I like waking up with a kiss.

	It's one of those way kewl ways to start a Shift, ya know?  Kinda
like starting with sunshine or when I used to start with the warm
bitter-sweetness of an almond latte when caffine used ta still affect me.  

	Froggy kisses so well, too.

	Not wet or goopy.  His kisses are warm and firm, but yield just a
tiny bit at exactly the right time.  Yum.  Makes me wanna just lie there
and enjoy it with eye closed and feeling my heart just gradually rev up to
speed.

	Which, of course, is just what the techs want me to do.  Froggy
bein' one a' the techs, he does it 'cause he likes how it shows up on my
charts.  I'm still not quite sure just what the balance of my wakeup kiss
is 'cause he likes doin' it, how much it's for me, and just how much it's
for the charts.  He doesn't to it for Kali, but then I think she'd
probably take his head off if he tried, so that might not count.  Doug
has said, kinda wistful like, that he'd like that kinda wakeup, but I don't
think Froggy kisses guys.  A shame, said Doug.  I promised him I'd kiss him
awake when we trade off and he kinda grinned.

	Anyway... so, this mornin' I wake up to my kiss, and the air's
kinda hot still, so I know I am still in my warm-up stages.  My heart's
still at a low hum, but gettin' higher with the input and time.  Can't
just start and stop a rotary heart, it has to take a little time to come
up.  I feel my fingers and toes, but the shut-off's are still active, so I
just kinda lie real still and start lookin' at the displays and logs of
the last shift.

	Not bad.  

	Conversations were still fast enough to be intelligable.  Past the
protective sound insulation over my ears, I could still feel and hear from
the induction through my metal bones, my silicon laced body, the click of
the nurse's heels as they walked by, the murmer of dispassionate voices
speaking of lunch breaks, sugar levels, crazy ass metal heads,
calcium-sodium balances, and zombies.  I wasn't up to full speed yet.  I
checked the chronometer and found that I was on schedule, an hour into
the wake up proceedure and coherent enough to remember to do the check off
on the system records.  A flick of the mind and my status charts were mine
to see in black over the blue of no-signal to my eye.

	Kurt's still up, but about to go to sleep.  We connect.  Quick 
text just bangs up.  He's still at full speed.  

	<< Ey! >>

	<< Bee! [giggle] >>  I feel so slow shaping the words and sending
them.

	Kurt's text flashes up before I even finish thinking about the
send.  << [smirk]  You'll never change.  How are you feeling? >> 

	<< Chipper.  Always been a morning person. >>

	<< [ppbbtt] I hate mornings and, right now, I'm feeling good
enough to be up a whole 'nother hour.  [grumble] Don't know why they wanna
put me down already... >>

	He keeps going on in that vein, so I just take a look at his log, 
<< Damn... you gotta Delta!! >>

	<< Hyup.  Near razor, that... weird 'flex.  Might wanna bone up on 
that while you're still down.  >>

	<< Walk me through? >>

	<< Hai.  Tell me when I'm goin' too fast. >>

	<< K. >>

	<< 'cordin' fer Doug and Kali >>

	<< Kewl. >>

	Vid up, sound, and Kurt puts me head-first into the front lobby.  He's
running...

	<< Whoah!!! >>

	<< Oh.  Humph, lazy butt. >>

	<< [Pbpbbbt.]  Here's my clock rate... <blip> >>

	<< Right.  Man, you really are just starting up.  Sorry... >>

	<< S'O.K. >>

	Vid up, sound up, senstim on and we start slipping through the air,
streamlining just a touch with our hand out front, parting that invisible
curtain of air.  The hallway blurs by, but the steps are in my timeline,
I love just running full out.  Feelin' everything just jettin'...

	The Delta shows up on the security map in our head, first,
blipping along while the blues are still as doorknobs.  Near-razor, true.
Near fast as us.  Cool.  

	We're running red-hot, our heart rate is just a scream, the
pump-thro lungs just jetting, and the smart link's red, red, red.  Ratio
looks useless, but blanket fire can't hurt.  We go in by the book.
Blasting cover fire.  DUCK Delta's return auto.  Go sliding in at the
knees.  Hurrah!  A crunch as we hit, hard, faster than the bullets were
travelling.  More mass, more damage.

	Delta's hard, too.  Oops.  He goes.  Recog hilights nearest match
as Triple Orchid Feint, we pick Hummingbird Counter and launch.

	***BLUR***

	<< Yeep. >>

	<< Yeah... Here... slowed down three-way analysis and recording... >>

	<< He *changed*...  I saw that...>>

	<< Yeah... hair trigger slower, but with changability... >>

	<< Yeep. >>

	The slowed down vid and sound only is creepy.  Like missing half
the world. You know how it is when the sen cuts out on the stim, and you
feel like half of your brain goes numb?  Anyway... Kurt's blipping red
circles onto the vid.

	<< Here.  Here.  Here.  Vectors... this >>

	Blood red arrows appear.

	<< Velocity changes? >>

	<< Hai.  Look... this, this and this...>>
	
	A few more frames go by.

	<< Hey... looks like... >>

	<< Right.  Waterfall.  Bastard *changes* the script in the middle
of the move. >>

	<< New 'Flex combo? >>

	<< Maybe.  But look at the timing... >>

	The vid, bleeding arrows, clicks back two notches and plays full
through the frames.

	<< Perfect counter for the beginning of the Gargoyal.  That perfect,
it might just be programmed in, a new Move? >>

	<< Other way around... *that* perfect, he's reacting to what I'm
doing.  Most 'Flex bends with the user, a touch slower, touch faster,
closest match still epsilon off... >>

	<< Yeep. >>

	<< Yeah.  But look... >>

	The no-sen vid clicked forward some more.  The Gargoyal's blocks
worked, but the three-pronged attack clearly went for an unefficient angle.
Thing was, though, that Kurt's speed made up for the angle, and even as the
Delta started the counter for the Waterfall, the third prong of the
Gargoyal blasted straight through the Delta's mid-section. 

	Boom.  Brap.  Fluids everywhere.  Cool.  

	Oops.  Not so cool.  Some of those fluids is us.  

	<< Waterfall counterstrike did manage to get through.  See... >>
	
	I blip clock again.  The text starts scrolling onto my screen from
Kurt insteada just appearing, whole.  The vid speeds up to action, again,
and I see that the bastard got Kurt in the same place five times before 
Kurt's counter landed.  He was slower, not as much punch, so couldn't crack
our case until multi's landed.

	<< It was aimed right, and for all that it wasn't fast, it hit the
same plate enough times to bust it. >>

	<< A tie. >>  

	<< Nah.  He got through. >>  

	<< A tie wins at home. >>  Always.  The win is keepin' our folks
safe.

	<< I hate losing. >>  Kurt really does sound upset.  Don't know why
text can sound upset, but he doesn't usually talk in small sentences.

	<< Yeah.  Nobody likes it.  But you kept folks safe. >>

	<< Yeah... but... >>

	<< But what, Bro? >>

	<< Nah.. never mind.  You're right, I did the important thing,
stopping the bastard before he took someone important out. >>

	<< Hurrah!  One for the Good Guys. >>

	<< [chuckle] You're a cute brat.  Good luck with your shift, Sister
Under the Skin. >>

	<< Kewl.  The cut outs are gone.  Kin I give you a hug 'for you go
down?  >>

	A pause in time, long enough to make me think that I made a mistake
offering.

	<< Sure. >> another pause, << Just don't worry when you see me,
O.K.?  Froggy says they got things well in hand, and I just look worse than
I really am. >>

	That worries me more than anything I've seen so far, but he's
playin' it cool, so I do, too.  << 'Kay >>

	I 'open' my eye. 

	I love how I see.  Can't imagine what it was like with only one
hundred degrees of binocular vision and only the spectrum visible to the
meat.  Colors without names, shadows without lies, and a field as wide as
reality.  They can't fool me anymore, can't do things behind my back that I
can't see anymore.  No tricky peripheral vision.  The world's laid out in
front of me and all around me as well.

	No one's gonna get me like they got Annie.  I can still see, in my
head, that little poof when the bullet entered the back of her head, and
how her whole face blew off.

	No.  They won't get me like that.  Ever.  I'm not gonna die like
that.  If I die, it's gonna be for a reason.  Lots of reasons.  Lots of
lives that hang on my performing my duty.  Not just the fortunes of a
single, stupid family.

	The probes leave me.  The maintaince gear retracts.  The
protective layers of insulation peel away gently.  The bands that hold me
safe when my mind's turned off slip away with a last caress.  I slowly get
up, and notice that, already, the technicians look a little bit like
they're moving in slow motion.  Froggy sees me first, and I can almost
wait to watch his head come around to see me, and his arm as it moves up
to wave at me.  I wave back at him, making sure that his eyes have aquired
me, first, and then slip off to Kurt's bay.

	Froggy hasn't finished his wave when I'm out the door.  Heck.  He
hasn't even stopped looking where I was.  Oh well.

	An auto duties-report appears in my command center.  I open it, and
my schedule fills.  Nothing for twenty minutes other than having to decide
on a few odd jobs.  Leaves me plenty of time for a walk and small talk.

	I walk into Kurt's bay.  He's lying on his maintaince platform, all
connected up now that I'm on duty.  He's grumbling at the techs in high
speed, so I doubt they understand anything he's saying.  Probably just a
high pitched hum to them.  He stops bitching the minute I step in the
door.  I wave at him.  He looks at me, and target aquires me as a
greeting.  His head's the only part that isn't attached to the maintance
bay, and they've already gotten his chest open, where the Delta had hit.

	I'm kinda shocked.  He's a mess.  The impact on the initial slide
looks like it did substantial damage to his thigh, and the Waterfall
breeched the high-pressure interal fluid flow.  He's still drenched with
high-tech blood, both his and the lighter fluid from the Delta.

	I flick up time display and superimpose the Delta record.  It
was only a half an hour after the meeting.  No wonder he was upset.  They
were cutting short his shift for repairs.  When you're only awake one
quarter of the time, time up is precious.

	"Ghods, friend... you're messed up."  I say, high speed.

	He grins at me, "Yeah.  But they can build me 'better and faster
than before...'"  He chuckles, a stream of sound that nearly sounds like
clicks even to me.  "Froggy's already break-down analyzing the Delta, and
the labs are having a heck of a time.  Seems there are learning circuits in
the thing that are almost as fast as pure 'flex."

	"Almost..." I say, doubtfully.

	He shrugs and grimaces when the beeper goes off when he disconnects
something.  The med-tech reacts as if swimming through honey.  They're so
slow.  I reach and reconnect the tube for him.  

	Kurt sighs.  "Yeah.  Bothers me, just a touch, that with something
like that it didn't self-destruct when it got 'caught'.  Even we blow when
caught."

	I nod and frown.  The tech finally looks surprised and stops
reaching for the already connected tube.  We both kinda watch him for a
bit.  He starts reaching for the shut down sequence.

	Kurt sighs.  "Check that out for me while you're up, O.K.?"

	I nod.  "Yeah.  I'll do that, but I don't think Froggy'd add
anything to us he didn't think was safe."

	Kurt laughs, "You think hi-pressure rotary pump hearts are safe?"

	I laugh with him.  "Well... as safe as anything else we are."

	"Then I'm dead as fresh meat."  His tone's half laughing, but it
hurts anyway.

	I catch my breath, "Don't say that, Kurt."

	He looks at me, his eyes all pointed at me on their stalks, "That
bugs you, Princess?"

	"Hey, I'm not a Princess any longer, either."

	"You get born a Princess, it's not a job you can just take or
leave."

	"Hey, I left it." I say flatly.  "Left it when I left that half of
my meat by the operating table."

	He just looks at me a while longer.  The tech reaches the switch.

	"O.K." he finally says, "You're not a princess."  The corner of his
mouth goes up in a wry grin, "More like the dragon now... lying in
protection of treasures unimaginable."

	I bob a stalk in surprise and then grin as well.  "Much, much, much
better than the screaming princess."  I lean forward and kiss him gently
on the wry corner of his mouth.  The corner straightens out and he laughs
softly.

	The switch flicks.  Kurt sighs.  He says, "And thaannks fooor thhhe
teeessssstinnnnnggggg."

	He says something else, too, but it's too drawn out for me to
really hear.  I flick <<What did you say??>> over the channel and wait an
interminable time and nothing comes.

	The lights on his console slowly fall down their slides, and some
start to grow yellow and then dim.

	Don't you die on me.  If you do, I'll lose one of the three people 
I can talk with in the world.

	A sob is nothing more than a click in slow time.

	And the day had started out so well.