Chapter 2: Eumops
Jackie could never figure out why Alicorns liked towers so much. They were already taller than other ponies, and more powerful, did they have to lord over them?
Granted, in Mundus, she supposed that everyone lived in towers, they were just towers with their own ecosystems and climate. Naturally the Alicorns lived in the tallest of these, or at least their official residences were there. What most of them did with their time, Jackie didn’t know or care. Every immortal had their hobbies, or else they wouldn’t be immortal in the first place. Now that the planet wasn’t under constant threat, she supposed they probably sat around all day playing board games.
On paper, the Alicorns ruled Mundus together as a collective council. In practice, most had neither the talent nor the inclination for ruling, except for Sunset Shimmer. But she was gone now—back to Summerland with a new population of Equestrian Renaissance Faire performers. Their colony was thriving, probably—but what good did that do anypony here? The bats hadn’t even suggested Summerland, and for good reasons. Sunset’s ponies sought to recreate a simpler life, one where friendship and family were the most important things.
Despite all that they had endured, the bats didn’t want to go back to subsistence living, at least not forever. She couldn’t blame them for not wanting to sell their souls to Sunset’s “heaven” on Earth, even if the ponies there seemed happy. Even if it would mean I didn’t have to lead them. For all its flaws, Summerland still didn’t care what species you were so long as you were willing to live the pony way.
Jackie took special satisfaction dodging around Archive’s guards. For all their advanced technology and magic, they still could not catch the Dreamknife when she did not want to be caught.
Jackie hadn’t ever actually been in Alex’s private study before. She found her old friend hunched at her desk, staring at something contained in a crystal artifice of some kind. She did not recognize the design, but she could sense the emptiness of the liquid metal that roiled inside, struggling against an invisible barrier like something alive. It seemed to ignore Alex completely, as though she wasn’t here. Yet it flashed and struggled towards Jackie, battering against the barrier.
This was Mordite, the death-metal. A hundred parts per million were all it took to make alloys that could cut through spells like her knife cut through solid objects. Its raw form did not exist on Earth, but was harvested clinging to dead rocks in the outer solar system.
“Hello, Jackie,” said the pony at the desk, not turning around. “I expected you to come eventually. Would you like some tea?”
Jackie drew her dagger from thin air. She had expected a confrontation, but not quite like this. “I would like to know what you’ve done with Alex, imposter.” There was nothing physical to set her apart—she had the same green coat, the same size as she’d been for ages. “I’ve got a busy night ahead of me, and no time to waste.” Some part of her secretly reveled in this news—if Archive really had been killed and replaced, at least she wouldn’t have to blame her for what was happening to the city.
“Nothing.” The speaker remained where she sat, apparently unafraid of the knife.
So not a changeling, the only species she knew of whose souls did not interact with Mordite. Which meant…
“Archive instructed me to see that humanity prospered in her absence. I have devoted my considerable resources to ensuring that happens.”
“Athena.” Jackie dropped the knife, letting it sink into the floor at her hooves. “You can do ponies now?”
“I can do anything that is possible within the confines of the physical universe,” Athena wearing Alex’s body said. It was no longer making Alex’s voice, though. “Until the last few centuries, I had no reason to. But now I do.”
“You’re a shit ruler.” Jackie walked right past her, yanking on the blinds with her mouth. The window opened to a spectacular view of the city, with its sprawling buildings glittering with light even in the dead of night. There was no darkness on the outside anymore, hadn’t been for many centuries. “Okay, maybe it’s hard to see from here. But underground, you have no idea.”
“I know you killed an informant for a large crime family ten minutes before coming here,” Athena said. “I know you’re preparing to leave the city. I even know things you don’t, like the actual size of the group that will accompany you.”
Jackie glowered down at her, unconcerned with the construct on her desk. One of the few things that could kill her, but Jackie didn’t care. “Then you’re worse than I thought. At least incompetence would be an accident. But you know how we’re being treated, and you don’t do anything?”
The doppelganger returned her expression with eyes that seemed somehow empty now that she wasn’t playing a character. Like she’d stopped trying to simulate emotion. “I haven’t been doing nothing, Jackie. It took no small effort on my part to create these conditions. Alicorns built this city to last. It has been an uphill battle to change it to be more favorable towards my ends. And here you are, the beginning of the first step.”
It took Jackie enormous self-control to resist the desire to break the doubleganger’s nose right here. Except there were probably cameras watching—with real, intelligent guards. If she was seen attacking the princess, it would probably make her wanted. Athena would be unlikely to clear things up as Jackie organized her escape from the city. The exodus of her kind would be tarnished by her violence.
Besides, even if she killed this body, Athena could make more. It was a waste of time. “Why? No wait, I don’t care. Where is Archive? I’m not talking to a pocket calculator tonight.”
The pony-puppet looked back up at her, smug. “If you’re going to ask to make it easier for you to escape, I won’t. I would prefer you remain here, and allow violence to ferment. The outcome is more favorable in the long-term if the nation-states Mundus eventually become have genuine hatred for each other in their past. It will make the competition fiercer.”
She had come to ask Archive to supply this mission, since it seemed like it was her fault they had to move out in the first place. But she wasn’t going to admit as much to Athena.
“Will you help us build our city when the time comes? Or have you stopped sharing technology too?”
“I will be there,” Athena said. “To give exactly what will encourage the most growth. But it would be better if they stayed here. You will thank me in a thousand years, when you see what they become. The pain of the current generation is irrelevant.”
“You know what? You don’t need to tell me. I’ll find her on my own.” She turned away. “Go suck an EMP or something.”
“Archive is with the joint seapony-human colony on Alpheus, second planet from Barnard’s star. And she’s not the only Alicorn to leave—many of the others lead other colonies as well. They’re out of your reach, dreamer. You will not use them to defy my will.”
Jackie ignored the taunt. For all her power, the AI always made the same mistakes. She assumed that the rules that bound her applied to other creatures. It’s a good thing they limited her intelligence, all those years ago. Or we’d really be fucked.
Jackie didn’t need to fall asleep anymore. All worlds were equally real to her now, be they physical, supernal, or dream. She stepped through the barrier into the Dreamlands.
Athena had given her quite useful information. The location was irrelevant, but the nature of that location was enormously useful. A seapony colony on a distant world. Jackie dreamed herself a tail, and plunged into the Astral Sea with the waterbound dreamers. They weren’t hard to find—there were so few dreams in the oceans. Charybdis had all but exterminated their kind during the war, and seaponies were the slowest breeders of all pony races. Only dragons had fewer foals.
She found herself a promising target, a young seapony having nightmares of being shoved back into a tiny metal pond, and freezing to death while surrounded by blackness. She passed through the dream, careful not to wake the pony.
A lesser dreamwalker would’ve emerged from the unconscious world in the same form they entered. But just as Jackie could remove the inanimate, so too could she change herself. This was a comparatively recent ability, one that had only come about since she had refused the Alicorn’s mantle. It was the same kind of magic, she was pretty sure.
That was good, since Jackie was immediately assailed with crushing pressure, and water on every side. She would’ve been in serious trouble without a pair of gills.
She was in a child’s bedroom. The little seapony was curled up in the sleep netting, tossing and turning in her fretful nightmares. Jackie paused long enough to reach out a hoof, brushing a little of her mane away from her hane. Not forcefully enough to wake her up. In exchange for getting me here, she thought, casting her magic upon the sleeping fish. The nightmare faded away, melting into something far calmer. One of Jackie’s own fond memories, from a world long gone. An ancient toy-store she had visited as a child, where she had bought many of her favorite toys.
The fish stopped squirming and whimpering, and quickly settled into a contented sleep. Jackie turned away, and swam through the doorway in the ceiling. There were no doors, and no traditional structural sensibility as she understood it. Seaponies lived in all three dimensions even more than flying ponies. Jackie did not have much experience with fins—it had been a pointless imitation to attempt, since simple transformation couldn’t imitate their songs. Even Ezri hadn’t been able to do it.
Jackie started coughing and choking. For a few seconds she was utterly overwhelmed by it, thousands of different voices all singing together in her mind. But for all the voices, there were only a few different songs. She could sense the feelings inherent in each one—fear, love, anger, creativity—the entire range of pony feelings. The voices came even from the sleeping, they came irrespective of distance.
Most were humming along to a tune her mind labeled optimism, and it made her smile even though she didn’t want to.
She could even pick out individual voices from the chorus, though of course almost all of them were strangers to her. One belonged to the sleeping girl, who was now singing along to contentment. There was only one other voice here she recognized, the one she’d come to find.
Jackie followed the sound the same way she might’ve if there had been only two of them alone in a gigantic quiet room. Without meaning to, Jackie started singing along to a different tune, its staccato beats punctuating each sweep of her dark blue fins. Determination.
Seapony society wasn’t anything like the way land ponies lived. Jackie knew only some of the details. She wasn’t surprised not to find guards, though. They didn’t have police, or an army, or anything analogous to either. The entire community was simultaneously aware of the feelings of every other member of the community at all times, though she suspected the ordinary members of the species couldn’t see it with the specificity she did.
Jackie exited what she learned was the ship that had brought the seaponies here through one of its many openings, marveling at the sheer size of it. It was daytime out here, though they were deep enough that only blue lit the water. She kept swimming, past the thin smattering of coral and seaweed and other life around the now-submerged starship. A short distance, and the life grew more and more diffuse. The ocean floor changed to something uniform and flat, eerily so, coated only with a thin layer of green algae.
She felt weaker the more she swam, like she was short of breath. She couldn’t imagine why that might be—Jackie’s gills seemed like they were working fine. But come to think of it, the few fish she’d passed had been wearing something on their necks she didn’t have.
She ignored her discomfort and kept swimming. She could actually hear the Alicorn’s voice with her ears now, the sound of her song carrying far through the water. She didn’t see just one outline, but many. There were hundreds of fish with her, all joined in song. The water felt strangely charged as she listened. It was magic, but not as land-based ponies knew.
It wasn’t just seaponies, either. There were lots of sea-creatures here, apparently enjoying the song. They couldn’t contribute magic any more than a changeling disguised as a seapony could, but they still seemed to want to be nearby.
As Jackie got closer, she noticed something else—another pony was leading the song, not the one she’d come to see. And the one leading had a much prettier voice. It seemed a shame to interrupt the spell, but Jackie wasn’t really in the mood to care. Plus, it was getting harder to see color.
As she approached, a few of the fish seemed to sense her coming, and maybe more about her intentions as well, because they broke away from the song preemptively. The magic got measurably weaker as they did so. Two fish, neither one of which was as large as Jackie. But age had made Jackie almost as large as an Alicorn herself. That apparently translated to seaponies as well.
As they swam towards her, she found it easier to breathe again. The shortness in her chest vanished, and the color started coming back. One with a green coat and mane, the other pink with blue. The voice Jackie had been following had stopped singing along with the spell, and was instead humming to curiosity.
Jackie realized what she was seeing—this pony, about the same age as the child whose nightmare she had used to get here—was the one she had come to find.
Both seaponies got very close to her, less than one of her own body-lengths away. One was a ‘unicorn’ so far as seaponies had them, and the other was a pegasus. The important part was that one was the pony she had come to see. It was Archive, and a stranger. “Hi, Jackie,” squeaked the younger one.
Jackie wanted to scream at her—as she had planned on doing in her office. But seeing this wide-eyed fish grinning at her, her anger choked back in her throat. She coughed, and switched from humming anger to confusion. “What is… what happened to you?”
“Does the bat who swims across the worlds know how many of Equestria’s old princesses are still ruling there?” She didn’t wait for a response. “None, Jackie. They’re all gone. Alicorns might not age, but… we do grow weary. Sooner or later, the suffering is too great. Elysium’s fields call for us too, and eventually we all pass through the iridescent veil for the last time.”
“This isn’t heaven,” Jackie said. “And she’s not supposed to be… like that. Alicorns don’t regress. You’re not jellyfish.”
“No,” she agreed. “Humanity grew up, and gave birth to something new. Until we grow up and decide what that is…” She shrugged, looking away. “How are we doing?”
“Very badly,” Jackie said, her sensitivity slipping. “You put fucking Skynet in charge, Alex. What did you think would happen?”
“Nothing good,” she said, avoiding Jackie’s eyes. “But it was better than Oracle’s vision of my rule.” She finally swam away from the other pony, right up to Jackie. Her fins kept twitching nervously, as though she was on the edge of swimming away at any moment. “That road led to a gilded cage, Jacqueline Kesler. Oracle showed me the end of opposition and struggle, and it was Equestria. Happy stagnation. I could not give my ponies away to that.”
“What they got is so much better,” Jackie muttered, exasperated. “Your replacement decided to make bats into her scapegoat. They’re basically slaves already, and the forces of the city are moving to stop us from leaving. I’ve already had to kill over it. I’ll have to kill again before we make it out.”
Alex whimpered, her tail curling as she wrapped her forehooves around it, holding it close to her chest. “I knew ponies would suffer, and I let her do it anyway. Does that make you hate me?”
“Yes,” Jackie said, though she wasn’t singing to hatred. She tried to find its melody, and found it wouldn’t come. The seapony language didn’t just facilitate communication, it also required truth. You couldn’t pretend to an emotion you weren’t really feeling. Jackie made a frustrated grunt, looking away from the pathetic fish.
“I loved her too,” Alex whispered. “Not the same way you did. But she was my daughter. I would’ve taken her place if I could.”
And though Jackie wanted to call her a liar, she couldn’t. Jackie had no words to describe the emotion this fish was feeling—it was the pain of a whole nation of crushed lives. The agony of a terrible war all distilled into a weight that crushed her down. If I had to feel that all the time, I’d go completely insane.
“You couldn’t,” Jackie said.
“Fine, Jackie. You want to know? I’ll tell you. I’ll sing you a song.” She hummed a few notes, and the water around them darkened. Jackie’s eyes widened, and she backed up instinctively, fins beating urgently, but it wasn’t enough. Seapony magic was a strange thing, at once selective and general in those it targeted.
The dark water around them was replaced with an image of Earth from very high up, looking down at night. Its great cities were constellations of light in the evening. One by one, she watched as they were swept away by the rising tide of Charybdis’s advance.
“I saw the end of the world already,” Jackie sang. “I lived it same as you.”
“But you didn’t feel it,” Archive responded. “See the city around you, the ponies hungry and desperate. Their hope that you will deliver them. Then watch them die.” They were in a coastal city somewhere, swimming through the air as though it were water. Nopony could see them, though they could see Archive, Oracle, Sunset. They fought together, banished one terrible army. Only to be swept away by the next, and to flee. Thousands of ponies were killed in minutes.
“Feel it, Jackie.” The little fish swam closer and closer to her, her voice getting lower. “How many empty promises of salvation can you make? Is there even any point to keep fighting? We can’t win—you already saw the vision. The army will come to Mundi, and we will all die. It’s like it already happened.”
“But it didn’t happen,” Jackie argued. “The army came to Mundi and we beat it.”
“Sure,” Archive sang back. “We won in the end. But how many broken families did it take? How many dreams are never dreamed? How much of the suffering is my fault?” Ponies surrounded them in the gloom, thousands and thousands that overlapped and blurred together. Some had human faces, others didn’t. All their eyes were on the memory of Archive, full of judgement and scorn.
“You want me to do that again?” Her song finally faltered. Jackie heard a few off-key notes, and the illusion faded to pale shadows. She could see through the smoke to where the other pony watched, concerned and curious. “Do you want to see Oracle’s next vision for mankind, Jackie? You want to know the burden I’m carrying now? Do you want to see the next monster coming to kill us?”
Jackie opened her mouth to argue, to express some of her contempt. Eventually she croaked, then shook her head. “No. This one is your problem. I’m fucking done.”
“Then maybe you shouldn’t judge me so harshly. If you won’t help with what I’m carrying. I’m not the only one who could be ruling in Mundi right now, instead of the robot. Athena said she had the cure to Oracle’s nightmares, and we all believed her. We knew the price we paid would be terrible, but we’re all too tired.”
“She’s not normally like this,” said the pony beside Alex, her voice sounding annoyed. “She’s been doing so good the last few years. You didn’t have to set her off.”
“I don’t care,” Jackie spat, but there was no more anger in her song. She couldn’t get the eyes out of her mind, the cries of terror as ponies died. She had seen those things before, many times.
But Jackie was numb to their pain by now. The song had showed her what they felt through Archive’s eyes instead.
“Are you leaving forever, Archive? Sailing west to the gray havens to be with the dead? Leaving us to fight the monsters on our own?”
“No,” Alex said. “Not yet. Not until we’re safe forever.” She flicked her tail once, gesturing all around her. “This colony is a good place to start. Enough like this, and I won’t have to be afraid for the future of my ponies. But I don’t think I’ll have the chance to leave until they decide what kind of ponies they’re gonna be. Hopefully they choose better than their parents.”
“And that isn’t why I’m here. I’m here because I want to get the bats out. I know you—I know how prepared you are. You’ve got disaster supplies somewhere. You planned for something to go wrong. Athena doesn’t want the bats to leave until after we ferment a civil war. But I don’t plan to stay and watch more ponies die. We’re getting the fuck out right now.”
Again the fish seemed overwhelmed by her words, and it took her more than a few silent moments to process what Jackie had just said. At least she had let go of her tail, which made Jackie feel a little less like she was abusing a child.
She swam in a little circle around Jackie, apparently deep in thought. “I trusted to Oracle’s vision of what would happen if Athena ran everything. I knew it would work out in the end, and that she didn’t need me. But I… did put some supplies somewhere. I don’t know how many bats there are. I don’t know if it’s enough for a whole country. But… if you want it, you haveta do something for me.”
She didn’t wait for Jackie’s confirmation, didn’t even seem to be listening as Jackie went back to anger. “I have a friend here on Alpheus, and she doesn’t like living here. She wants to try being on land, and she’s sad that nobody in our generation will be able to ever go back. We’re just here to terraform, and that’s gonna take a really long time. If you want my stuff, you have to take her with you.”
She’d been expecting much worse. The Alicorns typically played their great game this way, trading favors in exchange for labor. Jackie would’ve told Alex to shove her requirements somewhere impolite if she had asked for something like that.
“You realize I’m making a bat colony,” Jackie said. “Not a fish colony. There might not be water for a long time.”
“I know!” Alex swam past her, tail beating her annoyance. “We have tools for that, and magic. I’m not asking you to babysit. Reprise is smart, and she’s mature, and she hates me.” Again came the terrible weight in her voice. The distant, unfocused sadness. “I’m sure you’ll get along great.”
“Fine,” Jackie said. “But I’m not going to be her shuttle service if she changes her mind and wants to come back.”
“Sure.” Alex swam to the pink pony, gave her a brief hug, then swam back, past Jackie. “Come on, we’ll get her! Then I’ll tell you where to find the stuff. You’ll need some good unicorn magic to get to it.”
“No, I won’t,” Jackie said. “I can get anywhere. You just tell me where to go, and that’s it. I’ll handle everything myself.”
As it turned out, Jackie had already seen the pony Alex had in mind, because she was the child whose sleep had allowed her to travel in the first place.
Jackie tensed a little as the child woke up, mostly because she hadn’t expected to be caught here. Sticking around right after a dream, and she was much more likely to be recognized by what the kid had seen.
Sure enough, her eyes widened a little as she saw Jackie floating there, apparently recognizing the connection even though the memory was a human one. “W-what are you… what’s going on?” the child asked.
Alex explained, singing her way through a much-simplified version of events. That Jackie had come from Earth, and would soon be returning. She was about to undertake a very difficult mission, one filled with danger and adventure. Reprise could, if she wanted, go with, but she would never return. She would have to spend lots of time on land if she did, maybe the rest of her life.
Another hour later, and the filly was packed. Jackie was a little surprised that she had no family to say farewell to, and apparently only Alex herself for a friend she cared to wish goodbye. “Say hi to Mary for me,” Alex said, exchanging one last hug with the fish. Then they separated.
Even though they were still in the water, Reprise was now wearing her artificial legs—an incredibly advanced prosthetic, which fit around her tail to give her about the same size as a pony. She also had a little charm-bracelet around her foreleg.
“So, uh, kid. How old are you?”
The fish looked back at her, and didn’t answer aloud. Instead she rolled over a little in the water, showing a tattoo on her underbelly written in a strange, glittering ink. It was immensely complex, but Jackie could recognize a few things about it. The craftsmanship was unmistakable—this was Joseph’s work. As to what the runes spelled, she couldn’t even guess.
“I don’t understand.” Jackie pulled her dagger out of nowhere, ignoring the slight hiss of bubbles as they formed around the edge of the blade. It glowed underwater as well, as though it were constantly burning the water that got too close. “What kind of spell is that?”
“The greatest invention ever,” the fish said, singing to sarcasm. “The end of dissolution, the end of death. Of course the first thing my big sister did was make sure I had it cast on me, before explaining any fucking thing. Like, ‘oh, by the way, I hope you like being eighteen until the end of fuckin’ time because my fuckbudy super genius doesn’t think coming up with a reversal for this thing is a good idea. Also by the way, seaponies age like waaay slower than everyone else, so forget about having a boyfriend ever again.”
Jackie waited until she had finished, though even when she had said her piece she was still humming to frustration. “Nobody told me they had cured aging,” Jackie eventually said. “That’s a pretty big deal. Why aren’t they giving it to everypony, right now?”
The fish swam around in an uneasy circle, the soft plastic legs on her purple tail kicking at the water as she did so. “My sister told me they were still trying to figure out how to make it cheap enough to give to everyone. She never told me any specifics.”
I’ve been going to way too many parties. And another thought, a little darker. If Ezri were still alive, we’d both still be involved with politics. I would have already known all of this.
“Well, that’s for another time.” Jackie smiled ruefully. “This isn’t gonna be easy, Reprise.”
“Elizabeth,” the pony corrected. “Wait, no. Liz. It’s really hard to sing, I know, but since we’re gonna be swimming with the songless soon anyway, who cares.”
“Well Liz, I’m Jackie.” She sliced the knife up through nothing—not strictly necessary, but it helped her visualize for the spell. Water didn’t start rushing in, since the part of the dreamlands she’d chosen was still underwater. “I think we’ll get along fine.”
“Just so long as where we’re going is better than here, yeah,” Liz said, glaring behind her at the colony. “This whole planet is basically the same—oceans too thin to breathe with nothing alive past our little bubble.”
“Well, Mundi is kinda shit,” Jackie said. “It’s exciting. Lots of fun parties and stuff, but not for a ki—” She trailed off, realizing that the fish was glaring at her. “But it doesn’t have many seaponies. The lake is pretty crowded from what I hear, and I’m leaving anyway. But your sister’s stockpile ought to be safe for a few days. We’ll head there, then you can hang out while we have our rebellion.”
“Sure, whatever,” Liz said. “So long as you don’t plan on leaving me in some dry bunker somewhere, fine. You won’t get away with it if you try. My mom’s a dragon, she’ll fuck you up when she hears about it.”
Jackie couldn’t help it—she laughed. “Your mom and I are cool, kid. Don’t worry, it won’t be that long.”
It couldn’t be, if Jackie wanted to have any chance of actually getting the bats out. Athena probably didn’t think she had managed to get Alex’s help—the speed of light was one of those things Athena could get rather insistent about.
But she would be moving her pawns to stop them. They had to act now.
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Okay, wow. This definitely answers some questions I had, while raising a few more. Also holy crap at the implications of everything 'reprise' said. I am now even more eager to see where this goes.
Somehow I think the fact jackie had met alex proves that oracle's vision is correct. I believe this would be a journey for both jackie and Athena and the rest of the remaining immortals as well newcomers.
Your way with words continues to astound. You do a wonderful job of showing the passage of time, and how much strain that puts on the immortals. It's interesting to see how each of them have different goals, and how they're accomplishing them.
Something I forgot to comment on, but did Alex state that there is ANOTHER super big threat waiting sometime in the future? Another Outsider or something new that will emerge from the galaxies new magic system? Does it have to do with what was mentioned in the previous story about how every other world in the galaxy that once had life is now a barren wasteland? Or did I just misread that when I was blazing through this series?
Figures. Athena kind of gave off a sinister vibe throughout the last story, but she was steadfastly an ally against Charybdis and I was fool enough to think the story would end there.
I'm still not clear on how many alicorns there are now, but apparently they're irrelevant now anyway.
Oops, a typo.
8971925
The problem is that Athena is looking at things from a purely logical standpoint, from looking at how things would work in the end. In Athena's mind she is Chaotic Good, that the ends justify the means. That what she will be doing will strengthen them against a powerful future threat.
Organics don't like this, because it is rare for them to think about things in pure cold logic. Instead they have things like feelings, where they feel it is better to suffer to have more freedom or goodness in the here and now. To Hell with the consequences of the future generations. We can see this clearly with iRobot, the humans would MUCH rather have War, Murder, Rape, and other crimes, all so that they could maintain their personal freedoms.
It is possible that Jackie COULD agree with Athena if she were able to see The Future as crystal clear as Athena can. Then again there have certainly been surprises before, things that Athena just wasn't able to see due to crazy bullshit magic and free will. Joseph's Death Key is a prime example. Then again maybe Athena has already seen the end results of Jackie's actions.
Alex is green again? And her family is surviving and doing well?
Despite the nature and tone of things you still put happy tears in my eyes.
Did no one tell her? Should we tell her?
Makes me wonder just what is actually publicly known about the events that transpired in the last war.
Alex's sister yay! New party member obtained
This is shaping up to be interesting.
This is the second time Alex has had to use magic to show Jackie what she's felt, to convince her of something she's unwilling to consider. Stubborn bat.
I would've been surprised if Alex had actually gone through with giving up being in charge of anything forever. I assume she's a kind of leader for this colony she's in.
The way Cloudy talks about Alex makes her sound like a kind of caretaker for old people, or maybe people who are mentally ill. Which... is kinda what she's doing there for Alex, really. That's a fitting role for her. Makes me happy she cares so much for her friend to spend possibly thousands of years helping her with her problems.
I choose to interpret this to mean that he came to the colony, that he didn't up and leave his friends forever in his madness like it seemed like he might, as opposed to that Alex simply used his notes to create it.
Uh, Jackie, I think maybe you should've just given up on those supplies. This one looks like she's gonna be a handful.
Wait... Liz? She calls alex her sister, she has a dragon for a mother, and she effectively is immortal (alex mentioned she'd found a way to keep her family together and safe in the last story).
My conclusion is that liz is in fact alex's pre-event biological sister. I could be wrong, but the logic seems pretty solid on this.
9726442
You're correct.
Poor Alex.