>I'm sure we'll find that she's been communicating (and doubtless a
>whole lot else) with Akio, however. She has all sorts of buttons to
>push, naturally, and he's the expert at pushing buttons. She didn't
>unravel like this on her own.
>
No, and its exactly the sort of multi leveled ... umm... ploy that both Akio and his "boss" (whom us old timers tend to see under every bed ever since Twilight came out) both excel at. And this sort of weapon, while requiring skill, doesn't take much of an investment of effort. Just 'pull the pin' and point it in the direction of your enemies and let it do the rest. Even though at this point Ms. grenade... err, Lightwalker is no longer your friend, the probability of her detonation doing more damage to the enemy than yourself is enough to make the effort to do so more than worthwhile.

And here we see yet another of the twists that make UF so fun. First we have Juniper, a child from what reads as a pretty paved over planet, who becomes an Ash Knight and defender of the world Tree, and now Ana, as a Svartelf (sorry, I still think of her mostly as her 'subtype' of 'Drow') as a fellow soldier/servitor/follower of Baldur