Chapter 60

***This article contains spoilers.***

## Highlights

* Mikaboshi's assassin, Shinatobe, sets off explosives on the Invictus, kills Jade, and captures John.
* Alyssa goes Super Saiyan and saves John from the Amaterasu, and they capture Shinatobe. Mikaboshi escapes.
* With the help of Radiant Alyssa, the one who's been saving John in his nightmares, he revives Jade.
* Lynette promotes John to Rear Admiral as Alyssa desperately tries to stifle her laughter. Calara is promoted to Commander.
* Edraele allies with Kali Loraleth.

## Summary

A black-clad assassin woke up in a sarcophagus, stretched, and watched a holographic video message of Master Amatsu Mikaboshi, a man with pointed ears, telling Shinatobe who to assassinate. Shinatobe hooks a data-jack port on the console to wrist-mounted jack points and downloads data on John and crew.

Shinatobe leaves the shuttle, attached to the Invictus' airlock door. After jamming the sign to the Bridge and pressing the genetic synthi-print glove to the DNA reader, Shinatobe flinched upon hearing a seductive voice say, "*Welcome home, John*," Shinatobe stalked down the corridor, with a nanoweave combat suit providing invisibility.

Almari informs Edraele the extraction teams are arriving. Edraele tells Almari to call her by her name, rather than "Matriarch," just as she'd told Almari marvels at how much Edraele has changed.

Edraele meets the first of her guests: Kali Loraleth, the youngest daughter of House Loraleth. Edraele sincerely apologizes for what happened to Kali's family, and offers her an alliance. Kali recalls the years of abuse she'd suffered at her mother's and sisters' hands, and was forced to admit to herself that their deaths were actually a relief. Edraele reveals her plan to unite all the noble houses, and Kali agrees.

Admiral Lynette Devereux called while John was asleep, and became worried at Faye, an unshackled AI, answering. In the message Lynette left for John, she said she wasn't able to help him get in contact with Fleet Admiral Buckingham, since the Dragon Marsh is currently a security lockdown zone. However, she's promoting him to Rear Admiral (*Alyssa cracks up*), and Calara to Commander.

Irillith has a newfound respect for Lynette. However it turns out, she stands to gain.

* **They stop Norwood and his band of traitors**: She was heavily involved in unmasking them. She milks them for maximum PR, and claims responsibility for improvements in approval ratings for Terran Federation High Command.
* **Buckingham gets offended and kicks John out of the military**: She isn’t here with them, so her hands are clean. She explains away the promotions as a PR campaign. What happens with Norwood, she doesn't lose political capital either way.
* **Buckingham refuses to see them and the Dragon March assault is a slaughter**: She uses that disaster as a black mark against Buckingham, while spreading the word that she sent her agent, The Lion of the Federation, to try to stop Norwood. She mentions that her efforts were stymied due to Buckingham's incompetence, and it'd be great to have another Fleet Admiral.

Edraele offers to help John with politics.

Jade doesn't remember her birthday, so they decide to make it that day.

John calls Eito Yamamoto and challenges him. Yamamoto's eyes widened when John uses telekinesis to bring his sword to him, but then accuses him of using parlor tricks. When they start, John's improvements surprise Yamamoto, putting him on the defensive.

Alyssa, Calara, Dana, Rachel, and Irillith plan a surprise party.

Shinatobe heads towards her first target, currently in the middle of a holo-simulation, and just before engaging, triggers devices.

Just as Yamamoto is defeated by John for the first time, he sees a ripple in the simulator behind John and a black-clad ninja materialize out of nowhere with a pistol leveled at John’s back. Yamamoto fights back the terror from his flashbacks and warns John.

Suddenly, a piercing scream of absolute despair and tortured agony Alyssa's mind, knocking her backwards.

Calara was reaching for a bottle of wine when she spotted a small package on the floor. Suddenly, a series of explosions ripped through the Officers’ Lounge and she's sent sailing through the air, slamming into a bulkhead, and succumbing to darkness.

Seconds after John felt Alyssa react in shock to something, he felt aftershocks of explosives. The Invictus began to shake violently as they were violently yanked out of hyper-warp. When Yamamoto cries out a warning, John whirled around to find a black-clad assassin pointing a strange-looking pistol at him, and reflexively slapped the gun away with his mind.

The ninja drew two razor-sharp mono-edged swords, darted over to the simulator and plunged a blade through it, destroying the device. John was left holding a blunt edged simulator blade in his hands. John and the assassin fight, and the assassin drives him backwards enough that she could retrieve the gun. She dives for it and shoots two darts into his chest. He staggered and toppled over face-down on the mat.

Faye notices the ninja dragging John towards the door on Deck 3, so she called the bedroom where Jade was with maximum volume. Faye turns on the internal defenses and tries to fire the gatling lasers at the ninja, but gets a permission denied message.

Jade goes to Deck 3 to rescue John and wounds the ninja, but gets a blade through her body, sobbing as she closes her eyes for the last time.

Alyssa wakes up to find Dana, Rachel, and Irillith mostly uninjured, but Calara is missing a hand. In Alyssa's mind, there was a gaping hole where Jade’s mosaic used to be. Jade was gone.

The assassin drags John onto the shuttle. Another big ship jumps in, and after the shuttle docked, jumps out.

A fierce white light flared in her cerulean eyes, her face twisted with rage, and she storms down the corridor. Dana and Rachel are shocked, and ask where she's going. Alyssa snarls, "*To get John back*," her voice now with a deeper pitch, a slightly disconcerting echo as if there were two voices speaking as one.

Alyssa got Paragon armor and a punisher rifle from the Ready Room. Irillith grabs a Justice Laser Rifle and chases after her.

Irillith finds Alyssa in the Hangar Bay, who with a gesture, sucked all the Crystal Alyssium plating off the Raptor, re-shaping the alloy again and again into enormous portraits of Jade, until she arrived at her final one: the look of pure devotion that Jade only wore when she gazed at John. She replates the Raptor, and heads to it, leaving her gun. She won't need it.

Amatsu Mikaboshi gloats to himself as he watches Shinatobe's shuttle dock with his Battlecruiser, The Amaterasu. He tells Servant Kasai to set a course for Yomi-no-kuni. Mikaboshi heads to the interrogation room, where an unconscious John's arms and legs were chained to the wall.

Alyssa was planning on ramming the 750-meter-long, heavily customized Amaterasu with the Raptor, but ends up boosting Irillith so she can shut down the FTL drive. Irillith also disabled the shields by putting them into a looped maintenance diagnostic. Screens all over the Amaterasu showed a furious Alyssa. “*You killed one of us. Now you’re all dead men!*” Tactical Servant Oshiro had Servant Engineer Matsuki eject the comm relay, leaving them in a complete comms blackout.

Just as Mikaboshi starts to torture John, he feels the ship being forcibly pulled out of hyper-warp, but decides to continue. John wakes up, groggy.

Alyssa maneuvers the Raptor behind the Hangar Bay and sends bright azure beams slashing thsends the armor. Despite being hit with everything they had, the Raptor doesn't get a single scratch. Kasai calls her an *akuryo*, or evil spirit.

John receives a surge of psychic energy from Edraele, and just seconds before Mikaboshi crushes his larynx, John focuses his will into his psychic strength, ripping a hand free from the chains and yanking Mikaboshi's synthetic arm off. Mikaboshi felt fear for the first time in more decades than he could count.

Alyssa pulls into the Hangar Bay, gunning down several men there without a second thought. Alyssa goes to save John, leaving Irillith to guard the Raptor. She telekinetically rips off a titanium blast door that had slammed down to seal off the hangar, them sent it flying at a squad of soldiers.

Mikaboshi fled using Shinatobe's shuttle.

John and Alyssa meet up. John asks if she lost her weapon. No. '"*Killing them like this felt more personal.*" They come across Shinatobe, and Alyssa telekinetically lifts her into the air, slapping her back and forth, pounding her into unconsciousness. John told her to let her live and take her prisoner.

John, Alyssa, and Irillith return to the Invictus and they tell him what happened to Calara and Jade. Dana wants to waste the Amaterasu, and reduces it to a glowing field of debris in under a minute.

When Rachel pulled the sword out of Jade, she changed into another form. She was now a little over five feet tall and had a cat-like tail, a pointed set of ears, and a light covering of dark green fur over her body. Rachel suggested it must be what the Lenarrans looked like naturally just after the Mael'nerak made them. Irillith tells the rest that Jade told her she remembered everything, but didn't want everyone to worry.

John refuses to let her go. “*She’s a construct made by the Mael'nerak. If he can create life, then I can too.*" He had Alyssa and Edraele give them all of the psychic energy they could spare.

John placed his hand on Jade's forehead and Spirit Walked, feeling a massive resistance dragging him out of the Astral Plane back into his body. He saw a shadowy, astral echo from Progenitor John superimposed on his body, and realized he'd have to face him eventually.

John caught a bright flash and was shocked when he glanced that way. It was Radiant Alyssa, who's been looking forward speaking to him for a long time. He realizes she's the one who's been intervening for months. She shows him how to bring Jade back. Although Jade was dead, there was still a spark residing within her, and he knew that he merely had to breathe life into it to make it burst into flame once again. John channeled his will into her to ignite that spark. It worked.

Alyssa smiled at her. "*Happy birthday, Jade.*"