Farewell customs were certainly different in Khepri.

Sasha stood by as her many new friends touched their antennae with her ears. For the ones that didn’t have antennae, they wanted her to touch shells. Not having a shell herself, she opted to use her bare back instead. When everything was said and done, she gave the kids one last parting wave before she and Xan headed back to the ship. Much to Sasha’s surprise, both the kids and their guardians waved back.

“C’mon, Panther!” Mr. Xan called. “Time to go!”

“Huh? Oh. Yeah. Coming.”

She ran over, jumping up the building and climbing to her liaison. The suited kheprians were trying to flag Mr. Xan down when she reached the top, but the panda ignored them as he hurried up the bridge.

“Please, Ms., if we may,” one of them said, coming to her instead.

They pushed a pamphlet in her hands. She turned it over, the front showcasing some tall spider woman with sparking red eyes and an encrusted white dress. While most of the pages were blank, there was one phrase written in the center.

Madame Dyré sends her regards.

She looked to the kheprians for an explanation only to find them crawling away.

“Sasha!”

She flinched. Shoving her new find in her pocket, Sasha quickly boarded, the door slamming behind her.

***

As quickly as Mr. Xan pulled their ship off Khepri, you would think the place was full of lava. Only moments after reaching warp space, the panda passed out in his chair. The robots kept an eye on the ship’s course in his stead.

“Our next signal is for the planet Wonder in the Xenon cluster,” said one of the bots. “ETA in six hours.”

“Right. I’ll leave it to you guys then.”

She gave the robots a parting wave even if she knew they weren’t really programmed to wave back. Word in the cosmos was that robo-sentience would arrive in a few years. Best not to make enemies before then.

Moving to her room, she immediately plopped on the bed, laying back to stare at the ceiling. Another world, another headache. She reached into her pocket, pulling out the strange pamphlet. It didn’t look out of the ordinary. She gave it a sniff, the smell of regular paper not setting off any alarms.

“Should I be concerned, Ms. Sasha?”

“Don’t judge me, GT,” she said. “It’s called being thorough.”

She considered doing a taste test but instantly opted against the action when she remembered exactly where she’d just been. No way anything on Khepri was remotely edible.

“Maybe I should ask, Mr. Erin,” she said. “He’s probably done sulking by now, right?”

“You’re asking me?”

“Well, you are the superweapon. Kinda assumed that meant you were super smart.”

“I’d like to believe I have above-average intelligence. I suppose that makes one of us.”

She glared at GT. Did she really just get insulted by a metal stick? Before she could counter, the staff was disappearing into whatever void it went when she wasn’t using it. The coward.

Note to self, make a comeback later.

Putting the paper back in her pocket, she made the short trip from her room down the hall to Mr. Erin’s den.

For privacy’s sake, there were no windows on any of their doors. There were buttons on the side they could press to speak to each other in case of emergencies, but for the most part, it was always up to whoever was inside who got to come visit. Sasha had yet to see what either of her liaison’s rooms looked like. She cleared her throat, pushing the speech button.

“Mr. Erin,” she said. “It’s Sasha. Are you busy?”

No response. She was about to press the button again when the door rose on its own. She instinctively stepped back, not quite sure being turned into a pancake was off the table.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

“I can make time, yes.”

She relaxed.

Mr. Erin’s room was a bit smaller than hers. Or at least it looked that way what with all the textbooks and machinery lying around. The squirrel himself was bent over a table, tools twisting away at some contraption with wires and a wooden frame. It took her a bit to realize she was looking at Mr. Erin’s wand.

“T-this isn’t a bad time?” she asked.

“Not particularly, no,” he said. “Just routine maintenance. Have to change out the wiring every so often, or the energy outputs get messy.”

She wandered inside, peering over Mr. Erin’s shoulder. As many times as she’d seen his wand, it had always piqued her curiosity. Mr. Xan may have claimed her God Tool was strong, but GT couldn’t stop time or summon water jets willy-nilly. In fact, all it could do was whack things.

“Is that how the magic works? It's all in the wires?”

Mr. Erin smirked. “Magic would be a poor choice of words, Ms. Panther. It may come as a shock, but magic isn’t real, I’m afraid.”

“Rabbit crap. You make time freeze.”

“Only the perception. I’m not a wizard. If I could really stop time, I wouldn’t need to worry about all these wrinkles I keep finding.”

“Then how do you explain all those monsters you made float and junk? Or the magic circles? That smells like wizardry to me.”

“Light-based projections. As for the ‘floating,’ that would be from the gravitational fields. Dump enough energy, and you can essentially create pockets of space.” He glanced back at her. “It’s not that different from what you can do.”

She blinked. Huh?

Mr. Erin set his tools down, his goggles lowering onto his neck. She quickly took notice of the rings under his eyes. The slight red in his pupils. He scratched his neck, stretching it out like it was as stiff as a log.

“I pride myself on staying alert, Ms. Panther,” he said. “And it’s hard to forget the image of a graduate plummeting to their death.”

She shrunk. “Oh. You saw that, huh?”

“You mean with you screaming and flailing around? Only a little. But I guess you did kill the target, so I can let that slide.”

He smirked. Though she was wary of bringing up the topic of Argos, Sasha relaxed seeing Mr. Erin casually speaking about it. The squirrel moved to one of the bookshelves, pulling out a textbook and flipping through it.

“I believe what you experienced was a skill. Fortunately, our ancestors have kept thorough records of such things over the years.”

He set the book down on the bed, the pages showing an inky black sphere and an image of a glowing sword. She couldn’t quite read the lettering underneath it all.

“Do you remember what I told you about signals?” Mr. Erin asked.

“Yeah? It’s how we can track across galaxies, right?”

“Correct. Every being releases them, but not everyone can sense them.”

“But we can.”

“Right.”

Mr. Erin gestured to the book, poking at the giant sphere.

“What you're seeing here is that ability put into action,” he explained. “Using the signals…the energy released through those atomic communications…to bend the world to your whims. In my case, to create time displacement fields. In yours…”

Sasha thought for a moment. She stared at the picture of the man with the sword. Like a flash, she heard GT’s words replay in her mind. What he’d said to her moments before she’d gained her speed boost.

“Gravity…displacement?” she asked.

Mr. Erin smiled. So that’s what that was? She tapped her foot on the ground, remembering the sensation of being lighter than air. It hadn’t lasted long, but it had stuck in the back of her mind even after she’d left Argos.

“So then…I can change gravity?” she asked.

“You can do more than that, Ms. Panther,” he said. “I’d hazard to guess…maybe when you’ve gotten a bit more of a handle on your weapon…time wouldn’t be too far a stretch for you.”

Sasha instantly lit up. “I can stop time?”

“Perception, Ms. Panther. Perception. And theoretically. You would still need to learn how to manipulate that much energy.”

“Then teach me! I wanna freeze people in place! Just call me Sasha the Time Lord!”

Mr. Erin didn’t respond. Sasha squirmed in place at the idea. Sure Cici had her stupid overpowered rings, but if she could stop time, it would easily make her the top cat among the graduates. All five of them that she knew of. Besides. What better way to make an entrance when she found them than to just stop time and appear next to them like a stealthy ninja? The sure look of shock on Iris’s face would be priceless. As the image played through her head, she nearly missed the intercom buzzing with Mr. Xan’s voice.

“Yo!” he called. “Just a head’s up. We’re gonna be getting some company.”

Mr. Erin frowned. “What kind of company? Pirates? Traders?”

“Captain Mercury. Said he was in the neighborhood. Wants to meet the kid.”

Sasha came out of her fantasy. Me? She looked to Mr. Erin, who didn’t seem particularly bothered by the news. He shrugged.

“How long do we have?”

“Three days.”

“Ah.”

“Try not to get axed. Xan out.”

The intercom clicked off, leaving Sasha to stare Mr. Erin down for an explanation. He rubbed his neck, the squirrel closing the textbook and sliding it back into place with the others.

“In that case, we’ve got time to kill.” He picked his wand off the table, the shutter closing over the wires with the press of a button. “So you're interested in learning time displacement, then?”

Sasha quickly forgot about Mercury. “Yes!”

Mr. Erin nodded. “Alright. But maybe start basic. Let’s get you gravity-trained first.”

She summoned GT.

“Teach me, Master Erin,” she excitedly declared.