Lindsey Willows hadn't been able to concentrate all evening, and it showed in the completely scattershot condition of the homework cluttered around her desk. No matter what she tried to work on, her attention kept straying back to the object sitting at the corner of her blotter. It wasn't that she was dismayed at the idea of having a powerful firearm in her presence. She owned one herself, albeit not one quite so powerful as this. It was just that she hadn't been able to find out what she wanted to know about it right away.

Similarly, she hadn't made any progress learning about the other thing she'd wanted to know, though she had at least made a start on it. That was just a matter of waiting for the wheels she'd already put in motion to finish turning -

UUAAAAARRRGGGHHHH

- and the cry of Godzilla, cutting across her train of thought, informed her that the time for that was now. Grinning, she turned to her dataterm and informed the agent program she'd set into action an hour before that she was ready to review its results.

Half an hour later she was still mulling over what she'd just learned when her desk clock caught her eye and she realized that the other thing she'd been waiting for was at hand. Lindsey picked up the phone and hit one of the speeddial buttons, waited through a phone maze prompt, and since she knew her party's four-digit extension, she entered it now. Two rings followed, and then a click and a man's voice, as the face that went with it appeared on the pop-up vid screen:

"Crime lab, Brown."

"Hiiiii Warrick!" Lindsey sang, her smile broadening.

"... Who is this?" Warrick replied after a pause.

Lindsey sighed, remembering belatedly that the dorm phones defaulted to video off, and switched the pickup on. "It's me, Warrick. Lindsey."

Warrick grinned. "Hey, kid. Didn't recognize your voice! What are you doing up at this hour?"

"Waiting until I knew I'd catch you at your desk," Lindsey replied. "I need a favor."

Warrick eyed her. "Uh-oh. The kind of favor you can't ask your mom?"

"It's nothing bad. I think. Doesn't really even involve me, directly," she said. "But you know how Mom worries. I don't want to get her started. I just need you to run the numbers on an IPO firearm and tell me who's supposed to have it."

The investigator blinked. "An IPO - girl, what have you gotten yourself mixed up in?"

"I'm not sure yet. That's why I need the gun traced."

After a thoughtful pause in which his dark eyes scanned her face for clues, Warrick reached a decision, gave a businesslike nod, and said, "OK, shoot. What are we looking for here?"

"It's an AK23. Serial number is three charlie juliet five four niner niner tango bravo zero zero two seven."

Warrick's eyes moved from the telephone screen to another one outside the phone's field of view; she could hear typing, and a moment later, a beep.

"OK, got it. That weapon is assigned to a Detective Inspector Randall Buck, CID Special Branch."

"And where's he?"

"Uh... " There was a negative-sounding electronic blat. "Classified. Deep-cover assignment of some kind." He looked back at the phone screen. "You want to clue me in?"

"Can you give me a description of this guy Buck?" Lindsey asked.

"Human, white male, six foot two, hundred and seventy-five pounds, blond, blue, no distinguishing. The guy next door, if you live in Stockholm. Why?"

Lindsey nodded as if she'd had a suspicion confirmed. "'Cause that's definitely not the guy Kaname took this gun off yesterday."

"OK, I'm officially curious now," Warrick said.

Lindsey gave him the short version, insofar as she knew it, and then swore him to secrecy, saying, "I think he's legit, as far as he goes. I mean, if he is a skeeve, he's the most inept one I've ever even heard of. But I'd really like to know where he got this gun... "

"So would I. So would the Chief, come to that."

"Let me make a few more inquiries on this end," Lindsey said. "You might want to drop a hint to someone higher up the chain that they should check on Lensman Buck, though."

Warrick nodded. "I'll do that. And Lins?"

"Yeah?"

"Be careful."

She nodded. "Sure. You know me, Warrick."

He smiled. "That's what I'm afraid of. See you."

"Bye, Warrick." Lindsey commed off, sat thinking for a moment, then sighed at the lateness of the hour and turned once more to try getting some of her homework done.

The next morning she went downstairs to the office of the club president, who happened to be at his desk dealing with a few minor matters.

"Hey, Boba?" she asked from the doorway. "Got a minute?"

Boba Fett looked up from his work. "Sure. What's on your mind, Lindsey?"

"Well... something kind of weird is going on."

Fett smiled. "What else is new around here?" he asked. "What's up?"

Crossing to his desk, Lindsey gave him a quick run-down of the first encounter she and Kaname Sterling had had with the weird new guy, Sagara, on Thursday. She finished up by placing the weapon Kaname had taken from Sagara on Fett's desk.

"I talked to one of my contacts at IPO CSI last night," she told him, "and he dug up the Armory Section record for this piece. It's been issued to a CID Lensman, Inspector Randall Buck, and he hasn't reported it missing, but he's undercover somewhere and my contact wasn't cleared high enough to find out any details. He's going to run it by someone higher up, but in the meantime, I don't really want it kicking around my bedroom."

Fett nodded, picked up the weapon, stripped it, then put it back together, rose, and locked it in the wall safe behind the vice-president's desk.

"Should be safe enough in there until CID sends someone to get it," he said. "What about the guy Kaname took it from?"

"Well, that's where it gets even weirder," Lindsey said, and then filled him in on the events of the previous day. "I ran a third-level crawl on him when I got back to my room last night. Took my softagent an hour, but everything that came back was encouraging. He works for a security agency called TechCom Security Solutions. Heard of them?"

Fett shook his head. "No, but private security's a little outside my field."

Lindsey nodded. "Figured as much. It's part of a larger conglomerate called the Rhodos Group."

Fett raised an eyebrow. "Them I've heard of. They're what they call 'corporate security consultants' out in the Sector. Corpsec for companies too small to have their own armies. Mall cops with heavy weapons and Arm Slaves, basically. Didn't know they'd branched into bodyguarding for hire."

"Yeah, that squares with what I found," Lindsey said. "Are they legit?"

"As legit as anything is in the Corporate Sector," Fett replied, shrugging. "I've never heard of them being involved in anything seriously black-hat, if that's what you mean. They're not the Blue Suns. Are you sure this guy really works for them?"

"They've got a file on him. The ID number he gave us matches; so do the biometrics. They won't confirm what he's doing here, of course. Confidentiality."

Fett looked thoughtful, and a little doubtful. "Hmm."

"He and Kaname are supposed to meet somewhere this morning to work out the details," Lindsey went on, "and I thought it'd be good if we could have it in the Castle. She'll feel safer. Not that she's worried about him, really, but he seems so convinced she needs guarding that it's freaking her out a little... "

Fett folded his arms and leaned back against the safe, his face in a thoughtful frown. "You sure she wants to cut a deal with him? Sounds like something Odo ought to be handling to me. Or I could have a word with him if you'd rather keep it unofficial."

Lindsey shook her head. "No, I... it's hard to explain, you'd have to meet him to understand, I think, but... I think he's for real, now that his credentials have checked out. What I'd like you to do is lend us the conference room for a while, get a discreet look or two at him while he's here, and give me your impressions when he leaves."

Fett nodded. "I can do that."

Kaname Sterling arrived at the Castle promptly at 0930 hours, as Lindsey had proposed by telephone after her meeting with Fett. She'd been to the Castle before, but she'd never seen the conference room up on the second level, overlooking the ballroom-like practice hall. It was beautifully, tastefully appointed, like everywhere else in the Castle she'd seen, with a long table flanked by rows of plush chairs. Of particular interest to Kaname was the large painting on the wall behind the chair at the head of the table. It depicted a duel between two young women, one pink-haired and dressed in black and red, the other blonde and wearing a fencing costume, on what appeared to be the middle of a football field. A brass plate in the center of the bottom rail of the picture's frame read, THE DUELISTS' SOCIETY EARNS ITS CHARTER.

Kaname was no Duelist, but she hung around with one and knew several others, and she'd heard the story before, so she knew the players here. The pink-haired girl was Utena Tenjou, one of the Society's legendary founders; her opponent, captured just in the instant of losing the duel in this painting, was Liza Shustal - Liza Broadbank, as she had been then - at the time the captain of the Fencing Club. This had happened at the school the original Duelists had attended before DSM was founded, back on Earth. Kaname had only encountered Utena Tenjou a handful of times and didn't really know her, but several of her friends had compared them in general temperament, which Kaname supposed was a compliment, since everything she'd ever heard about the woman was good.

She was pulled from contemplation of the painting by the arrival of Lindsey and, a moment after her, Sosuke Sagara, the latter looking grave.

"Good morning, Miss Chidori," he said, inclining his head. "I trust you slept well."

"Don't you know?" Kaname couldn't stop herself from asking archly. To his credit, Sagara had the decency to look slightly abashed by the question; he looked away and said nothing.

"A-hem, let's stay focused here, people," Lindsey put in. "We're here to work out terms for détente, not kick off Round Three."

"You're right," Kaname said. "Sorry." She sat down at one side of the table, Sosuke took the seat opposite her, and Lindsey positioned herself at the head, ready to take notes. "Let's talk boundaries."

The first stage of the talks... didn't go well. Having had difficulty getting to sleep, Kaname was underslept and irritable, and now that she'd had time to think about it, her acquiescence to the situation the previous evening rankled. Despite Lindsey's admonishment and her own tendency toward good faith, she had a hard time stopping herself from being waspish and curt. The entire situation seemed utterly ridiculous and contemptible in the morning light, and several times she came close to just calling everything off and going for the scorched-earth solution to the whole problem.

Finally, just before noon, she stood up and said in a tone of supreme frustration, "Well, I hate to tear myself away from all this fun, but I have an RA Council lunch meeting to attend. That means not only am I not going to be able to finish this, I have to go sit across from Natsuki frickin' Kruger, who will be smug at me. This day just gets better and better." She sighed, pulling a hand down her face, and then said, "After that I've got a Yearbook Committee meeting and then I promised Mizuki I'd help her with rehearsal scheduling. I'll be back here at 3:30." Pointing magisterially at Sosuke, she added, "And if I so much as see you between now and then you can just start packing your stuff, because we're not finished here yet. Got it?"

Looking straight back at her, the young soldier inclined his head and said gravely, "I will be invisible," which was not nearly as reassuring as he probably thought it was.

Kaname made an I-don't-even-know-what-to-say-to-you gesture, then threw up her hand and said, "Ahh, good enough." As she left the room, she could be heard muttering under her breath, "... whole thing is crazy in a box with a side order of fries."

Sosuke watched her go, then got up, bowed slightly to Lindsey with a cordial, "Miss Willows," and left just long enough after Kaname that he couldn't quite be said to have followed her.

Lindsey followed him out, but by the time she got around the table and into the hall he'd already vanished.

"Huh," she said.

"Problem?" asked Boba Fett from the door to his office down the hall.

"Colonel Flagg up and disappeared on me." She shrugged. "Nobody gets him, he's the wind." She went into his office and out onto the balcony, watching the distinctive dark-teal blur of Kaname's hair disappearing into the Single-Acre Wood as she went back down the hill to the main campus, and then turned to the Duelist president, who'd come back in behind her.

"We're not done yet. Breaking until 3:30," she told him. "What'd you think?"

Fett stood looking thoughtfully into the wood for a moment, then looked at the girl and said, "Lindsey, do you know how people sometimes assume that I must be one of those psychically scarred former child soldiers from some third-galaxy hellhole on the Rim?"

"Uh-huh," Lindsey replied. She'd heard this rant a couple of times, most notably after the Castle's new House Guide, a well-meaning but very green psychiatric intern on loan from Starfleet Medical, had joined the school the previous fall.

"Well," Fett replied without a trace of humor, "unless I miss my guess, that young man actually is one." Leaving her gaping at him, he crossed to his desk, sat down, and opened his top drawer, removing a small black notebook. "I've got about three hours to see what I can dig up that you didn't already get," he said. "In the meantime... " He looked up, meeting Lindsey's eyes, and his own were dark and very serious. "... I think you should stay as close as you can to your friend."

Lindsey stood regarding him for a moment, her face faintly troubled; then she darted out the door, and Fett started working the phone.

It took him about an hour and a half to reach out to a half-dozen contacts in the bounty hunting, private investigation, and mercenary soldier rackets (which overlapped a considerable amount, especially out on the Rim, where he and his father had done the bulk of their business over the years). Satisfying himself that Lindsey's info was correct - there really was a Rhodos Group subsidiary named TechCom, and one Sosuke Sagara really did work for them - took only the first few minutes. After that he was mainly digging for information about the strange young man who was causing his fellow Duelist and her friend such consternation. What he found did not make him particularly happy.

By the end of those 90 minutes, Boba Fett had pulled together only the sketchiest impression of Sagara - the guy was a cipher, even to the merc community - but what he did know formed a picture of a young man with the kind of facility for military work, including wetwork, that spoke of long, hard experience. Possibly not as long as Boba's own, but arguably harder, since as far as he could tell from the few records he'd found, Sagara was an orphan. Fett leaned back in his chair and considered what he would be like with all the same hard-won experience he had now, but without the constant, steadying presence of his father and his Mandalorian cultural heritage in his life.

He didn't think he would have turned out to be a very nice boy.

Sighing, he picked up his phone and made one last call. It was a long shot that he'd even find his party in, but stranger things had happened, and in fact the phone was answered on the fourth ring by a scarfaced, white-haired man with bicolored eyes and a generally forbidding aspect - which softened a bit when he saw who was calling him.

"Hey, kid," Zaeed Massani rasped, his face coming as close as it ever did to a smile. "Long time. What can I do for you?"

"Maybe nothing," Fett replied, "but I'm grabbing at straws. You ever heard of a merc named Sosuke Sagara? Human, about 17, black hair, grey eyes, cross-shaped scar on his left cheek."

To Fett's surprise, Zaeed nodded at once. "Yeah, I know the kid. Grew up on a Far Rim rock name of Helmajistan. Kind of place you'd expect with a name like that. It was a shithole then and it's a shithole now. The only way a kid can survive in a place as hard as Helmajistan is to be even harder. Sagara used to be a nasty piece of work."

Fett raised an eyebrow. "'Used to be'?"

"He got out," Zaeed told him. "Just in time, you ask me. Fell in with an old buddy of mine from the 9th Lancers, name of Kalinin. Last I heard they were on Donatu IV working corpsec for a datavault company." Then he looked curious and said, "Why do you ask? Jeraddo's a funny place for a guy like that to be popping up."

Fett gave a wry smile and said, "It's not where you'd automatically think to look for me, either. He's turned up here enrolled as a student, and he's following one of the other students around. Claims he's been hired to protect her, though he won't say by whom, and it's freaking her out."

Zaeed chuckled. "I can imagine. I can't picture anyone more ill-suited to be a bodyguard, except maybe me, but it takes all kinds." He shrugged. "I guess he's branching out."

"So you think he's for real?" Fett asked.

"Funny thing about these wasteland kid soldiers," Zaeed replied. "They learn to survive, they learn to fight, and they learn to kill, but not one in a hundred of 'em ever learns to lie worth a damn." He nodded. "Yeah, if he says he's there to protect this girl, then that's what he's there to do. As far as he knows," he added, sharing a knowing look with the young Mandalorian.

"Mm," Fett replied. They didn't need to say more; despite the 80-year difference in their ages, both were seasoned campaigners and each recognized the other's expertise. "Well, thanks, Zaeed. You've been a big help."

"Happy to," Zaeed replied, sounding only slightly sarcastic. "Take care, kid. Say hey to your old man for me next time you see him."

"Will do. Don't get shot. Fett out."

Zaeed's image disappeared; Fett put down the phone, sat in thought for a few moments, then rose from his chair and left his office.

Sosuke Sagara lay at the edge of Colman Hall's roof, gazing through a pair of compact electrobinoculars through one of the upper-story windows of the building opposite. E.B. White Hall, the building housing the Language and Literature department, was also home to several of the campus clubs that were connected in some way to the written word, including the one whose executive committee was meeting at this moment.

Watching as Kaname had what appeared to be a towering, arm-waving argument with one of the other members of that group, he murmured into a small recorder, "Two twenty-four PM. Subject is engaged in Yearbook Committee meeting." Then, after a slight pause and without a trace of irony, he added, "All appears normal."

A moment later, he heard a scrape of bootsole on asphalt behind him and turned to see the tall, sturdily built figure of Boba Fett standing at the opposite edge of the roof. Fett was wearing a grey coverall like a flightsuit without coat or hat, but he didn't seem to notice the cold as he stood there, arms folded, regarding Sosuke with a thoughtful expression.

Sosuke put away his binoculars and got to his feet. "Is there something I can do for you?" he asked blandly, as though they weren't both standing around on a building's roof in January.

"I've done some checking up on you," Fett told him. "What I learned was... interesting, but not necessarily reassuring. So I guess you could say I'm still trying to decide what to do about you."

"I wasn't aware you had to 'do' anything about me."

"You're causing a lot of difficulty for a friend of a friend," Fett replied. "To a Duelist that's all it takes to make you my problem."

"Miss Chidori and I haven't concluded our negotiations," Sosuke said calmly.

"I know that," Fett acknowledged. "But before I let those talks continue in my Castle, I need to be confident that both parties are negotiating in good faith. I'm not convinced of that yet."

Sosuke came close to shrugging and replied matter-of-factly, "There's nothing I can say that can get you any closer to that conclusion."

"I know," Fett repeated. "But there may be something you can show me." He moved his feet a precise distance apart, centering his mass over them, and said, "A mentor of mine once taught me that you never truly know someone until you fight him."

Sosuke stood regarding him for a moment, then put down his equipment pack, pushed it a few feet away with his foot, and nearly smiled.

"I accept your challenge," he said, and the two young men started advancing toward each other.

Thirty-six minutes later, Lindsey Willows and Kaname Sterling entered the president's office to find Boba sitting at his desk, finishing up a formal invitation to the society's distinguished alumni to next month's Winterfest open house, one of the relatively few really gala events on the Castle's calendar. He looked up and smiled slightly as they entered.

"Got your page," Lindsey said, slightly out of breath. "What's up?"

"Lindsey," he said. "Kaname. Thanks for coming. I thought you'd like to hear what I've found out before Sagara gets back."

"You think we should go ahead?" Kaname asked.

Fett nodded, rising. "I do. Sagara has a past, and not all of it's pretty, but after digging a little deeper and talking with him myself, I'm confident that he's at least trying to play this straight. He still bears watching, and I'm going to try to keep him in the corner of my eye, but for now... it's worth pursuing. He's a merc, but all indications are that he's an honest one, and you could do a lot worse. And you might, if you put the run to him and his company sends somebody else."

Lindsey blinked. "Oo. I hadn't even thought of that. You sure know how to make a girl paranoid, Boba."

Fett gave her a rueful smile. "Everybody's got a talent," he said. "Anyway, that's my assessment, for what it's worth."

Lindsey nodded. "OK. Thanks, Boba. I won't ask how you came to that conclusion in just a couple of hours, but I trust your instincts." She looked at her friend. "How about you?"

Kaname looked thoughtful for a moment, then got that decisive look that, Lindsey knew, all the women in her family got at moments like this. "OK," she said, then added wryly, "As long as you guys have got my back."

"Count on that," Fett replied. "I don't think I'm wrong, but if it turns out I am, even a little bit, come to me." His smile became slightly dark as he went on, "I'll sort him out."

Kaname was faintly surprised to realize that, if she could at all help it, she would rather not consign anyone, even Sgt. Stalkerpants, to be "sorted out" by Boba Fett. The sentiment was reassuring, though, all the same, and she thanked him for it.

Lindsey glanced at her watch. "Just about time to get back to it."

Fett's smile remained a trifle dark as he told her, "Sagara might be a couple of minutes late."

Sosuke Sagara was, indeed, a couple of minutes late, and apologized sincerely for it when he arrived. He'd changed his clothes and seemed to have just had a shower. Lindsey suddenly remembered noticing that Boba's hair had been slicked-down wet as well, and an inkling of how the Duelist president had formed his opinion of the young mercenary began to take shape in the back of her mind.

She smiled and said, "OK, well... shall we try it again from the top?"

Just then they were interrupted by the arrival of a fourth person - a tall, slim, sandy-haired man in the brown uniform of the Bajoran Department of Public Safety, who entered the room, cast an apparently disinterested look at the three teenagers, and retired to the far corner of the room, where he folded his arms and leaned back against the wall.

"I'll just stand over here, if you don't mind," said Chief Odo of the Campus Police. "Do carry on."

Sosuke didn't react to the officer's presence at all, apart from a casual glance in his direction. Kaname and Lindsey looked at each other as if to say, I thought you called him, then shrugged and got on with the job in hand.

The second round didn't take them long, nor did the discussion threaten to turn rancorous again. Kaname felt an acute sense of surreality whenever it occurred to her that she was basically negotiating the terms under which this guy was going to be allowed to stalk her, but...

... well, it wasn't really. There was a difference, one she had a hard time putting her finger on at first, but which she wouldn't have been letting this go on without, even with Boba Fett's input. It wasn't until they were nearly finished that she realized, with a sudden epiphany, what it was. It was what she had been trying to put her finger on all last night but had never consciously reached.

Stalkers - and she knew this because she'd had a friend in middle school who was really and truly subjected to such a thing, by a genuinely scary dude - did what they did because they were warped inside, twisted such that they had an unconquerable lust for control. It was about power and possession, not even really sexual except in some bizarrely peripheral way. The people who did it felt they were expressing a sort of... ownership of the unfortunate objects of their attentions.

This guy... this guy was weird, no two ways of slicing that, but he wasn't giving off that vibe. He wasn't even trying, in that particularly horrible and distasteful way her friend's tormentor often had, to be charming or glib. Since being confronted he hadn't made the slightest effort to conceal what he was doing, apart from that first pathetically lame denial, which he almost seemed to give as a matter of form. He was... well, he said he was a soldier and that keeping her safe was his mission, and try as she might to remain skeptical, there was simply no other interpretation Kaname could fit around his behavior.

Basically, if he was a stalker, he was the most incompetent one who ever lived, and his story was simply too daft not to be true. That was strange, and would get laughed out of a court of law, but Kaname had always been raised to cultivate, and then trust, her instincts in matters like this.

What was more, Kaname knew soldiers - knew how they thought, how they operated. Her parents were soldiers. Most of her aunts and uncles, all of her grandparents, almost all the significant friends-of-the-family she could think of - all were or had been members of uniformed services. Unconventional soldiers, to be sure - Wedge Defenders, most of them, and a good many in the Mars Division, which was to the WDF as the WDF itself was to most "normal" armed forces - but still soldiers.

And, she reminded herself as the negotiations drew to a close, she did still have leverage. If it turned out that this whole thing was some kind of weird-ass scam - and she couldn't think for the life of her what its object could be, since she'd already ruled out the Usual Things - she could still invoke the nuclear option and remove the opposing piece from the board at any time. Her strategic position remained superior, even with the tactical concessions she was now in the process of making.

Spirit, she thought as that last notion crossed her mind, now I'm thinking like Grammy Miria.

"... then I guess we have a deal," Lindsey said. She finished writing in her notebook, then rotated it 180 degrees and pushed it down the table so that it came to rest between the two parties. "Who wants to sign first?" she asked with a smile.

Both parties reached for the pen sitting in the center of the open page, simultaneously saying, "I will." Both realized the other had taken the initiative and paused at the same instant, their hands barely touching over the pen, then withdrew them almost precisely the same distance and sat there staring at each other in sudden, blank surprise for a moment.

Sagara regained his composure first, if he could even be said to have lost it; he opened his hand and said calmly, "After you, Miss Chidori."

"Uh... right. Thank you," Kaname said with an almost imperceptible headshake. She picked up the pen, pulled the notebook toward her, quickly read through the ten points of the agreement Lindsey had drawn up, then applied her signature to the bottom in a big, bold, looping hand before smartly reversing the pad and shoving it across to Sagara. He read the page as well; one of his eyebrows elevated a fraction of an inch as he saw her signature.

Oh well, she thought, so much for that. Should've known if we were going to do something like this, that'd be the end of my little joke...

Then, apparently unconcerned, Sagara signed below her name, put the pen down, and pushed it and the notebook back to Lindsey. She signed it as witness; then, slightly to her surprise, Odo appeared beside her and affixed his signature as well.

"You will, of course, be giving Campus Security access to your new internal surveillance devices at Hamlin Hall, Sergeant," he said. "Our own protocols for the accommodation of covert bodyguarding arrangements are quite strict in that respect, though in light of present circumstances I'm inclined to let slide your failure to register with my office when you first arrived. Oh - and now that we'll be working together," he added with faint archness, "you should know that I've had administrative control of your external surveillance devices since about an hour after you emplaced them."

Everyone around the table - Lindsey, Kaname, and even (perhaps especially) Sosuke - sat and gaped at the security chief in flat astonishment. Then, turning to Lindsey, Odo said, "CSS will distribute the required copies of this document and return the original to President Fett."

"Uh... good enough?" said Lindsey, still not sure what to say to the revelation he'd just dropped.

Seeing Sosuke still staring at him in bafflement, Odo gave a thin smile (the only kind that really suited his face) and said dryly, "As Commander Ivanova says, Sergeant, this isn't my first time at the rodeo."

With that, he inclined his head cordially, wished everyone a good day, and left with Lindsey's notebook under his arm. Sosuke sat looking after him with a look of mingled amazement and... was that self-deprecating amusement?!... before composing himself, rising, and addressing both girls.

"Thank you for your cooperation," he said, evidently in complete earnest. "I appreciate your acceptance of my good faith and will make every effort which is compatible with my mission objectives to see that it is not misplaced."

"Uh... yeah. Well, remember what happens if you don't," Kaname replied, standing as well.

"I'll bear it always in mind," he promised with that same perfect sincerity. Then he went on, "If you'll excuse me, I must revise my operational plans with our new agreement in mind. I'll see you at dinner." Bowing to Lindsey, he added, "Good afternoon, Miss Willows... " Then he turned to Kaname with the barest, most deniable hint of a smile and punctuated his bow to her with a deadpan, "... Miss Chidori."

Kaname watched him go, then sat back down, leaned back in her chair, and let out a huge sigh.

"Lins, what the hell did I just do?" she asked rhetorically through a half-smile.

"DSM Panic! Mission 3: The Universal Brotherhood of Soldiers of Fortune"
(a Symphony of the Sword Mini-Story) by Benjamin D. Hutchins and Philip J. Moyer
Special to the Eyrie Productions Discussion Forum
© 2011 Eyrie Productions, Unlimited