She didn't understand why people hated rain; it washed things clean and allowed for new beginnings. It watered the earth and reminded people that Nature would not be tamed. Even now, it was giving her the privacy to weep, and she let it wash away her past life.

Jac tugged on her arm, "Come on, we have to go."

†~†~†

"Lily! I told you not to wander off!" She huffed. Running around for an hour really took it out of you after sixty!

"Sorry, Auntie." The little redhead looked contrite. "Won' do it 'gain."

Lisa eyed the little imp. "Really? You said the same thing the last three times too."

"But I really mean it this time!"

Lisa sighed. "Just stay close, okay?

"'Kaaay!"

Really, taking a walk shouldn't involve stifling the desire to put a leash on the toddler.

She and Jac had been "on the run"—if such a term could be applied to what they were doing—with Alex and Mat for close to six years. They had all acquired new identities when they moved out of America. In India they had a fresh start, though getting used to some of the local food was a bit more challenging—in Lisa's opinion—than getting used to being 'Elizabeth Marshall'. The name had been Alex's choice. "Very British!" She proclaimed. Really! It's not like they were buying shirts or something! And besides, this is INDIA, not the United Kingdom. She sighed. Alex could be such a ham.

"Auntie Liza! Can we go get i'cream?"

"Haven't we had enough sugar for one day, Lily?"

"Nooo." The little redhead skipped ahead and faced Lisa, hands behind her back and that puppy-eyes look on her face. "Just a litto bit? Please?" She articulated. She managed the 'l's pretty well for a not-quite-three year old.

Lisa weighed the chances of this treat sending Lily bouncing off the wall against her own desire for some sherbet, and the fact that she would be handing the imp over to her mother in less than an hour. I am an 'aunt' after all, spoiling the kids rotten is in the job description. "All right. You want mango, or something else?"

"Mango."

"Okay! Mango ice cream, here we come!" She started to march in place.

"Silly." The little girl giggled. She skipped alongside Lisa to the candy store that had her favorite flavor.

She remembered similar summers in Kentucky with Jay and Mick. Mick was much easier to hype up on sugar than Jay. Jay had even challenged Mick to a pixie stick eating contest, sibling sadism of one kind or another, and Mick had hallucinated that everything had flipped upside down afterward, clinging like a limpet to the built-in bookshelf. She had forbidden them pure sugar candy after that.

They ordered their treats and sat under an umbrella while they ate. Lisa normally avoided going out in the sun until around three in the afternoon when it wasn't so harsh, but Lily seemed to thrive under the nearly physical assault the sunlight became around noon. Maybe Methuselah are part plant. That would explain it. The girl was getting a tan to rival some of the natives'. Ah, if only I had that kind of adaptability, but I just burn.

After washing their sticky hands with a squirt from a drinking fountain, they started the walk back to the flat where the five of them lived.

†~†~†

Alexandra looked worriedly at the window overlooking the street. Lily and Lisa weren't back yet. They had left an hour and a half ago to go for a walk and Lisa had promised to be back thirty minutes ago.

Just as she was about to break their rule of no cell phone calls she spotted a bright red mop of hair bouncing through the crowd, and after a moment's search she spotted someone with brown and grey following. She sighed with relief and put away her phone.

Once the two of them had removed their shoes and dusted off their pants—she absolutely refused to have any more street dirt tracked in than absolutely necessary—Alex sent Lily to finish cleaning up her mess from before the walk.

Apprehension curled around her stomach like a cold snake. "Lisa, I need to talk to you in private."

"Uh, sure…"

Alex herded Lisa into the sitting room and closed the door. "We might have to move again."

"They caught up so soon? We were sure to cover our tracks last time! We even got Hane to erase the public files!"

"I don't know, but if they have people watching for us wandering the street, or even a picture from a newspaper with one of us in the background…"

Lisa collapsed into a heap on the couch. "Have you told Mat or Jac yet?"

"No, and I don't know for sure if we will. It's only a hunch at this point and I'm not going to move until what I'm feeling becomes more than just a twinge in my gut. Don't worry," She anticipated Lisa's objection and cut her off, "I'm not making this less than it is. My prey instinct has gotten very sensitive over these last few years and even that isn't clamoring."

"But even so, even one close call is more than we can afford, the risk goes up exponentially every time. Even if it's just a whisper of a hunch we should pack up and go."

"Lisa, I don't think you understand how small of a hunch this is. If a normal hunch was the size of a marble, this hunch would be a virus. THAT is how small of a feeling I am talking about."

"Still…."

"Urgh. Lisa, give it a day. If I'm still feeling uneasy or you notice something we'll move immediately, okay?"

"All right."

Alex got up and opened the door to the kitchen, "What would you like? I got a delicious marsala blend from the spice shop. I promise it won't make flames shoot out of your nose like last time."

"It had better not! I thought I was going to have a heart attack!"

At that moment a brown blur, Sweetpea (once known as "Pooch"), came barging through the door and scrambled behind the couch, her spines narrowly missing poking holes in anything. It had taken a good year before the dog could keep the spikes along her back flat along her back. A gleefully shrieking Lily followed close behind and a rambunctious game of tag ensued.

Worries put aside, Lisa and Alex made a strategic retreat to the kitchen to start supper.

†~†~†

A week later, Alex had her whisper. They were getting closer, she could feel it. Centuries of caution had honed her intuition to near-psychic sensitivity, and she could feel that their time in New Delhi was coming to an end; she just hoped that they could get something set up before the first shoe dropped.

Small arms circled her ankle. "Slide Mama! Gimmie a ride p-l-ease!"

Smiling, she rolled her eyes and obligingly dragged her offspring across the floor.

†~†~†

Lisa glanced worriedly at the clock. Their contact wasn't late yet, but there was only two minutes left. She tore her eyes away from the second hand and forced herself to watch the people, and tried not to act like she was anxious. 'Tried' being the operative word in that sentence. She sighed. One minute, thirty seconds. She mentally kicked herself and focused on her wedding ring, trying to lose herself in the opal's fiery blue and green.

So of course she jumped when someone sat opposite her.

"Hi!" Said the too-red-to-be-real redhead. "I just noticed you and realized that I had the book that you lent me a while ago, so here you go. I'm finished with it and I think I'll get my own copy instead of stealing yours, though I am tempted. I liked the ending a lot, very obvious in hindsight, though it caught me by surprise the first time."

She had never seen the man in her life, but he had to be her contact since random strangers didn't return books you never lent them. She glanced at the cover. Core Being by Brandon Randall, a fiction/might-be-supernatural thriller that had been popular a while ago. It was well thumbed and a bit dog-eared and all in all looked like a favorite volume. "Thank you, I was starting to miss it. Care to join me for a bit?"

It turned out that he was a bit more of a sci-fi/fantasy fan than she was, having read such classics as Honor Harrington and Wheel of Time, and they had a fun debate on how well the predictions from old sci-fi matched up with the then-future. After their plates were clean they parted ways, and she had to restrain herself until she got home. It wouldn't do to try to decipher the code in public.

Of course, that changed the second she got inside. She barely waited until the door was closed before she kicked off her shoes and not-quite-ran into the kitchen. "Jac! Alex! Mat! The mail's in!"

Alex and Mat nearly materialized out of the air and Jac wasn't far behind. She held it out to the two non-humans. "You are faster at this than either of us."

Mat nipped the book out of her fingers and started flicking through it. After a minute or so, he had a piece of paper with a set of coordinates on it.

Jac looked at it. "Not too far from here. I think it's around the park nearby, I think I'll take a look, it's getting dark so there's less chance of someone seeing something weird." He regularly took evening strolls, so no one batted an eye; the risk was minimal and if someone asked around nothing would stand out.

He still waited about half an hour to leave though.

†~†~†

Two weeks later the boxes were packed and they were loading the little they owned into a rental van. She hated to have to move so much, it couldn't be good for Lily, but there was no helping it.

She sighed. At least the girl's family remained constant.

"Hey Alex, we have everything?"

The second floor window opened and Alexandra's voice floated out. "Yeah, that's the last of it."

"All right! Let's head out then!"

†~†~†

Lisa was sure that TREE would exact another favor at some point, but so far there had been nothing. No requests, no suggestions. Nothing. It was starting to make her nervous. There was no way that they weren't keeping tabs on this little carnival, but she had yet to see any evidence that they knew she still existed, and lately things she couldn't see made her exceedingly jumpy. She had brought it up last night after dinner and no one else had gotten any twinges either.

She realized she was grinding her teeth and forced herself to think about literally anything else. That take-out curry was quite good, I must finally be getting used to the amount of spice they add around here. What is Jacob plotting? Will there be a good view at this next place? I hope there's a bookstore nearby. Tree, bush, tree, tree, tree, field, pink flower, tree, TREE, is there going to be a request the next time? GAH!

She gave up trying to not think and started playing the squiggle game with Lily.

After turning random scribbles into a fish, turtle, landscape, man drinking coffee and a close up of a comma—the last one was Lily's attempt to thwart her by drawing a huge mass of scribble—Lisa was tired enough to nap for a while.

†~†~†

Her escape was brief.

They stopped at a motel/restaurant and got room service, and as they were mopping up the last of their meal with naan bread Alex decided to drop a bomb. One in the Tzar Bomba kiloton range.

"You know he survived, right?"

"Uh…Who survived what?"

"Adrian survived our fight."

Lisa's head tilted and she asked, "So, when are they going to pull the plug?" She joked. What? Please tell me she's not serious…

"I mean he survived survived."

Her mind was reeling and she didn't like the look on Alex's face. "What? What is it?" Please let there not be another shoe…

"The only way he could have survived the shock is if he was a Methuselah. The amount of damage they can take is far more than even the hardiest human…" Alexandra's voice trailed off. She looked distinctly uncomfortable, like she was sitting on hot coals.

"Are you suggesting that Adrian… Adrian my ex-boyfriend… IS A FREAKING METHUSELAH?" For once she didn't particularly care that she was screeching.

Alex remained imperturbable. "I used enough power to pulp a human."

"Pulp?" She hoped she'd misheard.

"Think human plus sonic blender."

Everyone flinched.

Once her head stopped reeling she was livid. "WHAT THE HELL ALEX! YOU WAIT UNTIL NOW TO TELL ME THIS? WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL ME, OH, I DON'T KNOW, SIX YEARS AGO? YOU THINK THAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN A GOOD IDEA? YOU KNOW, BACK WHEN THIS WOULD HAVE BEEN A REAL FACTOR IN HOW WE WERE PLANNING? HUH?"

Alex tactfully refrained from pointing out Lisa's shifting pronoun choices. "I wasn't sure of it until later, and by then none of us were in any position to worry about it, and…I guess I forgot about it until today." Mat and Jac were nowhere in sight. She wanted to join them; the grey hair and extra weight did nothing to diminish the threat her friend was radiating.

Lisa forced herself take a deep breath before she started yelling words Lily shouldn't learn and counted to fifty in her head.

"All right, you forgot, that's fine. But could you leave me alone for a bit? I need to process this."

She sunk into her chair and rested her head in her hands as the other woman left.

†~†~†

That night she didn't sleep. Or rather, she slept enough to dream, and then woke up in a cold sweat. The red gleam in Adrian's eyes when he threatened her. The feral gleam in both combatant's eyes as they fought to kill or cripple. A jumbled terror of running from something that was closing in, her legs heavy and the wind fighting her…and a white-haired angel. She woke up feeling like she hadn't slept a wink.

She stared into her coffee cup with the obscure hope that maybe, just this once, it would act like a crystal ball or tea leaves. Or better yet, alphabet soup.

Slowly, the other three joined her at the fold-out table and she shook her head to clear it of that silly line of thought.

Jac, looking bleary-eyed and well rested (dammit) sat down next to her and she plucked a bit of down from the pillow out of his hair. Down…feather—Angel! She suddenly remembered the image—memory—from her dream last night, and later she would remember picking up feathers among the rubble.

Mat and Alex shambled into the kitchen and helped themselves to hot coffee.

They sat in companionable silence for a while, until Lisa's face broke out in an evil smirk. "Speaking of things that should have been said long ago, I have a fuzzy memory of an angelic pair of wings adorning your back, Madame Mystery."

Alexandra looked a bit like a deer caught in headlights. She glanced at her husband and back at Lisa in a silent conversation with him.

Jac looked around the table and said, "If you'll pardon me, I think I have a taste for some fried bread this morning." He quickly vanished out the door. He tried as hard as he could to not learn anything about any of the mysteries that Lisa seemed to throw herself at. He was willing to follow his wife wherever she went, but there were some things that he didn't want to know. Namely, anything that would break his illusion that Homo sapiens was the only intelligent species on the planet and if there was another, that they weren't terrifying monsters out of legend.

Mat rolled his eyes. "Fine, go ahead. It's 'by any other name' at this point."

The corner of the other woman's mouth tilted up, and she started to explain.

Lisa could barely believe what she was hearing. Vampires that preyed on vampires that preyed on humans, who were supposedly the top of the food chain. Abilities that made all but the most powerful weapons and subtlest technologies look like child's toys. And, as the cherry on the cake, they could fly.

"Wings? You have freaking WINGS?" Had been her reaction to THAT particular bit of information.

Alex looked slightly embarrassed. "It's been called our 'true form', though technically that's not correct. It is more of an…alternate form. Some wit once called it our Berserker form—and that name is quite apt, actually. It's very similar to the Norse legends of the Viking warriors who possessed the strength of three men in their battle fury. We don't have much in the way of reason when we are that mad or desperate—you've heard of mothers lifting enormous weights off of their children? In a rational frame of mind such a thing would never be possible, but under certain conditions we can pull off things that normally would be impossible. But when we do, it's just…flashier for us, than most other species." She finished quickly, trying to cover her discomfort with speed.

"Ah…" Was Lisa's weak reply. "A simple 'Yes' would have been fine you know…"

"Of course, we train ourselves once we reach a certain age to use whatever abilities we're given, so it's not entirely dependent on emotional state."

"Unngg..." She whimpered. The always-detached scientist residing inside her skull had taken a vacation, she couldn't think of any questions to ask…then she found one.

"Are you done? Any more revelations and my brain is going to start coming out of my ears."

Mat roared with laughter.

***End Chapter 17***

Whew… Well, that was interesting. I tried to keep the OMGWTF-ing to a minimum, but… *shrugs* I think Lisa's suspension bridge over the Belief River just broke in this chapter.

I feel that I have to give credit to Darth Stitch for her version of what happened after the final battle in the anime as there are several things in her fic, "Death Shall Have No Dominion" that heavily influenced my theory of how Crusniks work biologically, as well as prompting me to write this in the first place, so if you like this, thank her.

Omake:

Shadow: *goes back and looks at the early chapters of this fic* O.O WTF? I wrote like THAT?

Lisa: =_= Yes, hon, you did.

Alex: Poor thing. *pokes Lisa* Remember how YOU used to write in high school?

Lisa: *turns greenish* Oh…

Shadow: I AM SO SORRY TO ALL OF THE CHARACTERS FOR HAVING TO PUT UP WITH SUCH A HORRIBLE STYLE! *runs away sobbing*

Lisa: T.T Now I feel horrible…