An alert goes out on her personal feed, automatically bringing up a window on her visor. 

missed-the-sun: Uh, boss, there's something here you might wanna take a look at

sensor data

 Concerned, she stares at the attachment for a moment, willing it open. 

And then she stares some more. 

"Caine," she says calmly, "I need you to collect G and Xandro for me. We have something of an emergency on our hands."   

He looks up from his book, expression turning blank for a moment at her tone before relaxing again.

"Sure thing," he agrees easily, dropping the book on the table next to her couch and rolling to his feet. He lopes out the door, heading towards the Vongola siblings' warded rooms.    

Aria watches him leave, simultaneously messaging several dozen of her agents, ordering them to lock down on the sensor information on the ships they reside on. They need the Black Lily to be the only ship which learns of this discovery, for as long as possible. 

She does not want this unknown ship's first interaction with the Titan Fleet to be Roberto Vongola's demands for surrender.

The Aureolin Marsh is one of the few dozen smaller ships of its fleet, old and rugged and proud.  It is also currently alone. 

The brief separation of it from its usual docking to the Tower of Autumn was only meant to last until the docking systems were overhauled.  Maybe 8 hours. After they wound up falling into that spatial anomaly, that estimate is going to shoot up dramatically.  By the shift in the stars, they've been teleported several light years away at least.  

Not so alone as all that. 

A small ship approaches quite quickly. It's more of a shuttle, really, shaped like a flattened oval with long, thin wings. It pauses a distance away from the Aureolin Marsh for a long moment, and then attempts to hail them over all the frequencies they have access to. 

They get the hail, and hail back on one of the frequencies.  

Inside, the mayor is frantically scrambling, trying to figure out how contact with aliens should go.  Meanwhile, the ship's pilot is making sure the guards and peacekeepers are ready.  There's a chance that they were brought here for unfriendly reasons.

There's a Legendary onboard, and she's summoned to the bridge.  So too come a pair of scions of the Oak family - nobility from the old world.  

The image which comes up on the viewscreen is surprisingly non-alien, given how far they are from home! The person looks human. 

"Greetings, I am Commander G, of the city-ship Black Lily of the Titan Fleet," she says. "We come in peace," she adds, tone slightly amused. She expects there might be some trouble with language until they can get some rudimentary machine translation working, or else meet the residents of the ship in person, but it doesn't hurt to be friendly in the meantime. 

They do look very similar.  That their daémon isn't on screen is somewhat unnerving.  Just what sort of person are they? 

The mayor is an older man with a large mustache, his clefairy daémon on a pedestal beside him.  "I am Mayor Saffron, and this ship is Aureolin Marsh," the mayor says.  This would be easier if they were in range of the psychic daémons.  He takes a deep breath to compose himself, then continues.  "We were just separated from the rest of our own fleet, when our ship accidentally hit some form of wormhole."

Humans! Well now, that is... unexpected. Working with at least one other possibly intelligent species, it looks like, given the unfamiliar being standing next to the person on the screen. The language is unfamiliar, however. She glances off to the side, at someone offscreen. 

"We're working on it, sir," a voice calls back. 

She nods, "See if you can send the language package in the meantime, if our systems are compatible enough for it."

"We can try, sir, but they don't seem to be using their ship soul to host a flamenet - their systems seem to be entirely non-flametech based."

"Really? Interesting. Can you put something simpler together to send over this frequency?"

"Yes sir," they agree, "Already on it." 

She turns back to the screen while the tech does that, "Please stand by," she offers the other ship's representative(s?), "We are going to try to send over some information on our language, hopefully we will be able to discuss meeting in person afterwards, so that we can exchange languages more fully."

The ship is set up to listen and record anything they can from the encounter.  They are something of a rustic small town, as ships go, and their computer systems are rudimentary compared to the four Main Ships.  Once something that is possibly a language is sent, they can send their own back.  Hopefully at least one of them will be able to decode the others.  

Language packages are sent and received. The techs onboard the Sparrow do their best to decode the one received from the strange ship. Eventually they manage to put together a temporary written translation program to add to their visors and send to the other ship. They'll be able to build a more sophisticated one once they have access to both a mist copy of the language and the computers aboard the Lily. 

G looks over the transcript and nods, turning back to the screen. She keeps part of her attention on the half-visor covering her right eye as she speaks, "We have a temporary translation solution," she says, and then pauses while the translation is sent to the Aureolin Marsh. 

"I am Commander G of the Black Lily, a city-ship of the Titan Fleet," she repeats, "I'm afraid we don't know anything about what might have caused that wormhole. We detected your ship's appearance through it and came to investigate. Do you require assistance, first of all?" They only have the resources on this ship at the moment, but that includes a small crew of combat trained flame actives and a flame doctor, and they can call for more aid from the Lily if necessary. 

Oh, good - their machines are still analyzing the information.  

"Nothing was damaged in the trip."  

Their ship was originally meant to be self-sufficient, though in the 200 years since the fleet left their dying universe the ships became more specialized.  Now Aureolin Marsh has mostly food production and mud-making - something appropriate to a small town as the ancient traditions passed down from their old world claimed.  Good for short-term survival, but eventually something will wear out that they can't repair.  

"I'm glad to hear that. We would like to arrange a face-to-face meeting, if you don't mind, to allow better communications. We would prefer not to lead you back to our fleet before we are more certain that your intentions are benign." She would actually prefer not to lead them back to the fleet at all, but now that they each know the other exists it's going to happen at some point. Best to mitigate the damage. 

"Yes, getting in range of each other's psychic-type daémons would be better, however good a translation program."  The mayor is smiling, though the clefairy is showing his unease and glancing around the edges of the screen for an ear or tail of a hidden daémon.  

"Your ship will be able to fit into our hold, once we move the shuttles out."  He gives the orders to set that up, and sends the location of the shuttle bay.  Aureolin Marsh is vaguely hourglass shaped, and the airlock is in the back half of the front bulb portion.  

...Daémons? Hm, the translation program is having some trouble with that one. She glances back at the tech for clarification. They send a reply over their visor.

Station 3: No equivalent word. It has to do with souls, but we haven't been able to discern exactly how. Perhaps soul companions? 

She nods, turning back to the screen again, "My crew includes a pair of Mist users, trained in in-person translation and language transference. We are not sure what you mean by daémons?" 

Mist?  Maybe that's what they call psychic-types, and it isn't translating?  

"Daémons are our souls," the mayor says, gesturing to the clefairy.  Well, there were bound to be some translation issues.  

She blinks in surprise, taking in the other being on the screen anew. 

"Your souls manifest as other creatures?" She asks, confused. 

"Yes?  What do yours manifest as?"

She lifts a hand, producing a handful of orange-violet fire, which curls around her fingers like wisps of clinging smoke. 

"Soulfire," she says, "The manifestation of will and soul, the expression of our inner selves. The mark of a sentient being - even inactives have it, they just can't use it." 

Huh.  That seems strange and a little lonely, unless the fire can talk.  At least they probably aren't zombies.

"All people we know of have daémons, which settle in adolescence to one of several hundred forms based on personality and destiny.  Each has a unique set of skills, such as generating electricity or cooling things down.  Uh, I guess the one important thing that might be different is this - make sure not to touch a daémon that isn't yours."

The two shuttles previously in the shuttle bay are remotely piloted out of the ship and onto it, latching onto ridges in the side with their pairs of grabbing claws.  

"Interesting. We will be sure not to touch them, then. We do not have them - though active Lightnings and Rains are capable of electricity generation and cooling, respectively." 

"Perhaps we should continue this conversation in person, however." She nods to the Sparrow's pilot, "Take us in." 

The pilot does so, settling the shuttle inside the bay. After a moment, the middle of the ship slides open, allowing a pair of flamesuited soldiers to step out first, checking over the area for hostiles.

The purpose of things is recognizable, but the architecture is strange.  They are under different material constraints, too - the floor is lined with stone tiles, and much of the visible metal appears to be gold whenever the item doesn't demand a better material to function.  

Four people are in the welcoming party.  The mayor and his clefairy, followed by two women and a man who look around twenty years old.  Their daémons are a metang, suicune, and gallade, respectively.  All much larger species, though they don't appear to be there as guards.  They're dressed nicely, in outfits too different to be uniforms.

The soldiers will stay by the shuttle, then. 

Four people step out of it once they've received all-clear messages - the first is the Commander they spoke to over the view screens, followed by a young man in his late teens, a woman roughly the same age as the Commander, and a man perhaps a few years older. All four of them wear the same style of body-hugging armoured suit as the soldiers, but their headpieces only cover one eye, where the soldiers' cover their whole head. Another difference is in the colour - both the Commander and the younger man have orange lines extending from their mixed orange-and-violet and orange-and-red cores, their two companions wear indigo lines extending from their yellow-and-indigo and pure-indigo cores respectively, and the two soldiers have red and blue cores and lines. 

They come to a stop before the other party, all four bowing lightly from the waist in greeting.

The woman tilts her head to the side, her eyes beginning to lightly glow with indigo light.

"Mayor Saffron?" The Commander asks, the meaning of her words coming across perfectly clearly despite still sounding foreign. "It's good to speak face-to-face. These are Second Lieutenant Xan" she motions to the young man, "Robin Chiswick, Mist Guardian to Captain Ariana of the Black Lily," the woman, "And Lieutenant Arthur Randyll, my own Mist Officer," the older man. She eyes the daémons with some interest, but doesn't stare. 

This one does, though, watching the larger daémons out of the corner of his eye. 

They each return the bow, with varying degrees of skill.  "Yes, I'm Mayor Saffron and Oririserv," he greets, motioning to the clefairy riding on his shoulder, half hiding behind his head.  

"With me are the Legendary Verity-and-Araeneve, Alizara-and-Salanaya, and Azure-and-Florentho."  

The one with the gallade, Azure, steps out right next to the mayor.  His outfit looks messy, but in the same deliberate and fashionable sense as his 'windswept' hair, evoking the concept of worn while being brand new and perfectly clean. 

The gallade is hanging back but never getting more than a few feet from his person.  Florentho speaks in their minds, offering "I'm a psychic-type, and can step in for translation if you run out of stamina."  Knowing that Salanaya won't, he adds, "The metang is also psychic."

The metang's human looks remarkably similar to Azure, only with longer hair and feminine features.  She has a somewhat forced smile and is clearly feeling awkward about being part of the welcome party with her twin.  Metang Salanaya indeed fails to comment. 

Farthest back, Verity is both annoyed at this whole predicament and with being invited just because of her daémon's shape.  She watches Xan back.  

Araeneve is pacing nervously, ready to drag his person away if this turns dangerous.

Slightly amused smile, "My capacity is among the best in the fleet, but I appreciate the offer," she says.

"We can figure out a system for trading off on translation duty if we have more meetings that need it," Arthur puts in, shrugging. 

(Xan catches her watching and locks eyes, his own briefly gaining a red tint before he blinks it away. He nods.)

That is unnerving.  What did that nod mean?  Did he use some kind of magic, or are red eyes just another kind of gesture for people who can do that?  She frets, and also scoots closer to Alizara, then goes back to eyeing him warily, and glancing around at the other daémonless people.  

Araeneve moves closer to his person, standing on the opposite side from Alizara.  The back rank of the welcome party is now in a line.

"It's convenient not needing to worry about translation thanks to Floren, but I'm not attached to the idea of spending my time translating for others," Azure says.

"Perhaps now that we're able to communicate clearly, we can exchange information?"

There are a lot of things to talk about, and he's not sure where to start.  The beginning sounds logical.

"Our fleet originally came from a pocket universe, about 3 light-seconds across and running under different physics than this one. It was reaching the end of its life cycle, but the Legendaries of that time were able to keep it together long enough for us to build a series of large ships.  Four Grand Ships, and several smaller towns such as Aureolin Marsh.  We were then sent through a hole between dimensions, and have spent the last 200 years travelling through interstellar space towards the likeliest planet for terraforming they were able to find."

Well, now he knows she's not hostile, so he can mostly ignore her.

(It's strange to interact with people who don't know what it means when an active lets their eyes glow visibly instead of channeling any excess flame to their core - a polite way of telling the surrounding people that they're using flames for something internal.)

"I'm perfectly happy to keep translating," Robin assures him, before turning her attention to the Mayor.  

How interesting! They might be able to create a pocket dimension that large with their abilities and resources, if they stopped and focused on that alone for some time, but if these people know nothing about Flames it must have been done some other way. Something about 'Legendaries', perhaps - they wonder if Verity-and-Araeneve is (are?) one of these, or if the 'Legendary' descriptor meant something else in their case. 

"As far as we know this is our original universe," G offers in return, "We come from Earth - a planet within the second-nearest galaxy to our current position, which we call the Milky Way. Its relatively recent destruction was a long-delayed consequence of an experiment performed tens of thousands of years ago by a small group of Flame scientists belonging to a species which have since been wiped out, aside from their part-human descendants among our people. This was roughly 300 years ago. We have been traveling towards Andromeda - the nearest galaxy to our current position - ever since, on the prophetic advice of the Giglio Nero Oracle of the time. The Titan Fleet consists of three large City ships and fourteen smaller ones - the Sparrow shuttle we arrived on belongs to the Black Lily, which is one of the larger ships." 

"Do you know what you're expected to find in Andromeda?"

"No - Cielo Giglio Nero's sight was not clear on the matter. He only knew that our people would find the greatest success if we took that path, and that our own galaxy was filled with great danger." Or, at least, that was all he told the Admiral of the time. 

"Our foresight is either unreliable or vague past a certain point.  I'm not aware of any large prophecies we're being led by..."  he turns to look at Verity quizzically.  "Though I'm not an expert on theology.  Perhaps you have insight into the matter?"

She sighs.  "Theology is a waste of time.  Some small percentage of people get rare and unusually powerful daémons, and people think they're reincarnated from the first legendaries to lead them, even though we have no proof of reincarnation being a thing for anyone as far as I've seen.  And other various annoying things.  I doubt any prophecies the church has are any more accurate than the rest of what they say."

"Giglio Nero have the gift of prophecy - their accuracy has been proven extensively over the past few centuries."

She pauses.

"We don't have proof that reincarnation exists," she adds slowly, cautious about the topic of 'Theology', "But we do have strong suspicions. Recurring patterns, particularly obvious in the personalities within natural Flame sets - a set being a group made up of usually one person of each Flame type, tied together through Flame bonds. We do know that our souls return to the ship souls when we die - and given that your ship has one, it stands to reason that yours do as well." 

She glances at Verity in confusion.  Alizara never kept track of religion or found it especially plausible, either, but a legendary openly speaking against it is very strange.

"'Ship souls?'" Alizara asks, trying to work through the unfamiliar concepts.  "Do you mean that our ship has a daémon - or a soulfire?"

"Hm - any place which contains a large enough concentration of sentient souls over a long enough period of time will gain something of a soul of its own. It is not quite alive as we know it, however. More... a conglomerate of all the excess soul energy of all those beings tied to it." Planet-derived ship souls are different, of course, but those differences aren't relevant at the moment. "They make for a good frame to tie down Flame techniques and technology which need to be lasting."

"The church has guesses about where souls go when the daémons vanish after a person dies, but nothing with evidence," Alizara says, picking her words carefully.  "Daémons have weight and are clearly solid when alive, but don't leave bodies," she adds, in case that wasn't clear.  

"We'd probably need to check records to see if there are any suspicious similarities between people of different generations.  I don't think anyone's tried looking for reincarnation in non-Legendaries.  As for those... out of about a million people in the fleet there are usually only 10 or so Legends at a time, out of the 68 Legendary forms.  They haven't been repeating in any patterns that I've been aware of, though I'm not caught up on their teachings either."

"There aren't any patterns," Verity confirms.  "There were two celebi in our history since the fleet started, but they didn't sound like the same person.  No more than two of any other daémon form do."

"Are daémon forms tied to personality? Soulfire is - those suspicious recurrences all have the same non-gift determined primaries. There are only seven types, however, far more limited in number than daémon forms, from the sound of it." 

"There's 478 first-stage forms a teenager's daémon can settle as, give or take some debated variants and a small percentage of people skipping directly to an evolved form.  Many of these have known evolutions, which occur as the person matures. 

"People who have the similar daémon forms tend to be similar, but it isn't enough to perfectly judge personality."

"Hm, there are two overarching stereotypes which apply to each flame type, and it's safe to assume that any person who acts like one of them will have that flame type. There are outliers, however, and gifts do muddle things somewhat - some families, such as the Giglio Nero, have unusual powers which require a certain flame type to use, and so they all have at least as much of that type as is needed to do so." 

"Should we be having this meeting out here in the shuttle bay?" He wonders idly. 

"Oh, I suppose not," the mayor says, once prompted.  "We have a meeting room not too far away that should work well for this.  Will you be needing any special accommodations or..." he isn't sure exactly what to offer.  

"If you are providing refreshments we will want to check them over before we eat. Even if we seem to be the same species, somehow, different soul manifestations aside, we could easily be incapable of digesting each others foods. Other than that, nothing comes to mind." 

"Of course.  Will you need them checked at your ship, or can you do it with your magic?"

She nods, "We are capable of checking ourselves, yes." Sky flames are useful in this area. 'Is this substance in Harmony with this person's body?' 

Then they can all start heading towards the meeting hall, the mayor typing on his phone as they walk, ordering the hall to be ready when they arrive.

The visitors will follow. G eyes the phone as they walk, recognizing it as something like a hand-held flame bracer. She wonders what these people use for power, without access to their soulfire. Perhaps electricity, as their ancestors on Earth did? It seems like a discussion for later, and one better left to those with more expertise in the subject, however. Sarah will certainly be interested.

"And here we are," he says after not too long.  The meeting hall's table can easily hold twice their number, and large stages are set to either side for the daemons to sit.  Mayor Saffron leads the group with daemons to one half of the table, and motions for the Titan Fleet group to take the other side. 

Daemons climb the stairs to that side's platform, clumping together in a huddle to have their own conversation. 

("I'm not sure about this," one whispers quietly, too low for a normal human to pick up from that distance.  "Not being able to speak to their souls.  We're only going to get half of a conversation this way."

"People have one-phone-set conversations all the time," whispers the gallade.

"Yeah, but not for something as important as this.")

In a large basket at the front of the table there are a few bottles each of several types of drink - iced tea, fruit juices, chilled spiced vegetable broth, and plenty of plain water.  Small snack foods were grabbed as well, and include biscuits, pastries, fruits, and candies.  Nothing appears to have meat or animal products in it.

The Titan Fleet group sits - or, most of them do. Xan pauses at the end of the table for a moment, producing a palmful of red-tinted orange flames which he runs over the food and drink. After a moment, he nods, "Looks good," he says. He takes two of the iced teas and a fruit juice, and then moves to take his own seat, passing the juice to Robin and the other tea to G. 

G is not a normal human. She is, strictly speaking, very impolite in that she is not eyeflashing all the time, given that she constantly cycles Cloud Flames to magnify her senses. She is used to ignoring private conversations, but this seems like an important thing to bring up.

"How much difficulty will our lack of daémons cause in establishing diplomatic relations?" She asks. "Soul-to-soul communication usually only occurs between bonded, among our people. It sounds as though it plays a significant part in your peoples' interactions, however." 

"Daemon conversation adds an extra layer onto communication, similar to body language and tone of voice.  We can get by without them - or in only uninflected text, for that matter - though we may need to clarify things explicitly that would otherwise go unsaid between humans."

"It'll be fine in this room, and between diplomats.  Regular citizens will probably be uncomfortable about the idea for a while.  

"On a possibly related subject, what sort of bond are you referring to?  I hope our daemons talking isn't coming across as lewd."

She nods in response to this explanation. 

"It does not," she reassures him, "I was referring to a sort of soulbond between individuals, which can occur so long as at least one person involved is active - capable of using their Flames. There are a few types, but all of them allow some amount of communication between the participants, silent to observers and from arbitrary distances. The bonded need not be involved in any particular kind of relationship, so long as they are close in some way. The title I referred to Ms Chiswick by, 'Mist Guardian', means she is bonded to a Sky, in her case the captain of our ship." 

"That's a relief," Mayor Saffron says.  "I suspect there will be many cultural differences, some related to daemons or different technology, some just from being other cultures.  Giving each other the benefit of the doubt does sound like the safest option.  Do let us know if anything seems confusing or likely unintended.

"Have you met others on your trip so far?"

"We will be sure to do so. We have not met anyone else, no. We have been moving near constantly since shortly after we set out, and meeting any other peoples' in the void between galaxies is... extremely unlikely. Frankly, the fact that we encountered you is mind-boggling." 

"It did seem unlikely.  And a group so similar other than soul shapes..."  Perhaps all of the sets of sci-fi entertainment which spent time making very inhuman puppets for the aliens were being less realistic than the ones that just gave human actors odd-colored wigs after all.

"Mm," she nods, "To business, though. I assume your goal is to return to your own fleet?" 

"Yes.  These smaller ships were originally designed to operate alone if necessary, but over time became more dependant on each other for efficiency.  We could survive for decades more alone, but are likely missing some kind of important manufacturing systems..." she trails off, looking at the mayor.  Her and Azure were only visiting this ship, and she doesn't have every production line for every ship memorized.

The mayor confirms this.  "We export food, cloth, and trace materials gathered from created mud, but are lacking electronics or metal production."

"Do you have any way of returning through your own technology or the abilities of your people?" 

"Not unless one of the ship's preteens happens to settle as a Palkia.  That's not very likely.  We haven't been able to figure out how far the anomaly threw us, either, though we'll probably get the information soon enough once the star charts are compared."

She sits back, considering. It sounds like this isn't going to be something which can be resolved quickly without the Admiral noticing. That being the case... She glances at Robin, who offers her a nod. 

"I believe it's in all our best interests if I am blunt about the situation you have been dropped into," she tells them, "So that we can determine what should be done about it from an equally informed footing."

"I represent an individual Captain, who would love nothing more than to extend a hand of friendship and cooperation to you," she says, "However, the leader of the fleet is something of a would-be-conqueror. He has been making military preparations for our entrance to the Andromeda galaxy for his entire reign, readying us to take by force whatever we can't take by being the first there. At the moment, we are doing the best we can to keep him and his loyalists unaware of the presence of your ship, but it's only a matter of time before the Captain's agents slip up. When they do, well. Roberto Vongola does not believe in diplomacy which doesn't result in an immediate surrender." 

"What would surrender mean, in more exact terms?"

"Giving him control over your ship, first of all, and your people and resources. Your agreement to follow his orders as the Captains of the other ships do - likely he would put one of his officers in charge here as well, in this case. He would want to understand daémons." She glances over at the platform where the daémons are settled, "Likely, he will want to train you for combat, given what you've mentioned of your capabilities, and he will almost certainly demand you allow your children to be activated so we can discover how the two manifestations interact. Flame activation is dangerous for adults," she adds, "Over the age of twenty-five, activation has a rising chance of killing the person activated. He would likely have your children tested for channeling capacity, and those with higher capacities between the ages of twelve and sixteen would be taken to learn at the academies on the other ships, while those between sixteen and twenty-five would be conscripted into training programs." 

"But he's not going to slaughter us all and take the ship for scrap?

"We would prefer not to be conquered, obviously.  We'd also rather avoid dying.  Even a victory can result in our deaths, if the ships take heavy enough damage or casualties."

Behind him, the gallade momentarily slips away and makes sure the doors are locked, this not being a good conversation for someone to walk in on.  Unlike the others, he's not constrained by distance.

"Is he the sort to lash out and murder large swaths of people after an unsuccessful assassination attempt?" Azure says, cutting immediately to the next most likely question.  Though, plausible deniability and possible recording devices being a thing, continues, "even without the approval of our current government.  There's likely to be someone liable to resist, no matter what this room decides."

"Of course," she agrees with Alizara, "No, he wouldn't kill anyone without being given a reason. That would be a waste of resources."

She nods at Azure, though, "In that case he would retaliate with targeted executions, I believe. His wife was assassinated when I was four - once he knew who had done it he had every person who could have possibly known about the plot over the age of twelve executed. It's likely he wouldn't take such a person being an independent actor as a reason not to retaliate against your leadership, or else those of your people effectively held hostage on our ships. It's unlikely that a person could assassinate him covertly," she adds, "He allows none but his bonded close enough to do so, and to kill him openly would invite retaliation from his supporters."

"I say we make a plan to fight.  If he does wind up being unreasonable and demand us to surrender, we can fake it and have a plan to take him out before he knows what we're capable of.  What are all of the things that your soulfire can do?  There might be things that our daemons can do that he won't have defences for."

"Would activating be possible at all?  We seem to have very different souls."