Several hours later, Joshua shut off the monitor in the Rumpus room and sat in silence. "You see?" Magenta said softly to him. "You feel much better don't you?" With a grin he nodded. "I just wish I had something more recent than the video from Cyn's second birthday." They all stared in amazed silence at what Kirk had just told them. "Are you saying that she's two years old there?" Melee blurted out. He nodded. "She looks like she's seven!" "Accellerated growth." Zell muttered. Looking up, his voice became louder. "Like the Grand Army of the Republic." "Yes." Joshua said with a nod. "But with one big difference. The aging slows down drastically when we hit puberty. And by the time we get to eighteen or twenty, we're aging at the same rate as the norms." "What age do you reach puberty?" Mala asked. "That's unpredictable. Seventy five years ago a girl reached puberty at the age of five. Cynthia's mother, Sasha, was seven. The oldest was eleven." "And how old were you when the change began?" Mulk asked. "Eleven. And it was the worst two weeks of my life." Magenta winced. "I bet it was! I remember my puberty, and I'd hate to have to compress it into two short weeks." "Did they do this to get you to fighting age sooner?" Zell asked. "And to get us to breeding age quicker also. Had to keep the replacements coming. Even our gestation period is faster. Two and a half months for the Soldier class." He said, gesturing to Ano and Baby. "And a General is three and a half months." Joshua said poking Melee in the arm. The girl grinned at her friends. "You hear that? I'm a General! You must follow my orders." Joshua turned the monitor back on. "Wait, I was wrong. I do have one thing here that's new. It's a single picture taken a few days before the Excalibur took me. It was just after the Yankees beat the Mets in game one of the World Series." An image of Joshua appeared with what looked to be a girl of thirteen or fourteen. "I see she's wearing a protective suit." Peenk said with a smile. "I take it her puberty has started?" "Yes. Just a couple days earlier. Her body wasn't producing pheromones yet, but she wanted to wear her first suit. Cyn wanted everybody to know she was changing." The smile that was on Kirk's face melted away. "And I missed it. Nor was I there to approve her First." "First what?" Peenk asked curiously. Staring at the image of his daughter for a few seconds, Joshua smiled again. "It is customary among my people for the parents to approve a child's first sexual partner." "Who are you to tell her who she can have sex with?" Ano cut in. "I'm her father!" Joshua growled at her. "My people don't attach any great mysticism to sex like you norms. Except for the first time. And we don't choose, the child does. But we do approve their choice. Even our children can make a bad choice, which is why we approve their First. We want it to be something to remember with joy, not regret." "Did she have someone in mind?" Mala asked. The man grinned at Magenta's young daughter. "Daniel Kilpatrick. The youngest son of my chief of staff at the embassy. He's a tall, good looking boy, and he's barely acceptable for the most perfect being in the universe." "Where's her mother?" Bitty asked. Joshua stared into space for several seconds. "She died when Cyn was two months old."