A/N: I wrote the first Lyon and Ryland Holiday Fic ("Trick or Treat," although "The Year of the Rappy" is actually the first in the internal chronology) back in October of 2006. At that time, it wasn't meant to become a series; I just liked the orange-and-black color set for a RAcaseal and thought it would be a cute image to have a holographic pumpkin fall on one. Things kind of spiraled outwards from there. I liked the characters, and I conceived of the idea of doing a series with them. Since the first story featured Halloween, it was natural to do stories featuring the other holidays that the PSO servers would celebrate, as a kind of theme. So thence followed Valentine's Day, White Day, New Year's Day, and Christmas...and now, at long last, the final story in the series, with Easter. I actually wrote the story last year (2015), but I felt that it didn't make any sense to "publish" it in late summer, so I decided to hold on to it until this year. So here, nine and a half years later, the series finally concludes. Hope you enjoy it!

AUW 3087, April

"Target: acquired."

"Thanks, Gowan; I see him," Android Weinstine Co. Type L/Y-906 (Lyon, to those interested in saving nine syllables) said over the communications link. "He's approaching my position from the west, coming in just north of the rock formation."

"Damn, I can't see him," spoke up one of the organic members of the hunter team. Naomi was a Newman, one of the genetically engineered race built to emphasize agility and, more significantly, manipulation of Photon energy through the so-called psychic techniques. She had turned up her nose at that design concept, though; as a Hunter her training was primarily focused on hand-to-hand combat.

Lyon could appreciate Naomi's attitude. She herself was a RAcaseal, her combat programming and body structure optimized for long-range encounters, but her personal preference was to operate in the front lines. She wasn't sure if the phrase "biology is not destiny" could be applied to someone who didn't actually have biology, but the underlying principle applied.

"I have him on my nav-unit's radar," the final member of the group spoke up. Donovan Ryland was the only full human of the bunch, and as a Force was the one who offered support through technique use. "Try to drive him north towards Naomi's and my positions. Lyon, you're going to need to cut him off from the way he came, so let him get past you."

"Copy that."

"Plan: acknowledged," Gowan echoed. His speech processor had been damaged by an online virus, resulting in his unusual mode of expression.

Lyon settled herself into the absolute stillness of pose that only an android could manage, not even the shallowest breathing to create a flicker of motion to give her away. She wished that it was after dark, so that her orange-and-black carapace would better blend in; she would have to hope the lush greenery of this mountainous area of Gal Da Val Island was enough to disguise her until her quarry had passed by. She watched on her navigation radar screen as the mark indicating the target continued to approach, then passed by north of her hiding place so that she could get her first good look at him.

In the flesh, Selfas Kane did not closely resemble the video images of him that they'd been shown. His blond hair was worn in a cluster of spikes, and a wraparound visor covered the upper half of his face, giving him an almost mechanical look that Lyon could not help but admire (being perfectly happy to be an android, it made sense to her that organics would want to emulate robots and androids in various ways). His body, already thick and muscular, was made even more so by the bulky, built-up armor he wore; it lacked the exaggerated torso plating human Rangers favored but the shoulder guards made him vaguely resemble Gowan, who was so huge that he looked more like an artillery unit with humanoid design than an actual person.

It was Kane, though; Lyon's visual comparison functions were quite able to adapt to the differences.

"He's in position," she said.

In the next instant, the sound of gunfire rang out. Shots from Gowan's Photon rifle tore into the earth at Kane's feet, no more than a meter away. An experienced Hunter, Kane reacted at once to being caught out, open and exposed. A handgun flashed into his grip in case he needed to return fire, and he was on the move at once, zigzagging to make it harder for the sniper to acquire a target.

Lyon was on the move then, too, stepping out from cover with her Varista drawn. The high-powered handgun not only was there to dissuade Kane from trying to shoot her down, as he might have considered if she'd only had a hand-to-hand weapon equipped, but it also had an integrated unit capable of inducing neural paralysis with a shot. She fired twice, the first shot a clean miss while the second took Kane in the side. He didn't freeze up, though, so either the paralysis had just failed or his armor was augmented with a unit to resist such effects.

Though the shots didn't stop him, they did cause him to change course. He swiveled hard to his right and continued to zigzag, but this time towards the north, just as they'd planned it.

He was running uphill, now, Gowan's rifle fire hedging him away from the eastern path that would have led to his escape route. He could telepipe back to the orbiting Pioneer 2, but his pursuers could just have followed him up the teleport gate to the spaceship, so practically that would accomplish very little. Hopefully, he didn't know that the path led to a cliff high above the island shore, and with Ryland and Naomi closing in, he'd end up pinned.

Gowan broke from cover, his steps thudding loudly against the turf. The black-armored RAcast was huge, both tall and broad, and the impression of a mobile weapons platform was only emphasized by the Kama Mag floating above his shoulders like a secondary gun battery. He and Lyon both fired every so often at Kane, not really taking time to aim, just keeping him aware of the direction the danger was coming from.

Their quarry rushed upwards, crashing through the fronds of the spear-grass shrubs that dotted the way. These bushes, with their spiky-looking but relatively flexible leaves, were as tall as a man and common in the Mountain Area. They lay thickly on the hillside, making it even harder for Kane to realize that he was coming up on a cliff.

Until he got there.

Kane jerked to a stop, barely two feet from the edge. He whirled to see the androids pursuing him, then looked to his left to see Ryland advancing steadily. As a hunter himself, Kane instantly recognized the green and white Force's robes and what they meant in terms of technique power. If he hadn't known, the pulsing red and blue haze that settled over him as Ryland used the Jellen and Zalure techniques to reduce the Photon efficiency of his weapons and armor certainly would have done the trick.

He glanced back over his shoulder to his last avenue of escape and found Naomi blocking his path. Like most female Newmen of Lyon's acquaintance, she was dressed skimpily, in a strapless bustier and microshorts. Unlike most of her sisters, she wasn't built like a lonely geneticist's wet dream, but had a massively muscled torso and limbs that made her resemble Gowan's form more than Lyon's. Her daggers liked almost comically tiny in her hands.

"Selfas Kane!" Ryland called out. "We can do this without any further trouble. Turn over the data you just retrieved from the monitoring station and you can go. Otherwise we'll have to take it by force."

"Do you really think I'd accept your devil's bargain, Administration lackeys?"

"Are we Administration lackeys this week?" Naomi asked conversationally. "I lose track sometimes of just who's backing our clients on any given job."

Kane snorted.

"I suppose you think you're being cute, pretending that you don't know what's going on?"

"No," she said, raising her daggers into a ready position as she advanced towards him, "I don't. And I'm not pretending. Trying to puzzle out which faction is screwing over which other faction on any given job isn't my idea of fun. So how about you do what Ryland said so I don't have to show you what I do enjoy?"

"She's actually joking," Lyon said. "She wants you to give up because she won't enjoy fighting you at all. There's no challenge in it to make it interesting for her."

Then she shot Kane, as did Gowan, the impact of their blasts jolting him out of the technique he was trying to conjure. Most likely it was Ryuker; a quick escape by teleport wouldn't seem so bad now that his back was against the wall.

Grunting in pain, Kane dropped to one knee. Ryland's Zalure had weakened his armor to the point that the gunfire had hurt him.

"Last chance," Ryland warned. "Toss the data disk on the ground or w'll do it the—well, frankly, it'll actually be the easy way."

Kane rose shakily to his feet, his expression harsh with what Lyon estimated was more than just the bitterness of loss, according to her data on human facial features.

"You scum can burn in hell before I'll do that!"

The hunter kicked off, legs flinging his body backwards. The androids fired as one at his movement, even as Ryland hurled a Foie fireball at him, but it was too late. Though he may well have been knocked unconscious or even killed (if not irretrievably) by the attacks, they did not check his momentum. Airborne, he went over the edge, plummeting down, down through empty air. His pursuers rushed to the edge, but it was too late. Naomi and Ryland, being closer, probably saw him actually hit the water, while the androids were only able to look down to see the last of the ripples fade hundreds of feet below.

"Retrieval: impossible," Gowan said what everyone realized. There was no functional way to get down there; it would take a watercraft of some kind to approach from the sea side and that would have to come from Pioneer 2. If there even were any; there weren't a lot of boats on a spaceship. Nor dive suits or underwater robots, for that matter.

Besides, if their client had the ability to send vehicles and specialist teams to Gal Da Val, there wouldn't have been any point to hiring hunters in the first place.

"The only chance we'd have to retrieve that data," Lyon said glumly, "is if Kane pulled off a miraculous recovery from a fall that no one could supposedly survive."

"Probability: negligible."

"I know that, Gowan, especially if he was dead going in the water from our attacks."

Even so, it was over six beats before the four hunters turned away. There was a difference between knowing that Kane's armored corpse had been pulled down to the seabed by its weight and being able to accept that the literary cliché was not going to pop up to save them from their failure.

The plain truth was that, unable to escape with his life, Kane had intentionally given up that life to avoid capture. Lyon glanced at Ryland; though her eyes were blank blue lights instead of simulating an organic's iris and pupil, he had worked with her long enough to recognize the unasked question and offer a shrug in return.

Lyon estimated an 80.4% chance that it meant, "No, I don't have any idea why he'd do that, either."

~X X X~

"So that's the story," Ryland said eighty beats later, standing in the Hunter's Guild offices. "I'm sorry, but we were unable to retrieve the target data."

Rather than being upset, their client waved it off, no much as a flicker disrupting the smile beneath the heavyset man's moustache.

"This is by no means a failure," he said. "Quite the opposite, we are very pleased with this outcome."

"You're pleased that a man died and took the data you wanted us to retrieve to the bottom of the sea with him?"

"A person's death is always regrettable, but let me be practical: this man was, if not precisely an enemy, at the least their hired agent, actively working against my own employer's interests. Don't ask me to shed tears for someone like that."

It was interesting, Lyon thought. From a purely logical standpoint, Mr. Solus's point couldn't be argued. Indeed, upon running a quick analysis, she found that his lack of emotion was the expected response, and had he reacted otherwise she would have suspected either deception or some sort of mental imbalance. And yet, despite those facts, to hear him lay it out so coldly still provoked her to be upset.

Emotional interactions, she decided, were complicated.

"I wouldn't," Ryland said, evidently having the same reaction as she was. "But I wouldn't think you'd be quite so sanguine about the loss of the data."

"Ah, I see. I believe the issue there is just that my original briefing may have given you a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of the job." He held up one thick finger, in a pose like a teacher pontificating. "You were not, in fact, hired to bring back the target data. That would have been preferred, of course, but it was not mandatory."

"You wanted it kept out of the hands of whomever Selfas Kane's client was," Ryland concluded.

"Exactly. Of course, we wanted the target data for ourselves if possible, but the important concern to us was that it not be let out into others' hands. As this has been prevented, then I consider the quest to have had a successful outcome. I will authorize the Hunter's Guild to release the full amount of your fee to you."

"Payment: appreciated."

"Well, if the client's satisfied, who am I to complain?" Naomi agreed.

Lyon glanced at Ryland. She found herself feeling uncomfortable, the emotions of dissatisfaction and suspicion rising at the conclusion of a job in which the suicide of a man was considered an acceptable outcome, but there seemed to be nothing to say.

"Then I believe our business is concluded," her partner told Solus, "and we wish you good day."

The four of them left the meeting room, stopping off at the main desk of the Guild to pick up their payment as they passed through.

"Well, two thousand meseta'll do a nice job covering my expenses for the month," Naomi declared. "So, who wants to help me go blow some of this on loud music, cheap booze, and riotous living?" She was smirking when she said it, her eyes sweeping across Ryland and the two androids, knowing there was virtually no chance of any of them saying yes. The two men, in particular, had considerably different ideas than she did of what constituted a party.

"Invitation: declined."

"I'm afraid that I'll have to pass."

"Lyon? Up to playing wingwoman?"

"I'm sorry, Naomi; I just don't feel like it today. Maybe some other time?"

"No problem." She gave a cheery wave and headed off towards the aerocar deck.

"Collaboration: enjoyable."

"It was good to work with you again, too," Ryland agreed.

"See you around, Gowan."

The massive RAcast clumped off, his steps ringing off the metal deck. Lyon had to admit, the idea of Gowan club-hopping was something she'd gladly tag along to see, just for the sight of the huge android shaking it on the dance floor. In a way, though, she was glad that she'd be denied that chance tonight, since she wanted to talk to Ryland.

"Can I treat you to coffee?" she offered.

"Only if I can pick the place."

"Ryland, I haven't tried dragging you to the Blue Grotto since Christmas."

"Exactly." He smirked at her. "That's just enough time for you to think my poor, inefficient organic brain would have let the memory lapse."

Lyon shook her head.

"No, no, I have that flagged for May 14th, though I'll have to recalculate for the effect of this conversation."

Curiosity and surprise flashed across his face for a split second before the realization hit that she was joking and he groaned.

"Come on, Lyon. We'd better get that coffee soon; I'm going to need the caffeine if I'm going to deal with your sense of humor."

~X X X~

Lab technician Winston Almonte's head snapped up as the rightmost of the three screens at his workstation suddenly went dark. Three frames of scrolling data and visual representations were suddenly replaced by a solid black block, then by a swirling test pattern.

"He's dead," a voice emanated from the screen.

"What? Who? Kane?"

"Bastards," spat the technician standing at the workstation to Almonte's left. She swept back some of the reddish-violet hair that had gotten caught up in the high collar of her Lab uniform when she'd turned her head.

"A request was entered with the Hunter's Guild and a location marker set for possible future retrieval of the body at 558.7 beats. The body fell into the ocean off the north shore of Gal Da Val Island on Ragol," the dry voice replied.

"So his mission was a complete failure. Those bastards," Almonte agreed with his colleague Sena's assessment. "I knew they were cold, but…" He shook his head. "Still, if his body was lost in the ocean, that means that they didn't get the data."

"Unless they killed him first and then threw the body in," Sena said.

"Unlikely," remarked the voice from the screen. "Access to Gal Da Val is restricted to Lab-approved hunters only. Such individuals would be unlikely to engage in such behavior towards a fellow hunter."

"And what would be the point?" Almonte said.

"For one thing, to hide the fact that they recovered the data disk," Sena said. Her steel-rimmed glasses slipped down her nose, she'd snapped out the response so vehemently, and she pushed them back up with one dark-skinned finger. "We think Kane took the disk to the bottom of the sea with him, but instead they have it and are decoding it even as we speak, while we're ignorant of the whole thing."

Almonte snorted.

"That'd be twisted even by this place's standards," he said.

"Agreed."

"You two are such innocents sometimes. Do you really think there's anything they wouldn't do for the sake of power?"

"Possibly. But in any event, it does not matter."

Both techs looked at the screen in surprise.

"Doesn't matter? If they've got that data—"

"There is nothing in the data that could help them, Mr. Almonte. It consists only of monitor results. Regardless of whether Miss Sena's suggestion is or is not true, it does not affect the two core facts. One: Selfas Kane is dead. Two: We do not have, and likely never will have, the data he was attempting to retrieve. Anything beyond those facts is ultimately more noise than signal."

"God, you're cold," Sena said.

"I am endeavoring to be practical."

"Can't you do something about it?" Almonte asked. "Electronically, I mean?"

"The reason we found it necessary to send a hunter at all was because I could not establish a direct ship-to-surface link via BEE. The network is too limited for that purpose, and the secondary transmission lines are controlled by CALS."

Almonte glanced at Sena. Both of them knew he had a point; nothing any of them had access to could hack the Lab's core AI.

"Then what are we supposed to do? We can't go to Chief Milarose and the Administration with theories and guesswork, no matter how good."

"They'd probably just steal it for themselves," Sena muttered. "Maybe they already have."

Almonte didn't bother objecting to this one of his colleague's conspiracy theories, mainly because it made too much sense. "And if that happened, the shark'd use us for fish food."

"An apt metaphor," came from the screen.

"You'd better report this to the director," Almonte said. "I don't know what his Plan B is, but I think we're going to need it."