Title: Girls Have Germs

Author: Pixie Princess & Bunny

Date: Thursday, February 27, 2003

Ram frowned as he watched the image of Eowyn on the screen into virtual space. She was stirring again. He would have to re-enter very soon to explain and calm her down. The frown remained upon his face as he heard her speak in her sleeping state.

"Jay... Ved..."

There it was again. While he yearned to awaken her and ask her how she knew his general and genius brother, Ram did not want to take the chance that she was indeed, as he suspected, an old girlfriend. It hurt him to think so, and hurt made him angry. After a few instructions, Ram set the settings for him to entire Eowyn's world, and put his virtual space helmet on.

He hurried down the hall in virtual space, as his last image of her had been her beginning to pull out monitors. Ram told the virtual space adult doctors, "I'll check on her, please, go back to your work." It was meaningless drivel, but he had programmed them to listen to him. He looked in on her. "So, you've awoken, Eowyn."

She was still working on the sticky circles, seeming to be debating whether to pull slowly or to just tug. Seeming to make a decision, she looked up at him. "That is not my name." She tugged, moving her gaze down again, and he smiled as she said a few words he hadn't heard from anyone since before the evacuation. Rubbing her side, where the sticky thing had been, she continued. "It's Prudence."

"Such an attitude..." Ram had been smirking when he first thought of that, but now is frown faded, and was replaced witha scowl. "...just like my general an his brother, the genius." That made her smile, he saw. "What makes you smile?"

Prudence, since that was her name, Ram figured he might as well think of her with the correct one in mind, kept smiling. "My brothers said that's what drove them completely insane."

"Do you like it here?"

"It isn't real." So she did know that all this wasnt' real. Even so, she had propped herself up into a sitting position and was looking over at him. "At least, I know I am, and you are... nothing else." Now Ram frowned again. "What makes you FROWN?"

"The members of my tribe-" He noticed her face change when he said that, but ignored what she made him feel in reaction, and cleared his throat. "-they tried to secure you for-"

"I remember." Prudence began fiddling with the bedding, he noticed. Having been watching her since they had occupied the hotel, Ram knew she was nervous He didnt' need heart and lung monitors to tell him. "Why am I here?"

"As opposed to the cells occupied by other virts?" When she frowned, it worried Ram. "That's what my tribe calls those who are not so... technologically enclined."

"Still doesnt' answer my question."

Ram sighed. She was certainly strong-willed. The more he talked to her, the more he wondered if she was an old girlfriend of Jay or Ved's. From the before time, maybe. "Because I wanted you safe, and kept under careful surveillance..." He saw the questioning look in the raise of her eyebrows, and decided to answer her before she asked. "I thought you were appealing. And the stuns were not supposed to knock you out like they did."

"So am I sentenced to stay here forever?"

He knew this was going to come. he just hadn't expected her to ask it so soon. "No." The answer was simple. He had her image in the program, and could keep up the facade of her in a coma if he so wished. "If you wish to return to the real world, I'll allow it."

"Good."

"But why would you want to?"

When she got up out of the bed, Ram pressed a few things under his sleeve, and placed her in a outfit of jeans and a spaghetti strap top. He quite enjoyed those. Although puzzled, he saw Prudence wasn't about to give up on explaining. "Because my brothers are out there. Because Pride is out there. Because I need to be in a world that needs positive change and influence."

"Then just reach your hands up towards your head, close your eyes, and take off the helmet."

"Just promise me you'll show me why you come into this world."

"I don't make promises."