I was, I realized, saved. Like a failed acrobat being caught by a net, it wasn't my own fortitude or skill or even dumb luck which prevented me from crashing, it was deliberate intent, placed there with caution and foresight, and the none-too-assuring familiarity with me that I might very well need saving.

After everything that had happened in Vegas, I'd been spiraling downhill. I'd felt directionless, powerless, aimless. And what's worse, I was all set up to reside in that little tent and remain so, with no idea which way to go, and with myself a failure. Every breath I took that didn't push me towards avenging Alyssa or finding Lia or rescuing Moon just another failure. And I was setting myself up to just be buried by my failures, to remain incapacitated there forever, until it seemed like even trying would be pointless and it would be better just to forget.

But I never got there. For one, that might have taken years before I'd turned old and gross enough to pass as a washed-up has-been hobo, and for two, I wasn't alone. I was with AEGIS. I was rescued.

Every day for the last few days now, she'd forced me out of the tent, telling me if I were going to do nothing, I could at least do it outside. She made me eat, she made me see the sights and learn my environs, she made me, in my own words, sit and look at some goddamn trees.

When I'd last hospitalized Tem, lashing out at her on accident through a flashback, Lia and AEGIS had dragged my sorry ass to an arboretum and reminded me of all I'd done to survive in the Canadian wilderness, of how simple life could be, and how, if I ever felt overwhelmed or directionless, I could always stop, think, and look at some goddamn trees while I figured it out.

It was practically a joke by this point, but damn if those trees didn't get me.

There'd been a few more outings of note, but all of them disappeared into obscurity one day when I was looking at a photo she'd taken of the two of us. Or, more specifically, that she'd asked a random passer-by to take of the two of us.

"What are you looking at?" she asked me, a little happy but a little wary, sort of her default at the moment while she was helping a headcase out who was on the verge of a breakdown.

I said nothing, not hearing her, because I was staring at the device. It wasn't until she crowded in, her cheek pressing against mine that I responded. With a surprised outburst which sounded mostly like 'yark'.

"Yark!" I shouted, as her cheek pressed against mine.

"Oh I liked that photo," she commented. "Did you have fun there?"

"Uh, yeah. Sure," I said, holding my chest as my heart slammed. "Sorry."

"No need to apologize," she grinned. "Sorry to surprise you, but you were spacing off there. What were you scrutinizing so hard on that picture? Me?"

"No."

"My cleavage?" she teased, fingering the neckline of her dress.

"AEGIS, please," I swallowed, ripping my attention back to the photo. "Something about this photo...reminds me of something."

She settled in next to me, making me very aware of how long her legs were and how hot the skin of her rump was as it slid next to me. It was a good thing I was already distracted, or else I'd have found her very distracting. "You've never been to Pier 39 though."

"Yeah, or San Francisco," I agreed.

"May I?" she asked, and I nodded. She lifted the tablet from my hands and stared at it, frowning slightly.

The two of us looked small and center in the picture, our volunteer cameraman stepping way too far back and filling almost half the frame with the sun-washed wood of the pier as the two of us stood laughing. She'd told me to smile, and when I'd given her lip about how I wouldn't or couldn't or some measure of mopey bitching, she'd taken to giving my butt a good pinch right before the camera went off.

There, under one of the many blue-and-white signs reading 'Pier 39', was photographic evidence that I could, in fact, smile. As long as someone was around to play with my butt and laugh about it with me, I guessed.

"The crab shack maybe?" she asked. "You have those in LA?"

"Probably but...dunno, that's not it. It feels like something I saw in a dream, something that seemed so important at the time but now...now I can't even remember why." I joined her in frowning at the photo in concentration. "This might sound crazy but can we go back?"

"Of course," she said, her face brightening in an instant. "I was just about to say it was time to get up and out. Are you all ready?"

I obviously wasn't, I didn't have my exoframe on, but she was just being polite. I hobbled outside and found, with a shake of my head, Whitney asleep in our 'yard', thickly bundled in a few layers of shirts, sweater, and sweatshirt...and shorts. The girl was impossible, and I just sighed and shrugged at AEGIS, who had basically the same reaction, but brought the girl inside while I put my legs on.

It was about ten when we got there, way earlier than last time, which wasn't surprising given that we'd headed straight over instead of AEGIS dragging us in a very organized, yet exhaustive tour of All Things Worth Seeing on the way over. As we arrived, she kept shooting me sideways glances, like she wasn't sure if it was a good thing I had my very own desire to go and be somewhere, or if the compulsion drawing me here was an early sign of madness.

Honestly I wasn't sure myself either, it felt unnatural the way the...the...the something had lodged in my brain. It wasn't like being under a compel...it was just…

I got distracted seeing the blue and white signs again. 'Pier 39', like it was a brand, the name of some ritzy mall or something.

I mean, it was cute enough, I guess, but it was just a tourist attraction in the end. Some old disused pier that'd been converted into a little shopping area. Ice cream, sea-salt taffy, some overpriced restaurants and shops selling seashell-everything. As far as I could tell the only real attraction of the place was the pack of sea lions that liked to live in the harbor nearby and bask on floating platforms near the pier.

Which was pretty cool considering they were an endangered species and all, but they also were just kinda sitting there. I could see why they'd be endangered.

But none of that brought back that sensation like staring at the sign did. I tilted my head looking at it, covered one of my eyes, then the other. Tried to catch it in the corner of my eye, anything.

"Okay, you officially look like a confused puppy now," AEGIS commented.

I covered the bottom half of the sign from my eyes. 'Pier', it now read, helpfully. Then the top half.

'39'.

I stared at it.

"What?" she asked.

"Thirty nine. The number thirty nine. Not pier thirty nine, the number thirty nine."

"What about it?"

I turned to her, and her eyes widened at seeing my face. "Number thirty nine. The fifth at ten."

"What is that?" she asked, reaching for her hair to tug.

I might have sounded crazy but I wasn't, I was sure of it now. "What day is it?"

"Um, the fifth. The fifth?" she echoed.

"At ten...AM? The fifth at ten?"

"Yes?"

"Number thirty nine, the fifth at ten. That's here, and now."

I snapped my head around, looking for anything. For Soran, mostly, but...for anything.

"Are...are you...okay?" she asked.

"Those words. That's something Soran told me before he threw me here. He told me to be here now. He knew it would work, that's his power. He knew it would stick in my head, and by telling me that, I'd come back here."

"Oh...kay…? But um…"

I froze. I felt it. It was here, I knew it.

"A...than?"

"Be...be right back," I said, trying to get my head straight. I took a running step as fast as I could, and then realized immediately that was a terrible idea while wearing an exoframe. I just about jumped a whole block in a stride, and barely missed crashing into someone on re-entry.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

AEGIS landed next to me, matching me step-for-step. "Athan, what the fuck?" she shouted at me, as the woman I'd almost hit stared at the two of us, cradling her purse as she fled.

"She's here...this way," I said, and then found myself being held by my wrist. The girl holding it was frowning deeply at me, her electric-yellow eyes filled with worry. "Sorry," I muttered. "But...please trust me. It's Saga."

The hand on my wrist held tight for another moment before letting go, and then both of us darted off like VTOLs breaking hover. In single file, we ripped down the edge of the street, covering a block with every stride.

I bounded higher to clear a red light, sending us soaring in an arc over the traffic below, when Saga finally caught 'sight' of me. Everyone in the street winced as she shouted her excitement at us.

[ATHAN!]

"Jesus, stop yelling," I muttered back at her through a grin.

[I know you missed me, but you don't have to call me Jesus.]

"Saga, just shut up and wait, I'm almost there."

[Well what's the fun--]

She stopped because I landed next to her, kicking up a cloud of grit and freshly-smashed asphalt. She had exactly one moment to look me up and down, take in my exoframe and leg, before I picked her up and wrapped her in a hug, crushing her tiny frame against me as I whooped and spun her.

"Gah! Ack! A-than! Stop! It!" she choked out. "My leash!"

"Your what?" I asked. But just then something solid crashed into the two of us, and I'd have fallen if my auto-gyros didn't catch us. I blinked and found Karu, uncomfortably close, her face bright, bright red, her hair growing out enough to be 'short' instead of 'shaved'. And her lips to be inches from mine.

This time it was my turn to say things like 'gah!', as I tried to stumble away, succeeding only in dragging the two of them with me and being saved by the auto-gyro again.

"Hullo, Ashton," she mumbled.

"H-hi, Karu," I said, stumbling back another step that she took with me. Both girls were basically on top of me in my arms, pressed against me entirely. Entirely.

"You kinda...caught my leash," Saga muttered as she fumbled behind my back, and I realized that in spinning the two of us, I'd entangled all three of us somehow, a fact AEGIS hadn't hesitated to figure out as she was now bodily separating us and untwisting individuals to undo the knot we were all a part of.

Of course, that ultimately just led to more questions than answers once we were all separated again. Karu was blushing harder than ever now, Saga was bearing a grin so evil it'd twirl your moustache, and AEGIS just walked up and closed my mouth for me with a clop like a coconut, a little more sharply than necessary.

"You're staring," she informed me.

"No, I...yes I...Karu...what are you wearing?" I asked.

Her arms crossed over her chest and she shuffled her knees together uncomfortably, which really just made her look duck-footed and added to the illusion of her legs going on forever.

I'd seen her in casual wear and formal attire and ass-kicking gear, but never trendy. And she pulled off trendy well. Holy shit, did she pull off trendy well. The plunging v-neck, the sheer black atop it, the artfully-torn jeans showing just a little more skin than was reasonable.

AEGIS closed my mouth for me even harder this time, and I rubbed my jaw.

"Hey, if you're gonna spank it to her later, you can imagine the part where I made her put it on," Saga said, her eyebrows waggling at me. "You can pretend I was naked at the time if it helps."

"Well it's been good seeing you," AEGIS said, steering me around the other way. "We'll catch up later, bye!"

"Okay but seriously why is she...why are you wearing a leash?" I asked.

She stared at me, and then stared at Saga, so I looked to Saga as well. As much as I could. Jesus, they were like, right there.

"Oh, that was just for show," Saga said, reaching over and unclipping the collar. "Good girl. I set you free."

Karu seemed about ready to either die from shame, or kill Saga out of it, but instead settled for extending an arm with a stiff movement in my direction. It took me a moment to realize I was supposed to take it, and we exchanged a very awkward handshake.

"Ashton, I am relieved to know you are well," she said. And then her face darkened. "Although...wait...I was infuriated with you, was I not?"

"Uh," I said, suddenly aware that my hand was locked in her grip. I might die here. Although...that might make them the last thing I saw, which wasn't the worst thing in the world.

"I was!" she shouted, drawing looks to which she now seemed immune as she heated up. "Your decision-making and incompetence led to my injury at the critical moment. It is because of your foolhardiness and lack of foresight that I was shot and thrown from a moving vehicle. And this is how you greet me afterwards?" she asked, palm moving to cover the...deepest of her cleavage.

"Sorry," I said. "Really I...I am sorry."

"You do not act it!" My arm in her grip was wrenched downwards, my fighting instinct to turn and the self-stabilizing of the auto-gyro at ends, making me stagger forward half a step instead. Her green eyes blazed at me. "This humiliation, this shame...this was your fault and doing, you should be made to take responsibility--"

"Alright, alright, enough fun and games," Saga said, stepping between us. "Karu, sweetie, you just know that if you've got someone to blame, it's me. Pretty much true in pretty much every situation. So let the poor boy go, most of his blood isn't in his brain right now anyway."

Past Saga I could see Karu give me another smoldering glare, but then, to my surprise, she relented, and I could stand again. I wasn't sure quite when Saga had learned to de-escalate a situation but the fact she could worried me slightly.

"So uh," AEGIS said, as the silence drew on. "We're all together again. Yay?"

"No, not quite," Saga said, making a gesture like she was checking a watch. "Give it...another minute."

"Another minute for what?" Karu asked. "I would prefer we retreat to a private are as soon as possible so that I might burn these clothes."

"Don't do that," I said in alarm. AEGIS hit me, while Saga cackled.

"Be that as it may," she continued "they are impractical for whatever should come next. I daresay you are already enacting a plan?" she cocked her head at me and put her arms on her hips, before frowning at my face and remembering to put them back on her chest.

"Uh, a plan?" I asked.

Karu sighed enormously and turned to AEGIS. "My apologies. Perhaps it was optimistic of me to hope to get anything of use out of him at the moment. I had no idea how easy it would be to disable his entire capability for conscious thought."

"Hey," I argued, but as that was about the extent of my argument, I couldn't say she was wrong.

"Honestly I'm just taking notes," AEGIS shrugged. "I think my next dress is going to have a little more black sheer in it. It looks nice on you, though."

"Thank you?" Karu asked.

AEGIS shrugged again. "We don't...actually...have a plan at the moment. Athan was...not coping well with…" her voice lowered like I wouldn't hear if she did. "...with failing against the XPCA, and with losing track of Lia."

Karu frowned and straightened, suddenly seeming a lot more dominant as she turned on me. "You gave up?" she cracked.

"No, I was...I just…" I bleated. My eyes went to the ground while I tried to put together useful words. "I didn't know what to do."

"So you did nothing? Ashton...I...have I taught you nothing?"

I muttered an apology. When she put it so simply, I just felt terrible. AEGIS started to fend her off a little, but Saga interrupted.

"She's here," she said. "She's on her way now."

"Who?" Karu asked.

"You'll see. In about...five...four...three…"

Saga continued counting down while the rest of us spun like prairie dogs, but as she reached zero…

Well, nothing continued to happen.

"Right there!" Saga said, pointing. "There, in the grey."

I looked over and thought my heart stopped for a moment. And then I thought...no, that couldn't be. But it looked like her. But...maybe, I was mistaken? But Saga'd pointed her out.

I took off running, forgetting again that for me, that meant tearing up the ground and hitting ten miles and hour in half a step. The hooded girl looked up at the sudden crunching and whirring of machinery that I was, even though she was a few blocks away.

And I saw her face, and the familiar mess of brown hair framing it, and I knew. And my legs couldn't carry me fast enough once I knew.

She squealed loud enough to deafen me as she crashed into my arms, her excitement feeling like it could vibrate my entire body through conduction alone. Her hair somehow got simultaneously in my mouth and eyes, tears ran down both of our cheeks, a salty stringy mess, impossible to sort out whose were whose.

In a moment AEGIS was on us, jumping and yelling with us, and a few minutes later, Karu and Saga showed up in the periphery, pulled into the mosh by Lia's unstoppable exuberance.

I was reminded how, just a few minutes ago, I'd reunited with the two girls and that meeting had a thousandth of the energy of this reunion, as we all, by infection or by force, hugged and bounced and laughed in one tangled mess of bodies and arms on a street corner in San Francisco on a balmy Wednesday morning.

The locals looked at us like we were crazy. Some smiled, most gave us curious glances as they passed by. Some took the opposite side of the street.

And none of us cared. I had Lia again, in my arms, flesh and blood, and I'd never let her go again. I think we all felt that on some level; Lia was the energy and the love that united all of us, the purest and best among us, the heart of the group, in more ways than one.

And she was here, as though by magic. Safe. Sound. In her own slipskin, in one piece, not in tatters like AEGIS or myself, nor in garish garb like the others. Somehow, through it all, she'd been the one to hold onto all of herself.

It was too long we all stood there, Lia making the rounds to make sure she gave each of us our own personalized hug, complete with babbling and ranting and too many unanswered questions, and as we all talked over each other and stories came out, it became apparent we needed a place to be other than a street corner.

"Food," Lia suggested. "And then catching up, and then planning, and then all the stories of everything everyone did. Sound good?"

We all agreed. Because of course we did. Even if I didn't know everything that'd gone on in all the girls' lives to that point, I could tell by their faces that each of them had been adrift like I was the last few weeks, and having Lia back, having a person who could crank out some order, whip out a plan like that with no prep, with no planning, and having it be exactly what we needed…

Yeah, it sounded good. It sounded great. Amazing, even.

I had to stop before I got too superlative. But as she whipped out a new mobile she'd gotten from somewhere and read off places that were near us and open, ticking off food preferences and expected prices and relative privacy, she had to stop in the middle of it.

Because I interrupted her by hugging her again. She laughed as she patted my back awkwardly, her voice asking 'what's all this for?' even though she knew the answer.

It was greedy of me, and selfish, and stupid, I knew. But for that minute I just needed to hold my sister and to know that she was alright.

That we were all alright.

Things hadn't been alright for me in a while now, and I needed all the help I could get to convince my brain that was changing. Lia was back, things were going to be alright.

And more importantly, maybe, I was back. I was going to be alright.