#terraform script | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

chimcess · 22 days ago

Text

⮞ Chapter Seven: Fuck Bureaucracy Pairing: Jungkook x Reader Other Tags: Convict!Jungkook, Escaped Prisoner!Jungkook, Piolet!Reader, Captain!Reader, Holyman!Namjoon, Boss!Yoongi, Commander!Jimin, Astronaut!Jimin, Doctor!Hoseok, Astronaut!Hoseok Genre: Sci-Fi, Action, Adventure, Thriller, Suspense, Strangers to Enemies to ???, Slow Burn, LOTS of Angst, Light Fluff, Eventual Smut, Third Person POV, 18+ Only Word Count: 19.7k+ Summary: When a deep space transporter crash-lands on a barren planet illuminated by three relentless suns, survival becomes the only priority for the stranded passengers, including resourceful pilot Y/N Y/L/N, mystic Namjoon Kim, lawman Taemin Lee, and enigmatic convict Jungkook Jeon. As they scour the hostile terrain for supplies and a way to escape, Y/N uncovers a terrifying truth: every 22 years, the planet is plunged into total darkness during an eclipse, awakening swarms of ravenous, flesh-eating creatures. Forced into a fragile alliance, the survivors must face not only the deadly predators but also their own mistrust and secrets. For Y/N, the growing tension with Jungkook—both a threat and a reluctant ally—raises the stakes even higher, as the battle to escape becomes one for survival against the darkness both around them and within themselves. Warnings: Strong Language, Blood, Trauma, Smart Character Choices, This is all angst and action and that's pretty much it, Reader is a bad ass, Survivor Woman is back baby, terraforming, some mental health issues, survivor's guilt, lots of talking to herself, and recording it, because she'll lose her mind otherwise, fixing things, intergalatical politics, new characters, body image issues, scars, strong female characters are everywhere, cynical humor, bad science language, honestly all of this has probably had the worst science and basis ever, I researched a lot I promise, let me know if I missed anything... A/N: I love a good rescue mission...

prev || masterlist || next

The reds of M6-117 bled across the sky like a bruise stretching over the horizon. It was technically morning—though nothing about this place felt like morning. There were no birds, no blue sky, no dew on the ground. Just heat rising in slow, merciless waves under the low twin suns. No relief, only exposure.

Y/N stood outside the Hab, boots sunk halfway into the grit. The wind had died down for now, but the silence was heavier than any storm. Her suit was streaked with dirt, pockmarked with patches—each one a story she hadn’t had the time or energy to write down. The visor on her helmet caught the early light at an angle, throwing a warped reflection of the landscape behind her. She didn’t look back at it.

She tilted her head slightly, as if trying to decide whether she was ready to say it out loud. Then she pressed the comm.

“Jim.”

Her voice came through the static-soft channel, low and almost hesitant, like she was still practicing the sentence inside her own skull. The word hung there a moment, delicate and unfinished.

“I need you to do something for me.”

She paused, pressing a gloved hand against the seam of her thigh like grounding herself might make it easier.

“If I don’t make it—and I’m not saying I won’t, just… if—I need you to talk to them. Please.”

She looked down, eyes tracking the trail of her own footprints half-blown smooth by last night’s wind.

“They shouldn’t hear about me from a news brief. Or a stranger reading a script. That’s not how this ends.”

Her voice cracked slightly, but she didn’t stop. If anything, it made her steadier. There was no emotion she hadn’t already felt out here—fear, grief, anger, numbness—and now they all just circled each other like orbiting moons.

“Helion Prime was the beginning of everything. I was seventeen. Terrified. Stupid in the ways you’re only allowed to be when you’re too new to know better. And they were so proud. I used to think they were just being polite, but they meant it. Every article—they printed them all. Even the blurry ones where I was just in the background fixing a panel.”

She exhaled slowly, eyes drifting to the nearby speculor—its chassis sand-swept and sunburnt. Her reflection blinked back at her in distorted glass.

“Flight school at twenty. I met you there. I remember the day I brought you home,” She smiled faintly, remembering. “They adored you. God, I think Aunt Rose made you cookies the second day she met you. They never had to pretend with you. You were family before we ever said the word out loud.”

A beat.

“They didn’t even hesitate to move across the galaxy to be near us. Packed up their entire lives and settled on a rainy colony world, even though Aunt Rose hates humidity and mold and missing her morning paper. You remember how mad she was when she realized Aguerra didn’t even have paper delivery?”

Her voice grew quieter then, the smile fading as her posture straightened slightly.

“If something happens, I need you to go to them. Sit down. Look them in the eye. Don’t tell them about this place. Don’t describe the suits and the patch kits and the way the sun burns through the walls at midday. They don’t need to know that. Talk about Starfire. Tell them how much I loved that ship. How much I loved what we did. That was the happiest I’ve ever been, Jim. Not just in space. Anywhere.”

She shifted her weight slightly, boots crunching against dry ground.

“It’s not going to be easy,” she said. “There’s no good way to tell people their niece died millions of miles from home. But if it has to happen, they need to hear it from someone who knew me beyond the title. Who saw me here, with the work and the grime and the joy of it all.”

Her voice caught on the next breath. She didn’t try to hide it—there was no one out here to impress. Just the comm channel, the open stretch of dead horizon, and a sky that never blinked.

She steadied herself.

“And tell Uma…” Her voice cracked, unraveling mid-sentence. She blinked hard, trying to keep her eyes clear, but it was already too late. They were glassy now, fogging over with grief she hadn’t allowed herself to feel until this exact second.

“Tell her I love her. Tell her I’m sorry.”

The words came out rough. Honest. And too small for everything they meant.

“I wanted to be there,” she continued, slower now, like each syllable cost her something. “I wanted to help pick paint colors, argue over names no one would use. Hold her hand when she panicked over something tiny and hormonal and beautiful.”

She let out a shaky laugh—just one—but it didn’t stay.

“I wanted to sit in the nursery with her. Feel the baby kick. Help build furniture we’d curse at and pretend we knew how to fix. Babysit. Fall asleep on the couch watching movies we’d already seen. Spoil the kid. Sneak them candy behind your backs.”

She looked up, eyes squinting against the sharp white glare of the twin suns climbing higher above the dunes. Her voice dropped to a whisper, quieter than the wind curling at her feet.

“If I made it home… that baby would already be walking.”

She didn’t need to explain it. The heartbreak sat there on its own, fully formed.

Silence followed, but it wasn’t empty. It was full of everything she couldn’t bring herself to name. All the stolen time. All the pieces of a life she was still trying to carry, even as the weight of this planet pulled harder at her every day.

When she spoke again, it was softer. But there was no wobble left.

“I’m not giving up. Don’t think for a second that I am.”

Her eyes locked on the far line of the horizon. The sky shimmered, heat warping the edge of everything.

“I’ve made it through things that should’ve killed me,” she said. “But if I’ve learned anything, it’s that hoping for the best only works when you’re also planning for the worst. I’m not making a goodbye message. I’m covering my bases. That’s all.”

She reached up, adjusted the mic on her collar, and took a steadying breath.

“If it comes to that—if I don’t make it back—tell them I didn’t die out here just trying to hang on. Tell them I chose this. That I wanted to be out here. That I believed in what we were building. That I gave it everything I had.”

She paused, her fingers brushing the spot near her hip where the suit had been patched again and again. The fabric there felt thinner, no matter how many times she reinforced it.

“Not because I was brave. Not because I was reckless. But because I believed in it. All of it. And because I was exactly where I was supposed to be.”

Her voice dipped to almost nothing.

“Tell them I’m okay with that.”

A pause.

“Even if they’re not.”

The wind picked up again, pulling at the hem of the thermal shielding she’d bolted down earlier that morning. It flapped once, soft and tired, like the Hab itself was exhaling beside her.

Y/N stood there a little while longer, watching the light stretch across the red landscape. The suns climbed, and the shadows pulled behind her like anchors.

She didn’t speak again.

Eventually, she turned. The gravel shifted beneath her boots, crunching softly with each step. The Hab loomed ahead, patched and battered and still standing—like her.

She walked back toward the airlock.

The Taurus Interplanetary Commission headquarters stood like a blade of glass and steel against the deep blue atmosphere of Taurus I. It was the kind of place built to make a statement—an architectural flex that said humanity didn’t just belong in space; it was starting to understand how to make it beautiful.

Inside, the halls buzzed with quiet, measured urgency. Footsteps on polished floors. Low voices in corners. The occasional murmur of comms traffic spilling from open doors. On a wide display screen in the atrium, NOSA’s press conference played in real time. Yoongi and Mateo sat at the table, looking like they hadn’t slept in days. Probably because they hadn’t.

“We substituted the standard ration bricks with high-density protein cubes,” Mateo was explaining, his voice steady but dry with exhaustion. “What we didn’t account for was the behavior of those cubes under heavy thrust. Combined with lateral vibration during ascent, the protein packs liquefied and shifted the weight distribution. That’s what destabilized the payload.”

The reporters pounced.

“Why wasn’t this caught during final inspection?”

Yoongi leaned forward, face unreadable. “We didn’t have time.”

The room stirred with low, anxious chatter.

“You skipped the inspections?” one reporter asked, voice sharp.

“Yes,” Yoongi said. Flat. Unapologetic. “We had a fourteen-minute window. If we’d missed it, we wouldn’t have another chance for months. And she doesn’t have that kind of time.”

The broadcast continued, but in a quiet corner office ten floors above, the volume had already been muted.

André Batista stood near the window, his hands tucked into the pockets of his tailored jacket. His gaze drifted from the screen to the man seated behind the desk.

“She’s not going to make it,” André said finally, his voice low but certain. Not cruel. Just honest.

Gunther Apinya didn’t look up right away. He was scanning a data packet, fingers idly flipping through the pages until André stepped forward and placed a second folder in front of him.

“Maybe not,” André allowed. “But maybe she does. Take a look.”

Gunther opened it.

Charts. Numbers. A schematic of the Argo booster system, overlaid with a proposed injection path—M-344/G orbit. Deep burn. Minimal gravity assist. Fast and dirty.

“You ran this through engineering?” Gunther asked, already knowing the answer.

“They ran it twice. If we launch in forty-eight hours, it’ll reach her in time.” André crossed his arms. “With margin.”

Gunther frowned. “Why hasn’t NOSA reached out to us?”

“They don’t know we can help,” André said simply. “That booster tech is still classified under Coalition R&D. There are maybe twelve people outside this building who even know it exists.”

Gunther leaned back in his chair, fingers steepled under his chin. “So what you’re saying is... if we do nothing, no one would ever know we had the capability.”

André nodded once. “That’s right.”

They sat in silence, the air between them thick with implication. Out the window, the twin suns of Taurus I were setting low, turning the glass gold.

Gunther finally spoke, his voice quiet but firm. “And if we help?”

“We burn a booster we can’t replace. Argo gets delayed. Possibly scrapped.”

Silence again. This time, longer.

Gunther stared at the file. He didn’t move. He didn’t blink.

Then he closed the folder slowly, the soft click of the binder echoing in the quiet office.

“This doesn’t go through governments,” he said. “No public release. No diplomatic channels.”

André raised an eyebrow. “You want backchannel?”

“I want scientists,” Gunther replied. “Just us. Just them. No politics. No medals. If this works, the world never needs to know.”

André didn’t smile, but something in his shoulders eased. “I’ll make the call.”

As he stepped out of the room, Gunther turned back to the muted broadcast. Mateo was still speaking, trying to explain the loss without flinching. Yoongi sat beside him, unmoving, his eyes shadowed but clear.

The lights in Yoongi’s office were dim, the windows tinted against the rising glare of Aguerra’s twin suns. A half-empty mug of cold coffee sat forgotten on the edge of his desk, the ring it left behind now drying into the paper below. Across from him, the comms unit glowed faintly, casting a soft blue hue over the scattered reports and schematics that hadn’t been touched in hours.

He didn’t speak. Not yet.

The voice on the other end was calm, precise—measured in that way only career scientists and seasoned negotiators knew how to be. It laid out the terms cleanly: launch access, limited telemetry sharing, classified propulsion specs kept under lock. No governments. No press. Just a backdoor lifeline.

Yoongi sat motionless in his chair, head tilted back against the cushion, eyes closed. Not from sleep—he hadn’t slept in over thirty hours—but to block everything else out. The ache in his shoulders. The sting behind his eyes. The pressure that had been building in his chest since the probe failed.

But now, there it was.

Help.

Unexpected. Improbable. Quietly offered from a corner of the galaxy where he hadn’t dared hope.

He almost didn’t trust it at first. Then the voice repeated the final clause, politely, waiting for acknowledgment.

Yoongi blinked. Straightened.

He didn’t reach for a pen. Didn’t take a breath to buy himself time. He already knew the answer.

His voice, when it came, was low—rough from disuse—but steady.

“Yes,” he said. “We accept.”

And as he leaned forward, elbows braced on the desk, the hum of the line settled into silence. A silence that, for the first time in days, didn’t feel like failure pressing in from all sides. It felt like motion. Like the beginning of something.

He let the weight of it settle.

Then he picked up the stylus and got back to work.

At Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s primary assembly bay, the air was thick with fatigue, sweat, and the faint chemical tang of solder and composite dust. Half-finished components were stacked on worktables. Coffee cups littered the corners of schematics. No one had slept enough. No one was planning to, either.

Marco stood at the whiteboard, sleeves rolled to the elbows, marker already in hand. His hair stuck up in uneven tufts like he’d run his fingers through it too many times, and the stubble on his jaw was well into Day Three territory. Behind him, the whir of ventilation fans and toolkits hummed over the low murmur of keyboards and data feeds.

“Okay,” he said, voice sharper than usual—not angry, just wired. Focused. Running on pure adrenaline. “Thanks to some unexpected friends on Taurus 1, we’ve got one more shot at this.”

He turned and started writing fast, the marker squeaking against the board as he sketched out the basic launch trajectory and burn profile. The numbers came from muscle memory now.

“We built Iris in sixty-three days,” he went on, turning back to face the room. “And for the record? That should’ve been impossible. But we did it. You did it. Every subsystem, every weld, every last calibration. You made it happen.”

He held up the marker like a baton. “Now we do it again.”

The engineers and analysts around him exchanged tired looks. There were bags under everyone’s eyes, a few still wearing the same clothes from the day before. But no one objected. No one moved to say no.

Marco raised an eyebrow, as if daring someone to tell him it couldn’t be done.

“We don’t get sixty-three days this time,” he said. “We get twenty-eight. Twenty-eight days to design, fabricate, test, and launch a completely reconfigured payload. Lighter. Faster. Hotter burn. Different booster.”

He tapped the board with the marker, underlining a series of projected dates.

“And we’re going to do it. Because the alternative is watching someone die knowing we could’ve helped. I’m not interested in being a footnote in that story.”

The room had gone quiet—no arguments, no complaints. Just the subtle shift of people straightening in their seats, tightening ponytails, finishing cold coffee. The kind of stillness that came just before a storm.

Marco exhaled, stepped back, and dropped the marker into the tray.

“We don’t get to fail this time,” he said, softer now. “We get to try. That’s the gift. So let’s move.”

Someone from the propulsion team stood up and headed toward the assembly corridor. A software lead muttered something about patching a new thermal profile and started typing. A tech from avionics walked out without a word, already pulling up wiring schematics on a tablet.

Marco watched them go, then turned back to the board.

The numbers weren’t beautiful. But they were possible.

The hum of NOSA’s supercomputer lab was the kind of ambient noise that most people didn’t notice anymore. But Dean Marblemaw had always liked it—the low whirr of a machine thinking faster than he ever could, the air conditioners clicking rhythmically to keep it from melting down under its own brilliance.

He sat alone at the far terminal, sleeves pushed up, fingers moving fast over the keys. The numbers flowed like music—data sets, burn windows, orbital maps all converging into something strange. And then, suddenly, something true.

He stopped. Blinked.

Ran it again.

Same result.

Dean leaned back slowly, a grin spreading across his face like he couldn’t stop it if he tried. The kind of grin that had nothing to do with ego and everything to do with the pure, breathless thrill of seeing the impossible become real.

"Holy shit," he whispered, half-laughing.

He snatched the pages from the printer—charts, calculations, a half-scribbled orbital solution that shouldn't work but absolutely did—and bolted for the door.

The halls of NOSA blurred past him. He wasn’t built for running—skinny and long-legged in a way that always looked vaguely winded—but he didn’t stop. Security glanced up as he passed. A junior engineer did a double take. He didn’t care.

By the time he reached Mateo’s office, his heart was pounding and his shirt clung to his back. He didn’t knock.

He flung the door open hard enough that it bounced off the stopper, startling Mateo, who was in the middle of a call, headset pressed to one ear, tablet in the other hand.

Dean didn’t waste time.

“You should hang up the phone.”

Mateo blinked at him, thrown completely off balance. “I’m sorry, who the hell are you?”

“Dean Marblemaw. Astrodynamics. Floor six.” He stepped forward, still out of breath. “And seriously—you need to hang up the phone right now.”

Mateo held up a finger, eyes narrowing. “I’ll call you back,” he said into the headset, voice sharp with suspicion. He ended the call and set the tablet aside. “This better be worth it.”

Dean didn’t respond. He dropped a folder onto the desk and shoved it across the surface, sending a half-full coffee mug wobbling to the edge.

“Read this.”

Mateo didn’t move. Not at first. He studied Dean’s face—sweaty, flushed, buzzing with something like adrenaline—and then picked up the packet.

As he read, the frown that had settled into Mateo’s forehead deepened. Then stilled. His eyes jumped back up to Dean’s.

“This trajectory’s not viable.”

“It wasn’t,” Dean said, chest still heaving. “Until I ran the residual vectors on the second flyby sequence and—look, I can’t explain it fast. But it works. The window’s narrow, but it’s there. We can reach her.”

Mateo glanced back at the numbers, flipping to the second page. He did the math in his head. Then again.

His chair creaked as he leaned forward, elbows on the desk.

“You're absolutely sure?”

“As sure as I’ve ever been of anything that wasn’t caffeine dependency or gravitational constants.” Dean grinned, breath finally evening out. “Dr.Gomez, we can get a new payload there faster than we thought. If we burn on this vector, we shave thirty-one days off the injection arc. Thirty-one. That’s the difference between watching her die and watching her walk away.”

Mateo didn’t waste time. He was already punching the intercom.

“April,” he said, calm but urgent. “I need mission planning in my office. Now. Tell them it’s about Project Elrond.”

Across the room, Dean dropped into a chair, still riding the high of the math he’d just scrawled across four pages and a whiteboard. He grinned, breathless.

“I told you to hang up the phone,” he said.

Mateo didn’t respond. He was staring at the file in front of him, not reading it, just letting the numbers sink in like they were burning through the paper and into his chest.

They had something they hadn’t had in days.

Hope.

Alice stepped into the conference room mid-scroll, still reading from her phone. “Okay, seriously—what the hell is ‘Project Elrond’?”

Mateo didn’t look up from his tablet. “Had to give it a name.”

She stopped just inside the door. “Elrond?”

From the far corner, Creed looked up, brow arched. “Council of Elrond. Lord of the Rings.”

Alice blinked. “Why do Earth people always name critical operations after fantasy books? Is it a cultural compulsion? Or just a lack of imagination?”

Marco, legs stretched out, gave a quiet laugh. “It’s the meeting where they decide to destroy the One Ring. World-saving stuff.”

“That doesn’t make it better,” she muttered, rubbing the bridge of her nose. “Am I even supposed to know what that means? How old is that book?”

The door opened again, and Yoongi walked in with a coffee in one hand and his usual unreadable calm. “If this is a Project Elrond, I want my codename to be Glorfindel.”

Alice didn’t miss a beat. “This is why I hate working with Earthlings.”

Creed grinned at Yoongi. “You don’t even know what this meeting’s about, do you?”

Yoongi took a seat and set his coffee down with care. “I assumed it had to be important if Matt called us all in here so urgently.”

Mateo looked up at last and slid a tablet across the table toward Dean. “Show them.”

Dean nodded, suddenly serious. His energy had been buzzing all morning, barely contained, but now it focused. He stood, pulled a few random objects from the table—a stapler, a mug, a stylus—and laid them out with quiet purpose.

“I can get Starfire back to M6-117,” he said. “By Sol 320.”

The air shifted. Heads turned. Every unspoken thought hit the same wall: That’s impossible.

Creed narrowed his eyes. “Say that again.”

“Five-six-one,” Dean repeated. “It’s tight. But I’ve run the numbers three times. The trajectory holds.”

Yoongi leaned forward, fingers steepled. “How?”

Dean didn’t sit. He held up the stapler. “This is Starfire, inbound toward Earth. They’re supposed to decelerate soon, prep for orbit. But what if they don’t? What if we tell them to skip the braking burn and use M6’s gravity instead?”

He swung the stapler in a wide arc toward Yoongi’s mug. “They slingshot. Pick up velocity, not lose it. We intercept the Argo probe on the way through. Resupply mid-sling.”

“With what?” Alice asked.

“Food. Fuel. Life support modules,” Mateo said. “Whatever we can get packed into the probe before it meets them.”

Dean pointed with the stylus. “After resupply, they make the burn straight back to M6-117. But there’s no time to decelerate. It’s a flyby.”

Alice frowned. “That’s useless unless—”

“Unless Y/N meets them in orbit,” Dean said. “MAV launch. She matches trajectory and speed, intercepts them mid-pass, and they haul ass home.”

The table was silent. Not confused—calculating. Each mind tracking the feasibility, the mechanics, the margin of error.

Dean took a breath. “It’s all there. The math checks out.”

Yoongi sat back slowly. “Dean?”

“Yeah?”

“Leave the room.”

Dean’s face fell. “Wait, what?”

“You’re done for now,” Yoongi said quietly. “We need to talk.”

Dean hesitated, looked around the room, then gathered his notes and walked out. The door clicked behind him.

Yoongi turned to Mateo. “Is he right?”

Mateo gave a slow nod. “His math’s clean. No gaps in the logic. If the Argo resupply works—and if Y/N can get the MAV off the ground—it’s viable.”

Alice’s brow furrowed. “So what’s the tradeoff?”

Mateo didn’t pause. “We only have one Argo. We use it to resupply Starfire, or we send it to Y/N directly with enough food to keep her alive until Helion Nexus arrives.”

Alice leaned back, thinking. “No backup?”

“No second probe. No margin,” Creed said. “We built one. We launched one. That’s it.”

“And what about the crew?” she asked. “What does this add to their mission?”

Mateo looked her in the eye. “Three hundred twenty days.”

Creed didn’t hesitate. “They’ll do it. All of them. You don’t even have to ask.”

“That’s the point,” Mateo said. “We don’t want to ask. Jimin shouldn’t have to carry this decision.”

Alice blinked. “Commander Park.”

Creed nodded. “Her family. Her former commander. If we put it in front of him, it’s over. He’ll say yes, and we all know it.”

Yoongi exhaled, his gaze shifting to the ceiling for a moment. “Can the ship make it?”

Mateo nodded. “It was built for extended missions. All five Nexus launches. It can handle the time.”

“And if anything fails out there?”

Mateo didn’t blink. “Then we lose all of them.”

Marco’s voice was soft but clear. “So it’s a question of one life… or six.”

The words hung in the room like smoke.

No one spoke.

Then slowly, every head turned to Yoongi.

He didn’t rush. Just sat there, staring at the table, eyes distant. The room was quiet except for the quiet hum of the vent overhead and the faint ticking of the wall clock.

After a long pause, he said, “We still have a safe way to bring five people home. That’s not a risk I’m willing to take.”

Creed’s hands curled into fists on the table. He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t need to.

“Let them make that decision.”

Yoongi didn’t answer.

“We’re going with option one,” he said.

Creed stood. Slowly. The chair scraped sharply against the floor as he pushed it back.

He held Yoongi’s gaze, jaw tight.

“You goddamn coward,” And he walked out.

The airlock sealed behind her with a low hiss—routine, automated, impersonal. Y/N didn’t look back.

She stepped onto the dusty ground with the same slow, measured movements that had come to define her. Not fatigue exactly—she was long past the point of real exhaustion. This was inertia. Survival-mode autopilot. Her boots dragged slightly with each step, her gait uneven from the ache in her hip that hadn’t gone away since the last hard fall.

The brush in her hand was stiff, its bristles worn down to the point of uselessness. She’d meant to replace it weeks ago, but every time she thought about digging through the storage crates, she ran out of momentum. So the brush stayed. Dull, frayed, familiar.

Ahead, the solar panels stretched in a broken line across the plateau—dust-caked, half-buried in places, their surfaces dull under the constant pale light. Cleaning them had become a ritual. Not for efficiency anymore. Not for system optimization. Just something to do. A reason to put on the suit. A reason to move.

She reached the edge of the first panel and lifted the brush.

Then stopped.

Her hand hovered midair, fingers locked around the handle. For a moment she just stared, unmoving, her helmet visor reflecting a warped image of herself against the glassy surface of the panel.

She let the brush fall.

It landed with a soft thunk against the dust and lay still. The sound barely registered. Even the wind felt half-asleep, carrying only the faintest rasp of fine sand.

She stood there, breathing slow, not entirely sure what she was waiting for.

Then, without making a conscious decision, she turned and walked. Not toward the Hab. Not toward the rover. Toward the low ridge that curved beyond the eastern edge of the old settlement site—the one she visited sometimes when the air inside got too heavy.

Her spot.

The only place that felt slightly other on a planet that never changed.

The slope was gentle, but it took effort. Her suit was already too warm, the sun already high. She climbed anyway, boots crunching against loose rock, the incline chewing at her thighs. At the top, she sank down, legs folding beneath her with a graceless drop, and sat.

Not to rest.

Not to think.

Just to stop.

Below her, the empty valley stretched endlessly in all directions. The remnants of Colony 212’s initial outpost lay half-swallowed by dust—crumpled scaffolding, shattered survey drones, the twisted frame of a greenhouse torn apart by a windstorm before she’d even landed here.

The suns were low now. Three pale coins bleeding sideways light across the ridgeline, elongating shadows until the rocks themselves looked like reaching hands. She closed her eyes.

And stayed that way.

Minutes passed. Maybe longer. She lost track.

By the time she opened them again, the sky had changed. The suns were climbing again—merciless, blinding—and the world had gone from dim orange to stark, clinical white. Her suit’s internal alarm chirped, then escalated to a shrill beep.

TEMP WARNING: EXTERNAL ENVIRONMENT UNSAFE.

She silenced it with a few taps.

Her throat felt dry. She didn’t feel like moving.

She didn’t want to go back to the Hab. Not yet.

And that was when something caught her eye—just a flicker of light in the dust. A glint. Not bright. Just out of place enough to make her turn her head.

Near her boot, half-buried in grit, was something metallic.

She crouched automatically, fingers brushing the sand aside. The object revealed itself slowly—a long, slender drill shaft, pitted with corrosion but unmistakably familiar. A specimen drill, the kind issued during the early survey missions.

She stared at it, frowning.

It hadn’t been there the last time she climbed this hill. At least, not visibly. The storms must’ve uncovered it, shaken it loose from whatever shallow grave had hidden it all these years.

She turned it over in her hands. The serial tag was mostly scrubbed, but she recognized the build—an older model, standard during the early M6 surface ops. Pre-colonization. The drill tip was blunted. A few of the threads were stripped. But it still had weight.

Her eyes followed a faint line in the sand—tracks, barely visible. The kind only time and wind could etch. They led toward a jagged rock formation nearby, one she’d passed a dozen times without looking twice.

She stood and followed the line.

Near the base of the rock, holes had been drilled—precise, methodical, in a pattern meant for core sampling. But they were shallow. Incomplete. As if the mission that had started here had been cut off mid-execution.

Y/N crouched again and ran her gloved fingers across the markings. The ridges were still sharp. It hadn’t eroded completely. She paused, hand resting against the surface.

It didn’t feel like just another piece of equipment forgotten by some long-dead operation. It felt… interrupted.

She sat back on her heels, the drill resting across her lap.

The low hum of NOSA Mission Control ticked along at its usual pace—monitors blinking, quiet conversations traded in clipped tones, the soft churn of machines doing what they were built to do. Underneath it all, that familiar background drone: the sound of systems keeping time in space.

But at April Borne’s console, none of it registered.

She sat forward in her chair, posture tight, eyes fixed on the center screen like it might flinch. Her fingers hovered over the keyboard, ready to react, but frozen for the moment. Around her, the world moved in quiet circuits. At her station, the world had narrowed to one: M6-117.

Three displays surrounded her, each showing a different slice of telemetry—orbital drift, atmospheric density, biosuit vitals. She moved between them with ease, toggling overlays, tracking sensor shifts in real time. She wasn’t new anymore. She’d learned what mattered.

But one feed didn’t change.

Front and center: the live camera stream from an orbital relay, trained on a wide plateau. The camera wasn’t automated. April had locked it manually an hour ago. She didn’t want the feed to lose her.

On-screen, a single figure moved slowly across the dust-blasted landscape. An EVA suit, patched and sand-worn, its silhouette tiny in the frame. Step. Pause. Step. Pause.

April didn’t say anything for a while. Just watched.

Then, softly, without looking up, she spoke.

“She’s been out almost all day.”

Behind her, Mateo Gomez stood with his arms crossed, his weight shifting like he couldn’t quite settle. His jaw was tight, eyes glued to the same image. He looked tired in a way that didn’t come from lack of sleep—like his body had forgotten how to let go of tension.

“How many EVAs is that now?” he asked.

April flicked through a tab on the side screen. “Four, officially. Five if you count the solar sweep she did this morning.”

On the feed, Y/N’s figure came to a stop. She bent slightly, adjusted something in her hand, then continued walking—three hundred meters, give or take—before stopping again.

Then again. And again. Same rhythm. Same intervals.

“There’s a pattern,” April said, frowning slightly. “Three hundred-meter increments. Always the same distance between stops.”

“Survey work?” Mateo leaned in. “Did JPL send her updated collection coordinates?”

April shook her head, already checking. “No new packets. I ran a log scan—no inbound data. No flagged instructions. She hasn’t even acknowledged our system pings in four days.”

“So it’s all her,” Mateo murmured.

April nodded once. “She’s marking positions. Deliberate spacing, consistent timing. She’s not scavenging. She’s building something.”

The screen to her left pinged. A soft alert. April’s eyes snapped to it.

“Hold on,” she said. “We just got a packet through the Speculor relay.”

She brought it up quickly, hands moving across the keyboard with purpose. The data decrypted smoothly. It wasn’t a distress call. Not even a voice memo.

It was raw science.

April’s brow creased. “Chemical breakdown—batch 1A-7C. Surface composites. Silica ratios, microstructure modeling, thermal tests...”

Mateo stepped forward fast. “Wait—what batch?”

“1A-7C. Why?”

He stared at the screen for a second. “That’s Oslo’s grid.”

April looked up. “You mean—Colony 212? The geo-mineral mapping project?”

Mateo nodded slowly, as if the pieces were clicking together in real time. “Yeah. Oslo’s team was testing local substrate cohesion. Seeing if the regolith could be mixed and cured into load-bearing material. That data was supposed to drive long-term construction models for outposts. But the Eclipse hit before they finished.”

He leaned closer, eyes narrowing at the screen. “And that number… she’s not guessing. That’s the actual designation. Oslo ran a radial grid—six hundred meters across, three hundred between sample paths.”

April quickly overlaid the coordinates from Y/N’s EVAs onto a legacy terrain map. The grid snapped into place, translucent lines lacing across the dusty plateau.

It was nearly identical.

“Oh my god,” April whispered. “She’s not just collecting. She’s replicating the test grid. Exactly.”

Mateo stood still, like he was watching something sacred.

“She’s not just surviving,” he said quietly. “She’s continuing the mission.”

Y/N’s figure had stopped again, kneeling in the red dust. Her hands moved with slow precision, sealing something into a container—probably a drill sample, maybe a substrate core. There was no rush. No panic.

Just focus.

Purpose.

April sat back slowly, her eyes still fixed on the screen. “She picked up where they left off.”

“She must’ve found Oslo’s notes,” Mateo said. “Maybe from the wreck. Maybe from one of the old surface drives. It doesn’t matter. She’s finishing the work.”

“No,” April said softly. “She’s continuing it.”

The room shifted around them. Not louder—just heavier. The kind of silence that settles when something meaningful happens and no one wants to interrupt it.

On the feed, Y/N stood again. Adjusted her grip on a sampling tube. Walked three hundred more meters. Stopped. Crouched.

She was following a dead man’s path.

She was finishing what history had abandoned.

Mateo exhaled. His voice came out hoarse.

“She’s doing the science.”

April didn’t respond at first. She just kept watching.

Then she leaned forward, eyes bright behind tired lashes.

“That’s not what we expected her to do,” she said. “After the crash. After everything. I thought—honestly? I thought she’d hunker down. Try to stay warm. Make peace with the end.”

“She was never built for that,” Mateo said. “She’s a problem-solver. If she couldn’t be rescued, she’d figure out how to be useful.”

He watched her take another knee, dig gently into the ground.

“That girl is a fucking superstar,” he murmured. “Even when no one’s watching.”

And for the first time in days, the tension in Mission Control eased—not with certainty, but with clarity.

April’s screen updated again—new readings, a fresh transmission of spectrographic data. She sat up straighter, readying the next pass.

Across the room, techs leaned in a little closer. Conversations quieted. Chairs scooted forward.

Because for all the things they didn’t know yet—how to bring her home, how to explain what she was doing, how to protect her legacy—they understood one thing now:

She hadn’t stopped.

She had found a reason to keep going.

The Hab was silent, save for the steady, rhythmic scrape of stone on ceramic.

Y/N sat at the experiment table, hunched over, sleeves rolled back to the elbows of her pressure-rated thermal undersuit. Her fingers moved with practiced efficiency, knuckles red and chapped, nails bitten down to the quick. She brought the pestle down again—firm but controlled—grinding the coarse sediment sample into something closer to a usable grain. Not powder. Not paste. Just enough to test. Just enough to keep going.

The makeshift chem kit in front of her was stained with dust and old reactions, once-white trays now tinged with rust-colored residue. Glassware clinked softly as she shifted her weight. The solvent vial sloshed—half-full, if she was generous.

This part of the job wasn’t hard. Not physically. But it demanded a kind of patience that only survival had taught her. The precision of it gave her something to anchor to. A routine. A reason to move from one hour into the next.

She didn’t look up when she started talking. She didn’t need to. The camera, mounted across the room, was already rolling. It had been for hours. Most days, it was easier to pretend someone was watching. Even if she knew better.

“They evac’d eighteen sols into a thirty-one-sol mission,” she said quietly, the words emerging through a clenched jaw. “Eighteen. That’s how long Colony 212 lasted before everything went sideways. Which means they only got thirteen sols of science logged. Thirteen days.”

Her hand moved without pause—sample bag to mortar, pressure, grind, transfer to the tray. Repeat.

“For each of them,” she added, her voice lower now. “That’s what they left behind.”

She reached for a second tray—one marked with Oslo’s original numbering system, the labels half-scratched out, rewritten in her own handwriting. Neat. Slanted. A little messy in the corners, but legible. Human.

“Commander Oslo,” she said, almost conversationally. “You get the easy one. Mineral bonding profiles, structural cohesion. Hard science. Repeatable tests. The kind of thing even someone half-awake with a hangover can finish.”

She paused, adding a few drops of reactive solution. It fizzed faintly, curling steam against the inside of the tray cover.

“I hope your afterlife’s better than your last moments on this rock,” she muttered. “I really do.”

She glanced up, just briefly, toward the camera. Her mouth curved into something like a smile—thin, ironic, but not cruel.

“Jung, listen. I’m gonna be honest with you. I don’t understand chemolithotrophic detection. Not really. I read your notes three times and still couldn’t tell if you were looking for life or just bored. But I’m trying, okay? I’m running the tests.”

Her gaze flicked to the far side of the workbench, where a row of empty sample tubes waited to be filled.

“And Cruz,” she said, her voice lifting a notch with mock solemnity, “I know you didn’t like it when I touched the ChemCam. You made that very clear. Well. Guess what?”

She reached for the unit, brushing it with the back of her hand like a cat knocking something off a shelf.

“I’m touching the ChemCam. And there’s not a damn thing you can do about it. Zero consequences. Viva la anarchy.”

The joke landed quietly, with a faint shake of her head.

She kept working, transferring notes from a test strip to her master log—an old ration box she’d flattened and drawn a grid on in marker. Real paper. Real pen. The graphite snapped halfway through a sentence, and she calmly flipped to a pencil stub with a taped-on eraser.

“Zimmermann,” she said, a little more gently now, “I made a cataloging system. It's rough, but it works. I’m calling it ‘Das Core Samples,’ because I figured you’d like the pun. You know. For the Fatherland.”

She didn’t laugh at her own joke, but the corner of her mouth twitched.

“Nguyen…” She paused. “I still don’t know what you did. Seriously. I looked it up. Your title said ‘systems integration and adaptive redundancy.’ Which—I think means... backup stuff? No clue. I hope someone back home got your job title translated before your plaque was engraved.”

The words hung in the air, but there was no venom in them. Just tired affection. The kind you had for coworkers you never really knew but still missed when they were gone.

She turned back to the test rack, sorting the samples into clean, labeled sleeves. Every move was methodical, deliberate. She wasn’t rushing. She wasn’t wasting time either.

“I’m trying to keep everything organized,” she said after a while. Her voice was softer now. “Documented. Archived. I know it’s not exactly my strength.”

She wiped the corner of her eye with the back of one hand, smudging a line of dust across her cheek.

“But I want it to make sense,” she added. “In case... someone comes later.”

She reached across the table for a clean data tag and etched the next code into it with the edge of her multitool. Her hands didn’t tremble.

“Maybe someone will teach it in class one day. ‘The Frenchie Syllabus.’” She let the words linger, then smiled—a real one, this time. “Intro to Improvised Civil Engineering: How to Build a Bathtub Using NOSA Tubing and an Old RTG.”

Her smile faded just slightly, but her voice remained steady.

“Intermediate Cuisine: How to Cook a Potato Six Thousand Ways. Advanced Chemistry: How to Make Water Out of Rocket Fuel. Maybe don’t blow yourselves up like I did.”

She looked back at the camera.

Then, wordlessly, turned back to her samples and kept working.

The Starfire was quiet, save for the soft whir of filtered air and the constant, almost imperceptible hum of the ship’s primary drive coils in idle mode. The kind of silence that didn’t just surround you—it settled in. Wore into your bones over time.

Armin Zimmermann sat alone at the aft systems console, strapped into the harness more out of habit than necessity. His diagnostics had finished a full ten minutes ago, but he hadn’t moved. The screen in front of him still blinked its green confirmation lights in time with his pulse.

He scrolled absently through his inbox, expecting the usual: systems logs from JPL, status updates from mission ops, the occasional joke from Jung or Cruz buried in the metadata of a routine check.

But then his eyes landed on a message that didn’t fit.

Subject: Unsere Kinder.

He stared at it.

Our children.

Armin frowned. It wasn’t a phrase Kelly would normally use. They didn’t speak German with each other much—not anymore. His wife preferred English, and emails were usually short, efficient. News from Earth. Photos of their daughter. No riddles.

He hesitated, then clicked.

The body of the email was empty. No text. No signature. Just a single attachment: a .txt file, small and unassuming.

He tapped it open.

The screen populated instantly—lines of symbols, not quite random but not immediately readable either. Mathematical notations, directional headings, numbers too specific to be coincidence and too disorganized to be deliberate.

A sharp edge settled in his chest.

He stared at the file, heart rate rising. The longer he looked, the more his instincts screamed that this wasn’t a mistake or spam or a misdirected file.

This was a message.

Armin unstrapped, pushed off the console wall, and glided through the corridor with practiced, weightless ease. The ship was familiar under his palms—every panel, every joint, every slight bump in the composite wall plating. The kind of familiarity that only came with months in orbit, where even silence had a pattern.

He found Valencia Cruz in the ship’s rotating gym module, her strides steady on the curved track. The artificial gravity was low—just enough to make cardio unpleasant, just low enough to make injuries dangerous. She was in the zone, sweat on her brow, earbuds in.

Armin tapped the console by the entrance. The door hissed open.

Val looked up, spotted him, and slowed. “You okay?” she asked, voice breathless.

“I have a problem,” Armin said.

She stopped the treadmill, wiped her face with a towel, and stepped out of the rotation ring. “You don’t usually say that unless something’s on fire.”

He handed her the tablet. “My wife sent this. At least, it says it’s from her.”

Val took it, leaning against the bulkhead. She swiped through the file. Her brow furrowed. “It’s not an image,” she muttered. “Not corrupted either. It’s a clean text file. Plain ASCII.”

She tapped to expand the lines. The screen filled with patterns. Coordinates. Variables. Formulas layered between what looked like navigation flags and arcane mission notations.

“This isn’t random,” she said, more to herself now. “These look like… course headings. Vectors. And this—this might be delta-v tables?”

Armin nodded slowly. “I thought so too.”

Val looked up. “Any idea what it’s for?”

He didn’t answer right away. His eyes scanned the data again, fingers brushing over the screen like he was trying to feel the meaning in the numbers.

Then his voice caught—quiet, clipped. “Here. This is a reference to the Marblemaw Maneuver. It’s a theoretical slingshot burn. Dean published a paper on it two years ago, but I think I’m the only person who actually read it.”

“You’re saying this is from Dean?”

He shook his head. “No. But someone used his math. Dean wouldn’t be able to get clearance to send this. Has to be a big guy at NOSA, but that still doesn’t explain why it was sent to you from Kelly’s inbox.”

Val’s eyebrows drew together as she focused on one line that stood out, bolded in a sea of plain text.

SOL 320.

They both stared at it.

The number hit Armin like a punch to the gut. He reached for the wall to steady himself, the zero-g making him sway.

“Oh mein Gott,” he whispered.

Val stared at the screen, then at him.

“You think it’s about her.”

He nodded once.

Val didn’t look up from the screen. Her fingers were already moving, copying the data into her private log and running checksum validations. Not to confirm the file’s source—she already knew it wasn’t junk—but to stabilize it. There was a chance it could disappear as quickly as it came.

Armin hovered for a second, his jaw tight. Then he pushed off the bulkhead and turned toward the main corridor. “I’m getting the others.”

Val nodded without taking her eyes off the text. “I’ll see what else I can pull from it.”

Val was still at the terminal, but now her fingers hovered just above the screen, not typing—just staring. She’d parsed most of the file. Enough to know what it was. Enough to feel her chest go tight with the implications.

She heard the others enter before she turned—Armin, Jung, Nguyen, each one quieter than the last. No one cracked a joke. No one asked for coffee.

Jimin Park wasn’t with them yet.

Val looked up, then at Armin. “You told him?”

“He was on the call deck talking to Uma,” Armin said. “He’s coming.”

She nodded once, then sat back in her chair, folding her arms over her chest. The data still glowed on the screen—numbers, coordinates, trajectory math, and the name SOL 320, burned in bold near the top like it was written in blood.

Nguyen broke the silence first. “It’s real?”

Val glanced at him. “Yes. It’s real.”

“And it was sent to Zimmermann,” Hoseok said, quietly. “Not to JPL. Not to Command.”

“To his wife,” Armin said. “Piggybacked on a family message. They slipped it into the attachment buffer.”

Hoseok gave a low whistle. “That’s a hell of a risk.”

Val didn’t smile. “Which means it’s got to be important. So, it’s a Park call.”

The hatch behind them opened with a pneumatic hiss.

Commander Jimin Park stepped into the room, still in his flight jacket, headset looped around his neck. His expression was unreadable, but his eyes scanned the crew immediately, clocking the tension, the way no one made room for small talk.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

Val stood. “You need to see this, sir.”

She didn’t say more. Didn’t try to explain. Just stepped aside and offered him her seat at the console. Her tone wasn’t dismissive—it was deliberate. This wasn’t hers to carry.

Jimin sat slowly, glanced at her, then down at the data on-screen.

He started reading.

The others didn’t interrupt.

For a long moment, the only sound was the soft hum of ship systems, the occasional shift of a boot against the deck. Jimin scrolled slowly, eyes narrowing as the math unfurled in layers—positioning burns, delta-v margins, fuel requirements, time dilation calculations.

Then came the header again:

SOL 320.

He froze there, staring.

Val leaned on the back of the chair, her voice low. “It’s a maneuver. Based on Dean Marblemaw’s original slingshot paper, but adapted for our current trajectory. It uses the neighboring planet’s gravity to redirect us back to M6-117. No braking. No orbit insertion. Just one burn, a flyby intercept… and Y/N has to meet us mid-course using the MAV.”

Jimin sat back slowly, his hands resting on the armrests, gaze distant now.

The others watched him. No one pushed. No one dared.

Val broke the silence, her voice softer than before. “I didn’t want to be the one to say it, Commander. This... it’s not a decision for any of us to make. Not really.”

He looked up at her.

“I trust you,” she said.

The room held still as he looked at each of them in turn. Jung. Nguyen. Armin. Val.

They all waited for him to speak—not out of deference to rank, but because they knew what this meant. Y/N wasn’t just a crewmate. She wasn’t just a scientist on another rock.

She was his family.

And now she was a question hanging in space.

After a moment, he leaned forward, shoulders stiff with the gravity of it all.

“Get me everything,” he said. “Engine specs, margin of error, fuel thresholds. We don’t move unless we know it can be done.”

Val nodded once. “Yes, sir.”

He stood slowly, gaze still on the screen.

“And we keep this off Command until I say otherwise.”

“Of course, sir,” She grinned.

The crew of the Starfire sat around the narrow rec table, their knees brushing beneath it, shoulders hunched closer than comfort allowed. The lights overhead were dimmed, low power mode humming softly through the ship’s systems like a second heartbeat. Empty ration wrappers floated lazily in the corner, caught in the stagnant air.

The ship’s artificial gravity drum wasn’t active tonight. No one felt like turning it on. No one felt like pretending.

Jimin leaned forward, elbows resting on the scratched tabletop, fingers loosely laced. His voice was steady, if a little hoarse from speaking too long in the too-thin air.

“And assuming the burn goes clean, the maneuver takes us into a solar flyby, past Earth. The intercept brings us home in... 211 days after rendezvous,” he said. “Give or take.”

Silence followed. The crew looked at one another, the numbers hanging there like frost on the walls. No one moved. The weight of what he’d said hadn’t settled. It was still drifting, still searching for a place to land.

Koah broke the stillness first, his voice hesitant. “That would actually work?”

Jimin nodded. “The math’s sound. I ran it with Armin. Val checked the burn window against the latest telemetry. The fuel reserves are tight, but within margins.”

Koah rubbed a hand over his face, then let it drop to the table. “That’s wild,” he muttered. “It’s brilliant.”

Armin, who hadn’t spoken since they sat down, leaned forward. “It is brilliant. And it wasn’t mine.”

He looked up. “Whoever sent that file knew our vector. They built a burn profile around our exact rotation, our real-time acceleration data. It’s too specific to be theoretical.”

Hoseok Jung exhaled hard, his arms folded across his chest. “Okay. But why the encrypted file? Why send it to you and not Command?”

Jimin looked at him. “Because NOSA already said no.”

He let the silence hold a second longer before continuing. “They weighed the risks and made their choice. Rescue her later, not now. Safer for us, statistically. But someone disagreed. Someone back home—someone with access—wanted us to have another option.”

“So we’d be overriding the chain of command,” Koah said, brows knitting. “Making a decision they explicitly rejected.”

“Yes,” Jimin said. “If we do this,” he continued, “we’ll force their hand. They’d have no choice but to send the supply probe to intercept us on the return arc. If they don’t, we starve. But they will. Because the alternative is letting six astronauts die on a public feed, live and slow.”

Koah leaned back, eyes locked on the ceiling. The metal above him was marked with signatures—names from Nexus I and II, left like chalk on a wall before graduation. Most of them were still alive.

This would make sure of it.

“Are we doing it?” Valencia asked finally. Her voice was calm, but there was something brittle at the edge of it. She looked tired. They all did.

Jimin shook his head. “It’s not my call.”

Koah blinked. “You’re the commander.”

“I am,” Jimin said. “Which means I know when something is beyond the scope of command. This isn’t a mission deviation. This is a mutiny.”

The word hung in the room like static.

He let it sit before continuing, his voice low. “You need to understand what this is. If we commit and the maneuver fails, we’ll burn too much fuel to get back. If we miss the MAV intercept, we lose the rendezvous and she dies. If we miss the unnamed planet’s gravity corridor by half a degree, we spiral off-course for good. And even if we pull it off... it adds 213 days to our mission clock.”

He paused. Let the numbers soak in.

“213 more days in space. No resupply planned. No re-entry window guaranteed. Something breaks—something simple, something stupid, like a heat exchanger or a water recycler—and we die out here.”

No one moved.

“And even if we don’t die,” he added, “some of us are military. Koah and I would face court-martial. The rest of you? You’d never fly again.”

A long beat passed.

Then Koah gave a crooked smile. “Yeah, I figured.” He looked at Jimin. “You really think I care about flight status after this? Frenchie’s out there alone.”

“She’d die,” Armin said quietly.

Koah nodded. “Then yeah. I’m in.”

“Don’t rush it,” Jimin warned. “This is the kind of decision that doesn’t come off your record. Ever.”

Koah met his gaze. “Then I’ll make it count.”

Hoseok tapped a finger against the table, then looked up. “We can’t ignore it. If there’s a shot—hell, if there’s even a chance she’s alive—we take it. We’re not leaving her out there.”

Jimin turned to Val. She hadn’t spoken. She’d just been watching him.

Of all of them, she looked the most conflicted—not reluctant, just... aware. Her eyes were sharp, calculating. And scared, in a way only someone with full knowledge of the risk could be.

“Val,” Jimin said.

She exhaled slowly. Ran a thumb along the edge of the table. Then finally, she nodded.

“One condition,” she said. “We finish the math. Every inch of it. No gaps. No ‘close enough.’ We run this thing until it bleeds numbers.”

Jimin gave a slow, sure nod. “Agreed.”

Val looked around the room—at the faces of the people she’d flown with, laughed with, broken with—and when her gaze came back to Jimin’s, her voice was clear.

“Let’s go get her.”

Brendan Hatch sat slouched at the front console in Mission Control, elbows on the desk, one hand wrapped loosely around a paper cup of coffee that had gone cold an hour ago. The graveyard shift was always the same—quiet, steady, unremarkable. Background hum from systems, low chatter from telemetry and comms, a few tired engineers trading stories in hushed tones. It was routine, predictable.

That’s why he liked it.

He took a slow sip and winced. The coffee tasted like rust and burnt toast.

The voice in his headset broke the calm.

“Flight, CAPCOM.”

Brendan straightened a bit, instinct overriding fatigue. “Go ahead, CAPCOM.”

“We’ve got a... strange ping from Starfire. Unscheduled update, came in just now. One-line transmission.”

Brendan set the cup down. “One line? What kind of line?”

There was a pause on the other end, and when the CAPCOM spoke again, their voice held a note Brendan didn’t like. Hesitation.

“No system flags, no distress codes. Just this: ‘Houston, be advised. Dean Marblemaw is a steely-eyed missile man.’ That’s the whole message.”

Brendan blinked.

He turned slowly toward Guidance, who was already swiveling in his seat with a raised brow.

“Dean who?”

“Not a clue,” CAPCOM replied. “Checked personnel. Checked payload specialists. No one onboard Starfire by that name.”

Brendan opened his mouth to respond, but didn’t get the chance.

Alarms screamed to life.

First one console, then another—flashing red across telemetry, guidance, propulsion. The hum of the room shattered. Chairs scraped, voices rose. The quiet rhythm of Mission Control was gone in an instant, replaced by controlled chaos.

Brendan shot to his feet. “Guidance, report!”

“Flight, Starfire’s orbital vector just shifted,” came the answer, fast and clipped. “They’ve made a burn. Large. Coordinated.”

Brendan’s gut tightened. “Drift?”

“Negative. No drift. This wasn’t passive. They changed trajectory. On purpose.”

“What’s the delta?”

“Twenty-seven point eight one two degrees. Relative to prior flight path.”

Brendan swore softly under his breath, jaw clenched. “CAPCOM, get them on comms. Ask what the hell they’re doing.”

“They’re not responding, Flight. Not acknowledging the transmission request.”

“Jesus Christ,” Brendan muttered. “Guidance, time to irreversible course commit?”

“Working on it.”

“Telemetry,” he snapped, turning toward the woman two rows back. “Any chance this is instrumentation error? False reading?”

“No, Flight,” she replied, already typing. “Confirmed from both uplink satellites. This is real-time. The burn profile is clean. Intentional.”

Brendan ran a hand over his face, pushing back the throb that had started behind his eyes.

“Flight,” CAPCOM again. “Still no response from Starfire. No autopilot anomaly. Manual controls engaged. This is them.”

For a moment, no one said anything.

Then the propulsion tech let out a breath. “It’s a slingshot.”

Brendan turned to him. “What?”

“The numbers. It’s not a decel. It’s a gravity-assist prep burn.”

He turned back to his console, pulling up the star map. The trajectory arced not toward Earth, but around it—shaving close, building speed.

“They’re not coming home,” the tech said. “They’re slingshotting Earth. Back out. Somewhere else.”

A long silence stretched.

Brendan leaned over the comm desk, both palms flat against the surface, heart pounding.

“CAPCOM,” he said quietly. “Ping orbital intelligence. I want a full trajectory model. And tell me when that slingshot window locks.”

“Aye, Flight.”

“Guidance,” he said, turning again, “when exactly did this maneuver begin?”

“Timestamped at 03:46:18 GMT. Four minutes ago.”

Brendan stared at the screen. The arc was unmistakable now. Clean. Purposeful. A new course already emerging.

He knew what that meant.

He didn’t know how, or why—but this wasn’t a malfunction.

This was intent.

“Goddamn it,” he muttered. “They’ve gone rogue.”

He took a deep breath and leaned into his mic.

“Somebody,” he said, “find out who Dean Marblemaw is—and why the hell he’s hijacked my spaceship.”

The early light bled through the windows of NOSA’s executive floor in thin, fractured lines—cold and silver, like the morning hadn’t quite committed to warmth. The city beyond the glass was still quiet, tucked beneath fog and the hush of anticipation.

Yoongi stood at the far end of his office, unmoving, hands clasped behind his back. He wasn’t looking at anything in particular—just the smear of light creeping across the skyline. His reflection hovered faintly in the glass, superimposed over the world below like a ghost watching from orbit.

Behind him, the door opened. Footsteps, then a pause.

He didn’t turn.

Creed Summers stood just inside, shoulders squared, silent.

For a moment, neither man spoke. The only sound was the low hum of systems on standby, the distant rattle of a cleaning cart down the hall. That, and the heavy, aching silence of two people carrying the weight of a decision too big for either of them alone.

Finally, Yoongi’s voice broke the stillness.

“Alice goes before the press at nine,” he said, still watching the horizon. “We’ll confirm that we’re supporting Starfire’s new trajectory. Official line is that it was planned. Contingency strategy.”

Creed nodded once. “It’s the right move. Optics, morale. Damage control.”

Yoongi turned, slowly.

He looked tired—not just physically. There was something deeper in the lines around his mouth, the set of his shoulders. Not a man who lacked conviction, but one who had been forced to weigh too many impossible things for too long.

“You may have killed them,” he said.

Creed didn’t flinch, but his face didn’t harden either. He stood with his hands in his coat pockets, still and steady. “They made the call.”

Yoongi stepped closer, stopping just behind his desk, fingers brushing against the edge as if grounding himself. “You fed them the math. You knew what they’d do.”

“I gave them information,” Creed said evenly. “That’s all. The choice was theirs.”

Yoongi’s jaw tightened. “Don’t split hairs. We both know what a team does when you give them a mission and a reason.”

A beat of silence.

Then Yoongi’s voice dropped—quieter, rawer. “You know how fragile this whole damn thing is?”

He looked at Creed now—not as an adversary. As a man trying to hold up a building while the ground cracked beneath it.

“The public, the funding, the next three missions that haven’t even left the floor. I’ve got three senators on the line every day, asking why we haven’t pulled the plug. Why we didn’t bring them home sooner. Why we let her stay behind. Every time someone dies up there—even when it’s the right call—people turn their backs on us. And every time we get lucky, they forget the odds. They stop listening to the numbers. The margin disappears.”

Creed didn’t speak. He didn’t have to.

Yoongi exhaled, slow and steady, like it physically hurt to say what came next.

“I’m not here to play politics,” he said. “I’m here to keep the program alive. So the people who come next still have something to reach for. I’ve fought tooth and nail to hold this place together—not for power, not for legacy. For continuity. Because once it breaks—once people stop believing we’re worth the risk—it’s gone. And it doesn’t come back.”

Creed’s voice was soft. “She’s not a statistic.”

“I know,” Yoongi said, almost too quickly.

It surprised them both—how fast the words came.

He looked away, swallowing once, then slowly sat at the edge of the desk.

“She’s not a number, Creed. I know who she is. I remember her interview. She had this… fierce optimism. Asked me if she’d be allowed to ‘fix things’ if they broke, or if we’d just tell her to wait for a maintenance bot. She was so sure she could outsmart anything.”

Creed’s posture eased, just slightly. “She kind of has.”

Yoongi let out a low breath that might’ve been a laugh, or something close. “Yeah. I know. I read every log. Every data stream. Every piece of cobbled-together engineering magic she’s pulled off in the dirt. She shouldn’t have lasted two weeks.”

“And yet she’s finishing the colony’s science logs,” Creed said. “Using a frying pan, duct tape, a shitty old drill, and radioactive decay.”

“She’s alive,” Yoongi said, like it was a secret.

“She’s alive,” Creed echoed.

The silence that followed was different now. Heavier, but not hostile. Just honest.

Yoongi stood again, walking back toward the window. The city below was waking. Headlines would be firing up soon. Half the world already knew. By the time Alice hit the podium, the story would be out of their hands.

He stared out at the light for a long moment.

Then, without turning, he said, quietly, “God, I hope you’re right.”

Creed said nothing.

After a few more seconds, Yoongi added, “When this is over, you’ll submit your resignation.”

There was no venom in it. Just gravity. Consequence. A toll paid in silence.

Creed nodded. “I figured.”

Yoongi turned back to him.

“Bring them home,” he said.

Creed gave a small nod—tight, respectful—and left the room without another word.

Yoongi stayed where he was, one hand resting lightly against the windowpane. The sun had climbed a little higher, casting long, sharp shadows across his office.

The sun crawled over the horizon like it was dragging its feet, casting deep red light across the wind-carved ridges of Sundermere Basin. As it climbed, the basin seemed to ignite—rust, gold, and copper spilling across the plain. Heat shimmered early in the day on M6-117. It didn’t build; it simply arrived.

The stillness of the planet, as always, was total. Except for the faint, rhythmic sound of drilling.

Inside the Hab, Y/N sat hunched over her cluttered experiment table, still in her half-unzipped EVA suit. Her hair stuck to the sweat along her temples, her undershirt damp across her spine. A dozen open containers surrounded her—rock samples, rusted tool bits, a half-smashed solar converter she was trying to rewire with salvaged cabling. Her shoulders ached. Everything ached.

The camera blinked red, and she gave it a weary smile.

“Here’s your daily crash course in logistics,” she said, voice hoarse but steady. “Every Nexus mission requires a minimum of three years of presupplies. Fuel, food, oxygen, parts. You don’t pack that kind of bulk on launch day—you land it ahead of time.”

She gestured vaguely to the map that blinked on her tablet. “Which is why the MAV for Nexus-4 is already parked in Sundermere Basin. It got here almost a year before I did. Or... was supposed to.” Her smile faded for just a second. “Anyway. There it is. Waiting.”

Her eyes flicked down to the numbers on the screen—distance, resource counts, route projections. She swallowed, then looked back up.

“The plan is simple,” she said, not even pretending to believe it. “I drive 3,200 kilometers across a planet that actively wants me dead. I bring my oxygenator, my water reclaimer, my atmospheric regulator, my food, my tools, my radiation gear—everything that lets me keep breathing. I install it all into a vehicle I’ve never tested, in conditions it was never prepped for. Then, right as the Starfire passes overhead at orbital velocity, I launch and pray I don’t miss the window.”

She paused, letting that settle. Then gave a dry, lopsided grin.

“Okay, yeah. It sounds insane. But also kind of awesome, right?”

She sat back in her chair, stretching out her sore arms. Her elbow knocked over a tin of screws, which rattled across the table and clattered to the floor. She didn’t bother picking them up.

“Of course,” she added, “that’s future Y/N’s problem.”

Her tone darkened, not bitter, but quieter.

“Right now I’ve got two hundred sols and change to figure out how to convert this glorified golf cart into a spacecraft support vehicle. NOSA’s running the numbers, trying to make miracles happen, but so far the best advice I’ve gotten from Earth has been... and I quote... ‘Drill holes in the roof of your rover and hit it with a rock.’”

She smiled again, brighter this time, then glanced down at the metal plates stacked beside her. “So. Guess that’s what I’m doing today.”

She didn’t log off. She just stood, rolled her shoulders, and got to work.

Later, outside, the three suns were already high in the sky. The light was sharp, clinical. There was no softness here—not from the light, not from the wind, not from the planet. The surface heat rippled like liquid, and the rover baked under it.

Y/N stood on the roof of Speculor-2, bracing her boots against the support bars, a modified drill in her hands. The metal screamed beneath each puncture. The holes didn’t need to be pretty—just precise. Dozens of them, arranged in a ring, traced with chalk from a broken filter cap. Her gloves were stiff with dust. Sweat ran down her back inside the suit, soaking the inner lining.

When she finished the last hole, she set the drill aside and pulled a flathead screwdriver from the pouch at her hip. Then, the rock. She’d chosen it carefully. It had a good weight to it.

The first strike dented the panel. The second left a visible imprint. She kept going.

Each blow echoed through the stillness like a challenge. It was absurd and it was necessary. And it was all she had.

Inside the Hab, the cooler hummed. The lights flickered briefly as she walked in, peeling the top half of the suit from her body. She drank a pouch of electrolyte gel, gagged, then sat down at the small kitchen table, slowly chewing on a cold potato.

One by one, she laid out ration pouches in a line and began marking them in thick black Sharpie.

Departure.

Birthday.

Last Meal.

She hesitated over the final pouch, then wrote something smaller.

If I Don’t Make It.

She capped the marker and sat back, staring at the row.

There was no drama in her expression. Just focus. Acceptance. She’d been past fear for a while now.

Far above the surface, the Starfire had completed its burn. Its course now locked. A ship the size of a small city turned with impossible grace, cutting through the darkness in complete silence. Its panels flared softly in the starlight as it adjusted position, beginning its long arc toward rendezvous.

The engines cooled. The crew settled. Somewhere, someone was running simulations.

But down below, on a world that had tried to kill her a dozen different ways, Y/N was still moving. Still patching. Still planning.

She pulled her notepad back toward her and began sketching the adapter plate that would bridge the MAV’s cockpit to the supply lines from the rover. The drawing was shaky—her fingers cramped—but she kept going.

It was still absurd.

But not impossible.

The video booth on the Starfire wasn’t much more than a glorified storage locker. No insulation, no privacy to speak of—just a narrow alcove welded into the comms deck, with walls so thin you could hear the ship groan during its thermal cycles. A single chair, bolted to the floor. A screen about the size of a dinner tray. That was it.

But to Commander Jimin Park, it had become a kind of chapel.

He came here when he couldn’t sleep. When the silence of the corridors felt too big. When the ship's humming nerves and quiet voices became too much and too little all at once.

Now, he sat forward in the dim light, hands folded tightly between his knees, staring at the flickering terminal as it made contact.

The screen blinked once, twice—and then steadied.

Uma appeared.

Backlit by the warm kitchen glow of their apartment on Aguerra Prime. She stood in front of the counter, arms folded across her chest, her silhouette unmistakable. Behind her, the sky beyond the window was still black. Early morning. That fragile hour before the city started breathing again.

Her golden hair was pulled into a messy knot—loose, a little unkempt, wisps of it curling around her face. No makeup. Her eyes were puffy, like she hadn’t slept much. Like she’d maybe cried in the bathroom and then come back out without pretending it hadn’t happened.

Jimin stared at her a moment longer than he meant to. He drank her in like she might vanish if he blinked too hard.

But when she spoke, there was no softness in her voice.

“Five hundred and thirty-three days.”

It wasn’t a greeting. It wasn’t even anger, not really. It was the kind of flat, sharp-edged fact that cut deeper than yelling ever could.

“You added five hundred and thirty-three days to your mission,” she said. “And you didn’t even call first.”

He didn’t flinch. He’d had this conversation a hundred times in his head. None of them made it easier.

“I know,” he said, quiet. “I’m sorry.”

She shook her head—not in disbelief. That stage had passed. This was something colder. A sadness so layered it had started calcifying into sarcasm.

“Did you even think about us? Me? Hana?” She didn’t wait for him to answer. “Do you even remember how old she’ll be when you get back?”

He didn’t look away. “Almost five.”

“She’ll barely remember you,” Uma said. Her voice cracked slightly on the word remember, but she pushed through it.

“I know.”

Her arms tightened across her stomach. He could see it—how hard she was trying not to let herself break, not here, not on a grainy video call with a six-second delay.

“You’re signing up for seven more months of silence,” she said. “When I went through IVF. When I was pregnant. While I give birth. While I recover. While our daughter goes to her first day of school and asks why the other kids’ dads come to pick them up. And all she’s got is a photograph and a voice memo from orbit.”

He closed his eyes for a moment, just to breathe. The silence stretched, broken only by the faint hum of the Starfire behind him.

“I know,” he said again, voice low. “You’re right.”

“You think I care about being right?” she snapped, and then immediately softened, as if the sharpness had drained what little strength she had left.

Her hand came up slowly to her face, like she hadn’t even noticed it moving. She rubbed at her temple with the heel of her palm, as if trying to smooth out the ache that had settled behind her eyes. Then her hand dropped to her belly.

“I had contractions yesterday,” she said.

Jimin’s breath caught, barely audible over the low hum of the booth’s systems. His whole body stilled. Only his eyes moved—searching hers across the grainy feed like he might read something more, something urgent.

Uma didn’t give him time to respond.

“I was alone,” she said. “Scared.”

Her voice didn’t tremble. She said it with the kind of flat honesty that came after a long night of holding yourself together.

“I called my parents,” she added, more quietly now. “They won’t make it in time. Customs delays—they’re stuck off-world until next week. Rose and Sean are staying with me through the delivery, which is… fine. Really. They’ve been amazing.”

She paused, and for a moment, her eyes softened—but not toward comfort. Toward grief.

“But they’re not you, Chim.”

She looked down, hand still resting on her belly. Her other arm wrapped around her midsection like she was trying to hold something in, or maybe keep something out. When she looked back up at him, the bravado had cracked wide open. What remained was raw and quiet and impossibly human.

“I didn’t want to meet our son without you.”

Jimin leaned in slowly, like he could close the light-years between them with body language alone. He opened his mouth, then closed it again. Swallowed hard. When he finally spoke, his voice was rough-edged and barely steady.

“You’re not alone,” he said. “You’re meeting him in a world where I already love him more than I ever thought I could love anyone. That has to count for something. I know it’s not the same. God, Uma, I know it’s not. But it’s true.”

His voice caught, and he pushed past it. “Rose and Sean—listen, they’ll take care of you like you’re theirs. I made sure of that before I left. I should’ve told you sooner. I should’ve done a lot of things sooner.”

“I know,” she whispered.

“I’m so sorry I’m not there with you.”

Uma turned away, just slightly, dabbing at her face with the sleeve of her sweater. Not hiding the tears—just trying to stay upright through them.

“I called him Riker,” she said after a pause. “I know we were still deciding. I know we said we’d wait. But it felt right. Last night I was reading those baby books Quinn gave me, and I whispered it to him. And he kicked.”

Jimin’s throat clenched. He didn’t trust himself to say anything at first.

“Riker,” he repeated finally, like he was testing the word in his mouth for the first time. “Yeah. That’s his name.”

She smiled—small, real. Her chin trembled.

“He looks like you,” she said. “From the scans. Same nose. It’s hard to get clear pictures because he keeps tossing and turning, but I just know just like I knew Hana would.”

“I wanted to be the first one to hold him,” Jimin said, voice low.

Uma nodded. “Then get your ass home.”

He chuckled, breathless. “Working on it.”

He leaned in even closer, his hand hovering near the edge of the console like he might reach through it. “I’ll come home to you, Uma. I swear to you. I’ll crawl back if I have to.”

“I believe you,” she said, her voice barely more than a whisper.

Her hand came up again, touching the screen gently. Jimin mirrored the gesture. Their fingertips aligned through the glass—no warmth, no pressure. Just the image. Just the intention.

A silence settled between them. Not empty. Just full of the things that didn’t need to be said aloud. Years of late nights. Early mornings. Fights. Laughter. Hana’s first steps. The quiet promise of a life they were still trying to build.

Then Jimin spoke again, more carefully now.

“She’s like my sister,” he said. “I know that’s not in the job description. I know it wasn’t supposed to matter. But I made the call. I stayed. I would do it again.”

Uma pulled back slightly, sitting straighter. Her arms folded across her chest. The tears were drying, but her eyes stayed hard, focused.

“You think I don’t understand why you did it?”

He didn’t answer. He knew better than to try.

“I do,” she said. “But you didn’t tell me. You didn’t even give me a choice. I had to find out from a system ping that you were extending your mission—seven more months, just dropped into my inbox like a goddamn package delivery.”

She shook her head. “You’re going to miss your son being born, Jimin.”

Her voice didn’t rise. It didn’t need to.

He leaned in again, pressing his palm to the console like it might carry the weight of what he wanted to say.

“You would’ve told me to go,” he said, quiet. “If I’d asked.”

“Of course I would’ve. But you didn’t ask. That’s the part that hurts.”

He nodded once, slowly. “Then be furious. Be as mad as you want. I’ll take it all. I just…” He swallowed again. “Please don’t stop talking to me.”

Uma stared at him for a long time.

Her face didn’t shift. Not right away. Her arms were still crossed, her jaw still tight, and for a moment, Jimin wondered if she was even going to say anything. Then she exhaled—long, controlled—and the line of her shoulders softened. Just slightly. Not in surrender, but in recognition.

That quiet, painful kind of understanding that only happens between people who know each other too well to lie.

“Goddamn it, Chim,” she muttered, voice low. “You’d better bring her back.”

It wasn’t forgiveness. Not entirely. But it wasn’t anger either. It was something deeper. Something closer to faith. The kind that could only survive if you’d been through fire together and still chose to look each other in the eye.

Jimin’s shoulders sagged, just a little. Not enough to be obvious. Just enough to let some of the weight slip off his chest for the first time in days.

“That’s the plan,” he said.

Uma didn’t respond right away. She just reached forward again, her hand finding the edge of the screen. This time, her fingers trembled.

Jimin mirrored her instinctively, pressing his palm to the glass. Their hands aligned—pixels and pressure, no warmth, no real contact—but it was the closest thing they had to touch.

They stayed like that, neither speaking. The silence between them wasn’t empty. It was full—of late-night talks and shared routines, of old fights and quiet reconciliations, of watching their daughter sleep between them on the couch and arguing about whose turn it was to clean out the recycling chute.

It was the silence of people who knew how to sit in each other’s pain.

Finally, Uma spoke. Her voice was quieter now, but not small. It was steady. Honest.

“Bring my favorite sister-in-law home.”

Jimin’s lip twitched. He gave a tired smile that almost—almost—reached his eyes.

“She’s your only sister-in-law.”

Uma rolled her eyes, that familiar flicker of fire slipping back in. “Whatever, Orphan Annie. That just makes the title easier to maintain. Don’t get cocky.”

He laughed. Really laughed. It came from somewhere deep in his chest, cracking through the weariness like sunlight through storm clouds. The kind of laugh that reminded him what it felt like to be more than just a uniform and a mission file.

Uma smiled too, but it faded quickly, replaced by something gentler. Something sad.

“I should go,” she said, glancing off-screen. “Hana’s about to wake up, and I don’t think our connection is going to last long enough for her to talk to you. It’d break her heart if she only got a few seconds.”

Jimin’s smile faltered. He nodded, slow. “She still asking?”

“Every morning,” Uma said. “She stands at the window and asks when the stars are going to give you back.”

His chest tightened. “What do you tell her?”

Uma’s voice was soft, but firm. “I tell her the stars are just slow. Like her dad.”

Jimin chuckled under his breath. “Exactly like her dad.”

Uma glanced down, brushing something off her lap, then looked back at the screen. “She still sleeps with that stupid plush helmet you gave her.”

“She named it Captain Helmet, right?”

“Lieutenant Helmet,” Uma corrected. “She demoted it last week for insubordination.”

Jimin barked another laugh, “That tracks.”

In the corner of the screen, a red light started to blink—connection timer winding down.

Neither of them said anything right away. They both knew what that light meant. They both knew how these calls ended.

“I love you,” Uma said.

“I love you,” Jimin said, the words catching at the edges of his throat.

The screen flickered.

Then it went dark.

The booth filled with the soft hum of life support again. A steady pulse of recycled air, a low mechanical whisper—just enough to remind Jimin he was back on the ship. Back in the silence.

He didn’t move.

Not for a while.

He just sat there, one hand still resting against the blank screen, the echo of Uma’s voice lingering in his chest. He had hoped Hana would be there today. She would’ve made him feel better about this whole thing.

Eventually, he stood. Adjusted his collar. Wiped his face with the back of his hand.

Then he turned and stepped out into the corridor, the weight of two promises—one to his wife, one to Y/N—pulling him forward.

Because there was work to be done.

The lab at JPL was immaculate—sterile white walls, overhead lights humming in quiet synchrony, and the kind of chill in the air that came from both temperature control and high stakes. But beneath that pristine order, the room buzzed with pressure. Not the loud, chaotic kind. The quiet kind. The kind that built slowly and wrapped around your ribs.

Marco Navarro stood near the central bay, arms folded tightly across his chest, posture stiff. He looked like a man trying very hard not to look tired. The sleeves of his button-down were rolled up just past his elbows, exposing forearms marked by the fine lines of someone who hadn’t left the building in days. His dark eyes were locked on the Iris 2 Probe as it hovered, cradled by a suspension rig, waiting to be sealed for launch logistics.

All around him, his team moved with quiet precision. Engineers in cleanroom suits adjusted clamps and rechecked fittings. Two techs hovered over a tablet, reviewing structural readings. A third was halfway through a final checklist on the containment shell. Every movement was practiced, deliberate. No one raised their voice. No one had to.

But the tension in the room was palpable.

Across the lab, three representatives from TIC—the Terran Interplanetary Commission—stood just beyond the boundary line in sealed protective suits, their presence as subtle as a shadow, but twice as heavy. No one spoke to them. They didn’t speak either. They just watched. Silently, intently. The government’s eyes on borrowed ground.

Marco didn’t acknowledge them directly. Not yet. He leaned in toward one of his senior engineers, muttering a question under his breath.

“Telemetry package confirmed?”

The engineer, a red-haired woman with tired eyes and half a protein bar tucked behind her monitor, nodded once. “Final sync cleared at 0637. No transmission lag. We’re clean.”

Marco gave a curt nod, but his eyes stayed on the probe.

Iris 2 wasn’t just a machine. Not anymore. It was memory and responsibility and proof of intent—of everything NOSA, JPL, and TIC had promised and failed to deliver the first time. This probe wasn’t just about reaching M6-117. It was about reaching her.

He could feel the weight of it—of the quiet desperation stitched into the calculations, of the late-night redesigns, of the emergency approvals rushed through by Parliament in the wake of the satellite feed leaks. Every bolt on that chassis felt like a plea.

Just hold together.

Just get there.

Just give us a chance to make this right.

He exhaled through his nose and finally let himself glance at the TIC observers. One of them—a younger woman, likely an analyst based on the blue badge—caught his gaze. She gave a small nod. Not approval. Not encouragement. Just acknowledgment. That subtle gesture that said, We’re all in the same trench now.

Marco returned the nod, just as restrained. No words exchanged, but the message passed cleanly between them.

They both knew what was riding on Iris 2.

This wasn't a test flight. It wasn’t a publicity mission. It was a lifeline.

Every update they’d received from NOSA over the past three days—Y/N’s position tracking, the sample uploads, the EVA logs—had shifted the gravity of the operation. Iris 2 wasn’t going to M6-117 just to drop instruments and wave a flag. It was going to confirm the unthinkable. That someone had survived. That someone was still fighting.

Marco turned back toward the rig. The final clamps had been set. The outer seal was being lowered into place with a slow mechanical hiss, locking the probe inside its carbon-frame shipping cradle. Once it left this room, it would be transferred to a high-altitude payload facility for thermal calibration. After that, it was Helion’s problem.

But right now, in this room, it was still his.

“Double-check the seal redundancies,” he said to no one in particular. “Don’t assume the checklist is enough. I want a visual on every damn latch.”

Someone murmured an acknowledgment and peeled off toward the capsule with a scanner.

Behind him, the lead TIC official stepped forward slightly, crossing the line for the first time. She was older than the others, with silver streaks in her hair and a face that looked carved from patience. She didn’t interrupt. Just waited.

Marco finally turned to her.

“We’ll have full system redundancy locked before the truck arrives,” he said. “We’ve tripled the diagnostics on this model.”

She nodded, arms at her sides. “Good. Because we don’t get another shot at this.”

He didn’t argue. They both knew it was true.

“You’ve seen the EVA logs?” he asked.

“All of them.”

“And?”

The woman hesitated—just for a beat. “I’ve seen a lot of missions,” she said. “A lot of accidents. A lot of breakdowns. But I’ve never seen anyone doing what she’s doing. Not after that long. Not with no support.”

Marco’s jaw tightened, but his voice was calm when he answered.

“She was always that kind of astronaut. Doesn’t do things halfway.”

The woman looked at him, gaze sharp. “Let’s hope the rest of us can keep up.”

Then she stepped back behind the line again, her presence receding without a sound.

Marco stayed where he was, hands on his hips, eyes back on the crate now that the final lock had engaged. The engineers were already moving to sign off the handover forms, but he lingered.

Because once this box was gone, once the probe left his care, everything became chance.

The video booth on the Starfire was barely bigger than a walk-in closet, but Armin Zimmermann didn’t mind. In zero-G, everything felt a little more spacious anyway. He floated cross-legged, tucked into the narrow padded frame like he’d been born for it, the soft blue glow of the console casting gentle light over his face.

The screen flickered, adjusted—and then settled. Kelly appeared, clear as ever.

Her hair was pulled back in a low, effortless bun, and she wore a navy wool sweater he recognized from their last trip to Bremen. Even over the feed, she looked sharp. Steady. So completely herself. She sat at her parents’ kitchen table—he recognized the striped ceramic sugar jar by her elbow—and behind her, soft daylight filtered in through a tall, arched window. Earthlight.

Home.

“I found it at the flea market,” she said, lifting something into view with a sly grin. “Original pressing.”

Armin squinted, then let out a short, delighted gasp.

“No!”

Kelly held it closer to the camera, and there it was—Abba’s Greatest Hits, 1973. The white cover with the floating heads, perfectly preserved, the plastic sleeve only slightly scuffed.

“You’re joking!” Armin’s voice leapt, thick with his Aguerra-tinged German accent. “Kelly—that’s impossible to get! People have been trying to fake that cover since the ‘90s!”

“I triple-checked it,” she said, clearly proud. “Even the spine’s intact. The guy selling it said he bought it new in Malmö and barely played it. I think he was a bit heartbroken to let it go.”

Armin laughed, clapping his hands once in midair, the motion sending him spinning slightly in the seat harness. “Of course he was! If I had that, I wouldn’t let it leave my sight.”

Kelly smiled, and for a second, her posture relaxed. She looked at him like she had in the early years—before deployment cycles, before kids, before so many late nights spent on opposite sides of space.

“I got it for you,” she said simply. “I figured it’d help you hang on, for a few more months.”

He pressed a hand to his chest, mock-theatrical. “My heart,” he said dramatically. “You’ve stolen it again.”

“You never had a chance,” she replied, grinning.

Then a voice cut in from offscreen.

“Papa! Papa, look!”

A blur of motion darted behind Kelly’s chair. Max—age five and wild as ever—climbed up into her lap, shoving something toward the camera. A small toy spaceship made of interlocking blocks.

“I made this for you!” he shouted.

“Ohhh!” Armin’s face lit up. “Is that the Starfire? Wait—Max, did you get the airlock module right?”

“I did!” Max said proudly, twisting the top off to show him. “And this part detaches for landings!”

Kelly made a quiet oof as he squirmed in her lap. “Max, careful—you’re knocking the camera.”

“Sorry!”

Another voice called out from behind them—more composed.

“Felix, come say hi to Papa,” Kelly said over her shoulder.

A moment later, Felix stepped into view, his gangly arms wrapped around Marta’s middle with the kind of awkward, determined grip that came from practice and not quite enough upper body strength. He was seven now—taller, thinner, all knees and elbows. His hair was sticking up in the back like he’d just rolled off the couch.

“She’s getting heavy,” he announced, not complaining so much as stating a fact.

Marta let out a soft babble in response, followed immediately by a hiccup. Her round cheeks flushed with effort as she spotted the screen—and then her entire face lit up. She reached out toward Armin with both hands, fingers splayed, drool trailing from her chin to the sleeve of Felix’s shirt.

“Ach Gott,” Armin murmured, smiling so wide it wrinkled the corners of his eyes. “Look at her. She’s so big now.”

Kelly adjusted the angle slightly to center them all, then tilted the camera down to keep Marta in frame as Felix shifted her to his hip with a grunt. “She’s cutting teeth,” she said. “We’re up at least twice a night now. Last night she bit my finger and started laughing like a little villain.”

“I wish I could be there for it,” Armin said, the humor still in his voice but something heavier behind it now. “Even the screaming. I’d take the 3 a.m. crying and diaper explosions if it meant I could hold her.”

Kelly looked down at Marta, brushing a bit of hair from her forehead. “She misses you. They all do. But… I’m really glad you were here when she was born. I keep thinking about that. It mattered. Even if it was just one week, it mattered.”

Armin nodded, slowly. “Min didn’t have to approve the delay. I know that.”

“He did,” she said softly. “And I think it meant a lot. To all of us. Uma’s been struggling more than she says—Jimin missing Riker’s birth really hit her. I told her it would be okay. That it doesn’t change how much they love each other, how close he’ll be to that baby. I mean, you missed Felix’s birth.”

“And look at him,” Armin said, watching as Felix leaned against the kitchen doorframe now, absentmindedly rocking Marta as she gnawed on the edge of his hoodie string. “Still thinks I’m the coolest person alive.”

“He wrote an essay about you for school,” Kelly said, with a faint smile. “Said his papa works in space and is braver than a lion, but also better at cooking noodles.”

Armin laughed, chest tight. “Better than a lion at cooking noodles. High praise.”

“Max added that you once stopped an alien invasion. With a rock.”

“An Aguerra rock, no less. Very powerful stuff.”

“Apparently.”

A blur darted across the screen again. Max had returned, spaceship model still clutched in one hand, his curls bouncing with each step. “Papa! Did you see the antenna? Look, it turns—” He twisted it aggressively, and one piece popped off, bouncing out of frame.

“Oh no—wait—where’d it go?” he muttered, diving under the table.

Armin grinned, shaking his head. “Are you still fighting space pirates?”

“Every day!” Max’s voice called from under the table. “But they’re scared of me now.”

“Good,” Armin said. “Because they should be. With that ship, they don’t stand a chance.”

Kelly checked the screen corner. “We’ve got three minutes.”

Armin sat up straighter, trying to squeeze every second out of it. “How’s Earth?”

“Busy. Loud. But it’s good to see everyone. My mom’s still convinced Aguerra air has too little oxygen, despite never setting foot there.”

“I miss her house,” he said. “And her strudel.”

“She’s still mad that you like it more than mine.”

“She’s not wrong. Yours is… dense.”

Kelly gasped, mock-offended. “Rude.”

“I say it with love.”

“You’re lucky you’re in space.”

Marta began to fuss again, a tired cry cutting through the moment. Felix bounced her gently, but she was already twisting, trying to wriggle free.

“I’ll get her down,” he said, disappearing down the hallway.

Max had reappeared, one hand clutching a bent antenna triumphantly.

And then it was just the two of them again.

“You holding up?” Kelly asked, her voice quieter now.

Armin hesitated, but then nodded. “I’m okay. Mission’s a lot, but the team’s solid. Yoongi’s keeping the pressure focused. Mateo’s... well, he’s still Mateo. And Jimin’s trying to keep it together.”

Kelly’s expression shifted slightly. Concern.

“Any word on Fry?”

Armin’s smile faded, but it didn’t vanish. He was good at carrying the hard things lightly.

“No updates yet,” he said. “But she’s out there. Been fixing things, and managed to finish an old colony’s mission. Sick off of eating potatoes, perhaps. I know I would be and I get paste in a tube for breakfast.”

Kelly nodded slowly, eyes drifting toward the edge of the screen like she was picturing Y/N on that silent, brutal planet. “She’s always been stubborn.”

“She’s not stubborn,” Armin said. “She’s relentless. There’s a difference.”

The countdown blinked red now—less than a minute.

Kelly reached toward the screen, her fingers brushing the camera frame like she could close the distance through intention alone. “I’ll play the record for the kids when we’re home. Felix already sings Waterloo in the bath.”

Armin laughed, low and fond. “He’ll be a star.”

“Like his papa.”

He looked at her—really looked. The creases near her eyes, the calm strength in her voice, the soft exhaustion of someone doing too much but never complaining.

“I love you,” he said, quiet but clear.

Kelly smiled, eyes glistening, but she didn’t blink. “I love you more.”

The feed stuttered—just for a heartbeat—then steadied.

“Tell Max he’s getting an upgrade module,” Armin added, right as the screen blinked to black. “I’ll build it with him. When I’m back.”

And then the connection dropped.

Armin didn’t move.

He floated in the quiet for a moment, hands loose at his sides, the echo of laughter and baby babble still ringing in his ears. The hum of the ship crept back in—soft, familiar, indifferent.

He pressed one palm gently against the screen.

“I’ll get there,” he whispered, more to himself than anyone else. “I’ll come home.”

Then he pushed off the booth wall, slow and weightless, and drifted back toward the corridor. Toward duty. Toward something unfinished.

A father. A husband. A chemist. Still tethered to three children, a kitchen on Earth, and a vinyl record waiting to be played.

The launch pad shimmered under the relentless Aguerra Prime sun, the air rippling above the scorched concrete like a mirage. From a distance, it looked almost peaceful—the tall form of the Iris 2 Probe standing poised against the deep blue sky, its titanium shell gleaming with clean, sharp edges. But the closer you got, the more you felt it: the pressure humming through every cable, every socketed bolt, every word passed between engineers like it might snap if spoken too loud.

The booster tower rose behind it like a steel spine, support arms still locked around the probe’s flanks. Sunlight glared off the reflective plating, flashing across visors and toolboxes as teams moved in tight formation around the base. They moved with the synchronicity of people who didn’t have time to second-guess themselves—every motion honed by thousands of hours of prep. Check. Recheck. Confirm. Sign off.

It wasn’t chaos. But it wasn’t calm either. It was the electric stillness before the sprint.

Off to the side of the pad, in the limited shade beneath a modular control tent, Taurus Flight Director Isla Reinhardt stood with her arms tucked behind her back, her body language composed but taut. The sharp lines of her white jumpsuit caught the sun, unwrinkled despite the heat. In front of her, Creed was gesturing—tight, controlled movements, but unmistakably frustrated.

“This entire sequence is backwards,” Creed said, low enough to keep it out of the general comms traffic, but not hiding the edge in his voice. “You’re running a TIC stack from twenty years ago. We’ve updated every protocol since Nexus One, and we haven’t done command layer locking that way since Apollo 27.”

The translator, standing just to the side of them, repeated the statement in clipped, neutral tones—softening the delivery but preserving the structure. Creed didn’t look at the translator. He didn’t need to. His eyes were locked on Isla, waiting.

Her jaw flexed once, just barely.

“We’re following a mandate from oversight,” she replied. “The redundancy needs to clear from the top line of remote interface down. You want to override that, you take it up with Parliament.”

“I’ve tried,” Creed said. “They sent me you.”

That earned him a sharp look, but she didn’t flinch.

A few meters behind them, André Batista leaned against one of the static barriers, arms folded, expression unreadable behind his reflective shades. He was a fixture here—part liaison, part architect, part political shield. He didn’t often speak unless something needed settling. So far, he hadn’t moved.

Beside him, Yoongi Min stood with one hand tucked into his flight jacket pocket, the other holding a data slate he wasn’t reading. His stance was relaxed, but his eyes tracked everything. The two men locked eyes for a moment.

André tilted his head slightly.

Yoongi gave the barest shrug. Not my circus.

The translator cleared her throat gently as Creed fired off another quiet barrage of concerns, this time about sensor lag and latency curve risk over a long-range transmission relay. Isla didn’t interrupt—she simply let him speak, waiting for the break. When it came, she replied in a tone so calm it almost felt detached.

“We’re under a transparency clause,” she said. “TIC’s name is on this. I don’t care how things were done at NOSA. If something goes wrong on this flight, it’s ours to explain, not yours. That’s the trade-off for funding.”

Creed’s nostrils flared. “This isn’t about funding. It’s about surviving the mission long enough to justify the launch.”

There was silence. Not long. Just long enough for the weight of it to land. The translator didn’t repeat that one.

André stepped forward finally, pushing off the barrier. “We need to stop playing jurisdictional chess. The probe is loaded. The window is locked. We’re hours out, and every one of you has skin in the game.” He looked between them, then directly at Isla. “Let’s not waste the time we’re running out of.”

He turned to Yoongi next. “Where are we on the confirmation pings?”

“Telemetry’s stable. We’ve got three handshake confirms from Iris and two from the booster package. Final burn path data’s syncing now.” He glanced at Creed. “She’s gonna fly, Summers.”

Creed didn’t argue. He just exhaled, rubbed the back of his neck once, and stepped away from the argument like someone carefully placing a grenade down before walking away.

Yoongi looked after him for a beat longer than necessary. Then he turned to Isla. “He’s not wrong about the sequence logic. But you’re not wrong about politics.”

“Funny how those things rarely line up,” she muttered.

In the background, the launch pad hissed as cooling vapor rolled down from the upper stacks. A ground tech called out a ten-minute marker in clipped Standard. The wind shifted slightly, bringing with it the tang of scorched ozone and oil.

They all turned toward the pad, eyes tracking the silhouette of the Iris 2.

Y/N stood crouched atop the curved hull of Speculor 2, bracing herself against the relentless wind. The gusts came in rhythmic pulses, sharp and slicing, carrying fine, metallic-red grit that embedded itself in every seam, every fold of her suit. It was the kind of wind that didn’t scream—but pressed. Pushed. Like the planet itself wanted her gone.

Her boots, magnetized to the surface, clicked softly as she adjusted her stance. Above her, the sky was the same hazy slate it had been for weeks—never quite light, never quite dark, the perpetual dusk of Hexundecia’s upper atmosphere. Out here, there was no sound but the filtered rasp of her breath inside the helmet and the occasional groan of the rover shifting in the wind.

She worked quickly, but carefully—gloved hands moving with practiced intent as she secured the last edge of the pop tent onto the roof. It didn’t look like much: an awkward dome of salvaged thermal mylar, structural flex-canvas, and about three rolls of industrial adhesive. The seams were patchy, the shape slightly asymmetrical, and the fabric still bore the faint burn marks from its previous life as an emergency airlock tarp.

But it was what she had. What she’d built.

She ran a final bead of sealant along the base, then tugged at the corners, checking for give. None. Good. The fabric trembled under her fingers, sensitive to even the subtlest shifts in pressure.

"Okay," she muttered, her voice low and clipped, more to herself than the recorder feed. "Let’s see if you can hold your breath.”

She flipped the switch on the manual pressurization system—an old NOSA rig she’d retooled for small-space inflation. It hummed, then clicked. A second later, the tent shuddered and began to rise, inflating with slow, uneven breaths. The canvas bulged awkwardly at first, then snapped into shape, the internal frame locking into place with a faint metallic pop.

Y/N held perfectly still, watching. Waiting. Her pulse ticked in her ears, louder than she liked.

The tent swelled outward slightly under pressure, flexed, then settled.

No tearing. No hissing. No collapse.

She exhaled, breath fogging briefly on the inside of her faceplate.

"Okay," she whispered, this time with something closer to relief. “Okay.”

She stepped back, letting the winds howl around her as she took in the strange structure she’d created. Ugly as hell. But airtight—for now. It would hold a pocket of warmth. Let her eat. Sleep. Think. Survive a little longer.

The pop tent wasn’t a permanent solution, and she knew it. It was a stopgap. One she’d have to check every few hours for signs of structural fatigue, thermal drift, or microtears. But compared to sleeping half-curled in the rover’s cargo hold, it was a goddamn luxury suite.

She climbed back down, boots thunking lightly as they disengaged from the magnetized hull, and dropped into the main chamber of the rover. Inside, it was dim and cramped—stale air, the scent of worn insulation, and the ever-present tang of iron dust.

She peeled off her gloves with slow care, flexing her fingers. They were stiff and pale, the skin rubbed raw in places where the liner seams never quite sat right. Her breath slowed. The adrenaline was ebbing now, the rush of getting something done giving way to the quieter dread of everything else still ahead.

This had taken four sols to rig.

She had, maybe, twelve more before the storm cycle shifted and buried the area in sand thick enough to compromise everything. And if her estimates were right—and she prayed they were—there was a chance, however slim, that a satellite would be sweeping near this quadrant by then.

She had to make the tent visible. Reflective. Irrationally bright.

She’d started sewing strips of spare mylar to the outer shell two nights ago, in the dark, with a thermal needle and frozen fingers. She had four more to add. Maybe five.

Outside, the wind surged again—louder this time. Something heavy thudded against the side of the rover. Probably a loose panel from the old dig site. She didn’t jump. She was past jumping.

Instead, she reached for her patch kit and a folded sheet of mylar she’d scavenged from the side panel of an old solar collector. Then she stood.

One seam at a time.

That’s how she lived now.

Not by the week. Not by the day. Not even by the hour.

Seam by seam. Breath by breath.

At the NOSA headquarters, Mateo and his team of engineers were deep in the throes of their own technical challenges. They surrounded a mirrored setup of Y/N’s speculor, trying to replicate her conditions as closely as possible. The engineers were methodical in their work, carefully testing and retesting, but their efforts were proving difficult. One of the engineers scratched his head as he tried to fit the bulky Oxygenator into the cramped confines of the pop tent, muttering under his breath as he juggled the components.

“Maybe if we angle it this way…” Mateo began, but before he could finish his thought, the unit tipped over, causing a flurry of activity as the engineers scrambled to adjust the pieces. Mateo sighed, his patience wearing thin, but his tone remained steady. “Okay. Again.”

Koah floated just above the rail of the comms bay, one hand anchored to a support bar, the other tapping a short sequence into the feed control. The connection took a few seconds longer than usual—just long enough to make his pulse tick a little faster.

Then the screen lit up, and there they were.

Quynh, all sharp cheekbones and soft eyes, with her long hair twisted into a lazy bun at the top of her head. She was sitting cross-legged on the couch in their apartment back on Aguerra Prime, barefoot, a wrench in one hand and their two-year-old son Bao sprawled sideways across her lap, talking a mile a minute.

“There he is!” Quynh grinned, tossing the wrench into a tray beside her. “Koah, your son is trying to dismantle the toaster because he thinks it’s a spaceship.”

“It is a spaceship,” Bao declared, his little face popping up toward the camera with unfiltered joy. “Papa! Look! Toaster engine!”

Koah laughed, the sound echoing softly in the confined booth. “That’s classified technology, buddy. You can’t just reverse-engineer domestic appliances for launch.”

Bao let out a squeal of delight, bouncing in Quynh’s lap.

“You’re supposed to say hi, not initiate tech theft,” Quynh muttered playfully, nudging him with her chin.

“Watch this,” Koah said with a grin, pushing off the far wall in one smooth motion.

He floated through the zero-G space like a swimmer in slow motion, tucking into a controlled spin. His body twisted mid-air, knees drawn in, one hand flaring out for style points. He rotated once, then shifted momentum and drifted cleanly into the partial-grav buffer near the edge of the booth, landing with a soft thud on the deck.

Bao shrieked with laughter, clutching his belly. “AGAIN!”

Koah beamed. “You’re lucky your dad’s a certified space ninja.”

“You’re lucky you married a woman who finds space ninjas hot,” Quynh said dryly.

Koah barked a laugh. “No lies detected.”

He dropped back into a crouch and leaned closer to the screen, chin propped on his hands as he took them both in—his son’s wild curls and jam-streaked shirt, the familiar line of Quynh’s collarbone just visible under a worn tank top she’d probably stolen from him in college.

“You look good,” he said softly, his smile still tugging at the corners of his mouth. “Exhausted. But good.”

“So do you,” Quynh said. “Very heroic. Very floaty.”

“Bao,” Koah said in a mock-whisper, “how’s Mama holding up without Papa’s superior wrench skills?”

Bao squinted at him. “Mama says you make mess. Mama say she fix.”

Koah clutched his chest like he’d been shot. “Traitor!”

Quynh smirked. “He’s observant.”

They all laughed—an easy, looping rhythm that Koah could’ve stayed inside forever.

Then Quynh tilted her head, the light from the screen catching in the curve of her cheekbone. The warmth in her face didn’t disappear, but it shifted—something sharpened beneath it.

“I’ve been asking around,” she said, her voice quieter now. “About her. About what’s happening. No one’s talking.”

Koah’s smile dimmed at the edges. Not gone, just more cautious now. “You mean Fry?”

She nodded, brushing a hand through Bao’s curls as he leaned heavily against her shoulder. “I know Creed Summers went behind Yoongi’s back. That much I pulled out of one of the payload guys during a lunch break. But past that?” She shrugged. “Even Ives won’t say anything. And you know she usually cracks if you wave a coffee pod in her direction.”

Koah let out a slow breath and rubbed the back of his neck, like he was trying to knead the tension out of it. “Yeah,” he said finally. “It’s… complicated.”

“Complicated like top-level-clearance complicated?”

He hesitated, eyes flicking away for just a second. “Complicated like… you’d be obsessed with the engineering, and then terrified once you realized what it actually meant.”

Quynh’s expression didn’t change, but her posture shifted. She leaned forward a little, Bao still clinging to her like a sleepy barnacle.

“I don’t need you to break protocol,” she said, not accusing, just honest. “I know how it works. But I don’t want you sleepwalking into something you can’t walk out of.”

Koah looked at her, really looked, and felt that familiar pull in his chest—the one that reminded him exactly why he chose to stay. Why he said yes, when every other instinct told him no.

Even now, with everything spinning tighter by the day, she wasn’t asking him to come home. She was telling him to be smart. And that was love too.

“I’ll keep my eyes open,” he said, voice steady. “I promise.”

Quynh’s mouth curved into a half-smile. “Good. Because I may be the only one in the support chat who thinks you staying up there is the coolest thing ever.”

Koah chuckled. “The other wives still mad?”

“They’re... coping. Uma’s pissed. Understandably. Kelly pretends she’s fine, but the boys are taking it harder. Max asked if he could build a space elevator to bring Armin home.”

Koah smiled at that, the kind of smile that knew exactly what being missed felt like. “And you?”

Quynh rolled her eyes. “I’m over here bragging to anyone who’ll listen that my husband is doing deep-space diagnostics with a toothbrush and a busted coolant valve. Like some kind of orbital MacGyver.”

“Technically,” Koah said with mock formality, “it was a toothbrush and a strip of thermal tape. I have standards.”

Bao perked up. “Papa is best!”

Koah grinned, eyes sparkling. “Damn right he is. And you, Bao Bean, are the best little sidekick in the galaxy.”

“Are you bringing robot?” Bao asked suddenly, sitting upright in his mother’s lap. “You promised robot!”

“I remember,” Koah said, nodding solemnly. “And not just one—two robots. One for you, and one for Mama.”

Quynh raised a brow. “Oh yeah? What does mine run on? Flattery and caffeine?”

“Logic circuits, emotional resilience, and a coffee reservoir with built-in sarcasm,” Koah replied. “Basically… you in droid form.”

She laughed, the sound bright and short and familiar. “Flawless design.”

The screen flashed—two-minute warning, pulsing red in the corner.

Koah’s chest tightened the way it always did near the end of a call. He hated this part. Not just the goodbye, but the slow slide into silence.

“I wish I could stay longer,” he said, quieter now.

Quynh reached toward the camera, her fingers brushing close to the lens. “We’re good,” she said. “We’re here. And we’re proud of you.”

His throat tightened, but he didn’t let it show. “Give Bao a kiss for me?”

Before she could answer, Bao leaned forward, pressing his entire face against the screen. “MUAH!”

Koah mimed catching it, then tucked it into his pocket. “Straight to the cryo logs. Archived forever.”

Another blink—sixty seconds.

“I love you,” Quynh said, voice steady, full of everything she didn’t have time to say.

“I love you more,” Koah answered. Then added, “When I get back—”

“You’ll finish fixing the toaster?” she cut in, smirking.

“I’ll launch the toaster,” he said. “With a fusion drive and retractable wings.”

Quynh laughed, even as the feed flickered one last time.

The screen went dark.

Koah stayed there, suspended in the weightless booth, his hands still hovering near the edge of the console like he could will her image back. Then, slowly, he let go, pushing off the wall with practiced ease.

Back at the launch site, the first rumble came low—almost imperceptible at first, like a distant storm building beneath the concrete.

Then the pad lit up.

A towering column of fire and sound erupted beneath the Argo as its engines roared to life, white-hot exhaust curling around the flame trenches in thick plumes of smoke. The shockwave hit a split second later—rolling through the observation stands, rattling steel fixtures, and thudding deep into every chest on the platform like a second heartbeat.

It was a controlled violence—raw, precise, beautiful.

The Argo began to rise.

Slowly at first, as if testing the air, then faster—cutting through the sky in a clean, perfect arc. The hull gleamed gold in the afternoon light, the sun catching along its flank as it punched upward past the clouds, trailing a pillar of heat and vapor that tore the sky in two.

A wave of cheers broke across the launch complex. Technicians and engineers who’d been stiff with focus a moment earlier now stood shouting, hugging, clapping each other on the back. Some laughed. Some just stared, mouths parted in disbelief, as if they couldn’t quite believe it was finally happening. Others wiped at their eyes with sleeves and tried to pretend it was the sunlight.

Yoongi Min stood just off-center from the crowd, shoulders square, arms crossed, but there was a softness to his expression that hadn’t been there minutes before—like a coil had finally loosened in his chest. Next to him, Creed Summers was grinning, not wide, but sharp—relief mixed with the residue of pressure. His tie was still half-loose from the argument earlier, but now he extended a hand to Yoongi.

Yoongi hesitated, then took it.

Not warmly. Not with forgiveness. But with acknowledgment.

“Well,” Creed said, low enough for only Yoongi to hear, “we didn’t blow up the planet. That’s a win.”

Yoongi didn’t smile. But he didn’t pull away either.

“Telemetry looks clean,” someone called from a nearby terminal. “Guidance holding steady. No drift on the main stack.”

Across the pad, André Batista stood a few paces back from the crowd, hands in his pockets, sunglasses reflecting the disappearing silhouette of the rocket. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to. The quiet, satisfied nod he gave said enough. He had seen a hundred launches in his lifetime. This one mattered.

Marco stood a few steps off the platform edge, jaw clenched but eyes tracking the ascent with laser focus. The Iris-2 probe was up there now—every circuit, every algorithm, every delicate sensor array tucked into the Argo’s belly like a secret whispered across the stars. It wasn’t just equipment to him. It was purpose.

As the rocket disappeared past the clouds, only the vapor trail remained—fading into the blue, curling in on itself like a final signature on a hard-fought page.

Yoongi finally exhaled and turned to face the rest of the team. His voice was steady when he spoke, but his words carried the weight of months.

“Mission clock starts now,” he said.

Creed nodded once, then turned toward the ops tent, already scanning his tablet.

The cheering had begun to taper off. Reality was returning in steps. There were check-ins to process. Booster separations to confirm. A thousand things that could still go wrong.

But in that brief window—between fire and silence—everyone stood a little taller.

Taglist: @fancypeacepersona @ssbb-22 @mar-lo-pap @sathom013 @kimyishin @ttanniett @sweetvoidstuff @keiarajm @sathom013 @miniesjams32

59 notes · View notes

blueikeproductions · 9 months ago

Text

The Quintessons also got cards.

While we don’t know for sure if there’s other members of their race yet, these are a pretty big departure from the original designs, which have remained somewhat consistent.

Most notably the absence of the most recognizable Quintesson Judge is curious. There’s nothing that says they’re not there, but usually the Judge types are front and center for things, so removing them for a new High Command version is interesting.

The High Command and Soldier designs seem closer to some one off Quintessons from the 80’s cartoon.

The Quintessons have a somewhat complex conceptual history.

Their earliest concept looked like this.

A psychic biomechanical humanoid whose psychic abilities were so great they could make a horde of Sharkticons from scrap metal in an instant and probe the galaxy with a simple mind scan. Their head was apparently their true form, as it would eject and fly to another body when Hot Rod tried threatening it. The biomechanical look would persist for their final designs, but more modern media via Aligned and Cyberverse would instead state they’re actually organic creatures that look something like this:

Revealing their robotic bodies as merely being suits they pilot. It’s not clear yet if this is also the case in EarthSpark or ONE, though ONE feels like this is what they’re supposed to actually look like, but more organic this time than robotic as they typically are.

Some further revisions to the 80’s movie scripts and marketing of the time originally cast the Quintessons as working directly for Unicron, their mock trials were to punish and destroy any lingering survivors of Unicron’s wrath that passed by Quintessa. While this idea never made it into the original film, it was used in the Marvel comics and later revisited in early BotCon comics, but never became hard canon. The UK comics would make them into aliens clinging for survival as their home planet was destroyed by a time anomaly caused by the time traveling Galvatron. Running out of options, the Quints attacked Autobot City on Earth to try and colonize it, but were driven off by Rodimus Prime and Metroplex, their fate unknown but nevertheless swearing revenge on the Transformers.

The final version of the Quintessons in the cartoon cast them as the ancient creators of the Transformers, with some media explaining they also created Cybertron by terraforming a planet into a factory world (at least it wasn’t a parking structure planet). The cartoon would also establish them as slimy business men, having their tentacles in the affairs of other species for financial gain. Along with the Transformers starting out as in universe products to sell, it seems the writers might’ve been having a laugh at Hasbro.

The Quints’ primary goal in the cartoon was to push the Autobots aside so they could regain control of Cybertron, often conning the Decepticons into doing their dirty work for them. Where the Quints came from is never clear, as the show implies Cybertron was more their home planet originally due to their sentimental attachment to it. Their supposed home planet, Quintessa, is implied to merely be another planet they terraformed after getting booted off Cybertron.

Due to the more popular Primus origin from the Marvel comics, the Quintessons and their hand in the creation of Cybertron and its people was largely ignored in most mainstream media. While they saw a homage in Alpha Q in Energon (the connection to the Quintessons made stronger in the Energon Dreamwave comics), they didn’t really start resurfacing as major characters again until recently. The BotCon comics attempted to reconcile the two origins, stating the Primus origin was also the case in the cartoon, with the Quints interfering in the process, and this early idea served as the basis for the Aligned canon, where the Quints did the same in Cybertron’s early years, conning the young race into becoming their allies (servants), by bestowing both the futuristic space fairing technology Cybertronians enjoy today, their modern hierarchy (that became the corrupt caste system Megatron fought against) and the ability to Transform. Apparently the robots technically could already Transform as they all had Cogs, they just hadn’t LEARNED to Transform yet. Like the 80’s cartoon, these Quints intended to sell off the Transformers as products to the galaxy, with Sentinel (Zeta) Prime installed as their figurehead leader like in TFONE. Eventually they were chased off like in the old cartoon, but Prime nor RiD15 would ever revisit the Quintessons, though the prequel novels nobody read did claim the Autobots and Decepticons briefly became antagonized by them once more during the hunt for the Allspark in space.

Aligned’s main difference that’s fueled most modern interpretations is the Quintessons are the creations of Quintus Prime one of the newly established 13 original Transformers.

Aligned implies they killed Quintus and stole what they needed from him to become space fairing and eventually go to Cybertron, conquering other planets along the way.

The Quints were intended to be allies to Cybertron, as were other Quintus borne races, but this was not meant to be, due to the Quints’ hubris. EarthSpark’s version says the Quints were the first sons of the Prime, and in trying to discover their purpose, they became bitter and developed daddy issues, going around and killing off their cousins on other planets, attempting to acquire the Emberstone for their own use. The Quints and Transformers are strongly aware of each other, and clearly fought before, but their exact relationship has not been established yet, if at all.

TFONE greatly simplifies it to the Quints being an alien race that attacked Cybertron during the time of the Primes, though the hows and whys aren’t clear. What is clear is the jealous Sentinel made a bargain, helping them destroy the Primes and letting him be in control in exchange for paying them off in Energon to leave Cybertron alone. It’s not clear if Quintus Prime created the Quints in this universe, but there is a resemblance.

Quintus at some point: Sorry guys, you know how kids are!

Despite the Quintus origin, some modern media has gone back to the 80’s cartoon origin. Notably Age of Extinction and The Last Knight returning to the aliens created the Transformers idea, but the movies not directly using the Quintessons. However concept art does suggest the original intent WAS supposed to be the Quintessons…

Instead all we have is an alien hand and later Quintessa to go by.

It’s never clarified if the two are related, with Quintessa possibly being a Transformer and a Prime as well, but she is also called a liar by those formally in her employ so… She IS able to reprogram Optimus into doing her bidding however, so there’s that. She’s clearly inspired by Quintus, but isn’t connected beyond that. Her goal was to restore Cybertron by draining Earth of its life force and destroy Unicron in one fell swoop (as Earth is inexplicably Unicron again like in Prime). The organic Creators meanwhile were responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs, deploying bombs that converted organics into cyber matter that made the metal of the Transformers. Lockdown was working for the Creators, but with the abrupt inclusion of Quintessa, it’s not clarified if he was working for her instead/also.

Cyberverse cast the Quintessons as major villains, but instead of the creation origin, they depicted them as trans dimensional entities that travel to other Transformers universes to judge them guilty and destroy them for no other reason other than they can. Truly the best kind of villain: petty. Still this Dr. Who meets The Matrix direction with them doesn’t appear to be at all popular despite the arc being regarded positively. I still think Cyberverse is awful top to bottom, but the general idea they went for is decent. The Primes exist here, as noted previously with Alchemist Prime, but it’s never stated if these Quintessons are related to Quintus Prime.

Netflix War For Cybertron and Skybound Energon Universe also return to the Quintesson origin for the Transformers, though in the former’s case, their connection, if any, to the Allspark is never clarified. Skybound’s Void Rivals is currently the main component using the Quints, and dialog heavily implies the cartoon origin, though some minor Aligned concepts creep up as well. Nevertheless the Quintus origin doesn’t appear to be as… nailed down as Hasbro probably would like.

Indeed despite the resurgence in relevance, Hasbro seems somewhat reluctant to use the Quintessons still. The Quintus origin in the modern era had only been used in EarthSpark, and even then it’s not used… super well. The Steven Universe Diamonds that need a family intervention, never mind the genocide they caused, persists here to much chagrin. With the inconsistency on how the Quints came to be in modern media, it also makes Quintus Prime unnecessary, if some media is treating the Quints as separate beings. Even IDW didn’t do anything with this, despite using a lot of the Aligned concepts, and for now Skybound seems content to ignore it also.

I think the reluctance is due to toys of them not doing well, with the Cyberverse ones doing especially poorly. The High Command guy being able to Transform toy wise seems to be an attempt to make it clear they fit in with Transformers, but their peg warming doesn’t seem to be fixing that.

Along with Hasbro and Paramount not handing the transition from Bee to ROTB properly (like how do we jump from what Bee did to suddenly Unicron attacks?), I don’t have high expectations that the Quintessons will be handled well for a possible TFTWO, if they’re even used at all.

Which is a shame because the ONE designs are pretty cool, they made the Quints more appropriately scary and intimidating vs the slightly goofy looking egg shaped Judges. And I like the Judges but still.

#blueike productions #blueike #transformers #maccadam #quintus prime #quintessons #transformers one spoilers #transformers one

140 notes · View notes

hive-sight · 2 years ago

Text

Concerns 1

Sentients. This one has news. Upon encountering Raxor in the halls of the ship, this one inquired into their change in disposition. What could crush the spirit of this one’s companion so?

Raxor’s response… It is worrying.

--- TRANSCIPTION BEGINNING ---

RAXOR: The Terrans… they do not enjoy war.

ELYSIA: That is good, yes? Too many of the new races seem to revel-

RAXOR: No.

ELYSIA: No?

RAXOR: They are a war race. Their history and evolution are paved in the ashes and blood of their enemies. Yet they do not revel. The Skellesian Bloodmites revel. Their weapons are made to draw out battle and prolong suffering. Barbed rods for the rending of flesh. Heated blades to ensure the enemy stays standing no matter how much is chopped off.

The Stol’oon of Grumha revel. Their cowardly tactics involve slowly terraforming the planets of surface-bound races while they are defenseless to stop them. Slowly cooking as the atmosphere of the only home they have known becomes their crematorium.

The Terrans? They do not revel in war. They hate war.

ELYSIA: This one does not understand. The race was molded by war, yet hates it? Do they hate what it has made them? Are they a drink that hates the shape its container has forced upon it?

RAXOR: They hate the acts. This one asks Elysia to consider, if one despised an action but the action was needed, what would they do?

ELYSIA: This one does have experience with this. This one dislikes having to configure variables in simulations. This one wrote a script to automatically program variables if given a planetary identification code.

RAXOR: Why?

ELYSIA: To get it done as quickly… and…

RAXOR: Yes.

ELYSIA: By the Queen. Have the Terrans… streamlined… war?

--- TRANSCRIPTION ENDING ---

This was not the end of the discussion, Raxor proceeded to request a cancellation of the mission. They claim that the Queen would not have allowed the mission had she known.

Unfortunately for Raxor, after more than the expected number of delays, the ship has already entered the Sol System.

On this, the Terran Date of May 21st of 2030, or XD 4682C 4A 2L, and with an uncertain future, this is Elysia of Xyloptha, signing off.

#hfy #humans are weird #earth is a deathworld #humans are space orcs #haso #humans are space oddities #HiveSight #alien blog #xenobiology #speculative biology #PoT 005 #Perspective on Terra #aliens #space australia #Xenobiology #unfortunate delays #posted 7/11/23 #accidentally misgendered Raxor

780 notes · View notes

xantchaslegacy · 1 year ago

Text

Keen Sense and Curiosity

Some more Phyrexia happenings; check out the story on Ao3 too if the spirit moves you ;)

The cavern was empty.

As empty as any place could be on a plane where even metal lived, and tunnels of living flesh laced through the world from surface to core, and back again.

Walls of matte metal enveloped the cavern, carved smooth in some places by patient hands, and elsewhere patched with stretches of rougher-hewn, and more frequently, unhewn steel. Pools of varying depth and size blotched the cavern floor, brimming oily fluid; a mixture of effluvia that seeped in from the Hunter’s Maze above, and runoff from the labs that pumped in through meat-pipes from the Surgical Bays below.

The liquid churned, filled the air above it with the thick scent of life. It glowed, reflecting the false sunlight of the Hunter’s Maze that shone through tunnels of mirrored steel, flooding the space with a placid light. The fluid hummed in many low notes, a liquid choir that sang, just then, for no-one.

Even absent the creatures of Phyrexia, the cavern was active.

Active, but empty.

Two predators stalked into the cavern.

Glissa and Vorinclex prowled through the space. Side by side, elf and hulking praetor, scanning for danger by sight and smell and sound. Watching each others’ flanks with the practiced instinct of packmates.

Glissa tapped her scythe against the porous steel of the cavern.

Nothing of concern, as far I sense.

Vorinclex growled, low, and lumbered forward.

I smell nothing alarming. Stay alert.

Glissa sniffed her concurrence and fell back to the shadows, watching her companion as he went.

Phyrexia’s tongue was efficient, but the language of beasts had a guttural elegance that script and speech wanted for. That the "civilized" coveted.

Vorinclex sniffed the air once. Twice.

“Prawn.”

Speak of the devil .

Jin-Gitaxias strode into the cavern through a rounded tunnel that sloped upward from the Surgical Bays. Two chrome-capped cronies accompanied to him, chattering in their sanitized tongue.

“Hm.” Jin turned his head at the sight of Vorinclex. “You aren’t tardy.”

“As agreed.” Vorinclex’s voice, guttural even when he displayed the full and disarming range of his articulateness, rolled from his throat at a growl in Jin’s presence. “Brave of you to saunter out of your sterile little bunker.”

“As agreed.”

This cavern was a compromise of a rendezvous. One of many pockets between the Hunter’s Maze and Jin’s Surgical Bays that had formed as a semi-organic side effect of the intentional terraforming that had created the layers of their new Phyrexia.

The place had proven of interest to both factions so far, exacerbating the developments of predators in the vicious swarm, and (by the accounts of the Progress Engine) expanding the scope of Jin’s research with equal explosiveness.

It was one of the precious few, if not only, places in Phyrexia where the Vicious Swarm and the Progress Engine dwelt in equal measure, and felt equally comfortable.

Or equally un - comfortable, Glissa mused . Depending on who’s around.

“Vorinclex.” Jin-gitaxias’ voice, metallic and self-important, rang through the chamber like a bell. “It is surprisingly civilized of you to leave your attack dog behind.”

G lissa only sneered from the shadows at that. It was impossible that Jin-Gitaxias did not now she was there.

Vorinclex snorted. “We are praetors. We do not fear to fight our own battles.”

“Battle…? This is a simple trading of knowledge to benefit both our factions in the work to come. I understand if such a complicated notion frightens a simple brute. If you prefer to turn your tail...”

“I would not waste a chance for Phyrexia’s evolution,” Vorinclex spat. “Though I doubt I’ll find anything useful to the Swarm in the body of some sulking cell-scraper.”

“I am equally skeptical,” Jin replied, “that the mass of flesh that transports your meager brain will prove of any interest to our synthesis. Still, Norn will insist we work more collaboratively sooner than later. What she wishes, we must actualize. Better we begin such efforts in advance. In any case, further exploring the opportunities this space has to offer for our experimentation is worth a pointless hour of diversion.”

“Your portion of this space,” Vorinclex corrected. “The properties of these pools will be a boon to accelerate the development of the swarm’s best predators.”

“That is the agreement,” Jin said. “Wasted as it is on you and yours.”

Glissa scowled. The arrogance of the Engine’s Praetor was a sort of grating that only the self-proclaimed “civilized” could manage.

“That is part of the agreement.” Vorinclex prowled closer to Jin along a strip of metal ground that divided two of the pools, and sat up on his haunches, lording the few inches of height his current body had over the other praetor. “Sharing this space. Are you ready to share your secrets as well?”

“For the good of Phyrexia,” he added, smirking with his voice, if not his actual maw. He dislocated his jaw, and spat something at Jin’s feet. A red-white blur bounced once with a dull clatter then lay still on the cavern floor.

A phyrexian’s head and upper body, red-muscled and clad in plates of white porcelain steel.

“A souleater,” Jin observed, in his dispassionate way.

“One of Norn’s,” Vorinclex said, picking at his teeth with a finger on his smaller limbs. “A lurker. She may approve of our cooperation, but I will not suffer her eyes and ears where they have no business.”

Glissa smiled grimly. The cavern had been cleared of members of the Swarm and the Engine alike in preparation for this meeting, in some cases by force. Those efforts had revealed this member of Norn’s Machine Orthodoxy sects, lurking about the sub-layer. She had personally beheaded the agent herself and eaten its body with Vorinclex.

Jin-Gitaxias stooped slightly to inspect the half-corpse at his feet. “Norn will be displeased with her servant’s dispatching.”

Vorinclex licked his chops. “Are you displeased?”

“I serve Phyrexia’s greater ends. I have no opinion on small matters.”

“So it pleases you to come here for Norn’s benefit?”

“There is every chance our Great Synthesis could benefit from this exchange,” Jin replied. His jaws hardly moved as he spoke. Glissa wondered if his vocal chords even required motion of the mouth to communicate, with all the modifications he’d made to his body. “Allow the two most advanced specimens of our respective factions to examine each other and find how our best qualities can be shared between our...separate efforts to advance Phyrexia. It will certainly benefit your blind efforts to learn from us, and Norn will undoubtedly want you operating at a greater capacity than you do now.”

“Our glorious, ineffable leader,” Vorinclex snarled.

It’s good he speaks like that all the time, Glissa thought. Otherwise his scorn for Norn would be a more open secret.

“Our flawless mother.”

Jin-Gitaxias was harder to read. Glissa wished dearly to know what he actually thought of their self-proclaimed ‘mother.’

V orinclex spat into the pool. “ Your flattery would be wasted even if she was here to hear it .” He tilted his head, appraising Jin. “Shall we begin, or would you like to waste more time with words?”

Jin held up a closed hand, then raised a single index finger.

“I will insist on taking my observations first,” he said. “If you can contain yourself that long.”

“Please.” Vorinclex spread his arms wide, and his shadow fell on Jin’s toadies as well as the praetor himself. “Observe. I know you can’t wait to see what a real phyrexian looks like.”

“It is not eagerness, simply concern is that your own clumsy analyses will damage my instruments before I can take your measure.”

Vorinclex huffed, and lowered his arms to his sides while Jin turned to his attendants, who were busy pouring steaming liquid into a basin. Jin dipped his fingers into the stuff.

Sterilizing, Glissa realized. The acidic smell was powerful, even at a distance . Since the Swarm and the Engine had begun making joint use of it, each had introduced elements to the odor of the place, and while the acidic curdle of the Progress Engine's experiment pits did permeate the place, it usually melded queerly well with the more vital, vibrant scents of the Hunter's Maze, making a smell that was inoffensive to a hunter's nose, and even invigorating, at its best.

“So much ceremony,” Vorinclex observed. “I could inspect you twice over in the time it takes to complete your pageantry.”

“At least one of us needs to approach this exchange seriously.” Jin raised his hands from the bowl and began cleaning them on his apron, wiping each digit with a slow meticulousness that seemed maliciously deliberate. He looked to Vorinclex, still squatting on his haunches. “Will you lie supine for me?”

“Guess.”

“Hm.” Jin snapped, and his transcriptors snapped to attention. “Prepare to take notes.”

They chattered in affirmation.

Jin’s hands, those massive, long-fingered things that made Glissa think of blightwidows, began probing at Vorinclex’s shoulders, tracing along the massive spiked plates that protected his upper body. The light scrape of chrome on bone-steel rang like a chime through the cavern.

“Grand,” Jin remarked. “Such ostentatious plumage is likely effective in scaring off other simple beasts, I presume. I doubt our synthesis has much need for...bony shoulders.”

“Still,” he added, “It has a certain animal charm. It suits you.”

"When you find yourselves in the wilderness of a new plane, with nothing but your test-tubes and little needles to defend yourselves against the incomple at , you'll feel different."

Jin made a dismissive *click*-ing sound. "I have faced the strongest among the incompleat and triumphed." his hands trailed down from Vorinclex's bone-spurs and dragged way across his collar and breast. another crisp metallic note sheared the air. "This robust musculature, on the other hand…" His fingers splayed over the chest, probing at intervals with prods that brought soft huffs to Vorinclex’s breath. Jin’s other hand began taking measurements of Vorinclex’s arms, working its way from shoulder to arm to wrist to-

-Vorinclex seized Jin’s fingers, and lifted the arm above his head with a casual tug.

“A practical demonstration,” he growled, cutting Jin off. “Strength like this emerges through the struggle of life against life and death. Something that doesn’t happen in your test tubes and operating tables.”

“Untrue at its premise,” Jin replied, mildly. “In any case, the structure of your muscles can be examined, and reproduced by construction or artificial growth.”

Vorinclex cocked his head by the slightest degree. “I’ll believe it when I see it. How will you learn the structure of my flesh?”

“Our oil and research have yielded have many ways to examine what lies within. Lenses that can see past base matter. Magical tracers injected into the body and tracked with external scanners. However-”

Jin’s finger thinned, a subtle and silent shifting of the metal in his digit that Glissa might have missed if not for her eyes, compleat with a hunter’s acuity.

“I prefer to look for myself.”

Glissa tensed. Jin meant to cut Vorinclex open. She would allow it, of course, so far as Vorinclex was prepared to allow it, but would be ready to spring to his side should the need arise.

Jin, however, simply stood, half hanging by his wrist, looking at Vorinclex with his sharpened digit raised.

“Well?” Vorinclex sounded vexed by the pause. “Will you or won’t you?”

“We civilized people call this ‘waiting for permission,’ Jin said, enunciating the last three words with an insufferable deliberation.

Vorinclex barked a laugh, and released Jin’s hand. “When does the great butcher prawn wait for any thing’s permission? What sort of Phyrexian waits and does not just take what it intends?”

Jin ‘tsk’-ed through grit teeth. “Discourse between praetors should have more weight and social depth than the intercourse of beasts.”

“What do you know about the intercourse of beasts?” Vorinclex shifted, closing the distance between them. “Fine. This is permission to take whatever measures and make whatever cuts you need to slake your idiot thirst.”

“Whatever measures? I will remember that.”

Jin’s blade sank into Vorinclex’ upper arm with a disquieting ease. The muscle there was dense, as Glissa knew from hunting and scrapping with her companion. If the lack of resistance gave Vorinclex any pause, he showed no sign.

Nor did he look bored. He was watching Jin intently as he drew the blade down and lay open the topmost layer of Vorinclex’ skin and steel-twined muscle.

“The musculature...” Jin pulled aside Vorinclex’s hide and sliced deeper into the limb. Red and green and black dribbled in oily clumps from the cut. “...Impressively dense, as expected. Supply. Pliable. The proteins comprising the circulatory system...”

He trailed off, muttering and slicing. His unsharpened fingers working aside the fibers inside Vorinclex. Every few seconds he pulled a needle of silver from his knuckles and sank it into the flesh, marking a spot in the meat. Vorinclex’s gaze followed Jin as he moved down the arm, exhaling to punctuate each piece of Jin that was slipped into him.

"You've let the growth of your organics guide the development of your mechanical components," Jin observed. "A common thread in the Swarm specimens I've explored."

"They work in harmony," Vorinclex replied, as if explaining nursing to a newborn. "These components want to work as one, so there is no need to meddle in the finer details. A creature need only to act, and the instincts of the oil will guide the organic and its modifications to the best natural conclusion."

Jin scoffed. "Without adequate guiding intelligence...without intent, you are wasting time and resources with an uncoordinated approach."

"Oil is intelligence. Where you see only a vector, there is a guiding natural brilliance already present in the oil that outstrips the capacity of any sapient mind. Even yours, prawn. You say I waste resources? I say you waste time trying to bend the direction of an already perfect path to compleation."

“That’s as good as an admission of complacency,” Jin replied.

“It’s efficient use of our energies.” Vorinclex reached down and tapped one of the needles thrust through his upper arm. “unlike this.”

Jin only scowled at that.

After the arm came an incision along the back, then a cut along Vorinclex’ backmost thigh, down to the knee. The muscle within was vivid red and a maroon cocktail of oil flowed down the limb to the ground, where it soaked into the floor and trailed off into the pool behind him.

With every prod and pin from Jin, more of these fluids leaked down Vorinclex’s body in minute rivulets.

Still, Vorinclex stood as high on his haunches as he had at the outset.

“Another beast might have fallen from being cut open in this way,” Jin remarked.

“A lesser beast,” Vorinclex replied.

M ore cutting. More needles. Jin chattered away all the while as he cut deeper and deeper, until his probing found Vorinclex’s internal organs.

“Some actual efficiencies,” Jin murmured, shifting aside steel-mesh sacks and crocus-flesh enhancements, “And more than a few vanity organs that I presume let you play at being king of the beasts.”

“Not a king, just an aspiring apex.”

Jin fell silent after a period of further muttering and poking. His fingers ran the length of Vorinclex’s splayed-open leg, flank, and arm, tracing the patterns of muscle fiber within.

After a minute of this silence, Vorinclex stirred.

“Is something displeasing you, prawn?”

“The lack of something has me...intrigued.” Jin ran his sterilized digits through the fibers of Vorinclex’ arms. “It is known you boast a prodigious healing capacity, and yet I see nothing at work-”

“Watch your fingers,” Vorinclex said, interrupting.

The meat of his arm began joining with a sudden, soft, squirming, sucking noise so low and quick it barely registered to even Glissa’s ears. Jin withdrew his hands, but the closing muscles bunched around the longest of his fingers, and the digit came away trailing a gobbet of Vorinclex’s flesh.

Jin held up the stringy chunk of shuddering meat, turning it over in his fingers.

“A healing that must be triggered consciously. Interesting.”

“A healing that can be subdued intentionally,” Vorinclex cut in, as the rest of the cuts began sealing all along his body. “Aren’t scientists not supposed to jump to conclusions?”

J in ignored the question. “I will take this as a sample.” He held his hand out, and one of the transcriptors scuttled forward, producing a jar with a black seal about its lid. Jin popped the seal off and dropped the meat into the jar. H is minion shuffled back away, nearly tripping as Vorinclex growled at it, spattering the ground with spittle.

Having deposited most of the flesh. Jin wiped the rest from his fingers into a smaller tube, and examined it by the light; a series of metal tunnels reflected the false sunlight of the hunter’s maze down into the caverns; more than generous to see by.

Satisfied by what he observed, Jin tucked the test tube away in a slot in his flank. He spread the remaining smear of oily tissue onto Vorinclex’s arm, along the line of the now-healed cut. His other hand hovered above the healed-over incision on the leg.

“My pins are still inside your-”

“They are mine now. Carry on your examinations.”

“In that case-”

With a deft movement – a pull at the leg and push to the chest so subtle Glissa barely registered either, Jin unbalanced Vorinclex and flipped him into the pool. Vorinclex was too large to submerge fully in the fluid, and he displaced enough of the humming green stuff that Jin’s transcriptors were obliged to shuffle hastily backwards from the splash. Vorinclex let out an angry yelp, but Jin strode into the pool in two smooth steps and, straddling Vorinclex’s waist, grabbed his head in one massive hand. Jin continued vocalizing his examination as if nothing at all had happened.

“These teeth,” Jin murmured, his voice dropping in volume as he leaned in close to examine Vorinclex’ mouth. “Ingenious in form for affecting lethal lacerations in prey, though they are not especially well-rooted. Prone to falling out in the process of your...consumptions, I’d hypothesize.”

“Teeth break,” Vorinclex growled back. “Better to get good use out of them a few times and have a robust body to push new ones into place.”

“Wasteful.” Jin loomed closer. Vorinclex would have a front-row view of the blue praetor’s pristine, regular rows of chrome teeth. “Better something that lasts.”

“How long would it take you to replace those trinkets in your mouth if I savaged you right now? I can push out new teeth in seconds. I don’t need to go crawling back to a lab to replace my fierce parts.”

“You’d break your teeth a dozen times on mine before you even scratched my mouth.” Jin moved his face bare centimeters from Vorinclex’s, as if he meant to test his hypothesis on the other praetor there and then. “So savage away. But not until I’m finished with you.”

Jin’s fingers ran leisurely down Vorinclex’s side, fingers curving around from chest to back, probing his musculature and carapace with minute twitches, before coming to a rest on hips, where groin met thighs.

“Powerful legs. Claws and teeth that could render steel to fragments. You have excelled in your advancements toward animal perfection.” Jin dragged two fingers back up along Vorinclex's flank, the chrome making a surprisingly soft sound as the tips trailed over the metal-shod bone and exposed muscle.

Vorinclex snorted. His voice spoke dismissal of Jin’s comment, but he seemed, to Glissa’s eye, to almost preen at the comment, like a wolf showing off its coat.

“I am testament to the Swarm’s success. We have taken life that once barely subsisted and hobbled along among tangles of rust and created an ecosystem of thriving, ever-improving predators.”

Jin grunted at this newest failure to provoke Vorinclex. It was such an annoyed, base sound that Glissa had to suppress a giggle.

“Regardless of this...low success,” he said after a pause, “I hypothesize there might still be shortcomings in your Swarm.” Jin’s left hand snaked under Vorinclex’s gut, while his right slithered down Vorinclex’s thigh.

“And I would hypothesize those weaknesses might be reflected in your own...form.”

“You’ve seen me inside and out. Look as long as you like, you’ll find nothing resembling weakness.”

“We will see.”

Jin continued to inspect Vorinclex’ chest and neck. He kept up a constant monologue of numbers and measurements, his transcriptors at rapt attention. Neither had materials for writing. Sound recording devices built into their skulls, Glissa mused.

“You will be the first to attempt traversal across planes,” Jin commented after a while. “Our research to date suggests this will be a catastrophically traumatizing experience for your body.”

“I look forward to new hunting grounds.”

“There will be immense pain and an almost complete immolation of your form.”

“Is that all?” Vorinclex affected a yawn. “Good to know. I’ll bring my rubbers.”

Jin grumbled again. “It is regrettable Vrig failed to divine the secrets of Memnarch’s soul-traps...we might have achieved Phyrexia’s interplanar ends without such needless agony.”

Glissa stifled another giggle. It could not have been plainer Jin was hoping the comment would lead for a chance to expand on his tedious science.

“Research and development? Limited?” Vorinclex’s feigned shock was somehow more and not less pointed when growled. “Imagine my surprise.”

“It takes astoundingly little imagination to imagine you surprised,” Jin’s fingers darted suddenly to Vorinclex’s thigh, forefinger and thumb pressing into the veins below the hips.

Vorinclex grunted once. A soft bark that indeed betrayed surprise.

Glissa tensed, again.

“Curious.” Jin’s fingers had paused along the inside of Vorinclex’s thigh. “I would have suspected this organ here might be rendered obsolete by a...properly evolved creature.”

Vorinclex did not squirm. He was too proud, to perfect for such a thing. But he did shift noticeably under Jin’s observation

“Such a novel shape the tissues have taken.” Jin’s hand shifted under space where Vorinclex’ hind legs met. “The Grand Evolution is abundant with its own surprises. This feels like...an advancement of the Crocus blooms, yes? Grafted onto...no...grown from your body?”

Vorinclex did not shy away from Jin’s gaze.

“Some creatures among the swarm yet benefit from physiological stimulation to encourage breeding.”

“It yields rapid generations and equally explosive improvements in biology,” he added, sounding as defensive as an apex predator of Phyrexia could.

“The father of machines disdained such methods of reproduction,” Jin mused aloud. “Much of old Phyrexia did, at least on the nine spheres.” His hand had disappeared up to his first elbow, and it did not escape Glissa’s notice that the fingers on his right hand were running through the fur on Vorinclex’s back, caressing the spine. “‘Grow’ is our watchword. Not ‘breed.’”

“The father of machines failed,” Vorinclex spat. “And perhaps he disdained procreation because he was too preoccupied with writing into the scriptures his own sad failures to acquire the mate he desired.”

“And who have you been mating with?” Jin inquired. “Beasts? Elves? Wurms? I would have guessed you and yours were too busy trying to eat each other and preening your muscles and metal at one another to find time to breed.”

“I will take a sample,” he added, gripping tight onto Vorinclex’ fur.

“Don’t waste breath talking about what you will do. Do it.”

“Mm.” Jin withdrew his hand from the spine with a jerk and a sound like a canvas torn in two, pulling out a clump of spined hairs from Vorinclex’ back.

Vorinclex tensed and growled.

Jin’s other hand came away from between thighs, and Vorinclex jerked this time. Jin held between thumb and forefinger a strip of tissue.

“I presume your healing is as robust in your crocus organs as it is in your muscle?”

Vorinclex rose up, though not to his full height, dripping pool-fluid. “Prodigiously robust. You can inspect closer, if you dare place your head where your hand was bold enough to wander.”

“Regardless,” Jin replied, clinically smug, returning his hand to Vorinclex’ leg. “That the most advanced among the Swarm...the apex of phyrexian evolution, even, would possess such an organ...” He trailed off, and made a series of soft clicking “tsk”s. “I would think that you might think it...weakness.”

Vorinclex lunged toward the edge of the pool. Jin, not expecting the move, was thrown forward and landed in as semi-sprawled position in the shallows. Glissa suppressed a laugh to see the praetor so prone, his little skirt and apron askew about his legs.

“You are losing focus, prawn.” Vorinclex's voice was dangerously low as he prowled forward to loom over Jin. “I am ready to take my turn.”

“Impatient,” Jin clicked. He pulled back the skirt, perhaps to keep it from getting wetter, though it was thoroughly soaked from what Glissa could see. The fluid of the pool also, had shifted in color, while they stood in it, from an acid green to something more like the blue-green light when Lyese and the Eye of Doom both broke the horizon together.

“Worried that I’ll break you?”

Jin hummed, a raspy vocalization of frustration . “Not at all. My concern is that your clumsy pawing will not yield the data your swarm need s to adequately better itself.”

“Never mind my paws, Jin. I have my other ways of taking your measure,” Vorinclex rumbled. His maw thrust forward, to within inches of Jin’s neck. From her place, Glissa could hear his breath. See it steam along the metal of Jin’s jaw.

“A predator can probe by scent and taste alone.”

“Bestial senses,” Jin scoffed. “Your means of analysis are as crude as those you use to advance your evolution.”

Vorinclex responded by placing his forelimb across Jin’s shoulder, pushing him down into the shallows of the pool, and sniffing further down the other praetor’s neck, approaching his shoulder.

“Hm.”

He stopped there, inspecting the metal of Jin’s collar in a slow circuit. Jin seemed unsure what to do with his head as Vorinclex probed, and opted to remain still. Vorinclex moved almost painfully slowly, and Glissa could not help but wonder what was driving this uncharacteristic display of patience.

V orinclex’s breath continues to fog on Jin’s chrome surface as he moved, leaving a misty, matte trail on the shining body that faded quietly as he wandered across Jin’s form .

Jin kept silent for several more minutes as Vorinclex probed further down, inspecting chest and shoulders. Every few seconds he would adjust his fore-paws, never pressing down on one stretch of Jin’s body for too long, but never taking off enough weight to allow him to rise, either.

“How are you recording this?”

Jin’s voice was strained, the already metallic voice reverberating as if spoken through a funnel of steel. Almost as like he’d run a long distance.

Vorinclex paused at the question. He was just then running the edge of his snout along Jin’s elbow, and he made a slow, deliberate trail of Jin’s head as he re-positioned himself to look Jin in whatever portion of his face would best correspond to eyes.

“Recording?”

“Yes.”

“I will remember, of course,” Vorinclex placed a broad paw over Jin’s midsection. Maroon-muscled digits closed around Jin’s silvery, snake-like spine. “An apex’s eyes miss nothing. An apex savors every meal it takes the measure of.”

“You intend to eat me, Vorinclex?”

“If I ate you, Jin-Gitaxias….REALLY ate you, I would not get to see the despair in you when the Grand Evolution crushes your Synthesis, and all the other fool dogmas of Phyrexia under its heel. When all is one with our mighty Swarm, when all are free of sapience and weakness...perhaps on that day I will eat you. But no sooner.”

“But since you brought it up...” Another paw closed around Jin’s corded spine, though Vorinclex kept his weight on his hind legs so his weight did not crush the other. “I can’t think of a better use for you than nutrition to fuel the Great Evolution.”

“Can’t think, that is one among many defects,” Jin rasped. “No imagination. No critical thought. Nothing beyond instinct. Fitting traits for a king of beasts.”

“Your opinion,” Vorinclex growled, shifting forward so his shadow fell of Jin. “Me, I like my current position.”

“You don’t dispute it?”

“I wouldn’t want to waste your time debating with a mere beast.” Vorinclex’ jaw shifted into something only a few would recognize as a smile. “This spine of yours...” He pressed forward slowly, and Jin sank further into the pool, a glowing mix of oil and other fluids washing over him. “Strong. Stronger than it looks. I’ve torn apart wurms with less durability.”

“The result of rigorous research and development,” Jin said, the pride tangible enough that Glissa could detect it even in his metallic monotone. “Not the sort of strength one could just evolve through blind-”

“And yet,” Vorinclex continued, pressing down further. “Even with such a strong support, I suspect there’s no real backbone beneath it. That must be why your posture is so slovenly.”

“Ah-” Jin started to say something, but whatever it was caught in his throat, and instead a low, tinny buzzing noise came from his chest. his fingers found the hollows in Vorinclex’s forearms. The same forearms that held him in the pool. His fingers wove their way into the space, gripping onto the other praetor’s limbs.

“Ah, it looks like I’ve found something.” Vorinclex, if it was even possible, leaned in closer, bearing down on Jin. “This can’t be where air flows through, so I can only assume I’ve hit a nerve.”

“How-ah!” Jin cut off again into more buzzing.

"I'm gleaning more than you know." Vorinclex' hands were almost entirely submerged in the pool, but it was clear from the movement of his arms that he was probing the length of Jin's spine. "I'm intrigued by how you've arranged your nerves to run the length of this tube-body of yours. Incredible use of space, but not without its tender spots…As for your form..you could have a raptor’s grace, if only your limbs were not so inefficient in proportion to-"

Jin’s hand jolted up Vorinclex’s arm, and pressed at a spot just below his jaw, where head met body. Vorinclex’ weight shifted suddenly to one side, and Jin used the momentum to roll the both of them sideways, splashing through the pool, which hummed with tripled vigor.

Jin rolled atop Vorinclex, and for a split second Glissa’s leg’s fell into a crouch in preparation to strike his head from his body-

But Vorinclex, using the sheer advantage of his weight, carried the roll another turn, and pinned Jin beneath him, once again half-submerging his chrome form in the fluid.

They remained that way for long seconds, Jin humming hoarsely, and Vorinclex’s arms tremoring.

“Very clever, little prawn,” Vorinclex said, finally. “All that time spent studying was not entirely wasted.”

“Your evolution has granted you some low advantages,” Jin conceded in his tinny rasp. “I am beginning to re-evaluate my chances of thriving in your death-trap of a home.”

The pool fluid around Jin was slowly turning a more metallic sheen, a mixture of blue, purple, and black metallic. Where it dispersed into the blue-green, it became more muted, but seemed to churn with a thick urgency

"Of course you would not survive in the Maze. Your form has been molded to fit into your filthy operating theatres."

“So I should simply remain in my labs in perpetuity?”

"I didn't say that. You and your meat-molders are more than welcome among the Swarm. I'm intrigued to see how perfect your form could be if you let the oils of the Maze shape you into a true predator."

"You said I would not survive."

"Because you would never embrace it. It isn't in your nature. If you could come down from your chrome pedestal, and hunt and adapt like any other beast, you could be something tremendous."

“You underestimate me.”

“That was never a problem. That you overestimate yourself is.”

“I am capable of cooperation and collaboration, it is others who are too insular or insecure to take full advantage.”

“I’m taking full advantage now, or didn’t you notice?”

“You have lingered unusually long on my spine.” Jin shifted his grip on Vorinclex’s left arm, his fingers moving closer to the shoulder. “It is an unparalleled example of compleation, but I wonder how useful the time you are spending on it is now.”

“Lower then.” Vorinclex shifted his grip, and his attentions, to where Jin’s skirt began. If you insist.”

“‘What is planted below will determine what flourishes above.’”

Vorinclex paused, one of his fore-paws beginning to pull back apron and skirt. “Poetry?” He asked, scorn clear in his growl.

“One of Sheoldred’s prophecies,” Jin replied. He kept a grip on the nearest of Jin’s paw’s. “One I have been pondering at length when my schedule allows. Her counsel and her company have been more useful than seeking cooperation from you or the furnace-rat.”

“Sheoldred.” Vorinclex spat the name as if it had been a bone lodged in his throat. “A waste of your time. If there’s one thing more useless than your science it’s prophecy and soothsaying. The only reality you should care about is the reality of flesh and fangs.”

“They have proven exceptionally useful, her prophecies,” Jin replied, almost sing-song through the grate of his voice. “She has been my most fruitful partner outside the Engine.”

Vorinclex grunted, and leaned further into Jin. The chrome praetor sank another few inches into the pool.

Jin's own arm shifted as Vorinclex's did, his fingers still clinging to the hollows in the other praetor’s arms.

Vorinclex seized Jin’s shoulder in his maw and, with a quick thrust of his head, tossed him further into the pool. Before Jin could even conceive of rising up, Vorinclex was looming over him again, this time with a massive limb planted to either side of the chrome Praetor’s head.

“Enough talk. I’m not done knowing you.”

Keeping his left paw planted, Vorinclex cradled Jin’s head in his right. The muscle of his arm began to distend and lengthen. Moments later, branches of flesh were snaking under and across Jin-Gitaxias. Vorinclex’s lower arms began to distend as well, and resumed the probing at Jin’s legs.

An exasperated sigh escaped Jin as the upper-arm tendrils splayed his arms out, binding his limbs to the ground and tethering b etween his long fingers.

“Silence is a waste. I have plenty of additional data I might gather from observing your clumsy pawing.”

“Speak to your toadies if you wish. I don’t mind your noise.”

V orinclex pulled back Jin’s skirt in one swift motion, and a rip cut through the humming as his skirt tore along one side, revealing sleek legs of chrome.

“The leader of the Swarm is notably and conspicuously preoccupied with my lower anatomy,” Jin said, conspicuously loudly. Louder at least than his trascriptors would have needed him to speak to hear. “His probing, already indelicate, becomes borderline frenetic as his bestial sensory organs take account of the perfection of my form.”

The distended muscles around Jin’s upper body tightened audibly. He did not abate in his monologue, but the fluid around him grew more intense with it’s churning, and deepened in its dark-metallic tint.

“-seems completely capable of processing auditory information, even when preoccupied with pursuits of base interest-”

Vorinclex bared his maw, and something not dissimilar to his distended arm-muscle snaked out. It was not a tongue exactly, as sapient creatures of flesh might understand it, but a sensory organ modeled after crocus organisms Glissa had perfected with compleat frogmites.

Just now, this organ took the measure of Jin’s legs, probing the knit of cable and struts that joined below the waist, extending into chrome-capped knees.

“-searching perhaps for an equivalent anatomy to his own, not appreciating that, unlike the cumbersome designs of the Swarm, creatures of the Progress Engine make use of modular bodily components that may be included or exempted from certain activities based on their applicability to the situation at-”

The tendrils about Jin’s chest began to writhe, and pulled his arms from a T-formation to up above his head, dragging him further up along the bank.

“-ah-”

Vorinclex’s secondary arms moved up again to Jin’s core, leaving the explorations below to the tongue. His palms rested along the segmented coil enveloping Jin’s spine.

“-feeling to measure the reactions of my nervous system to his probing and brutalization. A simplistic approach, but showing more attention to detail than one might expect from-”

Jin’s ankles and feet received more lingering examination. Vorinclex tested the durability of each digit with his snout, pushing them to the extent of their flexibility. The construction of Jin’s heel seemed of particular interest.

“-most likely having discovered yet another anatomical superiority his own faction lacks in-”

Two tendrils wound a spiral around Jin’s neck.

“-a curious maneuver. What sort of response he hopes to elicit is a mystery, as even he must know respiration in a specimen as advance as myself is-”

Jin cut off suddenly as both tendrils slithered into his mouth and down his throat, writhing all along their length as they went.

Vorinclex gave no outward sign he was conscious of what his arms were doing. Glissa had no doubt he was enjoying the opportunity deeply regardless.

The opportunity, and the rasping, muffled sound of Jin attempting to continue his monologue.

Vorinclex brought one of his smaller arms up to the side of his head and tapped around where his sheltered ears lay. He favored Jin with a shrug.

Jin’s muffled attempts ceased suddenly, and a rattling vibration started up in his chest.

“His tactile limbs navigate the obstacles of my internal organs with unexpected efficacy. A lifetime meandering through the unorganized hazards of the Tangle and the Hunter’s Maze have helped develop a low cunning useful for-”

A voicebox somewhere on his body, built into the chest, maybe. Glissa smirked from the shadows. Leave it to Jin-gitaxias to build in redundant systems to make sure no one could ever shut him up.

Vorinclex’s maw had returned to Jin’s midsection as his tendrils lifted Jin’s arcing spine out of the fluid. His tongue traced over each coil of the segmented spinal spikes that fanned out around Jin’s back.

“-that he can carry out so many parallel probings of my form is astounding, especially given the thoroughness. It is of course a shadow of the theoretical network efficiency our faction has already accomplished with the vedalken mindmeld, but nevertheless-”

Vorinclex released his grip on Jin’s spine, but his body remained bent over the surface of the pool, as if straining of its own volition.

“-able to contort my body from within using his tendrils-”

That he can keep rambling on with several tons of muscle and steel shoved down your gullet is incredible enough, Glissa mused.

“-tendrils prove resilient to the acids of my stomach and the abrasive metal components of my internal-”

Tiny offshoots of Vorinclex’s arms, thin fibers of metal and crocus-perfected flesh, w o rked like roots into the crevices of Jin’s upper body. The fluid all around them was properly churning now with the combined effects of their movement and the essences leaking from both of them into the pool.

“-provided his brain is capable of such memorization, the beast should have explored enough of my innards to form a rudimentary map of my major external organs.”

“A fair exchange of information.”

Glissa almost started at Vorinclex’s voice. He’d been silent for nearly a half-hour.

Jin shuddered and tsk-ed. “This is...not equitable...I did not explore you nearly as deeply with my dissections-”

“I can feel your pin-probes working their slow way through me, collecting information,” Jin cut in. “Spare me.” He moved his face closer to Jin’s. “What is your conclusion on my own research technique, hm?”

Jin turned his head. “You were studying my actions. My reactions. Taking note of how I grapple with you, and my stimulus response to your aggression.”

“Obviously. This is how a predator learns.”

“Learning...what use is learning to you?”

“Everything learns.”

“Your evolution is a mindless charade. You mean to tell me you have a use for the scientific process?”

“You misunderstand the Grand Evolution, and you do degrade it by comparing it to evolution writ large. Even at it’s basest, evolution is not a process of becoming the biggest, the strongest, or the most fang-filled-”

“As if any of those things are prized or rare in our Phyrexia,” Jin observed.

Vorinclex made a rasping sound that Glissa knew to be a chuckle. “Evolution simply rewards whatever creature can rut and breed best. What makes a new generation that survives to do the same in perpetuity wins.

“Our Grand Evolution is more than just evolution as the flesh knows it. We see a process failing, we see a useless limb or vestigial encumbrance, and we remove it there and then. A jaw formation fails to aid a predator in its hunting? The jaw must go. A venom fails to kill outright from a single bite? The glands that produce it must be replaced. A creature like you-”

Vorinclex leaned into Jin, his voiced dropped to a strained snarl. "You are s quandered potential. You've coated yourself in such potent metals. Hacked yourself and your septic underlings into such ingenious shapes. But now you languish in front of vats and corpses, those clever bodies untempered and untested against real strength."

J in barely stirred at the commentary. “Your approach is both more scientific and more reckless than I thought. No concern for long-term consequences. Short-sighted and slapdash modifications.”

Vorinclex pulled his head back. “You got me talking again, silver-prawn. You’re such a fool I forget how clever you can be.”

“More flattery than I anticipated.” Jin raised a hand and brushed the side of Vorinclex’s jaw. Vorinclex leaned into the gesture, almost imperceptibly.

“Interesting.” Jin’s hand came away, and he inspected something along the back of his thumb. “Heightened levels of adrenaline, even compared to your baseline.” He wiped the thumb on Jin’s forearm. “I will take samples for my research.”

“Don’t let me stop you.”

Jin half-rose to a seated position, long strands of Vorinclex' arms still draped around his shoulders. He looked to Glissa like one of the vedalken draped in their bulky suits.

With the same hand he’d caressed with, Jin flexed, and the middle finger elongated, thinner than the scalpel-finger had been, until it was needle-fine. One of the transcriptors waded into the shallow of the pool, and affixed a clear container to the back of Jin’s hand.

Vorinclex carried on tasting the air about Jin’s neck and face all the while, arm draped round the other praetor’s back.

As the Transcriptor waded out again, Jin slid the needle into Vorinclex’s collar with a smooth deliberation. A snake slipping into a burrow. Vorinclex showed no overt sign of feeling it, though he kept steady, even as his probing increased in intensity about Jin’s chest. If Jin's instruments were as fine-tuned as he claimed, they were sure to have picked up on the rumble within Vorinclex' chest, mixing with the sounds of the fluids in the pools.

The glass vial on Jin’s hand began to fill.

“Under the fallen father, Phyrexia developed many variations of oil, as you well know.” Jin leaned forward into Vorinclex’s shoulder. “Substances found in the artifacts of planes explored during our many years of exploration, powdered powerstone, the fluids of the many lesser creatures whose bodies we mastered...we produced glands to resist acid and fire, to fuel sleepless hulks and unailable plague vectors.”

A fluid, clear and green-tinted, and laced with golden filament, filled the glass. More still poured into the container at a thick flow.

“The oil is an art we have all benefited from and contributed to. Even you beasts of the swarm.”

“I’ve touched the inside of you, prawn. Your oils are not more impressive than mine, just different.”

“Did you enjoy their taste, Vorinclex?”

Vorinclex laughed – a thundering rumble from his gut.

“I should be asking if you are enjoying the taste of me right now.”

“Ah, yes, I forgot you were in there.”

Jin bit down, hard, severing the tendrils Jin had shoved down his throat.

“Ah-”

Vorinclex pulled his hands up, tearing the thinner cords of sinew and steel. His fore-arms re-formed in full with a sharp, violent sucking sound, and he pounded back down into the pool, dousing them both.

Jin, for his part, vibrated with a grinding noise from inside his chest. His needle had snapped off in Vorinclex’s neck.

“Now that is what I would call fair exchange.”

Vorinclex spat into the water, and stalked back up out the side of the pool, shaking out his coat as he went, splattering the walls and floors with the fluid of their exchange. Jin clambered back up the bank of the pool, reclining with an arm balanced on his knee.

“You’ve ruined my skirt.”

“I’m sure you’ll find a nicer one somewhere.” Vorinclex stretched out his forelimbs. “Was that useful for you, prawn?”

“It was not entirely unproductive,” Jin replied. His transcriptors approached him from behind, still muttering away.

“I could learn even more if we had our entire network of caverns and pools at our disposal.” Vorinclex’s claws flexed. “If you were willing to let me hunt you through the space, I could glean multitudes about how you tick...if such a thing interested you…?”

“Guess.”

“Hmph.”

“A moment.” Jin turned to his transcriptors and, with a single deft swipe of his hand, separated their domed heads from their bodies.

The heads never hit the ground; Jin plucked them out of the air with his other hand, and tucked them into a compartment at his waist. The bodies slumped in place, sagging but standing upright.

Vorinclex sniffed. “Failed in their recording?”

“Succeeded, which is why I will be taking their knowledge into myself. It is an unnecessary risk to have such valuable data wandering around inside beings so susceptible to bribery or abduction. Here-” Jin waved a hand over the bodies, and began collecting the jars and other vials they had assembled. “A gift – you may eat those. I have no more use for their ambulatory parts. These were grown from samples of myself; they can be your consolation prize, since you cannot have me.”

“A waste of resources.” Vorinclex looked down on the bodies with disdain. “Phyrexia is still a closed system until Norn can break through to new hunting grounds. Can’t your research make use of them?”

Jin looked up at Vorinclex, but did not answer right away. He continued to collect the samples the transcriptors had gathered.

“Most likely,” He said at last. “It was only a goodwill gesture.”

“I eat only what is worth being eaten. Those septic corpses are worth nothing.”

“Hm.”

“The exploration of your form is goodwill enough,” Vorinclex rumbled.

“I will offer something else then.” Jin made a strange gesture; a movement of the hand from chest to side. “We are, despite valid criticisms, among the pinnacles of our factions. Your crocus creations-”

“Glissa’s Crocuses. They are the fruit of her labours.”

Jin clicked irritably. “The crocuses are, despite their crudeness, well suited to aiding the sort of newt and germ generation the progress engine has perfected. We might then make children from our respective materials-”

“Yours and mine?”

Jin paused, but Vorinclex pressed on.

“You and me, specifically?”

“It is a proposal with immense promise.”

Vorinclex tilted his head. “I would be...curious to see what comes of it.”

Jin leaned forward, and Glissa imagined for a moment she saw his jaw clench into a smile. “An understandable position. We have this space here, and Norn will approve of anything that could add such potent forces to Phyrexia. If you would only-”

“I won’t,” Vorinclex cut in, with a sudden, unmistakable edge.

“...why?”

“What does it matter ‘why’? I said no.”

Jin hummed in exasperation. “We have already seen great leaps and bounds in our respective factions’ grand designs. Why not join our own materials to see what can be made anew for Phyrexia? Urabrask and Sheoldred have their own project underway, and even the tangle has a fine specimen resulting from your proximity to the Furnace.”

“Norn will have no children of mine.”

"The swarm is already committed to her expansion. To our expansion. What does it matter whether they are of your direct lineage?"

"There is no singular "Swarm" to be committed. Glissa and I don't limit where our hunters range, and I won't deny them whatever killing grounds the Orthodoxy open for Phyrexia. They're free to join Norn's conquests whatever way they please.”

Jin hummed with irritation. “If they are free, then...I ask again, why not-”

“If a phyrexian I spawn chooses, they may follow Norn. If a predator can make itself mightier on the flesh of the planes she wishes to open up, I welcome the chance. If the creatures our factions collaborate on here are meant for her schemes, so be it. What I will not do is personally sire for the sole end of adding to her legions. I won't give my own brood to be her tools. She has you for that, prawn."

Silence. Jin turned away, and busied himself with extracting the vials and other samples from the bodies of his transcriptors, tucking them into a bag at his waist, and several slots along his back.

“It’s a wasted opportunity,” he said at last, not looking up. “This space has already proven useful to our efforts beyond measure. I foresee much great progress being made here.”

“That’s why we were here to-” Vorinclex’s gaze swept the cavern. “Yes. That’s why we agreed to this.”

“I am trying to discover the way forward for all Phyrexia. Not just for Norn’s benefit.”

“Then you should look up from your dissection tables, Jin, and see the world Norn is making with clear eyes, and how you contribute to it.”

“As you do.”

“I know what I am contributing to, and how I am contributing.”

Jin hummed. “I am not ignorant.”

“You don’t have to be ignorant to fool yourself.”

Jin hissed at that, so low it was almost lost in the humming of the cavern, but still he hissed. He turned away from Vorinclex.

From the transcriptor’s bodies, Jin extracted two more vials – long, empty lubes of glass. He waded out into the pool, and knelt.

The fluid was much changed by their activities. From acid-green to blue-green, to something that seemed to Glissa’s eye like colored quicksilver, shimmering form purple to blue to green to black to purple again. It sang a markedly more complex tune now than the humming of the fluid in the other pools.

Slowly, Jin tipped the vials into the fluid and filled them up, stopping each with a plug of gummy black material.

“I will test incubating my next batch of larvae in the fluid from this pool,” Jin said, tucking the vials into compartments in his breast. “It has absorbed some of my own essence, which should at least...counterbalance any defects you might introduce.”

“I’m sure the notion does not make you uncomfortable,” Jin added, somehow baring even more of his teeth than usual. “I do not fear to create life for Norn’s Phyrexia.”

Vorinclex said nothing, but regarded Jin for a few seconds longer.

Then, still without a word, he lowered his maw into the fluid of the breeding pool, and began to drink.

And drink.

Jin just stared. Glissa realized her own breath had caught in her chest.

And still, Vorinclex drank deeply of the stuff, and the humming of the fluid shifted, chords of sound rippling through the cavern as he sucked the glowing stuff up into his maw.

When he at last lifted his head, minutes later, the gaze of every other person in the chamber followed the movement.

He merely licked his chops, and stretched out his shoulders with what Glissa knew to be intentional effect.

“Meager,” Vorinclex noted at last. “But, if I cannot eat you, that’s the next best thing. Maybe you managed to leak a useful mineral or two into the pool.”

Then, with a deliberate grace, he looped out of the pool, leaving Jin to watch him go in silence. Iridescent, humming fluid dripped from his sides onto the spongy metal floor, which soaked the liquid up with a greedy haste.

Glissa smiled at Vorinclex as he rejoined her, then back at Jin, shooting the latter praetor a tight smirk and sneer.

Your scientist has been pleasantly rattled.

Vorinclex grunted.

He’s not mine. And now I’m liable to be sick.

Glissa snorted a laugh.

They began their climb back to the Maze. As the breeding pools disappeared behind them, Glissa patted at Vorinclex’s flank, where Jin had cut into him and delved inside. He rumbled his appreciation, but when she went to wipe the fluid from his jaw, he pulled away.

She let him be. There was much work being done, and yet to be done still. This diversion had certainly been trying enough on its own.

As the light of the Hunter’s Maze began to fill the tunnel, Vorinclex’ tongue slipped out the corner of his mouth.

Almost absently, he began to lick traces of fluid from his chops.

"Keen Sense and Curiosity” is unofficial Fan Content permitted under the Fan Content Policy. Not approved/endorsed by Wizards. Portions of the materials used are property of Wizards of the Coast. ©Wizards of the Coast LLC.

#mtg #phyrexia #jin gitaxias #vorinclex #mtg fan fic #glissa

73 notes · View notes

kyriefae · 9 months ago

Text

I don't see people using The Lazarus Experiment from Series 3 as a routine means of identifying Doctor Who as being "past it's prime".

Even commentary regarding the farting aliens that wear human skin suits has been at a relative low.

There were also two episodes where James Corden played the key companion role. People didn't like it but rarely mention those episodes anymore.

Then there was the episode about the moon being an egg. Another one about sleep dust from our eyes taking over a space station cuz capitalism...

There was also that one that became a soapbox about making choices to fix the planet or else the surviving humans would become monstrous mutations trapped outside of planet terraforming resorts that dish out space coupons.

Almost like Doctor Who routinely puts out these silly, not-so-award winning scripts or stories and routinely receives mediocre ratings or fan reception as a result. ...but people still keep watching it and people still love it.

Space Babies is not different; in fact it's a delightful episode with beautiful messages attached to it.

CGI baby mouths or not...I just want to put a stamp on the *cow's excrement* (NAN-E filter approved).

Edit: In case it's not abundantly clear I thoroughly enjoy when Who is either bad or heavily perceived as being bad. It's never like "omg they put the lead actor's character into a coma and wrote them off the show I wonder what's happening behind the scenes" it's always like "this week we're going to introduce a new creature into the lore" and people get mad or "this week we're going to bring back a known creature from the lore* and people get bored or *what if we brought back one of the farting aliens and make her story kinda sorta sad but still funny* then people's heads explode.

#doctor who #whovian #space babies #dw fandom #fifteenth doctor #dw #doctor who commentary #eleventh doctor #the curse of the black spot #ncuti gatwa #millie gibson #the lazarus experiment #aliens of london #the lodger #kill the moon #sleep no more #orphan-55 #doctor who writing #boom town

20 notes · View notes

worldofsaia · 2 months ago

Note

for my ask game !! (for your better cr)

🛡️ ❝ A GIRL WORTH FIGHTING FOR ❞ ... is there anyone in your dr who's "worth fighting for"? anyone who motivates you when you feel like doing nothing but slumping over?

🐴 ❝ KHAN ❞ ... what about animal companions? any fur babies, waiting for you to go home and spoil them? any birds, who love their freedom but still fly back to you? or maybe some exotic sweethearts, outside of the usual pets?

🪭 ❝ THE MATCHMAKER ❞ ... how did you meet your s/o? was it by arranged marriage, like what mulan was going to the matchmaker for, or some other trope?

now playing ; joy by kadhja bonet…

@ BETTER CR ! for @deepinthegroves

✎ ... ahhh I'm so happy to get an ask from you! I'm a little late cause of work but 🤷‍♀️. now i haven’t quite let myself sink into this reality the way i could—haven’t had the chance to marinate in the deep stuff yet. i mean, i did shift briefly (some hours) into the future of this reality and got my back disintegrated by my s/o.

🛡️ ❝ A GIRL WORTH FIGHTING FOR ❞ ... is there anyone in your dr who's "worth fighting for"? anyone who motivates you when you feel like doing nothing but slumping over?

✶ it's hard to put into words yet, but there's one person who's definitely worth fighting for in this reality. you know the kind of person who, once you meet them, everything you think you understand about your world shifts? that's how it'll be when i meet liran. this is something i’ve only just scripted into the timeline, but i can feel a connection that makes me want to surpass him in everything i do.

picture MOROMBE, sitting on a rusted pier, eating greasy fries and drinking lime soda out of a glass bottle, just mindlessly trying to escape the frustrations of everything around me. i had just caught my first lucky break in life, after cutting ties with pretty much everyone from my past.

liran is this weird, nearly unapproachable genius, the kind of guy everyone remembers for his wild ideas, like wanting to terraform coastlines with algae and actually starting the process. they won't remember the man. the exhaustion. the volatility. the cruelty when he was right and the rest of us were slow to follow.

he is brilliant—tiring, chaotic, idealistic in a way that made me dizzy. the older guy you’d have a crush on in middle school who let you tag along to field research when you barely knew your ass from your elbow.

the thing that really sticks with me is an event in my timeline called the hanga reclamation project—how he disappeared during it. he disappeared during it.

✶ in my future shifts, i know i’ll have joja. she’s going to be my ride-or-die. a 4-year-old red-nosed pittie with yellow-green eyes who’s obsessed with strawberries. she’s going to be a rescue from my time in the netherlands during a flood—this scrappy little thing who growled at me when i pulled her into my van, then puked on my sketchbook and slept for 18 hours straight.

she’ll be sweet to everyone, but when she needs to be, she’s going to be all muscle. we’ll take her out shooting to burn off some of that energy.

then there’s echo. my african grey parrot. i can already feel the mischievous energy of him—flirting with everyone he meets, always loud and opinionated. he’ll have very strong political views. and, of course, he’s going to sing “lovers rock” by sade when my s/o’s around. he’ll love to mock me, saying "babe, drink some water" in my partner’s accent, then bite anyone who raises their voice at him. and he’ll laugh about it, like the little demon he is.

🪭 ❝ THE MATCHMAKER ❞ ... how did you meet your s/o? was it by arranged marriage, like what mulan was going to the matchmaker for, or some other trope?

✶ no arranged marriage here. definitely not the way i’ve scripted this. but it’s one of those unexpected moments, where i’m just in the right place at the right time, but the world wasn’t quite ready for what came after.

we meet in a coffee shop in north dallas. me, sitting there—hungover, broke as hell, three job applications open on my laptop that i’m not even remotely qualified for. i’m trying to ignore this guy who’s arguing with the barista about how real matcha shouldn’t be served cold. that is, until i blurt out something along the lines of him just getting a coffee maker instead of being a pretentious writhing cunt.

it’s a weird icebreaker, but for whatever reason, he likes it.

we end up talking for hours. or, to be honest, he kind of just harasses me with his constant questions until my friend picks me up. i don’t even know who he is at first—just some guy with sharp cheekbones and a serious air of superiority. but then he gets my number.

i never meant to actually answer him. but he’s persistent, and it turns out he knows exactly how to get me back to that coffee shop again. i love free food, so i play along.

i learn a bit more about him each time we meet—how he struggles with reconciling his serbian and japanese sides. that he’s a famous striker with a god complex, his wrists are gorgeous. it wasn't intentional, but he definitely has some psycho-in-love traits and i’m not going to fix it, i'll make him worse. can’t stop greeting me at my flat with fig tarts and flowers. eventually, he gives up pretending to like espresso just to impress me.

#unsunderedsaia #asked and answered #shifting realities #reality shifting #shiftblr #shifting #shifting asks #shifting ask game

4 notes · View notes

oceanbpm · 3 months ago

Text

MY QUIRK IN MY FIRST MHA DR

QUIRK NAME : earth's blessing

QUIRK TYPE: emitter

my quirk allows me to control the earth and things connected it, like metal and flora for ex, to a certain extent.

TRIVIA :

my quirk was originally named terraform when it was first evaluated, but it was later renamed to earth's blessings.

as you can tell from the gifs, my quirk is heavily inspired by toph's earth bending in particular. i even scripted that my seismic sense and metal bending is as good as hers. she's the goat.

in terms of limitations, i can only control the earth that's within a certain radius of me, outside of some exceptions.

#shifting blog #shiftblr #desired reality #reality shifting

2 notes · View notes

pico-digital-studios · 1 year ago

Text

Into, Across and Beyond! Scripting: Let's do this one last time.

One More Hero

OMT!Sonic (represented by a PC game box)

(Find his here.)

Detective Ghost / Kaede Titan (represented by a comic cover)

"Okey-doke! Let's do this one last time. My name is Kaede Titan. I gained my own ability to go at super-speed, and for a couple of years, I've been the one and only Detective Ghost! Sure some of you out there might know the rest. I've foiled Razereye's schemes, fell in love with Luna, adopted Max into my family, and then I saved the island from crooks time and time again!

Compared to Sonic, I got a whole secret identity thing going on, and though it's tough, I can say with confidence that I've loved helping save the day. And no matter how many times I get hit, I always find my way to keep on moving. Because right now (before OMT!Tails helped her out), the only thing standing between South Island and oblivion... is me.

There's only one Detective Ghost out there. And you're lookin' at her!"

CR!Sonic (represented by a comic cover)

"Alright, people, let's do this one last time. My name is Sonic Maurice Hedgehog. I was transformed by one of Robotnik's machines, and for the last seven years, I thought I was the one and only hero of Mobius. What a day, huh? I'm pretty sure you know the rest.

I saved Mobius, fell in love with Sal, saved Mobius some more, maybe too much, beat the heck out of Exegod and Corrupt, and blah blah blah, saved Mobius again... and again... and again. Fast forward! One of Robuttnik's robots flew at my face and broke my back, my relationships got testy, made some dicey money choices - Don't invest in a Sonic-themed restaurant, by the way. - then, like, 2 more years passed, yada yada yada.

A freaking drone flew at my face, I hurt my back again, entities that want to kill this stupid lemon idiot came around, I buried Uncle Chuck, who passed from old age, I realized I'm reaching adulthood, Sally and I... split up. But I handled it like a champion! (cut to him crying in a shower) 'Cause you know what? No matter how many times I get hit, I always keep on moving without regrets. I also got a lot of time to reflect and work on myself.

Did you know that seahorses mate for life? Could you imagine a seahorse seeing another seahorse and making it work? She wanted a family and kids, and for us both to rule over Mobius... and it scared me. I'm pretty sure I broke her heart. [...] Flash forward, I'm doing my part, doing ab crunches, getting "strong"... when this weird thing happened.

I gotta say, weird things happen to me a lot, given I live in a crossover multiverse and stuff, but this one was especially weird. [...] You see, I was still in Mobius, but... a lot of things were different. I was this... embodiment of hope the island looked up to. Also, I was dead... and young. It felt... nostalgic. It was like going back in time! I got a feeling that, whatever brought me here, it must've been the thing that got him killed.

Wanna know what happened next? [...] Yeah, me too."

Nine (represented by a DVD case)

"*sigh* Alright, then. Let's get it out of the way, one last time, if you will. My name is Nine. In my youth, I engineered seven mechanical tails to defend myself with, and for a couple of years at this point, I've been looking out for myself in this hellscape known only as New Yolk. Kinda sure a few of you will know the rest. [...] I met Sonic, beelined with a Paradox Prism shard, discovered the Grim, and even helped Sonic keep those shards out of the greedy hands of the Chaos Council.

That said, the more recent endeavours are ones I'm not proud of. Turns out, holding a whole Prism in your hands to terraform a Shatterspace is the worst idea I could think of, and it almost killed everyone around me. I... got what I deserved in those days...

[...] After Sonic and Shadow left for good, I ditched my mechanical namesakes and just... gave up. Left the Grim behind, and spent a long time in my workshop just passing the days.

Thankfully, it wasn't all doom and gloom for me. A young rabbit girl, whose name was... Crème Brûlée, I think? She often came down to check up on me, and always let me know how the city was recovering after we sent the Chaos Council's sorry butts into the Shatterverse's depths.

And then one day, something pretty crazy happened. I know I've seen crazy things before, but the fact an entirely different Sonic wound up here confirmed my theory that there were MANY worlds beyond the Shatterverse. [...]

It also had me thinking; with all the times life has knocked me down, even when I've been thrown curveballs, is it really an easy feat to just get back up again? Well, with what's coming next and a chance to look into the further multiverse, not really much point in pondering so much."

OMT!Mina (represented by a SEGA Saturn disc)

"Alright, people. Let's start from the beginning one last time. My name is Mina Mongoose. I gained super-speed in my own fashion, and for a couple of years, I've been the leading star hero of my universe. You guys know the rest. I led a band, saved my buddies... I couldn't save my best friends, Sonic and Tails, so now I save everyone else. And I barely do friends anymore, just to keep distractions to a minimum.

And one day, this weird thing happened. And I mean, like, really weird. When I was leaving my dimension with another Sonic, I ended up getting blown into last week by something. Literally! I landed in Central City, which wasn't my Station Square. [...] My instincts told me to head to Bumper High School, and well, the rest is history with that one! I didn't know why I needed to until I met you."

Mini Sonic (represented by a Nokia phone)

"Okay, let's do it one last time, and cut to the chase. I'm Sonic the Hedgehog! Well, arguably smaller than one would expect, of course, but I'm still the hero of my land. Pretty sure you know the rest by now. Freed my animal friends from robots, and fought my Robotnik a couple of dozen times by that point.

In my universe, it's constantly 1992 tops, and I'm pretty quick to leap into action! I like to chow on chilli dogs, and I like fighting robots. A lot. [...] Well, I mean, I have fallen victim to getting knocked out every 10 minutes or so at West Side Island, even when I've already gotten past an area.

Okay, so something weird happened earlier today. How I got here? It's a long story. (cut to a shot of Mini Sonic flying out a portal and being bounced around Balloon Park) Er, okay, maybe not that long, then. But yeah, no matter how many times I get knocked about, I can definitely keep moving each time!"

Mr. Needlemouse (represented by a VHS tape)

(Will come a little later.)

EX!Alice (represented by a SEGA CD/EX disc)

"Okay, then. Let's do this one last time. My name's Alice, and I'm a survivor of the twisted crystalline demon known only as Xenophanes. I don't know if you know the rest, so I'll sum it up for you; I used to work under him, but eventually defected and left for a quiet, isolated life away. I never told my family where I was, but at least it spared them the heartache when he and his new assistant, Caffrin, claimed me and took me into his world, sealing me in a vessel akin to Amy Rose.

But I was soon tired of being a punching bag to them, and so I decided to act. I patched myself up and fought valiantly, but lost. And I lost again. And again and again, and again. However, things changed when Veronica, Caffrin's big sister, wound up in that world solely by choice. And together, we actually made a difference. Caff defected in the end and helped us kill Xeno, but... it cost her her life in the end.

I stayed behind to pick up the pieces that the monster left behind, even after the other souls moved on. It got me dabbling in tech maintenance, and I eventually was able to integrate some of the leftover dark matter into "Sonic 3 - Zone 6: Round 3", or "E4-R6:3", for short. It essentially gave me a psychic link with that modified Big Arms mech, saving me some effort in pulling levers and pushing buttons.

Just today, something weird happened. Yes, the same weird thing that everyone else here ended up in, so it's not really a long story. Good thing I was piloting E4 at the time, so I didn't suffer any injuries on my way here. I was able to figure where I needed to get to from there, and the rest is history."

More than One Universe

Antho (represented by a comic cover)

"Alright, let’s back it up from here. My name is Anthony Miller the Hedgehog, or just "Antho", for short, and for the past year or so, I and a group of friends have become the new heroes of my Mobius. But it wasn’t always like that you see.

You see, I was just your average normal nerdy hedgehog until something with a super collider changed my appearance and gave me some knowledge of a multiverse or something. Oh, and I’m pretty sure there was a T-Rex-. Oh no, wait! That was added to the script to make it more dramatic.

Anyways, aside from that. It was also the day we lost our Sonic… and I saw it with my own eyes… thanks to that monster, Mammoth Mogul. Ever since then, the Dark Ages happened, and I was never the same again. But not until I stood up and took vengeance against Mogul himself and since then, I’ve restored the faith of Mobius, met new friends and allies, some of which I can now consider family, and am now living in our beloved hero’s legacy.

But despite that, it's still kinda hard work, and I sometimes feel like I can’t live up to Sonic’s standards and how he was the saviour of us all. But deep down, I know he's proud of me, and having my friends, family and the main cast by my side has helped.

I can’t be the next Sonic, even if some otherworldly hedgehog says otherwise. But this is my world and my rules. And I’m doing my own thing, whether you like it or not."

Nitro (represented by a comic cover)

"Well, you probably know the drill by this point, so let's do it one last time. Or... is it the SECOND last time? Eh, never mind. My name is Christopher Smith, and for a couple of years, I've been the one and only... Nitro the Hedgehog. I doubt you know the rest, so I'll sum it up; I fled from my old home into Mobius, helped in the war against Eggman, and even saved the multiverse from possible destruction at the hands of Toxinfect. [...]

That said, with all the times I've been knocked down, I haven't always been able to keep on moving. In an older timeline I came from, I suffered from long-term depression that I hid from everyone. At least, until a mini "Smol" version of myself revealed it, by which point I got some much-needed therapy. [...] But of course, there have been positives. I saved a newer friend from the clutches of a corrupt corporate boss, met amazing friends across the multiverse, and even got girlfriends out of my Amy and Mina. [...]

Just today, of course, something weird happened. A portal opened under my feet, and I had to go to the hospital for a bit after some creatures gnawed at my legs. We waited a little bit, and then we saw that portal open into OMT!Tails's house. Wanna see what comes next now? Same! But before we do..."

CU!Sonic and CU!Sonia (represented by a comic cover)

CU!Sonic: ...It's time for us to do this-

CU!Sonia: -one last time!

CU!Sonic: Heh, knew you'd get the drill, mini-blue! So anyway, I'm Sonic, and this is my little daughter, Sonia. For a while, I've been the hero of my world. Pretty sure you know the rest! I got together with Amy, we had Sonia, and I've continued saving the world countless times. We did get into some tough love at times, but we always sorted it out!

CU!Sonia: Ah, erm... You gonna mention what happened with... mom?

CU!Sonic: Oh, er... I'm... not really sure if I can muster up the courage myself...

CU!Sonia: Come to think of it, I don't really remember what happened, but... she's no longer with us. Ever since, dad's been raising me on his own.

CU!Sonic: Right. Sonia's really the only family I have left, so while looking after her (and a mix of her keeping me right, of course), I've also been helping keep my home safe from criminal organisations trying to take advantage of things. [...] One day, however, something weird happened.

CU!Sonia: We saw a portal just open up in front of us during our walk, and we met other friends on the other side!

CU!Sonic: Sure you wanna know what happens next as much as me, so let's cut it here.

D-Sides Mighty (represented by a SEGA Genesis box art)

"Well, let's get this out of the way once more, and I doubt it'll be the last time. So my name's Mighty the Armadillo. As you can see, I'm not red, but purple. I've been generally going my own route in life, but I'm pretty sure you know the basic gist of it; I've helped defend the world from Maria Robotnik, who IS still living in my universe, before you ask, spent plenty of time with my little bro, Ray, and aspired to do things off-the-script.

Of course, you know about those "EXE" things or whatever you call 'em, right? Well, there's a few of them that take my shape instead of that of Claws, for whatever reason. Shows how inconsistent my whole multiverse is, huh? So, fast-forward a bit, I met a sweet kid named Hefty, he fell in love with my version of Honey... Kinda similar to how EV had it on his end. But even with the script loose and literally no sense of "canon", I always find a way to keep on moving, no matter what tries to knock me down. Even with that... MightMurderer entity.

Trust me, I felt that cosmic tremor as much as anybody else did, and me and my crew felt it warranted some investigation. Claws and Tails picked to hang behind just in case anything broke into our universe, while me, Ray, Honey and Hefty came here to figure out just what was going on. Guess we found the answer quicker than I expected, huh?"

Black Knight Amy (represented by the Sonic & The Black Knight cover art)

More than One Universe Intro

"Well, you know the drill. Let's get this explained, one last time. I'm Amy, Amy Rose! I'm sure you know a lot about me; my love for Sonic, my enjoyment in tarot card reading, and my Piko-Piko Hammer packs a punch against Eggman's tricks. Though, one day, things went pretty crazy for me.

I was dragged into the kingdom of Camelot by a spell Merlina cast, and I gained these amazing amulets that allow me to control water. Using them, I was able to calm the Knights of the Round Table and halt King Arthur in his tracks. However, the sword Merlina was with, Caliburn, revolted immediately after, citing that all mistakes are to be vanquished from the "perfect world" he envisioned. It took us both to stop him, and I showed that everybody is flawed, but mistakes make us who we are in the end.

After that, I was allowed to use the amulets outside of Camelot, and Merlina kept the gateway between those worlds open so I can visit anytime I want! I also started crushing on Honey a lot more, hehe. Well, as for how I got here, I felt the big tremor shaking the area and knew it warranted me to check it out. When I came through that portal, that's when I came across a version of Sonic who looked like he was on drugs, and... yeah!"

Into the Sonic-verse Expanded Explanation

"You know, I've found things pretty easy going to begin with! I even got a daily routine going. I wake up, skip workouts since I'm already naturally strong and I don't want to get any muscles, you know? I don't need to do anything with my wondrous hair...

OMT!Tails: You don't use any product on it?

BK!Amy: I only really need strawberry shampoo and a dash of coconut oil to keep it fresh, hehe!

So anyway, I also read my tarot cards daily to plan out my luck, fight some of Eggy's goons, bring fruit for the local Chao Garden in Station Square... The usual stuff! And I even have a quick break for a cup of chai with Yasmine and Samia in Shamar!

OMT!Tails: Chai tea, huh?

(record scratch)

BK!Amy: Tails! "Chai" means "tea"! It's like you're saying "tea tea"! Would I ask you for a "coffee coffee" with a side of "cream cream"? O-Oh! Sorry, heh. Got a little carried away there.

OMT!Tails: Yeah, sorry about that.

Well, I've started hanging out more with Honey as well. She's a really amazing fashion designer, and she's quite strong to boot! And while helping out Sonic, I also help keep good old Camelot safe from harm! Quick tour for you guys; Misty Lake, Camelot Castle, the Deep Woods, Titanic Plain, the Crystal Caves and Molten Mine, Faraway Avalon, Knight's Passage, Shrouded Forest, Great Megalith, the Cauldron, and the Dragon's Lair! Phew, that sure was a lot, huh?"

Ex-Prince Brian (represented by a SEGA Genesis cartridge)

(Will come a little later.)

Hog (represented by the GIGA console)

"Okay, then. I'm getting this off my chest one last time. I'm a bootleg, yes, but I still got my own super-speed on the table! And for a while, I've been the one and only... Hog the Tenrec! Pretty sure you know the rest; met some cool buddies, defeated ol' Dr. Yolkman dozens of times, and showed my rival Fists who's boss.

Well, that was until... HE struck. I lost control of my body, and this hedgehog who accused me and my friends of "replacing" his world laid torment upon my home, until I broke free. Needless to say, I was furious and itchin' to get back at him. Though, it all came at the cost of my world. I shouldn't've survived that, but I got warped out to CrossRealm Sonic's world before I perished.

It took me some time to recover, but I'm still ready to help protect a world no matter what. Because, no matter how many times I'm knocked down, for the sake of my fallen friends, I'll keep on movin'! I got here with Sonic after we felt that soft tremor and some portals popped up at one spot. So, yeah! That pretty much sums it up for me."

Wacky (represented by a special disc of her own)

"Well, let's do this one last time! I'm Wacky the Erizo, a bootleg just like Hog, and I got my own world to boot. I'm kinda sure you know the rest; I saved my world from Dr. Sunnyside, fell in love with Starburst, saved the land a few more times, blah blah blah. You know how it is. I also got sucked into a new land, and met this creepy broken being that called itself "Bizarro".

They tried to possess me, but as long as I kept my eyes shut, they couldn't take full control of me. I really didn't like them. But other than that, you really expect me to take things seriously all the time? I barely take anything seriously. I still remain curious about that big screen in my world's sky, though. Why is someone new always appearing on it...?

Though, I felt that tremor as much as I imagine anyone else did, and it happened to knock Bizarro right out of me. They faded away soon after. After that, while I was glad I was still in full control for good, I knew something needed to be done about whatever the heck happened.

So, Zanie provided me a way between worlds, using that same tech Dr. Sunnyside used to knock us into next week, quite literally in this case. I've seen crazy things, but nothing could be crazier than trying to get a black and red ghost under control just now."

Devy (represented by a comic strip)

(Will come a little later.)

EV!Sonic (represented by a comic strip)

"Yeah, they figured out the reality, so I'm just gonna do this one last time. My name is Maurice. I gained super-speed in my own fashion, and for some time, I've been the one and only... Sonic the Hedgehog! ...of my universe, I mean. Pretty sure you know the rest.

I overcame depression from fans' harsh criticism on my games, beat Phantom Ruby cases THREE times, fell in love with Nova, and saved my world and surrounding universe countless times. Same here as it was in the old timeline. "Old timeline?", I hear you ask?

Well, in that old timeline, I stepped down and passed on the mantle of protecting Mobius to Nitro, who I trained quite well. Though, I lost a close friend there, and we had to put up with a heartless company replacing people with clones of themselves.

Then a whole bright light consumed everything and the entire universe underwent a full-blown reset, if you will. Brian's all safe and sound, the Puhoi Curse is now non-existent, Clover's been enjoying life on the surface again with Frisk and Chara and the other ex-fallen humans, and ol' Eggy's been split between his old self and Mr. Tinker. To be honest, I like Tinker a lot more.

EV!Eggman (in the background): I HEARD THAT! ...Wait, what did you say about timelines?

EV!Sonic: Eh, just ignore him.

So anyway, sometime after Eggman Prime got all these supervillains together in one place to try and kill my original self, Sonic Prime, I met Tekno the Canary with my friends, and the two of us started our elite strike force dedicated to protecting the multiverse. It started with eight of us, and by this point, it's pretty much in the hundreds! And better still, I'm still available to actively keep my world safe from harm.

Me and Nitro already knew what was coming when those portals showed up, and that brings us to this point. Wanna know how it continues? Me too!"

OMT!Tails (represented by his own PC game box)

(Find his here.)

Across All Worlds

"Alright, then. Let's do this one last time. This time, I mean it! My name is Miles Prower. One day, my twin tail became my blessing, Sonic saved me from some bullies, and for the last 33 years, I've been the one and only... Tails! Of my universe, of course. And things have been pretty awesome since I strung out on my own a year and 9 months ago. Catching all sorts of bad guys...

I refurbished my nanomachine suit, with a metal sheen to blend in with robots. Kaede and her siblings moved over to Emerald Town, Dr. Robotnik got graduated as a professor at Balloon Park University, I guest-hosted Speed-Three, endorsed in motion sickness prevention classes, developing a new twist on my electric hand thing...

How much longer can I keep things under a steady hold? I mean, would every world get it if I shared my stories? Eh, maybe in another timeline. Sometimes, I just wish me and Detective Ghost weren't the only ones doing this gig. But I haven't been dwelling too much on it. (cut to him doing child-like sketches of the Blur Gang, a LOT of which are of Mina)

I do miss Sonic and Sally a lot, though. Even with everything that went down with them, I try to do what Sally told me... "Enjoy the future for her". But at the end of the day, I am the hero of Mobius. And nobody can take that away from me!"

Many More Heroes (as a taunt to LM!Sonic)

"My name is Miles "Tails" Prower... [...] I inherited my best friend's mantle because he wanted me to. [...] I'm pretty sure you know the rest, jerk!"

Funkinverse Crossover

Benjamin Miku (Boyfriend of Earth-111723)

"Alright! Let's do this one last time! ...again. My name is Benjamin Miku. I dropped out of high-school, got a snazzy microphone, and for the last 2 years, I've been my universe's one and only... Boyfriend! I'm pretty sure you know the rest. I sang with some people, fell in love with Grace Dearest, fought off the Corruption, befriended the other Dearests... you know the drill! And, uh... I did this. (footage of "Really Happy") Yeah, we don't really talk about this.

Of course, one day, a year after my musical career kickstarted, the gateway to our wider universe opened. One minute, I remember being 17 with Grace, then the next, us and our siblings got younger. I remember me being 13 as part of some "age-halt" last I checked. Though it got me more involved in action and helped me achieve new feats, like becoming the hero I know my world needs and deserves.

And through it all, even with the bumps in the road, I've really enjoyed my career as a fellow successor to my big sister, and being the "Boyfriend" as a whole! And to me, being a kind and selfless soul is what I feel should encapsulate any Boyfriend out there. Music is something that's all around us, everywhere in the whole world. And if we share it with each other in harmony, it really brings us all together.

I may not be the exact same Boyfriend my world intended on, but if anyone needs my help, I'll be ready to do my job! And if you expect me to abide by supposed fate? Nah. I'll be doing things my way, whether you like it or not. In my eyes, anyone can wield the microphone if they wish to, and I'm sure as heck not the only one out there by far. I'm the hero of my own story, and nothing can take that from me!"

Across All Worlds

Scourge (represented by one of his own comic covers)

(Inspired by this)

"HEY! Sit down, shut up, and lemme cut this short! The name's Scourge, and yeah, you can say me an' the multiverse ain't exactly 'friends', per se. The runts of the litter around my planet like calling me "Evil Sonic". "Anti-Sonic". Pft! Can't imagine why. With my speed, and a leg up on the royal ladder, I took over my entire planet! Took down any pretty punk who dared disobeying me, and made anarchy my one way or the highway!

And to think, through all that... I was still a nobody! A cheap knock-off of the real Sonics across time and space! A dull flash in a pan of big blue wimps. I needed a change, and a total... royal... makeover! [...] A quick trip to my blue alternate's goody-goody dimension, a magic power boost and a little setback later... Ooh, yeah! I was a frickin' beast!

And when the Sonic connected to me tried steppin' up to my plate? Super Scourge showed 'im a thing or two! ...Didn't last very long, though. Got me thrown into f*ckin' multiverse prison! But with my gang of crooks bustin' me out and lickin' the Zone Cops off my tail, we were stakin' on BIG plans for the Sonic of my line and his pigs! The key word almost being, er... "were".

This alternate Eggman once hired me to trash this Sonic Prime fella, though that didn't work out as we hoped. But when this creepy Doc Finitevus guy proposed a plan for us to conquer the whole multiverse without an Eggman? Hell yeah I was on-board! Look out, however many Sonics plan to come for us, and get ready to hail to the king, baby!"

Many More Heroes

LM!Sonic (during the prologue) (represented by a picture of his fic of origin's artwork on a printed picture)

"I am Sonic the Hedgehog from Dimension SS-2001. I am part of an elite strike force dedicated to the protection of the multiverse-."

OMT!Mina: Actually, forget it.

LEGO Sonic (based on this) (represented by his LEGO Dimensions pack)

"Alright, let's do this one last time! ...again. My name is Sonic. I gained super-speed from being brick-built, and I became the one and only-! (numerous LEGO Sonic figures, including the bootleg ones, appear around him) Okay, scratch that.

After acquiring a keystone device from Baldy McNosehair, I helped heroes across my multiverse take down Joker, Green Goblin, the Cybermen, Lord Business, GLaDOS, the Wicked Witch of the West... You know, the big ones! I even teamed up with some bad guys to take down Lord Vortech that one time! Although... we don't really talk about that. And I even saved the original LEGO HQ from Eggy when he took the place over!

Anyways, that's just me. What about you?"

(cut to show he was talking to an unamused Crimtake)

Pana Der Hejhog (represented by a SEGA Genesis cartridge)

"Aight. My name is Pana. Pana Der Hejhog. I gained my-. Eh, wouldn't you like to know? And for the past 13 years, I've been the one and only... Look, didn't I state my name to you already? C'mon outta it!

That's when I'm not running around Mystic Island, keeping forced winter at bay, chasing off my Robotnik, chilling out in the sunshine, practicing music with Mina or having a laugh at Gust Planet's bar. I'm no role model, but I was briefly a runway model.

I dislike political fronts, I hate slimy companies, and I'm especially not into labels. I don't call myself a hero despite the good deeds I do, because the absolute jerks in society who claim they're in the right are self-mythologizing narcissistic fools!"

#sonic exe #sonic the hedgehog #spider verse #sth #sonic #sonic fandom #sth au #sonic au #spider man #friday night funkin

10 notes · View notes