CHAPTER 15: THE CHOSEN ONE

The flight back was mostly silent. Only a few terse words were exchanged between Moria and Natia. Hiro turned the translator back on, but the team had already fallen back into silence by the time the little light blinked back on.

Ghram knelt by Bellator's limp form struggling to pump magic into him. He was running on fumes. Bellator looked a mess. He had fleshy growths all over and his arms lay at odd angles. His breathing was ragged and labored. A long-forgotten memory surfaced to Hiro. Her great aunt was in the hospital dying of cancer. Her breathing sounded exactly like Bellator's.

Hiro was afraid to ask what happened. She finally settled on, "Is he going to be ok?"

Ghram shot her a distressed look, "If I can get him to the medical bay we should be able to set his bones. I am able to hold off the worst growths, but it'll be touch and go while I'm low on power. Backup will bring a healer to take over. They're already working their way to the base." His tone was sharply contrasted to the chipper translator.

Hiro only nodded. "When I get some power back, let me know if I can help at all."

Ghram nodded in acknowledgment before going back to focusing on Bellator. Moria barely registered their conversation. She was clenching her hands and leaned forward over her knees. Hiro did notice the light behind her ear kept occasionally flashing. She wondered if she was listening to her AI about something or getting orders.

Hiro decided now wasn't the time for her multitudes of questions. She was worried about what would happen to Duffy. What Genisis had done to Bellator greatly concerned her. Didn't Button say Genesis was a platinum concept? She even alluded to it herself when she had blasted Bellator. Was the power discrepancy between levels really that great? If Genesis could go around messing with weaker Sparks, why hadn't the headquarters sent a whole force to capture her? Why was she allowed to roam around with an army of creatures?

Speaking of the creatures, she said she had created them. How did she do that? Was she some kind of god? Able to create life? Or was it genetic splicing? Each creature had some mixture of creatures tangentially related to creatures Hiro recognized. Or at least could draw a link to earth creatures. There were some parts that were alien. Had she latched onto the things most like earth creatures? She also called the spider-goat centaurs 'babies.' If they were babies, how big would they get when they got bigger? She shivered at a mental image of them being the size of cars.

This all swam in the background, as the thought forefront in her mind was, what would happen to Duffy? They were nice and genuinely helpful. They had been indignant at what had happened to her when she was brought to the cavern. They were going to help her and they weren't mad when she messed up during the first battle. In fact, they even asked her to help them. Plus Duffy defended her to Bellator when he was being a jerk.

Hiro was confused to realize she was slightly relieved at the turn of events. She tried to figure out why before she figured it out. Her mother's voice had gone silent. She had helped seal the anomaly and didn't get in the way during the second battle. The whole scene with Genesis, she hadn't been the cause of the problem.

Genesis had clearly set up an overwhelming force to acquire the anomaly. Maybe if she had still had anything left in the tank she could've helped, but if she hadn't been there, Moria might not have had enough power to protect her teammates when they got swamped. She had helped as much as she had been able. How Genesis got there before the backup Ghram mentioned was a question that deeply worried Hiro. They had arrived twenty-four minutes after the anomaly appeared. How did she appear as soon as they were done closing it?

Guilt wormed its way up her spine at feeling relieved, but she squashed it. She could be relieved that she hadn't messed up again and be worried for the team she was with at the same time. She took some deep breaths to try and regulate like her counselor taught her. She had seen her for a while when she first started working at the machine shop. One of her friends recommended her when she kept having panic attacks after she moved out of her mom's. She hadn't been to her in a few years. She wished she could talk with her about everything that happened. If she could though, she might just send her to a psych ward.

Her thoughts were interrupted as Natia called back, "Buckle up, we're landing." Her voice was monotone. Moria and Hiro started strapping their webbing. Ghram slowly got up maintaining contact with Bellator the whole time. He pivoted into a seat and got his webbing around him with one hand.

There was no cheerful call and response as they landed. Moria was unbuckled and ready to go as soon as they touched down. The ramp opened too slowly for her and she vaulted off it before it had even finished opening. Hiro was still unbuckling herself when she disappeared into the main building.

"Help me get him unbuckled while she gets the gurney." Ghram requested as he was one-handed undoing his own webbing. Hiro just nodded and got to work unbuckling Bellator while Natia finished powering down the ship.

Soon Moria reappeared with a floating gurny and Hiro helped get Bellator's legs while Moria grabbed his torso. Soon She and Ghram were heading back into the main building. Hiro walked off the ship trailing after them unsure if she should follow. She paused at the end when Natia called out to her.

"Hey, kid!" Natia walked briskly down the ship's ramp. "Leave Bellator to those two. When you have some energy you can go help, but right now you'll be in the way. Come with me, we can get cleaned up while we wait for the response team from headquarters. They should be here soon enough."

Hiro switched directions to follow Natia to one of the smaller hexagonal buildings. The same one she had disappeared inside before the anomaly.

Inside the hexagon theme continued. There was a short hallway to a central hexagon that looked like a kitchen and recreation room combined. Half of the walls had cabinets and counters with weird-looking contraptions scattered about. The mugs and cups told her what it was probably used for as well as a hexagon table with stools built-in on each side. The other half of the room had a couch and comfortable chairs surrounding a low table with a device in the middle of it. There were strangely shaped doors in the center of each of five of the walls. The sixth was the hallway they walked through to get to the entry area.

Natia pointed to the door to the right, "There's the bathroom, there are two toilets and shower stalls. Let me get some clean clothes for both of us and I'll show you how they work. I have a spare set of the uniform I don't wear anymore, you can have that. It's a little worn out, but it will be better than this." She motioned to their current outfits. They were both splattered in blood, mud, and even some sand from the anomaly.

Natia disappeared into one of the other doors. Hiro caught a glimpse of a bed, desk, and dresser from the doorway, but couldn't make out much more than that. Some opening and closing of drawers and closets later, Natia was back and led Hiro to the bathroom. She walked her through how to use the toilet. She couldn't make heads or tails of any of the words, but the pictures were self-explanatory. They didn't use toilet paper as she had suspected, but rather an elaborate bidet system. It was an odd experience. She also found out, that her body was much better at processing all forms of energy now. Her need for a bathroom would decrease as time went on and her abilities grew.

The showers were much easier to figure out. They also had a control panel but had simple sliders for heat and pressure. There were communal pumps on the wall for soap. Natia showed her how to use the 3D printer to make a biodegradable scrub sponge. She told her how to break down naturally with use and they print new ones about once a week as the old ones wear down. The fibers go into the grey water used in their hydroponics and gardens after filtering. It was all so efficient and environmentally friendly. Hiro approved.

Natia helped her cut off the bandages off her hands. The skin under was still pink and tender, but Natia told her they'd re-wrap it after they were clean. Hiro dumped her dirty clothes into a chute that Natia pointed out. Soon she was scrubbing herself as vigorously as her tingling fingers would allow. She was used to getting dirty in the shop, but metal chips, oil, and cutting fluids were significantly different than the blood of monsters. She offhandedly realized it had a green tint to the red color. Almost like the red blood cells were surrounded by the same bright green that Genesis gave off in her bursts of light. Without her sensitivity to light and color, she might not have even noticed it. Natia certainly hadn't when she asked if she noticed.

The other woman was helpful but not talkative as they washed in neighboring stalls. A wildly overpowered animal lady had captured one teammate, and another seemed to have been mutated, so she didn't hold it against her. Natia was done and out calling to her to meet her in the living space when she was done in nine minutes and four seconds. Hiro took longer. She was alone for the first time since Moria dragged her out of the pool of water. It gave her time to think and decompress.

All her questions from earlier still swirled in her head, but she had no answers. So in the end she allowed the water to boost her healing by standing in it for a while. It was peaceful. Allowing herself to find a semblance of equilibrium in the mundanity of shower thoughts and hot water. It hadn't even been twenty-four hours since she woke up in the cavern.

Feeling slightly refreshed she stepped out of the shower and tried to do what Moria had done to pull the water off herself. She managed to get a few drops off her arm where she was focusing, but couldn't do her whole body. Still, it was a step in the right direction. She gave up and used the towel Natia had left her. She didn't have much power in the tank to push it.

She got dressed and joined Natia a few minutes later. Natia sat in one of the comfortable chairs with a cup of tea in hand. Hiro wondered if it was the team Ghram disapproved of but didn't ask. Natia looked up as she walked in and gestured to the table with the seats.

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

"Honestly I thought you'd be in there longer. We have to pry Moria out some days," she said wryly. "Go sit at the table, My PGA says the response team is still ten minutes and two jumps out. We have time for a quick bite." She waved to the table that also held some packages of gauze.

Hiro's belly growled when the translator made it clear she was offering to feed her. Natia just smiled and walked to a machine embedded in the cabinets and began to tap it. It looked like the one Duffy had gotten her water out of earlier. And her face fell a bit. Soon the smell of food came from the cabinet. It took it three minutes to print out three cubes of dubious quality. Natia used the time to wrap Hiro's hands. Not quite as well as Ghram, but serviceable to cushion her still-healing hands. Then she took some tongs transferred the cubes to a plate and set a cup of water from the sink in front of her before getting her own printed food going.

"Why is it a cube? Shouldn't it be a hexagon?" She asked.

Natia chuckled under her breath, "Asking the big questions huh? Because the food printer is designed on a different planet than our habitats is the short answer. The long answer would take too long but boils down to different races and fractions in the multiverse having different design aesthetics. The food is plain but decent. Duffy would've probably cooked you a welcome meal, but now you have me and all I can do with food is press the buttons." Natia lapsed into silence again and Hiro got the hint. Natia pulled a spork out of a drawer and handed it to her. Hiro took it gingerly and took a bite. The texture was strange, but okay, and the taste was bland. A least it filled her up. Each cube had a different color and flavor. One vaguely meat-like, one faintly fruity, and one vegetable-based for sure. The fist-sized cubes filled her up. She ate every bite.

Natia's food had finished printing and she was still working on eating her last cube when Hiro said, 'It's been ten minutes, Where is the response team going to show up? The main building?"

Natia nodded, her eyebrows drawing together a bit, before tapping her gem. "They're coming through now, Moria said to come to the debriefing room once we were done eating." Hiro realized she had basically set a timer in her head and it had gone off at exactly ten minutes. She was anxious to see if they could help Bellator and Duffy. She wasn't Bellator's biggest fan, but nobody deserved the mutilation that had happened to him.

She waited while Natia finished the last few bites of her cubes. She took both their plates. and set them on a rack inside one of the cabinets. It had a few other dishes and it looked like a dishwasher-adjacent contraption. She motioned and they set off again. Hiro was again barefoot as she left the building. The paper-thin shoes Ghram had printed for her had fallen apart as she undressed.

Natia led her to the main building. In the yard, a group of six people in variations of the uniform that Hiro was wearing were boarding the dragonfly ship. Natia called to them, "Don't break my ship, Franklin!" and one of the six made a gesture that was similar in vibes to a middle finger. Natia just shook her head and continued to the main building as the Dragonfly ship hummed to life behind them.

Hiro followed her up the steps she had spotted to the second floor. Another hallway greeted her with doorways along the walls. "Come on, they're waiting in the big room at the end," Natia told her. Hiro's anxiety spiked. She didn't know what to expect. Would the new arrivals question what she had done? Blame her? She didn't know.

When Natia slid the door back at the end of the hall for them to enter, Hiro's fears spiked. A feeling of profound wrongness flooded her before vanishing. She froze like a deer in headlights. What was that? She looked around debating on bolting down the hallway. She saw a large circular table surrounded by chairs in the room. While the room was still hexagonal, the furniture was not. It all looked high quality and comfortable. Directly facing the door was a small man with owl-like eyes behind a pair of spectacles. He had a bushy mustache and long pointed ears sticking straight out from his head. He wore an old-school suit and tie.

Moria sat next to his right with red-rimmed eyes still splattered with blood and mud. Another person sat to his left. An absurdly tall woman with a long nose and intense expression. She wore a long black coat over the standard uniform. A third person in uniform stood at attention next to the door. It was a normal-looking human man with pale skin and red hair.

"Ah yes, Miss Skylark, please have a seat." The mustached man gestured to the seats on the side of the table by Moria. She started when he spoke in English. She could understand him without the translator. She had mixed emotions at hearing her native tongue. It put her at ease but the man being the strangest one of the bunch contrasted his language skills.

He stayed in English as he gestured to the man at attention, "Ms. Chopra, please accompany Mr. Flynn for a debriefing in the next room." Hiro looked up at Natia and noticed her face had gone pale as a sheet.

She bowed and replied, "Of course Headmaster." Natia and the redhead left the room. She looked pensively to Moria who just jerked her head to sit by her.

She walked slowly around the table and sat next to Moria who gave her a weak crooked smile. Silence descended in the room Hiro warily switched her attention between the 'Headmaster' and the tall lady sitting next to him.

"Miss Skylark," The headmaster stared after a sigh, "I do have to apologize we're meeting this way. I had intended to meet you as you came through the teleporter to explain your unique circumstances. However, from the records your PGA sent, plans went off the rails way before the current predicament." The little man gestured to himself and then to the woman next to him. "I am the Headmaster of the training program at Headquarters. Headmaster Death. A little grim I know, but it is what it is. This is Mrs. Celeste she is the head of the PGA department. She has a new AI for you."

"It's modified based on the readings 'Button' sent back including the personality and memories from your original to help your integration into the Sparks. I also boosted the translator and it's nearly instantaneous, unlike the crude thing around your neck." Mrs. Celeste said with unbridled excitement. "Frankly I'm happy the headmaster is allowing me to pioneer my new design in this new generation of Sparks."

"Indeed, Mrs. Celeste has also integrated a power reading sub-structure that we hope will help you with your interrupted change. until we can get a full scan done, we will hold off, however." The Headmaster said firmly to the woman's disappointment.

"Hang on, I did not sign up for an AI embedded into my head. I realize it's some kind of law, but I don't want to be some test dummy for whatever new design this lady cooked up." Hiro broke across the two. They clearly thought this was a foregone conclusion, and while having the ability to have a translator in her head would be helpful, she never lost sight that she never agreed to one in the first place. She missed Button, but she wasn't their test dummy either.

The room fell to silence. Moria looked pained at her outburst. The woman, Mrs. Celeste had an aghast and offended look across her face. The Headmaster just sighed amusement tugging at his lips.

"Yes, I received a complaint a bit ago about how we brought you into the program. M. Duffy had some strong words for how I maneuvered around the regulations. I have my reasons, which I can explain shortly. For now, suffice it to say, I had it on the highest authority that Time was not on our side." His eyes seemed to glimmer and Hiro was suddenly on high alert. Did he know somehow? Even after all she had tried to do to keep it secret.

Moria joined in the conversation, "Time? Do you mean Old Man Time had something to say about her? Did he have a vision?" When the headmaster nodded in confirmation she murmured, "He hasn't had one of those in centuries." She looked at Hiro speculatively.

She shifted uncomfortably in her seat as all three of them examined her. At least it seemed like her cover wasn't blown. But a weird vision about her seemed strange. "What are you guys talking about?" She said after a beat.

The others looked to the headmaster and he dropped into the cadence of a lecture with practiced ease. "I will give you the general shape of things. Most details can be learned in class. We Sparks were tasked to keep the fabric of reality together long ago. Using the powers granted to us by the Accened we have been closing anomalies for billions of years. We have spread our network across more and more universes as we gain the numbers. This allows countless more to survive each generation instead of collapsing into nothingness. We have integrated many worlds, cultures, races, and beings into the network to become better and more efficient throughout the years. With a wide-ranging teleport network, we can reach most places in our care within a day to back up response teams out bases if needed." Hiro nodded along, she had heard most of this before.

"This system has been refined and advanced throughout the years. The Personal Guidance Assistants have been one of the greatest boosts in our efficiency in the last millennium. In fact, the last time Time had a vision was in favor of the PGA's. Not only that, it allowed us to increase the efficacy of sparks by helping guide them in their abilities to increase their power. Most of the work was done by one of the platinum sparks with the help of a team of technological sparks like Mrs. Celeste here."

"Millennium," Hiro broke in confused, "She only looks like she's a bit older than me." She pointed to Mrs. Celeste

"Ah, one of the bonuses to being a Spark is a longer life. The higher the concepts you hold, the longer it tends to get. More on that later," The headmaster took the interruption in stride. He continued, "With the ability to track our powers, sparks could figure out how to increase and even rarely evolve their concepts like the first generation could. In all the boost was immeasurable in our ability to fulfill our core mission as well as resulting in fewer casualties and faster responses." The headmaster paused staring into the distance for a moment.

"Then not long ago, tragedy struck. Our Platinum who had been working to expand the AI network inside the PGA's had an accident. While fused with the neural network they had created to house the core of the network, something happened. We still aren't sure what, but when she roused from her coma she was different."

Hiro was catching on to what he was saying. Didn't these sparks know what movies were? Just one watching of Terminator should've been enough warning. Also, wasn't there magic to fix stuff like this? Her gut said something was off, but she didn't know enough to figure it out.

"Genesis became secretive and obsessive. She cut herself off from the PGA network. So we investigated. When we found out she had stolen several anomaly crystals and was working on a device to reopen them we had to stop her." His face was grave, mustache quivering. "She fled, and soon after she started kidnapping sparks and attacking teams that have closed anomalies and stealing them before we can get them in containment." Hiro's frown deepened.

"We have our theories about how she chooses targets and gets around so quickly in that flying fishy fortress of hers, but that's not something you need to worry about at the moment. What did concern you is the vision that Time had. He saw the powers Genesis gained through her experiments tear apart multiple universes in a Cascade that we could not stop. When he looked for solutions through the timelines, he said a new sparkline would emerge from a far-flung galaxy. He said that Spark would be the key to preventing that cascade as long as they could grow strong enough before the point of no return."

Hiro's face looked more and more alarmed as he spoke. What kind of chosen one bullshit was this anyway? She was about to say something when the headmaster spread his hands wide. "We thought that person was you. That's why we rushed your integration. But when a second new sparkline appeared soon after you, and he acquired the platinum concept 'Soul' we knew it had to be him."

"What?" Hiro blurted out.

"Yes, another person from your universe was awakened soon after you. You are powerful and will be an important member of the Sparks. At least once we fix the damage of your faulty change. But a platinum will be needed to combat a platinum. Both Time and I are no longer able to combat Genesis and her growing power. She avoids conflicts with us like a plague as well. I was speaking to the new Soul when I got the message that Genesis showed up here near one of the concept caverns. He is already in training as we speak."

Hiro sat in stunned silence as the Headmaster finished his tale. Finally, she stirred, "What the actual F..!"