“She sells seashells by the sea shore.” Siria read out the words on-screen to help train Kaguya’s linguistics. The soulstones she had taken out of her item box were currently having additional mana pumped into them by Ingrid. Meanwhile Cecil and SABER were currently emptying out the guns and ammunition into Cecil’s Room.

“You can’t get a scan or where I’m at?” Cecil asked.

“Negative.” Kaguya replied. “Your room is registering as being right here. I’ve worked with portals before, and I should be able to tell where the other end is pointing. To be honest, it’s messing up with my sensors.” There was a beeping sound from Kaguya, perhaps the sound of her disengaging said sensors.

“Thanks for helping out, Kaguya. To be honest I wasn’t sure if you’d just let us arm ourselves to help out Arek.” Cecil said as he hauled another big box of ammunition. “...and why does Arek have so many weapons?”

“To answer your first question” Kaguya began “this wouldn’t be the first time I’ve helped dubious characters so long as they promised me fuel. And to answer your second question, he plans to sell them. Pre-FTL ballistic weapons fetch a good amount of credits in the black market.”

“And I thought he was just going out for milk.” Ingrid remarked.

“Braxis-2’s got a space walmart, what do you think is at the back of space-walmart?” Kaguya’s response got them laughing.

Kaguya opened up another floor panel “The energy core is below, place those soulstones into the crucible and I’ll smelt it down for the reactor.”

“Good to know Gulans can use ladders too.” Ingrid said as she climbed down the ladder. Siria came over and tossed down the bag full of soulstones to Ingrid.

Kaguya lit up the chamber around Ingrid, it too was round and it was much smaller than the chamber above. The walls were lined with different doors. In addition to the signs on the doors written in alien script, there were also small displays above them that now read their names in English.

“You coming, Siria?” Ingrid called as she heard her climbing down.

“Yes! I’d like to see what’s down here.” she answered. Cecil and the mice followed suit.

“Reactor Core is this way.” Kaguya opened the door. Without any further prompting, Ingrid picked up her bag and walked in. Meanwhile, Siria was noting the room they’re in, it looked like it was carved out of a single piece of metal.

The Reactor core was full of various buttons and switches, some of them matched the aesthetic of the ship while others looked like they came from older eras.

“I’m not familiar with spaceships, but I’m guessing either Arek put in some kind of sleeper build or rednecked some repairs” Cecil remarked, looking around the room.

“Both” Kaguya said, opening up a round vat, indicating where to put the soul stones. “Arek’s run my warranty and I’ve got too many modifications that make proper repair shops ask too many questions.”

“What’s Kaguya talking about?” Siria asked.

“Arek added some enhancements to Kaguya that were in some way illegal… for example, going past speed limits, is that a thing in space, Kaguya?” Ingrid queried.

“Very much, you’re talking about a zero gravity environment, you’ll need more room to stop. Also, add a police scanner, anti-scanning coating, too many hidden compartments, certain parts you can’t exactly own legally and… you try to bring me to a proper repair shop and they’ll be obligated by law to report to the space police what they see.”

Siria nodded, she didn’t get the full picture but she understood enough. She had learned shortly after joining the group that many of Arek's guns had no legal ownership out of the hands of professional soldiers. It was then no stretch of the imagination that an advanced machine such as Kaguya would also have parts not meant for the regular market.

“Also, redundancies, Arek wanted to make sure he could manually override some of my functions, that’s those rednecked parts.” Kaguya added, indicating the parts that looked like they came from Earth, many of which were levers and large buttons.

Ingrid emptied the first batch of soulstones into the crucible. Kaguya closed it up and started the furnace.

“And now we wait…” Ingrid said. “What’s in the other rooms?”

***

“Figures, we don’t have access to Arek’s room.” Cecil said as they opened one of the doors, revealing a bunch of various alien devices.

“Once you have computers, nobody is allowed to be in your room.” Ingrid said “...is that a mini tank? No wait…it’s got to be a UGV.”

“A what?” Siria asked.

“It’s like a golem that shoots.” Cecil explained.

“That’s a UGV, but I wouldn’t recommend trying to activate it, he got it from the deep space web. It’ll probably narc on us. Arek was planning to sell it.”

“Oof, no thanks.” Ingrid replied.

“Isn’t this one of those solar panel things?” Siria said, picking up a large rectangular plate.

“Close, that’s from Famornia, just like Earth’s but a lot more efficient, you’ll need Arek to help you hook it up.” Kaguya said.

“Cecil… you know a place that’s sunny 24/7?” Ingrid asked, her lips curling into a smile.

Cecil looked at Ingrid frowningly, but before he could speak he turned around. “My room?”

Ingrid and Siria nodded.

“Infinite energy!” He squeaked “SABER! Help me bring it in! Oh… would that be fine, Kaguya?”

“Knock yourself out, I’m buried under the ground.” Kaguya said.

***

Kaguya landed in a small clearing in a forest near the Whales’ rented farm house. Although cloaked, Arek’s smartphone was tracking her exact location, allowing him to know where to look.

“We come in peace.” Ingrid said in a strange monotone as she walked down the ramp, Arthur was riding her shoulder and the rest were once again in Cecil’s Room. “Take me to your leader.” she said to Arek who was standing in the small clearing. Kaguya remained cloaked, leaving only the ramp and entrance visible.

“How’s Kaguya?” Arek said as Siria and Cecil climbed down.

“Pulls a little to the left.” Ingrid replied cryptically. “Anyway, we got enough fuel for atmospheric flight, according to her. We’re going to need more soulstones, or a really big fat one.”

“Good to know my girl’s still flying.” Arek said, as he started to climb up the ramp, Ingrid spoke up.

“Arek, you’ve been a great help.” Ingrid said.

“You know on second thought maybe I should see your Earth.” He turned around and walked back to Ingrid. “Farmer Grace’s used to me being gone for a while, and this wouldn’t be the first time Kaguya and I got marooned together. Actually, we found each other in Krontabulon-5, she said she’ll take me out of the planet if I get her some fuel.”

Ingrid guffawed “So you were the guy she’s talking about!”

“What? What did she tell you? Kaguya! What the hell!” He yelled, hurrying inside the ship.

***

“Are we moving out or something, Ingrid?” Kvaris asked as he saw the mice stuffing all of the weapons and ammunition into Cecil’s room.

“We found Arek’s spaceship. Head to the forest where SABER put up a totem pole, go straight ahead, it’s hard to miss; a ramp leading to nowhere.” Ingrid replied.

As Kvaris walked out to have a look, she then got to work with Siria who were transferring all their necessary gear to the ship.

“A flying ship?” Kinu asked as he helped Ingrid pack various foodstuffs into a box.

“Yes” Siria replied “we’ll be using the ship’s amenities to store our food and valuables. Its ability to turn invisible will be useful especially if we’re camping.”

“Oooh, flying ship. Looks like we can go anywhere!” Kinu said excitedly.

Siria sighed.

“We’ll need more of those soulstones if we’re going to regularly fly around. Flying the ship here exhausted everything we had, which mind you was a good amount of money we need for our daily expenses as well as the maintenance of our gear. Kaguya, that’s the ship’s name, estimates the best course of action is to divert only a small amount soulstones we earn each day towards the ship’s power and use the rest for our daily needs.”

Kinu hung his head “I guess this deal was too good to be true… so much for a flying ship.”

Siria smiled “you should look inside the ship, you’ll be amazed what’s in there, it may not be able to fly yet, but there’s quite a lot it can still do. Go on.” she jerked her head to the door, encouraging him to go out and see it for himself.

***

Kinu went to the crude totem in front of the forest. Remembering Ingrid’s directions, he walked straight forward. Inside the forest, he saw the mice setting up lanterns, possibly to light the way in case someone from the ship needed to go to the farm house or the other way around.

Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.

In the middle of a clearing, a set of poles were set in a circle, forming a perimeter. Ingrid was tying a rope around the poles to cordon off the area. He went under the cordon and held up a paw but ended up lightly bumping his head on something invisible. Following the sensation, it seemed to be round in shape and was smooth, he couldn’t feel any seams around the vessel.

The only thing visible was a ramp and its entrance, it reminded him of Cecil’s Dialogue Window sans the multicolored motes leaking out of the edges.

The cabin inside was a round, dome-shaped room. On one table to the side, some of the mice were busily setting up their new workstation to assemble more bullets.

Arek was at the helm of the ship, opposite the entrance, he was busily manipulating some runes floating in the air, as he did so, several runes above it flew up randomly, but his expression seemed to be elated.

“Solar radiation absorption is compromised while being cloaked.” A disembodied voice said, probably Kaguya’s.

“De-cloak, Kaguya.” Arek said, “We will make do for now.“

“Decloaking…” Kaguya said, there was a slight thrumming around the ship’s hull, outside some of the mice squeaked in surprise.

“What happened?” Kinu asked curiously. Arek looked up and turned to him.

“Kaguya’s invisibility is draining some of the ship’s power.” Came Arek’s answer “Being invisible is useful in certain situations. You can imagine lots of people coming over asking too many questions and nobles asking too many favors, or some wanting to claim this ship outright.”

“I heard from Siria we’re going to need more soulstones.” Kinu said.

Arek shook his head. “Not feasible to do right now. We should focus on earning for ourselves first.”

“What are you doing right now?” Kinu asked, noticing that Arek never stopped his hands’ movement.

“I’m making adjustments to Kaguya’s functions, I’m disabling the ones we don’t need to save power. It's a little complicated to explain but the ability to disable said functions aren't available by normal means, so I’m doing a workaround.”

“Sounds unnecessarily complicated” Kinu remarked “Why would your machine not have the ability to perform such a simple task?”

Arek chuckled “The reasoning comes down to money, making things like these cost money, and they figure that if they simplify the process and don’t add things most people won’t use anyway they’ll cut down on expenses.”

“That’s absurd, it’s dangerous to remove something that could save your life.” Kinu shrugged.

“Definitely.” Arek nodded. “Anyway, I’m sure Ingrid or Siria has already told this to you, but this is probably the safest place to put our valuables right now, that’s the advantage of a flying ship that can turn invisible.”

“Yeah, about the flying part, Siria said there’s other things this ship can do besides fly, which is currently out of the question at the moment. What are they?” Kinu asked.

“Oh right, refrigeration. That’s freezing our food so they stay longer. You can stuff raw meat in our freezer and it’ll keep for months, we got a medical bay so we can lighten Iohann’s workload or take her place in case she’s incapacitated or unavailable.” Arek paused, looking around. “There’s also some other functions right now but my brain’s currently focused on this task. If you want, you can sit in front of one of those chairs and say ABC, it’ll help train Kaguya’s linguistics.”

“Ayy-Bee-See? Linguistics? What’s that?”

“Kaguya can’t understand the languages in Terragalia right now, the interpretation spell doesn’t work on her since she’s a machine. If you say ABC she’ll show you some words to read out loud, saying this will allow her to eventually learn your language.”

“Sounds very interesting. I’ll get to it after I finish helping around.” Kinu said, turning to assist in bringing the team’s supplies.

Ingrid then came over and waved at Arek “Soo, about this power situation, you sure we can sustain these just with sunlight alone?” she waved her hand at the huge monitor-dome all around them and the various lights.

Arek nodded. “I know it sounds weird to bury the ship when it can use solar radiation, let’s just say it’s standard procedure in worlds like these.”

“Uh-huh, Prime Directive and other stuff.”

***

Iohann and Selphie were the first of the newcomers to enter the ship, more tables and seats had risen out of the floor and the workshop for firearms had been expanded. Arek began showing them around the ship.

“What are these things, Arek?” Kvaris asked. Eyeing the strange round constructs crawling around the floor.

“Cleaning droids. These constructs keep the floor clean.” Arek replied.

Kvaris frowned, he looked at his foot and noticed it was spotless. He then noticed Iohann and Selphie walking up the ramp and noticed they weren’t leaving marks on the white floor.

“Hold on, to get here you have to walk through a forest, how are they not leaving any marks?” Kvaris walked closer to the ramp and saw nothing.

“Kvaris is asking how come nobody’s tracking in any dirt.” Arek said to Kaguya.

“The ramp’s surface is composed of countless vibrating bristles, in a manner of speaking to remove most of the dirt on your feet. As I'm still in the process of self-repairing I’ve yet to restore my air curtain to reduce contaminants.” Kaguya.

“What contaminants?” Kvaris asked.

“Dust and dirt on the body. The air curtain will blow it outside.” The AI replied.

Meanwhile, Arek showed Iohann and Selphie a square hole on the floor; there were guard rails on all sides to prevent people from accidentally falling over. Ingrid was in a chamber below and the floor was rising to level with the rest of the cabin.

“Got it working now, Arek!” Ingrid said triumphantly.

“What happened? Did the elevator get damaged during the crash?” Arek asked expectantly.

Ingrid shook her head “The Mass Inertial Dampener glitched out a bit and knocked out your after-market elevator wires. Kaguya didn’t have sensors in that area so she had to walk me through plugging them back in.”

Arek exhaled sharply “Whew… you’re a lifesaver, Ingrid, thanks!”

Ingrid shook her shoulders “I figured you had to have an elevator here since the other rooms below had some movable stuff that were too big to fit through the ladder chute. That’s when I asked Kaguya if you had one.”

“Well, yes and no.” Kaguya replied, her unexpected voice causing the newcomers to look around in surprise. “My original configuration had hatches on the side for moving such large objects, so Arek did a lot of modifications to my body to include an internal elevator.”

“Okay, Iohann, Selphie, I know this is a lot to take in but, we’ll explain what’s going on here later. For now, just know that this is Arek’s flying ship. It’s currently unable to fly at the moment but we’ll be using it as our main storage, especially for valuables.”

The Felmoon healer and Dryad nodded.

“So how did Selphie do at the Guild?” Arek asked. In response, Selphie took out a metal ball from a pouch in her pocket; the same metal balls the mice used for their slingshots. She willed her energy into the ball and it quickly grew wriggling vines.

“Floramancy” Iohann said “she’s been largely out of practice due to her curse but she’s re-learning quickly.”

“That’s amazing, Selphie! Just imagine, forcibly manipulating a monster’s body with those.” Ingrid’s eyes twinkled at the thought.

Selphie laughed nervously “Ummm… how do you know that’s possible?” she tilted her head at Ingrid.

“Ingrid is a human, their creativity knows no bounds…sometimes to the point of being outright barbaric.” Kaguya chided, but Ingrid took no offense, she merely pointed both index fingers to the dome above and winked.

“Hell yeah!” She said in assent. “And guess what’s a plant? Bacteria.”

“Please, I know this is not Earth.” Kaguya began “...but at least have some decency. Let’s skip the WMD’s.”

“Anthrax is a naturally-occurring organism.” Ingrid said with a big goofy smile on her face. Cecil, who was across the room, slowly turned to her, his face utterly aghast. The Kobolds who were near him noticed this and looked at Ingrid, wondering what sort of foul blasphemy did she utter.

The mice too, turned to Ingrid, wondering if there was something else they could weaponize.

“Ummm…what is she talking about?” Selphie asked, looking at Arek.

“Nothing, just Ingrid being Ingrid.” Arek sighed.

“If you could find some uranium ores, I will smelt them for my fuel. No nuclear missiles for you.” Kaguya said.

“Okaaayyy” Ingrid said with a tone of disappointment.

Viel and Sammy were the last to enter the ship. Like everyone who stayed in town, they were freshly outfitted with either upgraded, repaired, or refurbished gear.

“Okay! Since everyone’s here, welcome to Kaguya, Arek’s space ship, please have a seat and enjoy the show, Kaguya will educate you all with a couple of things, especially about Arek and me coming from different worlds.”

Kvaris, Kinu, Iohann, Selphie, Viel, and Sammy then took a seat on the divans near the dome. The mice continued with their construction of ammo and grenades.

***

Selphie and Ingrid were outside on a stroll.

“We should consider hitting the fourth level of the dungeon if we want to fly.” Ingrid said as they headed towards Teth-Odin.

“Agreed, with our numbers we should be able to harvest some good loot there.” Siria said “the last exploration had us in trouble due to me not accounting for your compatibility with the channeling games…”

“Siria, don’t blame yourself for that.” Ingrid said.

The elf sighed. “I left my last team because I made a bad judgment call.”

Ingrid shrugged. “Don’t let those hang ups and what ifs haunt you Siria. You know, if Cecil and I can’t go back, we’ll just accept it. We’ve made our run in Earth, maybe we’re brought here to do that run back… hell, maybe we’re here to stay so Melrondia remains trapped.”

“Who is this Melrondia?” Siria asked. Ingrid paused to take money out of her leg holster and hand it to the orc guard who then nodded them through. Even at this hour the gates were open and there was still a short line of wagons of newcomers who wanted to try their luck in the dungeons.

“A corrupted Starchaser, she used to go by Philia Lovelock” Ingrid explained as they stepped into the night time city. There were lots of colorful lanterns that reminded her of a festival and in a sense it was, with a tunnel of doom with real carnage and real monsters, and the best prize was coming out alive.

“She and I hit it back then” Ingrid continued “even though we Starchasers were a team I was pretty much doing my rounds all by myself until she opened up to me.” Ingrid stopped and looked up at the festive plaza, it felt so ironic they would come to such a beautiful and romantic-looking place while she’s telling a tragic backstory. “And because of that we got attacked and she ended up being taken away. Some hero, huh? Couldn’t even save the one who helped me.”

“I don’t see how that’s your fault if you two were ambushed out of nowhere…” Siria said, reflexively grabbing a boy’s arm as he accidentally stumbled as he ran after his friends. The boy thanked her and continued on his way.

“It IS my fault.” Ingrid corrected her as they passed the plaza, noting the various food stalls in the plaza, they seemed to have increased in number during the night for some reason. “..because I kept going alone until she arrived, then they sent a lot of SEEDs after us…after ME. In the end they took her away when it should have been me. I guess that’s why it just felt so natural for me to sacrifice myself to take her down. It was my screw up and I was the loner, nobody should miss me, at least that’s what I thought back then.”

Siria waited until they were clear of the plaza and were heading towards the less public areas of the city. Ingrid was sort of expecting the fantasy equivalent of a crime-ridden hood but this was not the case, with so much to earn from the dungeon, the citizens’ best mode of crime was the over-priced skewers she and Siria were eating and the tons of useless charms.

“There’s Cecil too.” Siria finally said.

Ingrid sighed “We met before I became a Starchaser, his summoning was completely accidental. He didn’t fit in with the other familiars and ran away, that’s how I met him. Due to us not being a superhero and a sidekick at the time we pretty much accepted that our chances of getting killed by a SEED was pretty high and we should live on with that loss.” He waved his hand at Siria indicating she lead the way.

The two walked in silence at the quieter parts of the city. To one side there was some theater with a growing crowd that was waiting for their turn, to the other was a tavern where they could hear the singing of drunks…someone was having quite a party.

The thought suddenly occurred to Siria as they walked through an alley.

“Why were you hunting SEEDs before you became a Starchaser? Sounds pretty dangerous.”

“Wouldn’t you?” Ingrid asked rhetorically. “Some big monster kills some family members, you get angry, you take matters into your own hands… you find out they bleed and can be killed.” She stopped to take a breath. “I met him in an alley like this, to box in the monster and shoot it down. Then my gun jammed, I was more angry than afraid so I stood my ground and hurried to unjam my gun.”

Ingrid then pointed upwards. “Cecil then drops from above out of nowhere to impale its face with a rusty pipe and I finish it off with a couple of shots. In the heat of the moment we started clubbing it with some pipes…well it was already dead but it was pretty therapeutic to get all that anger out.”

“What was his first words to you?” Siria smiled.

“He said ‘I’m friendly by the way’ so I replied ‘hi Friendly, I’m Ingrid…wanna kill more SEEDs?’ and the rest is history.”

Siria chuckled.

“So where are we going, Siria?”

“Study material for our Floramancer Selphie.” Siria replied, “we’re going to the black market, and I’ll need you when violence calls for it.”

Ingrid smiled.