"Nanites?" Casey asked, glancing at where Peel stood near Lady Keena.

Lady Keena shook her head. "Nay, and I would know."

"Not hard light, either," Peel said. She squinted slightly and Vuxten saw a lens flick down in one eye. "She's not a projection."

The woman chuckled, exhaling smoke as she slowly walked forward. Vuxten noted that she seemed to be able to sway her hips in an odd way that had never really seen a female human do, making the skirt swirl around her legs.

"In the flesh," she said. Vuxten noted how her voice was low, slightly rough, and he wondered why. She didn't exactly seem the type to be yelling over the roar of the battlefield and inhaling all the wonderful chemical mixtures common to the modern battlefield.

"And yet you claim to be the Mistress of Hell within the SUDS," Lady Keena said. She shifted her blade, no longer threatening the shorter woman, but not off guard either.

"No, I am the Mistress of Hell, Purgatory, and the Master Catastrophic Casualty System as well as the Massive Trauma Treatment System," the woman, Dee, said. She took a drag and exhaled smoke and Vuxten noted that it smelled of hot iron, blood, and something else. "There's a difference," she said.

"So what does the Mistress of Hell want with us?" Casey asked, lowering his Mark II Cutting Bar and letting the motor idle.

The woman smiled and Vuxten had to admit, it wasn't the kind of smile he liked. Human smiles were the pleasure signal of an apex predator at the best of time, but there was just something about the woman's smile that went further.

"That's just it, I can't read you in just yet," she said. She moved over and held out one hand. While Vuxten and the others watched she lifted a smooth topped rock from the ground, brushed off the top, then sat down, folding her legs primly. "The target has capabilities far beyond what you could imagine."

"Then how are you going to give us a good reason," Vuxten asked. "If you can't tell us what you want, how can you tell us why we should cooperate?"

The woman chuckled. "I can't read you in. I can tell you what I want."

Casey frowned. "What?"

She pointed at them with her cigarette, each in line. "The Warrior Princess," she said, pointing at Lady Keena. She pointed at Peel. "The Unblinking Gaze and Steady Voice," she smiled, then pointed at Casey, "The Armor Lord," finally she pointed at Vuxten. "And Wrath in Love - Love in Wrath."

"Very poetic," Peel said.

Dee held her hand out and bottle of beer slid from the half-rack and flew to her hand, hitting with a smack. Vuxten watched as she used her thumb, now sporting a black talon, to pop the cap off, the talon vanishing as the cap arced through the air to land in the box. She took a long drink, then lowered the bottle, smiling.

"Those are the names I was given. I prefer your given names, but I speak with more than my voice," she said. She took another drink. "Oh, sit down, you all look foolish, like you're in freeze frame right before you do the whole superhero mass attack scene."

Vuxten moved back to his spot, sitting down. He looked down and realized that he'd pulled his submachinegun from the armory. He sighed and clipped it to his belt before reaching back and letting his cutting bar clack onto the carrying lock on the harness he wore beneath his top.

Casey just folded his legs and sat down, his cutting bar on his lap. Lady Keena walked back to the circular tent she had been living in since the birth of her children, peeking in. Peel moved over by Casey and sat down, looking at Dee suspiciously.

"I could have sent someone you would have automatically obeyed, but He feels that it would rob you of your free will for him to request your compliance in person," the woman said. She snorted. "Some people need ordered, to be forced to bend the knee, but seeing all of you in the flesh, he was right."

"Who?" Lady Keena asked, sitting between Vuxten and Casey, slightly more forward than everyone else. She sat cross legged with her naked blade on her thighs.

"Huh, no top, no underwear, full bush," Dee said. She smiled. "The bra burners would have loved you."

"Who?" Lady Keena asked.

"Nevermind. A long time ago, remembered only by me," Dee said, her voice going soft. "Irony, thy name is time."

Vuxten glanced at Casey, who gave a minute shrug.

"I hate this," Dee sighed. She swigged off the beer and set the bottle down next to her, taking a drag and exhaling smoke. "I prefer to bargain from a position of actual or perceived strength or at least with heavy shells in the ammo locker, not like this."

"You're here to bargain?" Lady Keena asked, frowning. "What bargain would the Mistress of Hell offer?"

Dee sighed. "And I can't even get into that," she snarled, looking around. "Howdy-Doody is literally everywhere and the minute he figures that out and learns how to use it, I'll be in for the fight of my life."

Lady Keena frowned. "This Howdy-Doody, a powerful enemy? I have never heard of them."

"You wouldn't," Dee said. She tapped her ashes on the grass. "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy," she said.

"Riddles," Lady Keena mused. She looked down at the blade, where tiny threads of electricity were wreathing the tip of the finger she was rubbing across the engraved blade. "You are bound to speak in riddles to avoid the notice of this all-powerful Howdy-Doody," she nodded. "An end game epic level dark purple quest giver with a single opportunity to accept," she smiled brightly. "I'm in."

Dee blinked. "What?"

Lady Keena smiled wider. "I accept thine quest, Dark One. In the service of Hell can often be found the glory of Heaven for only the Devil can grant access to Hell."

Dee shook her head. "All right, that's one," she looked at Vuxten, then at where Casey sat with Peel. She pointed at Casey with her cigarette. "You're going to be a problem. I've already recruited someone who I need more than you, but I need you too."

Casey thought for a second. "General Trucker. You recruited him somehow," he frowned. "You played on his guilt for activating the Black Cauldron, for leading his dead men into the teeth of the Atrekna assault, and offered him perceived salvation if he does your bidding."

"Oh, I like you," Dee smiled. She looked at Peel. "That tells me exactly how intelligent you are. No intelligent woman will hang around a man dumber than her for long, no matter how big and thick his dong is. You're body language tells me how possessive you are of him, which means you place high value on him."

Peel nodded tightly. "Tell me something none of us know," she said sarcastically.

Dee closed her eyes for a second and Vuxten could see her eyes flicking back and forth rapidl.y After a single breath she opened them. "You have a scar just above and to the right of your tailbone from when you were learning how to ride a bicycle and crashed. The pedal cut you deep enough you needed stitches and your mother fed your bicycle into the mass reclaimer before you got home. You got your first set of cybereyes by forcing your parents to buy them because you stared into the sun with macrobinoculars for nearly two hours, even after you could no longer see. You told them you woke up that way."

Peel's eyes opened wide.

"Howdy-Doody has access to the same information I do," Dee stated. "Now you see why I have to be careful. Soon, he'll understand just what power he holds and I'll hear the Hellhounds and Cerberus baying whenever I walk the mortal realm."

Peel just nodded, blinking to try to cover her shock.

"What about me?" Casey asked, his face stony, as Dee put out her cigarette and dropped the butt into the empty beer bottle.

"Ring Breaker. Knight Æsir of Sancti Ordo Spiritus Tyr," she shrugged. She leaned forward and spoke rapidly in a sing-song language that Vuxten couldn't follow. His implant couldn't even provide translation.

Casey answered, Dee spoke more, even more rapidly. Dee pulled another bottle to her as she and Casey spoke. She popped the top with that taloned thumb and smiled as Casey lowered his head.

"It isn't a trick of loading up a language pack," Dee stated. "My maternal grandmother, before TB took her, only spoke that tongue in the last years of her life, not that it matters."

Casey didn't say anything.

Vuxten noticed that Lady Keena had watched carefully the entire byplay.

Dee took another long drink off the beer before lighting a cigarette. She looked at Peel. "We both know, if I take him, you'll come along willingly. Orpheus to his Eurydice," Dee said. She opened her mouth and viper's fangs unfolded from the roof of her mouth as her smile grew wider. The fangs retracted and Dee took another swig off the beer. "No Saint Patrick to drive me out of the Emerald Isles and save him, Peel."

"I don't understand any of that," Peel admitted. She tapped her datalink. "Something's jamming my 'link."

"Me," Dee said. She stared at Casey. "In or out, Ring Breaker?"

"In," Casey said, looking up. His eyes looked sunken, hollow, and dark. "I'm in."

Peel looked at him, then at Dee. "You want him in his armor," she accused, her voice hot.

"Of course I do, don't be foolish," Dee snapped. "If you walk in with an explosive vest, you best have Semtex and not hot dogs."

"NO!" Peel said, coming to her feet. "No! How can you ask him that? Don't you care what it will do to him? How can you ask something so monstrous?"

Dee stood up, expanding into the huge demonic figure. She bent forward, until her massive muscle was nearly touching Peel's pert upturned nose. "Because I'm the Detainee, girl."

"What you ask is cruel. You ask him to risk his soul," Peel snapped, not stepping back even when the smoke from the Detainee's nostrils washed over her face. "No."

"You have no idea what I ask of him. Wrapping him in armor is the least of what I may ask of him," the Detainee growled. "If I must unveil the Ring Breaker, I'll be the biggest mass murderer in the history of the galaxy as we know it," she puffed out more smoke. "I'll kill more people than the Great Flood and do it without a second's hesitation."

Peel frowned.

"But that decision will not be on him. He's a weapon, not a man, plain and simple. I don't need the man, I can find a man in any dive bar bathroom I bother to check with my tits hanging out, I need the weapon, and he's the only one that exists," the Detainee growled. "He may fire the weapon, but it'll be me that pulls the trigger."

Peel looked uncertain for a moment, looking at Casey, then back at the massive face of the Detainee.

She suddenly shrunk, back into a short woman that only came up mid-chest on Peel. She stared up into Peel's eyes, her gun-metal gray eyes hot and full of some kind of burning emotion that Vuxten didn't understand.

"I know more keenly what I will be asking him to do than you can ever know, girl," Dee said softly. Her eyes burned with something, something that made her eyes look like burning liquid iron. "I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds," she said softly. "Look into my eyes, girl."

Peel clenched her jaw and stared into the other woman's eyes.

Vuxten was at the right angle to see it, the reflection in Peel's eyes.

An atomic explosion in a desert.

"I was there," Dee whispered. "It was mine own hand that wrote the complex equations to understand the waveform of the implosion trigger. It was mine own hands that helped craft it. I was there."

Peel swallowed.

"Victory at any price," Dee whispered.

Peel suddenly looked away.

"Monster," she whispered, rubbing at the goosebumps that had suddenly appeared on her upper arms.

Dee just shrugged.

Vuxten just stared at the small woman as she turned to face him, ignoring how Lady Keena got up and moved over to embrace Peel with Casey.

"Ever look into the Devil's eyes," Casey said softly.

"You come highly recommended, fox boy," Dee smiled. She walked back over and sat on the rock, picking up her beer and taking a swallow. "Enraged Phillip, Bellona the Grave Bound Beauty, Legion. All of them sang your praises."

Vuxten nodded and swallowed, his hand drifting of its own accord to the ornate stubber on his hip.

"Now that I can see you with my own eyes I can make my own decision," she said. She stared for a long time at him. She suddenly gave a solemn nod. "You carry the weapon of a man who stood back to back with Enraged Phillip on the sands of Anthill," she leaned forward slightly as she exhaled smoke.

"You're Enraged," her voice was a crackling whisper. "You alone, among the Telkan, are Enraged."

Vuxten nodded jerkily.

"You fell beneath the mountain, pulled into the depths by the Balrog of Morgoth," Dee said. Vuxten realized he could see her eyes perfectly through the cloud of cigarette smoke. "You arose from the depths, you and 471 both, your sins and wounds washed by the water."

Vuxten nodded. He remembered very little, only pain, from the end of the fight when everything turned white.

"You fear contaminating your podlings, your wife, your broodcarriers, with the rage you carry inside of yourself," Dee said softly.

"Leave him alone," Casey said, letting go of Peel and starting to step forward.

Vuxten held up his hand. "She's right," he said. He nodded. "I do fear that, which is why I am out here with Lady Keena every day."

"And now the Devil's come for your soul," Dee smiled.

Vuxten nodded slowly. Before Dee could say anything else he spoke.

"I'm in."

Dee smiled.

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

471 stood in the middle of his fellow engineers, his bladearms and work arms upraised, his hands clenched over his his head. They were cheering, complex mathematical equations being tossed out even as they made rare vocalizations of approval.

He wore an MRE wrapped on his torso, holes ripped in the sides for his arms, a hole for his head.

His fellow engineers showered him with droplets of beer.

He chanted with them.

The Devil had been to see him. Fearsome in her matronly glory.

Had reminded all of them.

Of him.

Now, like them, he was being called to service beyond what any could expect by something almost beyond comprehension, who had seen the value in the smallest.

They chanted the name of the First around him even as he yelled the name with his voice.

"GRAVITY!"