Foreword:

I would like to thank my sister for her input which came at a time most desperately needed. She encouraged me to fix up my grammer and gave me advice on the Star Wars universe when required, and suggested ways out of a situation I had written myself into. To Sah-Rae Hyjo, my sister and fellow Stars Wars fan, I send my many thanks.


I would also like to thank Dawn Erlston for her feedback and suggestions. To this fellow fan and countless others, I offer my many thanks. All of you who have contributed to this have opened new doors to me and showed that there really is more out there than what may originally seem.

To Hanna-Barbera, thanks for creating these wonderful characters of yours. And finally, many thanks to George Lucas, the creator of all things Jedi. To both of these identities, I send my gratitude for putting up with us fans writing about your characters and creations, even though you probably will never know about this.

If there is anyone who wishes to archive this out there, then please contact the author. He can provide the original files and authorise you to make any reformatting that is required to incorporate it on your site.


Okay, this story first appeared in some circles under the tile "Spontaneous Combustion" and was, at least in my opinion, highly fragmented in nature and not really up to the grade of what other writers out there have written. In light of this, a lengthy re-writing and revision process has since been undertaken and now it is closer to what I originally intended. It has gone so far that some events have even been changed and others removed completely. So, if anyone out there has a copy of it, I advise them to ignore that previous version because this one will naturally take precedence over it. If you haven't read that prior version, then don't; It'll spoil all of this for you if you do.

It is assumed that all Three-Letter-Agencies conglomerated to form Intelligence-1 shortly before Dr. Benton Quest's birth. If you're wondering, the FBI, CIA, NSA, USSS, etc. still exist, but as sub-sections, and under the authority, of I-1. I am not sure if anyone else has used this idea before, so don't get upset if you think I'm copying, because I'm not.

So just sit back, relax, and enjoy while I pretend I know how to write.

Chapter 1

The date was Friday, October 18, and Jonathan 'Jonny' Quest was nineteen years old. In one week's time, he'd be twenty years old, although it really wasn't at the forefront of his mind right about now. At the moment, he was sitting in the lounge room, observing the proceedings taking place. His father, the famous Dr Benton Quest was now the Vice-President of the United States. Benton had previously offered the use of the Compound as a temporary place to make official meetings and hold diplomatic talks with other countries in the event of something like September 11, 2001 happening again. With the White-House recently destroyed by terrorists, such was the case now.

It was still unknown who had sabotaged the major stock exchanges around the world. Wall Street; the Nasdaq; the Nikkei; the ASX; You name it, and it was down. Rumors suggested that Jeremiah Surd or Ezekiel Rage had somehow done this or were responsible for it. But without hard evidence, the FBI didn't have anything to go on. Recently, Dr Quest had acted like he was possessed. When asked why, he had said that financial security of millions, nearly billions, of people were at stake. That was why he had been pushing for an early resolution. The sooner things get back to normal, the better.

Many views had been aired on how to best repair the damage... Some suggested that the old financial system be pieced back together and bought back on-line... Others said that was unnecessary and why repair an unstable system that could blow-up in your face at any moment?... Yet, still others said that neither choice was good enough, and that what was needed was something more like a "global community" without divisions of any kind, like seperate stock exchanges. Over time, the amount of solutions offered had gradually grown and multiplied, so much so that it seemed like an end would never be in sight.

This was where Jonny found himself now. Australia was trying to push the creation of one currency, and was negotiating -- if you could use that term -- with America as the best way to go around this. As usual, they had neglected to cover the subject of whether that was really the right way to go about things in the first place.

Jonny grumbled to himself. This diplomacy game was boring. His mind traveled to Hadji safely tucked away in the lighthouse, probably surfing the 'net or gaming in QuestWorld again. Why did I choose to stay here? Jonny asked himself. Maybe curiosity was the answer, yet it could also be something else entirely different. Perhaps, it was because a certain red-haired girl had wanted to see how things 'really got done', and Jonny had unconsciously wanted to stay with her, all the time while insisting that his desire to stay was purely academic in nature... Right.

Needless to say, Race, her father, had not believed him. Jonny was not known for his academic side. While Race had told him that it was okay, he had also told him that they would be having a serious "talk" -- a more accurate term with Race would have been a one-sided lecture, even though he would firmly deny it when asked about it -- with him when this was over. Race had determined that Jonny had better not be forming an interest in his daughter, regardless of if it was conscious or not. A few hours later, Jessie told her father, with Jonny present, that they were only friends, and would never consider going beyond that. As far as Race was concerned, that had been the end of the matter. Now, however, it was the time to worry about the present.

Jonny glanced over to Jessie, who was sitting next to him on the couch. She was starting to nod off, for she had soon found the antics of diplomacy boring also. An idea soon hatched inside his head, and so he leaned over and asked her, whispering in her ear, "Hey Jess? Want to play a game in QuestWorld?"

Jessie eyelids fluttered open. "Yeah, sure thing, Jonny. I'm actually surprised it took you so long to ask."

"Yeah, Yeah, Yeah,..." Jonny mumbled, trying to dismiss the matter lightly.

Jessie smiled inwardly at his response. "We'll need to ask our fathers beforehand, though."

*** *** *** Ten minutes later, Dr Quest broke into the talks. 'Excuse me, Mr Prime Minister, and Mr President, but I think it's time for a drinks break.'

The Australian Prime Minister eased up out of his seat and quipped, "Ahh, at last! The highlight of the evening!"

Meanwhile, the President of the United States just smiled and stated, "You don't have to call me 'Mr President', Benton, you know that."

"Sorry, Race," the man apologised meekly, "I forgot. Old habits tend to die hard."

"Tell me about it," Race grumbled, and stood up from sitting in his chair. With that lightening of the moment, everyone mirrored his actions and started to make their way to the kitchen. On the way, he continued, "You should see the looks some Secret Service guys give me when I walk by. Just because I was one of them once, and now I'm the President, it makes them jealous. I'm serious, Benton. Just the other day I was in the Oval Office and this agent comes up to me holding a package and asks to speak the guy who--" He stopped that sentence abruptly when he felt someone tap him on the back.

"Yes, What is it?" he said as he turned around to see who it was. Recognition came within an instant. "Ah, it's just you Jessie. Do you need something?" he asked.

"Umm, Dad, could I go to the lighthouse with Jonny?" she requested.

"I don't see any reason why not. Some guards will have to go with you though," Race told her while referring to the people on Detail.

"But surely I can take care of myself withou--"

Sighing to himself, Race interrupted her impending outburst. "Jessie, you know that either you and the guards go, or you don't go. Please, Jessie. We've discussed this many times before. Not now."

"Humph. Well, all right then. They can come also," Jessie huffed, with a slight edge of frustration showing in her voice.

*** *** *** So when everyone had finally made their way into the kitchen, Jonny and Jessie met again, and compared notes. "So Jess," he asked her, "did your father say yes?"

"Yeah, he did," she replied. "And yours?"

"He said its okay, so long as some Secret Service people come along." Jonny then winced visibly as her expected reaction came forth.

"Y'know, my dad said that also. I don't know what his problem is! Its not like I'm a six year-old or anythi--"

Jonny hastily interrupted Jessie's mini-speech that she was getting into. "Yes, Jess, I know you like the Secret Service as much as I do, but they're here to stay. Just pretend they're not watching our every movement, okay?" Then, after a slight pause, "C'mon, what we waiting for? There's some serious QuestWorld games waiting!" He turned at a run and grinned over his shoulder as he raced from the room, "Last one to the lighthouse is a rotten egg!"

"BLONDIE is on the move," a secret sevice agent whispered into his wrist.

"Hey!" Jessie yelled at his rapidly shrinking form. Everyone in the room turned their heads towards the disturbance. She dashed from the room and continued from where she had left off, "Not fair! You were supposed to give ME the head-start this time!" Her voice was still quite audible to those left in the kitchen when she had finished.

"REDHEAD is one the move," another secret service agent said into his wrist.

Race and Benton couldn't help but look at each other and grin. Such is life when teenagers are in a house.

"And to think we were teenagers once," commented Race.

"Let's not even consider talking about that," Benton responded quickly.

Now Race was really grinning, and everyone else, the Australian Prime Minister included, were barely containing a laugh.

*** *** *** Less than a minute later, Jonny and Jessie dashed into the lighthouse with a squad of Secret Service agents following quickly on their heels. When they caught the two and finally entered, one of the agents decided that it was best to notify command. With a casual movement that usually goes unnoticed by others, he raised his wrist to mouth and whispered into it in a low voice, "BLONDIE and REDHEAD have arrived at the lighthouse. TURBAN is still here. Everything is secure." The people on Detail then took up their places at the corners of the room while one stayed outside and guarded the enterance.

In comparison to others, it was surprising how much effort the Secret Service was taking when it came to protecting the First Daughter along with the Vice-President's son. It hadn't taken them long to learn how bad a history Jessie had when it came to bad guys, let alone Jonny. And, worse yet, they knew that if they failed, the President would not hesitate at practicing a few techniques that he had learnt during his time in special-ops before firing them. Race might be the President, but he still worked out whenever he got the chance. The thought of what would happen in that eventuality made their faces take on a worried expression as they fidgeted in their spots.

Hadji noticed this, but decided not to call them on it since they probably had enough on their minds anyway without him adding any extra to it. Instead, he turned to his two companions and said, "Ah, my friends, I see you have brought me some company."

"Never mind them, Hadj," Jonny sighed. "Have you finished installing that stuff from the 'net, yet? We want to use Questworld sometime this year too, you know!"

At this, Hadji could not help but chuckle. "It is not so bleak an outlook, Jonny. How does next month grab you?"

Jonny groaned to himself belatedly while Jessie found that she could only giggle in response.

Hadji laughed outright. "No, really, my friends, I was just finishing up. The computer will be free in just under twenty seconds." Then, as if in answer to that statement, he heard the console behind him beep. "Just a moment," he told his two friends while he turned around to the object which had demanded his attention so blantantly. He entered a few commands in through the console before stepping back away from it as if both in triumph and taking pride in his abilities at the same time. "There, it is done. You may now sit in the induction chairs."

And so Jonny and Jessie went over to the set of three induction chairs in the middle of the room. Hadji handed out the earpieces that would create the portals into Questworld. The two attached it to the left hand side of their heads and rested the devices on their ears for support before sitting down in the seats.

As Hadji started to tap away on the keyboard, the sound of various computer systems warming up gradually the room. "Logging in subjects Jonathan Quest, and Jessica Bannon." He looked up from his typing and saw with satisfaction the purple streams of energy flow from the earpieces, across the eyes of Jessie and Jonny, and entered the head on the other side near the ear in a circular fashion. Hadji looked back at the console before him and prepared to power the system up fully just before the final countdown begins. Numbers flashed by on nearby monitors at an almost blinding speed as he verbally counted off the seconds that were left. "3... 2... 1... Going hot."

Slightly startled by the sudden immersion into a different environment, the brain, being stubborn, tends to need a little preparation for the sudden change of surroundings when the VR system starts up. To rectify this when he designed the system, Dr Quest used a swirling green vortex that seemed to materialize at the center of a subject's vision before steadily growing and clouding out the previous surroundings. In this case, it was simply the manner in which a computerized system like Questworld prepared the mind for the sudden change of incoming data.

So after all this was said and done, Jonny and Jessie found themselves standing inside Questworld's standard loading sequence of a black and blank world deviod of life that had intersecting green lines as the ground. "So what game do you have for us this time, Hadji?" Jessie asked aloud, knowing from experience that her voice would be transmitted from VR and into the real world by speakers lodged into the ceiling of the room they were all situated in.

The game's world slowly shimmered into existence as the reply came back of, "It is the new game I downloaded from the Internet, which I made compatible with Questworld." A chuckle came over the line. "I suspect that its name will not elude you."

Jonny watched as a droid control-ship appeared in orbit around a planet. "Star Wars," he utterred in awe with a slight shake of his head. "Man, I love Star Wars."

Hadji continued the introductions further. "However, I have not had time to fully read your virtual bodies into the game. For now, you will have to use the bodies that the game provides, but your voices will remain their usual annoying selves. It may be disconcerting, but since you have done something of the nature before, it should not worry you too much."

And with the simpleness of that statement, Jessie and Jonny were catapulted at break-neck speed into the middle of the destroyer. Their vision seemed to flash white for a moment before their surroundings stabilised into that which they were familiar with by now. Jonny looked at his hands and concluded who he was playing as. "I'm Obi-wan Kenobi!" he exclaimed with delight before something else occurred to him. He drew his gaze from his hands and up to the figure standing in front of him and over to his right. "But wouldn't that mean Jess is..."

Jessie, for her part, had already worked out what was happening by now. "Qui-Gon Jinn!" she finished for him while looking at him steadily.

They looked around the room with what could best be described as that of wonder. They could see the chairs around the large oblong table in the middle of the room, the markings on the wall, the grilles in the floor, the almost-circular door, and event what was going on outside.
"Look out of the window, Obi-Wan," Jessie commanded, using that name just to goad him. Jonny glared at her briefly before she continued with an innocent-looking smile, "Those are troop transports. The Trade Federation must be plotting some dark course!"

"And how did you know that, Jess?" he asked her jokingly.

She grinned back at him. "Wouldn't you like to know." And then, before anything else could be said, their vision warped and the outlines of the room seemed to glow radiantly. Jessie shot a look at Jonny just as he did to her, and both of them realized during that short moment that something most unexpected had happened. And then, as the glowing effect spread from only edges to gradually envelop entire objects, they knew what it was... the game was enhancing their sense of the surroundings.

"Hadj!" Jonny called out quickly with a trace of alarm, "The game is doing something! We're seeing way too much detail, here!"

It took a moment for Hadji's disembodied voice to answer. "It is one of my features that I added. From my readings, it is emulating the Force quite well."

"What?!" Jessie exclaimed, "You mean I'm a virtual Jedi?!?" Her voice was nearing that edge that Jonny loved to call 'the wild and uncontrollable force of fury'.

Hadji chuckled softly to himself as he recalled that. "In essence, yes," he answered her simply.

"Cool!" Jonny responded. "Now how does this game begin?" He racked his brain for a moment. "Oh yeah, I remember..." He cleared his throat before speaking in a low and serious softly-accented voice, "I have a bad feeling about this."

Jessie picked up the track he was going on. "Your feelings serve you well, Obi-Wan... but don't let cloud your judgement!"

He turned to face her fully. "What is your plan, Qui-Gon?"

"When the trade-federation viceroy arrives, we must convince him to leave the system."

"Will they agree to leave?"

She shook her head. "The viceroys are cowards. Our meeting will be short." The door opened and a droid walked into the room. Jessie continued mock-warningly, "Still, be prepared for the unexpected."

The doors shut. The droid gave the standard welcome message that only truly devoted fans of Star Wars knew well. "Greetings! I am TC-14, protocol droid and servant of the Trade Federation." An odd-coloured gas started to come out of the air conditioning vents.

"Something is amiss here," Jessie then said vaguely. She noticed some odd smell had entered the room from the vents. Of course, she thought, Why receive the message when you can destroy the messenger instead? That smell must be poison gas! Some part of her mind privately knew that she really didn't have to say that because she'd seen the movie countless times before, but had decided that it was better to go along with the flow of the program. "The room is filling with poison gas!" she yelled. "We must escape!"

Jonny and Jessie instinctively pulled out and activated their lightsabres present on their utility-belts, even though they had absolutely no idea as to how they could possibly fight off poision-gas with something like a lightsabre. Since the only way out was through the door, Jessie decided they'd melt it down. Unfortunately, much to Jonny's chagrin, it then opened wide.

As they stepped through the door, they were met by a pack of droids outside. "Security Breach!" the commanding droid exclaimed harshly and opened fire just as hastily.

As Jonny and Jessie battled their way through the squad of droids, armed only with their lightsabres and the Force, Jonny wondered at how he knew, as if by instinct, exactly where the blaster-bolts were going to go, and when they would come too close so he could move his lightsabre and reflect them accordingly. Before he was completely finished, however, he shook his head to clear it before commanding, "Iris, enter cheat-code: But I feel so good." Iris was their A.I. equipped computer that existed inside Questworld itself.

"You're the guy with the force," came a female's computer-generated voice that was accented with melodious tones. Grinning evilly, Jonny raised his hand sent a red force push to the remaining droids, which promptly flashed forth with sparks before exploding.

Jessie glared at him in consternation. "Beware the dark side, Jonny!" At the look then he gave her, she added hastily, "Once you step down its path, forever will it dominate your destiny."

"You know Jess," Jonny observed, "you sound just like Hadji. All I did was enter a cheat-code." And so he gripped his hand into a fist and lowered it firmly like a bad-guy out of a second-rate Anime as he commanded, "Iris, re-enter cheat-code again: But I feel so good."

"Play nice," Iris replied. Now Jonny tried another force-push. This time, it was back to blue.

Jessie rolled her eyes at his antics. "Now can we please get back to the game, hmm? We need to find a way to open this door!"

"Sure, no problem," Jonny said cooly, "A switch is bound around here somewhere..." He strode up the hallway with long strides that almost seemed to speak of confidence. He noticed an Artoo droid to his left and a cubicle to his right that was almost set into the right-hand side of the door. Just before he reached it, however, the cubicle opened and a droid walked out with blaster firing.

Cursing himself for letting his guard down, Jonny re-activated his lightsabre and split the droid in half through its midsection. He watched with satisifaction as collapsed into a loose pile of metal on the floor. That droid was guarding something, he observed as he walked into the cubicle with a puzzled look. His prayers were answered. Aha! A switch! he thought triumphantly. He pushed his hand on the switch and forced it into the wall.

From the hallway, Jessie said, "The door is open, lets go." She strode off ahead of him.

"I think you're settling into this Master Jedi role a little bit too well, Jessie," Jonny commented as he ran his heart out to catch up with her.

"Of course," she quipped with a smile, "I love to boss around little boys who think they're invincible!"

Jonny muttered something under his breath until they reached a T-shaped intersection. He looked to his left and said, "Destroyer droids. Don't want to go in there. Take the right."

"Right," agreed Jess, and took the path.

Another door blocked them, leading Jonny to wonder just what on Earth was the idea here with the level-designers wanting to put all these obstacles in their way all the time. It wasn't like that in the movie! he protested to himself mentally. It turned out that only after blowing up another two droids in separate compartments on each side of the hallway did the door finally open and let them through.

Just as Jonny was about to go off again on some personal mission of his, Jessie caught him by the arm. "Shouldn't we wait for the Artoo-series droid?" she advised him. "We might get a health upgrade!"

Jonny disagreed with a hearty, "Nah, I hate waiting," and strode through the door.

Cursing all nineteen year-old boys worldwide under her breath, Jessie followed him reluctantly until she saw what lay ahead of them. "The ship's command centre is just ahead!" she informed him. She liked this bit in the movie. She was really looking forward to melting down a blast door.

That is, until two destroyer droids rolled into view and blocked their path by placing them under heavy fire.

It only took a few tense moments of battle for Jessie to make the call. "We're out-numbered, let's go." They ran pell-mell down the adjacent hallway and entered a cramped alleyway just as a blaster bolt skimmed past the opening.

Jessie passed Jonny while he caught his breath. "Let's split up," she ordered in passing and not waiting for objections, "I'll jump over the hole in the floor and you can go down it. We'll meet in the hanger." And with that, she leaped over the hole like it was nothing and entered the hanger's walkways.

Jonny shrugged to himself and decided to jump down the hole. He didn't want to get on Jessie's bad side. Especially when she was armed with the Force and could impart learning on him in a rather primitive fashion if it ever came to that. When he drew his mind back to the moment, and subsequently back to the Living Force, he noticed that he had fallen into a room with only one exit to his left and an insanely-high grill to his right that he couldn't even possibly attempt to remove. "Here goes nothing," he muttered to himself as he took the only path available to him.

He rounded a corner and came out to a walkway that overlooked the hanger where a giant ship was docked. "That must be my ship," Jonny observed before adding with a grin, "and I can't wait to fly it." He knew that it wasn't exactly like Race was around to protest about his driving this time.

And as soon as that statement had passed from his lips, the ship exploded, the world around him rocked violently, and the vibrations from the quake threw him to the floor moments before his entrance into Questworld was terminated. Jonny's last thoughts as the familiar green vortex swirled around him were of a wonderment as to how a simple explosion in some game could ever cause him to be thrown out of Questworld in a such a harsh manner.

*** *** *** Jonny's mind drifted aimlessly through endless waves of black, his thoughts lost to the darkness which enshrouded him. On the edge of his rapidly-diminishing consciousness, he was aware of sound, touch, vision, and all the other senses, but he was too immersed in where he was now to act upon any of them. Yet suddenly, there was a voice, and the voice slowly grew louder. It rose in magnitude until recognition finally connected, and the words which followed screamed all the way down into his very soul. "Jessie, Jonny, wake up! The house is on fire!"

With the simplicity of that statement somehow jerking him back into the realm of the living, Jonny was wide-awake and his mind was on full-alert. He stood up out of the induction chair with only a bare trace of grogginess and spotted his adopted brother within an instant. "Hadj, what's up?"

Hadji almost did a double-take. It seemed to be that Jonny had changed from someone out of it to someone with it in under a second -- and this from someone who had trouble waking up any time before noon? Had it been any other time, he would've asked Jonny about it, but now certainly was not another time. Tersely, he supplied, "The mansion is what is up. It's on fire. Our secret service agents have contacted the authorities and are outside attempting to slow the fire down."

Jonny didn't like the sound of that. "Alright. It'd be quicker if there's all three of us, so I'll wake Jess while you run ahead and see if you can get anyone out of the mansion. If you leave now, we can catch up in time."

At the moment, Hadji knew that any plan of action was better than at all, and he'd be darned if he could work out a better one, anyway. "Very well," he agreed, and briskly strode through the door that led outside. He was on a mission now, and, to be frank, he was determined to complete it if it was the last thing he did.

Jonny saw Hadji leave and turned back to rouse Jessie. Part of him was aware that his father was in the mansion, but he couldn't worry about that now. He moved over to her induction chair and, only for a moment, was struck by what he saw. For as long as he could remember, he'd had a crush on Jessie, but had only let it remain at a distance and not allowed it to interfere with their friendship, which he treasured. Then he thought about what he had to do, and forced those feelings aside. He knew they would resurface one day, maybe even to destroy them all, but he had more important things to worry about now.

Like Jessie. He gently shook her by the shoulder. "Jess, wake up!" he entreated, "We've gotta help Hadji save our Dads!" He looked down at her and suddenly wondered why she wasn't waking up. Puzzled, he knelt down in front of her and, with a look that could best be described as that of worry and concern, he studied her face intently for any sign of movement.

Jonny did not have to wait long. The clutch present in his chest went up a notch as he saw her unconscious form cringe slightly in her seat as she murmured in a low and frightened voice, "N-No... Get away." Jessie held up her hands in front of her face, as if to ward of a blow, leaving him to wonder what was going through her mind at that moment. His answer arrived soon thereafter. "No... d-don't k-kill J-Jonny."

Those last four words of hers were hoarse and spoken as if she were crying as she watched her world end. Jonny wondered why she could speak of him in such a way. He didn't think he was worth that much to her. Thus, not wanting Jessie to reveal any more so that her eventual embarassment would not be complete, Jonny steeled his resolve and gripped Jessie by her shoulders as he screamed at her as forcefully as he could manage, "Jessie! For the last time, WAKE UP!!"

At long last, Jessie's eyelids flutterred open. As she looked at him, Jonny could clearly see the despair and hopeless evident in her eyes before it changed into outright joy as she saw him. Her face seemed to light up as she exclaimed, "Jonny! You're alive!" and leapt at him ecstatically, forcing him back onto the floor. She sat atop of him, her face positively beaming as she straddled his hips. She gazed down at him fondly and his heart skipped a beat. "It was horrible! I thought you were..." Her voiced trailed off as she then looked into space, deep in thought. "Y'know, now that I think of it, I don't remember what was troubling me." She gazed back down at hin, saw their relative positions, and her face blushed a deep shade of red as she got off of him. As he rose and stood up beside her, she hastily explained, "Sorry, Jonny. It wasn't me who did that; I don't know what did."

Jonny seemed to brushing himself off. "'s okay, Jess. I know." And he thumbed the doorway. "Anyway, we need to be leaving now. Hadji's sorta expecting us."

"Expecting us?" she questioned with a puzzled frown.

"The mansion is on fire," he answered promptly, jerking his thumb in the direction of the door as a reckless grin tugged at his lips.

From the look present on her face, Jonny could tell that Jessie hadn't quite gotten it yet. "The mansion?" She thought about that, only briefly, and the look of wide-eyed horror that passed over her face sent chills down Jonny's spine. "Oh my God! DAD!" And before he could do anything else, she dashed frantically from the room, leaving Jonny behind her to stare at where she had just been before moving to follow her.

*** *** *** The scent of acrid smoke drifted through the air as the large wooden frame of the mansion was consumed by an enormous fireball. Even from halfway between it and the lighthouse, the heat was intense... so intense that it stung the eyes just to look at what had been their home. From the very sight of it, they knew that their fathers wer still inside... but there was nothing they could do about it now. It was as if from far away, from the wrong side of an ever widening chasm, that they saw the agents on detail use the garden hose in an attempt to put it out and heard the wail of fire-engines off in the distance.

Jonny stood stock-still on the slope near the compound, the flaming heat evaporating the liquid forming in his eyes. "Dad..." Yet as with everything else, even these words were stolen from him by the wind. He felt his heart break as he watched the golden, ruby lights flickering inside his home. The strange thought of how beautiful the effect was breifly crossed his mind, strangely reminding him of Jessie's fiery red hair at the same time. His hands slowly rose to cover his mouth, trembling in shocked grief. Despite the heat beating as the front of his body, he felt cold and naked, stripped of everything he had ever possessed and believed in. He felt so lonely... so alone...

Jessie stumbled forward, arms stretched towards the raging inferno and her beautiful eyes tearing. "DAD!" The cry tore from her throat, but was soon lost in the crackling roar of the inferno. Heartbroken, she fell to her knees and sobbed into her hands as an empty void she knew she would never fill opened up in her chest at the loss of her father. Her tightly clenched eyelids concealed the demise of the small light that had always seemed to cause a sparkle in her eyes... and burn even brighter in her heart. With her father gone, that light would never again shine... it had been muted as easily as a glowing wick can be extinguished between two wet fingers.

Hadji could only watch mutely, his yoga training stopping him from expressing his grief as openly as were his friends. An observer might have mistaken his calm for an uncaring attitude, but deep inside him there was a little boy who wept bitterly at the loss of his true family. He broke his gaze away from the fiery blaze and turned his face to the side, as if denying the truth now that he couldn't see its evidence, allowing only one solitary drop to trace its way down his cheek before clenching his eyes shut to stop the rushing waterfall lurking behind them.

A sudden gust of wind inflamed the raging fire, blowing out another window and pushing fire towards the three friends. Their haunted faces were lit up momentarily by the flames, and the Detail guarding the three haltingly averted their gazes from the anguish visible in their once-youthful expressions.

This time, the good guys lost.