Their body blushed as Janice listened to Tabra mentally curse again and again. Janice
wondered if she should says something but honestly was worried -what- to say in a
situation like this. Finally, Tabra manage to say in a civilized voice.
"Then I guess I'm lucky, that it passed midnight just before you made your ultimatum
Jasim." Tabra said.
The angel on the white camel's eyes narrowed. "Mere luck for you. But I shall honor what I
said. You will either accept our aid in the destroying of the kitesune the next day, or we
shall take matters into our own hands the day after."
Janice could hear a lot of what Tabra was thinking, most of seemingly relation go how
Jerusalem belonged to no one. She could feel Tabra's burning desire to say them to this
being. However, Tabra also knew they were in a situation that could change from bad to
worse very quickly and unreversable.
"Very well, see you already." Tabra teleported their body back their underground safe
house.
"Tabra... you were male before and... didn't you say that once that you altered your name
just to fit the revisions to your body? How did that... Angel know to call you Tabra?"
"I've had a female body before, one of our encounters was me wearing a female form, and
before you ask, Angels normally don't -have- genders, we were created before the
concept was even invented, one of the reasons we don't marry or reproduce the old
fashioned way. And before you ask, ALL souls are gender less, you really think one tiny
chromosome matters that much against an immortal spirit?"
Their body sighed, 'Am I that predictable?"
"No, I just think I'm starting to know you that well. We have forty eight hours to rescue
Tammie now Janice. Remember the collateral damage types I mentioned before? Jasim is
one of them."
Their body dry washed their furry hands, "We were supposed to have a lot more time to
prepare for this weren't we?"
Their body nodded, "Yes. A lot more. I intended us to scout out the place before hand so
we wouldn't be marching into their defenses blindly. I was planning on giving our recruits
time to develop their own fighting styles, and ... possibly starve off us merging into one
person."
Their body shivered and had a scared look on her face, "What are you saying?"
Their body had a look of guilt, "If we had more time to put the rookies through enough
training to enable them to better support us, and enables to fight smarter rather than
harder, we wouldn't need to resort to extreme measures to save Tammie from herself.
Karther is just a shadow of himself now, the person he was barely even exists anymore,
Tammie is the real danger now, and the one the djinn will target when they make their
attack. The kitesune desert kingdom is almost it's own force now, a chain of self spawning
events ever cycling. Hopefully tough if we disable the heart of it then the djinn won't see a
need for a full scale invasion."
Their body clenched her fists she said intensely, "Stop tip toeing around things Tabra! Tell
me! What extreme measures! Spell it out for me!"
"You and I need to die. If not before the battle, then almost certainly during it. And then
trust that our child manages to save Tammie in our place, and she manages to lead Vicki
and the others to survival."
Their body spoke with dismay and anger, "You said when this whole stupid thing was over
you'd ditch this body and leave it to me to work out!"
"That's what I said... before Jasim and his fellows decided that they weren't interested in
waiting... I'm sorry Janice, I'm just so sorry..."
"...what are our chances if you and me doing it alone? With my sisters helping us?"
"If we had seven more days, pretty good though one or two of us might still get killed. Just
one day to finnish preparing? Laughable. Even with Julio and us putting them through the
meat grinder, I had broken down EVERYTHING to the bare minimum of time needed for
them to be fully ready."
"Any chance of bargaining for more time?"
"Zero! Jasim and his teammates WON'T budge on this."
"Why are they so fixated on striking now?"
"Besides the innocent people still being targeted? Karther's kingdom is now expanding
beyond it's agreed upon boundaries, that good enough for them."
"And you?"
"Karther kingdom, and the one Tamthis is building is stagnant, frozen, never changing,
never evolving, just existing, like a city of lifeless statues. Tamthis' kingdom, will be like a
domain of puppets. It's even worse than what Karther's little frozen kingdom would have
been, at least his robots were showning signs of evolving into people."
"What?"
"Alexandra... his first 'covert' I saw your memories remember? She'd had the template
applied to her so long ago she was beginning to learn how to be her own person again,
wasn't the person she was, but at least she was learning to make her own choices outside
of her programming."
"And with Tamthis they're frozen the way they are?"
"Who knows? Maybe in a couple centuries the slaves will begin to think again, but there's
no way to know, and it doesn't matter anymore, we attack tomorrow just before dawn. And
if we can't save Tammie in that time, the loss of life will be staggering."
"What are our chances of survival now?"
"As we stand? We best hope is ONE of us living through this."
".....And if you and me... die... before... by being one person... what are our chances then?"
"I'm not sure, only she'll know for certain, but the chances our more of your siblings, her
aunts, living through it will be much greater.. the whole is greater than the sum of it's
parts."
"And if we try to force it along?"
"She'll be born insane."
"But, you said we needed that to happen, for... for the chance of saving Tammie OR more
than one of us living through this..."
"I did, not to mention the endless number of slaves who will be caught in the crossfire."
"HOLY ****!" Their body's ears flattened against their skull, Julio came running into their
chamber, "Please don't tell me I felt who I think I felt!!!"
"You did Julio, you did." Their body said cooly and melancholy.
"Oooooooooooh, ****-****-****-****-****-Cr********p!" Julio began randomly kicking
and punching the walls.
"They've met?" Janice asked idly.
Julio glared at their body, "If you can call 'Die Abomination!' Knowing someone!"
'Julio's rather bias on that subject.' Tabra thought.
"He's not here,so I assume you didn't mention me!"
"You just keep up your reality hacking and cheat sheet using and he won't, I don't think
he'd violate my safe house... or at least I hope not. He gave us till the end of tomorrow to
do the job, or the djinn will clean things up -there- way."
Julio cursed again. "So now what?"
Their body shook her head, "First, we'll need to skip socialization and rest. I can't get
everything into their heads I hoped to get into their heads that I hoped to. But I might be
able to hammer enough of the fundamentals into that they won't make any mistakes like
the amateurs they are. The only thing really working for us is that Tamthis' army is made
out of mostly 'robots' or 'mindless animals.' Also... I'm going to let you hack us-WHAT?!"
"WHAT?!" Julio exclaimed at the same time as Janice.
"Yes, you get to test your tricks on a Angel's spirit and that of another mortal being... what
you've never been allowed to do... I need you to hotwire my spirit and Janice's so the
triggers that'll cause us to die will occur in a way that our child isn't born mad."
"Now hold on! You've got another passenger in there remember? What about HER opinion?
"
"Janice?" Their body spoke. "You saw with this time limit our chances our winning are
awful, but if we do this... the chances of saving Tammie, and Karther's slaves, and all my
sisters, will go from absurd to possible?" Their body nodded and said, "Yes." The voice
was grim yet stern, "Then do it."
Julio fell on his back side, in all the years he had lived, all the centuries, these eons. He
never imagined, even once, that T' would ASK him to screw with his/her spiritual insides.
Julio sounded hesitant and unsure, something that so unlike him that it made even T' feel
uneasy, "So uh, how do you want to do this? Do you guys want to spend one more day as
separate people? I can jury rig it to happen next time you both fall asleep. Or do you er,
your child to take care of training the newbies in their emergency panic combat crash
course?"
Their body signed and sat down, even though time was no longer even in the slightest on
their side, 'Janice......this training we're about to put your sisters through, it won't drive
them mad or make them stop feeling for their loved ones (including you and their
families), but they'll be soldiers, just soldiers, it'll be a PART of their mentality.'
'You know they've already burned their bridges behind them. And it looks like I have too.'