CHAPTER 4: DIEU M'EN GARDE

"You know, a long time ago being crazy meant something. Nowadays everybody's crazy."

-Charles Manson

RENE BONAVENTURE

DENVER, COLORADO

"They did what?" Special Prosecutor Rene Bonaventure was furious. He had just gotten off a four and a half hour flight from New York by way of Montreal. He was groggy and irritable already, and this news certainly did not help. "How the hell could the FBI have fucked this up so badly?" It was only when he was angry or drunk that the guttural, choppy remnants of his Témiscamingue joual shined through his normally impeccable English. Today, he was angry.

"Apparently they made a rookie deliver the news. Some field agent, green as grass. She just got out of Quantico like six months ago. She handled it completely unprofessionally, and in public to boot. Apparently she thought she was a cowboy or something, the poor girl had a breakdown right there in the middle of class." His underling, Aaron Rickover, a highly competent if perpetually badly dressed lawyer, spoke to him over the phone from their offices just across from the UN General Assembly building in New York. "As you can no doubt tell, this sets us back, uh, considerably."

"Jesus Christ, did anybody see?" he asked, "Oh, Jesus, did anybody film it?" The damn kids had cellphone cameras now. "If this leaks…"

"No, thank God. But it was a close call."

"Thank Christ," he said, sitting down on a public bench. He placed his hand on his forehead, as if to signal his frustration and exhaustion to the world. "What's the Fed's name? Tell me there have been Biblical consequences. Old Testament."

"Her name's Akizuki. Apparently she's been placed on disciplinary probation, been riding a desk for a while."

"How long?"

"Didn't say."

"Make them double it." He didn't have time for this. Not now. Not one month before opening statements. "And I want a personal meeting with Director Beatty. I have to stick my foot up his ass. And make him come to us."

"I'll tell Cathy to pencil one in." There was a pause. "I'm sorry boss; ultimately, this was my fault. I was in charge while you were away, so this is my mess to clean up. I can handle it."

"Don't worry about it. You didn't know the FBI would make a rookie, a glorified fucking mall cop bring the most important fucking summons in world history. No one would think they'd be that stupid." A mother nearby covered her child's ears. He felt slightly embarrassed, but he was too frustrated to care much. Besides, he was old. He could do what he wanted. He stood in the middle of the domestic baggage claim area of the Denver International Airport, trying his best to keep the conversation quiet.

"Well, second most important."

"How'd the summons for the Ikari kid go? "

"Substantially better, but the end result is exactly the same. 'Recalcitrant' doesn't even begin to describe these witnesses. They're not returning phone calls, and they still want nothing to do with us. Go figure, huh? The Feds've got surveillance so we can be sure they don't run off or … you know." The younger lawyer mimicked a choking sound.

"Is that really, uh, a thing to be concerned about?" If those kids died…

"Well, there's been at least one suicide attempt on record for the girl. And the boy's apparently worse off psychologically than she is, according to the Private Investigators. Plenty of meds in the house they could do it with, too. You should see their prescription list: valium, prazosin, solian, it's like a friggin' Armenian phonebook. These kids definitely aren't alright. Then again, we have nothing to indicate that they're technically suicidal per se, so we aren't obligated to act yet. It's just something to keep in mind."

"Who's their shrink?"

"No one right now as far as I can tell. The girl was seeing one a couple months ago, irregularly, but those have dropped off completely, no record of her being there in quite some time. Also, the PIs we hired said there're occasional visits to, uh, shit, I don't have the name on hand. I'll email it to you if you want. But from what I understand he's basically a vending machine for pills. Word on the street is that this particular "doctor" will write a script for anything you want. Real shady operation. Lost his license a couple states over, hasn't been caught here yet."

"Forget about the name, it's not important. Have the articling students deal with it." said Rene. "This couldn't have come at a worse time."

"No shit. These kids have been walking on mental eggshells for years, the poor bastards. They were barely holding it together as it was. The Sohryu girl at least could down a job, but she hasn't left the house all week, so I don't know how long that'll last. Neither has Shinji. This whole fiasco set something very dark off in them. I'd have them committed if it didn't raise credibility issues."

Rene sighed again. Credibility issues, the bane of his current existence. This wasn't a jury trial, sympathy alone couldn't win a conviction. The judges adjudicating this were hardnosed, experienced, and largely immune to old prosecutor tricks. They could see right through a sad kid and get right to the bullshit underneath. "See, this is why I came to this hellhole myself. Here's a lesson, kid, don't trust anyone to do your job for you. You just end up doing more work in the end. To fix their mistakes, ya know." He sighed once more for good measure, making sure it was heard over the phone to really drive home his point. "It's looking like I'm going to have to coach them myself."

"Are you serious?"

"We've got no choice. We can't let them slip away. If they fight this subpoena, or break down in the stand at the wrong time, or Dieu m'en garde they fucking kill themselves, then this whole trial is going straight down the shitter. The MAGI deleted most of the paper trail of the Evas themselves, and more than half the material witnesses are dead or in the ocean. None of the NERV brass that flipped was high up enough to get us anything more than circumstantial evidence, half of which is contradictory. We need these kids to say the right things at the right time to get a conviction. They're our most important asset, and unless something changes soon they're our only asset."

He was not looking forward to this. They were already behind schedule. The delaying tactics of these damn kids had prevented them from doing much serious prep work. They didn't know it, but they had the entire government case over a barrel. If they somehow got out of their depression enough to get a lawyer of their own, and challenged the subpoena, it could delay things enough to derail the whole thing. "I already wanted to meet with them personally, anyway. It's just going to have to be more long term now. We need to take a very particular kind of soft approach with them."

"You? Soft?"

Despite everything, he smiled. "You underestimate me. However, this means that I can't devote any more time to drafting the factum. From now on you're in charge of that. Oh, it also means we're going to have to rent some office space in Boston."

"You're sure you don't want to at least review the factum? Like, I could do it, but didn't you say it had to be perfect?" Rene could hear the glee in his underling's voice. Aaron was nothing if not a careerist.

"Yeah. I did. So make it perfect. These kids are the key to everything. They don't give us what we want, we lose. It's that simple." He said, "Anyway, I gotta go. The rental place is going to drop off my car soon, and I want to get to Florence before sundown, if I can. I'll be back in two days. Update me then."

"Sure, Rene. See you soon. Good luck with the interview. And if you want to rough the bastard up a bit, I'm sure no one will care too much." There was a pause as he went to hang up the phone, but then Aaron remembered something. "Oh, shit, I forgot to ask, how was your mom?"

He had been away from the office for a week visiting his dying mother, who had finally been moved to a hospice less than a week ago, in his hometown of Rouyn-Noranda. He flew in direct from Quebec, only stopping in New York for a one-hour layover. "She's on her last legs. Doctors say she's… well, let's put it this way, they're not stingy with the morphine no more. She didn't look too good. Real frail. Nothing she says makes sense. Didn't even recognize me. Just keeps saying weird religious shit. 'Notre Dame, Notre Dame, la Sainte Vierge!' over and over. Screaming it, even. Her mind's completely gone. The dementia's… well, it's sad. It's been a few years now, even before the Impact. Never this bad though. Priest even came in to give Last Rites while I was home, but she stabilized, so he left. Either way, they don't think she's got long."

"Sorry to hear that."

"Forget it, she's ninety-two. It's her time to go. Claudette's already got the lawyers involved over the house. She can hardly wait for our mother to die." He sighed. "I'll see you on Wednesday; we can start cleaning this mess up."

"Yeah, boss."

He flipped the phone shut and put it away. The phone was outdated by several years, but it served Rene just fine. In his heart, he was a utilitarian. He had little sentimentality left in his old body. He had simply seen too much over the years. Any romanticism left in him had been strangled and left in a shallow grave in Bosnia.

He had been a lawyer for exactly forty years, and a war crimes specialist for thirty. He cut his teeth in the Balkans and Africa, and had even prosecuted some of the top Third World War officials that weren't granted an exemption by the Valentine's treaty. He was hands on, with a penchant to visiting the sites of atrocities himself, something that his colleagues in the Hague had no stomach for. To Rene, it was impossible to understand human darkness from a plush office in Belgium. You couldn't understand a man that could slaughter a busload of boys by reading about him, you had to see their bodies. You had to go out on a rickety pickup truck, way out in the bush. The hinterlands, the dark corners of the world. The Serbs called it vukojebina: "Where the wolves fuck." That's where the secrets were.

Gravesite 88: Thirty-two to thirty-four juvenile bodies, partially decayed, located in one grave, four miles east of Gravesite 29. Forensic report indicates callouses on hands, digging implements found nearby. Possibility that juveniles dug grave trench themselves. Signs of malnourishment. Bullet-wounds in back of each head.

It's weird, Rene thought, The Hague and those Bosnian killing fields are both underwater now.

He was in a new, darker corner now. He was here to meet with Gendo Ikari, the man he had been assigned to prosecute years ago, contingent, of course, on if he ever came out of the water. This was by far his largest case to date and it was surely his last. As soon as the ink was dry on Ikari's sentence, Bonaventure was retiring. He had had enough.

His job paid well enough, but he didn't really need money anymore. He lived alone, in a small apartment in Manhattan. He had had a house before, but since Roisin died, he hadn't needed anything that big. He had been with his wife since he was in college, working in Derry (or Londonderry, depending on who you asked), as an intern with some NGO, supervising elections during the Troubles. One of his first International Law gigs. She was the only woman he had been in any sort of steady relationship with, before or since.

They were happy together; their marriage had lasted for nearly fifty years. Through Second Impact, through World War Three, through the post-war trials that he had worked on, they had been together. They really had no other family. She was orphaned at a young age, and had no one left in Ireland. He was not close to his mother, or his sister, Claudette, who he had hated since he was a teenager. They had no children. All they had was each other.

Then, Third Impact happened.

He came out of the ocean.

She didn't.

He claimed his bag at the carrousel and began to walk down DIA's meticulously cleaned hallways. Since Third Impact, Denver was, by far, the largest city in the Western United States, outranking even pre-war Los Angeles. Any farther west and things got dicey. Denver was the refuge of first resort for most of the people fleeing east. They worked odd jobs or scrounged to get by, hoping desperately to get an East Coast Pass. Even if Denver was relatively safe, there were no jobs here. No money.

Despite the size of the airport, and despite the fact that Denver itself had ballooned in size in the past five years, the airport was strangely empty. Rene, who traveled here often enough to be familiar with its layout, noticed that DIA never seemed to get much use. The fact that the airport stood on the equivalent landmass of two Manhattans made it seem even more empty and foreboding. Sterile, almost. The fact that the small crowd of people that had been at baggage claim with him had thinned out to almost nothing made Rene feel like he was the only one there.

But he wasn't. He passed by one of the airport's famously inappropriate murals: a man in pseudo-Nazi gear brandishing a scimitar next to a long line of dead children, with a burning city in the background, and stopped. Not for the mural, he had seen it enough times that it barely even registered to him, but for the man that was standing there.

He had an imposing figure: tall, muscular in a malnourished sort of way, and completely bald. Not bald in an old man sort of way like Rene himself, who still had a few scraps of hair clinging to the back of his head like the ruins of some lost civilization, but completely clean shaven. Even the eyebrows. The amount of effort to maintain that must have been immense. His skin was covered in tattoos, mostly blue, red or black ink, which formed obscure, almost arcane patterns. Like a mix of alchemical manuals, subway graffiti, and children's scribbling. It was difficult to look at any one part of the fleshy canvas, he was so utterly covered. They were like the mad notes of a schizophrenic, all jumbled and overlapping, but done in tattoo ink. They were obviously not professional. Maybe prison tattoos? Either way they seemed recent. There was another one on his arm that seemed older and didn't fit with the pattern. Rene recognized the symbol, Fourth Infantry Division. A war vet.

The man seemed to be staring off into space, at nothing in particular. As far as Rene could tell, they were the only two people in the cavernous room. The crowd had thinned away to nothing, strange for this time of day. There was a palpable aura of hostility around him.

Rene tried, vaguely, to place him. His work prosecuting war criminals in the 2000s had required him to memorize a vast wealth of knowledge on troop placements in the Third World War: which units were stationed at which battles and the like. He had no particular interest in the mechanics of war, they were just another fact pattern to him.

Based on his age, he's definitely a Third World War vet. Fourth Infantry… let's see… Eastern European Theater, spring of 2000. Oh Jesus. Probably stationed on the Dnieper. That meat grinder.

He was mouthing something to himself, slowly, deliberately. It wasn't chanting, which Rene thought it was at first. It was more like a conversation that he was having with himself. The man seemed to be rocking back and forth, gently, lost in his own little world. His hands were shaking slightly, as if he could not quite control them.

This odd behavior was not particularly surprising, half-spun war vets were a dime a dozen these days. On nearly every corner they would be there, begging, or just ranting, their minds broken for almost a decade.

He was not a man that Rene particularly wanted to talk to. And yet, deep inside Rene felt a feeling that he at first dismissed as dark curiosity, which then blossomed to a full blown urge to understand the man. It was as if there were meat-hooks lodged in his brain, drawing him in. In the hours after their encounter, Rene would try to offer some sort of plausible explanation to himself to justify his own behavior here, but the truth is he could find none. There was simply a sort of odd, yet indescribably powerful animal magnetism to the man. There was the unspoken promise of a deep revelation there, drawing Rene in like a moth to a flame. Unlike a moth, though, Rene knew very well that the man could, and probably would, burn him.

"Hell of a mural, eh?" said Rene. "Bit, uh, inappropriate for an airport if you ask me." He attempted casualness here, for some reason. It was totally inappropriate, but Rene was unsure of how, exactly, to introduce himself to a probably schizophrenic. He certainly wasn't trying to befriend the man, he just needed something to defuse his own nervousness.

"It is totally appropriate for this airport." said the man. His voice was smooth and soothing, like butter. It was far deeper than Rene expected, but not overpowering. It was completely foreign to his appearance, which was, frankly, freakish. "You are Rene Bonaventure. The lawyer." It wasn't a question.

How the hell does he know my name? Rene was frightened. How could he not be? But the comment seemed to confirm his initial suspicion that the weirdo knew something.

It was then that he noticed his eyes. They were piercing blue, deep, and impossible to look away from. But they were utterly dead, as if some spark, some fundamental humanity, had gone out inside. "I uh… did you see me on the news, or something?"

The man seemed to think for a second, as if to think of some kind of plausible lie. "…yes. The news." He cleared his throat, and, lacking any discernable sense of propriety, spat on the floor. "Since you're here already, I have a proposition for you."

Christ, this freak wanted him doing favors for him now? "What is it?"

"I need a license to live on the East Coast. You can help me obtain it."

"You should talk to an internal immigration lawyer about that, I do something a bit different." He wanted to turn to walk away, but his feet wouldn't let him. He felt paralyzed.

"Yes. War crimes. You are here to meet with Gendo Ikari." Again, how the hell did he know that? Clearly there were some very big leaks in the office, if even this freak knew who he was and why he was here. He would have to speak to Aaron about it when he got back. Unless… "Even so, your signature will suffice. You are a very prestigious man." He rummaged in a dirty looking backpack, which was his only luggage, and pulled out a page. "The paperwork is already filled out. I need a witness of your standing to notarize it. Nothing more."

"I wish I could help you, but…" No, I have time, said a voice. He was pretty sure it was his own, but it seemed to come from the aether, like his own internal narrator speaking to him from outside. You're in no rush. You can fill out some paperwork. Gendo Ikari can wait. "What do you need an East Coast Pass for?"

"I am going to Boston. I have friends already living there already. They are preparing for my arrival, and they... require guidance. You will give me your signature, correct?"

No. Of course not, fuck off. His own voice again. But instead, he said, dreamily, "Yeah, I might as well." It sounded as if the words weren't even his, but he said it, he was sure of it.

What the hell was he doing? Why did he say that? Was he insane? By vouching for someone on an East Coast Pass, he was essentially making himself responsible for this nut-job. His good name was on the line, and he had little reason to put any stock in this man's credibility. This was a very bad idea.

But despite these misgivings, his hand was already in his pocket, grabbing his pen as if it had a mind of its own. "Pass me the papers." He said the words lazily, as if in a dream. He wanted to rebel, to throw the papers away, but he simply could not bring himself to do it. He put them against the mural to sign them, right at the tip of the storm trooper's scimitar. It was then that he realized he didn't even ask the name of the man he was signing for.

"Laffey. My name is Jack Laffey." said the man, who was looking through Rene, but not at him. Rene never got to ask his question. He just knew.

"Where, exactly, are you from?" Hell?

"California, originally. But I've been living in Nevada for some time with my… friends. The ones that are waiting for me in Boston. They went ahead of me." He sniffed. "I believe the universe intended for us to meet this day."

"Well, it certainly was your lucky day. I don't normally do things like this, and I'm not quite sure why I…" he stopped speaking, thinking better of it. There was no point in salvaging any pride here, he had clearly been beaten. "Just don't go doing anything bad, kid, or I'll draw shit for it." It was more a plea than an order.

"I will not disappoint you, Monsieur Bonaventure." Oh, he speaks French, too. Laffey breathed in deeply, far too deeply. "The universe did intend for us to meet today. And it intends that we'll meet again someday. Soon, I think."

"Yeah, sure. Soon." He was growing tired of weirdo, and already fully regretted signing the papers. It was almost as if the wool was pulled off his eyes, and some semblance of judgement had returned to him. He noticed, then, that Laffey's breath was terrible. All his teeth were rotten or chipped. Clearly he had not been to a dentist in some time. Also, despite his clean-shaven appearance, the man was filthy. He smelled like a mix of incense and incest: patchouli, gunpowder, and poverty. Spoiled milk, peyote, and death. His fingernails were long and cracked, as if they hadn't been cut in weeks. It was weird to such a lack of personal hygiene from a man that obviously invested a lot of time in shaving his body hair. Why, then, does he speak like an aristocrat?

Clearly, Rene had not been thinking straight in vouching for him. We'll meet soon alright. In a fucking police station, when I'm called in to bail your ass out, trying to give a good explanation why I vouched for you. An explanation he couldn't hope to give.

"Au revoir, Monsieur Bonaventure." The accent was unbelievably Parisian, far removed from Rene's own backwoods North Quebec miner-speak, which he couldn't shake despite the fact that he had not lived in his hometown for nearly five decades. Again, it was weirdly formal for someone that was quite obviously a yokel.

"Oui," replied Rene. It sounded more like 'wah,' "à plus."

At that, Laffey wheeled around almost comically and walked away. Every limb of his looked as if it operated entirely independently in some sort of loose confederation, making his gate completely alien. He seemed to disappear entirely behind some sort of column. Strangely enough, as soon as he was out of sight, people started to appear, going about their business as they had before, making the airport feel occupied once again.

The entire meeting felt as if it had taken place in some ambiguous space half way between dream and reality. The peculiar man was real, to be sure, and yet…

Rene shook his head, questioning his own sanity.

"What the hell have I done?" He said, to no one in particular.

His car was late, so Rene was forced to mill about the entrance of the airport for some time. By now, he could only vaguely remember his encounter with Jack Laffey. He remembered the general gist of the encounter, but he felt and unsure, as if he were remembering something done in a drunken stupor the night before, half remembered and hazy.

Surrounding him were the two categories of people one was likely to see at an airport entrance. The majority were tired, busy people who were in a rush to get the hell out of there as quickly as possible, and the minority were people with nothing better to do but harass the people in the first category.

One was a Filipina girl, young and pretty, wearing a lei-like garland of flowers around her neck handing out pamphlets. She gave a warm "God loves you!" to everyone she handed a brochure to. Most crumpled them and threw them on the ground, unwilling to hear the new gospel.

It was Rene's turn. "God loves you!" she said. "He has a plan for you!"

"Uh, thanks." Where the hell is the car?

He looked at the pamphlet. It was all black, except for the logo of the Iglesia ni mga Angheles, which consisted of a cross, with three eyes along the cross bar: one black, one blue, and one red. The cross stood against the backdrop of a red ocean. The only text on the front cover read "WHO IS LILITH? WHAT IS HER PLAN FOR YOU?"

Inside, the brochure read: "THE RAPTURE IS OVER – THE TRIBULATION HAS BEGUN! THE BEAST WALKS AMONG US! CHRIST HAS RETURNED! " Then below it, "REMEMBER, YOU CHOSE TO RETURN! FIND OUT WHY AT OUR FREE DISCOVERY CAMP. CALL FOR DETAILS." They listed a phone number which Rene had no intention of calling.

I chose to come back. So why didn't Roisin? Did she not know that he had returned? Did he not know she wanted to stay? Why did his mother return, if she was already old, frail, and riddled with dementia?

When they fished his mother out of Lac Noranda, she had nearly drowned, too weak to swim. It was a good thing she returned around the same time that most did, a few weeks after the event, when the SQ boats were out on the lake 24/7. Last he had heard, they didn't even bother anymore. The priority now was cleaning up the LCL, rerouting it to the large northern section of the lake devoted to tailings from the massive gold mine that, to this day, dominated the town. Dredged out and mixed with cyanide. If anyone returned they'd probably be poisoned immediately, but no one had come out of Lac Osisko in more than two years.

Still, it seemed wrong to Rene. The fact that he was even here right now, to see Gendo Ikari, proved that people still came back sometimes:

"You know," his sister, Claudette said to him at dinner last week, in Rouyn-Noranda while Rene was home for his mother's vigil. "I was at the dépanneur a couple months ago, picking up some beer for St. Jean Baptiste weekend. On sale, tsé. Anyway," she used the English word. "I ran into Gilles Arleux there. Helped me carry the cases back to my car. Remember, from school? He was the one that hit you with the ice-ball that one time behind the church right before mass, back when it was still at Saint Michel Archange. I think you were in Grade 4 or something. Remember, Rene? You cried and cried, 'cause you got blood all over your new coat." She began to laugh. Well, cackle really. "Mum reddened your arse bad for that one! Even made you go take confession!" Her laughs got louder, filling the room, as if it were the funniest thing in the world.

Claudette's son, and Rene's nephew, Guy Glenevis, joined in the laughter. He was an occasional handyman, forty-three years old, with little to show for it except credit card debt and two asshole kids both of whom, unfortunately, came back from the lake early. Guy was at one time "semi-professional" defenseman "on the traveling team and everything." He hadn't done much, really, since a concussion in the beautifully named town of Asbestos ended his very mediocre sports career. He was sired by Claudette's second husband, who she divorced sometime in the late 90s. Rene had convicted no less than twenty war criminals in his time as a UN prosecutor. He had been to no less than forty countries, had met heads of state, and had even spoken at the General Assembly. But Guy outranked him in the family hierarchy, despite the fact that he had only been outside of Quebec once, to some Peewee tournament in Timmins in '94.

As they laughed, Rene just sat there, quietly suppressing rage. He did that a lot, whenever he was at home. His mother, for her part, was oblivious to the fact that they were discussing her at all. She was upstairs, screaming her half-understandable prayers to the Virgin Mary. The delusional ranting mixed with the laughter to create disturbing cacophony. Rene hardly noticed. After a few days of his being there, her constant praying had simply begun to blend into the background noise.

The laughter died down, and Claudette's face got serious again. "Anyway, I got to talking to Gilles a bit. His son, uh, Julien I think, is a cop. Nice boy, used to be on Guy's team. Gilles says his son does the skidoo patrol in the winter, sees all sorts of crazy shit." Their mother's screaming got louder, causing Claudette to raise her own voice to compensate. "Says there's a whole bunch of bodies at the bottom of the lake. Dozens of them, even. Says they can see them through the ice sometimes, in the shallow spots. They float up, eh, right up against the ice. You really see them in the spring when the snow starts to come off, and it's glare all the way down. They think they're from the ones that come back in the winter, when it's frozen."

Rene snapped out of the memory. That conversation kept running in his head, over and over again. The whole eight-hour drive from Rouyn-Noranda to Montreal, he had obsessed over it. Try as he might to shove the thoughts way, Rene kept seeing the newly returned in his mind's eye, struggling to claw through the ice, only for the water to take them. Reborn only to die again. When he passed over the St. Lawrence, blue again after a massive dredging effort, he wondered how many bodies lay under there, undiscovered. Did their families know they were dead? Or did they wait in vain, obliviously waiting for the call informing them that their loved ones had been fished out and dried off, and were waiting to be picked up?

Was Roisin still in the water after all? Or was she dead, permanently?

Still, the thought confirmed one thing to Rene: The cults were full of shit. No God would send someone back just to let them drown, and certainly no one would choose that fate. He crumpled the paper, just like everybody else, and trod it underfoot. He began to smoke a cigarette fitfully, hoping to calm his suddenly tense nerves.

They're lying, exploiting a tragedy. That's all.

That's what he wanted to believe, at least.

It was less painful, that way.

The car finally arrived, almost an hour late. It was driven by a tiny Japanese man, who spoke no English and accepted no tip. Which was good, because he didn't deserve one. It was already five, and it would about wo hours to drive down I-85 to Florence.

As he drove away, he noticed the large, white, tent-like structure of the airport cut an imposing figure against the massive storm clouds rolling in from the west. It was a good thing he took the earlier flight, chances are he wouldn't be able make it in at all. It looked like tornado weather.

As he drove, he listened to the radio, hoping for some kind of forecast: "-without bail in an apparent case of road-rage turned deadly. Police in Boston say the suspect suddenly and deliberately crashed his own car into a Dodge Caravan. They then say that he retrieved a tire iron and beat thirty-eight year old Alison Lexington to death with a tire iron, while her injured children were in the backseat. Traffic was reduced to a single lane, causing major delays." A pause. "Weather forecasts indicate major thunderstorms with possible tornado activity in the Denver metropolitan area. All flights to and from Denver International Airport have been cancelled or delayed. Residents are cautioned to exercise extreme caution."

Just as the weather was starting to pick up, he arrived in Florence. Thunder boomed in the distance, but the air was ominously dead. Every so often, however, the wind would pick up, causing the trees to sway back and forth. The sky was black, but apparently there was still supposed to be an hour of daylight left.

The town was tiny. Classic single-industry shit-hole, all tract housing and kitsch. It kind of reminded Rene of home. Except there were no mountains, only low, rocky hills, turned black from the smog and acid rain. Everyone who lived here was a prison guard or the child of a prison guard. It was a weird sort of place. The air itself was oppressive; this was a real prison town.

He checked into his accommodations for the night. A shitty chain motel with branches all over the country. It was Spartan, but it would do. He just wanted to sleep. He grabbed a burger and a few beers at the adjacent bar, which, of course, was prison themed. The locals eyed him suspiciously. He was an outsider in a suit, the worst kind of thing to be in a town like this, except maybe a perp. As he drank, it thundered outside. Last call came early, because the power went out. Probably for the best, he had to be up early the next day.

He was able to get into his room because, thank God, it still used a real key. He wanted to review his notes a bit, make sure he knew what questions he was going to ask the next day, but it was too dark and there was no way to turn the lights back on. He wondered if it was safe. There was no basement here, and the walls didn't look particularly sturdy. Fuck it, if there's a tornado, there's a tornado. Hope it wipes the whole damn place out.

As he slept, he dreamt. He dreamt of his mother, looming over him, rage in her eyes as she wielded his father's belt like a bullwhip, buckle-end out. His coat, stained with blood from an ice-ball thrown by a boy eight years Rene's senior, soaked in the kitchen sink as his sister peered out from behind a corner. She was terrified and yet strangely satisfied that it was her brother, not her, that was receiving the beating tonight. His cries mingled with the sound of the Habs game coming from the tiny black and white TV where his father, who as a rule never hit Rene or his sister, was passed out in his chair, drunk again on cheap rye. His cheap cigarette still smoldered between his fingers; he was dead to the world.

The Canadiens had at least won that game. Hell, they even won the Cup that year; beat the Red Wings in seven games. Rene never cared much about sports, but he had always remembered that. His father would not live to see it. Within a month, Marc-Andre Bonaventure would catch his foot in a crook while mucking out a collapsed ore pocket, causing him to fall 3,000 feet straight down an elevator shaft. After that, his only protector, imperfect as he was, was gone. Despite his age, Rene was a pall bearer at his dad's funeral. It was strange, the coffin was far lighter than he expected, and his father was, after all, a big man. Decades later, Rene found out why. In a dark curiosity, Rene called up some files from the Ministry of Mines, investigating the accident. Apparently, they only ever found a few of his body parts, scattered over an area a kilometer wide.

The rest were still down there, hidden somewhere in the darkness.

They called it the Alcatraz of the Rockies. The name didn't do it justice. Florence ADX was, by far, the most secure prison in the United States. Built in 1994, it had never had an escape. It was designed like a reverse castle, meant to keep inmates in rather than outsiders out. Its hallways were deliberately confusing, meant to befuddle prisoners on the inside and keep them from planning any sort of escape. No one who was inside the prison knew exactly where they were situated. No one was allowed to talk to other prisoners. The cells were sparse, and soundproof to prevent any sort of communication. Prisoners stayed there twenty-three hours of the day, in total isolation. One former warden described it as a "cleaner version of Hell."

"There are a few rules you have to remember," said his escort: a short, stocky guard with glasses, no neck, and a buzz-cut. "No touching, no gifts, no weapons or anything that could be used as a weapon. And we're gonna have to do a search on you before you go in." He produced a metal detector wand. "Arms out."

The wand beeped. "It's probably my keys," said Rene. "Sorry, I forgot to take them out of my pocket."

The guard eyed him suspiciously. Rene dropped his keys into the metal bucket with his other possessions. "The belt too." said the guard. "It's got a metal buckle, plus you're not allowed ligatures. That means you're also gonna have to leave your tie here."

He took it off. He felt slightly naked. "Can I keep my shoelaces?"

"That you can keep, but make sure they're tied tightly and do not take off your shoes under any circumstances." he said, "It'd be a damn shame if Ikari hung himself before we can hang him."

"It's an ICC trial, no death penalty."

The guard only snorted in derision at that. He then quickly barked a confirmation that Rene had arrived into a walkie-talkie. "Okay, you can go on through. Cell sixty-four. You can't miss it. There's a visitor's screen we just installed right in it. Plexiglass. We don't like to let 'em in the old visitor's room anymore, too much bullshit to move 'em, ya know. You have forty-five minutes, exactly, so make it count."

"Okay. Where's his counsel?"

"Huh? Oh, shit, they didn't tell you? Ikari didn't want his lawyer present. He said he just wants it to be you and him. Beats me why."

"Did anyone tell him that that was a very bad idea?"

"He made his choice, he's a grownup. Hell, he blew up the damn world twice. I think he can make his own decisions."

He buzzed him through, and the massive, bomb-shelter like door swung open. The hallway smelled like bleach, sterile. Everything was silent. Prisons were supposed to be loud, noisy affairs. Not here. They called this cellblock "Bomber's Row." Timothy McVeigh had been here. Ramzi Youseff had been here. And now Gendo Ikari was here. He was the only one here. Every other cell in the block was empty. Gendo Ikari was the only inmate in this part of the prison.

There was another guard, that looked almost identical to the first, standing outside the cell. "I'm officer Davis. I'm here to monitor your conversation, and ensure your own safety."

"You related to the other guy?"

"Huh?"

"Never mind." Rene said. "I'm ready."

Gendo Ikari was shorter than he expected. The man that had contributed to, or engineered, the deaths of five and a half billion people in the two of the greatest crimes ever committed, sat quietly in the corner of his cell, staring at the wall. There was something underwhelming about him, he seemed more middle-manager than genocidal maniac. Still… he radiated a sort of quiet authority. And besides, Rene had been in the business long enough to know that appearances were deceptive.

"You're late." said Ikari, who didn't bother to look at him. He seemed to be far more interested in the wall, which he was staring at intensely.

"Good, you speak English. It said in your file that you did, so I didn't bring a translator." said Rene, flipping through his notes. He was going into prosecutor mode. All distractions were shut off. It was just him and his prey here. Hunter, and hunted. "Why didn't you want your own counsel present? You do understand that I'm trying to convict you, correct?"

Ikari finally looked at him, staring deep into his eyes. He wore glasses, large, plastic and googly, clearly prison issued. "I have reason to believe my defense lawyer's intentions aren't entirely… identical to my own."

"You know you can fire them right?"

Ikari didn't respond. Fine. Play it that way. That's the last free legal advice you're getting from me. "How are you doing?"

"My cell is quite inhumane."

"You have a TV and everything." said Rene, gesturing to the tiny, clear television set sitting behind another plexiglass window on the far side of the windowless cell. There was some kind of Televangelist program on, muted, and filmed in the late 80s or possibly early 90s. An old, probably southern man was gesticulating at the altar, bleeding charisma. Behind him was a blood red cross, covered entirely in sequins. To his left, a Christian rock band played. To his right was a seemingly endless line of cripples, queuing to be healed by the power of the Holy Spirit. A middle aged man, probably about Rene's age, came up to the altar with a cane. The preacher-man grabbed it theatrically and snapped it over his knee. He was healed. Hallelujah.

Rene had noticed that they occasionally cut to people in the crowd, whose arms were outstretched in religious ecstasy, muttering supposedly divinely inspired nonsense words. Old time religion, real snake-handler shit. There was none of the Catholic austerity that he had been raised with, but pure showmanship. Something about the preacher reminded Rene of the man he had seen in the airport. That ability to control people, to hypnotise them. Was it the work of the divine? Was it sorcery? Or was it fraud?

"Oh. That. I muted it. That is the only channel available to me. I find it most… distasteful."

"Can't argue with you there." He sat down at a small plastic chair set up across the plexiglass window that divided them. It reminded him of the gorilla cage at a zoo, there was a real separation there, almost like they were on the phone or something. He pulled out his tape-recorder, an ancient device that he had had since he had begun to practice law and set it on the table. The damn thing still used tape, and it was scratched all to hell from years of heavy use. But it had been with him all over the world: from Belgrade to Brazzaville, so he had a certain sentimental attachment to it. He struggled with the little switch on the side for an uncomfortably long period of time, until finally the tape deck started turning.

"So, Ikari. Let's talk brass tacks. Though it may be meaningless to you, you are in prison after all, we're short on time. So I'll be brief. From what I've read, you've been giving my neckless compatriots out there, and the detectives, a hard time in every interrogation you've been through. Stonewalling them. You're a hard nut to crack. I expected as much. Still, it must be a difficult act to keep up, they've been at it for weeks."

Ikari's expression did not change. "I believe the Fifth Amendment gives me the right not to incriminate myself. This is an American prison, is it not? I have the benefit of the American constitution?"

"Technically."

"Then I intend to use it. I am not in the business of giving you the rope to hang me with. If you expect me to talk about my time at NERV, you will be disappointed."

Bonaventure shook his head. "That's not what I'm here for. If you wouldn't give them anything on NERV, you won't give me anything on NERV. That's fine. I expect you to make me work for my retirement fund. I'm not a detective, I'm not interested in investigating the nuts and bolts of the uh, what did you call it, Instrumentality Project? Weird name. No, I delegate that responsibility to investigators far more capable than I. My job, by and large, is merely to summarize the fruits of their labour." He stood up again. "No, I'm here to talk about you, Mr. Ikari. To see the man behind the charges. Who, exactly, are you? What makes you tick? Why did you do what you did?" Bonaventure smiled, his yellow, smoke-stained teeth glistening, "or allegedly did?" He sat back down, well, flopped, really. He had surprising springiness to his movements now, he had an energy that simply wasn't there when he wasn't in the zone. In truth, he got high off it.

Ikari merely shrugged. "If this is some gambit–"

"No gambit. No tricks. I don't work like that. This is only half about you, anyway. I'm just laying a foundation here. You ever been to a seafood restaurant?"

Ikari looked at him quizzically. "Yes."

"Well, you don't eat a lobster unless you pick it out yourself. See the bastard in person -" Bonaventure smiled again, wider this time, "- before you boil him alive."

"I do not care for lobster. They are bottom feeders. Filthy animals." Ikari almost smiled himself. Almost. "Do you intend to boil me alive, Mr. Bonaventure? Refreshing, that you make your intentions so clear. "

"I figure I owe you the courtesy. I respect you, in a weird way. From what you were able to accomplish in such a short time. Ghastly, yes, but impressive all the same. From what I've seen, you came from nothing."

Ikari said nothing. He just stared. Bonaventure made a note of it. Flattery would not soften this man up. Not that he was attempting to soften Ikari, his remarks were genuine. Still, it was strange. Most megalomaniacs, the type of men that usually committed war crimes, liked nothing more than praise, even if it was backhanded. In truth, most of the men, (and, for some reason, it always was men) that Bonaventure had dealt with over the years were little more than street thugs. The title of "war criminal" elevated their acts to something oddly noble, almost, undeservedly. Their crimes were the most base imaginable.

Ikari did not fit that description. Power? He didn't care about it. He could tell just by looking at him. He carried himself almost humbly, but with a quiet dignity. Bonaventure took a different tack.

"What, exactly, do you hope to accomplish?" Bonaventure asked, finally. "What's your best case scenario here? Even if, somehow, you get off, do you really think the world out there will care? That's half the reason I never gave you a plea deal. The public wouldn't accept anything less than the maximum sentence, which is a hell of a lot lighter than what they'd give you."

Ikari, once again, said nothing. Then, finally, after thinking it over for some time he said, "I know from experience that thinking too far ahead often backfires."

"So you're a live in the moment kind of guy. Interesting."

Ikari shook his head. "I would not say that."

Bonaventure sighed. He picked up a figurative olive branch and held it out, one last appeal to sanity. "Look, Ikari. Maybe you should just plead guilty. I know I'm your prosecutor, not your defense lawyer, but still… you'd be saving a lot of people a lot of pain. You don't really think you can win, do you?"

Ikari said grimly, "Even if my fate is a foregone conclusion, I will not surrender. I will not run away. It's… unseemly. So no, Mr. Bonaventure. I will have my trial. I will not give you an inch."

Was that that old Japanese sense of honour coming out? Ikari didn't look like the type of guy that would subscribe too much to old cultural trends, but then again… No. It wasn't that. This was a personal code. A creed he lived by. It wasn't honour he was after. So what?

"Fine. Have it your way." Bonaventure pulled out his notes. "I've been looking a bit into your history. Some things that don't quite add up. I figure I should hear it from the horse's mouth, so to speak, while I have the chance. Clarify things. Do you have a moment?" He didn't wait for the response. "Ikari isn't your original last name, is it? It was Rokubungi at first."

"Yes." Said Ikari, nonplussed.

"So why did you change it?" asked Rene, already knowing the answer.

"Marriage."

"Is that how it works in Japan? The man takes the woman's name? How progressive."

"It's more common than here, but it is by no means the norm." he said. "I have never been one for social conventions."

"That much is clear, Mr Ikari." Bonaventure grinned, no teeth this time. "So, let's talk about your wife. Yui." Ikari flinched. Whatever he was expecting, he wasn't expecting this. "You met in school, right? University of Kyoto, class of, uh… '99. Hell of a year, the last good year we ever had, wouldn't you agree?" Ikari, again, said nothing. Bonaventure made a show of leaning into his notes, playing with his spectacles a bit. "Says here she was born in 1977. That's ten years younger than you. Hell, I even got a nephew born that year. You like 'em young, Ikari?"

Ikari seemed angry, but only slightly so, at that remark. "You're being vulgar. Stop."

"Sorry, sorry. No judgement here. But, I gotta say, I'm a bit confused about some of the things surrounding this girl. Specifically, the fact that she doesn't seem to have existed at all. The only government records mentioning her at all are your son's birth certificate. No marriage certificate, no record of enrolment at Kyoto University, no driver's license, hell, not even a birth or death certificate of her own. And nothing in the GEHIRN files, such as they are, either. Aside from a brief note in a fucking tour pamphlet we dug up. Otherwise, nothing. Did you marry a ghost, Ikari?"

At that, he merely shrugged. "I cannot be held responsible for poor record keeping."

"Well, speaking of record keeping, let's talk a bit about your bank accounts. Gendo Rokubungi in 1998 had the equivalent of $2000 USD in his bank account, unemployed, no family, and was basically aimless. Long string of convictions though, mostly petty shit. A real thug. Mr. Rokubungi certainly wasn't enrolled at Kyoto University. In fact, you were never enrolled at Kyoto University. Your wife wasn't either, but we'll get back to that." Another grin, as he paused for effect. "Like I said, you came from nothing. Now, let's compare Mr. Rokubungi to his alter-ego. Gendo Ikari in 2000 had, well, I don't even know how to pronounce that many zeros. I was never a math major. And that's just your public accounts. We've tracked down a few of your offshore accounts, the ones that weren't frozen, anyway. Any one of those would make a Saudi prince blanche. You get some good investment advice, Ikari? Win a couple lotteries?"

"I fail to see how this is relevant to my supposed culpability in the Third Impact." said Ikari. "And to be honest your tone is becoming tiring."

You little shit. He slammed the book down. "Oh, I know you fucking sparked the Third Impact, Ikari. Second, too. I already got all the proof I need from other sources." lied Bonaventure, "I told you already, I'm not here for that. I don't care about that. Not today, at least. I care about you, and how you got to the position where you could spark off the Third Impact. And I care about the people that helped you get to that position, because you sure as shit didn't do it alone."

Ikari smiled, for real this time. "I see your game. This interview isn't about this case…"

"I'm just curious about how a punk, a fucking poche, with no job, no connections, and no prospects suddenly becomes one of the richest men in the world. How he goes from a high-school dropout, with shit grades in science by the way, to the head of GEHIRN in one year. Everything seems to lead through Yui. You marry her in '99, that same year you're in Antarctica, leading some expedition. Next year, the world blows up. It's obvious she had something to do with the whole thing. Unfortunately, she died of… well, something…" he let the point hang, "sometime in 2004. And we only know that from a grave stone. There's no death certificate." He paused. "She is dead, right?"

No response. It was like interviewing a fucking brick wall now. He glanced at the clock. Jesus Christ, thirty minutes gone already. He was running out of time.

"Do you have something better to do than talk to me, Mr. Ikari? Watch TV? Jerk off?" He was getting too hostile now, and he could sense it. A rookie mistake. He knew better than this, so he eased off, bipolar style. "Look … it's obvious you don't want to talk to me. That's fine. I wouldn't want to talk to me either. Your lawyer would tell you not to talk to me." He pulled out a photocopy of a photograph, scanned from a newspaper. It was blurry, a man stood at a podium, holding papers, trying to speak to a massive crowd of people. "There are people still out there that had something to do with this. You're a scapegoat. Someone is very glad that you're keeping silent on this." He pointed to a figure. "Do you know who that is?"

Ikari eyed the photo passively. "Hideki Izumo."

"The Prime Minister of Japan, at least until a few months later when he blew his own brains out in March of 2001, after he lost the election. Suicide, apparently. You'se guys call it sepukku right? I've been told the word hari-kari-" he pronounced it 'harry-carry.' "- is incorrect or something." No response, great. "The point is that that's you, there in the background, just a few steps away from him. This was right after Second Impact." He pointed to a small figure in the back, barely noticeable, wearing a dark suit and sunglasses. Anyone else would've missed him, anyone not looking for him.

Rene pulled out another photo. "This one's even earlier. 1999, fairly early in the year, so it must've been pretty close to when you met Yui." He reached for the tape recorder and flipped it off. "Whoops." It was a picture of a dinner. All present were wearing formal dining wear, balloons festooned the background. A sign read "COWPENS 2000! A NEW KIND OF PRESIDENT FOR A NEW KIND OF MILLENNIUM" Ikari would've blended into the crowd, if not for those eyes. "Why do you have such a talent for showing up near world leaders, Ikari? Why were you at this dinner?"

Ikari shrugged. The earlier levity was back. It was just a friendly conversation, after all. "I was hungry. They were serving dinner." There was something very wise-guy-esque about him. He was like an old mob-boss, unwilling to break omerta for anything. Strange, for a supposed scientist facing life behind bars.

"At ten thousand dollars a plate. Sitting at the same table as a future four-term fucking president."

"It was good food." He deadpanned. "No lobster."

Bonaventure sighed as he flipped the tape recorder back on. "You have connections, Ikari. And I'm going to uncover them. This whole thing involved more than just you, Fuyutsuki, and the NERV gang. You were involved, to be sure but… like I said, I can't help but think that you're a scapegoat in this. That very powerful people want you to keep quiet."

And suddenly, the floodgates opened. "I can give you a name." said Ikari. Bonaventure tried to hide his excitement. "If you want it. He means nothing to me, and I am certain he is long dead. I feel no attachment to this person, so I feel no guilt in revealing it." Ikari shifted on his bed. "That said, I will not reveal this information for free."

Bonaventure answered with no hesitation. "Name your price."

"A simple swap of information." He said. "By rights, it's something that should have already been given to me by my own lawyer. They change the subject, or try to convince me that information would be a distraction. Clearly, they are hiding something… And so, I am forced to barter for it. I want to know two things, and two things only."

"What?"

"Is my son alive, and where does he stand?" Bonaventure thought, for a second, that he saw the faintest hints of tears forming on the side of Ikari's chiselled face. They were gone in an instant, though, probably a delusion.

"Excuse me?"

"Is my son Shinji alive, and is he working against me? My lawyers will not tell me."

A weird request, but one I can work with. Still… "How do I know this name won't be meaningless? How do I know you're not trying to deliberately mislead me?"

"Because," Ikari said, "I am a man with little to lose. I said already, my fate is a foregone conclusion. This trial is a farce. So, although I will not admit to anything, I will tell you that you are correct in suspecting that there is a vast power edifice connected to the events of the past two decades that I am…" he chose his words carefully. "…aware of. I will gladly bring it down around me, but I would be a fool not to use the information that I have to advance my own position. By following this lead, you will uncover some of the story. Not all of the story, but enough to keep you interested. This, among other things, ensures that you keep me well protected. You wouldn't want your best lead to die unexpectedly, would you? Like you said, the people out there would gladly have me killed, simply based on..." he almost smiled again, "groundless accusations."

It also gives certain vested interests a hell of a lot of motivation to take you out of the game, Ikari. People that wouldn't want you to ever take the stand. Better not tell you that, though. Maybe you just forgot. Rene decided that, no, he hadn't forgotten. He was simply playing a longer con than he.

"Fine. Name first."

Gendo hesitated for a moment, and then finally said one word. "Kaji. That's all you get."

"No first name?"

"I did not say I was cheap. But I ensure you that the name I gave you is a good lead, a solid lead." He said. "You had better write it down."

Suddenly, the neckless guard cut in. "One minute, Mr. Bonaventure." Shit.

"They will force you to leave soon. Please uphold your end of the bargain, or you can expect nothing more from me."

He had him there. "Fine. Shinji is alive." He said, trying to keep his expression as neutral as possible. And batshit.

There was something like relief in Ikari's face then. Like he hadn't screwed up quite as badly as he thought he did. "And does he stand against me?" An odd question, for a father to ask about his son.

Bonaventure could do nothing but tell the truth. "I sure as hell hope so. As of now I can honestly tell you that I don't know."

Ikari nodded. Rene could see that Ikari was somewhat satisfied with that, if not entirely. "Mr. Bonaventure, if I may ask a personal favour before you leave…"

"What is it?"

"If you ever do see my son, please tell him that I am sorry. For everything I put him through." Ikari said. "He suffered greatly, and I am to blame for it." Genuine emotion?

"Fine." responded Rene, almost instantly. "I'll tell him."

Ikari seemed surprised. "Why? Frankly, I expected more bargaining."

"Because you owe the kid an apology. That's it."

He walked out of the cell and breathed a heavy sigh. He had been doing that a lot, lately. That had not gone as well as he had hoped. Still, he had a start at least.

He had another lead. It wasn't anything yet, just a seed. But, again, it was a start. Upon exiting the prison, Rene took out his phone and called the office. He got Aaron Rickover's answering machine, while smoking a cigarette. He sat on the hood of his car. "Aaron, it's me, Rene. I need you to get the team looking for the name Kaji. Anything connected with NERV or GEHIRN, or Ikari personally. I don't care how trivial it looks, I want to know about it."

He got in his rental car and started to drive back towards Denver, his thoughts troubled, his mind ill at ease. There was something more to this. Why did Ikari's defense refuse to tell him if his son was alive? And why did Ikari allow Rene to interrogate him unaccompanied? It was strange, to say the least. Still, even without his lawyer, Ikari had held his own like a champ. Nothing outwardly incriminating, nothing he could hang him with. Still, he had given him something to chew on, and that justified the trip.

He wanted to strategize as he drove, to try to map out some new kind of strategy, or at least get something useful done. But his thoughts kept turning back to the strange man Rene had met in the airport. His memories were hazy, but his last promise stood out to Bonaventure: "We'll meet again someday." There was something ominous about that. Whatever his intentions were, they weren't good.

"We'll meet again someday."

God forbid.

AUTHOR'S NOTE:

This chapter was a pain in the ass to write. Well, let's be honest. Every chapter is kinda, at least by the end. But this one was especially. After a long struggle against file troubles and legions of extra commas it's finally ready to be uploaded. Thank God for that.

OCs are hard. Maybe that's because there's already kind of a strike against them right from the get-go. It's not really their fault, but hey, I can sympathize. You're not here for them, after all. All I can do is try to make them halfway compelling characters. I did warn you right in chapter one, there will be OCs. They aren't the stars of course, but I feel that they're important because they're the ones, ultimately, that flesh out the world. The Third Impact did not, after all, affect just those that were directly tied to NERV. There were millions of people out there, with lives torn apart and rearranged by a tragedy the magnitude of which we in this world cannot comprehend. There are potentially millions of stories out there, all of which would have The Impacts as the central axis in them. Luckily for you, I'm only picking and choosing a few to tell.

This was the Chapter, above all, that I wanted to get right. It sets up the main part of the story, that we're finally starting to move in to. After way more work than I thought there would be, we were finally able to get it to a point where the foundation was lain well enough for the whole thing not to collapse under its own weight. For that, I thank Glory-To-Our-August-King, or the wonderfully euphonious short form of that name Glor who did more editing than I think any person should be forced to endure. I deleted most of the commas you told me to but I had to save a few of my favorites. Sorry Glor, they had families.

I also thank Word for kindly deleting most of the content edits I made the first time around, and for delaying this chapter by almost two weeks.

Until Next Time,

Folk Devil