Anything That Burns

by Darkenning

In a very damaged world, a very different Negi Springfield comes to a very different Mahora Girls Middle School ... where girls start throwing themselves at him. Sometimes, the greatest difference is no difference at all. AU, Multiple Crossovers, Lemon, Massive Harem. Inspired by "Anything That Moves" by OverMaster.

12. Chapter 9

Dedicated to the memory of

Stan Lee (1922-2018)

Excelsior.

Day One - The United States

Twelve hours after she'd watched a news report, Mary Jane Watson-Parker (MJ, as she preferred to be known) opened the back doors of the van she'd obtained. "Okay," she said, without looking at her daughter. "So here's the idea. You climb in the back here, and squish up really tight against the front. That's the only way I can get the crash webbing around you."

"If I'm squished up like that, won't that mean I'm not able to talk?" May asked quietly.

MJ nodded, as she turned to look at her arachne daughter, who'd been wearing a miserable expression all morning. "Yes, you're going to have to keep your speech bladders empty. But if anything, and I mean anything, goes wrong, give the front of the compartment a good thump, and I'll pull over as soon as possible and come see what's the matter." She took a deep breath. "So what's the matter?"

"Mm?" asked May, doing an innocent look that was so much like her father's attempts at one that it almost stopped MJ's heart.

"Don't give me that," her mother told her gently, once her heart started again. "Why are you looking oh so sad? I know this isn't going to be comfortable or all that fun, but it's the only way we've got to get you to the other side of the country."

"I know," May said, not meeting her mother's gaze. "It's not that. It's just ... I didn't know that you disliked Kamala."

MJ blinked. "I - wha - oh," she gasped as she achieved enlightenment. "Because I said - oh, sweety, no, no, no! I wasn't talking about Kamala! I think Kamala is awesome, beyond awesome! I was talking about the person we're going to have to deal with at the end of this road trip, not the one at the start!"

"Oh!" said May, brightening a bit ... then promptly darkening a bit. "But isn't she a hero? A really big hero?"

"It's, it's a long story, May," her mother told her. "Maybe when you've met her, I'll be able to tell you about it. Okay? Now, let's get you set up. Those tubes at the front, there, those are your rations, try to avoid drinking more than about one a day, we aren't going to be able to buy anymore on the road."

---

Mahou Sensei Negima Alter:
Anything That Burns

Inspired by OverMaster's Anything That Moves

Chapter Nine: Diana

---

After her only child was securely packed into the van's rear compartment, MJ headed up past the van's front to the head of the alley where Kamala Khan was keeping a watch. MJ had been genuinely startled when Jersey City's protector had shown up in person to turn over the van and help out, instead of sending one of her people to take care of it, even if she and May had become friends. But it had been a comforting sort of startle, in the end.

"All set?" the younger woman asked, turning to regard MJ as she approached.

"After some confusion was resolved, yes," the former model-slash-actress replied. That earned a lifted eyebrow, but all MJ did was wave a hand. "Too stupid to go into," she white lied, then grew more serious. "Kamala, we can't thank you enough for all this help."

"Please, don't," replied the superhero. "This is the very, very bare minimum the community owes you and your kid, Mary Jane. Everybody else might be doing their best to forget him, but we remember Peter." She jerked a thumb back towards the van. "And if we can help get May to a safe place? Pretty much anything we can do is on the table." Kamala's face turned a bit bleak. "Even if I'm not sure there really are any safe places left in the world."

MJ's heart clenched at that. "Something you'd like to share with the rest of the class?" she asked.

Kamala took a deep breath. "I don't ... no. You probably should know. Carol still has some friends in Space Command, and one of them sent her a message about some troop build-up in Area Ten."

"Let's pretend for the moment that I haven't been paying rapt attention to the Brittanic Empire's territorial acquisitions," said MJ.

"Sorry, Melanesia. Just to the south of the Philippines."

"Ohhhh," she said. Geography had never been one of her best subjects, but she did watch the news, and picked up on the implications. MJ shook her head. "But that would be crazy. They're already fighting in China and Iran, why would they open up a third front? And they'd have to know that we'd defend the Philippines, right?"

Kamala sighed and shook her head. "You really trust President Osborn to keep that deal he didn't even make?"

"Ugh."

"And they may not be fighting in Iran much longer, reports say that the Brittanians are about ready to cut a deal with the House of Saud to divide Iran up between them." She shrugged. "So they might get the Philippines, and after that, Japan is going to start looking pretty tasty, I think. And even if Osborn wanted to make an issue out of it, his government needs that sakuradite trade."

"And I'm sending May into this?" MJ groaned. Tiiigerrrr! she thought, as she often did.

"Hey. It still might not happen. And being able to be out in public, when the sun is shining, will be good for her. Just ... be aware, okay?"

"Okay," said MJ, wearily.

"I'll have my people keep an eye on your digs until you get back," Kamala added.

"Thanks, but I'm not coming back," MJ said with a head shake. "One way or another ... I think I might move back to Phillie. If I do, I'll call and let you know what you should have shipped to my new address." She hesitated for a moment, then asked, "So, how is Carol, anyway?"

Kamala's face looked even bleaker. "She recognizes me, on good days. There aren't a lot of those."

"I'm sorry."

Impossibly, the younger woman laughed. "Married couples really do start to resemble each other, don't they? You sounded just like Peter would have, just then." She proceeded to hug MJ. "Get going," Kamala said, "before we both start crying our hearts out."

"Okay," MJ managed to say.

A few minutes later, the van pulled out of the alley, and MJ paused to offer Kamala one last wave before she started driving towards the highway for what she suspected would probably be the last time.

---

Day Two - The United States

Drive for six hours. Rest for five. Little by little, making their way across the breadth of a continent. Finding deserted rest stops where she could pull over to stretch her legs, and, more importantly, let May out so that her child could also relieve her own stress. MJ preferred the dark hours for that, as it reduced the chance that a passer by might see what was going on.

The first time she pulled over and they both got out, she couldn't help but notice that May hadn't touched her food supply. Well, maybe her stomach was jittery. It was the first time she'd ever left the sprawl. MJ considered asking May to drink some of it in front of her, but ultimately decided that it gave the wrong message. Ignoring her memories of a cousin who'd almost wrecked her life with an eating disorder didn't sit well with her, though.

May brought out such memories in her. Maybe it was just the way that her daughter had the same red hair that MJ also shared - admittedly not just on her head, but in places that neither of them had had places. She shook her head. What kinds of stupid things were she thinking about, now? She summoned May to get back into position, but, while there was still a chance to talk, asked why she hadn't eaten.

"Oh," said May. "I just kinda forgot."

And other times, she brought out memories of her father. It was hard to say which hurt more.

Drive for six hours. Rest for five. Four days of this would put them in San Francisco-by-whatever-name. She talked to - okay, at May as much as she could, and occasionally tortured her best beloved by singing along to old songs on the radio. (Well, she supposed that she could have sung along to new songs, but she didn't know the words, and half the time they were accompanied by unfathomably obnoxious disc jockeys.) May demonstrated that she possessed the Parker masochism by banging 'no' every time MJ asked if she wanted her to stop singing.

It was sort of funny how the automation of everything from gas pumps - where she could pay with her credit card at the pump - to toll takers - same deal - meant that MJ had almost as little human contact as May did. If they'd replaced the customer service staff at the convenience stores where she bought her meals and coffees with drones, she'd have been completely cut off. She laughed as she thought this while in line, and laughed a little more at the clerk's absolute lack of reaction to the customer giggling like a maniac. Perhaps they already had done that, and she just wasn't noticing.

She needed the laugh. The other way she was cut off was the way that her schedule had her driving even in the dark of night, which was very dark, with even the stars somewhat blocked out by the red skies. Bits and pieces of a story she'd red in high school, so long ago, about stars going out as a sign of the end of the world occasionally passed through her mind, which wasn't good for her, she knew. She checked her clock. Still about an hour to go on the six, but maybe she could make a little pit stop somewhere and -

Ahead on her right, an explosion off the side of the road lit up the night. MJ slammed on the brakes. "It's okay," she said to May. "Something's going on, but it doesn't -" And then she heard the distant, too familiar sounds of gunfire. "It's okay," she repeated, voice sounding hollow.

With an enormous crunching noise, a metal giant of blue and black slammed face first into the road ahead of her.

"Oh god no," MJ whispered, praying May couldn't hear her.

Slowly, the Sentinel began to push itself up from the ground, head turning slightly from the right, away from the van, and then to the left, towards the van. MJ might have thought that was strange, if they were, as they were supposed to be, remotely operated, but all such thoughts were banished by the way that the head continued to look at the van, as though staring back at MJ who was staring at it.

Mutant detector gear, MJ thought. Terrible thought: Is it sensing May? Worse thought: Is it sensing me? There were rumors that they didn't just sense mutants, but people who might give birth to mutants. In that case, even if May was another species and not detectable as a human mutant, she might be about to die because of her mother, and then - "It's okay, sweety," MJ said desperately. "It's okay."

The Sentinel pushed itself up from the ground, regaining its footing, and then turned away from the van and marched back towards the inferno off the side of the road. Looking in that direction, MJ could see other Sentinel units directing laser fire down towards the source of the blaze, and various attacks coming up out of it - lightning, and ice. She sat there, staring at it, for what felt like even longer than the way that she'd sat staring at the fallen Sentinel.

Then she slammed on the accelerator and drove away as fast as she could.

Two hours later - the time it took for her to become reasonably certain that nothing was coming after her to eliminate any witnesses - MJ pulled into a campsite. Unsteadily, she walked back to open the back doors so May could move freely.

"What was that?" were her daughter's first words.

"What was what?" MJ asked, feigning calm.

"That thing where you stopped so suddenly. Did something happen?"

MJ considered, decided, and lied. "Yes, another car went off the road just ahead of us."

All six eyes went wide. "Shouldn't we have helped?"

Fighting back nausea, MJ continued to lie. "That wasn't an option, sweety. If we'd stayed around, the highway patrol would have showed up and started poking around, and you could have been discovered. Not an option. And, and it didn't really look so bad, anyway. Just, they were probably shaken up a little, that's all." Before May could respond, MJ continued, "Why don't you, uh, do some stretches, mom needs to review inputs, all right?"

For a wonder, she managed to get into the rest room stall before she emptied her stomach into the toilet. For a moment, she crouched there, breathing heavily. "What am I doing, Tiger?" she asked someone who wasn't there. "I can't do this. How the hell am I supposed to keep getting up, day after day, if I don't have her to look after anymore?" MJ let out a sob. "She wanted to help. Of course she wanted to help. It's exactly what you would have done. And look where it got us!" she concluded with a near-shriek.

Eventually, she got up from the washroom floor, went out to the sink and washed her hands, face and mouth, before heading back to the van and climbing up into the front seats to try and get some sleep.

Drive for six hours. Rest for five.

---

Day One - Japan

"This is the staircase to the shrine," said Haruhi, nodding slowly. "It's definitely the staircase to the shrine. So then why," she asked, turning to glare at her assembled Brigade members, "is this happening?"

"Well, mostly because I asked Tadamichi to tell me where and when you were going to assemble to visit the shrine, and she was kind enough to do so," Negi cheerfully answered the club's dictator from where he was standing among the girls in the club, plus Asahina who looked to be on the verge of letting out a squee at the very idea of Negi's presence.

"Tadamichi, you say," Haruhi repeated, now evenly dividing her glare of promised wrath between Negi and Kyonko, who at least had the dignity to look concerned about that, in contrast to Negi's air of total sang-froid.

"Yes, Tadamichi," Negi repeated. "Thank you, Tadamichi."

"Eh heh," replied Kyonko, who seemed less happy about being addressed by a proper name than you might expect. Yuki seemed faintly happy that this was happening, though, while Koizumi bore an expression of amused indifference that even Negi had to somewhat envy. For her part, Mai was also glaring at Negi, almost as much as Haruhi was.

"Well," Haruhi finally said. "You have some interesting imaginary friends, sensei." And with that statement, she turned and began climbing the aforementioned staircase to the shrine.

"So, is that it?" Negi asked dubiously. "She's just going to pretend it didn't happen?"

"That and a slice of pretending I don't exist," Kyonko explained, then glanced at Koizumi. "She came up with something meaner for you when you tried that a while ago, didn't she?"

"I do not want to talk about it," replied Koizumi, looking aside uncomfortably.

The child teacher grew affronted. "That's not right, Tadamichi, Koizumi. You shouldn't put up with this sort of bullying."

"This is just how the club works," said Nagato, startling everybody. She was speaking very quietly, but she was speaking. "It's just something you have to put up with, if you want to be in the club."

"But why do you want that?" Negi pressed. "Nothing about this club makes any sense. Your leader actively ignores the wonders that are happening in the world at large in favor of pursuing ones that exist nowhere except in her imagination, and drags you all along with her, bullying you in order to do so. Why would anyone put up with this?"

"It has its perks," Asahina said, smiling ingratiatingly at Negi.

Nagato, Koizumi and Kyonko exchanged a look, and then Kyonko offered a shrug. "We're kind of scared of what Haruhi will do if she's left to her own devices," she admitted.

"The way she has been, now?" Mai asked from the staircase. Unlike the others, she had started up the stairs immediately after Haruhi, but had paused to look back when she realized no one was followng her.

The trio of girls exchanged another look, a rather horrified one, then headed quickly up the stairs, with Kyonko and Itsuhime dragging Mitsuru along with them, much to his vocal distress. Mai watched them pass, then turned her gaze on Negi. "Coming?" she asked.

"We need to talk," he told her.

"Later," Mai replied as she turned away.

"Not much later," Negi told her retreating back, then headed up the stairs behind her.

By the time he got up to the shrine, the resident shrine maiden was patiently giving Haruhi a lecture about the history of the shrine and the various services it offered to the community. Tatsumiya paused in this, briefly, to offer Negi a polite nod when she saw him, apparently not noticing the rather blatant way that he was checking her out. (He couldn't really help herself; while Tatsumiya was beautiful no matter what she was wearing, something about the contrast of the red skirts, white blouse and her dark skin really appealed to him.)

"So, all this stuff about praying to the gods for help aside," said Haruhi once it seemed that the lecture was over, "any sort of paranormal phenomena going on here?"

Tatsumiya stared at her. "What exactly do you mean by paranormal?" she asked, taking the implied insult to her profession in stride.

"You know, not normal?"

"Maybe you could establish what you mean by normal, first?"

"Are there any talking animals?" Haruhi finally growled.

"... no, but I'm fairly sure that the crows who live nearby understand what I'm saying when I talk to them, even if they never answer," replied Mana.

"Riiight," the brigade chief said dubiously, as she started to pretend Tatsumiya didn't exist and began scanning the area for more interesting subject.

At that moment, the shrine's main door slammed open, and an old man who was not that much taller than Negi came out, smiling broadly. "So many visitors!" he said happily.

Tatsumiya quickly turned to regard him with concern. "Ojiichan, please don't get so excited," she said, phrasing her comment in such a way as to suggest that the old man was not literally her grandfather.

"Bah, I'm fit as a fiddle," he boasted as he hopped down the steps leading up to the building. "And I think these young people are in for a very real treat! Come out, dear, it's time for you to greet your first guests!"

And then, from within the shrine, a young woman slowly, shyly poked her head out. She was a red head with oddly pointed ears set at an angle, and she audibly gulped at the sight of the brigade. But a moment later, she came the rest of the way out, or at least much of her did, with another part of the long, red length of her serpentine lower body still hidden behind her. She was wearing the same basic outfit as Tatsumiya, and offered them a polite bow.

"Good afternoon," she said, in Japanese with a slight accent that Negi couldn't immediately place. "My name is Miia Lamaille. I'm very pleased to meet you all."

Negi frankly stared, then slowly turned his gaze in Haruhi's direction ... then turned away, because he couldn't handle the look on the girl's face. Besides, he couldn't deny that it was fascinating to watch what had happened to him, a few weeks ago, happening to someone else. Even shy Nagato had a few questions to ask, and it wasn't long before Miia's own nervousness had completely vanished, and she was talking and laughing cheerfully with the members of the brigade.

She first clarified her national orgins ("My people live in a small village in Anatolia. That's the far western part of Asia.") and personal history ("I was one of a few candidates chosen to participate in a program to learn foreign languages and cultures, and it was just fate that the Extraspecies Alliance made a deal with Japan, the nation whose language I'd learned, before any of the others.") and then her status at the shrine ("Well, this is where I've been temporarily settled until a host family is arranged, and since snakes are considered lucky here in Japan, I thought this might be a good way to help out here.")

"What do you think about Japan?" Itsuhime asked.

"I haven't really seen a lot of it, yet. I only arrived here last night," Miia explained. "But if you mean what I think about what I was taught ... then I'm amazed. My people are still recovering from the damage that we suffered when the Euxine - that's the Black Sea - rose up and nearly drowned our town, but your country suffered so much more, back then, and you've rebuilt so much. This is a land of wonders, and I can't wait to meet them all."

Negi couldn't help but flinch at that, and glanced again at Haruhi ... who'd disappeared. Turning sharply, he saw that she was meandering away from the group towards the hills around the shrine. He considered going after her, but hesitated. He didn't want to seem rude to a fellow visitor to Japan. Turning back, he saw that Kyonko had also noticed that Haruhi had walked away, and was now looking to Negi with an expression of concern on her face.

The girl bent her head in the direction Haruhi had taken. Negi thought a moment, then nodded. With a relieved look, Kyonko walked quickly after the brigade chief.

"Is something the matter?" Miia asked, having not exactly missed all this.

"No, not really," Negi reassured. "Haruhi-san is just a little ... um ... well, let's just say that she didn't really believe that the Interspecies Exchange Bill was real, instead of being a joke, I think."

"Ohhh," said Miia, nodding. "I know exactly how she feels. That's just how I felt when the Alliance showed me the videotape of that Princess Mina person declaring that vampires were real. I didn't believe it. I still think that's sort of scary." She frowned, then. "But she didn't object to you?"

"Eh?" Negi asked, privately panicking. Did lamia have some special knowledge of mages and magecraft? They had certainly kept to the shadows even longer than the mages had.

"I mean, aren't you a hobbit?" she asked.

"Miiiia," Tatsumiya groaned, hefting the broom she'd been using to sweep the shrine grounds, while the old man broke into loud laughter.

"Wah!" said the lamia, tilting back. "That's what Rei-san said about him last night!"

"She was messing with you, silly!" said Tatsumiya.

"Yes, um, yes, she was," Negi agreed, thinking very unkind thoughts about one of his students as he did. "I'm a human child, about ten years old, not a ... hobbit." He coughed. "All right, I think we've taken up enough of Miia-san's time. We should get on with searching for strange things, like Haruhi-san intended."

"Um, but -" Asahina started to hesitantly object, glancing at Miia.

"Visitors to this country aren't what she had in mind, I'm sure," Negi said. "Let's go, then. Just take care not to disrupt the shrine's workings?"

"What workings?" asked the old man. "Take a look at whatever you want, that's what we're here for. And incidentally, Negi-sensei," he added, much more quietly than he'd spoken up until then. "Thank you for looking after my great-granddaughter, and not being too bothered by her little joke."

"Oh!" the boy teacher said. "I didn't realize - of course, you're very welcome." He bowed politely, and headed off in the same direction as first Haruhi and then Kyonko had taken.

When he found them, a few moments later, he was somewhat stunned to see Haruhi kissing Kyonko rather forcefully, the shorter girl holding tightly onto the taller one's head and pressing their lips together. Negi managed to hold in a yelp, and kept behind cover to watch what was going on.

Kyonko finally managed to pull back, looking both confused and angry. "Why did you do that?"

"Why did you let me?" Haruhi answered.

Before she'd even finished saying that, Kyonko was shaking her head. "No. No. I'm not going to play these games with you, Haruhi. I was pissed off enough when I figured out what had happened between you and Asahina, I am not going to be another notch on your bedpost while you're looking for ... Mr. Goodbar or whoever."

"His name is -" she started to say.

"I. Don't. Care."

"Did you ever think," Haruhi asked, then broke off. "Did you even once consider that what I might want is someone who'll make me forget him?"

"No," said Kyonko. "Not after what you told me about love being a mental illness."

"I wasn't talking about -" Haruhi started to retort.

"And I'm not interested in what you want instead. If love is out of the question, then so is anything else, Haruhi." Kyonko was breathing a bit heavily. "Have you changed your mind about that, yet?"

Haruhi started to say something, then closed her mouth tightly, in an expression that was roughly half pout and half glower.

"I didn't think so," said Kyonko, sounding suddenly weary. She shook her head, turned her back on the other girl, and walked away, past Negi's concealment without seeming to notice him. When Negi looked back at Haruhi, he was startled to see that the girl was covering her eyes with her hands and breathing heavily.

"Haruhi-san?" he asked reflexively as he hopped out of hiding.

The hands came down, and she glared at him, without any sign that she'd been crying to be seen. "How much of that did you see?" she growled.

"... how much of what?" he asked, doing his best to look innocent.

For a wonder, it worked ... sort of. "Good answer," she said, still seeming irritated.

"Are you okay?"

"Oh, I am just fucking dandy," she told him. "It's all real, isn't it? The invasion, that stupid Deviluke girl, the vampires, the monsters, all of it. And none of it is happening to me."

"You ... did meet one of the first extraspecies individuals in Japan before nearly anyone else did," Negi reminded her, not even bothering to chide her for language.

"Big fat hairy deal," she groused, and started to march back to the shrine.

---

Day Three - United States

The sun was bright. Maybe just a little too bright, or so MJ thought, her mind still back a few hundred miles. Like it was trying to burn away the memories. She wondered what people driving past the ruins would think, now that it was so bright as it was. Or whether they would keep their eyes firmly on the road and ignore the signs. That would be sadly typical.

Thinking those thoughts had her scanning the area she was passing through, and so it was that she saw the hitchhiker, thumb raised in the traditional manner, seated on a suitcase. The thing that grabbed MJ's attention was the redness of the hiker's hair, so much like her own or May's. Despite knowing that she shouldn't, she found herself slowing down, and rolling down the window.

It was in fact an actual blue-eyed girl - which meant the hair was likely henna, but so it went. "Y'know it's illegal to hitchhike on an interstate, right?" MJ asked before the other girl could say anything.

"I'm on the shoulder, not on the interstate," the girl answered, a bit of Kansas in her voice.

"Oh, so young to be a lawyer," said MJ. "Where you headed?"

"Sin City!" she answered happily.

"... then you're really in the wrong place, kiddo, I-85 doesn't go anywhere near Las Vegas."

"Ah?" she said. Realization hit. "Oh, yeah, they used to call it that, didn't they? I meant the real Sin City."

Realization hit twice, and MJ shook her head. "Right, right, right. I still think of it as San Francisco. Well, you're in luck, then, because that's where I'm headed. Back's all filled up, though, so you're gonna have to carry that on your lap." She pointed towards the suitcase. "A bit of help out with the tolls would be appreciated, as well. Still interested?"

"None of this is a problem, ma'am," the girl said with total sincerity.

"One more rule - never call me ma'am. All right, get in."

Moments later, they were on their way. "So what's your name? I'm Mary Jane, incidentally."

"Kyra," she answered. "So, why'd you pick me up, if you don't mind my asking?"

"Saying 'if you don't mind my asking' after you've already asked is kind of gauche, y'know? But ... well, when I was about your age -" MJ gave the girl a mildly questioning look.

"I'm almost fifteen."

"When I was also 'almost fifteen', and ran away from home for the last time, I hitchhiked all the way from Philadelphia to my aunt's place in Queens. So I've kind of got a soft spot for red-haired hitchhikers." And I want to feel like I helped someone after I drove away from a massacre last night. And I hope hearing someone else's voice will be good for my daughter, hiding in the back.

"Well, thank you, Mary Jane."

"Like some music?" asked MJ, reaching for the radio dials.

"Defined as something recorded within the last decade?" Kyra asked quickly.

MJ grumbled, but adjusted the dial accordingly. She came upon a song just starting out, with a series of sharp guitar chords.

"Oh, I love this one," Kyra breathed, and joined in with the male singer as the lyrics started. She actually had a rather good singing voice.

Life is just
A fall of rain
We all know that
Despite all the pain
In the end
It all ends the same
A fall of red red rain

The girl's head bobbed rapidly as the guitar chords came back up again.

"Kind of a macabre little tune," MJ said once it was over and the radio had moved on to something Kyra clearly didn't like so well.

"Ah, no, no," Kyra disagreed. "It's sort of hopeful, in its own way. I mean, yeah, we're all gonna die and nothing's gonna change that. But we're not gonna die until someone kills us, know what I mean?"

"Not really, no," she said. This is a generation gap greater than anything my parents had to go through. I wonder if that's how May sees things, too.

They'd gone through a few more songs that Kyra had generally positive views about, and that MJ found variously creepy and weird, when the siren started wailing behind them.

"Shit!" MJ cursed. The Sentinel must have picked up something but been too busy to do anything about it, and then passed the vehicle's description on to the law enforcement network. Her eyes darted to Kyra. "Okay, here's what we'll do - I'll pull over and then you run for it, you don't want to get mixed up in this."

"Uh ... if they're coming after you for picking up a hitchhiker, I think I already am," the girl replied.

MJ froze. "Good point," she croaked as she brought the vehicle over onto the shoulder and slowed to a halt.

The officer, wearing sunglasses and a mustache that ridiculously ill-suited him, came up to the window. "License and registration, please?" he asked indifferently.

MJ silently handed the documentation which falsely proclaimed her to be the owner of this vehicle over, and forebore from asking the obvious question.

He frowned for a moment. "Were you ever on TV?" he asked.

"Uh, yes, a long time ago, I was on a soap opera called -"

"Secret Hospital!" the officer exclaimed. "My mom never missed an episode. Wow! Small world."

"Yeah," said MJ. "Um, so ..."

"Well, there's nothing to worry about, ma'am," the young man said with what he probably intended as warmness. "We've just gotten some reports that someone stole some experimental animals from a research facility in the area, and we have to check every vehicle that might be carrying them. That includes yours. So if you could open up the rear compartment of your vehicle, I'll just do that and you can be on your way."

People shouldn't sound so kind when they are signing your daughter's death warrant, MJ thought, more clearly than she would have thought she could think under these circumstances. "Ah -"

"Okay," said Kyra. "I'll go back and open it up for you, mister. You can just stay where you are, mom."

"Ah -" MJ said again as she watched Kyra open the door on her side and slide out.

"Nice daughter you have," the officer said as he turned and headed back out of sight.

Seconds later, MJ reeled at the sound of someone being punched rather forcefully. Then fainter noises she couldn't identify, footsteps on gravel, a car door opening and then closing, and more footsteps ... as Kyra - if that was indeed her name - came up into the van again, rubbing her hands together as though to wipe dust off of them.

"So that's taken care of," the girl said.

"What did you do?" MJ asked quietly.

"Knocked his lights out, took off everything he was wearing but his undergarments, put his own handcuffs on him, and shoved him in the back seat of his cruiser," the girl counted off on her fingers.

"Isn't that all going to be on the cruiser's cameras?"

"I've got someone taking care of that," the girl said calmly.

MJ nodded, then asked what she probably should have asked first. "Who are you?"

The girl made a face. "I really do like Kyra better than my real name, atchally. But I'm Kara Kent. It's nice to really meet you, Ms. Parker." She raised her voice. "Looking forward to atchally meeting you, May."

"... Kent as in -"

"Yeah." She smiled then. "Did you really think my mom was gonna make you come all this way without some help?"

---

"So you're really really strong?" May asked as she crouched beside the fire pit in the otherwise deserted campsite.

"Prolly add a few more reallys to that," Kara said cheerfully, eating from the tin of beans she'd produced from her suitcase and helped to cook. "I've never really tested it out, y'know, juggling elephants or something like that, so I dunno how much I can lift-press, but it's a lot, I think." Her face went speculative. "Y'know, I've heard that arachne silk is really strong, so maybe that might be a good test, later."

"Cooool," May said, almost glowing. "And you're invincible."

"Ehhhh, nobody's really invincible. It might take a bursting shell to hurt me, but the army and our faithful peacekeepers all have weapons that dish out much more punishment than that. So I try and avoid fights when I can."

"... can you fly?" the spider-girl asked, as though she was asking for a divine revelation.

"Nope," Kara answered firmly. "Running broad jump of two miles, high jump of a bit more'n six hundred feet. And it's none too comfy for anybody I'm carrying, so I wouldn't go asking for a ride."

"I ... wasn't going to do that," said May, blushing, in an unconvincing manner.

"Yeah yeah," the super-girl replied with a grin. "Most of the really cool stuff is invisible, like x-ray vision and hearing stuff that most folks just can't. I'm atchally doing that right now to some news reports from my partner, who's been nice enough to confirm that a highway patrolman was rescued after being assaulted by a gang of drug-crazed bikers. I'd feel sorry for the drug-crazed bikers in the area if they weren't, y'know, drug-crazed bikers."

"Kyra - Kara, I mean -" MJ started to say.

"Either will do."

"- if I hadn't picked you up back there, what exactly were you going to do?"

"Follow along until you ran into trouble and then help you out as best I could," Kara answered promptly. "Secretly if I could, but if not, then not."

"Okay, but wouldn't it have been a lot simpler to join up with us at the very start?" MJ asked, pressing a bit.

"Yes," said Kara, emphatically. "I thought so too. Mom decided otherwise." She paused, studied her beans intently for a moment. "She said you needed as much of a chance to change your mind as possible, and figured you might not have that if you were under ... supervision, if you'll pardon the pun."

"... smart woman, your mom," MJ said at last. "Sees all the angles. Okay. Um ... one more thing that's been bothering me, Kyra. You said you were about fifteen. How much is about?"

"Urg. Could I plead secret identity?" the girl asked lightly.

"No."

"Fiiiine. Forty-nine weeks less than fifteen. My birthday was three weeks ago." Kara looked very unhappy with this admission.

"Wow, you're way younger than I am," May said, cheerfully. Then paused. "Wait a minute."

"Second Impact was fifteen years and a few months ago," MJ quietly observed. "You're not old enough to have been conceived before it. And, as we all know -"

"There was this project," interrupted Kara, accent in abeyance. "They had his DNA. My mother found out about this, arranged to break in to the place, found the sample and ... inseminated herself with it."

"Oh," said May, looking every bit as uncomfortable as Kara did, and using one of her eyes to give her mother a really unimpressed look.

MJ ignored that. "Of course she did," she murmured. "Sees what she wants, and - excuse me." With that, she stood up and walked away from the fire, back towards the van.

After a few moments, May spoke up. "I'm sorry, my mom ... doesn't really like your mom, apparently."

"'sall right," said Kara, having recomposed herself. "I'm a teenaged girl, May, I don't like my mom all that much sometimes, either."

"I'm really grateful that she's helping us," May added.

"Well, lemme just warn you that she's gonna get something she needs out of the arrangement. I love my mom, but she's turned into kind of a schemer. But whatever she gets, it'll be something you won't mind giving. Girl Scout promise." She held up the three middle fingers of her right hand.

"Isn't it the Girl Guides?"

Kara's face twisted a bit. "Spend a lot of time online, I take it?"

"Well, they do call it the web."

Over on the other side of the van, MJ was crouched, covering her face with her hands, and muttering the most common term for excrement, over and over and over. She heard a footstep nearby, and looked up to see Kara standing nearby. "I, uh, I'm sorry -"

"All right, then," said Kara. "That's not what I came to talk about though. Given your route, and the pace you've been keeping ... did you happen to run into some Sentinels yesterday?"

"Yes," MJ admitted. "That's why I thought the patrol was after me, and -"

"Does May know?" the other girl asked.

"No," MJ said, almost silently.

"All right." Kara took a deep breath. "This is pretty much what I figured happened, and my partner thought so too ... so you should know that the only mutants who were in that compound were the ones who volunteered to stay behind and keep the Sentinels from realizing that the rest had already fled. They knew they were gonna die, and if you, or May, had run into help, you'd have just died too ... and for no good at all. Just in case you were feeling guilty about all that."

"Oh," she said.

"If you're really feeling bad about it, when we get to Sin City, I'll get you in touch with Rachel Summers, the mutant leader, and you can work out between you how to help them out. But that's for later, so, why not come back to the fire and make some good memories with May?"

MJ started to get up, then shook her head. "How do you do it? You, Kamala, her people, those mutants ... how do you all of you keep going, keep fighting, when everything seems to be working against you?"

"I speak only for myself," said Kara. "I do it for the happiness that I feel when I remember that other people - like you and May - don't have to fight because I do. Now come on, you need some grub."

Back they went to the fire.

---

Day Four - United States

When San Francisco Bay had risen up and drowned most of the city of the same name, as well as much of Oakland and San Jose and other towns, there had been serious discussion about abandoning all of them, as many different coastal communities had been abandoned. The prominent Roarke family had led the efforts to save the area, and by the time the National State of Emergency ended eight years after Second Impact, it was clear that their efforts had led to results. The new community around what was now called the basin was, logically enough, named Basin City.

Within a year of the new city's incorporation, it was discovered that some wit, or community of wits, had defaced all the "Welcome to Basin City" signs at city limits, erasing the first two letters of the name. Efforts to catch the vandals, or even to prevent them from continuing to vandalize the signs, were resounding failures, and Mayor Roarke had a screaming fit and bodily attacked a reporter who asked about the subject. This made the national news, and so it came to pass that the community became known nationwide as 'Sin City'.

Driving past one such sign (defaced, of course) MJ let out a sigh at the destruction of a beautiful city she'd enjoyed visiting during her years on the West Coast, and its replacement with ... this. Even in her youth, Manhattan had never been quite this dingy and unpleasant to the eye. She couldn't see it, but she knew that the wreckage of the Golden Gate Bridge lay just a bit out of her line of sight, it having been too expensive to try and repair or remove it. "Why did your mom set up camp here?" she asked Kara, seated beside her and navigating.

"Would you expect to find superheroes in a place like this?" Kara asked. "Turn right here. Right again, just up here."

MJ decided not to argue the point.

Little by little, through a maze of twisty streets that looked all alike, the van made its way into the sick heart of this urban hell. Finally, some distinctive building designs became apparent. "Is this Chinatown?" MJ asked.

"Was, once, I think. These days there's no such thing as an ethnic neighborhood. And we're here, so ... uh, yeah, okay, past this alley, stop, back up and turn into it, then keep backing up until I say stop."

This was promptly done, and MJ heard a garage door opening as they approached. "Annnnd stop!" said Kara.

Almost as soon as she did so, the garage door closed, much more quickly than it had opened. MJ promptly shut off the ignition.

"Welcome to the Hall of Justice," said Kara, and opened her door to get out of the van.

MJ did the same, and found that she was in the cleanest looking environs she'd seen since arriving in Sin City. She made her way back to the rear of the van and helped May back out of it. By the time she accomplished that, a door at the top of a short staircase on the far side of the garage had opened up, and a brunette woman in a black jacket and a pair of jeans came into view, leaning on the staircase railing and overlooking them. "So you made it," she said, in a voice which was pure Gotham.

Kara, who had been closing the van doors, whirled around at that voice. "Helen!" she fairly shrieked, then leapt from the garage floor up to the railing, stepped off it and dropped to the landing in order to grab the other girl. "HelenHelenHelen!" she cried as she hugged.

"Ow, ow, ow," said the woman MJ was fairly sure was Helen. "I just got out of the hospital, you want to put me back -" She was then interrupted by being vigorously kissed on the mouth.

MJ watched this, and nodded a bit to herself. Glancing at May, she found her daughter regarding it with voyeuristic fascination. "Ah-hem," she said.

"Oh, yeah," Kara said, pulling out of the kiss. "I found 'em," she told Helen.

"Got that from the fact they were here," Helen said dryly. "Welcome to our base of operations, Ms. Watson-Parker, Ms. Parker."

"This is Helen -" Kara started to introduce.

"Eh!" coughed Helen. "Secret identity! No last names!"

"Sorry."

Helen shook her head in a 'what am I gonna do with you' sort of way, before turning back to the two below. "The Princess asked to see you as soon as you came in, but if you need time to refresh yourselves, just let me know."

"I'm good, thanks. Sweety?" MJ asked.

"I feel like I could use a few minutes to settle down, but I really do want to get on with things," May answered. "Let's go."

"All right. Follow me, please."

The trip through the well-lit corridors of the base seemed to almost recapitulate the trip through the city streets to the base, but involved a number of elevators as well, so it seemed to play out in three dimensions. At last, they came to a pair of bronze doors, with a masked man standing before it - and then MJ realized that, though he was wearing a mask, the bull horns on either side of his head were quite natural.

"Adam," said Helen, politely but not friendly. "She wants to see these people."

He examined each guest, including Kara, as though he could see inside their souls, but then turned to the door and opened it a crack. "Your Highness, Agents W and K are here with guests."

"Send them in, please," said a warm female voice from the other side.

He bowed in acquiescence, and proceeded to swing both the doors open to their full extent, so that May would be able to enter without compressing herself aside from the need to duck down a bit. She smiled at him gratefully, but flinched a bit as he regarded her without a change in his expression. For her part, MJ was realizing that the doors were solid bronze, and wondering just how strong the doorman had to be.

The room beyond was half-office, half-museum - mostly devoted to weapons, and a few patriotic-themed shields, one circular and one more of a traditional type. Seated at the desk was a woman with long black hair in a white dress that would have been the height of fashion in Athens of twenty-six hundred years past. She was smiling, but her smile grew very broad when she saw May in all her glory. "Welcome, May Parker," said Princess Diana of Themyscria, rising to her feet.

"Uh, h-hello, your highness," May started to say.

"Diana will suffice, thank you. And this is your mother. Greetings, Ms. Watson-Parker."

Now she was here, looking at her, and the anger was growing with every moment. But all that MJ said was, "Yeah. Hi."

If that offended, it was not apparent. "I would very much enjoy discussing your trip here, and other matters, but I suspect you probably wish to get right to the point," Diana said to May. "You would like to travel to Japan, I'm told?"

"Yes," May said. "I'll do whatever you want me to do -"

"That's a very dangerous thing to promise," the grey-eyed princess of power warned her. "But I believe your wishes can be arranged. However, there have been some developments you may not be aware of. The Extraspecies Alliance has recently signed agreements, much like those they made with Japan, with a number of other nations, including the Republic of Eire, the Union of Albion, and the Kingdom of Greece."

"Oh!" said May. "I, you're right, I had no idea."

"Listening to the news was not a priority on your journey, I suspect, and these agreements have not been as well-publicized as the first one was in any event," Diana allowed. "Regardless, I would now discuss your choices. If you choose to travel to Japan, as you originally planned, you will be sailing in a container on a cargo carrier ship, taking about two weeks to reach the islands. It will not, I think, be comfortable. It will be a slightly longer trip to reach Albion or Eire. But, as I have some connections with the Greek royal family, I can arrange for your transportation to Greece by plane. The decision is yours."

May was silent for a while. "I think," she said at last, "that I should do what I planned from the start, and go from there."

"Very well, it shall be done," said Diana, giving no sign as to what she thought of this particular choice.

"Um ... Kara said you'd want something -"

"Did Kara?" said Diana, smiling broadly at the shortest redhead in the room. "Regardless, that discussion can wait. First, I need to speak with your mother. In private, please."

MJ closed her eyes a moment. Here it comes, she told herself. Her eyes opened enough to give May a reassuring glance as her daughter, looking unhappy, was ushered out of the room by Kara and Helena. Then they turned to lock on Diana.

Who, smiling calmly, said "You hate me."

MJ swallowed. "I ... do not like you, no. Are you going to refuse to help May because of this?"

The older woman blinked, then shook her head firmly. "Of course not. That would be utterly capricious of me. I would very much like to know the cause of this hatred, since, to the best of my knowledge, you and I have never met before this."

She could feel her self-control start to fray, but MJ managed to hold back for just a few moments. "Why don't we start with the way that you're an impossibly beautiful immortal superhuman demigoddess and I'm an aging, no longer beautiful mortal?"

"We could start there, but I'm neither immortal nor a demigoddess, you are a very lovely woman, regardless of your age, and nothing you've shown me so far indicates that you are motivated by such banal jealousy. Ms. Watson-Parker, please, if I have given you cause to hate me, I would ask that you tell me what I did so that I can offer what apologies are appropriate."

"You can't apologize, he's -" she started to shout, trying - and failing - to stop herself before she gave too much away.

Diana's calm expression was finally punctured, as she looked both bewildered and a bit concerned. "He? Is this about Peter? He and I fought each other on occasion, when one or both of us were misled or subject to mental influence, but I wasn't aware that I gave him any permanent injury during any of those episodes. If I did -"

"You're really going to make me say it, aren't you?" MJ practically snarled.

"That would indeed be my goal."

"Are you seriously to pretend it never happened?" she demanded. "He told me what you did to him the first time you two met, all right? He told me how you molested him!"

Now Diana looked genuinely shocked. "Zeus on high," she said. "That's what he thought?"

"Of course that's what he thought. He was fifteen! You were a grown woman, already a living legend, and you made him have sex with you long before he was ready to do that kind of thing. What would you think if someone did that to Kara?" MJ demanded.

The not-quite-immortal not-a-demigoddess seemed almost faint. "I'm quite sure that Kara is sexually active, already, and that my other daughter was by that age, in fact, but that is neither here nor there. Ms. Wat- Mary Jane, please -"

"Wait," MJ said, thrown off. "You have another one, besides Kara?"

"Yes, Kara is my adopted daughter, and Helen is my biological daughter."

MJ's jaw dropped.

"But that is neither here nor there," Diana insisted. "Please. Please allow me to tell my side of it. I assure you that I had no idea that Peter felt that sort of ... revulsion for what we did, or that he thought he had been molested. Had he let me know that he felt that way, I would have done everything I could to make amends for what had happened. I now regret his death even more deeply than I did before all this."

MJ shook her head, now almost past disgust. "'what we did'," she quoted. "God, you even talk like a predator. He was just a boy!"

And quite suddenly, Diana no longer looked feeble or upset, but rather angry and in full possession of the forces with which to do something about that anger. "No," she said firmly. "I will not hear that. You may say whatever you like about me, accuse me of many things, but I will not have you insult your husband's memory in that manner."

It occurred to MJ, rather belatedly, that she was talking to a woman who supposedly possessed strength rivaling that of Kara's father, and somewhat fewer compunctions about using it. Anger forced her onward. If she was committing suicide by doing this, then maybe it was her time to die. But she would not die without having spoken truth to power. "What -" she started to say.

"What was his name?" Diana interrupted.

Unfortunately, it seemed that power was bent on speaking to her, first. "Wha- you've said it yourself, his name was Peter Parker -"

"No, that was the name his parents gave him. What name did he give himself?" she demanded.

MJ just stared. "I - I don't -" Just as she was about to confess her lack of understanding, the lack was ameliorated. "No, you don't mean -"

"I do mean. I very much mean. Spider-Man. He was fifteen, but he had already made adult choices and taken on adult responsibilities by the time that I met him. I may have done a regrettable thing by ending his sexual innocence, but he was not a child. I will not stand by and allow you to diminish Peter in that manner."

MJ looked at Diana. "'You won't stand by and ...'" she quoted again, this time without nearly as much heat. "You talk like you loved him."

"I did love him," she admitted. "Not as you did, but I cherish and honor his memory, just as I do those of Richard, Garth, Roy, Kara's namesake, Johnny, Scott, Jean, Henry, Warren, Bobby, Alex, Lorna, Garfield, Jason, Koriand'r, Cassandra, Stephanie, and many other young people I have known who chose to join the good fight long before they would have been considered adults in your culture."

"I suppose you had sex with all of them, too," MJ said wearily.

"Not Bobby, he was homosexual," Diana answered.

"Oh, holy shit," MJ groaned, hand on her face.

"Please, sit down," Diana said, beckoning her over to one of the chairs in front of the large desk.

Not really wanting any more 'help', but not wanting to faint on her feet, either, MJ came over and indeed sat down. Eventually, she managed to work up the nerve to ask a question. "So, if you're in a revelatory mood, which one of those people was Helen's father?"

"None of them," she answered. "Her father was Bruce Wayne, with whom I had a long-standing relationship in the years right before Second Impact. It's possible that I would have married him, had fate not had other plans."

"So you do it with other adults, too."

"Mary Jane, I am neither a pedophile, nor an ephebophile," Diana told her. "I am Venus' champion, and I do what I can to show others that love is love."

"I-I don't even care anymore," MJ said, waving her hands. "That was a cheap shot, and I'm sorry. It's just all too much ... but ... if you're not Kara's biological mother -"

Diana hesitated, but eventually spoke up. "Her mother was Lana Lang, whom you might know as the chief executive officer of Global Broadcasting Systems. She was somewhat infatuated with Kal-el, having grown up with him, and took his death particularly hard. She -"

"I already heard this part."

"Ah. Well, once she had done what she did, and had some time to think about it, it came to her that she had no idea how to be a single mother to any child, much less a superhuman one. So she contacted me and arranged for me to 'adopt' - informally - Kara, when she was born. I love her as much as I do the daughter of my body, and Kara ... has never actually met her biological mother."

"And you ... and him -" she asked.

Diana smiled, almost shyly. "It never happened. I dreamed about it, but ... he loved one woman, all his life. I think she was the luckiest human being who ever lived."

"So, so fucked up," MJ said, shaking her head. "All right. I think I can take it, now. What do you want in order to help get May into Japan?" She visibly braced herself, clutching the armrests of he chair.

And Diana told her.

"... I don't get it," MJ said.

---

"Is she going to kill my mom?" May asked as she followed Kara and Helen down one of the twisty hallways.

Kara started to answer, but Helen beat her to the punch. "Has your mother used mind control on anyone recently?" she asked.

May blinked about eighteen times. "I-I don't think she has."

"Then she's probably safe," said Helen with a shrug.

"I mean that's not exactly the sort of thing that comes up at the dinner table -"

"May," interjected Kara, looking back with a gentle smile. "She's just kidding. The moms are prolly gonna come out of this singing Bette Midler tunes together."

"All right," said May dubiously - hiding a fair amount of curiosity about what that would look and/or sound like. "So, where are we going now?"

"'Member how I told you about my partner? You're gonna meet him and he's gonna set you up with the documentation you need to be a liminal in Japan. And he is right behind this door," Kara said, and opened a door on the side of the hallway.

A hollow scream ensued.

Kara slammed the door shut. "Or possibly one of the other doors. Don't look at me like that, I'm a field agent."

"It's this door," said Helen, and opened a door on the other side of the hallway, which opened up to a dimly visible room beyond. In the absence of a scream, Helen and May entered, and May - squishing down a bit - also went through. The room was lit only by the illumination of about twenty-four different TV displays, each showing a different news program, many of which were in languages May didn't know - which was to say anything other than English.

Seated in the middle of the room was a figure with rather spiky black hair, facing towards the screens and only faintly visible behind the mass of the chair in which they sat.

"Hey, Tim," said Kara, softly.

The figure let out a sigh, then spoke in a masculine voice. "Kara, we spend all day talking to each other when you're in the field. Don't you think we deserve a break from each other when you're in the Hall?"

"Well, except that I like talking to you and there's also something we need," she told him.

"Pause," he said with another sigh, and the TV displays all locked up. Then the chair rotated so that he was facing them, and May found herself trying very hard not to gasp. He looked to be in his late twenties, or possibly a bit older, but that only applied to the parts of him that weren't mechanical - which included only his left arm, the shoulder of his right, his upper chest and his head, save for one eye. "Helen," he said. "And I'm being introduced to May Parker. Greetings. My name is Timothy Drake."

"Am I the only one who cares about secret identities anymore?" asked Helen.

"The name will mean absolutely nothing to her -" Tim started to say.

"The Timothy Drake whom Bruce Wayne adopted five years before Second Impact?" May quietly interjected. "I spend a lot of time online," she added into the silence that resulted.

His artificial eye made a whirring noise, and he suppressed a cough - or it might have been a chuckle. "- and that boy has been missing and presumed dead for more than fifteen years, and she will be going to Japan, soon."

"Did this hurt?" May asked, unable to stop herself from staring at his cybernetics.

"It was very painful until I decided I wasn't interested in feeling pain anymore," Tim answered. "Can we move forward?"

She nodded quickly.

"All right," he said, and behind him, the screens which had been displaying paused news programs went blank for a moment, then displayed various pictures of May's head and shoulders, taken from a number of different angles, all of them from her short time in the Hall of Justice. In another moment, the various images were pulled together onto one screen in particular, creating something like a three-dimensional image of her, which then shrunk down and was integrated into the image of a card.

"We're going to print you a forged copy of an Extraspecies Alliance identicard that describes you as a sixteen year old citizen of the Arachne Tyranny, which lies beneath the Greater Caucasus," he explained.

"Tyranny?" May asked, quailing a bit.

"In this instance, it just means 'autocratic adoptive monarchy'," Tim said. "The arachne are a very peaceful people who've had exactly one civil war in the three thousand or so years that the Eternals have been recording their history. Admittedly, that was within the last hundred years, and the same challenges that are confronting every intelligent species on Earth are probably doing a number on that peacefulness."

"Oh-kay," said May. "But, if I'm from, uh, Georgia, I think? Why would I be on a ship coming from the US?"

He nodded, and it seemed to her that he might actually be smiling a little. "We're also going to be coming up with a fake background for you, saying that you ran away from home two years ago, and managed to get from Armenia all the way to Atlanta. With the situation in Japan, you've decided to move there instead - as the latter part is true, it should be fairly convincing."

May nodded. "And what language do, um, 'real' arachne speak?"

"Their own, which bears some resemblance to Koine Greek. Helping you there is someone else's department," Tim admitted. "One thing about your background I should probably tell you right away involves your rear carapace."

She glanced over her shoulder at that, the stylized black spider figure on a red background that was covered in black lines that suggested webs. "I'm guessing most don't have that sort of marking," she said ruefully.

"Actually, they do, and the patterns usually indicate their family origin. But that is a unique pattern that wouldn't be found among them, so we've invented a background that has you getting your actual pattern covered up by a magical tattoo artist," Tim explained.

"Clever," she agreed.

"It should only come up if you run into another arachne." He looked at her for a moment. "Scared?" he asked abruptly.

"Yes," May admitted.

"Good. Shows a realistic appraisal." He coughed again. "As it happens, I also spend a lot of time online. Hashtag Boyracle. Look me up if you ever want to talk to someone from the US without compromising your identity."

"Oh. Thank you!"

"Right, I've spent long enough on this as it is. Out, all of you."

Helen and May quickly departed, but Kara lingered a while, smiling broadly.

"Don't say it," he said.

"You like her," she said sweetly.

"... she is the first person who asked me if it hurt," Tim admitted, after rejecting the option of pointing out that he'd just told her not to say what she'd promptly said.

Now Kara frowned. "I asked you if it hurt."

"She is the first person who isn't a pain in the ass -"

"Oh, fine!" she interrupted, making a face. Her smile came back almost immediately. "Love you," she called out as she started towards the door.

"Bah humbug," he replied.

---

"Y'know, now that I think about it, we prolly shoulda asked Tim where to find the next person on the list," said Kara, after a few moments of wandering the halls and taking elevators.

"No, that would be pointless, because I know exactly where she is, and so do you," Helen said, just a little irritably.

"Well, I don't like to make assumptions," Kara protested, looking away.

"Who are we talking about, here?" May asked as they approached a set of double doors - light double doors, that could swing back and forth.

Kara danced out to stand before both Helen and May. "Behold!" she declaimed. "The true heart of the Hall of Justice -"

"My God, you actually told them we call it that?" Helen asked, appalled. "We don't," she promptly told May.

"Okay?"

"- the Cafetorium!" Kara continued as though she had not been rudely interrupted. She pushed the doors aside, much like Adam had the huge bronze ones, and proceeded to hold them both open on the other side. Helen marched forward and took one of the doors out of Kara's hands so that she could step to the side, and make space for May to enter.

It was basically a giant cafeteria. Various people in various uniforms and various sorts of plain clothes could be seen seated at the various tables, variously eating and having various conversations with each other. Some of them looked up at the new arrivals, but no one found them interesting enough to stare at - or perhaps they were considerate enough to avoid staring, even if the sight of an arachne was novel even to these jaded persons.

Seated near to the door was a rather fat, middle-aged brunette woman in a long black gown who was eating from a large plate of spaghetti. She also looked up, but spoke when she saw who it was. "Ah, was wondering when you were gonna get here. I was just about to send out a messenger."

"Hi there, Za-" Kara started to say.

"This," interrupted Helen rather forcefully, "is Special Consultant Zed, our wizard-in-residence."

"We don't use that word," 'Zed' said wearily. "And I'm only doing this because someone, who has more magical potential that I've ever seen, has perversely refused to take any lessons from me in the arts of magic, in favor of punching and kicking her way through life." She glared in Helen's general direction.

"I sense some history here," May said quietly to Kara.

"Like you wouldn't believe," Kara said quietly back. She raised her voice to interrupt the staring contest Helen and Zed were having. "Okay, so this is May, and she's the one who needs your help."

"Gosh, here I thought it might be the other arachne I met today," groused Zed, as she rose from her seat and walked over to May, studying her face carefully. "Are your ears pierced?" she asked.

"Uh, no," said May, resisting the urge to pull back.

"Well, then, this will hurt a little," the old woman said, and reached out to grab May's right ear.

There was a sudden, sharp burning sensation, and this time May couldn't help herself - she jerked back, her spider legs pushing her torso up and away from Zed. "Ow!" she said.

"'All Gaul is divided into three parts, one of which the Belgians inhabit, the Aquilonians another, those who in their own language are called Celts, in ours Gauls, the third,'" said Zed. "Did you understand that?"

"Uh ... yes," May had to admit. "That was Latin, wasn't it?"

"Very good," said the woman. "It usually takes a bit more time for someone wearing one of those translators to start recognizing the different tones that indicate the language being spoken. It's waterproof, so don't bother taking it off when you shower. Isn't magic wonderful," she added, with a look in Helen's direction.

"'I respect the gods; I do not rely on them,'" replied Helen. "That's what Japanese sounds like," she added to May.

"Thanks," said May, a bit dazedly.

"It's not about gods," Zed said angrily.

"The demiurges, then. Or whoever you are talking to when you start talking backwards. I am going to accomplish my goals by my own strength and Kara why are you snickering?"

"Gosh, I'm wondering if there are any famous magicians who do magic by talking backwards," Kara wondered aloud.

"... oh hell."

"Wait," May said, looking frantically at the three of them. "Are you saying - no. That's not possible. I've seen Zatanna on television, and she, well, I mean -"

"Ekam em suoromalg," said Zed - and quite suddenly, there was a slender woman who couldn't be much older than her mid-twenties, dressed in a costume that was half a tuxedo and half fishnet stockings. She posed coquettishly. "The magic of magic," she said, sounding completely different as well.

"Having fun, are we?" asked Diana from behind them. She and MJ had quietly entered the cafetorium when May was speaking about how the person who was talking couldn't possibly be Zatanna.

"Oh," said May, turning around. "Is everything okay?"

Diana and MJ exchanged a look. "Everything is as ... resolved as it is going to get," MJ said.

"No Bette Midler songs," muttered Kara.

"What?" asked Diana.

"No-thiing."

The Princess shook her head. "Now, May, you asked earlier what I would have from you in exchange for all the help I'm giving you. Here is what I need - for you to travel in a container, on a cargo carrier ship, from here to Japan, over the course of the next two weeks."

"... I don't get it," May admitted after a moment.

"Like mother, like daughter," Diana said with a small smile.

"No, seriously, what?" May pressed. "That's what I need your help to do ... and your price for that help is for me to do it? That's ... crazy."

"It might seem that way," Diana agreed. "All I will say is that you doing this will help me in ways that you don't need to know about. And what I'm asking won't be at all easy, May. You will be completely alone, for all that time, out of all human contact. If you get seasick, or suffer from other illness, there will be no one to help you or care for you. What you are embarking on is a dangerous thing. Knowing this, do you still want to go through with it?"

"Yes," May said, without hesitation.

"Very well. You sail tomorrow night. Tonight, you and your mother will stay here, in our headquarters. You'll receive your information package in a few hours. Special Consultant Zed, could I trouble you to escort these two to the dormitory? I need to talk to Agents K and W in private."

"Yes, your Highness," said Zed, who had silently reverted to her older form. She looked longingly at the remainder of her spaghetti, but picked up the tray and started walking over to the waste recycler system. "Be with you in a moment."

As May and her mother walked out of the dormitory, she looked back to see that they were looking up at Diana as if expecting a serious lecture, and hoped that her new friends - for she certainly thought of Kara that way, and Helen was more than just a friend of a friend - were not in any great trouble.

---

Day One - Japan

When Haruhi returned to the main area of the temple, she seemed cheerful, even a bit giddy. She apologized to Miia for running out like that, and asked her and the old priest some very profound questions on the subject of Shinto. She took an interest in the mundane mysteries that the Brigadiers brought to her by her request. If Negi hadn't known better - and hadn't noticed the way that Haruhi was pretending that Kyonko didn't exist - he'd have thought her emotional state had tremendously improved.

"This was really a lot of fun," said Asahina as the club trooped down the stairs once more. "I think I might come back and bring my little brother with me. He's really interested in the liminals."

Negi nodded absently, largely focused on Haruhi's situation. But he was able to say, "Well, please just remember that Miia and others like her aren't here for our entertainment. They are thinking and feeling beings, and it's important to treat them with dignity."

Mitsuru nodded. "Oh, yes, definitely." Of course, Negi was somewhat uncertain as to whether the boy was in genuine agreement with his points or whether he just agreed with whatever Negi said. There were a number of problems with this situation.

At least the problems with Mai seemed to be about to resolve themselves. As the others dispersed at the foot of the stairs, she stayed there with him.

"Are we going to have our talk?" Negi asked her when she hadn't said anything after a moment. "Is this private enough for you?"

"We're in full view of the road, so no, of course not," Mai answered. "There is an area up at the shrine that's set up as an area. That might be better."

"An arena?" he asked, dubiously. "Tokiha-san, I don't have any interest in fighting you."

She looked at him then, and he immediately saw what Okuzaki had tried to warn him through Kaede about. There was an intensity in this girl's eyes that was not unlike the manic energy that he kept seeing in Haruhi. "Good," she said, and for all that he was seeing, she seemed completely calm. "Then if I decide that I do have an interest in fighting you, it will be a very brief conflict."

Negi swallowed. "Arena it is, then."

Tatsumiya was a bit surprised to see them again, and even more surprised when they asked for permission to use the arena. After a interlude of careful consideration on her part, she escorted them there and left them to their own devices, simply asking that they leave it as they found it.

What they found was a fighting space sitting in the middle of a moat, with bridges on either side. Mai separated from where she'd been walking at Negi's side and headed over to the far side of the moat, entering the arena from that side. Negi obligingly entered it from the near side, so that they stood facing each other from a distance.

"All right," said Mai. "Are you one of the espers that Haruhi-san keeps talking about?"

"No," Negi answered. "I'm fairly sure her ideas of espers are based on a distorted understanding of the superhuman mutants who were once fairly common, world-wide, but are now very, very rare. I am a mage."

The orange-haired girl nodded slowly. "I see. Thank you for being honest with me, Negi-kun. Midori had already told me about your organization, and how she'd figured that you were one of the mages who run this school, but I didn't know if she were right or not."

"Thank you for confirming that Midori-san is another hime," Negi answered her politeness with some of his own.

"HiME," she corrected calmly. "All right. Are you associated with the First District?"

He promptly shook his head. "I don't even know what that is, much less anything about it. If it's an organization, rather than a location ... I'm aware that there are a number of esoteric factions active here in Academy City, and that I haven't been told about all of them, yet. If the Mage Association, with which I am associated, has dealings with that group -"

"They do, according to Midori," Mai interrupted. "It is an organization, and its men in black operate with impunity here, cleaning up evidence of battles with the Orphans and convincing witnesses that they saw nothing. Sometimes the witnesses disappear completely."

"- then I haven't had anything to do with such dealings. I am, after all, a fairly low-ranking member of the Association's hierarchy."

"Figures," she said, a bit of frustration coming through in her tone. "Those who could help, won't; those who would help, can't. Even if the faces change, the big picture doesn't."

"I didn't say that I can't help you," Negi interjected. "As I understand it, you believe that you are a traveler from another world."

"Believe?" she said, fire nearly shooting from her eyes.

"I have no way of proving or disproving your statement," he replied. "Until very, very recently, I would have believed that such journeys are functionally impossible, with only a single individual in all of recorded history having succeeded in travelling to different dimensions, as opposed to realities found in the overworld, underworld or dreamworld. However, I have recently had it made clear to me that this is not the case, and I would be willing to introduce you to other refugees in our reality, who might be able to assist you in returning to your own."

He watched Mai's face light up. "Tell me more, please?" she asked.

---

"Oh! Oh, god, Shizuru! Ohmygod! Oh! My! God!"

Fate, mused Shizuru as she kissed Natsuki's belly button, was a tricky thing. There was a time, and the time was not long ago, when all that she could have wanted was to have Natsuki crying out in ecstasy at what was being done to her by Shizuru's hands. But now that she had that, and actually had to listen to said ecstatic cries, she was somewhat vexed to realize that they were ... well ... more distracting than anything else. She'd gotten the message that Natsuki was trying to give - that she really enjoyed this - and further indications were just pretty much superfluous.

"Ahhhhhhh!"

And kind of deafening, too.

It had begun when she had shown up at Natsuki's dorm room and asked to come in. Even though it had been the first time that she had ever visited Natsuki's room, her friend - her famously paranoid friend - had let her come in, then paused to make sure that no one was observing this, then closed the door, locked it, and turned to ask what was the matter. That's when Shizuru kissed her, passionately, on the mouth. From there, it had been fairly easy to steer Natsuki's stunned form over to the bed, still kissing her the whole way, and make her to line down on its covers.

By the time Shizuru had started to unbutton the buttons and undo the laces of Natsuki's school uniform, Natsuki had regained enough presence of mind to stammer out, "W-w-wait!"

"Do you really want me to stop this?" Shizuru asked, honestly unsure what she was going to do if Natsuki said yes.

Natsuki turned bright pink and avoided Shizuru's gaze. "Please be gentle," she said.

Shizuru smiled. Mostly to hide the fact that she had no clear idea what that would mean, in these circumstances.

What she actually did, once she got Natsuki's jacket and blouse off, exposing her ridiculously cute bra and panties - seriously, this supposedly practical girl spent way too much money on clothes no one was ever supposed to see - was basically what she and Suzushiro had done to each other, all those times, with some stuff she'd seen the girls in Negi-kun's 'collective' doing with each other that crazy night. This included stuff she'd never done, or even imagined doing, like going down to Natsuki's genital area and licking and suckling there.

It did not, in fact, taste like honey. She had been cruelly, cruelly tricked. However, from the screams that she heard Natsuki releasing in response to this activity, it seemed likely that her friend enjoyed it. Which was nice, she guessed. But it seemed somewhat likely that fingering would have just as much of an effect, so she went back to that, allowing her to move up and pay homage to Natsuki's breasts.

Unfortunately, that too paled rather quickly.

"Ah! Ahhhhhhhhh! Oh, Shizuru ... no more! Please, I'm going to go crazy!" Natsuki was crying as Shizuru considered her next move.

"All right, all right," the vice president reassured her, pulling back. "Let's rest a spell, then."

"R-rest?" Natsuki stammered.

"Well, yes," said Shizuru. What, did Natsuki think she was some sort of sex monster, who'd keep going after a comment like that? They really needed to sit down and discuss their relationship. And she should probably admit all the other stuff that had been going on, and tell Natsuki that she was also a HiME. She opened her mouth to start her confession.

Natsuki pounced on her and kissed that open mouth. "I don't want to rest!" she cried out. "I want to show you how amazing you've made me feel!"

"Well, all right, we can do that if you'd rather," Shizuru said dubiously.

With that, her friend - she supposed she should start thinking of Natsuki as a 'girlfriend', under the circumstances - began fussing at her clothes, just as Shizuru had done to her. Unlike that episode, however, Natsuki's face went from excited to frustrated as her fumblings achieved exactly nothing. "How does this thing come off?" she finally yelled.

That finally got a thump on one of the walls from a neighbor annoyed by all the noise.

"It's a goku, I think it might only come off if I deliberately choose to remove it," Shizuru explained. No one had actually told her that was the case, but it might make sense if it were. "Let me, uh, get up and see -"

Sure enough, it came off quite easily once she was the one undoing the fasteners and sliding the skirt down her legs. Once she was sufficiently nude, Natsuki pulled her back into bed and began doing unto Shizuru as had been done unto her.

It was ... nice. Certainly better than all those embarrassing times with Suzushiro. But ... it was horrible to realize, considering how she'd defined herself since middle school, but Shizuru was becoming increasingly aware that lesbian sex did not really do it for her. She liked receiving better than giving, but that wasn't saying very much. Even though she didn't really want to, she kept thinking of the way that Negi-kun had satisfied her craving and then kept going, making her feel things she'd never imagined feeling.

She was thinking of Negi-kun while Natsuki was eating her out. Something had gone horribly wrong, somewhere. At least she could pretend her quieter reactions were in the interest of keeping the neighbors calm.

---

Mai's face had slowly fallen as Negi had explained and elaborated. Finally, she shook her head. "No," she said. "This isn't helpful. These people physically traveled here, where all that came with me was my ... my soul, I guess."

That made Negi tense up a bit. "I see," he said slowly. "Then what happened to the soul of the young lady who originally inhabited your body?"

Mai's face flushed. "I don't know," she admitted. "As far as I can tell, I am the only person in here. There's no one else. So she's sleeping, maybe. Or ... maybe she's dead." Mai looked away. "Maybe I killed her," she added, very quietly.

Negi glared. "You do understand, this is not the sort of thing that will encourage people to help you?" he said.

"It's not my fault!" she snapped. "None of this is happening by any choice of mine! Not here, and not back there, either! I keep getting thrown into situations that I want nothing to do with! And now I'm here, on this, this festering dungheap of a world, and it's just getting worse and worse."

"I'm aware that the world is not a particularly kind or gentle place, Mai-san, but that just means that those of us here have to work harder to make it better," he told her, not breaking his glare as he spoke.

"I get that, and I'm trying to do just that for the other HiME. But you, standing outside and above our situation, you do not get to judge me!" she told him.

"I never said that I was, but if you've done harm to this world's Tokiha Mai, you need to be held accountable for it. If you'll come with me to our headquarters, people who are better at mental magic than I am will be able to look into it and determine what exactly -"

"Oh, no," Mai said firmly. "No, no, no. I trusted you because you didn't try any mind-fuckery on me, Negi-kun, but if all you're going to do is try and turn me over to those who can and will do that stuff to me, you can just forget about it."

By now, he had unlimbered his staff. "Tokiha-san, I think you've misunderstood this as a request that you can decline."

"So much for 'I don't want to fight you'," she half-snarled.

"I still don't want that," Negi replied firmly. "Circumstances, however, compel us to do things we might not want to do."

"Don't I know it," Mai said. Her arms stretched out to either side, and a circle of flame traced itself on the boards where she stood. A moment later, twirling jeweled bands were surrounding both of her wrists and both of her ankles, and she was hovering a foot or so above the ground. "All right," she continued, speaking in the same even tone. "I am going to leave this place now."

"Tokiha-san, you are not the only one who can fly," he told her.

"Yes. I do know that," she said, and snapped out a hand. "Kagutsuchi," she said.

Behind her, and to the direction of the hand, a giant circle appeared on the ground, its diameter beginning just beneath Mai's floating feet and extending across the dueling platform, the moat, and the area surrounding the moat, where it came to an end. Unearthly light gleamed from the circle, and slowly, ever so slowly, a gigantic silver form like that of a wyvern slowly lifted up from within it, the creature's wings folded against its body. There was a sword stuck through the creature's maw, all the way from its top to its bottom, yet it seemed not to impair it all, for it opened its mouth to let out a roar as it came fully into view ... then quietly bent its head so that it came close to Mai's still outstretched hand.

She momentarily turned her gaze from Negi to look at what she'd called up, and Negi found himself swallowing at the gentle look there. "I wasn't sure you'd come," she said.

The creature's head came close enough to her hand that it touched it, and the hand moved so that it gently caressed the metal surface. A sound like whalesong echoed through the area.

"What - what is that?" Negi asked.

"This is my Child," Mai said, returning her gaze to the child teacher, gentleness gone in a flash. "You already know his name. Now. Kagutsuchi and I are going to leave peacefully if we're allowed to leave peacefully - but if not ... then not. And you can expect the results to be very hard on this arena, that we both promised not to damage."

Part of Negi - and a larger part than you might expect - wanted to curl up in a ball and just let her go her merry way. But the responsible person that he wanted to be forced him to stay standing, and reply. "That isn't the sort of thing someone who wants to make the world a better place should be saying."

She took a deep breath. "No, I suppose it isn't. But the truth is, Negi-kun, that I have a really, really limited amount of empathy for most of the people of this world, aside from those I know from my own, and none of them are present. So I'm going to leave, now. Don't follow me, or we'll have problems." She glided over to the handle of the blade, and took hold of it.

"This doesn't have to go this way, Tokiha-san," he said, making one last try.

"Yes, it really kind of does," she answered.

And then Kagutsuchi spread his wings, almost spanning the entire arena, and what looked like jet engines within them roared to life. A moment later, he and his master were streaking towards the sky, faster than Negi could fly on his best day. A moment after that, they were nothing more than a twinkling in the sky.

He stared up at that twinkling for what felt like a very long time, before he finally muttered to himself. "I really am going to need help from everyone, aren't I?"

---

If only the sky were blue.

Mai had never taken Kagutsuchi out flying just to do so. There had always been some dread purpose, or terrible tragedy, that she needed help with. Technically, she supposed making an escape from a self-righteous little jerk of a mage still counted as something like that. But he had - prudently or cowardly - chosen not to follow her after all. So right now was as close to flying for fun as she'd ever come.

It would have been wonderful, on a bright shiny day, with a sparkling wind, carried by these wings of dreams, to just soar across the sky. But reality ... was not cooperating.

She shook her head. "Okay," she said to her Child. "I can take it from here."

Whalesong.

"Yeah, I wish it had worked out better, too," she agreed. And with a deep breath, she let go of the knife handle and began to drop feet-first towards Academy City. She was too high up to be sure of where she was going to come down, so it just made sense not to start flying on her own power until she could see where she should fly towards. There was no death wish involved. Not at all.

She really was up quite high, wasn't she, though?! Higher than any birds were flying, though probably not higher than planes - or, she realized quite suddenly, as she looked down, other flying people. A man - no, a boy - in a red suit with a kanji on its chest was coming up towards her, wobbling in the air as he did. Well, that wasn't the sort of thing you saw everyday.

But wait, he was coming up there to rescue her, wasn't he? Mai brought up her magatama and slowed her fall to a crawl. "It's okay," she called out to him. "I got -"

He flew past her.

"- this," she told his retreating form, which seemed to be trying to slow down and/or change direction. It was tempting to fly after him and offer some tips on the subject. Well, that would be patronizing, and also, she didn't really care. Limited amount of empathy, and all.

Resuming her descent, she soon found that she was within visual range of the building she wanted to land on - the rooftop of the Mahora High School's main building. She sped up her descent a bit, so as to look like nothing more than a flash of light coming down, and dropped down on the concrete.

"So what happened?" said Midori, who was waiting there for her, seated on one of the benches up there.

"It didn't work out," Mai summarized. "He said that he wanted to help, but he was just a tiny cog in a really big machine ... and then he started to get a bit salty about me being a ghost possessing the body of the real Tokiha Mai." This was probably being a bit unfair to Negi, but she wasn't in the mood to be fair.

"Dammit." Midori reached up to rub her bright red hair vigorously. "So now what?"

Now what indeed.

---

Day Four - United States

The first thing that Diana did, after the Parker family had been escorted out, was to firmly grab both her daughters and pull them close to her in a not-quite-bone-breaking embrace. (She was mindful that Helen had just got out of the hospital.)

"Mom?" asked Kara, bewildered. She was never this publicly demonstrative.

"Recent events have made it clear to me that it is very important to make sure that the ones you love know that you love them," she said, just loud for them both to hear. "You do know that?"

"Yes, we know that, mother," replied Helen, doing her best not to panic at this display. "You drive me crazy sometimes, but -"

"And I am put out by the fact that Helen refuses to take advantage of the opportunities offered her, and that Kara told tales that required me to explain myself more than was strictly necessary, but you are my children, and I love you dearly. All right?" Now she let go, and looked at them plainly. "Now, come with me to my office, and we will discuss your next assignment."

"The reason that I need May Parker to travel to Japan in this circuitous manner, rather than being sent there on our private jet, is that we are also smuggling two agents into Japan in that manner," Diana explained, sitting at her desk.

"Us," the two girls chorused as they sat in chairs facing the desk.

"Correct. While the attention of port security will be focused on the liminal who has just arrived in their country, you will be able to slip out undetected. You'll be supplied with maps of the port, and I suggest that you memorize them on the trip there. You won't have much else to do in that interval."

Kara looked away from her mother and started whistling innocently. Helen just closed her eyes and shook her head for a moment, before asking a question. "So what's our target in Japan?"

"Your primary target is this individual," Diana replied, pulling a photo from the file on her desk and handing it to Helen. Kara promptly leaned over to get a good look at it too. "He - and while I'm calling him that, be prepared for the things to be other than they seem - has been active in the Academy City area for the last few months, but only begun to come to public attention recently, after he was involved in some business that was media blacked out. Shunning the limelight is a good sign, but it does complicate matters."

"I know this costume, somehow, but I can't remember where I know it from," said Kara, frowning,

"It bears a marked resemblance to that worn by Ralph Hinkley about thirty-three years ago -" Diana started to say.

"Oh, yeah, Rocket Man!"

"Can we please not use the silly code names?" Helen asked wearily.

"Hmph. Anything you say, Huntress."

"Ahem," said 'Wonder Woman', cutting off an objection from Helen, who proceeded to sit and stew. "In any event, Hinkley is still alive, and we contacted him for information about his successor. He couldn't tell us anything, and claimed that the aliens who gave him his suit took it away again after six years. Apparently, they eventually gave it to another individual, who, reports would suggest, also lost the manual."

"You'd think they'd consider putting the docs online, at this point," mused Kara, with a shake of her head.

"Our mission is to recruit?" Helen asked brusquely.

"That's the ideal situation," Diana agreed. "But even if he won't agree to work or share information with us, try to make it clear to him that he needs to be careful. This is not a world fit for heroes." She laughed, suddenly. "It's really strange, actually. Japan has probably produced more stories about superheroes than anywhere else on the planet, other than the United States, but they've always had a paucity of genuine ones - I can only think of two, off-hand, and one was an expatriate. Yet here we are, trying to rebuild our forces, and one of the first heroes of your generation makes themselves known in Japan."

"We'll find him, mother," Helen assured her.

"I've no doubt," said Diana. "But be careful, too. What we've been able to find out about the situation that our new 'Rocket Man' was involved in suggests some very frightening things. I'd suggest Pendragon Rules, but you should operate as you see fit."

"Are you going to be okay without us?" asked Kara, quietly. "I mean, who'll take care of business?"

"Kim and Ronald will be stepping into your shoes," Diana replied. "If you don't mind, could you give them both a briefing on your take on recent activity?"

Kara nodded. Beside her, Helen made a face. "What I'm worried about is -" She broke off and looked back towards the office's huge bronze doors.

"Adam?" asked Diana, and shook her head. "He's a bit intimidating, but I trust him completely. He's the son of a very dear friend of mine, and he's shown that he's just as reliable. We have nothing to worry about from that direction."

---

"She's trying to slip a fake arachne into Japan," Adam said into the phone's receiver as he stood in the otherwise empty surveillance room.

"A fake - how's that even possible?" said the voice on the other side.

"Some mutant," he said, making the word a curse. "I saw her with her human mother, and arachne don't breed with the baselines, right?"

"Not normally, no, but there's a lot that's not normal, these days. All right, we'll keep an eye out for this. Are you still safe there."

He nodded reflexively, even though his handler couldn't see him. "Wonder Bitch doesn't suspect a damn -"

"Adam, don't. Disrespecting the enemy is one step towards underestimating the enemy, and we cannot afford that."

"Fine," he growled.

"Keep on as you have been." The phone clicked as the other end hung up.

Adam Taurus stared at the phone with naked disgust on his face, something he wasn't allowed to show except when he was certain no one could see him. He lifted his eyes unti he saw the display of the surveillance in the director's room, showing Diana rising and embracing both her daughters, giving them warm tongue kisses in the process. His lips twisted with loathing.

"Soon," he promised himself. "Soon."

---

Las Vegas was far from any waterfront, and had largely been spared the immediate effects of Second Impact. If anything, the sudden climate change from sweltering heat to northern chill had been good for the city, making it more livable for its permanent residents. Tourism never exactly stopped, but the profile of the tourists who were drawn were, even more than they'd been before all this, families rather than singles seeking excitement. Yet there was still gambling, and dancing, and comedians.

Especially comedians.

"And the worst part, beating out even getting beaten up by a guy in a gimp suit and a succession of teenaged boys?" said one particular clown-faced, green haired, moustached comedian, parading on his stage before his audience and clinging to his microphone. "The absolute worst part had to be the way everyone thought I was crazy! I mean, okay, some of the kids were around the bend, but me?! Do I only commit crimes with a cat, bird or plant motif? Do I flip a coin to make my decisions? Do I send the cops a lovingly written riddle to spell it all out for them?"

He let out a long, long sigh. "Oh, Eddy, Eddy, Eddy. Scary thing, I don't think that was even his real name. Yeah, he literally went to the point of getting his name legally changed to Eddy Nigma just to fit the stupid riddle motif. Now that, my friends, is crazy."

"Says Jack Napier," came a voice from the audience.

The comedian paused momentarily, then let out a wry chuckle. "A touch, I do confess it. But the point is, I wasn't crazy. I was a crook, I was a bad guy, but I wasn't some psycho, some homicidal maniac. Some of these stories, though! Hadn't these people ever heard of Norman Bates? Or Ted Bundy? The guy you should be afraid of isn't the one who looks all scary and freakish, it's the one who looks totally normal. I'm surprised nobody ever tried to make me out to be Kira, or something! I mean, killing a whole amusement part full of boy scouts? I'm trying to be entertaining! Who finds that gruesome image to be even a little bit funny?"

"You did," came that same voice.

This time, the comedian's chuckle was a bit more forced. "All the questions I'm asking are pretty much rhetorical, okay, folks? No need to strain your brains coming up with allegedly witty rejoinders. Anyway, back to what I was saying. It's really sort of a compliment to be called crazy, in a way. People used to think crazy people were touched by the gods, holy, sacred. Of course, that's all crap, it's just something gone wrong in the workings of the brain. Not that it matters, though, because I'm not crazy. I just got it a lot sooner than anybody else did.

"That's why I gave up, actually. I mean, hello, meteorite strikes Antarctica, kills two billion instantly and another two over the next year or so. All just a horrible, horrible cosmic coincidence. And I sez to myself, self, I sez, if this doesn't convince all those rubes - that's you dear folks - that it's all pointless, then nothing I can or ever will do will make them understand it. And sure enough, life went on for the half that lived." He spread his arms wide, and shrugged. "I gave up folks! What else could I possibly do under the circumstances?"

"More," came the voice.

"Okay, shut up," said the comedian, no longer even remotely amused. "There's a limit even to heckling. One more smart-alec remark, and I'm calling the bouncer."

"Oh, our anarchist calls the police," said the voice. "Our gangster turns to the feds, our psychopath to his shrink; our clown cries for the assistance of the ringmaster. You could do more, and you know you could do more. The world is so unbalanced, it would take only the slightest push to make it all go smash. That could be you, and you know it."

"Stop it," the comedian thundered. "Don't you get it? There's no point. There's no point to trying to make them see that there's no point, there's no point in trying to destroy the world, there's no point in trying to save the world, there's no point in there's no point in there's no point in -!" He broke off, shuddering. When he spoke next, there was something of a pleading note in his voice. "This is a good life, you know. Good enough."

"And when did you ever have anything to do with good?" said the voice.

For a terribly long moment, the comedian stood in silence, bathed in the white spotlight. "Well," he finally said, as he bent down to look in the suitcase of props he'd brought up with him. "I've always been pretty good at one thing."

When he stood up, he was holding a submachinegun, with which he proceeded to spray the audience, laughing madly as he did.

Of course, since no one was actually sitting in the seats, as this was a rehearsal, no one was killed at all. But the voice did stop.

"Hmm," said the comedian, once the gun's magazine had been fully discharged. "That was sort of fun." He tossed it back into the suitcase and picked up his bag of tricks, walking towards the nearest stairs down from the stage, arriving at the floor just as the manager came in from the front.

"What the hell was that?" the manager shrieked.

"New routine," said the comedian. "Problem is, I can only do it once. Yeah, actually, I think I'm about ready to move on to other things. Don't think it hasn't been amazing ... well, it hasn't been amazing, but don't think that. Point is, I quit."

"You -" the manager snapped, then calmed down. "Ah-hah, ah-hah," he said, trying to imitate this thing he'd heard about called laughter. "You've got a contract, buddy, that says you're booked in here for the next six months. So, no, you don't quit. You do, however, forfeit your pay for the next few weeks to pay for damages to the theatre."

"Hmm. Okay, this contract ... it's between me and you, right? It doesn't transfer to your heirs?" asked the comedian.

"What do you mean by that?" asked the manager.

What else could he possibly do with such a straight line? The tiny pistol in his pocket came out and it barked once at the manager's skull.

With that resolved, the comedian carried his luggage with him out into the not really all that dark Las Vegas night, tilting his head slightly as he went. "Japan, huh?" he asked no one present. "Okay. So long, Las Vegas, and thanks for all the fish." Whistling Journey of the Sorcerer, the Joker started walking in the general direction of McCarran International.

Hopefully he could buy a disposable razor and shave in one of the bathrooms there. The moustache had to go.

---

Day Five - United States

The tearful goodbyes had been said, the final hugs given, and then May had walked into a shipping container and it had been sealed up behind her, and the truck carrying it had driven out of the Hall of Justice. MJ stood staring at the garage doors that had promptly closed behind the truck when it departed. More accurately, she was looking a thousand yards beyond that.

"So now what?" she asked.

"Now I fulfill my younger daughter's promise to put you in touch with Rachel Summers," Diana said, standing a bit behind her. "She wants to meet you, as a witness to the ongoing genocide of her people."

"... okay," said MJ, without looking back.

"And after that ... there is a certain lady who lives in Cleveland who's expressed an interest in meeting you. No longer the luckiest woman who ever lived, but still someone with whom you have a great deal in common."

Now MJ looked back, genuinely startled. "I thought she was dead!"

"In fact, no."

"Diana," said a voice from a speaker nearby. "We may have to postpone those."

An actual frown creased the Amazon's features. "What's the matter, Timothy?"

"There are reports of some sort of large scale rebellion breaking out in Shanghai, and that the Brittanians have sent Knightmare Frames in to suppress it."

"... so it begins," Diana murmured.

---

They'd given her a chronometer, so she could tell exactly how long it had been since she'd entered the container, how long since it had been taken off of the truck, how long she'd felt the dizzying sensation of being lifted through the air, how long since the container had come to rest on the ship. But she didn't check it. She quietly lay under the blanket they'd also given her, sucking on the first of her ration tubes, until she felt the slight surge that told her that the ship was underway.

That's when she spoke. "Can you hear me, Kara?"

And from everywhere and nowhere at once, she heard the reply. "You're a real clever girl, May. When'd you put it together?"

"Last night," May admitted. "I didn't tell my Mom, I thought it would just make her mad. I ... didn't know if you'd be able to answer. How are you doing that?"

"I honestly do not know. It's one of the weirder tricks in my dad's trick sack. He called it super-ventriloquism, which makes no darn sense, but it lets me talk to people at a distance, just like I can hear you by thinking about you, even though there's distance and barriers between us, which makes even less sense."

"Well, I'm glad that you can do it," the spider-girl said. "I'm ... I'm used to being alone, but I don't really enjoy it."

"I know exactly what you mean."

"And I bet you're glad that Helen is there with you," May added, just a bit slyly.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Kara's voice agreed. "We're probably gonna be real sick of each other by the time this is over, though. Um. So what's New York like anyway? I've never gotten that far east."

And so they talked, and Kara relayed Helen's additions to the conversation, long into that night, and what could have been a frightening start of a journey became just a little less so. Eventually, they slept.

---

Day Five - Japan

Nebukawa Eiji hated life. He hated his job. He especially hated the wretched children whom he saw parading into his classroom every day. Pitiful little ingrates being cossetted from the cold realities of life just because some of them might possibly save the world. As if saving this world was anything to brag about.

As he finished up his paperwork in the teacher's office, many of his fellow teachers were clustered around the radio listening to some nonsense happening in China. He didn't join them. He didn't care about things that happened in China, and he didn't enjoy the company of his fellows. So he walked out of the room, then out of the building, and over to where his car was parked in the school's parking lot.

And then, just as he was closing the door, something happened. The door wouldn't budge. Nebukawa stared at it for a moment, then looked up to see that a dark-skinned, white-haired girl was holding onto the top of the door with a grip like iron.

"You hate life," she said. "But do you know what death is like?"

"No," he answered, being honest for some reason.

"It's like going to sleep. Let me show you." And with the hand that wasn't holding the car door, she reached down, plunged her hand into his chest, and crushed his heart.

His last thought was the surprisingly grateful realization that she hadn't lied, and that this was just like -

Zazie let the body slump, and walked away into shadow, allowing the victim of a heart attack to be discovered in the proper time.

NEXT: Classified