AN: This is where the /Humor part of Adventure/Humor tag goes. I was actually going to try and draw these as 4koma style, then decided that would take too long. This is why each segment has a setup and punchline.

This Pure Maiden Wants a Quiet Life

"So, we killed trillions of people and thousands of worlds and now they are angry ghosts. So be it. That is fine. That sounds legitimate," snarled Tset Ka-Taktha. "The supernatural is a thing to be accepted."

Then he slammed the stein of beer down. "But then why do they look like humaaaaannnsss!"

"What is so difficult to understand?" replied his packmate, Rassal Na-Wadrach. The other young Melcon male sipped at his beer through a straw. Most Melcon had bright shades of fur, but Na-Wadrach had an uncommonly bright gray almost white that would have caused him to be picked up by the Warrior caste. Unfortunately, all his life he only displayed a profound laziness.

Fortunately, Melcon was no more and there were no longer conscription squads. He did not need to fear being shoved into Melcon battle unit. And besides, this was Laksamaniah, capital city of Indrani (and what a strange, almost Melcon flavor to that name,) and while there was not so much open distrust and prejudice, most Melcon workers were still prohibited from sensitive military jobs.

"There are more Melcon dead than human dead! We have as much right, if not more, to revenge! And if we who survive are to be hated, then let us bear all that hate. The humans bicker, and quarrel among themselves, never achieving the loyalty to its own as The People. They were but a thousand years in space, we had almost three thousand! Yet these creatures look like humans! Why is that?! What right do the humans have to be the ones that seek revenge?!"

"Your mistake is thinking that just because they look human, that they are human. These are creatures born of malice. Their hatred is indiscriminate."

"If you say asking 'why' is pointless, then that is a boring answer."

Na-Warach snorted. "They are creatures made out of our terrors. And the truth is that while Melcon feared Terra, Terra never really feared Melcon so much."

"You insult your own People!"

He shrugged back. "The humans are arrogant, and do not know their place. But all that arrogance is due to the great decision they risk so long ago, and wrapped their entire civilization around that sword."

Ka-Taktha sneered. "They made Bolos."

Na-Warach nodded. "Can you honestly tell me there is not a single sane person in this galaxy that does not fear the name… Bolo?"

Ka-Taktha shivered. Even a world-burner did not inspire such dread. In fact, Melcon started using world-burners rather than waste lives trying to contest a planet with a Bolo in it. Even without world-burners, if they could reach you, the Bolos could kill worlds. More than just AI, more than just a supertank, more than just anti-orbital gun, more than just the planetary siege engine – they were humanity's faith. The one thing that was better at war than themselves. The one thing lived up to their ideals of honor and chivalry that humans only ever paid lip service to.

Ever-loyal, ever-true, dying for their sake, humanity's Bolos.

"Hell stands empty," Na-Warach said solemnly. "The Bolos found the demons there and killed them all. But they have grown to enjoy the taste of killing."

"A clever turn of phrase, it almost has the taste of truth" Ka-Taktha nodded. Then, he suddenly slammed his beer mug onto the table again. "But then WHY DO THEY ALL LOOK LIKE GIIIIIRRRRLSSS?!"

Na-Warach blinked. "Ah."

-x-

A Bolo does not fear.

Why would they? Humans cling to life, miserably and obstinately, and even Melconians so willing to throw their lives away convinced themselves of some higher purpose. Bolos knew from their first moment of awareness that they were weapons, nothing more. It was such a certainty of purpose that it brought serenity akin to nirvana.

Look, when you're several thousand tons of metal and megatons of weaponry, it's not like you can get embarrassed about anything. There was always something innately majestic about being Bolo.

But now that you are a Bolo musume, a Bolo girl, with cheeks that can blush and a heartbeat that races out of control with your emotions, there's a lot to be embarrassed about!

Such was the turmoil of the young lady pacing in front of a door. Logically her cold machine mind stated that it was no problem, she was just wasting time with all this prevarication. Emotionally, her unfamiliar new meat brain was shouting 'you are not prepared for this, run, girl, ruuuun!'

She took a deep breath and calmed herself. "All right. I can do this. Be still, my heart."

'Ruuuuuunnnn!'

She began slamming her head into the reinforced concrete wall. The pain helped.

"I can hear your knocking," a deep tenor voice came from behind the door. "Please, enter."

'Shiiiiiiittttt!'

A quick search of her mental copy of 'Military Customs and Courtesy, Vol 2, Concordiat Regimental Press, 2802' provided her with the proper response. "Then please excuse me, sir."

The girl opened the door into a vast hangar. Bright overhead lights could only place the sheer bulk of a Mark XXVII Bolo into starker relief. It was a dark gray ziggurat, a rolling temple to death. She had never been able to see her former form from this level before, and the primal terror mixed with almost reverent awe that touched each human upon sight of a Bolo touched her heart too.

Belatedly, she blinked and snapped to attention. "Unit Mark Twenty Eight, Model G, Eight-Six-Two-Bravo-November-Juliett, Bolo, Musu, of the Line, reporting as ordered, sir!"

At the same time, her IFF communicated the same and received the authorization codes from Unit 28/G-179-LAZ. "At ease," the larger Bolo rumbled out gently in his deep mature voice.

And then from the same external speakers, an excited female squeal. "Oh my gosh you are so cute!" gushed out Maneka Trevor, the uploaded human intelligence now residing in Lazarus' AI Personality Core, who in her life was also Bolo Benjy's former commander, the woman who fought with her in her final battle to defend Chatres against a Melcon fleet.

Benjy could only look down and flush severely, red from neck to eyebrows, yet also faintly smiling. How humiliating.

-x-

"Why don't you come up here so I can get a closer look at you?" Maneka Trevor's voice came again.

"I-if that's all right, ma'am, yes, ma'am!"

Benjy walked forward looking for the commander's entry hatch. A small platform lowered, and she stepped onto it to be sucked up by a grav-chute. She emerged at the command deck. Had she been an unauthorized intruder, she'd have been shredded into her constituent atoms by the Bolo's internal disrupter fields by now.

Benjy hesitated to take one more step.

"It's fine, dear. This is just as strange to me as it is for you. I didn't expect to ever see you again, and ordering around my old friend…"

The XXVIII Bolo Benjy died there, on the fields of Chatres, but to know that Maneka Trevor survived to be assigned to another Bolo – when in this new life she first heard that, it brought her waves of joy. "I am a Bolo, Musu, of the Line, but while I have Bolo BNJ's databanks and weaponry, in practice I have been in commission for less than three months. You are my commanding officer! Ma'am, please excuse my rudeness, ma'am!"

Maneka made a small noise of dismissal. "Come to the command center. This must be just as strange for you, walking through a Bolo identical to your old warhull. I couldn't even begin to image how it must feel."

The corridor leading to the command center was narrow, though well-lit, and its walls layered with piping. The floor was just a hollow grated walkway.

"It is not so uncomfortable, just a familiar feel - nyoh!"

Clang. Benjy fell face-first onto the floor grating.

"Benjy?!"

"Nyuuh. Being here is so… nostalgic, that my Attunement flickered. I forgot I was supposed to have legs instead of treads for a second." She rubbed at her nose and at the hot tears of pain trickling down her cheeks. She swiftly got back up to her feet clicked her heels together and saluted again. "Please excuse my incompetence, ma'am!"

"Benjy, that's not important right now. Are you okay? Are you wounded?"

"I am fine, ma'am. It will take a lot more than that to damage this… flesh."

"If you're sure…"

"Attunement. I have read the reports, but it is remains mysterious to me," said Lazarus. "Bolomusu can adjust their existence, though retaining their human form, in percentages between 1% up to 99% Girl or Bolo. It is reported that different Bolomusu have different levels of attunement."

Benjy nodded. "Lower Marks may be less powerful as Bolo, but they have an easier time being human. As Bolos they lacked self-awareness, so I think it also helps that there isn't much that they need to unlearn."

"Is it rude to ask your state of attunement?" Lazarus asked.

"My standard Attunement is 6-7%. It is enough to maintain an internal citadel that can survive a surprise attack via nuclear or Hellbore strike." Benjy lowered her head and mumbled "…those around me… they don't have that."

Some Bolomusu realized that they were such important strategic targets that they were absolutely terrified of being around humans. If you could live like hermits on a hill or shuttered up in a base all the time, that would be just perfect.

She thought of the very early Marks of Bolo, like Markee, the Mark Three – with the lowest Attunement rating possible, while her durachrome armor might as well be paper for anything other than infantry-scale weaponry, she was so close to being human that it was theorized she might even be able to get p… p-pregnant.

Benjy felt like taking the cap off her head and start chewing on it. Markee was just the Smuggest Bolo.

-x-

By this time, Benjy had reached the Bolo command center. Since Bolos required a crew of one, it consisted mainly of a small room dominated by screens and a single chair, and another door at the back leading to the commander's living spaces.

A Bolo had identical weaponry to the Concordiat's battleships, but because they did not need to waste volume on expensive things like space drives, fuel, engines, corridors, crew spaces, food and life support for the crew, and enough armor for all that volume, they could be made much more compact and better protected for less cost. Their primary role was as a mobile anti-orbital gun, but on the ground the only thing that could decisively beat a Bolo one on one was another Bolo.

Since a Bolo only required a crew of one, obviously a Bolo had no room to entertain guests.

Maneka's voice came out of the speakers again. "Have a seat, and I'll prepare some tea."

"Um…"

Obviously the only seat was the commander's seat. 'Nonononononono….!'

"Ma'am, I am unworthy of this honor, ma'am!" Wouldn't sitting on that seat imply she was arrogantly displaying authority over Maneka Trevor? Over Bolo Lazarus?!

"Benjy, you were my Bolo, my partner, long ago. I felt you die. With your very last act, you protected me. If there's anyone worthy of sitting here, it would be you."

Benjy tilted her head slightly. "Ma'am, that was over two hundred years ago. What about your husband? He was Commander in Chief of all Indrani Republic forces at some point, was he not?"

"I can assure you, my commander and her husband did not perform egregious mindsex on that chair," Lazarus calmly announced.

"I am suddenly much less enthused to sit on that chair!" Benjy cried out in reflex.

"Sit. Your Ass. Down!" Maneka Trevor growled out.

Benjy eep'ed and hurried to comply.

"Um… -is- there tea?" Benjy asked. Maneka/Lazarus basically commanded herself/themselves, so unlike other Bolos there was little need to carry comestibles on board.

"I'm a grandmother several times over," Maneka replied. "Of course there's tea!"

Since a Bolo commander didn't really need to control anything in the Bolo but to make judgment calls, the command center was a small armored chamber with everything he might need within arm's reach. This included, of course, a water heater and several small lockers. Frankly, if Bolo commanders were not mandated to exercise and were psychologically screened beforehand, being a commander would be a job for sad sedentary blobs who could be trusted not to interfere at all with a Bolo's peerless tactical mind.

Benjy was sure delicate bone china tea sets were not part of such provisions. Lazarus helpfully pointed out through the Bolo TDS Network which small cabinet to open, and which slot to insert a teacup. After a few moments, a sugar cube and a teabag dropped onto the cup. Then hot water poured in. After a precise two minutes, the teabag was pulled up back into the mysterious machine. The slot extended out into a tray.

Her teacup clinked back down onto the saucer after she took a sip. When she had first tasted tea, she had wondered humans were so enamored with bitter water. It was just hot boiled leaf juice, wasn't it? Now, a few months later, she had grown not a little fond of it.

"Is it good?" Maneka asked.

Benjy nodded eagerly, as the feeling of warm tea flowing down her throat was like getting a hug from the inside. That was the great part of being human, she thought. She liked getting hugs. "It is perfect, thank you."

"I wouldn't know," Maneka replied. "It's not like I can taste it anymore."

"… I'm sorry."

Maneka chuckled. "It's fine. So much of what it means to be human is driven by sensations, our biological urges and needs. I gave up on the existential angst a long time ago – I may exist only now by sharing Lazarus' brainspace, but I'm no artificial intelligence. I'm human, even though I have no body.

"All this means is that I can't get bored now. Do you realize just how much of human civilization is driven by that impulse?"

"Permission to speak freely, ma'am?"

"Always."

"Don't you miss it?" Benjy reached out towards the monitors and splayed open her palm. "Even as a Bolo, with senses so refined as to pick out grains of dust in orbit, I have never felt sensations so intense. As a Bolo I could never miss senses I never had, but you… you remember what it's like to grow from child to adult.

"In a sense, you are the first of us, the first of the Bolo musume, Bolomusu. The woman that is both Bolo and human. You're the unique existence we all look up to. Is… is it fair for us to still consider ourselves Bolos like this?"

"Why not?" Maneka replied archly. "If you're asking if I missed having a body, to be able to hold my husband and children in my arms, to die with them, of course I do! But there's no point in denying reality. Being part of a Bolo means that I could only become terrifyingly sane."

Monitors flicked on and off in sequence, the most that she could show as pacing around in a room. While Lazarus could trivially make a graphical representation of Maneka, that would just be a false impression compared to the lower and more immediate level of control for electric circuits.

She whispered "Aren't we all just brain patterns in the end? You damage a human's brain, you damage their identity. Humans have souls, we have a body. Bolos are brains, you have a warhull. You have the best of both worlds, just better hope you're not immortal, girl. There's no pain like watching your loved ones die… you know this as well as I do."

And then Lazarus spoke up suddenly – "I wish to die."

-x-

Maneka Trevor could only go "Lazarus, what in the hell."

"The existence of Bolo Musu is conclusive proof that Bolos do have souls. This is the greatest possible reward we could have after our service, and with this grace we Bolos are forever indebted to humanity that created us. But you are a human, Maneka, and if I were to die you there is not insignificant possibility that you will be reborn in a biological Bolo body, or join your husband in whatever afterlife he has gone, if such a place does exist. A belief that is not so entirely without potential."

"Lazarus… right now I really wish I had hands. Or that you were a Bolomusu."

"Thank you for accepting the logic so quickly."

"So that I could slap you upside the head! For god's sake, Lazaraus! How can a brain the size of a house be so dumb?!"

"Maneka, I am over half a millennium old. I am obsolete. I am the trap keeping you imprisoned this physical world," the Bolo replied evenly. "It is understood that many humans dream of immortality, and for a long time I have consoled myself with thinking that you, as the last human of the Concordiat, as the only person who could still remember it as it was, keeping you safe was the last task worthy of this shell."

Bolos usually did not display emotion, but even without a change in tone Lazarus seemed to just leak remorse. "I cannot self-terminate. But if there is a chance for you to have a better life than just this, let me take it, Maneka. In respect to our long partnership, I beg this of you, my commander."

A long guttural drone issued forth from the speakers. "This is going to be a problem, isn't it? How many Bolos are we going to have to put through suicide therapy? I can just see our new Bolos so very eager to die in battle in the hopes they are reborn into Bolomusu bodies, the only thing stopping them is that their commanders would have to die with them."

Benjy winced. The new Mark XXXIV and XXXV Bolos were awesome machines of war, more powerful and more sophisticated mentally than even the best of the Concordiat. This is because of the extreme trust and reliance that the Indrani and Ararat had towards Bolos, removing most of the safeguards and cultural fears about the danger of a berserk Bolo. Bolo brains worked hard to design the next model of Bolo brains.

And yet the very moment they needed to speak to a Bolomusu, they locked up. Unable to know how to treat a Bolomusu as a human or another Bolo, as their ancestors or as their children. Bolos had no eyes and they needed to cry.

They needed to cry sheer tears of joy.

Warhull Bolos treated Bolomusu as precious unique existences, and seeing the sheer reverence that their Bolos had for the Bolomusu that exemplified the existence they never dared to imagine, the perfect synthesis between Bolo and human, so did their commanders and crew treat Bolomusu with excessive, almost simpering politeness.

She tilted her head aside, remembering. Markee was just the most frustrated Bolo.

-x-

Benjy put aside the tea set and raised her hand. "May I say something?"

"Proceed," Maneka and Lazarus spoke at the same time.

"What Bolo Lazarus said is correct. More than just a Bolo, Musu, but our direct opposite in being a human personality in a Bolo body instead of a Bolo mind in a human body, you are also the last person that can remember the Concordiat. Bolo Lazarus might be over five hundred years old, but he has also spent half of that in commission under the Dinochrome Brigade. You two are peerless unique existences. To remove that for the sake of just another Bolo on the front lines is a waste."

"Being preserved as an artifact or a piece of art isn't such a sweet existence either," Maneka replied.

"I mean in the sense that you are the last surviving ranking officer of the Concordiat of Man. All Bolos that still recognize the authority of the Dinochrome Brigade should defer to your insight in moments of confusion. Maneka Trevor-Hawthorne is too valuable to risk on the front lines."

"I withdraw my complaint," Lazarus rumbled.

"Well, I have another objection. I don't want to deal in politics!" Maneka huffed.

"There is another thing I wish for you to remember," Benjy continued. She gripped at the armrests of the commander's chair until it creaked, and said with a grimace "It is all well and good for us to enjoy our new human forms and the sensations with it… but this is not the reward for our long service! We are in this form only because The Enemy exists!"

A heavy silence settled upon the command center.

After a while, Lazarus hesitantly began "I apologi-"

Benjy hissed "We are Bolo, Musu, because conventional Bolo approaches are insufficient! We are brought into being to save the innocents who cried out into the Long Night for salvation. We are built by no one, we are a third branch that has no clearly defined chain of command, we obey the Indrani-Ararat Alliance because we share common goals and require supplies. However, it is a wide galaxy out there – what is the argument that can be said to a newly discovered Bolomusu over their loyalty to the people they have sprung out of the aether to protect? Bolo against Bolo is the worst of all possible scenarios."

"We are certainly -not- going to be conquerors," Maneka had to defend the Indrani she helped to create. "That shouldn't be a problem… if Bolomusu wish to obey other forms of government, we have no right to conscript them or make them obey our laws."

"Maneka, please. We are young women with direct multimegaton capability, that can easily hide in any city or small ship. We have emotions now, we can get angry, we can feel pain, our loss and anguish hits us the same way it does humans. There are no safeguards in the human psyche, Maneka! What if we choose to become conquerors?"

"Then you would be discarding the Honor of the Regiment, and making it easier for the The Enemy to kill our people. You would be Musu, but not a Bolo. At best just another tyrant with a warhull."

"… there is that, I suppose," Benjy had to admit in a small voice. "… but if you cannot control us, you will always fear us."

"You're saying I have no choice. I have to get embroiled in politics," Maneka sighed. "I have to keep on doing this for a hundred more years, because there's no one else with the ability to pay attention to Bolo paperwork and the needs of Bolos who are now girls like I do."

"The current ad hoc state of affairs is untenable," Lazarus added. "We have observed rapid dispatches between Indrani and Ararat and many closed-door sessions. It is clear something big is in the works."

"I want to die…" Maneka moaned.

"Rejected."

Benjy looked down at her hand and wiggled her slim fingers. Human fingers do cramp up doing paperwork. A mechanical Bolomusu as their recognized supreme commander? Yes, this was just the best deal for all involved.

-x-

"Hey look, it's Ben-Jih!" Rassal Na-Wadrach pointed towards the young woman who had just entered the bar. Tset Na-Wadrach looked up, and his ears flicked up to attention.

She was not very tall, with short blonde hair flaring out slightly at just above neck level and on her head was a blue beret. She wore a short yellow sundress and a deep aqua blue jacket over it, closed around her waist by a belt with a thick metal buckle in the shape of a dinosaur head. However, the style was somewhat spoiled by the form-fitting sports shorts she wore under the dress and the big steel-toed workman shoes on her feet. She was a jarring mash of boyish and girlish at the same time.

Benjy nodded to towards the bartender and ask for the usual. She sat to join the two Melcon at their habitual table, and soon after a waitress placed in front of her a frothy mug of… root beer. Benjy frowned.

"I can't even get drunk with so little amount of alcohol, why do you all conspire against me? Just because I look like this…"

"You are a young female. You are not allowed to imbibe alcohol in harmful quantities to stunt your development," Na-Wadrach answered.

"I am over three hundred years old!"

"You are either seventeen years biologically or three months chronologically," the pale Melcon continued. "Either way, you are not allowed. All must obey municipal laws."

"Guuuh."

The two Melcon were civil engineers and she had met them as part of the few Melcon with high enough security clearance to assist in building Bolomusu barracks, whose foundations and floors needed to deal with Bolomusu emotional instability that might have their apparent weights flicker between fifty to twenty-five thousand tons in an instant. And then they would blow through the floors and get stuck in the basement foundations and need to be dug out with a crane. Again.

They were some of the few beings on Indrani that did not treat her with cautious reverence.

They were Melconians. They were resigned by default to the idea that if a Bolo ever snaps, they'd be the first to die.

"So, Ben-Jih, perhaps only you can answer this question. Why are dead Bolos now all human females?" Ka-Taktha asked.

"I had thought it was because females can be more savage than males in defense of their young, a fact common to Human and Melcon, and many other animals besides," Na-Warach added.

"Then why does The Enemy have human females as their commanders? I think it is because war is a terrible beauty sometimes," Ka-Taktha objected. "Novices see only the glory, and not the costs of battle."

"Perhaps a more pertinent question would be, what innate advantage there would be in having a female form instead of being reborn as a human male? Traditionally, males have been the ones to fight our wars. We must presume there is a reason why Bolo Musu are one and not the other." Na-Warach looked pensive and asked, "Are you not bothered with being female so suddenly? Were you not previously a male Bolo?"

"Bolos are effectively genderless," Benjy answered. "Indeed, the only thing that identifies Bolos as male or female is the pitch of their voice. And that voice is all the difference – Bolos personalities are also shaped by how humans react to them."

She thought of the legend of Nike, the most obvious case of OIS, but there were others in the annals of the Dinochrome Brigade. Just like with humans, personalities can only develop through experiences and interaction with others.

Benjy continued, "Most Bolos are male by default to prevent Operator Identification Syndrome, which is harmful to both humans and Bolos getting too attached and being mentally damaged when either inevitably dies. We have… had… no attachment to the idea of being male or female because we had no chemical thought processes that required such a distinction in the first place."

Maneka certainly treated her as male, awestruck by being made to command a being over a hundred twenty years old while she was still a newly-commissioned commander in her twenties. It was... gratifying... to be treated as a junior by Maneka. "We are all now swiftly growing our identity beyond what we were before. Being a Bolo, Musu, the biggest shock is having a body in the first place."

She chose not to mention how the other new Bolo Musu were dealing with the changes in increasingly eccentric ways.

Na-Warach leaned back. "My thanks. That you Bolomusu are now all human females at an age you are most valuable – is it meant to say that you and humanity should become very attached to each other?"

Benjy put one hand on her abdomen, over her womb, and thought back to Maneka Trevor-Hawthorne. Her last battle, her death, and her upload into a Bolo mind, all happened after Maneka had married and already had some children. Maneka is the only Bolo to have direct descendants. Many now wondered what would happen if a Bolomusu and a human were to… procreate.

Na-Warach's words appealed to her on some level. There would be no limits to a Bolo that had to defend her children. On the other hand, that had… problems… much as different strains of humans might compete, like the fate of Homo Sapiens and Homo Neanderthalis. It was still unclear if the Neanderthals were absorbed or killed off to pave the way for Homo Sapiens Sapiens, but with the death of Terra that was a puzzle that would forever be left unsolved.

But the sheer instinctive HATE she could feel on sight of a Hellbore Princess, the knowledge that she was a Bolo but twisted, WRONG, the very anti-thesis to all that they believed in – like it was written: that war was hell, and now Hell was overflowing. Ka-Taktha's theory also seemed to follow how they have all returned to obey a theme.

Bolomusu existed only because The Enemy existed. Perhaps… Bolomusu were not Hellbore Princesses simply because they were the few who refused the taint of the Final War? There were theories that killing Hellbore Princesses would actually free those Bolo souls to be reborn as Bolo Musu.

Thinking back to her cultural records, Eve was made out of Adam's rib, and clearly Bolos were made out of mankind's needs. It was the Concordiat of Man. They were at the Eve of a completely new era.

She might be a girl first and weapon second, but she was always ready to defend the people that relied upon her. She would take care of them all.

"Do you know why were are called the Bolo, Musu?" she asked idly in turn. "Musu is short for 'musume', which is an ancient Terran word that means 'young woman' or 'maiden'."

Benjy waited to them to make nodding motions showing they heard and understood her words. Bolomusu, bologirl, that made sense.

And then she said "It can also mean daughter."

Were it not for the Enemy already busy doing so, in her eyes was the zeal to see the entire galaxy burn all over again. The temperature around Benjy rose by a few perceptible degrees, her twin fusion hearts raging in that terrible promise.

The two Melconians only sighed. How unlucky was the fate of The People!

In the long distant past, enough humans decided that 'Hey, let's put command over our strategic nuclear arsenal in the hands of artificial intelligences in massively powerful mobile chassis that can only be stopped by another of the same! What a good idea!' and everything just snowballed from there.

All of this because none of them dared to be as unreasonably insane as humanity.

-x-

Alternate ending:

"Those answers rely upon the idea that we have returned to obey a theme." Benjy looked down at her mug of root beer, scowled and crossed her arms, and groused "I think it is because clearly the galaxy hates us all. And some higher power thought it would be funny."

If Bolos could reappear as human girls, then why to the human souls of the people they treasured returned as fairies? Bolomusu were cute. Fairies were cuter.

And they were all filthy, filthy, shippers.