Haibane Renmei: C O R P O R A T I O N Chapter 16: Circumstances Beyond Their Control, a haibane renmei fanfic

HAIBANE - RENMEI:

CORPORATION

Chapter 16

Circumstances Beyond Their Control

By R. A. Stott

It had taken most of the afternoon for her to get a clear shot at her target, but finally, the android girl was alone. Xuru spun her about and slammed her against a wall with her forearm pinned across her neck under her chin.

Charm only glared up at the taller demon woman. "Yes?" she asked in a dull tone.

"What are you playing at?" Xuru hissed. "Why would you let Puruu see anything like what you showed her?"

"She asked, I answered," Charm bluntly stated with no sign of the crushing force the demon was exerting against her neck bothering her. "Maybe you should be asking her why she would come to someone like me to find out about her father."

Xuru got a wild angry glow to her cheeks. "You were about to show her how her father died!?" she shouted.

"No."

Xuru stepped back slightly, allowing Charm to lower her head a bit. "But that playback…" she started.

"…Was stopped at the moment that Puuru requested," Charm finished as she brought her hand up and converted it to the probe device she had used on the console after Xuru had come into the room with them. "Any further viewing was done by you when I unlocked that next section… I thought that wasn't you that followed us out of the room. It seemed too… civil."

Xuru released Charm and moved further back, staring at the girl. "But, she could have seen her father's death!"

Charm shook her head. "She saw what she asked for, nothing more, nothing less. What you saw, only you saw. And…"

She leaned closer to Xuru to whisper at her, "…that wasn't when he died, or at least, vanished. No one has ever found a body."

"How… how do you know?" the demon goddess asked. Charm tapped her own forehead with a finger.

"Think," she said. "Maybe you should ask someone who was there. Now, you saw the playback. Who was there that you could ask?"

"THAT FEATHERED BITCH!" Gabrella shouted while covering her baby with her body and wings.

"Mr. Tolefson, are our shield even up?" Kinza was barking into his communicator. Klaxons were blaring throughout the flight deck.

"Yes sir," was the reply. "Phoenix should not have been able to penetrate the shields."

"She didn't need to," Gabrella snarled as she looked about the cavernous room. "She was riding inside a Celestial!" Kinza gave her a shocked look until he saw his Captain waving at him.

"I came through the shields, as did those four earlier," he noted.

Kinza drew his paw across his face. "Scragg! We need modulation codes on you all NOW!"

Katherine sat stunned while shielding her child. "Oh… dear father! Did she kill him?" she finally yelped.

Kinza walked around where the man who had appeared then vanished had stood with his scanning rod buzzing. "I don't think so," he said while looking about. "As gruesome as that looked, if she had actually impaled him, there would have been blood. I think she tucked her head down and slammed him."

"That also means she could be anywhere in here as well," Strom growled. He tapped his chest patch and called out, "Intruder alert! All systems report to Security Chief! Captain to the bridge!"

At that moment, the bridge was busy with their own issues. Someone had just appeared on the high gangway and had launched a fiery bird down at the Captain's Loft. It dashed about in a zig zag move, but was obviously heading for the baby in the Science Officer's seat!

Roughly six feet away it swung its talons at the child, but was bounced away by a field of energy. It spun up and circled the ceiling.

"MIHO!" it cried. "What are you still doing in the child!?" It flipped and dove on the baby screaming, "I WILL FORCE YOU OUT!"

As the bird neared its target, it found a large hand swatting it away. It slammed into the wall in a ring of flame, which was then doused as Mr. Button fired an extinguisher at it. He then flung the empty metal cylinder up at the man on the gangway, who deftly snagged it, then calmly put it down on the metal walkway.

Button returned his attention to the bird that had slid off the bulkhead and was now staring back at him while perching on the railing that lined the edge of the Science Station. Two cadets were shrinking away from it, but it ignored them. It was still bewildered by the creature that had hit it.

"Get off my bridge," Button growled.

"What are you?" the bird asked. "None have struck me like that… NONE!"

"I'll do it again if you don't get off my BRIDGE!" he repeated.

"Mr. Button, the Captain reports that Amethyst was forcibly taken from the lower hanger deck by Phoenix!" the communication station reported.

Button stepped down and stood between the baby in his chair and the bird. "What have you done with the Celestial?" he demanded. The bird chortled as it turned and swatted the two cadets with its tail.

"He is mine to do as I please with," she sneered. "Do you want him?"

Button smirked. "Normally, I could care less about him," he admitted. "But in this case, I would appreciate knowing what his fate will be, considering that you're in violation of the treaty."

She snapped a glare back at him. "FAA the treaty! You're a sensitive. You know what his fate is. He failed me. He failed me in the WORST possible way."

Button blinked at the bird. He reached up and turned down his Doorknob.

"Really?" he asked her. She looked away and then launched herself for the rafters. Button tapped a few controls on his console and deployed a cloud of particulates that the bird flew through. It then returned to its host. With that, the man vanished.

"What?" the baby asked. "What did you feel?"

Button was busy working over his controls. "That is one jealous bird," he told her. "Scanning spores are attached. Start tracking her," he told the girls down in the scanning deck.

Nemu sat in a chair the chief engineer had provided her via the transmat pad. Her fingers were fidgeting about as she listened to what had transpired – A Rainfall event – the destruction of the core of Old Home by a massive cocoon – the roof of the nursery crushing her and some of the Little Feathers – And Mr. Kinza breaking the Renmei's rules on Haibane treatment. This final point in the story made her cover her face and cry. This confused Koi.

"I don't understand, Nemu," he quietly told her as the nurses slowly removed the children from the room for further examinations back in sick bay. "What has he done that was wrong?"

"D'ere's a number of things he's done that are in violation of da rules," he heard. They looked behind them at Marshall, who was resetting systems on the tranmat's console. "I'm sure that d'ere's quite a few things he's busted on your side, and d'ere's a bunch on ours… hell, I've just done a few myself. Just because he's under the One One Zero One mandate, doesn't exonerate me any. I pushed da buttons, my system did da repairs – he only provided da stats and numbers… oh, and that ring over your head as well."

Nemu looked up at her halo. "This is new?" she asked almost in fear.

Marshall scratched his stubby beard. "Technically, it's your old one, only made of new material," he surmised. "Dat's just how the transmat works. The point we took you from was a second or two before da roof fell on ya."

Nemu wiped her face. "But… the roof DID fall on me and the children you're saying…" She then heard a chirping over her and found the doctor running a scanning rod over her.

"Yes, it certainly did," she told her. Nemu noticed that the doctor was still in a surgical garb, and that it was spotted in red dots. She stared at them, nearly reaching out to touch one in a daze. The doctor reached down and lightly swatted the top of her hand, waking her. She then bent down and took the extended hand and held it in hers.

"Mr. Kinza really did all this?" Nemu weakly asked. McManus only nodded while staring into her eyes. "Why?"

"Why shouldn't he?" she replied. "Mr. Kinza is a good officer. He cares for you all. He's risking punishment and even possibly a death sentence for his acts."

"What?" Koi now barked. "What do you mean a death sentence?"

McManus sat on the edge of the transmit pad. "The Treaty whose rules have been broken is a bit old fashioned in its interpretations," she told them. "Granted, it was written at a time when the Justinian Code was starting to dominate the rule of law, so some of the sub-sections are, how should I say, archaic?"

Marshall snorted. "Dat would be a slight understatement," he laughed as he did final adjustments to his tweaking of the mold oven's designs. "I t'ink it still has parts about halving children in it."

"The point is," McManus continued, "he was not willing to leave you or the children to the fate that had befallen you."

"But… but the rules…" Nemu whispered. "The rules state that Haibane must live with those wounds we make – it is a part of our lessons prior to our day of flight."

An older hand reached in under Nemu's lowered head and rested on the pair in her lap. She looked up slightly to see a familiar fedora and a slightly withered smile look back at her.

"My dear child," Ptolemy said to her, "those rules are changing as we speak. True, your day of flight is determined on how you live your life here, but certainly not by accidents not caused by you. You should trust in Mr. Kinza. He knows what he's doing."

He heard a beep and looked up. McManus was looking at her scanning rod and shaking her head. He smirked at her and gave her a slight shake of his head. She sighed and continued to scan her real patient.

"But… I don't want anyone to risk their life over me," Nemu whispered. "I'm not that important."

She unexpectantly had the old man wrap himself around her in a hug and shake her. "Oh, my dear, my dear, don't EVER say that! You are most definitely important!" he calmly scolded her. He loosened his grip and pulled away a bit to look her in her eyes. "You're important to the Little Feathers, to Rakka, to Kana, Hikari, Koi, and most definitely me. And I will thank Mr. Kinza every day I see him for that." The old man then stood up and tipped his hat towards her as he headed for the door.

"Professor," Koi asked him quietly as he left, "what about her?"

Ptolemy looked back at Nemu. "What about her?"

"Is she in violation of any of these rules?" he asked, trying not to be too loud.

The old man tapped his lower lip. "I don't remember her being in any trouble because of this," he answered. He again tipped his hat to them, turned and then… vanished.

"What the…" Koi said in shock. He heard a chortle from the transmat room and looked back in.

"Time trippin' old geezer," Marshall was laughing.

"What was that?" demanded the cub reporter. "Where did he go?"

McManus shook her head. "Remember the other day when you had three Kinzas?" [1] she asked. "Those were future versions of the same officer, two of whom were copies of the third one. When they were done reporting to him, they vanished into the time stream."

Koi shook his head. "I'm still trying to fathom just how that can be done."

"Umm," Marshall grunted. "Well, if he just did one of those, he had help from us. I'm pretty sure da Corporation doesn't have the capability… I think…"

McManus chuckled as she continued to check over her patient. "We should have asked for his relevance, though I'm not sure if he would have given it to us. Ptolemy can be a sneaky old man."

"I still don't understand," Nemu sighed. "Is Mr. Kinza in trouble or isn't he?"

"Certainly not with us," the doctor replied. "And from what I see, not with the Corporation either, but as for the Treaty and the Renmei… I'm not sure."

"At this point, da treaty is pretty much scrap paper… er… papyrus I mean," the engineer said as he shut down the transmat, having finished his tweaking of the halo mold ovens.

"And the Renmei answer to the Corporation, so they might gripe, but Plato can override them," McManus stated as she also finished.

"So, you think he'll be okay?" Nemu asked cautiously. A hand tapped her on her shoulder. She looked over at Koi who was smiling.

"Like they said," he told her. "We saw three of him just yesterday, and two were from the future. So we know he's okay at least a couple of months from now – he did say something about being from August or something. Though, the one I saw last night seemed rather… sad."

Nemu and the doctor stared at him. "You saw another one last night?" they asked together.

He nodded. "Yea, he showed up after everyone had gone to bed, and Rakka and Hikari were using me as a pillow on the recliner in the yard. I was barely awake when he passed through, but the girls were chatting with him. It wasn't until that Scar showed up that I was given a full rousing wake-up call by Hikari."

"Scar?" McManus asked. "Oh, you mean Bloodeagle?"

"Is that her name?" he asked. "I didn't know… it feels like days ago now…"

Marshall snorted. "Yea, it's been a rousin' twenty-four hours…"

"Amethyst, I am very, very disappointed in you," the crumpled heap on the ground heard. His suit was dirty from the dust he was laying on, and his chest below his rib cage ached from something having been smashed into it – oh, yes a beak – the top blunt part of a beak…

He slowly opened his eyes. A pair of sandaled feet greeted him. They were parading back and forth, raising dust that added soot to the dirt that now covered him. The lady bird was now a balding man. He exhaled painfully and rolled onto his back.

"What… what did you do… to me?" he grimaced. "Why… are you trying to… eliminate me?"

The man in robes glared down on the suit and tie. "You know why… YOU KNOW WHY!" he howled. "I am your life! I am your blood! I am your reason for living! NOT that filthy energy beast that you PROCREATED with!"

"That… was… an accident!" the man coughed.

Phoenix bent down and hissed at his former servant. "And was trying to find out just why I was trying to gain entry into the soul of the baby also an accident?" he demanded.

"My purpose in life was to protect you! That may include from yourself!"

Phoenix stood up and eyed the man on the ground. "Amethyst, my sweet sweet Amethyst, are you saying that I was attempting harm to myself?"

The man coughed, and a trickle of blood ran down his cheek from his mouth. "Yes," he bluntly pointed out. "I have done so in the past as well – you know that."

"Ah, yes," the Phoenix said quietly, almost to himself. "You are my sense when I am senseless… my reminder of when my instincts have the best of me…"

"And you entrusted me to make sure that if anything were to hinder your plans…"

He looked down on the man in the dirt. "You were to inform me… DID YOU INFORM ME?"

The man rolled a bit to get the pain in his groin to lessen. "I was in the process of analyzing the situation, sir!" he barked with an added grunt of discomfort. "That is why I called for you at Sinner's Rock!"

Phoenix started parading around again, at time mumbling to himself. "This is all true, is it not, is it not?" This last question was directed towards the man who had brought them to this place. He stood silent, with a blank expression on his face. Phoenix scowled and ruffled his robes as he stalked away. "Oh, he is of no use, no use at all!" he grumbled.

Wearily, the wounded man stared at the statue that was standing across from them. This man showed no emotions, no signs of seeing them, nor any hint of recognition. In fact, if he was not breathing ever so slightly, he would have indeed seemed to be made of stone.

"Who is that?" the former servant asked. "Is he my replacement?"

Phoenix continued to parade back and forth, examining his feet as he tromped. "Him? Oh no, no, no… yes. You… you were my city… he is my suburbs… you don't like to get dirty, while, he had no problem going places that require a bit of labor."

"And the baby?" The man sat up and clutched his stomach.

Phoenix stopped and rubbed his hand slowly together. "Oh, my dear Amethyst… that is no mere baby… no, no, not in a long shot! That is a Haibane baby! My armor! My shield!"

"I WAS YOUR ARMOR!" the man shouted, splattering the dirt with spots of blood. "It was my DUTY to protect you!"

Phoenix started to walk in a lopsided way, waving off the notion that had been spouted. "Your body? FAA! That frail thing? If you die, I would have been ejected and open to attack almost immediately. But the vessel of a Haibane… oooh, that durable, nearly impenetrable, indestructible shell! I crave a home as safe as that!"

"But… it has no powers," the man said, trying to force the pain in his mid-section to abate. "I have powers, and so does that man… your suburb…"

"That didn't matter," Phoenix snorted. "If I had to, I could have easily given powers to the Haibane. I augment both of your powers, so it would have been easy enough to give the child some as well. Besides, it is a known fact that children are much more powerful than adults. All that pent up energy, you know. And certainly less restrictions, as their knowledge is at a point where nothing is impossible to them – they haven't been stagnated by rules and instructions, or laws. To them, if they wish it, it becomes true. Not like some stodgy suit and tie who only knows too much for their own good. But now it does not matter."

"How so?" The pain was not subsiding.

"The child is no longer in play," the Phoenix hissed at the ceiling. "Your rival has her, and I doubt that the good captain will be willing to allow easy access to her. Plus with the second soul in her, the body is plugged."

"I sense a solution."

The voice had come out of nowhere. The two of them looked over at the statue, who had just spoken.

"A solution?" Phoenix asked. "Edward, my dear boy, you have found a solution?"

"A pair of possible solutions," he said, finally moving from his spot. "But not here… not in front of him." He gestured to his side to bid his master to the far end of the cave they were in. They looked at the man on the ground, who was now doubling over in pain. He slumped to the dirt in agony. "He's not going anywhere," Edward added.

Outside the cave, Edward stood looking at the far end of Glie as the dust cloud from Old Home continued to billow away into the afternoon sky. The view would be blocked from time to time as Phoenix would parade back and forth before him, seemingly oblivious that he had asked him out there. He could hear him mumbling about 'solutions' and 'traitorous Celestials' and 'damned Denivans' and what not.

"Master," Edward said with his voice raised. Phoenix stomped to a halt and glared at him. He saw his suburban body gesturing towards the falls at the far end of Glie.

"Water, what of it?" he glowered.

"You seek a powerful body, do you not?" Edward asked. "Preferably that of a Haibane child or infant?"

Phoenix cocked his head to its side, looking between his servant and the falls. He then stopped swinging back and forth and stared at the falls, and the Temple that was nearby.

"What… what is that I sense?" he pondered. "What is that energy I feel? What has happened up at the Temple, my dear friend?"

Edward coughed. "A child, my lord. But an extremely unique child."

Phoenix slowly returned his stare to the man beside him, a dribble of drool running down his chin. "The power… the power I sense… why is there so much energy, my friend?"

Edward looked out at the Temple. "The baby is that of a Haibane and a Human, my lord. The first of its kind."

"S – S – SACRILAGE!" the Phoenix howled. "HOW CAN SUCH A THING HAVE COME FORTH?" it shrieked until it again turned towards the building energy it felt. "But then again…"

"Exactly, my lord," Edward said. "Be it as it may, the child is coming, and when it does, what will it be? Human or Haibane? Halo or none?"

Phoenix rubbed his hands together. "Oh, none, I can tell you, none indeed." He then noticed that Edward was now pointing up towards the center of Glie… at that SHIP floating there. "What?" he snarled.

"Option number two," Edward stated. "A Haibane who is a sensitive is currently on board that vessel, but should return to the holy site soon. He is older, but still very powerful. And he brings a bonus power – he is a demon hunter."

"A demon hunter, yes, I've heard of him," Phoenix said while scrutinizing the ground. "But why would I want him? What value does he bring to me?"

"His hunting spirit, his inquisitive mind, and of course, the shell of a Haibane. Granted, he lacks the infant's powers, but his knowledge and inherited capabilities will be of value in the struggle that is coming."

Phoenix looked back at Edward. "You know the future?" he asked. "You see the horizon that has yet to come?"

"Only what you have allowed me," Edward stated flatly. "And only while you are still partially within me."

Phoenix smirked. This soon followed by a cackling laugh that grew into a wild bellow.

In the cave, the man formerly known as Amethyst gasped. The crushing blow that Phoenix had given him may not have been terminal at first, but he could feel the broken ribs inside his chest rubbing against themselves. He would die of internal bleeding soon, and his powers were not capable of healing himself – a drawback of the rules of being either a Celestial or a Denivan, though the latter did have their 'cheat' – becoming their changeling and returning to their natural form was an instant cure for injuries – curse the lot of them!

A flash of light caught his attention through the pain. He heard a man's voice say, "There he is," in a hushed tone. He heard a scurrying of feet and he could see a small pair of sandals move in close to him.

"I've got the old bird busy outside right now," he heard the man say as two gentle hands touched his shoulders. He managed to glance upwards from his nearly face-down position at the head of a girl with markings on her forehead and cheeks.

"Goddess?" he weakly asked.

"Oh father above, look what it's done to him!" she gasped as she gave a slight healing orb to the body before her.

"Don't get too busy, honey," the man said. "We won't be out there much longer. We've got to get him out of here!"

"Hey!" he then heard hissed from around the corner. "That bird will sense you doing that!"

"She's right, honey," the man said. "Remember, we need to just get in and get out. Even I will be able to sense your powers here."

Amethyst now saw a pair of red feet. "Let's hope that crazy android has the transmat ready," he heard the other lady say. "The last thing we need is for psycho-bird out there tracing our own energy teleporting out of here." He then heard a beep, and the dirt started to fade away and blur into a sparkly haze.

He awoke to a white ceiling and a dull window. Rain was pelting against it. He looked down his chest to see he was in some sort of bed, and had tubes attached to his right arm, wires protruding from out of a blue-white gown he found himself in, and a machine nearby beeping and showing a heart rhythm.

"I'm… I'm in a hospital?" he asked himself.

"Very much so," he heard, "but probably not the one you would expect to be in."

To his right was a doorway leading out into a nondescript hallway. A man was standing there with a clipboard covering his face. When he dropped it away, a shock ran through the patient.

"Telos? Doctor Telos?"

The short little man flipped a page on his chart. "Indeed, Mr… Moriarty. What an interesting name… better than Amethyst, but then anything is better than what that bird has done to us in the past, right?"

He felt groggy and in some discomfort, but nothing as bad as he had been in before blacking out. "Where am I? How did I get here?"

"You, sir, are in a private medical facility outside of a town called Newtown, in what the locals call a Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. You were brought here by a very determined set of people who rescued you when you were on the verge of death. For your, and MY safety, a time displacement was done to prevent certain volatile people from causing issues with your procurement."

"Time displacement?" Moriarty looked around the room. A clock on the wall said that it was 10:42. The gray daylight told him that at least… it was morning. Little else gave away to him just how far off time he was. Though he did notice something else…

"Since when did you give up your horns and cloven hooves, doctor?" he asked the little man he had once seen as a satyr.

He smirked as he wrote something on the chart in his hands. "Oh, they're still there," he commented. "A benefit provided by our benefactors."

"A magical spell of concealment?"

Telos laughed. "A holographic body overlay," he said with a tap of his pen to his forehead. "Sometimes science outdoes magic. Besides, I'm sure someone out there would prefer that I was draining a battery, rather than their mana to conceal this charade."

Moriarty shook his head, rattling an oxygen tube that was slightly ajar across his face. He found he wanted the soothing coolness it provided his bruised lungs, but readjusting the hose when both of your hands and arms were full of IVs and other pointy-needle things made moving them cumbersome. He found one of the two jets shooting into his left eye momentarily. Telos re-seated the stray tube as he continued to write down things on the chart.

"So, just how large a 'time displacement' are we dealing with here?" he asked.

Telos looked at his watch, and then the clock on the wall. "At this point, roughly twenty years into the future."

Moriarty noticed the odd way he had said that. He looked at the clock again… it still said 10:42. Was it even running? But then he saw something out of the corner of his eye.

A nurse was passing by in the hallway. She was moving incredibly slow. He looked over at the window and saw that it was indeed raining, but the droplets striking the glass were as if someone was tossing glycerin at the pane as they would splat and drizzle down in syrupy lines.

"A time bubble?" he asked. "Are you still working with speed demons?"

"They are very useful, yes," the doctor admitted. "Though, unlike the last time I was allowed to use them, where I had twenty of them in rotations of twelve at a time, now I am only using two… again, our benefactor's have provided more practical equipment to enhance their powers, though I'm pretty sure if they had wanted to, they could have generated this partial reverse stasis on their own."

One of the monitors he was attached to started to make an annoying beeping sound, which brought Telos around to the other side of the bed to reset it.

"So… twenty years… have I been here that long, or was I brought here?" Moriarty asked.

"Oh, most definitely brought," the Doctor said as he switched out a bottle from a hanger on the pole beside the bed for a fresh one. "As badly injured as you were, you did not need twenty years to heal to the point of waking up. You've actually have been here only five days so far."

With the wires leading out of the gown he was dressed in holding it up slightly, he could see bandages and coverings over his chest. "Just how bad was it?" he asked.

"Well, let's see… you had your sternum broken in three locations, breaking four ribs and fracturing three others. One of the broken ones punched a hole in your right lung, which was fortunate for you."

"Fortunate? How so?"

The Doctor peered over his glasses at him. "If it had been your left rib at that level, it would have punctured through your heart." He checked a few more items on his list. "Basically, you have the injuries of someone who was slammed into a steel pole at great velocity."

"She has a very resilient beak," Moriarty mumbled. "I've seen her enter my soul cavity hundreds of times… I will never be able to see that again."

Telos snorted. "She wouldn't be able to do that again if she wanted to, but in this case, I think that was the idea."

Moriarty looked down at him. "She was showing me that I was no longer hers," he sighed. "Who was it that saved me? I remember two women and a man… one was a goddess I did not recognize… all I saw of the other woman were her red feet, which made me think she was a major demon. I never saw the man, and they were talking about someone else… Someone they called Andy?"

"Andy? OUCH!" Telos dropped to the floor.

"What the…" Moriarty asked as he watched his Doctor climb back up holding his forehead. Something had struck him!

There was a drumming coming over from the window. Much to his shock, Moriarty saw the wall and window were starting to slowly crumble, and what had hit the Doctor had been a piece that had entered the time bubble with them. What looked like a large metal mallet was starting to penetrate through the shielding, and as a section passed the boundary, it was making the sound they were hearing as that part was in their time stream, while the rest was not, and it was causing a stress rattle.

"Oh, we've got to get you out of here!" Telos yelped as he started unplugging things from the wall and pushing the bed towards the doorway. "That thing's not going to take that much longer without breaking into shrapnel!" He then opened the closet door next to them, revealing a Speed Demon inside.

"Nano?" it asked.

"Open a path out the door, then get yourself to your bunker," Telos directed it as he shoved the bed towards the hallway.

"Nano!" it agreed and adjusted the time bubble. It spun on the stool it was seated at and vanished through a hole in the back of the cupboard. Meanwhile, Telos turned the bed out the door and was just past the section of where the room would have ended, when the hammer head exploded from the pressure being exerted on it, spraying shards through the wall and impaling the opposite side of the hallway with holes.

There was a roar that shook the area that came out of the room. The stasis that had been held in the room had collapsed, filling the remaining hallway with debris and broken studs from the now non-existing wall of the room. Out of it stepped a large creature howling at nothing in particular, its right hand bloody as it held what was left of the hammer's handle.

"Yup! We've got ourselves a Cyclops!" Telos yelped as he continued to push the bed away from the rampaging creature. Moriarty drunkenly watched as he was jostled about. Lights were flickering and the ride was anything but gentle. Also, as he had been forcedly removed from his medications, pains were encroaching on him that had been covered by their continued use.

"Get him out of here!" he heard yelled, as two women dashed by him. One was dressed in white, while the other was hardly dresses at all, showing off a great deal of red.

"I'm taking him to the bunker!" Telos yelled. Moriarty saw the red woman give him a thumb's up. She had turned towards them to do that, and it shocked him to see that she was a demon.

"Again a demon?" he asked, as the ride was getting rocky. Another wall had fallen into the hallway behind them, and it too was followed by another Cyclops-like thing, though this time, it seemed to have simply smashed its way through the building.

"And a goddess too, yup-yup!" Telos agreed. "They do seem to pair up a lot these days!"

Moriarty found himself entering a small room as what looked like security ran around the corner of the end of the hallway towards the new danger. Two doors slid shut causing him to loose his view.

"Take us to the bunker!" Telos shouted out loud to no one.

"The bunker – aye," a voice replied. Moriarty felt his stomach lift out of bed for a moment, but was then jolted as this new ride was hitting many pot holes. The lights blinked and the ride ground to a halt.

"What was that?" Telos asked.

"That was the bunker," the voice replied. "It is no longer there."

"Something broke your bunker?" Moriarty asked.

"It would seem," Telos muttered as he looked about.

"It's a good thing I wasn't in your bunker in the first place," his patient said with a slightly drunk sounding slur. "It seems not much of a bunker if it gets broken so easily."

Telos looked at him with concern. He whipped out a small flashlight and began passing it over Moriarty's eyes. "The bunker didn't have the necessary equipment needed for you, otherwise you would have been down there in the first place, and not in a time bubble up there! Now why are you in such a state?"

A quick examination found an IV bag being crushed under Moriarty's left arm. Telos shook his head and found a better place to put it.

"No pushing your Percocet!" the doctor scolded him.

"Telos? Telos, come in!" Your position is compromised!" another voice now harped. Moriarty was getting a headache from all of this. "Stand by for transmat!"

"Hey! Hey!" Telos yelled. "Don't forget my Speed Demon!"

The small dark room shimmered away, replaced by a larger room with three or four doctors waiting. One was holding a limp form in his arms.

"Bellomy?" Telos asked looking at the small body. The doctor nodded as he put the imp on a table.

"He's just knocked out," he told him. "Took a chunk of wall to the forehead."

Telos shrugged. "Speed Demons aren't the fastest things in the universe." He looked about with concern. "Where are we?" he asked.

The room shook. The lights flickered.

"This is Bunker #2, isn't it?" he flatly questioned. He was answered by the far wall collapsing followed by a large worm-like creature that was burrowing through it.

"HYEEEEEEEHAAAAH!" someone in black yelled as they flew over top Moriarty and Telos past the huddling doctors. Two blades flashed about in a streaky dance of light. The worm fell into many pieces and let loose with a vile steam.

"I hate ground wyrms," the person groused as they swiped the goo that had covered their swords, splattering a wall in the paste. "We'll need to vacate the room – that gas is toxic to you."

"I would say it's probably not too good on bio-androids either," Telos added as he started pushing his patient in the opposite direction, with the doctors in tow. They only got past the doorway when the crumbled far wall of the bunker was blasted throughout the room as another wyrm entered. It shot out a long tongue that slapped one of the doctors in the back, yanking him back into the room as two thick steel doors slid out of the ceiling and slammed to the floor.

"He was just the dentist, right?" Telos asked as they wheeled the bed down a long straight corridor. "What was he doing in there?"

"We had expected you two in Bunker #1," one of the other doctor's stated. "He was in #2 clearing his equipment."

"Now is not the time, doctors!" the woman in black yelled as she grabbed the front of the bed and made it do a quick right turn down a side corridor. She then looked under the raised head of the mattress and punched at something under there, making Moriarty jump up.

"OW!" he yelped. "What did you do THAT for?"

She reached around and sprinkled small black electrical parts into his hands. "Tracker… no wonder they know where you are," she told him.

"Interesting," Telos said while examining a larger part he removed from Moriarty's hand. "Now how did that get there?"

"You tell me," the woman shot back. "Other than yourself, who could get into that room he was in?"

The bed entered a round wide open space in the corridor where five other hallways merged. The woman steered them into one off to their left. "Other than myself, Bellomy and Gort, his co-worker, and the night nurse. Bellomy and Gort wouldn't be able to do anything, since once they're in position, they need to remain there to generate the time stasis field. The night nurses were provided by you lot, so you'll have to check on them yourself."

"Oh, I will," the woman cursed. She looked under the bed again at the hole she had made. "This thing looks like it was made to actually belong to the bed – it was literally molded into the plastic housing… Was he ever switched to another bed?"

"Multiple times," Telos remarked. "It was easier to move him from one bed to another when it came time to clean his linens."

"Umm, I'm going to have to check on that as well," she noted. She looked about. Grabbing the front of the bed, she brought it to a quick stop.

"Well, that was rude!" Telos yelped as he had slammed into the footboard. He looked up at the woman and found her looking around at the ceiling. "What is it?" he asked. "What do you sense?"

She drew out her katana and took a defensive stance. "We are surrounded," she hissed. "Two wyrms to the front, something large and one-eyed to the rear, and what looks like Minotaur on either side."

"Typical," they then heard come from the woman, but not in her voice. "Do you need help Charm?"

The woman smiled. "Only if you've got your hands on a transmat, old man!"

"Of course I have a transmat," the second voice indignantly replied. "Thought, you're pretty far down there in a shielded tube… and you're about one hundred yards past the emergency beam-out window in the ceiling for that sector. I might only be able to beam two of you at a time."

"Then the sooner you start the better!" Charm yelled as the hallway a hundred or so feet away gave way to two wyrms dropping in from above. Get the patient and a doctor first!"

"Ah ah," the old man commented. "The patient and his BED make two people. The doctors have to wait! Energizing!"

Moriarty found the comfort of his bed vanishing out from under him, as he found himself, sans any IVs of pain killers, bed sheets or anything else he had been laying in gone, and he now lay on a cold teleportation platform.

"Get him out of there! GET HIM OUT OF THERE!" was being yelled. He looked over at two men working at some sort of console. "We've got the second part of the transmat on hold, but it won't hold for long! GET HIM OUT OF THERE!"

An energy field opened next to him, and two burly men jumped into the chamber and hauled him off the pad as the field resumed and the bed suddenly appeared.

"Clear the pad!" one of the men behind the console yelled. The men carrying Moriarty placed him on the ground, stepped up on the transmat's deck and rolled the bed off, making it thunk down the single step, then picked up the patient and plunked him back into it.

"Next pair… Energize," a man dressed in a long dark blue P-jacket and a large naval cap ordered. The man beside him at the console rapidly began working over the controls. In the chamber two forms were starting to materialize.

"Why is she in mid air?" one of the men who had dragged Moriarty off the pad asked.

A low yell was beginning to fill the room along with the sound of the transmat. "YyyayayayayayayaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAA!" cried out as Charm fully materialized, sending her flying out of the chamber as she impaled the back of the console with her katana.

"Oh, that didn't do the system any good," the operator said to a whiff of smoke. "Line one is down! We can only do one at a time!"

"Quickly," the officer barked. The pad was cleared, and another form appeared. But when they went to get another of the three people still down there, none could be found on scans.

"What the hell was all of that about?" a doctor shouted. The person was wrapped in a full surgical garb, and until a head covering was removed, Moriarty could not tell it was a woman, but once revealed, one he recognized.

"Robert, explain to me just what happened down there?" Doctor McManus barked at the 'old man' in the dark blue naval jacket.

"You tell me Abby," he replied back. "I heard what Charm said about a tracker on the bed. How did one get into the mix?"

"Into the mix?" she asked.

"There were five beds to be used by the orderlies for Mr. Moriarty," Charm stated. "When one was taken out for maintenance, it was to be scanned and sterilized before returned for the next use five days later."

"Serial numbers all match up… this is bed #3," the man who had been working the transmat said. "And I see what you mean by the way the tracer was mounted… only way that could have been done was either replace that entire housing unit, which is doubtful, or…" The man looked over at the console, which was still giving off a puff of smoke or two.

"It was transmatted into the unit," Robert the old man finished for him. "Someone is either very tech savvy, or we have a mole in our team somewhere. Mr. Marshall, I suggest you have a look see to your crew members assigned to transmat duties."

Just then, the small room became more crowded as the two deities with a pair of doctors in tow appeared in the room. "FEW!" the demon said sweeping her brow with the back of her hand. "That was some breach we had there!"

Robert looked over the many heads. "Telos? Where is Telos?"

"He and that Speed Demon of his were snatched by a pair of Minotaur before these ladies arrived," one of the now saved doctors said.

"Cecil and Larry? Really?" Robert questioned. "That's not a normal thing for them to do."

"I'm not sure it was them," the demon lady noted. "From the doctor's description of them, these two seemed a bit bigger than those two."

"Wait a minute," the old man grumbled. "Where did these two come from? It's bad enough that I find that there are TWO Minotaur, when I thought there was only supposed to be ONE at the center of the Labyrinth, but now you say there are FOUR?"

"There are twelve in total," he heard, which quieted the room briefly, as the man who had said that was Moriarty.

"I'll be damned, Mr. Celestial," the demon snorted. "How'd you know that?"

"Wait, are you saying he's correct?" Robert asked a bit shocked. "When was your mother going to let us know about THAT?"

"You know my mother," the demon-girl coyly said. "She loves her secrets!"

"Besides, she probably wouldn't want to let known just what her ranks are down there," Charm stated. "Even twelve seems a bit low."

"It was all that was left after the culling," Moriarty said, which drew her attention.

"The culling?" she asked. "The culling of the Minotaur?"

Moriarty shook his head. "No, of the Celestials, though, I'm pretty sure they were being culled as well by my master."

"Phoenix considered Minotaur dangerous?" the lady demon asked. "I always thought of them as a bit buffoonish."

"Don't let being around Larry and Cecil fool you," Moriarty said through a sudden shot of pain. "Much like how the American Bison once blanketed the prairies of their mid-west, great herds of Minotaur once roamed the Labyrinth."

"Herds in the Labyrinth?" she smirked. "How can you have herds in there? It's not that large!"

"No, no, he's correct," Robert said as he gestured to the doctors to aid their patient with his discomforts. "Maybe the current Plains of the Labyrinth are relatively, let's say, crossable? But originally, the inner gates were dimensional portals that sent those who passed through them to a vast outer world. It's what made venturing through them practically impossible."

"Of course, it doesn't help its reputation with its walls retracted into the ground most of the time," McManus added while re-establishing Moriarty's IVs and pain killers.

"Yea, why is that?" asked the demon girl.

"Its part of the treaty," Moriarty told her, with a bit more grogginess to his tone as the pain killers started to take hold. He attempted to point a finger at her, but could not decide which person to point at. "I know you from somewhere."

"Aah upp bupp bupp bupp!" announced the old man Robert as he quickly escorted the two deities out a door, the other of which looked as if she had wanted to join in the conversation that had been brewing. Out of earshot of the now quickly numbed patient, he added in a whisper, "I thank you ladies for your assistance in this situation, but remember that he's the past, and you're the future. Mixing the two tends to make for messy things." He wiped his sweaty brow and added, "Why does Charm always get me mixed up in these things?"

"Maybe it's because she knows you'll always find a way to get things done," the Goddess told him with an added kiss to his cheek. "Thank you."

He smirked. "Don't thank me yet, young lady. We're not out of the woods just yet. We now have to find out why they took Telos and his Speed Demon, and why after twenty years they're still after your father."

She sighed. "Indeed," she agreed. "Even after the events of the past being rectified, we still are battling with this legacy." She found Robert patting her on the head in a grandfatherly way.

"The joys and blessings of dealing with something that has happened in the time and space continuum," he told her. "What is finished and completed in our time, may still be happening from an earlier time with repercussions that lump all over us in the here and now. I'm pretty sure that Phoenix would have ordered a search for his missing Celestial once realizing that the transmat cadaver left in his place was not the original Moriarty."

The demon blinked at him. "Transmat cadaver?" she asked. "What transmat cadaver?"

A moment was taken as the Admiral took in what had been asked. "Regulation 3 of the transmat rescue protocol of injured personnel in a hazardous location – 'If said rescue requires that an injured rescuee needs to be seen as still present at transmat out location, an inert transmat duplicate will be left in place of said rescuee as a cover to Observers operations.'"

The two deities shrugged their shoulders. "We were being transmatted out at the time," the demon noted. "We never saw if one had been placed."

The P-Jacket the admiral seemed to inflate for a moment. He had the sliding door open behind himself. "Charm, could I see you for a moment?" he asked those in the transmat room beyond.

"Yo," she replied as she pranced out of the other room.

"Xuru and Puruu here say that they can't remember seeing a transmat cadaver being put in place of Moriarty when they went in to rescue him," he asked.

"Well, sure – they wouldn't have been able to see one as they were being beamed out at the time," she answered. "But that wouldn't have mattered anyway, as one wasn't put there in the first place!"

All three of them just stared at her. Before Xuru had the chance to explode all over her for that, Robert pinched his eyes and asked as calmly as he could, "Charm, dear, do you think that maybe that would be the reason why we are having this situation in the first place? Why wasn't a TC left in his place?"

"We weren't allowed to have one," Charm snarked right back at them. Robert peered over his fingers that he was pinching his eyes with while Xuru deflated into an expression of non-belief.

"Weren't allowed one?" the Admiral asked through his fingers. "Why?"

Charm crossed her arms and leaned hard against the wall beside her. "I was told, AS the mission was going down, that because this was not an Observer's sanctioned operation, the process of teleporting from one location to another, and not the replication of a body was the only thing allowed."

"Of all the lame…" The Admiral began to parade a bit around the hallway. "If I get my hands on whoever that was… the historical damage they just caused… I'LL FLING THEM THROUGH A FREAKIN' BULKHEAD!" He glared over at Charm, who seemed rather impressed by the rage her mentor was having. "You didn't happen to get a name, did you?"

She shrugged. "Some Lieutenant named Tully," she replied. "He works in the History Library." She saw the Admiral pull out a PADD and start hammering on it.

"Tully… Tully… Tully…" he grumbled. "Ah, here he is… Aw DANG IT!"

"Ooh, watch the swearing, Admiral!" Charm kidded him. "Children might be watching! What's wrong?"

"Mr. Button beat me to him," he said while reading the data. "He had him arrested for… oh, really? He was stalking Ai Fujisan!?" [2]

"Ai?" Charm asked in surprise. "Now there's a name I haven't heard from in a while! He was stalking her?"

"All the way back to the Academy, it would seem," Robert snorted. "And it looks like Roy has already given out punishment for it… ooh, you'll like this one, Xuru."

The demon slid over to the Admiral's shoulder to look at the PADD. He pointed to a line near the bottom.

"Rather than simply strip his memory and toss him out of the Observer Corps, he sent him down to the basement for a bit of R&R…"

"R&R?" Puruu asked in shock. "Rest and Relaxation?"

Xuru sneered. "Ripping and Repentance," she grinned. "Roy can be mean when he wants to be!"

Robert nodded. "He tends to not like it when his cadets stray beyond the norm. Besides, having Mr. Tully have a bit of Hell before his afterlife might make him think twice before doing what put him there in the first place again."

"But he'll have his mind wiped!" Charm complained.

"Not one hundred percent of it," Robert noted. "Just enough to remind him that he was a bad boy. Roy can be very selective." He then noticed Puruu seemed to be pouting. "Hey, are you okay?" he asked quietly.

She blinked and looked up, then at the door where she had left her father. "I've seen so little of him," she said while clutching her hands nervously. "We rescued him, took him to where you told us to take him… and then… I haven't even been able to talk to him… see him…"

North sighed. "That's what happens when you do things on the fly," he told her with a light pat to the shoulder. "Hopefully this shift in locations will settle things down a bit."

"I'm almost sorry for suggesting this in the first place," Xuru huffed while leaning on a table. "Now we lost two or more important people to our cause to that crazy bird. And where is this place? We don't need her finding this one as well." She looked about the dark room they had found themselves it. "This looks familiar…"

"It should," the old man said as he stepped around a bit. "That wasn't just a teleportation I brought you through, that was also a dimensional jump. This is Tech Lab One."

Charm stood straight up hearing that. "Tech Lab One?! You brought me home?!"

North shook a finger at her, and then pointed to the floor. "No, yours is down there one level," he reminded her, pointing out one of the many facets of joy in dimensional hopping. Something crunched under his foot. He looked under it to find gravelly concrete that had pooled badly on the ground. "Oh yes, I need to know just what we have available here… the Vault would be intact, but that's normal. The rest would have been pulled out when I left rather precipitously."

"Precipitously?" Xuru asked. "How so?"

North reached into one of his jacket's deep pockets and pulled out a small rod and box. He connected a wire that was dangling from the rod's end to the box and started waving it about as it chirped. "Oh, got shot a couple of times, Shadsie took out the shooter, Forrestal dropped a retrieval team on us, I activated the purge system which removed enough stuff to fill two of their storage bays to their roofs for a few months, and filled my storage trunks with that concrete, replaced Shadsie and I with transmat cadavers and skedaddled… which it looks like everyone else did as well," he added looking at the readouts he was getting. "The Silph Building is empty!" He looked about and then headed for a fire door near the back wall. He pushed a security bar, which made the unit give a slight winy yelp. But the battery was pretty well dead as it droned only for a moment and then fell silent.

North on the other hand was far from silent, as he was pushing hard against a door that was refusing to open. Charm came over and gave it a slight tap that flung it wide, but also shot a chunk of building away that had fallen against it on the outside. It bounced a few times in the tall wavy unkempt field that was out back of the lab. They stared out the doorway for a moment. North stepped out and looked back at the building.

"It looks like the auto-repair started working, because the vault has a roof on it again," he noted pointing down the side he was facing. "All the windows along the back of the main building have been fixed as well, but I can still see some dangling ceilings in there. It looks like this place has been abandoned."

"But why here?" Xuru asked him. "Why bring Moriarty here? Phoenix has been on this level before…"

"The Phoenix Guild have been strictly forbidden from coming to these levels because of what happened here," he replied. "And unlike the last time, where the old bird arrived to a world decimated by Mauvais, the Black Lugia, it is now defended by many stronger beasts, birds and humans that can pretty much match Phoenix if need be. Plus, we have an added benefit in this world than the other."

Charm looked at the two confused deities, and then back to her mentor. "The tunnels?" she asked.

North snapped his fingers at her and then gave her a thumb's up. "Spot on, my dear! The sandwiched Dytrillium metal that they are made from can't be burrowed through, so no wyrms can get into them, and the metal prevents teleportation without a window, which they don't have!"

"That hospital we were in had tunnels that collapsed with a light knock!" complained the demon.

"No, those walls were normal," Charm said. "The teleportation and transmat blocks were done with a field generator. Those aren't as dependable as these walls – plus, there's no energy needed to run them."

Xuru looked down to see if she could 'see' these tunnels, and indeed did see the outside of them, but nothing else. "So why didn't we bring him here in the first place?"

"Because the Admiral is breaking a treaty," she heard. She looked down the hill and saw a spiky gray head of hair bobbing over the tall grass heading up towards them. "It states that once vacated, they were to never return to these levels, even though they were what saved them."

"Well, we do have the right to peek in from time to time every ten years or so," the Admiral noted as he scratched his cheek.

"That's three years from now," the man said as he stepped up to him and held his hand out. "How are you doing Rob?"

"Been better, Mr. President," he replied as he shook it with a warm greeting. "Xuru, Puuru, you remember President Brock Takeshi of the Stratus League?" Both gave the man a nod of their heads and a "Mr. President" greeting.

"So, what brings our favorite mad scientist back home after all this time?" Brock asked as they all re-entered the shuttered lab.

"We need a safe house," he told him as he looked about for something to sit on. There was one beat up stool, but little else around that wasn't a jagged edge or broken console. The table over by the vault door seemed the only intact thing in the room, and Charm and Xuru seemed to have already claimed it. He finally just crossed his arms and stood there. "We're harboring a person of personal interest to the Phoenix."

"Phoenix?!" Brock yelped. "I thought Roy and his gang had retired that old bird to somewhere called Arizona!"

Rob leaned up against the railing that lead up to his old apartment above the floor of the lab. "He did," he replied. "But since we're from a different time line, we," he added while pointing at the ladies with him, "are dealing with it at an earlier time than what happened here."

Brock looked at Xuru and Puuru, who looked pretty much like they did when he had seen them last. He held his look at Charm for a bit, as she seemed oddly different. And then there was this… larger than expected man before him.

"Listen, not to be blunt, but if this is an earlier time for the bird," he whispered, "why do you look so much… older?"

North leaned in on his friend and whispered back, "Everything that is old is new again. Charm and I are from the future attempting to keep issues in the here and now from making a mess of everything back there."

Brock glared at him. "That makes things clear," he sarcastically stated. "So who is this extremely important person you're attempting to keep away from old crazy firebird from hell?"

"Hey!" Xuru barked. "I don't go saying bad things about where YOU live!"

North held his hand up to keep the deity at bay. "We have a man named Moriarty… formerly known as Amethyst. He's a Celestial."

Brock looked at him in shock. "Celestial? Isn't that what Edward Furgesson is? Puuru's husband?"

North nodded in agreement. "Mr. Moriarty is one as well, and was the Phoenix's vessel of transport and protection much like the way it took over Edward's body in the past. But Mr. Moriarty is also her father, and Phoenix is trying to find him."

Brock looked over at the Goddess, who was staring at her feet with an expression that looked like she would have preferred if he would please avert his stare.

"So, you intend on setting up shop here?" he asked. Rob shook his head in the negative.

"No, the tunnels would protect us, but caring for someone with his current needs in a hundred foot tall cavern isn't a preferred location for a medical bay," he said as something in his pocket beeped. He pulled it out and flipped it open.

"Admiral, we are ready," it told him.

"Be right down," he said and slapped it shut. He looked at Brock. "Did you bring a ride, or would you like to come along?" he asked him.

"I teleported down from the Stratus when our scanners told us something was going on down here," he told him as he sauntered behind the group. North was guiding them towards the large vault door at the far end of the lab's floor. "So, where are we going?"

"The entrance to the tunnels are down at the far corner of the testing vault," the scientist said as they started descending the stairs to the floor below. As they crossed it, Charm noted a crumpled heap of what had once been a stasis capsule to one side of the doorway to the tunnels and grunted.

"Good, I'd rather be somewhere that didn't remind me of that other life anyway." She grabbed the Admiral's arm as they walked out of the room.

It was a short hallway that betrayed the thickness of the vault's walls to them. But as the outer door swung away, a burst of air blew in, and what sounded like air breaks huffed and snorted beyond it. Brock stared at what looked like the entrance to another room, until he cleared the door frame, and saw large caterpillar tracks beside another large door, which wrapped up the sides of a very large vehicle.

"What the hell is that?" he asked.

North looked back at him. "This? Transport… this is a Tunnel Ratz… umm, a Class One unit from its size, I would say. I'm not sure why they would have sent one of the large ones for us, but one can't be too picky now can one?"

Brock stood and stared at the size of this movable wall that was before him. "I thought the treaty said you folks were to stay away!"

North was busy showing the deities on board. "We did stay away," he said to him. "This is run by the locals!"

"So, where are we going?" Puruu asked as she could see her father being tended to by Dr. McManus in the modular back section of the passenger compartment.

North answered her by tapping on a wall intercom. "Bridge, what's your heading?" he asked it.

"Tech Lab Two, sir, and the Northern Mountains Science Center," it replied. "Dr. Jade is waiting for us."

North nodded. "I guess they found her?"

"Found her?" Charm asked.

"Okay pilot, we're all on board – you may proceed at your leisure," he said to the com first. "Dr. Jade Yukanna disappeared soon after Mr. Kinza offered her the position of chief scientist to the lab during the resettlement after our issues with Lugia and Phoenix were completed [3]," he continued with Charm. He tapped his forehead a few times as he walked about a bit while everyone was jolted back slightly as the monster machine started up the tunnel. "Oh, wait a minute… that was down on 1.1… I thought Jade Yukanna was unimonic…"

"Unimonic?" Brock asked. "You mean appearing only on one dimensional level?"

The Admiral nodded and tapped a monitor on the wall. "Computer…"

It chimed a harmonic tune. "SAM System – Unit 42… yes Admiral, what may I do for you?"

"Personnel information – Dr. Jade Yukanna… I would like some information on what she is doing up here on the Prime Level of the PokeWorlds?"

The image of a middle-aged woman with glasses appeared on the screen. "Dr. Jade Yukanna-Sonheim – Chief Scientist and Head of Operations, Tech Lab 2 Research Facility. Transferred to Level Prime of Dimensional Level 01-324A after returning to the matching base on Level 1.1 after a six year absence. Reason for transfer – protection – During her years hiding after abandoning her position at the lab on level 1.1, she had avoided being captured by that level's Terminal Solutions four times, and was recovered by the Observers after being shot during the last incident. Approximately five years ago, the entire compliment of Tech Lab 2 from Level 1.1 was transferred to this level to accompany Dr. Yukanna-Sonheim for their mutual protection."

"I thought the TS up here was meaner than the one on my level," Charm noted.

"They are," North replied. "But up here, they aren't looking for any of them. It does make sense, especially since I know that she was particularly worried about her daughter's protection, and that she thought that being away from her, and she being in the protective custody of the Observers would keep her safe."

"Daughter?" Charm asked in puzzlement.

"Jade, her daughter," North nodded. "The MewTwo kit she was raising. Computer, did she bring her along as well?"

"I certainly hope she did, otherwise my daughter wouldn't have had her friend to play with," a deep voice answered for the digital one. North looked over his shoulder and saw an old friend leaning against a door jam.

"M2! My son, how are you?" he asked as he quickly moved across the room to shake the paw being held out to him.

"Stiff," he said while rotating his right arm about and rubbing his shoulder. "I've been teaching my boy how to pitch WITHOUT using psychic powers!"

"Boy?" the Admiral asked. "You and Peanut had another child?"

M2 held up his two-fingered paws with his thumbs inwards, showing four.

"My god," North stood in shock. "And you didn't blow up?"

"Damn near – twice… Peanut and I have decided that four is enough," he sighed.

"I'm surprised you didn't know about that Rob," Brock noted. The old scientist looked back at him and smirked.

"I probably do," he said, "just not in this time line. Since you're here, maybe you can bring us up to date… what's the status of this level's Terminal Solutions?"

M2 shrugged. "Pretty well defunct, which is both good and bad. Jesse has been busy keeping those who wanted to follow the old ways of Team Rocket at bay, with the help of our friends up in the Stratus League of course."

"What makes that both good and bad then?" Charm asked. "I would think a dead Terminal Solutions would be a good thing."

M2 shook his head. "The problem is that it didn't die – it shattered," he noted. "Many gave up, but there are many others who went off on their own. We now have to deal with these splinter groups, with the Three Colors being the worst."

"Three Colors?" Puruu asked

M2 huffed. "Team Red, Black Squad and The Indigo, also known as The Blue Mafia. Fortunately, none have attempted to bother us up at TL2 so far. Then again, we have the upper hand as well…"

North raised an eyebrow. "Upper hand? You have some sort of protection from these sub groups?"

M2 smirked and nodded. "From a former inside source," he snorted. "Remember when Roy recovered all of Daphne's family and friends for her before he departed?"

The scientist rolled his eyes and winced. "Yea?" he droned out.

"Daphne?" Charm interrupted. "Who's Daphne?"

North crossed his arms and leaned against a bulkhead. "You know her better by her code name… BJ."

"Baby Jigglypuff?" she laughed. In her mind she pictured the girl shrinking back at the mention of her full code name. She may have loved it as a moniker, but hated when someone else said it out loud. It usually meant some high official was about to demand something of her, which usually was the case.

"Captain Strom 'saved' a number of her friends and relatives from your home level with offers of a new life up here on the Prime," North noted with quotation fingers around the 'saved' part.

"Well it worked out for the most part," M2 said with a slight laugh. "Out of the dozen or more people he brought up, only two went to the 'dark side,' he added with his own air quotes, "but most formed a service group in the Golden R to protect the base and its operations. One is actually piloting this Ratz."

"I thought I saw Stingray heading up to the pilot's house," North commented. "How is life without the Rockets to keep things interesting?"

"At times, boring," M2 sighed. "Other time, all hell breaks loose. When they were around, there was a constant 'alert' status. Now, we have long periods of calm and then the storm explodes on us."

"Well, I hope we're not a thunderhead about to crash down on you," North smiled as he patted him on the shoulder.

"Depends," M2 said looking him in the eyes. "You're dealing with that bird again that I thought we had put away. What makes you think he, she or it won't be heading this way to get the prize?"

North huffed. "We don't," he admitted. "But even in their insanity, they never jumped their time lines to the extent we just did."

"Maybe so," M2 pointed out, "but who's to say they can't send someone in their place?"

"Miss Rakka, please report to the bridge… Would the Haibane Rakka please report to the bridge…"

Rakka had been pondering the floor of the waiting room as the two Young Feathers played with this new goddess who she had never met before attended to them. Both she and Nemu were kind of in a daze at all that had occurred in the last few hours, and were staring at fibers in the tightly woven carpet the room was clad in. Koi would look up from the puzzle the kids were assembling that featured some strange creature shooting lightning from its cheeks to keep a tab on the two seniors.

"A Pikachu," Hlin commented. "A very formidable creature, especially for someone wearing metal."

"The bridge?" Rakka asked, woken by hearing someone she could not see asking her to go somewhere she had not been to before.

Hlin noticed the questionable look the young lady was giving those in the room. She reached over and tapped the seemingly magic wall she had been conjuring up these playthings for the children from. "Computer, can you guide Miss Rakka to the bridge, please?" she asked to nothing.

A four tone beat resonated through the room, followed by a young woman's voice lightly stating "SAM System Concierge… Of course Hlin, I would be glad to oblige. Miss Rakka of the Haibane Glie has been requested to come to the bridge."

Koi saw the expression running across Rakka's face. "Do you want me to come with you?" he asked her. She quickly shook her head, making her halo whip back and forth in a blur. He looked over at the two kids in the room with them, and then at the goddess in the room. "You will keep an eye on them?" he asked her.

"Certainly," she replied. "Guarding is my duty. Besides, once the nurses in the next room finish with the other Young Feathers, this room will be full of children needing attending to. I'm pretty sure Miss Nemu would appreciate the assistance."

Nemu gave a slight smile and nod as she woke briefly from her counting of strands in the floor, and then returned to her duty.

Rakka gingerly took hold of the hand being offered to her. It felt warm and strong, and surprisingly wanted at that moment. As she stood up, the voice in the walls said, "Proceed out of this room to your left and head down the hallway until you see a door on your right with this symbol on it…" A sign appeared on the wall that showed four arrows all facing away from one another.

"Let's go," Koi said, and led her out the door. She had not noticed before the fact that there were signs all over this hallway, and now they seemed to dominate everything. She looked back and noticed that there had been words over the room she had been in and out of all afternoon – 'Medical Center – Sick Bay' with a snake with wings wrapped around a sword symbol beside it. The next door said that it was 'Service Locker 643-A' – across the hall from that was a plaque that stated 'Dr. Abigail McManus – RM 642 A-G'. A few more doors down was the aforementioned sign. Koi tapped a button beside it.

"Summoning a car," the voice announced. The sealed split door hissed a bit as they could hear something approaching. Then they suddenly opened to a brightly lit booth-like room.

"Looks like some sort of elevator," Koi mentioned as he guided Rakka aboard. As the doors shut behind them, they felt it back away from where it had met them, and then hold for a moment.

"We will be heading for the bridge, the voice returned. "Please stand by as we wait for the tube to be cleared. Tube cleared. Travel time will be twenty seconds."

Koi could tell the voice wasn't helping with Rakka's nerves as every time it started to yammer, she would squeeze his hand. "Computer, do you talk to your riders every time someone uses these lifts?"

There was a brief moment of silence save the whizzing sound of the car's travel. "I am the Concierge Service," it replied. "I am simply explaining to someone who has never been on a ship like this what is going on around them. Shall I cease?" Again, Rakka shook her head rapidly.

Koi gave a slight laugh. "Just give us the basics, not the full rookie treatment, please."

"Acknowledged," it stated in a kind of almost hurt sound. Now Rakka felt bad for the concierge! Drat it all!

Those twenty seconds felt like twenty hours. They sensed the car slow. "Bridge, Level Two," the voice said as the doors opened to a cacophony of technology.

The two riders stepped out of the car. The doors slapped shut behind them, causing Rakka's hair to be blown forwards. She swallowed as she stared at the massive dark room that sat beyond a short hallway whose walls sloped down from above the elevator's doors to the floor before them. A step forward showed her that to their right was a small alcove where four girls were working at displays and consoles as a fifth person walked behind them. This person noticed the new arrivals and smiled to them.

"Miss Rakka?" she asked. "Hi, I'm Erin. Mr. Button would like to see you. If you could please, come around to the other side of the Scanning Deck to the stairs over here?" She moved to the other end of this bump-out from the wall behind them and pointed to where she needed to be – which meant that Rakka and Koi would have to enter this room of dark panels and blinking lights, into a rhapsody of noises and tweets, a room with large grumpy looking men and women standing at either side guarding something – and they seemed to be armed… and did that one have real wings? Wings larger and obviously functioning unlike her own tiny pain-inducing sprouts on her own back? And she has a BEAK! I mean, at least she thought it's a she…

Rakka shimmied a bit further out into the bridge, when she noticed the girls of this 'Scanning Deck' looking at her – only two were what she would say were human. One of the others had a red and white furry face, and looked almost like a fox she had seen in the fields around Old Home. The other… just flicked her tongue at her…

Koi watched the hair on the back of Rakka's neck raise. He put his arm around her and started to guide her along.

"Hi, hello, g-good to see you," she whispered, trying to be as polite as her nerves would allow her to be… until she made it to the stairs and looked up…

…And a baseball the size of the wash basin they used for their weekly laundry looked down on her. And it had arms and legs!

"EEEEAAAAHH!" she shrieked. As she finished drowning out the sounds of all the computers on the bridge, she opened her eyes and peeked up the steps at this strange vision… that had a pair of huge ovoid glasses on, and a bemused expression on what she could only describe to herself as its face.

"Par for the course," it said. "Miss Rakka, Master Koi, welcome to the bridge of the Forrestal. I am Commander Button."

"I apologize for Rakka's scream," Koi replied as he held her shoulders. "I'm sure she didn't mean anything by it."

"I don't know, I sometimes feel like screaming when I see the Commander first thing in the morning too," they heard behind them. There was an audible chuckle through the room as Koi looked back at the man who had said that.

"You!" he said. Rakka noticed that tone in his voice and looked back as well. A tall blond-haired man was sitting at what looked like the main controls for this ship they were on. As she looked at him, a vision passed over her…"

"And the last Haibane who died in Glie did so by drowning in her own cocoon!" the vision screamed. "His has cracked along the top! He won't be able to escape it, and if the pressure drops any further, it will be normal water he's in! HE WILL DROWN!"

"You're the man who cracked open Pop-Pop's cocoon!" she squeaked. He tipped his hand to her and winked.

"Hi hi!" he said, and then noticed the grumpy look he was getting from above her. "Ooh, if looks could kill…"

Button cleared his throat, if he had one. "I am sorry if my appearance was so shocking – I was thinking that being in the presence of Mr. Kinza, Gabrella and Katherine would have prepared you for non-Terrans."

"I didn't scream like a little girl when I saw you for the first time," someone said from behind a console out of sight of the two Haibane. Rakka could only see the top of a small head bobbing over a console from where that voice came from.

"Koni?" Koi asked. Rakka looked about.

"Koni?" she asked. Noticing that Koi was leaning over to see around the console before them, she followed suit and found the child in a chair looking back at her.

"Konnichiwa," she said.

"Why is Koni speaking?" Rakka asked. "Why is she speaking in Japanese?"

"Why is Koni here?" Koi more appropriately asked. He saw the ball-man looking at him.

"You, sir, brought her 'guest' aboard, and when she vacated you, she entered the baby," Mr. Button told him. Koi looked puzzled at him at first, and then looked startled at Koni.

"Miho?" he asked the child. The baby looked away and nodded.

Rakka looked confused between the three of them. "Miho? Who is Miho?"

"The soul of a Haibane captured by our Sinner's Rock," he told Rakka. "Remember when I was acting strangely around Jester?"

Rakka looked down at her hand that suddenly stung like she had struck someone with it. When she looked up, Koi was rubbing his cheek as if she had hit him again.

He laughed slightly. "Yea," he grimaced. "I was acting that way because she was inside me at the time.

Rakka was befuddled. "I don't get it," she complained. "How could someone else's soul be inside you?"

"Master Koi is a sensitive, like me," Button stated as he took a step down towards them. "He is from a family of Demon Hunters. They can sense beings with powers and have the ways and means to dispense with them."

Even Koi looked at the Commander strangely on that point. "Dispense? How so?"

"In your dark ages, there were many in your world with these powers," Button explained, "and those who would deal with them. There are still some these days, they only hide their strengths better. Modern technology can provide a potent shield. But it doesn't stop those who are sensitive from sometimes being taken advantage of."

Koi smirked at that. "I'm an open doorway?" he asked.

"No," Button replied. "You're more a bucket waiting to be filled. If you were a doorway, you could close that door. But that's where Miss Rakka comes in."

Rakka looked about. "M-me?" she asked. Mr. Button smiled at her, which strangely seemed calming even as weird as he looked.

"You, ma'am, are also a sensitive, but in a different way," he told her. "Remember the ghost that was haunting the construction site at Old Home?"

A night months ago ran through her head. Koi had only recently joined their home after she and her sisters had rescued him from the catacombs under the wall by the Southern Slews. Specters had seemingly entered the restoration project on the north end of their building.

"The girl," she whispered. "The girl who was lost…" [4]

Button nodded. "Koi could see her, but you could feel her. Koi could not touch her, but you could, and you sent her back home to her own body…" He paused for a moment. "…Saving her life in the process."

Rakka gasped. "I… I did what? I mean… I did what?"

Mr. Button held his huge hands up. "Easy now," he calmed her. "She had attempted suicide, and between your Professor Ptolemy and Dr. Hypocrites, gave her a second chance at life… she even thanks you for it."

Rakka shuddered. "She… she remembers me?"

Button smiled and looked at the ceiling. "She remembers that someone saved her – reminded her that there are those who care. It is what you're capable of doing as a Haibane of special talents. Another of those talents arose later the day Master Koi decided to play Batman and jumped Jester from the editor's window at the newspaper building."

For some reason, Glie's Library shot through Rakka's mind. An image of a file drawer in the Periodicals section flashed as it was pulled open revealing thin magazines of cartoons, [5] one of which showed a man in black, dressed in a cape and cowl leaping at the reader with the words "VENGANCE OF THE DARK KNIGHT" emblazoned between the two hands that were reaching out at her.

Rakka squealed and spun about, almost slapping Koi in the process. She opened her eyes and looked up and found him holding her arm below her wrist.

"Slap me once, fool on you," he told her. "Slap me twice, fool on me…"

"Sorry," she whispered as he raised her back up from the crouched position she was in. "Batman attacked…"

"Remind me to talk to the Corporation rep about those comic books in the library," Button said to one of the girls in the scanning deck, and then looked over and glared at his helmsman.

"What?" Tolefson asked with a 'who me?' look on his face. "You told me to clean out my old cubby hole when I was going on native duty… just because I donated them to the monthly intake of Glie, and the locals didn't scrutinize them…"

"Besides, I believe they're needed for a future case," they then heard from the side entrance of the bridge as Captain Strom entered. "Status?"

Mr. Button signed and gave his helmsman a final glare. "We were about to ask Miss Rakka if she could help us on our latest problem," he said to his commander.

"Problem?" Rakka asked.

Koi looked at the Commander, and then at Koni. "Miho, what have you done?" he asked the baby.

The toddler clasped her tiny hands together and bowed to the two Haibane. "I am stuck," she said in a faint voice. Koi pinched his eyes.

"Let me guess," he grunted. "That 'hole-in-her-soul' that crazy faun doctor drilled into her?" Button nodded in agreement.

"I take it that you were unable to do anything, Mr. Button?" Captain Strom asked as he climbed up the step to his seat at the top of the Command Stack.

Button looked perturbed. "Unfortunately, I'm too sensitive. There is way too much noise in the air right now for me to settle on one lone soul. That's why I'm calling in a specialist!" He pointed directly at Rakka. Both Miho and Koi reared back at what, to them, her specialty was.

Rakka looked back and forth between them, looked at her hand and then at the toddler. "Do I really have to slap a baby?" she asked them.

"NO ONE is SLAPPING MY KONI!" Kinza barked as he now entered the bridge. Everyone was staring at him as he looked about. "Sorry, I just had to say that," he added. "Besides, you probably don't have to do that anyway," he added.

"I don't?" she asked with some relief. "Then how do I do it?"

Kinza stroked his beard as he walked back and forth. "Technically, she would only need to command it, right?" he asked the science officer. Button thought about it.

"Technically, yes," he replied. "Her power comes from the direct control of the spiritual energy. The slap only added to the force of the control."

Rakka gingerly approached the child in the chair. "S-so… all I need to do is tell her… what is her name again?"

"Miho," Koi whispered into her ear.

"M-Miho…" Rakka stammered. "…Miho to leave Koni's body?"

"Pretty much," Button noted.

Rakka stood before the child and looked down on her. Koni/Miho stared up at her with a gruff expression on their face.

Rakka clasped her hands down to her knees as she bowed to the child. "Miss Miho, it is nothing personal, but would you please leave this child?" she asked as politely as possible. When she looked up from staring at the tips of her shoes, she saw Koni still staring at her, though now wide eyed.

The toddler looked around the room and then back at her. "Sorry, but I'm still here," Miho stated.

More than disappointment, Rakka felt a bit of anger rush through her at that moment. She pointed at the child and placed her finger directly to her forehead.

"Out," she said.

Koni blinked. She then started to giggle at her big sister pointing her finger at her head.

"Oh!" she heard behind her. "Hello there!"

Rakka looked behind her to find Koi rubbing his forehead. "Yup, she's inside me now," he said. He then quickly had to grab Rakka's hand as it began to whirl around towards his cheek.

"Whoa! Whoa!" Kinza yelped as he also grabbed the wayward hand. "He's got control of this!" he told her. "There's no need to smite her out while we're here!"

Rakka gave them a wary eye, holding her open hand up as if she were cocking a gun. "Really?" she asked. "Are you sure?"

Koi was rubbing his forehead as if he had been struck. "I think we're safe," he said a bit frazzled. "She said she seems to have bounced off you before being dropped back on me," he added to the second in command, who was beside the Captain.

"Not surprising, seeing that he's probably the most sensitive to these things here," Strom noted. "But Lif Sphares also tend to be the hardest to merge with, seeing that their mental strengths are honed because of their sensitivity."

Koi gave a light laugh. "She says that it was like bouncing off a hard rubber ball." Mr. Button only looked up at the ceiling and sighed.

Rakka looked closely at Koi's face to make sure he wasn't just covering up a change in personality. "How come you're more in control now than then?" she asked while scrutinizing him – her hand was still in a face slapping shape as she peered intensely at him. She heard a stomping next to her, and found Kinza pounding the deck plate with the heel of his shoe.

"The metal this ship is built from prevents the second soul from being the dominate one," he told her. "And honestly, with a little training, he probably could do the same thing even off this ship. Besides, we have deities down in sick bay right now – I don't see him rushing down there to deal with them, right?"

Rakka stood back. "He would attack Katherine?" she asked.

"As a Demon Hunter, maybe," the Captain stated. "It depends on the strength of his drive when the feeling hits. I've seen situations where a hunter was in the process of dealing with a demon while a goddess was nearby, and the hunter turned on her. They tend to be driven by the energy emitted by those they prey on, and sometimes, inexperience causes them to lash out at both extremes."

"Extremes?" Rakka and Koi looked puzzled at the Captain. He smiled as he pondered his response.

"There is a science to what some call magic, and those who can use such powers," he stated. "We call them energy users, since most of it is simply the capability to manipulate such powers, either positive," to which he then pointed at the ceiling, "or negative," and then pointed to the floor.

"The Attic and the Basement," Koi said realizing what he meant. "I've heard some mention of that."

"Like two poles to a battery," Strom agreed. "And at these two ends, we have life forms that are comprised of these powers, which is why rather than being energy users, they are energy beings – what you would call gods and demons."

"So what are you?" Rakka asked the Captain. "I can feel power in you, sir, much like I can feel Katherine's, though hers is more constant.

Strom looked at Button impressed. "She's good," the second in command said to him. He rubbed the back of his head and looked at the girl at the bottom of the loft.

"Guilty as charged," he told her. "I am a user, though certainly in a different way than Katherine. I was not born with powers. How I get mine I'd rather keep to myself."

"Aww," she replied. She heard Mr. Kinza make a chuckled snort.

"Now, now," he told her. "It's not polite to ask someone with special powers their secrets."

"What? I can't ask the Captain what his kryptonite is?" Tolefson cracked from the helm. The remark got an unused earpiece chucked at him by the lady running the communications station.

Strom shook his head at his uncouth helmsman. "Katherine is an energy being, which is why you can feel a constant power from her. I, on the other hand, do not store my energies within me at all times, so I might… blink to you?"

Rakka scrutinized the man. "I'm not sure," she replied. "Seeing that this is the first time we've met, I can't say that I would have noticed this yet. I can say that you seem to have less power than she does…" This brought a giggle through the bridge, which made Rakka look about in concern. She then saw the Captain holding his hands up and looking around the room.

"People… Be kind," he admonished them. "Other than Mr. Button here, and Master Koi of course, who here can sense powers?"

A hand popped up over in the scanning deck. Button and Strom looked a bit shocked at her.

"Tsiaris?" the Captain asked. "Really?" He then saw the deck commander tap the side of her nose as she stepped behind the crewperson.

"Reptilian sinuses," Mackey explained.

"You make my nose tingle… sir…" Tsiaris admitted.

"Is that why you sneeze when I walk by?" Strom asked in shock. "My apologies, Ensign!"

She looked a bit mortified. "Oh, please, it isn't a problem, sir! It only happens when I don't have my Doorknob turned on! When I am at station, I want all my senses working, so I turn it off."

Strom pointed at her. "I'll have to remind myself to take wider paths when I come in that lower center lift," he told her. He then looked down at Rakka. "I apologize for my crew at their… behavior… just now. They know things that you don't."

"Things?" Rakka asked. It was then that the room suddenly felt a washed in energy. She stared at the man before her as he seemed to swell in power, which then vanished as if it was never there. Beside him though, Commander Button was giving him a grumpy little glance. Strom looked over at him.

"Sorry," he told him.

"A little warning, ea?" Button asked.

"You mean he didn't telegraph it enough for you?" Ensign Tsiaris asked, noting that she had turned up her Doorknob just prior to her Captain powering up.

"What?" Rakka asked in shock. "How… how did you do that?"

Strom squatted down to be closer to her level. "Unlike those you sense around you constantly, I don't store my powers internally. Mine is more… supply and demand. When I ask for it, I get it…"

"Usually…" Button added while looking at the ceiling.

"I thought you didn't want to tell us how you get your powers," Koi noted.

Strom shook his head. "I didn't tell you HOW I get my powers," he corrected him. "Only that I don't store it."

"Unlike the others," Rakka surmised.

The Captain cocked his head slightly. "Unlike the Celestials… The others ARE made of that energy."

"Which is why we're dealing with what's going on down in the hanger," Mr. Button groused, "and why we needed your help with our stuck soul here."

"Going on down in the hanger?" Koi asked, feeling a story about to drop on him. Rakka watched as his eye flew wide and he took a step back.

'Katherine just had a child,' he was told in his mind.

"She WHAT!?" he barked. Rakka chirped at his sudden outburst.

"Koi? What is it?" Rakka asked, as she attempted to take his hand as he stumbled back. Kinza caught him.

"Lem'me guess," he said. "Miho just told you that Katherine just had a kid on the flight deck."

He nodded slightly. Then Kinza noted that the hair on Rakka's head was standing on end, and that she now looked like she needed propping up.

"How… a b-baby?" Rakka stuttered. "A goddess can have a baby?"

"That is a story for another day," the security chief told them. "Besides, I'm sure Miho will be willing to explain it to you, since she was there as well. If these two are no longer needed up here, shall I escort them back to their fellow 'Homers' waiting in Sick Bay?" he then asked the Captain.

Strom held his hand up. "I'll ask Ensign Mackey to do that. To you, I must ask you to return to your quarters."

Everyone turned to their Captain. Kinza smirked and snorted.

"Off duty until further notice?" he asked. "I'm under arrest, ea?"

Strom sighed. "I think you know why," he replied.

Kinza snorted again, this time making his beard ruffle. He saw the expressions on both of the Haibane's faces and shrugged.

"Not to worry, kids," he told them. "This is the nice way of doing this."

"The nice way?" Koi asked with a touch of anger in his tone. Kinza plopped his paw on his shoulder and smirked.

"With what I've done today, by the rules of the Treaty of Set, the Captain could easily have pulled his gun and shot me dead on the spot." He looked up at his superior. "Which begs to ask, since I'm obviously in house arrest, why?"

Strom snapped his fingers. The com officer understood that it was his way to get her attention. He looked down on her and asked, "Marcy, bring up channel one."

"Channel opened," she replied. The large screen on the upper half of the bridge's ceiling switched to a face of a large burly human."

"Gather Damon," Strom announced.

"Captain," the man replied. The image pulled back to show that he was seated back at his bench in the meeting room where the mediation hearing was proceeding.

Strom pulled on his tunic. "I will assume that Forrestal is still neutral territory?"

Damon tapped his gavel stone lightly at a few disgruntled sounds coming from off camera. "It is," he replied.

Strom shuffled his stance slightly as he readied his next question. "Has it been determined yet if the Treaty of Set has been invalidated?"

Ptolemy and Plato watched the simulcast they were now receiving from the Forrestal's com. They could hear that the meeting room was getting a bit raucous again. Damon was now hammering the gavel harder as calls for the security chief and even the Communicator of Glie should be shown no mercy for their actions. Multiple calls for order were shouted by the moderating judge.

"It has not been decided," Damon finally told him. "The actions of your security chief were done prior to the actions of the Phoenix Guild."

Strom huffed and scowled at the screen. "I beg to differ," he responded. "The actions of the Phoenix alone seems to go back to as early as when that guided fireball shot my officer down and deposited him into the holy site in the first place."

"That has not been determined by an independent source."

A silence came over the bridge. Then a squeaky "ARE YOU KIDDING ME!?" shouted out of the scanning deck.

"Ensign!" Mr. Button snapped. Erin looked up at him at first in anger, but then changed to scarlet embarrassment for the blurt. "We understand how you feel, Ensign," he continued, "but our scans are not admissible because Mr. Kinza is one of our crew."

"Professor Ptolemy," Strom then called out. "Have you been listening in?"

"I have," the old man said as he tapped his wife on the shoulder.

"Any chance that you have an independent read on our situation?" the Captain asked him.

"Checking," he replied. But the worried look he was getting from her made him lean over and tap on the screen in front of her. "Is this correct?" he asked.

Janice whipped a mouse about swapping window after window about on the screen. Multiple views of multiple drives seemed empty.

"We've been hacked," he barked. That brought Plato over to see for himself. Before him shown a series of memory drives wiped of data.

"Who could do this?" he asked. "Was this an inside job?"

Janice looked up at him. "And risk the wrath of those who put us in this situation?" she asked him. "I doubt it. But to do a selective wipe of this type will have left a date stamp… hang on…" She began switching screens about to get readings from the servers. "Whoever this person was, they knew what they were doing," she mumbled. "Our systems have many backups – they're gone as well… It looks like some sort of data worm… and it was installed…" She sat back and looked around.

"Janice?" Ptolemy asked, seeing the concern she was showing.

"It was the night of the explosion in here," she told him. "The night their pilot crash landed in Glie."

Ptolemy stood upright looking down at her. "The night you found Amethyst trying to remove data disks from the events monitors."

"This is Ratz 01-249 entering zone one," the pilot announced to his com link.

"Roger 249," came a reply. "Medical and security are awaiting your arrival. Please note that one of your passengers has a message awaiting him on com 2. It is inter-dimensional."

The Admiral looked at the note being handed to him by the purser. He reached over and keyed in a code to the wall com.

"Break break, all stations," he spoke loudly, surely making anyone on the system snatch their headsets off. "Command system one – this level is on com lockdown – silent com to all outside levels until further notice. Internal communications is allowed, at a limited level."

"You're making it sound like there's going to be trouble," M2 smirked.

"There has been already," the Admiral grumbled. Charm only rolled her eyes.

"I take it this means that you two will be departing rather quickly upon our arrival at the station?" the MewTwo asked. North sighed and nodded. "Pity," M2 continued. "Peanut doesn't know that you two are still with us."

Charm smiled. "Technically…" she started. M2 noticed the odd look her superior was giving her.

"Technically?" he asked. When he looked back at Charm though, some strange girl with glasses was sitting where the Shadow Master had been sitting. She smiled at him.

"The dead make the best spies!"

North grunted at her. "All I can ask is that you hide and protect Moriarty," he stated. "We will attempt to divert any attention from old crazy bird as possible. Once he is able to answer questions, we need to know more about what Phoenix was planning, to limit what damage it is about to cause."

Brock and M2 leaned in from their seats. "Damage?" the President asked. "What sort of damage?"

"The destruction of the Seven Jewels," the Admiral said in a deep tone. "All zones – all homes of the Haibane on all levels… obliterated in a holy war caused by the Phoenix."

"Now wait a minute," M2 pointed out, "that's not what Mr. Kinza told us the day we took that idiot bird down. He said something about taking some of the sites down."

North shook his head. "Right now, we see all of them being destroyed. And personally, even a few is too many in my opinion. So if I can prevent any of it from happening, so be it!"

Brock looked perplexed at the old man. "What's different this time than last?" he asked.

The Admiral smiled as he stood beside his assistant. "We weren't there the first time!" he told them with a wink.

oOo

[1] See HAIBANE-RENMEI: CORPORATION - Chapter 11 – Perigee and HAIBANE-RENMEI: CORPORATION - Chapter 12 – To Hell & Back – A Haibane's Journey here on FFN

[2], [3] See AFTER CHRONICLES The RGP/s – Chapter 27 – Team Rocket's Finale – Part 2 here on FFN.

[4] See HAIBANE-RENMEI: CORPORATION - Chapter Four – N D E here on FFN

[5] See HAIBANE-RENMEI: CORPORATION – Only in New York one shot here on FFN

Captain Roy Strom, Engineer Marshall, Doctor Abigail McManus, Commander Button, Lieutenant Shaun Tolefson, Katherine/Bakuu, Admiral Robert North, The Observers, Transmat Cadavers, Gather Damon, Elb Kinza Farley, Koni, Scanning Rods, GENUINE Doorknobs, U.N.S. FORRESTAL, S.A.M. & S.A.M. System, Battle Phoenix, Ensign Erin Mackey, Ensign Mary Westfield, Lieutenant Tully, Ensign Caitlyn, Ensign Xethia, Ensign Tsiaris (Sensor Deck Crew), Dytrillium, Unimonic, Dimensional Level System, Lif Sphares ©2021 Denivan Media Services – Used With Permission

Girl 194/Miho, Amethyst/Moriarty, The Treaty of Set, Rainfall Event, Koi, Claudius Ptolemy, Plato, Janice Ptolemy, The Corporation, Sinner's Rock, Chip, Toki, Toki's Child, Telos, Speed Demons, Bellomy, Gort, Cecil and Larry, Team Red, Black Squad, The Indigo/Blue Mafia, Jester, The Seven Jewels ©2021 The Golden Halo Project/DMS – Used With Permission

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