Disclaimer: Sorry I didn't put this in the last chapter, but I forgot. I borrowed that line from Chronicles. And to all of those people reading my story whom also watch Andromeda, Seaphra System is from there. Andromekles is from history and the movie Troy. And I also want to make apologies for the abruptness of the ending of that last chapter, but I didn't feel like that stuff was very important, but it was necessary enough to put in. So on with the story!
It had only been a few days after her mother's anniversary that year that everything had gone down, not even a week. "I told you mom, once everything was said and done, you would be proud of me." "She's always been proud of you." said Riddick. "Yes, always been proud of you." said Kyra as she got up to them after all the commotion was over with.
Dannie watched as all of the mercks were taken away in custody, but when Dannie was being put into the ambulance, she saw Derick being uncuffed and put into a different ship. When the chief came to see her at the hospital, she asked him about it, but all he would tell her was, "It's none of your concern.", and "It's confidential." She spent about a week in the hospital just laying around and allowing her body to heal as fast as it could. While she was there, either Riddick or Kyra and Cameron were at her bedside, once Connor came, but he was never very comfortable around her, but then again, he hated hospitals.
When she got out of the hospital she was given the opportunity to either become a full fledged police officer, or continue on as the defense without weapons teacher. Her dream for so long had been to become a police officer and that was the whole reason why she volunteered to take this mission. The whole point was for her to infiltrate the last remaining merck crew and bring them to justice. Ever since the Necromungers had been defeated, crime had become almost nonexistent and there was no more need for the mercks of the universe. Mercks were now considered criminals, and entire crews were taken to the very prisons that they had been selling the criminals they were catching, to.
But now after experiencing what a police officer, especially an undercover officer, has to go through, she decided that she would rather just retain her previous position as the teacher. Besides, if she took the promotion, she would have to give up fighting in the ring and there was no way she could give up that and the class and not leave a trail of bodies behind her on those days where nothing goes right.
Kyra, Cameron, and Connor all went home after Cameron had his second birthday party, and Kyra had her second child, a little girl named Kara. They were just going to wait until Riddick and Dannie were settled in and not trying to rip eachother's heads off all of the time, but that took longer than Kyra expected, and then Cameron's birthday was coming up, so they stayed so he could have a real party instead of some crappy thing on a ship heading back home. Then they were going to leave once they chartered another ship, but that took longer than expected, and by the time they had one ready, Kyra was too far along to be able to get on the ship; women over six months pregnant were a liability because unborn children past that point became deformed and disabled in chryo-chambers when they were born. So they had to wait until Kyra gave birth and then they were able to get the ship to go back home.
That whole thing with Kyra took about six months, and during that time, Dannie and Riddick formed a real bond, not quite as strong as a father-daughter bond, but it was up there in the top three of bond strengths. Dannie began to trust him and he began to let up on the paternal "instincts" that he thought he had. She trusted him enough that she even gave him the room upstairs that no one had occupied since Kyra left. It had been her mother's room when she was alive, and Kyra only stayed in there because she was like a mother to Dannie, but Dannie swore after Kyra left that no one would ever be allowed to stay in that room ever again. But Riddick needed a room of his own, and Dannie didn't feel right taking the bigger room upstairs, if her father was going to be staying here with her, so she told him he could have it, but only if he promised that he would take good care of it. "I promise that I will take good care of it. It will be as if she never left, as far as the room is concerned." He leaned down and kissed her on the forehead.
Dannie went back to work, back to the life she had left behind for so long, back to work, the fighting ring, and no friends; the only difference was now she had her dad to come home to. She had to tell Riddick about the ring, it was the only way he would let her out of the house after dark after what happened the last time she went out to the gym that late at night.
"Back when Kyra left, I didn't have anyone around to help with my anger-management issues, so I started going to gyms and training groundsand ended upfinding people to fight. There were always plenty of people there willing to fight a young girl if only to put her in her place. Well, when I started beating people two and three times my size, I got a reputation as the Destroyer, and ended up starting an underground fighting ring. At first I had to put up myself as the prize if they won, but that never happened and I started winning around two thousand a night, at five hundred a fight. When I started working for the station, I cut down the hours at the ring and even started a monthly tournament so everyone would get a chance to fight. The first tournament was the first time that I ever almost got beat, and ever since then, the same guy has been coming back more and more to try to beat me outright, but I always manage to win by just the skin of my teeth."
"Wow! So are you going tonight?" "I have to, or else people will stop coming and I will loose a lot of money." "Can I come to see you fight?" "You can come any night except tournament night. On tournament night you have to pay to get in and you have to fight if you pay, but on any other night anyone can get in, you would just have to pay to fight and those nights have a very limited number of fights a night." "I don't want to fight and take away your championship, just yet, I only want to come see for right now. When we are more comfortable with eachother, then I might change my mind. Anyways, right now you would have to front me the money to get into the ring, and I couldn't do that to you."
Almost another six months went by, Dannie was getting used to telling people she was twenty, and finally beginning to get over Derick not being around all of the time. She was never told why he wasn't put in prison with the rest of the mercks on that crew, or where he was taken and why she wasn't allowed to even contact him. All of a sudden everything about him was "Classified", "Confidential", or "Top Secret". She had just about given up finding out anything at all, when one night there was a knock on her door…
knock, knock, knock Dannie opened the door and standing on the other side was Derick, his piercing blue eyes, sandy blonde hair, and his finely toned body. A whirlwind of emotions over took Dannie. She was happy to see him again, but pissed off that he didn't get what was supposed to befall his ass, she wanted to grab him and pull him into one of those kisses that she had been missing since he left, but she wanted to kick his ass lying to her and helping those fucks beat her to a bloody pulp, and she wanted to him to just hold her like he used to, but again he had lied to her and she didn't tolerate liars. Because she couldn't decide which way to go, she stood frozen in the doorway, until Riddick came up behind her and broke her out of her trance. Surprisingly, Riddick was the one who invited him into the house.
"Thank you for meeting with me Riddick. I have to admit that I was surprised when you had that ship sent to pick me up. I would have thought that you would have wanted me away for as long as possible." "Well, I said I would hear you out, but that doesn't mean that I want to wait around for a year or more for whatever you feel you need to tell me."
Dannie walked to the back of the house to her room, "Is she alright?" "She's none of your concern anymore. You came here to talk to me." "True, but I had hoped that Dannie would at least be in the room to hear what I have to say to you." "She wants nothing to do with you, and frankly, my patience is running thin. If you don't speak your peace quick, you won't speak it at all." Dannie walked back into the living room and sat down in between Derick and Riddick, "There will be no blood shed in this house ever. What do you want to tell us."
Derick wanted to reach over and kiss her lips, those beautiful lips. The last time he saw them, blood was spilling from them and she had a fat lip from the beating she was given. "You look good, almost like none of this ever happened." Dannie went to get up, "If that's all you want to talk about than you can just leave right now." "Please," he grabbed her wrist and Riddick grabbed his arm, "I have to explain what happened during that time. You have to know." "I've already tried to find out everything, but apparently I don't have high enough clearance to warrant an explanation!" "Only because I wanted to be the one to tell you myself." Riddick reasserting himself into the conversation said, "Allow him to tell his side of the story Dannie."
Dannie sat back down and allowed Derick to tell his side of the story. "Now, the story starts back when I volunteered for an undercover mission after my nineteenth birthday. I had been with the Seaphra 9 Police Force for about a year, and I was a hot head that needed a serious lesson in life."
"Seaphra 9, but you transferred from Helion 5?" Dannie interrupted. "Yes, but first I was with Seaphra 9 Police Force. That was my home planet, and when a deep undercover mission presented itself, I figured that it would be the best way to get Detective. But by the time I had any real evidence that this gang that I had infiltrated was actually a merck crew, we were gone from my system. You see, for as long as I can remember, my system has outlawed mercks, so we have to find proof of who they really are, and then we can arrest them."
"But if you had proof, why didn't you arrest them right away and take them in?" "Right, one nineteen year old boy, alone on a merck ship, with no backup. I'm sure I wouldn't have been killed on the spot by three other bigger men with more fire power. I had to wait until we got to another system that had mercks outlawed before I could even think of making a move again." "But it doesn't take seven years to get here from Seaphra System." "It does if you make stops at every other planet in the universe first." "Oh!"
"By the time we made it into the Helion System, I was just another one of the crew members. They trusted me enough to send me out on an undercover mission for them. I was to infiltrate the Helion System Police Force in order to gather information on Riddick. When I found out, while in Helion 5, that Riddick had a daughter, I was told to find her as well so we could use her for bait to capture Riddick and make sure that he went the entire way to prison without any problems. I just never expected his daughter to be you Dannie. When you told me, I almost scrapped the entire mission right then and there." Riddick got up to leave, he had already heard this story, and the rest of it he lived first hand, so it was rather boring to hear about and it brought up painful memories.
"After Riddick came into the picture, I had to report everything to the captain of the ship, but I also had to tell Chief Fry as well. You never came in the next day, and that was when I told the chief everything and to not tell you any of it, just that I was an undercover merck that you needed to take down." Dannie looked like she was ready to interrupt him again but Derick just put his finger over her lips to stop her from saying anything. "You had to believe that I was really one of the bad guys, or else you wouldn't have gone after me as hard as you did."
"But why did you hit me when you got me on the ship if you were one of the good guys the whole time?" "Before the guys had a chance to touch you, the captain pulled me aside and told me that they were going to have 'fun' with you before everything went down." "What!" "Dannie, if I hadn't stepped in and knocked you out before you fought them at all, then the captain had already authorized the men to rape you and beat you into submission. I couldn't allow that to happen, so when they tied you up, I knocked you out and warned them against trying anything with you or else I would have killed them on the spot." Dannie got up and walked around the room to help everything sink in faster before she would allow him to continue with the story.
"They never touched except to hit you, I swear. And when they were finished, I was the only one who came within twenty yards of you after that. Well anyways, after I placed you in the backyard next to the grave site, I put in a call to the chief and told him to get here as soon as possible, and that our lives were in danger. Riddick found you, and you know the rest of that part the story. I was put into protective custody until the trial and sentencing where finished and they were securely in the farthest triple max slam possible. I received word three months ago and hopped on the ship that Riddick chartered for me, and here I am."
