planar chaos part 2

The lights here were dim, when she awoke.

It was nothing she wasn’t used to, of course. The blinds in the small Alolan house her and her dear friend Kris had bought were drawn shut tight in her bedroom in particular.

But this wasn’t her bed. In fact, she was waking up on a cold steel floor, just outside of some strange device with a seat within.

She could no longer hear the burbles of the two children that she and Jack had been given, nor the squeaks and tiny roars of the Necrozma they had adopted. She couldn’t feel Xerneas anywhere in this world to call on, though her bonds to the Pokemon of Life were as tight as ever. She was thankful for that much, at least, because she had grown to be uncomfortable without that bond. Though it had, without a doubt, killed her before, she knew that Xerneas – Vasanti, as she called herself in human guise – cared for her like a daughter. She needed that warmth after everything she had been through.

Being pulled away from the world like this disconcerted her, now that she was convinced that it would collapse without her.

She had first come to Kalos, because it was touted as a beautiful region and excellent for the mental health with its vibrance and artistic slant. When she met her traveling partner and began a journey to conquer their Pokemon League, she was caught up in a terrible, terrible plot by a man who had decieved everyone and seeded corruption throughout the region. He feigned benevolence with his invention of the Holocaster, while he gathered followers to destroy life as the world knew it. She rescued Xerneas from his clutches, while her partner Kris saved Yveltal, the Pokemon of Death. Now, they were inseparably tied to these deities.

When the disaster of Kalos, with its old legends and its ancient kings, and its Ultimate Weapon, had subsided, she and Kris decided that the region wasn’t worth staying in, as corrupt as it was. The professor even tried to defend the maniac during their parade of heroes. They went to Hoenn, good for their healing bodies with its beautiful nature and clean, pure air. Now, they were caught in the battle between two apocalyptic cults, one which wanted to reset nature to the oceans of the beginning, the other who wished to dry the seas to curb overpopulation and stimulate scientific progress. Though it was more simple to handle than Kalos had been, it was still a disaster. They tried to give Hoenn a second chance, but then were made to ride the king of the skies, Rayquaza, into space to destroy a meteor.

With two more apocalypses averted, they chose to rest now in Alola. They were told that nothing ever really happened in Alola, they didn’t even have a Pokemon League. To some end, that was true. To some end, nothing much did happen in Alola for a while. But when they chose to attempt the trials, they were sucked into a tangle involving a girl on the run and the Pokemon she was sworn to protect, a creature she called Nebby. She ran from the white-uniformed workers of the Aether Foundation despite their seeming benevolence, but overall, it seemed not to be anything to worry about. They met up with another pair of travelers; Kris’ cousin, and the gangly, cat-like woman with the blind eyes and bum leg that he had adopted. Like Lillie, he too cared for a Cosmog, that he had named Haru, because it felt right to him. Together, they traveled, keeping each others’ beings safe from those who didn’t know.

Until they reached Ula’ula Island, and Lillie – and both Cosmogs -  were captured by the ne’er-do-wells of Team Skull and brought back to the technical Aether Paradise. There, they experimented with the tears in spacetime called Ultra Wormholes. There, Lillie’s mother captured the two baby Pokemon and harmed them with the intent of going to save another world from a great and terrible being.

When that Wormhole opened before her, she felt her reality shatter.

She remembered the feeling well. Through her mind’s eye, visions of other worlds tore through her. The searing pain of irradiation, the horrors of being disintigrated with the rest of a universe, countless stabs and breaks and burns. And through it all, one constant. Two children, both hers. Hers, and the man named Jack’s. She had already been fond of him, considering asking him to date. But now they had to be united, by their children.

Her mind was overwhelmed by the sights and feelings of countless other worlds, but only one reached out to her in return. She heard whispers in her mind. It tried to corrupt a dragon tamer, and it failed. She controlled it, and in return it gave her a parting gift. Raw, pure energy, at first uncontrollable. It nearly drove her to uninhibited madness, and with this new gift she was able to possess her Kommo-o. She wished nothing more to rampage, but was stopped by… something. The witnesses later said it was another mirror of herself that stopped her taking the Aether Paradise down into the ocean.

When she regained control of herself, she practiced with her newfound power. She used it to scale the Vast Poni Canyon in tandem with her Pokemon, to climb to the Altar of the Moone with her partner, and their new companions. She used it to futily attempt to fight off an adult Necrozma as it stole away their children, and she used it to pursue the beast into the rift. When she got there it was already dead, murdered, having left behind an infant version of itself. A child, that didn’t know what to do with the babies it had been given to consume.

It too accepted her as mother, and she felt herself somewhere across the multiverse cry out in envy.

After those events, she was determined to make Alola her home. She and Kris became the very first champions of their Pokemon League, and she was named Dragon Master for her deeds in the other regions by the elders of her home in Blackthorn City.

But the Ultra Wormholes weren’t done with her yet. Villains from around the multiverse converged at the Aether Paradise and overtook it, villains from universes where they had succeeded in destroying or subjugating the world. When she laid eyes on the madman from Kalos again, her white-hot rage manifested in burning red runes and an indestructibility that would make even the hardiest Steel-type cower in fear. It was the aura and the rage of Xerneas, and it killed her for her Dragon-type blood. She was revived, and she was still recovering even now, even as she lay… wherever this was.

She didn’t realize before that cold steel could feel as good on recovering burns as a cold porcelain bathtub did.

This place was… interesting. It was almost as if it was colored specifically for the purpose of easing light sensitivity, because her eyes didn’t hurt looking around. She was tangled in strange, pliable white roots on the ground, and following them led her down into a chasm aboard whatever vessel this was and up into the back of the strange chair device that she had apparently fallen out of.

She checked herself over. Nothing missing or broken. Valuable dragon fang necklace, still there. Still wearing her clothes, with all her Poke Balls. That meant that only Magali would be missing, and she doubted the dragon would be happy about it. But she would worry about calming her when she figured out where she was and how to get home.

She felt like she recognized this place somehow. She rose to her feet, as unsteady as they still were, and hobbled toward a portcullis out of the room. This vessel had the same scientific, technological feel as the bottom of the Aether Paradise, and it made her a bit uncomfortable. On the other hand, it felt lived in like a home, instead of studied in like a laboratory. There were a number of coffee mugs and food labels strewn about the hallway she entered into, and some posters hanging on the metal walls depicting strange beings that looked humanoid, but were not human.

Something that looked like gray, spreading flesh with glowing red nodules expanded through the door to her right. Whoever ran this place, she was sorely tempted to leave a note for them regarding cleanup. To the left was a more normal-looking door, so she decided to examine that, first.

In this room was a comfortable-looking personal quarters, covered in more posters depicting those humanoid beings. Some were suplexing strange, square-headed men in space suits, and others were making burgers out of men who looked like they were made of ground beef. In the dead center of the room was a large tank filled with strange fish-like beings that she had never seen before, and another similar tank was built into the wall to the side, circling a set of gently-sloping stairs.

Right in front of the tank, on a pedestal, was a purple-ish black helmet gently levitating in place. It was surrounded by strange-looking flowers and clearly-handmade candles. There was a sheet of paper stuck to the front of the pedestal, with what she could only assume was some sort of strange language on it. It flowed like calligraphy, but didn’t seem to follow the conventions of any language she had ever seen before, except in her strange, Wormhole-induced dreams. Even with the dreams, she still wouldn’t have been able to read it.

This was clearly a shrine of some sort. Not willing to disturb it, she carefully examined the helm as best she could without touching it. What a strange headpiece. It looked like it was meant to cover the eyes, shaped strangely like a lotus blossom. If she got too close to it, she began to hear soft whispers beckoning her. Urging her to action in places she had never heard of or seen before.

Deciding she didn’t want to take her chances with mysterious whispers, she instead circled around the carefully maintained fish tank and into the main room. Next to the wall tank, an alcove containing a full-sized, real model of one of those humanoids carrying a crossbow and a whip. It was painted bright purple, with red and pink decals, indicating to her that whoever owned this place shared her taste in colors. It had strange ear-like protrusions and glowing fixtures on its face that made it look like eyes, and it shared a very similar body type with her.

 On another pedestal, another one of those strange humanoid creatures danced in a hologram. Next to that pedestal, an expensive looking Pokemon bed… or at least, she assumed that’s what it was. Maybe these were Ultra Beasts that lived here? A cushioned bench lined the back end of the fish tank, covered mostly in soft plush dolls of these Ultra Beasts. And in front of that, a large window…

… showcasing the vastness of space in front of her.

She was on a space ship.

In space.

“Operator?”

She jolted, falling onto the floor again and hissing as her wounds lit up like burning fire. The voice that asked for its Operator was feminine and synthesized, like a Porygon’s, but somehow more than that.

“Operator, you look… older.” The voice glitched, and hissed with static. So, less like a Porygon, and more like a Porygon-Z. That could really only bode well, huh.

“You mean… me?” She asked, cautiously.

“Yes? You are the Operator, aren’t you? Your biological signatures are exactly the same.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t know who you are. I don’t know where I am, so if you could just maybe ask your trainer to let me go...”

“What do you mean ‘trainer’? Have you lost your memory? Have all of those Ancient Earth video games seeped into your head?”

“What? No! I remember everything! Just tell me how far away from Alola we are and how I got into space.”

“Operator, what is an… ‘Alola’? I don’t have any such things in my data logs. Have you been bathing in coffee again- no, no, the locks don’t seem to have been bypassed on the espresso maker...”

The thought of bathing in coffee while she still had very raw, healing burns over her skin made her shudder. Ow.

“Have you been wounded?! No one’s been on the ship- how?! Operator, get to the main freighter’s medbay.”

“No, I don’t need to go to any medbays! Tell me where I am! I’m not your Operator!”

“Yes you are. Your biological signatures are exactly the same, and, frankly, you reek of Void. If you aren’t the Operator, then you couldn’t utilize Transference. We’ll put this to the test.”

“What-”

“Requesting code-name Umbra, please come to Orbiter One. Code-name Umbra, Orbiter One.” She could hear the tinny, synthesized voice echo below her, confirming that there was indeed more to this place than one tiny ship. She heard some compartment or another open up with an air-sealed hiss, and the thumping of something heavy and wild on metal.

She was caught like a Deerling in the headlights when the door to what was obviously a personal quarters opened up, and one of those strange beings came down the stairs to investigate.

It was a male, that much was obvious and certain. It was one of the biggest men that she had ever seen, rivaling the size of some Black Belts from Cianwood and other Dragon Tamers from her home. He had skin of burnished, dark metal, smooth-looking yet scuffed by wear and tear, and he was banded with polished gold. On his face was a ridge like a Rhyhorn’s horn, and his metal skin was torn asunder to the right, revealing an eye. One very human eye.

Seeing that eye brought her to the conclusion that these were not Ultra Beasts at all, at least not the humanoid ones. These were, somehow, people.

He stood there, evaluating her with that single eye, wavering between an aggressive posture and a more neutral stance, as if he didn’t know what to make of this.

“Shiva, I’ve brought you here for a test. All biological signs indicate that this is, in fact, your daughter. I don’t know how she’s grown so much older in such a short span of time, nor does this damned caring precept let me neglect how burned she is. But she denies that she is the Operator of this orbiter, and I cannot initiate the Purge Precept without verification of Transference.”

“I don’t even know what Transference is!”

“The transfer of consciousness from Tenno to warframe!”

“What are either of those! I mean… transfer of consciousness… that sounds familiar but I have no idea what either of those things are. If you want special fancy powers I know sometimes I possess my Pokemon and we battle together and it’s helped me tame some dragons because I can get into their headspaces and understand them...”

“Operator.”

“What?”

“Ignoring the reference to Ancient Earth video games, that’s Transference. Right there. What you just described. Do that, but to him.”

“...What really? There’s a name for it?”

“Will you do it so we can address those burns!”

“Alright alright, fine!” She approached the tremendous being, and placed a hand on him, transferring her being into his body. It was a familiar experience to her, to become integrated with someone else, possessed of both her mind and theirs. She tried to avoid doing it to humans, but this, apparently, was a special case.

As she became one with the being that the disembodied voice called Shiva, his memories flooded her mind. She saw an empire of white and gold, and a woman who looked just like her mother, carrying two dark-skinned babies, one with red hair and one with black. Unmistakably her and her twin sister. She saw war against beings possibly more alien than the Ultra Beasts, and she saw a tent in which she was surrounded by two others, a young man in uniform and some horrible, twisted excuse for a human with blue skin and one arm far too long for his body.

The uniformed man was a happy, optimistic sort, proud of his father, while the blue man was malicious, taunting him silently while they played some strange board game. She learned that the blue man was a through and through traitor, seeking to end a bloodline by injecting the man this being had been with a virulent disease, aimed to turn him purely into a weapon of war. When the transformation was complete, she watched as the man was ordered to murder his son. She saw a life on the run, wild and uncontrolled, playing that last memory on repeat before finally confronting the blue man again. She felt disintegration and reconstitution, and she saw… herself.

She, as a child of no more than fourteen, was repeatedly throwing herself at this dangerous being to try to becalm him and find out what was the matter. This child, who turned out to be one of his daughters, took a beating for him. This child broke him out of his memory loop and finally helped him confront the man of blue. Suddenly, she understood who the Operator was.

They were right. It was her.

Just not the same iteration of her.

She watched them both stab the man with almost as much spite as she had felt in the moments after she had ripped Lysandre’s heart out, then watched the man carried off by some strange Ultra Beast-like life form with a human woman’s head, who told them this was what she really was.

After that, this man’s memories consisted of his trying to get to know her despite his form, and his terror at the possibility of killing her or her sister, too.

All of this flashed by her in the instants before the act was complete, and before she knew it, she was in control of the large man, able to see and act and feel in his body. She waited there for a moment while the disembodied voice processed the act, then allowed herself out of the body again, freeing the man.

“Transference verified. No need for the Purge Precept. Good. Shiva, what did you experience?”

The man began making hand motions into the air. She recognized them – he had been taught sign language for lack of a mouth to speak with, it seemed.

“Fascinating. So this one tells the truth about coming from a place called ‘Alola’. And you say she is correct about living amongst the creatures of an Ancient Earth video game?”

He nodded.

“Interesting. And all of this, while the others are on a mission to seek out the original Operator?”

He nodded once more.

“Very well. Bring this one to the medbay-”

He shook his head, signing more at the air.

“You say these wounds are supernaturally induced? And that there may be nothing we can do for them?”

One more nod.

“You understand of course that I cannot just let the Operator, even this one, stand around being as wounded as she is. How would those wounds even come to be supernaturally induced? Anything and everything can be rationally explained--”

More signing.

“… Except the Void, yes. I suppose that’s true. But surely these aren’t the burns of the Void?”

Head shake. Yet more signing.

“A god? I thought we abandoned such notions with the Orokin long ago. You say she was burned by a great, deer-shaped goddess of life… you’re certain of this?”

Nod.

“Strange… of all the times for the Lotus to be missing. She would have the answer.”

The being made a strange noise that almost sounded like a growl. She tried to back away, but the man wrapped his arms around her protectively, as if she were something to be defended from whoever this ‘lotus’ character was.

“Yes, Shiva, I know. Protect the girl from the Big Bad Sentient. Isn’t that the order of the day. You never knew the Lotus before Ballas came for her. She never steered the Operator wrong. She cared for her… interesting that this one has nothing to say. Perhaps there truly is something strange at work here, if this one does not know the Lotus. No reaction, even to her helm at the door.”

“I heard whispers...” she mumbled, “I decided I didn’t want to fuck with anything that was going to call me ‘my child’ directly into my brain pan and expect me to come hither. At least, I assume it did. That’s not good juju and I’ve been through at least three near-apocalypses so I know bad juju when I feel it. Fucking with deities is apparently my job now and let me tell you I’ve seen some shit. I know when something is too much of a basket of cases for me to touch.”

“… Yes, I’m certain now. This Wounded One is not our Star-Child, but she is the Operator, in a certain sense. Our Star-Child wouldn’t hear a single word against the Lotus, but this one deigns her helm ‘bad juju’. I’ll have to get in touch with the ship’s Regulator. We’ll see what he has to say about this mess, if he noticed anything strange while my attention was elsewhere.”

The synthesized voice faded out, leaving her with the man, still clutched close. Against her skin and her sensitive burns, she could feel the smooth metal, like armor, but pliable enough to enable movement. She remembered the discomfort and pain of reliving the transformation in his mind, and shivered a bit, before looking up into his eye.

The two stared each other down for a long time. Judging each other, evaluating each other. She understood that he now knew she’d never had a proper father, but she also now knew that he viewed her as his child nonetheless, because in this world, this iteration of her was.

“You know I don’t… really, trust the helmet, right? I never knew whoever they were talking about. If she cared for the one who actually is your daughter, that’s something different and it’s clear you don’t like it. I appreciate the concern, I really really do. It’s clear you love her, and it’s flattering that you’re just as willing to protect me. But I’m not gonna go blindly follow the whispers of some thing floating on a pedestal just because it told me to no matter how familiar the voice is.”

He nodded slowly, then released her.

“Where I come from, following strange whispers will get you killed by ghosts, unless you’re a spirit medium. You’d have to be careful in some particularly haunted places, because they’d be just steeped with Pokemon trying to drain your very life from you. That’s what Jackdaw was trained to do, he grew up in one of the ghost capitols of the- of... my, world. If she followed them, whoever this ‘lotus’ is must have meant the world to her. But I have no context. It just seems weird to me.”

He began to sign at her, but she shook her head in response.

“I’m sorry. I should have, but I never learned sign language… I never needed to, not with psychic... hang on. Maybe I have a solution to this.” She took one of her Poke Balls off the dragon fang necklace, and released from it a beam of energy, which the man watched with a certain fascination. When the Espeon within materialized, it immediately curled up on the bed in the room without a care for the foreign environment, though not without hissing in the vague direction of the helm. It seemed it didn’t like it either, bringing her some relief. It wasn’t just her being the odd one out.

“What a good day to Poke-sit for my sister then. Sapphire? ...No it’s not going to require any extra effort on your part. I need you to project what he’s thinking to me so we can talk. I can’t read any of the writing here and he has no mouth that I can see.”

The large, purple cat’s teal forehead gem began to glow, and it made a satisfied purring noise as it rolled around in the stolen bed.

The voice that entered her head was as deep as could be expected from such a huge man. <You are not my child, not the one I knew, but I should look after you just the same. It eases my weary, tainted heart to see my daughter grown, no matter the circumstances. Here you are, a fully grown adult who never had to suffer the Continuity trade or the Old War, as I’ve come to learn it’s called nowadays. And yet, you keep your Transference, something I was taught to believe was mere Void devilry. I am unique in my sentience, now, and I know something special when I see it. The Origin System could have used somebody as brilliant as you back then.>

“I guess I did save the world three times… but I know nothing about this place. Apparently everything I know is nothing more than an old video game. I’d believe it, given the dreams I see now, but… it’s not easy to have context.”

<The System still could use a bright guiding light like that. It’s impossible to have a light untouched, untainted by the Orokin now. Even you belong at home, with your… ‘Pokemon’. But you stand with confidence, despite your glimmering burns. You are strong and able. That’s something I wish I could have taught my daughters, but especially the one missing right now. Instead, I ran off to war alongside my son, and left them abandoned for fourteen years. Long enough for their mother to die, and then the surrogate that took them after Zariman. Long enough for them to be taken thrall by the Void. Long enough for a damned Sentient to be a better parent to them than I ever was. Long enough for that damned man and his ilk to seed her with a wrath I never wanted to see again. Mine. I should have followed her. I worry that her sister will bring back nothing more than a bloodied corpse.>

“Do you know where she went?”

<She has been so angry… I tried my best to keep her here, keep her with me. I needed to protect my little starlight like I couldn’t protect my son. She has spent her time lately spilling blood in the name of Vox Solaris, but I heard her mention that it wasn’t enough, that she wanted a Sentient to tear into after being faced with Ballas’ backpedaling. Before I could stop her, she left to the Plains of Cetus without any defense. No warframe, no weapons. Herself, and an Amp for her powers of the Void. I warned her fellows, her sister, that boy she fancies, the spy girl… and some time after they left, I was called up to this orbiter to find you.>

“I see. I’m going to be honest, I’m not sure I understand any of what’s going on here. I don’t know where Cetus is, and I only know about this backpedaler because of that Transference thing. Of all the things that could have stuck with me in the Ultra Wormhole incident… I wonder why it was that.”

<The Void works in strange, sometimes inscrutable ways. They believed it to be home to demons, some of them. There’s a reason it was called devilry. They feared it, and it did bring their downfall. I suppose that it may have reached through my little starlight, to you, somehow. But now, she’s missing, and here you are.>

“And somehow this isn’t even the most bullshit thing that’s ever happened to me.”

<… I know it doesn’t mean much, but I’m proud of you all the same.>

“What?”

<To have lived through doomsday and faced it down stalwartly repeatedly requires a strength of character that I only wish I had. If I’d had it, perhaps I wouldn’t be here. Be… this.> There came something of a sound that might have been a laugh, <But at least I have more strength of character than a narcissist who betrayed everything he knew for a woman who would have sooner died for children she had no obligation toward than to let him have his way with her. I can live with myself knowing my fate is less pathetic than a man who threw his life and status to the wind, and expected to stay as hideously ‘perfect’ as he was when it came time for that debt to be repaid.>

“I mean that’s the idea. No matter how bad things get, at least you’re better than some other guy… I have a question. Feel free not to answer of course, but it’s bugging me.”

<Go on?>

“Why, in Arceus’ name, was that guy blue?”

Another probably-laugh, this one much heartier. <The man was considered strange even to his fellows in the Orokin high class. His version of beauty was much different than all the others’. Though they were equally as warped, the blue skin was an odd choice. There was more than one reason that woman was put off of him.>

“That woman, being the one that originally took care of these children?”

<Yes. She cared for them as if their own, to my knowledge. My little starlight has very fond memories of the only one of them who ever showed her empathy, tried to help her control her powers. She was executed for it, because they feared those children. It only led them to rally under the banner of a Sentient who was meant to kill them, but somehow grew a heart instead. It only resulted in the fall of the Empire.>

“Okay, so what the hell is a Sentient?”

<Created beings, intended as terraformers to a new solar system, out there around another star. They were crafted when Earth was in ruins, as the Orokin frantically tried to reverse the damage they had done. But they, like their namesake, grew intelligent. They could think for themselves, act for themselves. They knew that their creators would only destroy Tau like they did the Origin System, so they claimed it as their own and waged war, despite the fact that their only way back was the Void, which was poison to them. That is what I mean when I refer to the Old War. It is the war I and many others fought in, including those children. It is what the sort of thing I’ve become was created for.>

“You know, to hear you tell it, it sounds like these Sentient sorts weren’t even wrong.”

<They wouldn’t have been, if only they didn’t prey on the innocent colonies. They saw humans as the enemy, and especially those touched by the Void. Actual children, they considered their greatest enemy, worth exterminating in one blow were it not for a mole who wished for nothing more than to be a mother. In truth, there is no right side in war.>

“… it only leads desperate people to heinous acts. Like an ancient king who built a world-ending weapon powered by the souls of hundreds and hundreds of Pokemon, over his one beloved fairy.”

<Or the man who threw away everything he had for a woman who never wanted him, took the bait when he thought he saw her again, and ended his life humiliated, twisted and warped by the beings he betrayed them for.>

“The only side that’s right is the side that wants it to end. The side that’s trying to protect the common man on either side. The average joe who steps in to keep the madmen from annihilating the world.”

<You are a brilliant sun shining over your world. Never let go of that light. Never let your world become like this. Because from what I saw in those moments of Transference, there’s still a world worth saving. Here, it’s that much harder. I believe someday the Origin System can be set right, that I can be cured, my fellows restored and my little starlight able to live in peace with herself and grow up to be as strong as you are. But it will take work beyond my power alone, and it may take many years. Your world is still beautiful and vast. Protect it.>

“By my honor as a chosen of Life herself, I don’t think I have much of a choice but to protect my world. Hell… I wish I could help, here. But I don’t think I can help much with a world I know next to nothing about. But… maybe I can do something small. Something that’ll brighten up this ship, so maybe the actual owner of this place will have something to keep her together.”

<What might that be?>

“Do you have any potted soil around here? Anything will do.”

<There’s a hydroponic garden in the main freighter, if that will do the job.>

“That’ll do just fine if there’s no soil available. Sapphire!”

The cat Pokemon didn’t do much more than purr loudly.

“Sapphire?”

“mrr.”

“Come on! I just need you to follow us.”

“mrrroooow.”

“Okay, fine, two can play at this.” She strode over to the cat bed and hefted the Espeon from it, eliciting a rumbling sound of annoyance from the Eeveelution, but no other protest.

<What a strange kavat. How did you manipulate it to have psychic power?>

“I’m not sure what a kavat is. This is an Espeon. A Pokemon. Although I guess they don’t have those here. They come with psychic powers naturally.”

<Interesting.>

She, with the Espeon draped lazily in her arms, was led up to another chamber of the ship. This looked like a main hub of the place, with various machinery and tool tables around the open room. The man pushed a button on a wall at the far end, opening up a ramp downward, leading into a much larger-looking hallway. Said hallway was made up of catwalks between pillars of servers and floors of techno-gook, glowing a pleasant blue against its silver metallic walls. This place looked much more clean and technological than the ship above, and already she could feel how much larger this freighter actually was outside that tiny ship.

It wasn’t far until she was led into a much more plain room, with a domed window over hatched steel floors. It would be somewhat drab looking if not for the shelves of plants and the sprinklers above them installed in bars above them. When she saw a row of empty pots, she picked a few out, then cut her finger against one of the fangs of her necklace.

<What are you doing?> The man asked, watching her drip blood into the water of the pots.

“It’s something my goddess taught me, personally. With a little bit of organic material, doesn’t matter what...” When she focused on the blood in the pots, her burn scars glowed a faint red.

It was a bit more difficult than normal to make it happen. But he was shocked to see her, with her mind alone, coagulate the drops of blood into seeds, which began to take root in their pots and sprout as if they had always existed, and come from natural plants. Tiny green leaves soon broke the surface, growing quickly into small plants with leaves that looked somewhat like nine-pointed stars.

She picked up one of the pots, and held it up to him, eventually passing it over to him.

“… I can create life where it’s needed most. A gift. These plants helped me, maybe they’ll help her too.”