister's boyfriends.

A few minutes later Sanson, Jean, and several crew members from the Nautilus came by and dragged Lucas away, excitedly discussing among themselves various submarine-related engineering problems. At least, that's what they claimed, although Adric suspected it was more than a coincidence that several of them just happened to position themselves near a table that just happened to be occupied by a certain blonde-haired woman in blue, 19th Century attire.

Ryoko and Adric watched the goings-on for some moments in silence, each wrapped in each other's thoughts.

Finally, Adric turned to the space pirate. "Um, Ryoko?"

"Hmm?" she mumbled, in surprise.

"I know I don't show it sometimes, but... I wanted to say thank you for everything you guys have been doing for me. Or have tried to do. I know I can be a bit of a jerk sometimes..."

"You're not a jerk." Ryoko denied. "You just... needed a bit of a boost, that's all. Besides... remember when you told her about not wanting to see a friend get hurt? Same applies here. Whatever else those idiots out there think, we think you're kind of cool. We're your friends, Adric. And we hate to see our friends get hurt."

Adric digested that information. "Thank you." he said finally, after a moment's thought. "I don't know if you can ever appreciate how much it means for me to hear that."

Ryoko and Adric watched silently as Wes and the black-haired girl sat down at a table together.

"Adric?"

"Yes?"

"Some of the things you said to her. They didn't sound like the words of someone who didn't care. In fact, they sounded an awful lot like the words of someone who cared a great deal."

The Alzarian made no immediate response to that observation.

"Ryoko?"

"Yeah?"

"I'm telling you this honestly. I don't know if you guys are right about her. I actually still think it's all rather doubtful."

Ryoko's catlike eyes glanced in his direction. He seemed to be staring at nothing in particular.

"But..." he continued, turning towards her in all seriousness, "I think I would like to find out."

Ryoko gave him a short, muted laugh.

"I hope you do, Adric. I hope you do."

--DBK
24 June 2001

AUTHOR'S AFTERWORD

Woo boy, this one has been a real long time coming.

I didn't intend that it should take as long as it has for me to get back into the main TDF storyline, but the fact remains that it has been more than a year-and-a-half since Light Matters (my last TDF arc story) was posted. The only major TDF post I made in 2000 was A TDF Christmas, and while that story did expand things somewhat (not to mention win an award), it was still basically a side-story to the main plot. This, then, is my first contribution to the ongoing mayhem in a very, very long time.

Back when Brad started "The Feminine Mistake" and I started writing the loose group of stories that make up "The Question", the idea was to write two sets of stories that were more or less taking place at about the same time. Thus, parts of this story were actually written more than two years ago, and have been waiting around until FM was finally finished. Since that time, however, a number of writers (Inayat, Mags, Velasquez, and others) decided to jump onto the TDF bandwagon, and so some of the things I originally wrote then now seem a little dated. In particular, the sequence with the characters from Tenchi Muyo was originally written as a sort of introduction to them, but since Inayat has started to write and has already taken that particular task to heart, much of what I wrote then could be considered superfluous now. If so, please excuse this author's wish to preserve that writing, and to include those sections in this piece.

I am fully aware that introspection and a fair degree of angst have been major features in several of my last few TDF stories, and as you have no doubt noticed, it is also a very prevalent aspect in this one. For some reason, this actually seems to bother a few people. If you are one of those people then may I ask that you please forgive me, and beg that you be patient. Yes, there are some aspects about these characters that I want to examine, and yes sometimes the best way I've found to do so is to simply let them talk, or cast them into a quiet moment rather than some big, planet shattering crises. But I do understand that there is only so far one can go with an angst/WAFFy plotline and still not have anything happen. With Friendly Hopes, I believe I have passed the principal watershed. From here on (at least for the next few stories), I don't expect to go quite so far as I've done here. That doesn't mean you won't see the occasional introspective moment (this is me we're talking about, after all), but you won't see them quite as often.

MISCELLANEOUS NOTES:

Originally, this story was conceived as happening directly after Willis' "The Feminine Mistake". However, since a number of stories have cropped up while FM was completing (Imran's "Fantasy Island", works by Gadzikowski and Halliday, my own A TDF Christmas, to name a few), I felt that a gap was needed between that story and this. Time length between the two is vague, so it can be as long or as short as you deem necessary. I suppose that if the books and audios can shoehorn almost a season's worth of stories between "Planet of Fire" and "Caves of Androzani" (and "Resurrection of the Daleks" and "Planet of Fire", for that matter!), then so can we.

The previous Christmas that Ryoko refers to can be found in Erin Tumilty's "Sadism 4".

Mike Yates expressing an interest in Nyssa comes from the B.K. Willis story "Five Little Words".

Katarina's heroism comes from B.K. Willis' "The Writing on the Wall".

Adric's encounters with Spike can be found in Mags L. Halliday's "Rock the Casbah".

The PDA novel Asylum, by Peter Darvill-Evans, does indeed use a post-Terminus Nyssa paired with 4Doc before he picks her up as a companion. Before anyone asks, most of Friendly Hopes was actually written well before this novel was published, and in any case was completed before I'd even seen my first copy of it on the bookshelves. Just to make my position absolutely clear (and because I have already been asked via email), my official line on this novel is that, regardless of what it adds to the character of Nyssa, I plan to simply ignore it.

*****

I would like to thank the following people, without whom I could never have finished this monster and who have, to varying degrees, contributed to its completion:

Bradley Keith Willis, my co-conspirator, whose humor and comments have brightened many a dreary day. This story has been much improved by his input.

Diane Brendan and Sarah Morley, my other two beta-readers, for providing useful and continuing commentary on a work whose nature changed dramatically from inception to completion.

William December Starr, for being a good sport in letting me use him, and for his commentary on the section where he appears (Yes, Bill, I know it was more than a year ago!).

Mags L. Halliday, Helen Fayle, Imran Inayat, Paul Gadzikowski, Clive May, and all the other writers on Alt.Drwho.Creative who have at various times written with comments and encouragement on my work, and who have even sometimes contributed to TDF itself. Thank you all.

RuthKub and all the other fans who have e-mailed me or who have posted glowing reviews on FF.Net. You guys have made my day more times than I can count, especially when I needed a lift to continue on.

And most especially...

Siobhan, my wife, for putting up with this strange hobby horse of mine, and my children Megan, Martin, and Liam, whose attentions and cries of "Daddy!" will never grow old with me.

COPYRIGHT NOTICES

Doctor Who characters and concepts copyright British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC).

"This Time Round" concept created by Tyler Dion, after Kielle's Subreality Cafe‚ (Who, I should note at this point, is in reality a Girl rather than a Guy, as I incorrectly stated in the copyright info for A TDF Christmas. Error here corrected).

"Ucchan's" was originally created by Takahashi Rumiko as simply the name of Ukyo's restaurant in Ranma 1/2. However, some writers on Rec.Arts.Anime.Creative decided awhile ago to significantly renovate and expand the place and turn it into the Anime equivalent of TTR and Subreality, a tradition which I've decided to adhere to.

"Number One/Ember Ashe", "Francois the Ogron", and "The Brethren" created by Bradley K. Willis.

Bernard Wiseman (Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket) copyright Bandai Entertainment. Hopefully Cartoon Network won't change the ending to 0080 when they run it, because this is one of the best, most powerful OAV series' I have ever seen.

Death (Sandman) copyright Neil Gaimen. I decided to give the Pratchett Death a little time off.

Ryoko, Ayeka, Sasami, Tenchi, Ryo-ohki, Washuu, etc. (Tenchi Muyo) copyright Pioneer Entertainment.

Wesley Crusher (Star Trek: The Next Generation) copyright Paramount Pictures.

Lucas Wolenczek (Seaquest DSV) copyright Amblin Entertainment.

Spike (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) copyright Joss Whedon/Mutant Entertainment/20th Century Fox Television.

Minor crossovers copyright their respective creators and copyright holders (Look, I lost track of how many I shoved in here, so I'm not even going to bother to track them all down and list them individually).

Original story and concepts copyright 2001, Douglas B. Killings. All rights reserved.

This is a piece of fanfiction written for the expressed purpose of having a little fun. Absolutely no money has ever changed hands over this work, and if any does it wasn't with my knowledge or consent. In other words, please don't sue me.