Chapter 42 – West of Eden

With the factory in ruins, the widow and Becca proceeded to transverse the smoldering wreckage all the way to the core power-station, the pale girl floating to and thru while Becca walked with Purrin on her shoulder. She felt a relapse of clarity with the devices removed.

The group proceeded to the core, which was a chamber filled with hundreds of glowing gems, the core that drove the entire factory forward and backwards through time, which would let it fly from planet to planet like a spaceship in the reality known as 'AU'. In the center of the chamber was a gem with a distinct glow, a golden ambient aura whose luminescence outshone all the others. Becca broke the glass and reached out to the gem.

Another godshard was acquired.

The widow smirked. "You have a strange way of coming about my business. I like you Becca." She leaned in, hands gliding above the godshard as if absorbing heat from a lantern. She leaned her head in close. "That sound.." Her black lips curled into a smile. "They're singing for you Copurrnicus, I'm a good listener.."

The widow's hand made contact with the gemstone, caressing it as if it were a lover's. "Cuz love is a banshee, cuz war is the language of love-" The widow sang in a melody, her hand gripping the stone tightly. The bright amber light basked her palms in a glow that revealed her bones underneath.

The widow's eye turned to lashings of fiery blue as she gripped the stone. "Need a little spook juice to get us out of here. Hold tight, babe. This might be painful."

The widow's face fell into the stone, a kiss on the gem that revealed her lips wet and sticky as the lipstick ran over it. She placed a tender kiss on the stone, and it began to burn, to glow, the gem began to singe under her skin like it was coated in molten lead. From the godshard, a wispy disc began to grow out and circulate in front of the two. Slowly the Widow floated through before offering her hand pulling Becca through the other side while tucking the godshard away.

On the other side, the Widow let her head fall back and she looked up at the ceiling, the starry room like some kind of nightclub in another dimension. The Widow grabbed Becca's face and pulled it close. "Listen to me." She looked Becca in the eye. The pale girl's mouth seemed to make a vow. "You completely acted like you'd forgotten who I was when you found me here. Promise me you'll remember me, and how far we've come, the two of us. The only time we'll have together is this very night. Do you promise?"

Becca reached up and hugged the Widow with her arms. "I promise." She kissed Becca's forehead.

Then the Widow chuckled and looked up at the ceiling, the lights above her were colored like a rainbow, like a galaxy. Her arms and hips began to gyrate, the dance of vengeance. A sound like the roar of a thousand thunderclouds began to ring, as the sound of her scream reverberated throughout the nightclub in the void.

Becca found herself floating around as well, her mind filled with a kaleidoscope of color, thoughts that had been drowned with a sea of sound. Her thoughts were a million miles away, her body dancing. The two danced for the next several hours, losing their cares and taking the time to appreciate life's simplest thrills.

The Widow looked down at Becca with her pale hands, a smile on her face. The gothic lips curled into a smile. "It's a long ride to freedom, Becca. If I don't make it, I'll be thinking of you."

Becca nodded, her thoughts a whirlwind of motion.

With a slow swish of her skirt, the Widow made for a door behind the back of the bar. She gave a long deep kiss on Becca's lips, one last taste of the sweetest thing. The smokey caress of her lips seemed to caress the very tastebuds Becca had for a long time forgotten. She pulled out a golden keyring, unlocked a warpcube, and placed Becca within. She then placed the key back in her pocket. Then the Widow was gone, slipping through the smoky darkness with a graceful smile.

Becca fell asleep in her warpcube's temporally displaced chamber, sleeping for a thousand years.

Through the Void she traveled, where the future and past flowed like a wave on a shore, ebbing and flowing back and forth.

When she awoke, she found herself seated on a balcony. It was a clear night in NeoCity. The moonlight shined and the clouds cast a pale light.

"W-what?" She looked around confused.

In front of her on the balcony was a small child, a young girl who stared at Becca with her big shining eyes. Herself, or some incarnation of her younger self.

"Don't you remember, Becca?" The past her said. "Remember what?!" Becca replied, confused.

"This life could be anything you wanted it to be, but it doesn't have to be anything at all, Becca." She turned to Becca. "It's not too late for us."

Becca looked up at the stars, and realized she'd remembered her own feelings. She finally could feel her own hopes and dreams again, her aspirations as a young girl. A part of her was still present.

A part of her still cared.

She hugged the girl with her arms.

"I'm coming back home." She promised. The girl hugged Becca back.

Then the child in her arms seemed to fade. Then Becca's arms were empty. She looked up at the sky, and felt the stars and moonlight were warm, like the most comfortable thing in the world. As she began to walk through the city streets of NeoCity, the strange trickster night of the world seemed to descend upon with a coward's eye, fleeing and dissipating slowly into a slow melting mist. The skyscrapers, signs, roads and starlight flew away, the illusion dissipating as she moved on. Becca let her head fall back and looked at the world around her. With the void, a long dark road ahead curved out like a bridge for her to follow. Purrin poked out of her hair and onto her shoulder.

 

 

"Well Purrin, guess we're going to keep on moving forward." The small cat meowed in response.

Becca and Purrin continued on.

 

 

The girl continued to walk through a landscape of nothingness, a voidspace of dark matter, nothingness, an uncaring and empty universe. And she felt that she didn't mind. She didn't mind the endless possibilities she'd forgo and that she might find her way back to the factory, to NeoCity, to the girl she'd been. She didn't care. She felt free.

Becca walked on through the voidspace for a length of time.

Her mind had lost all sense of time, and felt an infinite possibility of what could be. She smiled a long smile as she walked through the darkness.

All this while, in the distance she could hear the sound of music coming from afar. A song of some otherworldly nature that sounded like it was from some other dimension. And all the while, she could see her path laid before her, a long road on the bridge she traveled across leading across the voidspace, towards something a long way off. The light of hope shined from afar, and it became her destination. The light gradually appeared as some sort of Tower far in her midst. She continued to walk with that hope in her heart.

Becca continued to walk, towards the horizon. And walk, and walk and walk some

more.

When the endlessly tall structure drew near, Becca could finally see two other smaller

bodies of infrastructure, if one could call them that, ahead. She held Purrin tightly in a hug as

she crossed the chasm in the void, until she was able to look up at the two. She saw a tall, imposing, glowing fortress-like cube with countless square entrances and protruding angles, corners and geometrical curiosities with trees growing atop the roof, and across the chasm to it was a gigantic tree with crystalline lining, its bluish-green branches the size of buses. Drooping from them were gigantic starry spheres that looked to her like Christmas ornaments powered by neon inferno. Hanging from this massive tree were hundreds of spheres simply dangling and glistening in this manner. It's lights lit brightly against the Tower, whose presence had since gotten darker upon close proximity, not clearer or brighter, in fact it looked like a pure black silhouette at this distance.

And all the while she could hear from the cube the music of freedom, her salvation. The voice sounded unmistakably like the widows, with guitar chords to boot. When they walked to the entrance of the cube, the girl could see that it had many chambers, each one lit by different colors and sounds, a myriad of colors and tones, some urban like a mall, some like chapels and many forested. She turn turned to tree looking around. She heard a voice.

"Yo, you coming in here or what?" A female voice called out.

Becca turned to see a figure standing behind a small doorway, an open entryway to the tower with a dark door, which she could see through and see a glowing chamber of multicolored neon blue-white and a girl who looked no older than 13. She wore a blue latex catsuit that seemed to shift its shine in the dark like tinfoil, and had a greenish hue around it as some sort of aura-like afterglow, overtop were white rubbery overalls layered above rubbery suit. The thick goggles she wore hid a face that made Becca think of the widow from her memory. The similarity between the two was uncannily similar, although this girl was much younger.

"Hey." The girl continued. "Don't be scared. I get guests from time to time, although very few stay." The little girl swung her head back and forth from her perch over the exit in the stalk, like a spider peering out of a web. Becca pointed to her mouth and shook her head to indicate, which the girl quickly caught on. "Huh, you cannot speak?"

"Sorta." Becca pointed to her mouth, trying to signify the concept of talking, although she could barely remember any words. "Sometimes. N-not much.." Becca shook her head again and looked to the girl. "But.." She pointed to the tower and back to her. "I need your help. I have to find my way home." She said, as if having been practicing the words for eons. The strange girl lifted her goggles and slid down a steel pulley before inspecting Becca closer, running her hand over the girl's ears with 'hmms' and 'uh huhs.'

"You're kinda preaching the choir. I'm here cause I want to get home too, but I can't exactly travel with you, not if I wanna get home myself." She took off one of her sheeny white rubber gloves and offered her hand. Becca hesitated, the earnestness caught her off guard. The girl looked at her as if she'd forgotten basic formalities like that.

"Oh, c'mere." She grabbed the young girl's head and hugged her, then and tugged her arm and pulled her towards the stalk, holding her while she roped her back up the pulley high up the tree's freakish height. While she ascended Becca eyes the colorful spheres- countless were lit in neon rainbow hues, but some seemed quite dull as if they were lightbulbs that'd blew

out. The multitude of colors reflected on their faces as they rose higher and higher, dancing in Becca's eyes. When they reached the top, she looked back towards the strange geometrical cube far away, now able to see the sizable garden and forest atop of it.

The girl lead her through a door, where they passed through and entered a dark cave lit by a soft yellow light, then into a large open room with a massive chandelier. They walked through the room until the girl entered a door with a sign that read 'OFFICE', the room lit by a dim blue light, with several dozen advanced consoles and monitors, and a desk. The girl sat down and leaned back in a chair, while Becca sat on the edge of the desk, watching the girl move a few levers on a large console and type away rapidly on a keyboard. The flurry of data and information that passed on 17 monitors at once overwhelmed becca, but the girl seemed to be able to follow the procedures just fine.

"Now, we can set a path for you to get home. Where is home?" The girl asked Becca, who shook her head.

"I don't know." Becca said, as she scanned her mind, trying to figure out where home

was.

The girl scratched her head. She hopped off her chair. "Let's get you something to eat

first, you must be starving."

She hopped down off her chair and into a small kitchen through the back, while Becca kept her gaze on her. She heard the rustling and rattling of a cabinet, and the sound of what seemed to be some sort of canned meat, or perhaps beans or something similar. Her nose was greeted by a strange musty aroma of frying fish, and she could hear the sound of a sizzle as if of a skillet or grill. The girl entered back into the room with a tray with a can of soup and a plate with some rice and a fish patty with cheese. "Here you go." She placed the plate and can down in front of the girl.

The girl opened up the can of soup and gave it to Becca, who looked on with awe at the metallic can and its contents. The girl placed the spoon in Becca's hand and pointed at the fish patty and rice. Becca took the fork and carefully scarfed it into her mouth, taking a sniff inbetween bites and soon digging whole bunches into her.

The girl nodded and said nothing. She turned back to the consoles and began to type. "Uh.. what are you doing?" Becca asked, but received no answer.

"Haha, don't worry. The machine knows. Take your time with that meal, I've got to get a little heuristics algorithm programmed."

Becca watched the girl write away for a while, unsure of what the girl was doing. She simply continued eating while the monitors flickered rapidly and sound of typing echoed through the room.

When she finished half the plate, the girl came to her with a scanning device and ran it down Becca's body, the light pulsing red and then yellow, then turning green.

"Okie dokie. We're all done." The girl said, looking at her monitor. "Based on the quantum trace signatory and radiocarbon dating you're from Orchid, but have been around quite bit haven't you?"

Becca looked puzzled.

"I hope I don't need to tell you where this is, eh?" She gestured to the inner circle, within which appeared to be the Solar System of Gaia. Becca shook her head as if to imply "N-no."

The girl shrugged. "Well I don't see a way home from where you're standing, but don't worry, you got your home cooked meals from me, plus free room and board until you do."

Becca shrugged and thought to herself, is this girl for real? The girl pulled out a tiny holographic tablet, then gave it to Becca.

"Now, if you'd care to tell me about your time here.." She motioned for Becca to enter some writing.

Becca looked at the device, and the girl turned it to face Becca, indicating for her to write. She tapped in what she could remember from her time in the factory.

The girl tapped in a command on the tablet. Then she entered a few more figures into the console. "Eureka!" The girl's face lit up like a pulsar nova. She pressed a button, which sent ripples through the consoles. A line and a sphere shot out of the monitor and traced a path, the destination of which was Earth, a bright blue sphere on the map. She tapped in some more coordinates and then entered it in the console. "Oh my! You've been doing a lot of temporal jumping in the void then huh? Ok, so it looks like this factory you came from is on 19,140.5 Earth Sol, so if we want to bring you back to where you are from we need to go through a trajectory gate, which is a distance of 237.6 sols and a duration of 3,283,759 years into the future and a few million back after, plus the amount of time you spent in transit to get here. It seems like you only spent a few hours in transit, and probably a weeks in your mind, but even millions of years traveling out here with the curvature of modulated space-time that would only be about 30 hours of actual time spent here. But that's a problem. You got over 4 million and have overshot, and you need to head to another sector and gate to go back to your point of origin. It should be easy though, a little bit of quantum spacetime re-shaping to get you there. Then after a few million years of trans-quantumatative cyclical epochs, right around 3,000,000+ years from now we should be able to get you back home, if you remember where that is."

The young girl leaned back and crossed her legs.

After she'd finished her calculations the girl turned around in her chair, which seemed more like a highchair that was way too big for her in Becca's eyes. "Unfortunately.. I don't really have the equipment nor power to do that." She sighed. She could see that Becca felt indignant, the etched lines of frustration bending at her brows and puffed cheeks.

"I'm sorry, I can be a bit annoying. Basically all it means is we're outside of time right now, and to get you back properly is beyond my capabilities."

Becca's eyes went wide.

The girl nodded. "Yep. We're stuck in the void. We're going to be here a while." The girl sighed and leaned back in her chair. "A really long while. 100,000 years, 1 million years, that sort of thing. But! That's ok, cause we can still keep yourself busy." She stood up and walked around the room, the various terminals and consoles luminous with activity as if the room were a neon rainbow as she walked around it. "Follow me. I'll show you what I do with my time here." Becca and Purrin followed the woman down a short hallway. The dark room the girl lead her to beyond seemed like a portal to the infinite abyss.

The room was decorated with a multitude of different colored lights, some bluish, others oranges and reds, it felt like the floor was some kind of trampoline that bounced, when Becca looked down she saw it was actually stretchy starchy green material that seemed organic in nature. The girl showed the two some star charts. "These are called starseeds, you can visit them. Just pick a color and enter. They're like doors, each one takes you somewhere different, and they open into different chambers. And this one is called the Mothership."

Becca couldn't help but be amazed at the architecture of this space, it seemed so familiar and yet it was so different. The place was like a small pocket universe of its own, with its own stars and it's own unique topography and flora inside the tall stalk itself. "My goal here is to escape. We're not too far off the beaten path, but there are a few challenges still to be solved."

"I'm not used to being around people who still care about me anymore. People I know. Anyway, scaling invariance is required by some quantum field theories. A quantity equal to the product of two vectors multiplied together. My objective is to figure out how to traverse a voidspace without having to enter a trajectory gate in a vacuumless state, or some way of making the gate work with this tree tower." The girl stood there and began to explain the theory of the tower. "The power from the gate flows through the matrices of its roots, but are locked by binary switches that enable some to activate and not others, but activating any starseed lights up the trans-temporal properties of the seeds adjacent to it and allows entry through them successively."

Becca shook her head, unable to comprehend the concept of such matters.

"The main goal is to learn how to work with quantum spacetime in that way. A lot of the time spent here was spent figuring out how the star charts and constellations inside the starseed worlds are linked together." The girl sighed and shrugged.

Becca put a finger on her cheek to pause her rambling technical jargon. “For us. Do you mind if I ask you something? What's the deal with your cat?"

Becca put her finger to her chin again. "If there's anything, anything you need to tell me, I'll be listening. There's no one else here, no one left. It's just you and I."

She blinked. "P-pUrrin?"

The girl took Purrin from Becca, and put her down so the two could talk face to face, the cat rubbing against her leg.

Becca's mind swirled.

"I came here with my partner. I know what you're thinking, I may not look at but I'm almost 42. My name is Tera Oggie. Some call me Serendipity." The girl shrugged. "I've been wandering through the Void for a while. How I got here is, a long story. But the two of us went missing together." She stared into the girl's eyes. "Either way, something happened that caused our disappearance. For him it was finding some, twisted videogame cartridge. For me it was finding a magical book and ending up at some enchanted school for assholes, but don't worry about that."

"And I don't know who I am anymore. Not really. I'm not even sure what I was looking for. I'm a different person now, from what I've seen. I look kinda different from how I did back home, and I think my mind has changed alot." She looked up at the dangling starseed charts above and threw up her arms. "I was amazing before I got here, don't get me wrong. But I never could've started figuring this all out or solving quantum super-position dimensional scales or harnessing the power of nucleon radar before I got here. I grew up on a farm as a little girl with a telescope, and a dream. When I was young my mother got sick, I madeup a fantasy where the stars or aliens could cure her! She passed but, my interest in space never really faded away. I met my the love of my life sneaking into my clubhouse, and from that day forward we watched the stars together."

She leaned back and covered her eyes, as if she'd just relayed an embarrassing presentation. "And after everything, that's the only thing I've ever wanted. To see the stars. To find what I'm looking for. The answers twinkling above us."

Becca had no response to the young girl. This was something she felt, something she deeply knew as well. The girl's speech reminded her of some of the Widow's dronings, except more about music and freedom than stars or aliens.

"So here I am, a weird-ass woman with a dream of being a scientist or astrologist. I want to escape here, find him, and then just wanna know who or what I am now. It's, kind of confusing not knowing y'know? And I do miss my old self." She said, her voice trailing off with a sadness Becca couldn't fully comprehend.

The girl's eyes became very large, and she rubbed her hands in her suit. She looked towards Becca and gave her a look.

Becca had no response. She felt very small next to this strange young girl who seemed to have grown a lot.

Becca thought of anything to say, then turned her head towards a window and pointed towards the other structure. The Widow’s face flashed through her mind, her fiery eyes, her dark, enchanting smile. The giant cubicle maze with a million shifting dots and entrances. "Oh, her? Another girl lives in there, with her own challenges. I think she's me from an alternate

timeline, maybe? And wants to find her own way back home. And I don't know alot, but we used to go the same-"

She was cut off when Purrin had climbed atop the walls and was jumping on the Starseeds, swinging from their strings and hopping one to another. The girl panicked. "AaH! Purrin! What the hell are you doing?!!"

The two ran towards Purrin who was falling towards the ground, Becca extending her arms for a catch. But the girl leapt at her arm and reached out with her hands to grasp it. The cat landed on her like a sack of hammers, the two falling on top of each other. Purrin's paw shot out and hit the young girl's nose in the face, hard. The impact hit her with such force she flew into the wall and hit it with a thud. The room spun around, and Becca heard the girl moaning softly. She rolled over onto her back and rubbed her temples. From the floor, the starseeds dangling high above looked like a neon rainbow forest of fruit ripe for the plucking, and her their diligent, stupendous plucker. Serendipity.

That was the name those stuckup teachers and bakers gave her back there, at the old academy.

In her head, Tera thought 'But what about me? Who knows what I'll be called or what I'll do in this place, a place so unlike any I've ever seen before. I might never know. I might never find my way back to Earth or back to that little farmhouse of mine. Back to my telescope. But with so many doors here, and so many worlds, maybe I'll find my way home after all. And when I do, maybe I'll remember who I was back then.'

Serendipity reached up, her fingers brushing one of the closest spheres, which flickered at her touch. "We pick. Each of these spheres leads somewhere, somewhere important. Each one is a different universe, a different door into a totally different dimension. When you reach for one, think what you'd want to get out of that trip."

"Like a dream." The girl said.

Or a nightmare, Becca conveyed with an uneasy glance.

"But they're not random! I have observed that in each of the dimensions I've entered, the star patterns are correlated and seem to have some striking cipher to them. Once I solve the pattern, they reveal themselves as constellations that have shapes and symbols, which end up clues to obtaining Sacred Plugs and signals, which lead to something called a Stellar Tower.

Once the Stellar Tower lights up, I'm able to pluck the starseed outside and its glow is transferred to two or three surrounding starseeds, which cannot be entered until they glow aswell. So I'll have to get through one to get to another. The constellations also have hints for what I'd dubbed the 'Grand Seed', the tallest starseed in my tree at the pinnacle, which I believe will finally take me home."

Becca, looking at the dazzling light show the spheres were putting on. She looked at the two, and felt her mind begin to turn into a whirlwind. She had no idea what to do or what to say to the girl.

"I've been here too long." The girl pouted. "I'm scared I won't remember who I am if I leave here."

Serendipity’s smile was small but genuine. She stepped closer to the tree, choosing a sphere that glowed with a soft, otherworldly light, an iridescent blue-green that seemed to shimmer like the ocean under moonlight. "This one feels... right," she murmured.

Together, they reached out, their hands touching the glowing surface of the sphere. For a moment, nothing happened, just the faint hum of the tree and the distant sound of music still lingering in the air. But then, the sphere began to shift, its light intensifying, wrapping around them in a cocoon of warmth and energy. The world around them seemed to dissolve into a kaleidoscope of colors, the void pulling them forward into the unknown.

Becca felt a tug in her chest, a sense of displacement as if her body was being stretched across time and space. Purrin meowed softly, nestled against her neck, as the pull became stronger. She closed her eyes, trusting in whatever was coming next.

When she opened them again, the world had changed.

They stood in a vast, open field, the sky above them a deep, endless black, dotted with thousands of stars. The grass beneath their feet was silver, glowing faintly in the starlight, and in the distance, Becca could see a large, looming structure, a fortress made of dark stone, its towers piercing the sky like jagged spears.

Serendipity let out a slow breath. "We’re here."

Becca looked around, her heart pounding. The air felt heavy with anticipation, the kind that came before something important, something life-changing. "What is this place?"

Serendipity stared at the fortress, her expression unreadable.

"I don't know. I've never been here before." She gestured to the fortress in the distance. "But we can find out soon. Follow me."

The two entered a huge gate and knocked, three times, but were denied entrance. The outside seemed clear as day. A suspicious old woman with a headscarf asked if they were looking for a way in, and showed them around a shrubbery 20 minutes away where a small crack hidden allowed them to crawl through a tunnel inside. Within the gigantic fortress's interior the ceiling was sealed everywhere but the center, and temples, barracks, houses and entire marketplaces were visible inside along the streets.

They began to walk towards the center of the fortress, a steel dome above them hanging like a dreadful umbrella above them shielding them from the droplets that were stars. From what the two could loosely observe, it was night-time and the stars were visible from the center, but not from outside where it was day. As they walked, Serendipity shared more about her journey, the challenges she'd faced and the things she'd discovered. She shared about what happened to her back there, how she'd gone back in time and accidentally ended up at an Academy for baking and had a nightmare of a time getting through the lessons she'd been given.

She stopped when she saw a hole atop the dome connected to a glass tower 50m high that a series of archers seemed to guard atop of. Several went up and down it like an elevator, with only entrances at the bottom floor and top, the platform inside moved by steel ropes and pulleys.

Tied to the center of the glass tower 10m up was what Tera recognized as radio equipment with red bulbs that needed to be turned on.

“That’s the Stellar Tower. They sometimes look different depending on the world.

They're towers powered by fusion energy that glow when they receive a full signal and powercore. The Stellar Tower has two layers of activation- the first sequence lights up the constellations, and constellations contain a clue for the Starseed completion, and usually I have to do a few quests to get Sacred Plugs that turn it on, unless I get lucky. The powercore and plugs will activate the 2nd sequence. And once the second sequence is lit and solved on the tower itself, the Stellar Tower activates a gravitational signal whose wavelength makes a path through sky. Then it's ready to be plucked outside in the Mothership, and once it’s plucked, another Starseed adjacent will open its world up, ready to be glow and be plucked, and the process repeats until I get to the top of the Ixagon and reach the Grand Seed.”

Becca couldn't quite grasp what she was talking about, but she understood that she had to do some important things in each world to unlock more worlds and maybe get to the top- worlds and escape somehow. Tera was so excited by the mere concept of this, the idea of having an answer to the world's mysteries was so appealing, it made her feel giddy and almost foolish.

A group of archers descended down the glassy tower in the center of the fortress and walked down the inner road, dressed in strange and colorful armors, a mix between medieval knights and aliens. Some had large shields, others had long staffs.

They walked towards a series of stairs which went up into platforms along the walls where huge glass windows were visible through, through which they observed a massive battle on the other side being waged between a group of archers and a small army of strange beings with claws and horns. Tera was amazed by the detail of the battle, a chaotic scene of bloodshed and gore. There seemed to be no end to the invading army, the arrows of the fortress's defenders slaying them like a sandwall stopping oceanic waves as they ebbed and crashed against it.

Tera nodded and the two began to walk the long way around the wall, the floor littered with skulls and bones of fallen defenders of the fortress. The closer they got to the battle, the harder it was to ignore the horror of it all. Finally, they reached the battle area, and Tera could feel the hot steam coming from the battlefield through the glass wall. A massive line of soldiers stood guarding a small, square opening in the wall, ready to face off against the advancing army. Tera could see the soldiers through the opening in the wall, their uniforms reminiscent of the medieval style knights she saw in one of her textbooks back home, but more akin to the way gunmen would fire out of galleries and ships from inside hoping not to get devastated by enemy firepower.

Soon they found a free window which lead to a perch outside where they could see the invading armies, although seeing the stars in full was difficult from the angle the perch offered. Becca squinted, they looked faded and blurry, as if blocked by transparent ink stains in the

sky smudging against each of them. High up in the sky, from what she could make out was some strange dial that looked like a circle and the minute plus hour hands of a clock. Tera observed it too. "It's a night phase. We lucked out! You see, inside these Starseeds the worlds typically have two phases- a day phase and a night phase. During day phases the worlds are more calm and less dangerous, it's typically better for gathering information and finishing quests, including finding plugs and powercores. But you can only see the stars during the night phase however which makes them kind of useless, but during night phases the really powerful enemies and dangers come out which makes them much less safe." She scratched her cheek with an ecstatic smile. "I never really care for day phases, in fact I make a point to never waste time in them.

Besides, there's something much more dangerous hunting me in those..."

She paused. Becca looked at her, shooting queries and skepticism about these statements.

"Well that's all I can tell you for now. All you need to know is once the minute hand on that clock in the sky ticks 24 times past the hour hand, the phases switch. Usually that means its time for me to make my way back to the Mothership portal."

Becca said nothing.

"Yeah, so we'd better get going, since we've got a lot to do still!"

The next seven hours for the two were spent inside, in the fortress, as dusk drew to nightfall, although the stars were visible and fully intact regardless of day or night so long as the 24 hour 'Day phase' was active. There were many rooms and halls that lead out into gardens or towers that were all connected together in a labyrinth of halls and courtyards. The hallways and chambers were lavishly decorated and richly furnished, although with an ancient, dusty atmosphere. Tera thought they reminded her of some of the rooms she saw at the Academy for bakers she attended in her time in a different world a while ago, some of which had rooms that seemed like something from a mythical past of another time.

They passed a small museum and an archive of papers from the distant past on the way to the marketplace which had all been sealed up during the night, leaving the fortress quiet and serene. Some stragglers were left packing away their tents and inventory, but soon as night fell, they all dispersed and made their way back into the inns and dwellings within an underground palace like a nest of scorpions. Tetra paced and forth like a detective, books from the archives sprawled across her tables that peaked her interest were laid in tall piles. It begged the question for Becca how a girl like her used to be a grown woman, let alone one this dedicated like some kind of ingenious scholar. As far as clues went, the lore of the world was laid out in dense historiographical volumes and obscure books on a magical philosophy the world followed known as The Soul Whispers. Numerous linguistic, mathematical and scientific books were scattered about to accent Tera's knowledge as she poured through the book searching for answers.

Occasionally Tera would find a hunch, get off her tall chair and leave the museum, leaving Becca alone for 15-30 minutes. When she'd return, she'd scurry the shelves like a cat and pull more books off the shelf onto new tables, and start a new line of research threading theories along.

Hours passed without incident. The two took a walk sat atop the giant clock inside the fortress citadel's central tower, waiting for the next phase to end and for the floating phantom clock to reach 24 past the hour hand in the sky. Once the minute and hour hand nearly converged, they left towards the portal back to the Mothership with 15 minutes to spare, entering their tree base once again outside the dimension.

Tera sighed. "Well, a step back is a step forward. I received a few clues She was disappointed, but not for long. "Come with me."

Once in the kitchen, Tera picked up her sparkly spoon and opened up the fridge again.

Becca listened as she started to bake over the next 20 minutes. "On our last mission, but didn't get any Sacred Plugs." She said as she finished mixing a bowl, pouring the contents into a cake mold and placed the metal tin into a neon heating apparatus. "The constellation I entered had some strange symbols, and something about the constellations in the world I’m from. I was meant to go there and find an old man with white hair, and he gave me some clues about how to find the powercore and which ones to plug in, although I doubt he'll be there when we get there again. I don’t remember what he said exactly, but he said the Sacred Plugs are made of ‘Wild- Light’ and can be found in ancient temples which I can find by deciphering the signs in the stars in another Starseed world." She scratched her head, the ding quickly signaling her to take the tin out. When she placed it on the table, the cake was fully baked. She added some creamy topping, strawberries and powdered sugar, making it smell like some freshly made, delicious baked good.

"That’s all the tedious part, once I get the Stellar Tower turned on, I'll be able to see the constellations and that's my favorite part. I can solve the constellations like a jigsaw pretty easily, comparatively speaking." Serendipity said, serving Becca a slice.

She tasted under her tongue the sweet Merveilleux, her eyes lighting up. "I don't need to solve EVERY starseed or activate them all, just enough to bridge a way to the top! Once I get to the Grand Seed, you need a big, heavy dose of wild-light to open the grand seed and reveal the answers in its center. About 100 Sacred Plugs should do it! And then that's it. Then I go home, I'm free!"

The girl took a bite of her own creation, as amazing as she remembered. "Ah Mhmmot

wait.."

Becca's eyes widened and she took a big bite, chewing the sugary dessert. "Sounds easy

e-enough."

She sputtered with mouth full.

Serendipity swallowed. "The day after tomorrow, tonight we should get some rest. When the next cycle finishes we can go through a Starseed again, but for now we need to rest." Becca said nothing. She felt relieved by how easy Tera made it seem to get back home. That night, they played a few more video games on a vintage arcade machine in her comfy lounge and then headed back to bed.

Becca that night was perturbed by strange dreams. Most of her dreams were foreign, dreams of her life in NeoCity, of a homeworld known as Nyuphis-II that she was pretty sure she'd never been to but remembered vividly, and memories of growing up in Orchid among the holiest caste of her not-mother. Shadows danced about in her mind tormenting her. She was tormented by terrors of a black void that seemed to stretch on for an eternity inside her mind, its pitch infinite, an abyss of horrors as the worst nightmares she'd ever had came swirling around her like a tempest, the black swirling miasma barricading her on all sides until a sphere appeared with bright red lights that flashed within, beeping as if inputting computer code. She was reminded of the inhuman machinery and conditioning she'd undergone in the droney facility before before the Widow set her free, and the strange feeling that she'd been forced to do something she never wanted to again, as if she'd become subjected to some sick, cruel experiment. She saw a strange, feminine entity with a leather draped dress, the one she’d heard back in that inhuman facility while a faceless, inhuman, emotionless figure she assumed was a scientist studied her, cables protruding from her body and tethering her to the machines. The figure said:

Ψ You responded. Good. My heart may be missing its core, but yours seems quite overcast.

Becca was taken back by the calmness in the feminine voice, which sounded almost computerized, but sing-song and at ease.

Ψ Don't you care for your inner beauty? Can you see your own stars in the jetblack night of your soul, wandering one? The square doesn't quite fit the circle.

She could say nothing. The cables from out the figures head began ebbing and flowing, like waves of the ocean blowing into stardust.

Ψ Let me be your star to remember yourself by. Beauty is not so easily tainted.

She woke up. It still was quite early, although no sun rose in this world nor set. She looked at Tera who was snoring comfortably, than wandered around the Mothership in the dusk of the dimmed lights. She felt like she was going through a lot, and being thrown around between many strange and foreign dimensions, with some of them being not too great to be in. But she could not help feel the strange euphoria of excitement mixed with wonder, curious who the strange figure in her dreams was.

Becca was taken aback by what she was told, how Tera had such immense passion and devotion to her goal, that she was a mastermind at baking who had been in the same predicament she was for what felt like her entire life. The more she thought about it, the more she was in awe by Tera's determination and her dedication to her work. She had no idea what to make of it all.

Tera spent most of the free day looking through star charts, her concentration supreme in matters of intellect. Becca hung around the couch, occasionally pacing and looking at the Starseeds, counting how many Tera had already beaten and conquered, the grand Starseed high in the top seeming to be hundreds and hundreds of worlds away still. For lunch Tera made

macaroons, and dinner baked them more cake. Around their dinnertime, a rocket flew from the cube across the chasm and shot into the mothership, exploding and sending in a gross scaly green rodent which scurried about. Tera panicked as it hopped on their table, Becca needing to chase it like a cat before she caught it in her mouth and swallowed it whole. The two looked out towards the gigantic cube building, Tera shaking her head. "She's always playing dumb pranks like this.. even back then." She huffed. "Girl hasn't changed or lost her sense of play at all." Other than the vermin, the second day went about their day without incident. They slept soundly.

The next day, they searched around the fortress again and found some more clues, some symbols which lead them to a chamber containing an ancient book. From what the two could discern, one particular marking in a book seemed to be a key to a secret inside the fortress.

When Tera followed an ancient language she had to teach herself within a few hours. Some clues lead them to tunnels in the underground palace where the populace lived, and after lifting a vase a huge tomb was revealed with dozens of coffins. Tera figured out the puzzle by pulling the farthest skeleton out of one revealing a switch, which once flicked slowly lowered the chandelier above. The two looked at each other and slowly approached, before yanking it out of the ceiling completely. Becca climbed along the walls with sharp fingertips and peaked into the hole, she saw a small strange glowing lance with a cord on the handle and numerous metallic shiny coiled rings.

Becca brought the artifact down, Tera's eyes going wide. "Eureka! You did it, that's a Sacred plug!" She lifted it up, its glow shining like embers in the dark.

Tera grinned. "It's a Plug, alright, but its missing a component. Sacred Plugs require some sort of 'Wild-Light' to power it. The powercore has that. We'll only need 2 more for this world." She turned to Becca and gave her a high five. "Now lets go, I have to plug it in before the phase switches back to day and it deactivates."

Tera returned back to the marketplace and saw the tower where archers were firing prior, although they seemed absent for now. She went into the elevator platform within and pulled a huge plate from the wall inside, twisting the coiled lance in by the triangular side until the Stellar Tower lit up slightly. The stars in the sky were now more visible as if the curtains were pulled back in the sky a slight.

Tera smiled. "We're almost there now!"

She took Becca back through the Mothership portal and baked Becca another creme filled cake outside, this time chocolate-Carmel. The white sugarbeads that Tera used on the top to her looked like milky stars aplenty. After they played more arcade games as Tera talked about getting back home. At one point Tera turned to Becca after defeating her in a 2D fighting beat'em up and smiled. "Say, you don't talk much. Why don't you tell me about yourself abit?"

Becca tapped the red jewel on her head and shrugged. "Uh.. cannot. Sorry."

Tera sighed. "Of course, I'm not forcing you to talk. But I always have a soft spot in my heart for the quiet types. You remind me of an old friend back in the town I grew up in. A quiet

girl." She restarted another round and bashed the joystick wildly. "I really miss Astrid.. feel like she would like you."

Becca blinked. "Ah. Ok."

Days later, Becca and Tera soon headed back to the fortress and found some more clues in the tomb, but no luck in cracking the puzzle. They found some clues which lead them to two separate chambers which made them have to split up, which Tera agreed to only if Becca went to one chamber and she went to the other, the two agreeing to meet back at the entrance in the main hall in the next hour. However both seemed to lose track of time, neither noticing the minute hand passing the hour for the 24 time. Suddenly there was a soft 'thud', and Tera put down her book and gasped. "Oh, ohshitshit. Forgot about the timer."

Becca, who was on a perch observing the hordes of enemies fighting the guards outside saw something glinting in the distance. From that sparkle, a tunnel of cyan energy burst through the battlefield pushing the enemy army into the fortress wall like a battering ram from hundreds of meters away. The glint got closer and closer, and from the smog of the horizon Becca could make out the silhouette of a man, lurching towards them like a deathbringer at dawn.

"Tera!" She yelled down. "The timer." She jumped on the perch next to Becca, grabbed her arm and ran back, they both got up and rushed to the portal to the Mothership together.

Before getting in, Becca could see the man's sordid face, wrinkles under his baggy eyes and rustling blond-brown hair thin and short. His baggy pants seemed out of place and he looked somewhat emaciated. He aimed his arm, which Becca could now see was sealed with some strange steel weapon or brace wrapped around its entire length complete with copper wires. He aimed a black orb that seemed to be growing out of the end of his arm towards Tera's back, and fired as the two jumped into the portal.

At the mothership, Becca arrived with Tera being nearly yanked back. Becca pulled on her hand, the girl undergoing some suction on the other side. Tera pulled on her arm, the girl slowly yanked back against the pull. She strained herself to hold onto Tera and drag her inch by inch through the portal, her body being sucked back in from the other side. When Tera finally reached through, she fell back and went flying with a yell.

Tera gasped. "Ugh!" She gasped and held her head. "I hate that guy." "W-who?" Becca asked.

Tera pulled her friend back to the kitchen and began baking Marzipan.

"Oh, that man." She said, looking at the oven as she scratched her head. "I helped him one time after he was injured in a world, and he took a small magnetic hook I lent him and turned it into some kind of gravitational tractor beam. He's always chasing me in day phases.. The only real threat during them."

"What's his name?" Becca asked.

"Graytum." She said, rolling a marzipan ball to be cooked. "I like to call him the Pull Man though, because he always tries to catch me and pull me with his device. I've been careful not to leave any other technology in any world out of fear he'll find it and become more scary."

"Sounds like a bad guy."

"He is, probably. I try to avoid him. It's not as dangerous in night phases though, his device doesn't seem to work, I don't know why. But I guess he doesn't chase me in those phases because he doesn't have a good weapon." She said and made another marzipan ball and plopped it on the trey, taking tender care that each doughy sphere was delicate and evenly proportioned.

She put them in the oven and turned to Becca. "Why did you keep pulling me back?" "That man? Uh.. just because I noticed you were in trouble.." She said, scratching her

head. The machine dung immediately in 10 seconds, and she pulled the trey out with muffs and then placed them on a fancy plate on the table.

Tera's eyes lit up. "Hehe, ahhh. That's sweet. You're very kind, very kind." She said as she made some more, her eyes smiling in content. Becca felt embarrassed, and walked towards the hallways, which were dimly lit, and felt like a cave within a wooden cave. Some strange alien glyphs and hieroglyphs were inscribed on the walls and made Becca feel a little lost and curious.

She wandered around the hallways for what felt like an hour but was only about 15 minutes, counting over 50 doors, each one labeled with a different language, some of which she did not recognize, while the others were obscure and unreadable. From the dark she could only make out a few. The Widow was written on the third door, the Widow! Becca entered in.

The inside looked like a dorm room with black bedsheets, a bunch of plush dolls of the Widow in a gothic dress and a shrine of her surrounded by said dolls. There were numerous pictures of her and Tera together, usually in baking aprons and fancy pastel dresses in the walls were posters of the Widow and banners. They read 'The Widow is always a widow, never a widowsmaid', 'The Widow never forgets', and 'The Widow's kiss is always sweet.'

The most prominent poster, above a mirror, read 'I wish I knew how to quit you' in glittering letters, the poster being pink and silver, and a large black and white picture of the Widow in a gothic dress leaning against Tera in a labcoat with their arms snugly around each other. The room was dimly lit and smelled like vanilla cream, some candles lined the walls. She was curious to learn more about the strange mysterious room, but decided against it.

There were many pictures of Tera with a man that looked old, with a grey beard and overalls on in many different poses, including a painting on a desk of Tera and the old man smiling next to each other. Tera's youth was never more apparent for Becca than when she was juxtaposed next to the elderly man. In gel ink was written. 'With ever neutrino in my body, miss you dad.'

Beside the portrait was the old man and Tera with a strange younger man, who wore a red hoodie and pure dark shades. He looked hip and like a hooligan by comparison. 'You too.. Strider.'

Becca picked up the portrait in her hands, Tera arriving at the door with a playful knock. "Enjoying your sightseeing?" She asked.

She looked up at Serendipity and showed her the portrait. "You have two dads?"

Serendipity's head shook. "Hahaha.. this isn't even my dad." She said. "It's a good friend of mine back when I was in my old world, he gave me the nickname Serendipity as if he was my dad, and treated me as if I was his daughter. He was kinda funny and weird, but living with him was a blast." She looked over the portrait, her face an expression of delight. "The other one is my actual dad, he was super busy with work and didn't really have the experience caring for kids.

I've always dreamed of having a mom, even as an adult. I love my friends like my family and friends though, Euphony included."

"You and the Widow?" Becca pointed to the shrine.

"Oh, that? It's a recreation. She built that back at her old school, kind of silly and narcissistic Constance did some pretty silly stuff back then, she'd get very jealous and competitive of people a lot. Never used to be like that though.. the weirdest thing is, I was the one who first found her there. Found her a day before she was about to kill herself, when she seemed about to die she started getting nostalgic and melancholic and all.. I found out she was some other version of me.. I tried to make her happy, by being her friend, but failed. Sometimes people just like to get what they like." She picked up the picture with the Widow. "This was one of the last photos we had taken before we went our separate ways." The girl laughed. "By which I mean, she's in that other building, probably solving her own trials and trying to get back home too."

She grinned and laughed. "Although we're both trapped here in another dimension, I think of her fondly and she's actually my best friend. The only one I still have regular contact with, technically. If barely at that." The girl's stomach growled. "You're making me hungry again." She said. "Hunger is a strange sensation for me when I'm awake, but never before. I don't know why."

She shrugged. "Well, I did just spend like 3 days doing nothing but looking around a castle and eating a lot of sweets. It's normal to feel hungry sometimes."

Becca shrugged and put the portrait back down. "I guess."

"Why don't I bake us some pudding-cake and-" The lights above went blood red. Tera Oggie gasped. The hallways were bathed with the same red eerie glow.

"Becca! That's-!"

"What-!?" She exclaimed. She dashed for her main lounge and pulled a white backpack around her, taking out two technological gauntlets and punching her own fists. "

"Boss fight time." She smirked, oozing confidence and anticipation. She ran up to the main stairs to the highest interior platform of the tree, with Becca slowly slumping along like a trailing cat. Inside was a chamber that had a massive ring-shaped shallow arena with ring- shaped walls 2-feet high, another ring outside the arena held a circular table with teasets and chairs next to a large counter. Sitting on the teasets were strangely adorable figures with bright colorful wings, each decorated with patterns on them. They were drinking tea, some with delight, others scowls and apathy. "Hello Soupity! Come have joyity with us's!" One with bright red wings said, they were wearing a rubbery red catsuit coating even their hands and stumpy, stubby legs like the rest in differing glossy hues. "It's Serendipity." Tera chuckled and shook her head. "Becca and I aren't coming to your tea party, we're gonna be real busy fighting. Well, I am anyway."

"Who are?" Becca felt out of place.

"The Soup Fan Club! I call them that because they call me 'Soupity' because of my name and I jokingly cooked them all soup one time, they're real nice and fun! Well most of them, trust me."

Tera took her position behind the arena on the opposite side from the arena, Becca not saying anything or expressing her confusion. The Soup Fan Club let out a strange cheer. "Yay!" They yelled. "Soupity's here!"

Out of nowhere, 4 more Soup Fans appeared out of nowhere, some with black, others with blue and others with purple wings, and all with catsuits of the colors of their wings. Their latexy bodies seemed to glitter as if constellations were swirling on the surface, and the avant garde designs on their wings caught Becca offguard. Some where repeating skulls or Christmas trees, others lipstick and makeup, or even flowers or the sun with the earth beside it, their fashions matching the personalities of their patterns. "Hey hey!" They hollered, one of the black winged Soup Fans wearing bright lipstick, another of the black wearing a dress like an Egyptian scarab, another with a dark brown scarf, and another with her lips painted red. "Today we're taking you to see our planet's goddess! She'll decide your fate, Soupity. May your fleshness be rotted to the corious depthians of mt. deadery."

One with pink wings next to her huggled that one and squeaked. "She's just being a jokerist, Tetra-terawatt. Trust me, you're gonna do greatee!"

Becca watched the Soup Fans dance and celebrate. She felt like she was eavesdropping on a secret.

Serendipity just giggled.

"Are you going to join us?" One of the winged figures asked Becca. Reluctantly, she crawled up to the elevated ring to take a seat by the Soup Fans.

Serendipity smirked and pulled out a lilac dress from her backpack and put it on, the dress becoming gossamer and translucent almost like a gauze, with two shimmery wings like the Soup club growing out her back- a sheath of fashionable armor she'd made for herself. The Soup

Fans applauded. "Beautiful, like the rainbowment in the sky on a goodity day." They said, Becca nodding off.

"You're too kind." Serendipity said, pulling out a pair of glittering slippers. "And thank you.. but we're about to fight the biggest baddest evil thing here. She breathed deeply in and concentrated. "The Xowusses."

"Xovus!" The red-suited Soupie yelled back.

"Bless you. Nah, they're Xo-wussies." Serendipity said making a rude face by sticking out her tongue.

The Soup Fan club giggled as if they were at a tea party and talking about their favorite hobbies, and Becca was left not being able to tell if they were actually talking about their tea party or some secret saccharine code that only they could decipher.

"We're gonna get some Xowusses?" One of the Soupies asked, another smiling so wide it looked like they could fit their head in their mouth. "We're gonna get some Xowusses! And then we're gonna have our tea party!"

"What do you mean 'get some'?" One of the tea drinking Soupies asked. "Do you mean like... you know-" They gulped. "Ba-kill them?!"

"Yep!" She shouted, jumping and dancing around with her eyes glinting. "Get some Xowusses!" The Soup Fan club jumped around clapping and cheering like they were at a parade or an opera. "We're gonna get some Xowusses!"

Becca felt awkward and decided to say something. "The Xowusses are...?" She asked. "The worst thing in the whole multiverse! A bunch of bullies that show up to fight me in

my lil fort here sometimes. I lose Starseeds if I lose to them, but gain Powercores if I win. They

used to kick my ass and cockslap me around alot in the past, but now?" She closed her fist, her gauntlet swirling with neon-blue electricity.

The other Soup Fans began jumping and shouting. "Ba-kill them! Ba-kill them!" They cried, their eyes glimmering. "Fight! Fight! Fight!"

"We won't lose." She looked at Becca. "Are you scared?" She blinked. "Uh-"

"If you are, it's ok! I know how scary things are the first time you fight them. If you are, I'll protect you." She took Becca's hand and brought her close to her. "Say, I love you bro, Tera you're the best and you're gonna kick their ass!"

"I.. I love you too." Becca said with a small tear coming out of her eye, another coming

out.

"Awwww. Close enough!" She hugged her, Becca not being able to keep herself from crying. "That's sweet! We're gonna be fine!"

"Rebecky! Soupity!" One of the Soup Fan Club yelled. "Our "Our planet's goddess will be here now!" She put a finger to her lips.

A voice came from above that sounded so divine it made Becca's skin tingle.

"You don't have time to be afraid." One of the butterfly winged entities said. "Fight, you'll do well."

"I love you, Serendipity, you have some luck with the cards." Another Soup Fan Club member said, whose wings had green clovers over golden coins printed on them. "Don't die."

Suddenly a blinding golden light, so radiant as to encompass the entire room in brightness. There, visible from windows showing outside the apex of the tree a gigantic square figure, hundreds of feet tall, the size of a skyscraper, hovered and glowed with a bright green aura that was almost holy. Golden tendrils wrapped around the massive figure like a crown of light, their body was surrounded with an aurora of gold so dazzling that it almost seemed to illuminate the whole castle. Their eyes seemed pure white and alien, the back of their skull wrapping into what looked like horns.

Serendipity, the Soup Fan Club and Becca gazed with awe at the majesty of the massive figure before them, its features both angelic and menacing in their beauty.

"This is... the Xowuss God?" Becca asked, the Soup Fan Club also expressing their awe. All of the winged figures in the room bowed, except for Tera who only took a knee out of respect. Becca felt like she was in a church.

The strange God began speaking in an incomprehensible tone that sounded like a thousand different languages at once. Becca's head turned, she was about to ask the Soup Fan Club for a translation, before realizing they couldn't understand it either, merely that it was a voice of pure power and divinity, an incomprehensible divine message. Once its speaking in tongues ceased echoing, the entire being began to shrink and implode with light, merely becoming a single point that descended down and entered the chamber until it crashed into the other end of the arena from Tera. The entity reshaped into a square shape with two parallel sides and a curved arch atop. When the blinding light started to dissipate, the aureate arch seemed to have the same crown as when it was was a vague cryptic creature earlier, golden tendrils along said arch and onto a metallic splendiferous doorway. Most curiously, it lacked a doorknob, tendrils coming out of the hole where the knob would be like a lifeline. Somehow, the divine entity had taken the form of a door.

The door opened miraculously, unleashing rays of light that carried menace with the shadows they wrought. As the remaining light became a mere fade of the shadow, a strange female figure emerged, she looked like a mummy. Her eyes were covered with dark red, shades of blood, with her neck, arms, legs and back all covered with bandages, even the bandages looked like skin was peeling away, making her look mummified and unhuman like a doll.

Becca shivered at the idea of Tera having to fight her. Behind her however, slowly five young girls Tera's age slowly walked forward, leaving the nestled comforts and spacial entrance of Thermidor to spread over the ring.

The first to come out was Alexi, a girl was wearing a hood that shadowed half her face, and with the light of a single star shining in her eyes. She had dark tanned skin, a magenta sweater and black pencil skirt, and purple plastic flats. Her short straight bangs were perfectly perpendicular to the hair bobbed over her shoulders. A series of dice dangled in her hands. “I cannot believe she’s actually gotten this far.. What are the odds?”

The second, with her wavy short pink hair, jacket and exotic armless dress stood with a wreath of leaves in her hair. A single rolled up scroll with two ivory handles was her possession. “She’s simply interrogating the rules to the limit.” Morosanne said. “When Naga beats her, I want to make her into my barking dog! I and I alone will command that dweeb.“

The third, shorter than the rest by nearly 7 inches arrived with bright neon-cyan hair in two pigtails which tied around her neck and even her own chest. Cybelle wore slick black suspenders with navy-blue lingerie underneath, a black-cyan flannel skirt and striped stockings. She licked a lollipop continually. “98.7% chance she bites it. Wanna make bets Lexi?” Cybelle asked.

“Take this seriously!” A deeper voice boomed, as the tallest out of the 4 of them approached. Stepping in front of the group, Nagathyis held a golden spear that extended and contracted at will, she stood there, face as stoic and sculpted as a statue with well-defined cheek bones and a helmet that resembled an ancient roman.

The four daughters of Thermidor arrived from the Darklight. Behind them the Mummy stood as a kind of ref, watching over all 4. “We’re here to defend our honor! Do not disgrace our mother with the shame of defeat.” Naga proudly announced.

“Bit late for that.” Cybelle said. All 3 of them behind Naga had already fought and been outsmarted by Tera in the past, arriving here just as they had. Now only Nagathyis remained, jumping into the circle arena primed for glory.

“Easy there spear girl. Sure you don’t want to run some Marathons before you try to bust my balls? You’re all muscle and no muse, I wouldn’t want to be in your situation.” Tera teased, putting her hands up.

“Your taunts won’t work on me. My power is too much to be beaten.” Naga stated, with an air of arrogance Tera had become accustomed to.” She raised her spear, both armored shoulder epaulets glimmering like gold as she did, revealing the depths of her musculature across her arms.

“Your beatdown.” Tera stuck her tongue out and spread around the ring, her gauntlet launching with sonic booms in their wake at Nagathyis as Tera unleashed her power of her drones. Each spherical orb slammed into her with increasing intensity, until she was hit so hard that she was flung back into the ring wall, the force almost causing it to shatter with the impact.

The Soup Fan Club jumped and cheered. "Beat them! Beat them!" One screamed.

"Beating them!" Tera laughed, pulling her arm back and launching a violet booming explosion that slammed into the Xowuss and launched them to the other side of the ring-like space where they were. Nagathyis grunted and coughed, coughing and clawing upwards from the ground with a black scorched suit of armor that was almost steaming. She gripped her spear, and leapt high into the air, tossing herself at Tera. Tera's gears kicked on and her hands emitted a neon-blue aura as she took to the air and smacked into Nagathyis with an invisible telekinetic barrier her gauntlet created, her impact shattering the breastplate of the Xowussy.

And yet, Nagathyis kicked the air and headbutted the invisible barrier, sending herself flying at her opponent. Her fists smacked into Tera's face delivering great pain, she slammed her into the ground with her gears still going on the girl's equipment. She let out a strange warcry, the sounds of her voice distorted and glitched as she picked up Serendipity by the neck and slammed her head onto the ground like a rag doll.

Becca watched, crying as she had all the fights they'd been through, Tera's gears stopping with her face flushing red from the intense pain. "T-Tera, are you ok?" She said, the girl crying but laughing. "You're the last one I haven't beaten yet.." Tera's smile widened. She pressed two hands on Nagathyis's chest. "I've already thrown down all your little friends. Once I beat you, I'll have whipped the whole stable, and then you'll have to call me mama." A propulsive blast left from her gauntlets, intending to blow Naga away. Unfortunately the Xovus gripped tightly and didn't let go, carrying Tera into the wall with her as she went flying. When Tera got up, she made sure to smack the wall, circling around it as if to give herself some space.

As the other Xovus had been defeated in previous fights, Serendipity was able to collect miniaturized Starseeds. The Starseed, when it was inside Serendipity's jacket pocket with the rest of the Starseeds, would glow. If she touched the Starseed and absorbed it, it would vanish, and thus grant her power. Unfortunately, she would lose access to that Starseed's Stellar Tower, its constellations and adjacent worlds effectively undoing her progress.

Tera held up her gauntlet and unleashed a torrent of electricity. It smashed into Nagathyis's body with blinding sparks, and yet didn't budge her.

Nagathyis gripped her chest, her hands on the chestplate as it reformed. She had the ability to manipulate metals psychically, and the broken chestplate smoothed back into pristine condition like liquid flowing over a cast mold. The metal went further, enveloping her hands and encasing them in sheeny silver-gold armor. Tera winced. "Oh no..." Tera's gauntlet suddenly flared up with a bright white beam, almost luminous. The beam of light struck her, its light and pure force caught by Nagathyis's metalized hands, barely pressing her back. Naga marched forward making coppery echoes with every step, before grabbing both of Tera's gauntlets, squeezing and cracking them with a twist of the wrist. Tera screamed in pain and pulled her arms away, only to fall flat on the ground. The armlets snapped and shattered as they did.

Her gears went silent as she held her arms close to her body, the other girl walked over with a cold look of defiance. "Get up." Nagathyis said.

"Nah you come down!" She hollered, grinning as she took a sip from a thermos. She took out some metal rods and put them together, forming a glittering rod-like weapon that buzzed with electricity. Tera charged upwards with all her vigor, Nagathyis slashing her spear down and breaking the glittering rod into shattered fragments with a single swing of her spear. She punched the girl back down and then kicked Tera right in the gut.

"Nagathyis has a unique talent for metalmorphing." One of the Soup Fan Club said. "She's also got a shield power she hasn't even used yet. Perhaps Tera got way too confident in her previous victories.."

Tera got up and began to crawl across the ring, her suit's gears turning on again. She was almost at the wall, feeling like she was going to have to climb over it. She was about to, her head hanging as she clambered up the wall, her hand on a bar at the wall. One of the girls, Alexi grabbed her by the hair and flung her across the ring. "Get back in there nerd!" She hit the other wall with a clap and hit the floor, blood pouring from her forehead. Still, she made for the walls as if fleeing, crawling just barely along the edges, palming and gripping the top of the elevated top repeatedly. At one point Cybelle tried to stomp on her fingers as she did so. Having none of it, Nagathyis extended her spear a dozen meters and nearly impaled Tera, the spear penetrating cracking the wall instead before retracting.

"Serendipity!" Becca yelled.

Nagathyis picked up Serendipity by the ankles and held her aloft, her body writhing with pain and struggling to wiggle free. She seemed to be counting as the Xovus pulled her towards her, confused what she was doing. "That's enough. You've become a real handful. By the honor of my mother.." Her hands began to ooze metal which spread over Tera, slickly sticking and coating her legs until they formed heavy layers that immobilized and merged overtop. Their flow wrapped down to Tera's hips and eventual waist, squeezing and wrapping her. By the time they reached her chest, she may as well have been as mobile as an iron statue.

Nagathyis held up her spear, it pulsing with strange energy at the tip. "I'll give you a good headless life." The spear began to elongate and glow.

Becca, Serendipity and the Soup Fan Club stared wide eyed at the horrific sight of a gleaming spear about to pierce Tera. The Soup Fan Club had gone completely still, and Becca was still on her knees, her hand on her heart, barely able to keep still the shock of the sight. The Soup Club turned to the mummified woman in the corner just outside the ring. "A-aren't you going to stop her? Call a victor!"

The woman simply shook her head. "There are no victors in war, only shattered corpses and the dustbooks of history. Nagathyis prides herself as a soldier.

Tera's mind flashed with a million different memories and scenarios, so many possibilities but all futile. If the spear pierced her, her armlets would reappear to absorb the impact. If the spear didn't penetrate, Tera would still be restrained.

And yet... Nagathyis's spear stopped. It seemed to have lost some of its former strength, like a candle that had been extinguished, now flickering with only a small flame. Tera stopped counting and reached into her backpack, pulling out what looked to be a baking bowl with an extendable curve. She yanked the disc-shaped edge and extended it far over her head. Becca, the winged troupe and the mummified ref all watched as Nagathyis clutched her helmet and screamed Tera's hand suddenly reached into her gauntlet's pocket and pulled out a sonic detonator.

Nagathyis turned her head around, looking to the other girls, seeing Morosanne, Cybelle and Alexi in awe.

Then her eyes met Tera's, who was peaking out of her baking bowl. She was smiling. The circumference of the arena walls blasted with sound and vibration, making them both deafening and damaging. A geyser of dirt and dust rocketed from the wall as Nagathyis's body flew back, her face covered in the implosion kicked up by debris. She landed prone, coughing and gasping for air. She looked like a corpse, and began to get up. She looked around at the Xovus, who seemed stunned as they looked at her, at each other, at the ring, at their opponent.

The Soup Fan Club cheered. "F-fuck yeah!" They screamed as they looked around at each other, at Tera, at Serendipity, at the mummy. They hugged each other in laughter, their cheeks blushing, their eyes gleaming. "So that's why she was cowering the walls earlier.. She was planting some sort of device!"

Tera threw her arms up in celebration abit prematurely. Emerging from the debris, Nagathyis got up like a tank, her ears bleeding. She never suspected that the girl would use the vibrations of her helmet against her. Slowly Serendipity took off her bowl. "Magical metal, can survive oven temperatures of 180000 kevin. Got it at school." She stuck her tongue out. "It's a perfect insulator against sonic-based attacks." The other Xovus looked at her in awe.

Tera wiped the blood off her face and pulled out spare gauntlets from her backpack, gears turning rapidly. "Nagathyis! Let's end this."

Suddenly Nagathyis looked at her spear, but rejected it with her gaze and touched her armored, injured body. The metal around her began to shimmer and melt, as she stepped out of her metalized gear, leaving her in silvery bra and undergarments that looked like an ancient loincloth. "If I have to go down, at least I'm going to go down in my own colors." The gear began to liquidity into droplets she could manipulate completely, rearranging their shape into massive wheels, a shiny metallic seat and cords, structuring into a chariot, one seemingly with no driver- her telekinetic metalmodding seemed to move the vehicle.

Nagathyis looked at Tera. "My name is Nagathyis, daughter of Crest and Conquest. Hear as the wheel of fate spins." She hopped on the chariot, the ends of the cords slowly forming two halves of some hollow, hoofed beast.

When the Xovus pointed at Tera's gauntlets, she breathed deeply. "Before conquest, all falls to ruin." Suddenly her gauntlets became soggy silvery soup and melted away, the material on her wrists dripping into a puddle on the ground. Before Tera could say anything, the girl

hopped on the chariot and the wheels exploded forward, the sound of their momentum deafening and the gust of wind forcing the hair out of the girls' faces. Tera, still reeling from her injuries, had to hang onto her equipment as the air around her was displaced, and couldn't hold on to her backpack any longer and made a dash for it.

The girl didn't get far before the half-horses clobbered her, hooves slamming her into their inner spaces. They suddenly slammed shut, metal starting to fill inside like a cast mold. "My chariot lacks a beast of burden. If you don't wish to fill that place, starting this seriously!" Nagathyis yelled.

Tera tried to throw it off of her, but it was too strong, she couldn't get a purchase. When she tried to pry open its back, it trotted ahead and pushed her forward. Tera tried to smash it with her arms, making the chariot clank together to stay closed. The chariot's metal had become less like silvery metal and more like slushy semi-solid liquid, more sticky and gooey than the metal she was used to. The metal rose higher and higher up her legs, pooling like a silvery path. With a deep sigh, the girl realized she was out of options.

She reached into her pockets and pulled out her starseed, clasping it into both palms and gently squeezing it, processing its immense heat and pressure to convert its energies into her own. The ambient bluish-glint it gave off began to dim, before reigniting along her her arm and traveling up her body. From afar Becca could see the glowing silhouette within the steel horse. The brightness radiated beyond its expanse and melted the exterior like a furnace cooking clay. Once the slag of the equine was melted away, only the pure blue-white shape of Tera was seen, floating and rising at the temperature of the sun.

Nagathyis stepped back cautiously, a gesture she chided herself to even reconsider. In her heart of hearts a warrior should never retreat when valor is on the line, she hoped her mother watching behind could excuse her in all her gilded glory. “A mere trick!” She yelled, having never seen this with Tera’s other fights. She raised her hands and shot shards of liquid metal turned into arrowheads and spears at her enemy, which exploded into slag and bounced off. Tera only advanced, flying towards Nagathyis. Her hand stuck out and she launched a stream of plasma that lit up the air like a flameflower and caused Naga to panic.

She dodged and took shelter as the heatwave flung her back and away.

Becca stared at the spectacle, her mouth slightly gaping as Tera floated up into the air, her hair and skin glowing with a strange luminescence, her fists radiating waves of energy that made their way into the sky. "It's like she's the sun!"

"That's the Starseed we've been collecting!" The Soup Fan Club screamed.

The heat came down, causing all the members of the mummified's troupe to run from the warmth as well, and the remaining metal metal to burn and steam and turn into a slag of liquid goop, bubbles ascending in each puddle with the consistency of soda pop fizzing into oblivion.

With a single swing of her flying fist inchs from her face, the honorable Nagathyis was reduced to a flinching coward, the shockwave exploding the surrounding arena and turning it into a pool of molten lava. Naga looked down, sweatbeads dripping down her cheek and carrying with it the last droplets of spirit she could muster. Tera clutched her by the wrist and flew up, dangling her in a way that a single drop could be fatal.

“Go home.” Tera said. She threw her back into the other Xovus, the other kids all gasping and looking down at their defeated leader with despair.

“It's over.” Tera flew to the winged monarchs and slowly, her glowing ambience began to dissipate, wisps of black smoke around the ground leaving smoldering footprints for a few few steps before they faded out. She pulled out her goggles and slipped them overhead. “Better luck next time! Go and take care of yourselves girls.” The other Soup Fan Club held each other in a weepy, joyful embrace. They all went over to Serendipity who seemed relieved, as if crossing the last mundane chore off her checklist.

Becca looked to the mummy and the Xovus, feeling she’d seen the former before at some point. Hadn’t she? The woman looked familiar, but her mental fog was so cumbersome these days that she grew curious if any memory could be trusted at all. The mummy was wrapping bandages around Nagathyis and consoling her her like a mother would after a loss, wrapping her body in layers and layers.The Xovus looked at each other. “Nagathyis- our master!” They said. The mummy nodded. “We shall see what your mother has to say.” She said, thinking Croix would be disappointed in this stock. Or perhaps, impressed by a better one she planted, she figured as she turned over briefly to the Soup club and the prodigal girl that had defeated the iron warrior of crest and conquest.

Soon the Xovus left back into the mystical arched doorway, Naga giving one last look back with a nod of respect towards Tera, who shot her a wink back.

Tera was rewarded for the last of the bosses she’d beaten with a series of gifted gems in her gauntlets and given a hug by all the Soup Fan Club, their bodies enveloped in each other’s embrace. The Soup Fan Club took their seats, Serendipity and Tera with them, the gears turning on full time and the girl feeling like she could relax and even sleep for the first time in a long time. She laid one of their laps, the red sheeny, smooth shelled lithe figure gently stroking Tera, their wings decorated with decals of closed fists.

The girl rested for a short bit, like a child in a caretaker’s lap. Then Becca spent the next hour and twenty minutes watching them console her, “I’ve missed you guys. How long has it been?” She said, Serendipity giving her a waterbottle to drink. “Almost three years.” The one red suited Soupie replied. “Last one took me almost seven tries to beat, and it was 40 before that. I’ve really gotten better haven’t I?”

The Soup Clubber patted their head. “Yes, you’ve become strong Tera! I’m so proud of

you.”

The Soup Clubber patted their head. “Yes, you’ve become strong Tera! I’m so proud of you.” “We all missed you.” “You kick ass Serendipity!” Their shouts clamored and turned into a chorus of affection all around her.

The girl sat up, her gears turning on. “So what’s going on with my kids? I’ve been gone for awhile.. I heard they got new powers, but what else?”

Becca paused for a moment, as if she’d heard the most odd part yet said outloud from the tween girl. “Kids?”