***LUCA***

"How the hell did I get involved in this?" Gideon mutters to himself as he paces the warehouse floor.

"Not by choice, that's for damn sure," Russell says. "Not entirely, anyway."

"You're at perfect liberty to return home whenever you like," Jasmine says, glowering at Gideon, "but we can't guarantee you'll have a home to return to for much longer!"

I clear my throat and hold out the phone I borrowed from Russell. He takes it back, then I turn my back on hi and return to the others, who are still huddled near the broken door.

Mattia peers around the corner. I follow her lead, seeing the mushroom cloud from the ultralight bomb still smoking a few miles west of us. There's no more heat or shock wave, but the light continues to shine behind the smoke.

"There better not be any radiation from that shit," she says.

"I don't think so," Kensi says as she sidles on up to us. "I've heard of these ultralight things before. No radiation - it just relies on big-bada-boom overload to kill people."

"So..." I muse, moving back around the corner and sitting next to the girls. "Where do we go from here?"

"Wherever your friend Alex is," Mattia says. "I'm thinking we should combine all our forces."

"He must be back in the Prime 'Verse," I say, thinking back to the short conversation we had. "He knew about the bomb. He must've seen it too, wherever he is."

"Weren't they supposed to be up at Tahoe or something?" asks Kensi. "They must've come through that portal thing too, then."

"If only we had a computer to GPS-track Annie's phone with," I say. "Unless...wait, does she have an iPhone or Galaxy or whatever?"

"I don't think so," Mattia says. "I think she and Russell use burn phones. Off-brand models."

"Doesn't that just mean it's harder to track 'em?" I ask. "But not impossible?"

"Maybe," she says. "I think. I dunno."

Russell crosses the floor and returns to us. "Annie, you're back on," he says, holding his phone out like we're in a business room making a conference call. "Where are you guys?"

"Uh...Miralo, I think," she says. "Lucky us, we found our way to Alex and Gabe's aunt and uncle."

"Yeah," Park butts in, "'cept Alex's uncle kinda shot him. And Juliet. And Annie."

"What the fuck?" I whisper. It had to be an accident, right?

"Miralo..." Gideon mutters. "That's a little ways east of where we are. We could probably get to you guys in an hour or so, maybe?"

"Try an hour and a half if you don't get stuck in traffic," jokes Alex.

"Which there might be a lot of right now," I say.

In the background on the other end, I hear a string of staccato popping noises, which can only be from a gun. Coming after said noises is a loud whoop of laughter. I'm thinking that's the twins' uncle. His aim better have improved, that's all I'm saying.

"Are the scrivs still coming?" I ask, feeling stupid for doing so.

"Duh," says Gabe. "So if you guys wanna come join us, be prepared to get into a fight."

"Where exactly are you guys?" Russell asks.

Two voices - one of which, I think, is Alex's, with the other being a woman's voice I don't recognize - talk for a second. Then I hear the woman give an address.

"Who's this?" Russell asks.

"Uh...Becky Grillo," she says. "Alex, Gabe, these are you guys' friends?"

"Would we want them coming here otherwise?" Alex scoffs.

"We'll have time for intros later," Russell says, pulling the phone back, "but for now, we kinda need to get going, all right?" He peeks around the door, then says, "We'll be right over, Annie, okay?"

"Land on the west side of the house if you can," Annie says tersely. "Otherwise, Uncle James might subject you guys to more friendly fire."

"May he never live that down!" Alex cries out before Annie and Russell hang up on each other.

Russell pockets his phone and leads us in flight, in the opposite direction. Half an hour later, we've flown beyond Sacramento and are over the eastern suburbs, where Miralo is located. I've heard stories from the twins about their aunt and uncle before - they apparently live in a nice Modern Family-type house, with enough art to fill a Roman museum and tons of state-of-the-art technology. If there exists such a thing, they must share the same "movie-buff" genes with Alex and Gabe - although they've said that the real movie buff is Uncle James, and it's actually Aunt Becky who's their blood relative.

It's so weird, how all the random things I've learned about these guys are resurfacing in my brain right now. Will it help me fight scrivs? Probably not. But maybe it'll help me concentrate on what's really at stake - the lives of millions of innocent angels.

Russell pauses to navigate us to the right address, and then we come in, landing at the foot of a steep driveway. Behind the house, gunfire continues to sound, and I see bolts of black and white - dark and light energy, of course - rising into the air, targeting a small cloud of scrivs hovering maybe a mile up. These scrivs aren't attacking, though - why is that?

Ever so politely, Russell rings the doorbell. A petite, well-tanned woman answers the door seconds later, peeking cautiously through a small square iron-barred window set in the center. "You the lady of the house?" Russell asks.

"Mm-hmm." She leans back and calls behind her, "Alex, Gabe, are these your friends?"

Footsteps click across a tile floor, then Alex looks through the window himself. He grins crazily as he sees us all. "Let 'em in," he tells his aunt.

She lets us in, and we all flood into the living room. Wow, Alex wasn't kidding - it really does look like a museum with all the paintings on the brown walls. And the ceiling is double-height, which would make this room ideal for playing a game of flying squash.

Once I'm done marveling at the sight - I'm such a prole sometimes - I see Alex and Gabe waving hi to me. The former has a bullet wound in his shoulder, and blood staining a wolf hoodie I've never seen him wear before. Despite this, he doesn't complain when I hug him hello - he even hugs me back, as does Gabe a few seconds later. "You're looking a little more alive than the last time I saw you," I joke.

"Now you're a cheekier bastard than Alex," he laughs. He then points at me and asks, "When did you get that cut?"

"What cut?"

Gideon points his thumb at his eyebrow. "You got it right here," he says.

"I didn't even know I had it," I say, touching my own eyebrow and feeling a rough spot. "Shit's been cray-cray today."

"Don't we know it." Gabe kisses me on that cut.

"Ow," I say, prompting a chuckle from Alex.

"They're not coming after us now, though, I don't think," Gideon says, smothering his own laugh.

"So why is James still shooting?" Becky storms past us and opens a glass sliding door in the next room. "James, are you guys still-?"

"Just warning shots!" calls a deep voice.

Juliet passes me and Gideon and tentatively approaches Alex, not unlike the way I approached Gideon. Also not unlike that moment, they hug, pulling each other close. She looks like she's been hurt herself - how many of my friends got shot by Uncle James?

"Hang on!" cries another woman I don't know, who's standing outside with two men - or, more accurately, one man and a boy, maybe the same age as me and the twins. "They're coming down, unarmed!"

"What does that mean?" I ask. "Are they gonna surrender?"

"And if so," mutters Alex, "why?"

"Should we go find out?" asks Russell. "Wait...where's Annie?"

"Right here," she says, poking her way into the room with another young dude right behind her. More hugs are exchanged between Russell and these two - the other dude turns out to be his and Annie's younger brother, Harlan.

"And where's Mom?" Russell asks. "I heard her talking."

"Outside," Annie says, gesturing to the back door with her head.

Russell makes his way out the door with Annie. Gabe, Alex, Fionna, and I follow close behind.

The guy with the gun, the older of the two males out here, looks up. When James sees us coming, he lowers his weapon and twists the earplugs out of his ears. "How long do I have to stand out here scaring the piss out of these guys? When do we get to fight a real fight, huh?"

The dark-haired woman - clearly Russell and Annie's mother; they have her eyes - frowns up at the cloud of scrivs still hovering above us like Satan's Air Force. "They're coming again," she says. "Look, see? Those three that were coming down before, but then they went back. Maybe this time, they'll finally surrender."

Russell can't contain himself any longer. "Mom!" he cries as he delivers yet another hug. I see tears falling from his eyes.

"Uh...guys?" The deep voice I heard earlier speaks up. I'm surprised it belongs to the boy next to James, whose own voice makes him sound much younger than he is. "They're not surrendering!" The boy fires light energy at the tree inbound scrivs, hitting one of them repeatedly. The others dodge his blasts and shoot down at us.

James immediately cocks his gun, but Russell's mom holds him back, pushing his gun barrel towards the ground before he can fire. I, on the other hand, blast one of the other two scrivs, as does Fionna. The twins pull water from the swimming pool next to us - I'm guessing their aunt and uncle are water elementals too, because most angels with the other three elemental types don't have one - and form ice blades.

"You guys can do ice now?" James whistles, awestruck by the sight.

"We've had plenty of practice," Gabe says, throwing blades into the air with both hands, as does Alex. Both of them land at least one each in the third scriv's body, cutting his - no, wait, the shape of the body under this scriv's suit suggests "he" is really a "she" - so, her body in a number of sensitive, possibly deadly places.

"Ouch," Alex says wryly as the lady scriv hits the ground, somehow managing to not land in a way that would drive the ice blades deeper into her legs and stomach. "So sorry, sweetheart."

Fionna edges away from Alex a few inches, but then moves the other way, past him and up to the soldier. She pulls the ice blades out of the woman's body, ignoring her protests, and cauterizes her wounds.

"Lots of that going on today?" I ask. "You look like you've been doing that job for years."

"It's useful to have fire elementals around," Fionna says, cracking a smile and earning a wink from me.

"STOP!" yells a voice from above.

I look up and see another scriv coming down, this one clearly unarmed and not ready to get elemental on anyone's ass. "God?" I ask, putting on a stunned face. "Is that you?"

"Couldn't resist, huh?" Alex asks, nudging my arm.

The descending scriv ignores me. "Forget what these three upstarts have done," he says, sounding like just another average Joe off the street. When he takes off his mask, he even looks like one. "They're rogues. They attacked of their own volition, without orders."

"Is that so?" Russell asks, crossing his arms.

The lady scriv who got ice-bladed looks up, her hand still on her stomach, and gnashes her teeth at this other guy. "No way would they have ordered us to just give up!" she hisses.

"It was an authenticated order from President Holly himself," says this new scriv dude, who I'm guessing is the boss of this particular attack squad. "He's surrendering, and we're all to do the same. Frankly, I've been wondering how long it would take for him to come to his goddamn senses."

Annie snorts in disbelief. "And you came to yours? Then why were you still fighting? You guys don't have to live on that stupid space sphere forever - there's plenty of room for everyone on the ground!"

"Bullshit," growls the lady scriv.

"What's this about a 'space sphere?'" Alex asks out of the corner of his mouth.

"It's where most scrivs have lived for the last seventy years or so," Russell explains. "A surface made entirely of solid dark energy, encircling the globe. Thompson thought it up, based on the concept of a Dyson sphere-"

"Can we just skip the Star Trek pseudo-science and get to the point?" asks Gideon.

"The sphere is a sort of scriv homeworld, with the mortals living on the real surface," Russell says. "It's why the sky in the Second is always dark-"

"You mean was," the scriv boss corrects him. "The whole sphere's failed now."

"All of it?" Russell asks. "Wow. Well, I hope everyone got down from there safely."

"Oh, of course," the lady scriv snarks. "The evacuation was a complete and shining success. No, of course not everyone got down! My family - my husband didn't make it, and my kids barely survived the crash-landing in Memphis!"

"Ever thought maybe trying to steal mortal cities wasn't the best idea?" Gabe asks.

"Where would you have us go?" the lady asks. "To that mythical Third 'Verse the president's science daddy keeps spouting off about?"

"Kept spouting off about," Russell's mom corrects her.

"Yeah," Alex chimes in. "You guys killed him when you bombed Tahoe."

"Enough!" the boss yells. "We're done, okay? Can we go home and face whatever punishment your people will come up with?"

Russell's mom pretends to think about that one. "I'll have to ask my - oh wait, you guys killed my husband too."

"I probably wasn't the one to have actually pulled the trigger," says the boss, "but never mind. You'll probably blame me anyway."

Russell's mom holds out her hand. "Can I hear the order from Holly? I'll acknowledge his surrender myself."

The boss removes his earwig and hands it off. "Ugh," I say, grimacing as Russell's mom sticks it in her own ear instead. "He might have brain worm eggs on that thing."

"Probably," says Annie, "but never let it be said that Marian Troy" - so that's her name, I think - "wasn't badass enough to not care."

"I'm hardly a badass," Marian says with a small, sheepish smile, "but thanks anyway." She pushes the earwig as far into her ear as she can - because her ears are small, it doesn't want to go in. "Yes, this is Marian Troy, interim leader of Operation White Shadows. Could I - yeah, I know, I'm legally dead. So what? It's not stopping me now." She leans back against the nearby barbecue. "The same can't be said for my husband, though, which is why I'm in charge now. I need the authentication for President Holly's surrender order, please." Pause. "Yes, I'll hold."

"For inconvenience," Fionna jokes, "press one..."

Russell does a raspberry at nobody in particular. "For those of you playing at home, phone tag is as much of a thing in the Second 'Verse as it is in Prime. Even when the decision to prematurely end what could have been the war to end all wars is on the line."

The good news is, it doesn't take too long for Marian to finally connect with whoever's dishing out Holly's orders. The bad news is, during that time of about six minutes, several more scrivs decide to quote-unquote "go rogue." Elementals fly everywhere across the backyard, and even well above it - for instance, I wind up flying after a particularly troublesome scriv who keeps dodging attacks from everyone else. My fireball attack makes him crash-land in the neighbor's pool instead, and from there, I grab him by the ankles and lift him (somehow not straining and/or herniating my entire body in the process) over the fence. As I fly, I dangle him low enough that his head smacks into the top of the fence, and I'm not sorry to have done so.

Then Marian yells, "Quiet, everyone!" Unbelievably, everyone gets quiet and stops what they're doing. Even if she doesn't think she's a badass, everyone else does, and that's all that matters, right?

"That's it," she says. "It's true. Holly's surrendered, and it's over."

"If you don't mind me asking," says the deep-voiced guy, "why?"

"It was Lincoln," Jasmine says. I hadn't seen her emerge from inside, but she must've been in the thick of things, judging from the two scrivs piled in a groaning heap at her feet. "He must still have had his transmitter active. I guess Dad was there to see him die, after a fashion."

Russell looks from Marian to Annie, then to Jasmine. Seeing her lip tremble as she sinks down against the wall and starts to cry, he crouches at her side and comforts her. She responds by burying her face in his chest as she sobs.

I should feel happy that this pointless inter-universal war is done before it could really get started. Instead, I feel...numb. Nothing but buzzing in my head, and in my hands too, like I'm about to pass out or something. I think I know where this is coming from. I've spent an infinity - not really, but it feels much longer to me, like I've been injected with one of those time-dilation drugs - helping out with this cause.

Now what?

Everyone around me talks, yells, argues...but me? I decide that the best thing to do is to take a page out of Russell's playbook. I go inside, where the news is now talking about how the "mysterious invaders" have unexpectedly stopped and retreated, with the portal over Tahoe now closed. Gideon's hanging back from the rest of the crowd, drumming his fingers on a wooden tabletop in the kitchen.

"Can't believe it," I say after a Joker-like giggle fit. "We helped saved the world, man."

My laughter infects Gideon as well, but he doesn't respond positively. "I just wish Paul were here to see it." He gestures at everyone else, pretty much all our friends very visibly in a celebratory mood. "Hell, they probably don't even know he's dead yet."

"We'll have to break the news gently," I say.

"I pity the poor fool who's got that job..." Gideon's voice trails off for a moment. "Wait, what do you mean, 'we?' Please tell me that's the royal 'we-'"

"You were there too," I say. "We should be the ones to tell everyone else."

"Not his parents, I hope?"

"That's Russell's job," I say. "Alex and Gabe, though...they'll probably take it better from us."

Gideon takes another look out the window and nods. "But not now," he says. "Give them a few hours to get all the adrenaline out of their systems."

"Andus too," I say with a heavy sigh.