Part 21

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A brilliant white shot exploded out from somewhere between his legs and hurtled into a tall heap of trash some distance away. Perkunas almost flew off of Tannac. "Eeenca!" he yelled on his way off her and onto his back next to her. Tannac immediately flopped over onto her front on top of him with some sort of pulse rifle in a dead aim at the tall heap of trash she'd struck.

Perkunas tried pushing up, but he gave up to stare at her nearly flat but pert breasts. "You had a pulse rifle between my legs?! Did you think I needed some help?"

"Only after I noticed someone was approaching" she kept her eyes on the area ahead. Perkunas quickly turned his head best he could to watch as well, safely positioned beneath Tannac. "I don't think you could've hit that heap with yours, to say nothing of having any impact mm?"

Perkunas took a moment to look blankly at her.

"If you wanted to try you should've said something, I would've helped" Tannac smirked.

"Er no besides you are not unknown for your ability with a pistol or rifle."

"It should also be known not to approach my residence while I'm around" she muttered under her breath.

"Fortunate I came with you."

"Said you wouldn't regret it" Tannac winked.

Perkunas crawled out from under Tannac and whisked off the garbage sticking to him that they'd knocked over. Standing up, he put his fine leathers back on. "That and I decided that if anyone important heard that I had been seen here under these circumstances, they would not believe it."

"Not if they didn't know you."

Perkunas slowly looked back for a moment. "That could be Bursamen you almost shot."

"He is stupid enough!" she realized. "If that's you, fekkik! Come out now!"

The normally decisive Bursamen timidly stuck a hand out. After it stayed connected to his arm for several seconds, he dared out his shoulder. After that test came the rest of him, in halting steps. He looked like someone had a gun barrel pointed at his nose.

Tannac let a sharp breath out of her nose. "Fekkik."

"What is it you'd risk your life coming her to relate?" Perkunas asked approaching Bursamen.

"Obviously I didn't know I would be so welcome" Bursamen sneered, tugging his jacket in place and, dusting himself off.

"Pithy lines aside, what the frell is it?" Tannac asked very dryly.

Bursamen stopped a few feet from Tannac, intending to give her hezmona. But as always there was the frayed sting of someone who had been troubled within haunting Tannac's overly sharp eyes. As always he couldn't hold onto his hatred in the face of it.

That didn't stop him from planting his feet down in a way that sent gravel at her. "Larran's having some unwelcome visitors."

"Whose moving on him?" Perkunas didn't try to hide his surprise.

"They're not moving, that's just the trouble" he snorted out a chuckle.

"They?" Tannac asked wearily, too resigned to be impatient.

"Fenas."

Both Tannac and Perkunas looked up to him.

"Have we put word out yet?" Perkunas had to ask.

"No" Bursamen sneered at him. "Word didn't wait for our time table."

"Are they-" Perkunas began.

"-No" Bursamen answered. "There's several dozen loitering around his estate but so far that is all. If his servants have seen fit to mention it, no one has yet made any action."

"Wisely" Perkunas moaned.

Tannac slammed the butt of her pulse rifle into the ground. "I'm going to see her."

Perkunas looked at her. "Yes. Well I will be going."

"Any of these times will due."

Perkunas slowly looked back for a moment. "Yes. I will miss the intractable repartee." He nodded to Bursamen who nodded in return to say he understood that he was to shadow Perkunas for safety. Perkunas looked back to Tannac. "You wouldn't do anything....?" Tannac shook her head no. Perkunas and Bursamen both shook their heads as well. "Naaa."

Perkunas walked with Bursamen to the street before remarking under his breath "We shall meet at the storehouse opposite Larran's estate."

Bursamen nodded his agreement that it sounded like a prudent plan.

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"Why the hell" John got out between breaths "are we running? What am I going to do, destroy my own head?"

"If this was my head I'd consider it" Harvey offered. "But since it's yours I suggest you find some way to put a stop to that."

"Frell that" Chiana turned aside to let the flaming module looming up behind them pass. John and Harvey followed, but the craft changed direction to follow, plowing right through any obstacle. "Ah frell!" Chiana looked down to find the ground became increasingly treacherous, with roots and holes becoming ever denser. "Do you mind" she shot aside at John while their legs were becoming a blur frantically trying to run around the obstacles "making this a little more interesting and a lot easier?"

"Does it look like I'm having fun here?!" he yelled.

"Unquestionably your penchant for sadism, Crichton!" Harvey yelled back while he awkwardly scurried as frantically as John and Chiana. "There's only one thing to do! Someone must get into the craft and steer it away!"

"Right!" John sarcastically yelled back. "Well Harv it looks like I finally found a use for you" he waved him off "I love ya, buh bye!"

"Look! There's the exit!" Harvey yelled.

"That's a frigging hole in the cliff Harvey!"

"Considering that we're running into a cliff, I consider it a potential escape route!" Harvey had John know while he managed to run ahead of John and leap into the hole.

"It's a big old rabbit hole, knew it!" John remarked "But of course it goes up, not down!" John looked into hole where Harvey trying to squeeze his way up. "Pip! Come on! Move it, Harv!" He noticed Harvey was stuck. "Oh crap" he pushed at Harvey. "That's it! No more malt shop for you, grasshopper. Too late you bastard!" John yelled as the craft crashed behind him. No, he corrected himself, beside him. John pulled out of the entrance to the big old rabbit hole and looked around.

The cockpit sprung off the flaming rubble and Chiana tumbled out. "Whoa!" she said. John stared in disbelief. A smile slowly crept into his face while he watched the soot blackened, smoldering Chiana cough out smoke and stumble over to him making a series of jerks, twitches and quirks. "Naah" she sniffed while scratching her smoldering hair "frell."

"You okay?!" John gawked but he couldn't get the smile off his face.

"Yeah I'd think" Chiana swept smoldering material off her arms "you wouldn't have it another way."

"Gawd I hope not" John took a long look up and down the disintegrating stretch pants and top she had on "I'd be nice to know I have some control over my own mind anymore."

"It would be better if I did" Harvey grumbled, rolling out of the hole. "As fortunate as your rescue was, it collapsed the tunnel and our means of escape" he told Chiana.

"Ah that's too bad" Chiana was far from concerned. "He'll think of something else. It's his mind" Chiana's widened eyes and smile were precocious.

"Precisely" Harvey stood and dusted himself off. "That could be a slow process" he glared at John and walked past him to look along the cliff.

"Ha ha" John walked toward the fiery wreck. "What a mess" he observed. John bent sideways a bit to observe the rear exposed when the smoldering material fell from Chiana's backside. "What a sight."

"I don't think it'll run" Chiana sarcastically observed looking over the wreckage.

"Man if I does I hope I'm right behind it" John observed, now looking over the wreckage but not yet thinking about it.

"You know what I think?" Chiana asked.

"We need that Cheshire Chi about now?" John looked around.

"Nope. You look cute in pink and red heart boxers."

"Thanks. I think I picked them out for you. I don't suppose your map's gotten any more useful, Harv?"

"I think not, Crichton" Harvey passed by him and leered. "Every direction finds more of the same state of mind."

"My mind's set on statehood" John flinched. "Well at least I've still got ambition."

Chiana climbed on some of the wreckage. John watched the silvery rear sticking out at him and the material still smoldering away that was quickly exposing more. A white, oval tail shot out from the small of her back. He shook his attention to watch the Cheshire Chi appear in a lounge along her back, hair first.

"How are we not getting on?" it asked at John.

"A repulsive grasshopper as a companion might have something to do with it" John answered to himself.

"H-hey ah" Chiana hopped off the wreckage, leaving the Cheshire Chi to hang in place in the air "how can we get out of this place?"

"An admirable goal I must agree" Harvey remarked. "I'm afraid I have no way out."

"That's because you have no way" Cheshire Chi leered at him despite a sympathetic tone, still reclining on thin air. "Always here, you see, are Crichton's ways" it dissolved into a swirling blue-ribbon vortex, becoming an open ended cone before sucking itself in, reversing and dropping Cheshire Chi's head back out onto the ground. "Of course" it continued, unconcerned at being decapitated "you could always make up your own mind" it hummed into a maddened laughter.

"You need help" Chiana told John. He scratched under his chin, hard pressed to argue the point at the moment. "Then h-how" she turned toward the head, which lifted when the body returned from the ground and balanced its head in its hand "you said the ah the party, was, was this way? How do we get there?"

"Well some people go right" it jiggled a stumpy waddle to the left. "Some people go wrong" it turned its huge smile into a huge frown, jogging right. "But as for me, myself, personally, I prefer the short cut." It's hair flew off to leave it in a crew cut, revealing that the tip of the tail pointed to a hole in the cliff made by the craft, just becoming visible as the fire extinguished.

Chiana crawled over the wreckage while John and Harvey squeezed around it. John ran to catch up to Chiana. The moment his hands touched her skin, everything in awareness flew away, leaving only themselves facing each other. "What the-the!" he stumbled to think.

"Mmmm you're sweet" Chiana purred.

"So are, very sweet, gaa Chi- you're- you're Chiana!?"

"Yeah. Oshan-"

"-nana. Yeah. It's not that I mind just now, heck this is even better than sex, but why the hell can't people leave my mind alone!"

"Wha- I go, go out of my mind for you, save your drad eema in your own mind, a-and I could've got, got killed, twice, and I'm supposed to think you're better off alone?! I don't think so. Mmm sides I like it right here" she purred.

"Well you're....you're differ-mmm....unity" a stray thought came to him, from trying to grasp any sense of context to the experience. The thought flew from his hand and spooled away into nothing while he felt someone that frightened and enraptured him. But the fear didn't last. He understood then that it was a need to be open to feel everything that had scared him, something without set definitions that was a part of Chiana. She needed to feel and reached to feel him. He thought then he understood some foundations of her sexual orientations. He felt inspired by it all.

The thought of a unity returned, a blue lady, Delvian, who had been inside not unlike this, and she- Zhaan, he suddenly knew, the thought coming from Chiana without their asking. Everything that had been going on around himself and Zhaan at the time of their unity returned to his memory, but they were not where they usually were at that time. Where had they come from and where did they return, he wondered. It was the place he felt he needed to return to, suddenly defining an odd sense of not belonging that he'd had since they escaped their captors only to rush into Larran.

Light from a place to one side of their awareness almost distracted them, but he could only return to an ecstasy with the hungry searching of Chiana. She too was distracted for a moment, but he reached to her and held her absorbed with him.

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