A small, pained, smile appeared briefly on his lips. "Of course that didn't work with the Princess. She kicked that door open! But even she was changed. As tough as she was." "That is why I didn't want any of you to see me like that! I want you to see me like this!" He said, pointing to himself. "Not some burned, hacked up body. Promise me you'll stay away from it." He said, turning to Melee and Ano. They nodded back. "Who was the Princess?" Peenk asked, wiping away tears. "Shion Charzide. She was my best friend from the Academy. She was the first student to treat me like just another cadet, instead of an oddity. She Commands the Big Prize now. The Enterprise. And she was captain of Excalibur before that. And we called her the Princess because her mother's the exiled Queen of Masar, her father the king." Joshua got up and went to the door to leave. "Where are you going Josh?" Melee asked. He paused a moment. "I'm just going up to the bridge to listen to some music. I'll be ok little sister." Twenty minutes later, Peenk stepped onto the bridge. Joshua sat in the right hand seat staring into hyperspace, listening to a song called Tumbling Dice. She quietly crept around the chair and found him staring up at her, shaking his head. "You'll never be able to sneak up on me." He said with a smile. She smiled back and sat in his lap. "Well, I'll keep trying anyway." He looked into her eyes. "I certainly hope so!" After several minutes of staring into hyperspace, Peenk turned to Joshua. "Joshua, can I ask you something about your brother?" He turned to the woman in his lap and raised his right eyebrow. "Well that's a real mood killer. What do you want to know?" "Is your brother a different kind of super soldier?" Joshua gives her a half smile. "You want to know why he was so badly beaten up and I wasn't?" "Well he was pretty bloody." He shrugged. "We're identical twins. We are the same in every way physically. But he was damaged goods. You see, two years before the fight, my parents took the two of us on the three day ski trip down Olympus Mons for our birthday. Well Mack and I were caught in an avalanche. Ten damn minutes from the bottom. Both my legs, my right arm, and all the ribs on my right side were broken." "Ow!" "Well, not really. I was able to shut the pain down. Mack though, took a blow to the head. It was pretty bad too. They were able to repair most of the damage. But he permanently lost the ability to block pain and accelerate. That's why he looked like that. When I took him down, I was going at ten times normal speed. He never stood a chance." "You can go that fast?" Peenk asked in disbelief. "Yes." Joshua said, a look of pain crossed his face, as if he was remembering something he'd rather have left forgotten. "But I've never done it for longer than thirty seconds. And I hurt for days after that. The scientists say that I could cause severe damage to my body if I go beyond forty seconds." "How long did this fight last" He gave her a half smile again. "For the norms there, it was about two seconds. But for me it was like twenty. And of course, for Mack, it was an eternity. I did alot of damage in that time." I would like to thank Desgar for letting me use ths characters of Shion and Aseska.