"Lieutenant Yin, may I enquire as to why you're squashing this poor lad's face against a bulkhead?" Captain Mayu asked with a distant air. Her words were leagues more polite than the words Sokka would've liked to give to Yin if his mouth wasn't too busy biting rivets. Yin was unapologetic, even with Wan patting his spanner menacingly.

"He's a passenger, ma'am, and yet he's taking an unreasonable amount of interest in the running of the Gang Shen," Yin explained, "he's been seen here in the Engine Room, up on deck poking his nose into our investigations, and associated with the abducted shortly before he went missing."

"But...he ain't done nuthin'!" Shui defended unthinkingly. Sokka screwed his face trying to turn his head to one side under Yin's hand-clamp. He looked out of the extreme corner of his eye at the people surrounding him, unable to see Shui as more than an offended blur, "he's been here fer hours! He's been nuthin' but help!"

"I have to say, Lieutenant, you're treading on thin ice, evidence-wise," Mayu scolded the First Officer, "and this is a distraction from our main task, making sure the ship is safe from this abnormal threat."

"With all due respect, ma'am, you might believe this gobbledy-gook, but I have hard evidence that this 'boy' has something to do with our current situation," Yin let go of Sokka's head but kept him pressed against the bulkhead as he drew out a scroll from his pocket, "the room that came under attack is signed in his name. There's little of it left now except a lot of chewed up furniture, a great big hole, and our missing crewman, Ensign Xai, lying dead in the centre. Imagine my surprise when I realised the Gameshin who miraculously appeared in the engineering roster a few hours ago was the same Gameshin who was staying in a room with a dead crewman in it. And then imagine my surprise when that same Gameshin just so happened to be you."

Sokka's breath had been so thoroughly squeezed out of him that he couldn't respond coherently. Mayu crossed her arms, her condescending stare drifting from Yin to the disguised Water Warrior, "you have my apologies, Lieutenant. That does sound mighty suspicious."

"C'mon, yer Captainness, ye gotta give th' boy a chance ta speak," Wan reasoned, "I'm sure he's got sum' fine 'n dandy reason fer being so pokey. Don'tcha, kid?"

Sokka could see Wan inside his field of vision, but the look he gave back didn't seem very supportive. It seemed almost smug, in a 'how are you going to get out of this now, smartass?', sort of fashion. Obviously, the Chief Engineer had decided his usefulness had come to an end, and was leaving him out to dry, confident that he couldn't think of anything to get out of this mess. As much as Sokka wanted to wipe the smile off the smug curmudgeon's face, the truth was that he honestly couldn't think of a way out. He'd painted himself into a corner, and feigning innocence was no longer an option.

"Gam..." Shui broke away from the rest of the group and ran to Sokka's side, leaning down to meet Sokka's squished face at eye level, imploring "Gam, tell 'em. Tell 'em ye're an okay guy. ...Gam?" She was hoping earnestly for a sign that these people had to be wrong...that Sokka really could be trusted. Those hopeful, golden eyes made Sokka feel ashamed, because he knew he couldn't be trusted. He was a spy. And any moment now he was going to break her heart. He glanced away, unable to look into those eyes, and that way noticed something off about the pipe-covered metal surface far behind her.

"Hey..." Sokka winced, "...should that wall be leaking?"

Shui raised an eyebrow at the comment, and turned around, jerking into alertness at the sight of a panel halfway up the wall bubbling water out of its crevices. She swore under her breath, "Kaya Nu Hima..." Grabbing onto a stray hand-hold, she launched herself up onto the edge of the balcony and ran along the railing, leaping across a gap to latch her feet into a narrow foothold just above the panel, and falling backwards to look at the damage upside-down. A quick glance was all she needed, yelling "Chief! I'm gonna need help!"

Wan's eyes flitted momentarily to the God of Steel, cursing, "why ya...ye heard her! Get a spare panel an' find th' source o' th' leak! Try th' lower fuselage connection chutes! If not that, try sumthin' else! What? Ye think I jus' gave ya a holiday? Move!"

The Engine Room erupted into a flurry of activity as engineers left their stations to set about fixing the leak. Sokka, in the meantime, was getting an uncomfortable cramp from being spread across a bulkhead, "hey...uh...sir? Could you...maybe...let me go now?"

"This proves nothing, you realise?" Yin threatened. Mayu was close to ordering Sokka taken away when she paused. The bulkhead Sokka was being pressed against was starting to leak too.

"Maybe not, but I daresay that most certainly will," the Captain commented. Yin turned away to ask what the Captain was talking about, but the bulkhead rumbled as he opened his mouth. Both Yin and Sokka twisted their eyeballs warily at the loosening bulkhead, hoping that it was just the furnaces doing their own thing.

Of course it wasn't.

The two of them bounded across the room, and the Captain threw an arm up to cover her face as a torrent of water burst through the wall. The rest of the militia were swept off their feet, but the Captain remained on her feet. Being the only one in the room not either busy or being pummelled by fluid, she was also the only one to catch Wan's scared glance when her arm fell from her face. He knew something. She could tell, and asked over the roar of the burst pipe, "explanation, Chief Engineer!?"

Wan's terror evaporated into focused anger, as he wielded his spanner with renewed determination, "nature wants a fight!? I'm gonna give 'er th' fight of a lifetime!"

Mayu was momentarily distracted by the engineer that had tried standing to attention before being thrown off the balcony by the valve he was fixing exploding in a gush of seawater in his face. When she looked back up, Wan was already trying to seal a raging funnel with insane certainty. Water was bursting in from several points by now, from the floor and from the walls, filling up the Engine Room with alarming speed. She ordered the militia just now getting to their feet, "get to your feet and help him!"

Sokka pushed away the bulkhead, having been squashed against the wall. Thankfully Yin was there to take some of the pressure. The First Officer groaned painfully, which was music to Sokka's ears, but any satisfaction he might have had evaporated when faced with the hellish scene facing him. The Engine Room was flooding from several points, leading up from the depths of the ship, everyone was trying to seal it, but the flow was too strong...like it was being pushed. Sokka gulped, "...it's started..."


"Can anyone hear me!?" Lieutenant Tan screamed into tube after tube, with no appreciable effect. Hot and flustered, he glanced at the navigation instruments and shouted at the helmsman, "can't you adjust course without me ordering you to? We're starting to drift!"

"I am adjusting...course..." the helmsman complained, drifting off when an utterly terrified Xuan tore past him, practically falling at the feet of the Second Officer, huffing and puffing mercilessly.

"You have to stop them!" Xuan begged the officer, tugging at his uniform in desperation, "they...they're after me! The kids are going to kill me! Do something!"

"Do you mind? I'm in the middle of something..." Tan ignored the hyperventilating administrator and concentrated on the tubes, yelling until he was red in the face, "the lifeboats have been jettisoned! I need people up here and I can't leave the bridge! Can someone please for the love of Agni talk to me!?"

"They did it! The kids! They launched the lifeboats! They're after me! Don't let them..." Xuan squealed as he turned and scrabbled into a corner, mumbling incoherently, "oh no...oh no...oh no...they're here...they're here..."

"Shut up! I need to concentrate!" Tan scolded, ignoring everything else in the bridge...including the strangling noise coming from the wheel behind him, "okay, I know for a fact there's nothing wrong with these tubes! So stop joking around and help me you damn lazy creep...!"

Why did you take our children?

The voice that wasn't sound, emerged straight into his mind with no intermediary. And yet for some insane reason he believed it was talking through the speaking tube. Frozen in fright and shaking like a leaf, Tan leaned in to talk something resembling reason, "um...we...haven't taken your children...as far as I know. I mean...I guess we could help if you...uh...gave a description?"

Give us back our children.

Tan gulped. Sweating torrents, he pursed his lips upon realising that whatever it was he was talking to...it wasn't looking for assistance. He leaned in again, asking earnestly, "...what are you?"

GIVE US BACK OUR CHILDREN.


GIVE US BACK OUR CHILDREN.

The two lady assistants-cum-food distribution agents both looked up from their ration cataloguing to wonder what on earth could have made that voice coming out of the tube.


GIVE US BACK OUR CHILDREN.

Kyo ignored the cry, even as the others shrunk back from their march down the corridors. She wanted to know the same thing.


GIVE US BACK OUR CHILDREN.

The agonising call shocked Yin out of his haziness, and he got to his feet on the half-submerged Engine Room floor to address the Captain, who had paused in helping the others to look up at the tubes. She looked angry, and he asked carefully, "what was that?"

"That was our final warning," Mayu called to everyone in the Engine Room, "all hands! Abandon ship!"


GIVE US BACK OUR CHILDREN.

The young girl buried her head inside her mother's chest. She cradled the child, assuring her everything was alright, knowing deep down that she was lying.


GIVE US BACK OUR CHILDREN.

Katara took a step backward, still cradling Aang, to cover Toph's back. She was shaking, and could tell when they were close that Toph was shaking too. She looked down at Aang and begged fate that this wouldn't be the end. That everything wasn't lost.

In an instant, Aang's eyes opened wide and the Avatar gasped for breath.


GIVE US BACK OUR CHILDREN.

Lieutenant Tan stood dumbstruck. They hadn't a snowball's chance in the Dragon King's lair. He shut the speaking tube and muttered, "...my god."

"No," Nandi giggled next to him, "mine."


The shattering of glass made Kyo turn her head, and down the long corridor to the bridge, the rest of the world became darkness by comparison. At the end of the long tunnel...her son looked at her and smiled. He looked worn and pale, water dripping from his body and veins bulging from his skin, but he looked happy. His childish giggle sent Kyo into tears of joy.

"Nandi..." she murmured, slowly beginning a run forward, down the dark tunnel towards her child. She had believed, she had been certain, and she had been vindicated. But from the ceiling, out of nowhere, the tunnel snapped shut. Joy turned into desperation, agonised and torturous frustration, as she flew into the sealed bulkhead, an emergency measure, scrabbling her fingernails across the surface in a mad attempt to tear the whole thing off. It wouldn't budge an inch. She never stopped trying, and when she heard the other parents, accompanied by the crewmate attempting to calm them down, she screamed until her throat was sore, "he's alive! They're alive! They're right here and they're alive!"


The militia member was within a hair's breadth of getting out of the Engine Room when the bulkhead dropped down from above the door. In a snap decision, he halted right in front the door, flailing backwards as it sealed shut in front of him. If he'd tried to leap through, he would have been crushed. The militiaman wiped his brow in relief, standing up to get his behind out of the water. The burst of water were actually dying down now. Everyone else sagged. There wasn't anything else to do now.

"That was close," the militiaman laughed nervously, facing everyone else, "for a moment I thought I was a gon-AAK!"

The militiaman disappeared beneath the water-line, shocking the engineering team and Mayu's guard into taking defensive positions. The soldier had vanished without a trace.

Sokka unsheathed his boomerang, exchanging glances with a grimly determined Wan. This was it.


"Aang! We have to get out of here! There's..." Katara began, letting Aang step down into the puddle by himself, feeling stronger than ever. The water was swirling with...something. Something was circling them, watching them, but that didn't phase him in the slightest. He was calm, and he knew what was coming.

"I know," Aang interrupted the Waterbender, "there's nowhere else to go. This ends here. Now."

"With us turned into zombies, no doubt," Toph drawled pessimistically. Aang would hear none of it.

"I won't let them," he breathed deeply...angrily...fiery, "there's been too much death today. There'll be no more. Not one more."


Xuan cowered underneath the console, far in the corner, chilled to the bone even with the night-time summer air drifting in through the smashed window. There was no one else in bridge now. Except them.

He shook his head and wept. He didn't deserve this, to be the one who saw his pride and glory sent to the bottom of the sea...to be the last one to see it before he was dragged down with it. All he did was try to provide a service, to advance his reputation a little, but instead he was cradling his last sack of money like a child, while a dead child was giggling distantly and playing with the ship's controls. It wasn't fair. It wasn't fair in the slightest. What was the point of all this? Why did it have to be him? He sobbed, "please...what do you want from us?"

"Same thing you wanted from us..." Nandi turned and smiled, yanking forward hard on the accelerator lever, dripping water everywhere. His eyes went straight through Xuan, and he answered joyfully, "...death."


From the water, the Shachihoko emerged. Around the three at the bottom of the ship, and in front of the contingent in the Engine Room. They emerged on slowly rising pillars of water, the slick wetness sliding effortlessly off their smooth, white surfaces, catching in cracks that crept in from the edges of their faces. They were nothing but round faces...masks...staring at the humans with two black holes each, shaped perfectly circular, leaking water as they emerged. The holes were the only features on their cracked mask-faces. But they could tell the Shachihoko could see them. They stared into the humans' very essences, seeing more than mere appearance. They could see everything.

The mask-faces rose, not attached to anything except the pillars of water they rose on. The Shachihoko rose as if they were cloaked figures, slowly rising out of the water, consisting of nothing but water themselves. Through the water, the mask-faces formed their bodies. The Shachihoko were indistinguishable from the water they emerged from. It was as much a part of them as their faces were, and there was no point in the water where they stopped. They looked at the humans with infinite grief. And infinite rage. It was emotion unlimited by the human ability to express. The Shachihoko bled their emotion into the environment around them. The environment became their grief, and their rage.

Almost all the humans stood in terrified awe of these things, barely able to comprehend their magnificence. All except one. The Avatar stood before them, understanding their grief and their rage, but nevertheless he stood firm. No one else would die today, and he meant it.

The Shachihoko stared at humankind, their murderers, and called their endless song. The song they would scream until the end of days if they had to. They had no other songs left. The Shachihoko consumed everything around them, and were themselves consumed by a single, mindless desire...

GIVE US BACK OUR CHILDREN.


"Nothing can bring them back!" Aang cried.

The Shachihoko stared at the Avatar with their infinite gaze. They could not accept what he just said. Around the three of them, eight Shachihoko had emerged, and all at once they sprang into action. From their cloak-shaped pillars, tendrils of water burst forth, circling around until they took up most of the cavernous chamber in the depths of the ship. The dozens of tendrils twisted until they all pointed straight at Aang, and plunged.

Katara swirled her arms around at a lightning pace, and all the tendrils swerved violently into a whirlpool that surrounded the group of three. She never let her arms stop moving, and her movements were so constant that a gap in the water formed around them, leaving a part of the steel hull on which they stood perfectly dry. The Shachihoko stood firm, waiting for her arms to tire, and pressed continuously.

Protected from attack, Toph stepped forward to prepare her own response. Aang stood still, staring through the watery maelstrom at the mask-face of the Shachihoko, which stared back. Neither stirred.


Captain Mayu asserted herself through her fist, punching it forward to push her sense of righteousness and authority out of her breath and into the world, blazing fiercely as it seared the air between her and the Shachihoko. The fireball sizzled loudly when a tendril of water swished wildly in front of the mask-face, leaving nothing except a large streak of steam in the space between them. Through the steam, the spirits of rivers pressed forward.

Mayu and Yin fired blast after blast to slow their progress, and their fighting retreat just about allowed the other engineers to get behind the firebenders and climb to higher ground around the engine. At one point they even got lucky: Yin fired a blast that was deflected by a surge of water, but by chance Mayu was aiming at the same creature, and through the steam the fire blast pummelled the Shachihoko's face with great force. The cracks widened and the creature weakened, falling behind the others. Only problem was there were over a dozen 'others'. Upon trying to repeat the trick, Mayu and Yin failed. The creatures had wizened up.

The Shachihoko streaked water in front of them, advancing slowly, but Yin and Mayu kept up their withering defence. The Captain was focussed hard enough that it never dawned on her how dangerous standing with her feet in the water was. Only when Yin called out "Captain!" did Mayu realise something was tightening around her leg. All of a sudden, she was hanging upside down with a tentacle of water wrapped firmly around her ankle, a moment away from being dragged into the Shachihoko's embrace.

Then salvation came as a plume of flame cut across the length of the Engine Room, severing the tentacles. Splashing flat on her back, Mayu leant up and glanced swiftly to her left to see Shui dangling from a balcony with a hand pressed firmly down on a release valve just above a pipe connected to the furnace, which was roaring with flame. Shui yelled at the Captain, "get outta th' water!"

Mayu and Yin, lying perilously close to a wall of flame, were inclined to oblige the engineering monkey's request, hands helping the two of them clamber onto the engine itself, overloaded with engineers and militia clinging on for dear life. Sokka stood upright on the top of the engine, along with Wan. On the balcony itself, several tendrils of water snaked up to get at both Shui and the valve, but Sokka was prepared, throwing his boomerang and jumping after it, severing the tendrils and catching the weapon on its rebound to sever yet more tendrils snaking up around the firewall.

The Engine Room was being transformed into even more of a sauna than it already was, and many of the tendrils were evaporating even before they reached Sokka. He gulped down and relaxed himself as he stared through the steam at the Shachihoko...who, true to form, just stared right back.

Shui leapt back onto the balcony and peered over Sokka's shoulder, asking fretfully, "wh...whut are they? An'...whut're they waitin' for?"


Momo pointed out the nearest of them, which was all Toph needed to get started. Planting her feet into the pure steel out of habit more than anything else, she pushed a fist forward and twisted her palm back, spearing her armband through the wall of water like a dagger. Pointed straight at the Shachihoko's face, the spear gradually slowed as it was gripped in massive watery arms. Toph pressed her palm slowly forward to exert more and more pressure on the water arms, the prick of the metal-bended spear inching closer to the surface of the creature's mask-face.

Then, out of left-field, Toph twisted her left arm forward, sliding three fingers through the air. The metal on her left armband formed into three three, sharp tendrils, slicing through the water and then into the Shachihoko's face, cutting it cleanly into four long parts. The resistance being met by her spear melted away, and the parts of the mask-face splashed into the puddle. Toph reeled the metal back into her arms with another pull of her arms and twisted her head into the next direction Momo pointed.

This time, Toph stepped forward and slid both her hands forward, sliding them across each other to get her armbands to form into tendrils and slice across each other, to meet the mask-face in the middle. The Shachihoko she aimed at caught the tendrils in mid-swing, and concentrated its empty eyes on the blind girl. Toph smiled as she forced her foot sideways, bringing forth another spear to skewer the mask-face...until something stopped her foot from budging.

The Earthbending master felt something inside her leg, underneath her skin, like it was about to burst. It felt like it had become a solid lump, a useless appendage attached to her body. Angrily, she pushed against her palms harder to bring the two sets of tendrils together. But it was only a few seconds later that her arms became nothing but bulging sacks, sprung apart at a speed that left Toph breathless. Breathless and stuck. She lost control over her limbs one by one, and then lost control over her entire body, dragged off the comfortingly solid ground from the inside.

The blind Earthbender was convinced a fist was squeezing her insides, and her veins pumped by an industrial drainage pipe. She gasped as her lungs were squeezed and her chest filled to bursting by the vice-like grip that overcame her body. Katara spun around as Toph was jerked violently towards the Shachihoko, and stretched out her own arm to halt Toph in mid-air. Toph spluttered, being able to do little except grunt as she had a force behind her attempting to expel out of her blood a force dragging her forward and stretching her in all directions. Momo grabbed onto her shoulders and flapped his wings mercilessly to drag her back, and was remarkably succeeding.

Aang ran forward out of Katara's immediate protection to grab onto Toph's legs and pull. The Earthbender was dragged backwards at an agonisingly slow pace, as tendrils of metal hung limply from Toph's limbs. The well of water swirled inward as Katara was forced to concentrate on two things at once. With one arm holding Toph and the other swirling wildly, the well shrank into a small gap of floor that slowly squeezed shut a tiny bit at a time.


The Shachihoko looked distantly at the humans, at each other, and finally reached some kind of conclusion. They drifted across the surface of the water, which was still being fed by the many leaks bursting into the Engine Room, and wandered towards the nearest furnace. One of them drifted up on its pillar of seawater and leaned forward, seemingly peering into the flaming, coal-fuelled hell that powered the engine and everything else on the ship, cocking a glance from side-to-side inquisitively.

"...what's it doing?" Sokka asked out loud, witnessing the whole thing along with Shui from their vantage point above the firewall. With a growing horror, they slowly realised as they witnessed the magnificent creature extending tendrils to latch onto the sides around the opening to the furnace...and dived straight in. Steam began blasting out straight away as more water was drawn to extinguish the furnace, slowly dying into non-existence as the Shachihoko did the same. It came as a shock to Sokka...they hated humanity enough to sacrifice themselves just to destroy it.

The hull groaned and rumbled, lights dimmed, pipes burst one by one, and the Gang Shen convulsed from the permutations unleashed by the sudden release of so much steam in so short a time, coursing through the ship and damaging all sections along the way. Everyone in the Engine Room could feel it, vibrating and shaking through them. Wan clambered over to complain, loudly, "what're they doin'!? Th' ship wasn't built fer this treatment!"

"They're...killin' themselves..." Shui was shaking like a leaf, looking at Wan with eyes that had aged in the last few minutes, "why're they doin' this? Why?"

Wan opened his mouth and closed it rapidly, breathing harshly and squeezing his fists tightly in stubborn anger. He glanced at Sokka, who returned a knowing look and asked the Chief Engineer, "do you want to tell her, or should I?"

"We gotta stop 'em," Wan ignored Sokka and directed his call to everyone else in the room, "we gotta get out here an' stop 'em 'fore they blow all th' furnaces out!"

"You crazy!? We'll get picked off by flies if we go out there!" Sokka argued, flailing at Wan ineffectually.

"An' we'll get picked off if we don't! Ye got any better ideas!?" Wan shot back as another massive plume of steam rose over the whole room, setting off another rumble that burst pipes, smashed valves, and died down the firewall protecting the crew, ever so slightly. Sokka gripped the railings to keep himself from falling over, and when he looked up again, Captain Mayu had suddenly appeared on the balcony.

"Everyone! Grab what you can and get up here! Both sides! Let's make them regret messing with the Fire Nation!" the Captain ordered the crew members. After a moment's hesitation, Sokka witnessed the various crew members gearing up with militia spears, unwieldy spanners and lengths of lead piping. He knew, instantly, that they were going to get slaughtered. He looked aside at Shui. She was thinking exactly the same thing.


The rumble coursing through the ship made Katara briefly lose her footing, and for a few hair-raising seconds the well of water squeezed further inward. Straining her limbs past breaking point, the Waterbending master gained back control of the water flow enough to keep the well from shrinking faster, but it had shrunk to only a couple of yards across, and it was getting hard to keep Toph inside the wall of water. The Earthbender was strained hard, breathing in a series of gurgled gasps, and annoyed beyond all human reckoning. Aang and Momo were trying their mightiest, but time was taking its toll.

It had to be then that the Shachihoko turned the screws a little bit more, latching onto the tendrils of metal still hanging limply from Toph's limbs and tugging, slowly at first, until the bending of her arms and legs forward became noticeable to Aang. The short-haired boy yelped in fright, repositioning himself to tug harder around Toph's waist. Momo clambered onto Toph's chest and headbutted it, flapping his wings as hard as he could to keep the blind girl from plunging into the Shachihoko's grasp. It was a slowly losing battle.

At the worst possible time, another rumble coursed through the ship, dislodging pipes and snapping valves. Right above the group, a gas pipe snapped and ignited, the hot blast knocking Katara down and sending the Shachihoko's tendrils inward in a mighty collision. The force sent everyone flying, splashing some distance away from each other. While the others had the wind knocked out of them, Toph was so suddenly freed from the crushing control of the Shachihoko that she felt energised, landing on her two feet and quickly appraising the situation: she couldn't see her attackers, but the air around her should be clear, given how forcefully they were thrown.

Banking on a hunch, Toph quickly thumped her feet down and willed the metal on her arms and feet to spin and slice, mimicking the strategy Katara was using to keep the Shachihoko at bay. Her quick thinking paid dividends...another collection of objects splashed to the ground, the remains of a mask-face sliced into fragments. The remaining Shachihoko kept their distance for now, as Toph whipped up a whirlwind of iron to slice anything near her into bits.

Aang groaned as he opened his eyes again, and his senses came into sharp focus the moment a sharp piece of metal bended into thin wire sliced the air above his face. His head turned aside to look at Katara, who had been knocked out from the force of the slammed water. They were all bathed in an orange glow as the gas pipe above billowed out flame dangerously. The Shachihoko had retreated in the face of something they couldn't counter, but they were still lying in a puddle, and that made them vulnerable. Especially Katara, who was at that moment being raised on a pillar of water into the spinning whirl of metal.

"Toph! Stop!" she heard Aang cry, and instinctively she snapped the metal back into her bands. Before she could ask what the problem was, her insides constricted once again, and she was dragged back-first into the puddle.

"...ghech...Aang?..." Toph wretched, "...little help?"

Aang didn't know what to do. No bending, no ideas, nothing that could counter the six river spirits approaching slowly from all around them, passing judgement through their eyes.

To Be Continued…

Avatar: The Last Airbender Concept and Characters © Nickelodeon 2005-06


Author's Note: First of all, I want to thank everyone who gave me support after my near-end wobble at the last part. I can't thank you all enough. It's comments like these that make this whole exercise worthwhile. And I want to assure all of you that this Chapter will most assuredly be seen through to the bitter end. In fact, this part would very probably have gotten here earlier if it wasn't for me moving digs on May 31st.

And for those who didn't write to me, but still read my work and enjoyed it...I want to thank you all too. People like you go grossly underappreciated, did you know that? The passive reader. The vast majority of any readership who simply want to sit back and absorb without feeling obligated to comment on things. I salute you, my friends, because as you may have noticed from my chronic lack of reviews and favourites for other authors on FFN, in my heart I'm one of you people.

That said, I am also an attention junkie, so all comments and criticisms welcome!