"Some things are impossible to forget. Some things are impossibly written."

[---Citadel Refuge: 2 Weeks Later---]

The medical spire bustled with professionals holding knowledge she couldn’t fathom, some poked away at their displays as they did their tasks. Checking in with patients, carting medical supplies, and stretchers holding the wounded from the border wall.

Each man and woman had a hardened facade, each soldier and a few Ravenguard were being worked on by both Eta and the growing number of medical personnel.

One of the Ravenguard held a blackened arm out to a nurse, the burn trailed up the muscular limb much like a piece of charred wood.

An involuntary shudder passed through her, the contrast of his burned away tissues against the white tiled walls looked wrong.

She grimaced sympathetically as she crutched along, swinging her leg forward in time with Bishop and thanking her luck she wasn’t one of them. Every swing was a pulsing pain that trailed to her hip.

Her breath felt coppery.

Eta walked right behind her. “Every day, Lil’ Mel, I know the meds taste terrible, but every day. Managed to bust your kidney and punctured a lung during that tumble.”

“I will, I will, Eta,” she swung forward, pausing to readjust as her stomach violently turned on itself, Eta held her by the shoulders. “Thank you.”

“I know it hurts like hell, but trust me, it’ll make getting augmented feel like a vacation. I’ll give you really good pain meds then.” Bishop met Eta’s gaze as she addressed him.

“Make sure she gets to her apartment, big man.”

“I’ve got her,” he rumbled out as he glanced at Melissa’s nauseous face, “need a minute?”

“Mhmm, just sick.”

“Thing got you good, huh?”

“Got you good too.” Her eyes looked pained as she adjusted herself, “thanks for being out there… I owe you guys.”

“Don’t,” he rose a hand, the hard lines of his face resembled an anatomical sculpture as he flashed a perfect smile, “regardless, Ripley and I are more than willing to protect you. It’s an oath taken once you become a Ravenguard. We live and die by said creed.”

“Oh, well… no one told me that… what’s the oath?”

“You’ll get to hear it for yourself soon enough, it’s tradition, and the group you and Ripley will be training with will know it by heart, because you’re gonna hear it a lot.”

Her face morphed into another grimace as they made their way to her apartment.

It had a drawing of a little white rabbit perched on top of a rock with flowers growing around it, a wolf laid next to it, comfortably dozing. One eye opened looking directly at the viewer.

Most of the ecological wing were artists, he saw a few doors with similar artwork.

There were photos of various ecologists on their expeditions, one was a man sitting next to a bear, he looked excited. Yet obviously nervous sitting mere feet away as it ate some fruit. Its paws were blueish, though it did have its eyes fixed on the man, who had his eyes nervously fixed on it.

Floyd was a wild card, a guy who loved danger and sparring with Tom when he could, he usually managed Mithrop.

She palmed the pad on her door, hissing it open as both stepped inside to mostly bare office walls, save for her many potted plants and taxonomic charts lining them for her visitors and clientele operating for, but outside Ravensmantle’s borders. Various journals and notebooks lined the shelves behind it along with her degrees, much like Vahlen’s.

Her own degrees were that of environmental science, botany, animal husbandry, and agriculture among others.

Vahlen’s seemed to cover every subject imaginable. She was intimidatingly intelligent.

“There is a good reason Vahlen has the most effective army at her disposal, and she knows how to choose soldiers.”

Her grimaced anguish deepened as he finished his statement.

“That means you too, once you’re healed.”

“I don’t know if I’m ready for that per se’, I’ll try.” She palmed the office door open, revealing her living quarters. Her home on the first floor of the Citadel was an almost violating contrast to the industrial space.

It’s old wood furniture and the smells of cardinals, posie groupings, and hung plants always brought her a homely comfort.

“You’ll do or die, trust me, I was like you once.” He leaned against her wall, enjoying the scent of lavender, lilacs, and perennials on her countertop across the living room.

“Really? You’re a tank, what would you be afraid of?”

He put a hand to his chest, “Guarding my heart, I was a kid once, grew up to fast and saw things no child should, look, I’m a Ravenguard for those that can’t protect themselves. A beacon of hope for those like yourself just a few years ago.”

“I know it haunts you, but you’re stronger than you were in Juniper Valley, and you can become something even stronger.”

The smell of her old home and its lush forests.

The fire, the screams, the grey cloaks.

Pounding footfalls, running for her life.

In whatever way she could manage, she wanted only to remember the positive aspects of the home she burned.

It was safe, populated, and thriving.

A nameless city among many other nameless cities eaten by the annals of time and burned away to ash for preservation in the name of the Western Federation. Years of survival in a slowly disappearing world, the memories of her old neighborhood and how it burned.

“Hey, you’re mumbling,” Bishop’s apologetic gaze scanned her in concern, “I know you have it in you.”

“I’m in, after last week, I wish I did it sooner.” He nodded.

“You will have to skip a rotation, you need to heal first, so, next month, you Ripley and a handful of others begin.” She blew a drawn bout breath in response.

“Alright, I think I’m going to lay down,” the wave of nausea attacked her stomach as she slowly made her way in after a hug with Bishop. “Thank you again.”

She spent the night struggling to sleep.

The days blurred between the pain, medicine, and fact that she couldn’t understand the creature that chased her.

A few weeks of close study gave her no result and she wasn’t any closer to helping the rest of the world. As her ankle and insides slowly stitched themselves back together, she couldn’t do the same with her mind. As she jotted down her thoughts of the day along with her discoveries, she couldn’t help but feel a disquiet.

The urban temple, that little girl. Even after sending her report, thoroughly documenting her experiences and reporting another potential missing person.

Nothing came up, and there weren’t any children matching the description, nor were they allowed to leave the confines of Refuge City and its miles wide expanse of infrastructure, housing, and garrisons, each one taught the importance of duty to their country, because that meant the worlds safety.

Indoctrination and she held hands, she held it loosely.

A knock on her office door saw the equally gripped pen flying.

Despite trying to grab at it in practically slow motion. She felt a growing frustration as her hands couldn’t operate as fast as she wanted them to. Between the recovery and meds, her reflexes were off.

The softened voice of Eta responded to the audible gasp and clatter inside, trying to speak quietly with the sudden absence of power tools breathing in from the hangar bay. The workers done with their day shuffling by the door made a quiet ambience of murmurs and boot steps.

“Hey Lil Mel’, you in there? Just here to check up with you, haven’t seen you all day.”

“Yeah, one sec.” She shut her notebook, marking the page she wrote on for later. The pads of her crutch swung her to the little stain at her doorstep.

It always looked like a child’s hand just plopped there, stained a strange off-color nothingness.

“Hey, Eta,” the red-eyed ecologist gestured for her to come in. “I’m… not so great… hanging in there.” The air left her with the sudden hug that briefly took her off balance.

And, within 5 seconds of Eta being in the room, she felt herself breaking down all over again. Opting to stand on her good foot and letting the crutch lean against the door frame. She found herself terrified in that moment of letting go.

She felt another pile onto the hug from behind Eta, suspecting Amanda, she and Tom often visited at 530pm, him on his way from geology, her from the hangar.

It was just about time.

Both held her for a while urging her to feel and experience it, the sweet smell of linen washed in a soap she had never smelled before, almost metallic with a fresh lime scent.

As she went to apologize for staining Eta’s simple grey shirt with a bear holding a teacup, thanks to her face, even the bear was tearing up. She waved it off.

“Knew it’d happen. It’s okay, Lil Mel, you can say the graft fucking sucks. It does for everyone and given what happened in Zone 17…” Eta’s eyes dropped momentarily.

“But that’s the cost of being super-duper smart, right?”

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“Hey, stranger, how ya’ feeling?”

Melissa leaned fully on Karla before righting herself and shaking her head, “better with you here.”

A moment later Amanda, Tom, Bishop, Ripley, and Nala squeezed inside to Melissa’s surprise.

“Oh, I forgot to mention, I kinda told people there would be dinner, don’t worry don’t worry. I’ll cook,” Eta raised a heavy bag full of ingredients. “It’ll be my pleasure.”

“I actually appreciate the company… feels like I’m going crazy.” She shot a smile at them as Karla helped her to the door of her apartment, Nala grabbed her crutch.

Melissa led them inside, shutting her door and sitting on her couch with Karla, arm around her shoulder. She put a little blue succulent on the coffee table. “For you!”

“Thanks,” she smiled at the little blue succulent, it pulsed in patterns, lighting the individual blooms of sepals that winked on and off almost like a flickering set of Christmas lights. “Bio lume… did you get me a night light?” She shot a playful frown.

“Well, maybe, or maybe Nala and I wanted to get our Rabbit something nice.” She tilted her head, her curly hair bobbing. “I was worried sick about you, you coulda’ said something, and I coulda’ joined you.”

“Yeah, Lil ‘ Mel, you could-.”

Eta was cut off by Melissa’s stabbing finger and playful frown, “I invited you.”

“Well, I did need to figure out our dead sow.”

“See? And you’re right, I should have said something… though in my defense I thought it was a medium sized… giant thing.”

“Not so big it broke the doorway to the Masque?” Amanda quipped.

“We are happy to see you here, rather than elsewhere, regardless!” Nala’s smile lit the room as she held up a chocolate bar, thrusting it at Melissa.

“Your favorite, sea-salt caramel!” She took it gratefully, if not gleefully.

“Thank you Nala.” She drew out, “thanks for coming over.” She relished the flavor as she tore into it.

“We got our own here.” Eta strolled to the kitchen island with a few potted plants on it just past the open concept living room, many others were strung up around the place. Mostly green and grey coloring among the other informative charts next to each one.

The plant hanging over the island was a red cardinal set in a fishbowl, the root system looked akin to a bunch of centipedes, Eta glanced at it with a brief wince.

A few others had fruits and veggies with a few already harvested and eaten, their scraps were in a small plastic box on the kitchen island covered in cling film for composting.

“Check out what almost got us.” she pointed to her dimmed wall display as she worked it remotely with her wrist, fingers tapping away.

The brightened image made a shiver run down each Ravenguard’s back.

Melissa was briefly stricken with nausea again.

The loper in the dark.

A series of complicated layered anatomical diagrams of various animals and species next to it.

“The hell is that?” Eta asked, a tinge of creeped out surprise in her voice, she let out a brief pensive breath. “Is that the thing?”

Melissa replied with a brief sigh of her own, a pensive twirl of her hair tangled it, she gave up on trying to fix her frazzled hair. Nala passed something over her back to Karla.

She pointed out the differing animal diagrams by pairing the table screen to the wall screen. Bone structures, nervous systems, and the location of Zone 17 itself along with the climate, biome, and common small prey animals.

“I’m trying to find its genus, family tree, anything… nothing I’ve found so far…” she pointed out the diagrams, “so, compare, note, compare… you know how it goes…”

Given the hundreds of comparisons she could whip through in a few minutes with rapid, languid circular flicks, touching the screen was almost like pressing into electrically charged jelly with a silky-smooth fabric.

Eta followed along behind her before stopping her at one with a quick knife jab from the kitchen. “Hold up.”

She pointed to a pair of skulls, “lower mandible looks wolf like, but the upper part, does that look like a bear to you? I mean, I’m also a vet, but not for anything ursinus, that’s more Floyd’s department.”

She had laid out mushrooms, meat, and other veggies, she craved a good stir fry.

“Hey,” she raised a mushroom, “you wanna try some? It’s different.” The rumbling of her stomach reminded her that she hadn’t been eating well since the injury.

It was easy to get lost in work trying to ignore the pain.

All too easy for her thoughts to consume her entirely. Far too easy to feel what happened to her all over again.

Thank science for medical grade edibles.

She turned to look behind her at Eta along with Karla and Nala, “Sure thing, what are those?” She noted the almost blood red color of the mushrooms.

“Not sure, Lil’ Mel, new to me,” she took a bite of a raw one, it stained her pearly white teeth scarlet, cleaned off by a flick of her tongue. A devilish smirk wrinkled her face as she flipped it upright, catching it with her fingers by the stalk.

“For science?” she asked, stretching the last word in a keening way.

Melissa’s stomach audibly rumbled, Karla laughed, waving at the bag as the room’s colors seemed to intensify with her smile. She pumped an arm, “I wanna eat that blood shroom for science!”

Eta tossed her a mushroom with a laugh, “think fast!” The surface had striations of red and deeper hues, she counted the rings as it spun towards her, 14 rings, ribbed cap.

She analyzed it visually in less than a second, almost waiting to catch it once she finished.

She realized at the last second her hand wasn’t up.

It bounced off her face, her black strands flicking forward along with the chocolate bar as it flew from her hands, she laughed as she fumbled for it with her arms hung over the back of the couch. Nala snatched it before it landed, passing it to her with a smile.

The chocolate bar wound up on the hardwood flooring, Bishop snatched it up, tossing it to Melissa.

It smacked her in the face again. He waved a hand at her to get her attention from analyzing every detail of the mushroom.

Her hands were still in the same position up until he waved his hand. “Doctor Hawthorne?” She jumped, looking at the floor with a sheepish smirk, she laughed.

“Can you toss that in my freezer? Well, maybe place it…”

He laughed, “Sure. Sorry about your face.”

“I can’t feel anything right now,” her slowly listing smile met the cook in her kitchen, “thank you Eta.”

Eta tossed one to Karla who immediately popped into her mouth. Tom snatched one for Amanda catching the other for himself. “Eta makes the best stuff.” He smiled wistfully as he popped a similar looking gummy into his mouth with a wink, he studied the mushroom while chewing.

“This is safe, right? Looks like it was dipped in blood and left to dry.”

“Don’t worry,” Eta smiled, “fresh bill of clean health from toxicology, ridiculously high in protein and vitamin c.” she flexed her bicep, the shirt she wore seemed to stretch at the seams, “keeps scurvy at bay and almost entirely replaces meat on its own.”

She looked at the beef she had laid out, knifing a hand at it, “missin’ a few amino acids though.”

It resembled muscle with a subtle crunch on the surface, a supple yet snappy texture that melted in his mouth.

“So where did you find these?”

Eta nodded and smiled, “found them near that old shack in Mithrop, growing from a few…”

“Don’t worry about it.” The blade in her hand went back to chopping veggies, to Amanda it sounded like the end of a Rambo movie.

All rapid fire.

She saw Eta’s shirt and helpfully pointed out as she chewed, “Eta, you drooled in your sleep again?” Eta laughed.

“Nah, my lil’ bears’ having an emotional day is all.” Amanda glanced at Melissa, offering a reassuring smile as Eta wiped her shirt with a grin, she pulled the fabric out feeling her dog tags unstick from her skin.

Ripley turned and saw the Loper on the screen, her face paled, blue eyes going wide in silence.

She walked to the display, “Melissa, may I?” She gave a permissive nod.

“Yeah, can you mess with the settings? I can’t really see the full thing and you’re the expert when it comes to pretty cosmic pictures.” Ripley smiled as Melissa leaned back.

“Quite the compliment, you have my thanks.”

Ripley’s mind raced as she stared at the image of the bizarre Loper creature. Flickering memories surfaced, tales from her homeland that now seemed eerily relevant.

One legend stood out about a being composed of disparate spirits, instincts, concepts, and abilities that merged into the first proto human. A coalescent formation of galactic formations focused into one point of countless others, breathing life into the very fabric of reality.

Arranged purposefully. Created, an existence constructed.

The very concepts such as love, hate, among other oblique terms, such as the concept of simplicity. It it’s own namesake, it would be remiss to not attempt to understand such a thing.

As she edited the copy of the photo, she realized, simplicity had far more awaiting under the surface.

She went pale, eyes wide.

A gasp cut through the space, Ripley had taken a step back from the image, both hands down at her sides as she walked to Bishop.

Eta dumped the water and other ingredients in making the pot shriek briefly.

All was silent for a few pensive moments, only broken by the sounds of sizzling meat.

“Fuck me running…” Bishop leaned in to study it, “couldn’t fully see what mauled me…” He leaned forward, putting a hand on Ripley’s shoulder and gently rubbing it.

“I’m not letting that get you.”

Still had to change out bandages daily.

His steps were… Squishy.

“That thing is quite horrifying, no?” She put a hand on his.

“It worse looking than I thought.” Melissa leaned forward to get a better look, wincing at her ankle again as she put a hand to her mouth. Karla rubbed her back, just as shocked.

“Looks like a messed up bear, it’s got two sets of jaws.”

“Deadly Beautiful.” Nala’s eyes sparkled at such a beautiful glimmer and shine to their eyes. Regardless, she swallowed a lump in her throat, flicking her eyes to Karla, both held a steady gaze. Both smiled.

The strangely wild and feral smell of the heavily spiced blood red stew Eta got to a boil wafted as she called to the group, wiping steam from her brow with a rag.

“Hey, turn that scary ass shit off, swap to something pretty, dinner’s almost ready.”

Melissa pulled a picture of the spiral flower up, poking a few key buttons on her wrist display, she put it back on the table.

“I didn’t see anything like that before, not even in Juniper, and Juniper had a shit ton of bears…”

Amanda sat above her on top of the couch, swinging her leg over as she accepted Karla’s waiting comb, and just before she could ask what both were doing she felt Karla’s hand waft her hair up and a gentle tug and rasp of bristles on her scalp.

“Not so much now.”

She melted with the sensation briefly.

“You guys don’t have to do that.” She looked up as Amanda paused with Karla’s comb raised back.

“Sorry, just a lady lookin’ out… your hair’s a mess, and mines a mess.” She tugged the back of her head, a cascade of waist length steel shimmered down her back

“I like braids.”

“Only if you don’t mind… thanks.”

Melissa gave a grateful smirk, taking her comb from the table, still full of broken knots. She worked them out and gestured to Karla, the four formed a circle of mutual combing and tangled knots undone with light ticks as Nala began braiding Amandas steel locks.

As they ate dinner over the next hour they discussed what the next few years would look like for Melissa.

Augmentation, training, and cross training in other fields to round out her knowledge like the others.

Among other subjects. Tom spoke after finishing his meal, “so, were gonna show you something only Ravenguard know about tomorrow,” he gestured at the thin cosmological scientist, “or if you’re Ripley. Its gonna raise some questions, but I’ll be there every step of the way.”

“Alright, sounds good,” Melissa barely touched her food, stomach going to knots again.

“Hell yeah it does.”

“I am quite excited to see the stone once again.”

After Eta helped Melissa with the dishes and the others left for the evening, she paused mid scrub. “You’re sure about going through with it? I know it’s a shit ton of peer pressure.”

“Yeah, I believe in myself enough. Tom taught me that, he helped ease me through the lace too.”

She smiled, her eyes misty, “I trust his judgement. This place is too good to be true and has been for years.”

Eta drew her in for a hug, she broke down all over again.