I have a message from another time...

                     Eyrie Productions, Unlimited
                               presents

                UNDOCUMENTED FEATURES FUTURE IMPERFECT
                   - SYMPHONY OF THE SWORD No. 2 -

                 Second Movement: Blue Moon Serenade

                         Benjamin D. Hutchins
                           with Anne Cross
                           Kris Overstreet

                (c) 2001 Eyrie Productions, Unlimited


                      WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 31, 2405
                               9:17 AM
             DEEDLIT SATORI MANDEVILLE MEMORIAL INSTITUTE
                      JERADDO, REPUBLIC OF BAJOR

        As she had every morning for the past week, Utena Tenjou woke
up, sat up, and briefly wondered where the hell she was.
        The room she was in wasn't the beige-cinder-blocked
familiarity that had been Morgan 412, which the part of her mind that
was in "back-to-school" mode was still unconsciously expecting.  It
also wasn't the little cabin aboard the One-Hit Wonder where she'd
spent half the summer, or the comfortable little bedroom in Skuld
Ravenhair's cottage on Tomodachi where she'd spent the other half.
        This room was large and round, with a large picture window
dominating one side, a high ceiling, and walls of reddish-gold stone.
The window looked out over a lovely little lake with a cozy town
tucked up against the far bank, huddled at the foot of a range of
impressive, craggy mountain peaks, but the heavy drapes were closed
right now, blocking the view.  Because of the shape, the room always
made her think for an instant that she'd somehow woken up back in the
White Tower at Ohtori Academy, though that was clearly absurd.  That
room had been smaller, and mostly blue, and the window there had been
much taller than it was wide.
        Then, and only then, did she reach a high enough level of
consciousness to remember that she was in her new home - Room 501, the
Castle (true to Wakaba's prediction, it never had managed to acquire a
proper name for itself).  Four days left until classes began; tomorrow
was course registration day.
        But today... 
        Today, Utena Tenjou decided to sleep until noon.

        Kaitlyn Hutchins, her roommate, woke up about half an hour
later, climbed out of bed and into her slippers, and padded across the
room to the window, yawning.  Careful not to let daylight fall across
her sleeping roommate's bed, she peeped out the window and saw to her
delight that it was another beautiful day.
        As it happened, Utena woke up anyway, and, noting that Kate
was up, decided to abandon her sleep-til-noon plan.  She got up too,
and, seeing that she'd risen, Kate smiled and opened the drapes,
flooding the room with light.
        It was, as Utena had noted to herself before, a large room,
occupying as it did the entire inside diameter of the Castle's West
Tower.  It went from wall to wall without interruption, except for the
furniture; the only permanent feature was the spiral staircase which
entered from below and continued on up to the roof.  Utena, who over
the course of the summer had found herself (to her great surprise)
becoming interested in astronomy again, was thinking about putting a
telescope up there.
        It was a far cry from Morgan 412, that relentlessly beige,
rough-brown-carpeted, much-abused, rather cramped enclosure with its
balky little window, its boring, battered industrial furniture, and
its glaring fluorescent light.  The floor here was covered with a
cluster of nice Oriental rugs, including the one that had graced
Morgan 412, which had pride of place in the center.  The lights were
torchiere halogens, which filled the room with a warm glow when
Bajor-B'hava'el couldn't provide that same service through the bay
window.
        The furniture had been built by Kaitlyn and a Minbari friend
of hers named Chenann.  It wasn't fancy - Kate called the style
"Shaker" - but it was sturdy, and there was a certain elegance in its
simplicity that the WPI standard issue had entirely lacked.  There
were two desks - big, sturdy ones with drawers that could actually
hold things - next to each other along one side, their back edges
curved to conform to the wall.  There was a pair of large wardrobes,
each flanked by a chest of drawers.  Much of the remaining wall space
was occupied by shelves, some holding books, others Kate's stuffed
tiger collection (what wasn't on her bed) and Utena's teacup
collection, except of course for the upright piano.
        The acoustic damper web Kate had built for Morgan 412, to keep
the piano from disturbing the neighbors, wasn't necessary here; there
was no one above them or to either side, and, thanks to the thick
stone floor, you could have a fully-amped rock concert in 501 and it
would be completely inaudible in 401, the single-bed room wedged into
the corner directly beneath the tower.  Kate could play the piano, or
her guitar, or any of her impressive number of electronic instruments,
and not be in danger of disturbing anyone but Utena, as long as the
windows were closed.
        All in all, the atmosphere of the new campus reminded Utena
(again, as Wakaba had predicted) much more of Ohtori Academy than of
the Worcester Preparatory Institute.  WPI had been converted from an
abandoned college, deliberately reconstructed and maintained as a
Working Historic Site in its late-twentieth-century configuration, and
though adequate, its facilities had always had a certain... well,
soulless industrial flavor.
        DSM was brand new and had been designed with the aid of people
who had struggled with WPI's physical limitations for years, the
school's administrators.  The WDF Corps of Engineers Third Battalion
had worked closely with President Tiefeld, Dean Montaigne, and the
on-hand students (mainly, the Duelists' Society) to make the new
school answer all the shortcomings of the old.  The campus was
spacious, green and beautifully landscaped, not wedged into the middle
of a post-industrial city.  It had a full range of athletic
facilities, a student center which boasted an honest-to-God BALLROOM,
a performing arts complex that didn't resemble a small converted
church, and a dining hall which was actually -elegant- as well as
functional.
        Inside, the student accommodations (except for the Castle,
which was on a whole separate level) looked more like bedrooms in
someone's home than dormitory cells, with nice views, windows that
worked, non-40-grit carpet, and furniture designed for the use of
actual human beings.  Being handmade by the person whose room it was,
the beds in Castle 501 were atypical - they were fully queen-sized! -
but even in the regular residence halls, they were doubles, not WPI's
accursed 36" 'narrow twins', and they had proper box springs.
        Such touches did not go unnoticed by the incoming students or
their parents, many of whom wanted to know what they were paying for
before they sent their children off to be educated in the wilds of a
Bajoran moon.  Nearly all of them left satisfied.  Many of them left
lamenting that -they- couldn't have gone to a place as nice as that.
The students themselves were, by and large, enthralled - especially
those returning from WPI's historic austerity.
        At any rate, because of all that it struck Utena as much more
similar to her old school, Ohtori Academy, than WPI.  That didn't mean
she disliked the place; true, she had some bad memories of Ohtori
Academy, but she also had good ones, and there had never been a time
when she didn't think the place was a beautiful setting, however
troubling the story playing out in it was.  She had the same attitude
toward DSM, and a much more optimistic view of her future there.  In
the week since she'd been back from deep space, she'd spent a lot of
her time exploring the campus, and at every turn she saw another thing
about it that delighted her and made her think, Himemiya will like
that.
        That thought ran through her head again as she stood next to
Kate in the window bay and looked out at Lake Jeradar and the craggy
peaks of the Forlein Mountains.
        "You know," she said wryly, "I think we've done all right for
ourselves, for a bunch of displaced fugitives."
        Kate grinned.  "Mm," she said.  "I th-think."
        They went downstairs, showered, then came back up and got
dressed for the day; this was the one inconvenient thing about living
in Castle 501, and it was a small price to pay for that view.  Then,
ready for the world, they went downstairs, and Utena gleefully put to
use -another- of the many improvements in their living situation that
had come with the translation to Jeraddo:
        The Castle had a -kitchen-.
        Utena Tenjou was a good cook, had been for years.  It one of
her favorite hobbies, probably the most domestic thing about her, and
the trait people who had just met her - bold, forthright manner,
sword, boy's uniform, and all - least expected.  She didn't see any
particular discontinuity in it, herself.  A person wanted to live
well, she had to eat well, and the best way to ensure that you had
good food to eat was to cook it yourself.  Besides, at the Academy,
she'd been cast adrift in an empty dorm without a domestic staff, so
it was either cook, shlep clear across campus to the Dining Commons,
or starve.  (Or - shudder - let Himemiya cook... )
        Over the previous summer, she'd spent a lot of time, when not
out roaming the galaxy on practical skill exercises, at Corwin
Ravenhair's Aunt Belldandy's house on Tomodachi.  Aunt Bell was a cook
of legendary ability, and Utena had become something of an apprentice
to her in this arena, as she was Corwin's in spaceflight.  Utena had
come away with even greater respect for the craft, broadened culinary
horizons, and an itching need to put her new training to use; it had
made her look forward to getting at the Castle's kitchen all the more.
        "W-w-what's on the m-menu this m-morning?" asked Kate with a
little grin as Utena hung her jacket on a peg, rolled up her
shirtsleeves, and put on an apron.
        "Waffles," Utena replied.
        Duelists wandered in, one by one, drawn by that strange
radar-like sense that all true chowhounds have, which can rouse a
person from a sound sleep and send them drifting to the kitchen even
if they couldn't smell the food cooking from where they started out,
and as they arrived, Utena fed them.
        Kyouichi Saionji, who had spent half the previous school year
making breakfast for -her- in his capacity as Morning Grill Guy at the
Morgan Hall snack bar, had encountered the reversal of roles with
puzzled equanimity last Friday, Utena's first morning in the Castle.
Somehow, in two years of knowing her, he had managed not to learn that
she -could- cook.
        "Pancakes?" he inquired as he entered the combination
kitchen/dining room just off the dojo.
        "Waffles," Utena replied.  "Bacon or sausage?"
        "Bacon," said Saionji.  Yawning, he went to the percolator and
got himself a cup of coffee.  "Last of the students should be arriving
today... "
        "Yep," said Utena as she busied herself with the next waffle
pour.  "Isn't Liza supposed to get in this afternoon?"
        "Mm," said Saionji, dropping a couple of sugar lumps into his
coffee.  "T'skaia and I are planning to take the bus up to B5 and
greet her."
        "S-sounds like a g-good idea.  I th-think I'll j-join you."
        "What the hell, I've got nothing better to do," said Utena,
flipping bacon into a skillet.  "Mind if I tag along too?"
        "Why not?  The more the merrier," Saionji replied.  He took a
seat at the long table, sipped his coffee, and added, "I wonder what
sort of change her summer of adventure will have made in her."
        "I shudder to think," said Utena dryly.
        "Morning everyone!" chirped Azalynn dv'Ir Natashkan as she
trotted in.  She took a sniff.  "Pancakes?"
        "Waffles," said Utena.
        Azalynn was informed of Saionji and Sky's plan, and eagerly
invited herself as well.   She had unfinished business with Liza from
the fall before, and was keen to have it out of the way.
        Before Utena was finished cooking, three more Duelists came in.
All of them tried to guess; two of them guessed wrong, leaving Miki to
wander in last, speculate, "Waffles?" and receive in reply,
        "Waf - ... yeah."
        "You don't have to cook for us like this, y'know," said
Azalynn.  "You could make us get our own breakfast."
        Utena shrugged.  "I don't mind," she said.  "Maybe when
classes start and I'm actually in a -hurry- in the morning," she added
with a grin, "I'll make Saionji do it again."
        Saionji tried to look put-upon, but failed.

        After breakfast, the others pitched into help clean up the
kitchen, and then they all went outside, just for the sake of being
out on such a nice day.
        As they walked down the path to the main campus in a small,
chatting group, the soft roar of an incoming spaceship caught Wakaba's
ear.
        "Was Corwin going to come by today?" she wondered, pointing at
the dark blip in the morning sky.  It wasn't the One-Hit Wonder,
however, nor was it Daggerdisc; what it was, was a grey and brown
monstrosity nearly three times Daggerdisc's length, vaguely resembling
a trilobite with a stack of ion thrusters sticking out from its shell.
It bore down steadily on the newly built campus until, with a loud
roar of engines, it buzzed the buildings, rattling a few windows as it
soared off to the horizon to make a leisurely circle back to the
spaceport.
        The ship, although going respectably fast, had been slow
enough for the Duelists to see the golden thunderbolt flag painted on
its bow, and the markings CFA NO BULL CFA-5290 beneath.
        "M-M-Mac," Kate murmured, remembering a Cessna plane buzzing
Moose's van in upstate New York.  There hadn't been a single
Freespacer ship at Port Jeradar since the Home Fleet departed the
system.
        "Who?" Wakaba asked.  "McKenzie?  I didn't think he was that
crazy."
        "Ask G'Kron about it sometime, if you want an earful," Miki
smiled.  "My only question is, where did Mac find enough money for a
spaceship?"
        "Th-that wasn't a s-s-spaceship," Kate muttered, "th-th-that
w-was a f-f-fossil."
        The answers came later, when Mac McKenzie rode up on the
shuttle bus, looking much less stressed out than he usually did after
an interstellar voyage.
        "Morning," he said. "Has Housing opened up yet?"
        "Was that -your- ship?" Wakaba asked.  "The one that nearly
broke every window on campus?"
        "Hyperbole," Mac said, "and I steered well clear of the
castle, anyway.  That was my summer's income," he added.  "The hull of
an old Corellian Star Cab - it's nearly two thousand years old, but
they built the things THICK back then - reinforced with scrap duralloy
plating from the shipyards, refurbished engines - she'll do
sixty-eight megalights sublight and a flat factor one in
h-h-h-hyperspace," (he added with a shudder,) "and all the basic
amenities.  It's amazing what you can buy for five thousand credits,
if you know where to look."
        "WHY?" three people asked at once, and Mac shrugged.
        "I need income," he said, "during school breaks and on
weekends.  I was flying bush on Earth, into and out of the Badlands,
but there's noplace to fly -to- on this moon.  The Noble," he grinned
at his own pun, "can haul freight; it can haul people; and it can haul
a respectable little bit of ass."
        "No," Wakaba asked, "why -that-... that -beast-?"
        Mac shrugged.  "Cheap."  Then he looked down and noticed his
hand trembling slightly, and he said again, "So how about that
housing, hm?  The adrenaline is wearing off, and I could really use a
lie-down about now."

        Chenann took charge of getting McKenzie to the Residential
Life office.  Others wandered off in various directions, just enjoying
being outside and free to do whatever.  Saionji, Kate, T'skaia,
Azalynn and Utena piled into Vlad the Impala and headed down to the
bus stop, thence to Babylon 5 to greet Liza Broadbank.
        Liza was an interesting case.  For years, she'd been Kate's
self-appointed arch-foe.  Well, "self-appointed" wasn't really
accurate; she'd been appointed by her father, a powerful corporate
executive who hated the semi-formal immortal cadre who, on paper or
not, pretty much ruled the Republic of Zeta Cygni.  Since that cadre
quite prominently featured Kaitlyn's parents, Ephram and Alicia
Broadbank had very carefully produced three children - one who would
be in the same school year as Kaitlyn; one the same as her younger
brother, Leonard; and one for their younger siblings, the twins, Guy
and Priss.
        (The sheer amount of ruthless calculation these acts embodied
sometimes left Utena, when she stopped to think about it, grappling
with a grudging mixture of awe and loathing.)
        These three daughters, Elizabeth, Clarissa, and Marietta,
found themselves indoctrinated from an early age into their parents'
hatred of Kaitlyn's (and the others of their social class), and each
was sent to the same schools as whichever contemporary she had.  In
two out of three cases, they had succeeded.  Liza had grown from a
spoiled, petty child into a spoiled, petty adolescent, fixated on
Kaitlyn but too craven to attack her directly most of the time.
Clarissa was even worse, but she had a larger group of opposition -
Leonard had a lot of contemporaries, including his half-brother
Corwin, because of the timing of the Ragnarok and the celebrations
which followed it.
        Toward the end of the previous school year, though, Liza had
overextended herself and very nearly paid for it by spending the rest
of her life in thrall to the Earth Alliance's shadowy Psi Corps.
Unknown to herself, she harbored a rare and powerful psionic talent,
one for which the Corps did not find itself above brainwashing and
perjury to get hold of, even if its holder were a citizen of a nation
which did not recognize their authority.
        The experience, and the awakening of her power, left Liza a
wreck; and then, at her darkest moment, the people she had spent her
life hating and scheming against, the people from whom she could least
expect kindness, gave her exactly that.  Between them, Saionji,
T'skaia and Kaitlyn had shown her forgiveness and a new direction, and
Liza had latched onto them with both hands, eager to make something
better of what remained of herself.  She'd spent the summer aboard a
deep-space trader operated by Sky's Barsaivian t'skrang trading house,
Ishkarat, as a bottom-ranked spaceman - a position usually held by
t'skrang in the grip of kaissa, that species' excruciating version of
adolescence.
        The Spirit of the River was due at Babylon 5 in one hour, so
the four Duelists and friend went to the Marche Movenpick in the
Zocalo, got some bread, cheese and sodas, and staked out one of the
table to wait for the announcement of the t'skrang vessel's arrival.
        The hour passed without any announcement; then another; then
another.  Finally, Sky said he would go and inquire of the station's
recently-installed Ishkarat trading office as to the reason for the
delay.  While he was gone, an uneasy silence settled over the four
remaining at the table.
        It was Utena who finally said what they were all thinking:
        "I hope nothing's... wrong."
        Kate nodded, but she looked as if she suspected that hope was
a vain one.
        Sky returned a few minutes later, looking disconsolate.  He
stopped next to the table, his tail making an uneasy circle on the
deck behind him, and said,
        "I just spoke with the head of our trading delegation.  She
has informed me that the Spirit of the River... broadcast a distress
call this morning at 11:41 local time, saying that she was under
attack by unknown pirates near the Cardassian border.  The message was
cut off.  Since then... nothing.  Other Ishkarat ships are making for
her last known location, as is the Challenger, but... nothing will be
known for some time."  He sighed deeply, hanging his head.  "The
honored delegate recommends that we go home.  There is nothing to be
gained by lingering here."
        The uneasy silence matured into a full-fledged gloomy one.
Saionji stared blankly at his hands, slack on the table in front of
him.  Kate closed her eyes as if she had felt a sharp pain.  Utena
looked concerned for her roommate, fidgeting in obvious frustration
with the straw in her spent drink.  Azalynn looked as though she were
about to cry.
        "Shazrad jakhaii," she murmured.  "It's not -fair-.  She'd
only just started becoming who she really was... "
        "We don't know her fate yet," said Sky gently.  "There are
survivors of most pirate raids.  And the Spirit of the River was a
good, strong ship.  It's possible they fought their attackers off but
lost their communications equipment.  We shouldn't jump to conclusions
yet... "  The t'skrang slumped a little.  "... but I'll admit, it
doesn't seem promising."
        "So what do we do?" asked Utena.  "Take the delegate's advice
and go home?  Wait it out here?  Kate?  What do you think?"
        But it wasn't Kaitlyn who answered; it was Azalynn, her voice
smaller still and quavering.
        "I want to go home."
        Saionji pulled himself back from wherever he'd gone and looked
at the Dantrovian, who was looking down into the melting-ice dregs of
her soda and looking even more like she would cry at any moment.
"Azalynn... are you all right?" he asked, his voice surprisingly
gentle.
        "No, I'm not," Azalynn replied in a whisper.  "I want to go
home.  Now."
        "Let's go, then," said Saionji, rising.  "The others can stay
here if they wish.  I'll walk with you back up to campus from the
shuttle stop."
        "N-no," said Kate, breaking her long silence and standing as
well.  "The d-deleg-gate's right.  There's n-nothing we c-can do
h-here.  Let's g-go back.  M-Maybe we'll h-hear something l-later."
        Sky nodded.  "The office has promised to call me with any
news," he said.  "It need not be said that I'll pass it on to all
interested parties.  For that matter, the school's administration -
Dean Montaigne, at least - should be notified."
        "R-right... l-l-let's go d-do that, th-then," said Kate.

        The five of them were a bit crowded in Dean Montaigne's new
office, which was a little smaller than her old one.  They conveyed
their unsettling message, promised to keep her posted as new
information came in, and then left her to draft an announcement to the
school community about their missing classmate.
        Slowly, downcast, the five filed out of Miss Montaigne's
office, Kaitlyn in the lead - then pulled up short as Kate stopped,
startled, in the hallway.
        Coming out of the Admissions Office was a girl in a green
striped dress who looked a lot like Liza Broadbank.
        "What's the matter?" asked Saionji.
        "Th-that g-g-girl... that's C-Clarissa B-B-Broadb-bank.
L-Liza's younger s-sister."
        "The one who's even worse than Liza used to be?" Utena asked.
"Corwin's told me some stories about her."
        Kate nodded.  "The s-same.  W-what's she d-doing here?  D-does
she know?"
        Clarissa noticed the little group standing near Miss
Montaigne's office door and trotted over, light and carefree, to meet
them.
        "Well, hello, Kaitlyn," she said, smiling.  "And how are you
this fine, fine day?  Beautiful institution your daddy's friends have
built for you here, isn't it?"
        Kate, in no mood, refused to rile.  She just folded her arms
and gave the younger girl the "what do you want" look.
        "My good-for-nothing sister was supposed to get in today,
wasn't she?" asked Clarissa as if she hadn't asked her previous
question.  "Do you know if she's here yet, Katie darling?"  The
younger Broadbank's smile became smug as she sang with a nasty glint
in her eyes, "I've got an ul-ti-ma-tum from Daddy for her!"
        "Your sister is missing," said Saionji, his voice cold and
eyes like slate.  "Her ship was attacked by pirates this morning.
There's been no further word.  The IPO is investigating."
        Clarissa's blue eyes widened.  "Pirates, you say?  So she's
either dead, or dragged off to the Outer Rim to be sold as some Hutt's
plaything, or the like, then."  The blonde considered this for a
moment, then shrugged.  "Well, what a shame," she said, with the most
sublime lack of sincerity Saionji had seen since the last time he saw
Touga.
        "That's all you have to say?  Your sister's missing, maybe
dead, and all you can do is bat your little blue eyes and say, 'Well,
what a shame'?" Utena demanded.
        "What am I supposed to do?" Clarissa replied.  "Wring my hands
and wail?  She was an embarrassment to the family anyway.  I suppose
it's only fitting that she should have such a scandalous end.  Daddy
will be even angrier knowing what a spectacle that'll make.  I suppose
it'll be announced to the whole school and they'll make a Federal case
out of it.  Memorial service and all that boring nonsense."
        Azalynn came out of nowhere, as though she had somehow
teleported from the back of the group to the front; she moved so fast
that the air made an audible WHUMP as it scrambled to get out of her
way, and then she reared back and unloaded a full-blooded slap to
Clarissa Broadbank's right cheek, knocking the blonde flat on her back
in the hallway.
        "Never speak ill of the dead in my presence," snarled the
Dantrovian in a voice that was barely recognizable as her own.  Then
she turned and stalked away, off up the corridor.  After standing
there a moment with a peculiar mixture of amazement and concern on his
face, Saionji followed her.  Utena stared dumbfounded after them for a
moment, then turned her attention back to Clarissa again.
        The blonde slowly raised her hand and wiped away the trickle
of blood the blow had left at the corner of her mouth, her eyes
venomous and fixed on Kate.
        "You'll pay for that, Katie," she said softly.  "You and all
your little pals had better watch out from now on, because I'm taking
over for my worthless dead sister, and you are -all- going to pay."
        Behind her glasses, Kate's soft brown eyes hardened.  She
glared down, meeting Clarissa's poisonous stare, then turned on her
heel and went off down the corridor after her friends, not saying a
word.  T'skaia gave the blonde a rather pitying look and followed;
Utena lingered a moment longer, alternating between wanting to get in
some last comment and wanting to get the hell away from Clarissa, then
went after Kate as well.
        "Oh - and tell your Trading House they'll be hearing from
Daddy's lawyers, lizard boy!" Clarissa shouted after Sky.

        They sat in the Castle's library/game room, not saying much,
for almost half an hour: Kate, Utena, Juri Arisugawa, T'skaia, Wakaba
Shinohara, Miki Kaoru, and Dorothy Wayneright, scattered in the
various armchairs and couches, some listlessly trying to read and not
succeeding very well.  Up on the mantelpiece above the fireplace,
Lesser Mazinger and Tiny Robo tried to concentrate on their card game,
but kept glancing worriedly at their owners and losing their places.
Presently the door opened and Saionji entered, his long, lean face
drawn and looking even leaner.
        "Mr. Kaoru," he said hoarsely, "your assistance is required."
        Miki looked up from the book he hadn't been reading, then
nodded and got to his feet.  Pausing, he glanced at Dorothy; the
dark-eyed girl nodded with a faint expression that somehow combined a
thoughtful smile with a worried frown, and Miki nodded back and
trotted out.
        "D-d-dammit," said Kate bitterly.  "Sh-she was f-f-feeling so
much b-better, t-too.  W-why the h-h-hell did C-Clarissa have to
sh-show up and... "  She gestured meaninglessly in frustration, then
sighed under her breath, "(F-f-ff-fuck it.)"
        Nobody disagreed.

        Upstairs, in Room 304, Mia Ausa was unaware that any of this
had happened.  She was sorting out her room, unpacking the last of her
things, which she'd recovered from storage the day before.  B'Elanna
Torres, the Duelists' Society's half-Klingon semi-mascot, was sitting
on her desk.  The reason she was sitting on the desk was because the
chair was too low to the floor for her taste, and she couldn't sit on
Mia's bed.  Having been raised Minbari, Mia preferred sleeping on an
incline, which made her bed more or less impossible to perch on and
have a conversation.
        "What's -that-?" B'Elanna asked as Mia removed an item from
one of the last plastic packing crates.  It looked like a stuffed
animal of some kind, but of what sort of animal, B'Elanna couldn't be
sure.  Some kind of fish, maybe?  It was roughly the size and shape of
a basketball, but it had stubby little fins and an unusual number of
little googly eyes on stalks, and another single eye, huge and
staring, dominating most of its front side.  Most of it was made of a
sort of vivid green corduroy, with lurid round pink spots on its body
and fins of bright purple satin.
        Mia turned around, grinning, and hugged the disturbing item to
her chest.  "It's Gorgon Ghidra!" she said.  "Isn't he just the cutest
thing you've ever seen?"
        "Um... "  B'Elanna was no stranger to bizarre-animal pets;
back on Qo'noS she'd had a neighbor who had a pet targ, which, by
human standards, was about the most loathsome quadruped around.
Still, it wasn't as if Krovor had ever claimed his targ was cute, or
even particularly pleasant to have around; he'd liked it because it
was disgusting and violent, much like its master.
        "Oh, just look at him!" Mia cajoled her, holding out the toy.
"His round, pudgy body, his beady little eyes... "  She squeezed the
stuffed monster in her arms again, which caused it to emit a rather
disturbing 'squeek!'  "Oh, he just makes me -melt-," Mia went on,
cuddling the gorgon.
        "O... K," said B'Elanna.
        "Well, fine," said Mia with mock annoyance.  She gave the
gorgon a last squeeze and put it on a shelf near her bed.  "-You-
don't have to hug him, then."  Humming a happy little tune, she went
back to unpacking her books.
        As she did so, she came to one - a large, leather-bound,
metal-strapped volume, of a type of which she had several - and
paused, looking at it with an interested expression.
        "What?" said B'Elanna.
        Mia carried the book across the room and laid it down on the
end of the desk B'Elanna wasn't sitting on, then started leafing
through its heavy, yellowed pages, her tongue wedged in the corner of
her mouth.

        Miki and Saionji were back in the library in an hour, looking
worn but relatively pleased, under the circumstances.
        "How is she?" Utena asked quietly.
        Miki let himself fall into an armchair, checked his stopwatch,
and replied, "She's very upset.  She never took the time to talk to
Liza after... everything that happened last spring.  Before we went to
Dantrov, she was still holding onto too much anger, and when we got
back, of course, Liza had gone.  Azalynn thought she'd have the
opportunity to make everything right again when Liza got back, and
now... "  He spread his hands.  "Now she may never get the chance."
        "And she's upset with herself for getting so angry with
Clarissa.  It's a vicious cycle she's not sure how to break," added
Saionji, rubbing his face with both hands.
        Miki nodded agreement.  "She's sleeping now," he said.  "We
persuaded her that, perhaps, a nap would improve her perspective, or
at least bring her better news when she wakes."
        "No joy yet," T'skaia said glumly.
        Mia Ausa trotted in then, carrying a large metal-strapped book
with her and looking excited about something.  B'Elanna was right
behind her, also looking pleased, but the both of them came to an
abrupt halt as they felt the atmosphere in the game room.
        "What's the matter?" asked Mia.
        Sky told her.
        "Oh... that's awful," said Mia, looking downcast.  She closed
the heavy book on her thumb and said, "Never mind."
        "No, t-tell us," said Kate.  With a wry smile, she added,
"W-we all n-need some ch-cheering up... "
        "All right," Mia replied, a bit hesitantly.  Then she laid the
book down on the pool table and said, "I knew this building looked
familiar when I first saw it, but I couldn't place it, because I
hadn't looked at this book in a couple of years."  As the Duelists
crowded around, she opened the book to the page she'd marked - 
        - And there was the Castle, drawn across the two-page spread
in black and pastel inks, slightly faded against the yellowing
parchment but still quite clear.  Around it were markings, text in
some swooping, curved and flourished script that looked a little like
Arabic.
        "Wow," said Utena.  "What's the book?"
        Mia smiled.  "It's an ancient Atlantean text about the Order
of Jedi Knights.  They were an order of mystic warriors that
flourished during the previous epoch, the last cycle of great galactic
civilizations - headquartered on Atlantis, but their influence was
felt throughout the galaxy.  They fell at about the same time as
Atlantis itself, before the rise of Corellia and Salusia, but some say
there are still a few of them, out on the Outer Rim, passing the
techniques down and keeping some vestige of the Order alive."
        Kate nodded.  "O-one of the f-f-founders of the Asag-g-giri
K-Katsuj-jinkenr-ryuu was a J-Jedi Knight.  He l-lived in the
m-mid-t-twenty-first c-century."
        Mia looked interested.  "Really?  Did he leave behind any
writings?"
        "A f-few.  You'd h-h-have to ask D-Dad."
        "Mm.  Next time I see him, I think I will.  Anyway - at the
height of their power, the Jedi Order built temples all over the
galaxy.  Most were destroyed in the wars that led to the collapse of
the Epoch, but a few survived, mostly on Outer Rim worlds, and there
are images in the books of the time."  She tapped the picture with a
fingertip.  "This building is an ancient Jedi temple.  They must have
had a presence on Bajor."
        "Mm, that's not surprising," said Miki.  "I've been reading a
bit about Bajor - Major Kira gave me a very interesting book on the
planet's history.  Their civilization's continuity of history goes
back almost -twenty-five thousand years-, to the Epoch -before-
Atlantis.  So to them, a Jedi presence during the last Epoch would
have been a passing fad.  Bajorans didn't even -live- on Jeraddo back
then."
        "(They practically don't now,)" Saionji observed in a dry
murmur, causing Miki to give him a wry little grin.
        "So," Miki went on doggedly, "it's not too surprising that,
when they -did- come, no one knew what this old building had been.
Despite having had starfaring technology for millennia, the Bajorans
have only very recently come to take an interest in the worlds beyond
their own."
        "So... " said Utena thoughtfully.  "The reason the big room
downstairs feels so much like a dojo... "
        "Is because it -is- a dojo," said Mia, nodding.  "It must be
the room where the Jedi practiced their fighting techniques.  They
fought with projected energy swords - lightsabers, they were called.
I saw one once - there's one in the Great Library, preserved from the
days when there were Jedi on Minbar.  They're incredible pieces of
technology.  Lightyears beyond the modern mass-produced beam sabers."
        Kate nodded.  "D-Dad has one.  It's s-supp-posed to have
b-belonged to T-Talar Kem, the J-Jedi who helped T-Tetsuo Asagiri
f-found the K-Katsujinkenr-r-ryuu."
        "Well," said Saionji.  "That seems an auspicious bit of news
for our Society."
        "Shame it had to come on such a dark day, though," said Mia
glumly.
        "Actually, I think it's good," said Miki.  "It gives us a bit
of light, so that the day won't have been completely given up to
sadness."
        "(grr,)" said Tiny Robo with a grave little nod.  Utena
absently patted him on the head.
        Mia nodded.  "That's a good way to look at it," she mused
softly.  "Well... if you have any news... please let me know?  I'll be
upstairs, putting away the last of my books, then meditating upon the
crystals."

        Course registration day dawned rainy, grey and dreary, one of
the first really lousy days they'd had since coming to Jeraddo.  It
suited the general mood fairly well, as students dressed in the black
rain capes or trenchcoats of the DSM uniform made their way around the
suddenly sodden campus, forming long lines in the Student Center's
Grand Ballroom to sign up for their A-term classes.  There was
something amusing, Utena decided, about a thousand soggy teenagers
standing around in bank-teller-like lines in a grandiose,
high-ceilinged, chandeliered, hyper-elegant room like this one,
dripping onto the plastic sheeting which had been laid down over the
magnificent mosaic floor with its grand reproduction of the DSM Seal
and its motto ("Nolite accipere ullos ligneos sestertios").
        For the first two terms at the Deedlit Satori Mandeville
Memorial Institute, the uniform of the now-defunct Worcester
Preparatory Institute would be acceptable garb for those former WPI
students who had made the transfer to DSM.  By Christmas, everyone was
expected to have switched over to the new standard.  Not that there
was all that much difference; both uniforms specified a black and grey
checked skirt, black V-neck sweater vest, and white shirt for girls,
and black dress shorts or trousers with black suitjacket for boys.
Both had red accents - socks, tie for boys, neckerchief for girls.
The main differences were in the boys' uniforms: DSM had chosen to
dispense with the charcoal-grey dress shirt in favor of a more
conventional white, and the jackets were double-breasted instead of
single.  Shoes were still left up to the students' discretion, within
limits, as were headgear and accessories.
        As at WPI, there was no actual school rule specifying the
girls' uniform exclusively for girls' wear, or the boys' for boys';
and so Utena Tenjou stood in line for class registration (right about
on the "u" in "ullos") wearing a double-breasted jacket and black
shorts, her tie neatly knotted, hands in her shorts pockets pinning
back the tails of her trenchcoat, with galoshes over her usual black
and white saddle shoes and a non-regulation black fedora hat on her
head.
        "The hat's a good choice," Wakaba Shinohara informed her.
"Without it, the trenchcoat and the jacket would give you kind of an
'Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS' look."
        Utena rolled her eyes.
        "Where'd you get that hat, anyway?" Wakaba asked.
        "Sort of a present from Corwin, last New Year's," Utena
replied, smiling fondly at the memory.  "He was wearing it when the
bunch of us left the house to go downtown for the big New Year's Eve
bash they have in New Avalon every year.  I complained that if he was
wearing a hat, I couldn't fuss with his hair, so he took it off and
plunked it on me instead."
        "At which point," said Dorothy Wayneright with a hint of
amusement, "it became yours forevermore."
        "How romantic," said Wakaba dryly.
        "Don't you think it suits her, though?" asked Dorothy.  She,
like Wakaba, had opted for the usual girl's outfit; with a bit of an
autumn chill in the air to ring in September, both, like most girls on
campus today, were wearing the optional black leggings for warmth.
Dorothy didn't really need them, but she liked the effect they
presented.  Like Utena, she was wearing a hat, in her case a neat
little round one with a broad brim.  Wakaba's onion of hair was
looking a bit wilted because she'd decided not to wear one or put her
rain cape's hood up for the dash from the Castle to the ballroom.
        "Oh, definitely," Wakaba agreed, nodding and giving Utena an
appraising look.  Then she glanced next to the pink-haired Duelist
(who was looking comically put-upon) and saw that Kaitlyn was frowning
at something across the room through her slightly-fogged-up glasses.
        "Something wrong, Kate?" she asked.  "You're quieter than
usual this morning."
        "That's C-Clarissa," Kate murmured, as if to herself.
"D-d-damn!"
        Wakaba and Dorothy turned to look; Utena didn't have to.
Clarissa Broadbank was indeed standing in one of the other reg lines,
chatting with returning sophomore Carol Alverson, one of Clarissa's
sister Liza's former brigade.  As the four Castle-dwellers watched,
the two girls shared a laugh about something.
        "Looks like she's taking over right where Liza left off," said
Wakaba unhappily.
        "Just like she said she would yesterday," Utena added glumly.
"I hoped she was just trying to get Kate's goat, saying that... "
        Kaitlyn looked at the two in the other line for a moment
longer, then shrugged slightly.  "W-we'll h-h-handle her," she said.
        In the line on their other side, a few places back, G'Kron of
Narn found himself bumped by someone who was slipping through the line
on his way across the room, a pink special-reg form - requiring him to
consult with one of the guidance counselors on the far side - in his
hand.
        "Pardon me," said the bumper, "but - Great Maker!  G'KRON!"
        G'Kron blinked, then drew back until he bumped the person
behind him.  "MARMO!" he bellowed, causing many people, including Kate
and her party, to turn and look.
        Standing face to face with G'Kron, his arms outstretched to
mirror the Narn's gesture of surprised, pleased welcome, was a tall,
broad-shouldered young man with the characteristically upstanding,
fanned-out hairstyle of a Centauri belonging to a family of some
importance.  The hair in the fan was a dull red, a bit streaky, as
if it had been partially highlighted.  The Centauri himself had a
rather patrician nose and a prominent chin.
        Centauri and Narns generally didn't like each other very much;
the Centauri Republic had conquered and occupied Narn for a good bit
of the previous century, and there were still a lot of hurt feelings
about the whole affair.  So there was a good bit of tension in the
room, as the two young men stood staring at each other; but then they
crashed together into a vehement, back-slapping embrace, and it seemed
that all would be well, so most of the room lost interest.
        "Who's -that-?" Wakaba wondered.
        "Search me," Utena told her.
        "Beld M-Marmo," said Kate.  "G'K-K-Kron's old r-roommate.  He
l-left W-p-p-PI last Ch-Christmas."
        "Ah, the whole Psi Act thing," said Wakaba, nodding.  She'd
heard all about it, over fifty students from nations which had decided
to protest the expansion to the Psionics Regulation and Protection Act
by pulling their nationals out of the Earth Alliance, gone for the
previous school year's holiday break and never returned.
        "Indeed," said a soft, pleasant voice from next to them.
"Many of us who were lost to the Institute at that time have accepted
President Tiefeld's invitation to rejoin the community we were forced
to leave."
        Wakaba turned to see who was speaking, and found herself face
to face with a rather sharp-faced young man who had short-clipped black
hair, slightly greenish skin, and pointed ears.  He nodded cordially
to her.  Kaitlyn smiled.
        "S-Strom," she said.  "W-w-w-welc-c-come b-b-back."
        Strom inclined his head to Kate as well and replied, "Peace
and long life, Kaitlyn Hutchins.  It is agreeable to see you again."
        That was pretty effusive for a Vulcan, and brought a little
smile to Kate's face as she asked, "S-S-seen P-Prof-f-fessor
S-S-S-St-Stuv-vek?"
        "Yes," Strom replied.  "He is in his office, unpacking his
books.  I believe he would also find it agreeable to see you again,"
he added with just the faintest touch of humor.  "Ah.  My line moves.
I must keep up or be left behind.  Live long and prosper, Kaitlyn.  I
trust I will see you when Professor Stuvek's classes recommence."
        Kate nodded, smiling, and gave Strom the Vulcan split-fingered
salute, which he returned with grave solemnity before slipping back
into his place in his own line.
        "Why is a Vulcan taking Vulcan classes?" Wakaba wondered.
        "P-Professor Stuvek t-teaches l-l-literature, too.  Or at
l-least he d-d-did at WPI."

        On Friday, word came back from the ships which had gone to the
Spirit of the River's last known position: they'd discovered nothing
but a lot of wreckage, some unidentifiable, most from a t'skrang
trader of the Spirit's class.  Two bodies were recovered, both
t'skrang.  The Spirit's log buoy had not been found; the search
continued, but not much hope was held out.  Friday night in the
Castle's beautiful dining hall degenerated into a kind of impromptu
wake for Liza Broadbank, and not even Utena's masterful execution of
Corwin's grandfather's lasagne recipe could save the occasion from
becoming miserable and maudlin.
        ("To Liza," said Azalynn, raising her glass at one point: "The
only enemy I never tried to befriend, and the one I most should have.
Takhai malath'thani, Elizabeth.  You were beautiful."  Then she
drained her glass, threw it into the fire, and went to her room to cry
some more.)
        The weekend passed, rainy and dreary, and the Duelists and
their friends remained disconsolate.  It was a sit-around-watching-
rain-run-down-the-windows kind of weekend, where the sudden,
unseasonal, damp cold seemed to seep through the stone walls of the
Castle and fight a winning battle with the building's modernized
heating systems to give everything a faint, slick edge of chill.
        Monday morning, though, dawned clear and sunny, the warmth of
August coming back to take a curtain call in the first days of
September.  It was as though Jeraddo itself didn't want them to
inaugurate the first day of classes in this new and beautiful school
with such feelings of gloom hanging over them.
        Kaitlyn and Utena rose, showered, dressed, and headed
downstairs in time to start setting up for a good, hearty group
breakfast for the Castle-dwellers, a gesture of solidarity before
plunging headlong into their junior year of high school here on this
lovely blue moon... but when they got to the kitchen, they found
somebody already at work there.
        "Aunt Urd?!" Utena blurted.  "What the hell are YOU doing
here?"
        Urd Snowmane, Norn of Yesterday and self-proclaimed favorite
aunt of Corwin Ravenhair (though she knew full well that Bell was his
favorite - Bell was EVERYONE's favorite, and Urd had long since gotten
over that), turned around at the range and grinned at Utena.
        "Is that any way to talk to your House Guide?" she inquired
with a cheery wink.
        "House Guide?" said Utena, still confused.
        Urd shook her head and tutted with mock disapproval, wagging a
finger at Utena.  "You didn't read your new Student Handbook, did
you?"
        "Only to make sure they didn't fix the uniform rule on me,"
Utena admitted sheepishly.
        "Well, if you -had-," Urd informed her, "you would know that
one of the changes here at DSM is that all residence halls will have,
in addition to student Resident Advisors - "
        "We don't have an RA here," Utena interjected.  "Dean
Montaigne decided that since we're mainly a club residence, the
officers could - "
        "Don't interrupt me!" Urd cut in, then recomposed herself and
went on as though she hadn't been interrupted, "All residence halls
will have, in addition to student Resident Advisors OR THEIR
EQUIVALENT - " (with a pointed smirk) " - an adult House Guide, to
whom students will be expected to take any problems too serious for a
peer to handle, including but not limited to inter-roommate violence,
sexual harassment, serious injury, suicide threats, or other major
crimes, and concerns over drinking, drug use, cybernetic interface
addiction, or unplanned pregnancy."
        "... You memorized that part of the Handbook," said Utena,
giving Urd a half-lidded, skeptical look.
        "Of course I did," Urd replied, drawing herself up
importantly.  "I'm your House Guide!"
        "They made -you- a House Guide?!"
        Urd did her best to look offended, though she knew Utena was
teasing her.  They'd become fairly good friends over the course of the
summer, with a special understanding cemented during Utena's brief,
unplanned vacation in Asgard a few weeks before.
        "That they did, and I intend to do a bang-up job at it, too,
so you'd better just watch yourself, Missy!" Urd declared.  "Now have
a seat - the pancakes will be - "
        "B-burned," Kate observed, thoughtfully sniffing at the air.
        "What?!"  Urd whirled.  "Oh, dammit!  Bell makes this look so
-easy-... "
        Utena chuckled, dropping her attitude of mock antagonism.
"Here... let me," she said, and nudged the goddess out of the way.
"Why don't -you- have a seat," she went on, starting to clean up the
mess Urd had made, "and -I'll- make the pancakes."

        Day 1 went well for the Duelists and their company.  The first
day of classes was never particularly challenging, and the
reconstituted faculty of WPI, with a few local additions, seemed to be
enjoying the new setting every bit as much as the 60% of the student
body who were also transplants.  The 'new' students, those who hadn't
been to WPI, didn't have as much of an adjustment to make, and so
perhaps they didn't have quite the same level of appreciation for
DSM's luxuries, but they liked it all the same.
        At lunchtime, they gathered at Table 11 in the new dining hall
and had the first meeting of the Institute Band Geeks Federation.  The
state of the student orchestra was discussed, as was the somewhat
unstable condition of Kate's own band, the Art of Noise.
        Azalynn was feeling somewhat better today - she was still
rather subdued, but she didn't look like she might burst out crying at
any moment.  She was game to start Art of Noise rehearsals as soon as
possible, so that the band's two new members - drummer R. Dorothy
Wayneright and rhythm guitarist Miki Kaoru - could start getting up to
speed.  There was hope, though not really ambitious hope, that they
might be able to have their first performance during the fall break
between terms A and B.
        That afternoon, when classes were done but before dinnertime,
Kate met Utena at the main entrance to the Castle, smiling her
I-have-a-surprise-for-you smile, and led her puzzled roommate back in
the other direction.
        "R-remember before you l-l-left with C-Corwin," Kate asked,
"y-you said w-w-we had enough m-motorheads in the I-d-d-DS, it w-was
too b-b-bad there aren't any r-roads on J-Jeraddo?"
        Utena nodded.  "Nobody seemed to think I was serious."
        Kate's grin got a little wider as they reached her antique
Impala convertible, parked in the corner of the student lot at the
bottom of Castle Hill.
        "We w-were k-kind of p-preocc-c-cupied," said Kate.  She put
her hand on the top of the Impala's driver's door and vaulted into the
driver's seat without opening it, which made Utena smile a bit; there
had been a time, not all that long ago, when Kate wouldn't have done a
thing like that.  She was chuckling to herself about it as she opened
her own door and climbed in.  Kate gave her a querying look as she
fired up the engine.
        "Nothing," Utena said, still smiling, to the unspoken
question.  "You were saying?"
        "I was s-saying," Kate said patiently, "th-that we d-did take
you s-seriously."  She guided the big car onto the twisty road that
wound through the campus, saying as she did so, "So w-we t-talked to
M-Major Clanton, and h-he talked to P-P-Prylar Otano, and h-h-HE
talked to V-Vedek B-Bareil... "
        The Impala curled up the sweeping turn around Comins
Observatory and started picking up speed, heading for the hedge fence
which marked the edge of campus.  On the plans of the campus Utena had
seen before leaving for her tour of space training, the internal road
had ended here in a small parking lot/turnaround.  As they drew near,
though, she saw that it didn't; in fact, it left the campus, heading
off into the wooded hills to the south.
        Kate threw a shift and accelerated as they passed the fence,
her face almost glowing with anticipation and enjoyment, and soon they
were roaring through the hills on a shiny new strip of two-lane
blacktop.  As they charged along, taking the turns with tidy precision
and swooping up and down the slopes, Utena began to realize that she'd
seen something like this road before.  It was almost more like a
racecourse - it had progressive corners, and low, striped curbs
flanking the bends, and the occasional sand trap off to the sides of
the sharper turns.
        And, she saw as they flew deeper into the woods, it had an
on-ramp.
        An on-ramp which led to a six-lane, elevated, divided
superhighway.
        She turned to Kaitlyn and had to shout to be heard over the
Impala's slipstream as the brown-haired Duelist leader ran the big
black car up to a hundred twenty, grinning fiercely.
        "You conned the Corps of Engineers into building a HIGHWAY
COMPLEX?  On JERADDO?!" she cried.
        Kate smirked, reached down to the dash, and punched a key
above the radio.  Instantly the roar of the wind was muted by the
car's climate management field, reducing it to a conversational level
without removing that open-road feeling.
        "We c-call it 'D-Die Autob-b-bahn'," said Kate with a grin.
"It w-was actually W-Wakaba's idea."
        Utena grinned wryly.  "That figures," she said.
        "It d-does technically have a p-p-purpose, or the M-Major
wouldn't have b-been able to s-s-swing it," Kate went on.  "The
f-f-freeway p-part c-connects the m-main c-c-campus with the
r-recreation c-complexes at B-Botrell B-B-Beach and the K-Karkasus
Mountains, and the s-s-surface r-roads are b-backup routes."
        Utena's grin widened.  "Ah, so -that's- why Wakaba was so
enthusiastic about it.  She loves beaches.  Any excuse to go to the
seaside, she'll take it."
        "K-K-Kyouichi-kun was p-pleased too," Kate informed her.
"He's app-parently a fan of c-c-camping."
        Utena nodded.  "He used to go camping in the Forest of Secrets
sometimes.  It was against the rules to leave campus during the term
without special permission, but being on the Student Council, he could
go into the Forest anytime he liked."  She chuckled.  "Weirdo."
        Kate shrugged.  "It'll h-help when the t-t-time c-comes for
his w-wilderness s-s-surv-vival training."
        "That it will.  Are you going to take him out into the woods,
drop him off, and tell him if he's not back in a week, you might
consider looking for him?"
        "W-worked for D-D-Dad and me," replied Kate unconcernedly.
        "By the way - it's SUPER-surreal to hear you call him
'Kyouichi-kun'," Utena observed.  "And not just because nobody uses
Japanese tags in Standard except Tomodachiko schoolgirls and zaibatsu
executives."
        Kate shrugged.  "K-Katsuj-j-jinkenr-ryuu is a J-Japanese
form," she said.  "He c-calls me 's-s-sensei'.  You w-want to t-talk
about a s-sur-real feeling," she added wryly.  "Anyw-way, it's only
f-f-fair."
        "Bet he gave you a funny look the first time you said it to
his face," said Utena.
        Kate grinned.  "W-Wakaba thinks it's c-cute.  He d-doesn't
t-t-take it as w-well from her, th-though," she added with a wink.
        Utena leaned her chin on her fist, elbow on raised knee, and
regarded her roommate with a smile.  "You're really enjoying yourself,
aren't you?" she asked.  "Not just right now, I mean in general.
You've really been up since I got back... well, except for the times
like last night, anyway."
        Kate nodded, a shadow flickering across her face.  "Mm," she
said.  "I th-think we've b-been o-over-r-reacting a little," she went
on thoughtfully.  "I m-mean, the inf-formation we have s-so far is
p-p-pretty s-sketchy.  D-Dad and the t's-skrang are still
inv-v-vestigating, and p-people s-survive p-pirate attacks all the
t-time.  Even if she was c-c-captured, not all p-pirates are
s-slavers... "
        Utena nodded.  "Yeah, I was thinking about that too, last
night, after we went to bed.  The way I figure it, the attackers were
probably specifically after an Ishkarat ship, so even if they were
after the crew, they aren't going to be interested in a human."  She
grinned.  "They'll probably either ransom her or dump her on the Outer
Rim someplace.  She'll hitch a ride back with a Freespacer trader or
something and be here in time for B-term, and I bet she'll be pissed
off, too," she added with a grin.
        Kate chuckled at the image.  "I h-hope so," she said, more
soberly.  "If they d-do ransom her, her f-f-father probably w-won't
pay," she mused.
        "Then we will," Utena replied.  "Or we'll find out where
they've got her and go get her."
        Kate gave her a smiling, askance look.  "D-Duelists to the
r-r-rescue?"
        "Of course," Utena replied.  She drew herself up importantly
and said, "I -am- a Prince, you know.  It's my duty to rescue young
ladies in distress.  Even bitchy ones," she added, dropping the
pretentious pose and grinning.  "Anyway," she went on as Kaitlyn
giggled, "I was just noticing that you're... -brighter-, since I was
away.  Just... little things.  You shine more.  It's hard to explain."
        Kate nodded.  "I kn-know what you m-mean.  I d-didn't
r-realize it showed on m-me.  But I h-have a lot to be h-h-happy
ab-bout," she said.  "I h-have so m-many g-good friends... I have a
b-beautiful school to c-call home, and a b-b-beautiful home to g-go
b-back to when it c-closes...  a f-family that b-backs me a
h-h-hundred p-percent... a s-student of my o-own... "  Her cheeks
pinkened, and she added softly, "... and s-s-someone to l-love... "
        Utena's smile became softer, nostalgic; she leaned back in her
seat, hands folded behind her head, stretched, looked up at the
flickering play of light and shadow that the afternoon sun made
through the trees flanking this stretch of highway, and said,
        "Nice feeling, isn't it?"
        Kate's own smile faltered a little.  She reached across the
bench seat and held out her hand, and said in an apologetic tone,
        "You'll g-get her b-b-back.  I kn-know you w-will."
        Utena glanced at her, then took her hand, squeezed it, and
said, "Yeah, I know.  Don't worry.  Don't apologize for your good
fortune just because I've had some bad luck."  She chuckled.  "It
won't hurt my feelings if you don't share my loneliness," she said
lightly, trying her best to make a joke out of it.  "Anyway," she went
on, the lightness in her voice less forced now, "I have some good
friends to see me through too, y'know."

        Mia Ausa finished her first day's reading for Professor Ford's
Intermediate Comparative Religion class, closed her textbook, and
pushed her chair back from the desk with a yawning, stretching sigh.
        "I don't see how you can stand that stuff," said B'Elanna
Torres from the sofa she'd scrounged for the room, the bed being
useless for the traditional dorm-room accommodation of seated guests.
"It's so -dull-.  None of it has any practical value."  Lying on her
stomach with her chin propped on her hands, she flipped a leaf in her
Electrodynamics text and continued offhandedly, "Besides, I'd have
figured you'd have had enough of that kind of thing on Minbar."
        Mia turned her chair and smiled patiently.  She didn't
particularly mind having acquired a sidekick, but sometimes B'Elanna
got the -oddest- ideas about things.
        "Not every Minbari prays for a living," she said.  "Admittedly, 
my mother belonged to the Religious caste, but there was a good deal
more to -my- life on Minbar than religion."
        "Mm," said B'Elanna skeptically.  "To hear Chenann tell it,
there's -sewers-, too."
        Mia laughed.  "Well, sewers are important," she said.  "More
important than religion, by some standards."
        "Anyway, if it's so nice there," B'Elanna asked, "why'd you
leave?"
        Mia's smile slipped a little.  She looked pensive as she
replied, "Well... that's a good question.  I guess, when you get right
down to it, my situation wasn't so different from yours.  That's one
of the reasons I took your uncle's attitude toward your future so...
personally."
        B'Elanna grinned.  "And that's why you whomped him so hard?"
        Mia's smile returned, with a hint of mischief, as she replied,
"Well, mostly that was because he cheated."  (And tried to kill me,
she didn't add.)  "But I challenged him because of that, yes.  He
reminded me of the reasons why I left Minbar."
        "Oh yeah?"  The half-Klingon girl shut her book, sat up, and
looked eager.  "Like what?"
        Mia gazed at her just long enough to make her uncomfortable,
then said, "All right... I'll tell you about it."

/--

                       MONDAY, DECEMBER 6, 2404
                               11:31 AM
                            YEDOR, MINBAR

        Mia adjusted the cuffs of her best robe's sleeves again,
though there was nothing wrong with them, and patted at her thick,
wavy black hair, though no one else on Minbar would ever know if it
looked right or not anyway.  She knew they were just nervous habits,
but they were better than pacing, so she didn't try to stop herself.
        Her uncle Davonn, tall, slender, spiky-crested, smiled at her
from the bench along the anteroom's wall.  -He- looked calm, calm
enough to make Mia want to hate him, just for a moment.  She could
never, of course.  He was her only blood relative who would speak to
her, after all - except for her father, who wasn't allowed to see her.
        "Be calm, Mia," he told her in his soft, smooth voice.  "It's
only a formality."
        Mia nodded.  "I know, Uncle," she said.  "Still... the Grey
Council!"
        Davonn smiled a little wider, but before he could speak, the
door before them opened silently onto darkness.
        "Go," said Davonn softly.  "Your mother will be watching you.
Speak from your heart."
        Mia nodded again, then turned, squared herself up, and went
through the doors.
        There was a single spot of light shining on the bare floor; in
the darkness, it was impossible to tell anything about the room, not
even its size.  Something in the air gave it an unconscious sense of
vastness, though; vastness and immense age.  Mia walked into the spot
of light and stopped, her eyes searching the blackness around her.
        Then, without warning, there they were, standing in a circle
around her, each illuminated by his own similar light from the
invisible ceiling.  They wore identical grey robes and their faces
were downturned, hidden in the shadows of their hoods.  Mia looked
from one to the next, but it was impossible to tell which of them was
the only friend she might expect to have in this room.
        There was one who definitely wasn't, though - the tall,
broad-shouldered one who bore the staff of the Council's leader.  Mia
knew him on sight, identified him by his size and by his staff, though
she could not see his face.  Her uncle had often spoken of him, for he
held the highest position in Davonn's caste, the Warriors.
        Neroon, the leader of the Grey Council, spoke the ceremonial
words that opened any and every gathering of that council, describing
its foundation by Valen Himself, its composition, its purpose, in
language ancient and elegant.  Then he reached up, pushed back his
hood, and turned his cold, patrician face and sharp, perceptive eyes
on Mia.
        "Mia, child of Lemia, late of the house of Ausa," he said.
"You have a petition you wish this Council to hear?"
        Mia forced her voice not to quaver as she nodded her head
respectfully and said, "I do."
        "Then speak," said Neroon, in a tone which came just politely
short of implying that she was wasting his very valuable time.
        "As the Council no doubt knows," said Mia carefully, "I have
just passed the fourteenth anniversary of my birth, on the Old
Calendar.  I feel that the time is right for me claim the name of my
mother's house, and decide the course of my future."
        Neroon looked first to one side of Mia, then the other,
managing to pass his eyes over her in the process without giving the
impression he had actually seen her, and nodded.  "The name is yours
by birthright," he said; in his voice was an undercurrent of
reluctance which Mia did not fail to pick up.  "And what of your
future, Mia of Ausa?" he went on, sounding faintly mocking.
        Mia felt herself tremble inside, quashed it fiercely.  She
wouldn't let him get her down, make her embarrass herself in front of
the Council.  Of course he had nothing but disdain for her; it was
Neroon who had called her "the shame of all Minbar" at her birth, her
impossible birth, the child of a Minbari woman and the Earthman she
had loved illegally, never dreaming that a child could result.  That
complacency had cost Lemia of Ausa her position as assistant to a
Satai, her standing in society, the regard of all but one of her
relatives, and, in the end, her life - and Neroon, Mia knew, Neroon
had stood over her deathbed and declared her fate justice for the
disgrace she had brought to Minbar.
        All that, knowledge no one else in the world knew she had
gathered, knowledge her beloved uncle had tried to protect her from
and still believed that he had succeeded, flashed through her mind in
an instant as Neroon's mocking tone bit into her, and for an instant,
just an instant, she felt her fists clenching.  It would be so easy to
make Neroon pay for his arrogance, his bigotry, his callous dismissal
of her mother's suffering and death as "justice", his never-veiled
contempt of her uncle Davonn for the young warrior's belief in the
ancient ways of the Anla'shok.  Neroon never would have dreamed that
her family's neglect could have had a positive outcome; but an
intelligent, inquisitive girl all but abandoned in the greatest
storehouse of knowledge the modern universe boasted could learn all
-manner- of fascinating things...
        Mia caught herself in a nanosecond and forced herself back
into the composure she had never visibly lost.  Never had the
temptation to abuse what she had learned in her endless solitary hours
in the Library been so strong, and never had the responsibility that
knowledge carried with it been more clearly etched on her soul.  In
that respect, then, this was a valuable experience - something, she
thought with bitter humor, to thank Neroon for.
        "The calling of my heart is clear," said Mia, making herself
meet his cold, uncaring eyes without flinching.  "My path is my
mother's.  I seek admission to the Religious caste, to devote my days
to the study and the glory of the Word of Valen."
        Neroon's mocking smile almost lost its veneer of cordial
impartiality, and even as he spoke, Mia felt her heart sinking,
knowing that the fix was in:
        "Mia, of the house of Ausa, has made clear her wishes.  How
speaks the Council?"
        And all around Mia, one by one, the lights revealing the
members of the Grey Councilors went out, until only one, aside from
Neroon, remained.
        Well, some part of Mia's mind said wryly while the rest of her
raged in silence, now you know which one is Delenn.
        "Unfortunately," said Neroon in a voice that left no doubt
that he found it anything but, "there is no place for you among those
of the Religious caste at this time, Mia of Ausa.  However," he went
on charitably, "Valen teaches us that no... Minbari... shall lead a
life without purpose.  A place has been prepared for you in the caste
of Workers.  You will report to the Guildhall of the Sanitary Legion
tomorrow and begin your training as a cleaner."  He smiled
benevolently.  "Perhaps you will be placed in charge of maintaining
the cleanliness of the Library," he said, as if offering a condolence.
        He banged the end of his staff upon the stone floor, a clear
dismissal, and waited for her to leave; but Mia Ausa did not leave.
Instead she stood looking at the floor for a moment, her lip
trembling, willing herself not to break, not to give him the
satisfaction.
        "The Council has made its decision plain," said Neroon in a
warning voice.  "All... Minbari... must abide by those decisions."  He
said it with that pause again, that poisonous pause which silently
added, "And those nameless things that presume to call themselves
Minbari, too."  As the pause and the subvocal sneer came, something
inside Mia did break, but it wasn't her heart or the dam holding back
her tears.
        Her shoulders stiffened, her hands at her sides flexing again;
then she raised her tearless eyes to Neroon's and said, "Then the
Council leaves me no choice."
        "I am glad you see it that way," said Neroon mock-pleasantly,
but Mia wasn't done talking, and her voice, suddenly clear and hard,
cut him off, echoing in the vastness of the chamber.
        "I had hoped I would not have to do this," she said.  "Despite
everything, I love Minbar, and had hoped for the chance to live out my
days here, in study and contemplation of the truth of Valen.  But
Valen's law says that a Minbari's first obligation is to the calling
of her heart, and my heart does -not- call me to the Worker caste.  It
is a noble and honorable calling," she added for the benefit of the
three Workers who belonged to the Council, who were still here, even
if the snuffing of their lights in the vote had made them invisible,
"but it is not mine.  If this Council cannot see fit to honor Valen's
teachings and grant me the future on Minbar I choose, then I am
forced to choose a future -away- from Minbar."
        Neroon actually looked taken aback.  "-Away- from Minbar?" he
said, his tone still mocking but now puzzled atop that.  Then,
becoming indignant, he went on, "Nonsense.  The Council has spoken!
Your place is prepared, Mia of Ausa, and you will -not- presume to
educate the -Grey Council- as to the meaning of the Word of Valen!"
        "My father," Mia informed Neroon sharply, "as you and so many
others never tire of holding over my head, is an Earthman.  Under
galactic law, I am therefore entitled to claim citizenship of the
Earth Alliance as well.  The petition, backed by a tie of blood, is
automatic and cannot be denied."
        She took a deep breath, let it out, and said with much greater
calm than she would have believed possible, "If this Council insists
on denying me the place my heart dictates for me on Minbar, then I
hereby -renounce- Minbar!  You have told me all my life that I am not
Minbari - fine, then, I am not!  I am an Earthwoman, and as an
Earthwoman I demand that the Minbari government grant me passage to my
-homeworld-."  She put an extra twist on the last word, digging it in,
using it against Neroon and his supporters the way they had always
used the word 'Earthman' to hurt her, pretending they didn't know she
could hear them.
        Neroon stared at her as though she'd suddenly grown a second
head, all trace of his usual contemptuous cordiality wiped away for a
moment by sheer surprise.  Then he gathered himself in and sneered at
her, "Out of the question.  This foolishness will not reflect well
upon you in the future, Mia."
        "You deny my right to Earth citizenship?  You would disregard
the international laws of the United Federation of Planets and cast a
citizen of another sovereign nation into involuntary servitude?" Mia
demanded, her voice thick with outrage, no longer contained.  "You are
many things, Satai Neroon, but I did not think you a common -slave
trader-."
        Neroon's eyes widened with shock; the haughty warrior was
struck absolutely speechless by that claim, leaving Mia an opening to
continue in a more reasonable tone of voice,
        "However, there is an avenue open to us besides useless
name-calling.  I claim that I have certain rights under international
law.  You dispute that claim.  Under the Pact Babylonica, which you
yourself signed two years ago, there is a clear path to resolution of
this disagreement: We must refer the matter to the International Police
for arbitration."
        Mia saw Neroon's face freeze and knew she had him.  She was
right; a matter such as this was tailor-made for IPO arbitration.  But
to bring an International Police arbiter here, to lay this whole
sordid matter out in front of him - to admit on the public record,
before the eyes of the galactic press that such a case would draw like
flies to Minbar in the arbiter's wake... 
        Slowly, stiffly, Neroon conceded defeat.
        "Very well," he said reluctantly.  "You will collect your
belongings and leave this world within forty-eight hours.  But know
this, Mia of Ausa: As an Earthwoman, you will not be welcome on Minbar
ever again."
        "I never have been," Mia replied coldly.
        Without acknowledging her further, Neroon extinguished his
light.  Somehow, Mia could sense all around her the Councilors
leaving, though their movements were as silent as they were invisible.
        As she turned to go, Mia saw with surprise that one Councilor
yet remained; and as Mia faced her, Delenn of Mir reached up and
pushed back her cowl, then gestured for Mia to walk with her.
        "Very few," said Delenn carefully as the two left the Council
chamber, "have ever spoken to Neroon in such a fashion."
        "Perhaps that is his problem," Mia replied.
        Delenn permitted herself a very small smile and said dryly,
"Perhaps.  In any event, I am sorry it's come to this, Mia.  I, too,
had hoped that you would be granted your request."
        "I never really expected I would," Mia told her.  "I only
hoped... but they forced my hand, and here I am.  Or, rather, here I
go."
        Delenn nodded.  "As it happens," she said, "I will be leaving
Minbar myself before much longer.  I've been named ambassador to the
Babylon station."  She looked concerned and asked, "Do you know where
you will go?"
        "Earth," said Mia, "as I said I would.  My father can arrange
citizenship for me, and after that... I imagine I'll have to go to
school somewhere.  There are some good schools on Earth.  Dad will
probably have some ideas."  She shrugged, a human gesture she'd
learned from her infrequent, surreptitious visits with her father.
"I'll find a new path."
        Delenn smiled, more openly this time, and said, "I wish you
good fortune and peace in your search for it.  Be well until I see you
again."
        "And you, Satai Delenn," said Mia, and they took their leave
of each other.  Mia wondered just when she would see Delenn again.
She supposed that, if the elder woman were taking a position on
Babylon 5, Mia could visit her there; the station would be a public
port once it was operational, free for all to enter, if they could
afford passage.
        Aunt Delenn.  Mia called her aunt, but of course she wasn't.
Mia's mother had been her assistant, years ago, before the tragic love
affair with John Trussell of Earth.  Aside from Davonn and his
Anla'shok peers - dismissed as crackpots and fools by almost everyone
on Minbar - she was the one Minbari adult who -liked- Mia; and so Mia
called her aunt, at least privately.  It was Delenn who had used her
influence to ensure that Mia got to know her father as she grew up,
seeing him twice or three times a year in some neutral location,
usually by a rendezvous of starships.
        And now, she would be appearing in his life, unceremoniously,
full-time.  She wondered how he would take that, if he would welcome
her or resent the intrusion into his routine.  Then again, if she went
to boarding school, that would be mitigated; they wouldn't have to
learn how to live with each other at this late date.  Perhaps that
would be for the best.
        Nonetheless, it was with a nervous heart that she went to find
where her uncle had wandered off to and ask his help in arranging
things.

--/

        As Mia finished her tale, B'Elanna sat on the couch and gazed
at her wide-eyed, her face bearing a look of wonder.
        "Wow," said the half-Klingon in amazement.  "'A common slave
trader.'  That'd be... that'd be like me telling off Chancellor
Krojaar in front of the High Council... except on Qo'noS, what you did
would have gotten you killed."  She grinned.  "Good thing Minbari are
a bunch of peace-loving wimps."
        Mia would have remonstrated with her, but the impish grin on
B'Elanna's face made it clear that she was only joking.
        "Well," Mia said, "at the time, it seemed like the right thing
to do."
        "So that's why you went all -house- on Uncle Klayvor,"
B'Elanna mused.  "You were just doing to him what you wanted to do to
that Maroon guy."
        Mia laughed.  "Neroon," she chuckled; then, sobering, she
said, "I don't want you to get the impression that Satai Neroon is an
evil man.  He isn't.  He's just... blinded by his prejudices.  He has
a cruel streak, but reserves it for those he views as enemies.
Unfortunately, he hates my father, and so he considered me his enemy
from birth."  She sighed.  "As a warrior and a leader, he's very
well-regarded.  He would never have made the cowardly final attack
your uncle tried."
        B'Elanna nodded.  "Uncle Klayvor talks a good game," she said,
"but deep down inside he's just a piece of - "
        "B'Elanna!" said Mia with laughing admonition, and the two
girls giggled for a few moments before B'Elanna became serious and
said,
        "Listen... I never thanked you for what you did.  I really
think... you saved my life.  If I'd had to go home with him, try to
fit back into the life he and Mother wanted for me... I'd never have
made it.  One way or another... "
        Mia got up from her chair, crossed the room, and sat down on
the couch, patting B'Elanna's hand.
        "You're welcome," she said.  "Anyway," she added lightly,
"there were at least a dozen other people in that room who would have
done it if I hadn't.  Utena was about ready to run him through right
where he stood.  He really shouldn't have called her a cupcake."
        B'Elanna snorted.  "Yeah, I thought for sure he was gonna get
it right in the gut for that one.  He would have if I'd've been her."
        Mia smiled, then glanced at her watch.  "Well.  You'd best run
along - your lesson with Professor Kraalgh is in five minutes."
        B'Elanna looked at her own watch.  "Oh yeah.  Thanks, Mia - he
gets so grumpy when I'm late."  She hopped up from the couch, gave her
hostess a cheery farewell, and left.
        Mia sat on the couch for a few more minutes, then went to her
bookshelf and drew out one of her ancient texts.  It had been beyond
thoughtful of Delenn to slip several of Mia's favorites - titles of
which the Great Library had duplicates, of course, but still - into
her luggage before the girl had left Minbar to begin her self-demanded
exile.  She put the book down on her desk, then switched on her
dataterminal, called Babylon 5, and made an appointment with an
excruciatingly earnest young attache named Lennier to dine with
Ambassador Delenn on Friday evening.

             /*  R.E.M.  "1,000,000"  _Chronic Town_  */

        The resurgent summer hung on for two glorious weeks, and then
tumbled almost overnight into fall, which was even more glorious.  The
snap in the air reminded Utena pleasantly of her visit to Asgard,
where it always feels a bit like October when it's not doing its best
impression of February, and the foliage along Die Autobahn was
magnificent.
        Classes went well; so did the business of the Duelists'
Society.  After their experiences over the spring and summer, they'd
started really living up to the wording of their charter, testing
themselves and each other in a meeting of diverse styles of combat,
learning from each other and drawing a collective strength from their
diversity.  In the second week of the term, while summer still clung,
they acquired a new member - Beld Marmo, a student of the traditional
Centauri swordfighting form, which utilized short, broad swords not
unlike Amanda Dessler's Gamilon k'tayyl blade.  Marmo's flamboyance on
the dueling floor almost equalled that of T'skaia, which made them
very interesting to watch together.  He declined the Society's offer
of a place in the Castle, though, preferring to move into Room 218 in
Hannibal Hamlin Hall across campus, where G'Kron had eagerly and Mac
had indifferently made room for a new roommate.
        Truth be told, G'Kron was starting to get a bit fed up with
Harcourt McKenzie - not "one of us has to go" fed up, but "that guy's
going to kill himself" fed up.  By G'Kron's lights, McKenzie was
working himself to death.  Between his advanced studies, his weekend
freelance-pilot job, and all the time he had to spend working on the
ancient excuse for a spacecraft he plied that job with, Mac had taken
up a new mantra, to which he clung with all the fervor of a
Kalidorian: "Sleep is a luxury."  By October, G'Kron was considering
the purchase of a large-animal tranquilizer gun to rein in his
overworking roommate.  Beld just shrugged and said, "A man has to do
what a man has to do, eh, G'Kron?" - which wasn't a very helpful
attitude at all, if you asked G'Kron.
        Meanwhile, Kate pieced her orchestra back together; the influx
of new students in the new freshman class, returning from the
political 'exile' of the previous C and D terms on Earth, and joining
the school's other grades outright balanced out the loss of all the
Earther students.  By October, they were rehearsing a fall pops
program, Kate's own Symphony No. 1, and some other works-in-progress
by Kate and Miki with satisfactory progress, if not quite as much
cohesion as she would have liked.  She consoled herself with the
knowledge that this would come in time.
        Clarissa Broadbank had slipped easily and smoothly into her
sister's old role, taking command of the remnant of Liza's clique
which hadn't remained behind on Earth with consummate ease despite the
fact that, as a freshman, she was younger than any of them.  She'd
revived the Beacon, the former WPI's "alternative" newspaper, and set
its editorial policies contentiously against those of the DSM official
student paper, the whimsically named Institute Intelligencer.  She'd
claimed her sister's place on the Student Council (which may or may
not have been a legitimate thing to do) and made a pain of herself at
its functions, reminding Utena intensely of someone she had known in
days past.  (She was, Utena reflected, even the right age; but Nanami
had had her moments - sometimes she was smart and sometimes she was
funny - and there just wasn't anything clever or humorous about
Clarissa Broadbank.)
        Still, the middle Broadbank hadn't really -done- anything yet;
she'd settled in and taken over most of her sister's old functions,
but she hadn't taken any direct action against anyone yet.  They all
knew it was coming, but so far, Clarissa seemed content to settle in,
get her bearings, and wait.
        In fact, the Duelists had already frustrated her in one way,
before the promised new war ever began.  By the time Clarissa got
around to joining the Fencing Club, her sister's most jealously
guarded old preserve, it had already been invaded by Duelists, as Juri
Arisugawa and Miki Kaoru had assumed that club's presidency and
vice-presidency.  This was all quite legitimate - the old club's
vice-president hadn't come to DSM, and Liza, as president, had left an
eeriy prophetic note indicating that, if she didn't return from her
summer's adventure on time, she was to be replaced until she -did-
return by Juri.  As acting president, Juri could then appoint anyone
she cared to have as the old VP's replacement.  Clarissa could grit
her teeth and try to oust the redhead at the next officers' elections
in January, but there was little more she could do about that, for the
time being.
        The only three blots on the vista of the school year, as
A-term wound down into mid-October and the evening shadows lengthened,
were the unencouraging lack of news about the Spirit of the River, the
ongoing troubles of the Art of Noise, and the sudden resignation of
one of the history professors, which left a bit of a gap in the
faculty at an unfortunately timed juncture, a week before finals.
        Of the first, there wasn't much to tell; the joint
IPO-Ishkarat investigation turned up little evidence, and all of it
unencouraging.  The discovered wreckage had been analyzed and found to
account for about half of the Spirit of the River's mass, most of it
hull plating and drive components.  It seemed clear that the other
half of the ship wouldn't have been going anyplace on its own with
that kind of damage... so where was it?  So far, there were no leads,
and there didn't look like being any terribly soon.
        Azalynn continued in her funk for a week or so, but seemed to
snap out of it after the Festival of the Falling Leaves, which she
conducted as an overnight excursion deep into the thick forest at the
feet of the Karkasus Mountains.  With Miki, Dorothy, a curious Saionji
and Wakaba, and Mia Ausa in attendance, it was the most populous
Falling Leaves Azalynn had ever conducted off Dantrov, and she seemed
mightily pleased with the result when they all returned to school the
following morning.  Seeing how cheerful they all were when they got
back, Utena almost wished she'd gone with them, even if she -didn't-
want to know the details.
        As for the second problem, the travails of the Art of Noise,
that was a stickier tangle.  The main problem, as Miki Kaoru saw it,
was Miki Kaoru.  He'd only taken up the guitar earlier in that same
year, after coming to Midgard, and though he was a prodigy and had
mastered the technical aspects of the instrument in fairly short
order, he wasn't satisfied with his ability to play as part of an
ensemble - especially a rock band.  A pianist by training, he was
accustomed to being a soloist or duet player.  Even an orchestral
pianist is essentially a soloist who happens to be playing at the same
time as an orchestra.  Playing guitar - especially rhythm guitar - in a
rock band was a whole different experience, and as the term went on
and rehearsals continued, Miki became more and more frustrated with
what he felt was a serious deficiency in his ability to 'click' with
the rest of the group.
        Amanda Dessler, the previous rhythm guitarist of the Art of
Noise, had honed her own abilities in that regard by playing rhythm to
the lead guitar line of her beloved elder brother Garon in an
impromptu band composed of the two siblings and their Dragonaar
bodyguards.  She'd had years, and the powerful motivation of her sheer
adoration of her brother, to perfect that craft, and perfect it she
had.  Amanda was now the Gamilon Ambassador to nearby Babylon 5, and
as such, she was local, even if she was too busy to remain in the
band.  She visited a couple of rehearsals, offered Miki a few tips and
a generous helping of encouragement, but admitted when pressed to be
blunt that no, he wasn't as good as she had been.  She hastened to add
that she thought his performance perfectly serviceable, though.
        Miki might have become less intense and neurotic since coming
to this world, but he was still a perfectionist about his music, and
"perfectly serviceable" wasn't damned well good enough.  He felt he
was dragging the band down, and was starting to consider suggesting to
Kate that her band would be better served if she found someone else to
take over, despite the insistence of everyone involved that things
would be fine if he would just relax and let it come at its own pace.
        This problem, as it turned out, would be solved by the
solution to the third problem.

                       MONDAY, OCTOBER 17, 2405

        Several of the Duelists and their extended circle of friends,
including Kate, all the Cephireans, G'Kron, and Moose, were members of
Mr. Kesselring's Galactic History 301 class, 10 AM every weekday but
Wednesday in Parkinson 117, the new history building's big
ground-floor lecture hall.  All of them entered that hall wondering
exactly what would await them on this, the last Monday before finals.
They all liked Kesselring, a cheerful man with a comical German accent
who claimed to be a descendent of the World War II general, and were
sad that he'd had to go so suddenly back to Niogi to see to a family
crisis; but more than that, they were wondering what was to become of
their term's work so far.
        Could a reasonable replacement for a galactic history teacher
be found on such short notice, so close to the end of the term, in
this still-rather-remote location?  Would one of the other history
professors have to take up the slack?  How would that affect the
program?
        They needn't have worried.  As they and the sixty other
students who made up the double-sized lecture class took their seats
and arranged their notebooks, the doors down at the front of the
lecture hall opened, and a woman entered, carrying a brown leather
satchel.  She was dressed in a green cable-knit sweater and woolen
skirt, and had a great deal of long, golden-brown hair that was pulled
back from her pretty oval face in a great thick braid, tied with a
gold ribbon.  She didn't look much more than five years or so older
than the students in the class, and as she put her satchel down on the
desk, opened it, and took out the teacher's edition of their textbook,
half the boys and a couple of the girls in the class fell instantly
and hopelessly in love with her.
        Utena and Kaitlyn, on the other hand, were just staring at her
in dumbfounded amazement.
        "Good morning, class," said the substitute teacher in a voice
that was at once soft and pleasant, but clearly audible everywhere in
the room.  She smiled benevolently at the class and said, "I'm
Mrs. Morisato, and I'll be taking over for Mr. Kesselring starting
today."

        Mrs. Morisato - better known to Kate and Utena as Aunt Bell -
stopped by the Castle in the early evening, just in time for dinner.
She insisted on helping in the kitchen, and unlike Urd's well-meaning
but inept efforts, her help actually helped.  Bell had met many of the
Duelists the previous February, when she'd visited WPI to help Utena
with a bit of a problem on the same day that Juri Arisugawa had
appeared on campus.  Those she didn't know were introduced, and any
worries they might have had over being visited by a faculty member and
relation of the president's were immediately put to rest by Bell's
sweet and unassuming manner.
        After dinner, Moose MacEchearn arrived from Hamlin Hall, where
he now shared a room again with his old WPI roommate, Davy Crockett
from Tencton.  He carried with him his usual good cheer, and his bass
guitar, slung over his back in a gig bag.
        The Castle's second floor contained a number of large rooms,
though not as large as the main dueling room below.  These had
probably been used as exercise rooms and smaller dojos by the Jedi who
build the place, millennia ago; for this purpose the Duelists used
them also, except for the one which had been staked out by the Art of
Noise as their rehearsal room.
        Here, various mebmers of the Society tended to sit on one of a
couple of old couches the WDF Engineers had donated, and listened to
the band rehearse.  The couches had been put here for the benefit of
the band, during breaks, but they also served to house the
ever-fluctuating peanut gallery.  Every Duelist had, at some point or
another, stopped by to watch their president and her band hone their
craft.  Utena rarely missed a rehearsal, and indeed, she was there
now, over in the corner, with her calc homework spread out on half of
the couch and a pen stuck behind her ear as she grappled with a
particularly sticky integral.  Idly, she scratched behind the ears of
Dorothy's pet cat, Peril, while she worked.  Normally she'd have had
Miki Kaoru to help her with the math; but he was up on the riser,
trying once again to get it together with the band, so all she had for
assistance was Tiny Robo, who could stand there on the arm of the
couch looking impressive and supervising, but not offer much in the
way of actual math help.
        Juri Arisugawa was there, too, sitting on the opposite end
from Utena and her chaos of paperwork.  She was supposed to be reading
a novel for her advanced literature class, but she was spending more
time looking at Kaitlyn.  It wasn't that Kate was particularly dolled
up - in fact, in old jeans and a sweatshirt, with her hair pulled back
into a loose ponytail, she was lookin decidedly casual - but she
looked so pleased with things that Juri's eye kept being drawn back to
her smile.
        One of the main reasons Kate was happy was at the sound board,
making the band's mix sound right for the first time since Miki gave
up the board for the rhythm guitar.  The board was an old one, and a
bit temperamental; if not constantly tended it was prone to wander out
of true.  The fact that he was no longer tending it gave Miki
-another- reason to feel like he was letting the band down, until
Dorothy told him that if he didn't stop worrying about that, she would
be forced to smack him.  Besides, now Aunt Bell was on the scene, and
she had a way of talking to the balky old board so that it gave its
best effort.
        If Juri hadn't heard the previous version of the band at the
absolute peak of its ability, she would never have thought that there
was anything amiss with the group as it currently stood.  As it was,
they still sounded good to her as they attempted one of the old
group's standards, the song with which they'd opened every show of
theirs she'd attended.
        Midway through the song, they stopped; Miki, looking
frustrated, sighed.  "I think I've figured out what the problem is,
anyway," he said.  "It's trying to take my lead from two different
places at once."
        Moose nodded.  "Taking your lead from Dorothy and me, and
trying to counterpoint Azalynn at the same time?"
        "Yeah.  It's a lot tougher than Amanda made it look," said
Miki, looking hangdog and sheepish.  "I'm sorry, Kaitlyn.  I don't
think I'll be ready for a Fall Break show."
        Kate shrugged.  "It's O-k-k-K, M-Miki," she told him.
"R-relax.  It t-t-takes m-m-most p-people years to get as g-g-good as
you are.  A l-lot never g-g-get that g-good."
        Miki nodded, but he still looked down as he said, "Mm... but
still... maybe it would be best if I went back to the board and you
found someone else?"
        "At the risk of seeming snippy," said Moose, "which I
certainly don't intend to be - where would you suggest we -look-?"
        Belldandy slipped off her headphones and said, "Perhaps what
you need is a teacher."
        Miki blinked, not having expected her to address him, and
turned.  "Beg pardon, Mrs. Morisato?"
        "Please, Miki, we're not in class - you can call me Bell, if
you like.  Or Aunt Bell, if you want to be like most of Corwin's
friends," she added with a puckish smile.  "At any rate, what I'm
getting at is this: You've been taught to play the guitar, and you've
become quite good at it, but has anyone ever actually taught you how
to play -rhythm- guitar, in a band?"
        Miki shook his head.  "No... Amanda doesn't have time to do
that, and she's the only rhythm guitarist I know... "
        Belldandy smiled.  "Well, there you go, then.  How can you
expect to become a truly good rhythm guitarist without a mentor?"
        "I see your point, Mrs. - uh, Aunt Bell," said Miki.  "But
where am I going to find one?  As I said, Amanda doesn't have time."
        "Amanda isn't the only rhythm guitarist in the system," said
Bell.  She pointed an admonishing finger at the mixer board and told
it sternly, "Now you stay just like that, all right?"  (Standing next
to the board, Lesser Mazinger folded his arms and nodded, as if to
indicate that it had damned well better.)  Then she stood up, brushed
down her skirt, and climbed up onto the riser next to Miki.
        "-You're- a rhythm guitarist?" he asked her, disbelief plain
in his voice.
        Bell grinned at him, her eyes twinkling.  "Back in our college
days, my husband, my sisters and I had a band.  We still play
sometimes, just for old times' sake.  I bet I haven't lost the touch."
 She smiled at Kate.  "Would you mind if I joined you, Kaitlyn?"
        Kate smiled back.  "P-please," she said.  "If it g-g-gives
Miki some c-confidence... "
        Bell nodded, and, still smiling, folded her hands over her
chest, eyes closed.  >Come to me,< she murmured, in that same language
which Corwin Ravenhair sometimes used: >DOUBLE Z!<
        The thin, diamond-shaped mark on her forehead glowed, and
suddenly, with a rush of air and an involuntary "Whoa!"  from Moose,
she was surrounded by a swirling vortex of white mist that obscured
her completely from view.
        When she reappeared again, she was dressed completely
differently, and in a manner that made Miki blink at her in utter
astonishment.  It wasn't all that different from the sort of things
Amanda used to wear on stage - black leather pants that looked like
they were for motorcycle racing, an unfastened jacket to match (with
"NIT MCC" emblazoned in big white letters down the arms), and a
t-shirt with the Nekomi Institute of Technology seal.  Her hair was
out of its braid and in a thick sheaf, sprigs of it flying free all
around her face.  Slung over her shoulder was a scarlet Fender
Stratocaster guitar, similar to Kaitlyn's black one, but
right-handed.
        "I think I'll say that again," said Moose dryly: "Whoa!"
        Bell smiled.  "It's been a while since I wore these clothes,"
she said.  "I think I still remember, though."
        She hooked up, tuned up, and conferred briefly with Kaitlyn.
Kate could be heard to murmur, "A-are you s-sure?" but Bell seemed to
convince her, because with a smile, the bandleader went and got her
own guitar as well.  Then the band gathered themselves up and,
following Bell's cue, Dorothy launched them into another song.

          /*  Boston  "I Think I Like It"  _Third Stage_  */

        It didn't quite come off with the razor-sharp precision they'd
played it with in Toronto, but it was good, damned good.  Bell seized
the rhythm line with both hands, counterpointing Kate and Azalynn's
competing leads and at the same time staying in lockstep with Dorothy
and Moose - turning her scarlet Strat into the glue that held the
whole band together.  Juri, who had been watching this byplay with
some interest, blinked in amazement.  She never would have guessed
that Aunt Bell was a hard-rock fan.  Utena, who had spent a decent
part of the summer under Bell's roof, grinned and went back to her
homework.  -She'd- heard the goddess singing "I Wanna Be Sedated" soft
and sweet under her breath many a time while helping her in the
kitchen this past summer.
        When they finished playing, Bell regarded her guitar with some
satisfaction and said, "Mm, yes.  Was that useful, Miki?"
        Miki blinked.  "Um... very.  Wow.  I... I'm not sure I could
ever play like that... "
        Bell gave him another of her bright, gentle smiles and said,
"Of course you can.  It'll just take a bit of time and effort, that's
all."  She turned to Kate.  "If you're open to it, Kaitlyn, I can take
Amanda's place for now.  I'll be here at the school, in Mr. Kesselring's 
place, for at least the rest of this calendar year, and I can have
Miki ready to take over from me by Christmas if he applies himself.
In the meantime, he can teach someone else to take over for him on the
sound board."
        "That's f-fine with m-m-me, if M-Miki d-doesn't mind b-being
ousted," said Kate with a grin.
        Miki shook his head vigorously.  "Absolutely not!  I'm - I'm
at your feet, Mrs. - Bell."
        Kate gave Bell an indulgent smile and told her confidentially,
"You'll b-b-break him of it ev-ventually.  He h-hardly ever c-c-calls
me 'Miss K-Kaitlyn' any more."
        "So we're back on for a gig over break?" said Moose
laconically.
        "If w-we can f-f-find one without D-Devlin," said Kate, a
trifle glumly.
        "Well, that's a relief," said Moose, "'cause I got us one.
We'll have to truck a little way to do it - it's at a club on New
Hokkaido - but a little bird tells me the place is nice and they get
good crowds.  We're the main act for Saturday night, November fifth."
        Kate tried to look outraged and failed because of her grin.
"N-nice of you to w-w-warn us!" she said.
        Moose shrugged glacially.  "I just did."
        "I think," said Dorothy calmly, "we have a lot of work to do."
        Kate nodded.  "So l-let's get t-to it.  R-ready on the
b-b-board, Mr. K-Kaoru?"
        Miki looked up from the knobs and sliders, grinned, and said,
"Ready!"

                      THURSDAY, OCTOBER 20, 2405

        The interior lights of CFA No Bull shone brightly from the
bridge viewports, casting beams into early-hour October morning
fog.  Inside, just below the plates of the cargo deck, Mac McKenzie
tinkered with a small motor by the light of a hanging shop lamp.  His
pilot's headset rang not with the buzz of any ATC channel, but with
the recordings of the previous day's lectures, turned up loud enough
to penetrate the sleep-deprivation fog closing in thicker around Mac
than the real fog outside.
        Mac had not yet achieved the ultimate stage of sleep
deprivation - the point where you begin hearing messages from the
Banana God - but he was getting there fast.  The only regular sleep he
got was Friday and Saturday nights, and that only because of
Federation regulations requiring that pilots get a minimum of six
hours sleep before any twelve-hour shift of flying.  This particular
week (the day was Thursday, or would be when the sun rose), he'd had
three hours sleep Monday morning and stayed up all Monday night into
Tuesday morning either studying or working on a particularly
troublesome arpeggio sequence for his guitar ensemble (Beginner)
class.  He'd spent Tuesday night sealing the barrel of the starboard
bow laser, before being dragged to bed at 2 AM by a worried, upset,
and verbose G'Kron, waking at 6 to study for an 8 AM pre-finals quiz.
        In the past sixty-nine hours, he'd had a total of six hours,
thirty minutes sleep, and now Mac was journeying in lands where not
even the foul, viscous stuff he brewed for coffee could guide him.
        Checking the alignment of a couple of wheels one final time,
Mac tightened the bolts, sealed up the engine, and carefully walked
around the cramped chamber placing the safety covers back onto the
rotary track.  Inside the circle sat a largish gun turret, flexible
ammo tubes running up from the gun itself to magazines concealed under
the cargo deck plating.  With the details of fluid-state electronics
echoing through his ears, Mac crawled out of the maintenance tube
surrounding the turret and lowered himself into the turret's control
chair, strapping himself in before flipping it upside-down.
     The transparent-aluminum turret windows revealed only the
steel-grey of the ejectable hull panel that hid the turret from
outside view; that panel also hid the sight of Mac hanging down
against the harness, switching on the small gravity shield and
bringing the rail gun's magnetic accelerators on-line.  The primitive
but deadly RebelTech rail gun turret was standard issue for the
underbelly of every CFMF warship as a defensive shield-ripper to deter
attacks from below; it would be the most powerful gun on Mac's little
ship, if the repairs were successful.
        The ammo chambers were empty, so that red light was still
burning on the gun's status board.  Mac keyed the turret to test mode,
and the red light winked out, leaving the board entirely
yellow.  Pulling his Advanced Calculus book from his jumpsuit, Mac
keyed in a basic test sequence and read along with the voice in his
headset as the turret smoothly rotated through seven hundred twenty
degrees, then rotated back again, then shook in short back-and-forth
sweeps like an old clothes washer agitator.  The program made a much
more limited test of the vertical-axis rotation (to avoid hitting the
camo plate), then drew a handful of nonferrous test-bolts from the
auxiliary ammo feed and, with satisfyingly loud BLATs, verified that
the accelerators were in perfect working order.
        Mac didn't look up for a couple of minutes after the test had
ended, engrossed in either five-dimensional set factoring or the
formulas for electrical resistance in duotronic units.  When he did
look up, only three yellows remained, all concerning the main ammo
feed; every other system on the gun was green.
        Mac yanked off his headphones and whooped with delight.  The
rail gun rotor had been the last weapons system repair left to the No
Bull, or the Beast as the Duelists had taken to calling it.  All that
remained was to cast a few thousand iron bolts for the mass driver,
secure some tibanna gas from the grey market for the blasters, and the
No Bull would no longer have to rely on it speed (which it had) or its
maneuverability (which it didn't) to evade attack.
        It took a little while for Mac's laughter and celebration to
die down enough for him to hear the patient knocking of someone
against the hull.   Blinking away the sudden mental image of Duke
Blenk, the Phantom Pirate (spaced by his crew centuries ago and still
wandering space begging to be let aboard another ship), Mac powered
down the turret, righted himself in the chair, unstrapped, and walked
down to the passenger airlock.
        The silhouette hanging just outside the reach of the airlock
lights gave Mac one second's terrified thought that the ghostly pirate
captain had come for him after all.  Then Azalynn dv'Ir Natashkan
stepped into the light, and the broad shoulders of the pirate were
revealed as a thick blanket hung, rolled up, over Azalynn's shoulders.
"Good morning, Mac," she said with a smile.  "Are things going well
with you?"
        "Superb!" Mac replied, stepping down from the airlock onto the
grass of Port Jeradar's broad airfield.  "I've fixed the short in the
Number Three-Four ion drive's control circuit, installed the sound
system for the passenger berths, tuned up the h-h-hyper, hyper, the
thing," Mac shuddered reflexively, "and now the weapons systems are
just two steps away from being completely operational!"
        "That's nice," said Azalynn, nodding.  "Meanwhile, G'Kron sent
me looking for you three hours ago, with this."  She held up the
blanket and removed from its folds a spare school uniform.  "He's
threatened to chain you to your bunk for Finals week.  And Professor
Stuvek asked me to tell you that, although he is intrigued by your
insights into the continuation of pre-Reformation literary themes into
post-Surak writings, he found them much more coherent on his ride with
you to B5 last week than at any point during his classes in the past
month."
        Mac scratched his head, smiling sheepishly. Stuvek's Vulcan
Literature class was the only one Mac shared with any of the Duelists
for A-term.   "I'm, um, usually preoccupied during the week," he said,
adding reluctantly, "Lately I get more rest flying than anywhere
else."
        "You know," Azalynn said slowly, "I never have been inside
your ship before."  None of the Duelists had yet.  Although Mac listed
his ship on the Student Union travel board and made one shuttle run on
the B5-Bajor-Jeraddo triangle run any Saturday and Sunday he had no
charter, the Duelists had chosen the slightly more expensive shuttle
service for their infrequent visits to B5.  A couple of them avoided
Mac's ship out of fear - G'Kron especially, after his one experience
with Mac's love of barnstorming - but most, Azalynn thought, were
staying away out of plain good taste.  "Would you like to show me
around?"
        Mac blushed a little bit, and his mouth said something his
brain normally would never have let loose: "I thought I wasn't your
type, Azalynn."
        Azalynn giggled and threw the blanket and clothes at
Mac.  "Just the half-credit tour, please, and nothing else, silly."

        Mac walked Azalynn through the ship, first to the cargo hold
and engineering deck, pointing out the rail gun turret he'd been
working on and the two laser emplacements tucked between the four ion
drive exhausts; anyone looking for a blind spot in the engine area
would recieve a nasty surprise.  The cargo area itself was not exactly
spacious - about the size of a large bedroom, with a large, new
bulkhead sealing off the upper portions.  "That's for the extra heads
and shower," Mac said.  "I had to expand those when I added the two
extra passenger berths."
        From there it was up to the main deck, which to Azalynn's
intense disappointment did not look different from the cargo deck.
The floors were bare steel, the wall panels either industrial grey,
warning red, or in a couple of places missing altogether, baring the
wiring conduits behind.  The narrow berths had a broad couch with
harness that, along with an overhead foldaway, could be converted into
twin bunks.  Three-quarters of the bunks' vid screens were blown out -
all of them centuries old- - and the upholstery in them all had been
replaced with a random patchwork of fabric remnants, poorly applied.
        The bridge was the worst of the lot.  The control panels were
obviously cobbled together, even to Azalynn's inexperienced eyes.  The
four crash seats for pilot, co-pilot, comm officer and forward gunner
had not been reupholstered, and the ancient leather had cracked and
split in so many spots that the chairs looked more white than
black.  Azalynn noted the thick rolls of duct tape slipped over each
arm of the pilot's chair; Mac had apparently been using it on
something -besides- the chairs.
        Azalynn resolved there and then that, should she ever return
to the No Bull, it would be at the head of a crack team of combat
guerilla interior decorators.
        Mac, meanwhile, was trying to keep himself from babbling, with
the result that he was babbling in short, blunt sentences.  "Got the
weapons control system salvage out of a Sullustan patrol ship.  Hardly
used.  They'll go through an inch of duralloy plate at half a klick in
two shots.  God I wish they'd been ready when I got here."
        It took a moment for Azalynn to realize that Mac's tour, or at
least his running commentary, had ended with that statement.  "Why's
that?" she asked, more as a conversational place-holder than anything
else.
        Mac slowly lowered himself into the pilot's chair, invited
Azalynn to sit beside him, and said, "Broadbank.  Didn't spare much
thought for her over the summer.  I'm ashamed to admit that, when I
first heard about her, I felt a bit gratified - just what she deserves,
right?
        "But then I thought, here now, she's trying to mend her ways
and make a new start.  I've grown up believing that new starts are a
-right-, if you're really committed to changing.  It seemed really
unfair, then, that someone dedicated to a change should lose their
chance at it like that."
        Azalynn nodded to herself, slouching down in the copilot's
chair.  That was part of her own thought process on the subject as
well, when she wasn't feeling guilty about rejecting Liza herself.
The wound from Liza's disappearance had closed over since, but it was
still tender, still subject to twinging when it was prodded... like
now.
        "And when I thought that, I very nearly jumped back into the
Noble again.  I wanted to just fwoosh!  Off to the Cardassian border,
and do my own looking for her.  But I couldn't, because without guns
this ship couldn't -do- anything about it if I -did- find the
attackers, or if the Cardies took exception to my presence.
        "And now it's too late.  Trail's gone dead cold.  IPO doesn't
know where.  T'skaia's people don't know where.  Debris field's
scattered to hell and gone now, or else scavengers have grabbed it.
No ransom, no slave market, no release, no body, no -nothing-.  For
all we know, Liza and all those unaccounted-for t'skrang have been
teleported to Tiki's Little Neighborhood."
        Azalynn couldn't help giggling at that. When Mac glared at
her, she smirked and said, "I'll bet she -wishes- she was in the slave
pens, then."
        Mac snorted, not seeing the humor in his own sarcasm.  "So now
all I can do is pretend Elizabeth Broadbank never existed, and go on
with my life."  He stared out the viewport at the dark mist, obviously
dissatisfied with the prospect.  His left hand twitched a ragged beat
as he leaned his chin against his right fist.  "Damn, damn, damn."
        "Oh, I don't know," Azalynn said with a twinkling grin.  "Then
you'd have to forget how you taught her to appreciate Pak'led opera."
        Mac's chin shot up off his fist, his body going rigid as he
stared at Azalynn.  "You knew??"
        "You can't expect to hide nighttime raids from a nocturnal
creature," Azalynn chided him gently.  "Especially a -bored- nocturnal
creature.  I'm probably the only one who knows what you got Kate for
her birthday... or whose bra and panties were stitched to the WPI flag
the first day of C-Term finals."
        Mac couldn't help chuckling at the memory.  "Liza never did
claim those from Dean Montaigne," he said.
        "And I, for one," Azalynn said with a grin, "can't wait to see
what you have planned for dear little Clarissa."
        "Well," Mac said, stifling a yawn, "I haven't decided.
Broadbitch version 2.0 has not yet discommoded Ms. Hutchins, the
Duelists, the Art of Noise, myself, or much of anyone else as yet.
Waiting 'til she does."
        "You know," Azalynn said slowly, "I wouldn't mind helping you
with that, if there's a chance for it."  When Mac grunted agreement,
she continued, "I think I prefer your method.  Mysterious, anonymous
cosmic justice, never anything permanent, just something embarassing
or inconvenient.  A strong hint that maybe what she's doing is wrong."
        Azalynn sighed and leaned back in the chair, shifting a bit to
avoid a particularly rough edge of split leather.  "One of the
ancients said that the true measure of one's love is in one's power to
make the unloving return love.  I really wish I'd had that chance with
Elizabeth.  The chance to make things right with her, to bring her
into our little family... I wish I hadn't written her off as
unreachable when it's so obvious now that she -could- have been
reached, if I'd just tried harder.  But," she went on, shrugging,
"maybe I'll have that chance yet.  The spirits work in means beyond
our perception, you know.  Perhaps next time Liza will rescue -us-
from the forces of evil.  I'd like to see that, wouldn't you, Mac?"
        Mac had passed out asleep in the pilot's chair. With a smile,
Azalynn closed the blinds on the cockpit viewports and wrapped the
blanket around Mac's body.  "Normally they don't fall asleep until
-after-," she giggled to herself, before skipping off to inform
Professor Stuvek and Mac's other teachers that Mac wouldn't be showing
for his Thursday AM classes.
        A few moments later, she returned to the cockpit, found the
alarm clock stashed by the comm unit, and turned it off before rushing
out again.

        Final examinations at the end of A-term weren't generally too
bad at WPI - maybe it was just because the students' reserves of
energy hadn't yet been tapped, but they never seemed to be as drained
by the first finals of the year as they were by the ones at the end
of, say, C-term.  The pattern seemed to be holding at DSM; on Friday
night, the student body was feeling conscious and active enough to
muster quite a good showing at the Halloween dance, the first school
function (aside from the opening ceremonies) to be held in the new
Grand Ballroom.
        As in previous years at WPI, much of the student body missed
the point of Halloween.  They showed up for the dance in their finest
formalwear and wore silly little domino masks as a concession to the
fact that it was billed as a masquerade.  And as in previous years,
the IBGF/Duelists' Society clove instead to the occasion's true spirit
and came in costume, much to the disgust of Clarissa Broadbank and
her slowly expanding power base.
        There were a lot more of them this year than last, and so
their costumed panoply made a great deal more of an impression -
especially since, as the dance was held in the Grand Ballroom,
Professor Kraalgh could once again act as chamberlain and announce the
guests as they arrived.  In most cases this was done normally (once
again putting the lie to the dance's billing as a masquerade), but the
Duelists and their friends wouldn't have that, and so they presented
special information to Dean Montaigne when they arrived, and it was
passed on to Kraalgh, who got into the spirit immediately.
        Standing at the top of the Grand Staircase, attired in the
scarlet, white, and gold regalia of a Persian prince (burnoose,
scimitar, pointy shoes and all), the Klingon professor boomed, "The
Honourable Moltar, King of the Lava Men!"
        The figure that emerged from the doors, passed Kraalgh, and
began descending the stairs was enormous, and made even larger by the
fact that he wore the bulky, heavily insulated encounter suit of a
Magmaloran Lava Man - green, brick red and brown, with a mirrored
visor and what looked like a little respirator module.  This immense
figure inclined his helmeted head to the professor as he passed and
then made his way in stately dignity to the dance floor.
        The buzz spread among those already in attendance
immediately.  They knew who he was, of course - with those
proportions, he had to be Moose MacEchearn, and that meant that the
Band Geeks and Duelists were at it again this year.  Many of the
regular students looked forward to seeing what the others had come up
with.  A few, off in the corner, were shaking their heads in sad
dismissal.  How old was MacEchearn now?  Sixteen, seventeen?  A
junior, anyway.  Surely old enough to know better.
        One by one they came, and one by one they were announced by a
Kraalgh with a completely straight face.  There was "Kaitlyn of
Avalon", a woad-bedecked Pictish warrior in tartan and linen, with a
bronze-headed spear; "Saionjius of the First Legion", an ancient Roman
centurion (with green hair?); "Urthr Snowmane, Norse Goddess of Love"
(please! even the Castle's token adult was making a juvenile spectacle
of herself - although they did have to admit that her elaborate,
navy-blue, tiger-trimmed vestments were quite eyecatching).  And, of
course, Samurai Wakaba, her golden and crimson-lacquered armor
clacking and gleaming, the very picture of a feudal Japanese warrior.
        Azalynn, persuaded not to dress as the Dantrovian Wolf
Princess for the third year running, instead had found some fuzzy,
stretchy fabric somewhere, acquired a pair of gag Salusian primary-ear
prostheses, dyed her tail, and come as a yellow housecat, albeit an
unsettlingly nubile one.  Miki and Dorothy were back in their old
Toronto goth gear, going around being mockingly crushed by the weight
of their ennui.  Peril, fully into the spirit of things, had been
rinsed black and dressed in a little tuxedo vest, and was lounging on
Dorothy's shoulder looking suitably bored and batting at one of her
crucifix earrings.  T'skaia had pulled out all the stops; after being
for some time stuck for an idea, owing to his rather odd (by human
standards) construction, he'd acquired some metallic makeup and odd
bits of armor plating and had come as Swoop, the Dinobot bombardier.
        Belldandy Morisato was slightly hampered by the fact that,
however she dressed, she looked the same.  She'd come dressed as a
twentieth-century biker-gang member - black leather, torn jeans,
studs, chains, etc. - but she just ended up looking like the Blessed
Madonna dressed as a twentieth-century biker.  (A TEACHER?!  They
dragged a TEACHER into this silliness?  Well, Clarissa Broadbank
pointed out cattily, she -is- Kaitlyn's half-brother's aunt.  Oh, yes,
that family is just -rife- with bizarre liaisons.  Did you know she
has a younger full brother who is almost -exactly- the same age as
that half-brother?  Honestly!  Good Lord!)
        Utena Tenjou, with Bell's connivance, came as a Valkyrie.  Not
a modern Valkyrie, in a black, silver and scarlet dress uniform, Luger
opposite the Thorn of the Rose on her belt, jackboots clicking on the
hard tiled floor, winged skull and thunderbolt glinting on her peaked
cap - but a Valkyrie of legend, with her glossy pink hair tied back
into a pair of heavy plaits, a glittering golden helmet, armor of
leather and cold black iron, tightly laced fur boots, a steel
roundshield emblazoned with the Duelists' rose crest, and a fighting
spear, its wicked point and edges shielded by a black plastic safety
guard.
        Corwin Ravenhair, her invited guest, who actually -was- a
Valkyrie, had nearly fallen down at the sight of his dear friend in
such a getup.  He himself was dressed as a Napoleonic-era British
naval officer, tricorner hat, dress saber and all, and was announced
by the chamberlain as "Admiral Sir Corwin Ravenhair, R.N., K.C.B.",
much to Kaitlyn and Utena's delight.  Accompanying him was a tiny,
black-striped, bright-orange creature who claimed only the name
"Tigger".
        ("You, my d-d-dear dragon," said Kaitlyn admonishingly as Nall
jumped from Corwin's shoulder into her arms, "a-are a sh-shameless
snuggleh-h-hound."
        "You know it, honeypie," Nall replied smugly.)
        G'Kron appeared in the guise of his revered uncle G'Kar,
currently the Narn Regime's ambassador to Babylon 5.  Unfortunately,
that primarily consisted of dressing in elaborate leathern clothing
whose distinct significance, compared to G'Kron's -own- formal,
traditional Narn garb, was only apparent to well-schooled Narns.  As
such, the effect was somewhat lost on the assembled gathering.
        Beld Marmo, getting cheerfully into the spirit of things, had
taken his hair -out- of its accustomed Centauri fan and let it just
fall lankly behind his head.  Combined with his naturally bushy
eyebrows, his prominent chin, the elaborate black plate armor he'd
acquired somewhere and the fur-edged cape he wore over it all, he made
a decent likeness of a younger version of galactically renowned
crackpot Lord Wolfgang Amadeus von Fahvergnugen.
        Janice Barlow, Hannibal Hamlin 2nd's intrepid Resident
Advisor, demonstrated her unshakable commitment to the social and
mental well-being of her charges by putting on a ballgown and getting
Mrs. Morisato to do her hair up, all to trump Harcourt McKenzie's
evasive claim, "I'd go as the Dread Pirate Roberts, except that I
don't have a Buttercup."  Mac had figured he'd be safe enough with
that evasion, but he was game about it, and except for the wrong hair
color, he made a quite passable Dread Pirate.
        "Or possibly Zorro," Azalynn mused.  "I have a hard time
keeping track of Earth's masked mythic heroes.  There are so many of
them."
        "I want a picture," said Mac.  "Dad will go absolutely spare
when he sees this."
        Beld furrowed his brow.  "You keep using that word," he said.
"I do not think it means what you think it means."
        Mac declined to explain Standard dialectic drift.
        The next two to arrive were announced by Kraalgh as "Belann of
Minbar and M'Iia vestai-Ausa of Qo'noS", and the perfection of their
costumes startled even the catty disparagers into silence.  Not only
had Mia Ausa somehow managed to change herself, alabaster complexion,
crest and all, into an extremely authentic-looking, twilight-skinned,
dreadlocked Klingon warrior-maid (traditional armor and bat'leth
included), she'd also contrived to change dusky B'Elanna Torres into a
perfectly convincing, hairless, white-skinned, smooth-foreheaded,
bone-crested Minbari priestess in white and silver robes.  Chenann,
who had been sort of stuck for ideas and so had come dressed, most
irreverently, as a Grey Councilor, first burst out laughing and then,
as she got closer and saw -how- perfect a job it was, stared in awe.
        "Wow, you two," she said.  "That's incredible work.  How'd you
ever do it?"
        "Oh," said M'Iia airily, "it's really just an extension of
borrowing each other's clothes."
        Juri Arisugawa had just smiled whenever anyone asked her what
she was going to do for Halloween, and hadn't shown signs of actually
preparing.  Miki Kaoru, who had known her longest, predicted that she
wouldn't be masquerading; that if she came to the dance at all, it
would be in her old Ohtori Academy dress uniform, perhaps with the
usual domino-mask concession to the holiday.  Azalynn had insisted
that Juri just wasn't that boring.  Juri had resolutely refused to
comment, only smiled a surprising little I'm-up-to-something smile.
On Thursday afternoon, after finals, she had mysteriously taken the
shuttle up to Babylon 5 on her own, stayed there for an hour, then
returned with a package, on whose contents she refused to comment.
        Now, all eyes turned to the top of the Grand Staircase, where
a tall, slim figure had just entered and paused next to the
chamberlain to be announced.
        And announce this figure Kraalgh did, with a great, booming
flourish:
        "The Terror that Flaps in the Night!"
        The figure standing next to Kraalgh was certainly dressed the
part, all in violet, from the peak of her broad-brimmed slouch
hat to the cuffs of her razor-creased trousers.  The buttons on her
neatly tailored double-breasted jacket were shining silver, and her
wingtip shoes were gleaming black, but all the rest was purple.  Her
cape, lined in a lighter purple that matched her hatband, was furled
over her shoulders, and a violet silk scarf masked the lower half of
her face.  The very picture of Hammer... except that with that lesser
height, that wasp-waisted figure, and those merriment-filled,
sparkling green eyes, she was definitely and absolutely -not- Martin
Rose.
        Kaitlyn stood at the bottom of the Grand Staircase and stared
up at her in blank-faced (and slightly unfocused - Pictish warriors
don't wear eyeglasses) astonishment for several seconds.  Then she
burst out laughing, and would have fallen over if Utena and Corwin
hadn't caught her under the arms and held her up.  She laughed for a
solid minute, tears of mirth streaking the woad on her face, giving
Juri plenty of time to pull her scarf down below her chin, descend the
stairs, and stand there smiling at her.  This, of course, made Kate
break again every time she calmed down enough to focus on Juri again,
until finally she was laughed out, panting for air, and trying to
congratulate the redhead on her triumphant costuming job.
        Up above, in one of the ballroom's skylights, Juri's sharp
eyes caught a flicker of motion as she accepted these congratulations,
and her smile widened ever so slightly.  Marty hadn't wanted to
intrude on the moment, but it would hardly have been fair to make him
-miss- it when he'd been the one to make it possible in the first
place.  Juri only wished Garak could have been here as well, to
witness the triumph of his emergency alterations.
        The grand entrances over with, the Duelists and their friends
danced, snacked, and talked, circulating among their schoolmates,
generally enjoying the evening.  Juri and Kate spent a few minutes
over in one corner, where Juri carefully repaired the damage her
entrance had done to the intricate pattern of woad on Kate's face.
She got a little of the blue stuff on her fingers, but that was all
right; by the end of the evening, careful observers would note that
she ended up with a little on her -face-, too.
        Corwin, who had been dispatched to the buffet table to procure
drinks for himself and his not-date, had to stand there for a few
moments in amazement as he was served by two tiny figures, costumed as
Gigantor and an AS7-D Atlas-class assault Destroid, respectively.
Once he'd recovered (and wondered if they'd done the costumes
themselves, or been "helped"), he turned around and bumped into a
black-haired girl dressed as a firefighter, nearly dousing her with
the pair of water glasses he carried.  "Oops!" he said, "sorry -
MOM?!"
        The last word came out as a startled shout, which drew the
attention of a sizable number of people all around.  Skuld Ravenhair
tipped back her yellow fireman's helmet and grinned at her son.
        "Aw, you figured it out!" she said with mock petulance.  "Love
the uniform," she replied, running a playful fingertip down along the
row of brass buttons that held his waistcoat closed.
        "Mom, quit it," said Corwin under his breath, reddening a
little, as he slapped ineffectually at her hand.  "What are you doing
here?"
        Skuld looked slightly indignant.  "Just taking advantage of
the downtime before B-term starts to get accustomed to the place."
        Kaitlyn, attracted by the shout, came over and asked, "D-does
that m-m-mean you're t-t-teaching here n-next term?"
        Skuld nodded.  "Visiting professor of Applied Sciences!" she
beamed.  "I took a sabbatical from NIT; I'll be taking half of
Division A into a second division so that everybody can get more lab
time."  She grinned at Corwin's expression, which was midway between
pleased surprised and worried surprise.  "Don't worry, Corwin, I'll
stay out of your way on the weekends," she said.
        "Well, uh... that's great," said Corwin.  "Are you staying
here, or commuting?"
        "Oh, I'll commute, like Bell.  Poor thing, she'd go crazy
without me close by to help out around the temple."
        Corwin declined to comment on that, instead congratulating her
again.  She smiled, gave him a whack on the shoulder, and moved off to
hobnob with some of the other students.  It was fun to do that - most
of them didn't realize she wasn't a new student, since she still
looked about senior-age.
        Off on the other side of the room, Utena missed all that, and
was starting to wond