Lia set up her notes and data on the chair she had been using, when she was done, she turned to face her audience.

“When I graduated from Imperial Academy, I was always singled out for my ability to remember species designation and racial details.”

It was true, she had been bullied quite often and called teacher's pet by nearly everyone in her class during her prime years in the Academy. Her sister certainly had wrought vengeance upon all who were bold enough to do so, but it had left her ostracized from the rest of her peers. Nobody was dumb enough to mess with the younger sister of the star student, Ariel Hawkers.

“So when I began looking at the cells I gathered from the girl, I honestly thought I was surprised! They weren't from any species I could remember, and even when I ran it through the database, there was a 0% match with any known species! Zero! Zilch! ”

This was odd. The magical organism and species index was a massive library of every known species the elves had ever encountered, with records of their DNA, EBRF(Ethereal Biological Residue Footprint), body type, habitat, and ISQ(Instinct Sentience Quotient). The way the database works is it scans the different parts of the sample provided and runs those parts against all known parts of other species. For example, Kobolds look like dogs or wolves, but when searched up in the database, are found to be distant descendants of dragons.

Even if the species is not the same, the machine will still compare them to other species and show what species the parts of the sample resemble. For a 0% to come up was, to everyone's knowledge, impossible.

“Huh, would you look at that. Something the great elven researchers haven’t found before.”

The dwarf had finished with his little bout of self-pity and just went back to being a crude towards the girl and everyone else.

“Can it Engineer. So what are you saying, sis? Are you saying she's not Terrian? That she’s some sort of Alien?”

“That's exactly what I am saying. That or there's a whole other, never before documented ecosystem on Terra we have not explored yet. And forget species! Strictly speaking, the ‘cells’ I harvested are not cells at all. It’s like, inanimate matter that suddenly decided one day to get up and start walking around!”

“So she's a golem? An artificial construct?” the captain asked.

“Not necessarily. A golem is just a mass of matter controlled by an external source or force. Even a ghost possessing a golem isn’t thinking for itself. The ghost is still the one driving the golem. It can’t feel pain or think for itself just carry out orders, which she can definitely do. And at the same time, I’m not saying she's some sort of homunculus either. A Homunculus is just artificial life similar to cloning just with a little variation from the original. I’m not even sure if girl is the proper terminology here since girl refers to the female sex. Who knows if she can even reproduce! How would she be classified then...”

She wasn’t even sure if you could call this ‘girl’ a lifeform since she didn’t have cells. As far as she could see, it looked as if a pile of inorganic substances picked themselves up one day and decided to suddenly organize themselves, start thinking, moving, learning, and communicating. None of the tools she had could figure out the age of the sample she had, and when she tried to run computer simulations, they came back inconclusive.

It made no sense at all! Normally cells would require energy to move and sustain themselves, but if she didn’t have cells does that mean she didn’t use energy to sustain herself? Doesn’t that mean her physical state will never decay? Not even gods were immortal, they died all the time. It’s just that they were so hard to kill that they might as well be immortal. But her...Was she even affected by the passage of time? If she was left in a box for half a trillion years would she emerge the same, in the same physical state as she was in when she went in?

Everyone was intrigued.

“And you got this all out of a few hair and blood cells?”

To this, the elf smiled. She took out a packet of photographs and distributed them to the crew.

“Take a look at the third photo. This is one of the first photos I took of the ‘cells’. And why I call them cells well...You'll see why.”

The other, curious, opened up the packet and looked at the photo marked with a 3. It was a blurry photo containing several small, silver white objects surrounded by darker gray objects reminiscent of animal cells. Each one was interconnected with the other via a web of darker gray material.

“What exactly is this?” her sister said.

She majored in command and only took biology to fill her science requirement in the academy. It had been so many years that she had forgotten almost all of it.

“When I first looked at those ‘cells’, I thought they might have been fossilized or something, but when then I noticed that they were all moving! This! It's so strange! And those black lines, It's like their some sort of magical parasite, but they're not even alive, just like the other cells in the sample! As far as I can tell, their all some sort of gathering of inorganic matter that has decided to organize itself in an organic manner. As for what those ‘cells’ are. Don’t know exactly. When we get back to Terra I’m going to do more research. Those ‘cells’ are obviously an organic pattern, I just don’t know what they come from.”

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At this point, most of the crew was at least beginning to see why she had been acting strange, shouting in amazement at random times, and literally sleeping at her workstation.

The captain thought back to his old universe. Alien life was not something they had discovered when he was pulled into this new world. Before the war, scientists had been saying for years they could discover new life on other planets. Technology had advanced to the point where intergalactic travel was no longer science fiction. And yet here he was, in a magical universe stuck in the middle ages, on one of three magical moons, with magical creatures like elves and beastmen as crew members aboard a magical space shuttle. Oh, the irony.

"Oh, and don't forget the Extraterrestrial Loli we failed to capture. It was so much easier when there was a walkthrough..." the captain whisper to himself.

“Anyway, I don’t think there's much more I can do with the tools and database I have here. I’ll need a full lab to fully pick apart these cells properly. What I have here just isn’t suited to this kind of work. This is amazing! Non-organic life! The professor on earth would be amazed!”

Prior to being picked for the moon mission, she had been a student who had just finished her doctorate in herbology and ethereal physics and was working on a new application for a type of ignis moss for medical purposes. If she had succeeded, then cheap anti-flame element potions would not have been out of the question. Adventurers looking to dive into fire type dungeons, craftsmen such as non-dwarf blacksmiths and other fire related crafters, and even lava miners would have bought such a product by the cartload.

But when the moon mission was announced, she had jumped at the chance. Unfortunately, she the way she had gone about securing her seat involved giving her data and research she had collected to the previous seat holder. Giving away the data she had worked so hard on had been like someone had torn her arm off, but the chance to find something never discovered on the moon overridden all feelings of hesitation she had.

Her professor had been thoroughly disappointed, though. He knew how hard she had worked on her thesis. And the guy she ended up giving the data too had not been a very good character. He was a nobleman who was only seeking to advance himself in the eyes of the board of science and magicks. Compared to a trip to a giant rock in the sky, 40 years of data for a new potion for heat immunity was worth far more in the eyes of the nobleman.

To add insult to injury, her father had not been very supportive of her decision and her mother had outright been opposed to it. She was already risking one of her daughters on this hair brained trip into the sky, so when her youngest, Lia, had told them she was going with Ariel, it was not received well. But they were adamant, despite the pleading of their siblings and Things deteriorated and they ended up not speaking to each other and Lia moving in with Ariel.

“OK, thats enough for tonight sis. We can continue this tomorrow. Although thanks for letting us know.”

Her sister wisely stopped her sister from continuing. While she was highly curious about what the ‘the little girl’ was, she was more concerned about keeping the crew in top shape. Tomorrow was going to be another hard day, and her sister cutting into the next 4 hours of their sleep time was not going to help.

“Right, well I’ll take the first watch. Lia, if you could give me more detail on your thoughts about what this ‘thing’ is capable of tomorrow, that would be helpful.”

The beastman took the first watch not because he was not tired, but because he wanted time to process this information Lia had shared. An unknown enemy was currently holding them prisoner and cutting off all contact with their commanders. Now they learn that the enemy was capable of feats outside the knowledge of the elves. With no reliable information to base his strategies off of and no information of possible weak points, he knew they were in a bad spot.

The elven scientist, however, was the exact opposite. She hadn’t been sure if the trade she had made back then would have ruined her life or turned her into a renowned scientist.

She had thrown away the respect of her teachers, her relations with her parents, her data, all on the chance that she might discover something amazing. And luckily, as fate would have it, She did.

________________________

It was after Ronnie switched in with James on watch that the captain decided to talk to him. He had been awake for the past 2 hours, contemplating what he would say after the watch switched.

“Hey Ronnie, can we talk?”

The dwarf looked up from the electronics he was fiddling with.

“What!” he said with a little more force than intended.

“Look, I get that we're all stressed, but you were digging a little hard into Lia today.”

“With all due respect sir, you weren’t the one who had to endure her antics for the past few days.” He said gruffly.

“Ronny...forget ranks for a moment. I’m here as a friend! This whole crew, actually, the whole coalition is supposed to be based on racial unity. I know that the elves and dwarfs have the whole rivalry thing-”

“Pffft. Not even close!”

The Dwarf made and The captain pursed his lip.

“I’m trying to help. Lia has done an amazing job keeping us alive when those presumed goddesses came for us, better than any of us did anyway including you. Listen, Lia acts immature sometimes, but she's young and still learning how the world works. Can you at least give her some credit?”

The dwarf went back to tinkering with his electronics for a few minutes. Dwarves were creatures of principle and trust. They mined for a living down under the earth where conditions could turn deadly, either bringing trillions of tons of rock down on your head or suffocating you to death at any moment. The fact that an airheaded elf had staked their lives on some hypothesis of hers without consulting the others, and then acting carefree and studying afterward had steamed him. True they might have died anyway if she hadn’t, but the mere gesture was enough. And to make matters worse, she didn’t even seem conscious of the fact. ‘

“I’ll give it to her when we get out of this steaming mess. Unfortunately, that may be unlikely.”

They had gotten some auxiliary thrusters working, but it was difficult to say if they would hold up long enough to escape the atmosphere. Of course, there was also the huge chance of the goddesses finding them again right outside the moon's atmosphere and killing them, assuming they even got past the barrier, which based on the captain's analysis, was even more unlikely.

“Come on Ronnie. There's still a chance to get back to Terra as long as we don’t give up hope.”

“Hehe, yeah sure, and the moon is made out of my momma's meat pies. Now if you'll excuse me Captain, but I believe its been 3 hours already.”

The dwarf went to go wake up the lieutenant for her watch duty while the Captain was left with a grim look on his face.

As uncouth as the dwarf was, he was right. Who was he kidding? Everyone on the shuttle knew there was little chance for escape, everyone except him. He knew the facts and saw reality, and every time he mentioned escape it only spoiled the mood even more.

Everyone else was resigned to their fate, so why, just why couldn’t he leave it alone. Maybe all he was just hoping for a miracle...