"The scent and smoke and sweat of a casino are nauseating at three in the morning.
                        Then the soul-erosion produced by high gambling 
           -a composite of greed and fear and nervous tension-
      becomes unbearable and the senses awake and revolt from it." 

                                            - Ian Fleming, Casino Royale


After years of working alongside various governments, groups, agencies, and the like; Dylan Hunt had a tendency
to know that good news for one source didn't exactly mean good news for another. Not that he had anything to worry
about, his crew did maintain an air of professionalism even through the most dire circumstances.
...As long as said circumstances didn't cross into the personal. 

Even then, he was confident that they would work as a well-oiled machine. Or at least pretend they could. 
The balcony of the ship had somehow gained back it's liveliness in the passing weeks. Now that Tyr had 
(mostly)full access to the ship's amenities, he seemed to gravitate towards it almost daily. Something 
about the open air made him less tense or, in his case, intense. 
With him, the others followed; some days they would spend their off-hours participating in what could be 
written off as 'team building exercises'. If this was any other team, that is.  
Today was no different. 
The moment the door opened, he was greeted with a basketball ricocheting off the hoop and whizzing past 
Harper's head, causing him to lock up entirely.
"No, yeah, that was great." He swallowed, looking like an animal that had just been shot. "We're starting 
over but that was a good one." Turning to Beka, Harper saw her stand attention and followed her line of sight until
he met Dylan's with a poorly concealed glare. It then slid into something a bit more cheeky. His eyes still held 
some deep sense of contempt right around the edges but Dylan avoided it, idly planting his gaze on his forehead, 
just out of the line of fire. 
"Joining in?" Harper asked in a tone that indicated that he hoped the answer was no. Not that it mattered, Dylan 
wasn't dressed for it anyway. 
"Sure." Ah, what the hell, anything to make sure Harper didn't get what he wanted. 
The look of remorse across his face pretty much made up for the number of times he had to pull a melted soda can 
out of The Andromeda's joint systems.  
"Alright, then you're on my team. Here, I'll even give you the honor of starting off my score." He teased, wiping 
the sweat from his forehead. 
For a moment, Dylan expected Tyr to go into the logistics of team building and advantages versus disadvantages but
he didn't seem to be much in the mood for analysis. "I still don't understand the equine element to this game." He 
interjected, boredly. 
Dylan blinked. "What?" 
"We're playing horse." Harper explained while he tried to connect the logic here from Point A to Point B. "It's an 
old Earth game." He explained, bluntly. "Whoever gets five points first wins. You'll love it." 
Rolling the ball into his palms, he backed away as Dylan's fingers started to dig into it's sides; all the games with 
Tyr dragged from memory to reality- reforming his old stance. Like riding a bike. 
Slipping the ball to one hand, he calculated the arc of his throw by bending his knee and sent it flying through the hoop 
without so much as a thought. Until now, he hadn't realized how long he had gone without doing anything extracurricular. 
Every day came with an addition to his never-ending work list. 
Turning to Harper, skin buzzing with something he had long forgotten, Dylan found his mouth slinking into a sideways
smile. "How many points was that?" 
"One." 
"One?!" He gaped. 
"The point of the game is that you don't have to be like eight feet tall to play it." Harper then grimaced
up at the three of them. 
"Or have any physicality, practice, or proficiency..." Tyr added on, "It's practically a game for children."
"It IS a game for children!" Harper shouted, suddenly realizing he'd been had. "Hey, that's not
not funny." He paused. "Damn it, that was really funny! I'm the one who's supposed to be funny!" 
"So why is it called 'Horse', anyway?" Beka asked with a straight face that made it really hard to tell if
she was messing with him or not. 
"Can we shut up about the horse thing?"











The conference room felt more full than it had before, everyone seemed to have returned to their
usual places at the table as each member of his crew, once again, had a seat to fill and a role to fulfill. 
"Our newest assignment might be our most demanding." He began, knowing that was a lie, but, not one
anyone would refute without taking a hit to their own ego. You could call it a form of motivational speaking; making a 
situation seem more difficult than it actually was made people approach it with more caution and care.
Of all things, this certainly needed both in fistfuls.  
"We'll be escorting a political figure from two distinct points so that he may give his electoral speech
as we provide basic security." Here, there was a sharp drop in mood and Dylan already knew why. 
"Electoral..." Harper wrenched a sour look as the image started to click into place. "...you mean?" 
"Yes, Sid Profit will be attending a gala in his honor for winning the election. He'll be making a speech as the 
leader of the newly formed Commonwealth and, in turn, we must provide security for this event." 
"I don't think this is a good idea." Trance spoke up for the first time in months, her hands ran along the
edge of the table, her thumbs smoothing over it's surface in what appeared to be a nervous tic. "After what
he's done to Beka I-" She then stopped her hands dead in their tracks and looked over at Tyr who was 
leaning back in his chair, arms folded, glaring back at her. 
"It's a job." He shrugged, decidedly unaffected. It was obvious his answer was more out of spite. Her trying 
to appeal to his emotions would lead to nothing but pushback. 
"It's Beka!" Harper stood, gesturing both his hands in a chopping motion towards her as if Tyr hadn't
realized he'd been sitting beside her this whole time. 
"It's fine." She signaled to him with a wave of her hand, "It's not any worse than half the people we've
toted around on The Maru." Now that was a development. The entire room had suddenly found the subject turned 
on it's head as Beka gave a resigned sigh. "What? Do you want me to make a scene?" She snapped as Harper fell 
back down in his seat. "I'm a big girl, I think I can handle a little family visit." 
"Why are we covering for this guy anyway?" Harper asked, avoiding her words altogether. "What? Did he finally
piss off someone with money this time?" 
"Worse, actually." Dylan pointed out. "Idealists. Political anarchists. Opportunists."
For a moment he hadn't realized the irony until Harper spelled it out for him, "And...they think we're...?"
"Members of the Commonwealth for one thing." He pointed out to which he head Tyr let out a short, biting, laugh. 
"And yet we don't seem to fit under their jurisdiction until they want us to bend to their will." He added, contributing
nothing only to add to the contempt that had already flooded the room. 
"You're talking like I've given them a pass." Hovering over the table, Dylan acknowledged every single face that was 
scowling up at him and realized they had accumulated over one reason, alone. "If we might give a show of good faith, 
maybe that will give us leeway with them later. They might allow us to use their channels, they might even alleviate some
of us for our crimes, but, most importantly, isn't it important to see this out?" He leaned forward, flattening his palms
across the table, mirroring Trance in her posture. "We've worked towards this for so long, aren't you even a bit curious
to see where we could go from here?" 
  











Docking procedures had always been a headache, but, when they involved a list of agreed-upon requirements
from someone who expected luxury, well...Let's just say Dylan wasn't entirely excited knowing that his 
years of Highguard training and experience were being reduced to making sure someone had the correct number
of olives in their martini. Not that anyone else on board had been too excited about it either, at one
point, Tyr had offered to take up residence back in containment because he 'found it less degrading'.

In fact, he had expected Beka to be the most vocal one of the group, but, instead, she held firmly
to the background, quietly reading away on her datapad. 
"You're certainly taking this in stride." While he wasn't much for therapy, Dylan knew how to give
someone an in to talk about their problems. Discussing these problems, however...
"It's my uncle." She shrugged, keeping her eyes glued to her pad, "Either you learn to play by 
his rules or you lose the whole game." 
That certainly was an enlightening statement. 








Heading down to the docking bay, Rommie in tow, Harper pulled himself from their conversation long
enough to type in the code to the door lock. "Why would he pick us to transport him?" She
asked, her nose curling at the idea of letting him on the ship which, considering everything, was fair.
If anyone besides Beka had a reason to be on high alert, it was Rommie. After all, she wasn't built
to tote around just anybody. "Afraid of a little conman?" He teased. She didn't exactly appreciate it, 
but, damn she was cute when she pouted.
"We're not talking about you, here."
"Ouch." He laughed, putting his hands on his chest as he turned to face her, "Rommie, I'm hurt." The 
door behind him now slid open and he walked through it backwards, grinning, "I'll keep the alarm system 
on high alert for you." He reassured her. "I don't want that guy crawling through your files." 
"I don't want that guy crawling through my corridors." 
Struck by a wave of empathy, Harper actually considered kicking the guy off the ship. Yeah, that'd
probably get him thrown out of an airlock, but, if she asked him to, he'd...well, he'd get his face
smashed open in the process, but, he'd do it.

In their hangar was the most tacky ship he'd seen in years and he had seen a lot of ugly designs. 
It was all flash and sheen; the shapes edged and molded to make it look like something out of a
comic book. Which meant the second something hiccups, it'll blow itself apart at the seams
because the damn thing didn't even have a protective hull to keep it together. He could literally
throw a wrench into the whole thing's design and render it unusable. It was an abomination; an 
expensive one, and he wanted it. 

Popping his head out of the door, Sid peered down at him and frowned, "Not you again." He then 
reeled back into the cab of his ship and stayed, "Don't you have any better chauffeurs? Maybe
something in a curvier model?"
He wasn't serious...right? 
Exchanging glances with Rommie, she gave him a look that told him all he needed to know. If this
guy ended up dead from having his lungs explode in a horrible air-breach incident, well, we can
all chalk it up to a bad malfunction and a tragedy with absolutely no witnesses. 
"I'm assuming you mean me?" She spoke up, immediately capturing his attention. Offering him her
hand, he took it and practically leapt out of his ship, landing with a smile before her.
"Now that's a nifty little thing you've got there." He laughed, scanning his eyes over Rommie
like he was slicing her into spare parts, "Where do you get one of these?" 
"One of a kind. Sorry." Harper cut in before the guy started slobbering.
"Sure you can't cobble one together for me?" He smiled, joyfully pulling himself up on his toes
to catch another look as she rounded back to grab his luggage. 

Once everyone started to fill up the hangar, Harper started to feel less at his wit's end and
more at his, uh...wit's beginning? You know what? Sure. He didn't want to think about anything
for a while. 


"Oh, you don't have to worry about that." Sid waved at her just as she had finished wrapping her arms
around a large suitcase. "I have someone to do all that for me."  
"You...didn't come alone?" Dylan pried in that way he did when he was trying hard to not just
call someone stupid.
"I get a plus-one don't I?" He asked, quickly ignoring any answer he could've gotten out of that to
guide his guest out of their 'craft. "It's fine, you'll love her." Bracing his hands on the shoulders 
of his new buddy, Sid steered her towards the group with all the giddiness of a thirteen year old boy 
showing off a new action figure. "Oh, Dora, sweetie, introduce yourself!" The grease ridden smile he 
held didn't hide his anticipation in the slightest. 
"Don't let the affectionate nickname fool you." She bowed, one ankle over the other, "My name is Pandora." 
There was a joke he could make here but, while not exactly the most socially acceptable guy 
to ever grace the galaxy, Harper wasn't stupid. She had bone blades that looked like they 
could lop off more than just a limb or two. 
That is, until her gaze locked onto him. "And what's your name little one?" 
"I don't have one." He blinked, confused, as a laugh that came out of nowhere had just exploded 
out of him. "Wow, who said that?" He was sweating now, nervously trying to remember the last 
time he'd taken a decent shower and not the routine kind you had to take to make sure that red onion smell didn't linger. 

Swiveling, he immediately joined Tyr and Beka in hopes of regaining his dignity among sympathetic ears. 
"Good luck with that one, buddy." He exhaled, legs quaking, clamping a hard hand down on Tyr's shoulder to keep 
from falling over. "That's gonna be one tough box to open." 
"What makes you think I'm interested?" He inclined as if he didn't have eyeballs and the 
vision of a genetically endowed freak of nature. 
"Oh, you are so full of it." Beka, of all people, mocked them with a shake of her head before
turning to explain. "He's just saying that because he knows he won't get anything out of it." 
Harper blinked, "Huh?" 
"Nietzschean women out in the field are sterile. The best Tyr could get is a cheap roll in the 
hay and we both know he's too uptight for that." She then nudged her head towards him with a
wide grin, "Aren'tcha?" 
Both Tyr and Harper turned to each other in unison as the big guy gave him half a shrug, his
eyes suddenly finding themselves glued to one of the monitors as if it was the most interesting
readout of the cabin's curated air temperature system he had ever seen. 
Noting to investigate that thread later, Harper turned his attention back to Beka, "How do 
you know that?" 
Suddenly, she stopped where she had been reading and looked at the datapad in her hand as if it was
somebody she knew once before. "I just do." 
"You know mysterious is not a sexy look for you."
Her eyes then snapped up and he could practically feel himself getting drawn and quartered where he stood. 
"Okay okay, I got the hint, I'm leaving!"








"You have quite the amenities here." Sid noted, pawing at the edges of Dylan's desk in curiosity. "Cute. Fitting of
a bunch of ragtag team of..." He then looked up, "What are you, again? Guns for hire?" 
Swallowing a comment or two, Dylan sat up in his chair and braced for the worst. "Advocates of the New Commonwealth."
Pulling back, he pointed across the desk with a bright nod, "Oh, right, that." Smoothing down the front of his shirt
with one hand, he scanned the room around him, stopping at the door with a smile. "You know that Android of yours-"
"She's not for sale." Dylan interjected only to get a short 'tsk' in return.
"I wasn't going there, alright? I know your type you and your..." He strained around the words as if he couldn't say 
them without feeling dirty, "...'peaceful coexistence'." He then nodded, "You see, that's exactly the kind of mindset
we're looking for at my inauguration. I bet she has fantastic things going on in that mind of hers. Do you mind if 
we poke around in there- ah- interview her?" 
"You...want to interview her? Why?"
"Who else could better represent our new Commonwealth than those who forged ahead with this unending idea
of progress?" It was obvious delegations were not his strong-suit. He seemed to really do his best work at a
personal, more emotionally manipulative level than a crowd pleasing one. 
"Let's hope you don't write your own speeches." Dylan smiled in a way that didn't give any indication to whether he 
was joking or not. 
"Look, we can pass this back and fourth all day if you want, but, the people do look up to you." 
He then gave a quick gesture of a feigned discomfort. "The suits lining the seats of The Great Commonwealth's 
government however..." 
"Oh, they've already made their opinion of me and my crew very clear." 
"Of course!" He pointed across the desk with an attitude that could only be referred to as 'chipper'. "And that's why
my inauguration is so vital!" He leaned back in his seat, bobbing an anxious leg as if he was ready to spring into action 
at a moment's notice. "You see, I need the peoples' trust and you need an in with our representatives! It's symbiotic!" 
More like parasitic. The only question was, which one of them was the host and which was the parasite?
"I can't say I'm entirely convinced of this endeavor." 
The nervous bounce of his leg suddenly ceased. All that glittered drained from his eyes and, in it's place, Dylan saw
the face of a man who was to be taken seriously lest he end up with some unforeseeable kickback in the near future...
"See, I thought you'd say that. Let me bring this down a bit, mano-a-mano." Crouching in, he met Dylan with an 
expression that was far more than a few shades darker than what he had worn earlier. "You've got a ship
full of walking, talking, contraband and you're just sliding around the universe with it, not a care in that 
pretty little head of yours. But that's the funny thing about ships, isn't it? They break down. They need maintenance.
Especially when your contraband starts to leak." He drew himself further in, "Have you ever seen the after effects that a
plasma leak, left unattended, has on a ship? I have. An old freighter buddy of mine used to carry illegal goods from 
one star system to the next, only stopping for the highest bidder. Thing is...he might've set his bar just a little too
high. By the time we finally got his distress signal, him, his ship, and his freight had all but been picked clean."
He rolled his palms, sweaty, against the arms of his chair, his eyes staring not past Dylan, but through him, scanning over
a scene that had been etched into his memory long ago. One that had obviously followed him since. 
"Sure, you might be fine, now, but we both know this little charade you've got going on
here won't last forever. After all, nobody builds a ship without any lifeboats." 
Like a switch had been flipped, he struck the arms of his chair, clearing his throat and reclined with a sense of boredom.
This conversation never happened. 
Dylan could replay it on a monitor a million times over and still it would have not existed. 
"I believe I now understand the value of your...engagement." Dylan conceded with a quiet diligence that didn't feel 
like his own. He needed out of this meeting. He needed off this ship. He needed to stretch his legs. He needed to consult
someone whom he could trust. 







"Rommie?" 
Her nickname had never been spoken so softly before, she almost didn't recognize it. Turning, she saw Dylan rapping
at her doorway with his knuckles as if knocking wasn't some obsolete part of social etiquette or for entering Harper's
workshop. 
Lost in his thoughts, he entered and began to wander, glancing over everything she had accumulated over the past
few years. It wasn't much; a small dresser of clothing, various photographs, a few items she had inherited from the 
rest of the crew. 'From the bottom of our hearts' they told her but, really, she knew it was just the 
stuff they didn't want anymore. 
"I'd take it that your meeting went..." From her seat on the bed, she watched him fiddle with a bracelet 
that probably wasn't worth as much as Trance had said it was. He was brooding. This meant it was her job to course-correct.
"Was it thought provoking?"
"Have I made a mistake?" 
Well that was certainly not the answer she had prepared for.
"You've made a lot of mistakes." She pointed out, sending a jolt of discomfort throughout his body that seemed to start
at the tension in his neck and fire down to the tension in his arches. "That's not to say you've failed, it's to say
that you're making effort and, through that effort, you're able to progress." 
"But what am I progressing toward?" He asked in a tone that indicated he was blurring five separate
conversations into one. 
If anything, Dylan Hunt was a creature of simplicity and habit. He preferred easier, more solid
structures that relied on quick solutions even if the footwork needed to get there was anything but. 
"A better future." She answered, finally drawing the short window of silence between them to a close. 
He sunk onto her mattress, hunched with his wrists dangling off his knees, his large form curled in on itself
before outstretching into something with more posture. Even now, he was trying to prove something. "I agreed to 
the partisanship." 
Oh, so that's what this was about. 
"I know." She conceded. 
He looked upset, almost betrayed by her response. "What do you mean 'you know'?" 
"We all knew you would." She smiled apologetically, or at least, tried to. "We hate it as much as you do but we
know you're just looking out for us in the long-term." 
Here, his eyes seemed to drop to her face, holding it there as the reality began to dawn on her.
She stood up. 
"Wait, Rommie!" 
He clamored to pull her back down but made the mistake of forgetting that her alloy was far denser than his flimsy
mass. "Are you going to tell them?" 
She hesitated for a brief moment, watching him clasped to her wrist like a drowning man refusing to let go of a
lifeline. "I won't but not for you." In all the time since they'd met, she never thought... "They have enough to
deal with without-" Without what? Knowing that the one person they should be able to turn to would betray them for 
his own gain? 






Sitting, tense, Beka held herself rigid against the backsplash of the ship's cool ambiance. 
"Enjoying the new setup?" Trance asked her, elbows balancing off the back of her seat. 
"It's gonna take a little bit to get used to." She noted, patting the side of her pilot's station, "But, hey, looks
like Harper was good on his word when he mentioned seat warmers." 
Right, she didn't even consider that it would've been cold. Even as the temperature kept level, there was something 
about exhaustion that could throw someone's nervous system into disarray and make them feel hotter or colder. She 
wondered if this was a common issue but decided it was best not to ask.  
"Tired?" She asked, instead, causing her to think about her answer for a moment. As Beka pulled away from the console, 
Trance's eyes fell upon the viewscreen, watching as a small blip on the screen appeared then disappeared, drawing a 
curved line of interference across the map before appearing again. "What's that?"
The question seemed to cause Beka to jolt back to attention, watching the small mark move across the screen, dancing
in formation with The Andromeda. "Probably just a piece of space junk caught up in our undercurrent." She explained,
"In empty space, nothing really moves that fast so when ships go through a blank patch, things tend to caught up in the
pull. Like how leaves get carried by ripples in a pond." 
"Leaves?" Dylan's entrance seemed to be accompanied by little fanfare. It had been a long night and none of them had 
particularly slept more than a few hours between shifts. Left them all a little less observant than usual. 
"Trance is getting paranoid." Beka chuckled, leaning back in her seat, setting her boots up on the dashboard. "A few
rocks showed up on our radar and she's having a fit." She then stuck her hand out straight as if measuring her stress
level, pushing it towards the floor with a swish of air between her teeth. "It's nothing." 
Of anyone on the ship, Dylan was, unfortunately, the only one who knew when to take her seriously. Not that Trance 
didn't appreciate his trust, but, it was taken with a sense of disillusionment that told her he really only trusted
her as a soothsayer of doom and nothing more. She might as well have gifted him with a magic eight ball seeing as it 
would've had the same effect...
Regardless, he was already scanning over Beka's monitor. She had rolled her eyes at the cause for concern but, as the
look on his face grew more grim by the second, she began to straighten her posture, sitting upright and at the ready. 
"I don't know about you, but, I don't think a bunch of space rocks know proper dodging maneuvers." He noted as the green
glow of the screen indicated the path of trajectory of a large object. The dot avoided collision by forming a large semi-circle
in order to slip by, unharmed. 
Zooming in on it, Beka started to move The Andromeda just slightly off it's course only for it to follow in their tracks. 
Like an animal walking along the foot tracks of a larger predator to avoid detection, it was no wonder why Beka hadn't
noticed the energy reading it gave out. The ship was simply too small and far too close to pick up on anything that could
read it's energy output. 
"Well whatever they are, we can't catch 'em like this." Reaching out for the handlebar to separate the seat from it's console, 
Beka slid out of her pilot's chair and began relacing her boots. "The Andromeda's too big, if we tried to go after them 
here, we'll only end up showing off our hand. They could run." With every knot tied in her laces, she squinted
down at the scuffed leather as if it held a new answer to grasp at. "And trying to catch them is a no-go. Worse case scenario, 
we'll end up popping their ship." She grimaced, "Like a big mechanical zit."
"So what's the plan?" Dylan asked, crossing his arms as she hopped back up to her feet.
"Have to pull the guy in. Manually." She then gave her boot a firm stomp to make sure they were secure enough for the 
trip. "All ships create a kind of universal degradation no matter how much energy they use. It's easy to pick up for normal sized
ships, but, what we need is something smaller. Faster." 
"You're going to chase after them in a slipfighter."
Spelling it out had practically granted her full permission. 
"Hey, whatever works." 






Stacked, the cards were placed atop the table delicately in order to keep from making noise as Sid tapped his index finger
against them. His fingernail had managed to burrow a mark into the elegant design across their backs. One would assume he was
trying to be discreet, but, the action was so obvious in it's slow execution that it drew in the attention of
everyone in the room. Everyone except-
"Oh, dude, you're good." Their tiny engineer exclaimed, picking up the cards placed and going over them with a keen
eye. "Too good." He sounded almost congratulatory, like he had finally met his match when it came to the game. Whatever
that implied. Pulling up the skirt of the table and ducking his head below, the boy began his search, "Seriously though, 
where'd you put it?"  
Tyr never thought he'd meet a politician outside the usual routine assassination, so to watch one's 
mask of benevolence be worn away by a certain personality...well, that was entertainment in it's own right. 
"Put what?" He scowled like a child. For all intents and purposes, maybe the boy did finally meet his match.
"Two hands ago, you got a two."
"How do you know that?"
At this point he was practically ripping his hair out, exclaiming, "Because I put it there!" Bumping his fists against the 
table, he clenched his eyes shut, "Tyr do something about this guy!" 
"Like what?" He asked, craning his head at the logic of it all.
"I don't know, rough him up for me." Clearly, the boy was joking, but, Profit's companion didn't seem to find the humor in it, 
pulling herself upright at the first sign of a threat. 
"My dear friend, I believe you were the one cheating." He reasoned.
"Yeah, and I cheated fair and square!" The boy snapped, "He's the one who's swapping cards!!"
"With all regards..." Pandora finally spoke up, meeting Tyr's gaze from her place, seated at her employer's side, "...A member 
of the commonwealth is incapable of framing him for any crime without sufficient evidence." She then turned to him, a smile of 
delight drawn across her face, "If you'd like, you may take any complaints up with his advocate." 
A pause. A nod. "Bring 'em. I've got an open and shut case."
"You're looking at her." 
A knot seemed to catch in the boy's throat and any attempt to swallow around it only seemed to choke him more. Letting out a 
cough, he bent over on the table, giving Tyr a pleading look to which he only shook his head. The thought of having
to drag him out of yet another skirmish of his own making would be entertaining. Something straight from the boy's imagination. 
Realistically, he uncrossed his legs, drawing himself forward in his seat until they met eye to eye, "Don't even consider it." 
A whine erupted as he threw a silent fit, flattening his head against the table's surface. 
Leaning back in his chair, Tyr watched their gracious guest glance from face to face in a daze of confusion. "So...I win, right?"
"You won before you even drew your first card." His guard had reassured him. He seemed to have no issue with this, greedy hands
already digging through their pot as he pulled the currency to his face and frowned.
"So, where do I get these exchanged for the real thing?" He asked to which Harper let out another groan. 
To this, Tyr remembered the words 'you can't con a con' now with a warmer connotation to them. 

Before any of them had the time to acknowledge her, Miss Valentine rushed to the tableside in a panic that immediately set him 
back on edge. 
"We've got a problem." 








Zipping up the front of her suit, Beka pulled back and stared at the front of it like something was wrong. "Hey don't
worry about it!" Harper reassured her with a pat on the back that might have lingered just a little too long. Not 
in a weird way, he just needed her to know somebody was looking out for her. Even when everybody in the world was 
looking out for her uncle. "It's just one guy. I've seen you take out more guys with a laser pistol and
a bottle of Rothkian Tequila." He wasn't kidding with that one, either. "You're gonna be fine." 
"That's not what-" She clenched her shoulders like she was getting ready to be hit with something massive. Well, whatever
it was that was stewing in that brain of hers, he had no business to start picking away at it now.
"Here." He handed her a piece of equipment he'd been meaning to test pilot. He had managed to hammer it out of
old parts from a virtual deck, "It's a communicator." She held it between her fingers, the rim of the headset looked like
it could snap in her grasp, but, she didn't seem determined enough to go that extra mile. Immediately, he regretted even
giving her the thing- now wasn't the time to play with prototypes, not when-
"Thanks." The frown on her face got all soft and, for once, Harper realized he did something good. Nothing to win awards 
over, but, enough to make Beka feel less crappy and, honestly, if that's all he succeeded in doing, that was enough. 
"Now spin around for me." He grinned, moving his finger in a circular motion as she grabbed it out of the air and
crushed it against her palm. 
"Not in your life."
"Atta girl."
From here, they split off; Beka heading to her slipfighter and Harper to a little place he liked to call his 'command
center'. Really, it was just a monitor in his workspace connected to The Andromeda's mapping system. Sending out a pulse,
he saw Beka's ship soar from the docking bay, a small blip across the grid formation on his screen. "Time to see if you 
really liked my little gift." He pulled on his headset and tapped the button to connect them, waiting until the voice
confirmed that, she had, in fact, turned the thing on. Now to see if she was actually wearing it. "Mission control to 
Sweet Cheeks. You hear me Sweet Cheeks?" 
"Oh, you are not calling me that." She snapped and, just as he had hoped, every ounce of annoyance read through loud
and clear. Perfect.
"Right, like I'm letting you pick your own codename." He smiled, switching off the map temporarily to go through the 
Andromeda's readout of the other ship. "Looks like your target is a one-man show, here." There was no way he could
get a read off it's inhabitants or their life-signs, but, he had eyes and the ship didn't look like it could fit more than
one guy on a good day. This didn't exactly bode well. "...That means..."
"He's the only one we can see." Out of everything, he never thought of Beka as much of a mind reader, but, they had been
flung through enough crap together to build a tower out of the stuff. Eugh, let's back away from that thought for a second.
Sending out another pulse, the reading didn't seem to add anything new to the grid which, of course, turned this into a guessing game.
"I'm not reading anybody else. You think he's a spy?" Pretty pathetic spy work if you asked him. 
Now sounding a bit more tense than before, Beka seemed to be talking through the side of her mouth. This meant she was doing that
thing where you're trying not to clench your jaw and you're failing at it. "Doesn't matter what he is, they're all the same." She then fired
a few shots just misaimed enough to not hit the other ship, per say, just...send them a message. "Cowards." 
And he thought Tyr was bloodthirsty. "You're not gonna take on this guy mano-a-mano, are you?" He asked as he watched her ship
use it's slipstream abilities to move just fast enough to practically teleport underneath it. 
"No, I'm just gonna give him a little scare." Yeah, or a little incentive to come back with an army. 
Firing off another shot that grazed off the other ship's bow, she stilled in her place, positioned up as if she was
practically holding a gun to this guy's head.
In return, the ship changed gears and began turning upside-down to meet her head-on. Harper had seen people do this
maneuver before. It was a pretty good way to recall your lunch, but, flying a ship with the blood rushing to your head
was never calculated. Not the kind of tactic found in old flight manuals. He knew because he used to collect stacks of 'em from every 
extremist political group that had approached him for their cause. They were all crazy but none were crazy enough to tell you to risk having your
head explode under pressure just to get the upper hand. By all means, these guys were in a league of their own. 
As the ship sank, capsized, down to eye level with Beka's slipfighter, it's electronic patterns started to rise almost like...
"Beka get out of there!" He shouted into the mouthpiece of his headset, holding the microphone closer to his mouth, "He's gonna
suicide you!!"
No response. 
"Beka!?" He begged over the line, turning back to his monitor to watch as the other ship burst forward right as her slipfighter
snapped to the left. It's exposed belly managed to take most of the damage, like gutting a fish; all it's mechanical entrails
seemed to have been scraped out but, otherwise, the cockpit remained intact. Taking a heavy breath, he watched the ship turn and, 
instead of trying to finish the job, went right for The Andromeda. The worst part was that it wasn't trying to crash itself on it's 
surface, no no, it's trajectory had it scouring along it's frame, planting itself at her base and out of the line of attack. It was 
waiting for something. 
Taking off his headset, Harper froze, staring at it in his hands and turned to the monitor at his side before putting
it back on. Mission be damned, he wasn't abandoning her out there. 
Rushing down the corridor, he pressed the button several times to see if he could get the connection back and, finally, the
automated voice on the other end chirped back at him that the connection was secured. "You okay out there?" He asked, trying
to find where Tyr had ended up dragging her dirtbag uncle for protection. He swore, if she died protecting him...
"I'm alright." She swallowed, watery and gross, a good amount of bile rising in her throat before gagging. The sound, alone, made
him nauseated. "Just immobilized. Did you see where he went?" 
"Yeah, he's hiding up under the ship, right where we can't reach him too. Like hopping on a giants back where he can't reach."
"He's good."  
"He's sub par." He didn't like the whole 'worthy advisary'+++++ thing. No one was worthy enough to pluck her off this plane of
existence, no matter how miserable it was. "I've seen you run better evasive maneuvers between three moons on the same axis." 
"Don't remind me." The embarrassment in her voice was a good sign. There really wasn't room for it when things were dire. "Why 
did I even take that bet?" 
"Subspace circuitry doesn't come cheap, we needed the cash." 
"Right..."
Just as he found Dylan's quarters, he froze, backed up, and switched the door open to see her uncle 'taking cover' in an armchair,
comfortably flipping through a stack of papers. The image made something in Harper's stomach want to digest itself. Here he
was without a worry in the world while Beka was floating out there hoping to not get shot out of free space. "Having fun?" 
He asked, leaning against his arm in the doorway, he couldn't even bring himself to look at the guy or else he'd end up
saying something that could probably be used against him in a court of law. You know, now that those were a thing again. 
"Just going over my speeches." It took him a few moments but he finally sensed something was off and spared a glance in Harper's
direction. "Did you get rid of that, ah...annoyance yet?"
"Still working on it." 
"They're like worms, you know." He grimaced, clearly off in his own little self-serving world. "I once came across a very
particular breed of worms like that. Disgusting little things. They burrowed into anything that was organic and destroyed
hundreds of ships' worth of merchandise. Parasites eating away at valuable stock...and they were difficult to get rid of, too.
We had to use everything from gas to chemical compounds just to stave them off and even then, we're not sure where they came
from. Just that they were this tiny irrelevant problem that kept us from doing our job." 
Harper swallowed.
"Where's Tyr?" He asked, and, to that, the guy actually stopped to think about it, like the only thing standing between him
and a blast between the eyes was an afterthought. 
Raising a finger to his lips, he moved it forward to point off in varying directions before stopping at the floor. "I believe
he said something about the ship having a bit of a breach on it's lower levels..." He then dropped it and went back to his speech. 
"Or something. He took my sweet Pandora too." He frowned, "If she comes back in less than mint condition you'll be seeing
a lawsuit so big, you'll have to go back to-" Squinting his eyes, he let out a sigh of disgust. "-whatever it was that you 
were doing with my niece before. What was it, scrap work?" 
Turning, Harper left the room to head down to the lower decks only to hear Beka's good ol' Uncle Sid call out to him again. 
"Good luck out there!"

Bastard.



Following the point of entry, the ship's avatar began to bleed several points of access into Tyr's ears as he ran his fingers
along the line of the maintenance tubes. From the outside, nothing looked out of place. The puncture in the ship's hull was 
precise, accurate, and quiet- of all things- which did not bode well for anyone aboard. 
"-I managed to cut off the engineering block just in case the ship disconnects in transit." Her announcement was greeted by
admiration from his associate. 
"Impressive." Pandora sneered at the visual output, "So we've taken away his point of escape." 
Placing a thumb against the shell of the curved bulkhead, Tyr felt a very pained sense that something was...off. "By what I 
can tell," He interjected, "I don't think leaving is a part of his plan." Not that it would be an issue. A trapped animal was
still trapped in the end. Suddenly, he noticed a very faint odor wafting through the air and, in return, so did his acquaintance. 
A look emboldened her face into something carnivorous and it made him wonder if he looked the same. "Not very clever is he?"
He asked, tilting his head towards the sound of life inside. Pressing his ear against the wall, he heard their intruder 
stumble about like a man far too drunk to move his feet. He wondered how long one would have to spend constrained in a ship to
create such an effect. 
At his side, his fellow Nietzschean was following suit, her eyes darting with each step taken. "Looks like he won't be moving 
very far."
"That doesn't make him any less of a threat." Pushing off of the bulkhead, Tyr began his stride towards the corridor, "A
desperate man will use any means to escape his misfortune." He beckoned to the ship's avatar with two fingers, drawing her 
to appear at his side. Taking a sidelong glance down the halls, Tyr began to formulate his point of attack. "Give me the
coordinates to the two closest exits out of the tunnels." The computer stared at him with pursed lips, clearly,
it wanted something from him. "Please." He added, flatly. She was then all too eager to comply, displaying the mazelike 
corridors, drawing in the image to one door in particular. 
"This is the first exit he'll reach. I can keep all the doors sealed but that won't keep him trapped forever." She then 
showed the second door which led to the upper deck. "From where he is, if he knows anything about how to rewire a power
transceiver, he could attempt to sabotage me from the inside." 
"Then we should make sure that doesn't happen, shouldn't we?" He prompted, dismissing all her chatter as mere paranoia. The
ship had seen worse. Nothing that could happen to her would stay; for one who was never alive to begin with could not 
experience death eternal. "Unlock the second door, seal the first until we reach it's access point..." His accent held
firm on his tongue for just a moment as the tension began to mount into an oncoming headache, "And somebody tell the Captain 
what's going on." 








Having left Rommie back on deck, Dylan was confined to wait, hunched in the maintenance tubing where there was little 
room to do anything more than wait. He felt stupid squatting here with his knees up to his chin. Pulling his head back against a nearby 
console, he rested his eyes. The days without sleep had started to wane on his nerves, endlessly threading him between distress
and paranoia with no end in sight. All work and no play makes Dylan a dull boy, he supposed. 
He hadn't realized just how close he had gotten to falling asleep when a loud scrape of metal against metal had him leaping
from his daze, nearly smacking his forehead against the bulkhead. Placing a hand against it's cold surface, he pushed 
away from it and set himself to a crouch. Again, he heard the scraping noise only, this time, it was more muffled. Had he realized
that his little foray into their ship hadn't gone unnoticed? Had he realized he wasn't alone in the maintenance tunnels?
Was he expecting him? 
Reaching for his lance, Dylan held it gently in his grip; not to be perceived as a weapon, he cradled it in his palm like
a handset. For all their intruder knew, he could be just some engineer checking out the damage. Turning himself to the 
paneling, he pretended like he didn't notice the form slowly crawling towards him on it's belly like a wounded animal. 
Before he could turn to face him, he was met with a quick arm being slung around his neck, anchoring him to the floor 
in an instant. "If you know what's good for you, you'll stay down." He was warned by a man covered entirely in body armor
so old, it surely had nothing left to give. If he was attacked now, it wouldn't protect him from anything. So why wear it?
"Those are battle fatigues." Dylan noted as the man, shifty-eyed and trembling, stared down at him with contempt. "What 
unit were you from?" 
A part of him saw something in this young man that read as desperate and it wasn't because he was being pursued by two
Nietzscheans, either. After a few seconds with no response, Dylan let himself relax against his own weight. Despite being
held at the man's disposal, he still had his weapon in hand, pressed flat between his palm and the floor. "I'm assuming it was 
more than a discharge that brought you here..." 
"You have no idea what's coming do you?" He finally asked, looking at Dylan like a foolish old man and, maybe he was. But
he knew better than to second guess his own intuition.
"The war?"
"Not the war you're thinking of. No, this one's been going on for longer than I've been alive." He heard a soft shuffle 
in the shadows and froze, cocking his gun accordingly. "That damn Commonwealth is just making it worse. Have you seen 
the people they're electing into their ranks? They don't want leaders, they want power." Pulling Dylan up by the collar
of his shirt, he now realized this negotiation had now turned into a hostage situation. "Warlords and profiteers..." The man
mugged at the hushed forms moving down the tunnel, eyes reflecting in the warm glow of the console. "There's a war coming,
alright, but, it's only phase two for those-" He shuddered at the sight, "-Animals!" Firing a shot into the dark, he was 
immediately intercepted by Tyr who leapt across the cramped distance to pin them down as they unraveled into a storm of
limbs clawing, reaching, for a weapon. 
Seeing his chance, Dylan wrapped his fingers around his lance, still small enough to fit in his palm, and activated it; 
knocking the intruder off of him. Quickly, he pulled it back into it's handheld form, rolling to the side and aiming
it at his assailant. "Don't move." He had no idea why he thought that would work. It never worked. Immediately, the man
turned and tried to escape only for Tyr to quickly catch up with him again, this time by wrapping his hands around his
skull. With his fingers placed in distinct points of contact. Tyr seemed almost entranced by the weight of it, rolling it from
his left hand to his right. Calculating, his eyes darted with his thoughts, like the tip of a pencil scrawling on a 
piece of paper. 
Approaching them with a pair of restraints, Dylan got maybe within a foot from them before Tyr jerked back, silently
questioning his motives. "You can let him go now, Tyr." He encouraged him only to get a pointed scowl in return. "We take 
prisoners on this ship, we don't execute them." Making his point clear, he closed the distance and started to pull a cuff over one 
of the man's wrists. In turn, Tyr loosened his hold, turning the man around in his hands so that Dylan could reach his other
arm. Kneeling, he hadn't realized the vulnerable position he had put them in until their assailant began thrashing, knocking 
him back with a strike of his boot. Suddenly, he and Tyr were neck-in-neck, with the man bucking at him wildly, twisting
in his grasp until he finally pulled loose. 
Scrambling back down the tunnel, he hadn't realized how turned around he had become in the struggle until he found himself
at Pandora's feet. Her fingers quickly wrapped around the side of his neck, locking his head in a firm position against her
ankle. "Your hunting abilities leave something to be inspired." She laughed.







 
The room was a lot less accommodating than the average holding cell, there were no amenities that made for a welcoming experience.
Just four walls and a door. You could estimate that it was once a maintenance closet but, even by those standards, it would've 
been far too cramped to fit more than a mop bucket. That said, having Beka and Tyr in on this interrogation seemed to add to the
claustrophobia. Tension had risen within every single person in the room, Dylan included. 
"Because I know how these little cous go, I know this assassination attempt won't be the last. If you were acting 
independently, you might've been able to slip through, unnoticed but because you just had to make a point of putting
your ideals before your actions, you ended up doing nothing. Failing at both." 
At his back, he could hear Tyr pausing between steps, fiddling with the firearm in his hands, clicking the safety on and off
then on again. Anxious tinkering coupled with mindless pacing. 
If Dylan had been a dose more paranoid, he'd be offset by the clear warning sign, but, because he knew
where he stood with the Nietzschean, he stayed at ease. 
"You think I'm just going to start spilling names because some Commonwealth bigshot wants to make an example out of me!?"
Against his better nature, he hesitated, giving a signal disguised as a simple brush off his shoulder. "No. I think you 
did a pretty good job of luring them to us when you sent out that distress call." 
"What distress call?" 
Slamming a bulky hand-fitted communicator against the desk, Beka imputed a code into it's keypad before sliding it 
his way, making sure it stopped right in full view of everyone, lights blaring across the darkened recesses of the room. 
"That distress call." 
"You think you can capture us all? You have no idea how deep this goes." His eyes scoured the interior of the room, desperately. "We're
everywhere."
 








Trance's garden had always felt like a bizarro version of Harper's workshop. Like she had to counterbalance every piece of 
machinery he cobbled together with some little leafy thing with a name he'd never be able to pronounce. Hey, at
least it was constructive. A little humid, but, nice. 
That's where he found her. It's where she'd been haunting these past few months, locked away in her terrarium with no
one but the plants to keep her company. Well, today, Harper decided to change that. 
Standing at her side, he watched her at work, pushing thumb holes into the soil. She didn't even look up at him. 
"Listen I think we've danced around this long enough."  
"You mean how we're no longer friends?" 
"No that's-" He took a step back, "How can you say that? We're just stuck a little." He sat down next to her, 
feeling the dirt soak through his jeans, "I'm here to jimmy some stuff around, you know, that's what you do when 
something's not working. You figure out what the, uh, 'root' of the problem is." He gave her a smile and she gave
him nothing.
Scratching at the back of his head, Harper exhaled, "It's a pun, you see, 'root' can be a mathematical-"
"I got the joke." 
"Yeah, yeah, I know." Open mouth, insert foot. 
He looked down at the ground and wondered what it felt like to be so connected to something greater. He'd only experienced
it through technology and, for the most part, it just made him feel even more isolated. It was always just
streams of information being projected into your brain but it let him forget what it was like to be himself 
for a second. As crappy as it'd make him feel afterwards, in the moment, he felt free of everything
he hated about being human. The aches, the pains, the hunger, the stress, the never-ending maintenance he no longer had the
time or energy to keep track of. Not to mention the personality. Indifference to yourself was cool if you were different. 
It was like conceding that you knew your place even if that place was tucked in a dark corner behind a computer 
screen. 
It then hit him like a rock to the head. 
"Hey Trance, do you like gardening or do you do it to feel alive?" He realized after he said it that the question seemed
so out of left field it was making it's way out of the stadium and into the front windshield of some poor shmuck. 
"Wait I meant-"
"Yes." 
"Oh." And he thought he had issues. 
"Gardening is much more simplistic than taking care of the needs of others. People are so...complicated. You cant just 
cut off what doesn't work, you have to spend so much time and effort on just one and still they might never give you the results
you want." 
"That's what it's like with machines. They break and you can fix 'em. People don't break, though. Yeah, they can be busted
up but no one alive really stays stagnant. They're constantly stuck on this feedback loop of ups and downs. For something to be broken, 
it'd have to stay that way but nobody ever stays one way or another. They change." 
There. That was the problem this whole time staring him right in the face and all it took was watching a girl move a flower
from it's pot into the soil to make him see it.
"Trance, we've changed." 
She didn't seem to take the news in stride. "I don't want you to change." 
"But if I don't change, I can't grow! I'll just be stuck sitting in a pot on the shelf like-" Like Tyr's flower, 
sequestered in a pot on a table for everyone to see when it should be out here, connected to the others. "Hold on I gotta
go take care for something." He brushed the dirt off his pants and started on his way out when Trance sat up, looking at
him as if she could read his thoughts. 
"One day you're going to have to make a choice." She said. "It's going to be difficult, it might even hurt the people you
care about, but you're going to have to decide." Turning to face each other from across the room, he watched as she kneaded her hands
into the dirt around her, the sensation flooding her with something to soothe the mounting dread that threatened
to shake her whole body apart. "Promise me you'll make the right decision." 














The warm hum in Tyr's body threaded through the muscles in his shoulders as he hefted his weights back into place. As much
free time as his cell had given him, the repetition of exercise without the use of an apparatus made him feel far too
limited. Not to mention the lack of leg space. Despite being deemed no longer a prisoner aboard The Andromeda, he was 
still, in a way, confined to it so his routine only expanded as far as his world currently did. Which is, to say, not very far. 
By the terms of what was available to him, it wasn't terrible but the lack of purpose left him both restless and raw. The galaxy
that stared back down upon him from his place on the balcony only served to remind him of all that he could never have. His hopes
had all but dried up now. 
He draped an arm over his vision, hoping to blot out these thoughts, altogether. 

A pair of footsteps began to approach and Tyr found himself begging for privacy. 

Wiping the sweat from his face, he shivered. There was something particularly cruel about the lack of moderation with the environmental
controls. It was always cold, just one or two degrees below comfortable and not once did they fluctuate with the passage of time. 
If he was in a state of inactivity for too long, it'd begin to wane on his senses, making him irritable. 
Amusing, as it was, that of all the burdens he carried with him; at the moment, not one could compare to something so meager, so 
small, as a degree or two. He laughed. 

"You've kept your spirits up in your confinement." Signaled Pandora as she brushed through the entryway, making her way to him with 
the long, slow, strides of a predator preparing for the hunt. 
"I have no interest in anything you have to offer."
"What of my company?" She passed by him with a scouring eye. 
"I can find better company." 
"With the humans?" She grinned in a mockery of his disdain. "Those little kludges don't know the first thing on how to fill their own
empty lives and yet you still prefer their defective company?" 
Her tongue struck viciously in her mouth in a way that felt all too familiar. 
"Not the sentiment one would expect from an advocate for Nietzschean relations." 
"My position as a delegate has nothing to do with my beliefs." She smiled, "Neither does it have to do with our placement in relation
to humans." 
He sat up only to have her drop into his lap, pinning him where he was, her bone blades on full display. She regarded his stare with a smile.
"Do you miss them? From your psychological profile, I could never quite tell if you did." 
His worst suspicions confirmed, Tyr felt as if her weight was the only thing still grounding him. 
"You've been mimicking me to garner their trust." 
"What can I say? The people love you. They just don't love..." She leaned over, hovering with her face just above his, "You."
Grabbing the weights above his head, he met her as they were pulled from their place and held, in a stalemate, between them;
his strength against hers. 
"You shouldn't blame yourself for starting this war. It needed to happen. The Nietzschean people needed to see that together we could unite
to destroy the Drago and all their allies. Without them, we may flourish once again." She bore down on him, the weights beginning to shift
under her vantage point, "All that power and what did they do with it? Stagnate. Preferring to plunder instead of create, they're no better
than the humans they believe they've evolved beyond but, those of us who still remember the old ways, we see beyond that." She stopped, 
now holding them without force yet still refusing to let them go, hovering just above, a threat in wait, ready to strike.. 
"Then why are you here?" He questioned, "To kill me? Rob me of the last vestiges of my life so that you may take it's place?" 
"Kill you!?" She cackled, wretchedly, "My dear, I'm here to save you!" Pulling the weight back to where it had laid, Tyr felt gentle 
hands reach out to touch his face, "You've been running for so long, are you not lonely for your own kind? Do you not dream at 
night of returning the Kodiak people to their rightful place in the universe? To their rightful home?" 
She sat up, straddling him in a way that made him sink his teeth into his own tongue. 
"I thought you were-"
"I never said I was."
Suddenly, every atom that built up every ounce of his being was threatening to explode outward. He was a man at war with himself,
kicking his heels against the ground, he felt the universe split him from his throat to his groin, leaving him exposed
and open to losing the soul he never even had. 
Thrown upon the altar of the universe, under it's uncaring blade, he was left begging to weep, to scream, to lash out at 
every single living being that had dragged him to this point. He pressed his hand to his breast, his heart pummeled 
his brain until his vision blurred; unfocusing and focusing until his eyes met the subtle movement from across the room.
"Woah, I uh..." It was the boy. His dear Charge had obviously mistaken his misery for ecstasy, staring wide eyed at the display. 
"I'll just be going. I didn't know you'd be, uh..." Before he turned, the woman was already upon him, sending
him further into a state of discomfort. 
"Nothing has happened, little one." She glanced back, "Nothing that can't wait. Tell me, what was it you came to discuss?"
He gave her a nervous smile, playfully shrugging off his current state for something more benign, "Nothing that can't wait."
"Nonsense." She crooned, lowering herself to his height. "I have the time. Come, let's take these matters elsewhere." In a moment
they were both gone, leaving Tyr where he laid. 
A chill brushed through the air. 









As the planet pulled into view, Dylan leaned into the console before him. Palms pressed firm into it's sides, he swiped
his thumbs against the corners of it's buttons and diodes like he was scratching at something he couldn't quite reach.
The itch in his brain had spread to his fingers. He was staring at the end result of all his work- accumulated 
over years of tried and true effort and all he could feel was doubt. His head had been wrapped around this idea of a
false start when Beka spoke up from her pilot's chair. "Trouble in paradise?"
With a sigh, she let go of the controls and stretched, folding her arms into her lap. The pull of her shoulders
seemed to point her to the floor like an arrow, ready to be shot. Something was weighing heavily in her mind and 
he hadn't the slightest clue what it could be. 
"It's the lack of trouble that bothers me." He then stood in silence, watching Beka fold in on herself, tired from
the slip. Her head was now hovering over her lap, like someone bent over in prayer. "You'd think we'd catch sight of
more than just one man after how much precaution we were made to take for this journey."
"Paranoid." She stated, matter-of-factly. "You expect everything to blow up in your face." Pulling herself back up, she
rested her back against the seat, watching him toy with the controls absent-mindedly. 
"More than paranoia, I..." He steadied his hands, realizing he no longer could say what he thought. "...I'm just not used
to something being practically handed to me." 
The diversion seemed to work and she let out a noise that told him what she thought. That he was driving himself up a wall
over nothing. "Maybe you should take more missions where you're not in control. They say exposure therapy is pretty popular 
these days." 
"Dylan doesn't need exposure to anything." Rommie spoke up as she entered the upper deck with a stern look. 'Except a good
idea' was what she must've thought. He could handle everyone else being apprehensive with him for any reason under the sun
but he couldn't take this. Not from her, not even if he deserved it. 
"I think I may have an idea you might like." Looking from Rommie to Beka, he already could feel the decision settle in his
mind. "Since you're going to be our representative, why not have Beka cover you? That way I can cover our target and the 
both of you can have the night to yourselves- away from us." The tradeoff was fair if it'd have Rommie talking to him again. 
"Alright." She agreed, crossing her arms and closing herself off to him completely. If she ever gave him her trust again, he'd
swear to never do anything to lose it. There was just something about the lack of her presence at his side that made him feel
unsteady. Exposed. They were the foundation in which all of this was built on and to watch it crumble...










"I hardly deem this necessary." Tyr complained dismissively, his hands already uncomfortably tugging at the concept of
wearing a full shirt. 
"Aw, but they got you all dolled up for me." Harper grinned as he tucked a pack of extra rounds into his pocket.  
"I'll be posited at the top of a thirteen story building as armed surveillance." 
"I'll bring binoculars." He laughed, heading out the door when a certain lady of the night decided to enter. 
Bracing himself against the doorframe, Harper wobbled as if his legs were about to give out, twisting just to 
catch a second glance. "One word: Woof." 
"Two words: Dog chow." Pandora grinned back at him. 
Pushing up off the door, he extended his arms in offering, "Wanna tear through the bag?" 
Immediately, Tyr was rounding him up with a quick turn of his hand around his arm, yanking him through the door
and out into the hall. With a toss, he was launched forward and, for some reason, the ship's bulkhead began to feel like 
it was closing in. Turning, he forced a smile, cheeky and cute. "All you had to do was ask." A look of confusion struck 
Tyr's face so he continued, "If you wanna turn tail and run back in there, be my guest." It wasn't like he wouldn't do
the same if given the chance. "After all, what's a cheap thrill here and there?"
All of a sudden, it was like the gravity field around the ship had disengaged with just how compressed Tyr had become.
Too big, not enough space. He looked uncomfortable, confined. "She's offered to take me." 
Big news. Good news. Harper felt like he should congratulate the guy but for once, he found himself at a loss for any
words except. "I thought she was-"
"She's not." He stated, pointedly. "If I take up her offer, I may be able to have a place back among my people. I'll be
able to have the children I wanted. Live the life I've longed for." Lowering himself to Harper's level, he noticed Tyr's 
eyes narrow around the edges. He was waiting for something. An answer to a question no one asked. 
A boiling sensation began to stew in the back of his mind. Here was Tyr telling him how he was finally going to get 
everything he's worked so hard for and all Harper could do was play in his own jealousy. It was unfair the way everyone
around him had grown into who they were and here he was stagnating, barely even able to keep his head above water. He had
hardly grown into anyone worth sticking around for. If anything, he was shrinking, collapsing, folding so far inward in a sea
of his own words, he wondered if he'd ever be able to actually say anything again. 
"That's great." It came out more sarcastic than he wanted it to, but, he didn't care anymore, he just wanted to say the
right thing. "Maybe you'll let me watch." He joked despite himself, "Bet that'll be the show of the decade, huh?" It was clear
he screwed up. Tyr had turned away from him, contemplating. Well, he didn't want to stick around long enough to hear about it. 
"Look, I've got a flight plan to map so if you wanna put this on ice for me until I'm finished, that'd be great." 






  
Staring down at his monitor, tracing the stretch of buildings encircling the square capitol, Dylan started pinpointing directions.
If there was a position to take, they would occupy it. 
Beside him, Sid had reached an arm across the console, pointing at one dot in particular. "You're not planting my dear 
'Dora that far away from me are you?" 
"We need to take as many positions with our snipers as possible." He then pulled away from the screen to look him square
in the eye, "Unless, of course, you like the rush of being exposed on stage."
He immediately knew he had picked the wrong set of words. "Oh wouldn't you believe it." He joked, downing yet another drink
in his hand, "What about the robot?" 
"The Android-" Dylan corrected, "-will be attending to her own after the interview is over. She'll be providing backup 
security." 
"Smart move." He nodded, turning to leave. 
"Touching down now." Beka announced as a bit of turbulence hit and caused her uncle to drop his glass across the deck's
floor.
Leaning over to Harper's station, he looked down at the flight map and then at him. "Would you be a dear and clean that up for 
me?" He then left without another word. The sound of the door sealing shut behind him allowed everyone to breathe a sigh of relief.
"Look on the bright side." Harper jeered, "Every time we try to pull a bunch of stuffed-shirts into one spot, it usually blows up in
their face." Tracing from one area to the next, he focused for just a brief moment before continuing, "What do you bet this whole 
thing is gonna end with him begging his way out of office?"
Straightening in her seat, Beka mused with the idea, "I think I like those odds." 
If only Dylan were so lucky. "And you say I'm paranoid."







In the abundance of faces around her, Trance watched as people gathered and joined together in dance. The gentle tide of
bodies swaying together rocked along with the beat. Everybody, together, had felt conjoined as a whole. It was a romantic 
thought on a romantic night. What can she say? There was something about violins that made her nostalgic for a simpler
time. Back when things weren't always preordained like the many faces of death she had seen her friends bear. She could 
distinctly remember the last time she had felt this kind of ease. Maybe not within this time or understanding of the 
universe, but, it was there at one point. Maybe, she hoped, it could be there again.
Peering through the crowd, she noticed one face in particular, silently calling to her, hands held up to the sky to catch
her attention. Well, consider her caught. 
Guiding her way through the sea of bodies, she found Harper grinning like he had one of his terrible schemes brewing just
on the tip of his tongue. 
"You clean up well." She noted at his tuxedo, realizing this had been the first time she had seen him in one. Shocking how, 
as many times as they'd gone through the same conversations, the same meetings, he still somehow managed to surprise her. 
"Nothing a few hand wipes can't fix." He grinned, tugging at what was clearly a clip-on as if he had cinched it, himself.
Laughing, she tossed the fringe of her dress to the side, turning towards him, playful and weightless. "Are you here for 
business or pleasure?" 
"Oh, so now I get to choose?" He snorted, smiling as she batted her eyelashes at him. "You know you really shouldn't go around
teasing guys like that, you'll give 'em the wrong impression." 
Grabbing him by the arm, she put on the whole act- demure and small, hanging off of his big, manly, arm. Which was difficult seeing as
she had to practically lean into him to make herself look that way. "Oh? Like what?" 
"Like that!" He groaned, pulling her off his arm with a playful shove. "You're really laying it on thick tonight!" 
Here, she opened her mouth only for him to immediately catch himself and cut her off with a quick "Don't." 
Harper then shoved his hands in his pockets, heaved a breath, and watched it cloud in the cold air. A silence fell 
on the both of them as the night began to wane away at the skyline, grey skies turning black right before their very eyes. 
"Feel like it's all over now."
Here, Trance found a deep sense of dread start to crawl inside her stomach. "Hm?" 
"It feels like the end, you know? Freeze frame, roll credits. Cut your check and get out of dodge."
"Are you afraid?" She asked which seemed to yank him out of his daze long enough to be confused by it. 
"Huh?"
"The end, are you afraid of the end?" 
He swallowed, scouring the crowd for some kind of answer or clue, looking lost and ungrounded. "Pleasure." He answered.
"What-"
"I'm here for pleasure." He rounded out with a nervous smile. Offering her his hand, he kneeled just a bit to get his point
across, "C'mon, let's dance." 



 
 




The amount of work being done to make her look 'presentable' felt...excessive. Between the hair and makeup, Rommie felt 
more like the kind of doll Tyr suspected her of being than anything else. "I don't think I need this much lipstick." 
She expressed to her makeup artist as Sid leaned over to her from his chair after just a quick powder. 
"Trust me, you're gonna need all the help you can get out there." He laughed, examining himself in the mirror with a 
chuckle. He then turned, to his stylist and began framing his hands around his head, "Are 
you sure this is the part you want the future leader of The New Commonwealth to be seen with?" The way he spoke was 
childish and prying, like someone who didn't know much about the world and had to have everyone explain it to him. 
One of the most powerful men in the galaxy and he played ignorant so well that others had to provide him with what he wanted.
It left her feeling nervous. 



The room, with all it's cameras, where she had to be interviewed brought her even more dread. Between the company
and the setup, she had a feeling that every single one of these people were under his paycheck. At least Beka and Dylan 
had decided to attend with her or she'd be worried. Well, more worried. 

Pulling himself over from his place on the couch, she could feel a switch flip in his head, now assuming the role
of someone charismatic and wise from years of experience. She wondered if this was a facade. She wondered if there
was anything about him that wasn't a facade. 
"So, tell me, what are you thoughts on humans?" 
Right. Of course. The interview. 
"Humans are vital to the continued growth of A.I. we're not trying to grow past you, we desire to learn with you, 
side by side."
"Really?" He blinked at her response, a droll boredom plastered across his face. "So there's no resentment there?" 
This, she hadn't prepared for. "What do you mean?"
"I'm talking about the laziness, the long hours, the sheer cruelty. Humans created most A.I. to simply..." He made
a vacant gesture at her as if he needed to consider his words, "...do the work for them. Automation, we called it." 
His posture then slouched, comfortably. "You know, we're not the most agreeable species, we tend to prefer something-
or someone- else do all our tasks for us. That's where our initial need for machines came in."
"I don't think that's entirely true." She shook her head, "I was designed to do things no human is capable of." 
"Like the transporting and deployment Nova bombs?" He asked, cutting her off.
"I'm a war ship, practically a soldier, just as much as any human with a weapon and a cause to fight for." 
"Yes, but, one human with a blaster rifle can't possibly compare to the amount of carnage that could be caused by
one of your many basic functions."
It was clear now that he was baiting her. That she had been set up all along to make even the most sympathetic
A.I. look like an interplanetary crisis just waiting to happen. 
"I was working under the Highguard with a captain at my helm. Anything I did was under the command of a superior
officer." 
"So you were just...following orders, then?" Now where have I heard that one before?" 
At her back, she felt a legion of eyes watching her every move, waiting for something to slip. They wanted her to
fail. All in all, they had expected it. Granted, it just made her more aware of how separate they were. Whether she
looked like them or not, her emotions could not convey themselves without her permission while theirs so easily
slipped through the cracks in their masks, leaving them salivating with anticipation. She looked back at Dylan, reading
his face for any sign of help through the veneer of neutrality he held. Still and calm, he did not budge an inch.
"My crew has provided me with the tools I needed to become the Android- not person- Android that I want to be. I don't 
wish to be human or to replace them. I want to keep working alongside them, just with the same social standing and 
acceptance they would provide to their peers."
If she hadn't held herself so still, she might not have recognized it- a sudden hitch in her posture- so slight no one
could register it as anything more than a slight chill. She wondered if it was cold.
"Alright, we're done here." Beka interjected, barring the crowd from any sense of satisfaction by shielding her from 
the cameras. 
"You can't leave now, what about my voters?" 
With a tremble, she whipped around, a bite of anger still rising in her voice. "You can take your little voters and-"
"Beka." 
She stopped. 
"We're leaving." 







The gentle tide of voices rose to Tyr's ear as what would be considered a chorus down below registered
itself as a distant bustle. Life. Even now, it still managed to bloom around him. 
Overlooking the crowd, he followed traces of comradery between the guests; the flow of their silent conversations
alive on their faces. Despite himself, he never had been able to placate the yearning in his heart. Companionship
came at it's own disadvantages. Forming bonds required a kind of sacrifice he was either unwilling or unable to give. 
It was an unfortunate circumstance of his existence. After all, when one was presented with too many caveats to heed,
it made maneuvering even a simple conversation into a battle. This deemed him difficult and unsociable even
among those who shared his fate at the edge of society. He didn't need to be a part of what the gathering of souls 
down below shared for he found peace with himself to simply sit and listen. 

"You're quite the professional." He didn't take his eyes from his scope. He knew who was addressing him and why. "You haven't 
moved an inch since you've been up here." 
He swallowed her words with distaste. They weren't bitter as they were far too sweet on her tongue. "I suppose you've shirked
your duties to come distract me from mine?"
"Good observation." She spoke with a smile shaping her jaw just playfully enough to garner his attention. "But you're wrong." 
Firmly holding her rifle in her hands, she began to grace the edge of the building. "I've come to join you." 








"So there I was, all embarrassed like I was fourteen and found my uncle's stash of old skinmags and they weren't even
doing anything!!" Harper yelled burying his fingers in his hair. He had been shouting into his drink for so long, Trance was certain
he had all but forgotten it was there. She, however, had decided to take advantage of their political situation and found
that if you were invited by the right people and looked the right way, a bottomless drink ticket truly did mean bottomless.
Pointing a finger in Harper's face, she found that the moment you actually had to think about what to say,
the alcohol found a way to make you unthink it. "Yet."
"Hm?"
"You said they weren't doing anything but she said they weren't doing anything yet." Her head lolled closer. Once again, they had
become each other's keepers. A position she had become very very good at. 
"Yeah well whatever it was, I can't stop seeing it every time I close my eyes. Worst part is, I'm not even sure I want to!" His
hands made their way down the front of his face as he tilted his chin back up, staring towards the empty space before him. "This
whole party blows." 
"Gala." She corrected. 
"This whole gala blows." Heaving a sigh loud enough to disturb everyone else seated around them, he let it carry on long enough
for it to legally count as a formal complaint. At this point, usually, Harper would make some statement about hoping one of the overhead
snipers would misfire followed by one of his graphic descriptors of his head exploding. 'Like a big wet melon' or something. But he didn't. 
He didn't say a lot of things these days. He just let his head hit the bar with a loud 'thud' and became, concerningly, very still.
"You're not as fotal...' She braced herself against the bar. "...Fatasistic...." inhaling, she let out a deep, cooling breath. "Fatal-"
Reaching out to brace her by the arm, he gave it a tight squeeze. "I got it. God, how many of those did you drink?" He laughed
as she began running out of fingers to count on. 
"I can't remember." 
"Is the room spinning yet?"
"It's certainly swaying." 

Without looking, he reached out and grasped her hand, holding it there with an affectionate warmth she had missed. There, they 
sat in silence, communicating thoughts at each other, soundlessly under the wave of music and comradery. 
He had changed.
"What'd you bet they're up there riding it out right now?" 
He also hadn't.
"They're probably gonna hop the nearest spacecraft and go pop out like eight hundred little Nietzschean nightmares
and we're gonna be stuck giving ourselves peer-reviewed handies under the strict surveillance of Commandant Hunt for the rest
of our lives." 
"There's still Beka." She suggested.
"Are you kidding!? The second she finds out she's better off without us is the second that-" He considered the notion, "Well it'll be
the second Hell freezes over but after that-" He made a noise mimicking The Maru splitting through the skyline. "-Free as a bird!"
"What about Rommie?"
Here, he stilled himself; motionless, nauseated, then another emotion she couldn't quite find the definition to. 
"Rommie tends to stick to a safe bet." He raised a hand between them, "Not the smartest bet, not the best bet, but the safest." 
"So she neither wins nor loses?" 
"Exactly."
"What about me?"
"You, my sweet golden goddess of the fates-" He waxed in a faux-poetic manner, "-will eventually cut your losses and go find 
yourself a winning team."
"And where does that leave you?" 
"As the Galaxy's number one loser, baby!" He then swept up his now-warm drink, downed it in one go, and shivered. "C'mon. Last
dance is on me." 









"I can't believe this..." Beka hissed over the balcony, ignoring the crowd below for the soft glow of the lights lining the  
square. The heavy buzz of a nearby sign hummed a sound that Rommie found almost comforting, it reminded her of her control
panels when they overheated from use. The sound of exhaustion. "He just stood there while- while they picked you apart
up there!" A breath whistled from between her teeth, bringing her temper back down with it, "Vultures."   
The city square had been blooming with life, it felt like a distant memory compared to where they were. "I can." She spoke
without realizing she had said anything at all. 
"Oh, come on, not you too. Don't tell me cynicism is in now?"
In? "Let's just say I knew what I signed up for when I walked up there." Beka's mouth opened just enough to barely put
out a word before Rommie cut her off, "I didn't know it was going to be aimed at me, but..." She paused, a falling sensation 
overcame her, as if she could feel every piece of circuitry in her body push the words out of her chest. "Dylan has a 
pretty nice future to look forward to if this night turns out well."
Beka blinked at her. She then blinked again and pulled her body across the table until her shadow looming across it,
spilling into her lap. "What about us?" 
"I..." Rommie watched as something tugged at the edges of her eyes, pulling them, like search lights, for an answer she
did not have. "I'm sorry." With every falling sensation came the damage that went with hitting the ground. Only, instead
of the ground, it had been Beka, with everything she had been building towards now on the verge of being ripped out from under her. 
Sliding out of her seat, Rommie found herself retreating from the balcony, the warm hum of light fading in the distance.  










Standing at his post, Dylan watched as Sid graciously accepted a number of handshakes from former planetary delegates.
Men who held their office long before the birth of the New Commonwealth. They were old professionals in the game, each 
boasting a large background in politics and yet, somehow, none of them were competing for leadership in this new 
frontier. Of all those who had come to attend, only three weren't planning their oncoming retirement. He 
decided to make a case against that. 
"Excuse me," He began, approaching a delegate of Yevor whose sole job for the past three decades had been dismantling
the systems put in place during an occupation. One that had almost encompassed his entire planet. "I know you've seen
your fair share of change over the years, so I thought I'd ask- what is your outlook on the New Commonwealth? Any advice
you'd like to give us out there in the mess of it?" It was clear and to the throat and yet the delegate's mouth turned 
downwards in a look that didn't promise much. 
"I have hope you will be able to keep the peace." 
Not an answer. 
"I understand your need for pageantry, but, really..." He used his hand to guide the delegate away from the others as
a way to keep them out of earshot. "What do you think about joining our cause? We could use someone who knows how to heal
old battle scars around here." 
Stopping in his tracks, the man, clicking his alien tongue in a show of tension, made Dylan remove his arm almost immediately.
"I refuse to join a coalition of criminals and thieves." He grumbled under his breath, "Rubbing elbows with them is bad enough,
you've made a mockery of a civil union tonight." A breeze of cold air cut between them amidst the warmth of the night. "A word 
of advice?" He asked, taking Dylan's arm in a reverse of his little gesture from earlier, guiding him back to the others in one
quick turn, "Don't be surprised what your Commonwealth becomes when the economy turns sour." 
Suddenly left to his devices, Dylan watched as the delegate returned to seat himself next to their admiral with a pleasant
nod to his arrival. The future was dark. 







Pushing her way through the crowd, Rommie found herself dodging tails and tendrils swaying to the music as she let the 
press of oncoming bodies pass through her, unaffected. Wading into unfamiliar territory was one thing but, here, she felt like
she was drowning in it. There was a thousand faces and not one she recognized. Leaning up on her heels, she managed to bob
her head over the crowd, following the music, her eyes swathed over every single face on stage until she finally found Dylan's.
He was still hovering in line with men of power and respect; exactly where he wanted to be. 
Falling back flatly on her feet, she began her descent towards the stage when a hand reached out from the crowd and caught her 
where she stood. Wrenching herself from it, she heard a loud shout of, "Hey-ow!" that stopped her in her tracks. Turning, she 
looked back at Harper holding his hand in his other and staring up at her like she had gone mad. 
"What're you doing all the way out here?" He asked, shaking off the sting from his wrist, "Shouldn't you be watching after Mister 
Big Shot up there?" She glanced toward the stage, and back at him, watching as his face turned sour, her anger apparent. "Hey, it's
okay." Shoulders drooping, he crossed his arms over his stomach in a pained gesture he had somehow developed over the past
few years. Looking away from her now, she actually found it hard to pick up what he was saying over the sound of the crowd
erupting around them. He then turned to her and gave her a smile, trying and tired and heavy with all the things that had
been crushing them underweight. "Knock him dead for me, huh?" 
"Don't you mean-"
"No, I don't." He cut her off, finally letting himself relax for just a moment before she realized he had been wandering through
the crowd alone as well. 
"Where's Trance?" She asked. 
"Oh, uh, I've got something I need to take care of." 
She blinked at him, wondering if there was any depth to his words that she just couldn't see. Instead, she just assumed the obvious.
"The bathroom?"
He then leapt to attention as if she had caught him off guard. "Y-yeah." With the way his eyes were darting around, she knew it
was probably something she shouldn't pry into. 
Closing her eyes, Rommie laid her hands on her hips, and swiveled on her heel as she started her way back towards the stage. 
"Well, knock him dead for me, then."
"You know that's not-" 
"I know." 






The cold air of the night had started to chafe at Tyr's senses. It seemed evident the longer the evening drew on, how dull
he had become.
How long had it been since he held a rifle in his hands?
How long had it been since he had company of another Nietzschean? 
Albeit, the term was used loosely, there was something difficult in having to come to terms with his discomfort in the company
of his own. Had he fallen through his own senses? Was this a result in cohabitating with humans for so long? 
No, he decided; as he recalled his own experiences among his own kind. Self destruction in the face of war and ravaged for the 
pursuit of power; he never had a chance to know his true kin nor his true self. From that, came an emptiness that bled
like an open wound, gaping and pooling in his heart leaving him like an animal, wounded and left for dead. 
It left too many degrees of separation between himself and his current company for he was a fortress, impenetrable forevermore. 

"To think the savior of our people was a Kodiak all along..." She spoke, leading yet another attack on his stronghold. 
Sourly, Tyr didn't think his deception had covered as much ground as it had. "You would be impressed with what one is capable of." 
"I wasn't talking about you." 
Quickly, his eyes locked onto hers, searching it for any sign of deceit. Surely she couldn't have-
"The father of our messiah..." Her eyes creased in deviation, "...Alone, cast into the shadows of the cosmos." 
Pulling his rifle back, Tyr felt himself, once again, swept into the undercurrent of her words. 
"It doesn't have to be this way." She reasoned, grabbing the muzzle with her free hand as a way to disarm him
further. "You have a chance to leave all this behind. To take your rightful place, seated at your son's side when the time comes."
Her eyes burned through him, seeing through his flesh to what lay beneath. "The divine will of progress will heal all that has
been wounded. For your loyalty, shouldn't you be at the forefront?" 






Sizing up the building, Harper thought about how long the elevator ride to the top could be. Enough time to change his mind. 
He'd be luckier to take a quick U-turn now and chicken out before he locked himself into any big decisions. After all, he was
a man of survival. A coward. A con. Dishonest down to the teeth. So why wasn't he running? 
The elevator beeped and, instead of sending him flying out of his skin, it made him drop like an anchor, resigned to his decision.
Pressing his back to the wall of the elevator, he let his head rest against it's cold surface, breathing deep in and out, staring
up at the tiny light peeking out the top. What was he even gonna say? 'I totally give you my blessing to bang this chick'?
'Congrats on getting what you always wanted'? 'Here, let me help you pack so you can go home and write this all off as a fun
little blip on your radar'? "Augh, kill me." He groaned, smashing his hand into his eyes, rubbing the exhaustion out of them
as he watched the light overhead flicker, the elevator hit a snag and shook him back to reality. He was being an idiot again. 







Approaching the stand, Sid cleared his throat to address the crowd. Dylan, in all his patience, found himself worn to his last
stretch of sanity. There was nothing he had to say that could boast any kind of confidence anymore. The galaxy saw The Commonwealth as
a sinking ship and it's captain was still held firmly at the helm, willing to ride it as long as it stayed afloat. And here he
was, standing at his side, watching the water come in, remaining willfully ignorant to it. 
The distance between his gaze over the crowd and his mind had closed in when Rommie pulled herself up to the side stage, 
slowly pacing herself up the stairs as she stopped just behind the curtain, remaining just out of view of the crowd. "Dylan."
She spoke in hushed words, "You can't let him do this." He stole a quick glance in her direction, swallowing, and turned to
look her in the eye. 
"I have no choice." 
"Yes you do! This is your Commonwealth, your dream, you can't just let some criminal drag us back into the dark ages!" 
Her whispering was starting to gain traction, her voice stepping just over the line between a hiss and a shout. 
"Let's not do this right now." He was the one now pleading, begging her to leave things be. To smile and stand with him and pretend
like they weren't staring down the peak right before the end. "When we get back, we can discuss the finer implications of-"
"Implications!?" She was yelling now. Right in his field of view, between him and the crowd, Rommie had grabbed him by the
collar of his shirt, wrenching it in an attempt to slap him to his senses. "You think this is what the future looks like!?" 
Her knuckles tensed as she swept an arm towards their new 'gracious leader' who had now stopped mid-speech, as his microphone
began to pick up on her, "We've seen the worst this universe has to offer and you're settling for this!? We didn't fight tooth and
nail for the first man who was willing to pick up the job to run it into the ground!! We don't deserve this!! The Commonwealth
doesn't deserve this!!"  







"Loyalty!?" Tyr spat, feeling the snag where her lies had held him, still buried in his mind. "You know nothing of loyalty!" One
by one, he began to unhook her claws from his flesh. "This pursuit of yours isn't Divine, it's opportunistic at best!" Disgusted.
He was disgusted, rendered raw and pained by the grate of her words. "Using me as a pawn- a means to your own goals." Power. Why
was it always power with them? "There is nothing loyal in-"
A gunshot.
Following the sound, Tyr's head snapped down to the crowd below, to the podium, to the leader of The Commonwealth's 'bright future' 
sprawled across it. The weight of the world had folded in on itself, breaching through every sense he possessed and pulled through to
the present. A distraction.  







When the shot went off, she didn't even notice what it was until they were both on the ground. Instinctively, her sensors indicated
the sound of violence and acted accordingly. Holding herself over Dylan, Rommie stared down into his eyes, wide like an animal. 
Her face had become splattered with blood, now dripping from her nose to his suit, staining the fabric. She tried to wipe it away.
It smeared. A pause. They quickly rolled away from each other in opposing directions, she quickly recovered as Dylan was still attempting
to regain his footing. Pulling behind the curtain for cover, the dizzying sounds of chaos began erupting all around them. 







Wide-eyed, Pandora stared at him through the dark, now on guard; preparing for an attack. "The blame will fall to you." Her teeth gnashed
against the cold air, proudly biting into it as she drew a blade from her belt, "Come with us and we'll guarantee your safety." 
No, not a distraction; a hostage negotiation.
"And if I refuse?" He offered, having known how this situation would play out as he had prepared for it long before she had ever
conceived of it. 
"They will find him." She warned, pointedly, stepping in a wide arc to the left and then to the right of him. "I can promise you that." 
Watching her move, Tyr realized she wasn't strafing as much as she was taunting him. This way, she no longer held the
intimidation of secrecy. Instead, she was now offering up her winning hand for all to see. "Whether you will be there to greet him..." She moved 
back a few paces, allowing him room to still make a choice. "...that's up to you." 
To her credit, it was smart to allow him a moment of reprieve, to gather his thoughts and prevent any rash decisions from being
made. Only, to her detriment, was she foolish enough to have already drawn a weapon, marking that she knew what his answer would
be. 
An explosion from below highlighted their features, burning red and hot through the crisp air, still bellowing through their bodies.
The silence between them had been punctuated by the screams below, their collective voices could do nothing but echo off the pavement,
breaching the space between her and him as a warning of things to come.  
He took a step back. 
She followed.








The blast had burned a vibrant hole through the night in one brilliant instant, scattering the crowd into absolute disarray. It was
Dylan who reacted first, the burning smell in the air triggered a memory; working espionage in an illegal weapons facility.
"Chemicals." He noted, holding a hand over both his nose and mouth in fear of exposure. This particular
type of volatile substance couldn't have been easily moved around meaning it had been sitting idly, waiting for someone to come
by and activate it. An explosive, from what he assumed, was planted far before the gala had even begun. Slipped under the radar 
and kept hidden until the time was right. Worse yet, with the crowd dispersing, any number of guests could set off any number of
traps that had been laid. The onslaught of bodies blurring around him like a storm added to his anxieties. There was no use
in trying crowd control when the crowd in question could only focus survival. Debris of falling buildings had crumbled at the edges 
of the square. His best bet was to try to not get buried in the undertow. 
Following the crowd, he made sure to keep the flow regulated by heading them off to the nearest exit but, just as he let the first
few attendees pass, one figure caught his eye, darting away from the others to head off in the opposite direction. Suspicious,
Dylan had to fight against himself to not give chase. Weighed down by the guests around him, he found his jaw tighten teeth
grinding down his back molars, trying desperately to reduce them to dust. He could do nothing to stop them. 
Up until now, he had forgotten Rommie's presence, altogether. She clamped a hand down on his shoulder, pushing him astride. Without a 
word, she motioned for him to keep going as she weaved through the crowd, giving chase.  







Maybe Harper was right and these events were just always meant to end in disaster. Fancy shoes you can't walk in, 
fancy food you can't eat, fancy people you can't talk to. Sure, maybe an assassination wasn't on his mind when he
brought it up, but, that said, it still counted. 
Sliding to a halt, Rommie yanked the heels off her feet and tossed them aside. She didn't care where they landed. They
meant noting to her. Unrestricted, she pressed her feet flat against the pavement. Ripping the rim of her dress, she could 
feel it's grip on her legs give way as she measured herself between speed and distance. She couldn't go too fast or she'd risk
missing a vital turn and overshoot her target as for going to slow... 
Turning her foot up, she readied herself in a moments notice, kicking off of it with a smooth brush of wind against 
her face.
The hard smack of her weight against the pavement echoed, following long behind her as she weaved down a nearby
alleyway. Pushing a finger behind her ear, she closed one eye and focused on the trail of heat rising in the air before 
her. It had registered as traces of light. Green, as if she had switched to night vision. A sharp turn ahead was 
pinpointed, now, by the slam of her foot against a nearby wall. Following the streaks of body heat dissipating, just
as she caught sight of it, she realized it was far too cold out here to keep going like this. She had to make haste. Racing down the 
pathway at a higher velocity, she caught a glimpse of the trail's end and slammed her hands to the ground. The sheer
strength of her alloy joints were enough to push her up off her feet, kicking them out to land firmly back where they
were. Standing, she looked back at the building. An old factory, abandoned and left to rot. 










Around her, the world had turned. Etching itself ceaselessly towards a path none of them could follow anymore, Trance
felt the crowd sway with her in an unending dance of futility. Another explosion lit up the night, casting it's soft
glow across her face, washing it in a warm light. She stumbled. 
From where she was, she could see the attendants fleeing to a bottleneck where the flames had still not quite closed
in. Fighting and clawing their way through the dark, they were greeted by a figure of safety overseeing their escape. 
Another explosion, another light, another face illuminated in the dark. 
"Dylan!!" She called out for she did not fear the fire, the way it licked it's way up towards her, it was nothing compared
to the things she'd known. She feared the pain that radiated from her body, the uncertainty, the unfamiliarity. This 
wasn't supposed to happen. None of this was supposed to have happened. 
With a few quick strides, he was quickly at her side, holding her by the shoulder as if she was injured. "I've got you." 
He reassured her as he pulled her from the blaze. Wading through the thoughts swelling in her mind, she could hear her
own voice begin to break. "No. You don't."








The pursuit was calculated, eased of any tension on her end while Tyr had been left to scrounge in the shadows for
cover. "What are you running from?" She asked him, quickly turning on her heel in order to scan the night. 
"Your loyalty to those humans can't be what's deterring you, there has to be something else..." Slowly moving
her way to the next thermal unit, she pulled the gun from her holster and held it in relation to her blade, a
hard thumb keeping it pressed to her palm while her finger held firm against the trigger. "Is it fear? Are you 
afraid of me?" She sniffed the air, dropping back to circle around an antenna, her wrists separating and 
connecting...separating and connecting... She wanted to smell his fear. 
To his best attempts to move, Tyr started to make a line for the elevator when she fired a shot over his head.
A warning. Her next one wouldn't miss. 
Stilling himself, Tyr watched as she recovered from the hard recoil of her weapon. From what he could see, it 
seemed to have been built around exuding as much force as possible. It was a tool built for execution and extinction. 
He had assumed as much. Little restraint; large payoff. Wasn't what this whole mission had been from the start?
Keeping him pinned under her sights, she slowly paced herself across the rooftop, she locked eyes with him, urging 
him to make his next move. 
"You carry death with you and yet you don't fear it." She observed, turning him over in her mind with delight. "Such 
acquaintances you've become." She then froze, "Ah...is that it? That you've become so accustomed to death that it's life
that gives you so much dread? Is that why you run?" 
Bracing his shoulders, Tyr curled away from that thought and towards her coercion. "Really?" He asked, cruelly, provoking
her more irate emotions to bubble to the surface, "Coercing your prey? Are you truly that desperate?" 
Her eyes twitched in their sockets, barely even able to keep steady. She charged him, finger already on the trigger as 
he pulled back enough to let her fire off a quick round. Recoil. A hand steady on her left arm guided it further back, turning
it until the knife in her palm had wedged itself just left of her collarbone. "I apologize." He lamented, hoarsely, as he 
closed the distance between them to bury it further into her sternum, "But I cannot go with you." Holding her as she choked
out her last, he offered her at least a small comfort in death, one that would surely not be offered to him when the time
came. 

The elevator in front of them played a small tune, the doors reeling open to reveal the first witness to his downfall. 
Horror. The boy's visage had stiffened in a mask of horror, his mind begging to comprehend the incomprehensible. "What-"
Another explosion cascaded through the air, climbing up a nearby building; enveloping it in flames. Watching, Tyr saw
him reflexively back away, bracing himself against the back wall of the elevator. A sense of gravity weighted in the
soles of his shoes as he stared, almost beckoning to him. Did he want him to follow or to leave? He dropped the weight
in his arms. 


The building began to crumble under it's own beset weight. In a mere few minutes, it would find itself resting upon
the crowd below. They had to hurry. Leaving everything behind, Tyr made a quick reach for Harper who, in his
panic, did not reach back. His side of the rooftop had already been sent sliding when Tyr managed to close in on
the empty space between them and snatched the boy up by the hand, reeling him in with one, well-focused, snap of the
wrist. 

By the time he caught his breath, he noticed he had kept him far too close for far too long. Releasing him from 
his grasp, Tyr watched as he hesitated to move, a fist buried in his shirt. 
Gasping, he finally allowing himself to breathe once more. "Did you-"
"No." 
"But you-" 
"She held a clever position between all of us, didn't she?" 
Blinking, the reality of how cruel the truth was had began to settle under his skin, contorting his body by sheer tension,
alone. 
"I am not deceiving you." He promised, feeling the weight of it drag his forehead down to Harper's shoulder. "I will not 
deceive you again." 
The boy knew him far too well to let him get away with such a vow. "You expect me to believe that?"
"The sentiment does not extended to the others." He explained, allowing his companion the freedom to tumble to the floor, 
arms outstretched over his head, tossed about, uneven and unrestricted. 
Speaking of restrictions...
Tugging at the fringe of his own shirt, Tyr pulled off the garment, tearing it as he tugged it off his head and tossed it to the 
floor. It was a costume that belonged to someone best fit to another role, one he could not fulfill any longer. He then 
stilled against the cold air, letting the chaos from below simply wash off his shoulders, it's weight drawing his posture
down. Beaten, but not defeated. "One day our paths will diverge and I will walk alone." Already, he could feel it.  
"When that day comes, will you follow me?"  
From his place on the floor, Harper's face fell to a bizarre scowl, "What am I, your patsy?" 
Already, Tyr knew the answer. Looking away, he paused in consideration. "Yes." 
Here he grinned, satisfied with something Tyr both knew nothing of and didn't want to. "Well, it's about time."







It was always moments like this that had her processors running as if someone had overclocked her far beyond her
usual capabilities. She felt overheated. Not warm, but overworked and yet she had to hold herself still against the 
darkness. Without the halo of a moon hanging over her head, Rommie felt cut off from the rest of the world. No wonder
they were called heavenly bodies- the thing of poetry and prose- without it, the emptiness around her became more 
apparent. Wherever angels came to tread; here, they simply looked away. 
Moving out of the shadows and towards a nearby machine, she tuned her sensors to the noises around her. Small animals
scuttled out of their hiding places, clearly aware of her presence...or...
Bracing herself against a large metallic sphere, Rommie sank her teeth into her lower lip in concentration. She had 
picked up on the sound of breath. Too large for a rodent, too small for a beast. Whoever it was had been hiding from her.
Just as she stood to turn on her night vision, Beka pulled herself out from behind a nearby pillar.
"I got here as fast as I could!" She gasped, her wide eyes scrolling over the dilapidated factory. 
Shoulders unlocking, Rommie glared over Beka with annoyance. Really, she was just relieved she wasn't alone. She knew the 
kind of things explosives could do to her circuitry. Besides, the last thing she wanted was to lose her legs again. 
Mouthing the word 'sorry' Beka then took a sidestep, letting her take the lead. 
Engaging her night vision, Rommie stared over at the traces of movement across the floor. Dirty as it was, people
tended to kick things up when they moved, especially in a hurry, creating a path in the accumulated mess.  

Tracking the path forged through layers of dirt and debris, she found herself in a changing station. Untouched, most of
the lockers had been destroyed from years of use. A layer of rust had encroached upon every single joint,
handle, and vent. When she placed a hand on one in particular, she found it brittle to the touch. Reeling back, she
scanned the room until she stopped on one locker that had stood out from the rest by just a small margin. 
The blanket of dust coating the door had been disturbed. There were no finger marks but large swathes of clean 
spots as if someone knew to cover their tracks. Placing two fingers into the locker, Rommie pulled the rusted
door off it's hinges and stared at the sniper rifle stowed inside. There is no equivalent response 
to the state of shock humans consistently found themselves in but she was sure if she had a heart, it'd have stopped.
It was an old Highguard model, usually kept stored and well-maintained inside Dylan's emergency weapons locker. He never
enjoyed the use of standard firearms, so it remained tucked away, unused for years. Until now. 

Turning her head, Rommie stared at Beka, hesitantly bracing against the doorframe, pulse rising. "Did you find anything?"
She then looked back at the locker as all the evidence began to click into place inside her mind. She looked away from her. 
"Nothing." She said, and closed the door.