Killerie sniffed at one of the snacks on display, a weird spiral-shaped fuzzy thing nearly six inches long. She had no idea what it was, but it certainly smelled nice.

The vendor selling it was a tripedal beige-skinned creature with rubbery skin and too many eyes. He (or at least she thought it was a he) was giving her and Madeline a slightly strained smile. Killerie thought maybe he had to go to the bathroom and was being polite, but she was hardly one to make assumptions uninvited.

“What is it?” She finally asked, backing off.

The vendor’s smile somehow stiffened further. “It’s a bievachie, a local snack here! Would you like to try one?”

Killerie glanced at her mom with a pleading expression, and Madeline gave her a nod. Turning back to the vendor, she happily replied, “Sure!”

He carefully removed one of the snacks and held it out. When Killerie grabbed it, he retracted his hand rapidly, almost as if his elbow moved faster than his fingers. An alien reflex mechanism, maybe?

Putting it aside for the time being, Killerie stuck the bievachie in her mouth and bit down. It was cloying and bitter, but in a way that made her mouth want to cry.

Swallowing, she gave the vendor an awkward grin, distancing the snack from herself. “That’s a very good snack!” She told him, happy for once that the emotion portrayed through her vocoder didn’t quite match what she was feeling.

He seemed enormously relieved by her stated pleasure with it, though, and she left feeling a little better about herself. She had experienced something new, after all, and wasn’t that what she was here to do?

“Killerie!?”

The great centipede turned, shock and excitement balling up inside her as she realized who had spoken. Jason and his parents were walking over, luggage in tow, her new friend bearing a giant smile on his face.

She skittered across the ground towards them, and Jason jumped forward. An intrusive memory of Coffee Shop, the malevolent boy sprinting forward as twin cups of hot liquid sloshed at her face flashing through Killerie’s mind, but before she could act on it, Jason slammed into her stomach and wrapped his arms partway around her in a hug.

“Jason!” Killerie squealed, the memory vanishing as she tried to hug him in return. “What are you doing here?”

“We’re on vacation!” He enthused, pulling back. “Mom and Dad wanted to look around before we got to the hotel.”

“We’re doing that too!” Killerie gushed, happily dancing in place. Madeline approached Jason’s parents with a ready smile, starting one of those adult conversations that made Killerie want to go to sleep.

Jason suddenly noticed the snack floating beside Killerie’s head, and his eyes turned round. “Floating food!”

Killerie glanced at the levitating bievachie, guiding it through the air towards Jason. “I’m actually holding it! It’s a shedling thing.”

“Without touching it!?”

“Yeah! Just look!”

Briefly focusing on the unusual snack, she flipped it over and started rotating it. Jason’s jaw dropped, and he started spluttering. “You can - and it just - that is so cool!”

He tentatively grabbed it out of the air, then turned to Killerie with an awestruck expression. “Can you do that with people!?”

She shook her head, antennae swishing through the air. “No, people are too heavy. I can’t lift that much.”

Jason still looked awed. “Can you teach me how to do that?”

Killerie squirmed. “I don’t think shedlings can teach telekinesis,” she told him, apoloegtically hooking two of her legs together. He wouldn’t be too upset about it, right?

Her fears were entirely unfounded as Jason promptly ignored the statement, taking a bite out of the bievachie. His face wrinkled up, at first in disgust and then confusion. Looking from it to Killerie, he said, “That tastes like being lost.”

“I know!” She agreed, legs alternating in excitement. “That’s exactly what it tastes like! Thank you!”

All three parents walked back over, still chatting. Madeline gravitated to Killerie, standing beside her with a relaxed smile. “Well, while you’re here, why don’t we take a look around?”

“That sounds fun!”

There was a short moment of confusion as the adults tried to figure out where to go first. Killerie’s personal suggestion was that they go find more new kinds of food. In spite of her unfortunate experience with the bievachie, she was eager to have more new experiences.

While both of the mothers spoke, Jason’s dad sidled over to Killerie. “Hey, so… I’ve been chatting with Madeline a bit, and I just wanted to apologize for the questions I asked earlier. I’ve… had better moments.”

Killerie blinked, her eyes shuttering with a click. “What questions?”

He stared at her for several seconds, then ruefully shook his head. “Yeah, okay, never mind. Just - trust me on this, they weren’t good questions. I’m sorry.”

She shrugged, a shivery motion that made her whole body wiggle. “Okay! What do you want to do now - wait! Mom, I just had an idea!"

Circling around Madeline’s legs, Killerie rambled as she walked. “Alright so I was thinking about tech and stuff and I realized that there’s gotta be someone here that sells something I can take apart! Can we go find it!?”

Madeline couldn’t help a laugh from bubbling out of her. “You want to find someone without knowing if they’re here or not?”

“Or if they even exist!” Killerie confirmed happily, her legs almost shimmering as she raced around her mother’s feet, having to walk on her own bag as she circled in a smaller radius. “So can we go?”

“I think we should do it,” Jason’s dad suddenly spoke up, and all eyes turned to him. He withered slightly under the attention, but added, “I mean, from what you told me, you’re both here on your friend’s request to make Killerie feel better, so this is technically Killerie’s vacation.”

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

“But you only just got here with us?” Killerie half-said, half-asked, tilting her head in mild confusion. “I don’t think - aren’t our vacations different vacations?”

“Let’s do it!” Jason enthused, bouncing up and down as he held his mother’s hand. “I wanna go with Killerie, Mom!”

“Go where?” She amusedly replied, receiving an exaggerated shrug in response.

“It’s decided then,” Jason’s dad said, retrieving his luggage. “Let’s go find you a mechanic or an engineer or whatever it is you’re looking for. Any idea where we should start?”

Madeline looked at Killerie, who promptly closed her eyes and slid away from her mother’s legs, raising herself and pausing. She could detect a lot of unfamiliar technology nearby, that odd extra sense humming in curiosity as it scanned around her. There was plenty of it underneath every single one of the booths, which was… interesting. Madeline had a bit of it, Jason had a little bit of it - Jason’s mom had a lot of tech on her, and not any Killerie recognized the scents of. She resolved to ask about it later.

Her mandibles clacked in irritation. There wasn’t anything! Surely with all of this technology nearby there was a mechanic to fix it. The more complicated something was, the more engineers you needed to fix it! That was why Madeline didn’t want any newer technology in their house - if Madeline couldn’t repair it, it wasn’t worth having.

…which seemed a bit odd, now that she thought about it.

Shaking her head, she squeezed her eyes shut even tighter, feeling the fingers of her extra sense trickle outward, expanding as she focused.

“Is she alright?”

The voice of Jason’s dad was like a jolt through Killerie’s system, and she grimaced as the radius shrank. She heard Madeline’s voice a few seconds later.

“She’s fine. Just looking around, that’s all.”

Comforted by her tone, Killerie took a breath and relaxed, feeling it spread out and seeping into the cracks of the ground, a slight tingle alerting her to the technology she was already aware of. But just outside of it, slightly past her normal range…

Her eyes snapped open, her mandibles spreading in a grin. “Found it!”

Bouncing from leg to leg, she looked up at Madeline, her expression pleading. “Mom, please can we go?”

Madeline patted her plates with a wry smile. “We sure can, cocoa bean. Where is it?”

“Follow me!” Killerie cheerily pronounced, and headed off through the markets, an excited bounce in her steps.

New technology! She didn’t know why, any more than any of the other random little quirks that she had, but something about the thought of finding a new piece of tech had her wriggling with excitement all the way up her spine.

Happily flouncing between booths and unfamiliar aliens, Killerie kept following her… nose? Brain? She didn’t quite know where exactly the extra sense originated from and so she decided antennae would do the trick.

Following her antennae, Killerie led her impromptu companions through the unfamiliar territory, pausing for nothing. Except a cool fountain. And a floating house glowing blue. And a quadrupedal person(?) made out of metal and gears, countless cogs meshing together to allow it to function.

She decided she was going to like it here very much.

Killerie crawled over to the source of the technology she’d found, a sizeable place built into the backside of a white cliff. It had a plant-like covering stretching out over the street from the roof, several lamps glowing red and aimed inward. The real draw of the shop was the devices literally overflowing from the shelves, bins full of glittering metal and blinking lights. They even hung from the ceiling on hooks, innumerable machinations running on enough electricity to send a shiver through her antennae.

Skittering forward, she raised herself onto her back half. Madeline and Jason’s family were some distance behind. She’d been moving pretty fast, but they were moving at their own pace so they shouldn’t have been out of breath. Jason’s dad looked… winded. Maybe he was really old?

Returning her attention to the shop, she moved closer, trying to look over the counter. The red-tinted lamps above her were radiating heat, making her plates uncomfortably itch, but she ignored it in favor of the wondrous technology laid out before her.

A snake lifted their head behind the counter, perhaps fourty feet long or so, blearily looking around before their eyes sharpened, fixed on her. Killerie had been hoping for a really interesting alien, maybe a cyborg or a plasma-based creature. A giant snake was fine though.

“Hello!” She cheerfully said across the counter, her mandibles twitching.

The snake’s eyes narrowed. As their head rose higher, Killerie saw a mechanical chassis a short distance down their neck. It was large and had a lot of straps and parts she didn’t know the names of, but the most important part was that it had two mechanical arms protruding from the sides. Their mismatched hands slid up to rest on the counter as they looked at her and said in a hoarse, rattly voice, “No.”

Killerie blinked. “No?”

“No,” They firmly repeated, their coils lashing about irritably. “I have a hard enough time selling technology of any kind without an Engineer memorizing every design I’ve got and copying it a billion times over. It took me two years to refresh my shop. I’m not doing that again. Go find someone else to steal from.”

Shrinking back, Killerie glanced at them, and then at the technology behind them. “But I just wanted to-”

“I said no!” The snake snapped. Reaching up, their mechanical hands gripped the shutter gaping above the window of their shop, ready to slam it down.

Killerie darted forward, her eyes worried. “Wait! I’m kind of a shedling, but-”

They paused with a sigh. Leaning down, they looked Killerie dead in the eye, their head sarcastically tilted to one side. “Okay, look. I appreciate the speech synthesizer. It’s very polite of all of you to start talking to us. But my wares are entirely technological in nature, and you are entirely plagiaristic in nature.”

Killerie shrank beneath their stare as they loomed forward. “Am I mad at you personally? No. Do I blame you for doing it? Certainly not. But does that mean I’ll let you do it? By all the scales in the sky, no.”

They pulled back with an annoyed huff. “Please don’t come back.” Reaching up, they slammed the shutter closed, leaving her outside.

Madeline and Jason’s family caught up a few moments later. Madeline was breathing lightly; Jason and his mom were panting; Jason’s dad was straight-up wheezing.

Walking up behind her, Madeline patted her carapace. “Awww, I’m sorry it’s closed, bean. Anything else you want to do?”

Killerie said nothing for several seconds. It twinged Madeline’s motherly instincts, and she came around her with a concerned expression. “Killerie? Is everything okay?”

The shedling blinked, her face settling for a smile. She found herself suddenly glad that she couldn’t cry. It seemed like such an embarrassing thing to do in front of people. “Yep!” She said cheerfully, the voice synthesizer perfectly imitating a tone that didn’t match her current feelings in the slightest. “They were… closed. Just like you said.”

Madeline rubbed her headplates comfortingly, patting her soft underside just below her jaw. “We can come back tomorrow if you want, I’m sure they’d-”

“No!” Killerie yelped, suddenly panicked. Madeline reared back, surprised, and Killerie hastily added, “We - we don’t have to. We’re not going to be here for very long anyway, right?”

Concern was written all over her mother’s face, and she took Killerie’s head in both her hands. “Cocoa bean, are you sure you’re alright? We said we’d tell each other when we were scared, didn’t we?”

Glossy black eyes stared into worried blue ones. If Killerie had learned one thing about people, it was that they were terrible at reading her facial expressions.

So she let her mandibles split wide in a pleasant smile. “I’m fine, Mom.”

Madeline’s expression eased slightly, but only slightly. “Okay,” she murmured, rubbing the side of Killerie’s jaw with her thumb. “I’m going to say goodbye to the Lovelys now. Do you want to?”

“N-no, I’m okay,” Killerie deflected. Internally she filed the family name away, partially wondering if she’d ever see them again.

Madeline gave her an anxious smile, but stood and walked over to the Lovelys, giving them their goodbyes. Out of the corner of her eye Killerie could see Jason, his head tilted in confusion and hurt, wondering why she wasn’t saying goodbye to him.

She could only duck her head, feeling more miserable than ever.