"John?"
"Yeah?" John said, his head popping up.
"May I speak with you?" Patrick asked.
"Sure." John said, running a hand over the back of his head. His head was mentally going over his every questionable action in the past couple of days – had he screwed up? Was he in trouble? Why else would Patrick want to talk to him?
"We will be going into battle very shortly." Patrick said, getting directly to the point.
John nodded. "I know. I'm ready."
"Perhaps you should consider staying behind."
"What?" John barked in a knee-jerk reaction. "No! Why?" He definitely wasn't the weakest link here – Teresa, Sam, he was stronger, his fighting had improved exponentially.
"You're number four." Patrick explained patiently. "You're the next one on the Mogadorian's list. They can't kill any of the others as long as you're alive. As long as you're alive, the other of the Garde cannot be killed by the Mogadorians in battle."
It began to click into place for John. "But we knew this when we started banding together." He said. "I know it was safer for us to be apart, that's why we were, all our lives. But we've been changing tactics now."
"I realize this," Patrick said. "However if you die in battle, things could go very wrong very fast. And whenever you go into a fight, dying is a distinct possibility. I want to be sure you realize that. It may be safer, for everyone, if you stayed back."
He heard the words, he understood the logic, but every fiber of him was opposed to the idea. The whole trip had been building up to this. These were the people – not even, the things – that had ruined his life, his family, that had forced him to leave Sarah. That had killed Henri. No way was he going to sit this one out.
"I understand." John said. "But that's not an option. I'm not going to spend the rest of my life hiding. Honestly there's not any guarantee I would be any safer out here on my own, I may be safer in a group. And I'm going to try my best to stay alive."
Patrick nodded. "Okay." He said, straightening back up. "I'll be looking out for you tomorrow. Just remember. You risk more lives than your own."
"I will."
"Okay."
It was most definitely dark now. It enveloped them like a blanket, covering them, hiding them, smothering them. They could have been the only ones left on the planet – or they could be surrounded by Mogs, though Ella assured him they weren't.
She was sitting in a chair facing the spaceship wreckage, Tyler next to her drawing a map of what she described.
Nightvision would have been pretty handy right about now, but John was still feeling pretty smug with lumen. No need for electricity – the magnificent 4 to the rescue! He smiled to himself, making the lights shine a little brighter.
Six smoothed out the papers in front of her, mostly messy lists of all the detail anyone knew. She seemed tense and on edge, probably in no small part due to the fact that Netoya was standing next to her, arms crossed.
"Two groups." She stated. "Thoughts."
"Good." Sam said instantly. Daniel and Patrick both nodded, and Netoya gave a curt jerk of the chin.
"Yeah." John added his consent. "But – before all that – what exactly are we going to do, once we go in there? What are we trying to do, I mean? Just kill all the Mogs?"
"The spaceship." Patrick clarified. "We need the spaceship. We will undoubtedly fight Mogadorians, but we need to keep the spaceship in tact."
"Okay. Why?" John asked.
"So we can go back. Nobody here wants to build a spaceship from scratch. And Leo can't teleport that far. Yet."
"To Lorien?"
"Yes. Where else?"
"Well, I mean, what if those aren't all the Mogs though? What if there are more? Shouldn't we try to, I don't know, figure out their plans? Capture one of their leaders?"
"The Mogadorians are not very secretive." Patrick explained. "They kill. They destroy worlds. Their mission is to kill all of you. There are surely more of them. We will never kill them all."
"But we could still kick them all out of Earth, right?"
Patrick paused. "Maybe."
"So, we're going to make sure that Earth is Mog-free before we think about going to Lorien, right?" John's gaze flickered from face to face.
"Earth will be fine." Netoya dismissed. "The Mogadorians will probably leave the planet once they realize we have left. You are their true targets."
"Probably?" John questioned, raising a hand.
"Wait – I'm with John here." Teresa said, speaking up. "What exactly is all of this? I didn't sign up for going to another planet. Is that even possible?"
"Well of course we're going to go back to Lorien." Netoya said, the irritation in her voice evident.
"That's always been the plan." Patrick said in a calmer tone. "Once the threat had lessened, once it was safe, we would return to Lorien, rebuild. I think it is clear that the time has come."
"Well I don't." Teresa said, her voice straining higher. "Sam! What do you think? You don't want to just, leave, do you?"
"Um," Sam rubbed the back of his head, eyes skittering between the many pairs no focused on him. "Actually – well, being able to travel to another planet would kind of be a dream come true for me. Sorry."
Teresa simply looked away from him. "Well I'm not going." She said, a wild look in her eye as she crossed her arms and shook her head repeatedly.
Netoya and Patrick looked at one another. John was a little shell-shocked from all the new information, but was extremely grateful to Teresa, for making him not the only one with a reluctance to leave Earth.
"You don't have to." Tyler said firmly, putting a hand on her arm. Everyone else stared at him. "Our main goal, when we all got together, was to defeat the Mogs, the Mogadorians." He said firmly. "This seems like it's their base of operations. So we attack it, we take it over. That's out mission. We can figure out our next step after that."
John nodded his agreement along with the others. It would be nice to have a decision made now, but he's right, they should finish what they can all agree on first.
"Alright." Netoya said. "But we will be having this discussion again afterwards."
Tyler and Teresa both nodded.
Six cleared her throat, shuffling her feet a bit. "So, back to business. Two teams."