Most people remained dubious when first they heard her proud boast - that she never missed a mark. She didn't particularly mind - a blind believer was a fool, and fools didn't last long in this game. She respected them for their disbelief, and was only too happy to accept their apologies along with their money. Not that she intended to let an over-inflated ego affect her judgement. Though she may not have appeared so on the surface, Jessalyn was a quick, calm thinker. When you were eight years old and without a family or a home, you learned to cope. Or, of course, you died. Jessa had opted for the former.

The dingo lifted her field glasses and scanned the terrain ahead. She'd been tracking the prince for three days, and now, at the base of the Mobian Alps, she was still unsure of where he was heading. He appeared to be going Northeast, but that direction, after taking him through the Alps, would ultimately plant him in the uncharted regions of the planet. At first, she'd thought he must have been trying for one of the small islands that dotted the coast of the mainland - even though those Northeast of Mobotropolis were perilously close to Overlander territory, particularly for a prince of the House of Acorn. But the prince hadn't changed his direction, and now the islands were behind them. Now she had reasoned that he must have been planning to turn back south once he passed the mountains and head toward the Kingdom of Mercia. The choice didn't seem logical - if the prince was looking for a new life, he should have headed to Downunda, or the subtropical regions that lay South and over the water from Mobotropolis, or even to the Floating Island...

With a sudden shiver, she pulled her jacket tighter around her shoulders. Damn fool prince, taking off into the Alps in the middle of winter...it would serve him right to freeze his royal ass off. But, since he was no use to her if he did, the best thing to do was capture him and get the hell out of there...and, judging by these tracks in the first layers of the morning frost, and the campfire she'd found last night, she was getting very close...

Slipping the field glasses back into her pocket, Jessalyn resumed her pursuit. Wherever the prince was going, she would find him before he had the chance to get there...

Prince Elias folded the map back up and returned it to his backpack, then surveyed the whitened mountains before him. To the young prince, the bite in the morning air was not cold but exhilarating, the frozen landscape was challenging rather than bleak. For just beyond them lay his goal - the mysterious, uncharted regions of Mobius. Nobody, to the anthropomorphic Mobians' knowledge, had ever explored this area. Why, Elias had no idea - it was a vast, sprawling expanse that could contain any number of natural wonders and terrors. And, now that he was finally free of the burden of kingship, it was exactly where Elias intended to go. He would explore it all, map it out for the benefit of future generations. When Sally wore the crown, when he could return to Mobotropolis, he would bring with him a wealth of knowledge to pass on.

But first, the mountains. These, too, were largely unexplored, barely touched since the day Sally and her companions had been chased up there by a patrol of swatbots and completely by chance stumbled on a frozen cave-bear from prehistoric Mobius. He planned to change this, as well - the first map he made would be a smaller, more detailed chart of the mountains alone, or at least the region of them through which he passed. He would come back to complete the job later, once he was done with the area beyond.

From future king to wandering cartographer, he thought with some irony. The latter may have been far less prestigious than the former, but at least it was what he had chosen for himself, not some restrictive, one-way destiny pinned onto him by the circumstance of his birth. That was all he had ever wanted out of life - his freedom, his choices. Not a kingdom on his shoulders. He might have been able to carry the weight successfully, but he might not. And he wasn't willing to risk countless lives to find out.

He resumed his trek into the mountains, boots crunching over the first lingering layers of frost left over from the night chill. The grass seemed crystalline in its coating of ice, blue-green needles dotted with tiny shards of glass. Where the occasional alpine blossom flowered, it too sparkled and glinted in the morning sun's gentle light. There was nothing so beautiful in Mobotropolis...there was nothing so beautiful anywhere, or at least nothing that wasn't forced out of his memory by the sight of the glittering landscape ahead.

He paused for a moment, suddenly remembering the small, dictaphone-like voice journal he had brought with him. A gift from his father, the voice journal had been intended as an organizer for royal business. But Elias, uninterested in such things, had never even filled in the personal details.

"January twelve, the year oh-five post-war," he informed the journal's small microphone. "It's about six-thirty in the morning, and I've just started into the Mobian Alpine Territory, the first step toward my goal - exploring the uncharted regions of our planet that lie beyond. It shouldn't take me long to get through the mountains - three days at most, according to the existing maps. I plan to chart my course briefly in this crossing, and then return later to complete it."

He was stopped there by a loud, grating sort of fuzzy hiss - sort of like he imagined static if it were recorded onto a cheap cassette and replayed through broken speakers. Puzzled, he checked the voice journal, but apparently the sound originated elsewhere. Where, Elias had no idea. There shouldn't be anyone else here...

There was a low, feline growl, extremely primitive and more than likely made by something that still walked on four legs. Elias held himself firmly in place, his only movement to click the voice journal off and slip it back into his pack, but his grey-blue eyes searched wildly over the landscape for the source of the noise. Food - especially live meat - must be scarce in the alpine environment. To an unevolved predator, he probably looked like breakfast-to-go...

Finally, he saw it. A glint of white that was metallic rather than crystalline, revealed by the sunlight reflecting off it. A lone robian? Perhaps...but it sounded so primitive...the prince-cum-wanderer tensed himself, preparing for the charge, or the bolt, or the blade...

What he didn't expect was the pain. Without warning it appeared, pulsing at the back of his head, then grinding its way around to his temples, stabbing like a hundred dulled needles at once. He cried out as it forced him to one knee, unable to stop himself. And then came the charge that he had first expected - a blur of metal and fur and steely fangs that collided with his midsection, throwing him backward over the frosty ground with the taste of blood in his mouth. He had no chance to move before it was on him again, razor steel claws raking his shoulder and slicing through cloth, fur and flesh. His feet swung up impact with the body on top of him, managing to knock it off-balance and give him time to scramble to his feet, right hand gripping the opposite shoulder. Blood stained his jacket, and pooled on the icy ground below.

Elias saw his attacker now for the first time - neither robian nor beast, but a mixture of both. It was a huge, thick-coated mountain cat, stocky and powerful and armed with claws to tear flesh and fangs to match. But it wasn't natural - its right foreleg was missing, replaced instead by a corded steel limb bearing razor claws even sharper than those it naturally possessed. The two back legs were much the same, and half the face was also replaced by cybernetic implants. A red eye gleamed at him from amongst the circuitry as the bionic cat lowered into a crouch, snarling, preparing to pounce again.

Just as it launched into the charge, the beast suddenly dropped from the air with a pained yowl and the smell of burnt fur. As it landed clumsily a few feet away, Elias made out a painful looking scorch mark near the left shoulder.

"Damn jerk cyborg!" Jessalyn muttered, too quiet for Elias to hear, as she aimed her laser pistol and let off a second shot. "Try to eat my walking gold mine, will you?"

Elias was starting to get dizzy. He couldn't focus on the new combatant, able to make out only that it was a Mobian, of tan fur and sand-coloured hair. And it was firing on his attacker with some sort of small gun - unusual for a Mobian...

"Move or lose it, you overgrown house cat," Jessa snarled, leveling the gun for a third shot. Her second had struck the robotic eye, which was now shattered and letting off little sparks. With a ferocious snarl, the bionic beast turned on her, furious. Suddenly, she felt an agonizing sensation at the back of her skull, so powerful that she couldn't avoid dropping to her knees, clasping her head in her hands.

With what seemed like a smile, the creature advanced.

Elias, injured shoulder burning horribly and unconsciousness descending, was fumbling wildly with his boot. The small tazer he had stashed there would normally not have been very effective against the beast, but with those wires exposed in the eye socket, it just might work...

"Hey!" He shouted hoarsely, ignoring the throbbing in his shoulder, the lightness of his head and the nausea rising in his throat as he gained his feet once more. He was successful in drawing the cat's attention - it reached him in a single bound, but before it could strike, the wounded prince thrust the tazer forward, directly at the damaged eye socket. The cat stopped mid-attack and shrieked horribly as the electric current tore through its bionic body. Then, it collapsed, a smoking heap of burnt flesh and machinery.

Elias' head spun violently, and he dropped back to his knees with a small moan. In a second, his rescuer was by his side, holding him upright.

"That was close," she remarked.

"My...arm...hurts..." Elias murmured. Granted, it wasn't the most intelligent-sounding thing he could have said, but it was all he felt inclined to observe at the moment.

"Here," she eased off his backpack, repositioning it behind his head, then pulled off the blue jacket he always wore. "Let's take a look at it..."

Damn fool prince, Jessa thought to herself as she retrieved what meager emergency medical supplies she carried in one of her seriously oversized pockets. Die on me and I'll kill you...

To her relief, Prince Elias' wound was nothing too severe. It was only a cut, and not too terribly deep as far as they went. It would just need a few stitches and a little rest.

"This I keep purely for the cliché value," Jessa commented with a mirthless smirk as she placed an old-fashioned bullet between his teeth. "Bite."

The prince immediately lifted it out again. "Why would I - "

His words were lost in a sharp cry as Jessa promptly upturned a small bottle of rubbing alcohol over the wound. She rolled her eyes as the prince snarled and ground his teeth against the fresh pain.

"I told you to bite," she sighed.

"Ow..." he managed.

"Bite," she ordered again, as she threaded a thin needle. Not wanting to risk it, he quickly returned the bullet to his mouth and bit, hard.

"Squeamish?" She brandished the needle like a dagger, then began deftly working on the stitches. She finished bare moments later, clearly practiced at the art.

Elias made a brief, pained sound somewhere in the back of his throat, then winced. "Ugh...thanks...I think..."

"Sit up," she told him, then helped him into a sitting position. With practiced skill, she wound a bandage firmly around his chest and shoulder, until she deemed the binding sufficient.

"There," Jessa sat back, satisfied. "That ought to hold."

For the first time, Elias now looked at his rescuer. At first glance, he would place her as a coyote, perhaps a jackal, or some other canine species. Her fur was a light shade of tan, with sable markings on her face and extending down over her stomach. A careless, lopsided fringe of sandy-blonde hair became a thick plait that reached down to her mid-thigh, and big green eyes were set behind it, regarding him with some interest. Her clothing said little about her - a pair of loose khaki cargo pants with very large pockets, and a faded khaki tank-top, over black army boots. Her wrists each had a small strip of cloth knotted around them, for reasons he couldn't guess. Her body - and he appraised it purely from a practical point of view, or at least told himself so - was slender, shapely and firmly-muscled despite being slim. She was undeniably attractive. But there was something unusual about her...

At the same time, she was appraising him. The only previous time she had seen Prince Acorn was on the flip side of the new Mobian fifty-dollar bill, and she grudgingly had to admit that it didn't really do him justice. He shared the same fur colours, markings, red-brown hair and grey-blue eyes as his sister and father did, but only he had inherited his father's brushy tail. He didn't exactly have the regal bearing that Maximillian carried, though - his messy, side-parted hair and bushy eyebrows made him look more like a teenager, though she knew he should be around twenty-one by now. He was good-looking enough, she supposed - in a rough-around-the-edges sort of way.

"You might want to put this back on," she said, handing him his jacket.

"Who are you?" He asked, big steel-blue eyes a little too...honest...for her liking, as he accepted the jacket and pulled it on, careful of his injury. "Why did you save me?"

"Hey, can't a girl help out her future monarch now and then?" Jessa shrugged innocently. You aren't any good to me dead.

"Your future monarch is way back in Mobotropolis, and is female besides," Elias pointed out.

"You mean your sister?" Jessa feigned disbelief with a decided flair, that being one of her most respectable talents. "You gave up the crown to Princess Sally?"

"I thought everyone knew by now..." Elias trailed off, clearly not wanting to say more.

"Well, either way, you're still the prince," Jessa reasoned. "And there's no less reason to help you out." Especially when you happen to be worth five million bucks, Your Royal Rebelliousness...

"What were you doing out in the mountains?" Elias queried.

"I'm a hunter," Jessa said, honest but indirect. "I come into the mountains sometimes in search of bigger game." Bigger as in you. Lucky you.

"Oh."

"But I've never seen anything like that mountain cat." That, at least, was true. "Is it just me, or did it make you feel like you had a drill stuck through your forehead, too?"

"Mmmm," he nodded, and suddenly found himself feeling very tired. "I don't know...but we shouldn't stay...much longer..."

"You're tired and injured," she pointed out. "You need to rest before you go anywhere. It's coming on midday now - you should sleep while the day is at its warmest, and then we'll be travelling at night to stop ourselves from freezing to death."

That made sense. "Will you...be all right?"

She laughed without much mirth. "Hey, I just saved your royal butt, didn't I? Go to sleep, Your Highness. Everything will be fine."

The prince yawned. Probably, Jessa reasoned, because of the sleep-drug that coated that bullet. Useful, it was. And quick. Once he was asleep, he would stay that way until she was good and ready...

"You still haven't...told me your name," he murmured, fighting to keep his heavy eyelids open a moment longer.

"My name is Jessa," she replied, not even sure that he could still hear her as his tired eyes closed. Then, voice lower, she added with grim satisfaction, "goodnight, my royal meal-ticket. I'll take care of you."

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