Al­though Sobon's aether was be­gin­ning to set­tle and heal enough for her to be­gin the next stage of at­tune­ment, and al­though Mian ap­proached her want­i­ng to dis­cuss ex­ter­nal qi, Sobon forced her­self to spend the next full day de­sign­ing and get­ting the ma­te­ri­als to make a spir­i­tu­al sen­sor ar­ray. The ma­te­ri­als were the stick­ing point; the sen­sor ar­ray re­quired both an an­ten­na por­tion, for which Sobon's di­a­mond was an ac­cept­able ma­te­r­i­al, but also a de­tec­tor por­tion, which was some­thing that usu­al­ly re­quired spe­cial­ized ma­te­ri­als--ide­al­ly, high­ly re­ac­tive met­als, but ones just sta­ble enough that they wouldn't de­cay due to aether ef­fects alone.

Gen­er­al­ly, in aether tech­nol­o­gy, this was done with very heavy el­e­ments, and the heav­ier the bet­ter; it was a pri­ma­ry use for the transuran­ic met­als, when placed with­in spe­cial­ized sys­tems to pre­vent or lim­it ra­dioac­tive de­cay. Sobon had no in­ter­est in try­ing to find an ide­al sub­sti­tute; the "cheap and easy" so­lu­tion to the prob­lem was bis­muth. It wasn't quite heavy enough, and it wasn't quite ra­dioac­tive enough, but its crys­tal struc­ture was com­pat­i­ble with ex­ist­ing de­signs, and its aether in­ter­ac­tions pre­dictable enough.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, the lo­cals here had some­thing of an at­tach­ment to bis­muth, since it was also the name and col­oration of a rel­a­tive­ly high qi rank--one just above Sobon's, now. Or, to be clear--the qi rank was based on the iri­des­cent col­ors of bis­muth ox­ide that forms on the sur­face of the met­al. Ei­ther way, the few peo­ple that Sobon could im­me­di­ate­ly find to sup­ply her with even a lit­tle bit of the met­al were out of stock, and only will­ing to make promis­es in­volv­ing weeks or months and a lot of mon­ey.

Weird­ly enough, though, this quest had her cross­ing paths with Kibar, and not in any of the usu­al places. He was sim­ply walk­ing by, when he spot­ted Sobon look­ing rather cross as she left a shop.

"Lady Alas­si." His words were for­mal, if a bit sullen. "You look per­turbed."

Sobon might have snapped at him, but so far, the man had been harm­less. "I am search­ing for ma­te­ri­als," she said. "Un­suc­cess­ful­ly."

"Tru­ly?" Kibar glanced at the shop, seem­ing­ly con­fused. It wasn't ex­act­ly a world-class shop; Sobon had gone to the shops in the Ways of Gold and Sil­ver first, and end­ed up in more of a back-al­ley shop­ing dis­trict by the end. "If I may ask, what is it that you are so des­per­ate to find?"

"I am not des­per­ate. I sim­ply have a spe­cif­ic use for a sam­ple of bis­muth, and there are none to be found."

"Bis­muth..." the man frowned, putting one fin­ger on his chin. "Strange met­al, and stranger that it lends its name and col­or to qi, is it not? I have sev­er­al sam­ples, but I have yet to find any mean­ing­ful con­nec­tion be­tween the met­al and any prop­er­ty of qi that jus­ti­fies its pro­found place­ment in the heirar­chy." He looked again at Alas­si, and this time, Sobon could de­tect no trace of the man's for­mer smug coun­te­nance. "I wouldn't mind part­ing with a sam­ple, if the Lady would be will­ing to en­gage me in... civ­il dis­course. Noth­ing more than that."

Sobon did take the time to clear her mind and make sure that there was no spir­i­tu­al sense here that she was walk­ing into some kind of trap, sig­nif­i­cant or oth­er­wise, but the man re­al­ly seemed like some­thing she had said, or some­thing else that had hap­pened to him, had shocked him into a new way of think­ing.

That is what led to Sobon fol­low­ing the man, with some cau­tion, to an out of the way slum, where he as­cend­ed some poor­ly built but well-main­tained stairs to a very small apart­ment on the top floor of a rick­ety three-sto­ry build­ing. From a ways away, Sobon wouldn't have re­al­ly ex­pect­ed to even find a three-sto­ry build­ing in the area; a small but deep shift in the ter­rain meant the top floor was only bare­ly taller than the two-sto­ry build­ings near­by.

Kibar's quar­ters, as­sum­ing that's what they were, were clean and spar­tan. Sobon could sense a hid­den chest in the cor­ner that con­tained a pock­et di­men­sion, much like Sobon's ring and in-progress bracelet, but in­stead of go­ing to it, Kibar wan­dered to a bit of cracked ma­son­ry, and shift­ed it aside, show­ing coins and oth­er small items in a small hol­low in the wall.

The sam­ple of bis­muth that he with­drew was the size of his thumb, which was a bit larg­er than Alas­si's thumb, and more than enough for Sobon to work with. But as he re­placed the ma­son­ry and held it up to the light to look at the col­ors that shined off of it, he spoke slow­ly, and again, Sobon found the man's voice to be... sub­dued.

"I was first told of the ex­is­tence of the spir­its when I was a very young boy," he said. "In truth, even when I look back on my life, I do not see any places where their guid­ance has led me astray. And yet, af­ter you have so firm­ly dis­missed the con­cept of be­ing led by the spir­its, I be­gan to won­der. Per­haps they did not lead me astray, but did they lead me to the best fu­ture I could have had?"

"What was sur­pris­ing was that when I be­gan to think like that, they be­came up­set." Kibar low­ered the bis­muth and turned, then tossed it to Sobon, who caught it out of the air, and took a mo­ment to study the sam­ple with her eyes and sens­es. It was def­i­nite­ly large and pure enough, al­though there was some kind of large im­pu­ri­ty with­in the crys­tal. "Since then, I feel... dis­placed. I am not sure that I un­der­stand." A mo­ment or two af­ter fin­ish­ing that sen­tence, Kibar added a tiny spir­i­tu­al pulse, to sug­gest an end-of-sen­tence be­yond what was im­plied--that he was done speak­ing and ac­tu­al­ly ask­ing a ques­tion.

Sobon took it in stride, putting the sam­ple away in her space ring. "I think you'll find the an­swer un­sat­is­fy­ing. You be­gan be­liev­ing in mean­ing and pur­pose, but you have en­coun­tered some­thing that has no mean­ing and no pur­pose. Spir­its have a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive, but they are still..." Sobon had to con­sult briefly with Alas­si to find a word that had the right con­no­ta­tions to con­vey what she meant. "...peo­ple. They have faults and flaws, and es­pe­cial­ly, they have emo­tions. They can be hurt, and they can be shal­low. Their per­spec­tive and their na­ture can let them lead peo­ple, if that's what they want to do. But some­times, it isn't what they want, ei­ther be­cause that is not their na­ture, or be­cause they are hurt or dis­tressed and sim­ply stop want­i­ng to. That hurt is not pur­pose or mean­ing. It is, sim­ply..." Sobon again searched for a word. "...vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty."

"Vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty." Kibar's voice had just a touch of bit­ter­ness. "That is a rea­son...?"

"Rea­son is not mean­ing or pur­pose, sir Kibar." Then, tak­ing a bit of a gam­ble, she fetched the sam­ple out again. "Let's talk about bis­muth. You won­der what its mean­ing and pur­pose is? In truth, it has none. In­stead of mean­ing or pur­pose, bis­muth has prop­er­ties. Once you un­der­stand its prop­er­ties, it ceas­es to be mere­ly a flawed, brit­tle met­al." She moved the sam­ple in her fin­ger and raised her hand as though to fore­stall an ob­jec­tion, al­though Kibar didn't seem to be rais­ing one. "I won't pre­tend that your spir­i­tu­al guide is lit­tle more than a tool, the way that even the best of ma­te­ri­als is only a tool. Peo­ple that think of oth­er peo­ple like that are of­ten un­kind and un­de­serv­ing."

"In­stead, the fact that I un­der­stand bis­muth is what will let me give it pur­pose, where you could not. And that is part of why I don't trust your 'spir­its.'" Idly, pro­ject­ing an aether pat­tern around the bis­muth crys­tal, she re­moved the im­pu­ri­ties and the ox­ide lay­er, re­shap­ing what re­mained into a small­er, sol­id cube. The im­pu­ri­ties and ox­ides she let fall to the floor at her feet. "I've been led by peo­ple who un­der­stand noth­ing be­fore. I've been a sol­dier, and be­ing led is how be­ing the mil­i­tary works. That will al­ways be a large part of who I am."

"The sense I got from your so-called spir­it is one that didn't know and didn't care about my his­to­ry or my fu­ture. I would be­lieve it meant well, but that doesn't mat­ter if it doesn't un­der­stand. I will not sim­ply be a pret­ty piece of crys­tal held by some­one who doesn't un­der­stand."

It wasn't un­til Sobon spoke that it re­al­ly oc­curred to him, the for­mer Cy­borg, that he was re­al­ly now a she, a woman, in a world that seemed to ex­pect cer­tain things from women. The pret­ty shop­keep­ing girls that were sim­ply dec­o­ra­tions for their store­fronts came to mind, as well as Xoi Xam and Rai Su Anin. Sobon had known, of course--Alas­si's own fu­ture had been ru­ined by a sex­ist bas­tard who want­ed to black­mail her into sub­mis­sion. But it was still a very dis­tant thought that peo­ple were look­ing at her, Sobon, with those same eyes. Or, it had been.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

Kibar had said he want­ed to talk with a pret­ty woman. Sobon had rec­og­nized it as flirt­ing, but not put it into con­text, not least be­cause Kibar hadn't turned out to be any kind of scum. A fool, per­haps, and a fool who Sobon now re­al­ized was ac­tive­ly search­ing for a wife, and who still har­bored some hopes that Alas­si would be it.

Once again, Sobon found that she tru­ly hat­ed be­ing a flesh and blood thing. What she wouldn't give to re­place her body with suit­able pros­thet­ics, carv­ing away all of those ugly bits of bi­ol­o­gy that cared so damned much about re­pro­duc­tion and re­plac­ing them with weapons, data­bas­es, gen­er­a­tors, tools. She fought the urge to show her ugly feel­ings on her face, though she couldn't quite stop the stress and tense­ness from reach­ing her fea­tures.

"And you, sir Kibar," she added, as new feel­ings rolled through her, "I do not be­lieve that you will ever un­der­stand me, but even if you could, I would be un­in­ter­est­ed in try­ing. I have work to do, and I do not be­lieve you will ever be a part of it."

The fi­nal­i­ty of her words did strike some­thing in Kibar, and al­though she soft­ened her exit with "Thank you" and some oth­er mol­li­fy­ing words, byt he time Sobon walked out of the man's room, she could tell that he had tak­en the com­plete re­jec­tion for what it was.

When Sobon re­turned home, she was in no mood to an­swer Mian's ques­tions, al­though she re­tained enough good na­ture to apol­o­gize and sched­ule a bet­ter time. Mian, too, fac­tored into things; Sobon stud­ied the man, who was still smit­ten by Alas­si, but he also seemed like he was will­ing to move on and look for an­oth­er woman, not in­ter­est­ed in Sobon and will­ing to ad­mit that Alas­si her­self was all but gone.

In­stead of en­gag­ing with those thoughts di­rect­ly, Sobon spent the rest of the day and night in her hid­den base­ment, as­sem­bling the spir­i­tu­al sen­sors, form­ing di­a­mond an­ten­nas, bis­muth de­tec­tors, and crude brass sup­ports, then as­sem­bling a sec­ond full set with dif­fer­ent an­ten­na tun­ings. At the very least, none of this work re­quired Sobon to ex­per­i­ment; it was fair­ly stan­dard Crestan gear, and she had craft­ed sim­i­lar out of spare parts and garbage on a mis­sion be­fore. With the aether rou­tine data­base pro­vid­ed by the Coro­na mak­ing up for her own lost data­base, she sim­ply had to grind through the math and cre­ate the struc­tures ac­cord­ing­ly.

Even so, the sun was al­ready ris­ing when Sobon had got­ten to the point where she could be­gin script­ing a dif­fer­en­tial sig­nal ma­trix that con­nect­ed the two de­tec­tors. A DSM Scan­ner was a half-pas­sive sen­sor, mean­ing that it was still de­tectable by the spir­i­tu­al­ly at­tuned, but its aether sig­na­ture was much, much small­er than any ac­tive sen­sor. That wouldn't like­ly stop the Di­a­mond Lord, or any­one else, from notic­ing that they were be­ing ob­served, but they shouldn't be able to tell from which di­rec­tion, not as long as Sobon wasn't us­ing any ac­tive pow­ers to pierce shield­ing.

The DSM script it­self, though, was com­plex enough that Sobon couldn't en­grave it in a morn­ing, and she had promised Mian to speak af­ter break­fast. So she set aside the work, join­ing the oth­ers for their meal.

"You seem up­set," Ki'el said. "You have been ever since you re­turned."

Sobon just nod­ded. "I am fine. I was... re­mind­ed. That I am not who I used to be, and that I have to deal with the same things every­one else does. In this case... with how peo­ple view women."

Both Lui and Ki'el flinched in sym­pa­thy at that, al­though Sobon wasn't ex­pect­ing it of Lui. Then again, from the few con­ver­sa­tions she'd had since Lui had start­ed grow­ing up again, if that was the right way to phrase it, the girl was not as naive as she had been, and had be­gun re­flect­ing on what she'd seen when she was younger. Al­though she seemed too young to re­al­ly un­der­stand what the men at the inn had want­ed or in­tend­ed when they were be­ing crude and crass... per­haps it was right that she was learn­ing while she was young, and not dis­cov­er­ing these things when she was of age, and al­ready in the line of fire. No, put that way, of course that was right.

If Sobon had her way--his way--he would have equipped both Lui and Ki'el with plas­ma can­nons, just in case, but that wasn't the way of things on any world. Still, Sobon en­joyed the thought.

"It was for­tu­nate­ly noth­ing, and noth­ing should come of it," Sobon clar­i­fied af­ter a mo­ment. "But I..." She searched for words, un­sure of ex­act­ly what she want­ed to say. "I would much pre­fer to be a war­rior with­out sex or gen­der. That is who I was, be­fore, and it's still who I am in­side. I have no in­ter­est in nav­i­gat­ing peo­ple's ex­pec­ta­tions, and their in­ter­est gains me noth­ing. It is noth­ing but an ir­ri­tat­ing dis­trac­tion."

Ki'el nod­ded firm­ly at that, al­though Lui seemed like she didn't quite agree. Mian, per­haps not hav­ing en­coun­tered these thoughts be­fore, was look­ing be­tween the three of them as though try­ing to get a read on the sub­text that he was miss­ing.

Ki'el spoke up af­ter a mo­ment of si­lence. "I do not think that it is wrong to be a woman, and I do not think that I will mind be­ing a moth­er some day, but I in­tend to live my life as a sword. Un­til I find some­one I... ac­cept," she added some sub­text to that word that Sobon didn't feel any need or de­sire to un­tan­gle, "I would not wish for any­one else to pre­tend to be­ing close with me. These things that the Djang call beau­ty are shack­les, and I will nev­er ac­cept them.

Lui seemed un­com­fort­able, and Mian more­so, but Sobon just nod­ded. "There will be those who do not un­der­stand, but there is no need to con­cern your­self with that, not un­til and un­less they in­tend vi­o­lence. Just be aware that those peo­ple do ex­ist, and you may need to fight or flee in or­der to sur­vive."

Ki'el nod­ded at that, and Mian stepped into the qui­et. "Ki'el... I agree that no one should force you to be any­thing you are not. But I don't see beau­ty as a shack­le."

Lui nod­ded em­phat­i­cal­ly at that. "It's not!" She protest­ed. "Beau­ti­ful peo­ple are... beau­ty is..."

Sobon wait­ed to see what she had to say, but when she seemed not to find a way for­ward, Sobon spoke up. "My peo­ple would say it is a mat­ter of [gen­der]," she said, trans­mit­ting the word's in­tent when she felt like the lo­cal lan­guage didn't quite con­vey it. "Gen­der is a spir­i­tu­al qual­i­ty that isn't sim­ply about your flesh. Peo­ple's souls res­onate with peo­ple of sim­i­lar minds, and re­ject those who are in­com­pat­i­ble, and gen­der is a foun­da­tion of that, some­thing prim­i­tive and in­her­ent. If some­one asked me, or Ki'el, to be­come 'women' in the sense of be­ing... beau­ti­ful, sub­mis­sive peo­ple, like many we've seen in this city, it would be no dif­fer­ent than ask­ing the same of Mian, or Lord Shi­da, or Tuli. They would be ask­ing us to res­onate with in­com­pat­i­ble peo­ple and in­com­pat­i­ble ideals."

"But at the same time," Sobon spoke up as both Mian and Lui seemed like they want­ed to protest, "we can't ask you not ac­cept beau­ty, be­cause the beau­ty you see draws you to­wards peo­ple like you. If we asked you to re­ject what you felt and what you want­ed, to be­come like us, you would find few peo­ple 'here' that are like you. You would only find peo­ple like 'us'." She nod­ded at Ki'el, who was watch­ing her with a rapt look on her face.

"I don't think beau­ty is an in­com­pat­i­ble ide­al with be­ing a pow­er­ful war­rior," Mian protest­ed. "I be­lieve that a pow­er­ful woman can look how­ev­er she likes. There is no rea­son why pow­er and sex can­not go hand in hand."

Lui, for her part, was con­flict­ed, and mum­bling some­thing about 'beau­ty' and 'spir­i­tu­al' as she tried to wrap her mind around the com­plex­i­ties of what Sobon had said.

Sobon just shook her head. "Mian, and Lui, and Ki'el... I can tell you for cer­tain that we could spend weeks or years try­ing to find the ex­act words to ex­plain how we feel. The truth is that there is a truth. It is not writ­ten in stone; our feel­ings are im­per­fect, and they can change. But my per­son­al feel­ings are that my gen­der, and my sex, should not mat­ter ex­cept if and when I choose for them to mat­ter. But the peo­ple who dress their daugh­ters up and have them stand for hours in their shops to at­tract cus­tomers are say­ing that those girls' gen­der and sex al­ways mat­ters. That they should al­ways be aware of their sex, and should al­ways be act­ing in a way that is de­ter­mined by their sex. That is what is of­fen­sive."

"If some­day, I em­brac­ing be­ing a woman--and I have some doubt that I ever will--but if I do, it will be no one else's con­cern. And if I am re­born a man, next time, I will be of­fend­ed if peo­ple tell me that my be­ing a man mat­ters, just as I'm of­fend­ed when peo­ple tell me be­ing a woman mat­ters. I am nei­ther man nor woman." Sobon put down the dish with the last of her break­fast. "I am only Sobon."

The oth­er three con­sid­ered those words, with Ki'el be­ing the least per­turbed of the three. But Sobon, see­ing that Mian was thor­ough­ly dis­tract­ed, de­cid­ed to just go back to her base­ment work­shop. The whole con­ver­sa­tion was ir­ri­tat­ing; nec­es­sary, but ir­ri­tat­ing. Most­ly, it just re­mind­ed Sobon that there was an­oth­er whole world out there, one full of peo­ple and lives that she had nev­er ex­pe­ri­enced. It wasn't as though she didn't want--and hadn't want­ed, past tense--more friends, who lived in­ter­est­ing lives filled with col­ors, and gen­ders, and oth­er in­ter­est­ing things. And for all she knew, if she ever had a chance to ex­plore the world, if things were at peace and she wasn't tasked with dis­man­tling a world-end­ing dis­as­ter, she might fall in love or... or oth­er­wise, be­come some­thing she def­i­nite­ly isn't right now, and has nev­er been.

But she'd be damned if she was go­ing to let some­one ma­nip­u­late her into some bull­shit, and that was all she was ex­pect­ing from this world. Even on Crest, when she looked at her peers she saw re­la­tions that start­ed on ac­ci­dent and end­ed in tears. She wasn't go­ing to get tan­gled up, not now, and maybe not ever. She just couldn't af­ford to.