I woke with a start with my knees hurting and wiped drool off the corner of my mouth, looking down at the small pool I'd made on my pillow while I slept. Frowning, I wiped the fabric and felt it jiggle unexpectedly under my fingers.

I looked up a little more and found Rito attached to the breasts I'd just manhandled, and then looking up further, the dawn-lit living room of the girls' place in Vegas, and further still, I saw Saga beaming at me, her small smile full of malice and her almond eyes narrowed.

It took me just a second to get my hands off her, a second longer to confirm that she was still asleep, and just another second to get my bearings and remember why I was here. So three seconds before I turned on Saga and started in on her.

"What the fuck was that?" I asked her in hushed tones so as to not wake the others. "You just fucking put me under."

"Baby needed a nap," she said, crossing her legs regally. "Seriously Athan, you were so sleep-deprived, your brain was screaming at me like a rusty engine trying to start. You had a prescription for sleep, and I'm your local dealer."

"Drug dealers don't need prescriptions. And I did not need to sleep more than I needed to get to Talon," I hissed at her. Rito made a pitiful noise at my increase in volume but didn't wake. It was extra annoying that I had to hush up, but Saga was so naturally quiet she could keep talking like she always had.

"As I said, Talon was dead. She saw it with her own eyes."

"But I didn't. And you're being such a fucking bitch about it."

She shook her head and let the insult pass. "I'm frankly a little offended you think that little of me, Athan. I'm the one with all the information here, the least you could do is trust me to make a decision based on it. I get no points for our storied, sordid past?"

"It's not that I don't love or respect you, Saga, it's that there's a dead guy, and he's a friend and a good guy. Also...maybe really important to the stability of the world."

"Tsk. So hung up on one dead body. I make loads of dead bodies. I've been thinking of collecting their skeletons, maybe put them in a closet somewhere. Cross that one off my idiom checklist."

I could tell Saga was just using my frustration for her own amusement because she knew there wasn't any immediate threat or danger, and so the most productive thing now would be to stop feeding into it. I had to calm myself down and bore her if nothing else, into helping properly.

I also realized that's exactly the kind of awareness I was lacking last night and quickly pushed the thought from my mind before Saga could pick up on it. But she was wearing a shit-eating smirk already so fuck me.

"Okay, you've had your fun. Tell me what happened to Rito."

"Sure you don't want to hear it from her?"

"Yeah, I can do without the screaming and whimpering."

"Damn, cold, Athan. You know, she's just an ordinary girl."

"So is Lia, but you never see her crying."

Saga grinned at me and I felt like I was missing something. "What?" I asked.

"You're so messed up. Gets me so hot."

"What?" I reiterated, with completely different intonation now. Miraculously useful little word.

"You have no idea what normal is anymore! I'm so proud of you I could just hug you!"

She began to get up but I just swept her feet and dropped her ass back in her chair, where she landed with a giggle.

"Athan! Normal people don't leg sweep their friends! Normal girls don't carry around big fuck-you sniper rifles and wear slipskins and deal with Exhumans and AIs every day!" She sounded really abnormally cheery, and I began to suspect her offered hug, while given for bizarre reasons, was actually genuine. "You're super fucked up and don't even realize that a normal girl would panic and cry for a few hours after seeing someone get shot!"

"You super lost me," I said. "I know I'm not normal. I'm an Exhuman. We're like, the zero-point-one-percent that mucks up the whole world."

"Yeah, we are. But you've been mucking up the world for so long now that you've lost normal as a vantage point. It's adorable. It took me years of being locked up and tortured to get to that point. I'm so proud of you."

"Okay, I'm really not sure how this is a compliment, and coming from you, I'm pretty sure a compliment actually means the opposite, but can we please focus on Talon for now? Remember me being pissed off about not doing this last night? We're still wasting time."

"Fine. But only because you're such an adorable little anomalous aberrant now."

"Whatever. Tell me what happened."

Saga closed her eyes and banished the cheery, slightly disturbing smile which had haunted her thin face and took a deep breath, reaching towards the other girl in the room with outstretched fingers. I felt my brain prickle as well as Saga washed over both of us.

"Yesterday after the summit, you got detained for questioning, talked to Karu, slept for a few hours, if you can call it sleep, and then met this one again. In the time you were apart, Rito here took the rest of the Defiant Unchained back to their respective homes...they tend to live in cheap housing in groups of three or four, to save money but also to watch each other's backs...and she took Talon home last. He lives alone in Santa Fe. He's still got a lot of money from...as you know, being a lawyer for a while."

Still with her hand out, Saga scratched her eyebrow idly with the other hand. "He'd hired her...wow, for fifty thousand credits, to coordinate everyone to and from the pizza parlor. She needs money really bad, her mother thinks she's at an art institute, doesn't even know she's an Exhuman...damn, what a mess. She's got a lot of lies she's living under, but mostly just wants to send money to her mommy. Lots of debt--"

"I don't need her life story, Saga. Let's not pry into her personal life unless it's relevant."

"You sure? I can tell you about the spicy bits from before she dropped out of art school. Lots of very creative girls playing with paint. And each other."

"Saga."

"I'm kidding. About the paint. All art's digital nowadays. They still played with each other of course. So she got her money from Talon, and they were talking a bit when someone came in the door...suddenly the windows went black. She doesn't know why. We can check that when we get there. Talon starts freaking out, the power is out, and then gunshots."

Saga stopped scratching herself and now seemed as interested as I was in her own story. "Let's see...it was dark, so she doesn't have much to go on. Talon was on the floor, shot in the back. She pissed herself, nice. Is that one of your fetishes, Athan? Never mind, you're just going to yell at me, I'll test it later. Blood. Lots of blood. Talon bleeding out...hmm."

"Hmm?" I repeated.

"Talon's powers were really strong. He could warp the shape of things around him. Tried to defend himself from his attackers by imploding the room behind him, but it didn't work. He used it again to shove the little prude into the bathroom and warp the door shut behind her. She was trying to escape using her powers the whole time but someone was watching her and she can't use them when she's being watched. Pee shy, I guess. Wait, no, she did pee. So a voyeur?"

"I wish it were AEGIS with the mind reading. This would be so much less painful," I said.

"Hey, when you've only got one person in the booth, she's gotta do both the play-by-play and the color commentary. I threw you a bone. Sports analogy there for ya, Athan. Chin up."

"You're such an ass. So what happened next?"

"Not much. More gunshots, three total she was around for before she got her head together enough to get out with her powers. She went back to...the pizza place looks like. Fortunately the XPCA were done there and she just had a cry in an empty back room for a while. A long while. Um, like...couple hours, looks like. I know you can't see this but I'm basically fast-forwarding through all the boring parts of this."

"Can you try to be nice to her brain?"

"Meh. You thought she was annoying when you met her, she was downright inconsolable right after it happened. Funny, though. Maybe I've been around you too long, but she didn't have any guilt over it. Not yet anyway. Just wondering what happened, not too big on the why or how. Why do you like blondes again?"

"AEGIS said the same thing. Do I like blondes?"

She shrugged. "I peeked in your head for preferences, and it said something about lanky Sino girls with black hair. I'm actually a chubby Irish redhead and you just think I look like this because I tricked your brain into believing I'm the perfect girl."

"That's it, I'm waking her up."

"Okay, we're almost done. Keep your pants on. Or, take 'em off, I'm good at multitasking." She paused but my pants somehow miraculously stayed on. "Psh, suit yourself. So a few hours of crying and moaning, and then eventually she sits there for a long time just kinda...shocked, I guess. Starts denying what she saw, thinking it's impossible, refusing to come to terms. Typical human stuff."

"That doesn't sound typical human stuff to me."

"And we love you for it. But yeah, you are so messed up, kid. I'm proud to have helped. So full denial sets in and she decides to go back and maybe she thought she saw him still alive and she can get an ambulance and everything will be all gravy, and she goes back...and surprise! He's still dead. Power is still out. Windows are still blocked. She finds his mobile laying on the ground in the dark, touches it, sees your name, calls you because...fuck I don't know, I'm not the idiot here. She recognized your name, basically, and was tenuously grasping at reality. And you know the rest."

She sat back and recrossed her legs with a small smile. "Class is over. Any questions?"

"She has no idea who did it?"

"No idea at all."

"And he's dead."

"Deader than alive at least."

"And she called me why?"

"Humans have this state I like to refer to as 'blind idiot panic mode'. Some Exhumans too, apparently, though obviously you and I are far too cool to be victims of it."

I bit my lip and pushed back thoughts of her beneath New Eden. Her small smile went ominously blank instantly, and I immediately wished I had better control over my thoughts.

"I guess I walked into that one," she sighed, seeming only ten percent the girl she was a second ago.

"Sorry. I didn't mean--"

"I know. I shouldn't say mean things and then get butthurt when people have mean thoughts about me. I'm a tough cookie, I can take it. Think your worst at me."

"It really was just a train of thought that took off, Saga."

"I know. You're not gonna break me with a single errant thought." She gave me a sly grin. "Takes at least a month of ripping my body apart and threatening me with legitimate death, while forcing me to erode any principles I might have about using my powers to do that."

"Saga--"

"I'm fine, Athan. Because you saved me from that. You're allowed to think about it whenever you want to, because it's over, because you ended it, okay? I survived it. I'm all here. I'm making jokes about necrophilia and piss fetishes. I'm safe. I'm in my house, with Lia and Chiho."

"And AEGIS."

She shook her head. "Sure."

I still felt bad for bringing it up, but she'd disarmed me masterfully before I could work up any proper self-loathing over it. But still, I recognized the atmosphere in the room was completely different. Before, she'd been...well...Saga, as I'd ever known her. Cocky, perverse, mind-reading asshole she was.

And then, like a switch had been thrown, she was back as she was in the hospital with me. Almost...maternal. Telling me everything was all right, that I'd done my best and had won the day, not a hint of joking or sarcasm on her. I knew it was a scar from her suffering, but it manifest...in the most mature, absolutely un-Saga-like way imaginable.

She'd faced her own weakness and when she came out of it, she wasn't scared or sad or frightened by what she saw. She accepted that it was a part of her, and that when something threatened her again, she could treat it seriously, diligently.

It actually blew my mind some, and I had to wonder how much of it was from her recent trauma, and how much of it had been from the journey of discovery she'd taken before then. Come to think of it, at the Christmas party, she was actively trying to keep the peace with others, even when suspected by everyone. And her newer more subtle mind tricks...just how far had Saga come?

I looked at her and saw she was blushing, though the serious look remained fixed on her. She'd always been a more powerful Exhuman than I was, but she was growing as a person too. If I didn't keep up, she'd be leaving me way behind.

"Don't undersell yourself either," she said, her small dark eyes beaming bright. "You're growing constantly too. You just don't see it because you didn't vanish for a couple months there."

"Hardly, compared to you."

"Total lies. But I don't see anything to gain by arguing with you. Someday soon, you'll see. I might have been joking earlier that you lost sight of what it means to be normal, but that's really just because of how exceptional you are. If it'd been you there instead of Rito, I'm sure Talon would still be alive."

"Maybe because of my powers being better in a fight."

"No. Because when bullets are in the air, you run towards them, not away. When people bleed, you pull them to you, not stand aside. Some blood and gunshots are nothing to you, not because of your powers, but because you have more important things in this world that you believe in, things like friendship and justice and honor, things which don't fear guns and which don't bleed."

She was blushing even brighter now but didn't step down, and I was wondering if the blush on me was from her compliments, or just residual emotions leaking out of her. She was done talking though, and I didn't know what I was supposed to say after something like that.

"Um, thanks?"

"You're a good one, Athan."

Silence lingered for just a little bit too long.

"Can...you go back to sexually harassing me now? I find you a lot easier to turn down that way."

She laughed and the weird tension between us broke. "Bullshit, I'm never easy to turn down. Who wouldn't want a piece of this?" she said, rolling up her sweater to show off her malnourished stomach. "Why settle for a couple juicy breasts or a six-pack of nuggets, when I'm offering two whole racks of ribs?"

"Food analogy?" I laughed. "And crossing a six-pack with chicken nuggets? And the first two are chicken and then you're suddenly pork?"

"Or beef! Chickens have ribs too!"

"Wow, Saga. Not your best work."

"They can't all be winners. If I unleashed the full fury of my comic genius, you'd get so erect just listening to me that your brain would die from blood deprivation. Terrible way to go. Happens to every guy I like. So many wasted lives. And erections."

I laughed again, happy that Saga could be serious when she needed, but also still the same sick fuck as ever.

"Okay," I sighed. "Thank you for your help. Now let's wake her up and see what there is to find at Talon's, right?"

"It's your plan. I make a habit of staying away from murder scenes. Mostly just to spite those smartasses who always say shit like 'they always return to the scene of the crime'. Which I don't get. Like, why go back, when I have so many more potential crime scenes to make."

"If nothing else, I'd like to find out what kind of gun he was shot with, and why the windows went black. Maybe some clue on the power cutting out? Sounds like enough to look into to warrant a trip. Might be a good idea to bring AEGIS--"

"Why?" Saga asked.

"Because she knows a lot about forensics and shit."

"Not right now she doesn't. You're thinking of the old AEGIS."

"She'll be fine. Besides, I haven't seen her in a bit, and last time didn't go so hot. I need to apologize for…"

"For unplugging her."

"Yeah."

"Okay well, good luck, have fun. See you when you get back."

She arranged herself sideways in the chair, sprawling luxuriously, white ankle socks stretching upwards towards the ceiling.

"Yeah, okay. I'll let Lia sleep too. Can you wake up Rito while I grab AEGIS?"

"Aye, aye, Captain."

I headed into the garage where AEGIS greeted me with immediate forced glee and then covertly grilled me on what Saga had done to me and why hadn't I said hi when I arrived yesterday and why was there screaming but nobody had told her anything, and as I brought her back to the living room, who the heck was that girl, and what was Saga doing to her, and was that a spot of drool on her chest?

Rito seemed flustered by the inquisition, dabbed the spot on her breasts with nothing but idle curiosity, and overall seemed about a billion times more in control of herself than when she first saw me.

"I fell asleep?" she asked timidly. "I don't remember that. I must have blacked out from the stress."

"Or from hyperventilating," I said.

"Or multiple spontaneous orgasms," Saga said.

"Or a Code-X," AEGIS said.

She blinked at the three of us.

"Just saying -- stress, hyperventilating, Code-X, none of those explains the drool," Saga said. "But multiple orgasms, that can get any body fluid anywhere."

"I want to take AEGIS...she's the one in the box here, and go investigate Talon's place. Can you bring us there? If you don't want to, I understand."

"She's not coming with us?" Rito pointed at Saga. I shook my head. "Okay."

I heard her take a few deep breaths and mutter again to herself okay, okay, okay, while we all faced the other way. I wondered if AEGIS counted as being someone watching her, but before I could arrange any kind of experiment, I realized we somewhere else.

We were standing in the dark, illuminated only by the glow of AEGIS' holo, and the smell of blood hung heavy in the air.