[a five part ending to VIN sort of requires its own topic, don't you think?] For a while, things looked a little grim for us, but after beating the senior writer out of his funk and pointing out that he really has nothing better to do, Varneck Inheritor Nergal is now back on track. However, considering the depths of depravity that we have now sunk to, do we really want it back? VARNECK INHERITOR NERGAL dubbed in English Episode 13: The Final Nights Part 1: Paradigm Shift The Ninja ran. He didn’t really know why he was running, mostly because ninja aren’t capable of that complex of a thought, but he ran. It was a primitive fight or flight instinct inherent in most animals. That and if he stopped running then the mostly dead guy on the motorcycle with the golf club would catch him. Okay, perhaps he did have an idea why he was running. Of course, even a ninja can’t outrun a motorcycle. “Paradox backlash mostly dead guy three martini lunch polo golf swing of justice!” the mostly dead guy called out as he overtook the ninja. “FORE!” The ninja’s head flew an appreciable distance, past two observers, a panda and a writer wearing a black hat. The panda held up a sign. “Was this really necessary?” The writer nodded. “Yes, yes it was.” ***** Now that that is out of my system… Admiral Stan Sanders was stunned at this latest revelation (no, not the mostly dead guy on the motorcycle, the one at the end of the last episode). “So, this means that there is an intruder aboard this ship,” he said as he examined the open cockpit of the salvaged invader war machine. “This was unexpected.” “Sure is,” Aniston agreed. “We should get security down here on the double, just in case.” Narm nodded. He had just happened to be in the launching bay when they had brought the machine in. “No!” Stan suddenly declared. “Nobody else hears about this. We could have a panic if the rest of this mob learned that there is an enemy aboard.” “But sir,” Narm protested, “you can’t really expect us to ignore this…” “I expect you men to find this intruder before he causes any problems,” Stan said. “Handle this, commander.” He turned to walk out. ***** As this went on, Tycho and Merrick spoke of geopolitics and socio-economics in the ship’s recreation room. Well, not really. “So much for cooperating with the military,” Tycho said as he played a mean game of table tennis with the port wall. “I wonder what they’d have to say if they knew we were busy sneaking off to Vol to pick up Daishi.” “You know as well as I do that we have things that need to be taken care of on Vol,” Merrick replied.  “Things that the military can’t know about just yet. We still need to get the third vessel ready for deployment.” Tycho nodded, though he felt a little amused about the whole thing. Before Merrick had come along, he had been the company man aboard the Nergal. He was pretty sure he knew almost as much about what was really going on as Merrick did, but the very fact that she was here now seemed to say that the higher ups with the VEEC didn’t entirely trust him anymore. Just how long would he still be in the loop? And just how much could he accomplish while he was there? “I will admit, however,” Merrick said, “Mr. Lee’s fate is certainly far more important to me.” “Oh yeah?” Tycho asked mischievously, turning away from his table tennis game. “So you’ve fallen for his charms too, eh?” “Now hold on a second!” Merrick shouted, “Why does everyone on this ship assume that any woman that meets Daishi will instantly fall in love with him?” “Statistical probability?” Tycho replied. “Just look at his track record over the last few months. It’s quite disgusting really.” This only seemed to get Merrick even more incensed. “My only interest in Daishi is his usefulness as a test subject! Robert Lee is the only human we know of capable of bosan jumping. We need him if we are to ever unlock the secrets of this phenomenon. Do you understand me?” “Yes I do!” another voice suddenly declared. Merrick turned around to be confronted by Tina. “And I have to say that I don’t like it! You will leave my Robert alone or I’ll…” “You’ll what?” Merrick demanded. This brat teenager that Tycho had chosen to command the Nergal had been getting on her nerves ever since she’d come aboard. “Well? You’ll hit me? Kick me? Rearrange my hair?” Tina was dumbstruck. She had apparently had a big long speech planned and having it derailed like this had thrown her for a loop. “What kind of captain are you anyway?” Merrick continued. “Wasting everyone’s time chasing after that fool of a pilot when you have responsibilities to the VEEC and…” Her tirade was cut off when she felt an invisible hand slap her across the face. Tina hadn’t moved a muscle, but there could be no doubt she was the source of that blow. “Don’t you ever talk about Robert like that,” she said menacingly. Merrick felt the red mark on her cheek that, despite being the result of direct manipulation of the force and not an actual slap with an actual hand, still looked like a hand print. “You little brat,” she said, “just who do you think you are?” Tycho vividly remembered the last cat fight he had seen Tina get into. The one where she blew up an island and knocked Eridani slightly off its axis. For the safety of the ship, he knew he had to stop this quickly. “Oh there you are captain,” he said as though suddenly just noticing her. “There were some budget problems we needed to go over…” he took her by the arm and led her, sort of unwillingly, out of the room. He hoped he had managed to avert a catastrophe. ***** [editor’s note: we have instituted the practice of identifying Stormie as Stormie-chan when he is a she. Therefore any confusion after this point is your own bloody fault] On the bridge, other secret (umm yeah, “secret”) meetings were taking place. “I’ve thought it over,” Stormie-chan said, “and I can’t go back to being just an army trooper.” She took the transfer form that Argon was SUPPOSED to have given her in the last episode and tore it in half. “You’re sure about this?” Argon asked. “Yes,” Stormie-chan said with a smile. “You’re stuck with me for a while longer.” Argon frowned. “I can’t get you to change your mind?” “No,” Stormie-chan replied. “I decided to accept the risks of serving aboard this ship, just as I have accepted what this curse has done to me, and to us.” She rested her head on Argon’s shoulder. “And I suppose that after this war is over you’ll be wanting to settle down…” Argon stiffened (no, not that way you bloody perverts, I don’t write hentai) “I would rather not talk about it.” Stormie-chan looked up, surprised. “What are you going to do after this war is over?” Argon felt a new measure of resolve forming within him. It was something that needed to be said. “I don’t want to talk about that, I don’t mix my personal life with my job.” Stormie-chan pulled away from him. “What is that supposed to mean?” she asked. “Am I a part of your personal life or your job?” No going back now. “I can accept either,” Argon said, “but not both.” Stormie-chan was shocked. “How can you say that to me?” “All systems are nominal,” Ruri suddenly said from her station. Both Stormie-chan and Argon turned red in surprise. “How long have you been there?” “I arrived before you did,” Ruri replied. “Of course, since I’m just a kid, I wouldn’t understand such an adult conversation, which in this case I am infinitely thankful for. Though I will admit, the biology of it staggers the imagination.” In the fine tradition of the art, both Stormie-chan’s and Argon’s faces displayed previously unknown shades of red. “Ah, is it over already?” came a voice from behind a consol. Stormie-chan and Argon turned around, finally noticing the three pilots crouched behind the consol. “What are you three doing there!” Argon demanded. Generec En Pee See One stood up. “We…We were just servicing this panel here!” she declared in a rapid fire voice. “We didn’t here anything and even if we did it’s just none of our business and we weren’t snooping or anything like that…” “Idiots,” Ruri said. ***** Soon after, almost as if by magic, the Immortal Warrior plushies began appearing all over the ship. Immortal Warrior stickers soon followed, scattered in sheets all over the corridors. Roving patrols of engineers dressed as their favorite battlemech scoured the ship. Ruri, finding herself buried in the plush little engines of war in a cute way that would just make some of the creepier fanboys drool, just frowned. “Yes, they’re all idiots.” Meanwhile, Aniston reveled in his pure umm… genius. “I’m so brilliant it scares me!” He declared, clutching a sheet of Immortal Warrior stickers in one hand and a plush Vlad Ward in the other. Around him, his engineers were reporting the completion of their missions to scatter Immortal Warrior merchandise throughout the ship. “If our intruder is as much of an Immortal Warrior fan boy as we think he is, there’s no way he can resist such tempting bait. He’ll be ours in no time!” Meanwhile, Narm was doing his part. The atlas suit he was wearing wasn’t all that comfortable, and for the life of him he couldn’t figure out how Aniston talked him into this. He walked nonchalantly through Uncle Yo-sims Bar and Grill (as nonchalantly as possible considering he was dressed in a giant robot suit), noticing the recent upgrades. On the stage, a six piece all-ninja jazz band played. Against one wall was a fireplace, complete with the head of a six point trophy plot continuity fairy mounted above it. A crystal chandelier hung from the ceiling. Briefly he wondered how so many complicated renovations could have been done to the ship’s cafeteria in the middle of a war with no steady source of supply or resources, but then he decided not to think about it. “Hello ladies,” he said to the Deathwookiee girls, trying not to notice their looks of utter confusion. “Have you seen anything peculiar?” “Umm…well…” one began to say, only to be elbowed in the ribs by another. The Deathwookiee looked on nonchalantly. “So what’s going on Narm?” he asked. Narm leaned in conspiratorially. “I’m on a secret mission. Don’t tell anyone about this.” He then walked off. “Umm, sir?” one of the Deathwookiee girls said to the Deathwookiee. “Is our executive officer cracking up?” The Deathwookiee nodded sagely to his assistant. “Yes, he is.” “Does this mean we have to cook him now?” “No, my child,” the Deathwookiee replied. “The brain parasites might be contagious.” ***** In her room, Aku watched Immortal Warrior. Despite her status as a devoted servant of all that is evil in the universe, Aku’s room didn’t at first glance reflect the evil that was in her heart. The frills, the fluffiness, the hint of perfume in the air, the man sized stuffed animals that stood a silent vigil simply didn’t fit a servant of the dark side of the force, which was fine because Aku, though thoroughly evil and very much a force user, was not a servant of the dark side. She served another, far more terrible master. But that’s beside the point. “I’m sorry,” the main character was saying to another, a female, “but your brother has pledged his loyalty to my evil sister, I must destroy him. I have no choice.” The main character stepped away, walking to his hulking battlemech. “Why, Victor?” the woman called after the main character, “Why do we always have to fight?” Tears ran down Aku’s cheek. “Yes, Robert,” she said, on the verge of crying, “Why do we always have to fight?” In an instant the anguish vanished with all the skill that only a professional actress like Aku can manage. “I could have done that scene a lot better than she did,” she said. The fact was that very little in this world made Aku sad, and Robert certainly wasn’t on that list any more than Immortal Warrior. If anything, Robert’s continued resistance to her… lets just call them charms, mostly frustrated her. She saw a power within him, a power that she knew she and her master could utilize, and let’s face it, she wanted his body in, well, the worst way. That he appeared to be one of Geist’s closest friends among the crew would only make his eventual conversion to her master’s cause all the more delicious. Though Geist would have no qualms dealing with Aku, even ending her life if he had a reason, there was no way he could bring himself to stand against her master again. But now really wasn’t the time for such thoughts. Robert was currently stuck on Vol waiting for the Nergal to come pick him up. She very well couldn’t work to turn him while he was several light years away. She moved to switch off the viewer. “WAIT!” Aku watched stunned as one of her stuffed bunnies leapt from its place to land within a few centimeters of the viewer, watching the scenes unfolding on the screen with rapt attention. “Oh my god, it really is!” he declared as he watched. “This is the legendary lost episode 621!” Aku just blinked for a few moments before finally speaking. “Mr. Fluffy?” ***** Geist walked into the hangar bay, noting the Immortal Warrior paraphernalia scattered about and Aniston cackling a little madly. Like the Deathwookiee, his first thought was brain parasites. He waited for Aniston’s cackling to die down before he approached him. Aniston looked surprised when he caught sight of Geist, quickly concealing the immortal warrior plushy behind his back. “Umm… hey, Geist, fancy seeing you here…” he said. “Hello,” Geist said. “I was wondering if we got any packages from my wife before we left?” “Huh? Oh… yeah!” Aniston said as the rusty clutch of his mind finally shifted gears. “Five of them. Big ones too. What did your wife send you anyway?” Geist smiled. “Just something for the pilots,” he said. “She’s kind to a fault you see, and she’s got some spare time with the kid in school and all, so she decided to get a project to work on.” “What are they?” Geist was about to answer, however the sounds of a fight spilling into the hangar bay interrupted. “Come back here you slimy reptile!” one of the combatants demanded. Warm water went everywhere as the male (for the time being) fighter spun through the air in a series of maneuvers that, if not actually breaking the laws of gravity, at least bent them into pretzels. “Who are you calling slimy?” the other yelled. Though he was moving through the air too fast for anyone to get a good look at him, his enormous size and the occasional flash of gray business suit were unmistakable. Both students of the Anything Goes School of Jedi Arts were showing all of the powerful potential of that school as they clashed throughout the hangar bay, flashing from point to point faster than the eye could track. The only real markers of their relative positions were their glowing lightsabers. For a while, everyone was enjoying a remarkable show of spinning lightsabers darting through the hanger at speeds and in directions that defied all reason. “Quit hogging all the popcorn,” Aniston said to Geist. Of course, the enjoyment soon went out of the show when Stormie reminded everyone in no uncertain terms what the Anything Goes School was truly about. “FIST OF THE MA DEUCE!” He shouted, suddenly the hangar became a very unfriendly place as big, fat, fifty caliber rounds began spraying out in virtually every direction. His once darting and dashing form finally came to a stop at one end of the hangar bay, where he stood panting and cradling a fifty caliber machinegun in both hands (don’t ask where he got it from). His lightsaber hung, switched off, from his belt. He looked to see the results of his handiwork. Argon landed at the other side of the bay, untouched by the slugs that had ripped through the air like a swarm of angry, bone shattering wasps. He stood there, his lightsaber also stowed, an assault rifle in each hand. Everyone had been so worried about ducking for cover from the first barrage that they hadn’t noticed him using the Revenge of the Angry Gun Nut technique, which was pretty much the same thing as the Fist of the Ma Deuce, but with assault rifles. Shell casings, both 50 caliber and 5.56 millimeter, littered the floor. “I didn’t want it to come to this Stormie,” he said menacingly, “This isn’t any of your business.” “HAH!” Stormie returned. “How could you stand there and say it ain’t none of my business? You ain’t got no right to do what you did to me…or her…or… DAMNIT, I’M JUST GONNA KILL YA AND BE DONE WITH IT!” He lunged at Argon, the now empty machinegun raised high for a skull cracking blow. Acting quickly, Argon dropped his now spent weapons and called his saber to his hand, slicing the machinegun in half before it could strike him in the head. Stormie called his own lightsaber back to his hand and jumped to a safer distance, dropping the rest of the gun. “I suppose it was too much to hope that Argon and Stormie’s girl half could fall in love and raise a family of future students for the school,” Geist said. He shook his head and decided he should probably do something to break up this fight. Over in another part of the bay, an Asian woman (no, not that Asian woman) and a writer in a black hat got into something of a shouting match over the validity of this scene, but that’s not important now. Geist stepped forward as Stormie prepared to utilize the Ryu Ginsu Ken (dragon knife-capable-of-sawing-through-a-brick-and-sold-in-hour-long-infomercials fist) technique. Argon was ready to counter with the angry flaming housecat strike. If Geist didn’t act quickly, things were going to get really bad, or at least weird. He grabbed a fire hose. Stormie brought up his lightsaber. Argon prepared to light the kitty. Geist suddenly hosed Stormie down with a jet of icy water. The now helmswoman was knocked to the ground. Argon dropped the kitty, which scampered off, still smelling of accelerant. Geist sorta hoped it would make it. As it scampered past the writer in the black hat, he stopped arguing with the Asian woman long enough to throw a lit match at it. He didn’t really like kitties all that much. The kitty, however, escaped unharmed. “Argon, get out of here,” Geist ordered. Argon instead turned to watch Stormie-chan stager to her feet. She had a look in her eyes, not the same homicidal anger that her male form had possessed, but something else. Angry, hurt, defiant. She made a big show of ignoring Argon. Feeling a bit defeated, the Whipid withdrew. The writer and the Asian woman continued to argue, breaking out charts and diagrams and precedents and volumes of manga and episodes on DVD. We really shouldn’t worry about them. They’re happier like this. “Come boy,” Geist said to Stormie-chan. “You need some more training.” Stormie-chan shook her head. “Not now old man, I am not in the mood.” “I wasn’t asking, boy,” Geist replied. “Training will help you relax.” Stormie-chan tried to argue, but Geist’s position was unassailable. She eventually submitted. Meanwhile the Asian woman proved just how rabid a fangirl she was when she pulled a mallet out of thin air and delivered a solid blow to the writer’s head, dropping him like a sack of flour and knocking the rusty gears of his mind out of alignment. ***** I hate hamsters. I mean, I really do. Especially Japanese hamsters that speak in butchered hamster dialect English and have adventures. I mean, jeez! Its time everyone united behind the great alliance of gerbils and white mice to overthrow the hamster menace! [editors note: This rant actually went on for a while longer, but in the interest of good taste we got rid of most of it after a metaphysical mechanic was done re-adjusting and applying some WD-40 to the rusty gears of our senior writer’s mind. Our senior writer is currently running good as new, or at least well enough to be coherent…we hope.] ***** Tycho may actually have averted a serious incident. By the time Tina and Merrick ran into each other again, in the women’s sauna, both had had a chance to cool off some. Of course, Merrick still went after Tina, its just the threat of a thermonuclear incident had been greatly reduced. “I don’t think there’s any problem with you expressing your feelings for Robert openly,” Stormie said to Tina nervously for a variety of reasons. By a stroke of random chance designed to make all the creepy fanboys convulse and bleed profusely through the nose, most of the female crew of the Nergal were using the woman’s sauna at exactly the same time. Though each of the unnaturally lovely girls was wearing a towel for the sake of modesty and censors, it was, to say the least, a sight to behold. “I disagree,” Merrick said. “I admit that I haven’t been on this ship for very long, but I’ve seen more than enough to worry me.” She turned to look at the captain. “Just why did you become an officer anyway?” Tina thought about that very carefully. It really was a difficult question for her to answer, if for no other reason than it revealed information about herself that she hadn’t really intended to reveal. Of course, Merrick might already know about her origins because of her connections to the VEEC, so she guessed it would be okay. “I guess it’s because as an officer I can truly define my own identity,” she said. “What?” Merrick asked, seeming quite confused. “What are you talking about.” “I’ve only had a physical body for two years or so,” Tina said. “And the fact is that what little time I’ve had has been spent living a lie. Everyone thinks of me as just another admiral’s daughter, but I’m so much more than that, and here I can be who I am.” Most of the people in the sauna that had overheard Tina’s statement just stared. “Huh?” Merrick said, dumbfounded. Geist sighed and shook his head. A few girls turned, briefly surprised. For a moment they thought there was something wrong about him being in here, but they just couldn’t put their finger on what it was, so they promptly forgot it as Somebody Else’s Problem™. “You’d think that with me in control of a completely unregulated and unsupervised organization with extensive military and scientific assets, the higher ups would at least try to figure out what I was doing with my time,” he complained. “The short form is this. About three hundred years ago Tina was a promising young student of an obscure school of force users known as the mindwalkers who unfortunately got run over by a landspeeder. Though her body eventually died, she was able to sever her spirit from her body, effectively turning herself into a ghost, which is how I eventually met her. I felt sorry for her, so using the assets available to me as Director of Special Projects, I had a new body grown for her and planted her in Riel Fury’s home as his daughter. I assumed someone would have figured it out by now.” “You mean she’s not really Riel Fury’s daughter?” Merrick uttered in surprise. “She is in every way that matters,” Geist said. “Tina just had a secret. If secrecy bothers you so much, Merrick, then by all means, lets be honest.” He gave her a grin. “So, shall we start with the Marduk?” Merrick frowned. Where did he hear about that? “You make your point very convincingly you old coot,” she said, “but my complaints stand. She’s just here so she can be herself? What kind of commander has no ambition, no drive? Just what are her goals?” “I think the captain has done a pretty good job,” Stormie said. His (what did you expect? It’s a sauna, steam is hot water vapor) nervousness much lessened now that Geist has started speaking without getting stoned to death. “Do you think all the people that have died on this ship would agree?” Merrick asked. “A captain can’t just stumble her way through a war hoping that everything will turn out all for the best.” “I agree,” Geist said. “As a member of this crew I would be extremely interested in knowing what our captain’s specific goals are.” Tina looked contemplative. “I guess my goals are pretty much the same as any captain in wartime. I just want to get through this war and keep my crew safe. I spent three hundred years haunting the mindwalker temple on Gauss and during that time I saw many powerful mindwalkers with a great deal of personal ambition fall into oblivion because of their ambitions. I’m simply happy being who I am and serving however I can. ” “Those who let their ambitions destroy them are fools,” Merrick said. “And just what are your goals, miss eye on the prize?” Generec En Pee See One asked. She had been listening for a while and decided to speak up. “I intend to be in charge of the VEEC in three years,” Merrick replied. “Really?” One asked skeptically. “Being in charge of the VEEC will allow me to influence the economic growth of entire planets,” Merrick said. “It would allow me to single-handedly shape the course of their history, and perhaps that of the entire Epsilon Sector.” “Hmmm…” Tina said. “Maybe my ambitions aren’t quite as megalomaniacal as yours, but I’m happy with them.” The discussion got a little more heated as Merrick took exception to the megalomaniacal crack and Tina sheepishly apologized (she meant to say grandiose but for some reason it had come out megalomaniacal). In the meanwhile, Aniston and his boys watched intently through the ever so slightly open door. “You realize they’ll shove us into an airlock if they catch us watching them again?” one of the techs pointed out. “Who cares?” Aniston said with a lecherous timbre in his voice, “just kill me now!” A hand almost seemed to shoot up from the floor, covering Aniston’s mouth and pinching his nose shut. He struggled with the suffocating grasp for a few seconds before finally breaking free. He looked down to see Generec En Pee See Two standing there. “What are you doing?” Aniston demanded. “Are you trying to kill me?” “That’s what you wanted, right?” Two asked sweetly. “So just what are you bad boys doing here?” “Well…umm…you see…it’s like this…” “I’m waiting,” Two said with the sort of sweet innocence that promised bloodshed if Aniston couldn’t give a VERY good answer. Awe heck, the admiral can be hanged for all Aniston cared. “The fact is that we’re looking for an intruder.” The door shot open and several women stuck their heads out. “An intruder?” all of them asked in unison. ***** Stan was busy doing paperwork when the calls started coming in. “Admiral!” Tina’s was the first holographic floating disembodied head to appear over his desk. “Is it true that there’s an invader spy aboard stealing women’s underwear?” “Did you order Mr. Aniston to be a peeping tom in the girl’s sauna?” Generec En Pee See One asked next. “And what’s this I hear about you ordering the maintenance crews to inspect the girl’s locker room while we were still inside?” Merrick demanded. The Nergal had an extremely small crew for its size, but a quirk of fate (or contrivance) seemed to make a lot of them women. And almost every one of them was right now hovering above Stan’s desk in holographic form, angrily demanding to know what kind of perverted game he was playing. “Why me?” he asked the gods as he pounded his head against the desk, “Why always me?” ***** After the commotion outside the sauna, the women quickly filed out to go back to their work and to avoid further peepers. Of course, two men followed them out as well, surprising Aniston to no end. “Wha… how… who… huh?” he asked as Geist straightened his bathrobe, having marched nonchalantly through the throng of women clad only in towels and their own inhibitions (and sometimes little of either), dutifully followed by Stormie. Geist smiled enigmatically. “Training for infiltration. This too is part of the Anything Goes School,” he said sagely. “Hey,” Aniston said, regaining his senses, “that’s a pretty neat trick. I don’t suppose you could teach me that one?” Geist shook his head. “No, I fear that you will not use the Somebody Else’s Problem™ Cloak for good.” “Awe, come on,” Aniston pleaded. “I promise I’ll be good.” Geist just turned to walk away. “Come, boy,” he said to Stormie. They left the room. “Jedi elitist!” Aniston called after them. The pair changed back into their cloths, the Cloak of Somebody Else’s Problem™ still covering them in the women’s locker room, then walked for a while back towards the bar and grill before Stormie spoke up. “I’m sorta worried,” he said. “About what?” Geist asked. “Well, umm… It’s… well…” “Spit it out, boy,” Geist said impatiently. “I think I’m going through some changes,” Stormie said. “I think my curse is doing things to me, at least when I’m stuck as a girl, making me feel things I don’t wanna feel…about Argon… I’m afraid it’s gonna spread to my guy side and…” his voice trailed off. Geist stopped and looked around, briefly worried. “What’s the matter?” Stormie asked. “For a minute I thought we’d wandered into an after school special.” “What’s that supposed to mean?” Stormie demanded not a little annoyed. “Nothing,” Geist said. “It’s the curse, plain and simple, it sort of comes with emotional and mental baggage. I eat a lot of this weird bamboo stuff when I’m a panda, but I just can’t stand the stuff when I’m normal.” Stormie blinked. “Oh. Okay.” He felt better now. The way his girl half had been carrying on with Argon tended to make him nauseous. The sooner he got  a cure for this thing, the better. The writer in the black hat wandered by, muttering to himself over and over again that it really wasn’t his fault. ***** Meanwhile, in an orbital station high above Vol, Daishi found himself serving out rice. Why rice exactly? Why not? It is a noble food, if dull and uninspired. Furthermore it’s what the defenders of Vol, having been under siege by the invaders for a short while now, had to eat. Resources were scarce, and rice was relatively easy to come by, so Daishi served it. “So did you manage to contact the Nadesico?” the woman that helped run the station’s cafeteria asked him as he worked. “Now I told you dozens of times already, honey,” the woman’s husband said, “it’s not the Nadesico, it’s the Nergal.” It was an important correction to make, but we won’t hold the woman’s error against her. “Yeah,” Daishi said with a hint of resignation in his voice. “It took me too long though. I couldn’t get through in time to save Generec En Pee See Four.” The man in the brown robe at the counter sipped at a glass of heavily recycled metallic tasting water before speaking up. “I’m surprised, Daishi,” he said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you get this upset over the death of a soldier before.” “It’s not that simple, Master,” Daishi said, briefly causing some eyebrows to be raised at such an apparently formal and subservient form of address. It was, of course, neither formal nor subservient, but not many people knew that the jedi sitting at the counter just happened to go by the name Master. “How do you mean?” The semi-retired Imperial affiliated Jedi Knight had been traveling through the Vol system on business when the Invader blockade had clamped down on the system. Random chance alone had found him on the same station as his former comrade in arms. “She died in my place,” Daishi said. “She died because the VEEC wanted me as a test subject, and because they didn’t warn her about what kind of enemy she was facing. That just pisses me off. I had two whole weeks in which I could have warned them, and I just couldn’t get through. It was like the universe itself was united against me.” Master hmmmed and took another drink, instantly regretting it. It didn’t matter how good a water recycling system was, if you recycled the same water over and over again enough times, eventually the filters stopped helping all that much. “So what brings you here anyway?” Daishi asked. “Jedi business,” Master said, his tone became deathly serious. “Master Skywalker has informed me that he has sensed the awakening of a great, ancient evil somewhere in the Epsilon Sector, and since I’m one of the few light Jedi capable of moving about openly in this region of space, he asked me to poke around and see what I could find.” “Sounds spooky,” Daishi said, wondering if the Deathwookiee was registering as supernatural evil again. At least he wasn’t sending the Jedi Academy threatening pastry anymore. “It is,” Master agreed. “I’m told Master Skywalker had a dream about it that made him scream like a little girl for at least an hour.” “Well,” Daishi said, “whatever it is, I’m sure we’ll run into it at some point.” He poured himself a glass of water and sniffed it suspiciously. It didn’t smell TOO bad. “You should think about joining up with us on the Nergal.” Master nodded. That just felt right. It was the kind of feeling that made a master jedi pin all his hopes on an eight year old podracing slave whom he’d never met before. Something told him the Nergal was where he needed to be, almost as though he was reading god’s notes or something. “Besides, Geist’s opened a bar on the ship,” Daishi added. That settled matters. ***** There were a few disadvantages to being cursed like this, Stormie-chan thought to herself as she walked through the corridors of the Nergal, leaving something of a trail of water drops in her wake. One of them was that arrogant chauvinist she had to share this body with. His thoughts were so… well… male! He had no idea what it was like being locked in his head while he went about his typical pig life. Like today in the woman’s sauna. Training for infiltration indeed! It must be said here that Stormie-chan was still quite a bit hurt over Argon’s rejection/ultimatum/heart breaking statement (cruel, awful, mean, heartless Argon Viper!) and as a result she had trouble right now looking on the myriad of different male species with anything but disdain. They were, in her current way of thinking, all pigs. Another problem had to do with the rest of the pigs on this ship. Her male form couldn’t walk around this ship for more than a few moments before some crewMAN who preferred to look at her female form would splash her with cold water (as one had a few moments ago). Nobody ever tried splashing Geist with cold water. Argon’s voice came across the intercom, informing the crew that there was an intruder aboard the ship. “He sounds like he’s announcing a fox hunt,” Stormie-chan said to herself. She stopped to shake some of the water out of her hair, and stopped when she realized she was making a mess. This wasn’t going to work. ***** Aku looked up startled when she heard the buzzer on her door beep. “Oh, gosh,” she said. She turned back to the invader spy disguised as Mr. Fluffy. “Don’t move!” she ordered. The buzzer beeped again. “Come in,” Aku said, as calmly as she could manage. The door slid open and Stormie-chan entered. “I hope I’m not interrupting anything,” she said, “but I was wondering if I could borrow a towel?” She looked around the room a little uneasily. Aku was something of her friend on account of the two of them working side by side for so long, but Aku’s taste in room decorations were just plain creepy. Without seeing it, Stormie-chan accidentally stepped on the remote control for the viewer, which lay on the floor. The screen was soon alive with Immortal Warrior. There was a dramatic scene where one of the secondary characters died. Mr. Fluffy gasped. Aku briefly panicked. Stormie-chan just blinked a few times. In the truest honorable spirit of a man who knew the jig was up, Mr. Fluffy stood up and pulled his head off, revealing the human head concealed underneath. He saluted. “I apologize for this deception,” he said. “I am Star Colonel Joe Umitsubame of the Clan Krayat Dragon, attached to the expeditionary forces of the Clan Federation of Jovia and its associated moons and asteroids.” More blinking ensued. ***** Daishi sat on the shore of a lake, thoroughly depressed. He wasn’t sure why he was depressed, and he wasn’t sure if it really mattered, but he was depressed. He could hear Tina footsteps as she approached. She had just gotten her new body, and now she couldn’t just pop out of the ground like… well… like a ghost. This meant that for once, he could hear her coming. And he was thankful, because he didn’t want to talk to anyone. “What’s a matter, Robert?” she asked. “Are you feeling alright?” “Just leave me alone, Tina,” Daishi said. “I don’t want to talk to anyone.” “Were you in a fight?” Tina asked. She sounded concerned. “Just go away!” Daishi demanded. Instead, Tina crouched down before him. “Hey,” she said. “You wanna see a magic trick that will turn you back to normal?” “Huh?” Daishi was surprised, and, against his better judgment, curious. “Just close your eyes,” Tina said. Not really sure why he was doing it, Daishi closed his eyes. Tina kissed him. It was one of those kisses given when you really mean it. Long, slow, tender. It was… Daishi’s senses returned in short order. His eyes snapped open and he broke away from the kiss. “Gah!” he said, angry, scared, irritated, and {AHEM} all at once, “What the hell did you do that for?” Tina giggled triumphantly. “See,” she said, “I told you it would turn you back to normal!” “Don’t you even think of doing that to me again, Tina!” “TO LATE!” She tackled him, pinning him to the ground and raining kisses on his face. ***** Daishi awoke to see a thirteen year old girl staring down at him with a look of concern. The dream still fresh in his mind, he recoiled in brief terror before remembering where he was. He was in the makeshift sleeping quarters of one of Vol’s orbital stations, surrounded by fifteen other people, each of them asleep. “Are you all right?” the girl asked. She was the daughter of the manager of the cafeteria where he had been working the last two weeks. “It was a dream,” he said, mostly to reassure himself. “Just a bad dream.” “You had another nightmare?” the girl asked. Daishi nodded. “I’ve been having them almost since this war started.” Of course that left out some information. He had been having bad dreams since Varneck was attacked, but these dreams, the Tina dreams, hadn’t started hitting him until the Nergal’s mission to Varneck had gone sour. They were the ones that bothered him the most. “What do you think it means?” the girl asked. Daishi didn’t answer that. He didn’t want to try to think about what his dreams about Tina might mean. “Wouldn’t it be cool if you were some kind of reincarnated warrior?” the girl said dreamily. The way she said it didn’t sit well with Daishi, especially not so soon after that dream he had just had. Without bragging he would admit that lately he has had some kind of good mojo when it comes to dealing with the ladies, and the last thing he needed was a thirteen year old with a crush or the angry father of said thirteen year old following him. Before either of them could talk any more along that vein, the alarm began blaring and the station was rocked by an explosion. That didn’t bother Daishi too much. The way the girl suddenly clung to him in terror on the other hand… ***** “Thank god we have a pilot of your experience with us,” the VEEC administrator of this facility said later as Daishi put on a pilot’s suit. In the launch bay before him stood a Hatav. “We have to destroy that invader before the VEN arrives.” “Why is that so important?” Daishi asked. The Administrator pointed to a nearly completed ship visible in the station’s main repair bay. “That’s why,” The administrator said. ”The Nergal’s sister ship, the Marduk. We’ve been building her secretly here for months in preparation for a return to Varneck.” “So the VEEC has been keeping things from the rest of the Vast Empire,” Daishi said. ***** Meanwhile, back at the ranch… “Are you sure about this, Stormie?” Aku asked as they pushed a laundry cart through the corridors of the Nergal, Star Colonel Umitsubame concealed under a pile of dirty laundry. “Mr. Viper might be upset.” Stormie-chan took on the indignant look that angry women do so well. “I can’t begin to say how little I care about how Argon Viper feels.” Her look softened some. “Besides, I’d like to hear what our guest has to say before we throw him to the wolves. Wouldn’t you?” Aku grinned and nodded. They kept walking. The ship’s laundry (run by droids) would be the best place to have a quiet conversation. Of course no such conversation would be forthcoming. As they turned a corner of the corridor, they were confronted by Argon Viper and a detachment of security personnel. “What are you two doing out here?” he demanded, placing a single hand on the laundry cart to stop it. “I don’t think that’s any of your business,” Stormie-chan stated. Aku kept her mouth shut, having seen the battle lines drawn and knowing it would be better if she just kept out of the line of fire. “Don’t you realize there’s a security alert in progress?” Argon said. “Yes,” Stormie-chan replied, “and I can tell you’re enjoying your little blood sport.” Argon decided to try a different tactic. “Until we locate the intruder, this ship is not secure. You’re both in danger here…” Said intruder had heard everything that the Whipid and the cursed helmswoman were saying to each other and simply could not take it any longer. He suddenly got to his feet. “How dare you speak to these women in such a disrespectful manner!” he shouted. He likely would have continued his rant if not for the security team, which took the opportunity to dogpile him. ***** “Well, he’s human,” Geist said. Star Colonel Umitsubame stood with his hands bound at Uncle Yo-Sims, which had fairly recently become something of the ship’s informal conference room. All of the Nergal’s command staff was assembled, and most of them had drinks. Some of those drinks even had little paper umbrellas, but we won’t name names. Technicians in the meanwhile put away the DNA analysis machine, stowing it behind the bar (of course there was a DNA analysis machine behind the bar, it’s Uncle Yo-Sims after all). Geist continued his report. “Aside from some minor genetic modifications, he is completely normal.” “But how can this be?” Tina asked. “We’ve been told for all this time that the invaders were aliens.” She turned to the prisoner. “Did the invaders recruit you to fight against your own people?” The prisoner was incensed. “How dare you imply that I have any connection to your barbarian society! I am a proud soldier of the Clan Federation!” This declaration surprised most of the assembled personnel. “You mean the invaders are human?” Argon asked in surprise. The sudden appearance of Ruri’s holographic head, however, interrupted before the questioning could continue. “Captain,” she said from the bridge. “We have emerged from lightspeed in the Vol system. My long range sensors indicate that several starfighters and one VEEC hatav are engaged in combat with one of the Invaders’ attack units.” “Oh my gosh!” Tina exclaimed. “Robert must be piloting that Hatav! Ruri, sound general quarters! We’re going in to help.” She turned to the rest of the bridge crew. “All of you get to your battlestations.” “Hold it captain,” Merrick demanded. “What are you going to do about those two traitors?” She pointed an accusing finger at Stormie-chan and Aku. “Saving Robert’s life is more important than bullying those two, Merrick,” Tina snapped. “We’ll worry about them later.” ***** A TIE interceptor blew up just above Daishi’s hatav. This was pretty intense. The starfighters had been swarming the surprisingly maneuverable invader for several minutes before Daishi had joined the battle, but they weren’t having much luck, the massive invader machine’s shields were too strong. “I knew it!” Daishi declared as he got a good look at the invader. “That’s the same guy that was on Endoven.” The war machine smashed another TIE with a blast from one of its main guns, then turned to face Daishi’s charging hatav. Daishi’s comm system crackled to life. “Your evil giant robot is no match for my battlemech!” the enemy pilot declared as he turned to ignore the much smaller machine and instead raked the station with heavy weapon’s fire. In the heat of battle, it didn’t occur to Daishi that a supposedly unmanned weapon system had just spoken to him. “Don’t you turn your back on me, [CENSORED]!” He shouted as he opened up with his heavy laser cannon and a volley of concussion missiles, actually breaching the behemoth’s shields and damaging one of its charged particle cannons. “Curse you, foul barbarian!” his adversary uttered angrily. “That is the single blow you will land on me!” It finally hit Daishi what was wrong with this whole thing. Why would an unmanned alien weapon be speaking to him? And in flawless basic no less? ***** “The captain is too soft,” Talon said as he escorted the prisoner to a makeshift holding cell at gunpoint. “That’s far enough,” he said, stopping the prisoner in a deserted looking corridor. He raised his blaster to line up on Star Colonel Umitsubame’s head. “I think the public would be better off thinking we are at war with inhuman invaders, which makes your existence something of a liability.” Umitsubame merely stared at Talon with a look of surprise, as though such underhanded acts were beyond his comprehension. “Sorry about this chum,” Talon said. His finger tightened on the trigger. The as yet unnoticed Stormie-chan chose this moment to deliver a blow to Talon’s head with a frying pan. “Start running,” she said as the unconscious playboy slumped to the deck. “But but…” Umitsubame sputtered, “I can’t break my prisoner’s parole like that!” Underhanded acts truly were beyond his comprehension. Aku stepped forward and with a thought released the locks on his manacles. “Well you’re not a prisoner now,” she said. “Just go.” “HOLD IT RIGHT THERE!” someone else shouted. The trio turned to see Narm charging down another corridor. Umitsubame snatched up Talon’s gun and leveled it at the officer. “I’m sorry… EEP!” his apology quickly turned to fright as Narm whipped out a pair of blasters of his own and began spraying fire rather indiscriminately. Umitsubame and the two girls sought cover around the corner. Narm came charging around the corner, only to catch a frying pan in the face from Stormie-chan, and joined Talon in unconsciousness. The trio then ran for the launch bay. ***** “Just who are you?” Daishi demanded of the not so unmanned weapon he was facing. “I am a proud soldier of the Clan Federation of Jovia,” his opponent replied. “I am a hammer of righteousness that shall help bring true justice to the galaxy…” The enemy pilot continued his rant for some time, but Daishi was more focused on its implications. There was no doubt. No matter how good they were at speaking it, aliens never quite sounded human, this guy did. “He’s human. THEY’RE human. The invaders are human beings just like us! But that’s impossible!” Both machines hung in space, one pilot ranting, and the other coming to grips with the fact that yet again everything he had known about this war was wrong. Tina’s holographic head suddenly appeared in Daishi’s cockpit. “Robert!” she exclaimed. “Just hang on Robert, we’ll be there in a jiffy!” Since the comlink between Daishi’s hatav and the invader machine was still open, his adversary heard Tina’s declaration as well. “Reinforcements?” he said. “I must flee for now, but I will surely defeat you when once again we meet!” His war machine winked out of existence. ***** “Pilot Lee’s hatav is now landing,” Ruri reported. The ship was securing from general quarters now that the invader had jumped away. Narm sat at the communication station, his broken nose carefully wrapped up, trying to do Aku’s job since she had flown the coop with Stormie-chan and the prisoner. Tina looked downright depressed, which might have had something to do with Merrick’s continued harping on her over the current situation. “Thanks to your dubious decisions,” she said, “the prisoner has escaped and we have two missing crewmembers! Is this the way you are going to run this ship for the rest of the war captain?” “I’m sorry,” Tina said meekly. Daishi burst onto the bridge, having broken some kind of speed record in the process. “I just heard the prisoner has escaped!” he said. Tina’s face brightened considerably when she saw Daishi. “Robert!” she cried, but almost immediately she noticed that there was something different. Something wrong. Something angry. “All this time we’ve been fighting other humans,” he said to himself. “What is going on here? How could they do these things?” What is the matter with you, Robert? Tina asked herself this question but could not find the answer. There’s something different about you. You’re scaring me. ***** TO BE CONTINUED! Next Episode: Final Nights Part 2: The beginning of Nergal’s war.
 
-----------------------
"Thinking before you act is counter-revolutionary."
~Uncle Yo-sim, All Knowing Bartender

So the invaders were originally banished by the Republic, Tycho is playing his own weird games with things, and we have a weird module attached to the hull named the Reality Bender, which was built by a bartender who apparently isn’t supposed to exist. Is anybody else as confused as I am? VARNECK INHERITOR NERGAL dubbed in English Episode 15: The Final Nights Part 3: Pure Talent; You’re the next captain of the Nergal! A few months have passed since the Nergal acquired its new module, and things have proceeded pretty much as normal. Ruri learned she was (again) a princess, though we haven’t yet figured out exactly how that works. Mr. Aniston in the meanwhile was caught embezzling an enormous amount of money from the VEEC, however no punishment was delivered upon him when it was revealed that he was using the money to build a pretty cool superweapon. After watching too much Immortal Warrior, Stan, our military liaison, was driven to attempt suicide by piloting said superweapon. Though the superweapon was destroyed in the flight, Stan survived when at the last minute he was replaced by his stunt double. He is currently resting comfortably in a mental institute on Eridani, and the doctors predict he might some day make at least a partial recovery. Given the high rate of attempted suicides among military liaisons stationed aboard the Nergal, no replacement has been provided for Stan. As I said, it’s been a fairly typical few months. The only real noteworthy piece of news is a message from the Baron Administrator that arrived on Tycho’s desk about a week ago. It said simply “Plan C”. Whatever that means, I couldn’t tell you. ***** “Grrr…be a star… be a star,” Tina said testily as she tore down posters featuring an image of the generic idol singer babe wearing a dress which was tight in all the right places. “These stupid be a star posters are everywhere!” she said as she came across a corridor lined with them. “Just what is going on here?” ***** “Oh yeah, a beauty contest!” Aniston said as he directed his engineers in setting up the stage. “Lots of girls in swimsuits and heals and…” The door opened to two Deathwookiee girls came in carrying a box of posters. “Did you order these posters sir?” they asked with synchronized cheerfulness. “Hey, ladies,” Aniston said. “Are you two entering the contest?” The Deathwookiee girls just stared uncomprehending. ***** Tina marched into Tycho’s office in something of a huff. “Just what are these?” she demanded as she dropped a stack of posters on his desk. Tycho briefly glanced at the posters before returning to his spreadsheets. “Posters,” he said. “And what’s on them?” Tina asked shortly. Tycho looked again. “A girl.” “And?” Tycho gave it another look. “A rather top heavy girl.” Tina gave up on that line of questioning. “Why didn’t anyone tell me about this beauty contest?” she demanded. “I’m the captain of the Nergal! People are supposed to tell me what’s happening aboard my ship!” “Oh, but we’re looking beyond that, captain,” Tycho said, finally giving Tina his undivided attention. “Huh?” “The crew of the Nergal is largely young people with bright futures ahead of them,” Tycho explained. “They need to start thinking now about what they are going to do when this war is over.” “When the war is over?” Tina repeated, not really comprehending. “Yes,” Tycho said. “Some day this will all be over. What will our young crewmen do when there isn’t any need for soldiers?” Tina blinked once. “I don’t think such a time has ever existed in the history of the empire,” she said. “Sure this war with the invaders will come to an end, but then there are the numerous other wars that the imperial factions have been fighting and will be fighting for a long time, and there will always be a need for soldiers. I always thought that anyone that was willingly serving in the imperial forces were doing it because that was where they wanted their lives to lead. Though that may not be the case with the crew of the Nergal, most of us have our  futures thought out already. In any case, I don’t think winning a simple beauty contest will be enough to define the course anyone would want their life to take.” Tycho opened his mouth to speak, the closed it. Damn her when she decides to act and think rationally. Okay, new tack. “How about it’s to improve crew morale?” Tina’s expression visibly brightened. “In that case I think it’s a great idea!” she declared. “Just wonderful! I might even enter myself…” “I’m glad you like the idea captain,” Tycho said. “And I was thinking we could make the winner captain of the Nergal,” he added rapid-fire, hoping she was too caught up in her own ideas to notice. This time, however, she wasn’t. “Huh?” “Oh, just a little idle thought I had,” Tycho said, trying to dismiss her inquiry. “What a great idea!” Tina declared, catcing Tycho by surprise. “If pop stars can be made fire marshal or police chief for a day, then why can’t the winner of the contest be made captain for a day? What a great gimmick!” Okay, perhaps she hadn’t quite caught his meaning… ***** “So all you space cadets that want a shot at being captain for the day,” Tina said later on a shipwide broadcast endorsing the contest, “enter the First Star of the Nergal Talent Competition today!” “So,” Master asked Daishi as the pair drank at the bar, “are beauty competitions a regular occurrence aboard this ship?” Over the last month or so Master had  gotten over the creepy vibes he got from Geist and his bar enough to become one of the place’s more regular patrons, especially since seeing as he had no actual duties aboard the Nergal except as a passenger he had nothing better to do. Besides, if he were really going to get to the bottom of this, he needed to know everything he could about Geist, and that meant spending a lot of time at his bar for… umm… surveillance. Yeah, that’s it. Surveillance and whiskey. Somewhere a good and honest jedi wept for the sins of other jedi, but then he might not be so uptight if he had ever gotten a date in high school. “Not really,” Daishi said, referring to Master’s original and probably forgotten question. “I think it was Tycho’s idea.” A writer with a black hat in his hand wandered into the bar and took his usual corner table. He wasn’t wearing a hat right now because of the ice bag applied to the lump on his forehead, the result of a rather unfortunate contract dispute with a young computer officer. The Generec En Pee Sees occupied their own table, and all their talk was focused on the competition. “Did you hear that the winner is going to be made Captain of the Negal?” Generec En Pee See Two said. “Who do you think it will be?” “I bet I can spy out the new captain,” Three said, than began to chuckle some. Two just shook her head. “That was way too pointless, even for this writer,” she said, tossing a glance and an empty pop can at the writer with the black hat. No, I’m not going to explain that one. “So what are you going to do for the competition, One?” Two asked her other companion. “I’m gonna sing a song!” “I’m not entering,” One said sullenly. “Wha?” Two uttered surprised. “But you gotta!” Three leaned in real close to One’s face, slurping up her noodles for effect. “So…” she said, “what are you planning to do when this war is over?” Almost unconsciously, One’s attention turned towards the kitchen, where Daishi was hard at work on some soup being judged by the Deathwookiee. Both Two and Three saw this, and both leaned in real close, blocking One’s view with their own knowing grins. “I bet I know what she wants!” Two declared. “And where she wants it!” Three added. “WILL YOU TWO KNOCK IT OFF!” One yelled, “IT’S NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS!” ***** Entries began appearing above Tycho’s desk in holographic format almost before the contest was formally announced. “Interesting…” Tycho said as he catalogued the various entries. He soon came to one that gave him reason to pause. “Loyal Sexy Undergrad Minion?” he said, reading the name of entrant 87 word for word. “That’s a little blatant, isn’t it?” The next entrant was girl named Lynn Minmay, and Tycho immediately contacted security. A few moments later there was a faint sound, almost like a young idol singer being ejected out an airlock, but we won’t dwell on that. (I always wanted to eject Lynn Minmay out an airlock) A few Ninja also wanted to enter, but because Ninja have no definable gender, they weren’t qualified. Tycho was still hard at work when the priority communication from Endoven came through. “How is it going, Tycho?” Bear, the VEEC man tasked with watching the shop while the Baron Administrator was on… umm… vacation, said. “Is everything going smoothly? Do you understand what we want to happen?” “Of course, sir, “ Tycho said. “After our little security breach concerning the identity of the invaders, morale is rather low.” Tycho didn’t feel obligated to point out that he was the cause of the little security breach. Some people just wouldn’t understand. “You want a new captain that will leave the crew like putty in your hands.” “Make sure of things, Tycho,” Bear said. “The Nergal needs a super idol captain to take their minds off of all the unimportant aspects of the war. Both the VEEC and the High Council want the crew happy and fighting. Happy enough so that they won’t care that we’ve been lying to them all this time, especially now that they have the reality bender.” “Of course, sir,” Tycho said, “just leave everything to me.” The communication came to an end and Tycho sighed. “Even for us this is sinking pretty low.” “Excuse me!” Tina said as her holographic image popped up. “There seems to be some misinformation going around, Tycho. People seem to think this is a competition for a new captain! Don’t you think you’d better clear things up?” “Oh… well…” Tycho began. He deftly turned his attention back to his work. “I’m afraid I can’t talk right now captain, I still have a lot of applications to process…” “Now hold it…” Tina said as her holographic image moved to keep in Tycho’s view. “You have to clear this up! People have to understand that winner gets to be captain for a day, not the new captain.” “There’s no cause for alarm, captain,” Tycho said. “Huh?” Wise man once say: think fast, talk faster. “Why isn’t it obvious?” Tycho asked. “With your dazzling looks and intelligence you’ll win without a doubt!” “Oh!” Tina replied with embarrassed, modest, flattered delight. ***** Meanwhile, somewhere else, orbiting a star far far away, two men argued, while a third watched. “How can you think of such heresy, Joe?” Star Captain Ken Uraki lamented. “A peace treaty with those barbarian hordes… It is unthinkable!” “Our goal in this war is to establish a lasting peace!” Star Colonel Joe Umitsubame countered. “We must be prepared to exercise every option!” “Don’t give me that, Joe!” Ken protested. “I know what this is all about! You have let yourself be possessed by that barbarian woman’s witchery!” He walked over to the wall, where one of Joe’s prized Immortal Warrior posters hung and tore it down, revealing another, far more damning poster underneath. A likeness of a certain helmswoman on a certain imperial warship. Joe blushed automatically upon seeing the likeness of the woman that lately haunted his dreams, any response he might have made to Ken’s accusation caught somewhere between his throat and…umm… lower down. “Is this true, Star Colonel?” Galaxy Commander Genbaka asked, having chosen this moment to finally speak. Joe turned away from the drawing of Stormie-Chan to face his commander. “My only concern is the establishment of a lasting peace, sir,” he said. “I believe the best path to that peace will be through negotiation.” “And you believe that the Empire will have any interest in peace as long as they have the Reality Bender?” the Galaxy Commander asked skeptically. “No, I cannot agree.” “But sir,” Joe protested. “If they truly intended to use the Reality Bender, they would have already. It has been months since they deployed the module, and they have made no effort to utilize its power.” “They may be waiting for an opportune moment,” the Galaxy Commander countered. “No, Star Colonel. We will not talk peace with the Empire until the Reality Bender is dealt with. Only when we have gained a position of strength again can we be prepared to talk peace, because only then will the barbarians be prepared to listen.” ***** “Welcome, fans, to the first annual Star of the Nergal competition!” Tycho announced, looking very fitting for his role of announcer in his shiny white tux. The ship’s grand ballroom (what, you’re surprised the Nergal has a grand ballroom?) had been quickly and quite successfully remodeled to accommodate this event. The audience, largely male (almost every female in the crew was a contestant) applauded enthusiastically, anxious for the show to start. “So without further ado, lets begin our search for the next captain of tomorrow! I present entry number fifteen, Generec En Pee See Two, singing the opening theme to Immortal Warrior, Princes of the Universe!” Two took the stage, clad in the classic Immortal Warrior garb of shorts and a vest. With great enthusiasm, she began to sing. “Here we are, born to be kings, we’re the princes of the universe!” she sang. “Well, this battle royal is off to a great start,” Aniston, acting as a commentator, said into his microphone as Two sang, “and we’ll be keeping track of the votes all through the broadcast. Now, let me introduce my co-commentator, former champion playboy Sierra ‘Talon’ Tarsus.” “Thank you,” Talon said. “But what was that about former playboy?” ***** Backstage, Stormie-chan was supposed to be getting ready (she was up next) but she was instead lost in thought. Thoughts of a dashing young, and coincidentally enemy, officer had been meandering through her head for some time. She had only met Joe Umitsubame once, and for a brief time, but there was just something about him… “Hey, Stormie,” she heard someone say to her. She broke out of her reverie. “Two is getting close to finishing her song,” Aku said. “You’re up next, right?” Stormie-chan nodded. She studied Aku for a moment. “Aku, why are you wearing that medtech’s uniform?” Aku smiled. “I’m going to demonstrate how to give a vitamin shot,” she said, displaying the old fashioned syringe (the likes of which hadn’t been seen in centuries). “You’re going to give someone a shot on stage?” Stormie-chan said. “Are you certified for that?” Aku waved aside Stormie-chan’s question and picked up the stuffed animal she had chosen for her subject. “Now don’t move, Mr Bun Bun,” she said as she attempted a practice run. The needle didn’t quite go where she was hopping. “I think I pierced Mr. Bun Bun’s lower lip.” ***** Two’s song ended with a flourish and something of a magic trick. A flash of a cloth briefly concealed her, and when she reappeared she wore, not the vest and shorts, but an itsy bitsy string bikini. She stood as she finished her song with the kind of slightly shy and innocent pose that drives some fanboys nuts. “And a strong showing by Generec En Pee See Two,” Talon said. “It’s talent like that that makes a true captain of tomorrow. Who’s up next?” “Next we have Stormtrooper 1026 with her Spacetrooper swimsuit routine,” Aniston said. “You have to wonder if the whole gender changing curse might hurt her a little in the votes.” “Now I don’t know about that,” Talon said as Stormie-Chan started her routine wearing a massive suit of spacetrooper armor. “After all, our crewmembers are certainly honest, reasonable people who will judge the contestants on their talents…” Stormie-Chan’s spacetrooper armor suddenly popped off, leaving Stormie-Chan standing there in a provocative pose wearing a swimsuit that was more wishful thinking than actual material. Behind Aniston and Talon, the vote counter for Stormie-Chan suddenly registered a rather dramatic increase. “Forget about curses,” Aniston declared. “In the here and now Stormtrooper 1026 is hot!” ***** It proceeded like that for a while. Girls came on stage and did their thing, and most of them somehow ended up in a swimsuit at the end. It seemed to be the winning formula, and the audience certainly seemed to enjoy it. “I lost my needle,” Aku said cheerfully when she got on stage. “So if anyone finds it, let me know.” A flash of cloth, and Aku’s medtech uniform was gone, replaced by the most scandalous swimsuit yet. “Wow!” Aniston declared as the vote count for Aku went up. “Aku can nursemaid me anytime!” He composed himself. “So who do you favor as the winner?” “Hey, I’m easy,” Talon replied. “Who’s up next?” “The Deathwookiee girls,” Aniston said. “They do everything together, but that might make judging them a bit difficult.” “It would be a shame to break up such a nicely matched set,” Talon agreed. ***** Of course, the Nergal was a combat warship in a potential combat zone, so obviously some of the crew had to be on duty, and those on duty personnel, namely two pilots, a computer officer, an all knowing bartender, and a writer in a black hat, paid rapt attention to their assigned duties on the bridge. Okay, so they were mostly paying attention to their duties. The writer was typing and the bartender was hanging around waiting for someone to request an explanation. It’s not like those two actually have any duties anyway. But the three actual crew members on duty were keeping their mind on their job… or rather the large holoprojection displaying the talent competition that hovered in the middle of the bridge. That’s sorta like their job, right? “Geez, Dai” Generec En Pee See One said. “You’re practically drooling.” Daishi didn’t look away from the Deathwookiee Girl’s performance. “Well, they’re so…talented. I’ve never seen KMFDM performed in quite this way…” “Whatever,” One said. She for one didn’t think the music fit too well with girls bouncing around on stage in skimpy outfits, but then, she just didn’t understand that girls bouncing around on stage in skimpy outfits went with EVERYTHING. I mean, what wouldn’t be better if it were done with girls bouncing around on a stage in skimpy outfits? Daishi, in the meanwhile, was starting to feel philosophical. He found that KMFDM tended to make him think deep thoughts. “Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be like those invaders?” he asked One. “I mean training your whole life to kill and not knowing anything else?” One shrugged. “I never had a problem with it,” she said, then got up from her seat. “I gotta go do a patrol now. At least I don’t have to watch any more of this meat market.” ***** In a silent coup, Narm quickly deposed Tycho as the announcer. Actually, he just grabbed the microphone before Tycho could announce the next contestant. After all, if anyone was going to announce this next girl, it would be Narm! “And here she is, ladies and gentlemen!” he said. “Entry number 1578!” “We don’t have that many entries!” Aniston protested, but Narm ignored him. “Such a vision of beauty has never before been seen!” he continued. “Here she is, the goddess of Gauss, the queen of space! Our beloved captain, Tina Fury!” Looking good enough to eat {ahem!} Tina took the stage and began to sing. “Zutto sagashiteta konna emotion, kimi ga fui ni mune no tobira akete kureta kara…” ***** “Where exactly did our captain learn Japanese?” Ruri asked nobody in particular. This was something of a cop out in her opinion. The writer began grumbling something about how hard it is to find bubbly pop songs for ditzy girls to sing. ***** “Donna houseki mo iro aseru hodo, pyua nakimochi nemutteita no ne.” “yume o oikaketara egao to namida no kazu dandan fuete yuku koto shitteiru kedo.” The song had something of a catchy tune to it, and even though there were only two people on the ship who had any real idea what was being sung (and one of them only vaguely, three years of Japanese in school and I can barely order a blasted coffee) everyone seemed to be enjoying it. “Doki ni ha motto watashi rashiku kaze o kanji tai, hoshizora mo kurayami mo massugu mitsumeru kara, ashita ha motto watashi rashiku aruki hajime tai, tatta ima no kirameki o itsumo daiji ni shite.” Narm was doing his best to keep on his feet and cheering, but the effect of Tina singing seemed to be sending him dangerously close to cardiac arrest. Poor fellow. Fortunately, a brief instrumental section ensued, sparing the young officer. ***** Generec En Pee See One’s hatav flew its lazy patrol loops. The only breakup of the monotony for One was the audio from the talent competition being transmitted to her from the Nergal. Watching that stuff tended to make her nauseous, but the background music was a good counter for the monotony of a patrol in which absolutely nothing is happening. Besides, she never thought the captain could sing quite this well. Suddenly the glint of light off an object far in the distance caught her attention. “What the… Bridge!” ***** “Doki ni ha motto watashi rashiku kaze o kanji tai, taiyou mo sukooru mo minna uku tomeru kara, ashita ha motto watashi rashiku aruki hajime tai, dare demo nai watashi no mirai o mitsuketakute.” Through some undisclosed means, Tina’s costume had been replaced in proper talent show fashion with a bathing suit as she came to the end of her song. “Dare demo nai watashi no mirai o mitsuketakute!” The crowd applauded, hollered, whistled, and cheered. ***** “You aren’t really going to make me go through with this,” Ruri asked after she watched the captain leave the stage. “Are you?” “It’s in your contract,” the writer replied. Ruri frowned. Someday, someone has got to let her sign her own contracts. “I am not happy with my contract,” she said. “There were certain guarantees…” “Well…” the writer stammered, “Word limits and budget concerns and all that… we couldn’t fit everything we wanted in… Nevertheless, your scene is essential.” Ruri found herself in a corner, so she tried her last card. “I’ll sing badly,” she threatened. The writer smiled a smile of victory. “No you won’t,” he said. “You have artistic integrity.” Ruri slumped her shoulders in defeat. “Damn you.” The young computer officer turned to her computer consol and mentally prepared herself. Best to just get it over with. “Hey, Bridge! Wake up damnit!” One’s voice over the comm system nearly startled Ruri. “Of course!” she said to herself, seeing a way out. She immediately opened a communications channel to the lone hatav. “This is the bridge, Pilot One,” she said. ***** “’Bout time!” One said as she used her hatav’s lightsaber to bisect another invader war machine. “They’re coming in from all over, I could really use some help here!” ***** “Damnit!” Daishi said as his hatav launched, the talent show forgotten in the face of this new crisis. “How could they have gotten so close without us detecting them!” Unmanned invader attack units were closing in on the Nergal from practically every direction, and Daishi could have sworn they were multiplying. Of course, there was little time to think about that, as he soon found himself in bitter combat. ***** “We have to get clear of these attackers!” Argon said as the Nergal shuddered from another attack by the invaders. “Our compression field cannot hold up against this pounding forever.” Tina remained silent. Aside from giving the orders for evasion and activation of the point defense system, she hadn’t said much since the battle began. “Concussion missile magazines at seventy-five percent, captain,” Ruri reported. “I am reading no appreciable reduction in the numbers of the enemy. Additional units are appearing at the edge of the battlezone as quickly as they are being shot down.” “How can that be?” Merrick demanded. “Our sensors aren’t detecting their approach. How can they just be appearing this?” Tina turned to Geist. “Do you have an explanation?” she asked. Geist nodded. “I think I will let my loyal sexy undergrad minion field this one,” he said. A holoimage of said loyal sexy undergrad minion appeared on the bridge. “It is apparent that the invaders are utilizing their ability for bosan jumping in a new way. In this case they are jumping their unmanned weapons in close enough to the Nergal to allow them to strike with almost no warning.” She smiled. “This system leaves us as exposed as I am now.” The holoimage zoomed out to show the minion’s full body, which was clad in… well… I’m sure you’ve picked up on the gimmick by now. Aniston’s holoimage popped up, with a holographic and steadily increasing vote count for the Loyal Sexy Undergrad Minion next to it. “There’s nothing more exhilarating than detailed technical descriptions from a lady in a swimsuit!” he declared. “No detail left covered,” Talon added. “Trust this girl to reveal it all.” Merrick pointed an accusing finger at Talon. “Aren’t you supposed to be out there with the other pilots?” “Oh… umm…” Ruri, in the meanwhile, was noticing something. “Captain, this is odd, but…” “We are being herded,” Tina said as if it were no real problem. “Huh?” most everyone else on the bridge uttered in surprise. Ruri decided to elaborate on her captain’s statement. “The enemy is attacking from almost every direction, but they always leave one path open to us, and because it provides the most room to maneuver, it is the path we have invariably taken. As the captain has said, we are being herded. More precisely, we are being herded into an ever tightening spiral. If this pattern holds true, we will be completely surrounded and boxed in in about eight minutes.” “Then we have to get out,” Merrick declared. Tina shook her head. “No, maintain evasion.” She looked down at Stormie-chan. “Stick to the spiral Stormie,” she told her helmswoman. “Now wait just a minute, captain!” Merrick protested. “This is obviously a trap! Once we reach the end of the spiral they will have us surrounded!” “They can have us surrounded any time they want,” Tina replied. “The invader attack units are much more maneuverable than the Nergal. The unmanned weapons aren’t here to destroy us, they are here to pin us in place when the time is right and wear us down until then. Then the enemy will strike with their real weapon.” “If that is so, then why are we playing into their hands?” Tina flashed one of her best ditzy smiles. “Who said we were?” She opened a comlink to the four pilots currently engaged in combat outside. “Hyee,” she said. “Could I get you to do me one teeny tiny favor in about six or seven minutes?” ***** “I sure hope you know what you’re doing,” Daishi said after Tina explained her plan. “Don’t worry, Robert dear,” Tina replied. “I know we’re fighting other humans now, and I know how humans think. This is so much easier than when I thought we were fighting aliens.” “Okay, Tina, but it’s going to be real ugly if you’re wrong.” ***** The minutes ticked by. Six minutes passed. “New contact, captain,” Ruri reported. “I am reading a massive energy buildup comparable to the one measured three months ago shortly before the destruction of the Marduk.” Tina nodded. “Very well,” she said. “And here is their trap.” “Captain, we have to get out of this spiral!” Merrick demanded. “If the invaders are preparing to fire a blast like the one they used at Vol, there is no way our compression field will stop it!” “We still have two minutes before they will fire, Merrick,” Tina said. “How can you be so sure?” Merrick wanted to know. “The spiral,” Argon said, having caught on to his captain’s train of thought. “Since they are trying to maneuver us into one specific point, we have to assume that this weapon cannot be aimed effectively against a freely moving target.” Tina nodded. “And the very precaution of the spiral suggests that the weapon takes some time to charge before it can fire,” she said, “and when it is charged it must be fired as soon as possible. That means any target must be at a very specific place at a very specific time. What will give us the advantage, however, are the power requirements.” “What are you talking about?” Merrick demanded. Tina just smiled. ***** Another minute passed, and it was time for Tina’s plan to be implemented. “All hatav units,” One ordered. “Execute power dump! Full speed! We have one minute to take that bastard out before it can fire!” It was a tactic almost as old as space combat. All imperial spacecraft had a power distribution system that could be altered on the fly, allowing for power to be transferred away from weaponry and defensive systems to the engines. This system could make even a ponderous craft suddenly a whole lot faster. Fast enough to cover an enormous distance in a very short time. All five of the hatavs were now hurtling through space, towards the ever increasing power buildup, at speeds comparable to a TIE Defender on crack. Of course their shields were slowly draining away to nothing and their laser cannons would soon become useless. They would reach the source of the power buildup in about forty seconds, and would have twenty more to destroy it before the ship could fire and vaporize the Nergal. Not that it would have a chance to shoot at the Nergal… ***** “Left seventy degrees, up twenty,” Tina ordered. The Nergal gracefully swung out of its shallow descending spiral, turning away from the path of least resistance it had been following up until now and into a solid wall of enemies. “Go to continuous fire on the munchion cannon, Ruri,” she said. “Blast us a way out of this spiral.” “Aye sir,” Ruri acknowledged. “Now you decide to break out of the spiral?” Merrick asked. “What about your plan?” “The hatavs can take it from here,” Tina replied cheerfully. “By now the power build up for their weapon should be high enough to force the Invader warship to shut down its defensive systems, if our data collected from Vol and other battlefields is accurate. The purpose of following the spiral until now was to compel the enemy to cross that point of no return.” “And what if you’re wrong?” Merrick asked. “What if that ship still has its defenses, what if it can target a moving ship?” “But I’m not, Merrick,” Tina said innocently. “The first principle of strategy is to know yourself and know your adversary. If they can fire at a moving target, they would not waste time with a strategy that serves no other purpose but to put the Nergal at a certain place and a certain time.” She smiled. “And even if they still have enough power for their defensive systems, it really doesn’t matter. Even if they do have time to fire, the Nergal won’t be where it was supposed to be.” ***** “What do you mean they’re breaking out of the spiral?” Star Captain Ken Uraki demanded angrily. The invader sensor officer cringed under his commander’s displeasure. “The imperial warship has turned and crashed through one side of our box, sir,” he reported. “The unmanned weapons can’t keep them pinned down!” “Damnit! That means they won’t be in place when the Infinity Cannon is fully charged!” “Captain!” the sensor officer broke in again. “Five imperial humanoid fighters are closing in on us at a very high rate of speed! They will be on us in ten seconds!” Ken slammed his fist against the command console. “Not now, damnit!” The infinity cannon was using up so much power that there was none left for shields. For this brief span of no more than thirty seconds, his ship was completely defenseless. For the imperials to send their humanoid fighters against him now… He suddenly had the horrible feeling that the imperials had been at least two steps ahead of him from the start. “Impossible!” he cried. “Those barbarians can’t have outsmarted us so…” The first hatav launched concussion missiles began slamming into his ship’s unprotected hull. Then again… “The infinity cannon has completed its charging cycle,” the weapons officer reported. Damnit “Stand by,” Ken ordered. “Sir?” One of the many problems with the infinity cannon was that when it was fully charged, the shear amounts of energy it stored caused a rapid degradation of its containment system. If it wasn’t fired within a few minutes of being charged, the infinity cannon would explode, and take the ship it was mounted on, and most everything around it, with it. “YOU HEARD MY ORDERS!” Ken thundered, then seemed to calm down a bit (a little bit). “Restore power to the defensive shields before those barbarian insects reduce us to wreckage!” As though to emphasize the situation, the ship shuddered from another wave of concussion missile hits, combined with several new and frightening sounds. “Sir!” the sensor officer reported. “The humanoid fighters have landed on the hull and are cutting into the ship with their energy swords!” Ken said nothing. All of his careful planning had proven to be for naught. To be defeated so handily at the hands of these barbarians was the ultimate dishonor. Far better, perhaps, to just wait for the infinity cannon to take both him and his tormenters out of the fight. “Captain!” the comm officer said frantically. “We are receiving orders from Star Colonel Umitsubame! He is ordering us to discharge the infinity cannon and withdraw!” Still, Ken said nothing. “Captain!” Ken slumped his shoulders in resignation. Retreat. Truly this was the final insult. “Very well. Discharge the infinity cannon and get us out of here.” How, exactly, Ken was supposed to escape the five humanoid war machines currently dicing up his hull, he didn’t know, or care. ***** Actually, that part was rather easy. The mere sight of that blinding beam of pure energy blasting from the invader warship’s spine was more than enough to make the hatavs want to be somewhere else. “Oh my god we didn’t destroy it in time!” One uttered in horror. “Nergal, are you there?” “We are fine,” Ruri reported over the comlink. “The beam missed the Nergal by a considerable margin. Most likely they just had to discharge the weapon before they could properly retreat.” “They scared the bejeezus out of me!” Two whined. “Lets go teach them a lesson!” Three suggested. “That would be a bad idea,” Ruri chimed in. “According to my sensors, the invader warship has restored at least partial shield integrity, and also all of the surviving unmanned weapons are forming up to follow it. If you were to attack it now, you would most likely be overwhelmed.” One growled. “I hate leaving a fight unfinished, but still…” she shrugged. “Hatav squadron, lets head home.” ***** That really left only one thing to resolve. “Here is the moment you’ve all been waiting for, ladies and gentlemen,” Tycho announced. “Its time to announce the winner of the Star of the Nergal Talent Competion and the next captain of the Nergal!” There were cheers from the audience. Now that all the excitement was over with the invaders, the real important things could be decided. “Please bear with us, as it will take a few moments for the computer to tally the votes.” ***** In the meanwhile, men of power sat and anxiously awaited word of the results. “How long will it take?” Grand Moff Kadann, head of the VE high council, wanted to know. “Factoring in time delays and such I think it should be any minute now,” Spartacus, his assistant, said. “Lets just hope that this new captain will be a cute and ditzy idol that will keep the crew’s mind at a jelly like consistency,” Fury, prefect of the Army, said. “On the subject of being a ditz,” Threeof4, Naval commander, said, “that Tina Fury may associate herself with the pacifist movement.” The other members of the VE high council nodded in agreement. “Let’s take this moment to think about our new campaign image and slogan,” Bear, who for reasons that aren’t entirely clear had found himself sitting in for the normal Baron Administrator of the VEEC, suggested. “How about a picture of the captain with her fingers like this,” One of Bear’s assistants said, steepling his fingers, “saying ‘naughty kids that won’t fight will get it from captain enema.’” “You’re fired,” Bear said. “How about Love Love Battle Girl?” Spartacus suggested. “Nergal. Love me, fight for me, or die like the traitorous dog you are!” Threeof4 offered. “Ooh,” Kadann said. “I like that one.” A message flashed on the view screen, saying the votes had been tallied. A brief moment while everyone subconsciously held their breath, then the winner was shown. “WHAT!” every member of the high council said in unison. “Proving that there truly is nothing sexier than a hot chick who’s also a tactical genius,” Tycho said, “The winner, Tina Fury, will be retained as captain of the Nergal.” “NO WAY!” ***** Actually, there are a few more things to resolve. That’s just the way it works some times. After all, doesn’t the winner deserve an acceptance speech? “I want to thank everyone who voted for me,” Tina said, wearing a tiara and holding a bouquet of roses. “I promise to do my very best to honor the trust you have shown me, and I intend to start right now.” The audience seemed confused. Just what was she getting at? “The events of the last few months have shown me that we can no longer rely on either the Empire or the VEEC for honest answers or support. In fact, if this most recent attempt to replace me with a vacuous figurehead is any indication, then it is clearly obvious that neither the VEEC nor the Vast Empire have our best interests in mind. And if we are just being used as pawns in a wargame, I have to assume that those in power will feel no qualms in sacrificing us when the whim hits them.” Merrick REALLY didn’t like where this seemed to be going. And she had no doubt that the High Council wasn’t enjoying the show either. “As captain of the ship, this is unacceptable to me,” Tina continued. “So with that in mind, I see no choice but to sever all ties with the Vast Empire and the VEEC. From this point forward, the Nergal will be operating as a purely independent vessel outside of the control of the Vast Empire and the VEEC.” It was fair to say that most everyone was stunned. “You can’t do this!” Merrick shouted. Tina shrugged. “Yes I can.” She smiled. “You are certainly free to leave the ship if you would like.” Merrick scowled, but piped down. She couldn’t do that. Not yet at least. There were certain things keeping her on the Nergal right now. She instead glanced at Talon. “Plan D?” she whispered. Talon nodded. “Our captain sure is full of surprises.” ***** Somewhere else, a different confrontation of sorts was brewing, but nobody really knew it yet. “Damn you, Joe,” Ken Uraki growled as he entered his commander’s office. “That battle was mine to finish! Why did you order me to retreat?” “To save your life, Ken,” Joe replied. “Indeed he did,” Galaxy Commander Genbaka said. Ken had not realized that the supreme commander of the fleet was here. “Your battle was lost, Star Captain, and it would have been a waste to let it continue to conclusion.” Ken lowered his head respectfully. “Of course, sir. I stand corrected.” “That is good enough for me,” Genbaka said. “Now on to other matters. The Grand Council has decided that the time has come to begin peace talks with the Imperials. Though I do not agree with their decision, I am honorbound to carry out the wishes of the Grand Council.” He turned to look at Joe. “Star Colonel Umitsubame, I have chosen you to be our emissary to the Imperials.” Joe was stunned. “Sir? Why was I chosen for this honor?” Genbaka smiled cryptically. “Because to my knowledge, you do not have a younger sister for me to send instead.” “I… I don’t understand.” “Understanding is not required,” Genbaka said. “Only obedience.” Joe bowed his head. “Of course, sir.” ***** TO BE CONTINUED! Stay tuned for our next exciting episode! More secrets revealed! The return of Riel Fury! Another glorious strike by the almighty frying pan! “please let me be, your number one, let me be the one you keep in your heart…” “or something like that.” Next Episode:  The Final Nights Part 4: Secrets and Lies

So this whole thing was Talon’s fault. Bad Talon, no evil overlord treats for you! Of course, if you think about it, it doesn’t really matter whose fault it was. In the end, nothing has been changed. And with the Nergal well and truly separate from the Empire, just what the heck are we supposed to do now? VARNECK INHERITOR NERGAL dubbed in English Episode 17: The Final Nights Part 4½: A Necessary Filler Episode DISCLAIMER: I’m afraid we’re starting to march into the forbidden territory of WAFF content. Those with low tolerance for romantic nonsense should proceed with caution. There was no joy in Uncle Yo-sim’s bar and grill today. “So he was working with Talon all along?” Narm wondered. “Working to seize control of the alien technology for the VEEC?” “I can’t believe that Geist would be a party to this madness,” Tycho said. “I don’t want to believe it either,” Master said. With Geist gone, he had taken over bartending duties, and though he had been surprised by what Geist kept in the storeroom (A DNA scanner, romulan ale, a romulan, Jimmy Hoffa, George Lucas’s REAL original script for Star Wars, the lance of Loginus, Adam, a hundred girls with blue hair and red eyes…) he still couldn’t accept that Geist had any part in Talon’s evil scheme. “Geist was up to something,” he conceded, “I just don’t know what. Whatever it is, he told me that everything would be settled soon.” “But if he went with Talon and Merrick,” Narm said, “that must mean that whatever he has planned involves them somehow.” “Yes, indeed,” Tycho agreed. “No matter what Geist knew before, we have to assume that for whatever reason he has decided to aid them now. This could be a dangerous problem. There is no telling what schemes the three of them are working up even as we speak…” ***** “So what do you think?” Talon asked as he, Geist, and Merrick looked over the nearly completed warship Anu. “I don’t know,” Geist said. “Cherry red just doesn’t do it for me, I’ve always been a fan of a more sedate paint scheme.” “I agree,” Merrick said, “after all, some insurance companies will raise the premiums on us with a color scheme like that.” “Okay,” Talon conceded,  “so we go with battleship gray for the paint. What about the stereo system?” Yup, diabolical schemes indeed. ***** “You mean we’ve finally found it sir?” Star Captain Ken Uraki asked. “Yes,” Galaxy Commander Genbaka said. “Our excavation units uncovered it just hours ago. Now not only will we be able to replenish our supply of the alien technology, but our original plans for the war against the Empire can continue.” “What effect will this have on the upcoming peace talks?” “The grand council is debating that as we speak,” Genbaka said, “however this timely discovery will no doubt weaken the efforts of those pushing for a peace settlement. I will be conducting the peace negotiations personally, and I have a special assignment for you, star captain.” “A special assignment?” ***** Meanwhile, someone was having doubt. “I hope we did the right thing,” Tina said as the Nergal continued its trip to the peace talks. Though the Empire would not officially sanction peace negotiations with the Invaders, Riel Fury had told Tina that if the Nergal could bring back a reasonable peace treaty, he would do everything he could to make it a reality. “You can’t have doubts, Tina!” Narm declared. “We have to believe that we can bring an end to this war.” “Part of me understands that,” Tina said, “but is peace actually possible? No matter how hard I try, I just can’t convince myself that either side will be willing to accept peace.” “Well I believe in myself,” Stormie-chan said, “and I believe in Mr. Umitsubame.” Argon looked on silently. ***** “I’m sorry, but I don’t buy it,” Merrick said. The evil trio was once again hard at work with their cunnin schemes. Actually, they were just hanging out and BSing. “You wouldn’t still be carrying a torch for Daishi,” Talon asked, “would you Merrick dear?” “Are you trying to insult me?!” Merrick demanded. Talon laughed. “I’m just being logical,” she protested. “There is absolutely no sane reason why Daishi would be in love with Tina. She’s a blasted ditz!” “A ditz she may be,” Geist said, “but I dare say that her and Daishi seem to connect pretty well every now and then.” “You’re just imagining things,” Merrick said, a whole lot more vehemently than a normal disinterested party would have I might add. “Would you care to put down some credits on that,” Talon asked, sensing blood in the water. “You’re on!” Merrick said. “I’ve got twenty credits that say that Daishi chooses…” she stopped, realizing what she was about to say, “that Daishi tells Tina to take a walk.” Talon grinned. Though he didn’t bring it up, there was little doubt that he caught was Merrick very nearly said. “Hey, I’ll go one step further,” he said. “Three to one says their first kiss lasts better than two minutes.” “I’ll take a piece of that action,” Geist said, laying down thirty credits. Meanwhile, the writer scratched his head and wondered what the point of this scene was. ***** Time passed. With the Nergal in hyperspace on its way to its meeting with fate (dramatic cliché #376), the ship had entered empty time, that point where there was really nothing important to do for most of the crew. As a consequence, they had some time to relax. Stormie-chan was hard at work deciding on ear-rings for her first date with Umitsubame (put on hold until now due to an unfortunate incident in the last episode) when the bell on her door rang. For a moment she was simultaneously terrified and excited, but she got over that quickly when she remembered that Umistubame wasn’t coming for another hour. She waited for her heart rate to slow down to a proper level before she answered the door. When she saw who it was, she immediately regretted even opening the door at all. “What are you doing here?” she asked Argon, her voice thick with disdain (woman scorned and all that rot). “I was just curious about something,” Argon said. “Have you told him?” “About what, Mr. Viper?” Stormie-chan asked with a curious combination of innocence and loathing. “About us? I seem to recall that you decided there was no us anymore.” Argon shook his head. “What happened before has nothing to do with this,” he said. “I mean have you told him about Stormie. The real Stormie.” Stormie-chan frowned even more than before. “I don’t see how that is any of your business,” she said contemptuously. “If Umitsubame means as much to you as it seems, then he has a right to know,” Argon said, “and also, Stormie deserves some consideration.” “I don’t think I care all that much what he thinks about my private life,” Stormie-chan said. Argon shook his head angrily. “You seem to have forgotten that your so called private life isn’t so private when it comes to him. You are a guest in that body,” he said. “What is that supposed to mean?” “Precisely that,” Argon said. “You, or at least part of you, died a long time ago. The only reason you are here now is because Stormie fell into a pond.” Stormie-chan snarled. “Get out!” Argon just shrugged and walked out. “Idiot,” Stormie-chan said quietly. ***** Despite the fact that the founder of the auspicious watering hole was currently MIA, the employees and patrons of Uncle Yo-sim’s Bar and Grill certainly weren’t going to let this period of empty time go to waste. Master, as one of the first acts of his regime as bartender, had dug into the storeroom and lined up some first class entertainment (also some second class and third class entertainment as well), and most of the crew had turned out for a night of solid relaxation. Right now there was a talented young singer on stage. A charming (in a quiet, doll-like sort of way) girl with blue hair and red eyes. “Fly me to the moon, and let me play among the stars…” she sang. “Cute kid,” Narm commented as he slowly nursed his drink. “Where did you find her, Master?” “Somewhere between the Necronomicon and Amelia Earheart,” Master replied. The writer, having thought he heard someone mention Jennifer Earheart, looked around nervously. “Have you, perchance, found the point to this episode?” Ruri asked, sipping from a bottle of fizzyglug. “No,” Master said, “but I found some rather interesting vids from a beauty contest…” “What?” Ruri asked, turning a curious shade of red. “Oh, nothing,” Master said. “I didn’t know Ruri entered the beauty contest,” Tycho whispered to Narm. “I don’t want to talk about it,” Ruri said. She got up from her seat and walked to the end of the bar, where a poor, innocent, unsuspecting writer sat. Without saying a word, Ruri calmly picked up an unoccupied barstool and smacked the writer in the head with it. Ow. Argon entered the bar and took a seat. “Give me a fuzz buster,” he said. “Extra rice wine.” “Did it not go well?” Narm asked. “It went about as well as expected,” Argon replied. “That bad, huh?” “Yup.” The group sat in silence for a while. Ayanami #74 finished her song, and the ninja band took over. ***** Time passed. About an hour later, Stormie-chan and Umitsubame showed up and got a table. Stormie-chan wore a stunning teal dress and sapphire earrings (clip, not pierced, as her only concession to the guy with whom she was time sharing her body). Argon suddenly got a very evil look. “Wouldn’t it be a shame if someone were to accidentally spill hot tea on Stormie about now?” Master frowned. “Anger, jealousy, a perverse sense of humor, these are the path to the dark side.” Argon smiled. “Ah, but this too is part of the Anything Goes school. I wouldn’t be committing an evil act, I would merely be paying homage to the ideals of the art.” “I thought I taught you better than that,” Master said. Argon shrugged. “What can I say? The Anything Goes School of Jedi Arts operates on higher principles than a black and white interpretation of good and evil.” Suddenly a steak knife shot past Argon’s head and embedded itself up to its handle in the wall. From her table, Stormie-chan gave Argon a menacing wink. “Then again,” Argon sputtered, “A true student of the art need not flaunt his mastery of the force…” ***** Tina and Daishi were likewise present at Uncle Yo-sims. They had their own corner table and were in the process of eating a quiet dinner together. It is worth noting, however, that should one suggest that they were on a date, rather than just two friends enjoying dinner, it would likely produce a rather vehement denial from Daishi. Tina was watching Stormie-chan and Umitsubame, who had graduated from uncomfortable silence to inane banter. Umitsubame seemed to have discovered an inexhaustible supply of bad puns, which for no good reason at all seemed to entertain Stormie-chan a great deal. “Don’t they make such a perfect pair, Robert?” Tina asked dreamily. Apparently she was highly susceptible to the ancient curse of inane romantics. Daishi spared a glance for Stormie-chan and Umitsubame. “I don’t know,” he said. “I’m still getting used to the idea that Stormie’s female form is not the same person as his male form. Seeing him… or her I guess, on a date with a guy is just really creepy right now.” “Oh Robert,” Tina said, “you’re so sensitive.” “I am?” Daishi wasn’t entirely sure what he had said that had made her think that. ***** But, as it often did, the evening came to an end. As a gallant officer, Umitsubame escorted Stormie-chan back to her quarters. In all fairness, he almost certainly had no idea whatsoever what this would lead to. “Well, here we are,” Stormie-chan said when they reached her door. She then decided to throw caution and nerves to the wind and threw her arms around Umitsubame. “Urp…” Umitsubame managed. This was certainly unfamiliar ground for him. “Would you please let go of me?” he asked in terror. “Nope,” Stormie-chan replied simply. “Please,” Umitsubame pleaded. “The forces of the Clan Federation very rarely have a chance to interact with the opposite gender and though this experience is not unpleasant I really don’t know what to do here…” Yup, that’s right. He was rambling. It wasn’t that he was offended by Stormie-chan’s advances; quite the contrary in fact. It’s just that he was terrified. Stormie-chan finally let go of Umitsubame. “You mean you’ve never even kissed a girl before?” Umitsubame took a deep breath. “No ma’am,” he said meekly. “Would you like me to teach you?” Stormie-chan asked coyly. Umitsubame’s brain seized up. His response was indefinable. “Was that a no?” Stormie-chan wanted to know. “Well… umm…” Umitsubame was really lost here. “Make up your mind please,” Stormie-chan insisted firmly but still coyly. The ninja that installed his spine in the last episode popped up to give Umitsubame a kick in the rear. “I… I’m not against it,” Umitsubame finally managed. “All right then,” Stormie-chan said softly. “Close your eyes.” And we’ll just fade to black here. ***** Meanwhile, a similar (at least by accident) scene was playing itself out. Tina and Daishi were walking together through the corridors of the Nergal. For some reason, Tina had gotten really quiet. Almost solemn. She suddenly came to a halt and just stood there. Daishi realized Tina wasn’t walking next to him anymore and turned around. “What’s wrong?” he asked. “Why are you just standing there?” “Because this is the door to my room,” Tina said. “Oh, so it is,” Daishi said. “Well, see ya.” He turned to walk away. “Robert…” Tina’s voice was quiet, solemn. If Daishi had been more on the ball, he would have known what he was in for. Daishi turned around. “Wha…?” Tina stood there, her eyes closed, her lips slightly puckered, expectantly, hopefully. “I was just thinking,” Tina said, almost in a whisper, “since the war is coming so close to an end, if you were ready to make a decision… about me…” She was asking him to kiss her? Daishi’s mind was running in a hundred different directions at once. What was that wacko thinking? Is she insane? There’s nothing going on here! She’s so… She’s so damned… Without even realizing it, Daishi was leaning towards Tina, his lips guiding in like a laser guided bomb. She’s so damned beautiful… “Ahem,” another voice interrupted. Both Tina and Daishi practically jumped out of their skin. Generec En Pee See One stood there behind them. On the surface, she seemed indifferent, but anyone could see the turmoil in her eyes. “Don’t let me bother you two,” she said, then started to walk off. “Wait a minute!” Daishi protested. “We weren’t doing anything!” Tina, for her part, took Daishi at his word. He hadn’t kissed her, and he seemed genuinely worried that One might be upset with him. Was he rejecting her? Was this his final rejection? When Daishi turned around, Tina had already fled to her room. “Damnit,” he said under his breath. ***** Bed time. A time for sleep. A time to be alone with your thoughts. Tina was in turmoil as she tried to sleep. Had she really lost Robert? Daishi was in turmoil as he tried to sleep. What the hell was he thinking? Tina… One was in turmoil as she tried to sleep. Dope. What did she really expect? Argon was in turmoil as he tried to sleep. It wasn’t right. It just plain wasn’t right. Narm was in turmoil as he tried to sleep (of course, he was always like that). Tina!!! Stormie-chan sighed contentedly as she drifted off to sleep, thinking about her Joey-pie. Of course, we certainly won’t stand for that sort of nonsense around here. ***** The Nergal popped out of lightspeed at the proscribed coordinates for the peace negotiations the next day. Waiting for them was an invader fleet. “That is an awful lot of ships for a simple diplomatic mission,” Narm said. “I don’t like this.” “Still,” Aku pointed out, “their willingness to deal with us at all is a good sign.” “We’re so lucky to have Mr. Umitsubame with us to act as a go-between,” Stormie-chan said. “Let’s not let our guard down just yet,” Argon said. “Is that jealousy I hear?” Stormie-chan asked. “I don’t mix business with pleasure,” Argon replied indignantly. “Oh really, Mr. Viper,” Stormie-chan said, “then you wouldn’t ask someone whom you had been intimate with to get off the ship?” “What happened before has nothing to do with this.” Most of the other bridge personnel just sort of tried to stay out of this little spat. “Captain,” Aku said, “we are receiving a transmission from the invader flagship.” “Put it through,” Tina said. A holoimage appeared before the bridge crew. “I am Galaxy Commander Suchiro Genbaka of clan Fire Wombat, commander of the Clan Federation combined forces.” “Fire Wombat?” Ruri repeated quietly under the breath. “Another idiot.” “And I am Captain Tina Fury of the Nergal,” Tina replied. “It is a privilege to meet the daring captain of the Nergal. Your exploits precede you.” “Why thank you, Galaxy commander,” Tina said, clearly flattered. “I am honored.” “In the interest of expediting matters, I wish to begin peace negotiations at once,” Genbaka said. “I would be honored if your negotiating party would come aboard my flagship.” “Very well, Galaxy Commander,” Tina said cheerfully. “We are ready when you are.” The transmission ended. “That was pretty fast,” Narm said. “The invaders must be as anxious for peace as we are,” Aku suggested. Argon remained silent. ***** The negotiating team was leaving shortly, but Umitsubame had one more thing he had to do before he left. He and Daishi walked into Uncle Yo-sims (or should we call it Uncle Master’s now?). “Are you sure you want to do this?” Daishi asked. Umitsubame had come to him early this morning looking to find a special item, one that would cause quite a stir. Daishi had been the one to suggest trying the Bar. “I’m sure,” Umitsubame said. “No matter how nebulous the path to your dreams may seem, once you have found your true love, everything becomes clear.” Daishi hrmmed as they approached the bar. My true love… Unbidden, Daishi’s thoughts turned to… “Were you able to get the item we discussed?” Umitsubame asked Master. “Right here,” Master said, setting a small box on the counter. “Are you sure about this, pal?” he asked. “Yes,” Umitsubame said as he pocketed the item. “You know, sometimes we think we know people, and then it turns out…” Master began to say, then stopped himself. It wasn’t his place to say any more. “What do you mean?” Umitsubame asked. “Nothing,” Master said. “We’ve gotta get going,” Daishi pointed out. ***** The shuttle carrying the diplomatic team lifted off from the Nergal, escorted by Daishi’s lone hatav. “And so it begins,” Tycho said. “So now we learn if we can really live in peace,” Narm said, strangely philosophical for him. Back at the bar, Master suddenly felt a cold chill. “A disturbance in the force,” he said. “Something terrible is going to happen.” ***** The shuttle landed without incident, and the negotiating team  (Tina, Argon, Daishi, Stormie-chan, and Umitsubame if you were wondering) was led to the main conference room. They were surprised to see that, aside from Galaxy Commander Genbaka and Ken Uraki, the room was deserted. “What’s going on?” Tina asked. “Will you be conducting the negotiations by yourself?” Genbaka shook his head. “No. There will be no negotiation.” He nodded to Uraki, who raised a pistol and coldly shot Umitsubame. “JOE!” Stormie-chan cried as her love fell to the floor, unconscious. Invader troops burst into the room, weapons at ready. “These imperial dogs have just shot Star Colonel Umitsubame!” Genbaka cried. The imperials were for their part stunned by this betrayal. Genbaka had brought them here as part of a trap! “You bastard!” Daishi shouted. “What the hell are you doing!” “The Empire will be destroyed!” Genbaka declared. “For this crime, for all of your crimes, I will see the Empire reduced to ashes!” “No!” Daishi cried. “You can’t do this!” “I can,” Genbaka said, “and I will! There is only one true righteous path, and it is our path!” “Who cares who’s right and who’s wrong, please help him!” Stormie-chan cried. “Can’t you see Joe is dying!” Argon was the first to act. With lightning speed he slammed a fist into the face of a guard, relieving him of his rifle before he even hit the ground. “Dai!” he called, tossing Daishi the rifle. Daishi began spraying rounds in order to keep the invaders pinned down while Argon hoisted Umitsubame on his shoulders. “Get out of here, head back for the hangar!” Daishi yelled. The erstwhile negotiators fled. ***** Meanwhile, things outside weren’t all that good either, as the invaders pressed a murderous attack against the Nergal. “Why are they attacking while the diplomatic team is onboard?” Two wanted to know as her hatav launched. “We’ve got to get them out of there!” One declared. ***** Several dozen invader warships were currently pounding away at the Nergal. “Our shields can’t stand this much longer!” Narm cried. “Can’t we pull back?” “That would mean abandoning the captain and the diplomatic team,” Ruri said. The Nergal shook from an internal explosion as an invader beam pierced the compression field. “Damage to our starboard engine,” Ruri reported. “We will no longer be able to effectively maneuver.” Then the invader flagship seemed to explode from the inside. ***** “What’s happening out there?” Two asked. “It’s blowing up from the inside,” Three said, shocked. An as yet undamaged section of the invader flagship suddenly blew out, and through the hole flew Daishi’s hatav and the shuttle. “It’s Daishi and the team!” Two cried. “All right,” One said. “Let’s go get em!” ***** The destruction of the invader flagship had given the Nergal some breathing room, but not much. “Protect that shuttle!” Narm ordered. The ship shuddered even more violently as another barrage of energy tore at it. “The compression field has collapsed,” Ruri reported. “I have damage reports from multiple sections.” ***** “This is bad,” Argon said as the shuttle tried to get back to the Nergal. The hatavs were being swarmed by superior numbers, and things looked pretty grim everywhere. ‘This looks like the end.” In the passenger compartment, Umitsubame was lain out on the floor while Tina tried to control the bleeding from his gunshot wound. No matter what she did, it didn’t seem to be enough. “Stormie,” Umitsubame said weakly. “Don’t try to talk,” Stormie-chan said desperately as she held his hand. “I…” Umitsubame was briefly taken by a coughing fit. Blood trickled down his chin afterward. “I have something for you.” With the last bit of his strength, he fished a small, bloodstained box out of his pocket and offered it to Stormie-chan. She took the box and opened it. Inside was an engagement ring. Tears streamed down her cheeks. “The answer is yes.” Umitsubame smiled, and a look of peace came upon his face. He then closed his eyes for the last time. ***** “Hull integrity is now down to eighty five percent,” Ruri reported. “Damnit!” Narm cried. “Why haven’t they responded!” There had been no choice. With the Nergal so badly outnumbered, with her shields down, the only option left that would save the crew had been surrender. He had given the order. But the enemy was ignoring the surrender transmission. It was now apparent that they wanted the Nergal to die. The invader fleet closed in for the killing blow. Then the Anu jumped into the fray. The sleek new warship popped out of lightspeed right in the middle of the enemy, firing its munchion cannon with brutal effect at point blank range. “Well, what goes around comes around,” Talon said in a transmission to the Nergal. “We’ll cover you while you go retrieve your people.” “You mean you’re going to help us?” Narm asked incredulously. “Like it or not,” Talon said, “we are on the same side.” ***** The entry of the Anu into the battle had been enough to drive back the invaders long enough to recover the shuttle, but it wouldn’t be enough to score a final victory. No, that required something other. Something far more drastic. Tina stepped onto the bridge, a deadly fire burning in her eyes. “Arm the Reality Bender,” she ordered. “But captain,” Tycho said in horror, “If we use the Reality Bender, we will never prove what happened here! All hope for peace will be destroyed!” “It’s too late for peace now,” Tina said. “Are you sure, captain?” Ruri asked. “Are you absolutely sure?” “Yes,” Tina said coldly. “We came seeking peace. All we wanted was an end to this war, and this is how they respond! If these people want a war, I’m going to give them one!” ***** The common misconception about the reality bender is that it somehow bends reality. This is not true. Bending reality is impossible. Reality is not flexible, it simply is. The Reality Bender was so named because, in the words of its designer, “it takes reality out on a bender. The kind of week long bender where reality wakes up with no idea where it is or what it has been doing.” A more proper description of it would be that it changes one minor, inconsequential fundamental law of nature, in this case the zero point energy level of a single point in space and time. Scientists refer to this as a vacuum energy phase transition, and it is generally regarded as a Bad Thing™. You see, even the most inconsequential fundamental law of nature is intrinsically tied with all others, along with everything that is bound by those laws. By changing that one minor point in space/time, the Reality Bender creates an expanding pocket of new reality. One that operates on fundamentally different laws of nature than what we are used to, and one that, if left unchecked, would expand out at the speed of light in all directions, destroying everything that came before and replacing it with a new universe. Obviously, some effort is made to control the pocket universe the Reality Bender creates, and it will only last for an infinitesimal time before collapsing back in on itself into nothing as the dominant reality reasserts its control. However, this fraction of a fraction of a nanosecond is plenty of time for the pocket universe to swallow the entire Invader fleet, reducing it to nothing in a relative instant. “My god,” Tina said as she watched this new symbol of Armageddon do its thing. Though she had known in a very basic way what the reality bender did, she had only now begun to grasp the true horror of the weapon. “It actually destroys the fabric of space itself.” “I’ve never seen anything like it,” Argon said. “And if we were to ever loose control,” Tina said to herself, “If we couldn’t stop it…” “Then it would continue to expand forever,” Ruri said, “destroying our universe in its wake.” “We can’t use a weapon like this again,” Tina said, “not against other people.” “No,” Ruri said. “Not unless all we want to do is vaporize them.” Meanwhile, Geist looked on from the observation dome of the Anu. “What monster have I created?” he asked himself. ***** TO BE CONTINUED! Greed, rigid doctrine, and stupidity caused this war. Now those same factors will bring an end to the war as well as everyone involved heads to Varneck for the final showdown. Who will survive when monstrous fleets, monstrous egos, and equally monstrous megalomania collide above this barren world? Get ready for the last two episodes of Varneck Inheritor Nergal! Next Episode: The Final Nights Part 4 ¾: A place we called home
 
-----------------------
"Ask me why I fight and I will tell you that I fight for our selves and souls. I fight against despair because without hope there is no life." -Izumi Maki

“The present is made possible by the ghosts of the past. And because there is a present, there will also be a future. The past, therefore, is where the future begins. I wonder if it means that in the same context as we think of breakfast.” ~Ruri Hoshino “Breakfast; cold pizza, donuts, and cherry coke. If that’s where my future begins, I’m in a whole lot of trouble!” ~a writer in a black hat VARNECK INHERITOR NERGAL dubbed in English Episode 19: The Final Nights Part 5: The End of Me? DISCLAIMER: Yup, WAFF content. About the last half of this is grade A prime sap. A calm had settled over the battlefield of Varneck’s north pole. On the ground, the crippled Anu continued to burn, while in orbit, the shattered ships of the Invader and Imperial fleets stood a silent and eternal vigil. The clash in orbit had been short and utterly brutal, striking down ships by the dozen in an orgy of mutual destruction. Those few ships on both sides that had survived the cataclysmic battle in orbit had since pulled out to lick their wounds. The second battle of Varneck had ended a draw. Back on the ground, a dozen hatavs, three from the Nergal and nine from the Anu, kept a cautious watch on each other. “I don’t get it,” Generec En Pee See One said. “They still have us outnumbered three to one, why aren’t they attacking?” “I guess there just isn’t any point in fighting anymore,” Two suggested. “The captain isn’t going to keep firing on the ruins as long as Geist and Daishi are down there.” “Maybe,” One acknowledged, “but keep your guard up anyway.” What was going on down there? ***** “Jeeze,” Daishi complained as he continued his descent into the ruins, “just how deep is this place?” “About sixteen or seventeen kilometers,” Talon said. Though his hatav was crippled, the baron administrator could still transmit communications, “with compression fields in place every kilometer.” The compression field Daishi was currently trying to force his way through suddenly collapsed. “Gahh!” Talon shouted in surprise as the wrecked carcass of his hatav began a kilometer long free fall. After Daishi had crippled his machine, it had come to rest on the compression field. “The least you could do is put me on a ledge or something!” he complained to Daishi as his machine plummeted. “I don’t have time for this!” Daishi shot back as he sent his hatav hurtling deeper into the ruins to deal with the next field. ***** “Will he be here soon?” the boy asked Geist. “I’m not sure,” Geist admitted. “With all those compression fields in his way…” he then noticed that the boy was giving him a rather unpleasant look. “Is something wrong?” “You look a little like my dad, old man,” the boy said bitterly. “That creep!” “That makes sense,” someone else said from the shadows. A faint mechanical whine could be heard as some kind of machine shifted position. “You know, Geist, what you are planning is really, really stupid.” “You’re one to talk, sir,” Geist replied. “There’s a big difference between what I did and trying to change the course of history,” the shadowy figure said. “You really have to learn to relax. Life is a journey, enjoy the ride.” Geist shook his head. “Great, now people are trying to sell me cars.” The boy squinted, trying to identify this new person through the gloom of the chamber. “Who are you, mister?” ***** “We cannot allow the Imperials to seize the ruins!” Galaxy Commander Genbaka declared from his command center far away from the now concluded main battle (Ever notice that this guy always seems to do everything he can to keep out of the line of fire?). “Commit all of our reserves to driving them out at once!” ***** “I have another contact closing in from orbit,” Ruri reported. “It appears to be an invader gateship.” “Oh great, that’s just what we needed,” Narm said. “We just dealt with the Anu, now we are going to have to fight the Invaders!” “What are your orders, Captain?” Argon asked. “Signal the Anu,” Tina said. “Tell them to evacuate to the Nergal. Order all hatavs to prepare to intercept the enemy. Prepare the munchion cannon for continuous fire.” “Is that wise, Captain?” Tycho asked. “How do we know the Anu’s crew won’t try to seize the ship?” “We don’t,” Tina said. “We’ll just have to hope they are smart enough to know that now is not the time for that sort of nonsense.” ***** The gateship opened as soon as it entered the atmosphere, disgorging warships from distant Jovia by the dozen. The sudden occurrence of so many bosan jumps, however, had an unexpected side effect. Deep in the ruins, glowing lines briefly appeared on the boy’s body. “Ah!” the boy screamed, frantically trying to brush the lines off his body for the few seconds that they remained. “Damnit!” Geist said. He opened his comline again. “What’s going on out there?” “Mr. Geist,” Aku said, “an invader gateship has shown up and is deploying warships.” “So the sudden increase in jump activity is causing this,” Geist said, frustrated. The boy was amazed at the holoimage hovering in mid-air and leaned in to see what was going on, which happened to put him in the picture. Since Geist’s transmission was open to everyone, Daishi also saw the boy. “That can’t be!” Daishi cried, stunned. “It’s Jay! He’s alive!” Then the signal cut off in a wave of static. ***** “I told you so,” the shadowy figure said. “Reality doesn’t take well to causality paradoxes.” Geist snarled. “IF THAT’S TRUE THEN WHY THE HELL AM I HERE?!?!” Jay, a boy we haven’t seen and barely acknowledged existed since episode one, started glowing again, and this time it didn’t go away. “I don’t want to go, mister!” he pleaded. “I wanna stay! I wanna see Mr. Lee!” Geist looked at the terrified young boy. Not now damnit! Not when I’m so close! There was one thing he could still do, one drastic final action that would put everything right. His hand dropped to the gun at his belt. If Jay dies here, then all this madness ends! “What would your wife say if you did that, Geist?” the shadowy figure asked, knowing what Geist was planning. “What would your son say?” Geist’s hand fell away from his gun. Mellisaa? Sol? Geist suddenly felt all the anger, desperation, and depression flowing out of him as the full weight of what he was attempting hit him. I cannot play god. “You will, Jay,” he said to the boy, feeling a sense of peace he hadn’t felt in a while. “You might not realize it, you might not recognize him, but you will see him again. That I promise you. You are a strong boy, Jay. Strong enough to handle what will come, I know that now.” Somehow that seemed to help relieve some of the boy’s overwhelming terror. Well, it calmed him down enough so that he remembered to do what he was supposed to. “Wait, they told me to give this to you!” he said, taking a small ceramic square out of his pocket. “They said you would need it!” Geist reached out and took the ceramic square. Then, in a flash of light, Jay was gone. And of course, Daishi arrived about two seconds later. His hatav made a perfect landing while Talon’s wreck landed with an unceremonious crash. “Ow,” Talon said from the shattered war machine. “Jay!” Daishi shouted as he leapt out of his cockpit, “where are you?” “Sorry,” Geist said, “just missed him. If you had gotten here sooner you might have been able to get him out of here in time to prevent his third jump. Which, coincidentally, would have probably prevented the war from ever happening.” He nonchalantly shrugged his shoulders. “Oh well, I suppose it was meant to be like this. Like the man said, reality doesn’t take well to causality paradoxes.” “I don’t understand…” Daishi said. “The first letter of Jociam, despite how it sounds, is J, Daishi.” Daishi’s jaw dropped as it hit him. “My theory about why you, me, and Tina are capable of bosan jumping appears to be correct,” Geist said. “It appears that these ruins have somehow fundamentally changed the DNA of this planet’s population, meaning that anyone with Varneck genes in them is capable of bosan jumping, even if they are just an eight year old kid.” “The kid was scared back in that shelter,” he continued. “Everyone around him was dead, and he didn’t know why. Everyone but you. So he ran to the only person he thought could protect him, and when you jumped, he instinctively tried to follow you.” A ninja stopped by and offered them both drinks. Daishi got a beer. Geist chose fizzy glug. “I’d forgotten how much I loved this stuff,” Geist said as he took a pull from his bottle, “Though mom always made sure I had a pixie stick to go with it. Anyhow, since you had jumped to Erebria, or more specifically since you had jumped to where Tina was, he got lost, ending up here, several thousand years ago. The people who built this city cleaned him up, treated a few minor scrapes and bruises, and sent him back, sort of. They sent him here, to our time, where they knew you would be, and where I would be. Because of all that happened out here, he was forced to jump again, and ended up in the passenger seat of an airspeeder on Coruscant, mere seconds before it crashed into a building.” “That was forty six years ago,” Geist continued. “A woman whom I had never met before died in that accident, and head trauma resulted in me loosing all of my memories. The husband of that woman, a simple weatherman of all things, took me in and told me I was his son. I guess he just felt sorry for me. Ironically, if I had ended up anywhere else, I probably would have never been able to join the Imperial army and done the things I did there, which, by dint of causality, probably means I would have never met you again. So in a way, my original intent, to follow you, was fulfilled. I guess reality really does have a sense of humor.” “I’m sorry, Jay,” Daishi said, “I didn’t know, I should have saved you…” Geist shrugged. “I’m not dead, you know,” he said. “I only started to recover those lost memories over these last few months, and for a while now I’ve been regretting everything and just feeling sorry for myself. I blamed myself for the war, because I was the one that unlocked the secrets of the technology buried here. I told myself that I didn’t have a right to exist, and decided that I would find a way to ‘put things right’.” He grinned. “I’m over that now. I tried it, and it didn’t work. I don’t think it could work. I’ve also realized what all would be lost if I had been successful, and you know what? I realized I had a good life here as Jociam Geist. I had all this angst crap going, and the fact is that it just didn’t suit me. I’ve got me a beautiful wife, loads of cash, I commute to work every morning in an armored assault vehicle, and we can’t forget the cool office. I mean, what’s world peace compared to that?” “I guess you’ve got a point there,” Daishi agreed. “Damn straight,” Geist replied. “A man can live his entire life thinking about what he doesn’t have, or he can focus on what he’s got. You dig?” On one side of the room, a ninja began singing the blues, playing one mean harmonica to go with it. “I dig,” Daishi agreed. What I’ve got… Unbidden, Daishi suddenly found himself thinking of… Wait for it. ***** “We can’t take this punishment much longer!” Argon pointed out as the Nergal absorbed another barrage of particle beams from the attacking invaders. “Can we disengage?” “The enemy has us almost completely surrounded,” Ruri reported. “We have nowhere to withdraw to.” “That’s not entirely true,” Tina said. “We still have one line of retreat open.” “Captain?” Ruri inquired. “Take us into the ruins!” ***** “Damn,” Star Captain Ken Uraki cursed. “They know we can’t risk damaging those ruins!” The Nergal had just slipped past the edge of the chasm that led into the ruins. This put Ken’s fleet in a very delicate position. They MIGHT be able to dig the imperials out with an assault by battlemechs, but that was iffy. A full-scale assault with warships was out of the question. The collateral damage would be far more than they could afford. “They have to know they are beaten!” Ken declared. “Even if we can’t go in after them, they have to know that we can keep their ship bottled up until they starve.” As much as he hated the notion, he knew his best option was to offer them terms. “Mister Ikeda!” Uraki called to his communications officer. “I wish to send a message to the Imperial warship.” ***** “If you surrender your vessel within the next thirty minutes,” Aku read off of Uraki’s message, “you have my word as commander of this battlegroup that you will not be harmed. Sincerely, Star Captain Ken Uraki of Clan Krayat Dragon.” “That’s awful generous of them,” Argon said, “considering they have us trapped like rats.” Tina had gathered all of the senior officers, along with Geist, Talon, and Merrick, in the conference room for this planning session. It might very well be their last. “So what are we going to do now, captain?” Tycho asked. “Are we going to surrender?” “We can’t do that,” Tina said. “And we can’t let either side take possession of these ruins either. That means its time to drop the big one.” “The big one?” Merrick repeated. “And just what is that?” “We’ll overload the Nergal’s engines and turn it into a bomb,” Tina said cheerfully. “That oughta destroy those ruins!” “Wha…?” most of the command staff uttered. “Are you asking us to sacrifice ourselves?” Merrick demanded. “Of course not,” Tina said with the same good cheer. “The only one who will be aboard will be me.” The door to the conference room slid open and the pilots (who had been listening from the other side) sort of fell into the room. “What the hell are you thinking, Tina?” Daishi demanded as he got back to his feet. “Are you trying to get killed?” “Don’t worry Robert,” Tina said. “There will be a time delay, which will let me escape by shuttle. I’ll be just fine.” "Idiot!" Daishi yelled. "Don't you know how many things could go wrong with your plan? You'll die Nutbar!" "Don't be stupid!" Tina shot back, "I won't die!" "WILL!" Daishi yelled. "WILL NOT WILL NOT WILL NOT!" Tina returned. "YES YOU WILL YOU DITZ!" Tina got real quiet, and got a weird look on her face. "What does that look mean?" Daishi wanted to know. Tina started sobbing. "Awe," Talon and Tycho said in unison, "you made her cry!" Daishi growled in frustration. "All I want to do is destroy those ruins and end the war," Tina said pathetically. "Isn't risking my life worth it to bring an end to this awful fighting?" "But if you do it," Merrick said, "you'll be killed!" "That's not necessarily true," Aniston pointed out. "According to Geist's explanation, time really has no meaning to these ruins. What that means is that if they cease to function, then every influence they ever exerted in the past, present, and future will all be voided. For example, Jay would never have jumped forty six years into the past to become Geist. This also means that the war will never have happened, because the technology the Jovians have used to fight their war would have never existed." "You see?" Tina said, "Everything will work out fine." "Actually, captain," somebody else said from outside the room, "to take this path will ensure your death." "Huh?" more than a few people said in surprise. Master strode into the room like a jedi with a purpose. "Was I the only one paying attention?” he asked. “Think about it. If you destroy the ruins, Geist, at least as we know him, will never have existed. Though it could be said that Jay has as much right to exist as Geist does, the simple fact is that it was Geist that brought you off of Gauss and gave you a new body. If you do this you are condemning yourself to possibly an eternity of solitude as a ghost." Tina seemed to shudder at that thought, but her face still bore a look of resolution. "If that is the price I have to pay to end this war..." she began to say. "DAMNIT TINA!" Daishi shouted, "Stop trying to play the martyr! You can't destroy the ruins!" "Don't you see that this is the only way?" Tina pleaded. "If I have to be sacrificed so that so many can live, isn't that the right thing to do?" "No it's not!" Daishi declared. "But why not?" "BECAUSE I SAID SO!" Tina was obviously getting frustrated with Daishi's obstinance. "THAT'S NOT A REASON AND YOU KNOW IT!" Daishi took another step forward, standing nose to nose with Tina. "ALL RIGHT TINA!" he shouted, "IF YOU WANT A REASON, I'LL GIVE YOU A DAMN REASON!" And he did, too. He grabbed her, pulled her to him, and kissed her. Tina's eyes widened in shock at first. Her brain had seized up. Robert was kissing her! The man she loved with all her heart and soul was kissing her! Then, when her mind had time to reboot, she remembered to return his kiss. ***** Everyone else in the conference room just sorta stood there for a while, politely trying not to interrupt as Daishi and Tina continued an increasingly long and passionate kiss. Merrick grumbled something akin to "get a room" as she passed Talon the twenty credits she now owed him. "I don't think they're coming up for air any time soon," Argon pointed out. Talon looked at his watch. "If they can keep this up for another minute I win another thirty credits." "So why now, exactly?" Master asked. "Why did Daishi just all the sudden decide he loved her?" "Pressure and time?" Ruri suggested. "The stress of the moment? Plot contrivance?" "I vote number three," Geist said, looking at his watch. He shook his head and handed Talon thirty credits. “One thing still bugs me, Geist,” Talon said as he cheerfully accepted Geist’s money. “You said before that only those who were born on Varneck can bosan jump. But if that is so, then how can Tina do it? She’s not from Varneck.” “Not in the strictest technical sense, no,” Geist replied. “However, one of her genetic parents is, and this gives her a genetic ability for bosan jumping.” “You mean you used Varneckian DNA in the creation of her body?” Merrick asked. “Yes,’ Geist said. “Her body was created by generating a cloned embryo with carefully selected DNA from two donors. About half of that DNA comes from the Varneckian donor.” Talon got a weird look on his face. “But there were only three sources of Varneckian DNA available to you,” he said. “That means…” Everyone looked at Daishi and Tina, currently sucking face like there was no tomorrow. “Please tell me you didn’t use…” Merrick began to say. Geist shook his head. “Just what kind of a sick mind do you think I have?” Everyone got quiet. I don’t think anyone wanted to answer that. "Well..." Tycho said, deciding to change the subject. "I guess we won't be using the captain's plan. Does anyone else have any ideas about how we can get out of this mess?" Geist nodded. "I've got one, but it's going to take some preparation. And... well..." he just sort of vaguely gestured towards Tina and Daishi, who were still, umm... at it. "Let’s give them some privacy," Tycho suggested, "while we work out the details." Everyone not currently involved in {ahem!} close order mouth inspection filed out of the conference room. ***** A little while later, someone else came down the hall, riding on the back of an invader attack droid and strumming on a guitar. "Being my own self, that's just what I'd be," he sang, "looking for a future that's only for me..." Kevin Setzer, not actually dead and fresh out of an invader prisoner of war camp where Geist had found him, rode his faithful pet droid (which he had named Sparky) down the corridors of the Nergal. His admiral's hat was perched askance (or is it askew?) on his head, his official dress shoes had long ago been replaced by sandals, and somewhere along the way he had gotten a Hawaiian shirt and sunglasses. Sparky hung a left when they got to their destination. The door to the conference room slid open and Kevin and Sparky brazenly slouched into the room like a beach bum riding a giant turtle. Kevin was mildly surprised to see the conference room deserted except for Daishi and Tina, who were... yup, still at it. "Oh... sorry, didn't mean to intrude." He and Sparky reversed course, leaving the two lovebirds alone. ***** Daishi and Tina finally broke from their kisses. "Whoa," Daishi said, awash in the feelings that he was finally allowing himself to appreciate. Love, true love! Woohoo! All kinds of inane things were dancing through his head right now like hamsters doing their infamous hamster dance. "Oh Robert..." Tina purred softly, gazing into his eyes with a love that she had never shown before, "I love you so much." Daishi returned the loving look. "I love you too, always and forever," he said as the ambient sweetness increased to levels dangerous to diabetics and the elderly. Somewhere in the galaxy, a dark jedi's head exploded. Something, possibly a nagging feeling that something was amiss, possibly just plot contrivance, brought the couple back down to earth however. "Where is everybody?" Daishi wondered. Tina looked around the room. "I don't know," she said, then giggled like a high school girl in love. "I guess we were a little distracted." Daishi smiled as this peculiar madness he had been taken by took hold again. "I guess we were," he said, then started to wonder why he wasn't kissing Tina some more. He had discovered that he really enjoyed kissing. "Well, I guess if they needed us, they would have said something, so..." Tina returned the grin just before they descended into another round of smoochies. Somewhere a writer decided to walk away from his computer and beat his head against a wall for a while. ***** "So we just bosan jump the Nergal?" Argon asked. "Why not?" Geist said. The conference had moved on to the Bar, given that the conference room was… in use. "It worked getting the Anu here." "But the Anu was fitted with equipment that amplified the jump field you three created," Merrick pointed out. "The Nergal doesn't have that equipment. Is jumping the ship even possible?" Geist nodded. "It is simply a matter of getting myself, Daishi, and the captain focused on forming a jump field large enough to encompass the Nergal." "What would it take?" Tycho asked. "About three to four minutes of intense concentration," Geist said. "Intense concentration?" Narm asked. "Yes." "From the captain and Daishi?" Talon asked next. "Yeah." "On forming a jump field?" Merrick asked. "Yup." "Not on each other, not on kissing each other silly?" Argon asked. "'fraid not." "On forming a jump field," Master said. "Right." "And you can't do this by yourself?" Generec One asked. "Nope." "And this is our only hope?" Tycho asked. "Looks like it." "We are all going to die," Ruri concluded. ***** “Why did you give them thirty minutes?!” Galaxy Commander Genbaka demanded over the communication link between the distant command center and Star Captain Uraki’s flagship. “The enemy may be weak, sir,” Uraki said, “but they have taken possession of the ruin’s interior…” “I don’t want excuses!” Genbaka thundered. “You will attack immediately!” ***** "Multiple enemy units are closing in on our position," Ruri reported from her place at one end of the observation lounge. "We'll take care of them, somehow," One said from the cockpit of her Hatav, "you just take care of things on your end." "No problem," Geist said. It had only taken a few minutes to get Daishi and Tina's attention and get everything set up, and now, with some luck, the Nergal could get out of here in one piece. "Are you guys ready to... HEY! KNOCK THAT OFF!" Daishi and Tina broke from their embrace sheepishly. "Sorry," they both said with dopey grins on their faces. Geist shook his head. "Like a pair of blasted teenagers," he complained. "Do you two want to stay here and make out or do you want to live? Focus on the task at hand!" Merrick, who out of professional interest had come to the observation lounge to witness the jump attempt, leaned over to whisper to Ruri. "I know the captain isn't really thirty odd years younger than Daishi," she said, "But seeing them carry on like that is really starting to creep me out." "You aren't the only one," Ruri said. "All right, it's time," Geist said. "Concentrate, you two." All three closed their eyes and started to concentrate. Almost immediately the same glowing lines that had appeared on their bodies during previous jumps began to materialize. "Stay with it!" Merrick encouraged. The glowing lines increased in luminosity with every passing second as the jump field expanded. Suddenly, in a flash, the jump field collapsed. "What happened?" Geist demanded. "The field was unable to stabilize," Ruri reported. "Do I even need to guess why?" Geist asked in frustration. He turned to Daishi and Tina, who had once again ended up locked in a round of kisses. "THAT DOES IT!" Geist declared. "Ruri! Get me a fire hose!" ***** Generec En Pee See One threw her hatav into a violent evasive maneuver to avoid an invader particle beam. All around her, the messy firefight continued. "Damnit!" she growled. "What the hell is taking them so long?" ***** "We're sorry," Daishi and Tina said in unison. Both were now soaked through with icy water, which seemed to do wonders for calming them down. Geist tossed aside the fire hose. "All right, let's try this again," he said irritably. "I was thinking, Uncle Yo-sim," Tina said. "Wouldn't it be easier to form a jump field large enough for the Nergal if Robert and I had a membrane to membrane contact with each other?" Geist scowled darkly. "No, it wouldn't, so stop horsing around!" "Shucks," Daishi said. "You know," Merrick said to Ruri, "Daishi seems to have undergone a drastic change in personality. I don't think I've ever seen him act so... well, so much like a lovesick teenager." "I've noticed that as well," Ruri confirmed. "Some philosophers and psychologists have theorized that the antagonism women like Tina inspire in men like Daishi is in fact affection that is simply not recognized as such. If that is the case, then given how much Daishi tended to yell at Tina before he decided that he loved her, his current response to her makes perfect sense." Merrick nodded in agreement. "However," Ruri continued, "It is equally possible that the writer simply wanted to prove that he really could write warm and fuzzy scenes without everything ending very, very badly." No comment. "Well," Geist said, "let's get on with it. This time we are going to do it and we are going to do it right." The three human jump engines closed their eyes and concentrated. The glowing began. "The jump field has begun forming," Ruri said. "Field is currently ten percent of necessary volume and is still expanding." Time passed. The glowing increased dramatically in luminosity as the seconds ticked by. "Field is at fifty percent of necessary volume," Ruri reported. So far, about three minutes had passed since the process began. "Recalling all hatav units." Obviously they had to return to the Nergal before it jumped, or they would be left behind. "Field is at sixty percent," Ruri reported about a minute later. "All hatavs recovered. Multiple enemy units closing in." The Nergal suddenly shuddered as the enemy began a merciless assault. "Field volume has dropped to fifty seven percent," Ruri reported. "Concentrate!" Geist hissed through clenched teeth. "Field volume has increased to sixty five percent," Ruri reported. The ship shuddered even more violently as another wave of attacks struck her. "The Retarded Wave Compression Field is beginning to buckle," Ruri reported dispassionately. "Jump field volume is now seventy three percent. At current rate of increase, our defensive systems will collapse before we can successfully jump." Everyone knew what that meant. If the field didn't expand a whole lot faster real soon, they would all be dead. "Tina," Daishi said suddenly, "when we get out of this mess, will you marry me?" Tina's eyes went very, very wide at that statement. Once what Daishi had said sunk in, she got a look of determination the likes of which had never been seen. Damnit! If Robert was going to commit himself to her forever and always, she was damn well going to make sure they were alive to enjoy it! "Jump field is now at ninety five percent of necessary volume," Ruri reported, surprised at the sudden jump. "Ninety seven, ninety nine, one hundred and three, one hundred and ten..." "Good enough!" Geist declared, "visualize the destination!" The rest was easy. ***** The Nergal emerged from its jump several hundred light years away in orbit of a quiet backwater world, far away from any danger. Of course, there was a certain price attached to their escape, one Daishi knew he would have to pay. He turned to Tina, never feeling more nervous in his life than he did right now. "Tina..." he began to say, "I..." Tina, however, had a solemn look on her face. "You don't have to say anything, Robert," she said with an unlimited amount of understanding. "I understand that you did what you did in order to save us all." Daishi was dumbstruck. "I know you asked me to marry you in order to give me the strength to help the Nergal escape," she continued. "Your compassion, your willingness to give all for your friends is one of the reasons I love you so much. I don't think ill of you, Robert, if you aren't ready yet for marriage." Daishi scratched his head. "You know, for one of the most powerful force users in the galaxy, you sure have trouble sometimes reading people." "Huh?" Daishi gave her a lopsided grin. "Back there, when I thought we were going to die, it just pissed me off. I mean, what kind of cruel joke was the universe trying to play on me? I’d just realized I loved you, and then we were just going to die like that? It just wasn’t right. I thought about all the things we would never have, all the times we would never share, and suddenly it hit me. I didn’t want to die now. I wanted to live a good long life, and I wanted to live it with you. When I realized that, I forgot all about how we were about to die, and, well…" Tina was stunned. "You mean..." "I mean I want to marry you," Daishi said. "I...I was worried when you didn't answer me... I'll understand if you aren't ready... or if you just don't want to..." Tina threw both arms around Daishi and kissed him fiercely. "Is... umm... is that a yes?" Daishi asked. "Oh Robert!" Tina cried, "of course I'll marry you!" Ruri and Geist meanwhile looked on. "Now they're engaged," Ruri said. Geist nodded. "My little girl is growing up." "And we really didn't resolve most of the major plot points either," Ruri added. "You know what this means." Geist nodded. "Another episode." "Worse yet," Ruri said gravely, "a WEDDING episode!" ***** TO BE CONTINUED! That's right fans! The next and truly final episode of the Epic Varneck Inheritor Nergal saga will be the long anticipated wedding of Daishi and Tina! Count on romantic hijinks, heartfelt drama, and a frantic effort to resolve every plot point that has so far been ignored in this last, and I mean really last episode of Varneck Inheritor Nergal! Next and (I swear!) Final Episode: Wedding Bells and Hand Grenades
 
-----------------------
~The nerd occasionally known as Jociam Geist

THINGS WILL BE DIFFERENT WHEN I RULE THE WORLD!