Theseus Garlock sometimes found himself considering that he might be the unluckiest person in the universe. It seemed like a very likely proposition to him. Being a highly educated man in the fields of economy and politics, you would think he would be making important decisions and leading the government into exciting new frontiers; instead, he wasted most of his political energy arguing with idiots about dinner parties for ambassadors and ways to keep the people under their jurisdiction convinced that they actually knew what they were doing. Then there was the fact that the other eleven governors of the Yosei Shinsekai Council all treated him like some sort of babysitter, as was being demonstrated at that very moment - Theseus had been sent out (once again) to the planet Earth, on the terms of tracking down three very naughty young girls.

Theseus much preferred the planet of Yosei Shinsekai to Earth. The two were close neighbors - only a few light years away - but the only way they were similar at all was their climate. Yosei Shinsekai was the sophisticated hub of travel between dimensions, whereas Earth, although being a popular vacation spot, was hardly cultured. The planet was dominated by only one intelligent species - or at least that's how the humans saw it - and they were very isolated beings. Hardly any interplanetary travel or trade, certainly no interdimensional relations. And on top of that, the Shinsekai was an individual kind of society, there being only one Yosei Shinsekai in the entire universe, and that one being a refuge for beings of all kinds - a multicultural hotspot. But no matter what dimension you were in, every planet Earth you encountered was the same. Ignorant.

Dimensions. That was another topic that was prone to irritate Theseus. Why did there have to be so many of them? It was bad enough trying to govern just one planet, but being a governor of Yosei Shinsekai meant dealing with the problems of every dimension in the universe. Whenever anyone in any of the infinite dimensions had any kind of complaint at all, they came to the Yosei Shinsekai Council to complain about it. And the universe had a lot to complain about. Come to think of it, Theseus by himself had a lot to complain about.

Theseus wiped his sweaty brow and checked his watch. He had been standing in the hot summer sun far too long for his liking. Our unfortunate protagonist was an easily aggravated, impatient sort of man, with a stalky build and his wavy brown hair, which he liked to comb straight back, was starting to stand on end. He was 352 Earth years old, but in mortal terms, he appeared to be in about his mid-thirties. Currently, however, Theseus felt several hundred years older than he actually was, with his bones tired and aching from standing for hours on end. His shrewd appearance gave the impression that he would hold a position such as a news reporter; but, in actuality, Theseus Garlock was a member of the Yosei Shinsekai Council - a group of twelve governors who were mainly responsible for ruling the Shinsekai.

Feeling uncommonly bored, Theseus surveyed his present surroundings with mild interest. He was standing on a wide, crowded sidewalk in front of a tiny cafe - the cute, little kind of cafe that had some quaint tables and chairs set out in the front, and was surrounded by a fence with fancy iron pickets. Across the street were several oriental-looking, two-story residential homes, and a bath house. Further down the road were a few sit-down restaurants and a martial arts supply store; and in the opposite direction, a crowded record store and a small bus stop. This was the large city of Hope's Haven. In some dimensions' Earths, Hope's Haven would be located on the island known as Japan. In this dimension, that body of land was simply known as "The Island."

Even farther off in the distance, Theseus could make out the large, adobe-colored stadium in which Earth's Tournament of Fighting Arts took place. He eyed the stadium rather bitterly; after all, it was the fault of the tournament that he was here on Earth anyway, standing in the middle of a crowded sidewalk, being jostled around by rushing passers-by, and getting scorched by the sun. It was also, of course, the fault of those Netilieiy. He thought angrily, for not the first time, that those princesses may just be more trouble than they're worth.

Ah, the Netilieiy. Theseus remembered the old Netilieiy, the original three. Those young women were charmers, that was for sure - maybe a little different, but still they were very agreeable, which was probably what made them so revered across the macrocosm. And how could they not be a little different, doing what they did? Not many others in the Universe, certainly not many twenty-something-year-old girls, would spend their lives wandering across the dimensions, learning as much as they could about the expanse of the cosmos and generally inserting themselves into very important affairs. Some considered them a self-righteous menace, but Theseus knew them as something else: just a simple group of three friends, dubbed the Netilieiy (a word meaning "angel") by the public, coming from humble beginnings in places on the opposite stretches of known existence from each other, and united by their dreams to see, and protect, the farthest reaches of that very spacious home of theirs - the Universe. Weren't even paid for it. Certainly, they were indispensable informants and assistants to the Shinsekai - that was the whole reason they were rewarded the honorary title of "princesses" of the planet - but they were never officially employees of the Council. He remembered the times they would visit the Shinsekai Embassy, bringing with them their cheerful smiles, their airs of great adventurers, and always some news of the outside universe. It was true that they hadn't only been important to the governors as informants, but also as friends.

That was probably why it caused Theseus such a raw pang to recall the day when the Netilieiy had disappeared.

He remembered clearly when he'd gotten the report from one of the lower interdimensional correspondence officers that the Netilieiy had not had any recorded contact anywhere in the Universe for more than six months. It wasn't unusual for them to be absent from their semi-permanent residence on the Shinsekai for that long, but to have interacted with none of the Shinsekai's innumerous correspondents across the Universe was highly suspicious. At that time the Council sent out a well-resourced interdimensional team to, at all costs, find the Netilieiy. How well Theseus remembered, as if it had been yesterday, standing with the rest of the Council and a gaggle of cheering Shinsekain citizens, watching the search parties take off from the Shinsekai launch deck, and oathing himself to the cause of finding the Netilieiy. Even if the search party failed, he would not let such important assets to the Shinsekai be lost. He would find them by himself, if he had to. Oh, how naive he had been! The fervent search had died out after more than a year of searching without even a hint to their whereabouts recovered, and three years later the search was officially called off by the Council. Now, more than forty years later, Theseus could not remember a more shameful moment in his life.

But as much as Theseus was sure they had failed, that the Netilieiy and all their dreams were dead forever, all hope was not lost.

About two years previous to the present, surprisingly well-documented and reliable reports began to surface about the Netilieiy's last whereabouts before their disappearance. From that same dimension, on the planet Earth, strange things were being noted by correspondence officers. Suspicious energy patterns resonated from it. Suspicious and familiar energy patterns. A team of government officials, including Theseus, had been sent to investigate it.

Using some complex technology that Theseus could never understand but knew how to operate well enough, the team tracked the energy patterns to their epicenter, hoping to find a clue to the disappearance of the Netilieiy. The governors expected to end up with some artifact of the princesses', maybe a journal, or even a grave - Theseus truly hoped not - but never, not in his wildest dreams, would he have guessed what they finally discovered.

A few of the team members were assigned to the field work, following the tracking technology to the concentrated center of the energy on Earth. The tracking technology lead them to a house. They held the house under surveillance and found it was inhabited by a human family. They found the family was inhabited by two parents and three daughters. They watched the daughters as they came and left the house, passing through the field of their tracker, and found that they were, inarguably, inhabited by the distinct energy signatures of the Netilieiy. Essentially, if you were a complex tracking technology, you would insist that these three girls were the Netilieiy.

But then, there was the slight problem that it wasn't quite normal to walk right up to someone's house for no apparent reason and plead to talk with their daughters for the sake of interdimensional affairs. They needed a plan. So, some genius among them forged official-looking documentation about a youth scholarship program to show to the parents as means of convincing them to allow an interview with the girls - while the parents thought they were being interviewed for a scholarship, the councilors could educate their daughters about their interdimensional origins and related matters. It wasn't a foolproof or particularly inspired plan, but it was something.

Theseus recalled sitting in their living room with two other "scholarship executives," staring in disbelief at those three miracles. They were definitely not human. Their parents might have been, but the tracking technology never misspoke, and as Theseus glanced at it discretely on his wrist (in the form of a watch), it showed clearly that the energy patterns omitted from the three girls matched the patterns of the lost Netilieiy's species' identically. And they even looked like the Netilieiy, in some ways. This one's eyes, that one's hair, the other one's smile. Here were these last shreds of the Netilieiy's nobility, their dreams, in whatever way they had been preserved. Theseus, in some way, had upheld his oath.

It was an interesting interview with the young girls. How do you tell a trio of sheltered, ignorant Earthlings that you are not only from a different planet, but also a different dimension, and that you believe they originate from such a place, too? Most likely, they would think you were a science-fiction fanatic who had fallen off one too many life-sized spaceship replicas. But somehow the Shinsekains got the information out in the open, and could only wait for the girls to respond.

And then the three Earthlings threw something at them that positively confirmed everything.

They had dreams, they admitted. Strange, confusing dreams. When they were awake they always felt as if they were somehow out of place, like they'd been assigned to the wrong life, but when they slept they had visions of being foreign places that were as comforting as they were cryptic. Dreams of traveling through the stars, which all of their earthly education told them was ridiculous. And then for the kicker - in their dreams, they had two names. The birth names given to them by their parents, and other names that dream-people called them: Akitoshi, Yoshida, and Tiawanii. Surname, Netilieiy.

The rest was history.

The neo-Netilieiy had been recovered and brought back to the Shinsekai eighteen months ago, a cause for copius celebration throughout the Universe - although there was also much controversial debate over how these supposed Netilieiy were related to the non-human originals if they were descended from a human family, an issue that was never resolved. That aside, the transition was made smoothly. On the Shinsekai the Netilieiy would study the ways of the Universe, diplomacy, and history, and of course, they would be trained up to defend themselves. And they did so, taking residence at the Yosei Shinsekai Embassy and inserting themselves in the everyday lives of the Shinsekains, making the Netilieiy once again a commonplace entity in the Universe. The Netilieiy, Yosei Shinsekai's princesses and strongest allies and informants, were born again.

Unfortunately, they screwed pretty much everything up.

It wasn't that they were bad people. In fact, the girls were far more decent than your average person. It was easy to see in them the very things that made the original Netilieiy so special - a love and passion for the Universe, a talent for the extraordinary, and, unfortunately, restless, wandering spirits. The kind of spirits that disallow their possessors to sit around an embassy all day and be taught and trained. The kind of spirits that would occasionally steal a spaceship and run off to Earth.

It made Theseus wonder if they would ever again truly have their most valuable asset back, completely separate, independent, and without prompting from the Yosei Shinsekai.

Theseus was so absorbed in his less-than-warm feelings towards the Netilieiy that he did not even notice what appeared to be a flickering orb of light fluttering toward him. Passers-by in front of the little old cafe did notice it, however; many of them doubled back on the bustling sidewalk to get a second look at the strange apparition. Upon closer inspection, one would discover that the glowing light was being emitted by a female fairy, who was now buzzing around Theseus Garlock's head in a futile attempt to get his attention. Many people stopped to stare and mutter to one another about this creature - it was not often that city dwellers got to see a real, live fairy, as fairies preferred the forest. The fairy, obviously tired of fluttering around Theseus's head with no results, landed on his shoulder.

"Oy! Master Garlock, sir!" shouted the fairy into Theseus's ear, tugging on his hair. Theseus jumped and tensely muttered something that sounded like "squiggle wiggle;" then he caught sight of the fairy on his shoulder, and relaxed slightly.

"Oh, it's you, Yosei," he sighed impatiently." Any sign of them?"

"Not one, sir," answered Yosei while brushing her hair delicately out of her eyes. Yosei had thick, powder blue hair that was cut just below her ears, fairy wings that resembled dragonfly's set squarely between her shoulder blades, and a long, slender figure - long, that is, for a fairy. In more literal terms, she was only about six inches tall. Like Theseus, she was much older than she looked. "I can't sense their energy anywhere on the planet, so they must be masking it," continued Yosei. Then she added with a smirk, "We must have taught them well, sir."

Theseus would have smiled at this remark, but he was currently too gloomy to be amused. He checked his watch and frowned.

"It's 3:00," said Theseus, running his hand through his wavy hair. "The rest of the council will be expecting us back at the Shinsekai in a few hours. But at this rate, we won't find those girls today, unless they walk right into our hands."

Just as Theseus got these words out of his mouth, Yosei spotted three unusual characters out of the corner of her eye. The strangers were fighting through the close-knit crowd, trying in vain to move quickly down the sidewalk in front of the cafe. Wearing deep-blue traveling cloaks, with white silk scarves draped over their heads and wrapped around their necks, the three strangers looked like traveling gypsies. Their oddly familiar eyes, which were the only parts of their faces that their scarves left exposed, looked frantic and nervous. And those eyes did look very familiar, although it seemed to Yosei that the gravity swamping them looked strangely misplaced -
CLICK, went Yosei's brain as she understood where she had seen those eyes before.

"Master Garlock! Sir, look!" Yosei whispered excitedly, once again tugging on Theseus's hair. "See those three over there, in the traveler's cloaks?" She pointed over at the strangers, who had stopped at a light post some ten yards away, where there was a break in the foot traffic - apparently, they were regrouping themselves.

"Oh my!" gasped Theseus at the sight of the travelers, and Yosei nodded vigorously in agreement. Then Theseus continued, "Look at what they're wearing! They must be cooking, it's as hot as -"

"No, no, not that! Don't those travelers look at all familiar to you?"

Theseus stared in confusion for a while - and then, he looked as if he had just been stuck on the back of the head with something very solid. Yosei could almost hear the reverberating, hollow ring.

"Oh yes, I see!" he whispered with very wide eyes. "Why would anyone be wearing a heavy cloak in the heat of summer unless he was trying to hide his identity?"

"Or her identity," added Yosei, her eyes locked on the travelers.

Slowly and cautiously, Theseus, with Yosei perched on his shoulder, began to edge through the crowd towards the light post around which the cloaked strangers were gathered. When they were about three feet away, Theseus and Yosei realized they didn't need to be stealthy, because the three strangers were deeply immersed in conversation, and hadn't noticed their arrival in the least bit.

"Well, yeah, they've probably already realized we're on Earth," the tallest cloaked figure was saying. The voice was slightly muffled by the scarf over its owner's mouth, but it obviously belonged to a female.

"Are you kidding!?" said a shorter, more compact cloak-ee. "They've probably already got members of the council on the planet!"

"But unless they've read the paper lately, they won't know where on Earth to find us!" replied the tall girl.

"Yeah, they're probably on the other side of the planet from here!" chimed up the third member of their party, whom sounded several years younger than the others.

"Or maybe," said Theseus, stepping into view of the three girls, "they have a member of the council standing right behind you."

The three cloaked Netilieiy turned around to find themselves face-to-face with none other than Theseus Garlock