Ravela stood in her motel room, nursing her neck with one of the cold bottles she had brought with her from the gas station when she woke up.

Sunday morning had just begun, and she was about ready to go to bed again. She remembered the moment the weaker shield at her back broke, the bumps she felt touching the backside of her skull. She could count the fingers just from the memory. The following moments of complete blackout were lost to her, but waking up on the floor of that hallway and seeing the Bomber already standing again still made her heart pound in her chest. Her struggle to get back to her feet, the feeling of being surrounded by two Altered beings.

‘It had been ages since someone had rattled my skull like that,’ Ravela thought.

“Wait, no, it hadn’t! I got concussed on the regular during my matches in the arena!” Ravela amended her thoughts aloud.

‘For you perhaps.’ Something inside Ravela replied snarkily.

Ravela stood up straight. “Oh, oh no, that’s not good.”

‘Not good? Not good! I had to watch you helplessly, voicelessly, bumbling around in my body, you dull creature! Possessed by a hooman! Do you have the slightest idea how humiliating that is?’ The voice in her had aired her odd grievance.

Ravela staggered toward the mirror. “Oh, come on! Haven’t I been punished enough? Now, I get an internal commentator?” She looked at herself as Ramiel in the mirror, spotting her true form and sitting leisurely on the edge of the bathtub. “A prejudiced one at that.”

‘Whatever, gutter rat.’ The voice mocked her, mustering her with contempt. ‘I’ve spent too much time watching you bumbling around and almost getting me killed to start being nice to your kind now. I am better than that.’

Ravela’s lips curled, and she snapped back. “Well, excuse me for keeping both of us alive during that time.”

‘Oh, please. Barely,’ There was a pause as the hallucination vanished from her view. ‘Though I must admit, you absorbing energy from the crystal was something. I had no idea I could do that.’ The woman said, reappearing behind her, her mouth close to her ear as though she were whispering into her ear.

Ravela calmed her breath. This was officially ridiculous. She was having some aftereffects from the concussion.

‘That’s another thing. Could you stop referring to yourself with my name? It’s disturbing.’ The mirror apparition aggrieved herself. ‘It’s so wrong.’

“Well, excuse me for not remembering my actual name.” Ravela was no longer looking at the mirror. She found herself gesturing at the thin air in the bathroom behind her. Her hand found her forehead and slowly dragged down her face. With a sigh, she looked at the mirror again and thought. ‘And who are you calling a gutter rat?’

‘Oh please, I saw your dreams of you riffling through the tunnels of the city above you, stealing out of warehouses. What would you call that?’ Her copilot mocked her.

‘I’m calling it being a survivor. I liked you better when you were the occasional dream about your sister -what’s her face-.’ Ravela snapped back.

The reaction she got was unexpected. Her mirror illusion’s face showed a mixture of sadness and rage.

‘Ombia is her name. You’d do well to speak of her with respect, veneration even.’

‘Relax, I apologize. Look, obviously, we’re stuck in this situation, and I don’t know much about family or your people. We clearly didn’t get off to a good start, seeing as I got stuck piloting your body.’ Ravela tried de-escalating. ‘Truce?’

The look she got was a measuring one. ‘I suppose you did well for your kind in keeping me alive. I have no doubt that had you been born in different circumstances, you could just as well have been one of humanity's finest. And I doubt my reaction to arriving on a human world would have led us to the semihidden situation we’re in now.’

“I will take that as a compliment, I guess,” Ravela said out loud, stretching a bit. “And what would you have done in my place?” She asked curiously.

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A concerning smile crept onto her new companion's face. ‘Oh, I would have thrown all caution to the wind.’

“That doesn’t instill confidence in me. You got a problem with humans?” She asked, narrowing her eyes at, well, the actual Ravela.

The mirror image bared her teeth in a toothy grin. ‘I could say your kind started it, but that would be a lie. I am still wondering how these humans were able to alter through our birthright. It was deemed impossible.’

“You seem to know your memories and my own substantially better than I do. Doesn’t seem fair to me.” She complained while starting to brush her teeth.

‘Pff, you get to move my body and taste the food you want to. That doesn’t seem fair to me.’

There was a sign of real upset in her words. Ravela rolled her eyes and thought about her response while still brushing her teeth. ‘Anyway, what were you before all this? You seemed to have grown up sheltered.’

‘Sheltered? My parents manned a void station on the edge of the Galaxy. It would be more accurate to call it isolated. You’ve seen my sister and me at the pond. That was the first time we had seen a body of water beyond a puddle from a burst pipe. You saw us enter into the glorious presence of the center of my people's most holy ground. I had never seen so many of my kind in one place before. From there, we became soldiers of the only civilization in our Galaxy. At least we tried to keep it that way.’ There was hesitation in her voice. The expression on her face became distant and thoughtful. A moment later, she blew the illusionary hair out of her face. ‘Anyway, when will you shave this atrocity you let grow on my head? It is impractical.’

‘You know, I like the hair, and I think it’s-’ Ravela started before a somehow loud thought interrupted her own.

‘Irritating? Yes, Yes, it is! It is not just unclean. It is also beneath my station. I am no child or civilian. I am a chosen of the throne. It’s humiliating!’ There was some actual distress in her voice. This shaven head seemed to be a very intricate part of her culture.

‘Eh.’ She retorted while putting away the toothbrush. ‘I think it is quite pretty, and right now, you and I both are civilians.’

‘Oh, you nasty thing. You take that back! I am part of the guard wherever I am!’ The apparition was punching at her surroundings and hitting right through them. It would have been adorable if it couldn’t have been a superpowered murderous outburst.

She left the bathroom, but to her chagrin, she didn’t leave behind the voice in her.

‘Hey, we were just talking. You can’t walk away from me?!’ The voice complained.

‘I sure as shit don’t have to watch you throw a fit over some hair. Tell me if you want to be helpful until then…maybe just think your temper on…I don’t know how to say this. Keep your fits in my subconscious and not my active conscious. Also, your bald head looks kinda weird.’ Ravela shot her down.

‘Why you-!? Fine, fine, be that way. Don’t expect me to work with you, though.’ Then there was silence, a very loud silence in her head. At least it felt silent.

‘Aww, don’t be like that. Let’s compromise. I’ll cut it back in a way that it doesn’t get in your eyes anymore. Or rather, can’t you just imagine yourself to be bald?’

There was a long pause that felt like someone wanted to answer badly but had decided not to.

‘I’m sure you’ll be back. After all, a friend of mine once said: You can’t walk away from me.’ Ravela threw one last swipe at her new passenger, waiting for her to take the bait. It surprised her that she could tell there was a reaction to the fact that she felt mildly annoyed afterward.

“What an odd turn of events. Maybe it was just the concussion.” Ravela said to herself without real conviction. Things only ever got more complicated for her, it seemed.

She sat down in her car and drove directly to her property. At least Safora and Laena decided to make her life easier by flying over themselves from now on, though Safora had been way more enthusiastic than Laena at the prospect.

It was at least one thing off her plate. She just hoped the girls would remain as careful as they had promised.

Ravela had decided whilst sprawled out on the barn floor the day before that she’d put her trust in the teenager on that front. If they failed and were found out, they promised they wouldn’t involve her. Ravela did, however, not believe that for a second yet. But she had to resolve things as they came up, and a gut feeling told her she wouldn’t have to worry on that front, at least for some time.

She pulled off the highway and felt something in her scoff, a subtle sign of her co-pilot’s disapproval or her own doubts. It was hard to tell right now.

Ravela arrived in her driveway after another ten minutes. It was still early enough to get some work done before the girls arrived. Outside, she took a deep breath of fresh air.

She massaged her soar neck while she walked in the barn. Ravela stood still for a moment, a thought appearing in her mind. The girls would show up in the forest behind the house, and Safora was aching for some action.

Ravela put on her armor before returning the rest of her stuff to its place in the roofing beams.

Through her armor-altered voice, she said to her passenger, “You're going to miss some fun if you keep all quiet. I would like to hear some input on my two recruits. Unless you got nothing worthwhile to contribute as a member of the guard.”

‘I can watch without commenting at all, but if you insist, I shall evaluate you and these children you’ve been babysitting.’ The voice mockingly replied.

Ravela twisted and turned a bit, then tested her balance with a handstand. Her body seemed to follow her will without trouble, but she would refrain from any sudden head movements. She did some proper stretching practice in the armor and found that her muscles did not ache any longer.

‘One of the many luxuries my armor affords.’ She heard the comment from her companion.

Ravela did some cartwheels and other easy stunts to reaffirm that her body didn’t suffer some lingering balance issues. To her relief, even complex and fast spins and jumps did not lead to any loss of balance or direction.

“Alright, let's go into the woods and set up an ambush for my students. I want to see what they’ll do when they set upon suddenly.” She hummed the tune of a popular song from the radio. “That should be very educational, right? Why should I be the only one getting ambushed?”

She felt a vague sense of glee and skepticism in her. Her new companion seemed to approve of the ambush of her students but doubted her reasoning for it. At least, that is what Ravela speculated that feeling meant. They hadn’t known one another long enough to understand each other without words.

Ravela vanished into the thicket of the forest effortlessly. Waiting was half the fun of a good ambush, she felt. Laena would no doubt be faster to react, but something told her Safora would really be the one to get the most out of this. The girl had been itching for a fight or to be part of something fun, and Ravela had let her down two weeks in a row, which in teenager time might as well be a year, and Ravela needed some fun, too.