Member 53 had originally picked her screen-name (pronounced "EFF-sucked") as an inside-joke. It was a line-command for a specific operating system. It just so happened to bear a passing resemblance to the f-word, which most people assumed it was a euphemism for. That was part of the joke. None of this presented a problem, until it came time for people to address her in person.

At first it was funny when they tried to pronounce it phonetically. Then it became mildly annoying. Now she found herself wanting to say the f-word all the time when people got it wrong and she had to educate them. But she'd made her peace with it. She'd made her peace with a lot of things.

Her car sliced around a curve now coming off of 59th and Maine. It was a newer import from the Aquarian Nebula called the StarSteed™, and she had to admit it handled wonderfully. It wasn't terribly flashy, but eventually she'd get a new paint job which would fix that, probably a shimmery yellow. The main reason she got it though was it had a solid reputation for underwater performance. No leakage guaranteed up to thirty fathoms or 16 billion cyclo-revs - she couldn't pass up a deal like that. And with the current state of affairs and the duties they entailed, there was no telling what she'd have to be prepared for.

For all intents and purposes, she was Ven's bodyguard. And that meant she had to have contingencies in place the Secret Service would envy.

Actually, she was much more than just a bodyguard - she'd assisted other Children in confrontations with the Perdendosi foot-soldiers and even survived a few run-ins with their Elite Guards. On the wall of her apartment she had profile silhouettes painted of almost two-dozen soldiers and guards. Blue paint represented one she took down with a weapon; red paint signified a hand-to-hand combat win. She couldn't say "kill" because they didn't have enough knowledge of Perdendosi or foot-soldier physiology to determine if they could be killed by conventional means. But each time she'd ensured the Children had walked away to fight again, so in her book that was a win.

And she was smart. Extremely smart. She was one of the few entrusted by Ven to helm the operating systems at his place and at the Chamber Hall if ever he was otherwise occupied - which so far was never. He usually briefed her on everything going on with the Children, often soliciting her input. It was pretty much an open secret that she was second in command of their little organization; if she said "jump", your ass had better be up in the air.

And she was attractive. Extremely attractive. One member likened her features to that of a china doll, a compliment she always appreciated. She was thin, and she thought her ears were too big, but she always appeared taller than she was. That of course had more to do with attitude than anything else. Guys would usually dig her, but in turn fell completely beneath her notice. It took a real man to get her attention...but they were hard to come by. And she didn't have much time for that anyway.

fscked was also Ven's driver. This too was an unofficial title, but more often than not, when he needed to get somewhere, she was the one to take him. This suited them both just fine, since it kept him in close enough proximity where she could be watchful, and he could rely on her skills behind the wheel like few others. She was an exceptional driver; by his reckoning, there was only one other Child whose skills compared.

(The fact that Ven didn't drive was another open secret, and truth be told, the vast majority of the Children were so fanatically loyal to him, he could have gotten nearly any one of them to deliver him from place to place. Some of the female members would have relished the opportunity to have him in the passenger seat or in the back seat, whichever he preferred. Still, Ven was primarily concerned with taking care of business. He effectively had a calling, and fscked considered it her unspoken calling to help him see his business through. She could respect him, which she couldn't say of most, and the feeling was mutual.)

The wind blew through fscked's red hair as she raced down the final streets to Ven's place. He resided in a two-floor apartment above an empty storefront, which allowed him plenty of privacy. She pulled around the corner in order to park in back, and they both jumped out and headed up the steps. There was nothing unusual about their surroundings, but she usually walked ahead of him, just in case.

Inside of Ven's apartment, the only light came from another wall of video monitors up on the top floor, very similar to those at the Chamber Hall. These were always left on as well, and his first instinct was to check and see if he'd missed anything. From anyone else, this behavior would have bordered on compulsion - and indeed, before the Acid Bath, fscked actually felt that it was at times - but now it all seemed part of their protocol. And more often than not it was warranted.

Part of her own protocol was checking his security systems, and when she saw that nothing looked out of order, she nodded that he could turn on his lights. "I'm gonna go downstairs and see if that package arrived," he said.

She held up an index finger to get him to wait, and went up to the top floor to sit at his workstation. She scanned the internal monitors first, and when she saw nothing suspicious save for the package at the foot of the front steps she motioned that he could continue. "I'll be online going through my messages. Check that box first," she said. Ven's eyes widened slightly and he nodded as if to say, Yes mother, you're being overprotective, then he opened his apartment door to descend the steps to the front door. There was indeed a box waiting for him there, and she watched through the eyes of the security camera until Ven had hefted it before taking her eyes off him.

"Yup, this is it," he said over the sound system, knowing full well she was listening. "Interstellar Parcel Systems comes through again."

fscked busied herself now with the tasks of responding to her messages, checking current events and generally net-surfing (she didn't trust most Earth-based content though, since the prevalent media outlets were screened by the Perdendosi-controlled bureaucrats in the FCC) while Ven opened the package below. He was talking about it, but then he realized the monitors above were rapidly jumping from webpage to webpage with dizzying speed...she was reading pretty much everything she was coming across, as fast as his system would allow. And that was plenty fast. Lights below indicated his servers were working triple-time, straining to keep up with the demand on their resources.

"You break it, you bought it," he called out, and one by one the monitors slowly rolled back to their original contents of CoA members. Altogether, they resembled an expanded and mutated Brady Bunch.

"The news reports say those outages are being caused by upgrades to the city's power supply lines. I don't buy that for a second," said fscked.

"Neither do they," said Ven, referring to the higher authority he answered to.

fscked descended the stairs and took a seat on the floor across from him, studying the object in his hands. It was a camera of the oddest sort, the most tell-tale sign of its function being the lens at the front, but even that was peculiar. It was oval shaped and dark and recessed into the body. The neck had a handle which could be twisted to the left or right sides, but there didn't appear to be a viewfinder, and there was a silver disc at the back with no apparent function at all. It looked very awkward to handle.

"Where does the film go?" she asked.

"Doesn't need it," he responded.

"Oh-kaaaaay. And this camera is special because...?"

Ven held the camera between them, aimed at fscked's face and directed, "Say 'cheese'," to which she instantly vamped. He captured her image three times in quick succession, the last being the most notable. He chuckled before he even got a chance to review it. Her expression had changed by the third click of the shutter when she realized -

"That creepy thing just blinked!"

He rotated the camera, trying to figure out just what button to push, then held it with its back facing upwards. The silver disc at the back began spinning rapidly, and then hovering above its diameter flashed the three images of fscked, the last wearing a look of surprise.

"I found it online last week. Figured it would come in handy, and wouldn't you know it shows up today just when I needed it. Like it was meant to be."

"Sweet," she said. "So why can't I just go tonight? I've collected field data before. With this thing it'd be a breeze." She was really just saying this because she was restless; she already knew what his answer would be.

"'Cause she was built for this job. It's what she does - and I'd never hear the end of it if she found out I sent someone else."

fscked laughed. "I won't tell her."

Ven grinned and nodded. "Well even beyond that, she was the one requested. And I don't argue with the bosses."

fscked looked at him. The green glow was finally gone from his eyes. It had lasted longer this time than any she could remember, which meant that it must have been a pretty intense session in the chamber. She was hesitant to ask him about it, even though he was usually pretty forthcoming with any information. "They must think things are gonna get pretty bad, huh?"

"You don't even wanna know."

"Worse than an alien invasion? That's saying something." Her brow furrowed. "Really Ven, what are we gonna do about it? I mean, there's a lot of us, sure, and we're all pretty powerful and can do crazy shit now...but there's who-knows-how many of them and they're at least as powerful as we are. Not counting the foot-soldiers and the sympathizers and however many of them are still out in space."

"Yeah, but..." He groped for words, fully appreciating her sentiments and trying to give the correct voice to his own. "I don't know. I had been worrying more about it too. You're right, what kind of revolt are we going to lead?"

"Just look at what we're working with here," she said, gesturing toward the video screens above. "Honestly, half of these nimrods would wet their pants if they knew what we were really up against." She shook her head. "Actually, half of these nimrods probably don't know how to spell 'nimrod'!"

"That's why the ones who need to know, know." He took off his cap and ran a hand through his own bright red hair. "Honestly, I'm not even told everything. Just what I can handle. Like I said, it used to worry me more. But now I just know...it's all going to fall into place."

"Just like that?"

"No," he said, "but we're all there is. So we've gotta make it work. And you know something? Not everyone in the galaxy agrees with what they've been doing here on Earth. It's easy to forget that, but we've got sympathizers."

"Sympathizers are one thing, but who else is willing to take them on?" She stopped and took a deep breath. "I'm sorry, you know it's not that I don't believe in what we're doing. It's just...I don't see where this is heading. I know too much to keep living blindly like everyone else, but I almost don't want to know any more."

"Yeah," said Ven.

They were both silent for a moment. It was mind-numbingly crazy when she really stopped to think about it, how the Perdendosi had so totally seized control of the planet, and yet in many respects life just went on like normal. People still had jobs and went to schools and walked their dogs and shopped online - all the trappings of a normal existence were still there, but they were much more fragile, like an eggshell. Or a china doll. There was that feeling that hung in the air thick and heavy like a fog:

THIS ISN'T YOUR PLANET ANYMORE, it reminded everyone. YOU EXIST AT OUR WHIM. AND IT CAN ALL BE GONE IN AN INSTANT.

It was still hard to wrap her mind around the enormity of it all. If she didn't know Ven though, she could almost pretend nothing was wrong. There were still stretches when she found herself forgetting it was so bad, and she'd remember being tucked in the warmth of the Acid for that endless night. Then she'd open her eyes and see a landscape void of warmth and color and she remembered why she walked around with a knot of hostility in her stomach. Why she wasn't afraid of any foot-soldiers or guards. Why she couldn't ever completely relax...and why she constantly wanted to kick some ass.

"I've got to say, it'd be nice to see a blue sky again," said fscked. She looked at her watch. "What time are we supposed to meet-?"

"Seven-fifteen," he said, already ahead of her. "Come on, we can grab some food on the way."

"You're buying," fscked said, and then she noticed Ven had put the camera and its attachments back in the box, but something seemed to be missing. "Hey, didn't that come with instructions?"

"I think I put them back in there somewhere." Then he grinned and put his sunglasses on. His eyes glowed again, briefly. "But think about it; you know she isn't gonna have any trouble figuring out how to make this work."

fscked had to agree. This part of the plan at least was already clearly in focus...