Lia finished buttering her waffles and then began to cut the stack. She always did it in the same order -- butter, then cut, then syrup. To do otherwise was madness, she assured me, along with several other arguments about butter adherence and syrup distribution which honestly all went over my head.

But it was almost enough to make me stop and hug her again. This was Lia, my sister, my only sister, sitting next to me, chatting away and buttering and cutting her waffles like it was a weekend morning at my parents' house, and we'd just been called to the table after Saturday morning cartoons.

This wasn't my parent's house, and these weren't my parents. Instead there was a hunter, squirming a little bit and glancing around to see if people were ogling her exposed back or nearly-as-exposed front, who was picking at a plate of nachos with her long fingers. There was an AI, who seemed to be devouring the company of those around her, beaming as she watched us happy and together. The code-X, whose eyes watered and chin trembled as the sensation of people eating around her seemed to throw her into barely-controlled convulsions of ecstacy at times.

And me, with a burger. A pretty decent one, though it was definitely a lot more medium-well than medium-rare, but at least the provolone was melty and delicious.

Karu was finishing telling us her quarter of the events, and from the sound of it, the least exciting by far, though she was also taking advantage of Saga's current blissed-out status to editorialize as much as possible. But reading between the lines, I still picked out the necessary details -- the two of them had been personally saved by Soran the same way I had, thrown together where, as I assume Soran planned, Saga would treat Karu's wounds, and by peeking into his mind, would know of this date of this meeting to make it.

Just like he'd told me the riddle of Pier 39 to make sure I was here. That just left Lia.

"Um, I was just passing by," she said, covering a mouthful of waffles to talk. She swallowed and then continued. "I was on my way to Japan, actually, where I assumed you'd be at least," she nodded at me. "Not a lot of flights from New Eden. Not commercial anyway."

"Why would I be in Japan?" I asked.

"Moon?" she stared at me. "Really?"

"Well...yeah, her," I agreed. "But uh,"

"But uh, what?" she asked, her eyebrows knitting. "I just assumed, gee, what damsel in distress would my brother go galavanting off to charge in and rescue? And she was on the top of my list. You didn't even think about going after her?"

"I did, no I did," I said. "It's just...I also…"

"He was worried about you," AEGIS clarified.

Lia gave my shoulder a little punch. "You dummy," she said, going back to her food. "I can take care of myself."

"I know you can. And...after all the stuff you did in New Eden, I don't think anyone could ever say you couldn't. I wasn't...worrying about you, exactly…"

"He shut down and became a useless turd," AEGIS clarified. I glared at her and she gave me a little smile and wave. I took a bite at my burger.

Juicy hot meat shattered into streaks of grease which dribbled across my tongue. It crumbled, the more savory insides binding together just a bit more than the sweeter, seared brown of the burger. A playful pickle, swimming in ketchup and their own briny sauce co-mingling--

I just about shuddered out of my seat before I slammed my mind shut to Saga, finding it very hard to blink and breathe and swallow as I focused entirely on closing off her influence.

Also kinda...tasted like...nachos? I glanced over at Karu and found her similarly entranced. This meal was gonna be really weird if all of us were having a hard time keeping Saga out of it.

"Well," Lia said, talking with her mouth full again behind her hand. "I was gonna ask what you guys were doing next but I guess we're all decided then?"

She was asking us, but mostly asking AEGIS, who seemed the only other person at the table not having issues of some kind staying in their seat. AEGIS, apparently ignorant of everything going on around her, nodded seriously. "I think just having a direction is critical at the juncture. Given that we know where Jack, Tower, Steffie, and Rito are, and that Moon is in considerably more danger than them, I'd say she makes an ideal target."

"What happened to the others again?" I asked. AEGIS glared at me. "What, I was eating!"

"You were drooling over something," she agreed, giving Karu a glance. I wasn't sure that correcting her would really help.

"Jack wanted Steffie to be safe," Lia repeated. "They dropped me off near here, and headed for...somewhere in South America, I think. Tower said:" she dropped her voice in an approximation of the big guy, an action that also necessitated she swing her arms while speaking "'I'm no good at thinking or searching. If you find something that needs doing, give me a call.' And then he left with Jack and Steffie. Rito chose to stay in New Eden."

"Great," I said, kicking a bare foot crawling up my leg that I think belonged to Saga. "Well it's not like Rito and Jack would have been really helpful in a pack of the XPCA's most wanted trying to flee the country or anything."

"Ahhmmm," Karu muttered, propping herself up and sitting straight, her eyes slightly unfocused. "Oh. Hmm," she clarified, flushing.

"What is in that food?" AEGIS asked.

"Nothing," Karu coughed, thumping her chest a few times and creating some tremors I would not have minded watching forever. "Erm, my apologies. Uh, but what I meant to say was that, ahem, I might perhaps have a lead for us. We require surreptitious transport, and information on IkaCo. I have a contact who may be able to provide us with both."

I frowned at her. "Your dad again?"

She nodded.

"Last time we went out to visit him, the two of you just ignored each other completely over a round of golf. He wouldn't talk, you wouldn't compromise, and it was just a huge waste of time. What makes you think it'll be different this time?"

"For starters, as it were, I believe we should circumvent him this time, and attack his resources directly. As his former protege, I am fully capable of accessing his systems, and I believe it fully within my capabilities to browse through his private files and book us passage before he is any the wiser."

"Well that does have a better ring to it," I agreed. "Anything that doesn't involve dealing with him directly...especially now that we're all kinda...criminals."

Karu threw back her head and laughed. "Foolish boy, Father is more criminal than you ever shall be. Worry less about associating with him as one, for he commits criminal acts and wheels and deals with the sort on the regular."

"Okay," Lia jumped in, "but why don't we instead just fly to Japan directly from here? It's gotta be cheaper than doubling back to DC."

"Not necessarily," AEGIS said. "We've got to consider that anything that requires an ID scan would definitely flag any of us. I don't think the same trick I pulled with the hospital would work -- if their systems go down, they're not going to let us fly anyway. We'd either need to somehow change our records in the public database without them knowing, intercept the ID request and send our own fake response--"

"Or charter a private flight with nobody doing scans," Lia added.

"Which is exactly what going through my father would provide," Karu nodded. "As I said, he is frequently in the habit of providing for and meeting with less than scrupulous folk."

I put up the wall in my mind and ate another few bites of my burger. Somewhere on the other side of it, I could feel Saga still swimming in a sea of meat and juices, but at least most of it was blocked away. For once, it was possible that us all going out to celebrate together wasn't the right choice.

I bolstered my thoughts by focusing on the situation at hand. It did seem pretty backwards to head to DC instead of Japan considering we were pretty much right between the two right now. And while I understood Karu's point, and her dad's resources were certainly something it'd be nice to have, it also seemed like another tangle I wasn't sure we should be spinning at the moment.

But putting aside the issue of the flights and IDs right now, which despite her protests, I was sure AEGIS could come up with a way around, given enough time...there still remained the issue of what we were doing, overall. Japan was a whole freakin' country, and while it looked small on a globe, I'd now travelled enough to realize that even the smaller US states were friggin' huge if you were just wandering aimlessly through them.

Kaori would be one Japanese girl somewhere in the whole island nation, kept somewhere secretive by her father, who had essentially unlimited resources. Add to that, we were all fugitives who'd have to lay low over there as well, and the fact that none of us spoke or read the language, and the simple plan of 'fly over there and find her' sounded completely impossible.

"Do you think your dad would have more specific info on where to find Kaori?" I asked Karu.

She thought for a moment, pausing only to drag Saga back into her seat when the latter nearly slid out of it onto the floor.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

"I believe that he would not be privy to such details, nor would he have need of them, but he would have information which would lead us to the data we seek. It is known that my father is in IkaCo's pocket, as it were, and so I would expect he is well-invested in keeping tabs on their on-goings and furtive maneuverings. He would not associate himself publicly with such an entity unless he was certain they were no PR disaster waiting to implode."

"Kinda nice he can be counted on to be paranoid then, huh?"

"I do not find anything about him 'kinda nice' or otherwise, but I agree it is to our advantage for once."

I turned to my sister, who was now sitting amongst the ruins of her defeated waffles, holding her tummy with triumph. She seemed completely unaffected by Saga, and I wondered if that was some mental discipline she'd hardened, or if Saga didn't like waffles or something.

Until I remembered that Saga still held her under a compel, which was a whole fucking disaster still going on between them. I realized, despite everything happening to her, Saga must be spending all her energy and focus on keeping Lia securely walled out, so that nothing happened between the two of them. I gave a sobering sigh at how even something so simple as this meal was mired in the screw-ups of our past.

"What do you think?" I asked her the question I'd meant to several moments ago.

"Of...the plan?" she asked.

I nodded. "I think you've proven yourself pretty capable of forging a plan? How's this one sound?"

She eyed me steadily for a moment before shrugging. "I dunno, honestly. I'm not like, some super-genius, y'know," she tilted her head towards AEGIS.

"Well given what you did in New Eden, I just thought…"

"Thought what? Finish your sentences, bro."

"I thought you were sort of coming into your own on making genius plans and shit. Isn't that what you did?"

She smiled at me, a little condescendingly, and then began dragging her fork through the pool of syrup on her plate, tracing lines which vanished in its own wake. "Dude, all I did was meet some people, get to know them, and then turned what I knew about them on each other and themselves. I'm not, and never will be someone who can run a plan from the other side of the country."

"That's not true. You did the whole thing with the decoy for Dragon."

"And...how'd that end?"

"Just because it ended badly doesn't mean it wasn't a good plan."

Her brow furrowed like she wasn't sure what she was hearing. "Uh. Literally the whole point of a plan is for things to go the way you plan them. If they don't, by definition, your plan sucks. I'm gonna stick to what I know and deal with people -- maybe ask AEGIS if you want numbers run on your scheme."

I gave AEGIS a little smile and nod but turned back to Lia. "Well of course I was going to ask AEGIS at some point, but right now I was asking you."

"Well that's dumb," she said, dropping the fork. "I don't know. From what I've heard, Idris is a really good guy, and also a really awful guy, and I haven't heard much in the middle. I've never met him, I can't tell you my thoughts on someone I've only heard of in rumors."

"But aside from him, I mean, the plan is to circumvent him if we can."

Her face scrunched up more and again. "Dude, bro."

"What?"

"Take a ding-dang hint, bro. I. Don't. Know. Why are you pestering me on this?"

I frowned at her and apologized. "I didn't mean to pester you...I just...thought, since, y'know you'd done all that stuff in New Eden…"

"What Athan is trying to say," AEGIS cut in, giving my hand a squeeze from where she sat next to me, "is that he missed you, Lia. He's been with me for weeks now, but the whole time, he's been worrying about you, and now that you're back together, he wants to do things with you, even if he's too much of a dummy to properly communicate his desires. That about right?"

She looked back and forth between us as Lia's expression softened, and I realized, she wasn't wrong.

"Yeah, I guess. Sorry."

"Sorry," Lia mumbled back. "Didn't think of that."

"For the record, I think it's a good plan," AEGIS said, her voice still quiet like she was soothing a baby. "We need info on IkaCo badly, and if we have a ringer, we should use her."

"Thanks, AEGIS," both of us mumbled, and she gave us a final nod as she leaned back, fading out of the conversation through the power of body language.

"I really did miss you. I was worried sick," I said.

"But you did nothing," Lia said, frustrated. "Come on, bro. That's the opposite of you. Usually I have to work my pants off trying to keep you from charging in and doing something moronic, and this time you just...you just...what, exactly?"

"Do you guys mind if we take a walk?" I asked, rising, my exoframe hissing as it bore my weight. When the others agreed, I took Lia's hand and walked us outside, where my feet kept going, the two of us headed down the empty sidewalk in the pre-lunch calm of the city on a weekday.

Before I realized it, we'd already gone several blocks and I hadn't said a word. Lia still trailed on with me, her hold fingers laced in mine, as both of us watched the ground as we wandered.

I forced myself to say a few words, and they began to cascade into the thoughts swirling in my head. "It's just...I've been...my life, recently. I feel like...I don't know. I feel like I've been making a lot of wrong decisions recently. Things used to be so simple. I was an Exhuman and then there was the rest of the world. And then I worked for the XPCA, and it was just us, and enemies of the state. But then there were bad people inside the XPCA too, but if I fought them, I was the enemy of the state. And there were good people, enemies of the state, even though I didn't want to fight them."

I scratched at my head while I tried to make my stream of consciousness into something comprehensible. "I tried doing nothing too, just went to college, lived an ordinary life, but even that didn't take. So when I got my powers back, I thought...it was a sign, that I should do and be what everyone always says about me, that I just...do what I think is right, not worrying about the consequences. So I went after Dragon because he's pure evil...and that was the worst thing I could have done. Now we're all fugitives, and split up, my leg's shot off, and Dragon's in good with the XPCA, and everything's a mess. And here we are talking again about going off and doing something, and I'm just not sure that what I think is right anymore."

She squeezed my hand, but said nothing. My wandering thoughts continued, unspoken now, as we kept forward, the sounds of people bustling, cars whipping past us, and somewhere distant, the roar of the sea.

"I think the last few major decisions I've made were mistakes," I said, trying to express myself clearly. "And I don't want this to be just another one of them. We've been lucky so far, honestly, that so many things can go wrong and nobody's hurt or killed--"

"Your leg's gone, bro."

"Nobody who matters," I shrugged at her. "And I just don't know...if things will get worse with us chasing after Moon and Tem...or if leaving them is the worst option. They might be fine, she's with her dad, not some random stranger. And here we're making plans to steal data and infiltrate and put everyone on the line again."

She counted on her fingers. "We know he has enforcers on his payroll; he's already sent them after her before. He knows by now she's Exhuman, and he knows of her ties with the rest of us. He'll probably be expecting us, or at least preparing for us, and as a legitimate business in an allied country, we'd be facing the XPCA again."

"Attacking someone who's preparing for an Exhuman attack, on his terms, against the XPCA's resources and more. It seems stupid to do, doesn't it?"

"Yeah," she agreed, and we stopped at a red light. "It seems incredibly stupid."

"So should I stop? Should I be like Jack and just protect the people I love that I already have in my hands?"

I gave her hand a squeeze again, but she slipped out of my grip and began crossing the street, jaywalking without any oncoming cars. I hesitated for a second before stumbling to catch up.

"Dunno," she said. "If you did, would you be the same? Do you think those people would be the same people you loved? Do you think you'd be someone worthy of loving?"

"Would you stop loving me if I quit now?" I asked, alarmed.

"No. But I think you would."

I scoffed. "Yeah, because I already love myself so much--"

She turned on me, her hair bouncing under her hood, but her brown-green eyes steady and level. "You know what it means to stop, right? I means you aren't going anywhere."

"...yeah?"

"That means wherever you are, you stay there. These last few weeks, where have you been? What have you done? Is this somewhere you want to pack up and stay for the rest of your life, mentally?"

I frowned at her. "I'm only all tortured currently because I'm not sure what I should do, or even can do. If I make a decision--"

"Then you'll be haunted by that decision the rest of your life."

"Well that's why I'm trying to make the right choice, so it doesn't haunt me."

She crossed her arms. "The problem, as I see it, is that most likely, both choices are bad. You're either giving up on Moon and Tem, or you're putting the rest of us at risk. Whatever you pick here, you're going to regret something."

"So they both suck. So I just lose no matter what--"

"I wasn't finished," she said. "My point was, if you stop, that's it, you've stopped. The last decision you made was a bad one, and you get to dwell on that forever. But if you keep moving forward, there will always be more decisions to make. You can redeem your past mistakes, you can put yourself and the world into a better position. If you give up, that's it, you're over, enter your initials because that's the score you're posting on the leaderboard. But if you keep playing, that's the only way to win. Even if you have to struggle, even if more bad things happen to you, or me, or any of the others."

"I can't just decide to put you all in danger, though," I said, and she sighed.

"Bro, seriously. Do you have any idea what it means to be the leader?"

"I never asked to be leader. I don't even think--"

"Yeah shut up. Do you think Saga would be following any of the rest of us around? Do you think Karu would listen or confer with any of us? Do you think AEGIS would dedicate herself entirely to just anyone? Heck, I've got a pretty cushy setup if I want it, you think I'd just climb down from there for any old dingus?"

"I don't want any of you doing all of that for me, though. I want you to be cushy and happy."

"Well too frickin' bad, bro. Because you're my dingus. You're sitting here torturing yourself about making a decision which might imperil us, but the fact is, each of us has already made our decision to stick with you, knowing the danger. We each sacked up and chose to keep moving forward, and now it's time for you to choose, too."

She took my hand again and began pulling me forward, the auto-gyros in my exoframe making me fall into step even if I didn't want to.

But of course I did want to. I wanted to be with her, wanted to be with all of them, no matter what. I was scared of choosing wrong, of hurting or risking them, but the fact was, if I didn't take a risk, I'd have lost them all already. Just as Lia was pulling me across the streets now, if I stopped, she'd keep going, she'd leave me behind. They all would, I realized.

Lia and all the others, they'd chosen to be with me because they were all moving forward, because I was a direction they could all believe in. But if I stopped being that direction...nobody needed me right now to know that rescuing Moon and Tem was the right thing to do. Whether I refused to budge or led the charge, they would go anyway.

Lia kept my hand in hers as she pulled me forward, but she could let go at any second, and if she did, I'd still follow her anywhere. I had to laugh.

All this time, beating myself up and questioning my own decisions, and I'd never once given thought to the autonomy and decisions of those around me. I needed to get ahold of myself.

"You look like you've made up your mind," Lia said, a few blocks later, while the two of us were chillin' in a park.

"I have," I agreed. "And thank you, for helping me see what I needed to see."

She shrugged with excessively constructed calm and gave me a little wink. "I told you before, I'll stick to what I'm good at. I can leave planning to you and AEGIS, but when it comes to a heart-to-heart--"

"You're the best in the world," I said, draping her in a seated half-hug.

"And don't you forget it," she grinned back at me.