After the youngster left the room with her pocketful of candy, Sara returned to her workstation and sat down.

"She's a lovely child. She smells delicious, too," Carmilla commented. The individual was actually looking upward for a change, her hair falling back to reveal an exquisitely shaped Asian face with unusually enormous eyes. If she had been born on Earth in the early twenty-first century, she could have been a leading star in the Korean film industry.

"Don't remind me," The orange-haired guard replied with a grimace. "If I had known she was coming, I would have had a pint beforehand. As it is, I haven't fed for five days."

"They donate blood in bags of five hundred milliliters, or emm-ells, as they now call them. As I have explained to you many times, they do not donate it in the archaic unit known as a 'pint.'"

"And as I have told you before, it's an old term from Earth meaning a large glass of beer or other alcoholic beverage."

"Yeah, as if either of us has ever set foot on Earth, you Lunee."

"I am proud of the fact that I was born on Luna. Just like you are glad to have come from Mars."

"Yep, I'm a Marsie through and through. Oh, and by the way, it would not have helped."

"What wouldn't have helped?"

"I had a bag of B positive an hour ago and she still smelled good enough to eat."

"Hands off, she's big sis's kid in more ways than one. She would beat us both into a month-long hibernation if we drank a single drop from her."

"Is that why you had her take the ruined slide with her?"

"Yep. It would have been too much of a temptation if she left it anywhere we could get to it."

"Well, what Christy doesn't know won't hurt us."

"You forget she's going to be my niece and your second cousin in a few short Years. No matter how good she smells I still wouldn't lay a fang on her."

"You're assuming she makes the cut."

"I have heard Duflot is happy with her progress. If the head honcho is satisfied, I have little to fret about."

"But..."

"Look I will worry about Princess One. You just concern yourself with Princess Two. Okay?"

-----

It was the middle of the Night when her portable beeped.

As always, she was awake and fully alert at this hour, and she quickly answered the incoming call as voice only.

"Harris here," she answered while typing away on the terminal in front of her, the text that she was typing hanging in midair before her.

"It's Cooper. We have an emergency," came the voice on the other end of the connection.

Her fingers immediately stopped. The lively motions from before ended in the blink of an eye.

In all seriousness, the young-looking blonde asked, "Is it an alien invasion? Should I contact law enforcement planetwide about the weapon garrisons hidden in each of their headquarters?"

"No, it's not that..."

Before the person on the other end could respond, Harris cut her off. "Then are the humans revolting against us? I mean only the President, Speaker of the House, and the Senate Majority and Minority leaders even know we exist. That would make them a laughingstock if they went public even with their prestige and positions..."

"No, it's not that either it's..."

"It's Rose," the blonde guessed, her voice holding a tinge of both relief and of exasperation.

"Yes, it is Rose."

"NOW of all times, she decides to go on one of her romps? We don't have time for this," Harris responded with a groan. "We are up to our ears with work on the experiment."

"I know, but as Christoph pointed out, it's been twelve Terran years since she let herself go wild. While he's angry, he isn't as furious as I expected to be when I informed him of the matter."

"So it's the same old story. Rose 'repented' for a decade or so until we couldn't afford to keep guarding her." Harris sighed before continuing, "Now she's gone back to seducing lone women in the outback."

"At least she can wipe the humans' memories of the actual event, although her abilities aren't perfect," Cooper pointed out.

"So why are you contacting me about this?" Harris asked, her tone showing that she already knew the answer to her own question.

"I want you to go out and fetch her before the rumors start up again," Cooper admitted.

"Why is it always me? Why not send out Keiko or Emma? The tournament is about to start in a couple of weeks. I don't have the time to go hopping around the planet trying to track down our escaped diva," Harris complained. "Why not send out Sara or Camilla?"

"The younger members just don't have the physical speed needed to match hers. Nor do they possess the prestige for Rose to surrender to them willingly. Meanwhile, everyone else is already on mission-critical assignments. There simply aren't enough members of Stellae Sanguine to do everything that needs to be done."

"So my mission isn't mission-critical as well?" the blonde grumbled.

"You at least, have a brief break before we need you on-site at the event hall. Besides, I will shift your administrative duties over to Sara until you can track our escapee down."

"Well, Sara-imouto can definitely do the work, so that is a relief," Harris admitted. Then, after a breath, she continued, "I'll never understand why Rose prefers blood fresh from the source. I cannot tell the difference between it and donated hemoglobin in bags. Besides, if she wants to feed directly from humans why not go to one of the paid donors? We help support how many families financially in return for a few mouthfuls each month?"

"Rose claims she misses the thrill of the hunt and that there is a distinct flavor if she drinks from someone in the height of passion," Cooper replied, her disgust clear in her voice.

"I think she just needs an excuse to mess around on Duflot every few years," Harris quipped. "I'm sure one of our salaried donors would be happy to 'play' with a woman as beautiful as Rose even with no additional financial incentive. Louis XV did not nickname her the 'Rose of Versailles' for her ability to embroider flowers."

"I think it actually comes down to the thrill of the chase. She enjoys being both the hunter and the prey like in the old days in Europe. The legends of hunters like Van Helsing had some truth to them," Cooper pointed out. "Meanwhile, there were no blood donation centers to feed off of, so the only way to survive was to feed off a human every twenty-eight days or perish. In the meantime, there were always animals to drink from."

"I can't imagine having to hunt while being hunted," Harris said with a shiver. "Plus, having to drink from a stranger directly from their bodies is disgusting. I'd much rather sleep with a stranger than do that."

Cooper simply laughed over the audio. "According to Rose all of us who were turned while in space are prudes who wouldn't last a week back on Earth."

"Well, we think of her as overly promiscuous, so the feeling is mutual," Harris replied smugly.

"People will do whatever they have to in order to survive, and it leaves a lasting impact on their psyches. We shouldn't judge her too harshly," Cooper pointed out. "That is something we both need to keep in mind when dealing with Rose."

"You are right, as usual. It just seems that we are always so busy when she pulls one of her stunts. It is always so frustrating to have to drop things without notice to go chase after her while she is out gallivanting around the planet."

"We are always busy," Cooper admitted. "But we have to keep our numbers low until the population breaks a billion. Until then, overwork will just be a fact of our existence."

"Why a billion?" Harris asked, her curiosity clear in her voice.

"Because at that point the population will be large enough to sustain itself for centuries without the Labs. In other words, our kind won't starve. Men are only the backup system after all and inbreeding will be a potential problem without the Labs ensuring genetic diversity."

"Who knew that creating a stable colony in an alien star system would be so problematic?" the blonde asked in wonder.

"Duflot," was Cooper's one and only answer.

----

Christiana was laying in bed wearing her pajamas, her hair still wet from the bath. She was reading a history book concerning the Chosen on her portable. Meanwhile, Haruhi-nee was across the room in her own bed and was presumably doing something similar, judging by the way her eyes rarely left her own handheld terminal.

Since it was just before bedtime patMother Sydnee had sent Johnathan-oniichan to his own room to give the womb-mates some privacy roughly an hour beforehand. Otherwise, he would still be hanging out in the girls' room, reading along on his own computer.

'I love Johnathan-nii,' she thought as she read, 'but he has been so clingy lately that it's annoying.'

Christiana was abruptly pulled out of her musings by her Sister's loud exclamation.

"There's been another one!" Haruhi-onee suddenly crowed.

"Another what?" the other child asked, genuinely confused.

"There has been another incident involving the 'blood-sucking strangers!'" the dark-haired Sister explained. "They found a young woman wandering around in a daze about fifty kay-emms outside of Planetfall. She had been out servicing a broken down harvester the Alterday before and had never returned home."

"Wow, she was lucky that her filters hadn't run out in that amount of time," was Christiana's first reaction.

Being outside past the expiration of one's filters could lead to long-term health issues and severe headaches in the shorter term. Cooper's World had the same partial pressure of oxygen at sea level as the city of Flagstaff, Arizona back on Old Earth. Therefore, oxygen deprivation wasn't an issue. The high levels of see-ohh-too were.

"According to this article, she is fine except for two puncture marks on her inner thigh. So I wouldn't worry about that."

"Where did you find that article?" Christiana asked, hoping to look it up and read it herself.

"It's on 'Tales of the Weird' in a special bulletin for paying members only so you can't access it, I'm afraid."

"Wait, you pay creds' to read that urban legend stuff? I know you love folklore, but come on Haruhi-onee that's taking things a bit too far."

"Don't mind that Chris-mouto," Haruhi-nee insisted, changing the conversation back to the matter at hand. "What is important is that the incidents are happening again, just like they did back when we were first born."

"How do you know that this isn't just some copycat? It has been fifteen Years," she pointed out. She often tried to use logic to pick apart Haruhi-nee's wild stories. Sometimes it would derail the older Sister's enthusiasm, but tonight it did not work.

"These incidents date back to the beginning of the Second Wave. That is why such an outlandish tale became such a prominent urban legend and made its way into folklore," Haruhi-oneechan pointed out. "Compared to that time span a Decade and a half are nothing."

"Even assuming that it is an actual phenomenon, who would drink blood? Humans can't digest it," the younger sister posited.

"Well," Haruhi began before launching into a long and fanciful set of outlandish ideas that had been put forth over the centuries. Needless to say, the duo were up well after their bedtime discussing this matter.

----