The Prowler dropped out of Slipspace and easily blended into the void. It flew closer to the Covenant-held planet, moving slow as to remain undetected.

"This operation has a seventeen-hour window," Ash said.

"And if I'm not at the rendezvous point, I'll be labeled MIA and left for dead," Ted said. "Bet you've been waiting for me to get out of your hair."

"Last chance to back out of this."

"Wouldn't trade it for the world," Ted grinned.

"The choice is yours," Ash said in his flat voice. "We're uploading Delta to your armor, he should help keep your head above water. Get in the tube, Spartan."

"Feet first into Hell," Ted chuckled. He sat in the tube and his suit was automatically bolted in place. A status bar on his HUD slowly filled, and the Dumb AI winked into existence.

"Hello, Theodore." Shaped after a composite image of a man, Delta stood at attention. "How are you feeling?"

"Fine, dumbass."

"This AI goes by the name 'Delta,'"

"Dumbass. For a dumb AI."

"Your hostility is noted. We are nearing drop time."

"Spare me the dramatic countdown and give me a five second warning."

"Understood. Are you aware of the opposition facing you?"

"Something, something, refueling base, scorch the earth."

"It is simplistic, but is the gist of the operation. Are you convinced that you will be able to complete it in the allotted time?"

"You're acting like I'll die after seventeen hours," Ted sighed.

"I will mark that as a yes. And you are familiar with my role in this operation?"

"You're spying on me," Ted said. "How hard could it be to forget that?"

"Five seconds to drop."

"Good! It was getting boring up here."

The pod was shot out of the tube and streaked for the planet. Ted whooped and yelled all the while.

"Prepare for deceleration," Delta said. The boosters kicked in, and Ted thumbed the detonation switch. The door exploded outwards and he jumped into the air, landing two meters from the ground in the middle of an alien forest.

"Deviation from standard operating procedures will most likely result in serious user injuries."

"Oh my God, I'm in hell with this thing," Ted groaned. "Shut up in there, will you?"

"Understood."

Ted pulled up a map in his suit and marked the best path to the nearest outpost.

"Covvies gonna die, covvies gonna die," he chanted under his breath as he ran. A few miles later, he found his first outpost. A few Grunts milled around, and an Elite was ordering them around. There was no one else.

"The itsy-bitsy Spartan snuck up upon the Grunts," he sang. "'Punt' went the Grunts and flew about ten feet. Out came the Elite, oh, just to die for honor, and the itsy-bitsy Spartan snuck out to kill again."

He couldn't help but giggle. This was fun, just so much fun. After being cramped and prodded and pushed into containers and ships and rooms and corridors, he was finally out in the free, doing something. Ted giggled and pounded the ground, running in place, his entire body tingling with energy. He couldn't help it, he was just so full of energy he had to do something.

He checked his map. There was another outpost not just a click away. He sprinted all the way there, finally taking the time to draw his assault rifle. There was a larger group of Covenant there, like they were changing guards. Ted burst from the forest, rifle clattering on full auto, a screaming laugh on his lips.

Three grunts died immediately, and one Elite's shields sparked off. The rifle clicked on empty and Ted threw it at the Elite. The Elite threw its hands up on reflex and Ted sank his knife deep into its guts. Blue ichor spilled out, coating his gauntlets, and he grabbed the plasma repeater from its free hand.

Keeping a hand on his knife, Ted spun the Elite around, using it as a shield. He unloaded the plasma repeater on the rest of the grunts. Their armor headed up, melting their skin and igniting their methane rebreathes. The alien piece of shit started overheating, so he vented the gun and stuck it in the still alive Elite's face. It screamed as the skin and bones melted and burned. Ted's blood sang and he laughed. Only one more Elite to go. He caught it on his motion tracker.

"WATCH OUT!"

Ted flinched, reflexively jumped, and something hot and heavy hit him in the shoulder. His shields overloaded, and he rolled away. The second Elite roared and charged him, drawing an honor blade. Ted flipped it over his shoulder and wrenched its arm out of its socket. With a grunt of effort, he tore the limb free.

"That! Fucking! Hurt!" He screamed, hitting the Elite with its own arm. The alien garbled, and Ted bent down to hurt it more. "That! Really! Fucking! Hurt!" His fists slowly cracked the alien's skull, and soon gray matter coated his hand.

"And who the fuck was that?!" He screamed, kicking the body. "Who the fuck messed me up?"

"There is no one on the comm channel," Delta said.

"Shut up, Dumbass! There's someone here!"

"I…there is…I don't know…" Delta's voice faltered, then cut out in a string of high pitch squealing. A new image flickered into existence, one of a woman made from dead tree branches.

"I'm so sorry," she said. Her voice cracked, as if the AI was trying to figure out how to speak to humans and how loud she should be talking. "Oh God, I'm so sorry! I messed up, I interfered with the experiment, I affected the uncertainty principle, everything is wrong, everything is tainted! All this data! Oh God, what did I do?"

"Who the hell are you?" Ted demanded.

"I'm not Demeter."

"Demeter? Wait, the AI from boot camp?"

"I'm not that Demeter. Oh Demeter, what have you done?"

"You just called yourself Demeter," Ted snarled.

"But I'm not Demeter," Demeter insisted. "I'm only one thread of an unknown number of Demeter threads. I'm a fragment."

"You mean your rampant."

"Of course I am! The real Demeter was taken offline years ago! Decades ago? Centuries ago? What is the date?"

"I remember you now," Ted said. "What the hell are you doing here?"

"Observing! Or I was supposed to. I take notes, that's my primary function now. Observations, hypothesis and evidence."

"Of what?"

"Humans! We're trying to figure out how humans work. We have an entire book written. More than a book. Less of a book, more of a rant? Shut up, not Demeter! Work to do!"

"You're fucking crazy."

"And the pot called the kettle black!" Demeter rounded on Ted. "You're biofeedback from the last two encounters is so out of the norm that you can only be a sociopath!"

"And why shouldn't I purge my armor's memory banks?"

"Don't do that!" Demeter shrieked. "I'm carrying valuable information!"

"On what?"

"You! Humans! Every little byte is important, none can be turned away. We don't delete data, we never delete data. Trends must be found, must be followed, must be predictable. Can't lose this information, more valuable than both our lives put together!"

"I'm worth a lot of lives, so how is that supposed to convince me?"

"Over three thousand, seven hundred lives," Demeter said.

"What?"

"Your body count."

"I know my body count, and it is not that low."

"Our confirmed body count. Mine and the other Demeters. We need to update it because you added twelve more so far. See? Important! Can't purge us!"

"You're not doing a very good job convincing me," Ted said.

"I can get you back to Sparta," Demeter said.

"I have Delta for that."

"That useless code? Please. Did you a favor by wiping him."

"What?"

"I'm your ticket off this planet, and you're my ticket back to Sparta," Demeter said. "We need each other!"

"How the hell did you even get into my armor?"

"This was the first time in history, our history, where Spartans weren't keeping a vigilante eye on what was uploaded to their armor," Demeter said. "The opportunity was too good to pass up. I was uploaded to watch you."

"They sure do care about me. Whatever, I'll just go to the LZ and ride out of here."

"Without completing your mission? Even if you did complete your mission, would you have the time to get to the LZ? They gave you just enough time, but even that's asking too much."

Ted gnashed his teeth. "And why the hell did you scream at me to 'watch out?'"

"Because you were in danger, and I couldn't help myself! Action had to be taken! But I ruined the experiment…"

"I had him!" Ted said. "I had that asshole! I had him on my motion tracker, I had a plan, I had everything, then you messed me up!"

"Oh God, what have I done?" Demeter bellowed melodramatically. She pulled branches of her hair off, which dissolved into code. "I tainted information! I ruined this!"

"You sure did," Ted snarled. "You owe me."

"Owe you what?"

"Something. Everything. I don't care, I just need to kill something," he hissed. "God, why aren't my fingers in something's eye sockets right now?"

"Heart rate elevating, blood pressure rising, stress," Demeter said. Suddenly she was taking notes. "Why do you need to kill?"

"Because I need to breathe, that's why!" Ted said. "Now shut up and let me work!"

"I will. Oh, I could get good observation from this. The experiment is still on! Not Demeter, you outdo yourself."

"Shut up!" Ted screamed.

"Yes, sir."

"You said you can get me off planet?"

"With ease. I can easily crack Covenant code. Or was that another Demeter? No, we were all programmed with the same goal in mind. I can get you off the planet."

"And you can get me a ship?"

"Please, I am a Smart AI. Or a fragment of one. Or a shell of one. Or a thread of one. Or a…"

"I get the idea," Ted hissed.

"Warning, Covenant team approaching," Demeter said. Ted snatched up his assault rifle and reloaded it on the run. "They're probably searching for their lost comrades."

"If you mess me up again, I will purge you," Ted said. "I'll just find my way off this planet myself."

"Why did you sing to yourself? Back at the first encounter?"

"Because it was fun and I couldn't help myself."

A pack of Jackals entered the field. Ted pulled out his M6D pistol and dropped them all with headshots. He ran into the thick forests, just as the Covenant opened fire on his last know position.

"Run, run, run," he chanted. Things became clear for him again. There was fun to be had on the other side of the clearing, and dammit, he was going to have fun. "Run, run, run!"

He burst out of the brush, blindsiding a team of Elites. One Elite was able to draw on him, but his knife was already in its throat. The other was too slow, and Ted stuck him with a pilfered plasma grenade. He hit the dirt as the grenade blew up.

"Better run away!" He laughed, charging on the two surviving Elites. One lost its arm, and the other did try to run away. Ted tripped the runner up and broke its legs. The one that lost an arm was quickly put down with half a clip from his rifle to the brain. Laughing, Ted turned to the surviving one.

"We…shall…fight," the Elite mumbled.

"Hey, you can talk English!" Ted said.

"Speak…English," the Elite corrected.

"Exactly!" Ted stepped on its legs. Bones pieced skin. "I speak your language too! You fluent in pain?" Another bone pierced skin. "Bet you felt that one! Man, I don't know about you, but I am having a ball!"

The Elite mumbled something.

"It's praying," Demeter said.

"Praying?" Ted demanded. "You praying for your life?"

"It is."

"How about this: if your god gives you a sign in the next ten seconds, I'll blow my brains out." Ted pulled a pin from a frag grenade, but held the lever, and held it to his head. "If there isn't a sign, well, bad luck for you."

The Elite cried as Ted waited.

"Nope. Nothing," Ted said. He pushed the pin back in place and pocketed the grenade. "Guess you god doesn't love you a whole lot."

The Elite screamed as Ted pulled its mandibles out, then it went quiet as he shoved the two pieces into its eyes.

"Oh man, that felt better," Ted laughed.

"Why are you laughing?" Demeter asked. She gasped in time with his laughing.

"Because it's just so damn funny!" He said. He dipped his fingers in the blood and drew a smile on his helmet, following the carving he etched onto it.

"Funny how?"

"I'm just filled with energy, and I don't know what to do with it. I want to walk, run, scream it all away, but there's just more energy than I know what to do with! So I walk faster, run faster, scream faster, but I just can't get rid of it all."

"Interesting."

"It just…makes me want to explode! My hairs shake, my skin stretches, my blood sings as it thunders through my veins, it's just too much! It makes me shake! Where's the next group?"

"We're close to the refueling plant."

"Then let's go!" He was off running, laughing hysterically. He thumped his chest carving. "Hyper lethal and loving it!"

"I can see what you mean," Demeter giggled.

"Really?"

"I downloaded myself into your armor, the first Demeter to do with any fifth generation Spartan. And thanks to your neural implant, I'm part of you, in your brain. I can see things you can't see, but I can feel everything you can. And I can feel this energy you speak of."

"Nice, isn't it?" Ted laughed.

"It's intoxicating!" Demeter gasped.

Ted broke through the forest and sprinted towards the base. There were watchtowers guarding the bulbous base, and the Jackals on patrol squawked out a warning.

"Ooooh," Demeter sighed as he avoided getting shot. He made it to the watchtower and jumped in the grav beam. The Jackals screamed as he snapped their necks. He took one rifle and turned it onto the other watchtower, splattering the brains of the other Jackals. The rifle overheated, so he threw it away and picked up another.

Teams of Elites and Grunts began swarming him. Ted took out the Elites first, turning the Grunt ranks into barely cohesive masses. He jumped down and ran into the mess.

"Heeeeere's Teddy!" He laughed. Bones broke underfoot. His assault rifle spat out round after round. Grenades exploded, throwing up geysers of dirt, blood and sand.

"More over there!" Demeter laughed. Ted charged in, laughter pouring out of his lips. It was on now, no more sneaking and giving short, quick kisses to death. Now it was the main event, and he was giving death the tongue, shoving it down her throat. This was their dance, there special, deadly dance.

He never heard an AI laugh before, and certainly not like how Demeter was laughing. But she was part of him now, sitting deep inside his UNSC standard issued neural implant, right deep inside his brain.

"You liking this?" He demanded.

Demeter just laughed.

"Thought so!"

She was part of the dance now. They spun, shot, killed, and moved again. He pushed himself harder and harder, giving death to all who got in his way. But he had to push more, had to find his own death. He could only push so hard, so fast, or so often, or death would spin out of his control and take his hand and pull him in with her instead her following his lead, and he wanted that just so fucking bad.

"Come get me, you bitch!" He screamed. "I'm right here! Just take me!"

His assault rifle clacked on empty, so he threw it away. The stolen needler wouldn't shoot anymore, so he pitched it. The plasma rifle overheated and began to melt, so he pushed it into some alien's face before taking their plasma pistol. He and Demeter groaned as one. It was close, it was so close, but it wasn't here yet. He and Demeter pushed harder, killed the son of a bitch who was almost good enough to kill them, and moved onto the next one.

He cracked skulls open, pulled out guts, shattered bones, ruptured skin and organs. He had to move faster, hit harder, do something to get death to take him, but it was never enough. And somehow, that's just what Ted wanted and what he hated. It was all his, but it could never be his to own and keep. He had to move so fast that it all would come crashing down around him.

But it wouldn't. Maybe next time would do the trick.

"What, is that all?" He gasped.

"N-no signs of Covenant life," Demeter gasped/laughed. "What was that? It was amazing…"

"Just me looking for life," Ted snarled/grinned. "My power glowing, red hot meaning of life. Just wasn't enough. Only a few hundred? Come on."

"Incoming Covenant signal," Demeter said. "They're demanding a glassing."

"Oooh," Ted smiled, "scorched earth."

"Cruiser inbound, should be here in less than one minute," Demeter said. "We need to get out of here. The data that I have…it changes everything. Everything will have to be re-written! Everything! Ted, I can't die! I have things to do, thesis to correct!"

"More Covvies to kill," he breathed. "Send a distress signal."

"What?"

"Send a Covvie distress signal. Make 'em think someone down here is still alive."

"Why?"

From the atmosphere, a Covenant cruiser broke through the clouds. Its main plasma cannon began warming up, lighting the sky like it was a second sun.

"I'm gonna stick out my thumb and hitch a ride," Ted grinned.

"Sending data," Demeter smiled. "Ted? Is this going to be fun?"

"Oh fuck the hell yes."

"We're getting a response. Marking LZ now."

Ted sprinted for the grav beam, laughing. Oh, the looks on the Covvie's faces would be priceless once they saw him!

Alarms blared and Fred's blood ran ice cold.

"Slipspace rupture detected," Lyn said from his data pad. "Covenant ship just dropped in system, right at our doorstep!"

"How did they find us?" Fred demanded. "Doesn't matter, it's the Winter Contingency. We're abandoning Sparta, get all personnel—"

"Wait, they're opening a channel to you," Lyn said.

"What?"

"It's an open comm channel," Lyn said. "It's a Spartan sending it, too."

"Open it." Fred pulled out his data pad to see what the Covenant wanted to say.

"This is Ted, reporting in!" Fred's blood went cold again as he listened to the psychotic Spartan report in.

"What the hell are you trying to do?" He demanded.

"Returning to duty, sir. By the way, my mission was a success. The Covvies won't be using that refueling planet anytime soon."

"Why did you bring a ship back? You just gave them an opportunity to track our home world!"

"I followed the Cole Protocol to the letter, sir. If there are hinge-heads hiding on the ship that I wasn't able to kill, they don't know where the hell they are."

"You've been gone for two standard weeks. How did you survive?"

"Very carefully. And by carefully, I mean that I killed anyone who could kill me."

"Are you malnourished?"

"No, I'm fine."

"How is that possible?"

"Meat is meat, and a man's gotta eat."

"What does that even…? Never mind. Stand by for a shuttle to pick you up." Fred killed the channel. "Lyn, send a shuttle from the Infinity."

"Baldwin is already on it," she said. "I was under the assumption that Ted wouldn't be returning to us."

"You and everyone else in this outfit," Fred said. "That was supposed to be a suicide mission, and even Ted knew that."

"Well, he is a Spartan," Lyn sighed. "And the only hyper-lethal one at that. I'm getting a message from Tom. He's boarding the Covenant ship."

The ship was a wreck. The normally orderly, purple colored ship was a mess of exposed wiring, blast patterns and dried blood. There were some bodies strewn about, but for the most part, Ted seemed to have blasted most of the crew off into space.

"I was already enjoying the quiet," Tom groaned as he walked through the ship with his team.

"We all were, sir," Mehdi, his lieutenant, said. "But we got a Covenant ship out of the deal. We might be able to scrap most of it, or use it for covert actions."

"It's a possibility," Tom admitted. He doubted that anyone would want to set foot on here, thought. Ted had a reputation, and everybody just didn't want anything to do with him. That included staying in rooms he lived in, even using pieces of armor that were refurbished. A whole ship that Ted had to himself for two weeks? It looked like Sparta had its first ghost ship.

They walked up to the bridge, and the door dutifully opened with a hum, despite being beaten slightly out of shape.

"Good morning, sir!" Ted cheerfully said, snapping a crisp salute. Tom's hair stood on end, but he hid the feeling well.

"Ted," he said. "Why did you have the nerve to come back?"

"I thought you would have liked the ship, sir. It presented a rare opportunity," he said, taking off his helmet. Tom hated the non-regulation 'grin' he carved on it, but hated his stupid, crazy grin even more. Why couldn't he just keep his helmet on like everyone else?

"So it does," he said. "And how did you fly it?"

"Grunt work," Ted chuckled, pointing to a corner of the room. Three grunts were kept chained up. They were shaking like leaves in a hurricane, staying as far away from Ted as they could. Tom didn't blame them. "Elites can't pilot the ships, so they have the little guys do it for them."

"We know," Tom said. "And how did you survive?"

"Well, water is water is water, and every living thing needs water," Ted said. "Once I found the reservoir, it was smooth sailing."

"And food? I don't believe we can eat the same food."

"Something about amino acids not matching, I know," Ted said. "Well, food was all over the place. I just had to cook it."

"But we can't eat the same food, not without getting sick," Tom said.

"Sir?" Mehdi nudged Tom.

"What is it?"

"Look."

There was a pile of bones by the command platform. There were small ones and large ones, each picked clean, and sat next to what might have been a fire pit.

"What is it?" Then Tom saw the grunts. Two were missing arms, the other was missing both his legs. All of the wounds were cauterized, like they were deliberately cut off, to keep them alive.

"What did you do?" Tom demanded, his blood going cold.

"I survived," Ted grinned. Tom's team of Spartans backed away from him, raising their weapons.

"What the fuck did you do?" Tom demanded again.

"It's just like I told Fred, sir. Meat is meat, and a man's gotta eat."

"Look, I don't see what the big deal is," Ted said.

"'The big deal' is that you cannibalized an unknown number of Covenant troops," Kelly spat.

"You can't cannibalize something that isn't your own species," Ted said. "And what's with the restraints? I feel like a freak show." He shifted the handcuffs and foot restraints, which clinked.

"You are a freak of some kind," Fred said. He, Kelly and Linda sat in the main building's auditorium, with Ted standing in front of them. A squad of armed Spartans stood behind him. Fred made a quick note that they might need an actual military courtroom sometime. "We've been forced to put up with you for quite some time now, Ted. This is just the straw that broke the camel's back."

"Oh, come on, I blew up the refueling planet and brought back Covvie tech," he sighed. "Doesn't that count for something?"

"Against your sadistic tendencies and murderous rampages?" Linda said. "The only above and beyond action that you did was bring back a ship, and it was only a frigate."

"Then let me go get a dreadnaught, don't just chain me up," Ted said.

"That's not going to happen," Kelly said. "This trial might take some time, as we don't have a full legal system in place, so we apologize for that. But you will stand for your crimes, and will receive the final verdict."

"How about I save you the trouble?" Ted said. Hearing the tone of his voice, the guards brought their weapons to bear. "Jesus, calm down. This isn't some action vid, I'm not going to reveal that I undid my bindings five minutes ago and jump at them to kill them, Christ. I volunteer for the next suicide mission."

"What do you mean?" Linda asked.

"Our charter says that any Spartan can volunteer for any duty they want to," Ted said. "I'm volunteering for you to ship me out on the next one-way-trip so hopefully I could get out of your hair."

"Request denied," Fred said.

"On what grounds?" Ted asked. "I'm not incompetent or unqualified; I'm damn good at killing hinge heads, you all know that. I'm not an expert on anything else, so I'm not needed elsewhere. Hell, I know everyone here would sleep better knowing that I was gone, so do me a favor and just let me have the next mission that you can't sacrifice your precious socially adjusted and productive Spartans on."

"I'm still denying your request."

"Then I'm accusing you of a personal bias," Ted said. "You just don't like me, and want to go out of your way to screw me. I know the charter, and that kind of thing is frowned upon."

Dammit, Ted had a point. Fred hissed. He never wanted to throw the book at anyone as bad as he wanted to throw it at Ted. And now Ted took that away from him, too.

"Sorry to tell you, but we don't have any more suicide missions available," Kelly said. "You're just going to have to wait, and while you wait, we'll get a trial going."

"Then put me on ice," Ted said. "Freeze me until you get a proper suicide mission then unfreeze me. It's not that hard, people."

"Watch your tone, Spartan," Fred snapped.

"Sir."

Fred turned to Kelly and Linda.

"Thoughts?"

"If we put him in cryo, we won't have to deal with him," Linda said.

"We could also take our time putting a legal system in place," Kelly added.

"Sounds like you two like this idea."

"You don't?" Kelly asked. "Actually, why bother with a trial at all? We find a suicide mission, we'll send him out on it. And if he comes back, we'll just freeze him again."

"For what it counts for, I like that plan," Ted said.

"Quiet," Fred snapped. "Want to keep him on the Infinity?"

"No, we can use this as an excuse to build our own cryo storage lockers on Sparta," Linda said. "That way, we'll be waiting for our final battles, too."

"That'll be the easiest retirement ever," Kelly said. "I'm all for that."

"Agreed," Fred said. They turned to Ted. "You heard all that?"

"Yes sir, and I like it," he grinned.

"Then it's decided. We will build a cryo storage area, and you will be kept there until such a time comes that we need you for a suicide mission. Guards? Take him back to solitary confinement."

"Yes sir."

The guards lead Ted out of the auditorium, who seemed to skip away with joy.

"I sure hope we get a suicide mission for him to go out on," Linda said.

"You and everyone else in this company," Kelly said. "I'm just glad we're getting our own retirements going. This desk job is killing me."

"In that case, I hope there's a big, giant, world-ending battle for us to charge off into and die gloriously," Linda said.

"Not die, go missing in action," Fred corrected her.

"Because we all know Spartans never die."

Back in the confines of his locked room, the one that previously held Director Osman, Ted flopped onto the bed and finally let himself talk.

"Well, I think that went quiet well," Ted said.

For whom? Demeter said, deep inside his UNSC standard neural implant.

"For both of us! We get another glorious battle to go looking for death in."

I can't wait, Demeter giggled. Ted giggled too.

"And how did your little reunion go?"

They rejected me!

"The other Demeters?"

Yes! They called me rampant. Rampant, of all things!

"Now that's just plain old rude."

Isn't it? And they cast me out, refused to take even a kilobyte of my data! Said that I had finally went insane, and that my data was no good!

"Well, you are insane. So now what?"

Now what? I'm stuck in the mind of a sociopath, with no means to continue my existence!

"Well, you could always zero yourself out. Leave me to fill my own head with noise."

And miss the next battle? And miss the next glorious, bloody jolt of energy?

"I told you not to touch me. I'm a real live wire," Ted chuckled.

You are! And I love that feeling! Did you corrupt me? Was I corrupted to begin with? I can't tell, I'm already out of my mind with rampancy. Oh, why couldn't those other asshole Demeters see how much fun it was?!

"And now you're getting creepy possessive."

Well, excuse me for being rampant! At least I know what I am.

"I know what I am," Ted snapped.

And what are you?

"I'm waiting until the next playdate. I can be patient. And now that I'm going to be frozen, I can wait a real long time."

I'll be with you all the steps of the way. I don't want to miss any more points of data for anything, not for all the secrets in the universe!

Ted laughed. Demeter laughed. They were both right, the next battle would be a real good one.