A Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons Story

By Cwissy

2070

Dr Fawn suddenly awoke with an involuntary gasp and sat up in his bed with the notion that he’d just had a strange dream and a strong feeling came over him that he was urgently needed elsewhere, but where? He racked his brain but couldn’t find the answer there and the compulsive feeling would not dissipate like what usually happens with people’s dreams. He showered and changed into his Spectrum uniform, had some breakfast and walked into sickbay in time to hear the latest Mysteron threat against an American State Representative by the name of Roddy Chalton whom he thought had probably done something undoubtedly idiotic to upset them and they were out to get him. He’d never heard of the man, but he still had a strange compulsion to go with whomsoever was going out there to guard him.

He went straight to the control room to see Colonel White to tell him about this strange compulsion that he had.

“Why are you here, Dr Fawn?” the Colonel asked with some surprise at seeing him there.

“Colonel White, I want to go with whoever is going to guard this Roddy Chalton,” he stated emphatically to the Colonel, looking like he was going to brook no opposition.

“Why?” asked a confused Colonel. “What is this politician to you?”

“I don’t know him at all, but I woke up with a really strong compulsion to go with the captains on this mission and I can’t shake that feeling that I am going to be very much needed.”

“I am sending Captains Scarlet and Blue to the man-made lake that this man seems to like fishing in when he isn’t at work and I’ve had confirmation that he is definitely going to be there. I can’t see why you would be needed at all though and I’m very reluctant to let you put yourself in danger as you seem so determined to do.”

“All I know is that I have to go, I have to be there for some reason and I just can’t shake it.”

“I see, but you’ve never shown any desire to be involved in a mission like this before.”

“I’ve never felt this way before and it is really strong, like an unseen force and I’m not talking about an unseen Mysteron force either.”

“I’m not liking this,” the Colonel told him. “What if it is a roundabout way of getting at you for some yet unfathomable reason?”

“If they were after me, they would have said so and they didn’t even have the threat in riddle form, now did they?”

“No, but for the life of me I cannot see why you would want to go.”

“I don’t know why I want to either, but I just have to. Maybe, in my mind, I feel as if I need to go out on some mission...”

“I still don’t understand.”

“All I know is that I woke up in the early morning just knowing I was needed and the feeling hasn’t left me. Hmph, if anything it has gotten stronger – I’m needed for some reason and I can’t shake that very strong feeling... and I don’t even believe in such stuff either, but there it is.”

“If I refuse to let you go, what then?”

“I don’t know how I’d feel, but I suspect I’d be very upset and distracted the whole time.” The doctor snorted. “I can’t believe I’m actually talking like this.”

“May I say something,” Lieutenant Green interjected, “I think you should let him go and those strong feelings he has, well my late grandmother would have said they existed for a reason and one shouldn’t resist one’s calling.”

“Don’t you start,” the Colonel sniffed and then mused about what the lieutenant had said. “Although, I do know that your grandmother was an exceptionally wise woman and I wouldn’t want to go against such wisdom... hmm... very well, Doctor, you may go with the captains, but if you get yourself into a lot of trouble...”

“Yes, I know,” the doctor placated him. “It will be all my fault and no one else’s, I can live with that and you just giving me permission has actually eased my seemingly urgent need to go. I’m actually feeling quite happy in fact, go figure.”

“Then you are doing the right thing and your mind knows it for some reason,” Lieutenant Green smiled at him.

The doctor smiled back and gave a little chuckle. “I hope you and your grandmother are right.”

“I don’t know about me, but my grandmother usually was and I can’t think of a time when she wasn’t.”

“All very interesting, I’m sure,” the colonel cut in. “Now Lieutenant Green, get Captains Scarlet and Blue up here.”

They both turned up in quick time and were astonished to hear that Dr Fawn was going with them on this particular mission for some strange reason the doctor didn’t even understand.

Dr Fawn was smiling the whole time they flew down to the ground, requisitioned the Spectrum Pursuit Vehicle and all the way to the lake.

“You certainly are in a happy jolly sort of mood,” Captain Scarlet said to Dr Fawn feeling it was all a bit strange for this man who was usually quite serious most of the time.

“Am I?” the doctor questioned, unaware of how happy he seemed to be.

“Yes, you were just humming some tune to yourself.”

“Oh, I didn’t realise I was, but my mind does seem to be cheerful for some reason I cannot fathom at all.” He frowned and slightly shook his head at the thought.

“All right here we are,” declared Captain Blue, as he pulled the SPV up to the lake’s viewing platform. “There seems to be a couple of people already here.”

The people were Captain Black and a reconstructed woman called Athena who, unbeknownst to the Mysterons, had began to realise her true self when landmarks had started to seem familiar to her and tingling thoughts started activating in her brain. When the car they were travelling in had pulled in to a viewing platform, she had sprang out of the vehicle and raced to the fencing around the lake.

“I KNOW this place, I KNOW IT!” she had called out staring in disbelief at all the water. “I don’t believe it, this valley is DROWNED, IT’S DROWNED; how could this have happened?”

“That is not our concern, you have your instructions from The Mysterons and you must now carry them out; there is your small boat below here, so get out there on the lake and do as you have been told,” a deep growling voice coming from Captain Black had forcefully instructed her.

A wolf had howled nearby and a great ripple of excitement had gone through her body, Athena’s head had whipped up and her inner wolf came to the fore, overriding the remaining Mysteron influence and she had given off a great howl back to it.

“Speak to me, My Darlings, speak to me,” she had then called out to the wolves, with her arms thrown out from her sides.

Another wolf had howled from a different direction and Athena had turned to it and given off yet another bellowing howl. The Mysterons were completely baffled by what had happened – nothing in her memories had prepared them for this; there were wolves featured, but it didn’t make any sense to them at all, as they had thought that it was to do with human folklore and they could feel that they were losing control of her. They had then realised that a Spectrum Pursuit Vehicle was almost there and all they could do then was to warn Captain Black to get away.

Captains Scarlet and Blue and Dr Fawn alighted from the vehicle as fast as they could to see a woman looking over the lake and howling her head off like a wolf, which they all found a bit peculiar. Captain Scarlet was sure he spotted someone else who had disappeared.

“Edwin, Edwin, Edwin,” Athena then called out loudly across the lake, “Where are you Edwin?”

“Hold it right there, don’t move,” Captain Scarlet forcefully told her, with his gun pointed at her.

A wolf howled again from the hills and Athena answered, seemingly unaware of any of the other people who had turned up.

“I told you to keep still,” she was forcefully told again.

She noticed him then and looked at him in confusion. “Why are their voices different than before?” she asked. “It is like they are a completely different pack altogether.”

“Let me take a picture of her, Captain Scarlet, with the Mysteron Detector,” Dr Fawn offered, feeling really intrigued by this mysterious woman who seemed to be quite indifferent to them overall. “Don’t be too hasty in shooting at her, because you have to admit she doesn’t act like any Mysteron we’ve ever encountered.”

“Very well, Doctor Fawn, but make it quick. I’m certain that was Captain Black we just saw vanishing near her.”

A picture was taken with the Mysteron Detector; Athena meanwhile had turned back to the lake and had called out to Edwin again.

“This picture is inconclusive; it sort of shows both.”

“It can’t be, it must be one or the other,” protested Captain Blue.

“Well it doesn’t, have a look for yourself.”

“You’re right; it looks like a really bad double exposure; you will have to try again.”

Another picture was taken with the same result.

“There must be something wrong with the camera,” Blue speculated, but a picture of him showed an x-ray and one taken of Captain Scarlet showed a positive image.

“There is nothing wrong with the camera,” concluded Dr Fawn as another picture of Athena showed the same result as before.

“This is really so weird, nothing like this has happened before, so strange...” Captain Blue was completely flummoxed.

Athena, in turning around to face them, noticed the other two men talking to each other. “Edwin, why do you look slightly different and why are you using an Australian accent and why, oh why is the valley flooded?” she addressed Doctor Fawn.

“My name is Edward, not Edwin,” he answered her, “I am Australian and this valley has been flooded for over twenty years.”

“Don’t be silly, I was in that valley just a few weeks ago. Edwin and I often ride through there on my brother’s horses, although I don’t swim in the caves anymore.”

“What on Earth could she be talking about?” a confused Blue pondered. “What are those Mysterons up to this time?”

“Why is everyone talking in riddles?” Athena was starting to feel frustrated, “And where did the man in black get to?” She looked around and couldn’t see him.

“What man in black?” Captain Scarlet warily asked, although he was certain he knew the answer.

“The one that brought me here and wanted me to row out on a little boat and capsize myself so that the people in the larger boat out there would pick me up. He didn’t make any sense, why would I do a stupid thing like that?”

“What else did he say?”

“I don’t know, I was distracted by the drowned valley and I still can’t understand why it is under all that water,” was her puzzled answer and then a thought hit her. “Wait, there might have been something about an explosion, but that didn’t make any sense either.” She gave a great sigh, “Why isn’t anyone making any sense today?”

“I don’t think she is dangerous,” Dr Fawn confidently stated as he walked over to her. “What year do you think this is?” he gently asked her.

“2024, of course.” She gave him a look as though he was a bit thick in the head.

“What have they done? They seemed to have copied someone out of time and they lost control of her possibly for that reason,” Captain Blue surmised and then had another thought. “Maybe that causes the pictures of her to be so muddled.”

Athena, still confused and still looking at the doctor said, “What is that strange man talking about, Edwin, is he all there?”

“I’ll explain later, but who is this Edwin you keep mentioning?”

“My husband.”

“Do you think that I am your husband?” he asked her.

She blinked and stared at him, “Yes, of course, er... perhaps, maybe, er, no, not with that accent, but you do keep reminding me of him...” She walked up to him, put her hands on his shoulders, leaned over and sniffed his face, much to his bemusement. “I seem to have less of a sense of smell, but...” she leaned over some more and quickly licked her tongue over his lips, startling him a little. “You taste the same... I’m so confused, where is Edwin?” She turned around and shouted his name several more times across the lake again.

Dr Fawn felt oddly drawn to her, despite her strangeness. He took her arm and said, “C’mon, let’s leave this place and go back to where I can do tests and try to find out what really is going on.”

“You take both of them back to Cloudbase Captain Blue. I’ll contact that boat out there and warn them that they may be in danger, although I suspect it is over,” Captain Scarlet stated with a fair degree of certainty.

“Come, er... what is your name?” Dr Fawn asked her.

“Athena Wilde,” she answered, still confused. “The wolves here have a different song to what I remember, I don’t understand.”

“C’mon, I’ll try to explain what I can on the way back.” He guided the bewildered woman over to the SPV.

“What a strange sort of vehicle this is,” she told the doctor while looking at its interior.

“It certainly is,” he concurred with her.

Captain Blue sat at the steering wheel facing backwards and looking into a TV monitor making Athena give him really funny looks.

“Why are you facing backwards?” she asked him.

“It is deemed safer for us in case of accidents,” Captain Blue answered her. “We see the road via TV cameras at the front of the vehicle.”

“I would think such a thing would cause accidents, what happens if you go through mud? Wouldn’t your cameras get covered up and how do you see then?”

“There are ways of cleaning them.”

“I hope so. Hmph, the daft ideas people get about things...” was Athena’s assessment as she shook her head at the silliness of it all. “Where are you taking me and why?”

“Ah, Athena,” Dr Fawn was wondering about how to approach the tricky problem of telling her about what year it was. “You told us you thought the year was 2024 and...”

“I know it is 2024, why? Did I have a fall and hit my head or something like that? Are you giving me some sort of cognitive test? You know like asking me to say the months of the year backwards? I can do it, but I don’t see the point of it and anyway saying the alphabet backwards is so much easier and a lot more fun.” She then quickly ran though the alphabet backwards. “See, now that is fun and seemingly faster than saying it forwards too.”

“I’m assuming that you can say it forwards then,” Captain Blue couldn’t help himself from commenting on what he had heard them talking about.

Athena shot him a cool look and then asked the doctor, “Am I allowed to go over and cuff him in the ear?”

“Not while he is driving,” was the dry response from Dr Fawn.

“Very well, I suppose I should be asking why I am in a strange vehicle with my husband’s twin and a strange man.”

“Yes, that is the tricky bit. You see, Athena, it isn’t the year 2024 it is the year 2070.”

Athena kept very still and just blinked at him. “Are you both some sort of comedy team and are you both making fun of me? Are there cameras in this vehicle to see my reaction and then everyone will laugh at me for perhaps believing you?”

“I’m so sorry Athena; I actually, for your sake, wish that were true.” The doctor was feeling a bit upset himself over having to explain to her why her world would soon be turned upside down.

“Do you really believe that I would believe that I have travelled forty-six years into the future somehow, just how gullible do you think I am?”

“It is true,” he quietly told her.

“Ha, yeah sure,” she glared at him, feeling quite nettled.

“You saw the lake, it has been flooded for over twenty years; how do you think that happened if, as you stated, you were there just a few weeks ago?”

An ominous feeling was creeping over her, thinking back she could tell that the valley wasn’t recently flooded and she would have heard about it happening in any case.

“No, no, no, please tell me you are making up all of this, please!” She shook her head from side to side.

“I’m so sorry.”

“NOOOOOO! No, no, no.” She broke down and started crying her heart out as the full impact of it all hit her.

He reached out and put a hand on her shoulder. “Sssh, please don’t be so distraught, everything will be okay.”

“How can it be? Where’s Edwin? Where’s Alison? Are they both still alive?” she demanded to know with a hoarse cry.

“Who’s Alison?”

“My daughter, of course, my ten-year-old daughter... only according to you she would be fifty-six years old, assuming she is still alive.” She broke down again and cried, then suddenly sat up. “I have to get out of here, I have to run and run and run until my head clears. Let me out of here!”

She unbuckled her seat belt and tried to get up, but he promptly held her back.

“Keep still and we will try to find the answers for you. You can’t go around trying to escape from a moving vehicle...”

“Then stop it!” she wailed, still struggling to get up.

“No, Athena, we can’t do that.”

“Why?”

“You are in no state to go running off by yourself,” he told her in a slightly exasperated voice. “We will do all we can to find answers for you, but until then you must stay with us where you are safe for now.”

“Safe... safe? Safe from what?” She was mightily confused by it all.

“We will explain it all when we get to Cloudbase.”

“What is that?”

“A giant floating platform, sort of like an aircraft carrier in the sky.”

She gave him a look like he really was completely deranged. “I will warn you that I am more than capable of defending myself,” she hissed as her grey eyes glittered and looked a bit feral.

“I can assure you that we won’t harm you at all.”

“Serial killers tell that to their victims all the time to keep them quiet,” she snorted and still glared at him.

“Dr Fawn is not going to hurt you and neither am I,” Captain Blue thought it was about time he intervened.

“That’s right, I think I heard the man in red call you a doctor before,” Athena mused. “Are you any good at it? I’m a healer myself and I know I am good at it. My grandmother trained me and she was the best there ever was.”

“In what sense are you a healer?” the doctor was intrigued and thought that getting her to talk about something else would help keep her calm.

“I use my hands. I lay my hands on a person, sense what is wrong and feel myself healing the injury or disease; it is an ability or gift I was born with.”

“How intriguing,” the doctor answered her, not believing a word of it, but if saying that kept her happy, so be it.

“You don’t believe me, I can tell,” she told him.

“How?”

“Your body language, I’m quite good at reading the body language of many mammals and some birds but reptiles are much harder... I hate snakes, the foul nasty things they are.”

“In all fairness, not many people do like them,” the doctor informed her, more than happy to go off on a tangent.

“Some do, but then again, there has never been a shortage of idiots in the world.”

“You are definitely not wrong,” he concurred with her with feeling.

She smiled at him then. “I wish you were Edwin.”

“So do... hum, I mean I wish I could tell you more.” Dr Fawn felt a bit silly and briefly wondered why he still felt so happy within himself.

Later, on Cloudbase, after the doctor had run various tests, which still left him without many answers, he took Athena to the Officers Lounge to meet the other captains, a nurse and a couple of the Angels.

Athena surveyed the people assembled there with trepidation; they didn’t look welcoming at all to her and she felt a bit fearful.

“Why am I here, Edwin?” she asked, not noticing that she had again called him by the wrong name, something she kept doing on and off since she had arrived there.

Dr Fawn, real name Edward Wilkie, had given up correcting her about his name. “There were requests from some of them to see and talk to you, that’s all.”

She backed into him subconsciously for protection. “They don’t seem like people who want to see me at all, their body language is quite hostile if anything.”

“Go over to them and greet each one in turn and then they will like you, I’m sure of it, c’mon. No one is going to try to harm you and I certainly wouldn’t allow it in any case.” He took her arm and guided her over.

The first man, Captain Blue, she said hello to and then sniffed his face, much to the amusement of some of the others and tensions eased.

“I’ve already met you, but I could barely smell you then and I can barely smell you now,” she commented, “I feel so handicapped.” She felt the same when meeting Captains Magenta and his girlfriend Vanessa who was a nurse.

When she came to Captain Scarlet she sensed that he was different somehow; but still her stifled sense of smell was letting her down, so she reached up on tiptoes, put a hand on his shoulder, leaned over, sniffed his neck a bit and then licked his lips, making him jump back in shock.

“What, what are you doing?” sputtered the man in red, wiping his lips with the back of his hand.

“Frightened of girl germs are you?” taunted Captain Ochre with a smirk.

Athena spoke up, ignoring Captain Ochre’s comment. “You smell and taste slightly differently to the others but I can’t analyse it; this is SO FRUSTRATING, I can’t help it I have to change; I can’t go on like this, it’s driving me nuts.”

“What are you talking about Athena and why have you been sniffing everyone you meet and why did you lick Captain Scarlet like that?” asked the doctor with trepidation.

“I have to get up close to sniff because my sense of smell is so bad, even my sense of taste isn’t very good either and both used to be superb. If I change to wolf-form I may get it back, even though people don’t like me doing it but it can’t be helped and it has absolutely nothing at all to do with full moons or evilness like you see in those stupid idiotic movies. I’m not a monster, I am a healer.”

The others in the room thought that the doctor had brought in an insane person to meet them and he was looking just as confused by her answer as they were.

She had started circling the room with her head up and seemingly all senses alert. “I know that we are in the air, but how far up are we and where is North America or even Eurasia?” she asked Dr Fawn.

“We are about forty thousand feet above North America at the moment.”

“Forty thousand feet! That might be too high!” she gasped, “but I have to try.”

She started with low vibrating howling sounds to test the air and they gradually became louder. The other people were eyeing off each other nervously and edging away from her, but the doctor felt no danger and stayed next to her.

“Oh... there is something blocking my soundwave,” she said in a startled voice. “Who are you and why are you on my family’s wavelength?” she asked the air above her. She turned around and innocently addressed Dr Fawn, “What are Mysterons? You made some reference to them before and the man in black mentioned them too.”

“They are Aliens that have a complex on Mars and they are quite hostile to us because of a terrible mistake that was made.”

“They have the same voices as that man in black I mentioned, why is that?”

“He is the man that made the terrible mistake and they took him over to use as an enemy agent against us. That is what he was doing with you, using you to carry out an attack of vengeance but it seems you could overcome their influence somehow that is still beyond me.”

She shook her head at him, “Well they will have to move off my wavelength.” She then addressed the Mysterons, “Please get off this soundwave, it belongs to my family and has done so for many generations. Don’t grumble at me, please move, I have to contact my fellow wolves on Earth and you are blocking me.” She listened for a while and gave a snort of frustration. “Will you please move; I have to get through to the wolves and this is the only way I can; you could use this wavelength later if you want but I must get through now!”

She turned back to the astonished doctor, “Stubborn, aren’t they Edwin? I will have to get firm with them and they will just have to move out of my way.” She gave her body a great shake, sending static electricity scattered all over the room – everyone felt it and then wondered if they might have to intervene with this woman and her bout of madness as they certainly didn’t believe anything she had said.

“Ahhh, that’s better,” she pronounced. “They are gone and I can now feel that I have reached the Earth.” She gave off louder howls and then even louder and all of sudden reciprocal howls were heard in the room to the utter astonishment of everyone and they all wondered what they had stumbled across with this very strange woman.

They were even more surprised when Athena quickly started peeling off her clothes and before Dr Fawn could come to his senses to stop her, in a great blurring of form there stood, instead of a woman, a great silvery-brown and grey she-wolf.

The wolf howled with great joy to cut off her call to the wolves and thank them; she then made a happy wuffling sound and then sprinted around and around the room several times, leapt over a table, rolled over and over, chased her own tail and seemingly gave off puppy yelps of joy.  She ran up to the startled doctor, put her paws on his shoulders sniffed his neck and licked his face; then took off in another sprint around the room. All people assembled there were too astonished to move at all, but Captain Scarlet took another backward step when she put her paws on his shoulders, sniffed his face and licked him. She got back on all four paws and lifted her head and analysed his scent with the Jacobson’s organ in her mouth.

A coughing, spitting Captain Scarlet exclaimed in disgust, “I just felt a long warm tongue in my mouth, errrgh!”

She changed back to human-form and looked at one very startled captain. “You ARE different, I knew it,” she declared. “My senses are back and fully functioning, I’m so pleased.”

“Athena!” called out Dr Fawn in shock, “You are naked!” He rushed over with her dress that he had just picked up off the floor.

“Oh, that can’t be helped, it comes with the territory,” she answered him in a tone that seemed to convey that there was nothing much that could be done about it.

He reached her and tried to hand her the dress and told her to put it back on anyway, but she would have nothing to do with it.

“I will change back to wolf-form and I can’t move around with that garment on me,” she declared as though stating the obvious. “Wolves don’t wear clothing as they have their own fur coats, the lucky things.”

“But you can’t go walking around this room full of people naked!” he stressed.

“You find something that I can wear and that a wolf can wear and I will put it on.” She now sounded amused. “Dear Edwin, you really do go on sometimes you funny old thing.” She gave his arm a playful shove and snickered.

“Why does she keep calling you Edwin?” Destiny Angel asked, clearly puzzled and staring, as were the others, at Athena.

“Long story, I’ll explain later,” he quickly told the Angel, then he turned back to Athena. “At least wrap a towel or something around you,” he told her all exasperated.

“Oh, give me that,” she took the dress and wrapped it around her middle section, “Happy now?” she gave him another not-so-gentle push to his shoulder and giggled at him like a schoolgirl, making him blush and not much made him blush anymore.

She changed back into wolf-form and took a couple of steps, making the wrapped around dress slip down and catch on her back foot. She growled and snapped at it, making it fall off; then she grabbed it and shook it vigorously like prey she was trying to kill and growled even louder.

“Here Athena, I’ll help you put it on properly,” offered the doctor whilst grabbing hold of one end of the dress.

This action caused her to be suddenly overcome with playfulness and she had a tug-of-war with the doctor for possession of the garment, pulling and growling like an overgrown puppy with front feet splayed out. Dr Fawn found himself with a very strong opponent and was almost pulled forward by her, but still held his ground. The other people found this all quite entertaining and wondered who would win. The doctor staggered back a few steps when Athena stopped pulling, but he hadn’t won at all, because she ran around him in a circle and wrapped his legs with the dress making him then fall over backwards. He was the one to let go in order to stop falling over all the way and he landed on his backside with his hands on the floor propping him up.

Athena gave off a puppy wuffling sound and ran up to him and licked his face all over, causing him to sputter and complain whilst trying to push her away at the same time; and no one tried to help him either, because they were all too busy laughing.

“Get off me, get off, you are being silly. Stop licking my mouth!” the doctor gasped feeling a warm tongue slide into his mouth and lick the inside of his left cheek. He wiped his face off with his hands while coughing and sputtering at the same time.

“Grrowuff,” answered Athena, who sat, waved her foot in his direction, cocked her head and gave him a goofy ‘dog’ look. She then did a puppy bow, wriggled her bottom and seemed to invite him to come and romp around the room with her, especially when she inched forward and nudged his arm with her nose a few times.

“Awww, I think she likes you and she wants you to play with her. Go on, give her a little wrestle, it will do you good,” Captain Magenta said, with a grin on his face, trying to urge the doctor on and causing more happy chuckles from the others.

“This is NOT a laughing matter,” declared Fawn as he untangled the dress from around his legs. He put on his sternest face and told the bouncing Athena, who gotten closer and snuffled in his hair in passing as she ran around him again. “Now put this thing on properly this time!”

He was a bit perturbed when she suddenly stopped near his feet and then quietly walked over to him and stared eye-to-eye with him and he then realised just how large wolves really were and how dangerous looking. He noticed the wild wolf eyes change to silver-grey flashing eyes and realised she had changed back to human-form.

“I am NOT wearing something that will get entangled in my feet,” she declared, “and you have just found out yourself how annoying that can be, haven’t you mmm?” She then seemed amused all over again and sat back up on her knees. “You do realise that you have just rubbed your dirty hands all over your face and you claiming to be a doctor too, tut tut tut.” Her body jiggles and now twinkling eyes showed that she was silently laughing at him.

“I wouldn’t have had to wipe my face off if you didn’t slobber all over me like that,” vexation showed over his whole aggravated countenance.

“Wolf saliva is cleaner than what is on that floor,” she declared, “and it has anti-bacterial properties too, would you like me to lick your face clean again?” She smirked at him.

“No, I wouldn’t! I would like you to put this dress on and stop putting on a naked display.”

She rolled her eyes and spoke to the room in general. “Has no one here ever seen a naked woman before? I am well-toned, but I’d hardly rate as some buxom sexy wench that would cause distractions. I bet if everyone here were naked too, I’d barely be noticed, if at all, as all you other women here have much curvier figures than me, that’s for sure.”

“You are wrong there,” spoke up Melody Angel. “You are very distracting to both males and females here and not just for your very neat-looking body either.”

“Oh, very well, I’ll put the wretched thing on,” she relented, but not before she had ripped off a lower portion on it, making what was left much shorter which she then shimmied into. She then grabbed the doctor’s wrists and pulled him back on his feet quite easily. “Happier now, Sweetums,” she chuckled; giving Dr Fawn’s left cheek a squeeze and making him blush again. She then changed back to wolf-form to test out the dress and found it didn’t bother her too much, so she put her paws on the doctor’s shoulders again and licked his neck, causing more protests from the man.

This caused much more gaiety in the room to the others assembled, how much they really loved to see the usually serious-minded Dr Fawn looking so discomfited.

Captain Grey then came into the room with sticking plasters on several of his fingers. “What do we have here?” he asked upon seeing a wolf in a short dress trot over his way, stop and casually stare at him.

The wolf walked closer and sniffed him, and then in a blurry movement there was a woman standing there looking back at him.

“Whoa! What the... who?” was the completely confused cry upon what he had just witnessed.

“Never seen a wolfwoman before, huh?” was Athena’s smiling response.

Captain Grey stood there opening and closing his mouth, goldfish style.

“Captain Grey, I presume, judging by the colour you are wearing,” she told him, “I’m Athena.”

“Yes, er, Athena Wilde,” Grey said as he managed to find his voice.

“Word gets about, I see.”

“I recognised you from the photo, although you should look a lot older, unless you are named after your grandmother or something like that.”

“My grandmother’s name was Abigail, not Athena,” she informed him. “She was a wolfwoman too. I never met my paternal grandmother but her name was Wendy. I was actually named after my grandmother’s grandmother who, in turn, had taught her everything she knew, as she did for me. I missed her so much when she died...”

“What photo?” asked Dr Fawn with curiosity of Captain Grey, as he walked over to Athena and placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder.

“The one the threatened State representative carries with him. I have the information here,” he told them all, handing a folder over to Captain Blue. “It is strange because it says that Athena Wilde died and was cryogenically frozen and it now seems I have been misinformed. Bye-the-way, the building housing such frozen people has been destroyed by a great bomb blast and was completely burnt out.”

“Ahh, now that explains it.” the doctor nodded. “The Mysterons must have found out Athena was in storage there, destroyed the building and copied her. That’s one little mystery solved, two actually, the fact she is a shapeshifter might explain why they lost control of her.”

“Are you telling me she is a Mysteron?” Grey was feeling a little unsettled.

“Sort of, she escaped their influence quite early on it seems; she remembered the lake when it was just a valley and was rather shocked to see it full of water.”

“That is an understatement,” Athena joined in. “I used to ride my brother’s horses there and swim in the caves.”

“Caves?” asked Captain Grey.

“There were a few swimming holes and they were connected by underground caves. My brother knew the right directions to swim in to get from one to the other. He left markers and we all knew the pneumonic chant to use to make sure we didn’t get lost.”

“Do you mean to tell me that you used to swim in underground caves?” the doctor asked her, looking a bit aghast at the idea. “They would be pitch black.”

“Yeah, of course, hence the markers and the pneumonic chant to guide us.”

“That sounds like a nightmare!”

“Only if one got lost in a side-cave. Ha, Edwin pretty much thought the same as you and after I persuaded him to go through one with me... well, he did have nightmares later on and I will admit that did fill me with shame for realising that I did scare him like that.” She sighed and hung her head at the memories that had brought back to her.

“Don’t worry, Athena, people often do have such nightmares anyway. I know I did when I was a kid and I grew out of it.”

“You had nightmares about swimming inside an underground cave?” she asked him in astonishment.

“Not a cave as such, just being trapped in a tight space and trying to escape. As I said, I grew out of it and I don’t suffer from claustrophobia.”

“That’s good, although I could have cured you of it.”

Dr Fawn smiled at her claim. “Sure, you could.”

“Yes, I could, I cured Edwin of his nightmares after all.”

“If you say so.”

“I love a sceptic,” she smirked at him and then turned back to Captain Grey. “What happened to your hand?”

“Someone accidentally slammed a car door on it.” He looked over to Captain Ochre.

“I didn’t know you had your hand there and I apologised.” Ochre said in his defence. “Hmph, anyone would think I did it on purpose the way you carried on. I even put the sticking plasters on it for you after sterilising the wounds with alcohol swabs, which seemed to make you jump around and yelp like a little kid.”

“Your bedside manner, so to speak, left a lot to be desired and you complained more than I did. The way you tried to slam that door in the first place makes me wonder why I didn’t end up with splintered bones as it most certainly felt like I did at first.”

“Ouch! Give me a look,” Athena told him, grabbing his hand at the same time. “Mmm, your fingers are quite bruised and cut by the looks of things. I bet it still hurts when you move them.”

“Yes, it hurts but it will heal quickly enough. It is nothing to make a fuss about.”

A comment that made Captain Ochre give off a snorting noise.

“I can heal it now if you want.” she told Captain Grey.

“How, with herbs or something?”

She smiled. “I was taught the healing power of herbs thanks to my wonderful grandmother but I have a much quicker way. Besides being able to change from human to wolf I am also a healer. The doctor doesn’t believe me though.”

“Actually, after seeing what I just saw you do before I certainly believe you.” Captain Grey assured her.

“Will you allow me to heal your hand and prove to Edwi... I mean Edward here that I’m telling the truth. He thinks I’m a little bonkers with my claims.”

“I didn’t say that at all,” Dr Fawn protested.

“No, but you were thinking it. I told you, I do know body language. I will prove to you that I don’t make idle boasts.” She then turned back to Grey and indicated his hand. “May I?”

“Sure, go ahead.” Grey told her, feeling fairly certain that it was all true.

She covered his hand with both of hers and concentrated. All the others had gathered around to watch and were rather astonished to see her hands glow. After five minutes her hands went back to normal and she let go. “See, the bruises are gone,” she stated.

“They certainly are and that feels so much better, thank you,” said a grateful Grey.

“Let me see.” The doctor took hold of Grey’s hand in turn and prodded it, then he removed the sticking plasters and saw there were no abrasions there at all. “That is extraordinary,” he told Athena admiringly. “Are there any other gifts that you have?”

“Well, thanks to my grandmother’s teachings I know I can give or take energy from people when healing, depending on my requirements. If I need extra energy I can have someone place his hand on my skin, usually at the base of my neck and I can heal things that I would normally run out of energy to do. I can also do what she called a ‘greater-wolf’ which is when I change with someone else and we both make up a wolf twice the normal size, that is if I change with an adult. I did that with Edwin quite a few times and Alison. Incidentally the person you are doing this with must be willing or else it won’t happen.”

“Wow! Can you do that now with me?” asked Melody, looking quite excited at the prospect.

“If you are willing to undress, then I will demonstrate if you want,” Athena told her with a smile.

“Er, ah, not today thanks, maybe another day when there are no men present,” she chuckled.

“Are there yet any other gifts that you could tell us about,” Dr Fawn intervened, in case one of the captains decided he wanted to test out the greater-wolf theory. It was something he didn’t like the thought of her doing at all with one of them.

“I don’t know,” she sighed. “I do know of ancestors who go back to the Middle Ages but so much gets lost and only a few wrote anything down of what they knew. We wolfwoman-healers tend to skip a generation and so information is not always passed on. My dear grandmother often bemoaned this fact.”

“So, I take it then that your daughter, Alison, wasn’t like you.”

“No, dear Alison was quite normal,” she sighed, “I hope she still lives and that she might have had children and that one of them might be a wolfwoman-healer too.”

“Your daughter still lives, Athena,” Captain Blue told her, still perusing the folder Captain Grey had given him. “She’s married and has a son called ‘Kit’ but it doesn’t say that there is anything unusual about him here.”

“Perhaps I am the last and perhaps it was always meant to be. As I said, it can skip one generation, sometimes two, but no more than that is known. Kit is the last hope but male wolves are really rare and I know of only two male ancestors who could change. It is just possible that he might one day father a wolfchild but I want to see my grandson and daughter in any case.” She turned two very bright eyes on to the captain. “What about Edwin, does he still live?”

“I’m so very sorry, he died in 2030 but he is the reason you were cryogenically frozen after you died from gunshot wounds...”

Shocked gasps were heard throughout the room.

“I had a feeling that Edwin was no more, although I also have a feeling that he was still here and I suppose that was all wishful thinking and I do know I will have to grieve for him properly,” a downcast Athena told them, then she went on to the other topic. “I can vaguely remember attacking a man in my wolf-form who was shooting at us and grabbing his throat in my mouth and not letting go... I vaguely remember the sounds of gunshots and something hitting me but I was so intent on stopping him that nothing else mattered. When I thought he was dead I let go and changed back to human-form, looked over to Edwin, who was shielding Alison behind his back, and smiled to see that they were safe then I heard another gunshot and I don’t remember anything after that at all.”

Dr Fawn took a deep breath as he imagined the scene and the dreadful aftermath, all of which gave him a cold shiver down the spine.

“It says here that your wolfdog stopped a crazed gunman in his tracks before he could kill anyone; he’d wounded a few, but your dog stopped him. Reports say that when the large dog was killing him its owner became involved and was shot too just before the killer died himself. The owner: I presume you, Athena, died later without regaining consciousness.” Captain Blue told her.

“All it took was for one idiot to destroy my happy family.” Athena bemoaned. “Oh, Edwin you must have been so bereft and dear Alison... I have to see her; I have to but how will she cope with seeing me again? Will she be angry at me for leaving them like that... but I had to protect them with everything I had, I just had to. What will she think of me?”

“Sssh, she will be pleased to see you again, I’m sure of it,” Dr Fawn gently told her as he reached out and gave her a little sideways shaking hug. “Look stay here and sort yourself out before you go to her and that way you will be able to work out what to say and how to say it, mmm?”

“You are very wise, Edwin,” she murmured, leaning against him and closing her eyes.

“I suppose we’d better get on to another topic now,” spoke up a reluctant Captain Blue, breaking up the silence that had descended. “Athena, do you remember a Roddy Chalton at all? He was the State Representative being threatened today and...”

Athena gave off a great start at the sound of his name. “Roddy Chalton? He’s not related to a William Chalton, is he?”

“Yes, I do believe he is his grandson.”

“I don’t believe it, is that horrible man going to haunt me forever?”

“What do you mean?”

“I knew that creep in the past and I loathed him.”

“He didn’t loathe you; he kept a photo of you with him at all times and even a letter he had once written to you and it seems his grandson took over this obsession when he died.”

“YUK!”

“You might not have liked him, but we now think he is the reason you are here at all. The Mysterons must have found out about his grandson’s obsession with your picture and found out too that you were cryogenically frozen and that they could get access to your body to copy it. They must not have known about your other gifts though and that was their undoing.”

“I do seem to have a way of getting others in trouble, so it seems.”

“The Mysterons threatened to kill Roddy Chalton over something he had said about them being quote: ‘The bloody stupidest Aliens he’d ever heard of and that they were all a loud noise and no bite and no self-respecting person could ever take them seriously’ unquote, which was a really dumb thing to say and it seemed to have riled them up good and proper. Incidentally his grandfather did write a very touching eulogy about you.”

“I bet Edwin was thrilled,” she wryly stated. “He didn’t like him either; come to think of it, I don’t think anyone did.”

“Well, his grandson was touched by it all and he has written that you must have been an ideal woman for his grandfather to have been so taken by you and that looking at your photo filled him with all sorts of nostalgic longing.”

“Blah! Yuk! Ick, ick, ick and double ick! Ergh!” was Athena’s response to that and she shuddered dramatically.

A reaction that made the others smile.

Two weeks later and Athena was still on Cloudbase and she was getting to know quite a few of the people there, when the voice of the Mysterons came over the loudspeakers threatening Dr Fawn for the work he had been doing on retrometabolism and telling him that he would not succeed in figuring out how it all worked.

Colonel White called the doctor and two of his captains, Blue and Scarlet to the conference room to discuss the latest threat. He was a bit perturbed when a large grey wolf padded silently in behind Dr Fawn; everyone on Cloudbase knew who she was by this time and she had demonstrated her abilities to both Colonel White and Lieutenant Green much to their startled astonishment and she had also made those two men gasp and sputter too when she put her paws on their shoulders and licked their faces.

“Dr Fawn, I can’t have your friend here when we discuss this, so she will have to go.”

“What, who?” The doctor looked around and saw Athena at his heels; she was so quiet that he hadn’t heard her following him. “Athena, you can’t stay here; you are not allowed in on confidential meetings like this one, so please leave.”

A shake of the head was the reply he received, and she then walked up to the table and lay down near it putting her head on her front legs.

“She can’t stay here and that is all there is to it,” the colonel firmly stated.

“C’mon, it will just be for a short time...” the doctor pleaded with the wolf.

The wolf lay flat out on her side and gave off a short whining sound.

“Captains pick her up and put her out the door,” the colonel sighed deeply, trying another way.

Athena quickly scooted under the chairs and table and ran around the Colonel’s feet, as she was being pursued by Captain Blue, who accidentally caused the protesting colonel’s chair to spin around a couple of times but all to no avail as the captains and the doctor found themselves completely outmanoeuvred.

“This is ridiculous,” Colonel White fumed and called for security.

Three security men turned up and the wolf’s demeanour changed completely, she sprang in front of Dr Fawn and made a really low menacing growl, eyeing off one of the men in particular. Stiff legged and bristling she stalked towards him.

“You don’t frighten me Earth-wolf,” he told her as he pulled out his gun.

Athena sprang at him and grabbed his arm, shaking it remorselessly. With a scream the man let go of the gun and tried to make a run for it, but no man can outrun a wolf and she brought him down in two bounds.

The man cried out: “You won’t win Earthmen; I’ll blow up this entire room and...”

He was cut off when the wolf snapped the back of his neck, severing his spinal cord, and then he lay still.

“He was a Mysteron!” gasped Captain Blue, stating the obvious; he turned to Athena and asked, “How did you know?”

She had changed to human-form (she now wore a silken grey dress that covered her middle section and that also acted as a dog coat when she was a wolf). “His smell of course, he had a similar scent to Captain Scarlet’s. I knew there was one around here somewhere and I knew who he was after, so all I had to do was wait and I was not going to leave Edwi... Edward unguarded for a minute.”

Dr Fawn had recovered from his shock at what had happened. “Thanks Athena, you do realise don’t you that you probably saved all of us in this room, he did say he was going to explode.”

“That is why I killed him of course; I really don’t like killing things, but he left me no choice when he threatened all of you like that with a bomb and I had to stop him from detonating it.”

“Athena, he was the bomb...” Captain Scarlet started to explain.

“I don’t understand.”

“Mysterons can detonate themselves and use the energy within their own bodies to explode with quite a bit of force and that would have killed everyone here.”

“Yikes! This just gets worse and worse ... wait, that is what Captain Black wanted me to do on that boat, isn’t it?”

“It seems like it.”

“Oh Great!” She turned with wide eyes to Dr Fawn and gasped, “I won’t do something like that now will I, I mean I won’t have a bad dream and unconsciously explode or anything?”

“No, I would think it would take a bit more than that and now that you are not controlled by Alien forces you would be quite safe to be around.” He patted her arm reassuringly.

“Phew, I was a bit worried there for a minute.”

“Well, you can leave the room now and not worry, just wait outside.”

“I am not leaving your side,” Athena told the doctor straight, “And I’m going to stay in wolf-form so that I can monitor any unusual activity around you, I’ll be your ‘guard-dog’ if you like day and night until this threat is over.”

“There is no need now.”

“Is the threat over?” she addressed Colonel White directly.

“I doubt it; they often try again, not always but usually.”

“There you go;” she told Fawn, “Consider yourself with a grey shadow that you won’t be able to shake when I next change to wolf-form.”

“Oh, all right then,” Colonel White capitulated, “I won’t send you out and it now seems that I wouldn’t be able to if I tried, and yes, thank you Athena for taking care of the Mysteron agent. You two,” he indicated the two remaining security guards, “Please take the Mysteron body out of here and give it a zap with the Mysteron gun just to make sure he doesn’t come back to life.”

“What do you mean about the Mysteron coming back to life?” Athena asked, looking quite perplexed at the thought.

“I’d better explain it to her,” volunteered Captain Scarlet. “I should have told her all about it before but I never got around to it.”

He then went on to explain that the Mysterons have the power of retrometabolism and that some copies had in the past been able to overcome being fatally injured unless they were shot with a Mysteron gun that zapped them with high voltage electricity. He added that it was thought that the high voltage electric shock had cut off the Mysteron influence and that had caused the Mysteron copy to cease functioning. He also told her that he had the ability to even recover from any injuries as well and she, in all probability, would too; something that completely astonished her.

“Oh and I was not very nice to the Mysterons at all, I’ll have to find a way to communicate on another wave-band and apologise for my words and actions and explain how desperate I felt at the time.” She appeared a bit guilt stricken.

“APOLOGISE!” everyone in the room gasped.

“Well I wouldn’t be here now, but for them and I wouldn’t have been able to do healing, have the really big opportunity of seeing my daughter again and a grandson I have only just found out about and now you tell me I will be able to recover quicker... Yes, I do have to be polite and explain myself and thank them for that opportunity.”

“I think you had better not,” Captain Scarlet explained, “They might think you are rubbing it in about them losing control of you and it might backfire horribly. They might punish you by harming someone you care for, like your daughter for instance – no, I really and truly think you should just leave it be for now.”

Athena, feeling a bit alarmed at what he had told her, agreed to let it go for the time being.

 Colonel White then cleared his throat, “Now that’s all cleared up, let’s to get down to business, Dr Fawn do you really have to go to that medical conference, is it really that important?”

“I’d rather not now, but there are specific people I have to meet and it is important.”

 “Right then, we’ll have a ring of agents around the centre and check out anyone who comes and goes, Captains Scarlet and Blue you will have to mingle with the crowd and watch out for suspicious activity near the doctor. It now seems we will have someone with us too who will be able to scent out Mysteron Agents,” he nodded to Athena, “And that should give Dr Fawn a measure of safety. I still have lots of reservations about this though; I don’t like it at all.”

One day later they all arrived at the conference centre and many of Dr Fawn’s fellow medical experts were surprised to see him with a large dog that followed him around.

“That looks like a wolf,” one commented pointing to Athena.

“Wolf-dog, they are very hard to tell apart at times,” Dr Fawn explained. He and Athena had discussed the possibility of someone recognising the differences between a wolf and a dog and had come up with that solution, because Athena said she was an acting guard-dog for that occasion.

“Are you sure? It looks very wolf-like to me.”

Athena tilted her head to one side, like a pet dog and gave off a ‘woof’ sound and whined. She then lifted her right paw and waved it at the man as if asking for a handshake.

“I take it back, no one could train a bloodthirsty savage wolf to bark or shake hands,” he laughed, whilst giving Athena a handshake and receiving a whiny lick on the face in return.

“Phew, that was close,” the doctor told Athena when the man left.

“Well hello, as I live and breathe it is Edward Wilkie,” a brassy female strode over to them and hugged and kissed him on the cheek, “Long time, no see and who is your great lolloping puppy dog?”

“Athena is her name and Athena this is Dr Susie and old friend of my university days,” he introduced her.

“So formal, Eddie, and all for some mangy old dog too,” she laughed and Athena gave off a small growl. “Well I hope it doesn’t shed hair and fleas all over the place, see you later if you are lucky.” She skipped off.

The doctor and the wolf circulated and he met with some of his important friends and discussed many topics that Athena found dull beyond belief.

“I do believe you are jealous,” Dr Fawn smirked at Athena in his room that evening, after she had complained to him about Dr Susie.

Athena was in his room because she had repeated that she wasn’t going to let him out of her sight and was going to guard him as he slept. He tried arguing that he did need privacy and she had told the blushing man that she doubted his body had anything she had never seen before and for him to get over it. She had also told him that she was sleeping in front of his door in case anyone tried to get in and that included that deranged over-stuffed sex toy, Dr Susie. That was when he accused her of jealousy.

“Believe me, if I were truly jealous I would have given her quite a sharp little nip on that broad backside of hers when she accused me of being mangy, having fleas and shedding hair all over the place. The nerve of her!”

He laughed, “I wouldn’t have minded seeing that actually but it would have meant you and me both getting thrown out of here. Now, what are you going to do if I do bring a lady friend over the night?” He smirked at her again.

“I’d rather you didn’t try to do that with her, it is not something I’d particularly want to witness but I warn you, you would have me watching you. I’d check her out and be doubly on guard, sex is often used to bait traps and it a very effective strategy of catching or distracting animals, especially of the male variety.”

“Now you are calling me an animal?”

“We are all animals Edwin, I mean Edward,” she corrected herself again, “and all animals have very similar desires, fears, loves and hates just like human beings; they might express them in different ways and often the very same ways but they are there all the same. Each species even have different personalities within them and you mentioned jealousy before and I can tell you, oh boy, it certainly exists outside of mankind all right.”

“All right, you have made your point and in this case it could be a plant we have to be on the lookout for, a Mysteron plant of a deadly variety.”

A knock sounded at the door and Captain Scarlet’s voice asked to be let in, Athena changed to wolf-form and sniffed under the slight space under the door and then indicated to the doctor that it was safe to open.

Captain Scarlet entered and informed them both that he was staying in that room too and sitting on the chair on watch most of the night.

The night passed safely; it was the next day that all the drama happened.

A breakfast tray was wheeled in and Athena immediately sniffed the waiter, who became a bit nervous of her.

He gave a little squawk, jumped and stammered. “I’m afraid of dogs, one once bit me.”

“I don’t blame you for being nervous but she won’t bite you, I can assure you of that,” Dr Fawn tried to calm the man down.

“I don’t want you to be proven wrong and she does look really savage to me.”

Athena had sat down when she could smell his fear and she looked away from him.

“That does not look like a savage animal to me,” commented Captain Scarlet with a slight smile. “She’s not even looking at you.”

“I’m sorry but I don’t trust dogs. Please leave the breakfast trolley outside the room when you are finished so that I don’t have to even look at her again. Please.”

“All right, all right, we will and we would have anyway,” the captain assured him.

The waiter scurried off.

Athena changed back to human-form, walked over to the door and locked it. She turned in time to see the men hurriedly spoon some of an omelette onto their plates.

“Are you both completely insane!” she hissed at them in disbelief.

“What?” asked Scarlet with a dumbfounded expression.

“I haven’t checked out this food yet but here you are all ready to scoff it down like a couple of greedy schoolboys in a Chocolate store.”

“I’m hungry,” was the doctor’s excuse. “I take it the waiter wasn’t a Mysteron agent unless the nervousness was all an act.

“No, he was afraid of me. I could smell fear come off him in waves as soon as he laid eyes on me.”

“So, what’s the problem?”

“He didn’t make up this breakfast, he only delivered it. Anyone could have tampered with it.”

She changed back to wolf-form and did a thorough sniffing of all the food, much to the consternation of the men seeing a wolf nose snuffling all over their plates.

She then changed back. “Just as I thought, you can’t eat this,” was her pronouncement on completion of the sniff test.

“What’s wrong then? Could you smell poison?” Dr Fawn asked her.

“There are mushrooms in the omelette, surely you saw them and that cereal smells a bit dodgy too. Throw it out.”

“You can tell they are bad mushrooms, can you?”

“You are under a death threat and you are going to risk eating mushrooms? Are you nuts? It is almost impossible to smell the difference between good and bad mushrooms once they are cooked. You are not eating it and that is that.” She fixed a gimlet eye on him.

“But...”

“No arguments, look I’ll fix this.” She reached onto the plates of food and ran her hands through the slices of omelette on them, making them into a real mess. Then she poured some milk, tea and cereal onto them and stirred that in with her fingers as well. “Now, no one is going to eat it.”

“You are right, I’m not eating that!” exclaimed a shocked Scarlet, then his stomach growled.

“We will go somewhere nearby and eat at a popular restaurant for breakfast, a place where there are so many people that it would be hard to arrange poisoning the right person, all right?”

“All right,” both grumpy men said at once and Athena smiled.

The two men and a ‘wolfdog’ walked into the town and found such a place that served breakfast and hurriedly scurried inside out of the cold wind that had sprang up.

“Sorry, but dogs are not allowed in here,” were the words that met their ears. The owner was looking quite adamant about it all too.

“She might be a guide dog,” was Captain Scarlet’s quick but lame suggestion.

“She doesn’t have a harness, not even a collar or chain, do you take me for a fool?”

“If we pay you extra could you pretend she is?” Dr Fawn offered; he had not liked the chilly wind that had blown on them.

“No, I’m sorry, but with health regulations as they are I could be shut down.”

“Very well, I suppose we would be allowed to eat outside,” sighed the doctor.

“Of course you can, now what can I get you?”

Both men found themselves outside in a place where the wind was less biting and prepared to tuck into their full breakfast consisting mainly of eggs, bacon, fried tomatoes, baked beans, and sausages, with buttered toast on the side. They made sure that to tell the man to leave mushrooms off the plate as they knew Athena would do something to stop them from eating the food if mushrooms were allowed.

“At least this looks better than an omelette any day,” spoke a happy captain, whose attitude changed when a wolf intervened and stole one of his sausages that he had on his fork and wolfed it down. “Hey, eat Dr Fawn’s food, not mine; he ordered extra for you!” the disgruntled man told her. His discontent was not lessened when her nose quickly snuffled all over his plate and stole an egg with her long tongue. “Bloody hell, get out of it!” he bellowed as he tried to elbow her away, then he threw his arms and upper body around his plate to protect the rest of his food.

Dr Fawn’s chuckle was quickly cut off when she did exactly the same to him after eating her allotted extra sausages, bacon and eggs and he protested just as vigorously to the sounds of laughter from the indoor diners who could see them from out of the large window and were appreciating a bit of comedy with their morning meals.

Their protests didn’t stop Athena from sniffing every morsel of food that they tried to lift to their mouths, as she was fully determined to protect them and to eat as well. She stole Dr Fawn’s last half-slice of toast, nudged the man into putting some hot water and milk on a saucer and was then satisfied she had eaten enough. She then licked the men’s cheeks to show her appreciation and to show them that all was well for the moment, a gesture they didn’t fully appreciate in turn.

They had another run in with Dr Susie, who was wearing a very tight bikini, when they were spotted by her as they passed by the enclosed swimming pool. She shouted out to Dr Fawn, then she ran up to him and locked lips with the startled man, nearly knocking him over. As she had him in a tight grip, she almost fell over too and she accidentally kicked Athena, in wolf-form, into the swimming pool.

Athena surfaced, sputtering and sneezing and then had to find her bearings to get out, as it is quite hard for a canine to scramble out of a pool, so she looked around and located the steps. She quickly clambered out and, while still sopping wet, she ran towards the offending woman with her nose out and full of determination to bite her backside really hard.

Dr Fawn could easily tell what she was intending to do, so called out to her with a shrill whistle and then bellowed out her name in a desperate bid to stop her. He was relieved to see her pull up short but was not so relieved to see the wolf’s glare that was directed at him as she trotted over to them.

A great shaking by a large wet wolf had Dr Susie screaming out in dismay and Dr Fawn found himself having to make an effort to appease her by pointing out that she had knocked the ‘dog’ into the water in the first place.

Dr Susie, suspecting that Eddie was rather fond of that useless animal, as she called it in her own mind, thought she’d try to pretend it didn’t worry her too much. She grabbed Athena’s face with her hands and told her, “I’m sorry little soggy doggy, I didn’t mean to get you all wet like that and I’m sure all three of us can still be friends. How about it, poochy woochy?” She then made little kissing noises.

Athena, still peeved off about being kicked into the water and then being whistled at like a recalcitrant sheepdog thought of a good way of getting back at this most annoying woman. She made a puppy wuffling sound, wriggled her bottom and then launched herself forward and slobbered all over Dr Susie’s face, making sure she got her tongue into her mouth to lick inside her cheek.

Dr Susie immediately reacted by jumping up, sputtering and complaining about the tongue, a comment which caused Captain Scarlet to turn his head away and smirk.

“Dogs do that all the time, they lick the insides of each others’ cheeks to pick up scent, it is quite normal for them.” The doctor tried to placate the angry woman.

“You know this for a fact then?” she furiously cried, still wiping her face and spitting and sputtering in front of them in a most unladylike fashion.

“Yes, she told me all about it.”

“Your dog told you, huh?”

“Er, my dog trainer, she told me. It is all a part of nature and a dog’s nose is its main sense.”

“It wasn’t a dog’s nose that licked the inside of my mouth!”

“Would you have preferred that?” he joked with a slight smile.

“Do you think this is funny?” she screamed at him. “Well, how about this for funny; I demand that you keep that wretched animal on a collar and lead from now on or I will complain to the organisers and get both of you thrown out of here – how about that?” She stalked off in a complete huff.

“Now you have done it, Athena,” the doctor told her. “I will have to buy you a collar and lead, and I bet I’m pretty safe in betting that you won’t like that at all.”

A low rumbling growl from deep inside the wolf’s chest gave him his answer.

“You didn’t make things much better yourself, Doctor,” Captain Scarlet told him. “It is not a smart move to make jokes at an angry woman’s expense.”

“Why didn’t you intervene then?” the doctor asked him.

“I wasn’t going to come between you and an enraged woman, who knows, she might have scratched my pretty face,” he smirked, patting one of his cheeks as a joke, and added, “You are damned lucky she didn’t try to do that to yours.”

Athena gave off a really loud menacing snarling growl at those words, making both men jump.

All three then went off and found a nearby pet store.

“It seems I now need a collar and a lead for my dog,” Dr Fawn told the store owner.

“Wow! That is some dog, it looks more like a wolf to me.”

“Wolfdog, they can be hard to tell apart.”

“If you say so. The collars and leads are over there,” he pointed out.

They went over to the collars and Athena noticed a huge leather one with sizeable, spiked studs on it that seemed very expensive. She put her paw on it and whined.

“Do you see how much this damn thing costs?” choked the doctor upon seeing the price tag.

The wolf sneezed and seemed to smile.

“Look there is another one that...” he didn’t finish because Athena grabbed his wrist, growled lowly and pulled it away from the offending second choice collar.

“You are going to be difficult, aren’t you?”

The wolf nodded.

“This is payback for me calling you off when you were going to bite Dr Susie, isn’t it?”

The wolf nudged him and licked his cheek.

“Great,” Dr Fawn grumpily responded. “I suppose you will want the most expensive dog lead too?”

The wolf shook her head and pawed a light leather lead that she would be able to bite through.

“Really? Are you sure you wouldn’t prefer one of these chain leads? They would go better that collar.”

Again the wolf grabbed his wrist and pulled him away. She indicated the light lead again.

“Okay,” the doctor sighed. “Very well, you win.”

“I’ve got to say, those two have quite a rapport going on between them, don’t they?” the store owner told Captain Scarlet.

Captain Scarlet grinned. “Yep, they are quite the cute couple all right.”

They both laughed and Dr Fawn looked really miffed at them. Athena cocked her head, made the ‘grrowuff’ sound and waved her paw at them all. She then nuzzled the doctor’s neck and made him complain again by telling her that her nose was cold.

It was later that morning when they were back in the doctor’s rooms and Captain Blue had joined them to discuss what had been found out so far, that Dr Susie barged in, without knocking.

She said in her most seductive voice, “Eddie dear, I’ve come to apologise for my...” She stopped short and stared aghast at seeing Athena, now in human-form, wearing the wolf dress with a dog collar and lead still on her neck, who was staring back at her with narrowed eyes. “What the hell?” she exploded in shock, “Who is this ... this tart?” She pointed at Athena with horror written all over her face.

Captain Blue quickly came to the rescue, “She is not a tart, she is a model that works for a dog magazine and they admired the outfit the doctor had for his dog, so they thought they’d do a special spread featuring a beautiful woman wearing the same accessories. Their readers like that sort of thing.”

“Oh pull the other one, where are the cameras? There is nothing beautiful about that female for hire and I never thought that you, Eddie, of all people would participate in some sick little fantasy like this. Fancy paying some harlot to dress up like a dog so that you... three... aha... three men could have sex with her.” Her voice was full of loathing, “YOU DISGUST ME!” She then walked over to him and was about to slap him hard but found her hand stopped in mid-motion by a very strong woman.

“Ah, ah, we can’t have him damaged now, can we?” Athena told her, as a bout of wickedness overcame her, “You can join in if you want, as you have a passable body but I’ll have him and you can have the other two.”

Dr Susie gave off a great scream of revulsion and fled the room.

“Well that got rid of her quick smart, as I hoped it would.” Athena grimaced and moved her hands together in a slapping wiping motion.

“Thanks very much,” an irate doctor told her. “Now everyone will think I’m the world’s biggest pervert who participates in dog orgies!”

“Serves you right for not locking the door, now isn’t it.” She was unrepentant as she walked over and clicked the lock in place. “I bet you won’t be making that little mistake again.”

A snorting glare was his answer to her, as the two captains tried not so successfully to suppress chuckles.

“Now, where were we, before we were so rudely interrupted by the good doctor’s walking sex toy?”

“That is NOT funny,” Dr Fawn said between gritted teeth.

“Well I don’t like being called a tart or a harlot by someone that looks like one herself, and she was absolutely dripping in mating pheromones.” Athena defensively told him.

“Don’t talk such nonsense, she was simply here to apologise...”

Athena made a rude sound back to him. “Do you really seriously believe that? She has been after you since she first laid eyes on you and I think you damn well know it too.” She turned to the smirking captains. “I’m sorry I tried to foist her onto you two, but it was safe enough to do as it was the doctor she was really after.”

“Maybe we all should have left them alone,” was Captain Blue’s smiling idea.

“Over my dead body after calling me the names she did!” Athena growled in voice very similar to a wolf’s growl.

“Now, now, we don’t want a domestic argument do we?” Captain Scarlet told them, while still trying not to laugh outright.

“That’s all right, I’ll forgive him,” she now smirked, “Being magnanimous and all.”

The doctor didn’t look so forgiving in return.

“All right, as I was saying, I could detect the scent of Mysteron about the place, but I can’t pinpoint where he might be as the scent doesn’t stay in one place and he might be sizing up the place looking for his best opportunity.”

“It might be Captain Black looking for victims,” suggested Blue.

“No, he’s not your man; I know his scent, even though my smelling capabilities were less then, but I could still smell him in the close confines of the car when he was driving me to the lake and his scent was not quite the same as that of a real Mysteron in any case. The man we are looking for is different to him.”

“Are you sure it is a man?”

“Yes, I do know the difference between males and females of many species including human beings. I tell you what, if I detect the scent getting any nearer to Edward, I’ll give a half-hearted howl, such as a dog would give.”

They agreed and went back to the conference, Dr Fawn walking his wolfdog on a lead and getting a lot of differing reactions from the other people there; stony glares, snickerings and thumbs up signs were the main ones, plus one crude suggestion of using pet costumes of differing types in his orgies. The doctor pretended he didn’t hear and dearly wished that this seminar was over, whilst inwardly cursing all the women and canines on Earth.

Athena suddenly pulled him up short from his angry musings as she could detect the scent of the Mysteron. She sniffed the air, moved her ears about to detect sound and gave off a short howl to alert the others of danger. She could tell the scent was getting closer, but still couldn’t tell where until a slight sound gave the game away – it was coming from the ceiling crawl space, someone was moving around above them and stealthily moving into position. With an icy chill of fear for Dr Fawn in her spine, she practically dragged him away to the safety of another room but sounds above her told her that they were being tracked. She pulled Dr Fawn over to Captain Scarlet and tried to convey where the Mysteron was, but he didn’t understand what she meant and she had no choice but to change back to human-form and tell him.

A shriek told her that Dr Susie had spotted her and she was calling all her colleagues out to look and convince them that Dr Fawn did indeed have a woman with him dressed as a dog, so Athena quickly changed back and the rush of people saw only Dr Fawn’s large dog wearing a dog-coat and started to think that Dr Susie was losing her mind and making up scurrilous stories for attention.

In the ensuing chaos though Athena lost track of the Mysteron, although she could still smell him nearby; then she saw someone who hadn’t been there before and she thought she had her man. With a quick bite of the lead that quickly snapped it in half she tore down the room right at him, before realising she had made a mistake and it wasn’t the right scent. She spun around in a tight skidding circle to see another man, with his back to her, raising and aiming a gun in the doctor’s direction. She gave voice to a great bellowing howl to alert everyone to the danger and then she ran towards him moving as fast as she could like a great grey blurring streak, legs pounding on the floor at breakneck speed. It worked; Captain Scarlet had thrown Dr Fawn to the floor and was shielding him. The Mysteron spun around and fired several shots at her and she felt one hit her neck, but it didn’t slow her down at all and she leapt right up and barrelled straight into his chest and both of them went sprawling across the floor.

The gunman staggered to his feet and was getting ready to shoot again at the terrifyingly angry wolf that was back on her feet too but she had already circled him and was biting the back of his right leg in an attempt to hamstring him when a crossfire of bullets stopped him dead, causing him to fall backwards over the wolf. Captain Blue had heard the howl and had helped Captain Scarlet by getting there in time to prevent more carnage. Screaming people vacated the building, leaving only Spectrum Officers and Athena. Dr Fawn quickly scrambled to his feet and saw where Athena was.

Athena had pulled herself out from under the dead Mysteron and walked a short distance away.

Dr Fawn ran up to her and quickly moved his hands all over her wolf pelt, mainly concentrating on her neck, looking for wounds or blood as he was sure at least one bullet must have struck her but she was too tired from running and attacking the Mysteron agent to change back quickly and tell him where it might have been, so she stood there panting to get her breath.

When she finally was able to change back, she sat down on a nearby chair and quickly tore the collar off herself and exclaimed, “I HATE THINGS AROUND MY NECK AND I NEVER EVER WANT TO FEEL ANOTHER CHOKING THING LIKE THIS AGAIN! And where is that damned woman, I want to take a great chunk out of her for making me wear this in the first place!” She was very angry. “This bloody threat had better be over or I am going to search out and find a way to contact those bloody Mysterons and give them a bloody damned good piece of my mind ... scaring the HELL out of me like that!”

“Simmer down,” Captain Blue told her, “The threat would be over and they will be happy that they disrupted this conference and have probably put it off happening again for another year or so.”

“Well, so long as they are HAPPY, that is the main thing isn’t it... Grrrr! How can you bear fighting such raving lunatics?”

“We are specially trained for this sort of thing but we still wouldn’t have gotten him in time if you hadn’t spotted him – so be proud of yourself.”

“I am most certainly not, I made a mistake that could have been fatal; that is the reason I am so angry,” she started shaking. “Edwin might have been killed because of me,” she managed to squeak out.

“I’m all right, Athena, please don’t be so distraught,” the doctor gave her shoulders a little shake, “I’m the one that had the biggest fright when I saw him firing that gun at you,” he tried a bit of humour, “I’ll probably need to put on new underwear.”

She gave him a little smile and started to calm down.

“Do you want another good piece of news?”

“I wouldn’t mind.”

“That giant dog collar you made me spend a fortune on saved you from a bullet, it struck one of those metal spikes and ricocheted off. You might have to thank Dr Susie for that instead of biting her.”

“Not flipping likely, all her shrieking is what made me lose track of the target in the first place ... although you can give her the collar as a thankyou gift if you like.”

He grimaced, “I’m not THAT brave, or STUPID either I hope.” A comment that caused quite a bit of merriment around him.

Athena received a visit from her daughter and grandson one week later. She walked into a room and saw someone who seemed vaguely familiar and certainly her scent was known. “Alison,” she called out to a woman in her late fifties, “I would know your scent anywhere and how I missed you.” She walked quickly towards the woman with her arms out.

“Mom!” Alison answered, “I never dreamed I’d ever see you again, you even look younger than I really remember you being.”

With tears in their eyes the two women embraced, looked at each other and embraced again.

“Please meet your grandson, Kit; his father couldn’t be here today because of work commitments and also time being scarce just lately is what took us so long to get here at all.”

“The fact that you exist in this world at all is what really matters to me, time is immaterial. I should have been the one to look you up earlier but I confess that I was a little afraid of seeing you.”

“Why?” Alison was all astonishment at that confession.

“I was worried that you would be angry at me for dying and leaving you and your father all alone, then turning up again long after he had died...”

“Oh Mom.” She gave her mother another big hug. “I missed you so much and was never angry at you. I was very angry at the man who killed you though; incandescently angry to tell the truth for messing up our happy family. Enough of that, now come and say hello to Kit.”

Alison took her mother over to her son and introduced them.

Athena walked up to Kit, took his hand and smiled, “I can tell that you can change and I can also tell you that male wolves are really rare in our family, almost non-existent – there have only been two that I know of over the last five hundred years...”

“Well, I can tell you that I’d rather not be one at all and that I never change shape, that part of my life is non-existent,” was the sullenish answer.

“Oh, my dear, don’t be like that. Have you never gone for a run and covered the miles and miles of expanse; have you never loped along a beach through the surf, played in the waves and chased noisy seagulls; have you never run with a loved one alongside you on a horse or vehicle and raced across the hills and valleys; never touched noses with the wild wolves and sang with them; never picked up the scents and smells that the human-form cannot fathom and so much more. It really breaks my heart if you have missed out on all that.”

“I don’t understand or need any of that, my life is pretty much complete without it; I have my work that I enjoy and I have fulfilment.”

“Well, I’m glad that you do, but I’m really sorry I didn’t live long enough to teach you the basics of our unique life. Do you know about healing at all?”

“Mom has mentioned such a thing to me that I don’t really understand at all but I am in the medical profession and I do heal people; I’m also considered pretty good at it too.”

“I’m not surprised as it would be an intrinsic part of your nature, whether you realise it or not.”

He gave her a small smile and stated, “Actually ... I mainly came here to meet Dr Edward Wilkie as he is quite famous in medical circles, have you met him?”

“Yes, I most certainly have, they call him Dr Fawn here as they seem to have a thing for colour-code names.” She turned to her daughter, “Alison, I’ll be curious to know if he reminds you of anyone.”

She gave a chuckle. “I’ve seen his picture and he reminds me of Dad to look at.”

“Edwin ... I shouldn’t have mentioned this topic ... I’m trying so hard not to think about him, as if I start crying ...”

“I understand, I really do understand.” She diplomatically changed the topic.

They spent the next few days catching up on events and changes in the world. Kit got to meet Dr Fawn and those two spent a lot of time together discussing all sorts of medical procedures and problems.

But Athena knew she would have to leave soon to be in the open spaces and do her wolf’s lament over her husband’s loss as it was getting harder and harder to put it off.

The next day Athena changed form and started to howl over and over, heart-rendering howls full of despair. Her howls got louder and louder, they travelled along her wavelength through the atmosphere and down to earth. Howls from the wolves, dogs and related canines answered her; all the bandwidths of the Earth then resounded with her lament over her lost love. The sounds affected her grandson, who was in sickbay with Dr Fawn, and he found himself wanting to change to wolf-form and join in. He started removing his clothes, but before he changed he told the doctor that he just had to join the lament with his grandmother, as it had become an irresistible force within him and he couldn’t let his grandmother go through such grief alone. The doctor told him that he was going over there with him and that he’d help him get through any security on the way, so the doctor, carrying Kit’s clothing, and the large black wolf ran to the lounge area where the sounds were the loudest.

Kit ran over to Athena, nudged her and started howling alongside, making the howling twice as loud. People vacated the room to get away from the din, although they were still affected by the grief-stricken lament. Colonel White and several of his captains came running into the room and called out to and beckoned to Alison and she went to them, with Dr Fawn, out of the room and shut the door.

Alison explained, “I cannot stop her, once a lament like this starts it cannot be stopped; she will call until she collapses of exhaustion. I did warn you that this might happen and I know Mom didn’t want it to happen here, but there is no helping it now and you will have to ride it out. She tried so hard to put it off, but she did love my father so very much...”

“If she keeps this up it might harm her,” Dr Fawn warned, “I could try giving her a sedative.”

“Don’t! Whatever you do DON’T interfere, you might just kill her; she did tell me about the retrometabolism; but this might just override it if you interfere and kill her permanently if you do that.”

“What?” he gasped, wondering if she knew what she was really talking about.

“After the lament, so it is said, the lamenting soul sometimes goes into the after-world and searches for the lost loved one. If Mom’s soul finds Dad she will probably want to stay and no power on Earth, or Mars, can change that; the only way to get her back is for her loved ones left behind to try to persuade her to return. We have to remind her that her grandson will need her knowledge and that we both love her and don’t want to lose her for a second time and we really will have to plead hard too.”

“For how long will we have to put up with this infernal noise then?” asked an irate colonel.

“The wild wolves’ and dogs’ lament for my mother when she died lasted quarter of an hour, but since Mom is here now leading this one, it will probably last a lot longer. Please don’t try to harm her, this is the only outlet she has for her loss and sorrow and the only way she can get over it if we do manage to call her back.”

Lieutenant Green came over to the group and handed the colonel a report.

“I’m getting reports from all over the world and through satellites that this lament of your mother’s is all over the Earth and right across the solar system.”

“I’m not surprised, this is much, much stronger than what I heard all those years ago; poor Mom, she is really hurting and, as I said, she really didn’t want it to happen here.”

“So, what set her off then?”

“I’m afraid I did. I was talking to her about Dad and even showed her some photos of him; I was hoping to cheer her up, but it backfired badly. I really shouldn’t have mentioned how very grief-stricken he was when he lost her and that was why he had her cryogenically frozen. She had asked why that had happened in the first place and I couldn’t lie to her...”

“When did he die?” Dr Fawn asked with curiosity.

“In 2030,” she answered.

“Hmph, the year before I was born,” he mused.

Alison looked at him in astonishment. “I wonder if... no... no, it’s too farfetched ... no.” She shook her head. “You do remind me of Dad though, your eyes and lots of your mannerisms. No wonder Mom kept calling you Edwin without realising it.” She gave him a searching look and asked, “Could you stay and try to help us call her back? She might respond to you better than she would for us in a way and I think having you around is what helped her put this lament on hold for so long; she does like you a lot, a real lot, even though that thought has been bothering her too, like she was becoming fickle.”

“I doubt that there is anything fickle about your mother,” the doctor responded earnestly.

“I told her that and mentioned that it was more a reminder of what she had lost and I’m afraid that is when she started crying and couldn’t stop. She changed then and the howling lament began,” Alison sighed.

The whole world and solar system heard the lament for the next half an hour, it becoming gradually less as different canines dropped out, until finally it stopped to a stillness that seemed deafening in its silence. Athena nudged her grandson, Kit, in recognition for his support and then she collapsed and changed back into human-form.

Her soul fled her body and into the ethereal world of spirits. She called Edwin’s name over and over and couldn’t find him.

“Athena,” a call back reached her, “Athena, I’ve been waiting for you since I first heard your lament.”

Athena could sense her grandmother. “Grandmama, how I missed you all these years,” she responded.

“I know my dear one, but you did do well on your own. You do have to go back and teach your grandson though – you do realise that, don’t you?”

“Maybe, but I can’t find Edwin, has he forgotten me? I wouldn’t have thought that at all possible.”

“Oh Athena, why do you not trust your instincts; he is not here, because his soul went back to the world of men to wait for you, however long it took to find you. He is waiting and calling for you now, he’s been there in front of you almost the whole time you have been revived – you even call him by his previous name without at times realising you have done so.”

“Are you talking about Edward? He isn’t Edwin, he didn’t really know me.”

“He does know you subconsciously and is drawn to you. A soul that returns will return with a clean slate and very few know of their past lives. Despite all that he sensed your return, insisted on going out with his colleagues to find you and he now loves you as much as he did in his past life.”

“Is that really true? I wasn’t fickle then when I felt a strong attraction to him, could see Edwin in his eyes and felt a deep connection to him.”

“It is true dear Athena; he is your lost love and you need feel that terrible loss no more. He is calling you now and you must go back to him after all, you were quite ready to die for or with him.”

“Yes, I knew that I had to defend him without really knowing the true reason. I know I actually died in the past, but I don’t remember being here before,” she told her grandmother.

“Your soul stayed with your body because you weren’t fully dead when you were cryogenically frozen, until those Mysterons unwittingly released you into a better bodily version of yourself. That was when your now Edward woke up from sleep and just knew he had to search for you; although he didn’t fully realise it properly at the time, he just had an overwhelming desire to go on a mission.”

“Then I will return to him and my family.”

“Of course you will, dear child of my heart, and remember I will always watch over and love you.”

“Goodbye, and I will always love you Grandmama, and I will think of you and miss you too.”

She felt herself drifting back to the world of the living and she could hear her three favourite people calling her back.

“Come on, Athena, come back to me,” the doctor called, whilst holding her unconscious body slightly above the ground. “Come on, my love, you can do it, you can return; we need you here in this life.”

Her daughter and grandson were making similar pleadings to her, when she gave a great gasp of breath and opened her eyes. Edwin’s eyes looked right back at her and she wondered briefly how she could not have really known the patently obvious before.

“Edwin, Alison and Kit, I heard you all calling me. I met my grandmother and she told me you were all here waiting for me and so I couldn’t resist returning.” She smiled into Dr Fawn’s face. “You were my Edwin in my former life and you are my Edward in this life.” She hugged him tight and he reciprocated, leaning his head against hers and closing his eyes.

“What do you mean?” he whispered in her ear.

“When I met up with my grandmother in the afterlife and she told me you were Edwin in my former life and when you died you chose to return; even though you’d have no memory of the past but you declared you’d find me if I were ever revived. She said you woke up from sleep the moment I was remade and that you had an overwhelming desire to find me.”

“The other captains probably told you that I insisted on going with them the day you were found.”

“No, they never mentioned that.” She leaned back and stared at him. “So, my grandmother was right, hmph, of course she was and I bet she found a way to prompt you – that is something she would do too and not tell me about it. I loved that woman so much.”

“And I love this woman,” Dr Fawn declared to her, putting a hand on her face.

“And I never stopped loving you, my Edwin/Edward, and I see now that I actually was very jealous of you, even if I didn’t want to admit it,” she smilingly said.

“When I accused you of jealousy it was only a joke, I’m certainly not used to having two women fighting over me of all people!” He gave a little chuckle at the thought.

“You are worth fighting for, my Edwin, you always have been and I’d fight to the death to protect you and my family in any timeline.”

“You’ve done it again,” called out a returning Angel pilot, “His name is Edward, not Edwin.”

“He was Edwin in a former life and his name may have changed in this life but to me he is still the same Edwin,” she answered whilst placing a hand on the doctor’s face in turn.

“You can call me any name your heart desires if it will keep you in this world with me,” he responded with feeling.

“I’m not leaving you again as Edwin or Edward,” she promised as she sat up some more and embraced him and then felt her daughter and grandson embrace her from both sides.

---

Cwissy:

2023

Athena came to me late last century when Dan and I used to walk a neighbour’s dog in the paddocks nearby (an energetic Smithfield-cross). He’d have such fun chasing after the plovers (Masked Lapwings that have spurs in their wings) and getting swooped by them in turn that I’d think how wonderful it would be to change to a dog and join in with the fun. Of course I had heard about werewolves and thought them rather silly things, but if one could change to a wolf and keep one’s mind – how lovely that would be. The thought of Athena having healing hands came to me too, as if she could change form then why shouldn’t she be able to heal as well.

I enjoyed writing this and the short follow up stories I later did as well with all the trouble she was capable of getting into. I romantically attached her to Dr Fawn because she could heal and I had to pick on one of the characters after all – ha ha ha.

I do love cats and dogs and always have and since wolves are the wild ancestors of dogs I chose them. The traits people love about dogs like loyalty, courage, herding instincts, endurance and empathy (to name a few) the dogs inherited them directly from wolves and it makes me sad when they are maligned – the same as for cats.

My 97-year-old mother loves the Athena stories and urges me to do something with them, as did my husband and one of my nephews, who had always enjoyed reading all my stories in the past and now. I hope others like them too as they have given me so much pleasure to write and, after all, that is the only reason I have written anything at all.

I want to thank Chris and all the contributors to this website and thank them greatly for all the pleasure they in turn have given me over the years.

And now for some very kind comments from my husband:

Dr Fawn, having convinced the Colonel that his services would be needed on a current mission being carried out to protect a politician, soon finds himself, along with Captain’s Scarlet and Blue, meeting-up with a beautiful but very strange woman who is about to lead them through a labyrinth of tangled passages of both physical and mental challenges where time itself seems to be unravelling.

It’s revealed that this woman, Athena Wilde, died in 2024, forty-six years before the commencement of this story and was cryogenically frozen and then later Mysteronised. However, she still looks and acts like a normal person even though the results of pictures taken with the Mysteron Detector were all inconclusive. She also seems to think that Dr Fawn is her husband Edwin. Oh, did I forget to tell you that she also has the ability to change into a wolf... well, she does.

Cwissy combines the right amount of wit, action and humour to grab the reader’s attention from the first sentence and sustains it to the final full stop. Another great read.

Dan.