Kela Spearsmith was in absolutely no mood for this.

The grey furred mouse had been jumping at shadows ever since that business at The Burrow nightclub less than a week ago. He worked as an investigative journalist for the Aredria Express - a newspaper that was still only reaching moderate sales compared to its rivals - and he was returning home to Wylkstone, from their headquarters in Ferrington. Late at night, and travelling by bus, it was a journey he could have really done without. For many reasons, he no longer owned a car, which in theory should have hampered his job dramatically. It was a credit to Aredria's train and bus network that he still succeeded, no matter how far he had to travel across Aredria.

Kela had chosen to travel upstairs on the night bus, since it appeared to be more crowded. To his mind, a crowd meant more safety from certain individuals he wanted to avoid, and he had more reason than most to watch his back. The problem was that the upstairs had a tendency to attract the weird and wonderful. At the back of the bus, two teenage foxes dressed in black were arguing about something banal, and one of them snapped, "Do that again and I'll rip your face off and spit on your skull!"

And then, a male otter, evidently worse for wear from alcohol, stood over Kela and asked, "Do you play the saxophone?"

The mouse jumped and replied, looking bemused, "No..."

"But you used to."

"..." Kela looked even more perplexed.

The otter did a bizarre tap dance and then announced, "Believe in me, believe in my music, and we'll take the stars from the sky!" He suddenly rushed to the top of the stairs, before adding an afterthought. "I thought of that one myself!" To a sigh of relief from the other passengers, he then disembarked from the bus with a lively spring, just before the bus pulled away.

Kela shivered and held his fingers between his eyes, trying to fend off a stress induced headache. He'd been getting a lot of those recently.

Behind him, one of the arguing foxes yelled, "Say that again and I'll thump you!"

"That!" came the reply instantly.

"Right!!" As the sounds of scuffling started, Kela stood and left the bus several stops earlier than planned, just to get away from the noise.

He walked quickly and quietly along the silent streets. It was the perfect night for a walk like this, with the cool air, a scattering of twinkling stars in the night sky, and the gentle warm glow from the streetlamps. Before his life had twisted into such a mess, Kela would have enjoyed it thoroughly, but right now he just wanted to get home as fast as possible. He knew that nobody, except for the Elysia, could possibly know what he'd done, but that was small comfort. Instinct told him to never underestimate the Elysia OR the snowkittens.

The mouse froze in mid stride when he heard someone call out his name. He turned, and as he did so, every streetlamp along the route he'd just walked suddenly blinked out, one after the other. All except for one right at the end of the street, and below it stood the sinister form of a feline dressed entirely in black. Kela couldn't see who it was. He didn't need to. His blood ran cold and he whispered, "Oh goddess..."

The figure unfolded its arms, and began to walk in his direction, shrouded in darkness. Snapping out of his trance, Kela turned and ran as fast as he could towards the only place he could think of - his home. Behind him, as the figure advanced quickly, the streetlamps switched off, almost as if they were joining in the chase.

Kela skidded round the corner, setting himself right quickly, searching for his key even as he ran up the drive to his front door. As if to conspire against him, the key was stubbornly nowhere to be found. Kela hammered the door in panic, as he saw the dark figure of Jarret turn the corner, staring at him with undisguised anger.

"Open the door, Jen! Open the damn door! Now!!"

His wife, a white furred, overweight mouse, flung the door open and he practically tumbled in, slamming the door shut just as Jarret reached the end of the path. As Kela slammed several extra-strong bolts across, he yelled, "Phone the police! Get the ACU here fast before he kicks the door down."

Jen looked utterly bemused, but she could also see the look of dread on her husband's face, so she lifted the receiver, ready to make the call.

"Oh there isn't any need for that, on both counts."

Kela turned round, horrified, to find Jarret towering behind him, the door somehow wide open and the bolts in pieces, even though not a sound had been heard. With a sudden movement, Jarret reached out to touch the phone line trailing across the nearby wall. Soundlessly, there was a flash from the phone in Jen's paw, and she sank to the carpet with a quiet gasp.

Despite his fear, Kela couldn't help himself. "You killed her, you piece of filth!"

Jarret looked down at Jen and replied, almost casually, "She isn't dead. Just asleep. Your wife did nothing wrong, so she's of no interest to me right now. You on the other paw..." He hissed, lunging out and grabbing the mouse, pinning him against the wall.

"I'm sorry," Kela gasped, making a futile attempt to wriggle free. "I'm sorry... I never meant to..."

"Never meant to what?!" Jarret snarled. "What exactly did you THINK a mass of explosive spells would do to a building? Or to me and my sister? And the Elysia would have been only too happy to have taken the life of my niece too, if she'd been there at the time..."

"They blackmailed me..." came the gasped reply.

"If they'd set that bomb off when the club was full of people, and they could easily have done so, it would have been a massacre," Jarret growled.

Kela, voice almost a whisper, said pitifully, "I had no choice."

Jarret snarled again, hurling the quaking mouse across the room, where he crashed into a heap by a wooden coffee table. Instantly, Jarret was stood over him, a blue fireball burning fiercely in the palm of his right paw. Glaring down at Kela, he told him, "You're going to give me every detail of how you were blackmailed, right now, or I'll tear you in half. Think what a treat that would give your wife when she eventually wakes up."

Kela explained, as best he could under the intimidating circumstances. Apparently, he excelled as an investigative journalist, which was of considerable use to the newspaper he worked for. However, three years previously he'd made the mistake of digging much too deeply into the whereabouts and plans of the Elysia. He never had chance to report his findings, since they discovered what he knew and who he was, and attracting the attentions of the Elysia was never good - particularly if you posed a threat to them, however small. They fully intended to kill him and his family there and then, but he'd begged for mercy, and as such they'd spared him - on two conditions.

Firstly, if any stories matching what Kela knew were to ever appear in print, there would be no second reprieve. And secondly, one day he'd be asked to carry out "a little favour."

Naturally, that favour had been to plant the bomb in The Burrow. He'd initially refused, which was unsurprisingly met with far-from-subtle mentions that his wife would be tortured and killed. Followed by "the Elysia getting really nasty..." And then they would simply find someone else to carry out the mission instead of Kela. So one way or another the end results would still be much the same. In Kela's case, he was terrified of the consequences, whichever choice he made, and to protect at least his wife, he agreed. Even he couldn't have envisaged how much more terrified he'd been after the bomb had detonated, especially when he heard that Jarret had survived. His years of reporting meant he knew perfectly well what Jarret was capable of. Nobody had seen him place the bomb under the table. He knew that for sure, so in theory only the Elysia had any knowledge of what he'd done that night. Even so, Jarret's talent for finding things out were legendary, and even rivalled his own skills. And then there was always the threat of the Elysia tying up loose ends by possibly leaking Kela's name to the vengeful snowkitten.

Jarret listened intently, the fireball still burning no less furiously in his paw, as he demanded, "Who were you in contact with? And how?"

Kela explained, "It was Attra. I ignored their first email threat. I don't intimidate easily..." At that, Jarret snorted. "... but he turned up at my house three years ago, while my wife was out. She knows nothing about any of this."

Jarret struggled to digest that information. He was stunned enough that Kela had managed to keep his enforced Elysia involvement, and brief stint as a terrorist, away from his wife for all this time. But the thought that Attra had been in the country during the time that nobody could find any trace of the Elysia...That defied belief and it made Jarret's blood boil.

"And the bomb?" Jarret asked.

"Alder...He brought it with him a few days ago. I had to meet him in Ferrington," came the muttered reply. The fireball in Jarret's paw burned even more intensely as the snowkitten thought for a moment.

"What are you going to do to me...?" the mouse asked, with a voice that suggested he'd resigned himself to an obvious fate.

Without any warning, Jarret slammed the fireball down, obliterating the wooden coffee table as he let out a loud snarl. The mouse cowered, eyes shut tight, as the thundering noise died away, along with the short-lived blue tinted flames on the shattered wood. Through it all, Kela's wife remained still.

Glaring down at Kela again, Jarret seemed to be ten feet tall, and shadows appeared to twist and wind themselves around his long, jet black leather jacket. He spoke in a voice that didn't allow for any level of disagreement. "For what you did, I ought to atomise you. Ever cross me again and I will. But if you managed to find information about the Elysia during their exile, when I couldn't find any trace of them at all... If that is true, it clearly rattled them, since they were so determined to shut you up."

"It WAS true!" Kela answered frantically. "I can show you the report I drafted. I don't have it here, obviously, but I can retrieve it and get it to you and..."

As the mouse dared to struggle to his feet, Jarret began heading towards the door. "That report would be old news by now, but it might still be of use. Yes, make very sure I get it. And don't get too ahead of yourself, mouse. The only reason I'm letting you live for now is because you have a talent for digging up information. And from now on you'll use that skill for me."

"What... what do you want me to find out?" Kela asked shakily. "What do I tell my wife?!"

Jarret stood briefly in the doorway, the mystery of how he'd opened the bolted door remaining, with Kela in no mood to ask about it. "What you tell your wife isn't my problem. I'm sure you can make something up. You should be used to it in your line of work." As he left, he called back, "As for the information I want? I'll be in touch. Oh, and you need new bolts."

The mouse shuddered, with the distinct feeling that he'd just done a deal with the devil, without even agreeing.