Agatha stumbles on the broken desert ground, hand to her side, the bastard actually stabbed me, oh momma that hurts, the hooded figures swirling out of her in the darkness, and

They're coming, twisted things like Dracula had dipped himself in a nuclear reactor charging right at her, and she's not alone, women to the left, women to the right, and

Block, twist, throw, boot to the head, boot to the balls, get that knife in, you won't kill me dammit you won't kill me and

The power comes, beyond anything she ever imagined, beyond anything possible, strength and speed and skill and pure primal fury and

She's yelling now, the attackers falling before her Ka-Bar like soldiers cut down like a machine gun and

Got to hold the line

Got to stop them from killing my Marines

Got to

Agatha lies on the floor of the desert. No, it is a cave. Boulders crowded around the walls, a soot stained ceiling high above. In the center crouches a hunched figure with skin dark as night. Filth-matted hair hides its face before it looks up. A skull is painted its features--no, her features, three simples swatches of white forming the death's head. She is both woman older than time and a young girl barely into her teens. She stares at Agatha before stalking over to the fallen woman. On the way, she contemptuously kicks aside a mass of chains bolted to the cave floor. As she approaches she changes: from African to European to Asian to Native American. All nations, all peoples, all times. For one moment she is a tiny blonde, then a buxom brunette, and then Herself again. She studies Agatha for a long time.

And smiles.

And offers a hand.

"Are you ready to be strong?"

From deep within Agatha's core, there is no other possible answer.

"OOORRAAH!"

Agatha awoke on her hands and knees. Harsh pants burst from her lungs. Every muscle was knotted and tense. Distantly, she felt her right hand aching with a low throb. Looking down, she saw her hand gripping the unsheathed Ka-Bar almost hard enough to crush the leather-wrapped hilt to pulp. No amount of will would make her loosen her hold from the knife. Eventually she had to peel each finger off with her free hand. It felt like an eternity until her muscles relaxed enough to risk moving. She nearly collapsed from the release. Crawling, she curled up in the far corner of the container. Dixie slept, unaware of the commotion in her rack.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, over? She had nightmares from time to time, especially since the attack in December. Nothing like the one that sent her catapulting out of bed. It was even weirder than the one she had the night before about a man covered with cheese. Agatha drew in one deep breath after another until her heart stopped racing like a pack of hounds after a bitch in heat. Probably nothing, she decided. Tuckered out from thirteen hours straight of being next to Capelli would turn any girl's mind a bit funny. Getting back the knife had just riled up sleeping rats hiding up in her attic. A shower and a cup of coffee would set her right. No, make that the entire damn urn.

She fished out her other set of utilities from the footlocker by her bed. Clean, or at least cleaner than the mildly grease-stained ones from yesterday. Sheathing the knife, she tucked it into the far depths of the bag. Heirloom or not, she didn't need the troubles it stirred up right now. Donning the uniform grounded her. I am Agatha Putnam, Lance-Corporal, serving my country and my Corps in way-and-the-hell-gone, Afghanistan. I am not some crazy girl dreaming about caves and wild warrior women. She tucked a fresh pair of skivvies and T shirt along with her bath things. Her nose wrinkled when she finally smelled herself. The sweat raised by the dream and the grime from yesterday had made her a little ripe. Any raunchier and Dixie would have to put on MOPP gear.

The early morning light blinded her. Startled, Agatha shaded her eyes against its intensity. The air was purer than she had ever seen before. Why, she could swear that she could make out every pebble on the mountain ten miles away. Passing boot steps echoed off the steel bulkheads of the barracks. She clapped her hands over her ears to stifle the onslaught of noise. What in Lord's name is happening to me? Agatha gritted her teeth, focusing on regaining her composure. Boot camp and training taught a Marine how to get past pain and fear to concentrate on the mission. It took everything she had to keep from curling up in a ball. I need a corpsman, she thought miserably amid the din and light. Wake Dixie up, something's wrong. Maybe a fever, that's what caused the dream, some disease around her nobody warned me about.

A bugle sounded. It awakened her back to the world the way nothing else could. Agatha snapped to attention when the company bugler blew the call to morning colors. The captain was a traditionalist at heart. No recordings piped through scratchy speakers for him. The drill of standing to the colors had been branded into her soul. It had been the first glimpse the ritual that defined the core of the Corps, performed twice a day from first day at the depot on. Back ramrod straight, she turned to face the flagpole in the center of the parade deck. While the bugler played, the raising party carried the flag without ever letting it touch the ground. Agatha saluted while the national colors were raised. The brilliant hues of the Stars and Stripes glowed almost with an inner light. So fragile, yet untouchable upon its standard flying over a foreign land. This was what she had joined the Corps for: moments exactly like this.

Calmed by the ritual, she shook off the maze of confusion. Colors meant eight in the morning. It also meant she was going to be late reporting for duty. Not too worrisome, as she had built up enough trust with her platoon's staff sergeant to skate a little. It did mean she had to hustle. Breakfast would be a cup of coffee and an energy bar today. Hurrying to the heads, she ducked into the common shower stall. Hope the water's warmed up a bit--

*SNAP*

Agatha stared at the sheared-off tap in her hand. Breathtakingly cold water streamed down her naked body.

"Shitfire!"

"Capelli, not a goddamn word," Agatha snarled. Water from her sodden utilities pooled around her boots.

"Uh--" Capelli gulped, squatting by the wheel well of a Hummer. "Aye aye, Lance-Corporal."

"So you do have a survival instinct." Agatha forced herself to unclench her fists. Happy shiny thougts, girl. Capelli hasn't given you a reason to kill him. Yet. "What's the problem, Private?"

"Wheel's stuck." He pointed at the lug nuts set in a magnetized pan by his knee. "Rim got bent in a bad pothole while on patrol, so I was going to take it off. Think we have to use a blowtorch?"

"Naw, you just have the ease it off." She grabbed the tire. "Watch, you rock it back and forth, little bit of pressure at a time. Do it right and--"

*CRACK*

Horrified, Agatha held the wheel and the considerable portion of axle she had ripped off the Humvee.

"Like that, Lance-Corporal?"

"Dammit!"

*POP*

"God damn it, Lance-Corporal Putnam!" Gunnery-Sergeant Reyes shouted. "What the hell did you do?"

"I--I--" Agatha juggled the two halves of her M16, snapped in half at the receiver. "Just cleaning it, Gunnery-Sergeant, when it...came apart."

"These rifles don't 'come apart'," Reyes spat. He snatched the ruined rifle from her. "First I hear you bust a shower, then you turn a half-hours work on a Humvee into a circus, and now this! I'm docking you the cost of this from your pay. You're goddamn lucky I don't have you up before the skipper at office hours and bust you down a stripe."

"Maybe they're evil hands," Capelli suggested.

"I do not think 'evil hands' is a diagnosis," Dixie said. She turned Agatha's hands over, palm up. "Do they feel evil, Aggs?"

"They're goddamn annoying, is what they are!" Agatha snatched them away. Carefully, she slipped her sunglasses up to better cover her eyes. "And don't touch them, I don't know what they'll do. No sense in me doing more damage."

"Superpowers!" Capelli waved a crowbar. "You could prove it. Bend this thing in half. Hey, Dixie, check her for, you know, a spider bite. Or a weird burn. Wait, did you find a ring? A green ring?"

"Jesus Christ in a jumped-up handcar", Agatha swore. "What am I, a circus geek? Superpowers aren't possible."

"Are there any other symptoms besides--" Dixie pondered. English being her second language, she often concentrated to find the proper word. "Random destruction?"

"Eyes hurt." Agatha jabbed a thumb her Oakleys. "Not like I'm going blind. Opposite--everything gets intense. And I'm hearing things I shouldn't. Swear I could tell you what those Rangers at the other end of the mess are saying."

"That is not good." Dixie frowned. "I only can think, maybe sudden adrenaline, out of control? And the problems with your vision and hearing might be-- You have to see someone better than me. A doctor."

"C'mon, Dix", Agatha pleaded, "Gimme a no-shitter here. Cancer? I'm going crazy?"

"I--" Dixie offered an apologetic shrug. "This is not my plain--no, field. I was trained for combat medicine. If you had a sucking chest would, I might help better."

"Sucking chest wound would be more fun." Agatha sighed. "G'wan, shoo. I gotta brood for a while. Won't be fit company for either of you."

Reluctantly, her two friends left. Agatha picked listelessly at the MRE spread out on the table. It was the only meal she considered safe to eat. Her one attempt to get a meal at the chow line ended with several shattered meal trays and broken cutlery. Her ears burned red when her erratically-sensitive hearing picked up a single word: "Taz". The base was small and the Marine contingent close-knit. It didn't take long for her to get a new nickname. News of her affliction would spread even faster. I'm going to get sidelined to a desk job, she thought. Or even sent back home. All that work, just to end up in sick bay and a flight home. It isn't fair. She could delay the inevitable by not going to the company aid clinic. Eventually, though, Gunny Reyes or her platoon sergeant would figure it out. Then, bye-bye.

Resting her chin on her hand, she ate the MRE's bastardized version of a chocolate brownie. She idly watched the TV in the far corner of the mess. As usual, CNN was on. Soldiers drank news up faster than water in combat. CNN was the number-one choice of the US military to get word when something around the world went tits up. Nothing like a nice juicy disaster or civil war to get Marines panting at the screen like dogs over a case of Alpo. On rotation were the Los Angeles Cult Riots. They had been going on for the past two days. A lot of the Los Angeles area was up in flames over some crazy woman who had spread a cult like wildfire. Jasmine or some such thing. A third of the city was trying to commit suicide, a third was trying to stop them, and a third of them were behind the reporters doing stand-ups and flashing gang-signs. One small mercy was Camp Pendleton had avoided getting caught up in the trouble. Units from the 1st Marine Divison--along with half the nation's Guard units--had headed in to put down the disturbance. Almost as bad as the panic over the solar eclipse a few months ago.

Now there was something about... Agatha's jaw dropped. An entire freaking *town* had dropped into the earth? Goddamn, she had signed up to fight terrorists overseas and they were putting craters back home! No, the anchor said Sunnydale was a natural disaster. No known deaths, either. Entire town had cleared out as if they had a mass premonition. The report said that a passing flight to San Francisco had seen the collapse live at nine thirty that morning. The world was up to all sorts of craziness, Agatha mused. My own troubles are a little drop in a big bucket.

"I hear you have problems," growled Gunny Powell beside her.

"HAH!" Brownie bits sprayed from Agatha's lips. "Gunny! How'd you--"

"I'm Recon." Gunny stole a cracker from her MRE. "We're supposed to be sneaky. Now what's this about you having health problems?"

"Heard that, Gunny?" Agatha mumbled.

"Saw your tubby Private putting it away and got hypnotized," Powell explained. "Is that boy even human?"

"He had a certificate somewhere saying that." Agatha smirked. "Got lost somewhere, so we have no idea."

"Hmmmm." Powell's jaw ground the cracker to powder. "You're having control problems, distracted?"

"Yeah, I do." Agatha bowed her head. "I know. I'll go to the clinic tonight. Can't bring down the company 'cause I want to stay."

"Before you do that," Powell said, handing her a small container. "Put these in. Earplugs, we use them during chopper flights and on the range."

"Thank you kindly." Agatha tucked them into a pocket. "But that won't stop the other stuff."

"No," Gunny agreed. "On the other hand, I might be able to help you with controlling your reactions. Ever heard of tai ch'i?"

"Never heard about it." Agatha cocked her head. "That like, whatcha call it, yoga?"

"Bit like that." The gunnery sergeant rose. "Meet me next morning by the west end of the parade deck, oh seven hundred sharp. That's an order."

"Aye aye, Gunny." Agatha smiled up at him. "I right appreciate this, especially since I ain't under your command. You don't owe anything to me."

"Corps needs solid Marines," Powell said before leaving. "And I promised Hartbreaker to sea-daddy you a bit. I keep my promises."