Maelstrom Chapter 33
Conversations in the Kitchen: Chapter 4 "Hoping you Like Me Too"

Part A

Author's note: This story is part of a LONG series called Maelstrom. It is strictly Gen. 1 - sorry, but that was all that was out when I started writing back in the late 1980's. It began as a fan-publication so the first chapters are in the form of a comic book! If you have not read the nine original Maelstrom Comics and the preceding text stories, I strongly suggest you do. This is a complex universe. They can be found at http// illmatar. deviantart. com (I have put double spaces between the URL here or FF . Net eats the link.) The comics and art which accompanies this series are there...and believe me I am a better artist than writer.

Most chapters of this series contain strong language and violence. Rated M for adult themes! Really! Transformers characters belong to Hasbro. Critiques adored! This scene contains strong language, violence, and sex. Rated M for adult themes! This chapter has something for everyone. It has violence, sex, humor. It has Matrix issues, Jabez issues, and Decepticons. It has cannon-twisting history, ass kicking, and angst...duh.


Transformers characters belong to Hasbro. Story and OC characters are mine. Critiques adored!

Maelstrom 33
Conversations in the Kitchen
Chapter 4
Hoping you Like Me Too

Part A

"Spike wasn't happy being left behind my love," Lancer said, lounging on the shuttle's armrest. Rodimus, in Autobot form, was piloting and patiently ignoring Springer's helpful back-seat flying. They'd been en-route for about eight hours.

"Yeah well, I already saw Spike's family destroyed in our universe so he can sulk at home and kiss my shiny butt. If something happens when we are gone that's Op's guilt, not mine."

"Are we there yet?"

"No we aren't...quite bugging me about it or I'm throwing you in a life-pod to float aimlessly in space until the Junkions find your frozen impatient ass," Rodimus said.

"I'm just trying to find out when we'll get there," came the sullen reply. "I can't see the instruments from down here."

"Remember that the next time I'm complaining about the same thing," Marissa grumbled. "These shuttles are not human friendly at all."

"OK...we'll recommend modifications...but I still want to know when we will get there. Who are the Junkions?"

"MAGNUS!" Rodimus snapped. "My daughters are more patient. We still have two more hours. This crate is almost as slow as Spike's computer...and nevermind the Junkions or I really am gonna take you home."

After two more hours of cooped up griping and antics they approached their destination with Rodi's usual frustrating caution - meaning they circled the area several times and did esoteric scans with the Jabez scanner before he would consent to take them within visual range.

Magnus turned to Hot Rod, "you know how I'm always telling you to be more careful?"

"Yeah?"

"Well...do that, but not to this extreme!" Magnus ordered.

"Ignore him Hot Rod," Rodimus said.

Magnus grumbled.

"Mags, if we run into a Quint fleet I'm gonna dangle you out the back hatch as bait," Rodimus informed him. Prime was running out of patience.

Magnus subsided.

X

X

X

When they finally did approach, the base appeared as abandoned as their scanners indicated. The Quints typical, twisting spires jutted up out of a dense jungle canopy where they weren't already covered with vines. The forest was obviously taking back the base, overwhelming it inch by inch. None of them were sorry to see Quint handiwork overrun by greenery. Magnus' impatience was suddenly replaced by anxiety. His time as a gladitorial slave rarely involved jaunts outside, but the architecture was distinct enough to raise his hackles. The broken spires rose in corkscrew twists until they abruptly ended in scorched wreckage.

"There's an older structure underneath," Rodimus said.

"You sure it isn't just a Quint basement?" Magnus asked.

"Nope...too many angles and sharp turns for our footless friends to be happy with. I'm scanning deeper...oh."

"Rodi? What is it?' Marissa asked.

"Well. I'm not entirely sure. There's a lot of collapsed tunnels down there, but the older stuff seems kind of hexagon-shaped," Rodi answered grimly. At home this would have gotten a big reaction. These people just blinked at him.

"If spirals make Quints happy because they can't navigate angles easily, then hexagons do something for Jabez," Lancer whispered.

"It's the crystals," Rodi whispered. "They base everything off the structure of the crystals."

"You don't know that love," Lancer said.

"Yes I do. I just can't prove it!"

Lancer looked down at Marissa and made a disgusted face. Marissa refrained from laughing at Rodi's defensive assertions.

He was focused on his scan. "There's a series of natural caverns underneath the lowest foundations. I suppose if the crystals are natural objects the Jabez modified then we are most likely to find them there, but we'll have to go down through the base to get there. The foundation is solid bedrock until you get about 20 meters down, but if we cut through the caverns might collapse."

"Looks like we're in for a hike," Arcee said.

X

X

X

Rodimus circled a few times until he found the landing platform. They could barely make out a wide, flat expanse under all the overgrowth, but they could see that it was raised above the forest floor to accommodate the Quints tall, contorted cruisers. There were six slots for such ships. All were empty. Lancer startled the others by activating her exo-suit, which formed around her as she jumped down off the armrest. Manning the lasers, she expertly cleared them a landing zone. Once down, Rodimus kept them on-board for a few minutes with the engines running and Lancer's hands on the triggers. When nothing swarmed out of base to assault them, he nodded to Lancer. She went outside alone in her suit, with the cloak activated. Those on board couldn't see anything and they all fidgeted with repressed adrenaline while she scouted.

After what seemed like an eternity, Rodimus shut down the engines and led his humanized friends outside.

Stepping off the ramp, EDC issue blasters drawn, Magnus and the other humanized Autobots felt the effects of human stress. Sounds from the jungle seemed painfully sharp, the crunch of blaster vegetation underfoot felt strangely distinct too. The scent of it would come back to them in memory at odd moments for the rest of their lives. Rodimus towered over them and they were suddenly clear on why so many humans seemed so...relieved... when the Autobots arrived to help.

"Aren't you going to cloak?" Springer asked him.

Rodimus shook his head and didn't answer the triple changer.

Hot Rod saw Springer frowning and pulled on Springer's shirt to get his attention.

"He's the target," Hot Rod whispered in Springer's ear. "Lancer stays out of sight and he draws any fire away from us."

Springer frowned at Hot Rod and then shrugged. "He's got the paint job for it."

"Shh!" Marissa ordered.

"Hang back," Rodi told them. He approached the door and scanned it with an Autobot sized version of his Jabez scanner. Detecting no life-forms on the other side, he switched it to look for anything that might be a trap. The door seemed clean, so he activated it, noting as he did that there were signs of an old battle all over the door. It responded half-heartedly and didn't open more than a few inches. He slipped his fingers into the crack and pulled them apart with effort.

Musty air rushed out at them, causing the humans to cough. Rodimus peered inside and then slipped sideways through the hanger doors. The inside was covered with dust, leaf litter, and dead Sharkticons. All of the 24 parking platforms for Quint shuttles were empty. The dust moved slightly where Lancer was walking ahead of them, but he didn't focus on that or call attention to it in any way. He signaled the others to follow him in and he went over to the nearest carcass to inspect it.

"Blasted," he diagnosed unnecessarily. Half the things face was missing and what was left was scorched. "Looks like this place was abandoned after a nice fight. I'm trying really hard to feel bad about that too."

"No you aren't," Foul Play said. Rodi grinned at her.

"Stay behind me," he warned them.

"This place is empty," Springer argued.

"Right. Maybe I should clarify. Stay behind me or go back to the ship," Rodimus said lightly.

"Yessir," Springer said. He was getting used to the fact that Rodimus made his threats in the most conversational voice he could manage.

Rodi paused and let them stand there a few minutes while the tiny dust clouds moved around the hanger, past every nook, cranny, and carcass. Finally he approached the next door and opened it as he had the last. The corridors on the other side were much darker than the hanger, which had a few holes in the ceiling where light filtered through the vines.

Rodimus turned on his headlights and the little dust clouds went on ahead. They quickly disappeared into the darkness and the others solemnly followed. The whole group was quiet...for a while.

"This place is a maze," Marissa complained in a whisper, after about a half hour of walking. "Every corridor looks identical."

"Quints have no imagination if they aren't making money or causing pain," Magnus informed her. "Decorations probably just snag on their tentacles."

Marissa snickered at the thought, but she could see Magnus was very tense. She took his hand.

They walked and walked, going round and round, deeper into the base. Rodi never explained why they went into some rooms and not others but they saw that the dust had been disturbed at every turn on the way down. Once in a while they found a dead Sharkticon, and even a few dead Quints, but mostly it was just one, long dizzying road down.

Occasionally, they would stop while Rodimus paused to examine on side chamber or another. The rooms varied in configuration and potential atmosphere, but there was nothing indicating either scientific research or warfare.

It was not what they expected at all.

"Rodi?" Hot Rod asked.

"Hmm?"

"Can we talk to each other?" the younger twin inquired wistfully.

"Translation: My feet hurt and I'm bored," Rodimus observed.

"Asshole," Hot Rod said.

"I take it that I'm right then?" Rodimus smirked.

"Can we talk or not?" Hot Rod pressed, refusing to give Rodi the satisfaction. "I feel like I'm in one of those dreams where I'm trying to get somewhere and the hallway keeps getting longer in front of me."

"You need to keep alert," Rodimus told him.

"How? I can't seem to focus on everything and nothing for this long. There's not even anything to look at! How do you do it?"

The rest of the group made faces and shifted their weight. Most of them were feeling the same way, but they weren't about to admit it.

"Practice," Rodimus informed his twin unhelpfully. "This base is great for it. We're about to get into the lower levels anyway. Things will get more...interesting down here. Quints make a maze of their upper levels to make it harder for spies and invaders to find their way to the real action."

"You sound like you've done this too many times Rodimus," Arcee noted.

"I explored my share of bases when we exterminated them," Rodimus reminded her grimly, "but this one is different. It's bigger than any of the ones I've dealt with and the corridors are more elaborate. There are a lot of meeting rooms and guest suites to accommodate various species of company. They either used this to entertain a lot of clients at once or they had something else drawing crowds. I've never seen anything quite like it. It has the feeling of a big hotel! I've seen rooms I can tell were designed for about eight distinct species of alien....even Sories and they're full aquatic! If this place is meant to handle all of these room being occupied at once, I'm at a loss. In my universe the Quints were always careful to outnumber their suckers...I mean customers."

Magnus froze and scowled to himself. He was suddenly even more uneasy. Of all the group, he was the only one who's tension was steadily increasing as they walked rather than being blunted by monotony. He wasn't planning on saying anything but both Marissa and Rodimus noticed his face and looked at him.

"What?" he barked.

Marissa's eyebrows puckered in concern. Rodimus just arched one. Magnus considered defiance but knew he was outnumbered. His shoulders slumped.

"I can think of one time they encouraged crowds," he muttered.

Rodimus turned fully to face him and shook his head. "Gladiator games...I'm not thinking obviously. You think they might have had an arena here?"

Magnus shrugged, and Marissa looked worried.

"Maybe we shouldn't have come," she said.

"I wouldn't want to be left behind," Magnus told her. "I would have followed on my own if I had been. I need to be here. I'll be OK."

"OK Big Guy," Marissa said, "but don't forget to ask for help if you need it!"

Magnus nodded. Rodimus looked at him for another minute and then went on without a word. Magnus took Marissa's hand again and made distracted note of the fact that all of his troops closed ranks around him without a word.

It made something in his wounded heart glow with pride. Once he would have been ashamed to confess his anxiety for fear they would reject him. Instead, they moved in to support him automatically and he suddenly KNEW what Marissa had been telling him all along. They were his friends. It wasn't fear that moved them. It wasn't orders. It wasn't even the Autobot code to protect the weak. It was respect. It was loyalty. It was love.

It didn't eliminate the wounds. It didn't completely destroy the shuddering child in him that felt worthless and alone...but it went a long, long way to making things better. He rode a wave of relief that made him quiver slightly. Magnus wondered, as he felt the energy he had been wasting hating himself flood into healthier channels, if this is what Rodimus had felt when Lancer destroyed Vector Sigma's sadistic brain-washing.

All the while, Rodimus' headlights stabbed into the darkness and took them deeper.

Finally they reached an area which was not maze-like, but clearly a labyrinth. Rodimus moved forward, unfazed, which would have been impressive except that there were arrows blasted into the walls. Whatever people had invaded this place had taken time to solve the labyrinth.

"How do we know this will really lead us below?" Foul Play asked.

Rodi smiled, "Because I have fore-knowledge."

"Because you have a woman on the brain," Springer said.

"Well, there is that," Rodimus said mildly.

"Thank God for that!" Marissa exclaimed. "A spiral maze! I'm dizzy!"

"We're almost there," Rodimus said, steering them towards the curve on the right. They came upon an open doorway as they rounded the turn. It was flanked by a large heap of dead Sharks on either side.

Marissa shook her head at the Quint sneakiness. "The maze keeps right on going. I bet when this door is closed there's no sign of it and you just walk on by looking for the end."

"Yeah. It's a dead end too I bet," Hot Rod muttered. "If you know where the door is, you don't go. If you do go you don't belong looking in the first place. There's probably nasty surprises all over after this point."

"Ah, Grasshopper. You learn to think like your enemy," Rodimus said. "Well done."

"Yeah? Great...but my brain feels like it needs a shower," Hot Rod said.

"Quit thinking about Foul Play then," Arcee snickered.

The darkness in the doorway hissed at them. "SHH! You're voices echo all the way down the corridors!" Lancer's voice came at them from within the dark hallway.

If she wanted quiet she didn't get it. Everyone but Rodimus jumped and yelped in surprise. She was right though, they could hear their startled voices echoing over and over down the shaft before them.

Rodimus smacked himself in the face. "Amateurs," he whispered in disgust. Why did you come back up Love? he sent to his mate while the others complained at him.

I don't like the feel of it down there, she responded vaguely.

Anything in particular? he sent back, concerned.

No...but I'm not going to scout up so far. I want to be close if you need me.

I always need you, but are you sure that's for the best? What's wrong?

Just a feeling, she said, annoyed with herself. She was nervous, and she had no real reason.

Yeah...well. The last time I down-played one of your feelings Unicron made a play for our Magnus. Stay close until you feel better about it or something happens.

They skirted the heap of Sharkticons by the doorway, making note that most of them were of the higher functioning sort that could actually think for themselves.

Down below was another spiraling maze but this time the corridors seemed older and more used. The rooms off the side paths were laboratories and testing facilities rather than luxurious suites for plasma breathers and ultra-high gravity aliens.

Lancer remained invisible and noiseless, but Marissa noted the dust clouds returned often...as if she was circling them. A glance at Rodi indicated no change in his demeanor but he slowed their pace even more. Even Arcee was fidgeting impatiently whenever he stopped them. Magnus' eyes jerked back and forth, and he was exercising his new skulking skills to their maximum. He took to rapping Springer's skull with his knuckles every time the triple changer's feet made a sound.

This happened often. In the dead silence of this spiraling tomb their very breathing seemed amplified.

As they went deeper, the signs of battle grew denser. More bodies of both Quints and Sharks littered the halls. Most had been pushed off to the side by someone, but in a few cases, Rodimus moved heaps of corpses out of the way so that his smaller companions wouldn't have to climb the sheared and twisted metal of long dead defenders.

Marissa in particular was glad of his help. Not only did she have a better sense than her companions of how deep such shards of steel would cut, but the segmented carapaces of the Sharkticons reminded her of roaches. Their dead, shattered, orbish optics did too. She shivered, and skirted the corpses as gingerly as she could manage.

Magnus on the other hand seemed almost mesmerized by the dead. He stood before one heap of bodies while the others filed by and lingered as they moved on. Marissa was just about to ask him what was wrong when he grunted and caught up to Rodi's little sphere of light.

"What is it?" she whispered.

"I like them better that way," he remarked with a smile.

Taken off guard by the smile and the comment, Marissa snorted with laughter and threw her hands up over her mouth when it started to echo.

Rodimus paused and turned to look at them. Tall as he was and with the headlights pointing ahead of him, they couldn't make out much of his face. Just those glowing optics. It seemed wrong that they were standard Autobot blue at the moment. Though they couldn't see his mouth, his optics smiled and Marissa realized he'd heard Magnus' comment as well as her suppressed giggles.

X

X

X

After about five hours of steady walking, Rodimus took mercy on their feet and came to a stop right in the hallway.

"Rest. Eat a little...and drink," he murmured.

No one complained about the break but Hot Rod had questions as usual.
"Why here?" he wondered at his twin. "Wouldn't one of the side rooms hide us better and be more defensible? Oh...and before you tell me to figure it out I've already thought about it and I don't understand."

Rodimus smiled. "To be honest Hot Rod I debated, so you are right that this is not clearly the best choice. I leaned this way for a few reasons. First, anything that lives down here probably doesn't rely much on light. Therefore it either hears well or feels vibrations. Either way, it knows we're here and I prefer to have an unobstructed view so we have a chance of noticing it. I also prefer to have a clear line of escape right now."

"Why...do you really think something is down here? We haven't seen any disturbed dust or heard anything," Hot Rod noted.

"Well...all of the empirical evidence is that we're alone," Rodimus said with a sigh.

Magnus and Hot Rod looked at each other. They were both getting familiar enough with Rodi to know when he was holding out on them.

"But..." Magnus prompted.

"But Lancer is nervous," Rodimus confessed.

"Lancer?" Hot Rod asked.

"Nervous?" Magnus added. "I didn't know Lancer and nervous went in the same sentence except in reference to her effect on everyone else."

"Hah Hah," Rodimus answered. "Look...it is nothing she can pin-point, so I suppose there is always the possibility she is just nervous because she is, but something is jangling her web. Let me put it this way. We may never know how much of her awareness of the world filters through her energy sense. She usually not conscious of anything outside of her immediate area or something blatantly out of place - like say an electrical storm or a huge power surge. Mostly she just ignores it, the way you ignore the temperature in a room unless it becomes uncomfortable, right? Well...something is making her uncomfortable. She doesn't know what it is but she doesn't like it. It is making her nervous and my friend if it is making HER nervous you and I should probably be ready to run for our lives. The last time she got this way, I put it down to moodiness and let me tell you I was almost very sorry and very dead."

"I'm surprised she wasn't the one that killed you," Magnus said.

"Oh, I wanted to," a voice from the dark quipped, "but I needed him to change diapers."

In spite of many personal vows not to yelp this time, most of the group gasped in surprise. Lancer appeared in their midst, first in her gruesome suit, but morphing out of it as she walked up to them. She sat down next to her mate and leaned on his metal leg.

"Find anything?" Magnus asked.

"More labs, more bodies, and another hidden doorway to a deeper level. Looks like the real fight was there. That's why we're resting here. The true purpose of this base was probably the next level down. There is a major battlefield up ahead and we need to be alert just to navigate it safely." She sighed and took the water and the energy bar Foul Play offered her with a smile. "Thanks. The suit is taking a lot out of me today."

"You didn't find any energy sources to recharge that thing with?" Rodimus frowned. On missions like this his mate was a real scavenger for power to keep her reserves high for battle.

"Nothing. Either whoever took down this place drained it dry or something else is at work. The whole place is shriveled up like a prune, in terms of ambient energy that is. There's nothing...not even in the back-up batteries in the Sharks, and those hold power for years even after they're dead. These guys were blasted, not drained, but none of their weapons have any charge, the corpses are barren, none of the lab equipment has any juice. I don't like it. All the evidence says the original attack was a real tussle, but it looks like a fast raid to me. I've done enough fast raids, so hopefully I know what the aftermath looks like. Maybe I'm wrong, but the labs are stocked with chemicals; they haven't been ransacked. The rooms upstairs weren't tossed or searched that much, and yet there isn't a drop of energy anywhere."

"What could do something like that?" Arcee wondered, frowning.

"Well, me, for starters," Lancer said. "But I would have to either go room by room or do a major draw but that's risking overload."

"Overload? I thought you could handle almost anything," Springer said.

"When did we ever say that?" Lancer asked. "I can handle a lot of juice, especially if I have somewhere to shunt it if my own reserves are full, but there are limits to how much I can take. I can even give myself seizures if I can't control the current."

"Oh," Springer said. He thought about it for a second, then added, "Ouch."

"Right. Ouch. Unlikely to happen here though. Like I said, not a spark to be found. Whatever did it is very...thorough."

"OK," Hot Rod remarked, "I am officially nervous too."

"Welcome aboard," Springer said, making a face at his young friend. "Took you long enough. All this walking in the dark through dead bodies doesn't make an impression at all does it?"

"I was too busy trying to work out what happened to be nervous before now," Hot Rod explained.

Marissa laughed, and pointed at Rodimus. "In case you have any lingering doubts about the growing up issue!"

X

X

X

They took about an hour of rest, during which Lancer gave every appearance of actually napping against her mate's leg. Marissa found it funny that while Rodimus clearly never relaxed his guard as he scanned the halls around them, he put his hand over Lancer while she rested. Arcee caught Marissa's eye and they both suppressed the urge to giggle.

Unlike his oblivious twin who was sharing a similar moment with Foul Play, Rodimus was on to them immediately and turned to face them the instant they started snuffling and snickering.

He frowned.

"Don't be like that Rodi. You guys are just cute," Arcee explained quietly. Marissa nodded.

"It's not cute. I'm worried. She's too tired this early in the mission. Something is really wrong," Rodimus confided.

The girls exchanged looks again.

"Is she alright?" Marissa inquired.

Rodi nodded. "Yes, I think so....so far."

"Look, I know you're concerned," Marissa informed him, "But you guys are still cute." She and Arcee sounded a bit better this time because they just laughed quietly instead of forcing it through their noses.

Lancer opened her eyes and stuck her tongue out at them. "I resent being associated with the word cute," she said gravely....then she grinned and got to her feet. She reactivated her decidedly un-cute suit, disappeared and went ahead of them. They followed.

Around a few more winding turns and intersections they came upon another secret door with carcasses all around it. The signs of battle were by far the most intense they'd seen. Scores of Sharkticons of all types and even a few Quints with weapons in their tentacles were strewn everywhere. These bodies had been roughly shoved out of the way instead of stacked. Rodimus spent half an hour clearing a path humans could safely navigate. He had to carry the bodies quite a distance to get them out of the way. At the door there was no room to stack them.

Once past the doorway, he had more bodies to move. The hall was jammed. Finally he sighed and pulled an Autobot sized Katana-style sword from sub-space and began slicing and moving just the limbs that got in the way. He reminded Marissa of a jungle-guide hacking at foliage with a machete...except the foliage was actually Sharkticon chunks. This time she suppressed laughter because it felt just a wee bit hysterical...as though if she started stopping would be out of the question.

The air and the walls were noticeably colder than the rest of the building. Foul Play shuddered and drew closer to Hot Rod. Springer walked with his hands in his armpits. Arcee stalked with that intense look she sometimes got, but the hand that held the weapon in front of her shivered.

Magnus trailed deliberately behind the others. He kept looking over his shoulder as though expecting to be attacked from behind. His face was ashen and covered in a faint sheen of sweat. Marissa kept looking back as well, but to check on him. She didn't like the way he stared around him, eyes wide and darting at shadows. It reminded her of the way his eyes rolled so frantically when he had a flashback.

"Magnus? How are you holding up Big Guy?" she asked.

"Marissa...maybe it's just coincidence...but...but this place...It's hard. I'm smaller... it's dark...but this place FEELS familiar."

Rodimus stopped and turned to face them as he had before. This time his optics were green and they illuminated his frown quite clearly. "You think this might be where they held you?" Rodi asked bluntly.

"I don't know...maybe," Magnus confessed.

Rodimus turned fully to face them. His headlights blinded Magnus for a moment and the City Commander suddenly knew he was under inspection. He tried to pull himself together.

"Magnus...I know you want to be part of this, but if it is too much you have to tell me. We will go back to the surface if we have to. You'll be safe enough on the shuttle and you can put it in orbit if something happens."

"I'm OK for now," Magnus assured him. He knew Rodimus was serious and respected that Rodi would make a command decision to send him back if it looked like Magnus might become a liability. Magnus had never been more determined not to be a liability.

Rodimus studied him dispassionately, noting the pallor, the sweat, and the firm press of Magnus lips. Magnus met his optics and waited. Hot Rod stepped up behind his uncle and stared at Rodi too. Rodimus ignored his twin, examined Magnus a moment longer, and then turned without a word and kept going.

Hot Rod snorted as they resumed walking.

Magnus took some comfort in instructing his nephew. It brought him back to the present.

"You weren't going to challenge him if he decided to send me up were you?" Magnus asked his nephew.

"Hell yeah I was," Hot Rod replied.

"You shouldn't. If I freak out down here it puts everyone at risk. A good commander needs to keep his emotions out of decisions like that," Magnus told Hot Rod sternly.

"I know. I wasn't going to argue about that. IF you were going to freak out you'd have to go, but you won't," Hot Rod said with perfect assurance.

"You don't know that," Magnus said.

Hot Rod met his eyes and gave him a weird, old smile that looked completely out of place on his young face. "Yes...I do," he said. Still smiling, he rubbed Foul Play's cold hand and kept walking.

Magnus was stopped in his tracks. He stood there, with his head cocked to one side, looking after his nephew.

Marissa waited for a minute, then came back to take him by the hand and lead him forward.

She grinned and answered the look of complete confusion on Magnus face. "Well Mr. City Commander, I guess that makes at least two of us that have complete faith in you."

Magnus smiled, tentatively at first, then shrugged and grinned. They walked fast to catch up with Rodi's headlights.

Continued in Part B