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Aberrant: Children of Quantum Fire - [Interlude] Fertile Ground [Fin]


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May 12th, 2027

Sakura had taken a break from the flurry of dealing with the creche, Teragen politics, nova history, and the course of the future. She was in the large garden behind her apartment, reclining in a hammock made of her silk and tied between two trees and overlooking the statue of the king at the center of the garden, when a porter gently shook her shoulder to wake her up. The boy, no more than eleven but with the pride of a child trusted with important duties, smiled at her and bobbed his head respectfully, "Mlle Sakura, Mlle Coraline souhaite vous rencontrer. Dois-je l'amenar à vous?"

She blinked awake, her mind taking a moment to catch up with the question, "Mlle Coraline? Uh...um, oui. S'il vous plaît ont apporté des rafraîchissements sur le balcon et la voie ici. Merci, Jean."

She wasn't quite sure who this Miss Coraline was, though she thought she'd heard the name a few times before; she was in Kinshasa and knew that any visitors would be well-screened by the Palace guards and staff before being allowed in, though, so there was little reason not to play the proper hostess. She slid out of the hammock and made her way up to the staircase/balcony, resettling herself just as the refreshments arrived (she'd learned earlier that a small kitchen had been set up just for her only a little ways down the hall from her quarters). She sipped at the fresh limeade juice that had become a favorite of hers in the past few weeks while she awaited her unexpected visitor.

The garden smelled pleasantly of warmth, flowers, and of course, sweet cherry blossoms.

Sakura's Presence
Tactful is in effect.

Coraline's social shield quite sufficiently bypassed Object of Desire, and Health negates the pheromones.

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It wouldn't be very long at all before soft footfalls would bring Sakura's guest within range of her sight. Coraline looked up as she turned the corner, quantum charged good looks a hair or two short of the the pregnant nova's own, brown-haired and features lighly sun-kissed around distinctive white-on-black eyes. She gave Sakura a quick up and down, the whisp of a smile crossing her features at whatever she saw, but nothing more than that. A simple but nice dress rustled in the light breeze of the garden, it's wearer closing the final distance to speaking range with effortless grace.

"Thank you for seeing me on short notisce, Miss Sakura. My name is Coraline Boehm," she spoke warmly, a half-dozen voices emerging in almost synch from her lips, "You know my brother, Darrik, and since this is the middle of my half-day off, I was hoping to meet the woman who helped make me even more of an Aunt to be. It's not too much of a bother, is it?"

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Sakura smiled at her guest, used to a multi-voiced speaker by now. Darrik's sister.... "No, not at all. Please," she motioned to the chair on the other side of the table, angled so they could both look out over the garden, "sit. There's limeade or water, and...." She glanced down at the tray of miscellaneous but no doubt delicious snacks and gave Coraline an apologetic smile, "Um...whatever these are. Honestly, I've never had most of them."

Once Cora was settled in, Sakura asked, "Did you have questions? About what specifically happened with Agatha and Gwen? Or are you interested in becoming a parent yourself?"

Out in the garden, a pair of parakeets chirped happily in their nest and a gentle breeze stirred up the scents, leaves rustling pleasantly.

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"Oh Node, no. The last thing I want to be is a parent yet. I'm not done growing up myself," Coraline protested with a laugh, shaking her head and chorus fracturing before she got herself under control, "But I was curious about what you did for them. What you've done for others. I think I can do the same thing. Not the same way, not to the same degree, not if I'm reading your aura correctly, but..."

The young metamorph looked down, smile waning by inches, "Everything I think I know about my powers tells me I can give us back what they stole from us and hunt us for to fully remove. Family. Hope. A future beyond ourselves. I haven't done it yet, even tested it, not with the target that would paint on me and my siblings with everything else we're doing, but... I'd like your advise on how to do it. How not to do it."

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Sakura arched a brow, "You'll have to be a little more specific about what you can do, dear. Are you able to cure sterility? Can you cause conception? Would you be able to test this on something like a plant or animal?"

"As for painting a target on you," she shrugged and picked out one of the morsels to nibble on. "I'm in the process of setting up a company to offer other services I can perform publicly, and to act as a screen for also offering fertility treatments for novas and baselines. You could tag along on that, discreetly. An aide, for all anyone else needs to know, and in time we could look towards testing your abilities on a baseline or nova."

"What I would suggest avoiding is going fully public and getting yourself killed, or offering your services even discreetly without screening would-be parents." She frowned, the smell of cherry blossoms curling into a damp, rotting smell for a moment, "There are those novas who would ask you to provide them with a means of conception and no intention to raise children but instead to bear weapons for their personal use."

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Coraline looked on the verge to argue that last point, kept from objecting to the idea that reproduction is a privilege only by the fact that the children of severely tainted novas could be as much of a threat as any Motherhunter. That needed solving. She fought the impulse away and sampled one of the treats, enjoying the flavor while gathering her thoughts. It was one thing to act on a whim and stop by Congo to talk to the one living nova publically known to be able to help with the fertility issue, another to do it *inteligently*.

"It would be nice to have a safe testing ground other than brushing against an unsuspecting nova and following them around to see if it worked," she voiced a frustrated fantasy aloud, tones wistful in a 'as if I could live myself doing that' way, "As for what I can do... I can change myself and others to adapt to the world around me. Including superhuman reproductive abilties that should allow a sterile Nova to have children as long as I fuel the changes. I think."

That last bit was almost involuntary, an honest doubt and fear at failing someone who trusted her to do something so very important.

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"Well, if you're willing to wait until after I give birth, you could try it on me. I have an understanding of my body that would allow me to know pretty much instantly if you'd had an effect." She shrugged, "That's a far safer test, as I can change myself back if your abilities do work." Simple solutions, at least to the simplest of questions. What to do after that...was infinitely more complicated. "If you could find another nova with the same capability, you could request to test that even earlier."

She thought for a moment, "Perhaps you should speak to the King, see if any of the novas here in the Congo would be willing to be a discreet test subject, one with same awareness of their body that would allow them to know instantly if you had caused them to be fertile. Or wanting to bear a child....if you went that route, you could bring them to me a few weeks later and I could confirm conception and check on the child or children, offer the services I usually do save for the actual fertility."

She seemed genuinely sweet and more than willing to help Cora learn the extent of her ability to affect the fertility of others. As she took another bite of something vaguely marzipan-like, she started in her chair and dropped her sweet. She laughed, "Sorry about that. It usually takes longer before you can feel a baby moving around, but with three of them wrestling for space, I've been feeling like a walking container of jiggly jello."

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Coraline smiled herself, drinking in the sight and promising herself to help as many Novas as possible be able to experience the unique hope and happiness she could see in Sakura's expression. And four months ago, before her voluntary exile from the world, she would have taken the older Nova's advice up imediately. Now though, she nodded thoughtfully. It would have to be an actual sterile nova, someone like Sakura already bearing most of the gifts she'd want to give someone from nature's toolbox, but good basis.

"That sounds encouraging for when things quiet down," she volunteered, "But what do you mean 'services'?"

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Sakura retrieved the fallen sweet and laid it on the table, rubbing her belly to soothe the children within. "There's a great deal more I can do for a child beyond helping to conceive them. I can ensure that they're healthy, correct any genetic defects, and even impart gifts that I have, physical traits that help ensure they're born with the greatest potential and chance of survival. I can even nudge nova children's quantum signature some to favor one parent's traits over the other, though I rarely do unless there is a health or safety reason to do so."

"With baselines, I can even do such adjustments or healing after they've been born." She sipped her limeade and shook her head, "Nova's have too strong of a quantum signature after they're born for me to affect them much anymore. For nova children, the gift I prize most to give them is the assurance that they will be able to control their fertility, to bear children or not as they choose." Her expression darkened, "I was told recently by your brother that nova sterility was...induced...which explained a number of confusing things to me. Genocide is...." She shook her head again and closed her eyes, taking a steadying breath. "Sometimes I just don't understand people."

She opened her eyes and gave her guest as bright of a smile as she could, "Back to your question, though, that's the short answer of what I can do. The long answer....could take days."

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"Oh, I know that feeling. It's one thing to say and demonstrate you can grow a functional set of gills, another to say how you you can do it. I don't even have the technical words for most of what my node can do. Never felt the need to learn them," Coraline chimed in emphatic sympathy from her seat, chorus growing inevitably more serious.

"The people behind the sterility cocktail and motherhunting are easy to get. They're scared to death of losing their control over the world. And scared people make stupid choices. It just our job to help sort out who was just following orders and can be turned and who knowlingly made the choice and shown why you don't terrorize an entire generation of novas by hunting them like animals for being born. The world's just really, really lucky that so many of us were raised by basically good people, or else we might have used our gifts to become everything Proteus tries to scare the other factions with."

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Sakura sighed. "There are novas out there that want to be or make the children that these Proteus people are terrified of. There will be those novas. These Proteus people, they're responding to the instinctual, primal knowledge that baseline humanity is no longer the controlling factor on Earth." She held up a hand to forestall an object from Coraline, "I'm not at all defending what they're doing. Their actions are that of cunning animals, but still animals, not reasoning sentient beings."

"They made a very poor decision," she said quietly, looking sad, "and in the final run of things I see only more violence and death because of what they did than what might have occurred were novas let be to be. My greatest hope in all of this is that the nova response is not one of violent revenge. Humans are better than this, baseline and novas, and it's time we starting using our minds for things other than killing each other."

She regarded Coraline for a moment and then asked tentatively, "You're Darrik's sister...you were raised by Shen as well, then?" There was something intense in the question, hidden in the depths of her verdant eyes.

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Coraline gave a grim 'we'll see' smile of her own. There needed to be some bloodshed to get Aeon and Proteus to leave Novas alone, but a massacre by eiether side was the last thing anyone needed.

"After my parents died protecting me, yes. He found me and raised me and taught me what I needed to grow beyond the terrified victim I was. I owe him the best I can do for myself and others," the young metamorph happily replied save for her own shadow of concern in her gaze. She had a possible time table to worry about, every tick of the universe driving her forward towards the end of the year, much as she tried not to think about it. Uncle Shen would *not* die on her watch. Not unless she was spent and broken herself when it happened.

She waited for the potential trap at the end of Sakura's statement to trigger, curious at the intensity behind the older Nova's question.

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She didn't say anything for several moments and then collected herself enough to murmur, "I see." Whatever reason she had had for asking the question and whatever Coraline's answer meant to her were both kept locked away behind a carefully neutral expression.

Silence stretched again, the warmth of the sun and sounds of birdsong filling in the lull of conversation. Finally Sakura pulled herself out of her thoughts and smiled at Coraline, but there was a tension to her look that hadn't been there before. "Well, how would you like to procede from here? In testing out whether you can create fertility in sterile people."

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"Sterile Novas. Sure as I am of anything about this, I think they have to have an active node to power most of the important changes, quantum improvements not just physical designs I adapt from nature. I may be wrong though. As to how... Find a safe volunteer, gift them the changes, let them go do what is needed, and then see what happens to the child once I relax my node," Coraline answered simply, more concerned about what Sakura wasn't saying. No one was *that* nuetral after being *that* interested in asking a question unless they had serious problems.

"If you don't mind me asking, did you know Uncle Shen before?"

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There was a stretch of silence again as Sakura struggled with her emotions, though to all outward appearances she seemed simply to be watching the garden. "Yes an no. My mother left me with him when I was little. She was supposed to come back, but didn't. So Shen found other people to take me in." The words were carefully chosen and as emotionally neutral as she could keep them, but she did glance at Coraline, a quick appraising look that was unguarded enough that Coraline could easily read the question: Why did he keep you and not me?

She moved on, or at least tried to move the conversation on, "Well, there are many novas in the Congo. I doubt it would be difficult to find a sterile one that wishes to be a parent. Perhaps if we asked Esperance, she could make some quiet inquiries to find us a willing candidate without putting your identity at risk? Or I could ask Chang or Jason if they know of someone suitable and willing."

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Coraline's look back, concerned and sympathetic, said just as clearly, 'I will ask him why next time I see him.'

And then she let the issue go, moving on.

"Esperance is King Einherjar's aide, right? Yeah, that could work and the parents would be as safe here as anywhere. At least for now," the young metamorph answered, wondering how the coming war might change that before shaking the thought away and chewing on a sweet to distract herself, the flavor adding to the flood of information she was passively filtering in from the garden and people around her.

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  • 2 weeks later...

The two nova's discussed the matter for a while, then went to speak with Esperance, who directed them to Dr. Anders, the director of Congo's R&D division, not to mention one of the women more or less enamored of the king. Of course, Carla controlled it a lot better then some of the woman who threw themselves into the Storm King's bed, but she was clearly sterile and knew it, so she was interested in the idea that Cora and Sakura had to bring to her. Of course, upon meeting Sakura for the first time, with the beauty of both nova women side be side, she was momentarily overwhelmed..

Still, Carla Hope Anders was one of the worlds smartest women, she might not be within Alexandra's league, but within moments of speaking with her, it was clear she was extremely capable mentally, and she made time for them soon enough to talk and consider the options, but she was definitely agreeable to them. It was also clear to someone with Cora's degree of mega perception, that she was utterly devoid of taint, which for someone of her intelligence, had to be a mix of deliberate choice and luck.. though the rumor was that Carla tended to be superhumanly lucky anyway.

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Sakura smiled, pleased as always to feel useful and to help another. "Well, do you know who you would like to be the father of the child? In order to test Coraline's capabilities, I will only be using my own abilities to check on the health of the child once Coraline ceases to maintain your fertility, so this will require the...original...method of conception."

Carla thought for several moments, then sighed very softly and nodded. "Kendrick. He's an old friend and will understand."

"Alright, then our next step is to contact him, ensure that he is fertile or that we will need to make him so, and then...."

Carla blushed and Sakura hid a giggle in her grin. They contacted Kendrick, another Palace staffer, and met with him over lunch to explain the situation; after a moment of shock, the coal-skinned man agreed. He shook his head in bemusement and commented in his African-spiced French, "This has to be the strangest proposition I've ever gotten. But, ah, Carla, you and I, we will make a beautiful baby, no?"

Carla blushed again and two made "dinner plans" for the next several weeks. While they spoke and flirted, Sakura leaned over an quietly conferred with Coraline. "He is not fertile either. Do you wish to try to grant fertility to both of them, or would you prefer that I use my own gifts for him?"

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"I've got the reserves to maintain both of them, so I should do it. If this doesn't work then we try a mixed pair," Coraline replied, sober and serious and just a little bit nervous below her superhuman composure now they they were about to do this. She shook her head, took a deep breath, and walked over to Carla first, graceful and beautiful and with just a hint of the arcane.

"Give me your hand, Doctor Anders, and know that if this works, you hold my life in your hands as much as your child's," she exhaled, letting her node pulse once as she let her gift flow from her flesh and into the other woman's, grasping the essense of her flesh with the hands of an artist and taking one final look before twisting *there* and *there* and *there*.

[envoy] 10:59 pm: bodyshift on Doctor Anders last five mega.

envoy *rolls* 18d10: 1+3+6+7+1+10+2+6+4+3+7+8+10+6+5+5+4+10: 98

[envoy] 11:00 pm: eight successes, me thinks.

[envoy] 11:02 pm: that should be enough for Fertility II and two levels of accelerated gestation for her.

She took a step back, gaze taking in the changes she had made. That would work or it would not. And so she turned to the man, "And now you, Mr. Kendrik," her chorus intoned, reaching out to take his hand and being met half way.

"I trust you, Miss Boehm," he intoned in returned, earning a surprised blink of Coraline's eyes before she hit him, granting him the same gifts or at least trying.

envoy] 11:15 pm: bodyshift roll for mr. kendrik.

[envoy] 11:16 pm: last five mega

envoy *rolls* 13d10: 10+7+5+6+2+6+8+2+5+2+5+4+10: 72

[envoy] 11:18 pm: six successes towards ferility 2 and... yeah, accelerated gestation 1

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May 25th, 2027

Sakura had the two come back each day, just to check on them and to catch the (hopeful) pregnancy the day conception occurred. Thirteen days later, the Spring Goddess smiled at the two nascent parents and her new nova friend. "Congratulations, you two! You have a little boy...." she blinked and then frowned slightly, but kept her hold on Carla's hands steady. "Just a moment."

Carla's eyes widened in fear, "Is something wrong?" Not already! Please!

Sakura patted the woman's hands and shook her head, "Not wrong, there's just something a little strange. You weren't pregnant yesterday, but you're already almost a month along today. The baby, he's fine, perfectly healthy, just a month ahead of schedule....and he doesn't seem to be slowing down. At this rate, you'll be a mother by the middle of next week." She touched her own swollen belly, her tone light to try to calm Carla down, "Honestly, if that's how things turn out, I'm a little jealous."

Sakura glanced at Cora, one brow arched in an unspoken question, leaving the young nova conversational room to explain.

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"I did alter the speed of the pregnancy a little. To make sure the embryo had a chance to implant before I withdrew my energy from you, Doctor Anders," Coraline confessed, "After all, I don't know how the sterility cocktail interacts with a child. Wanted to give him every chance in the world if it's in my power to do so."

She smiled a bit tiredly, the last two weeks an exercise in subdued nervousness where she had meditated five hours a night instead of sleeping. The constant drain on her quantum batteries in and of itself was unpleasant. Releasing her hold on the man had been an act of relaxation.

"The pregnancy will slow down once I let go in any event. Much as I could push it even harder with a little luck. If I had a mind, I could easily become everything Aeon fears in a breeder nova... You ready to see what happens when I let go, Miss Sakura, Doctor Anders?"

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Sakura blinked at that. Speed up the pregnancy....? That sounds wonderful right now. Perhaps she and I should talk to her...later. Although, I'd like to see this pregnancy all the way through. Just once, maybe, but at least once.

"I'm ready. Carla, if anything starts to go wrong, we're both right here and will do everything we can to keep him and you safe." She left unsaid the sad possibility that could occur; with both her and Coraline there she was hopeful that even if the pregnancy started to fail once Coraline removed her quantum gifts.

Carla nodded nervously and Kendrik wrapped an arm around her, squeezing her shoulder for support. "Let's-let's get this over with."

Sakura kept hold of Carla's hand, to monitor the baby....and just in case.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Sakura kept her sense on the baby and her powers just a thought away as Coraline ceased supporting the parent's fertility. She felt the rate of the fetus' growth slow immediately, coming back to the normal growth rate in a matter of seconds. He was still stable, though; she could sense that Kendrik was again infertile, but Carla and the baby were now simply as mother and child would naturally be.

She smiled at Carla, "He's doing fine. He's slowed down, though, so you've got about eight more months before you get to meet him."

Carla threw her arms around Sakura in a tight hug, tears gathering at the corner of her eyes; then did the same to Coraline, whispering over and over, "Thank you, thank you."

She glanced at Coraline, giving her a nod of approval that her powers had worked and would provide everything necessary to ensure a pregnancy without having to maintain the effect for the full term. Once Carla had settled enough to pull back from Coraline, Sakura glanced between the two parents-in-waiting and asked, "Now, is there anything else you would like to do for him? He's perfectly healthy and a so far a fine mix between the two of you; I can provide certain traits for him, though, that increases his potentials and provides abilities such as breathing underwater and withstanding high pressure...."

She continued on very business-like, listing the advantages she could code into the newly forming nova's DNA and quantum signature; Coraline could tell that the conversation was almost rote for the flower-haired nova, though no less warm or caring for the repetition. It took a little over fifteen minutes for the parents to decide what further they wanted for the baby and only a few seconds for Sakura to make the necessary adjustments.

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While perfectly aware of the conversation among the many other things her senses were keeping track of around her and making apropriate social cues when the doctor expressed her thanks, Coraline was too elated to devote more than a fraction of her awareness to them. Success! One life given to start balancing out five lives she had taken away! Not something she could routinely do for now with so many other demands on her quantum, but something she could do. Something good and healing giving back what had been taken from all Novakind because a few greedy individuals were too stupid and blind with fear to think about what they were doing, listening to echoes of the future rather than news from the present.

The young metamorph wasn't entirely innocent of that behavior herself at the moment, but she could still be offended by it right?

She tried to not think about it too much while she waited for Sakura to finish her alterations and the new couple to leave, focus drifting out across the palace grounds and to the city beyond at the edge of her hearing. "So. Success," she ventured to the older Nova, chorous scattering ever so slightly in happiness, grin infectious, "How did you feel the first time you ever helped someone make a life? I'm jumping up and down inside in relief that it worked."

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The Blossom Princess blushed. "Um, well, honestly...I was propositioned. There was this...couple. Baselines. They'd been trying to have a child for over a decade, but there was something wrong. They could conceive, but she always miscarried right before entering her second trimester." Her emerald eyes turned soft and sad at the memory of the woman's pain. "It was a genetic defect and the couple lived in a small village just inside the deeps of the African jungle. I think it was technically in the Central African Republic, not that the villagers seemed to care. Perhaps they didn't know, I never asked. They, the couple, thought I was a spirit, a goddess of the forest. They came upon me while I was...while I looked a little different than I do now. They left gifts, the fruits of their hunting and gathering of the past several days, at my feat and prayed."

She shook her head, a small smile playing on her lips. "I had no idea what they were going on about or why they were leaving their food with me, so I tried to give it back. The woman, she burst into to tears and the man looked...he looked like he was waiting to be harmed somehow. I managed to get across the question of where they lived and they took me there, both looking grim and sad. Luckily, there was an anthropologist and a team of botanists staying with the village and I managed to get a translation, both of words and of culture, of what the couple wanted." She shrugged, "It was easy enough to do, for me. I didn't really think about it until the rest of the village started coming out of their huts and the edges of the village. They'd fled when they saw me, not sure what kind of creature or god I was."

Her eyes were sad again and she spoke with a quiet gravity, "There were maybe three hundred souls there, and most of them were...hurt? That's not quite the right word. They would have died out in a couple of generations without a large influx of new genetic material. The defect that Inari had, it was a recessive gene that nearly every person in the village had. There were other defects as well. Blood diseases, parasites, a bone distortion that gave that village and about a dozen others a distinct ridge along their arms and legs, which rubbed on the cartilage and usually led to premature arthritis. Their average lifespan was forty years, where it had been seventy a century ago. They were dying. That's why the anthropologist was there, to try to capture as much of their culture as she could before they were gone."

Her lips pressed into an annoyed, thin line. "Her grant money could have been spent on a nova healer or even a team of baseline doctors to actually help them, but that was 'against her code of non-interference in aboriginal cultures' or some stupid reasoning like that. In the end, studying a dying people got her academic credentials and a lucrative book deal. Healing them would have gotten her the thanks of villages that measure wealth in community and goods hand-made for their benefactor. Not nearly as lucrative as book sales." Her tone was sharp and angry, the smell of cherry blossoms burning wafting from her. "I do not understand how people can be so callous, no matter how often I've seen it."

"I healed them, corrected the genetic defects and gave them traits that would help ensure long and healthy lives and children and grandchildren to carry on their traditions and bloodlines." Her smile returned, and the smell of sweet cherry blossoms with it. "They appreciated the gills especially. Said it made fishing much easier and that they wouldn't lose any more children to drowning in the lake that the ring of villages was on the shore of. Between that and making their bodies simply much more efficient, they are able to spend less time gathering food and more time celebrating their lives and raising their children. I stayed there for nearly four months. It was quite pleasant." She looked at Coraline and shrugged, "But different for me than you. It wasn't until I saw everything fit together, more than children and pregnancies, but an entire culture, a whole people given new life, that I felt elation and a sense of what my place in the world was."

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The story bothered Coraline, dampening her smile. She'd meditate on it, the paradox of human nature.

"Uncle Shen told me recently that we can only save the world one person at a time, and only that by caring about enough individuals we can make the world better for everyone. So that's what I'm trying, Miss Sakura. The best I can do for myself and those I can protect," she volunteered before gesturing at the older nova's gravid belly, "Would you like me to cut a little bit of time from your own pregnancy? It's the least I owe you for helping me realize what I can do with my own Node to help others like this."

The smile returned to full brightness, a flare of relief and graditude to her almost step-sister.

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She smiled at the offer and sighed, staring at her belly. "That's real tempting, but y'know, I think I want to go through the whole thing at least once. I would like to learn how you do that, though. It's a wonderful power, and could help novas especially get through pregnancy safely by simply cutting off most of the time actually spent pregnant."

She tilted her head, looking thoughtful. "Would you mind experimenting with me? We can see if your power extends to plants or even animals and I could see if I can pick up how you do it. I can grow plants and animals to maturity, but with animals I can only do that after they've been born." She hesitated, but pushed through her negative emotions and reticence, "And, do you think you could get a message to Shen for me? Just a request to meet with him sometime soon, if he's...if he will."

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"I I can gift strictly humans, I think. When I 'push' with my Node that way, nothing else... 'hums' the way humans do, seems ready to respond to my touch. But I'll be glad to spare a few hours here and there when I have the time, Sakura. Always glad to learn," the young metamorph ventured before turning more serious as the topic turned to the minefield of Uncle Shen.

"I can't promise that Uncle Shen'll see you before at least a month passes. He's busy training my sister in a secluded location," she apoligized, "But I will pass him the message. I can't imagine he'd refuse to see you with all the help you've been doing."

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Sakura nodded, her eyes hooded with private emotions again. "Thank you. Both for your time and for speaking to Shen for me." Sakura smiled again, "Why don't I call for lunch and we can go over the details while eat?"

The young metamorph returned the smile and nodded. Lunch was called for, and arrived in style and nova proportions. The two ate and planned for several hours before they made their goodbyes, with firm commitments for later days to experiment and teach and learn from each other.

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