“AND,” Andrew adds, “you may remember that I said my last name is Griffin.  So, in the end, not only did Tyler Griffin’s efforts ultimately result in a great legacy of System Guards, even his name lives on, associated with the cause of the SG’s.  Now, that’s a testimony of what God can do with a person, even if they never live to see the results.  Though, we all know Tyler knows about us now.”

    “Especially considering we can visit him whenever, hon,” Sakura laughs as she adds this.

    “Now, where do your stories fit into this picture?” Jo asks with a cheesy grin.

    “That’s where you come in, babe,” Drew says to his bride.

    “Well,” Sakura says, “as I mentioned, I’m from Earth, and I used to be part of an organization of superpowered soldiers that protected the planet so the System Guards could focus on other worlds and storyboards.  Then, one day, the System Director gave me a new assignment.  I was kind of a wild child and not afraid to voice my eager hope that this relocation involved a cute guy.  They could’ve seen through me then and changed their minds, but they were patient with me.  I was brought to Ruyngard and met this super strict good boy that was nothing like Luke and Nikki.  I thought he was cute, and I was specifically told that my assignment was to help him reestablish the System Guards officially on the planet, but that wasn’t as easy as it sounded.  I should mention that even though the Stones and their friends had done well to push the planet in the right direction, the System Director didn’t think it good timing to have an official SG branch on Ruyngard just yet.  So, here I was, a self-centered soldier girl from another planet come to help this ordinary, sometimes very boring guy just up and start his own super squad?”

    “Was I really that bad?” asks Drew.

    “Honey, I’m being nice about it because I love you.”  She teases before continuing.  “You know why I can say this so bluntly about him?  Because it was every bit of that kind of person that I needed to get me out of my little world and think about others, not just myself.  He was a cute guy, and I wasn’t going anywhere, so I’d try to allure him, but he was so annoying and rigid.  There was no chance wooing him the way I was.  Because of his heritage, he pointed every discussion to the Bible, and the more we debated over how much I wanted a relationship with him and how legalistic I thought he was, the more we’d study the Bible together.  There were times he would read something, look at me and apologize for being pushy over things the Bible doesn’t mention, not even in general living principles.  Other times, I’d cry and want to leave the table because I would see from our reading what a horrible friend I was to him and how useless of a System Guard I was being by wanting things contrary to my mission.  I cried a lot.

    “But you will love why I cried the most.  It was in those moments that God granted Andrew the wisdom and compassion to look past my selfishness and talk to me about why I would get bad attitudes with him, and about how all the insecurities I had about myself were wrong and holding me back, that I was my own enemy and bully.  Well, it wasn’t as slow of a process after this, and soon enough, we got the Ruyngardian Branch of System Guards up and running, and by the way, we got married.  And now, we’re loving life as the leaders of our cute little gang, as well as the privilege of traveling wherever we want as Infinites.  A big contributor to the travel factor is that the unified universe seems to have slowed down the flow of time on Ruyngard, making it about the same as the rest of the universe, with exceptions.  And by the rate of time, I don’t mean the planet’s rotation slowed down.  It’s a…science thing…kind of.”

    “It’s a System Director interference thing is what it is,” Cat specifies.  “There’s no need to cover for him where the science isn’t there to excuse his blatant reconstruction of time and space.  I mean, guys, he combined an infinite number of universes into one just for a more coherent story, and we’re afraid to point out he changed the time flow of one planet to make it compatible with the others?  Don’t be trivial.”

    There’s a bit more science talk before the brevity of the lesson and the excitement of the next destination turns the rest of the visit into casual time.  It’s this relaxed environment that makes it feel like anything but for two horrified young girls who suddenly get the feeling their friend isn’t so distracted with science and galactic news anymore.

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