Author's Note: All right, so I managed one update for you guys this week, not two. But it's a long one, and I'm hoping to have Space up sometime mid-next week. We'll see. I am working on it though. I have a full timeline for Greenhouse now, which is close to 35 chapters. So yay for that. Thanks once again to all my reviewers, and I hope you enjoy. Yes, this chapter is slightly silly...I figured I'd give them some comic relief before the storm. :ominous music plays:

Chapter 7: Crystal Balls

The Athena handled like a dream. Niobe sat in the pilot's chair, her fingers just barely resting on the controls. The thing was practically on auto pilot. She knew she could call Ghost or Sparks to come and take over for her, but she preferred the quiet of the cockpit for the moment. Her thoughts wandered back to Zion, to Morpheus in the medical center. He was being kept in a quarantine ward separate from all the other patients when she'd visited him the night before leaving. His head had been covered in electrodes, a dozen pieces of equipment flashing strange looking symbols from screens clustered around his bed. They were watching his mind, Lock had explained, making sure there was no attempt from inside the Matrix to hack into his thoughts and extract the access codes to the Zion mainframe during one of his fits. Niobe hadn't bothered to ask what he intended to do if they did discover what they thought to be an attack.

"Don't jump."

Niobe shook herself and turned around to see Neo standing at the entrance to the cockpit, hand pressed lightly against the wall for guidance. He'd abandoned his attempts to walk with a cane within his first day aboard the ship, opting instead to follow the walls by touch. Niobe smiled a little though she knew he couldn't see. She'd begun to see Neo in an entirely new light during the last few days of the war, and had regretted not getting to know him better.

"Don't want your pilot taking you for an unexpected roller coaster ride?"

"Preferably not." He made his way over to the copilot's chair. "But I hear you give a damn good one when you want to."

Niobe smiled absently and turned back to the viewscreen for a moment.

"I never got to thank you," she said softly. "You saved us."

He shook his head, a familiar look of self-deprecation creeping over his face.

"I did what I had to do."

He was silent for a moment then, fingers toying with a loose thread at the hem of one sleeve.

"I'm sorry about the Logos," he said at last. "I should have told you…I wasn't expecting to bring her back."

Niobe waved away his apology, the gesture too familiar to forsake, though she knew it was lost on him.

"Don't think about it. You needed it. God knows we would've lost a hell of a lot more had it not been for you."

He turned back to her at that. There was undeniably something about his eyes, she thought, something intense and slightly unnerving. She felt suddenly that he could see straight through her, though she knew he was still, for all practical purposes, blind.

"If I had told you, would you still have let me take her?"

"I knew," she said, surprising herself. It was truth, though, she realized suddenly. "I didn't want to admit it to myself, but I knew. It's strange, getting so attached to a hunk of metal, but it's like—"

"It's like losing your home."

She was struck dumb by his perceptiveness. Until just recently she'd taken him as nothing more than another hotshot soldier. This was something she would have expected out of Morpheus or Ghost.

"I was wrong about you," she said at last. "You are not who I thought you were. And I'm sorry for that."

He shook his head again, cutting off her apology.

"Don't be. Isn't worth the effort."

Niobe sighed. She couldn't stand it when people refused to acknowledge their own worth.

"Hey, I let you apologize to me, it's only fair that I get my turn."

He laughed at that, a rare display of emotion. It seemed somehow to Niobe that everything he did was shadowed a little by guilt and grief.

"All right, fine. But you have to promise me something."

"What?"

"That you'll stop apologizing."

"All right…but you have to stop too."

"Fine." He chuckled and held out a hand to her. She reached out and shook it, surprised by the strength of his grasp.

He started to get up, then turned back.

"Niobe…what made you change your mind? Was it the Oracle?"

She sighed and looked down at the controls, absently making slight corrections to their course.

"You mean did I come back from her and suddenly decide that I'd been wrong all along and the prophecy was true after all?"

He nodded.

"No. I just…hate feeling helpless. And it was all I could do. Don't take it personally, but I never believed in the prophecy. Still don't know if I do."

Neo shrugged, surprising her with his lack of reaction.

"Tell you the truth, I don't know if I believe it either. Not anymore, anyway."

He got up and left without another word.

"Well, well, would you look at that," remarked Sparks, looking over Link's shoulder at the screen which fed into the Construct.

Link burst into laughter and shook his head.

"Looks like hard training to me."

Trinity stood at the top of the ladder and just observed for a moment, debating whether or not to go and interrupt her crew members. They were supposed to be overseeing Kid's training, but she had a feeling that even he would not be this entertaining in one of the Construct sparring programs. Still, she hated to kill their joy, it was so rare that they found pleasure in their work anymore.

"Shiiiiit!" exclaimed Sparks.

Trinity sighed and left her hiding place to see what was going on as they broke into a fresh round of raucous laughter.

"Having fun, boys?"

Link's head shot around, his eyes huge.

"Captain!"

Trinity flinched; the title was still unfamiliar, and she wasn't sure she liked the looks of anxious respect the other crewmembers now regarded her with. The responsibility was like a deadweight in her stomach. The days of easy companionship were long gone.

"You might want to take a look at this," said Sparks, feigning seriousness as he gestured to the monitor.

She sighed and bent over the back of his chair, slightly unsettled by the appraising gaze Sparks was giving her. The last thing she needed was another suitor on her heels.

Kid was in the Construct, supposedly practicing his newly-uploaded combat skills. Instead, he had loaded a simulation of a Hawaiian resort and was currently lounging by the pool. He had on garishly flowered swim-trunks and sunglasses. In his hand was a glass of bright pink liquid complete with a little umbrella. In the water, clad in a scanty red bikini, was one of Mouse's blondes.

"God…" muttered Trinity. She had the sudden impulse to throw something at Kid's unconscious body in his chair, but she knew it would do her no good.

"Should I pull him out, captain?" asked Link.

Trinity pondered this for a moment, then shook her head, an idea rapidly forming in her mind.

"No." She went over to her chair and began punching in the familiar sequence.

"Captain?"

"Send me in, Link."

Sparks' eyebrows shot up, but he came over to help her into the chair anyway.

"Yes, captain," said Link, turning back to his screen.

"And Link?"

"Yes captain?"

"For God's sake, stop calling me that!"

Kid did not notice her immediately. In fact, Trinity very much doubted that he would have noticed her at all, had she simply remained standing and watching. He was far too busy with the pretty blonde in the red bikini. Trinity quietly made her way over to the back of Kid's lounge chair and leaned on it, clearing her throat. He jumped visibly, and emitted a sound like air being let out of a balloon.

"Captain!"

"Kid." She regarded him with an icy stare. He appeared to shrink under her scrutiny.

"I um…"

"I was under the impression that you had scheduled a training session in here."

"Yes ma'am."

"Then what, may I ask," she moved her hand in a wide, sweeping gesture around the resort, "is this?"

"I um…I…" His eyes lit up as a story came to him. Trinity groaned inwardly; she could practically taste the lie forming. "I thought you might be coming, and I've been doing some aquatic combat training, and so I thought that I would…um…show you."

"You just thought that I might be coming? How did you know?"

"I don't know…I just…had a feeling. I have this thing sometimes, where I can sense what other people are going to do. It's like I have um…"

"You have what?" asked Trinity, slightly amused despite herself.

"Crystal balls," said the woman in red suddenly. "He has crystal balls."

"Yes," said Kid, nodding enthusiastically, as oblivious to what he was saying as the woman.

Trinity bit her lip, caught between laughter and disgust. This was just the kind of woman she'd always hated, hadn't been able to stand as a girl. She had never understood Mouse's fascination with his creations, but she figured it was just as well that he'd programmed them not to be very vocal.

"Right. So then I'm assuming that if you used your uncanny intuition to foresee my coming and checking up on you…that you now have sufficient…crystal balls…to show me some of this aquatic combat?"

"Um…I…uh…" stammered Kid.

"Aw, come on, be a hero for me," crooned the woman in red.

Kid gulped visibly, bony adam's apple bobbing, and got up out of the chair. Trinity took a couple of steps back and pointed at Kid's sunglasses.

"You might want to take those off first."

"Oh! Right." He scrambled for them, fingers visibly shaking. For just a moment, she felt almost sorry for him.

"Go ahead."

Kid nodded, looking from side to side as though searching for an escape. The woman had come over to the side of the pool and was now leaning over sickeningly, displaying an obscene amount of cleavage and grinning like she'd lost a few chains of code somewhere along the way.

"We um…we should start…out here, so I can show you my normal combat first."

"All right."

Kid stood staring at her for a moment, then bent ever so slightly at the waist, as though afraid she'd ambush him if he bowed in earnest. Trinity mirrored him, then stood back, arms relaxed at her sides. This would be a show for her.

He took a deep breath, then came barreling at her with all his might. Trinity waited until she could barely feel the simulated wind from his running on her face, then threw herself neatly to the side. Kid was moving too fast to stop, and narrowly avoided a collision with the wall. The sound of giggling from the pool made a sick kind of soundtrack.

Kid's theme, thought Trinity, smiling a little to herself.

As he struggled to regain his balance, she hooked one hand under his arm and swung him around, administering a neat blow to his chin. Kid yelped and stumbled back, falling into one of the chairs.

"Come on, Kid." She gestured for him to get up. "I've told you this before. You can upload the moves, but you still have to learn to use them."

He picked himself back up gave her an insolent look.

"What are you doing to the simulation? I thought we could fly in here."

"Nothing," she said simply. "You can. But you have to believe it."

"All right," he said skeptically. "Let's try this again."

He jumped in place a few times, experimentally. His feet never got more than two feet off the ground.

"Damn!"

"Kid…"

"Yes ma'am!"

He charged at her again, using the same tactic as before. This time she kicked out as he ran by, tripping him. He managed to roll, though, and was back on his feet in a matter of seconds. Trinity let him connect this time, blocking his hits almost automatically. She let this continue for a few minutes, then grabbed him by the shoulders, pinning his arms to his sides, and pushed him backwards. He lost his footing as she had intended and plunged down into the deep end of the large blue swimming pool.

He came to the surface sputtering and spitting water, reminding her of a newly-unplugged in the power plants. The woman in red giggled louder.

"My hero!"

Trinity shook her head, and executed a perfect dive into the pool. She was surprised as she broke the surface; her hair had come loose in the water and now hung partially over her face. She hadn't realized that her RSI had changed, but she figured it made sense with everything that had happened in the past year.

"So," she said, making her way into shallower water and gesturing for Kid to follow, "how about you show me some of that aquatic combat now?"

"Ummm…uh…right. Well, you nod instead of bowing. Because if you were to bow in the water, you'd get water up your nose." Kid laughed nervously.

"Soooo smart," purred the woman in red.

Trinity shot her a death stare, and she closed her painted lips.

"All right, go ahead, Kid." She nodded deeply, feeling slightly ridiculous.

He charged forward yet again, looking ridiculous doing breast stroke, his legs flailing around in a clumsy frog kick. He obviously had not yet uploaded swimming skills. She let him get within striking distance of her this time before pushing off the bottom of the pool with all her might.

Up, she commanded her body wordlessly, and instantly the familiar rush was there. The air seemed to be rushing downward, an inverse current forcing her body up into the arc of the eagle. For a moment everything was deathly still and crystal clear, time holding its breath. She could see the drops of water hanging frozen beneath her.

Then just as suddenly, darkness, the grinding, hair-raising sensation of the data spike being removed, and she was back on the ship with Ghost standing over her.

"Captain? We've arrived."

She was on her feet in an instant, leaving the sounds of a groaning Kid behind her as she sprinted up the ladder to the cockpit. Neo was standing behind the copilot's chair, face ghastly white.

On the viewscreen, the machine city rose ominously before them, little bolts of purple energy flaring from time to time. There was an entire line of sentinels waiting around the perimeter to greet them.

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