Afura Mann stood on a balcony of the palace looking out into the night.

Tomorrow the three priestesses would return to the mountain, but tonight
was a night for celebration.

Shayla-Shayla and Nanami where off somewhere getting drunk together and
Miz Mishtal was chasing Mr. Fujisawa to settle the date for their
wedding.

Afura was fairly certain that Miz had used her water powers to snatch
the bouquet today.  Well, more power to her.

Afura was left to herself, which suited her well.  She had joined the
order to have time to her own thoughts anyway.

She heard a sound behind her, turned and saw something she'd would never
have expected to see on this night.

Makoto was pale and shaking as he staggered to the edge of the balcony
to stare out into the night.

"What is wrong?"  She asked him, "What happened?"

"I saw --- I saw it", he lapsed into pale silence.

"Makoto, I'm sorry", Ifurita walked out in a bathrobe.

"No", Makoto took a long breath, "It isn't your fault.  I'll be OK, just
give me a moment."

As Makoto took Ifurita in his arms, her robe fluttered in the wind and
Afura spotted a label where Ifurita's belly button should have been.

It was a swirl device with two words inside.

Suddenly all of the old legends of Ifurita being as dangerous to her
masters and innocent bystanders as her assigned targets made sense.  Her
erratic "emotional" behaviour, it was all due to this one factor.

For the rest of her life, whenever Afura would meet Ifurita, her eyes
would reflexively dart to the android's center, whatever she was wearing
and she would remember again the two words on the warning label:

"Intel Inside".

	Henry J. Cobb	hcobb@slip.net          http://www.io.com/~hcobb