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"So you're telling me," Sandalphon started, gesturing incredulously with his hand, "that this big, ugly creature is actually the singularity."
The big, ugly creature, let out an unintelligible, screech-like gurgle, its stubby limbs and... eyes? Antennae? Whatever, curving downward, almost an expression of sadness, or perhaps disappointment.
"Guh— Sandalphon, don't say that! I'm telling you, this is the captain!" The man in the mechanical suit, Nicholas, exclaimed with his eyebrows high up. "D-Don't be sad, captain, you don't look big and ugly...!"
"Indeed, captain, please pay him no mind," The bespectacled priest whose name Sandalphon had yet to pay any attention to said, his tone a little too ecstatic to Sandalphon's liking. "I believe you look fascinating!"
The creature gurgled again, turning the topmost point of its star-shaped body towards the priest and tilting it. Its claws moved in a strange way, almost as if trying to communicate.
Sandalphon blinked. The movement seemed so familiar — if he imagined delicate hands in place of those large, monstrous claws...
With knit eyebrows, he raised his hands, signing one of the first words of Phantagrande's sign language he learned — Coffee.
The creature immediately jumped to attention, babbling excitedly at Sandalphon. One of its claws rose and moved in a specific way, then it gurgled in frustration at its perceived failure, but Sandalphon could tell — it was trying to say "yes". He was trying to say yes.
"Singularity..." Sandalphon whispered incredulously. One if his hands reached for him, but stopped just short of touching. "Is this really... It is you, isn't it?"
The monstrous singularity sang sadly. Nicholas gave it a pitying glance, but said nothing.
"That's nonsense...! How could this have happened?" His hand drifted towards him again, leaning against the bright dome on what seemed to be the captain's chest.
The singularity squeaked almost like a toy and jumped backwards, maybe only a centimeter, bringing his claws up to where Sandalphon had touched.
"Ah— did that hurt you!?" Sandalphon immediately called out. He could have hit a weak point, or this body may have been much weaker than it looked—!
Nicholas looked at the singularity, humming with a hand on his chin as he gurgled something at him. "No, seems like it just surprised him — you're probably the first human.. er, that is, non-abomination to touch him since he turned, so I kind of get it..."
Sandalphon glared at Nicholas. "He's some sort of abomination now, right? You... Your job is to avoid these kinds of things...!" He growled, tone much harsher than Nicholas would like. "If this can't be reversed, I swear, I'll make your life a living hell...!"
"S-Sandalphon! I get where you're coming from, but this isn't Nicholas's fault!" The girl in blue cried at him, pleading, hands balled into tiny fists. "You should be getting mad at that... Tyrias person, not him!"
The singularity made a short little "blaargh" along with a nod. Of course he'd agreed with Lyria, but that didn't make a difference.
The doctor and Nicholas had speculated beforehand, something or other about abomination cells and mutations, but Sandalphon didn't understand any of it, other than that it would be too dangerous to try anything right now. The singularity and every other person made into an abomination hybrid would be stuck like that until they dealt with Tyrias.
Still, the singularity faced Sandalphon directly, limbs waving upwards shortly, its toothy maw almost shaped like a grin. That's how the captain of the Grandcypher rolls, he thought bitterly — always reassuring others that it'd be okay, even at his own expense.
Sandalphon's hands balled into fists as he watched Nicholas flee with the hybrids, taking the singularity away from the agitated defense forces.
At his side, the girl in blue looked at the direction they flew to, hands raised to her chest, face twisted with worry. He wondered if that's what he looked like, too.
Even after everything that's happened, his power was still asleep, his too white wings still too heavy to carry.
Your job is to avoid these kinds of things , he'd said. Hah, yeah, right.
Sandalphon still couldn't protect anything.
After a truly nonsensical series of events that involved the chainsaw draph piloting a giant machine and the not-golem-but-still-mechanical lady joining with Nicholas for a '"finishing blow" (in Vyrn's words, that is), Sandalphon found himself in an infirmary, not too unlike the one in the Grandcypher. It was just just a little more white and unsettling, only partly because the cot in front of his had its curtains drawn.
One of the crew's healers, an erune — Shang? Shao? — was looking over his wounds, as he'd done with the rest of the team that fought to support Nicholas and the singularity, and Sandalphon felt the refreshing coolness (and sting ) of medicine over his lightly wounded skin. It does little to relieve the tension in his shoulders or the crease in his eyebrows.
"Oh, worry not, Dr. Rashomon said he'd be fine," Shao said unprompted, and Sandalphon's eyes finally tear away from the drawn curtains, "he just needs some rest, it seems. The past few days have been rough on his body."
They must have been. Changing shape, being controlled like a puppet, changing back into what it was — Sandalphon can see why he'd need rest. The problem is that it should never have happened in the first place. Sandalphon is now one of the strongest forces in the sky, and yet, something like this still slipped by him.
Losing the singularity to an "evolved" abomination would have been such agonizing irony.
"Now, now, don't wrinkle your eyebrows like that, your pretty little face will get stuck like that!" Shao teases, immediately continuing as Sandalphon shoots him a glare. "And I'm saying this as a doctor's recommendation. It wouldn't do him any better for you to worry yourself sick, now would it?"
It probably wouldn't, no. But worrying, getting angry, those are the things Sandalphon does best. He's had a good few thousand years to get good at it. Has he really changed that little?
How pathetic. If Lucifer could see him now...
There's a sigh, and Sandalphon hears rather than sees Shao sit on top of his medicine cabinet. "Supreme Primarch, the one who oversees evolution — are you really going to let this put you down?" Sandalphon looks up at him, an eyebrow quirked. "Now, I haven't heard all there is to hear about you, but I'm sure this isn't the worst thing to have ever happened in your millennia."
"That...!" No, the worst thing to have happened to him was losing Lucifer. "You don't know anything."
"Yes, yes, that's what I'm saying. No one knows you better than you, after all." Shao gives a self-satisfied nod. "I happen to know the captain fairly well — not better than his closest friends, mind you. But the captain is a skydweller. Knowing that, there's a few assumptions that can be easily made."
He blinks up at Shao. He has no idea where this is going, but it's already insufferable.
"Us mortals, we're very unlike you Primals, in that we are, well, mortal. But we're also not that different, are we?"
Lucifer certainly turned out to be mortal, in the end.
"And I don't mean our mortality ," Shao clarifies as if reading his mind, "but in our capacity for change. Between rebellious archangels who refused their roles, and humans who refused to simply watch as things fell apart around them... We're all adaptable creatures. It's what makes us people."
"I haven't changed at all," Sandalphon hisses under his breath. "I'm still just as powerless as before I got these wings."
"And perhaps you are! That doesn't make you weak, or any less important. I'm certain the captain of all people wouldn't think that." Shao looks over to the captain's cot, eyebrows twitching — so far, Sandalphon hadn't seen him with any expression other than that silly, laid back smile. "But our lives are much shorter, you see. We have to change and grow much faster than a Primal Beast... We don't have the luxury to wait twenty years for a promise to be fulfilled, like a Primal would. Half of our lives go by in what to you is a blink."
Sandalphon groans. "What is the point of this? Do you even have one, or are you just going in circles on purpose?"
"The point, Primarch, is that it's normal to lose progress, get stuck in place, and fail. That's part of evolution, that's part of growing up. This captain of ours is an expert at getting into trouble — it's nobody's fault, much less yours. Ah, except for that time where it was."
A year ago, when he threatened the skies. When he threw a tantrum, all to get Lucifer's attention.
When he shoved the singularity off the edge of an island.
It all seems so far away, to him, but to them, it's still recent history.
"That said..." He looks back at Sandalphon, and — opens his eyes, too blue eyes. Sandalphon feels a chill run down his spine, and has to break eye contact within the second. "If you want to be someone he can be proud of, you shouldn't spend so much time pitying yourself. His life isn't as long as yours."
He knows that.
Sandalphon understands that, implicitly — Gran is a singularity, but he's just a skydweller. Even if his life can be a little longer than a normal human's, it's still but a fraction of what Sandalphon has lived so far.
A short life that Sandalphon himself almost cut even shorter.
He's always known that, and yet...
"Haha, what's with that scary look on your face? I'm joking, of course — you can't really rush these things, or the rebound will be much worse." Shao smiles, easy and light, as if he hadn't just been talking about the captain's death. "Give yourself some slack, Primarch. We're all doing our best to survive, and that includes you!"
Sandalphon glares up at him. "What kind of sorry excuse for a pep talk is this?"
"Oh, I know my bedside manner leaves something to be desired," he laughs shamelessly, "but I don't think the captain, or Vyrn, or Lyria would like seeing you like this. Am I right?"
Sandalphon hates that he's right. If Lyria pulled him out of hell once, he's sure she can do it again — but he'd much rather not get low enough that she has to. It would make her much too sad. And the singularity...
"Now, you should get going. This is a sick bay, and you're not sick, just a little scuffed up!" Shao claps his hands, sliding off his medicine cabinet. "Ah, but it'll be open for visitors in a bit, and I think a certain someone was promised coffee."
...How does he know about that? Shao wasn't in the vessel when Sandalphon and the singularity had talked—
"Yes, and if you would, please make sure our captain takes the drugs I left on his bedside? It's necessary to ensure a speedy recovery, but..." He gives the cot an exaggerated pout, left hand poking at his chin. "I figure he'll do it if it's someone he trusts. I only accidentally poisoned him once, but now he won't take anything I give him!"
Sandalphon chokes, and he's not sure if it's at the confession of attempted murder, or at the implication that the singularity trusts Sandalphon of all people.
"Haha, don't look at me like that! I'm just joking, of course! I'm actually going to be busy, you see, Marie asked me to give her a check up. So I won't be here when he wakes up to tell him to take it." Shao grins, and Sandalphon seriously questions the erune's sanity.
"Don't say these kinds of things as a joke!" Sandalphon admonishes, hands balled into fists.
"You're no fun," Shao sighs, tone still nonchalant. "Well, I'll be taking my leave now. I hope I could be of help, if only a little."
"I have no idea why the singularity lets you staff his infirmary," Sandalphon shoots back.
"I wonder why?" Shao laughs, not too loud, just soft enough. "I'll see you later, then... Sandalphon."
His name, in that voice — deep, quiet, reverent.
"Sandalphon."
He sees white hair shimmer in the sunlight as Shao leaves the room.
At that moment, a simple erune pharmacist reminded him too much of a fallen Supreme Primarch.
"Oh, what in the name of..."
The singularity stands in front of Sandalphon, once again in abomination form, large and round and salmon-red.
"He was really eager to try it out," Nicholas explains, crossing his arms in a mix of pride and confusion. "Our research made it one hundred percent controllable and reversible, so you don't have to worry."
"Still, why in the world would you want to go back to this body!?" Sandalphon exclaims, eyes squinted in rage.
The abomi-singularity gurgles happily, taking a step forward and embracing Sandalphon with its stubby, clawed arms.
Sandalphon doesn't understand anything and has given up on it entirely.