"We can't have a deadwoman running for president. It simply sets the wrong kind of precedent."

On the holoscreen Tala Kelly raises an eyebrow in amusement, "Mr. Hunt, nowhere in UN global code does it say anything prohibiting a dead woman from running for president. It DOES say, and I have it right here, that I must be a citizen of earth, over the age of 40, human, and free of any major criminal offences including, murder, felony embezzlement, assault with a deadly weapon, sexual battery and others. As per the last time I won the presidency, all of those things still apply."

"How can you be a citizen of earth if you died?" He shot back, pointedly jabbing a finger in her direction, "Shouldn't you be a citizen of revelation now."

Her eyebrow stayed raised, "How can I be a citizen of somewhere I have never been. I died, was captured by general kazna tortured for a year or more, forced into servitude and then escaped, and took a sabbatical on Arcadia during my recovery."

Hunt's face twisted into a sneer, the mean expression fitting perfectly on his face, like the expression had always belonged there, "And how about the rumors that you assaulted the president of Mars."

Kelly straightened and her body flickered momentarily revealing the black void and smattering of stars that made up her other form. Her lips drew into a thin line. She stayed quiet for a moment, and Hunt crowed with Triumph, "That's right, don't think I wouldn't know about that. I've seen the records, about what happened during that diplomatic mission, where you infiltrated the GA capital and attempted to murder the acting chairwoman, and assaulted the Martian president causing him to be left in a coma for several weeks."

There was a muttering from the crowd with a sudden uptick in camera flashes. Kelly glitched again her lips still pressed together into a thin line. Voices were raised from the crowd.

"President Hunt, if we are here to put forward my litany of sins we can do the same for you. Like how there is evidence yu colluded with general Kazna to murder me, or perhaps how you ignored signs of the original void outbreak, or that you may have been involved in an attempt on Adam Vir's life." More muttering from the crowd, but she raised a hand, "Yes we can sit here and hurl insults at each other like a couple of monkeys throwing our own excrement, but I'm not here to do that. As far as my involvement in an attempted GA assasination is concerned....." She paused again the gears inside her head churning hard.

There was silence before she sighed.

"Yes."

There was a gasp from the crowd.

Kelly held up a hand again, "What I say next is not intended to absolve me of that, but perhaps it is time the public understands what happened following my death." She adjusted her tie, "The spear used to kill me, has special properties, or so I understand, and is used to harvest Maker anima when the two are in contact. When I died, my anima was claimed by General Kazna. Usually an anima would return itself to the seat of maker power, revelation, but in this case I was brought to void holding, and thrown into..... Into a." She struggled to find words, stumbled over her own tongue.

She had gone pale and her hands gripped the edges of the lectern.

She glitched twice in quick succession before managing to rein herself in, "Some people used to believe when you die there was nothing there, that it just ended. Well in this case that is what it felt like, for a whole year, or so I am told, I was kept inside a balck void. At the time I didn't understand how to manifest a body so it was simply my mind and nothingness... The darkness the void subscribes to isn't dark. Do have something dark, you need light to exist and in that place, there was neither light or dark...... there was simply nothing. A whole year, alone in the nothing, 365 days of nothing but my own mind slowly going mad."

The audience was silent. The glitch happened again but this time it stayed partially, on her right hand as she spoke, crawling up her arm though she was clearly trying to fight it down, "No one here, can understand what that is like, no one here should ever understand what it's like. The human mind is not equipped to be left alone like that without stimulation, sensory deprivation and isolation for that long resulted in a state of temporary madness. I have difficulty remembering up to six months after I was deployed by Kazna, a mindless creature of convoluted thought and form. If the president of mars wishes me to make reparations for what I did, then I will, if the people of earth don't want me after that then I understand. I will not dodge my wrongdoings. I will not make excuses, I will only explain the facts and let you decide.... I will not lie."

She held up her hand so everyone could see the void of black and the rolling stars within, "I cannot shake what happened to me, I have accepted that I never will for as long as my anima draws power, but before you write me off, let me make my case. I know our enemy better than anyone, I know how they think and what they use, I have been there and I have returned, I have survived what I hope you will never have to. I have a rare insight into ur enemy that no one ever will. There is no one who wishes to deal with this problem more than me, to protect earth." She lifted her chin as the glitch began to recede, replaced by smooth tanned skin.

"I understand what we need, and I will do everything in my, not inconsiderable, power to keep humanity safe. We have all seen what isolation has done to earth, the allies we have lost, the pain we have all suffered. And you know that I plan to broker allies, to return Earth to its seat in an intergalactic alliance that will defeat Kazna and the void. There are a few other things to consider of course." She motioned to hunt, "Your president has managed to ostracize you from some of the most powerful people in the galaxy, but I still have good relations with them, The chairwoman of the GA, Lord Celex of the Celzex and his son Emperor Avex, Adam Vir, who even now works to combat the void."

The crowd cheered.

Adam lifted his head from his pillow and adjusted the volume on the TV as the debate continued, but even that little movement was exhausting and he let his arm slump back down, slipping from his fingers and falling to the floor. He looked at it with some measure of resentment and held his hand out, willing the force to bring the remote back into his hand.

He was disappointed, once again, to find that he did not have any jedi powers, and the remote remained on the floor. He could, of course, use voice control to adjust the holoscreen, but whistled instead. Waffles came trotting into the room, her tail sweeping low against the floor.

He barely even had to point her in the right direction as she leaned down and picked up the remote, walking over to hand it back to him.

"Thanks pretty girl." He said ruffling her ears.

Waffles licked his hand, and then his face.

He laughed.

With that waffles turned in a tight circle, and slumped to the floor with a heavy sigh right beneath his hand, head resting on her paws. At the other end of the couch laying across Adam's feet, jeffery lifted his head.

"At ease." Adam muttered.

He was only a day out of the hospital, and recovery was seeming a long way off. He was still drugged, quite heavily, and it seemed that he would never catch up on sleep. He was exhausted all the time, and spent more time napping than he did awake. Even with all the medicine, his chest ached, weirdly only around the edges of his new lung and heart which didn't hurt at all, nor the skin on his chest. Still he was tired, and sore and weak.

Simply lifting his arms felt impossible most days.

He had been brought here by way of wheelchair. He wouldn't have been able to walk even if he had found the energy to strap on a prosthetic leg, which he most certainly didn't.

It was all rather embarrassing of course, since the first few days he had been so weak, he couldn't even raise his own arms, forcing Sunny to help him bathe, eat, dress and everything else he didn't want to think about.

Speak of the devil.

Sunny stepped into the room just then spear in one of her lower hands, upper arms crossed over her chest.

"How's it going/"

"Not sure, but I'm pretty sure Kelly is schooling hunt soundly."

She walked over and sat on the edge of the couch next to him, "Like that was ever in question." She leaned over gently touching her forehead to his. He kissed her cheek as she pulled away, one hand resting on the good half of his chest.

He held her hand in place with his right hand and turned his head back to the TV.

They were talking about something boring now, like fund allotment or something he didn't have the energy to think about.

He yawned.

"You should sleep."

"That's what i've been doing for the past two or three weeks if you haven't noticed." He sighed in frustration, "By the time all this is over, all the muscles will have atrophied off my bones."

Sunny ran a hand through his hair, "King James will sort you out then."

That was true enough.

The man would like nothing more than to make Adam suffer through an incredible routine of back breaking exercises, which simply thinking about was making him tired. Then again walking to the bathroom seemed like an impossible task at this point, so running 12 miles felt as impossible as manifesting wings and flying away.

"Where's Kay?"

"Preschool."

Adam frowned, "he's old enough for preschool."

"Let me rephrase, Drev preschool."

"Ah, okay."

The drev started training their children young, not in combat necessarily, but they worked hard to train body awareness into their children. Running, climbing, jumping, being grabbed, thrown, spun upside down, flipped and twisted was all part of the process. It all seemed rather ridiculous, until you considered, that a peer reviewed study, done by krill, had confirmed that any children, drev or human included that participated in these early training sessions had better balance, spatial awareness, and body control even a year later than children who didn't.

For Drev it was important, but for kay it would just be extra intense playtime.

"How are you feeling?" He asked, looking up at her from where he lay. At this oblique angle he got a good look at her stomach, but unlike human women, drev women had barely any indications of pregnancy except for their sudden psychological aversion to combat.

Sunny shrugged, "Fine, unless you consider the desire to eat everything in sight a problem."

He snorted, Adam had never seen a "heavy" drev, so he doubted it. Then again he had never seen a drev that didn't participate in martial combat every day, so finding a sedentary drev was near impossible. His eyes dropped a little as he watched the TV, lulled a little by Kelly's steady voice. His eyes opened a little when Sunny grabbed him gently by the shoulders, sitting him up long enough to slot herself in place behind him on the couch.

When he rested his head back down it was against her stomach, her legs penning him in on either side.

He hummed quietly, a habit he had picked up from her, as he closed his eyes again dozing off to sleep, cheek resting against her bare skin.

He supposed forced bed rest had its perks