Elder Thirdgonad, Twenty Seventh Brood of the Third Waxing of the Eleventh Moon stewed in the brew of frantic last hexacycle preparations and simulation reports. The waters of his starshell were cloudy with the chemical chatter of the barely-worthy.

Elder Thirdgonad signaled the shell's AI with his control growth and it flushed away the cloudy water, replacing it with clean. To this he added his own chemicals, which spoke all the more strongly in the clear water.

"There will be no more flitting about like preyfish," Thirdgonad's chemicals spoke "It lacks dignity. The humans are beached, their organs laid bare. If such a lowly people frighten you still you have not the honor to call yourselves Old Ones. You know your places in the grand design, tend to them and don't pollute my water with your cowardice."

The chatter ceased. Additional battle simulations completed but none of the crew had the pancreatic fortitude to report it.

* * *

Caesar had not seen a proper Concensus Ring city since arriving on Ran; as far as he knew everyone lived in the tiny little communities favored by Sparkle and Min-ji.

This turned out not to be true. As much effort as they might put into denying it Consensus humanoids were still humanoids after all. Social creatures of a certain level of sophistication could be counted on to build something that could be categorized as a city. Finally he was going to get his chance to see one.

The flier he and Sparkle occupied swooped down out of the clouds and Caesar got his first good look at the place. Built in three dimensions the city bloomed outward like a sphere. The buildings were small and eccentric, and floated atop one another using AG fields. Despite the haphazard look of the buildings everything was arranged very orderly, and there were many wide and straight passageways through the sprawl for air traffic.

Caesar was surprised to see what at first he assumed to be ads. Beautifully colored holograms shone between buildings, and massive screens flipped between different images. He was struck with how nice the ads here looked, and wondered what they could be advertising. It took Caesar a few minutes to realize that they weren't advertisements; they were art installations. They existed for no other reason than because people thought they'd look nice. For the first time since coming to Ran Caesar reflected on his home ring with a feeling of shame.

"What's this place called?" he asked Sparkle.

"Requited Love's Moment of Sublime Recognition," she replied "It's less clunky in the original whalesong."

"Why is the name in whalesong?"

"I don't know," admitted Sparkle "It's a pretty name."

She took another drink from the brightly colored liquid she was drinking. Caesar had a similar glass in his own hand and copied her. He found the drink unpalatably sweet but the intoxicating effect more than made up for it. It had him feeling buzzed, warm, and happy.

"So how far do you think it is to the concert hall?" Caesar asked.

"A way still," said Sparkle "It's right at the center of town. The city is a sort of bubble around it. It's the third nicest performance venue on Ran so a lot of people want to live here and other people want to live where a lot of people are. It's fun to visit but I wouldn't want to live here."

"Have you been here before?" asked Caesar.

"No. But I anticipate having great fun today," she leaned over and rubbed her cheek against his shoulder "And I wouldn't want to live in any big city. But this is the very last thing I need to do before I can leave, right Ran?"

<If you recall,> signaled Ran's avatar <We spoke about unnecessarily including me in casual conversation.>

"I'm going to miss you, you grumpy old machine."

<A more insecure entity might take offence at that,> said the avatar <Owing to the fact that I have several trillion other individual matters occupying my vast but admittedly limited attention at the moment I'm going to leave you two to your date. Sparkle, if you would be so kind, please only invoke me when you require assistance.>

"I require the assistance of a hug," said Sparkle "I want you to incorporate into something physical so I can hug you."

<I am going to be ignoring you until you've sobered up.>

"Ran's warming up to me," said Sparkle, in what she incorrectly presumed was a whisper.

Caesar laughed.

"This is supposed to be a big concert?" he asked, just to make conversation.

"Yep," replied Sparkle, proud.

"How did you get tickets to this thing if you don't have a cred system?"

"I asked Ran," said Sparkle.

"So you just let the consensus run everything?"

"Well it represents everyone so that seems like the best option. If 100 people want to see a concert and there are only 99 seats then Ran knows what all 100 of those people know. So she knows who has other things to do that night and who might get along and who has been to other concerts lately and who doesn't like the band that much and who is leaving the ring for a long time and won't get another chance to see this band maybe ever. And she can weigh this information with the insight and perspective of everyone all added up. So she can pick the exact optimal group to both ensure a fun concert and cause the least sadness for the least people."

"But what if you really want to go to the concert and you don't get picked?"

"There will be other concerts. If it's not my turn it's not my turn. Don't they have a consensus on Hercules?"

"Yes, I suppose, technically. We don't have a planned economy or anything. We don't have, like, a personal relationship with the avatar either. It's just an administrator."

"He," said Sparkle "He's an administrator. Hercules identifies as a male human."

"How could you possibly know that?"

"They make a little screen show about the Human Consensus deliberations where it's like the avatars are debating. I watch every episode. Sometimes Hercules is there and he's a big muscley man wearing a lion skin and usually he's drunk.

"You're drunk"

"I am not drunk I'm just a little stoned."

* * *

Ran sent the appropriate communication signals to trigger an artificial chemical stew in the reception tank on the Old One starshell.

"Attention Old One fleet. Your current course is bringing you well within my jurisdictional space. I have not received any flight plan. Do you require assistance?"

The starshell responded by breaking away into the 6th dimension, and the rest of the fleet quickly adjusted to follow. They were now headed straight for the Ran system through exponential hyperspace.

Ran sent out a general signal of distress to the other rings, before turning to its own people.

<A potentially hostile Old One fleet has entered our space,> Ran sent to every one of its trillions of citizens <Be on standby for emergency evacuation.>

* * *

"No," said Sparkle "No, No, No. Not again. No."

* * *

The seven AI shells slaved to Elder Thirdgonad's shell continued on towards the ringworld while his own starshell pulled away. It would stay just at the edge of the range of its field projectors to keep the humans from taking control of the drones.

The seven drones tore down two dimensions and emerged into real-space. The split into seven different directions, each targeting one of the seven largest population centers on the ring. Having accelerated to a significant fraction of light speed on the journey to the ring each struck their target in an instant. The velocity was such that the inclusion of the nuclear warhead, or even antimatter, would have been redundant.

Thanks to the amphitheater, Requited Love's Moment of Sublime Recognition was lucky number seven on the list. Its own drone struck the performance venue and the entire city erupted in white light. The buildings seemed to have a delayed reaction to the explosion as first their defense fields overloaded and then they were torn apart by the force.

At the center of the explosion, not visible until the smoke and debris began to clear, was a perfectly opaque sphere of blackness. It faded away just as it became safe, revealing a few thousand Old Ones in battlesuits. The football-shaped suits floated on antigravity fields and bristled with weapon pods and protrusions. They were wrapped in layer after layer of defense field that made them sparkle in the non-visible spectrum. The soldiers scattered in every direction.

Ran had taken control of Sparkle and Caesar's flier the moment the starshells began to come too close, and they were at the outskirts of the city when the attack hit. The flier was battered by the force, zigzagged in the air, but regained control and began speeding away from the city.

Sparkle flipped a mental switch and her body instantly metabolized the drugs in her system, leaving her sharp and clear-headed.

<You stay,> Sparkle signaled, to be heard over the noise being pumped in from outside <I'm going to stay and fight the bad guys.>

<You're what?> asked Caesar.

<Someone has to,> she replied.

With that she caused a door to dissolve open on the side of the flier and stepped out. Sparkle began to plummet to the ground. Caesar ran to the opening just in time to see her engage her EMFMs to cushion her fall. She landed as though moving through a thick liquid.

Caesar closed the door and took manual control of the flier.

Two Old Ones, in bristling power suits, detected the field emitted by Sparkle's EMFM and came flying over to investigate. The air was still black with the debris from the explosion. The Old Ones flew around the corner of a marble building, through a toppled statue garden, and immediately opened fire.

Luckily for Sparkle she had caught sight of them a split second before they were able to position themselves for the attack and had already thrown up her defense field. The pulsing energy beam crashed into her protective bubble and immediately began eroding it away.

Sparkle was suddenly struck with an idea. Anger and adrenalin fueling her creativity she bent the shape of her defense field until it funneled the energy beam back at her attacker.

The gap between Old Ones and Consensus field technology became clear in one moment, as the anti-shielding attack blasted through the concentric layers of defense fields protecting the Old One before it overwhelmed Sparkle's own field. The first Old One exploded spectacularly. The annihilation was so complete that Sparkle detected no remaining coherent molecules. Just atomic dust and radiation.

The other Old One attempted to engage antigravity and flee, but sparkle plucked it from the air with a force field and slammed it back into the ground. Pinning it to the ground with the EMFM on one hand, she slowly and methodically began peeling away the nested layers of defense fields around the Old One's suit like an onion.

<I see you under there,> Sparkle signaled, broadcasting the the general area just in case <You suit is translating this for you isn't it?>

Sparkle tore a few more layers of defense fields away. She had nearly stripped the suit down to it's bare metal.

<Feelings of comprehension. Undertaste of mercy,> signaled the Old One.

<You do understand. I'm so happy. I want you to know that if you had decided to make this very bad decision yesterday... do your people have a concept of yesterday? Well in any case I would have been very worried about what a certain person would think of me if I killed a helpless foe like this.>

<Feelings of submission and sincerity!> the Old One stepped over itself to blurt out.

<The translation is bad. You're missing the finer points of what I'm saying. I would have been worried about this yesterday. You, however, decided to attack my home today. Today I'm not worried about what anyone thinks.>

Sparkle ripped away the last defense layer, and tore open the metal container like it was a baked potato. Alien smelling water and other exotic liquids spilled from the wreckage.

Sparkle seized the quivering, wobbling mass of flesh that was the pilot with two force fields and lifted it out of the suit and into the air. It screamed like a lobster being boiled.

"eeeeeeeeeeee"

"Not good enough," said Sparkle.

She pulled the Old One into two pieces with her twin EMFMs. The pieces went flying in either direction as it's complex twisting organs spilled out like foul smelling spaghetti.

The Caesar's flier caught up to Sparkle just in time for him to watch her rip the Old One apart. It swooped down to land, and Caesar jumped out a door the second it had settled.

"What are you doing?" asked Caesar breathlessly.

"What do you mean?" Sparkle asked.

"You just murdered him!"

"The Old Ones are FTL Players," replied Sparkle "I'm sure he has something in that suit of his that recorded his mind-state before he died."

"And if he didn't?" asked Caesar "If you damaged it?"

"Then I suppose he shouldn't have attacked my home," Sparkle snarled.

After thinking about it for a moment, she added "I hope I didn't upset you."

"Actually I think it's kind of sexy," said Caesar.

"Oh good," said Sparkle cheerily, "But later," she added, with sudden seriousness.

"Right," said Caesar.

"Do you have an EMFM?" Sparkle asked.

Caesar looked at the wreckage of the alien battlesuit.

"Not like yours," he said.

"Okay well stay within 10 meters of me then," said Sparkle "That's the area of effect for my heavy duty defense field. Wouldn't want you to get blown up!"

As smiley as ever, Sparkle childishly mimed an explosion complete with sound effects and jumping.

"Aaah no my limbs!" Sparkle squealed, in falsetto "All my limbs were blown up I should have listen to Spaaaarkle- Ooh there's another one."

Caesar couldn't see anything, but Sparkle caught it on IR. A lone Old One, maybe a scout, just at the edge of Sparkle's maximum range.

<I seeeeee yooooooou,> Sparkle signaled, as she began to drag it closer with a force field.