Archive of Our Own

Where once the expanse of space had been vast and all-consuming in a terrifying way, now Tommy finds peace with the holograph that paints one of the Infinity Dawn’s many walls, reflecting a glimpse of the space field reflected back at him.
There aren’t windows or sheets of reinforced not-quite-glass as they had been aboard the Ericitcratna, because Humans have different technologies and understandings of space travel, but it does well enough to disguise the white-panelled walls.

Where the Nansolal have materials that are as durable as steel to create the windowed effect that allow bridges to host the view of the wide void expanse beyond the ship, Human technologies use holographic projections that don’t compromise the structural integrity of their designs.

Doesn’t mean that they have to be boring and panel everything in plain, tedious, nightmarish white.

Not that anyone is letting Tommy dwell on that particular observation. It’s an unexpected side effect of having the halls bustling with newly freed Leorval, some of whom are more curious of their new ship than they are of the singular Starchild that resides among them. It helps that there are some who are unrestrained in their curiosity of Tommy himself, and appreciation for his efforts for helping them escape.

There’s a lot of talk when they think that he can’t hear: too used to their once-captors having been deaf to their language that they speak of him when he’s close by, forgetting to drop their voices to a whisper so that he might not catch the worry that they share.
But so too does he over hear when the Leorval remind one another that Zhay was the one to vouch for him—one who deserves more than most to hate Humanity—that Tommy had consistently placed himself between the Humans’ guns and themselves; that Tommy had possession of what couldn’t possibly be Xsdí’s mandible (could it?) and the alliance of a Nansolal artificial intelligence strong enough and powerful enough to manipulate even the Human’s pitiful technologies to jump further than they had thought possible.

Tommy does not interrupt them when they talk, nor acknowledge that they’re talking about him in the few chances that he’s out of the confines of the rooms that he’s claimed for himself, as a way of quietly keeping observations. Null and void, seeing as he can ask Nook to report to him should there be any issues—which he already has, determined to be nothing but prepared for any and all eventualities before they can sneak up on him.

It isn’t hubris that pushed him to take the captain’s quarters, but both necessity and security.

Tommy had checked with Nook, after they’d made that first jump from the Aegis’s void-space, asking for the entire layout of the ship and all its amenities, to determine just exactly what it was that he was working with.
While doing so, he’d caught sight of the captain’s quarters on the same floor as the flight deck, practically on the other side of the wall of the raised stations of the bridge. Being the only personal quarters on this floor, fully contained with a personal galley and cleaning facilities, while also being somewhat isolated from all the others, it was safe in a way that he wouldn’t find elsewhere and claimed it as his territory before anyone else discovered it.

Security. Necessity.

It creates a divide between him and the people that he should be trying to convince that he is not an enemy of, but Tommy cannot risk anything that stands between him and chasing after the Ericitcratna, wherever that may be. And maybe he can convince himself that he’s giving them space, allowing them to adjust to their new reality without encroaching on their liberty; giving firm indications of where he is expected to be about the ship so that those that wish to avoid him can do so, and those that wish to bridge the divide can come and seek him out….

They’re excuses, but they can sound like reasons if someone calls him out on it.
No one has yet; no one is quite brave enough to question him so bluntly, even if he isn’t being entirely ignored.

When he steps out onto the bridge, he isn’t shunned. Lulah and Qalna still watch him with curiosity but they greet him cordially and they don’t flinch away when he joins them at the holographic map so that they can explain their current course. Assang, Grazsem and Bandr, who share in the responsibilities of the pilot’s chair will nod their heads and might offer him greetings, as do those that occupy the RIG gun controls, just on the chance that the ship might need defending.
Zhay still watches him like he’s a puzzle, as do the other Hylochoerians that have more rights than anyone to hate him, but even Velon, who openly glares, does nothing more than scowl from the sidelines.

There are only a few who approach Tommy on their own, and the most common visitor that he has when he’s keeping himself busy between being on the bridge, chasing sleep and forcing himself to eat food just to keep his body working—

“Tommy!”

Tommy lifts his head from where it’s bowed over the workstation in front of him, hands curled around makeshift tools that aren’t as clunky as what he used to work with back in Technoblade’s workshop, and yet are largely inferior. Instinctively, he lays a hand over where he’s slowly mending Nook’s metal—never mind that Nook doesn’t need a physical body anymore when he has the Infinity Dawn itself to host him—but it’s only Sunny poking her head into the space, fluffed antenna poking upright like bunny ears, collar fur puffing as soon as her eyes catch him.

“Sunny,” Tommy offers in greeting, head dipping in half-custom before turning back to the desk and continuing with moulding the last of the metal through the use of electricity for local heating. It’s not what he’s used to, and the tools aren’t nearly as powerful as what Technoblade had on offer, but Tommy is familiar with moulding metal back into the desired shape, even while desperately trying to keep his brain empty of the reasons as to why.

Despite Nook’s obvious health and rapidly growing strength the longer that he’s patching holes left behind by his own near-destruction and whatever damage that the human scientists dealt, Tommy still doesn’t like looking at the medallion damaged as it is, and he’s spent a few hours here and there, between piloting the ship, gaining what sleep he can and keeping himself supplied with food and nutrients on their venture to Zidathea.

“Hey, you’ve almost fixed it,” Sunny says, dropping down on the worktop where she’d propelled herself across the room on her wings; their length almost as tall as she and just as wide when they’re spread out.
She holds no fear in her tiny body. Caution perhaps, but if so she does a good job of hiding it, acting instead on the impulses that bring her close to someone that resembles the same monster that has kept her caged, even if Tommy himself isn’t responsible.

She’s braver than he is. It had taken Tommy days to simply be able to look at Ranboo or Eret without feeling a panic attack clawing up his throat. Weeks, to stop feeling fear, even if he hadn’t been able to entirely ignore the resemblance to Xsdí.
It’s why he understands that there are so few of the Leorval that tolerate his company, even now, four day-cycles since jumping from the Aegis fleet. Tommy doesn’t blame them for hating him, or hating what he stands for, and that’s why he does not push himself into their circles and does not force them to be friendly.

But there are those like Sunny that do not bother with caution. Either she is incapable of it, or trusts entirely in Zhay and Lulah’s reassurances; in Tommy’s own words and when he’s protected her back on the Human ship. Or perhaps she does distrust and she’s offering Tommy the chance to break her instead of her kin to reveal his monstrous nature.
Either way, she doesn’t hold back and doesn’t bother giving Tommy his personal space, falling out of her trajectory as soon as she reaches his workspace, claws sliding on the smooth metal of the workspace and nearly tipping over.

Tommy, without needing to think about it, offers Sunny his left arm, either for a better perch that won’t see her sliding all over the place, or to prevent her from falling against the tool currently emitting several powerful volts where he’s soldering Nook’s metal back together for the second—and certainly—the last time.

Sunny clicks her beak, head slightly tilted as she assess his arm, but takes the offer, shuffling around until she’s got her claws dug into the fabric layered over his shoulder, mostly using his head like a resting spot, talons sinking into his hair to twist and play while keeping clear of his braid that lays against his neck.

It’s familiar, like how Tubbo used to use him like a climbing frame, and Tommy tucks that little memory somewhere next to his sternum before leaning over Nook’s hand, returning the electric sparks to the pale metal allowing him to fold the last of the grooved metal back into place. He doesn’t have the correct components to make it as perfect as it once was; the fix cosmetic than anything that might allow Nook to take host of it again, but this is more for the sake of his own peace than anything.

“Well. It’s not perfect,” Tommy says, when the metal is almost-smooth; the lines of warped metal and desaturated colour less obvious as he holds it up, angling it so that the light from the projected wall doesn’t cast shadow from the horrible groove down its center.

“As long as it works,” Sunny says, in what sounds as an attempt to lift Tommy’s spirits, despite not knowing the full depths of the pain caused by the curved metal he holds in his hand. “It’ll serve its purpose,” he agrees, grabbing the corded cable that he’d created from spare lengths on the Infinity Dawn and hangs it about his neck once more, taking in the sight of his medallion almost fixed, before tucking it underneath his collar where he could keep it safe.

“Now, I’m assuming you didn’t come in here to watch me work,” Tommy says, voice not accusatory, but pointed enough that Sunny shouldn’t try and make up an excuse as to why she’s come to pester him. She tries anyway.
“What? Can’t I be curious?” she grins, beak pulled into poor imitation of a Human’s smile; leaning away from him a little but not unthreading her talons from his shirt to risk losing grip and slipping off.

Tommy makes a face at her. “You can. But you always bring questions.”

“Not questions. Not this time,” she adds when Tommy raises an eyebrow at her. He’d be a little surprised to know that she understands that body language coming from him, but figures that the four years of being held by aliens he shares far too many similarities with has allowed for enough observations to be able to understand as much.
Or maybe too, that he broadcasts more than just human-learned body language, not having really been aware of the way he’s working his jaw which is a Hylochoerian tell. Something that Sunny is far more familiar with.

“Lulah said we’re nearing another charge for a jump. I figured I’d come get you.”
“You could’ve asked Nook,” Tommy reminds her, because Nook isn’t just limited to his cobot shell anymore; that his vessel is the ship that carries them to their goal. His knowledge is not constrained to only speaking with Tommy. While there was pain in the change, he’s glad that he still has his friend with him, even if his form has changed now, and he’s far stronger.

Sunny hums non-committedly, the fur on her collar puffing just a little in what could be read as a shrug, despite for the way that the rest of her fur also lifts, including her antenna. It’s only brief, like a ripple of movement washing across her tiny body, starting from her neck and shifting downwards, but she’s perched on Tommy’s shoulder so he doesn’t miss the obvious display of unease.

“He’s not your enemy,” Tommy says quietly, hand reflexively shifting to the medallion tucked under his collar, wanting to encourage, but understanding a little.

Nook has… changed, somewhat.

It’s to be expected, given the damage he had accrued—both from the battle on Daroda and from the hands of the Humans that should’ve known better than to carve him open—and that he was reduced in capacity to what could only be held in the expanse of Tommy’s medallion, that not all of Nook’s original programming and independent growth would’ve survived the transition. With the Infinity Dawn’s capacity allowing him to grow, it has infinitely expanded his capabilities in all aspects, but having grown from a fractured foundation has left him… unfamiliar.

What childish and carefree personality that he’d had from observing and adopting aspects of Tommy’s character have been replaced by clean efficiency. He’s more like Sam than he’s ever been before, but at the same time, he isn’t.

They’re thoughts that accompany Tommy as he leaves the workshop behind; Sunny unbothered by her perch shifting beneath her and simply adjusts her weight so it’s curled against Tommy’s back. She snags her talons into the folds of his cloak-like mantle, digs the tips of her toes onto his hips, then takes a thread of thought and begins to chatter about anything and everything as Tommy carries them up to the top of the ship.

Eyes follow them as they go, and while there is fear shadowed beneath poorly constructed masks, so too is there… amusement. Intrigue. Disbelief, for sure, when they double-take at the way Sunny is lounging all over Tommy’s left shoulder, using him like her personal taxi service instead of walking or flying to where she wants to go.

Sunny doesn’t bat an eye; continuing to gesture wildly and chat happily, and it’s only when they reach the top of the main stairwell; the access acting as the backbone of the ship to connect all the floors together, does Tommy think that perhaps, part of it is an act. For his sake, maybe, to make him appear less threatening to the rest of her kin.

Tommy isn’t quite sure what to make of that little train of thought, but there’s no room to ask with privacy and time in mind, so he files the thought away for later investigation and continues down the corridor.

The doors to the bridge slide open sharply, causing the few Leorval to be scattered between stations and decks to turn back to the upper door. Tommy doesn’t allow the twist of nerves to creep into his posture or movement at the sudden turn of heads, but Sunny’s presence and idle chatter floating about his left ear make for good distraction and he hums in all the right places as he moves towards the captain’s chair in preparation for an imminent jump.

For reasons unknown and unexplained, the Leorval haven’t touched it. Even when Tommy isn’t on the bridge, and control is temporarily handed over to whoever is claiming the responsibility of making sure the ship stays on course, it’s left empty. Which, he could ask about, of course, but it’s not important and although he could ask Sunny—she’d give him an honest answer regardless—he’d rather not come off as ignorant or stupid.
It’s egotistical, perhaps, to want to present himself a certain way: a habit he has yet to unlearn from the time he’d spent on the Ericitcratna with his family, but this time the want is not born out of a want to be kept around, but instead the same kind of promised safety of the deliberate routines and the claimed captain’s quarters.

If Tommy is neither a threat nor able to be easily threatened, then the danger to him from the Leorval that doesn’t trust him should be easier to avoid.

Hopefully.

Sunny spring-boards off of Tommy’s shoulder as soon as he’s close to the chair, settling herself on the arm as best she can, given the thin padding that doesn’t offer as strong an anchor point to her talons, leaving enough room for Tommy to sit, but he turns to the consoles instead, half leaning against the frame to cast an eye at the information that Nook has overlayed with thought that he might be interested.

On the smallest screen, to the right, there’s a neat summary of the ship energy gauges that power the fusion reactor drives and replicative impulse drives for emergency, near-space manoeuvrability; as well as the 90% charge of the nuclear jump drives.
While it may have been that the Humans that were once in control of the ship would’ve needed the charges to be near enough complete for a successful jump, with the Leorval crew running command and Nook further forcing the drives to run as efficiently as possible, the Infinity Dawn only needs a fifth of its original power demand to make double the jump.

The only reason that Tommy had argued for the ship to hold before making another jump an hour ago is their current relative position to a nearby brown dwarf; small enough not to pose a threat to the comparably weaker engines of the interceptor ship, but large enough that the 7% gravity had caught them enough to create a hyperbolic orbit, thus giving speed and force without the need of using more energy for the engines.

Bandr, a short dusty-mauve-feathered Æirtyto who has taken up rotation of the pilot’s chair, was the only one to make a comment of Humanities need to fill the gap between their aspirations and inferior technology—not directed at Tommy but at the ship itself—before simply complying with his suggestion.
It was Adl’d, one of the Draora willing to help Qalna and Lulah map the starscape, who suggested adjusting their course enough to continue to create hyperbolic orbits to further increase speed as they continued their venture closer to the centre of the universe.

But now the ship is nearing the exit point of the hyperbolic orbit arc, and the drives are charged enough that they’ll be able to make a jump reinforced by the extra speed, with a second already logged and ready in case the initial jump launches them too close to danger. For that specific reason, Tommy has all but ordered—as gently but as firmly as he could, while being very aware that he was in no way in charge—for a hold on their engines to give them that boost, and although the others had been confused at first, they have listened.
They’re saving their own skin too, of course. Tommy isn’t so disillusioned to think otherwise.

Lulah steps away from where she, Zhay and a few others are gathered around the near-side of the holographic projector, movements a little stiff as she approaches, but Nook would’ve warned if there was a problem so Tommy lets her approach at her own speed, pretending to read the data on the screens as she climbs up the stairs, talons clinking in betrayal to her nearing.

On the main screen, there’s a brief summary of other ship components as well as a simplified starmap that Nook has constructed from the logged information that the Human ships offered, but there isn’t anything new that needs much revision or further questioning. Tommy manipulates the screen regardless, busying his hands while Lulah closes the distance.

“Did Nook—?” she begins when she’s beside him, before snapping her beak shut quickly, face betraying a sudden flash of something that she tries to hide behind a roll of her shoulders.
“We’re not yet ready to make the jump,” Lulah says instead, voice firm but edge with a nervousness in her posture that bleeds into her tone because she’s not certain of Tommy’s reaction, and while she is still one of the few that tolerates Tommy more than anyone else, she still doesn’t trust him entirely.

“It should be another few minutes,” she finishes, feathers not quite as settled as they were earlier, but she’s here, beside him, instead of standing with the others.
She’s trying.

“I finished in the workshop so I thought I’d come here,” Tommy offers in explanation, only half turning to her so as to keep most of the weight still trained on the screens, hoping at the very least that the pretence of divided attention… helps.
“Everything is working as intended?” he asks offhandedly, continuing to manipulate the screens until it’s not displaying the journey they have to make, but the Xemes triskaidecagant as a whole, and the rough distance they’ve already managed to make from where they left the Aegis behind. It’s more than he’d expected given the technological disadvantages of Human ship, but with Nook manipulating as much as he is able, it’s definitely making up for it.

“By Nook’s reports and from what Sunny and the other engineers have been able to determine,” Lulah agrees with no small amount of hesitation, her confusion betrayed in the way her feathers lift and fall in rapid succession, fingers curling tight as if trying to physically hold onto her emotions.
“Human technology makes it… harder,” she says, taking the time to choose her words carefully, glancing between Tommy, the screens that he’s inspecting and Sunny who is beaming a bright, encouraging smile and showing absolutely no hesitation to clamber all over Tommy again. He simply swaps the hand he’s using to shift the screen around, left now balancing Sunny who is content to use him like a climbing frame again, impervious to all the cautious looks she’s getting.
Either that, or she’s blind to them, hanging off him instead to inspect the screens that are transcribed in English, if only to save Tommy the split second needed to translate everything in his head.

“We can only work with what we’re able and even with Nook pushing the sensors and the ship to its potential,” Lulah continues, words coming a little slower where Sunny has distracted her, and then again when Tommy brushes a hand over the console and only has to begin typing in a function for Nook to understand his intentions and display all text with Thíetue translations underneath, as he had done for Zhay for their escape from the Aegis fleet.

“We’re having to make adjustments with every jump, and collecting what data we can to piece together the starmap,” she finishes. Tommy is certain he’s given them no reason to believe he’ll turn on them at any provocation, but he also doesn’t know the specifics of their years in captivity, nor what tricks the Humans used to try and broach communication.
Tommy isn’t about to ask, of course, but it also makes it very hard to avoid making mistakes when he doesn’t know where the potential pitfalls are.

Still.

Lulah’s trying.
He’s trying.

For now, it’s enough.

“How is that going?” Tommy asks in effort to keep up their conversation, as elsewhere Nook manipulates the screens in front of them to bring up the starmap.
There are more nodes on it than the last time that he looked, where the others are trying to date their location, as well as pinpoint their location given that the universe hasn’t exactly sat still for the last four years. It helps him too, of course, but they’re all mourning the limited capacity of Human technology.

“We’re making do,” Lulah says, with a voice far more even than Tommy’s would be, given the situation. “The sensors are Human-made, so they don’t provide all of the details, but we’re able to date the light decay or nearby stars to get a better exact location,” she says, gesturing towards the screens to better explain, but pauses when she catches the slight furrow of Tommy’s brow.

“Is… Is that not how Humans navigate?”

“I don’t know how Humans do it,” Tommy admits. Not now at least, with the eighty years of technological improvements and the way that Humanity has been Frankenstein-ing Nansolal ships and technology to better their own.

“I mostly learnt aboard the Ericitcratna, with Æirtyto technology, and Sam’s star maps. Before that, I’d never left the solar system. With all the technology, warp gates and planets, it wasn’t like I needed to learn otherwise,” Tommy admits, shrugging at his own lack of intelligence; the motion and admittance seemingly catching both Lulah and Sunny by surprise, given their twin expressions and much the same reflected on a few of the other faces still gathered around the holo table.
Maybe it doesn’t fit their understanding that a Human might admit fault or weakness, but they’re still only seeing what is on the surface. Not all of them, of course, and it’s still only been days since their escape, so it’s not as though they’ve had much opportunity to begin rewriting their bias.

Tommy doesn’t dwell on it.

“Is there anything Nook can do to make the sensors stronger?” he asks instead, turning to the screens, expecting Nook himself to have provided that answer as he so often does whenever he poses a question; sensors and internal processors firing off as faster than Tommy’s brain has the time to think through logical thought.

But Sunny is the one to answer him; two hands looped around the arm she’s perching on to hang off of it, leaning over the screens because apparently she needs to be mere inches from the text like that would make it far easier to read and not that it’s in an entirely different language.

“Eogul and Throsne have already near-torn the engineering deck apart in hunt for better technology,” she says, almost offhandedly, one hand reaching out like that would allow her to manipulate the screen, except it doesn’t react to her claws like it does react the way to Tommy’s skin. She’s doing a good job at pretending she’s nonchalant towards the entire affair, except Tommy isn’t the only one aware of the way her ruff is more puffed up than it would be otherwise.

“But there’s nothing that wouldn’t beat what is already working for us now. We even asked Nook to scan what’s onboard, but….”
She adopts Tommy’s way of shrugging, although it’s ill-effective given the way she’s hanging off of him, feet pressed into his elbow to keep her body rigid but pointed down towards the screens.

They flicker, the displays shifting to reorganise as Nook broadcasts an avatar of himself across the main screen; the helix of code and symbols he’s borrowed from Human created-displays amalgamated into an almost-silhouette like shape that resembles Sam’s sharded form.

It’s not perfect—there are no real defining edges—almost like looking at a two-toned image hidden beneath layers of feedback that keeps shifting; like the data streams themselves are alive and unbidden to one statics shape. Tommy doesn’t know if that’s because the programming that Nook is using to “create” himself is incomplete or if there are other factors that make it difficult for him to represent himself in a new format.
It’s unfamiliar, but any discomfort Tommy feels towards Nook’s new form, he keeps close to his chest, along with the medallion that so often weights his palm and warms his fingertips as he traces the shape; mindless in action, but grounding.

“The fuel cells are charged enough for a full jump and two micro jumps,” Nook informs them, voice clear and words concise, which is another change that Tommy is quickly going to have to get used to.

He grips his medallion tighter.

Zhay, who had been hanging out on the rear deck near to where Lulah and the other navigators have claimed themselves workstations, makes his way towards the front of the bridge, heading to one of the many seats that Sunny and her engineer friends have heavily modified to fit the larger sizes of the Leorval, while also offering them anchor points for jumps.
He straps himself in, acting first for everyone else to take his action as cue to move themselves, and then connects to the comms line: announcing to the ship at large that they’re about to make a jump as per Nook’s confirmation that they’re ready as soon as he is given the go ahead, and that everyone needs to brace or find somewhere to strap themselves in.

Tommy deposits himself in the captain’s chair and buckles himself in while Sunny follows Lulah to her chair and curls into her wings, all four arms sinking into feather and mantle where there are no Titraier-sized chairs on deck that won’t cause injury should anything go disastrously wrong.

They’re not expecting it to, but the Nansolal’s ability to space jump is far more fluid than what the Infinity Dawn has been able to showcase, even with Nook manipulating all of the technology to the nth degree, and Tommy isn’t the only one that isn’t about to take unwarranted risks.

Overhead, Nook is ringing out a two minute countdown over the ship-wide comms. Simultaneously, he’s checking the security cameras for every member’s location and whether or not they’re in a secure position, or are able to reach a secure position in the calculated timeline. A third of the number aboard the ship are in their claimed quarters, while others are eating in the designated mess hall; quickly strapping themselves into the braces on the wall that are designed for just such a reason. Down in the infirmary, Pomme, Alü and Lendrohe help brace the few that were injured in their recent escape, so as not to inflict anymore injuries.

Only when Nook gives the all clear, and when he finishes the countdown that prepares everyone does Assang, who is currently in rotation of the pilot’s chair, take command of the ship and propel it into a hyper-jump.

It’s a far smoother transition than their escape from the space around the Aegis, and just as fluid as their last few jumps. Tommy waits as the inner walls of the bridge power down from their broadcasted void beyond, allowing for all necessary energy to be channelled to the appropriate stations for the jumps, and then the displays flicker on once more, but this time the starscape that they reflect is vastly different.
For a start, the giant purple-red planet that they’d used to piggy-back a hyperloop into speed has vanished, but instead there’s the ghost of a supernova somewhere on their rear wing, and the glittering remains of a comet shower that have finally fallen prey to their own gravitational bodies and collided into a mess a fractured elements.

But none of the stars jump out as constellations that Tommy recognises.

He stomps down on the irritation that rears its head and manipulates the screen on his right to watch as Nook broadcasts the sensor net and starts compiling everything and anything that he’s able to detect.

“Did we make it?” Sunny is asking from where she’s perched, peeling her way out of Lulah’s arms to lean on her console and beyond, ignoring the holo screens to look at the projections on the wall even though that has limited information comparatively.
“Calculating,” Qalna says from her own station, hands moving on the keys where she’s also monitoring the sensor net; ignoring what Nook has listed in favour of watching the monitor herself.

“We—Well, we managed to jump further than what we calculated the human technology would allow,” she says, hands flying over the keys, head turning back and forth between projected numbers and the new numbers that she’s got in front of her. “A great deal further in fact,” she adds with no small amount of relief and awe, leaning closer to the screens like that might enable her to be able to see more than what is already there.
“Is this—would the jump drive be affected by the travelling speed gained from the orbit propulsion? Has it really given us that much of an advantage by using such a method?”

“It’s not doing nothing at the very least, but it will help conserve energy and allow for larger jumps to be made with adjusted calculations. It’s easier with solo ships without having to rely on all ships calculating the same advantage and not needing to worry about collision on the other side,” Tommy pipes up.
He knows that Qalna’s not exactly asking him—it’s rhetoric at best, but gives rise to explanation as he gets Nook to mirror her screens on the one to his left so he can see what she’s looking at as he continues— “But we did we at least get near enough to be still travelling towards Zidathea.”

The trajectory of their jump might only be off by a fractional degree, on both axis from their original heading, and while that wouldn’t mean much to normal human-distance jumps of a few million miles, Nook’s abilities to manipulate the space jump is far beyond the norm, and with each jump he’s able to make even greater distance.
When they escaped from the Aegis fleet, they must’ve jumped somewhere around a hundred and fifty million miles, which was already impressive for Human technology. Now, the ship is reporting that they’ve managed to jump thrice that, and it’s not like the additional speed from the slingshot tactics have done that much of a dent.

Still. Tommy can see why Qalna sounds so impressed.
He is too.

“We’ll have to continue to make adjustments as we go,” Qalna hums, voice just loud enough that Tommy can hear it from where he’s sat. “But as far as I can tell so far, we’re still on course. And the closer we get; we might be able to track the A’yda if they’re closer. Which….”

“We know how to get in contact with the Leorval fleet and Nansolal civilian ships,” Zhay reassures her, having abandoned his modified chair and moved closer so that he can better read from her display, even if a few words would have Nook reflecting as much onto the screens that sit in front of him.

“We’ll use old protocols, but prepare defences in case,” he says, one hand moving to manipulate the keys, bringing up blueprints of the Infinity Dawn with a look none too dissimilar to disgust as he looks upon the display of Human technology. There are listings of the shields and the weaponry, along with the jump drives and the armaments that Sunny’s team and Nook have bolstered—Nook copying the same list that Zhay is looking at on Tommy’s own screen per the warnings when it comes to any of the Nansolal onboard looking into anything that could be threatening towards him.

“No Leorval would trust a human ship so close to Zidathea, nor would they trust our comms even less, but it’s all we’ve got until we can get in front of them,” Zhay continues, half talking to himself, but at a volume that that no one else has to strain to hear him. It’s clear by his tone that this is something he’s already considered, many times over, possibly from the moment that they all escaped from the Aegis fleet and escape was guaranteed, but this is the first time that he’s made any sign that it’s been something on his mind.

Lulah is half a beat behind.

“We’ll need more of a reserve charge in our engines if we want to prepare for evasive manoeuvres,” she says, already pulling up the relevant information, with overlays of comparison and data that look calculated as much as they’re provided by Nook’s vast intelligence.
“If that’s the case, I want to get better acquainted with the ship’s systems. It’s easy relying on the… Nook, for everything, but I’ll feel better if I can do something myself,” she says slowly, eyes shifting to the ceiling, although it makes sense that she doesn’t trust Nook given the short time that they’ve been travelling together. It doesn’t matter that he’s an AI with Enol’ka origins, (whether she and the others believe that or not) given that he is Tommy’s ally first and foremost, and it’s not even certain if anyone trusts him.

Well. Sunny certainly does, but Tommy thinks it’s more curiosity than anything trusting.

Around them, a few of the Leorval that had chosen to be present for the jump lift themselves out of their seats, leaving the bridge to find themselves food, or retire to their self-claimed quarters for what rest they’re able to get in moments of downtime between jumps and expected incidents.
By the time that the main bridge doors close, seven of the team remain on the deck: Assang, who remains in the pilot seat; T’malin, Zhay and Richarlyson who each take a screen and a chair; Erythos and Thren unmoved from their chairs; and Sathe and Velon on the guns, and Sunny jumping back and forth between the holo deck and the screen that manipulates the sensor net display. Tommy himself brings the number up to seven, and Nook’s presence brings them up to eight.

They’re unoppressive enough in their presence that Tommy isn’t immediately struck with the urge to return to his room. He could—he’s been awake long enough that after a detour for food he could lock himself in his quarters for eight hours to sleep, especially now that they’ve made a successful jump and there wouldn’t be need for him for at least another two.
But he also knows that he’s got to stop hiding himself away any chance he gets, no matter what he’s told himself about the efforts he’s made to befriend the crew.

Tommy settles himself back into his chair, glancing at the screens in front of him, idly flicking between all the data that Nook thinks is necessary. He checks on the supply list—which is more habitual than anything, and Nook has calculated that the food supply will grow to dangerous levels within two weeks, at which point they’ll have to half the amount of their current rations—but there’s no point worrying just yet when Nook’s predicted flight path tells them they’ll be within an Ayada’s orbiting rotation in a little over ten days. He doesn’t have to worry about water—the ship has systems that can collect and filter space ice to make it safe for consumption—and he doesn’t have to worry about fuel either with Nook handling all the systems to make them as efficient as possible.

Honestly, having Nook with them is making their journey easy enough that they don’t have to worry.
And yet, Tommy can’t outrun the feeling of anxiety that clings to him like a second skin. They’re cautious of the possibility of running into Dkaræ ships and void-creatures, with at least two gunners always on the bridge at once and enough charge in the engines for three consecutive micro-jumps that will buy enough time to get out of danger.
Velon has made sure there are always Leorval manning the guns, and is still rotating all forty-seven survivors through the mechanics of how to use them, as further precaution in case anything were to happen and they needed to fight their way out of more trouble.

Similarly, a lot of the Leorval are inspecting and trying to understand the archaic designs of Human technology, and— well, archaic is perhaps a harsh term, but it’s not a lie to say that the Human’s logic when applied to technology, space travel and propulsion is incomplete and a variation of brute force rather than a refined understanding that allows them to manipulate space in the same way that the Nansolal know.
Whereas the technology and understanding handed down from Enol’ka allows the Nansolal to make surgery-precise incisions in space and warp through, Human technology punches a hole, so to speak. It’s also why it takes up a lot more energy to get half as far.

Tommy has heard more than enough insults and irritations in the last couple of days regarding as much, but at the same time, everyone is working hard with what they’ve got, unwilling to give up just because the ship is crappy and weak.

It’s probably why Lulah is determined to learn as much as she is able, and why she and the others are busy working, sticking to their guns and staying on tasks with single-minded focus. Even Sunny isn’t jumping back and forth between her friends, although that’s probably because T’malin is using her as a soundboard with her own investigations into the sensor net and the like.
But Tommy finds his eyes drawn back periodically to where Lulah is sat, wings draped around her almost as if they’re too heavy, deciding to use her feet to poke at the controls rather than her hands. It’s harder, given that the Infinity Dawn was built to the specifications of Human biology, but between Lulah’s intentions and the changes that Nook has made to the input keys and behind-the-scenes programming, she’s able to keep using the technology as she wishes, even though she’s sinking further and further into her chair; that she’s taken deeper breaths now and then—not quite sighing, not quite yawning—but clearly tired and growing more so as time churns on.

Tommy tilts his head enough to check the ship clock that takes up one of the screens near the middle of the ship. It’s been calculated to the thirty-hour days that suit the Nansolal, rather than the Human’s twenty-four hour period (although there are clocks around the ship that show both times given that the Leorval have been subscribed to the Human’s routine as prisoners since Rissahlan’s fall). The time alone isn’t all of the pieces to the puzzle, however, and with the screens in front of him, he makes small inquiries as to how long Lulah has been awake and in charge of her shift rotation.
Sixteen hours, give or take. Not dangerously long, but definitely beyond the agreed time frame of ten-hour rotations that the others had decided between themselves which makes Tommy want to say something.

Although, he isn’t the only one to have noticed their resident navigator’s tiredness.
Between repeated glances every time Lulah slips deeper into her chair and the rapid-drumming of his fingers on the arms of his own chair, Zhay has abandoned his screen from where he’d been watching the sensor net, moving close on quiet feet until his shadow falls over Tommy.
The closeness allows him to read the screen easily; data jumping minimally as Nook echoes as much in Zhay’s mother-tongue without Tommy’s instruction to do so. It’s a timeline that he’s put together and comparing to previous days of when Lulah first stepped on the bridge and where she’d been before, which clearly indicates that—while she’s been on the bridge for sixteen hours—she hasn’t been anywhere near a sleep bunker in the last forty hours, which is way more than Philza ever went without sleep.

Zhay clasps Tommy on the shoulder, appreciative and trusting all at once; the gesture silent but heavy in a way that’s grounding before moving over to his sister, voice low enough that their conversation is private for everyone else on the bridge. Yet the captain’s chair is close enough that Tommy can hear the way that Zhay worries. He tries to hide it behind innocuous questions and the way he leans his head on Lulah’s shoulder like he’s the tired one, words all-but-mumbled under his breath but vibrating down into Lulah’s body as she tips her head and offers more of her shoulder while tapping her talons on the keyboard in front of her.

“I’m fine, Brother. I don’t need sleep yet,” she says just as quiet, not bothering to turn her head, even when Zhay leans more of his weight on her, but not enough that would hurt. “Go and worry about someone else.”
“I’m more than capable of worrying about everyone else and you at the exact same time,” Zhay says, rubbing his cheek against hers, almost like he’s nuzzling into her feathers.

“You’re tired, Lulah.”
“I’m busy, Zhay,” Lulah bites right back, words a little too sharp as they fall from her mouth. “We’ve made one jump but I still have to plan what comes ahead. I will sleep when I need to,” she says, before shrugging again, leaning away like she can shift Zhay’s weight off of her. As if indifference would be enough to convince him to look away long enough for him to be distracted by another of their kin, pushing themselves just the same.

And yet, to Tommy’s surprise, Zhay simply hums, lifting his chin from her shoulder with one final nuzzle into her feathers. “Alright. But let me know when you change your mind,” he says, as if it’s a given that Lulah will, rather than push herself to the point of collapse. She’s nearly already there, if the way that her movements are sluggish and head tilted into the back of the chair, like she is losing the strength to keep it upright.
Zhay pats her shoulder and steps back, delegating himself to the nearest largest seat on her left. It’s not up on the raised platform that the captain’s chair and the navigation and ship system’s screens are—given the limited space didn’t allow for much modification for the larger sizes of the Leorval—and instead, he deposits himself between Thren and Richarlyson, picking up idle conversation while they busy themselves with one thing or another.

Tommy watches him from his elevated position, but Zhay doesn’t keep glancing at his sister, so perhaps he’s just waiting her out. They’re both stubborn in their own right, like how Philza and Techno used to butt heads because they both wanted the same thing but thought to go two different ways about it.

The thought makes Tommy’s chest twist with emotion and pain both, and he snaps his eyes back to the screen in front of him sharply, but there’s nothing new on the sensor net, and no changes that offer him a distraction to shift the way the knot settles firmly somewhere beneath his throat and above his heart, like a weight he can’t shift.
He doesn’t want to think about them. The emotions he feels towards his family are too tangled still, and he can’t afford to be weakened, when they’re still not safe.

Out the corner of his eye, Lulah scrubs a hand over her face, blinking hard at the screens in front of her. Tommy doesn’t know if it’s stubbornness, fear, or something else that makes her deny herself the rest that she needs, but he does know that it’s only going to hurt her in the long run. Maybe others too, if not just Zhay and Qalna and Empanada—close kin, brothers and sisters that could get too caught up in the danger of Lulah collapsing even after they had escaped humankind.
Their hope is fragile as it is, having been pressed thin by years of imprisonment and the near-disaster of their escape.

If Tommy can help….

He doesn’t think he’ll have any better luck than Zhay—given the pair’s closeness and that he is still, by all rights, and outsider—but Tommy is his father’s son, and he can be stubborn when he wants to be. He doesn’t allow himself to second-guess his actions as he pushes himself out of the captain’s chair and steps down from the lifted stage to the second tier where Lulah’s seat sits, triadic with the holo-control screen and the screen reserved for ship systems.
Qalna has left the deck to get herself sleep, and all the others that can fulfil the navigation roles, like Aol’d and Aedus are occupying their time elsewhere before their shifts are set to start.

(It looks like Lulah has fudged the rotations to keep as many people off her back for as long as she can. Unfortunately for her, she can’t get past Nook’s watchful eye, nor the commands that Tommy gave him that Nook run suspect behaviour by him.)

Lulah is tired enough that she doesn’t notice Tommy’s approach until he’s standing next to her, head tilted in open display of question that he hopes shifts the gap between his height and the way that Lulah might think him looming with the way she’s sat.

“You’re looking at the wrong parts of the ship.”

And maybe Tommy could be more polite, but Zhay has already tried the soft approach and he doubts that Lulah would trust him more if he tried to be kind.
The Nansolal’s expectations of him are low—not that he blames them—but Zhay has vouched for him and Lulah trusts him enough that she hasn’t said or done anything in argument against Tommy so far.

Even now, she simply blinks at him.
Or maybe it’s that she’s too tired to think otherwise.

“What?”
“The ship,” Tommy echoes, shifting from where he’s stood to point at the Infinity Dawn’s blueprints she’s got pulled up on her screen, trying to piece together an understanding of a flawed system that doesn’t make sense with her logic and understanding of ship mechanics, given that the technologies were built up with two completely different understandings of space travel.

“You want to know how it works,” Tommy continues, ignoring the way almost every head in the room has turned towards him being so close to one of their own. One vulnerable by lack of sleep.

Instead, he lends a hand to the keys to shift the view of the blueprints, shifting it from the focused view of the four rear fusion reactor drives, to include the two replicative impulse drives and two nuclear-powered jump drives that make up the belly of the ship. Another hand summons Nook for a running translator, because fluent though he may be in Thíetue, he still hasn’t nailed down the specific scientific words needed for this kind of conversation.
“For now, you only need to worry about the main engines and the power distribution, here and here,” he says, pointing out the structures and the power functions that balance the circulation ship-wide.

Looking at the model like this, and comparing it to what Technoblade had explained on one of their many nights of outrunning nightmares, it’s clear why Lulah is struggling to understand. Leorval ships run like biological organisms; with blood flow and circulation; the entire ship supporting all parts equally but allowing for shifts in patterns and regulations to supply energy and strength as needed, given the demand.
In comparison, Human ships are singularity systems that have limited capacity for sharing supply. The Infinity Dawn runs on a singular nuclear-core for all ship systems, gravity generator, life support and the like, while the burn-off of the nuclear jump-drives powers the reflector shields and armaments. The fusion and impulse drives are completely separate, as they’re relied on for close-space moveability, such as fire-fights and collision avoidance manoeuvres, meaning they’re always primed and cannot risk malfunction from other systems drawing too much power.

Lulah was looking at them like they’re the primary engines.

And yes, Tommy has been using them more than usual given the acceleration into near orbital bodies, but they haven’t been in use in the initial jumps. Though it would make sense that no one was paying particular attention to the energy usage when they’ve so far been far more attentive to the location and distance jump, and all the calculations that come with that.

Lulah leans closer to the screen, following Tommy’s finger, like his closeness hasn’t occurred to her. “But that’s a fusion drive,” she begins, and while she’s not wrong, it’s still worth an explanation.
“It’s a different type,” Tommy tells her. “It’s nuclear. There are two of them. They’re the ship’s jump engines.”

The Infinity Dawn, while being modelled off of one of the Nansolal’s ships, has still been outfitted with technology that Humans understand, meaning that instead of anything like a slips-space propulsor that the Ericitcratna was equipped with, or a repulsion drive that the Aordna’p was powered by, has been replaced with nuclear power.
They heavily rely on gas giants to refuel them, and while that works well for Jupiter acting as the Solar System’s fuel station, there is danger in distant void travel. Tommy would bet that the Aegis fleet has some variant of reusable energy to help ferry their journey, but that’s neither here nor there seeing as they’re limited now to this one ship.

Lulah listens as Tommy explains as simply as he is able, pointing out the structure and making comparisons to Leorval design. There are some similarities, considering the Frankenstein-nature of the Infinity Dawn, and quick enough Lulah is finishing his sentences, pointing out her own understanding and figuring out quickly that Nook has done all he can to make the nuclear power as efficient as possible without reducing any intake from the remainder of the ship.

By the time that he’s moved onto the shielding, and showing her the energy output and the reason why Human ships demand that they always be engaged—considering the sensor nets aren’t vast enough to give ample warning to defend against incoming projectiles in time to power up the energy shields—Lulah’s head tips from the back rest, dropping to her chest.
She’s finally fallen asleep, having succumbed to her tiredness hours beyond when she should’ve retired.

Around the bridge, a few of the others keep glancing in their direction—have been, ever since Lulah first began making signs that she was fighting sleep—and yet, rather than their gaze feeling pointed because of Tommy’s proximity, it feels more like surprise at Lulah’s ability to fall asleep in his presence.

If only Tommy had the strength to do the same.

Since his… leaving the Ericitcratna he’s been meticulous about getting back to his quarters, behind a sturdy locked door and all of Nook’s power before he’s truly begun to grow tired. When he can’t sleep, he doesn’t pace the halls like he would’ve; instead keeping the doors locked and the room his only cage to pace like a trapped beast. Instead he tries tiring his brain with Nook, either through conversation or a reviewing of current proceedings or more Thíetue vocabulary as if that would be enough to drive him back to bed for another few hours before his routine demanded he be elsewhere.

It’s a reflection on himself rather than the Leorval that surround him, and while there is no harm in protecting himself from people that aren’t entirely sold on his being here, it’s Tommy’s lack of trust that keeps coming back to haunt him, like old ghosts.
The ship might’ve changed, the labyrinth of hallways might no longer be familiar and the aliens that walk them are different, but throwing himself from his bed in the dead of night is an old habit.

It’s worse now, though, when it isn’t Xsdí gorging open his body with monstrous talons, but Techno’s cradling arms that lay him down in a white coffin.

Tommy no longer wakes up screaming, but it’s still not pleasant.

He wishes that he could trust, even just fractionally, but the pain of his family setting him aside—as kind as though he was trying to be—is still too raw, the wound too fresh, and for all his wishes for the Leorval to accept him as one of them, neither is Tommy about to put himself in the situation where he could be betrayed all over again.

It might not bring him the same kind of pain as Techno—as his father betraying him, but it’s a risk Tommy cannot allow a second time.
Not when he is still owed his apology.

From behind there’s a sudden shift in movement; Tommy casting his eyes just as Zhay approaches the back of Lulah’s chair. His expression is shuttered; his emotion tucked tightly behind deep thought. Tommy only just figures out what he’s doing when he places a hand on Lulah’s shoulder, moving to lean over to get a better grip—

Halts, when Tommy puts his own hand over the top to stop him.

It’s not the same. Zhay isn’t doing this to hurt her, and Tommy knows, realistically, that he’s trying to take her to her sleeping quarters; that his version of protection is this kind of care.
Tommy didn’t need to stop him. He didn’t need to interfere at all. Lulah doesn’t even mean that much to him; she’s Zhay’s sister first and foremost, and for Tommy’s she’s still only a possible ally at most.

It’s not the same and yet Tommy hadn’t been able to help himself.

“Wait. Not yet,” he says, ignoring Zhay’s brief flash of tusks in instinctual challenge, watching instead the way Lulah’s eyes flutter beneath her eyelids. It’s a barely-there movement, and nothing he’d be able to see if he wasn’t already so close.
“Don’t move her just yet, or she’ll just wake back up and keep refusing to sleep,” Tommy mutters, not quite whispering, but there’s a knot in his throat that he refuses to bring attention to, so he forces himself to speak around it instead.

Slowly, he retracts his hand, aware that Zhay isn’t the only one watching the movement closely, keeping his eyes on Lulah instead of emotion he doesn’t want to see.
But Zhay seems to see the sense in Tommy’s excuse, retracting his hands and taking a half step back.

It’s less surprising than Sunny’s offered friendship or the lessening distance that others have slowly begun to regard Tommy with, considering Zhay has already shown his trust back on the Aegis, which has continued on, aboard the Infinity Dawn, allowing Tommy to take place among the Nansolal, even if they don’t trust him.
But they trust Zhay.

And for now, as every eye in the room returns to their tasks at hand, that’s enough.

Tommy takes his cue from them and returns to the captain’s chair, pulling up the screens and searching for a task that works well enough for a distraction. There’s nothing new on the sensor net, nothing on any of the scans. He’s already read through the diagnostics of the engines that Nook has compiled, and there’s no damage that can’t be rectified by the next time they need a jump, and any calibrations that need to be made he’s already given permission for.
He’s checked the crew rotation too, just in case anyone is feeling the same kind of pressure as Lulah and has copied her in pushing back sleep for the sake of working themselves to the bone, but by his third run through of the crew’s tasks and comparisons to where they currently are, it’s clear there are no such other outliers.
At the very least, it’s something on his radar now, and though it doesn’t take long, at least he can spend a few minutes being productive by creating a routine task for Nook to check crew whereabouts at every “shift change” to make sure that no one else thinks to try it.

Zhay is watching him.

Tommy can feel the weight of his gaze on the back of his neck, and he’s wearing an expression that tells Tommy he wants to say something, and yet neither of them are making much effort to start that conversation.
Tommy doesn’t even know what it could be, or if it’s something that should be said where the others can easily listen in, considering that Assang is currently occupying the pilot’s chair that sits beneath his own on the balcony, and everyone else is close enough they’d catch every other word or so.

Still, by the fifth time that Tommy catches Zhay casting him a look from where he’s sat, his patience is worn thin enough that he doesn’t think twice about the look he casts in return. Zhay accepts it as an invitation, or something similar, given the way he pushes himself off of Lulah’s console and comes to stand by him instead.

“All is well?” he asks simply.
Tommy can’t help but raise an eyebrow in response, wondering what might’ve prompted the question, before immediately taking stock of his own emotions. He doesn’t think he’s being doing anything different, and he hopes that stopping him from moving Lulah too soon wasn’t crossing some kind of line—

“You seem distracted.”

Tommy blinks. “Do I?”
He doesn’t think he is. He’s trying to distract himself, given everything that he’s doing, but he’s surprised that Zhay has picked up on it. It’s barely been four days since they escaped from the Aegis fleet; surely it can’t have been long enough for Zhay to have begun to pick up on tells and habits.
And yet…

“Or… not distracted,” Zhay continues, his tone quiet, head tilted like he’s thinking out loud more than broaching a subject of conversation. “It’s more like… you’re trying to keep yourself busy,” he mutters.
And then, immediately snaps his jaw shut, like that wasn’t what he meant to say; brow folding into a frown as he diverts his eyes and glares at the opposite wall.

The projection is still playing a field of the void outside; endless star-scapes and distant dust giants that hang suspended in the darkness, with nothing to truly hold Zhay’s attention, but he’s keeping his eyes averted, nonetheless. Given that this is the first time they’re talking about something other than the state of the ship, Tommy understands that he might be feeling a little wrong footed.
Talking was easier before, when they were both reduced to prisoners aboard an alien ship with the wall separating them.

“I don’t like waiting,” Tommy says simply, if only to fill the silence. It’s awkward otherwise, and Tommy would appreciate it if Zhay finally addressed what he wanted to say rather than blatantly dodging the issue, but then he’s aware that he’s very much in the same boat and if he were braver, he could just ask.

“Better waiting out here than back on the Aegis,” Zhay mutters from where he’s standing, shoulders bunching up to his ears as he shifts on his hooves. The sound echoes; the metal floor beneath them resonating like distant drums.
Tommy pretends he’s not focused on it, tapping at the keys in front of him, idle and empty, keeping some fraction of his brain occupied on movement rather than incessant thought, or the way his eyes keep glancing back to where Zhay is trying desperately to act casual, and yet tension frames every line of his body. His shoulders are stiff, lifted unnaturally high; neck and mane hidden behind broad arms, even if his prosthetic is held at an awkward angle, like Zhay still isn’t used to it.

Like he doesn’t want it.

“Thanks, by the way.”

Tommy blinks, mind taking a moment to catch up as he realises that Zhay had directed the words to him. He’s not looking in his direction, in fact he’s deliberately looking elsewhere, and Tommy would bet his right hand that beneath his blond fur, he would be blushing pretty deep.
It’s a foreign concept, and Zhay doesn’t look comfortable with it, but just as Lulah hasn’t turned Tommy away, and just as Sunny keeps seeking him out for the sake of her curiosity or her boredom….

He’s trying.

“I know I haven’t said it yet,” Zhay mumbles, frowning at the visage of a nearby comet hurtling through the void. “So… thanks.”

Tommy doesn’t mean to laugh, but a small sound bubbles up from the back of his mouth. It’s small enough that it can be mistaken as an expulsion of air, and at the very least Zhay doesn’t round on him with a charged fist and anger behind it, no matter how much he looks like he’d rather be talking with his fists.
Tommy turns his attention back to the screens, if only to give them both a reprieve from the attention. “I’m glad that it worked out,” he sighs, genuine. “Everything could’ve gone wrong.”

He’s not lying. He’s not even exaggerating.
Tommy had nothing in that cell. He had his anger, he had Nook—even if he hadn’t realised that Nook wasn’t as destroyed as he’d first thought—he’d had two broken shards of polymer from the drain cover, a padded mattress and a thin blanket that he’d shredded for clothes and bandages instead of creating a garrot or something to help levy their escape. The only reason they managed to get out in the first place was Boomer. He was the one that overthrew the guards out of the door. Jack jammed the cameras long enough for Boomer to open the cell, to hand off a gun, to relay a plan that he and his team made in place of an apology for having accepted Philza and Technoblade’s request to take him in the first place, and it was Ant and Velvet who secured them a ship so that they could get out.

And then, Nook.

Whom without they wouldn’t have even made it nearly half as far.

Tommy had talked big. Made bigger promises. And in the end all he’d done was risk everyone with his anger and his determination, with nothing to back it up.
It was luck and everyone else’s efforts that saved them in the end, and here Tommy is, acting like a big shot, having taken the captain’s chair and the captain’s quarters like he had any claim.

Stars, he’s pathetic.

“Yeah, well… it didn’t,” Zhay shrugs, shuffling on his feet before leaning against the railing to the left of Tommy’s surrounding consoles, arms folded over his chest even as his lip curls in a slip of emotion he’s trying hard to keep close to his chest. He works his jaw, turning words over on his tongue before tilting his head.
“Is that what this is? Precautions?” he asks, unravelling one arm to motion idle fingers to the many screens that Tommy’s got pulled up around him; divided between different panels so that he can keep an eye on as much as possible at once. He’s still got the sensor net to his left; the crew roster divided between signatures and stray elements shifting through the void. There’s a calculation of the ship shielding, protecting the Infinity Dawn from stray projectiles—asteroid remnants and frozen water particles that could be as deadly as bullets dependant on the speed of their velocity, as well as a running calculation on the energy divisions between all ship systems, updating every few seconds or so where the rest of the escaped Leorval are using other parts of the ship at their discretion.

“Mostly,” Tommy hums, glancing at the information. They can also be distractions, for a moment here and there.
He doesn’t have the task of fixing Nook’s medallion anymore, and while there was no priority to it, at the very least it was something that kept his hands occupied, if not his mind. Back on the Ericitcratna, he divided his attention between learning the language with Sam, Nook and Blue; helping out in the garden as needed, tinkering in the workshop or playing around with the weapons under Technoblade’s supervision.
Later, he joined the routine of working out alongside Boomer and the others, even if he was stubborn in not wanting to talk much with them; his own hubris and his fears keeping them separate because he feared the comparison that Philza and the others might make.
Useless in the end, considering they’d thrown him away.

Well. They hadn’t really.
Even if it feels like it.

It’s not fair to consider that when they’d explained it to him: their actions that of misguided care rather than something designed to hurt Tommy, even if it did end up hurting him worse than anything he’s faced before.
He’s still angry—still has the right to be angry—but being so isn’t any kind of helpful right now, and he’s still got to actually find his family before he can demand their apology for what they’d done.

“You said… you were Xsdí’s prisoner,” Zhay says, rather than asks from where he’s stood.
The words come slow, like he’s not sure of them even as he speaks; biting the inside of his mouth as soon as he’s finished like he regrets it immediately. He’s searching for some kind of middle ground between curiosity and demand of an explanation he’d barely scratched the surface of back on the Aegis, but the words ignite an older, deeper memory and he’s rattling a snarl at the back of his throat before he’s even recognised the habit.

It twists into a scoff; the sound exploding out of him with the violence of bullets. Next to him, Zhay flinches, snapping upright as his head swings to Tommy fast enough it’s probably painful.
Around the room, the other Leorval display similar reactions, even if their own surprise isn’t as obvious given Zhay’s proximity. Not that Tommy notices, with the sudden surge of anger that claws up his thoughts like dragon fire, broiling beneath his skin, coating his tongue in noxious smoke.

“Prisoner,” he says, the word tasting like poison as he speaks it. “The bastard wanted an attack dog and something to entertain him.”
He’s just able to stop himself from snarling the words out. He doesn’t exactly want to recall his months spent in captivity like some caged beast even when they’re so close to the surface.
Doesn’t want to think about how the Aegis put him right back in that same white cell and the sweat pooling in the creases of his palms feels a lot like oil and ichor.

Zhay’s face is pale in places, beneath bristling fur. He mouths around his own unsure words, teeth sliding against each other in a familiar sound that is somehow grounding even though it’s a habit Tommy’s picked up on just as much as an expression of his own emotion.

“Your family saved you,” he says, words still slow, but firmer this time, as if he’s physically wrenching the conversation away from hatred. He doesn’t backtrack completely, however, either too curious or determined, or maybe even both. It’s not his fault that even the mention of family is like a knife to the gut.

“Something like that,” Tommy agrees. His hands have frozen over the console, his mind not really catching the information that Nook keeps throwing his way, fingers flexing into fists, knuckles bleeding white.

“They weren’t my family at the time.”

“Then why—?”

“Xsdí captured Blue,” Tommy shrugs, firmly crushing down his heavier emotions so that it doesn’t affect his tone. “Threw him in my cell.”

He doesn’t know how effective it is, given that he’s deliberately not looking at Zhay’s face. He aches to move, and forces his hands to uncurl; fingers drumming instead on the keys as he rearranges the screens he’s got surrounding him; the sensor net minimised for a moment while he pulls up the signal frequencies that Nook’s been throwing out on the hour every hour, in case there are other ships close enough to be monitored. He tosses aside the ship blueprints and instead pulls up what information Nook was able to steal from Foolish—Aegis reports that date back sixteen months, all neatly ordered in chronological order for Tommy’s perusal but nothing he can actually read while discussing Xsdí at the same time.

“Bastard wanted me to kill him,” Tommy continues, grating his teeth as he speaks. “For nothing more than his own fucking entertainment. Fucking pricks. Instead, when the others came to save him, I helped and we all escaped together,” he says curtly, keeping to the truth and trying to keep his own emotions in check even if the walls of the Infinity Dawn are too white for his own liking, never mind that the main walls are overlayed with a projection of the outer void and the endless stretch of the abyss that falls away around them.

“It’s like I told you. I wasn’t able to escape on my own. Not last time. Not this time either,” Tommy admits, voice dropping to all but a whisper.

It’s not something he wants to consider, but the truth of the matter is, despite all the time that he’s spent with Techno and Philza; learning from Blue and Sam; finding his place amongst them with Tubbo and Ranboo and Purpled and them all, he’s no stronger than he was when Xsdí first snatched him.
He’s still weak. He still has to rely on everyone around him.

“Still. You managed to hurt him,” Zhay says.
Awkward. Kind.

Tommy can’t help but laugh.
“I should’ve fucking killed him.”

But no sooner does the mirth find him is it washed out; chased away by the tempest churning in Tommy’s chest and his mind. He flexes his hands, sitting up straighter in his chair, and with a deep breath he forces himself to calm down.
Though he’s not paying attention to them, he is aware of the other Leorval listening in on his and Zhay’s not-so-private conversation. They’re not even trying to pretend anymore. No one is looking, of course—except Sunny, but she’s always been an outlier amongst her kin—but Tommy can feel the weight of their attention pressing in on him.

He doesn’t want to scare them any more than he undoubtedly already has. It would be easier for everyone if they were to trust him a little more, even if what trust that is there currently is because of Zhay’s words and Lulah’s partial acceptance.
Of course, Sunny’s been making roads too, and everyone on the bridge is bold enough to risk potentially annoying him by listening in, though it’s not like Tommy’s trying to keep secrets from them.

But Xsdí’s ship is a living nightmare.
He can’t fault himself for getting pissed at the mere memory of it.

Tommy flexes his hands again, fingers stretching as far as they can. His right is still a little stiff from where he’d beaten it black and blue and bloody against the inner wall of the escape pod. The Humans had tried fixing it a little, but it’s mostly been patched up by the resources in the Infinity Dawn’s med ward; large enough to house the few critically injured Leorval that had been struck during their escape, and patch up all their shallow scrapes.
There’s still an ache, and a slight stiffness that he’s purposefully not paying attention to, but the motion is something easily repeatable. Something to distract a fraction of his brain when there’s little else, so deep in the void.

“Sorry,” he says, and repeats himself when his voice doesn’t quite come out right. “You can—if you have questions you can ask them. I’m not angry at you,” he says, turning in the seat just enough to meet Zhay’s eyes, having to look up, although for a wonder not all that far where Zhay has perched on the console, but out of the way enough that he’s not looming into Tommy’s space.
“I’m angry at him,” he says, hoping his tone and expression conveys what he doesn’t want to say. “But I know—I’ll stay calm. Sorry.”

Surprisingly, Zhay laughs. It’s not much—little more than a snort of air—but it lifts his shoulders and curls his mouth, even as he runs his tongue along his teeth, like he’s surprised himself by the jolt of amusement.

“You don’t have to apologise about being angry at him. Everyone here hates him,” he drawls, avoiding Xsdí’s name like the plague, folding his arms over his chest. He works his jaw, like he’s trying to remember how to frown.

“I’m not sorry I’m angry,” Tommy corrects. He doesn’t want to be angry, but the Leorval, despite being closely exposed to humans for four years probably still need the clarification of Tommy’s emotions rather than being forced to guess when he’s not even displaying them properly.
His appearance too, stands as a constant reminder to the Humans—his face resembling that of a man who only shares his blood and though it’s not something that Tommy can change, he can’t help but apologise regardless.
His hand finds his hair in a moment of habit, grateful at least that it is long enough that there is another difference between him and Michael. As his hands thread along the shape of the braid, gold-capped and lovingly created, he’s grateful that he doesn’t even need to consider cutting it: the thought calming and hurting in the same instance.

Zhay follows the motion with his eyes, expression shuttered. His mouth opens on the edge of words, but nothing comes out.

“Well I’m not afraid of you,” Sunny all but shouts, no longer bothering to keep up the pretence that the conversation was private as she flings herself forward on her wings, claws digging into the back of the captain’s chair to perch herself as she leans over it, invading Tommy’s personal space as she places her beak inches from his nose.
“You don’t need to apologise to me. You’re not scary anymore.”

Amidst his surprise, Tommy can’t help the laugh that bursts out his throat, but as the words connect, he finds he’s amused as Sunny’s words, and this time when he laughs, he means it.

“I know,” he tells her, instinctively bringing an arm up to give her a better perch, but she just leans her wait on it, pin-prick pressure along his skin from her claws. “You’re about the only one aboard this ship who isn’t afraid of me.”

“I ain’t scared of you,” Velon growls from his chair, having forgotten that he’s not meant to be listening in; muzzle scrunching, scales sliding over one another to create grooves from snout to spine. “You’re fucking ugly, but I ain’t scared.”
It is a surprise of words that Tommy hadn’t expected, unbothered by Velon’s put-upon threat display, and what laughter Sunny had elicited from him resurfaces; louder, brighter, fuller.

Around them, everyone seems to take a breath. Laughter, it seems, they can read much easier than anything else Tommy has been trying to convey, and at least it allows them all to feel a little more at ease, even with the heavy subject still clinging to the shadows of the room.
Out the corner of his eye, Tommy catches the slight way that Zhay settles into his skin; shoulders not quite so bunched around his shoulders as before, weight easing onto one leg. It’s only for a moment—before he seems to catch himself and forces his body rigid once more.
But Tommy caught it.

“Hey, just a question,” Tommy asks, when everyone has settled again, having returned to their tasks and no longer feeling the need to keep half an eye on him up in the captain’s chair. “We’re heading to Zidathea, right?”
“Hallowed Zidathea,” Zhay amends, voice rough but not instigating. He almost looks surprised, eyes focused on something in the middle distance, blinking a little too often for it to be natural.

“Hallowed Zidathea,” Tommy amends, head dipping in thanks and apology both, having only the barest knowledge of the planet, given his foolish habit of not asking enough questions.

He does at least know that their heading was a conscious decision made by anyone, and instead was simply a welcome coincidence that, when escaping from the Aegis fleet, Nook had picked the heading that sent them near enough in the perfect direction towards the centre of the universe. (Tommy simply hopes he hasn’t used up all his good luck in their escape.) Given the importance of Zidathea to the Nansolal, it’s the best bet that they’ve got in reaching allied forces, and doing more than simply star-hopping, but it’s not only Tommy’s decision to make.

“We didn’t talk about heading to Hallowed Zidathea, but if we want to change course, now is a good time,” he says, one hand idly poking at the controls to bring up a larger starmap halfway between the layout preferred by the Leorval and Human knowledge that Tommy has an easier time reading, given simply that he’d grown up on the same models.
“We haven’t made roads towards the centre of the universe that moving towards a different heading wouldn’t be a problem if that is the case.”

They’re still only a few days out from the location of the Aegis fleet after all, and just as there is no more worry about the Humans being able to chase after them, there are those aboard the ship that might want to head to their homeworlds instead. Letretis is as close as the A’yda are supposed to be, and Pacuvius might be a ways beyond that, but so too is it sat at the epicentre of the war, but exactly where Technoblade and Tubbo said that they wanted to go following Eret and Dream’s deaths.
With Xsdí riding the high of a victory against his Enol’ka kin, it would make sense that he’d also be heading there, to secure himself another win. He might even already be there.

Tommy doesn’t think he’s ever hated Human technology more, knowing that it will be weeks yet until he’s able to catch up.

Even with the efforts they’ve spent so far, Lulah and the others are still piecing together the starmap, but at a guess, it’s still going to take twenty or so more days, at minimum. Maybe more, maybe less, given the inconsistency on Nook’s ability to perfect the jumps, and the added speed brought by Tommy’s suggestion of hyperbolic orbit propulsion, but that’s neither here nor there on the grander scale.

Rather than immediately shutting down Tommy’s idea—or the basic outline of one, considering he hasn’t offered an alternative—Zhay seems to consider it for a moment, head tilted to favour his left shoulder as his eyes grow distant as deep thought overtakes him.
The expression is familiar; furrowed brow, red eyes vacant, and Tommy snaps his eyes away when he’s struck, not for the first time, how Zhay reminds him of Technoblade. And maybe it is that Tommy is latching the idea of family on the first that resembles his father, Zhay being Hylochoerian and all, and it’s not just because his tusks are dually split unlike Grazsem’s; although his fur is golden blond unlike Richarlyson’s russet brown; and whenever he looks at Tommy he’s scowling and angry unlike the kindness he’d grown accustomed to, and yet Techno had treated him much the same way—

“No,” Zhay says eventually, snatching Tommy’s mind back to the present. “We don’t need to change course.” He lends a finger to the display to Tommy’s left, where one of the screens is still broadcasting the star map, with all of the collected data and whatever else that Nook has deemed worthy of Tommy’s attention.

“We don’t have the time to jump all over the place, even with the… Nook, pushing Human technology to its maximum,” Zhay says, amongst those that are untrusting of the AI, even after all he’s done.
“It will be easier and quicker if we just all head to A’yda. There, we will meet up with the Leorval. My kin can return to their families if that is what they wish, and we will be able to inform High Command of the Human’s movements before making a decision as to what comes next.”

“But that’s for later,” he sighs. “For now, we just have to worry about reaching an A’yda.”

With their predicted trajectory, it shouldn’t be too hard. There’s always the risk of running into enemies or the Leorval, and Tommy isn’t blind to the fact that they’re manning a stolen Human ship that will make most turn tail, if not their weapons long before they’ve received the ship’s comms. For all of Nook’s power, he can’t change the communications array to run on faster-than-light technology, or whatever method that Sam and his sub-mind were using to communicate across such vast distances.

“Okay. If that is what you choose,” Tommy agrees, firmly putting all previous idle plans out of mind, even if they’re just jump coordinates and sling shot planets he could’ve made use of if they’d decided on a more direct route towards the front lines.
It would’ve been stupid, of course—even with Nook’s strength empowering their ship, the Infinity Dawn is still only Human technology, with basic frankensteining and a miraculous recreation of the replicative impulse drives as an engine. Yes, they’d be able to keep up in close-space manoeuvres, but the gun charge is still too slow and the warp technology was so laughable it wasn’t worth mentioning.

Of course, if Zhay had suggested the opposite, Tommy would’ve immediately plotted new coordinates and gunned the engine to the max so that he could get a quick grasp on Xsdí’s throat, even if it was all but suicide.

Beside him, with arms folded and eyes dark, Zhay is frowning.

“Why?” he asks, voice just shy of a growl. Tommy throws his mind back a few seconds, not quite understanding the change. Zhay doesn’t leave him floundering for long.
“Why is it my decision?” he asks, voice rolling low, arms folding tighter over his chest as he rolls his shoulders backwards, standing up straighter.

Tommy blinks.

“Because… they’re your people. You understand them better than I could,” he says, trying to explain, and though it’s not just that Zhay has been surrounded by all manner of the Leorval, he spent years imprisoned alongside them and better understands wanting to return to normalcy.
If Zhay thinks it is best to take a straight shot the nearest A’yda; that it will be the quickest and surest way of getting them all home, then that is what they’ll do.

Zhay, however, cannot help his distrust. It feels more than just the uncertainty that he usually regards Tommy with, and it’s not something that needs to be an argument—nothing that Tommy is trying to make an argument—and yet for a long moment Zhay just continues to frown at him, expression not quite sharp enough to be a glare and yet for his height and almost-black eyes, he’s fairly intimidating.

Yet the distrust isn’t as pointed as it could be. Cautionary, yes. Hesitant, certainly, but Tommy… understands on a fundamental level, what it’s like to have one’s choices taken. He has too many experience of that, given Xsdí capturing him, the Human’s aboard the Aegis treating him like some feral beast—

And his family.
Sending him away.

“While I may not be Human, I still don’t know as much as maybe I should when it comes to your family,” Tommy says, instead of following the path his mind has taken him down. He breathes through his nose and unclenches his fist where he’s white knuckled, trying to yank his mind back to the here and now, nethermind the way it feels like his heart is trying to smash open his ribcage.

“Yeah well, four years is still a long time to be out of the loop,” Zhay says, the words almost a sigh.

Tommy isn’t sure if he was meant to hear or not, but he’s speaking before he can think of it, the words falling off his tongue with sharp frustration. “Better than eighty years.”

Zhay blinks as the words register, scrunches his nose when they don’t make sense; his face betraying his confusion in a way that makes Tommy want to laugh when it reminds him of Techno.
Trying to ignore the way it makes him want to cry, when he’s reminded of Techno.

“The… thing about me being…Xsdí’s prisoner,” Tommy says, in beginnings of an explanation he still hasn’t quite managed to wrap his head around, considering that he’s been distracting himself with absolutely anything else, even as they’re beginning to run few and far between. He flexes his hand again as he speaks, like he’s trying to grip tight to his emotions, forcing his voice to be as flat as a blade but nowhere near as deadly.

“He warped my space jump from within the Solar System. And because, he’s a… prick,” he says, whether Zhay understands the insult or not, “he fucked with the time-space too.”
His voice is low enough in volume so that no one can overhear. For all that he loves and appreciates her company, Tommy doesn’t think he’ll be able to deal with it if Sunny ambushed him with a thousand and one questions right now. Luckily though, she’s moved over below, bugging Assang who is keeping a monitor on the pilot navigation controls, now that the Infinity Dawn is once more coasting through the stars.

“Xsdí stole me from the past,” Tommy says. Or, jumped from the past into the future with Tommy, by the count of eight years, but the details don’t feel as important as the overlying fact. He feels his eyes falling into the middle distance as memory crowds his mind, but he can’t allow himself to lose control on the bridge, too far from the security of a locked door and too close to judging eyes that he doesn’t want to risk showing the chinks in his armour.

It’s a much easier pill for Zhay to swallow than that of the Human’s, given that his understanding of the abilities of the Enol’ka—even that of the false god—so at the very least Tommy wouldn’t have to do much to convince him it’s the truth. He’s at least expecting some push back, or at least suspicion, because even to himself that had lived it, it still sounds far-fetched.
But when he glances up to Zhay, his frown is the same that it’s always been.

For a moment, he simply watches, but rather than asking, he rolls his shoulders and turns on his heel, moving back to Lulah’s chair, deciding there is nothing left to talk about. Lulah, of course, is now deeply asleep, having succumbed entirely to her exhaustion, head slumped against the back of the chair, eyes not even fluttering when Zhay’s shadow falls over her. He’s gentle as he reaches out, using his left hand to cup her shoulder and tip her weight towards him; right hanging limp by his side, fingers twitching like it’s a conscious decision he makes to not use his prosthetic to touch her.

It’s awkward, of course, even with the aid of his larger size and Lulah being small comparatively—and not just because she is Æirtyto—and Tommy allows himself to watch for all of thirty seconds, unsure if he should offer his help. It’s not until he catches the grimace of irritation flash across the side of Zhay’s face, his prosthetic fingers twitching silver arm lifting—

“Here, I can help,” Tommy says before he can truly second guess himself. He’s tall enough when standing that he doesn’t need to reach up that high to place his hand on the back of Zhay’s shoulder, lending a little his strength to push him just so that he can sidestep enough to get next to Lulah. It is much easier for him to use both his arms, strong enough that he barely registers Lulah’s weight as he lifts her from the chair. She doesn’t weigh much more than Blue does, but Tommy holds her for no longer than he needs before he’s handing her off to Zhay, doing so in such a way that he only needs to cradle her with one arm.

He’s blinking more than a little taken-aback by Tommy’s boldness, but he doesn’t fight it, nor do much more than mutter a quick, awkward thank you before he shuffles away; Zhay lumbering back down the stairs and out the doors that connect the bridge to the rest of the ship, arms delicate as he tries not to jostle his sister any, or wake her long before she’s due.
With that, there’s not much left for Tommy to do, with all that the rest of the Leorval have everything under control, but he’s not tired enough to try and take himself to his own quarters—nor does he want to re sleep after such heavy topics that would stain the wondering of his dreams—and so instead he relegates himself to remain on monitoring duty of the star maps, watching Nook repeatedly cast out the sensor net, content to take over Lulah’s responsibilities until another skilled in navigation—Aedus—wakes up and starts his shift.

Even that little interaction seems to have made roads on the other’s understanding of him because when Tommy turns back to his chair, he realises that Assang and Richarlyson are watching him. They dip their heads in partial nods rather than any grand showing of emotion, before they both turn back to their own tasks; the bridge returning to the muted quiet from before, although the air is no longer as tense as it has been.

It’s a continued theme, even hours later when it’s Tommy’s turn to leave the deck and his departure is accompanied by nodding heads like little bows of acceptance that follow him out the door and towards the food hall where hunger beckons him. He eats quickly and quietly—not quite ignored but not invited to any of the tables with his half plate—before heading back to the self-contained quarters of the captain’s suite, dithering with his tablet and old reports and anything he can get his hands on, until he’s tired enough to lay down.

The jumps have been going smooth enough the last few days that Tommy has stopped Nook requesting him each time they’re about to happen, even if he does make check-ins of his own that the ship is sticking to the loosely planned course that continues to take them towards the center of the universe.
With the added hyperbolic orbits that the others have mapped for, and with Nook’s continued manipulations, they’re making more distance than they thought they would, and it’s only a few more days until they’ll be reaching the outer orbit of the A’yda that circle Hallowed Zidathea.

Although that’s quite warming, Tommy is instead far more proud of the distance he’s come with the Leorval. Not everyone accepts him—not that he ever expected they all would—but more and more greets him every day and no one is flinching from him anymore. Velon and Grazsem still glare at him whenever he’s in the vicinity, as do most of the Leldrir, Draora and the other larger species that are used to intimidating their could-be enemies, but less and less of the aliens shun him as the days roll on until it’s not just a select few content to hold conversations with him.

It was Assang who had further explained the construction and purpose of the A’yda that they’re heading for: that they were created in honour of the Enol’ka once, but now have become civilisations, almost planets all their own despite them being created as they circle the centre of the universe. After a little explanation and Assang trying to communicate with Nook to try and create an image on one of the screens of the eating hall, Tommy realised that he’d already been to one. It was where he’d met the Shinyon—met being a strong word for what accounted to each terrifying the other—as it also is when he found out that he was meant to be some kind of monstrous creature, and he’d begun to understand that Humans were not only known, but feared.

The Nansolal that surround him are living proof as to why.

Unhated though he may be, Tommy still keeps himself to a simple routine so that he’s predictable; rotating between the bridge, the mess hall and the workshop.
Although he is no longer tinkering with Nook’s medallion that sits firmly around his neck, instead he’s offered his spare time and attention to Zhay’s prosthetic.

It doesn’t take a genius to realise Zhay hates the device that the Humans equipped him with. Even then, hate isn’t strong enough a word to describe it.

Now that Tommy’s noticed, it’s obvious even from a distance; Zhay’s metal arm, often limp at his side, or folded over his chest and tucked out of the way. It’s a conscious decision, and Zhay is as careful as he can be so that he doesn’t touch any of his brothers or sisters with the metal that malforms his silhouette.
No one else flinches when it brushes up against them, but Zhay is always conscious and Tommy hadn’t been able to put the realisation of it out of his head, until he’d found himself back in the workshop, leant on one of the tables and scanning through the information he’s got pulled up around him.

The engineer’s space is nowhere near as technical nor as crowded as the Ericitcratna’s workshop, but there is space to work and tools to be used, and a console that Nook uploads the making of a sub-mind to help Tommy control and display all of the necessary programs, holographics and diagrams that he desires.
Amidst all the information he’d been able to steal from Foolish and the Aegis fleet, there is substantial analysis and observations of Zhay leading up to and following the medical procedures that awarded him with his arm, and though he has no clue what could be done for the sake of helping, he can’t sit back and do nothing.

This time, however, he’s not alone.

Assang is half lounging on one of the tables on the lowered deck, arms hooked around the back of the chair to keep him somewhat-upright, while Empanada has made herself comfortable perched on the railing of the ramp that connects the two. She’s chatting idly with Foruwua and sending intermittent concerned glances towards where Throsne has found a treasure trove of Human contraptions and he’s currently working at pulling apart a soldering gun to get at the thermal heat pads inside.

Qalna, Lulah and Alü are the closest to him, though they’ve arranged themselves around the second workshop table, close enough to include Tommy in conversation while giving him more than enough room to juggle the screens and readings that aren’t making the kind of sense that he wants them too.
Usually it’s Sunny who acts like Tommy’s second shadow, clinging to his shoulders or fluttering around his head, or getting her claws into potentially-dangerous things, and slowly she began bringing her kin until the other Titraier were comfortable with Tommy the same. (They’re not invasive of his personal space like Sunny, but they’re happy to joke and tease and drop in on him without invitation.)

Tommy isn’t participating much in conversation currently; reading through old comparison reports that one of the medical officers had co-written—their assigned specific and self-important titles all meaningless to Tommy as he combs through cold detached words that almost make his skin crawl. He’s sure he’s read diagnostic reports with more feeling than the monitored health and acceptance of Zhay’s prosthetic, pleased a little that the model Zhay is currently fitted with is the fifth rendition.
Irritatingly, that does mean that he’s had to go through the same thing five times, with the Humans unwilling to acknowledge or accept Zhay’s hatred of the prosthetic and no compassion to what it means that he’s lost an arm.

Of course, there are logs to the damage to that as well; injuries surmised to have been inflicted during in Rissahlan’s fall or from the crash when Zhay’s ship fell victim to Rissahlan’s gravity well, as well as months of logs where they’d tried to save the limb through surgery, nano implants before being ultimately forced to give up and amputate. Tommy can’t help the way he grinds his teeth when the arm stops being referred to as an “injured limb” and instead “biological asset” that was handed off to the science team to analysis and cut up like it didn’t mean anything—

“Tommy?”

Tommy snaps his head up from where he’d been half bowed over the tablet in front of him; not realising that he’d been grinding his jaw, hands curled knuckle-white around the edge of the screen much to the wariness of those gathered. Alü blinks his eyes, the frills on his neck and upper shoulders rippling a vibration of movement that Tommy can’t quite parse given his ears aren’t as sensitive to the tones, but he suspects he’s feeling the same kind of wariness that makes Lulah’s feathers puff and Qalna shift in her seat.
She tilts her head in exaggerated movement. “You okay?”

“Wha—? Y-yeah,” Tommy stammers, forcing his grip to soften so that it’s not quite so biting on the tablet. “It’s just… information,” he says, waving his hand at the screens and the tablets, allowing Nook’s running translator to fill in the more specific words that he has still yet to cover his efforts to learn Thíetue entirely.
“It’s all from the Aegis. Stuff the Humans have written. Reading it makes me angry,” he says, sighing the words out. He doesn’t mean to be angry, of course, but everything he reads is painfully impersonal, like morality and human decency has been stripped away to make way for “progress.” It’s sickening that the Humans are hiding behind flimsy ideologies such as curiosity and the pursuit of knowledge to mistreat the Nansolal like little more than lab animals.

Alü drums his fingers on the back of his forearm, glancing towards the screen. “Is it bad?”
Tommy twists his lips into an almost pout. “Not… bad. But not good either.”
He doesn’t really want to go into the details. The Nansolal can probably guess, considering they’ve had years to learn just how far their captors would go, but maybe it’s worse that Tommy knows that they could’ve. All too easily.

Tommy works his jaw again as he looks at the screen, eyes skimming all too familiar phrases that stop-gap the fact the Humans hadn’t been making further progress in understanding why Zhay’s anatomical structure differed large enough from all captive and observed studies on other Hylochoerian specimens.
Tommy’s teeth grind with enough force his jaw aches from the force of it, before he makes a sharp clawed gesture with his hand and the tablet minimises the report he’d been reading so that he doesn’t have to look at the infuriating words for much longer, dropping his head into his hands and praying his mind will hand him the answer instead of him being forced to go searching again.

Beside him, there’s a shuffle that betrays someone moving; light taps of padded feet that tells him it’s Alü who moves closer to where Tommy is once more leaning over the worktable.

“What are you looking for?” he asks, and Tommy watches out the corner of his eye as he picks up one of the tablets. He can’t read anything on it—Tommy has deliberately not asked Nook to translate anything on the screen, and doesn’t do so now—but Alü moves his head back and forth like the text might make sense to him if he stares at it long enough, tilting his head back and forth, blinking both pairs of eyes at the reflective glass screen.

“Information on Zhay’s arm.”

He reminds Tommy of Blue a little, in both the mannerisms of how he displays emotions such as curiosity, but also that he retains some physical features, despite Blue being Væl’anyü and Alü being Vhoadan. They’re similarly four-fingered and four-eyed, and they host the same two-kneed skeletal structure that allows for balance and speed. They both have gills and aquatic lungs that cushion their chests and they’re omnivores, but where Blue has colour-changing skin dependant on his mood and blood flow, Vhoadan’s have thicker planting-like nodes that cover their torsos.
Alü is also a softer purple tone that lightens into reds, and what appears to be pale orange tattoos that ring all his limbs, as well as his horns and his frills, but when the Vhoadan speak with all of their body, Tommy is so used to his family emoting without words that it feels inevitable when he starts making comparisons.

As it happens, they are of the same evolutional biosphere, even if they didn’t hail from the same planet, nor even the same star; Tommy having been brave enough to ask and Assang, another of the Vhoadan aboard the Infinity Dawn, had given Tommy a brief but interesting history lesson on the origins of his species.
Nothing detailed, of course, given that Assang wasn’t an expert in the subject and that many joined in, derailing the conversation several times given that they’d been on the bridge at the time, during one such rotation of duties and ship watch, but Tommy was fascinated, nonetheless.

“Why do you need that?” Alü asks, frills wide similarly as to how Blue would raise and lower his sail when he’s trying to hide immediate startle.

“To understand what the Humans did. Maybe… try and fix it,” Tommy adds slowly, gesturing to the screens mounted on the walls and the scans that at least show the imaging of Zhay’s arm and the breakdown that reveals the power source—self-contained, thermal operated, designed to be powered by the kinetic and thermal output of Zhay’s bodily burn off rather than something limiting like a battery that would need to be plugged in or charged—although since Nook has taken control of the Infinity Dawn he’s been using the electromagnetic fielding to fuel it instead which is far more efficient and far more reliable—

“I know that there are rules around changing one’s self because of Xsdí, and what he’s made of himself,” Tommy continues, shoving his weight to the side so that he can balance his chin on one arm while reaching out to the keyboard he’s got shoved to the back of the desk, clearing space for tools and the overhead operating system for heavier tools.

“The Humans didn’t understand and made… this,” he says, gesturing towards the screen of the bionics separated by layer, functionality and components. In response, Nook manipulates the display so that the blueprints take up the largest middle screen, although blessedly the words remain untranslated so no one else has the misfortune of reading the Human’s drivel.

“They’ve tried to recreate a bionic arm based on Zhay’s biology, from scans and… collected information from other Hylochoerians,” Tommy says, kindly glossing over the fact that a lot of Humanity’s gained knowledge came from cadavers and thanatology studies.
While he acknowledges that Rissahlan has most likely offered many subjects, it’s not guaranteed to be the only source, although there’s nothing to mention anything for definite. Or, at least, nothing that he’s found in the number that he’s skimmed amidst Nook’s files: not for any sense of morbid curiosity, but because he’d been hoping to find information that would explain why the medical team and science officers hadn’t created an arm reminiscent of Zhay’s exact biology. Which, he’d found, that they had, and yet Zhay had damaged the prosthetic within weeks of being given it—or used it to attack the Humans that got too close—rendering each given prosthetic useless in increasingly longer intervals like they were slowly wearing down his tolerance.

“If it was something as simple as a sleeve attachment, Zhay could just… slip it off. Not use it,” Tommy continues, tapping at the blueprint and the attachment function where they’ve all but drilled into the remaining bone to act as support for the rest of the arm’s stability. Some parts can be taken off to be replaced, swapped out, or for the sake of getting to the electronics and engineering beneath the polycarbonate coating, but little more than that.

Qalna folds her arms over her chest and juts her lips.
“Instead, they changed him,” she says, with no small amount of pain in her voice.

“It wasn’t malicious. I’m not defending the Human’s decisions,” Tommy says quickly, hands raised when all three turn their heads to him, all with varying levels of disbelief and anger. It doesn’t escape Tommy’s notice that they’re all comfortable enough to express as such, but he keeps his focus on trying to temper the fires that the Humans started.
“I’m not saying what they did was a good thing,” he says, leaning into his words when Lulah’s beak snaps like muffled gunshots, her feathers deliberately flat, and her ornamental wings pulled close to her cheeks. “But they thought they were helping. And they were, in the beginning.”

Lulah’s eyes flash as she sits up straighter. “They never—”
“They tried to save his arm,” Tommy tells her, apologetic and kind and sympathetic all at once. He waves a hand to the largest screen when the reports he’s been reading still sit peacefully, none reflecting a language she’d be able to understand, but holding meaning to support Tommy’s claim. “It’s all here, in the files. I had Nook take what information from the Aegis as he was able to, which was a lot,” he adds as a half thought, “and I’m still going through that when I get the chance.” Which, is a simplified explanation of Nook having stolen geopbytes of information that would take literal years to get through, even if Nook summarised most of it as comprehensive as possible.

Tommy’s smile is wincing when he explains that, “in the beginning, they were trying to help.”

A ripple of movement shifts beneath Lulah’s fathers as they puff in restraint emotion that she’s desperately holding onto, for the sake of having a civil conversation. “In exchange for information,” she says curtly, beak clacking around the words.

“True. But Human medical technology is… different,” Tommy says slowly, sounding the word out as he speaks it.
It’s not… lesser, in some regards, given that Humanity, and Tommy himself are supported by nanobotic components swimming freely in his bloodstream and embedded into bone, muscle, flesh and organs. He wonders if the Leorval are aware—knows that the Nansolal as a larger collective potentially do not considering everyone’s reaction back on the Ericitcratna—or how bad it would be for them to learn that Zhay not only was changed by his prosthetic, but that he’d been injected with temporary nanobots. Actually, what if he—

Rather than risking anything by asking such a question out loud, Tommy turns back to the computer terminal in front of him, searching his query in the compiled databanks. Nook picks up immediately what he’s searching for and brings him the mild relief that, according to the Aegis’s most recent logs before their escape, none of the Leorval that imprisoned aboard the ship had been equipped with long-term nanobots once all Rissahlan-accrued injuries had been settled.
Not even Zhay, although his entire arm was still acting as a transmitter of medical data, from the simplicity of his heartrate to the homeostasis compositions of his internal systems. Tommy has already disabled all of that, of course—having no want or need for Nook to continue to collect useless data that disregards Zhay’s privacy, because it’s not like Tommy needs to know his emotions by the hormonal and chemical levels in his body.

“They couldn’t save the arm,” Tommy explains. “And neither could they talk to Zhay, so they just… replaced it. They should’ve replicated Zhay’s bone structure and muscle layout though, instead of just upscaling a Human bionic arm,” he says, with his own reserves of anger that grind his teeth and growl the words as they’re spoken. “I’m trying to figure out why.”

“Why?”

Tommy blinks, turning back to Alü with a brief recollection of his words and hoping he’d got the translation correct. He thought he did, but even though he’s mostly fluent, there are still words that he might’ve misspoken in his haste to explain.

“I mean—”
“No,” Alü interrupts, shaking his head. It’s a Human movement, either deliberately chosen, or habitual, picked up from years of imprisonment.
“Why is this important to you? Why do this?” he asks, more firmly, leaning in as he does with bright eyes blinking in hopes that his question is understood this time.

For a moment, Tommy blanks. No easy explanation comes to him, not having thought that he’d need one, and yet now that Alü has asked it takes him a little time to gather the words he needs, hands watching his fingers typing the keys instead of the expectant faces watching him closely.

“Because Zhay didn’t choose this,” he says quietly, swallowing down the residual anger at the diagrams, because just a little more effort would’ve allowed the Humans to model the arm correctly, and instead they didn’t, and there’s nothing on file to explain why they didn’t. There are reports for every other decision—polycarbonate plating instead of platinum, the charging system placed into the upper arm instead of the forearm, all usual tactical applications stripped back because they didn’t want to hand Zhay something weaponizable besides a fist made of metal which could’ve been disabled at even the hint of rebellion—but not answers to questions that Tommy has.

“The decision was forced on him. And if doing something like this can at least give him a choice…” Tommy shrugs, hoping that they’re not going to continue to push for an answer. His reasonings feel a little hollow, even if he himself is intimately familiar with decisions concerning him being made beyond his control.
When he chances a glance up, it seems that Lulah still doesn’t look entirely convinced and Tommy bites back on a sigh. He doesn’t blame her caution, but he’d thought that he’s shown that he’s trustworthy enough that he doesn’t have any ulterior motives than to help.
Of course, this is a distraction for himself as well, but if he didn’t have Zhay’s arm to focus on, he’d find something else.

At least this has a chance of helping.

“If he hadn’t trusted me, we would still be on the Aegis,” Tommy sighs, hand coming up to grip the back of his neck, nails lent to the soft skin there like he’d be able to physically dig out the discomfort. He knows there’s no use for the crafted projection he’s displayed for the others, nor for the image of Starchild that he’d held onto so tightly, as if the way that he acted and reacted gave him any more worth, but it’s an old habit that Tommy hasn’t quite grown out of.

For all that I did, if Zhay hadn’t given me a chance, we wouldn’t have gotten nearly as far as we have. So if I can help him… then it’s just paying back what he’s done for me. Which, in the face of everything, it’s not much,” Tommy says, hating the way his voice is so small, unsure if his reason will be accepted or if the others will reject his selfish reasonings.
It feels like little in the face of everything, but as Tommy admits, “I have nothing else I can give.”

He startles in that or when one of Qalna’s tendrils pats his arm, reaching out to him her touch feather-light but deliberate. “You freed us too, you know. That’s not nothing,” she chides, like Tommy should know better than to dismiss his own efforts in their successful escape. Still his own efforts feel immeasurable compared to Zhay charging his way down guarded corridors, taking out soldiers and combatants before Tommy had a chance to back him up. Nook did more than him and he wasn’t even conscious for half of it.
And yet, Qalna leans over to pat his arm and Lulah whistles a trill that is both scolding and amused, and Alü doesn’t look as sure as his sisters-in-arms, but he offers Tommy a smile when he looks at him.

Throsne, from the pit, lifts his own head with a chirp-like whistle that could be an imitation of the Æirtyto, or his own communicative song. “We’ve been trying to escape for years,” he says, matter-of-fact. “Some never thought we’d escape from the very beginning. Zhay never gave up though, but for all his attempts he never got anywhere. You both got us this far. You both deserve thanks whether the others are too prideful to admit as much or not,” he says, to the chorus of nodding heads and equivalent body language of everyone in the room.

Tommy knows that his surprise is showing on his face, but he can’t do much about it as he blinks at the open, encouraging faces around him, realising that the beginning of Zhay’s trust and Sunny’s boundless curiosity has gone a long way in making Tommy into someone who is not only approachable, but someone worthy of compassion. And maybe the better decision is simply to bow his head in accepting thanks, to be grateful that they’re not treating him with suspicion when he shows willingness to work with the forbidden contraption Zhay carries, to be content with the trust he’s been given and continue to build off that.
But that feels too much like making the same mistake again and before Tommy can overthink, second-guess or succumb to cowardice that would see him holding his tongue—

“There’s something I don’t understand though. Based on what the Humans reported,” he says, choosing his words carefully so that he doesn’t accidentally offend because he’s come so far and he’s loath to make another irreparable mistake.

“Zhay… is unique, compared to others.”

Truthfully, he knows that he shouldn’t be asking anyone here. He should be asking Zhay, but Tommy doesn’t want to face any more rejection from a Hylochoerian, even if he holds no connections to Technoblade. Similarities aside.
Hopefully, though, he’s been able to frame his question as innocent, or perhaps a little naïve if that will keep him in good standings with everyone here willing to share his company, and he has the excuse that if he understands it might allow him to make adjustments to the prosthetic that would bring it closer to a replication of Zhay’s other arm instead of sized-up near-Human anatomy—

“He is special, yes,” Lulah says slowly, taking point on the discussion. Even that agreement was more than Tommy had ever expected and he knows better than to be greedy, but Lulah is watching him carefully, expression open like an olive branch and Tommy, just as slowly—

“It’s his biology, isn’t it?”

He’s guessing but they’re educated guesses, even if Tommy’s experience to Hylochoerian’s has been limited to the time he’s spent in Techno’s company, Hanging off his words, listening to Blue and Philza’s stories alike, and what few moments he stepped onto planets, too busy caught up in the wonder of everything to pay too close attention to the aliens that looked similar to his father.
Similar, but nothing closely resembling.

Zhay is the same kind of outlier, in that regard. Although there are three others—Richarlyson, Grazsem, Demenius—Zhay doesn’t look much like his the blood-kin, and not so simply that his fur looks like spun gold under warm lights compared to Richarlyson’s, or that he’s taller than Grazsem not just because he’s male and she is not, or that his fur is thicker and stronger than Demenius, and his tusks are larger than all three, split and pointed to follow his jaw making him look larger and more intimidating.
It is unlike the others when compared to kin of their own species, like Empanada and Lulah, or Crocus and Loesis, or Sunny and her Titraier brothers who at least hold similarities to Tubbo’s compact stature, or Purpled’s furry down, or Sneeg’s armoured exoskeleton.

It’s what Humans had thought much of it in the past he’d considered the study similar to humans in genetics and DNA—that ones’ look was from old bloodlines or ancestral mutations, like how parentage determines hair colour, height, the strength of immune systems and everything else. Of course, for children like Tommy and Michael, their parents have been able to write their own genetic code; and while it was not without fault or unforeseen circumstance, the genetic lottery was easier to win with a little tampering.

The Humans had noticed the differences. Amidst their hours-days-weeks of observations, between cadavers and comparing other reports, from space skirmishes and soldiers hellbent on taking themselves out along with everyone around them, the Humans have not only noticed, but they’ve been trying to understand why.

“Nook managed to steal information the Human’s gathered from their observations of you and the other prisoners we weren’t able to rescue,” Tommy says, dipping his head in apology. “Among them Zhay is different, but those differences could be mistaken for age, or origin. Humans have the same differences, some still from planetary roots from when Earth was their sole planet, and now mutations and genetic differences are beginning to emerge, because of differences across Sol itself,” Tommy says, his explanation getting the better of him as he falls into a tangent of thoughts, words tumbling out faster than he can think them, not even realising when he’s switched over to his native tongue, or that Nook is not running a string of translations so that everyone else can keep up—

But his mind won’t stop coming back to the comparisons.

Tommy has had so many other distractions to keep him from thinking too closely, or understanding, and yet looking now there are so many similarities that he can’t quite get his head around—

“What is it that makes him so different?” Tommy asks, and then again, although this time in a language that the others can understand. They’re all watching him closely, but before Tommy can reflexively apologise, he realises they’re not concerned, but curious. Assang tilts their head, Foruwua pops their lips and Lulah leans forward from her perch, catching Tommy’s eye.

“What do you know of the Blood God?” she asks, the question seemingly out of nowhere, like a distraction rather than an answer, but the steel in her amber eyes tells Tommy otherwise.
He gives her question thought, face scrunching into a frown when nothing immediately comes to mind. His eyes flicker briefly to the green light, running a bead around the top of the room, where Nook has taken a page out of Sam’s book and announces his presence with lighting if not a hologram on one of the Infinity Dawn’s many screens, half expecting him to pipe up and infill details Tommy is obviously missing, much like Sam used to.
Except Nook remains silent, lurking on the edges of the conversation rather than participating himself, focused instead on other things. Tommy doesn’t blame him. He’s bound to be changed since his supposed death on Daroda and whatever damage the Humans wrought following all of that.

“I don’t… think I’ve heard of that,” Tommy says, mind returning to the conversation at hand. If it’s a title, it’s grand enough that Tommy feels like he should remember it, but his mind draws no solid memory that might answer his question. There’s a familiarity to it though; the cadence predictable enough that he feels like he has heard it, but nothing comes to mind clear enough.

Lulah’s face dances through a few emotions like she’s trying to figure out how best to explain. Tommy gets it; his own experiences might make sense to the Nansolal far easier than it would’ve been explaining to Humans, but that doesn’t mean he expects everyone to believe that he’d not only escaped from Xsdí once, as prisoner on his forerunner ship, but surviving the destruction of Daroda when Xsdí had followed them to the furthest stretches of the universe.

“It depends on who you ask,” she begins, slow, sounding out the words as she says them, “but the Blood God, and the Angel of Death, are mostly considered to be myths. Even those that do know the truth have their doubts, as though they’re tall tales, based on truth but made fantastical by rumours and the like, as word has passed throughout the years, and throughout the universe.”
Tommy nods, knowing that he’ll probably have an easier time accepting, giving everything he’s faced and come to learn in the short expanse of two years.

Lulah watches carefully as she continues, looking for disbelief. “They were thought to be the last remaining Sentinels of the Enol’ka, the Angel blessed by Kristin and the Blood God—”
“Sentinel to Eret,” Tommy finishes, much to everyone’s muted surprise, including Tommy’s own. She’s talking about Philza and Technoblade. There’s no one else it could be.

Lulah blinks at him; Qalna looking equally surprised where she’s perched on a chair beside her, hands falling still from where she’d been playing with stray flight feathers; surprise taking a stark dive into fierce confusion when Tommy doesn’t stop and continues—because he hadn’t known the Blood God and the Angel of Death by their epithets but instead by their bare names—and though his numb is tongue from his words he can’t help but ask when his mind won’t put the pieces together for him, “but what does Technoblade have to do with Zhay? I mean, they’re both Hylochoerian, sure, but they’re not… not…. They’re—”

Alike.

Similar.

Comparable, but in the same way that Tommy was comparable to Boomer, or to Niki, or to any of the other Nova Corps, with their height and their hair and the shapes of their face: two eyes, two ears, a nose, ten fingers and ten toes, hearts on the left side of their bodies, born of Sol and cast out into the stars; genetically similar because of their species. Comparable to Michael for all that they’re meant to be brothers, separated by time and Humanity’s own cruel greed that threw Tommy into child labour like he was nothing more than spare parts for an endlessly working machine and not a Human himself, and yet sharing blood and familiarities if not scars; the same face beneath the anger, the confusion, the hate….

“No,” Tommy says, but the word sounds hollow.
He’s standing, though he doesn’t remember rising to his feet; Lulah and the others around him having copied him enough to lift them all from their own perches, but no one takes a step back and no one takes a step forward.
Out the corner of his eye, Tommy is faintly aware that Nook’s colour has… changed slightly, fractionally stronger or more vibrant, or something, but Tommy is too caught up in tangled thoughts and a flurry of emotions that he can barely feel let alone understand.

“No,” he says again, firm, like that might change things. “No, that can’t—it doesn’t make sense,” he says, words sharper than he intends them to be, “because Technoblade’s son is dead.”
He told him so himself, voice full of pain and an agony that hadn’t lost any of its hurt from the years passed; regret, guilt and self-blame just as heavy, powerful enough that when he’d locked at Tommy with that same familial love he’d tried to prevent anymore needless death by sending Tommy away—

He shakes his head back and forth, not really seeing anything as he tries to line up the thoughts in his head and the sudden, new information that Lulah has handed him after careless questions.
He can see why she’d be mistaken. Why the Humans have noted that Zhay looks vastly different to the other kinds that they’ve captured; the cadavers that they’ve sliced open since Rissahlan’s capture. And one could argue that he does look a lot more like Technoblade; that it’s got to be something to do with maybe their bloodline, just as Humans have the same characteristics that can be traceable in ancestors.

This has to be the same kind of thing.
It has to be.

Because Technoblade’s son is dead. He died, in the battle for Rissahlan.

He died… in the … after the Humans….

Tommy jerks his head up as everything falls into place far too quickly and far too sharply. His eyes snap between Lulah, Alü, Throsne, Assang, rapid-fire, demanding more than words can ask for.
But none of them are looking at him.

Everyone is looking instead towards the doorway, and the looming frame of the Hylochoerian they speak of.

Zhay’s face is shuttered, his emotions held tight to his chest where his hands stands half in shadow, guarded face contrasting sharply with the darkness that outlines dual-split tusks, the slight hunch that shadowed Technoblade’s steps when he lumbered through the Ericitcratna’s smaller doorways; eyes void-dark but watching intently as Tommy steps around all those gathered, nearly tripping off the raised stage that separates the pit from the rest of the room.

“Dad thinks you’re dead,” he says, almost breathless with the admission—the realisation—the understanding as it slams into him with the power of a meteor caught in a gravity well.

“Everyone—no one believed there were any survivors from Rissahlan,” he continues, trying to explain although his own brain isn’t quite making sense to him; thoughts scrambled, like ink on wet parchment; nothing defined, nothing as clear as he wants it to be. An excitement takes hold of him as he stumbles closer, softened by relief even though Zhay hasn’t moved from where he stands.
As if the only thing holding him up is the doorway.

Like Tommy is the only one relieved.

He’s breathing deep, chest heaving, nanobots flooding his bloodstream with adrenaline, though it’s got nowhere to go.
Until Tommy is standing in front of Zhay, looking up at him, staring into dark void eyes.

“Dad thinks you’re dead.”

Zhay’s expression shatters into thinly veiled heartbreak.

“So he did replace me.”

“What? That’s not—” Tommy begins, caught entirely off guard as Zhay’s shoulders slump deep into a pain he’s kept firmly tucked away and yet so devastatingly familiar, because sadness looks the same on the father as it does the son.
Tommy’s heart wrenches in his chest, because this revelation should be joyous, and yet his brother—and, stars, his brother—looks as if he’s mourning his own death all over again.

“I had my suspicions,” he says, voice hollow, catching on his throat where he can barely speak the words. Tommy mouths at refusals and reassurances both, but no sound comes out. Zhay continues.
“No Human could know of Daroda, let alone reach it, or understand its importance, unless they were favoured by the Enol’ka. Or under the protection of one of the last remaining Sentinels,” he says with a sigh deep enough it feels as though it’s come from the depths of his soul. His lower jaw shifts, Tommy’s own mouth slack around words he doesn’t have the strength to speak; his hand somehow having found its way to Zhay’s forearm, fingers curled into the fur in silent prayer not to be shaken off.
Zhay appears not to have noticed.

“And then, when you fought on the Aegis…. You fight like a Hylochoerian.”
He laughs. It’s not a joyous sound.

Tommy can’t think past the surprise, words falling from his mouth of their own accord—

“Dad taught me.”

Whether or not Tommy fought with the same precise attacks and shift of weight that Techno had shown him, or the desperate kind of fighting that he’d picked up on Daroda, forcibly smashing his way through Dkaræ and robots alike, bloodlust on his teeth, panic in his lungs, escape on the tips of his fingers...

Zhay hums; a low sound that barely lifts from the back of his throat, not quite a growl but neither a chuff or a note of calm that Technoblade had offered in lapses of silence. Tommy, reflexively, purses his lips to whistle and apologetic trill, even if he’s not entirely sure what he’s apologising for, but before he can Zhay continues.

“Even without all of that… I knew the moment I saw the knife.”

“The knife?”

Zhay nods. It’s a small, slow thing. His eyes are trained solely on Tommy’s face, but by their glaze, he has the suspicion that Zhay isn’t seeing him.
“I have its twin,” he says, and when he does, there’s a tremor to his words like he’s losing the battle of holding himself together; desperation sneaking into his voice. Breath shaking on the inhale.

“Had, its twin.”

Tommy doesn’t think. He doesn’t need to.

His hand shifts to his spine, slipping underneath the mantle to the sheath he’s donned for the sake of combating the Infinity Dawn’s cold halls; reaching for the sheath he’s got strapped to the small of his back. His fingers close around the knife’s handle with ease, drawing it out in one fluid movement, the metal singing as he brings it into the light.

It’s unchanged from when Technoblade had handed it to him: a weighty dagger in Tommy’s smaller grasp with fractured reflections where the blade is multi-faceted instead of smooth; the weapon having been overlooked by the Humans where they’d shown more interest in Nook’s medallion and Xsdí’s mandible. They hadn’t even bothered messing with the stasis clip that allows him to fasten the sheath wherever best suits him.
He holds it now, in the flat of his hand; hilt and blade balanced in his grip. He doesn’t need Zhay to say any more than he already has. Whether it was the Humans that first captured him from the salvage of crashed ships that fell to Rissahlan, or it was lost to the wreckage, it means just as much to Zhay as it does to Tommy.
But he’s got the braid his father gave him, and so much more.

Slowly, like he’s afraid Tommy will retract his hand the moment he gets close, Zhay reaches for the dagger. It looks so much smaller in his hand; much easier to conceal against the length of his forearm or against his hip, but Zhay holds it with the familiarity of a missing limb; fingers shifting enough to allow it to tip, the blade flat to his hand before he changes grip, twisting again until it’s arced backwards up his arm, and then again as it seems to hold orbit to his palm, balanced on the back of his hand, the meat of his thumb, under—

The knife clatters, slipping from Zhay’s grasp, falling too quick for Tommy to catch it. He ducks to grab it immediately, reaching, but any word dies on his lips when he catches the way Zhay’s hand is shaking almost imperceptibly, but enough to be the reason why he hadn’t been able to keep his grip.
Tommy knows better than to mention it.

Instead he picks up the knife again, turning it over briefly in his hands although he knows that there wouldn’t be a mark from such a negligible height.

“I don’t know how you figured it out, but you got some things wrong,” Tommy says, pulling the sheath from where it had been held suspended to the small of his back. He tucks the knife back into its sleeve and takes Zhay’s hand long enough to fold his fingers over the sheath so that he doesn’t drop it a second time.

“You weren’t replaced.”

Zhay huffs a sharp burst of air, ears flicking as he stands up taller in feigned indignation, but he doesn’t pull his hands out of Tommy’s grasp.

“He gave you the other half of the knife’s pair! What else am I meant to—”

“Dad gave me that knife in the same conversation that he drugged me and put me in an escape pod and sent me to the humans,” Tommy says, voice a touch acidic from the still-lingering anger he feels at having been sent away under the excuse of safety and not their father’s own fear. Understandable fear, given Zhay’s supposed death and all the years of mourning that Techno has endured following, but Tommy won’t ignore his own hurt for his father’s momentary cowardice.

He glances to where Zhay is watching him closely, unashamed for having turned away beneath the heat of his own rage.
They’re both still holding onto the knife.

“He sent you away,” Zhay says slowly, sounding the thought out rather than asking a question but Tommy dips his chin in agreement regardless.

“This is why you want an apology.”

Tommy nods again. He can’t bring himself to speak, unsure whether his voice would be able to carry his words. Lulah, having abandoned her chair, has no qualms, all but demanding the truth because, “you know all of this because you travelled with the Sentinels‽ How did you—? Why were you—?” she stumbles, words catching in her mouth, disjointed and incomplete. But Tommy is able to understand regardless.

“They rescued me from Xsdí’s ship,” he says slow, with a half-hearted shrug. It feels as though he’s already said this a thousand times over, but he’ll probably have to explain that a thousand times more.
Maybe later he can ask everyone to gather together and they’ll get all their questions over in one go, but that’s for later and right now Tommy is more concerned with the way the Zhay is staring at him, unconvinced that he wasn’t replaced. Tommy doubts that he’s anything worth being a replacement for, but at the very least he understands the pain.

“I wasn’t chosen to stay. It was coincidence that we met in the first place and then I simply… couldn’t go anywhere,” he shrugs again, indifferent to the circumstance that had forced all their hands, preferring instead to consider those first few weeks with fondness.
“I was lucky that they didn’t just wash their hands for me by killing me,” he continues, deliberately ignoring the way everyone tenses up, “but they didn’t and we were all stuck in a situation we couldn’t change. It took weeks to warm up to each other. Months to learn to talk,” he laughs, reminded of his efforts of dragging Blue away from the bridge or the terminals and forcing him to play along in attempts to learn words.

He turns to Zhay, and tells him firmly, “I wasn’t your replacement.”
And then, softer, in quiet admittance that he hopes doesn’t betray his own hesitation; “I was the one that called Techno “Dad.””

He doesn’t say that Technoblade never actually called him his son. There were enough unspoken things between them to claim one another as family, and had Tommy not been so afraid to confront the others and show them how much they mean to him, then maybe he could’ve avoided being thrown away all together….
But then, if Tommy hadn’t been sent to the Aegis, he wouldn’t have found Zhay or the others. He wouldn’t have escaped with them all: forty-seven ex-prisoners now making their way to the nearest A’yda and their homes, who would otherwise remain trapped aboard the Human ship for who knows how long.
Thinking about it like that, Tommy can’t be as angry as he was.

Zhay hasn’t said anything more and no one else follows Lulah’s lead and asking anymore questions, and Tommy doesn’t have anything left to say so he just pats the sheath where he and Zhay are still holding onto the twin knife. “You should hold on to this for now.”
“I can’t—”
“You can keep it safer than I can,” Tommy says, unwilling to take no as an answer. He pushes the sheath closer to Zhay, practically into his chest, before attracting his hand and laughing a little when Zhay grunts at him.

“You’re making it very hard to hate you,” he says, voice low, rumbling. It could almost be mistaken for a purr.
Tommy allows himself to make that mistake.

“I’d rather not be hated,” his smiles, nonchalant but entirely truthful. And, emboldened, “especially by family.”

Zhay blinks his surprise only for a moment, before he ducks his head and sighs deeply—a movement so painfully Technoblade that the surprise of it disarms Tommy enough that he’s caught off guard when Zhay reaches out; his hand suddenly on Tommy’s head, ruffling his hair in an act this can’t be anything other than… fond. Affectionate.
The surprise doesn’t last long and Tommy playfully bats his hand away, chuffing air in playful irritation. Zhay’s laughter barks louder and the hands in his hair rubs harder to the chorus of their shared amusement and relief.

“Now, what’s this about the monstrosity that the Humans call an arm?”

Hmero snarls, the sounds vicious and threatening as he throws himself bodily at Barissun; the weight of his charge their combined statures tipping them sideways and into the bulkhead.
From the sidelines, Demenius and Grazsem cheer the spar between encouraging shouts, teasing words and the occasional thump of fists on bare chests. Wynn, who is perched next to Tommy on one of the upturned crates makes a questioning sound in the back of her throat, not pleased with the display of violence, but understands not only the necessity of it for the sake of the Leorval to be practiced in such efforts, but that the larger builds of Khaadren and Hylochoerian (to name a few) find the physical grappling to be as cathartic as it reaffirms the bonds they share.
Still, she can’t quite hide her uncertainty when Barissun snaps his tail like a whip, knocking Hmero’s feet out from underneath him.

Tommy finds it fascinating, however, so he’s more than happy to watch the larger Nansolal throw each other around like sandbags, even as both Khaadren shake their heads, forcing themselves back to their feet and charge one another once again, heads crashing against one another

“He’s fine, he’s too thick headed to feel it,” Qalna assures Wynn, who is a lot more at ease at the mild violence. She’s also grown used to Tommy enough that she’s stopped needing Zhay, Lulah or Sunny as a buffer just to host a simple conversation between the pair of them. And she’s not the only one.

Word of Zhay accepting Tommy as his brother–not just as a brother-in-arms united against a common enemy, but in the sense of family, both loved by the same father—has spread through the ship like wildfire.
And although it’s a small ship considering and Tommy knows he was the subject of hot gossip even before the revelation, but he’d kind of thought that the news would’ve been thoroughly talked out by now, and yet a week one and he still finds word following him about the ship, like ducklings chasing its mother.

Of course, not everyone believes Tommy’s tale, nor those that can’t effectively dispute all the evidence he’s provided—even though their efforts should be commended given Tommy’s knowledge of Daroda; the mandible strapped to his hip in place of the knife he’s entrusted to Zhay or Nook’s presence clinging to the greenlights that warm the ship corridors—but Tommy has found that those that hate him, or continue to distrust him at least have decided to keep their distance.

Truthfully, he’s glad for it. He doesn’t need to be friends with everyone aboard the Infinity Dawn, no matter how much easier it would make everything, but four years is a long time with a lot of hate and pain that Tommy knows better than to ignore.

Aside from the occasional cold shoulders and hooded glares, more Nansolal are welcoming than those that are not.
He can now easily claim friends among the Nansolal, and though he still holds caution in the back of his mind, he’s invited to tables in the mess hall on rotation when he doesn’t supply himself food from the Captain’s quarters. It’s not just Sunny seeking him out on the maintenance deck anymore, and it’s not just Assang explaining basic culture or history, and Tommy’s not just frequenting the same few rooms in predictable routine for the sake of everyone else’s comfort.

Things have been going better than expected.
Tommy can finally lower his guard.

Which is his first mistake.

“Again!” Hmero snarls from the other side of the room; Tommy lifting his head from Wynn and Qalna’s quiet conversation as the Scorcur pair lift themselves from the floor where their tussling looks to have been finalised in a draw.

Since leaving the Aegis, the Leorval, especially of which the largest species, have taken up to using the Infinity Dawn’s gym and part of the lower cargo bay’s open space as room to exercise when they feel the need to get up and move. After so long being restrained to cells marginally larger than a comfortable bedroom, Tommy understands the feeling entirely. He’d felt the same back aboard the Ericitcratna.
He feels much the same now; skin itching to join in, if only to disperse some of the nervous energy he’s got bottled up inside his body, but Tommy can’t quite conquer that final moment of hesitation, even as he tries to bond with any and all who give him the time of day.

Velon still calls him ugly every chance he gets and Sunny’s penchant for using him like a climbing frame has rubbed off on the other Titraier—although they also climb over some of the other Leorval that tolerate as much, so it feels more that Tommy has been accepted by—quiet no longer takes over a room when Tommy steps into it and no one looks twice when he gets on the running machine and runs until his legs are numb.
(Well, they looked the first time after Tommy had turned the machine on and set to work on exhausting himself, not realising the Leorval hadn’t recognised the machine for what it was, or that they hadn’t known how to turn them on so that they could do much the same.)

It’s what Tommy was doing earlier, and after he’d finished up his hour long stretch on one of the running machine—with Wynn, Qalna and Assang taking turns on the one beside him where their own individual species don’t hold the same reserve of stamina as Tommy—and instead of retreating to his enclosed quarters to lie down and simply soak up and chance moment of peace and quiet, he’d paused to watch has paused to watch the larger species grapple one another like they were overgrown children, or overexcited puppies.

It’s fascinating too, especially comparing the way Grazsem holds her weight as a Hylochoerian; moving with her centre of gravity in her gut, while Barissun and Hmero, being Khaadren, have large tails that help bring their centre of balance more in their chests, allowing them to grapple and pin their wrestling opponents far more effectively.
They were playing a game earlier, like testing reaction times or bringing rules into their wrestling like they could only redirect attacks, or they weren’t allowed to move from where they were standing, either trying to bring interest to their spats, or testing one another’s skills and warming up after too long locked in singular cells with little chance to keep skills honed without raising Human caution.

It’s nothing like how Techno taught him to fight in hand-to-hand combat, or how to use his own stature against enemies, and it leaves him mildly enraptured; content to sit and watch while Wynn and Qalna provide background noise, with Assang hopping off of the running machine when the overhead speakers crackle briefly in prelude to a voice Tommy doesn’t recognise announcing a warning that the ship is about to make a jump.

About the room, everyone takes note and pauses what they’re doing; everyone stepping away from the cleared space in the middle of the room to latch onto something static. Tommy copies in all that he shuffles on the crate that he’s perched, slipping a hand under one of the straps that keeps it in place, and wrapping it around once so it won’t easily come loose.
Since Nook has been supporting the Infinity Dawn in interstellar jumps, all of which that are being made on near-full charges with more than enough energy left in the tanks for emergent secondary jumps, they’ve been operating much smoother as of late, and at the very least, don’t need everyone eat to strap up and lock in. Holding onto the crate is simply to keep him in place during the slight shudder of turbulence.

The voice that Tommy still can’t place starts a five minute countdown while the soft sounds of the bridge whisper beneath decreasing numbers. Zhay’s the one on the bridge, stepping in as temporary shift lead for the rotation of the few still on the bridge.

After leaving the Aegis, Tommy had Nook convert the days to the Nansolal’s preferred cycle of days roughly counted in thirty-hour divisions, making the current time drawing near to the eighteenth hour. It’s downtime for a lot of the ship, most rotating into the mess hall and out towards their bunks, leaving only a handful of what can be acquainted to official duties, meaning Tommy has no reason to head up to the bridge and oversee a perfectly ordinary jump. Not when Zhay is up there, with a ghost team that are more than equipped to handle any potential fluctuations and hiccups provided by nebulae, debris or void creatures that demand a little more than preprogrammed functions.
Off the top of his head, it should be Bandr in the pilot’s seat, the Ovirs brothers on the guns, Aedus providing navigational data while combing through the sensor net, and….

“Who’s on comms?” Tommy asks, leaning forward as he interrupts Qalna and Wynn giving encouragement to Assang, tired from his exercise.
“It’s Orcan. Tagnuin.”

Tommy lifts his head, his question having been answered by Barissun instead; the older Khaadren ducking his head and greeting and question both, moving closer to tuck his head into the crate netting, same as Tommy. He takes a second to flick through his memories. He doesn’t remember talking to Orcan, but then he also doesn’t remember the Tagnuin sneering or shying away from him either.

He’s not embarrassed to admit that he doesn’t remember all the names and faces of the Nansolal. Half are still giving him respectful space while another few avoid him like the plague. It’s been just over three weeks (twenty-three days to be more precise) and it will still be a few more days before they reach guarded patrol territories of Nansolal-occupied planets.
They’ve already passed some mining colonies, floating outposts orbiting gas giants, space stations tucked in asteroid belts but they’ve only been small civilizations and none with the Leorval connections to help ferry them quicker to Hallowed Zidathea. Equally, Empanada and other like-minded aliens had pointed out the potential panic caused by a Human vessel triggering automatic border defences long before the weak comms system got close enough to transmit a message revealing its Nansolal crew.

“Well, at least we’re one step closer to the A’yda with this jump,” Wynn says, her own claws wrapping tighter around the strap as Orcan’s countdown hits the three minute mark. “Only a few more days now.”
“If anything, I’ll be glad to put this ship behind me,” Assang agrees. Then adds, “no offence,” with a grin in Tommy’s direction, who can’t help but laugh himself. “Don’t worry. I’m with you there.”

He turns his eyes to the bulkhead, the floor panelling, the walls. The endless white, white, white.
“I won’t miss this ship when it’s gone.”

It has served them well with escaping the Aegis and reaching the A’yda that surround Hallowed Zidathea, but Tommy is more than ready to put the Infinity Dawn behind him. Even if only to get his hands on better technology. Stronger technology.

“You know, I can’t wait for actual food,” Barissun says, voice full of wanting, his eyes distant. Instantly the others all agree making noises halfway between groans and sighs loud enough that the others on the far side of the gym raise their heads. “Thisran,” Qalna says dreamily. “And senni. And worhniva.”
“Hledtsí,” Assang joins in, words unknown by Tommy and going untranslated when Nook has long since stopped keeping a constant eye on him to act as running translator. Though given that they’re talking about food, Tommy doubts that there’s a word in his first language that would give him an idea as to what the others are saying.

Instead, he joins in.

“What I wouldn’t give for a large pepperoni pizza.”

As expected, everyone looks at him confused. From across the room, Demenius, Hmero, Adl’d and Koraxis relinquish their grip on the bulkhead and come wandering over, curious. Intrigued.
Grazsem follows at a restrained pace; having the liberty to where Orcan begins counting down the final thirty seconds until jump.

“The hell is a… pi—zah?” Demenius asks, tone unable to hide his interest.
“It’s—well, it’s like a flat bread,” Tommy begins shifting his arm so that the crate strap is wrapped more firmly around his wrist allowing for him to mould the shape with his hands while still being anchored in place. “You can make it however you like; adding whatever you want for toppings—like cheese, spiced meat, vegetables, fruit—or you can make it sweet, like a dessert,” he says knowing he keeps dipping into English to the words that he hasn’t got Thíetue equivalent of, on the tip of his tongue.
He watches as everyone’s face twists into confusion for the umpteenth time before giving up and addressing the ceiling, calling Nook’s name for help, right as Orcan hits zero—

The ship lurches harsh; the world yanked left, up and away. Tommy’s balance is yanked out from underneath him, his arm jerking his soccer and he cries out from the sudden pain to the chorus of everyone else’s surprise-panic-confusion-fear.

For a long moment it’s dark; the overhead lights having been cut out suddenly as the entire ship lurches for a second time and a horrible groaning sound, like metal twisting on itself loud enough Tommy throws his hands up over his ears for fear of going deaf. Suddenly, lights remerge from their banishment, but it’s not the stark overhead lights, but the secondary emergency system that kicks into gear, staining the walls and floor a vivid malicious red.

Something is wrong.
Something is worryingly wrong.

“Nook? Nook, what’s happening‽” Tommy demands around a gasp, choking back the pain that races up his left arm, into his neck, behind his teeth.
Beside him, Qalna is shoving herself upright where she’d fallen, shaking out her limb where her own arms had been wrenched by whatever the fuck that was. Assang and Wynn are equally startled, and equally bruised, but the rest of the Nansolal who’d wandered over have been thrown into the back wall; Hmero untangling himself from a tipped weight machine that has him pinned by the tail; Koraxis lifting his brother from where he’d crashed into the line of running machines, bruised but not out of commission.

“What in the stars‽” Barissun snarls, having leant a hand to hauling Demenius back to his feet.
Tommy would also like to know.

Answers are given by a sudden klaxon and Orcan’s panic, practically shouting throughout the entire ship, “incoming threat, everybody get to—fuck, fuck—get to a restraint system, the ship is—there are Dkaræ ships—”

Tommy doesn’t need to listen to anything else. “Barissun, Grazsem,” Tommy shouts, grabbing the edge of the crate as the ship shudders again, although thankfully there’s no vicious groaning or the sound of metal tearing itself apart. “We need to get to the bridge. Everyone else—”
“They’ve got it,” Barissun says as his hand wraps around Tommy’s upper arm and yanks him towards the door, leaving the gym in the hands of his kin. He bites down on his pain on the burn that reaches from the tips of his fingers not behind his eyes but there is no time for pain when the ship lurches again as sounds of panic echo up throughout the corridor even as Barissun drags Tommy down them; Grazsem and Adl’d carrying Assang half a step behind.

“There’s Leorval ships too!” Orcan shouts, Tommy unsure If he’s meaning to broadcast as much to the rest of the ship, but he’s thankful for the information, especially with Nook still being radio silent, probably focused on protecting the ship. Protecting the crew.
They reach the main spinal corridor that connects the bridge to the lower levels quickly; Tommy hardly having the time to trip over his own feet as Barissun hauls him up to the top deck, which is faster than simply allowing him to walk.

What should’ve been a simple jump has obviously failed in some way, and Nook is still being worryingly quiet even as Tommy shouts his name, bursting through the doors to the obvious chaos of the bridge.

He’s not the first to have rushed to the flight deck; the immediate floor on the other side of the doors crowded by familiar faces that have taken a shift behind one of the controls, all trying to help, all trying to figure out what’s happening.

Tommy barges through them, unapologetic and unhesitating; skipping every other step as he rushes to where Zhay is at his adjusted chair, twinned with the navigator’s post, a few steps down from the captain’s chair. He’s giving instructions to Bandr, in the lead pilot chair, and shakes his head briefly when he catches sight of Tommy dropping into his chair but Tommy doesn’t know what he means.
He doesn’t take over—doesn’t take command or interfere as other Nansolal delegate to consoles: Barissun and Grazsem taking gunner seats alongside Crocus and Velon; Adl’d moving to the holo map to support Aedus and Nook’s rapid-updating sensor net; Assang rushing to one of the empty pilot seats, although he takes command of the Infinity Dawn, even before he’s fully strapped in. It makes sense; Assang has logged more hours in the pilot’s seat than anyone else aboard, and he was the one that flew the ship from the Aegis, already used to handling her under pressure.
Bandr doesn’t fight it. He all-too-happily relinquishes control and swaps to a supporting role; Zhay’s instructions to get clear are conveyed to Assang instead.

Tommy is barely seated himself before his screens light up with all appropriate information; Nook lending what limited capacity of his core memory that he can as the ship shudders again, lights flickering before resuming the normal overhead white, if, at least, a little muted.
It’s better than nothing, however, and Tommy is hardly worried about lights when Assang yanks the ship to the right, avoiding a mass of debris that is little more than what once would’ve been a ship—the display that wraps around the front of the bridge dark one moment and then lit up with the vivid light of the nearby star, silhouetting smooth, gold-metal ships that seem to glow in the suspended void.

“Nook, give me everything!” Tommy yells, thankful at least that the sub-mind hasn’t the capacity to be playing translator or tutor right about now, his screens in blessed English rather than the amalgamation he’s been slowly learning from. He’s got information at the tips of his fingers that he doesn’t even need to think about; shield energy levels and fluctuating power that signifies stray masers slicing up the underside of the Infinity Dawn but profiting no damage where they’re running at full power; the emergency jump capacity sitting on a collective twenty-eight percent that offers two large jumps, or four smaller rapid jumps that wouldn’t take them as far, but would make it much harder to track their movements.
The sensor net is a mass of colour and nodes; predicted mapping of debris, of ships in movement, enemy fire and enemy movements reflected on both the two-dimensional graphs that takes up the entirety of his left monitor, and that of the holodeck down below, behind him, showing the near space flooded with a swarm of ships moving in intricate patterns and seemingly caught in the chaos of the firefight.

On his right monitor he’s got the current count of the ship guns: two AI-Assisted Coil Guns that are equipped with both armour piercing and explosive calibre; a half-dozen maser cannons, two heavy Magnetic Automatic Cannons and another double dozen dual-paired missile turrets that Tommy immediately takes control of, along with the eight ventral guns that are cycling through automatic lock-on procedures to incoming debris fire and ships that swing too close.

The screen flickers, jumps with a glitch of data, and then above each listed weaponry is the adjoining name of whoever is currently manning it; Crocus and Velon controlling the AACGs, Barissun and Grazsem throwing themselves the nearest largest seats, taking control of the MACs while Adl’d vaults holo table behind the raised stage that hosts the captain’s seat, co-captain’s seat and the navigation stand where Orcan is repeating warnings to the rest of the ship and giving everyone instructions to lock in place and take shelter.

The gunners don’t need to be told where to hit or what to target; they’re familiar enough with warfare and enemies and the basic functions of a loaded gun to waste time before the Infinity Dawn belches another round of ammunition and laser fire; the screen at the front of the ship calculating trajectory and damage before Assang yanks the ship upwards to divert out of the path of enemy fire coming towards them.

“It’s a Leorval patrol as far as we can tell,” Zhay says from his seat, taking a brief moment between all the gunfire to try and explain the situation to Tommy, even though the lacking sensor net and the confusion and chaos of everything is making it hard to get details on anything that’s happening.
For sure all that Tommy knows is that there are enemy ships ahead of them, potentially firing on them and that they themselves are returning whatever violence is being thrown at them.

“Three dreadnoughts remaining,” Orcan says, from where he’s returned to monitoring the sensor net; Adl’d supporting him in his sought answers, allowing for Nook to divert his own attention away from gathering and sorting the battlefield’s information, to instead channelling the power balance of guns, shields, engines and support systems.
“I think—I can’t—thirty-six single-engine fighters, but the Leorval ships won’t respond to my hail,” he continues, hands flying over the keys, working as fast possible even as the information updates every half-second, thanks to Nook’s earlier improvements and the importance of real-time information affecting their manoeuvres and potential escape routes, though backing off right now feels more than impossible given the way that the ships is surrounded on all sides by intricate dances of enemy and Leorval ships alike chasing, giving chase and landing stray shots from crossfire and debris alike.

They’re not even in the midst of the firefight, they’re still roughly on the edge of it with only a few scout ships surrounding them, each being chased by what looks like Leorval ships, and for a moment Tommy takes a breath because despite all the chaos and the sudden surprise being thrust into the middle of a dog fight in the middle of the void, things aren’t as looking as bad as they could be.

The thirty-six fighters that Orcan has caught on the sensor net—of which Nook has aided in colour-coding as well as dividing them between designations of slingshots, starfighters and twin-fire crafts, not all of them belong to the enemy.
Of the triple-dozen ships, only fifteen of them are manned by Dkaræ.

The fleet that they’ve been travelling in convoy with is also small, especially when compared to the Aegis fleet, and while Puffy was in command of numerous ships—with battleships, dreadnoughts, warships, interceptors and numbered crew to man all of the support ships that accompanied each one—the Dkaræ fleet that the Leorval are facing off against is made-up of eight large ships. Four of which were dreadnoughts. Three of which remain.
Two warships hang on the far side of the cacophony, firing on anything that gets close while hiding behind heavy shields and acting as a sponge for enemy fire while two interceptors are currently flanking, looking something like escorts or honour guards. Their ease of manoeuvrability and engine and weapon functionality means they pose a bigger risk to the Leorval, which sees them being targeted by the fleet’s forerunner ship and the Leorval’s own honour guard of a half-dozen smaller warships.

Tommy can see the fight is halfway fought. From the visual display at the front of the bridge, without even having to read all the information Nook has overlayed relating to damage and non-functioning systems he’s able to bring up from chatter and what else he’s spying on, the enemy’s interceptors are already floating dead-weights. Their engines have been crippled and the front of both of their ships are smoking, smouldering messes, billowing debris and corpses into the void. If the continuing battle doesn’t take them out, then the fractures in their walls, shields and internal structure that exposes them to the void will be enough to destroy the entire ship.

Tommy doesn’t need to command the Infinity Dawn to join in.
The ship will be destroyed long before they get to it.

The fight should’ve been easy.

Except Tommy has brought the Nansolal he’s escaped with to a firefight inside a Human ship.
A ship, which the current defending Leorval recognise as a threat.

The Infinity Dawn shudders as the underside of the ship is struck by rounds of artillery; giant metal slugs that are aimed for the fuselage. “Damage!” Zhay barks, demanding an update to the situation, untrusting of Human shields, but he’s forgotten that they’re being supported by Nook, who’s abilities far surpass anyone else’s present, bolsters the ship and all her machinations.
With Nook’s efforts, the Infinity Dawn takes no further damage than more violent trembles, and the hull isn’t completely shredded nor is their journey brought to an abrupt and violent end, but by the sudden alarms that Nook has thrown up, all over the screens, and the klaxon that cries out like a banshee, Tommy also knows that there is potential damage if they’re struck again with the same kind of volatile prejudice.

“Assang, get us out of here!” he yells, at the same time that Bandr starts calling out headings where there are no ships or gunfire in the immediate area; taking control of the replicative impulse drives, and thus creates a two-point momentum attack, helping to move the Infinity Dawn in an unpredicted arc so that the barrage of gunfire doesn’t continue eating into the weakening hull.

“The shields aren’t gonna hold if we get hit again like that,” Adl’d shouts, point out the obviosity in his panic as he’s reading the information Nook has cast onto the holo-table behind; Tommy not bothering to turn and strain his neck when he can tap a few keys and have the same reflected on his left monitor.
“Fucking useless human ship!” Zhay shouts eloquently from his seat, hands curled tight around the armrest of his chair, strong enough that he’s probably bending the metal beneath his grip. Tommy feels the same kind of rage, but there’s no point bullying the Infinity Dawn for the actions of her creators, and instead he turns to the only one that could make an instantaneous change in the moment.

“Nook, divert as much energy and power as we can to the shields,” Tommy commands, momentarily swiping aside the crew listing he’s got in front of him and instead takes control of the comms, now that Orcan has gone back to monitoring the sensor net and helping call out target headings for Velon and Crocus.

“Everyone, disregard Orcan’s earlier commands,” he all-but shouts into the mic, ignoring the sudden boom of his voice, that, while not only echoes throughout the ship, but sounds throughout the bridge as well, the noise sharp and all too loud, but nothing he can fix while everything else takes priority. “Either get to the bridge or get to the med bay, whichever is closer.”

Heads turn to him—confused, questioning—but Tommy doesn’t pause to explain his plan in detail, when their survival is near hanging from a thread and time to react is running out.

“Do it! Do it now!” he shouts, “move as quick as you can. We’re going to redivert the power from the rest of the ship. Nowhere else will be survivable.”

More confusion sounds around him but Tommy ignores it, praying that the rest of the ship at least catch onto the desperation in his voice and don’t bother wasting time standing around and debating Tommy’s plan and instead just simply act.

“Get to the med bay or to the bridge. They are the only places that will have shielding defence and life support.”

Tommy’s commands are unprejudiced as it belches it out over the speakers throughout the ship, including the flight deck meaning that he is not needed to explain his plan in any further details. Neither does anyone feel the need to question Tommy’s plans, and he doesn’t know if it’s trust, desperation or fear for what’s unfolding around them as they keep their eyes on the void ahead of them, fingers flying over the keys, wrestling with the controls, praying to whatever god is out there that they continue to survive now that they’re so close to true freedom.
All of them, except for Zhay, who has that luxury where he’s sat in the modified first officers’ chairs, surrounded by his own screens and information, still in relative control of the ship while Tommy works alongside him, trying to support everyone where he can, even though the technology they’re working with is vastly inferior and probably about to get them all killed.

“Tommy, if you do that—if you remove life support from the rest of the ship,” Zhay begins, just as another crash of metal-fire-laser-hate slams into the ship and Assang wrenches the Infinity Dawn out of the way, just as Grazsem turns her MAC rounds into the barrage, cutting them off with a series of explosions that rock the ship, but it’s better the sound and heat wave rather than the incendiary rounds themselves.

“I won’t do it until everyone is safe,” Tommy says, voice lifting over the cacophony of noise; Aedus shouting out headings; Barissun demanding more targets; Velon keeping up his own string of insults and curses like that would be enough to knock the Dkaræ ships from the void. “When the rooms are empty I can close them off, remove the life support, the gravity generator and any non-important systems using power so that Nook can convert that into powering the shields, engines and guns,” Tommy explains, not bothering to use the mic and dually explain it to the rest of the ship at the same time.
Even if he did, there’d be no point.

“We are in a fire fight and we are vastly outmatched,” Tommy says, teeth grit where the truth tastes bitter on his tongue. “And the Leorval are also shooting at us.”

Actually, no.

Tommy leans forward in his chair, as if getting closer to the screens would reveal something different, but the same colour-coded dots still reflect the same pattern.

“The Leorval are the only ones shooting at us.”

“What?”

Tommy turns around to where Adl’d is leaning over the holo-table sphere, his confusion painted plainly across his face in the stark red light of the klaxons and alarms. “Right, yeah I don’t get it, I don’t understand,” Adl’d says, matching Tommy’s clear confusion instantly; shrugging with his entire upper body where the Leorval have picked up on a few Human mannerisms.

“It makes sense that the dreadnoughts are firing on us ‘cus we’re too far away from them to be their first target, but there are single-engine fighters flying past us, being chased by the Leorval fighters, and they’re not even bothering to shoot on us.”
Adl’d turns back to the holo-table, as if the answer would appear before him. There’s nothing. He makes a noise in the back of his throat, teeth clacking together in a snap of anger. “I don’t get it.”

Tommy doesn’t get it either. Is it that the Dkaræ do not see Human ships as a threat?

It can’t be that the Dkaræ think Humans an ally considering everything that Boomer said, and considering everything that Puffy said. Humanity cannot tell the difference between the Dkaræ and the Tolrii. There’s no alliance there—there’s nothing he as far as humans or where every other alien intelligent alien life form beyond the solar system is an enemy there’s no connection between Dkaræ and Humans, so why the fuck—‽

The bridge doors open and a flurry of bodies flood in through the doors.
Tommy chances a glance at them, brain making small connections between faces and names as the Leorval don’t simply gather at his command, but they also make themselves useful, now that they’re close enough to be of use. Empanada doesn’t bother with stairs and throws herself forward on a mix of wings and legs to take the third pilot chair, strapped herself in and not bothering about bent or twisted feathers as she does. Sunny, Richarlyson, Foruwua and Wynn plug themselves into the ship systems; Lænshi, Qalna, T’malin and Chlois take screens close to the sensor net to help manage the information while Korakis, Malle, Sathe and Erythos each tuck into a screen behind each of the respective gunners and takes over mapping out targets for them to hit allowing for a measure of automation to play between cycling ammunition and taking aim.
There are more names and faces, but they stay near the entrance doors, wisely keeping out of the way; Demenius among them, ordering them all to strap in or hold on.

Everyone else must’ve headed for the med bay, but rather than assuming, Tommy demands Nook check; bites his lip as he steals Nook’s attention away from the firefight long enough for him to confirm that all forty-seven Leorval have heeded his orders and they’re safe. Tommy wastes no more time in commanding he close off all of the rest of the ship, before sending Nook back to the frontlines and he himself goes into the internal systems, overriding safety systems and regulations and what feels like a thousand and one firewalls that fights him every step of the way, until systematically, the ship begins to shut down.
The cargo bay; gym; labs; the observation lounge; storage; the machinery rooms; emergency energy rooms; maintenance; entertainment; recreation; main deck and internal hangers all go dark.

It would’ve been even more efficient if he’d ordered everyone to the bridge, so that they could shut down the medical bay’s systems, but there are still Leorval being tended to in the medical ward where’d accrued injuries escaping the Aegis, sufficient enough that they cannot be moved. As far as Tommy was concerned, having them remain in medical is far preferred.

He’d also really like not to be in a firefight right now, but he can’t make miracles out of thin air.

“Alright, I’ve closed off all parts of the ship where there are no lifeforms,” Tommy says, head twisting back and forth as his screens jump between colours and warnings and a few sparks of helix code where Nook is assisting with the more protected programmes, like life support, oxygen and temperature. There’s a ripple of unease amongst the aliens present, but they're all too busy to voice their unease.

There’s an unnatural silence beneath the alarms when Tommy finally commands Nook to cut off all remaining function to the rest of the ship, but there is an ease in breathing when another barrage slams into the starboard side and this time the reinforced shields barely shudder beneath the onslaught.

Alright.
They’ve got a fighting chance.

Tommy feels that he can breathe too, when everyone shoves down their panic and fear, and works with single-minded focus on their tasks instead. He hands control of the missiles to Sathe, who immediately turns her own attention to the larger, heavier Dkaræ ships that are still hounding the Leorval forerunner ship.
More fighters zip past them; the gunners chasing with their arcing masers, but they still don’t shoot back, even when Barissun takes out three with one burst-fire round. Still, there are plenty of Leorval ships that are shooting, and Tommy doesn’t know what they should do jump to a nearby location and observe the firefight from a safe distance or—

Zhay takes the decision from him as he bark another order, but this time to the pilots, demanding that they get closer to the forerunner ship from a higher position, having already taken note that most of the guns are built on the forward hull and that isolating most of the attacks to one section of the ship will take stress off of many of the shields deflecting stray shots and floating debris.

Tommy bites his tongue before questioning. Despite the years Zhay’s been sidelined, he actually has experience in fire fights and battles, and while Rissahlan’s defeat was the last notch in his belt, its left a scar that needs branding over and Tommy holds on as the ship accelerates at sudden speed, it’s forward shields slamming into a nearby interceptor trying to evade the Leorval’s chasing dreadnought. There’s no time to move and the hull rips through weakened metal as Sathe, Velon and Crocus unleash their weapons in repeated rapid succession that their gunfire carves through the ship like a blunt knife.

The power from their relatively-elevated position and the change in power supply allows for allows for sharper bursts of movement from all of the engines, but even with the change in function, the Infinity Dawn is still too clunky to fly in the same neat formation that the Leorval are creating, even as they throw stray gunfire in their position. There must be confusion in their own chain of command, especially as to why the Human ship is only attacking Dkaræ and that they’re not being attacked in turn, but whatever Orcan is trying to do with the comms, begging the Leorval respond—

“I can’t do it! I don’t know why, either they’re blocking our communication attempts, or it’s the Dkaræ, or they’re refusing to listen because they think it’s a Human trap,” Orcan wails, his ears standing upright on his head as he slams his hand on the console in front of him.

“Can we force them to accept the broadcast if we get closer?” Tommy asks, not sure what the plan is that’s forming in his head, but only that if they’re close, they can make the connection stronger, and they can force the Leorval to accept whatever communications Orcan is desperately trying to offer.
“We can make a micro-jump, to the middle of the swarm,” Tommy continues, hand swinging out, pointing to a cluster of Dkaræ ships spiralling in close-but-chaotic formation, carving their own way through the space of ships that the Leorval hold, physically forcing their ships to divert for fear of crashing into smaller sacrificial ships. All at once, there’s dissent around the room; Wynn, T’malin and Lænshi all shaking their heads as Qalna tells Tommy, “there’s no way, there’s no ship that could be that precise in such a short distance. Not even Nook—”

But that’s as far as she gets before her voice cuts suddenly.

So does everything else: lights, sound, space; all collapsing into a gut-wrenching, stomach churning yank that drags the Infinity Dawn and her occupants a few thousand miles at an angle so sharp Tommy’s sure that he was disassembled down to the atom and put back together wrong.
Nook heeded no command or listened to any order; stretched thin across the entire ship and whatever other functions he’s divided his attention into—helix code flickering-glitching-spiralling on Tommy’s screen as he keep as hand over his mouth, feeling like his spine is piercing through his stomach—acting on his own but inline with Tommy’s wishes.

By the grace of whatever god watches over them the Infinity Dawn has suffered no further damage and it’s only a micro-second before the shields flicker on, the sensor net jumping and suddenly bright in all the dark red nodes that signify enemies.
Zhay gets his breath back in the same instant Tommy’s lungs realise they still work and in one voice, the brothers shout: “all weapons open fire!”

Every direction is alight in dragon fire; incendiary rounds slamming into the glistening black of Dkaræ metal; violence and hatred belched out prejudiced and vengeful. Assang refuses to be left out and he yanks on the controls; Empanada and Bandr half a step behind as they command their own drives in reverse to keep the Infinity Dawn in relative position, but now it begins to corkscrew, sending spirals of molten metal dancing in curling patterns into the void, into debris ready for the making, into the tight-knit Dkaræ formation that takes precious seconds to realise their pattern has been infiltrated and that they’re now at the mercy of Humanity’s archaic weaponry.

Masers and MAC rounds tear through wings, fuselage, life supports. Ships crumple as their hulls are vacuumed into the void, and Tommy’s not the only one laughing as the Dkaræ scramble to get clear of the enemy suddenly in their midst.

“Don’t celebrate just yet,” Sathe shouts from where she unleashes another round of missiles into incoming fire. “We’re too close to the fleet’s forerunner. They’re turning their attention to us!”

Sure enough, the weaponry that had been firing everything it had at the swarm of Dkaræ turns their sights on the Infinity Dawn, which is now much closer and a much easier target to hit.
Shielding lights up the entire port side; Nook taking point as he redirects all power of the shields with a shout that is almost guttural, his voice roaring through the air like crashing waves-thunder-a sleeping beast finally called into waking. The lights overhead flicker and dim to mid-brightness as Nook steals more power to protect the ship, and Tommy feels the magnetic pulse of gravity weakening under his feet, straps biting into his shoulders; sudden shouts echoing as those on the back wall scramble for a hand hold which is either grooves in the walls or one another.

“We need to get out of here,” Velon yells, stating the obvious, like the three pilots aren’t already manipulating to shift the ship into a dive; Grazsem and Barissun’s guns targeting incoming fire to blow it up before it makes contact.
“The Dkaræ are falling back—”
“Chase them!” Velon shouts, his words sharp where he cuts Aedus off, but Tommy’s command is sharper before Assang can heed the order, right as another of the Dkaræ’s warships reaches the end of its lifespan and sets the nearby void alight in sudden explosion of fire and debris.

“They’re retreating—”
“Don’t follow, Zhay barks, echoing Tommy from where he’s trying to stay in his modified seat even with half gravity and the continuous shuddering where the Leorval pull attention from their fleeing nemesis and focus instead on an enemy practically in their laps.

Another barrage, twice as large as the first erupts from the nearest interceptors; the forerunner ship falling back momentarily where she sustained damage from the skirmish.

“Why are they shooting?” Sunny cries, braced with two arms, the other pair manipulating her own display of the sensor net and the nearby count of ships, that don’t look like they’ll withdraw fire anytime soon.
“Because we’re in a fucking Human ship!” Richarlyson yells, even though he, much like the rest of them, can’t do anything about it.

“Nook, send an open signal!” Tommy shouts, yanking on his seat restraints as gravity flickers off again, his feet rising into the air before he jams them under the console to keep himself somewhat centered.
The right side of his screens are alight in red, and it’s not just because of the klaxons and alarms ringing out overhead, but also the warning systems screaming about the reduced rate of shielding and the imminent failure of the systems if they don’t get the barrage to stop. And soon.

“Nook, now! Do it now!”

“They won’t accept it,” Zhay shouts from his own chair. “They don’t need to speak to us.”

He’s not quite at risk of being lifted from the lack of gravity thanks to his size, but it’s still making it hard for him to get at the controls even if there’s little he can do. He looks apologetic when Tommy turns to him, but his jaw is grit in determination, meaning that he hasn’t given up yet. It’s just, he doesn’t know what to do.

“Then what can we do to make them respond‽” Erythos half begs, still aiding Velon is lining up targets even as the Leorval begin to scatter their shots, making it harder to catch them before they can make impact.
To aid them, Assang continues making evasive manoeuvres, but he can only jerk the ship so far and the engines can only offer so much power without syphoning what is needed for the shields.

In his panic, Tommy stands up, floating awkwardly above his chair as he leans out over his screens, staring at the wide wrap-around display that acts as one of the few windows out into the void. He doesn’t question why it hasn’t been powered down and syphoned to the shields, but a few LEDs must be minimal to power compared to that of fusion reactor drives, or the replicative impulse drives, so really, it doesn’t make a difference.

“What’s the same as a white flag?”

“A what?”

“Surrender‽” Tommy shouts, waving his hands uselessly, not wanting to bother with the hassle of having to translate everything in his brain, allowing panicked adrenaline to take over as he simplifies his words. “How can we tell them we refuse to fight against them?”

“You drop shields,” Demenius shouts from the back wall, his refrain echoed by Zhay grinding his teeth; “but at this rate they’ll just destroy us. It’s a death sentence.”

Tommy’s breath freezes in his lungs.

Fear takes him—viper-strong and suffocating—as if the walls of the Infinity Dawn had given way to the void and the vacuum was crushing him; lungs empty and rattling even when he hears faint desperate gasps that don’t capture enough air; hands shaking from fear or too-much-adrenaline as nanobots flood his system, keeping his brain rapid-firing, looking for an answer, a way out, a silver lining.
His heart pounds in his ears, drowning out the deafening cacophony of lasers slamming into the Infinity Dawn’s shielding, of rippling explosions where missiles collide with condensed light and nitrogen compounds, debris hurtling into the unprotected side of the ship but forcefully ignored because it’s minimal compared to the Leorval’s focused, unrelenting rage—

“Fuck. Fuck!” Tommy near-screams, panic choking him. His mind is blank, he can’t think and the alarms aren’t helping but there’s no thought to silence them as he glances to the ceiling instead, like a devout might pray to the heavens, not even hope in his chest as he begs, “Nook, Nook, is there anything that you can—?”

“Do you wish to speak to the captain of the Ohnin?”

Nook’s voice is distant and all together all encompassing. There is little of his familiarity in his voice; words unmelodic; surgical in their precision, unwavering in tone so much so that they feel above the destruction slowly closing in around them. It makes sense, with distant logic, but Tommy doesn’t have the time to think, his own words stuttering in his throat as he begs, “yes, yes, that’s what I—”

The display that paints the inner wall a vicious mirage of explosions, light and destruction abruptly shifts, and suddenly what was once the void suddenly flickers into a visage of another flight deck, familiar enough Tommy recognises it to be one; alien in designs and colours, and crowded by familiar shapes, if not familiar faces.
Somehow, Nook had just… forced the forerunner ship—the… Ohnin—to accept their broadcast.

The broadcast is grainy in places, flickering with glitches and overlayers that skew the visual aid, as if some part of the connection is unsecure or something is fighting the connection—likely the ship’s own AI, if it isn’t that the Infinity’s own technology is incompatible or inferior. Either way, they have a display of the other ship, and what looks to be a dozen Leorval soldiers spread about the room, strapped into their own seats and work stations, but sitting front and centre, in front of his own large holo-field of the nearby void, is the captain of the ship.

Another Hylochoerian.

“What is happening?” a voice that could be the captain’s yells from the other side of the screen. “What is that noise?”
He probably thinks that this a trick; not understanding what is going on, but thankfully Zhay doesn’t wait for Tommy to give him an explanation, either having heard Nook’s question or Tommy’s panic but he’s the first to speak, beginning to explain the situation to the crew of the Ohnin.

“My name is Zhay of Letretis; myself and everybody aboard the ship were previously prisoners. We are in a stolen Human spacecraft. We are not your enemy. Please hold your fire,” he says, slow and deliberate.

“I repeat, my name is Zhay. We escaped from the Humans. We are no threat to you.”

The simple fact that the Infinity Dawn has taken no shots at any of their fleet ships should be enough to back part of the claim, but Tommy doesn’t fault the Leorval for their hesitancy.
He isn’t the only one to heave a sigh of relief, however, when the others at least listen and within a matter of seconds, the message has been sent out to all, and every ship that had been previously firing upon them halts their guns. They remain locked on them though; still charged, and still trained on all of the Infinity Dawn’s weaknesses, as Nook indicates on the screens above Tommy’s head, even if he doesn’t spend too long analysing it all. It makes sense that none of the fleet is about to take any precaution with a could-be-enemy ship so close, but at the very least they’ve stopped firing and Nook is no longer overworking the generators and that he can return power to the gravity generators instead.

Tommy is a little confused at the… somewhat lack of reaction. Zhay, evidently isn’t sure himself as he begins to repeat his words, obviously having been expecting a response or an acceptance of some kind, simplifying his sentences even further the third time, before the Hylochoerian sitting front and center cuts him off.
“What is this? What are you talking about?” he demands, voice guttural and sharp as he commands an answer to his questions, hands curled around the arms of his chair, facing forward. He’s not looking at them though, which Tommy thinks is a little odd. Maybe he doesn’t believe the broadcast, thinking it’s the same kind of trick, but either way, Zhay is going to have to convince him quickly before they decide to blast them out of the void.

The Hylochoerian grates his teeth together, snarling low beneath his words. He’s noticeably shorter than Zhay, even from through the screen, with dark brown fur that looks almost red in the emergency lights. His fur is russet, short-cut around his neck but long enough to shield one side of his face and the edges of scars he’s keeping protected. They’re not the only ones he’s got, but they’re the only one’s he’s hiding; more vicious cuts sliced into flesh over his shoulders, his forearms and his hands. One of his tusks is snapped halfway down while the other is chipped deep enough to show on the monitor.

Zhay doesn’t let the other’s disbelief discourage him.

“We are survivors of Rissahlan,” he says, putting his own edge into his voice as he speaks, leaning forwards, arms on the console as his weight shifts between the two. His frustration is understandable, especially when they’re so close to their people, and yet caution dictates distrust, and yet Tommy can’t explain that Human’s don’t have the technology to create a fake display, when in truth they do. And it’s not like the fleet would be amenable to allowing the ship to dock, even if they do outnumber those aboard, ten-thousand to one.

“We have been kept prisoners by Humans these past four years,” he explains, leaning forward a little, his words not exactly unsure but edged with something, like there’s confusion or perhaps an uncertainty to his voice. He’s not saying anything that's not true and he's not lying, but it might be that only now is he considering how unbelievable the words are despite their truth.
It’s a convenient tale, with enough to sound reasonable given the Human ship, the fact that they haven’t attacked the Leorval, but it might also been too convenient, especially when Nook had forced their hand to accept the broadcast and for some reason their shared enemy had not fired upon them—

Fears that are founded, when the captain of the Ohnin scoffs.

“There were no survivors of Rissahlan,” he spits, as if the word is poison on his tongue. “The humans massacred everyone—”
“Untrue,” Zhay tells him. “The Humans made it look as if everyone was destroyed, but there were survivors. Here are forty-eight souls aboard this ship, and we survived capture by Humanity’s hands. We escaped them and we're heading to the nearest A’yda from the Xemes star system. We have injured aboard,” Zhay says, just able to keep his control. “We request your aid.”

“Lies,” the captain snarls, resolute in not wanting to believe. “I lost near my entire clan—”
“It is the truth,” Zhay shouts in a moment of impatience, snarls, his jaw snapping shut.

“We’ve finally escaped and we hold important information for High Command that could save so many, and we have not—”
“This is a Human trick—”
“I am Zhay of Letretis, son of the Blood God,” Zhay snarls, voice thundering, “I did not suffer four years at the hands of Humans to be killed by my own kin,” he spits, matching the Hylochoerian’s guttural scowl, defensive and ready to butt heads, like there’s not a few hundred miles of void between them.

“Zhay, calm down,” Tommy warns his brother, taking a half step away from his chair, intending to place a hand on Zhay’s arm to encourage him to reign in his emotions—

“The Blood God’s son is dead, and yet you have the nerve to imitate—”
“I can prove it,” Zhay says, slamming his fist—metal—against the screens in front of him, head snapping to where Tommy is still near his own chair. “Tommy, how do I turn on the hologram?”

Tommy shakes his head. “This ship doesn’t have a hologram. It’s non-vital technology.” Just because the Aegis might’ve had those fancy gadgets, it wouldn’t be built on an interceptor that’s role was to be supported by fleet ships, focused instead on its manoeuvrability and fire power.
“But there should be a video feed,” Tommy stutters, realising now that when Nook had forced the other ship to accept their connection, he’d only created the visual aid from one side, somehow having hacked into the Ohnin’s cameras and translated the feed to display on their feed, rather than creating a two-way-corridor that would’ve shown them immediately that the ship was being piloted by Leorval.

“Nook, broadcast the—” Tommy begins, but he barely gets Nook’s name out before the lights around them flicker from red to the usual off-white; the screen that wraps around the room shifting sudden too as the Ohnin’s holograph display located in front of the captain forcefully glitches from the display of the void to the third-dimension rendering of the Infinity Dawn’s bridge with all the details of the gathered crew, and—
Panic is understandable, confusion just so, and between the sudden shouts of alarm that ripple out on both sides of the screen, Tommy’s realisation slams into him with the weight of a meteor, having bare seconds before the hologram settles as he grabs the underside of the console in front of him and yanks himself down and under, knowing how damaging it would be for the other ship to see him and make the poor assumption that this ship is not entirely claimed by Leorval as Zhay claims.

Zhay watches him, confusion shaped across his brow, but any question is silenced by the way Tommy roughly shakes his head, turning to look instead at the dawning realisation on their allies’ faces. He hopes that his sheltered position keeps him hidden, and that the aliens are too busy trying to understand what’s happening to pay attention to the empty chair and the way many heads around the room are glancing at him, not having made the same connection that his likeness to Humanity could be damaging to their plea.

“What is this?” the captain exclaims, standing, staring at the hologram with wide-eyed surprise. Around the room, a few of his officers have moved away from their own stations to look closer at the hologram, murmuring amongst themselves.

“It’s true? But there were no survivors,” they say, glancing back and forth between themselves and the holograph, like that would give them the answers they’re looking for.

Zhay takes a breath, relieved, at the very least, that his people don’t think the display to be a trick.

“We were prisoners since the battle and only recently escaped. It is a long story and I will explain everything and I will answer any question you have, but would you help us?” he asks, allowing his voice to betray the exhaustion and desperation that he’s been carrying for so long.
“Please,” he all-but-begs. “We have injured.”

And maybe it’s that that finally breaks through to the Hylochoerian, or maybe it’s that they realise that they’re not being lied to, or maybe it’s something completely different, but suddenly the captain is on his feet, waving at his crew to start moving, gesturing to Zhay in turn. “Yes, yes of course. We will bring your ship aboard. Stay where you are and we’ll bring it in.”

With that, be it the Ohnin or Nook, but the visual feed cuts off. Tommy stares as the wrap-around display returns to a field of stars, blinking as he pulls himself out from underneath the desk. Everyone about the room are sagging in their chairs or laughing; faint relief rippling throughout as they breathe peace and the excitement of returning to their people in the same moment; Velon and Crocus bumping fists; Empanada falling out of her chair to wrap her wings around Bandr; the others on the back wall all falling into one another in a mass of limbs and hugging.

Tommy wants to join them, but there’s a knot in the base of his throat and something like exhaustion clinging to his spine.
“Nook, return the ship to normal power,” he commands, having to take a second attempt when his voice comes out weak and scratchy the first time, before turning to Orcan, still near his control desk and politely asks him to inform those in the medbay what’s happening, feeling a sudden sense of guilt for not having kept the comms online the whole time for their benefit. While he wouldn’t have been able to talk with them, they’d at least have some sense of what was going on, rather than sitting in the near dark, terrified of the shaking ship and then the sudden silence that followed.

Tommy makes a mental note to apologise to them all, hands on his chair, then suddenly his entire body and he can’t quite stop himself from slumping, catching himself just enough that he doesn’t quite fall into his chair, but it is caught by it regardless.

While everyone else is feeling relieved and slowly begins celebrations that grow louder and more exuberant but the second, Tommy can’t help but feel apprehensive. He’s not sure why he’s cautious but for some reason, he’s unable to avoid the feeling, even as he rubs at his chest and tries to copy the same way that Sunny laughs when she slams into the side of his chair and then scrambles onto his shoulder, claws digging a little into his sleeve as she clicks beak, fluffs her ruff and nuzzles against the side of his face.
“We did it! Tommy we did it!” she yells, before she’s off like a shot again, flying over to Empanada where she’s dragged Bandr over to Assang and the three of them are all figuratively patting one another on the back for their flying.

Tommy smiles, but the knot remains. It does ease, however, when Zhay comes over, hand reaching into this hair to ruffle his fringe before ducking just enough to press their foreheads together; the brothers’ eyes falling shut as they share in one another’s peace—Tommy leaning into Zhay, soaking up his warmth and the feeling of soft fur against his skin that has been so distant of late.
It’s barely been two weeks when he’d laid his head on his dad’s shoulder, but Zhay’s shoulder is large enough to support him and, for a long moment, Tommy allows himself to bask, before Zhay’s arm wraps more firmly around him and yanks him up, out of the chair, laughter lighting in his chest.

“Wha—Zhay, what are you—?” Tommy laughs, surprised and amused as Zhay practically carries him down from the elevated step to where everyone else is practically creating a scrum of bodies, and suddenly it’s not just Zhay hugging him but other hands coming out to pat his head or ruffle his hair or pat him on the should. Even Velon hugs him, which is a welcome surprise; Assang slotting himself under Tommy’s arm; Demenius headbutting him affectionately; Wynn hugging his back until Tommy is laughing too, the knot in his throat unravelling fast until it is simply forgotten about.

There is little more to be thought about. After a few vocal orders from Tommy, Nook takes over minimal uses of the ship in correlation to the Ohnin’s AI throwing over coordinates, angles and speeds that allow for a pair of transporters to meet the Infinity Dawn in the middle distance before manoeuvring her to the nearest hanger.
With the entirety of the Infinity Dawn once more functionable, everyone begins to congregate in the cargo bay, where they’ll be able to lower the ramp and connect the crew of the Ohnin with the survivors of Rissahlan.

Tommy lingers by the bridge door, pretending he’s watching the holo-sphere and the way the transporters connect their ships to the outer hull of the Infinity Dawn rather than stalling for time. He’d connected with Zhay aboard the Aegis out of necessity, having earned his trust after proving himself—an opportunity that wasn’t offered or gifted, but found between moments of running for their lives and demanding their freedom from people that refused to see the bigger picture.
Tommy does not regret their escape and nor would he change anything that happened, but he’s also painfully aware that there is no necessity demanding the Ohnin from hearing him out. They won’t see him as Starchild—they’ll recognise a Human and they don’t have to stop and wait long enough to hear him out.

Fuck.

It was easier simply getting shot at.

Rather than heading towards the stairs with everyone else, Tommy finds himself gravitating towards his room, falling back on bad habits when the door closes behind him and he automatically locks it, the movement habitual rather than thought, and much harder to undo now that he’s done it.
Fuck, he’s not sure why he’s so scared. They were just in danger of being blown up, out of the sky and he’d been mildly fearful, running on adrenaline and determination, but now that there is no immediate threat and only the clock ticking down until he is to be surrounded by strangers that will look upon him and hate—

There is no safety in hiding away in his room. There is no purpose in it either; Tommy turning on the ball of his heel and facing the door. For so long, he’d hated the idea of a locked door, shying away from even the mere prospect of it, back on the Ericitcratna, and yet here he is, building the walls of the cage himself, shying away from the bars and pretending there is shelter in the thin-cast shadows.

“What am I doing, Nook?” Tommy asks, although the words are hypothetical. He knows he’s being cowardly, but fears aren’t so easily conquered just because Tommy recognises their shape. His hand comes up to his braid, fingers running over the woven gold and capped charms that Techno had given him, praying for strength.
Above, the lights shift from warm off-white to a green light, warm and artificial. “I will protect you,” Nook says, in his strange new voice, cadence a little simply but his volume replacing the characteristics of determination that he’d once picked up from Tommy. “You will come to no harm while I am with you.”

They’re reassuring, even in their stiffness.
Tommy swallows back a laugh, but the smile he wears is genuine. “Thanks Nook. I know I can count on you.”

Out of the corner of his eye, something green-silver-mercury catches his eyes, and he turns his head just enough to catch sight of Xsdí’s mandible sitting on the small table in the section designated as a sort of lounge. It’s not as tidy as the previous captain might’ve kept it, but tidier than Tommy’s old bedroom given that most of his possessions, save for the clothes he wears, his mandible and his knife—now Zhay’s knife, he supposes—and there’s even less when he takes the mandible.
It is proof of his story. Hard-to-believe proof, but undeniable all at once, and Tommy tucks it into the crook of his arm, wishing he had a longer manger with a hood because he doesn’t have his father’s shadow to hide in.

But he can’t hide here any longer, and with ice in his throat and sickness in his stomach, Tommy unlocks the door.

Techno stands on the other side.

Or—it’s not. It’s Zhay.
But for a moment, with thoughts of his father and the hope of him, it was who he’d seen, because of all their similarities. Despite their differences.

“Brother,” Zhay greets, smile warm and waiting, not having followed everyone else down the stairs the moment that he’d realised Tommy hadn’t been walking behind him. Just beyond, Richarlyson and Demenius have paused too, the three of them making for an intimidating sight, but Tommy is warmed by the presence. He moves towards them, door sliding shut cleanly behind them, deliberately not giving his room and it’s solitude a final glance.
As soon as he’s close enough, Zhay settles a hand on his shoulder.

“Is anything wrong? You don’t look pleased,” he says, dropping his voice as if Demenius and Richarlyson aren’t close enough to hear everything he says anyway. And it’s not like there’s a point in lying. Still, Tommy shrugs and tries at least to sound like he’s not as bothered as he actually is.

“I am pleased. I just also know that this is about to be a disaster. Given what I look like,” he says, gesturing with his hand, and then letting it drop.

Zhay’s hand curls tighter around his shoulder.

“They will not harm you,” he says firmly, like it is a fact and not simply a promise. As if he has decided reality and it will play out the way that he demands. His determination at the very least, is comforting, and Tommy allows himself to walk closer to Zhay’s side, amused when Demenius and Richarlyson echoes his brother’s promise, and they lead him down the steps towards the flurry of celebration and anticipation.

Despite the size of the ship and the smaller number of survivors that the Infinity Dawn hosts, it’s still a little bit of a squeeze to get everyone into the cargo bay, what with the already-loaded supplies and the shifted space where its also becomes some kind of overflow of a gym. There’s damage too, from where not everything had been strapped down and Nook had killed power, gravity and life supports, allowing for cold to chill the room and the equipment to fly free and bang into the walls. There’s no structural damage other than scratched paint, and the damaged exercise equipment is of no one’s concern where the Leldrir have shoved it aside to make space for them all, caught between waiting and hugging and celebrating.
Sunny and her brothers can’t hold still, and Tommy keeps watching them zip above everyone’s head, jumping from one shoulder to another, carrying news, reliving the fight, sharing their relief and their hope for home that has come sooner than the predicted time it would take for them to reach the A’yda.

Lulah wastes no time in finding Zhay, wrapping him up in her wings, and then in almost the same movement, drags Tommy into the same hug.
Someone ruffles his hair, someone else laughs in his ear, and Tommy breathes it all in, determined to smother the slow-building apprehension threatening to choke him. His feet won’t walk and his legs feel like they’ll give out any second, but Zhay’s arm stays resolutely around his shoulders, keeping him close.

Around them, the metal clunks loudly, and Nook’s lighting infects the cargo bay along with the echo of his voice to announce that the Ohnin’s transporters have brought them into position and soon they will be inside the Ohnin’s hangar bay. Everyone else shares their excitement. Tommy is just trying to remember how to stay standing.

It’s amusing how everyone quietens down as the sounds around them signify movement; the ship shaking slightly,, not enough to unbalance anyone but enough to be felt through their feet and up into their legs, a ripple of shock and laughter rippling out, before Nook announced that they’re touching down, that he’s opening up the hangar doors—

It’s much different from the last time that the door was open, giving that the last time was aboard the Aegis and they were all running for their lives, trying to get through the rapidly closing ramp under gunfire and threat of recapture. Now, the ramp lowers into freedom, and despite his fear and trepidation Tommy feels himself caught up in the excitement as the sliver of light from the outside slowly grows larger and larger, until he comes face to face with the inner walls of Ohnin’s hangar.

Given the angle of the ramp and the bodies that surround him, at first all Tommy can really see is the ceiling, then the walls, and all the slots that hold individual fighters and smaller transports, and additional fleet ships with individual bays, similar to bees in a hive. It’s impressive and fascinating all at once, and Tommy wishes it was enough to hold his concentration, but the ramp continues to lower and soon his eyes fall upon the crowd that has come to witness the survivors of Rissahlan.
There is a large number, perhaps as large as many as all aboard the ships or more, but they’ve left a wide berth around the descending ramp. Tommy can’t tell if the neatly black-uniformed Leorval are supposed to be holding the frontlines as some sort of security measure or intended as some kind of honour guard.

The ramp touches the floor with a soft sound, and Nook takes that as his cue to power down the engines, bringing the hangar to a simple susurrus, and all at once the Leorval move forward, as if called by some invisible force. Tommy moves with them, mostly because of Zhay’s arm still wrapped neatly around his shoulders, but so too because he doesn’t want to get trampled underfoot; moving with them as the group spill down the ramp and onto the floor.
No one wants to follow protocol or propriety and Tommy watches, a small smile on his face, as the aliens all mix together, lines blurring until survivor and crew all stand with one another, gripping hands, offering well-wishes, praise, amazement to their survival and the beginnings of stories because everyone had thought that Rissahlan was nothing more than a massacre, that they had never dreamed that the Humans would dare to keep their people as prisoners—

Tommy feels Zhay’s hand slip from his shoulder and his feet stall in position. He follows only with his eyes as Zhay steps neatly around kin, stepping up to the familiar russet-furred Hylochoerian that he’d spoken to—forcibly, but spoken to regardless—hands clasping one another’s forearms and pulling one another into their space into a hug that looks more personal than Tommy would’ve guessed. He was certain that Zhay and the captain were strangers, and is proven right when the other introduces himself with a deep-throated voice.

“Greetings, Zhay of Letretis, Son of the Blood God. My name is Cellbit. I am honoured to have you and your kin aboard our ship, and protected by our fleet.”
“As we are both honoured and relieved to be here,” Zhay says, giving into a moment’s formality.

Cellbit’s eyes drift over his arm—that Tommy had been unable to fix before they reunited with their kin—and there is a sudden flash of deep-seated rage that cannot be so easily hidden, but Zhay shakes his head and continues, having given his greeting and then does away with such nonsense he’s out of practice with.
Regardless of his prosthetic and how much Tommy knows he hates it, Zhay ignores his difference to yank Cellbit back into his arms, holding on stronger this time. From where he stands, Tommy can see his lips move, offering private words, and Tommy doesn’t need to hear them to know that his brother is thanking Cellbit for the help he offers his family.

With Cellbit’s accepting them aboard, he has brought them all one step closer to home.
For all of their sakes.

Briefly, there is pain on the other’s face, but he ducks his head and seems to steel himself. “We lost so many of our clans. So many of our children. Did you—Did any…? Zahri Nom,” he says after a moment, voice choked with emotion, and though the words don’t make sense at first, they do when Richarlyson hears the words and steps up himself, arm held out, pulling Cellbit into his hug and pulled in turn Somehow, the hug is tighter and longer than what Cellbit had shared with Zhay.

“Then we did not lose all of our children to the Human’s massacre,” he says, voice thick with unshed tears.

By the pain in his voice, Tommy wonders if Cellbit himself had witnessed the assault. If he’d been forced to retreat and regrets his actions now, realising that those he’d thought dead had instead been taken alive.

Prisoners of war.
For four years.

Someone hisses an insult lower under their throat and Tommy can’t help but follow the noise, confused at first by the sudden change. But then he meets anger glaring directly at him; expressions sharp and sharpening still. It was expected, and yet it is still disarming in a way he hadn’t expected as a ripple of anger and hatred shifts outwards, insults rising out over the relief until the room is drenched in ire, all of it aimed at Tommy.

Many of what he suspects to be security officers shift their hands to their weapons, those closest even going so far as to withdraw them, aiming them towards him, but they only get so far before the bodies around him move, and suddenly Tommy can’t see much of anything.
He’s crowded in, bodies blocking him from sight; Barissun shoving his way to his left; Velon on his right; Lulah and Qalna tucking in from behind while Sunny and her brothers pick nearby shoulders and threat-display as loudly as they dare, with their wings buzzing and their claws bared.

They should make him feel claustrophobic, but instead Tommy feels nothing but protection.

“Human,” someone spits.

“Monster,” another snarls, and the words don’t hurt, but fear as to the repercussions do and Tommy isn’t ashamed of the way that his own hands wrap around Lulah and Qalna’s; Xsdí’s mandible tucked into the crook of his arm and kept out of the way as the room rises in sudden rage and all at once is swallowed by silence and the booming of Zhay’s voice.

“He is not a monster,” he says, staring at the captain, but his words are loud enough to address the entire room. Tommy can see him between Barissun and Velon’s shoulders; how simply he turns his back on his kin and moves back to the group, not needing to push anyone aside when they move easily for him, because Zhay and Tommy are brothers and though it has barely been weeks since the truth has come out, there has been healing in their bonding.

Tommy’s muted surprise is nothing to the surprise of the Leorval that surround them. At least those that had reached for their weapons have frozen in place, either waiting for an order or for provocation to use said weapon, but Tommy gives them nothing. In fact, its everyone else acting threatening, but no one makes to grab them as the survivors of Rissahlan move back towards their kin once more in an act of solidarity; or with Velon is snarling, all teeth bared. Loesis and Crocus are making similar noises while standing tall and intimidating, as are the rest of the larger-bodied Leorval that have planted themselves firm.

Richarlyson, impervious to the tension, or deliberately ignoring it, drags Cellbit by the arm, right to the middle of the group; Leorval parting for them with ease. Around them, his crew look unsure, but no one acts without order, and between panic-fear-apprehension-tentative hope, Tommy doesn’t have room to pay much attention to anything other than the stray thought that Cellbit doesn’t loom as much as Zhay is. Their height difference is notable up close. As are the other’s scars.

“Gornonyyn,” Tommy says quietly, perfectly pronounced and almost instinctive. He prays it isn’t a mistake, but he’s uncertain given the ripple of shock that echoes out from his words.
Beside Cellbit’s blatant shock and shuttered anger, Richarlyson is grinning brightly. “We were able to escape, all thanks to Tommy. He’s the one that got us out and brought us this far. Tommy, this is Cellbit. He’s my clansman. He is family,” Richarlyson says, unbothered by the self-appointed guards that surround him, stepping up close enough to bump their foreheads together in a very deliberate motion that sets seed to another ripple of shock through the watching Ohnin crew.
It is as performative as it is meaningful, given the slight chuff that Zhay gives as Richarlyson pulls back and the sudden way Richarlyson’s hand comes up to ruffle his hair. He doesn’t flinch when Cellbit’s expression shifts through a multitude of emotions before he settles on simply… observing.

At the very least, he ducks his head and offers Tommy a smile, tight though it may be.

Tommy can’t fault him. At least he’s not being held at gunpoint. Not that any of his brothers or sisters would allow that, but it’s a hopeful thing that Cellbit didn’t bother to voice the order.

“I will want all my questions to be answered, concerning your… Human friend,” he says, plain and equally loud enough that many of his nearby officers can hear, sowing the seeds that Tommy might not be the enemy they first thought he was.

“Starchild,” Zhay corrects with a nod of his head, “and he is already prepared to do just that, as we are all.” Around them Tommy’s family nod their assent, looking like they’re happy to get questioned right here right now, but given the sudden startle Cellbit has received, neither he nor his people seem quite so ready to lay out the red carpet to Tommy. At least, not before warning the rest of the crew that there is a… Starchild… aboard the ship.

“It will take us time, but we’re making arrangements for quarters to be prepared—”
“We don’t need that,” Zhay interrupts him gently. “Not all of us at least,” he says, giving a slight glance at Tommy, having obviously picked up on his unease, not just aboard the Ohnin, but back in the early days when he was determined to keep himself to himself and a very lockable door that allowed him the peace of sleeping. At the very least, it doesn’t sound insulting when it comes from Zhay.
Because, he’s not wrong. Tommy would much rather stay aboard the Infinity Dawn, where he at least has a semblance of control over his environment.

Rather than lingering, Zhay gestures instead to others also being supported by their peers: Pomme and Alü among them, looking very relieved when he brings attention to them.
“But for now, please, help those of us that are injured. We have done what we could with the Human technology we had, but—”
“Yes, yes of course,” Cellbit says, shoulder dropping in relief that he’s been handed a script he knows how to read, having the answers, once more stepping into the role of captain and ordering his people to help the injured to the Ohnin’s medbay. He offers food too, calling others to lead Nansolal to the nearest mess hall, to the bathes to clean if they wish, calling for someone to arrange clothes and aids and whatever else the survivors might be.

Around him, everyone begins to split, moving to wherever they please, now that they have the luxury. Throsne pats Tommy’s shoulder as he passes, saying he’s going to sit in the medbay with their friends; Lulah following with a quick flutter of her wings. Velon and his brothers claim their hunger, but they linger long enough for Zhay to nod his permission before they follow a red Terrol waving the Leorval that wishes for food to follow her; more and more of Tommy’s brothers and sisters peeling away, thinning the crowd until there are few gathered and still too many watching eyes that keep looking back.

It’s like being in a cage all over again, but… worse, somehow.

Tommy feels untethered. If he were to listen to his internal clock, or were they to follow the normal routine that they’ve all been following these last few days then right about now, Tommy should be getting food or heading back to the workshop, looking for a distraction to tide away the few hours before he carried himself back to his quarters and tries to clock in a few hours sleeping before taking over on the bridge.

Now, he doesn’t know what to do with himself.

Before Daroda, Tommy would’ve jumped at the chance to explore an alien spaceship as he had done with Eret’s halls, chasing Tubbo and Purpled, keeping time with Ranboo and Nook. The Ohnin isn’t as large, but it is huge, meaning that there are countless places to explore, and at least it’s not white, but all that Tommy wants in this moment is to turn around, march back inside the Infinity Dawn and lock himself in the captain’s quarters.

But Tommy refuses to be a coward, and instead of hiding, he falls in time with Zhay, following where Richarlyson, Cellbit and many of what look to be Cellbit’s upper officers begin to lead. They’re signified by their rank from gold markings, some wearing pendants, others earrings, some of them having words and symbols pinned to their collars that must be indicative of their position.
Tommy files it all away, along with the layout of the ship as he slowly moves further and further from the Infinity Dawn, ignoring the fear, anger and surprise that every passing Leorval gives him.

Green shadows the lights as they move into the heart of the ship.
No one else seems to notice.

Despite his apprehension, Tommy is to trust his newfound friends and his newfound family.
And, if worst comes to worst, he still has the Infinity Dawn within his grasp. He still has Nook. If it comes to it, he’ll take those that wish to join him, and they’ll hunt down his family by themselves.