Chapter 3 - Aeneas, Act One

Part Two: Aeneas



Disclaimers: Demon Diary, Descendants of Darkness, and Kiddy Grade are all part of this chapter. In fact, a great deal of the events and dialogue in this chapter is straight from Kiddy Grade episodes 18 (Unmasked/ Face) and 19 (Take/ Revenge). But Astri is still MINE.



Part Two, Act One

Heat-tossed mirages flickered across the oceans of sand dunes that undulated across the cliffs of Noreina like a living thing, bedecking the golden mounds with whispered temptations of water, shelter, or palatial wealth. None of these, however, were of interest to the slim young girl trudging through the blazing heat of the desert noon.

She was tall, with long, pale-blonde hair that cascaded almost to the ground, even in its upswept ponytail. Despite the heat of the desert day, she wore a long, ragged cloak that enveloped her gaunt frame, over an impractical silken outfit more suited to lazing around in a slave-filled harem than to desert travel. Despite the sun beating down on her unprotected face, her complexion was milky and smooth, so cool and perfect that it was obvious sunburn had never been a problem in her life, and would not begin to be now.

In one hand, the wrist of which was bedecked with the remains of a manacle she had not yet taken the trouble to tear away, she carried a small wooden box with no keyhole.

Suddenly a figure shimmered, a far distance away from her. Although it looked no different from the throngs of other mirages clamoring for attention all around, at the appearance of this one the girl stopped. Slowly her head lifted, showing eyes filled with a demonic cunning out of place on her young, delicate face.

Her fangs glittered in a smile.

“So,” she whispered to herself, less a word than the merest sliver of breath riding the pink line of her tongue.

She leaped, pushing off from the ground with inhuman strength, the cloud of dust exploding behind her like the takeoff from a rocket. She sailed a mile into the air, the wind whipping her eyes and long blonde hair, and then began to fall, until she slammed into the ground in front of the figure with a whumph of exploding sand that shook the ground. Without missing a beat, she lunged up through the encompassing cloud of dust from her landing and seized the figure by what she knew was the throat.

Her fingers slid through air.

The cross-world illusion smiled into her face. “Hello, Lilith.”

*~*~*~*~*~

A colossal explosion went off in the middle of the trees, sending a shockwave rippling through the rocky ground that caused the trees to tremble.

Astri almost lost his balance, and had to grab onto one of the trembling trees for support. “Whoa! Where are we?! When are we?! What's going on?”

“I hoped you would know!” Monika grabbed at another tree, missed, and fell.

Astri reached out to help Monika up just as a tremendous roar caused the air to vibrate just like the trees.

“What the hell…?!” Monika demanded.

“Wait. Wait. I think…” Astri looked around at the forest, lips moving soundlessly as he thought. “I…this forest. Explosions…roars…OH!”

Astri slammed his fist into the palm of his other hand.

“I get it! We're on Aeneas—right when Alv's impersonating Éclair!”

Monika stared at Astri and said, quite politely, “What?”

“Alv—she—Éclair—but—oh, forget it, just follow me!” Astri continued his earlier action and hauled Monika to his feet, just as another earth-shaking blast shook the…well, earth. Astri and Monika fell onto each other, trying not to fall as the ground beneath their feet did the tango.

“Thanks,” Astri said.

“Uh, yeah.” Monika let go as soon as the ground stopped moving. “You said to follow you?”

“Yeah. This way!”

“Hold on!” Monika grabbed Astri's arm. “You want to go towards that…that…whatever it is?!”

“Of course!” Astri said impatiently. “I brought us here to find Éclair and Lumiere! And they're at the center of the action, they always are!”

“Who are they?” Monika demanded as Astri dragged him among the trees.

“GOTT ES Agents,” Astri declared, stepping up his pace. “If those…I think those explosions were the genetic beasts. So Éc—” Astri stopped dead. “Oh no!! The clones!!”

“The whats?”

Something else exploded, sending a blast of smoke at least a mile into the air. With this shockwave came the stench of burning metal and combusted circuitry, making both Astri and Monika cough.

“Never mind, there's no time to explain right now!” Astri coughed. “I was hoping we'd get here at a less frenetic time…I guess finding Raine and them was just luck, after all…”

The sound of gunfire clattered faintly through the aftermath of the explosions, growing louder by the second. Then there was a strange, hissing, zzchuuu kind of sound.

“Lasers!” Astri moaned, tugging Monika forward. “Not good!”

“What are—?!”

Then the trees suddenly, abruptly, ended directly in front of them, dropping away into the sheer sides of a ravine in the middle of the forest. Not even grass grew on the bottom of this ravine, and most especially not now.

In front of the two otherworldly travelers, lining the bottom of the ravine in a brave attempt at either a blockade or an assault team, was a small group of uniformed men, backed up by a handful of large, unmoving robots. Scattered across the ground in front of them was a veil of burning, twisted metal parts—a destroyed robot, or perhaps something else.

Advancing on this line of defense was a cavalcade of gigantic objects, plated in red metal, with a yellow V splashed across their face in place of eyes. They most resembled dragons, or perhaps some unwieldy dinosaur, with long spiked tails and arms ended in ferocious metal claws. However, most terrifying were the two circular openings near their shoulders, which were spewing forth beams of red light which were wreaking havoc on the bare ravine.

“What…are…those?!” Monika exploded.

“I don't remember what they're called,” Astri said distractedly. “They're machines…things made by men, out of metal. The rocks in this gorge are magnetic…they've caused the machines to go crazy and start attacking things…”

“People made those?!”

“Yes, they—ohgodlook, rightTHERE!!!”

Astri's finger shot out, pointing to a figure on the other side of the gorge who was leaping at one of the metal monsters. It was a woman, a woman with long brown hair and glowing amber eyes, dressed in black with a cross across her chest. Her right boot was ankle-high—her left went halfway up her thigh.

“ÉCLAIR!!!” Astri screamed, just as she slammed into one of the machines—which crashed over backwards, plowing up solid rock in a great, splashing foam.

“Now, hurry! Get moving!” the woman shouted to the uniformed men as she landed, watching the cloud of pulverized rock thrown into the air by the thing's crash.

Out of the cloud of rock splintereens, the massive dragon-creature loomed up again.

“Come on,” the woman shouted. “It's just you and me now!”

The thing came, slamming its fist down with enough force to turn the woman into jelly. But she leapt straight up, inhumanly high, and slammed another mighty kick into the side of its head. The thing was sent sprawling again, and this time it did not get up.

Unfortunately, one of its fellows, perhaps sensing the danger, aimed a glowing fist at the woman, preparing to fire the red beams of light it had been spewing earlier. As it prepared to do so, however, one of the huge robots aimed two proturbences at this second thing and fired two massive beams of light at it. The beams streaked through the dragon, leaving empty holes in its body, and caused the entire thing to self-destruct.

“LUMIERE!!” Astri screamed triumphantly, pointing wildly at a small girl with light blue hair twirled into a corkscrew on one side of her head. “It's Lumiere!! Oh my GOD, it's really Lumiere!!!”

The woman with long brown hair leapt up again, dodging a shower of red laser light, readying herself for a new assault on another of the beasts—

“STOP!” shouted another voice.

Another woman dressed in a black bodysuit and a white cape had appeared in the canyon. Her hair was slightly more reddish, her eyes slightly more golden, but aside from these two minor differences, both women looked exactly the same.

“What's going on here?!” Monika demanded as the two women began to argue.

“It's not…it's too…I don't have time to explain it right now!” Astri exploded.

Lasers struck the canyon floor, hiding the two women and the girl in clouds of smoke and debris.

“Tell me!” Monika yelled over the explosions.

Suddenly the first woman was visible again, charging out of the dust with her face set. One of the dragons fired more red light at her, but she deflected it with a black energy field. Again she leapt into the air, but this time she sent her fist into the dragon's face, just where its jaw should have been. The dragon ricocheted back onto the ground and exploded, temporarily blinding Astri and Monika in the blaze of light.

When Monika could see again, he was sure that the light had done something more severe to his vision. The woman was kneeling on the ground, the little girl at her side, and surrounding them was a ring of—

“Astri,” Monika muttered, “why do they all look alike?”

Standing around the first woman and girl was a ring of women and girls, all whom looked exactly like either the woman or the girl except for one crucial fact—a mask obscured their features, making them look like featureless drones. Each of the masked girls had a wine bottle in their hand, holding it like a weapon.

The caped woman walked up to the first woman and girl. Beside her was another girl who looked just the same as all the other girls, although her hair was perhaps more vibrant a blue, and instead of a black bodysuit she wore an oddly cut blue dress and grey boots.

“All who oppose us must be eliminated,” the red-haired woman said.

“All who oppose us must be eliminated,” the girls standing in the ring all said together.

“All who oppose us must be eliminated,” the women standing in the ring all said together.

“What—” Monika tried again.

A black beam of energy shot down into the ring of females, sending up an explosion that drowned out the rest of his question.

“Ta-da!!” proclaimed a joyful voice.

Astri screamed.

Opposite the two boys, on the other lip of the canyon, two figures dressed all in black, with black helmets, were standing with arms akimbo. Abruptly their black outfits shimmered and exploded away into sparkling mist, revealing yet another woman and girl—but these two were quite different from the others.

This woman was just as tall and statuesque as the others. However, her hair was short and purple, with the left side drawn back into a tiny ponytail with a clip. Her eyes were bright magenta—she wore a bright red dress with a grey gun holster and a white shirt with holes cut into it. Fingerless red gloves covered her hands; red high heels shod her feet; black tights covered her legs to the thigh; and both her black necklace and single earring were bedecked with a tear-drop-shaped green stone.

The girl was petite and delicate, just like the others, but her hair was sea-green and down to her waist, falling in two large, whorled ringlets. Her eyes were emerald green, and she wore a loose cerulean dress with a periwinkle bow and accompanying cerulean sleeves, separate from her dress and held up with white ties. A sky-blue bow was jauntily displayed at the top of her dress; a white sash cinched it about her waist. White kid gloves gave her hands a cute, yet sophisticated, appearance.

“ÉCLAIR!!” Astri gasped. “LUMIERE!!”

“I thought you said they were Éclair and Lumiere?!”

“They are! They all are—well, except for those two, those are Alv and Dvergr—”

“What are you talking about?! There can't be more than one of them!!”

“They're clones of Éclair and—”

“Whats?”

“Exact copies! Of them!” Astri pointed at the woman with purple hair and the girl with sea-green hair just as the woman leapt down the side of the canyon, throwing a wave of black energy from her hand which struck all of the identical females, sending them reeling.

“Your turn now!” the purple-haired woman called back up to the little girl as she hit the bottom of the canyon.

“Yes, I can see that,” the girl called down. From behind her back she withdrew a wine bottle, just like those held by all the other little girls, and threw it down into the canyon. As it hit the ground right-side up, its top burst off, and a rain of sparkling something exploded out of it into the air.

All of the masked women and girls screamed as the sparkling whatever came raining down on their heads. Although it did not seem to be physically hurting them, as one they all collapsed to the ground beneath its glittering assault.

There was a clattering as their masks fell off their faces and hit the ground, and Monika gave a yelp of surprise. Every one of them had the exact same face.

“C`mon!” Astri yelled. “We gotta get down there! Hecate, goddess of witchcraft and sorcery—”

“I hope you don't mind,” the little girl with sea-green hair said, “I took the liberty of giving them a neural-net-deinhibitor.”

“Or in other words,” the purple-haired woman said, “you don't get to play with your dolls anymore, sorry!”

“Release Gravity!” Astri finished.

* * *

The group of Éclairs, Lumieres, and one Alv and Dvergr (if Astri was to be believed) were in the midst of a conversation that was a hair's length away from a battle when suddenly a slab of rock came flying out of nowhere and smashed right between the Alv and Dvergr pair, sending them both flying.

“What—?” somebody asked.

Out of the cloud of dust thrown up by the crash-landing of the rock, two young male figures suddenly appeared, running for their lives as balls of black energy streaked around them, shot by the Alv/ Éclair, who was not at all happy about being attacked in this manner.

“What the hell was that?!” the boy with shorter hair yelled. “Why'd you drop us ON them?!”

“Shut up and keep running!!” the other one yelled back.

“What—?!”

“Éclair! Lumiere!” the second boy yelled. “Er…Éclairs and Lumieres! Start running!”

“Running?” somebody said blankly.

“Just trust me! I know you know it's Alv, and she's running out of time! She needs to Absorb somebody or she'll lose your Power, same with Dvergr and Puppet! Just trust me! Everybody get out of here!”

“Who are you?” the purple-haired woman asked, looking slightly wary and more than slightly confused.

“My name's Astri! This is Monika!” Astri narrowly missed a bolt of energy and yelped. “Move! Run! Come ON!”

He grabbed the purple-haired Éclair by the arm without missing a beat and dragged her around as he continued to run. Éclair stumbled, then put her foot down; literally. Thanks to her superhuman strength, this whipcracked Astri back so hard he nearly dislocated his arm.

“I don't understand!” Éclair flared. “What do you mean, she's running—”

The sea-green-haired Lumiere suddenly looked as though a lightbulb had gone off over her head, although from the look on her face, it wasn't one that gave her any happiness. “Wait! Do you mean—”

Two shining golden beams of light lashed out of the dust and snapped around an Éclair and Lumiere's wrists like shackles.

“NO!!!” Astri and the sea-green-haired Lumiere shouted.

Before the brown-haired Éclair or the blue-haired Lumiere could even scream, they were yanked into the dust.

“Too late!” Astri moaned. He whirled on the purple-haired Éclair. “Hurry! We can't let them take them!”

“Running out of—” That Éclair jolted. “Wait—you don't mean they—?!”

“Yes, and they just recharged, but it's okay, just—”

The dust, dying away now as it floated back to the ground, was suddenly cleaved by a massive black energy blast.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!” Monika, Astri, and two or three of the brown-haired Éclairs yelped.

Another male figure leapt in front of them—a man dressed in a grey suit, with long hair tied back in a ponytail. He hurled a suitcase into the energy blast.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!!!

Both the suitcase and the energy blast were utterly annihilated.

There was a stunned pause.

“That really does come in handy,” the primary (green-haired) Lumiere remarked.

The burst of power had blasted the dustcloud back down to the ground. With it gone, all present could clearly see the “bad” pair of Éclair and Lumiere—Alv and Dvergr—with the captured Éclair and Lumiere lying on the ground, shuddering with pain.

“Everyone, start climbing!” the man shouted.

“What about them?!” Astri and the primary (purple-haired) Éclair demanded.

The green Lumiere raised her gloved hand.

Iridescent sparkles of power rushed from her fingers, streaking across the open air to connect with a mechanical transport pod. The pod switched on of its own accord, lifted into the air, and took flight, streaking straight for Alv/ Éclair and Dvergr/ Lumiere.

Alv and Dvergr jumped reflexively out of the way—although they could have blasted the pod to bits with their stolen powers, they weren't used to them enough to think of it. The pod stooped against the ground, scooped up the fallen Éclair and Lumiere, and streaked up to the green Lumiere, where it stopped, motor purring like a proud cat.

“Hurry, everyone,” Lumiere commanded, stroking the pod gently. “Let's get out of here.”

* * *

“Are you going to tell me what's going on now, or not?” Monika muttered.

Astri screwed up his face. “Um…we're on a planet called Aeneas, on the run with Éclair and Lumiere and a bunch of their clones and Armblast—although he barely counts—from Alv and Dvergr, who are evil ES members who stole Éclair and Lumiere's old appearances and powers and are taking dictatorship over Aeneas and the GOTT to try and futher their plots for revenge. And…we're going up this hill through the forest right now so Alv and Dvergr can't fire at us easily and will be slowed down, and because there's an escape route at the top.”

Despite the fact that Alv and Dvergr were only feet behind him, Monika stopped and stared at Astri. “What?!”

“Keep moving!!” Astri shoved at Monika. “We're at the back of the line, here. We're the most vulnerable.”

“Well that's just spectacular news, isn't it?!”

“It's okay, if Alv and Dvergr try to absorb us, they won't get anything out of it except our appearances. We neither of us have ES powers.”

“What about those energy blasts?!”

“Well, technically, we're not any more vulnerable to those back here than we would be up there…”

“Real reassuring. I still don't have any idea what's going on here!!”

“Neither do I,” said the purple Éclair, practically materializing next to them. Astri and Monika both jumped. “Who are you two? Where did you come from, and what are you doing here?”

“Oh, well…” Astri stalled. “You see, Éclair…” He paused. “I can't believe I'm actually talking to you, Éclair! You have no idea how incredible this is!”

“Thank you. I'm…glad you're so pleased about it. But who are you?”

“My name is I—Astri. And this…is Monika. And we're from another world.”

Monika winced, expecting total disbelief on Éclair's part, but Éclair only nodded.

“I figured as much. Which one?”

“Different ones. Monika here is from Terra. I'm from…” Astri paused ever so briefly, “Sylvarant.”

Monika stared at him. No he wasn't. Astri had come to Sylvarant to get help from Raine and Lloyd and the others. Unless he'd come from Sylvarant originally—except he'd told them that he had come from a different world than theirs. So…where—?

“Terra and Sylvarant?” Éclair frowned. “Those aren't very technological planets, are they? How did you get here?”

“Magic!” Astri pulled out his penny. “I called on Hecate, Selene, and Artemis and used their powers to enchant this penny so I could go to other worlds.”

“Whoa, you what?” Éclair took the penny gingerly, much as Raine had at first. “Enchanted it? To go to other worlds? I don't—”

“Magically,” Astri said helpfully.

Éclair looked at Astri, then shook her head and handed the penny back. “Sorry, this seems like something that's going to take a great deal of explanation, and we don't have the leisure for that right now. Maybe after Witch One and Witch Two back there stop following us—”

“Well, don't you think it's about time we made our stand?” The ponytailed man—Armblast, Astri had called him—turned to look at Éclair. “As the old saying goes—”

“ `Borrowed wisdom is a tenuous thing',” Astri said impatiently, making Éclair and Armblast both stare at him again. “NO! We can't stop here!”

“Why not?” Armblast and Éclair asked, although in very different tones of voice.

“We've been walking for a while. They didn't get much energy back there—they're still low on Absorb-time. When they run out we'll still be in trouble, but the sooner they do it the better for us.”

“Hold on,” Éclair interrupted. “Let me make sure I've got this straight. Alv and Dvergr back there, they've Absorbed our powers and appearances, right?”

Astri looked at Éclair, with her new purple hair and ruby eyes, as contrast to her old auburn locks and amber gaze. “Well, your old appearances, anyways.”

“And they can only hold that shape for a limited time, right?”

“Right.”

“And to hold it longer, they have to re-Absorb us, right?”

“They have to Absorb more power and looks from you or one of your clones, yes.”

“So if we stay out of their reach, they'll eventually revert to normal?”

“Eventually, yes—”

A shower of energy blasts tore the earth and shrubbery around them into bursts of dusty smoke.

“Too much talking, too little walking!!” Astri yelped, grabbing Monika and shoving him forward yet again. “They're catching—”

A whip of light lashed out of the dust and seized Astri's ankle.

“—uuuuoooWAAAAAP!!!”

Éclair lunged forward, but too slowly. Astri was yanked off his feet, hand still on Monika's arm, yanking the other boy over backwards and crashing them both to the ground in a heap. Then Astri suddenly zipped out of the tangle, dragged inexorably backwards facefirst over the earth downhill, into the cloud hiding Alv and Dvergr.

Monika spat out dirt and flipped to his feet without knowing how he did it. “Astri!!”

“I'm really starting to hate these two!” Astri screamed back. “Hecate, goddess of witchcraft and sorcery—”

A hand, not the familiarly gloved hand of the fake Éclair and Lumiere, but a bare hand springing from a fuschia sleeve, reached out of the cloud and dug into Astri's leg, just below his knee.

“LET GO OF ME, YOU TWO-TIMING REVENGE-MONGERING IDENTITY-STEALING—”

Out of nowhere, two serpent-shaped blasts of energy—one red, one blue—reared, spraying plasmatic needles like swords. The blasts entwined briefly—then slammed forward.

A massive explosion shook the ether and knocked Monika, Éclair, Armblast, and a few of the closer clones off their feet. Astri was literally picked up off the ground by the force of the blast and thrown into the air before he could even scream—then a red streak snatched him out of the air, holding him very tightly against something warm.

The smoke stung his eyes, but even through it he could see the bright red sash trailing across the chest.

“Dextera!”

* * *

The word didn't mean anything to Monika (although his right hand twitched slightly,) but the way Astri said it did. It was exclaimed in surprise, relief, and ever-so-slightly guilty delight. Delight which made him feel oddly jealous.

Jealous of what? That someone else had rescued Astri?

Monika meant to dismiss that thought as ridiculous. But after he thought of it, he suddenly realized it was true. He was jealous that someone else had rescued Astri. Dammit, Astri had saved his life at least twice so far—once from Lilith, once from Sheena. And although he'd had plenty of opportunities to so far, he, Monika, hadn't managed to so much as help Astri in return.

But what the hell was he supposed to do, surrounded by super-powered women with weird “masheen” things he'd never seen before and figures more buxom than—

Then Astri appeared out of the smoke—held in the arms of a tall, muscular, utterly gorgeous man with skin tanned to the color of gold, amethyst eyes, and short hair like garnets. Beside him was another tall, gorgeous man, pale as the moon, with sky-blue eyes and waist-length aquamarine hair.

Astri coughed and rubbed dirt out of his eyes, then looked up and turned the same color as his rescuer's hair.

“Dextera!” Astri repeated faintly. “Um…thank you!”

“Anything to give our dear `acting-chief' a little more trouble,” Dextera said. His voice was low and smoother than honey. “And if you're a friend of that impulsive rebel over there…”

Éclair rolled her eyes. “Thanks a lot, Dextera. And yes, I'd say he is.”

“…that only sweetens the deal.”

“Yes…well…” Astri brushed dirt off his Sylvarant shirt, making the crystals clink musically, and settled for, “thanks, anyways. I was worried that she might—”

“Look,” the real Lumiere said, pointing a white-gloved hand into the obscuring dirt-fog. “I think time's run out for her.”

Everyone turned to look into the slowly-clearing haze of exploded soil with expressions varying from blank confusion (the many clones and Monika) to wary understanding (Armblast and the real Éclair) to tactical observation (the real Lumiere, the two new arrivals, and Astri).

A sudden gust of wind blew the air clear enough for sight again, and Monika and the clones gasped.

The fake Éclair and Lumiere were gone. In their place, covered in dirt and newly-opened cuts from the dual energy blast that had just hit them, were two new women—the true faces of Alv and Dvergr.

The blue-haired Lumiere had been replaced by a young woman with a cloud of softly-poofing rose hair. She wore a curiously cut yellow dress with baggy off-the-shoulder sleeves, lacy black gloves, and a choker around her neck. However, her presence faded into a vague colorful nothingness next to the woman beside her.

Where the auburn-haired Éclair had been standing, there was now a tall woman dressed in a buttoned fuschia waistcoat with puffed sleeves, a black-and-white striped top, and tight, low, black trousers with the left leg cut off. Hoops as wide in diameter as her crimson-painted thumbs were long hung from her ears, surrounded by wisps of short periwinkle hair. Beneath her periwinkle bangs, one could see a curious choker encircling her throat, lavender lipstick smeared across a mouth clenched tight in pain, and slanted aqua eyes burning with raw, uncontrollable fury.

Monika's fists reflexively clenched. This was a woman who would—who wanted to—fight to the death and then tear her opponents' corpses to shreds to appease the horrible anger inside of her. He knew that expression.

Wait. He knew that expression.

The eyes of a demon burned suddenly in his mind.

* * *

“No!” the taller woman spat. “We haven't lost this fight yet…and we're not going to lose it now. Not when I'm so close to my revenge.”

“Your revenge?” Éclair demanded.

“Everything I've done,” the woman snarled, staring at Éclair with eyes full of hatred. “Absorbing your G-class abilities, disposing of the Chief, assuming control of the GOTT…it was all part of my plan to take revenge against the Nobles! What is the `Global Union'? Or even the GOTT?! Empty names. In the end, it's still the Nobles who control the lives of every single person in the galaxy. You, of all people, should understand! You've seen the way the Nobles exploit the masses to serve their whim! You know the hardships we've been made to endure—and all the suffering we've caused in their name!”

“The GOTT you serve so proudly is a mockery,” the other woman said, her voice steady and emotionless. “It was only created as a tool for the Nobles. All these years, the only thing we've ever protected is their interests.”

“We have no choice but to act the part of pawns,” the first woman continued, her eyes locked on Éclair, anger breathing out from her like smoke. “We aren't even allowed to die. If there's a worse hell than this, then you tell me what it is!!”

Éclair was looking back at the woman with something like pity in her eyes, although the rest of her face betrayed no emotion. Yet even so small a gesture seemed to infuriate the woman still further. She took a deep breath, her eyes closing, and began to croon words blazing with her rage.

“But now it's their turn to suffer just as I have. The Nobles and all of their puppets.” Her eyes snapped open again. “I'm going to pay you all back…ten times over—!!”

“Oh, please!”

Astri's voice cut through the woman's words like a knife. Her gaze snapped from Éclair to him with a nearly audible tearing sound—the woman beside her did the briefest of double-takes—and Éclair turned her head to face him, looking taken aback.

“Do you think you're the only one who's been wronged?” Astri demanded, the crystals on his shirt clinking gently. “Do you think you're the only one who's suffered? Do you think that in the decades and decades the GOTT has been in existence that nobody else has felt the same pain you feel? Do you think they haven't been hurt either?!”

His gesture included Éclair, Lumiere, Armblast, his rescuers, and all of the clones—but his glance shot through the air and focused solely on Monika.

“Do you have any idea how stupid you're being?! Do you understand at all that you're acting exactly like the Nobles, killing and manipulating other people just to suit yourself?! Did it ever occur to you that you had the choice to not do the things the Nobles told you to?!”

“What else could I have done?!” the woman screamed, spit flying from her lips.

“You had the option to become fugitives, just as we did!” Lumiere said suddenly, her silvery, childlike voice loud in the forest air.

The pink-haired woman's eyes widened.

“If it was what you truly wanted, with your abilities, I'm sure the two of you would have had little trouble escaping,” Lumiere said. “You say everything you've done has been in the name of revenge, but I suspect you're only trying to convince yourself of that to justify your true lust—for power.”

“You're just as cruel and selfish as the Nobles are!” Astri shouted. “Can't you see that if you win, you'll subject the galaxy in exactly the same way that the Nobles do now?!”

“Say what you want,” the woman snarled, “I don't care. In another five minutes, it won't matter.” And surprisingly, her lavender lips curled into a smile. “Like I said, we haven't lost this fight yet.”

The ground split.

* * *

The only warning was a rumbling like that of a snoring giant. Then the ground leapt up, trembling as though in fear—the hillside behind Alv and Dvergr cracked and erupted like a dirt-spewing volcano—trees, bushes, grass, mosses thrown through the air like dying confetti—and out of the earth as though born from it came a massive steel creation, the dark bluey-grey of a contaminated bruise, shaped in sharp angles and geometric polygons, larger than a blue whale and infinitely more dangerous.

Way up near the top of the metal monstrosity, a laser cannon unfolded and aimed straight down.

BOOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!!!!!

If it hadn't been for the slightest angular miscalculation in the cannon's aim, probably due to the velocity at which the metal thing was rising into the air, Éclair, Lumiere, and the others standing with them would have been dead at that moment.

“Run!!!” Astri screamed, grabbing Dextera's arm and matching action to word.

They ran.

* * *

“You know,” Armblast panted as they ran, “it's really something of a shame things had to turn out this way.”

“How's that?” Éclair said acidly.

“Well, I mean, in the end, we all basically want the same thing. It's just that thin line that separates us from them.”

Astri paled.

“Perhaps,” Dextera contributed, no longer being towed by Astri, “except their goals included the destruction of GOTT headquarters. However noble their motives, that's a line that should never have been crossed.”

“I guess,” Astri said—then tripped over a rock and nearly fell flat on his face.

Éclair, who was running in front of Astri, slammed her feet down into a stop, whirled on her high heels, and caught Astri before he hit the ground.

“Thanks,” Astri gasped, going red again. “That was seriously dumb of me.”

“You can worry about that later, when we're not being chased by the copycats anymore,” Éclair said, throwing Astri up onto his feet in front of her and pushing off again. “We're not out of the woods yet.”

Astri let out a breathless laugh as the irony of the statement sank in through quickly-congealing fear for his life. “Nor will we be anytime soon.”

“Shut up and keep running!”

They ran.

* * *

“Faster!” Alv exulted as she and her partner leapt into the seats of their mobile armor, Thor, while their massive battleship Svalt still hovered overhead.

“I've got them,” Dvergr said calmly, flicking switches and buttons across Thor's control panel.

“Funny, though,” Alv mused. “I recognize Armblast, and Dextera and Sinistra…but the other two. Who are they?”

“I don't know,” Dvergr said. “But it's not to matter much longer.”

“How true.” Alv snickered. “Where do they think they're going?”

“Nowhere. We're coming up on a dead end.”

“A dead end?” Alv's twisted smile widened. “How appropriate it will be for them, in more ways than one.”

* * *

“Can't keep this up,” Éclair panted, casting anxious looks back over the small army of clones, Lumiere, Astri, Monika, Dextera, and Sinistra running gamely behind her, and behind them, the crashing of falling trees that heralded Alv and Dvergr's approach.

“Oh, my, my,” Armblast said.

“What?!”

“Ah, you surprise me.” Armblast was the only one still able to keep up beside Éclair's high heels. “I didn't think the words `give up' were in your vocabulary.”

Éclair wanted to sock him in the face. “This is not the time to start joking around!”

“Sorry,” Armblast smiled. “I was only making an observation—”

The pine-green hulk of Thor exploded out of the woods directly behind them, its cannons raised and ready.

Astri screamed. “Hecate-goddess-of—”

Dextera snapped his fingers back over his shoulder.

The entirety of space shifted ever so slightly, pushing all of them to one side, shunting Alv and Dvergr to another, sending their laser blasts streaming into the earth somewhere off to the right. Smoke and dirt enveloped them all in a great cloud, but nothing more damaging touched them.

“Oh my God!” Astri gasped. “That's your power, right? Anywhere?”

“That's it,” Dextera agreed, dust swirling around them in great eddies as they ran.

“That was…that was amazing!! What did you just do? It was like all of—”

“Hurry!” Éclair shouted, interrupting Astri with the voice of desperation. “Just keep moving!”

They ran.

* * *

And came out into open air on the edge of a cliff, some hundreds of feet above a tremendous lake like a sheet of green glass.

Monika pulled up short and yelped. “What the—?!”

Astri hoved to a stop and stared. “Oh…”

Two of the clone Éclairs ran into each other and almost fell over the edge.

The real Éclair stared down—a long, LONG way down—into the lake, her gaze calculating.

“Should we swim for it?” Armblast inquired.

“Don't be ridiculous,” Éclair and Astri snapped at once.

“They're here,” the real Lumiere murmured.

Gliding forward like a huge malevolent bird, Thor came to a stop just feet away, Alv and Dvergr seated in its shoulders, the massive form of the battleship Svalt hanging above it like a second moon.

A dozen cannons on Svalt, and a dozen more on the arms of Thor, aimed straight for the edge of the cliff on which Éclair, Lumiere, and their companions teetered like baby birds unable to fly.

“It's over,” Alv said, almost gently.

A soft breeze ruffled through Alv's hair, skipping down all the way down the cliffs to kiss the still green waters. Alv lifted her face to it, inhaling deeply.

“Such a nice breeze,” she crooned softly. “They say that if you die in a gentle breeze like this, it will carry your soul to better fortunes in the next life.”

“It'd be nice if that were true,” Éclair said, meeting Alv's blue gaze with her own magenta one quite calmly. “But we both know better than that, don't we.”

It was a statement, not a question.

“Well then, there's nothing left to say,” Alv remarked, her voice losing every shred of softness. “Except the final goodbye.”

Way hundreds of feet below, the surface of the lake moved threateningly.

“Hey, you,” Monika hissed, poking Dextera's arm. “Do something! Do that space-moving thing again!”

“There's not enough space to shift,” Dextera retorted tensely.

“What?! How can there not be—”

“All I can shift us to now is out over the lake!”

“Astri—”

“Don't worry, Monika,” Astri said.

“Don't worry? `Don't worry'?!?!?!”

“Nope,” Astri said. “Everything's fine.”

The lake turned gold and exploded.

* * *

A massive beam of golden light blasted forth from the lake and took the Svalt straight through its cannons, slicing through them like a knife cutting through peanut butter. The massive battleship seemed almost to recoil from the blast, but it was far too late for it to save itself. The cannons exploded, sending fire through the whole rest of the battleship, sending it crashing down to the ground. A massive blast of flaming smoke shot straight up into the air, twisting greyly like a kind of living tombstone to the Svalt's resting place.

Alv and Dvergr stared, mouths agape in shock.

“What the—?!” Alv gasped, whirling to look at the lake.

But something else was looming up out of the water—something huge and white and red, shimmering metal glistening with water, bright crimson paint cutting through the air like a laugh, wings spread in the appearance of a beautiful rising swan.

“Is that—?!” Alv couldn't believe her eyes.

“It's about time!” Éclair said, her features relaxing into a smile half of relief, half of triumph.

Lumiere's smile matched hers. “Well, a lady has to wait for the right moment to make a proper entrance.”

Shedding droplets and rivulets of water like crystal through the air as it rose, the massive machine caught the sun and reflected it off as a blinding blaze of glory.

“It…can't be…” Alv gasped, her face a raw ruin of shock.

“Oh, yes it can!” Astri shouted gleefully.

“Yes, the high-speed cruiser La Muse, Prototype Zero,” Lumiere said as the huge ship rose into full visibility above her head. “Or, as it was formerly known…Calliope.”

“But how?!?!”

Something small, but very, very red, burst from the back of the La Muse Prototype Zero Calliope, soaring down on an unerring course towards the cliff where his owners were standing.

“Donner!!” Éclair shouted happily.

The crimson robot Donnerschlag beeped back at his mistress.

“This is the upgraded version of Donnerschlag,” Lumiere explained. “But for the La Muse, we actually had to go back to the original production model.”

Responding to some sort of command (or perhaps realizing that he wouldn't fit on a cliff already so overcrowded with people,) Donnerschlag made a smart about-face and zoomed back to the Calliope, to land above her bridge like a sort of honor guard. A hatch slid open in the top of the bridge, and out of it rose a platform on which two men and one woman were standing. One of the men was a brown-skinned behemoth with muscles like footballs—the other was sharp and slender as an arrow—but the woman in between them, dressed all in blue with a shock of golden hair visible even from this distance, captivated the attention of every single person on the cliff.

“Impossible,” Alv breathed. “Eclipse?!”

Even Éclair and Lumiere looked surprised at this.

“Unou?” Lumiere whispered, more to herself than to anybody else.

“It's like I told ya,” the arrow-like young man shrugged, shouting to be heard from the bridge of the floating Calliope. “We found a job with more interesting prospects.”

“HOW, ECLIPSE?!” Alv screamed. “YOU WERE DEAD! I WATCHED YOU FALL!!”

The golden-haired Eclipse inclined her head ironically. When she spoke, she did not raise her voice, and yet was perfectly audible to all, even with all the many yards of open wind between her and them.

“You know I was an ES Member myself at one time. My ability was known as Quant, or Quantum Jumping. Surely you've heard of it.”

Éclair and Lumiere turned back away from Calliope to face Alv and Dvergr again.

“The short version is, it's what brought us back to life,” Éclair said. “Her ability is what encoded all of us as ES Members to begin with!”

Alv looked like she was going to erupt like a volcano.

“Do you have any idea what I've been through to get this far?! Do you?! The pain I've suffered?! The humiliations I've been forced to endure?! At long last, revenge is finally within my reach! It's mine! I won't let it slip away!!”

Completely forgetting about Éclair and Lumiere, completely forgetting that she was in a robot while Eclipse was on a fully-equipped ES ship, completely forgetting about everything except her all-devouring need for revenge, Alv slammed on Thor's keyboard and shot it off the cliff, up towards Calliope and Eclipse.

Yet Eclipse appeared unruffled. She looked the approaching Alv straight in the eye, and said something that was drowned out in the roar of Thor's engines. And Alv screamed, unleashed a long, horrible scream that resounded with all her pain, and back in the trees her battleship heard and gave out one last salvo of laser blasts which rocketed towards Calliope like a great scarlet sword. The effort of firing out this last blast was simply too much, though. The Svalt shuddered one last time, just before giving up the ghost and finally completely exploding.

Eclipse did not bat an eye.

The huge onslaught of laser power struck a barrier like a great cerulean sapphire, which materialized around Calliope in midair, and bent back as though reflected off a mirror.

Alv's own laser blast enveloped her and Dvergr and Thor and streaked away into the air, just above the heads of all those standing on the cliff. Everybody ducked down and covered their eyes as the searing light and heat streamed way too close for comfort—and when they could look up again, Alv and Dvergr were gone.

A few flecks of ash blew away on the gentle breeze.

* * *

It took a while, but with Donnerschlag to ferry them all down, all the persons still present at the scene eventually made it down to the shore of the lake. By the time the last of the clones had been safely carried down the multi-hundred foot drop to the sand of the shore, the sun was beginning to sink below the horizon and the forest was stained tangerine by its dying light.

Monika's mind felt like a sponge that had soaked up more water than it could hold. He had no idea what most of the things he was seeing were, he had no idea who any of these people were, and he had NO idea what was going on. There were more questions in his head than he knew how to ask. But he could tell that, were he to try asking any of them now, nobody would pay any attention to him. So, exasperating though it was, he held his tongue and waited.

Éclair and Eclipse were standing in the center of all the rest of everybody, staring at each other. Éclair looked like she wanted to say something, but wasn't sure how to phrase it politely—Eclipse looked inscrutable. Lumiere stood by Éclair, once again as serene as the lake beside her. Astri was watching everything, turning his head back and forth, trying to look at everything at once.

“Thank you.”

Éclair started, and turned to face one of her clones, with a clone Lumiere at her side. It was the Éclair and Lumiere that had been seized by Alv and Dvergr way back on the canyon floor all those hours ago (was it really hours? It felt more like days than hours).

“Thanks for…helping us,” the Éclair continued. “But I guess…this is goodbye.”

Eclipse closed her eyes, and inclined her head slightly.

“We're just shadows, really,” the Éclair said, smiling as she spoke, but smiling a smile filled with sadness. “Disposable puppets Alv created in your image, so she could continue to Absorb your powers.”

A bird began to sing, beautifully, obstreperously.

“You could say our lives were built on borrowed wisdom,” the Éclair said. “They were never meant to last.”

“But—” the real Éclair and Monika began.

“Understand,” Eclipse said, talking over the both of them, “the Global Union charger strictly prohibits the creation of clones such as these. The law is very clear in this matter. They cannot be allowed to exist.”

“Chief Eclipse!!” Éclair cried.

Eclipse looked straight at Éclair, her blue eyes very serious. “My advice to you now is to forget that they ever existed in the first place.”

Monika's jaw dropped. Kill them? Kill them? They'd gone through all this trouble to save them from Alv and Dvergr and their weird metal-monster-things, and now they were just going to kill them?! Like they weren't people, but property, something owned illegally?

“Lilith doesn't belong to you. She's her own person. She doesn't belong to anyone.”

The words sprang to mind without conscious effort, but Monika had no time to think about them. He whirled on Astri. “Astri, do something!”

“I don't need to do anything,” Astri said.

Monika reeled as though he had been punched in the stomach. “Don't need…? What do you mean, you don't need to?! Isn't this what you came here to do?! Isn't this why you said you made that—?!”

“It's okay,” Astri said soothingly. “Eclipse knows what she's doing.”

Monika was fully ready to punch Astri as hard as he could—how could he stand there and say things like that with the clones right there, listening to what sounded like their death sentence?!—when the earth began to shake.

“I do indeed,” Eclipse agreed, inclining her head again towards Astri, this time without sarcasm. “After all…”

Once again, the lake began to boil as though heated by a colossal underground flame. The waters stirred and heaved—Monika caught his balance and whirled back on the lake just in time to see something huge and fuschia emerge, streaming liquid turned gold by the setting sun, and behind it something pacific blue, and behind it leaf-green…

“…something that doesn't exist can't be judged, correct?” Eclipse concluded, as six magnificent spaceships lifted up to float delicately just over the surface of the sunstreaked lake waters, all precisely the same as the Calliope, differentiated only by their varying color schemes: fuschia, pacific blue, and leaf-green, but also tangerine, lemon, and yellow-green.

Éclair gasped, joy flooding her features.

“La Muse's prototypes,” Lumiere explained proudly. “Number One is Clio. Number Two, Terpsichore. Number Three, Erato. Then Euterpe, Thalia, and Polyhymnia.”

The Éclair and Lumiere clones all stared at the ships, hardly daring to believe their eyes.

“All of you must leave now,” Eclipse said gently. “But to help you on your way, I present you with these ships. I trust you will use them to make the most of what limited time you might have in this life.”

The Éclair and Lumiere who had come up to the original Éclair and Lumiere lit up like Christmas trees, nodding ecstatically.

“You see?” Astri said happily, beaming at the ships as proudly as though he had brought them himself. “It's all okay! They'll be fine. They're going to—”

His expression didn't change, but something about his manner did. Monika, floored and overwhelmed though he was, did not miss it.

“Going to what?”

“I don't know,” Astri said, more to himself than to Monika. “Hmm…”

Whatever internal cogitation was taking place in Astri's brain came to a sudden conclusion. He snapped his fingers and took a compulsive step forward. “Um, Éclair—Eclipse!”

Everybody who answered to the name Éclair or Eclipse—which was substantially more than two people—turned to look at him.

“I was wondering—hoping—that is—well, one of you,” Astri said, lifting his hand towards, not the purple-haired Éclair, as Monika had half-expected, but the brown-haired clones. “Could we—Monika and myself—come with you guys? One of you guys?”

The Éclair closest to the main Éclair (God, it was becoming impossible to keep them apart, even if they did look different) looked around, then raised her finger to point quizzically at herself. “Us?”

“Yes,” Astri said. “It's just…you see, we kind of came here to get…to see things. Old things, new things. Monika has amnesia, and I'm a total loss when it comes to combat, so we came here to…temper ourselves, sort of. And although this wasn't exactly the way I was thinking of doing it, I'd really like to come with you guys. If that's all right.”

The Éclair looked down at her partner. The lilac-haired Lumiere looked back up at her, the two of them exchanging some kind of message almost psychically with their glances. Then they both looked back at Astri. And both of them smiled.

“Yeah, sure!” Éclair said warmly. “The more the merrier, after all!”

Astri's smile matched theirs. “Thank you! Thank you so much for letting us come along!”

Monika wanted to scream. Was he the only one who didn't understand what was going on at all? “Astri, what—”

“I promise, I'll explain everything,” Astri said. “Soon. Really soon.”

You've been saying that ever since we got here, Monika thought mutinously, but held his tongue.

“You can come with us,” the Lumiere clone said generously. “I'm sure it will be nice to have you along.”

“I'm sure it'll be fantastic to be along with you!” Astri said enthusiastically.

“Not to sound as though we're trying to get rid of you all,” Eclipse remarked. “However, it is only a matter of time before GOTT officials arrive to investigate what has been going on here, and you really must be gone before that time.”

“Yes, of course,” the lilac Lumiere agreed. “We understand.”

“Then let's get moving!” the brunette Éclair exclaimed.

* * *

A shower of brilliant sparks flew into the sky like kaleidoscopic fireworks.

Down on the ground, Eclipse looked up into the fading-to-night sky, and watched the colorful sparks disappear into the stars. “Good luck, ladies.”

“And gentlemen,” the aqua-haired Lumiere added.

“And gentlemen,” Eclipse agreed. “Éclair…”

“It's okay,” Éclair said, her own eyes drawn to the panorama of stars overhead. “I think I understand you now, Eclipse. You did what you had to do.”

“Yes.”

“I wonder if we'll see any of them again.”

“For their own safety,” Eclipse murmured, “it is probably better if we do not.”

“Yeah.” Éclair's eyes caught one last sparkle of tangerine light, then lost it in the darkness of the sky. “I suppose so.”

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