"Bye Mr.J!" The four-armed young woman said, smiling over her shoulder.

"Have a good day Silia." The man responded and then watched the woman leave through the gate of the picket fence and cross the busy thorofare to her house across the way. "She's a good girl reminds me a lot of you, Laura." The man said to the air around him, and then patted the picture next to the door, in it were two women and the man, one standing next to the man and both having a hand on the shoulders of the young girl in front of them.

Tears began to well up in the man's eyes. He shook his head, "No time for that Thomas, they are gone and there is nothing you can do about it." Thomas wiped his eyes and walked back into the house. The house was new and looked like it had been pulled from propaganda for the old "American Dream" white picket fence, drapes that were a ghastly color, and shag carpet. "Well, I guess that's what you get when you buy a prefab from an alien contractor so far from Earth." Thomas said to himself, he liked the house, and the planet, though mostly because of its 1,000 lightyear distance from the nearest human settlement.

The planet he was on, was new as well, the latest in sentient mad planets, and by far the largest, it was supposedly several times the surface area of Jupiter. The interior was taken up by vast industrial districts and several of the largest artificial gravity generators ever produced. The benefit was massive population centers, and the ability to create gravity districts. Thomas lived in the high-grav district, it was only half of Earth normal, but it was better than the almost zero-G that many others preferred.

"Welp, let's make this house a home then." Thomas said to himself and headed out to the nearby shopping district. He spent the rest of the day shopping for food, tools, supplies, and anything else he would need to strip the shag carpet and put in some sensible synth-wood floors and keep himself fed.

As the star that had been chosen as host to this massive artificial planet began to set under the horizon Thomas purchased a pre-cooked fish meal for diner and began the skipping walk that let him move in the one-tenth Earth gravity. "Mr.J!" Thomas heard the voice call for him, and turned to look behind him and see Silia.

"Hey Silia," Thomas said, smiling at the young woman, and seeing the strange warthog looking being next to her, "who's your friend?" He asked looking the clearly male being over, something in Thomas's stomach churned uneasily at the sight of the being.

"This is Zajor, he's the one that I need to borrow those spices for." Silia said, sliding her lower left arm through the slightly shorter male's right arm.

"So the cookies were a hit?" Thomas asked and Silia nodded thanking him again for the use of his spice rack. Thomas watched as Zajor looked disgustedly at the arm looped through his and subtly pulled free. "So what are you guys doing here?" Thomas said giving Zajor a smile that he hoped made the being uncomfortable. He didn't know what it was about Zajor, but every part of him disliked the man.

"Well I told Zajor about the human practice of going on dates that you told me about, so here we are, on our first date!" Silia said, she was clearly head over heels for the man, and Thomas was happy for her, but some small part of him wanted to scream a warning.

"That's good, I don't want to interrupt," Thomas said dismissing his unease at Zajor as some hormonal response to his race's natural musk or some such thing. "I'll let you go, Silia when you get home stop by my place I have something for you."

"Okay, Bye Mr. J!" Silia said smiling, and walking away with an indifferent Zajor.

Thomas watched the two for a second and shook his head. "She is happy, and not stupid, and most of all not your kid. Quit worrying about some strange biological response to an unknown species." Thomas was berating himself as he stopped at another vendor to get dessert and head home.

Several hours later, with the pale light of the streetlamps being the only light, Thomas was sitting in front of his holoscreen watching old earth TV shows in 3D, when he heard frantic pounding on his door. "Mr. J! Mr. J please be home!"

Thomas moved in the low gravity covering the distance from his seat to the door in a time that most other sentient races would have considered impossible. He opened the door to see Silia, whose right upper arm looked to be dislocated at the shoulder, her two lower arms were behind her back seemingly stuck that way, and her upper left arm showed telltale signs that she had been in a fistfight. "Come in Silia, what happened?"

"Zajor...He...They..." She tried to talk but ended up sobbing.

"Silia," Thomas said in a reassuring tone, stepping behind her and snapping the restraints that held her lower arms, "you are safe here, no one will hurt you."

Silia's eyes widened at the now mangled restraints that she had no doubt struggled against. "Woah, I guess the rumors about humans are true..." She shook her head and took his hands in her now free lower hands, her upper arms cradling each other to minimize further damage to the dislocated shoulder. "Mr.J, Zajor, he and apparently some of his friends, they did this, they tried to take me, but I got away, and I didn't know where else to go, I think I lost them..." She trailed off as if realizing something.

"Oh no, if I didn't lose them, I lead them straight to you." She muttered to herself and seemed to make a decision, turning to the door. "I'm so sorry Mr. J, I never meant to get you involved, I'll go, thanks for..."

She continued to ramble as she reached for the door, and Thomas gently placed his hand over hers on the door open pannle. "Silia, I meant it, you are safe here, you do not have to leave." Just then they heard the distinct sound of a hover's door opening and several pairs of boots on the concrete path, and the distinct creak of the gate in the white picket fence.

"Listen, in there on the holoscreen is a blue button that allows access to the security system, and next to that is a nice big bowl of sweets, you go in there find something to watch, and I'll deal with the uninvited guests." Thomas said giving her a reassuring smile, and gesturing her into the hallway. He knew she would want to see what was happening, so he figured that using the security system would allow her to satiate her curiosity as well as keep her safe.

Silia watched him leave and noticed he patted a photo as he walked out, she looked and saw the photo of his wife and daughter, and below it another photo, one she had not noticed before, it was of Mr. J, in a uniform, along with a few dozen other men. She then turned and went to the seat that was in front of the holoscreen, and tentatively pressed the button to activate the security system, sitting down to pick at the candies and watch.

Thomas walked down the two steps to his front door, still holding the mangled restraints. "You lost these Zajor." Thomas said tossing the restraint at the man's feet.

"What the hell happened to those?" One of the others in the group of six asked.

"So she got out of them." Zajor said with a cold and calculating chuckle. "Oh well, we will have to use something else."

"No, I think you are done here. You should leave while I let you." Thomas said turning to go back inside.

Thomas felt something hit the back of his head and turned to see the restraints. "While you let us?!" Roared Zajor. "Old man, who do you think you are? Who do you think I am. That girl will be leaving with us, and then she will be broken down and either sold into slavery or thanks to a unique trait of her race, converted into one of the rarest drugs in the known galaxy. So bring her out while I let you, old man." Zajor said all this while nearly frothing at the mouth.

If Zajor or any of his men had been paying attention, they would have noticed that Thomas's body language had shifted from relaxed, to what could only be described as malicious, at the word slavery. "You come to my home, after attacking my friend, and then make threats and to top it off you make demands after throwing something at my head?!" Thomas's voice had been slowly amping up, and the final words seemed to shake the windows of the house. Lights went on in other homes, and Zajor's face paled slightly at the sheer volume that came out of the 'old man'.

"And let me tell you something else," Thomas was furious, as he spoke his voice had dropped to a menacing whisper that seemed to carry farther than it should, he also scooped the restraints from the ground, and began crushing them into a ball, when he was finished he looked up and smiled with a vicious grin, "I warned you, while I let you."

As he finished he reared back and threw, the ball of mangled restraints left his hand and went straight through the gut of one of the six. Before Zajor could react, Thomas was amongst them, his punches easily bursting through heads, stomachs, and shielding limbs. To Zajor it seemed an eternity, but to Silia watching inside with her mouth hanging open, the total annihilation of the other five took no more than six seconds and ended with Thomas's hand wrapped around Zajor's throat.

"This planet is my home, and you dared come here?" Thomas asked his tone sounded calm, but his eyes, Zajor looked in them and swore he could see the flames of the underworld.

"Uhh, Mr. J. I'm sorry, I won..." Zajor started and then froze, seeing the even angrier eyes of Thomas.

"Only my friends get to call me that. We are waiting right here, if you choose to speak I will kill you. The sensors have no doubt dispatched the peacekeepers, when they get here, you will confess to everything, if you do not I will kill you, and then make it my life's mission to hunt your family and kill them as well. Your choice." The ice in Thomas's voice seemed to drop the air around them several degrees.

Several moments later the peacekeepers arrived and Thomas tossed Zajor at them, as soon as the peacekeepers had him Zajro began to confess to every crime he had ever committed. The peacekeepers spent several minutes talking to the both of them, and then bid Thomas farewell, and sent for a medical shuttle for Silia.

Thomas walked back inside and saw Silia waiting for him. "Silia, they are sending a medical shuttle for you." He said, smiling at her before going and changing quickly out of the gore-stained clothes and washing the blood and bone fragments from his hands. When he came back out, Silia was still there.

"Mr. J, can I ask a question?" She said as they both watched the medical shuttle pull up.

"Sure Silia." Thomas said with a smile to her.

"Well two questions, the first one is what was it that you wanted from me and why you asked me to come by in the market, before all this." She gestured to the front door where peacekeepers were still cleaning the mangled bodies from Thomas's yard.

"Oh right." Thomas said with a smile and went to his bedroom to get a necklace, he returned as she opened the door for the medical droids. "Here, this is for you." He handed the necklace to her, "It was my daughters, but she is gone now, and you remind me so much of her and are here all alone so I wanted you to have it to know that you can always ask if you need something."

The droids guided Silia onto a stretcher and started to move but Thomas blocked the path, "What was your other question Silia?"

"What are those pictures?" Silia asked, gesturing to the two photos on the wall next to the door.

"Well this one you know, is my wife and daughter, who were killed by people no better than slavers, and this one..." Thomas's eyes seemed to glaze over for a second, he shook his head. He took the photo and handed it to her, "this is the only photo that I know of that has the remains of the legion of the damned in it. If you can't ever find me, find any of these guys and tell them that Tommy sent you, and show them that necklace, and they will help you."

Silia smiled at him and thanked him again, and Thomas moved to let the droids do her work. He wondered what Fredrich was up to with his granddaughter, the kid should be nearly nineteen now. Thomas shook his head and began thinking about what he should cook Silia as a get-well gift.