The dusk at the end of the summer always have been one of Hikaru's favourite moments to meditate, sat under the colonnade of the shrine's rear courtyard. There, while the monotonous noise of the near traffic was beginning to decline and be replaced by the gentle rustling of the wind in the foliage, she could think about the commuters coming back to home after a more or less successful work day and just willing to be with their spouse, children or friends around a good meal. She was even almost able to scent these traces of relaxation and simple everyday happiness, floating in the air as a modest but enjoyable perfume.

Opening her eyes, she found herself looking at the serene figure of the Moon. Even if the young red panda was born a long time after the Apollo missions, it was not contradictory for her to think at the Earth"s eternal companion simultaneously as the lifeless dusty world described by the scientists and the mystical land as fully charged with symbolism as inhabited by countless cohorts of spirits. It is just that the over-trained military pilots who landed on the Moon had not the smallest chance to meet them, as they were not aware of their presence or even believing in their existence : rationalists and non-believers can miss so much extraordinary things sometimes...

A discrete noise made her ears instinctively prick up and rotate in its direction, near the entrance of the courtyard, before she consciously recognized the familiar sound of sandals squeaking softly on the sand of the alley. When her superior stopped at a few steps away of her, she waited three seconds for a word from him before turning her head towards his direction. Then, contrary to his habit to salute her with a gentle “Hello, Karu-chan” before sitting and sharing her meditation, he just nodded and made her understand without any need of words that he wanted the young priestess to follow him. "Something bad or embarrassing happened and he's thinking I'm directly or indirectly involved", she thought straight away, "but that's last week when I inverted salt and sugar on Kichuru's kitchen shelves... so what's this time ?"

The only sound which broke the almost complete silence of the scene was the ringing from the large bell attached to Hikaru's long fluffy tail, when she stood up and headed towards the temple's main entrance room.

  -   "All these things that happened to us... they're way more serious than in your predictions... and it isn't normal that you didn't warn us correctly about them !"

It was the smallest of the two raccoons standing in front of Hikaru who spoke first and his voice was filled with anger, but he was talking to her with all the respect due to her function and also because she was still wearing the Miko ceremony robe. She could not really remember when she had seen them as customers, but the rough-skinned paws and fur covering theirs well developed muscles combined to their drawl accent told easily their status of farmer.

  -   "I can understand your sadness and fully feel for you in your sorrow", she said with her most sincere tone of voice but fully aware of the advantage given by the prestige of her uniform, "but future is somewhat moving and uncertain, my role being just to show you trails to modify it as near at your liking as you are able to. You are in this situation because you didn't follow fully my advices. When I said that a dust devil will land near your crops and try by all means to keep you from harvesting them", she added while reviewing mentally the cracks made by the fire on the corresponding turtle shell – and also the imaginary ones she added with the aim of dramatizing her prediction -, "I also gave you a list of small gifts you could offer to it to lower his guard and conciliate its favours."

  -   "But, you don't understand... we made it, we applied what you advised us to do and Kacey volunteered to bring the gifts to the spirit, the morning after we saw the meteor as predicted, but... he attacked him by rising a huge sandstorm and left him half dead !"

  -   "His fur was pulled out in places and his skin badly crumbled", said the other raccoon when he saw that Hikaru had difficulties to believe entirely their story. “Just like the last accident in the sandblasting workshop where my cousin works...

While the two farmers were taking her to their home near Hamamatsu, after a short detour to the cousin's workshop to borrow a sandblaster suit, the young priestess was checking mentally the list of all the items she took with her in order to capture or neutralize this dust devil. She also took a look at the numerous prayer slips she had added to the ones already tied to her tail, arms and chest : if the malicious spirit she will be confronted soon was as powerful as it seemed to be, she will need all these protections to avoid being possessed or driven to madness. At one moment, she felt a shooting pain in her right arm and had a fugitive vision when she closed her eyes under the effect of the short but intense suffering. "So, I'll be compelled to fight and get hurt", she said for herself before heaving a sad sigh, "but I'm sure to beat this devil and receive at least as much money for that as for my initial prediction, and I can manage to be paid a lot more if I need medical care."

The suit being largely oversized had the advantage for Hikaru that she did not have to undress partially and stay in underwear to use it, as the visible disappointment of the the tallest raccoon, but she was still floating in it and got hot and sweaty in a matter of minutes. They were near one of those polders, arable lands won against the sea at the prize of a constant hard work, where were made occidental-like intensive monoculture and she could only see corn stems wherever her look can break through the condensation covering the glasses of the heavy metallic helmet. But she noticed quickly an intermittent rising of dust near at the other end of the field. Cautiously moving forward this direction, she reassured herself by putting her paws on the cherry leafy branches she had hung to the tool-belt with the rest of her gear.

She was able to hear the thoughts of the dust devil as if it was in her head a long time before coming out of the corm field.

"Hunger. Hunger. Hunger. Fear. Hunger."

The more she was getting closer and the more damaged was the crop, with even sometimes entire groups of stems laying on the ground cut in half.

"Hunger. Fear. Hunger. Fear. Hunger."

She took in paw the cherry branches and tried to not let the fear overcome her judgement.

"Hunger. Fear. Presence. Fear. Fear. Defence."

  -   "Oh sh.., it spotted me !" she swore while crossing the branches in front of her torso and turning in the direction of an expanding sand cloud.

The first shock was very violent as she faced a magically-driven supersonic sand blast, but the foliage fortunately did its job and deviated the majority of the particles, the remaining doing no more damage than making the helmet resonate like a bell hit by hail. The next attacks were weaker and directed towards her sides, so Hikaru had less difficulty to stop them by swinging the branches and saying conjuration psalms to weaken her enemy. "Even if I could lead it to exhaustion by blocking attack after attack, I can't move further yet and let it the advantage of a chosen battlefield. I need to lure it and and make it move where it'll be easier to fight", she thought before taking out the symbol-marked rice paper wrapped around a small food net hung to her belt. The amber, lodestone, malachite and fossilized wood it contained being very prized candies for earth and sand demons, the result did not take to appear.

Fear. Defence. Hunger. Hunger. Hunger.

She immediately turned on her heel and started running towards the asphalt road where they stopped the pick-up, branches hold in the back to prevent rear-side attacks, but the dust cloud did not seem to have moved when she looked back. This dust devil was eventually the slowest of its kind that she have encountered and this compelled her to harass it, moving periodically under its attack range to lure and exhaust it. Driven far away from the sandy bank of the polder, the devil's blast force ans apparent size declined regularly and it was only two meters wide and high when they reached the road.

A last useless attack used all the remaining sand in suspension and revealed the real shape of Hikaru's enemy : a chihuahua-sized fluctuating life form, six-legged most of the time and not seeming to breath, made of grey dust and aches. Only the lone eye and sharp fangs were glowing with a specifically spiritual silver-like gloom.

  -   "Okay, little one, time to be reasonable and talk now that I've exhausted you. Why have you attacked someone who were bringing you gifts ? she asked both verbally and mentally.

"Fear. Invasion. Fear. Defence."

  -   "And what are you afraid of ?"

"Hanger. Loneliness. Hanger. Heaviness. Hanger. Oxidation."

  -   "I can help you for the hungry part. See the food in that net ? I'll put in this box, put the whole on the ground, move away and let you enjoy the meal."

She did what she said then moved back to the other edge of the road.

"Hanger. Hanger. Hanger. Hanger. Hanger."

The tiny demon began walking to the small ebony box, even if one could not guess what its iris-less eye was looking at, but he stopped suddenly.

"Closed space. Open Space. Closed space. Trap. Defence."

Hikaru immediately placed herself in a defence stance when she saw it huddle up as it was willing to pounce her, but it seemed to have swallowed its fangs and two seconds passed without attack.

Then, a very violent shock on her right arm. The very clear felling of lacerated flesh. A sharp pain too powerful to be containable. A shrill scream coming deep in the throat. A growing whistle coming from the rear. A second violent shock, against the side of the helmet this time. The deafening noise of the closed metallic cavity acting as a powerful bell.

Half knocked out and seriously wounded, the young priestess fell on one knee, trying to keep the dust devil in sight and praying with all her faith that it will not aim the heart...

Never-ending seconds passed during which the situation stayed frozen, then the demon went back towards the directions of its 'den'. "I must... stop it before it reaches an 'ammo' sand pile. I won't be able... to fight it a second time." she thought while picking herself up and putting her valid paw on her wound. Searching for a mean of quick neutralization – the possibility to kill came in her mind but she kept it as a last chance solution – she checked in a hurry the mystical items on her belt as well as the immediate surroundings until she found a rusty bucket half filled with rainwater. During this time the dust devil, even slow and weakened, just disappeared behind the cornfield edge when Hikaru looked back.

  -   “Quick, quick, remember you this incantation... what's the end, already ? she said extremely worried and hurried.

Lifting the quite heavy bucket with her valid paw, she began to chant while tracing the appropriate kanjis on the metal with her mud-soaked right fingers. Fortunately, her memory did not waver and the bucket became almost weightless, so she could gather her strength and courage to take the object at two hands and throw its content as far as possible even if this gesture made her cry from the sharp pain. The water extended itself as a long and practically thick-less layer suspended in the air until the classical law of physics applied again and made the whole thing swoop down on the ground with a great splash.

A heart-rending scream of atrocious suffering resonated so strongly in Hikaru's head that she tried instinctively but in vain to put her fingers in her ears. It was like if someone have been trapped under a napalm bombing... Breathing slowly and trying to calm her ponding heart, she closed her eyes and concentrated in order to locate the demon... or its remains. Among all the floating spirits wandering along the corn stems or circling around the red panda attracted by her spiritual essence – or trying to find a breach in her holy protection and feed themselves on her soul's energy – she perceived five small silvery rocks a few meters ahead : the little demon was still alive but dismembered and powerless.

Find the mentioned stone parts between the stems and put them into the the ebony box picked up in the meantime was a child's play compared to the previous fight, but Hikaru felt soon very weak and suffered the repercussions of her wound and exhaustion. The acrid smell of coagulated blood impregnating the rubber of the suit that she had ignored until then was now driving her near to puke, all the sweat she had lost during the battle was making her cloths very sticky and stinky, she could not see a thing because of the steam on the helmet glasses, and the worse was the acute blood lose which have drawn too much of her strength to allow her to take the heavy suit off and was weakening her minute after minute...

  -   "I must... not loose... consciousness..." she muttered felling unsteady on her legs.

The last thing she remembered then was someone holding her under the armpits just when she felt on her knees.

The temple's kitchen was animated but calm in this ordinary morning : novices and oblates, almost all foxes or raccoons, were eating in silence the frugal breakfast cooked by the careful Kichuru or preparing themselves to the second prayer session of this new day. The only little infringements to the habit was the presence of a sad-looking Hikaru having large rings under her eyes and the fleeting admiring or very respectful looks she was receiving from the would-be priests. The young priestess felt even more embarrassed when one of them tried by muttering to recount an embellished version of her last “feat of arms” to his neighbour, but was stopped by the careful “mister Long-Ears” watching the rice cooking.

“How can I made them admit I'm not a heroin ? It's just by dumb luck that this afraid and weak devil didn't kill me ten days ago..." she thought while the oblates were finishing their meagre bowl of rice in a hurry to not be late, "and now I've to find a way to send it back to hits home world !" Another shooting pain under the large bandage she was wearing at the top of her right arm cruelly remembered her how bad she was hurt and how ugly was the wound : even if the local doc/vet then the intern at Hamamatsu's ER did a very good job when stitching up the ragged edges of the cuts, which at first glance could seemed to be caused by the rusty and twisted claws of an old hoeing tool, the young female was really afraid that it could leave a large permanent scar on such a visible zone.

"On a better side, the farmers paid me twice as much for having defeated the demon as for having predicted its coming, and they insisted on paying my medical fees even if my mutual insurance will do the same..." a little smile appeared fleetingly on her face "but the didn't have to offer the sandblaster suit I used as my 'modern knight armour' : with the huge scratch on the arm and this sickening smell impossible to wash out, I'll never get a good prize for that thing at an antique shop even if I present it as a early model of Siebe diving suit."

  -   "How are you today, Karu-chan ?" said warmly Kichuru when they were alone together, while gathering the empty bowls left on the long table. "You still look pale and tired."

  -   "It's normal, Einstein : I still have to take these meds and irons supplements for another two weeks," she replied a little drily. "to restore my lost blood, they said. But the truth is that I wasn't subjected to such early hours since noviciate : usually, I'd sleep at home and wake up just in time to be here at schedule."

  -   "It's for your good that your superior asked you to stay at the temple's dormitory, under the careful watch of our nurse."

  -   "I know, I know ! It's just that I'll fell... useless as long as my wound'll make me unable to take part to the ceremonial dances." she replied, putting her chin on her arms and heaving another sigh.

  -   "I don't like to see you in such a sorrowful mood, even if I didn't like the numerous tricks you played on you. There's today newspaper, hope it'll help at changing your mind." he added while throwing the latest edition of the ' Nagoya Shinbum' on the table.

Hikaru grabbed the journal, opened it to her favourite section and gorged herself of gossips, rumours and unverifiable scoops in order to have enough ammo for her future small talks with the other Miko priestesses. Her pleasure was evident and pleasant to watch, but also to hear as the wagging of her long tail made the bell once again tied up to – necessary protection given her actual state of weakness – chime in rhythm each time it hit the ground. After a little while, Kichuru spoke again.

  -   "Hum, Karu-chan..." He waited for her to finish reading. "about what you've said concerning Tsuki-No-Hokori... I thought a lot about it these last days..." He had now her entire attention. "but I didn't find yet a really convenient solution to send it back." he added, trying without success to not make his words appear too disappointing.

"' Moon dust '... why did I give this lunar devil such a dull name ?" she asked for herself while letting again her head lean on her arms. "Admittedly it's practical and informative, since we are sure now of its real origin given its spiritual signature, the fact it doesn't breath and fell heavy in Earth's gravity, or the unusual type of rock constituting its material anchorage, but it doesn't solve the real problem."

She summed up the situation : swept away far away from its main mystical energy source, probably by a meteor impact, the dust devil was wasting away day after day. The easiest way to send it back would be to use or build a Moon Bridge, but she would need the need of the Theurg WindClaws and have to wait for the full moon, and yet the spirit will not last until the next one. With its premature death with regard to the cosmical equilibrium, the latter will be altered and the others of its kind alerted of his absence... The slightest idea of a landing of well-prepared lunar demons determined to retrieve their lost fellow made Hikaru tremble all over while an icy spine ran along her spine, making all her fur stand up and waking up her wound as a reminder of her possible near death in case of failure.

"I might not brood, it's completely useless ans as stressful as possible. Anyway, the little demon should survive between two and three weeks if we maintain it in the sealed ebony box and under the protection of blessed silk, so I have a lot of time to find a solution even if it turns out to be very tricky. I'm sure it'll emerge at the most unexpected moment, as always in such a case."

Her wish was quite quickly granted : a few days later, while she was reading the “People” special edition of the journal and had just finished the the supplement about J-pop idols, her subconscious – or the Fate's finger as she would rather say – drew her attention to a brief article in the “Science” section she generally used to skip :

New Launch Day of the KAGUYA (SELENE) by H-IIA Launch Vehicle No. 13
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd.
Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA)
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd. and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency would like to announce that the launch of the Lunar Orbit Explorer "KAGUYA" (SELENE) by H-IIA Launch Vehicle No. 13 (H-IIA F13) was rescheduled as follows.
Scheduled date of launch : September 13 (Thursday), 2007 (Japan Standard Time, JST)
Launch time :10:35:47 a.m. (JST)
Launch windows : September 14 (Fri) through September 21 (Fri) 2007 (JST)
(Launch time will be set for each day.)
The original launch date was postponed due to the replacement work of parts in the two on-board baby satellites of the "KAGUYA" as announced on July 20, 2007. The replacement was successfully completed thus the new launch date was set.

  -   "The 14th... it'll be in little less than two weeks, just during the new moon..."

Her brain got off to a flying start and a plan began to take a tangible form : totally harebrained even for her high standards, rather risky but not suicidal, needing her to do acts against nature, taking a lot of time, but possibly working. When Kichuru saw the little mischievous smile on Hikaru's happy face, he began to worry and mentally noted for himself to double check the labelling on his ingredients...

"It's the second time this month I have to wear uncomfortable clothes. Hope I won't become a habit..."

However, even if the one-size unisex clean room suit was painfully compressing the young female's tail and other natural assets while the surgeon mask and mobcap were hiding her lightly made-up lips and carefully washed hair put in two large buns, the mature fox guiding her into the long corridors of the main technological centre could not help giving her lecherous gazes each time he was looking back.

Since she have learned months ago - from the common friend that made them introduce each other - the spicy fact that the engineer-in-second for the Payload Integration Room have a Lolita-like crush on her probably going with shameful fantasies, Hikaru has took a wicked delight in blowing hot and cold or teasing him with a innocent look each time their paths crossed themselves. And it was paying now, as she was wending her way through the security checks delimiting the severely-restricted access area in his company without any problem.

  -   "I'm still amazed you managed to own a small lunar meteorite... they are really rare and very difficult to find." he said when they entered the dust decontamination airlock.

  -   "As I told you earlier, I'm not absolutely sure of its origin and need to learn more about the Moon's characteristic rocks in order to find out it."

  -   "Don't rack your mind, a simple comparison of isotopic quotients for oxygen and iron should do the job and my lab'll be open to you any time you want to have performed this study for free." he replied, having to raise his voice to cover the noise from the laminar air extractors. "But you can still polish a small area of your aerolite and check with a polarizing microscope that you have at least the correct minerals : you might find first basalt, then... – followed long and quite boring considerations about lunar mineralogy – and potentially aggregates of regolite, as we call the very fine powder created at the Moon's surface by the incessant bombing of micro-meteorites and particles from solar wind or cosmic rays. As there're no kind of erosive agents like wind or water, the grains constituting this dust have only razor-blade sharp edges making them very abrasive : the regolite was the main worrying issue from the Apollo landings crews because it was eating away the airtight joints of theirs spacesuits, and the future astronauts of the Orion/constellation program will face it without besides being really better prepared."

He did nothing else in fact than confirm what Hikaru already knew or read, but now she was able to fully understand why the dust devil lacerated her arm so badly when it spat its “boomerang fangs” out on her. And it was at this unfortunate moment that the bandage started to loosen and rub against the healing wound, making it very itchy while impossible to scratch unless undress almost completely...

However, she forgot for the time being her little annoying problems when the interior airlock door slid with a light whistle of well-oiled hydraulic mechanism and revealed the content of the huge clean room. The massive soon-to-be-launched lunar probe, as tall as two wolves and already adorned with its golden thermal protection blanket, had pride of place on a large metallic pedestal at the center of the control hangar, like a giant idol consecrated to a goddess of knowledge and technical arts that made the young priestess bow her head as a sign of respect and admiration. The second thing that surprised her was the silence into which was plunged the room : every technician and engineer was as his well-tidy workbench testing fragile and sensitive components without saying a word or talking to his fellow workers. But the third and weirdest fact was the spiritual silence, none spirit being around here at first glance and even after a more careful watch, which made Hikaru fell terribly alone and heightened her latent nervousness.

  -   "Isn't our Kaguya magnificent, even if she have carbon-fibres composites, silicon and integrated circuits instead of bones, flesh and soul ?" boasted her guide but very quietly at her ear, as if he was afraid of the probe and didn't want it to hear him.

She smiled gently, not because of his witty remark but as she was remembering the tale concerning this amazingly beautiful female from the Moon who was sent to Earth for safety during a celestial war and later had to return to her native world. The irony of fate wanted that the young red panda would have to accomplish the same travel in the opposite direction...

After that, he got closer to his chief and introduced with sycophantic words the red panda girl as a potential technical trainee who will help the team for the calibration of next satellites' subsystems.

  -   "Don't touch anything, young lady. You don't know the sums of work, time and funds that were needed to build this probe." said the latter with a tone admitting none answer.

  -   "I damn knew well how much SELENE's cost – more than 900 M$ - and I'm well aware of the pertinence of the 'no touch' policy while you're not covered by the common insurance going with my internship covenant.” she dared to say.

He frowned – sure he was not smiling under his mask - and looked down his muzzle to Hikaru before giving a black look at her future tutor who lightly blushed from the shame.

  -   "You have to excuse him." muttered the latter when they moved away to go around the workbenches "He's always a little grumpy when the launch date is getting closer."

They then stopped at each desk, him making the introductions while checking the quality control forms and her having to lie smartly about her academic career when the discussion started on this subject. At one moment, they had to stay longer around a workstation because one photovoltaic module of the sub-satellite 'Okina' was having a slightly off-limits drift current and the technician in charge of the measurements was in need of some help to solve quickly the problem. When Hikaru's guide raised his eyes from the now fully functional module, he found her squatting down in front of another photopiles assembly put vertically on the table and gazing at her reflection in the polished surface, while tracing small arabesques in the air with her right index and mumbling something. She stay concentrated doing her little trick another ten seconds, only then seeming to notice that they were gazing at her with an astonished look.

  -   “Oh sorry, I got distracted. It's just that these small solar panels are somewhat... shiny."

  -   "Ah ! First time I hear a non-raccoon use their typical excuse for working only on pretty, glowing... and non-working things !" said the technician while trying to make his racist statement out to be a joke, which did not made her smile at all...

Before standing up to continue the tour, the young priestess took a last look at the monocrystalline surface to check the tiny marking – invisible for normal eyes – she just have done and admire herself : the deep blue colour of the silicon was making her pretty dark pink irises, almost purple in fact, have a steel blue hue that fitted her very well.

The tiny fishing boat was standing still in the bay, as far as from the coast as allowed by the anchor chain length but close enough to be able to observe the tall silhouettes of the Tanegashima Space Center buildings.

  -   "OK, the rocket is properly installed on the launch platform, the upper and lower umbilical links are still in place and I can see the vapour plumes from cryogenic ergols filling circuitry : the launch should be done at the scheduled hour, in thirty minutes."

Lowering his binoculars, the novice looked at Hikaru, who was trying to arrange as a protection circle all the prayers slips and omikujis she has made these last days, and asked if she needed some help.

  -   "I wouldn't say no ! This cockleshell doesn't stop to move in all direction. Why didn't we rent the larger pleasure boat ? It seemed to be a lot more stable, comfortable, fast..."

  -   "Perhaps because even the small fortune you're making with your predictions and love potions isn't enough to match your envy and afford the most expensive boat at the marina." replied the young fox with a knowing smile.

"This lad knows my weaknesses too well, but I need to turn to his passion for astronautics if I want to succeed." she said for herself while the latter was kneeling to help her. "Fortunately, no one is totally incorruptible and I know well his own weakness." When they finished this first part of the plan, the novice scanned the horizon again.

  -   "The upper umbilical link is now retracted, quite normal as we're at about H-15. For the rest, this is looking good... Uh oh, talked too fast : there's a patrol boat at the North not so far from our position. It's not heading to our direction, Karu-chan, but you too should slip on a diving suit."

  -   "Hope all the gear we've rented will be a good enough cover if we're boarded and inspected, because I don't know the first thing about diving."

  -   "Me neither, and it's totally normal as our interests are limited and one can't... know everything about... everything. Hum... perhaps we'd renew or tighten your bandage to prevent it from rubbing against the neoprene of the suit. I can help... if you don't mind." he added embarrassed as she was undressing, keeping only her titillating underwear which was setting off her harmonious curves and charms.

Hikaru, who just nodded, could literally feel his embarrassment and shyness when he got closer and squatted alongside her, but also the lightly bitter and captivating scent of his growing desire... Being only three years younger than her, he was at this stage of adolescence when hormones give oblates a hard life and make them having difficulties to respect their future wows of purity...

She let him untie the bandage with his slightly shaking paws and took a look at her wound : the previously shaved fur was beginning to grow back normally, except just above the three stitched scars where the reddish and slightly lumpy skin was still visible trough, but the whole seemed in a good way to heal completely. By mutual agreement, they decided to not renew the bandage and she strangely decide to kept the now useless but almost clean gauze compress. Perhaps as a wartime memory...

  -   "I still believe that you should've told your superior the real implications of your plan. It'll be worrying sick when I'll bring your unconscious body back to the shrine, even if I show him the notes you've wrote at this subject."

  -   "You know as well as me that's the only working plan and we have to realize it without delay. Then, do you prefer assist me now and make sure nothing bad happens, or have to defend later the temple against angry, determined and really dangerous lunar demons ?" she said touching her scars "And above all, don't forget the little gift I promised you if my mission is a success..." she added while leaning backwards to look at him.

The blush on his face and the way he was not exactly looking at her in the eyes said well the kind of gift was put into play. Not that the young female was acting as a cradle snatcher, but she has found the young fox quite cute and never bothered to mix business with pleasure...

Before closing the frontal zip of the suit, Hikaru leaned forward to grab the little ebony box placed near the circle and put it on her crossed legs. Once unwrapped from the fine rice paper serving as spirit containment barrier and carefully opened, the small casket revealed the home-made pendant she have done the day before the trip to Tanegashima and which she was quite proud of. Suspended to a thin gold chain from another of her numerous jewels, harmoniously curved lacy patterns in 18-carats gold taken in her personal reserves were gripping tightly the material anchorage of the dust devil – four half-crescent shaped fangs and one smooth oval eye – in a setting off that looked like a stylized feline eye. When she worn it, she could fell the little demon's presence very easily, although its mystical gloom was very faint, as it there laying on her chest and trying to accord its vital rhythm to her heartbeats...

  -   "Ten minutes before the launch ! We'd better hurry if we want to finalize the ritual in time."

  -   "You're right. Hang me my calligraphy set and finish to tie the remaining goheis on the 'tepee'."

Simply replying by a quick and quite martial 'Aï !', the novice got down to the said tasks with application... until something unexpected made him jump : the young priestess have let out a colourful swear not really suiting her character, because she just noticed that she had forgot to reload in calligraphy paper. Searching around in a hurry a correct substitute, she soon turned towards her assistant.

  -   "Give me the bandage again ! Hurry up !"

He did not have to be asked twice and passed the said object which she unrolled without losing a second. "Phew. Good thing I didn't decided to thrown it overboard." Slowing her breathing to calm herself down and do not make mistakes, she began to trace the kanjis with application using a very water-light ink mix. The ideograms followed on with a certain fluidity given the circumstances and were defining more and more precisely the spell that this complex incantation will trigger soon. At the end, she drew the symbol of an eye piercing – looking like a twin to the pendant on her chest – at the place she kept for it at the centre of the band, then tied the latter around her forehead letting the free parts disappear into her long floating hair.

Hikaru was so concentrated on her calligraphy in order to limit the effects of the boat rolling that she surprised herself to let out a short shriek when, raising the head, her nape struck something : it was one of the omikujis suspended among other spiritual protection symbols to the 'tepee' armature, in fact the wooden stays of a large fabric-less sun umbrella. To gain a precious time, her assistant has carefully placed the structure over her while she was writing... and she did notice nothing.

The hardest part of the ritual just began, at least for the young priestess : while both of them were chanting the incantation, she gathered her courage and leaned on her long ringed tail fold against her slender legs.

  -   "O you / Dragon with metal skin whose terrifying roaring show the great power / who will soon dash towards the infinite outer space / carrying to the Night Star the beautiful Kaguya..."

When the first prayer slip fell, she felt the pendant becoming heavier on her chest.

  -   "Listen by my voice to the prayer of a small afraid spirit / lost in this earth / and who I want to drive back to his home world / before the mortal sorrow of exile came claiming its due..."

At each slip which slid out of her fur, the dust devil's presence became more and more oppressive while more and more aquatic spirits were coming out of their element to cluster together around the mystical cage, staying at safe distance from the omikujis.

  -   "Please allow us to ride on your silver back / and keep you company when you will rush to the skies / as we promise to not defile your powerful fire mane / or be in the way of your glorious mission..."

She had soon the persistent impression to be in plain water surrounded by a shoal of tiny mackerels with blueish or silvery glooms. But the fleeting apparition of another spirit, of an absolute darkness and irradiating a frost-burning coldness, made her be frozen by terror during a few seconds, her mind ever refusing to think at what will happen to her soul if this one would succeed to go through the holy barrier...

  -   "I'm praying you, great Space Dragon, to accept our request / and let us board within you / as tiny as fleas."

At the end, Hikaru could barely breath and so chant, her movements have become as slow and jerky as the ones of a puppet, her consciousness was loudly begging in her head to not do this act of pure folly, to not remove the last remaining prayer slip tied to the end of her tail... but she had to do this, to accomplish the mission she assigned herself.

The novice could see her convulse violently a brief moment, before sitting up straight abruptly and with a very rigid manner, breathing noisily and irregularly. Fortunately, as he was sat behind her, the young fox was not able to see neither her freaky dilated pupils which were accentuating the glazed and wild look she had, nor the hideous rictus which was troubling her tired face periodically. So he could concentrate on his assignment : do not stop reciting the soul travel incantation while clapping his paws and make Hikaru's bell tied to his own tail chime, in order to keep the invisible spirits away from the young priestess – also object of his growing love...

Suddenly and in the deepest silence, a bright light appeared at the horizon and began to shine in the morning sky as a second sun. It was only after ten long seconds that a very powerful rumble, seeming to come from the very earth of the Earth, made itself heard while the huge rocket was already approaching the wall of sound, leaning itself on the giant feather of white smoke it was drawing in the cloudless sky. The two occupants of the fishing boat looked at this spectacular event, the novice with admiration but trying in the meantime to not stop chanting, Hikaru gaping and with a empty look until she stared into space and fainted in the wink of an eye.

All was plunged into a without equal darkness fixed by a total and harsh silence...

"Am I still alive, or did I already sink into oblivion ?" was the first organized thought she could remember of, but Hikaru as her mind slowly gathered confuse feelings from her body...or what seemed to be that. The situation just looked like to the short moment when she was drowning bit by bit in a deep sleep and could fell herself stretch in size or shape at the rhythm of her breathing. In fact she had now rather the odd impression to be buffeted by a stormy sea, but it was not the only unusual feeling. Something as changing and unstable as her not-really-mortal coil was shaking in her, something her instinct of priestess recognized well before its name came to her mind.

"Wait... if Tsuki is within me, so the astral projection might have been a success !" It looked like it and was a great first for the now reassured young medium : if she already have done a few astral travels in the past, or even projected her mind on a object once or twice in the aim to help find it or keep watch on its holder, project herself into the deeps of the crystalline lattice of the material making up the target object was a quite initiating experience for her... Now that she could recall well where exactly she was and why, understanding the strange phenomenons she had in sight : for example, the tiny and hardly visible silvery dots, regularly spaced ad infinitum in the three dimensions as they would be at the vertexes of imaginary cubes, were simply femtometer-sized nuclei of silicon atoms. And the buffeting which was shaking her in rhythm with the surrounding atoms was caused by optical phonons propagating external vibrations and thermal agitation in the deeps of the material.

All of a sudden, the vibrations began to die down quickly and soon to an almost total immobility where Hikaru had the impression to float weightless, just as if she was an astronaut just arrived onto orbit. The feeling was really as exhilarating as her novice fellow outlined it, and she felt a little sorry for him who would have give up everything to know it by himself.

After an undetermined time spent to contemplate this never seen landscape, before its perfect and monotonous regularity bored her, tried to move towards her final objective but was greatly slowed in her progression by the electronic clouds which, while being almost intangible and blurry because of the Heisenberg's Incertitude Principle, were exerting a powerful repulsion force as she was trying to get closer. Compelled to jump from interstitial gaps to octahedral vacant sites each time the repartition of the nearest electronic layers allowed her this, she only had covered a dozen atomic rows before taking a break. “OK, stop. I'm fed up with squeezing between these always identical atoms stacks, even if I know that I have to reach the power gathering wires and then the main satellite's circuitry. I'd have put the astral tracking mark on the golden contacts rather that on the semi-conductor silicon : the progression rhythm should've been better.”

Suddenly, she perceived on the left and slightly above her a very brief and bright line which stopped itself a few nanometres further, just like a totally straight lightning, Progressively, similar events occurred more and more frequently and transformed soon the material to a real shooting range hailed by hundred of dazzling strokes. When the priestess turned on herself to determine the origin and reasons of this phenomenon, she saw an atom near her being frontally hit by one of these lightnings, making the group of electrons oscillate violently in a complex manner while a tiny shapeless cloud pulled away from it and began to drift toward her direction. The encounter was not as bad as she had thought, and above all led to a real boost and clear ideas on what was happening.

Energy. Insufficiency. Hunger. Hunger.

  -   "Oh no, Tsuki, don't come disturb me while I'm on a mission whose your survival will depend. The object that struck us was simply an electron freed from its atom of origin but an interaction with a photon. What means that Kaguya came out of the orbital night and is now lighted by the Sun. So we have to hurry to find a place in the main satellite before the injection into lunar transfer trajectory, because we'll stay only a few orbits around the Earth."

Even if she was well aware that this trip will not look like to her previous ones, viewing from the inside the flow made by myriads of electrons travelling into a gold or tantalum wire while being reduced to microscopic size did not either remind anything from the film “Tron” as she was half-consciously expecting. In fact, if one could put aside the intangible blurry look of the particles, the first comparison to come would be with Tokyo's commute highways during morning rush hour : 'bumper' against 'bumper', the almost-free electrons were unceasingly zigzagging between the metallic atoms or sometimes bumping against, while moving at a whole. The current was permanent, one-sided and so strong that Hikaru was not able to 'swim' in the opposite direction, and so had to follow the movement just like she was in a very dense crowd. After a while, the only way to slow down a little she had found was to get near the interface between the the metal and the outer isolator – even if the wire had surely a round section, this separation was appearing as an infinitely huge straight wall – wait to see the first asperity, nanoscopic crack, non metallic inclusion, pile of atomic dislocations..., and try to cling to it. These breaks were welcome, first to allow her to take a breather but mostly to let time to find her bearings, as the satellite's designers and builders did not thought of engraving nanometre-sized direction panels into theirs machine's circuitry in order to help a young desincarnated priestess in her mission... But guessing where you are heading just by the amount of electronic flow, type of atoms composing the wire material and the regularity of the crystalline lattice is as easy as find the direction of a mountain road by considering the traffic, type of the vehicles and quality of the pavement...

At least, one thing was clear for Hikaru : being in the power circuitry of one of the sub-satellites, she had to pass into the main data bus in order to go to the main probe and find the appropriate “exit doors”, because only numerical data were circulating between the two structures. So, when she saw a bifurcation with an apparent smaller section, she took it without hesitation while thinking to have found a connection to a current probe. Effectively, the atomic lattice pattern went back to from face-centred cubic to simple cubic as the drift speed and easiness of motion dropped, sign that she was again into silicon. But soon she could see photons emerging from where she was heading to. “What the hack ? I hoped to make my way through a separation between power and controls systems, not return into the photopiles...” she muttered for herself, disappointed. Two facts did not fit however : electrons and photons directions were opposed, not coaxial ; photons flow and electrons drift strength seemed to vary as the would be linked.

Her curiosity and tiredness being almost equally balanced, she decided to let the current, slightly more powerful than the photonic radiation pressure, hold her up gently. The deeper the young red panda was getting into the material, the greater was the light flow but she was still able to move forward. Soon noticing that the photons were less and less parallel between them meanwhile, she arrived in a zone where the tiny clouds materializing the electrons were white instead of black just during a short lull of the photons emission. And when it restarted, they came from... behind her.

The white electrons started too to move again, still in the opposite directions of photons, but their effects were the contrary of the ones from the black particles : coaxial this time and adding their power, electronic drift and radiation pressure succeeded quickly to accelerate Hikaru at a crazy speed. Viewing the atomic rows unfold so fast that they were almost imperceptible, feeling the light particles hit as strongly as a hurricane wind, being dazzled by the ones which were missing her by a few, she started to panic and tried to slow down. When the material's surface came into sight approaching at a great speed, her attempts to stop herself became desperate and she even crossed her arms in front of her head at the last second, as a pathetic gesture of protection. She just had the time to scream “No no no no... !”

When she opened her eyes again, it was not to be faced to the feared endless obscurity or because of the suffering, but precisely because she did not fell anything special. The atomic arrangement was the same, without any wall in front of her though, even if she could still see photons coming from behind her. It was when she looked back to check their origin that she found the surface... this fact added to the electron generation, just like in the photovoltaic modules, that she could perceive by looking attentively to her immediate surroundings achieved to let her so puzzled that she did not even care about being swept away by the electron current.

Hikaru, latter when she was waiting the lunar orbit injection in one of the main satellite's on-board RAMs, actually ended up understanding what was going on here : : it was simply the result of crossing an optocoupling device. What she had mistaken for white electrons were in reality what one call cationic holes, positively-charged equivalents of the negative electrons and so having the exact opposite behaviour. Light, created at the interface between electron-doped silicon and a holes-doped layer where the two sets of particles could recombine, served as Hikaru's soul transport medium when it travelled the few micrometers of void separating the emitter and receiver part of the system. Being done at the speed of light, this jump was way too short – less than a ten of picoseconds – to be consciously noticed.

But the the young priestess was still for the moment into the sub-satellite and the optocoupler's exit led her to a secondary analogue data bus.

  -   "I'm fed up ! I've been stuck into this muddle of ways and junctions for surely hours... I should've tried to put my hands on a global wiring diagram of this lunar probe and its electronic components before the departure. But I'm not a good spy..."

She had the right to be a little upset as the integrated circuit she was travelling into was a real maze of data transfer channels, golden power circuitry and very complex stacks of dielectric materials. Navigating from gold or silver wires wires to multi-layered assemblies of a semi-conductor unknown for her – in reality, the gallium arsenide of MOFSET transistors – trough tantalum swimming poll-like structures travelled all over by stationary radio-frequency waves, she was trying to find a way out of here when a faint inner voice made it heard.

Weakness. Fear. Hunger.

  -   "Oh no, Tsuki, don't come hassle me ! I'm searching my... our way in all this mess !" she replied with anger.

Fortunately, she managed to find a small channel were electrons were moving by dense groups separated by an almost complete lack of particle, something looking like a lot to the classic square-shaped TTL signal. Then, bit by bit, circuit after circuit, she began to take larger and larger data buses, swimming patiently and stopping at each junction to look at the type and density of the of electrons whole movement before choosing her way. At the end, Hikaru ended in a huge wire seeming to be as large as Red Square. The analogy with this famous place was not totally innocent as the electrons in front and behind her were gliding in rhythm within compact well-ordered wholes, just like the cohorts of soldiers during these well-known huge march-pastes of the defunct soviet Red Army. And the young priestess could not help but enjoy herself “walking” at parade pace with a feigned martial air, before having a fit of giggles. But a question was remaining unresolved : "I'm now in the main data bus, not bet again that, but am I heading in the right direction ?" she muttered for herself while going back to a more normal attitude. "This group of cables are linking probably all the important sub-sat's systems to the probe's control motherboard, so I'll just to make a U-turn if I end up in a deadlock. But I don't have the slightest idea of how many time is left before the separation of the sub-sat or how fast I'm walking, and that's really annoying..." She was too thoughtful at this moment to remark the subtle change occurring around her : nuclei's glance colour have changed, as well as the spacing between them have notably increased and the motion easiness substantially improved. All that, for her now expert eyes, was pleading for a transition from iron to gold in the wire composition. Now, when do engineers use gold wires with a diameter greater than several micrometers to transmit large amounts of numerical data ? If not for a best-quality external plug connector... The very probable confirmation of this place being the “bridge” between the two satellites happened when she could spot far away a sector of the cable continuously bombed by cosmic rays. The few times she had viewed them when being in the photopiles or the circuits near the sub-satellite's surface, these subluminic but energetic massive particles looked like burning meteors contrary to immaterial photons, going thought the material very quickly while leaving behind them a powerful phonons shockwave and sometimes ejecting the atoms present on their trajectories like billiard balls. Such a wealth of radiation in the middle of a connector signalled clearly that the latter was located in the gap between the two metallic structures, where protection by the surrounding masses was the weakest.

Entering the main probe's on-board electronics came to reach by foot the centre of Tokyo while stating from the peripheral train station, so much was extended the microchips districts and intricate the metallic back streets. Icing on the cake, the diversity of signals and waveforms became prolific and Hilaru had to stop at each “crossroad” during the needed time to identify the better direction to continue her journey. Finally, after an indeterminable but surely very long moment, she arrived in a small rectangular channel whose celling material was not probably an isolator. Her hunch was confirmed when, after having swimming in this direction and touched the interface, she had the impression to feel her hand going thought it and this little right guessing made her smile. Having decided to let curiosity guide her steps and explore this new strange structure, she came back to the channel floor and then propelled herself by a powerful punch in a sort of fairly large prismatic space, constituted by a regular matrix of several different atoms.

There were iron, oxygen, silver, plus other chemical species she could not recognize, and the yellow-reddish glow diffused by this complex semi-crystalline lattice oddly reminded the young priestess of the autumn dusk at the temple, when all this story have begun... In addition the walls, being rather grains junctions than real interfaces, were not opaque as accustomed but sufficiently translucent to let pass a part of the “light” emanating from the identical surrounding rooms. It was just like the sliding rice paper tiles in the shrine... As a result, Hikaru felt soon both serenely relaxed and a bit homesick, but she was fully aware to be compelled to accomplish her mission before walking back to Earth.

Tiredness. Tiredness. Hunger.

  -   "Oh gods, I really have the impression to have a young lad stuck between my legs..." she heaved in a sigh. "Don't be so impatient," she added while sliding down the wall to the room's floor “We're heading to your home world and will arrive soon or later. But now, we'll just stay here for a while for a ride and have a good rest."

An uncanny thought popped into Hikaru's mind as she was saying this to Tsuki No Hokori with a gentle but half-infuriated tone : each time she spoke or replied to the little dust devil, it was while lowering her look to her belly or even putting her hands on it. As if she was bearing it...

Meanwhile, 400 kilometres below...

  -   "Hello sergeant. How's our Sleeping Beauty today ?" asked the colonel while entering the small individual room whose cleanliness and dazzling whiteness were in fact a bit sinister.

  -   "Good morning, sir !" replied the military doctor standing to attention. "Stationary state, Glasgow score still below five, cardiovascular constants in normal limits, regular breathing without any sign of mucus accumulation. What makes me think that we didn't have necessarily to intubate her."

  -   "It's the normal procedure in such a case of deep coma and you know it, sergeant. Well, by the way, I suppose her parents visited her yesterday afternoon ?"

  -   "No sir, they called to say that they had non postponable obligations and... asked me if I'd pray for her. But...”

  -   "And you did it ?" asked the officer interrupting his subordinate. "How noble of you" he added with a little irony when the other nodded, "but don't forget you have other patients to heal, and they aren't civilians like her."

  -   "In fact sir... I wasn't the only one to pray : the superior of the young girl was here too. You know, the priest from Gifu's shrine.”

The colonel wrinkled his muzzle with a severe look and his mood went quite badly.

  -   "Why did the guards – and you too, sergeant – let him pass despite my recommendations ? Even if I have a great respect for the function he represents" he added in a not very sincere manner, "the theory and so-called written proofs he showed us to explain the current state of our patient are way too... far-fetched to be believed. Him and her parents might make themselves a reason : after more than ten days in this state, the chances of immediate recovery are really low and might more usefully pray for her soul than for... Hum, now that I remember it..."

He went quickly to the bed and raised the bottom of the blanket, revealing Hikaru's long slender legs largely jutting out from the prescribed pyjamas trousers and her long fluffy tail faded by forced stillness. His muzzle frowning as his anger became then more pronounced.

  -   "Why did she still have these prayer slips ?! I did ask you last week to remove them, they aren't hygienic ! And you know well sergeant what's the sanction for disobedience to a superior... so I want to see them disappear before my next round !"

The colonel left the room incensed while the doctor remained quiet to not make things worse and risk something more severe than a warning. He turned toward his patient and put his large lynx paw on her tail, near one of the strings tying several slips. Heaving a deep sight, he caressed a few seconds her soft fur before having with regret to leave the room as well and go take care of the other wounded. Convinced that removing all these sacred items risked letting her weakened soul separate from her unconscious body, he was trying to think at a way to subtract them to the vigilance of his chief...

A few days later, far away in space...

Something, as slow and relaxing as the rolling of calm waves on a quiet beach, awakened Hikaru gently : it was probably the low amplitude vibrations induced by the trajectory correction thruster. And given the duration of the boost, the lunar orbit circularisation had just occurred.

As she was slowly standing up – spirits do not get tired though – the young priestess began to remember faint flashes of memory which built themselves bit by bit to re-form the short nightmare that had oppressed her during the “night”. In the latter, she was leaning over a large and very deep well with the image of the Moon in the bottom when someone pushed her. During the fall, she was viewing the well's end come closer at a great speed with a strong mixed feeling of impotence and imminent death. But the dream sequence stopped abruptly just before she reached the Moon image. When Hikaru thought about this bad dream, she had the uncontrollable hunch that it was surely another vision of the future, fact which let her immediately in a state of sharp angst and despair. "No, it can't happen... If I fail to separate my spirit from Tsuki's one before reaching one of the two “exit doors” I know to exist, we'll thrown together on the Moon surface and I'll stuck there probably for eternity... It'd be worse than death !" Despite being racked by a deep paralysing sadness, her optimist nature however succeeded to overcome that and she soon reassured herself by thinking at the unusual vagueness and lack of organic symptoms of this nightmare, possible indication that the latter was a show of possibility for a particular event rather than a deterministic prediction. But she promised to herself to be as careful as possible.

Floating in the again still crystalline lattice and now fully awake, she decided to move from here and began to swim but noticed soon that her gestures were more clumsy, slow or jerky than before her rest. After a short while when she realized several warming up exercises – with difficulties because of the microgravity – she thought having found the not really pleasant reason of this problem : the longer they will stay in low lunar orbit, the more spiritual energy the dust devil will be able to gather, and the more thick would be its control of her astral body...

A sudden change in Hikaru's peripheral field of vision draw her attention : several cells similar to the one where she was staying, place approximatively on a row, had their colour dimmed as if one have shut down their inner light. Several other cells followed the movement and soon the material was blinking like the average mall neon signs during Black Friday. Then, her own cell did the same thing... and she ended up turned upside down in a fraction of second. Before she could really comprehend what oddity was occurring, there was a second change of brightness correlated to a second flipping, then another and another... Soon made sick by the induced vertigo and waiting hardly to leave this crazy zone, Hikaru swam with all her strength but had to stop during each inversion in order to not turn back involuntarily. Having finally reached the small electronic channel from where she arrived before the "night", the young panda girl could take a breather then leave behind her a now fully operational RAM socket. The "upside down" issue was in fact the result of her being affected by the flipping of the atomic spins in the magnetic domains at each modification of a stocked bit. This interaction was fortunately not reciprocal, or Hikaru's presence would had led to bit flipping errors and then potential program execution problems.

The electronic city seemed to have woke up, as the compactness and diversity of the signals travelling in each communication channel whatever its size have built up in a staggering way : if the whole was not totally silent, the young panda girl's spirit striding along these silver streets could have thought to be in the heart of a megalopolis during the rush hour. The number of stops Hikaru needed to find progressively her way were literally uncountable, because she had the problem to only know approximatively where she was had to go and what kind of sign she could track on her path. on their side, electrons were even more gregarious than sheep – normal for non intelligent particles – but were also precisely guided to their destination by the laws of quantum mechanics, contrary to her... She also took advantage of these breaks to meditate a few seconds and then strengthen her mind, this allowing her to regain temporarily a full control on her astral projection, but the moments of full liberty of movement following the resumption of the journey were beginning to last shorter and shorter.

Hikaru was looking for the way leading to one of the two scientific devices which can act as the already mentioned “exits doors” and help her to send the dust devil back to its native world, namely the Lunar Radar Sounder and the Laser ALTimeter. So she heaved a joyful “Bingo” when she encountered a new type of signal in an anonymous control wire : standing still most of the time, the electrons were periodically taken by a furious jig where they started to oscillate around their equilibrium position with a progressively increasing rhythm. This kind of sequence, when signal frequency changes in only one way during a short burst, is called a chirp and used in almost every radar to enhance emitted radio beam quality...

At last, the final stop of this long and difficult travel into the lunar probe's insides.

Hikaru was staying as near of her objective as allowed by the carefulness and her now weakened and difficultly controllable body, holding tight a bar of the central control grid splitting in two the klystron in charge of the radar beam modulation. Far before her, after the vast uniform volume formed by the component's power cathode, was one of the large cooper electrodes leading to the magnetron. Seeming to be as huge and impetuous as the Amazon river, it was travelled all along by great waves of electrons which, as regularly as Swiss clockwork, were rushing to the electrode end and then into the radar cavity where they will swirl at a frantic speed to release their energy as radio waves. The spectacle was breathtaking but she did not want to stay for ages here.

  -   "OK, Tsuki, it's here that our roads'll split... Once I'll pronounce the separation incantation, continue straight ahead and then follow the...”

Liberty. Return. Happiness.

Without delay, she felt her legs begin to tuck.

  -   “Oh no, don't you dare do that, you little devil !”

The young priestess gathered and focused all her will on the rebel part of her body, not leaving her eyes out of it until she had the firm impression to have won this spiritual skirmish as her legs came back to their initial relaxed state. But she did not have the time to heave a relief sigh that she felt her right arm, the one holding the bar, contract itself all of a sudden and thrown her to the other side of the grid.

Realizing how dangerous the situation have became in no time, Kikaru started immediately to swim as a maniac. But the cathodic current was just enough powerful to overcome her remaining forces and inexorably swept her away to the electrode. The lesser the distance was becoming and the greater fear and panic were, as the thought of death began to haunt her mind. She even tried to grab to grab atoms to slower drift, but their electronic clouds repelled her paws without pity. Just as the sand surrounding the ant-lion larvae den...

When she came out into the giant cylindrical electrode, her lope was to reach and grab hold of a defect present at the interface. But an electrons wave caught and drove her away at a tremendous speed. The walls flash pasted around her and soon the electrode end's surface was visible. Hikaru fully understood at this moment that her worst nightmare will realize... without any hope to avoid her final fate.

- “No... I didn't want to die... Mom, Dad... I loved you so much...” she muttered while crying, the eyes closed to not see the unavoidable.

Suddenly, a violent shock against her stomach made her howl with the powerful pain and huddle up on herself, while her arms closed on her belly by reflex... grabbing something solid and immobile. She had struck full-force a line of atomic dislocation being on her way to eternal exile. Coming to her senses in no time, she tighten her grip on her lifeline and prepared herself to face the incoming electrons waves. But her muscles began again to act against her will : the little lunar demon was still struggling selfishly to made her loose the hold and dive to its native world. The young priestess started so to chant the exorcism incantation. Combined to the repetitive impact of the electronic bursts on her back, each pronounced syllable added its pain to the whole. The suffering became sharper and sharper until reaching an unbearable level. The last word was screamed without restraint, as she had the feeling to have the lunar devil ripped off from the very earth of her entrails...

Hikaru just had the time to see a small grey dot being accelerated toward the cavity before her eyelids started to become heavy. Hiving now to struggle against both drown into unconsciousness and rising tiredness, which would lead to the same definitive result of they overcome, she started singing a fervent prayer to her kamis asking them protection and courage. Hoping with all her heart that her strength would not abandon her until being in safety, she just had to wait...

When the radar emission finally stopped after a never-ending moment, she almost immediately left her improvised raft and swam as fast as possible right up the cooper-isolator interface. Then she began the long ascent toward the klystron, putting all her remaining strength in her cramped paws holding the atomic defects. Her stomach was knotted by the fear that the electrons waves would resume, sweeping her away to ineluctable and terrifying destiny. “I won't have another chance.” she thought while hurrying the pace.

It was only when reaching the one of the calm klystron entry gates that Hikaru dared to stop, and then all the tension accumulated during this brief but extremely stressful episode was released at once. Submerged by this powerful feeling, the young red panda girl huddled up on herself and burst into tears. She did not remember how long she have cried, because both of the extreme joy to be still alive and the terror of realizing how close to meet the grim reaper she have been, she was really weak and shaking when her cheeks became dry again.

Now that her main objective was fulfilled, she did not want to stay one minute longer into this damned satellite. Having the small luxury to choice between two ways of exit did not mean to be exempted to find them into this huge mess of complicated circuitry... These two ways were simply the data transmission antennas pointed to the Earth. The high gain one was offering a more powerful and precisely oriented radio beam than the low gain one, this meaning a more comfortable and secure return travel for the young red panda girl's spirit. But she would have escape the data reception centre after that if she wanted to go back to her body, wherever it was laying. The simple idea to have to stride along into integrated circuits again gave her nausea, especially as her imaginative mind put off by the recent near-deadly incident began to slog away and visualize the worst. She could not stop herself from viewing her spirit inadvertently blocked in a data storage magnetic tape, at the mercy of the fist scientist who would consider her soul as corrupted data and click on “delete”...

So she prepared herself to trail and follow all what looked like the most to low-power frequency-modulated radio waveforms.

After about one second of speed-light return travel...

New diving into the immobile darkness and new feeling of being sinking into oblivion... until a crackling was audible a few seconds. After the almost soundless journey in the lunar probe's atomic structure, this noise seemed deafening to Hikaru but she could locate it on her left, that reassured her on the fact she was pretty sure alive and returned sound and safe to the reality realms.

Bit by bit, the young red panda felt the floating perception of her body shape stabilize itself while the renewed silence was progressively replaced by the serene rhythm of her heartbeat and the continuous sound of the blood flowing in her arteries.

Inspecting herself in thought more carefully, she had a brief burst of panic when she noticed that her tail was icy not only physically but also spiritually... before reasoning herself. "Calm down, calm down... none part of your body is unreachable by your spirit so you're not possessed. No need to worry, the protection slips must have been tied elsewhere than usually, perhaps because the people who's washing your unconscious body during all these days might thought it more practical this way." Indeed, the appeasing warmth of the calligraphed prayers was located on her arms, belly and even chest, being rather concentrated as if the papers were folded several times. However, another foreign object was present, but in her throat this time and slightly bothering her swallowing.

Opening the eyes was the first move she thought about and immediately regretted : the harsh and violent light from the neons seemed to burn them and made her wishing hard to sneeze, so she closed them again but only to be caught in an irresistible coughing fit which made the tube stuck in her throat even more irritating.

After a short while of struggle which seemed to never end, during when the young priestess had the impression to choke, the drop of luminosity she could perceive behind her closed eyelids signalled that something or someone was leaning on her. Immediately, large rubber glowed paws - not the best feeling to have when you are half-awake – laid themselves on her muzzle, opened her mouth and searched inside it, manipulated the intubation device that was bothering her and finally took it out as quickly as painfully. She could not even take a breath of pure air because an oxygen mask was pressed against her face without delay.

Turning her head on the side and opening only the least light-exposed eye, she tried to look at the doctor or nurse who performed these technical acts.

  -   "Whe... where I am ?" she finally had the strength to say, with a little voice muffled by the mask.

  -   "At the military hospital of Yahu Island, young lady"

It was not the lynx-like being standing in her misty field of vision who talked, but someone else staying near her feet. She could see him as he moved near the doctor and resumed his talk :

  -   "In fact, these 'gentlemen' from the Military Police would like to lake a long explanation from you once you'll be up and about, especially about the reasons why you were in a navigation-forbidden zone, near the Tanegashima Space Center a day of launch. And don't give them the alibi of a decompression accident like your fellow did, your bottles were nearly full and neither nor your accomplice have a diving license. By the way, the latter was freed quickly because he's too young to be charged, but it won't be the case for you so prepare yourself well, young lady..."

Actually, she didn't give a damn at who was this officer or what he just said, not even have looked at him : her gaze have been captured by the golden and silvery glooms of her home-made pendant, placed on the bedside desk. Even if the lunar rocks composing it were now as drab and inert as normal rocks should be, it became her most precious jewel because being a proof of her bravery and success.

Thinking to her parents, the superior and also the young novice she left behind during her mission, a small smile of happiness appeared on Hikaru's tired face.