[FFML] {XOVER] [AMG] Drunkard's Walk V, Chapter 7

[Bob Schroeck]

Hey, people.

Here it is, only four years late -- the final chapter of
"Drunkard's Walk V/Oh! My Brother II:  Another Divine
Mess You've Gotten Me Into".  You can't imagine how glad
Chris and I are to finally get this one out the door.

For redundancy's sake, I'll note that you can also read
the chapter at my website, at

     http://www.accessdenied-rms.net/dw5-07.shtml

Enjoy!

-- Bob

===========================================================================
Bob Schroeck         http://www.accessdenied-rms.net        rms at eclipse.net
===========================================================================
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
===========================================================================

Disclaimer and credits will be found after the end of the
chapter.




            DRUNKARD'S WALK V / OH! MY BROTHER! BOOK II:
             ANOTHER DIVINE MESS YOU'VE GOTTEN ME INTO

            by Robert M. Schroeck and Christopher Angel





7.  In Which People All Come Together At The End


You're not among the walking wounded any more.
There's a time to fall,
There's a time to rise above it all.
-- Journey, "To Be Alive Again"

All is rhythm, all is unity
I am laughing, as it's meant to be
Just amusing, I am using the
Word was given, making harmony
Moving slowly, dancing aimlessly
Endless circle, turning fearlessly
Resurrected, falling down again
Introspective, I'm just stating my views
Now you can choose, what do you feel,
Is it for real this time?
-- Kansas, "Hopelessly Human"

Life is a mystery
Everyone must stand alone
I hear you call my name
And it feels like home.
-- Madonna, "Like A Prayer"


Temple Hill Road, Nekomi Ward, Saturday, May 31, 1997, 9:44 AM

The incubus Zerethuel -- or, as he vastly preferred to be known,
Takano Watanabe -- was not happy at all with his current
position.  Then again, he served Hell.  Not being happy sort of
went with the territory, he reflected.  *Remind me again why I
thought joining this side was a good idea?* he berated himself.
*Oh, right, more pleasures of the flesh with fewer rules and
complications.*  Yes, he was weak, he knew it.  His weakness
manifested as an inability to resist the physical beauty
possessed by so many mortals.

It also manifested as a strong desire to run screaming from the
impending conflict.

The presence of his immediate superior Garnash immediately behind
him -- along with his rather large and distressingly sharp
hellglaive -- boosted his strength of will immeasurably, however.

Dammit.

Takano glanced to the left and right of his position, trying not
to turn far enough in either direction to catch sight -- or the
eye -- of Garnash.  There were more forces here than he'd
expected.  Maybe Razielaingor had sent out his call over a wider
area than just the Kanto Plain -- surely this many demons
couldn't be operating out of just one admin zone.  There had to
be a couple hundred here, at a minimum, loosely formed up into...

He frowned.  What *was* the right word?  Squads?  Brigades?
Platoons?  The only collective noun on that scale he was really
sure of was "orgy".  Military organization was *so* not him, and
if he had his preference he'd never even have to worry about it.
It was enough to say that, had the higher-ups not erected
standard mortal-repelling wards, traffic in front of the temple
would have been forced to a standstill by the demonic throng.

Garnash stalked past, stopped, and backed up to snarl wordlessly
at him.  Takano gulped and straightened up out of the loose
slouch he'd slipped into.  Garnash sneered, then moved on, and
Takano suppressed a sigh.  If only he could cope with celibacy,
he'd happily grab onto the coattails of whomever it was who was
defecting.

That thought stopped him for a moment.  *Come to think of it, who
*is* defecting?*  He straightened up once more, having started to
slouch again after Garnash had passed, and risked craning his
neck to look for all the First Classes.  *Lessee...
Razielaingor, of course.  Raeito, Ymir...*  He swiveled his head
the other way.  *Dohguberuttu, Alanael...  Who's not here?*

Wait...  that unmistakable cloud of gorgeous blonde curls was
missing.  *Mara!  Oh, no, Mara, not you.  Now I'll never have a
shot at you...*

An explosion of cheering from his cohorts cut that thought short,
and Takano shook himself free of the vivid mental images that had
accompanied his spurt of regret.  *Another time,* he thought
ruefully, watching the hellish energy playing around the darkly
squat and bulky structure of the wardcracker as it arrived in the
mortal world.

                               * * *

Tarikihonganji Temple Complex, Saturday, May 31, 1997, 10:02 AM

*That's odd,* Keiichi thought with a flicker of a frown
momentarily creasing his forehead.  *Is the temple... *bigger*
than it was a few minutes ago?*  It was hard to be certain, but
he was pretty sure that the interior of the wooden building had
never been this... well, "cavernous" was the only word that
seemed appropriate.  *I *know* I've been able to see the rafters
and the roof before, but now they're so high they're hidden in
shadows.  And I'm pretty sure the altar wasn't so far from the
door.*

He glanced across the ritual diagram.  *It's probably something
they're doing to give them more room to work.*  Belldandy and her
sisters had taken their places along the circumference of the
great circle that all but filled the temple floor.  Pulses of
light rippled outward from the smaller circles in which they
stood, flowing out into the greater design and then fading.  Each
pulse reached further than the one before, like the waves of an
incoming tide, until they met and the entire diagram flashed a
bright white before settling down to a low, constant glow.

                               * * *

Eyes closed, Mara burrowed her nose into my right shoulder with a
little grunt of pain as the goddesses began chanting and
energizing the circle.  By the time a solid-looking webwork of
light had replaced the chalk diagram, she and I had come to a
mutually comfortable arrangement, one that didn't hurt her any
more than absolutely necessary and which put the minimum stress
on me.

The latter wasn't too hard, I must admit.  On any given day I can
dead-lift just over a hundred kilograms with two hands and hold
it over my head pretty much as long as I want, and on a good day
I can double that; Mara's mere 45 kilos or so didn't tax me at
all.  The only real problem I had with holding her -- other than
inadvertently hurting her -- was her hair.  Even with my helmet
on, that blonde mane of hers kept getting in my face every time I
turned my head to the right.

I didn't need to do that very often, though -- just to glance at
the temple doors.  They were closed and barred; Rachel and Ami
had left their bench and now sat in seiza on either side of them.
*Bad position,* I thought. *A hostile comes through there hard
and they'll be hit, either by the doors or by door fragments.
Keiichi's much more wisely positioned.*  Which he was, on the far
side of the circle from the doors.  I wanted to shout at them to
move, but the ritual was already starting.

I'd positioned myself to face Belldandy head-on, which was only
common sense given that I was waiting for her to give me the
high sign.

I felt more than heard the small moan Mara made into my shoulder.
"You okay?" I asked.

"They're coming for me," she whimpered.  "They'll never let me
get away, even in death."

"Your bosses?"

Her curls rippled -- the only thing I could see of her nodding
head.  "Maybe I should just stop this and hand myself over to
them now."

"Too late," I declared with somewhat forced jollity.  "The
girls've started.  You're committed now."

"Maybe I *ought* to be committed, thinking I could do this," she
murmured.

I wanted to squeeze her reassuringly, but didn't dare.  "Don't
give up now, Mara.  We'll get through this.  Stay with me..."  A
faint scent of incense and ozone drifted into my nostrils, and
the diagram of light blazed up, brighter and far more fierce,
like a fire that's had gasoline thrown on it.

I looked up from Mara's hair in time to see... *something*
uncurling itself from Belldandy's back.  At first I thought it
was simply a pair of wings unfolding -- unexpected but not at all
surprising -- but then I saw bare skin beneath them, as though
her back was swelling or bulging up above her shoulders.  In the
moment it took me to register that, a female head and torso
followed the wings.  A nude female torso, I realized after a
moment's shock.

The angelic figure seemed to be... mated to Belldandy's back, and
either mimicked or reproduced the movement of her upper body
perfectly.  Its features bore more of a sisterly resemblance to
Bell than, say, Urd's did, and its hair, while more or less the
same color, was thicker and wavier, and floated unrestrained
about its head and body.  Its wings were purest white.

"Ooooo-kay..." I muttered to myself, and glanced at the other two
goddesses.  They, too, had manifested their own winged
apparitions.  Skuld's seemed to match her in apparent age,
although its hair was shorter and Hollywood blonde.  And Urd's
was two-toned like a classic Chevy, split right down the middle
with black hair and wing on one side, and white on the other.

Just when I think my life can't get weirder...

                               * * *

Chris held his breath and waited for the moment that always came,
when he got shunted to the back of his own head while Mr. Hyde
took over the driver's seat.

It didn't come.

As the ward alarm rang out again, sending palpable vibrations
through the steps in up through his feet into his legs, Chris
felt the urge to swear.  *Of all the times that stupid thing
chooses *now* to not take over?*

He stopped that thought cold when a familiar chuckle echoed
inside his head, bypassing his ears entirely.  *Now why,* an
equally familiar mental voice asked, *would I need to take over?*

Chris tried to ignore the fact that the voice was his own, the
same voice in which he "heard" his own thoughts.  *I don't know,
one would expect based on past experience...*

*I have only 'taken over' when you're too spaced or too stupid to
react when you should.  And for your information, and don't argue
with me -- I'm *you*, and you're *me*.  I'm just the bit of your
brain that used to be your subconscious.*

*Used to be...* Chris frowned.

*Gods don't have the luxury -- or curse -- mortals do to leave
most of our thinking to roam free, uncontrolled.  We have no
subconscious, we always have our full mind available.  You're
just not able to take advantage of that yet, so I've been forced
to monitor and control myself -- which I wouldn't have to, if we
were complete.*

"What do you mean, 'if we were complete'?" Chris growled out
loud, startling the angel-possessed raven on the railing next to
him.  The raven squawked and flapped its wings, before turning a
beady eye on him.

*Argue later, nimrod.  Remember the demon army at the door?  Take
a look at yourself -- I've 'taken over' and you're still in
charge.  You always were, you just never listened to yourself
before.*

Chris opened his eyes and looked down at himself.  Damned if he
weren't in Full Manifestation after all.

*See?*

*Oh, shut up.  I get this abuse from everyone else, I don't need
it from you too.*

*Aye, aye, Captain!*

*I've got a notion to give you a piece of my mind.*

*Too late, I already have it.*

*Grr.  Think you're clever, don't you?*

*Like the philosopher says, know thyself.*

                               * * *

"Well," Ami said offhandedly from where she sat in seiza to the
left of the temple door, "you learn something new every day."

"You bet.  And just when you think the future in-laws can't get
any stranger," Rachel replied in an equally casual tone from
where she sat, also in seiza, to the right of the door.  "So...
what do you think?  Separate creatures or not?"

Ami considered this, reaching up with one hand to tap a finger
against her chin.  "I'm not sure which would be more disturbing --
finding out that my future sisters-in-law each actually have two
heads, four arms and a pair of wings, or that they're in some
kind of weird symbiosis with creatures that look like angels."

Rachel turned to her and raised an eyebrow.  "'Look like'?"

Ami rolled her eyes.  "Okay, okay, probably *are* angels.  If
they're not just previously-hidden body parts."

There was a longish pause.

"You know," Rachel mused, "you'd think that at times like this,
when there's a demon army at the door howling for blood, and our
boyfriend's sisters suddenly turn out to be a bit more... um...
*complex* even than we thought, that we ought to be terrified
beyond the capacity for rational thought."

There was another, somewhat shorter pause.

"I think we're just jaded," Ami offered.

Rachel thought about this for a moment, then nodded.  "You're
probably right.  All the more reason we need to stay with Chris,
then.  After him, any other guy would be excruciatingly boring."

Ami glanced over her with a lopsided grin.  "Oh, *yeah*, you can
say that again."  Then a sly smile slid onto her face.  "You
know, I wonder if *Chris* has more than the usual number of
anything we might be interested in..."

They looked over at each other and giggled, despite the gravity
of the moment.

                               * * *

Keiichi stood against the wall opposite the entrance of the
temple, trying not to fret.  Perhaps it was undue prejudice, but
he didn't entirely trust magic on this scale, divine or not.  And
having seen Belldandy remove her limiter as she took her position
in the great chalk diagram only added to it.

It was never a good sign when Belldandy removed her limiter.

And to be absolutely honest, Holy Bell and the other angels
weirded him out just a little.

*Okay,* he corrected himself.  *A lot.*

As the goddesses and their angels began to chant, flowing lines
and circles of deep, luminescent colors sprang to life on the
ancient wooden floor, racing along and replacing the carefully-
scribed chalk.  As they formed, something that was clearly
writing appeared, lacing though every centimeter of the complex
design.  He recognized the script from previous exposures but
could not read it.  The lettering seemed at once familiar and
strange, blending what seemed to be natural language, equations,
and even something that looked like programming code into a
seamless, living whole.  The lines and runes of glowing red, blue
and green pooled and ran across the floorboards as if carried
along by controlled but powerful currents of invisible water,
constantly in motion, never exactly the same from one moment to
the next.

The overall shape was, as usual, a circle.  Six smaller circles
were spaced equidistantly around its circumference; Urd,
Belldandy and Skuld each stood in one, forming an equilateral
triangle.  Glowing lines connected both the occupied and
unoccupied smaller circles to form a six-pointed star at whose
center was a seventh; in that seventh circle, Doug held a semi-
conscious Mara in his arms.

Keiichi's attention was almost entirely upon Belldandy, the other
participants barely registering on his peripheral senses.  Thus
it was that he was watching when Belldandy and Holy Bell, as one,
swept their arms forward and pointed directly at Doug.

                               * * *

*That's it,* I thought, resolutely ignoring just how creepy the
surprise double-decker effect the goddesses suddenly had going
was.  *Showtime.*

I dropped into magesight.  The spell construct sprang into
visibility around, above and below me, exactly reproducing the
rendered image from Skuld's computer as far as I could tell.
Already tiny pulses of lambent power were flowing along its
multitudinous paths and circuits, maintaining the structure and
energizing key nodes where most of the "initialization" took
place.

It might have been purely psychosomatic, but I began to feel
faint tingles along my skin, pulsing in time with the flows.

I quickly identified the node which acted as the "power input"
for the construct, and put a metaphorical "finger" on it so I
didn't have to search for it again.

I didn't have to search for the tether at all.  I was standing on
it.  In it.  Whatever.

Taking a deep breath, I nodded once to myself.

"System," I declared loudly enough for the computer to hear me
over the goddesses' song.  "'Supernova'.  Play!"

As the first notes played -- a low drone that sounded like a
church organ opening up on a hymn -- I felt the unmistakable rush
of my metatalent opening up and shaping itself to match the form
my subconscious had decided this song evoked.  In this case, it
was a metaphorical pipe, with me as an equally metaphorical
"valve" in the middle.  I fitted one end of the "pipe" to the
Tether, the other to the goddesses' construct... and as the
synth-drums entered the arrangement, I swung the valve to "full
on".

                               * * *

While Doug had been studiously careful in holding her, Mara was
distantly and somewhat absently pleased that despite their past
antagonisms he was as good as his word -- though vigilant, his
stance and grip was relaxed, with a gentleness she thought might
even be paternal.

Until he said "play."

She felt the change in him instantly.  Every muscle in his body
tensed.  No, not tensed -- became a steel cable stretched to its
breaking point.  His hold on her tightened reflexively, replacing
the gentleness with discomfort that verged on, but did not quite
reach, pain.  His entire body began to tremble.  And she wasn't
sure, but she thought perhaps his body temperature was rising.

As Doug's trembles began to turn into full-blown shakes, he
gritted his teeth.  "Oh, gods," he hissed between them before
abandoning all pretense of stoicism.  "This is gonna
HUUUUUURRRRRRRTTTTTT!"

                               * * *

Chris climbed back up the steps to the temple door as he slid
Urd's Sharpie through a temporary slit in his armor and back into
his pocket.  As he re-manifested the sword on his right hand, one
of Keferael's crows shot over the temple roof and dropped to a
perfect two-point landing on the railing next to him.

He eyed the bird.  "Okay, I'm ready.  You?"

The crow cawed and bobbed its head in an approximation of a nod.

Chris returned the nod.  "Well, then, we just have to wait
for..."

With a flare of shed power, the wards overloaded and collapsed.
A bare moment later, the gates exploded inward.

"...that."  He shook his head.  "I *knew* I should've taken the
time to put a lock on that gate."

Even as the possessed crow cawed its laughter, demons surged into
the temple grounds like a swollen river spilling through a
crumbling dam.  As he stood there on the temple steps, weapons at
the ready, Chris was amazed at their variety.  Most seemed human
or nearly so -- infiltrators into the mortal world, he assumed,
just like himself and his sisters.  Others were... less so.
Armor plates, tusks, claws, horns, wings, digitigrade legs --
these were only a few of the demonic features he spotted.  At
least their owners were vaguely humanoid in form; others didn't
even aspire to anything resembling human *or* animal.  Chris was
sure he had spotted a flowing blob of pustulent goo that wouldn't
have been out of place in a grade-Z 1950s sci-fi movie.

The demon vanguard spotted him almost immediately, and with a
bloodthirsty howl charged.

Only to slam face-first into the second ward that Chris and
Keferael had laid out around the temple building.

It was a remarkably solid impact, as though they'd run into an
invisible stone wall.  This surprised Chris; he'd thought the
ward would work more like an energy field than a solid object.
*Note to self:  pay more attention when Urd discusses ward
mechanics.*  After a moment, he mentally appended, *if I
survive.*

He slowly walked back down the temple steps and up to the edge of
the warded area.  In the rear of the crowd, he could already see
the wardcracker being slowly trundled through the shattered gates
by a band of demonic teamsters.  *Well, that's to be expected,*
he mused before deliberately turning his eyes to the front row of
demons, most of whom were rubbing bloody noses or bruised chins.
"Did that hurt?" Chris asked casually.  "It looked *real*
painful."

In the back of his mind, his other self chuckled.

The responses to that ranged from wordless growls to explicitly-
detailed anatomical impossibilities.  Chris ignored them all, and
continued.  "I'm sorry, guys, but my sisters are busy and can't
come out to play right now.  *None* of my sisters," he emphasized
with a scowl.  "So you'd best move on."

"Or what, asshole?" one particularly mouthy demon demanded.

Chris fixed him with a flat look for a moment.  *To hell with the
Doublet System.*  "Or *this*."  His right arm flicked out, and
the sword blade affixed to it passed through the ward as if it
weren't there.  The neck of the mouthy demon offered only a
little more resistance.

                               * * *

Careful to avoid attracting the attention of anyone, *especially*
his superiors in the Infernal hierarchy, Senbei slipped through
the shattered gate.  Using his tiny size and his black leather
garb to their best advantage, he alternately hid and ran across
the compound, ducking behind rocks and sliding through the
shadows beneath the engawa surrounding the house, until he came
to the temple proper.  Secreting himself in the rafters above the
temple's engawa, he settled in to wait.

                               * * *

    I take a step to what's real
    Or at least to what it is I'm chasing

                               * * *

It took me only a moment to realize that I had miscalculated --
*badly*.  For the second time in my life, I had made the kind of
mistake that beginners in node magic rarely make more than once.

Because the first time usually kills them.

The tether wasn't a fire hose.  It was a high-pressure main,
blasting its way toward a turbine that could power an entire
city.  It was a raging whitewater river that could smash a
fragile raft with a simple surge in the wrong direction.  It was
a jet powerful enough to slice through steel.

It was roaring through me, body and soul, completely out of
control from the moment I completed the circuit, carving its way
through me, threatening to rip the very fabric of my existence
into a million shreds of evaporating primal energies.

As the song kicked into gear and filled my ears, I did the only
thing I could.

I screamed.

                               * * *

As the goddesses' voices seemed to multiply, sounding first like
six singers, and then nine, and then more, Keiichi raised his
hand to shade his eyes.  Already Doug was glowing as brightly as
or even brighter than the magical designs on the floor.  *If he
gives off any more light, I won't be able to see anything,*
Keiichi thought with no small amount of worry.

Almost at the moment Keiichi finished that thought, Doug
screamed.  As panic seized Keiichi, the older man and the woman
he held were engulfed in a featureless pillar of white light so
brilliant it cast sharp dark shadows against the walls of the
temple.  At the same instant, six immense shafts of equally
brilliant, equally white light erupted from the pillar, lancing
out horizontally.  Three struck the goddesses, who seemed to
absorb their power.  Two struck the temple walls, apparently
without effect.

And one engulfed Keiichi in an ocean of blazing white.

*SON,* a Voice whispered in the blinding glare.

Keiichi recognized it.  "Kami-sama?" he murmured.

*SON.  YOU ARE REQUIRED.*

He suddenly found himself *much* closer to the action.

                               * * *

    Another step to reveal
    All the shadows that I keep embracing

                               * * *

Morisato Megumi sat cross-legged and scowling on the bed in her
dorm room.  In the distance, she could hear the ritual resonating
through the Symphony, and tried to ignore it.  Let them go ahead
and try to save that monster.  See if she cared.

White light exploded from the walls and swallowed her whole.

*DAUGHTER,* demanded a Voice in the Light.  *ATTEND.*

And then the room was empty.

                               * * *

He'd managed to kill another three demons before the closest
members of the horde shook off their surprise and threw up wards
of their own.

As soon as his blade had sparked off the new defense, Chris had
backed off to stand at the base of the temple steps.  He stood
there, scowling, and simply watched as a band of imps trundled
the bulky, primitive shape of the wardcracker across the temple
yard.  Behind him, Keferael launched itself into the air with a
caw and settled to roost on the ridge of the temple roof,
watching the action from above.

Chris wasn't sure what he had expected when Urd had first
mentioned the wardcracker, but it certainly hadn't been something
that looked like Leonardo da Vinci had put it together from
scraps he had lying around the workshop.  Large, he had pretty
much anticipated -- it was a siege engine, after all, and they
rarely came pocket-sized.  But stone and wood just didn't look
right, in his opinion.  He'd expected it to fit in with the
general Celestial and Infernal aesthetic that he'd grown used to
over the past few months; if it had looked like a Cadillac-sized
1950s canister vacuum as designed by a 1930s version of Peter
Max, he wouldn't have given it a second thought.  But something
that didn't look much more advanced than the battering ram that
was its mundane equivalent -- no, not what he'd envisioned at
all.

Absently, he rubbed around his right eye and suppressed a curse.
He felt a headache coming on.  He hadn't had a headache -- or any
other kind of illness, for that matter -- since getting this god
gig.  *Freakin' hell.  Figures *now* of all times I'd get my
first headache.  And it's a *big* one... yow.*  He swayed
suddenly as a wave of dizziness washed over him with a spike in
the pain so bad his vision doubled.  Only a clumsy grab for the
temple railing kept him from falling over.  "I do *not* need this
right now!" he growled as he strained both to hold himself
upright and to ignore the roar of demonic enthusiasm his sudden
weakness precipitated.

                               * * *

There is a phenomenon, known to those who study the way matter
functions on the atomic and molecular levels, called "self-
assembly".  To put it simply, pile all the right parts in the
same place, provide a jolt of energy or some other trigger, and
those parts will naturally fall together and build a far more
complex structure.

What few know is that while self-assembly is not seen on the
human scale, it is by no means *limited* to the nanoscale.

                               * * *

    Failure forgets to fascinate
    This light inside will resonate

                               * * *

Chris shook his head to clear it, and then immediately regretted
it.  The headache wasn't going away, and the effect of the
wardcracker at this close range -- the pulses of raw magic paired
with nearly subsonic thuds that hit his chest like the shock of a
flash-bang fireworks shell -- was just pumping it up into
something he thought might be a full migraine, given the
unpleasant, foreboding sensations that were welling up in his
stomach and the back of his throat.

The dizziness had only grown as well, and even his other self
seemed close to panic -- when (not if, but *when*) the ward fell,
he'd be completely unable to fight.  The horde of demons out
there would roll right over him like a horned and fanged
bulldozer.  It was all he could do to focus all his attention on
the rapidly-fraying circle of warding which was the only thing
that held out every demon that made their home in the greater
Kanto area.

Thus it was that he had no warning when the immense shaft of
light struck him from behind with an almost physical blow.

He nearly exploded in rage when he was submerged in the blaze,
until he felt the Presence.

*GUARDIAN.*

"Boss?" Chris whispered.

*YOU ARE SUMMONED.*

"Um, Boss?  Since you've got that whole omniscience thing going
on, I assume you can *see* the horde of great nasty demons out
there?"

*YOU ARE SUMMONED.*

"If I leave, they come in here and do things I don't even want to
think about to everyone and everything I love.  I'm sorry Boss, I
*can't*.  Now, if you were to send some help, sure."

*If you need help, you only need to ask,* whispered the voice of
his Full Manifestation.

"Ooookay.  Help?  Please?"

*Not without, within.  You must aid yourself.*

"Okay, we've gone Zen, here.  What?"  Chris closed his eyes.  He
could feel the headache trying to crowd everything else out.

*Send out your cry for help, open your eyes, and *see*.*

"HELP!" Chris screamed, and opened his eyes.

And Saw.

                               * * *

He stared out into what seemed to be a universe of stars, and he
could see that each point of light was not a star, but another
self.  Some familiar, some strange, some utterly alien, he could
see each and every one, and could feel a link from himself to
them, and from them to each other, forming a web of connections
of unending complexity.  And through that link, he could see the
transcendent selves of other gods -- his sisters, his friends,
his enemies -- all stretching out across a myriad of universes,
worlds without end arrayed like pages in some great book.  He
felt himself grow into those worlds and more -- and in the
process finding echoes of *himself* in each one.

As he watched, he could see his cry for help spread out among his
selves, and from each, either an eager "Yes!" or a regretful
"No."  From each that said "yes", he felt a sort of mental hand
being stretched forth, and he reached for them all.

He pulled.

And in that moment

Paradox

Self-Assembled.

                               * * *

    And shame dissipates with open eyes
    Refreshing fate I can't describe

                               * * *

 From untold numbers of universes they came, the parts of him who
had never been part of him before.  They came, and assembled
themselves with him.  Not *to* him, but *with* him.

And from his others, his selves, he heard a myriad explanations.
"They are all but puppets."  "The overmind is part of all their
aspects."  "But separate."  "We are all separate."  "But linked."
"We have no overmind."  "We have only the summation of the
parts."  "Different."  "Not worse."  "Not better."

And though he remained similar in nature, his potential, his
actuality, became something else, something greater -- a unity
formed from their uncounted voices that transcended the worlds
into which they had been born.

And first among these equals was the one who had called them,
Christopher James Angel, the god of Moments, the Lord of Paradox:
he who only was himself when he was an infinity of others.  And
as each voice joined the chorus, the composite Being they formed
grew into dimensions beyond the three physical and one temporal
to which they were accustomed, twisting and warping through
space-time, rising to higher dimensionality after higher
dimensionality, expanding, growing, unfolding.

Becoming.

Until the last of their parts joined them.

And They reached the Top.

                               * * *

"Greetings, youngling!"  "Well, hello there!"  "Hey, who's the
new guy?"  The chorus of ... well, "voices" was the closest
analogue he had in his experiences, but they weren't voices, not
really, nor were they *not* voices, nor were they "speaking" in
any language he recognized even as he understood it...  The
chorus of greetings and hails and expressions of surprise was
almost overwhelming.  As was the "place" in which he found
himself.  Himselves.  Themself.

Blast.  It was obvious, wasn't it?  At least to all of him at
once.

But he/they/it didn't have the luxury to explore the experience
right now.

He held up something that he thought of as a hand although it had
far too many physical dimensions and not enough physicality.
"Sorry, can't talk now, in a hurry.  Family emergency.  Later, I
promise."  Then, acting entirely on instinct, he gathered
himselves together and sent them back out to the world/line/point
from which the "I" who seemed to be in control of their vast,
consolidated self had originally come.

There was a crushing, wrenching, *tearing* sensation, and then he
was back in front of the temple.

Chris opened his eyes, and could see the demonic army, frozen in
one of his time stops.  And around himself, a legion.

Of himself.

Chris looked about at all the figures who surrounded him, who
filled the yard around the temple from its porch to the edge of
the fallen wards.  To his momentary shock and surprise he
recognized them.

They were *him*.  There -- there by the ward cracker was the
gleaming form he'd dreamed of wearing in MegaTokyo.  Over there
perched on the engawa, holding a spear that repulsed him, was
Kristas Two-Souls.  Uneasily beside him, a Namekian variant of
himself stood, his antenna twitching as his form grew steadily
radiant with power.  Kneeling in the yard, a miniature parody of
himself, bouncing a small spherical bomb, cartoonish yet ominous-
looking, in his hand.  In the rear, towering over the others,
was that an *Autobot*?  Even the AI Paradox of the Matrix, his
form seeming to flicker with green scan lines every second or so.
All the versions of himself he had dreamed himself being, night
after night, month after month, all of them and more.

And he knew the names and abilities of each one.

As did they.

"Well," he began, and swallowed.  "You... we... *I* know what to
do."

Wavelets of nods rippled across the crowd.

"Well, then...  let's do it," he said briskly, and dropped the
timestop as he finally let Kami-sama's summons carry him away.

                               * * *

Chris' cry for help drove its way through the heavy wooden doors
of the temple, and the two mortal women in his life -- already on
their feet in response to Doug's own scream -- sprang as one to
answer.  But before they and the four "honor guards" could do
more than turn toward the entrance, they were engulfed in a
brilliant white light that filled the ancient temple to the brim
and more.

Mirroring each other, Ami and Rachel turned back and looked into
the blaze.

The light was at once both blinding and transparent as crystal,
painful in its intensity even as it carried with it a
transcendent peace that stilled their panicked motion and bade
them watch in silence.

And so they did, holding their wonder and fear in their hearts
as they observed.

Where once the three goddesses had been the only figures at the
edge of the circle of blazing power there were now six -- three
others had joined the ritual, occupying the lesser circles that
had lain empty between the goddesses.  On the far side of the
great circle from Belldandy Keiichi now hovered, his arms spread
and his face painted with a mixture of surprise, concern and
determination.  Winglike streamers of white energy stretched from
his shoulders, reaching just far enough to touch the pinions of
Urd and Skuld's angels.

Opposite Skuld, Megumi similarly floated, her features twisted in
anger and outrage.  Like her brother, she too seemed to bear
wings of energy, but hers were less bright than Keiichi's,
faintly grey in the face of his white.  Like his, her "wings"
stretched to touch the wingtips of Belldandy and Urd's angels.

And instead of being outside defending the temple, Chris now hung
in the air facing Urd, with head back, eyes closed, arms hanging
limply at his sides -- and huge rust-colored wings stretching out
to either side from his shoulders, their tips just brushing Skuld
and Belldandy's wings.

Ami gasped at the sight, then sighed.  "Oooh.  I want a pair of
wings.  Think we'll get some?"

Rachel shivered at the thought and tore her eyes away to glance
at Ami. "If Keiichi qualifies..."

Ami gave a delicate, ladylike snort.  "Keiichi, nothing!  If
*Megumi* qualifies..."

For a moment they grinned at each other.  Then, through the doors
behind them came a sudden roar of voices.  Before Rachel and Ami
could respond to it, Chris's four friends barreled past and threw
them open to reveal two armies surging toward each other.  In the
instant before Hiroshi and Louis slammed them shut again, the
girls got a good look at the closest combatants.  A glance shared
between them as the slamming door echoed through the temple
confirmed what both had thought they'd seen -- most of the non-
demons near the door had borne a resemblance of some sort to
Chris.

"You think...?" Ami began.

"I'm not even going to *try*," Rachel murmured before they turned
their attention back to the center of the temple.  In the exact
center of that paradoxically blinding and transparent dome of
light, they could make out the forms of Doug and Mara, floating
free and unfettered by gravity, slowly orbiting each other.  Twin
streamers of even more brilliant white energy connected their
eyes, and a third joined them at the breastbone -- right over
their hearts.

Unconsciously, Rachel and Ami stepped closer together until they
were shoulder-to-shoulder; almost automatically their hands slid
into a firm grasp.

                               * * *

    This time it feels like I've been
    Touched by a Supernova

                               * * *

No, Keiichi reflected, he *didn't* entirely trust magic on this
scale, divine or not.  Not at all.  And his sudden transportation
into one of the previously unoccupied minor circles along the
edge of the greater design did nothing to dissuade him of this
opinion.

He was about to cry out in protest at his involuntary inclusion
in the ritual when his vision flared white and the mix of magical
tones and the battle outside the temple faded away.  There was a
moment of blissful silence and white oblivion.

Then, with no sensation of movement at all, Keiichi found himself
seated in a comfortable leather armchair in front of a large,
Western-style fireplace.  He blinked, then looked about himself.
To his right was a second armchair identical, as far as he could
tell, to the one in which he was seated.  Between them was a
small table with an antique-styled electric lamp (lit and casting
a pool of warm yellow light around the chairs) and a silver tray
on which stood a crystal decanter of some amber liquid with two
glasses.  Craning his neck, he could make out walls lined with
bookshelves filled to overflowing.  A library?  How...

The sound of a door opening directly behind him catapulted him
from his seat.  He spun in place, not sure what he could do if it
were someone coming to harm him, but determined to face whatever
danger it was head on.

The figure coming through the door looked at him with the eye not
covered by the patch and nodded approvingly.  "Oh, sit down, son.
Your battle-readiness does you honor, but there is no threat to
you here in my study."

Keiichi instantly recognized him -- if the grey beard and hair
and the stocky muscular form hadn't done it, the eye-patch would
have.  He wasn't in battle-stained leather armor this time,
though; instead he wore a long red satin dressing gown over a
white open-necked shirt and grey trousers, and his hair and beard
had been neatly groomed.  As he stepped around the chairs to take
his seat, Keiichi realized he was wearing red velvet slippers,
too.

"K-kami-sama!" he stammered.

"Yes, and you're Keiichi Morisato," Kami-sama replied as he
unstopped the decanter and poured a measured amount of the liquid
within into each of the glasses.  "Now that we have that
straightened out, do sit down.  We have much to discuss, you and
I."  He held out one of the glasses to Keiichi.  "Brandy?"

                               * * *

    Inside, the Hand that touches hearts
    Is touching mine

                               * * *

Megumi hadn't quite finished blinking in surprise when she
realized that she was no longer on her bed -- or, for that
matter, in her room.  Shock replaced her anger as she took in her
surroundings.  The sturdy, functional chair in which she sat was
the first thing to register.  The large, Danish-modern desk in
front of her, made of some light-colored wood, was the next
thing, along with the big, comfortable-looking velvet swivel
chair behind it.  A computer terminal of unfamiliar design sat at
one end of the desk, and a gumball machine (of all things) rested
on the other.  There was nothing else on its surface -- no
blotter, pens, pencils, calendar, anything.

Her eyes flicked next to the famous "big blue marble" photo of
Earth taken from space decades earlier, framed and hanging on the
wall behind the desk.  The wall was white -- all the walls were
white.  As Megumi began to estimate the size of room at perhaps
twenty meters by twenty meters, a doorknob rattled directly
behind her.

She leaped from her seat and spun to see -- nothing.  There was a
door -- large, made of a darkly-stained wood at odds with the
blankly-painted walls, with a fancy gold handle -- but the only
sound she could now hear was the susurration of the air
conditioning, and the door resolutely remained closed.  When
after several seconds this showed no signs of changing, she
turned back to sit down again -- and stifled a shriek when she
found a man had somehow seated himself behind the desk while her
back had been turned.

Although he had a huge grey beard and long grey hair that flowed
into it, and a craggy face seamed with lines and wrinkles,
somehow he didn't seem elderly to her.  And while the black patch
that covered one of his eyes raised a little revulsion from the
bit of Shinto she still harbored within her, it seemed to Megumi
that he was anything but hampered by it; instead, the sharpness
of his remaining eye, the way its gaze skewered her, whimpering
slightly, to her chair, suggested quite the opposite.  And he was
built more like an athlete -- a weightlifter, maybe, or a rugby
player -- than any elderly man she'd ever met before.

On top of that, he was wearing scarred and stained leather
clothing that looked like nothing so much as armor.  Megumi
couldn't help feel more than a little terrified in his presence.
She glanced about nervously, looking to see if he had a sword to
go with it.

"Good morning, Miss Morisato," he intoned in a deep, resonant
voice that made her want to relax and trust him, but she remained
on her guard.  "I've been meaning to have this little chat with
you for a few weeks, but I haven't been able to work it into my
schedule before now.  However, a fortunate coincidence this
morning has given me the opportunity to speak with you."

Megumi's eyes grew wide at this and she shrank back into her
chair.  "Where am I and who are you?  And why did you want to
talk to *me*?"

"Ah," he said, and smiled for the first time.  Megumi couldn't
help herself -- all the tension drained out of her, and she felt
comfortable and relaxed for the first time since being stolen
from her dorm room.  "My apologies, Miss Morisato.  I should have
introduced myself, as we will be related someday, in a manner of
speaking."

"Related?" Megumi asked.

"Oh, yes!" he replied with a chuckle.  "I am Belldandy's father,
and I will eventually be your brother's father-in-law."  He
smiled again, which took the edge of terror off of her
realization of his identity.  "I am also essentially the CEO of
the organization into which you convinced my other daughter,
Skuld, to induct you."

"CEO...?"

"I'm your new *boss*, Megumi.  And this is your employee
orientation.  Welcome to the family business."

                               * * *

Of all the places a summons from Kami-sama might have brought
him, a dirt path in a forest was the last one that might have
occurred to him, Chris reflected idly as he carefully surveyed
his surroundings.  Pine forest, old growth, the trees almost
primeval in their size and age; heavy undergrowth everywhere but
the narrow trail, little more than a line of bare earth, on
which he had found himself.  He was, he absently noted, no longer
in armor, but still retained the other characteristics (as far as
he could tell) of his Full Manifestation.

He was also quite alone.

"Okay, Boss, I'm hoping there's a good reason for this," Chris
declared to the empty air, "because I don't like leaving the
girls undefended with an army of demons screaming for blood
outside the temple door."

"I assure you, son, there is," came a familiar voice from behind
him.  Chris whirled in place, automatically willing his armor and
weapons into being, to find Kami-sama in his Odin aspect standing
where seconds before he *knew* no one had been.

Chris banished his battle gear back to wherever it dwelt when he
didn't need it and, disgruntled, muttered, "Still with the mind
games, Boss?"

"And rest assured that your numerous other selves have matters
at the temple well in hand."

Chris narrowed his eyes, but almost instantly realized that the
Being before him was correct; it was, after all, the reason he
had followed his instincts and called them all to the temple.
For the moment, at least, one less fighter would not make a
critical difference.

"All right," he said slowly.  "What's this all about, then?"

Kami-sama smiled, a slight and indulgent upturn at one corner of
his mouth, then inclined his head toward the path before them.
"Walk with me, Christopher."

                               * * *

    As I find my tears are all
    Consumed by the Supernova

                               * * *

Urd blinked several times then rubbed her eyes as she tried to
adjust to the new light level.  "Bell...?" she murmured before
her sight fully cleared.

"I'm here, Urd," Belldandy replied from somewhere to her right.

"Me, too," Skuld said from her left.  "What happened?" she asked
plaintively.

Urd's vision finally defogged at that moment, and after a quick
glance, she wished it hadn't.  "Oh, *crap*."

"What?" Skuld demanded.

The eldest Norn gazed around at the open space in which the three
had unexpectedly found themselves, and the structures that ringed
it.  *Familiar* structures.  "Father *knows*," she said simply.

Belldandy and Skuld paled.  "Surely you must be mistaken," Bell
whispered.

"I wish I were," Urd murmured.  "And don't call me Shirley."

Despite the seriousness of the moment, Skuld rolled her eyes.

A flash of worry crossed Belldandy's face, but then her
expression grew determined, and she squared her shoulders.  "In
that case, we will find Father and speak with him of our
actions."

"No need," came a deep, male voice, and Kami-sama seemed to step
out of the shimmering light.  "I am here."

                               * * *

As the pain reached a crescendo, my vision blanked out in a sheet
of blinding white light.

Why is it these things always go for for the cliched white-out or
blackout?  Why can't I get a gentle cross-fade, or maybe a bold
wipe with a bit of an optical effect -- or even better, a classic
"dotted line racing across a map" -- when I have to make a
transition between levels of awareness or states of
consciousness?  It'd be a whole lot classier, and a lot more
artistic.

Even better would be an iris out as I stuttered "Th-th-th-that's
all, folks!" in a classically porcine style.

But no, it's always a fast transition to simple black or blinding
white.

Feh.  Amateurs.

Well, at least the pain had stopped.  Of course, that was
probably because I was out of my body now (as opposed to out of
my mind, which I've noticed almost never stops the pain).
Despite that, I felt surprisingly corporeal; although I couldn't
actually see myself, I gave my chest a quick thump just to check,
and yeah.  Not just astral.  Ectoplasm, maybe?  Who knew?

So I'm standing there, and in a few seconds the blinding white
dials down a few stops.  It lets up just enough that I can start
to see *gradations* of blinding white, kind of like photographic
negatives of silhouettes, here and there, suggesting that I was
in an actual *place* of some sort, as opposed to a mental
construct.

Very interesting.

I was just starting to shade my eyes and squint to make out just
what those shapes *were* when I heard it.

"Douglas Quincy Sangnoir."

A small still voice.  I nodded to myself.  "Of course.  This
whole thing was a setup from the start.  Why am I not surprised?"

                               * * *

    This time the Hope that lights the world
    Is in my eyes

                               * * *

Watching people drink brandy in movies had not prepared Keiichi
for the real thing.  He managed not to react badly, but unlike
the subtle wine-like taste he was expecting, the amber beverage
was powerfully flavored and far stronger than the sake with which
he was familiar.  At least he knew from those films to merely sip
it; if he had taken a full mouthful -- or worse, gulped it down --
he wasn't sure he could have avoided spitting it out in surprise.
As it was he knew enough to consume it slowly and in small
amounts, and that helped make it a bit more palatable.

Across the tiny table, Kami-sama savored his own glass for
several minutes before holding it up and swirling its contents
gently while apparently studying the fire through it.  Keiichi
watched him nervously as he took another tiny sip.

"You're wondering why I called you here," Kami-sama suddenly said
without preamble, "given the... event you were part of when I
did."

Keiichi nearly dropped his glass.  "You know, what... what we
were doing?"

Kami-sama barked a short, merry laugh.  "Son, my job is *all
about* knowing what's going on."  Still smiling, he took another
sip of his brandy, then added, "And sometimes helping others
figure it out as well."

Despite their friendly tone, something about that suddenly set
Keiichi to worrying.  "Really?" he breathed, not trusting himself
to speak at a normal volume.

"Certainly," Kami-sama replied, once again holding his brandy up
to the fire and studying the flames through it.  "There aren't as
many frost giants around as there used to be, after all.  I've
got to have *something* to do with my time."

"Um..." was all Keiichi could think to say.

"So... having gotten that out of the way..."  Kami-sama turned in
his seat to look directly at him.  "Let us talk about you... and
Mara."

                               * * *

Megumi desperately wished she had a notebook, or a pad, or
*something* on which she could have jotted notes.  Kami-sama's
introduction had started simply, but had quickly escalated to a
*very* detailed examination of Heaven's operations, supported by
a Powerpoint presentation that Megumi was pretty sure was
displaying in more than the three dimensions in which she could
see it.

At the end of it all, Kami-sama caught her eyes with his and
asked, "I trust you now have a better idea of your position
within our organization, and your role in our day-to-day
operations?"

Outside, Megumi nodded enthusiastically.  Inside she was
frantically shaking her head "no!" and wondering if she could
get a copy of his notes.

"Very good," Kami-sama said as he shut down the Powerpoint
display, which vanished into the thin air out of which it had
first appeared.  As the lights in the office came back up to a
comfortable level, he settled himself back into his seat.  "Now,
there's just one more thing before we're finished here."

"There is?" Megumi squeaked.

He smiled, a fatherly smile that should have made her feel like
all was well with the universe and her place in it.  Why it
didn't, she had no idea.

She was afraid she was about to find out, though.

"We need to speak about you and Mara," Kami-sama said.

And there it was.

"Let's start with your mutual history," he continued, leaning
back with a faint squeak from the pivots and springs of his
chair.

Megumi took a deep breath, and told him.

                               * * *

    There's a piece of my mind
    That tries to fathom the stars

                               * * *

"I suppose I should start by offering you an apology,
Christopher," Kami-sama said softly as they made they way along
the path.

"An apology?  For what?" Chris asked absently.  The path, barely
a deer-run where Chris had entered this... world?  Space?  Place?
He mentally shrugged.  The path had been barely visible to start
with, but almost as soon as the two of them began to follow it,
it had become a broad strip of packed white sand, wide enough for
the two of them to walk side-by-side in full armor.

Kami-sama caught his eye and raised a brow.  "For what?  Well,
I'm sure you're feeling a little... different now."

"Oh," Chris murmured.  "That."

"Yes," Kami-sama said with a paternal chuckle.  "That."

Chris stopped walking, and Kami-sama halted with him.  "So.  I'd
suspected since that first meeting in your office that there was
something more to me becoming a god than anyone was letting on."
He waved a hand in a vague, expansive, inclusive gesture.  "All
this kind of proved it for me."

Kami-sama nodded.  "You have to understand, son, we were in a bit
of a hurry.  We needed someone with certain... qualities..."

"Like a huge number of analogues in parallel universes?" Chris
interrupted with a good-humored smirk.

"Just so," Kami-sama replied with another nod.  "Among other
things.  And you fit the bill."

Chris frowned.  "Did I ever really deserve a wish, or was it all
a setup?"

Kami-sama clapped him on the shoulder.  "You did indeed, son.
You were already in the pipeline for a wish -- have no doubts
about that.  We just... advanced your priority a little."  He
smiled gently.  "If you doubt me, ask Belldandy.  It was her
Overself who moved you to the head of the wish queue."

"And the wish I made?" Chris pressed.

"Entirely your own."  Kami-sama let go of his shoulder and turned
to continue down the path.  "Although we *were* prepared to...
'creatively misinterpret' any wish you made to get the result we
needed, you made the perfect wish -- for both you *and* us --
entirely on your own."  He paused after a step and looked back to
Chris.  "And believe me when I say that Heaven is in your debt
for that."  He started trudging down the path once more.

Chris considered that for a moment as he followed.

                               * * *

"Hello, girls," Kami-sama said.

"Father," they replied almost in unison -- Belldandy with her
head bowed over folded hands, Urd with eyes half-lidded in
suspicion, and Skuld digging one toe into the ground and guiltily
looking away.

He gestured, and four chairs -- great, heavy throne-like affairs
made of rough-hewn logs notched and planed and fitted together
as though by a careless giant -- appeared in a circle.  "Come.
Sit.  And let us speak of why you have chosen to go ahead with a
redemption which I declined to perform."

The three goddesses glanced among themselves for a moment before
Belldandy straightened her back, lifted her chin, and seated
herself demurely in the chair closest to her.  Demurely, but not
subserviently, for all that she was facing Kami-sama.

"Right," Urd said to herself, and took the seat to Belldandy's
left.  It would have surprised Keiichi to see her not in her
usual slouch, but ramrod-straight.

And almost before she was seated, Skuld scrambled into the chair
to Belldandy's right, imitating her sisters' postures without a
thought, completing the wall of loving defiance facing Kami-sama.

"Well?" Kami-sama asked as he took the remaining seat.

Belldandy tilted her head inquisitively.  "Why, should we have
not?"

Urd almost chuckled at the audacity.  Her little sister's sweet
homemaker image was not *all* she was, though she rarely showed
the other sides of herself.  But she was Aesir, a warrior even
if she wore a house dress and carried a casserole.  And she was a
Norn.

As were they all.

And despite the fact that all three of them called him "Father"
and regarded him with loving deference, even Kami-sama himself
was subject to them in the end, for not even the greatest of the
gods was above the turnings of Fate.

*Though some things are beyond even us,* Urd thought sourly.
*Isn't that why we're here in the first place?  If we could have
averted Mara's fall from grace by simple fiat...*  Then she shook
herself and returned her attention to the now and their
confrontation with Kami-sama.

"Should you not have...?" he finally asked.  "I forbade..."

"Umm, actually," Urd interjected raising a finger.  "You didn't
really forbid *anything*.  You simply told us you wouldn't redeem
Mara.  You never said we couldn't try to do so by ourselves."

When Kami-sama smiled in response, Urd began to worry that
perhaps she shouldn't have said anything.

                               * * *

"Douglas Quincy Sangnoir."

A small still voice.  I nodded to myself.  "Of course.  This
whole thing was a setup from the start.  Why am I not surprised?"

"Why do you do this?"

"Do what?"  I clamped down on my sudden, surging anger over being
manipulated -- again, dammit! -- at the unexpected question.
Instead, I forced myself to study the white and near-white shapes
surrounding me, in the hope of getting a clue to where I was.

"You hate gods," the quiet voice whispered into my ear, "and you
loathe demons.  Yet you stood in the circle with a demon in your
arms, playing a part in a ritual to Redeem her.  Why do you
bother?  For another boast?  Another glory to drape yourself
with?  Sangnoir the God-slayer is now Sangnoir the God-saver?
Just a bit more proof that you're morally superior?"

I rolled my eyes.  "God-slayer".  Sure.  One punch at the end of
a long battle and I'm a figure of fucking legend.  Well, since it
frightened the rubes I'd gladly use the title I'd been given, but
it dismissed the entire rest of the Warriors and *their*
contributions to the fight.  Which was, frankly, all of the real
work -- I'd whiffed on every attack but that last one.  "You
don't have a clue, do you?" I sneered, offended that this inhuman
*thing* was trying to claim the moral and ethical high ground
over me.

The voice declined to respond.  Not that I was surprised.  Well,
then, that just meant it was time to cut loose a little.

I turned slowly in place, looking but not expecting to find the
source of that little voice.  "She's dying.  Like I have to tell
you that," I said, letting a little snarl creep into my voice.
"And she wants to go home to die, but You. Won't. Let. Her.
Well, screw that!" I shouted to the empty air.

"I don't care what she's done, I don't even care whether she's
sorry for it or not now."  The fact that I didn't have a focus
for my anger just made me angrier.  "All that matters to me is
that she just wants one last view of her home before she, before
she evanesces, and dammit, if I can help her I will."

And then I closed my eyes and forced myself to calm down.
"Because even if *I* won't ever get home, at least I can make
sure *she* will," I said much more quietly.  "Because no one
deserves to die alone and unloved, far away from home.  Even a
demon has that right, dammit.  Even a demon!  And if you deny her
that, then you are a Being of consummate cruelty and evil,
greater so than the demons you allegedly oppose, and unworthy of
the devotion mortals offer you."  I opened my eyes again, my lips
set in a snarl at my invisible interlocutor.  "And against such
as you I have long ago sworn eternal war."

                               * * *

    Or to contemplate the divine.
    Don't need to look very far.

                               * * *

Although Keiichi was certain that Kami-sama knew everything about
his run-ins with Mara already -- he was Kami-sama, how could he
not? -- he duly recounted everything he could recall.  Between
carefully measured sips of brandy, he glanced over at Belldandy's
father to see him nodding appreciatively at each story or
anecdote.

Finally, after what seemed like hours, he was done, and Kami-sama
nodded slowly.  "She has... inconvenienced you, has she not?" he
asked.

Keiichi couldn't help laughing, and somehow the sound of it
echoing in the room with the crackling of the fire did not seem
as disrespectful as he had feared it might.  "I guess you could
say that, sir.  She scared the hell out of me the first few times
we ran into her, but you know, after a while, she became just one
of those things."

One grizzled, grey eyebrow lifted.  "Just... one of those
things?"

Keiichi chuckled nervously and rubbed the back of his neck.
"Well, life with Bell-chan -- and Urd, and Skuld, and Chris -- is
never dull.  There's always *something* supernatural showing up
and making a mess of things.  After a while, I just stopped
worrying about *what* kind of thing it would be, and just...
dealt with it as it happened, you know?"

"So even if Mara has been deliberately targeting you, or
Belldandy..."

"Or anyone else."

Kami-sama acknowledged that with a nod of his head.  "Or anyone
else, out of malice?"

Keiichi shrugged.  "After the fifth curse and the tenth
transformation, it's hard to get worked up over the *why*.  You
just find the fix and get on with your day."  He tilted his
head and considered a moment.  "Besides, isn't it in the nature
of a demon to act like that?  Why should I get upset over it?
It'd be like getting angry at a bee for stinging."

"So you bear no ill-will toward Mara despite all she's done to
you and yours," Kami-sama said, taking another sip from his own
brandy.

"None," Keiichi replied.   "'Hate the sin, not the sinner.'
Isn't that what the Christians say?"

Kami-sama studied the fire through his brandy snifter again.
"Some do, son.  Some do."

                               * * *

It was the first time she had ever let it out -- all the horror,
all the fear, all the confusion and self-doubt and self-loathing
that Mara's multiple violations had planted in her.  All the
terror and hatred that had blossomed when she'd discovered it
had all been real and not the fevered imaginings of a diseased
mind.

It all spilled out of her in a torrent of words and emotions that
blurred together until Megumi found herself doing nothing more
than howling wordless tears into Kami-sama's shoulder as he held
her and gently rocked her back and forth.  "There, there, child,"
he murmured as the stained and scarred leather against which she
rested grew wet beneath her cheek.

Finally, the tears dwindled away, and she lay there, sniffling,
against the dampened leather.  "Mara has sorely tormented you,"
Kami-sama said softly as he pressed into her hand a silk
handkerchief completely at odds with the scarred and stained
leather armor he wore.

Megumi didn't notice the incongruity as she wiped her eyes and
nose.  "Uh-huh," she hiccuped around the brilliantly white cloth.

"Mara stole your body, your identity, your very substance from
you."

"Yeah," Megumi whispered.

Kami-sama stroked her hair.  "She transformed you into an
inanimate object, for what you feared was forever, taking from
you your very humanity."

"Yes," she moaned into his shoulder, and the leather scraped
against the skin of her cheek and nose.

"All terrible crimes," Kami-sama agreed, "made more so by the
abuse of power by one who had so much more of it than you.  For
these acts by themselves she surely deserves punishment.  But is
that all?"

Megumi lifted her face from where she had buried it against his
leather armor and looked into Kami-sama's eyes.  She wasn't
certain what she had expected to see from this close, but all she
could think of were her own father's eyes.  Kami-sama had her
father's eyes.  "What?" she asked in confusion.

Kami-sama smiled again, a small, paternal smile quite unlike the
broad grin with which he had welcomed her.  "Has she not sinned
against you in other ways?" he prompted.

"In other ways?" she repeated, and wracked her brains.  Had she
forgotten an encounter with Mara because it was so terrible, so
horrifying, that she had buried it deep in her mind, never to be
remembered?

No...  somehow she knew that in this place, at this time, there
was nothing hidden from her that she should know.  And she had
forgotten none of her dealings with the demon Mara.

But if that were the case, then...

Megumi frowned as she sifted through her thoughts and memories,
seeking out what should have been obvious but wasn't.  Until,
finally...

She lifted her eyes again to meet Kami-sama's.  "Yes," she said
softly.  "She has."

                               * * *

    When You bring me
    The reasons just to believe

                               * * *
							
When Doug screamed, when it all went white, Mara knew that they
must have failed.  She wondered how much longer she had left
before the ritual, running wild, finished burning through the
mortal who held her and turned its out-of-control energies on
her.

She wondered how badly it would hurt, then dismissed the thought.
It could not possibly hurt worse than her Fall.

Realizing this, she closed her eyes, drew a deep breath, and
braced herself for the end -- the Final end that came so rarely
to god or demon.

She was still holding that breath with her eyes closed almost a
minute later when she noticed Doug was no longer holding her.
The grip had changed, and where there had been cool, slick
leather under her shoulders and knees, there was now bunched
cloth, smooth to the touch.

She opened her eyes and found herself gazing into a kindly face
she hadn't seen in millennia.

"Father!" she gasped.

Then she burst into tears and buried her face into his shoulder.

                               * * *

In a matter of moments, the glare from the circle had grown too
bright to even glance toward; it flooded the temple with light,
banishing every shadow and every dark space between the rafters
and around the tops of the columns, so bright that the colors of
their clothing began to wash out.

Ami and Rachel clutched at each other, burying their faces in
each other's hair away from the terrible light.  They dropped to
their knees and held each other upright as the floor beneath them
began to hum and then vibrate in tune with a low, powerful rumble
that seemed to originate from the circle before them.  Within
moments, the vibration had turned into outright shaking, and they
struggled to remain upright as the floor beneath them bucked and
rippled like an earthquake.

"What's happening?" Rachel shrieked, and Ami dared look into that
overwhelming light again, in time to see seven pillars of pure
white energy erupt from it, lancing skyward through the ancient
wooden ceiling.

                               * * *

Outside, in the temple yard, the battle froze for a moment when
seven great pillars of light exploded up and out of the temple.
But with them came a surge of energy, a second wind that
invigorated the endless variety of the defenders, and the battle
was immediately re-engaged.

                               * * *

    You bring me answers
    I can't conceive.

                              * * *

"Tell me, Christopher," Kami-sama said as they continued on
through the woods, "what are your thoughts about Mara?"  The
path, for all its width, had grown twisty and seemed to vanish
completely into the forest not far ahead or behind them.  Knowing
Kami-sama, Chris half-suspected that the small segment of visible
path just might be all there really was to it.

He frowned as the Boss's comment worked its way past his
preoccupation.  "Mara?"

Kami-sama nodded and made an affirmative noise.  "You're at a
critical juncture here, son, being asked to accept an enemy into
your family.  Are you really willing to take on another sister?
Another responsibility?"  He glanced sidelong at Chris, his one
eye half-lidded in critical contemplation.  "The two of you have
been at each other's throats since the day you first met, after
all."

"Don't remind me," Chris muttered, and Kami-sama laughed.

"Yes, that's well-worn ground we needn't go over again.  But the
question still stands -- can you abandon your anger at her, your
history with her, so you that can protect her like you do Urd,
Belldandy and Skuld?"  He stopped and turned to Chris, who had
automatically stopped with him.  "Are you willing to take on a
contract, just as you have with them, and embrace her as a sister
despite her demonic history?"

Chris stared at him, unbelieving, as around them the sounds of
the forest seemed to swell.  "Boss, in case you haven't noticed,
I already *have*."

Kami-sama's lip quirked upwards into the faintest of smiles.
"Indeed?"  He clapped Chris on the shoulder.  "Ah, good, good."
Turning back to the path he began walking again.  "Come along,
son."

Chris frowned for a moment, trying to figure out just what had
passed between them, before sprinting after him.

                               * * *

There was a long, long moment of silence, during which I began
to wonder if I had just condemned myself.  *Good-bye, Maggie,* I
started to think.  *I did my best to get back to you.  And Mara,
I'm sorry for failing you.*

Then the small, still voice spoke again.

"Not hubris or pride, then.  Compassion.  Empathy."

I nodded as surprise and relief washed over me.  "Exactly."

"For a demon?"

"For a *person*," I corrected.

"An unlikeable person."

"So what?  I don't need to like her to understand that she wants
the same thing I want.  I don't need to like her to know that I
can help her."

"You don't have to help her, either."

"The hell I don't!" I bellowed into that white nothingness, my
fists clenching as my anger reignited.  "How can I say that *I*
deserve to finally get home if I turn my back on someone else who
wants exactly the same thing?  I know how she feels!  *Exactly*
how she feels!  And I'll be damned if I didn't help her when I
could!"

"You could well be."

Oh, how I wanted to belt whatever face that quiet voice came
from!  "Don't give me that shit!  I refuse to grant you *any*
power over me, and I refuse to be bound by *your* hypocrisy!"  I
scowled as I spun in place again, looking for any hint of my
interrogator.  "If compassion for someone in pain is punished
with damnation, well then, there are going to be a whole lot of
good people in Hell who will have excellent reasons to hate you."

And then I let a sly smile creep across my lips.  "And you know?
If that's where I end up, I might just have to organize them and
fight our way to your doorstep to register a grievance."

For a moment there was no response at all, and then, to my
surprise, soft but hearty laughter blew through the white nowhere
like a summer wind.  "Somehow I have no doubt that you would do
that very thing."

"You don't want to test me, old man," I warned, although I was
smiling still.  "I may have hubris enough for any *two* other
people.  But not here, not now.  This is more important than
that."

"Indeed it is, son.  Indeed it is."

And then I was alone.

                               * * *

"The simple truth of the matter, Father, is that there is no
justice in this, there is no rightness in this," Belldandy
stated plainly.  "No greater good is being served by denying
Mara her request to see Heaven once more before she dies."  She
tilted her head as she studied the Leader of the gods.  "One
might even say there is deliberate cruelty here."

"Go, sis," Urd whispered.

Kami-sama tilted his head quizzically.  "One might say?"

Belldandy lifted her chin and stared Kami-sama directly in the
eyes as the mantle of Norn of the Present cloaked her in power
and presence.  "*I* might say, Father.  I *would* say.  In fact,
I would say that you have been so concerned with Chris's final
apotheosis that you have given up on Mara, that you have thrown
her to the wayside like so much trash.  I accuse you of having
abandoned one of our own."

He returned her gaze steadily.  "And wherefore do you care,
daughter?  Have you not been tormented by her shards in this and
other timelines?  Has she not actually killed all three of you
outright in hundreds of worlds?"

"And have her unfallen fragments not helped us in dozens more?"
Belldandy snapped.  "There are worlds where she is a favorite
older sister to my beloved Keiichi.  There are worlds where she
is a hero.  There are worlds where she must live over and over as
a mortal, always striving for and never reaching the divinity she
cannot quite remember once possessing.  If we are to judge her
and determine her fate by a mere handful of timelines, why not
choose these instead of those like the one we are in now?"

"She's still our sister," Urd said softly.  "And we still love
her."

"Even if she's been a real pain in this timeline and the others
like it," Skuld added.

"If she must die," Belldandy declared, "then at least let her die
with dignity within sight of the Golden City."

                               * * *

    And how can I bring You doubt
    When You bring me the sky?

                               * * *

*There's something about brandy and a fire that's very relaxing,*
Keiichi thought to himself.  *It makes you admit things to God
that you wouldn't if you were paying attention to what you were
saying.*

That he bore no ill-will toward Mara was as much a revelation to
himself as it was an admission to Kami-sama.  He hadn't realized
that he'd relegated a First-class demon to the same level of
inconvenience in his life that a traffic cone might present to
him on a race track.  *I wonder if that means there's something
wrong with me.*  And then, a moment later, *I wonder if that
means Kami-sama's going to be upset with me.*

He glanced sidelong across the little end table at the satin-clad
figure in the other chair.

"Your attitude does you honor, son," Kami-sama said suddenly,
startling Keiichi.  "It is a rare man indeed who could suffer so
much at the hands of one like Mara and yet have neither anger nor
a desire for revenge."

"Um, I don't know about that," Keiichi replied, again rubbing the
back of his neck.  "It just seems like it would be such a waste
to hold a grudge."

Kami-sama nodded slowly, a faint smile tugging at the corners of
his lips.  "And what then is your opinion on redeeming Mara?"

He replied without hesitation.  "If it would give her a few
moments of happiness before she dies, why not?  It seems to me
that she deserves a little happiness, even more than most other
people, if what Belldandy's told me about Hell is true."

Kami-sama set his snifter down on the table and reached out to
clasp a large hand on Keiichi's shoulder.

"You are a good man, Keiichi Morisato.  Never doubt that.  I will
be honored to have you as a son-in-law."

Keiichi gulped, narrowly avoiding flooding his throat with the
last of the brandy in his glass.

                               * * *

Chris caught up to Kami-sama just as the path curved again, and
slid in a loose patch of sand.  He flailed his arms a moment to
catch his balance, then leapt ahead to block their progress on
the trail.

"Okay, Boss, what's going on?" he demanded.

"Going on, Chris?" Kami-sama replied with a raised eyebrow as he
stopped and stood face-to-face with the younger god.

Chris raised a finger and held it before Kami-sama's face, and
prepared to shake it for emphasis.  "You're *way* too calm about
all this, Boss.  You're not surprised at *any* of this."  As the
forest noises around them faded away to silence he added, "This
whole thing, from the moment you refused to redeem Mara, it was a
setup, wasn't it?"

Kami-sama studied him for a long moment, and then with a faint
smile nodded slowly.  "Yes, son, it was."

Chris lowered his hand.  "Why?"

"That critical juncture I mentioned?"  Kami-sama's gaze burned
its way through his eyes and into his brain.  "It was not just
*your* critical juncture."

He stepped around Chris and continued walking.  "If Mara is
redeemed, if she survives," he called back over his shoulder,
"you will not just be family.  The two of you will be working
together.  You are reflections of each other, counterparts and
complements."  He stopped on the white sand, but did not turn
around.  "That is, if you choose to; I cannot make you do this.
But I hope that you will."

"So this is, what?  My final test?" Chris called after him.

Slowly, Kami-sama turned back to face him.  His mien was far more
serious than it had been moments before.  "No, son.  You have
passed all the tests long ago.  You have fully embraced your true
nature.  No, this is...  Consider this your first act in your new
office.  One that will set the tone for your entire tenure
therein."

Confusion raced across both Chris's face and his heart.  "My new
office?"

Kami-sama nodded.  "Of course.  You did not think such a change
in your very nature would not be reflected in a change in your
duties and responsibilities, did you?  You are the one born of
many, and that makes you many things at once.  You are Paradox,"
and Kami-sama counted off one finger.  "You are Moments."  A
second finger.  "You are the Guardian."  A third finger.  "And
you are Champion Eternal."  A fourth and final finger.

As Kami-sama ticked off the titles, Chris realized that the
light was changing; behind the All-Father, the path ahead was
slowly vanishing in a building glow of pure white.

"Boss?"

"Into your hands I place my trust and confidence, Christopher."
The glaring light had begun to stream around and blur the edges
of Kami-sama's form, bleeding over and starting to obscure his
features.

"Wait a second there, Boss!"

And then the forest was gone, replaced by the brilliant white
light on all sides.  Nothing was left, not sand nor trees nor any
hint of Kami-sama's presence, save for the voice that spoke once
more from the light.

"Oh, and Christopher?  Bring Rachel and Ami to my office soon.  I
think it is high time that the three of us finally met."

And at that, the light flared, blinding Chris, and he felt the
call of the mortal world.

                               * * *

    This time it feels like I've been
    Touched by a Supernova

                               * * *

Mara buried her face in the white samite, refusing to look up at
the One who held her.  Instead, she wept -- wept for her sisters,
wept for herself, wept for the brother she had never really
gotten to know.  She wept, and her tears soaked the smooth, soft
fabric beneath her face.

"Father, Abba, *Daddy*," she moaned softly.   "I was wrong, I was
bad, forgive me, please let me come home to die."

"Daughter..."

"I miss you, Daddy, I've missed you so much and I love you and
I'm so sorry..." she cried.  "Please let me see Heaven one more
time, please let me come home.  Oh, Daddy, I want to come home!"

                               * * *

Megumi straightened and looked Kami-sama in the eye.

"Forget about what she's done to me.  For everything she's done
to my brother Keiichi, I can never forgive Mara," she said, tears
forgotten and her voice cold.

"Indeed?" he asked.  "Although she did little more than taunt and
inconvenience him, while her attacks upon you were far worse?"

"I love my brother, sir," Megumi said softly.  "He's never had
much luck with women.  He's always fallen for the..."  She
glanced at Kami-sama, then continued.  "For the bitches, and the
snobs.  Beautiful, elegant -- but cruel and selfish.  He's had
his heart broken so many times that I was sure he would give up
on women completely, that he'd never find someone who would love
him.

"And then he met Belldandy."  She closed her eyes and smiled.
"The day I met her, I could see right away she wasn't one of the
bitches, that there was something *real* about the way she got
along with Kei."  She laughed.  "I told her she was practically a
goddess.  I guess I have good instincts."

Kami-sama chuckled, but said nothing.

"And to see how happy he is with Belldandy... I can only hope to
be that happy someday."  She shook her head.  "Mara has chosen to
attack my brother's happiness.  That is what I cannot forgive."

"You know what my daughters are attempting?" Kami-sama asked.

"Yeah," she replied.

"I put its success or failure in your hands, Megumi Morisato.
You need only say yea, and Mara is restored to her former glory,
to look upon the vistas of Asgard once more.  Say nay, and she
perishes unredeemed."

Megumi found herself free of Kami-sama's embrace, standing
several feet away and staring in shock at him, every muscle in
her body tensed as if to flee.  She couldn't remember tearing
herself free, but she must have.  "Are you *crazy*?" she
demanded, forgetting for a moment just *who* she was speaking to.
"You can't put that on me!  At least bring in Keiichi to help
decide!"

Kami-sama smiled gently at her.  "Your brother has already
forgiven Mara of all her trespasses against him.  And, I daresay,
any she may yet make."

Megumi blinked, opened her mouth, shut it, and blinked again.
The tension of her body slowly faded as her expression grew
thoughtful.  "Yeah, he would've, wouldn't he?  Keiichi never
could hold a grudge."  Her eyes narrowed.  "Why does it even
matter that I make a decision?  Skuld explained how you all work,
that what I'm seeing" -- and here she gestured broadly at
Kami-sama's leather-clad burliness -- "isn't the *real* you, but
a kind of puppet.  Why should I have to decide the fate of a
puppet?  It's not like the *real* Mara is going to be affected.
It's not like I'd be taking *real* revenge on her.  Whatever
happens here, the real Mara just goes back to wherever you spend
your time and the puppet gets tossed back in a box or something."

Kami-sama gestured, and the floating screen from the Powerpoint
presentation reappeared.  "Normally, you would be correct.  But
Mara is... a special case.  Her Fall was a terrible and
destructive one."

Upon the screen played a film of a plate falling from a shelf.
When it hit the ground, it broke, but most of its many pieces
stayed together, retaining the general shape of a plate while
still broken beyond repair.  Kami-sama continued.  "She shattered
into an untold number of lesser beings, some of whom stayed
divine, most of whom did not.  They are all still connected,
though, holding themselves, and her, together -- however
loosely."  The film ended and the screen vanished again.  "But
her together-but-separate state is not stable.  When one of her
many selves dies..."

"...they all will," Megumi whispered, suddenly comprehending.

"Precisely," Kami-sama confirmed.  "If you say nay, Mara dies
unredeemed, tormented, permanently, for real, throughout the
infinite timelines of the multiverse."  Then he shrugged.  "Of
course, if you say yea, she is dying anyway, but she will at
least have one last moment of joy before the end of her
existence."  He leaned in toward her, his eyes intent on hers.
"What say you, Megumi Morisato?  Will you take vengeance on Mara
for your brother by denying her last wish?"

Horrified, Megumi took a step back.  Her mind spun in place like
tires in mud, thoughts racing and chasing their own tails.  Above
all stood the desire for revenge on Mara, the desire to hurt and
punish her.

And it was not what she had expected.

If she had been given the chance to declare whether Mara lived or
died, she could have chosen without a second thought.  She could
have condemned Mara to death in an instant.

But that was denied her.  No matter what happened, Mara was dying
already.  In minutes, perhaps, she would be dead.

No, what she had been offered was the chance to *torture* Mara in
the final moments of her existence.  To snatch away the last hope
she would ever have, to deny her a minute's comfort at the end.

Megumi could not execute Mara for her crimes.  She could only
inflict a final cruelty.

Why did death seem cleaner, purer than cruelty?   Megumi
envisioned herself ordering Mara's death, and could feel nothing
but satisfaction at the idea.  But ordering the failure of Mara's
redemption, ordering her barred from Heaven for the last seconds
of her existence -- why did that horrify her?

Was hope that much more important than life?

And with that question, Megumi closed her eyes and envisioned
herself in Mara's place.

                               * * *

    Inside the Hand that touches hearts
    Is touching mine

                               * * *

What seemed like an eternity later, Megumi lifted her head,
opened her eyes, and met Kami-sama's gaze.  Her face bore the
marks of confusion, but when she spoke, it was with confidence
and strength.

"I can't do that to her.  So help me, I can't," she said softly
but firmly.  "I can't return cruelty with cruelty."  She looked
upward, as if seeing something beyond the ceiling overhead.

"Let it work."

                               * * *

"Mara."

"Yes, Daddy?"

"It's time to come home."

"Daddy?"

"Come home... Marller."

                               * * *

There is another phenomenon that, by the end of the twentieth
century, had been noted many times over the course of the
previous several hundred years:  the universe seems to like
symmetry.

Perhaps "like" is the wrong word.  The universe is not a
conscious entity, after all -- probably -- and anthropomorphizing
it is the ultimate example of the pathetic fallacy -- probably.
So maybe it's better to say that something inherent to the nature
or structure of the universe tends to encourage or produce
symmetries.  As a result, things both great and small often
appear in complementary pairs:  charges, spins, particles;
genders; matter and antimatter; light and darkness; good and
evil; death and taxes; Abbott and Costello.

This is important for many different reasons.

The reason that is relevant right now is named Paradox.  Paradox,
who moments ago had been an uncounted number of separate
individuals spread across an infinity of universes.

Paradox, who has just self-assembled into a 12-dimensional hive-
mind gestalt unlike anything seen before by god or demon.

Whether symmetry has anything to do with self-assembly is
unclear.  It probably does, somewhere down the line -- one of the
first rules of many different areas of study is that everything
is connected to everything else.  The degree to which this is
true varies by the field being studied, but not the fact that it
*is* true.

It is most certainly true here.

Megumi would come close to comprehending exactly what had
happened after musing on the events of that morning some days
later.  Remembering Skuld's lecture on the nature of the Four and
their male counterparts, she would almost immediately realize
that Paradox and Mara were linked together in some way she could
intuit but not quite explain intellectually -- which, as an
engineer, she would ever after find profoundly annoying.

What she would fail to grasp for several more years (at which
time it would annoy her even further) was that even before his
self-assembly the connection between Mara and Paradox was more
than merely metaphoric, that like many other symmetrical pairs,
they inherently and actively reflected each other.  Almost all of
their reflections were equal opposites, mirroring each other's
state:  male/female; newest/oldest; sworn to Heaven/servant of
Hell; newly-born/nearly-dead; yet to combine/broken into
uncounted pieces.

But in one thing they were identical:  They were both gods, and
they had both been in pieces for far too long.

Now, one of the odd things about self-assembly is that the state
of the component parts being separate holds a kind of tension,
like a spring pulled taut, that is relieved by falling together
and fixing themselves in place.

So it was with Mara, who was once called Marller.  Shattered
though she was, her component personae still sought, however
unconsciously, their original unified state -- but distance (or
something analogous to it in the 12-dimensional time-space
inhabited by the gods in their true, whole forms), damage, the
polar opposition (that is to say, the *symmetry*) of hell and
heaven, and finally the equally separate state of her male
counterpart (yet another symmetry) all combined to hold them
apart -- apparently until time and death severed their links once
and for all.

Until symmetry was broken by Paradox's self-assembly, and the
delicate balance of forces within Mara's multitudinous self was
changed by one solitary incarnation changing sides.

After that, it was perhaps inevitable.

                               * * *

    As I find my tears are all
    Consumed by the Supernova

                               * * *

A deafening explosion like thunder reverberated within the
temple, and Mara's floating figure was catapulted upward almost
into the ceiling.  Doug was flung to the floor at the same
moment, where he tumbled bonelessly until he fetched up against
the wall of energy that ringed the ritual space along its
outermost boundary.

High above the floor, Mara hung motionlessly, her head thrown
back, arms spread wide, blonde curls streaming in an unfelt wind.
Ami and Rachel gaped, wondering what was coming next.

They didn't have long to wait.

There was a crack, and a flash of light, and instead of the
fragile blonde, a brawny-looking man in what looked to be
vigorous middle age hung in her place; he was dressed in jeans,
work boots, and a t-shirt, and his silver hair was tied back into
a ponytail.  In one hand he held a medieval-looking battleaxe.

Almost as soon as his appearance had registered, there was
another flash and crack, and now in his place there was a
olive-skinned woman with a Roman nose and night-black hair, clad
in black leather armor and holding a gleaming sword in one hand.

Once more, crack, flash, and a new figure:  female again, in
gleaming plate armor fitted to her lush curves, a massive
broadsword held in salute before her hidden face with both hands.
Almost as soon as she appeared...

Crack, flash.  A woman with waist-length purple hair and golden
wings in a long white gown; in one hand she held a staff with a
circular headpiece of gleaming metallic gold.  She was visible
for barely a moment before...

Crack, flash.  A black-haired Japanese woman in a colorful
leotard with tights and leg warmers, a red headband visible
across her forehead.  Ami and Rachel hardly had time to register
*her* when...

Crack, flash.  A Middle Eastern beauty, with amber-brown hair
cascading in waves through a headdress of fine golden chains,
dusky skin, and wings, spread but held low.  Then...

Crack, flash.  A woman with the head of a lion, clad in a tight
red sheath.  Crack, flash.  An Indian-looking woman in red robes
and a golden crown, with eight arms.  Crack, flash.  A pale woman
in black robes with black hair to her knees, a crow perched on
her shoulder.  Crack, flash.  A black-skinned woman draped in
brown and green cloth with a serpent coiled over her shoulders
and a crossbow in her hand, hovering in a whirlwind of leaves.

Each appeared faster than the one before, until Ami and Rachel
could no longer distinguish between them.  There was only the
humanoid blur that hung high above the temple floor -- a blur of
skin color, of clothing, of features, of hair -- and the flashes
that had merged into a continuous glow even as the cracks became
a single, interminable roll of thunder that flooded the temple
and shook it to its foundations.

                               * * *

    This time the Hope that lights the world
    Is in my eyes

                               * * *

 From his perch in the rafters above the temple's entrance, Senbei
watched as something beyond his experience took place.  He had no
idea what was happening, except that the one he had served so
faithfully for so many years was going somewhere he could not
follow.  Hiding from the shafts of light blazing through the
door, he huddled in the shadows, rocking himself back and forth
and keening softly, "Noooo, Mistress Mara!  Don't leave Senbei!
Take Senbei with you, pleeeeease!"

*SUCH LOYALTY IN THE FACE OF THE PIT SHOULD BE REWARDED.*

The Voice was one Senbei had never heard before, and had never
expected to hear.  In shock, he stopped his rocking and looked
upwards.  "Master?" he whispered.

*FEAR NOT.  YOU SHALL NOT BE SEPARATED.*

And then the rafters were unoccupied.

                               * * *

    There's a light in my eyes
    There's a light in my eyes

                               * * *

"WHAT'S HAPPENING?" Rachel shrieked over the deafening roar.

"I DON'T KNOW, BUT IT CAN'T GO ON FOREVER!" Ami howled back.

And it didn't.

The overwhelming noise of Marller's reassembly grew in volume and
rose in pitch.  Her floating figure blurred beyond any measure of
recognizability as beings and creatures that were not even
remotely human in form flickered through the process of joining
themselves to her.  As it spiraled up from a roar into a screech
it suddenly ceased, leaving behind a quiet that was almost
deafening in its unexpectedness, a silence that was all but
undisturbed by the sounds of battle outside.

Ami and Rachel blinked, released their hold on each other, and
turned as one to look to the center of the temple.

Six pillars of light still hid the Norns, Chris, and the
Morisato siblings.  Doug still lay sprawled on the floor, though
he seemed to be stirring.

And where Marller had been hung a roiling cloud of energy, shot
through with streamers of multicolored lightning.

It pulsed once, then a second time.

No fools they, Ami and Rachel dove for the floor.

Then that which had been Marller exploded, emitting a brilliant
white shockwave which washed over the two women and passed --
apparently harmlessly -- through the temple walls.

Rachel and Ami glanced at each other across the floorboards, then
as one raised their heads in time to see the familiar, blonde
form of Marller drop out of the air and into the arms of a
stumbling, smoking Doug.

                               * * *

    The light of the Supernova glowing in my eyes

                               * * *

Rachel scrambled to her feet and absently offered Ami a hand up
as the pillars of light vanished without a sound, leaving behind
the rest of the ritual participants.  With a wordless cry, the
two mortal girls flung themselves across the floor to wrap
themselves around a confused and stunned-looking Chris.

At the same time, Keiichi sprinted to Belldandy, and caught her
up in a powerful and expressive embrace as Urd and Skuld joined
them.

Megumi stood alone, arms wrapped around herself, and tried to
look at anything but Doug, still standing at the center of the
ritual circle, swaying slightly with Marller limp in his arms.

A few moments later, their embrace finished -- or at least
suspended for the moment -- Belldandy and Keiichi turned their
attention to Doug and Marller.  Slowly, almost fearfully, they
crossed the floor to the two.  Belldandy held a loosely curled
hand before her mouth, her concern written plainly upon her face.

They paused a step away from Doug, who stood unsteadily, wisps of
smoke drifting up from the singed grey leather he wore.  In his
arms, Marller lay still, almost too still.  Belldandy reached out
tentatively to touch Marller, only to draw back her hand at the
last second.  She looked up at the goggled face.  "Is she...?"
she began as Urd and Skuld joined them.

"She..." Doug croaked, then coughed, spitting out a small puff
of smoke.  He wheezed, then tried again.  "She's breathing," he
croaked, his voice thick and hoarse.  "I think... I think that's
a good sign."  He swayed, stumbling slightly as he tried to keep
his balance, and Keiichi stepped forward, holding out his arms.

"Here, I'll take her," he offered.

"'Kay," Doug coughed, and handed her over ever-so-gently.

Belldandy brushed Marller's hair out of her face and caressed her
cheek, then turned her attention back to the mortal who had made
this moment possible.  He was starting to sway even further,
despite being relieved of his burden.  "Doug," she asked, "are
you all right?"

"Juuuuust peachy," he croaked.  He raised his right hand as if to
pat her shoulder reassuringly, but missed.  He tried again, and
missed again.  Slowly, almost drunkenly, he turned his head to
look accusingly at his hand.

Then he fell over.

Before he could hit the ground, though, Urd caught him.  Scooping
an arm under his shoulders and another under his knees, she
lifted him up as though he weighed no more than a child.  Then
she looked down upon Doug and smiled.  "Rest now, thou good and
faithful servant," she murmured.  "Thou wilt be condemned into
everlasting redemption for this," she added as her smile grew
ever-so-slightly playful.

"Why don't you two take Marller and Doug back to the house and
see that they're both comfortable while they recover?" Belldandy
asked as she watched Megumi from across the floor.

"What about the demons outside?" Keiichi asked nervously.

"Haven't you noticed?" Skuld piped up.  "It's quiet out there.
Nii-chan must have beaten... them..."  She trailed off as she
remembered that Chris was in the temple with them.  "Oneesan?"
she asked, looking up at Belldandy.  "Do you think...?"

Belldandy nodded.  "Yes, I believe so.  We'll know soon enough,
in any case."  She turned back to Keiichi.  "Go on, it's safe.
We'll be in after you in just a few minutes."

Acquiescing with a nod, Keiichi pecked Belldandy on the cheek,
and then headed for the door followed by Urd.  They were met
there by Chris and the girls, who unbarred the portal and held
it open for them.

Meanwhile, Belldandy crossed the floor, with Skuld at her heels.
"Megumi?" she asked, standing before the girl.

Megumi looked up in surprise, as if startled out of deep thought
by Belldandy's interruption.  Eyes wide, she stared at the Norn
of the Present for a long moment without speaking, then dropped
to her knees.  Reaching out, she took Skuld's hand and kissed it,
then took Belldandy's hand and kissed it as well.

"Hey!" the younger goddess objected.

"Megumi?" Belldandy repeated, unfazed by this.

"I didn't really understand it before," Megumi said without
preamble.  "But you... you're all *so* much more than you seem to
be, aren't you?"

Belldandy smiled, and next to her, Skuld silently went "ooooh" in
comprehension.  The older goddess reached down and effortlessly
lifted Megumi back to her feet, then kissed the mortal girl on
the forehead.  "Yes, Megumi," she said, holding the girl's hands
in her own.  "We are.  But then, so are you."

"What?"

"C.S. Lewis, one of Father's favorite authors, once said:  'There
are no *ordinary* people.  You have never talked to a mere
mortal.  Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations -- these are
mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat.  But it
is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and
exploit -- immortal horrors or everlasting splendours.'"  Her
smile grew in brilliance as she released one hand so that she
could raise it and cup Megumi's cheek.  "*You* are an everlasting
splendour, Megumi.  I have it on the Highest authority."

Baffled, Megumi simply shook her head.  "But you don't belong
here!  You should be in heaven!" she blurted.

Belldandy's gaze grew distant and loving.  "Wherever Keiichi is,
Megumi, *there* is heaven."  She patted Megumi's cheek.  "Why,
this is Asgard, nor am I out of it."

Then she turned and left the temple as Megumi stared after her.

A moment later, Megumi felt an insistent tug, and looked down to
see Skuld pulling on her hand.  "C'mon.  Let's go get some ice
cream."

                               * * *

Keiichi and Urd paused on the temple engawa, stunned at the sight
before them.  Behind them, Chris, Ami and Rachel halted as well.

It was not the broken bodies of demons, already fading away,
dissolving, or breaking down into dust in the light of day that
rendered both speechless, although by itself the sight might
have.  It was not the crude stone and wood wardcracker broken in
half as if by a monstrous karate chop, sprawled splintered in the
center of the temple yard, though that, too, would have given
them pause on any other day.

It was the *army* there contemplating its victory in quiet
satisfaction -- an army whose every member bore a disturbing
resemblance to Chris.

It took a moment for their exit from the temple to be noticed,
but when it was, the forces directly in front of them parted,
forming an avenue of sorts for them.  Wordlessly, the five of
them stepped down, Urd and Keiichi careful of their burdens, and
into the temple yard.  As they passed, some of the Chris
lookalikes bowed, some saluted, and others simply watched.

And some responded more vehemently.

"Colonel Sangnoir!  Oh.  My.  God!"

They paused as a female voice rang out, one shaded with the
distinctive accent of the southern United States.  Keiichi and
Urd exchanged a glance of surprise then turned towards the
source.

There, shoving her way through the throng of, well, Christophers,
was a woman in a spandex bodysuit that appeared to be based on a
black-and-yellow variant of the flag of the Confederate States of
America, from the era of the American Civil War.  She was
muttering something about the male genome being stupidly tall --
with good reason, as she was all but invisible until she broke
through the front ranks.  She couldn't have been much more than a
meter and a half tall, Keiichi noted, though voluptuously built
in a way that almost made him blush.  A wild tousle of dark
coppery-red hair topped a thoroughly freckle-kissed face.

Finally free of the wall of her counterparts, she skidded to a
halt in front of Urd and her load.  She looked like she wanted to
lunge into a hug of the unconscious man, but held herself back at
the last second.  She stared at his limp form, then locked eyes
with Urd.  "Is he... I mean, Colonel Sangnoir's not... I mean..."

Chris wracked his brains for a moment to pull her name up out of
the knowledge he'd gained when his analogues had joined with him.
Who was she again?  Oh.  Oh wow.  Chris' eyes widened when he
realized that this tiny woman was his analogue from Doug's home
timeline -- Captain Alena Jordan, codenamed "Rebel Yeller", from
Warriors Delta in the Sinai Peninsula, recently promoted from
lieutenant.  Wow.  "Captain Jordan," he began, "Alena..."

To his surprise she snapped to attention and saluted him.  "Sir!"

He sighed.  "At ease, soldier.  I'm not your commanding officer."

She relaxed and grinned at him over Urd's shoulder.  "Oh, Ah
wouldn't say that, not here an' now."  Then she grew serious
again.  "Is Colonel Sangnoir all right?" she asked.

"He'll be fine," Urd replied with an amused little glance down at
her burden.  "He just pushed himself to the edge and a little
past."

Alena laughed.  "The usual, then."  She smiled fondly.  "Ah can't
wait to tell Major Maggie about this when Ah get back -- she'll
be so happy hear that Ah've seen him."  She looked back up at
Chris and grinned.  "Not ta mention that Wetter Hexe an' Alpha've
been goin' spare tryin' to find him.  They'll be glad to have
some mo' intel on his movements."

Keiichi cleared his throat.  "I don't really want to interrupt,
but Marller's getting a little heavy..."

The tiny redhead squeaked.  "I'm sorry.  Do you need a hand
carrying her?"

"I think that's our cue," said Louis as he, Hiroshi, Juhachi, and
Takeshi pushed their way out of the Chris crowd.  "Sorry,
Captain," he said with a bow to Alena, "but this is our duty as
the honor guard for the Redemption."  Behind him, Hiroshi had
already relieved Keiichi of Marller's unconscious form.  With a
shake of her head, Urd had refused to hand over Doug, though, and
Juhachi and Takeshi had settled for flanking her.

Alena looked a little nonplussed but nodded an acknowledgment.
"Fair 'nough."

"C'mon," Juhachi said, "let's get these two inside.  You can talk
to your reinforcements later, Chris."  He grinned back over his
shoulder.

As Alena melted back into the crowd, the small procession began
again, slowed only by the continuing salutations offered to
Chris.  It took several more minutes before they actually were
able to enter the house.
  
"By the way," a male voice drifted through the windows shortly
thereafter, "anyone care to tell me where that crowd came from,
and why they all look like Chris?"  A moment's silence, then...
"Except for the giant robot, that is."

                               * * *

Tarikihonganji Temple Complex, Nekomi Ward, Saturday, May 31,
1997, 5:23 PM

My first thought on waking was, "Hey, I *know* this ceiling."

My second thought on waking was, "If I'm looking at a ceiling
after what we had planned, it just might be a bad sign."

So I did a physical inventory and turned up... nothing wrong.
Which to be honest surprised me.  I don't remember being in
particularly good shape toward the end there -- in fact, I kind
of expected not to wake up at all given what I'd felt happening
to my body.

"Yes, you're alive," said a familiar voice -- one I hadn't
expected to hear regardless of the outcome of the ritual.  I
turned my head toward the voice, blinked twice, then propped
myself up on my elbows to take a better look.

"Mara?" I asked.  And not without at least a little
justification.  For one thing, she was *alive*.

Then there was her *appearance*.  The Mara who had gone into the
circle with me, while definitely female, could pull off the
androgynous thing without much trouble had she cared to (and
according to Chris's stories, she *had* cared to at least once in
his experience).

Mara now actually had a figure that would make it a lot more work
to pass as a male.  The hair was the same explosion of golden
curls, which worked *very* well with the new contours.  And
blood-colored broken "V" on her forehead was gone.  In its place
were blue marks not unlike her sisters':  a pair of small shield
shapes lurked at the corner of each eye, and on her forehead was
a four-pointed star with the top point stretched out to make a
kind of stylized sword-shape.

She was sitting on a cushion next to my futon as if she had been
watching over me.

Seeing my reaction to her change in appearance, she grinned.  "In
the flesh, so to speak."   She tilted her head.  "How do you
feel?"

I took stock of myself.  "I feel good," I said with some
surprise.  "I feel better than James Brown.  I feel better now."
I narrowed my eyes and looked her up and down.  "How do *you*
feel?"

She laughed.  "By which you mean, 'aren't you supposed to be
dead?'"

"Yeah."  I lifted myself up off the futon with my arm strength
and pulled my legs under me in a classic "indian" position.
"What happened?"

"I got better," she said with a smirk.

I gave her a Look, and she laughed again.

"The Redemption changed the conditions that were killing me, and
I ... reassembled," Mara explained.  "You can ask Bell for the
details, but it boils down to that I'm no longer the multiverse's
worse case of split personality."  She looked smug for a second
or two.  "And once my Overself was back to normal, all my avatars
were reset to their default base states."  She made a sort of "as
you can see" gesture, adding, "And voila, back to perfect
health."

Then she smirked.  "You, on the other hand, needed a bit more
work under the hood."

I studied her for a moment.  "How much work?"

She shrugged.  "A fair amount.  Belldandy knocked herself out
putting you to rights."

"She what?"  I started scrambling to my feet.

"Sit down, she's fine," Mara ordered, waving me back to my futon.
"She didn't hurt herself, just used up all her energy.  Sleep's
how she recharges."

"No bullshit?"

"No bullshit," she confirmed.

"So now what?" I asked.

Mara got this serene look on her face.  "Now, I go back to what I
used to do before I Fell.  I go back to who I was."

"*Who* you were?"

She smiled broadly through the serenity.  "Exactly.  I'm not Mara
any more.  I'm *me* again."

Okay, this was getting a little strange.  "Yeah?  Who are you
then?"

She lowered her eyes, and the memory of old pain crossed her
face.  "When I Fell, I was no longer myself; my Name was taken
from me, and I was made into Mara by Hell.  When you and my
sisters and brother Redeemed me, when my shattered self was
healed, Father restored my Name to me.  I am as I was.  I am once
again Marller."  She smiled at me again, the same smile that
Belldandy had.  "But there's more."

I tilted my head.  "Like what?"

She closed her eyes and lifted her chin, and for a moment her
face was transformed into something more than the human guise she
wore.  Then she opened her eyes and looked into mine.  "In one
world, I was reborn as a dancer named Linna Yamazaki, who grew
and lived as a mortal and came into her birthright on the eve of
the Apocalypse.  In another, I never Fell, and a people of horses
and plains do me duty and worship.  In yet another, I invest
avatar after avatar, calling to myself each time the best and
brightest in the arts of war to do battle against the Dark.  I
have been Sekhmet, Mylee, Ishtar, Michael, Athena and a billion
others, and I will be a billion more before the worlds grow dim
and cold.

"The Three were once the Four -- the Maiden, the Warrior, the
Mother and the Crone.  I am whole again.  I am the Warrior."

The memory of an 80s song lyric bubbled up from the depths of my
mind, and I couldn't resist the urge.  "Shootin' at the walls of
heartache?"

"Bang, bang," Marller confirmed with a smile, and I laughed.

Maiden, Warrior... waitasecond.  That rang a bell.  I wracked my
brain and found what I was looking for.

"Maiden, Warrior, Mother, Crone," I quietly recited the Shin'a'in
warsong I'd learned from Dee so long before, during my two-and-a-
half-year stay in Velgarth.

    "Help us keep this land our own.
    Rover, Guardian, Hunter, Guide,
    With us now forever ride."
    
"Yes," Marller said with a smile.  "Exactly."

I nodded thoughtfully to myself.  "Chris is the Guardian, isn't
he?"

She nodded.  "He is now, after so long without one to take up the
role."  She held out her hand, fingers spread, and pointedly
studied it, as if examining her manicure.

"So what about the other three?  The Rover, the Hunter, and the
Guide?"

"The Rover..."  Her eyes grew distant and shaded.  "The Rover
has crossed your path once already on your journey, and will
cross it again."  She sighed.  "Like Chris before today, he has
not yet fully awakened to his divine status, although he is aware
of his destiny.  Which is as it should be."

"Hm."  I tried to think of who the Rover could be.  He had to be
male, powerful, and a wanderer among worlds like me if he were
going to run across me twice.  No one came to mind, which led me
to suspect he might be disguising himself.

"And before we get too far off the topic...." Marller interrupted
my musings.

I looked up at her.  "Yes?"

She reached behind herself and brought out something that looked
like a CD jewel case, and held it out to me.  Curious, I took it.
It had no insert, so I could see through the clear plastic to the
disk inside, which was the usual plain silvery polycarbonate save
for a single word printed on it in large, black block letters:
"GODS".  I opened the case, took the disk out, and turned it over
to examine it.  The underside had the shimmery rainbow effect
caused by the pits and plateaus of the data encoding; it was
perhaps a bit *too* bright and rainbowy, but otherwise seemed
completely normal.

"What," I asked as I put it back in the case, "is this?"

"I owe my very existence to you, Doug," Marller said softly.
"Without your help in the ritual, I would be dead now."

"Not necessarily," I pointed out as I tried to hand the disk back
to her.  "Skuld's original plan had a definite non-zero chance of
success."

Marller shook her head.  "We both know how small that 'non-zero
chance' was.  You were the deciding factor in my survival."  She
took a deep breath.  "In return, I am making a promise to you.
Any time you ever need me, no matter where you are, no matter
what universe or time, I will come, in one way or another."  She
tapped the jewel case in my hand.  "This is a physical token of
my promise.  You need only take it out of the case and call my
name, and I will respond."

I studied first the disk and then her.  "You're serious.  You're
actually giving me a hot line directly to you.  The *real* You --
the Warrior, not just Marller."

She nodded solemnly.  "Yes."

"And what would you do if I called on you?"

She leaned forward and looked me right in the eyes.  "Whatever it
is in my power to do."

I matched her, eye to eye, for a long moment, then nodded myself.
Without taking my eyes off hers, I opened the case, took the disc
out, and held it in my hand.  "Marller, send me..."

I suddenly found her fingertips over my mouth as she shook her
head sadly.  "I can't return you home.  There's something you
must do on your journey -- I-as-Marller don't know what -- and
I-The-Warrior am not allowed to prevent it.  But anything else,
ask and I shall do it.  *So mote it be!*"

Just like when Skuld had promised to fix my motorcycle, and later
when Belldandy had sworn on blood to always tell me the truth,
Marller's marks flashed bright white, and I felt that solid
*click* sensation through my mage gift.  I suppressed the urge to
sigh.  She had gone ahead and locked it in.  "I really wish you
hadn't done that," I said softly as I removed her hand from my
mouth.  "I don't want a genie in a bottle."

Marller tilted her head inquisitively.  "Then what *do* you
want?"

I looked at the disc that I still held, then back up to her.  "A
friend?  Someone to complain to when the road is hard and the
days are lonely?  Someone to offer advice and help, but not do
the whole job for me?"

She thought about that for a minute, then slowly smiled.  "I
think I can do that."

"Of course, if you ever find you *can* send me right home," I
added with a smirk, "I'll wish for that in a New York minute."

"Fair enough," she chuckled.

At that point my stomach growled rather loudly.

Marller laughed.  "Exercising my godly omniscience, I determine
that you are hungry."  She rose to her feet and held out her
hand.  "C'mon.  It's time for dinner anyway."

"Right."  I let her hoist me to my feet -- she was quite a bit
stronger than a normal would be, surprise surprise -- and rolled
my head around my shoulders, making little crackling noises in my
neck.  "Say, if Bell's out cold, who's cooking?"

Her eyes widened.  "I have no idea."

I crossed to the door and paused.  "Who else in this house *can*
cook?" I asked as I tugged on the pull.

The door slid open, and a glowing, winged shape shot into the
room.  "Mistress!"

Urd followed it in.  "This little fellow claims to be with you,
Nee-chan," she said with her usual sly grin.

Marller raised an eyebrow.  "Really?"

"Mistress!  Mistress!"  The flitting glow screeched to a hover
next to Marller's head, and I finally got a good look at it.  It
had a vaguely pixie-like appearance -- an attractive, almost
cutesy, miniature humanoid form, maybe thirty, thirty-five
centimeters tall, male (or at least male-ish), with a
surprisingly stocky build, a Byronesque shock of blond hair, and
blurring hummingbird wings mounted on its back.  Its entire body
radiated a golden light, but its eyes burned like two tiny stars.
A faint floral scent seemed to follow wherever it went.

Marller regarded the apparition quizzically.  "And who might you
be?" she asked it.

"Senbei!" it declared in its piping voice.  "Senbei is Senbei!"

That seemed to mean something to Marller, because her eyebrows
shot up into the cloud of golden curls that topped her head.
"Senbei?  *Really?*"

The tiny form nodded so fast it looked almost like a woodpecker
at work.  "Yes!  Senbei did not want to be left alone, wanted to
go with Mistress.  Without Mistress Senbei has nothing, is
nothing.  Senbei wanted to enter temple but was afraid, and
begged to be with Mistress.  Almighty heard, Almighty said,"
(and here the piping voice deepened to the merely lower soprano
range) "'Such loyalty is to be rewarded' and..."  Senbei spun in
the air like a hyperkinetic top, then came back to a steady
hover.  "Senbei *changed*!"

"Marller?" I asked.  I glanced over at Urd, whose smile had lost
its sly aspect, and whose eyes were suspiciously shining.

"Senbei..." Marller breathed, then spread her arms wide.  The
pixie shape shot forward into her embrace, stilling and folding
its wings as she drew her arms around it.  Marller silently
cuddled the tiny thing, her eyes closed, for a minute or two,
then opened them again.  "Senbei was my ... my flunky," she said
softly as the creature crooned happily in her arms.  "And
sometimes my only friend."

"Senbei loves Mistress," came a high, muffled voice from
Marller's chest.  "Senbei has always loved Mistress, even when
the Pit forbade it."

"In that case," Urd said, her voice husky, "welcome to the
family, little guy."

Senbei shrilled something and popped out of Marller's embrace to
go zooming around the room again.  He came to a spinning stop in
front of the mirror on the low dresser where I kept some of my
clothes.  I chuckled when I realized that the little pixie-thing
was checking himself out in it.  He spun once to the left, and
once to the right, then shot back over to hover in front of
Marller.

"Senbei is so pretty now!" he declared, then seemed to wilt, as
much as he could and still remain in flight.  "But..."

"What?" Marller asked.

Senbei pouted.  "Senbei misses his leather jacket."

Marller laughed merrily.  "We'll see if we can find one that'll
accommodate your wings."

                               * * *

Tarikihonganji Temple Complex, Nekomi Ward, Sunday, June 15,
1997, 2:30 PM

"Tada!" Skuld announced proudly.

Megumi gunned the turbine and grinned like a maniac.  "What do
you think, Doug?"  She was seated in the saddle of my
reconstructed motorcycle as it floated in the bright sunlight of
the temple yard, about thirty centimeters off the ground.
Although a gentle breeze was blowing that afternoon, it seemed
rock solid instead of drifting like a balloon.  She had just
flown it out of Skuld's workshop -- a little unsteadily, as she
wasn't used to *flying* bikes -- and put it in hover-park to let
me inspect it.

Since Marller's Redemption the two of them had refused to let me
into the shop to work on the bike.  They had claimed they wanted
me to be surprised by the final product, so I humored them and
spent my time playing skeeball, putting extra time in at the
robotics lab, doing guy stuff with Chris and Keiichi, or bumming
around with Urd and Marller.  After the intensity of the previous
few weeks it was a pleasant change, although if it had gone on
any longer my inner adrenaline junkie would have started
complaining.  Fortunately, the Terror Twins had proudly announced
the completion of the bike rebuild at dinner the evening of
Saturday the 14th.

So there I was on Sunday afternoon, waiting in the yard for the
unveiling.  Belldandy (who was still the final judge of Skuld's
promise) and Keiichi (who was interested in the results) were
with me.  We had been chatting idly for a little while when the
shop doors slid open and out glided one of the most beautiful
pieces of vehicle engineering it has ever been my pleasure to
see.

Yes, I know.  It still had the same basic lines it had had when I
built it originally in MegaTokyo.  But Skuld and Megumi had made
a number of small changes -- and one or two large ones -- and
frankly it was only superficially the same bike.

I walked around it slowly and took it all in.

"We reproduced the color-changing paint with a field effect,"
Skuld announced proudly, shouting over the turbine.  "That way
you can change license plates every time you go to a new world
without having to worry about running out of that special paint
you had."  She got a hopeful look on her face.  "Do you mind if I
keep the paint, to study?"

"Sure, no problem," I shouted back absently.  "What else did you
add that wasn't on the plans?"

"A full stealth system!" Megumi crowed, and hit a control on the
panel before her.  She and the motorcycle faded from sight,
betrayed only by a faint ripple at the edges, and at the same
time the engine sound cut out entirely.  Megumi's disembodied
voice went on, "It's now radar-invisible, and undetectable in the
infrared, visual and ultraviolet spectra."

"Even the turbine exhaust?" I asked.

Megumi sounded disappointed.  "No, we haven't found a way to hide
the exhaust plume from the turbine, so stay away from heat-
seeking missiles."

"Heh.  Okay," I said.

"We also added a noise suppression system," she went on, "which
constantly samples the turbine noise and injects an equal and
opposite waveform into the exhaust to cancel it out."

"It's variable, too," Skuld interjected, "in case you want *some*
engine noise but not everything the turbine normally puts out."

I nodded approvingly.  "Cool."

Skuld swelled up with pride in her work.  "Next feature:  a
virtual cockpit."

I looked at her.  "Virtual cockpit?"

"Yup," she declared.  "A weak force field, just enough to keep
wind and bugs out of your face and a comfortable environment
inside.  And like the noise suppressor, it can be dialed to any
level between zero and full strength."

"And it's selective," Megumi added as she faded back into
visibility.  "You can reach out of -- or fall through -- the
cockpit field without smashing into it."

I chuckled.  "Well, if you kept all the saddle straps, I doubt
I'll need to concern myself about that."

"Yeah, we did, don't worry about that -- no less than the bike
was before, that was what we agreed on," Skuld pointed out.

"Indeed we did," I agreed.  "Is that all?"

"Nope," Megumi said, bringing the bike in for a landing, and then
shutting it down.  "It's also got its own local gravity field, to
keep you in the saddle."

"And that's not all!"  Skuld sounded like a presenter on a game
show.  "I was studying the enchantment on *Skidbladnir*..."

"That's Frey's magic boat the dwarfs made, that can fold up and
fit in his pocket," Megumi added helpfully.

"You added *that* to the bike?" I asked, astonished.  "Now that's
majorly impressive."

Skuld pouted.  "No, I couldn't make it work on the motorcycle.
But I *did* make it work on the panniers, kinda!"  She stepped
around to the back of the bike, where a typical set of three
lockable boxes sat on a rack around the rear wheel:  two tall and
thin cases hanging over the sides of the wheel (although they
hung unusually high), and one larger, boxier one sitting atop the
fender -- all the same gloss black as the undisguised bike.

Skuld flipped the catch on the top box, opened it up, and then
reached in -- and in, and in, all the way up to her shoulder.
"Ah ha!" she said after a moment, "there it is."

And with that she pulled out a garden rake that was clearly much
too long to fit in a box the size of the top pannier.  "All three
boxes are much bigger on the inside than on the outside," she
said proudly, "and the mass of their contents is ... elsewhere,
so you don't have to worry about weighing down your bike with
too much cargo."

The audience made appreciative noises, as did I.  "How much can
they carry?" I asked.

Skuld got a thoughtful expression on her face.  "I'm not really
sure," she admitted.  "But *Skidbladnir* goes from about 15
meters long to about 15 centimeters, which is around a
million-to-one reduction in volume.  I don't think I got nearly
as good a yield on the enchantment..."

"Because you're not a dwarf!" Megumi interjected.

Skuld stuck her tongue out at her Servitor before continuing.
"But I figure it's still going to give you at least a 10,000-to-1
storage increase."

I blinked, then turned to her.  "That's something like 1500 cubic
yards.  How the hell do I find anything in that?  How the hell do
I reach it all?"

Skuld smirked.  "I've incorporated a smart search.  All you do is
stick your hand in and think about what you want and it comes to
you automatically."

I shook my head.  "That is just freakin' mind-blowing.  That's
the cargo capacity of a small *barge*."

"Oh!"  Skuld reached under the top pannier and worked something,
then with a yank lifted the entire frame off the bike.  "And the
frame comes off so you can take it inside with you instead of
unpacking it where people can see, and each of the cases comes
off the frame, too, if you don't want to take the whole thing
somewhere."

I shook my head in disbelief.  "Anything else I should be aware
of?"

"Just one more thing," Megumi added.  "The bike's construction is
an almost 50-50 mix of technology and magic.  Enough magic that
it practically *shouts* its presence both to mage sight *and* the
Symphony.  So we've aura-shielded it."

I whipped my head around to look at her.  "You what?"

"Aura-shielded it," Skuld repeated proudly.  "And it's
switchable, too.  While the shielding is on, nothing below an
archangel or a demigod will be able to tell there's anything
magical about the bike.  But if you need to do magical
diagnostics on it, you can turn the shielding off."

I shook my head again.  "I didn't know you could do that.
Something new for me to investigate in magic.  And here I thought
I was an expert."

Skuld puffed up again, clearly delighted at the idea that she had
come up with something I hadn't thought was possible.  "All part
of the service."

I walked around the bike once more, still shaking my head.  "I
have to admit it, Skuld, I was afraid you wouldn't be able to do
it, but you did.  You kept your promise and then some."

"So let it be judged!" Belldandy declared, and that was that for
Skuld's obligation to me.

I got on the bike and spun up the turbine, then engaged the grav
drive to get off the ground.  "Just one question, though, Skuld,"
I said, looking down.

"Yeah?"

"The tires are on fire.  Why are the tires on fire?"

"Relax.  It's just a hologram.  I thought it would look cool,"
she replied sheepishly.

I gave her a look.  "I thought you said the red light around the
wheels was wasteful."

"Shut up."

                               * * *

Tarikihonganji Temple Complex, Nekomi Ward, Sunday, June 29,
1997, 4:35 PM

Well, two more weeks passed more or less uneventfully -- a
strange and unnatural occurrence in my life, but one which I
embraced gratefully.

Psycho Freddy and Leatherboy (okay, okay, Tamiya and Ootaki)
finally came by and took away all the assorted auto parts -- and
the Ford Prefect -- which they had dumped in the temple yard
shortly before my arrival.  Not long afterward, Keiichi mentioned
a project he and Belldandy had been discussing around the same
time, to build a bench to put out by the sidewalk at the temple
gate, for the use of passers-by.  This sounded like a good idea
to both Chris and me, so we shanghaied Keiichi and drew up some
plans (being careful to keep Skuld away from them, as we didn't
want or need the bench to be able to transform into a 10-meter
battle robot with fusion-powered beam weaponry).  Having
determined the needs of our project, we then went to a local
lumberyard, bought our raw materials, brought them back to the
temple, and went to work.

We sank a couple thick posts to support the bench in quick-crete
the night before.  The next day, as the concrete finished curing,
the three of us spent several hours cutting, shaping, finishing
and assembling the bench proper.  The idea was to do something
that had a very traditional Japanese feel to it, yet was a bit
more sophisticated than a pair of stumps with a planed board
nailed to them.  Our final design partook equally of Bauhaus and
Craftsman styles (mostly by accident, to be honest) but still
managed to feel very classically Japanese.

It was also very sturdy, being assembled almost entirely using
big carriage bolts, the nuts of which we spot-welded to keep from
unscrewing (using a portable welder we borrowed from Skuld's
workshop).

When we finished the bench along about mid- to late-afternoon,
the three of us lugged it out to the sidewalk. (Being made of
big, thick cuts of wood and heavy steel bolts, it weighed a good
hundred, hundred and fifty kilograms.  Chris or I probably could
have manhandled it out by ourselves, but frankly, it wasn't that
kind of job, and it was easier to share the load.)  It took about
ten more minutes to mount it on the posts with more carriage
bolts (which then got spot-welded as well).

And when that was done we sat on it, that being the purpose of
benches.

"So... kenjutsu lesson after dinner?" I asked after about five
minutes of people-watching.

"Mmm," Chris replied.  "I guess.  I'm running out of things to
teach you, though."

"Oh."  I thought about it.  "We can always just spar."

"True."

Five more minutes of silent people-watching, and then Keiichi
stood up.  He stretched and groaned, and then said, "Well, I have
mid-terms to study for still.  I'm going to try to get in an
hour or so before dinner.  I'll see you guys then."

Chris nodded thoughtfully.  "Actually, that's not a bad idea."
As Keiichi picked up the portable welder, Chris unfolded himself
to his full height and stretched as well, setting off a fusillade
of cracking-joint noises.  "Got mid-terms of my own I should
review for."

"Being an old man with only a full-time job to take up his time,"
I said, "I shall remain here to enjoy the afternoon sun."  Then I
grinned.  "Consider it a... benchtest."  The two of them groaned
and threw their work gloves at me.  "Hey!"

They glanced at each other and shared a laugh.  "We'll see you at
dinner," Keiichi said.  "If Bell-chan lets you have any after
hearing about that pun."

I sighed theatrically and shook my head.  "Kids these days, no
appreciation."

"In," Chris said, opening the newly-rebuilt gate.  "Quickly,
before he puns again."  They dashed into the yard, grinning, and
the gate shut behind them with a heavy slam and the jingle of the
latch catching.

As soon as they were gone, I rolled backward off the bench and
landed on my feet in a crouch.  I pulled a Sharpie out of my
shirt pocket, and carefully labeled the back of the bench "Group
W" in large, block romanji letters.  Giggling to myself, I
returned the Sharpie to my pocket and vaulted the bench to drop
back down on it in a perfect casual sitting position.

Just in time to hear the gate latch rattle again.  I looked over
to see it open.  Out stepped Megumi and another girl whom I
hadn't met before; she must have arrived during the woodworking.
She was almost a head taller than the Megster -- not a difficult
or unusual feat, given Meg's height -- with long, shining hair
down to her butt.  Not bad looking, either.  Both were dressed
for clubbing.  Unusual on a Sunday, but not unheard of.

"No, don't wait up, Kei -- Ama-chan and I are off to terrorize
the einherjar," Megumi called back through the gate.  Oh, so
that's who she was.  Megumi shut the gate and the two
heartbreakers strolled past me -- "Ama-chan" with a mirror in her
hand, and Megumi wearing a necklace that seemed to be made up
mostly of comma-shaped jade beads.

"Have a good time," I said with a smile as they passed, and got
a pair of evil giggles in reply.  Then they were down the
sidewalk and making good time.  They weren't too far away when
"Ama-chan" glanced over her shoulder and commented, just loud
enough for me to hear, "Hey, he's cute."

Megumi simply said, "He's married."

"Awwwwww."  Then she giggled again, which faded into the sounds
of the street as they strutted out of earshot.

I grinned and shook my head.  *Well, even if Megumi still is a
bit chilly to Marller, at least she's making other Celestial
friends.  And I can't believe I think that's a good thing.*

Almost before I finished that thought, there was a flash of
golden light, and a young fellow with blue skin dressed in silks
and a gold crown appeared, awkwardly holding a measuring cup.  He
glanced my way and seemed to recognize me.  "Excuse me," he said,
gesturing at the gate.  "Is Verthandi present?  Satyabhama is
cooking and she sent me out to borrow a cup of sugar."

"Go right on in," I said.  "She's in the kitchen.  I'm sure
she'll be delighted to give you whatever you need."

He made a sort of abbreviated bow.  "Thank you."  With a jingle
and a thud from the gate, he entered the yard.

I laughed softly to myself.  "Like Grand Central Station today."

Despite that, though, there was no other non-mortal traffic in
front of the temple.  I sat and basked, thoroughly enjoying the
fruit of my labor and an afternoon without crises or other
demands on my time.  People-watching can be a lot of fun, and the
occasional pedestrian this Sunday afternoon allowed me to indulge
just the right amount.

Nobody joined me on the bench, though, until an elderly gentleman
in a natty pinstripe suit and fedora walked up, whistling a tune
I found vaguely familiar.

Unlike the other pedestrians that afternoon, he was a Westerner,
with the most amazingly improbable "General Stanley" mustache:
huge, bushy, white, and trimmed to be pointy at the ends without
the waxed kind of tip that Victorian villains always seem to be
twirling.  Underneath it were brilliant white teeth, straight and
regular and bared in a friendly smile as he nodded to me.  "Ah,
just what I need.  May I join you?" he asked in English.  As he
nodded, his right eye vanished entirely into the shadow from the
brim of his hat, and for a moment I could swear he had a beard.

Then he stood straight and no, he was clearly clean-shaven except
for that humongous mustache.

I smiled in return and patted the bench beside me.  "Of course.
Please, sit down and rest yourself, sir."

"Thank you."  He slowly and carefully lowered himself to the far
end of the bench from me, and settled in.  Then he held out a
hand.  "Harold Laird," he said, and I suddenly recognized both
the tune he had been whistling and his voice.

I took his hand and shook it.  He had a grip like a wrestler, and
his palm was ridged with a swordsman's calluses.  "Doug Sangnoir.
Then again, you already knew that, didn't you?"  I gave him a
dubious look.  "You weren't planning on me actually being taken
in by that alias, were you?"

His eyes widened, and then he erupted in hearty laughter.  "No,
I suppose I shouldn't have.  But my boys, when they heard that I
intended to speak with you, insisted I take on the appearance of
a mortal.  'You can't just go down there and say, Hi, I'm Odin,
Father -- what will the skalds think?'  'You've *always* done the
disguise thing in the mortal world, Dad.'  'It's your idiom,
Pop.'"  He laughed again.  "They're all good boys, just a bit
hidebound."

I couldn't help it, I laughed as well.  "And then you got around
them by using the very same voice you used when you spoke to me
during the ritual.  You, sir, are as sneaky as myth and legend
have painted this particular avatar of yours as being."

He nodded in acknowledgment.  Still smiling, he took off his
fedora and laid it on the bench between us, then dug into one of
his pockets.  "Well, now that we've gotten *that* out of the way,
I just wanted to give you the big picture.  You've been so
pivotal in recent matters that I didn't want to leave you in the
dark.  And your relationship with your commanding officer shows
that you aren't *automatically* hostile to our kind."  He pulled
out a brightly-colored candy.  "Gumball?"

"No, thanks," I said, holding up a hand, and he slid it back into
his pocket.  "First -- my relationship with Hexe is a completely
different thing.  Unlike so many of you, she's making an effort
to understand the human condition from the inside out.  Far too
many of 'your kind' seem to consider the human condition akin to
a *disease* -- when they're not treating us as toys to play with,
break and throw away at their pleasure."

"Laird" looked pained.  "That's an unfair generalization."

"It's not a generalization," I corrected.  "But it *is*, I
believe, a more than accurate description of the majority of
gods."  I pointed over my shoulder with my thumb at the temple
complex behind us.  "Other than Hexe, most of the few exceptions
I've come across in my life are inside that wall.

"Which leads me to the second point.  I dislike and distrust
gods.  But I am *not* irrational about it.  You came here to
speak with me, and you did so in a way that neither played to
deific ego nor was cloaked in deliberate deception.  For that, I
at least owe it to you to hear what you have to say."

He inclined his head in acknowledgment.  "Thank you."

"You're welcome," I replied.  "So... back to topic.  I think I've
got a pretty good idea what was going on -- Belldandy explained
the deal with Chris to me a few weeks back."

"Good, good," he said, nodding, "but that's only half the story."

"Half the story...?" I echoed.  "Oh, crap.  Marller.  It was all
part of the same mess, wasn't it?"

Brilliant white teeth flashed again as he grinned at me.  "You're
very quick, son.  I like that.  Yes, as you've just intuited,
Chris's situation and Marller's were intimately connected.  Hm.
How to cast this in terms that make sense to you..."  He rubbed
his chin and thought for a moment.  "A great distance away on a
time axis so alien to you that you wouldn't recognize it as time
proper, there was... well, an incident for lack of a better term.
In this incident the Warrior fractured, as you already know, into
uncountable beings of lower dimensionality, many of whom Fell.
What you *don't* know is that we lost several of our best people
as well in that incident.  In particular, the backlash from
Marller fracturing is what killed her counterpart, the Guardian,
outright."

I thought about that for a moment.  "I presume that the pairing
of the two is somehow critical?"

"Laird" nodded.  "It's difficult to explain.  It is a matter as
much having to do with our native ecology as with our social
structure, but yes:  it was *vital* to our long-term needs that
the Warrior and the Guardian both exist -- or both *not* exist --
in an equal and complementary state."  He drew a deep breath.
"For numerous reasons, although ending the shattered Warrior's
existence was a valid resolution to the incident, we chose
instead to try to heal her."

"And I'm guessing your reproductive cycle is too slow to let you
*grow* a new Guardian fast enough on your timeline," I offered.

He laughed again.  "The next time the other side says lower-
dimensionals are stupid and witless, son, I want to hold you up
as a counter-example.  Yes, you're right on the money.  We didn't
have the time for a new Guardian to reach maturity; we expected
the Warrior to perish outright before that would happen, which
would put us back in the same situation.  So we decided to make,
as the phrase goes, a 'Hail Mary' play.

"We had noticed a timeline not unlike this one, in which an
audacious experiment had taken a human male and, well, *smeared*
him across all his analogues and counterparts in a very large
number of the four-dimensional universes.  This left him
something very similar in nature to one of us, although he is
currently limited to a four-dimensional experience of time and
space."

"'Currently'?" I asked with a raised eyebrow.

"Currently," he chuckled.  "It turns out that he is descended
from an avatar of one of our number, who has taken it on himself
to guide his descendant into a full ascension.  Regardless, this
accident inspired us.  We wanted a new Guardian who could
withstand the fracturing, so we decided to *start* fractured and
then unify.  We found another individual with a large number of
analogues and alternate selves and put him in a situation where
he would undergo an apotheosis of his own similar to the other
fellow's -- but more controlled, less painful..."

"Chris," I said.

"Yes.  Chris."

I studied him.  "Belldandy told me all about this part.  Where
the whole idea was..."  I paused and fished for an analogy.
"Like taking a sheaf of roleplaying characters and looking to see
if they would spontaneously form a *player* under heat and
pressure."

"The concept was a *bit* more sophisticated than that, but yes."
A shadow seemed to pass over "Laird"'s face for a moment.
"Unfortunately, something went wrong with his apotheosis.  Oh, it
*took* -- but it didn't go far enough, and instead of placing
Chris as the controlling persona of the new Guardian, it left him
as little more than a local kami of place, and the rest of the
Guardian's... ahem... components only loosely linked to him."  He
sighed.  "What we hadn't understood at the time was just how
closely the Guardian and the Warrior had to mirror each other.
Neither could be whole until the other was... and we had just
made a Guardian as shattered as the Warrior."

I leaned back and looked up into the blue sky above.  "Catch-22."

"Precisely."

We sat together silently as I turned this over and over in my
head.  Finally, I said, "You were stuck.  If you stayed within
the pattern you were used to, your only choice would have been to
kill both the Warrior and the new Guardian and raise a set of
replacements together from birth."

"Laird" bowed his head.  "Yes."
  
"I presume something bad would happen if you did that, either
because of killing the two of them, or because of the delay in
raising and training their replacements."

He bowed his head even further.  "Yes."

I nodded, more to myself than to him.  "So rather than suffer
whatever that bad thing would be, you tried something out of the
box.  You pulled in an outside force to give your locked system
a kick in the ass."  I tried to keep the igniting anger from my
voice.  "You used *me*."

"Yes."  He straightened up and turned to face me directly.  "You
must understand, Douglas -- you are a remarkable... catalyst, for
lack of a better word in a mortal language.  It's your greatest
strength, in my opinion.  One of your... acquaintances in another
universe once swore in a private moment that you were chaos
incarnate; she wasn't too far off, if you define 'chaos' as a
force driving change and growth.  And if there were a patron
saint of free will, you would be it.  Your very presence unbinds
that which is bound to be.  You can do what we *can't*.  We
*needed* you."

I locked eyes with him.  "You could have asked me to help."

"Yes," he said, returning my gaze with his own, just as steady
and serious.  "We could have.  But if we had, it might not have
worked."

"Explain," I demanded, frowning.

"We have vast computing power at our fingertips, to put it in
terms familiar to you, Douglas.  We ran millions, *billions* of
simulations.  It boiled down to this:  You would be immensely
more effective if you had *no idea* why you were here.  It didn't
matter how we approached you -- the moment you knew what we
needed, the chance of success plummeted.  Not back to zero --
your involvement always improved the odds.  But it was only when
we dropped you in the deep end with no warning that those odds
maxed in our favor."

I thought about that.  If it were true -- and I wasn't about to
discount the possibility of a fancy lie for my benefit -- but if
it were true... damn.  It was a decision I just might have made
myself.  And it wasn't like they had plopped me down in a
Celestial warzone.  I'd never been in any serious danger in this
world that hadn't been of my own making.

I still didn't like it.  I'd *never* like being jerked around by
Celestials.  But I could understand the reasoning behind this
particular case.

And for the first time in my experience, a Celestial (other than
Hexe, who really is more human than Celestial if you ask me, and
Belldandy, who had sworn on blood to never lie to me) was taking
the time to explain *why* he had done what he had done with me,
instead of waving the "ineffable" flag and telling me that I
couldn't hope to understand.  It wasn't exactly an apology for
messing with my life.  But it was surprisingly close.

It was treating me as... well, probably not as an equal, but at
least as a sapient worth talking to like a grown-up.

"Well," I finally said.  "If you're not just feeding me a line
calculated to appease me, I think I can respect that.  The very
fact that you're even talking to me about it... that goes a whole
long way toward defusing the state of permanent pissed-off I have
about you Celestials."

He chuckled.  "I'm very glad to hear that."

"And I'm glad my involvement kicked things in the ass the right
way," I replied.  "Because it helped out a couple people that I
guess I think of as friends now, I'm not going to hold a grudge
over it."  I caught his eye again.  "*This* time."

He nodded and smiled that big smile again.  "Fair enough."

I folded my arms behind my neck and leaned back again, digging my
toes into the dirt under the bench to keep from falling over
backwards.  "So, I suppose you want your magic stick back now
that this is all over."

"Laird" chuckled.  "You do, do you?"

Without changing my position, I turned my head to look over at
him.  "Well, yeah."

"You're wrong."

I looked sidelong at him without changing my position.  He was
smiling still.  I wasn't sure I found it reassuring.
   
"Understand, son, that Heaven and Hell are less... antagonistic
in this world and its parallels than you are perhaps used to.
We're not enemies at each others' throats..."  He chuckled, a
little nervously perhaps, possibly at the thought of the howling
demonic mob which had besieged the temple only a few weeks
before.  "Well, not usually.  We're more like two competing teams
in a cutthroat sporting event -- each out to win over the other
at all costs while the contest lasts, but outside of that contest
we can be civil and even friendly with each other.  In this skein
of universes, Heaven and Hell share the same goal -- the ultimate
perfection of the human race."  He chuckled again, this time with
no nervousness at all, a rich, throaty chuckle full of irony.
"We simply disagree on our methods and the definition of
'perfection'."

"Interesting," I said, "but hardly relevant."

He laughed outright,  "Oh, but it is, it is.  That little toy you
now own -- yes, it's yours to keep now, we won't take it away,"
he parenthesized at what must have been a look of shock or
surprise on my face.  "That little toy is an example of the
cooperation between Heaven and Hell here.  We do have our
radicals, our renegades, and the occasional outsider who thinks
he knows better how to manage things.  We determined early on
that we needed weapons that partook of both sides to address any
'third sides' that might arise."  He gestured at the staff.
"That was one of our first attempts, many eons ago.  A pleasant
little device, but just a bit underpowered for our needs despite
having a trick or five up its proverbial sleeve.  A steak knife,
you might say, when we were looking to make a two-handed sword.
It was forged, tested, and put away to be forgotten as bigger and
better models were created for actual use."

"Forged?" I interrupted.  "It's made of *wood*."

He gave me a Look.  "Don't be so literal, son."

I snorted.  "So your toothpick here is a prototype.  Underpowered
for a Celestial," I said slowly, "but not for a metahuman?"

He laughed again and clapped me on the back in an almost fatherly
manner.  "Precisely.  And now, as you were its first true
wielder, it's bonded to you, and will be for the rest of your
life."

I stood up and pulled the staff from my pocket and studied it.
It had remained in its 15-centimeter collapsed form since the day
I'd almost killed Marller.  For a moment I wondered if it, too,
had a variant of the "*Skidbladnir*" enchantment on it before I
forced my mind back to the matter at hand.  "I'm not sure I like
that."

"It just means you can never lose it, Douglas.  It will always
find its way back to you, unless and until you explicitly give
its ownership over to another.  Or you die," he noted with a
cheerfulness that annoyed me.  "It's not like it's sucking on
your soul or anything like that," he added with a smirk.  "That's
why we're not taking it away from you -- because it would just go
right back to you anyway."

"Well, I suppose that's reassuring."  I held it out at arms'
length and thought "open" at it.  With a sound like a tree branch
breaking in half it obediently snapped open to full length.  I
gave it a careful once-over -- that faint, transparent orange-
gold spearhead was nowhere to be seen.

Good.

"So, do I get to part the Red Sea with this baby, then?" I asked.
I held it out before me with one hand and my arms spread, as if I
were Charlton Heston and expected the asphalt of the road in
front of us to roll back and reveal bare ground.

He laughed.  "Don't push your luck.  Moses you aren't."  He
studied me for a moment with a smirk.  "Aaron, maybe..."

"Yeah, right."  I thought "close" at it, and it shrunk back down
to hide in my hand with the same cracking-wood sound.  "So, save
me a lot of work and guessing.  What does it do?"

"It doesn't really do all that much, actually," he replied,
tilting his head to watch me.  "It just kills gods.  And demons.
And anything else on the same general level.  It is made from a
twig of the True Yggdrasil and exists in several more dimensions
than the ones you live in, which means it is completely
unbreakable by any merely four-dimensional force or object."

"Well, that's good to hear," I said as I remembered the old joke:
an unbreakable toy is very useful for breaking other toys.  "But
I *know* it does more.  It flew into my hand when I needed it,
for example."

"It did?"  "Laird"'s eyebrows -- just as bushy and white as his
mustache -- rose into his hair.  "Well, I did say it has a few
more tricks up its sleeve.  I couldn't tell you what it else it
might be capable of, though."

"Wonderful," I snarked as I slid the compressed staff back into
my pocket.  "Where's omniscience when you need it?"

"Laird" fixed me with a look.  "I must have left it in my other
suit."

And so help me, I had no idea how to respond to that.

So I didn't.  I sat back down on the Group W bench and ruminated
a bit.  "So, that's it then."

He nodded slowly.  "Yes, son, I believe it is."

"So... what song takes me out of this universe, preferably to my
home?"

"Ah."  He pointedly did not look at me.  "That would be telling."

"Ah," I mocked.  "That would be jerking me around at the end,
after all."

He sighed.  "Frankly, son, your presence is as important to
Marller's recovery from her experiences as that of her family.
If I -- or she -- were to tell you how to leave before you find
it for yourself, could you resist using it right away?  So yes,
this is selfish of us, but you are still needed."

Dammit.  It was very hard to work up a head of righteous anger
when he was being so honest with me.  And he had told me enough
to reassure me, whether he meant to or not -- there *was* a song
to take me out of this world, and I *would* find it on my own.
I suppose it was enough to know that, after all.

"All right," I said after thinking about that for a while.  "Fair
enough.  Though you still could have just *asked* first."

"This is true," he admitted.

I sighed.  "Look.  I appreciate you actually making the effort to
explain this all to me.  In my experience, you gods tend to be a
whole lot more arrogant and high-handed about things, which is
one of my main complaints about your lot.  So the fact that you
felt you needed to do this -- appreciated, really."

I turned and sat facing him across the bench.  "But don't mistake
this for anything beyond a temporary truce.  You gods still have
a lot to answer for, in my opinion."  And I patted the bulge in
my pocket where the staff lay.

"Understood," said Odin in his guise as "Harold Laird", those
big, white teeth of his bared in another broad smile.  "I
wouldn't have it any other way."

"And don't think that now that I've rubbed shoulders with some of
you for a while that I'm going to start changing my mind,
because, frankly, Mister, I don't want or need to believe in
*what* you are," I said, my mouth starting to run away with me as
an epiphany dawned.  "But *who*... well, that's a different
story.

"I believe in *who* Belldandy is, not *what* she is.  I believe
in *who* Chris is, *who* Urd and Skuld are.  And I believe in
*who* Marller is.

"They're my friends, kind of, maybe even family of a sort.  Even
if they weren't in the beginning, that's *who* they are now.  I
couldn't care less any more that they're gods."  I gave him a
lopsided grin.  "Come to that, I doubt Chris is *ever* going to
think of himself as a 'real' god, no matter what he
accomplishes."

He threw his head back and laughed.  "No, no, he won't, will he?
We're going to have to work on that eventually.  But I think
we'll give him a few decades to settle in first."

I snorted.  "Yeah, that should do."

"Well, then," he said, getting up from the bench and retrieving
his fedora, "I think that just about concludes our business.  I
do want to thank you again for your help in this difficult
matter, despite the, ahem, 'high-handed' way we pulled you in on
it."

I stood as well.  "You're welcome.  Of course, this changes
nothing between us."

"Nothing at all," he agreed amiably.  "War it is, then?"

I grinned.  "War it is."

"Very well," he said, bowing.  "May the best entity win."

And with that, he turned and walked off down the street, back in
the direction from which he had come, whistling once more.  It
was the same tune he had been whistling when he first appeared --
Joan Osborne's "One of Us":

    "What if God was one of us?
    Just a slob like one of us?
    Just a stranger on the bus
    Trying to make his way home..."

Appreciating the irony I laughed out loud.

Hearing it, he stopped, turned back to me, smiled and tipped his
hat.  I sketched a loose bow, and when I looked back up, he had
vanished.

The whistling resumed, though, and I chuckled softly to myself.
After it faded into the distance, I chuckled once more, then
re-entered the temple.

God is all things, I once heard a priest say when I was a kid.
Apparently, among all the other possibilities, God -- at least,
*this* universe's God -- was a big goofball.  Somehow, I found
that strangely reassuring.

As I passed through the brightly-painted gate, though, I thought
of Maggie and sighed.  It would be hard -- it would *always* be
hard -- but someday I *would* get back to her.  And knowing that
Alena had been here, however briefly, and would have reported
back to Hexe by now, that helped, a little.  In the meantime,
though...

I paused, holding the gate open as I took in the entire complex.

It wasn't -- and would never be -- a static picture.  There
perched on the house's engawa was Keiichi, surrounded by his
books on all sides except for the one Belldandy had claimed as
hers.  As he slowly turned the pages of the one in his hands, she
leaned against him with her head on his shoulder, an expression
of pure bliss on her face.

Through the open shoji behind them, I could see Chris and Rachel
pouring over their own books.

Skuld stood at the door to her workshop, wiping her hands on a
red cloth and wearing that manic grin which hinted that another
new project had suggested itself to her.

And Urd was draped across the temple's front steps.  She noticed
me at the gate and waved.  I grinned and waved back.

Above her on the temple roof, several ravens eyed me and cawed in
suspicious unison.

A gentle breeze was blowing, rustling the trees in the yard.
Drifting out of one of the house's windows was the faint sound of
music; it faded in and out of hearing enough to keep my metagift
from activating even if I had not been wearing my tuneplug, but
not so much so that I couldn't recognize it.  It was a tune that
I'd privately decided was Keiichi's personal theme song -- "I'm a
Believer", by the Monkees:

    "Then I saw her face, now I'm a believer!
     Not a trace of doubt in my mind.
     I'm in love, I'm a believer!
     I couldn't leave her if I tried."

I smiled and closed the gate behind me.  I would never have
expected it six weeks earlier, but... the last time I felt this
comfortable and welcome was when I lived in the Kurata household.

And more -- encounters like the one I'd just had aside, this was
the first place in ten years where I really, truly felt at peace.
Belldandy's influence, no doubt, but I didn't begrudge that -- it
was just the way she was.

I know that I'm going to have to travel unimaginably further
before I finally find my way home, before I get back to my wife.
I know that it's guaranteed to be anything but easy.  I don't
need the gods to tell me that; it's just the way my life runs
and the way the dice roll.

But...

But for now, I have a welcome respite.  A way station where I can
regain my strength and balance for the tasks ahead.  Whether I
find that gate song tomorrow or a year from now, it doesn't
matter, because I'll always be welcome here.

It may not have been home, but it was good enough for now.

                               * * *

And though home is a name, a word, it is a strong one; stronger
than magician ever spoke, or spirit answered to, in strongest
conjuration.  -- Charles Dickens, "Martin Chuzzlewit," chapter 35

                               * * *

EPILOGUES

Nirvana?  That's the place where the powers that be and their
friends hang out.  -- Zonker Harris, "Doonesbury"


Location:  Meaningless.  Time:  Meaningless.

It was much easier the second time, Chris realized.  Actually
knowing what he was doing, and doing it *on purpose*, made a
*big* difference.

And more of himselves joined with him this time -- not just the
ones ready and eager for battle, but the scholars, the diplomats,
and the peacemakers as well.  He realized then that there would
never be just one version of his Overself, but that it would
always be in flux, changing by the needs and demands of the
moment, and the availability of the others who joined him to
form it.

He figured he'd get used to it.

The process of expanding through and into eight more dimensions
than he was familiar with, though -- he wasn't sure he would
ever get used to *that*.  It was just freaky.  Not to mention
that the Being he became when he finally reached ... what *was*
this place called, anyway?  Not to mention that what he became
couldn't even be perceived in human terms even though his mind
kept insisting on trying to do so.

"Hey, it's the new guy again!"

Paradox nodded in acknowledgment, or at least performed its
12-dimensional analogue, while waving -- or its equivalent.  "I'm
back like I promised."

"And we've been waiting for you."  The voice/signal/communication
came from something like behind him, and he turned to see...

His four-dimensional components kept overlaying their own
interpretations over his 12-dimensional perceptions.  That wasn't
as annoying as it could have been, because he wasn't sure he
would have recognized his four sisters here without the sensory
confusion.  Or maybe he would have, he realized as he stared at
their true selves.  They were nothing like human, but somehow he
knew -- that one was Belldandy, that one was Urd, there was
Skuld, and there was Marller.

Or should he say, The Mother, The Crone, The Maiden... and The
Warrior.

He did something that felt like smiling, and said, "Hey guys."
Then he added, "Who're your friends?"

Accompanying his sisters were three more Beings, who flickered in
his perceptions back and forth between their true appearances,
and four-dimensional human overlays.  Male overlays.  One nudged
another, and they laughed.  "Friends?  We're your *brothers*,
Guardian," one said.  His human appearances all tended toward the
long and rangy, dressed in leather that flowed seamlessly through
the spectrum from fringed buckskins to bomber jackets.  He did
something Chris interpreted as holding out his hand.  "I'm the
Hunter," he said as Chris did something he thought of as shaking
it.

The second waited until Chris turned his attention to him.  His
overlays seemed far more variable than the Hunter's, ranging from
tiny old men in academic robes to burly figures in armor.  "The
Guide.  It's a pleasure to meet our new sibling."

"Hey there," said the last.  The variety and number of his
avatars outdid the Guide's -- many were human, but almost as
many weren't, ranging from outright aliens to things that looked
like cartoon animals.  Their clothes varied just was widely, from
Japanese kimonos to olive drab military uniforms to outfits that
wouldn't have been out of place on a comic book superhero.  As he
stepped forward, though, they collapsed together, leaving behind
a single image that all Chris's component selves seemed to agree
upon:  a cheerful human male, muscular and swarthy with a streak
of white in his black hair.  He held out a hand in greeting.
"Greetings, little brother.  I'm the Rover.  But most folks call
me Ed."

                               * * *
  
Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment
and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen
next.  Delicious ambiguity.  -- Gilda Radner


Temple Hill Road, Nekomi Ward, Tuesday, July 1, 1997, 9:44 AM

The incubus Zerethuel -- or, as he vastly preferred to be known,
Takano Watanabe -- was not happy at all with his current
position.

Oddly enough, the last time he had felt this way, he had been
standing more or less in the same spot -- across the street from
the temple in which the Norns and the mortals they associated
with lived.

And hadn't *that* been a fiasco.  Just about every demon assigned
to the Kanto Plain had run in there, expecting to interrupt a
Redemption and drag Mara back to the Pit.  The army that had
ambushed them once they were inside and trapped, though, no one
had expected.

Fortunately, Garnash and the rest of the local chain of command
above him had gotten themselves slaughtered almost immediately,
and Zerethuel had been free to make a strategic withdrawal.

And now, while they were still paying for their mistakes in the
Pit, it was time for him to make a different kind of strategic
withdrawal.

Being on the side of Hell wasn't what he'd thought it would be.
Yeah, he got to experience the pleasures of the flesh as much as
he'd wanted, but after all these centuries he was willing to
admit it was all kind of empty.  Fun, but depressing after.

He'd never used to feel that way, but something about himself had
been changing over the past few decades.  Maybe he was growing
up?

Was that possible?

Who knew?

All he knew was that maybe... just maybe... he'd find something
more fulfilling back on the other side.

Steeling himself, Zerethuel marched across the street before he
could lose his nerve, and rapped smartly on the temple gate.

It rattled and swung open, revealing (to his sudden fright)
Paradox, the ascended mortal, who was muttering, "...someone
actually knocked, I can't believe it."  Then he looked down on
Zerethuel and said, "Can I help you?"

The demon looked up, up, up until he found the eyes under the
shock of red hair that topped the man-mountain before him.  He
opened his mouth to reply, but all that came out at first was a
frightened squeak.  He closed it, swallowed, and tried again.

"Um.  Hi.  I'd like to speak with the Norns, please?"

The freckled face looming high above him slowly twisted into a
scowl of suspicion.  "And who should I say is asking?"

"Uh, my name, my *real* name, is Zerethuel," he said, biting his
lip for a moment before adding, "I'm an incubus, but I want to
switch sides."  He wrung his hands as he watched surprise replace
suspicion on the young god's face.  "I was hoping they, you,
could help me?"

The Lord of Paradox studied him for several moments, then slowly
nodded.  "Come on in, and we'll see what we can do for you."

                               * * *

Well, I'm on my way
I don't know where I'm goin'
I'm on my way
I'm takin' my time but I don't know where
-- Paul Simon, "Me and Julio Down by the School Yard"


MegaTokyo, Japan.  Friday, April 18, 2042

*I could have gone out to eat with Nene and Sakuya tonight.*
Lisa Vanette scowled as she rinsed the remains of her dinner from
the plate she held.  *But no, I had to stay in and be maudlin and
alone.*

When the plate was clean, the kitchen faucet shut itself off.
She held out one hand and the dishtowel shot from its hook into
her grasp; a few strokes and the plate was dry.  As she slid the
dish back into its place in the cabinet above the sink, Lisa
waved the towel back across the kitchen and onto its hook, then
growled with irritation at herself.  *It's been five years, girl.
You need to move on with your life,* she upbraided herself.
*Doug's not coming back, and you knew it from the start.  Stop
commemorating the date he left like it was a national day of
mourning!*

She turned from the sink to stalk back to her living room;
another unconscious flick of her hand and the kitchen lights
turned themselves out.  Dropping heavily into her favorite chair,
she resisted the urge to flounce melodramatically.  It wouldn't
have done any good, anyway -- there was no one to impress but
herself, and she was already as disgusted with her own behavior
as she could get.

She settled in for a good long sulk and had begun to consider
whether or not to supplement it with alcohol when her doorbell
rang.  She growled once more as she sprung from the chair,
propelled by her irritation at the interruption.  *That had
better not be Nene, trying to "cheer me up" again...*

She stalked over to the door and yanked it open without bothering
to check the peephole first.  "Nene, I told you I..." she began,
then stumbled to a halt.

Whoever the woman at her door was, she wasn't Nene.  Instead of a
petite blue-eyed redhead with a creamy complexion, Lisa found
herself staring at a tall, aristocratic woman of approximately
her own age, with olive skin, green eyes, and rich mahogany hair.
Her stance reminded Lisa oddly of Sylia, that strange but
attractive blend of elegance and battle-readiness.  The most
striking thing about her, though, was her clothing -- she wore a
belted tunic, close breeches, and calf-height boots all of a
soft, supple leather so brilliantly white that it was almost
blinding even in the dim, yellowish lighting of the hall, topped
off with a cloak of the same color and material.  Lisa's eyes
widened when she spotted the sheathed sword and knife that both
hung from the woman's belt, partially hidden by the cloak.  They
widened further when she realized that the outfit was not
unfamiliar to her; she had seen one just like it, years before --
buried in the depths of Doug's wardrobe.

"<Forgive me for the intrusion,>" the strange woman said in
perfect English.  "<My name is Delandra vel'deVarn, and I am
looking for Colonel Douglas Sangnoir.>"  When Lisa didn't reply
right away, she added, "<May I come in?>"



FIN

------------------------------------

This work of fiction is copyright (C) 2012, by Robert M. Schroeck
and Christopher Angel, and is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License.

"Oh! My Goddess", and the settings and the characters thereof,
are copyright by and trademarks of Kosuke Fujishima, KISS and
Kodansha Ltd., and are used without permission.

"The Transformers", "Autobot" and other indicia are copyright by
and trademarks of Hasbro, Sunbow Productions, Marvel Productions,
Toei Animation and/or AKOM, and are used without permission.

"The Matrix" is copyright by and trademark of Village Roadshow
Pictures, Silver Pictures and Larry and Andy Wachowski, and is
used without permission.

"Bubblegum Crisis" and the settings and characters thereof are
copyright by and a trademark of Artmic Inc. and Youmex Inc., and
are used without permission.

"Mahou Senshi Riui" (AKA "Rune Soldier", "Louie the Rune Soldier"
and "Rune Soldier Louie") and the settings and characters thereof
are copyright by and a trademark of Ryo Mizuno and J.C. Staff,
and are used without permission.

"Douglas Q. Sangnoir," "Looney Toons", "The Loon" and any
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thereof are copyright by and trademarks of Christopher Angel.

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copyright by and a trademark of Peggy Schroeck.

"The Warriors", "Warriors' World", "Warriors International" and
"Warriors Alpha" are all jointly-held trademarks of The Warriors
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Quotation from "The Weight of Glory" by C.S. Lewis, originally
preached as a sermon in the Church of St Mary the Virgin, Oxford,
England, on June 8, 1942: published in THEOLOGY, November, 1941,
and by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1942.

Lyrics from "Supernova", recorded by The Echoing Green, written
by Joey "Joey B." Belville, copyright (C) 2000 by Echoing Green,
The.

Lyrics from "I Feel Better Than James Brown", recorded by Was
(Not Was), written by David "David Was" Weiss and Don Edward
"Don Was" Fagenson, copyright (C) 1990 by Chrysalis Catalog.

Lyrics from "Shin'a'in Warsong", written by Mercedes Lackey and
Leslie Fish, copyright (C) 1988(?) by Firebird Arts & Music.

Lyrics from "One Of Us", recorded by Joan Osborne, written by
Eric Bazilian, copyright (C) 1995.

Lyrics from "I'm a Believer", recorded by the Monkees, written by
Neil Diamond, copyright (C) 1966 by Screen Gems-EMI Music Inc.

These and all other quotes are included in this fiction without
permission under the "fair use" provisions of international
copyright law.

For a full explanation of the references and hidden tidbits in
this story, see the Drunkard's Walk V Concordance at:

         http://www.accessdenied-rms.net/dw5conc.shtml

Other chapters of this story can be found at:

         http://www.accessdenied-rms.net/dw5.shtml

"Oh! My Brother!" can be found at:

         http://www.yggdrasil.org/omg/index.html

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C&C gratefully accepted.