The Watcher named Sen, hefted his axe and told them,"It's down there. On the lowest level. It started up just before you arrived. So I am told." Pazu stalked down the ramp, his senses tingling. Snowflake followed him, her one eye scanning the area. Snowflake asked,"So this was once a mine for the most perfect optical silica and quartz?" Sen said,"Still is. Just not useful to live on any more." Pazu stopped and whispered,"Creepy place. Hot,too. We must be close to that lava tube!" Snowflake stopped in shock. She gestured as she exclaimed,"PAZU! Look here! The Four Sisters symbol! It looks ...different. It's indicating the 'Earth' Symbol! What does it mean?" Pazu turned and came over. He looked it over and said with a wave of his hands,"Don't know. You're the 'fifth of four', aren't you? Shouldn't you know?" She frowned in disgust. "Those ancients surely were the ancestors of Humanity! What happened to me was the 'Four Sisters one point five four System'! A stinking program update! The 'Four Sisters' was SUPPOSED to be the last gasp program to protect humanity from extinction." She looked at the glowing, holographic seeming symbol and sighed,"However they didn't end up as extinct as soon as they thought they would. SOooo they thought they'd improve the system. They found bugs and tried bug-fixes. A huge whopping Probability Altering weapon system, that I'm now a part of, and I'm a bug-fix. Great." Pazu looked at Snowflake, and asked,"How do you know all that?" She waved a hand at the symbol, and with growing shock,"It...told me! Let me interrogate it!" Pazu shrugged,"Knock yourself out." After a moment, she slumped into his arms, limp. He lowered her to the stone floor, and exclaimed,"I didn't REALLY MEAN THAT!" She blinked and stood up with his help. She growled,"I was SO stupid. I asked it for a data-dump. Duhhhhr! I suffered a buffer over-run that kept my CPU from burn-out, or blow-up!" The Symbol faded out of sight. She said,"Shit. It was a warning of some kind. Something on this planet is coming here to kill me. It'll kill all humans it finds here,too. It's an agent of the GREAT ENEMY. Whatever that means. At least it downloaded all my attack and defense protocols into me! I now know what I can do, so we're not as screwed as we were." Pazu looked at her expectedly. After a moment, he asked irritatedly,"WHAT? What can you do?" She looked mildly alarmed. "I can't tell you! I mean...it would be less than good if I told you all. It would cause an alteration in probability that might cause negative survival parameters to occur. It's...really hard to describe." Pazu frowned, and rubbed his beak. He asked,"Can you tell me anything?" She looked around in thought. After a moment, she said,"My powers are a reversed form of Toxic's. Sort of." Pazu nodded and waved a hand at her. He already knew that much. SHe took a breath and said,"Ice, not Fire. Energy sublimation and absorption. Potentially fatal. That's all I can say." Pazu nodded. "Walk through shields. Weapon immune, mostly. Freezing dumb-asses! Useful. Alrighty, not as screwed...that's a good thing!" He looked at the mysterious Sen and asked,"So...when it lunch served?" The Watcher's deep voice replied,"We'll have some mushrooms and rats fried up soon." Snowflake said,"Ehhhhhh, mmmmm, rats!" Pazu clacked his beak. He said,"If it's those frilled rats, YUMMmmmmmmmm! Let's eat!" Snowflake rolled her eye and said as her stomach made noises,"I guess I can eat some rat. Even if I don't want too." Sen said,"Follow me." Snowflake and Pazu followed him back into the labyrinth of mine shafts, leading into the underworld below Blue Gorge. --TO BE CONTINUED!--