CH4

"the Cheese looks for the Mouse"

No one and I mean no one thought it was a good plan. Walk in, act like my insane self, ask/demand an explanation, and hope to dear god that I could get the hell out of there.

Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time. Even possible.

But that was what I thought.

"If I didn't already know you were insane I'd think so now." Jabs

"It'll work."

"Rip, we can't even get any info with out letting the General know what we're up to." Benz

"Yes we can."

"Ok. So Mr. John F. Nash, how do we get top secret government files, with out using our government connections?"

"Stegs."

"Stegs?" Mantaman

"Stegs?!" every one else.

"Well, I'll be a rat nosed monkey." Rox says as the others crack up at his remark.

Yup, our trump card. Stegs was part of the Dinos. A group of intergalactic dinosaurs that had chased some bad guys from their planet to ours. We first met them during the winter. It was funny. They really don't like the cold.

At any rate, being that they were from another planet and all, and at the time they were actual aliens and all… they needed some way to gather information. So Stegs, being the super intelligent one and all, started writing programs to get past the firewalls and into the US governments files. He found that even though some of the computers weren't on the internet, they were networked with ones that were. So he just worked from there.

We just had to hope he would believe us and help us out. It didn't seem like we were asking a lot from him. Go in, look up a few things, and see if every thing was a lie and then leave the system. Easy.

Wrong, not easy.

It never happened, it didn't need to happen. Everything was already there. Down to the floor plans. Alls he really needed was to get the new guard schedule and a few other things and we'd be ready to go. Because you see…

Someone beat us to the punch.

Not just beat us to the punch, but had gotten in and spoken with General Thomson as well. Can you say damn?

"What?!" said all the Street Sharks and Benz.

"uhmm… could you please choose another word. You've all said that way more than I'd like. Typical of the others to ditch me..." Stegs said. He really didn't like being surrounded by 5 sharks, a manta ray and one freaked out Benz.

"Could you please say that again... I really don't think I heard you right."

"Shard already beat you to the punch. She had me gather all the same information. a little less, but the same. She was very paranoid when she was here. And very grim."

"Where did she get a name like that? A comic book?"

"Shards of a broken mind. That was what she said. It makes sense in a sick manic-depressed sort of way. She was worse then Ripster."

"How so?"

"See, what they did was introduce the fusion to you all slowly. Probably since you were kids. I'm not sure how. But because Shard was a born and raised in another part of the country, her system wasn't able to handle the change as it would have had she been born and raised in Fusion City.

            It never took a solid hold.

She could change between her finned form, and her human form.  Never got the specifics, but I think it could have killed her. That much stress on her system, but I think she got help some how. Probably wasn't by choice. And why are you all looking at me like that?" Stegs starts to back into a corner, slowly.

"Her name is Shard? How did she know to go to you? Where is she now? When did she do all of this?"

"Ok… let me do this one at a time and sitting down, ok?"

"Fine."

It turned out that Shard has been around for about the same time as us but she, wisely, stayed in the background. Apparently no one knew about her. And she did her best to keep it that way.

            By the way, she's not even sure about the whole 'slow introduction' thing. She said she was making an educated guess based on collage records. I understand that as much as you do.

So… she can switch from having a massive fin-like thing similar to Mantmans, but with out the whole face thing. And she has a bit of a blue tinge to her skin. Her hair is a dark black/blue and there are dark blue stripes on her back.

And in her 'human' form she just looses the fin. Has dark black/blue hair.

And yes she wears clothing. A mask on the lower part of her face, black leather pant's with a little hole in the left knee, boots, and a beat to hell leather jacket that has seen better days.

She didn't really give Stegs as much info as we had thought. Just the random things I mentioned and that if she didn't come back she was either ok or dead but most likely dead. Now that I think of it, she sounded like me at the time. Oh well.

"So… you still insist on going thru with this?"

"Yes."

"If you do, you'll end up dead just like Shard." Mako says in a non-chalant sort of way.

Did I forget to mention that we found out Mako was alive?