171. Little Bug (Patreon)

The purple spiderweb cracks erupt all around us, fractal tears in the face of reality which herald the imminent judgment of Interitus' unfathomable talent. It's hard to guess who the woman was before Ars broke her soul into pieces and forged her into a splice, but she must have been legendary even before it was twisted into the chaotic destruction she now wields. It's one of the few things on this island I still truly fear, yet Vita responds not with trying to avoid it, but by blocking it head-on. She pulls me towards her, seemingly ignoring my massive weight, two chitinous arms squeezing me close as the sky flashes with ruin, a deafening screech wailing in our ears as the world itself protests the power being forced upon it. The shockwave hits us point-blank, yet whatever Vita does to protect us from it holds. I suppose that makes sense; it's difficult to understand exactly what Interitus' talent does, given how it conforms to no known school of magic. Yet it is at its most dangerous when applied to a target directly, and within Vita's bubble of blue it simply cannot form.

There's no sense risking a prolonged engagement here, though, not when I barely even know for certain who this Vita even is. She lets me use her mana to craft a teleportation spell, and I pull the three of us away from danger and back to our base, deep in the forest. The one we made together, when we were two very different people.

Such melancholy is irrelevant, so my thoughts pull away from it the moment I notice its presence. We've arrived in my personal teleportation room, created as such so that there's never a need to recalculate an end point due to obstruction. It's just a small, square, stone room with a few windows, designated to be kept empty at all times.

"Keep her impotent," I order Vita, not that I expected her to release the High Templar. "I need a collar, now!"

"And here I was certain you preferred to hold the leash, my lady," Nugas jokes in that sing-song way of hers, entering the room with the metal prisoner's collar that I requested. How was she already here with it ready…? She's gotten quite skilled with these sorts of predictions.

"Thank you, Nugas," I say, leaning down to pat her head the way she likes with one massive hand as I accept the collar with my other. I'm almost seven and a half feet tall now, nearing the end of my final stages of growth. I've had to molt a few times (which was frustratingly inefficient and a generally unpleasant meal) but the added mass has been extremely useful in terms of strength and power storage. I'll soon hit a sweet spot, however, where the extra mass starts to become a weight problem faster than it can increase my strength. When all is said and done, I will be seven foot nine inches tall when standing on my legs, though of course I'm capable of nearly doubling that if I stand on my tail instead.

Vita adjusts her grip to allow me to secure the collar on Cassia, which I quickly clasp around her neck. The mana field she's somehow created dissipates, the Mistwatcher's essence rushing in to fill the space. Vita drops Cassia, letting her speak.

"You bastards won't—"

I am, of course, uninterested in what she has to say, so I manually activate the collar and knock her unconscious, catching her as her eyes roll back and she falls. With one hand, I offer her to Nugas.

"Take her to Theodora to get her fixed," I grunt. "After Theodora finishes with her, inform her that Vita has returned."

"Yes, my lady," Nugas bows briefly, taking the High Templar in both arms and walking out of the room with a self-satisfied smirk.

Even now, I never know what's on that woman's mind. Besides me, that is.

"So," Vita murmurs, scratching at the front of her armor with a clawed finger. She has very interesting fingers now, six of them with an alternating flat-sharp structure. Clearly unnatural. Her body is likely entirely biomantic in design. My talent desperately flicks through diseases that might ravage her body, but each and every one of them comes up impotent. I'm probably going to end up running subconscious mental simulations for weeks trying to figure out something that will bypass her insane immune system. This will be annoying.

My talent's stubborn hold on my mind is difficult to purge for long. I have to optimize my habits to ignore it, rather than simply flushing the urges away.

"Yes, it's been a long time since you were back here," I say. "Let's give everyone a chance to see you again. Melik's old squad is even here, minus the older gentleman."

"Wait, really?" Vita says, her compound eyes shimmering in the light as minute changes to their configuration play upon the surface. I suspect that has some significance, so I commit it to memory. The rest of her face looks like a porcelain doll that hasn't been painted yet, so if there's a way to gain clues from her face this is the only option available to me.

"Yes," I confirm. "This way."

"Well I wanted to… oh. I mean, okay."

She somewhat awkwardly shuffles after me for a moment, seems to catch herself, and then walks with such supreme confidence that I come very close to laughing. What a sudden shift! Her digitigrade legs and clawed feet means she walks quite differently from a human, yet she moves like a natural, a fluid grace that is unmistakably practiced to perfection. The idea of Vita as anything resembling noble is endlessly entertaining in that impossible dichotomy sort of way, yet here she is, activating it like a lever has flipped inside her head. Her squad informed me that she performed something similar with Melik, copying him almost perfectly without needing to practice, as their memories merged. Yet they reported that, over time, Melik seemed to disappear as Vita moved to the fore. It's been nearly three months since she got this body, however, and yet here we are. A Vita with some semblance of propriety, if not outright vanity walks before me. I'm not sure how to factor that into my calculations. It is, in a word, baffling.

Though I do note with amusement that, while she is taller than her previous bodies, it's only by a few inches and as such our height difference has expanded drastically. Which is good. I've always liked how small she is.

I let none of this show on my face, of course. Out of habit more than anything; Vita's ability to read souls is doubtlessly better than ever, so she has no need of my face. It's difficult to tell if she's even paying attention to it, what with the way her bulbous, sapphire eyes seem to be looking in every direction at once. Perhaps they are. I upgraded my vision significantly, but it did not occur to me to upgrade the field of that vision, to create multidirectional sight and replace my eyes wholesale with superior systems. I doubt the result would be worth the effort, however, particularly in retraining my brain to work with the new signals. Now that my soul has already been shredded twice over, I've been much less hesitant to work on upgrading my brain, but it's still an exceptionally slow and careful process, demanding vastly more testing and experimentation to understand than any other biological problem I've tackled. Testing and experimentation I no longer have the time for, since I have been planning a war.

Incidentally, planning a war is very, very difficult when you've enslaved your soul to a series of moral principles.

I can't use biological weapon attacks that have any chance of propagation. I can't permanently harm civilians. I can't mind control people to my side. I can't interrogate prisoners effectively, nor use them as experiments, nor otherwise bring them unneeded suffering. I can't allow other people to do any of these things either. I'm no general, but most of the things my grandfather taught me on how to win wars simply aren't possible anymore, because of how immoral they are. I've been reduced to collecting creatures from the forest to make into a partially-undead, partially-animantically-domesticated monster army, which is inefficient at best. Were I capable of acting without restraints, I wouldn't even need an army.

That is, I suppose, part of why it's for the best that I'm restrained. But Vita clearly isn't, and nor do I suspect she'll tolerate being treated like a subordinate. She is outside my realm of control. Her casual domination of multiple High Templars proves she is, easily, the most powerful person on this island.

She must not be allowed to act by her own fickle whims, and therefore I need to find ways to tie her to me.

"Hey, uh… boss," a familiar voice asks me. "Is that, uh, y'know…?"

It's Lyn. Good. I arranged events so that she'd be here. I watch Vita's expression carefully, memorizing the way her eyes twist and change. This will be my reference for a joyful expression.

"Mom!" Vita cheers, rushing forwards and scooping the thief up into a crushing, spinning, four-armed hug. To her credit, panic only washes over the woman for a moment before she returns the embrace, laughing as her alien daughter twirls her with delight.

"Vita!" Lyn greets her cheerfully. "Hey, girl! Wow! You're looking a little, uh… exoskeletal?"

"Thanks, wish I could say the same! Gosh, I'm so glad to see you, mom. Is everyone okay? Rowan and the kids?"

"They're all living here with us, yeah," Lyn confirms. "This place has gone from camp to village to town in no time flat."

"And then back to camp…?" Vita asks, looking around. We're surrounded largely by tents and defensive emplacements, since this area is near the edge of our little burgeoning nation.

"It looks a lot nicer when you get further in," Lyn assures her. "So, uh… bug lady, huh? Or are you a bug man?"

"Bug lady," Vita confirms. "I'm a Princess now!"

"Oh, uh… congratulations, your majesty?"

Vita makes a warbling, hissy noise that I can only assume is what her species considers laughter.

"You don't need to call me by my title, mom," Vita assures her. "Neither do you, Penelope."

I nod, doing my best to look thankful as I peel through the obvious implications of that. It means she'll expect most people to use her title. More confirmation of the differences I felt earlier. How much of Vita is in there?

…Irrelevant. I need what she has become more than I need who she used to be. I do not love her, so what's the sense in missing her? Besides, it's not as though I can complain, considering how little of my old self resides within me.

I just… always found her lack of propriety to be refreshing. Her bluntness, the way she always speaks her mind, the way she could see into my very soul and know it completely and simply allowed me to have the same insight through her own forthright nature… it was the opposite of everything I despised about nobility. She refused to play games with my heart, and that is how she took it. Has that changed? Has she become the very thing she hated?

"Hey, Penelope!" Vita calls, apparently having noticed me staring at her. "Wanna see how my freaky mouth is constructed?"

I blink.

"Yes," I answer honestly, and she opens up the four mandibles under her chin to extend a long tongue-like structure covered in blunted teeth. It's beautiful and fascinating and I don't have time for this, Ars is growing his powerbase with every second I waste here.

"Pretty wacky, huh?" Vita chuckles.

"Indeed," I answer flatly. "Now come along, there are many more people who I'm sure will be happy to see you."

"Oh, I mean… that's great, I really want to see everyone, but—"

"Let's go then," I insist uncharacteristically, turning to leave. Hmm. Impolite. I'll have to investigate that impulse later so I can fix it.

"Penelope, I mostly wanna see you," Vita insists, her mouth still hanging as it's unrelated to her speech.

I stop, glancing back at her.

"You are seeing me," I answer, my tone clipped. "This is what I am. We'll sit down later to discuss the Ars situation and the upcoming war, but introductions come first."

Her tongue slurps back up into her head and her multi-jointed jaws snap shut. Her eyes start making an odd movement but then, after a moment's consideration, she nods instead. Mixing human and Hiverock expressions, then. Hmm. We exit together, Lyn following us with a blank expression of her own.

"So, uh… I don't sense Galdra anywhere," Vita comments idly as we walk.

"I destroyed her," I answer simply. "It wasn't worth the risk keeping her around, even with her forcibly obedient due to animancy. The false belief that animancy is infallible is what allowed me to kill her, after all."

"Ah. Yeah, I suppose so," Vita says. "Though I might have suggested collaring her like you did with Cassia."

Well. I did collar her. I just… decided to kill her afterwards.

"The risk still would have been too high," I insist. "Galdra is clever."

"Oh," Vita says. "Well, that's fine. That's your call to make, I guess. I hope it was cathartic, at least."

"Unfortunately, I suspect it was," I tell her. "Because I've blocked my memory of performing the act and tightened the revulsion response to my natural sadism in response to it."

"Oh," she says again. "You're, uh, still making adjustments, huh?"

"I fell down the slippery slope so long ago that at this point I consider my chances best if I try to ride it somewhere, as opposed to a futile climb back to the top."

She pauses, her expression still unreadable to me. Though it certainly isn't joy.

"Okay," she answers finally. "Though we're gonna have a talk about basic and advanced Pneuma safety."

"Pneuma?" I ask, not recognizing the language.

"Animancy," she explains. "Sorry. The Athanatos have different names for everything."

Ah. Well. Far be it from me to deny learning the standardized regulations from an entire biologically engineered society of animancers.

"And that's what you are, I take it?" I ask. "Athanatos? I've heard To-Kill-From-Above use the term."

"Haha, yeah. Oh man, he's gonna shit his pants when he sees me."

"I'm afraid To-Kill and I have a similar fashion sense, regarding that matter."

She briefly regards my naked body with about the same general disinterest as I'm used to.

"...Right, yeah," she says, not engaging with my joke. Hmm.

We wander away from the outer defenses into the city proper, towards a nearby courtyard where I suspect at least some of the people most interested in seeing Vita will be relaxing. The idea of a section of town designated exclusively to not be built in, an open space to be used for whatever public open-space purposes people happened to need, irritated my sense of efficiency at first. Planning our city as if it were the same as Skyhope is a losing gambit, however, and I conceded that the benefits of such an area would likely outweigh the opportunity cost. I did not expect to find the open area so universally popular, however. We'll probably have to make more to keep morale up, because it's frequently too crowded. A space explicitly designated to have nothing in it is too crowded. Even now, I find myself surprised by people.

"Again!" Lark barks ahead of us, she and a group of likely and unlikely friends all sparring together in the yard.

Lark has been a blessing in many ways, fulfilling nearly everything I had hoped from her. As a straight physical combatant she's quickly proving she has no equal, at least in terms of raw potential. Carefully curated pools of monster flesh, both enhanced through biomancy and left natural, have proven her body can implement and often even improve on changes that add to her meals. We haven't agreed on any major upgrades, of course; Lark doesn't wish to risk physically altering her appearance any further, so her selection of meals is limited. I have managed to improve her already-absurd muscular and skeletal structure, however, and we're working on figuring out ways to convince her body to implement its cut-anything spells to her claws and talons. Between her speed, her sensory range, her lack of need for sleep and her ability to set up a nearly-limitless amount of webbing, Lark has been keeping our borders safe from forest incursion nearly single-handedly, a task that also has the benefit of improving her dangerously low self-esteem. An expanded group of friends and peers has been doing the same.

Of course, she still has a good relationship with her former Templar squad, particularly Xena. Managing the girl's bodily transfiguration is an enjoyable use of my free time, especially since she has been extremely enthusiastic about optimizing her form into something well beyond human. Once she got past the babbling-incoherently-in-embarrassment stage, she's had no end of wild ideas, most of which I've then had to temper into something practical. Still, it pleases me to have someone share one of my more esoteric hobbies, as well as to unambiguously consent to subjecting herself to them.

Her body is nowhere near completed, and is currently stuck halfway between its original state and the final product, as I unfortunately cannot dedicate the time necessary to accelerate her transformation any more quickly. She was very insistent about wanting horns, despite my protests that they are rather useless structures unless she intends to start headbutting people. We compromised, so her horns are hollow and capable of holding highly pressurized water for use with her talent. She has a pair that curves around the sides of her head in a spiral, one that juts diagonally up from the center of her forehead (and frequently gets caught in doorways), and two more which also emerge from the forehead on either side of the center one, but travel backwards across her scalp. This has obviously made her head quite heavy, particularly when all these horns are filled to capacity, so her neck muscles had to be the focus of density augmentations. The rest of her body is adapting much more slowly, and the daily changes to her physical capabilities are a large part of why she spars regularly with Lark.

Of course, her modifications don't stop there. Inspired by Lark, Xena wanted four arms (which was sensible enough, so I acquiesced without argument) and oversized sharp teeth (which I pointed out was useless if she didn't intend to bite anyone, to which she did not respond and Bently merely blushed). The teeth are mostly done growing, but her second set of forelimbs is only half-finished, making them currently appear undersized and infantile. Also undersized is her tail, which to my pride and delight she wanted modeled after my own. She did, however, request that hers be "fuzzy rather than scaled," and when I pointed out the many ways scales are a superior optimization she simply informed me that "fur is optimized for cuddles, and that is the most important optimization of all." Which is, of course, ridiculous. And vaguely offensive. I'm sure I would give great cuddles. I can freely adjust my body temperature! Good luck trying to do that with a ton of fur over-insulating everything.

Still, it's her body, so she can design it to be inferior in function if she chooses. I'm still getting good practice and information out of the endeavor. The rest of her transformation is fairly straightforward so far, focusing on flushing out her old body's hormone patterns and replacing them, shaping the development of her feminine features, and the more direct process of removing and then subsequently growing her new genitalia. It's a slow affair, but one I've better optimized since… well, the last time I did this to someone. Which was for rather less altruistic reasons.

Fighting alongside Xena are some of Lark's other, more unexpected friends: Penta and Margarette. The four of them form quite the monstrous quartet, but Lark latched onto them almost immediately after settling here simply because the skeleton-woman and the animavorous ozoid don't smell very good to her senses, greatly inhibiting her natural desire to eat them. I believe she could digest them both if she made the attempt, but her greatly reduced instinct to do so—likely because the souls are bound to substances other than meat—immediately made her more comfortable than usual around the pair. Add Margarette's ability to prepare undead meat rations for Lark to safely and ethically chow down on, not to mention Lark's ability to collect captured monsters for Margarette to add to our ever-growing undead army, and the two of them ended up spending a lot of time together and becoming fast friends.

"Aww!" Vita coos. "Lark's getting along with her aunts! Or… I guess maybe her nieces. The relative generational gap between them is somewhat unclear."

I don't bother to suppress my sigh. Here we fucking go. Vita is back, and that means we get to randomly find out how basic aspects of reality have actually been a silly joke this entire time.

"...You are implying that vrothizo have a familial relationship with nawra, of all things?"

"Well, um, yes!" Vita confirms. "They are definitely related to Nawra. And also to the Children of Nawra, which is apparently the actual name for what you call 'nawra.' Nawra is the name of their creator. Who, uh, happens to be a mana goddess. Like me! Hmm, I should probably chat with her soon. She makes bioweapons and is really fucked up, but in a less cool way than you of course, and also she's my older sister kind of I guess?"

Sure, that may as well all be the case.

"Hey Margarette!" Vita greets. "Hey Penta! Hello Lark! Wazzup, Xavier!"

"She goes by Xena now," I whisper quickly.

"I mean Xena!" Vita quickly corrects, then turns to whisper back to me. "Why'd she change her name?"

"Because she changed her gender, Vita."

"No she didn't…?"

I sigh. Well, we're firmly back in familiar territory, I suppose.

"Wait, is that… Vita!?" Margarette gapes. "Watcher's sweaty asscrack, she's back! She's baaaack!"

The black-boned skeletal scorpion abomination gallops over to greet us, laughing gleefully as she tackles the dragonscale-armored royal warrior insect girl that was once a powerless street rat. Margarette's prodigious size barely even makes Vita redistribute her weight. She may as well have charged into a wall, though this particular wall happily wraps its arms around Margarette's spine and returns her hug.

"I've been gone for nearly four months, I died twice, and the best greeting you could think of was 'Watcher's sweaty asscrack?'" Vita laughs. "Seriously!?"

"Hey, I haven't exactly been workshopping this moment!" Margarette protests, nuzzling her master with the upper ridges of her skull. "I'm just so happy to have you back!"

"Holy thit!" Xena yelps, her recently-grown teeth apparently still giving her a lisp. "That'th Vita?"

"It's Princess Vita now, actually," the Lich corrects. "Or Princess Malrosa, if you prefer."

Malrosa. The name of the life she took and melded with hers. One she still, apparently, identifies with. It's worth remembering.

"Ooh, fanthy," Xena grins, elbowing Penta. My former brain warden has grown substantially over the months, and now stands at about four and a half feet tall. "Your headmate'th a Printheth now. Doeth that make you thome kind of royalty?"

"Categorically no!" Vita answers cheerfully. "Clear Ones can't inherit. Good news, though: you are immortal! Well, you were, I guess."

"I was immortal… until I died," Penta clarifies.

"Yep!"

"...Well, thanks for telling me, I suppose."

Vita chuckles, seeming to take the ironic appreciation at face value. It's something I've seen her do before, even though she should be able to determine the veracity of a statement through her empathic abilities. Does she just not bother? It's nearly impossible to tell if she's paying attention or not.

"So!" Vita says, turning to the last member of the group. "You look like you're doing a lot better, Lark! High twenty?"

She holds up all four of her hands, palms out. Lark glances at them, making no moves to approach. She's wearing her usual white silk shirt and pants, which quite a few people have come to her asking to commission sets of their own. I've personally gotten used to going without clothing, since it tends to restrict me without providing any benefit other than carrying capacity, which I only occasionally need. Nugas is happy to carry things for me if the situation requires it.

"I like being able to just… fight monsters at my leisure," Lark nods. "Templar training was restricting and somewhat overcomplicated, in retrospect. I suppose it's good that you're alive."

"I… suppose it is," Vita agrees awkwardly, her hands still up in the air, waiting for a slap that does not seem likely to ever arrive.

"I got you, Printheth," Xena grins, reaching up her arms as best she can to complete the no-doubt-legendary high twenty, though Vita has to lower her second pair of arms so Xena's still-growing set can reach.

"Aw, yeah!" Vita cheers. "Welcome to the monster girl club, Xa… Xena!"

"Glad to be here!" Xena confirms, bouncing happily. "I can thoot water jetth out of my hornth!"

"That's neat probably!" Vita answers encouragingly.

"It ith neat!"

I manage to smile a little. Such a boundless pile of energy, that one. It's no wonder she can actually keep up with Bently.

"There are other people we need to say hello to, now," I announce. "Altrix will be furious if we don't go see her soon. Vitamin as well, of course, not to mention Rowan and your other siblings. And I'm sure Jelisa and Melissa will want to at least know you're around. And Theodora will come find us, I'm sure. Your giant vrothizo and her partner ask about you nonstop as well, so they might—"

"Penelope," Vita says, cutting me off. "Come on. You're stalling."

I scowl, letting my scales tint red.

"I am not," I say simply. "I'm simply putting other people first."

"Yeah, well, I want to put you first."

She crosses one pair of arms, the others coming to rest indignantly on her hips. Doubling up on stubborn posture, I see. I suppose there's no point in arguing with her if she insists on speaking with me before her own family.

"Very well," I sigh. "What would you like to do, exactly?"

"I want to talk to you," she says. "Alone."

I nod. I wanted to show her the rest of the town we've built in her absence, on the back of her efforts, as a safe place for the people she cares about most. The town that I de facto rule. I need to maximize my negotiating position and get her under control, before whatever 'conquering' she intends to do starts putting us at odds. If that's a task I have to deal with now, before I'm fully ready, then so be it.

"Fine," I say. "Come with me."

I don't lead her anywhere important, just a nearby half-finished building that will be neither under construction nor occupied at this time of night. It's alone enough.

"What's so urgent, then?" I ask her, crossing my own arms under my chest. Gah. I worked so hard on Vita's body, and now she doesn't even have it anymore.

"It's not a matter of urgency," she tells me. "It's just… you've been thinking of me like I'm a problem since I got here. I don't want to be your problem, Penelope, I want to be your solution."

"You have explicitly stated you are here to conquer the island on behalf of Hiverock," I remind her. "I wish to conquer the island on behalf of its people."

"Those two things don't have to be mutually exclusive," Vita insists. "There's more than enough resources on Verdantop to support both populations."

"And yet I fail to see a reason why we should support the genocidal insect creatures that have been systematically converting the animal matter of the island into destructive living bioweapons. They've already killed countless thousands!"

"Okay, I mean… yes, but they're my family now! They're nice and they love me and I love them and just… it's complicated, okay? Sure, they're xenophobic, but their society is amazing and they'll at least respect anyone we decide to make immortal! As long as I'm here, and I'm alive, the attacks will stop. We can wipe out the vrothizo with their and Nawra's blessing, and we can just trade a little water and grain for the ability to keep existing. And we have plenty of those things!"

"Vita, you literally lived as a starving orphan."

"Okay, well, we have plenty of water and we will have enough grain once we clear out enough of the forest. You and I can do that! I bet you've already figured out ways to curb the most dangerous encroaching flora species."

I have, it's true. But she's rather missing the point. …Or am I missing the point? How much food and water is worth reliable peace with a superior foe? Is it reliable peace, or will Hiverock change their mind? Shit. I think I have to go along with it either way, because we need peace with Hiverock. I've seen firsthand how they've been putting next to no effort towards their conquest against us. What we thought was suicidal desperation was actually just having their leftovers tossed thoughtlessly at our faces. The ease at which Vita crushed the High Templars we have remaining is clear evidence of that.

"I'll accept that basic compromise," I allow. "What's the catch?"

"There's no catch," she insists. "As long as Liriope is getting the resources they need, this island is mine to do as I see fit. And… well, you're a better leader than I am, Penelope. So I'm more or less here to put you in charge."

"Me," I repeat flatly. "Will your newfound pride truly allow you to swallow that?"

"Well we'll definitely have to act like I'm in charge or the girls upstairs might metaphorically raise an eyebrow, but… yeah, of course. Of course I want you in charge. I don't think I'd allow anyone but you."

"Then you are a fool of colossal proportions," I answer flatly. "I am an unstable mess of constantly-reapplied animancy commands. I have personified myself as my own principles, and I frankly suspect that I will end up insane within a decade. And even if none of that were true… no, especially then, I would be a terrible candidate for leadership. The Penelope you knew was a sadistic, narcissistic, megalomaniacal sociopath who consistently failed to uphold any of the values she purported to believe in. Your judgment in proper leaders is clearly flawed."

Vita's eyes reconfigure. I recognize this one. It's joy. …Why?

"Well sure, I'll cop to being biased," she says. "After all, I loved her. And I still love you."

"You don't even know me," I dismiss. "And it would seem I no longer know you."

"You know half of me," she argues, "and I think I still know at least half of you. That's better than a lot of couples I've seen."

"Truly, your standards for healthy interpersonal interaction are unrivaled," I deadpan.

She barks out some more alien laughter at that, and I remember how beautiful her laugh was as a human. There was almost always an anger to it, a harsh edge hidden in the back of her mirth that drew me like a moth to candlelight. Now she's the moth, sitting before me and staring like I have fire in my eyes. Usually, I feel nothing at all when I think of her. Now, suddenly, I'm starting to feel an ache. But not joy. Not like I used to. Just… an ache.

"I do not love you," I remind her. "I am not sure that I can. We brought out the worst in each other, Vita. We enabled each other to drop deeper into the pit from which our worst sins crawled out."

"And we cuddled at the bottom," she says longingly. "It was wonderful."

"Vita…"

"Penelope," she presses. "You got me out of that prison. I probably would have been there until I cracked, you know? Maybe even after that. You worked so hard for me. You spared me having to kill my own family! I just… I know our relationship was weird, and different, and really confusing for both of us. I barely even did anything, but somehow, you made it work. You put in the effort for it, and so it worked. It's my turn to do that now. Is that okay?"

The ache again. Damn it. There's something missing which should be there. I suppose it's only natural that it hurts.

"If I had asked your permission to pursue you back then, you would have said no," I remind her. "I did so anyway, knowingly. So who am I to stop you?"

Again, her eyes light up with joy. It's the only one I can identify now, but I'll learn every last expression she has.

"Thank you," she says. "In that case, I have my first courting present."

She loosens her armor, and while my mind immediately goes ballistic trying to figure out why she's getting naked, she actually leaves it all on and pulls out a hefty stack of papers from within it, handing them all to me.

"Here you go," she says. "The advantages, disadvantages, unsolved problems, and of course methodology behind true biological immortality. I translated it by hand for you."

She drops them into my claws, stunning me like I just hit a mountain at supersonic speeds. Almost automatically, I start leafing through it all, an impossible treasure trove of biomantic knowledge greeting me within the pages. It's not specialized for humans, but… oh, Watcher. This… this is…

This is a very fucking good present.

"Drawing all the little diagrams was the hardest part," Vita says innocently, and I barely manage to peel my eyes away from her work to stare at her with utter disbelief.

I have no words. There is nothing to say.

"You wanna stay here and read it while I go say hi to everyone?" she asks, doubtlessly knowing that at this moment there is nothing else more important to me than these papers, the end goal of my entire life's work just casually handed to me with a joke and an alien smile.

"Y-yes," I tell her. "Thank you."

She reaches up to pat me on the shoulder (perhaps because she's unable to reach my head) and strolls casually out of the half-built building, in which I will soon obtain the knowledge to become a god.

I won't even last a tenday against her, will I? That asocial, impossibly dense little bug is going to woo me faster than I even worked up the courage to tell her I was interested.

…Whatever. Embarrassment is unproductive. I return to the first page, and I start to read.