This follows Hidalgo's Collar and finishes up the small story arc of Nyelah Elle,in 2249, long before the "current" Bryan's time of 2402 (I'm going to go back and tag the date in the corners of all the Bug Comic renders, partly to keep me straight on what year it is;) Here Nyelah has made it to Portland in her borrowed boat. She was doing very well steering between the channel markers, but then she hit the chain that was stretched across the Columbia shipping channel--a good thing, since downstream of the chain the river was mined. The Marines sent out a little boat to pick her up, after confirming she was by herself and the registry on the boat was from Gresham, and were astonished that she had a Azali bit of loot in the form of a Mer collar--they'd never found a working one before, especially not one that turned out to contain maps and entry codes for many of the Azali bases in Northern California and Oregon (Hidalgo had been a tech, and was allowed a lot of access to bases, and the collar kept a record of all his travels.) Here she's come to a sudden stop on the stairway up the bank. After a very long day, it's just hit her that she can't ever go home again. The Marine with her has been telling her she'll have a place to stay, clothes, food, and be back in school as soon as possible; but Nyelah isn't really listening. Unlike many people who have lost everything in a natural disaster, Nyelah knows who to blame. And they'll be sorry, once she gets big enough to enlist. -------- I wanted to do this image even though it isn't great art (I've had a crappy sinus infection I can't get rid of), because it brackets the little story arc--the next image has the Vigilante antiaircraft platform in it as well, but aged the 150+ years to be in the background of Bryan's render, so that loops up with Bryan sitting under the statue of General Elle. --------- The uniforms that look ridiculous to me here are actually the cool Xurge HEV outfit, it just doesn't look right to me for the story--I'll fix 'em later. I'm still hating that blanket;)