Avery slammed her foot into a compact ball of dragonleaf, kicking it diagonally across its top to spin spiral it into the floor. Without taking a break, she immediately formed another ball and kicked this, too, across the room.
"I can understand why he never told me anything," Avery panted, running and kicking balls at the same time, "but then he went and left me behind!?" She let out a small growl as she slammed her foot extra-hard, rocketing the ball forward into the net lining the immense training room wall.
Avery paused to rest as she reached the end of the room. She sighed, then looked down at her feet. She knew that, in truth, Bath hadn't deserted her; however, now that she knew his identity as COTD's Dragon, her preeminent desire was to follow him on his conquest across the stars.
She inhaled deeply, then began to run across the room in the opposite direction. "Couldn't he have waited a few years?" she snarled, ripping forward. Everyone around merely saw her as a child, especially her parents. Ever since finding out that Bath was the Dragon, they'd only encouraged Avery to avoid dangerous pursuits.
This, too, Avery understood: if one of their kids--Bath--was destined to perpetually engage in dangerous situations, the parents McLane naturally wanted to keep their other child safe.
'They just don't get it,' Avery thought as she whirred her feet. 'They're in denial. It's not fair to coop me up because of him.'
This time, after Avery completed her round, she let out a sigh of relief. "Dinner," she moaned, fetching a water bottle and a towel before leaving the training room. As she left, the open, blue atmosphere of Earth shone before her. She grimaced: Earth's sky served as a reminder that she was here, while Bath was...somewhere. Gray World, if COTD's official Wikipedia page was reliable.
Before heading over to get food, Avery returned to her family's dwelling. While people of all ages could get their own apartment-style living quarters, no questions asked, Avery preferred to live with her parents. Even if they nagged her about staying safe, or attending her classes in school, she'd lived with them her whole life: living alone at the tender age of thirteen sounded, to Avery's mind, awfully lonely.
"Honey," Samantha called out from the living room. After Bath left, the McLanes had left Basalith to return to their present residence. They'd since refurbished the house with dragonleaf, such that the traditional, colonial-style home brimmed with green flourishes and tendriling vines.
"Mom," Avery replied, smiling. 'I'm not an idiot,' she thought to herself. 'I know I'm not ready. I don't...feel ready to leave home.'
"How was the gym?" Samantha asked, while trimming greenery hanging from the overhead lights.
"Fine," she stated blandly. 'I need to focus on the plan, instead of getting upset over being left behind.' An image of Kray City popped up into her mind. 'That's the goal. In the next two years, I need to be the leader of my own dragonleaf city, just like Anne.' Information of all city leaders was public knowledge. As soon as Avery realized one of the leaders was just a high school dropout, she'd felt exhilarated.
And along the way, she'd continue to amass power. When she had her own city, she'd be able to amass path points much faster. Then, she'd move on to other planets, established city-seeds there, and continue the cycle. She'd found her own schools, corporations, maybe even a line of clothes...
"How much homework do you have?" Samantha probed.
"Not that much," Avery fibbed. She groaned internally as she remembered the stack of worksheets waiting for her in her room. "Mom, why can't I just quit school already?" she pouted, kicking her feet into the kitchen island's lower cabinets.
Samantha turned back from the ceiling, an eyebrow raised. "Really, kid?"
"What?" Avery moaned, placing her head on the island's dark, mottled granite.
"You've asked me if you could quit school at least 10 times," Samantha admonished, "what haven't I already made clear?"
Avery released a pitiful whine. "But it takes up so much time," she grumbled.
Samantha gawked at the ceiling, pausing her trimming motion. "School is only two hours per day," she remarked. "What do you mean it takes up so much time?"
"Ugh, Mom, that's two hours per day that I could be training! What's two times five? ten! That's ten hours per week! And since there are fifty-two weeks in a year..."
Samantha sighed; once she got on one of these number tangents, she just kept going...
"...520,000 hours in a millennium--"
Samantha narrowed her eyes. "You aren't going to be in school for the next thousand years," she muttered. "Something's up with you today. Did something happen?"
Avery exhaled audibly. "Today? Well, Ms. Adams gave us, like, a million pages of reading."
"Due tomorrow?"
"Uhh," Avery croaked, caught in her lie. 'Man, I totally walked into that. Future scheming is interfering with my concentration. "Only a little."
Samantha gave a knowing look. "Mhm, sure. Hey, wait, where--"
Before she could finish her words, Avery had already left her seat and to dash up the stairs and swap clothes.
Samantha rolled her eyes and shook her head. Even though Bath and Avery were both adopted, Samantha had to wonder at a similarity between the two of them: 'Did they get their melodramatic tendencies...from us?'
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
---
Dean grinned. "Awesome," he breathed, expression rapt as he watched long, thin torpedo-shaped vehicles enter--and leave--the lava without visible injury.
"Glad to see it's satisfactory," one of the scientists smiled.
"Make a thousand of them," Dean ordered. "As many as you can fit into this area."
"...One thousand?" The vehicles were difficult to make and, regardless of resource availability, they were huge and clumsy: put more than five within a few miles of one another and you'd almost certainly be beset by trouble.
"Uh," Dean cleared his throat. "Just make a lot," he clarified. He had no idea how many of these vehicles were required to transport people to Gray Land in a timely manner. What he did know is that any solution he came up with now needed to be robust, scalable, suitable for similar gate obstructions in going forward.
Dean clenched his fist in determination, as though crunching something between his digits and palm. 'Using the path points on developing my director skills was a good choice,' he observed, noting the ease with which words came to his mind. The stutter of old was still gone, except for in situations where he was under great duress.
However, given his growing familiarity with running dragonleaf cities and status within COTD as the first human to finish all fourteen boon professions, very few people had the ability to exert pressure on Dean. Two such people were, unsurprisingly, his parents.
Dean returned to his office, intent on resuming mind-to-text communications. Before he could begin, a snake quasi-sapient wrapped statue-like around the Spire poked its head into the hall leading from the balcony.
"Knight," she hissed gently, the sound carrying like the ringing of a struck knife. "Your parents are below."
Dean's self-assured composure faltered; he sat there, face ashen, back stooped. He looked up from his lap, eyebrows curving upwards. "Where's Barkhad?"
Kisserin's pearly belly shone glossy in the light of the hall; simultaneously, her black scales sucked the light in like a winding sieve. Her white fangs were retracted into sockets within her mouth, leaving Dean with the bizarre, and ironic, impression that she needed dentures.
"He went out to join Grey," she replied, eyes stormy. "When am I off duty again?"
Dean gave her a thoughtful look. In truth, he only had his closest subordinates guard the Spire to keep up appearances: Dean would be shocked if anyone on Lime World could deal him a killing blow, even through assassination. Path points were incredibly easy for Dean to acquire; of those he chose to spend, Dean concentrated the vast majority on defensive enhancements.
"You can leave now," he replied simply, refusing to beat things around the bush. Kisserin hissed cheerfully, then withdrew her head and neck from the hall and balcony.
Dean, along with most people in COTD, agreed that path points were, on the whole, fair: path points provided for fairly logarithmic gains. Once you surpassed a minimum threshold, path points could only help so much in progressing down certain boon paths. Dean thought that this was odd: the system appeared to propel people to simultaneously progress lots of different paths at the same time to make full use of their points. However, in all his experience, specializing in one area was the most sure-fire way of attaining success.
Dean scoffed at himself. 'As though you're anything but the poster child of a jack-of-all trades.' Unsurprisingly, he'd cleared out all the lower-tiered path boons without batting an eye, his path point riches merely dented. He actually didn't know how his path points had accumulated so quickly: he didn't engage in any other business than the running of Jerboaland and Snakeseed. Even as he walked sluggisly down the Spire's stairs, his points continued to accumulate like bacteria in a petri dish.
His mouth formed a thin line as he looked at his LeafWatch, a land-shaper invention that displayed both the current time (UST) and path points. Dean wasn't sure how it worked, exactly, but knew that the watch's dragonleaf sprout had the ability to tap into...whatever fountain his path points were gushing out from.
Finally, he arrived at the bottom of the stairs. To Dean, the downward climb seemed long and arduous; however, in reality, he'd only been moving for around thirty seconds. He opened the door, then gave his parents a complex look. He looked around, then ushered them inside, keenly aware of the close proximity between the entrance to the reserved Spire and the bustling Anima.
His parents followed him in silence up the dizzying steps, their breaths coming out in huffs despite their recent advancements along the fourteen professions. Dean didn't even notice that the silence was, if anything, due to the rapid pace he established at the outset of the climb, leaving his parents little room to speak.
As they reached the office, Dean looked on, leaning against the side of his desk, as his parents each took a seat on the couches: his father on one, his mother on the other. The silence felt like a ripe fruit about to burst, or rot.
"You said you were coming to visit," Dean began, cracking the thin, ice-like calm. "I knew you had problems, but this?"
They just gave him sad looks, his father's tinged with anger, his mother's with regret. "I haven't been happy with our relationship for years," Dean's mom, Hope, admitted. She glanced at his father, Robbie, before continuing. "It's not your father. I--we just haven't been in love. And that was okay: we spent our time caring for you, and your sister...saving for college. But with everything that's happened..."
Robbie remained silent, his dark brown face slightly red. In his eyes, Dean thought he saw embarrassment.
"It's fine," Dean murmured, eyes dark and inscrutable. "Just do what you want." Inside, he felt like his heart was folding in on itself. Without his director boons, he'd be unable to keep his serious, immovable facade.
His parents shared a look before returning both of their attentions to their son. "We just wanted to let you know."
Dean nodded, shifting his crossed arms closer to his chest. "Yeah, thanks," he replied emotionlessly, his eyes like two blank voids, as though his sight was focused on a far away location. "What about Gina? You told her, I guess."
"Yes, she knows," Robbie replied gruffly. Dean was unsurprised, given that Gina still lived with the two of them.
"Well," Dean began, clearing his throat. "I'm, um, kinda busy."
Hope bowed her head. "Right. Well, love you."
Robbie nodded. "Good work."
Then, having nothing more to say, the two left the office and proceeded downstairs to the exit.
Dean's expression didn't change as he walked from the outer side of the desk to his chair and sat down.
---
This time around, Bath left Lisa in charge of establishing a city-seed from scratch. While she did that, he embarked on a serious tour of Illudis, just as he'd vowed to do when he first visited the planet. Bath found that the planet's environmental conditions were quite similar to Earth's. Interestingly enough, many of the species had convergently evolved with Earth species.
Bath almost immediately realized, after swallowing countless lifeforms, that the primary non-sapient lifeforms on Illudis clearly shared a distant evolutionary ancestor with the verdora. These creatures were six-legged, aquatic dogs that filled Illudis' mighty oceans.
He compared the evolution between verdora and their ancestors, and, in turn, compared this to the evolution of humanity from its prehistoric relatives. He found few similarities, indicating that, for all intents and purposes, both species had developed without outside interference. Bath could only sigh: if their genetics couldn't help him find out the cause of widescale convergent evolution, he resolved to find out the mystery behind the humanoid-dominated composition of the universe.
Unfortunately, the rather inhuman characteristics of the verdora currently complicated this endeavor. After twenty hours of absorbing verdora from different region of Illudis, Bath grinned, his eyes glinting. This evolution information search, while interesting, was only a way for Bath to pass the time: he was really killing time until Lisa announced that Illudis' first human city, Whitesun, was completed.
Finally, after a day, Lisa called Bath over to take an official look.