Back on the space station Zelan the four protectors of Algo were still hanging out in the main control area, listening through slightly crackly radio speakers of Rune laughing wildly, like a giddy nine year old child. Demi currently had the microphone and she was the one sitting in the chair, with Chaz, Hahn and Raja standing around her. She simply would not be able to reach the control panel without the added boost of the chair, as horribly sad as it was to admit. She smiled cheerfully.

Rune was flying! Well, more of a controlled descending levitation but it still looked like a whole lot of fun. The esper in his space suit had his arms spread wide, embracing the lack of air and the vast emptiness of the void. Demi held the microphone clasped to her chest, watching with excitement the antics of a friend made thousands of miles away. It felt a little strange to her, along with the other few members of their crew to see the dead world of Azura through her master's perspective, but this kind of limited surveillance was better than no surveillance at all.

Twenty minutes had elapsed since Rune had put his safety into the hands of the life support system. They were making good time and as long as Rune was able to make it onto the shuttlecraft towards the worldship before the hour was through he'd have plenty of oxygen left. Wren had stopped watching Rune flying through the air and had instead elected to focus on where he was walking, climbing down the steep hill towards the true entrance of Azura. The four protectors could only hear one exclamation from the esper now, a long as drawn out; "Yeeeehahahahaaw!"

On Azura Rune didn't know how long he could stay in the air, but right now it had been quite some time. Apart from how much fun this was he was also covering an impressive amount of ground. Three more leaps like these and he'd be more than halfway to his destination without even breaking a sweat. Rune descended, floating down effortlessly until his feet touched the ground, but then he kicked off again immediately afterward and was on his way. The second hop was small and tame compared to the first, but it was still enough.

// "Aw… that sounds like so much fun, I want to try it." // Chaz laughed from Rune's radio, now a little jealous.

Sure this might be the fun part now, but maybe Chaz would want to change his mind once the serious stuff began. Rune also had to gather himself together and lay his focus back on the mission, or else he would be sending a bad impression to the people waiting for him back on the space station. The entranceway was easily visible to him now, just a very brisk walk away. Rune ended his flight for the last time and resumed walking slowly, captured by terra firma once more. After a minute Wren joined him in stride, catching up to him.

From what they could see so far the huge doors leading down into Azura were securely shut, locking out the lack of atmosphere and low gravity. On either side of the entranceway were two huge statues, as they got closer Rune judged that they must be about ten feet tall and they were angular, featureless. Hardly the work of a master craftsman, but they did look very sinister.

The two explorers halted a short distance away from the entrance. "So, how are we going to get in?" Rune asked casually, wishing that he could scratch his nose. Wren merely showed him the item that he had been keeping secret and safe so far, it was their trump card in getting through Azura and the worldship safely. Rune leant over and looked at the medallion in the large android's hand with faint recognition. He himself had never seen one of these things before, but one of his earlier incarnations had. "Hey… is that a Waizz Star? I didn't think those things even existed anymore! How did you get one?"

// "What's a Waizz Star?" // Raja asked curiously but someone on his side hushed him up gently, somebody that was most likely Demi.

Wren ignored the questions from both of them. His selective hearing was really beginning to get on Rune's nerves. "You will unlock the doors while I keep surveillance of the area. Take this." He palmed the small trinket into Rune's gauntleted hand. The android was sick of holding onto it and the star was basically a lie given physical form. The fact that it was powerful and daresay useful just made matters worse. Rune could hold onto it from now on. He already seemed to know how it worked.

Rune weighed the key in his hand, thinking about the offer. It would put him back in point position again and frankly Rune liked the idea of that. The things that he didn't like, however, were those stone statues. Something was not right about them. They served no purpose, so why were they there? "Alright, no sweat." He announced, turning purposefully and striding toward the doors. Wren backed him up, three paces behind.

When danger struck it was not Rune who had noticed it first, or Wren. The android had been inspecting the terrain to the left of the entranceway while keeping Rune and part of the facility in the corner of his field of vision. Fortunately, while the two explorers had failed to notice anything out of the ordinary they were not the only ones who had been keeping watch.

Back on Zelan Hahn Mahlay had caught the flicker of emerging red from the dull sockets of the statue on screen and had acted without hesitation. He ripped the small microphone from out of Raja's hands and screamed; // "Rune! Get down!" //

Hahn's shout burst through his radio loudly and smacked Rune's ear as if it were a drum. The volume of the outcry had been so blaring and sudden that he couldn't make out of words precisely, but the general gist of the message was felt. A fraction of a second later a needle of pain darted through Rune's head like a laser, causing the magician to wince. He would have held his head if his helmet hadn't prevented him. All at once Rune sensed esper magic, and powerful stuff at that. God, it made his head sting.

But how? He cried to himself as his legs went wobbly and he sunk to his knees. Nobody's alive on this satellite! I'm sure of it!

The two huge stone entities animated themselves as Rune and Wren entered their range of detection, eyes flashing and thick limbs the width of tree-trunks creeping into life. One of the statues groaned impossibly low, like the sound of a tuba, and then its twin joined in. When they moved all the weight and force of their two-ton bodies went with them, revealing the statues as crushing, killing machines. The statue closest to Rune lashed out at him with a jointless arm and missed, sailing over the esper's head as he sank to the ground. The monster clipped Wren instead and knocked the android onto his back, throwing his handheld cannon out of his reach.

// "What the hell are those things?" // Chaz cried uselessly into the microphone as Demi let out a short, surprised squeak of // "Master!" // as he was sent flying and they all heard the thud.

Now that Rune had some idea of what had happened and the brief pain had dissipated he rose, preparing to become the leader again. He kept his eyes on the two statues lumbering towards them like snails and snarled, a very un-Lutz like thing to do. "What the hell are golems doing on this moon?" He shouted, stepping back so he could get closer to Wren who was already showing signs of recovery. This wasn't good, but it certainly wasn't unexpected either. They had come prepared for a fight.

Their one lucky break was that the low gravity made it very difficult for the heavy creatures to move under their own power, magical or no. Golems were very much like machines, they did not think or tire and they followed orders explicitly, to the end of eternity if required. Unlike machines they could not be stopped unless their entire body was destroyed, crushed into fine powder or pebbles. Rune and Wren were not in the right position to do that right now, they were practically defenseless.

Wren rolled toward his weapon, grabbed it and fired while still lying on his stomach, his photon eraser cannon nearly disintegrating about half of one of the golem's arms, raised up into the air to strike Rune down. The esper saw an opportunity to get away again and leapt into the air, letting the weak gravitational field carry his body way over the monster's head. For a moment he thought that he wasn't going to make it, but then he used the golem's head as leverage, stepping down on it, and managed to get away.

"Unable to identify enemy. Retreat seems the most logical course of action." Wren said as he stood and switched his weapon to his proper hand. A golem came up at his side and rushed at him angrily, but Wren was able to sidestep in time and put himself between the monster and the door. He looked up at Rune who was also trying to float to the door as fast as he could. The floating thing had been fun five minutes ago. Now it was just a deadly nuisance. Wren thought over any strategies to buy them some time. His hyper-jammer wouldn't work on a being made of only magic and stone, burst rockets would not ignite unless oxygen was present in the atmosphere, and if he risked the positron bolt he stood a chance of destroying Rune and the entranceway along with the monsters.

"No shit, Wren!" Rune called furiously as he spun around and raised a hand to the creatures, dearly wishing that he could unleash fire or ice or something to put the miserable constructs in their place. Instead all Rune could do was point that stupid space suit integrated gun at the monster and fire, hoping to deal some damage. His aim was terrible, missing completely and scorching the ground in front of the golems instead. "Shit!" Rune cried again as he accidentally dropped the Waizz Star, forgetting that he had been holding it in his gun-arm.

The android kept up a continuos volley of fire against the golem closest to him, attempting to draw it away from his friend so they would not get the chance to gang up on him. Wren watched Rune stupidly drop the star. Four voices on the radio shouted things at him, urging Rune to pick it up again. "We cannot unseal the door without that item! Retrieve it now!" He ordered, raising his usually monotonous voice. Wren shot out one of the legs of his golem but it still kept coming, forcing him up against the entranceway's wall.

He wasn't doing any damage. The gun was useless! Rune got down on one knee and tried to force the thought of an angry golem looming over him out of his mind, sifting his hands through the dirt and rocks to find the medallion he had lost. All manner of filthy words issued forth from his mouth as his thick gauntleted fingers couldn't get a proper grip on the star, try as he might it slipped away from him. At last Rune seized the item in his fist and looked up, his heart in his mouth, just as the monster's enormous limb came sweeping down upon him.

The impact was so terrible that he was amazed he didn't break anything, either his bones or his space suit. Rune wheezed as all the wind was knocked from his lungs by the slow hit, but instead of just taking the blow Rune molded his body around the stone limb and clung to it, swung about in the air. His mind wasn't working on its own anymore but once the golem's arm reached the apex of its swing Rune suddenly had a clear path between himself and Wren, who was cornered up against the wall. "Catch!" The esper cried and hurled the Waizz Star in his friend's direction, trying to get the key closer to the lock.

Wren dove to the ground for two reasons, to snatch at the medallion that had come his way and to avoid being punched into the dirt by the one-legged golem stalking him, crushed like a tin can. Wren caught the item nimbly and turned to the mechanical lock on the entranceway, moving to deactivate it. This was a great turn of fortune, save for the magically enraged golem about to raise both its hands for a second, two-fisted strike.

Rune could see that if anybody was going to save the day it needed to be him, as these were magical monsters and magic was his field of expertise. Oh, if only there was some way to drain the magic from their bodies so they'd only be useless lumps of rock again…

Wait, that was it! He could do that! Rune was banned from his offensive magic techniques but his supportive spells would work perfectly fine in his delicate space suit. Raising a fist and still clinging tightly to the arm of the golem about to shake him off, Rune shouted out; "Seals!" and then coughed, trying to get his wind back.

From his vantage point Rune watched Wren actually flinch as if he had expected to be destroyed, the golem virtually upon him, its fists two feet away from impact. The magician experienced the usual tugging sensation from his esperine aura as his spell was conjured into reality, complicated runic symbols materializing in the space around the monstrosity. The golem groaned again, flatly, as the symbols grew brighter and began to suck the magical energy out of it, draining the construct completely dry. The golem's glowing red eyes flashed alarmingly and then burnt out, all its impossibly heavy limbs freezing up and stopping, returning to inanimate stone.

The remaining golem wildly waved the arm that Rune was clinging to, trying its best to shake the blue-haired palman off. Rune made a bit of a groaning noise himself and pushed away, somehow landing on his feet but feeling thoroughly discombobulated. Wren swiped the underside of the Waizz Star over the scanner clock briskly and stepped back. He didn't know if the item would really work. It was possible, but not certain.

The door chimed a glorious ring of acceptance and slid open easily, allowing them entrance into another spacious airlock. Wren got inside quickly and turned back to the action, witnessing Rune stumbling toward him as quickly as he could while the other living golem still chased him, three strides behind. "Please hurry, Rune!" Wren called from the entrance and stepped in to hold the doors open with his hands after they had tried to close automatically. If Rune was locked outside with the other golem he'd probably be finished before he'd gathered up enough of his bearings to cast his seals spell again.

Rune's panic was clearly evident on his face. For every three slow steps that he took the golem's heavy footfalls were like the rumble of distant thunder right at his back. He could see Wren struggling to keep the hydraulic doors open and he ducked low as he burst through the threshold, diving beneath the android's arms. Rune skidded to a stop on his knees and Wren let go immediately, the golem bellowing in frustration and reaching out to them just as the gateway closed.

The esper remained on his knees for a few moments more, panting and gasping to get the air back into his lungs. He had been running on empty back there. Boy, it had been a close one! Wren waited for Rune to recover in silence, but Demi felt concerned for him and really needed to know if he was okay. She couldn't help it, she just had always just been like that. // "Rune, are you hurt? Will you be alright?" // She asked.

"I'm fine. I just need a minute. Thanks Demi." Rune reassured the little voice on the radio and stood up, a hand over his rapidly beating heart. He exhaled deeply and examined Wren. They were lucky that they had both been able to keep their heads during a crisis. They might not get along so well together anymore but at least their combat coordination had stayed flawless. Rune smirked. "I'm glad that part's over wi-"

Azura's airlock rattled sharply as something incredibly large and heavy slammed into it. The metal made a deep booming sound like a low percussion instrument but remained intact. Rune's words died on his tongue and Wren defensively raised his cannon in the direction of the clamor, yet did not fire. It looked like the golem didn't want to call it quits so easily. "It may tire and give up on its own." Wren guessed as the doors rattled for the second time. Rune could only hope he was right.

They waited tensely for several moments as the poundings continued. Rune sat down on the floor with his hands in his lap. It seemed like the golem desperately wanted to get at them but was unwilling to tear the airlock of Azura apart to do so. It might make sense if Rune was correct about what they were. Soon the banging stopped and they were safe. Wren put his gun down. "Those were guardian golems." Rune stated gravely, thinking. "I don't know why somebody planted them here on this moon but they were definitely guarding something."

Wren appeared to wilt just a little. It was very strange to watch. "This will not be as simple as I thought." He said.

He was right.

†††

Whoever it was that had said curiosity killed the cat obviously had had Rika in mind. The hushed sound of soft toe shoes whispering down the empty corridors of Zelan was heard only by her long, pointed ears. Rika had excused herself earlier from the group and had left Chaz behind with them, the youth obviously enjoying the newfound company all over again. It had been a huge rush to see Rune, Raja, Demi and Wren after so long, a good rush, but Rika had not anticipated being plunged into an entirely new mission with very real risks. Two of her friends were gone now, whisked away to a cold desolate moon where Rune's life might even be at stake.

Rika needed to walk in order to clear her mind. She hadn't really wanted to see Rune squeezed into that old space suit and then blasted off towards the stars, but if it had not been Rune then it might have been Chaz, and she wouldn't be able to stand the worry. Things had changed a lot in three years. She could have watched Chaz fight and bleed and scream in pain three years ago as his friend and comrade, but Rika would be the first one in the worlds to admit that her heart and resolve had softened since then.

This girl that walked all alone did not wear armor, did not wield claws that rent like slashing blades. She wore long skirts and dresses with ribbons in her hair, and the last tool she had picked up that even vaguely resembled a weapon had been a kitchen knife. In some very abstract way it was like the Rika that had defended Algo ferociously with her friends had created a younger sister and then had fallen into a deep sleep, her role as a warrior at an end. Maybe that was why she felt so alienated from her dear friends right now. They had not retired totally from protecting like she had.

Regardless if Rika was entirely who she used to be or not, Chaz still loved her in all her incarnations. It was liberating to see such devotion, such acceptance in those pretty green eyes of his. Chaz had grown from a boy into a man during the Great War and the years that proceeded it, there was still so much more of his future that Rika needed to see. She loved him back because of all that he had done for her, the smiles, the happy moments, and even some of the pain. It was impossible for a person to love somebody and not feel a little pain. Rika was feeling that now, hoping that nothing would happen to drag Chaz and her friends into danger.

Because the cold hard truth was that Rika didn't think she could help them anymore.

Sighing, the numan girl brushed some bright pink hair behind her ear. It would make things a lot earlier for her heart if she went back to the control room and carefully monitored the mission with the others, but she was not wandering through Zelan for no reason. This would probably be her only chance to walk freely around there without an escort for some time. Rika knew that Demi counted her a good friend, trusted her in just about anything, but if she were to walk about the space station all alone without a guide she might mess up something and cause a total disaster. This rule applied to all her palman and dezorian friends too, it seemed.

As mentioned before, Rika was quite a curious soul. It was something that Seed had initially implanted into her but she had developed the desire extensively of her own free will. She had seen Demi pause and hesitate in front of one of the closed doors along the path to the observation deck, just as Rune had seen at a later date not so long ago. The esper had written it off as something weird yet unimportant, but Rika had felt an urge to discover what it was that had made her friend appear so sad.

When I saw her looking at that door it was almost as if she were looking over a grave… Rika told herself as she began to count down the numbers of each room. They were written on the corner of each door in what appeared to be calculator font, with a capital letter before each numerical value. This part of Zelan must have been a dormitory area a long time ago when there had been people living here, or it could have just been a vast amount of storage space. Sixty three, sixty two, sixty one…

Was it terrible of her to be poking around the space station and into other people's business when Rune or Wren could be in awful danger at that very moment? It was a little, she supposed, but no matter what Rika did she wouldn't be able to help them now. She probably couldn't help Demi either but she could at least gain some insight into why the android girl had looked so sad. It was like she was missing something, but what? Fifty five, fifty four, fifty three…

Rika suddenly realised that she didn't really know anything at all about the green-haired girl, other than what she was and what she did for a living. Demi was three and a quarter centuries old and that was a huge amount of time for history to pile up. She had never thought about it like that before. Her android friends, what had they been before they became what they were? Certainly they had been called into life for their jobs, hadn't they? Rika thought that maybe, with her catlike sixth sense twitching like a puffed-up tail in her mind, she might see something important if she shoved that closed door open and tried to understand it for herself. Forty two, forty one, forty…

Room thirty nine. This was the right one, she was sure of it. Block A, room thirty nine. Rika stepped up to it boldly and laid her hands upon the cool metal surface, about to pull the doors apart, but the mere touch was more than enough. They were fully automated and slid apart sneakily with a hiss like a conniving serpent. The girl backed away a step, looking up and down the hallway to see if anybody was watching her. She was sating her sense of curiosity but she also kind of knew that she was doing something wrong.

The numan girl did not know it and could not make a proper comparison, but the interior of room thirty nine was completely identical to that of the room Wren and Demi had visited right before their mission had begun. The door accessed a small area with a table, some chairs, and a body too.

Rika poked her head into the room, eyes widening as she mentally traced the decidedly palman shape left lying on the table. Unlike the broken android in block C this figure had been arranged neatly, carefully, like a body laid out for burial. She immediately realised that this small room was a crypt. Demi had not just been sad, it may have been deeper than that. She may have been mourning. A crypt on Zelan! What in Algo did that mean?

She was determined to investigate further. Rika had already come so far that there was no sense in turning back now. Sheepishly the girl stepped into the room, hearing the hydraulic doors clamp shut close behind her. The lights grew brighter, compensating for the illumination lost coming from the hallway. Block A had been kept in rather good condition when compared to the other storage areas. This was where Wren and Demi usually came whenever they needed spare parts. But not room thirty nine. Never room thirty nine.

There was a girl lying on the hard metal table, hands clasped to her breast in a praying gesture and legs firmly together. She was the most beautiful girl that Rika had ever seen! Approaching reverently she put her hands on the steel table and leant over, inspecting the mystery that she had found. The girl was scantily clad in a red and white outfit that did little to conceal the natural curves of her body and her hair was a deep, vibrant shade of crimson, the colour of a rose. Her chest did not rise and fall with breathing. Was it true that she was really dead?

Her body was soft and pliant as Rika touched her, carefully pressing her fingers to the girl's neck as she searched for a pulse. There was absolutely nothing for her to feel, no response at all, and the body was alarmingly cold. Rika simply could not figure out how a dead girl's body could have turned up in such an isolated location. It was a shame that she was dead, she would have been so pretty, even more beautiful in life. Demi must have known this girl at some point in her life, that was probably why she was here.

But wait, her revealing outfit was not the only thing that she had been wearing, the red-haired girl also seemed to be wearing a paper tag around one wrist, held there by a length of string. Rika recognised it as a death tag, placed upon corpses for identification purposes. There was also a thick metal choker around the base of her neck, clasping tightly like a collar with visible circuitry all around it, as if it were a graphic design. Rika raised her crooked index finger to her mouth and bit down lightly as she pondered. She thought that she might have seen that collar before at one point during her studies in the Bio-Plant.

She focussed on the tag first, as that was something she could easily understand. Rika gently took the dead girl's hand and lifted it away from her body, extending the arm so that she would be able to read the tag dangling from her wrist. The first thing Rika saw as she held the tag between two of her fingers was that it was written in Wren's handwriting. As dull and as precise as Wren was Rika knew that he was a rather sloppy writer. It had something to do with how big his fingers were and how small the pen was, but that was not the point. Wren would had to have known about this lost dead girl.

The second thing that Rika saw was the text itself. It clarified a lot of things, and was able to jump start her memory enough to know what that weird collar was all about.

MIEU class android
'MieuS'
No number
Currently suppressed.

If this tag was correct then this red-haired girl was the most lifelike android that Rika had ever seen. Not an inch of her body appeared to give away the secret that she was anything other than palman. Heck, Rika brushed some of her long hair away, even her ears looked completely real. Whoever had made her had obviously put a lot of effort into it. Rika placed the girl's hand back onto her chest, now scrutinizing the fingerless reinforced gloves that she wore. They were definitely claw gauntlets, and expertly made too.

This android girl, Mieus, if that was really her name, definitely had the correct body shape and muscle distribution to be a skilled twin-claw user. Rika had come to the space station Zelan completely unarmed and she had regretted it, so would it really be a bad thing if she took the weapons off this girl and used them for the greater good if necessary?

But Rika had forgotten the most important thing of all. She had officially retired from the world of fighting. Her own guardian claw and silver tusk were hanging up on the wall at her home in Aiedo, and there they would always stay. Picking up a weapon now would mean turning her back to all that she and Chaz had worked for in the past three years. It was too much to risk, and far too much to lose.

As for the collar though, Rika had just now remembered what it was. If this girl was an android then she was not broken or damaged in any way, but the tight metal choker would contain a small hyper jammer device feeding out a low frequency vibration that was impossible to detect through hearing alone. If what Rika suspected was true then Mieus' AI was being kept in a deep unending sleep for reasons unknown to her. The slave collar, as it was more commonly known, had been a useful tool in capturing and bringing back crazed machinery during all of Algo's most dangerous wars. Rika had learned this through her study of history with Seed.

Rika was not hesitant anymore. Obviously this girl could not hurt her and she was safe for now. It seemed ludicrous that such a sweet and innocent looking face would be endowed with an ability that Rika once had, the ability to kill easily and swiftly with merely the sweep of an arm. She fancied that maybe she herself had looked that untouchably innocent once, before her darling Chaz had taken her by the hand and had led her out into the world. If anything, Rika wanted to know the reason why this girl had been left here like a sleeping beauty, waiting for a prince to come and awaken her.

She couldn't ask Demi about her, that would give away the fact that she had been poking about in here. One thing that Rika really didn't want to do was break the android girl's trust in her. Demi had been sad as she looked at the crypt of her old friend, maybe. That would make a whole lot of sense out of things. Still, Rika needed to hear the explanation from Mieus' own lips.

If curiosity killed the cat, then Rika was walking on very hot coals indeed. Once she undid the clasp of the collar around the girl's neck the jamming frequency should cut out, breaking the circuit. As long as Mieus was perfectly functional she might come back to life again. If not, well, then Rika would just have to give up on her search and go back to the others. She wouldn't gain anything but she wouldn't lose anything either. Rika reached for the android girl's neck.

When she touched the thick metal slave collar she found it humming softly under her fingertips, the feeling quite gentle and pleasant. The catch to open the contraption was a little seam on the left side of her neck, magnetized slightly to keep the lock closed. Rika applied force to the collar and it snapped open, the calming hum switching off almost immediately. She was leaning over the girl in what felt like a vulnerable position, looking through streams of her bright pink hair that had gotten into her face, waiting to see what would happen next. The tips of her fingers were practically tingling with excitement.

Several heavily expectant moments flew past where nothing happened, the time dedicated to bringing all of Mieus' systems back to partial life. It was like raising the dead and it was totally amazing to witness. Then, finally, the girl's eyes opened for the first time in many years. They were a deep, oceanic blue, like the colour of the darkest sea or the heart of a glacier. They were beautiful eyes but very cold, and now in the first seconds of life again they looked confused and afraid.

Mieus convulsed momentarily and tried to sit up while Rika was still leaning over her. The numan girl didn't want to let go of the open slave collar around her neck in case she suddenly needed to close it again. The red-haired android came up until her face was only inches away from Rika's, her cold breast pressed against Rika's warm one. Her mouth opened into a little 'o' shape, testing to see if it still worked right, and them Mieus' arms slowly raised themselves from the table, like she was about to embrace the person that had awoken her.

"Help me please…" Mieus whispered softly into the air.

In the end it was Rika's nervousness and quick reflexes that ultimately saved her life. She had been jumpy before as she leaned over this complete stranger and the very moment that she heard the familiar 'click' coming from either sides of her body she immediately let go and pulled away. Rika had heard that noise thousands of times before. It was the sound that her own hands had once made right before a battle, the click coming half a second before the light scraping sound of metal, claws sliding out of gloves that had once been restricted.

One of those claw blades whizzed by her face as Rika threw her weight onto her heels, while the other tore easily into the fabric of her dress at the shoulder, thankfully missing her skin. Rocking backward Rika steadied herself and watched Mieus stare at the place where Rika had been, not comprehending that the girl wasn't there anymore. The android shrieked in frustration, a howl sounding like broken glass, and while the girl seemed as distracted as she would ever be Rika darted around the table and grabbed Mieus from behind.

She clamped down hard on Mieus' shoulder to prevent the girl from turning around and snapped the slave collar back into its proper place, completing the circle. The hyper-jamming frequency wasn't instantaneous however and its AI scrambling abilities came down upon Mieus gradually, similar to a chemical sedative. Rika had to hold her with all the strength she could muster from her arms as Mieus thrashed about like a teenager throwing a tantrum, screaming mindlessly, blankly, as if there was nothing she could do left.

After five or six seconds Rika could feel the strength and resistance leaving Mieus' body, and the siren-like screams had died down into sad, persistant cries. Rika's heart almost went out to the girl as she heard and felt her struggling, but then she reminded herself that there didn't seem to be anything left in this girl's mind at all. It was a shame. She had wanted to know the reason why Mieus was here and why Demi seemed to care for her, but there would be no more answers here.

She was wrong. As the girl's eyelids fluttered helplessly back into sleep and her cleverly-hidden artificial body fell back against Rika's strong chest, Mieus cried out one last coherent word, like a plea. It was only one word and Rika did not grasp the full meaning of it, rather, Rika had barely heard it in the first place. That was too bad, as it answered all the questions that she had and was a greater clue than any of the others she had seen beforehand.

"Mother…" Mieus had said, hoarsely, before deactivating into nothingness all over again.