"Ashia?"

Messia was putting a hand to my face and smiling down at me from over the top of me as I opened my eyes. She had such a beautiful face, and I leaned up to kiss her, but then noticed that there were three things missing, and I panicked.

"Don't worry, they are right beside you and waiting to be fed, but don't look at them! I don't know how you slept through the mewing, but they are content for the moment, and Hilda said to come and wake you; we are almost to the Troll Village," Messia said to me and then leaned down for a kiss, and I pulled her down on me as she did.

As soon as Messia broke away from me, I asked, "Do we have some time to have some fun before then?".

"No, we can later, but if you want to be going down with the others, you should be going down and getting ready. Everyone is one edge about you leaving the ship," Messia said as she passed me the bowl of meat from before that did not smell good, but my opinion didn't matter.

*MEW, MEW, MEW!*

The Kitten Dragons bonded towards me, and all three scrambles up and on to me. I gave them each a large chunk on my chest again, and it was worse this time with the smell of the meat much more potent.

After watching them eat their food in the same manner as before, I asked Messia, "Why didn't you feed them or why didn't they just eat from the bowl?".

"I tried, believe me, but they wouldn't eat anything I offered and even when I offered them the bowl. It seems that the Kittens are attached to you now, so you will have to be the one that takes care of them," Messia explained to me.

"That makes sense, and it's good. They are my pets, so I will take care of them. Once they are done eating, I will come up, but can you go and get Serria? I don't really want to go out in public like this with my chest all scratched up," I said, and Messia smiled at me and then gave me a hand up and out of bed, causing the kittens to crawl up onto my shoulder as I did.

Messia smiled back at me with a grin when she told me "Yes, but I will have her join you at the Water Hex-Comb. I think it would be better for you to get clean," he said to me.

Taking a breath, I said, "I wholeheartedly agree with you; it has been a week since I was licked clean, and I need to get more than those parts of me cleaned," I replied, grinning back.

Messia turned and then buzzed up into the air and then out of my room, and I watched her go longingly. I really had fallen in love with being able to fly, and now that I had lost the ability, it was hard to watch others do it.

Nevertheless, I had to be thankful that the pain was almost gone now, but I still had to deal with the pain of a terrible loss. In order to feel safe in a world where everyone else was relying on me to keep them from harm, I needed to be able to protect myself.

Will had been a perfectly good example of this when he tried his I Kill You game on me. Yes, the system reacted, but Will had not been actually trying to kill me, and while he was extremely tall, he was not like the monster that had broken into the ship.

If it would have been that Female Predator that had appeared behind me, there was no way that the girls would have been able to pull off the same move. That was what scared me; what did it matter if I was safe if thirty people had to die for that to happen?

I understood that war could do that and have far more significant casualties than that, but this was not a war in my mind. This was the build-up to something like a war, but I was also trying to keep that from happening.

In spite of the fact that there are so many unknowns about the Predators, learning about them would not allow me to discover where they have hid. I walked over to the Levi-Stone pad as I contemplated what could be done to learn more about them and where they were.

'Draw them out with bait and then tract them.'

"Yes, but they will know that we are doing that if they have a seer… wait, who just said that?" I asked while looking around as one of the Kittens jumped from my shoulder, Starting to flap and hover in front of me. "Was that you, Atom?"

'Use what cannot be found," Atom projected to me, and I knew exactly what he was talking about, and I put out my hand.

Aton and his fluffy nuclear green fur lighted down on my hand, and I pulled him to my face to cuddle his soft fur as I clicked down the Levi-Stone. The thing that could not be found was Bob, and he was perfect for this type of job, but my main concern was how they were controlling the other women.

'Cat Maiden's Blessing will protect him,' Atom told me.

"Wait, how do you know that?" I asked the mysterious little creature that seemed to have more brainpower in its peanut-sized brain than I did in my grapefruit-sized one!

'We can see your God-Tech, and you have given us all the gifts that we lacked, true speech. Atom is a good name for myself, but I think that we will all enjoy our time with you,' Atom explained to me as I arrived up top.

"Oh, they are adorable! Come, you are such a slowpoke! Messia said you were coming right behind her! Serria will be down there waiting for… oh god, you smell horrible!" Miasma said as she pulled back from coming to get close to the Cat Dragons.

I was about to complain, but there was no chance as Miasma dragged me by my two left arms into the Honey Gate.