syegul@ix.netcom.com (Serdar Yegulalp)

[Copyright notice: this work is in the public domain and may be
reproduced and distributed freely. It may not be distributed for
profit.]

                                URUSEI X
                        (or, THE YATSURA FILES)

                                PART ONE

Based on characters and situations created by
Chris Carter and Takahashi Rumiko


Scully shifted around in the chair, feeling it rattle back and forth
beneath her; one of the chair's legs was shorter than the other.
Disgusted, she got up and shoved the chair aside.
     Mulder stood at the front of the room, tapping his toe.
     "Sorry," she said, "if I'm going to sit through a newsreel I'd
like to go for a chair that at least lies flat."
     "Budget cuts," Mulder half-smiled. "Sit on the edge of the desk;
it's softer."
     Scully lifted a pile of manila envelopes marked EYES ONLY DO NOT
OPEN and dumped them into the offending chair, then perched herself on
the edge of the desk. Mulder scooped up the remote and started the
wall-sized TV.
     On screen, a ship the size of Manhattan Island caromed across the
sky, its hull painted in yellow and black.
     "All of this stuff should be pretty familiar," he intoned. "About
a year ago those aliens showed up. For real--"
     "How could I forget?" she said. "I did pay up, you must say that."
     "You think you felt stupid. Anyway--they came, and their computer'd
spat out the name of a Japanese high school student." He touched a
button on the remote and up came an FBI database dossier. "Morob--shit,
I have the worst time with these Japanese names..."
     "Moroboshi Ataru," Scully said with perfect intonations. "Ataru
Moroboshi to those of us who put birthname first. He was the one they
set up for that tag game with the alien ambassador's daughter, right?"
     "Right. He won, but only after pulling a trick that got censored on
TV in just about every country around the world except Japan." A vague
smirk. "And the FBI archives."
     "Celebrity Skin doesn't cut the mustard with you anymore, I guess."
     A lame smile. "A man's gotta try. --So after that they stuck
around, and the ambassador's daughter--" He touched another button and
displayed another dossier. "--arranged to marry him, 'cause apparently
he'd promised. He still denies it. But she shacked up with him and
invited a whole bunch of her friends over. Pretty wild in-laws."
     He flipped off the TV.
     "She went missing about a week ago." The interior of a Japanese
home flashed on screen. "Signs of forced entry, but no blood--although
the walls and ceiling were scorched." He pointed at the dark marks
splattering the interior of the house; Scully squinted and touched the
screen herself.
     "Electrical fire, looks like."
     "Right. Apparently the daughter--name of Lum, I think--yeah.
Apparently one of the features of her race is that everyone manifests
some kind of extranormal ability from birth. All of them can defy
gravity at will. Lum apparently had the ability to store and discharge
electrical energy. One of her live-ins, a cousin--name of Jariten, age
two--is able to expectorate methane through the mouth, and ignite it, too."
     "Plain English, he breathes fire."
     "Changing him must be a joy." He picked up his passport and flipped
through it. "I've booked us a flight on JAL to Tokyo tomorrow morning.
Go home and get some sleep."
     Scully picked up her bag. "Kind of frustrating."
     "What is."
     "After those Uruseians came along, things got really boring around 
here."
     "So you say."

     The district police in Tokyo were questioning the Moroboshi boy 
already, but they looked haggard when they came out to greet the agents. 
Scully's Japanese was a little clumsy, but her deferential phrasing seemed 
to bring the best out of the officers.
     "The one on the left's Prefectural Inspector Yamanouchi," she told
Mulder. "The other one's Under-Inspector Yamada. Both of them were
questioning Moroboshi for about five hours in there. Apparently he's the
ichi-ban suspect."
     "How come?"
     "He always talked about how he wanted her out of the house. About
how she was 'ruining his youth' with her 'smothering attention'. But
now--"
     The guards slid back the metal partition that covered the cell.
Sitting on the bench in the middle of the tiny room, his face lit from
above by a single flickering fluorescent tube, was Ataru Moroboshi. His
unruly thatch of brown hair hung over his wide, harrowed eyes.
     "Can we talk to you?" Scully said.
     Ataru's eyes rose slowly, in a way that Mulder realized (with a
twinge of disgust) was plainly fueled by an overanbundance of teenage
hormones. He flew out of the bench and pressed his face to the bars,
grinning.
     "Oh, you can bet on it!" He nodded vigorously, making sure that his
face never strayed more than a few inches from Scully's chest. "Yes'm!"
     Scully threw Mulder a uneasy sidelong glance.
     "You translate, I'll talk," Mulder sighed.
     The picture emerged in fits and starts. Ataru freely admitted to
being disgusted with the way Lum inhibited his life, but as he said --
     "--it wasn't all like that. I love her! I just didn't want her
hanging over my shoulder every second of every day. Isn't that reasonable?"
     "I guess," Mulder shrugged.
     "And now they're saying I did something to her." He gripped the
bars. "Look, if I had done something to her, she wouldn't be missing.
Matter of fact, she'd probably be hanging off all over me tighter than
ever. But--" He sighed. "No one believes me. I came home one day and she
just wasn't there!"
     "What about her cousin."
     "Jariten? That snotty little brat? Oh, he came home after the
cops'd already dragged me off. They didn't even talk to him!"
     Mulder and Scully sat back in their chairs. They had to.

     Mr. and Mrs. Moroboshi weren't all that different from his own parents,
Mulder reflected. Once hale and bright-eyed, decades of marriage and home 
life had ground them down, put lines in their faces, taken the glint from 
their eyes. Mr. Moroboshi's attention frequently wandered to a newspaper, 
which his wife was quick to snatch out of his fingers.
     "I don't want to sound ungrateful," Mrs. Moroboshi said, pouring tea 
for everyone, "but he's been nothing but a burden since the beginning. 
My son, I mean. Always in trouble, always flunking something in school, 
always spending his money on stupid things--"
     "And chasing everything female that's warm and breathing," 
Mr.Moroboshi gagged. "Including that alien floozy Lum!"
     Mrs. Moroboshi shot him a glance that could have melted the ice
caps. "Don't you dare," she hissed. "Lum is a part of this household--
was. I'm just as shattered as Ataru was at her vanishing."
     "So Ataru was broken up when she was gone."
     "He cried in my lap for the first time in years," Mrs. Moroboshi
said in a suddenly gentle voice. "After all, he is my son, the only son
I have..."
     "One too many," Mr. Moroboshi mumbled, and got up to nurse the
horrid lump that grew from his forehead after Mrs. Moroboshi mutely
picked up a rice cooker and clouted him squarely in the face with it. 
Back in their hotel room, Scully and Mulder sagged in facing chairs and
looked over their notes.
     "That was," Mulder sighed, "really unproductive."
     "Not really," Scully rejoindered. "At least we have a handle on who
feels what here."
     "Right. They all hate each other."
     There was a tap at the door. Scully yanked out her gun and plastered 
her face to the peephole; she backed away, frowning, and offered to let 
Mulder look.
     A very tall woman with cascading ruffles of dark hair and chiseled,
fierce features stood on the other side of the door. She held up to the
peephole a pad on which was written: I MAY PLEASE SPEAK TO YOU F.B.I.
     Mulder's eye remained stuck to the peephole for many more seconds
than was required to read the sign. Scully grabbed his shoulder. "Well,
do we let her in?"
     "Three guesses, Scully. First two don't count."
     "One of these days you're going to trust the wrong woman and--"
     "And you're not going to be there to save my ass? I thought that
day came and went when we buddied up." He unlatched the door and let the
other woman in.
     "Thank you," the woman said in a steely contralto, stepping inside.
"I understand you're investigating the disappearance of the Oni-girl."
     "The what." Mulder blinked.
     Scully murmured, "Apparently this Lum girl's race strongly resembled 
a classical Japanese demon called an Oni. They all called her that."
     "That wasn't in any of the notes we took in the interview."
     "I read the first graphic novel."
     "Oh."
     "May I sit down?" the woman asked. Both of them nodded; she slid
into a chair like it had been built for her and crossed her legs. The
sound of her thighs sliding against each other made Mulder's knees 
malfunction and he grabbed a chair himself. "My name is Sakura, and I'm
a maiden priestess. Actually I moonlight as a priestess now; my real job
is school nurse at Tomobiki H.S."
     "Tomobiki," Scully said. "That's the district where Ataru Moroboshi
lived, right?"
     "I had the misfortune of working there, yes," she sighed. "Poor
boy-- very susceptible to influences by evil spirits. Sometimes that's
useful, and sometimes that proved to be nothing but trouble."
     "Evil spirits."
     "When I first met him, I was afflicted with a number of disease
spirits--but he drew them off without even trying. I exorcised them from
him, of course, but not without some difficulty. The police refuse to
let me see him now; I'm convinced that some terrible spirits have
influenced what has happened here. Only the gods can help him now."
     "Wrong!" a squeaky male voice intoned from the doorway, followed by
a slight jingling. "Only the Buddhas can help him now!"
     Mulder turned and stared at an impossibly squat man with a completely 
bald head, dressed in the garb of an itinerant Buddhist monk. The jingling 
came from the staff he clutched in one hand, bound about with iron rings. 
Sakura came out of her chair and went face-to-face with the little man; 
both of them aimed casual contempt at each other. Mulder stupidly realized 
that with all of his ogling of Sakura, he had forgotten to shut the door.
     "Do you know this ma--" Mulder started to say, somehow already
knowing what the answer would be.
     "This is my uncle, Cherry," Sakura growled. "Who I've told not to
interfere in my personal affairs."
     "That Moroboshi boy's both our problem now!" He jabbed a finger
through the air. "His doom was in his face from the beginning--and now
it's taken a turn for the worse!"     
	"What are you saying! All along you were trying to help him get rid
of Lum, and now that she's gone--you're saying things are worse than ever?! 
Gods help this man!"
     "Excuse me!" Mulder said, in a voice several decibels louder than
he was originally planning to use. "You knew Moroboshi as well."
     "Of course I did. I was his spiritual guide and tutor. I still am.
That is, if indeed he still lives." A weird, shocked expression crossed
the little man's face; he slapped a hand to the top of his bald head and
goggled. "Gyah! How foolish of me! We can find out if the boy lives 
right now!"
     Sakura caught his arm as he bolted for the door. "Now wait a minute-- 
are you thinking of praying over your mandalas again? Waste of effort. 
Let me make an offering to the spirits--"
     "You and your spirits! Leggo my arm!" He jammed the end of his staff 
in between Sakura's hand and his own arm and pried fiercely. Scully took 
up smoking.

	One headache and four Anacin later, two shrines adorned the inside 
of the tiny hotel room. On the left was a silk screen, adorned in gold with
various mandalas and images of the Buddhas. Cherry knelt at this one, of
course. A small portable shrine was at the other end of the room, in front 
of which Sakura knelt-- dressed in the white hakama of a priestess. The 
folded paper streamers rustled under her fingers as she tied them to the 
small sakaki branch and began to shake them frantically. Another rustling of 
paper came from Cherry's shrine as he tore into one snack- pack after 
another.
     A minute later the combined sounds of her chanting and Cherry's
mouthing of the sutras around gobs of dried squid gave Mulder and Scully
a whole new headache.
     "I'm thinking of changing careers," Scully murmured.
     "--name ho renge kyo name ho renge kyo--"
     "Phone sex operator?" Mulder raised both eyebrows.
     "--miseru misetemi miseru misetemi--"
     "Grade school teacher. Less stress." Scully fumbled with the cap on
the Anacin bottle and dry-swallowed two more pills.
     The table started vibrating. At first Scully thought that Mulder was 
fidgeting again, but for once his hands and feet were rock-steady. No; 
something else was making the table vibrate... perhaps that strange black 
evanescence that seemed to be collecting in the middle of the room.
     There was a sound like an elephant belching. Both priests shut up and 
turned around, staring at the black bubble. It burst with a sound like an 
elephant throwing up. Mulder and Scully were slammed back against a wall 
and thrown around the room like coins in a giant's pocket.
     It took many long moments for the roaring and shuddering to leave
Mulder's head; he explored the side of his skull and found no dent large
enough to accomodate his finger, and relaxed. There was something soft 
pressing against his head, though--two soft somethings. He opened his eyes.
     "Get out of my lap!" Sakura barked, slapping him back across the room.
     "Goodness," he heard Cherry say as if from a great distance, "I had
no idea I was still desired by women."
     "Hate to disappoint you," Scully said, and there was the sound of
someone moving in a great hurry. Mulder could have turned around at any 
time, but a small voice in the back of his skull told him that was
probably a bad idea.
     When he finally did stand up, after everyone had backed off, he saw
that Cherry and Sakura were both studying their respective altars with great 
concentration. Some of the votives on Sakura's altar had been knocked over, 
shattered, or scorched; some of the gilded mandalas on the silk screen had 
been discolored or burnt.
     "I sense..." Cherry murmured.
     "...the fist of arrogant men..." Sakura chimed in.
     "...has had a hand..."     "...in the misfortune..."
     "...that befell the--HEY! STOP CRIBBING!"
     "*You're* the one cribbing!"
     They fell to blows. With infinite patience, Mulder straightened out a 
chair, picked up the phone, and ordered room service. Along with lunch came 
a bucket of ice, which he proceeded to uncover and douse both luminaries 
with. It had a satisfyingly sobering effect on both of them.

     "As far as I can tell," Sakura said after changing back into her
streetclothes, "someone has kidnapped Lum for a very specific reason: 
profit. Someone stands to gain something from this."
     "Blackmail?" Scully wondered aloud.
     "I'm not sure," Mulder said, opening the dossier. "Nothing in here 
about ransom demands or anything like that. Not unless they're only 
unveiling this a little at a time."
     "I don't think it's anything that crude." Sakura shook her head.
     "Hoh! What would you know about crude or subtle? You're the one who 
nearly brained poor Mulder-san here for landing in your lap by accident." 
Cherry was perched on the edge of the bed; his diminutive legs didn't even 
get halfway to the floor. He looked like something out of "H.R. Pufnstuf".
     "What he did after that wasn't exactly 'accidental'!" Sakura slapped 
the table with her open palm; to Mulder's ears, the sound it made seemed 
exactly like the blowback from a SIG-Sauer 9mm semiautomatic handgun. 
Especially since Mulder's ears were less than an inch from her hand when it 
happened. Her suddenly shrill voice didn't help either.
     Scully decided it was time to direct traffic. "Do you have any idea who 
They might be?" Careful, girl, she told herself; with capitals on "they", 
you've definitely been hanging around Mulder for toooooo long.
     Cherry swallowed the mouthful of the Dreamsicle he'd been hacking down. 
"I saw a vision-- a map of Tomobiki. One of the houses was bright red, as if 
on fire. Or maybe as if the neighbors had decided to toilet-paper the 
house...."
     Sakura squinted. "Which house?!"
     "2-12-3 Hamadayama."
     She jumped to her feet. "That address flashed through my mind, too! 
Proves once again that the gods are always more specific than the 
crypto-gibberish of your Buddhas--"
     "At least the Buddhas have the sense to be subtle, Miss Subtle-As-
An-Airhammer-On-The-Occipital-Bone--"
     "Let's get out of here," Mulder suggested, wondering what had happened 
to the industrial strength aluminum baseball bat he'd once kept in his hall 
closet, back in his college days. It might have made a nice 
discipline-invoking system here. "For a holy man," he said offhandedly,
"you've got a real knack for pissing people off."

	They drove. Scully was less nervous about driving on the "wrong" 
side of the street, so she helmed the car while Sakura rode shotgun and 
called out streetnames. Mulder, jammed in the back with Cherry (the tininess 
of the car made even Cherry seem large next to him), wasn't having any fun.
     There wasn't much conversation on the way, and when they pulled up
outside 2-12-3 Hamadayama, Scully's face fell. "Why is it," she said in 
a metaphorical voice, "that every time we get a lead it always winds up 
sending us into an Abandoned Warehouse?"
     "I hear those capital letters again," Mulder said, bailing out.
     It didn't look very abandoned on a closer inspection. The windows were 
in good repair, and the doors were locked very solidly. Mulder jiggled at 
the chains and shrugged.
     "No warrant," he said. "We don't go in."
     Scully produced a fax from her pocket and shoved it under his nose.
"We do now."
     "I can't read this."
     "Sorry. --It's a blanket order from Yamanouchi; says that we can 
basically go anywhere without a warrant provided we turn something up 
for our efforts."     
     "Gotta love that wily Oriental mind," Mulder said, taking the fax
and putting it into his coat.
     "Mulder!"
     "What."
     "Mulder, that was just plain uncalled for. In the first place, no
one says 'Oriental' when referring to people from Japan or China or the
Far East. People say 'Asian'. 'Oriental' is for furniture and food. And
'wily'?!"
     Sakura and Cherry looked on, confused.
     "Look," Mulder said, sounding even more tired, "we can stand around
on the tarmac all day or we can go inside like Yamanouchi-san told us 
to." From inside his coat he took out a skeleton ring and set to work on 
the lock.
     The chains fell away from the door. Mulder opened up his hi-beam
flashlight to full intensity and shone it inside; the lights were off.
He took one step inside.
     There was never a sense of a blow, no stars in front of his eyes.
What little light he was waving around the room went out, and then he
remembered nothing.

     Mulder had been unconscious too many times before to count, and never 
under pleasant circumstances. As he crawled back to the light, he wondered 
if it was time to start keeping score; now that Scully'd won the "Is there 
really intelligent life out there or not--and do they party like we do?" 
bet, he had to have something else to do.
     He was lying on his back in a room that looked something like a
sickbay on the "Enterprise". Great, he thought. A/E: 
Abduction/experimentation. The smell of formalin was heavy in the air,
which made him frown. If these were aliens, they wouldn't be using
formalin, would they? Or maybe--
     The door slid back and several of the crow-creatures flapped in. 
Now that he was close enough to inspect them properly, he noticed that
they all wore wooden sandals and small, white jacket-like outfits. Uh-huh.
     "This the guy?" one said.
     "In the flesh. You don't know what we went through to get him."
another said.
     "Heard that before; I don't wanna even think about the last time we--"
     "Shut up!" a third one hissed. "He's up."
     Mulder cleared the goop out of his mouth by swallowing and managed
to say, "Can you understand me?"
     "Sure," one of them said, "but it's not like we're hanging on your
every word or nothin'."
     The only thing worse than a hostile ET, Mulder thought, would have
been a smart-assed ET. Well, here they were.
     "Can we ask a real personal question?" another one said.
     Mulder bit his lip, then succumbed. "Sure."
     "You--uh--" The crow speaking looked bashful and waved one sandal-
shod toe back and forth. "Does your--you know--your, uh, your
reproductive system. Does it work?"
     "Last time I checked," he said stupidly. Which wasn't that long ago
at all, come to think of it, he thought.
     "Okay," the crow said noncomittally, and yanked a lever.
     The pallet fell away from underneath him, and it took him an
abysmally long time to hit the floor. No; the floor was past him by now-
-he was rocketing straight down through a tunnel. By the time he'd made
sense of that observation, the mad rush of air and the spindizzy ripping
his stomach apart from the inside had stopped, and he was facedown in a
pile of luxurous, fragrant bedsheets. Every inch of them felt good on
his skin.
     Probably because his clothes were gone.
     He tried to remember all the case studies of people who claimed to
have been abducted by aliens and used in some experimental fashion. A
great many of these experiments were sexual in nature-- usually sex with 
an alien (usually a remarkably attractive and anthropomorphic one), or
the collection of semen or ova. There was a theory that such cases were
phantasy projections of the subject and therefore bogus-- but crows in
sandals. Wisecracking crows in sandals. Not a chance that this was a
fantasy.
     He thought briefly of a very stupid joke that nevertheless cracked
him up-- the one about the chicken in the whorehouse-- and felt the mother
of all headaches cranking up for war in his skull. Erotic is one feather; 
kinky the whole chicken; this was enough to--
     "Are you the new mate?" a voice said. A female voice.
     Despite the odd hairdo-- was that even her hair? he wondered-- she was 
all-too-perfectly human. More human than human, haw haw haw, he thought, and 
only then did the fact of her nudity hit him full-on and make him go red in 
the face. How long? he thought. That girl Anna What'sherface in college and 
since then it's been slim pickings...
     She was squinting at him. "Do you *talk*?!" she snarled.
     "Sometimes too much," he said glibly, but without smiling. "I figured 
I'd try getting off on the right foot this time. Except I'm flat on my ass 
at the moment."
     "Very good! Very intelligent. Not like that last one." She shuddered 
with what must have been remembered disgust. "We've been looking for plenty 
of intelligent male specimens to continue the species. Many rejects; many 
who simply weren't suited." She ran a hand along his face. "You seem to be 
*uniquely* suited to our needs."
     Mulder wet the bedspread.


PART TWO


	The cell was two and a half meters on a side. Three walls were 
cement and concrete; the fourth wall was the same, with a single double-door 
with a single steel-reinforced Plexiglas window set in it. The toilet was a 
metal can with a lid; the only light came from a caged fluorescent tube in a 
shatterproof glass housing. The bed was a cot so thin the springs dug into 
his back. There was no conceivable way to escape.
     Ataru Moroboshi knew every square inch of the cell by now; he'd 
been in it for a week. He'd tried everything to stave off boredom--
everything, that is, short of things that would get him strapped to a 
table with electrodes tied to his head. Well, he thought morosely, 
it's not like I don't know what *that's* like by now. He'd even slept 
under the bed at one point, just to break the monotony.
     He hadn't seen a woman, except for that FBI babe, in weeks. 
Entire weeks.
     "Visitor to see you," the guard droned, and Ataru's heart 
skipped a beat. Maybe it was that cute agent babe again? With luck 
his stupid boyfriend/partner wouldn't be with her...
     No, it was his parents, looking even more morose and put-upon 
than ever. They sat on one side of the glass partition and fought 
back tears.
     "It's going to be all right," his mother sniffled. "At least 
that's what the lawyers keep telling us."
     "We tried putting up a collection fund to pay for your bail," 
his father said. "We got seven hundred yen so far."
     Ataru fell out of the chair.
     "Was that from the school," he said, grasping at straws, "or the 
neighborhood...?"
     "BOTH!" his mother sobbed.
     Ataru fell over hard enough to break the chair clean in half.
     His mother reached into her bag and took out something wrapped 
in several layers of tinfoil. "Here," she said. "Some homemade 
taiyaki; just the thing to tide you over. I imagine the food must be 
awful."
     "Millet and noodles," Ataru groaned. "Sometimes just millet..."
     "Eat hearty," his father admonished. "Cherry helped us make it."
     "Cher--?! What? Oh, no--!"
     "Ssh! Quiet!" his mother snarled, bringing her palms down flat 
on the table with a sound like an antiaircraft cannon. The guard at 
the door turned briefly, then turned back to his copy of "Kitan 
Club". [Note: "Kitan Club" is a long-running men's magazine in Japan. 
--sy] "Cherry's promised me that his help will pay off this time. 
Just don't eat anything else with it, all right?"
     "I can't even wash it down with anything?"
     "Son, it's not like you have anything to wash it down with. Am I 
right?"
     "I guess..." He sagged. "Okay."
     The guard handed the taiyaki around the partition. Ataru touched 
his hands to the glass, then pressed his face desperately to it, 
shouting, "Mom--I swear by whatever you'll have me swear by, I didn't 
do it! I-- Whatever I felt about Lum, I wouldn't *hurt* her."
     "Not *physically*, anyway, is that right?" his mother said, in a 
voice that dripped icicles.
     Ataru hid his face as they left.
     "Oh," Ataru's mother gasped as they left the jail, "now I know I 
never should have had him...!"
     "Take it easy, honey." He put his arm around her and held her in 
the hallway leading out to the street. They stood there for several 
long moments, the front of his jacket muffling her tears.
     She looked up at him a moment later.
     "I don't think you've held me like that since we were 
newlyweds," she said.
     He sighed and nodded.
     "Life grinds you down," he said. "I wish it didn't, but there it 
is." He kept his arm around her and continued walking. "I remember 
all that time very, very clearly. Maybe a little too clearly, 
'specially since it doesn't square with what's happened since..."
     "I wanted a girl; I got a boy," she murmured.
     "Lum doesn't count, I suppose."
     "Oh, it's just not the same thing... I mean, she's so sweet, and 
Ataru's just so *mean* to her--"
     "Then it *is* like we have a daughter now! Sibling rivalry and 
all."
     They looked at each other and shared a laugh.
     "Maybe you're right," she said, "maybe you're right..."
     Cherry and Sakura were standing just outside as they emerged 
blinking into the sunlight.
     "How is the boy? Did he take the taiyaki?" Cherry insisted.
     "Slow, man, slow," Ataru's father sighed. "He got it all right. 
I imagine they're gonna slice into it six ways to Sunday before they 
let him eat it."
     "They can cut it up all they want," Sakura said. "I doubt that 
will affect the magic we worked into it."
     "'We'?" Ataru's mother echoed. "You're working together now?"
     Sakura shrugged, smiling. "We've been known to work together 
when the circumstances demanded it."
     "And if this isn't one of those times," Cherry announced, 
banging his staff on one of the stairs as they descended, "then I 
don't know what is! Onward!"

     Scully hung up the phone for the fifth time in a row, her index finger 
aching. She'd dialed every single English-speaking law enforcement bureau in 
the whole of Tokyo, if not Japan, and had come away empty. No Mulder. She'd 
dialed the embassy; nothing there, either. She even tried the local chapter 
of the Lions Club. Nothing.
     Maybe I should just declare him missing and take charge of the 
investigation myself, she thought. And what's wrong with that? At 
least that way I'd be doing some of my *own* research, instead of 
playing Little Miss Souped-Up Librarian. Or Dr. McCoy.
     Pooor guy, she thought. Tilting against windmills that are far 
too big for any of us individually, anyway.
     Is it cold in here or is it just me?
     She shivered and put her jacket on. No; it was getting colder in 
the hotel room, and not by a little bit at a time, either. Her breath 
was misting out in front of her and the windows were fogging over. 
She checked the thermostat; it was on, and working overtime, 
apparently.
     There was mist drifting out from under the closet door. Not a 
little mist, either, like from outside on a real cold day when the 
heat's on full blast. This looked like it was the door to a movie 
studio where a Hammer-style horror film was in progress. Or maybe a 
Nine Inch Nails concert; dry ice, both ways.
     She nerved herself, walked to the closet, put one hand on her 
gun and the other on the closet door, and shoved.
     A miniature avalanche slewed out and covered Dana Scully to the 
hips. She almost fell backwards, partly in shock and partly in 
disgust; she had had an aversion to snow and ice ever since that 
incident up at the North Pole. Nevertheless, she wrapped both hands 
around her gun and pointed it into the closet.
     "Freeze!" she shouted, and almost immediately felt unbearably 
stupid for using that particular word. "I mean, show me your hands!"
     What came out of the closet--or maybe undulated was a better 
word-- was the third- or fourth-most-staggeringly-beautiful woman 
Scully had ever seen in her life. Jealous much? a little voice said 
in the back of her head, as the details registered one by one. She 
was pale, almost as pale as the snow she was wading through, and 
wrapped from neck down past her toes in a thick kimono-like robe. Her 
hair--well, it wasn't hair, exactly; it looked like someone had 
carved a block of topaz into the shape of a fashion wig and set it on 
her head. And sling jauntily over one of her shoulders was a snow 
shovel.
     "Oh my," she said, in a voice that made a snowflake hitting the 
ground sound like someone beating an anvil, "it seems I 
miscalculated. My humblest apologies, madam."
     "Wait a goddamned minute!" Scully snapped, waving the gun. "And 
hands where I can see them! Who are you?"
     "Princess Oyuki of Neptune," she said, placing her hands out in 
front and letting the shovel fall blade-first into the snow.
     "Very funny."
     "I beg to differ, but I am not joking. I came in search of 
Princess Redet Lum's betrothed, Ataru Moroboshi... I understand he 
has fallen into terrible trouble. She, too."
     The gun wavered a little. "That's right. How'd you know?"
     "They say the only thing that travels faster than the speed of 
light is gossip," she giggled. "They may be right."
     "Okay; fine. Why the closet?"
     "That is how I travel. I was hoping I would be able to find him, 
but the computer for some reason chose this closet as being the most 
advantageous one."
     "Well, he's in the lockup right now, so it's no mystery where he 
is. It's Lum that's missing."
     "Oh! I see. Might I speak with him?"
     "Only if I go with you."
     There was a knock at the door. Scully peeked through the 
peephole, then backed away from the door. "Some of the people I've 
been working with on this case have arrived."
     "Ah! So you have already been chosen for a husband. I 
congratulate you."
     "It's not like that--" The rest of Scully's sentence was choked 
off as the door swung back and Sakura and Cherry barged in. They both 
stopped cold--pardon the pun-- when they saw Oyuki however, and kept a 
safe distance from her as they entered the room. Oyuki looked hurt 
and sat down on the edge of the made bed.
     The subsequent round of explanations took less time than Scully 
had feared, and when it was done she told them about her own lack of 
luck in finding Mulder. "Looks like he joined the ranks of one of his 
own X files," he said. "He might as well never have existed."
     "So he is missing also," Oyuki said.
     "Some magic might be helpful here," Sakura added.
     "I was just thinking the same-- mmgbgbbg--" Cherry's words were 
cut off as Sakura stuffed a piece of dried squid into his mouth, 
cellophane and all, that happened to be protruding from his pocket. 
"*I'll* handle this one," she said, standing up and offering Scully a 
hand. "Let's get back to my place. We can work undisturbed there."
     "I was thinking I'd accompany Oyuki to go talk to Moroboshi 
first," Scully said.
     "Very well then," Oyuki said, standing and gathering her skirts 
around her. "Follow me very carefully, or you'll be lost."
     "What?"
     Before she could say another word, Oyuki gave her an oh-so-
gentle shove between the shoulder blades-- right into the closet. 
Snow, mist, and cold all vanished in a matter of seconds.
     Cherry and Sakura faced each other, then tiptoed out the door, 
biting their lips.

     "Princess? Princess?" the oldest of the crow-men gasped, shaking 
Princess Kurama frantically. "Wake up! You've overslept."
     Princess Kurama rolled over and nearly crushed the tiny fellow. 
He got out of the way just in time.
     She rolled over once more and found herself nestled against the 
even more deeply slumbering form of the "one-night bridegroom" that 
she had selected the night before. According to the wallet they had 
taken from his clothes, his names was Fox Mulder and he carried 
identification from something called the Federal Bureau of 
Investigations. His blood type, tissue type and IQ were all within 
acceptable norms. They had taken him in last night, put him in the 
Princess's bed...
     ...and had ruined four box-spring mattresses in the nine hours 
that had followed.
     Two of the crow-men had bought a pillow-book to use as a 
refernce guide to the "action". There wasn't a single illustration in 
the book that hadn't been marked off with a giant red X. The canopy 
over the bed had had a sign that originally said THINK BABIES! but 
about an hour through the proceedings, one of the crow-servants had 
taken a marker and scrawled another message over that one:

WE DON'T THINK-- WE *KNOW*!

     Princess Kurama's back and hips were out of joint.
     Mulder had almost dehydrated himself in the process, too.
     You know something? he said to himself. You've been keeping up 
this search for God knows how long now. Starting with Sis and working 
its way on down from there. And you got pretty far, too: you've 
gotten farther and deeper than any other human being probably has a 
right to go, considering what kind of stuff you're up against. But 
the more you do it, the more it looks like Scully's right. You're one 
man, one tired man against something so large and evil and well-
defended that there's no chance of you even making a dent in it. They 
know all about it; they know exactly where you're coming from with 
all of this. So why do you even bother? -- 'Cause it's better than 
sitting back and letting someone else get into trouble, I guess. That 
way you can still pat yourself on the back for not being a "passive 
observer".
     "Tell me something, Earthling," Princess Kurama was saying.
     "Mulder. Fox Mulder," he said drowsily.
     "Very well... tell me something, Mulder Fox Mulder. --I 
understand you work for one of the governments of this planet. What 
exactly do you do?"
     Mulder reached over for where the bedside table would normally 
be, but found nothing. He'd never smoked before, but somehow a post-
coital cigarette seemed very appropriate now.
     "I'm..." He hesitated. "I head up an independent investigations 
team that involves itself with phenomena that can't be explained with 
current science."
     "Such as?"
     He looked right at her. "Things that go bump in the night."
     She raised herself up on one elbow and squinted at him. "I had 
known your species was superstitious to the extreme, but -- 
*government-sponsored research* into superstition?"
     "I'm not talking about ghost stories," Mulder said, digging out 
his best uninflected voice and trying it out on her. "I'm talking 
about people vanishing from locked rooms--"
     "A simple fourth-dimensional causeway would allow for such a 
thing, Mulder Fox Mulder," she declared, lying back down. "You do not 
seem to understand that the science on your planet is very limited."
     Duh, Mulder thought. Aloud he said, "Never stops people from 
dreaming, apparently."
     "For all the shortcomings I could bestow upon you," she said, in 
a wholly different tone, "I have to say that you are extraordinarily 
accomplished sexually. Do you already have a regular mating partner?"
     Mulder was about to show her his right hand but thought better 
of it. "Not really," he settled.
     They went back to sleep.

     The taiyaki tasted vile.
     Ataru almost spat out the first mouthful the minute it touched 
his tongue, but somehow he retained enough self-control to swallow 
the miserable thing. There's some kind of purpose to all of this, he 
thought; my mother would never cook this badly on purpose, even if I 
was in jail.
     Somehow, thoughts like that didn't help when he had to face the 
cold fact that he most definitely had nothing to wash it down with.
     Against the odds, he choked down the whole thing and sat down 
uneasily on the bed. The springs poked through the mattress and made 
his buttocks hurt. He coughed once, twice--
     -- and saw curls of smoke rising in front of his eyes. A foul 
taste, like ashes or charcoal or something. He spat reflexively to 
clear his mouth (Must have been that rotten taiyaki, he thought) --
     -- and spat a gout of flame that scorched the floor!
     Oh man oh man oh man, Ataru thought frantically, what in the 
name of Heaven was in that thing?!
     Cherry, he thought. Cherry spiked the damn taiyaki with another 
one of his stupid concoctions! Like that cupcake--
     Now wait a minute, he thought. Two things. Number one, this 
might be my ticket out of jail....
     ...and number two... and more importantly... this could finally 
be my chance to get back at that little putz Jariten! On his own 
turf!
     He wanted to laugh maniacally, but what little common sense he 
had told him that it wouldn't be such a hot idea. He arranged himself 
on the floor, with his head nearest the door, and started to cry out. 
"Aagh! Aagh! My stomach! My stomach!--"
     Footfalls out in the corridor, the scraping of keys in the lock, 
the squeak of hinges... Ataru lifted his head and blew out the 
lungful of air he'd just sucked in. And as the air left his lips, it 
turned into a monstrous gout of flame that enveloped the man standing 
haplessly in the doorway.
     Screams echoed around him. The man fell over backwards. Bits of 
fire clung to the doorway, the walls, even parts of the floor as the 
man scrabbled around on the ground, frantically trying to slap out 
the flames. Ataru tried not to gag, shut his eyes and ran out right 
past him.
     I hope I didn't hurt him too bad, he prayed.

     The trip had originally been scheduled for three weeks, but the tour 
fund ran dry rather quickly, and so Shinobu and the rest of the girl 
students in the tour group found themselves back on the plane a week 
early.
     New York had been downright dizzying, Shinobu thought, as she 
looked out at the spires of the city from the plane window. The whole 
of Manhattan Island was dropping away behind them as they took wing 
for the first leg of the flight to Los Angeles; they would change 
planes there for Hawaii, and from there continue on back to Tokyo. 
They'd be in the air almost twenty hours total. Everyone had been 
promised a day off from school afterwards, to recover.
     She'd need it -- not only to recover from the jet lag, but to 
sort out everything they'd seen. They'd eaten lunch on the steps of 
the library, between a pair of stone lions; gone to the top of just 
about every tall building in the city; eaten in more kinds of 
restaurants than she could remember. The whole city's like a 
collision, she thought: everyone and everything, all piling on top of 
each other. It was scary and wonderful at the same time.
     When that rotten Lum is finally out of the way, she vowed, Ataru 
and I are going to live in America!
     She slept most of the way, dreaming about getting her fingers 
around Lum's neck... or around Ataru's neck, as he turned to ogle yet 
another girl passing by. And then an odd thing happened; she saw 
Ataru wandering off into the distance, chasing someone else (Sakura, 
perhaps?), and in the foreground there was Lum and herself, sitting 
down, and... talking. Not even talking *about* anything, just 
talking. And somehow, in this dream... Lum seemed to her like the 
best of friends.
     She woke up with a jolt when the plane touched down in Tokyo. 
The prospect of seeing Ataru (and Lum) again filled her with a mix of 
sadness and dread. When does it ever end? she wondered.
     The four men in long coats and dark glasses in the airport 
waiting room caught her eye the minute she walked off the plane. When 
they stood up and headed right for her, she felt her stomach tie 
itself into a perfect sailor's knot.
     "You know this boy?" one of them said, holding up a picture of 
Ataru.
     "What's he done now!" she sighed.
     "Jailbreak, assault, arson, and suspected accessory to commit 
kidnapping and/or murder," the second one rattled off.
     "Murder?!"
     The third one held up a picture of Lum.
     "He tried to--? Her?!" She stared, and felt her bags slide from 
her shoulders and hit the carpet. "But he loves her! He's a lecher 
and a moron, but -- well, I guess that precludes him from doing those 
things, anyway..."
     "Come with us?"
     It seemed she didn't have a choice.

     "Open your eyes," said the voice.
     It was a smooth, sensual voice that called to mind the kind of 
men who oiled themselves up for a day at the beach. The kind of man 
that she hated, when you got right down to it.
     She pried her eyes open and found herself staring into endless 
light. It didn't hurt; it was diffuse and gentle, but it was still 
disorienting in that there was nothing to *see*.
     "You still fail to see the error of your ways, Redet Lum," the 
voice declared. It seemed to be smirking. It was smirking, now that 
she thought about it; there was a little mocking laugh at the end. 
"You and your... I shudder at having to call him your 'husband'!..."
     "You can't insult my Darling that way and get away with it!" she 
shouted into the light. "Only I can do that!"
     "You may have to do that," the voice said. "You may have to do 
that and oh so much more. Your very life depends on it."
     She could not see her body, either. That was the other thing 
that disturbed her; she could neither see, nor feel, any part of 
herself. Her arms were tight against her sides -- or at least it felt 
like that -- and whenever she tried to summon her lightning, nothing 
happened. She felt weak and lightheaded after trying to do so, and 
the voice seemed to notice this.
     "Not a good idea. Not a good idea at all," the voice chided. 
"You mustn't expend so much strength in trying to resist me. You must 
channel your efforts into..."
     Words exploded in the light in front of her:

LUM N.T.

     "Lum N.T.?" she managed to say.
     "Lum, NewType!" the voice exulted.
     The words vanished, replaced with an image of Lum grinding a 
tiger-striped boot into Ataru's sobbing face. Only this time the 
emotions that flooded her were not hot, but cold. She saw herself 
doing this with no more feeling than if she were mashing an insect. 
Less, even; the death of an insect can provoke some of us to a sad 
reaction. She felt nothing, not even spite.
     No! She fought hard to not let the emotions that oozed from the 
image enter her, and tried to shut her eyes. But there were no eyes 
for her to shut, it seemed; the image burned into her and through 
her, leaving her in incredible pain.
     "This is the Lum that is yet to come," the voice insisted. "The 
true Lum -- the Lum for eternity. The Lum that is not laid low by 
lecherous louts looking lustfully."
     "Very funny," she sneered.
     "STOP RESISTING!' the voice barked. Another image crashed into 
her, this one owing something to the tortures visited upon the 
hapless in the Buddhist hells. She writhed from the inside out.
     "I won't let you do it!" she cried out into the vicious light. 
"I won't let you make me hate my Darling, no matter what!"
     Another snicker.
     "It's not hate I'm trying to awaken in you, my dear Lum," the 
voice said, soothingly. The images dimmed -- thankfully -- and were 
replaced by a face, speaking those words. Somehow, this was worse; 
she knew this face, and when the lips on the face moved and spoke, 
she was certain.
     "Mendo?!" she gasped.
     "None other," he said, stepping closer. "With your spirit broken 
and your soul cleansed, I can finally begin to execute my plans. 
Beginning with burying Ataru Moroboshi!" A huge picture of Ataru's 
face with a "forbidden" bar slashing across it appeared.
     "You beast!" she shrieked. "if I only had my lightning!"
     "You're not likely to have much of anything unless you 
cooperate," Mendo barked at her. "Keep in mind that I am master 
here!"
     In front of her, forever out of reach, Shinobu and Ataru 
embraced.
     "Ataru-kun!"
     "Shinobu!"
     "Or perhaps it'll just be a different kind of death," Mendo 
said, sounding vaguely bored. "Maybe he and Shinobu will run off 
together somewhere, without you. --Ye-es," Mendo taunted, "I see 
hatred rising inside you... I see how you lust to put a bolt of 
lighting right through that philanderer's liver!"
     "I'll start with YOUR liver," she snarled.
     "I'm sorry," Mendo sighed, "but you're going to have to do 
better than that."
     Lum never knew what came next. The universe simply dissolved in 
a blinding wave of pain.

     Seen from the outside, the previous events took on a whole new cast.
     The tank stood about ten feet tall, a cylinder about four feet 
in diameter. Loosely suspended inside it from a network of cables and 
hoses was a harness that could be used to strap in a humanoid, 
adjustable to fit anyone from Invader's size down to Cherry, or even 
Jariten.
     Strapped into the harness and suspended in a salt-water bath was 
Lum. A breathing mask had been clamped down over her face; her body 
was wired with electrodes and her blue-green hair floated out around 
her exactly like seaweed. Goggles over her eyes and headphones on her 
ears fed her only the sensory impressions she needed to have from 
him. And, most importantly, a yellow ribbon was tied between her 
horns.
     Mendo's hands were on the control panel a few feet away from the 
tank. He sighed and took off the clip-on mike that hung an inch from 
his lips and flipped a few switches on the panel. Enough for one day, 
he said to himself. If she doesn't break today, she'll break 
tomorrow. I need to have more patience...
     He looked at the tank and shuddered. Not something I would ever 
submit to, of course. Which is why we drugged her and stuck her in 
there.
     "Any luck?" said a voice behind him.
     Mendo shook his head. "I'm only wondering what it took to get 
that suppressor ribbon."
     "Don't ask."
     "I just did."
     The voice sighed. "Apparently, the Buddhist priest concocted 
that little item one day to help the Moroboshi boy. One of his 
friends held onto it and sold it to us for a price. Megane; I'm sure 
you know him."
     "Of course. I'm familiar with all of Moroboshi's worthless 
friends." He yawned. "I'm getting some rest. I'm thinking tomorrow we 
may want to try something a little more creative."
     "Sure. What were you thinking?"
     "I'll let you know when I have something."
     A snicker from behind him.
     Mendo pushed himself out of his seat and walked out of the room. 
He tried not to pass too close to the tank, but his eyes were rooted 
to the whirl of hair and the girlish mouth, slightly open, gagging 
with pain.


PART THREE


    The ship shook from a blast of energy.
    A pencil-beam of light cut through the outer hull, carving a neat 
man-shaped hole. A second beam of light, this one green and evanescent, 
lifted a single man-shaped form out into space and into a ship shaped like 
nothing more than a giant snowflake...
    "RED ALERT! RED ALERT!" screamed a horde of crow-men. "The royal 
consort has been kidnapped! Wake the Princess NOW!"
    Doesn't beauty sleep take precedence over red alerts? She's 
incubating, you know--"

    The door to his house was open.
    Ataru Moroboshi slid back the door and grinned. The door was not 
normally locked anyway, especially if someone was in the house. And if Mom 
and Dad were out, the only other person who would logically be at home 
would be--
    "Te-e-e-e-en-cha-a-aa-n," he called in a high, teasing voice. "Are you 
home?"
    No echo came back to him. The lights were out.
    Ataru's feet burned from having run all the way across town, taking 
every back-alley route he knew to get to the house. And now that he was 
here... He sucked in his breath and let out an experimental tendril of 
flame. Yes. It still worked.
    "TEN?" he barked out.
    Nothing.
    He started to climb the stairs. Somehow the dark at the top of the 
stairs -- and it wasn't even that big a staircase, damn it! he thought -- 
looked like it could be fanged and hinged, ready to snap closed on him any 
minute.
    One step, two, three, four. The creaks were angry and loud; somehow 
those noises made echoes. He shot a glance to the right, where the echoes 
were bouncing back... the hanging cloths over the door to the kitchen eddied 
gently. More black lay back there.
    Go.
    Five, six, seven eight.
    Blackness at the top of the stairs. Another frame of blackness to the 
left; his room.
    The house was quieter than he ever could remember.
    Something small and roughly spherical came screaming out of the light 
BEHIND him -- something which slammed into the side of his head and sent 
him colliding with the wall and losing his footing. The stairs reared up 
and smashed into him, over and over again; he was only dimly aware of 
falling, hitting his head, sending loose a gout of flame that touched off 
the wall.
    The house is on fire, he told himself. You set the goddamned house on 
fire!
    "MO-ROOOOON!" something tiny screamed in his ear. He turned, blind, 
and spat flame at whatever it was that was buzzing at him. A cry, and then--
    Something fierce and stinging washed over him, shoved him against the 
wall, knocked the little round thing into his chest. His mouth was full of 
a terrible alkaline taste and the light washing against his eyelids faded. 
His face was covered with something foamy.
    He wiped his face and saw Scully standing over him. In her left hand 
she had a gun; in her right was an industrial-grade fire extinguisher.
    "Stole it from the jail," she said curtly.
    She reached down and plucked the tiny ball from his chest. It was Ten, 
looking terrified and plenty the worse for wear. She dusted him off, propped 
him against a wall, ditched the metal cylinder with a heavy clank and traded 
her gun to the other hand.
    "Hey," Ataru said weakly.
    "Don't 'hey' me," she snapped. "I heard a report you came busting out 
of prison. Immolated a guard and half a cell block and then were seen 
cutting towards your house. I've had about enough of this evasion. What's 
going on?!" She closed the distance between them until her gun was 
practically up his nose.
    "You gnow as mug as I do gnow!" he gagged.
    She waved the gun. "Get in the car." To Ten: "You too."
    "Lady, I'm not going with you!" Ten snapped. "I've still got a score 
to settle with this jerk."
    "Get in the car," she said flatly, "or you get the spanking of your 
life."
    He got in the car.

    Oyuki and Sakura traded glances and looked back down at the supine form 
on the examination table.
    "Is he--?" Oyuki said.
    Sakura pried up one eyelid and flashed an examination light into his 
retina. "He's just unconscious. A few contusions. Two days to heal. But..." 
She held up a clipboard and frowned. "He's been through *something*, the 
last few days. He's somewhat malnourished and dehydrated; abnormally low 
phosphorus content... If I didn't know any better, I'd diagnose him as a 
compulsive masturbator. Sorry," she said as Oyuki reddened. "But that's what 
the facts tell me. --Is *everyone* obsessed with sex?"
    "Not everyone," Oyuki admitted. "I once heard about a man -- this was 
in another galaxy, you understand--"
    "Forget it," Sakura sighed, exasperated.

    "This ISN'T WORKING," the voice boomed, making Mendo flinch.
    "It will if you give it time," Mendo gritted.
    From out of the darkness behind Mendo stepped a tall man dressed in a 
business suit -- not young, crag-faced, with a cigarette plastered to his 
lower lip. The cigarette waved goodbye frantically as he spoke: "You may 
have all the time and money in the world, but I don't have either. I want 
this girl made useable by tonight or I pull the plug on this whole damn 
project."
    Mendo turned around and squinted viciously at the smoker. "You have a 
lot of nerve saying that to me--"
    The other man drew closer and put his nose to Mendo's. "Yes, I do. 
I've earned it. Any screwy shit and all the nasty little details about how 
your father was ripping off the central gold supply goes public. For 
starters!"
    Mendo ground his teeth together and turned a knob on the control panel 
to maximum.
    Lum's arms and legs kicked out against the glass, over and over again. 
Her eyes were scrwed shut, tighter than ever, behind the goggles that 
flashed ten thousand candlepower pulses at 1/1,000-sec. intervals, each 
pulse flashing through the synapses in her brain and triggering one mental 
earthquake after another--
    SHE WAS STANDING ON A SEASHORE WAVES BLASTING AGAINST THE SAND shinobu 
standing over her as she was slowly buried up to her neck in sand "YOU STAY 
AWAY FROM MY BOYFRIEND!" her own voice somehow weak "you can't take me away 
from my darling!" THUNDER ROARED IN HER EARS
    and lightning flashes
    SAKURA BENT BACKWARDS OVER THE ALTAR AND SLAPPED HER FACE OVER AND OVER 
AGAIN WITH THE PAPER STREAMERS "Exorcise!" melting wax hardening over her 
hand ataru's face close and soft by her WHEN SHE REACHED UP THE TOUCH OF HIS 
SKIN WAS LIKE A LIVE SQUID
    and another lightning flash
    AND REI WAS SQUEEZING HER TO DEATH
    and again the flash
    AND HER FATHER CLENCHED HIS FIST AND SHOUTED "never a husband. no 
husband except for an earthling. and a dumb lucky earthling at that!" "More 
Human Than Human" laughter floating in from somwhere "be thankful I'm Not 
Human" and in the last she felt a spurt of strength enter her own voice
    and again the FLASH
    --and this time a fat blue spark arced between Lum's horns, illumating 
the gel in the tank.
    Mendo and the other man blinked.
    "Did you see that?" Mendo gasped.
    "Yes. What did you do."
    "Nothing. Intensity's been at full for a few minutes now..."
    The smoker grabbed up the mike--
    THE VOICE THAT ENTERED HER HEAD WAS TEN THOUSAND DECIBELS LOUD "what 
are you doing? what are you doing? answer me. answer me." and her own voice 
WAS CRUSHING THAT VOLUME, CRUSHING IT
    "I AM THE ONE WHO LOVES DARLING!"
    --but coming out the other end the voice was a wan and feeble trickle.
    "No!" the smoker barked. "The longer you cling to your delusions the 
more pain you'll experience!"
    "PAIN MEANS NOTHING TO ME NOW," she said, in a normal voice, one which 
somehow made the sides of the tank vibrate. Her voice was no longer coming 
from the speaker. "I KNOW ABOUT PAIN -- I KNOW ABOUT THE PAIN OF HAVING MY 
HEART BROKEN SO MANY TIMES AND IN SO MANY WAYS I CAN'T EVEN COUNT. I WON'T 
EXPLAIN. NO ONE UNDERSTANDS EXCEPT FOR DARLING. HE SHOULD KNOW. I BROKE HIS 
AS WELL. BUT HE COMES BACK TO ME ANYWAY, THE SAME I COME BACK TO HIM."
    The coffee in the cup was vibrating visibly.
    "There is a whole new road ahead of you," the cigarette-smoking man 
hissed into the mike. "You're on the verge of things you know nothing about--"
    "AND I COULD SAY THE SAME THING!" she snarled. The floor shook. "YOU 
DON'T KNOW HOW FAR I'LL GO, DO YOU? OR MAYBE YOU DON'T CARE? YOU'RE JUST 
WILLING TO PRETEND THOSE THINGS DON'T EXIST!"
    "I have to go to the bathroom," Mendo whispered, but stopped when the 
smoker's hand crunched down on his wrist.
    Another spark snapped between her horns.
    Her horns were getting *longer*.
    "We've got to turn this off, now!" Mendo hissed. "We don't have the 
precautions to deal with this--"
    The cigarette-smoking man drew a gun.
    "Open the tank," he said, turning off the mike. "This experiment is 
closed."
    Mendo reached for the red button in the upper-left hand corner of the 
control board.
    The tank exploded like a balloon, flinging a wave of broken glass and 
an even broader wave of gel across the room. The gel washed across the 
control board, coating the switches and shorting out all the connections. 
Mendo didn't shut his mouth in time and was thrown to the floor, gagging. 
The cigarette man's Marboro was extinguished as the wave of gel shoved him 
to the floor and back into an open storage closet. His gun fell from his 
fingers, smacked against the control panel, and discharged a single 
hollow-point 9mm NATO slug into the far wall.
    The lights went out.
    Lum crouched in the middle of the room, rising slowly. The air in the 
room was incredibly frigid against her bare skin; there was so little 
strength left in her, though, but there was just enough for her to stagger 
out the door (she dimly saw her foot landing squarely in the 
cigarette-smoking man's face), and then she remembered nothing else.
    "Darling..." she gasped.

    Mulder opened his eyes.
    "Relax," whispered a voice. "You're quite safe here." It wasn't Kurama.
    "I was plenty safe back where I was before," he croaked.
    He was sitting on a futon bed, fully dressed. The weight of his gun 
against his hip was, all at once, tremendously reassuring; he reached into 
his pocket and closed his hand around his badge and pack of ID.
    Oyuki sat on the floor across from him, a tea tray in front of her.	
"Something to drink?"
    "Already scorched my tongue," he said, and stood up. His knees and 
hips weren't working as well as he remembered, but he'd gotten used to 
expecting things like that. Outside the crystal window was a whirlwind of 
stars.
    "Your female partner was very concerned about you," Oyuki said primly, 
pouring a cupful for herself. "Apparently, the Princess Kurama has been 
very selfish in her dealings with her friends."
    "I don't know; she was pretty giving as far as I was concerned."
    "Oh yes, of course," Oyuki chuckled. "You were her consort."
    "Were," Mulder echoed. "Past tense?"
    Oyuki looked at him quizzically.
    "You think whatever you like," Mulder said, drawing closer. "There's 
more to me than this damn gun and badge. --And Agent Sculley, too," he 
snapped, seeing the change in expression on her face. "I've been walking 
around with my head in a pail of cement for years. My sister, the FBI, the 
X-Files, all the stuff I was waist-deep in. I had to do it; I was keeping a 
promise to myself. And after a while, part of me just got plain sick of it 
all. They had everything on me and I had nothing. All uphill. And then 
this..." He scratched his head. "So I said, you know, who cares? Nobody's 
gonna miss me if I for once go after something I want."
    "You are very wrong," she said.
    "Oh, come *on*--"
    "Dana Sculley is a woman of very strong principles and emotions--"
    "No shit."
    "--and she holds a great deal of respect for you. Even if she feels 
you are, how shall I say, a 'kook'."
    "Respect."
    "Yes, respect -- in that you are able to follow things through to 
their conclusions, even if they hurt."
    An ache Mulder had hoped was gone started up again. "You could say 
that."
    "You said before that you wanted to be more than your gun and your 
badge," Oyuki continued. "That is entirely within your grasp. But right 
now, the gun and badge need you. There are things which have to be done." 
She stood. "A friend of mine is missing and has possibly had her life 
endangered. We need to find her. If you cannot have your interest 
enlisted in this in any other way, then I will beg if I have to."
    "Don't beg. It gives you frown lines." He unsnapped his holster. "Can 
I use your phone?"

    Scully grabbed the carphone out of the cradle before the first ring was 
finished. "Scully," she said, shooting a glance at Ataru (belted in next to 
her) and Ten (belted in behind her in a child seat).
    "It's Mulder."
    Scully's car nearly hit the rail. "Where the hell are you?"
    "Leaving Neptune orbit."
    "Mulder, god damn it--"
    "I'll explain when I'm closer to home. What did I miss?"
    Scully filled him in. When it was over Mulder's hand was plastered to 
his forehead; it took him an effort to peel it off.
    "Jesus, Scully, where are we supposed to pick this up?"
    "Actually, maybe you'd better tell me what happened to *you*."
    "Are you sure you want to hear about it?"
    "Mulder, just--"
    "Right," he said, weary. "Well, there was this girl in an outfit that 
would have gotten her arrested in New Orleans."
    "An alien."
    "You're picking this up real fast."
    "And she had sex with you."
    "At first. Later on, we had some more sex--" Mulder glanced over at 
Oyuki, who was suppressing horrible fits of giggles. "--and then she took a 
blood sample and we, uh, had sex. And then she asked me about my job, and we 
had sex. Oh, and then we had sex. How's that?"
    For long moments there was nothing but the hum of an intergalactic 
phone carrier wave.
    "I think we hit it off pretty good," Mulder concluded.
    "Where's the--" Scully swallowed the word that was building in her 
throat and substituted "--woman now."
    Oyuki tapped his shoulder. "Excuse me, madam," she said, "but the 
woman in question is off our port bow and is firing at us."
    "WHAT?!" Scully almost crashed the car again.
    Mulder was pitched to the floor as the ship shook in what felt like 
every single direction at once. The phone tumbled from the floor and smashed 
into a million pieces.
    "That's what we get for buying off-brands," Mulder mumbled.
    The video screen covering one wall of the room lit up and Princess 
Kurama's blood-congested face jammed itself into Mulder's. "AND JUST WHAT DO 
YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING?!" she roared. "I WAS TALKING ABOUT THE FUTURE OF A 
RACE AND YOU RUN OFF WITH THE FIRST WOMAN THAT COMES YOUR WAY?!?!"
    Sakura burst out of the bathroom, her face still slathered with cold 
cream. "What--?" She took one look at the video screen and ran back out 
again.
    The ship rocked again from another blast. Oyuki was thrown against a 
bookshelf and fell to the floor in a dead faint. Mulder narrowly missed 
colliding with the corner of a table.
    Scully, back in the car, shook the phone in disgust. "Deaf, dumb and 
blind," she sighed.
    "What's this?" Ataru pointed to the paper curling slowly out of the 
cellular fax machine. Scully ripped it loose and frowned.
    "'Electrical disturbance?'"
    "LUM!" Ataru gasped. "Um.. er.. I mean.. well, who knows what it could 
be?"
    "It's Lum!" Ten insisted. "Ignore this idiot! Drive!"
     Scully put her foot to the floor.

    "I already told you, I don't know anything!" Shinobu insisted. "How long 
do you plan to keep me here! Doesn't the Consititution of Japan forbid this 
kind of thing?!"
    The agents said nothing.
    The door opened and whispers were traded between two agents. One of them 
reached down and seized Shinobu's wrist.
    "There's been some kind of explosion at a factory downtown. They pulled 
a *girl* out of the wreckage--" A photograph of Lum in her school suit got 
shoved under Shinobu's nose. "Someone you know?"
    "L-L-lum?!" Shinobu gasped. "What happened to her?"
    The agent seized her chin and forced her to look into his eyes -- 
covered with mirrorshades, there wasn't anything to look at...
    "You and her have had a long-running feud, haven't you?"
    "Not half as bad as her and Rei! Or her and Ran--"
    "Who's Rei?" said one agent.
    "Who's Ran!" said another.
    "You figure it out!" she shrieked, dumping her purse out onto the 
table, throwing at them the endless humiliating pictures stuffed into her 
wallet. "Lum and Rei! Lum and Ataru! Lum and Ran! Lum, Lum, Lum, Lum, LUM! 
It's always her!" The air in the interrogation room was inexplicably hotter. 
"EVERY TIME I TURN AROUND -- IT'S HER! IT'S HER! IT'S *HER!*"
    She slammed the flats of her palms on the table.
    The door to the interrogation room blew off and flew across the hall.
    It took five workmen with power tools an hour to extract the agents 
from the far wall. By that time, Shinobu was long gone.
    The A.P.B. came curling out of Scully's fax machine just as her car 
came slewing across the gravel in front of the wreck of a warehouse: RYOKO 
MANUFACTURING, read the sign outside...
    "As in Mendo Ryoko?!" Ataru gulped. "Oh, no.."
    Scully showed Ataru the A.P.B., wordless. Ataru's fingers dug into the 
thermal paper and discolored it.
    Ten's face was plastered to the rear window.
    "What's THAT?" he gaped, pointing at something streaking down out of 
the sky, white-hot and illuminating the tops of the buildings.
    "It's headed for--" Ataru began to say, rolling down the window and 
and sticking his head out... and in doing so almost collided with something 
warm and soft. Hair... and a pair of horns sticking out of it!...
    "Tomobiki High School," Lum said weakly as she sank to her knees, into 
Ataru's arms. Her hand slid down the side of Ataru's face. "...daa-ling..."
    Ataru stared as a bubble of light grew on the horizon and lit up the 
undersides of the low-lying clouds.

Mulder looked at the viewscreen blank-eyed, the way rabbits stare down 
oncoming vehicles in the hopes that they will somehow magically disappear. 
Sakura and Oyuki were clinging to each other in abject terror.
	"I hope you two swung with Mutual of Omaha," Mulder said a moment 
before they smashed full-tilt into Tomobiki High School.


PART FOUR

	
    The police, fire department, and Self-Defense Forces converged on the 
burning wreck of Tomobiki High School and its immediate environs, hosing 
everything down and picking through the rubble for survivors. What 
survivors were to be found were pulled out of something which one of the 
neighborhood on-lookers dubbed "one of those goddamned UFOs."
    Mulder stood in the doorway of the wrecked spacecraft and looked 
on out at what once was Tomobiki High School. He shook his head.
    "So much for the vaunted superiority of the Japanese educational 
system," he muttered.
	
    Mulder stood with the phone pressed so hard to his ear that 
Scully could have sworn his other ear was vibrating from the 
transmissions conducted through his skull at killing volume. Every so 
often, a tinny screech she recognized as Skinner's voice, strained way 
beyond any comfortable pitch, wafted in and out of her hearing.
    "Yes, sir," Mulder said lamely. He put the phone back down and 
turned around.
    This hotel room looked like a Shriner's convention on acid, he 
thought. Sakura lounging in an easy chair, with Cherry no more than an 
armspan away; Ataru Moroboshi sitting on the edge of the bed, looking 
dazed and with an all-too-affectionate Lum clinging to him; Oyuki 
kneeling on the floor, placidly sipping something from a thermos; Benten 
and Scully eyeballing each other warily in the corner; Jariten hovering 
in the corner, looking on in confusion, with Shinobu cuddling him and 
sending icicles -- better, daggers -- at the back of Ataru's head. 
Kurama, one arm in a sling, scowled out from behind her hovering 
karasu-tengu attendants.
    Cherry was nowhere to be found.
    Kid, he told himself, you have lived through more kinds of hell 
than any one person deserves. Warehouses full of clone tanks, UFO 
abductions, alien experiments, God knows what else. This ought to be 
something you could do in your sleep with both arms tied over your head 
and with one collapsed lung.
    It wasn't.
    "Everyone," he said, clearing his throat. "Listen up. My supervisor 
has told me that because of the suddenly high profile I've taken on in 
this case -- "
    "You mean trashing the high school," Ataru said sourly.
    "Little things like that. Because of that and other things, which 
I'll get to in good time -- because of all that, he's telling me I've got 
thirty-six hours to fold up shop and come home. Or he turns me over to 
the Japanese intelligence authorities, who will most likely do with me as 
they wish."
    "They can't do that to you!" Lum cried out. "You and Darling 
saved me! My father would -- "
    "Your father's not in a position to do anything," Mulder said. 
"We're dealing with people who operate above and beyond anything you 
people are capable of conceiving of. They are ruthless. Life -- human, 
alien, whatever -- means nothing to them. They turn every opportunity 
into a deathtrap, and every piece of evidence into lethal bait. They are 
the Bad Guys."
    "And with your death it will mean the end of our civilization as 
well!" Kurama insisted.
    "Yeah -- well -- "
    "And *we're* the Good Guys?" Ataru sighed. "Not again."
    "Yes, dammit, again," Mulder half-shouted. "And again and again 
until they haven't got any strings left to pull! They want to yank me out 
of this -- " his voice softened " -- but I'm too far in. I'm using every 
minute I got left.
    "But here's the thing. If I go by my own guidelines, I shouldn't 
be asking for your help."
    "What are those guidelines?" Shinobu asked.
    "'Trust no one.' Three little words that got me into and out of 
more trouble than -- forget it. A lot of trouble, let's leave it at that. 
But now... it looks like I've got to get help from some higher sources. 
Higher than me, anyway."
    "Such as the Princess of Neptune," Oyuki murmured.
    "Or someone with bigger *guns*," Benten crowed, hoisting her own 
MangloBlaster a little higher.
    "And so on and so on," Mulder nodded. "You got me pegged. -- The 
whole point of this is: Someone kidnapped Lum and tortured her, tried to 
perform experiments on her. Not aliens; she IS an alien. At least that's 
what my gut tells me. Now we already know, at least from what we've all 
heard, that the rich kid -- "
    "Beeeeee!" Lum gagged.
    " -- is involved in this. But who else?"
    "Lum, do you have any enemies who would want to do this?" Scully 
asked suddenly.
    Mulder blinked at her. Scully blinked back: "Old high school 
enemies, maybe?"
    Lum's eyes nearly bugged out of her head. "Old... high... 
school... enemies?... " Her hands flew to her mouth. 
    "OH, NO, IT CAN'T BE!"
    "*Ran-chan?!*" Ataru gibbered.
    "RAN?!" three-quarters of the room chorused.
    Mulder sat down and opened his notebook. "Mind telling me who 
this 'Ran' is?" He listened dutifully to the description provided 
tearfully by Lum -- and somewhat lecherously by Ataru, which earned him a 
fresh hand imprint on the side of his face and a few thousand volts. 
Scully leaned over, reading and shaking her head.
    "Explosives? Gizmos? If this girl ever came to the States -- "
    "If this girl ever came to the States, I'd move to Australia. Too 
hot for her there, at least in a party dress." He fingered the picture 
Lum had given him and shook his head. It was a crazy notion, but no 
crazier than anything else he had entertained at one point or another in 
his life.
	
    They started to make plans.
    Mulder and Scully had a few things to do first. Issue an APB for 
any member of the Mendo family, for one, but Mulder had already made up 
his mind that anyone with that much money and power was not going to be 
hindered much by the police. But it was worth a shot.
    Oyuki volunteered to check the city morgues for any fresh corpses 
that might have some information. If the rice had already hit the fan 
then there was reason to believe more than a few cooling bodies might 
turn up. Scully was to go with her to provide detailed forensics if they 
needed it.
    Sakura, with Cherry's help (if he could find her), would use her 
own resources to turn up evidence -- specifically, to look for Ran, and 
Mendo. Ataru rooted around in his pockets and came up with a cluster of 
hairs from Ran's head ("And how come you're carrying THOSE and nothing 
from ME, darling?!" Lum snarled).
    Shinobu offered Mendo's class ring. Ataru yanked up the toilet 
lid and heaved at that.
    Benten's knowledege of weapons and technology would be useful if 
they find any hardware. She would stick with Mulder as they sifted 
through the wreckage from the warehouse explosion.
    Kurama, after some hemming and hawing, agreed to help and 
contribute whatever knowledge she had. But she refused to go anywhere in 
particular; she needed to repair her flying saucer. (Apparently, cloning 
and fertility technology were very highly developed on her world -- 
although they shunned the use of cloning to directly propagate the 
species, since it was a lot less fun.)
    Lum, Jariten, Shinobu and Ataru were to be put under guard. There 
was plenty of reason to believe that someone wanted all four of them 
very, very dead.
    "Which leaves us short someone to watch over them," Mulder said 
out loud.
    These words had to have been a summons; the door banged inwards. 
A rattled of beads, a clanking of iron rings on a staff -- 
    "No fear! The glory of the Buddha shall be watching over them 
always!"
    Cherry stood in the doorway. Aside from his monkish garb, he was 
wearing a pair of Wayfarers. He trundled up to Ataru (and Mulder by 
proxy, since the two were toe-to-toe at that moment) and yanked off the 
glasses, pointing at both of them with it. "Pretty good, eh? Nobody 
followed me here!"
    "You didn't need the glasses for that. With a face like that, 
who'd want to."
    The bottom of the iron staff flipped up and slammed right into 
Mulder's crotch. He sank to the floor, his eyes filling up with lights 
that rivalled the brilliance that had come through the window when his 
sister had vanished. Twelve incredibly agonizing seconds later, he saw 
Ataru and Cherry engaged in a glaring contest (with Lum trying to 
separate both of them).
    "We can take care of ourselves, no thank you!" Ataru blared.
    "Arrogant and as sinfully unaware of his predicament as always! A 
million years of hell await you, my boy!"
    "Uncle, knock it off," Sakura sighed.
    "We need," Mulder wheezed, "someone a little more assuring... " 
Scully came over with an icepack, but Mulder gratefully stopped it 
seconds before she applied it to his anatomy. "Naw. That's worse than the 
damage," he managed to say. "One of your folks. Not one of ours. Someone 
you know we can trust." What he wanted to say was: Someone too stupid to 
do anything except listen to us, but it didn't come out.
    "Now who does that remind me of?" Lum fingered her lower lip. 
"Darling, can you think of anyone?"
    "I say we take care of ourselves! I'll fry any bastard that tries 
to hurt Lum!" Ten bounded up and around and made scorch marks on the 
wallpaper.
    "And if they touch Ataru-kun -- " Shinobu declared, lifting up 
the queen-sized bed and making as if she were about to trounce Mulder 
with it.
    From the floor, Mulder cringed and waved his hands in the air. 
"Okay. Okay."
    "Can we get out of here already?" Benten sighed. "No disrespect, 
but my ass's getting sore sticking to this wall -- "
    "Fine, fine," Scully breathed, exasperated.
    "Wait," Mulder murmured. "One more person to try and look for, 
Sakura. Here." From inside his jacket he drew out a small plastic 
evidence envelope.
    Inside it was a single mangled cigarette butt. Sakura looked at 
it quizzically, but said nothing.
    "An old... " Mulder held back one word and substituted another. 
"... friend."
    "Old friends have a way of reappearing suddenly, Agent Mulder," a 
gravelly voice sounded from the doorway. Mr. X stepped into the light, 
but it didn't bring out his features much more than it normally did. "I 
cannot stay long. Coming here was difficult enough, but there was far too 
much at stake for me to ignore this."
   "Such as."
   "Such as the future of every sentient being in the known universe?"
   Mulder could almost hear the silence that followed -- 
BWWWWWOOOONNNNNGGGGG! Like in a bad cartoon, he thought, with lots of 
zoom lens effects and cutaway shots of everyone in the room looking 
stunned. Shock. Horror. Gasp.
    He shot looks around the room. Everyone was indeed gaping. He 
flapped his arms to jolt them out of it; Mr. X went on.
    "'They' are never satisfied, Agent Mulder. I think you know this 
by now, but do you also know the magnitude of their greed?" He shook his 
head. "They do not care that aliens are now a familiar sight on earth. 
They know that there is still a great deal to be exploited, pushed under, 
kept in the dark. We cannot fool ourselves for a minute by thinking that 
just because we think we know everything now that we do."
    "I know all this," Mulder said, irritated. "What's it got to do 
with this?"
    "You know better than to ask me directly," Mr. X snapped. "But 
this should put you on the right track. I'll not be contacting you again 
about this matter." He turned.
    "Do not risk going outside," Oyuki said gently. "Step into the 
closet and I will send you wherever you need to go."
    Mr. X studied her face for a minute, nodded. "I've read your dossier," 
he said. "No one's trustable, but I know what you're capable of."
    Oyuki opened the closet. Everyone's feet suddenly felt a numbing 
swirl of icy air play over them as Mr. X stepped inside and was gone. The 
door closed and Oyuki bowed to everyone in the room. "He is safe now."
    "The only time I'll be sure he's safe," Mulder said, "is when he 
stops breathing."
	
    Oyuki offered Scully her tea the minute they settled into 
Scully's car and got under way.
    "Pretty strong stuff," Scully winced. "I don't see how you can 
drink it with a straight face."
    "On Neptune it is considered a sign of great inner strength."
    "Nice place?" Scully got onto the highway.
    "It would be much nicer if we were able to find a place for all 
the snow. Unfortunately, even our most valiant efforts have failed. Our 
last attempts involved the use of a black hole, but due to some -- how do 
you say it? -- quirks in the nature of the physics we were dealing with, 
the snow wound up coming back to exactly the same place. In effect, it 
travelled so far across the universe it came full circle."
    "Only on Neptune," Scully said.
    Oyuki accepted this with a shrug.
    The morgue was, of course, closed, but with the aid of a utility 
closet Oyuki was able to get them into a storage locker just inside the 
cold room. Scully's teeth instantly sank into her lips to keep from 
chattering; Oyuki, seeing this, whipped off her long outer kimono and 
wound it around her. The room suddenly felt downright balmy to Scully.
    "Thanks. I should keep this handy next time I go to Iceland."
    "I wish I could provide you with it as a keepsake, but it is a 
famiLy heirloom. Let us exit... "
    The slabroom was pitch-black. Scully yanked out her killer-candlepower 
flashlight, kicked it on, and waved it around. Nothing unusual: lots of dead 
bodies, the stink of formalin, the sound of her shoes sticking to the icy 
floor. The usual stuff.
    They made the round of the bodies in no time, but there was 
nothing even remotely strange. No bodies with non-human configurations 
(definitely no horns), no human bodies with "unexplained causes of 
death", according to the tightly coded toe tags and dog tags. Oyuki 
gingerly lifted the corner of a tarpulain covering a body and closed her 
eyes.
    "What a shameful sight the naked body is," she sighed.
    "'Shameful'," Scully echoed. "You and Mulder should have a debate 
some time."
    "Shameful in the sense of pitiful. I regret deeply if I misspoke."
    "Pitiful?"
    "The body by itself is fragile. Moreso for the individual body, 
and the individual himself. A man alone -- or a woman alone -- is nothing 
in the face of the universe. Especially in a universe full of other 
beings that see fit only to war with each other. My planet's population 
numbers in the billions; so does yours. Empires across the galaxy deal in 
quadrillions, quintillions even. They must present themselves to the void 
in such a fashion: as a greater One, and not neccesarily themselves."
    "For the sake of survival?" Scully said, closing a folder.
    "It is the law of the universe."
    Scully thought, I'm not sure I like this woman. Aloud she said, 
"Then again, in the right time and place, an individual effort can mean a 
lot more than any number of people banded mindlessly together. You have 
to agree there -- "
    Oyuki nodded but said nothing. For the first time Scully saw that 
her eyes were exactly the same color as the carapace of a cockroach: 
reddish-brown, with glintinting highlights.
    "Let's get the hell out of here," she murmured.
    Oyuki nodded and opened the utility closet. A moment later there 
was a snowdrift, and then nothing.
    Scully stood there with her flashlight playing dead-on into the 
blank wall of the back of the closet, covered in snow, feeling like the 
single biggest idiot of her life.
    "Oyuki," she called out. "OYUKI!"
    Nothing.
    The bitch deserted me. One of Them.
    Stop wasting breath, she told herself. You've still got her coat 
-- oversight -- and your flash, and your PHONE! She clawed out the phone 
and pried it open; her fingers at first wouldn't dial the numbers.
    There was no dial tone, no glow from the buttons or display. The 
battery meter hugged zero. She turned it over.
    The battery was gone. Sometime during their talk in the car, 
Oyuki must have reached down and surreptitiously pried it out.
    Why her? she thought. She sat down against a wall and tried not 
to let her heart race too fast, use up more oxygen than she could manage. 
Her skin wasn't cold, but the air she was breathing was arctic, and if 
she didn't find a way to breathe warm air she was looking at a case of 
double pneumonia at the least and aggravated hypothermia at the worst.
     Why her? she thought. Why her?
	
    Ataru had retreated to one corner of the hotel room, with Lum 
edging closer every so often. Shinobu and Ten sat on the bed, nodding off 
into sleep.
    "Quiet now," Lum said noncomittally.
    Ataru gave one of his more aimless grunts.
    "Darling, I just wanted to tell you something," she said, 
dropping her voice to a murmur. "In the event we wind up not living 
through the night."
    "Sure."
    "Please don't forget, Darling. I'll always love you, even beyond 
death."
    Ataru squirmed and looked at the ceiling. "Don't talk like that!"
    "Like what? That we're going to die? Or -- "
    "Yeah, that we're going to die! Bad enough that I know it; I 
don't need to be reminded of it!"
    "I'm sorry."
    "Sheesh. Don't worry about it." He pushed hair out of his face. 
"I guess you don't think much of Cherry watching over us either."
    Lum knocked her forehead. "What a farce!"
    Ataru stood up and tiptoed to the front door, peeking out the 
spy-lens. Sure enough, Cherry sat adamantly in the chair facing the door, 
staff in hand, prayer beads in his fist. "Still there," he nodded, "but 
I'd feel a lot safer with Sakura outside. Or Benten. Or -- "
    "I know. I know," Lum growled. "Anyone except *me*, right?" She 
chinned herself on her knees and ground her teeth together, her slightly 
oversized incisors protruding as they always did when her emotions rode 
high. "Don't worry, *Darling*. I'm getting used to it."
    Ataru stared at her. Normally, he thought, she either got boiling 
mad or ran out in tears. Or zapped me. This kind of venom... Ataru found 
himself at a loss for words.
    "So you don't like the fact that I happen to like women. Not just 
*a* woman," he said, spacing his words carefully. "You think it's because 
I hate you. Nothing to do with that, and you know it. I just -- " He 
balled his fists. "I need room! I'm young; I'm barely just beginning to 
learn what joys the opposite sex can hold for me! Why the hell do I have 
to commit *now*!"
    "You promised. And anyone who breaks promises is a liar. Like -- "
    Silence. Ataru squinted at her.
    "A liar like what?"
    No answer. Lum turned away.
    "A liar like what? Come on."
    Still no answer. Lum's shoulders started shaking. Oh boy, he 
thought, she's gone and turned on the tears. He went over to her, feeling 
foolish, and put his hand on her shoulder. That single action was like a 
trigger release; Lum buried her face in his shoulder and sobbed like she 
was rehearsing for a funeral. No words, just a flood of tears that went 
unabated for minutes on end.
    "No," she managed to say, "don't ask. I'll tell you sometime. If 
we live."
    Ataru glanced over at Shinobu and Ten, nestled against each other 
and sleeping peacefully. He envied them.
	 
TO BE CONTINUED...