She reconsiders her hasty conclusions and leans in to hug her dad. “I’ll try to calm down. I’m just scared. Your little brother just died in front of my eyes. I saw my boyfri—my best friend kill my uncle. Now, my beloved’s parents are fighting.” As she stays still to gather her thoughts, it isn’t long until Kam has a new complaint. Kammy Crystal Meyers told Z2 that she has many secrets hiding within the small metal plates of her two firing friends, and her most important secret is about to be exposed.
She looks into the eyes of her father and whispers, “And now, I have a dad trying to ‘touch’ me.”
“AAACK!” The man’s cry of pain is heard by everyone nearby. They turn to see what has happened and watch as Jocelyn Meyers has just lost her other son, and at the self-defending hands of her granddaughter. Kammy floats in the air, staring at her dead father with a vacant look in her eye. Baby Z is still engaged and showing what deadly secret took his life. Kammy installed a System Blade just in case she ever needed to purify someone on the spot. She never imagined that something like this would happen. “And now,” Kammy whispers, “I know how you feel, my love.”
This miscalculation stirs up the wrath of an angry mother not ready to lose her other son so quickly and in such a chaotic fashion. Jo, without thought, leaves her J Tot behind and plows into Kammy, grabbing and slapping the poor girl. “WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU? CHILD OF SATAN?!” She tries to slap her again, but Kammy manages to cover her head in time. From here, there is a loud, unintelligible argument between the two with Kammy trying to hug Jo and apologizing, and with Jo alternating between pushing Kammy away and trying to shout at her.
Now having lost two people to System tech, Doug takes a measure that should have been done much sooner and contacts the Milky Way HQ to speak with AB. “This is Doug Rug in the Dogwood Galaxy. We seem to be having a problem with our System Sabers killing people instead of simply purging them. We lost both Owan and his brother just now.”
“You’re not alone,” AB replies, much to Doug’s mix of comfort and sorrow. Doug is happy that there seems to be some logical explanation here, but he’s sad that this implies other people have died elsewhere. AB continues, “Fortunately for Planet HQ and Juniper, there was only one case of defection down on HQ, and she’s fine now. She’s stuck on Juniper for quite a while, if you know what I mean, but she’ll get over it. And, to further relieve your stress, Owan shows up on the recent Drawing Board arrivals, so I imagine his brother will appear in the next—yeah, there he is. I’ll even set the computer to do a visual search. Hold on.” And moments later, AB confirms that both Meyers brothers are safe within the Drawing Board. “We’ll worry about possibly reviving them after this is over. I have to tell you that Juniper, and probably even our base, will have limited, if any access between us and the outside world. We’ll send the appropriate help when needed, but I can’t risk this kind of tainting seeping into a place like Juniper and having the departed PACs dealing with something like this. That’s probably why Owan and Faye didn’t make it in earlier. While the entry wasn’t always so strict every time, out of hopeful mercy, the line has been drawn and the time has come to clean up this filth before the System can move forward peacefully. So, with that said, if you have to, use the System Blades and feel no guilt. They will pop up here, then we’ll send as many as we can home after the villain is stopped. Tell Jo to stop hitting her granddaughter. That’s just rude.”
All of this news is relayed and a remorseful Jo hugs the daylights out of her traumatized granddaughter. The two might die, being stabbed several times over, but that doesn’t matter to either one as they just want to hug and forgive each other.
“Hey, Kammy,” Doug yells.
“Yes, Mr. Rug?”
“You know what you just did, young lady?” His smile lets Kammy know a good thing was accomplished. “You singlehandedly rescued your dad AND helped us to know how to save everyone else. YOU, my girl, are a hero!”
Inner Man Theatre 