BSG: BUMP IN THE NIGHT
DISCLAIMER: I own nothing. This is me playing in the dark. No copyright infringement is intended.
Okay, I'm picking this up about five minutes after I finished the last chapter. The original was written the same night, but I thought I needed to let it percolate a bit (ie, edit). I've got the basic idea for the end in my mind, but I'm still messing with it. The next chap is largely done, but the end needs work. I think I've got 2-3 chaps to go. I don't think this is the finale, but it's probably a crescendo. I might be able to squeeze one more cliffhanger out of it, but I don't know. I just don't want this to be too predictable.
"...And I'm sure Commander Creel is feeling the sting," Serena's warmth and sincerity seemed to glow form the protected screen. "So, to Major Sheba and Special Ops Division, as well as the rest of Green Squadron, well done. This is Serena of Intraship News signing off for tonight. Peace be with you all."
Starbuck lay on his narrow bunk, propped up on his pillow, brooding at the monitor. Even after two days of exposure, it all seemed so impossible. 'Zak and Serena are both alive and me and Apollo are dead. Boomer's a captain and Sheba's a major. If I've heard things right, even Cain's alive somewhere out there. I wonder if Athena's met him yet?'
He looked through the plexi cell door to see how Apollo was dealing with his wife being alive again. What he saw wasn't a surprise. His best friend was in the same position he'd been in for the last three hours. He was staring at the little monitor at the foot of his cell with a blank look in his eyes.
'At least the drugs have started helping.'
"Hey buddy," Starbuck called out. "How ya doin'?"
"Fine," Apollo's answer was a listless affirmation, something a distracted teen might make.
"Listen, we're not going to be in here forever, you know," Starbuck said. "Pretty soon they're going to see that we're no threat to them."
"Who are you kidding?" Dares' voice clattered up the narrow corridor from his cell. "We're gone. They're never gonna let us go and even if they do, Galactica's moved on. The commander can't wait on us and you know it."
Starbuck sighed guiltily and thumped his head back onto the hard little pillow. He hadn't told anyone anything about his 'interview'. He was the only one that knew about the plagues. He was the only one here who suspected that they were it, as far as the Galactica was concerned. He wished that he could have some of whatever they were giving Apollo.
"We're P.O.W.s with no home to go to," Dares grumbled. "We'll be doing good if we don't end up in some labor colony somewhere."
The hatch at the end of the corridor hissed open and the sound of several sets of boots began thumping against the decksole. Starbuck sat up. It had been half a day since he'd been sent back.
'Maybe they've figured it...' He wasn't prepared for what limped into his field of vision.
"Bojay," the blonde pilot all but laughed when he saw the shorter pilot hobble into view. "I thought you were in stasis." He could only reach through the circles in the door with his fingers, but reach he did. He laughed when Bojay took them. The man's flesh was warm. Alive. "What's been going on? How did you get out?"
"Yeah, these guys version anyway." Bojay clung gratefully to Starbuck's fingers, his eyes gleaming with the gratitude of knowing that though he might be far from home, he wasn't alone anymore. "The techs here said I picked up some kind of blood-borne pathogen. I had to stay immersed until they flushed it."
"Have you had time to work on the escape plan?
Bojay laughed again. "We're out of here at midnight. I've got a laundry shuttle waiting at the launchbay."
A fist pounded the glass just as Bojay was shoved forward. "No contact," the distorted voice clicked.
"What happened?" Dares asked as the yellow clad man limped forward. "We tried to come get you, but you weren't at your ship. We were afraid those things had gotten you."
One of the plexi doors further down screeched open and there was a stumbling noise as the wounded pilot was shoved inside.
"They almost did," he confirmed. "I got cut up pretty bad when I ditched in that wrecked bay. It slowed me down. Frak, those things move fast, don't they?"
There was a general assent from Starbuck, Dares and Sinon. Chira hadn't said much of anything since she'd come back from her first interrogation. Across the corridor, the blonde warrior saw that Apollo was still staring off into space.
"What are those things anyway?" Bojay asked. "I mean they're awful!"
"They're the crew of the wreck," Starbuck said. "Over here, the dead don't stay that way."
"Frak," Bojay swore wonderingly. "If I wasn't so doped up, that'd be pretty scary..."
The boots were on their way back out as the conversation continued. At first, Starbuck didn't pay any attention. They were just leaving. Then the armored pair stopped in front of his cell.
"Um. Hi guys..."
One of the guards reached out with a keycard. "Come out quietly," he said.
"What's going on? I thought you guys were done with me..."
"Orders."
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'At least I'm walking into the medbay this time,' Starbuck thought.
The door hissed open, revealing a room built out of chromium steel and whiteness. He wondered if Galactica's medbay had looked like this when it was new. A couple of the medical staff stopped what they were doing to stare as he was marched past, on his way to an intimidating bed.
"Um, you're not going to put me on that, are you?" Starbuck frowned nervously at the steel framework. It looked more like a torture device than a medical one.
"Yes, Lieutenant, we are," a familiar female voice replied. "The only question is whether you want to make yourself comfortable, or whether you want us to strap you in. The result will be the same either way."
"Cass?" Starbuck whirled quickly, causing one of his guards to take a preemptive step. He swallowed as his eyes flicked from the anonymous helmet to the face he'd wanted to see since he got here.
She obviously wasn't his Cassiopeia. Her scars just sealed the deal. War had been even more cruel to this one that the one back home. This universe's girl had been kissed by fire, but the odd coldness in her eyes wasn't ash, it was something else...
'Great. Cassiopeia, do you see me as some kind of freak too?'
A whorl of scar tissue swept the right side of her face, caressing her cheek and drifting finally into the edge of her eyebrow. It wasn't heavy or deforming, but it was easily visible. She lifted her chin slightly, proudly, as his eye lingered. It really was a medal for her, not a mark against her beauty. Starbuck found himself agreeing with the attitude.
"So, uh," he swallowed, "what are you going to do to me?"
Athena and Zak captured his eye as they walked into the room behind the nurse. Their expressions were still cautiously hard, but they didn't seem quite so hostile as before. Cass took a step to the blonde warrior's side and pressed a button. The rack clattered behind him, making him jump.
"I'm going to put a daggit tag around your neck and give you some shots. Then maybe you'll be allowed onto the rec-deck with the older kids." She stepped close to him and looked into his eyes, searching. Then her hand went to his chest and she pushed him back. "Now, you can be a good boy and you'll get some pacifier..."
Starbuck fell back onto the thing she'd just transformed into a steel chair. He blushed and reflexively volleyed back with something clever. "And if I'm naughty?"
"Electroshock," the blonde woman smiled pleasantly. "Your choice."
"Pacifier, please."
"Good boy." The blonde grinned as she walked over to her wife and brother-in-law. "Are you two going to lounge around on my counters, or are you here to help?"
"I'm here to lounge," Zak shrugged. There was a playful note in his voice, but his eyes never left the man in the chair. "I think she's here to watch. You playing doctor seems to have an effect..." A quick elbow shut him up.
"Aha," Cass grinned. "Well, just stay out of the way, okay? This will be over in a centon and he'll be all yours." She wheeled a little trolley back over to her prisoner.
"So what do these daggit tags do?" Starbuck asked. He watched her take a bit of woven metal fiber and a square locket from the top.
"They're powerful magnets, really." Cass slipped one end of the fiber into the locket, snugging it with a click. "You know how cancellation pulses work?"
"Yeah. Kind of."
Cass nodded and put the cable around his neck. "Good. This works on that principle. The universe tries to fry your brain with its magnetic field, this cancels that with a field of its own." She slipped the other end into the little metal square, feeding it through until it couldn't be pulled over his head. "Could you hold this please? Thanks."
"But what if there's no magnetic field?"
"Not an issue. Daggit tags normally only activate in the presence of high density fields." She leaned in and clipped the cable-tail short. "Of course, yours is a little different."
"Oh yeah?" Starbuck felt around his neck. He could breathe easily enough. It wasn't that tight, but he'd never get it off without cutters. "How? Has it got a tracker or something in it?"
"That too," Cass replied. She leaned in again and fiddled with the thing, doing something invisible beneath his chin. "We wouldn't want you to get lost. Elysium's a big ship, after all."
"Warstar Elysium," Starbuck murmured. "We don't have warstars where I'm from."
"Hm. So I hear." She put the cutter back on the trolley and picked up something else. She pushed the trolley out of reach and walked over to the pair not far away, passing Zak a thumb-sized remote. "Here you go. Just for the record, I don't like this."
"I don't either," Zak replied, "but we need the insurance."
"Insurance?" Starbuck asked.
"Yeah. Walk with us," the warrior replied.
Starbuck rose.
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"YOU PUT A BOMB AROUND MY NECK?!" the blonde's shout drew a couple of looks from crewmen in the corridor.
"Yep," Zak replied easily. "That's why your tag's so big. "Magnet to turn off the universe, tracker, bomb, power supply."
"You didn't think we'd just let you walk around unguarded, did you?" Athena asked. "Even our Starbuck wasn't that stupid."
"Stupid? Wait, what have you got against me... Him?" Starbuck spluttered. "I didn't do anything to you..."
"Not yet," Zak replied.
"And you're not going to get the chance to," Athena added.
"Wait a centon," Starbuck stopped in the middle of the corridor. "You didn't put on this little song and dance to prank me. What's this about? Are you mad because your 'me' kept hitting on both of you at the same time? Is that why you're giving me all this felgercarb?"
Zak and Athena blinked at the confused warrior, then at each other. Then they burst out laughing.
"You hit on both of them?" Zak laughed disbelievingly. "Are you crazy? It was all I could do to keep 'Thena from shoving you out an airlock here. If she'd been a full warrior, she would have shot you."
"Yeah, that's a recurring theme lately," Starbuck said. "So what's so funny?"
"You." Athena returned. She shook her head. "You're definitely an alien Starbuck." His bewildered expression almost started her laughing again. "I was never interested in you, fly-boy. Never."
"What? Why not?"
"Come on," Zak took his elbow and started them walking again.
"Because I've never, ever been into men," Athena replied. "I mean really, men? Ew."
"I don't know if I should be offended or not," Zak murmured.
"You're my brother, so no," the brunette replied.
The blonde warrior saw a break in their hard facade and grasped at the first straw he could. "So how did you two meet?"
She began to sober as she continued. "Well really, you met Cass first, during the relief effort on Caprica. We were without a home since... Since father..." She wiped the last of the laughter away from her eyes as she remembered her version of the Galactica. "It was at one of the satellite hospitals they set up around Typhon. You were flying the rescue shuttle that picked her up. Even banged up, she was a beauty..."
"Our Starbuck was flying shuttles," Zak interjected. He stopped at a lift hatch and pressed the summoning button. "A lot of us were. The warriors who lived, I mean. We didn't have a battlestar anymore and local search and rescue was swamped."
"Weren't you on the bridge?" Starbuck asked. Athena's sudden, black look made him flinch. "I mean, was there time to get to an escape pod, or did the commander evacuate?"
"Escape pod," Athena nodded. "I was one of the last out. Father wouldn't let me stay. Believe it or not, it was Colonel Tigh that forced me inside. He was..." She took a breath as that day began to flood her veins. "Father had taken the command console. There was a blast that had knocked Omega out... There was another as the pod chute closed. The Galactica starting blowing herself apart while I was inside..."
Zak's hand on her shoulder broke the chain. She gave him a nod and patted his knuckles.
"It was a rough ride in. After the recovery guys found me, I went to the same hospital and ended up in the same room." She chuckled a little. "You looked really surprised when you found me there. After that it was always on between us."
"Always on?" Starbuck asked as he followed Zak into the lift.
"We always had a competition going," Athena said. "I mean our Starbuck and I. We had always been interested in the same girls. Of course, you... he just wanted a good time..."
"And you didn't?" Zak jostled her shoulder.
"I always wanted more," she returned defensively. Then she shrugged. "Of course, if 'more' started with a good time, then so much the better."
"But Cass was different, I guess," Starbuck said.
"Yeah," Athena nodded. "I knew the first time we spoke that she was the one. Even when she was half covered in chelating wrap. There was just something..."
"So I guess she's on your Galactica too," Zak said.
"Yeah. Both of them, Athena and Cassie," Starbuck nodded.
"Are we... they together?" Athena asked.
"No. Our Athena likes boys. Me mostly, though I think that might be changing lately.," Starbuck replied. He looked uncomfortably at the other two occupants of the car. "I've been kind of playing one off against the other."
The others frowned simultaneously.
"I'm not trying to. Not really," Starbuck said hurriedly. "It's just you're... they're both so perfect. I mean sometimes my Athena is fire, sometimes she's ice, and Cass is just the same, but at opposite times. My Athena's a commander's daughter, so she's all class and intelligence, while Cass is more about empathy and passion..."
"And she's detonite in bed?" Athena asked.
"Oh yeah," Starbuck replied. "Of course, you're no slouch either. The other you, I mean..."
"Well, Lieutenant Starbuck, it looks like you're in a bad spot."
Starbuck looked up at the man who had died with the Peace Fleet. "Yeah. Too late now though, isn't it? If you're right, they're both gone."
There was a long pause as the weight of Starbuck's regret sank in. Both Zak and Athena seemed to feel it too. It wasn't hard to imagine the pain of being without the blonde med tech in their lives.
"We're going to find out," Zak said.
"What?"
"You're going to find out," Athena repeated. "You got yourself sent out of the first briefing..."
"But I thought your admiral was deciding what to do with us."
"He was, in a way," Zak replied. "That meeting was really a full review of all the facts. You missed Chief Seres talk about your tech. And Major Sheba's recommendations."
"I can imagine what your Major said. Give me the run down on the tech."
"You might be surprised about her, fly-boy. The medical exams you all had were pretty convincing, but the tech was the deal-breaker." Athena led the way out of the lift when the doors slid apart. "While you still were unconscious that first day, Major Sheba went back and stole your Viper. There was some battle, but it came out far better for us than Commander Creel. Chief Seres went to work on it as soon as her skids hit the deck."
"So why the runaround?" Starbuck asked. "Why all the felgercarb?"
"You've got to understand, our Cylons aren't like yours. There's no 'empire' here. There are the Deathlords, but they fight each other as much as they fight us," Zak returned. "A lot of the time we're just raw materials to them and not much else."
"Nice."
"Not really," Athena replied. "Anyway, the chief found out how your ship works. It confirmed everything that Doctor Onias' exams did, but from a different angle."
"You're not from around here," Zak broke in.
"And wherever you're from, the universe isn't as hostile," Athena continued. "Your people don't need protection against EM..."
"And you've never heard of lemmies, wraiths, lyches, just about everything that wants to make us them," Zak nodded.
"The admiral feels that, if you're not part of some insanely subtle ruse, your universe could be a source of resources for us, if not a haven for ship-building and possible colonization."
Starbuck started laughing.
"What's so funny?" Athena demanded.
"Nothing," Starbuck waved off her stiffening look. "I just hope it works out better for you than it did for us."
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It felt good to be back in his own uniform. Starbuck tugged his jacket snug as he took in his reflection. 'I feel like a warrior again,' he realized. 'Now if they'd just give me back my blaster.' He gave himself one last glance and stepped, no, he marched out of the turbo-flush pod and into the briefing room. The small crowd stared.
"That uniform looks weird," Zak observed.
"It's all the rage back home," Starbuck returned. "So what's the plan?"
"Simple enough," Boomer's voice didn't carry any of the happiness or excitement the blonde warrior's did. Indeed he looked across the light table at Starbuck as if he was some kind of insect. "You guide elements of Green Squadron and Special Ops to your home base. If there are wraiths, your escort can take care of them. If there are too many, then Silver Griffon engages with KKM's. With our superior fire control and standoff capabilities, we'll cover you while you return here. If you penetrate the wormhole and your battlestar is infected but not dead, the marines cleanse it, one section at a time."
"It's not going to be that simple," Major Sheba's voice cut into the gloom as she strode rapidly through another doorway. "Laurentia has moved."
"What?" Boomer demanded. "Laurentia hasn't moved in twenty yarens..."
"It's moved since the raid," Sheba strode into the room and pushed a data chip into the light table. Instantly a three dimensional map of the local area appeared in the air. "We're here obviously," she pointed to a small hovering glyph, the symbol of the Colonies. Then she pointed to a skull-and-crossed-swords symbol. "That was Creel's position when all this started." Her finger wandered back, pulling the skull with it. "This is his new position, twenty light centons back along this vector." She looked meaningfully at Starbuck. "This is the same vector you people came from."
"Frak," Starbuck swore. "Twenty light centons puts him on top of the hole."
"That's what we suspected as well," Sheba nodded.
"So that's it then," Zak sighed. "Scrubbed mission."
"But..."
Sheba cut Starbuck off with a raised finger. "No. Admiral's orders. We're still on."
"But there's no telling just what is in Creel's debris field," Boomer gestured to the hologram. "He's been sitting out here picking off ships since the Veldranei incursion. He could have a thousand fighters in there, or another capitol ship..."
"I thought you said that you could cover us..." Starbuck observed.
"It doesn't matter what he might have," Sheba cut them both off. "What matters is where he is and what we have to do. The mission is a 'go'."
She looked around the table, capturing every pair of eyes there. "Admiral Agathon has given orders that may prematurely end our portion of Operation Autumn." The major said that as if it were very important. From the murmurs around the table, it must have been.
"Operation Autumn?" Starbuck asked Zak.
The younger warrior leaned over to whisper. "We were out here to try and figure out if Creel was communicating with other Deathlords. Right now, he's in with Hellbloom, but there have been..."
"Our interrogations of the strangers have revealed that if we don't carry out this op, we could be in violation of the First General Order," Sheba continued.
"War always has a price..." Boomer began.
Sheba shut him down at once. "Perhaps, but it's not for civilians to pay. Admiral Agathon and I believe that there is some sort of wormhole in there. More than fifty-thousand human beings could be on the other side. Refugees. Survivors. Losers of the war we're still fighting." She looked at Starbuck and, for the first time, there was something other than raw hate in her eyes. "He and I agree that hundred of us are worth the risk, if we can save fifty thousand of them." Her gaze tracked back to the stoic Captain. "If you think otherwise, you might want to consider resigning your commission."
"Look, I agree with your decision," Starbuck tugged at the space his gun belt should have occupied. "Dis, I love it, but I don't get it. A few centars ago, you all thought I was some kind of space freak monster, now you're ready to go charging into a cloud of... of that?" He waved at the skull hovering in the air. "I don't get it."
"Um, Major," Zak broke in. "I think this is one of those 'discrepancies' Doc said might exist. I don't think Lieutenant Starbuck understands how we think on issues like this."
"Indeed," the brunette nodded. "Lieutenant Athena, tell this man where we're coming from."
Athena cleared her throat so she could be heard through the briefing room. "Our first order is to preserve life. Period." She looked over at the blonde. "I'm sure your fleet has its traditions, oaths and by-words. We have ours. Every tech on every deck, every pilot who drives a ship from warstars to tankers, fighters to shuttles all swear the same oath. 'We die, so that others will live.'"
Major Sheba took the floor. "We were angry at you for the insult we thought Creel was sending us. You wore the faces of our loved ones. Our heroes. Three yarens ago Captain Apollo of the Battlestar Galactica saved the Peace Fleet at Cimtar. He gave his life to foil treachery on the part of the Deathlords. Not even a centar later, Commander Adama took the Battlestar Galactica out of formation, rushing to the attempted murder of Caprica." The major held all their eyes and when her gaze fell once again on Starbuck, he couldn't help but straighten his spine. "Our Galactica was destroyed, obliterated by the combined might of three dreadhulks, but she bought the Colonies precious time."
"Others came from Cimtar as fast as they could break free of combat. Acropolis appeared on the scene only microns before Galactica exploded. She was on fire. Pacifica and Triton each had a single functioning bay. Like their sisters, they came on, launching their surviving fighters at the enemy. Triton crippled herself firing main battery pulsar blasts with her primary heat sinks gone. She didn't stop until the weapons fused. Solaria came as well, even streaming air and crew into the void. She was commanded by a junior grade lieutenant after the bridge and command staff were killed by a cyclonic torpedo." The dark haired woman had to mask her growing emotion with a cough. "President Adar ordered the fleet to break up, to head to other worlds while Battlestars Columbia and Thermopylae stayed behind with Warstar Olympia to finish of the wraiths. We lost a hundred thousand warriors in a single day, but they saved a hundred billion."
Her eyes tracked back across the assembled men and women in the small room. "If Admiral Agathon is right and if the strangers in our brig really are our counterparts from another universe then we were the lucky ones."
"Ladies and gentlemen, it is our belief that this is Lieutenant Starbuck of the Battlestar Galactica. If you're not on board with that, then you're relieved as of now." Her eyes locked on Starbuck. "Catch us up on the events of your side, Lieutenant."
Starbuck cleared his throat and wished fervently that Apollo were here. He was so much better at this. "We lost."
Clearly they had expected more. He shifted his shoulders uncomfortably and began again.
"Zak was a cadet at Cimtar," Starbuck nodded at the young officer. "He's the one who died short of the Peace Fleet. Apollo delivered the warning. President Adar didn't listen. Everyone started dying." He swallowed, trying to cut the pain short. "Our Commander Adama broke formation, headed for Caprica. At first I thought he was running. I didn't understand..." He cleared his throat again. "Our Galactica came to face off the baseships that had come, but she was too late. Caprica, the Tauron Colonies, Piscia, they were all gone."
He looked down at the table, surprised that the pain could remain so fresh, even after all this time. "The fleet was lost, except for Galactica. Dis, every fleet was lost. All our worlds burned, but you now how humans are. We're fracking hard to kill."
"Commander Adama ordered the exodus. Every man, woman and child that we could save was put onto whatever star capable ship we could find and we ran." The blonde man was almost whispering now. "We've been running ever since. We fight when we can, but most of the time we hide."
"Some kind of warriors you are," one of the shadowed techs muttered.
"We can't afford to stand at fight. We're it. The last battlestar. We're all they have." Starbuck looked around the room now, almost daring whoever that had been to speak again. "On our side of the hole, there are four hundred and twelve ships crammed full of people." His tracking eyes paused on Zak, then Sheba, and finally Captain Boomer. "They're all the people that there are. That's it. All of humanity on four hundred ships and most of them are junk. We're about at the end of our cable and the Cylons are always back there somewhere, like a toothmaw following some kind of blood trail in the sea."
"What do we fight for?" Zak asked. He began to look angry when no one answered. "What do we fight for?"
"We fight for life, Lieutenant." Sheba's quiet reply wasn't the gathered shout he'd probably been hoping for, but it got the point across. "That's our first General Order. We save lives. Even if it costs us our own."
Boomer sighed, expelling his old argument with his breath. It was just his way. "So when do we launch?"
"Within the centar," Sheba replied. "All of Green Squadron with us as overwatch. Lieutenant Zak will be in the leading element. Second group is yours, Boomer. Half of Silver Griffon's Adders will be next, primarily loaded for space superiority, but if anything bigger than a Type-S shows up, you'll be sporting a torp on your center rails.
"That could be expensive," Boomer observed.
"I'm sure they'll make more," Sheba retorted. "Third group will be three shuttles of marines and one with my Special Ops team. We'll also have a Boa this trip." That got a few murmurs. "Tactical commands are pretty normal; Zak, you'll command Green Squadron if we make contact. Boomer, you've got the Griffons. My XO will be in charge of the Ops team, while I'm aboard the Boa. I'll have command of the operation."
"What about me?" Starbuck asked. "Will I be on one of the shuttles?"
"Oh no," Sheba replied. "We recovered Lieutenant Bojay's Viper. You'll be in that. It's been disarmed, of course."
"Disarmed?"
"Well, we don't completely trust you yet," Sheba shrugged, "and we don't want you shooting at us."
"But..."
"When your battlestar sees you leading the formation, they'll be less likely to shoot us up," Zak supplied. He looked at Sheba for confirmation. She nodded. "Besides, you shouldn't need your guns for very long anyway."
"But Bojay's Viper is slow over here. The way your universe works..."
"Is immaterial," Sheba said. "Your engines have been tweaked. Chief Seres has managed to get the shop to cobble up an extra switch in all of out ships. It stays on our side of the hole. Off on theirs." Her gaze lighted again on Starbuck. "Don't forget. When it's on, you can move at our speeds on this side of the hole. On the other side, don't make a mistake, turn it on during the restart and then hit your turbos.
"Why not?"
"Chief Seres believes that you'll probably explode. In fact, full military power could be a bad idea, if the switch is on at the wrong time."
A/N: There ya go. Let me know if the Relief of Caprica was a bit heavy handed. I liked it, and it explained the events (and I went and dug up all the battlestars from the Peacefleet. What's the fun of an AU if you can't change things, right?).
BTW, I've got a new job. It starts in two weeks, so I hope I can wrap this up well enough. If I discover that I have time, I might even continue. Would you guys like to see more adventures in the Bump universe?