Bill waved a couple more times as Tiffany receded into the mass of humanity at the Rome Fiumicino terminal. Four days of near constant partying, fucking and sightseeing and she was still bouncing around like a tweeker on a hotplate, it amazed him.

He grinned as he turned away and walked off to the bar to kill some time before his own flight was scheduled. The occasional novaphile braved his reputation and aura of menace to ask for an autograph or just to shake his hand (probably hoping his node would reach out and jumpstart them or something) but Bill didn't mind. Maybe they didn't hire his ass but they did buy the figures, the comics, posters and the ton of other shit Devries put out that supplemented the pay he received for testing the tensile strenghth of human bone.

It'd been a good few days with Tiffany. It was just sport fucking, and thank god she wasn't stupid enought to think otherwise, but she was still cute company. She had a way of completely looking flummoxed whenever he'd mention anything that happened in music, movies, tv or hell, the entire world, before she turned 14 that he found a hoot. And on the other hand since she came from money she knew a shitload about how Bill was actually supposed to act in nice places and was willing to let him know what to do in a nice restraunt or a museum.

That made him chuckle. A museum. But still, he stood staring at the Oath of the Horatii for an hour, just dumbstruck. He was going to have to check this art shit out just a little more. No reason he couldn't have a little culture. It'd make momma happy as hell.

He left a sizable tip two hours later when he rose from his stool and walked into the terminal to catch his flight to Johanesburg. The bartender was still agog at the three empty bottles of Johnny Walker that Bill left. He'd heard of the inhuman resistence novas had to drink and drugs but hearing and seeing were two things seperate altogether. But two hours and three litres of hard liquor had left nary a sign of intoxication on the massive man that had just left his bar. It was definetely a new age.

Lot to be said about Italy, Bill thought as he walked towards the gate, They let a man get a decent drink on without yapping about it being too much and don't bother a body for happy noises in the hotel rooms. Maybe I should get me a place here.

As per usual the flight attendents were attentive and friendly, not just due to his first-class ticket he realized, but also for having survived three years in a high profile profession as he had. The thought always brightened his mood and with him already being high in spirit he was smiling broadly as he sat in his comfy seat and rested his eyes, listening to the sounds of other passengers finding their way and occasionally whispering to themselves about their notorious cabin-mate.

Fifteen minutes later he heard whispers stress-strained and louder likely than the participants intended.

"Who in their right mind would have booked this? Are they looking for trouble" a man's voice said. Bill was hardly the most attuned of men but there were things he recognized after his many years and one of them was the sound of fear. The way a man's voice quavers and occasionally breaks when violence is threatened and he is not a man prone to or comfortable with violence.

"His flight was re-routed here and grounded. It wasn't intentional. It's not like we were going to say no, especially not for this reason." A woman responded. This one wasn't scared, just annoyed.

Ah, nothing sicks out a strong woman more than a weak man. Bill surmised. That limp-dick better man up or she'll have his sack for a coinpurse.

The conversation concluded moments later with the fearful man acceding to the woman's wishes. Not that Bill had any doubt in his mind after hearing the steel in her voice. He wondered what was causing the ruckus. It had to involve him in some way, tha was obvious. Another Elite perhaps? Rey Del Guererro was supposed to be in Europe. Maybe him? No matter. No money means no violence. They didn't need to worry.

Bill glanced over to the stairs to see who else was the source of panic. When he saw the long blonde hair, swept back perfectly, he knew and his smile disappeared. The sky-blue eyes rounded slightly as they locked with Bill's ebon stare and the perfect teeth on display to the other passengers disappeared between his thin lips as they tightened.

Fucker even wears the colors when he's off duty , Bill noticed as he took in the magnificent build and perfectly cut clothes of the Team Tomorrow member.

"Well hey," Bill said, refusing to be thought of as cowed for even a moment, "If it ain't one of my favorite 'Topes. Howzit going Blue Star?". His voice was friendly. The type of friendly meant to annoy someone who knew you didn't mean a goddamn kindness towards him in any way, shape, or form.

Yeah, this flight is gonna suck.

When two gorillas start to circle each other and make with the aggressive displays the other members of the tribe scream, hoot and generally make a ruckus but they don't get involved. When two stags lock horns and proceed to prove their dominence the does and immature males in the area step back and wait to see who comes out on top. When two male wolves decide it's time to figure out who has the biggest dick the pack circles and watches, they don't interfere.

With these sterling examples of what happens when two large, strong and completely senseless males come across each other let it be said that humanity is really quite stupid when it comes to such basic social occurrences.

The two flight attendents in charge of overseeing the first class cabin were named Theodore (Theo, never Teddy) and Angela. Together they were two highly trained, very experienced professionals who had years of experience dealing with drunk, disorderly, rude and self-indulgent passengers who felt that possessing a first-class ticket entitled them to behavior that would be looked upon poorly if displayed by an epileptic baboon. So they did what time after time of having to stand interference between two passengers who for a variety of reasons despised each other.

They chatted with them. They broke out the drink cart early. They convinced three seperate passengers to come up and offer to switch seats so they could "be more comfortable". Not a difficult task considering that even a casual observer of Elite/Utopian interactions would remember one of the more colorful confrontations to occur over the last three years.

Two years ago, in Turkmenistan, members of Team Tomorrow were called in to deal with a rebel warlord. While Turkmenistan could hardly be called an admirable political entity it was stable and Project Utopia under the auspices of the UN was intent on keeping stability in the region. That the warlord was a heroin-traffiker to boot only made their involvment all the more sensible.

The warlord though was a sucessful and rich man and he'd hired some protection from Devries, the Elite Vile Bill and a non-combat negotiator by the name of Angeline "Fairplay" Malleus.

The unexpected presence of Malleus, VileBill and especially a camera team threw Team Tomorrow's plans into disruption. For although the warlord was a drug traffiker he was also a champion of his people against the army of Turkmenistan which had taken to unbelievebly brutal practices to destroy the popular support of the warlord. Fairplay's "Realm of Discussion" ability negated the manipulative abilities of T2M'er Geisha and took from the Utopians their expected easy victory. Fairplay kept Geisha off balance, embarassing the young woman greatly for the cameras and Vile Bill went on an unexpected rant against the muscle of the Team Tomorrow unit, John "Blue Star" Bakker. Despite his uncouth manner the cameras caught Vile Bill making an impassioned defense of the warlord, specifically regarding his willingness to protect the women of his region against the brutality of the army. Blue Star was prevented from engaging the Elite in combat due to Utopian policies and the presence of the cameras and he eventually lost his temper and delivered a tirade that to some suggested a misogynistic and uncaring streak in the Utopian.

All in all it was a bad day for Utopia.

And the two had not met again until they sat down, opposite sides of the aisle in first class.

All through the waiting, takeoff and five minutes afterwards the two novas sat quietly, not even looking at each other.

Vile Bill was the first to break the silence,"So, this is a Utopian in the doghouse eh? You gotta ride first class instead of one of your private supermegajets?" The derision in his voice was obvious.


" Wow, am I wrong or did you just go an entire sentence without using any vulgarity? Don't you get fined or something whenever you act like a real human being in public? " BlueStar was in a similar mood to be sure.

" Ooooh, a 'real human'. Dude, no wonder they don't let you swing, you can't even insult a body right. "

" You're right, you deserve a hell of a lot worse but the fact is we're in public and these good people don't need to hear that kind of language. Not even about a drug-running murderer like yourself. "

A few beats past.

" Drug runner? You talking about my youthful indescretions? The ones I done paid for with real time spent behind real bars or you talking about working for Warlord Kashan? "

" Kashan of course. Yes, you dealing drugs in the States was horrible, and you didn't spend anywhere near enough time in prison obviously but you're right, you 'paid' your debt. Kashan on the other hand is a totally different matter. The man moved tons of heroin. And you helped keep him in power! "

" Yep, I sure did. Dude, that's why they pay me. And what are you bitching about? The eight weeks I was there you know how many folks got killed? On either side? Zip. Zero, none. I almost felt bad for taking the man's money. Hell, I did more peacekeeping that y'all manage to most of the time. "

"No, you kept the rightful government of Turkmenistan at bay so that rebel and drug lord could continue to sicken the world with his poison. "

" Yep, I did do that. I did make sure that he could spread his shit to a bunch of weak-willed fucks who chose to snort the shit in the first place. Goddamn them for wanting to do something bad to themselves. I could cry. Y'know what else I did? I kept those uniform wearing fucks from running trains on twelve-year old girls cuz their daddy didn't want to join the army. "

" I'm not defending that kind of garbage and damn you for trying to make me look like I did. That was some pretty clever editing your folks did with that tape. Proud of that? Proud that you came off looking so clever? "

" Editing? You saying you didn't say that shit? You saying we made that up? Dream on Blue Balls. "

" No, I'm not losing my temper again, not with trash like you. Yes, the government was doing some awful things, things that needed to be stopped and we were trying to do that too. But no, you couldn't look beyond your wallet. I'm sure it was nice to justify defending that jackal but the fact is if he wasn't doing what he was doing the government wouldn't have had him as an excuse to bring the hammer down the way it did. We would have been able to spend our time working on political and human rights instead of the animal you were working for. "

Minutes passed. Conversations stopped. This beat listening to the in-flight movie, "27 Dresses" by a long reach.

" I been thinking. You got a point. But I gotta say this. If a fucker is doing evil shit like having his soldiers gang-rape little girls and beat old-women with clubs then you don't try to 'work with him'. You take him out. Kind of like we do at Devries. We always on the side fo the angels? Fuck no. I ain't not child. But c'mon, how many angels out there are running governments, being rebels or owning companies? Nah, fact is you guys are the only ones who are really claiming to be angels. Maybe y'all should read up on the Angels of Vengeance and Wrath and shit instead of the pussy angels you seem to think are so hot. "


   

It went on like that for the entirety of the flight.

Two men, opposite sides of the fence, opinionated, passionate and each capable of leveling a city block all by their lonesome.

Nothing was settled of course. Both were too caught up in their own arguments to really listen to the other and neither was good enough at making his own point to get through the stubborn wall of denial the other had up.

But it made for an entertaining flight. At least for those able to get passed the colon clenching fear that the argument was going to turn to blows. Blows that would surely result in the destruction of the plane and the death of them all.

If any victory could really be claimed it would belong to Bill. As the plane landed and the passengers departed he managed to turn off the anger he had built up against the Utopian and turn on his rather charming grin as he put ten crisp hundreds into the flight attendent's hand.

When she protested he said "Hey, y'all were glory and bright shining light during that whole flight. Even when me and the spandex kid got with the harsh words. You take it and you and your buddies have a good night on ol Bill."

Disembarking he and Blue Star made sure to keep out of each others vision while looking for their respective rides. Once Bill saw Big Thaba, his all-around do-it-all, he knew he was home. The huge young man smiled once he his boss and threw his arms around him, "You do okay, Boss? Start no wars? Keep the client happy?"

Bill chuckled, "Thaba, man, ain't you s'posed to work for me? Andre is the one who's supposed to ride me about keeping the client happy and not starting shit I ain't paid to start."

Thaba looked at Bill with eyes far older than his twenty years would suggest,"Ah, I take care of six sisters, get them all married, even the older ones and watch over my mama and you think I'm not going to take care of you too? Bah, you no nova if you let the spirits get to your head and think I'm not gonna do today what I did yesterday, last week and last year!"

It was this warmth and tough love attitude that helped make Pretoria home for Bill. The one time his mama had come and visited South Africa two years ago she'd taken an immediate shine to Thaba and shoo'd away the little hottie that had been "taking care" of Bill's home and business for him. Thaba had taken over and kept Bill on an even keel for the last two years, knowing exactly how to move and encourage the Elite without angering him. If someone had kept track of his mission result figures (as Andre did) they would have noticed (as Andre had) that while Thaba played mother hen to Bill not only did his success percentages move higher in nearly all catagories but he also got into less trouble. Not no trouble, this was Bill of course, but less. So Thaba stayed, wielding far more authority in the camp than one of his station normally would.

Thaba opened the door for Bill to the car before taking the wheel, "Okay, Bossi, I treat you with respect an honored warrior like you deserves," Bill chuckled at this. "Bah! Your mama is right, you have no respect! Fine then, I still tell you that changes are going on in camp, maybe you care about that?"

Bill perked his ears, "Changes? What kind of shit is going on?" He knew enough about Thaba to know that he'd never bother to bring up silly rumors or shit like that.

Thaba looked back at Bill through the rear-view mirror seriously, "The Lady. The General. Some say there is trouble.