Mind-Warping Continuity Note: This story takes place between ACTION COMICS #773 and SUPERMAN v.2 #164, and sometime after Episode #13 of the Tenchi Muyo! OAV.

Original Tenchi Muyo! concept by Masaki Kajishima and Hiroki Hayashi
Superman created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster

He'd been flying over the city for thirty minutes so far, and nothing. Well, nothing new, anyway. He'd already managed to thwart three muggings, prevent a traffic accident, and talk down a suicide case from a thirty story building. All in a night's work for Superman.

He looked at the city below him and wondered. Not that long ago, one of his old enemies, Brainiac, had somehow managed to tap into futuristic technology and upgrade himself into Brainiac-13. Using his increased power, he attempted to assimilate the entire world to match his advanced self, and although Superman had managed to stop him, the effect was reversed everywhere except Metropolis. And now his home had become a true City of Tomorrow, complete with flying cars, robotic servitors, and impossibly tall buildings.

He had to admit, at first glance, the Big Apricot looked more like Krypton than Earth these days. And from a scientific standpoint, you could have a field day figuring out how such a rapid change like the B13 upgrade could have on a large population. The question now was where such a scientist would even begin such an investigation.

Superman looked down at the railroad tracks below him and found his answer. He could hear the oncoming train shake the rails as it approached. The vibrations were... off somehow. Finally, as the massive three story train--popularly nicknamed the Rail Whale-- barreled out of the tunnel and passed under him, Superman could see just what had caught his attention.

It was moving about fifteen miles an hour faster than it was supposed to. And it was accelerating.

Superman flew down to the Rail Whale's level and examined the gargantuan wheels underneath. Already some of them were beginning to form imperceptible cracks and tears as they were being pushed past their normal design limitations. He moved forward to the engine and peered in with his X-Ray vision. There was no engineer inside--the Rail Whales were operated by computer console at Metropolis Union Station--but he did find an unfamiliar piece of machinery taped down to the engine's main computer. A red light on its face blinked, and the train suddenly increased its speed by another five miles per hour.

Not for the first time, Superman cursed the B13 upgrade. It was hardly as infallible as many liked to think, and since it was years ahead of its time, no one knew just how much wear and tear the technology could take. He said a silent prayer, and propelled himself ahead of the train, gently slowing until his back was flat against the face of the front car. And he pushed.

He couldn't risk smashing into the engine room and disabling the device, since there was no way to know how it was hooked up to the train. Superman's only choice was to try to force it to slow down, hopefully before it came to any sharp turns on the track.

The Rail Whale whined in response to his shoves, and he could feel the train accelerate against him. He could hear the motors straining to turn the wheels faster against the force he was exerting in the other direction. All he could do was to keep up the effort, pushing with as much strength as he thought he could use without damaging the frame of the front car.

Just as he began to question his tactics, Superman heard a crack from below. Then another. And another. And the train began to slacken its resistance to him. He turned towards the train and scanned it with his X-ray vision. The motors that turned the wheels had somehow disengaged, apparently as some sort of routine to keep the motors from overexerting and becoming damaged. Now the Rail Whale was in a sort of neutral mode, rolling along with nothing more than the immense inertia left over from its great mass and previous speed. Superman sighed in relief and dropped down to the track where he started running to stay ahead of the train. Then he grabbed the hull of the giant engine and crushed a pair of handholds into the frame. Now dragging the Rail Whale in his hands, he started running for the next station, trying his best to maintain the normal speed of the route. At last, when they arrived, he released his grip, and gradually shoved it to a stop just as it rolled into place.

"This engine has been sabotaged!" he called out to the maintenance staff. At once a team of humans and robots rushed out to check the situation. Meanwhile, some of the passengers began to disembark from the train. Superman flew into one of the cars to check on everyone still inside.

"Is everyone all right?" he asked.

"Hey! It's Superman!" one of the passengers announced. A cheer came up from the group.

"Is something wrong, Superman?" another one asked him. She held a small child in her arms who kept reaching out to touch him.

"Yes, there's a problem with the engine, and I imagine you'll have to get off here so they can make repairs," he explained.

"Attention! Attention all passengers!" the intercom broke in. At once everyone on board looked up to listen to it. "We apologize for the delay, but we have completed the removal of the damaged engine, and have installed a new one onto this train. However, due to the nature of the damage, this train actually arrived ahead of schedule, and this should not interfere with your travel plans. The Metropolis Transportation Authority appreciates your patience."

"Replaced the engine?" Superman asked. He looked out the open door and saw a large machine lowering a new engine onto the track, then roll away. The one he'd dealt with was already on a repair bay, being looked over by the maintenance crew.

"Wow! This modern design sure is somethin', huh?" another passenger commented. "If this was Chi-town there'd be no telling how long it'd take to get back on track. But here in Metropolis the trains actually speed up when they're busted!"

Superman shook his head in resignation and flew back out of the car. On the boarding platform, he found the object of his search.

"Washuu!" he shouted, diving down in front of her. "I want answers! Now!"

"And I have them!" the deceptively young-looking girl replied courteously, holding up a flat screen that floated next to her. It flickered with a series of alien symbols and numbers. "You see? The people of this city have acclimated well to their environment. They consider their technology so beneficial, that they won't even question a defect as long as it doesn't affect their convenience. Of course, I'll have to run a similar test on a more conventional subway, but I think it says a lot that the Rail Whale was doing well over 115% of it's normal cruising speed, and no one was even concerned. And I haven't even considered the affect of your presence--"

He grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her slightly. "Listen to me! You can't risk these people's lives just to satisfy your idle curiosities!"

"I don't see how it's any different from what you do," she challenged. "It's not like you don't expose these people to danger every day. For instance, what if the robots who work in this terminal all went bezerk?"

The sound of clanking metal echoed in Superman's ears as she finished the statement. He spun around in time to see a multitude of robots stomping around the platform aimlessly, some of them swinging their arms without caution. Immediately, the people waiting for the next train scattered in panic.

"Would you destroy them, and cause untold damage to this station's maintenance crew? Or let them run amok so they could wreck anything in their path?" Her query was left unanswered as Superman leaped into a crowd of robots and began punching them with reckless abandon. A few started waving their arms at him and hitting him on the back, but he simply shrugged them off and kicked them aside. Finally, he ran to the railing on the edge of the platform and pulled loose the safety rail, twisting it into a horseshoe formation and gathering up all the robots into it. Once he had them all piled together, he bent the metal rail into a loop and tied it together into a bow.

"Well, I suppose there's less concern over a safety rail than a human life or expensive equipment," Washuu observed. "But you still walk into a situation and affect it by your presence. At least when I do it, it's deliberate and controlled. This 'hero' act's gone to your head."

"What's it going to take to make you stop treating humans like test subjects?" Superman demanded.

"Ooohhh, is that all that's bugging you?" Washuu asked. "I confess, I thought I'd give that roommate of yours a wide berth, but I can further confine my experiments to... lower life forms, if you like." She opened another dimensional portal and jumped into it. "Seeya around!"

Superman clenched his fists as the portal closed just before he reached it. He'd have to start all over again. The difference was that he at least had a clue to work with this time. He took to the air and sped out of the station tunnel like a missile.

All of that had taken place a short time ago, according to what Superman was telling him now. Tenchi wasn't sure what was worse. On the one hand, Washuu, one of the five aliens living in his home, had run off to perform a series of inscrutable scientific experiments using a major Earth city as her research subject, or the fact that her activity had raised the ire of the most powerful man on the planet, and he hadn't even told him half of what she'd been up to so far.

"Heh..." he said meekly. "She did all that, huh?"

The large man in the costume nodded sternly in response. "And that's not all. After I--wait, someone's coming."

Tenchi looked off in the direction he was facing and saw nothing. He was about to ask what the other man was talking about, but after a few seconds he heard her too.

"TENCHI!"

The young woman ran as fast as she could in her long kimono, and when she finally arrived at the foot of the stone steps where Tenchi stood, he could see she was carrying a pair of scissors in her hand.

"Lord Tenchi, I wouldn't have come all this way unless I felt this were a matter of simply the utmost importance, but that--that--" she stopped in mid-rant to look past him at the large man standing behind Tenchi. "Er, excuse me, sir!" she said, her voice suddenly dropping a few decibels at the sight of an outsider. "I, er, I don't believe we've met... are you a friend of Tenchi's?"

"Something like that," Superman said with a smile.

"This is Superman, Ayeka," Tenchi explained, holding out a hand to present him in a more official manner. "Superman, this is Princess Ayeka of the planet Jurai."

Ayeka's face went pale at this introduction, and she glared at Tenchi with her pink eyes wide open. "Ahhh... a-heh-heh! Tenchi, you shouldn't tell such silly jokes to our guest. We wouldn't want him to get the wrong idea, now would we? Such a flight of fancy, that I would be from another--"

"He knows..." Tenchi muttered to her.

"He knows?!" Ayeka gasped.

"He knows..." Superman shrugged. "Some of it anyway. I was just filling in the gaps with Tenchi before you showed up. I wouldn't be worried, Your Highness. I'm from another planet myself, as a matter of fact. I hope you're finding your stay on Earth to your liking?"

"It... certainly doesn't get dull, I have to say," Ayeka said with a forced chuckle. She started to relax a little and then she remembered what she'd come out her for in the first place. "Oh, of all the times to meet a visitor NOW, in the disheveled state I'm in! That woman must be having a hearty laugh knowing I'm embarrassing myself in this way!"

"Ayeka, what's the problem?" Tenchi asked. "You look fine."

"THIS," she shouted, turning around to reveal a long, knotted tangle of purple hair dangling from her head, "is the problem!"

Tenchi examined the disaster and looked back at Superman, who was trying his best to hold back a smile. "What happened?" was all he could ask.

"That monster happened," Ayeka raved. "I cannot believe that she would stoop to such a level! We were watching soap operas on the television, and there was an actress with braided hair, so we got to talking and she offered to do mine in the same fashion!"

"Demon?" Superman asked.

"Mmm-hmmm..." Tenchi nodded. He'd already explained how Ryoko had joined their little group, as well as a quick summary of her reckless ways. Of course, it was a confusing relationship between the two of them. Just by looking, he couldn't tell if Ryoko had sabotaged Ayeka's hair on purpose, or if she honestly didn't know what she was doing and simply refused to admit it. Or she was drunk at the time. Ayeka had a remarkable tolerance for liquor, and occasionally forgot that her fellow housemates couldn't keep up with her own sobriety. "Listen, Ayeka, maybe you should go back to the house and we can figure out something when I'm finished with Superman, OK? I'm sure it was all just a big misunderstanding--"

"I will NOT take this indignity lightly, Lord Tenchi," Ayeka insisted. She held up the scissors and clipped the blades twice in her hand. "This calls for swift and uncompromising justice... let the punishment fit the crime."

Tenchi slapped his forehead and tried his best to drive away from his mind images of Ryoko and Ayeka chasing each other around the house with razor blades and cans of shaving cream, blue and purple hair strewn across the floor in their wake. It was so vivid that he almost didn't hear Superman speak up.

"Um, it may not be my place to say this," he offered, "but what if I could just defuse this conflict before it escalates any further?"

"Well--well what can YOU do?" Ayeka asked.

"You'd be surprised," he said with a smile. "Just hold still, OK?"

She did as he asked, and in a blur of red and blue he sped behind her back and Tenchi looked on in astonishment as the mangled portion of Ayeka's hair was caught up in the miniature whirlwind Superman had created. Ayeka shuddered in discomfort for a few moments, but when it was all over she turned around to find Superman standing triumphantly before her, holding out his hands to present his handiwork. "How'd I do?" he asked modestly.

"Looks all right to me," Tenchi nodded as he examined the end result. Ayeka's prized locks hung in two symmetrical ponytails as they always had. "Of course, it's not braided anymore, but you can live with that, right, Ayeka?"

She reached around and drew one of the long strands in front of her to see for herself. "Why, it's as if nothing was ever wrong with it! But how--?"

"It's just a matter of untying dozens of minuscule knots in a hurry," Superman replied. "No harm, no foul. Right, Princess?"

She sighed. "Well, I suppose there's nothing left to be upset over," she conceded. "I might as well return home, then. It was very nice meeting you, Mr. Superman. And thank you for everything."

Once she had safely walked out of earshot, Tenchi wiped his brow in relief and sat down on the steps. "Man, I was sure she'd tear the whole countryside apart before she settled down. I appreciate it, Superman."

"Does that sort of thing come up often?" he asked.

"You might say that," Tenchi groaned. "Sometimes I think I'm the only thing standing in the way of an all-out war with those two. Still, every once in a while they manage to get along. It's like the eye of a hurricane, though."

"What's her story?" Superman asked.

"Well, the legend of the shrine I unsealed involved a samurai who trapped the demon in that cave seven hundred years ago. She's his fiancee."

"Is that a fact?" Superman mused. "Hmmm... doesn't look a day over two hundred."

"Juraians have longer lifespans than humans," Tenchi said.

"I'd gathered that," Superman smiled. "Just making a joke. I do that sometimes."

Tenchi felt an uncomfortable warmth in his face. Of course. He was kidding. He wasn't even out of high school, and he already felt like he was getting too old for this.

"So this samurai would still be alive after all this time," Superman suggested. "He might take issue with the way she was looking at you just now..."

"Uh, yeah, well... It's complicated. See, she's his sister, too," Tenchi explained.

"Uh-huh."

"Half-sister, actually," Tenchi added quickly. "And you can do that on Jurai, you see. Marry your own relatives. At least, that's what she told me."

"Right."

"I mean, it's not like Earth, you know." Tenchi added. "Things are different for them."

"Tenchi, on my homeworld, a thousand year war was fought over an aristocrat who tried to have her son married to a clone of herself. It indirectly led to the destruction of the entire planet. I'm hardly in a position to question other people's mores concerning intermarriage. If Jurai's still in one piece, I'd say they know what they're doing."

"Oh. Sorry," Tenchi squeaked. "It's just that I never had to explain all this before. I wasn't sure what kind of reaction it would get."

"So how did all these aliens become players in a human legend?" Superman asked.

"Well, you see," Tenchi said, clearing his throat, "Yosho was half human, and that made for a tricky political situation, since he was next in line to become the king. And since he figured Jurai's loyalty would become divided between him and Ayeka--who's full-Jurai--he figured on leaving the planet and settling down on Earth."

"Let me guess," Superman interrupted. "He finds out about the space-pirate, leaps into the sky after her, and fights her all the way to Earth, leaving his betrothed back home to clean the dirty dishes until he gets back."

"Yeah, pretty much," Tenchi agreed. "Only he never returned, and Ayeka spent the last seven hundred years looking for him, along with their little sister Sasami. It wasn't until I unsealed the shrine that she was able to track him down to Earth, and to make a long story short--"

"He's your grandfather," Superman concluded. "And after he concocted the legend of the samurai and the demon to keep the locals from the truth, he settled down and adopted the guise of a simple shrinekeeper who teaches his grandson swordfighting in his spare time."

"I'm impressed," Tenchi whistled. "How did you--? Oh, right, the super-vision. I keep forgetting."

"Your grandfather also gave it away with those fancy fighting moves of his. I haven't seen anything quite like that on Earth," Superman replied, pointing to his left temple. "And he doesn't need those glasses he wears, and that raised a red flag... My only question is how he's become an old man after all this time, but his sister still looks like a high school yearbook photo."

"Well, I'm not quite sure on that, actually," Tenchi admitted. "Change in the environment, maybe? Something to do with the space trees that Juraians use. When his crashed here, it took root in the soil, and that might have affected his life force, right?"

"Don't look at me," Superman chided. "I'm not the crown prince. I'm asking you."

He scratched the back of his head and sighed. "Well, y'know I just found out about all this stuff myself not too long ago. I'm kind of surprised I've managed to sort it out as well as I have. It's kind of weird to think about, you know?"

"Actually, I can relate," Superman nodded. "Still, one of these days you'll find yourself in a situation where you'll need to know these things. Burying your head in the sand when the hard truths come along... well, that attitude was what destroyed my own people. I'd hate to see the same thing happen again, all right?"

"I suppose that's how you were able to find Little Washuu so quickly, right?" Tenchi asked. It was kind of an obvious ploy to change the subject and get the microscope off himself, but at this point he was getting desperate.

If Superman caught onto his discomfort, he didn't let on. "As a matter of fact, it did. I don't know where Professor Washuu comes from, but in Metropolis, there's only a few places you can go for the kind of test subjects she had in mind...

It didn't take long to find what he wanted. He just followed the sounds of animals screeching. The Metropolis Zoo.

Superman was met at the gate by a tyrannosaurus rex. It was already straddling the fence and eyeing the rest of the town hungrily.

"Great. Just great," Superman groaned. He looped around the dinosaur and hung just out of the reach of it's powerful jaws. It snapped at him, but missed, and the giant reptile was forced to climb back inside the zoo to chase its new prey. Superman quickly raced for the interior of the zoo, looking for the first large cage he could find. It didn't take long to track down just the thing: one of the B-13 modified environment cells with a shattered Plexiglas screen. Superman dove inside and waved his cape to keep the creature's attention, and once it was lured inside, he rushed back out and started picking up the fragments of Plexiglas on the ground. In a flash of super-speed, he assembled them all back into place, using his heat vision to melt the shards back into a single sheet. It wouldn't stop the tyrannosaurus from escaping again, but it would hold him off long enough to assemble a more effective barrier.

Washuu came from out of the bushes nearby to find him bending safety railing into an "X" shape over the window. "What IS it you have against railing, anyway?" she asked. "And while I'm at it, what's the big idea messing up my work?"

Superman welded the last connection into place and sped to her side in an eyeblink. "Your 'work' is a hazard to everyone living in this city," he pointed at the sign on the envrio-cell, which read "LION". "Care to tell me what you hoped to accomplish changing big cats into extinct animals?"

"I have my reasons," Washuu answered defensively. "But if you keep locking them back up in their cages, I'll never finish! It makes me wonder if you aren't just a HAIR jealous of my expertise on this matter, Kal-El."

"I don't CARE what you think," Superman fumed. "These people trust me to defend their lives, and I won't stand by while you endanger them like this."

"If that's the way you feel about it," Washuu replied. Without warning a ball of orange energy formed in her hand, then shifted into the shape of a staff. She grasped it in both hands and struck him across the leg with it.

Nothing happened.

"I hope that was your idea of a joke," Superman declared, crossing his arms across his chest. "Now why don't you come along quietly for a change--"

She looked down at the energy blade she'd just used, and chuckled nervously. Just then another portal opened up behind her and she leaped after it without missing a beat. "Gotta go!" Washuu laughed.

Washuu found herself in the middle of the park. She was ahead of schedule for this stop, but with that blasted man wrecking her experiments, it'd take all night and all morning just to get caught up. "Lousy Kryptonians," she muttered, shivering as a gust of night air blew over her. "Always thinking they know it all."

"I resent that," she heard from behind her. Washuu spun around and found a familiar man in red and blue waiting patiently for her. "Don't look so shocked. This time I got a chance to look at the inside of that portal of yours with my X-ray vision. Not enough heavy metals to be a residential or industrial area. So I guessed the park, and here you are."

Washuu just widened her eyes and growled in irritation. "Well, let's do it your way, then." She took his hand in hers. "Better?" she asked.

"Better," he said.

"That's nice." Suddenly she jerked back on his hand and grabbed him by the trunks of his costume, then threw him into a nearby bridge over a creek.

Superman emerged from the brook in seconds, tossing off a bent piece of steel from his shoulders. "You're pushing it," he snarled. His roar was cut short when he looked out and couldn't find Washuu. "Where did she--?"

"Now let's see if we can't make you a little more easy-going, eh?" Washuu said, floating above the brook behind Superman. Before he could react, she clamped down her hand onto his exposed neck, and a painful energy coursed through his body. He screamed in agony.

Astonishingly, Washuu whimpered out as well. "Some--kind--of feedback!" she shouted, then flew back onto the land with a jolt of electricity.

Slowly Superman recovered and levitated out of the water. He was still woozy from the attack, but without knowing the exact nature of Washuu's power, he wasn't certain if she hadn't caught the worst of it. A quick scan of the area showed her lying prone against a tree trunk, smoke wafting up from her hands and face.

"Miscalculated," she coughed, wiping soot from her eyes. "Figured your cells would be roiling with energy, but I had no idea your biochemistry was so..."

"You can tell it to the authorities," Superman replied. "After you undo the chaos you've set in motion." Already he could hear sirens wailing in the background approaching the park. With luck they could find a way to keep her locked up for a while and he could still get a few hours sleep before work tomorrow.

A smirk on her face suggested otherwise. "I can see now that I have to reconsider my procedure," she said. "If you won't let me experiment on the city, maybe I'll just see how the city gets along without you..."

Superman lunged for her, but his hand passed harmlessly through her. Washuu's image then flickered and disappeared, leaving nothing but a tiny electric gadget on the ground. He sighed and cursed himself internally, realizing that she must have placed a holographic projector and left during the moment she was out of his sight. Now he'd have to start all over again.

But from the sound of it, she'd be coming for him.

"Wait," Tenchi interrupted. "Without you? You mean that was why she locked you up in the lab downstairs?"

"Exactly," Superman replied. "I don't know how she found out about it, but she managed to exploit my weaknesses and defeated me a lot more easily than I'd like to admit. Of course, it's one thing to understand that she's a super-scientist with centuries of experience and awesome power, but when you're confronted with a little girl giggling mischievously at you like that, I suppose I underestimated her from the way she'd been toying with me."

"Aw, man," Tenchi said. "I really can't believe this. I mean, if you took me over there, maybe I could calm her down. Or we could get Ryoko and maybe--"

"Ryoko?" Superman said suddenly.

"Yeah," Tenchi answered. "She's the demon I told you about before. See, as it turned out, she was actually one of Washuu's inventions who--"

"Great Scott," Superman gasped. "Tenchi I've MET this Ryoko person if I understand you right. And I don't know how to tell you this... but I was forced to destroy her!"

"Lessee, Almerac, Apokalips, X'vyv'x, Rann, Colu, Oa, Thanagar... they all got some piece o' the Earth-pie. You'd think they ran tourism ads or somethin'."

Nagi sipped her beer and shook her head. If what this man was telling her was true, things would be a lot more complicated than she'd originally thought. "What you're telling me then," she said, "is that it's gotten too hot for you. Am I right?"

The fat yellow man shrugged his shoulders and held up a pair of long thin arms. "Hot's a relative term, after all. I'm just sayin' the going rate for a trip to scenic Earth isn't cheap these days. Time was, all you hadda worry about was the debris floating around the planet left over from their Mickey Mouse space program. Now you set foot in the stratosphere and suddenly eight guys in tights want your passport or somethin'. Mebbe you ain't noticed, but I don't have yer tastes in whips and big knives. For that kinda risk, it's gonna cost you."

"Let me explain myself to you," Nagi said quietly, looking the man straight in the eye. "Somewhere along the way, my usual mode of transportation started to get sick. I made it to a space station just before it lost cohesion altogether, and we've been hitching rides from point to point all the way to here, where they tell me you're the only cabbie in the sector who'll take a girl to Earth no questions asked."

"Sick?" he asked, bobbing his head in confusion. "You mean like some kinda space tree rig? Wouldna figured you for Jurai, but now that ya bring it up, them face markings remind me of a guy--"

"No questions asked..." Nagi sighed, taking another swig. "Now after all I've been dealing with along the way, and against all the opposition you've been saying I'll be up against, do you really think that a price tag is going to keep me from what I'm after? Name it."

"Seven seventy-five, junior," he said in a casual, practiced tone. Somehow Nagi was starting to wonder if this amount was any different from the any other rate he'd set for his services.

"Two hundred now," Nagi offered, "and nine hundred more when we get back. Provided you make a side-trip to pick up a second passenger."

He rolled his eyes and started tapping the fingers on his right hand with one on his left, figuring up the profit. "I can live with that. Shows you have some brains underneath that big black raincoat you got on, and the credits to go with it. Who'd you have in mind?"

"I only know him by reputation," Nagi muttered. "But the word is that he's a... colleague. Someone who knows his way around the planet. Someone who might keep the guys in tights off my back long enough to get what I want. You may know him, we'll go over that part later, but from what I hear we just have to check all the watering holes like this one..." she gestured around the booth they were sitting at and pointed out the dimly lit atmosphere. "I suggest we get going before he gets too soused to be of any use to me. Agreed?"

"You got yerself a driver, lady," he nodded. "One thing I don't get though. Let's say we find your guy, and we make it to Earth, and whatcher lookin' for ain't there. Then what?"

"Mr. K'raamdyn," Nagi growled, "I've been trying to answer that very same question for a good seven hundred years. For your sake, as well as anyone around me... let's just hope it doesn't come to that."

Confronted with this, the scaly jaundiced man started to quiver in terror and blubber in his native tongue. Nagi smiled at his display and simply sipped her drink.

NEXT: Achilles Heel