---Fuel---

---Shí Dǎo Yuán’s perspective---

I sit on a plinth in the gymnasium, my back straight, my legs crossed in a full lotus, my hands placed into one another on my lap, my mind empty of thought.

Then I hear him approaching.

His normally impressively light footfalls thunder like war drums!

This man is burning right now.

“Fight me!” he challenges.

“No.” I answer without opening my eyes.

“Why not!?” he demands “Isn’t that your job!? Isn’t combat what you live for!?”

Answering his questions in reverse order, I say “What I live for is enlightenment, excellence in combat is simply my main means of seeking it… My job is seeing to your health and I judge that indulging your request right now would be counter to it… As to why; right now, you are a fire to which I do not wish to add fuel… I advise you to talk to Alchyinad…”

“She can’t see me until tomorrow… I’ve just gotta get out my aggression right now…”

“‘Getting out your aggression’ will not banish it, any more than one can extinguish a fire with dry wood.”

He thinks for a second before answering “If you pour enough dry wood on a fire, can’t you smother it before it catches?”

“You can pick apart my metaphors all you like, it will not change the truth they convey. Even if you could smother this fire with too much fuel, the risk you run is that if even a single ember avoids being smothered, you have now given it enormously more fuel than it had before. When the blaze reignites it will be worse than it was.”

“So what!? I’m just supposed to not feel!? Deny my emotions until they burn out!?”

“No… fire has its uses. I am telling you to be the tender of your fire, not its victim. Know when to add fuel to your fire and when to do so would be dangerous… I suggest getting in contact with your therapist and telling her it is an emergency… she may be able to find space she wouldn’t have otherwise.”

Even with my eyes closed, I can tell he scowls at the suggestion.

“Fuck this…” he snarls “…you don’t understand! How could you!”

“I have never experienced the pain you feel right now, this is correct. Even someone who had been in exactly your circumstances wouldn’t have felt exactly your pain…” I confirm “…but do not make the mistake of thinking that, because your pain is unique, none can empathise with it. Though no two flames burn exactly alike, all are keepers of a fire. To feel pain is to live.”

“Yeah, yeah… existence is suffering, right(?!)” he snarls.

“You may not share my faith, Míng, but please do not mock it.” I correct, gently but firmly “I suggest you join me for a meditation… I think it will do you much more good than a spar.”

Long moments of silence follow as the angry man considers my suggestion.

Then, I hear him turn on his heels and thunder away.

“A shame.” I state.

---Boris’s perspective---

“That’s outrageous!” I yell at the little xeno woman behind the counter.

She cowers away from me, obviously recognising me as a man of the one and only sapience producing deathworld.

“I’m sorry, Sir!” she grovels “But food with this high a calorie density with these specific nutrients isn’t readily available in this area of the spacelanes.”

“But this is nearly half as much again the price that we had to pay at the last station we resupplied at! This is extortionate! You’re discriminating against us because we’re deathworlders!”

Panicking, she answers “I promise you we’re not, Sir! It’s… erm… it’s just that a lot of things can effect the price! If… if you came from the core… the availability will have been better and the shipping costs will have been lower! If you bought from a large conglomerate, the price may have been discounted in a way that a family business like ours can’t match! We’re honestly not trying to extort you… this is just as little as we can charge without incurring a loss!”

“Oh yeah? Well, I want to talk to your manager about this! Or, better yet, what if I just went and got my friends off my ship and we came and took what we wanted and paid what we think it’s worth!” I bluff.

Stolen story; please report.

“Pretty sure that’s called theft…” comes a flat voice from behind me, translated into male sounding Russian by the device at my temple.

“Oh yeah, and what…?” I say, wheeling around.

My voice catches in my throat.

The unfamiliar man I’ve just turned to face is a head taller than me, powerfully built and, unexpectedly, Human.

He’s fair skinned, copper haired and has bright green eyes.

He leers down at me with a contemptuous expression colouring his face.

Behind him is a tall, slender xeno woman with blue skin, white hair, glowing white eyes and four arms.

“…I… uhm… It wouldn’t be theft if we paid for it?” I answer, carefully.

“Wouldn’t it?” he answers, danger in his voice. Then, seeming to completely change the subject, he says “Nice jacket you’re wearing… I’ll buy it off you for a credit…”

Deeply confused I answer “One cred? Dude, come on! I paid waymore than that for it!… It wouldn’t even fit you!”

A powerful hand shoots out to grab my lapel and yanks me forward so fast that my feet roll over my toes and I land in a kneel, held up by the massive man who now has his crazed face an inch from mine!

Blue hands appear at his shoulder as the xeno woman fruitlessly attempts to pull him away, saying “Victor… Victor! Calm down! This guy isn’t worth it!”

Ignoring her, he addresses me, snarling “If I decided that a cred were a fair price, would it be fair to just take the jacket off you and flick you a cred as I walked away?!”

“…Uhm… no?” I pant.

“Oh! Good! You can recognise an injustice when it’s happenin’ to you at least(!)” he growls “Now… let me tell you what’s gonna happen… I am gonna let you up, you’re gonna apologise to the clerk here for makin’ a nuisance of yourself, then you’re gonna take your business elsewhere and not try the same shit there as you did here, because, if you do, you’ll answer to me and my friends about it! Am. I. clear?”

Terrified, I nod my head, frantically.

“Good!” he says, releasing the front of my clothes, standing up and gesturing over my head to the warehouse clerk.

His companion tentatively releases her hands from his shoulder.

I scramble to my feet and turn to face the pink skinned xeno.

“I’m very sorry for causing you trouble!” I say, frightened that I might be attacked from behind if my apology doesn’t sound sincere enough.

“That’s… uhm… that’s alright…?” says the girl, her three eyes flicking from me to the man behind me and back.

I turn behind me, asking with my expression if I’m allowed to leave.

He jabs a thumb to the door and says “Off you fuck!… There’s another emporium on the other side of the station… prices about 4% higher than this one… short tempered pair of Threndians working security… I’m sure they’d love your custom(!)”

Metaphorical tail between my legs, I make for the door.

As I leave I hear him exhale before saying “Sorry about that… now, could you tell me what you’ve got in the way of deathworld provisions? We’re willin’ to pay full price, obviously…”

---Alchyinad’s perspective---

“Yeah, so… then we bought up their entire stock of all of the same stuff he wanted… It’s a tiny bit more than we actually needed… but it won’t spoil and it’s probably the best price we’re gonna get this far out on this side of the galaxy.” says the exhausted man, gesturing vaguely out of the window to the space station we’re moored at.

There’s no whisper of pride in his voice.

“And… you and your fiancée… fought about this?” I ask “What was the contention?”

“Basically, she thought I overreacted, that he was just a male Karen makin’ idle threats, that I shouldn’t’ve put my hands on him even if I managed to keep myself from beating him to a bloody pulp…”

“Do you think it was actually about you putting your hands on him?” I query, carefully.

“What d’you mean?” he frowns.

“Well… she has just agreed to marry you, hasn’t she? Do you think that she might be worried about what might happen if she’s ever on the receiving end of the way you acted today?”

Stonily, he answers “There is only one kind of person I’d ever put my hands on like that… people who deserve it! I am not an abuser!”

“I’m certainly not saying you are, Victor… and I don’t think Tuun thinks that either… consciously at least…”

“But… you think… she’s looking at how short my fuse is right now and subconsciously thinking ‘what the fuck am I gettin’ myself into? What if, one day, he decides that I’m someone who deserves it?’?”

I shrug “I think it’s a possibility… Maybe worth considering how it might have frightened her and how she may not be fully aware, herself, what it was that she was actually scared by?”

He closes his eyes, furrows his brow, exhales through his nose and nods.

“I understand that what you learned the other day must be challenging… I think anyone would be thrown into a certain amount of mental disarray by a revelation like that… Do you think you drew any connection between this unruly customer and the ones who cloned your mother?”

“Definitely!” he answers immediately with a single emphatic nod and a stony tone in his voice “He might as well’ve been wearin’ an ‘I ♡ the Revanchists’ pin on his ugly jacket! Swaggerin’ about, throwin’ his weight around, actin’ like bein’ the toughest guy in the room means he gets to act however he wants! Made my fuckin’ blood boil! Decided he needed to know how it felt to be on the other end of that!”

“So… do you think he learned his lesson?” I ask, my tone neutral.

He gives a long sigh “…Nooooo… I think he probably don’t have enough empathy to understand anythin’ like ‘That sucked! Guess I should stop treatin’ people like that myself!’… I suppose he just learned to be more careful when he does… make sure he actually is the toughest son of a bitch in the room before actin’ like a bully… I guess that’s better ’an nothin’ but…”

He trails off here so I suggest “But you’d much prefer the experience to have taught him some empathy?”

He nods, forlornly, before saying “Guess I’m a bit of a hypocrite in that way, though!”

“A hypocrite?” I say, my tone querying.

“Yeah… you know? Didn’t have any empathy for how I made Tuun feel, did I!”

I frown “I wouldn’t have said the two situations were comparable myself… You clearly care about whether you hurt Tuun… From your description it doesn’t seem like this man you made pay the ‘arsehole tax’ cared at all about how his behaviour affected others?”

He shrugs “Guess not.”

He doesn’t elaborate further so, instead, I ask “Alright Victor, why don’t we revisit the topic of this girl? Have you spoken to her since you found out she was not your mother?”