I have a message from another time...

                     Eyrie Productions, Unlimited
                               presents

                UNDOCUMENTED FEATURES FUTURE IMPERFECT
                      - SYMPHONY OF THE SWORD No. 4 -

		  Third Movement: On the Road Again

                         Benjamin D. Hutchins
			   with Pearson Mui

                (c) 2003 Eyrie Productions, Unlimited


		       THURSDAY, JUNE 11, 2409
			  1140 WILDWOOD ROAD
			NEKOMIKOKA, TOMODACHI

	They weren't in the dojo, so full discipline didn't prevail,
but there wasn't much lightheartedness among the three members of
Tomodachi's Asagiri Katsujinkenryuu school anyway as they all sat
around the dining room table.  Kaitlyn Hutchins was frowning, her
brown eyes thoughtful.  Her senior student, Kyouichi Saionji, sat by
her right side with his arms folded; he was a rather intense young man
under the best of circumstances, and now he looked positively grim.
	Across the table, junior student Anne Cross sat and forced
herself not to wilt under the close scrutiny of her sensei and
sempai.  She had just finished a demonstration of what skill she had
acquired in her two months of training, and the sweat prickled her
back under her monsuke as she waited for the verdict.
	Finally, Kaitlyn broke the tableau by speaking, in her normal
soft, slightly husky voice rather than the harsh snap of her "sensei
voice":
	"W-well... I th-think it'll be all r-r-right."
	Saionji grunted noncommittally.  Kate glanced to her side at
him.  "You d-d-disag-gree, Kyouichi-kun?"
	Anne knew that her sempai wasn't really selling her out - that
he considered it his duty under the circumstances to play devil's
advocate - but she couldn't help flashing him a hurt look as he took a
breath and said,
	"It'll be very dangerous.  She has potential, and she has
learned some discipline, but even so - we'll be traveling in areas
where the Psi Corps has complete jurisdiction, and she's still no
match for a Corps Security officer, to say nothing of a full Psi Cop.
Your protection only extends so far, Kaitlyn-sensei.  There's almost
-sure- to be trouble."
	Kate nodded.  "W-when isn't there, on our s-s-summer t-trips?"
she asked rhetorically.  "It's p-part of the r-reason we g-go out,"
she added with a very small smile.
	"I understand that, and I don't shrink from it myself," said
Saionji with a matching faint grin.  "But," he went on, becoming fully
serious again, "I don't think Juniper is ready to face that kind of
action alone."
	Anne restrained herself from protesting, partly because she
knew that Saionji felt he -had- to say these things, and partly
because she knew they were true.  She -wasn't- ready; she was only
just beginning to acquire the poise and confidence of a martial
artist, to say nothing of the physical conditioning.  She'd thought
she was in good shape - hell, she'd -been- in good shape - when she'd
started, and the regimen of the Katsujinkenryuu was pushing her to
a whole other level - but she wasn't there yet, and she knew it.
	Kaitlyn, though, merely nodded and said, "Of c-course not
alone.  She's h-h-hardly a j-journeyw-woman yet.  W-w-wherever she
g-goes off the sh-ship, she'll n-need to b-be ac-c-companied by
someone w-who c-CAN handle anyth-thing that m-m-might c-come up."
With this, she fixed her younger student with a steady gaze, demanding
and getting her whole attention, and went on, "The q-question is, can
she b-be t-trusted to do that?"
	Saionji turned his own grey-violet eyes to his junior comrade.
"Well?" he asked.  "Can you do it?  Can you be trusted to stay with
your protectors?  Can you, at your age, accept that you're not
prepared to defend yourself yet, and submit yourself to being watched,
for your own protection, like a child?  Do you have the maturity to
endure that without resenting it and running off on your own?  That's
what Kaitlyn-sensei is asking you."
	Without flinching, without hesitation, Anne rose to her feet
and bowed to her teacher until her forehead almost hit the table.
	"Sensei, I can," she said, struggling (mostly successfully) to
keep the excitement out of her voice.  "I will faithfully obey any
instruction you give me."
	Kaitlyn regarded her student impassively for a few moments;
then she smiled, the expression lighting up her pretty face and
completely destroying the tension in the room.
	"OK," she said.  "I g-guess we c-can go, then."
	Saionji leaned back in his chair and smiled.  "Arisugawa will
be relieved," he observed dryly.
	"-I'm- r-relieved," Kate replied, chuckling.  "J-Juni-chan?"
	"Yes, Sensei?"
	"T-take the r-rest of the d-day off," said Kate with a grin.
	Anne's face broke into a bright smile.  "Thank you, Sensei!"
she replied; then she bowed again, and one for Saionji, before darting
out of the room to collect her current book from the living room, en
route to the back yard and her favorite reading spot under the cherry
tree.
	As the back door banged behind her, Anthy Tenjou appeared in
the archway leading from the kitchen to the dining room, smiling.
	"What a difference you've made to that girl, Kaitlyn," she
observed.  "Who would have thought she -could- smile that way when she
came here?"
	Kate nodded.  "Mm," she said.  "I'm v-very p-p-pleased with
her p-progress."
	"Do you really think she'll be able to put up with being
chaperoned for an entire summer?" Anthy wondered.  "She's so much like
Utena... "
	"She'll do it," Saionji said positively.  "She'll do it
-because- she's like Tenjou.  The alternative would be to fail Kaitlyn
and ruin her summer, and she'd rather die than do that."
	Anthy considered that, then nodded.  "You may be right,
Kyouichi," she mused.  "All the same," she added with a little smile,
"I think I'll see if I can make it a little easier for her.  And in
the meantime," she said, "this calls for a celebration.  It's quite
warm out today; I'm sure she'd like some shaved ice."

		       WEDNESDAY, JUNE 17, 2409
			       11:31 AM
		  INTERNATIONAL POLICE HEADQUARTERS
			NEW AVALON, ZETA CYGNI

	Constable Janice Barlow of the IPO Criminal Investigations
Division walked briskly down the hall, trading hiyas and howayyahs
with her co-workers, then leaned into the doorway of Sergeant Neal
Krummell's office, rapping on the doorframe with her knuckles as she
did so.
	Krummell was sitting at his desk, frowning at the dataterminal
built into it.  Janice wondered if he were annoyed because somebody in
Tac Div had mistaken him for the internal computer help desk again
("You learn a couple of things about the way infosystems work, and
this is what happens"), or if he'd just received bad news by email, or
what.
	"Hey," she said.  "'Smatter?  You look like somebody just
asked you to help them debug their email settings."
	The burly brown-haired sergeant looked up, then smiled.  "Oh,
hey.  Nah, I'm just a little bummed about the news here," he said,
gesturing to the terminal.
	"What news?" asked Janice as she came the rest of the way into
the office and dropped herself into one of the visitor chairs.
Krummell's office was tiny and cramped, and so jammed with files and
documents that it was sometimes hard to find a place to sit, and
forget about putting down a cup of coffee anyplace.  Paperless office
of the future my ass, thought the Ragolian constable wryly.
	"Psi Div's not sending Imra with us this year," said Neal
glumly.  "She's been promoted; she'll be in charge of the Rigel sector
boundary zone with the Corps."
	"Well, that's good for her career," Janice observed.  "But it
-is- a bummer," she added, frowning.  "Who are they sending us
instead?"
	Krummell put his feet up on the corner of his desk and tilted
his dataterm display so that it would be easier to read from his
slouch.  "Some guy named John Hyatt," he said.  "I never heard of him."
	"Oh.  Well, that doesn't sound too promising," Janice mused.
"I mean, if they're taking Imra away from us, you'd think they could
at least send us another Titanese blonde," she added, waggling her
eyebrows.
	Neal was in the middle of snickering when there was another
knock at the doorframe, this one almost too quiet to hear.  The
sergeant took his feet off his desk and sat up, saying as he did so,
"Can I help you?"
	A woman stepped into the office, and both Neal and Janice
blinked at the sight of her.  She looked young, around their own age,
with -very- pale skin which looked even paler against her shoulder-
length, wavy black hair and dark brown eyes.  Her slim frame did nice
things to the white and green uniform of the IPO Psionics Division,
and her golden AEGIS badge sat on the tunic of that uniform at a bit
of an angle as a result.
	"Um... excuse me," she said diffidently in a hushed soprano.
"I'm looking for Lensman Krummell."
	"That's me," Neal confirmed, standing.  He pushed his sleeve
back and confirmed his identification by showing her his Lens.
	"Oh, good," said the newcomer.  "It's a pleasure to meet you,"
she added with a small bow.  "I'm the new AEGIS liaison to the
Irregular Projects Division."
	Krummell recovered quickly from the surprise, grinned his
usual affable grin, and was about to welcome Agent Hyatt aboard when
Janice, unable to keep the incredulity off her face or out of her
voice, blurted, "YOU'RE John Hyatt?"
	"Yes, that's right," said John Hyatt pleasantly, nodding.  "And
you must be Constable Barlow," she added.  "I'm pleased to meet you as
well.  I hope we'll all be able to work well together this summer."
	"Likewise, Agent Hyatt," said Neal cheerily.  "I'm sure it
won't be a problem."
	The AEGIS agent smiled - against the extreme pallor of her
face, the smile looked a bit wan - and said, "I hope you're right.
This is my first field assignment, so I hope I do well.  Oh - and
since we'll be working together, please, both of you feel free to just
call me Hyatt.  Everyone does.  'John' is such a common name back home
that we almost all prefer to be known by our family names."
	It seemed to Neal that Hyatt was wobbling a little bit on her
feet, and coupled with her complexion and the hushed tone of her
voice, it gave him the impression that she wasn't entirely well.
	"Are you feeling OK?" he asked, motioning for Janice to dump
the files off the second visitor chair in the corner.  "Would you like
to sit down?  If you don't mind my saying so, you look a little... "
	"Peaked," Janice supplied, performing the file dump as
requested.  "Here, have a seat."
	"Oh, thank you," said Hyatt, sinking gratefully into the
chair.  "It's a little embarrassing... I'm not used to this kind of
gravity yet."
	"Oh, where're you from?" asked Neal with a smile.  Inwardly,
Janice marveled, as she always did when she watched him work, at his
way with people.  Neal Krummell could ask people questions which would
be taken as insufferably nosy from anybody else; but coming from him,
they seemed like just what they were, friendly curiosity, and more
often than not they got answered.
	Right now, for example, Hyatt only smiled pleasantly (if,
Janice thought, a little tiredly) and replied, "Mars."
	"Ah, sure," said Neal, nodding.  "I can see where that'd be a
bit of an adjustment.  Still - at least here in New Avalon you can go
outside without an environment suit, right?"
	Hyatt blinked as if slightly perplexed, then smiled and
replied with a wan chuckle, "Oh, yes... of course.  You're right."
	"Well, hey," said Neal, glancing at the clock in the corner of
his terminal display.  "It's about lunchtime.  We were going to the
food court up at the top of the Entire State Building.  How 'bout you
come with?  My treat.  Sort of a welcome-to-the-crew thing."
	Hyatt looked pleasantly surprised by the offer, then worried.
She glanced uncomfortably at Janice and said, "Oh, no... thank you,
but I wouldn't want to interfere with your lunch plans... "
	"What plans?" Janice replied with a grin.  "We're just gonna
hit the Chik-Fil-A and talk shop.  We can give you the rundown on what
life's gonna be like as part of the Valiant's crew.  You might've
heard we do things a little... differently... in Irregular Projects."
	"Well... if you're sure it wouldn't be a bother... "
	"Nah, no bother at all," Janice assured her.  Then she
whistled and called, "Mitra!"
	Summoned, her M-series Mag combat remote hovered in from her
office, floating in the air at about head level and generally
resembling a metallic football with a photoreceptor on it.
	"C'mon, Mitra, it's lunchtime," said Janice to the device as
it fell in behind her right shoulder.  "If you're good, I'll buy you
some batteries."

			       5:17 PM
			  1140 WILDWOOD ROAD
			NEKOMIKOKA, TOMODACHI

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

	A dojo, Anne reflected, was kind of a peculiar place for a
rock band to be rehearsing.  Still, it was Kaitlyn's dojo, and
Kaitlyn's rock band, so Anne supposed she could do what she wanted
with both of them.  Besides, the acoustics were lousy in the garage.
	Juniper, as her friends had come to call her, sat at the other
end of the big room.  She knew that dojo discipline was relaxed when
the place wasn't actually being used as a dojo, so she had her back
against one of the wall's upright supports as she listened as the Art
of Noise powered through one of their old standbys.  They weren't
practicing so much as testing, checking their readiness for their
impending summer tour.  From where Anne sat, it sounded like they were
pretty damn ready.
	Of course, she had a thing or two to do with that sound.  One
of the several things Anne was looking forward to about this summer,
aside from the alluring prospect of being able to roam the galaxy
without spending the whole time in constant, mind-numbing fear, was
the fact that she wouldn't just be a passenger, hanging around and
making life that much more difficult for her teacher.  She had a -job-; 
she was a member of the tour crew.  And not just in a lip-service kind 
of way, by carrying a microphone stand and calling herself a roadie.
	No indeed - it was with a real sense of pride and purpose that
Anne Cross could say, "I'm the Art of Noise's engineer."
	The Art of Noise had possessed several engineers over the
course of its six-year life to date.  The first had been "Radical
Edward" Tivrusky, at the time a 13-year-old drifter who was, for a
time, washed up by the tides of her wandering life on the shores of
the Wedge at the old Worcester Preparatory Institute on Earth, where
the band began.  The second was Miki Kaoru, who had given it up to
take a place in the band.  He was briefly replaced by Corwin's Aunt
Belldandy (who had herself played rhythm guitar in the band for a
while), who was in turn replaced by the very-intriguing-sounding Liza
Shustal.
	With Liza absent from the Tomodachi scene, Miki had doubled up
as engineer and rhythm guitarist for a while, but it hadn't been a
really satisfactory arrangement.  Juri Arisugawa had also served for a
time, but her real talent and interest lay in managing the band, not
producing it.  Eventually, more or less by default, it had become
another thing for Kate to do, as if she weren't busy enough leading
the band.  Saionji had tried it once, and only once; his ineptitude at
the mixer had been so great that Utena, though completely untrained,
had done a better job taking over from him on an emergency basis
mid-show.
	Enter Anne, who knew little about the technology or the
technique but was willing to learn anything Kaitlyn or Miki tried to
teach her.  She was still learning, but she'd already mastered the
assembly and general configuration of the band's equipment.  No less a
figure than Radical Edward herself, who had turned up at random one
day in May, had said she had potential.
	Of course, setting up for a rehearsal like this one wasn't
nearly as complicated as a real performance.  So far Anne had only
done one of those.  Her trial by fire had been a pub show up at the
Hotohori University student union, and it had gone well - well enough
to give her the confidence to agree, with slight trepidation but more
anticipation, to serve as the band's engineer for its upcoming summer
tour.
	The ironic thing was that they didn't always (or even, to be
honest, often) play what was really her kind of music.  Still, when it
was played by the Art of Noise, she found herself liking stuff she
wouldn't have stood from any other band.  A lot of that had to do with
the band's presence and coherence.  These five people, as different in
many ways as people could be, from little coppery Azalynn to towering
coal-black Moose MacEchearn, could perform almost as though they were
guided by a single intelligence.
	But then, in a sense, they were.  When you looked at Kaitlyn
Hutchins, the first thing that sprang to your mind wasn't "natural
leader", but she led this band, and there was no question about that.
When they were on stage together, they all took their cues, conscious
and unconscious, from her.
	Juniper put her hands behind her head and smiled as she
watched Kaitlyn-sensei and Miki Kaoru standing shoulder to shoulder,
almost back to back, as they played the alternating solo line in the
middle of the song.  The bandleader and the blue-haired (normally
rhythm) guitarist traded the line back and forth effortlessly while
the Dantrovian (normally lead) guitarist, the towering bassist, and
tireless drummer R. Dorothy Wayneright tied the whole thing together
in the background.
	When someone was a little bit off, this whole song fell apart,
but when they were all on, like they were right now, it was magical -
even if you didn't particularly go for this kind of music.
	Then they swung out of the solo and through the last verse,
with Azalynn and Miki trading riffs between the lines while Kate took
over the rhythm chores, and Kate and Miki leaned together to the
front-center mic and blended their voices for the high harmony on the
last line, Azalynn and Dorothy backing them at their own places.
(Moose didn't get a chance to sing much; not many of Kate's harmonies
were constructed to require the services of a basso profundo.)
	Anne smiled to herself, watching her two teachers (Kaitlyn in
her family's kenjutsu form, Miki in almost everything else) share a
microphone and a moment of harmony.  A relative newcomer to the lives
of Kaitlyn and her friends, Juni had taken a few weeks to get a feel
for the various dynamics inside the group.  Very early on, she'd
suspected Miki of being Kaitlyn's boyfriend.  Even now that she knew
better, she thought they looked pretty good together.
	She felt a presence alongside her, turned her head, and saw
Juri Arisugawa lowering herself gracefully to the floor.  Anne's
cheeks warmed a little, both because of the thoughts she'd just been
entertaining and because she still hadn't quite gotten over having a
little thrill race up her spine every time she saw the tall, slim,
redheaded Duelist.  She was pretty sure Juri knew that happened, too,
and was too diplomatic to mention it - which added to the effect.
	Juri gave Anne a slight nod and a small smile by way of
acknowledgement as she joined the girl on the floor, making the blush
in Anne's cheeks heighten a little more.  This was a woman who could
look elegant sitting on a floor with one knee drawn up and her hands
interlaced on top of it, watching a rock band rehearse!  Such a
creature could be dangerous to a person's peace of mind, especially
when she happened to be the lover of that person's kenjutsu sensei.

/*  No Use for a Name  "Turning Japanese"  _Before You Were Punk_  */

	Juniper pulled her attention back to the Art of Noise as they
wound out of "I Think I Like It" and into a rollicking punk cover of
another very old song.  She'd been hearing them practice this one for
the last couple of weeks, off and on, and still hadn't figured out
what it was supposed to -mean-.  Sometimes it sounded like a love
song, other times it just didn't make any sense, and in at least one
place Juni was certain she wasn't hearing the lyrics right ("Everyone
avoids me like a cyclone ranger"?!).
	When they finished that one, the band didn't sweep immediately
into another song; instead they stopped entirely, putting down their
instruments and seeking refreshment.  Kate took a drink of water,
scrubbed at her face with a towel she kept next to her rack of
keyboards, and then smiled at her impromptu audience of two.
	"W-what's the m-m-matter, J-Juni-chan?" she asked her younger
student.  "You look p-p-puzzled."
	"Huh?  Oh... I'm just... I can't figure out what that song's
supposed to be about."
	To Anne's surprise, Kaitlyn blushed.  "Uh, w-w-well," she said
hesitantly.
	"I can explain that," Azalynn volunteered, grinning.
	Kate reddened still further.
	"Or I can," Miki offered with a serene little smile.
	"L-l-let's t-talk ab-bout that l-l-later," Kate insisted.
	"O... K," Anne replied slowly, now more convinced than ever
that there was a subtext she was missing.  She looked to her right and
saw that Juri was hiding a chuckle behind the knuckles of one hand.
	"Well, what do you think?" asked Azalynn.  "Are we ready?"
	"I think so," said Miki.
	"No complaints here," Moose concurred, raising one huge fist
in a thumbs-up.
	Dorothy rose from her stool and plunked her drumsticks into
the pocket of her black jeans.  "I concur," she said flatly; then she
broke the studied composure of her face with a very small grin.
	Kaitlyn chuckled.  "A-all right, then," she said.  "J-Juri?"
	Juri nodded and rose smoothly to her feet.  "Our first show,"
she said in a tone rather like that of a briefing officer, "is this
Saturday, downtown at the Alphabet Club.  It's Kate's father's 436th
birthday.  He'll be bringing the Valiant and our New Avalon crew
members over from Zeta Cygni that morning; Sunday noon, we leave for
Ishiyama to pick up the last member of the crew and play the Imperial
Theater in Ohji Tuesday evening."
	"I thought Mimi wasn't coming on the tour this year," said
Azalynn.  "Who are we picking up on Ishiyama?" she asked Juri.
	The redhead smiled.  "With Gudrun Truemace otherwise engaged
this summer - "
	"Much to her chagrin," Dorothy noted.
	" - the Central Office has decided," Juri went seamlessly on,
"that her replacement should be another woman more than six feet
tall.  Therefore, we'll be borrowing, for the duration, Kanzaki Heavy
Industries' chief of security - "
	"Kanna Kirishima," said Moose MacEchearn with a note of
satisfaction in his voice.
	"All personnel are advised to stay clear of the Kanzaki
Station main concourse until such time as our Hoffmanite lovebirds are
done reacquainting themselves with each other," Azalynn noted in a
mock-pompous tone.
	Moose grinned.  "Well, I dunno if I'd say 'lovebirds',
exactly," he said with exaggerated nonchalance as he packed his big
black bass into its big black case.
	"Personnel are -also- to note," said Juri with a glancing
smile at Azalynn, "that if President Kanzaki attempts to board the
Valiant and run away from her job for two months, she is to be
prevented from doing so by any means necessary."  Consulting a piece
of note paper she took from her pocket, Juri went on, "Admiral
Hutchins notes that she is not above using force, bribery, blackmail,
subterfuge, or, and I quote, big sad eyes to get what she wants."
	That got a laugh - Sumire Kanzaki's big sad eyes would be
about as convincing as Moose's - and when it was finished, she folded
up the paper and pocketed it before saying, "So.  Saturday night at
the Alphabet.  Until then, you're free.  After that... "  She gave
them all a mock-cold smile.  "... you belong to me."
	Azalynn made a great production out of swooning, secure in the
knowledge that Miki would catch her, and Juniper giggled.
	It looked like it was going to be a fun summer.

			FRIDAY, JUNE 19, 2409
			       11:13 AM
			  1140 WILDWOOD ROAD
			NEKOMIKOKA, TOMODACHI

	To Anne Cross, whose vantage point was admittedly a bit
limited in scope, it seemed like all of Tomodachi, or at least
Nekomikoka, was packing for the summer.
	She had finished her own packing in about twenty minutes,
mainly by virtue of not owning more stuff than she'd need more than
twenty minutes to pack.  Now she was wandering the back forty, bag
lunch and book in hand, looking for someplace different to sit down,
eat her sandwiches, and read for a while before reporting for
afternoon practice.
	There was a clearing in the woods a hundred yards or so from
the barn.  On days with particularly nice weather (or, occasionally,
when Kaitlyn-sensei was feeling particularly character-building, days
with particularly -bad- weather), practice was moved from the dojo out
to the clearing.  Since this was downtime for the Katsujinkenryuu
school, Anne didn't expect anybody to be out there.
	She realized as she followed the path and drew near to the
clearing that she was wrong.  There were two people in the clearing
already, judging by the voices.  Curious, she pressed on, rounding the
last corner next to the big boulder and almost entering the clearing.
	Before she could do so, though, she'd recognized the two
people in the clearing, and some instinct made her stop and take cover
behind the rock.  After she did so, she felt vaguely silly.  It wasn't
as though Anthy and Saionji-sempai would be upset that she'd come into
the clearing while they were there...
	... but what were -they- doing there?
	Juniper crouched behind the rock, wondering if she should just
turn around and go back, but her curiosity wouldn't let her just
-leave-, especially after she picked up enough on their tones of voice
to realize that they were arguing about something.
	"No," Saionji said, shaking his head emphatically, his bearing
stiff with disapproval.  "Absolutely not.  I can't allow it."
	Anne had never yet seen Anthy get ruffled about anything; but
that pushed a button somewhere.  The normally mild-tempered girl drew
herself up to her full height (which wasn't anywhere near Saionji's,
but the effect was impressive all the same, for some reason), her
green eyes flashing, and said in the harshest tone Anne had ever heard
her use,
	"Kyouichi!  Remember to whom you're speaking.  It's not for
-you- to say what I will and will not be allowed to do."
	Saionji's disapproving manner crumbled instantly; he bowed his
head and replied in a soft, cowed voice, "I'm sorry.  I didn't mean -
it didn't come out right."
	Anthy continued to glare at him for a moment, then saw his
genuine remorse, softened, and touched his shoulder.  The rapport
between them was such that the gesture was all he needed to know he
was forgiven; but even so, he kept his head bowed as he went on,
"But... what if... what if something goes wrong?"
	Anthy sighed.  "Nothing will go wrong, Kyouichi.  I've had the
best advice available, and that advice was to stay normally active for
as long as possible.  Besides, I'm not a natural fighter like some
here.  I have to work to maintain my skills, let alone improve them.
What do you think would happen if I did what -you- want and just -sat
down- for the next nine months?"
	Saionji opened his mouth, but didn't say anything.  Anthy,
seeing his discomfiture, smiled gently and added, "Anyway, if you're
so concerned about mishaps, then you'll just have to be the one to see
that they don't occur, won't you."
	Saionji blinked.  So, too, did Juniper, who hadn't the
faintest idea what the hell they were talking about.
	At least, not until Saionji said with a slightly dark chuckle,
"Trapped again.  All right - but you will -tell- me, -immediately-, if
you feel the slightest bit faint or weak."
	Anthy tilted her head in fond exasperation and said patiently,
"I'm pregnant, Kyouichi, not ill."
	Anne barely stifled a sound which, had it emerged, would have
been best spelled "!!"
	The stifling was apparently successful, since she wasn't
discovered.  Instead, she remained crouched, wide-eyed, behind the
rock as Anthy, smiling, made a small gesture which caused a pair of
roses to appear in her hands.  She fitted one of them into the pocket
of Saionji's t-shirt, then went to the other side of the clearing and
put the other in the pocket of her blouse.
	Saionji did a few simple stretches to warm up, then picked up
his sword.  When out on field assignments for the International
Police, he carried a Jedi lightsaber he'd acquired in one of his
adventures.  Here at his teacher's home, however, he carried the
katana he'd been given when he achieved journeyman's rank in the
Asagiri Katsujinkenryuu, the better to use his time with his teacher
to hone his normal blade skills.  They were, after all, critical to
his achievement of mastery in the form, lightsaber proficiency or no.
	He'd left the blade leaning against the rock while he and
Anthy talked.  Anne shrank back - still not sure why she was doing it,
except that it would have been embarrassing to own up to her sempai
now that she'd been, basically, spying on him.  She needn't have
worried.  With a Rose Duel impending, and one in which he had a great
stake in not screwing up, he was completely focused on the task at
hand.  He would probably not have noticed a brass band behind that
boulder, as long as they didn't show any hostile intent.
	Saionji left the sword's saya leaning against the rock and
walked back into the clearing with the sword held easily in his right
hand.  He was dressed in a way that accentuated his height and lean
but broad-shouldered build, in a black t-shirt and blue jeans.  An
outfit as mundane as that, finished out by battered old hiking boots,
almost made him look like a normal person, except for his Lens and the
way he carried himself.
	Anthy, for her part, wore a blouse and full skirt, as she
often preferred to do when not doing housework or tinkering in the
garage.  It didn't seem like the most practical outfit for fighting,
but as she summoned her rosewood Draconic warstaff to her hand and
went through some warmup maneuvers of her own, her movements were
smooth and effortless.
	Her skirt belled as she swung in the circular movements
favored by Draconic staff fighters, revealing her bare feet.  Anne
felt a spike of envy watching her.  One day, she'd like to be as
graceful as that - though she wasn't took keen on the idea of trying
to fight in a skirt.  Or barefoot in a place like this, for that
matter; the ground was grassy, but there were some rocks, and they
usually practiced in sandals out here.
	"Are you ready?" Saionji inquired as Anthy finished her warmup
and stopped with her staff slung casually over one shoulder like a
mason's hod, right hand draped over the wooden shaft, left hand open
at her side.
	She smiled a smile with just a hint of mischief, nodded, and
then shrugged the staff around behind her back and into her left hand,
where it stayed as she launched her first attack.

 /*  Toshihiko Sahashi  "Stoning"  _Big-O! Original Sound Score_  */

	Juniper knew that Anthy was a student, and a fairly serious
one, of the Draconic way of staff fighting.  She and Kate's brother
Corwin Ravenhair (a young man whose destiny, from what Anne had been
told, was intertwined with both the Tenjous' in many ways) spent
several hours a week, most of them on Saturdays, practicing the form.
Anne had been told he was its only non-dragon master.
	(The fact that dragons were real had somehow failed to
surprise Anne after everything else that had happened to her
recently.  It had -thrilled- her, yes, but not surprised her.)
	Still, Anne had never -seen- the darker Tenjou fight before.
It didn't seem like something Anthy would enjoy, but she was
definitely having a good time as she and Saionji clashed, rebounded,
and clashed again.  Her style of battle was very mobile, more so than
Saionji's; she often tried to flank him, usually stopped only by
last-minute moves on his part.  He was clearly the better fighter,
which was only to be expected, since he had a great deal more
experience than she had; but Anne was surprised by how adept Anthy
really was with her weapon, and how much she put into the duel.
	They rounded the clearing several times, back and forth, back
and forth, and Anthy impressed Juni -again- with her stamina.  Saionji
started sweating well before she did, and neither fighter's movements
slowed as they continued their dance.  Anne had to keep reminding
herself that Saionji's sword was real.  It might not be his primary
weapon, but it was his, and he maintained it in perfect condition, as
his sensei demanded.  In Kaitlyn's hands, the blade could divide a
piece of xero paper in half along its -thickness-.  Anne had seen it
with her own eyes.
	Anthy seemed to have no fear of it, though, and for all his
protests before the duel began, Saionji didn't seem worried about it
now that the fight had started either.
	While she watched them fight, Anne's mind was spinning a
little too.  Had she -heard- that right?  Anthy was -pregnant-?  HOW?
Utena Tenjou was an unusual woman, but not, Anne thought, THAT
unusual.  Had she gone to a lab?  No... no, Juni doubted that.  It
wasn't the sort of thing Anthy would do.  But... 
	... wait a second.  If he's so worried about it... 
	No, Anne, that's ridiculous.  Think of their history.
Saionji cannot possibly be the father.
	Can he?
	Anne shook her head and paid attention to the fight.
Considering anything else was just getting too confusing.
	Eventually, Saionji's experience and skill paid off, enabling
him to overcome Anthy's superior reach and defensive strength.  He saw
his opening and, banishing all doubt, went for it, and Anthy's violet
rose scattered on the grass of the clearing.
	"Well," he said as he took a half-step back and lowered his
sword.  "I guess that's that, then."
	Anthy finished her last maneuver (a sweep which had just
failed to intercept Saionji's blade), flowed back into a ready stance
with Rosenjaeger tucked into the crook of her elbow and laid across
her back, and smiled impishly at her opponent.
	"Don't be so sure, Kyouichi," she told him.
	Saionji looked down and saw that his own rose was gone as
well, plucked from his pocket by the move he had taken for a failed
parry.
	He chuckled.  "Shall we call it a draw, then?" he asked.
	Anthy's staff glowed and disappeared, and she composed herself
from her fighting stance, still smiling.  "I believe we shall," she
replied.  "And are you satisfied?"
	"For the moment," Saionji replied.  "I reserve the right to
re-evaluate my opinion," he added.  "I'm sorry, Anthy, I don't mean to
be overbearing or remind you of the old times, but... it's in my
nature to worry about you.  Especially now."
	"I know, Kyouichi," Anthy replied with an indulgent smile.
"And I appreciate it, truly I do.  But you have nothing to worry
about.  I've been advised by the best - Aunt Bell has four children of
her own, you know.  My staying active won't hurt either of us.  In
fact, if I keep as fit as possible, that will make everything easier,
when the time comes."
	Saionji shook his head, smiling fondly, as he crossed the
clearing to retrieve his sword's scabbard.  "-Most- women lift
-weights-," he pointed out wryly -
	- and then noticed Anne and stopped, his eyes going slightly
wide with surprise.
	Anne felt her face burning (well, no, not literally) and
wished she knew how Kaitlyn-sensei turned invisible.
	Five minutes later, she sat silently on the boulder, hanging
her head and feeling her ears burn with embarrassment.  She'd stumbled
through something like an explanation for the way she'd come to be
eavesdropping on Anthy and Saionji's conversation, interspersed
somewhat inarticulately with apologies for having done so and promises
never to tell what she'd overheard, and now the two of them were
standing there giving her almost identical looks combining concern and
consternation.
	Then, to her utter astonishment (and Anthy's, from the look on
her face), Saionji burst out laughing.
	"Put your mind at ease, Juni-chan," he told her when he'd
regained control of himself, wiping the tears from his violet eyes.
"You haven't done anything wrong.  Isn't that so, Anthy?"
	Anthy, who recovered fairly quickly from the shock he'd given
her, smiled and put a hand on Anne's shoulder.  "Kyouichi's right,
Anne.  What you heard wasn't a secret.  I just haven't... figured out
quite how to explain it to most of the people I know."
	Anne hesitantly raised her eyes to meet Anthy's.  "Uh... OK,"
she said dubiously, making Anthy chuckle.
	"Oh, dear," she mused, climbing up onto the rock to sit next
to Anne.  "It must seem very strange.  Let me see if I can explain
it... "
	Saionji nodded.  "I think this part will probably go better
without me here to make Juni-chan nervous," he said.  He squared
himself up and bowed.  "You'll excuse me, Lady Anthy."
	Anthy waved him away with a light laugh; he caught Anne's eye
(though her cheeks reddened again and she had a hard time looking him
straight in the eye), gave her the particular sort of little smile he
reserved just for her, and took to the path, vanishing into the woods.
	Anne sat silently, stealing abashed glances at Anthy, for a
few moments; then Anthy turned to face her as best she could on the
boulder, took her hands, and said,
	"Please don't be upset, Anne.  Kyouichi was right, you haven't
done anything wrong."  She smiled.  "You must have been surprised to
come upon us arguing in your clearing... "
	"Um... well, yeah," Anne admitted, still not meeting her
eyes.  "I didn't mean to spy on you... I just... I didn't want to
barge in, but... "
	"But you wanted to know what we were arguing about.  It's
perfectly natural."  Anthy smiled.  "And now you're confused by what
you heard."
	"Yeah," said Anne.  She finally looked up from their linked
hands, raising her eyes to search Anthy's face as she asked in a quiet
voice, "I mean... how could you be... "  She hesitated.
	"Pregnant?" Anthy asked gently.  Reddening again, Anne looked
down and nodded.  "Well, I'll assume you know the mechanics," Anthy
said wryly, smiling as she saw the blush spread to Anne's ears again.
"As for the particulars, well... "
	As they walked back toward the house, Anthy did her best to
explain the situation.  Juni took it all in without comment, nodding
occasionally.  They stopped again on the bridge over the stream in the
garden, where they stood side by side, leaning against the
wrought-iron railing on their elbows, while Anthy finished.
	Anne had heard parts of it before, when she first came to live
with the Tenjous and Kaitlyn on Tomodachi.  She knew about the way
Utena and Anthy met, and the way Corwin met first one and then the
other.  She knew, as well as a person who had never experienced
Cephiro or its magic first-hand could know, of the Grand Tournament
and its eventual outcome, and the mystic relation which bound them all
together.
	(A normal fourteen-year-old would probably have been
earthshakingly unimpressed by all of that, and spent a good bit of her
time rolling her eyes and saying, "What-EVERRR."  Anne Cross wasn't a
normal fourteen-year-old girl.  She believed every word of it - more
than believed it, it affirmed as correct one of the basic premises on
which she'd based her life.  She'd always -known-, on some instinctive
level, that things like magic, heroes and castles in the sky existed,
though on Orron IV such beliefs were considered just one step short of
mental illness.)
	So she understood, or thought she did, all but one puzzling
point, and Anthy's calm, smiling demeanor throughout the conversation
had made her just comfortable enough to try to ask about it:
	"So now that it's... done... you're not... "
	Anthy shook her head.  "No.  Our lives... don't intersect that
way.  I do love him, and he loves me, but... "  She shrugged
eloquently.  "Sometimes things don't work out the way they seem like
they ought to."
	Anne thought for a moment.  "Well," she said slowly, "you have
time... right?"
	"You're a very perceptive creature, Juniper," said Anthy with
a soft smile.  "Oh - that reminds me.  I have something for you, and
now is as good a time as any to give it to you."
	Still smiling, she led Anne to her rose garden.  Anne stood
next to the yellow-orange rose bush while Anthy rummaged on her
workbench for a moment.  After a moment, she found what she was
looking for, and then turned and presented it to Anne.
	It was a long, thin bundle wrapped in brown paper.  Anne
unwrapped it slowly, revealing that it was what she had suspected,
from that shape, it must be: a bokuto, a wooden practice sword in the
approximate shape of a katana.  This one was made of a pale blond
wood; at first glance she would have taken it for pine, but it was too
heavy and much too hard for that.  Its surface was rubbed to a fine,
smooth shine, its grip intricately carved with a pattern that mimicked
the wrapping of a real katana.
	"Wow," Anne murmured, looking it over carefully.  She stepped
slowly outside, away from the glass and fragile plants of the
greenhouse, then took it properly in her hands and tried a basic kata
with it.  It was precisely balanced, sturdy and a little bit snappy;
it felt more like a real sword than any of the regular old training
bokuto she'd handled in her weeks as a Katsujinkenryuu novice.
	Anthy stood in the doorway of the greenhouse and watched the
kata with a smile on her face.  The bokuto was the second part of her
two-part plan to make the summer easier for Anne, though it had
arrived first.
	Under the rules of the Asagiri Katsujinkenryuu, Kaitlyn's
novice student couldn't carry a live blade outside of training (and
she was a new enough novice that she hadn't done much with real steel
-in- training yet, either).  That honor was reserved for journeymen,
students who had demonstrated proficiency in advanced techniques like
the Hundred Blade Storm and could be trusted to conduct themselves
with appopriate discretion and skill in true solo battle.
	On the other hand, a wooden blade, which was permitted to
novices outside the dojo, wasn't going to be much use against the
sorts of things a modern kenjutsu novice was likely to encounter in
the real world.  Great samurai of olden times may have fought and won
duels with bokuto, but that was before cyborgs and blaster weapons.
	So Anthy had spoken to Corwin, and together they had spoken to
his Aunt Urd (who was, by an odd coincidence, also Anthy's cousin),
and the three of them had arranged a special bokuto for this special
summer.  Anthy was pleased to see that it pleased Juniper to have it;
she hoped that it would serve its ultimate purpose, and she had no
reason to doubt that it would.
	Anne finished the kata, tucked the blade into her belt, and
then turned to Anthy, eyes bright.
	"Thank you!" she said.  "It's wonderful."
	Anthy's smile widened a little; she closed the greenhouse door
behind her, crossed to the younger girl, and patted her on the
shoulder.
	"I'm glad you like it," she said.  "Come on, now, and let's
see how Utena's packing is coming along... "

		       SATURDAY, JUNE 20, 2409
			  1140 WILDWOOD ROAD
			NEKOMIKOKA, TOMODACHI

	"Thank you again for agreeing to house-sit for us this
summer," said Anthy, bowing.
	"Oh, no, my dear, believe me - I'm glad to do it," replied the
elderly man who stood on the doorstep.  "I'm happy to help out three
of my favorite alumnae from the old Institute."  He smiled, made his
way down one step, and patted her cheek.  "You go on and have a good
time, and don't worry about a thing.  Your flowers will be just fine,
I'll take care of everything."
	"I know you will," said Anthy with a smile.  "Have a good
summer, Mr. Haineley."
	"It seems to me," said Haineley with a twinkling grin, "that I
asked you to call me Arthur the very first time we met, Mrs. Tenjou."
	Anthy giggled.  "I can't seem to get used to it, but I'll
try."  She gave the old man a kiss on the cheek, trotted partway down
to the street, then turned back and called, "Be sure to call us or
Aunt Bell if you need anything."
	"I will, don't worry," Haineley called back, waving.  "Have a
good time, all of you!"
	"We will!" Utena assured him from the back seat of Kaitlyn's
old black Impala convertible.  She waved as Anthy hopped in beside
her; in front, Kaitlyn and Juri waved too.  Serge, seated smugly
between them, couldn't wave, so he made his farewell by roaring
(Haineley was impressed it didn't set off any car alarms on the
block), and then Kate put the car in gear and they were off, headed
downtown and thence to space.
	Arthur Haineley waved until they turned the corner at the end
of the block.  Then, smiling, he turned and went into the house.  He
was looking forward to a quiet summer here on this peaceful street.
He was certain not to be bored; all the young people might have left,
but there were still the professors Morisato, not far away, to visit
if he wanted company, and all of Kaitlyn's books... no, he certainly
wouldn't be bored.

			    ALPHABET CLUB
		CORNER OF A AND Z STREETS, NEKOMIKOKA

	"Everything ready, Juni?"
	Anne looked up from the mixer board and into the upside-down
face of Azalynn dv'Ir Natashkan, who had selected as the easiest way
of looking into the orchestra pit the method of lying down on the
stage with her head hanging off the apron.
	Anne smiled.  "Ready as it'll ever be.  Has Kaitlyn-sensei
decided yet what you're going to use for an opener this tour?"
	Azalynn giggled.  "When I left her backstage she was still
agonizing about it.  I guess she'll tell us before we start -
probably," she added with an inverted wink.  Then she sprang to her
feet, unrolling in one quick, smooth motion, and spun, hands behind
her back, to look out over the pit to the club itself.
	"Pretty good crowd so far," she noted.
	"I'm trying not to think about them," Anne replied, busying
herself with knobs and sliders and definitely not looking behind her.
	"You'll do fine," Azalynn assured her.  She hunkered down at
the stage's edge, elbows on knees, and winked again, golden eyes
twinkling in the half-lit footlights.  "You're too cute to fail."
	"Thanks for the vote of confidence," replied Anne with a wry
smile.  "I'll do my best."
	"I know you will," Azalynn replied, grinning.  She noticed
something back in the main club room out of the corner of her eye just
then, glanced up, and grinned wider.  "Aha!" she cried, and then
seemed to vanish.
	Anne turned and saw her flit across the room, which was
filling up but still had room to maneuver, and then more or less wrap
herself around a person who'd just come in.  From that person's
reaction, Anne guessed that she knew Azalynn (who didn't generally
greet total strangers that way anyway).
	The newcomer was a young woman about Kaitlyn's age, and about
her height, too.  Her dress sense more resembled Utena's, except that
Utena did not generally wear skirts, and this girl had one, a dark
grey one that hung to a bit below her knees.  The vest, dress shirt
and necktie were just the sort of things Utena would have worn, though
Anne had been told the pink-haired Duelist rarely wore coats in
-winter-, let alone summer, and the girl Azalynn was greeting had on a
buff-colored duster coat with leather patches on the shoulders.
	She had long black hair which could have stood more thorough
brushing, and her big, heavy-framed, black square glasses weren't the
most flattering style Anne had ever seen, but she was pretty anyway,
or at least Anne thought so.  She had an expression somewhere between
startled and welcoming as Azalynn hugged her like a long-lost
relative - and, Anne noticed with mild puzzlement, she was carrying a
suitcase, an old battered brown leather one with wheels and a
telescoping handle strapped to it.
	"Juni-chan, is Azalynn up - oh," said Miki Kaoru, who had come
up from backstage while Anne was taking in the newcomer.  She looked
to her side and saw him looking pleased.
	"Who's that?" Juni asked, nodding toward the newcomer.
	Miki smiled.  "That's Yomiko Readman," he said.
	"Ohhh," said Anne, nodding.  "Kaitlyn-sensei's roommate from
last year."
	"Right," Miki confirmed.  "Kaitlyn invited her to come along
this summer, but we weren't sure if she was actually coming."
	"Well, it looks like she is," said Juni.  "She brought her
suitcase... "
	Miki chuckled.  "She always carries that suitcase," he said.
"Everywhere she goes."
	"... Why?"
	The blue-haired young man gave her a twinkling grin.  "You'll
find out," he said, then raised his voice and called to Azalynn: "Oi!
Azalynn!  It's almost time!"
	"OK, I'm coming," Azalynn replied, detaching herself from
Yomiko and then grabbing her by the wrist and leading her to the edge
of the pit.
	"Hello, Yomiko," said Miki.  "Did you decide to join us after
all?"
	"Hello, Miki.  Dorothy convinced me the other day," Yomiko
replied, smiling.  "She said it would be good field experience, and
that I need to get out more anyway.  -And- she told me you're stopping
on Gutenberg," she added, her blue eyes sparkling behind her glasses
as a mild flush touched her cheeks.
	Miki chuckled.  "Same old Yomiko," he said.  "Yes, we are, in
early August, after we swing through the Earth Alliance."
	"You're actually going into the Earth Alliance this year?"
asked Yomiko, surprised.  "Isn't that dangerous?"
	"Possibly," Miki acknowledged.  "The Governor of Tau Ceti
invited us, and gave us his personal guarantee of safe passage."
	"It could be a trap," Yomiko mused.
	"It could," Miki acknowledged, "but we had a conference and
decided to take the chance.  With the governor's guarantee, we'll have
the law on our side, and we're willing to risk the rest.  Oh - I'm
sorry, how rude of me.  Yomiko, this is Kaitlyn's new student, Anne
Cross.  Anne, meet Yomiko Readman."
	Yomiko smiled and extended a hand.  "How do you do?"
	It surprised and pleased the detached-observer part of Anne to
note: She'd become so comfortable with the telepathic blocking
techniques Devlin Carter taught her that she took the hand without
hesitation, saying, "Fine, thank you.  It's nice to meet you."
	In extending her hand, Yomiko revealed a gem on a band at her
wrist, which twinkled at Anne and let her know that she needn't have
worried about undue telepathic contact with her anyway.  Juni was
getting to the point where friends of Kaitlyn's demonstrating that
they were in some way exceptional failed to surprise her much anymore,
so she didn't react visibly.
	"I've heard about you, of course," Yomiko added when the
handshake ended.  "Dorothy tells me you're showing considerable
promise.  We had several classes together last semester at Hotohori
University," she explained.
	"Oh, I thought you went to NIT," said Anne.
	"Only for the first year," Yomiko replied.  "To get the
information science part of my degree.  I'm studying to be a teacher."
	"Oh," said Anne.  -This- took her mildly aback.  A Lensman
studying for a teaching degree?  Lensmen were the International
Police's chosen galactic ass-kickers.  People like Gryphon-sensei
himself, and Saionji, and Wakaba Shinohara, and - though for some
inexplicable reason Utena -wasn't- a Lensman - Utena.  Anne had never
heard of a Lensman who wasn't a warrior of some sort.
	"'Oh'?" said Yomiko, sounding a little amused.  "Don't you
like teachers?  Did you have a bad experience with one once?"
	"I haven't had much recent experience with them at all," Anne
replied, a bit wryly.  "Until I came here, I was a fugitive for the
last two years, and the last person who tried to 'teach' me anything
before then was a Psi Corps 'recruiter'."
	"Oh!" said Yomiko, reddening slightly.  "I'm sorry.  I should
have realized any student of Kaitlyn's wouldn't be an ordinary
person."
	"No, I'm sorry," said Anne, falling back on dojo habits and
bowing slightly.  "I didn't mean to come off like I was trying to
shock you.   I have all the subtlety of a brick, sometimes."
	Miki chuckled and muttered behind his hand, "(Sometimes?)"
The act earned him an elbow in the ribs; Yomiko giggled, then so did
Anne, and the awkward moment was gone.
	"I'll look forward to talking more with you later, Anne," said
Yomiko.  "Right now, I think you're about to be busy."
	As she spoke, the tenor of the murmuring crowd behind her
shifted as two more people entered the now-nearly-full club.  Anne
looked past Yomiko and recognized them immediately, one from past
acquaintance and the other by association.
	The stocky, bearded, smiling form of Benjamin Hutchins, known
universally as Gryphon, was unmistakable to anyone who had met him the
way Anne had, whisked out of a life of uncertainty and fear and
plunked into his office for a high-level conference on the Future of
Her.  And that meant that the tanned, toned, tough-looking but
beautiful redhead at his side was almost certainly the First Lensman's
wife and deputy chief, Kei Morgan.
	Half of the crowd in the club recognized them; the other half
thought they did, but convinced themselves they must be wrong.  When
most celebrities of the magnitude of these two walked into a place
like the Alphabet, the result tended to be something like havoc, which
was why celebrities of their magnitude -didn't- walk into places like
the Alphabet; but these two just waved off overt reactions like
applause with friendly smiles and made their way to a corner booth,
and - and this was the part that really impressed Anne - it -worked-.
	Miki and Azalynn excused themselves while this was happening,
and Yomiko went over to Gryphon and Kei's booth.  Anne was a little
surprised at the reception she got.  The First Lensman knew all
Lensmen personally, of course, so that Gryphon recognized Yomiko
wasn't surprising, but Anne suspected that not all Lensmen found
themselves greeted with a grin and a big ol' hug by both the Chief and
Deputy Chief when they were encountered.
	Must be a story there, Anne mused as she bent over the board
and made sure of her final preparations.

	The kickoff show of the 2409 What Shall We Call the Tour
rocked the Alphabet until nearly midnight and featured, among other
things, Azalynn performing a metal-guitar 'interpretation' of "Happy
Birthday" which reminded those listeners who had been Americans in the
20th century - that would be Gryphon - of the Jimi Hendrix version of
"The Star-Spangled Banner".
	After the show, the club cleared out except for the band,
their friends, and the guests of honor.  By Tomodachi's calendar,
Gryphon's birthday was almost over before the actual party began, but
no one seemed to mind.
	The gathering was a festive one, for the obvious reason and
others as well.  It was a birthday party and a kickoff party for the
tour, and it was also a celebration of the fact that certain members
of the ship's company had graduated high school - Corwin Ravenhair and
Kozue Kaoru from Koopman Memorial in New Avalon, Corwin's assistant
engineer B'Elanna Torres from DSM on Jeraddo - and made it to
Tomodachi in time to join the tour.
	By now most everyone in the group knew about Anthy's pregnancy
and her, er, collaborator in the process.  It amused Kate somewhat
that some of the people in the room kept glancing at Corwin and Kozue 
in a vaguely nervous fashion whenever either of them spoke to Anthy,
as though they expected the couple to have a huge fight and break up
in the middle of the dance floor or something.
	Kate's amusement was tinged with a bit of regret for Kozue.
Among those who had known her at Ohtori Academy, Miki's twin sister
might have been able to shed her reputation for wantonness with three
years of monogamy at Koopman High, but she hadn't quite outdistanced
her reputation for somewhat deranged jealousy yet.  If some of those
present expected her to be showing that jealousy to Anthy, though,
they were disappointed.  In fact, Kozue seemed to find the whole
thing... kind of funny, really.
	The party proceeded into the wee hours of the twenty-first, a
happy and pleasant gathering without a false note to spoil the fun.
	In reconstructing the evening later, Juri Arisugawa reached
the conclusion that everything was going fine until the spearmint
schnapps appeared at the head table.
	The schnapps arrived because it was one of Gryphon's favorite
drinks, though he smilingly admitted that it was a fancy-pants liqueur
and not a real man's booze.  When the bottle arrived, compliments of
the management (who knew the First Lensman's tastes because he'd come
to several Art shows here over the last couple of years), it was used
for toasts around the head table.  This, at that point, consisted of
Gryphon, Kei, Kaitlyn, Juri, and Utena.
	Utena, after the first toast, registered the scientifically
considered reaction "bleagh!" to the schnapps, and so switched to
wine.  Kaitlyn, who had tried spearmint schnapps before and thought
that it had a place in hot cocoa, but aside from that could be missed
without regret, did likewise.
	Juri was feeling very expansive this evening.  The show had
gone very well, the tour showed every sign of being a good one,
everyone was happy, and they were getting off Tomodachi for a while.
It was possible that they'd be more exposed to the Psi Corps while on
tour, but on the other hand, they'd be traveling on one of the most
advanced warships in the galaxy, one with a stellar battle record and
the hull silhouettes to prove it.  Not many ships smaller than
cruisers could boast a k't'Inga-class Klingon silhouette on their
armor.
	As such, and also as a conscious effort to get into the spirit
of things, Juri stayed with the schnapps (which she had never had
before, but found she rather liked).  She didn't become overtly
boisterous - that wasn't in her nature - but she enjoyed the evening
without reservation.  Gryphon and Kei had, over the last few years,
made a conscious and concerted effort to make friends with their
daughter's lover.  Juri knew this, and matched their toasts with a
grateful heart.
	This, in retrospect, may have been a mistake.
	The problem was, Juri thought she was being clever.  Discarding 
the idea of gauging her intake against Gryphon's, since he was about
half again her weight, she instead kept an eye on Kei.  They were about 
the same size - Juri was a little taller, Kei a little more muscular -
so that seemed like a good bet, especially since Kate had told Juri
once that her mother rarely drank enough to get more than pleasantly
high.
	What Juri didn't take into account was the fact that she was
using, as a basis for comparison, the intake of a woman who was more
than four hundred years older than she was, who possessed a
genetically enhanced metabolic resistance to toxins, and who had once
been galactically famous as a hard drinker capable of putting Klingon
warriors under the table and then going out and winning sharpshooting
contests.
	The result was that Kei got pleasantly high, and Juri got
drunk.
	It didn't really show at first - such was Juri's level of
innate, unconscious self-control.  She didn't slur her words or get
blurry-eyed or lose her motor skills.  Kaitlyn did notice that she'd
started to speak more slowly, but it didn't really register, because
Juri wasn't talking that much to begin with; she was mostly sitting
there smiling, one hand on Kaitlyn's, the other raising her glass
periodically as someone thought of a new toast.
	Other people came and went at the head table, but Juri and
Kate stayed.  Around them, people played games, talked, laughed, and
in some cases got acquainted.  Not many people outside the immediate
Tomodachi Duelist group knew Yomiko, and no one except Neal Krummell
and Janice Barlow had met John Hyatt before today.  Azalynn flitted
from place to place, making sure everybody had met everybody and
generally greasing the social wheels.
	Following the show, Juniper had patched a datacrystal player
into the band's sound system and spent a while as DJ, playing other
music in the background of the celebration.  Kozue Kaoru was over
there now, laying down the grooves and freeing Juni up to talk to
Yomiko.  Corwin was sitting on the edge of the stage apron chatting
with Anthy, who was prudently not drinking anything harder than water,
while Miki loitered against the side of the bass stack near them,
wearing monitor headphones and fiddling with his guitar.
	Some of the other attendees were out on the floor dancing,
either with each other, like Wakaba and Saionji, or just to dance,
like Shiori Takatsuki.  Shiori had surprised a number of Duelists by
deciding, once she graduated from Tenjou Academy in Cephiro, to come
to Midgard for college.  There had been unvoiced concerns from some of
the Ohtori old-timers, like Utena, that her everyday presence would
cause problems for Juri.  They all -liked- Shiori, and welcomed her to
their world as they had all the other Cephirean transplants, -but-...
	Fortunately, those fears had proven unfounded, and tonight
Shiori's moves made Juri smile rather than driving a spike through her
heart they way they would have a few years ago.  Juri wondered,
abstractly, if that meant she was over her first-love crush on the
raspberry-haired girl (an irresolvable one, since Shiori was straight,
but at least it hadn't alienated her), or just that she was getting
better at coping with it.  Either way, it pleased her.
	At the head table, Kate talked to her father, one of the few
people in the universe she could speak to without stuttering, about
the tour, her students, her bandmates, and whatever else came up.
Juri, when she talked, talked mostly to Kei, who had some security
strategies to offer for their tour, especially the part that would
take them into the Earth Alliance, a place where they were,
technically, still wanted fugitives after the Battle of Titan in 2406.
	From there, they got to talking about people they knew, then
people they hadn't seen in a while, and before Juri really knew what
was going on, they'd gotten into a conversation about -relationships-,
of all the things to be discussing with one's girlfriend's mother.
Juri was feeling the spirit of the evening (and, to be honest, the
liquor) enough by this point that she warmed to the topic, rather than
avoiding it as her reticent nature would normally have caused her to
do, and they had an enlightening conversation while Kate and her
father discussed kenjutsu teaching techniques.
	"Listen," said Kei with a grin.  "You want to know the
ultimate secret to life - not just relationships, but everything?"
	"Of course!" Juri replied.  "Who wouldn't?"
	"Well, then, here it is."  Kei leaned over, sliding a bit
across the seat of the round booth, and whispered it in Juri's ear:
	"It's better to regret something you -did- do, than to
regret something you -didn't- do."
	For a moment, Juri felt a bit disappointed.  That wasn't a big,
cosmic secret, it was a greeting-card cliche.  She'd been hoping for
better, especially with the buildup Kei gave it.
	After a moment, though, it struck her that it might be a
cliche, but if so, it was a cliche because it was -true-.
	In that moment, Juri Arisugawa experienced, or at least
believed she experienced, an epiphany.
	"Excuse me for a moment, please," she said.
	Kate smiled.  "Of c-course," she said.  She squeezed Juri's
hand and let it go.  Juri smiled at her, patted her shoulder, and rose
(carefully, but quite steadily) to her feet.
	Then she turned her smile to Kei, at which point it became
just a bit sly, before turning and starting to walk across the room.
	Kei's grin faltered a little as she watched the tall, elegant
redhead go.  Uh-oh, she thought to herself, her experienced eye
reading the subtle signs.  She's pretty lit.  I hope I didn't just
encourage her to do something dumb.
	Kate, who was normally very perceptive herself but who wasn't
really concentrating on an occasion like this, thought nothing more of
it; had she given it any conscious thought she would probably have
assumed that Juri was going to the bathroom.  She turned back to her
conversation with her father.
	Juri strode out onto the dance floor like a conquering hero,
looking not to the side or back but straight ahead, her course
carrying her directly toward Shiori, who was in the middle of the
dance floor getting down to an ancient recording of Sam Cooke's
"Twistin' the Night Away" (a particular favorite of Kozue's).
	Shiori didn't notice Juri approaching, since she was facing
the other way.  She turned around during the first chorus and missed a
beat as she realized Juri was standing there, one arm folded across
her chest, elbow in hand, other hand on her cheek, giving her oldest
friend a sly private smile.
	Not really knowing how to interpret that, Shiori resumed
dancing and made a "join me?" sort of gesture.
	To her great surprise, Juri did.  Shiori had seen her dance
with Kate before, of course - at Utena and Anthy's wedding, and a few
other times since - but that was always to classical music, more of a
ballroom-type dancing.  She hadn't known Juri could -do- the twist,
though it was admittedly not a terribly complicated dance.
	This was such a departure from Juri's usual style that it
garnered attention from all around the dance floor almost
immediately.  Conversations died outright as all their participants
turned to watch.
	Kate noticed the sudden quiet, turned, saw, and blinked in
amazement.  A couple of her friends froze, worried - but then she
started laughing, then put the tips of her little fingers in the
corners of her mouth and whistled, and everyone took that as a license
to cheer too.
	When the song ended, applause washed over the room.  Shiori
grinned and tried to say something, but the noise kept it from being
audible.  Juri only smiled, then raked some of her disordered orange
hair back into something approximating the right place for it, put a
hand on her old friend's shoulder, kissed her on the cheek, and walked
past her, headed for the other side of the dance floor.
	Shiori turned to watch her go, then turned back and grinned at
Kaitlyn, who shrugged with a smile as if to say, Hey, I didn't know
she could do the twist either.
	Over by the corner of the stage, Miki Kaoru had completely
missed all that.  Not only was he facing the wrong way, he hadn't
heard anything either because of his noise-canceling isolator
headphones.  He didn't intend to spend the whole party like this - he
was in no way feeling unsociable - but there was a riff stuck in his
head, and he wanted to work it until he'd mastered it and could be
confident that he wouldn't forget it.
	He just about had it locked down when arms encircled him from
behind, one hand sliding across his chest under the strap of his
guitar, the other crossing his middle in the opposite direction under
the Rickenbacker itself.
	This was not a completely unaccustomed thing to have happen,
so he didn't stop playing.  As the arms completed their slide and the
rest of his embracer came up against his back, though, some quiet part
of his subconscious noted that nobody on the list of people he might
reasonably expect to come up and hug him like this tonight was quite
that tall.
	Azalynn certainly wasn't.  Kozue was near enough to his own
height as to make no difference.  So was Dorothy, who, despite the
fact that they weren't a couple anymore, was still known to show her
continuing affection from time to time.  Kaitlyn sometimes embraced
him, but not in quite so intimate a fashion (though he sometimes got
the distinct impression that she wanted to).  Gudrun Truemace might
conceivably have mistaken him for Kozue, especially after a beer or
five - that was always amusing, if only for his decidedly straight
sister's reaction - but she wasn't here.
	Before this train of thought could rise all the way to his
conscious mind and make him turn to see what was going on, the person
embracing him had nudged his left headphone away from his ear and
said softly into that ear,
	"Do you have any idea how sexy you are?"
	If Miki's guitar hadn't been strapped to his body, he would,
at that point, have dropped it.  As it was, it fetched up against the
slack in the strap with a jolt that knocked his headphones the rest of
the way off his head.
	"... Juri?" he blurted, startled right down to his shoes.
	"Mm-hmm," Juri replied quietly, nuzzling at the side of his
neck.  "I'll -tell- you how sexy you are," she went on, in a most
uncharacteristic but undeniably stimulating low purr that he was
fairly certain only he could hear.
	"You're so sexy," she murmured, "that -I- want you - have
wanted you for years - and I don't - want - men.  Ever.  It's not just
that you're pretty - though, mmm, you are.  It's something... unique.
It's everything about you.  How about that?  You're the only man I've
ever loved."
	"Uh... Juri," Miki began, trying to sound reasonable, but she
shushed him.  She either didn't notice or didn't care that the room
had gone completely silent behind her.
	"It's such a shame," she went on, nibbling slightly at his ear
as she spoke into it.  "All these years I've known you - been in love
with you - and I've never said a word.  First I was conflicted, then I
was despairing, then I was just confused, then I was taken... but I
just can't -stand- it any more.  You're almost past your prime," she
added with a throaty chuckle, "and I've already got enough in my life
to regret... "
	"What about Kaitlyn?" Miki asked quietly.
	"She can help," Juri replied, chuckling again.  "Would you
like that?  I know you two are close... and if I'm not jealous, why
should -she- be?"  She ran a hand into his partly-buttoned shirt,
feeling the smoothness of his skin and the definition of the muscles
in his chest, and held him tighter.
	"How much have you had to drink?" he wondered.
	"Enough," said Juri.
	That was, as it happened, the wrong answer.
	The right answer, for any number of reasons, was "Too much."
	Juri's body knew that better than her mind did, at this point,
and decided to pull the plug before something else went wrong.  It
took Miki a few moments to realize that he was now holding her up, at
which point he faced the interesting logistical challenge of keeping
her from hitting the floor in such a way that he did the same for his
guitar as well.
	R. Dorothy came into his field of view then, emerging from the
equipment room backstage, where she had gone to retrieve a crystal for
Kozue a few moments before all this started.  She paused, observing
the spectacle for a moment, then cocked an eyebrow in a "well, well"
sort of way.
	Miki gave her a sheepish look and indicated with his head that
perhaps she would be so kind as to give him a hand?
	Once everything was disentangled - guitar up on stage, Dorothy
holding Juri in her arms while Peril, her grey cat, observed the
situation with an air of feline bemusement for her shoulder - Miki
finally turned around and saw everyone in the room staring at him,
dumbfounded.
	"Um," he said.
	Kaitlyn crossed the dance floor, looking bemused and worried
but not particulary upset, and said quietly, "I g-guess we'd
b-b-better put her to b-bed."
	"I, uh... guess so.  Listen - Kaitlyn, I... "
	Kate held up a hand - not a curt "save it" gesture, but a
neutral "not now" one - and brushed Juri's hair back from her
forehead.  "D-Dorothy," she said, "w-would you t-take her up and
p-p-put her in my c-cabin?  I'll b-be up p-presently."
	Dorothy nodded.  "Certainly."  Then she activated her internal
comm system and hailed the orbiting Valiant; a moment later, she and
her burden disappeared in a wash of blue-white light.
	Miki watched Kaitlyn carefully for the rest of the party,
which she insisted go on.  To his eyes, which were among the most
experienced in the group at reading Kaitlyn's moods, and the main one
he saw was concern, but only for Juri's condition and Miki's
embarrassment.  For herself, she was showing neither embarrassment nor
anger, nothing negative at all.  She still didn't seem upset.
	When the party ended, it did so not with people slinking away
in an awkward silence, but with almost all of the good vibes preserved
intact, largely due to Kate's efforts to keep it that way.  At three,
she thanked everyone for coming and saw off those who weren't coming
along for the tour.
	This was mostly her parents, but also included a few of the
Tomodachi contingent.  Jess d'Alkirk, for instance, had to go back to
her homeworld of Salusia in a couple of days for what she classified
as "some stupid royal thing", and Mia Ausa's Anla'shok duties demanded
her presence on Minbar for at least the first few weeks of the summer.
	Only when the place was completely cleaned out and tidied up,
and the last of them had transported up to the Valiant, did Kate draw
Miki aside.  They went to her cabin, which was lit only by a
nightlight and featured a thoroughly comatose Juri whom Dorothy had
dressed in her nightgown and put to bed.
	Sergei, who knew the drill when Juri stayed over, made as if
to leave and find himself someplace else to stay for the night, but
Kate patted him on the head and indicated that he should stay, so he
arranged himself grumblingly on the floor at the foot of the bed.
Kate went to Juri's side to check on her, kissed her gently, then
turned back and spoke to Miki.
	"M-Miki," she said softly, "you d-don't have to t-t-tell me,
so p-please don't f-feel oblig-gated... but I w-would really l-like to
kn-know what J-Juri said to you.  I w-won't hold it ag-g-gainst her, I
p-promise.  I w-would just r-really like to kn-know."
	Miki weighed this for a moment.  Normally he'd have kept it to
himself.  He was man of great tact and discretion, and he well knew
Juri's private nature and the fact that she was absolutely certain to
be appalled at what she'd done, assuming she remembered doing it.
	But this was Kaitlyn asking, and asking about Juri.  He'd seen
the strength of their relationship himself, over the years, and his
own friendship with Kate was iron-bound.  If there was anyone he
trusted to live up to her word, not to hold Juri's words against her,
it was Kate.
	Also, he thought he might possibly know why she wanted to
know, and it wasn't the reason a normal person would have expected.
Jealousy was not entirely foreign to Kate's nature - very few people
could make that claim with honesty! - but it wasn't present in this
matter.  He would have bet anything he had on that.
	So he told her.
	She took it in without comment, nodding occasionally; then she
said thoughtfully, "A-all right.  Thank you, M-Miki.  I ap-p-preciate
you t-trusting me not to u-use this as a w-weapon.  I h-hope you
aren't t-too upset... "
	Miki smiled and put a hand on her shoulder.  "Not at all," He
said.  "We've been friends too long for something like this to be more
than a bump in the road."
	Relieved, Kate smiled.  "Th-thanks," she said.  "G-good
night."
	Miki chuckled and kissed her on the forehead.  "Good night,
Kaitlyn," he said, and then went into the hall.  Just before the door
closed behind him, he turned back, staying it with his hand, and added
reassuringly, "Besides - she'll probably forget she said it anyway."
	"Mm, m-maybe," Kate replied, though she didn't sound
convinced.  Miki smiled gently and let the door close, leaving Kate
alone with her sleeping tiger, her unconscious lover, and her thoughts.
	"M-maybe," Kate repeated softly as she undressed and got into
her pajamas.
	But I hope not, she thought as she climbed into bed.

                        SUNDAY, JUNE 21, 2409
                             IPS VALIANT
                          ORBITING TOMODACHI

        Anne Cross woke up, sat up, and briefly thought she was
somewhere else.
        It hadn't been that long since she'd last traveled by
starship, and she'd done a hell of a lot of it in the previous two
years.  The stateroom she found herself in now was one of the smaller
ones aboard, with an odd-shaped bunk to accommodate the curvature of
the wall and a compact desk and dataterm which could be folded up into
the forward bulkhead, converting the terminal to a watch-only
vidscreen.  There were two doors, one on the inboard wall which led to
the corridor, and one on the aft bulkhead.
        When Anne arrived the previous night, she'd been pretty much
asleep on her feet after the ass-kicking concert Kate and her band had
put on for her father's birthday party, so she hadn't had the
initiative to do much of anything beyond dropping her bag on the floor
and herself on the bed.  She hadn't checked out what the other door
led to.
	Now that she was awake, she hoped it was a bathroom.
	She got up, yawning, went to the mystery door, and keyed it
open.  What lay beyond was, indeed, a bathroom, small but
well-arranged.  It had a sonic shower, an innovation Anne had
experienced on several other ships and in a few cheap motels.  They
were OK, she supposed; not as satisfying as a real bath, but quicker
to get ready for the world again afterward.  Anyway, if she wanted a
real shower, she was sure the captain would let her borrow the one in
the master stateroom's bath.
	It wasn't until Anne had tried out the facilities, including
the sonic shower, that she noticed that there was -another- door in
the little bathroom, opposite the one leading to her room.  She went
to it and examined the control panel mounted on the wall next to it.
It was showing locked.
	My stateroom must share the bathroom with the one next to it,
she thought.  I guess that makes sense.  It'd be more efficient that
way.  I wonder if I'm actually sharing mine with anyone?
	As she wondered that, the door opened.
	"Oh, hi!" said the person who had opened it.  "Didn't think
you'd be up yet.  You must be Anne."
	"Uh... yeah," said Anne, whose brain wasn't quite working up
to speed yet.  She blinked at the person in the doorway, whom she'd
never seen before.
	The person before her was a girl who looked to be about Anne's
own age, maybe a year or so older.  She was a bit taller than Anne,
whose growth still hadn't quite caught up after two years of very bad
nutrition, and her build was trim and very athletic.  This was shown
to good advantage by the way she was dressed, in a sleeveless, high-
collared, tight-fitting top and military cargo pants, both in black.
	She had very good muscle definition without being masculine;
everything about her was nicely balanced and in tune with everything
else, a state of athleticism which Anne herself aspired to as part of
her Katsujinkenryuu training.  She was barefoot, Anne noticed, and she
even had strong-but-not-unfeminine -feet-.
	She also had long auburn hair tucked back behind her ears and
bright green eyes.  Her skin was very fair, her face had classic
Nordic features, and her smile was bright, open and friendly.
	Now she put out a hand and said, "I'm Gunnr Brynjelfr," rolling
the r's interestingly.  "We're going to be neighbors this summer, so I
hope we get along."
	"Uh... hi," said Anne, shaking the hand (and noting the firm
but not challenging grip) somewhat absently.
	They stood looking at each other for a moment, Gunnr smiling
with faint curiosity, Anne with that perplexed gears-are-turning look,
until Gunnr said,
	"Um... 'scuse?"
	Anne blinked, blinked again, and then seemed to shake
herself.  "Oh!  Uh, sorry."
	Gunnr laughed.  "No problem.  Just woke up, huh?  You can wait
in my room if you want to keep getting acquainted when I come out.
I'm just getting unpacked."
	Anne nodded, and Gunnr stepped aside to let her into the
adjoining bedroom before going into the bathroom herself.  While she
waited, Anne looked around.  Gunnr's room was the mirror image of
hers, with the desk on the aft bulkhead and the hallway door at the
forward end of the inside wall.  There were two valises sitting on the
bed, a satchel and a large aluminum suitcase, and a pair of army boots
stood next to the corridor door, one standing upright, the other on
its side, with the tops of socks hanging from them like the tongues of
tired dogs.
	Gunnr emerged from the bathroom momentarily, still smiling.
"I hope you don't mind that I'm here," she said.  "See, I'm a
Valkyrie, that's how I know this crew - through Corwin, right?  Lady
Anthy told me that you needed a guard for the summer.  She asked me if
I'd consider it because I'm the closest to your apparent age, and
since I need some field experience anyway and it sounded like fun, I
said sure.  I wanted to get that up front right away so that there
wouldn't be any awkwardness later on."
	Anne cracked a small grin.  "I've been resigned to having a
guard for a while now.  If you're willing to put up with looking out
for me, I'll try to put up with being looked out for."
	"Deal," said Gunnr cheerfully.  She opened up the satchel,
then started taking clothes from it and stowing them in the drawers
underneath her bunk.  Her tastes, Anne noted, ran pretty much to more
copies of the same outfit she was wearing - with some minor variations
in color, black, almost-black blue, almost-black green, almost-black
red - and very plain underwear.
	Gunnr noticed Anne's gaze as she unpacked those last items;
when she looked up and caught the younger girl's eye, Anne blushed
slightly, making Gunnr laugh.
	"Sports bras," she said with a grin.  "Greatest invention in
the history of clothes.  Not that I really even need 'em," she added
with a wry glance down at her modest torso.  "The curse of the
delicate elven build."
	Anne blinked.  "You're an elf?"
	"Yeah.  Can't you tell?  Long legs, good skin, no chest to
speak of - what else would I be?"
	Coloring slightly more, Anne tried to ignore that comment and
forged on, "I thought elves had... you know, pointed ears."
	"Yeah, normally we do."  Gunnr ran a fingertip around the very
much non-pointed contour of her right ear.  "I had 'em taken in when I
joined the Valkyrior.  See, being an elf - even a mountain elf like I
am - is a pain in the ass if you leave Alfheim.  Everybody who isn't
an elf expects you to be all graceful and willowy and delicate and
shit, plus they always think you're going to be some fountain of
obscure mystic wisdom.  And that's just -so- not me.  Plus, some human
guys just can't take a hint when it comes from an elf.  So I don't
like to advertise it - y'know?"
	"Oh," said Anne, nodding.  "Did it hurt?"
	"Nah.  It's an alchemical thing - you drink it.  Tastes like
puke mixed with road salt, but if you can get it down, the change
itself doesn't feel like much of anything."  She sighed.  "I do miss
my ears sometimes, though."
	"Why?"
	"Well, I can't hear quite as well with these," Gunnr noted.
"But mainly it's the fact that elven ears are a lot more... "  She ran
a fingertip meaningfully around the edge of her right ear again.
"... -sensitive- than human ones."  Noting Anne's further-deepening
color, she laughed and said, "TMI?  Sorry.  We Valkyrie are a pretty
rough bunch sometimes.  I forget how I'm supposed to act in polite
company.  I'll try to go easier on you 'til you get used to me, Anne.
Can I call you Anne?"
	Anne grinned.  "I won't get used to you if you don't act
normal," she pointed out.  "And Anne's fine.  Or you can call me
Juniper, some of my friends do.  Or Juni for short."
	Gunnr laughed again - she seemed to laugh a lot, Anne noted,
and she had a nice laugh for it - and said, "I bet Kaitlyn calls you
Juni-chan.  But I won't do that to you.  Anne it is."  She looked
around the room, then put her hands on her hips and hmphed softly.  "No
ordnance locker in this room.  Oh well."  She patted the metal suitcase.
"I guess the boys will just have to stay in here."
	Anne gave her a curious look.  "The boys?"
	Gunnr grinned and put her thumbs to the case's identilocks,
which snapped open automatically.  Then she opened the case and Anne
let out a low, semi-voluntary "wow."
	Inside the case, nestled in precise cut-outs in a bed of black
impact foam, was the biggest assortment of handguns Anne had seen
since the time she stumbled into the illicit arms deal in progress on
Danaval (perhaps the only time she'd ever been -glad- to see the Psi
Corps show up).  Big ones, small ones, sluggers, blasters, lasers, all
were represented.  In the center, given obvious pride of place, was a
pair of identical old-fashioned automatic sluggers, big slab-sided
bruisers gleaming in matte-brushed stainless steel.
	"That's a lot of guns," said Anne matter-of-factly.
	"Semper paratus," Gunnr replied, locking the case again.  "You
know how to shoot?"
	"Not really.  I picked up a blaster a time or two out on the
Rim, but I only know how to point and pull the trigger."
	"Well, if you want to learn better than that, we're going to
have a lot of time this summer."
	Anne smiled.  "Another way to defend myself from the Corps?
I'd like that."

	It was in keeping with Juri Arisugawa's generally brisk,
businesslike temperament that, unlike many of her friends, she wasn't
a slow waker.  When she woke in the morning, generally speaking, that
was it - she was conscious and ready to begin the day.
	Kaitlyn, on the other hand, had inherited her father's
reluctance, sometimes bordering on inability, to get up in the
morning.  Thus, Juri was accustomed to waking well in advance of her
after the nights they spent together.
	Days like that were actually among the redhead's favorite
times.  She liked to watch Kate sleep, liked being able to just lie
there and hold her, warm and at peace, perfectly harmonized.  No
responsibilities, no social pressures, just the quiet sound of her
lover's breathing and the faint, faint noises from outside.  It was
the kind of life she'd always dreamed of and never seriously expected
to find back in the old days, and sometimes she had to stop and just
remind herself that it was real.
	Today was not one of those days.  Not only did Juri awaken
slowly, she did so with considerable reluctance; and when she did
finally sit up and make a querulous noise, Kaitlyn was up well ahead
of her, sitting at her room's computer terminal.  She was even already
dressed, in a sweatshirt and a long, comfortable skirt.
	"Good m-morning," said Kate quietly.  Juri winced as the sound
ricocheted around inside her head, shattering glass-like neurons with
every impact.
	"nnnngh... morning," Juri replied, then let herself gently
back down onto the pillows.  "i feel terrible."
	Kate got up, crossed the cabin, and sat down on the edge of
the bed, patting Juri's hand gently.  "W-wages of sin, my d-d-darling," 
she said pleasantly.  "You r-really t-tied one on l-last night."
	"i didn't -mean- to," Juri grumbled, putting a forearm across
her eyes to block out the light.  "how embarrassing.  never lost
control like that in all my life."
	Kate shrugged - Juri felt her do it through the bed - and
replied, "You s-seemed to have a l-lot of fun."  Then, in a slightly
mischievous tone of voice, she went on, "M-maybe a l-little too much
f-fun... "
	Juri moved her arm and opened one bloodshot eye, aiming it
balefully in Kaitlyn's direction.  "what's that supposed to mean?" she
croaked.  She searched her mind frantically for some evidence of what
the hell she'd been doing, but somewhere in the middle of all the
toasts - and they -had- been very jovial toasts! - it all became kind
of a... muddle.
	"W-well, I'm not p-passing j-judgment on -your- j-judgment,"
Kate replied airily, "b-but I c-certainly wouldn't s-say that M-Miki
is p-past his p-p-prime."
	Juri momentarily felt as though she were sinking into the bed,
her cheeks heating as her heart plummeted and all of -that- came
slamming back into her conscious memory like a train wreck.
	"... oh, -no-," she groaned.
	Kate tch'd dismissively.  "Don't w-worry about it," she said.
"P-people say all s-s-sorts of f-funny things when they're d-drunk.
M-Mom tries to seduce M-Marty every N-N-New Year's."  She got up
dusted down her skirt.  "W-wait right th-there.  I'll g-get you some
w-water and a c-cold c-c-compress."
	Juri thanked her weakly and settled back to wait.  Behind her
rather blank expression, her mind raced - as well as it could race
with four flat tires and sugar in the fuel.
	Damn, damn, damn! she was thinking.  I promised myself I'd
never -say- that out loud!  Kaitlyn's acting breezy to spare my
feelings, but God, her feelings -must- be hurt... what can I say that
won't just make it worse?  Oh, -damn-!
	Juri would have been reasonably surprised to learn that
Kaitlyn was thinking no such thing.

	They didn't talk about it much over the next couple of weeks.
They were too busy, mostly; life resumed the familiar summer rhythm of
shows, rehearsals, and travel time, and as the Art of Noise's manager,
Juri was almost as busy making sure the tour ran smoothly as Kate was
making sure the band was ready for it.  Kate kept an eye out for the
right moment to bring it up, but with such a delicate, potentially
awkward subject, that moment would have to be very right indeed, and
in the first two and a half weeks of the tour, it never came.
	For Anne, the first seventeen days of the tour were a grand
adventure in the way that her two years of traveling the galaxy,
mostly on the Outer Rim, were not.  Rather than running fearfully from
place to place, she traveled in grand style, arriving not in
frightened secrecy but as part of a group which was welcomed like a
liberating army at most stops.
	She saw places she hadn't seen during her fugitive time, like
Ishiyama (where, for the first time, she witnessed the traditional
greeting practices of the people of Hoffman).  She saw places she
-had- seen back then, like New Gotham on Kane's World, in a whole new
light.
	The in-between times were better, too.  The usual trip between
worlds during her time on the run usually involved hiding in cargo
holds and being constantly alert to the threats of security personnel,
Psi Corps searchers, and - most dangerous of all, usually - other
drifters.  There was a whole dark subculture under the Outer Rim's
already-none-too-rosy public face, and Anne Cross knew more about it
than she ever wanted to.
	These trips, however, involved fun, and lots of it, in various
different forms.  There was her ongoing training, of course, proctored
more by Saionji with Kaitlyn so busy; that was hard work, but
rewarding, and she was already coming into good enough form that it
was only hard, not brutal and draining as it had been in the first
week.  Gunnr was teaching her to shoot, too, and that was great fun -
not as demanding as kenjutsu, but not as much easier as she had
expected.  There was something to the claims she'd read, that gunnery
was a martial art in itself.
	When not training in one form or the other, or manning the
board for shows and rehearsals, Anne had plenty of other things to keep
her busy.  Wakaba Shinohara, appalled that comic books were against
the law on Orron IV, lent her a giant stack of them.  These were
mostly Bacon Comics titles like "Top Thrills Comics Featuring the
Scarlet Sentinel and Arsenal" ("My personal hero," said Wakaba with a
mock swoon) and "Tales of the Lensmen", which occasionally featured
stylized adventures of Saionji.
	There were also conversations to have with other members of
the crew and new mutual friends to get to know.  B'Elanna Torres, a
half-Klingon with a passion for engineering and the bat'leth, showed
Anne around the Jefferies tubes and told her about her own time as a
runaway.  Kanna Kirishima, the towering redhead who had come aboard as
their security chief, took it upon herself to, along with the captain,
teach the ship's youngest crewmember how to cook.
	Anne spent many happy hours, as well, in Yomiko Readman's
stateroom (which was PILED FULL!  Of BOOKS!  REAL books!  NOT
CRYSTALS!  And at EVERY STOP, she bought MORE BOOKS!), curled up with
Serge in the only available floor space and reading... -anything-.
She and Yomiko didn't really -talk- all that much - they were too busy
reading - but they spent pleasant time together anyway.
	It was, indeed, a good time to be Anne; good enough, and busy
enough, that she felt little anxiety, and that sort of abstract and
distant, at the idea of going into the Earth Alliance, the very
ancestral den of the Psi Corps itself, and confronting the monster, as
it were, on its home turf.

			TUESDAY, JULY 7, 2409
			       9:12 AM
		     0.4 LY FROM TAU CETI SYSTEM
			   CENTAURI SECTOR

	The ship's manifest and registry documents claimed her
official function to be "freighter" - but they said the same thing
about the Millennium Falcon, and this ship looked the part
considerably less than that legendary hot-rod.
	The Kuratai no t'slas-Jas'Ishkarat looked too potent to be a
freighter, the lines of her hull too sharp, her bridge tower raked too
sharply astern.  Following the t'skrang cultural belief that imitation
is the sincerest form of flattery, her basic lines made her look a bit
like a Salusian warship - not any particular Salusian warship, but
with a look that made the casual observer think that her design must
have come out of the Saenar yards.
	The only problem with that impression was that she was too
sleek to be a Salusian war wagon, her lines too cool and her hull too
smooth.  She had the basic Salusian planform, like a wet-navy cruiser
which had learned to fly, but her superstructure was lower and canted
more sharply aft than Salusian command towers tended to be, her beam
was narrower in relation to her length than was common in Salusian
ships, and her decks were clean and gleaming, not studded with the
profusion of turrets and gun emplacements which marked the warships of
Her Majesty Asrial I.
	The Salusians were also not known for thermocoating their
ships in a two-tone scheme of gleaming silver and deep black with
lightning-jagged electric-blue go-faster stripes.  Nor was the
insignia which stood proudly out on the sides of the ship's
superstructure to be found designating any Salusian military element.
The black dagger against a yellow sun was known throughout the galaxy
as the symbol of the Ishkarat, the greatest of Barsaive's spacefaring
t'skrang trading houses.
	The Kuratai was bound for Tau Ceti with two purposes in mind.
One was to deliver a load of the Barsaivian spice from which she took
her name; the other was to be in the neighborhood when the Valiant
arrived on her tour.  The crew knew about this second objective,
though it wasn't anywhere in the official documents relating to the
voyage.  All the hundred twenty members of the ship's company (almost,
but not quite, all of them t'skrang) knew that the captain had...
-business- to conduct with some of the IPSF destroyer's crew.
	That captain was presently in her quarters, relaxing after the
fashion of t'skrang throughout the centuries.
	Elisabeth R'tas Shustal was buried up to her chin in warm mud.
	The fact that she wasn't, technically, a t'skrang hadn't
discouraged her from adopting this recreational practice when she
first went to live among the reptilian bon vivants of Barsaive.  It
hadn't, in fact, discouraged her from adopting a good many t'skrang
practices.
	T'skrang often found humans who tried adopting their customs
either amusing or offensive depending on how they went about it, but
those who knew Liza - like all those who were members of the Jezebel
Enterprises crew covenant which bound the crew of the Kuratai together
into a legal entity that was part corporation, part family - simply
accepted her for what she was.  Human she might have been by birth,
but in spirit, in a good many ways, she was very much kindred to the
children of the Mother Serpent.  She fought like a t'skrang, she did
business like a t'skrang, she told tales like a t'skrang; her crew
thought of her as one of them - albeit with a strange configuration.
	That was the biggest disadvantage to her current life, as far
as Liza was concerned.  She loved the t'skrang and their ways, and
loved her life among them... but there wasn't much action to be had on
a ship crewed entirely by incompatible non-humans.
	The mud baths helped, though, with their relaxing but not
soporific effect.  And before too much longer, they'd rendezvous with
the Valiant...
	Liza smiled and sank a little deeper into the mud, getting as
low in it as she could go and still breathe.  Tomorrow, she thought
happily.  Tomorrow, I'll see Azalynn again.
	She mused thoughtfully about the last message she'd had from
her Dantrovian partner in this oddball long-distance relationship.  It
wasn't like Azalynn dv'Ir Natashkan to seem worried even when she was,
but she'd been clearly concerned; that much was obvious even with the
nasty artifacting created by the high-compression encryption method
she'd used to send the message.
	Kaitlyn has a new student, the gist of the message went, and
she's hunted by the Psi Corps.  They know she's here, but they won't
move against us on Tomodachi.  You don't need to come running, we have
plenty of backup here - but if things get really desperate, that might
change, so be ready.
	A new student... hunted by the Psi Corps.
	Liza could relate to that.  She'd never been Kaitlyn's
student, not precisely (though she had certainly -learned- a thing or
two from her lifelong archfoe-turned-friend), but Liza -had- been
pursued by the Psi Corps once.  As an anodyne, a person possessed of
the ability to heal the sick and injured with the power of her mind,
Liza had a gift that was in high demand by the Corps.  Several years
before, they'd tried to "recruit" her with a combination of legalese
trickery and mind-altering drugs.
	She'd been rescued by Kaitlyn Hutchins, a girl she'd spent her
entire life despising and plotting to make miserable.  The experience
had changed her life, set her on the path she was currently on - a
path which was sometimes lonely, but was certainly rewarding, both
spiritually and financially.
	If the Corps had kept her, she wouldn't be financially poor,
to be sure, but Liza suspected that her spirit, far from experiencing
the brilliant awakening which had come to it during her first summer
on a t'skrang trading ship, would have withered and died entirely by
now.
	She wondered what this new girl had that the Corps wanted that
badly; Azalynn hadn't said, though Liza got the impression that she
knew.  Ah, well; she'd probably find out soon enough.  Would the Corps
try something on Tau Ceti IV?  It -was- one of their worlds.  They
would have local strength on their side, if, possibly, not the law -
the legal status of the new girl, as a ward of the International
Police, was a bit nebulous.
	Ah, well.  Tomorrow... 
	Liza had almost fallen asleep when the alarm went off, and a
moment later the voice of her first officer blared over the PA system:
	"Combat alert.  Hands to battle stations.  Captain to the
bridge."
	Liza blinked, then hauled herself up out of the mud (as it was
proper mud, not just dirty water, this required considerable effort to
do in a hurry).  She briefly considered toweling off (given the
consistency of the mud, doing this without a shower first might
actually be more like -troweling- off), discarded the notion, and just
went to the bridge as she was.  It wasn't like t'skrang gave a damn.
	Indeed, nobody raised an eye-ridge at the sight of the captain
coming onto the bridge dressed in nothing but a coat of mud and a
rubber bathing cap, though in some cases the lack of reaction was
accomplished only through extreme effort.
	With impenetrable nonchalance, she went to her center seat and
sat down in it, just as if she were dressed normally (or, well, as
normally as Liza ever dressed).
	"What've we got, Jandia?" she asked as she took her seat.
	Her first officer, a fetchingly tiger-striped, green,
businesslike t'skrang by the name of Jandia R'lajj Metolin Ishkarat,
replied briskly, "We received a distress call on the standard waveband
twenty minutes ago and dropped from metaspace to investigate.  At that
time, since I didn't know what the actual problem was, I decided not
to disturb you until I knew more about the situation."
	Liza nodded.  "Uh-huh.  It certainly looks like somebody -was-
in distress here," she noted, gesturing to the large field of random
debris visible through the panoramic bridge window.  "And now?"
	Rather than reply verbally, Jandia pointed toward the window.
As she did so, the bridge's holographic display system isolated and
magnified a sector of the viewing area beyond the tip of the t'skrang
lieutenant's claw.
	Liza groaned.  "Is that Rolfgar Lundgren again?"
	"So it would appear," Jandia replied dryly.  "It seems he's
upgraded his ship since the last time we encountered him.  Note the
new heavy weapon emplacements."
	"Mm... yeah, I see.  What do you think?  Heavy turbolasers?"
	"Possibly.  The hardpoint conformation also works for several
other Class-Beta weapons, including megaphasers."
	"Where would Rolfy get the money for megaphasers?" Liza
asked rhetorically.  "Better see if we can hail him.  Audio only, of
course," the captain added with a little grin.  "No sense in giving
him anything for free."
	Jandia arched an eye-ridge, tapped the tip of her tail lightly
against the deck in amusement, and gestured to the commtech.  After a
moment she received a nod in reply and said to Liza, "You're on."
	"Rolfy," said Liza in a tone which combined boredom and
irritation.  "What are you doing?  I know you didn't do all this
damage by yourself."
	"Well, well, well," replied a low, oily voice.  "If it isn't
Captain Shustal.  Why audio-only today, girl?  Having a bad hair day?"
	Jandia thumped the deck again, a little harder this time; so
did a couple of the other members of the bridge crew, all of whom
studiously avoided looking at their boss.
	"I'm not in the mood to listen to you flirt today, Rolf," Liza
snapped.  "Back on out of it until I have a chance to figure out what
the hell happened here."
	"Until you have a chance to grab all the good salvage, you
mean," Lundgren shot back, the oily cajoling erased from his voice.
"I'm loaded for bear this time, you t'skrang-kissing witch.  You try
and keep me away from the goodies and it'll be the last mistake you
ever make."
	"Rolf, why does everything have to be a battle with you?" Liza
said, exasperated.  "There's obviously been some kind of major thing
here, accident or attack, and the -smart- thing to do is figure out
what happened before doing anything else.  I don't even care if you
-do- pick up the wreckage - what little there is - and sell it for
scrap.  You might clear enough profit to get a haircut."
	"Why, you - OK, that's it, Shustal!  This time you're gonna
get it for sure.  Hope you've had a bath today, 'cause once I get done
with your ship, I'm coming over there to deal with you personally."
	"As a matter of fact," Liza replied coolly, "I just came -out-
of a bath.  Come ahead if you're set on it, Rolf.  I've been looking
for an excuse anyway.  Kuratai out."
	In the magnified window segment, Lundgren's pirate vessel, a
blunt-nosed old Earth Defense Forces Myrmidon-class destroyer refitted
for greater speed in a Corellian shipyard, accelerated visibly onto an
attack vector.
	"So predictable," Liza sighed.

	The Valiant dropped out of warp into the scene of a pitched
battle, and it took Utena a few moments to realize that all the
wreckage in the area couldn't possibly have come from the two ships
which were actually fighting.
	The International Police ship's arrival broke up the fight
like the sudden appearance of a teacher on the scene of a schoolyard
brawl.  Before Utena could even all-hail the area and demand to know
what the hell was going on, the blockier of the two ships beat it into
hyperspace.
	Utena sighed and punched a different call key on her chairside
comm panel.  "Hey, Liza," she said, not bothering with the usual
commnet pleasantries.  "The heck was that all about?"
	"Just another day at the office," Liza's voice replied.  "I'm
glad you're here, Utena.  Unlike -that- idiot, -you- can help me try
and figure out what the hell happened here, assuming my little fight
with Rolfy didn't destroy what was left of the evidence."
	"Sure.  Get your sensor officer on a side channel with Klaang
and we'll lay out a standard search grid."
	"Hey, Liza!" called Kozue Kaoru at the helm.  "What's with
your video signal?"
	Liza chuckled.  "I'd show you," she replied, "but I'm not sure
your brother would be able to control himself."

	"OK, Jandia," said Liza as she rose from her seat.  "Bring us
into formation with the Valiant and hold station; I'm going to go
shower."
	At that moment, a new holowindow opened on the main display,
this one filled with the horned, tusked face of the Kuratai's most
decidedly non-t'skrang chief engineer.
	In a voice that sounded like a bass fiddle which had developed
the ability to speak, he said, "Captain, I have your pre - " and then
stopped, blinking in momentary consternation.
	The trolls and t'skrang of Barsaive historically don't get
along all that well.  Trolls are taciturn; t'skrang are chatty.
Trolls are dour; t'skrang are jolly.  Trolls are obsessed with honor;
t'skrang are mercantile, not to say mercenary.
	Also, trolls have a major hang-up about nudity, and, as
previously mentioned, t'skrang don't give a damn about it.
	Fortunately, Torqq Gar'Kera'Stol of the Clan Forgefist had
been among t'skrang for a long time, and had learned to accept, or at
least ignore, a great many things which would have put most members of
his race into apoplectic fits.  These things were easier to ignore
among t'skrang, but when it came right down to it, very few of the
things that Barsaivian wisdom held would shock a troll shocked Torqq
any more, as long as a troll wasn't actually the one doing them.
	As such, once he'd actually processed what he was looking at,
his only reaction to the sight of his captain clothed only in mud was
to raise an eyebrow and intone dryly, "That's a new look, even for
you, Captain."
	"Rolfy caught me in the tub," she replied briskly.  "You were
saying?"
	"I was saying I have your preliminary after-action systems
report," Torqq said imperturbably.  "But there are no surprises in it,
so it can wait until you've... rinsed off."
	"Good," said Liza, smiling.  "This stuff itches something
awful if you let it dry completely."

	The capital city of Tau Ceti IV was, Anne thought, rather a
dingy place - more the sort of city she would have expected to find on
the Outer Rim, rather than in a reasonably significant core system.
It made a startling contrast to the last Outer Rim city she'd seen,
Ohji on Ishiyama, which was far from dingy.  Not everyplace on the Rim
was cheap and dirty.  She supposed it stood to reason that not
everyplace in the Core would be expensive and clean, either.
	She was quiet as she and Gunnr walked down one of the city's
narrow streets, partly because she was thinking about that and partly
because she was thinking about Liza Shustal.
	Of all the various friends of Kate and her circle that Anne
had heard of but not yet met, Liza was the one she was looking forward
to meeting the most.  Her transformation had been so dramatic, and her
new persona sounded so... -colorful-... that Anne's curiosity was
raging.
	She hadn't disappointed, either.  Liza had appeared on the
concourse at Tau City Spaceport with style and flash, a sword-toting,
sash-wearing, jackbooted pirate queen straight out of a book.  Anne
was a bit amazed to realize that the look didn't seem forced or
comical on Liza.  It really was who she was, and that showed in the
way she wore it.
	Anne hadn't had much opportunity to say hello to Liza just
then, though, since at about that same time, Azalynn had spotted her.
Anne spent a few moments considering the motion picture rating of that
reunion sequence.
	"Yeah," said Gunnr.  "That wasn't half-bad, was it?"
	"Huh?" said Anne, pulling back from her reverie.
	"Liza and Azalynn," Gunnr replied.
	Anne blinked.  "How'd you - "
	Gunnr laughed.  "You had that 'I'm thinking about something
that isn't here' look, and then you got kind of a goofy half-grin and
went red right here," she said, poking the younger girl gently on the
bridge of her nose.  "Figure you were either thinking about those two
or Arisugawa."
	Anne felt her whole face flush to match the spot Gunnr had
indicated.  "Am I that obvious?" she muttered, embarrassed.
	Gunnr laughed and threw an arm around Juniper's neck.  "Hey,
I'm not faulting your taste," she said easily.  "Generally, I like 'em
a little less cold than Arisugawa - but I hear she warms up under the
right conditions," she added, nudging Anne with an elbow and grinning.
	"She's not cold," Juni replied, a trifle defensively.  "She's
just reserved."
	Gunnr chuckled.  "Yeah, I guess I should've said 'cool' rather
than 'cold'.  Even so.  I don't blame you for finding her distracting.
Sometimes I ask myself, 'Now, what's a girl like that got that I 
haven't got?' - but really," she added with a rueful glance down at
herself, "the answer's pretty obvious."
	"Hey," said Anne.  "I like your - "  She stopped again,
blushing bright red.  "Uh, that is - "
	Gunnr laughed again, joggling the blushing girl with her arm
before releasing her.  "You're cute," she said matter-of-factly.  "And
thanks."
	They walked along in a silence which, at least on Juniper's
part, was red-faced and awkward.
	Anne had just opened her mouth to try and say something else,
but she never got it out, because it was at about that moment that
something exploded off in the distance, jolting both girls out of
whatever thoughts they might have been having.
	The prudent thing for a person, especially a stranger to Tau
City, to do at this point would have been to head in the opposite
direction.  Indeed, the crowd on the street started to do just that,
backing up like a river down which a sudden flood has come.
	Young women don't get to be Valkyrie or Katsujinkenryuu
novices by being prudent, though, and so, without hesitation, Gunnr
and Juniper started bucking the trend and making for the pillar of
smoke they could see over the low slate rooftops down the block.

	The process leading up to the explosion actually started
several minutes before, so let's back up and take it from the top.
	When the browsing group broke up and scattered into the
streets of Tau City's dingy business district, R. Dorothy Wayneright
found herself alone, except for her cat Peril.  That didn't bother
her, particularly; she knew where they were all headed and could
rendezvous with them easily enough.
	She walked down the street, brushing through the crowd,
looking at the various things for sale in the streetside booths.
Shoes, cheap jewelry, bootleg data crystals... your standard sidewalk
bazaar.  The businesses behind the actual storefronts looked like
mostly pizza parlors and tattoo shops.
	Dorothy spent several minutes walking aimlessly down this
street, just taking in the sights and sounds, enjoying the complex and
subtle interplay of human civilization at work, even if this -was- a
rather dilapidated example of same.  She was also noting a lot of
symptoms that all was not as rosy within the Earth Alliance as the
Chamber of Commerce would have people believe.  Generally speaking,
body-armored troopers with heavy small arms don't loiter on street
corners in cities without civil-unrest problems.
	Some way ahead, Dorothy noticed a group of people in grey
cloaks clustered together near a parked landspeeder.  She paid them
little mind at first, except to note that they were a rather
suspicious-looking bunch.  Still, they weren't doing anything
obviously illegal or dangerous.
	As she drew closer, though, her sensitive ears picked up a
sound abhorrent to all free machine lifeforms: the ultrasonic whine of
a restraining bolt's energy microcore.
	That got enough of her attention that she focused on what the
people in cloaks were actually doing, and in an instant it all became
clear to her.
	They were clustered not around the landspeeder, but around the
blocky shape of a power droid which had been charging the speeder.
The restraining bolt on the side of the droid's boxy casing was bright
and fresh, just applied, and while the others egged him on, the
tallest of the cloak-wearing people was working inside an access panel
on the other side of the droid.
	R. Dorothy had read about this practice before.  It was called
"gonk burning", after the distinctive attention tone most power droids
made in lieu of speech.  A popular recreation for members of the
Church of Man, that humanocentric fringe religion which hated
non-human lifeforms almost as much as it hated robots, gonk burning
involved finding a power droid, restraining it, and then modifying its
power management systems so that its fusion core overloaded and melted
down.
	Among the younger, more militant Commers, this was considered
hearty fun, almost as good as firebombing a Salusian noodle shop.
They were said to enjoy the last pitiful "gonnnnnnk" emitted by their
victims most of all.  Since the Church's official doctrine held that
robots had no souls nor feelings, it wasn't -torture- by the official
standards of the organization; it was no worse than vandalism, and
vandalism against robots was not only tolerated but encouraged among
the fringier elements of the Church.
	R. Dorothy Wayneright had her own standards.
	She stopped even with the group and said, in a quiet but clear
voice that cut through their gleeful chatter,
	"You.  Stop that."
	The one doing the actual work stopped, more out of surprise
than anything else.  He and his half-dozen pals turned and stared at
the figure which confronted them with looks that started out as shock
and then melted into cocky amusement.  They were being confronted by a
pale-skinned, petite girl, human by the looks of her, who was dressed
in a smart but rather somber dark dress and carrying a grey cat in her
arms.  Hardly a threat.
	"Oh, is this your droid?" asked the tall one with a smirk.
	"No," Dorothy replied flatly.  "Nor is he yours.  Leave him
alone."
	A ripple of laughter spread through the Commers.  The tall one
leaned over, cocking one bushy black eyebrow, and said, "Or -what-?"
	"Or I'll make you," Dorothy replied in exactly the same
uninflected, matter-of-fact tone.
	The ripple of laughter got louder and more unpleasant.  The
seven Commers moved from around the hapless power droid and advanced
on Dorothy, but she didn't back down a bit.  Instead she stared their
apparent leader straight in the eye, her face expressionless but her
dark eyes intent.
	"So what's your name, little girl?" asked the leader as he
stepped even closer.
	Dorothy tipped her head back so that she could keep looking
him in the eye; as she did so, she deliberately made the movement as
mechanical as possible, adding some resistance to the motion so that
the servos in her neck would be clearly audible.
	Just to make sure he didn't miss the point, she answered the
question.  "R. Dorothy Wayneright," she said, with subtle emphasis on
the R.
	That had the desired effect - the man drew back a step and
blinked in consternation; then cruel amusement spread back over his
face, its intensity doubled.
	"What are you?" he asked mockingly, taking in her neatly cut
black dress.  "Somebody's maid, sent out to give the cat a little air?
Your owners should have programmed you to mind your own business.  It
would have saved them a lot of money, by the looks of you."
	He threw off his cloak, revealing a body that was in
considerable part machine itself.  This was another trend Dorothy had
read about in the Church of Man recently; young cyborgs, rebuilt for
battle, whose hobby was demonstrating the superiority of the
'trueborn', as they called themselves, over pure machines.  They
roamed the Church's areas of greatest influence wrecking robots by
hand for the sheer hell of it.
	"Check this out, robomaid," he sneered, flexing fingers
actuated by magnetic rams.  "Ray Tungsten's the name.  I've scrapped
-military- droids."
	"Really," replied Dorothy in a tone of complete disinterest.
Then she tossed Peril into the air.  The cat, completely unconcerned,
flew about forty feet in a neatly calculated arc and landed lightly on
top of a streetlamp which was mounted on the corner of one of the
buildings.  There, he yawned, then curled up to watch the show.
	Satisfied that her cat was in as safe a place as possible
under the circumstances, Dorothy assumed a ready stance and told her
opponent conversationally, "So have I."

	The streaming crowds having proven too thick to navigate
satisfactorily, Gunnr and Juniper took to the roofs by way of a
conveniently placed Dumpster.  This avenue offered considerably
greater freedom of movement, and allowed them to get to the scene of
the commotion within two minutes of the explosion.
	That was fast enough for at least Gunnr, who had experience in
sizing up battlefield situations, to take note of the burning car and
the sprawled guy with the spent rocket-propelled grenade tube off to
one side, as well as the other five guys in similar-looking cloaks who
were clustered around him looking alarmed.
	Most of her attention, and all of Juniper's, was focused on
the pair in the middle of the street.
	One of them was a nice example of the Middle-Budget, Low-Taste
Kromeboi species of urban lowlife.  The other was a smartly-dressed
petite redhead.  It took Gunnr a moment to realize that she knew one
of them.
	Juni, who had seen her share of street fights in her days on
the run, sized up the situation pretty much as fast and pretty much as
accurately as Gunnr.  Then she spent the next couple of minutes being
really impressed by R. Dorothy.
	Anne didn't know Dorothy all that well.  She was a bandmate
and a friend of Kaitlyn's, and Juri's roommate in their apartment over
on Vineland Drive, a couple of blocks from the house on Wildwood Road.
She was also apparently Miki Kaoru's ex-girlfriend, though they seemed
still to be friends.  Still, though she was a familiar enough sight
around Kate's circle, Anne hadn't spent much time talking with her.
	As such, she didn't know that, since her "awakening", as it
were, from a lifestyle largely marked by not believing herself to be a
sentient being, R. Dorothy had found three great passions: driving,
cooking, and karate.
	That a robot should like to cook struck even Dorothy's friends
as a little odd, though none of them could deny that she was good at
it.  As for the other two, given the power and precision of her robot
body's construction, they were just... kind of scary, really.
	Juniper and Gunnr concurred with this as they crouched at the
edge of the rooftop, watching the black-clad, auburn-haired robot girl
trade blocks and dodges with the hopped-up cyborg cultist.  The two
were moving almost too fast to see, but it was obvious even to Anne's
relatively untrained eyes that Dorothy had the advantage in terms of
speed.  She was just a little bit ahead of her opponent, and gaining a
little bit of ground on him every second, sliding from a defense in
which she blocked his strikes to one in which she avoided them
entirely.
	"Where did Dorothy learn to fight like that?" Anne asked Gunnr
quietly.
	"Kanna," Gunnr replied.  "Most non-Hoffmanites don't have the
strength or the mass to learn the Kirishima style of karate, but
Dorothy's not exactly an ordinary normal.  She started learning it a
couple years ago, when the gang started spending Christmases on
Ishiyama instead of Titan."
	Anne winced as one of Ray Tungsten's strikes missed Dorothy
and tore the fender off an old Buick hoverwagon that was parked
alongside one of the buildings, then said, "Wow.  She's learned all
this in two years?"
	"If you add up all her actual face time with Kanna, it's more
like six weeks," Gunnr said.  "But keep in mind that Dorothy's a
positronic robot.  She doesn't have to waste time developing muscle
memory; she only has to learn the techniques mentally.  It's a real
timesaver."
	Anne frowned.  "That's cheating."
	"Taking advantage of an innate gift isn't cheating, it's just
being smart," said Gunnr.  "Should Gudrun Truemace make herself fight
with a light weapon to offset the fact that she's so strong?"
	"Who?" Anne replied distractedly.
	"Oh, that's right - you're new here," Gunnr noted with a
smile.  "Never mind.  The point is, we all have to exploit our
strengths and try to downplay our weaknesses."
	"I wish I had some strengths to exploit," Anne grumbled.
	"Never underestimate the utility of sheer cussedness," replied
Gunnr, grinning.
	"Well, I guess I've got -that-," Anne conceded, smiling.  Then
she returned her full attention to the fight.  "Wow.  Look at them
-go-."
	"Mm," Gunnr agreed.  "It's easy to see how Dorothy became the
only empty-handed Duelist.  She came late to the game, but look what
she brought with her."
	Anne nodded as Tungsten edged aside from a punch that caved in
the side of another Dumpster with a great hollow BRONG.  "No kidding."
	"Uh-oh," Gunnr said, her hand suddenly on Juniper's arm.
"Trouble brewing at two o'clock.  I think the other guys are getting
sick of waiting again."  She turned twinkling eyes to her companion.
"Be a shame if they interrupted Dorothy before she's finished with
this guy, don't you think?"
	"Aren't you supposed to keep me out of trouble?" Anne
inquired, but she was rising from her crouch and readying herself even
as she asked.
	"Nope!" Gunnr replied cheerfully.  "I'm just supposed to keep
you out of jail."
	Anne grinned.  "Oh.  Well, let's go then."

	Dorothy whirled past a punch combo, ducked an overhead kick,
blocked two more punches and then scored with a palm strike that
dented her opponent's plastron and sent him skidding back several feet
on the pavement.  He recovered fast, reversing his direction with a
blast from a set of combat-Buma-style jump thrusters in his lower back
and legs; they gave him the speed he needed to slip inside Dorothy's
guard and get in his first real hit on her, a partly-slipped kick that
landed high on her chest and knocked her over backward.
	She shot out a hand, grabbed his arm, and used his weight, his
momentum, and a careful shifting of her own mass to redirect herself
upright and his face into a wall in the same complex spinning
movement.
	Tungsten extracted himself, shook his head, and glared.  "Is
that the best you've got?" he demanded.
	"No," Dorothy replied.  "I was just waiting for you to finish
warming up.  I know how susceptible cheap cyborg parts are to burnout," 
she added matter-of-factly.
	Snarling, Tungsten charged.  As he did so, his left hand
flicked open and something glittered in his palm.  Dorothy's eyes
narrowed fractionally, her jaw setting almost imperceptibly, the only
visible signs that she had shifted from annoyed to furious.
	As her opponent lunged, driving his actuators and reflex
boosters to the max and moving too fast for the human eye to see, he
drove the spiked probe extending from the heel of his left hand
forward.  The probe was a type of robot restraining bolt designed for
use on robots with non-conductive outer surfaces.  That was what the
spike was for.  Tungsten intended to drive it through Dorothy's
synthetic skin to the conductive parts below, immobilize her, and then
dismantle her at his leisure.
	What he'd had planned for the power droid was bad enough, but
that, in the middle of a fight for which he'd been duly challenged,
was the last straw.
	R. Dorothy abandoned restraint.
	That didn't mean she became reckless or started wasting
movements, or that her fighting style became in any way less spare or
more flamboyant.  It basically just meant that she stopped caring so
much if she permanently damaged her opponent.
	She slipped his lunge, turning herself sideways to his line of
attack so that his left hand passed harmlessly before her chest.  Then
she set herself and threw out her left elbow, ramming it into the
center of his chest.  Before he could react to that impact (which
further dented his plastron, quite painfully), she had straightened
her arm, driving him back, then whirled to face him, trapping his
still-extended left arm in her right elbow, and delivered a full-power
kick to his midsection.
	Tungsten crashed through the side of the Buick he had
previously damaged, crushing the side of the car as though it had
collided at highway speed with a bridge abutment, and he didn't take
most of his left arm with him.
	To his credit, he came out of the wreckage still game for a
fight; but Dorothy had stopped playing now, and with one arm and some
pretty serious powertrain damage, Tungsten never got the initiative
back.
	Seeing their pal getting dismantled by what they had taken for
a maidbot, the others (minus the one who had tried to tag Dorothy with
an RPG early in the fight, who still lay senseless next to the brick
that had been used to remove him from the equation) hauled out their
blasters and opened fire.
	Suddenly being bracketed by blasterfire had the uncommon
effect of disconcerting Dorothy slightly.  She felt faintly annoyed
with herself for having stopped taking note of the others after the
brick incident early in the fight, and blasterfire was considerably
harder to dodge than Ray Tungsten's three - make that two working
extremities.  She kicked him away - not hard now that he had a frozen
leg to go with his missing arm - and sought cover, only to note that
she and Tungsten had pretty much flattened it all already.
	She supposed she could charge the shooters, but that course of
action promised to be problematic.  There were, after all, five of
them, and they were some distance away.  For that matter, she couldn't
quite consider Tungsten fully neutralized; he wasn't going to be much
of a hand-to-hand threat anymore, but he might still have a ranged
weapon he could put into play.
	Dorothy looked up, gauging the distance to the rooftops of the
 buildings on either side, and was just about to jump for it when one
of the boarded-up second-story windows of the building to her left
exploded in a shower of splinters and fractured boards.  Through the
cloud of broken wood, a slim dark-clad figure burst sideways out of
the window like a torpedo from a tube.
	As she flew in an arc from window to street, briefly turning
entirely upside down in the process, Gunnr Brynjelfr opened fire with
the slab-sided silver automatics she held in her hands, taking
Dorothy's assailants completely by surprise.  It didn't even really
register to them that they were being shot at until the first of them
went down with a cry that was as much consternation as pain.
	By the time Gunnr hit the street, landing with an
energy-absorbing roll that brought her up on one knee with both guns
bearing, all five of them had been hit and three disarmed.  It wasn't
her best performance, but then, the lighting down here wasn't the best
it could've been.
	"I'll cut you guys a deal," she said as she rose smoothly to
her feet, keeping her weapons trained.  "You take off right now and
I'll let you live."
	R. Dorothy, still taken slightly aback by the Valkyrie's
sudden appearance herself, heard running footsteps behind her and
turned to see Anne Cross approaching, a wooden kendo sword in one
hand and a worried expression on her face.
	"Gunnr, we've got a problem," she said, just a little out of
breath.
	"What's that?" Gunnr asked, not taking her eyes off the five
Commers she was holding down on.
	"Looks like about a million more of 'em, headed this way."
	"Our brothers come to support us, robot-kisser!" snarled one
of the five, holding a hand over a bloody shoulder wound.  "Brother
Tungsten will be avenged!"
	"Brother Tungsten will avenge himself!" Tungsten roared,
hauling himself up out of the wreckage of the Buick.  He balanced on
his one good and one jammed leg for a moment, then twisted and threw
himself at Gunnr.  Dorothy thought of intercepting him, but Gunnr was
in her way.  The Valkyrie pivoted, keeping one gun trained on the five
at the end of the block and blasting at the oncoming cyborg with the
other, but the bullets bounced from his armor.
	Growling, Gunnr holstered the weapon and reached behind her
back to draw another, but she wasn't sanguine about her chances of
getting to it before he reached her, at which point it would become a
different ballgame.
	Without conscious thought or conscious doubt, but with a kiai
that would have done her sensei proud, Anne Cross interposed herself,
bringing her bokuto around in a sweep that intercepted Tungsten's
right hand before it reached Gunnr.
	A blade of ordinary wood, even stout oak like the originals,
would at best have bounced harmlessly from Tungsten's armored arm.  At
worst it would have splintered.  In no case would it have been useful.
	This blade had been carved by a meticulous dwarven craftsman
of Asgard from a cast-off branch of Odin's great ash-tree, Yggdrasil -
the same tree which had provided the wood for Corwin Ravenhair's
much-loved Draconic warstaff, Stick.  It not only held up when it
struck Tungsten's arm, it dented the armor plate of his vambrace and
spun him partway around, completely interrupting his charge toward
Gunnr and nearly spilling him on his frozen leg.
	Roaring, the cyborg stabilized himself, then launched himself
in a fresh attack, his good hand seeking his quarry from any angle he
could work.
	While some small part of her mind looked on in gleeful
amazement, Juniper stayed cool and treated the flurry of blows like
archery fire, intercepting each one.  Her technique was a bit ragged,
her form imperfect, but it got the job done, and once her opponent had
exhausted that surge of energy, she capitalized on it and went on the
attack.  With one blow she smacked his arm out of line, buying herself
a couple of seconds while he regrouped; with the next she pivoted and
drove her blade against his frozen hip joint, crushing it and drawing
sparks.  Tungsten swore and nearly fell, then shifted his weight
forward, abandoning all technique, and just threw his fist at her with
all the speed and strength he had left.
	One of Juniper's goals in her Katsujinkenryuu training, a goal
with which her sensei wholeheartedly agreed, was the integration of
her own innate strengths into her approach to the form.  It was the
kind of thing Gunnr had been talking about, and that hadn't eluded
Anne as they spoke; her response had been mostly for wryness's sake.
	Juniper's third blow, struck with the full force of one of
those innate strengths behind it, brought up the runic carving on the
bokuto's blade, engulfed Tungsten's remaining arm in flames, and then
shattered it at the wrist, reducing his hand to a spray of broken,
smoking metal and plastic fragments that scattered up the street like
a fistful of discarded change.
	As Tungsten reeled, smoke pouring from the end of his
remaining arm, she stepped into him, pivoted, and smashed the blade
against his temple in a blow that would have converted the top of his
skull into a cereal bowl, had it been a normal skull and the sword a
normal sword.
	Ray Tungsten went down with a noise like a motorcycle crash
and didn't g