Unexpected Answers

                            By:

                         Fox Cutter

01/15/99:

Ah, the joys of the three hour lunch break. When you have no
one to directly answer to, you can get away with it. More so
when you're swamped under so much work that it seems almost
impossible to make it seem any less. Even after spending a
handful of days spending all your time working on it.

At least the IMF had a few more people working for it other
than me. I finally had a secretary to handle the majority of
the details, and a selection committee to decide who should
be working in this organization.

All of it of course so top secret that I think only three
people outside of the office knew exactly what was going on.
Well, not counting Elena and hir people. I somehow expected
they already knew who was's going to be picked, even though
we didn't have a candidate list yet.

At least the hard part of setting it up was now over. The
basic orders for the office had been created and approved.
We would be getting all the 'interesting' covert operation
assignments. I just hope we can get the group together to do
it. No one involved with the office was even officially
connected. They'll all have jobs in different places in
there military, mostly in the back rooms and such. Usually
as the result of a disciplinary measure.

Then there was me. I think officially I was one of Rachel's
advisors in the Consortium, with no real power. From what I
had been told I was going to be part of her Cabinet, once
such things were made official in the new government.

Which is just what I had never wanted to do with my life;
politics. I could have happily gone my whole life without
ever getting involved, and had tried very hard to avoid this
same position after the HammerHeads. Now I was finding
myself forced into it simply for necessities sake.

It just makes me want to jump up on a table and scream!

My manners are better than that though, at least in public.
Not that anyone was paying much attention to me as I browsed
through the assorted shops in the Grand Market. I wasn't
really looking for anything, mostly just killing time. I had
an appointment to get an implant only a couple of hours
away, and wasn't eager to be there early.

I was surprised, though, to see a familiar set of wings
perched over a chair in one of the smaller open-air
restaurants that could be found in the market. It was Sora,
though I didn't know what she was doing there. Shopping I
would suspect.

She was kind of slumped over a bit, a sad look on her muzzle
and her wings were drooping down slightly.

"You look like you need a friend," I said when I was only a
few feet away from her.

She looked up at me, moving only her eyes. "Fox," she said
slowly, almost like she was thinking about each word before
she spoke it. "Please, take a seat."

I took the free chair at the table, leaning forward a bit to
look her in the eyes. "What's wrong?"

Her response was a stifled laugh. "What makes you think
there is something wrong?"

"Because you look like how I feel when I'm utterly depressed
with no one to talk to." I answered, reaching my hand over
the table.

She almost made a point of ignoring it as she closed her
eyes, her wings fanning slightly behind her, but still
hanging low.

A waiter came by to see if I wanted anything. I quickly sent
him away without an order. I just sat and watched Sora. Her
eyes were moving behind her eye-lids, and I could see that
she was thinking. About what, though?

"Sora," I finally said as I moved my chair over to sit
beside her. "I'm your friend, you know that. You can tell me
anything you want. I can promise it will stay between us."

She finally opened her eyes, turning her head to look at me.
Her red eyes were some-what washed out from light of the
twin suns, but I could see that she looked more reassured
than before.

"It's Jadith," she said slowly, measuring each world as she
spoke them. "When she became a Huntress, we had plans to be
a team, her, me, Ren and Stew. Now things are completely
different. She's running The Organization, Ren is off on his
own adventures, and Stew has been snapped up by another
government. I'm just left here alone."

I frowned, this was partly my fault. We had promised Jadith
that the team she had formed would not be broken up, but
things happen that no one can predict. "I'm sorry."

She waved her paw at me. "It's nothing you should be sorry
about. We all worried about this when Jadith got that job.
Ren hasn't been the same since that trip with you. Stew has
family where he went. I was just left behind."

I nodded slowly, having been in the same position far too
many times myself. "Do you have any plans as to what to do?"
It was a silly question, and maybe inappropriate at this
point and time, but it was all I could think to ask.

"Yes," she answered, with a slower nod than before. "I
applied to be trained as a Huntress myself."

I frowned again, "They said no, didn't they?"

She flicked her wings out a bit as she pulled herself
forward. "They said only citizen of Prid, or of Council
member worlds, or naturals can join. I'm none of those
things."

"I could pull rank," I suggested. "Order them to accept you
in the program."

She sighed. "No, Fox, that would be ever worse. Everyone
else in the program would resent me. The teachers would
worry if they failed me, or I washed out. It would be the
worst thing you could do."

I nodded, leaning forward, resting my elbows on the table.
"Maybe we could make you a citizen."

She let out a very sharp, critical, laugh. "I've seen the
paper work required to become a citizen of Prid. It's a
joke, I would never qualify."

"True, it is very difficult to become a citizen," I said
with a wide smile.

She tilted her head, looking at me, a slight look of wonder
crossing her face. "But?" she prompted.

I leaned forward slightly. "Third basic tenet of the
Council, no slavery, at all."

Light suddenly filled her eyes. "You mean, since I was
declared a slave before I left my world. That it was the
reason I came here in the first place," she stopped for a
second, her wings fanning out wide. "There's some kind of
clause isn't there? There's some kind of rule in the
citizenship laws for slaves running to Prid."

I grinned. "Exactly! I found it when I was looking over the
laws for The Brothers," my old R&D crew who had left Prid
because of those very same laws a couple years ago. "It's
been a while, but there is no time limit on the clause. I
can witness that this happened for you, and we'll see how it
goes."

"You're pretty credible as a witness," she commented,
standing up, stretching out both her arms and her wings as
she called over a waiter.

I sat back and smiled to myself. I had never thought about
getting her any kind of citizenship before. As a natural, it
never applied to me, so it was never something I thought
about. I would have to see about it for Oria as well. The
children will of course have that citizenship for the sake
of being native, but Oria doesn't. That could lead to a
problem. I was going to have to talk to her about it.

Sora sat back down once she had ordered something, a big
grin on her face, now much more relaxed than before. "So, if
that does work, and I do become a citizen, I should be
accepted into the program to be a Huntress?"

I nodded. "You've worked with Hunters before, you know the
equipment and the procedures, and I'm sure Jadith, Ren and
Stew will give you a good enough recommendation that you'll
get in."

She smiled even wider, her wings fanning out a bit more
behind her. "I suddenly feel better than I have in weeks!"

I leaned forward towards her. "Then I may have some better
news. If you make it though the program it will help in my
plans, but I think I've come up with a way to get you back
home."

She seemed shocked by that, jumping forward a bit. "Oh, Fox,
that's amazing news. It's good to know I have friends who
would do something like that for me."

Instantly I knew she was leaving something out. There was
something going on behind her eyes, something I wasn't quite
sure about. "But?" I prompted.

"I'm not going back," she answered me, crossing her arms on
the table top as her drink was delivered. "Not for a long
time at least."

"Why?" I asked, sounding shocked.

"What do I have to go back to?" she asked, the way she asked
the question made it sound rhetorical. "I've not been gone
long enough to be declared dead. Unless we can perform a
miracle, when I return I'll still be a slave. The man I
loved is dead on the bottom of some ocean that's too far
away from me to even comprehend. I have no family, no
friends, just a job I loved which I'll never have back."

She stopped, shaking her head slowly. "No, The only things
left for me there is hard memories and cold lies."

I was kind of shocked; I could understand her reasons why,
but still. Somehow abandoning your home like that just felt
wrong, in almost every sense of the word.

Sora must have understood the look on my face, because she
answered my unasked question. "I'm not totally abandoning my
world. In another twelve years I'll be declared dead. Since
I'm the last of my family line, all debts will be cleared,
and the clan name struck from the books. I'll return after
that, maybe in twenty years, maybe in fifty."

I raised an eyebrow at that, fifty years was a life-time.

She smiled. "We live a long time, Fox; two hundred years is
considered the proper age to retire. I won't be going alone
either, I'll have a contact team with me. Whatever
government stands here will meet my world's government. I
think things will finally change." She said the last part
whimsically, I was getting the feeling that she had been
planning this for a while now.

I returned her smile, leaning back slightly in my chair,
playing with the edge of my jacket. "I understand, then."

She shook her head. "You can't really understand unless
you've been through what I have. Our clans are very
important to us, they carry the family line, and much
respect. Mine was a very old clan; we used to be the royal
family before we were over thrown half a millennium ago. The
history of our clan has been one of struggle and fighting
for survival for too long. My younger sister was our hope to
remake the clan's image. She was such a lovely girl."

"What happened to her?" I asked softly.

She sighed softly. "We never knew what caused it, some sort
of attack was all we could find. Whatever it was, it hurt
her so much that she killed herself." She let out a weak
laugh. "My younger sister could fly, she had just the
perfect body for flying, and she used it to kill herself.
She dived head-long into the rocky shores near our home from
as high as she could. She took the one thing that made her
special and used it to kill herself."

She was half crying now, wiping away the start of tears from
the corners of her eyes.

"I didn't mean to bring up painful memories," I said,
shifting slightly in my seat.

"Actually, if there's anyone who should know, it's you."

"Me?" I asked, sounding as surprised as I was.

"You remember the first time we met?"

I laughed. "Yes, you dropped a wrench or something on my
head."

She nodded. "I saw you walking up to the ship. I thought you
were a demon, so I hit you with the wrench, I didn't drop
it. The fact is I could have done more to you, maybe even
killed you."

I rubbed the back of my neck. This was something I hadn't
known before. She had told me it was an accident, and I had
believed her. I never even thought that she had attacked me,
or even that she could attack me, to be honest.

"It was when I got a good look at you that I realized that
you might not be a simple demon. You had the exact same
coloring as my sister, I even stripped you to make sure,"
she blushed as she said this, I just smiled. "It was perfect
Fox, every hair was the same color, the same pattern. It was
eerie."

I nodded. "I can understand that. Though the vulpine form I
some-times shift into is different from that original one."

"I know," she answered, "but I don't think that matters now.
If your colors had been what they were the last time you
became a fox morph, I might still be stuck back there. Or
even worse, back home as a slave."

"So you're saying it was fate?" I asked softly.

"Not exactly," she said, taking a quick drink. "When I got
to Prid, I worked it out. My world is in the same galaxy as
yours."

"That's interesting," I answered.

She smiled, "Which is this galaxy as well."

I sat straight up in my seat. "What?"

She laughed happily. "I always suspected you never knew.
Prid is on almost the very farthest side of the galaxy from
your world. Prid is much farther out than your world is.
Mine is closer to one of the other edges, but it's all the
same galaxy."

"Whoa," I said softly.

She nodded. "Not my reaction, but yes. Though I'm getting
ahead of myself. I worked all of this out in as many details
as I could, but I think the reason you had the same colors
as my sister is because you were her."

I sighed, shaking my head slowly. "Reincarnation? You have
to be kidding."

She shook her head. "No, we've know for years that souls
could be going to worlds other than our own, as well as
coming from them. It makes perfect sense, though; that's why
you ended up there in the first place. You said you found it
by accident, didn't you? The point is, we met there because
we had to come back together once more."

I shook my head more. "No, Sora, I don't believe that."

"I worked it out, Fox," she sounded like she was pleading.
"Taking a best guess, she died just minutes before you were
born. It works, for a soul there is no such thing as
distance. Even if you aren't now, some time before you were
my sister. I think some part of you you knows that."

I have had dreams like she had described. The classic dreams
of flying, but never the Superman style. Always flying like
a bird-- maybe it could have been in the same fashion as her
species. Then there was the bit about dive-bombing the
rocks. That's a dream I've had a lot, though not recently;
the last time was the night before I was exiled.

What was I thinking! There was no way that Sora could be
right. I may have a soul, but I do not believe in
reincarnation, or past lives, or anything else like that.
I'm me and that's all there was to it!

"Think about it," she said, finishing her drink. "Think long
and hard about it."

I shook my head again. "There's nothing to think about."

She gave me a knowing smile. "You don't believe that, Fox. I
know you, there's that twinkle in your eyes, I've sparked
something you've only thought about in the darker corners of
your mind."

"Maybe," I said, glancing at my watch, "but I have don't
have time to continue it. I have an appointment to get an
implant in fifteen minutes and I don't want to be late."

"Really?" she asked with a skeptical look.

"Yes really," I said as I stood up. "Everyone in charge of
the Consortium is getting them, which annoyingly includes
me."

"What kind of implant is it?" Sora asked, standing up as
well.

I rubbed the front of my neck, grimacing slightly. "Some
kind of gill implant. It's suppose to filter out any kind of
gases in the air, so we can't be poisoned in that fashion.
It just gets implanted right at the base of my neck."

She nodded. "Sounds painful."

"I won't be able to talk for a couple days," I answered,
pulling on my jacket. "At least it gives me some time off
from this constant work."

Her response was a pat on the back. "You'll work out
something, Fox. Spend some time with Beca and Oria, or maybe
visit some old friends."

"You count there as well," I said, fluffing the hair on her
head. She smiled slightly as I turned and started towards
the exit of the Market.

-----

This story is (c) 1999 by Fox Cutter, hardcopy reprints
limited to one a person, all other rights reserved. This
story may not be distributed for a fee except by permission
of the author, and this copyright notice may not be removed.