Aberrant: Children of Quantum Fire - Living Computers

[Karren Gaunt]

Time: the week between Shadow Games and Jungle Storms

Coraline flitted through the halls of the Primus, searching for her most unusual sister after a morning 'run' between Tibet and the Cape of Good Hope via Antartica. She had checked the bridge to no success, and now she was enroute to Alex's workshop on the other end of their moving home. Truth be told, she felt a little guilty for spending as little time with Alex as she had lately, and here she was coming to her with a problem.

Hopefully it'd be an interesting one at least, and worse come to worse, she could arrange a raincheck to drag her younger sister out into the world to see something fun.

Her eyes caught Alex bent over *something* on one of the central work tables, surrounded by glowing holographic screens that she glanced up at from time to time. Success. "Morning, Alex. Think you could help me with something I'm having trouble with? Or are you too busy right now?" the young metamorph called, flitting to a halt in front of Alex's workspace, smiling hopefully.

[SalmonMax]

Alex didn't look up, but scarcely needed to. Tied into the Primus' computer as she was, she could see through the ship's cameras. Her own senses were needed for a delicate adjustment at the moment...even so, she split off a few clock cycles of attention to her sister to see what she needed.

"Never too busy for you, Cora. What's the trouble?"

A set of micromanipulators burst from the tips of her fingers, looking uncannily like medieval torturing appendages for a moment as she gingerly used the tiny grippers and grasping claws to make tiny changes in the design of the equally tiny machine on the napkin in front of her.

[Karren Gaunt]

Coraline glimpsed at the tiny machine currently undergoing her sister's ministration, bemused as always at what Alex was doing. What she had done to herself made Cora think everytime she truly looked at her genius sibling, how alien Alex had made herself on the physical level. Not that it mattered long as she was still human on the mental level. Fast human but human.

"Well, I could tell you, but I'd be better off showing you a little," the young metamorph stated, pointing at one of the empty work tables. A bubble of flesh spurted from her fingertip and hit the surface, swelling and pulsing under a puppet string of quantum anchored on her index finger, shaping and crunching into a cat-like creature with a big, fluffy tail. bone-white fur, and long rabit-like ears. The construct stabilized into existence, still bound to Cora by a faint string of quantum, but independently stable. It blinked, eyes blue-on-black, and stretched, little micropulses of quantum running up and down the string like nerve impulses.

"This is what I've decided I'm calling a familar," she began walking the creature up and down the table.

"Unfortunately, if I get out range or forget to tell them exactly what to do when it comes to anything more complex than breathing, they're very... literal," Coraline continued, withdrawing the quantum string into herself and watching as the creature stopped moving and stared at one of the walls.

"And I don't want to have to spend forever giving them instructions to be useful. They tend to get confused if I give them anything too complex. So... what am I doing wrong?" she finished with a bemused shrug, smiling at her sister.

[SalmonMax]

Alex looked up; her sister's new trick successfully gaining her full attention. Her senses tore the thing apart and put it back together as a detailed mental projection.

"Clever," she said after a moment of analysis. "You discharge a wad of modified embryonic stem cells, then feed them and control their development with quantum energy. The final result is real flesh and blood, so it solves the duration problem of quantum fakematter. Skeleton, musculature...no digestion or excretion; it's metabolism is based on quantum energy input from you. Only a rudimentary nervous system necessary to interface with your signals and translate them to actions..."

She glanced up at Coraline. "You're not doing anything wrong. You just have unrealistic expectations.This isn't a familiar, or any other kind of independent life. It's a puppet that's made of meat. A meat puppet. As it is, it'll never be able to do anything you don't expressly will it to do."

Now that Alex wasn't leaning over her project, Coraline could see that the thing she'd been working on was, in fact, a bee. Or what looked like a bee.

"If you want to make changes to it, so it's more independent...I might be able to help with that," Alexandra was saying, still studying the weird little critter. "But you'll need to do a lot of learning. A lot of studying. You'll have to be able to create a more complicated nervous system...one that has more memory capacity, that we can put instincts in. Although....hmmm..." She fell thoughtfully silent, tapping her chin with a finger.

[Karren Gaunt]

"Okay," Coraline stated after a polite pause to allow both herself the time to get what her sister was saying straight and Alex to get another brilliant manifesto in order, groaning good-naturedly inside at the thought of *more* studying. As if she wasn't wracking her brain enough with Uncle Shen already. Although she was interested in learning how to pull off his pressure point tricks.

She 'flicked' a quantum string back into the creature, turning it around to look at her sibling, "Wouldn't be the first time I've had unrealistic expectations, Alex."

[SalmonMax]

"Well we could try encoding instructions on its quantum signature. It does have one; sort of a branch off of yours of course. Not very big or complex...but depending on what you want it to do, maybe enough."

The micromanipulators retracted back into her finger and she looked up at Coraline, resting her head in her hand.

"So what exactly do you want these critters to do?"

[Karren Gaunt]

"Sentries or defenders against baseline Motherhunters when I can't be there. They're too weak to be much good against anything more, but when they do die, I feel it," Coraline answered after making herself comfortable sitting in midair, "Try and give people I want to protect a minute or so of warning so that Warren or Marina or Darrik can get us there to help them in time. Nothing too ambitious yet, I thought."

She shrugged contendly, open and willing to accept any constructive critique Alex had to offer, "So what's with the bee? Some because you can project it'd take a half-hour for me to understand?"

[SalmonMax]

"You're thinking too high-order," Alex said, tapping her temple. "What do you want them to DO? Smell bad guys coming? Run out and attack bad guys? You want guards, or early warnings, but you need to be specfic in how you define those things. Specifics are key. No vagueness allowed."

With a glance down, she chuckled. "The bee. It's actually pretty simple." Alex picked the insect up and held it up between them. "Biomimicry. This is a robot. It uses microengineered parts to move and fly just like a bee. Power comes from an advanced thermocouple linked to a mesh that is keyed to a very narrow radio wavelength. The signal is generated by the hive, and it causes the mesh to heat up. That temperature differential powers the thermocouple, which powers the machinery. It can't carry much, but I'm thinking I could get a minicam and mic in there, and some solid state storage that it can upload to a permanent archive in the hive."

Alex paused then summed up. "It'll be a spy. A hive can coordinate dozens of these, all flying around in areas I've deemed strategically useful. Getting still shots of faces. Recording conversations. Once I get the system up, it'll be half of my datamine."

[Karren Gaunt]

"Ah. But wouldn't flies be better? People pay more attention to bees. My parents and I did anyway if only because we might find wild honey," half-suggested, half-remenisced the young metamorph, "You don't get bees normally in cities anyway, right?"

She smiled wryly at her own presumption, pondering what Alex said about specifics. That wasn't how her metamorphic powers worked most of the time, her consious mind coming up with 'what she wanted' and her subconsious providing the 'how she got it'. But then again this wasn't strictly speaking her metamorphic powers. "And I should be thinking... 'See a gun, call an alarm' when it comes to instructions?" Coraline guessed, thoughts tumbling in the place behind her eyes as she rested her chin in one hand.

[SalmonMax]

"Better, but remember that recognizing a gun is pretty complicated. There's lots of different kinds. And then you have to differentiate between friendly guns and unfriendly guns, or the little things'll freak out when they see a policeman, or an armed security guard. Think more elementally. What do you want them to do, at the bare essence? Then we can work out how to make them do it. You said you wanted them to be guards against mother hunters, right? So it stands to reason they need to recognize them. So how do we recognize mother hunters?"

She set the bee down. "Flies don't organize into hives. These things are too small to be independent. They need a central station to work out of. Bees and hives are normal things...people don't think twice about them. As long as they don't buzz in someone's face, they won't be a big deal. And yeah, bees forage in cities all the time." She shrugs. "Thought about ants, but ants tend to stick together. Bees range out individually. Their behavior pattern is perfect for my needs."

[Karren Gaunt]

"If we don't know them and they express interest in learning more about 2nd Generation Novas and Nova reproduction at all? That's at least what's its starting to feel like with how grey the situation is turning out to be, how many layers of innocents they're working through, innocents it's not right for us to punish en mass unless they're attacking first," exhaled Coraline in mild frustration before focusing on the problem again, "I'd be willing to settle with my familars recognizing armed agressors and raising the alarm as they drop onto their heads from their hiding places."

[SalmonMax]

"Alright, well, recognizing 'armed' is doable. It's just a pattern recognition task. The tricky part is how to get them to respond to aggression."

Alex shook her head. "I have a feeling I'm going about this the wrong way. I'm treating this like a computing problem, but these things aren't computers. Maybe we can...train them or something. How many are you going to make? And how many CAN you make? I think we're going to have to do some trial and error and see what their limits are."

[Karren Gaunt]

Coraline grinned at Alex's uncertainties, glad to have her ever so briefly in her own mental place, "I can create up to eight per go, and I don't think I have an upper limit as to how many I can have at a time. Although it does get distracting looking out of more than twenty sets of eyes at once, especially when they're so much slower than what I'm getting used to. There's still only one me in here."

She tapped her temple in a consious mimicry of Alex's earlier gesture, clearly showing her relief at getting some help with the third-most pressing problem on her mind.

[SalmonMax]

"So a data bottleneck too," Alex mused. "Seems like there's plenty of room for improvement.Thing is, quantum powers are tricky to make changes to. They're as much subconscious as conscious. Still, we can try a few things...see how much control you have over it, then that'll tell us how much work we'll have to do on the subconscious level."

"First of all, lets start with what you already know so we don't waste time. What can you make them do right now, independently of your control?"

[Karren Gaunt]

Coraline paused for thought, tilting her head to one side as she considered what would be the best answer, "Very simple, very direct tasks like 'walk in a circle'. But they're... Well."

She sent a pulse of instruction down the quantum string into the familar and snapped the 'cord' back. It started walking in a clockwise circle. Unfortunately for it, it's path had it tumble off the edge of the work table, unflinching and unthinking. The young metamorph caught the construct in a blur of motion, holding the creature with it's still moving legs for a second before setting it down on the floor where it had room to walk in a circle between the two female novas.

"Literal. No common sense. Like I said. And if I try to put more than two or three instructions in one, it gets confused and stops moving until I bring it back under direct control."

[SalmonMax]

Alex grimaced and stared fixedly at the little walking thingy that Cora had made, again probing its structure and quantum resonances.

Finally she shook her head. "I don't think it's going to work. You're looking at this like it's a little animal, and all you have to do is train it better. But this thing isn't real, Cora. The matter it's made up of is real, but it's only alive in the most technical of ways. Its quantum signature is just a vastly simplified form of your own. Even its cellular structure is vastly simplified. The instant you pull the plug on one of these, and stop feeding it quantum, it'll die, dry up and blow away. They're robots, Cora. Biological robots. They'll never be able to think until you learn to create them with brains."

[Karren Gaunt]

"I have to learn medicine to try and make the most of Uncle's pressure point techniques anyway," the young metamorph chorused back with a shrug, "Maybe then. Thanks for the pointers though."

She bent down and touched the creature's back, literally reabsorbing the thing into herself with a faint *slurp*.

Coraline reclaimed her perch in the air, "So aside from mechanical bees and something about satelites that Warren mentioned to me, what have you been up to? I've probably been a bad sister in not spending as much time as I should have with you."

[SalmonMax]

"I haven't exactly been Miss Social either," Alex admitted with a shrug. "As for what I'm doing...I'm trying to get caught up. Now that we're playing on the global stage, I have to make sure I have streams of data coming in. Spies, basically. Others, like Nyx, have spent years creating large organizations with vast resources to hire and train human assets to fulfill those needs. We don't have that kind of time, so I'm using machines. The bees are part of that. My goal is to have hives near major population centers in Europe, Asia and the United States within a year. Global saturation within five. Phase two is biomimetic birds, which will fill gaps that the hives can't get within range of. I'll need to study up on bird biodynamics before I can get into that though."

She chuckled. "I'll probably wind up with a virtual MD by the time I'm done too. Maybe we can open a practice."

[Karren Gaunt]

Coraline chuckled back, the affection obvious in her eyes at Alex's extremely big but extremely possible dream. If she got the time and the breathing room, she'd do it. So it was the young metamorph's job to help get her that time.

"Maybe after we dismantle a few Motherhunting organizations first. They might object to the kind of clinic I'd like to see us open up when the time comes," she responded lightly.

[SalmonMax]

"A nova fertility clinic?" Alex guessed. She waved a hand. "Doesn't matter. We've got a lot of work to do before anything like that's advisable. And sooner or later, we're all going to have to decide where we stand on the human versus baseline question. Not just the ones hunting nova children. That's easy to take a stance on. I mean the larger question...the one that everything is balancing on. We'll have to decide what answer we're willing to fight for."

[Karren Gaunt]

"The one that doesn't see Novakind dead or subservient for the rest of history, obviously," Coraline answered without hesitation before she frowned, "of course, we shouldn't punish the 99% of baselines who are too oblivious to stop the 1% of baselines who truely malisciously hate us in the process. That wouldn't be... right."

Her chorus fractured a little on that last sentence, looking away, fighting between what she wanted to do and what she felt she needed to do. "I just don't know how we can manage it though without running away or taking the entire planet to protect the baselines from themselves. And I'm tired of running and hiding."

[SalmonMax]

"We can't," Alex confirmed. "Manage it without running away or taking the planet. Those really are our long-term options. It would be different if we really were sterile, or if nova children were born human. Then our peoples could have a symbiosis...a mutual need. But as it is, we compete. Compete for social regard, for financial success, for natural resources...we compete because humankind has evolved to compete as a mechanism for self-improvement, and in evolutionary terms, novas are just an offshoot of humankind. That's gonna make co-existance really hard, and it'll only get harder over time."

[Karren Gaunt]

A thought occured to Coraline, an unpleasant one that made her brow crease.

"And more Novas are going to keep erupting from the baseline population, so even if all current Novas run away we're just passing responsibility to them or condemning them death if the baselines take Motherhunting to it's... natural extreme to keep us from rising again," she ventured, thinking aloud, "So we really don't have a choice. Not if we want to protect our own from the worst of human nature."

She looked away, breathing heavy. This was heavy stuff, not unless she was wrong.

The young metamorph chuckled then and grinned back back at Alex, "So to save world for Novakind we have to turn my parent's... overly simplistic view upside down and impose it on the whole world, huh? Is that what you're telling me?"

[SalmonMax]

Alexandra frowned. "You're putting words in my mouth. What I'm saying is that baselines and novas coexisting on equal terms is not something I foresee happening. The situation is too unstable. It can be sustained artificially for a little while, but it'll ultimately collapse. The current global situation is a textbook illustration of that principle. Novas and baselines are co-existing, but only because a powerful outside entity is forcing the issue...Utopia. However, in order to maintain the hegemony that gives them the power to enforce co-existence, Utopia's had to get its hands very dirty, and once that gets out they'll lose a lot of the credibility that lets them do their jobs. Then comes the decline, which will end in all out war."

"The alternative is segregation. We find somewhere to live that doesn't put us in direct competition or contact with baselines. Farther the better."

[Karren Gaunt]

Coraline's expression had a lot to say about how 'equal' she thought the current nova-baseline situation was and how much sympathy she had for Utopia's plight in what it had to do in maintaining that 'equality'. Essentially, not very.

"I'm not comfortable with running far enough away that baselines can do whatever they want to the Novas who erupt after us, Alex," Coraline confessed, "I mean, not to say we've been perfect towards them, but they hit first even before we did anything to them far as I've read. We're both human. Novas deserved that benefit of the doubt from baselines."

[SalmonMax]

"There's always been novas..." Alex murmurs, her eyes going distant as she thinks. "Maybe an arrangement can be made. If we settle a different planet, and do it peacefully, we could set up a kind of shuttle service. Trade to and from the new world. I think novas and baselines could exist peacefully as long as they weren't in direct conflict over territory. And new novas erupting on Earth could saddle up on the next shuttle to Nova-town. That way we don't totally lose touch, but we're not limited."

"I'm pretty sure we can get a win-win here, sis. The only problem is that we need certain things before it can happen. Namely, a destination, a way to get there, and a near-consensus on the part of nova-kind that this is the right solution. Of those three things, the consensus is the hard part...and it's the part we'll probably have to go public to get. We need to start thinking of what to do in advance, because time is short."

[Karren Gaunt]

"Not too short for you and the rest of the braintrust to figure something out," affirmed Coralined with complete faith in her family, "Worst comes to worst, we find our own corner of the world to hold until we find somewhere better, Alex."

Her smile was simple, uncomplicated, and the young metamorph nodded at the robotic bee, "Want to get back to that? If you ever need a break though, you're always invited to hang our with Butch and I for our hour of family time. No powers and politics allowed."

[Quantum Fire]

In the corner Shen stepped forward having waited for the conversation to go though the entire process before stepping in himself, speaking up as he did. "If you want to be close by, Alex, Ganymede is almost perfect for such purposes, but it also means we'll have to more or less claim the entire Jovian sphere, it will keep tensions down for long time. As to the nova's, part of the reason so many nova's appear every year is due to other effects. Generally, it is 1 nova erupts from the baseline population every two or three decades, except at certain key points, but due to the actions of a certain nova present on the planet now, the chances and probability of it occurring has been increased by several orders of magnitude."

He held out a hand to Coraline in a come here method. "Come, daughter, I think it's time for you to broaden your horizons and understanding, this is an important part of your path and study as well." When she did put her hand in his, he winked at Alexandra. "Be back later, Alex, darling.. oh, on another note.. children are not beyond you even now, with a few alternations to your basic structure you could even adapt an ability to take biological genetics and convert them into the your much more carefully planned structure."

Then they vanished, Shen taking the young and impulsive on his hand and appearing in a field in another part of the world. "

"Where are we?"

"A field of late season caterpillars, there is something here I want you to watch a moment, it is important for you to see and consider this before I take you to see something that will greatly test your preconceptions."

[Karren Gaunt]

"Okay," her chorus stated simply before Coraline focused on observing the field around them.

It was a field, temperate northren hemisphere vegetation and wildlife. American if the birds above and burrowing animals below she was sensing meant anything. No signs of civilization in easy viewing range save for a few dropped water bottles and a fading bootprint or two. No one around except her and Uncle. The young metamorph focused on a suddenly moving cocoon hidden in the bushes to her left, one of many now that she paid attention. Only... It's movement was odd, not a breach along the back seam, but a single point of rupture as something much smaller than a butterfly tore it's way free, wings damp and crumpled. A wasp in fact. Coraline frowned and looked closer, beneath the skin of the cocoon, seeing a dozen more of the parasite's sisters almost ready for a similar escape into the light of day, the butterfly that could have been in fact just a husk of half-drained and dying food for it's burden. She shifted her vision to a second cocoon. Same story, but a chapter or two earlier. Three parasitized cocoons after that, a previously ruptured husk being eaten by a scavenger.

Not a butterfly in sight though, one act of reproduction aborted in favor of another. This was something Coraline had encountered before, where she had learned to make her organic syringe to do to other humans exactly what had been done to these catepillars, not that she ever would. Not that she had ever seen a field this infested, this lost... She glanced up at her teacher, inhaling and curious where this was going, trying to keep an open mind.

"Okay," the young metamorph said again.

[SalmonMax]

Alex rolled her eyes theatrically after Shen's departure. That was just like him too. The king of conversation killers. Not that the conversation had much more life in it. Still. And his last little epitah had been wholly unnecessary. Alex knew her body inside and out. She already had sketched out a rough design modification that would let her create a sort of artificial gamete...but the truth was more elemental than that. The truth of her new existence couldn't be mapped onto DNA. It would be a step backwards, not forwards.

No, she already knew how she intended to have 'children,' and it had nothing to do with animal coupling or a dance of amino acids. It would take time though, and it wasn't even close to the top of her list of things to do. Second, maybe even third iteration business. Once she was ready to slow down. Then the time would be right.

[Quantum Fire]

Shen knew quite well his adopted daughter had other plans in mind, but his words had been as much for Coraline's benefit as hers, in fact, in some ways they were more for Coraline then for Alexandra. In fact, when it came to taint, Alex had a completely different path then his, in fact he was somewhat awed at what she had planned and what she would plan, but then all of his children were exceptional.

"Remarkable isn't it, let us continue to the next stage in this lesson."

With that they were suddenly in a different field, one in another part of the world, were thousands of butterflied were flying, the sunlight reflecting off wings and it was indeed a sight to behold, magnificent in it's own way as the previous one had been a mix of wonder and horror. This however, was shear beauty, the butterflies sent shaddows rippling against the ground.

Then they were gone again, and it was dark, here thousands of fireflies flew in the air, a dance that seemed joined by the stars above, it was dizziness beautiful in it's own way, and then they were gone..

this time they were africa as a colony of driver ant's tore everything to peicies in their way.. then they were gone again..

And watched as a group of pirana's tore an animal that had fallen into the water into pieces.. a wolf pack tearing into a elk.. a snake eating a rodent alive..

Then they were on the mountain he had been training for a moment.

"Life, but more then that, this lesson is a more important one, the humans are right to fear our children.. some become as butterflies and fireflies, the Trues of the 2nd generation, true to life, true in essence, true inheritors of what is to become. Then there are the Terats, both horrible and wonderful in their own way, by their own words, marvel, portent and monster.. I am quite aware of how Chrysalis works, and now with your young man, you have some idea as well. Trogs, the true children of taint are like the first vision, except the catapillers are humanity.. come, it is time for you to see at last, why even honorable people have chosen the path of distruction, though they chose it without truely understanding."

They were now on the edge of a village, and a horrible creature was moving though the ground toward the village, a mix of spider and tentacles, with snake fangs and human eyes, it was hissing and talking to itself as it approached the village in the Amazon. "Horrible isn't it? Unless we interfere, it will invade, kill and eat most of the inhabitants of the village, and put lava inside the survivors, as it wraps them in thread, hangs them up and let's it's lava eat their way out, to become what it is in a about 3 weeks.. it's powerful and deadly.. but no match for you or I, however the humans are no match for it. This is what the mother hunters truly fear.. and why they hunt nova children.. but this things darkness is easy to see, some of them can even masquerade as human for a while."

[Karren Gaunt]

"Baselines, Uncle Shen. Baselines. We're all human, node or no," numbly correctly the young metamorph, expression taut as her thoughts struggled with the mounting horror of putting together what she had been shown, what she had been told, and what she was increasingly realized what she was being implictly asked to do, to choose.

"I... No. There has to be a better way than theirs. Warren can... Alex could... *We* could persuade it not to do this. Aren't we supposed to try and be better than them? Have you ever..?"

Her chorus was quietly fracturing as she tried to avoid thinking an increasingly looming word, a word she had never thought to apply to her mentor before but seemed more and more... No no no... She didn't, but that nova was... She turned her blue-on-black eyes on Shen, hands squeezed to fists at her sides.

[Quantum Fire]

"It's mind is as twisted as it's body, it feeds off fear and pain, to it, there is nothing more delicious then meat flavored with pain and agony, it is the living embodiment of taint, it possesses a greater degree of taint then an newly erupted nova can possess, you could take it from here, but without feeding, it will die, you will have only prolonged it's suffering." He paused a moment. "You are at the point that this must be asked, before I take your teaching to the next stage, it is the living essence of imbalance, nothing I can do can help it, it is even beyond the help of chrysalis that the teragen offers.. so what should be done with it? Are the lives of the baseline humans worth in that village worth less then its?"

Inwardly, he hated doing this to her, but it was a necessary lesson teaching her. "Have I ever killed something like this? I will answer your question.. but only after I hear what you plan to do about this one." He paused a moment. "I will abide by your choice, Cora.. but I do insist that you make a choice."

[Karren Gaunt]

"I... I..."

The young metamorph stammered as she wrestled through the problem. Uncle Shen wouldn't lie to her. This person was sick, twisted by taint into something it probably never wished to be. Those baselines were innocent, at least of any crime that had them worthy of being put through this. Her parents wouldn't have let this happen, not if they could do so and kept her safe. There wasn't a choice. Not really. Not if she wanted to stay the person she was and hoped to become. Damn her.

"I want to know his or her name if you know it, Uncle Shen. The person they were deserves that much before I kill them to protect the baselines from them."

Coraline shook as she exhaled, mind thundering with a single, toxic heavy word now that she'd made her choice. Motherhunter. This was motherhunting, however her teacher framed it, murder in cold blood to stop a Nova from reproducing. Coraline lifted off the the ground and blurred into a vaguely female outline that radiated hurt and betrayal. She didn't want to do this, a dozen regrets burning in her eyes, but she would kill this nova. Because not doing so was worse than doing so.

Flight. Hyperflight. Enhanced Movement.

[Quantum Fire]

"The names of everyone you have killed to this day, Coraline, darling are, Julian, Cedric, Aldric, Meris, and the one your about to kill is Saris.. Julian and Cedric both had wives, Julian has a son and daughter ages 8 and 5, Cedric has a single daughter age 16, who upon discovering that her daddy was dead, erupted herself from the emotional trama and is now training with Utopia in one of thier clinics. Aldric was unmarried, but dating his high school sweetheart, who misses him dearly, and still hasn't entirely recovered, she may or may not do so, her future is still in flux. Meris was the only son of his parents, they still morne his death.. and non of them know exactly how thier loved ones died."

"As for Saris, it is part of a brood of seven, of whom only 2 survived, the other one is being taken down now, but their parent is much more powerful, i can't see it very well, though I have been hunting it over the last few weeks, as I have other others like this. And if your asking why I keep saying it, that is because Saris is hermaphrodite, it's both male and female... unlike the others, never knew being loved, it's parent is mostly psychopathic." Somehow he simply knew them, but then, Shen was as capable of seeing into the past as he was in the future, and unlike the future, the past wasn't in motion, it was easy to look and see.

He spoke to her quitely in the air, knowing that with her extremely high senses she would be able to hear everything even as she attacked this overly tainted nova, or trog as Shen called it, and would realize he's also answered her question.

[Karren Gaunt]

The blurred figure that was Coraline wanted to wail, expression cracking. That wasn't fair. Those others had hit first against innocents. She had killed them to protect *children*. They should have thought about whether that was worth doing. They... They... Her knuckles bleached white from stress as she realized exactly how very much the same she was acting as they, She, it... They... Advise from someone they trusted, a choice made, actions done and consequences accepted... Coraline pushed it all away, at least long enough to finish what she had chosen to do.

Boom. Coraline broke the speed of sound dozens of times over as she roared upward, jerking both Saris and the villagers awake with the noise and the shockwave.

Boom. Coraline roared downward, one hand extended at the monster, the victim, the beginings of tears boiling away from her face as she willed her momentum into her target.

Boom. Coraline was coated in gore as Saris quite literally exploded from the sudden impact into the earth, tendrils and spider legs and visceria decorating the landscape.

The young metamorph hung there, meters above the ground, a blood-drenched angel on the verge of a fall, shaking and unseeing of the world around her as the escape of a descion made evaporated in the face of who and only who was responsible for this. Who had decided to help do this and cross the line her mentor had aparently crossed long ago. Of the third group of 2nd Gens who gave Proteus the emotional ammunition that allowed them to ruin everything else they had tainted.

[Quantum Fire]

A moment later Shen was beside her, and touched her, suddenly they were gone from there, high on a snow covered mountaintop as Shen took her in his arms, sitting on a nearby rock and holding his little girl as she cried her eyes out, wailing in multiple tones as she simply sobbed like her heart was broken, ignoring that she was covered in blood and that blood was also covering him, and splattering on the snow around them, turning white snow to red..

The lesson, the most important lesson before he began to teach her the deeper and more intense lessons of Qi Meng, was never to take a life for granted was learned, he was certain that she would now take great care before moving to killing force. It was a hard lesson and in some ways a cruel one, but a teacher who was too easy on his students did them no favors, and he had been concerned about how casually Coraline chose to kill as of late, now that her power had so greatly increased, she needed to be more careful about such things, not less. Of course, it had been a multifaceted lesson, there was numerous other things to learn from this experience. That sometimes, the mother hunters had good reason for their actions. That there was a time and moment to take a life, but that one should be grieved over the price and consider the consequences when the moment came..

But he also held her tenderly, not just as a teacher, but also as a parent would, and he let the blood cover both of them, in another silent lesson, the one who gave direction was just as responsible as the one who did it, if not more so. He held her until she was ready to stop crying, letting her cry her heart out, listening to those broken hearted cries and wept himself, as much for the loss of innocence of his little girl, as for the price she had paid for this day.. his tears however, were silent, not a single sob or word spoken as he held her.

Finally, when Coraline had finally cried herself out, he took out a cloth and began to wipe her tears fro her face and waited for her to speak.

[Karren Gaunt]

Emotionally drained and sick on the dregs of anger and grief and a kernal of sprouting frustration that the world wasn't as nearly as neat was she had believed it was, Coraline halted her mentor's actions after the first wipe, claiming the bloody cloth for her own and extracating herself from his grip. Comforting as it was, much as she wanted to hide from what she did that way... She couldn't, wouldn't, shirk that responsibility. She cleaned her face, deliberately, slowly, struggling to treat the task as a meditative now like she had been taught, this emotion as another passing whimsy of the world she had every ability to understand and control even if she didn't feel like she could.

A final shuddering inhalation of breath, and she looked Shen in the eye, a young woman again and not a child, something lost in her gaze that it'd take her long hours of thought and meditation to ever truly make peace with. "I don't think I can forgive you for this lesson yet, Uncle Shen," she confessed, "Vital as my faith in you says it will be to me."

[Quantum Fire]

"I don't entirely forgive myself for it, forgiveness is not something done as suddenly as some might believe, it is more often a slow process rather then a swift one. It was a necessary lesson, but not one I desired to give, simply one that was necessary." He sighed, then gave her a slight smile. "I am afraid I had to take the path of the cruel teacher today, something I hate doing... now, would you like a bath or a shower?"

[Karren Gaunt]

Coraline didn't return the smile, not up to it yet. She needed to think.

"Yes. Back to the Primus, please. Somewhere near my cabin."