CVETKA KRALJ

Skips fell onto the ground and Cvetka rushed to her. She was worried but calmed down when she saw her breathing. One of the scorpions approached and put a leg onto the girl, then clicked a message to her. She looked for Teki, that long snake and waved at him: "Can you translate?". A moment later, remembering something, she added: "please."

Teki did so: "She is okay, just exhausted and can do with some hydration."

Cvetka nodded: "Thanks for telling me. I never saw anyone use a movement skill so well."

Teki nodded: "It's something she put a lot of energy into. I am not sure what situations she was in on earth but she seemed to want to get away from all of them."

Cvetka, admittedly part of these situations even though to a lesser degree than, say, Rush, blushed. "I understand what you mean. It has a lot to do with her father. I am sorry to ask but, keani don't really do families in the human sense, do they? So, I am not sure you understand what I mean…"

Teki made a noise that Cvetka feared was a mild insult, to which she lowered her head in shame. She never learned how to interact well with other species except for sygia. "We don't have familial ties like humans, instead we raise children communally. Everyone who participates in a spawn pool also participates in raising the resulting hatchlings. This is a multi-year commitment, I was saving up for before I got fired… but I know that humans don't have several dozen parental figures but just two."

Cvetka nodded: "That is the best case. In the case of Skips, there is only one. And there was a whole ordeal behind it: Her father had a son who he loved and cherished, but said son didn't survive. That was when he remembered that there was a kid that he sired, but gave up all rights to. There was a legal battle to get her back from the janitorial staff he fucked… eventually, her mother lost and had to give her up and was no longer allowed to contact her. She was 6 years old and remembered. The others in the little unofficial homeschool group had already been a friend group for most of their life, so she was always the odd one out. And her father, he was never the most caring one. So, I can understand her idea that movement skills can allow her to escape her father's grasp and get to her mother. At least I think that is what she was thinking by eschewing her plan in life and instead running away."

There was a moment of silence then, Teki translated this to the others, then there was an animated discussion, during which she felt utterly useless and feared that she had done something wrong. Then, Teki explained: "No, he didn't win the lawsuit. He made the other side go away and thus gained custody by default. Officially, it was an electrical fire in the apartment complex her mother lived in, while she was at school. After the lawsuit looked like it would be decided in her favour. But Skips never believed that."

Cvetka covered her mouth with her hands: "Really‽ I never knew‽"

Teki nodded: "Really."

Cvetka was shocked: "She never told me!"

Teki nodded: "I guess your group made it hard for her to believe she could tell any of its members about the matter without being sanctioned in some way. Be it that the information was shared with people who should not know it, or that it was used to disparage someone in a group. Has she experienced this happening even if it was not about her specifically?"

Cvetka was stunned for a moment as she thought about this: "I guess she did." She blushed as she realised that they did both to her.

"Hey, what about the loot!" asked Rush pointing towards the as of yet unopened chest.

Cvetka looked around and saw the others also approach the loot chest.

Teki looked at them with anger: "Can we first wait until Skips wakes up? I don't want to leave her out of the distribution."

Rush breathed in audibly in anger. "Or we can do it now and get out of the dungeon and into the drone and be halfway back when she does."

Igor nodded: "We can just take the items out and attune to them later."

This caused a bit of a tedious discussion, where often one side had to wait until the other translated. Eventually, they agreed to take the loot to the outside and then treat Skips with the supplies of the vehicle outside.

Cvetka looked at the group taking out random items and helped by princess-carrying the unconscious Skips out. When the group exited the portal, and after she read that she levelled up to level 13 and gained a new skill, she noticed Rush carrying 4 items on him. Which irked her because he was carrying 5 earlier and she had not seen him putting anything down. She tried to give Rush 'the look' but he seemed not to notice. She looked at the others, but none of them seemed to have noticed either. It would be easy to get away with randomly attuning to an item. Especially if you were able to do it when everyone was distracted with the level ups. She looked at Rush, waiting for him to fess up, but he only put down four items. She whispered to him: "Aren't you forgetting something?"

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

"What now?" he asked angrily, accusingly and loudly.

"I saw you take five items and drop four. You took that hoe, which doesn't even make sense because you don't have a farming related class." Skips spoke still at more of a stage whisper.

He unattuned to an item that dropped out of the sky. It was not a hoe but a mace. "Sorry, it must have slipped my mind!" he said, with his voice sounding utterly insincere.

She looked at him and spoke loudly: "I guess this can happen. Good thing I caught it. We don't want to cheat our rescuers."

Rush nodded: "That was thoughtless of me." His eyes didn't say what his mouth was saying however.

A while later, Skips woke up and was tended to by the natives. The loot was shared, with just a few items going to the drop bears while the others, due to their higher contributions. The fact that even though they had to get saved, the scorpions deigned to give them a few items was remarkable.

It was a few hours later, when they were back in the compound when Rush grinned at her and showed the hoe. "These scorpions are so trusting! They didn't notice that I took this one!"

Cvetka stared at him: "Did you really steal from the people who saved our asses‽"

Rush smiled: "I left them an item from a grade 15 dungeon, so it's not that bad… but I couldn't let them have this."

Cvetka wordlessly looked at him, frowning.

"I don't know what the Kraljs told you about this planet but we were told to take any items related to agriculture when we encountered them and to never sell them to the natives," he continued. "The biggest problem that the natives have is having enough nutrition to increase their numbers! The desert is not a place to raise armies and we must not allow them to turn it into one. That was what they said. It seems to be even worse than the original scans showed. So, yeah, we were told that this was a relevant step to prevent native dominance."

"Were those the same people who put you under a spell? Why do you still care so much about them?" she asked.

"They are my parents and grandparents…" he said weakly, a touch not removing any effect on his mind. This was not the effect of a spell. It was the effect of a lifetime of being raised wrong, by manipulative and malicious people with bad motives. Her own skill could not remove this from him. It was not a means to remove a bad childhood from him, but a means to remove any kind of influence magic, as well as debuffs.

She said: "Yes, they are. But are you sure that they are on your side? Or are they on their own side and just make you think that it is yours as well?"

He froze for a moment, then responded: "They are on their own side, I guess. Everything always was for the company, if I needed their time, it was always an inconvenience. If the company needed their time, it was always a priority… I mean, I always thought that is what you do as entrepreneurs, but I realised that your family always was at your events… or at least most of them. And yet, I want to be worth their time. I want to do something that makes them abandon everything and make time for me."

She nodded: "I can imagine. But do you think that making yourself a happy little footrest for them makes them acknowledge you? Or wouldn't you think that they would need to take much more time out of your day if you royally effed them over? No one stops because of their shoes. Everyone stops for the hard pebble that has gotten inside."

He stared: "But that is…" he stopped thinking about some adjectives that expressed his outrage but stopped. She was right. It was an idea that was preposterous, but it was an idea which seemed so out of left field that it made sense to him.

She nodded: "And that means that you need to return the hoe to the scorpions. It doesn't help to just realise that you did a mistake privately if you don't apologise for it and make it right, now does it?"

He thought about this: "I didn't make a mistake per se. I listened to my family and… they… they stressed the importance of not letting these artefacts fall into the hands of natives… "

She interrupted: "You let your family turn you into a liar and cheater. Now, I don't care about the bigger picture stuff, but I care about you. I never saw you like that on earth! I like you and I don't want you to start becoming a bad person. You always seemed like a good person to me. Apart from the entire Sarah thing."

Rush looked sheepish: "I… I hope that I can become the person you see in me. Now that I am no longer under the influence and that we spent so much time together, I really like you. It is strange. Are you using another mental effect on me?"

"I cannot really establish effects. I can cancel them. Since the last level up, I have a chance to cancel any buffs of creatures whose damage I reflect. I don't have a single skill that imposes a condition. Apart from the Yanigalean Resistance." She showed her status page.

Rush looked relieved: "I am glad to see that. Because that means that when I am falling for you, it is real."

Cvetka asked: "You mean 'if'? Or…?" she left the rest unsaid.

Rush shook his head: "I mean when, because it is happening." And he hugged her. Cautiously first: putting a hand on her shoulder, moving closer, ready to abandon the approach at any moment when a negative reaction was perceived. Instead, she also moved closer and soon embraced each other in a hug.

What felt like minutes later, after they were wordlessly in each other's presence, feeling skin on skin, each other's warmth, smelling each other's unwashed bodies and not being in the least bothered by this, Rush looked at her: "I am smitten by you and hope that I can become the person you deem me to be. You are right, it was bad to cheat those who saved me. Shall we travel to their settlement and fix this tomorrow?"