I never intended this to be a cross-over, but in some ways it's creeping in like that. I like Ami, I have to admit, so she may well be around on and off. Be warned, though, if you're the sort who cares, I'm going to be even less respectful of the purity of the SM universe than I am of the R1/2 one. I'll go where the story takes me. Wherever that is.

;)

And continued thanks for the nice feedback.


Misaki sipped her tea, watching four sulking magical girls clearing away a large amount of debris, two of them grunting with strain as they pushed a crushed car onto a flat-bed truck while the driver grinned. They were all filthy, their nice skimpy body-armour/perverted clothing covered in soot, oil, and dust. Every now and then they cast evil glances at the five young women sitting around a table at a miraculously undamaged café down the street, eating a decent meal and keeping an eye on them. She giggled a little, picking up an iced bun and disposing of it in two bites.

"Your friends seem annoyed," she said to the young woman next to her, who followed her gaze for a moment then smiled unpleasantly.

"Tough. I told them, again, this was a bad idea. They ignored me, again. Maybe this will knock some common sense into them for once. They've been getting more and more over the top for ages now, I'm not surprised Yori finds it irritating. I'm in the middle of it and it drives me nuts sometimes." She sighed, resting her chin on her hand and nibbling on a french fry while watching her friends work. "They, we, started off so well. But they've gotten lazy and arrogant. It's really annoying. They're my friends, I want to support them, but..." She shrugged one shoulder, reaching for another fry. "It's getting difficult. Sooner or later someone is going to get killed if it keeps on like this. I understand why Yori doesn't want us around, if I was in her shoes I wouldn't want us around. It's only her intervening in a couple of cases that's stopped things turning to tragedy."

Fumiko exchanged a glance with her friends. "Can't you explain it to them like this? You clearly see the problems, and I know for a fact that you're very smart. You remind me a lot of a friend of mine. Surely you could make them see sense. We serve the community, all of us in this game, so blowing half of it up isn't on."

Ami sighed, rubbing her eyes with one hand. "You'd think, but no. I've tried. Over and over. None of them seem to be able to see it. There are... reasons... I suppose. Not good ones, but real." She didn't look very happy, causing the others to study her for a moment. "They're terrified of Yori and Chou both, which generally at least keeps them away from here. Yori scares the hell out of me as well, I know on paper she's not technically the most powerful person around, but I seriously wouldn't want to get her angry enough to decide to take steps to stop them permanently. I'm pretty damn sure she could, even with all of us against her." She shivered slightly. "The readings I've got in the past from her are... horrifying. My computer is supposedly the most advanced system on the planet, but it gets extremely confused when I've tried reading her power levels and magic output. Chou is nearly as bad. The results don't make any sense, not least because every time I try the output goes up. A lot." She noticed Fumiko look oddly at her, then glance at her sister.

"Does Yori know you've been probing her? She takes her security more seriously than anyone I know, by a long way. It might not make her very pleased."

"Oh, she knows, that much I'm sure of. Half the time I try I get nothing at all, as if she doesn't exist, the other half the time I get something completely terrifying. She just grins at me when the others aren't looking. It's not a nice grin either, like she knows something I don't, and wouldn't like if I found out." Fumiko nodded understandingly.

"One of your bunch mucks around with time, doesn't she?" Aiko asked. Ami looked at her in astonishment.

"That's supposed to be a secret. How the hell did you find out?" Aiko simply looked at her for a moment. "Oh. Yori. I wonder how she found out." She didn't seem terribly surprised.

"She's had practical experience with time travel, apparently. Not overly impressed with it, though, or people who use it. She's said it always ends badly one way or another."

"Why am I not surprised." The young woman sighed again. "She seems to have had a ridiculous amount of experience with some very strange things. It makes her even more dangerous. The rest of the team won't come here on a bet, after what happened the last time." She shook her head for a moment, lowering her voice to an unhappy mumble. "Big bad immortal guardian of time, my arse. She's scared shitless of Yori, she can't read her at all. Or Chou. She won't even talk about it these days, just changes the subject. I'm really not sure I trust her much any more." The others looked at each other, then Fumiko shrugged.

"Um, OK..." She paused, looking at the blue-haired girl carefully, before continuing. "Yes, I'll agree Yori has had some very odd experiences, her life seems... somewhat chaotic. But that goes with the abilities, you know that as well as we do."

"True. All too true. But in her case it's taken to ridiculous levels." Ami glanced around her table companions.

"Are you all really as close friends of hers as you seem?"

Aiko nodded slowly. "Yes. We've all known her for years, Chou nearly as long, and we trust them both absolutely. It goes both ways. In a very real sense we're family." The blue-haired girl looked around at them then glanced at her friends, who were in the process of heaving a badly damaged truck towards another flat-bed recovery vehicle, looking royally pissed off at having to do the work.

"Don't they scare you?" she asked.

"No. We have enormous respect for both their abilities and their intelligence, but they don't scare us. Not like that. Although, I would agree, you very much do not want either of them really angry with you." The brunette studied the other woman, then glanced at her friends for a moment. "You truly have no concept of what they could do if they had to. I don't know what would push them to that level, but I'd want to be on another planet if it ever happened. Assuming I wasn't helping." Ami stared at her for a moment, then dropped her eyes with another shiver, at the raw truth she saw in Aiko's face.

"Who and what the hell are they?" she asked quietly. "They're so unlike everyone else, it's frightening when you think hard about it. Half the demons they meet are terrified of them, which is even weirder than it sounds because it implies they've heard of them somehow, while the other half greet them like long-lost cousins. I know the government seems to trust them as well, I've heard some really strange things about them and people in high places who trust them implicitly. The entire area here seems to know them personally, which is just strange, and again, everyone trusts them. They've been in the news quite a bit recently all over the world, doing something no one wants to talk about, but it's clearly impressed several foreign governments a lot if what I've seen on TV is true. Now, apparently they've gone on holiday through a damn portal of all things! Holiday, on a demon world? What's that all about?"

Tamiko giggled a little. "You wouldn't believe us if we told you. And if we did we'd have to kill you, as the saying goes." Staring at her the blue-haired girl looked blank for a moment, then smiled slightly.

"Do you think you could?" The red-head suddenly went completely serious for a moment, making her companion look worried.

"Oh, yes," she said softly. "Yori has taught us an awful lot recently." Ami stared, a slightly horrified expression crossing her face, until Tamiko giggled again, breaking the spell. "But we wouldn't. We like you." Glancing at the other four, who were leaning against the truck they'd just loaded the damaged vehicle onto, she grinned. Raising her hand she casually fired a small ki sphere that popped against the backside of the girl with the long black hair, making her yell in surprise and pain, then swear vigorously, turning to glare at the source of the shot.

"What the fuck was that for, bitch?" she yelled, outraged.

"Stop slacking off!" Tamiko called back, grinning nastily. "There's two more cars and that van, plus all the bricks over there to move. Then you can rest." All four girls glared at her, but as she raised a hand with another ki ball growing in it, paled a little and hastened to fulfil their task. Ami couldn't help but snicker.

"I shouldn't laugh, but it was very funny. So was you yelling at them, Fumiko." She looked respectfully at the taller girl. "Yori rubs off in unexpected ways."

Fumiko grinned. "It was fun, I have to admit. But I wish I hadn't had to." Her face fell. "Yori is going to pop a gasket when she finds out about all this."

The blue-haired young woman looked apprehensive. "Do you have to tell her?" she asked. Fumiko looked around at the damage surrounding them, the crushed cars, cratered street, broken windows, and the collapsed building three doors down where a particularly good bookshop had been until a few hours ago, then returned her gaze to the other girl, raising an eyebrow. Ami sighed. "I know. Stupid question. It's not like she's not going to find out one way or another. Hell, she probably already knows, somehow."

"If she did she'd be here doing something unpleasant, I think, so you're all safe for the moment." Misaki motioned to the waitress for a refill, then looked back at the girl. "Although, sooner or later she'll find out. Hopefully, enough time will have passed that she's just mad as hell, not homicidal. She's more than reasonable but really, really doesn't like people breaking the district she lives in. And she's not at all impressed with your friends. Last time really was close to the breaking point for her." Noticing Ami shiver again, she smiled. "Don't worry too much. She quite likes you, and Chou is fond of you as well. She'll keep Yori from doing anything permanent. Probably."

"Oh, thanks, that's a huge comfort," the other girl snapped. Grinning slightly Misaki sipped her new cup of tea, turning to watch the other team sweat. There was silence for a while as they slowly ate, thinking their own thoughts.

Eventually, the blue-haired young woman looked at her companions. "What did Yori do in Canada? I can't find any real details about it no matter how much I look, but I'm really curious." The others exchanged glances for a moment. Eventually Aiko nodded slightly.

"You remember that demon portal terrorist thing? I know the details weren't spread widely, but I'm pretty sure you probably picked up the overall idea. Yori talked to you when she was gathering information right back at the start, when she worked out what was going on." The other girl nodded.

"I know something about it. It sounded horrific. But they shut down the cult here over a year ago, right? I heard Yori and Chou blew up the mage and destroyed the portal weapons, while government agents rounded up the cult members."

"It's a little more complicated than that." Aiko paused for a moment, then told a slightly edited version of the story to the young woman, who looked more and more horrified as time went on. When she finished, Ami stared wordlessly at her for a long moment, then swallowed hard.

"Oh, my god," she mumbled. "That's all true?"

"Yes. Unfortunately. It was pretty horrible, at the end. Halleckton is something that I'm going to see at three in the morning for a long time." Aiko sighed, lost in her own thoughts for a moment. "A long time."

"And that crater on the news a while ago? Where that Murray guy had a mansion? That wasn't some huge pile of hidden explosives?"

Fumiko smiled slightly. "No, it was Yori making a point, while getting rid of quite a lot of very nasty demons at the same time."

"It was huge! Hundreds of metres across, from what the news said. Do you have any idea how much energy would be required to do that?" Ami looked appalled, pulling out her computer and prodding it for a moment, paling at the result it gave her. "In solid rock as well. The reports say the entire lake is nearly eight degrees warmer than normal, just from the residual heat. She did that all by herself?"

"Yes, she did." Fumiko studied her for a moment, then added, "If you want to really get worried, she wasn't trying particularly hard." The girl stared at her in horrified disbelief. "I've seen what she can do when she puts her back into it. Not something you want to be in the same country as."

"Holy crap." She stared some more. "Holy crap. No, I really do not want to piss her off."

"You don't." Smiling slightly, Fumiko finished her salad, pushing the empty bowl into the middle of the table to join the others.

"And she's teaching you all these techniques as well?"

"Some of them. A lot of what she can do we may never learn, she's in a class of her own, with only Chou, and possibly Azumi one day, to keep her company there, but we've learned a lot."

"Azumi. That's the new girl, right? From Setagaya? I've heard some weird things about her. If she's a friend of Yori's, that would explain quite a lot of it. Apparently half the time she just stares at the criminals and they run away. Yori is the only other one I know who can do that." Tamiko laughed, waving for another plate of fries to the waitress.

"Azumi is... quite worrying, on several levels. She's got amazing potential. Not as scary as Yori can be, but... Well, she's a friend of mine, but she can be very creepy." The red-head glanced at her friends, who nodded slowly. "Not as creepy as Ms Aoyama, but bad enough."

"I've heard of Ms Aoyama. One or two rumours are going around about her. Something about her being some sort of agent of doom, or something. Possibly literally." The other girl looked worried. "Even the government spooks are scared of her. Who is she?"

Tamiko raised an eyebrow, looking at Aiko, who seemed amused. "No one is sure," she replied in the end, in a low voice. She glanced around carefully, then leaned closer. "But she isn't human. She... knows things." Ami leaned in as well.

"Things?"

"Things." Tamiko gazed seriously at her. There was a long pause.

"What sort of things?" Ami asked slowly, looking more worried.

"All sorts of things. Things you wouldn't believe. So be good. Yori could blow your head off without even trying. Ms Aoyama..." She shrugged a little, leaning back in her chair. "You might prefer Yori."

With an involuntary shudder, Ami looked around at the others, who nodded soberly.

"Not someone to mess with, trust me," Fumiko said, looking quickly away, her face twitching in what the blue-haired girl took as mild fright.

"I'll bear it in mind," she finally replied, not at all comforted by the conversation. She went back to watching her team-mates clear up their mess, while behind her the other four at the table exchanged looks of momentary hilarity, talking silently to each other.


Onkra giggled. "It's pretty impressive, isn't it?"

"That's an understatement and a half," was the awed response from her friend.

They were looking out at probably thousands, possibly tens of thousands, of square kilometres of plains, from a point nearly four kilometres up. The air was astoundingly clear, allowing a view of the distant ground that finally disappeared into a blur at a range she found remarkable. 'How far away is the horizon, Jun?' she asked curiously.

#From this altitude, presuming the ground in front of you is near sea-level, the optical horizon is approximately two hundred and forty kilometres away. Your unaided vision is resolving details out to close to half that range if they are sufficiently large. The clarity of the atmosphere is very high, this world has few of the sources of pollution that cause haze or smog on your world, which improves visibility considerably.#

'Thanks.'

The plains visible in front of them were a patchwork of large-scale colour changes, obviously corresponding to different vegetation. Some parts were clearly artificially manipulated, neatly laid out fields on a large scale, multitudes of different colours corresponding to different crops, nearly the entire spectrum from bright red to a deep purple represented. Some of them were neat grids, similar to what she knew from home, while others were done as huge round areas divided into wedges like a colossal pie chart. These cultivated areas were scattered amongst other zones that looked more random and natural, in the colours she had come to associate with trees on this world. Some of the wooded areas were large enough to classify as true forests. At the far right, the land became uneven and wrinkled, full of hills, all of which appeared forested.

There were numerous clumps of buildings, small towns and one or two cities, visible right out to the horizon, with one very large one at the extreme limits of visibility off to the right, far, far out across the plain, all interconnected with roads along which some traffic could be seen moving. Small dots in the air appeared to be air-cars in flight, although none were near them. The city below Uthryyl's house was some distance away to the left, just peeking around the side of the cliff they were standing near the edge of. The land dropped from where they were standing on top of the ridge in a gentle slope for a few hundred metres then abruptly fell away vertically, something that wasn't visible directly in front but could be seen as the edge of the mountain curved away in both directions for a long way, forming the edge of what looked like a vast circular depression. 'Azumi' looked to one side, seeing how the drop was completely vertical for nearly half the total distance, then became a series of hills and valleys that evened out into the floor of the plain.

#It appears that this mountain range is part of the ring wall of a very large, very old impact crater, Nabiki,# Jun commented. #The information I have on it is that the structure is several dozen million earth years old, much of the wall having eroded away over time, but this section was left because it was created from much harder rock. The D'sage decided that the evidence suggests the impactor came in at a low angle, heading almost directly at where you are currently standing, pushing up a somewhat higher ring wall than would have otherwise happened in such hard rock. Traces of the original body have been found, mostly as metal rich areas in rock that otherwise would have been unlikely to contain such elements. These have largely been mined out as ore veins over the years. Your world has evidence of similar events, the Sudbury basin in Canada being the most obvious one, albeit somewhat smaller than this. Halleckton is inside it.#

'Is that why there are so many mines around that area?', she asked.

#Yes. The entire area is very metal rich. Backfilling with magma is the source of the majority of the metals in that case.#

"The entire plain out there is the floor of a huge crater," Onkra said, confirming what Jun had just told her. "It's very, very old, and very fertile. After it was formed it flooded for millions of years, forming an inland sea, which eventually dried up. The end result was a huge amount of nutrient-rich topsoil that's almost flat. For a long time most of the crops on this continent were grown here. Some people think this area is more or less the origin of our species. We've certainly found evidence that it's been inhabited for longer than almost anywhere on the planet. The city in the distance is the capital, Krentak. The smaller one that's visible from our house is Sirtha, it's a prosperous trading and manufacturing hub, but much smaller." Jun brought up a couple of windows showing information on both the cities, including population, distance from their location, and basic maps. 'Azumi' looked at them with interest for a moment then dismissed them.

"It's one hell of a view," she said, admiring it. Pulling out her camera she used half the roll taking a series of panoramic shots from left to right, then changed the lens for a telephoto one and got a couple of shots of both cities. Krentak was so far away even with the long lens it was barely visible, but she could make out some very large buildings that put the ones in Tokyo to shame. Several of them must have been in excess of two kilometres tall. Jun's data suggested it had a population of over five million people. Having changed the film she put the camera away again.

"This entire area is popular for tourism and sports. There's a lot of wildlife, all sorts of interesting animals live in the forests and mountains, some of them pretty large. Mostly not dangerous but there are one or two large predators that could be a worry if they were in a bad mood. Not around here, though, more further in. You more or less have to go looking for them." Onkra pointed to one side. "Those guys there come up here all the time for the flying." 'Azumi' followed her finger, looking at a group of people standing around a number of machines easily recognisable as some form of hang-gliders, with a few vehicles parked nearby. "A friend of mine does it, he says it's fantastic. He's always trying to get me to give it a go but I haven't tried it yet." She squinted, then waved. One of the figures waved back, calling something unintelligible. "That's him there, actually. Let's go and watch."

They wandered over to the collection of people and equipment, being joined soon after by 'Yori' who had wondered where they'd gone. The two Earth people inspected the flying machines while Onkra greeted her friend. "Cool, aren't they?" the martial artist said, as they watched one of the young people get strapped in to a glider by a couple of assistants. Unlike the hang-gliders that 'Azumi' had seen before, where the pilot basically hung underneath in a harness, these ones strapped on to the limbs and body, with control linkages to the wings and tail. They looked more like a cross between a light aircraft and a giant bat than the delta-wing kites or parafoil designs she was familiar with.

"It looks like the control system is done by moving your arms and legs, and in their case, tails, to drive the surfaces directly," she added, kneeling down to closely investigate a bright yellow glider that was next to them. "They seem to be made of some sort of very thin fabric over a composite skeleton of some type. Carbon fibre, perhaps? Something like that." Glancing at the owner of the machine for permission, she gently lifted one wing-tip. "That's amazingly light. The entire thing can't weigh more than about fifteen kilos. I'm surprised it's strong enough to take the stresses involved in flying."

Running her hand carefully over the wing surface, 'Azumi' nodded slowly. "It's certainly a lot more advanced than anything I've seen before. Someone I know tried this for a while back home, she said they were made of nylon fabric like a parachute, with an aluminium structure. Nothing like as light as this." They turned to watch as the pilot, fully attached to his glider, ran down the slight slope towards the edge of the cliff, into the light breeze. He was airborne within fifty metres, swinging his legs up behind him where they locked into the structure. Delicate movements of his limbs made the aircraft turn and head along the slope, gathering lift until it soared out over the edge, spiralling higher in the air rising up the face of the cliff. They watched with interest as the pilot circled around several times before heading out over the plain, joining a small group of gliders some distance higher.

'Yori' shaded her eyes and squinted. "Some of those aren't gliders, they're some sort of flying animal. Big, too." 'Azumi' followed her gaze, trying to make out the shapes.

"They look like pterodactyls or something like that," she answered. 'Jun, what are those?'

#I am unsure, Nabiki. There are several species in my database that meet those parameters but none are native to this world. A closer view might allow positive identification.# It paused, then added with distinct amusement, #Or you could ask Onkra, I would expect she would know.# 'Azumi' laughed slightly.

'Now, that's getting far too common sense.' She looked toward her friend, who was approaching accompanied by the young male D'sage she had been talking to. "Hey, what are those things?" she asked when the woman was close enough, pointing. Both of them looked up for a moment.

"They're called Mountain Soarers. Technically they're a species of flying animal from a different world, they're sort of an accidental import. Apparently, quite a long time ago, someone brought some back for a zoo, but didn't take as much care as he should have to prevent them escaping." Onkra grinned. "They escaped. By the time anyone realised where they'd gone they'd bred, there were dozens of them. The things seem to thrive in this environment. Some attempts were made to catch them but they always missed a few. In the end everyone kind of gave up. They're quite nice to look at, they live off animals that are very prolific breeders and eat crops, and they don't seem to cause any real ecological damage, so no one minds too much. The glider fliers use them to work out where the good thermals are, and the soarers themselves don't appear to mind gliders flying in the same area."

"If anything they seem to enjoy it," her companion said, in the trade language for their benefit. He looked amused. "I've seen them come up and join us in thermals if we got there first, they use us as much as we use them. I think they're reasonably smart, nothing like sentient but at the level of an effective predator. We get on well, by and large." Holding out his hand he added, "Hi, I'm Jyrron. Onkra has told me a bit about you, friends of the family visiting from an unaligned world, I believe?" 'Azumi' shook his hand with a nod and a smile, as did 'Yori'.

"That's right. This is my first time here. I'm Azumi."

"Yori. Pleased to meet you, Jyrron." The young man looked at the martial artist with his ears cocked forward alertly.

"Yori. I know that name." After a moment's thought he nodded. "Definitely. You and your partner Chou have a reputation as being extremely dangerous magic users and fighters, I seem to recall. Something about a kidnap, wasn't it, the last time you were here?" The middle sister looked at 'Yori' as she grinned.

"Yep. One of your politicians lost track of his wife, some rather unpleasant people seemed to be keen on a reward for returning her. Or they'd send her back in pieces. He wasn't happy, at all, and we were called in through a chain of people ending up with Uthryyl who is a good friend. We sorted things out." Her grin grew teeth. "Quite permanently."

"I remember. It was on the news for a while. External security consultants, they called you. There were a number of other cases as well. You both definitely have very impressive reputations. Healers as well, wasn't it?"

"Amongst other things. We have a number of useful skills." Jyrron laughed for a moment.

"So I gather." He glanced at Onkra who was smiling. "You seem interested in the gliders."

'Azumi' nodded. "We have something like them at home, but constructed differently and controlled in a somewhat different manner."

"Have you ever flown anything like this?" He looked them up and down for a moment. "No tails, which would make our control system difficult. Although I guess we could program the computer assist to bypass that part." He looked thoughtful for a moment, then nodded. "Yes, that should work. Fancy a try?" 'Azumi' looked at her companion, who was staring at the gliders with an interested expression.

"You'd let two people who you've never met before try one of these things just like that? What if we crash it?" Jyrron smiled.

"That would be difficult. They look pretty primitive but they're more advanced than you might think. There's a fairly smart flight computer that can take over in the event of pilot incapacitation, or if it realises you're doing something dangerous. If we put it in teaching mode it does most of the work, you just tell it where to go. If it all goes horribly wrong there's also a backup antigrav recovery system that will get you down safely, although the power pack is very small, so it's basically a controlled fall with a soft landing. To get back up here we'd have to come and pick you up in a car." Not completely sure, but intrigued, 'Azumi' finally nodded.

"OK. I'm up for it. How about you?" She glanced at 'Yori' who grinned happily.

"Always ready for new experiences."

"Great." Jyrron glanced at Onkra, who nodded eagerly.

"Damn right. If they're going to try so am I."

"All right. Come on over here, we have a couple of spare gliders as backups, and I can borrow another one easily enough." They followed him back to the group of people setting up another glider and pilot for launch. Shortly 'Azumi', 'Yori', and Onkra were listening as he explained the function and use of the controls of one of the gliders. "It uses wing warping, which twists the wing-tips, to control direction. The tail surface bends like this to make turns smoother," he demonstrated, "and also to climb and descend."

"How does it move the control surfaces?" 'Yori' asked curiously. "I can't see any actuators."

"The material covering the wings changes shape when an electrical current runs through it. The computer reads the desired movements from the input controls and generates the right outputs to perform the action. The batteries are in the spine part, here, they store enough power to operate it for nearly a full day, with a reserve for the antigrav for one trip from maximum altitude to ground level at a fairly slow speed. Slow enough that you'll just walk away with no damage, although it might sting a bit when you land." 'Azumi' shared a glance with 'Yori', who seemed amused.

"What would happen if we fell from this sort of altitude without the antigrav?" she asked privately.

"You'd reach terminal velocity in a few hundred metres, after that it doesn't really matter how far you fall. For us, me and Kasumi certainly, it would be nothing particularly interesting. I've hit the ground moving much faster than that before with no ill effects. On me, that is, what I hit didn't enjoy it." 'Yori' smiled. "By now, I doubt you'd have any issues either. Aiko and the girls certainly wouldn't. Don't worry about it."

"OK." Returning her attention to Jyrron's demonstration, she listened as he explained how the control harness translated motions of the pilot's extremities and shifts in bodyweight into control inputs for the flight system. He explained the basics of flight and the sorts of thing the computer would expect and more importantly, allow.

"It's pretty simple, actually. Most people get used to it in a few minutes, and are reasonably good in an hour or so. The computer will intervene less and less as you get better at it, but at first it will be doing most of the work. Right, let me just set these two up for you poor tail-less freaks and we can get you in the air." His expression was one of sly amusement. Onkra whacked him with her own tail, making him jump, then laugh. A few minutes work on a small control panel and he nodded in satisfaction, checking the display. "That should do it. The flight computer will compensate for a partial control input." Picking up a set of goggles he looked dubiously at them for a moment. "These aren't going to fit, though, our heads are nowhere near the same shape. This is where the instrumentation overlay comes from that gives you your airspeed, altitude, heading, that sort of thing, and the communications. Hmm."

#I can easily interface to the flight system and produce a far superior instrument set, Nabiki,# Jun said, sounding pleased. #Obviously, the communications are easy.#

"The instrumentation and comms aren't a problem," 'Yori' said, smiling a little, having clearly received the same advice from her SI. "We have our own methods of dealing with it." Jyrron looked at her for a moment then shrugged.

"Fair enough. Aliens are weird." He grinned. "Right. Who wants to go first?" A quick game of rock, paper, scissors later, and 'Yori' stepped forward, looking pleased. Jyrron and a colleague quickly strapped her in place into the orange glider. "OK, try the controls." She moved her arms and legs slightly, watching as the wings and tail shifted. "That seems to work. All right, remember what I told you. Run into the wind until you get lift, that won't take long, then as soon as you're in the air swing your legs back so the harness locks them in. After that, the flight computer will take you to a safe altitude and release some control. Is your alien system getting the instruments?" 'Yori' nodded.

"Yep. Artificial horizon, airspeed, heading, everything looks good. Comm check." Her voice suddenly came out of the communications interface his companion was holding, making the other man jump and stare. "That works." The D'sage man looked at her for a moment.

"I wish I knew how you were doing that. Right, are you ready?" 'Yori' nodded again. He and his helper balanced the glider structure until she was orientated correctly, then released it as she began sprinting down the slight hill towards the cliff edge. Seconds later she was in the air, her legs clipped up behind her. A shout of joy came clearly towards them as the glider soared over the edge of the cliff, circling higher. Jyrron watched carefully for a moment, until he was sure that everything was going to plan, then turned to 'Azumi'. "Your turn."


As she watched the ground abruptly drop away thousands of metres below her Nabiki gasped in awe and excitement, her 'Azumi' face glowing with a huge grin. 'This is amazing,' she thought to herself. Returning her attention to straight ahead she watched the overlaid instruments Jun was providing, seeing how fast the altimeter was ticking upwards as the flight computer gained height, circling around in the lift generated by the upwelling air from below. It levelled off at a little under nine hundred metres higher than she'd started at, gently circling to the right, heading away from the cliff. She looked around, grinning at the incredible view.

'Why have I never done this before?' she wondered, even as she knew she'd never have dared try something like this before she'd gained the abilities she now possessed. There was something very comforting about knowing that even if the alien technology did fail, a very unlikely eventuality, she would basically bounce. The thought amused her considerably.

#The flight computer is accepting manual input now, Nabiki,# Jun informed her. With a nod she experimentally tried flexing one wing-tip, yelping in surprise at how quickly the glider turned in the appropriate direction.

'Gack. That's very sensitive,' she told the SI.

#I can reduce the control gain if you wish, to damp out sudden movements,# Jun replied.

'That might be a good idea for the moment.' Trying again, she found the response was much less vigorous this time. 'Better. Now, let's see if I can get the hang of this...' Half an hour later she was circling back towards the cliff, slightly lower than the altitude she'd started at, having made rapid progress with the controls. The computer had intervened several times in the first few minutes, but for some time hadn't had to do anything. Jun had slowly increased the control gains back to where they had started. 'This is incredible fun,' she commented to the SI. 'I just wish I could use my camera as well.' Overflying the lake at a few hundred metres, she looked around trying to spot her sister and the merchant and his wife.

"Isn't this amazing, Nabiki?" Onkra commed her.

"Damn right. I could do this all day. Where are you?"

"Behind you to your left and slightly higher, out over the cliff," the young alien woman responded. "The green and blue glider." Circling around she scanned the area, until Jun dropped a designator over one aircraft.

"Got you." She watched with amusement as Onkra pulled off a perfect loop. "Not bad." Swinging around and heading out towards her friend, she spotted 'Chou' looking up at them. "Hi, sis," she commed, waving one hand, then yelping when the glider rolled hard to port. "Whoops. Forgot I need that hand to fly."

"Be careful, sister," the older woman's voice came, a giggle in it. "That looked exciting."

"It's amazing. You really have to try this," Nabiki said. "I want one of these things. Or a flying form. This is so much fun."

"I've been working on that, actually. I have some ideas. There are a couple of things I need to work out, but I think I'm close to something practical and fun as well."

"The sooner the better." Nabiki laughed out loud, diving the glider and looping it, then rolling out of the loop at the top, before resuming her flight towards Onkra. Behind her, her older sister laughed, walking along the shore of the lake with Quannyr and Uthryyl. When she reached the place her friend was circling around in, she fell in a few tens of metres away, turning her head to grin at her.

"This was a damn good idea. That friend of yours is very generous to let us play with his gliders," she said.

"Jyrron is a nice guy," Onkra replied. "I've know him for a while, he's tried to get me up in one of these things several times. Now, I'm wondering why I waited so long. This is fantastic fun. I'm going to have to get one myself. I wonder how much they are?"

"We should look into it. I could certainly see them being popular at home." Onkra giggled.

"Another thing for your shopping list. Nabiki Tendo Interworld Import/Export sounds like it's going to be busy."

Snickering, Nabiki replied, "I don't think it's quite gone that far yet, but I really do think I'm going to have to look into something along those lines at some point. There are so many cool things here that could make a real difference at home, some of them so simple. We can do this already, pretty well, but these are easy and safe for beginners. That's a damn good selling point." She laughed for a moment. "Although I don't know how I could explain where they come from. Alien technology is probably even more difficult to explain than demon magic."

"These are pure tech, no magic at all as far as I know," the other woman said. "The antigrav is probably the only part your world couldn't already make with some effort. Although I think the electronics are probably more advanced by a couple of decades than what you make at the moment." The pair had settled into a steady glide away from the cliffs, which were now some ten kilometres behind them. Looking back, Nabiki slowly started to make a wide right turn, Onkra following, until they were heading back. A moment later a familiar bright orange glider moved neatly into formation on her other side. 'Yori' grinned at her.

"Fun, isn't it, Nabs?" she asked.

"I'll let that one slide because, yes, it is huge fun," she smiled back. "I want one of these for Christmas." 'Yori' chuckled over the comm.

"So do I."

The three of them swooped and circled for a while longer, in the lift from the cliffs, until Onkra suddenly said, "Look to your left and slightly higher." Nabiki and 'Yori' both turned their heads.

"Holy shit! That thing is a lot bigger than I thought it would be." 'Yori' sounded impressed. The Mountain Soarer had slid up behind them very gently, none of them noticing it until it was only fifty metres away. It had a wingspan of close to ten metres, not far off that of the gliders they were flying, and was inspecting them curiously. Nabiki could feel no threat from it, only interest. It seemed to be concentrating on the two non-natives. Moving slightly closer and dropping to the same altitude with small motions of its wings and tail, it kept looking sideways at her, as she looked back, trying not to make any sudden movement that might scare it off. Wishing she could take a picture she settled for recording everything.

The flying animal was clearly an animal and not a bird. It had seven limbs, a long tail slightly like the ones the D'sage possessed, forelegs and hind legs, both with taloned paws on that looked slightly catlike, and a pair of wings that were somewhat bat-like, only covered in fine fur. They sprouted from roughly halfway down it's body, between the fore and hind limbs. The body shape was vaguely reptilian, mainly due to the tail, although the head looked more like a cross between a fox and a frog, with large wide-set eyes, small pointed ears folded back against the wind, and a large mouth which was lined with small teeth, visible when it yawned. The colour scheme was interesting, a slate-grey underside with a darker topside, deep blue markings similar to the rosettes of a leopard visible in the fur. The wings were covered in a lighter coloured fur, almost smoke-grey, and much finer than on the body.

Overall it was quite impressive, not least because of the size. It moved slightly closer to Nabiki, looking her over carefully, then slid over to do the same to 'Yori'. The motions were accompanied by surprisingly little wing movement. "Are you as close to that creature as it looks from down here?" her sister suddenly asked, making her twitch a little.

"Possibly closer," she replied. "It's huge! And seems to find us very interesting." The middle sister opened a visual link to the other woman, showing her what she was looking at.

"Oh, my. That is quite a large animal. It seems very curious." The soarer had moved closer to Nabiki again, looking at her closely. It made an odd yipping noise, which made her grin.

"Friendly enough, I think, though. I can't work out if it's just interested in us, or wants something. It's looking at me like a dog after a snack." 'Chou' giggled.

"Perhaps you should have brought something to feed the wildlife with," she said. Nabiki laughed.

"That would be difficult, my hands are otherwise occupied."

"That wing structure is interesting," her sister said, sounding intrigued. "Like a bat, but... different, somehow. I wish I could get a closer look at it." Nabiki stared at the animal, trying to gently move closer without frightening it off. "Oh, that's better. Thank you." There was a long pause. "Can you get above it?"

"I'm not sure. It might not like something higher than it, I think that's considered predatory in flying things. I'll try it and see what happens." 'Yori' and Onkra watched with interest as Nabiki gently applied a little up elevator, gaining altitude and losing speed to position herself above and behind the animal. Surprisingly, it didn't react, although it was clearly aware of her. Eventually she was about ten metres higher and perhaps twenty behind it.

"Well done. Yes, that's interesting indeed. Thank you, Nabiki."

"Why the interest, Sis?"

"It's a surprise." 'Chou' giggled, then dropped off the link. Wondering what her sister was up to, Nabiki grinned. They flew in formation with the soarer until they were a few hundred metres from the plateau, when it suddenly yipped again, did a neat wing-over, and dropped away down the face of the cliff at high speed, its wings half-folded.

"Wow. That thing can really move when it wants to," Nabiki said to her friends.

"They are extremely good fliers," Onkra replied. "I remember reading about them a while ago, they've been known to reach speeds of nearly three hundred kilometres an hour in a dive, in your measurement system. Apparently they come from a world with considerably higher gravity than ours, their bone structure is immensely strong and their muscles are very powerful. In this gravity, they can fly very easily indeed, for hours if not days."

"Impressive."

"Hey, you three, are you ready to come back yet?" Jyrron's voice suddenly intruded on them. He sounded amused. "We're going to need the gliders back eventually."

"We're enjoying ourselves," Onkra retorted, laughing. "Why didn't you tell me how much fun this was?"

"I've been telling you that for a long time, Onkra," he said, chuckling. "It's not my fault if you wouldn't listen." She giggled a little.

"OK, we're coming back. I'm getting hungry anyway." She peeled off from their formation, heading rapidly towards the collection of vehicles near the edge of the cliff, and the people surrounding them. Nabiki grinned and followed, as did 'Yori'. She laughed as Onkra shot low over the heads of the people on the ground, making one or two duck, pulled up into a loop, then circled around to make a neat landing a hundred metres from the edge of the cliff. As she passed overhead she could see the young woman grinning.

Making a somewhat less enthusiastic approach, the middle sister landed close by, followed seconds later by 'Yori'. Jyrron and a couple of friends came over, smiling, to help them release themselves from the flying machines.


"Thank you, Jyrron," 'Yori' said, shaking the young man's hand. "That was immense fun. I'm going to have to look into getting some of these things and taking them home." He grinned at her.

"I can give you the name of a dealer in Sirtha. They're locally manufactured, and not all that expensive."

"Thanks." They talked for a while as 'Azumi' and Onkra chatted to the other pilots, then shook hands once more. Waving, the three of them headed back to the lake.

"That was a hell of a way to waste a few hours," 'Azumi' said with satisfaction. "Just that was worth the trip." Onkra nodded, smiling happily.

"I can't remember the last time I had so much fun. And that soarer? I've never seen one up close like that. They're very impressive." Heading down the lake side of the ridge, they looked around, then headed for where the vehicle was parked.

"Kasumi? Where are you guys, we're back on the ground, near the car." Nabiki looked around, trying to feel her sister.

"We're down near the lake. We were about to go swimming." 'Chou' sent her a data ping with her location, which Jun dropped into a map, highlighting their position.

"OK, got it. We'll be there in a minute." Shortly they walked up to where the others were, noticing that 'Chou' was wearing a swimsuit now. She turned and smiled at them.

"Did you have fun? It certainly looked like it." 'Azumi' nodded, grinning widely.

"So much fun. I have to get one of those things." Her elder sister gave her an amused look, as if she knew something the other woman didn't.

"I may have to try it myself," she said quietly. More loudly, she added, "We're going to swim for a while. Are you coming in, or has the flying been enough excitement for one day?"

"Oh, I think we could manage," 'Yori' commented, smiling. She looked around, then shrugged, unconcernedly disrobing and pulling on her own swimsuit which she produced from ki space. None of the D'sage in the area paid any attention beyond a casual look. Most of them were either nude or wearing very little as well. Body modesty obviously wasn't much concern amongst them. 'Azumi' smiled a little, remembering years back when Ranma had first arrived, showing little concern for her female body being seen even then. Obviously nothing much had changed in that respect.

"Pity we can't use the mer-forms here," she sent to both her sister and her sister-in-law, who both looked at her, before exchanging glances. "I know you don't want to give away the existence of the illusion spell."

"We've kept it a secret, mostly, because it's a tactically useful thing to have in reserve, and we didn't want to give anyone the right idea about us. Back home that's something of a concern, still. Here..." 'Yori' glanced at 'Chou', who shrugged a little. "If you would like to use it, it shouldn't cause much of a problem. If anyone asks we can always say that Azumi is a limited shape-shifter of some sort, which is kind of accurate after all. It doesn't necessarily imply anything about either of us, since no one other than Uthryyl and his family knows we're related."

"Are you sure? I don't want to be the one to give away classified information," 'Azumi' snickered.

"It should be safe enough here, sister," 'Chou' replied. "We should probably avoid it at home wherever possible, in case people link Ms Aoyama and Azumi slightly too closely, although there your personae are so clearly different it's probably unlikely. Azumi is a bit worrying, but Ms Aoyama is... deeply unsettling." She smiled a little.

"All this secrecy really is a pain," 'Azumi' sighed. "Although I do understand the reasons."

"If we have to we can certainly make sure people see Ms Aoyama and Azumi in the same place at the same time, which should settle any lingering doubts if they arise." 'Yori' looked amused. "I'll have to be Azumi, though, I don't think I could pull off a convincing Ms Aoyama to anyone who's met her before. I'm nowhere near creepy enough. Terrifying isn't the same thing."

"Thanks, Saotome," 'Azumi' sent, giggling. "Really, I mean it, thanks. That's one of the nicest things you've said about me." 'Yori' laughed delightedly.

"And it's from the heart."

Onkra was watching them all with a smile, guessing from their expressions that they were all talking together. "What's going on?" she queried, amused. They all looked at her in eerie synchronism, making her laugh.

"We were just discussing what I'm allowed to show off in public," 'Azumi' replied. She grinned, then looked around. They were standing on the beach near a small jetty-like platform jutting out into the water, which the water-craft users were using to launch their machines from. It was about fifteen metres long, ending in water that was clearly several metres deep. No one was on it at the moment, so she started walking towards it, followed by a curious Onkra, while her parents watched.

"Allowed to show off? What's that mean? And why are we being secretive about it?" the D'Sage woman asked curiously. "Where are you going?"

"Swimming," the spoken reply came.

"With your clothes on?" Onkra looked askance at her friend. 'Azumi' grinned, then broke into a sprint, running down the jetty and leaping off the end, in a neat arch ending up in a perfect dive. What entered the water wasn't the figure that had left the ground. Onkra gaped for a moment, while Uthryyl burst out laughing and Quannyr giggled, then ran to the end of the jetty and looked into the water. A head popped up, mer-'Azumi' grinning at her. "Um, wow?"

"Come on in, it's nice," her friend said, giggling, then flipped over with a flick of her tail and disappeared, popping back nearly a hundred metres away in a ridiculously short time. "Come on!" Onkra shook her head, turning to look at her father who had walked up beside her, still laughing.

"Aliens are weird," she said with a wry smile.

"Oh, yes, that they are. Good fun, though." Glancing at her he suddenly thrust his arm out, neatly pushing her in, then looked around innocently as if he couldn't understand what all the shouting was about, before walking away looking amused. Quannyr and 'Chou' nearly fell over giggling, 'Yori' was rolling around in the sand howling with laughter, while Onkra thrashed about swearing.

"Dad! That wasn't funny," she yelled, several bystanders putting the lie to her statement by grinning widely.

"Want to bet?" he called over his shoulder, heading back to his wife and friends. She muttered darkly to herself, treading water, then began swimming back to the jetty. 'Azumi' suddenly appeared beside her, totally at home in the water, looking very amused.

"He's definitely not above teasing you, is he?" she asked rhetorically. Onkra kept swimming, reaching the edge and hauling herself out to sit on it, dripping wet.

"No. Now, what do I do to get him back?" She looked to the side as her friend heaved herself out to sit beside her, swishing her tail in the water, inspecting her closely, before grinning. "That's amazing. I didn't know you were so good at that shape-shifting spell," she added privately.

"I'm not, not really. It's incredibly complicated, you wouldn't believe it, so Sis set me up with a number of preset forms,. This is one of them. I'm studying the spell when I get time, and slowly making sense of it, but it's going to be quite a while before I can do it arbitrarily like they can." 'Azumi' sighed a little. "It's kind of worrying, and a little depressing, how good they both are at such complicated things. I don't know if I'll ever catch up."

"You will. I'm pretty sure of that. So are Dad and Mom. We all have a lot of respect for the way you've progressed in such a short time." Her friend smiled at her. "I'm in awe of it, actually. You took on an amazingly difficult task and have done very well with it. Right, I'm going to change, I'll be right back." Jumping to her feet the young woman wandered off, leaving wet footprints up the jetty. A moment later 'Chou' took her place beside the silver-tailed mermaid, who looked up.

"Hi." She smiled. "This is a wonderful place."

"Isn't it?" Leaning back on her hands, her sister looked around at the scenery, up at the mountains behind them, then out over the lake on which quite a few people were thoroughly enjoying themselves. "Both of us have visited Uthryyl before several times, but we've never come up here. I like it very much."

"You'd love the gliding. And you have to go and look at the view over the edge, you have no idea how amazing it is until you're up there." The younger sister looked around as well, then sighed a little. "It's a pity that Akane and Dad can't see all this." Putting her hand on her sister's one, 'Chou' smiled gently.

"One day. At least you'll have the photos to show them when we can finally come clean about all of this."

"Do you think that will ever happen?"

"Yes, eventually. I'm sure of it. But for now, it doesn't matter. This is a holiday, we don't have to do anything except have fun. So, I'm going swimming." The blonde slipped into the water, heading out into the middle of the lake at a fast front crawl. Her sister watched her go for a moment, then laughed slightly, following at much higher speed with a flick of her tail.

Behind her, Onkra and the others all jumped one after the other off the end of the jetty, soon dispersing out into the water, laughing and calling to each other, everyone enjoying themselves thoroughly.