- AU -

Madzistrale glared after the Evropan car, immune to the clamouring all around her, Tom, and Frank.

"Can I go kick the information out of his arse, now?" she begged her brother.

Tom smirked.

"You know you're a pacifist Christian, right?"

"He really test my resolve," she admitted.

"Hence why I'll be doing the information diggings, find and free this Bohm, and get what we need."

"And I wait here protecting this guy," she slapped playfully Frank on the shoulder, making him jump in surprise.

"Don't do that, I'm already stressed out," he complained.

Tom hugged Madzistrale.

"You're doing much more. This crowd no longer needs my logic and realism. They need your optimism, your cheerfulness, and your dreams. Help them see the way."

Madzistrale hugged him back.

"Be extra careful."

Tom smiled mischievously, then put his hand on his heart, the other hand behind his back, and bowed lightly.

"Yes, my lord-o."

Madzistrale refrained a laugh, and gave him a hand chop on the head.

"Go already, idiot!"

"As you wish, your Hi..."

Another chop on the head stopped him, and smiling brightly, he disappeared in the crowd.

Madzistrale looked after him; a small chuckle from Frank interrupted her.

"You have the same face as when I watch my kids walk to school on their own. We spend so much energy looking after them, we think we'd be happy once we're rid of them for a few hours; but as soon as we see their back going away from us, we feel empty and useless," he said, a small sad smile on his lips.

Madzistrale refrained from replying; it was exactly as she felt, watching her brother walk away: empty, but most of all, useless. She took a big breath, and slapped Frank on the back.

"Ready?"

"No," he admitted.

"Neither am I. So let's make an entrance; it always put people at ease.

She stared at a specific section of the crowd, almost in the center of it. Gesticulating dramatically with her hands, she concentrated. I can do anything; this is my dream... we've trained doing this for over a year... she repeated mentally. When she separated her hands apart, forming a shoulder wide imaginary bubble, the crowd shouted in shock as the core people got pushed backward by an invisible force. Under everyone's astonished eyes, Madzistrale gesticulated some more, and a translucent platform appeared where people once stood. Satisfied, she approached it, and as she did, the paltforn grew more opaque, until it became visibly as solid as the concrete around it. Putting a tentative step on it, she was rewarded with a solid ground. I hope you see this, Gab, she wished Gabzryel, whom she knew was monitoring them from his lab.

Upon the platform, she blushed as she fully realized that all eyes were on herself, her strange white uniform, her impossible platform. The good news was the clamouring had stopped for dead silence.

"Thank you for your attention; I'd like to take this silent opportunity to present my friend, and ask you to listen to him. Beat him up like last time, and you'll deal with me. Without further ado, ladies, gentlemen and variations thereupon, please welcome Frank!" she pointed to him.

He looked at her platform with a mixture of shock, fear and insecurity. Kneeling, she stretched her hand. Frank shakily took it, and she helped him up on the platform, then gave him a reassuring smile.

"Frank? Now's the time to share with all of us your thoughts on the latest events."

Frank looked around him worryingly, then took a deep breath.

"So here's what we've been told... not shown, mind you. Bohm is supposedly a Klavern; we don't have proof, just pictures of documents that any movie studio out there can reproduce. A picture of a branding that my friend here has debunked as a poor attempt of image editing. And what's the result? Our Constitution is suddenly thrown aside."

"Did it?" a woman argued, with more than a dozen voices backing her with their approval. "I'd say we've been granted exactly what the Constitution allows us: freedom!"

"Anarchy, you mean," Madzistrale replied. "If your Constitution is the same as mine, it doesn't promote the philosophy of each man for himself."

"So we're to be controlled?" another citizen spoke out.

Frank looked over the crowd pleadingly.

"Look everyone! They wanted us to believe that the last thirty years were totalitarian... they were not, we all lived those said years. They wanted us to vote for Bohm... we did..."

"A mistake everyone would make, even Carrie himself!" someone argued.

"And no one in the Council bothered checking his background? We've had presidential candidates checked for birth records, college records, Interweb privacy issues, you name it. Yet, until now, everyone overlooked the apparently 'overwhelming' evidences of him being a Klavern?!"

"The evidences are additionally, and badly, counterfeited," Madzistrale added.

"And now, those same hidden hands wants us to follow this Abraham! Are we really going to give them once again what they want of us?"

"And what's you suggestion?" a cry was heard.

"Yeah, slavery?" another added.

"Anything else than what we're manipulated to do!" Frank said, annoyed.

"No one told us anything. We do what we want now!"

"And what's that?" Madzistrale challenged. "Abandoning order? Doing anything without any consequences? That's what you truly wish for, don't you?"

"Where's the wrong in that?"

"Oye!" Madzistrale protested as countless voices joined the affirmation. Fuming, she approached the edge of the platform to stare at the crowd, and sarcastically replied: "Forgive my ignorance; how silly of me to forget that all of you live under isolated roofs when 5 millions people sleep on the cold concrete in your strrets during Christmas! How you enjoy five meals per day when 500 millions people out there can barely afford one loaf of bread per day!!"

"The government's fault, not ours!" the first woman who spoke cut Madzistrale.

"They got what they deserved; Terra cannot anyway provide resources for all of us," another added.

Madzistrale's jaw dropped in shock, and her burning eyes began to veil with angry tears. She threw her hands in the air, Frank stepping back.

"Oh, bloody hell! You're the biggest idiots in the world. You want to see someone doing single-handedly what any of you are too cowardly and selfish to do? I'll do it."

The crowd's protests got suddenly cut as an electric-sounding discharge went off in the sky. It rumbled through the air as a low thunder.

"Did a power station went off?" Frank asked Madzistrale, puzzled, as everyone else began once more to clamour.

A few moments passed with people wondering what just happened, completely forgetting the argument, when suddenly someone pointed at the horizon, her mouth open in a silent scream.

Rising from the horizon, their sizes still that of dots, flew hundreds of bizarrely-shaped ships in a triangular formation.

"... Ma... Mad...?!" Frank shook, closing in near Madzistrale. "Who the hell are they?!"

Madzistrale looked at the coming ships.

"Big trouble," she whispered; instinctively, she clasped Frank's hand in protection.

**********************

"That guy's getting to my nerves!!" Scott complained, angrily watching Frank speak over the holographic projection.

"It's this girl that I'm concerned about," Ysadora commented.

"It doesn't matter what any of them try to say; the population is on the necessary evolutionary side," Randall nonchalantly said. He pointed to the crowd cheering at a woman's counterattack ("They got what they deserved; Terra cannot anyway provide resources for all of us,"): "This is the defining moment we've been waiting for. They don't know how to do it, but they are ready to take their destiny in their hands."

He turned to the room's occupants.

"Before this woman's words seeds in their minds, let's begin the final stage. Scott, inform Temple XIII that we're ready for the Prince's transmission. Daniel, you have my instructions; begin at once."

Scott smiled gleefully and hurried out into a separate room. Daniel approached a desk at the farthest from the entrance, and began typing.

"Yes, sir; I am opening the file executive."

Randall turned to Ysadora.

"You know what to do; go see Bohm," he gesticulated with a head sign toward Daniel, warning her not to mention anything more.

"I can't leave you alone, not with the crowd out there about to get restless," she argued.

Randall stared at her coldly.

"If the crowd gets to me, I'm just an old Counsellor. If the crowd, or one of those annoying siblings, get to Bohm, they get to our superiors, and when that happens, I'd rather be facing the crowd than the Prince."

Ysadora lowered her stance.

"Understood. Be careful."

She climbed into her sand-coloured sport car, and carefully drove out of the underground parking lot. Even the sky was crowded with vehicles; although it annoyed her in terms of speed, she knew it would just as much slow down her enemies.

As she expertly maneuvered around the cars, a sonic shockwave resonated through the atmosphere; she could feel it shake her car. As the traffic stopped in surprise and curiosity, she found herself stuck, for all lanes were filled up.

Then, the atmosphere resonated with a loud terrified clamour. Ysadora moved in her seat to look in the surrounding sky.

Despite knowing and expecting the following vision, her body began to shook; and it took her mental strength not to cower in fear as a familiar grave booming voice covered the deafening noise.

**********************

Tom climbed the stairs to the entrance of the White Castle; he waved at the distracted guards attempting to hold back the restless citizens.

"Yo! Keep up the good work."

He smiled playfully as he opened the doors, the guards realizing too late what was happening.

"Hey! Sir, you're not..." the rest got cut by the doors slamming back shut.

Tom walked to the receptionist, who looked uncertainly behind him.

"Hi miss! Can anyone guide me to the federal prison where Bohm is?" he asked pleasantly.

The guards stormed through the entranceway, and drew their weapons; the receptionist rose and covered herself behind the massive desk. Tom turned slowly to them, his hands in the air.

He smiled mischievously.

"I wouldn't do anything if I were you," he said as a misshaped handgun appeared out of nowhere in his left hand, and his sword Kireru appeared also out of nowhere in his right hand.

The guards stared at the apparitions with shock and fear.

"I only wish to know where Bohm is incarcerated,' he said calmly, shaking his hands so that his weapons disappeared.

"223 Columbus Avenue; you can't miss it," the receptionist shakily said.

"Thank you very much!" Tom smiled. Carefully keeping his distance from the shocked guards, he got back out.

"223 Columbus Avenue, eh?" he thought. "I'm going to need a car, this time."

Looking over the crowd, he smiled brightly upon seeing his sister and Frank on a platform he knew didn't existed before.

"And she calls me a show-off," he smirked.

Jogging away from the crowd of the plaza, he turned into an empty alley.

"Hope this work," he muttered, extending his hands.

He closed his eyes, and concentrated hard his thoughts; carefully opening an eye, he was rewarded with the shiny futuristic car that Gabzryel and their friends had built. He climbed inside and started the engine; he ignored the surprised looks as he drove out of the alley. Realizing he missed something, Tom stopped in front of a general store for tourists, where he found a map of the city.

"Columbus Avenue, here I come!"

Tom walked in the corridor of the prison, waving his hand to make his handgun disappear; he could hear the guards coughing and sneezing from the heavy doses of pepper projectiles that he unleashed at the entrance of the solitary confinement wing.

Passing before the bare metallic doors, he stopped at his destination: Robert Bohm's.

Flattening himself at the food slot, Tom peaked inside the cell.

"Hiya! Are you Robert Bohm?"

The stout man looked at him in shock.

"Ummm... Yes I am..."

"Finally," Tom rose back on his feet, making his handgun reappear. "Hold on, Mr. Ex-President, I'm breaking you out; we need you to..."

A shockwave as loud and close shook the wing, as if a nearby power plant short-circuited.

"What the hell?" both Tom and Bohm said at the same time.

After a few seconds, Tom suddenly began to feel lightly nauseous, as his head began to heavily pound.

"Are you still there, young man?" Bohm's strained voice came from the cell. "I don't feel well..."

It was then that a grave booming voice, showcasing the heavy accent of one not used to talking English, spoke directly to them as if it was right beside them:

"Inhabitants of Terra. I am Prince Nebuchadnezzar of the Shiakar Universal Empire. You will listen, for your specie's survival depends on the decision you will take within this next hour."