Tuesday, 14:20 hours.
Ignoring the technicians, Alexander Potemkin fingered the loose-weave fabric, stroking it lovingly. For some reason, he had assumed it would be slick and silver, like the shiny fabrics in those 1950's space movies. Instead, it had the feel of good quality heavy cotton. Once he put it on, it would be cool and comfortable, at least until he started flying around at Mach Three.
He knew only a little about the process that had created the fabric. It was actually a collection of tiny tubes made of carbon and a few trace elements, capable of regenerating itself from any appropriate carbon source. However, the fabric itself was merely the means to an end -- what Potemkin had spent his last six months studying was the controls.
Potemkin was the test pilot for the next generation of the Old Gloryhog's suit. The project had completed on time and under budget, which was astonishing for anything run by the Defense Department. Potemkin thought that it was probably due to the scientists' patriotic attempt to make a difference in the Irish war, which of course they completed the project too late for.
Potemkin breathed in deeply, and let out a long slow sigh. Upon a successful flight, he would be the natural heir to the old war-horse. While each suit would be expensive, the government would be quite likely to field as many as they could find competent pilots for. And one of the first names on that list would be Alexander Potemkin.
Finally sensing the impatience of the waiting technicians, he disconnected the diagnostic panel and allowed them to pack the suit for shipment to the test range in Nevada. Potemkin would be there waiting.
******
Tuesday, 18:45 hours.
IB2Tap completed the preparations at the warehouse. Sensors of various kinds would record the several bands of radiation which were likely to be occasioned by dimensional travel. With any luck, she would learn more about her visitor than he would about her.
Either way, the visit should be interesting.
******
Wednesday, 05:00 hours.
It had been twenty or so hours since Carl made off with a half dozen spent fuel rods. There was nothing on the news about his attack on their waste disposal convoy. Not surprising, actually, as he expected that they covered it up. Carl even doubted that Powerdyne would report the incident. The power cell was almost ready, and since IB2Tap wanted to meet, he figured he could use the warehouse to make some modifications to the power supply and give Wedge some independence from the replicator.
Carl at least found good use for the kiddy pool that had been in the back yard for years. The rods weren't much to look at, just six gray metal bars submerged in water.
Carl had dug into Powerdyne's personnel files, but there was no reference to the guy he recently tangled with. He knew a whitewash when he saw one, especially when he found out that everyone who had been involved with the convoy received an interesting bonus afterwards. Carl didn't like that. He didn't know who the guy was, and it was going to eat away at him not knowing.
For most of the night, Tween worked on the power cells; these two were more sophisticated than the mini cell that was currently attached to the replicator. One power cell for the replicator, another for the wormhole device. He put a power linkup between them, just in case. He also wanted to take the mini cell and install it into Wedge, but he couldn't do any of that until he checked out the warehouse. IB2Tap had agreed to meet him at ten o'clock.
Wedge took a look last night. It was a small quiet warehouse just outside Vegas. The area inside seemed big enough from what Wedge described, so Carl was going to take a personal look around at eight, enough time before IB2Tap was supposed to be there.
It was still five in the morning here, no one was up. Tammy usually went to work around seven and the kids were off to school around the same time. Carl hadn't slept in days; he could have if he wanted to, but he just wasn't tired. The bruises from the day before were gone. It was more a psychological thing that Carl kept checking.
Carl also kept thinking about the night before, when he was cutting vegetables for Tammy. He sliced his thumb with a knife. He yelled, and blood flowed out, but a moment later the wound closed and the pain went away. The only reason he knew he had cut himself was the small pool of blood on the cutting board. The wildest thing was that when Carl touched the blood, the wet pool immediately seeped back into his finger. Luckily he had drawn Tammy's attention away from the incident, but he still thought she may have seen.
******
Wednesday, 06:30 hours.
Old Glory drank his coffee and reread the confidential report, then sighed and gave up. Who the hell cared about dead fuel rods? He was too distracted by thoughts about the glory hound that was just about now testing his new trousers.
Potemkin wasn't a bad sort. Bad sorts didn't make it through psych testing to wear a billion dollars in hardware. Nonetheless, he was a typical top-gun-style brat. It would be fun to take him down a peg or two, new equipment or no new equipment. No amount of high-technology would make up for twelve years in the suit.
Kids always thought that the latest and greatest would give them an unbeatable edge. However, the premiere patriot had been through enough skirmishes with the best -- and the worst -- to know that pure power seldom made the difference. It wasn't finesse, either, it was an undefinable something that comprised a combination of those, along with guts and luck.
Old Glory himself wasn't due on the range until about ten, when the individual combat options for Potemkin had worn thin and he needed an old warhorse to shake him up a bit. He grinned wryly, because he was just the one to do it. Until then, let the young stallion have his fun.
******
Wednesday, 07:10 hours.
The suit flew magnificently. Gloriously, he corrected with a chuckle. The manufacturers colored the costume with the standard red, white and blues, but they updated the visual design slightly for the new capabilities of the suit.
Potemkin swooped, curled and dived through a clear bright morning sky, pulling up to hover at the focus of the sensors. Radio chatter from the technicians and scientists suggested actions, and he complied nearly instantly with effortless loops and barrel rolls.
Drone rockets vectored in towards him, detected immediately by the suit and given low danger ratings, due to their lack of explosive warheads. He destroyed them anyway with a casual wave of his gloved hands.
Targets began appearing more rapidly, flights of three missiles, some armed. He blasted the armed warheads first, destroying the dummies as an afterthought.
"Fine on the preliminaries," said the Pakistani-inflected voice of the test commander. "We will now proceed to full combat test."
"Bring them on!" crowed Potemkin.
Six ground emplacements deployed, opening like deadly chrome flowers. One disgorged a dozen micro-missiles, while a second began firing evenly spaced ballistic shells toward him.
"Heat seekers," Potemkin read aloud off the display, then engaged full thrust upward, away from the focus of the attack. The micro-missiles curved upwards to follow him, then seemed to lose interest as he engaged "cool mode" and disappeared off their sensors. The missiles then began to track random heat sources, swooping off across the desert until the test technicians engaged the auto-destructs.
Potemkin grinned. "What else you got?"
His question was cut short by blasts of energy from three of the remaining emplacements. He had a long way to fall.
******
Wednesday, 08:00 hours .
The kids were at school and the wife was at work. Carl awoke the nanites within him and his body instantly shifted, growing harder and darker, his eyes suffusing with a baleful flourescent fire. Now as Tween, he transported himself a mile away just to get a feel for the surrounding area. When a cop car streaked by, sirens blazing, he thought he was in serious trouble. It's not every day that people walk off with spent uranium rods. But a moment past, and the silence that followed reassured him that everything else seemed fine.
Wedge teleported Tween inside the abandoned depot. His green eyes pulsed as he scanned the interior. Everything seemed in order, nothing he wouldn't have expected in an old warehouse. He noticed a half-open skylight. Like a wraith, he slipped through it and onto to the roof. Sitting with his feet hanging off the edge, he waited for IB2Tap to show.
******
Wednesday, 07:45 hours
Swearing, Potemkin pulled himself out of the uncontrolled dive, landing upright on the desert floor. The energy beams had caught him off guard, almost stunning him with the sudden shock waves. He shook his head to clear it.
That would not happen again.
He took to the sky, swooping towards the emplacements. They were filled with extremely expensive equipment, so for this exercise each had an adjacent hard target whose destruction would deactivate the emplacement, and incidentally record both the accuracy and power of the hits.
The suit's inbuilt reflexes guided him to the programmed targets, and he decimated them in seconds. The blue boxes with their rounded domes blew apart magnificently. Gloriously, he corrected himself.
Instantly upon the destruction of the last box, a horde of metal insects swarmed up from several hatches in the desert floor. It took him a moment to react to the unexpected attack, and before he could, they had pulled him to the ground and were hacking at his suit.
He sent an explosive shock wave of gravity through the attacking army, earning himself enough breathing space to rise above them, dangling two insects that refused to release him, even in death. Lasers from the eyes of the other robot insects began beating off the shields of his suit. He changed defense modes to reflect the incoming light beams, then slammed the two bodies together and watched the pieces fall upon the waiting horde.
Who thinks of these things? Potemkin wondered briefly. Obviously someone who reads too many comic books.
He had only a half-second's warning before the new missiles hit him.
******
Wednesday, 10:10 hours
Tween had grown impatient, ready to head home, when he heard the crash. It sounded less like a crash and more like a high-speed car wreck -- and it wasn't too far away. So being the eager and curious sort, Tween flew over the neighboring buildings to investigate. He immediately froze upon seeing the source of this commotion.
There, above the buildings, was Old Glory -- America's living icon. He hovered proudly like an immortal and angelic champion. Scraps of twisted blue metal lay about below him, with what look like confetti strewn about the debris. The cement around the metal was cracked and sunk down about two feet. Tween moved to get a better look at what was going on, to see what would attract Old Glory to a run down an area like this.
The star-spangled hero turned, and gestured to Tween, at least Tween thought he did. Suddenly, an invisible force threw Tween into the street and his body furrowed through asphalt for a good block and a half. He sat up, the lengthy trench he left only proved the attack would of killed him if he wasn't modified. Not the kind of thing you expect from a high-profile federal officer, even if you have stolen a bunch of radioactive rods.
Well, two can play at that game.
Tween's whole body immediately glowed in a static aura, and he bridged the gap between him and Old Glory with a jagged lance of electricity. Old Glory merely brush off the attack. Reality seemingly buckled as another ghostly burst flashed from patriotic hero, knocking Tween through a nearby warehouse wall and into an office.
The nano-coating hid Tween's wince. His body felt like it was on fire.
Tween stood up and moved to the hole in the wall. Another energy blast slammed into him, and it not only proved that Old Glory was a crack shot but that Tween was out of his league. Tween must have blacked out for a moment, because the next thing he saw there was several metallic tendrils coiled about him, helping him back to his feet.
"Thanks,Wedge," Tween said as the squid-like robot receded into thin air. "Be ready to pull me back into the bubble."
Tween paused for a moment to catch his breath. If Old Glory wanted a fight, he was going to give it to him. He shot himself up off the floor and broke through the skylight. He got about ten feet out when something caught him and slammed him back down. Glass and chunks of rooftop rained down on Tween, his static shielding barely protecting him from the impact and debris.
With a synthesized growl, Tween rocketed through the shattered window at full speed.
******
Wednesday, 08:15 hours
"What do you mean, he's not responding?" Old Glory barked.
He didn't bother to wait for a response, since it would just be a repetition of the stupid statement. Maybe Potemkin's communications equipment had failed in the tests, or maybe he was a sleeper agent from one or another foreign power -- it didn't matter. It was time to show the boy how the old guard did the job.
With an hour or more of flying time, it wasn't worth trying to save a few seconds, so he carefully set the alarm on the safehouse and closed the door before lifting off for the testing ground. He would have to make a quick stop there to pick up some special equipment he would need.
He rehearsed the coming battle in his mind, considering strategy. He had already analyzed both the suit and its pilot for weaknesses, but that had been under the assumption of a mock battle. With a billion-dollar US armament on the loose, probably guided by a defector, the parameters of the battle had changed. They would both be out for blood.
The diagnostic panel that he was picking up at the testing range was his main chance to save the suit without having to damage it severely. He had to assume that Potemkin had taken it up to full power, rather than leaving the test mode engaged. However, if Old Glory could manage to distract Potemkin long enough to get the panel attached, the game would be over, with no blood spilled.
If he wasn't flying into a supersonic wind, he would have spat.
******
Wednesday, 10:15 hours
IB2Tap was startled into awareness by the spikes on the detectors. Vast energies were being flashed around in the warehouse. Perhaps her guest was angry -- her meditations had gone a bit long, but Tween was only due a few minutes ago anyway.
She disconnected from the computer connections and stretched, making sure everything was in place for physical activity. A wide yawn sufficed to situate the remaining components, and she dropped through an opening, landing like a huge cat, then began loping through the blackness of a long dark tunnel towards the warehouse.
The tunnel had a round cross-section, less than 140 centimeters across, but it easily accommodated her flowing form. Nothing, in fact, would have differentiated the tunnel from a concrete storm drain to an average person's senses. However, the red light from her infrared detectors illuminated small patches on the walls, the only visual cues she needed for keeping her bearings at 20 meters per second. Those patches also reacted slightly to the coded light pulses, reporting IB2Tap's progress to the defensive systems and preventing them from initiating countermeasures due to her presence.
She slowed as she approached the hatch to the warehouse, listening and feeling for vibrations beyond the heavy grating. There were crackling and thrumming sounds, and an occasional crash, but they were coming from the street outside. As she listened intently, a sudden wave of sound reached her through the ground and set her head reeling with the force. She damped her ears into normal responsiveness and swung the grate up.
The warehouse was undamaged, although she could tell from the position of the skylight that someone had been here. She trotted up the metal stairs to the roofline scaffolding, then altered her forelimbs enough to climb the ladder to the roof. The sky was a brilliant blue, punctuated by occasional flashes of yellow and purple light.
IB2Tap watched the battle for a few moments, considering her options as the two glowing bodies threw themselves at each other clumsily and martialed godlike levels of energy. She weighed the amount of information she would gain by watching, against the additional information that could be gained by reconfiguring the hidden sensors in the warehouse to cover the fight intentionally.
She sighed in frustration. If only she knew how long the two would hold out. Then she saw a form in the distance, and knew that it wouldn't be long.
******
Old Glory's suit detected massive power emissions just outside of Vegas. He was following the same route Potemkin had taken, scanning the ground and noting occasional vandalism that could only have had a single source. The guy was obviously nuts with the power of the suit. He seemed to be destroying government property at random.
Usually the shrinks did a better job at screening. But everyone had their bad days. He grimly hoped today wouldn't be his.
He put his visual enhancement up to maximum, attempting to scan for the suit. A bright flash caught his eye, and he headed for the warehouse district, running a last check on the diagnostic panel before the coming fight. Intent on the figure in his own trademark tights, he didn't see the other, darker shape until it crashed into him, knocking the wind out of him and releasing the panel three hundred feet above the ground.
A jet-black humanoid with some kind of electrical halo about its body had tackled him and bounced off, yelling something that was incoherent at Glory's current speed. He didn't have time to absorb the tactical implications -- he was hurtling backward, and his technical edge over Potemkin was falling towards the street.
The super-patriot went into a power dive and raced the panel to the ground. He had almost reached it when a blast from Potemkin smashed him into the ground, and the panel followed suit with a desolate tinkling crash.
He rolled to his feet and scanned the skies for Potemkin and the intruder. Two to one odds or not, someone was going to pay... eventually. He sighed, then played it by the book. He switched the communicator to the test range frequency.
"Potemkin, Stand down! This simulation is over!"
Potemkin didn't respond. It was unlike the young buck. Old Glory had to do something to get the kid talking.
"And as badly as you've performed, you'd better plan to spend more time in the simulator." ...If not prison... he added mentally.
Instead of the smart retort he expected from Potemkin, the young pilot fired a gravity beam at him. He dodged it easily, letting it chew a deep, jagged divide in the pavement. He spared a glance towards Potemkin's companion in crime. While he couldn't see the intruder's face clearly, its body language spoke of massive confusion, looking back and forth between the two copies of Old Glory. The old soldier grinned in spite of himself.
Suddenly the intruder shifted his stance in the air, facing Potemkin. "You!" Tween yelled. "You attacked me for no reason!"
Oh, ho, thought Old Glory. This was more to his liking. The odds were now reversed. Or they would have been, if he could allow it. That technology was too expensive and too important to damage without cause, and too dangerous to let civilians -- of whatever species -- get involved in its apprehension.
"Son, this is a Federal matter," the real Old Glory said. "I can handle it."
Old Glory shivered slightly as the jet-black face turned back to acknowledge him, its eyes glowing. "I knew something wasn't right. I recognize your voice, Old Glory. I'm Tween."
"Uh, no time for pleasantries," Old Glory snapped. "Now just back... oooofff" The final sound was forced out of him when an enhanced gravity blast from the next-gen suit caught him full in the chest. That thing hurt.
Old Glory picked himself up and leaped off the ground and into the air, where he could dodge in more directions. He noticed that the intruder had taken up a position between himself and Potemkin, probably thinking to block any further incoming attacks. The alien-like kid might not have much experience, but he sure had moxie.
"Last chance, Potemkin. Stand down, or we'll shut you down."
It wouldn't hurt for Potemkin to think that Old Glory and this Tween character were working together. Either way, he had to stop Potemkin before that next-gen suit could get out of the US Government's control. Well, further out of its control. Regardless of the Psych reports, this guy seemed to have a total raging hate for the government. He proved it by firing a full blast at another mailbox below.
"What's this guy's problem? Trashing mailboxes, and attacking me without..." The sentence was cut short as Potemkin cut loose with another blast, tossing Tween through a warehouse wall.
Old Glory glanced down at the destroyed mailbox, and something clicked. It was a blue round-topped box, just like the hard targets for the simulation.
Potemkin wasn't in charge.
The specifications for the next-gen suit included automated reflexes for the purpose of getting an injured pilot to safety, or in extreme cases continuing a battle or simply defined mission. It utilized the entire suit's auto-adaptive neural net. Which was now running the show.
Either Potemkin was unconscious, or the suit had malfunctioned. Either way, this knowledge altered the tactical situation considerably. He had to get closer. Old Glory dodged another blast, then began running the gauntlet.
******
IB2Tap looked at the pieces of the broken instrument and quickly analyzed it. No one designed electronics to be dropped a hundred meters, but this had survived fairly well, as such things went. Luckily it had landed in some weeds.
It was obviously a diagnostic console, and used chips with the alien tri-phase technology just like pretty much every modern computer. However, the attachment leads were quite interesting -- they used an advanced nanofiber construction, and had already repaired any damage they might have suffered in the fall by using carbon from the dry grass covering the small patch of dirt it had landed on.
The designers had not considered all the danger factors in allowing that.
IB2Tap shrugged, and opened the case. Several components were shattered, but the chip types were surprisingly standard. Her face twisted into a quirky feline grin as she replaced them with some of her own spare components. It never hurt to have a powerful agency owe you a favor.
******
Tween's fingers twitched as he pulled himself out of the building and flew towards the two Glories. Even though they were almost deadringers, he could tell the difference easily. They moved differently. The real Old Glory had the grace of seasoned combatant, sweeping, rolling and attacking like a determined bird of prey. The imposter carried himself like the Superman in those old movies, with an almost impossible rigidity and an exaggerated agility. Whenever he moved, he looked as if in fast-forward.
"Is that all you've got?" Old Glory hollered. "C'mon, you pair of computerized long-johns -- let's dance!"
Old Glory drew his signature energy sword and made several deep, surgical cuts into the armor of the other suited man. The Glory imposter jinked and swerved, its suit stitching back together with each vicious swipe of condensed plasma that sliced through it. The air thundered, the ground tremored, and excessive surges of gravity shook and rattled the buildings around the two warriors.
This Potemkin guy didn't seem to care if he was hit or not, or at least wasn't very good at dodging. Tween thought he would oblige him. His nanotech biology powered the strongest blast he had ever made, and it hit the imposter Glory full in the chest.
Old Glory saw the purple electric bolt slam into Potemkin, knocking him ass over teakettle. He still thought of the next-gen suit as Potemkin, no matter what he had discovered and seen when he got up close. Any other way of thinking about it came uncomfortably close to reminding him that it could have been himself in the suit when this happened.
"Are you in there, kid?" Old Glory asked.
The suit was supposed to keep its occupant alive, but it also was supposed to repair its micromesh using any carbon source available. Old Glory had nearly retched, first seeing how it had resolved its dilemma.
A warning from Tween shook him awake as a small box hurtled through the air toward him. He dodged it, then raced after it as he recognized the console. Tween must have thrown it to him. Maybe things were going to go well after all.
For most of them.
Old Glory activated the diagnostic console and ran a test pattern. Something wasn't right, but it still might work well enough to shut the damn power-suit down. He shielded the console as the next-gen suit approached. He had to avoid any blasts by the suit until he could attach the unit -- even if the unit could take a hundred yard drop, it wouldn't take a shot from the enhanced gravity blasters built into that damn thing.
He generated a gravity field around the thing to hold it still. It hesitated only a moment before breaking free, but it was enough of a moment for Glory to close the gap. He reached up with the console to connect the leads, and met an energy sword slicing straight across his chest and through the unit. As he fell, some part of him noted that the next-gen sword was bigger than his own.
"Friggin' technicians," Old Glory muttered.
******
Tween rose up off the ground to rejoin the fray when an approaching truck caught his eye. It was an Exxon fuel truck. Perhaps the driver was oblivious, because he was heading directly towards the war zone. Tween became a blur as he darted towards the truck. He dug his heels into the road, locked his hands about the bumper, braced his back along the the grill. The road broke as two vicious treads marked and creased the ashpalt. The truck slowed down from Tween's efforts, and the drvier slammed on the brakes bring the truck to a stop.
Tween reached the cab door and yelled at the driver. "Get out of here, before you get hurt!"
Without thinking, he grabbed the guy and tossed him into some bushes.
Tween turned to watch Old Glory and Potemkin duke it out. Old Glory attempted to close in on his doppleganger and connect the console to him. Potemkin wasn't cooperating, and kept harassing the super-soldier with barrages of gravitic blasts. Old Glory felt dizzy, either from the constant blows to his head or from Potemkin's counter-gravity field pressurizing his brain. The patriot tried to block it out, but Potemkin was relentless with his attacks. And just when the veteran hesitated, Potemkin went in for the kill. He swept his own version of a plasma sword across Old Glory's chest and the console, and pieces fell in a wide arc below them. Then Old Glory spiralled down, too.
Tween was only halfway to the fray, and turning around he noticed that the truck driver had made it farther down the block. An idea popped into Tween's head. Turning back to Potemkin, he energized and let loose a bolt of green lightning at his slightly damaged suit.
The attack got his attention -- he fired several shots at me that I managed to dodge, as he pulled him closer and closer towards the fuel truck.
Old Glory managed to stop his fall somehow, and was slowly coming in the same direction. Then he paused, realizing what Tween was going to do.
"Use your head!" Old Glory yelled. "This place will go up like a napalm strike!"
Tween just nodded. He steered the suit closer and closer towards the truck, blast after static blast. As Potemkin floated over the fuel truck, Tween rushed forward and fired directly into the tank almost at point blank range.
Then the world went up in a rush of blistering red and yellow.
******
The first sight Old Glory saw when he awoke was a red visor on a shining silver face. It reminded him incongruously of a cartoon cat he had seen many years before. He shook his head groggily, then tried to rise.
"Rest, you are safe," said the chrome panther in a female voice. "The other is gone."
Old Glory smelled the concrete dust and charred paint, and turned his head enough to see the devastation. He lay in the middle of a pulverized zone perhaps half a city block across. A shredded tree was burning, imbedded in the brick wall of a warehouse a thousand yards away.
From where he lay, he could see an arm, or perhaps a leg, of the black humanoid that had joined him in the fight against the next-gen suit. It was not moving.
The panther followed his gaze, then filled in what information it could. "It appears to be not alive, but also not dead. It does not breathe, but it generates very much energy."
Old Glory surveyed the metal animal, listening to its odd accent and considering its powerful build and the strange sensors protruding from behind its ears and shoulders, now moving to focus on him rather than the black alien. He finally collected enough of himself to croak the obvious question.
"Who or what the hell are you?" Old Glory asked.
"You may call me Sumatra, or Quicksilver, whichever be your desire."
The silver panther looked at him and cocked its head to one side, then the other, obviously considering its answer carefully. Then it barked a little laugh. The panther curtsied with a slight noise of servos. Old Glory could swear the bow was sarcastic.
He returned the attitude. "You got a green card?"
The silver panther blinked, then cocked its head again. After a moment, it drawled, "Naw, Grampa. How about y'all?"
He propped himself up onto one arm, then managed to sit up. The surviving diagnostics on his suit demonstrated that he would have to retool before following the next-gen. For the next round, he would have to be even more prepared.
"It went thataway." The panther pointed like a hunting dog, then turned its head back to look at the super-soldier. "And it's severely damaged." It turned and began picking its way through the rubble, stopping to turn over a stone and nose the ground here and there.
"It'll be after power. And repair components," Old Glory muttered to himself. He glanced over to where the cat appeared to be licking the ground. "What the hell are you doing?"
The cat stood still and looked at him again, then bounded toward him like a pouncing kitten, and coughed up a small hairball into his face.
Old Glory almost lost his lunch for a moment, then looked at the small ball of fibers. They were strands of the next-gen suit. Those things could be scattered all over this area, and there was no telling whether they retained any of their programming or other properties. Better call the HazMat team.
The cat jerked its head toward the prone figure at the center of the devastation. "Tell him his friend was here. She had to leave."
The cat stood staring at him for a moment, the red visor reflecting
Old Glory's mask and chin back into his own eyes. Her demeanor, her attitude
seemed very familiar. For a moment Old Glory thought about how others always
seem to reflect our expectations. Then with a snort, the cat turned and
loped off, and was gone.