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25/11/2010
Alchemist felt incredibly out of place on Mars as he followed M'gann and her brother through the caves that ran under the surface of the red planet. The duo up ahead were just chatting away, catching up on thing that they'd both missed in each other's lives over the last... seven? Eight months?
He wasn't actually sure how long M'gann had been away from home. He knew the journey from one planet to the other was a long one but he didn't know how fast the bioship could travel in space.
A scuttling sound, more a rapid series of clicks, drew the dragon's attention away from the two Martians and to the ground as one of the creatures, a 'Shull' examined him. Its shell was dusted with a kind of green fuzz that almost looked like cotton.
Alchemist leaned down for a closer look, sniffing at the creature even as it seemed to take in his features. Under the front of the shell, he saw that the insect-like animal had three eyes. One on either side of its hidden face and a third sitting smack-dab in the middle.
Prey creatures, perhaps? M'gann had said that her people didn't eat them but that did not mean that there weren't other creatures that wouldn't find the little bug appetizing.
And it smelled about like moss, if that moss had, for some reason, been used to wipe someone's armpits. Sweaty, kind of onion-y and a little bit gross.
Well, M'gann had mentioned that the stuff growing on their shells was full of proteins and water...
And the creatures clearly had eyes, so they didn't live strictly within the cave system. That combined with the green of the moss on their backs would indicate some kind of system similar to photosynthesis. He vaguely recalled that plants were colored green because that was the band of color they didn't absorb and some plants would develop different colors based on specific environmental factors.
What, then, were the evolutionary factors that caused... szill'ech? Szill'ech to grow green?
Raising one claw to carefully, carefully scrape a little bit of the plant off of the bug's shell, Alchemist slid the little bit of szill'ech into his mouth. It tasted... salty. Kind of like iron-rich well water, too. Rolling the miniscule morsel over on his tongue, the dragon decided that he... didn't really care for it.
Of course, the flavor profile might change completely once it was processed.
"Alchemist?" M'gann called, her voice ringing in his mind. "Come on! I can't wait to introduce you to everyone!"
"Alright!" the wizard called to her, or at least he thought he did. He couldn't exactly 'feel' if his attempt at broadcasting the thought was caught, but things seemed to be working alright so far. "I'm on my way!"
Leaving behind the curious insect, Alchemist loped after the two Martians up ahead, quickly gaining on them both.
If he recalled correctly, M'gann was one of the younger children out of... twenty-seven? Thirty? Twenty-seven-ish kids and two parents. Not the largest family Alchemist had ever heard of, both of his sets of grandparents had pumped out a good number of kids themselves, but it also seriously aged the women who'd done so.
Or, at least, he hoped that was the excuse for why one of his grandmothers had been a horrible, hateful woman.
But there was also one significant physiological difference between Martians and Humans that might explain things.
The hips.
Martians, male and female alike, had especially wide hips. Those would likely make childbirth incredibly-
"Actually," M'gann cut in, amusement clear in her mental voice, "our shapeshifting comes in really handy for that."
"...Ah," Alchemist said aloud, the words slipping out verbally rather than in thought. His next statement was made mentally, however. "I suppose that makes sense."
One of the countless benefits to being a Void Dragon?
He couldn't blush in embarrassment.
One of the other benefits to being a Void Dragon?
He'd been able to drink an Extract of Twin Form without feeling like he was going to puke his guts out. Then his duplicate had disappeared, teleporting to outerspace just beyond the planet while Alchemist had still had Standstill active.
It had a job to do, something Alchemist had wanted to test but he'd also wanted to give M'gann his full attention which kept him from using Bilocation, as he normally would-
-----
The second Alchemist touched down, landing gently and disrupting a wide swathe of iron-oxide sand as he descended.
Much of Mars was uninhabited, barren and dry. The handful of cities spread around the surface were all focused around water, at least so far as he could tell.
Inhaling deeply, the dragon almost gagged at the amount of crimson dust he swallowed in the process. Hacking, he spat out great globs of rust colored spittle before managing to finally get his reflexes under control.
He only had so much time. Just a bit under three hours and he'd already wasted one in finding a suitable location.
Doing a final check on the area around him, noting the lack of trails or really any signs of life at all, the dragon nodded to himself and got to work.
Opening the Game Shop, the duplicate swiftly hunted down two items. One, a book of [Metamagic: Rapid Spell] was stowed in the inventory. His greater self had been intending to buy the book and work on learning the metamagic, but it would demand a time investment that he couldn't manage, not at the moment.
The second item was one that the duplicate needed. His goal was to cast an especially long-winded spell and he didn't have eight hours to do so. And he -did- want to see if a [Greater Metamagic Rod: Rapid Spell] could be combined with the two-thirds time reduction factor he'd transferred over from a set of Emerald Earrings that had come from Star Ocean Three.
Gently biting the rod between his teeth, Alchemist used a single claw to scoop out a small divot in the red soil beneath him. And, into the freshly dug hole, he very carefully placed a single seed. One of the little helicopter pods of an Ash Tree.
One of the hundreds he'd taken from Yggdrasil.
Carefully covering the seed with a little bit of dirt, he spat the Metamagic Rod down into his claws, wrapped the loop of an Emerald Earring around another claw on the same paw and sat back.
Even without Detect Magic, he could feel the structure of Plant Growth as he began casting it. He could almost see the structure of Rapid Spell as it surrounded the concepts and helped to bring them into fruition.
Alchemist mumbled as he focused, muttering words from time to time that helped to... define the magic, give it focus and direction.
He could feel as the spell that would normally take eight hours to cast was rushing towards completion. It was almost too much to keep track of; only his countless hours spent casting greater magics allowed him to keep up.
After a mere twenty minutes, however, the spell was done. The wizard looked down in awe as a tiny, green shoot fought its way out from under the dull, rusty soil.
He'd done it.
He'd done it!
And it had happened so much faster than he'd been expecting!
With a light, bubbly feeling in his chest, Alchemist realized that he had so much time left. So much time for him to explore, try different things, buy different things!
Only a little over an hour, sure, but that was still an hour he could spend at the markets of Mars, gaping and gawking like the tourist he was.
He almost felt bad for his other half. Having to socialize, having to rely on Auto-Libra to tell him who was who after he forgot people's names.
But that sounded like an Alchemist problem.
And he would much, much rather go and find himself a Twin-Form problem, instead.
-----
"-and this is my brother, Jur'din," M'gann explained to Alchemist, pulling another green martian out of a nook in the cave the M'orzz family called home.
"It's a pleasure to meet you, Jur'din," Alchemist responded. He would have responded dully but, unlike M'gann, he didn't really know how to pitch his internal monologue to really convey emotions. Even 'shouting' mentally all felt the same volume. "What is it that you do, here?"
Calling the M'orzz family home 'just' a cave was a horrible misnomer and a terrible lie, besides.
It was carved into the stone underneath of a mountain, so by any sane definition it was in fact a cave. But there were pipes running along the ceiling and along the bottom left corner of the halls that led to and from various facilities like bathrooms and kitchens, thick cables that supplied electricity to lights that were set into the cave ceilings or powered a handful of devices. Alchemist even recognized one when M'gann had walked him near the rooms she shared with some of her sisters; a television. An old design that looked like a strange combination of a cathode ray tube and a truly ancient crystal radio.
"M'comm and I do most of the work on shearing the shulls," Jur'din explained, his arms waving about animatedly. "We gotta make sure to get the plants cut down 'fore they start blooming or they'll try and send feelers up under the shull shells and take over the poor critters."
...The green fuzz was parasitic now, too?
Alchemist didn't know why he was so surprised by that. The Martians were one-hundred percent psychic. Having things around Mars that preyed on things using their brains, or took over their brains, it was all thematic.
"That sounds... horrifying," Alchemist told the man after a moment of consideration.
"Can be, can be. Still, gotta let it happen from time to time. Gotta get fresh szill'ech spores, y'know?" Jur'din asked, motioning back towards the main entrance that M'gann had led him through. "Got one that's about to bloom just outside. Y'wanna go watch?"
"...I'm good. Thank you," Alchemist responded, quashing the queasy feeling in his gut.
It was natural. It was the circle of life. It was how things were supposed to happen.
...That did nothing to ease the disquiet Alchemist felt upon discovering that the Martian equivalent of Cordyceps was apparently a key part of their regular diet.
And with that thought in mind, Alchemist cast Heal on himself, ignoring the curious looks sent his way.
He'd eaten some of... that. He'd put mind-controlling fungus in his mouth!
"C'mon!" M'gann said as she pulled him away from her brother and began dragging him down a hallway. "Over here is where M'ree and I sleep!"
It wasn't really much of a room that M'gann showed him. It was more or less a small nook with a pair of oval holes cut into the walls with thin but spongy mattresses inside. There were a handful of devices Alchemist didn't recognize set on a shelf nearby and... Alchemist noticed there wasn't any kind of door or privacy curtain for the girls.
He went through a brief moment of confusion before it clicked in the back of his mind that privacy didn't necessarily exist in the same way as he would expect among a hive-mind. So either nobody...
"You're thinking some kind of sex thought, aren't you?" M'gann asked, drawing the dragon out of said sex-thoughts. "You know you can just ask, right? I doubt you can think of something that'll be- Okay, nevermind. I guess you can, in fact, think of something really embarrassing."
"...Sorry," Alchemist apologized, genuinely meaning it. He hadn't intended for his mind to drift and wonder if the psychic inter-connectivity meant that M'gann had secondhand experience of certain topics, but he'd been forced to deal with the Greek gods and that included far too much incest to be healthy.
"Well, in the interest of full disclosure?" M'gann asked, her face lifting up in something resembling a sort of embarrassed grin. "Yeah. When mom and dad go at it, everyone in the house knows. We kind of just... pull back a bit. We can't disconnect but we try to give them a little privacy."
"You know you didn't have to answer that, right?" Alchemist asked as M'gann began to pull him in another direction. They were going... up, at a fairly shallow angle. And they were right at the side of the mountain, it seemed, as there were windows carved into the rock face and then set with semi-transparent crystal.
"It's not a bad question, though," M'gann admitted as they continued going higher and higher. "I never really thought about it because it's just how things are here but, some day, I'm going to have to explain things to Connor."
"...I think there are going to be a lot of other explanations leading up to that, first," Alchemist told the girl, shaking his head slightly. "It's going to be a few years before he really starts to catch up to you."
"Yeah... hey, Alchemist?" M'gann paused and turned around to look at him, her red eyes boring into his. "Is... is it right for Connor and I to be dating?"
"...I have no idea," the dragon admitted before sighing tiredly. "Physically, he's old enough. Mentally, he's catching up incredibly fast. Emotionally... that'll take some time."
"But, I mean," M'gann sounded rather small as she nervously shifted from one foot to the other, breaking eye contact to look down at the ground. "The age gap is kind of..."
"He might outlive you," Alchemist told the girl, silently working his jaw from side to side. He was tempted to try and speak out loud, or at least try to, so he could try and convey the right emotions. He held off, however. His voice as a Void Dragon was... not so great at communicating what he wanted it to. "With the regenerative properties of yellow sunlight for Kryptonians, he could well live into the thousands. You're, what, forty-five? Forty-six? Not too much younger than me, and I'm dating a woman who's been alive for something like sixteen or seventeen millennia. Possibly longer, it's difficult to tell how much time really passes inside of a time loop- Look, the age gap between the two of you is basically a rounding error, for both of you. And I know this makes me sound like a hypocrite but he'll catch up with you in a few years and, if things don't work out now, that doesn't mean they won't work out later."
"...I don't think that was really helpful," M'gann told him, a small lilt in her voice that almost sounded like a laugh. "But thanks for trying."
"...Sorry," Alchemist apologized and sighed aloud once more. "I've got my own issues on that front and I'm doing the best I can. But I'm always worried that I've made a mistake, or I'm in the process of making one, and I know I won't recognize it until it's already spiraled horribly out of control."
"...And somehow, that's the part that actually makes me feel better." M'gann leaned over and wrapped one arm around Alchemist's neck, pulling herself against him in a one-armed hug. "It's nice to know that age and experience don't make someone perfect."
Alchemist wasn't sure how to take that, either, but it didn't seem mean spirited so he just shrugged and took it as it was.
"Happy to help," the mage said. "So, is there anyone else that's here that you want me to meet?"
"Just M'comm," M'gann admitted, something like a sigh tickling across Alchemist's brain at her words. "But he's hiding somewhere. He's always been the best at hide and find."
-----
As a point of fact, M'comm was not actually hiding anywhere.
"The shulls seemed a bit more restless than normal, today," M'aatt M'orzz, M'comm's father and a fellow A'ashenn Martian, said as the two walked out of the harsh daylight and into the cool interior of the mountain they called home. "Good work, keeping them calm, son."
M'comm didn't really answer. He was tired and he was hungry. Being out in the sun all day meant wearing extra layers of clothing because he, like every other A'ashenn on Mars, could develop sun poisoning. And changing the color of his skin to offset that could attract a lot of unwanted attention from the other workers.
M'comm pushed a general sense of fondness in his father's direction as the two continued to silently descend into their home.
As he entered, he could feel something was different in the gestalt of the M'orzz home. There was an energy to everyone that felt out of place. Calm, excited, curious, nostalgic- A whole host of emotions that indicated something new.
Had M'ree already divorced her second husband?
No, no, it would probably be the other way around. Especially if the poor man had discovered that 'Em'ree J'onzz' was actually 'M'ree M'orzz', daughter of an A'ashenn.
M'comm exhaled sharply through his nose-slits as his exhaustion briefly gave way to amusement.
Maybe that was a little mean spirited of him.
And maybe M'ree could have felt something other than shame and embarrasment about her family.
Getting closer, M'comm could make out individual words and feelings as he joined the gestalt.
'Happiness', 'Familiarity', someone had come to their home, someone that M'comm's siblings or his mom was happy to see. 'Confusion' and 'Curiosity', however, implied something new and possibly something strange.
So it probably wasn't M'ree. There wasn't any deep sense of shame tainting every other emotion.
"...I'm thinking stew, M'comm," M'aatt offered, curiosity and concern in his words. "Maybe you should go get cleaned up before dinner?"
It only took a moment for M'comm to understand what his father was trying to do.
He was trying to send M'comm to stay safe while his father investigated whatever the upset was in their home.
"Stew sounds pretty good," M'comm told him, determination in his voice. "I think I'll go to the kitchens with you, first."
That was the general direction that things were being felt from, at least. It was difficult to be more accurate, at least without a bit more time to re-acclimate to the gestalt and get to knowing the personal strength and 'voice' of the new people.
When a Martian knew all of the people inside of a gestalt, they could feel the echoes of each person and draw out a kind of mental map. Just one upset, though, could subtly shift and change the 'shape' of everyone inside and warp the whole mass until it was recognizable but terribly off.
"Alright, son." M'aatt did not sound happy, but he did sound relieved. M'comm knew his father was brave, was strong, he had to be considering he'd pushed through the hostility and rejections that had come with his mixed-race marriage to J'ann. That didn't mean his father wanted to deal with an unknown on his own. "Come on, I think there might be some leftovers from yesterday."
M'comm wasn't sure what to expect as they traveled through the mostly-empty halls of their home. It had expanded as needed for every new sibling his parents had given him but, now, most of the M'orzz family had left. Going to the city to try and build new lives, going on to higher education, settling down or just searching for work that was more fiscally rewarding than raising shulls and growing food.
It would probably be fine. If the rest of the family was feeling good about the visitor, everything should be okay.
But the rest of the family weren't A'ashenn. A lot of the others had to deal with being teased about their father but only he and M'gann had to deal with being singled out and bullied over the color of their skin.
M'comm looked to his father, red eyes met yellow as the two, uncertain as to what they'd be dealing with, entered the kitchen.
What they found did not match their expectations. At all.
M'comm recognized the A'ashenn in the room instantly. It was his sister, M'gann!
He did not recognize the creature that was with her. It was large, perhaps as big as a ma'alefa'ak. And the voice coming from it-
It was horrible! Loud and flat, carrying traces of emotions or ideas but not enough to actually feel or experience anything. Even newborn children could communicate more clearly than... whatever that thing was.
"M'gann?" M'aatt called when he recognized his child. The man lumbered forward, spreading his arms out wide.
"Dad!" M'gann responded, rushing over to meet her father.
The two embraced, M'aatt actually lifting the girl off the ground as he pulled her against his chest. The two didn't have any more words to share but the raw joy and comfort radiating from them was intoxicating.
Looking past the duo, M'comm could see his mother, J'ann, practically melting under the onslaught of happy emotions. And M'comm was hardly immune, he could feel himself relaxing, feel his eye-ridges untensing.
The only one that wasn't joining them was the strange, black thing standing next a plate of... M'comm didn't recognize any of the things on the counter but now that he'd noticed them, they smelled absolutely amazing!
"M'gann?" M'comm called after their father put her down. She was still riding high on the combined emotions because she approached him, looking for another hug.
He was a little uncomfortable with it, he was too old to be hugging every family member now but he accepted the affection stoicly.
"It's good to see you again," he continued when M'gann let him go.
"I missed you so much!" she told him, backing away just a bit and looking him over.
M'comm mirrored her actions. M'gann looked... healthier. Happier. More so than he remembered. Especially after the last argument she'd had with M'ree, now Em'ree, that had seen the junior scientist leaving for the city and M'gann running off to steal a bio-ship-
"I missed you too, M'gann, but..." M'comm wracked his mind as joy quickly turned to worry. He knew M'gann had stolen the bio-ship, but he couldn't remember if anyone else did. And if she'd brought it back... there would be manhunters all over the place! "Does anyone else know that you're here?"
"...Not really?" His sister was confused by the way he was acting, and that was fine.
No, what she'd said was fine. Great, even!
"We came in to the spaceport using a magic spell, since Alchemist has to know a place to open a Gate there. Why? What's wrong?"
"M'comm?" J'ann asked, expressing worry by the subtle tilt of her head. "What's going on?"
"...Nothing," M'comm answered, relief spilling from him. "I was just... worried over nothing, I guess."
'Stealing' a bio-ship was no easy feat. They were intelligent and alive, after all, so forcing one to submit wasn't exactly an easy task.
Convincing a bio-ship, on the other hand, was much more manageable. Most of them were content with their duties, such as ferrying around a handful of Martians on a cycle to upkeep and feed the floating brain-ships that hovered over Mars and connected the numerous cities in a planetwide mega-gestalt. Some, though, wanted more. Some ships wanted to explore, discover new worlds and do new things.
But... the odds of M'gann being able to find one of those bio-ships, while she was still reeling and hurting from her last argument with M'ree? The likelihood of such a thing was improbable, at the very least!
Some ships just up and left from time to time. It was regrettable, it was unfortunate but it was also one of the various risks that came with having companions that were intelligent and capable, even if different from the Martians that had once made them.
Normally, a Martian aiding one of these ships would get a light punishment. Assisting one of the many caretakers that worked at the spaceports, for example.
Except M'gann was A'ashenn, not G'arrunn. She wouldn't be treated so lightly, she wouldn't be trusted to learn from her mistake.
M'comm pushed those thoughts aside. Pushed his worry and concern aside. It didn't matter, not right now. Without the bio-ship as evidence, M'gann wouldn't be punished. What she'd done wouldn't even be known!
"So, M'gann?" M'aatt asked, waving one hand at their strange guest and the plates of things next to it. "What did you bring home?"
"It's Thanksgiving on Earth!" the girl happily exclaimed, walking over next to the... thing and pointing out the various dishes they'd brought. "So I wanted to show you all what they ate over there to celebrate! We have tur'key, kran'ber'i sauce, cor'in and buttered rolls! Oh! And we made pie for everyone!"
M'comm and M'aatt walked over to the counter to look over the offerings. The both of them tried their best to avoid looking at the... creature. The thing's edges were... blurry. And looking directly at it had something deep within M'comm screaming that he needed to be careful. That he needed to curl up into a tiny little ball and hide in the deepest, darkest corner he could find.
"We actually have a lot more," the creature spoke, its empty voice grating into M'comm's mind. "I have more room in my home so everyone can serve themselves. You're all invited, of course. You can even take a look at Earth, if you wish to do so."
M'comm turned away from the delicious smelling things and forced himself to look at the creature. It was no Martian, M'comm could tell from feel and sound alike.
No, it was like something had taken a portion of the night sky over Mars and used it to make a creature of hard, black scales and burning yellow eyes.
It was looking at M'comm, its gaze betraying curiosity and thoughtfulness while its mind broadcast a dozen broken streams of interrupted thoughts, almost without pause.
It was unpleasant to look at. It was incredibly unpleasant to be around.
"That's a great idea!" M'gann exclaimed, clearly excited. "Oh, I'm going to go and call M'ree! She's not going to believe that you met Lord L'Zoril!"
M'comm forced himself to rip his eyes away from the bottomless abyss that was the creature's eyes to look wildly upon M'gann. The girl, so excited and happy, seemed oblivious to the sheer impossibility of what she'd just said!
"He- You-" Their mother, J'ann, mentally verbalized the raw confusion that he and his father both felt at that impossible statement. "-what?!"
