Courtney Fargo sighed wearily as she slumped down into the padded chair at the rear of the lounge, coffee in hand. She usually didn't drink coffee, but that only made the bitter, unpleasant taste more helpful in jarring her awake as she threatened to lose consciousness.

"Glad to be done with all that…. Yeesh. The little brat sure was a handful." Regardless, she allowed herself a slight smile, remembering the bond of respect and trust that she had forged with Princess Serenity during her training. The girl had been spoiled, whiny, and cowardly when Courtney had first taken her to the Senshi training grounds on Earth. And really, she had still been spoiled, whiny, and cowardly when she had escorted the princess back to her home on the moon. Yet the girl had completed the training, and proven herself quite readily.

Courtney's smile grew as she swirled her coffee around in its cup, waiting for the liquid to cool to drinkable levels. Despite the girl's attitude, Courtney had become far closer to Serenity than she had any of the Senshi that were sent to her for conventional combat training. Likely because the other Senshi did what they were told and took the training seriously, but still, Courtney couldn't deny that getting in a giant pillow fight with Serenity had been far more fun than teaching Saturn how to spin her glaive around without impaling herself.

One sip of the dark liquid in her mug, and Courtney's smile twisted into a disgusted grimace. "Damn it all… why does the moon have such moronic daylight cycles anyway? Ugh! Hell, I was half asleep when the princess was going through her trials! You'd think they'd push the whole thing back a day rather than have the participants staying up thirty hours straight!"

After making sure that everyone else in the shuttle lounge knew the full extent of her current discomfort, Courtney went back to slowly drinking her coffee. She had gotten only two hours of sleep since she had left for the moon before the trial, but she couldn't sleep yet; she still had some business that needed to be addressed before she returned to her home in the mountains.

"Hmm… still not here.  Bet Security's got him, going over some crap he brought or something," she muttered to herself, staring through the external viewport at the Moon, as the planet slowly receded into the distance.

Often, the combat trainer wondered why her family had been chosen to train every generation of Senshi and princesses, when the Fargos had always been located on Earth. Earth had very weak ties to the Moon Kingdom compared to the other planets, so Courtney had found it odd that they'd think to send their most valuable soldiers there in the first place. Didn't the other planets have decent melee combat trainers?

Of course, the Fargo family was more than just "decent", but it still didn't make a whole lot of sense to Courtney. She had asked her mother about it once before she had died, but the elder Fargo had merely said that their family's master warriors were the best candidates for the job; either the woman had some reason to hide the roots of it all, or she herself did not know. The latter was more likely, the Fargo line had been training Senshi in the arts of non-magical combat since longer than they had bothered to trace their history.

A man entered the lounge wearily, with his clothes in slight disarray. Courtney waved without looking at him.

The man immediately noticed the bright patch of red hair, which was tied into a pigtail and then pinned above the base of the braid, forming a loop.

"Ah, Miss Fargo. Good to see that all went well with the Princess. You are truly a master of your craft."

She smiled. "Always with the flattery. Let's get down to business, Yuhamaro."

Prologue: Power Surge

The scientist nodded, straining to lift the briefcase he had been hauling, only to let if fall heavily onto the table between them.

Yuhamaro breathed out a sigh of relief, and then unlatched the briefcase. "Thank you again for all the assistance you were able to provide. If it weren't for the connections that the Fargo family has to the throne, this project would have been discarded before it began."

Courtney snorted. "I'm not entirely sure how that's changed. Ultimately, even if you finish the project, the Senshi aren't authorized to use it, and from what I've gathered, they don't wish to. All your hard work could be for nothing."

Yuhamaro shrugged. "Eh, it's better than sitting in my lab playing solitaire until retirement. Besides, this project is just the beginning. If we're successful, this could lead to a complete overhaul in the way that the planets' powers are utilized! Think of it! A new age of magic merging ever more deeply with technology! It could lead to a whole new era for the Moon Kingdom!"

Courtney just rolled her eyes as the physicist began to daydream out loud. Yuhamaro was getting even farther ahead of himself than usual; the Queen had only given her consent and provided the resources requested so that Yuhamaro and his colleagues would stop setting up audiences through Courtney to try and convince her. To the queen and her Senshi, Earth's little "upgrade" project was just a big joke; the product of ignorant, backwards Earthlings trying to tinker with the greater magical heritage of the Moon Kingdom with their crude, inelegant technology.

She leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms over her chest. She supported the project fully, and tried to convince her former students of its value, but they merely humored her with false interest and condescending smiles, as if speaking to a child who was telling her parent about a new doll.

Feeling her mood dip downward, Courtney decided to stop Yuhamaro before he got too far into his inspiring nonsense. "Yuhamaro! The plans!"

The scientist started in surprise, being jarred back to reality from his pleasant euphoric hypothesizing. "Oh! Right, right…."

He pulled an item from his briefcase that resembled a picture frame with a translucent green grid inside it. Courtney watched the display intently.

"As you know, the ultimate goal of Surge is to reformat the Senshi's transformation matrices to maximize destructive efficiency. A combat upgrade. All things considered, this can be best accomplished through the use of effective small-arms weaponry that the queen often referred to as," he uttered the word around a bit bitterly on his tongue, "'barbaric'."

Courtney rolled her eyes and turned on the viewscreen. Immediately several profile images of different pistols appeared on the screen, and she nodded her head as she looked over each one. "Not bad. So you think you can get the transformations to create this stuff?"

Yuhamaro chuckled, and Courtney looked up with a raised eyebrow.

"We've already managed that part. On paper, at least. One of the biggest problems with this project is the feasibility of testing."

The combat trainer frowned at the training comment, but filed it away for later. "Already? It sounded pretty complicated."

The scientist shrugged. "It proved easier than we'd hoped, actually. The Senshi transformation already allows for the formation of uniforms and weapons, and as they are now, the magic matrices are hideously inefficient when you compare the type of power source they're manipulating. While Surge still doesn't come close to sealing that gap, it made our modifications very simple to formulate with nothing but an expanded blueprint for the Senshi's different transformation items. Even items as complicated as a particle cannon were simple to deconstruct into the transformation peripherals."

Seeing how Yuhamaro's explanations were starting to make her head spin, Courtney began rolling through the blueprints.

The first one showed a faceless female polygonal model in a blue-trimmed seifuku with low-slung holsters under each arm. She was holding two large handguns, one in each hand, and had the usual gem in the front bow replaced by a more angular one that glowed as if it held liquid fire within it.  The decorative belt had been replaced by a utility belt that mostly matched her skirt trim as well.

Courtney frowned. "Which Senshi is this supposed to be?"

Yuhamaro sweatdropped. "Well… that's not a Senshi, actually. Funny story! It turns out that the princess has a Senshi transformation herself that was designed with the idea of low-level engagement in situations where using the Ginzuishou would be considered gratuitous. Of course, the queen doesn't usually get involved in battles that don't require the level of power she normally uses, so it's kind of one of those dusty artifact type deals."

"Then why did you bother to make an upgrade template for it?" Courtney asked, utterly confused.

"Tonoda wanted to use the Ginzuishou's power to fire the Cosmic Reaver prototype antimatter cannon, so he built a template for the queen, too."

Courtney stared. "He actually built one of those?!"

Yuhamaro sweatdropped some more. "Well, yeah. It seemed like kind of a waste to me. I mean, it's completely useless unless the queen herself powers it up, and personally, I wouldn't have the guts to ask her for a demonstration without being far out of the cannon's range."

"I see," Courtney deadpanned, touching the smaller image boxes in the corner of the viewscreen. The display popped up to reveal the same figure standing below the Cosmic Reaver, a truly massive gun that floated above the figure's shoulder in total defiance of gravity.

"The more practical weapons are a pair of custom combat pistols, the 0.454 caliber Comet, and the 13mm Starscream. The Comet utilizes the magical matrices to form  super-dense armor piercing rounds with disruption charges in the tips to 'wear down' an engaged enemy, and carries a twelve-round clip, which is replenished indefinitely by the utility belt. The Starscream packs more 'finishing power', with a six-round magazine of heavy explosive rounds that utilize a type of disintegration effect that was originally part of the template's tiara. The magazine for the Starscream also has an experimental capacitor that we've put to use with a few other weapons that allow for the rounds to be 'charged' briefly for greater destructive potency."

Courtney nodded in approval. "I like what I'm seeing…. One thing, though."

Yuhamaro blinked. "What?"

The heavy combat expert pointed distastefully at the center of the model. "If you can change the transformation, then why exactly are they still wearing those damn cheerleading outfits? Those are the stupidest excuses for combat wear that I've ever seen; they should have been the first thing you changed!"

Yuhamaro darkened. "Well, you must understand… the queen… she really likes them!"

She stared at him incredulously.

The scientist sighed. "Even if it appears that Surge is a huge waste of time, we must do everything in our power to make our results appeal to our 'client'. That's something of a given in my business. And believe me, we don't like her preferences any more than you do!"

"Whatever," Courtney mumbled sourly, "let's move on to the real Senshi."

"Right, right. Next up is Sailor Mercury. Her visor has been remodeled into a two-piece system to minimize vision obstruction; the scanner is now a separate unit attached to her belt, and the visor unit has been stripped down into a targeting system. As a strategic weapon, Mercury's belt also carries mist-generating grenades. We're still working on the ice grenades, to freeze people and machines… but there's still a few bugs. Damn ice gets everywhere."

The viewscreen showed a different figure with a similar uniform that had a slightly lighter color skirt. This one had only one holster attached to its belt, had a device attached over her right ear that was attached to a viewscreen that covered one eye, and also had a headband propped up on her head instead of a tiara that sported a full array of vision enhancement gadgets. Strapped to her back was a long rifle that had a scope mounted on the top.

"Mercury gets the souped-up sniper fare, with a special type of ammunition; the rifle's rounds can be charged in the same manner as the Starscream to produce a 'cryo-shock' bullet that will freeze any reasonably sized target it pierces. Her higher level weapon is the experimental freeze cannon Zero, which has three firing modes: freezing bolts of energy, similar to her magic attack but with much greater rate of fire, a 'freezethrower' effect that fires a stream of magic that will seal anything it touches in ice, and an icicle cannon that acts as a water-based RPG launcher. We're trying to modify the freezethrower mode so that it can fire a heavy beam instead."

Courtney twitched. "An icicle cannon?"

Yuhamaro sweatdropped. "Tonoda's been really excited about this project. And he rarely comes to work completely sober."

She didn't bother to comment on that. "Okay… next is Mars."

The Mars model lost the gear that the Mercury model had, but sported a gauntlet on the left hand that ran the length of the figure's forearm. Attached atop the gauntlet was a long rectangular weapon with a barrel that flared out past the hand.

"The basic item is a devastator energy turret chassis that we've remodeled into the Demoneye heavy flamer. It has two modes: old-fashioned flamethrower, or it can shoot longer-ranged fireballs with a surprisingly efficient impact spread. The higher level weapon was designed by Tonoda. He calls it the Phoenix…."

Seeing the scientist hesitate, Courtney sighed. "Do I want to know?"

Yuhamaro scratched his head. "Well… it involves a lot of plasma…."

"Never mind," she muttered, "next is Jupiter, right?" The next figure had two gauntlets instead of one, and neither had a weapon attached. Propped up beside it was a cannon that was a bit taller than it was.

Yuhamaro nodded. "Primary weapon is the 30mm anti-armor cannon Crash, which fires armor-piercing rounds that can be charged to carry a high-energy lightning shock. Since you mentioned once that Sailor Jupiter took a particular liking to hand-to-hand combat, rather than gearing another firing mode into the Crash we also armed her template with twin lightning projectors, which take the form of full-movement gauntlets that are capable of delivering high-amperage bolts at short or point-blank range."

"So what'd Tonoda cook up for this one? He seems to love the experimental items."

"That he does," the scientist agreed, sighing. "He calls it 'Rain', and it's best if I don't try to explain the orbital satellites…."

"Righty-oh," Courtney said quickly. "So what's Venus get?"

Yuhamaro smiled. "Automatic weaponry, mostly. Twin Y-11 9mm submachineguns and a 5.56mm T-12 assault rifle. Tonoda actually showed some level of restraint with the experimental units in Venus' case, and just linked two armored Shinra minigun drones into the advanced level template matrix."

Courtney smirked. "'Restraint' indeed. What'd he want to do with it?"

The scientist sighed. "Advanced laser cannons. Come to think of it, he may still be planning to do that. Surge hasn't reached the final design stage yet, and who knows what he's been up to in the time it took me to come out and meet you here."

Courtney rose her cup of coffee to her lips to take a sip, then grimaced and pushed it aside in disgust. "You have to admire his dedication. I still say that these things'll never get used."

Yuhamaro shrugged. "We have to try. You yourself said that the Senshi's abilities are too unstable in nature to be tactically efficient. Sure they're effective, but only because they're overkill, power-wise."

"Not to mention really dumb looking," the trainer mumbled, yawning. "Who ever heard of using a giant heart as a projectile, anyway…?" blinking her eyes rapidly, she tried to cling to consciousness without having to reach for the rapidly cooling beverage at the end of the table. "So who's next?"

Yuhamaro frowned. "Unfortunately, that's all we have for now."

"What?" Courtney asked, surprised, "Why?"

The weapons expert sighed. "Of the remaining planets, only Saturn bothered to humor us by providing the necessary blueprints. The others apparently don't think we're even important enough to acknowledge, and while the queen gave her approval, all our resources had to be obtained by request. They might still give us the blueprints later, but at the moment our hands are tied."

Courtney nodded, frowning. "So where's Saturn's upgrade template?"

"Sailor Saturn possesses the greatest raw power of any of the Senshi," Yuhamaro deadpanned. "Tonoda snatched her blueprints up and I haven't seen them since."

The combat expert sweatdropped. "Uh… do you have any guns bigger than that 'Cosmic Reaver' thing?"

"Oh, believe me, he can design his own."

After sharing a sigh with the woman across from him, Yuhamaro stood up, snapping his briefcase closed. "I have to get in touch with the project team now. I'd like you to come down to the lab after we land."

Courtney blinked in surprise. "What? Why?" While she had been heavily interested in and had supported Project Surge, she couldn't think of any reason why they'd need her presence in a research laboratory. Hell, she couldn't even think of a reason why they'd WANT her presence in a research laboratory. She was a fighter, not a scientist!

Yuhamaro hesitated, glancing around himself. "There are… certain developments that I think you might take a special interest in. So I'd like you to drop by the lab as soon as we reach Earth."

"No," Courtney said firmly.

Yuhamaro blinked in surprise. "B-but… Why not?"

"Because I need some goddamn sleep!" The trainer growled, wobbling a bit as she slammed her hands on the table.

The scientist sweatdropped. "Ah. Okay, then. How about the next day?"

"Sho," the woman mumbled, before letting her face fall flat onto the table with a loud bang.

Yuhamaro blinked again. "I'm sorry? Fargo? Was that a yes?"

"Zzzzzzzzzzzz…."

Yuhamaro rubbed his forehead miserably as Tonoda looked over the newest list of requests sent by the Queen and the Senshi.

"So, it's not so bad. The queen just wants the weapons to match the general color scheme of the assigned Senshi, plus she wants that Senshi's symbol engraved into the sides."

The scientist sighed as the engineer began to hum to himself. "All right, fine. That's no big deal. What else does she want?"

Tonoda frowned. "Here's where it gets a bit tricky. We're to modify the weapons with voice recognition units that will only disengage the trigger safety after a certain command phrase, like 'Starscream Light Blaster!'"

Yuhamaro facefaulted, and then grabbed the edge of a lab table to haul himself up. "WHY?!"

"Hmmmm…." the engineer looked over the entirety of the missive. "Doesn't say. Orders from the queen, though."

Yuhamaro grit his teeth. "Why are they doing this?! The whole point of Surge is to upgrade the templates to remove wasteful initiation sequences like attack phrases and elaborate movements!"

Tonoda shrugged. "True. But at least they're paying us more attention now."

"THIS IS THE WRONG KIND OF ATTENTION!!" The lead scientist yelled, slamming his fist upon the laboratory wall in frustration. "They either ignore us completely or they take every opportunity to mock us! Can't they see we're just trying to do our jobs?!"

"Jeez, dude, chill!" Tonoda chided, shaking his head at his superior. "It's not all bad." Then he went back to the list. "Huh. Venus wants heart-shaped ammunition for her guns." He looked up in though. "Man, that's really going to mess with the chambering."

*Wham!* *Wham!* *Wham!* *Wham!* Behind the head engineer, Yuhamaro began to slam his forehead against the wall repeatedly.

"She also wants a bomb that 'explodes with the power of love'." Tonoda frowned, then turned toward Yuhamaro, who was accelerating the destruction of his cranium. "Would 'love-based' be a conventional weapon? Probably not, but I'm not sure…."

"GIVE ME THAT!!" Yuhamaro screamed, snatching up the letter and tearing it to scraps.

Tonoda blinked. "But what about the others? I know Sailor Saturn wanted 'healing bullets', but I think there was something else written there too!"

The weapons scientist growled and turned toward his computer. "They can mock my work all they wish, but I'll be damned if I'm going to let those snotty princesses interfere with it!"

"Well, you could just put a pressure trigger on a napalm charge and then tell Venus to test the bomb by hugging it."

Yuhamaro blinked, and then raised an eyebrow. "Well… that just might—" Then he started in surprise when he realized that the voice hadn't been Tonoda's.

Whirling around, he found Courtney smirking at him from the lab entrance.

"What's the matter? Not expecting me so soon?"

The scientist sweatdropped. "I expected you yesterday. I had assumed you weren't coming."

Courtney's smile dropped. Then she discreetly looked down at her watch. "God damn it…." she looked up again and scratched the back of her head. "I guess I overslept… a lot."

Before Yuhamaro could reply, Tonoda stepped forward, grinning widely. "I had no idea! The legendary beauty Miss Fargo, coming to a boring, sterile place like this! Why don't I show you around? Maybe buy you lunch?"

"No. Go away," Courtney deadpanned, backing up slightly.

Tonoda blinked. "Wow. That has to be the fastest rejection yet."

"Back up a little, or it'll also be the hardest," the combat trainer warned.

Thankfully for the both of them, Yuhamaro quickly pushed his subordinate out of the way and gestured for the redhead to follow him into the next room.

Courtney did so, and found herself in a meeting room with a giant viewscreen attached to the walls.

"So what'd you wanna talk about, Doc?"

Yuhamaro rolled his eyes; he wasn't a doctor, but as Courtney put it, to her 'all brainy guys are the same'. "Fargo, Surge has reached a breakthrough. And despite some… last-minute problems from our 'client', we've already begun the implementation phase."

She blinked. "No kidding? Well, congratulations!"

The scientist nodded and picked up a small item from the table, holding it up in his hand.

Courtney stared at it curiously. It was a diamond-shaped amulet with a depression in the middle, as if something should fit inside of it. The rest of the item was constructed of what appeared to be straight metal wires, buried just within the clear surface, that zigzagged around each other in sharp angles, giving the item a distinct "techie" image.

"This is the Surge chip. It's a transformation peripheral; the end product of our research." To Courtney's surprise, Yuhamaro tossed the item to her, without any warning concerning its handling.

She caught it, then looked closely at it. "This is it? I can't feel anything from it!" As a trained warrior, she was able to sense the power within objects and people, especially any who were connected to the Sailor Senshi, as powerful as they were.

Yuhamaro shrugged. "That's because it has no power. It's a shell, a blueprint. We tried experimenting with a few other power sources, maybe at least as an auxiliary battery, but it was no good. Nothing we can build can match the Senshi's power, and certainly nothing that we could clip onto one of those. These items are completely useless without the transformation items they were specifically constructed for. Without them, they're just wads of precisely built metal."

The trainer frowned. "Still, is it a good idea to just leave it out here like this? Someone could steal it or break it!"

Again, the scientist shrugged. "Wouldn't matter if they did. It's just a copy."

Courtney blinked. "You have more than one of these? I mean, other than the units for the other Senshi?"

He nodded. "Yes. The hard part of it all was deconstructing the transformation matrix and rebuilding it so that it formed what we wanted. The means of producing something that can do that, once we figured out how, was surprisingly easy. We could make a hundred of these without even putting a dent in our budget. As for stealing them…." Yuhamaro sat down at the head of the table, and gestured for her to take a seat next to him. "Well, the peripherals are useless without the item they were designed for, and the items they were designed for are useless unless in the hands of the people that the Surge chips were designed for. So security was never much of an issue."

Courtney stared at the item closely, then nodded and tossed it back onto the table carelessly. "Gotcha. So did you just want me to drop by to show me your new toy, or what?"

The weapons specialist shook his head, and clasped his hands together on the table. "Miss Fargo… we have discovered something among the data we were given to commence Project Surge. The means to construct a transformation pen."

Courtney blinked. "Makes sense. You're going to be messing around with that stuff, so it's best you know how it works."

Yuhamaro nodded slowly. "Yes… however, we now face a crossroads that we were unprepared for."

She blinked. "What do you mean?"

The scientist stood up, deep in thought, and began to walk around the perimeter of the room. "On most planets building a transformation pen would be useless, because there are existing items keyed to those planets' Ley lines, and thus drawing all the supplemental power for its Senshi. However, and I do not believe that anyone thought of this when we were sent the plans, Earth has no Senshi, and is a thus untapped power source."

Courtney shrugged. "Well, I figure that they're going to come down here and kick Earth in line eventually. They'll probably give us a Senshi then."

"Unless somebody beats them to it."

The combat trainer's eyes widened. "What? Why would you do that?" She started to get up, then hesitated. After seeing the scientist tense up, she slowly sat back down, deciding there was no need to take action yet.

Yuhamaro sighed in relief. "Let me explain! With these plans in our possession, and Surge ahead of schedule, we can shift our resources toward creating our own Senshi, one that utilizes a more efficient power scheme right at the roots!"

Courtney frowned. "But why should we? If everything you say is true, it seems a bit hasty to go do something like that just out of scientific curiosity. The queen might be furious!"

Yuhamaro grimaced. "She may be. Or perhaps this may save her. Surely you must have heard the rumors that are becoming more and more common."

"You mean about Beryl?" Courtney asked. "They're just rumors, and it's not like the Moon Kingdom can't defend itself."

The scientist snorted. "I'm a fairly well-respected counselor among the royal family here on Earth. What I hear are not 'just rumors'. And whether or not Beryl will ever become powerful enough to challenge the Moon Kingdom in full, they'll need all the help they can get. But more importantly…." He stopped pacing and looked toward the redhead. "Earth has no Senshi. If we are attacked, whether by Beryl or by some other threat, any other threat, I have reason to doubt Prince Endymion will be leading a charge to wipe out the attackers."

Courtney sweatdropped, nodding. It was another matter of some confusion as to why the royal family of Earth didn't make use of the same Fargo family that was esteemed throughout the solar system as the trainer of great warriors. Yuhamaro had a point in that Earth had no Senshi for her to train, but at the very least training other agents wouldn't require interplanetary travel of anyone. "So, have you run this by the King? I assume the Senshi of Earth would be under his command, since the Queen isn't involved in this."

Yuhamaro shrugged. "Well, that's up to you."

The warrior jerked back in surprise. "Me? Why would I have any say in it?" Just then, something dawned on her. "Wait, why are you telling me all this? How does this involve me? Am I supposed to find a candidate to be the Senshi of Earth?"

The scientist snorted. "No, I want you to be the Senshi of Earth."

Courtney's eyes grew large, and she stared at the man in front of her. "Whoa… this is heavy." Then she cocked her head to one side. "Why me?"

"Numerous reasons," Yuhamaro stated, sitting down across from her. "You believed in my work. I know I can trust you. You and your family have protected the royal family and many settlements for generations, if not nearly to the extent that the Senshi do for their planets. You have a very deep understanding of the Senshi's abilities and powers, as well as master proficiency with the type of weaponry we have offered them. And most importantly, I've seen you fight." He smirked. "They say 'those who can't, teach.' If that's true, then I'd like to see someone who can fight. They could probably destroy castles by squinting at them."

Courtney resisted the urge to bask in the praise, and rubbed her chin critically. "A Senshi, huh?"

Yuhamaro nodded, clasping his hands together. "Understand, I will only go through with this project with your full cooperation. If you don't want to do it, there isn't another person that I'd even consider to replace you."

She nodded absently, still thinking. 'A Senshi… all the power, but with decent weapons rather than those geeky magic attacks. Responsible for defending the entire planet Earth from evil. A chance to do what I've been training others to do all these years….'

Finally, the redhead looked up, and nodded decisively. "I have one question, and then we get started."

Yuhamaro looked surprised, but recovered quickly. "Of course. What is it?"

Courtney took a deep breath, and steeled herself. "W-will… Will I… Will I have to wear that uniform?" She asked, looking quite distressed.

Yuhamaro sweatdropped heavily, and there was a long silence. "…………… Uh… yeah, I think you do."

"GOD DAMN IT!!"

To be continued.

Webmaster: Larry F
Last revision: May 21, 2007