At the 7th Precinct, the Flea is sitting behind her desk. She looks alone, and very depressed, idly splashing one of her fingers in a cup of coffee long since gone cold. Sonic Boom enters the office, and seeing her sister in the throes of such deep depression, approaches her.

"What's wrong?"

Seeing that Flea didn't notice her signing, she vocalizes: "Whad's wrong?"

Flea looks up. It appears that she has been sadly reminiscing about something.

"Oh, nothing. I just happened to be pondering my personal life, that's all."

Sonic Boom shrugs, then leaves. Inside Flea, a mental conversation with Ferret begins.

"What's wrong with you, Jill Burke? Lately, you have been growing more and more depressed, and I can't find any reason for it!"

The scene shifts to a barren landscape: it's the inside of the Flea's mind, where two versions of herself are speaking. Ferret is in the Flea costume, minus the leather jacket. Jill Burke is wearing a white T- shirt and blue jeans.

"Tell me, Ferret, have you ever been in love?"

"As a matter of fact, I was. In fact, I was even married before you came along."

Jill finds a flat rock and sits on it. "Tell me about him. Your husband."

A smile crosses Ferret's face. "He was the most amazing man. We were married for about a year before you were brought aboard."

Jill sighs. "I'll tell you what's wrong with me, Ferret. My problem is just that I'm lonely."

Ferret nods. "Do not worry, Jill Burke. Your time is coming quickly. You will find someone. I am sure of it."

"Thanks, Ferret."

Back in the office, Ramm and Cutup have entered, and following behind them is Sonic Boom. Ramm is shaking Jill awake when she regains consciousness.

"Are you all right? You were talking in your sleep."

Flea blinks. "I guess so."

"You missed the call. We've received word that a superhuman just hit City Hall."

Flea leaps to her feet. "Well, what're we waiting for? Let's move!!"

When the team arrives at City Hall, it's mostly in ruins. The person responsible is still there, though, and he is a familiar face: it's Grungecut, but now as a bizarre superhuman, molding his hands and feet into various weapons.(NOTE: The team first met Grungecut in MH #2)

"Miss Maroone said you would be here." He molds his left hand into what appears to be a knife. "Now watch me do my stuff!"

Grungecut assaults a nearby man, but Flea is faster, leaping and pushing the potential victim out of harm's way before he can be hurt. Pulling out her gun, she faces Grungecut.

"We beat you before, Grungecut, we'll beat you again!"

"Grungecut? Oh, he's ancient history. The man you face is Demolition!"

Molding his hands into sledgehammers, he rushes Flea. Flea figures that his hands would be his weak spot, so she fires two rounds into each hand. Grungecut only responds with laughter.

"Oh, was that supposed to hurt?"

Flea didn't notice that he had molded his feet into the same hammers that his hands had been molded into. He swings a foot in a high kick and nails Flea on the side of her head. She collapses into a heap.

"I'll show ya hurting!!"

Three knives come flying toward Demolition, which he blocks by changing his hands into one giant shield. The knives shatter against the shield. Figuring that he has suddenly become overmatched, he runs away.

The team notices his departure, but are more concerned about Flea, who took a hard hit to the head. She remains in a heap on the floor of the lobby. Sonic Boom is trying to revive her, coming to the point of tears hoping that her sister is alive. A cooler head belonging to Ramm, however, picks up one of Flea's wrists.

"She's got a pulse. She'll be all right, Meredith, don't worry."

Sonic Boom turns angrily toward Ramm. "Whaddya mean, don't worry? She's by sisder!!"

Paramedics finally arrive, and Meredith stays with her sister as she is taken to the hospital.

High above the surface of the planet, hiding behind the dark side of the moon, flies a bizarre starship, vaguely shaped like a nightingale. Inside the ship, several people looking like doctors rush around, trying to contain every injury the come across, which the ship picks up. Three very concerned parties right now are the three men conferring around a status monitor on a console. The eldest is Kaye Diamond. The youngest, Lane Penta. The last is Cass Points.

"What happened?"

"Ferret ... Jill ... They sustained a sharp blow to the head. They've been taken to an Earth hospital, but I fear the kind of butchery they will perform on her."

"Butchery ..." Cass intones. "My God, the Gaoan anatomy doesn't even come close to human anatomy! How can they even treat her properly?"

"Careful, Cass," Lane injects. "I know you love Ferret dearly, but you can't let your emotions get in the way of the job you're supposed to do."

"I don't care!" Cass turns to Kaye. "You have to listen to me, gaulain. If you ever cared about your daughter one iota, you will listen to me. If I can trust this scanner, Ferret has sustained a brain aneurism, and if those human doctors try to treat her while they're learning her anatomy, Ferret will die."

Kaye looks at Cass with concern. Being his gaulain, or father in law, has built a paternal relationship between Kaye and Cass, one which Kaye has a hard time betraying when Cass is desperately asking to save Ferret's life.

"We'll arrange for a transport beam. As soon as the coordinates are set, we will send you down to treat Ferr ... Jill ... whoever."

Cass smiles, heading toward the reception area.

The ambulance arrives at Detroit Receiving hospital, where it unloads its barely living passenger. Meredith runs into the emergency room with Jill and the EMT's, screaming.

"Officer down! Clear out!"

Three doctors run toward where the commotion is occurring, and start checking out Jill.

"What happened?"

"Blow to the head with a 25 pound sledgehammer. She's got a concussion, she's been unconscious since we've seen her. We gave her 10 cc's of lidocaine, since her pulse was too weak."

The other two doctors start examining her injury. Soon, they make a shocking discovery.

"Excuse me, have you noticed the color of this woman's blood?"

The third doctor comes over to Jill's head. Meredith is going ballistic.

"What the hell are you doig?!"

The doctors turn to Meredith. "Who are you?"

"I'b her sisder, dow whad the hell is goig on?!"

"Look at this, miss. Her blood is blue."

Meredith takes a closer look at her sister's head. Just as the doctor had said, her blood is a deep blue. She starts backing away, frightened.

"The coordinates are set, Cass. You may leave when you are ready."

Kaye is at the control panel of the transport beam, as Cass steps onto the platform of the beam. Kaye makes final adjustments on the alterations of the beam.

"Good luck, Cass. Save Ferret."

"You know I will, gaulain."

Kaye activates the beam, which surrounds Cass in a protective stasis field, which will shield him from the vacuum of space on his way down.

"I've traced Ferret to a hospital building in the city the humans call Detroit. You are being sent directly there."

Cass nods, as the platform disappears from beneath him. Almost instantly, he drops out of the bottom on his guided journey.

The emergency room has become a confused panic of activity, as several doctors have been consulted about Flea's unusual physiology. Finally, they decide to take action.

"Listen, gentlemen, the plain fact is that this woman is going to die if we keep pussy-footing around her because she's got an unusual body. Get me 20 cc's of any coagulant and put it in her right now!"

A brilliant flash of light behind the activity startles all of the doctors. Cass Points appears from the flash, and pulls out his medical kit, approaching Flea. All of this is seriously affecting Meredith, who isn't sure who her sister is anymore.

"Stand aside, doctors. I have expertise in her anatomy and I believe I can help."

Cass approaches Flea, as the rest of the emergency room staff backs away from him. Slowly, he opens his medical kit and withdraws several instruments, including one tool which appears to look like a pair of pliers with a long blade on one of the halves. Cass picks up a futuristic syringe.

"Gentlemen, your patient is a Gaoan, and thus, her anatomy is much different from your own." Cass injects the contents of the syringe into Flea's injury. "A blow to the head such as your patient sustained will cause a primary brain aneurism in our species. The proper treatment is not any kind of coagulant ... that will merely kill the patient."

Cass picks up the plier-like instrument, and places the blade part inside the ear on the side of the Flea's head with the injury, plunging the blade all the way into the ear.

"The proper treatment is to release the pressure on her brain by directly releasing it through the injury. This instrument, which we call an aeriator, will achieve just that."

The entire room is shocked when the sound of pressurized air is heard coming from the injury on Flea's head. Cass smiles finally.

"The treatment is complete. All that is left to do is to dress the wound. Keep her under observation for at least three of the seven day periods you call 'weeks,' and once the wound is healed, she can be released with no further side effects." Cass applies a square dressing to the wound, a dressing which adheres itself around the wound. Finally, Cass backs away from Flea, and lets the doctors examine what he has done.

"Nurse, put this patient in Ward V, room 380."

"Yes doctor." A nurse comes and takes the gurney away. Everyone leaves the emergency room, except for Meredith. Suddenly, her doubts of her sister's identity come to light in her, and she cries bitter tears of rage toward her sister.

The Flea wakes up in her hospital room, none the worse for wear but still a little dazed. As Jill rouses the body, Ferret suddenly wakes.

"What has happened, Jill Burke?"

"We got hit hard by a superhuman. I don't know how long we've been out."

Flea opens her eyes, and notices two things: her left eye is swollen shut from the wound, and her sister is sitting at the foot of her bed, with an expression on her face which says that she's not very happy.

"Meredith ... what ...?"

"You've been oud for dwelve hours. Duh doctors were tryig to figure oud whad to make of you, bud adother dogtor made an appearance and saved your life."

Flea tries to straighten up, but Meredith continues.

"Who are you?"

"What? Meredith, it's me, Jill."

"No you're nod. However much you wand to believe you're Jill Burke, you are nod! Who are you?!"

Cass chooses that moment to enter the room, and seeing the confrontation, decides to intervene.

"Miss? You're Meredith Burke, right?"

In Flea's mind, Ferret, having seen Cass, suddenly jumps.

"Give me control, Jill Burke! Give me control NOW!!"

"Why?"

"THAT'S MY HUSBAND!!"

The Flea's body changes her expression from one of confrontation to one of confused relief.

"Cass?"

Meredith is shocked by what she (barely) hears: Ferret's voice sounds much different from her sister's, deeper, more accented.

"Cass? Is that you?"

Cass shows that same recognition on his face. Happily, he sweeps Flea into his arms.

"Ferret. You are in there."

"Will somebody egsplain do be whad's goig on?!" Meredith's voice shows her anger at her sister, or pseudosister.

"I suppose we should tell her, Cass. She is Jill Burke's sister, she has a right to know."

"'Jill Burke's sisder ...?' Whad happened do Jill?! Tell me now!"

Ferret turns to Meredith, and hesitantly begins her story.

"About a year ago, the Gaoan hospital ship, where I and Cass come from, picked up a seriously injured woman from the streets of Detroit. She had been shot on the top floor of a skyscraper and had been in her descent to the ground when we found her. When she arrived at the ship, it was determined that she was too far beyond our help, so we placed her mind in a stasis field to preserve it.

"It was discovered that I was an exact body double to the woman -- identical face, height, eye color, minimal hair difference because of the brown streaks. An operation was performed to implant her mind into my body, so as to preserve her. However, something went wrong during the operation."

Cass picks up from where Ferret left off. "Ferret was given a heavy sedative for the operation, because the mental trauma, in our opinion, would have made her psychotic, and not helped the other woman's mind any, either. Unfortunately, during the operation Ferret's body metabolized the sedative. She became fully aware of all that was going on during the procedure, and as a result, sucked the rest of the other woman's mind into her own. Thus, she ended up with two distinct personalities. One was the original, Ferret Diamond-Points, my wife."

Ferret concludes. "The other personality is Jill Burke. Your sister."

Meredith collapses into her chair. Her eyes are brimming with tears.

"My sisder is dead?"

"Yes. But I have her mind in me ..."

Meredith angrily lashes out. "What does thad madder?! So whad, you had a semi-successful oberation, whad was the cosd? I'll dell you, id was Jill. She had her whole life ahead of her, and id was taken away! I could habe deald with her death, bud then you had to keeb her alive in mind! Thad's the mosd cruel thing you could have ever done do her!" Meredith runs out of the room in a shower of tears. Ferret looks at Cass.

"She's right."

"What?"

"We have become so engrossed with prolonging life that we haven't yet thought about the emotional part. I always wondered why Jill Burke was always so angry, but now I know. Maybe she simply wanted to die."

"There's nothing we can do about that, Ferret."

Ferret's expression changes, and Cass is certain that he's now definitely talking to Jill Burke.

"We'll see about that, Cass. I've been listening in on the whole affair." Jill turns toward the door. Cass starts to follow her, but stops short. She turns around once, and her face changes again, so that it is Ferret who is in control.

"Thank you, Cass. I love you."

Ferret and Cass kiss, then Ferret continues down the hallway.

Meredith is sitting outside, on a balcony. She has her face buried in her hands, crying miserably. Jill walks up behind her.

"Hey."

Meredith turns around to face her. "What do you want, alien?"

Jill laughs and approaches her. "That's what I always liked about you. You couldn't recognize me from a distance."

Meredith loosens up from her tight pose, letting herself relax in the presence of her pseudosister.

"Listen, I should have told you that a long time ago. I just couldn't get up the nerve to do it. I think it has been extremely unfair of me to keep something like this from my own sister, and for that I apologize."

Meredith is clearly still skeptical. She crosses her arms and turns away. "So, is that all?"

"No it's not. Listen to me for once."

Meredith turns back toward her sister.

"What you said back there was not the truth. When I got shot by that punk, it wasn't my time. That's obvious, because something guided that hospital ship over Detroit and compelled them to pick me up. Now look at what I am. I'm still doing what I'm best at, and that's being a cop. Now, of course, I'm a superhuman cop, but that's beside the point. The point is, I wouldn't even be doing this if they hadn't picked me up. I'm living the life that was taken away from me."

Meredith looks like she is about to cry again. Jill approaches her and puts her arms around her sister.

"Feel any better now?"

"I guess so."

"Good, because you'll be hearing from Ferret again, I'm sure of it. Since you've already met her, you may as well get to know her."

Meredith looks up and smiles. "Dank you, sis."

Arm in arm, the two sisters walk back into the hospital.

Liked it? Didn't? Think the Flea has the stupidest origin you've ever heard?
Let me know! PLEEEEEASE!!

Back to 7th Precinct