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'There is evil there that does not sleep.' (Boromir, about Mordor)

"So..." Klein asked Fugue nervously, "what have you been up to?" He remembered the blowfish fondly, but there was something 'off' about him somehow that the skunk couldn't quite pin down. "Oh, you know..." Spikes erupted from his skin all over his body, yet Fugue continued to appear completely calm. Klein was not surprised at the former, but he was surprised at the latter. He had never known Fugue with such control over his spikes before. "This and that."

Fugue twirled a staff he was carrying around himself, some of his spikes coming off and sticking to his staff to cover it in spikes just as he was on its way while he faced Klein menacingly. "I always loved the rain, don't you?" he asked the skunk. "It's just like a thousand needles falling on you from above, but good," the blowfish elaborated. "It must make it a lot easier for fish not to have to worry as much about getting dehydrated," Klein observed.

"Yes," Fugue had agreed, "it makes you surface dwellers easier to find, at that." Klein closed his umbrella, tentatively turning it into a makeshift weapon while adopting a defensive Chinese sword-fighting stance. "They say it rains on the just and unjust alike," Fugue added cryptically, "whatever that means." Maybe it was time to experience the rain after all, Klein thought.

"I didn't know you were looking for me." It had the merit of being true. "How about your life, Klein?" Thunder crackled overhead. "Well, Bridges went to jail, Shinai went to war, Ogun bit me in the leg that time, Rakim had the incident of course... Mano's been down and I'm not helping much." Fugue chuckled mirthlessly. "It sounds like life hasn't been so kind to you either," he said. "That should make this easier, in any case." Klein tilted his head.

"What do you mean by 'this'?" The skunk was liking the sound of 'this' less and less.

"I was sent to kill you," Fugue sighed, "but I'm not going to." The blowfish lowered his staff by his side, like something he wasn't going to use after all. "And knowing life hasn't been kind to me makes this easier how?" Klein asked Fugue as the blowfish retracted his spikes and removed the spikes from his staff. "Forget it, it's stupid." Klein lowered his guard, reopening his umbrella over himself. "Well, I'm sure it's not stupid." Fugue shrugged uncomfortably. Silence fell between them as the rain continued to fall. "Thank you for not killing me," Klein finally said, "regardless of why you were going to."

"I thought you'd stay!" Fugue blurted out. "Huh?" Klein looked at him incredulously. "When you stayed over that time," the fish went on, "for a bit, I thought I could talk you into staying for good. I didn't know what your plan was. I didn't know you'd have to leave." Klein's jaw dropped. "You mean, you...?" Fugue nodded, embarrassed. "I had no idea you felt that way about me. I mean, I thought you and I would be more like you and Bridges I guess." The fish looked at the ground. "We were. I just... wondered what it would be like to live with you for a while, for some reason." He blushed. "I told you it was stupid." Klein looked at him seriously.

"I would've said yes!" Fugue hadn't expected that. "If I'd known, I probably would've stayed. I just ran because I didn't want to get caught after my plans against the factory. I didn't want to get you in trouble for helping me either." Fugue frowned. "Why was it more important for you to do that than to stay with me, though?" Klein was dumbstruck. "I just... took it for granted I would, I suppose. It was the whole reason I came. Why didn't you come with me to North America?" Klein asked him. "Because what I was doing there was important to me, Klein! I saved the lives of fish folk and the poor every day. They needed me. Why would I have left?"

"Why *did* you leave?" Klein was going through an unfortunate perspective shift about what had happened to him with Shinai since then. He had not realized that he had in his own way put Fugue in the exact same situation in which Shinai had put him by going off to war. Klein had a thought for the wife of Buddha who he left when he was 29, and for all those left behind on anyone's quest for enlightenment. It was too easy to see the quest and miss the people around it.

"Oh, Klein..." Fugue started, "I'm sorry. I'm really not trying to make you feel bad, but I had a pretty hard time when you left. I renounced my religion, you know." Klein gasped. "That's awful! I had no idea it would hit you so bad." Klein shook his head. "You know, Klein... You may not know this, but there is a kind of rumor that, usually, fish will only talk about with other fish. We don't want to offend you or make it harder for some of us to date the rest of you, but... The thing is, some of us believe that we fish make good 'vacation loves' for the rest of you. We are summer flings, but when comes the fall... the seafood buffet's over," Fugue euphemized.

"A nice place to visit, but you wouldn't want to live there," Fugue stuck out his tongue.

"I never wanted to make you feel like that!" Klein shook his head emphatically. "I would never have done anything if I'd known it would do something like that to you." He grabbed Fugue's hand to put his hand on it tenderly, as he had when they'd been living together. "You should know I've met someone else," Fugue told Klein while looking into his eyes, "although he may not be long for this world if no one does anything about it," he added grimly. "That's horrible!" Klein looked crestfallen, even though Fugue's new boyfriend was someone he'd never met. "Is there anything I can do?" Fugue sighed. "Well, that kind of brings us to why I'm here..."

"You never did tell me why you came here," Klein observed. "I was getting to that," Fugue answered. "You see, when I renounced Shinto, it was because something else came along that took its place, just as Ammut came along and took your place." Klein nodded. "What was it?" Fugue would've rather not have had to talk about it, but time was of the essence, and there was no way around it.

"I joined a cult."

Klein scrambled for his umbrella, having dropped it in shock. "A cult?" Fugue nodded. "At first, I would have told you it was just a small, new religion that had a hard time getting taken seriously, like so many before it," he explained, "but it's a cult. I can't pretend it's not anymore." Eli had sometimes said that religions were really successful cults, and that cults were really unsuccessful religions. In truth it could be much more difficult to tell the difference than most people liked to believe. "I understand." How could Klein not? After being taken in by Boko so completely, who could Klein be to look down his nose at Fugue for falling for such a thing?

"Are they why your boyfriend is going to die?" Fugue nodded painfully. "Yeah. They've done something horrible to his body, for 'religious' reasons. If I don't rescue him and cure him, he's going to die," he explained. "What can we do?" Klein asked him. "I'm a doctor, but I can only do so much," Fugue cringed, "and I can fight, but I can't stand against them on my own. Do you know other healers who can help me cure him? Will you... fight by my side, Klein?"

"The best healer I know would have to be Soma," Klein replied. "Mano knows plants, Mandrake does genetics, Ogun and Rakim do tech... I'm no healer, but I'll bring you to them, and yes, I'll fight for you, Fugue. I'll do what I can." Fugue nodded. "Thank you, Klein. I'm grateful for your help." Klein shook his head. "If only Shinai was still around to tell me what he learned about deconditioning people from cults..."

When Fugue and Klein reached Soma's grove, they found it half-burned down and drenched in rainfall. Rakim carried Ogun while landing in a clearing near Soma. Soma's red skin flickered to and from orange as Mandrake watershifted all over Soma's dryad body to heal him. Betta was lying unconscious in a vegetal cocoon by a tree. Mano walked into the clearing, took in the scene, looked at everyone with her three eyes, and said "What the hell is going on here?"

"Oh, Mano!" Fugue exclaimed. "You've been sorely missed." She raised an eyebrow at him quizzically. "Have we met before?" He sort of rang a vague bell but she wasn't really sure from where. "Not for long, only for a short time, back when we lived in Brazil... You met a lot of fish activists at protests back then, I'm sure." Mano snapped her fingers. "That's right, I do remember you! You told me you were a big fan of Eli, didn't you?" Fugue chuckled. "Well, I'm sure a lot of fish you met there told you *that*. Her 'Pool of Tears' poem is still famous, and her fandom..." He looked at the ground darkly. "Her fandom is still very active, Mano," Fugue said.

"In what way?" she asked him. "That's where it gets... messy," he warned her. "You see, Mano, fish activism hasn't been the same since Eli died, and you vanished beneath the waves." Mano winced. "I don't mean to be insensitive," Fugue hastily explained, "I know you were grieving. She was important to you. But many of us grieved for Eli, even though we didn't know her as well as you did. She represented something important to us too, in our own way."

Mano nodded. "I understand. She was something, all right." Eli had liked to share credit with others, as a strong believer in the fact that no movement could survive without cooperation and community. Be that as it may, she had still done more to bring the issue of fish rights on the map that anyone else that Mano had ever known. When the cause had learned to rely on her for so much, it was only natural that the cause would suffer from her death, just as Mano had.

"When she died, she left a power vacuum, with no one left to fill it. With you out of the way, someone stepped in to try to take her place at the head of the fish rights movement. His name was Atlan. He was very charismatic, he had his own very literal interpretation of her poetry that he put his own spin on, and he talked about it publicly, very convincingly, to more and more of us who began to believe that he was more and more right about everything. He led us to believe that we had no choice but to listen to him and to do as he said if we wanted the fish rights movement to survive, and borrowed her words persuasively to support his argument."

A chill went down Klein's spine. He was starting to understand.

"At first, our direct action stopped at flooding workplaces that forced fish to work themselves to dehydration, cutting out fish folk trapped in fishnets at sea, retaliating against gangs that targeted fish... At first, I could believe in that. We'd been downtrodden for so long, and none of the 'right' ways of dealing with it had done anything for us in decades. We had to do *something*, do you understand? Our people are dying!" Mano nodded sadly. "I do."

"With time, there started being more and more 'accidents,'" Fugue continued. "First an air-breather drowned in one of the floods we started," he said.

"I wasn't happy about it, but it was an accident. Atlan said that if all workplaces allowed fish to work in fair conditions, no air-breather would've been harmed. They'd only gotten what was coming to them. It made sense to us at the time. Then, we started blowing up fishing boats that trapped fish folk altogether. At first we blew them up when no one was on board, but when a fisherman died in one of our explosions, Atlan said they'd killed our own first. Turnabout was fair play. We went along. Then, we started attacking gangs that simply didn't have fish in them. Atlan became mistrustful of any fish hybrids following him who needed to breathe air."

"What was he?" Klein asked Fugue. "Atlan's a dolphin." Klein gasped. "But dolphins aren't even fish! And *they* need to breathe air." Fugue nodded. "Yes, that's true. Atlan's a hypocrite. He applies different standards to himself than he applies to everyone else. Most cult leaders do." "A CULT!" Mano exclaimed. "He made her movement, my beloved atheist's movement, into a bloody religion?" She was as offended by this as by any other sacrilege. "My Eli *was* a hybrid," she added disgustedly, "She was as much of a reptile as she was a hermit crab. And *she* needed to breathe air!" Mano shook her head angrily. "The nerve of him."

"Atlan called his new religion Fishism," Fugue explained. "The first commandment of Fishism is that fish are people." Mano couldn't help feeling a pang at hearing this, even in such a grim context. It wasn't just the idea of something so essential being enshrined as a religious commandment, it was the implicit acknowledgement that it represented of how badly it still needed to be said, again and again, until it would finally stick.

"Beyond that," Fugue went on, "Atlan believed that Eli had been the Prophet of our new religion. He claimed that she had prophesized that someone would rise up to replace her at the head of the fish rights movement when she would be gone, someone who would carry on her work on her behalf, so that she could still watch over us from beyond the grave. He taught us that it had been surface-dwellers who had killed her. Even though they had not killed her with their hands, it was the depression they'd caused her that made her kill herself, so they may as well have. He said that they did this to stop us, that it was our duty to avenge her death from them."

"I'll be darned," Mandrake said, "maybe God really is a shellfish, after all," he mused.

"Privately, I often wondered what you would have thought of Atlan, Mano," Fugue said. In some ways, he didn't truly seem to embody the spirit of Eli's activism or poetry as well as I wished he had, but he was all we had. We had to turn to *someone*, and we didn't have many volunteers to choose from. We latched on to what we could. With time, his obsession with controlling us grew. He forced those of us who dated non-fish to break up with them, or excommunicated us for it. We confessed to him, and he used what he learned about how our minds worked to manipulate and blackmail us. Even our genes became subject to his tampering."

Mandrake frowned. He hated when people gave genetic engineering a bad name.

"Now, Atlan has tracked down something old, something terrifying that had been forgotten about for thousands of years. You see, 'Pool of Tears' was his favorite poem by Eli, do you remember that one, Mano?" She nodded. "I knew all her poems," she said, "they wove a richer tapestry together than on their own, mind you. I remember she talked to me about that one, one time." A shiver went down Fugue's spine. "Atlan managed to get his hands on ancient, forbidden magic, magic that doesn't belong in our universe at all... the magic of the Old Ones. With it, he believes he can flood the whole world, and 'make Eli's dream come true.'"

Mano gasped. "But that was just a metaphor!" Fugue nodded. "So it was. Many religious stories are. But a lot of people take them literally, too," he added, tongue-in-cheek. "She just wished that landlub..." Mano stopped herself. "She wished that surface dwellers could be forced to understand what it's like to be a fish in an air-breather's world, that she could 'turn the tables' on them somehow, to force them to experience empathy for our situation, so that they'd become more compassionate toward us because of it," she explained. "She never would have wanted to actually drown them all! That would go against everything she believed in," Mano finished.

'Oh! When they call us landlubbers, that's not *good*,' Klein privately understood.

"But why did they attack us?" Mandrake asked Fugue. "You're Mano's friends," Fugue answered. "Atlan wants Mano to join Fishism, and to legitimize his position at its head by endorsing him in Eli's name, probably by controlling her just as he controls the rest of us. It's a common cult tactic to separate people from their friends. With no one left to turn to, Atlan hoped that Mano would turn to Fishism out of desperation, just as so many of us did. When Milgram refused to kill Ogun, Atlan stole my blood and used it to make her into a Voodoo zombi, to force her to do it. When my boyfriend criticized Atlan for it, Atlan imprisoned and tortured him."

"So Milgram is the eel who attacked Ogun, the one I fought?" Fugue nodded. "She was." Rakim growled. He was still nursing very strong feelings against the person who had attacked and possibly killed his boyfriend Ogun yet, at the same time, Rakim knew that Ogun would have wanted him to help someone who had been hurt by someone who had been using Voodoo for evil, someone whose actions against Ogun hadn't really been her fault.

"I'll go back for her," Rakim volunteered grudgingly. "She fell in the water, so she should be fine." "Wait," Soma told him, "before you go, I need your help with something." "Don't overexert yourself!" Mandrake told Soma. Soma always overworked himself to help others, and already needed Mandrake to tell him to take care of himself the rest of the time, let alone when he'd taken such a beating.

"I won't," Soma assured Mandrake before turning back to Rakim. "Will you help me do something for Mano first?" Rakim nodded as Mano moved near them with a puzzled expression on her face. Soma guided Rakim's hand onto Mano's sternum. "Jolt." Rakim blinked at him. "What?" "Do you trust me?" Mano nodded. "Do you?" Rakim nodded as well. "Jolt. Not too much, but enough."

Klein gasped as current passed from Rakim into Mano's body, shocking her. He almost wanted to jump in to intervene. Even though Soma had proved trustworthy when he had healed Klein's leg after Ogun had accidentally bitten it, Klein was so surprised by what happened that he initially was not certain that Soma really did have Mano's best interests in mind. However, she'd consented to his treatment, seemed to trust him, and she seemed to have survived what he had just asked Rakim to do just fine. She also looked dazed for a moment but, after she brought a hand to her chest, she looked at Soma and Rakim meaningfully in a way that puzzled Klein.

"Thank you," Mano said, simply. Klein relaxed again as Rakim kissed Soma goodbye before flying off to get Milgram.

"Now," Soma continued, "it's your help I'm going to need, Mandrake." Mandrake shook his head despondently, not because he was being asked for help but because he could tell that Soma was still pushing himself, likely more than it was wise for him to be. "Yes, dear," the otter answered his boyfriend dutifully. "Ogun's burns are pretty bad... Do you think you can imbibe this salve into your water form, so I can guide you as you go?" Mandrake nodded, shifting to water and going through the healing ointment that Soma had indicated to him to mix it with his water self, letting Soma direct him to the parts in and out of Ogun's body that needed it the most.

"Okay," Soma started, "it's not perfect and he'll need more repair work later," he harrumphed, recognizing that Ogun would have appreciated his use of the word 'repair,' "so I'll have to get back to him soon, but he should at least be out of immediate danger for now." Mandrake re-wrapped his water form around Soma, hoping to continue to heal Soma's dryad body as well, not only with water but with the burn salve that he was still carrying this time.

"You said Atlan used your blood to control Milgram, didn't you?" Soma asked Fugue. "Yes," the blowfish nodded. "I know it's not pleasant, but may I have a sample of your blood as well?" Fugue winced, rubbing the spot on his arm where Atlan had taken blood from him. "If you must," Fugue replied gingerly. "Good. I need some of it to synthesize an antidote to what Atlan used," Soma explained. "To save Ammut's life, I'd agree to anything," Fugue answered as Soma bit into Fugue's arm with his syringe-like fangs. "And what threatens his life?"

Mano took some herbs, roots, leaves and seeds out of a sash that she was carrying to offer them to Soma. "Now, Mano, Fugue, Mandrake," Soma addressed them as he finished chewing them while Fugue had explained Ammut's condition to him, "I'll need all of you to help me make something that can save Ammut. With your herbs, med kit, genetic engineering and my hedge witchcraft, we can save him. We have the technology."

When they'd finished, Fugue did what he could to heal Soma as well before refilling and reclosing his med kit. "Let's go find Ammut and this 'Atlan,' then," Mano enjoined the others. "But where are they?" Mandrake asked. "Atlan has an underwater lair deep in the ocean," Fugue explained. "How can you get there, though?" Soma asked, wishing he could go. "We'll take my sub," Mano replied. "But you never let anyone aboard your sub! You said it's your sanctuary," Klein exclaimed. "Well," Mano answered, "there's a first time for everything, I suppose."

Mandrake was going to go with them, but he looked back at Soma still flickering between red and orange worryingly and, regretfully, stayed behind to continue healing Soma with his water shifting and to be able to help him when Rakim would come back with Milgram in tow. "What... What the hell is this?" Betta asked groggily as she started waking up from having been knocked unconscious by Mandrake as raindrops. She struggled trying to break free from the vegetal webbing cocoon that Soma had woven around her to keep her safely immobilized, but it kept re-growing around her the more she tore through it, like the re-growing heads of a hydra.

"Oh this? It's harmless. I sleep in this every night," Soma told her offhandedly. "Now would you mind telling me why the hell you tried to kill my boyfriend?" Mandrake asked her. "Mandrake?" Mandrake tilted his head at Soma. "Let me." Mandrake gestured at Soma to go ahead. "Now would you mind telling me why the hell you tried to kill me?" Soma asked her. "Atlan asked me to," Betta answered, "as a test, to prove my loyalty to him. He wanted us to get used to hurting landlubbers, since we were going to be doing a lot more of it. He said that if we started by killing the air-breather who'd hurt us the most, everything would be easier after that."

"What did I ever do to hurt you?" Soma asked her. He'd never even seen her before. "You didn't," she replied coldly, "he did," she finished, gesturing toward Mandrake with her head as she did. "Me?" Mandrake pointed at himself. "What did I ever do to you?" Betta stared daggers at him. "You mean he didn't tell you?" she asked Soma. "Mandrake, what in the world is she talking about?" The otter shrugged helplessly. "I have no idea." The fish rolled her eyes.

"Oh, that's rich! You know what you did," she told Mandrake. "Why did you attack me, not him?" Soma asked her. "Well, even though I beat him before, now that he can do that thing with the water, there's not much I can do against him, for one thing," she answered bitterly, "plus, since Bridges hurt me through the one I loved, I figured I'd hurt him through the one he loved back. I told Atlan how I resented him so. He encouraged me to seek out catharsis here."

It seemed like someone could use a therapy lesson, Mandrake thought, unimpressed.

"... Bridges?" Soma finally asked her. "She thinks I'm Bridges," Mandrake told Soma. "Well, you are, aren't you?" she barked. Soma and Mandrake looked at each other giving each other that look. She stopped, and thought about it for a minute. "Well, all of you otters look alike to me." Mandrake's eyes widened. He pressed his fingertips together, as therapists were fond of doing. "Ooh, let's unpack that, shall we?" Soma gave him a sidelong glance. "In a minute, love."

Mandrake grumbled under his breath as Soma turned to face Betta again.

"So you tried to kill me because you thought Mandrake was Bridges, and you knew some sort of otter was dating me. Now we're getting somewhere," Soma said to her. "What did Bridges do to you, Betta?" Mandrake asked her interestedly, his training as a therapist slowly returning to him in spite of the situation. "He stole my boyfriend, Freud, are you happy?" she asked him bitterly. "There's no need to be vulgar," the Jungian answered, tongue-in-cheek.

"Bridges needs to understand that not everyone lives in his own little play world where everything belongs to everyone all the time," she said. "What's on your mind?" Soma asked Mandrake. "Huh? Nothing." Mandrake's mind seemed to have briefly wandered. "I was just thinking of something that happened to me before we met," he told Soma. "Oh?" Soma looked intrigued. Was this not something they'd talked about before, she asked herself? "Relationships can be very difficult for a lot of people," Mandrake told her, "there are a lot of reasons why they end up not working out for people a lot of the time."

"It was because I was a fish!"

"Ah, yes," Soma nodded sagely, "we cold-blooded ones are unlucky in love at times." Mandrake looked at him. "I didn't mean you!" Mandrake raised an eyebrow at him. "Look, can we talk about this later?" Mandrake stuck out his tongue at him. "You two really are like an old married couple, aren't you," Betta snickered, "maybe I dodged a bullet after all." Soma stared daggers at her. "I've never run out of olive branches to hand people, so I don't know what I'll do if I do run out, but if you keep swatting them away, we're all going to find out, aren't we?" The wind seemed to blow menacingly through the leaves above them as he animated them overhead.

"You don't know what it's like," Betta told Soma, "because you sleep. You may be cold-blooded like me, but you have no idea what it's like not to sleep," she elaborated. "But you can sleep if you want, can't you?" Mandrake didn't quite get it. "What if I don't *want* to sleep, Einstein?" she snapped at him. "Maybe everyone else doesn't always want what you want, have you ever stopped to think about that?"

Mandrake had clearly touched a nerve, he realized.

"Why is it important that you not need to sleep?" Soma asked her. "It was important to Mark that his partner sleep with him," she looked downcast, "he'd talked about it. I don't quite get it to this day. It was the first time either of us tried being in a closed relationship. But for some reason the idea that someone he'd be having sex with would spend the night with him had some kind of special meaning to him. I tried sleeping once or twice when I was a kid but I really didn't like it. I tried it again once, for him, but I woke up feeling antsy, restless, and dehydrated. For some reason I just can't stand the thought of staying still that long. I get... itchy," she said.

"The stupid thing, see, is that Mark didn't care about my shifting... Every six months, I turn from a girl into a guy, or from a guy into a girl. That's what I was always afraid I couldn't get dates for. But Mark was bi and he didn't care, so I felt really lucky to have him while I did... Eventually, he woke up in Bridges' arms one morning. He just had to be able to spend a night with someone. In the end, something all fish share, that I didn't control, was the deal-breaker."

Mandrake nodded.

"Do you remember when I was thinking back on something earlier?" he asked Soma. Soma did. "Before I met Soma," Mandrake started telling Betta, "I was dating this iguana guy for a while, see?" She encouraged him to continue. "It was pretty serious. We even moved in together and everything. I remember we used to fight about how hot to keep it all the time. See, I'd always be too warm, because of all this fur, but he was always too cold, because he was cold-blooded. Our thermostat would go back and forth every time either of us would walk in front of it, without either of us ever achieving a decisive victory."

She raised an eyebrow at him. "So then what happened?"

He shrugged. "What do you think? He left me for a gecko girl." "You got left for a girl?" Soma asked him incredulously. "Don't make fun of me, it really hurt!" Mandrake told him. "No, no, I'm... I guess I didn't know," Soma explained. "I guess it's a good thing I'm stuck in this grove after all. How would you and I ever fight over the thermostat here?" Mandrake gave him a look. "Unlucky in love, indeed," the otter remarked. Soma stuck his forked tongue out at him.

"The point is, I felt shitty for a long time after he broke up with me," Mandrake went on. "I really internalized what happened as my fault, as proving something bad about me as a person. I questioned what it would've meant about me if I couldn't be in a relationship with a reptile because of it. He really meant a lot to me, I'd gotten really used to him, to the point that it was hard to get through the day without him. He'd taken part of me with him, and I couldn't get it back. Eventually I started questioning whether or not I could be in a relationship with anyone at all. It was pretty much the biggest romantic crisis of my life."

She grunted knowingly.

"I feel you, man. When Mark left me, it was like he ripped everything out of me that made me want to live," she explained. "The ground gave out from under me, and I collapsed like a stringless puppet. He was my whole world, Mandrake... Everywhere I looked, all I could see were things that reminded me of times I'd shared with him. I didn't have any reprieve. I couldn't even hide in sleep the way you people can. Just... everything hurt, all the time. Pain became the only thing I knew. I resented everyone in the world who was happy. What did they have that I didn't have, that made them deserve it, not me? Eventually... I wanted to burn everything down."

It was becoming disturbingly difficult not to relate to her, Mandrake thought.

"I wanted to burn Bridges," she said.

"So you did," Soma said, "or at least you tried to." Betta scoffed. "I couldn't even do that right, that tells you everything you need to know about me right there," she stuck her tongue out. "Look, the point I was trying to make," Mandrake started, "was that in spite of what I went through, I ended up together with Soma after all. I didn't give up. If I'd believed I couldn't date reptiles, I'd have missed out on the best opportunity of my life," he said. Soma smiled this time.

"You'll meet someone else someday too, I'm sure of it," Mandrake continued, "there are other... well, you know." She looked at him dubiously, but he just looked embarrassed, so she decided to let it slide. "I did meet someone else, actually... but she's not doing too well right now," Betta said. "What happened to her?" Soma asked Betta. The fish looked downcast. "She's Milgram," she said, "Atlan said he'd free her if I killed you."

Mandrake frowned. "In the name of Eli?" She tilted her head. "No good?" Mandrake scoffed. "Eli was a hybrid! She was as much of a reptile as she was a fish. She fought for dryad rights in Brazil just as for fish rights. She breathed air. Now this dolphin, who's not even a fish, shows up out of nowhere after her death, sets fish against fish as though he owned the place, and sends you to kill a reptile dryad activist because his boyfriend happens to look like someone you hate by blackmailing you. And you're going to take his side over the side of those who are bringing back your girlfriend to free her from his spell even after you and she tried to kill us?"

She looked downcast for a moment.

"I don't see a source of water around here," she finally remarked, "what do you do if some of your patients are fish and they're hurt bad enough that you need to keep them overnight?" Mandrake shifted all of his body to water except for his head in front of her, and gave her a meaningful look. "Well I'll be gosh-darned," she said, "I guess I hadn't thought about that."

This was when Rakim returned with Milgram, unconscious.

"She's out, but she's still alive," Rakim told Soma, kissing him on the cheek again before looking back at his chimera worryingly, "what about Ogun?" "He'll live, for now," Soma assured Rakim, "Mandrake helped me with him a bit after you left to get Milgram." Rakim nodded at the otter who shared Soma with him in thanks, and Mandrake nodded at him in return. 'Anytime,' he implied.

"The shark girl who warned you..." Betta addressed Rakim. "Scylla you mean?" he asked her. "Atlan sent her to kill you, just as he sent Milgram to kill Ogun, Fugue to kill Klein, me to kill Soma, and Wintermute to get Mano's attention," she explained. Rakim shuddered. Scylla had made short work of him in the ring more than once. If she'd chosen to, she could have killed him without breaking a sweat. But she'd spared him, and now, he feared for her safety dearly.

"Where is she? Do you know where she is?" Betta fidgeted in her vegetal cocoon. She hated not being able to move so much. "If I know Atlan, and I do, he's going to have her tied up on a pole by the pier. When fish disobey him, he ties them up on this pole just so they're too far above the water to be reached by it, even at high tide... They die of dehydration before hunger can kill them, although thirst is certainly part of the equation," she shuddered.

The more she thought about it, the more Atlan was really kind of fucked up, she mused.

"She'll be guarded, pipsqueak!" she yelled out after Rakim as he flew back away. "Now..." Soma addressed her, "How long has it been since you've had a cigarette?" She gave him a surprised look. "How did you know I smoked?" He hissed. Was this how he laughed? "I can smell the smoke on you a mile away. You weren't just a casual smoker, you were a chain smoker, weren't you?" She looked uncertain. "What's it to you?" Soma didn't relent. "Atlan doesn't let you smoke, does he?" She looked down. "Atlan said that, if we're ruled by pleasure, we'll never be able to give ourselves over completely for the good of the Fishist cause."

Soma nodded knowingly. "What do evil therapists do in those conversion camps you hate, Mandrake?" he asked his boyfriend. "They completely control and limit access to anything that can make someone feel good," Mandrake answered. "That's another common tactic of all those who try to cement their power over their cult members," Soma explained. "People are easier to manipulate when they're desperate and on edge. Mandrake," Soma asked, "will you go look in my secret stump for me, please?" Mandrake complied, wondering where Soma was going with this until, to his surprise, his hands found cigarettes hidden in Soma's secret stump.

"You smoke?" Mandrake asked Soma incredulously. "No, but I figured I might need them for something someday, and it looks like I was right," Soma replied matter-of-factly, throwing one to Betta as the vine webbing loosened around her just enough to allow her to grab it. She brought it to her lips, paused for a moment, looked at Soma, looked at Mandrake, and groaned.

"Do either of you guys have any fire?"

They shrugged. "We don't smoke," Mandrake told her. She thought about it a bit longer. "How about Rakim, does he have anything on him that can make fire?" They shook their heads. "Rakim's afraid of fire," Soma explained. "Hah, that's great!" She laughed. Then she realized it meant she wasn't going to be able to light her cigarette for even longer, and she groaned even louder than before.

"Well," Mandrake said coolly, "you better hope Ogun does wake up," he added, gesturing at the chimera's dragon mouth as he did. "Mandrake..." Mandrake looked at him. "What?" Soma gestured at the ground around them. "Get me some sticks." Mandrake looked at him disbelievingly. "You can't be serious." Soma gave him a look indicating he was completely serious. "She just tried to kill you!"

"Mandrake..." Soma persisted. "Fine," Mandrake sighed, "I'll do it myself." "I can do it." "I said I'll do it!" Mandrake insisted. Soma sighed. "Fine, thanks." Mandrake shook his head as he rubbed two sticks together, using his feet to provide them with a stable base while he used his hands to move them against each other until he finally lit a spark. He walked over to Betta unceremoniously, and finally lit her cigarette for her with the stick he'd just set fire to.

"Ah...!" She took a long draw and, letting it out, seemed to let all the weight of the world off her shoulders as she did. "Shit, I missed these," she said happily. "I can't believe this," Mandrake said, "you are some kind of doctor, Soma," he told his boyfriend sardonically. Soma shrugged. "Hey, sometimes self-care might be a little counter-intuitive, but it still counts as self-care, doesn't it?" Soma said. "Anything else I can do for you, herr doktor?" Mandrake asked.

"Yes," Soma answered, "tell Bridges I'm not getting enough cigarettes for this."