So I watched Infinity War. It's a great movie.

In other news, this chapter is actually out in a decent amount of time. I don't know how exactly, since I haven't really changed my habits any. I guess I've just been on a writing kick recently. Good for all of you, I guess.

Showers.

Something I take for granted, but after getting back to the Nirvana after going after John, it feels so nice to clean off the layer of oil that built up on my skin, not to mention getting rid of the stench.

I think I might understand why Jura always has some perfume on her at all times now.

Alas, all good things must come to an end. I barely managed to get away from organizing this giant mess to take this shower, and I probably should get back to it as soon as I can. I turn off the water, towel myself off, and pull on a clean jumpsuit. No sooner did I do this than the door to my room suddenly bursts open.

Del stands there in the doorway.

"You're..." Del collapses to the floor, resting her head on the doorjamb "You're okay."

I nod. "I'm fine. Especially now that I've finished my shower."

Del visibly pulls herself together, and her trademark smile returns to her face. "Okay. Okay! I'm going to head down to the hanger to help direct operations there."

"I'll be down in a minute." I say.

Del stands up, throws a mock salute, and practically skips her way down the hall.

Odd.

I sit on the edge of my bed and run a quick call to Duelo. He tells me that John has woken up, is apparently not actively dying anymore, and Dita is currently assisting him showering. I had to laugh at that last bit, as I'm sure that he's completely uncomfortable with that situation.

Still, maybe I should go down there to make sure nothing... inappropriate is happening.

No, it's too out of the way. As much fun as it would be to get a little revenge for dragging me around in a tiny spacecraft for a few days, I have real work to do.

First up, a meeting.

Yay.

As any meeting, it went twice as long as it needed to, and barely provided any new information.

The Harvester robots are all completely dead in the water. The Melanos fleet has one ship operational, and they're still cannibalizing the parts to try to get more ships up and running. Just like in the anime version, Earth has sent three more of the Flagships after Mejare and Tarak, though I'm the only one who actually knows about the anime part.

There's quite a few suggestion to just wait for John to wake up, but those are mostly just ignored.

What's worrying is the cause of the EMP.

Nobody seems to be quite sure what happened, but-

"Meia?"

Jura comes out of a door and I turn to acknowledge her.

"I was looking for you." She beckons me inside the storage area. "Do you know where Del is?"

I shake my head. "No, but she said she was going to help in the hangars. Why?"

"She's supposed to be helping me figure out this mess." She waves dismissively at the pile of boxes strew haphazardly around the room. "Duelo and Paiway need more supplies. There was a lot of cuts and bruises caused by an entire fleet losing gravity at once."

"I'm free for the moment, so I could help." I say.

"That would be a great help... Here, take this box, and this one, aaaand this one." She stacks three medium sized boxes on my raised arms. "Take these to medical." She grins slyly. "While you're there, say hi to Barnette for me. Oh, and John. He was looking pretty bad when that EMP hit, so check up on him for me, okay?"

I smile slightly. "Who died and made you leader?"

"Nobody. The old leader deserted, and I got a promotion." Jura pokes me in the ribs. "Don't worry, you'll still be in charge once everything goes back to normal. I'm not cut out to be a leader."

I recall something I hadn't heard her say in real life, but she had said on the DVD of our show. "Well, we should change that." I say firmly. Jura looks up at me in surprise. "There's always a chance something happens to me again. We need to be prepared."

Jura grins. "I'm glad you're back, Meia."

"Same."

With that, I turn and head down to the medical wing, boxes in tow.

I barely get into the medical wing when the boxes are practically snatched from my grasp by several medical assistants from the Melanos fleet and Paiway.

The youngest crew member of the Nirvana looks haggard. She's probably working hard for the first time in her young life. Still, she comes up to me and throws a small salute before going back to work. I give her some silent praise and promise to myself to give her some reward for her hard work.

I could get Dita to make her something for her birthday.

"What are you smiling to yourself for?"

John, leaning heavily on Dita, comes out of the large adjoined bathroom. I can't help but notice that Dita also looks freshly showered.

I give John a look. "I thought sixteen was too young?"

He looks away and coughs. "I'm glad you're okay." He says politely attempting to change the conversation.

"Sixteen is too young for what?" Dita asks, looking between us.

"You're the one that looks like he was put through a meat grinder." I point out.

"Feel like it too. Who knew that being half robot could be a bad thing?"

Dita helps him sit down on the bed assigned to him and she come in to whisper in my ear. "He has a tube attached to his crotch, just like he said."

I give her a look. "Why are you telling me this?"

She shrugs. "I got a look when I was washing him off. I figured you'd want to know."

I open my mouth to tell her off, but instead I just drop it. This girl. Instead I head up to John. "The harvesters redirected three Flagships toward Mejare and Tarak."

He nods. "Got it."

"I guess this means we successfully completed the mission?"

He grins and slowly lowers himself to the bed. "And we didn't need to make a star to do it either."

"What are you two talking about?" Dita looks between the both of us. "No, seriously. What's going on?"

It occurred to me after a while that something was wrong.

Something was missing. Someone was missing.

I asked Duelo. I asked the Captain when she came to ask me some questions about how things went in the DVD. I asked Meia and Dita.

None of them would tell me what happened to the missing party, Zan.

I don't think she's dead. Dita's not really good enough at controlling her emotions to be able to hide the death of her close friend, so I can at least rule out the worst. Still, everyone clams up as soon as I mention her name, even Paiway. That means there's something that everyone was informed not to tell me.

That doesn't stop people talking when they think I'm not listening, though.

It appears that there's actually a second, more "luxurious" cell in the female part of the Nirvana. I overheard two of the security personnel muttering about how they hated having to do guard duty in the middle of the night when they passed by the room, along with something to do with Zan.

I had hauled myself to my feet, and slowly chased after the guards by slumping from wall to wall to keep myself largely upright. They continue to talk under their breath all the way to the other set of cells, the words lost to distance but still allowing me to limp after them.

Eventually, I find myself outside a door. It's a plain one I had probably passed a few hundred times before, but the two guards had both gone into there.

I should probably find a way to sneak in, preferably before someone else comes along and asks me what the hell I'm doing out of bed.

Hell, I should be asking myself that. Everything still hurts, even if it's a little less than earlier.

Still... curiosity gets the better of me. Curiosity may have killed the cat, but it also gave us a lot of info about Mars, and that's worth a cat or two.

Okay. So, how do I get in there? If this was splinter cell, I'd have that small periscope to peer under the door. Or thermal visors. Those are nice. Seeing as I'm lacking in both departments, I'll have to do something else.

Opening the door myself is probably a bad idea.

I don't know any way to fake an emergency, and that would be a terrible idea with so many people not part of the crew on the ship.

I'm not in any shape to go hand to hand with anyone, let alone the buffer women on the Nirvana.

As I ponder my options, the door opens of its own accord. The two guards come out into the hallway, still talking to each other.

"-creepy as hell."

"I agree. Let's just grab something to eat."

The two of them turn down the hallway, heading away from me. Thank whatever gods they did, and I'm kind of hard to miss even in the darkened hallway.

Hey, waiting patiently is a valid tactic in splinter cell as well, so I'll take my opportunity. I slip into the room and the door shuts behind me.

The lights are off, making the room pitch black.

I slowly move forward, left hand extended and three remaining fingers splayed to find furniture before I collide with it.

It doesn't take long before I smack my toe into something heavy and start whining in pain.

Before I can fully recover, I hear something else moving around in the room.

I stand as still as I can, suddenly aware of just how vulnerable I am.

Then, out of thin air, two bright, glowing cyan eyes open and focus on me.

"He can't transform anymore?"

Duelo shakes his head. "All of the nanorobots in his body were completely destroyed. Those robot where what turned him into things, if you recall."

Hmm. On one hand, it will be nice not to receive a report every half an hour about his latest attempt at pretending to be someone. On the other, it was definitely an asset that we might actually have use for in the near future. Those Melanos people are hiding something, I'm sure of it. Having someone who could just slip right in and take someone's place would be a great boon right about now.

"I don't think he even used that damn power to do anything but annoy me." I grumble.

"That does appear to be the case." Duelo fishes around in his lab coat's pocket for a second. "Which is why I'd like to discuss this with you."

It's a test tube. A test tube filled with sand. "Sand?"

Duelo shakes his head. "I kept some of the nanorobots in a Faraday cage with the rest of the sensitive equipment, and they made it through the EMP."

"Oh." I look down at the tube. "Are you sure those are safe?"

"No, I am not. But I decided that I should inform you of their existence now that it might help your lover."

"My love-" I can feel my face heating up. "He is not-"

"Either way, you're practically third in command of this ship right after BC and the Captain, and those two are currently busy dealing with our guests." Duelo gently passes me the capped test tube. "I leave it up to you to decide what to do with them."

"...Do I just smash the tube over his head? Dump it down his throat? Sprinkle some in his hair?"

"Just uncorking it should do the trick. They're already part of his system, so there shouldn't be any problems." Duelo assures me. "If you're going to give that back to him, I would suggest doing it sooner rather than later. They will have to populate again, and if we still want to be in Melanos space when he's able to transform again, you'll need to give them to him tonight."

"Alright. As loathe as I am to get even more reports of him abusing his transformation abilities, an infiltrator would be really useful right about now."

"Right this way." Duelo leads me towards the bed area of the medical ward, still crowded with people recovering from fractures and oxygen deprivation. He leads me right up to a bed which is clearly empty. After a brief moment of contemplation, he turns to me.

"Let me guess, he left without telling anyone?"

"He certainly didn't tell me." Duelo narrows his eyes. "He should NOT be up and about in his condition."

"I am going to throw him in a cell and throw away the key!" I tuck the bottle of nanobots into my jumpsuit pocket and head for the door.

"He already sleeps in a cell."

I sigh. "I know. Let's just go get him."

"He could be anywhere. He might have left the ship again."

I shake my head. "No, if there's anything I've learned about him in the past few months, it's that if there's something out of the ordinary going on, John will be there."

Duelo nods safely. "Just like the main characters of many a cartoon."

I open the door and Duelo follows me out. "You have cartoons on Tarak?"

"Most people don't have access to them." Duelo says. "I am a genius, and was given special privileges because of this. On Tarak, I was practically a celebrity." He delivers his words without a shred of emotion, as if he was just stating a fact, and not one particularly attached to him.

"Huh. I was led to believe you guys lived without any entertainment whatsoever."

"A lack of mental stimulation causes several detrimental effects, such as cabin fever." Duelo says with a hint of amusement. "Tarak is efficient, brutal on slackers, but we understand that you can't push your troops too hard or they'll break. On the other hand, Mejare looks like it's a constant party with how lax your discipline is. It may be because my primary observations have all been of this pirate crew though."

"No, it's like this everywhere on Mejare. If anything, we're a bit better organized. Mejare is in constant upheavals as one person makes it to power, changes some policies, and then gets taken down by the next politician who undoes everything. The jail system is a mess. As far as I know, the only reason Tarak hasn't been successful in taking over is that we have quite a few independent groups like ours that attack anything lifting off of Tarak."

"I see." Duello rubs his chin thoughtfully.

As we round a corner, I spot two women chatting to each other, each holding a bunch of snacks in their arms. "Kymnal? Ursis? Aren't you supposed to be guarding Zan?"

Kymnal starts and has the decency to look guilty, while Ursis just rolls her eyes. "We're hungry. We'll be back to guarding in no time. Besides, she's barely been aware of her surroundings, so I don't think she'll escape."

"That's not what we're worried about." I say. "We're worried someone else might get in."

"Oh." Kymnal starts edging down the passage. "So we should probably hurry back, right?"

I glare in her direction.

"Yeah, we might want to double time it too." Stage whispers Ursis.

The two start power walking down the hall, and I reluctantly follow, Duelo a few strides behind.

"I can't hear you singing."

The two floating blue orbs blink off then back on, two perfect spheres in the dark.

"Earlier, I heard you singing."

"Zan?" I ask quietly.

"Mmm?" The two blue orbs come right up next to my face. "What is it, John?"

"...What happened to you?"

She claps her hands together. "I learned to sing! I thought I could sing before, but now it has meaning!"

Her face is so close to mine that I can see more than just her eyes now, and I can confirm that it is indeed Zan. There are circuit board patterns glowing the same blue tracing all over the left side of her face, and these lines are the same shade of blue as her irises but not as bright. Her hair looks like it grew another foot in length in the short time I was away.

"All music has a meaning, even if it's only the meaning you assign it." I reply cautiously.

"Yes, but now I can hear it all!"

"...All of what?"

"Hey, just close your mouth and listen! You're the only other person who could possibly hear it, I'm sure of it!"

Silence descends, and aside from my slight tinnitus there's absolutely no sounds. Even my breath is loud in this silence.

"Do you hear it?"

"N... Maybe?"

"It's so beautiful right? The melody of the Nirvana? I just want to join in on the chorus and sing to it all day."

"Really? Hey, why don't you sing to it so I can... make sure I'm listening to the right tune?"

Zan takes a step back and starts humming to herself for a second before her voice bursts forth like a dam bursting.

It wasn't pretty. It wasn't a light melody, or that "song of the stars" crap. It's fast paced, seemingly random jumble of noise no human should be able to make with their throat.

In short, it's the sound of a dial up connection initializing.

I heard the dial up tone lots of times in media, but this was only the second time I had heard something like it in real life. Having it come from Zan's throat makes it a hundred times weirder, but I put the oddity of the situation to the side in favor of trying to figure out what's going on. After all, I'm currently inside an anime. Nothing tops that on the weird scale for me.

Dial up tones are a byproduct of listening to signals being sent to other locations. In the same way that some files can be opened up in the word program but they look like bizarre corruption has affected the file, a dial up tone is the just the electronic signals being interpreted by the wrong interpreter. It does contain all the login and connection information... I think. Because phone lines are designed to play any any electronic signals they receive, they used to not be able to refuse to play the screech of binary signals as it was transmitted.

So, if Zan is creating these kinds of noises, it's probably some sort of data transmission.

By the way, it's not exactly pleasant to listen to, but for the moment she's stopped staring at me, so I'll take it where I can get it.

What this implies is that she can hear something similar, and I had asked her to sing along with the Nirvana...

Can she hear data flowing through the ship? It would explain the "pattern" of her song.

I softly cough and Zan lets her voice fade away. "Ah, I was just wondering what that song you just sang meant." I ask, and the two blue spots move back to be inches from my face.

"Oh, all sorts of things! The chord playing right now is the security team's chatter, Layered over that is maintenance requesting access, and... oh it shifts too fast for words." In the dark, I suddenly see a row of teeth appear from the blackness. "You should sing with me! All sorts of things happen when I sing now, changing the words to suit my will!"

More screeching comes out of her throat somehow, and-

BRIGHT!

The lights come on in response to a particular wobbling sequence, and after a brief repeat with a small twist in tone the lights turn back off, and suddenly my eyes need to be completely readjusted.

What I saw in that brief moment though...

Zan's body isn't whole anymore. It looks like someone ripped all her bones out, wrapped them individually in flesh, and put them back together. The most easily noticeable example of that is her arms and ribs. Her forearms have a hole through the center where that the two bone separate. Her ribs reach around her organs like a sharp set of claws. Her organs are given the same treatment as the bones, individually wrapped in a bag of skin. The entire length of her body is covered in the blue traces of a circuit in the same way as her face. Oddly, her face is still all in piece aside from the aforementioned modification.

She's completely naked too, but there's nothing appealing about... that.

"W-What happened to-?" I bite my tongue, but not nearly fast enough.

"I decided to take my fate into my own hands!" She declares. "You, and Dita, and Meia and Jura, you all became something more, something better. Something us normal people couldn't touch! But I figured out what it was." She leans in really close. "The Paksis. In the show, it transformed everything outside the ship at the time. That means you guys all got lucky and were outside the ship when the bomb blew."

"I wouldn't call it lucky-"

"So, I figure out how to become one of the elites like you! To get on your level, as protagonists of this universe!"

I'm starting to get a sinking feeling, and I might be getting a bit sick.

"All I had to do was throw myself into the Paksis. It offered me... well, it changed me! Now I can hear the chorus, and if I want to-" She reaches a hand out and grabs my chin, forcing my eyes to meet hers. "-I can mute it."

A few chirps come from her throat, not through her mouth, but literally a mechanical section of her throat (explaining how she could generate the noises at least) and the door suddenly starts whining as it opens much to fast for it's mechanical parts. It starts making some grinding noises.

Zan releases my chin and grabs my arm, dragging me bodily out of the door. Her throat still occasionally chirping.

"Ah, Zan, where are we going?" I ask, trying to keep the panic out of my voice. It's not helping that out here I can see her mutilated form in all its glory.

"I heard it. They're making plans to take you away from me. I'm not going to let that happen. Never again." She looks back at me, the glow visible in here eyes even in the brightness of the hallway. "From now on, I'm never letting you out of my sight."