With Faith (Reprise)

[Rebecca Talon]

"You lie!" Rebecca grinned. "You shoot fire from your fists."

[Nick Ryder]

"Yeah because that was grafted into me, you had way more connection to the Iljuna way longer. That power didn't come from the Iljuna, now lightning bolts... yes... but ever since Dominus... I don't even dare to attempt that. And I'm not getting 'I'm the Real Nick Ryder' tattooed on my forehead." he chuckled. "Although it is stamped here." he held up his left arm and pulled out the technoorganic flesh. "Lightning screws with the electrical impulses in my hands. I end up flipping people off inadvertently."

[Rebecca Talon]

Rebecca laughed, "Master Ja'larin saw it in me a long time ago. Trained in violation of the Council back when we we all still serving the Python Fleet."

"Masters Talon and Lei I must speak with the president alone. If you'll excuse us," Master Plo said.

He lead Nick a few hundred yards away with a surprising ease of movement over the rough terrain. He stopped at the edge of the mountain that overlooked a deep valley where the town of Woodland Park sat tiny in the distance at the bottom.

Sitting cross legged with with staff across his lap he stared off into the distance. "It is a beautiful planet you have here. Sit, we must talk.

"I was the son of a farmer on Cardassia. My family had no powr5of influence. Had I joined the military I would have started my career as a glen and likely ended it as a glen.

"My family, we raised lomecs. It's a creature not too dissimilar to your cattle in its use. Meat, leather, dairy ectetera, but they are half the size. I'm sure you get the picture. Every once in a while a predator would take one of the mothers who had calves who still needed the teet. Rather than letting the calf starve we would put calf with another lactating lomec as a surrogate."

[Nick Ryder]

"I'm familiar with the practice." Nick replied. "So who is the mother that was killed?"

[Rebecca Talon]

He looked back at Rebecca and smiled, "Not yet anyway, but the daughter of Dominus will need a family. Your friend Becca will not be able to fulfill that role, but I'm thinking maybe you could."

[Nick Ryder]

"Which daughter? Ophelia seems a bit old to take on as a daughter." Nick replied. "And according to Jack, Kinsey killed her already but I doubt that's the last anyone would see of her."

[Rebecca Talon]

"No, the youngest. A blonde." Plo shrugged, I do not know all, but Ophelia lives. She and her brother are irredeemable. Which, is difficult for me to say. It flies in the face of everything I believe in."

[Nick Ryder]

"Sometimes evil is born that way." Nick replied. "So... another child." he thought for a moment. "Gale IS getting older and Alice was sort of secretly hoping that we'd give him a sister. Course, there are more girls in this family than boys anyway... but if its what needs to be done. I will do it. Not every version of her father is a bastard."

[Rebecca Talon]

Plo smiled, "She isn't a child. Like her siblings she has been... well, I don't know exactly what Dominus has done to them, but she is an adult, but she will still need guidance. Not just in life, but how to use her skills with the ijulna for the good, not the bad. Like it or not you are the closest thing she has to family."

[Nick Ryder]

"Like I said, it doesn't scare me, as long she isn't the psycho bitch her sister and mother are." Nick replied