The morning sun found Avalon Page dropping into bed just as her alarm went off. Class in three hours? Great. Just enough time to run to the library and do some more research! But wait, thought Avalon, at least three hours of sleep was more than none. She sat up in her uniform, boots leaving smudges of monster dust over her forest-green comforter. Pulling her laptop towards her, Avalon logged on and sent out emails to anyone who might be interested: her teachers, her boss. She wasn't feeling well, she had a fever, and she was staying home. A phone call provided her a cover for her shift, and she set it aside.

Then Avalon laid down and stared up at her ceiling. It was a fairly boring ceiling, traditional, with a coat of white paint and a light fixture that consisted of a frosted dome. There, the bar separating the panes of her window scythed through morning's dull light, a blue shadow over the rosy tint given from the sun. It always puzzled her that morning light could even reach her window, considering it faced a building; but she supposed the universe would do just about anything to annoy the ******** out of some people.

How in the world did some senshi do it? She'd already had a full schedule before becoming Avalon, and even if she kept her venturesome spells to nights when she had no evening shift, she still felt so much more exhausted now. Killing monsters was more of a workout than collecting numbers and trying to weed out false positives; she was no scientist, and she worked alone, which gave her numbers even less credibility, but they were nothing more than a means to an end. Zinkenite just pissed her off, she was just tired, all she needed was a few nights' sleep without being bothered by fragments of phrases, by persistent longings for something to wrap around her hand.

A ring. She'd seen a few Knights wearing them, all distinctly different, and she…

Avalon flexed one hand, sat up and gazed around her room; it looked more alien like this, so early in the day. Her desk, shoved against the wall under the window, piled high with notebooks and smudged with whatever she'd stepped in last night. A small niche for the laptop she'd just shoved to the foot of her bed revealed a few pads of paper, liberally scattered. Next to the desk on an end table she'd gotten off the side of a street was a small pile of plates, three bowls and a mug of cold coffee. Her waste basket was overflowing. She had to do something about that, she thought, blinking at it owlishly. Avalon laid back down and closed her eyes. Her efforts to ignore the words tattooed on the backs of her eyelids were wasted, she couldn't forget them. Why couldn't she forget them, they were just. Words.

She had to turn back to Tate, she remembered this suddenly, but just after that she remembered something else, something more important, something she had to say…

So she did, tired of biting her tongue on the damn thing, whatever it was, however it kept getting into her head. Maybe then it would stop and she could get more sleep? "I pledge my life and loyalty to Earth, and to Avalon. I humbly request your aid, so that in return I may give you mine…"

Avalon Page vanished from her room. She was going home.

Continues here

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