Onegai, Megami-Sama!
Part 3-3: Far-From-Silent Night

Matagu had just pulled his pants up when he heard the scream.

"Peorth!" he yelled, and almost took the bathroom door off in his hurry to open it. He dashed down the hallway, his only thoughts fear for her and wondering what could make her scream like that. Whether he actually wanted to run into something that could make a goddess scream didn't even cross his mind.

Matagu skidded around the corner, and froze when he saw white smoke billowing out of the spare room. He gasped, then dashed down the hall and nearly threw himself through the doorway. "Peorth!"

"Oh, is that what she's called?"

There was a man in the room, standing over Peorth's unmoving body and holding something in his hand that looked like a blowdryer. The same white smoke was coming out of the end of the strange . . . thing, and the man was holding it like a gun. He tossed his black bangs out of his face, and smirked at Matagu.

"I've never encountered such a being. Fascinating, really."

"You. . . ." Matagu tried to catch his breath as the sudden exercise caught up with him. "Who are you? What'd you do to her?!"

The black-clad man turned, and actually laughed at Matagu. "I don't have to explain anything to you, human. Now, go back to bed, this is none of your concern."

"You shot my girlfriend!" Matagu yelled. Without a second thought, he leaped at the strange man, fist brought back for a punch.

"Oh, really." The man waved his hand at Matagu.

There was a strange circular wavering to the air, and Matagu was tossed backwards. He felt himself hit the door, felt himself go through the door, and landed hard on his back. His head started spinning, and he groaned. Matagu struggled to open his eyes. . . .

. . . and found that he was looking up Urd's bathrobe.

"Hey, pretty-boy," Urd said, sounding almost casual. She stepped forward, standing on the other side of Matagu. "Yeah, Peorth's kind of annoying sometimes, but I'm not letting you do that." Matagu slowly managed to sit up, and saw bolts of white electricity building around Urd's hand. "So, you going to sit down and talk," she continued, "or are you going to pay for waking me up?"

If the black-haired man was listening to her, he didn't show it. "Fascinating," he said, looking down at his sleeve. "You're emitting an energy signature almost exactly like my quarry." He looked up at her, and smiled, looking like some kind of movie or TV star. "I'll have to bring you along as well." He raised the blowdryer-thing and pointed it at Urd, and the end of it started to glow white.

"Oh, good." Matagu couldn't see Urd's face, but he knew that tone. He scrambled back, pushing himself against the wall. This was about to get ugly.

"Urd Bolt, strike!"

"Skuld Bomb, away!"

Matagu blinked in surprise, then turned to see Skuld running down the hall, her hands filled with her odd bombs. He then decided that ducking and covering would be a really, really good idea.

The flash was bright white, even through closed eyes. When Matagu managed to open his eyes again, he expected to see half the temple gone. Instead, he saw Urd half-crouched on the floor, Skuld standing over her, and the other guy looking down at the blowdryer like he couldn't believe what he was seeing.

"Interesting," the man said. "Your energy must be just different enough--"

"Who are you and what'd you do to my sister!" Skuld yelled, and whipped out what looked like some kind of bizarre gun.

The man peered quizzically at Skuld. "Does everyone on this planet ask the same questions?"

There was the sound of more footsteps coming down the hall, and Matagu looked. Keiichi, Kei, Mizuho, and Belldandy were running toward the chaos, looking worried. Belldandy hurried to Urd's side, her hands glowing. Mizuho gasped as soon as she saw the man in black.

"No!" she exclaimed.

"Ahh," the man said, starting to smile again. "You must be Kazami. By order of the Galaxy Federation, you're under arrest for more violations than I really feel like listing right now. You will come with me." His expression hardened. "Please, don't cause a problem; I've had more than enough of those tonight."

"She's not--" Urd grunted a little as she got to her feet, but she was still holding lightning in her hand. Belldandy stood protectively at her side, as did Skuld. "She's not going anywhere."

"Neither is Peorth," Matagu said, pulling himself up as well. He stood behind the goddesses, wishing that there was more he could do.

"Such determination," the man said, then threw his head back and laughed. A second later, one of Urd's lightning bolts slammed into his chest, sending him flying back into the spare room. He groaned as the smoke cleared.

"I will not," he said, rising to his feet and dusting himself off, "be denied my mission." He coughed once, then stood tall, shaking his bangs out of his face. "And you're both coming with me. Mata!"

"Marie!" Mizuho cried.

There were two white shimmerings by Mizuho and the other guy. Marie appeared above Mizuho's shoulder, and something that looked like a larger, green Marie appeared at the man in black's side.

"Noh?"

"MYAH?"

"Marie, block his teleport! It's a priority one!"

The yellow thing put its stubby hands to its head, and its eyes closed. It looked like it was concentrating, while the green thing didn't do anything. The man just crossed his arms over his chest and smirked. A moment later, Marie looked at Mizuho and shrugged. "Noh!"

"What do you mean, you can't block it?" Mizuho asked in a small voice.

"Of course, your older model can do nothing," the man said, and laughed again. "The Mata unit is top-of-the-line. Allow me to demonstrate. Mata! Return myself, the Peorth woman, and Kazami to the ship, it's a priority one!"

"MYAH!"

"Peorth Rose Storm Attack!"

". . . what?"

A whirling tornado of roses and thorny vines spun through the spare room, slamming into the black-haired man and sending him careening into a wall for the second time. Matagu and the others shielded themselves as best they could, squinting against the flying petals and stems, backing against the hallway wall. The roses parted after a moment, revealing Peorth, standing there in her goddess garb and looking very, very upset.

"Foolish mortal!" she yelled. "You dare to attempt to incapacitate me, the Goddess Peorth?" She let out a long, triumphant laugh, making Matagu wish the winds would stop long enough for him to cover his ears. He was incredibly glad to see that she was okay, but the laugh still hurt.

"How absurd," Peorth continued, still keeping the black-haired man pressed against the wall with her rose storm, "to think that anything you could do could stop a goddess such as myself! For that, you shall suffer!" She pulled her hand back, and a long, thorny rose vine appeared in it."

"So, she ever brought that out in the bedroom?" Urd whispered back to Matagu. He could only shake his head.

"Mata, return me to the ship, now!" the man said as Peorth whipped the vine at him.

"MYAH!"

There was a familiar white shimmering, and the man and the green thing disappeared as the thorny vine snapped across where he'd been. A moment later, the rose storm disappeared, leaving red petals strewn all through the hall and spare room. Peorth stood there, hands on her hips, looking quite put out. "Hmmph," she muttered. "That was most unpleasant."

"Peorth?" Matagu asked, taking a hesitant step toward her. "You're okay?"

Peorth looked at him, blinked, then threw her head back and laughed again. "Oh ho ho! Of course, dear boy! A small thing like that could not stop such a goddess as I, Peorth!"

"Actually, it did," Urd said flatly. "You were out cold when I first showed up." Peorth glared at her.

"Are you all right, Peorth?" Belldandy asked, hurrying forward, her hands glowing softly. "Nothing like that's ever happened before, you should rest."

"I assure you, I'm fine--" Peorth started to gesture dramatically, but fell into Matagu. He caught her, and held her close as he lowered them both to the ground. "Why does the room spin so. . . ."

"I was afraid of that," Belldandy said. "Please, Shido-san, hold her." She put her glowing hands on Peorth's forehead, looking very concerned.

"What . . . what was all that?" Keiichi asked, looking around.

"That was an agent," Mizuho said quietly. "I can't believe they found me so quickly. . . ." Kei reached over and took her hand, and she seemed to calm down a little, or at least look less worried.

"So that's what we're dealing with," Urd said, leaning against the broken doorway. "Sure, he's handsome, but he's an arrogant bastard. And whatever it was he shot me with, that thing hurt."

"It looked like some kind of stunner," Skuld said, looking thoughtful. "It'd take me a while, but I could make up something that'd block it."

"You can do that?" Matagu asked, looking to the younger goddess. "He only fired that thing once."

"Of course I can do it!" Skuld proclaimed, standing proudly. "I'm a genius--"

"What do you mean, he didn't teleport here?" Mizuho asked, looking at Marie like she was going to panic. "You can't trace him, you can't block him. . . ." She shivered, and slowly knelt, Kei still at her side. "I should leave," she said quietly.

"Not at all," Peorth said, her voice tired. Matagu looked at her, concerned, but she just smiled at him. "I'm not giving the fool a second shot, at either you or myself. We'll find a way to stop him, and we'll send him back to wherever he came from." She looked up at Belldandy, who was kneeling next to her and Matagu. "Thank you, Belldandy."

"Of course," Belldandy said with a nod. She looked over at Mizuho and Kei. "I'm sure Skuld can come up with something to keep you safe. But if he didn't teleport in, we should see how he got here."

Mizuho paused, then nodded. "Agents usually have some way of getting around, so that they can blend in with the culture," she said. "He might have driven here."

"Really?" Keiichi asked. "That's weird. I didn't expect that from an alien."

After another few moments for Peorth and Urd to recover, the group of them gathered outside, searching the temple grounds for the agent's vehicle. Matagu and Peorth found it first, and called out to the others. They arrived in pairs, and thus, Matagu had to answer the same question about four times.

"He rode here on a motorcycle?"

Keiichi and Skuld started looking the cycle over as soon as they arrived. Matagu didn't understand a word of what they were talking about, but it sounded like they were checking it out. He looked down to Peorth as the two others examined the bike.

"Are you sure you're all right?" Matagu asked.

"Of course, cheri," Peorth said, smirking up at him. "Such a thing could not stop me, or at the least, not for long. You need not worry."

Matagu grinned. Sure, that wasn't going to stop him from worrying, but if she was talking like that, she was definitely okay. He held her a little tighter, then looked over when Keiichi and Skuld started shouting.

"You think you can make this work?" Keiichi asked, his voice loud in the quiet night.

"Of course I can!" Skuld said. "It might take me a few hours, but all I need to do is figure out how to get it started, and it looks like it just has a simple interface of--"

"Great," Keiichi interrupted with a laugh. "Because we've got that race tomorrow. . . ."

"You never thought this would happen, did you?"

Kei sat next to Mizuho at the kitchen table. Neither of them had wanted to go back to sleep after everything that had happened, and she'd been reluctant to even let go of his hand ever since. He could imagine what this must be like for her; he was feeling the same way.

After Mizuho had left him for the first time, his memory of her had been wiped away. It wasn't like he'd forgotten everything that had happened, more like she had been removed from what he remembered - he'd known that he'd been to Okinawa, but couldn't remember why, only that he'd met with his friends there. All he'd had of his time with her was hints and vague feelings, leaving him feeling somehow empty inside. He remembered standing with his friends by the railroad tracks, holding a box of pocky and wondering why he was crying. When he saw her again, as though for the first time, and everything had come rushing back, it was like he'd come back to life. . . . It was like coming back after being withdrawn and finding that it hadn't all been a dream.

And now, the past had caught up with them both, and it threatened to take everything away.

"Would you like some tea?"

Kei looked up. He knew Mizuho hadn't said it, but Belldandy's voice still sounded so much like hers, it was so hard to tell the difference. She stood in the kitchen doorway, looking like nothing had happened, like it wasn't past midnight and someone hadn't tried to kidnap both Mizuho and Peorth. Whether she wasn't worried, or things didn't bother her, Kei just wasn't sure.

But tea sounded good. He and Mizuho both nodded, then looked to each other as Belldandy stepped into the kitchen.

"Are you going to be okay, Mizuho?" he asked quietly.

Mizuho sighed heavily, and reached across the table for the box of pocky. She picked it up, shook it, and let out a small moan when nothing came out. She looked back to him, her purple eyes sad, and collapsed against him. He put his arms around her as she started to cry.

They stayed like that for a while, Kei doing the best he could to comfort her while Mizuho let out all her tears. They would find a way to get through this, he told himself, they had to. They'd come too far to be together, and they couldn't let anything happen to take them apart. The thought of losing her again made Kei hurt inside.

There was a soft clunk from the table, and Kei looked over to see that Belldandy had set down a small tray with three full teacups on it. She placed two cups in front of Kei and Mizuho, then took a third for herself and sat down across from them. Belldandy said nothing at first, just sipped her tea and gave the two of them a concerned look.

"I'm sorry that this is happening to you," she said after a moment, her voice soft and caring. "But I think things will turn out for the best."

Kei bit back a hard chuckle. It wasn't really in him to be cynical, but Belldandy's eternal optimism could be a little much sometimes. Instead, he gave a halfhearted laugh, and sipped his tea.

"I'm not sure if it'll be so easy," Mizuho said, pulling herself away from Kei enough to pick up her teacup. "The agents aren't supposed to go back to the Federation unless it's impossible to finish their mission."

"Oh, then we can do that," Belldandy said, still smiling brightly.

Kei and Mizuho both paused, and looked at each other. Kei wondered if he looked as worried as she did. "How - how do you know that?" Kei asked, trying not to sound too panicked.

"Your federation didn't seem to know how to deal with a goddess," Belldandy said, nodding at Mizuho. "Whoever that was, Peorth took him by surprise. I don't think he expected the energy he was looking for to be anything like her."

Mizuho paused. "Perhaps," she said after a moment, "but he'll know now. The agents are trained to learn quickly, and they study a lot about the ways of the worlds they go to." She glanced over at Kei. "I only had to go through a year of training to come here, but agents have to learn a lot more than I did."

Kei remembered how Mizuho had once said that human males were weak to physical contact, and decided not to comment. "Skuld can find a way to keep him from coming back here, right?" he asked Belldandy.

"I'm sure she'll be able to," Belldandy said. "She can be very determined when she gets started on a new project, there's very little that can get her to stop once she gets going. She'll come up with something, don't worry about that." She took another drink of tea. "If she's not up all night with Keiichi-san working on the motorcycle."

Kei did his best not to sigh. Hopefully, they weren't in as much trouble as it felt like they were.

"Try not to worry so much, Kusanagi-san," Belldandy said, concern clear on her face. "We won't let him take Mizuho away, any more than we'd let him take anyone else. I've had friends taken away before . . . I'm not going to let it happen again."

"What happened?" Mizuho asked, sounding curious. Kei nodded.

"It was a long time ago," Belldandy said, setting down her tea and looking faintly pensive. "It happened to Urd. She was taken over by a dark force, a program that would have brought about the end of this world. Skuld and I fought with everything that we had to return her to herself, and to keep the program from running its course."

Kei dropped his teacup, and barely managed to catch it before it spilled all over the table. Mizuho, still leaning against him, seemed just as shaken. Belldandy talked about stopping something that could have ended the world so . . . not casually, but it didn't seem like she was worried, like it was a hard story for her to tell. Kei swallowed hard, wondering just how much he still didn't know about the goddess.

But, he thought, who better to keep Mizuho safe than people like Belldandy and her sisters? Compared to what they'd had to deal with as goddesses, this was probably hardly anything to worry about. He pulled Mizuho closer, then leaned in and kissed her on the cheek. They would be okay. No matter what or who was coming for them, they were in good hands.

The kitchen door flew open, and Kei jumped, then he and Mizuho turned to look. Skuld was standing there, her eyes bright, looking eager. "Mizuho!" Skuld exclaimed. "Hey, can I borrow that Marie thing?"

Kei cringed. He suddenly had a bad feeling about this.

"Marie?" Mizuho asked, sounding about as worried as Kei felt. "Why do you want to borrow him?"

"It's a him?" Skuld asked, then shook her head. "Never mind. I figured out how to work that motorcycle thing that the agent left behind, I just need to tweak it a little tomorrow morning. I was going to do it tonight, but Urd said I should talk to you, just in case that guy comes back."

"Thank you, Skuld," Belldandy said, her voice warm. "I'm glad that you want to help Keiichi-san, but I agree with Urd on this. We should make sure that Mizuho and Kei are safe here."

Mizuho looked back and forth at the two goddesses, then leaned back against Kei. He felt her relax for the first time tonight. "Thank you both," she said quietly. "I - I don't know what I'd do if Kei-kun and I had to start hiding from him."

Kei nodded. Hiding his marriage to Mizuho was bad enough, though he only had to do that at school nowadays - his friends knew, so it wasn't that bad, though they did want to come over and hang out at his place a lot more often, and Hyosuke never stopped teasing him. But no matter what, he wouldn't trade it for anything.

Skuld grinned at the two of them, and while Kei couldn't help feeling a little nervous about her sometimes, he was glad that she was around. "Yeah, Urd told me about it when I got back tonight, but I knew I'd come up with something. So, can I borrow him?"

Mizuho nodded. "Marie?" There was the familiar white blur, and Marie appeared above Mizuho's shoulder, floating. "I need you to go with Skuld, she's going to help us."

Marie looked to Skuld, then quickly back at Mizuho. "Noh?"

"Of course I'm sure!" Mizuho glared at Marie. "She won't hurt you--" She paused, and looked at Skuld. "You won't take him apart, right?"

Skuld shook her head. "Nope. I just want to check out his range, see what I can do that might stop the agent guy too." She held out her hand to Marie. "Come on!"

"Noh. . . ." Looking pretty reluctant despite having just two circles and a line for a face, Marie floated over to Skuld, who snatched him out of the air and dashed out of the room. His last cry of "Noh!" carried down the hall.

Kei did his best to smile as Mizuho gave him a worried look. Sure, he was glad for whatever help his friends could give, but he just couldn't help wondering what was going to happen sometimes. . . .

Agent #42 paced back and forth on the bridge of his ship, going over the night's events in his head and trying to determine just why things had gone as they had.

Once again, the lack of proper training he'd received about the ways of this planet was becoming clear. Judging from the fact that the strange energy was part of an actual being, not some kind of machinery or natural anomaly as he'd guessed, he could make some guesses about the nature of the beings - the women, he supposed - who held the energy.

Considering that they had been present in a temple, it would be easy to assume that they were deities of some sort, what the denizens of this planet would call goddesses. However, such a thing was clearly impossible. The Galaxy Federation had been to hundreds of planets and knew of thousands more, and none of them had shown anything that would suggest the existence of actual deities. Therefore, there must be some other explanation.

But such a thing could wait. Figuring out just what the source of the energy was wasn't his job. Being one of the Federation's top agents, his job was to bring in his quarry. And now that he knew what said quarry looked like, finding it - finding her, he supposed - would be even easier.

And there was also the matter of Kazami. The images he'd seen had hardly done her justice; she was a beautiful specimen of a woman, even if she was half-human. One of the Earthling men whom he'd seen must have been her husband; which one, he could not be sure. It was unlikely that the tallest one held that role, as he had shown more interest in the other quarry, the one who'd been . . . who'd been throwing plant parts at him.

That was strange, Agent #42 had to admit. Just where she'd gotten that many plants, he wasn't sure, as he hadn't seen anything of the sort in the room beforehand. Perhaps she was some kind of charlatan, and had them hidden up her sleeves. He paused in his pacing, and put a gloved hand to his chin. Odd. She hadn't been wearing an outfit that had any sleeves. If he remembered correctly, she hadn't been wearing much of anything when he'd first used the weapon on her, but somehow, when she had recovered, she'd been fully clothed.

Agent #42 sighed. He would have to report this unfortunate lack of information to his superiors. Surely, nothing in Kazami's few reports of life on Earth said anything about beings who possessed strange energies and were capable of spontaneously manifesting both electricity and plant matter.

He tossed his bangs out of his face, and started pacing again. Now was not a time to dwell on what hadn't worked as well as it could have, now was a time to plan for tomorrow. Lacking his vehicle, he would have to rely on Mata for transportation. That would make things easier, but he would have to be sure that the primitive denizens of this planet didn't see him using the Mata system; he couldn't afford to give himself away and that could cause problems with the Federation. But tomorrow, he would accomplish his goal. Now that he knew his quarry's location, nothing on this simple planet could keep him from fulfilling his mission.