FINAL EPILOGUE:
Huis Hohenzollern sat uneasily in the dimmed interior of the Rozovoi Q-ship, his mind racing as the ship’s bioluminescent pulses flickered around him. The ship's organic structure seemed alive, each translucent wall pulsing softly with blue and green lights that ebbed and flowed, reflecting the emotional states of the Rozovoi crew. Jagged spikes jutted out from the ship’s core like a monstrous urchin suspended in the void, its neon veins blinking in hypnotic patterns.
The crew, amorphous creatures that glowed in ever-shifting hues, drifted past Huis, their appendages flexing as they manipulated the ship’s organic controls. Their language, a combination of color, movement, and soft, guttural sounds, filled the cockpit. Huis strained to make sense of it, the Rozovoi’s language primer playing in his head like a broken record: Kat mit miit kat... yes, that meant affirmative, but what else? The Rozovoi's communication was too fast for him to keep up.
This place felt alien beyond comprehension, even for a man used to the strange and incomprehensible. He’d thought the strange bioluminescent creatures were just a legend, but now, seated in the core of their pirate vessel, surrounded by technology that seemed grown rather than built, he wasn’t sure how he’d ever return to anything resembling normal.
The room he sat in was an organic sphere, the walls curved and made of something soft but translucent. Through the semi-transparent walls, he could see into the next compartment, where a few Rozovoi were attending to an array of what he assumed were weapons—disguised, of course, as harmless cargo equipment. Their long appendages wrapped around strange, smooth objects as they shifted them into place.
In the dimmed cockpit ahead, the Rozovoi pilot, a glowing figure in shades of violet, used its whiskers to adjust their course. Kat mit miit echoed softly as another of the Rozovoi drifted closer, offering him something that resembled food—an odd, pulsating mass that emitted a soft glow. He declined with a wave of his hand, trying to keep his distance from the bioluminescent feast before him.
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Far off in the void, he saw the comet's debris field stretch below them, the aftermath of the battle still visible. The silvery sands of Caitlin Daisy, the shattered Dyson trees, and the flickering wreckage of the Hohenzollern Excelsior floated in the distance, all cast in an eerie light from the ship's glowing interior.
Huis floated there in the dim, cramped corner of the Rozovoi ship, contemplating the bitter twist of fate that had landed him here. His mind raced, and disbelief ran hot through his veins. Those bitches had really done it. Sold him. Sold him to Rozovoi pirates. All for some technology that would give their ancient spacer enough juice to haul them back out of this cosmic wasteland. They'd barely even said goodbye.
He clenched his fists, staring out the porthole. He couldn’t understand most of what they’d been talking about—Rozovoi, of course they could fucking speak it. The clones and Shin Hajime, geniuses all of them, had switched tongues like flipping a switch, leaving him stranded in his own ignorance. They'd been negotiating his fate, his whole damn life, right in front of him.
But the one thing he did understand, the one thing he'd caught, was how they were pitching him. Selling his skills like he was some prized auction item. The clones had laid out his entire skillset, his history, his connections, his AVP productions, his value—as if they'd rehearsed a living resume.
At first, he couldn't process it, couldn't even get angry. By the time the deal had closed, it was too late to protest. They were shaking his hand, thanking him for his help, his mind too dumbfounded to keep up with exactly what they meant until they all left him there.
But it wasn’t that final transaction with the four Olavi clones that gnawed at him the most now. It was her.
Shin Hajime, that blank-eyed, sharp-tongued enigma, the one who’d destroyed everything. Her last words echoed in his skull, carving out a little corner of his sanity.
"This experience will make one helluva Replay."
She had said it with such clinical coldness, almost as if she knew—knew what Huis cherished above anything else. Not his life, not his legacy. But the story. The production. And damn her, she was right.