Shaina breathed a heartfelt sigh of relief as she slid from her practice gear the the sterile white floor of the docks. She saw Irina clamper down from another gear a few feet down, still as full of energy as she had been before the training session. She fairly glowed with excitement, as only a child would.

Lucky girl.

Taking just one more moment to rest before facing the girl again, Shaina closed her eyes briefly and let her head fall back against the leg of the White Knight, shutting out the garish light. She was *tired* of Solaris. Tired of Jugend, anyway. At least the level she had been born on was a little more colorful. Why was it that whenever she thought she had finally escaped this place, something reached out and dragged her back?

"Eat now?" Irina's voice asked succinctly, right next to her ear.

Shaina's eyes snapped open. Irina's smiling face filled her vision; this close, she could see signs of tiredness, although not as many as she knew her own face displayed. "Of course. Come along."

She headed off to the west door, with Irina in tow. Had things been different, she would have simply dropped her off at the mess hall reserved for the gear trainees, but...... after the most recent incident, she was inclined to keep the girl with her instead. She knew from experience that the cruelty of competing teammates could be harsh. And she didn't want to risk letting Irina become angry again -- not like that.

Besides -- the girl's friend, Mina, wasn't around the training area at the moment. No sense in letting her be...... lonely.

**Damn Morden. Why did he tie me down here when I could be on the surface with Victoria? Separating us was one of his more idiotic ideas......** If he let both commanders of Gebler jaunt off to the surface, why not her too? But no -- she was stuck here alone, the only Element not on the surface mission, shepherding a childish, clingy experiment of Myaru's.

What fun. Did he have anything else in store?

"Where - are - we going?" Irina asked haltingly in thickly accented Solarian.

She was getting better, at least -- she could construct meaningful sentances when she put her mind to it. She learned quickly. "To my house," she replied simply. "Better than the mess halls."

The girl's eyes lit up, and she nodded excitedly. On sudden impulse, Shaina added, "Don't start playing with anything when we get there. It isn't all mine." She almost laughed, imagining the look on Victoria's face if she found out this little upstart had rifled through her things. Tempting...... but not as good as this liason with Mordon was going to be!

Oh no, not nearly as good! As soon as this girl could pilot a gear with apparent competence, Shaina fully intended to jump on a transport to the surface so she could pick up where she left off. It just wouldn't do to let Victoria shake it all off, now would it?

**No, not at all......** Shaina led her charge onto one of the monorails reserved for military personnel, and sat the girl down at the front of the car, showing her card to the pilot. He nodded and changed his course without a word. **At least this crest is worth something,** she thought somewhat sourly, good mood lost as she gazed at it.

Myaru had slipped it into her hand before leaving, assuring her it would allow special privileges if she needed them. But what on earth would she need extra clearance for? She was an Element! She could take anything she wanted if she had the inclination!

Well...... mostly. The rest, she wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole. Mordon didn't hide his projects nearly as well as he thought he did.

She sighed. Really, it all came down to that woman tagging along with the Commander. She called herself Myaru, but if she was the same woman as before, Shaina would eat Victoria's gym socks for lunch. That...... woman she had seen with Ariath wasn't the same one who had taught her at Jugend. **People change,** she reminded herself, but without much conviction. Even her 'aura' -- for lack of a better word -- was different.

But as always, she left her suspicions unvoiced. The monorail stopped at the station at the edge of her neighborhood, and she pulled Irina away from the window and out of the car. It sped off with a high pitched whine, and she led the girl along the darkening streets to the apartment she shared with her best friend.

Nothing stirred as she led Irina up the stairs. A patrol car whirred by, but no other soudns disturbed the night; no crickets, no wind...... nothing. Just the dead quiet of the city.

"How long we stay here?" Irina asked, her voice seeming louder than it really was.

Shaina shrugged and opened the door. Irina dashed inside. "As long as you want to stay, I guess. Probably until tomorrow morning." She didn't know how wise it was to allow the girl to stay over, but she didn't want to take another trip back to the barraks just to drop her off. **What a pain that would be.** The door slid shut and she locked it, checking the security system.

There. She nodded in satisfaction and shrugged her bag off, dropping it on the couch. Irina would not be able to open the doors OR windows without Shaina's figerprints to unlock the security code.

If only she could do that for Victoria's room...... A little grin spread across her face, and Shaina went into the kitchen.

Irina had her head in the storage unit already. Trying not to smile, she took the girl's shoulder and pulled her out. "You should learn a little patience. You won't starve if you wait a few more minutes!"

Irina pointed to a box on the second shelf. Shaina took a look; the girl was pointing at Victoria's burgandy pasta.

This time she let the grin break through. It certainly did look good...... "Okay, get it out." Her companion complied. **She's going to skin me alive for this,** she chuckled to herself, remembering the last time she had done this. **So I'm childish. Sue me. She knows she loves it!**

It must be a subconscious thing.

"Hey, wait!" Shaina grabbed Irina's hand, preventing her from just digging into the pasta. She pulled a few plates off the rack and gave one to the girl. "Half and half," she said, reaching onto another rack for utensils. "Use this -- you know better."

Irina shrugged and took her fork, grinning. **Smarter than she looks,** Shaina reminded herself. **And still a child.** It wasn't hard to remember Irina's eyes the night after the hazing incident. It happened to all Lambs taken into training of course, but she had hoped her own presence and Myaru's would protect the girl from the other Juniors. As it turned out, it worked the opposite effect.

But what could she do about it? Even now she had her own duties to attend to, and her temporary command at Jugend to lead. She hated staying here, but she couldn't ignore her responsibility.

Instead of enjoying Victoria's little feast, as she had hoped, Shaine was trapped in her own brooding thoughts. Even when Irina finished ahead of her and began wandering around, she couldn't bring herself out of her contemplation. **I want to be down there with them!** She was whining to herself, and the thought annoyed her further.

**If I'm going to torture anyone with my whining, it's going to be Morden. Maybe I'll share with Myaru too!** She glanced at the clock and gritted her teeth. Speaking of the devil...... Time to send her daily report to that woman.

It all just kept coming. Abandoning her dinner with a sigh, she motioned to Irina until she caught the girl's attention. "I'll be busy for a while -- try not to get into anything, okay?" Irina shrugged and nodded, and Shaina continued into her room. It was really the best that could be hoped for, she supposed.

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

"Are you telling me I've been denied access?" Shaina snapped, trying to keep her calm. The flag ship's officer shrugged onscreen, looking uncomfortable.

"I've been given orders to hold all transmissions until the Tournament is over. You can leave a message --"

She glared at him wordlessly. He shrugged again uncomfortably, feeling the weight of her rank in that gaze, but he didn't back down as she half hoped he would.

She swallowed her irritation and tried to soften her voice to something more reasonable. "Connect me with the line then, captain." He nodded and gave her a short salute, obviously relieved, and disappeared, replaced by the system's "pause" symbol.

How long would it take Communications to connect to the reomte data bank? she wondered. With systems disrupted by some outside disturbance in the higher atmosphere, Shaina was half afraid even this wouldn't work for her. But the pause symbol disappeared in a flash of smoke -- one of Ariath's droll little jokes, she was sure -- and the message system asked for her priority level.

"Three," she replied to the tinny voice, and the screen flashed ready for her. **Thank god for P3 access...** She thought for a moment, and decided to go for the short, non-informative approach.

"Greetings again, Myaru." She just stopped herself from rolling her eyes. "There have been a few problems with Irina that might concern you......" No, no, maybe she should calm her voice a little, and avoid sounding like a petulant child. Shaina took a deep breath and continued with a scowl. "In any case, I think you should get back to me. I don't know what you want me to do with her - her training, or what I can contribute to it, is almost finished."

What else? She felt like an idiot, talking to a blank screen. "If you can manage to tear yourself away from Ariath long enough to think coherently, it might be helpful if you could give me my final instructions." She smirked at the thought of how Ariath must be keeping her 'busy', and went on before she could disgust herself completely. "Otherwise, I'll make my trip to the surface as soon as Irina passes the Junior Challenges."

She thought over her message for another few seconds and, concluding that there wasn't much else she'd like to say to an empty blue screen, she saluted and flipped the clannel off.

Maybe she shouldn't have made that last rude comment about Ariath...... but honestly, if she was going to be delayed in making her reports, and forced to leave a delayed message, the least the woman could have done was told her about it! She had wasted her time hurrying home to make this report.

Besides, she detested Myaru's methods of...... advancement. Maybe she was wrong about the woman's reasons for clinging to Ariath, and maybe not. Or maybe some of Victoria's attitude was rubbing off on her in her friend's absence.

"Oh, who cares?" Shaina muttered to herself, shrugging out of her uniform. "It's not like she can do anything but yell if I offended her." And Ariath probably wouldn't hear about it at all.

If he did...... well, she could blame it on being drunk or something.

Of course, she had never touched a drop of liquor to anyone's knowledge before......

And Victoria might let him can her just to get revenge for the Mordon jokes......

"Damn," she whispered. She did NOT want to end up dragging home and suffering her mother's glares and guilt trips. "But that's my trademark, right? I screw up."

And now she was talking to thin air like a lunatic. Like Aunt Mara after her breakdown. **What next? Little green men marching across my dresser?**

If she could get them to march over Victoria's as well, it might not be such a bad deal.

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

"Irina?"

Shaina, now wrapped in her favorite kimono, padded out to the main room again, hoping to convince Irina it was time to sleep. It was still early by her own standards, but the day's activities -- not to mention the session with this child -- had drained her more than usual. She supposed Aveh's heat would exactly be relaxing either, but it might be more exciting.

She couldn't see the girl from her vantage point in the hallway. The lights were off though -- probably timed out -- and faint white light filtered through the main room's window. She stepped softly into the room and stood at center, tilting her head to one side.

The apartment she shared with her best friend was in one of the higher-class districts, positioned near the center of the north-western sky dome that allowed Second-class citizens their view of the world outside Etrenank. Every night, the pale, flickering illumination of the atmosphere's aurora lights would be filtered through that perfect firmaglass to bathe their neighborhood in rainbow colors.

Irina lay curled up on the floor before the main room's large bay window, head resting on the frame and cushioned by the curtains. She had covered herself with one of Victoria's thick woven blankets, patterned in something Shaina thought resembled Myaru's uniform, even in color. Her auburn hair was pulled back in one of her friend's ribbons, bound in a messy braid that trailed on the floor.

The pale lights of the aroura tinged the child's profile and hair in silver and violet, and her expression tugged at something in Shaina's heart that she didn't really understand.

**Reminds me of Elanore, almost,** she thought to herself, not quite sure what to do. She felt the urge to go hug the poor girl, but that sort of thing wasn't really in her nature. Confused, she padded softly to the window and sat cross-legged beside Irina, gazing out at nature's lightshow.

"Something wrong?" she asked finally, the mood making her miss Victoria's company more than she cared to admit.

Irina sighed. "I...... miss Myaru," she said softly, staring fixedly at the aroura. "I...... I miss her......"

**I can relate,** Shaina thought, wishing for the thousandth time she was down in Aveh with her friend. Even Myaru wasn't so bad, outside of command. So far.

"Why she go?" the girl asked, finally looking away from the lights.

**Thinking about the hazing?** Shaina guessed. "She has important work to do on the surface." Like keeping Ariath busy between shifts, no doubt. "She had to go for some reason, or she wouldn't have left you behind." Left US behind, she amended.

Irina didn't say anything to that -- she simply stared out the window again, seemingly enchanted by the washes of pastel color that swept across the starry sky.

Shaina sighed, thoughts already elsewhere. It was funny, that while she had the freedom to do so, she rarely wished to even look at the land below Etrenank. But when her options were cut off, she suddenly had this overwhelming desire to feel the wind through her hair again, and see real trees and grass.

And even Lambs.

It was a hard admission for her to make, born and bred with Solarian prejudices as she was. But Lambs were infinitely more interesting than anyone in Solaris. Their importance was secondary...... but in a way, they had more to offer someone like her.

So Victoria said anyway. She was willing to believe it, especially now that she was stranded.

Stranded......

--***

"I suppose you're in command now, Shaina," Victoria grinned at her, eyeing the transport that would take her to Aveh.

"Oh joyous day," she replied, rolling her eyes.

Victoria laughed. "Don't knock it 'little sister'. Mordon holds the rank now, and as long as Gebler stays in line under SOME ranking officer, he doesn't care what the Elements do in their spare time."

--***

That glint in Victoria's eyes...... Realization broke through Shaina's mind. She smiled crookedly. **Plan B......**

"Would you like to visit Myaru, Irina?" The girl's head swiveled toward her. Shaina patted her shoulder. "I think I could arrange something, if you'd like me to."

Irina nodded emphatically, a smile breaking through her quiet mood.

"Alright, give me a few days...... I'll have a transport ready in no time."

So she hoped.