Part 101  A Moment's Distinction Between Brutality and Beauty



     Mara felt disgruntled.  She had found herself in the midst of an
ideal set of circumstances, and yet...
     "<Leave it to the mortals to totally mess things up!>" she
reflected angrily.  "<I have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity here!
I've been empowered with what feels like an infinite amount of
energy...far beyond any Demoness Powers I could have ever dreamed of
having...and it all falls apart!  I mean, I'm way more powerful than
the Ultimate Destruction Program, by a thousandfold!  But can I enjoy
my newfound powers?  Noo..oo..oo!  That worthless idiot Keiichi had to
ruin the whole thing with his stupid talk about 'wisdom and
responsibility'.  Blessed killjoy first-rank moron!!!  Why couldn't he
just keep his little mortal mouth *shut* for once?!  And what's the
worst by far?  He's totally right, blessit!!!>" she shouted, totally
frustrated.
     "<We heard that, Mara!>" six voices echoed, chorusing their
accusations in her mind.
     "<Waaaah!!!>"
     Mara almost sweat-gagged over her complete negligence.  For a
moment, her awareness of the fact that they could 'overhear' her
thoughts had totally absented itself.  Because of the 'link' between
them, the others could sense her almost as clearly as she could hear
herself.  Her antagonisms had reached the wrong audience.  In
frustration, she made to kick a nearby black hole with the
aggressiveness of a soccer player, until Belldandy motioned "no" with
her hand.
     "There'll be no kicking stellar bodies until we decide that it's
safe to do so," her younger sister announced censoriously.  Mara
gritted her teeth and fists in frustration, and then slumped down into
cross-legged position.
     A Demoness with a universe-sized dudgeon.
     They seemed to be omnipotent, and perhaps even omniscient.  Mara
found that she was suddenly knowledgeable about fields of expertise
that she had never been interested in.  She was filled with
understanding; arcane methods were never her strong suit, but now she
could mentally composite formulae with the slightest effort.  Even
realms of science she should have never known anything about...such as
the SysOperations of the Yggdrasil Mainframe...she seemed to have
mastered with an uncanny exactitude.  She was filled with the
Yggdrasilian knowledge and experience of three Goddesses; three
Goddesses whose intellects had been mysteriously expanded as well...
     Yet, a short while later, Mara discovered that their group of
seven *wasn't* all-powerful and all-knowing.  Especially in the all-
knowing department.
     Urd had completely forgotten about Cevn.

          *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *

     "<Urd, what do you mean, 'Cevn who?'!?  Cevn's been your
boyfriend for over a year now!  Remember?>" Keiichi confronted her.
He wanted to thump her on the head to drive his point home, but he was
still uncertain about how these cosmic energies that comprised their
bodies worked.  For all he knew, thumping Urd with a knuckle might
create some kind of catastrophe on a galactic scale.  Restraining his
impulses, he narrowed his eyes at her to demonstrate his displeasure.
Urd looked back at him blankly, with a quizzical expression.  She
clearly didn't know what he was referring to.
     A short while ago, her spirit was grave with melancholy; weighed
down by the realization that the man she loved was dead.  But now, her
being seemed to have undergone a transformation of candor; now, she
compassed a blissfully blithe perception of reality.  Urd was almost
happy-go-lucky in her demeanor, especially in regards to the immense
Divine powers she now possessed.
     "<I still don't know what you're talking about.  I'm trying to
remember...but I can't!  I don't know this person whom you are
describing as my 'lover',>" Urd replied archily.
     "<She never said 'lover', Big Sister Urd!  And Keiichi said
'boyfriend'!  Where do you hear such things?!  Get your mind out of
the gutter!>" Skuld interrupted, her voice tanged with distaste.
     "<It's impossible for me to have a lover, or even a boyfriend!
Remember the Ultimate Force?  Just because I can fall in love with a
guy, it doesn't mean that I can have him.  And vice versa as well.  My
life is marred; I'm stuck with unrequited love forever, because I'm
the Norn of the Past.  Why do you think I've been single these past
hundred millennia?  Because I *want* it to be that way?>" Urd said,
feeling sensitive in the wake of Skuld's accusations.  For a moment,
the old familiar longing grabbed her emotions and twisted them into
coils...
     For the first time in her life, Belldandy could fully sense her
older sister's emptiness, because it was mirrored in her own heart.
Urd's void was worse than she could have ever imagined; it reminded
her of a lifeless landscape painting of a deep desert, or a random
conflux of ice floes.  A nether-place inside of Urd's kokoro.
     Somehow, Cevn had never reached Urd's heart.
     "<This is...so wrong!>" she observed aloud.
     "<...so even if I knew this 'Cevn' character, whom incidentally I
can't remember ever meeting,>" Urd continued, "<I certainly couldn't
have possibly done the romantic hookup with him, if you know what I
mean.  But I understand why you guys would all think such a thing,
however.  Odds are if he's a mortal, then he's probably all infatuated
with me, from afar.  Oh hoooo...they *all* are, of course!  But let me
assure you, it's all one-sided.  No offense, Belldandy...but I would
*never* get involved with a mortal man!>" Urd declared resolutely.
     Belldandy and her sisters shook their heads sadly, brimmed with a
sense of irony regarding Urd's statement.  Belldandy noticed that
Keiichi was staring at Urd with an questioning expression, as if he
had never met her before.
     "<I believe you, Urd.>" Belldandy said gently, garnering
astonished stares from the others.  She felt that it was time to turn
the tide, rather than hound Urd to the mat.  Urd clearly wasn't
responsible for any gaps in her memory.
     She explained that, if her older sister was suffering from a bout
of selective amnesia, then it certainly wasn't her fault.  Perhaps
Urd's distraught feelings towards Cevn had caused her so much pain,
her subconscious had taken over and buried all memories of him.  If
this was so, then such a concealment would be rendered even more
impenetrable to she and her sisters, because of the mysterious
augmentation of their powers.  Perhaps even impenetrable to Urd
herself.
     "<Yet, you must understand that for all of us, this is quite odd,
Urd,> Belldandy noted.  "<Since we seven seem to share this profound
harmony of thoughts and feelings, then we should be able to 'sense'
something in your kokoro about Cevn.  As it is, we cannot.  I can't
touch at a single vestige of his presence inside of you at all.  It's
as if you've never met him!  But I certainly can see him in my own
mind, as clear as the day he first came to our temple.  I remember how
happy Skuld and I were when you told us that you and he had fallen in
love for real.  Can't you feel that happiness inside of me, Urd?>"
     "<Nn uh!  I feel something bringing you to a state of vicarious
joy, but it isn't this 'Cevn' you're talking about,>" Urd said,
squinting her eyes with effort.  Belldandy could tell that she was
really trying hard to remember.  Keiichi and the others nodded their
heads in encouragement, but after a while Urd shook her head "no".
     "<Don't you guys get it?!  I don't have some boyfriend called
Cevn!  I *never* did!  I don't know him!  And I certainly don't sense
his presence in your thoughts, either.  Despite the fact that you
claim to have known him.  Zero, nada, nyet...nothing!  So you wanna
know what I think?  I think *you're* the ones having memory problems
here!  Obviously, you all must be experiencing some kind of jointly-
hallucinated fantasy about me and some Earthrealm guy being together!
Which is pretty scary, considering that we're all mega-powerful now!
We're supposed to be getting ready to kick Isilblius's ass, and you
guys are busy imagining things about me that aren't true!  Well,
nothing new with that...>" Urd remonstrated, almost losing her cool.
     Belldandy let the implications of Urd's assessment pass through
her for the moment.  She could sense the apprehension about their
newly-bestowed abilities in each mind, especially Skuld's.  Urd was
right; it *was* a great concern to each of them!  It was intimidating
enough, having to wonder about whether they even had the *right* to
use their incredible new powers.  Now, they had to question whether or
not they had the *ability* to use them wisely.  But she didn't want to
dwell on these vexes, because she was more concerned for her sister's
sake.
     Something had surgically removed all her memories of Cevn from
Urd's consciousness.  From her heart.  From her kokoro.
     "<You guys!  There's something else too!>" Skuld said in a
cautious voice.  "<While you guys have been investigating why Urd
can't remember Cevn, I've been checking the TimeWeb to see if I can
dial up any history on him.  There's absolutely *no* trace of Cevn in
the *entire* TimeWeb.  None!  It's as if he never existed within
TimeSpace at all!>"
     "<Waitaminute!  You meant that the guy that came out in the
middle of a typhoon to flag down our police car, so we could rescue
this Keiichi and take him to the hospital...never existed?!  That's
impossible, because my partner and I *were there*!  I only met him
once, but I totally remember him.  Not too many gaijins with long wild
hair try to chase down our police car in the first place!  Usually,
it's the other way around; we're chasing them down in a blur of
sirens.  Any person who's crazy enough to go looking for a police car
in an intense typhoon...well, that person tends to stick themselves in
one's memories!  I don't understand this at all, because he *does*
exist!>" Natsumi exclaimed.
     "<Which leads to another question.  Why would he be barred from
Urd's memories...and also be missing from this TimeWeb thing you're
talking about?  *We* remember him.  I can see him in each of your
minds, except for hers.  And according to all of you, she's the
girlfriend.  Shouldn't she have the strongest memories of him?>"
Miyuki asked, gesturing towards Urd.
     "<So which one of us is mistaken?  We...or her?>" Keiichi asked.
     His question resounded within their consciences, like a rock
plummeting against the walls of a deep well.  A fugue-like silence
wrote itself upon their minds as they had to admit to the feverishly
dervishing confutation.  It was quite clear that their unity of
thought, perception and emotion was disturbed, was flawed; perhaps to
the point of being completely unreliable.
     "<Of course, only an idiot wouldn't see that there is two
possible explanations for this situation!>" Skuld suddenly
interjected, striking a pose as she raised a single gloved finger in
the air while resting her other gloved hand on her hip.  The only
thing missing was a strobing light above her head.  So she created a
pulsar above her to add to the effect.
     "<Who's an idiot, brat?!  Oh great...here comes another lecture!
Skuld, you shouldn't be so condescending when we all can sense what
you're thinking!  You're totally embarrassing yourself with your
pompousness, *Little* Sister!>" a flurry of voices chorused in her
thoughts simultaneously.
     Skuld immediately blushed and tried to tone down her aloofness a
few notches before engaging them with her theories.  But she kept the
pulsar alit...
     "<Possibility One:  We know that Cevn *was* the Ultimate Force at
one time.  It's possible that *we're* the Ultimate Force now.  Ergo,
there can't be two Ultimate Forces at the same time.  Which means that
he truly doesn't exist any more.  We ended up getting his UF powers
somehow.  Plus, maybe he didn't exist in the first place...that he was
just something the UF cooked up on its own.>"
     "<I don't buy that at all, at least the part about the UF
inventing memories of him in our heads!  *I* remember him...and my
mind isn't messed up!>" Mara replied with tight defensiveness.
     "<The state of your mind being un-messed-up is debatable, Mara,>"
Keiichi quickly countered with a teasing smirk, unable to resist
himself.  Belldandy glanced over at her fiance and started to giggle
despite herself; her fluid laughter was rendered even more delightful
by the apt scowl it drew from Mara.
     "<Every time I try to explain something to you guys, you do this!
You always ruin my explanations!!!" Skuld whined, a beacon of
frustration.
     Mara was thankful for her youngest sister, because Skuld's
pouting expression had redirected the laughter away from her.  She
quickly joined in the giggling as Skuld squirmed uncomfortably against
the sparks of mirth.
     "<Okay...here's Possibility Two:  Cevn *was* the Ultimate Force
at one time,>" Skuld noted, trying to get a grip on herself.  "<Since
each of us seems to have Ultimate Force-type powers, it's possible
that he *gave* them up.  He may have even given them to *us* for some
reason.  Which means that he's still alive, but somehow outside of our
sphere of perceptions.  This would make a lot of sense, since
obviously there can't be two Ultimate Forces floating around the
Multiverses at the same time...>"
     "<You mean to imply, dear Skuld, that if Cevn is still alive, he
somehow exists *outside* of TimeSpace?  *Outside* of the will of our
minds and the experience of our Beings?  If we have the power of the
so-called Ultimate Force, than how can it be that we can't sense him
in the present moment, except in our own memories?>" Belldandy asked,
astonished.
     "<And that still doesn't explain why Urd can't remember him!
A..and how come Urd can't 'see' him in our memories, despite the fact
that we all remember him in some way?  We seem to be able to sense
*everything* that each of us knows and feels...a unbroken unity of
consciousness exists between us.  Except for Cevn.  Why is this?>"
Keiichi added, firing off a serial of questions.
     "<You guys, I'm just offering theories, not definitive
explanations!>" Skuld acknowledged as they all turned to stare at her,
seeking answers.  She floated backwards a meter while waving her hands
in front of her defensively, brushing away the answer-girl
responsibility.
     "<Here's a thought,>" Mara said quietly.  Belldandy was somewhat
surprised at the calmness in Mara's expression.  Her Demoness sister
was rarely calm under fire; in fact, in her own way Mara was as much a
drama Queen as Peorth.  But Belldandy had been around Mara enough to
recognize the fire burning in her Demoness sister's red-orange eyes;
an intense fire that exclaimed "I'm onto something big!"
     "<We've got an Everything to fix," Mara said, weaving her hands
above her head.  A large holosphere formed around them, superimposing
the TimeWeb over the two sickly Multiverse-trees of Yggdrasil and
Vanagdrasil.
     Skuld gasped as they were quickly surrounded by a scale model of
the entirety of known reality.
     "<Wow!!  This is really awesome!  It's pretty cool that I can do
this, eh?>" Mara shouted gleefully in a genki voice, admiring her
'model' of the Everything.
     Belldandy was too shocked to acknowledge Mara's words.  "Awesome"
was an understatement.  Being in the middle of a spherical simulacrum
of the Everything was momentarily disconcerting to her.  She knew from
experience that rendering a stable fractional holo-visual
representation of Yggdrasil required the allocation of a huge chunk of
the Ygg Mainframe system resources.  Belldandy had done this once
before, as part of her Honors work in Sysoping.  She remembered
struggling over her Honors project for centuries from inception to
completion; the resulting scale model she had created had represented
only 1/200th of Yggdrasil's mass-interface with the Multiverse.  In
comparison to Mara's holosphere, her Honors project seemed like a
stick-figure drawing on display next to a Hokusai or Dali masterpiece.
She glanced nervously at Urd and Skuld; both her sister's faces were
brow-knitted with incredulity as they beheld the impossibly complex
simulation.
     Only the Lord could do something like this.
     Swallowing hard, Belldandy regarded the representation and
compared it against the visual records of the Multiverse that she
remembered from investigative research utilizing the Yggdrasil
Mainframe.  She was daunted, as she realized that the damage was far
worse than she had initially assessed it to be.
     "<It's quite possible that once we finish undoing all the
destruction that has been rendered upon the Everything, then things
will revert back to normal.  An equilibrium will be struck, a
homeostasis will be created.  I think that...matters will return to
the state they were just prior to when all of this started.  We'll all
be ourselves, Cevn will be back among us, and my twin sister Urd will
remember how gaga she went over him,>" Mara elucidated.
     "<I've never gone 'gaga' over anybody!>" Urd interjected
indignantly.
     "<I offer two words of refutation to that opinion.  Cherry
Blossom Spirit.  Troubadour.  Well, actually four words of refutation.
Case closed!>" Skuld said with a sly grin, still marveling at Mara's
'model'.
     "<Okay, okay, okay!  I give up!>" Urd admitted desperately.
"<This really sucks, you know!  I've had a hard enough time hiding
things from you guys before.  Now that you're a part of me, and I'm a
part of you..sigh..I can't conceal a single thing!>" she added, filled
with frustration.  If there was a downside to all of this, it was the
thoroughgoing lack of privacy between her and the others.  She didn't
know how to shield certain of her thoughts and memories from the
others...and in the moment, her thoughts seemed to beach themselves on
an incident between she and the Brat...
     Skuld's sly grin faded into an angry grimace...and then she
suddenly exploded with fury.
     "<Oooooooo!!!  Big Sister Urd!  Now I know what happened!  It was
*you*!  Y..you put an itching potion inside of my bra, a week after
you caught me 'borrowing' a couple things from your Urd's Castle room!
You just admitted it to yourself in your mind...and I *heard* you!>"
she screamed angrily, filled with dudgeon.
     "<Urd!!!>" Belldandy added in a voice of astonished denunciation.
"<How could you do such a thing to your little sister!  Especially
right after she went from being totally flat-chested to having to wear
a bra for the first time!  She was totally unaccustomed to wearing a
bra!  Now that she's small-busted, she's naturally bound to be
sensitive about her size, and her bra, and her...>"
     Belldandy's hand flew to her mouth...but it was too late.
     "<Gee...thanks a lot, Elder Sister!>" Skuld interrupted in a cold
voice of disgust, her face contorted with a mixture of embarrassment,
resentment and pure disbelief.

          *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *

     After Bell's over-the-top gaffe, Keiichi realized that, before
they attempted to save the Everything, they would have to save
themselves *from themselves*.  In the present moment, for all
practical purposes they were functioning as a conspectus; their
perspectives authored as much by their individuality as by the union
of their beings.  Consequently, they were handicapped by an inability
to determine whether the "I" or the "We" was in the ascendancy.
Beyond this was the sensitive issue of privacy...or lack thereof.
Keiichi sensed that his thoughts and feelings were no longer
distinctions.  Instead, they felt like 'libraries' of awareness.
     Taking all of this into account, Keiichi fervently advocated the
necessity for them to develop a means to control or perhaps harness
their 'groupmind'.  Arguing the point to the others, he managed to
convince them of the need for some method of separability.  A process
that they could use to turn the open flowgate of impressions and
experiences 'on' and 'off'.
     Keiichi was gravely concerned about undesired transcendency.  He
feared that they were so completely meshed together emotionally and
intellectually, it wouldn't be long before some *big* secrets came out
in the open.  Unwanted secrets, benign and malicious.  Not to mention
some very private experiences.  In his case, such experiences as he
and Bell making love, or having a heart-to-heart conversation about
their lives.
     They needed a way to consciously preserve their individuality.
Surprising or not, they all agreed with his assessment.

          *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *

     Returning to his 'work', Keiichi smiled as Bell's image filled
his thoughts.  A particular memory of sweet bliss filled his mind,
causing him to shiver.  But his imagination was quickly skewed with
embarrassment as he pictured the five others in the group all floating
in the air in his bedroom, looking on while he and Bell were sharing
tender intimacies on his futon...
     "Ulp!" he gasped, thrusting his concentration back towards the
issues at hand.  His two partners paused to look up at him
momentarily, Miyuki with a questioning look, Natsumi with a furtive
grin.
     Since he, Miyuki and Natsumi had lived all their lives without
the 'Next Level' types of interpersonal forms of communication such as
telepathy, meta-empathy, thoughtcasting and the like...naturally it
fell to them to develop a form of volitional shielding.
     They were the ideal candidates for such a project because they
would have a 'fresh' perspective on the subject.  The Goddesses and
Mara were biased, because they were accustomed to using these modes of
communication.  Because of this, the Divines might not be able to
create the kind of 'shield' that was needed.  So the 'shield project'
was an all-mortal effort.
     It was daunting enough that it took Cevn 37 trillion years to
restructure the Everything.  It was quite possible that they might
have to repeat Cevn's feat, depending on how fucked up the Everything
was after Isilblius ruined it.  But in the moment, Keiichi had to
focus his efforts to bear upon the near impossible task of rescuing
thought from thought, feeling from feeling, memory from memory.
     Bell-chan and the others had lived their whole lives having
certain extrasensory links between themselves, but for Keiichi and the
two other mortals, these 'senses' were strikingly new.  Because of the
novelty of having ESP-like powers, it would be difficult for the three
of them to shield their discovery from three Goddesses and a Demoness.
Not that Bell and the others would be deliberately prying...well, it
*was* possible that Mara and Urd might pry from time to time...the
potential existed that their thoughts and feelings could be
'intentionally' or 'accidentally' monitored by the Divines.  Thus, it
was imperative that they didn't 'broadcast' their progress too much.
This was a challenging proposition; hiding their discovery from the
four Divines would be like stopping up a leaky soup bowl in the
presence of a starving man.  Or trying to silence a voice after the
words had reached the ears of many listeners.
     This was a definitely worse than a paradox...
     But all at once, Keiichi realized that the moment they created a
working 'mental shield'...they'd have a *shield*.  Once the mental
shield became a reality; their new shield would completely protect
their thoughts from the four Divine sisters.  While the mental shield
was doing its work, veiling his thoughts initially...he and the two
policewomen could expand on their work while 'shielded', in order to
create an actual 'failsafe' system.  He was especially concerned about
Skuld; any mental shield they created would have to be complex enough
so that it couldn't be 'debugged' by a genius mind fueled by natural
tendency towards inquisitiveness.
     So what they really had to do was work toward constructing a
reliable 'shield-within-a-shield'.
     Once they initially created a means of thought shielding, they
would have to 'tweak' it a bit, otherwise Bell-chan and her sisters
might be able to bypass it.  The whole process was comparable to test-
building an secret racing engine in public.  As long as they worked
during daylight in front of a throng of spectators, the engine itself
wouldn't be very secret.  It's construction and design would be
observable and comprehensible.  But once darkness cloaked their work,
the queue of spectators would leave...and then they could fasten the
engine onto a chassis and drive off invisibly to a repair garage;
there, they could finish modifying and testing the engine unobserved.
     He could hear Miyuki in his mind cheerfully agreeing with his
analogy.
     "<Let's get back to work!>" she said in his thoughts.

          *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *

     It took just under a trillion years.  A significant cycle of time
that seemed to pass in an eyeblink, but it was the moment that
counted.  Keiichi and the two policewomen triumphantly announced to
the others that they had devised a functional 'thought shield'.  Met
with relief by the four sisters, Keiichi asked for permission to
proceed.  After an enthusiastic "Yes!", he snapped his finger and
implanted a cogito-mnemonic shield with a 'lock key' inside of the
consciousness of Belldandy and the others, including Miyuki and
Natsumi.  Next, Natsumi took her turn to implant another layer of
shields and 'lock keys' inside his mind, as well as those of everyone
else.  Finally, Miyuki places her set of 'lock keys' in Natsumi, his,
and the other four's consciousness of being.
     What they had done was encrypt the 'lock key' within their own
thoughts in such a way that it couldn't be deciphered by others.  Such
a 'key' that could unlock the thought shields could only be
implemented if the three of them agreed to it.  It was comparable to a
room with three sets of doors, doors that could only be unlocked by
three different keys held by three different keyholders.
     The shields they had created were triple-redundant, utilizing a
harmonic insignia of cognition so complex that it would take Skuld a
minimum of several hundred billion years to decipher each 'lock'.
Assuming that Skuld would want to do such a thing.
     The unspoken concern was whether Isilblius could undo their work.
If he managed to bypass the shields, he could manipulate their
minds...turning them against each other.  Keiichi wasn't exactly
brimming over with confidence regarding this issue, but he *was*
confident that the 'engine' or 'kernel' of the thought shields was
intricate enough to keep Isilblius busy a long time.  According to
Bell and the others, Isilblius was powerful...but he wasn't a prodigy.
     Once they were finished, Miyuki and Natsumi compressed the
trillion of years into a moment, so that they could circle back to the
starting point of their work.

          *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *

     To Belldandy's perspective, Keiichi had only been gone a short
while...
     "<Done already, Keiichi?!>" she said happily, her eyes sparkling
with expectation.  He hugged her, and then turned the 'key' in each of
their minds.  A moment later, he felt two small surges of thought
activity in his thoughts as Miyuki and Natsumi locked up *his* mind.
     He looked at Belldandy expectantly, and smiled when he noticed
his fiancee's face visibly relaxing.  This was all the proof he
needed, as she sighed with relief and smiled happily at him.
     "Let's test this out, Bell-chan.  Can you tell me what I'm
thinking?" he asked.  Keiichi's thoughts alighted on a special memory:
a late evening sun setting below the hill behind their house, the
clouds in the sky rouged with twilight.  He and Belldandy were sitting
on the roof of their temple home, shoulder-to-shoulder.  It was the
first time she had actually leaned against him intentionally.
Together, they had watched the sunset, Belldandy leaning against him
rather than pulling herself away with a blush of embarrassment after a
brief moment's contact.
     A very dear memory for Keiichi.
     Belldandy smiled and shook her head "no".  Keiichi then
visualized an 'opening' in his mental shield and let the memory pass
through.  His fiancee's reaction was almost instant; her eyes flashed
wide with recognition and she smiled sweetly, a slight blush to her
cheekbones.
     In response, she flashed a memory back at him.  Keiichi saw the
same scenario from Belldandy's perspective.  He felt himself traveling
*inside* of her feelings!  He experienced how Bell-chan had decided to
lean *against* him that time...because she was finally beginning to
feel safe in the knowledge that it was more than just a wish that
bound her to him.  She had examined her own heart, and realized that
she was really beginning to feel sentiments towards him that surpassed
the simple joy she experienced whenever she granted a wish.  The
setting sun was important to her as well; because it had cast the
whole experience in a romantic setting.  Romance was something quite
new for a young Goddess who had never sat next to a young Earthrealm
man before.  Keiichi blushed as his senses scintillated with the
thrill and surprise Belldandy had felt during that experience.  She
had been expecting *him* to pull himself away with embarrassment!  But
when he didn't shy from her, Keiichi felt her feeling of joy...a very
warm feeling, almost like being bathed in a comforting bath as he felt
the other surprise she felt...
     Belldandy had felt a blossoming sense of love towards him for the
first time that evening.  The Goddess who couldn't recognize romance
from radishes had been caught up in a delicious elegance...and was
never the same thereafter.
     Keiichi sighed, overwhelmed by the emotional impressions.  It
dawned on him that *that* moment had been the spark...one of many, to
be sure,...that had had urged their love to greater openness.
     And he had never even suspected that a shared moment on the roof
of the temple had so profoundly affected his Divine soulmate...
     "Ahhh, this feels so good!  Finally, I have 'me' back again!" she
said as she flew up into Keiichi's arms for a kiss.  An actual
*private* kiss, just between the two of them.  A kiss that Urd and the
others wouldn't sense, feel and think.
     A kiss he had been waiting a trillion years for.
     "Hey you guys!  Since the shields seem to be working really well,
do you mind if Bell and I 'go off' for a while by ourselves?" Keiichi
asked with a wink.

          *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *

     This time, they convened an actual War Council.
     Belldandy, Urd, Skuld and Mara were dressed respectively in their
Warrior Goddess and Warrior Demoness battle outfits.  Keiichi had
outfitted himself in a stunning mix of traditional samurai garb and
racing coveralls.  Miyuki and Natsumi wore battle outfits of their own
devising as well...a futuristic synergism between their regulation
Tokyo policewomen's uniforms and something resembling the Knight Sabre
mecha-outfits from Bubblegum Crisis.
     After all, with the ability to control all forms of matter, it
only made sense for the mortals to create battle outfits along
imaginary lines...but using designs that mattered to them.  Miyuki and
Natsumi were fans of the many policewomen 'gun babe' anime and manga,
including Bubblegum Crisis, Gunsmith Cats, and the Burn Up series.
And since Keiichi had spent a decade in medieval Japan, the samurai
armor was a must...plus he felt much more comfortable wearing racing
outfits.
     Mara looked at the others, and then remembered how she had been
initially surprised when she remanifested herself in her Warrior
Demoness attire in preparation to take on Isilblius...
     To her immense shock, she had materialized in a battle outfit
that was far more ornate than the typical enhancements that befitted a
Senior First Class Demoness.  She was dressed in a black bodysuit that
clung tight to her body, with a stripe of red slashing from her ankles
up the sides of her legs, past her hips and waist and then running up
under her armpits and inside of her arms until it reached her wrists.
A pair of intricate wings of red and gold flared away from her
shoulders.  Under her wings, a translucent silver cape descended from
her shoulders.  Her forehead was ringed with a spherical helmet with
thin gold strands that bubbled out into an exotic semi-circle of
tapering wands.  Her midriff was exposed, creating just the right aura
of sexiness.  After all, she was a Demon*ness*...and fashion had to be
served.  She had been especially pleased with the large calf-high
boots studded with diamonds and filigreed with streaks of Ixodenum,
with decorative flames hovering at the sides of her heels, Chinese-
style.  Her hands were clad with glove-coverlets decorated with
Demonic symbols and replica Sere-Hawks at the wrists.  Her shoulders
were shielded with translucent geometric auras of orange energy...
     In a word, her military attire was far more ornate and
sophisticated than that of Mephisopholis, the renowned Marshal of the
WarDemons.  She felt like a 4th-dimension dream...
     Marveling at her Warrior Demoness Battlesuit, Mara had spun
delicately around in the air.  Pirouetting with glee, causing her
silver cape to flutter breezily.
     "Oh look...it's a Magical Girl!  Pretty Warrior Scout Sailor
Moon!  Or maybe 'Sailor Scout Mara' would be more honest!" Urd quipped
with amused causticity.  Her self-admiring mood ruined, Mara quickly
blushed crimson with embarrassment and indignance as her body
stiffened up.  Fists clenched at her sides, she summoned up a sphere
of energy and then shot a few plasma firebolts at her twin sister.
Urd easily dodged the half-hearted firebolts and waved her hand...
     Mara felt a tingling condense on her skin, as if a thin mist had
covered her entire body.  She looked up...and Urd was giggling.  She
looked down...and she discovered that she was now clad in a red and
white sailor fuku: complete with a red mini-skirt; ko-gal thick calf-
socks; ruby-red slippers that belonged in the Wizard of Oz; and a red
and pink scarf-tie.
     "URD, I'M GONNA KILL YOU!!!" Mara screamed, glaring at Urd
balefully.  With a wanding of her hands, she immediately willed Urd's
Warrior Goddess Battlesuit into a white and green sailor outfit.
     Urd now looked like a high-school girl during summer session.
     Mara broke out into howls of laughter...at least until Urd
discovered what she had done to her.  Urd went nuts at this, and
immediately streaked off in pursuit of Mara, flailing thunderbolts
after the grinning, departing Demoness.
     Left behind, Skuld and Belldandy had dissolved into tearful
laughter at the sight of the two sailor-suit outfitted sisters doing
battle...
     "Look!  There goes two noble girls!" Natsumi quipped between
giggles as Urd and Mara blazed overhead like twin comets, no longer
contending half-heartedly with each other.
     "Hee hee..maybe *we* should wear sailor outfits too!" Belldandy
commented, her ribcage hurting after laughing so hard.  Skuld reacted
to her fanciful idea with an expression of shocked distaste at
first...and then she smiled with a broad knowing grin as a flurry of
imagination swept her up.
     "Yeah!  That would be so funny!  Could you...bwah ha
hah...imagine the look on Isilblius's face when he gets his ass kicked
by all of us, dressed in Sailor Moon outfits..." Skuld exclaimed
gleefuly.  This brought on another cyclone of giggling.
     "Bell!  Much as I'd love to see you in a sailor fuku...don't you
even think about including me in this 'idea' of yours!" Keiichi
shouted in a warning voice, overhearing them.
     "Wah!  That'd be a total disaster!  You would ruin the whole
effect if you showed up in a sailor outfit, Keiichi!  We wouldn't have
to fight Isilblius at all if that happened...he'd probably..bwah ha
haa!..*laugh* himself to death!" Natsumi teased.
     While everyone burst into unrestrained howls of laughter at that,
Miyuki looked at the twin sister battle unfolding above their heads
and noted to herself, "At least they're getting in some combat
practice."

          *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *

     Mara's attention returned to the present.  As she listened
distantly to the others discussing strategies, she found herself
filled with doubt.  How they were ever going to take on Isilblius if
they were prone to such bouts of insanity?  Even though the seven of
them were no longer cosmically challenged, they were still daunted by
the task ahead.
     It would be no simple thing, defeating Isilblius...
     The dread rival of both Lords...and now the Seven...had performed
the most execrable acts upon the Everything that could ever be
imagined.  No, it was worse than anything imaginable.  Belldandy
frequently had to check her emotions at the door, otherwise she would
bout nauseous just thinking about what Isilblius had done to the
Everything.
     With a fruition of Soul-less depravity, Isilblius had usurped the
Ultimate Power for his own use...and then recreated the Everything in
his own image.  The transformed Everything was horrible, disgusting,
trenchant in the extreme.  All matter and energy in the Everything,
from the smallest particles of matter to the largest structures of
universe-patterns...*was* Isilblius.  He had taken the entire spatial
structure of the Everything and recast every individual component of
it into a part of himself.  Isilblius atoms.  Isilblius galaxies.
Isilblius animals.  Isilblius stars.
     Isilblius Yggdrasil.  Isilblius Vanagdrasil.
     But it hadn't stopped there.  The vulgar baseness of his
violations included the temporal realms as well.  Time itself had been
corrupted.  Isilblius wasn't satisfied with being Everything...he
wanted to be Everywhen as well.  In a sordid act of possessiveness,
the entire TimeWeb had been warped to his own design.  Time was now so
tightly integrated with Space, that it served as a 'circulatory
system' to the Everything, transferring chronometric energies for
quantum energies, feeding the whole.  Feeding Isilblius.  In each
instantial sequence of Time, there was an Isilblius...and nothing
more.
     An infinity of TimeWeaves, each with Isilblius inside of them.
     The Mid-Space had been compromised as well, transformed into a
sort of Soul Vortex.  This particular alteration that Isilblius had
wrought was by far the most disturbing to Belldandy.  Continuing on
his twisted mission to recreate all aspects of the Everything as non-
Life, he had stripped all the Souls in the Multiplicity of their
uniqueness.  Every sentient Soul had been confined, and then altered
to become an Isilblius Soul.  The only Souls she could sense in the
Multiplicity were countless of these Isilblius Souls.  Each Soul had
been surrounded, 'coated' by the Soul of Isilblius, trapping them.
The encapsulated Souls were then being 'digested' by Isilblius.  Each
Soul's fullness of sentient awareness was stripped away; instead of
having a life of their own, the Souls were bound up as reflections and
attributions of Isilblius's foul Soul.  Yet, they *were* Souls, so
they were totally aware of what was happening to them despite the
sense that they were violated, unwillingly forced to carry parts of
Isilblius's consciousness...
     Deep in her heart, Belldandy could hear the voices of a
googleplexity of Souls, screaming in pain and fear.
     Beyond her, the Mid-Light itself was a sickly pale yellow, the
crux of two rotting trunks of two husk-trees.  The firm light of
energy that typified the Mid-Light now was oscillating weakly, burning
out in feverish flashes like a candle unwaxed.
     Everything was Isilblius.
     The more she discovered, the more Belldandy realized that the
task that had fallen to them would be extremely adverse.  They had to
defeat an enemy that had made himself inseparable from Time, Space,
Soul and the Ultimate Force.  All four processes were sempiternal when
considered within the rubric of Metanative trans-science; they were
inexhaustible, inexpugnable, eternal and transfixed upon all
dimensions of existence.  As long as Metanative energies existed,
these four essential processes would exist as well.
     But were they indestructible?
     Isilblius had scorched them to pale.
     Belldandy questioned the possibilities.  If she and her six
teammates managed to destroy Isilblius, could they do so without
causing irrevocable damage to Time, Space, and Soul?  Beyond this was
a greater paradox yet...if they destroyed Isilblius, what would happen
to the Ultimate Force?  Isilblius had grafted himself within the UF,
merging with it so thoroughly that it was impossible for them at
present to distinguish him from the UF.  By destroying Isilblius, they
might be sealing their own doom.
     Their resource of power *was* the UF!
     Belldandy found herself unable to reason out what Cevn's role in
all this.  He was definitely linked to Isilblius, as Urd had
discovered.  But what was his link?  One of Skuld's observations
seemed to aim at the conclusion that he was still alive, somehow.  If
they destroyed Isilblius, would he survive?  Skuld had also hinted at
the strong probability that he had given them their UF-level powers.
If they defeated Isilblius, would his 'portion' of the UF revert back
to Cevn?
     How could he have done what Skuld claimed?  His Soul was gone,
his physical body had died back on the Earthrealm, the mandala they
had designed to return him had failed.  Skuld's idea was only
thoughtspace; in the present reality, they had no proof the he was
alive.  Yet, Skuld seemed to sense that he was alive, but somehow
lingering invisibly in the 'background'.
     But Isilblius was definitely alive.  Besides the seven of
them...and the Lord, Dark Lord and Death...there were no other beings
alive in the Everything.  Isilblius couldn't even be properly
acknowledged as 'alive; no living being could ever enact the heinous
evil that he had done.
     "How do you destroy an enemy when that enemy is everything?  Can
anything be left after everything is destroyed?" Belldandy asked
herself once more, narrowing her eyes as she tapped her index finger
against her slender thumb.

          *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *

     Miyuki and Natsumi were huddled in deep thought.  Of the seven in
their group, they were the only ones who had actually partnered
together in the past; in their minds, they felt that they were more
keen to the notion of teamwork than the others.  True, Belldandy, Urd
and Skuld were sisters...and as such, a strong link of empathy existed
between them.  They had occasionally allied their skills and intuition
when events demanded it, such as during the time Celestine tried to
bring Time to a halt.  But kinship was a far cry away from dynamic
comaradarie that she and Natsumi had experienced during years on
patrol in Bokuto.  If they were going to beat this thing, it would
take flawless execution *as a unit*.
     Being of an investigative bent, Miyuki was more reserved in her
opinions than the others during their council of plans.  After each
strategy was aired, she wasted no time in pointing out potential risks
and flaws in it.  Her detractions drew the derision of the four
Divines, especially the Demoness woman.  But Miyuki was used to being
the target of irritated reactions; back in the Bokuto Precinct, she
had often played Devil's Advocate against Natsumi's 'gung-ho approach'
and Yoriko's 'calculated approach' to apprehending criminals.  Despite
the ire that her objections sometimes drew from the others, Miyuki
remained steadfast in her belief that a single voice of discord within
a group was often essential to the process of reaching accord.
     This was one 'case' that they couldn't screw up.
     Sequences of eternity passed her by...
     In a sense, this was by far the biggest 'arrest case' that she
had ever worked on.  Miyuki's mind kept vaulting to a single point of
clarity: the vital necessity for her to view Isilblius along the lines
of criminality.  Certainly, Natsumi would be thinking along these same
lines...but could she convince the others to regard Isilblius's
iniquities as more than wont of destruction?  It was so tempting to
regard him as a cosmic force, without paying due attention to his
psychology.  As a crim, he could be typified as a ruthless,
narcissistic sociopath who would stop at nothing to achieve his goal.
There were no restraints to his dictatorial ambitions; Isilblius had
conceived and acted out his destructive havoc with the callousness of
an anthropophagite.
     He was by far the most dangerous type of malefactor.
     At first, after they had been transformed into this transcendent
reality, she and Natsumi had felt intimidated at first.  One day they
were Tokyo policewoman on patrol, the next day they were all-powerful
beings.  Not the average experience one encounters during their
traffic beat.
     The only other 'mortal, Keiichi, even had a decided edge on she
and her partner.  He *already knew about all of this stuff*.  He could
make sense of it, perhaps even take it in stride.  Mention the words
"Goddess" and "Demoness" and Keiichi would barely bat an eyelash.  But
when comparing herself with the four Divine women, Miyuki felt
extremely belittled.  After all, she and Natsumi were mortals...while
the four sisters had lived almost *a million years* between them.
Belldandy and her sisters were accustomed to the experience of living
with Goddess and Demoness powers...
     In the process of adapting to her 'new' state of being, Miyuki
often found herself at odds with herself; struggling constantly with
the possibility that she had nothing of consequence to offer to the
group.  She and Natsumi were outsiders.  Rocks among the tuned bells
of a harmonic gamelan or carillon.  Lame ducks amidst beauteous
swans...
     But the five had welcomed them into their memories, into their
minds and hearts.  Slowly, Miyuki gradually acclimated herself to the
deific new powers and abilities.  She began to share in the profundity
of the thoughts of the four Divine sisters.  They too were overwhelmed
by their new powers.  Everything that was familiar was thawing away,
like a sweep of crystal hills of snow being reshaped by the March
sunlight.  But even after she had helped craft the essential 'mental'
shields that allowed each of them to control the outflow of their
thoughts and feelings...Miyuki still felt amiss.
     Why had the cosmic powers-that-be chosen to include her and her
partner in the group of Seven?  She sensed that the barely-known Cevn
was behind this, and yet she failed to understand *why*.  "Why me?"
questions had plagued her of late.
     But as she participated in the discussions about how to deal with
Isilblius, she realized that she *did* have something to contribute.
For none of the others were able to consider Isilblius in the same
light as she.  To the four Divines, he was a mega-Divine force to be
reckoned with.  They were focused on trying to confront him at the
level of divine powers, the TimeWeb, Metanative energies, etc.  To
Keiichi, he was a mindless Evil.  All that Keiichi wished for was a
way to end Isilblius's reign of horror.
     But in her and Natsumi's reckoning, Isilblius was a nothing less
or more than a terrorist criminal.
     A particular type of Evil...
     And within the stride of her convictions, Miyuki suddenly
realized *why* she and Natsumi had been included in the group.

          *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *

     "There is one important factor that is absent from your
considerations.  Each of you view Isilblius in a certain way...and
that's good.  But Natsumi and I regard him within an outlook that none
of you possess.  Because of this, I strongly feel that your plans are
missing something.  To us, Isilblius is a perpetrator.  A criminal.
In order to gain this perspective, we have to see the 'iron' of his
will...so that we can really *see* him for what he is.  Isilblius is
the distorted mirror of our own shortcomings; his motives are but
amplifications of perversion.  We all struggle with egoism, the
pervasive need to be affirmed in all matters of judgment.  Just like
an egoist desires to be the only voice of reason in their
world...which makes them the *unchanging* voice of truth...Isilblius
wishes to be alone and powerful.  To these ends, he has blighted away
all opposition, so he can monopolize his own being.  To be true to
himself, he had to eliminate *everything* else.  His greatness is
fragile, because it depends on the condition that everything else
around him is on bended knee.  Bended knee...as in not existing.  A
commonality among criminals is their strong fear of change; a faculty
of dread that is fixed within them to a degree that moral beings
cannot comprehend.  Isilblius is no different.  His weaknesses will
need to be drawn out, not simply attacked.  War with him...and he will
emerge victorious.  He had already won the war, so to speak," she
explained, gesturing towards the pseudo-Everything.
     "But once we convince Isilblius of the value of the one thing he
doesn't share with any being...love...and he will fall.  Ultimately,
criminal behavior is but a manifestation of self-love above anything
else.  In contrast, *our* strength derives from the friendships we
share, the love that we share, the intimacy of expression, bearing and
empathy that binds us together.  When these are profiled against the
psyche of a criminal, Isilblius's weaknesses will become our
strengths," Miyuki explained.
     Natsumi looked at her partner, marveling at how Miyuki's
explanation has spoken to her own feelings, her own heart.
     "Isilblius is obviously a criminal, because he so easily crossed
beyond every moral and ethical line imaginable.  He's *killed*...on an
unprecedented scale.  The catalogue of his atrocities is far worse
than mere genocide.  We cannot stoke the fires of his hatred directly;
he'll only make our own anger offend our goal.  Instead, we must
convince him that his life isn't worth protecting.  That will be the
lever-gap in his psychological armor.  Remember, we're dealing with a
being that doesn't give a shit about anything.  So we can't simply
frustrate him.  He needs to be possessed of doubt.  When criminals are
possessed of doubt, they start to screw up.  As policewomen, our job
is to detect these blunders and exploit them to our advantage.
Isilblius is one perp that I'm not going to let get away," Natsumi
added, nodding her head at Miyuki.
     Warmed by Natsumi's determination, Miyuki continued.
     "Here's what I propose," Miyuki began, the weight of all
existence carried forth on every word she would offer henceforth.
"Using police parlance...Isilblius needs to treated like a common
criminal...and have his ass arrested by us.  He has committed the most
heinous act in the history of the Everything.  So we need to prepare
ourselves to be police, judge, jury...and executioner."
     Skuld felt a lump in her throat in reaction to *how* Miyuki had
said the latter.  She looked to her sisters for comfort, but they were
listening raptly to Miyuki's plan.  Skuld had never killed a being
before...with the exception of Bugs, of course...but they weren't
beings, per se.  Neither was the Ultimate Destruction Program; to
Skuld, it was just another suite of software that needed to be anti-
virused out of existence.  But Isilblius was a *being* in every sense
of the word.  The worst kind of being, but a being none the less.  She
wanted him dead, but Skuld didn't want to be the one who killed him.
     "There are seven of us, so we need to approach this as a team,
with each person using their own strengths.  Belldandy will be the
first to confront Isilblius, because he hates what she represents the
most.  She is kind, loving, concerned, pure, innocent, and blissful in
aspect.  She is a nonpareil, the quintessence of a certain form of
beauty that is pure and wonderful.  Isilblius will be strongly
affected by her presence, because he *hates* Life itself.  When he is
initially challenged by all the best that Life has to offer, he will
become enraged and confused.  Remember, to him...we can't possibly
exist."
     Belldandy smiled sweetly, somewhat embarrassed by Miyuki's sea of
compliments.  Her sense of humility only served to confirm Miyuki's
opinion that Belldandy was the right person for the initial stage of
the apprehension.
     "After Belldandy raises his ire, Urd will be the next to attack
Isilblius.  We need to attack him not only with our UF powers, but
also with our personalities.  In contrast to Belldandy's innocence,
Urd's rambunctious nature will serve well to further unbalance him.
Urd is sharp-of-tongue, wily, unrepentant, irreverent, caustic and
seductive.  While Belldandy's assault will be of a moral ground, Urd's
assault will consist of an emotional haranguing of Isilblius.  Urd,
you must face him head-on and convey every possible hurtful reality
into his consciousness.  Taunt him, ridicule him, mock him, subject
him to the harshest assault-ecrasez l'infame...until his resentment is
inflamed even further."
     Urd nodded her head, her eyes gleaming with resolve.
     "Once Urd has thoroughly deranged Isilblius's emotions, it will
be Skuld's turn.  Skuld's youth will undermine Isilblius by initially
making him overconfident.  Criminals tend to stereotype children as
'non-beings' and 'victims'..."
     "I am not a 'children'!" Skuld shouted, interrupting Miyuki.
     "One may wonder about that from time to time," Natsumi cooed
smoothly, patting Skuld on the shoulder with fraternal encouragement.
Skuld wasn't able to see the wide grin on Natsumi's face, as the
erstwhile policewoman was standing behind her.
     "...well, uh...in any case, we need to make sure that Isilblius
takes the bait, so to speak," Miyuki resumed.  "He'll objectify you,
viewing you as nothing more than a child...which will be his profound
loss.  But we all know that you're the most creative and intelligent
being amongst us.  One look at you and Isilblius will think you're a
pushover, because he'll immediately type you as a rambunctious teenage
kid.  But instead, you're going to cream him with that super-genius
mind of yours, Skuld.  Your job, Skuld, is to contest Isilblius
intellectually by engaging him in a debate.  You must argue ad
reductio in response to anything he feels is 'the truth'.  Once you've
deconstructed his outlooks on 'reality', you'll need to confound him
further yet.  To wrap him up in so much confusion, he'll start to
doubt *everything*.  Especially himself."
     "Sounds totally cool to me!" Skuld exclaimed, beaming with
enthusiasm.
     "Once you've completely disoriented him, we'll turn to Natsumi
and myself for the actual 'arrest'.  Natsumi has the strongest 'ki'
energy of any of us.  She's a warrior.  Over the years as her partner,
I've come to respect her 'wild human' strength..."
     Natsumi frowned archily at this, but let Miyuki continue.
     "Put simply, Natsumi has *guts*!  Her immense strength comes from
confidence in herself coupled with an irreversible resolve.  I've
witnessed all sorts of super-human feats from this woman," Miyuki
said, gesturing towards her partner.  "She'll be perfect for our
'knockout punch'."
     Natsumi smiled sheepishly at this, behind her blush.
     "Natsumi.  Your role in this is very simple, but very critical.
After bouting with Belldandy, Urd and Skuld, Isilblius will be
considerably weakened.  Then it will be our turn...you and I will take
him on.  We need to consider him as the deadliest of all criminals.
We'll pursue him until he becomes exhausted, and once that's done, all
you have to do is kick Isilblius's ass!  Up until this point, our
attacks will be directed at him at the level of kokoro.  Now, we'll
rely on you to directly assail him at the level of manifest energies.
In other words, pound on him with all the abandon of a street fighter
until he's immobilized, and then I'll 'cuff him'!"  Miyuki said,
direct and to the point.
     "How are you going to 'cuff him'?" Skuld asked.
     "The same way we locked you out of certain parts of your minds.
We'll use the 'mental shield' technique.  I'll indwell a mental shield
inside of his psyche, which should 'disconnect' him from parts of
himself.  Instead of being a whole, Isilblius will be momentarily
fragmented.  It will take him some time to recombine all the aspects
of his being back into a single unity...but during that time, he'll be
especially vulnerable.  We'll be able to confine him, with Keiichi's
help."
     "Keiichi?" Belldandy, Urd, Skuld and Mara blurted out.  Miyuki
smiled smugly...especially since the only person who was nonplussed
about this was Keiichi himself.  Keiichi was looking at her
attentively.
     "Once Isilblius is apprehended, Keiichi will be called upon for a
special task," she noted.  Turning her attention to Keiichi, she
continued.
     "What you'll need to do is create a 'cell' for him, Keiichi,
using all the Ultimate Force energies at your disposal.  You'll have
to think faster, act quicker, and formulate temporal-physical
constructs instantaneously, so that Isilblius will get dizzy trying to
figure 'em out.  What we need you to do, Keiichi, is confine him with
the one thing he cannot fight..."
     "Speed," Keiichi said, finishing Miyuki's sentence.  He had
already sensed what his role in eliminating Isilblius would be.  None
of the group had competed in a conflict while using the tool of
velocity.  But in Keiichi's mind, velocity was definitely a tool.  As
a seasoned racer, he was used to employing speed in a certain manner,
towards a certain ends.  However, this would be much more than a
race...he would have to draw upon all his racing expertise, plus the
split-second skills he had honed as a samurai back when Isilblius had
stranded him in strife-ridden ancient Japan.
     In his own way, he was a warrior too.
     Keiichi looked forward to using his bushido skills against
Isilblius, to pay him back for robbing him away from Belldandy for 13
years of his life.  He would imprison Isilblius within an ever-
changing convex of matter, energy and Time.
     "And what do I get to do?" Mara asked.
     "You're the executioner," Miyuki answered levelly.
     "Figures.  You guys get to fight Isilblius, and then you leave
the dirty work to the Demoness.  How typical," Mara said with a look
of disgust.
     Miyuki was almost crestfallen at Mara's strong words...at least
until she caught the glimmer in the Demoness's orange-red eyes.
     After savoring Miyuki's reaction...after all, Mara was *still*
the head of the Demoness Mischief Office...she slowly broke into a
wide grin, exposing her fangs.  She had definitely gotten over on
Miyuki!
     Miyuki whispered to Natsumi, "She really had me going for a
moment there!"
     "As I suspected, I'm going to be the executioner.  That's double-
plus good, because I've been busy considering all the best ways to
kill Isilblius would be," Mara announced with thoughtful solemnity.
     "Mara, you can't just destroy him!  If you destroy Isilblius, you
might end up taking the Ultimate Force and the Everything with him..."
Keiichi noted with concern.
     "Don't worry...I've come up with a demise for Isilblius that only
a Demoness could invent," Mara replied with a grin.
     "You've really been thinking about that?" Skuld asked.
     "What do you think I am...a Goddess?!" Mara shot back with mock
indignity.  This brought a ripple of giggles to the group.
     "As you know, Isilblius manipulated me into creating him in the
first place.  I had to endure a lot of self-abuse and guilt because of
his actions.  Not to mention having my Soul almost completely drained
away by those SpiderDemons.  So I'm going to serve him up a dose of
poetic justice for using me like that."
     "How?" Miyuki enquired.
     "I'm going to make him kill himself."

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