Norma Crouger, seeing her son still dozing, smiled indulgently. It was always nice for her to be able to see Ryan when he wasn’t quite awake, with his red hair still mussed up from sleep and that adorable, hazy look in his green eyes. Norma always felt good when she saw him like that, but she also felt a strong maternal urge to protect him, since Ryan always looked so vulnerable when he was sleeping, and there was no way in hell that she was going to let anything hurt her son.

Now, though, it was time to get him up to go to school, and she walked over to his bed. "Ryan," she called softly.

"Iurgmzzzat," Ryan muttered, meaning ‘I hate mornings’.

"Ryan," Norma called again, almost laughing

"Gowway," ‘Go away’.

"I’m not leaving this room until you get up, young man," Norma said, trying to sound stern while holding off laughter.

"Nogginup," ‘Not getting up.

Laughing softly, Norma whipped the covers off of Ryan and got ready to pull him out of bed, but when she saw the sores on Ryan’s back, she stopped cold. Staring in disbelief at the blistering lesions on her son’s back, she pulled up the covers just enough to keep him warm and then touched one. It was hard and leathery and didn’t feel much like human skin at all.

Worried now, she touched the other one and found it had exactly the same hard, unnatural feel as the first. Pulling the covers up all of the way, she hurried out of Ryan’s room. There was no way on Earth that she was going to let her son go off to school when he was so clearly not well. Norma also needed to call the hospital and make an appointment, hoping that Ethan was there, since their old family doctor was very good at what he did. He was also a close friend of the family, and she trusted him implicitly.

XxXxXxX

When Ryan finally returned to the land of the living, he was surprised that he felt so genuinely rested. Normally, his mom would pull him out of bed, and he’d end up getting dressed and ready for school in a sort of semiconscious daze. Now, though, he felt better than he ever had. Even on a weekend, when he could sleep all day if he wanted to, he didn’t feel that good.

Hell, he didn’t even feel the need to stretch and work the kinks out of his muscles, but he did anyway, just because that was what he always did when he first woke up. Glancing over at the clock, just out of morbid curiosity since he was sure he was abysmally late by now, Ryan saw that it was already ten. Normally classes started at eight sharp, hence the need to get out of bed by seven thirty.

Unless today was a weird day, Ryan was sure that he had just missed a great deal of allegedly important class time. Ryan could give a flying crap about that, but he did wonder why his mom hadn’t shown up to drag him out of bed. Not that he was complaining or anything; he was just kind of curious. Leaning back against his sheets and blankets, Ryan saw with some surprise that his mom was coming back into the room.

"Ryan? Good, you’re awake." His mom seemed to be more relieved by that than Ryan really thought she should. It wasn’t as if he’d never taken a shower and then gone to bed before. She moved quickly over to his bed and laid her hand on his forehead. "Well, you don’t have a fever, that’s good. How are you really feeling, though?"

"I feel fine," Ryan said earnestly. "Better than I ever have, in fact."

As soon as those words were hanging in the air, Ryan felt a slight chill. Maybe he’d just been watching too much Stargate: SG-1, but that sentence always seemed to be a prelude to badness. Sometimes only a small amount, sure, but mostly the badness invoked by those fateful words was badness on an epic scale. Saying them was practically inviting the Irony Gods to smite the person stupid enough to have spoken them. At that thought, though, Ryan had to laugh at himself—he was really getting paranoid in his old age.

It was probably nothing.

"What’s so funny?"

"Me," Ryan said, still chuckling. "I’ve definitely been watching too much Stargate: SG-1. Every time anyone has ever said something like that, it’s either because they’ve been infected by a Goa’uld or something equally horrible."

"You’re right, that generally is the procedure," his mom laughed. "Well, since things like that generally don’t happen in this universe, I think you’re covered."

Ryan started laughing then, and it wasn’t long before his mom had joined in—watching Stargate and its spin-off TV series Stargate: SG-1 was one of his favorite things to do with his mom.

XxXxXxX

Luggnagg de Krumeggnik, holding the progress reports from Chronos Los Angeles, smiled secretively to himself: everything was going just as he and the others had planned. Their stronghold at the Los Angeles branch had not been discovered, and if he, Khan, and Hiyern had anything to say about the matter, it never would be. Moreover, the other Overlords were all too preoccupied with the problem of the Anti Chronos Task Force to be much of a hindrance.

Still, there was the small matter of Imakarum and his son. Imakarum was fanatically loyal to Alkanphel, something that Krumeggnik found rather odd, given the fact that Murakami had seemed to want nothing more than to rip the entire Chronos organization apart with his bare hands. Khan had even talked at one point of perhaps recruiting Murakami to their side, re-processing him into a full Zoalord, and then setting him loose on Chronos. The son would have perhaps been an asset as well, or at the very least been useful as a hostage, but now none of that was possible.

Sighing, Krumeggnik continued walking. He would have to destroy the progress reports that he currently held, since they were sure to give away the plan that their group had worked on for so long. That was, after all, the entire reason that he had volunteered to inspect the Los Angeles branch personally; fortunately for him and the others, Krumeggnik had become rather adept at falsifying Chronos documents. Thinking back to what he’d seen at the Los Angeles branch inevitably brought back thoughts of Commander Gyou.

It was really most unfortunate that the former Regional Commander had died back at Mt. Minakami, since the man’s almost complete lack of subtlety had made him a very good cover for their own clandestine activities. It would be that much more dangerous for Krumeggnik and the others to pursue their own agenda with him gone, and Khan would doubtless be worried about that. Hiyern would of course suggest that they put off their activities until they had gotten hold of the new situation.

Krumeggnik was personally of the opinion that life, especially an eternal one such as that enjoyed by all Zoalords, was for the risking. What possible entertainment could be had from playing things safely, especially when one possessed such powers as theirs? Alkanphel was not, after all, the omniscient and all-powerful god that Balkus and Imakarum liked to paint him as.

Thoughts of Imakarum led almost automatically to thoughts of the younger Mirabilis, Ingriam. Rather fitting, actually, Krumeggnik thought, since the child was basically an appendage of his father. Still, he could perhaps be a useful pawn, provided they were very cautious in how they went about that—even he wasn’t eager to risk the wrath of Mirabilis the elder if the other Zoalord found out that they were threatening his son.

It was an odd thing to think about, given that Imakarum’s son was not yet seven years old—odd, at least until one met and spoke with him. Ingriam had all the habits and mannerisms of a child. And also, the boy still possessed every scrap of the naïve trust that had gotten him kidnapped by the late Commander Gyou in the first place. Krumeggnik often wondered why Mirabilis the elder did not take the initiative and simply purge the boy’s mind of those useless and potentially dangerous attributes.

It was a puzzle, but at the moment not one that Krumeggnik was particularly interested in solving. He had other things to think about, not just falsifying the reports from the Los Angeles branch; he also had to make certain that his own branch, Chronos Africa, was functioning with just enough efficiency to keep the other Zoalords off his back. Khan and Hiyern were of course doing the same.