Aria shifted from foot to foot nervously, not quite sure what was going to happen next. After she had met Levia the previous night, she had gone to go distract Mai while Levia ate, but Nuwa told her that introductions would have to wait until the morning and that Levia had gone to bed. Then, in the morning, her mothers had called for a family-only meeting to introduce Levia, making Aria even more nervous.

Something big had clearly happened, but Aria just wasn’t sure what. Maybe Levia gone rogue, or accidentally ruined something important or…something. Whatever it was, though, Aria was sure it wasn’t anything good. Then, finally, the wait was over; the door opened, and Eve stepped in, carrying Aria’s sister. Wait…sister? That was…was…

“Alright, I’m sure you all felt it.” Eve said, interrupting Aria’s train of thought. “This is Levia, and we’ve officially made her into our daughter. We weren’t expecting to, but when we offhandedly told it was a possibility, she jumped at the chance. We gave her some time to cool down and her determination only grew, so we went forward with it.”

“No way.” Mai breathed, rushing over to Eve and Levia. “We get a younger sister? Awesome! I’m Mai, your big sister, nice to meet you!”

“Um, hi.” Levia said shyly. “I’m Levia. Um…thanks for allowing me into the family.”

“Well, aren’t you just the cutest little thing?” Jessica, one of Aria’s grandmothers, said. “I’m Grandma, it’s nice to meet you!”

“And you can call me Nana.” Siph, the other of Aria’s grandmothers, continued, smiling broadly. “And if you ever want to spend time with us, just let one of your moms know and we’ll be right there.”

Levia looked over at Mike, the last of Aria’s grandparents. He gave her a smile and crouched down so he was at her eye level. “I’m Grandpa, and while I’m not as excitable as your grandmothers, if you ever want to talk to anyone about anything, I’ll be here for you.”

Then, to Aria’s surprise, Levia’s eyes began to water. “T-thank you.” She stuttered, reaching up to wipe her eyes. “I…I…sorry for crying, I’m just really happy to meet you. I always wanted a family, and now, I, I…” Levia wasn’t able to finish, devolving into full out tears before she could.

“There, there.” Mai said, standing on her tiptoes so she could pat Levia’s head. “We’re gonna be the best family you could ever ask for.”

“Do you want a hug?” Jessica asked, holding her arms out.

Levia nodded, wriggling out of Eve’s arms before rushing into Jessica’s. “Thank you, Grandma.” She said. “I love you.”

After a few moments, Aria cautiously approached Levia. “Um…hi.” She said. “If I had known last night I wouldn’t have run away.”

“Last night?” Levia asked. “I…don’t remember, sorry.”

“Oh.” Aria said, unsure how to feel about that. “Um, then did you…?”

“She went through the same thing you and Mai did.” Eve confirmed. “And she knew exactly what she was getting into with it. She only found out about the possibility after you left, though, so it wasn’t something you could have known about.”

“Eh?” Mai said, shooting Aria a quizzical glance. “You met her last night and didn’t tell me?”

“Um, sort of?” Aria said. “I was getting a snack and we talked for a bit. Um, Mom was going to introduce her that night so I wanted to wait until they were ready, but then apparently, she made her choice and we delayed to this morning?”

Levia stopped hugging Jessica and nervously approached Aria. “I…I’m sorry if I made you mad.” She said, looking down. “I know I did something really selfish. I hope that we can still be friends.”

“What?” Aria asked, taken aback. “Um, no, I’m not mad at all, just surprised.” She tentatively reached out for a hug, and Levia happily obliged. “I’m…happy, I think. I always thought it would be nice to be a big sister, I just wasn’t expecting it to be…now.”

Yes, now that the surprise was wearing off, Aria was increasingly sure this was good news. Levia seemed like a calm kid, and that was something that Aria was really missing; she loved Mai and Carmen, but she couldn’t keep up with their energy, and they couldn’t sit still long enough to enjoy stuff like reading. Aria wanted someone around her age that she could share books with, and she had a suspicion that Levia might be that person.

And, hugging Levia now, Aria felt an odd desire to protect welling up within her. She hadn’t really understood how Winston, her previous self, had felt about keeping people safe until this very moment, but now she did. “I promise I’ll keep you safe.” She whispered, almost unconsciously. It just sort of…escaped from her mouth without her realizing it.

“I…I think that’s my job.” Levia said. “I, um, don’t remember much, but I feel like I need to do that.”

“No.” Aria said stubbornly. “You’re my little sister, and it’s the big sister’s job to protect the little sister.”

“Um, okay.” Levia said. “If you say so, it must be true.”

“Yeah, it is.” Mai said. “We’re gonna be the best big sisters ever and that means we have to keep you safe.”

“Okay.” Levia said, letting go of her hug and going over to hug Mai. And, after a few moments of that, she proceeded to go and hug each other person in the room in turn, a contented smile on her face as she did. And, the more Aria watched, the more Levia grew on her; things were going to shake up, but that was fine. All Aria needed to do was watch over her little sister and make sure nothing happened to her. And if that meant tapping into her power as a Perfect Chimera…then that was what she’d do.

----------------------------------------

Fortunately, introducing Levia to the dungeon’s inhabitants went smoothly. The only concern with the family had been Aria, and she had warmed up to Levia pretty quickly, and those who weren’t part of the family didn’t mind at all. That only really left Jerry, and Lilith had to admit she was a little nervous about that; after all, they had wildly departed from the original idea of what Levia would be.

Before they had begun their work on Levia, Lilith had let Jerry know that they needed a bit more time that day, and that things would need to be postponed, and now it was finally time to begin. She kept a careful eye on things, waiting for the moment Jerry requested access to their universe, then let Jerry in.

Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

“Ah, that was quick.” Jerry said, appearing alongside Amelia. “I wasn’t keeping you waiting, was I?”

“I was only here for a minute or two.” Lilith replied. “Been a bit of a busy day.”

“Do you mind if I ask why?” Jerry said curiously.

Lilith kept herself from gulping as she looked at Jerry. “Well, one thing led to another and Levia wanted to go through the same process Mai and Aria did, and then for us to adopt her. We gave her some time to cool her head and she wanted to go through with it, so we did.”

To Lilith’s surprise, Jerry smirked. “Yeah, once she sets her mind on something, she’s not the type to stop.” She said. “How’s she settling in?”

“She’s over the moon about it.” Lilith replied. “Keeps talking about how much she always wanted a family and is so happy to have one.”

“Well, she deserves it.” Jerry said. “She had a tough life back on my planes. I’m glad she’s settling in okay.”

“Sorry that we’ve deviated from the original plan.” Lilith said. “I’m not sure she’s going to be up to protecting anything for a decade or two.”

“We’ve got time for that.” Jerry said, waving a hand dismissively. “I wasn’t expecting her to fully acclimate to her new body for significantly longer. This is, in a way, the ideal situation; she forms a much deeper attachment with this universe than she would otherwise have, and she gets to acclimate in a much more natural fashion.”

“Oh.” Lilith said, motioning for Jerry to follow as she led her and Amelia towards the study room. “Well…good. I also took a look at some of the eldritch stuff like you asked. And we realized that we might have let my parents slip through the cracks, so Kali’s checking them now. Oh, and I think you’ll be interested to know that Levia has some modifications too.”

“Fascinating.” Jerry breathed. “I checked her before I sent the soul over, and she was clean. It’s likely that my perception was blocked on that for some reason, but I suppose we’ll never really know for sure. Anyway, how’d your examinations go? Can you read the abilities?”

“Yes and no.” Lilith replied. “I don’t know what they mean, but I can understand bits and pieces by using what you’ve taught me as a base. I see…more than Kali does, if that makes sense.”

Jerry’s eyes widened. “I see.” She said. “We’ll need to have you focus on deciphering that, then; it’ll be imperative in our future work.”

“Already on it. We made a new Parallel named Pandora who will be focusing on that avenue of things full time. We’ll introduce you later, but for now just know that she wants an exhaustive list of all Mana constructs you’ve made and what they do that she can use for reference.”

“Does this stuff even work like normal stuff?” Amelia asked disinterestedly. “Seems like it’s doomed to fail to me.”

Lilith shrugged. “Maybe? Some of it does, at least, and we’ve been able to identify one of my abilities from constructs we’ve seen in our study. It’s like…if normal Mana constructs are two dimensional, then these ones are four dimensional. That’s not totally accurate, but I don’t think we have an accurate way to describe what I’m seeing. Just know that we’re almost completely confident that we can reverse engineer my abilities given enough time.”

“You recognize some of the constructs?” Jerry asked curiously. “That’s strange, it’s not like there’s a single standard way to make them, for them to use the same constructs as me is…unlikely, unless they purposefully did so. Perhaps they were trying to leave you hints?”

“Probably.” Lilith said. “Pandora’s theory is that they want us to be able to make our own eventually, and they’re using this as training.”

“My thoughts exactly.” Jerry said. “Would you mind if I went to talk to her immediately after dropping off some materials for you? It seems that the two of us have quite a lot to talk about.”

Tell her I’ll meet up with you guys. Pandora said. I’d like to talk with Jerry as well.

“She says she’ll meet up with us.” Lilith relayed. “It seems she wants to talk with you too.”

“I’m looking forward to it.” Jerry said, rubbing her hands in anticipation. “I’m dying to learn more. In the meantime, would you mind reading Amelia’s Mana just to see if you can access her eld–”

“No.” Amelia said firmly. “That’s my Mana, and I don’t want people unnecessarily looking at it in case something goes wrong. I didn’t really have a choice with you, but whether or not she can read my eldritch stuff doesn’t make any difference until she’s skilled enough at reading it to do something with that information.”

“Fine.” Jerry said. “I’m sure one of the others would be happy to oblige, we can wait a while until they’re available.”

“Really.” Amelia said flatly. “You’re really going to try and pull that on me?”

“What are you talking about?” Jerry asked, frowning deeply.

“Obviously I wouldn’t be fine with someone reading their stuff, either, you’re just trying to use them to get me to agree, aren’t you?” Amelia replied venomously.

“That’s not it at all.” Jerry said quickly. “If you don’t want her looking at you or your lovers, that’s fine too. I can just ask people from Amy’s planes, it’s not a big deal.”

“Oh.” Amelia said. “Well, don’t do something like that in the future, I won’t stand for it.”

“I won’t.” Jerry promised. “I prefer to keep our relationship good.”

Lilith bit back the urge to ask what Amelia could do if push came to shove, and just gave a nod. “For the record, I won’t try anything like that either. If I ask for something and you say no, that’s the end of it, I won’t pester you any further.”

“Good.” Amelia sniffed. “I don’t have patience for these types of games.”

The group fell into a silence until they reached their destination a half minute or so later. Thankfully, Pandora and Kali were already inside, and they were able to break the awkward silence.

“Jerry, it’s so good to meet you as myself!” Pandora said warmly, rushing over to the group. “I’m Pandora, and I’m super pumped to work with you in the future.”

“Likewise.” Jerry said, giving her a smile. “I’m sure the two of us have a lot we can learn from each other. Would you mind giving me few minutes to get these two set up before we go to work?”

“Yeah, I’ll wait as long as you need. Just lemme know when you’re ready and we can start.”

“Kali, will you help out as my substitute for today?” Jerry asked.

“Me?” Kali asked, surprised. “I’m not exactly a paragon of system design, you know.”

“You don’t need to be, we’re just going over the basics of plane management. We can’t start on system work until they know what the aim is and some things they need to keep in mind.” Jerry replied. She held out a hand, and a few papers appeared within her grip. “Here are my lecture notes, you should be more than capable of teaching the stuff within.”

Kali accepted the papers. “Um, I’m going to need a few minutes to look these over.” She said. “You two just sit tight for a minute, okay?”

“Fine.” Amelia harumphed. “But I don’t see why I need to know this stuff, I’ve already made a system that fixes a lot of the problems with current systems.”

“And that system needed my fine tuning to truly shine.” Jerry reminded her. “And that only modified an existing system; to design a truly robust system from the ground up you need to do a lot of planning around concepts you didn’t even know existed back then.

“I’m confident that, with knowledge of the basics, you can design a system far more potent than any I’ve made, but we need to make sure you’re addressing the right things first. Of course, if there are priorities you feel aren’t properly addressed or are meaningless, do let me know and we can discuss them; we’re trying to avoid getting stuck in the rut of conventional designs, but we need to have reasons for these departures.”

“Whatever.” Amelia said. “Let’s just get this over with, then.”

“Thank you for your cooperation.” Jerry said, giving her a smile. “I promise it’ll be worth your while.” With her piece said, Jerry went over to Pandora, and the two of them began an animated conversation on eldritch Mana structures.

Since Lilith was currently waiting for her wife to finish reviewing the lecture notes, Lilith took a seat and motioned for Amelia to do so as well. “We have some time,” Lilith began, “so why don’t you tell me a little more about yourself and Lia? I understand that you did some rather incredible things for the sake of love, and I’d really like to see what sort of person would motivate someone like you to do such crazy things. I’d ask Lia herself, but I get the feeling she’d downplay her good points, so I want to go to the expert on the subject, so to speak.”

“Why do you care?” Amelia asked, a smidge less coldly than usual.

“I just want to understand.” Lilith said. “I want to know you and her better; she sounds like an exceptional person, and I can’t get the full picture by just asking her what she thinks of herself; she seems to think less of herself than those around her do.”

“Got that right.” Amelia snorted. “But, fine, we have time to kill so I’ll bite. It all started when we were young…”