TRIGUN: MOON CHILD ¤ The Oklahoma Years Chapter 3: Int with Kinza ¤ P1 ¤ Homestead Project, a trigun fanfic

Editor's Note #1: The following has parts translated by Babel Fish and edited by a lovely young lady who took Spanish way back in High School – please forgive any odd speech as we no not what we unleash at times!

Editor's Note #2: Please excuse the lack of our hosts to this story, Millie and Nicholas. They will be along as the tale progresses, but in this story we learn a bit more about some of the background characters.

TRIGUN: MOON CHILD
THE OKLAHOMA YEARS
Based on "Distant Lives" (FFN #3519328/9) from Trigun: Moon Child

Chapter Three

Interview with Kinza
Part One

The Homestead Project
By R. A. Stott

With thanks to TiredGamer for his input
Edited by S. Nordwall

Sections of this story based on The Lugia Chronicles, After Chronicles: Year of the Cat & After Chronicles: The RPGs

The chapel began to swell with parishioners as news began to filter down to the schoolhouse that Elb Kinza Farley had arrived. To the Plants of Deneb One/Gunsmoke, he had been held in high esteem for the help this alien had given them in saving them from near disaster years prior. It had been his diligence and resolve during the crisis of the Second Moon that saved those on the Third Moon, including Cindy Montgomery, the celebrated Plant of Detroit. And many still found his courts marshal to have been the worst thing to have happened to them, but admired him for demanding one when the Federation had thought better of it. "If you're not willing to make an example of me for breaking the rules, who will you then?" was his simple explanation to the court.

Their hero Kinza had returned. It had to be a miracle, right?

Was he not dead?

"Dead?" the Tomassamassa asked. He grunted as he pulled a scanning rod out to check on Millie's condition. "Well, not in this time-line," he said as he stepped over to the seated lady. He suddenly found a hand rubbing the fur on his head. He looked up to see her crying her eyes out.

"You're my Christmas gift this year Mr. Fuzzy, right?" she asked him through her tears.

Kinza swallowed. "Geeze, what did I do, go out in a blaze of glory? No, don't tell me – Knowing the future is a no – no!" He then found himself being embraced in a smothering hold. He still managed to get his readings.

"Mother and child are fine," his muffled words came from behind the constrictive hug. When he managed to get released from that grip, he found himself being swallowed up in another bawling crying fit, this time Meryl, much to Vash's amusement.

"Sorry to tell you, buddy," Wolfwood kidded his friend, "but your woman found another man – and he happens to be fuzzy!"

"I'm shocked!" Vash ribbed in mock anguish.

"You don't understand," Meryl cried to Kinza's embarrassment. "I never got the chance to thank him for coming after me when…"

"DING!" the patch on Kinza's uniform chimed. "HISTORIC ERROR - DO NOT CONTINUE… TO DO SO WILL DO POSSIBLE HISTORIC DAMAGE… SAM-System Unit 1." Meryl watched as Kinza rolled his eyes and slapped the emblem and snorted.

"Nice and delicate there SAM," he grumbled.

"I take it that is someone important?" Puruu asked Vash from over the banister of the balcony where she and Xuru had been sitting while they were observing Millie's tales of Christmas past in Oklahoma.

"Puruu?" she heard before Vash could answer her. She looked down and saw the visitor looking up at her and pointing. "Xuru, you too?"

"Well, he certainly knows us," the demon giggled as she watched him squirm.

"Aw, scragg, you're kids!" he said. His patch chimed again, making him swat his chest.

"Oooh, you know us when we're older?" Xuru giggled with a coy wink. Kinza blinked.

"Oy," he said. "Look folks, the only reason I'm here is because Exeter was the nearest available ship within the Dimensional Barrier Zone that links to this Source of yours. Since I happen to be on duty at the time and the doctor was busy in surgery, they sent me instead…" He thought for a moment about that then looked at the doorway back to the ship. "Is this why they were snickering back there?"

"Well, how often do they send the security chief to do a doctor's duty?" Wolfwood asked the Tomassamassa. Kinza rubbed his nose and pondered.

"More often than you'd think," he grunted as he was patted on the back by some of the parishioners, some of whom were showing their children to him and some of whom were just simply amazed to see a piece of their past standing before them again.

"We should tell Sara that you're here," Meryl exclaimed. "She really is the one who missed you the most!"

Kinza held his paws up. "Miss Stryfe, I appreciate it, but I am under direct code twelve orders – the less I discuss things and do my job, the less chance for contamination for the future." He was promptly bowled over by a woman with long blond hair.

"I thought I heard you!" Sara Montgomery called out as she lifted the small officer off the ground and spun him about like a stuffed doll.

"Well… it's nice to see you too," he said with more than a little bemusement in his voice. When the world stopped spinning about, he saw a man and child at the doorway looking at them. "Hi…" he said to them. "Family?"

Sara looked hard at the Tomassamassa. "You… you don't know me, do you?" she asked.

Kinza cleared his throat and eyed the patch on his uniform as he heard a warning chirp come from it. "I know of you, but no, at this time you and I have not met yet." The chirping ceased and he wiped his brow.

Sara put him down as he straightened his uniform. "I'm sorry we can't discuss this much more," Kinza said to her and the rest of the congregation, "but the computer system we use to prevent contamination works both ways. It warns us what not to say, and warns everyone else what not to discuss with us in the Observation Corps. As a matter of fact, when I get back, I'm going to have to have a little discussion with the duty officer about sending me here with so many folks who'd want to see me it would seem!" He growled a cat-like snarl that the children giggled over. N'ya understood it though, as he lowered his ears and curled up tight in Xuru's lap.

"What did you or North tell me once…" Wolfwood started to say while scratching his head. "Oh yes… reference point! Can you give us a reference point?"

Kinza looked at the preacher and smiled. "Relevance you men... I just got back from duty on Earth – finished in 1965."

Millie blinked as Wolfwood stepped back wishing he had not asked that. "Wait a minute…" Millie started to say.

"Whoa! Look at the time," he jumped in knowing that Millie never knew just how much help they had and the protection provided the entire time they were in the past on Earth. "I guess you need to see that duty officer now, right?" he continued as he shunted the perplexed officer to the door.

"Why didn't you ever stop in for dinner?" she asked as Wolfwood stared at her. "The children would have loved to meet you!"

Kinza yanked on his collar. "Err, it would have been nice," he said with a bit of nervousness, "but they weren't suppose to know of aliens like me."

"Ah, what a pity," she smiled.

Puruu sat back and looked down at the furry officer as he waved to everyone and departed the chapel.

"He's been expecting you."

Puruu stood at the entry ramp to the small starship. She had been greeted by another Tomassamassa – a female, slightly smaller than the officer she had seen the other day at the Forgiveness Chapel. She had moved into the past, roughly twelve years, and moved one dimensional level above the one she had come from. This Kinza Farley fellow was a tough cookie to track, even for a goddess in training. She had returned to a few weeks prior to his passing in search of information on the Saverem's. She found him on his home world of Pola-Lortos V.

She felt uneasy. He had obvious reasons for being there.

"Are you his wife?" she asked the woman Tomassamassa.

She laughed slightly. "No, I'm his sister-in-law, Koni," she replied. "Please, would you care to come in?"

Puruu looked over the spacecraft. It was simple, long and low – probably extremely fast, yet old. She felt as if it could tell many a story on its own, but the one she felt right now told her one thing. It was anchored. A starship is only anchored if berthed for a long period. The ship was there until the end.

"I-I'm sorry, I'm being intrusive," she apologized. "I must be going…"

"Please," Koni stopped her, "don't go. He's been waiting for some time now to see you. Besides, isn't this for your class project?"

"Darn tootin' it is!" Xuru barked and making Puruu jump. "What's the idea of going off without me?"

"What's all that ruckus going on out there Koni?" a deep voice said behind the girl Tomassamassa. "Oh, visitors."

A tall humanoid shape stepped down the ramp and bent over to see past the hull of the ship. Xuru and Puruu were surprised by seeing that the form was very much mechanical.

"A robot?" Xuru asked.

"No, an android… class one I would assume," Puruu corrected. "I sense a soul inside."

The mechanical man smiled. "Very intuitive, my dear!" he said. "Welcome! Welcome aboard my ship! I am Heswald Nepto, the Alman of this ship."

Xuru cocked her head. "Alman?" she asked.

"Captain I believe some would call it," the android grinned. "Please make yourselves at home!"

"They're here to see Kinza, Nepto," Koni explained to the android.

"Are they?" he exclaimed. "Well now, he is very lucky, very lucky indeed to get two lovely ladies to visit him. Mind your wings… I'm afraid Pegasus was never built with those in mind."

The ramp led up into the bridge section of the ship. Puruu and Xuru looked around as Koni excused herself to let Kinza know that his visitors had arrived. Nepto stood at a chair that faced what would be assumed the controls to the ship, his hand rubbing across its headrest.

"Mr. Kinza is a very good man," Nepto said almost nervously. "He served me well over the years as my navigator and security officer. I'm sure he'll be delighted to see you two finally… again I mean…"

Puruu looked at the android with concern. "Are you okay sir? You seem distracted…"

Nepto looked at the chair and sighed. Xuru found this mechanical man's face hard to discern – his large oval eyes never blinked. But other components – his mouth and eyebrows, allowed him to be very expressive – something necessary in one whose soul had been captured within a machine she guessed.

"I knew of your coming as well," Nepto quietly said. "Kinza told me." He drew in a deep breath, which surprised the girls, as they had not figured an android to be able to do that. "He told me that he expected a visit from you two… near the time he would leave us." The android leaned heavily against the console and looked over at them. Sorrow crossed his face that made Puruu catch her own breath. Xuru turned away as if to look around.

"Nice ship you have here," she said as she noticed a tall cylindrical device standing in the center of the room beside what she thought was the commander's chair. She could npt help feeling as if it was watching her, as it had monitor screens displaying all sorts of readouts along its middle section, and a pair of dials side by side that made it look like eyes on a metal snowman.

Nepto gave them a weak smile. "Yes… but she'll never be the same without her best pilot." He rubbed his mechanical hand over the seat-back again.

A human woman entered the bridge from one of the aft doorways. She was nearly as tall as Nepto. She had raven black hair and the greenest eyes either of the girls had ever seen. At first the woman looked a bit worried by their presence, but then she smiled and nodded towards them.

"This is Ariel," Nepto noted as he walked over to the woman, "my partner and wife."

Xuru looked between the two. "Ummm," she was about to say when Puruu cleared her throat for her to hold her comment. She leaned on the cylinder, until is spun about and the dials DID look at her.

"Do you mind?" a cranky woman's voice erupted from the device. "I'm not a leaning post, girlie! I'm the ship's computer!"

"Now Mother," Ariel said calmly, "she didn't know."

The computer huffed. "Well she keeps swatting me with her wings!"

Nepto looked sour at the unit. "Mother… cogitate!"

The unit spun about. "Oh very well," it grunted and retracted into a hole in the deck which then sealed shut with a hiss.

"She's your Mother?" Xuru asked a bit confused. "What sort of universe is this?"

Ariel laughed. "No - no, that's just the name the engineers gave her." She looked at the girls and nodded. "Koni told me that you two had arrived. Please, if you will follow me."

Nepto remained on the bridge as the trio entered the mid section of the ship and the crew's quarters. They found Koni and another Tomassamassa standing at a doorway halfway down the corridor watching them approach. She bowed to them.

"This is Lotha, Kinza's brother," she noted, "and my husband. Kinza is in here. He is resting, but is waiting for you."

Puruu bowed back to her. "Thank you your majesty," she replied as Xuru stared at her partner. She quickly joined her in bowing as well, though with less of a lean.

Koni blinked. "You knew?" she asked.

"Knew what?" Xuru asked, still a bit out of the loop.

"That you are the Queen of Pola-Lortos V? Yes m'am. You won the title in the Royal Marathon, and were the people's choice," Puruu noted then looked at their human host. "And that you are the former Queen of the planet Juantaur? Yes – I researched this level for who we may meet during our visit here from our data bank. We are allowed to do at least that with it – we just can't use it in any other way for our project, hence the reason why I thought you were someone else at first, your majesty - the files failed to give me a picture of you.."

"So that's where you were yesterday," Xuru snidely grinned. "I researched our interviewee. That's why I knew he never had a wife - and if you had waited for m, I could have told you that." She looked at the two Tomassamassa who were staring at her with trepidation. They found it interesting to see a demon with concern on her face. "How is he this morning?" she asked.

Lotha gestured to the door. "As Koni said, he's resting. He's better than the last few weeks though I believe it is the pain-killers that are keeping him now." He looked away. Puruu felt a surge go through the male cat-bear and she smiled.

"Would you rather I go in like this?" she asked.

He looked back to see that the Goddess in Training had become a beautiful girl Tomassamassa in robes.

"Hey, no fair!" Xuru complained. "I don't even know what a Tomassamassa demon looks like!"

Puruu grinned. "They look like dogs!"

Xuru stepped back with a quite visible look of disgust on her face. "They look like what?"

Koni took Puruu's hand and gave Lotha an angry glance. "I believe he'd want to see you as he knows you," she said. "If humans can see the beauty in Tomassamassas, then I'm sure he only sees the beauty in humans."

Xuru leaned over with a smirk. "But we're not human!" she commented.

Puruu reverted to her first form. "That does not matter Xuru. It's the idea that does. Thank you, your majesty. May we enter?"

Koni smiled and opened the door. The room was dark. A large window on the outer wall was the only thing illuminating anything.

"Kinza?" she called. "Your visitors are here."

There was a coughing. "Thank you Koni… please send them in." The voice was raspy and wet, as if the speaker had the worst cold imaginable.

"Huh, I don't remember there being any windows on the outside when I flew in," Xuru said as they entered.

"It's not a real window," Kinza weakly said from the dark side of the room. "It's a projection of what would be a window if one was there… Besides, right now, I couldn't withstand direct sunlight anyway."

They turned and looked at the bed in the corner. A frail and mostly bald Kinza sat propped up by a set of fur covered pillows. He smiled the best he could his eyes showing the strain of the illness that was running through his body.

"Come closer, please," he said. "I am so happy to see you two again after so long… even if it is only the second time you actually have seen me. How is your project going?"

The two girls slowly walked up to the bed. He nodded towards the two chairs that were waiting for them. Xuru held her breath as she noticed that he had a special chair there just for her. A narrow backed seat designed especially for a person with wings sat to Kinza's right.

"Our project is coming along fine," Puruu told him as she sat to his left. "May I ask how you knew we were coming?"

Kinza coughed slightly. He wiped his mouth on a cloth and looked at her with his head resting on the pillow. "You told me, but you did so when you were much older. We will have many adventures together, though I'd hardly call this one an adventure…"

"We will?" Xuru asked. Kinza looked over at her and nodded.

"My years of service with Captain Strom and Forrestal… And then there were Robert North and his many adventures… And of course Captain Edwards and Exeter… He closed his eyes momentarily as he swallowed and returned to looking at the ceiling. "It's funny… it was with her that I first met the Saverem's… they are the topic of your project, I am correct?"

"Yes, sir," Puruu noted. He shook slightly and she thought he was in some pain. It took a moment to realize that he was laughing.

"I'm no sir, dear," he jibbed at her. "I'm just an Elb."

"Elb?" Xuru pondered.

"Lieutenant," Kinza stated. "I believe they call the rank Lieutenant. Just call me Kinza, please… after all, I'm still on duty…"

Xuru sat back. "On duty?" she cracked. "You've gotta be kidding!"

Kinza smirked. "They couldn't bear retiring me, as I would have lost my pension… besides, while the Alman is on board, he's the sir here, not me."

"Very philosophical," Xuru commented. Puruu made a slight sound of disapproval. Kinza shook his head at her.

"No – no – A good dose of sarcasm is good for you at times – clears the soul of built up tension," he said pointing slightly with his left bandaged hand. Xuru added a quick tongue stick at her partner making Kinza shake even more, a smile rolling across his face. He reached over and patted her hand that was resting on the mattress.

"You're gonna kill me dear," he kidded her. He laughed lightly. She smiled back but understood what he meant. She would have to settle down.

"Now then… What would you like to know?" he asked. He looked over at Puruu. She had a pad in her lap and a quill pen.

She shrugged. "Well, you mentioned the beginning?"

Kinza nodded. "Umm, the beginning… Our first assignment to the Saverem's was before they ever arrived…"

"Breaching the trans-dimensional barrier in five – four – three – two – one…

The space two hundred fifty miles above Earth's moon erupted in the wave fold displacement of a starship returning to normal space. Her long flat shape first glowed a yellow of the universe it had just left, shifted slightly to the red for a moment, blue next, then finally stabilized in a buff gray.

"UNS Exeter has arrived on Earth Normal Dimension Zero," the computer spoke. "Date and time at target sight – August 12th, 1893 – zero two hundred hours GMT."

Kinza looked over the set of documents and plans that had been dropped on him and his crew. He snorted and looked at the shuttle that was carrying the load of equipment he needed to pull the job off.

"Are you sure about this Kinza?" a fellow crew member asked as she looked over his shoulder. "I mean, why do you need me in on this?"

"Shadsie, you're very much needed on this project, you know that," he told the woman with the feline-like face and fur. She was not a fellow Tomassamassa – she had been rescued from another world the ship had visited by a friend of his and was now working along side them in the Observer's Special Tasks Unit. She had been merged with the cells of her own pet cat in a strange experiment using a transmat in that other universe, so she was covered in a soft gray fur, save her head, which still had her shoulder-length blond hair. Otherwise, she was still quite human, save the cat tail as well…

"A Tomassamassa's tail is a very rare thing," he would crack at her when she would snap hers in anger. "It's short, easy to miss, and even easier to kick. But just don't try it, 'cause our claws are sharper than a crack of any tail!"

"I need you there as a quick deploy agent, Shadsie," he said, "and I need you to learn the outlay of the property."

"If you say so," she said nervously. "This is my first official mission after all."

He reached over and shook her by the shoulder. "You'll do fine. Is Nightwatch ready?"

She looked over at her very special Pegasus-like horse, his long wings neatly tucked against his body. "Why are we using Nightwatch?" she asked.

Kinza looked at her then at the horse. "You're asking me? You'll have to ask Rob that one… he said something about being able to hide himself well within the group?"

Shadsie stepped over to her prized stallion. "I sure wouldn't want anything to happen to you," she said to the large black horse.

"Nothing will," he replied. "You know that I'm quite capable of cloaking myself. What better way than to become their horse?"

"We still need to get a second horse," Kinza noted. "A REAL horse, not a Cheverian."

Nightwatch snorted. "What? They don't have talking winged horses on this Earth?" he kidded him.

"Hardly," another voice said. They looked over at the man walking in from the landing bay's main hatchway. Shadsie nearly laughed out loud.

"What is with you?" she asked North as she saw what he was wearing. "Have you disavowed science for religion?" seeing him in the garb of a pastor.

He looked at himself and laughed. "Repentance! This is what I get for all the hell I put everyone through in our last mission [1]." Kinza rolled his eyes and grunted.

"Sure, NOW you request forgiveness!" he jabbed back.

North laughed. "Anyway, not really. This just happens to be my cover for this mission… While you and your crew are building the homestead, I get to set up shop at Fort Supply along with Burnside, Tolefson and a security crew from Forrestal."

Kinza scratched his head. "I was wondering about that… Why is Roy sending his chief helmsman in training out on a mission like this?"

North leaned against the table that the plans were spread across. "Tolly needs the experience. Giving him the rank of a Corporal in the U.S. Army at this time and giving him a basic command will be good training for his responsibilities. He needs the challenge. We already know he can fly a starship like his pants are on fire… now we'll see if he can use that quick wit of his for something other than showing off for all the yeomen!"

Kinza laughed. "Sure, like that'll ever happen!"

"Approaching final launch coordinates," the com alerted the bay. "All crews to their posts. Stand by for special probe launch. All flights ready for launch."

"That would be us," Kinza noted as he picked up all the papers and inserted them into a briefcase. He patted Shadsie on the back and gestured to the shuttle next to them. "Time to go."

The flight from Exeter to the panhandle region was relatively short, though Kinza's approach was done without any lights on. Even though there were few people to see his ship, and that UFO records were not kept yet, he certainly didn't want to be the first. But flying by sensors only meant for a slightly harrowing ride for the passengers. Kinza on the other hand was having a ball.

"Pack of buffalo ahead," he said with a smile.

"Where?" North asked as he squinted to see anything in the dark. "Do you see anything Shads?"

"Just a little," she replied as she noticed Kinza now grinning. "You can see those?"

"Like it were daylight, m'am," he said. "Now I could make it easier for you all to see by switching the front view to a night vision view, but personally it hurts my eyes. Five minutes to the outskirts of Fort Supply… scanners show our Conestogas are waiting for your group… umm… Pastor North is it?"

North laughed. "I guess I'm definitely going to have to study this," he said waving a Bible. "Thanks Shadsie."

She shook her head and adjusted his collar. "You're going to need it! You don't just learn that overnight."

North nodded. "I will make do, and in the mean time, you can keep me up to snuff if I make a mistake?"

"You know it mister," she said poking him on the nose with the blunt side of her clawed index finger.

The forest outside of Fort Supply hid the shuttle as they disembarked Tolefson, the security detail, Burnside and North. The security team was to march into the fort. Burnside would follow as the new operator of the fort's PX and general store using the larger of the two Conestoga wagons. North would wait until dawn to start out with the smaller wagon. He would set up in the waiting chapel that sat between the store and the Territorial Commissioner's Office. An advance team had set up the chapel to act as the central base for the upcoming operation.

Kinza and his group was the advance for the homestead. The shuttle left North behind for that location.

"Okay gents," Kinza said to the three engineers that were with them, "we build it using the same way the folk around here build them – local lumber, materials and supplies. Shadsie, if you'll hand out these…"

She looked at the two booklets she handed the engineers then back at Kinza. He smirked as he held his copies up.

"These are your guides gentlemen. These are your life lines, your bibles, your holy grails - The Sears Roebuck and Montgomery Ward catalogs. Everything we will need will be in here. We don't have to wait the customary two to three months for delivery since we have an operative in Chicago who can get most of this equipment within a day of ordering. The delay factor is normally only three or four days, so we must schedule appropriately. Dickinson, I want you to work on the barn structure. Foley, you're on the house and coop. Toll and his brother will assist you when he gets here with the first load of goodies. In the meantime use the catalogs to order up the stuff for the inside of the cabin – stove, cabinets, furniture… follow the list that we have here that was provided by the land developer union… Any questions?"

The shuttle descended towards a hill out on the outer plains. It landed near a large tree.

"Okay folks, we need to deploy the cover tent as soon as possible," Kinza ordered. "Shadsie, as soon as it's light, take Nightwatch and scout the area. Use the scanning rod to make references for our topographical maps – scanning from altitude is one thing, being on the ground is another."

Dawn on the lower prairie came up with the chirping sounds of crickets in the swaying grasses. Shadsie mounted her horse, finding that the Cheverian had used his powers and hidden his wings.

"Whoa! Lookin' pretty there Miss Shadow!" Foley grinned as he came out of the tent in his new-old clothes. For the duration, ship's uniforms were out.

Shadsie looked at the engineer with puzzlement. "Huh?" she asked.

"Ah - good idea Nightwatch," Kinza noted. "You never know when there might be someone around."

Shadsie scowled at the Tomassamassa. "What are you talking about?" she asked with a bit of perplexed anger in her voice.

"I have cloaked you as I have my wings," the Cheverian said with a whinny. "It's for your own safety."

Shadsie pulled off her riding glove and found something she had not seen in nearly ten years – a human hand without any gray fur covering it. Nightwatch felt a shiver run through his rider.

"Would you like to see what you look like?" Dickinson asked as he held out a shaving mirror.

"NO!" she shouted as she hurriedly put the glove back on. "No… no, that's okay… come one Nightwatch!" She turned the horse about and headed off towards a stand of trees at the base of the hill.

"Was it something I said?" Dickinson asked Foley.

Kinza sighed and turned on a personal cloaking device. It made his fur crawl as his form was covered in the body of a small burly man. "I don't blame her…" he said.

"Sir?" Foley asked.

Kinza snorted – or the man he had become snorted – "She's been Shadowcat for so long now… maybe she just isn't ready to be reminded of her former self."

Kinza closed his eyes and smiled. "Shadsie was always such a nice person to work with," he whispered. "Maybe it was because of all the humans I dealt with, since she was part cat herself it was easier for us to work together – I don't know… Foley and Dickinson… those clowns… I'm surprised that the buildings ever got assembled… or at least to the point that they needed to be."

"Needed to be?" Xuru asked.

He nodded. "The idea of these homesteads was that they would be nearly complete. The homesteader would finish the home and barn to their needs. But since this location wasn't a set homestead, meaning that it wasn't originally on the Oklahoma Territory Homestead Trust's list, we were needed to build it first. Of course, that allowed us to plant our sensors and devices we needed to monitor their situations better. But with these two assigned to this project… oy…"

Kinza examined the designs and blueprints and then looked at what was being erected before him. He shook his head.

Many of the shack-like structures that the homesteaders used had used timber from the local forests, some with full logs as the floor joists. The same principal was being used on the Saverem's home… except…

The first piece of flooring had been tacked to the logs. They rose and dipped and rolled over the natural shape of the logs making for an extremely uneven surface even for those standing and just looking at it.

"That's not very good, is it?" Dickinson asked. Kinza just shook his head.

"I may be wrong, but isn't the floor supposed to be put down after the walls go up?" Foley added.

Kinza pinched his eyes and grunted a "Yes." This first week had been a nightmare. The Tolls had just returned with the first batch of lumber a few days before and started in on building things without consulting the plans. It had taken a number of hours for them to remove the scorch marks from the ends of the logs.

"ROUGH HEWN means HAND CUT," Kinza had roared, "not sliced with a laser gun! Where were you two during the historic building course!?"

The boys looked at Dickinson and Foley. The two men looked skywards as Kinza stared at them. Now they were looking at this raft that was suppose to be the floor to the house and he steamed. He turned around and stomped into the tent.

"Kinza to Exeter," he grumbled as he lowered the field that made him look like a human.

"Hello Kinza," a friendly face appeared on his screen. He smirked and nodded towards her.

"Caroline, where did we find this crew I got?" he snarled, making the captain sit back.

"Who's screwing up now?" she asked.

He huffed. "Other than Shadsie and Nightwatch, name it!"

Caroline brought up the crew manifest and looked them over. "Dickinson and Foley? I thought you worked with them on your last mission."

Kinza snorted again. "Blasted time jumping is driving me nuts. You do realize I'm working with them over on the PM level as well at this minute… They're probably dropping in on the Stratus League as we speak!"

"It does get confusing," she smiled. Kinza shook his head and laughed as she continued to look over their dossiers. "Well, Dickinson does have family on Deneb One…"

"In May City, yea… Which got him in trouble with his superiors," Kinza noted as he scratched his ear, a bit less grumpy now that he was talking to his friend from back home. "Worst yet, I believe our targets are currently near his wife and son running some sort of restaurant!"

Caroline shook her head. "How'd he get hooked up with a local?"

"Long term entrenchment," Kinza said. "He and Foley were placed on Gunsmoke nearly ten years ago, which is pretty rough for an Observer when they're in real time… You don't get the luxury of being 'out of time' that way – not growing older and such. It's actually common practice as you know… but he jumped in almost as soon as he was stationed. It's got to be rough on them too, since the ruling on his case was that he could keep his family, but still had to meet his obligations with the Special Tasks Force of the Observers… What I still can't understand is why either one of those two were assigned to this mission."

Caroline leaned her head on her right hand as she spun a trackball across a screen of data. "Why is that?" she asked the monitor beside the readout.

Kinza twirled his claw through his beard. "Well, on the last mission those two were security in the Golden R. Their jobs were to protect Robert North while he was stationed there. Where did the Observation Corps get the idea they were engineers?"

Caroline leaned over and studied the screen of data. "Yes, I see… they were decorated twice for pulling him out of dangerous situation, the second time when he left that level in his rather final way."

Kinza grunted a laugh. "Being shot by your boss will do that to ya," he smirked.

"Ah, here it is," the Captain said. "They are listed as Security Engineers."

Kinza twisted his face. "What in Balkar's Beard is a Security Engineer?"

Caroline blinked. "I'm surprised at you Kinza… as a security chief you don't know?"

"Er," he choked as he thought. "Scragg, you mean they're specialists at security devices and sensors… spy-gear and such?"

"You got it, that's why they're there…"

He ran his hand over his face. "May I have the name of the ding-dong who assigned me a pair of wire-layers to BUILD a set of buildings? I wish to thank them personally!"

Caroline laughed. "I'll see what I can do about getting someone down there to help out, but the next scheduled shuttle to your location isn't for a week. You still have natives around you, and we need to keep the visits down to a minimum."

He sat in a folding chair with a thump. "That's okay. I'll do the main building… I guess I'll have to teach them as we go. Can you see if North can come up here at some time? He knows how to fling a hammer as well…"

The Captain smiled and nodded to him from his screen. "Will do," she said. She was then cut off by a yell from outside. She could only watch as Kinza jumped up and leapt out of the tent.

The Tomassamassa looked up to see the Cheverian Nightwatch above him, his concealed wings now quite exposed and beating hard against the hot updrafts that were radiating off the ground. Shadow was leaning over his side with a very angry look on her face, her cloak down as well. He then heard her do something he had heard her do only once before – she hissed in a very cat-like way that made him take a step back. Fortunately, he had not been the recipient of the feline curse. He looked down at the flooring fiasco below the tent and saw why they were hanging over his head that way.

The Tolls were looking up at her, the one brother with a leveling line in his hands, the other with a laser pistol. They had removed the flooring they had put down and had used the gun to slice the logs evenly.

"We're so sorry, Miss Shadow!" the thick accented Dickinson said apologizing to the pair over his head. "We didn't see you two coming up the hill!"

"NEXT ONE OF YOU WHO TOUCH MY GUNS ARE GOING TO EAT ITS DYLITHIUM CORE!" Kinza bellowed over the monitor on the bridge of Exeter. Caroline quickly contacted North.

"Oh my," Puruu gasped.

"Ho! Hoo that must have been some building crew!" Xuru giggled.

Kinza shook a bit as he laughed too. "They weren't skilled, that's for sure. But we did manage to get the project started, if not just slightly behind schedule. There were other delays and incidents though. That was a rough job, that's for sure…"

The buildings were finally beginning to rise from the soil. The long hot summer days seemed not to faze the Tomassamassa much, even with his fur coat, since the cloaking system that made him look like a small human came with a cooling system. It was Dickinson, Foley and the Tolls who sweated the work. Shadow, a child of the desert, was already used to the dry-heat, so she would scout around with little to bother her.

The walls finally went up the day North and Tolefson arrived with added lumber from the depot east of Fort Supply. Locally sawn cedar was the choice for its durability and resistance to termites. They could only stay a day before returning to the Fort though, as they needed to continue their own preparations for the arrivals.

"I feel like we're going to have a baby," Kinza noted as he banged away on a wall.

"Expect it," North replied while tending to his papers he was taking back to the Fort. "There may be only two now, but the third will be here in October."

Kinza blinked at the man, stopping his stroke the hammer in his hand was about to strike. "She's pregnant!?"

Foley and Dickinson looked up from their work at those words. Shadow and Nightwatch were about to check out the creek area as well when they heard the Tomassamassa yelp.

"Rob, you know this is only a standard cabin we're making here," Kinza noted as he gestured to the spread out wood and lumber on the site. "Where do you expect to put this baby, especially in October? Isn't that the start of their winter here?"

North had shrugged. "Actually, that's still fall around here, but the coming year will bring an early cold break. They'll have the child on or around the 17th."

Kinza looked at the building site. "Wait a minute… just when are they coming here?"

North looked at his pocket watch. "Eight months, four days, six hours annnnnd about twenty-four minutes, with an added six months for temporal drift…" he read off.

Kinza stood back and dropped the hammer on the deck he was working on. "Why are we doing this so early?"

"Kinza, you know this has to look like a typical homestead site," North commented as he closed the lid to the watch and wound it. "Besides, it was also typical that these sites were built in advance by some of the Land Rights Associations, so they need to 'age' a bit."

The Tomassamassa shook his head and was about to comment some more when North's watch chimed. He popped it open again and looked at its face.

"Ah… Vash just put the hole in the Fifth Moon…" he noted.

Kinza now had a twisted expression. "Umm… yea… I was there…"

"And now you're here!" North pointed out to him. "Don't forget Kinza my lad, you're the one who taught me about temporal dynamics and time-line physics."

He picked up the hammer and gave a stubborn nail a thwack. "I hate temporal dynamics," he moaned.

Kinza watched North and Tolefson ride off to the south, but his eyes were drawn up to a set of dark billowing clouds starting to grow in size.

"Blast it – looks like a nasty storm brewing," he grumbled.

"Storms?" Puruu noticed that Kinza was shaking his head.

"I've seen storms from Altair to Rigel, been through ion storms that tear sections off ships," he noted while looking at the ceiling, "but I have never been so afraid for my life as going through an Oklahoma pan-handle thunderstorm."

"Put the fear of her father in you?" Xuru gently kidded her partner.

"And your mother," Kinza jibed back while pointing at the young demoness, "and a sister and brother to boot! They were completely unexpected, and they could wreck havoc in seconds. That was the first time we went through one of those storms that day… It was hell…"

"GET A HANDLE ON THAT TENT FLAP!" Kinza yelled through the blinding wind and driving rain. "WE'VE GOT TO GET EVERYTHING TIED DOWN!"

"WHERE'S ROB AND TOLLY!?" Shadow called as she glided Nightwatch into the rear hatch of the shuttle.

"PROBABLY UNDER SOME FORCE FIELD SHIELD, KNOWING THAT MAD SCIENTIST!" Foley yelled as he and one of the Toll's was busy lowering a section of wall they had been working on.

"OKAY, LET'S GET EVERYTHING BUTTONED DOWN AND GET INTO THE SHUTTLE!" the Tomassamassa barked. The rain was pelting down across his furry face making it hard for him to see without it flowing through his eyes. He gathered up some of his tools and started towards the ship.

His ear snapped about. He did not need to look behind him to know that something was coming.

Shadow had the same feeling and could hear the same thing. A rumbling and shaking was beginning to come up the hill towards them. Suddenly her ears popped as the air pressure dropped.

"GET INSIDE! NOW!" Kinza yelled as he grabbed the other Toll by the belt on his pants, dropped what tools he had, and ran for the open doorway of the shuttle. "SHADSIE, CLOSE THE REAR HATCH!"

Now the others could hear it as well – the sound of a locomotive rolling and thundering through the valley below. Small objects in the shuttle started to vibrate and the ship began to pitch about on its legs. Kinza quickly sealed all the doors and gave the cabin space normal pressure.

Shadsie clamored for the pilot's house where Kinza was frantically bringing systems up. The dome orb shaped windows were whited out by the hard driving rain. "Is that a tornado?" she asked.

"It sure ain't no car wash!" Kinza remarked. "I'm going to bring up the shields."

"Umm, that might not…" was all Dickinson got out when the whole ship rang with the shot of a lightning bolt crossing over its hull. Shadow felt her fur stand on end as the shield circuits fizzled.

"I was going to say," Dickinson noted, "we're the on the highest spot around, we're in a metal ship…"

"We're a lightning rod waiting to be struck," Kinza finished. He reached down beside him and grabbed a handle and yanked it. "Firing ground anchors," he reported as four thumps were felt through the floor. He then got up from his seat and grabbed Shadsie.

"Everyone to the passenger cabin!" he ordered. "I don't want anyone in the pilot's house while the shields are down right now!"

The roar of the twister was making it hard to hear him or anything else for that matter now. He brought up his local scanners on the control system in the rear and stared at it as the outside world clanked and thumped on the thick skin of the shuttle.

There was another deafening bang in the cabin as another bolt of lightning rang off the hull. This was followed by a drumming of hailstones and other debris.

"HERE IT COMES," Kinza yelled as the readouts showed the pressure dropping rapidly outside. Shadsie felt an unquenchable urge run through her, possibly from her cat side, to bolt and hide somewhere – ANYWHERE – but her human side overcame the fear. She moved to the rear to make sure Nightwatch had not been spooked by all the commotion.

To her surprise, he was simply standing there as peaceful as can be.

"It is the wind," he snorted. "Big deal."

Shadow just stared at the Cheverian until she felt an uneasy feeling in the pit of her stomach and in her knees. At first it felt like pressure pushing her down, then as if she were coming off the floor in weightlessness – odd when she knew she was in a sealed pressurized cabin.

Suddenly, the shaking of the ship got extremely violent. Small doors to cubbies and storage nooks popped open. Stray objects bounced about. In the forward cabin, the four men and a Tomassamassa were being punted about like footballs as the ship felt as if it were being shaken like a snow-globe. Kinza could hear many of the small antennae that lined the outer hull of the top of the ship getting wrenched off, or at least well bent.

The last set of sounds they heard over the din of the constant roar of the vortexes started with what Foley later described as the sound of a million eggs being crunched under a ten-ton weight. It was a sudden, unpleasant crushing and no one knew where it had come from at first, but it was also the last major banging noise that crashed across the hull, as the cataclysmic cacophony suddenly died down and moved off.

What was left was piercing through both Kinza's and Shadow's delicate ears though. To the others, it sounded like a mad teapot on a much too hot stove. Kinza looked over the readings on his screen, now that it had returned to normal, and he quickly lowered the air pressure inside the cabin. The whistling stopped and peace was restored momentarily – until there was again the crashing slap against the metal hull of a bolt of lightning as a crescendo to the mixed up natural orchestration that had been pounded over them in a matter of three minutes.

Kinza drew a breath and let his heart settle down. He slowly got onto his feet and stepped into the pilot's house. The others heard him laugh and plop down in his chair. Shadow came forward from the aft cabin and joined him up front.

"Heh," he said to her as she looked in. "'Found my hammer!" He was pointing directly in front of himself at the bubble window. There, the metal head had been stuck through the deceptively thick plexi-window, obviously at such a velocity that it had merely popped a cork-like section of itself out of the windshield. But it had been the source of the shrill sound.

The construction site was naturally a mess. The tent was gone – it wound up wrapped around an up-rooted tree some five miles away. Most of the lumber was strewn between the bottom of the hill and back over by the northern creek. The wall that Foley had been working on was still intact, but buried in rock, small bushes and some of the tools that Kinza had dropped. The floor joists that had been completed were now standing on end propped up by a large tree limb. The barn construction had been blasted to kindling, most of which wound up against the shuttle. The ship itself was a mess, but otherwise still intact, save the puncture to the windscreen and the lost antennae. What shocked the crew most was the fact that a large tree behind them, a grand old Blackstrap Oak, the lone tree on the hill only a few yards behind them, stood unscathed, almost laughing at the foolish attempt to build where they had started.

"I want a history scan of this hill," Kinza snorted as he stared at the tree. "We're here to protect this family. We might not have a choice where we put this house, but I'll be damned if I'll let this happen again."

"Did it work?" Puruu asked. "Did you manage to keep the homestead safe from storms like that?"

Kinza drew in a breath. "We lost three family members over the period from 1921 to 1979 to storms and weather related events, but never around the house we built. The homestead stood until the fall of 1970, when an F5 tornado finally caught up with that tree. That was when the remaining Saverems moved to the Los Angeles area."

Xuru rested her head on the edge of Kinza's bed. "That must have been a pain – having put so much into a place only to have it blown away like that." She noticed him shaking and found his paw rubbing her curly mop.

"It's not like it was the little shack we started with," he laughed. "By that time, the homestead had done its purpose – as a matter of fact, the destruction of the site allowed for the further distribution of the Saverems, thus allowing the family to grow properly. If they hadn't moved away, Rem would have never been born. That was the truth that the Observer Corps had to deal with all the time – cause and effect. A tornado removes the old homestead – the family disperses – one of the boys' moves to of all places Alberta, Canada, and meets an exchange student from Mexico City. They move to Scottsdale, Arizona, where they follow the Saverem tradition and proceed to have a massive family… I could never understand this group. They breed like hassents…"

"Hassents?" Puruu asked.

Kinza coughed. "A rodent of Alpha Centauri Prime… They tend to have litters of a dozen or so in a shot… The point is we needed to get them started. Once that was completed, keeping them intact was the order of the day. That meant securing the site even before they arrived. That alone could be dangerous in itself."

The Northern Canadian River meandered about behind the homestead, and the trees that lined it in a section that nearly turned back on itself were thick and full of brush. Shadow and Nightwatch went to investigate it as the reconstruction of the property resumed. It would make for a perfect 'blind' to observe from.

But she had not been the first to see this.

Kinza's communicator beeped, making him jump. It rarely chirped so when it did, he grabbed on the box.

"Hello, the Stratus Coffee House," he kidded the unit.

There was static and rustling.

"Who are you?" the voice of Shadow asked, obviously not speaking to the communicator. "What do you want?"

The security chief in Kinza kicked in immediately. He raised the com unit up and held it out in a homing scan. He hit a mute button and looked back at the two officers with him.

"Foley, Dickinson, with me," he ordered as he drew his hand laser. As he activated his cloak, the futuristic weapon was replaced in form by a standard issue Colt. He pointed at the Tolls, who were looking at him from under the foundation. "You two keep working on the cold cellar – and NO LASERS!"

Shadow had dismounted Nightwatch in her cloaked form. The Cheverian was near the north side of the creek while Shadow was checking on the south when her keen hearing heard something large in the brush. She glared hard into the thicket and saw a pair of eyes staring back at her. She quickly tapped the box hung on her belt and stepped back.

"Who are you?" she asked as she crouched down and bore her claws from behind her façade. "What do you want?"

The man leapt out of the brush with incredible speed, but still found the spot he was jumping at vacated. He looked up to see her spinning and tucked backwards in an avoidance move. She landed with a graceful three point stance ready to take on the intruder.

"Gata demonia," the bare chest man snapped at her. His skin was rough and dark with red stripes and other ornamental tattoos across his arms. His hair was long and mussed, and he had a wild look on his face, both angry at being found and surprised at how his target had avoided him.

"This is 1893 sir," Shadow huffed. "There are very few Indians left around here, unless you're a straggler… But that was Spanish you just spoke, so I'd say you're an educated one as well…"

"¡Usted no me engaña gata demonia!" he said with a grin. "¡Veo con su disfraz¡Le tendré!" He leapt again for her. But again she jumped over his grab, though she forgot about her invisible tail, which smacked him hard against his head, making him land face down in the dirt. He quickly got up laughing.

"¡Hermoso¡Usted utiliza su cola como un azote¡Pero no ESTE vez mi gatita bonito!" He sashayed to his left as Shadow followed his movements. She felt a touch of enjoyment in this little round robin they were having. It was her first real encounter since joining the Observers with North. She grinned and wiped her face with the back of her hand.

"Fine," she said as she watched Nightwatch come charging around the corner of the thicket in full flight. The man easily dodged the winged horse and took the advantage of the disturbance to leap at her again.

Shadow jumped almost straight up, and was intending on grabbing a tree branch over them when she felt a pain she hated feeling – someone grabbing her tail and yanking it. Her spine screamed as she was unceremoniously slammed to the ground.

"¡Gata diablo, usted es el mío!" he announced as he held the unseen appendage in his burly hand.

"DEVIL CAT!?" Shadow snarled. "I'll show you devil cat!" she growled as she fury swiped his chest. He stepped back as three lines of crimson trickled across his body. He looked down at the blood and gritted his teeth. He took two steps towards her.

There was a thump - Then another - Then two more. Each time, the man twitched and spasm until he dropped at her feet. Shadow scurried back a bit and looked up over the rise. Kinza was there with a less than happy expression on his face.

"Great… Just great…" he snarled as he dropped his cloak and returned his gun to its holster-less mount. "A native?" he asked Shadow. "The translator on my communicator was converting his words pretty easily… they don't normally do that for the Native American languages…"

Shadow shuddered. "He was speaking Spanish… I may have come from the southwest, but I only know a little Spanish… But the way he kept calling me Devil Cat, and the way he grabbed my tail, it was like he could see right through my disguise."

"What should we do with him?" Foley asked as Kinza turned the stunned man over.

"Nightwatch," Kinza called to the Cheverian, "can you deposit him somewhere away from here?"

"But where?" Shadow asked, worried about her horse's safety. "Where is his tribe?"

Kinza shook his head. "He's a loner. The nearest tribe is two hundred miles in that direction. From the looks of him, I'd say he wasn't even from the locals. He almost looks Navajo or Apache."

"Weren't they forced onto a reservation around here?" Shadow asked remembering some of her school lessons for years past. Kinza nodded.

"Like I said, two hundred miles that way… I had to do a security check of those before landing here. But still… Dickinson, when we get back to the shuttle, set up the short range sensors. I want to know where every living thing is around here. No more surprises, got that?"

Kinza helped Shadow up as Foley and Dickinson foisted the unconscious man onto Nightwatch's back.

"I will take him to Fort Sill," the Cheverian said, "that is where the reservation is. They will either take him in, or reject him… There is little more we can do."

"But what if he wakes up?" Shadow demanded.

Nightwatch nuzzled up to her. "You know me. I'll make sure he doesn't."

Kinza patted him on the side. "Just don't get seen as a flying horse, okay? Fly high and look like a buzzard, right?"

Nightwatch snorted. "Buzzard, indeed!" he grunted and took flight. He returned many nerve racking hours later with a mission completed.

"That must have been nerve racking," Xuru commented as she sat back in the chair.

Kinza huffed. "It wasn't the last time we would see that rascal either… he never stayed in that reservation long, and he'd take a beeline right back to the homestead each time. The third time he even broke into the house just before the arrival of our hosts for all this fun we were putting ourselves through."

Puruu scribbled her notes and leaned towards the bedridden Tomassamassa. "What did you do then?"

Kinza shook his head. "By that time, Shadsie was ready to throttle him, especially because of what he took…"

T-Minus ten hours until the drop of the settlers to their new homestead. The week leading up to this event had been spent in St. Louis for Shadow and Pastor North as they used the special funding they had from the Observer Corps to purchase clothing for Millie and Nicholas. North also had made sure things like the newspaper that would be found on the seat by Wolfwood and other subtle nuances were acquired for the home, placed and set prior to the arrival. It would be late in the afternoon when they would materialize in the closet, and the setting had to be just right.

Kinza stood at the broken doorway of the cabin with a snarl on his lips. The cold wind was whipping his fur on that chilly March morning. He did not need an intruder now, and whoever it had been managed to avoid all the alarm sensors at first. He reached up and tapped a plank of wood over the doorway. A small metallic disk appeared.

"Here's the reader sir," Foley said as he handed the security chief a scanning disk player. Kinza took the disk and inserted it.

"Scragg, it's him again," he barked. "Nightwatch!"

The Cheverian trotted around the corral near the incomplete barn structure. "What?" he called. He easily leaped over the fence and walked up to the door. He found Kinza holding up the player. "Oh no, not him again!" was his response.

"How many times has this person been on the property?" Pastor North asked with a look of anger and concern on his face.

Kinza understood the expression and snapped to. "This will be his third time sir."

North nodded. "And?" he prodded.

"Both times, I took him forcibly to Fort Sill Reservation," Nightwatch noted. "It would seem he doesn't appreciate their hospitality."

North looked at the image on the reader again. "How long was he in here?"

Kinza took the reader and punched through the controls. "It looks like about two days prior to our transmatting back in. He left about an hour ago."

"It's a good thing we brought the horses with us then," Foley noted as he and Dickinson were cleaning up from the intruder's obvious egg fetish – there were shells all over. There had been a chicken found in a heap as well, obviously meant to be a larger meal later.

"Looks like he was bloody well ready to set up shop," Dickinson remarked as he gathered the mess in a box for disposal.

North nodded. He gestured to the broken door. "Have the transmat engineers mend the door from the stored copy in their buffers. I'm sure they'll be glad to get this building out of their system by then anyway."

"Yes sir," Foley said. He then found himself being accidentally punted by Shadow as she steamed out of the pantry.

"THAT LITTLE BUGGER!" she screamed. "We have to replace a third of the stores in there, and HE TOOK THE RING!" She held up a little red tag she had tied to the ring Millie was supposed to put on.

North looked back at the open door. "What about the gun locker?"

She gestured back at the hidden fixture behind the door. "Oh yes, he tried, but the lock we put on it was too hard for him to break. We'll have to fix the damage to the surface though. I just can't believe he'd take the ring though!"

Kinza held a scanning rod up and inserted a plug into a booster box. He began a stronger scan of the local area.

"Damn, how does he do that?" he mumbled.

"What?" Shadow asked ready to do the man harm.

Kinza shook his head. "It's like he can sense when we're scanning for him. He was down in the thicket again keeping an eye on us, I would assume. As soon as I started to scan, he got up and ran."

"Does he still have the ring?" Shadow snarled.

Kinza keyed a switch on the box. "Transponder in it just kicked in. He'll be tracked now. Huh… Damn… HOW DOES HE DO THAT?"

"What? What?" Shadow shook him.

Kinza let the scanning rod dip and move as he followed the path the ring was taking. "He tossed it… its falling down a gorge along the Kiowa Creek bed he was following."

"I'LL KILL 'IM!" Shadow snarled and ran out of the building. Nightwatch looked back and forth for a moment then bolted after her.

Kinza grimaced at North. "Should we go after her?" he asked, knowing that the former scientist knew her better than he did.

North sighed. "When she gets in one of these moods, there's not much any of us can do. Where was it that you were taking this guy anyway?"

"Fort Sill," Kinza noted.

North nodded. "Are you sure he's Apache?"

Kinza shrugged. "No way of knowing, though he seems fluent in Spanish."

"Next time, send him to the Florida encampment," North ordered, "since I'm sure Shadsie will get her man, especially when she's like THAT!"

Nightwatch had to bear down to keep up with the speeding human-cat mix. Shadow sometimes did not realize just how fast she could get when pressed, or when angered. He could hear her cursing to herself, blasting the man who had foolishly ruined her work for the Saverem's.

"It took me all day to choose the right ring you idiot!" she was snarling when he finally caught up with her.

"Would you care for a lift over the river?" Nightwatch offered, but before he knew it, she had leaped the length of the water barrier and was scrambling up the far bank.

"Guess not," the Cheverian said as he unfolded his wings and took flight.

The cold wind and the stark March morning was not a deterrent to her – she wanted this pest once and for all! Kinza kept her and the Indian on his scans until the two merged.

"Ooh, what a tackle!" he commented as the signal that had been the man turned from red to blue.

"Out cold, ea?" North asked as he looked at the readings.

"Like a rock," the Tomassamassa noted as he opened his communicator.

North chuckled. "Okay, Foley, Dickinson, get this place ready again… remove any signs that this ding-dong was here."

The men snapped to and started in on the intrinsic areas, such as the blood from the chicken that had been splattered on the floor. Meanwhile, North and Kinza headed out to follow after Shadow and Nightwatch.

The Cheverian was amusing himself by hovering over the spot where Shadow had given their Indian friend a flying slam with her foot. She was now crouched beside the man glaring down at him with a sour look – he had gone down too easy for her tastes right then.

"Forgiveness my dear, forgiveness," North called through the trees as he approached the pair. "He is but a man with a fetish!"

"He's got a fetish for fur!" she yelled back. "If he calls me Devil Cat one more time…" Her tail cracked like a whip.

"I'm surprised he's not calling you a Skinwalker then," North said as he made his way across the river. "The Navajo and Apache believe in shamans and spirits that can take on the forms of animals by changing skins."

Shadow smacked the sandy soil sending a spray of cold wet dirt flying. "Blast it all! Don't ever hide my body again behind that false front again! I'm quite satisfied with what I am now!" she cried as she let out the emotions she had been holding in during the entire time they had been working on the homestead. "I'm not human – not anymore… I'm a devil cat…"

North stepped up to her and lifted her up from the ground. He held her as she wept against his chest. He brushed her head with his hand.

"Hey, we've been through this before, remember?" he calmly told her. "You are still a human, and you know it. Just because this man shows up and says that you look like a cat just means that he's observant."

She pushed away slightly and looked up at North with a half-cracked smirk on her face. "Observant, ea?" she cracked.

He placed his palm against her cheek and gently rubbed her face. "Yea. My pretty little kitty that I love. Got that?" He then kissed her and let her calm down on his shoulder.

"Okay lovebirds," Kinza broke in, "we have to get Mr. Party Crasher out of here."

"Do you want me to take him back to Fort Sill?" Nightwatch asked as he landed next to them.

"No," North said as he pulled out his communicator. "He's had three strikes – he's out. North to Exeter… transmat room…"

He woke up feeling queasy and odd. He had been in a cold windy day, now it felt warm, almost hot. He looked up and saw a blurry pair of moccasins. His vision cleared to see that they belonged to an Indian child who was looking at him from under a palm tree.

"What about the ring?" Shadow asked as they made their way back up the edge of the Kiowa Creek. She watched Kinza as he walked ahead of them with the scanning rod humming. He stopped at a point where the river dropped away from the banks and got deep. He pointed into the river with the device and she gasped. He then brought it up along the sloping edge and stopped.

"There it is," he said. He walked up the split hill and stepped closer to the edge, leaning over to examine the spot better. The ring was in the muddy northern side of the river bank. Had he thrown it at the southern side, being shielded from any spring thawing, it would have probably bounced into the water. As it was, it was too far down for him to simply grab it. He then tried the obvious.

"Kinza to Exeter… transmat room…"

"A ring?" was the response. "Are you kidding? With all the filled buffers on this ship, you expect us to be able to find a small ring with our scanners?"

"You just did a fully grown man!" Kinza barked. "You sent him on a one-way trip to Florida, all expenses paid!"

"That was a large target, not something as small as a ring!" the transmat officer barked right back.

"Fine," Kinza snapped. "Stand by…"

Kinza lay down and peered over the bank. "Hey, Rob? Hang onto my belt. I'm going to try and grab it this way," he said as he slipped closer to the edge.

North saw his attempt and grabbed him. Shadow held to North's waist as well to keep him balanced. Kinza stretched and stretched. He finally extended a claw and managed to tap the ring. His second attempted slid the ring onto the nail… just as the soft soil broke out from under North's foot, sending himself and his security officer flipping into the freezing Kiowa Creek. North had shoved Shadow back as he went over, so she fell onto her tail in time to see a shower of water launch skywards.

Kinza stood up, soggy and bedraggled, his fur plastered to his body. North then stood up beside him, his face caked in river mud. Both were cursing and looking very much worse for wear.

"I do hope you still have the ring," North asked Kinza.

The security officer examined his paw. No ring.

"You know, it's at times like this that I wished I still wore that lab coat of mine," North commented. He then looked up at the lady who was having a hard time containing herself on the bank above them.

"Oh! Oh… the looks on your faces! Oh! AH!" she was laughing even as North flung a soggy chunk of river growth at her. Now he was laughing as well, even in the freezing water.

Kinza shook his head and scanned the muddy water with the rod. The signal from the ring was no longer there. He looked behind them at the thicket of brush and trees. The scanner beeped.

"Balkar's beard, the blasted thing must have landed in there," he mumbled. "If I see that guy again, I'll be the one who will throttle him!" he then commented. "Shadsie, take the rod and look through there, would you? I think the captain and I need to see some fresh clothing."

Shadow caught the scanner barely as her giggle fit was keeping her amused.

"Shadsie!" North called, waking her from the laughing. "Eight hours!"

"Less than that!" they then heard. They looked back at Foley, who had come up along the far bank. The rotund man stood panting.

"What's up?" North asked, now showing a bit of shivering in the water.

"We just heard from the History Readers on Exeter," he reported between gasps of air. "They miscalculated. Millie and Nicholas will be landing here in roughly an hour and a half, maybe sooner – they can't pinpoint it, since the transference being created by Horloge isn't exact."

North shook his head. "No, that's not it – they're not taking time and relative dimensions into affect here… The signal is coming from Gunsmoke in the future to Earth in the past. I bet if we were to take a chronal reading right now, we'd find that they've started to arrive already, but they're in the red shift…"

"Chronal Doppler Effect," Kinza agreed. "So they'll continue to arrive until we see a blue shift in the chronal readings, right?"

North nodded, shivering. He looked up at Shadow, who was shaking her head at them.

"You're going to get pneumonia if you don't get out of that water," she advised them.

"Yes mommy," North chided her. "Exeter, two to transmat – water priority…"

Shadow watched them vanish then mounted Nightwatch as to cross the water safely.

It took only a few minutes to teleport up and back down to the site in dry clothes and fur for the two men. They found Dickinson looking curiously into the closet.

"They started to arrive?" North asked seeing a slight red glow from behind the clothing hanging there.

"Aye sir," Dickinson said. "It's rather strange looking – like they're in a stasis lock."

North and Kinza looked around him at the contents of the closet. Millie and Wolfwood were there, frozen in transit and time, a red sheen to their images as they traveled down the vortex of the Time Witch's path to their future. Kinza scanned them with a new rod he picked up on Exeter.

"They're coming along faster than expected all right," he noted. "I'd say less than an hour now."

North nodded. "Okay, replace the disk over the door and set all history recorders to zero. Clear the area, and prepare to get underway. Get Nightwatch up into the corral as soon as possible – he needs to be there when they search the property. Is our blind ready?"

"Aye sir," Dickinson replied. "Its access is ready."

North nodded. "Then let us retire to it. Let's do it!"

Dickinson flipped open his com unit. "Foley, how's Shadsie doing?"

Foley grunted. "The good news is she found the ring… the bad news is where it is."

The ring had played pachinko through the thicket. It was as far into the scrub as it could get. Shadow was tearing chunks of thick weeds and branches away to get closer, but the junk just seemed to get deeper and deeper. She had clawed as far as she could, and was sucking on one of her fingers that she had jabbed against a sharp stick. She could see the gold shining up at her and it infuriated her. She grabbed Foley's laser and took aim.

"You were trying to take my head off with one of these while you were building the cabin, now it's MY turn!" she snarled and shot at the tangled pile of wood scrub.

"Yo! YO!" Foley yelped as she sliced and burned the branches. "Don't start no fires down here! We don't want any fires goin' when they arrive!"

"That won't be for a while yet," she snapped until she looked back and saw Foley shaking his head.

"Na, that was bad information," he said. "They'll be here in less than an hour!"

"WHAT!" she yelped, her fur standing on end and her tail standing straight out. She swung about and turned the gun up full. She then used a less-than-delicate burst to remove the top layer of brush and cover.

"Vaporizing it is better than burning it, yes," Foley agreed, not wishing to get on her bad side while she had his gun.

Kinza looked down the hill towards the thicket as they were heading for the temporary blind, his ears ringing from the sound of the gun firing. "Oh goodie, she has his gun now!"

"I trained her myself on how to use one," North said as he opened the cloaked shelter that was hidden under a large stone at the base of the hill. "She'll be fine."

"But what about Foley?" Dickinson asked.

North looked over at the thicket as another shot rang out followed by a waft of steam and smoke. The cold wind was picking up as March was indeed roaring like a lion now. "Remind him to get Nightwatch up into the corral, will you?" he said as he entered the blind.

"Yes sir," he said.

"M'am," Foley started as he watched Shadow get deeper into the hole she had created in the thicket, "I've got to take Nightwatch up to the corral before they get here."

He watched as her tail would flick and spin relaying the struggle she was having with the thick growth and junk that was keeping the ring just out of reach. "Go ahead," she yelled. "I'll be only a few more minutes."

Foley swallowed and shook his head. He then patted Nightwatch on the side and gestured for him to get a move on. The Cheverian snorted and looked down on his partner then turned to trot up to the paddock area and his new partner, a chestnut filly that was always eying him. He sneezed and grunted.

"I'll see you up there," he whinnied to Shadow.

"Okay, see ya!" she replied from under the brush.

Silence filled the thicket. Shadow could only hear the sound of her own body breaking branches and twigs to get down at the ring. The rustling of the wind in the branches and a slight trickle caused by the creek only made her more determined to get at the ring – it was important to her. But it seemed to have a will of its own, as it would skip ever so slightly away just becoming out of reach again each time she would make the room to get closer. Now even the pistol was getting in the way. She had to untangle it a few times. It was beginning to infuriate her. She finally slipped it out and tossed it away. One final lunge would get the ring.

It finally slipped onto her finger. She examined it as it shown in contrast to her gray fur. She smiled and contemplated the idea of one of her own one day then smacked her head to regain reality. "Yea, right," she grinned to herself. "Time to get this back to the pantry!"

She attempted to back out, but now found herself snagged in the branches. She huffed and grunted as the anger of the situation built up inside her.

Wood shrapnel flew skywards as she furiously swiped the thicket away from herself using her razor sharp claws. She finally stood panting, looking as if she had just been cutting wood for the stove, the little chips clinging to her fur and uniform. She found the gun and slapped it to her side, then ran for the cabin.

"Final transmat cleanup of the dwelling is underway," Foley heard Dickinson report as he entered the blind. "Removal of footprints and anything deemed too out of place now completed."

"What about Shadsie?" Foley asked. "Ya know she should be heading up there about now."

"She is," North noted as he checked the monitors. "She knows protocol. She'll probably try the pantry's window."

"Hurry," Nightwatch snorted as Shadow ran past. "I can start hearing their approach!"

Shadow had to agree – ever since half way up the hill, a shrill sound has piercing her ears more than the now bitter cold wind that was rolling over the grassy fields. She shook her head as she dug the little red tag out of her pocket that she had originally had tied to the ring. She sat down on a wooden crate next to the window and pulled on the ring – which now wouldn't budge.

"Ooooohph!" she cursed as she struggled with her fur, finger and ring.

"Now settle child," Nightwatch advised. "Calm yourself, and you'll get it done."

The Cheverian was right – he always was, the pest. She closed her eyes and let her nerves stop commanding her mind. She looked to her left and saw the rain barrel. She stepped over to it and stuck her hand into its chilly water. The cat inside her shrieked.

But the ring slipped off as the finger contracted in the cold. She quickly retied it to the tag and returned to the window.

As she slipped in, the shrill was now to a low drawn out scream, and it was coming from the opposite wall from the pantry. She quickly threw open the small set of drawers and placed the object where it belonged, and where she knew Millie would find it.

"The signal's gone blue!" Kinza yelped.

There was a hard thump in the closet beside Shadow. The scream had stopped. She held her breath and dropped down in a near panic as she heard a man say "Ow… damn that smarts!"

"Damn! They're here!" She told herself. She looked at the window – it seemed a mile away now. She knew she'd have to get out through it then close it without them hearing it.

"Where the hell are we?" she heard the man continued. "What's this?"

The thin cedar planking that made up the wall was rattling from having two large adults crammed into the closet bouncing off it. Shadow crept towards the opening, waiting her chance.

"What the hell are we doing in this closet?" he asked. She heard the sound of a match being struck.

"Hey! What did you do that for?" he barked.

"There's no need to burn the house down!" Millie barked back. Shadow caught herself trying not to giggle at the Insurance Girl's jibe at Wolfwood's apparent incompetence at using a match in a closet full of clothing!

Then came Shadow's chance – she knew they were suppose to fall out of the closet – the History Readers had told them that. She climbed out and readied the window.

There it was! The pair was crashing to the floor. Just as she went to slide the window shut, she had not expected the force of those two hitting the purposefully shabby constructed floor to shake the building so. The window slammed shut, sending Shadow backwards into the grass. Even the chickens in the coop behind the cabin squawked at the sudden thump.

"Man!" she could hear Wolfwood complain. "You sure don't do things lightly, do you?"

Shadow ran over to her horse and hugged him one last time.

"Good luck," she told him.

He snorted. "Dealing with that idiot, this should be interesting," he grunted.

Shadow smiled and stroked the long white forehead diamond he had in this form. "Teach him as you taught me," she reminded him.

"Once an idiot, always an idiot," the Cheverian said using his horse sense. "At least its noble idiocy…"

"Wait until Christmas 1905," she kidded him. "I hear it's supposed to be a hoot!"

"Swell…" he mumbled. "You'd better vamoose."

Shadsie kissed him on the diamond and started for the bottom of the hill and the blind. But as she passed the corner of the cabin, she heard Millie wailing "My father is gonna KILL me! Having a child out of wedlock! Mommy is gonna SKIN me! Why did you have to die!? WHY DID YOU HAVE TO DIE!?"

Maybe it was simply the curiosity of her feline self, or even her human side telling her to look, but she peeked in on the window.

Kinza was having kittens below. North raised his hand to calm him.

"She is doing as history requires," he told him. The Tomassamassa stared at him.

"You know what's supposed to happen?" he yelled.

North glanced at him while studying the monitor. "It's a pain, isn't it? I was informed by the History Readers just prior to arriving this morning. Shadsie's next move will be necessary to draw them outside and realize they aren't on Gunsmoke anymore…"

Shadow cursed the dirty shape the glass was in now. She took her wet thumb and cleaned a small spot in the lower corner and stared in with one eye. She had to shield her vision since the sun was behind her and glaring the view.

But there they were finally… Nicholas D. Wolfwood and Millie Thompson, standing in the middle of the cabin they had built, standing over many of the clothes she had picked out for them. She smiled.

"But… But I saw you…" she heard Millie cry. "I saw Mr. Vash bury you."

Wolfwood stood upright. "Vash buried me?" he whispered to himself. Shadow moved down, as she could have sworn he had looked at her. When she peeked in again, she saw that he was still holding Millie as she sobbed against his chest.

"Hey… Heeey," the preacher cooed to his lady. He lifted her chin with his hand and looked at her big wet blue eyes. "Hey, I'm here now. I have no idea what's going on, but I'm here… wherever the hell 'here' is."

Shadow felt now would be a good time to head for the blind – she'd get an earful from them for her little bit of peeping-thomasing, but it was worth it to see they arrived safely.

What she had not noticed was the fact that she had released a catch that held the storm shutter open. The wind caught it and slammed it against the building. She crouched down, her ears plastered to her head. She moved closer to the building so she could hear the response and judge any action she needed to do.

She heard footsteps. From the sounds of the heals on wood, it must have been Wolfwood. He stepped to the rear. She heard the pantry door open. She heard him grunt. She could hear Millie's little steps shuffle about – interesting for such a large woman. Then she heard what she did not want to hear – Wolfwood was stepping towards the front door. She quickly looked about and saw a large stone below her. She leapt most of the way and landed next to it, sliding behind it and peeking up at the man who was having his face blasted by the Oklahoma wind.

"Nicholas, where are we?" Millie asked as she joined him on the porch. She clung to his arm trembling.

She was not the only one. Shadow panted hard, the emotion of the moment dragging on her. She looked down at the valley and saw the buffalo were passing by. She saw Wolfwood looking at them. She clung to the stone, hoping his legendary sight would not catch any of her movements.

Suddenly she knew how that idiot Indian felt when he knew he was being in danger of being spotted. Damn she hated that paradox!

She saw Wolfwood look back at the cabin and move back in. Millie followed.

Now! She jumped up and ran for all she was worth for the blind. She slid behind the stone and looked up the hill at the cabin and saw Wolfwood was back out on the porch. Had he seen her?

"Damn! We're on Earth!" she heard over the monitors of the blind. She peeked in and saw North and Kinza looking at her.

"Having fun yet?" North asked with a smile.

She stood up, the way he had said that meant…

"You… YOU KNEW!?" she yelped with an accusing finger shaking at North and Kinza.

Foley and Dickinson were hushing her. She threw them an angry glare that hushed them as well.

"All is going as planned," North reported to them all as he took her pointing hand in his and smiled at her. "Well done." He looked back at the others. "The blind is to be abandoned within twenty-four hours gentlemen. After that, we must give them their independence."

Kinza coughed slightly. He looked beside him and saw his sister-in-law standing there.

"Time to change the sheets, ea?" he whispered to her.

"And take your medicines," she replied. Kinza stuck his tongue out.

"Nasty stuff… If it weren't for you, I'd not take that sludge," he grimaced.

"May we assist you?" Puruu asked Koni. She smiled and nodded.

"Of course my dear," she replied. "Lifting him up to switch the bed sheets can be troublesome."

"Will this do?" Puruu asked as she crossed her arms and knitted her brow. Kinza was lifted off the mattress and held above it in a telekinetic levitation.

"Show off," Xuru grunted as she took the pillow off the bed and helped Koni swap the wet linens for dry fresh ones. Lotha stood at the doorway with the new sheets in awe of what he was seeing. He had been there ready to help move his brother, not expecting the visitors to be such help.

"I take it," Xuru asked as she fluffed up the pillow and spun it over to the fresher side, "that there is a relationship between this Robert North and this Shadow?"

Kinza snorted from his airy position. "Professor North and his Lady Shadowcat, yes I'd say there's a relationship there. It's been a long one, considering what they've been through together. But you'll see soon enough."

Puruu gently put her sick friend down on the clean mattress and drew in a breath. "We will?" she asked.

Kinza laughed. "Come now, it's rather obvious I knew you from future encounters. You'll meet them as well. Trust me, you and Shadow will become fast friends – both of you."

"Medication time," Ariel said as she wheeled a cart in around Lotha's stare.

"Yuck," Kinza snorted. He looked about at those with him and then laughed.

"What is it?" Koni asked.

He laughed a bit harder. "I'm being tended to by two Queens, a Goddess and a Demon… I must be in Bahdom's Gate!"

Xuru looked at Puruu. "Bahdom's Gate?" she asked.

"Heaven," she smirked as she readied to administer some salve to the raw arms and legs of their friend.

Xuru blew some air and grinned. "Try Hell first. It's not as bad as you'd think."

Kinza laughed until he hurt, which didn't take much. "If it's anything like being in Philadelphia with a burst water main in a small back street, then I think I can handle it!"

"Oh, you've been there?" Xuru asked.

"What, Philly?"

She smirked. "No silly, Hell…"

He smiled a broken smile at her. "Actually, I have my dear... I have indeed."

oOo

Next Episode

A sense of loss

A sense of gain

As chief of security, it is your duty to see to it that history is upheld

See to it that the losses and gains are kept within the required tolerances

You are not allowed one error

Not one

Next Episode of T:MC – The Oklahoma Years – Chapter Four – Interview with Kinza Part 2 – Family

Errors cost the future

Even if it breaks your heart

[1] See TLC – After Chronicles: The RPGs - Chapter 27 - Team Rocket's Finale Part 2 here on FFN

Special thanks to:
The USGS for their satellite photographs and research materials
& the Oklahoma Climatological Survey

Edited 1807.17

Robert North, Tolefson, Dickinson, Foley, Puruu, Xuru, Nightwatch (Diamond Mane), The Observers, Heswald Nepto (Mr. Gizmo), Koni, Lotha Farley, Kinza Farley, Ariel, Mother, GCS Pegasus, UNS Forrestal, UNS Exeter, SAM System ©2004. 18 DMS – Used with Permission
The Stratus League, Golden R ©2004, 18 The Lugia Project/DMS – Used with Permission
Burnside, Shadowcat (Shadow, Shadsie), N'ya ©2004, 18 S. Nordwall – Used with Permission
All characters from the Anime/Manga TRIGUN ©2004, 18 Yasuhiro Nightow
All characters from TRIGUN: MOON CHILD ©2004, 18 The MOON CHILD Project/DMS – Used with Permission

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