Life aboard The Chariot was new and exciting for Terra, despite the fact that most of what she did from day to day was grunt work. Her aching head lasted a little over two weeks while she got used to her role among the crew. She wound up splitting most of her duties between maintenance shifts with the reclusive elf brother, Thimel, and housekeeping work with Cassie and Ezra.
Ezra had been the last of the crew that Terra had met. She was a nervous quiloc girl, a race with rounded, rabbit like faces and thick follicles that stood on end with sharpened points whenever they felt threatened. Ezra had shaved any part of her body that was frequently under her clothing to avoid ruining outfits constantly. Her black, retractable claws were always chewed up to the quick. She wasn't the sort of person Terra would have imagined as a champion, but she had a familiar that followed her everywhere, shape-shifting to whatever forms would best support Ezra's needs at the time.
Sly was contemptuous of Ezra's familiar. He claimed using potential in that way was a waste. As if the system seed was serving Ezra instead of the other way around.
Terra thought it was sweet, just like the small young woman herself.
Whenever they finished their work, Cassie would invariably invite Terra and Ezra to eat with her or hang out with her. She was always cheery and eager to spend time with others. While Terra enjoyed the company, she was well aware that Cassie was taking her under her wing the same way she had taken the nervous Ezra under the other. She had no doubt Cassie would have included the shy Varse in her mother-henning just as often if the massive man wasn't impossible to drag along. He only had to stand in place to avoid being pulled in the extrovert's wake. Even given that, the four of them ate more meals together than apart.
So it came as no surprise to Terra that Cassie had been as much behind her winding up on the Chariot as the Captain had been. Cassie had heard about Terra running away on the night of her engagement- it had been prime gossip among the noble families throughout their galaxy- and had kept her in mind after that. Once she had signed up with Surith, she'd made the request that they stop on B15-Terra if they were ever passing near it. Cassie had tried to get subtle messages out to lure Terra in, but Terra's father had caught onto them instead, prompting him to increase the bounty before his heir could escape the planet.
"It's funny... if he hadn't raised the bounty I don't think I would have left. I was happy with the life I had carved out for myself in the low city." Terra admitted.
Cassie gave Terra a concerned look over the top of her noodles. "What changed?" She asked, her omnipresent smile quavering dangerously low.
"It's not your fault. One of my friends wasn't as much of a friend as I had thought he was, you know?"
"Shameful." Varse commiserated, patting one of Terra's shoulders with a hefty hand. He pulled it back sharply at the jerk of her shoulder. He rarely remembered his own strength, something he needed to work on as a Second Order being since if his Brains didn't catch up to his Brawn he would start doing a lot of damage. For now, he was mostly just clumsy due to his mind struggling to keep up with the force and nimbleness of his body.
Terra had never seen someone with unbalanced stats before she'd met him. Disparity of greater than 5 points in stats created an imbalance in one's body, with stats lagging by 10 or more points causing danger to the self and those around them. If someone significantly lacked Brains compared to their other stats they'd end up clumsy and eventually dangerously destructive. Brawn lagging behind would cause general weakness and eventually fainting from over exertion on an inadequate body. Inadequate Finesse would initially appear as clumsiness as well, though in the fine-motor skills instead of the gross-motor skills, but would eventually cause an inability to coordinate any physical actions properly between body and mind. A deficiency in Heart was not as immediately dangerous, but led to psychopathic behavior as mental and physical capabilities exceeded the ability to sympathize with others in more abstract ways. Unlike the other stats, Capacity would not impede a champion's abilities if it lagged, but their familiar would stagnate and be incapable of supporting any further growth, creating a hard cap not unlike the mortal cap on all other stats.
This was one of the lessons Terra was learning from Sly whenever she wasn't working. He had taken it upon himself to instruct her in the intricacies of improving herself theoretically and would set her tasks intended to improve her stats. She wasn't able to see how things were progressing right away since Sly refused to screen her again until she had healed from making her deal with the Interim. The pain going away was not enough, apparently. By the time Sly finally agreed to screen her again, she was not displeased with the results of her work over the three previous weeks.
Terran Starmer XI ⛝
Human - 24 - Female - Second Order
Stats
Brains: 6
Brawn: 7
Finesse: 8
Heart: 6
Capacity: 11
Trained Skills
✦✦✧ Athletics [ - ]
✦✦✧ Drawing [ - ]
✦✧✧ Disguise [ - ]
✦✧✧ Hacking [ - ]
✦✧✧ Performance [ - ]
✦✧✧ Persuasion [ - ]
✦✧✧ Streetwise [ - ]
✧✧✧ Cooking [ - ]
✧✧✧ Deceit [ - ]
✧✧✧ Maintenance [ - ]
Skill Gifts
-none-
Talents
Reality Sense [Enhanced - Elusive]
Shifting [Unenhanced]
Besides her exercises having increased her Brains by 1, all her practice back on her homeworld, as well as her work since had pushed her Capacity past mortal limits, pushing her into the Second Order. Likewise, her Hacking skill had improved a star rank and she had gained the basic Maintenance skill from all the work she'd been doing with Thimel. Most surprising of all though was her first talent enhancement.
[That shouldn't be there.] Sly said, sounding both defensive and annoyed, rather than happy for her.
'What do you mean? It's a talent enhancement. You had to give it to me, didn't you?' Terra had asked while mentally prompting him to pull up the full information on the enhancement.
Nothing appeared.
[I didn't. This must be part of your deal with the Interim. That's not fair. I was supposed to give you your first enhancement.] Sly pouted.
'I'm sorry, Sly, but can't you please tell me what it does?' Terra prompted. She still couldn't shape her potential into even so small an exertion of influence to make a simple illusion like the windows he showed her.
[Oh. Sure. Here you go.] Sly said sarcastically while a screen full of question marks appeared in front of her assessment.
'Oh, come on, Sly! I said I was sorry.'
[Sure you are. But even if you were, this is the best I can give you, remember? Whatever your super special "Elusive" reality sense enhancement is, I've got no clue.]
Terra sighed over his bitter tantrum, but guessed he was probably telling the truth. Not knowing galled him too much for him to pretend at ignorance out of spite. At least on something like this. 'Alright. Should I scratch your ears, Mr.Grumpy-Cat?'
[I'm not a grumpy cat.] Sly sniffed. Then he had slowly tilted his head towards her, perking his ears up. [Well? Get to it.]
She had given him a good set of ear scritches after that and let her mind feel out what the enhancement might be. It was an inherent part of her talent now, so on some level, she would instinctively know how to use it, but that kind of talent-discovery wasn't easy to make blind. Most of the time, one only had to get the sense of what their talent's nature was, then they could look up exactly what that kind of talent could do and what sort of enhancements it could get.
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Trying that search on "reality sense" hadn't turned up any results other than getting Sly to lecture her that she needed to keep it a secret. Again.
For the time being, that meant she could not get a firm grasp on what Elusive did. She felt certain it was part of what would prevent her from losing her freedom again, but she couldn't sort out anything more than that, yet. The knowledge would just have to come in time.
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The course the ship was following was not one that gave most of the crew anything to do beyond upkeep and training. For the first month, the ship did little more than travel from one uninhabited solar system to the next, stopping to let Devin Solkin and his system seed assess the planets. The man was haughty and impatient with the rest of them. He kept himself apart from all the crew, coming out of his VIP cabin only when he had to or when he was investigating planets. Terra hadn't been sure why Surith let him dictate where they went between delivery contracts until she found out it was his fortune that was paying for all their fuel and supplies. He had gathered significant wealth as he had gathered power on his way to becoming a Fourth Order being. He would use most of that fortune in the future to hire tradesmen to his planet, but for now he spent a portion of it to compensate Surith and her crew putting off more productive objectives in favor of helping him.
That wasn't to say the younger champions weren't working on any objectives though. The Interim always had work to give, even if the meaning of that work made little sense to the champions that received it.
The first objective Sly had presented to Terra had been one of those.
"What is the point of this, exactly?" Terra asked him as she looked over the little Objective window he had generated for her.
New Objective! ⛝
■ Draw 15 pictures of Sly being cute.
■ Place drawings into separate delivery crates.
[The point of an objective is to create changes on a planetary level for the Interim, which then pays forward the potential it could have spent to enact that change itself. Usually that would involve changing something about the course of development on a planet, but in this case...] Sly had trailed off sounding annoyed.
"It just wants to spread joy?" Terra asked, unable to think of anything else. She gestured for him to roll a little more so that his paws were curled up closer to his chest and his fluffy belly stuck out more.
[Yes.] Sly agreed sourly as he turned. [The exact method is something I have to feel out for you, since the Interim doesn't get this specific. What it asked of us was closer to "remove emotional rot." This was the task my judgement said would accomplish that best.]
Terra bit the inside of her lip to keep from smiling at his angst over being made to bring happiness to the universe with his adorable form. "You could have chosen to be a watch instead." She teased while she lined in an expression completely out of her imagination. The death glare she was getting would have hardly been comforting to someone experiencing emotional rot. Except perhaps for her, who was having a very hard time not laughing in his adorably furious, furry face.
Most of the time, the objectives made a little more sense than that. Such as "Rescue the girl on B15-Terra" which had apparently been one of Surith's objectives the Chariot had given her after Cassie had told them about Terra. During their travels, many of the objectives the First and Second Order champions got boiled down to "grow stronger". This involved anything from exercising on the weight machines in the rec hall, to mini-tournaments of tactical war games, to sitting in a circle and sharing their dreams and feelings.
Terra had never gone to any kind of school, but she liked to imagine that her early days aboard the Chariot were something like the boarding schools she had read about in her stories. Between making friends, learning lessons, getting assignments, and working on chores, she felt contented for the time being with not thinking about where she was going or what she was working towards.
Because if she started to think about that, about what Solkin was doing and that it was her own eventual fate, she'd start to panic. She didn't want to rule over a planet as a system administrator. She never had. Spreading tiny bits of kitten-shaped joy down with supply crates was fun. Molding the structure and future of an entire civilization was terrifying.
She knew that Sly must be aware of her feelings and thoughts on the matter since he could see into her mind, but he never said anything to her about her fears, even when he was at his most snarky. She supposed he wouldn't. They both had a lot of growing to do before they looked at planets as something other than stages for completing objectives to gain power. He probably thought she'd get over it before it mattered.
Terra didn't think she would.
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"Can we go down with the shipment today? Please?" Cassie begged Surith and Jenkins as they loaded up one of the escape pods with the three small crates marked for delivery to X9-Jorbal. The plump girl had wrangled Terra into being her accomplice for this endeavor by virtue of grabbing her arm and dragging her along. Terra was just as eager for the chance to get off the ship though. She hadn't stepped foot on a planet in the nearly six weeks since she had joined Surith's crew.
Visiting a system-world was more important for Cassie, whose goal of gaining a system seed couldn't be accomplished on uninhabited planets or in space, but Terra was getting stir-crazy. She squeezed her arm tighter around Cassie's and added: "We can look for local deals while you guys get the basic supplies."
Surith raised a brow at her.
"Or the other way around." She quickly corrected.
"The point of taking a pod down is to save on fuel." Jenkins said. "If we start taking you all down in the pods, that's going to add up fast."
Terra looked around with exaggerated care, then shrugged. "I don't see anyone else asking. Cassie and I are small. No extra trips necessary!"
"That's beca-"
"Oh, let them come along." Surith said, slapping a hand down on her friend's shoulder which caused him to stagger and would probably leave a big hand shaped red spot on his delicate skin. "We haven't landed on a planet since picking Starmer up and Dromedan is still looking for her seed."
Jenkins narrowed his eyes at his captain. "You just want to bring another champion down with us to sew chaos."
Surith's only answer to that was a booming laugh as she pushed the younger women into the pod.
X9-Jorbal was an extremely verdant planet, right down to its capital city. Consisting of a series of massive trees with interlocking branches, carved and grown with pockets that were turned into buildings, High Trukaron was a city straight out of a fairytale. The living city trees were laced through with the world-system's influence, glowing visibly through the veins of leaves and powering the city nestled on and within their bark.
While large ships were forced to land in the main port that ringed around the outskirts of the city, the trees were massive enough that pods could land in a smaller port near the main trading hubs. There were still screenings at the small port- mostly to ensure the people who left at the end of their business were the same people that had come in at the start- but by now it was a simple matter for Terra to bend her results to hide anything too unusual about herself. The screening was much more important for Cassie. The redhead held her breath and Terra's arm tightly with excitement, hoping this time her stats would impress a system enough to give her a seed. She had let Sly screen her to give his opinion on her.
Cassiopeia Dromedan ⛝
Human - 25 - Female - First Order
Stats
Brains: 7
Brawn: 6
Finesse: 7
Heart: 9
Capacity: 8
Trained Skills
✦✦✧ Persuasion [ - ]
✦✦✧ Dancing [ - ]
✦✦✧ Mathematics [ - ]
✦✧✧ Chemistry [ - ]
✦✧✧ Deductive Reasoning [ - ]
✧✧✧ Sewing [ - ]
Skill Gifts
-none-
Talents
Aquatic Affinity [Unenhanced]
Sly hadn't been impressed, but then again, nothing seemed to impress him except himself. He had said her stats were more than adequate for a seed, but that her talent was unlikely to be of much interest on its own. Aquatic Affinity meant that Cassie could swim quickly and breathe water as long as her innate potential could hold out. There were well known enhancements that could make it a much more useful talent, but it was not a promising starting point from the perspective of a system.
His assessment seemed to be the same as X9-Jorbal's. No seed appeared as the smiling woman's screening concluded. She was waved on without comment.
Cassie's perpetual smile didn't leave her face. "It was worth a shot." She said with forced cheeriness.
Terra squeezed her friend's arm in hers. "What would a tree system know about water anyways? We need to find you a nice beach world-system. Maybe put you in a shell-bra."
That earned Terra a laugh and a shove.
It didn't take long for them to acquire the basic supplies they were after. When Terra contacted the captain to let her know they were back at the pod, Surith encouraged them to sneak off and have some fun. "I'll distract Jenkins."
"You know I can hear you." Jenkins' voice said softly in the background.
"He won't realize a thing." Terra and Cassie could hear the bite of the captain's smile in her voice.
"We'll make the most of it." Terra assured with a bright smile of her own.
When she got off the pod's communicator, Cassie was giving her a knowing look.
"What?" Terra asked suspiciously.
"Yes, Captain. Anything for you, Captain." Cassie cooed while miming cuddling a communicator to her face.
Terra scowled. "So you're saying you don't want to go explore the city?"
"No, no. We wouldn't want to disappoint the captain. Can't sew chaos on the pod now, can you?"
Terra didn't deign that with a response.