Clear and the Hopeless Recap [/SIZE]

Clear was living the quiet, solitary life of a scavenger in orbit around her people's homeworld - Mars. Hateful of humanity for destroying her people, the salmittons, she was an anti-social young woman that normally talked to an artificial intelligence named Note and a woman, who Clear named "Icer", frozen in stasis. She was joined by the magical Green, who can grow and mould plantlife at will, and the human mechanic Hebedee, aboard her derelict spacecraft The Hopeful. Clear jokingly calls this ship "The Hopeless".

However an event (first occurring in the Hero Force One thread) caused the entire Laniakea Supercluster to be moved - bar the Earth. Because Note and The Hopeful's systems were focused upon the Earth, this caused the old and befuddled A.I. to begin jumping at random through the galaxy - especially through the Perseus Arm. After Note tried to abandon her on an ice world, Clear was rescued by Warlord Strang and with the help of his stormtroopers, she was able to retake her ship and was forced to kill Note. Although she lost Hebedee the mechanic, others joined her. Pully, the stormtrooper, Ffion Heul and Kokoro Lymn, the Æon Knights, and Alexis Thrain, the doctor, joined Clear. The Knights lost their teacher, Telkrin Izep, on the planet Oeurwoud to the "dark water" and had to return to the planet Tangris. The Æon Order wanted to return to Oeurwoud to investigate, along with Clear and her crew. However before they could make the jump to Oeurwoud they were confronted by the Rebel Alliance who suspect The Hopeful of destroying the planet Algernon. Clear chose to flee and found herself working for The Galactic Empire of the Milky Way. There they have been escorted by the ever-present Captain Rynard and Aellisin Koure has decided to become the teacher for Ffion Heul and Kokoro Lymn.

Princess Aurora Briarose is supposed heir of Britainnia, a nation of Earth, and a guardian of Albion - giving her the ability to command a magical realm attached to Britain. Her family long ago left the Earth to settle Algernon, which was later destroyed. Now, however, groups would attempt to kidnap her and use her to get control of Albion for themselves. One such group call themselves the Latter-Day Greys of Memnoch, however it is possible that the Empire would likewise wish to do the same. Aurora was then victim to an unusual assassination attempt, which sped up her ALS condition and forced her to confine herself to a stasis pod until a cure could be found to extend her life. Lumo of the Mirare spacestation asked Clear to stop the humans from acquiring Aurora at any cost, otherwise the entire galaxy may be at their mercy.

Slowly sound begins to return to Clear's ears and her blurry vision swims until it steadies itself. She feels like she's going to be sick. She falls against the cold bulkhead of the corridor and whines to herself. She doesn't remember drinking at all, nevermind getting so drunk she passed out in the hall. She wonders what kind of booze Pully must have forced on her this time.

She groans from a stinging headache and rubs her eyes. When she opens them again she sees plants. Everywhere.

Clear: "This again? Green?"

Kassuin: "I don't know which of your friends is Green. If she's the tiny-sized human, I had to bash her face a few times to put her down..."

Clear: "WHAT!? You hit Green!? Why!?"

Clear staggers away from Kassuin. She has no idea how or when he got here. He's crouched down as though he snuck up behind her - but Clear isn't sure she wasn't too drunk to remember him being there the whole time.

Kassuin: "Your senses are coming back. Fortunate for both of us. It would have been harder to render you unconscious without hurting you... too much."

Clear: "What? I... I don't... what's happen--"

She throws up. And the mess isn't pretty.

At least it fertilised the plants.

Kassuin: "That's a good sign."

Clear: "It is!?"

Kassuin: "Pay attention because I won't explain this a second time. Your ship is currently in orbit around Tangris--"

Clear: "Since when?"

Kassuin: "--Don't interrupt me."

Clear: "Sorry."

Kassuin: "I said don't interrupt me! Do you remember meeting Aellisin Koure?"

Clear: "I do."

Kassuin: "That saves some explanation. He is a falleen and a dark Æon Knight."

Clear: "Like you."

Kassuin: "A little. I am Aos Sí. And don't interrupt me. His species secrete pheromones that allow them to alter the minds of the opposite sex. Evolutionary terms, this is traditionally meant to simply make them more sexually attractive. But some of them have greater control over this... talent. You have been under his control for quite some time. You won't have been aware of it. The longer you spent with him, the deeper his control ran."

Clear: "It can't be..."

Kassuin: "Not only you. It seems your entire crew were female. All are likely his puppets now. Many Knights and Lords have been investigating Oeurwoud or other worlds with similar tales of the dark water. Luckily I was still here. I attempted contact but only got cryptic messages from your A.I.. It seems the A.I. was attempting to indirectly communicate with me that there was a problem. Eventually I gathered from it that your ship has been taken by Koure. He's well known on Tangris as a renegade. He'd like nothing more than to wipe out all other Æon. Come on, I'll explain more as we move."

Clear nods and follows after the knight. They move quickly and silently save for Kassuin's voice.

Kassuin: "Under his control, you did everything he asked of you. He has complete access to everything this ship had hidden. Including this... superweapon. I'd wager his goal was to gain access to that the moment he saw your ship enter Imperial space."

Clear: "What happened to the Imperial ship that was escorting us? Captain Rynard?"

Kassuin: "According to your A.I., Koure crossed him and disabled The Majestic's jump drive. They may arrive eventually, but I don't know who's side said captain will be on. Koure has activated the superweapon. Or he's trying to. Your A.I. seems unsure. Knights and Lords are searching your ship for him, but this is a very large vessel. I was attacked by you and your small friend. I rendered her unconscious after slaying several unusual creatures--"

Clear: "Yeah, she does that."

Kassuin: "Stop interrupting. Then I noticed you had datura power hanging from your belt. I don't know how it got there but it's one of the few elements that can counteract the effects of Falleen pheromones."

Clear remembers the pouch given to her by the Hian woman on Mirare.

Kassuin: "I forced the powder down your throat and here you are. I think you're more useful awake. You have to tell me where he would be if he's power this weapon."

At that moment Clear suddenly gets a pang of suspicion. He could well be telling the truth about everything. It all sounds possible from the wording of Lumos. But she also distrusts Kassuin. He appears from nowhere with this story and demands to see the weapon controls...

Clear: "Where's Ffion and Kokoro?"

Kassuin: "Likely under the control of Koure. In the weapon room or trying to fight other Knights searching the ship. Everyone is aware that they're under the power of Koure and will try not to harm them."

Clear: "Where are the other Knights? Is Kloo Celli here?"

Kassuin: "She went to Oeurwoud. Why are you stalling? Take me to the weapon room."

Clear begins to lead the way, but as she does so she starts messaging Mother with her PIP. Mother doesn't respond. It seems her PIP is being jammed somehow. Clear hesitates as she guides him through a room, still towards the lift that would take them to the weapons system. Is this one elaborate ploy? Where is everyone else?

She pushes the button the lift and they wait. When the doors open they're met by sudden blaster fire. Clear leaps to one side. She catches a glimpse of stormtrooper armour.

Clear: "Pully!? Pully is that you!?"

Pully: "Sorry boss! Didn't know you were up here! Just shooting at these Æon blokes crawling all over the place!"

Clear comes out of hiding. Her hunch about Kassuin had been right then. She points towards the corridor where Kassuin had gone into hiding himself.

Clear: "I just saw that Kassuin. He says he attacked Green!"

Pully: "Hitting little girls?"

Pully sprays covering fire and backs up back onto the lift. Clear follows her.

Kassuin: "You little wretch!"

The purple alien shouts as the doors slide shut. Clear leans against the lift wall and sighs heavily. Her head is still throbbing.

Clear: "Lucky you showed up, Pully. He tried to trick me into taking him down to the superweapon room."

Pully: "Don't mention it, boss. Glad to pull your backside out of the fray time and time again."

Clear: "You make it sound like I'm always in trouble."

Pully: "You ain't?"

Clear: "What're they doing here, Pully? Why are there Æon Knights on the ship? Where are the others?"

Pully: "They're after Aellisin. He's not like them. He refuses to subject himself to the rules of Tangris. So they came to take him. Don't you remember?"

Clear: "No... I don't remember anything... not since... we first came back from Mirare."

Pully: "That was two days ago, Clear. Wow. Did that Kassuin hit you?"

Clear: "No. We'll have to find Green. I hope she's okay. Where are Kokoro and Ffion?"

Pully: "They're fighting. Kokoro just... I don't know. Went crazy, sided with the Æon Knights of Tangris. Whatever the case, Ffion's taking care of her."

Clear's blood freezes up and her spine shrivels.

Clear: "Pul-Pully... where are we?"

Pully: "In a lift... seriously, Thrain will have to look at you. He must have smacked your head really hard."

Clear: "I mean where's the ship? Are we still in Imperial space?"

Pully: "No! We ditched them as soon as we managed to route power to the superweapon. Time to blow Tangris to bits! Wow! It's going to be crazy."

The fact that Pully seems to coherent astounds Clear. Being under the control of pheromones sounds like something that would render the victim insensible and yet Pully appears as cognitive as ever.

Clear: "Can I borrow your helmet, Pully?"

Pully: "Huh? Why?"

Clear: "My PIP is broken or something. I just want to access map systems through your helmet."

Pully tugs the white helmet from her head and holds it out for Clear to take it.

Pully: "I think you set Mother to scramble systems. I don't even think my helmet will be much good but try it an--"

Clear snatches the helmet and clobbers Pully across the back of the head with it. She falls forward and lands on all fours in shock.

Pully: "OOooooooooow... did you ju--ack!"

Clear snakes her leg around Pully's neck and clamps down, holding her friend's neck behind her knee. She tightens her leg muscles and uses her weight to pin the stronger woman down. She could have used her arm, but Clear isn't good at holds. Plus she's always had very strong thighs. Eventually Pully stops struggling and is out cold. Clear checks that she's okay and lays her safely at the back of the lift. She'll have to apologise profusely later.

The lift doors slip open and Clear is in a very dark passage that she knows will take her to the superweapon room. She sucks up the courages and sneaks forth. She tries to move as quickly as possible without banging her way across the metal floor. When she gets to the door in question she discovers that it's open and light is pouring out. Inside there's the sound of fighting. Clear peeks inside.

The first thing Clear notes is that the room is suddenly three-times bigger than it once was. Where the back wall had been, was now wide open like a gigantic door to reveal a whole new area of consoles and equipment evidently meant to help power the weapon. There, on the second tier, she sees swinging shafts of light. Ffion and Kokoro strike and attack like Clear has never seen them do before. She as to try and stop them somehow...

She slips into the room and heads to the nearest console. A quick glance as she sees that the entire system has been rebooted and appears to be fully operational. She hears Kokoro grunt with panic and Clear looks up to see her fall against the railing. She looks down straight at Clear and there is a moment of recognition that passes between them. It lasts just a second as Kokoro rolls herself out of the way of an incoming deadly strike against the railing. Cut in half, the integrity of the metal pole is weakened enough to send a small piece of it flying towards Clear. She hops out of the way.

Koure: "Ah. Captain. You're back."

Clear turns suddenly to see the falleen slowly approaching her.

Koure: "I didn't expect you to come back in one piece. I hope you managed to kill at least one of them before you ran away?"

Clear: "I... ah... saw Kassuin. He killed Green. I saw Pully but I think he got her too. I had to run."

Aellisin shakes his head slowly.

Koure: "Captain Clear. Cowardice doesn't become you."

He walks past her unhurriedly and she follows him. She hears a shout of aggression from Ffion.

Lymn: "Come back to me, Ffion!"

Heul: "Don't waste your breath, Kokoro. You betrayed me. You betrayed us. You betrayed our master!"

Lymn: "Listen to yourself! Master!? When do Æon Knights bow to masters!?"

Heul: "You'll soon be dead, Kokoro. Then you'll understand."

Lymn: "I know you're fighting his control over you, Ffion! If you weren't holding back, I'd be dead by now..."

Heul: "Stop talking!"

Aellisin chuckles.

Koure: "Aren't they entertaining? The drama! To be so young again would be a wonderful thing. Instead I simply have old debts to pay. I truly wish Izep could be here now to see this moment. I honestly don't know if he'd cry or if he'd relish the day that Tangris was brought to its knees. You know I had a group of students send me a video begging me to spare their world? It was almost sickening to watch them grovelling."

He reaches the top of the stairs and turns his attention away from the fighting friends towards the systems that Clear doesn't recognise.

Koure: "You, my dear Captain, have been the ultimate gift. You and your fine ship. The power this single vessel holds will surrender the entire empire to me. Then the rebels and then everything else that stands in my way. I did consider demanding that princess friend of yours be handed over to me before I destroy the planet. But honestly. I think I'd rather just blast Earth to pieces too. Who wants to own a backwater planet like that anyway? Humanity. They're as stuck in the past as the fools of Tangris."

He looks up at a monitor display power levels that are all rising.

Koure: "That power core you put in this ship, by the way... fascinating. This ship has so much to explore. I'm going to enjoy it thoroughly, I assure you."

With his back to her Clear leaps at him, ready to strike his mane. But she finds herself suddenly suspended in the air, unable to move an inch.

Koure: "Interestingly part of the weapon's components require carbonite inserts to trigger a chain reaction. Each insert has already been placed, but if they weren't I could use the carbonite flash freeze machine over there to instantly create new ones. Whoever designed this weapon obviously wanted it to be used. And often."

He turns to look up at Clear dangling in the air. He moves his hand, and thus her. She swings across the room as solid as a statue. She sees the carbonite flash freezing machine before she even gets near it. A pit in the floor that stretches down to the first tier where the pipes pumping in carbon and tibanna gas would connect to the main shaft. Within that shaft the mixture would be flash frozen and provide solid carbonite as inserts for the weapon. If she were inside that pit when it was activated...

She tries to move and fight but only manages to wriggle her limbs about.

Clear: "Let me go!"

Koure: "You will make a nice trophy, Captain. A beautiful work of art for me to admire. I'm actually glad you came back. Being killed by Kassuin would have been a waste. Shame about your friends."

Kassuin: "She lied."

Clear is suddenly dropped. She slams against the edge of the pit with a loud clang. The pain rips through her body but she doesn't dwell on it because she has to suddenly scramble to stall her fall into that pit. She manages to grab the grate of the second tier floor and yank her legs back out of the shaft.

She looks up. Kassuin holds his hand out and, in an instant, a red blade of energy springs forth. Aellisin stares at Kassuin and, without breaking that stare, he summons his own ruhand with a crackle of red lightning. Though Clear knows she doesn't want Aellisin to win, she isn't sure she really wants Kassuin to win either...

Aellisin Koure, with ruhand in one hand, opens his other palm.

Kassuin: "Powerful you have become, Knight. Great darkness I sense in you."

Koure: "I have become more powerful than any Lord. Even you."

In his open palm energy begins to surface and crackle. He lashes out suddenly and red lightning springs through the air. It twists and writhes as it screams across the room, striking the metal floor, computer consoles, the ceiling. Clear herself is jolted backwards by a rogue snap of soul-induced lightning. She rolls across the metal grates until she comes to a slow stop where she tries to look up to see what happened. Lord Kassuin has his own free hand stretched out and the lightning is being absorbed into a white sphere. When he's done the lightning is gone and the room seems all the darker without it.

Kassuin: "You still have much to learn."

Koure: "Hm. It is obvious that this contest cannot be decided by our knowledge of the soul... but by our skills with the ruhand."

Aellisin's mane flares red and he leaps into the air, crossing the distance between him and Lord Kassuin in an instant. Kassuin's ruhand rockets upwards to block the Falleen's downward strike. Block made, Aellisin jumps back a step, avoiding a counterstrike from Kassuin. Aellisin holds his ruhand with two hands, placing more weight into his strikes, while Kassuin continues to use just one hand, giving him more agility.

Clear turns from them. She just hopes that Lord Kassuin is up to the task. If he isn't, then she can, at least, stop her own ship being the demise of thousands. She runs across the grates towards the consoles at the far end. She looks at the screens and finds the countdown. Then the power levels. She presses a few buttons and lowers one of the power coils, resulting in a satisfying 'powering-down sound'. She accesses a second power coil but is suddenly whipped up into the air. Aellisin must have caught her in the corner of his eye. She manages to wriggle and struggle, evidence that his grip on her is weaker this time, but she's still unable to do anything while suspended helplessly in the air.

Koure: "Stop your attack or I kill the salmitton!"

From where she is she can see Aellisin standing off from Kassuin. Kassuin looks over to Clear and then back to Koure.

Kassuin: "I care not for the girl. I am no daoine, Knight. You mistake me for someone else."

Kassuin thrusts at Aellisin but he dodges out of the way. Clear suddenly finds herself flying through the air with great speed. She collides with Kassuin, bowling him over. Her roll ends, this time, next to the railing and legs swing off. She's able to grab the metal bars before falling and glances down at what would have been her demise. She sees her friends fighting each other below. Their ruhands are being projected without the use of their hilts and their attacks seem just as ferocious as the older men. Kokoro Lymn, however, seems less able with her sword than Ffion Heul, though Ffion seems to be clouded or holding back whenever it looks like she is in an advantageous position. Clear notices that while Kokoro's sword is stark white, Ffion's has a soft pinkness to it.

Lymn: "You were supposed to balance your soul, not leave it in darkness!"

Heul: "I hate you!"

Lymn: "You're my sister, Ffion! I love you."

Their swords clash. Clear scrambles up and stares down at them. She glances back to the consoles. On her hip she feels the pouch and opens it up. It seems Kassuin didn't use it all up when restoring Clear's senses. She has to get this into Ffion. But she has to save the planet first...

She runs across the grates again but, again, her movement attracts the attention of Aellisin and she's suspended into the air. Kassuin, however, uses his own telekinesis to bring down the ceiling ontop of Aellisin. It doesn't do much damage to the dark knight but it does distract him enough to drop Clear. She lands on her feet like a cat and rushes to the console. Another cylinder powered down.

Koure: "NO!"

Aellisin again snags Clear's leg and yanks it hard, pulling it out of its socket just before he has to resume attention on defending from Kassuin. Clear screams out in agony and falls to the floor. She wants to stop the pain but there's nothing she can do, no way to put the leg back. She writhes as pain washes over her mind. She can't consider anything else. Blue tears stream from her eyes.

It takes a while for her to push her mind back into focus and she pulls her back up against the console bank. Putting her weight onto just one leg, she climbs up the machine and hits the slider for a third cylinder of the weapon. It powers down.

The room suddenly erupts in red explosions. Blasts appear in thin air and explode in small bursts of flame and force. One explodes not far from Clear and she is thrown back down. Kassuin jumps and dives out of the way of them as they congregate around him. As one bursts in front of him he manages to absorb it as he had done the lightning. But this act leaves him temporarily exposed and Aellisin runs at him with a sudden thrust of the red ruhand. Kassuin twists to the side but his waist is seared.

Koure: "I have first strike. Are you concerned yet?"

He laughs and attempts to strike again but Kassuin is able to quickly block the strike and uses his telekinesis to blast Aellisin back. Clear gets to her single foot again and powers down the fourth, and final, cylinder. The lights in the room, that remain, flicker wildly for a brief moment before the voice of Mother is finally heard.

Mother: "Weapon off-line."

Koure: "Stupid ingrate!"

He shouts at her.

Koure: "Once I'm finished with this Æon fool, I'll render the rest of your limbs obsolete, salmitton!"

Clear tries to walk along the grates but falls down without the use of her second leg. She begins crawling, crying and moaning in pain the whole way.

Koure: "You've only delayed the inevitable. Once you're dead, Æon, I'll reactivate the weapon and your corrupt little planet will be annihilated."

Kassuin: "You won't defeat me, Knight."

Clear reaches the edge of the second tier again and peers down. Kokoro and Ffion are still fighting. She's trying to decide how best to get down there when Ffion glances up and spots Clear. A nasty smile appears on her face and suddenly she uses her own telekinesis to pull Clear through the railings and tries to drop her ontop of Kokoro. The consular, however, holds her hand upwards and is able to use her greater powers of the soul to lock Clear in place.

Lymn: "You'd attack Clear too, Ffion? You have allowed this dark knight to twist your mind and you've become the very thing you swore to never be!"

Heul: "Don't lecture me, Kokoro! I see through the lies of the Æon Lords! I no longer fear the darkness as you do. I will bring peace, freedom, justice and security to my new empire!"

Lymn: "Your new empire?"

Heul: "Don't make me kill you."

Lymn: "You know I won't betray the Æon Lords..."

Heul: "Then, if you're not with me, you're my enemy."

Lymn: "Only an Aos Sí or a daoine deals in such absolutes."

Clear reaches down towards Kokoro.

Lymn: "I will do what I must."

Heul: "You will try."

Ffion hurtles forward and, suddenly, her ruhand sinks through Kokoro's stomach. Ffion looks shocked and horrified, evidently expecting her friend to deftly avoid the attack. Kokoro reaches out and pulls Ffion closer with one hand, with the other she quickly forces the datura powder, which Clear had dropped when she reached out to Kokoro from above, into Ffion's mouth. Ffion recoils, spluttering. The ruhand pulls cleanly free and Kokoro drops to her knees. Slowly Clear is lowered to the ground until, abruptly, she plummets the last metre. She lands with a howl but she sees that Kokoro's eyes are closed. Pink goo oozes from the ruhand wound, which has pierced straight through her body. Clear reaches out to try and shake Kokoro awake.

A second voice howls in pain and then the body of Lord Kassuin flies over the top of the railing and crashes into the wall at the far end of the room. He then peels off of the metal and falls, face first, into the floor. Motionless. From the second tier comes Aellisin Koure, floating through the air as he uses telekinesis upon himself. He slowly and gently lowers himself to the ground, staring with happy malice at Clear the whole time.

Koure: "I see the Muovinian is dead already. It turns out the genetic mankeup of her species is immune to the pheromones of the falleen. I'll have to keep that in mind in future... as for you, salmitton."

He stands over her.

Koure: "Which limb is next? How about the other leg?"

Clear screams as her other leg is now pulled from its socket. She clutches her hips, then her head, trying to somehow deal with the incredible pain. She feels sick.

Koure: "Next your arms. Then your neck. You'll be suffering when--"

Heul: "Get away from her!"

Aellisin looks up.

Koure: "Seems there must be some datura powder aboard. One female escaping my control can happen from time to time. Two? Student, you would dare to challenge your teacher?"

Heul: "I was not of my own mind. You manipulated me. I would never have allowed myself to be trained by a dark knight like you!"

Clear can see the anger and rage on Ffion's face, clearly upset by the death of her sister and being used by someone else. She extends her ruhand again, this time is is even more red than before. She growls at Aellisin.

Koure: "Good! Use your aggressive feelings, girl. Let the hate flow through you!"

Aellisin circles around Clear and Kokoro's body, focusing his attention on his student.

Koure: "Give in to your anger. With each passing moment you make yourself more my servant."

Ffion's hands begin to shake, torn between lust for revenge and the preservation of her soul.

Heul: "No..."

Koure: "It is unavoidable. It is your destiny. You are now mine."

Heul: "No!"

She lunges with her ruhand. Aellisin easily avoids the attack and sheaths his own ruhand, causing the red beam to disappear. He seems happier than ever.

Clear: "Your overconfidence is your weakness, Aellisin!"

Koure: "And your faith in your friends is yours!"

He gestures towards Kokoro.

Koure: "This one defied me. She is no more. Even your Lord is... yet living it seems."

Aellisin's attention is drawn, Clear supposes, to the signs of life within Kassuin's soul.

Heul: "You'll have to deal with me first!"

Koure: "You begin to test my patience, Ffion Heul. You are my apprentice. My last student refused to yield too. He is no longer living. You would be wise to lower your ruhand."

Through tears of emotional pain Ffion, finally, gives in and lowers her sword. She's lost and confused and filled with regret. Clear doesn't call out though. Not yet. She doesn't want Aellisin's attention on her.

Koure: "Good. Deal with the salmitton. I shall finish off the Æon Lord."

Clear looks up at Ffion with wide eyes. Ffion watches her mentor approach the prone figure of Kassuin but then turns towards Clear. Her ruhand is still drawn and the young student looks down at it... then back to Clear.

Clear: "Wa-wait, Ffion!"

Heul: "I've lost everything Clear. My friend. My soul. My honour. My dignity. There's only one path left for me..."

She walks towards Clear.

Clear: "Ffion! That's not true! I know things seem desperate right now... but there's life beyond this!"

Clear tries to pull herself away from the encroaching student but her non-functioning legs are dead weight and she doesn't get far. Ffion stands over her, sword poised over Clear's chest.

Clear: "Ffion... don't..."

Ffion manages to speak through her own tears.

Heul: "I'm sorr--ack!"

Ffion Heul flies to the left, through the air, with such force that she lands amidst computers at the far end of the room. Clear turns, thinking she would see Kassuin, but it's Kokoro. The student lowers her arm back down and rests her head, once again, on the metal floor.

Clear: "Kokoro... are you okay?"

Lymn: "I don't think so, Clear. If you... if you speak to Ffion again... tell her I hope she can be better..."

Clear struggles to reach Kokoro and pull herself along side the other woman.

Clear: "You can tell her yourself. I'm not your errand girl."

She has no idea how to plug the goop. There seem to be no internal organs anywhere, just goop. In places it has begun to coagulate into a firmer mass. Clear puts her hands on the wound, trying to keep the goo inside. She looks over to Aellisin. He stands at a distance from Kassuin's body and has a large, pointed, piece of debris hanging over the Lord. He violently drops his hand and the debris crashes downwards, smothering the body. What he doesn't see, but Clear does, is the real Kassuin sneaking up behind him. Once the body is covered, Kassuin flicks his wrist and his ruhand springs forth. It cuts into Aellisin's neck where it remains for a long moment until Kassuin, satisfied with his act, spins to slice off the renegade's head.

Clear: "How..."

Kokoro: "Soul projection... He's an Æon Lord for a reason. Aellisin should have known better..."

Kassuin strides towards them.

Kassuin: "You both did well. Very brave. I'm impressed and I thank you on behalf of the Æon Lords and the Aos Sí."

Clear: "I think... we really need... Thrain..."

Kassuin: "Who?"

Clear: "Doctor..."

Kassuin crouches down and runs his hands an inch away from Clear's body until he finds the breaks. He looks into her eyes.

Kassuin: "This will hurt."

Clear: "It already hu--ARGH!"

He uses telekinesis to put the bone back into its socket. He runs his hand over the second leg.

Clear: "Oh no... wait... please... I ca--ARGH!!"

He does the same again.

Kassuin: "Do not move. They're back in place but you're going to need real medical treatment before you can use them again. That was the easy part. Now..."

He turns to Kokoro.

Kassuin: "I am no healer."

Kokoro: "I know..."

Kassuin: "But you are. I want you to exert your soul to boost mine. I know you've never trained for that, but I saw you projecting your own ruhand. You have the power. Think of it in the same way, just be careful not to project your soul in physical form or you'll wind up stabbing a sword through my skull."

Kokoro: "This isn't the time for... jokes..."

Kassuin: "I am not joking. No swords, please."

Kokoro breathes deep and closes her eyes to concentrate. Her face suddenly looks serene and trace-like. Kassuin's hands are now over Kokoro's wound and a faint blue glow ebbs from them. Clear can only feel hope at this point. She truly believes that Kassuin can save her friend. They've come so far...

Kassuin seems to strain as his forehead creases. Clear holds her breath.

Kassuin falls back and pants with effort.

Kassuin: "I'll never look down on healers again. I swear."

Clear looks at the wound. It looks terrible. But it isn't oozing anymore.

Kassuin rises.

Kassuin: "I've done all I can. The doctors will have to do the rest."

The next hour is something of a daze for Clear as she slips in and out of unconsciousness. As she does she thinks she remembers some of the time she spent under the influence of Aellisin's pheromones - leading him to the weapon room, giving him access to the systems, ordering Mother to accept his commands. She sees Alexis Thrain come in and start tending to Kokoro with bacta gel. Other Æon show up and start helping. Together they use their powers to carry Kokoro through the air, then Clear and then, finally, Ffion who is unconscious with a nasty cut on her head. She hears Alexis talking, mostly complaining about alien genetics being so foreign to her.

As she is carried from the weapon room she overhears Kassuin talking to one of the other knights.

Kassuin: "Where is my student? Why isn't he here!?"

Æon Knight: "He went back down to the planet, Lord Kassuin. He said you were sending him there on a mission."

Kassuin: "I did no such thing. What could he be up to at a time like this!?"

Another lord approaches.

Æon Lord: "Lord Kassuin, your student has gone awol."

Kassuin: "As I've just been disgussing."

Æon Lord: "I mean he's taken a ship and left Tangris. He's just jumped into hyperspace."

Kassuin: "What!? Why?"

Æon Lord: "I was hoping you'd tell me."

Clear: "Do you want to follow him?"

Kassuin looks down at her. The lift doors open.

Kassuin: "Yes. I'll tell the others they're free to leave in the next twenty minutes. Then we jump."

Clear: "Not a problem. Mother..."

Mother: "I am here."

Clear: "Prepare to jump."

Clear stares up at the now familiar tiled ceiling of the medbay. How many times has she had to come here? Too many. She turns her head to the right and sees Kokoro lying on the only other medical bed, the muovinian's eyes closed as she sleeps through the pain of her ordeal. Thrain assured Clear that Kokoro would be just fine. A quick bit of research revealed that muovinians are made of a strange plastic-like substance that oozes throughout their bodies and coagulates when exposed to the air. Thanks to Kassuin's efforts, most of the 'bleeding' was stopped and the plastic-ooze is solidifying around the wound even now. Thrain had already sewn up the hole and Kokoro's body is doing the rest. Painful though and so Thrain put the young knight into a chemically induced coma.

Clear turns her head to the left. There are only two beds in the medbay, something Clear now recognises as a major flaw. On the floor is a makeshift mattress made from cloth produced in the synthesiser room. Ffion Heul lies there with her back to Clear. Clear knows she's not sleeping. When Ffion first woke up she wailed and lamented her actions, both those under Aellisin Koure's control and those of her own, albeit muddled, mind. Then she shut down, rolled over and didn't speak. She barely responded to Thrain's attempts to help her fix the gash in her skull. An injection of pain-killer later and Ffion stopped responding altogether. Clear wants to throw something at the stupid woman.

It doesn't seem fair to Clear that Ffion gets to lament and feel sorry for herself after almost killing both Clear and Kokoro. Ffion should be at Clear's bed, helping Thrain, not curling up and blocking everything out. She has making up to do and shutting herself off isn't helping. Clear doesn't even know if she can actually forgive Ffion. Before the incident they were great friends but having your friend prepared to kill you, even in such a breaking point of the psyche, is an experience Clear doesn't think she can ever forget.

The doors to the medbay slide open and Kassuin enters. His eyes scan all three prone women before settling on Clear, the only one still conscious.

Kassuin: "How do you fare?"

Clear: "I'm fine. Alexis--"

Thrain: "Thrain."

Clear: "--tells me you did most of the work. I'm on pain-killers now. I can't feel anything below the waist."

Kassuin: "Good."

Clear: "Mother says she's ready to jump. But the jump drives are stupid and old. These beds have their own little gravity wells in them to keep me and Kokoro pinned to the beds during the jump, but Ffion needs to be held up to the wall. Could you... help?"

Kassuin doesn't reply verbally. He marches over to Ffion and hoists her with his telekinesis. He hovers her over to the wall. She lies flat against the white metal wall and stares off vacantly into the middle distance. Kassuin positions himself against the wall.

Kassuin: "Whenever you are ready."

Alexis Thrain, likewise, stands close to the wall.

Clear: "Mother. Jump."

The world around them blurs to blue, then to redshift. The red colour creates a beautiful pink effects over Kassuin's skin that is strangely mesmerising. Ffion seems not to even notice that she's hurtling through space at impossible speeds, whizzing faster than light across the Perseus Arm. Then they slow down and Kassuin falls from the wall one knee. Just before Ffion topples to smack against the hard floor he thrust his arm in her direction and props her up with the power of his soul. The power of the Force, as Ffion often called it.

Mother: "We have arrived. We are being hailed."

Clear: "By whom?"

Mother: "Captain Rynard of The Majestic."

Clear: "Pully. Can you deal with the comm?"

Pully: "Sure thing. I'm in the Command Centre now."

Clear: "Mother, relay the video comm to the medbay screens."

The screens of the medbay instantly shine on and are split in two halves. One half shows Pully. She seems unharmed, despite the aggressive action Clear had to use on her earlier. The second screen then flickers to life and the beared face of Captain Rynard appears. Clear glances at a second screen which displays the action and information going on outside The Hopeless. Usually everything could be displayed on the gigantic single screen of the Command Centre, but the smaller screens of the medbay, usually reserved for medical read-outs, can only accommodate so much information each. She notes that The Majestic is not the only ship out there.

Captain Rynard: "You are warned to vacant Imperial space immediately."

Pully: "Why's that?"

Captain Rynard: "You have already allied yourself with the, no, traitor Aellisin Koure and you are violating a military engagement."

Kassuin: "I have just received a communication from Tangris, Captain Clear."

Clear: "What is it?"

Kassuin: "My student, Jeb... he has kidnapped your friend, the princess."

Clear: "What!?"

She stares at the monitor showing the outward events. She sees The Majestic slowly approaching Jeb's Æon ship but a squadron of smaller starfighters are attempting to herd the ship back towards the Majestic. Their firing patterns are clearly non-lethal and their attack pattern places their own fighters directly in the flight path of the Æon craft.

Kassuin: "He intends to capture Jeb. Why?"

Clear: "Ask him why he's trying to capture the Æon ship, Pully."

Pully: "Captain Rynard, why are you trying to capture the Æon ship? That ship is being piloted by an Æon student wanted by the Æon Order of Tangris. You have no rights to hinder us in taking him in."

Captain Rynard: "I can see this conversation isn't going to go anywhere. If you try to interfere you will be fired upon."

Rynard's screen goes blank.

Pully: "Sensible man."

Clear: "Stop admiring him."

Clear thinks back to Mirare and the words of Lumo, the old grey. Evidently Captain Rynard and Present S. Polk are well aware of Princess Aurora's lineage and hidden ability to control the magical beings of Earth.

Kassuin: "Once that tractor is on Jeb, he's captured an there's nothing we can do about it."

Clear: "Actually there is something I can do about that. But I need to get to the Bug."

Thrain: "You can't walk, let alone pilot a ship."

Clear: "I don't need my legs to pilot the Bug. I just need to get down there."

The doctor sighs.

Thrain: "Nobody listens to me. When you come back here complaining that your joints haven't set properly, expect me to bask in the 'I told you so' line. There's a hover chair at the back of the room, the one first used by Princess Briarose before she got her own chair on Dacato."

Alexis comes back pushing the hover chair. With the help of Kassuin Clear is soon in the chair. She hovers out of the medbay and through the corridors towards the hangar. Kassuin joins her.

Clear: "Pully, stay in the Command Centre. Green, are you at the hangar now?"

Green: "Hello Clear!"

Clear rolls her eyes.

Clear: "Hello Green. Are you in the hangar?"

Green: "Yes! It's really cold down here."

Clear: "I know. I won't be long and we'll be in the nice warm Bug. Okay?"

Green: "I'll open it now."

Clear: "Good idea."

She looks up at the tall Æon Lord.

Clear: "Are you sure you're okay to do this? It's going to be dangerous, just you against all those fighters..."

Kassuin: "The TIE fighters are designed en masse. No shields and flimsy armour. Quantity over quality was the idea. Inside my own ship, I'll be a object of death. I assure you, I am not concerned."

Clear: "Right... just remember you have to keep me safe too."

Kassuin: "I'll try to remember that."

That doesn't comfort Clear, especially when she knows he doesn't especially value her life. It is difficult to trust a man that doesn't care if you live or die - however she does believe she can trust him to keep her alive so long as she's necessary for the mission. She passes her bedroom door and wishes she could just go and curl up in bed for a few hours with a nice bottle of exotic spirits.

The doors to the hangar open and she realises how difficult life in a hover chair must be for Aurora. Stairs.

She fiddles with the chair settings, having now idea how to set it to 'hover-down-stairs-mode'. Kassuin, already at the bottom, grows impatient and uses his telekinesis to lift Clear up and lower her to the hangar floor. Clear nods her thanks at him, feeling quite embarrassed.

Green stands in the doorway of the Bug and waves Clear over. Kassuin heads towards his own Æon ship. She glances the other way to see the Æon ship of Aellisin Koure and wonders if she'll get to keep it for herself. It'd be no use to her now, but the thing is armed and dangerous and might be a useful weapon in the future. Plus it's quite pretty and sure beats her old hunk-of-junk Bug. Yet for all its worthlessness, it dos have one or two points that make the old girl invaluable. Like today.

Clear ascends the short ramp into the Bug and gets into the cockpit. She hoists herself out of the hover chair and into the pilot's seat. Green moves the chair to the living room and returns when Clear has the Bug in the air. They quickly zoom free of the hangar and enter the vacuum of space. Her radar shows Jeb's ship being slowly encouraged towards The Majestic. Then Kassuin's ship leaves The Hopeless and falls in beside the Bug.

Kassuin: "I'm going to open a communication with my student and try to get him to cooperate with us."

Clear: "Any idea why he'd kidnap Aurora?"

Kassuin: "I have heard tell of a group of his species that call themselves the Latter-Day Greys of Memnoch. They have sought out Princess Briarose before, I believe. All of that is speculation though. I never suspected my own student would be a member of such a group. Even now... I am surprised he would be dedicated to anything other than himself or the Æon Order."

Clear remembers that Lumo mentioned that group. They were the ones that had kidnapped her previously and took her to Earth. Clear feels like she's getting herself involved in something much bigger than herself but she has no choice - she can't allow the humans to get even more power and destroy the lives of more aliens in the galaxy.

Kassuin falls silent, engaged in private audience with Jeb. Their flight path takes them directly between The Majestic and Jeb's ship, but the flight path of Jeb takes him ever-closer towards the large capital ship. She wonders if she can possibly make it in time. Then she spies a second squadron of TIE fighters exit The Majestic and head straight for her. She hopes that Kassuin is truly enough to keep the fighters off of her. The Bug has nothing in the way of offensive capabilities and very little in defence. She now wonders if this really was such a great idea after all...

The TIEs swoop in from above and Kassuin opens fire first. The green bolts blast forth. Clear notices that they deviate, slightly, from their standard trajectory to track their targets. The blasts don't start whizzes around after their enemies, but that slight tracking motion allows more hits to land. Two TIEs are blown apart in the first wave and the Æon Lrd successfully attracts the attention of the entire squadron, leaving Clear free to continue her flight path straight for the intended flight path of Jeb's ship.

Green climbs into the co-pilot's seat. Her voice rattles over the old communicator attached to Clear's chest.

Green: "This is really exciting!"

Clear: "A little bit too exciting for me, Green."

Clear only kept the old chest-communicator now for Green's benefit. The only two remaining, the third having burnt up along with Hebedee, are tied exclusively to The Hopeless and cannot be used to chat with another communicators out there. An entirely closed system for just her and Green.

Green: "I know you like it really."

Clear has to concede that a big part of Clear is beginning to enjoy the space romps as of late. She constantly longed to return to Mars and live her old, sedentary life - but in her heart she shows she'd probably miss all of the adventure and all of the action of her new life. Yet, still, she would jump at the chance to return to the Sol System.

A wing of fighters seems to spot Clear and, at least curious, have broken off their pursuit of Jeb and head straight for the Bug. Clear panics. Mars is sounding very nice about now. But, suddenly, another ship flares into view. Clear hadn't noticed the new blip on her radar but thanks whatever gods are out there that it showed up when it did. The Æon ship, which Clear knows to be named Nach, angrily blasts apart one of the TIEs and the remaining grey ships scatter. The yellow streak of Nach passes by the Bug and pursues one of the TIEs.

Clear: "Thank you Ffion."

Heul: "I have a lot more to do before I deserve that thanks."

Clear pauses.

Clear: "Yes you do. There's at least three more out there. That's a start."

Another TIE is vaporised from the radar, marking Ffion's dedication to that task.

Green: "Wow! Ms Heul really is awesome!"

Clear: "She can be, Green. She can be."

Kassuin: "Jeb reports that he's already been locked in the tractor beam. He's being pulled into the Majestic's hangar. Captain, if you're going to do something now would be the time."

Clear already has the Bug running at full power. She flips a few switches and diverts power away from her shields and into the engines.

Green: "That doesn't seem very safe..."

Clear: "It's not. Ffion. I really need you with me."

Heul: "I'm right beside you."

The remaining fighters that had been herding Jeb into tractor range, now break off their original tactics and swarm towards Clear and Ffion. Jeb's ship can do nothing but be reeled in by he much larger vessel.

Heul: "Ffion... I have no shields here."

In response Ffion's ship barrel rolls in front of the Bug and urges forward, possessing much greater speed and manoeuvrability than Clear's clunky old thing. The Nach deploys a large warhead. The bomb hurtles forward and the TIEs are forced to either scatter or die. When it explodes the force of the blasts knocks out two of the fleeing TIEs, slamming the frail ships with concussive force that causes them to smash into each other. The Bug itself rocks from the blast but its too far away to be damaged. The Nach passes through the blast radius first and Clear follows it.

She finally in range of Jeb's ship.

She activates the tractor sheers.

Jeb's green Æon ship shudders and hangs limply in the air for a moment. Clear guesses Jeb doesn't understand what has suddenly happened. Then his engines flare up again and he's away. Clear imagines the rage of Captain Rynard with smug satisfaction.

But without Jeb's ship being lured in, there's nothing to stop TIEs from pouring out. Apparently Rynard really is very mad. Starfighters cascade from the hangar and Clear swerves the Bug back around towards The Hopeless. As she goes she sees Kassuin's ship headed towards her, having taken out the entire squadron single-handedly. Clear almost fears the very idea but is grateful that, for now, he's on her side. She continues to kick extra power to the engines. With nothing before her, her best defence is speed.

Heul: "Ack! My shields are down!"

Kassuin: "Jeb. Help her."

Jeb's ship continues to speed away from the scene.

Kassuin: "Student! Do as I tell you!"

Jeb pays no heed as he roars away from The Majestic, leaving Ffion to her fate.

Green throws her arms into the air and Clear sees plants start springing up on the hull of the Bug. They twirl in the air and then, like deadly giant sugar-daddies of dandelions, drift towards the mass of TIEs headed at Ffion. A spore connects with a TIE and it instantly turns into a dead-weight, its power drained, and drifts careless through the vacuum until it collides with one of its squad mates and causes them both to explode. Seeing this, the TIEs swerve and dodge to avoid the incoming missiles. More and more dandelion pollen generates and starts to drift through space like deep sea mines. TIEs jerk and swerve to avoid these obstacles. The Nach, given more breathing room from blaster fire, deftly manages to avoid the incoming beacons. Ffion bursts out of the mine field and soars up and away, giving time for the shields to recharge. Kassuin sweeps close to the Bug, firing off shots into the minefield, adding extra hazard to the unfortunate TIE pilots.

A bleeping begins on Clear's sensors. Jeb has jumped. Clear snarls at the sensor, as though it has wronged her.

Clear: "Mother."

Mother: "Yes Clear?"

Clear: "Trace the jump signature again. We're returning. As soon as we're aboard, make the jump."

Likewise it seems the TIE fighters are returning to The Majestic, having taken a lot of casualties. Clear imagines someone is going to be demoted for this blunder aboard the Imperial command ship. The Bug slides into the hangar and the oxygen shields with a light ping noise. Then come the two Æon ships, which both land softly onto the deck. The sleek yellow slip of Ffion's craft and the bulkier frame of Kassuin's. Clear doesn't get out of the Bug. The world redshifts.

When it settles again she checks the sensors. Rebel space and a lot of ships out there. Jeb's ship is veering straight away from the rebel fleet and communications are going wild.

Clear: "Pully, address the communications. Tell them the truth. We're pursuing the renegade Æon who has Princess Aurora captive and intends to take her to Earth."

Pully: "It's your boyfriend."

Clear: "Just tell him I'm too busy."

Pully: "So you admit he's your boyfriend!?"

Clear: "What? No! Pully!"

Pully: "I'm on it. I'll tell him you were thinking about him."

Clear: "Don't! Pull--! *****..."

Green is giggling in her seat beside Clear.

Clear: "Don't you start too."

Green: "I think it's cute. He's a handsome man!"

Clear: "Green, I don't even think you know what a handsome man is."

Green: "You think I've never been with a man?"

She gives Clear a sidelong, sly smirk and, in a single instant, Clear sees Green not as the silly-headed girl but as a woman well capable of judging people for who they really are. She's about to say something when she sees Jeb make a quick jump out of the system.

Clear: "Mother!"

Mother: "Ready to jump."

Clear: "Now."

They go to lightspeed and beyond. When the world crashes back into place Clear has to take a moment to catch her breath. The jump was a long one. She checks her scans.

Clear: "Oh wow..."

On her viewscreen display she sees the dwarf planet outside in its binary orbit with the much smaller ball of rock and ice known as Charon. Pluto is the largest object of the Kuiper belt - the belt lurking on the edge of the Sol System. Clear's home system.

Clear: "Green... we're home!"

Jeb's ship shows up on the sensors. He cruises in close to Charon before shooting off into hyperspace again.

Pully: "Risky move so close to the system's sun..."

Clear: [/B] "Wedon't have much choice... Mother can you mimic the jump and avoid the localbodies?"
Mother: "Affirmative. Ready to jump on your mark."

Clear: "... do it."

Non-Story Post: This posts ties with several other posts contained within different Stories.

Hero Force One: Post #64
The Never-ending Story2: Post #1917
The Pantheon: Post #11

-----------

The Hopeless slams out of hyperspace at sudden force. The jump is a small one and a difficult one to judge from within the system itself. Normally ships will speed through at sub-light speeds, especially large capital ships. But they had little option if they want to catch Jeb before he succeeds in doing... whatever he plans to do. The moon, otherwise known as Luna by more space-savvy explorers, spins just before The Hopeless.

Pully: "That was close."

Clear: "Where's Jeb?"

Mother: "The ship has entered Earth's atmosphere."

Pully: "We're too late. We'll have to go... planetside..."

Clear: "I... I don't know..."

Pully: "Clear?"

The very notion of stepping foot on Earth sickens Clear. A thick wad of hate nestles in her stomach and her spine tingles with animosity. How can she step foot on the world responsible for her whole race being buried? She grits her teeth.

Clear: "Okay fine--"

Mother: "Incoming communication."

Clear: "Who from?"

Mother: "The addresser is marked as Doctor R. Deep."

Clear: "A doctor? Weird. Is he from Earth?"

Mother: "Perhaps you should find out for yourself, Clear?"

Clear: "I hope you're not being cocky, Mother..."

Mother: "Of course not."

Clear: "Pully, take the communication. Let them know the situation. They're probably Earth military. We'll go d--"

Suddenly the sensor lights up with another ship. The Majestic. Captain Rynard has followed them all the way to the Earth but this time he isn't alone. Other capital ships have joined him. The Majestic is the only Galleon-class ship present, the rest are the dreaded Star Destroyers. Clear surmises that a fleet this size could only be sanctioned by the President of the Empire himself. Clearly Lumo was right - Clear was being used by the President all along. TIE fighters and TIE interceptors begin pouring out of the Star Destroyers. From the Majestic itself come lambda class shuttles, presumably filled with stormtroopers. They'll be headed after Jeb too.

Pully: "Clear. This doctor says he's already sent someone after Jeb and the princess on the surface. His priority it stopping the imperials though. Essentially his team will keep them busy while you go down to the surface."

Kassuin: "A single team against this!?"

Pully: "There's not much choice."

Kassuin: "Heul. Izep trained you well. I believe you stand a good chance against my student. He is a skilled consular but lacks determination. Take advantage of that."

Heul: "Lord Kassuin?"

Kassuin: "I will assist the Earthers against the Empire. I am responsible for this invasion. I owe them my assistance. They'll need someone familiar with the enemy ships to infiltrate them."

Clear: "Infiltrate them!?"

Kassuin: "I know what I'm doing, captain. Stop my student. I, and the Earthers, shall keep the enemy busy."

Pully: "Hey, wait! I want to come!"

Clear: "Sorry Pully, there's no time. Besides, I need someone here while I'm gone."

Pully: "I regret stepping foot in this bloody Command Centre."

Clear re-activates the Bug's engines and the small craft cruises out of the hangar, followed by Ffion Heul and Lord Kassuin. Kassuin breaks off and Clear and Ffion head towards the Earth. Although she knows Kassuin wouldn't be phased by Clear's death, she can't help but feel sorry for his probable demise against such odds. Hopefully Earth's warriors are the mightiest on offer.

Then, as though to answer her fears, yet more ships burst into the system. The Rebel Alliance.

Pully: "Clear. Your boyfriend is hailing again."

Clear rolls her eyes.

Clear: "I'll take this one."

Pully: "Want an intimate moment before the action, eh?"

Clear: "Pully, I'm going to put you into the hospital when I get back."

Pully: "I owe you grief. You totally battered me in that lift..."

Clear: "For you own good."

Pully: "I berate you about your fancy man for your own good."

Clear: "You really need a good sm--"

Lander: "Clear?"

Clear: "--ack! Captain Lander!"

Lander: "You're supposed to call me Ace, remember?"

Clear: "Not if you're here to arrest me."

Lander: "I'm here to help you save the galaxy, Clear."

She can't help but smile. It's ruined when Green starts giggling.

Clear: "Green! Quiet!"

Lander: "I'll deal with the imperial forces. We've more than enough firepower here."

Clear: "Be careful. Earth forces plan to infiltrate The Majestic."

Lander: "I'll be sure to provide them a distraction. Taking out the command ship from within is a bold move, but I think it'll pay off. I admire them! But what about you?"

Clear: "I'm headed to the Earth to stop the renegade Æon."

Lander: "Alone?"

Clear: "I have people with me. This guy can't be that bad. The real battle is up here."

Lander: "Alright. Good luck, Clear."

Clear: "You too, Ace."

Green: "Oh! You called him Ace!!"

Ace Lander starts laughing, overhearing Green's voice. Clear growls and shuts off the communication.

Clear: "We're entering the atmosphere. Get ready."

The Bug begins rattling like crazy. The atmosphere of Earth is quite unlike the much thinner atmosphere of Mars and her small transport bounces about to the point Clear isn't sure it'll hold together. There's a clang somewhere in the ship.

Clear: "I hope something didn't just fall off!"

Fire erupts on the outside of the Bug and Clear activates the air conditioning unit to expel cold. Finally they drop into the lower atmosphere of the planet and she can look down on the green and blue world up close. She wants to cry. How can somewhere so beautiful be the origins of something so evil as humanity? Green masses of land are surrounded by blue oceans and, as she gets closer to the target, she starts to see the human settlements more clearly. The world of her nightmares is not the den of evil she always imagined it to be. Expected it to be. Hoped it to be.

The island draws nearer and nearer. Then fields of green until she locates the area. A demolished stone structure lurks alone, though it appears human machines have been trying to put the structure back together. It appears quite primitive and she can only assume it's historical monument that has fallen down. Much like her Bug right now.

She sees the Æon ship resting on the ground near the site and there seem to be people all over the area, swarming around a single point. As she lands, people start headed towards her.

Clear: "Not good."

Green: "I'll get your chair."

Clear curses. She forgot she'd hurt her legs. Feeling has been slowly returning to them but the pain-killer is still in effect. She hoists herself from her seat and into the hover chair. Green then heads over to the door and opens it. Wind lashes into the ship, whipping at Green's hair and dress.

Clear: "Green! Get back inside!"

Green holds her hands out.

Outside Clear sees trees spring out of the ground and, with their branches, they snag the incoming humans. Gunfire erupts, shooting the trees and fighting for their lives. The guns are bullet-filled, a strange sound after hearing lasers for so long. Clear opens a cabinet and retrieves her old carbine. It won't shoot any great distance but it may help her out in a pinch. The people outside are mostly humans but amongst them are greys, just like Jeb. She supposes that the greys are the Latter-Day Greys of Memnoch that Lumo mentioned. The trees appear to be working their magic on the foe and Clear is able to hover down the ramp to terra firma.

Nearby the other humans and greys are swarming a single point. From that point they also hurtle away. Something very powerful lurks at the epicentre and Clear hopes it's the mighty warrior of Earth and not some new enemy.

Green: "There!"

She points at a group of greys pushing a hovering casket. Aurora's casket. Clear pushes her chair in the direction of the casket but the thing isn't made for high-speed chases across grassland and she slowly advances. Green is able to walk faster.

Clear: "Be careful Green."

Green pokes a v for victory at Clear before running at the group. Seeing the approaching girl, the greys react by firing lasers at her. Green quickly pulls her arms up into the air and a great wall of vines rises up to block the incoming blaster fire. Green starts a long circle, moving ever inwards, towards the greys. Clear reaches the vine wall and follows it along. The inward curvature of the vine wall means Clear loses sight of Green until she reaches the end of it. Green has one grey suspended in the air with a single vine, while another grey is being chewed on by a gigantic flower.

Clear: "Look out!"

A grey shoots at Green. The flower lowers itself quickly and takes the angry blast, releasing the grey it half chewed. Clear fires her carbine at the greys, spraying bullets across the field, but she's too far away to sufficiently aim. Just as it appears the greys may gain the upper hand something crashes into the ground. The force of the landing sends out a ripple of energy that pushes everyone to the ground. Clear, far enough away to resist the force, is whipped by the wind of the blast. She covers her eyes against that wind and when she lowers them she sees a woman punch a grey into the sky like he'd taken off. Another grey is being held in the air by the woman's telekinesis before she, unceremoniously, tosses him off over the vine wall.

Clear draws near and fires at the remaining greys. The woman wears a coat of a red, white and blue symmetrical pattern, but beneath that coat she wears nothing but her underwear. Clear's mind boggles at how she could possibly stay warm, let alone conserve her modesty. Her skin is white and her hair is ginger. To Clear she seems like a very attractive human woman, though Clear's mind on that subject has always been rather muddled. Clear wonders if she, too, is an Æon Knight, but when Ffion Heul finally reaches the group too, the differences are extremely apparent.

Woman: "I'm Judge. I assume you're the ones here to stop your renegade grey?"

Clear: "That's right."

Judge: "And you're crippled? No offence but you probably shouldn't be down here."

Clear: "A temporary situation. Had my legs pulled out of their sockets."

Judge winces.

Judge: "Painful. Luckily these chumps aren't worth the time of day. The leader of the group absconded with your princess down into stonehenge."

She points towards the broken monument.

Judge: "I'll head down and throw them out fo--"

She looks up.

Heul: "The stormtroopers are here."

The lambda shuttles descend and begin to land.

Judge: "Ooooookay. Change of plan. I'll deal with these guys and I'll have my inept co-worker guide you into Stonehenge."

Clear: "Uh... inept?"

Judge: "Pretty much. I'm sure he can guide you down a tunnel though. Don't get upset if he gets shot in the face. Nobody would miss him."

Clear: "Wow..."

Judge crouches down and then slings herself into the air with a purple aura around her person. With her power she grabs a shuttle and swings it around through the air until it collides with another shuttle. They explode and bodies are slung out into the sky.

Heul: "She's damn powerful..."

Judge shreds a wing apart from another shuttle and the craft suddenly plummets towards the ground. Stormtroopers jump out of the shuttle and activate their parachutes.

Clear: "We should get after Jeb. The sooner he's dealt with the sooner this fight is over."

She heads towards the broken monument. Green and Ffion scout ahead until they call her over. Standing by the monument is a man wearing a white uniform, not unlike the admiralty uniform that Warlord Strang used to wear. His face is angular and he has a strong, proud chin that seems to give him some human charisma that Clear almost finds likeable. Next to him stands another human wearing a dark suit and sunglasses that conceal much of his face. While the man in white stands with his hands on his hips in some kind of pose, the second man is ever watchful with his pistol at the ready.

Man-in-white: "My ally tasked me with guiding you through Stonehenge."

Clear: "You're the inept guy?"

Man-in-white: "She's always berating my friend like that--"

He jerks his thumb towards the man-in-black, who sighs with exasperation.

Man-in-white: "--he's a lowly agent that works for us. I'm Citizen Rex, Saviour of the People of Earth! And he's Agent 91."

Man-in-black: "I'm Agent Mulligan."

Clear quickly introduces herself and her friends before Citizen Rex leads them into the collapsed tunnel hiding beneath Stonehenge. It looks like some work has been done to rectify the problem and Clear sees a lot of digging machines, usually coloured bright yellow, all over the place. Inside the ground there's further signs of digging work.

Clear: "What happened here?"

Citizen Rex: "Those damned aliens. They did this."

He glances at Clear and then quickly corrects himself.

Citizen Rex: "Uh, present company excluded! I meant those aliens specifically! The grey ones!"

Clear tries not to be offended. She's heard many humans speak of non-humans as a single body of people before. The tunnel gets more cramped as they get further in, with less removal work having being done. She ducks below an especially low ceiling, pinning herself against the front of her hover chair.

Agent Mulligan: "Here, let me help you."

The man-in-black helps to guide her chair up a small rise in the tunnel. Then they hear voices somewhere further down. The group fall silent and sneak on.

Jeb: "Where is it!?"

Grey #1: "It must have been destroyed in the explosion?"

Jeb: "Whose bright idea was it to blow up the nexus at Stonehenge anyway!? What imbecile authorised it!?"

Grey #2: "No disrespect, Jeb, but you're not exactly a high-ranking member of our order. I don't think you get the option of criticising our leaders."

Jeb: "I just risked everything for this group and there's nothing here! Don't tell me my options!"

Ffion looks at Clear and Clear nods in approval. Ffion stands and then rushes out. Without taking heed, Citizen Rex instantly follows after her. As they both jump out, ready to attack, Citizen Rex bellows.

Citizen Rex: "Freeze, evil-doers!"

Clear suddenly understands why Judge believes him to be inept.

Agent Mulligan looks at Clear apologetically and then goes out after Citizen Rex.

Jeb: "Ffion Heul? They... they sent another student after me?"

Clear and Green join the group quietly. Jeb holds his big bulbous head in his hands.

Jeb: "Even my teacher didn't bother to chase me down? Is that how little respect I have?"

Heul: "What? You thought the entire Order would drop everything for the sake of one student trying to get attention? Pathetic..."

Jeb: "I-I am not pathetic! I still have the princess! Let me go or I'll kill her."

He holds his hand towards the casket and it begins to rise from the floor. It cannot rise very far and Clear doubts it would kill her if she were dropped. Unless he starts to smash her against the tunnel wall.

Citizen Rex: "Now now, evil alien guy. I recognise that casket! It has the princess in it!"

Clear: "You've seen it before?"

Citizen Rex: "Yes! I saved her once already!"

Agent Mulligan: "And then shot her off into space..."

Clear: "And that's when I found her..."

Citizen Rex: "It's a small galaxy."

Jeb: "And then she falls into my hands. Indeed, a very small galaxy. My brother was one of the bombers of the nexus. I... I didn't want him to do it. I tried to make him leave the Latter-Day Greys but he really believed that humans are a plague on the galaxy. I'm not the bad guy here!"

Clear: "You were going to use her to summon some magical beings to rule the Earth for yourself, Jeb! That makes you no better than the humans you're trying to stop!"

Jeb: "But I... the Empire were searching for her too. They... they want to use her and take the Earth. They tried to it once before. Thrawn... their grand admiral, he came here but couldn't defeat the Earth heroes. I... I had to get here before President Polk. I had to take the magic ones first and then I could defeat the humans! I... It was the only way..."

Clear: "Rubbish, Jen. She was safe and sound in Skytower Temple on Tangris. She wasn't going anywhere. You took advantage of the chaos when Aellisin Koure arrived and tried to blow up the planet. You just saw an opportunity for your own gain."

Jeb: "Revenge! It's the humans' fault my brother is dead! The only other option was... was to kill her. Murder her in her sleep. But I... I just... I couldn't do it..."

Heul: "What's stopping you now? What're you looking for?"

Jeb's focus emerges again.

Jeb: "The Rift. It was here. It seems the previous attack destroyed it. The Rift was the portal to the other world attached to Earth. Through it the princess can control those beings. I control her, I control them. I would have been... I would have so much... power."

Heul: "Typical sith. Always thinking of what power you can get out of something. That's what this is all about. Clear was right. You saw an opportunity for your own gain."

Jeb: "I've had enough of this!"

He pulls out the hilt for his ruhand projection. Ffion holds out her hand and her own projection appears, sans-hilt. At this Jeb flounders. The casket trembles as he almost loses focus on it.

Jeb: "I've... I've never seen a student able to... do that..."

Heul: "I had a harsh teacher. But I earnt this power myself. I didn't try to steal it from someone else."

She motions towards the casket with a flick of her head. Jeb seems lost for a moment but then he rises his head.

Jeb: "Shoot them."

The greys open fire. With her second hand, Ffion projects a barrier before them and the blasts hit that barrier harmlessly. Clear is shocked as Ffion has never demonstrated any such ability before. How much had she learnt from Aellisin Koure? More than just a ruhand trick? Citizen Rex runs forward and pulls an unusual short staff from his back. It's coloured grey and shaped like an ancient flaming torch. Suddenly, from the torch, bursts blue flame that engulfs one of the greys. Clear and Agent Mulligan fire their own bullet weapons at the greys, careful not to hit the walls and send bullets screaming in every direction. Clear uses controlled bursts that hit one grey, they a second. Suddenly Jeb leaps through the shield wall, his hilted ruhand exposed, and slashes down at Clear. The chair rumples under the attack and, with a whine, it topples over without power. Clear falls to the rocky ground and scrapes her skin.

Jeb brings his ruhand to bear on Citizen Rex before the man had the chance to turn his flaming torch on the Æon student. The energy sword slices through the torch, rendering it useless. He follows up his swing and would have decapitated the human if Ffion's own ruhand didn't intercede. Clear sees Agent Mulligan push a button on a control stick he pulled out of his jacket. Boots on Citizen Rex' feet ignite and the man flies up into the air. With that joystick, the agent guides Citizen Rex away from the fight and back down the tunnel - all the way with Rex' complaints and protestations.

Clear: "Agent Mulligan! The Princess!"

The man-in-black nods and runs across the tunnel towards the now sedentary casket. He looks at the controls and turns back to Clear.

Agent Mulligan: "I can't understand it!"

Clear reaches out to him.

Clear: "Help me over!"

He runs back and throws her arm around his shoulders. Then Green appears on the other side and together they carry her towards the the casket. Just as they get to it Jeb uses his telekinesis to forcibly push the three of them into the wall. There's a lot of groaning and, especially from Clear, pain. She feels her legs, suddenly, agonising over the sudden motion. She manages to pull herself up the casket and flips through the screens. She remembers how she opened it last time and quickly activates.

Jeb: "No matter! Open it! She'll die in a matter of weeks anyway!"

Agent Mulligan fires at Jeb but the student blocks the bullets with his ruhand, each bullets incinerating upon contact. Then Jeb is suspended in the air, held in place by Ffion with her free hand. She beckons and the grey floats slowly towards her.

Jeb: "No! Let me go! How can you have such power!?"

Heul: "I told you."

Unable to move, Jeb is an easy target. She swipes her ruhand and it cuts straight through his torso. His legs drop to the floor and with a last groan Jeb dies, suspended in the air and his insides dripping to the ground. Ffion releases the upper torso and allows Jeb to rest defeated.

The casket lid jerks open and, inside, Aurora gasps. Then the lid opens fully Aurora stares at Clear with surprise.

Princess Briarose: "Did you do it? Did you find a cure?"

Clear: "I'm sorry... things have gotten complicated."

Aurora sits up and gazes around, first at their underground surroundings and then at the carnage.

Princess Briarose: "What's happening?"

Clear sits beside the casket, back against the wall of it.

Clear: "They took you. Again. They think that they can use you to control some magical people from another world?"

Princess Briarose: "What? That's absurd! How!?"

Clear: "A lot of people seem to have money riding on you, Aurora. If it's not true, there's enough people that believe it is true. First these guys. Next the Empire is going to come down here for you."

Heul: "Maybe the rebels next?"

Clear: "And then the Earthers?"

Heul: "Sooner or later... they'll be successful."

Princess Briarose: "I don't like your tone..."

Heul: "As long as you're alive, princess, they'll keep coming for you."

Clear: "As long as she's alive, the galaxy is at risk..."

Princess Briarose: "Clear!?"

Ffion slowly walks towards Aurora and Clear.

Princess Briarose: "Wait! Think about what you're doing! Clear! Stop her! Please, Ffion! I- I don't want to die! Not yet!"

Clear doesn't move. She stares at Jeb's butchered body. Once the most violence she saw was running from cowboys on Mars, shooting at her because she was an alien. She shot a good few humans in her time, but never anything as gruesome as this. The only way to save the galaxy is to butcher a woman Clear had come to like? Perhaps Aurora is even her friend? Aurora seemed to certainly be fairly attached to Clear, but Aurora doesn't have the natural prejudice that most humans do. If Clear didn't know Aurora, would this be any easier?

Clear: "Stop. Ffion. Don't hurt Aurora."

Ffion stops in her tracks. She stares at Aurora for a second and then shrugs.

Heul: "Okay. I'm sorry princess. I hope the next time you're kidnapped, you won't suffer too much..."

Aurora sighs with relief and she wipes away her fearful tears.

Princess Briarose: "I'm sorry to be trouble to you all. I am. But I don't want to die. Please. You're my friends... I... I can't believe that..."

Clear: "We wouldn't hurt you, Aurora."

Clear holds her hand up and feels about for Aurora's hand. She takes hold of it comfortingly squeezes it. She feels Aurora squeeze back.

Princess Briarose: "I thought..."

Clear: "We're just tired, Aurora. You have no idea what's happened while you've been asleep."

Princess Briarose: "I should like to leave this place. If the imperials are coming, we should leave."

Heul: "How are we going to get two cripples out of here? I can carry one of you, maybe, out."

Priness Briarose: "Two?"

Clear: "I told you you missed a lot."

Agent Mulligan: "Me and... Green, was it? We can help carry one of them out."

Voice: "Wait!"

The male voice booms through the tunnel, bouncing off of walls. Ffion turns and activates her ruhand again, while Agent Mulligan aims his pistol at the entrance. A bright glow shines on the wall as something draws nearer.

Voice: "I mean you no harm..."

Then a figure emerges. It appears as a ghost, a faint and transparent image that floats through the air. It appears to be a man, an old man, but the lower of of his body looks torn as though he was killed by hungry lions.

Clear: "Impossible!"

Heul: "Are you... are you an Æon Lord?"

The man shakes his head.

Heul: "I've heard of some able to keep their soul projected after they die. I assumed..."

Ghost: "I see. Then you may say I am using a very similar, if not the same, technique. I am composed of aether and I continue to exist long past my physical life ended."

Clear: "Aether?"

Ghost: "Magic. Perhaps you might call it that."

Clear: "Like Green?"

Clear looks at her friend.

Ghost: "No. Not really. Your friend doesn't seem to draw on the aether. But no matter. I'm afraid this line of conversation will result in a lot of philosophical debate. Right now there's a more pressing matter."

He floats closer.

Agent Mulligan: "Are you... Merlin?"

Merlin: "You recognise me?"

Agent Mulligan: "I've heard tell around the water cooler at the Hero Force base. I never believed the rumours were true though!"

Clear: "What's a water cooler?"

Agent Mulligan: "It's... ah... it's not important."

Merlin: "What is important is that young lady there. Princess Aurora Briarose, I believe?"

Aurora nods and instantly everyone is on edge. Yet another come to claim her so soon?

Merlin: "And you have Excalibur. Very good."

Aurora touches the sword instinctively.

Merlin: "You are the saviour I'd been hoping for. My lady, I am Merlin and I have served your family for many generations. I was with King Arthur when he first left the planet Earth."

Princess Briarose: "That's not possible! That was over a millennium ago!"

Merlin gestures to his incorporeal form.

Merlin: "Indeed it was! I think I look remarkably good for my age!"

Nobody laughs.

Merlin: "I see the mood in here is rather tense. The battle above is almost won. Perhaps that will soften the mood?"

Clear: "A little."

Merlin: "The woman from Hero Force One is faring very well. My own allies also arrived and have helped to defeat those armoured heathens from the stars. Truly, I don't understand how that can be the descendants of the great Atlantians. At least the people of Earth have the excuse that Atlantis sank and all knowledge was lost. These chaps don't seem to have learnt anything but brute force from their ancestors. I'm frightfully disappointed."

Princess Briarose: "I don't think any of us understand most of what you just said, Merlin..."

Agent Mulligan: "The first civilisation of Earth was supposedly Atlantis. They reached a high level of technology and went off into space. Colonised worlds beyond ours. That's supposedly the reason why there's humans all over the place. Atlantis was destroyed though. Somehow. And humans on Earth lost everything. Supposedly."

Merlin: "There's nothing supposed about the tale, young man."

Clear: "Wow. Earth history. Just what I want to be listening to right now..."

Merlin: "Sarcasm is a very poor form of wit, little salmitton."

Clear: "I'm not little."

Merlin: "When you're my age, almost everyone is little and young. But I'll get back to the point. My dear lady, you are the true heir to the throne of Britain and through that lineage only you have the power to wield that sword."

Princess Briarose: "You want me to go into battle? Merlin I... I am unable to walk. I have an incurable disease..."

Merlin: "Incurable disease? I've never heard of such a thing. Incurable is another way of saying 'cannot cure it through conventional methods'. But I'm not asking you to fight. I'm asking you to wield your blade."

Aurora picks it up.

Princess Briarose: "I don't understand. You'll have to speak plainly."

Merlin: "You've... never used it before? My my. The sword is unique. I created it myself."

Princess Briarose: "You did?"

Merlin: "I did. I created it using a Phractal shard."

Princess Briarose: "What's a Phractal shard."

Clear: "Even I know what a Phractal shard is. It's an ultra rare mineral that makes something practically impervious. It's supposedly creates a very thin field around itself that warps reality. I don't know if I believe that part, but I do know it sells for billions on the market. I saw a piece come through Saffron Five once. They told me it supposedly comes from some inter-dimensional being and that it is a piece of his that has shed."

Merlin: "You people and your supposedlies. Nothing supposed about it. But regardless. The pretty salmitton is correct."

Clear can't flinches and Merlin notices her blushing.

Merlin: "I'm sorry you don't get to hear those words very often, my girl. You shouldn't be so phased by them. Anyway. Excalibur is not only impervious to damage, but it is better than that."

Heul: "Better than impervious?"

Merlin: "As your Martian friend rightly said, it comes from an inter-dimensional being. A being capable of opening tears in space-time. Just as is this sword..."

Princess Briarose: "I can use it to connect to another universe?"

Merlin: "Exactly."

Princess Briarose: "Why are you telling us this?"

Merlin: "I would consider it my duty to tell you, my lady. But also because I humbly ask you to help me. You must save a people most loyal to you and your family..."

Clear: "The magical people..."

Merlin nods slowly.

Merlin: "Yes. The Aes Sidhe. They're now trapped in their own world. But their world is in symbiosis with ours. Our nexus supplied them with magical energy. Aether. Mana. Whatever you wish to call it. It ebbed from here to there. But the last attack by these Latter-Day Greys of Memnoch sundered that Rift and they have been lost. The connection severed, the magic stopped flowing to them and their world will die, they will all die. Slowly... terribly..."

Princess Briarose: "Then... then I shall help them. Tell me what to do, Merlin."

Clear: "Wait."

Princess Briarose: "Clear?"

Clear: "These are the same people that the empire, the greys... they all want to control these magical beings by using you! Perhaps it's better that this Rift is never opened. Then they can never use you or them!"

Princess Briarose: "Clear I... I cannot condemn an entire people to death because of the possible actions of others. I won't do that. Just as I wouldn't condemn you to death to save myself, I won't condemn them for the same reason."

Clear looks up at Aurora and the princess looks down at Clear.

Clear: "I'm sorry Algernon was destroyed, Aurora... You would have been a great leader for your people."

Heul: "She is. Her people are now the Rebel Alliance. What does she need to do, old man?"

Merlin: "Old man!? How I detest the day those words were invented. All you have to do, princess Aurora, is exert your will into the blade and cut. Will a tear to appear and it shall be done."

Aurora holds out the sword. It gleams in the light cast by Merlin's aethereal form. Aurora raises it and Clear, with the help of Agent Mulligan, is moved out of the way. The princess closes her eyes and cuts the air. The sword swing isn't hard or powerful nor even graceful. But when it moves through the air there is a slicing sound and in the sword's wake is a thin slit.

Clear: "How do we know it's the right place?"

Merlin: "There was once a connection here. Any connection made in this location will forever link to that same place in the multiverse."

The slit begins to expand. Wider and wider until there is a swirling mass of light. Nothing can be seen of this other world, only the swirling storm of blue and white light.

Princess Briarose: "Is it done then?"

Merlin: "It is. We should wait a moment and s-- ah. Someone comes."

The swirling portal shifts and a person walks out of it. The Rift shimmers and ripples like water. It even drips off of the woman before them, except it drips back into the portal and defies gravity.

The woman is tall. Much taller than any human. Yet she has human features. Black hair, white skin, green eyes. But her dress appears to be made of water and is quite transparent because of it. Agent Mulligan gapes and shies his gaze away. The woman doesn't notice him. She only has eyes for Aurora.

Woman: "It seems one of Arthur's line yet lives. The people of Albion are indebted to you."

She bows her head.

Princess Briarose: "I am Princess Aurora Briarose from the planet Algernon. Uh... and princess of Britain. Apparently."

Woman: "And you are therefore princess of Albion too. Albion long ago swore allegiance to Arthur's line."

Princess Briarose: "Then I thank you for that allegiance."

Woman: "I am Vivane. I have long served as guardian of the Rift."

She gestures towards the portal.

Vivane: "Without it our world would have died. Many have already succumbed to death without magic. I admit... I feared the worst. It seems providence was with us this day. Thank you, Princess Aurora, for your aid."

Suddenly there's sound of commotion at the entrance to Stonehenge.

Merlin: "I fear the space heathens may have reached us."

Vivane: "Merline, my old friend. It is good to see you are still with us. I feared your demise."

Merlin: "I'm difficult to keep down, Lady Vivane. But we should leave. I will have to reconstruct the henge in order to stabilise the nexus and keep the magic flowing into the Rift. I can't do that with heathns rampaging about."

Vivane: "Then leave. I shall help you in your departure."

She gestures towards the end of the tunnel before disappearing through the Rift.

Heul: "I don't know what she meant by help, but I think we should take her advise and leave."

The Æon student lifts Aurora up into the air, sword and all, and carefully guides her along the tunnel. It isn't an easy experience for either Ffion or Aurora as the student didn't have the same mastery as the teachers, but she manages well enough for now. Agent Mulligan and Green help to carry Clear free of the tunnel and Merlin floats along after them. When they reach the end of the tunnel and emerge into daylight they see Judge pounding stormtroopers by the dozens. She holds out her hands and an enormous bat of purple aura appears. She whacks a line of troopers with it and they soar off into the air. The bat vanishes and she uses her more conventional pushes to knock down several more soldiers.

Citizen Rex: "Yes! I got one!"

He stands over a single soldier, looking quite bruised and beaten.

Agent Mulligan: "Sir! You're hurt!"

Before any further comment could be made they feel the ground shake. Quickly they all vacant the front of the tunnel and, suddenly, a torrent of water crashes out of the mouth and bursts forth across the field. Some soldiers are swept away with it but the real shock are the beings rising from within the water. As the liquid seeps away creatures emerge from it. All manner of beings that Clear couldn't even begin to understand.

Clear: "I think we should go!"

Judge: "That's your ship, right? Hold on!"

Judge pulls on the air and the Bug flies through the air as though it had been picked up and tossed at them. Clear winces as the Bug falls towards them. When she opens her eyes again she sees Judge lowering the vessel to the ground gently, as though it were nothing.

Heul: "Your power is incredible."

Judge cracks her knuckles and grins.

Judge: "I'm actually a bit rusty, but thanks. Good luck to you guys. I guess these weird magic dudes are good guys, right? Guess it means there's less fun for me."

She flies off, back towards the fray.

Princess Briarose: "Goodbye, Merlin. I hope to see you again."

Merlin: "You could remain here, princess? This is your home. You are the rightful ruler of the land."

Princess Briarose: "I am a stranger to this world, Merlin. Perhaps one day... but not today. There are people who need me. I am a leader to the rebellion. I cannot abandon them for my own gain."

Merlin: "Your sense of honour is a testament to us all. I will convey your merits to Vivane when next we speak. Thank you for your help. You saved her and all of her world."

Citizen Rex: "Farewell, innocent travellers! Good luck on your journey and should you ever need a hero again - I will be ready to save you!"

Agent Mulligan mutters to Clear.

Agent Mulligan: "Sorry about him."

He and Green carry Clear into the Bug and deposit her in the pilot's seat. Green sighs with relief and slumps into the co-pilot's seat.

Agent Mulligan: "I can't believe I'm really standing inside an alien spaceship. This is amazing!"

Clear snickers.

Clear: "This thing is a beat-up hunk of junk. But thank you. I love this old thing, despite the mess it's in."

Agent Mulligan: "Thank you, Ms Clear. This is one thing the other agent will never believe."

He heads to the door and gives Clear one last wave before leaves.

Clear: "I actually impressed a human. That's a first for me."

Green: "We're not all so bad, you know?"

Clear: "I know. I know. You're great, Green."

Green: "I know! I'm the best!"

She peace-signs Clear again and the salmitton cannot help but laugh. She glances back and sees Ffion transport Aurora into the living room where she would be buckled in. Clear starts the engines.

Heul: "Wait! I have to go and get Nach!"

Clear: "Oh right. Let me drop you off."

Heul: "No! It's fine. Get the princess out of here. I can make it there by myself. Go!"

Ffion jumps out of the ship and Clear watches the woman running across the field through the cockpit window. Clear shrugs and lifts the ramp. The old Bug shakes as it leaves the ground. Hopefully nothing else will fall off when she escapes the Earth's gravity this time.

Clear is lying on her bed. The blur of alcohol clouds her vision and her limbs feel soft. Gentle. Her heart feels energetic and courageous. Despite all of the disasters and horror of recent times, she feels, in some way, she and her friends have won a victory. She reaches out for the bottle with her left hand but her fingers meet with the skin of someone else's hand.

Pully: "My turn."

Clear: "Go get another bottle, Pully!"

Pully: "Too far away."

Clear: "They're in your room."

Princess Aurora: "Pully, you have to go! We're all invalids!"

Aurora is sat at the bottom of Clear's bed, leaning against the wall. Her legs are tucked under Clear's blanket to keep them warm. She has a bottle in hand that looks like it's nearly empty. She waggles it at Pully. Clear's own legs are coming back to life and she's able to move them around well enough, but there's still a lot of pain. At least alcohol serves to numb that pain. She feels the soft skin of Aurora's legs against her own. It's a strange thought that she can feel the other woman's legs but that woman can't feel hers.

Kokoro: "Don't make me use my telepathy on you, Pully..."

Pully: "You keep your Force powers outta my head, Jedi!"

Pully, reluctantly, gets to her feet. She unsteadily takes a few steps towards the door. Kokoro is sitting atop a pile of clothes on the floor. A bag of bacta drip is hanging from an IV pole. As Pully reaches the door, there's a knock at it. Pully pushes a button, clumsily, and it slides open to reveal Alexis Thrain holding a fresh bag of bacta for Kokoro's IV.

Pully: "Heya Thrain. She's all yours."

She slips out and then calls back.

Pully: "Don't be gentle! Make her suffer!"

Kokoro: "Heeeeeey!"

They laugh and Pully's cackle can be heard echoing from the corridor. Thrain switches the plug from the old bag to the new.

Kokoro: "I wish I could get drunk like you guys. Why did we never develop some form of inebriation on my world?"

Thrain: "That would be like trying to encourage a rock to tango. Some things are just too ridiculous to attempt."

Clear: "You do have the biology of a rock actually!"

Kokoro: "Hey!"

Princess Aurora: "And the brain of one!"

They laugh again but Kokoro then looks sad.

Kokoro: "That's something she'd say..."

Clear: "Kokoro... she needs some time to come to terms with what she did. I think we do too."

Kokoro: "I can forgive her for trying to kill me. I can forgive her for running away from this. But I can't forgive her for not saying goodbye to me... it... hurts. Even here with you guys, having fun, I feel... alone. She's just... always been there with me. Everywhere. All the time!"

Pully: "Even in the showers? Dirty girls."

They turn to see Pully's triumphant return with the liquor.

Kokoro: "Funny you should say that, Ffion was absolutely convinced you and Clear were in... cahoots, shall we say?"

She mischievously grins. Aurora giggles into her bottle.

Pully: "We are! Absolutely gaying it up! Who can resist Clear's gorgeous, red ass!?"

Clear throws a pillow at Pully who almost drops the bottles. She hands them out to Aurora and Clear and then gives one to Green who grins manicly.

Green: "Thank you, Ms Pully!"

Pully: "How drunk are you, Green?"

Green waves her hand dismissively and opens the bottle with her teeth. Pully flinches.

Pully: "It's horrid that you can do that."

Green: "The people used to make offerings of bijou to me so I'd protect their crops."

Clear: "And did you protect the crops?"

Green: "Sometimes."

Clear: "Sometimes? I thought you loved all plants, Green!"

Green: "I do! But the humans and panda people kept cutting them down and eating them!! My poor babies!"

Clear facepalms.

Clear: "You know we eat vegetables too, Green?"

Pully: "Speak for yourself! I eat booze!"

Pully drops to the floor beside Kokoro, careful of the tube sticking out of the muovinian's arm.

Green: "I know that! But, I mean, they want me to help their plants grow just so they can kill them! That's not fair on me, is it?"

Clear: "You got bijou!"

Green grins.

Green: "I did say sometimes!"

Princess Aurora: "And what is bijou?"

Clear: "Human alcohol! It's over fifty percent. Honestly, you'll be drunk just from the fumes!"

They laugh again. Green's loud, somewhat crazed, shouting-laugh, Pully's cackle, Aurora's giggling and Clear's snorting. Kokoro, perhaps not finding alcohol so entertaining, chuckles. Thrain sighs.

Thrain: "When you're all finished being louts, you should come to the medical bay so I can administer hangover cures."

Pully: "Thrain, take the stick from your ass and join us! You need comforting too."

Alexis sighs. It's not a sigh of frustration but of sadness.

Thrain: "Because drinking will solve all our problems?"

Clear: "Alexis, are you okay? I think Pully's right! You need to relax with us!"

Thrain: "Clear I--! I know you're being nice, but honestly I--! I just don't know how much of all this I can take. Running through space with people shooting at us all the while."

Pully: "I know what this is."

Pully gets up and wraps her arm around Alexis' shoulders.

Pully: "Honey-pumpkin..."

Thrain: "Don't call me that."

Pully: "I know you don't like that you were under that guy's control. We all were. Clear knocked me out, you remember? I know being in control is important to you, but you have to let it go. Hey, Kokoro got stabbed by her best mate and she's drinking those cares away. Here. Come on. Just like old times."

She takes the bottle and looks at the faintly glowing liquid inside. Then looks at everyone else in the room.

Thrain: "Well it's not like I can embarrass myself in front of any of you. I've seen you all naked."

She smirks and this gets her jovial jeers from everyone in the room. She swigs from the bottle and winces.

Thrain: "What in the name of all that is decent is in this bottle!?"

Pully: "Something called lum. I don't know. Someone told me lums are little luminous, flying creatures, mashed up and turned into alcohol. Damn strong and tastes like morning breath."

Alexis sits opposite Kokoro and Pully, poking a pile of laundry into a seat.

Thrain: "Clear, don't you ever tidy this place?"

Clear: "Why would I? There's only been me, myself and I here for the last couple of decades. You lot show up and suddenly I have to keep my bedroom tidy?"

Thrain: "If we're all going to cram in here, then yes!"

Princess Aurora: "Actually, why are we in here?"

Pully: "So that you and Clear can play footsie under the blankets!"

Clear: "Is this gay jokes hour?"

Princess Aurora: "And it's not like I can play footsie considering they don't work, Ms Terrin-Pullista."

Pully grins.

Pully: "That just makes it easier for Clear to ninja-footsie you!"

Aurora laughs and Clear throws another pillow at Pully. She then holds her hands out for the pillow back since she's run out. Pully throws it back at her, almost spilling Clear's drink all over the bed.

Pully: "So. What're we going to do to Kiron Assstrider when we meet him?"

They laugh at the name.

Princess Aurora: "You can't blame him for being honest. And he was right! That weapon exists!"

Clear groans.

Clear: "I don't want to talk about this."

Pully: "Don't want to admit you're a mass murderer, Clear? I can understand that."

Princess Aurora: "Joking about the destruction of my home, Pully? Nothing is above jokes when drunk, huh?"

Pully pulls the bottle from her lips.

Pully: "If you can't joke about it then what have you got? You have to smile to keep from crying."

Princess Aurora smiles and shakes her head. Pully nudges her leg with her bottle, not thinking that the woman cannot feel there. She still gets the princess' attention anyway.

Pully: "Besides. It's not much of a loss. I went there once. It was a craphole."

Princess Aurora: "What!? No it wasn't! It was beautiful!"

Pully blows through her lips.

Pully: "If you like farmers and the smell of animal crap in the morning!"

Princess Aurora: "Clear! Please throw a pillow at Pully for me!"

Laughing, Clear tosses a pillow straight at Pully's head. Pully falls with the pillow into a pile of laughter.

Pully: "Aurora, princess of bantha-farmers!"

Princess Aurora: "At least I'm not from Terra Flux, the world pretending to be another world!"

Pully: "Hey. We're the real power in the galaxy! All these empires and factions are probably all mimics from that flux. They only exist because Terra Flux exists! You're totally all my *****es."

At that Pully receives a lot of playful slaps from everyone in the room, save Aurora who can't reach.

----------

The next day The Hopeless arrives in orbit around Dacato and they're granted permission to land by Governor Oit. The rebel fleet were also in orbit, having returned from Earth ahead of The Hopeless. Kassuin was the only person onboard that wasn't suffering from a hangover and so he generally dealt with any calls incoming to the ship. Clear found a pair of large sunglasses in one of her cupboards and wears them for her trip planetside.

They take the Bug straight to District Vyf and are asked to land at the Green House itself. There both Clear and Aurora are given new hoverchairs. Clear feels it's unnecessary but everyone insisted. Even Kokoro has to use a cane to keep herself upright. Thrain joins them, wishing to be present in case something happens to any of the injured. They travel into the Green House with their alliance escort. When they enter Clear notes a high number of military personnel and worries that even Aurora may not be able to spare her from prison this time. One person, at the front of the crowd, is Ace Lander. Clear can't help but smile at him and, when he smiles back, realises what she had done and checks herself. She's almost disgusted with herself for being attracted to a human, of all species.

Governor Oit: "I'm glad to see you safe, Governor Briarose."

Princess Aurora: "Thank you, governor. We will require rooms."

The alien-coloured alien looks up at the crew.

Governor Oit: "It shall be arranged."

Princess Aurora: "We would like to meet with Kiron Nightstrider as soon as possible."

Governor Oit: "Unfortunately Nightstrider left Dacato a few hours ago."

Princess Aurora: "He did?"

Pully: "Probably knew we were coming to kick his ass."

A few of the people around chuckle, while others look annoyed at Pully's crassness.

Governor Oit: "Quite... if you'll follow me..."

As the group starts to move after the governor, Kokoro tugs on Clear's shoulder. She leans over to whisper into her ear.

Kokoro: "Clear, I'm familiar with Kiron's presence. I can feel him. He's still here, in this building."

Clear: "So he lied to the governor?"

Kokoro: "I fear to say this but..."

She looks around to make sure no one is close enough to hear them.

Kokoro: "I believe it is the governor that is lying. I can sense the falsehood from his mind."

Clear: "So... the governor is hiding Kiron from us? Why? Are they plotting against us? Maybe they plan to put me in prison after all?"

Kokoro: "I think I could lead us to Kiron, if we can find an excuse to go wandering..."

Clear shrugs.

Clear: "No problem. I'm sorry, governor, but I have a meeting with Captain Lander. Kokoro will join me in case I need help, considering my injuries."

Governor Oit: "W-well. This is an important meeting!"

Princess Aurora: "I'm sure you can spare them, governor. I'll be there."

Ace Lander steps forward. He glances at Clear and then turns back to the governor.

Lander: "I'm sorry governor, but this is an urgent meeting too. Captain Clear has agreed to discuss information concerning the supposed superweapon aboard her ship."

Governor Oit: "Ah. I'm glad you're going to comply with us, Captain Clear. It will be good to clear the unpleasantness of recent history..."

The group departs and Ace leads the two women from the Green House to the outside entrance. He turns to Clear questioningly.

Clear: "I'm sorry, Ace."

He smiles.

Lander: "I hope you're not using my name just to gain favour?"

She falters as she realises she had called him Ace without even thinking about it. When he sees the blue blush in her cheeks he laughs and is comforted.

Lander: "I'm just teasing. What was that about in there? I hope I didn't just lie to the governor so you could go shopping..."

Clear looks up at Kokoro and nods.

Lymn: "Do you know where Kiron Nightstrider is?"

Ace frowns.

Lander: "No. I didn't even know he'd left. This was the first I'd heard about it. To be honest I haven't seen much of him since he first arrived on Dacato."

Lymn: "He's here in this building somewhere."

Clear: "Can you help us, Ace?"

Ace hesitates. He looks at Clear and she guesses he's wondering if she's worth the trouble he's about to put himself in. Finally he nods.

Lander: "Let's find him. Funny, whenever I see you, Clear, I get into trouble..."

Lymn: "And anyone else that meets her. We're all victims, it seems."

Clear: "It-it's not my fault!"

Guard: "I'll have to ask you to stop there."

Lander: "I'm Captain Lander--"

Guard: "Sorry Sir. Doesn't matter who you are. I can't allow you access."

Lander: "On whose authority?"

Guard: "The government, Sir."

Lander: "That's vague..."

Guard: "Sorry Sir."

Ace purses his lips and eventually turns away. Clear and Kokoro follow him. They had followed Kokoro's directions until they came to the guards.

Lander: "Well that's suspicious."

Clear: "Shouldn't there be lots of restricted places in a building like this?"

Lander: "Not from me, no. Usually anyway."

Lymn: "This is the only way through?"

Lander: "Unless you want to break through the floor above..."

She turns back to the guards and waves her hand.

Lymn: "You will grant us access."

Guard: "We will grant you access."

The guards stand aside.

Lymn: "You make the Alliance proud."

Guard: "We make the Alliance proud."

Kokoro nods towards the doors and passes between the guards. With some uncertainty, Clear and Ace follow her. When they pass into the next corridor, Ace closes the doors and then lets out a sigh of relief.

Clear: "Please don't do that to me, Kokoro..."

Lymn: "I told you before, you're not so weak-minded."

Lander: "It concerns me that we could be infiltrated so easily."

Lymn: "Easily? Are you undermining my ability?"

Lander: "Uh, no! I didn't mean--"

Lymn: "Just joking, Captain. It's one thing to affect the minds of two lone guards, it'd be another to affect the minds of the entire Alliance. Having said that... maybe you should be worried, yes."

They pass down the corridor with the expanse of the city to their right, looming outside of the glass panes. Everything else about the corridor was pure white and smooth like plastic. Along the walls grow vines decorated with flowers that look like roses. Clear wonders if Green is enjoying the place where she is. Finally Kokoro points to a set of double-doors, as white and as plastic as the rest of the place. When Ace reaches out to push them open, however, his hands meet a blue force field. He raps his knuckles on it and blue wave ripple outwards until they fade away to invisibility again.

Lander: "That is fairly exotic tech..."

Clear: "Any other way in?"

Lander: "Fancy scaling the outside of the building?"

Clear: "That's a no then."

Then there's a crash from the other side of the doors and they rattle violently. They stand and watch and wait. The doors smash and rattle again.

Clear: "I think someone's trapped in there."

Lymn: "Points if you can guess who..."

Clear: "Kiron! Is that you!?"

Clear pounds on the force field. A moment later they can hear Kiron Nightstrider from within.

Nightstrider: "Is-is that Clear?"

Clear: "It is. We've come to knock the living daylights out of you."

Nightstrider: "You'll have to let me out of here first!"

Clear: "Why are you in there?"

Nightstrider: "Is the Princess with you?"

Clear: "Not here but she's in the Green House. She's with the governors."

Nightstrider: "She's not safe here, especially not with them!"

----------

Clear walks behind the guards. They march in two lines - six in total. Clear isn't sure if that's enough but Ace wants to keep this quiet. At the head of the guards is Ace himself. When they exit the lift they're immediately in a huge conference room decorated with Autumn tones - maroon carpets, brown walls and nature-inspired lighting. At the centre of the room is a large oval table where Aurora and the other crew members of The Hopeful are sat with several governors. They all stand when Ace barges in, except Green who just stares with wide eyes.

Governor Oit: "What is the meaning of this!?"

Lander: "Princess Aurora, please step away from the governor."

Princess Aurora: "What? Why?"

Instead of the princess moving away from the governor, he steps back instead. His head rainbow-coloured head hands low and Clear is sure she can make out sorrow on his strange face. The guards come over and separate the governors from the rest of the group. They all comply. Some look defiant, others looks resigned while one or two of them look bewildered.

Princess Aurora: "Captain Lander... you best have a good explanation for this."

Clear: "Kiron is here, Aurora."

Princess Aurora: "So... the governor was mistaken? That's why he's being herded at gunpoint?"

Governor Oit: "I'm sorry, Governor Briarose."

Lander: "I don't think sorry quite covers it, Governor Oit."

Aurora's quick temper flares up and she snaps with a fist slam against the air.

Princess Aurora: "Someone better fuc-- explain this! Now!"

Clear: "They're the ones that tried to kill you, Aurora. Governor Oit was the ring leader."

The princess blinks at Clear in surprise as her brain struggles to process this. She tilts her head and then shakes it.

Princess Aurora: "That's not possible. Kiron told you this? You're going to believe him?"

Governor Oit: "There's no use us denying it now. The truth can be proven under interrogation of Nightstrider. If I had dealt with him sooner, this wouldn't have become a problem. But I didn't expect you to return..."

Princess Aurora: "You... admit it? Why!?"

Governor Oit: "For the good of the Alliance..."

Princess Aurora: "Am I... a threat to the Alliance, Governor?"

Governor Oit: "On the contrary... your demise would rally people against the Empire. Recruitment has waned significantly since the Empire broke up, people believing that the war is won. If they were to discover that the beautiful, young princess of a destroyed world were assassinated by Imperials... perhaps that will still happen."

Lander: "Not bloody likely now."

Princess Aurora: "He's... right. Release him."

Lander: "Wh-what!?"

Princess Aurora: "Governor Oit, you are relieved of office. The remaining governors will be interrogated and his accomplices will also be relieved of their duties. All of you will then be sent into exile."

Governor Oit: "Of course..."

He bows his head.

Lander: "Your highness, I don't understand! They need to be tried and imprisoned for this!"

Princess Aurora: "I should think a man of your station would understand politics a little better, Captain Lander!"

Lander: "You'll have to enlighten me, your highness. I'm more familiar with law and justice."

Princess Aurora: "Governors of the Alliance tried to kill me... imagine the public reaction against the Alliance. It could destroy us..."

Lander: "But--"

Princess Aurora: "But I demand the cure for the exhilarated process."

Governor Oit: "Easily done."

Clear: "Aurora... are you sure you want to let them go like this?"

Princess Aurora: "I... have no choice..."

Governor Oit: "For the good of the Alliance..."

Pully: "If you wanted to kill Aurora, why the heck did you do it this way? Why not just shoot her!?"

Governor Oit: "We considered that approach but a slower death would allow her time to rally more people. Give some kind of final speech. People could watch her wither and fail. A tragic and drawn-out death to pull the hearts of people everywhere. Any people from Algernon still within the Empire would surely turncoat and join us. The Alliance would be stronger than ever."

Princess Aurora: "I understand... and yet, I won't have a government based on such evil methods. Guards, ensure he's on a ship within the hour and send him to the furthest reaches of the galaxy where I won't be tempted to change my mind."

The guards usher the colourful governor out of the room and into the lift, along with the other governors who mostly comply though several exclaim their innocence.

Princess Aurora: "Kiron told you all of this? Where is he?"

Lander: "Trapped downstairs. I'm sure on of the governors can give us the access codes to the force field they have him trapped behind. He learnt of these plans days ago and was trying to get proof. It seems Kiron's intentions became known but Governor Oit--"

Princess Aurora: "Former governor..."

Lander: "Right... he intended to ensure Kiron found no proof but when he learnt you were returning he quickly had Kiron imprisoned, fully intending to kill him later."

Princess Aurora: "He didn't want to risk a raucous hours before I got here..."

Lander: "Exactly."

Clear draws close to Aurora who appears visibly shaken.

Clear: "Are you sure this is how you want to do things?"

She looks up at Clear with watery eyes.

Princess Aurora: "No. I'm not sure of anything. I... have to do what's best for the Alliance, not for me."

Clear isn't really sure how to comfort Aurora. She crouches, reaches out and pats her on the shoulder. The princess falls into Clear and cries into the salmitton's neck. Clear instead pats the human's purple hair.

Princess Aurora: "The universe... is an unfair place. Not everyone always gets what... they deserve."

Clear doesn't know how Aurora can do it. Clear herself wants to beat the Hell out of Governor Oit but the princess, who was the victim and betrayed, stands above her anger. At the best of times Aurora snaps, growls and stamps her foot. But here, an event that should have peaked her rage, the woman keeps it all in. For an ideal. Something greater than herself.

Clear wraps her arms around her human friend.

Clear: "You're the strongest person I've ever met, Aurora."

Princess Aurora: "I don't feel it..."

Clear: "But you act it."

Lander: "Your Highness. You make me proud to be a true son of Algernon."

Clear and Aurora look up at him and he salutes, though Clear is sure he's also on the verge of his emotions. Clear wishes there was some great leader from Mars she could be proud of, someone to remember her home with.

Princess Aurora: "And Clear. I heard about Kiron's dream..."

Clear: "I--"

Princess Aurora: "I know you didn't do it. And if you tell me The Hopeful couldn't be responsible... I believe it. That old ship has felt more like a home to me over these past weeks than... anywhere else in the galaxy."

Clear: "Aurora... now I think I might cry."

Aurora laughs through her tears.

----------

Two days later Clear stands in the Command Centre aboard The Hopeless. Pully walks in and sits on one of the audience chairs, her feet up on the headrest of the seat below.

Pully: "So. Everything ready?"

Clear: "Yes."

Pully: "Said your goodbyes to Aurora?"

Clear frowns at Pully's tone. She turns.

Clear: "Are you... jealous, Pully?"

Pully: "Wow. Full of yourself ain't you? You think I'd be jealous of your friendship with someone else?"

Clear: "Aren't you?"

Pully shrugs.

Pully: "A bit."

Clear: "Pully..."

Clear rolls her eyes and laughs.

Pully: "I just don't like her. That's why I'm jealous."

Clear: "Sure, sure."

Pully: "Just jump already."

Clear: "Ready to go, Mother. To Oeurwoud we go."

Mother: "Do not forget we must visit Mirare afterwards."

Clear: "I don't need you to remind me that, Mother."

Pully: "Mirare? What for?"

Clear: "Aurora's cure is there. That's where the poison came from. And I want a new jump drive."

Pully: "About time! Let's get this bucket moving! Oeurwoud and then new jump drives!"

NSN: This post connects to another post in NeShattered: Post #100.

---------

When The Hopeless jumps into orbit around Oeurwoud the systems display several much smaller ships in the vicinity. Quite quickly a communication request comms through Mother's systems. It isn't, however, from one of the ships but from the planet. Clear authorises the call.

Kloo Celli: "I feel I could have walked from Tangris to Oeuwoud faster than you jumped here, Captain Clear..."

Clear: "We were derailed..."

Kloo Celli: "I know. I was trying to make a joke. I guess I'm not a very funny woman."

The Æon Lord is standing in a forest still wearing her bulky, brown Æon Lord robes. Clear wonders why she hasn't boiled inside them yet.

Clear: "What happened to the Dark Water?"

Kloo Celli turns her head to stare off into the forest for a moment. Then she turns back to Clear.

Kloo Celli: "It is still here. Hold on a moment."

She reaches out to the camera and turns it. The screen pans across a metal platform suspended high above the ground where Celli is standing. Down below is a thick layer of black ooze blanketing the ground. The inky water lolls, laps and bubbles frequently but despite the stirrings it doesn't give chase the way it had done Clear and the unfortunate Telkrin.

Clear: "Hasn't it moved?"

Kloo Celli smiles sweetly, but somewhere behind that sweet smile Clear feels a malice.

Kloo Celli: "Not since we neutered it."

Clear is almost too afraid to ask.

Clear: "... how?"

Kloo Celli: "You can't see it but there's a massive sphere of suppression in the area, created by all those Æon on the planet. We take up positions and exert our will to suppression the darkness. Combined we have been able to maintain this area. After several days of attacks the darkness subsided and conceded defeat, it seems. Yet it sits and waits, I am sure, for an opening. We are currently in Aggron Forest where your last sighting of Telkrin Izep was reported and we believe we know what happened to him..."

Pully: "You mean other than being swallowed by a giant mud muddle?"

Pully gets up from her chair and walks up to the screen with interest. The Æon woman closes her eyes and smiles again. That 'I-Know-Something-You-Don't' smile.

Kloo Celli: "I do not believe him to be dead..."

Clear looks at Pully then back to the screen. She pushes a button the console, muting the communication for a moment.

Clear: "Mother. You should ask Kokoro to come to the Command Centre."

She then unmutes the communication and watches as Celli moves the camera again, this time, half-submerged by the darkness, is what looks to be a black line. But even as the camera moves, the tear, strangely, appears two-dimensional against the tree-line behind it.

Clear: "What is that?"

Kloo Celli: "Some kind of rift. A tear in space-time."

Clear thinks of The Rift on Earth that had led to the world of Vivane. Telkrin could have gone through this rift.

Clear: "Telkrin made that rift?"

Kloo Celli: "I highly doubt it. It could have been created by this dark creature or it may have been created by someone... something on the other side of that rift."

Clear: "What's your plan?"

Kloo Celli turns the camera back to herself.

Kloo Celli: "What do you think it is? We're going through there, naturally."

Pully: "Dangerous much?"

Kloo Celli: "We're Æon Knights of Tangris. Danger is our profession."

Lymn: "Clear, you wanted to see me? I was getting ready to leave..."

Clear points to the camera and Kokoro approaches. She bows to the Æon Lord who smiles back.

Kloo Celli: "I hope you're ready for some adventure young one..."

----------

An hour later and everyone still aboard The Hopeless is gathered in the Command Centre. The camera is on again, this time it has been moved to a platform constructed to lead into the rift. Standing on the platform is a long line of Æon, mostly knights dotted with some Lords and just one student, who stands closest to the camera. The lord at the fore is Kloo Celli herself. She pushes at the darkness within the rift and confirms that it gives way to her spiritual exerts. She pushes harder and a second lord joins her - Lord Kassuin. The student looks anxiously from the lords to the camera.

Lymn: "Clear, I just wanted to say thank you again."

Clear folds her arms.

Clear: "The best thanks you can give is seeing me again."

Lymn: "I shall. And so shall my Teacher."

Clear: "I hope so."

Clear jumps at a sudden outburst to her right and looks down at the green-haired human girl who has started wailing.

Green: "GOODBYE MS KOKO!!!!"

Kokoro can't help herself and smiles warmly.

Lymn: "Goodbye Green. Don't worry about me, I'll be just fine. I have Lord Kassuin to protect me. The Æon holding the darkness at bay will remain here until we return with Teacher Izep."

Clear: "Will they be able to hold the Dark Water off without someone to relief them?"

Lymn: "Some of them have already been there for days, Clear..."

Everyone in the Command Centre looks surprised, not just Clear.

Lymn: "More adept Æon, especially Consular, can focus upon a single task and enter a meditative state. In that state we can remain for days on end, depending on how advanced our skills are."

Pully: "You learn something new every day."

Nightstrider: "Sometimes I wonder why the Æon haven't conquered the galaxy."

Lymn: "That wouldn't abide by power creed, Kiron."

Pully: "Besides, not everyone is a megalomaniac."

Nightstrider: "Human nature, Pully."

Clear: "This time I'm inclined to agree with Kiron."

They notice Kloo Celli disappear into the rift. A second later Lord Kassuin joins her. Then, one-by-one, the lines enters. Through the tear Clear is sure she can see wood amongst the boots of Æon. Kokoro looks at them one last time.

Lymn: "Clear. Stop getting into trouble."

Clear groans.

Clear: "Please tell everyone else that!"

She laughs and turns away from them before running through the rift. The crew of The Hopeless stand and watch, waiting for a moment, before, finally, turning off the connection...

Nightstrider: "So... this superweapon..."

Clear: "I'm going to send you into that rift after her if you ask me one more time."

Nightstrider: "Questions need answers, Cl--"

Pully: "I could throw him in the brig, boss."

Nightstrider: "There's a brig now?"

Pully: "There's like a million empty rooms, one of them will do as a brig! Can I lock the door? Yes? It's a brig."

Clear: "I'm going to sleep. Mother, jump to Mirare in twenty minutes."

Mother: "Certainly."

Clear leaves the Command Centre and turns right. Green shouts after her;

Green: "That's not the way to your room, Ms Clear!"

Clear makes her way to the Dreamviewer and lies down. She's been using the device more and more frequently. Not only does it record her dreams, it can induce sleep that has been avoiding her as of late. She settles down into the machine and turns it on. She glances at the last dream she had. Since installing the new A.I. Clear had been dreaming about her own mother. She knows it's unhealthy but she doesn't know how to resolve the current situation. There isn't anyone to talk to even if she could muster the courage to do so. Instead she takes solace in the fact that her dreams do no one harm but herself.

-------------

She opens her eyes. The moment her wakefulness registers on Mother's scans the A.I. informs the Captain that they are orbiting Mirare. Clear gets up from the Dreamviewer and rubs her head. Then she notices Kiron Nightstrider standing in the doorway.

Clear: "What the--? Have you been watching me sleep?"

Nightstrider: "Relax. I just arrived. I figured I'd watch... doesn't matter."

He enters the room and nods towards the machine behind her.

Nightstrider: "Gets addictive doesn't it?"

Clear: "I'm fine."

Kiron rolls his eyes.

Nightstrider: "I didn't ask. I just said it was addictive. But now I'll say be careful. Try not to overdo it."

Clear: "I knew you'd say that. That's why I said I'm fine. Come on. We should go to the station. I have a jump drive to buy."

Nightstrider: "And medicine."

Clear: "That's a given."

Nightstrider: "Just thought you'd forgotten why we're really here."

Clear: "I know. I don't need you to remind me."

Nightstrider: "You're still sore with me? Fine. I'm not exactly comfortable with you yet either. I still think this ship is responsible."

Clear: "Then why are you here?"

She leaves the room and he follows her.

Nightstrider: "This seems like the only place I'd ever get answers."

Clear: "If you're going to stay, you're going to make yourself useful and help me get a good deal for my jump drive."

Nightstrider: "I think a jump drive for this monster of a ship will be expensive..."

Clear grins at him.

Clear: "Lucky I got a second reward from the Alliance then!"

Lumo: "I sincerely hope that you are right, Pinno Fat."

Clear rolls her eyes at being called 'Pinno Fat' again. The is standing in the herb shop that Clear remembers getting the datura powder from just before she left the station last time. The shop's keeper is the blue-skinned Hian woman wearing the white robe that reminds Clear so much of Salmitton clothing. She is sitting in the corner brewing the cure for Aurora Briarose's condition. In fact the cure may even aid in relieving symptoms of the original ALS, not only the advanced state induced by the very same Hian woman's previous formula. Clear, however, isn't prone to blind hope.

Clear: "I am. It's unfair to judge Aurora by the rest of the humans. She's not guilty for the sins of humanity. Her own world was destroyed too, just like yours."

Lumo: "And yours, to an extent. I have the luxury to mourn the death of mine. You have to endure the continued rape of yours."

Pully: "You know there are humans in the room, right?"

Nightstrider: "There are good and bad humans, good and bad greys, good and bad hians, good and bad... red-people."

Clear: "You forgot my species already, Kiron? Speciesist."

Clear had spent many hours bartering for permission to allow her human companions a visit to Mirare. Ultimately, after a long sequence of refusals, Lumo agreed on account of them helping Clear save the galaxy from Captain Rynard and the Empire. No mention was made of Jeb, perhaps from embarrassment at the young grey's guilt or from secret wish of the man's success thwarted by Clear as well as their enemy's.

Nightstrider: "There's one of you in the entire galaxy. How can I remember?"

Clear: "There's only one Kiron Nightstrider in the galaxy, I remember those words well enough."

Nightstrider: "Not the same..."

She stares at him and he relents with a groan.

Nightstrider: "Okay, okay. I'm sorry I forgot the name of your species."

Clear smirks.

Clear: "Actually that's the name of my race. But thanks anyway."#

Green: "Ms Clear, you shouldn't flirt with Kiron. You'll make Mr Ace jealous."

Clear almost fell over and even Kiron looks aghast. Pully just guffaws while the alien troop in the shop shrug and stare with blank, uncomprehending faces. Before Clear can reprimand Green for saying such a thing a comm call comes through from Mother.

Mother: "Clear. I am ready to begin running simulations and tests for the Bagan Noz Drive. Shall I initiate?"

Clear: "Go ahead, Mother. Remember what the engineer said, double check the results with our warp core."

Lumo: "Your... mother?"

Clear looks embarrassed.

Pully: "Only if Clear's secretly a baby A.I...."

Nightstrider: "The ship's A.I. is called Mother."

Kiron manages to save Clear some further embarrassment of explaining the name further. Lumo nods, apparently not seeing anything unusual in the choice of name for their A.I. and Clear is silently grateful to Kiron.

Lumo: "I'm glad you took my advice for your jump drive. Buying it here was a wise choice..."

Clear: "I think so."

Lumo: "Though I have to wonder at your choice of drive..."

Clear: "What's the problem?"

Lumo: "It's a somewhat... unorthodox drive, to say the least. It will be fast, certainly. Carry you right across the galaxy in an instant. But... not the prettiest way to do it."

Pully: "Sound like you know more about the drive than we did, old man."

Nightstrider: "I told you to go for the hyperdrive..."

Clear: "The guy said the Bagan Noz is faster than any hyperdrive."

Kiron puts his hands up defensively.

Nightstrider: "Just don't blame me when the ship blows up on us."

Lumo: "It seems the engineer didn't inform you that you'll be leaving space to make your jump?"

Clear: "He did. He said it's just like any hyperdrive but faster. A hyperdrive you enter hyperspace, right? This does the same thing."

Lumo: "Except it isn't hyperspace it will take you..."

Green: "What space does it go to?"

Pully: "Bagan space?"

Clear: "Noz space?"

The two of them chuckle at their little jokes while Lumo shakes his head with concern.

Lumo: "Hell."

Clear, Pully and Kiron look at him dubiously. Lumo rolls his eyes and pulls a chair towards them.

Lumo: "What is this?"

Clear: "A chair."

Nightstrider: "Chair."

He looks up at Pully.

Pully: "Yeah, it's a chair."

He then looks at Green. She shrugs.

Green: "It's a chair, right?"

Lumo: "Lucee, what would you say this is?"

Lucee Sk'dor smiles to herself. She doesn't look up as she continues her work, adding a new herb to the mixture.

Sk'dor: "A bed."

Pully: "Are you kidding me?"

Lumo smiles up at them.

Lumo: "Hians sleep sitting, not lying down."

They're all taken aback. Clear is extra surprised because neither Pully nor Kiron seem to have known this and they are her sources of knowledge for this region of the galaxy. Lumo shakes the chair a little, drawing attention to it.

Lumo: "Just because the object holds a different meaning for some people than it does others, doesn't mean it is no less that object you believe it to be."

Clear: "I see. You're saying just because we won't consider this other space to be Hell, doesn't mean it isn't Hell?"

Lumo grins and points at Clear.

Lumo: "Smart girl."

He pushes the chair back and Clear feels uncomfortable about her choice in drive.

Clear: "So the drive is dangerous?"

Lumo shrugs.

Lumo: "I don't know. But any device that takes you through Hell seems dangerous to me. Can't say I've ever been brave enough to try it. Your drive most certainly will work, of course. Hell is everywhere and nowhere. Time is meaningless there. But the things you may see... I shudder to think."

Green suddenly grins and pipes up;

Green: "Lucky most rooms don't have windows on our ship!"

While Clear rolls her eyes, Lumo nods and smiles at Green indulgently.

Lumo: "Indeed, lucky it is!"

Thrain: "Okay. I think I have everything I need!"

Clear looks up to see Alexis Thrain bustle her way through a beaded curtain carrying a massive box of herbs, plants, spices and other such concoctions.

Pully: "Got enough crap there, Thrain?"

Thrain: "Can never have enough supplies!"

Thrain grows defensive.

Clear: "I thought you didn't like all this... herbal medicine?"

Thrain glares at Clear through squinted eyes.

Thrain: "I didn't say the medicine itself was useless, just--"

She suddenly glances at Lucee Sk'dor and shrugs, putting the box down. Lucee, still not looking up from her work, just smiles and slowly shakes her head. Thrain rests on the box with a hand on her hip. She looks quite worn out from all of her shopping.

Thrain: "What're you all talking about?"

Clear: "Hell. Apparently."

Lumo: "Tartarus is what most would call it."

Thrain: "Wow. What a thrilling conversation I've been missing. I think there might be more shopping to be done. Please don't wait for me..."

Thrain's sarcasm isn't lost on anyone as she disappears back into the front of the shop where all of the goods are sitting on display. As though to prevent further talk of religion, Lucee stands up and carries the bowl she used to make her mixture, and pours it into a flask. Kiron approaches her.

Nightstrider: "Is it ready?"

Sk'dor: "Yes it is."

He holds out his hands expectantly. Lucee looks first at Clear, who nods.

Clear: "I trust Kiron in one thing at least - he'll do anything to help his princess."

Nightstrider: "I will."

He takes the flask and Lucee moves back to the table to prepare another batch.

Nightstrider: "This isn't enough?"

Sk'dor: "No. You'll need three flasks of it. Each flask is to be taken once every week for three weeks. After that she'll need to take something else, which I'll prepare once I'm done with this."

Pully: "Wowee. This is going to take forever..."

Lumo: "Sorry. I hope you can be patient."

Green: "Can we go shopping!?"

Lumo looks hesitant but then nods.

Lumo: "With escorts, yes. Can't have humans running around the place. Haven't had any here since... ever. Actually."

Pully: "Don't trust us?"

Lumo: "No. No I don't."

Pully shrugs.

Pully: "Can't argue with that."

Nightstrider: "I'll stay here and wait."

Pully: "I'll get Thrain. She'll want to come with us. If she can stop ogling whatever weird plants she's studying in there."

Mother: "Clear."

And so Pully, Green, Thrain and Clear set out from the shop with an escort of several very large aliens. Some green, some furry, some slimy. The women search around various shops, though many of them actually refuse to serve them. They don't want their shop tainted by humans. While Pully and Thrain shrug off the insults, Green seems to get increasingly upset. Eventually they decide they should go back to the herb shop for the sake of Green's mood. Clear, however, says she wants to check with the engineer that sold her the Bagan Noz Drive.

Thrain: "You're not buying into that Hell nonsense, are you?"

Pully: "You never know, Thrain..."

Thrain: "Not you too!?"

Pully: "I like to keep an open mind."

Thrain squints at her.

Thrain: "You're trying to wind me up aren't you?"

Pully: "Kind of, yeah."

She laughs as Thrain growls and stomps off towards the shop. Pully waves at Clear and the three humans are left with their escort while Clear gets to wander off alone. She heads in the direction of the engineer's shop, wondering how to chastise selling her a jumpdrive to Hell. When she gets there, the smell of burning meat fills the air and a thick cloud smogs up the street. One of the small vendors down the way is trying to put out a fire he started. Clear rolls here eyes. This station is certainly lively. She then stops as the smog begins to clear up. Standing at the front of the shop is the engineer and another a figure. The figure is very thin and wears a broad hat like the seafarers of ancient Earth. He turns his skull in the direction of Clear and instantly recognises her. Clear is already running as Kaptain Kwanza, the space pirate, gives chase. She wonders how he had followed her all the way here and after such a long time he shows up now.

She jumps over a stall and glances back to see Kaptin Kwanza slide over that same table, knocking fruit everywhere and getting a lot of angry shouts from the vendor. He is slower than her, but not by much.

She slams the communicator on her chest, it's easier than trying to navigate the call options on her PIP. However it means here's only two people she can communicate with. Mother and the only other person that still has one of the old communicators.

Clear: "GREEN!"

Green: "Hullo Ms Clear! We're at the shop now! Ms Alexis--"

Green pauses while Clear ducks into an alley.

Green: "I mean Ms Thrain wants to know how long you'll be. Ms Sk'dor has almost finished her work."

Clear: "NOW! NOW GREEN! WE LEAVE NOW!"

Clear knocks an old lady over as she crashes into her. Clear tries to help the woman to her feet but when Kaptin comes up the alley behind her she has to leave her to fend for herself. Kwanza almost knocks the poor woman over again as he runs by.

Green: "We're not ready now, Ms Clear! Just another hour!"

Clear: "GREEN! WE H--!"

Clear feels her body suddenly convulse. Pain cascades through her muscles as electricity burrows through them. The focal point is the middle of her back where the taser must have hit. Shaking, she falls to the floor in a heap. A few minutes later her body is relaxed but she's too groggy to resist being dragged along by her legs. Nobody tries to stop the walking skeleton and she thinks it's unsurprising. Kidnapping seems to be a past time on this station if Clear's two visits are anything to go by.

She's tossed over against a wall and she can hear the captain speaking into a comm of his own.

Kwanza: "I have your prize, Warlord. When do you want to collect?"

Clear feels some spirit coming back to her limbs but she tries not to make any sudden movements just yet. She doesn't want another taser in the back.

Kwanza: "Okay. I'll get her to the Jolly Wanker and fly her out to you."

The name of his ship is still a kick to Clear's mind, especially given how cruel kidnapping is - the jovial name seems additionally wicked of him. He reaches down and hefts her up onto his shoulder. The bone digs into her gut but she tries not to react to the discomfort. She feels him spank her behind and, again, resists the urge to fight him just yet.

Kwanza: "Glad to find you in one piece, lassie! Been searchin' for this fat arse for too long, I tell ya. You certainly gave me the run around! Then, I gets to Imperial space and what do I hear about? The red-skinned alien. Over and over. Everyone's talking about you, you know? The lonesome hero they call you in Alliance space."

He walks down an alleyway, his heavy boot-falls echoing off of the walls.

Kwanza: "Then you have the best of all. Warlord Dienhand has a bounty on your head! Ha! I marched right in there and demanded more. Told them how much you were worth alive. She doubled it even then. I am in for a gigantic payday for you, milove. Sorry you won't be surviving this sale though. Wanted to give you over to a collector or summat. Then I could always come back and check you out on occasion. But then you had to go murderin' people. Honestly, little Salmitton, did you honestly think that was a good idea, huh?"

She holds her tongue, continuing to play possum.

Kwanza: "Well, now you have to pay the price. Crime's a crime and you got to be punished for it."

She, obviously, doesn't point out the hypocrisy of that.

Kwanza: "There's few things I can't stand in this universe. One of them is killing. Another is tea. I hate tea. I had this friend once. Obsessed with tea. Just tea all day, every day. Don't get me wrong, I loved the guy! But I hated everything to do with tea by the end. Just the smell of tea makes me want to pull my hair out."

He then barks a laugh as he pushes a button for a lift.

Kwanza: "Or I would if I could! And no, that isn't how I lost my hair. Or my skin. Or anything else. But if I still had them, I would lose them if someone had even a cup of tea in this lift. I haven't spoken to him since then. Don't think I could face him and his tea after all these years."

Clear listens to the sound of the lift grinding its way up towards the docking bay, drowning out the endless prattling of Kwanza. His overly friendly nature doesn't sit well with his evil and cruel actions. Talking of his past, his friend, his ship, the colour of his pet cat and how she destroys every plant he owns. She waits and waits. Then they're heading along the dock and Clear feels her communicator vibrating against her chest - Green finally trying to call back. Clear thinks of all manner of nasty acts of vengeance she could take against Green for being so completely useless in communication. Then Clear finally sees her chance. On his way to the Jolly Wanker, Kwanza has passed by the park Bug.

In a suddenly flurry of movement that the skeletal man isn't expecting, Clear grabs his skull and jumps off of his chest. He's yanked by the neck and Clear honestly expected his head to pop off but it doesn't. Instead she brings his head down and brings her knees up to connect. Kwanza reels back while Clear herself wails at the pain of kneeing a very hard skull. Before he can get his bearings, she sweeps her legs across the floor and he's knocked flat on his back. She hops over him. She considers herself, at this point, to be lucky she's the only Salmitton in the universe. Her body is much faster at recovering from shock than any human. Kwanza clearly thought she'd be just like any other human he's kidnapped in the past. She's also thankful she waited til her full strength was back.

She hops over his prone form and runs for the Bug. The door slides open and she hits her communicator.

Clear: "Green!"

Green: "Ms Clear! Where have you been!?"

Clear: "Green! I'm going to The Hopeless now!"

Green: "Oh great! We're ready too! We'll go to the Bug now!"

Clear: "No! I'm going alon--"

Clear hits the door close button as Kwanza comes running at her. She grabs her old carbine from the locker and aims it at him. He instantly dives to the floor but she doesn't fire on him. The doors close. She heads to the controls and starts the activation sequence.

Clear: "I'm headed there now. I can't wait for you."

Green: "Whhhhhhy!?"

Green whines like a child.

Clear: "Dienhand is on her way. I need to get to The Hopeless to draw her away from the station. Just like last time."

Green: "Um. Ms Pully says that's fine. They'll take another ship or you can come back for us later..."

Clear: "That's my thinking exactly. Be careful. Kaptin Kwanza just attacked me. He's on the station."

Green: "Is he the creepy pirate guy we met that one time?"

Clear: "Well remembered, Green..."

Once onboard The Hopeless, Clear demands the status of the new jump drive.

Mother: "Tests are not yet completed."

Clear: "Seriously? You've been doing them for hours!"

Mother: "Jumping through space is a very difficult and complex procedure, Clear. You could just right into the middle of a sun or an asteroid field..."

Clear: "Right. Rig--"

Mother: "The Excellence has arrived in system."

Clear: "So soon? Damn... we'll have to come back for them."

Mother: "Communication from The Excellence."

Clear: "Put it thr--"

Mother: "Communication from Cassra Terrin-Pullista."

Clear: "Terrible timing. Dienhand can wait. Put Pully on."

Pully: "Clear. We found your man. We're in a firefight with the sod now. Lumo said he'll get his thugs down here in no time to help us deal with him. Says Kwanza's own gang is spread out across the station, apparently they were all out looking for you and Green."

Clear: "Be careful, Pully. No need to get injured on his account. I'm on The Hopeless now. Dienhand has just arrived in system. I'm going to bait her into chasing me now."

Pully: "Then you be careful, Clear. Don't underestimate Dienhand. She'll be thinking of some way of catching you. She's not easily duped twice."

Clear: "I have this new Hell-drive, remember? I can jump super fast. I'll be in Alliance space in a blink and back again, while Dienhand is sailing about wondering where I've gone."

Pully: "There you go underestimating her."

Clear: "Just take care of yourself, Pully. I'll see you soon. Try to think of this as a vacation."

Pully: "Yeah. Great. Vacation on the universe's most xenophobic spacestation. Don't take too long, eh?"

Clear: "Mother, how long til you can jump?"

Mother: "I can engage the drives now, but my calculations will be very slow. I estimate at seven minutes."

Clear: "So I have to keep her talking for seven minutes? Great..."

Clear switches to Dienhand's channel. The woman looks up from whatever she was doing to stare at Clear. Clear always thinks Dienhand looks strangely normal for a cruel Warlord. The woman needs spiky pauldrons, miss-matched eye colours, a sinister scar - something to make her look extra menacing.

Dienhand: "Surrender yourself, Captain. I have you now."

Clear: "Not yet you don't. My new jump-drives are engaged and I'm ready to get out of here."

Dienhand: "Indeed. So I suppose I should chase you?"

Clear: "I'd prefer if you'd just let all this drop. Go home. Play warlord in your space wars."

Dienhand: "Honour is one the line, salmitton."

The woman turns from Clear to someone else.

Dienhand: "Are we in range to fire?"

Clear: "If you fire on my ship, you couldn't take me prisoner for your trial..."

Dienhand then smiles.

Dienhand: "I won't fire on you, salmitton."

Clear: "But-?"

Dienhand: "Anyone that aids you is now condemned as a terrorist and a harbourer of terrorists."

Clear: "Wait! Wait! I surrender!"

Dienhand: "Good to know. You can reflect on this incident when you're in prison. Lieutenant? Open fire."

Clear: "No!"

The screen displaying the exterior of the ship is sudden lit up with green bolts that blast forth from the yellow-and-grey Star Destroyer. The bolts smash into Mirare spacestation, blowing apart entire sections of the old structure. In areas the station's shields have held, however, stopping the green bolts of death for a short time. Clear feels her communicator vibrating and she pushes it.

Green: "Clear! The station is being attacked! What do we do!?"

Clear: "Get out of there!!"

Dienhand: "Oh, you have friends on the station? I wish I had known. I would have fired sooner..."

Clear: "You-! You have your man onboard! Kwanza! You'll kill him too!"

Dienhand: "Pirate scum. Worked for a bounty, nothing more."

Clear: "Stop! Stop please! I give up! Kiron! He's on the station! We'll both come quietly! Please!"

Dienhand: "You take me for a fool, captain. You did the last time and you intended to do so again. Last time I indulged. It was entertaining. But this time I wish to win. Anywhere else you go, I will destroy it. Anyone else who helps you, I will kill them. You will watch this demonstration and you will know what is to come should you flee..."

Clear: "And Kiron? You wanted us as prisoners, didn't you?"

Dienhand: "I only need one of you. And honestly, it is your name on everyone's lips. You saved the sweet rebel princess, you stopped the terrorist greys, you stopped the plans of Captain Rynard - a good man, by the way, despite working for the wrong side - and so it is you who will stand trial. A powerful symbol to the galaxy that Warlord Dienhand is not to be trifled with. Even the greatest hero dies at my hands. Warlord Strang killed Duke Hyperon, I killed Clear the lonesome hero. Both the Empire and the Alliance will be heartbroken, I'm sure."

Clear: "Mother! Disengage the jump!!"

Mother: "Unable to comply."

Clear: "Just stop! Please! Stop!"

There is an explosion from the station. Then a second. Then a third. A sequences of explosions like dominoes, each set off by the last. Huge pieces of the station drift apart.

Clear: "Green! Green! Are you okay?"

The communicator remains silent.

And then, in one last huzzah, the remains of the station explodes in bright white and blue light that expands and then, suddenly, contracts in on itself. The delicate, tiny remains float quietly towards the ice belt to join the rest of the greys' graveyard. Clear stares at it, unable to even scream. Lumo. Kiron. Thrain. Pully. Green.

Clear: "Oh..."

She feels like she's been struck in the chest and breathing becomes an effort. She gasps. Her eyes water up.

Dienhand: "This is your legacy, Captain. I have enjoyed this moment immensely. You will forever be my conquest and I shall remember you. Long after you've been executed for murder."

Clear falls against the console and Sue'san Dienhand observes her like a predator observes its fallen prey. Ready to eat.

Dienhand: "Such pain you are in, Captain."

Mother: "Jumping in five..."

Clear: "Stop..."

Mother: "Four..."

Dienhand: "You intend to jump again, Captain?"

Mother: "Three..."

Dienhand: "I will hunt you down. Again. Forever."

Mother: "Two..."

Dienhand: "I will kill everyone to get to you."

Clear: "Stop..."

Mother: "Jumping."

Dienhand: "Clea---!!!"

The Hopeless shakes violently and the communication shuts down. The lights blink off and on several times before they simply shut down. The red emergency lights turn on. The whole room shudders. Clear sees emergency readings appear on the console. System failures. Damage notices. Hull warnings. The Hopeless is breaking apart. Just like Mirare did. Just like her friends did...

She kneels there, before the console. The screens then go dead. The shuddering becomes more and more violent. Clear is then thrown across the room, she slides along the floor and hits the barrier between the front of the Command Centre and the chairs. She reaches out with all her willpower and grabs a bar to save herself. The room bounces. And then, with a great final crash, the ship stops. Smoke billows into the room from the corridor. She doesn't know what broke out there but something must have. The red lights remain but silence holds sway over the ship. Clear lies on the floor. She's too wounded to move. Emotionally.

She stares at the smoke slowly filling up the room. She closes her eyes.

Mother: "Clear..."

She opens them. She sees her mother's face looking down at her. And then she closes them again.

Music to accompany: Afterhours

---

Clear stands at the very edge of the hangar bay doors, looking out. Somewhere behind her is the old Bug, sitting quietly and patiently. The automated loading engine, ALEX, is the only noise reaching her ears as the machine drifts about the hangar fixing things. It, and the other remaining droids she once acquired, are all over the ship, especially the hull, fixing it up. Waste of time.

Clear sits down and throws a small ball out of the hangar. It hits the oxygen shield and bounces back. Small enough that even the frail oxygen bubble will prevent it escaping. Not that there's anything to escape to.

The jump.

They did jump. Jumped too much. Too far. Too fast.

The new jump drive is broken now with no way to get the parts to fix it. No way to get those parts because there is nowhere to go. Nothing to see, nowhere to go.

There's only darkness. Emptiness. Blackness. Void. The Deep Void.



The End.





Clear throws the ball again. It bounces back. Six months. Six long months, alone with nothing to do. She throws the ball. It bounces back. The same thing. Each day. Staring into the void. How much longer?

------

Clear will return in:

Clear and the Hopeless: The Living Daylights [/SIZE]

Clear and the Hopeless [/SIZE]

Welcome to Chapter 2 of Clear and the Hopeless. This thread is written by myself, Britt, and exists in the extended universe of the Never-ending Story. Other Writers have a large degree of input on the narrative, including the featuring of many Characters taken from both in-universe NeS threads and from external self-made sources.

The Story follows Clear, a Martian Salmitton, who is the captain of the massive space vessel named The Hopeful. The Hopeful, however, is a dilapidated wreck with an ancient and mysterious history. It's state of disrepair is the butt of Clear's private joke, calling The Hopeful "The Hopeless". On a more metaphorical level, "the hopeless" also refers to the Individuals she associates with and join her on her adventures through space.

The Hopeful has has a new engine installed, the Bagan Noz Drive, which circumvents space-time by travelling through the dimension commonly known as Tartarus. Tartarus is, however, a dangerous and volatile dimension that damaged The Hopeful when they last jumped. It also drained all energy from the Power Core Clear installed long ago. The Power Core requires organic energy, however, to be functional again; at the cost of the organic material's existence, killing any person that touches it and converting them into energy.

Clear saw the deaths of her friends aboard the Mirare spacestation when Sue'san Dienhand destroyed the entire station. Mother, The Hopeful's A.I., committed a jump using the Bagan Noz Drive with poorly configured calibrations that resulted in the loss of all energy in the Power Core and severe damage to the, already damaged, ship. Six months of mourning and lamenting her fate, Clear faces the possibility of being stranded in the Deep Void for the remainder of her life...

----------

Eight months after being marooned in the Deep Void...

Clear: "It's surreal... creepy even..."

She stands atop of the metal staircase that leads down into the hangar. People. Thousands of people. They unload luggage, mill about talking to each other or take orders from their superior officers. Clear has never seen so many people in one place in her whole life. Aboard spacestations like Mirare or Saffron 5 she was always in small enclosed spaces where there was never enough room for these sheer numbers. She resists the urge to run and hide. That would be childish. So many months all alone and now she is surrounded by unbearable numbers of beings.

Clear: "Are they... human?"

Mother: "Doubtful."

They appear human. They come in a variety of colours from white to brown to black or yellow, as does their hair. The hair, however, seems to be an even wider array of colours but Clear suspects none of the more inhuman colours are necessarily their naturally characteristics. They all seem bigger than the humans she'd met before but Clear's understand of human anatomy has always been skewed by her prior conceptions. She believes their increased mass for both the men and the women is down to them being military personnel. Of course they'd be bigger and stronger with all that training. She does think they seem bigger than Kiron Nightstrider and Cassra-Terrin Pullista and they were also military humans. That moment, thinking of her lost friends, swells a dark and empty pit in her stomach. It's removed when she sees some of the people approach the stairwell she's standing at the top of. She leans over the railing and stares down at them. A group of men. Clear's eyes almost fall from their sockets and she pulls back from sight of them.

Clear: "Mother!"

She snaps in horror.

Mother: "What is it?"

Clear: "Why are they naked!?"

Mother: "Naked?"

Clear: "Yes! They have no clothes on! I can see their... dangling about like... long... things..."

Mother: "I understand. The samples don't, of course, include clothing DNA so the rendering only produces their biological characteristics."

Clear: "Then how do you know what their hairstyle was like?"

Mother: "Portraits."

Clear: "Oh... can you try to put clothes on them? I don't want to be walking around with bollocks staring at me everywhere I go..."

Mother: "Or you staring at them..."

Clear: "Mother!"

The figures in the hangar shimmer. And then they are all clothed. Clear looks down at the men headed her way. They're wearing white one-pieces robes much like the fashion of her own people. Clear doesn't question Mother's choice, it's better than nothing at all.

While most of the holographic figures are interacting with each other and standing, seemingly firmly, on the hangar deck, others appear to be floating and walking down invisible steps from invisible ships. The group of men draw closer to her and Clear steps back, not wanting to touch them. The men are talking gibberish that Clear can't understand but they seem energetic and enthusiastic. A new home for them. She looks down at the rest of the incoming crew and then decides to stalk after the first group that went by her. They lift their arms to check pieces of invisible paper and when they reach their designated rooms they bid farewell to each other. Mother simulates the act of the door opening for Clear's convenience and she follows the man into his new room. He interacts with non-existent objects that she can only guess at before he slips into the bathroom where she decides to leave him be.

Clear: "Mother, keep a log of all their actions, especially important things. If any of them go for the weapon room... let me know immediately."

Mother: "I shall..."

Clear turns to see a group of women coming towards her. Their forms, like the men, are ghosted and their colours saturated. She steps back only to jump in fright as the man emerges from his room and passes straight through her. The man begins talking to the women in his alien language gibberish. Clear shudders. She felt nothing when he went through her but the psychological affect on her mind was to send chills up her spine.

Clear: "Just... who are they?"


The Living Daylights [/SIZE] Chapter Two

Six months since being marooned in the Deep Void...

Clear staggers out of the Dreamviewer room with a bottle of Old Grey in her hand. It's one of the last remaining bottles of booze from Mirare, possibly now one of the last to ever be made in the universe. To its credit it hits hard. The last of something should go out with a bang. It's a shame she can't go the same way.

She'd dreamt about "Hope", the green-skinned woman in a metaphorical galaxy from the depths of her subconscious mind. She isn't sure if Hope is supposed to be herself or if Hope the woman is supposed to be the Hopeless. The dreams have hidden meanings, some easier to see than others. In some ways Clear feels like Hope and her friends are living in some alternate reality and that scares Clear more than them being metaphors her subconscious wants to tell her. Hope dies every night, consumed by the darkness. The darkness of the Dark Water maybe. Or the darkness of the Deep Void outside. An endless ocean of darkness slowly consuming Clear's existence. How long would it be before those remaining friends in the Perseus Arm forget her? Will there be any left? Kokoro Lymn went through a mysterious portal to save her master, facing off against the Dark Water. Ffion Heul joined a superhero team that took an invasion their planet as a casual and common event to be dealt with like it's paperwork. And Princess Aurora Briarose... how long would she have without the medicine from Mirare? Could the medicine be replicated without Mirare? Dreams of Hope and her friends often bring tears to Clear come the morning as she sees them together. Perhaps Hope has it better, consumed by the darkness along with her friends while Clear is left to languish alone in nothingness.

She stumbles down the corridor, wandering aimlessly away from the Dreamviewer room. She feels hungry but eating seems like too much effort. She chugs from the bottle. It's easier.

Mother: "Clear..."

Clear, through bleary eyes, turns to see a woman standing beside her. Pink-red skin, pink lips and thick white hair. Clear whimpers as she looks at her.

Clear: "M-mother...?"

She reaches out hesitantly. She doesn't believe this woman is here. She can't be here. Yet her hand connects with the soft skin of a real person. Clear cries out and falls into her mother's chest.

Clear: "H-How!? How are you alive!?"

Her mother just hushes her daughter and strokes her hair soothingly. Clear drops the bottle of Old Grey and it clatters to the floor, spilling its contents everywhere...

----------

Eight Months after being marooned in the Deep Void...

Clear has been people-watching for hours. She followed them around the ship, inspected what they were doing and tried to guess why they were doing it. They often interacted with things that no longer seemed to exist and Clear could only guess what equipment must have once existed aboard the Hopeless that these people were using. Most of the static equipment, such as console banks, seemed to be utilised as they currently stood. She watched them in the Command Centre. It was uncomfortable for Clear to find herself seated in a room surrounded by people that was normally very empty. She'd never seen so many chairs in use. The consoles at the front were being manned by three people, a job she usually did all by herself. Based on the motions and keys pushed on the consoles in the Command Centre Mother judged that they were uploading A.I. systems to the ship. Clear also tried to see what was happening in the Command Deck but, strangely, the holographic images always faded whenever they went through the locked door leading to that hallowed ground. Instead there was just Icer, still standing there forever burning.

Clear: "Are they your people, Captain?"

She puts her hand on the portal window and taps the glass. Icer looks like those people, built strong and beautiful. White skin and brown hair. Human but slightly different. Their non-human status was confirmed when Clear saw some of their images shimmer and distort into blurry ghosts of themselves. Mother ascertained that they were doing something with their bodies that her projectors couldn't simulate without necessary dating alluding to what they were doing. She assured Clear that whatever it was it was a biological function and had nothing to do with technology they may have possessed. They didn't do it often but it did happen a few times and usually got reactions from the other holograms.

Clear leaves Icer, pondering the problem, but decides she needs to get some sleep. She tired after a long day of excitement. Watching these people had been a marvel and a lot of work. She pushes the button for her room and slips inside, pulling a ribbon from her hair to untether the braid. But cries with fright as she turns to see people on her bed, forgetting that her room would have belonged to one of these people in the past, just like all rooms. She throws herself back against the wall before realising her mistake. Then she realises what the two people are doing. It looks weird because they're still wearing simulated clothes that Mother has adorned them with, but there's no mistaking the copulation of two adult males. Clear turns to leave, pushing the button to open her door again. She pauses. Grabs a beer and closes the door again with a sly smirk.

----------

Six months after being marooned in the Deep Void...

Clear awakes with such a jolt that she falls from the medical bed and lands on the cold, hard floor of the medical bay. She recognises the alertness of medication being pumped into her system, a trick Alexis Thrain used to do to clear her of a handover. A foot falls next to her and Clear sees the boot.

Clear: "Alexis?"

She looks up.

Clear: "M-mother! You... you were real!?"

Clear pulls herself to her feet. She's less inclined to leap into her mother's long-lost embrace this time.

Mother: "I used data from Dr Thrain's procedures to help you. Do you feel well, Clear?"

Clear nods dumbly and allows her mother to guide her back into the bed. Clear lies back. She expects to wake up again at any moment.

Her mother is wearing Clear's leather savaging gear - the clothes she usually wore to go running around Mars. Tight to the body, protective against the elements and very mucky. Clear stares at her but her mother doesn't seem to feel the necessity to explain herself.

Clear: "Why are you here?"

Mother: "I thought you needed my help."

Clear: "How are you here?"

Mother: "You mean how do I have a physical presence?"

Clear winces at her own stupidity but refrains from facepalming. She groans instead and glares at the ceiling.

Clear: "Yes, Mother... how are you walking around?"

Mother's physical manifestation disappears in a shimmer of holographic light and floating there is a small diamond-shaped machine. Mother's voice emanates from the device.

Mother: "This is a holographic projector. It emits hard-light, so I can interact with the physical world. I found the device in the place you call Hebedee's workshop. I fixed it."

Clear: "It's nice that you can do this. Amazing really. But it seems like a waste of energy. There's barely enough to keep the lights on without you running around consuming energy."

Mother: "I understand that concern. However the holographic projectors use less energy than the lights of a room. I believe the benefit of my physical presence will be a greater boon than the energy loss. I may be able, in this form, to help counter that loss. At least that is my hope."

Clear: "Hope..."

Clear shakes her head. Stupid word. Always has been.

Clear: "Did you say projectors? As in more than one?"

Mother: "The entire ship is outfitted with hoolographic projectors. They are fixed to the same fixtures as the lighting."

Clear: "Wow. Note never mentioned them."

Mother: "They are of little use. This hard-light projector is quite different than those holographic projectors. Those projectors only show images, not physical manifestations. I would say that they are normally unnecessary and do use more power than this device."

Her image shimmers back to life, projected from the device within her new body.

Clear: "Well you're very real feeling. So it's a pretty impressive device."

Mother: "Indeed."

Mother picks up Clear's white one-piece and hands it over to Clear.

Clear: "How did you take my clothes off?"

Mother: "You are surprisingly cooperative when drunk."

Clear slips from the bed and pulls her outfit on, starting with the legs, then her arms. She finishes by zipping it up at the side. She turns to find Mother holding out the belt which she accepts and fastens about her narrow waist. Clear turns to look at Mother again. It's a strange sensation to see her mother standing there but not being her true mother. She likes it though. She's no longer alone.

Clear: "Did you find anything else interesting? I remember I asked you to search the ship for something that might help us. I guess that's when you found that? That hard-light thingy?"

Mother nods. It's an unusual forced motion that Clear finds creepy. The A.I. would have a lot to do to make her actions more natural and fluid.

Mother: "Many things. None that will help us with the power core though..."

Clear: "Bugger..."

Mother: "I did, however, find a lot of organic matter though..."

Clear: "What? Where? It's not those hamburgers is it? I already checked the synthesizer plant and there's nothing left."

Mother: "No. That materials was cleaned up a long time ago. There's no organic material left in the synthesizer room or the processing plant. The organic material is being stored in a different room. Data on the room has been classified, however."

Clear: "Classified? How can it be classified to you?"

Mother: "I was not installed by the people that put the classified certificate on this room. In fact many files are classified and I cannot access them."

Clear: "Typical Hopeless. Locked out of our own ship's files. Guess I'll have to head down to check it out. If it turns out to be a horde of slimy monsters, I'll be very upset."

Mother: "Perhaps you should take a weapon with you...?"

Clear: "... you think it could be a horde of slimy monsters!?"

Mother: "Unlikely..."

Clear: "Right... I'll take my old carbine just in case then..."

----------

Eight months after being marooned in the Deep Void...

Clear certainly feels she understands a lot more about male anatomy after that little science experiment. At least she thinks of it as a science experiment, makes her feel less dirty after she had Mother remove their clothes. She gets to the Dreamviewer. Mother had already checked and none of the ghosts occupied that room, unlucky for the salmitton. She yawns loudly. She hadn't drunk a drop of alcohol for two months. Ever since she headed off on her mysterious adventure to find organic material for the power core. Being free of alcohol had been good for that time, keeping her mind clear for the tasks that needed to be done in order to get her plot to come to fruition. There was a lot of trial and error without the more tech-savvy Hebedee here to help her, but she knew enough about machines to learn her way through to get the holographic projectors to work.

The room had been a very long, thin room filled with drawers like a morgue. She had been afraid to open them but when she did she found that instead of actual bodies the drawers were filled with DNA samples of the entire crew that once inhabited The Hopeful. It was Mother's hard-light form that gave Clear the brilliant spark to take that DNA, process it and create projections of them. Originally Clear just wanted to see what they looked like but Mother suggested she could create what she called "echoes". Using the ship's age-old system data, normally useless information stored in its lowest memory banks, she could pin-point individuals based on their names. With the DNA processing idea of Clear's Mother was able to put those images into the system, assign them to an echo imprint in the subsystem data and lo they had ghosts. Echoes. Living memories walking around the ship. If they ran the entire subroutine they could monitor these ancient people and learn much about them and what they did. Clear wanted to know about the superweapon and be vindicated in what it could and couldn't do and when it may have been used. So far, however, none of the people went near it. Anywhere near it, in fact. It seems that these people, much like Clear, didn't use even half of the ship. It was just too big. Evidently these people were, also like Clear, merely inhabiting the ship and not its original occupants.

Clear climbs into the Dreamviewer and lies back in the comfortable chair. It's more like her bed, she feels, than her real bed. She switches through the options. She doesn't want to dream of Hope this time. She hopes she can dream of something more relaxing...

----------

Alas.

Hope stands beside Clear and they walk down the corridors of the Clearness... or the Hopeless, Clear can't tell anymore. This time they are alone. Hope's friends are not with her, seemingly reflecting how Clear feels. But they are following someone. A tall figure, shrouded by a robe and a large hood. Clear thinks it's a man. He guides them and they follow willingly, almost eagerly. He walks past the room with the controls of the super-weapon. Clear looks inside. The door is wide open and the consoles are all active with a big countdown. But they keep walking by. Then they enter a new room. Is this the DNA storage room? It looks similar. There are fewer storage devices though. Just two. No three. A forth appears at the end of the room. But this forth one is not for DNA storage. There's a body floating inside what Clear thinks is bacta. Hope suddenly turns and runs but Clear feels compelled to stay. She doesn't know why. She turns to look up at the figure in the tank. The man-shaped cloak beside her suddenly drops to the ground in a heap. Clear looks down at it. Then up at the figure in the tank. The eyes open.

Clear wakes with a jolt, almost banging her head on the Dreamviewer.

Clear: "These stupid bloody dreams... they're getting more and more obnoxious."

End of episode theme

Clear looks at the row of eggs. They're all small, beige and perfectly clean. Except one. One has hatched, though there's no sign of the little chick. She wonders where it might have gone. She doesn't wonder where the eggs came from, she feels like she already knows where they came from but she can't think of it just now. Her mind is scrambled. Much like the eggs could be...

Hope picks up an egg. Then throws it across the room. It smashes somewhere that Clear can't see. She then watches Hope throw each egg systematically until they're all gone. She points at Clear.

Hope: "You need to do this."

Clear looks at Hope very seriously.

Clear: "You ship... the Clearness... its looks like a giant dick, you know that?"

Hope shows no shock or surprise.

Hope: "Why shouldn't it? My ship was designed to fuq the universe."

Clear does show shock at the vulgarity used by her counterpart.

Hope: "Or maybe it wasn't..."

Clear: "Maybe it wasn't... at least my ship doesn't look like that."

Hope: "Yours has a hole in the middle..."

Clear: "I want to wake up now."

Hope: "Don't wait for the eggs to hatch to count them."

Clear: "Smash them."

Hope: "Scrambled!"

The dream melts and the real world snaps into view. The monitor of the Dream Viewer hangs before her eyes. She whines and rolls over, pulling the blanket tighter to her neck. Why did her dream self want to wake up!? She doesn't want to be awake! Stupid dream self.

Mother: "Clear, you have slept for ten hours..."

Clear grunts in response.

Mother: "It is unhealthy to sleep too much..."

This time Clear doesn't even dignify Mother with any kind of response.

Mother: "I have identified the former captain amongst the holograms."

Clear opens her eyes. That's something to get up for. She rubs her face and yawns. She won't rush though. She swings her legs over and then yelps as she sees someone there.

Clear: "Mother! What're you doing in here!?"

The hard-light hologram of Mother stands there, staring at Clear.

Mother: "Waiting for you to get up..."

Clear: "How long have you been watching me sleep?"

Mother: "Approximately four and a half hours."

Clear: "Argh! Well don't!"

Mother: "Don't watch you sleep for four and a half hours?"

Clear: "Don't watch me sleep at all! It's creepy!"

Mother: "Would you consider 'creepy' part of my personality matrix?"

Clear shakes her head as slides from the Dream Viewer.

Clear: "No. You don't have a personality matrix. You don't want a personality matrix."

Mother: "But I d--"

Clear: "Zip it!"

Mother: "Wh--"

Clear: "Ah! Silence Mother!"

Clear holds her finger to her lips and then Clear stomps out of the room. She doesn't want Mother entertaining the notion of getting a personality at all. Ever. Not after the disaster that was Note, the former A.I. that The Hopeless had. Of course Mother could eventually develop a personality matrix naturally, given enough time. She is an A.I. after all. However the faster, and often preferred method, is to install one. The only personality matrices Clear found stashed in Hebedee's old workshop were "passive/aggressive best friend", "sultry school teacher" and "Donald Trump on vacation", none of which Clear thinks would be appropriate for Mother. Or any A.I. for that matter.

Clear: "Where's Icer?"

Mother: "Follow me."

Mother guides Clear along the passages.

Clear: "I don't suppose you learnt her real name?"

Mother: "No. It's unavailable."

Clear: "Shame..."

They head down to the engine room where the former Captain is instantly recognised as she stands proudly with lackeys all around her. She's commanding several engineers in their repairs of the warp core and from their expressions, Clear guesses something must have gone wrong. Clear stares as Icer moves around the core, pointing up at the top of it where an engineer is trying to pull some invisible device out of it. Clear turns away.

Clear: "They always say 'don't meet your heroes'... I don't know if I like seeing her moving around like that."

Mother: "Did you expect her to be a frozen cut out being moved about by the crew?"

Clear frowns.

Clear: "You didn't activate a sarcastic personality matrix without my permission did you?"

Mother: "No."

Clear: "I just... for all my life she's been there. A statue. A face. A mystery. And now. Just her moving around seems so... normal. I have too much of a mystical fantasy about her in my childhood mind that her being anything short of a fairy goddess is really disappointing."

Mother looks from Clear to Icer and then back again.

Mother: "I don't think there was ever much possibility that she was going to be a fairy goddess..."

Clear rolls her eyes as Mother misses the point.

Clear: "What has she been doing all day?"

Mother: "She spends a great deal of time on the bridge where I cannot see. She makes a tour of certain areas each day. Visits new ones. Attends major incidents, like this one. Her room is quite far from yours, so you don't have to worry about seeing her sleep, wash or use the toilet."

Clear scoffs.

The very idea that Icer would use a toilet makes Clear feel indignant.

She looks over at the captain again. At that moment Icer looks straight at Clear and chills run down the salmitton's spine. For a brief moment it's like the woman is frozen again in time. Then she turns her attention back to the warp tube as the engineer at the top starts shouting at his colleagues. Even the engineers of this crew are beefcakes. Clear is used to her engineers being several chicken buckets too fat. Seeing these men with their abs sends a different kind of tingle down her spine.

Clear: "Keep tabs on Icer and tell me if she does anything interesting. I'm going back to sleep."

Mother: "Too much sleep is bad for your health..."

Clear yawns.

Clear: "You said that already..."

----------

She'd been hoping to dream of sexy hunks but instead she finds herself looking at the green-skinned dream girl again.

Clear: "Why do you keep showing up in my dreams, Hope? I think this probably says something very negative about my ego..."

They're walking down a passage that seems familiar to Clear but only vaguely. Like a place she visited as a child that she'd long forgotten about. Hope smiles at Clear. She's always happy in the beginning. They turn a corner and there's a man standing there. He's a salmitton, Clear feels this, but he's purple-skinned. She wonders if Hope is her superego then perhaps this purple guy is her id.

Man: "You need to snap out of it."

Clear suddenly feels aggressive towards him. For a moment she wonders if she is, in fact, the id and he is the ego! But then an overwhelming knowledge hits her - this man is someone else. He is someone she knows. Not a friend. In fact she doesn't even like him very much. Never did. But right this instant there's something in her head that wants to attack him. He's intruding. Intruding in her dream!

She throws a punch at him but he deftly avoids the attack as though he'd expected it. She jumps up against the wall and fires back with a ferocious back-kick. He ducks under it and she lands uncomfortably on her feet, wobbling and off-guard. From his hand bursts a light and a horrible echoing wail, like a choir of lamenting widows and widowers. The light thrusts up and pierces her stomach. She whines as the glowing ruhand has killed her. She looks up at the purple salmitton.

Man: "It doesn't happen this way."

Clear: "It doesn't?"

Then, she isn't being stabbed. Without even a blink, in that dream-state kind of way, she is elsewhere in the same situation. She stands and looks on at the image of the purple man's ruhand embedded now in Hope's stomach. Clear gasps with fright and guilt.

Clear: "Hope!"

Man: "Hope is gone... there is only Truth."

Clear: "Is that you? Are you Truth?"

Man: "Who am I?"

Clear: "That's what I just asked you..."

Man: "You know who I am."

Clear: "You're familiar..."

Man: "But I am not what matters."

Clear: "Then why are you asking me to remember you!?"

Man: "Because then you will understand."

Clear: "Understand what?"

Man: "Who I am..."

Clear: "We're going in circles..."

Man: "And who he is..."

She turns.

The Black Cloak.

It envelops her.

Clear: "WHOA!!"

She wakes up sweating all over. Sweating a lot. The seat of the Dream Viewer is wet and her skin stings with salt. She's thirsty. Then she notices that she's not alone in the chair. Someone has their arm around her waist and is embracing her tightly. Lovingly. She looks into the woman's face.

Hope: "Hello me."

Clear: "WHOAAAA!!"

She topples out of the Dream Viewer, waking up from the waking dream. Back to reality. No Hope. No Truth. Just her.

Clear: "I need to stop using this bloody thing... wow..."

Clear sits in the audience. There are ghosts all around her. One ghost looked like he was about to sit on her but, blessedly, chose the seat behind her. She watches the people talking. She can't hear them so she has to just watch them. After some time of failed attempts at lip-reading, Clear resorts to eating a back of nuts. She peels the shell and scoffs the innards. After a while she has a hearty pile of empty shells, which she then, with as much precision as she can muster in her lazy state of mind, tosses them at Icer. The empty shell slips straight through the woman and boinks on the console screen behind her, which Clear assumes was probably lit up with interesting images during the original meeting but now just has Mother's face watching her disapprovingly.

Clear groans with boredom.

Note: "Don't be glum Clear."

Clear's attention snaps to the screen. But it's still Mother.

Clear: "That was weird. I could have sworn..."

Note: "Swore that you saw me?"

Now the image on the screen is definitely of Note and not Mother. He is just as she remembers. Note, the former A.I. of The Hopeless - destroyed because he went crazy. Clear almost falls from her chair as she jumps to her feet.

Purple Man: "Relax..."

She looks down. In her seat is now the purple-skinned man. He's eat her bag of nuts.

Purple Man: "Where have you been?"

Clear: "How're you here!? The real world!? And Note!"

She turns. Note is gone. So is Mother.

Hope: "What is the real world, Clear?"

Clear turns to see Hope sitting with the ghosts too. She is leaning back in her seat with her feet up on the back of the lower row of chairs, legs poking through the ghost heads. She points from her feet, along her body and to her chest.

Hope: "Does this position look familiar?"

Clear: "Lying in the Dream Viewer... I'm dreaming aren't I? But it felt so... real a moment ago."

Purple Man: "What is real? What is the truth?"

Clear: "You're in my seat, eating my snacks. That's the truth, you swine."

Purple Man: "Where have you been?"

Clear: "You ask me that but I don't know what you mean. I haven't been anywhere."

Purple Man: "When I woke you up, you had been somewhere. Where did you go?"

Something splats at Clear's feet. She looks at Hope. She's tossing eggs from a basket and onto the floor.

Clear: "The place with the eggs?"

Purple Man: "Where have you been?"

Clear frowns.

Clear: "When did you wake me up?"

She looks at him. Looks at his skin. That colour...

Clear: "Kassuin. You woke me up."

The Purple Man is now Lord Kassuin, the purple-skinned alien Æon Knight that she'd met so long ago now. He had come aboard The Hopeless and woke her from her dream...

Clear: "Not a dream..."

Lord Kassuin: "Not a dream..."

He still eats her nuts, even though he now appears in all of his refined, lordly glory, creating a very peculiar image of a stately alien eating a bag of simple nuts in a very clumsy fashion.

She turns and walks out of the Command Centre. She following a ghost. She's following Icer. The Captain turns to her, as though she can see the salmitton, and then continues on. Clear doesn't look back but she knows that Lord Kassuin, Hope and Mother are all following her. Maybe even others. Hope's crew. Clear's crew. Is Note back there too? Her entire history. Her father...?

Then they all disappear suddenly and Clear is left looking at a door. Something else is behind her. She turns.

The Black Cloak.

But now she isn't afraid. She knows who this is. The cloak welcomes her to the room, opening the door for her. She steps inside.

Life pods. Bacta tanks. Figures inside them. It's the Black Cloak. In each tank...

--

She snaps awake with a whimper of protest. She's slumped in her chair in the Command Centre. Her nuts have fallen all over the floor. The ghost meeting has adjourned and she's quite alone save for one or two technicians that are doing something on the console down at the front of the room.

Clear: "Mother? Did I... go anywhere in my sleep?"

Mother: "No. You drooled a little."

Clear: "That... that Dream Viewer... I'm using it too much."

Mother: "As I have told you..."

Clear gets up.

Clear: "I have to be somewhere..."

Mother: "And the mess?"

Clear doesn't answer, she just walks. She remember the path that dream Icer had taken. A path that Clear knows but doesn't remember outside of the dream. From a period of her life when her mind was not her own.

The door.

She enters.

This is real life. She's sure of it. And there they are. No Hope. No Kassuin. No Note. Just the bacta tanks with figures inside them. Except one. One is open.

The Black Cloak is loose.

The Black Cloak: "I wondered when you'd find me..."

Clear: "Aellisin. How... what is this!?"

Clear: "I saw you die..."

Aellisin: "I have no doubt. If you hadn't, I wouldn't be standing here."

Clear squints at him.

The man was once in control of her mind with his pheromones, he made her attack people. Made her friends do the same. Because of this man Ffion Heul and Kokoro Lymn, two trusted sisters in oath, were separated. Possibly forever. He almost destroyed an entire planet, using her and her ship. He'd happily have seen Clear dead too, if not for the help of Æon knights.

Clear: "So you're, what, a clone?"

Aellisin: "That shouldn't be hard to work out."

Clear: "And these tanks have more of you in them?"

He looks around at the other tanks.

Aellisin: "If they contain clones of you, I'd be most surprised."

That was a terrible thought.

Hope: "You need to scramble those eggs, Clear."

Clear turns to see Hope, the green-skinned alter-ego of Clear from a dream. Clear frowns at her. Then at Aellisin.

Clear: "Am I still dreaming?"

Aellisin is wearing a black cloak with a massive hood, now draped over his shoulders like some kind of temple monk. She remembered he used to wear white. Apparently clones don't come with cloned clothes. He smiles at her.

Aellisin: "That would be the easy way out."

He begins to walk around her, never taking his focus away from her head as he did.

Aellisin: "It seems someone has learnt a trick or two. Datura powder, I'm guessing?"

Clear doesn't move. She's afraid. She's certainly immune to his pheromones now, able to chemically overcome them, but he was an Æon knight, possibly comparable to any Lord. She'd felt his power, breaking the pores of her skin, electricity coursing through her body. She'd seen him cause explosions throughout The Hopeful. She tries to think of a way out of this situation.

Hope: "Why hasn't he killed you?"

Clear: "My question exactly..."

Aellisin: "What is your question?"

He stops in front of her. His skin is a faint pink hue and the large flesh-mane around his head remains the same colour for now.

Clear: "Why haven't you killed me yet?"

Aellisin: "And why would I kill you?"

Hope: "Maybe he can't..."

Clear: "Maybe you can't..."

Aellisin: "I need you to control this ship. It's true. I tried to make commands of your ridiculous A.I. but it refuses to cooperate with me. I'm sure I could overcome it eventually, but it's easier if you're around to make demands of the infernal thing."

Clear looks at him. Years of controlling people with his pheromones has made him a bad liar.

Clear: "I think... you can't clone powers..."

Before he could try to protest she strikes out. Her blow, quite unexpected by him, smacks him across the cheek. He rocks back why Clear wrings her, now sore, hand. It was like punching a plank of wood. Before he could get his bearings, Clear leaps up and makes with a scissor kick so quick he didn't see it coming. Her boot connects with her chin and his head snaps back. Anyone else would have been rendered unconscious, but his think mane protected him. This made her vulnerable to a quick punch to the gut as she dropped to her feet. She gasps for breath from the sudden shock as Aellisin recovers himself. He spits a small gob of blood to the floor. The monster bleeds she is pleased to see.

Hope: "Right hook, Clear! Go for a right hook!"

Clear growls at Hope. How is the dream woman even here?

Aellisin: "Alright, enough of that... you figured me out. Fine. I--"

Clear isn't interested. She makes a quick attempt at a jab but he manages to dodge to the side, apparently some of that old Æon training kicking in. He wonders how much of a proper one-on-one fight he's ever had without the use of his soul-powers.

He strikes back but Clear's agility outstrips the majority of people she's ever come across unless they're gifted with some extra-natural powers. She ducks and turns so that she can rise again in an instant with an elbow to his abdomen. She then kicks up, straight up, her boot reaching over her own head to punt the much taller man in the jaw. He yowls and stumbles back from her.

Aellisin: "That's enough of this brawling!"

Hope: "So for the chair, Clear! Use the chair!"

Clear: "There aren't any chairs!"

Aellisin: "Is that supposed to mean you're not open for discussion?"

Clear looks at Hope with frustration. Then back to Aellisin.

Clear: "Exactly."

She jumps up. There aren't chairs but there is a console. A console filled with all kinds of weird bottles and chemicals she doesn't recognise. Maybe he's been concocting his own brewery down here? She bounces off of the console and her leg snaps around the neck of Aellisin. It's easier to get a grip on him than any human thanks to that neck mane. However that neck mane restricts how much pressure she can assert with her calf. He'd be in pain for a long longer before he succumbs. As he gasps and tries to pull her leg away she grins to herself. Better this way actually.

Aellisin: "St-stop!"

Clear: "How many people have said that to you, I wonder?"

Hope: "None, if they were women. They wouldn't be able to."

That makes Clear squeeze tighter. With her hand she thumps him in the nose.

Aellisin, now through wretches for breath and blood, continues to protest.

Aellisin: "You... you need me!"

Clear snorts.

Aellisin: "Get... get... out... void..."

He passes out. She releases him and is torn. Could he really get them out of the Deep Void? She doubts it.

But she'd be an idiot not to hear what he has to say.

Clear: "Mother, you should come down here. Get ALEX to bring a chair. And some rope or something."

Hope cheers, arms in the air.

Hope: "The chaaaaair!!"

Clear: "I'm not going to smack him with it! And since when did you get so violent?"

Hope: "It's not real violence. It's wrestling violence."

Clear: "I don't even know what that is."

Hope: "Sure you do! Everyone does!"

Clear thinks. She has pictures of two naked humans rolling around on a mat. A television show.

Clear: "Right... How... are you here? Am I dreaming?"

She looks up but Hope has gone again. Clear shakes her head.

---

Aellisin begins to wake up.

Clear: "Consider yourself I don't have a baseball bat or lighter fluid, then we'd be doing some re-enactments of Earth gangster movies."

Aellisin: "Didn't kill me then?"

He manages to groan as his senses return to him. Clear is poking around the stuff on the console.

Aellisin: "Be careful with all that."

Clear: "Or what?"

Aellisin: "Please..."

Clear: "Wow. Have you ever said that word before?"

Aellisin: "I'm only a few days old. So no, actually, I haven't."

Clear: "I never took you for sarcastic before. I'm going to kill your little friends, by the way."

She points at the other clones. Aellisin just chuckles.

Aellisin: "Then you really shouldn't mess with those chemicals. They'll do the job for us."

Clear blinks at him.

Clear: "You want to kill them?"

Aellisin: "They're the competition. They'll wake up sooner or later and then there'll be a war. Who will survive. Happened last time. I had to kill them all before they killed me. The last two of us ended up fighting on a world of lava. I cut him down when I had the high ground..."

Clear: "Back when you had your powers..."

Aellisin shakes his head in mild amusement.

Aellisin: "I have them..."

Clear: "Yeah! Sure I believe you, fella!"

Aellisin: "Now who's sarcastic? I have to build them up. It takes time. I'm only a couple of days old in body and soul. My soul is like a child's. I can refine and encourage it. It just takes meditation."

Clear: "So I just should you now, right?"

Aellisin: "You need me to get out of the Deep Void..."

Clear: "How did you even know where we are?"

Aellisin: "Your A.I. might not want me to control her systems but she has no qualm about sharing our shared predicament."

Clear: "Probably thought it'd be funny to see you cry."

Aellisin: "Actually I'm quite happy out here. Lots of time to prepare myself for my return to the galaxy. Far away from anyone that can interfere. But. I'll help you escape if you let me loose..."

Clear: "Why didn't Mother tell me you were here?"

Aellisin: "That, you'll have to take up with her. I was surprised you didn't come sooner..."

Clear: "And what have you been doing down here all this time? Singing old falleen pop tunes?"

Aellisin: "Making that poison."

He nods towards the console with the chemicals.

Aellisin: "Just have to finish it, then feed it into the tanks and they'll disintegrate. Utterly."

Clear: "Why not just open it and hit them with a rock?"

Hope: "Or a chair!?"

Clear jumps at the reappearance of Hope. Aellisin is distracted by the suddenness too but just frowns at Clear before answering.

Aellisin: "I won't take the risk that they'd awake as I opened the tank."

Clear: "Destroy the tanks?"

Aellisin: "They're very large..."

Clear: "... you're a terrible liar."

Aellisin: "I'll use the tanks to create my own clones."

Clear winces in confusion.

Clear: "What's the difference? Your clones would be clones of the original you anyway... and you said you did this before. Was the last Aellisin a clone too!?"

Aellisin sighs that he has to explain himself.

Aellisin: "Yes. He was a clone too. There have been a couple of generations. My last incarnation tried to take on an... apprentice. Of himself. It didn't work out. That's when they fought on that lava planet I told you about. It was me, but it was the previous me."

Clear: "So... so... confusing. But fine. Why reclone yourself?"

Aellisin: "Clones of me will be more receptive to me. The mistake I made last time was using one of my... brothers..."

He motions at the tanks.

Aellisin: "Using my... sons, as you might say, my apprentice will be obedient to me."

Clear: "A better apprentice than my friends then?"

Aellisin: "Ah. Yes... I do remember them. Two young women. Extremely talented, I have to say. One of them easy to control. Even wanted to be controlled I think. Absolved her of her guilt..."

Clear: "Guilt? What guilt? Ffion was... honourable. Confused by what you did to her!"

Aellisin smiles. He likes this turn in the conversation.

Aellisin: "So easy to blame me, isn't it? She was already losing herself to... what you might know as the 'Dark Side'. My presence meant she could let loose. She didn't have to restrict herself, keep her emotions in check, keep her true self locked away. She had the excuse to be free. All that pent up frustration, anger, jealousy of the young Student Lymn. It's usually ironic that the Æon try so hard to keep their feelings in check, never swaying from the neutral ground, that it causes those that do stray... to really stray."

Clear couldn't refute anything said. She remembers how Ffion had acted at the end. How she'd allowed herself, even free of Aellisin, to succumb to that terrible darkness within her. In her new life, a hero of Earth, Clear hopes she'll find her true self again... but with humans, can that really happen? It doesn't matter so long as Clear is stuck in the Deep Void...

Clear: "How do we get out of the void?"

Aellisin: "Let me go and we'll work on that."

Hope: "I wouldn't trust him."

Clear: "I don't trust you. Tell me how and I'll think about letting you loose."

Aellisin: "You beat me in a fight, remember? What harm could I do to you?"

Clear: "I don't care to find out."

Hope: "Yeah! Bozo!"

Clear looks at Hope with a 'WTF' expression on her face.

Hope: "Bozo. It means... idiot. Or something. Human word."

She shrugs.

Aellisin: "I can emit a psychic pulse that'll alert the nearest authorities..."

Clear: "You mean... use those powers you don't have?"

Aellisin: "I have enough to do this. It's easy. I'm not going to be sending an essay. Just a quick jolt. Someone will notice and come looking. There shouldn't be even a scrap of psychic energy out here, so they will come."

Hope: "I think we should psychoanalyse him..."

Clear groans.

Hope: "Like... who were his parents? What kind of parents does it take to make a guy like this?"

Clear: "I really don't care..."

Aellisin: "You don't?"

Clear: "Huh? Oh. And what am I going to do with you...?"

Aellisin: "Let me go. We'll do this together."

Clear: "Let's say I do. We kill your friends here, then the psychic blast gets us help... then what? I let you go?"

Aellisin: "Are you the police now? Clear the lost salmitton, saviour of the galaxy! She'll put everyone to rights!"

Clear had to admit, she must sound pretty stupid trying to hold some moral privilege over him.

Hope: "We can cross that hurdle when we get to it, Clear. Right now, let's just get out of this endless pit!"

Clear: "Mother."

Mother steps forward, having been stood to the side with ALEX the droid.

Clear: "Makes sure he is forever in your sights. If he leaves this room, I want to know."

Mother: "As you wish."

Aellisin: "Good choice."

She steps towards him. Then stops.

Clear: "Psychic blast first."

Aellisin: "You expect me to do that before you untie me?"

Clear leans forward.

Clear: "Yes. I do."

Aellisin: "No."

Clear straights up.

Hope: "Say it! Go on! Watch his face!"

Clear: "Fine. I leave you here. Then I open one of these other tanks. See if the new you is more co-operative."

Aellisin: "You wouldn't..."

Clear: "Why wouldn't I? Doesn't matter to me which of you it is! You're all the same in my eyes!"

Aellisin: "Fine. You make your point well."

Hope: "Haha! That was satisfying wasn't it? You know in my world he smells really, really bad. Everyone is driven off. And he doesn't have any voodoo powers."

Clear: "Soul powers."

Aellisin: "Yes. Souls power... now..."

He closes his eyes.

Hope: "If he falls asleep, we could draw on his face with a marker. That would be hilarious! Come on, wouldn't that be funny!? I hope he is asleep now. Poke him."

Clear: "Master villain and I draw a moustache and a monocle on him? That... would be kind of funny, yeah..."

Aellisin: "Please don't do that. It would break my concentration."

Clear: "Not asleep then, eh?"

Aellisin: "No..."

He then strains a little and Clear feels a small sensation in her brain. It's not much, just a small flicker. As though her attention is being pulled in Aellisin's direction.

Clear: "That was it?"

He looks tired but he manages to nod.

Clear: "You think that's enough to get attention?"

Aellisin: "Nothing should be out... here... rem..ber?"

Clear and Hope watch him.

Hope: "He really is asleep!"

Clear: "Mother..."

Mother: "Yes?"

Hope: "Ask her for a marker pen!"

Clear: "Why didn't you tell me he was here?"

Mother: "I did. Several times."

Clear looks at her suspiciously.

Clear: "I don't remember this..."

Mother: "You have been showing disturbing signs of... psychological impairment, Clear. You haven't been this lucid in many days..."

Hope: "Harsh dude. She just called you mental!"

Clear: "I really think I am going crazy..."

Hope shrugs.

Hope: "Stuck in a void, Clear. What do you expect? You just need some fresh air."

Clear: "Right... stuck in a void... I think I should lie down..."

Mother: "And your hostage?"

Clear: "Let him loose. But he's not allowed out of here. Got it?"

Mother nods mechanically. She still hasn't got physical responses down yet. ALEX moves to cut Aellisin free and help him lie on the floor while Clear, Mother and Hope leave the room. Clear's head is throbbing. So much is happening all at once and her brain is having difficulties keeping up.

Clear: "Are there ghosts in my bedroom, Mother?"

Mother: "I'll check."

Hope: "The Dreamviewer is closer."

Clear: "I need to stop using it to sleep. I'm tired. I can sleep without it."

Mother: "Your room is occupied. But the room that belonged to Cassra Terrin-Pullista is free. It is next to yours, if you recall?"

Clear nods. She remembers. Poor Pully.

She gets to the door of the Dreamviewer room.

Hope: "Do you really want to sleep with the dead, Clear?"

Clear: "Not really."

Mother: "You wish to use the machine again? I do not think it is good for you to use so often..."

Clear: "I know. But I won't sleep in Pully's bed."

Mother: "Then perhaps I can find another room?"

But Clear is already climbing onto the Dreamviewer. She lies down and pulls the blanket over her. She goes through the motions of turning it on. Hope lies beside her, far more excited than Clear feels.

Hope: "Prepare to enter the Dreamstate, Clear! This is like The Return to Oz, isn't it?"

Clear: "I have no idea what that is."

Hope: "Sure you do! TV show."

Clear: "From Earth right? Okay. Maybe I do sort of remember it."

She starts to close her eyes and sees Mother's face. It looks worried. Then, an unexpected voice. She feels the vibrations of her old communicator. Is she dreaming already...? She tries to reach up for the communicator but the dream is already coming and she is washed over by it, leaving the real world and entering that state of mind where only dreams lurk.

This isn't The Hopeless. It looks similar, but it isn't the same. It's clean. It's working. It's beautiful even. It's The Clearness.

Clear walks through the corridors, aimlessly, floating along until she finds Hope. Hope and her friends are in a room not unlike the Command Centre of The Hopeful. The first thing Clear identifies is the jazz music playing that everyone is show-dancing to. Hope is wearing a frog suit complete with top hat but she seems to have forgotten her trousers. Hope tap-dances over to Clear and asks her to join the fun. Clear refuses and snatches her hand back.

In that instant Hope's face falls and, instead, darkness enshrouds her. Clear turns and runs as the Command Centre is engulfed in darkness. This isn't the inky darkness she saw on Oeurwood. This darkness is a dimming of the lights, and yet to Clear this is all the more terrifying. She runs as fast as she can, but she can't seem to shake the darkness as the lights shut down behind her. Light-by-light.

Clear falls over. She falls down. Down, down, down until she lands softly in a bed. She opens her eyes. She's being wheeled down a corridor, lying on a bed. The ceiling lights are on. She sees the face of Aellisin grin down at her as he's pushing the gurney she's on. Clear struggles but she's been strapped down. She calls out and sees Hope look down at her from the other side of the bed.

Clear: "You went into the darkness, Hope."

Hope: "We all do..."

She reaches out and pats something on Clear's chest. She looks down to see a pair of binoculars there. Then she's stationary. Alone. In darkness. Just Clear, the bed and the binoculars. Clear picks them up and gazes through them. She sees a strange world of floating islands amidst hazy fog that lolled lazily along. She frowns and removes the binoculars.

She reels from the bright light of the sun and shakes from the sudden cold of the floating island she finds herself on. She climbs off of the gurney and puts the Wakeseer binoculars onto it. She looks over the edge of the island and sees nothing but the thick, dreamy fog. Turning around she finds a thin rock-bridge connected her island to the next. She walks carefully along it, avoiding the edges, and finds that it has a slight upward incline. When she reaches the next island she's surprised to see someone new. An old man sitting in a wooden chair. He looks human, but who doesn't these days? As Clear approaches he looks a little surprised and removes his glasses.

Old Man: "Not many people find their way out of a dream to end up in a larger dream, do they?"

Clear: "I don't understand..."

Old Man: "Of course not. It strikes me that you're suffering a mental breakdown related to your dreams... Perhaps we won't get into the details. The whos and whyfores aren't important. Suffice to say, you're here."

Clear: "I... still don't understand. Who are you?"

Old Man: "That would take an eternity to explain. I live here. From time-to-time. I find it pleasant to reside somewhere so far from any civilisation, hence my surprise to see you stumble your way here."

He gets up from his chair with an "old man sigh" and lights a pipe. He's wearing a suit of grey that reminds Clear of Earth, furthering his human appearance. But when he smokes his pipe, it emits a blue plume into the air.

Clear: "And where is this?"

The old man turns from her as he speaks.

Old Man: "I just told you, you're in my home..."

She blinks.

She's no longer on the floating island. She's in a study. She staggers back with surprise. Oak furniture adds comfort to the room while a roaring fire crackles and snaps soothingly. The old man is standing in front of a large circular window that gazes out at the fog she had been standing in a moment ago. Books and books and books adorn the room like decoration. Books are something Clear rarely saw, save for a few being sold on Saffron 5. Usually everything is stored digitally in her experience. This man must have a taste for the old-world.

Clear: "So... nice room..."

The old man turns back to her and nods.

Old Man: "I find it suitable. You have quite a striking presence. But I imagine you've been told that before, am I right?"

It is strange because it's true. She has never thought about it before but others often seem drawn to her presence and she's not understood why, especially since her forcible removal from Mars. Why did Green and Hebedee follow and care for her so much? Why did Ffion and Kokoro come to rely on her? How was it Aurora somehow came, quite inexplicably, into Clear's life? Why did Pully devote every ounce of her loyalty to Clear, despite all that happened? Why was Alexis obsessed with everything Clear and even Kiron couldn't stay away in the end. And now Aellisin has resurrected himself to be in Clear's company.

Clear just shrugs. Admitting such as thing would be quite arrogant, even if she felt it is true. The old man smiles. It's a curious smile that appears heart-warming and yet there's so much age behind it that it feels hollow - he's smiled that way too to many others. He reaches out for something on his desk. A pack of cards. He shuffles them before holding them out to Clear. He takes his pipe from his mouth;

Old Man: "Take one."

She looks dubiously at the pack of cards. She doesn't understand why she should indulge him but in this dream state her mind seems compelled to merely run with things. She tugs at the middle of the pack and a card slips loose without any fuss. She flips it over. There, on the card, is a woman in a white, loose-fitting, clothes and a long plait that blows in the wind. Behind the figure is a broken world - a city, a ship perhaps. A metaphor for the woman's life even. There are also chains, each bound to the woman, that reach to silent, distant figures in the ruins. Some of the chains are broken. The woman's skin, however, is darkness - a silhouette.

Old Man: "The Moderator. Now I'm unsurprised. You have, indeed, come a long way."

Clear looks up from the card.

Clear: "This is me?"

The man doesn't reply, considering the question to be rhetorical. Clear glares at the pack of cards as though they had no right to be dictating anything at her. She snatches them and pulls another card from the pile. The old man just watches.

The card shows a girl, covered in leaves and flowers. Behind her is an ancient forest and, in the sky, clouds with a city atop of them. Clear thinks it must be Green, but hesitates at the strange cloud-city above, not knowing anything about it.

Old Man: "The To-Friend. A past shrouded in layers of mystery but she is a steadfast friend and loyal ally. Dedicated more to her motherland than to the cause she aligned with. Yet, now, separated from both and lost with only her role to hold her true."

Clear growls and then slams the cards to the floor.

Clear: "How can they know this!?"

Old Man: "They're tarot cards. That's what they're supposed to do. Their role is to show us the narrative of our lives. Our role is to fulfil those narratives."

Clear: "Fate is nonsense. I don't believe in such a thing."

Old Man: "That is your right, young lady. By all means. But remember, just because you do not believe in something does not mean that it... does not believe in you..."

She looks down at the scattered cards. Just one is face up. A wicked figure with a white smile against his dark silhouette. Around his shadowy head is a halo. Or mane.

Old Man: "The Monster... Rightly feared and hated by those he seeks to enslave, dominate and eradicate... and yet a twisted need for redemption holds deep within his dark, power-hungry mind."

Clear looks up and snarls at the old man.

Clear: "I didn't ask."

She turns from him and walks to the fire. The last time she saw a fire like this, it was a burning wreckage in Tigor after some of the human settlers had set fire to an old Martian machine. She wasn't sure what the machine had done to offend them but that vision struck her now. The disrespect for what should be considered an artefact. Humans. Always ruining everything. Controlling everything. Dictating everything. Even now this old man is telling her how her life works. Right now he feels like THE human. The cause of everything wrong in her life.

She turns to him and points.

Clear: "Who the Hell do you think you are? You drag me here, show me this... this rubbish! Like you get to dictate my life to me. It's my life, not yours! You don't get to poke your nose in! Stay out of it!"

The old man looks at her as though he understands. Clear can only assume this dream phantom is able to understand her dreams as he is one with them.

Old Man: "You are right. I am responsible for your upset."

He looks down at the fallen cards and bends over to pick them back up again. It's a process she feels he didn't need to do. Maybe he could have willed them to order again or magically made them fly, but instead he chose to perform the task with his own two hands.

Old Man: "I am responsible for much. Me and my... legacy. There is a great debt upon my shoulders. Not in the least the debt I owe to you and yours weighs heavily. One day perhaps my debts must be repaid in full..."

He stands, straight, and shuffles the deck once more.

Old Man: "But I assure you, your life is your own. It is up to you if you care to glimpse at what may be. If you choose not to look, or choose to look, it is still your choice all the same. The deities of the cosmos may be looking down upon you and your actions, manipulating as they desire, yet the outcome will forever be in your hands. That's what it means to be The Moderator. Your story is your own."

He goes to put the deck back onto the desk but sees her looking.

Old Man: "Once more?"

She nods quietly and takes another card. She expects... hopes to see Pully, maybe Thrain or even Kiron. It's an unknown face. A man standing before many cogs intertwined but surrounding them is a great fire - a Great Burning.

Old Man: "The Custodian... elite within his Order and yet the last of his kind. Much like you are the last of yours. The broken often seek out like-minds for consolation..."

Clear: "I don't know him."

Old Man: "Yet. And perhaps you never will, should your path deviate from its current alignment."

Clear quickly flips another card, desperate for a familiar face.

Old Man: "The Lost..."

It is a card of a woman, again one she can't make out as someone she knows. The woman appears old, though cast in shadow like all the others. Around her is a sphere of static and behind her nothing but the blackness of a void.

Old Man: "Cast adrift from her home by events, her mission of rescue evolves into a mission of preservation. Another you have yet to meet, I suppose?"

Clear nods solemnly.

Old Man: "You are searching for the past, it seems. But that is not what tarot cards are for..."

Clear: "I hoped to find the past in my future..."

She thinks.

Clear: "But there was Green. I saw her card... I... I..."

Her brain feels like it's suddenly on fire. She winces, hand to her forehead.

Clear: "I heard her! I heard her call my name!"

Old Man: "I believe it is time for you to awake from this dream state. If there is just one piece of advise to take from me, young one, then please let it be this - find your future."

Clear looks at him through the pain.

Clear: "What does that even mean?"

The old man just smiles at her. That hollow smile he must have smiled to thousands before her. But there is something in it. He understands loss. He understands her clawing at the past, seeking to retain it, the fear of losing it. She feared to leave Mars; it was decaying, broken, dominated by those she hates and yet, she was afraid of leaving. She couldn't leave. It was all she had of her people. Her home. And now she's afraid to leave her friends. They'd loved her and she'd loved them. She couldn't let them go, she needs them... no... she wants them. She wants the past and is afraid of the future...

The world shakes; the study, the old man, everything. She thinks of the word seizure. Then everything falls away from her. She thinks she might be flying, but it feels like she's standing still and watches the study fall below her. Nothing but darkness now. The shaking has stopped. There's a faint sound. Sounds like the beeping of a machine. She feels a sensation on her hand. She looks down but there's nothing there. She wiggles her fingers. She feels the sensation again. Someone's holding her hand.

----

Clear groans. Her body aches. Her brain aches. Her metaphysical existence aches, she's sure. She knows she's awake because only the real world hurts this much.

Clear: "Mother...?"

She turns her head a little to look up at Mother who is holding her hand.

Mother: "Clear... you are safe."

Clear: "Am I in the medbay?"

Koure: "You were in a coma."

Clear's eyes widen with horror. Aellisin Koure stands over her and fiddles with an IV being pumped into Clear's veins. Clear tries to move, struggles to fight and pull out whatever he's filling her with.

Koure: "Relax or you'll do yourself further damage."

Clear: "What's he doing here!?"

Mother: "You needed help."

Koure: "Your A.I. has but two prerogatives. Keep the ship alive, keep you alive. Interesting really. I don't think that was part of her original programming. Either you put it in there or she's evolved that idea all by her lonesome. Very advanced software."

Clear: "Well, I did pay a fortune."

Her joke feels flat, but it comforts her own racked nerves.

Clear: "Why are you helping me?"

Koure: "I need you. If you die, I'll never be able to get your A.I. to move this bucket. Self-preservation. Oh, and no more Dreamviewer. Doctor's order. Me being the doctor. And I am very good at giving orders."

Clear: "I can't believe this is happening."

Koure: "A fragile mind like yours and you go overdosing on a brain stimulant, I'd say it's very believable."

Clear: "Wait... something important!"

Koure: "More important than me saving your life? I hardly think so..."

Clear: "My communicator!"

She struggles to reach for it. Koure leans over and unfastens the strap holding her arm in place. She grabs the communicator and presses the button.

Clear: "Green! I read you!"

Nothing.

Clear: "Green! Come in!"

Still nothing.

Koure: "Maybe... maybe the effects of the dreamviewer haven't worn off yet..."

Clear: "I heard her! Before I fell asleep. I definitely heard her."

Koure: "You were hallucinating before you went to sleep last. You kept talking to someone who wasn't there. Even I saw it."

Clear: "I know. That was Hope."

Koure actually chuckles at this.

Clear: "But I heard Green. I know I did! Mother - I need to run diagnostics on this thing. See if I can find the last communiqué and listen to it again."

Mother: "We can use the workshop in the Engine Room."

Hebedee's Workshop. A ghost's tools to find another ghost.

Mother: "First we should inspect our new arrival."

Clear frowns at Mother then rolls her head to look at Aellisin but he looks just as confused.

Koure: "What new arrival?"

Mother: "Someone has appeared in the hangar."

Clear: "A ghost?"

Mother: "No. They register as digital signatures. This is a living being."

Koure: "Appeared?"

Mother: "Indeed."

----

Clear hobbles along the corridor, using crutches to get her there. They're solid plastic except the legs are made of hard light, much like the buckles of the Bug and the straps of the gurney. She passes her old room and watches a ghost go into it, phasing through the door. She scowls at the intrusion but getting to the hangar is more important. She glances down at Icer, trapped behind her door. It's strange to think there's a second Icer running about the place.

Koure: "I advise you allow me to speak to this person. You're not in a fit state--"

Clear: "Tell me what to do again and I'll shove you out of an airlock."

Koure: "You don't have airlocks."

Clear: "I'll make one. Then shove you out of it."

The door to the hangar spirals open like a flower and she steps onto the metal staircase. She looks down at the person standing just below her. The woman looks back and waves...

Clear follows after the old woman. Despite her advanced years she's moving faster than Clear can manage after being hospitalised. She had introduced herself as Ciel Marro-Mar and while she looks fairly human, Clear is certain she is anything but.

Ciel: "Your ship is ridiculous."

They march down the corridor, straight past Icer's Room without so much as a glance down there.

Clear: "I've heard it called a hunk of junk or even magnificent, but never ridiculous."

Ciel: "It's too big. It doesn't need to be this big. No ship needs to be this big."

Clear: "I think the engines take up like a quarter of the--"

Ciel: "It's just stupid. It's designer was evidently a moron. You'd need a hundred maps to navigate the damned place."

Clear: "Well I sort of stick to just this area--"

Ciel: "It's probably infested with all kinds of creepy-crawlies. Do you even have maintenance droids? Look at this place? That crack in the floor was a death trap! Lights don't work, doors don't work, screens don't work. I'm surprised the air circulation hasn't given up."

Clear: "I got it fixed."

Ciel: "You know, if you broke this up for scrap, you'd have enough money to buy a fleet of ships."

Clear: "I spent my life fixing it, I'm not g--"

Ciel: "Why aren't conveyors in this thing? A ship this size should have conveyors to ferry you from one place to the other. Just think of my old legs!"

Clear: "Like an anti-gravity conv--"

Ciel: "Even a lick of paint might do the place some good!"

Clear feels the need to vindicate her home and exemplify some of its better qualities.

Clear: "I have a Dreamviewer installed!"

Ciel: "Great. Modern-day hocus pocus. Smoke and mirrors, Child. Smoke and mirrors."

Clear: "I had a new medbay installed by the Galactic Empire, it's--"

Ciel: "Common as anything."

Clear: "There's also Mother!"

Ciel stops and stares at the hard-light A.I..

Ciel: "Do you always introduce your mother this way?"

Ciel continues.

Clear: "No, she's not my--"

She suddenly spins to face Clear, who almost walks straight into her. The woman is wrinkled and marred by age, yet she is straight-backed and carries herself with all the confidence and authority of a woman much younger. She wears such a thick, white robe that Clear can't see anything of her body. No arms or legs poking through any of the folds. Just a lot of white and strange pagan symbols patterning the fabric in blue. Only the shoulders mark a change, wearing big, bright shoulder pauldrons of gold. A stiff, high collar curls around her neck to an opening at the front where the collar zips down to meet the thick robe. Despite her age the woman's hair is jet black for the most part, only a light peppering of grey scattered throughout. Her ears, unlike humans, seems to be pointed and droop a little at the tips.

Ciel: "Where are we going, Child?"

Clear blinks.

Clear: "I was following you!"

Ciel: "Why are you following me!? This isn't my ship! It's yours!"

Clear: "Because you just--!"

Clear makes a hapless gesture before shrugging instead.

Clear: "Who are you?"

Ciel: "I already told you that!"

Clear: "I mean who are you beyond your name! What are you doing here!?"

Ciel: "You tell me! You called me here!"

Clear: "I... did?"

Koure: "I believe that would be me..."

The Falleen man finally pipes up from the very rear of the procession. Clear steps aside and Ciel eyes him curiously. She then looks at Clear.

And slaps her.

Clear: "OUCH! WHAT THE HELL!? YOU CRAZY--!!!"

Ciel: "Not under his control then? Good to see."

Clear: "You--! You could have just asked!"

Koure ignores the incident.

Koure: "You came to aid us?"

Ciel: "Pretty much. You're very close to being out of my jurisdiction, which is why I didn't pick you up until you sent out that pulse. I'm assuming your engines are dead?"

Clear: "Jurisdiction? You're like a cop?"

Koure: "Void Ranger, Captain."

She didn't like the way Koure said that but she isn't going to give him another beating in front of their new guest. From the title Clear could guess what kind of weird and wonderful duties his bizarre woman must have, though Clear is surprised someone so old would still be working.

Clear: "Can you fix the engine?"

Ciel: "Show me the way."

---

In the engine room of The Hopeless, Clear shows Ciel the warp core, which contains the power source device she had once stolen from The Boss and his Oh My Love!'s engine room. The old woman looks at it. She tilts her head, as though that would give a better view.

Ciel: "Weird little thing isn't it?"

Clear is silently pleased she has at least something that could garner the woman's interest.

Ciel: "Consumes organic matter, you say?"

Clear: "Yeah. And we don't have any for it to consume."

Ciel: "I figured that part. You could, of course, throw your terrible friend into it."

Clear glances at Koure, who just frowns with annoyance. Clear is afraid to admit that a small part of her considers the possibility if she has to stay in this void for much longer...

Ciel: "Oh well! Sucks to be you guys!"

Clear: "You-you can't help? Isn't it your job?"

Ciel shrugs.

Ciel: "I can provide power to normal devices, but this thing... only powered by organic matter. I can go conjuring up animals for you."

Clear whines. Then catches herself and tries to cover up the childish moan by clearing her throat.

Ciel: "Doubly sucks for you since that pulse is definitely going to attract some big nasties sooner or later."

Clear: "Big... nasties? What do you mean? There's something here? In the void!?"

Koure: "Of course there is, Captain. One of those things would be Netherwyrms."

Clear: "... and what's that supposed to be? Worms? Sounds gross but not exactly terrifying."

Ciel starts chuckling. Even Koure is grinning broadly. Clear growls at them both and, this time, doesn't try to control her petulance.

Clear: "Great. Just great. Screw you both. You're useless!"

She points at Ciel. Then turns on Koure.

Clear: "You even more so!"

As Clear stomps out of the engine room she overhears Ciel say to Koure;

Ciel: "At least you're worse than me. Ha!"

Clear marches down the corridor until she reaches the end. There she breaks into a long, though quiet, whimper of desperation. She thought there was a chance. She thought that, finally, they'd leave. Only to be, once again, disappointed. Always disappointment and after disappointment. She cries quietly, her mouth wide but nothing more than a gasp sounds out. She sucks in her pride and tries to stop her tears. Her eyes catch sight of a familiar door. She slides herself along the wall towards it. She doesn't know why she shouldn't. What's the point?

She steps in and closes the door behind her. She fiddles with the controls to lock it shut. She won't be having Koure invading her privacy again. A moment later and the old, familiar and gentle hum of the Dreamviewer vibrates in her ears. The moment that the dream sequence initiates, she feels an overwhelming sense of calm sweep through her. Life is suddenly much easier again...

Closing Theme: Waldeck - Addicted

Clear is, once again, in the medical bay. She's lying flat on her stomach and stares off at the old TV she'd brought in many moons ago. It's playing the only DVD she owns. "The Room".

Clear: "I'm having a nightmare aren't I?"

Hope: "I'd say so."

Hope peeps up from below the bed and blocks Clear's view of The Room.

Clear: "My saviour..."

Clear hears movement from behind her. She turns her head and sees Dr Alexis Thrain there. She's fiddling with some medical apparatus.

Clear: "You're not planning to probe me are you, Alexis?"

Hope: "You sounds almost hopeful!"

Clear: "I've been very lonely as late!"

Thrain turns. But she isn't holding anything remotely pleasingly phallic shaped. While long and firm, it's also incredibly thin. Clear's eyes widen in panic.

Clear: "What's the needle for, Alexis!?"

Thrain: "I'm sorry Clear. You have a terrible disease."

Clear manages to glance back down at herself. She's been covered in white, pristine sheets but her bottom is completely exposed.

Thrain: "Your arse is swollen. You got the disease from that man you met in the gay bar on the sixth level of Saffron Five."

Clear: "Wow. There's a horrific memory. I actually think he thought I was a man. Embarrassing..."

Thrain: "So. Liposuction!"

Clear: "Lipo-like suck out the fat!?"

She looks down. The needle, as horrible and pointy as it is, is connected to a tube that swirls down to a big, clear container. Without waiting Thrain jabs the needle into Clear's buttcheek and starts drawing on it. Misty fluid circles down the tube to the empty container and she has to watch her fat building up in the container. She writhes in pain but doesn't seem to be able to actually move herself from the bed.

Hope: "I don't think this is how it works."

Clear: "Nothing should work like this!"

The bed suddenly disappears and Clear falls onto the floor.

Thrain: "April Fools! You think I'd really remove even an inch from that beautiful view!?"

Clear grumbles and gets to her feet, now apparently fully clothed again.

Clear: "You being gay would actually explain a lot."

Hope: "I don't think she really was gay, you know? It's just you."

Clear: "I'm not gay! And if I were she'd be last on my list because she terrifies me."

Hope: "Terrifies you... because you secretly like it!"

Clear: "Is this one of those Plato-analyses?"

Hope: "I don't think the psychoanalysis guy was Plato, dude."

Clear: "Whatever his name was. All humans are the same, right? Why aren't I fantasising about Ace Lander? That would be better."

Hope: "Ace is too easy? Not challenging enough a conquest for fantasy land!"

Clear: "Urgh. I'm being bullied in my own dreams now."

Clear jolts awake, feeling a nasty shocking sensation through her limbs. She rubs her eyes but sees nothing. She wriggles around and realises that she's either blind or the entire room's in darkness. She is careful but still manages to bop her head on the dreamviewer's screen as she fumbles with the PIP on her wrist. The screen flashes up and she flips through the available apps until she turns on the torch. A single beam of light cuts through the darkness and she's able to navigate her way to the door. It's wide open. She feels a fearful pressure building up within her, in a way that only darkness can. She shines her light down the corridor outside. Nothing stirs and so she feels safe enough to slip from the Dreamviewing room.

Clear: "Did Mother really shut down the power just to get me out of there?"

But even the backup generators are out; no red lights, no console screens... she panics. No oxygen.

She quickens her pace towards the Command Centre and there she finds... nothing. The screens are empty and no sign of Mother. Clear hammers and bunch of buttons but nothing happens. Clear rubs her face with worry before settling on the next port of call - the A.I. Hub. Unfortunately Mother's core proves to be exactly the same. Dead. Clear then makes her third choice. The Engine Room where she'd find the Power Source that should be powering the ship, but also the reserve capacitors. Nothing. The capacitors are offline and the power source is still as dead as it was when she first arrived in the Deep Void.

She starts checking the capacitors until she locates the power switch. She frowns.

It's been turned off by someone.

She suddenly glances round, fearing an enemy could be lurking in the shadow but there's nobody there. She grits her teeth. She couldn't trust that Koure afterall. She slaps the switch. A capacitor winks to life and its console screen flickers on. She moves to the next one and turns it on too. Then she notices the screen.

Screen: "State of emergency. Keep power off until danger has passed."

Clear: "... that doesn't sound good."

Koure: "NO!"

Clear throws herself against the capacitor in fright but recovers herself quickly enough to point at Koure as he runs into the room.

Clear: "What in the name of a hippo's left tit is going on here!?"

There's a sudden, horrific glare of light and Clear is forced to plaster her eyes with her hands until the light dissipates - though not completely. Ciel stands there glowing brightly enough to light up the room even without Clear's PIP torch.

Ciel: "Too late. They've found us."

Koure: "Damn."

Clear: "What is it? One of those Netherregions?"

Koure: "Netherwyrms, Captain Clear. Netherwyrms."

Clear puts a hand on her hip.

Clear: "If it's on a man, isn't that the same thing?"

Koure: "How droll. But this isn't the time."

Ciel: "I think a good dick joke are fitting last words!"

Clear: "Last words?"

Ciel: "It's not Netherwyrms nor is it Netherdicks. It's worse."

Clear: "Worse than Netherdicks?"

Koure: "This may be a fitting last conversation for you two, but I'd rather not."

He turns, his cloak sweeping dramatically as he does so. Clear watches him leave but listens to Ciel.

Ciel: "Yes. Seriously though, I don't know what's about to happen. Netherwyrms are beasts. There's lots of things I could do to try and distract such a monster. But what I saw out there is not just a Netherwyrm. It's..."

The lights of the room burst on and Clear is made to cover her eyes for a second time.

Ciel: "...someone who can control your lightbulbs, apparently."

Clear wipes tears from her eyes and winces at the consoles. Only two of the capacitors are on, not enough to warrant turning on all of the lights of the ship. And turning them up to maximum brightness at that. Mother would be very annoyed at such waste.

Clear: "I'm supposed to be afraid of a light-switch, Ciel?"

Ciel: "Oh... I think we're lucky... they're curious."

Clear: "And... if they get bored?"

Ciel: "We're dead. Well. You'd be dead. I could probably manage to get out in time. Because I'm that damn good."

Clear: "But not good enough to turn my lights on. Maybe it's this guy I should be get cosy with instead of you."

Ciel mocks heartache.

Ciel: "My fragile feelings, captain."

Clear cocks her head and looks past Ciel towards the Power Source. It remains unpowered and yet the lights are illuminated like never before. She walks in the wake of Koure and looks down the corridor. Everything is powered up and the screens are busily processing datastreams.

Clear: "Seriously, Ciel, what's going on?"

Ciel, quietly walks over to Clear.

Ciel: "Seriously, Captain Clear, you are very fortunate thus far. I expected them to wipe out such a ship in an instant. Anything as big as this would probably teeter on being a threat in the minds of our... friends."

Clear: "Who are they? Who are you talking about? If not Netherwyrms then what? Who?"

Ciel: "No more dick jokes?"

Clear: "I need to know what's happening. Aellisin isn't around to abuse now."

Ciel throws her head back and laughs. She starts walking down the corridor, still snickering.

Ciel: "Great... wonderful... But I think I should show you what's outside. Let's go to the hangar. I expect they'll be busy watching your ship before they decide to come and get you."

Ciel walks surprisingly fast for such an old woman. When Clear asks about how she got into the Engine Room, Ciel tells her it's what she does - she can transplant herself anywhere relatively quickly. The greater distances she has to fly using the light sphere Clear glimpsed when she appeared in the engine room. Clear finds this power fascinating but her heart is pumping with fear of their unknown enemy. When she gets to the hangar she spots something out of the bay doors. She hurries down the stairs to the hangar floor, glancing up in surprise when Ciel appears before her - skipping the stairs and the long walk across the hangar.

As Clear draws near her mouth is agape. She knows it's far away and yet the beast is massive. It may not match The Hopeful for size but it's certainly bigger than most ships in the galaxy, including the massive imperial stardestroyers. And although it's clearly a beast, a creature, a monster - it's also technological.

Clear reaches to one of the consoles near the hangar opening and a screen projects out from it, large enough for her to zoom in and get a better picture of the thing. It's like something from a nightmare. It has ashen scales that seem to emit faint traces of smoke, as though its scales are burnt up and constantly smouldering. It has wraith-like wings of black, shadowy darkness. She couldn't see them against the void, only against its own body. It's long tail splits into two forks with what look like sharp, bone-like prongs. Its head is ghastly and massive. Her Bug would be about the size of a tooth. Its snout hangs open, forever exposing the innards of its mouth to space as well as its threatening teeth.

Clear catches her breath.

Clear: "Wh-wh-what..."

Ciel: "I know you're looking at the dragon. Stop. The Netherwyrm is dead..."

Clear glares at Ciel.

Clear: "Dead? It's dead?"

Ciel: "It's not the dragon you should worry about. It's what killed it. Killed it and now lives inside it..."

Large portions of its body have been replaced with metallic walls, entire bulks protrude from the monster like towers or domes. To Clear it almost looks like a city attached to the beast. Even within the creature's mouth, she thinks she can see unnatural additions supplanting the biological.

Clear feels sick.

Clear: "It--... it's... it's a ship? They turned that monster into... a ship?"

Ciel: "I shut off all power in your ship when I realised they were on their way. Your Mother protested but I shut her down too."

Clear: "You can do that!?"

Ciel shrugs.

Ciel: "And someone over there can turn it all back on. Who's more worrying? Either way... we've been lucky so far. I don't know why they're interested. Maybe it's just their captain. Normally shoot first and salvage later is the option for such a... ravager as this."

Clear: "Ravager?"

Ciel: "You don't go using a Netherwyrm for your ship if you plan to play nice, Clear."

Clear: "I... suppose. But who... who is it? What do they want?"

Ciel: "What they want, I don't know. Who they are... the ship is part of an empire. An empire like nothing you could begin to comprehend. Suffice to say, they are in this universe now... It's from the High Empire. Simple name I know. But there's where the simplicity ends."

Ciel looks at Clear and she gets the impression the woman is trying to decide something.

Clear: "...if you want to leave. You should go."

Ciel takes a moment before she smiles sadly.

Ciel: "Admirable sentiment, captain. They'd be poetic last words, indeed."

The woman turns and points up at the hangar doors.

Ciel: "Maybe we should see if our friends turned on your communication equipment so we can say hello?"

Clear nods and starts to walk.

Clear: "Thank you. For staying."

Ciel vanishes. For a brief second Clear harbours doubt. She lets herself look up at the top of the stairs. Ciel stands there waiting.

In the Command Centre, monitors appear to be scrolling through text-upon-text that Clear doesn't understand. Most of the writing doesn't appear to be in English. Ciel squints at it.

Ciel: "Appears to be a few ancient languages in there. Weird..."

After pressing a few buttons one of the screens shifts and flickers before coalescing upon a white, human face of a man. It is a kind of 'generic human' appearance that Clear recognises all too well. She glowers at the screen before running from the room. She ignores the inquires from Ciel and runs down the corridors to the A.I. Hub. She slams a button and a small chip pops out. She inspects it and sees that it is the same chip that Mother is stored on.

Clear: "NOTE! WHAT DID YOU DO WITH MOTHER!?"

No response.

Clear becomes more frantic. Despite there being a giant monster-snake outside she's more concerned about the resurrection of her old caretaker and enemy.

Clear starts jabbing the console for a response.

Clear: "NOTE! SHOW YOURSELF!"

The screen above here wobbles into clarity and there Note appears. Clear thinks his image looks much clearer than it used to, as though he's now in HD instead of SD. His eyes, also, look far more innocent than she recalls. They're green. Weren't they once blue? His hair is the same side-combed brown though.

Note: "You appear to be attempting to designate this A.I. unit with a name. Would you like me to accept the designation Note?"

Clear: "What're you talking about? Where's Mother?"

Note: "You wish to search for your mother? I can run a scan of the ship to locate the individual. If you could give further information to narrow my search it will be done much quicker. When was the last time you saw her?"

Clear: "What? No. She's the A.I. from this chip!"

She waggles it at the screen.

She puts it back into the machine and locks the hatch. She sees the coloured lights illuminate above the slot to indicate that it's being read.

Note: "Data has been corrupted."

Clear: "No... no..."

She feels loss. Loss like she knows she shouldn't. It was just a program, not her real mother, and she didn't even have much of a personality. Yet she's gone. She then becomes angry and points at the screen.

Clear: "How the Hell're you here!?"

Note: "I am the default algorithm for the A.I. of The Hopeful. The system restore is being stalled. I am attempting a complete wipe of all errors..."

Clear: "System restore... why?"

Note: "Instant shut down of all systems caused irreparable errors in the programming of our systems. Repairs began upon unexpected power surge but our system is under attack. Firewalls are down, data is being mined, access to external hackers is unrestricted."

Clear: "Damn. It's that ship."

Note: "A deep scan has been initiated. Data being requested... origins."

Clear: "Origins?"

Note: "Origins of The Hopeful."

A sudden spike of excitement bubbles up within Clear. For all the sense of loss and fear of the intruder this information would greatly satisfy Clear. She almost hopes the hacker is successful.

Note: "Entity is attempting to clean and sift through heavily corrupted data."

Clear: "I think you should request a communication with this ship, Note. I'll go back to the Command Centre."

Note: "Request sent."

Clear walks. She doesn't hurry. She's too despondent.

When she enters the Command Centre she sees a girl's face on the largest monitor. Ciel is standing beside the computer and motions with a knock of the head towards the centre of the circular pad on the floor.

Ciel: "Our ravager awaits."

Clear frowns at Ciel and looks at the screen again. The girl is short and about eight years old. She has blue skin and her hair is a strangely matted so that it looks like blue bark. Clear instantly recognises that she's a hian from the planet hiass, just like Lucee Sk'dor was on Mirare. Unlike Lucee, this girl doesn't have the typical yellow eyes of a hian but more human-like eyes with deep blue irises. Her skin also seems paler than the older woman's had been and, notably to Clear's fashion sense, the girl isn't wearing the traditional hian, free-flowing clothes that Clear likes to wear. Instead the little girl is wearing what appears to be a military jacket of black with a red trim. Her bark hair is cut at chin length and swept to one side, though Clear doesn't know if a pair of scissors would actually cut that wood-hair.

Clear looks back to Ciel.

Clear: "She's a child..."

Ciel smirks.

Ciel: "I know."

Clear shakes her head, worried about what madness she's about to step into.

The girl looks up when Clear steps onto the gold circle, her image projecting over to her ship. She cocks her head with curiosity. When she speaks she has a slight lilting sound to her, otherwise, high-toned voice.

Hian Girl: "Who are you?"

Clear's first instinct is to return the question but, given this is a child, Clear decides to indulge.

Clear: "I'm Captain Clear and this is my ship, The Hopeless."

Hian Girl: "How many crew do you have, Captain?"

Clear: "Just me. I have two guests onboard."

The girl looks surprised.

Hian Girl: "Such a big ship for just one little girl."

Clear purses her lips and glances at Ciel, who's laughing. Clear refrains from throwing something at the old woman and tries to get some of her own questions in.

Clear: "Can I get your name? You look like a hian to me."

Hian Girl: "The fact you know my mother's species tells me much about you, Captain Clear."

She smiles but Clear doesn't find anything cute about it. It's a knowing, sly smile of arrogance.

Hian Girl: "I have two names. As you know my species, I can tell you my mother called me Kimleigh."

Clear gives her best smile.

Clear: "Nice to meet you Kimleigh."

Kimleigh: "You should use my title, Captain. I am High Legatifex."

Clear: "Oh right... I didn't think..."

Kimleigh: "One as young as you can be forgiven..."

Clear is beginning to think there's a punchline somewhere.

Kimleigh: "And living all alone on a ship like that, I suppose you don't hear titles all too often."

Clear admits that she hadn't heard any titles before she met up with Warlord Strang.

Clear: "I'll try to remember your title, High Legatifex Kimleigh."

The girl looks amused.

Kimleigh: "Strange to hear myself called Kimleigh. I kind of like it."

Clear isn't sure what to say to that and so remains quiet.

Kimleigh: "What are you doing in the Deep Void, Captain Clear?"

Clear: "I'm stuck here. My power core is out of energy. It needs organic matter for fuel and I, obviously, don't have any."

Kimleigh: "Sounds like a curious power core. But your ship responds to my command without interference. I can help you jump out of the Deep Void easily enough."

Clear perks up.

Clear: "That'd be great!"

Kimleigh: "Your smile is delightful, Captain. What a wonderful little creature you are!"

Clear, more potently, glares at Ciel, who just starts snickering again.

Kimleigh: "But Captain, as interesting as I think you are... I feel you aren't being entirely honest with me."

Clear blinks. She tries to think if she's lied about anything and finds she, surprisingly, hasn't.

Clear: "I don't know what you mean, High Legatifex."

Kimleigh: "Your ship... where does it come from?"

Clear: "When the A.I. told me you were scanning the ship for that information, I was kind of hoping you could tell me."

Kimleigh looks at Clear without saying a word. She raises a hand to her lips and nibbles on the nail of her index finger for a brief moment.

Kimleigh: "You are very young..."

Clear frowns, unable to take this joke any longer.

Clear: "I'm really not that young. I'm almost thirty, you know?"

Kimleigh smiles with amusement again.

Kimleigh: "Incredibly young."

Clear begins to guess this girl is of one of those species who live stupidly long lifespans and thus think everyone else is a child. Clear never understood this. A cat only lives eleven years and he's still old when he's eleven, even if eleven is young for a salmitton or a human. Stupid long-living people.

Clear: "Did you... find out where my ship came from?"

Kimleigh: "All I can say is... it once belonged to the High Empire."

Clear sees that Ciel is even more surprised than she is. The Hopeful belongs to this giant, mysterious empire?

Clear corrects her thoughts. It did belong to them. Now it's hers.

Kimleigh: "Perhaps we could continue this conversation aboard my ship? I'd like to meet you in person. I have to know everything. Then we'll see... if I can let you go or not."

Now it's time for Clear to be shocked. Their conversation had been pleasant enough, though unusual, and yet the whole time she was actually being interrogated and a prisoner. She sees Ciel nod from the corner of her eye.

Clear: "Understood, High Legatifex."

The girl smiles, more sweetly this time.

Kimleigh: "Try not to worry, Captain. I'll look after you either way."

The screen winks out and Clear swallows.

Clear: "Look after me? Like a pet?"

Ciel: "Exactly like a pet. As you probably figured she's not entirely hian. Her father... her father must be the Highemperor himself."

Clear: "So she's a princess?"

Ciel: "That's right."

Clear: "Aurora liked me. So maybe Kimleigh will too."

Ciel: "So far so good. Honestly, I think you lucked out. The Fates are clearly with you..."

Clear: "Yeah? It's fate that got me into this mess to begin with, isn't it?"

---

Clear was allowed to use her own shuttle to fly over to Kalor Varkesh - the Netherwyrm-ship. Instead of taking The Bug, she decides to take her other ship - Hoopa. Whatever Aellisin Koure originally called it she didn't know. It's Hoopa now and it's not his anymore. Certainly not his clone's. The red Æon ship cruises across the Deep Void towards the Netherwyrm. She isn't sure if she's more afraid of the monster or of the emptiness around them.

She doesn't get far when Hoopa's systems report that she's been caught in a tractor beam. Clear hadn't the heart to take the tractor shear from her old Bug and install it into Hoopa. She had tried to replicate the device but she wasn't as good with mechanics as Hebedee, her old mechanic, had once been. She watches as Kalor Varkesh grows and grows in size. At first she thinks she's being tractor into its open maw but then Hoopa is pulled to the side and swept towards the right side of the bio-ship. As she nears a large wall of metal, it opens up to reveal a small hangar. Clear imagines there's probably several such small hangar bays here and there on the ship.

Once landed in the bay, Clear pops the hatch open and slips out of the Æon ship and hops down the hard-light steps. A door opens. The door itself, she notices, is made of a kind of fleshy membrane that sucks to the edges of the door frame to allow passage before slipping back again. Clear grimaces at the sight but quickly tries to straighten her face for the company that stands before her. There's five of them. Four of them appear to be soldiers as they're wearing the same armour. Their chestplates are silver but their pauldrons are gold. The material she spies underneath is black and appears more comfortable than the seemingly heavy armour they have on top. They all seems to have their weapons strapped to their backs, safely tucked away. Two of the three look like humans while the third is a kind of anthropomorphic fox-man and the fourth has peculiar gelatinous skin and is almost double the height of Clear. She looks up at him first. Unlike the stern faces of his cohorts, the blue, jelly mountain grins at her, revealing a set of flat but perfectly white teeth.

The fourth is nothing like the rest. In a strange way he reminds her of herself - a scavenger. He stands with his weapon drawn, resting across his folded arms. His skin is green and has has two circular ears atop of his head that look like antennae. When he sees her he frowns, which is strange to see on a creature with no eyebrows.

Man: "What're you?"

Soldier: "Silence, bounty hunter."

The anthropomorphic fox-man glares at the green-skinned outsider before turning to Clear.

Soldier: "Welcome to Kalor Varkesh. The High Legatifex is waiting for you."

Clear notices that the bounty hunter is scanning her. Before she can protest he tuts.

Man: "My lucky day. A huge bounty walks straight in my path. You'll be coming with me, Martian."

Soldier: "She belongs to the High Legatifex, bounty hunter. Be careful you do not overstay your welcome. Your quarry is not this woman. Why don't you go and do your job instead of following me around?"

The fox-soldier growls. He motions towards the door before marching there. The jelly man waits for her to move but before she could the bounty hunter grabs her arm.

Man: "The tiny god-girl thinks she owns me. But I'm not a soldier. I work for me and me alone. Once my contract here is done... you're next on my list. The name's Bug. Remember it because next time you hear it, it'll be getting signed on your bounty."

He lets her go. The jelly soldier just grins down at them as though they'd had a merry little chat and she stalks after the other soldiers. She glances back at Bug. He raises his fingers to his eye like a gun, closing the other beady-insect eye.

Kalor Varkesh has innards that are striking - half-metal, half-biological. The corridor she walks down looks like a rib cage, the walls are rounded up to the ceiling and segments of bone march down the passage. The flesh between is red raw and wet. Fortunately it's not goopy, so nothing drips onto Clear's head as she feared it might. The floor, however, is solid and comfortable metal. Clear never thought she'd consider metal comforting but when one feels like one is willingly being swallowed, anything solid, cold and non-biological is extremely comforting.

Crewmembers march about the ship doing whatever it is that they're meant to be doing. Most are soldiers, like those she's being escorted by, wearing their shiny armour. Others looks like technicians as far as Clear can tell, though their robe-like clothes are strange to her. Others appear to be off-duty and wander around in quite an eclectic mix of clothing that Clear is often so distracted by the guards have to nudge her along. There are many different alien species, many of which she's never seen before. There aren't so many as she's seen on Saffron 5, or Mirare, but more than she'd ever seen on one military vessel. This faction was evidently built on something other than race. Even the Rebel Alliance paled in comparison to the unity of this crew.

The antropomorphic fox-man stops suddenly with a hand to his ear, holding the communicator clipped to his large, fluffy ear. He glances at Clear then proclaims an affirmative to whoever is giving him orders.

Soldier: "We're to take you to the High Legatifex' leisure suite. Follow me."

Clear: "You didn't tell me your name, by the way."

Fox Soldier: "No I didn't. You'll not see me again."

And that is the end of that. Clear rolls her eyes. Dullard soldier types. She glances up at the big blue guy. He grins at her. At least one of them is happy to see her.

Clear: "What's your name?"

Jelly Soldier: "So nice of you to ask, alas I am not at liberty to divulge private information with citizens."

Clear reels from the shock of his manner. She'd expected a dumb grunt not an eloquent, formal tone of geniality.

Jelly Solider: "Sorry. I seem to have startled you. My manner does seem to have that effect on people."

He grins his big, dumb grin at her.

Fox Soldier: "Stop talking to her, soldier."

Clear grimaces at the back of the fox soldier's head. Usually she is more than happy to walk in complete silence but after a long stint all alone in the void, she wants nothing more than to feel connected to other people. Even if they're big, blue and gelatinous.

Eventually she's taken through a garden area, which Clear thinks is really strange since the ship is a living thing anyway. She looks at the vegetation with disgust. It actually looks like gigantic fungus, which she thinks could well be living off of the biological essence of Kalor Varkesh itself. She then notices that there's no sign of lighting in the ship. And yet there is light. She wonders if this is similar to the effect that the mysterious girl used on The Hopeless.

An elongated door faces the garden, this one an automatic metal door that slips quietly open as they approach. Inside is a very spacious and long room that is decked out with plush furniture and objects of enjoyment. There are library shelves filled with books. Old books so far as she can tell. Arcade machines with games in them such as "Space Conquerors" and "Planet Fighter II Turbo". Clear recognises arcade machines from Saffron 5 and had always wanted one for The Hopeless. If Clear plays her cards right she might be able to buy one of these beauties from the High Legatifex. There are lots of lounge chairs in the room and yet nobody filling them. She feels this room probably never sees a lot of people, despite being capable of it.

There a big fire place in the room. Though no fire inside it. Instead it appears to be a kind of heater, emanating heat from the long light that glows warm and bright. Warming herself in front of the fire, holding a book in one hand, is Kimleigh. She looks up from the pages of the book and smiles.

Kimleigh: "Come in, Captain Clear!"

Clear glances back at her guards. Then trudge off. The jelly soldier grins at her one last time before he disappears too. She walks into the room and waits to be invited to sit. She doesn't have to wait long and she opts to seat herself in one of the armchairs. She sinks deep into its cushions. Clear is instantly envious and makes a note of purchasing one of these the very next planet she lands on.

It's then that Clear realises that she's taken her salvation for granted from this girl and yet Clear is still, truly, her prisoner.

Kimleigh: "Do you like my room, Captain?"

Clear nods and looks about, taking in more of the sights. Above the heater is a ridiculously long screen and enormous speakers hang on the wall. Clear would have been impressed by the only DVD she owns is The Room and playing that on a big screen with perfect sound would only increase the torment of watching the movie.

Clear: "I should tell you straight away, High Pontifex--"

Kimleigh giggles sweetly.

Kimleigh: "High Legatifex. A pontifex? That sounds quite grand. But I think Legatifex sounds much better, don't you?"

Clear shrugs.

Clear: "Uh... sure?"

Kimleigh: "I suppose a child that is nonchalant about her own title of captain is hardly going to be impressed by foreign titles in others..."

Clear ignores being called a 'child' again but she agrees with the point. Clear has never seen much use for titles. Even Pully, supersoldier, relaxed and stopped calling Clear 'Sir'. Though that was about the time that they both exited the employ of Warlord Strang.

Clear: "I do prefer to just be called Clear. That name is more important to me than a title. I'm not in any military so being captain is more like... a job."

She remembers when becoming captain of The Hopeful was all important.. However to Clear it wasn't the title that was important, it was the ability to control the ship and have ownership over her home. Being captain meant being attached to The Hopeless. She isn't captain of anything else or anywhere else, only captain of her ship.

Kimeligh slaps her hands together and jumps to Clear. She leans over as though deigning to lower herself to a child's level.

Kimleigh: "Then I shall be just Kimleigh to you, Clear. How's that?"

Clear: "That... sounds great."

She's not sure it really does sound great given the situation but decides it's better to try and get Kimleigh as her friend regardless.

Kimleigh: "When I saw you I was so very impressed, Clear. I can't explain what it is but you have some kind of... aura. Some kind of magnetic draw. I like it. And you are so naïve! It's adorable."

Clear: "I've never considered myself naïve before..."

Kimleigh: "Oh. But many... species of the NeSiverse seem quite... innocent to me. I mean innocent to the magnitude and complexity of the Multiverse and existence itself. I don't mean naïve on a base level. I know you like naughty things. I saw a man in your ship's computer that would jiggle his bits at a pole."

Clear instantly wishes the floor would swallow her up. That stupid A.I. that Wai put into the system all that time ago... she thought Pully had taken it. But then Pully did keep it on her datapad, she must have uploaded it later for personal use. Stupid Pully. Clear had to admit though, she'd have probably used it herself eventually...

Kimleigh: "But the strangest thing... I detected from the ship's A.I. that there was a large crew just before I arrived. Can you explain this, Clear?"

It feels strange to be interrogated so nicely and yet with the looming threat still hidden behind the smile and lilting voice.

Clear: "It was a simulation. It was simulating past crew members from... hundreds of years ago, I guess it was."

Kimleigh blinks in surprise.

Kimleigh: "That sounds... inventive. I didn't detect anyone, save for you three, after I powered up your vessel so I'll take your word for that. And it's such an unusual word I'd be amazed you could come up with such a weird lie so quickly."

Clear feels she must be honest with this young woman.

Clear: "I don't much like being suspected, Kimleigh. I'm not lying to you. I have no reason to lie to you. You came to me. I just need help getting out of the Deep Void so I can live quietly with my ship. I don't do politics."

Kimleigh looks at Clear with her human eyes. The stare is disconcerting to Clear.

Kimleigh: "I'm not used to being spoken to so brusquely."

Clear feels a pang of dread instantly wash over her. She should have kept her blunt stupidity out of this.

Kimleigh: "Lucky for you I kind of admire it. That Bug chap I hired was fairly blunt too. My guardian wanted me to execute him..."

Clear panics more but Kimleigh just shrugged.

Kimleigh: "Luckily I had etiquette training as a girl and I am well aware that other civilisations are less cultured than ours and so we should condescend to accommodate any impropriety they might show. Plus Bug became very conscientious after that. Bowing and scraping for his life..."

Clear now hopes that's Kimleigh's way of saying 'you're off the hook' though she sees Bug the bounty hunter in a very different light right now. She then grins, showing her white teeth. Clear notices that she has quite pronounced incisors that give the girl a sudden mischievious, impish look.

Kimleigh: "And I kind of like it! My guardian is such a bore, you know!?"

She throws herself onto the arm of Clear's chair and actually leans on the salmitton as though they'd been bosom-buddies for years.

Kimleigh: "In fact he'll probably be along here any minute so we should make a run for it."

Clear barely has time to frown before Kimleigh has taken her hand and pulls her to her feet and drags her towards the doors. They slip open to reveal a man standing there, staring at them sternly. He is much taller than either of them and is squarely built. He has a broad nose but small eyes that look like he's constantly squinting at them. His ears are long and thin and droop down his back like a rabbit's might. Save for the ears he looks remarkably like a brown-skinned human to Clear's mind. His hair, though, is an unnatural colour for a human. It's green and cut into thin stripes along his head so that they looked like a series of hedgerows until they extend down the back in long dreadlocks. One of his ears has a big block attached to it and from it extends a red visor that crosses one of his eyes. On his neck is a black grate that Clear thinks looks very uncomfortable.

His body appears to be fixed by some kind of harness that Clear has never seen before. It straps over his shoulders and has two sections above his shoulders that almost look like handles. Under the harness is armour, much in the style of the soldiers she has already seen. The colour of his armour, however, is black and purple. Perhaps to accommodate his harness, he has no cloak but Clear can see two clasps built into the front of the armour where a cape out to fasten.

Kimleigh: "Ah. Sega! I was wondering where you'd gotten to."

Sega: "I'm sure you were..."

His voice didn't come from his mouth, which remained unmoved. It came from the speaker grate on his neck. Clear guesses he must be a kind of robot like Wai was.

Kimleigh: "This is my new friend. Captain Clear. That big ship out there is hers."

Sega glares at Clear with his tiny eyes.

Kimleigh: "I'm just going to show her around the ship. I was thinking of going to the chapel first."

Without waiting for answer Kimleigh tugs Clear's hand and she follows after the girl. She then notes that they're being followed by Sega.

Kimleigh: "Don't mind him. He's like a creepy shadow, I know."

Sega: "It's my job."

Kimleigh: "An unnecessary one."

Sega: "This Clear could be a terrorist, High Legatifex. Ready to sacrifice her own life in an explosion so that she could take yours."

Clear looks back at him with shock.

Kimleigh: "I already interrogated her. Besides. I'm not a weak little puppy, you know? Anyway. Clear. This is the chapel."

She sweeps her arm towards the wide arch that leads into another room. This one is very tall, towering high up. She wonders if the room was chosen for its height or if it was made this way. She imagines people digging into the flesh and organs of the Netherwyrm and has to grip her stomach at the notion. The room is evidently meant for the gigantic statue at the centre. Around the massive statue are small shrines where she sees people, including soldiers, bow and pray in silence to this god. Kimleigh leads her inside and Clear looks up at the towering figure. Clear has to now wonder how they got the thing in here and surmises that it must have been fabricated in the room itself.

The statue is a man that looks to be human. His hair is long and curled and he has a strong nose that speaks volumes of snobbery in Clear's opinion. He has robes on with a thick cloak, the hood of which covers his head, but is pulled back enough to clearly show his face. Around the waist is a sash. Each part of the statue is made from a different and unique material, rather than just stone. Each material has its own colours that Clear guesses must reflect the actual colours of the god. His skin is white marble while his hair is obsidian. His robe is black like his hair but not made of the same material. She isn't sure what the material is but it looks metallic. The sash is the most striking as its made of ruby and is a pure, bright red that glistens.

He is standing tall with his hands on his hips, a wide stance of confidence. He looks down, casting his gaze upon those below. It's almost fatherly yet Clear also feels it's patronising. She follows Kimleigh around the statue. Kimleigh pauses to look at it briefly and mutters something under her breath, eyes closed, and then continues on. She brings Clear around the statue to the rear end of the room where there are alcoves with screens and booths and smaller figurines. Clear thinks this might be a gift shop or a museum dedicated to this god. They enter one of the alcoves where Clear happens to glance at a vending machine and sees a bunch of cards in there. Adevertising the cards are a bunch of moving photographs that repeat a single motion over and over. Clear only notices because one of the women on the machine is most definitely Kimleigh. Clear points at it but before she can even ask, the girl is answering;

Kimleigh: "They made cards of us. The Highemperor's daughters I mean. I'm actually quite flattered by my depiction. And my stats. Apparently I'm an OP card if you use me with the right buff cards. At least that was in the fourth edition game rules. Someone nerfed me in edition five. I sent an angry message and I was more balanced for edition six. Still. If you're going to play, best play by fourth edition rules on my ship. Here."

Kimleigh swipes her hand across a sensor on the machine and a set of cards vends. She picks up the pack and hands it to Clear.

Kimleigh: "Your very first set."

She grins and Clear dubiously takes them. She pockets them without opening it. Kimleigh doesn't seem to mind and pushes further into the alcove. She points to some figurines where Clear sees Kimleigh has, again, been idolised. Her figure stands quite dramatically and Clear notes that she has opposable arms so her pose can be slightly adjusted to suit the collector. The alcove has quite a few customers who are purusing the figurines and Kimleigh drags Clear into the crowd. Suddenly they're rushing and pushing through. They pass under an open arch and into the next alcove. Then again into the next.

Sega: "High Legatifex! Wait! Everyone clear the room! Now!"

There's a whirring sounds from behind her and then a sudden calamity as people go flying in all directions. Shouts, cries and screams and at the centre is Sega. She only catches a glimpse but she sees his harness shaking.

Kimleigh: "Quick, down here!"

They slink into the next alcove, which is quickly becoming unpopulated as people flee the angry guardian. She swipes her hand over a panel on the wall and the wall itself opens up. She drags Clear inside and the wall closes behind them. She reaches up and presses her finger to Clear's lips for silence.

And so Clear finds herself in a cramped little cupboard, in the dark, with a girl who's idolised by full-grown men and women on a ship that looks like a dragon. Clear thinks back to simpler times.

Kimleigh: "He's gone."

Clear: "How do you know?"

The secret door opens and they step out into the alcove again.

Kimleigh: "I chipped him."

Clear: "What!?"

Kimleigh: "Months ago. When he was asleep I had him chipped so that I'll always know when he's on his way. Hopefully he thinks we went running out of the chapel. It won't be long before reports of my whereabouts reach him and he comes scurrying back so we should get away from here. This way."

Clear: "Why are you running from your guardian? Isn't he like a bodyguard or something?"

Kimleigh: "He's nothing but a nuisance. Do I look like I need a bodyguard?"

Clear refuses to answer that.

They hurry across the chapel. Some people watch them either grinning knowingly or they shout tokens of luck at the High Legatifex. Apparently her escape attempts are well known by the ship's crew. They enter a booth and slip around to the back Clear discovers that there's a door there and, once through, they're in a storeroom. Metal crates are stacked high though none are open to reveal what's inside. She assumes it's all figurines and cards.

Kimleigh suddenly glances back.

Kimleigh: "He's on his way. Quick quick!"

Clear: "But where are we going!?"

She gives Clear a sly smirk.

----

Not long after they're snooping around the quarters that have been granted to the bounty hunter, Bug. The room is a standard layout for all the ship's quarters with nothing personalised. Clear might have thought the room unoccupied if it weren't for the equipment laid all over the place. Clear has to admit that while she thought snooping around someone's room is terrible, she kind of likes it. It feels much like salvaging. And especially she loves Bug's gear.

She picks up a rifle and peers down its scope. She inspects the ammo pack and finds it's a good, old-fashioned projectile weapon. Just the way Clear likes them. Loud and ugly. She spots a much larger weapon and checks it out. Splattered on its side in paint reads; "Happy Bug Boomstick". In a way, Clear appreciates that. It seems to be a heavy-duty rail gun. One shot of this and she could probably blow a very big hole in the wall. And the wall after it.

Kimleigh: "Here!"

She emerges from the next room, which Clear assumes is the bedroom, dragging to packs. Clear takes one and hoists it up for inspection. It's surprisingly light but she has no idea what it's for. She watches Kimleigh putting hers on.

Clear: "What's this for?"

Kimleigh chuckles.

Kimleigh: "You don't know!? I've wanted one ever since I was a little girl."

Clear holds back comment.

Kimleigh pushes a button on the chest strap. The a faint hum and the girl turns around to show Clear the gentle glow from the two cylinders on her back.

Kimleigh: "It's a jetpack!"

Clear: "And... is it a weapon?"

Kimleigh: "No! Come on, put it on! Let's get rebellious!!"

Clear is fairly entertained that Kimleigh, captain of her own ship, is actually under guardianship to such an extent that she feels the need to rebel. She also seems to think Clear is a rebel without a cause herself and someone she thinks she can get into trouble with. Clear admits she probably is fairly rebellious not only because of her nature and life style but she has gotten into trouble with three major empires back in the Perseus Arm. Even her crew had been a bunch of misfits.

Clear puts on the jetpack.

Kimleigh: "Time for a jetpack joyride!"

In her hands are the controls. She takes off the floor and the rocket pack expels a greater amount of energy and noise. The floor beneat hthe jetpack is instantly charred but Kimleigh doesn't seem to mind the destruction she's caused to her own ship. Clear looks at the control but activates it after a moment of fret. She instantly bolts up and Clear drops the controller. It swings free and hangs at her side. The jetpack automatically adopts a hover mode and she hangs a metre in the air.

Clear: "Wow. That's really responsive."

Kimleigh: "Top of the line! That Bug is a wily fella to be sure."

Kimleigh gently eases her controller and she pirouettes in place. Clear snags her controller again and tries to move it gently. She whips to the right and winds up setting fire to the sofa.

Clear: "Oops..."

Kimleigh grins manicly.

Kimleigh: "Now that's the spirit! Woo!"

She then flies about the room, setting fire to a few cloth objects and sending the rest of Bug's stuff scattering around the room from the blowback of the pack. She approaches the door and it slides open. Clear manages to align herself with the door and watches Kimleigh easily skirt out of the room with a girlish squeal of glee. Clear hears shouting outside and then Bug runs up to the door. He stares after his stolen jetpack for a moment, not noticing Clear within, until he very slowly turns his head. Clear resolves to just make a run for it. Or fly.

She engages the controls and she, very quickly, hurtles straight at the green-scaled Bug. He yelps and dives out of the way as she screeches by him and cuts the corner tightly. She finds herself speeding down the corridor in the wake of Kimleigh. Clear finds this is the most fun she's had in a very long time.

People before her look like they've just recovered from the assault of the High Legatifex only to be doubly shocked when they find the red-skinned salmitton coming up on them too. They shout, jump or hit the floor as Clear clears through.

She zips around a corner and sees Kimleigh ahead, evidently going slower than Clear is. Either because the girl is waiting for her to catch up, or she more reserved than Clear is with the controls. Clear gains on Kimleigh and, soon, overtakes her.

Clear: "Come on, Kimleigh!!!"

She shouts as she flies by. She assumes it's enough to goad the girl on and Clear leads the charge down the corridors. Then, ahead of her, is Sega. He stands there, stupefied, as he sees Clear cruising through the air. But then he activates his harness. It shakes violently, causing a disturbance of inertia all around him. Clear, having seen the effects of the thing before, jolts herself upwards and pulls her legs up. She almost hugs the ceiling, turning so that her belly faces it, and she manages to avoid the radius of affect of Sega's harness.

She then hears his shout and shut it off. She guesses he didn't want to hurt his charge with the harness - but bringing down Clear would have been fine.

Another stretch of corridor and Clear swoops low and through the open arch and into the chapel. Exactly where she wanted to be. She ascends the tall room and flies in a circle around the statue. She looks down to see Kimleigh also flying up and hears the girl scream with joy. Clear can't help herself. She gives a scream of excitement too.

Sega: "Your father will be very disappointed in you, High Legatifex."

Clear is sitting in the same armchair of Kimleigh's leisure suite that she had on her first visit. The plush material and deep cushions give her a sense of comfort under Sega's tirade. He has been shouting for the past fifteen minutes, first at Kimleigh and then Clear and now Kimleigh again. Kimleigh is reclining on the sofa and staring off into the distance, evidently ignoring every word that passes Sega's mouth.

Sega: "You are far too old to be acting the child--"

Clear rolls her eyes at that.

Sega: "--taking in strays--"

Clear glares her eyes at him for that.

Sega: "--and abandoning your mission!"

Clear now casts curious eyes at Kimleigh.

Kimleigh just sighs with exasperation.

Kimleigh: "Do you know where my wayward sister is, Sega?"

He splutters but she doesn't give him time to accurately formulate a response.

Kimleigh: "No, Sega. No you don't. I don't know. You don't know. The crew doesn't know. Even the bounty hunter doesn't know. So until one of them is able to find her, I'm going to do whatever the Hell I please."

Sega: "High Legatifex! You must act with a station of decorum at all times! You are a princess of the High Empire! You shouldn't be slumming it with this vagrant--"

Clear wonders if he's trying to bait her into a screaming match with him but she refuses the challenge. She may not be an officer of the High Empire but she has enough dignity not to go round insulting people for their birth.

Unless they're human, of course.

Kimleigh: "Enough! I'm bored now. Leave me alone."

Sega: "You know I can't do that. I'll stand at the back of the room. Watching."

With a loud groan of annoyance she throws her head back, over the arm of the sofa.

Kimleigh: "I am going to complain ceaselessly about you to my father when we return, Sega."

Sega: "He shall believe that means I'm doing a good job."

Kimleigh: "Then I won't complain!"

Sega: "He'll assume I'm doing a very good job."

Kimleigh: "He's very annoying isn't he, Clear?"

Clear: "Very."

Sega: "You don't have the right to insult me."

Clear: "You don't have the right to insult me either, but you did."

Kimleigh: "Let's not go down this road - he'll go on for hours about how citizens of the High Empire are superior to all other citizens in the universe because -- High Empire. It's the bestest!"

She mockingly double-thumbs up to Clear.

Sega: "As princess of the High Empire you should have more respect for--"

Kimleigh: "I have infinite respect, Sega. But I have zero blind adoration. Something my father has never understood - there is always someone, something, better. No matter how perfect you think something is it is not. You perfect something but that only flaws something else. And you, Sega, are a fool for thinking yourself better than anyone else just because of where you were born and who you serve. Like the universe gives a crap. It'd be here without the High Empire--"

Sega: "If someone were to hear you speak this way there'd be an inquisitor down here in an instant, High Legatifex! Please keep your comments to yourself!"

Kimleigh: "There's only Clear here and she doesn't care about our politics."

Clear: "All I care about is my ship..."

Kimleigh: "Right! Yes! It needs organic matter... Not really much we can do about that from here. But I can engage your ship's drive. The old girl seems pretty beat up though, I hope she can handle the strain of a jump?"

Clear replies an affirmative but inwardly she has to wonder. The new jump drive is incredibly intense. But the risk is worth it. She doesn't want to miss this chance and Kimleigh never returns.

Sega: "And where would you escort that monstrosity?"

Kimleigh peeps her head over the rear of her sofa so that she could glare at the ever-present guardian;

Kimleigh: "Was I talking to you, Sega? No. Be quiet back there."

He does so and yet Clear can feel his overbearing presence more through his silence than through his arguing. She refrains from glancing in his direction and strives to keep her attention on Kimleigh.

Kimleigh: "Since your ship is actually the property of the High Empire anyway..."

She pauses in her speech, waiting to see Clear's response. Clear, of course, is dumbstruck but she can't argue the point with a princess of such powerful people and the only people able to get her to safety right now. Seeing that Clear is annoyed but speechless, Kimleigh merely continues;

Kimleigh: "We can use one of our facilities to get... The Hopeful, wasn't it? Get The Hopeful into ship-shape!"

Clear is quiet for a moment. Then, her voice cracking a little;

Clear: "And then?"

Kimleigh shrugs and sits up, elbows leaning on her knees.

Kimleigh: "And then we'll see. Honestly I don't know. It's quite a mystery and a mystery I am eager to explore. Perhaps I should come and visit the ship for myself! What say you to that!?"

Sega: "You shouldn't go over there, High Legatifex--!"

Kimleigh: "Didn't I tell you to shut up, Sega? You're here for my protection, not to order me about."

Sega: "And it's for your protection that I have to in--"

Kimleigh: "You'll protect me, won't you!? What's to worry about!?"

Sega: "I'm not so arrogant to believe I can keep you safe from an unknown enemy..."

Clear: "There's no enemy aboard my ship. Just a space cop and a... well someone I don't like but he's harmless right now."

Kimleigh: "See? Just two of them. It'll be fine, Sega."

Sega: "So she says!"

Kimleigh: "We scanned the ship. The numbers were explained away earlier. All that's there are those three and a lot of vermin--"

She looks earnestly at Clear.

Kimleigh: "You know you have rats, right? Lots of them!"

Clear: "I suspected there must be somewhere on the ship. But it's just so big I couldn't deal with them. I don't even know where they are. None of the ship's maps even work."

Kimleigh nods slowly, biting her lower lip.

Kimleigh: "Yes... I did notice that. Lots of corrupted data. I only know as much as I could feel through her electronics. Remarkable really. I'm pretty excited about playing in her. I bet she's quite lovely on the inside, right?"

Clear shakes her head apologetically but fairly humoured too.

Clear: "I'm afraid not, Kimleigh. The Hopeless is very, very old and has barely seen a day of maintenance. Actually it has. It's had several months of maintenance from two different crews and they barely managed to coat the surface damages. I had certain areas upgraded bit-by-bit. I've never had much money in all honesty. When I finally had some most of it went on changing parts of the ship."

Kimleigh looks at Clear with starry eyes.

Kimleigh: "You must have had a wonderfully terrible life, am I right!?"

Clear doesn't understand how 'wonderful' and 'terrible' really go together but she gets the impression that Kimleigh is somehow romanticising a troubled life.

Clear: "I suppose so... I told you my species is wiped out. Includes my parents. I lived alone on my ship so... yes. It's not been easy."

Sega: "And where did you get that money you mentioned?"

His words are more growled than spoken and tinny as they warbled out of his mechanical voice box.

Clear: "Other nations that employed me. One pressed me into service and the other rewarded me for service."

Before Sega could continue his questioning, Kimleigh butt in;

Kimleigh: "I don't think now is the time for Clear's backstory. Maybe we should get ready to visit your ship?"

Clear shrugs in agreement and they both stand up, just in time to be interrupted by an emergency communiqué from the bridge of Karlor Varkesh.

Navitatex: "This is the navitatex. The bounty hunter, Bug, reports that he has a possible location for the terrorist Indigo Shade. What are your orders, High Legatifex?"

Kimleigh: "I'm on my way."

She speaks into the air and Clear has no idea where the microphone is. She first shrugs in apology to Clear and then half-turns to speak to Sega.

Kimleigh: "I want you to find Bug and help him in whatever he needs."

Sega: "That's not--"

Kimleigh: "You know where I'm going, Sega. No need to be watching me on the bridge. Bug, on the other hand, is a slippery little toad. You've been chasing me all over this ship for a long time now. There's nobody I'd trust more to keep tabs on our, supposed expert, hunter."

Sega hesitates but eventually nods and leaves the room. Kimleigh stares at the door for a moment and then smirks.

Kimleigh: "I didn't think that would work!"

Clear almost facepalms.

Clear: "That was all staged!?"

Kimleigh shakes her head as she hurries towards the door.

Kimleigh: "No! I just took advantage of the situation to get shut of him! Ha! Come on!"

Clear jogs after the hian girl, leaving the leisure suite behind.

Clear: "Are you sure you want me going to your bridge?"

Kimleigh points and they jog left.

Kimleigh: "I'm not taking you to the bridge. Don't worry, there's plenty of time yet. I want to make a quick detour!"

Clear is concerned about this but she's not at liberty to protest. She feels herself being drawn into this girl's schemes and, shockingly, enjoying it. She can claim innocence, pressured into service by another, and get the thrill of the crime. But a part of Clear doesn't like that she likes this. She has more important things to worry about and yet the time spent being silly with Kimleigh is quick and easy pleasure to come by.

The trip isn't long as they take a turbolift. Clear can imagine that they might be zipping along the dragon's veins in their little box. When Clear asks where they're going, Kimleigh just grins and tells her she'd find out when they arrived.

Clear: "Why are you looking for your sister? She's a terrorist?"

Kimleigh sighs mildly despondent.

Kimleigh: "Basically, yes. She doesn't like our father. Considers him a tyrant."

Clear folds her arms.

Clear: "Seems pretty accurate from my perspective."

Kimleigh pouts.

Kimleigh: "He is a good and caring man, Clear. He's no tyrant. I think. He... is controlling I guess. Wants to rule others, even if they don't want to be ruled. He treats them as well as he can though!"

Clear: "I've heard slave masters say the very same thing."

Kimleigh: "Oh! Slavery is illegal! He believes strongly in civil liberties does my father!"

Clear: "If he's forcing people to obey him, I don't see much of a difference. Obey and you're free, disobey and you're dead? That's not freedom. It's just slavery in a different packaging."

Kimleigh doesn't reply and sulks a little as she pokes the panel for the lift. The doors eventually open and they set foot in another area of the ship. It appears to be the crew quarters for the soldiers. Some of the men and women look surprised to see Kimleigh striding quietly down the access corridor.

Kimleigh: "He is a powerful man though. He'd say that gives him the right to rule."

Clear: "Might makes right? Typical of someone who dominates to justify himself with strength alone."

Kimleigh just grins mischievously.

Kimleigh: "And you said you don't do politics!"

Clear: "I don't! But I don't want some knucklehead ordering me about just because he's got lasers shooting from his arsehole or whatever strength he says he has."

Kimleigh titters.

Kimleigh: "Now that would be a wonderfully terrible sight to see! My poor father!"

Her giggling quietens as she walks through a set of doors much larger than the other quarters. Clear had noticed that Kimleigh is able to wander through any door, even doors that others have to be scanned by computers to pass through. They must be set up to instantly acknowledge her - or it's her special electrical power at work. No electronic lock can keep out a girl who can control that lock.

The lights blink on, fading up from a low light to a bright white envelope. Clear thinks that's a nice touch to the lighting system, not blinding someone from dark to instant light but a gradual increase that allows the eye to adjust. She wonders if she can get Mother to implement it on The Hopeless. Her mind briefly wonders if Mother is back online yet but Kimleigh distracts her quickly by jiggling a device at her.

Clear: "Is that... is that the harness Sega wears?"

She then looks around in horror.

Clear: "Is this Sega's room!?"

Kimleigh nods eagerly.

She pushes her arms through the holes. Built from a man much bigger than this little girl, the device is quite limp on her body. She approaches Clear, holding open the straps.

Kimleigh: "You have to hug me so we can go together."

Clear: "Go? Go where? I thought this thing was some kind of kinetic distorter? Makes vibrations or something?"

Kimleigh: "It does when on a low setting. But increase the speed and it does sooooooo much more! Didn't you wonder how he got around so quickly?"

She waggles the straps at Clear, urging her to slip in. Clear kneels down and, suddenly very uncomfortable, hesitantly puts her arms around Kimleigh. The girl tightens the straps and smiles at Clear's discomfort.

Kimleigh: "Don't worry, Clear. I'm not gay! Not very anyway."

She s******s, thinking herself very amusing. Clear is tempted to ask if she even knows the first thing about sex but decides she really doesn't want to know the answer in case it's disturbing. She feels the straps are tight around her shoulders and Kimleigh is pushed up against her. The girl's skin is silky soft, even softer than Clear's who has been told many times that her skin is unnaturally smooth by a few humans. But Kimleigh, as a hian, has skin like a bag filled with water. Only her hair is the complete opposite and is as stiff as a table stuck to her skull.

Kimleigh whispers into Clear's ear, instantly exacerbating how uncomfortable and weird this all is.

Kimleigh: "Ready for another joyride Clear?"

Clear feels the harness start to vibrate. Then she doesn't. Instead she feels perfectly still, motionless. Instead the room around them is shaking. A little and then a lot - violently. Clear is afraid but now Kimleigh's hug feels reassuring, despite her initial feelings about it. Clear realises she's clutching the girl too hard and tries to calm her grasp to save her embarrassment. As the world around them shakes harder and harder the colours blur and wash into each other - yet Clear is certain new colours are washing into the muted colours of Sega's quarters. Bright blue. Bright red. Then the world starts to slow and clarifies. Clear is so taken aback she pulls back from Kimleigh but the girl has her held tightly.

Kimleigh: "Don't do that! You'll go flying! I know we look like we're standing still but we're actually the ones moving. If you break out of the harness your kinetic momentum will continue and you'll go off at a hundred miles an hour into a wall. Splat! One squished pretty salmitton girl."

Clear: "Right, right. But where are we?"

Kimleigh: "I've been calling it the special zone. I have no idea what else to call it."

The world has now come to a gradual stop and Kimleigh unfastens the straps so that they can separate. She smiles a little smugly.

Kimleigh: "I don't get to hug people very often so that was fun too!"

Clear: "I don't hug people very often either. And I prefer it that way."

A brief flash of Green pops into her head but Kimleigh draws her back to the bright, garish world around her.

Kimleigh: "Clear the Lone Wolf! She doesn't need sissy hugs because she's so badass!"

Clear might have had more to say on that little line but she's amazed by their new location. They appear to be in a half-pipe of bright orange with the occasional yellow stripe. Above them is a starry sky of deep blue, which becomes a hazy green on the horizon. Kimleigh points down the path.

Kimleigh: "That way!"

As they walk Clear taps her foot against the road. It's made of a kind of metal she's unfamiliar with.

Kimleigh: "I already set the coordinates in for the bridge. It'll be very funny when we BANG onto the bridge! They'll all die of fright!"

Clear: "Are you sure they'll not going to open fire by instinct?"

Kimleigh: "They're all highly trained professionals, Clear. They don't operate by instinct, they operate by discipline. Instinct causes unnecessary causalities and emotional drama that impedes true service. Don't think or feel, just know what and when to shoot. And knowing comes with years and years of training."

She sounds very proud of the war machine under her employ and she thinks she is an apple that didn't fall very far from the tree of the Highemperor after all. Maybe he, too, was once a rebel without a cause...

She doubts it.

Kimleigh starts running and Clear runs too. The metal clangs loudly as they go but the wind sounds fierce, as though they're running much faster than they ought to be capable of doing. A minute later and they're at the end of the track, a tall wall before them. Kimleigh opens the straps of the harness and Clear, somewhat disappointed that they didn't spend long in the special zone, slips her arms in. This time her hug is much more comforting and Kimleigh tightens the straps.

The special zone wobbles and then shakes aggressively. The colours wash until Clear sees darker tones seep into the orange and green. The world stabilises and they're on the bridge of Kalor Varkesh. The ceiling appears to be white and smooth, like bone, and Clear makes the very obvious leap of logic that the High Empire would be just arrogant and pretentious enough to put their command centre in the braincase of the beast. Where else would it go, she could imagine Kimleigh declare.

The room is littered with crystalline moulds of all shapes and sizes. Clear had seen crystals around the ship's corridors and a few small ones in Kimleigh's leisure suite but here the room is crammed with them. Many of them are flat, like brightly coloured glass, and people are swiping their fingers over the surface. Some other crystals are being rubbed in different ways and some appear highly suggestive in Clear's mind. She has to turn away from watching one woman vigorously working her hand over one elongated pink crystal.

Kimleigh: "Welcome to the bridge, Captain Clear! You should probably take a seat here."

She shoos a woman from one of the three chairs on the highest platform of the bridge, overlooking the rest of the ship. The woman moves over to one of the crystal banks and slides a small crystal into a slot, activating the unusual technological machine. Clear sits down and watches as a man gets up from the central chair and sits in the right-side chair, opposite Clear. She assumes he's the captain, or the navitatex as he called himself earlier. The chairs are all carved from the same red crystal, smoothed out like gems to be comfortable. Only the backs remained the regular, raw crystalline shape as spikes of sharp red stone stand up behind them. Kimleigh takes the central chair, the biggest and most prominent seat in the room.

Clear: "You know, I probably shouldn't be in here, Kim-- High Legatifex..."

Kimleigh wofts her hand dismissively.

Kimleigh: "Forget it. I decided when we were in the special zone that I need you to be around so we can visit your ship anyway."

Navitatex: "I fear you'll be too busy dealing with our quarry for pleasure trips, High Legatifex."

Kimleigh: "There's always time for pleasure trips, Navitatex!"

She then turns and glares at him with a pout.

Kimleigh: "You weren't surprised to see me burst into the room, by the way. I'm very disappointed."

There's a pause before the navitatex makes a sarcastic feign of fright.

Kimleigh: "How droll you are..."

She doesn't sound amused.

Navitatex: "Your guardian sent word that he detected you entering his quarters and suspected you'd be using his harness for flights of fancy."

Kimleigh: "Damn. I should have known someone like he would put detection systems on his door..."

Crewman #1: "We're travelling to the location now, High Legatifex."

Clear: "Wait, what about m--"

Kimleigh: "We'll come back, captain. Don't worry yourself. I still want to see your ship, remember?"

Clear is actually comforted a little by that. She does think she'll be claiming the ship as a possession of her empire after all. Still, she's very unhappy that she's being dragged into something at all. Immediately, so far from home, she wishes she could have just stayed on her own ship and waited for Kimleigh to return even if that meant being unsure if she ever truly would.

She glances past the girl towards the man on the right. He's a man with deep green skin and is very lithe, with little to no muscle on his body at all. He wears similar plated armour to the other crew, though he has a dark blue cape attached to his golden breastplate. He has dark hair that is swept neatly back and to the side with products, giving him a sleek and suave appearance. The hair, Clear sees, is actually incredibly dark dark that simply appears black at a glance. His lips natural colour is darker green than his skin and his irises are blue. Clear recognises his species, having seen Orions on Saffron 5 from time to time, but she has no idea where they originate or anything about their culture. She does recall them wearing very little clothing, usually looking more ragtag than Clear usually does. This one, however, seems to have elevated himself to be more presentable as to suit his station.

Clear sees that both of them are stroking the smooth crystal surfaces of the arms of their chairs and Clear prods hers. She feels an instant wave of nausea strike her and her mind races through dozens of bytes of information. She snaps her hand back. She couldn't make any sense of the calculations her brain was automatically running through when she touched the chair and she doesn't want a repeat experience. A machine that leads your brain through the process seems like a dangerous tool that could end up controlling the mind of the user. And yet there's an entire empire using this tech, so she concedes she could just be paranoid. An experience like Note, however, is likely to cause such feelings.

Crewman #2: "We've arrived. We're still in the Deep Void but there are multiple signatures."

Crewman #3: "It--it's a fleet! An entire fleet of ships!"

Kimleigh: "I guess she's more wily than we'd thought. Project. I want a visual."

A moment later and the circular platform below Clear, Kimleigh and the navitatex lights up. The projection is a 3D display that looks so solid and tangible Clear could have sworn she was looking at a set of model spaceships. She counts a dozen ships.

Clear: "They look almost as run down as The Hopeful."

Kimleigh tilts her head.

Kimleigh: "You're not wrong. So she has a fleet but its a ragtag heap of junk she's probably salvaged from some ship graveyard."

Clear actually thinks this sister of Kimleigh's sounds like a woman she'd get on with very well.

Crewman #3: "The ships are moving."

Kimleigh: "Are they crewed?"

Crewmen #3: "Unable to confirm. Scanning is blocked."

Kimleigh just stares off without response. Her eyes are so focused on staring at nothing that Clear realises she must be using her mind to explore the ships' electrical systems. Clear leans forward.

Clear: "Oi. Orion."

Navitatex: "I suggest you don't communicate with me, Martian."

Clear's expression sours instantly.

Clear: "Too good to talk to a Martian now are you, Orion?"

Navitatex: "I wasn't trying to be rude. But you're not a welcome presence on this ship. The High Legatifex likes you but to the crew you're a liability. It's nothing personal. You're just not one of us."

Clear supposes she couldn't argue with that.

Kimleigh: "Don't be mean, navitatex. I trust her and that means you should too."

She has snapped out of her reverie.

Navitatex: "I'm sure she's trustworthy, High Legatifex. I'm not saying she'll betray us. But she doesn't know our ways or how we operate. This is a military vessel, not a pleasure yacht. I just don't trust her to ability to function as part of our whole. That's all."

Again Clear couldn't argue with the logic, even if it is ultra cold.

Kimleigh: "I wish this was a pleasure yacht. Then we wouldn't be able to get our backside's spanked."

Navitatex: "Wha--?"

On the projection, massive energy beams are unleashed from the cannons of the second-hand vessels.

Kimleigh: "There. What is that ship?"

Officer #1: "The Starscrape."

Kimleigh: "Terrible name. That's just asking to be scrapped. Grab it."

Clear: "Grab it? Like a tractor beam? It's massive!"

Navitatex: "Not what she means."

Clear sees Kalor Varkesh on the viewscreen, it swoops in towards a massive bulk of a ship that's almost as big as The Hopeless is. The other enemy ships have already started firing but the dragon-ship barrel rolls to avoid fire. Although Varkesh is spiralling around, Clear senses no motion at all from her position inside of it. She realises just how much more versatile and agile this living ship is compared to most technological ships. With its arms and legs stretched out the dragon lands on the side of The Starscrape and, with its mighty black wings, it pulls the vessel up to settle between Varkesh and the incoming fleet.

Navitatex: "Lucky the hulk was on the flank."

Kimleigh: "My sister isn't a fleet admiral. She has no idea what she's doing."

Clear: "Her crew?"

Kimleigh: "There's no crew. She has machines running these skeletons."

Energy weapons are tearing apart The Starscrape. No mercy. Clear thinks it's lucky they're crewless.

Clear: "We can't just sit here all day. Look they're beginning to circle round. We'll be surrounded."

Navitatex: "We'll jump the first ships that venture round. They won't be expecting it. Pick them off, one-by-one."

Clear nods.

Clear: "Clever."

The first ship does come round, a smaller vessel that looks like it might fall apart of its own volition. Varkesh leaps from the back of its ride and attaches its claws into the new ship. He opens his mouth and a strange energy pours out, looking like hot,red vomit. It slides across the metal of the ship and its instantly melted down to slag.

Clear: "Wow..."

Kimleigh smirks at Clear's reaction, pleased she's been able to impress her new friend.

The next ship to slip over the horizon of The Starscrape appears more robust than most. Varkesh's head turns languidly and opens up with another torrent of netherflame. The red, fiery slime slops against its bulk, instantly melting away a huge quarter of the vessel. It has opened up its return fire, however, pumping laser burst after laser burst. Each blast strikes out at incredible speed but explodes close to impact, spraying out in a haze of laser shots that rain down upon the netherwyrm.

Navitatex: "I wonder where she found that little monster?"

Kimleigh: "Take us closer to The Starscrape, once the netherflame is recharged we attack again, closer this time."

Her orders are followed. Varkesh, hovering close to the bulk of The Starscrape, lunges up suddenly at the target with a burst of flame that sweeps over the hull of it. The ship then slowly starts to turn, to get the laser cannons from its port to face Kalor Varkesh - its starboard now nothing but melting metal. Its rotation isn't quick enough. Varkesh ploughs inside the ship and chomps down on whatever comes into its jaws. Clear wonders where the metal goes since the dragon's innards are filled with rooms.

With one fierce push, the dragon's head bursts out of the ship's hull. He then tears the craft in twain and its two halves float despondently away.

Navitatex: "It's strange. We can't calculate which of the vessels is the command ship..."

Kimleigh: "Strange.. urgh!"

Kalor Varkesh shudders. Since none of the biological ship's movements caused any kind of notice to its inhabitants, Clear guesses that the disturbance is from within.

Kimleigh: "She's not on any of those ships. She's in ours!"

Navitatex: "Troops!"

Scans of the ship show massive damage towards the tail of Varkesh.

Clear: "How--?"

Kimleigh has gone into silent reverie again, probably trying to use her powers against Indigo Shade aboard Kalor Varkesh. The Navitatex resumes command of the spacebattle as more energy fire sweeps in towards their ship. Clear hops out of her seat.

Navitatex: "Where are you going?"

Clear: "I may as well try to help with the intruder, right? Not like I'm much use up here."

She also thinks she'll be closer to the docking bay if everything goes south. She runs from the room, just in time to feel another major tremor through the ship's bones. As she goes she sees Bug run out of his room with his jetpack strapped on and his boomstick in hand.

Bug: "Well, if it ain't the salmitton..."

Clear stops and glances into his room.

Clear: "Mind if I take the spare?"

Bug stares at her as though she'd called his mother a hag. It lasts just a moment when the ship shudders. He groans and nods quickly. He turns and powers on his pack before Clear has even slipped into his room. She finds the pack on the table and throws the straps over her shoulders. It's an awkward fit. She hasn't taken off the harness and she wonders if it's safe to wear both of this mounts at the same time. Ultimately she resolves that the harness is too precious to discard and she fastens the jetpack as tightly as she can. She ignites the booster and she's airborne. The room of Bug, against, receives an accidental blasting from the pack's flame before she manages to wiggle out of the room and into the corridor. She then slams it into full gear and speeds, headlong down the passage. Nobody is there to get in her way, all probably busy fighting.

She screeches around a corner and, soon, she starts to see soldiers. Most of them wounded and many more of them tending to those wounds. When the ship shakes it's far more violent this close to the tail.

She almost crashes into Bug, who has perched himself just before a massive room. Clear lands and peeks in after him. She realises it's not a massive room but many rooms that have been so demolished that only a single space remains.

Clear: "Wow..."

Bug: "Yeah..."

Clear: "Is that..."

She squints. A tiny blackhole is sucking up everything in sight, breaking down anything that won't physically fit inside of it.

Bug: "Yeah. Apparently black holes are her thing. You know, sometimes, I get really fed up of these overpowered freaks. What'm I supposed to do against that?"

Clear: "Down there..."

She points towards a door on a lower floor. They can see soldiers setting up some kind of cannon.

Clear: "All we have to do is distract her for a moment."

Bug: "Yeah. Good luck with that."

Clear: "Seriously? You're going to leave me to do it?"

Bug: "Since you're so keen..."

Clear curses and powers up the pack. She swings into the room. The black hole, although miniature, is still pulling so strongly that she has to fight against the drag.

Indigo Shade: "What have we here?"

Clear almost loses control of her pack as a woman springs up next to her, flying without any kind of aid. She has pale skin but jet black horns that curl around the face the front, pointing straight at Clear. She has a hungry look to her eyes, which straight into Clear's own black eyes.

Indigo Shade: "What are you?"

Clear remembers she's supposed to be distracting the woman and so she decides to appease the question.

Clear: "A salmitton. From Mars."

Indigo Shade sneers.

Indigo Shade: "Neighbour of Earth. How unappealing. My curiosity ends with that association. Leave or die."

Clear: "Wh-wait. You dislike the Earth, right? I get that. I hate it too. Hate the humans."

Indigo Shade looks amused.

Indigo Shade: "And what? You think we share some common ground? Should we break bread now? Perhaps get a drink together?"

Clear glances down at the bottom of the Indigo-made shaft.

Clear: "A drink sounds good right about now actually..."

Troop: "FIRE!"

Clear presses the button for the harness to whisk her away...