Kella stood on top of the Nautilus' Skipjack shuttle,when suddenly all sound stopped. She looked all the way to the end of the orbital habitation module and saw no movement. A bird some thirty meters away was frozen in mid-wing-beat. Her blood ran cold as she looked around in fright. Azreal stood some four meters away,dressed in scarlet. He said in a deep sonorous voice,"Come with me. It is not a request." She braced herself and her vision blurred into a realm of madness and shifting scenes. She screamed as it became to much for her as she clenched her eyes shut. He said,"It should be alright, now. It's disorienting to me as well to enter the Nunera system this way, instead into the SNARE." It was quieter and it seemed like an infinite jungle gym of bars, locked into balls holding them together. She shouted,"WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT OF ME? You turned me into an old, fat,bunny woman from a sexy,young girl! You didn't give me any chioce in the matter! What do you want?" He shook his head. "An unfortunate side-effect of being pulled out of linear time by me. You do not remember the long talk we had about it. The lot you have now is of YOUR choosing. The path you walk is yours alone!" Kella said sullenly,"Fine. Then change me back!" He said,"I cannot ravage you as much as that! The Nunera system has inbuilt limiters to prevent abuse like that! Do you remember what Izkibell did to Violet? How one of the last Altha-Krommiums twisted and ravaged Violet's body with the power of the Four Sisters system? YOUR body was more twisted than that! You body had been twisted, shaped and mangled by surgery and infused with nano-machines to shape you into an artificial beauty desirable by human men and docile and compliant with their wishes. You lost FORTY YEARS off of your life-span from it. Years you wanted to spend with your husband. You wanted to see if it were your own will and heart that loved him or what was done to you as a Beastgirl on the flying cities!" She put her hands to her head and stepped back in the virtual space. His words had the irrevocable strength of truth to them. "Then why am I so..." He sighed. "Your face bears the ravages of your body's strain and you ARE retaining a lot of fluid. The Sister of Water can help with that." SHe shook her head,"That doesn't explain why we are HERE,though! Why did you alter Sunshine? Why did you steal three years of life from her?" He shook his head,"I had to save her and Lime. Their adult versions came back in time and altered our future to save countless trillions of lives from the destruction of the PTEs that would have destroyed all inhabitable worlds in five galaxies! HOWEVER-- time travel is forbidden for a reason. It's to complicated to explain to you, other than simplistically. Potential energy always flows down-hill to lower potential. That's why ice cubes melt and electricity flows and even the winds blow." "Sunshine and Lime were about to die when I altered them as little as possible to enable them to live. At least they HAVE years for me to take to pay for their trip through time. Prince's Druaga body is immune to the ravages of time." He paused. "I would have thought you'd be more curious about Toxic than Sunshine." Kella dropped her hands and glared at him,"WHAT IS YOUR GAME? Where is she?" He waved a hand in a direction,"She's trying to get Rose and Snowflake out of the virtual prison of the Secrecy Act! Only the Emergency Coordinator or Project Director of the Four Sisters can lift that sanction." She gasped,"YOU--you MADE THE NUNERA SYSTEM? THE FOUR SISTERS?" He nodded. "I had to. I was partially responsible for the Four Brothers. I had to balance the scales. Let's go. ALL the other sisters are waiting for us. Including the Three immortal sisters that were the prototypes for you and your friends." Kella nodded and swallowed hard. --TO BE CONTINUED!--