Susan peered over the cloud, stunned at what she saw. Katherine had just died. She turned toward the Norn Reaper to ask him a question, but he appeared to be dancing. "Wait.." She thought, "dancing?"

"I'd never have thought!" he shouted, throwing his sleeves toward the sky. "It happened! It happened!"

Susan gave the Reaper a hard scowl. "Katherine just DIED, and you're dancing?"

"Child," he sighed, "you looked over the wrong side. Rokoko just replaced the light element."

"So?"

"Recite the first part of your poem that talks about elements being stolen."

"'But the fourth element was taken by the Shee'?"

"Now, the last line."

"'but takes with it, the life of the warrior's leader'?"

"Good job. Now, those two lines are related. If I change one, the other HAS to change. When the Shee predicted this would happen, they made a built-in system for the hero (Katherine) to save her own life. They decided that if she fully believed in the poem, her fate, and the power of the Arlington Stone, she'd be spared. But, they bet against Katherine, to the point where they wrote it in the prophesy where she died."

Susan thought for a minute, letting the words roll around in her head. "I thought I wrote the prophesy" she insisted.

"You did and you didn't." The Norn Reaper lightly giggled. "Remember when you first put it onto paper? It didn't make a lot of sense. The Shee had given you the inspiration that nagged at you, and told you the ideas to represent in the poem. However, you were the one who selected the words to use and gave it it's poetic flow." He paused. "Anyway, Katherine's not dead as much as she is in a limbo-like state. Someone has to bring her out." At this point, he looked directly at Susan.

"Me?"

"You."

"Now?"

"'Twood be nice."

Susan smiled, raised her arms, and left the cloud.

------------------

Words could not describe the mood in the splicer room. It was very quiet. The silvery splicer sat still seeming indifferent to the chaos it had just caused. Everyone was very quiet. What do you say when, literally, your creator lies dead in front of you?

Just then, a small flicker of light appeared above Katherine. It spun for a moment, creating the image of a creature. The image then formed into Susan, official ghost of the HoloDeck series. "Hello again!" She chirped.

She was greeted by 14 awestruck eyes. Katherine had just died, and Susan was apparently happy?

Susan muffled a giggle. "You think she's dead, don't you?"

Blip hovered up to her level. "Let's think. She just got spliced, she's lying there motionless..."

"Well, she's not dead." Insisted Susan. She nudged Katherine with her foot once, twice, three and then four times over. Then she stood still.

Katherine's body was still for a moment, being stared at by 6 warm bodies, a ghost and a machine. Finally, her arm moved a little. "Ooh... that hurt..."

Lydia, Ben and Boggles tried to run up to Katherine, but Kass stopped them. "Can you walk?" she asked.

Katherine pushed herself all the way up to her feet, took a few steps, fell over, then got up and tried again. "I guess so..."

Lydia, Ben and Boggles broke free from Kass and piled on Katherine. Of course, she enjoyed it; she had been lonely while she was dead. Jenna, Karr & Kass greeted her well, too. Blip thanked Susan somewhere around 700 times (to hear Susan tell it) very quickly before floating down to welcome Katherine back to the living.

Eventually everyone had calmed down, & Katherine had regained what little balance she originally had. Susan, still floating above Katherine, smiled a bit. She then held out her hand. Waiting patiently, she stood very still. After a while, she got very impatient and started wiggling her hand. Finally, a Grendel's arm appeared in her hand.

"Ever read Beowulf?" She mused. "This arm belonged to the Grendel King. Now, take this to the desert, & lay it by the large tree." She then disappeared, dropping the arm like a sack of manure. It was treated the same way -- no one wanted to touch it at all. Finally, Katherine gingerly picked the arm up by a claw, made a face, and motioned to move out.

------------------

"Is this the tree?"

"I guess so. It's big, and it's in the desert."

The 8 creatures stood beneath a large, twisted tree. This tree had a lot of history too it -- it was the one where Susan was killed, it was where Katherine was kidnapped and forced to face her destiny.. and now, it was where the Grendel King's final resting place would be. Katherine timidly stepped up, and laid the arm by the trunk.

The arm glowed a little bit. A voice popped up behind them suddenly. "I'M ALIVE!" it shouted. Whipping around, they found Susan in Norn form instead of a ghost.

"Susan.." Gasped a skeptical Katherine, "what happened.."

Susan giggled. "You really want to know?" Of course, everyone nodded. Susan told them that when she got back to her cloud, she was greeted by the Norn Reaper. The Reaper told her that the Shee were very pleased with her work, so she was going to get to go to a better place. Susan assumed she was going to Heaven, but apparently, he meant that she got to live again. So, there she was, in the flesh.

Something crossed Lydia's mind. "If we got the Arlington Stone back in place, an' Katherine and Susan are alive, can we go home now?"

Karr sighed and rubbed his head a bit. "Sounds good to me."

Everyone trudged back to the HoloDeck, and, after giving Ben and Boggles a quick lesson in Earth, beamed themselves home. (except for Blip, who simply injected himself back into his own Earthly body).

Back on Earth, everyone sat stunned for a moment. Katherine helped Lydia find her glasses, and, after adjusting them, looked at the small clock on the dresser. "I think only about 20 minutes have passed.." She announced.

"By golly, you're right." Susan agreed. Then, she looked over to Katherine's Nintendo set. "We never did finish that game of Banjo-Kazooie.."

With that, she picked up the controller, and everyone "helped" her through.