"When the two angels are joined and the third angel is born," says the radio, "the hosts of Heaven will descend and we will bask in their glory. Heed the words of Missionary Michael and Father William."

"Turn it off," demands Morgan from the backseat, crankily. "I've heard enough of this garbage I hate it."

"It's all that's on any of these fucking channels!!! And sometimes they actually give weather reports, which we might just need."

"I am being tortured. This is torture. I am back on the table being experimented upon. I would rather die in a sandstorm than this."

"Fine, fine, but only because you're traumatized and won't stop using it as a gigantic bludgeon to make all of your problems go away."

Radio: off.

"But in other news, there really is a sandstorm on the way. Next time we find a good place to hole up we should."

And speaking of places to hole up, they can see a reasonable landmark in the distance, there. The metal skeleton of one of the crashed ships, or pieces of it put together by people decades past. Windmills dominate it, more of them than most villages and towns they pass through have, since usually there's no need for that much power generation with plants around.

A bit closer by, however, is the corpse of a worm—a normal-sized one, only about half again as large as their car—lying on the sand. What's curious about it is that there's no blood.

"Ughhh I do not want to get eaten by a worm again," sighs Yvette. "How accurate is your bullshit sandstorm sense, can we hole up elsewhere."

"Eh. Haven't died in a sandstorm yet, and I've mostly been walking this desert like a loon, so. Any. And probably not."

Yvette gives a loud unhappy sigh. "Fine, fine. Hopefully anyone here's friendly."

Zash seems—distracted. Not paying so much attention to what they're saying, eyes glued to the outpost in the distance, watching it like a hawk.

Yvette notices his distraction.

"Mm. Think the worm corpse is worth checking out for butchering?"

And buy time for Zash to finish eyeing the place they're planning to go to.

"Sure why not, I've probably eaten worse. Look at you, princess! Talking about maybe eating road kill!! We'll make a wastelander out of you yet."

She pulls up to the worm corpse and stops.

"Is that road kill? It sort of looks like... I dunno, it was hit with something smaller than a vehicle."

He wordlessly steps out of the car, eyes not leaving the town until he's close enough to the worm to be able to examine it. Then he frowns. "Looks like it was punched to death."

She also steps out of the car, because now she's curious. Well. Sort of.

"Punched. Uh. Are we sure we want to stop around these people?"

"What people?" calls Morgan, not getting out of the car. "I'm not seeing any. And no roadkill for you tonight, princess, that thing looks ancient and long picked clean."

"And yet my heart is not filled with warm fuzzies and glee." She steps next to Zash. "Hey. You okay?"

He blinks and then turns a smile to her. "Yeah. Peachy. Let's go to the town?"

Bullshit. She knows that smile. That's the 'I'm unhappy but I'm trying to pretend I'm not' smile.

"... Yeah. Let's."

"More like a town's skeleton. It looks dead even from here."

"Mm. Wind power fell out of favor as the duststorms settled down as more water actually entered the atmosphere. Solar or plant based is generally the way to go now, more reliable these days. So... hopefully they just moved to somewhere better. Higher ground, maybe."

This is her attempt to comfort Zash, because you see, she's starting to get an inkling of why he's so distant. He has probably been here before.

"That sandstorm not hitting here soon, then?"

"Ehhh. I'd give it by nightfall at the latest, but I've been wrong before."

"We could get a second opinion from the religion radio."

Morgan shudders.

"They've been going a while. The religious people, I mean. A hundred and fifty years at least."

"Yeah? They just as crazy then as they are now? Or has it evolved and become super crazy?"

By now, Yvette's started driving them to town. Or what's left of it, anyway. It looks... pretty dead, and like the windmills haven't moved in ages. Which: they probably haven't.

"Eh, don't know that I'd say the change was up, you know? Sideways crazy. Sometimes more, sometimes less, always weird."

"Bah. Hey, think they left any electronics? When the sandstorm hits, the windmills might get power, it'd be nice to have, like, amenities."

".... I wouldn't hold out hope even if they did. Windmills don't get power from sandstorms unless they're really high end, and the early ones weren't."

"What? Why not? It's like, premium wind time!!"

"I mean, I'm not an expert in wind power, but as I understand it, that's the problem. Dangerous for the windmills themselves to mill without ripping them apart, unless they're strong enough to take it. So to keep the whole thing from being ground to death and getting sand in all of the little crevices and breaking it forever..."

"Turn the whole thing off. Ugh."

"No wonder they've fallen into disuse. I guess that means this part of the desert probably didn't use to have that many sandstorms usually even relatively recently."

"That I couldn't tell you. We did not go over typical sandstorm paths in class, sorry. All I know is that it's changed a lot, over the time we've been here."

"Well, I guess there's no use speculating. We'll just stay here one night then move on."

"At least the buildings will have natural temperature regulation!" she says, brightly.

As usual Zash takes the vanguard, watching for any danger while they explore. Unlike Jeneora Rock, this town doesn't have anything pretending to be surrounding walls, and there isn't an obvious main gate to walk through, so he elects to go in through the closest gap in the buildings he can find.

The immediate impression they'll be able to get from this is that this place has been abandoned for quite a while. Several years, maybe even a couple of decades. But the mismatch between the apparent age of the settlement and the amount of sand that's accumulated does lend credence to Zash's theory that this place doesn't see sandstorms very often; if it did, the entire place would be one big pile of sand. As it is, the buildings are all pretty surrounded by it but the streets are still walkable and the amount of digging they'll need to do to access anywhere won't be too terrible.

"Definitely no locals, then. Shall we be proper explorers, or just pick out a house to hole up in?"

"That sounds like you're asking 'do you want to dig out a house filled with sand sooner or later.' And the answer is later. We can pick the best and biggest house to dig out if we do some wandering."

The side street they're in opens to an enormous central "street" that runs the length of the settlement. The metal arches that were presumably once part of a ship that was salvaged for parts meet in the middle, high above their heads, and the occasional massive windmills are spread along this open area. The buildings themselves are arranged close to where the arches meet the dirt, and it's obvious that they were also built out of salvaged metal from the ship, mismatched iron sheets and pipes meeting at the corners to make walls and doors and ladders.

One thing the buildings have in common, though, are these banners made of some kind of thick fabric that are usually hanging next to the doors and windows. Most of them have frayed to almost-nothing over the years, but a handful are intact enough that they can puzzle together their overall shape and design: a long brown-red rectangle with pairs of straight yellow-gold lines running along the edges, a thick red circle in the center surrounded by a thinner one framing a simplified picture of an eye, and straight lines coming from the circle in a design that's reminiscent of drawings of a sun, three pointing up, three down, one to the left, and one to the right.

At least one of the people in their little entourage will be familiar with this symbol.

"Ughhhhhhhh."

"... Even cloth is offensive if it's religious?"

"Yes. It's a little different from what I'm used to, but I kinda want to use all of these things for fire starter. But probably we should actually salvage the cloth for something. I guess even the scavengers didn't want religious icons or whatever."

"You could wrap your gun in one and give me back my blanket..."

"And here I thought you liked me. No, but I will take all of these down and dump them in a pile so I don't have to look at them. Eugh."

"I think they collectively call themselves the Church of Plants. They see plants as gods or angels or messengers. It's... not very surprising that your cult would be related." He walks over to one of the buildings and looks into it through the window.

This home looks like it was properly vacated; it's bare, but for furniture that looks like it wasn't worth the trouble of hauling away.

"Nope, but man is it irritating!"

Morgan will meanwhile be grabbing the religious iconography and dumping them in a great big pile of shame.

"Weird that they'd leave any cloth behind, honestly. I'd guess that with semi-reliable electricity this could have been a weaving town, but even if you lose your religion, cloth's kind of expensive. Or, well, was, it's less so now. It makes more sense to take it all with you and bleach it."

"Do you want to take all of the hella-old cloth and try to salvage it. Is that what you're proposing."

"No, not really. I'm not sure we have room for it, I don't know where I'd sell it, or if it'd really be worth all the trouble. And I bet they smell."

"You are right about that, princess," she confirms, and tosses another flag with extra prejudice.

"I think you got the answer you were looking for, then." Zash walks on a little bit more then—

—stops.

The wall of this next building has an enormous dent, like some very massive and durable animal came at it at maximum speed and headbutted it. A couple of pipes were destroyed or crushed beyond usability, and the structural integrity of the building is greatly compromised.

Zash looks down the road to the side and notes that there are other buildings that have been similarly damaged, including a couple that crumbled into heaps of scrap metal from the impact of whatever this was.

Yvette notices Zash's observation before Morgan does, what with how Morgan is on a crusade.

"..... Huh. That's concerning. Possibly the same thing that got the worm?"

"Some of this damage looks pretty old. Much older than the worm. I think... whatever did this may still be around."

"Like it's... what, holed up here and protecting the place, then coming online to punch anything that looks at it funny?"

"Maybe. But I would have expected us to have been attacked by now, if that were the case." He walks a bit further then looks to the sides at some other side streets. "...seems like it was following a specific path here. Those buildings are intact."

"Mmm. Probably we should not be causing any kind of fuss and dramatically tearing down signs of the local religion, then."

Morgan has, by this point, overheard them.

".... Ughhhhhhhh fine I'll put them back up."

Zash smiles. "I don't think that's necessary. Besides, at this point you've probably ripped more than a few of those and putting them back up will be a chore."

"It will absolutely be a chore. But I'd rather do a chore than have a fight, you know?"

His smile widens. "Yeah, ideally we won't."

"See! I'm being good and respecting the sanctity of life or whatever. So since I'm following your ideals, help me with my dumb chore that came about purely because I indulged in a childish tantrum."

Yvette snorts, but will in fact help attempt to put everything back the way they found it. (Ugh, they do smell.)

Sure, they can do that. It'll take longer than Morgan took to pull them down but the power of friendship makes it quicker than it would otherwise be.

The job they do is better than not having done it at all, but... probably any attempt to look like the town hasn't been disturbed at all is in vain. But they can at least pretend to have been respectful, now.

They pick a little nook of a house far away from the trail of destruction Zash found to dig out and prepare to hole up in.

On the horizon, there's a great brown fog, hinting at what's to come.

Once they're pretty set, though, Zash will go explore the trail of not-quite-destruction. Does anyone want to come with?

"I'm terribly curious but I acknowledge that I am delicate and squishy and so probably shouldn't," sighs Yvette.

"Sure, why not!"

It does seem like what or whoever did this was following a path. There are a couple of areas of more widespread destruction, including some buildings that seem like they were specifically targeted, often on the larger side, but otherwise it looks like they were going somewhere in particular.

"No plant at all, in this town. Just the windmills."

"Not a one. This... looks like it was someone with a grudge of some kind. Local who came back and took vengeance or something?"

"Pretty strong local, if so."

"And very, very big. Like, I could have done that, probably," she points at an imprint that looks like it was made by a large fist, "but I'm not that tall."

"Yeah."

The trail does, eventually, lead them somewhere: one house, not entirely destroyed but pretty interestingly so. The front wall seems like it crumbled from something or someone trying to get in and being far, far too large and durable to do so. They seem to then have tried to go through some other doors in there, specific ones, which greatly compromised the support of most of the house and brought the ceiling down in some places. But other places are relatively unscathed, so they found whatever they were looking for and then left.

They didn't stop at this building, as there's more destruction on ahead, but this seems like a pretty special place, relative to the rest of the destruction.

...Zash does not like this. At all. Into the house he goes.

"Zash, do we really want to poke the nest...?"

"Yes. If there's something here and poking it makes it violent I'd rather we be the ones to poke it than people less able to defend themselves."

She gives a heavy sigh, then does in fact unwrap her gun and head in after him.

"Fiiiiine."

Zash tries to be careful and slow; if whatever caused all this damage is here, he doesn't want to rush and accidentally provoke it/them. He starts examining the room itself for any clues to anything.

Morgan has a significantly harder time being sneaky, what with her gigantic laser gun, but she does her best. And, if nothing else, she's an extra set of hands to rifle through stuff.

There's a book, there, a Bible of the Church of Plants.

There's a picture under it which floats down to the floor as she disturbs it. It's an old picture, as old as everything else, the edges fraying, and one of its subjects is much much older than the settlement. Zash's grin is wide and happy and he's holding a baby with a big scar on its face, looking for all the world like a proud parent even though obviously the baby is not his.

Ah. Well. That does explain his weirdness around here, doesn't it.

It does not, however, bode well that this house with this picture of a person connected to Zash is the source of the probable nest of whatever monster-thing tore through this town.

She pockets the picture, because Zash might want it later. Or, uh, not. She's not sure.

Zash walks into the next room.

"ZASH THE STAMPEDE!"

He bolts out of the room followed by a towering hulk of muscle, some eleven feet tall, metal plates covering much of his skin and a strange mask/helmet covering the entirety of his head and projecting a strange holographic skull-like face onto a glass panel in front. Each of his arms is encased in a frankly insane gun even by Morgan's standards, and even as he chases after Zash and causes rather a lot of destruction he also shoots at a gatling gun pace.

Morgan carefully gets herself out of the path of destruction, and watches.

"Hey so I think he knows you!" calls Morgan, helpfully.

"Yeah I got that!"

"ZASH THE STAMPEDE!" the hulk repeats, his voice distorted and robotic through the mask as he runs after Zash into the distance.

Man, he is really hung up on Zash in particular, isn't he?

"I'm going to see if he'll pick a target besides you! Yooooohoooo, big guy!"

She rushes out onto the street and aims her gigantic gun. It's not a hard target, he is rather large. For Zash's delicate sensibilities, her lasers are on the lowest setting. They hurt and cause approximately a mild sunburn, but are not mortal without a whole lot of effort. Will painful laser blasts get the big guy to focus his anger on someone else?

He stops and turns around to look but when Morgan turns out to very definitely not be Zash the Stampede he resumes his chase... and stops again when he can't immediately find Zash.

(Because he hid behind a box.)

"Zash... the... Stampede?" says the giant, slowly, as he takes more steps forward to see if Zash will come out.

"Nope, not here, just me with my gigantic laser gun. You feelin' testy?"

He looks over his shoulder again and decides to start shooting her, since Zash the Stampede has vanished.

Fortunately, she was expecting something like this, so she is prepared to dodge. She even manages to avoid getting shot! Good for her.

"Are you really very sure I can't solve this with murder????" she yells, as she escapes behind a building. She already knows the answer, but really Zash.

"Yes, and furthermore what the fuck are you doing!!!" He's sure she can take being shot at. He's not sure she can take being riddled with bullets. He can.

"ZASH THE STAMPEDE!"

And now the chase is back on, as are the machine guns.

"Testing how angry and distractable he was! And the answers are very, and not very when it comes to you! Which I can work with!!"

Tiny vial of liquid: imbibed. She kind of wishes she had one of those smaller sets of laser guns, because it'd make this whole thing a hell of a lot easier, but she's done precision work with hers before. Since the big guy is so easily tracked and hyperfocused on Zash, it's really not difficult to ambush him from above and take out one of his machine guns. This does involve a bit of leaping down from above to land on his arm and get the right angle, and will predictably get her thrown off or shot or something, but eh. She's good. The machine gun is in fact shut down, which is the important part!

And it does, in fact, get her thrown clean off and down a whole street with enough force she hits the ground half a dozen times as she rolls before she comes to rest at a wall. Maybe a bit embedded into the wall.

"Are you fucking crazy—"

"ZASH THE STAMPEDE!" He had two guns, though, so he keeps shooting with the one he still has and chasing after Zash.

From the rubble, a voice calls:

"It's called helping, jackass!! I got one of his guns!!"

She drags herself out of the wall she's embedded in with a groan of pain, and then gets back to work. There's another gun to take out.

This one goes better than last time, which is to say, she barely even gets thrown clear. And then the big guy has no guns and has been reduced to being an entirely melee enemy.

...okay maybe she's more durable than he thought. Maybe he shouldn't be so worried. And she's being helpful, so... he supposes he'll keep leading the guy on a chase?

He's happy to oblige. Guns or no guns he still packs a mean punch and every single time he turns around a corner he causes some property damage just with his weight.

"Uhhhh going to see if I can break the helmet and if it'll make him less bonkers!!"

This is too delicate of work for her laser gun, so she will in fact just be handling this by punching it. Well, technically speaking, kicking. Same difference. The big guy's big dumb skull faceplate gets kicked in, and then actually when she's not dragging around her gigantic gun, she's acrobatic enough to leap away before any retaliation happens.

And they can see his face, then. There's a big scar on it.

"...Rollo—"

Zash's stride is broken enough that the man—Rollo—manages to put his hands on Zash and immediately slam him against a wall. "Zash! The! Stampede!" he cries as he slams Zash again and again and again with enough force that an unaugmented human would probably have turned to paste on the first hit.

"Rollo—" he tries, with the wind being smashed out of him every time. "Please, Rollo—do you—remember—you're—"

Oh, of course it's the kid from the picture. Of course. Why would it be anything else.

Unfortunately, now that Zash is being used as a bludgeon, he's no longer steering the big guy away from the part of the city all thinking parties would really prefer he avoided. That being where the squishy is. And also structural support. Also that. That's concerning and needs to stop as soon as possible.

"OI. BUCKET HANDS," she yells, and then Rollo gets hit with a bit-above-lowest-setting laser blast. Again, not at lethal levels, but she's got more of a feel for how much punishment this thing can take. Which is a lot. So she doesn't have to be quite so gentle. She needs to get him off Zash so Zash can please get back to steering this gigantic wrecking ball of a man away from their squishy.

Yeah he's not even looking at her. Just smash smash smash—except he did slow down when he heard his name.

"Rollo—I'm—sorry—"

At that he stops completely, staring at Zash, dumbfounded.

And now Zash had enough breath to say full sentences, even though he's still being squished against a wall. "I'm sorry... for taking... so long," he says, having trouble drawing in breath but trying his best. "But I'm back. I'm here... to fulfill my promise. I came back..."

But the town was never that sturdily constructed, and in fact it has taken more punishment than Zash himself.

Which means an uninvolved someone is in a bit of a pickle.

Let's see, stay in a house that is collapsing, versus not while a massive fight is going on, which one is least likely to result in dying horribly, uh which one which one...

The silence of the fight seals the deal for her and she can make a fucking break for it, thank you!

The man hears her, though, and turns to look at her as she exits the building.

Then he drops Zash and roars. "DOCTOOOOOOR!"

And he charges.

Squeak.

Well.

She told Zash which way she’d fall. Kid’s gloves come off.

This gun of hers does have much nastier settings than what she’d been using, and she has excellent aim.

"—no! Rollo!"

He's dead before he even hits the ground. Given his weight his momentum is still dangerous but it's a lot easier to dodge when he's just moving.

Yep out of the way she’s terrified but also totally fine!!!!

“Sorry,” sighs Morgan, who gets to wrapping her gun back up.

Zash runs after him—

—his brain catches up to him and he stops, halfway, to turn and look at Yvette as he realises what almost happened, all the blood draining from his face. "Y-Yvette?"

Almost got squished and is fully aware of this! She is wide eyed and terrified and physically unharmed!

“I-I-I’m sorry, the house was, I was worried it was going to collapse and I’d thought the fighting had stopped and, and.”

“She’s okay,” says Morgan, like someone who’s trying to be gentle but doesn’t… really know how.

...he needs to hug her. That. That is a thing that will be happening now because holy shit the thought of what just happened is kind of making him have a panic attack and he needs to reassure himself that she's alive.

(Unlike Rollo, who is dead.)

Yeah okay hug she is so up for being hugged right now!!!!

He winces, then, in pain, as he belatedly realises he... actually did not escape all of the bullets. Because he was shot at. By Rollo. Who is dead. And who almost killed Yvette.

He's kind of having too many overwhelmingly contradictory feelings, right now.

“Oh my god you are bleeding everywhere and full of holes,” says Yvette, when she notices. Which admittedly takes a while.

(Morgan, meanwhile, is prepping another house to use as a shelter. Because: yep that one was structurally unsound.

She also suspects that Zash does not super want to talk to her right now, so.)

When she lets go of the hug he just collapses. Not as in passes out, as in he falls onto the floor and leans forward to rest his head on his hands and... shiver and hyperventilate.

Rollo's dead. Rollo's dead because of him. Because they came here. Zash couldn't save him. And if they hadn't killed Rollo, he might have killed Yvette. Which is nearly unthinkable except Zash has a century and a half of thinking the unthinkable so he's thinking it. That panic attack is coming right up.

Oh shit, oh shit, um, okay, um. He doesn't precisely need medical attention because he's immortal, he'll be fine, but probably it'd be more comfortable if he has it. Either way they should probably be getting to some kind of shelter soonish because the wind is already starting to pick up a bit and she suspects they don't have very long before the sandstorm is properly upon them. But the house she was in was structurally unsound, so, probably she should go find another one but he's right there and bleeding and clearly having some kind of a panic attack and. And.

"C'mon. This way. I've got him," sighs Morgan. Zash can get carried off to the replacement shelter Morgan's made ready in record time.

"...Rollo..." is what he can say between sharp intakes of breath, turning to look in the direction they came from.

"I'll bury him just as soon as I've got you two squared away. I was the one who did it, blame me."

And then Zash is deposited inside their new shelter, and Morgan goes back out into the growing storm. To transfer over some of their supplies, actually, not to bury Rollo, but still.

Yvette, will. Um. Attempt to care for a Zash who is very clearly out of commission. And also still bleeding. She would like to work to make him stop doing that, it's alarming and also getting everywhere.

He seems to not really want to help her with that, what with how he's now hugging his legs close to his body and how that's kind of making the bleeding worse.

Her attempt to care for his injuries fails from a mix of an uncooperative subject and the knowledge that he's probably been through worse, so, um. ... Instead she will just hug him, how about. It seems like he needs that more.

He's kind of failing to completely control his leaking, here, even though he very clearly is trying. She gets glimpses of his emotions and occasionally thoughts, and it seems like he's going in circles. He feels the pain of the bullets, which were because of Rollo (and every mention of Rollo in his feelings is seeped in regret), who is dead now, because he almost killed Yvette (feelings of relief), who is hugging him (feelings of longing), and that makes him hurt, because of the bullets, which...

Well then she will just gently hold him and pet his hair and, um. Hum him a lullaby? Will that help at all??

(Morgan has by now moved all of their supplies over, and the sandstorm is properly upon them. She will bury Rollo later, when her skin won't get sandblasted, thank you.

She closes the door and covers all the holes with recently re-salvaged religious iconography to prevent any sand from leaking in, and then sits down in a far off corner and gets to caring for her gun. Which has gotten sand in many places despite the wrapping, mostly on account of the violence.)

It mostly works, yeah. It tugs at his consciousness and starts fraying the edges of the cycle, which lets him start to break out of it. What happens then is less clear because, being out of the cycle, he realises how much he's leaking and clamps down on his feelings altogether. His eyes refocus on her and he notices that "I bled all over your white clothes."

"Probably for the best! Doctor asshole wears a lotta white, too, pretty sure it's what caused the freakout!" calls Morgan, from her perch.

"... It's fine. I don't mind. Um. But would you perhaps like to stop bleeding now."

Rollo isn't bleeding anymore, because he's dead...

"I don't think I can, while the bullets are still there."

"Yes, you dork, I wasn't telling you to use your bullshit powers to just literally stop bleeding, I was telling you to please let me help you do that," she sighs. "C'mon. Let me see. There's a pair of tweezers in the basic med kit I've got."

Which she had gotten out and then totally failed to use because Zash was having a meltdown and needed hugs more.

"Oh," he says, inanely.

So he takes his jacket off—it, too, is covered in blood—and then his shirt, and...

"Covered in scars" doesn't begin to describe it. There are patches of his skin that have a strange leathery growth, there are metal plates in various places, he's almost patchwork. The edge of his upper bicep, from where his arm was cut off, ends in a clean flat metal disc that he uses to attach his metal arm to, though the arm itself is also now off.

And of course, there are the bullet holes. Blood oozes out, slowly, much more slowly than it would in a human, but of course he's not human.

"Oh. I'm sorry, this is embarrassing..."

"Oh, hush. None of that. Try to hold still, this'll probably hurt, because I am so incredibly not qualified..."

And then she can start digging them out. She doesn't have any kind of control over the feelings she leaks to him while she does it, because she is not a bullshit human-plant hybrid, but. She feels awful and like this is somehow all her fault and that, furthermore, she wants to hug him and keep him safe forever.

But all she can really do is get the bullets out of him, so. She does that.

He barely winces when she does that, but it's mostly out of self-control.

There aren't that many bullets. A couple went clean through, and a couple were glancing hits. She only has to fish four out of his torso and one out of his thigh and then he's alright, for some value of "alright" that has to be stretched beyond recognition to cover Zash the Stampede.

"Thank you."

"Of course."

And then it can be back to hug time. She does not give him time to get his shirt or arm back on, she just. She needs to hug him, okay.

"Is it pointless to try to bandage you, or...?"

"It... helps the blood not get anywhere new. But..." He gestures.

The holes of the bullets that went clean through aren't bleeding at all, and the ones Yvette was just messing with are doing so only very very slowly.

"So you will not be escaping from hug time, then," she agrees, almost brightly.

(She is STILL HERE, GUYS.)

"I don't want to bleed all over you any more than I already have..." Not that he's, you know. Doing anything to cease hugging.

"Bleach is cheap. And these clothes are a lost cause anyway."

... Sniffle.

"Okay. Thanks."

"Least I could do. Um. ... Sorry. I'm sorry. I. Guess you were probably right about me following you."

"...what?"

Because that sounded an awful lot like she's saying she's going away and he does not want to contemplate that right now.

"I-I mean I, am, absolutely just a squishy human and I'm so sorry I got in the way and, caused..."

At that, Morgan abruptly stands up from where she had been sitting. This new shelter? Way too fucking small for this nonsense. She will take being sandblasted. It is better than this.

"I was the one who shot the guy," she sighs, irritated, searching through her clothes for where she put the picture she found. "Will you two stop falling over yourselves to find every goddamned excuse to play sad martyr and just, just fucking. Ugh. Here."

Picture. Zash-wards. And then she's LEAVING because AUGH.

Oh. That picture. He'd—forgotten they'd taken that picture. "Thank you," he calls after Morgan but it's too late, she's gone. He looks back down at the picture then at Yvette. "Let's put a moratorium on self-flagellation, for the moment."

... Sniffle.

"Easier said than done. Um. You knew him, right? Do you want to talk about him?"

He shrugs a bit, still looking at the picture. "There isn't much. I was here when he was born... It was a windless day and they had no power. I helped his mom deliver him. And then... years later I visited again and found out he had a congenital illness. He said he'd die before he grew old, because of the illness.

"He said that maybe if he believed in God enough he'd have been saved but he didn't."

Fortunately, she is already hugging him, so she can just hug him some more.

“Oh,” she says, because that’s horrific and awful and sad and almost certainly completely preventable with proper medical technology. Which they didn’t have.

"There's medicine that could manage his illness... I found some, and I came back, but the people from the town were all gone. I thought... maybe they'd have gone somewhere better. But I guess that was naive of me."

“… sounds like another ‘doctor’ got there first,” she murmurs.

"Yeah. Seems like it.

"And I guess Rollo blamed me for it. I... I told him..." He closes his eyes and leans on her. "I told him if God wouldn't protect him, I would."

Well. There’s nothing that she can really say to that, is there.

She nestles against him and reaches up to pet his hair.

It's matted with dust and sweat, like most of the rest of him.

"I... kind of wish he'd died young instead. Of this."

That’s okay, the point is to comfort him.

“It would have been kinder,” she agrees, softly. “Goddamned machine guns for hands, what kind of lunatic does that?”

"I have to assume that came—after. Whatever it is Dr. Conrad did. Same way Morgan's cult came after."

“Ugh. And then after being used as someone’s weapon he eventually… Came home.” Leaaaaan, pet pet pet.

"Yeah." He sighs. "...I hope Morgan's okay."

“Yeah. Um. We might owe her an apology for being the adults and then shutting down, huh. Or at least a thank you.”

"That hasn't happened since the time with Tesla. With me. I'm not sure what was up with that. But yeah."

“I’ve ruined you, you’ve caught the city slicker bug and now you’re going to be terrible in all emergencies for the foreseeable future,” she jokes.

"I don't know, you seemed pretty competent with the 'Zash is suddenly unexpectedly out of commission' emergency."

“Debatable,” she sighs. “But yes, yes, fine, no self deprecating humor while we’re both… not okay.”

"I think I would've been fine if there had been another emergency. Wouldn't have given me enough time to think."

“Oh no, something else wasn’t going wrong and other people were handling what was happening right then? … fuck, that’s exactly what happened, isn’t it.”

"Yeah. Guess it is."

Guess he felt safe enough to allow himself to have these thoughts and feelings. Now that's novel.

What a telling state of affairs that belies how incredibly lonely he is.

She doesn’t say that, in favor of just hugging him, but, well. He is psychic, isn’t he.

He is but it's rude to comment on people's surface thoughts and feelings so he doesn't. The hugs are nice, though, even if he's feeling kind of bad about all the blood and about being a patchwork creature with constant reminders of all the times he failed spread all over his skin.

He’s stopped leaking his own emotions, so she doesn’t get the particulars of what he’s feeling. She kind of misses it and wants him back, but, well, that’s not her right to ask, is it. He can keep his own feelings to himself if he really wants to.

She’s not, though. Her heart is open to him and she’s as easy to read as a book, easier than most humans. She wants to comfort him, wants to help him, wants to have his back and defend him where she can. Wants to get out of his way when she can’t. It’s not hard to tell that she’s very irritated by being the squishy non-combatant in a world of violence, but mostly because it means that if something is going wrong she can’t help.

All of that makes it even more important that he keep his feelings to himself specifically because he wants to open up so much. Therein lies danger. He doesn't want to like her more, and definitely doesn't want her to like him more. Therein lies a lot of danger. He is still planning to figure out a way to ditch her after they take the sand steamer in Terminal and she's back at civilisation. If he doesn't, she might still stick with him, and therein lies far, far too much danger—and not just, or mainly, to him.

...he can let her know a little bit that he's thankful for her worry but he'll be fine. He fully believes he'll be fine, as fine as he ever is, because he always has to be. There's not an alternative; if nothing else, he has forever to become fine, no matter what happens.

"Kinda wish we'd found better shelter than here."

“Yeah. I think Morgan did just drag us into the most convenient shelter replacement instead of, you know. Shopping around. Couldn’t you have waited until after the sandstorm to go poking around? The first place was pretty nice. Multiple rooms and everything.”

"Sorry. In my defence, 'that place specifically got turned to rubble' was wildly unlucky." Or maybe just his fault. He had been trying to lead Rollo through the narrow roads between buildings to get some reprieve from being shot at by turning around corners and hiding, but probably he should've just gone into the central open space of the town. He'd have had more holes in him but at least Rollo would still be alive.

...no self-flagellation. Leave that for later.

She sighs, and now she feels bad for offering criticism while he’s… not okay. Sorry, her very open heart whispers.

“Yeah. It was.” Huuuuuug.

He's okay. He's gonna be okay.

...does he send this...

...yeah.

He's gonna be okay, sooner than otherwise in large part because he's being hugged by someone he likes and trusts. She's helping.

Oh, good. Then she’ll keep snuggling him for the foreseeable future.

The sandstorm continues well into the night, long enough that there's not really any reasonable way for them (mostly Yvette) to just wait it out awake. They chat in subdued tones about other things than what happened today—Yvette talks a bit about details of her research, Zash tells her happier stories about his life because he has, actually, had many happy days in his life—and eventually drift off to sleep.

If Zash had been more in possession of his wits he'd have realised why this is a bad idea.

"You said you'd protect me," says a child—or a baby—or a large creature with guns for arms. Rollo's shape changes indistinctly, but the scar on his face and his accusatory eyes remain. "You said if God couldn't protect me, you would."

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, Rollo. I, I know I don't deserve your forgiveness, and I don't ask it. But I wish... things had been different. It's my fault."

"If wishes were fishes we'd never go hungry," says someone, a man Zash met decades ago, who liked that phrase since he'd read in a book from Old Earth somewhere. He didn't know what fishes were, but they sounded delicious.

"I'm sorry. We don't know what we're doing. Please, forgive us... Forgive humanity."

"No," says Nai, before cutting Conrad's head off with a single stroke.

His head turns into Rem Saverem's head, lying on the ground of the arcology of the ship. "I'll always love you."

"Rem... please forgive me..."

"I couldn't stop him. Couldn't save you, couldn't save anyone..."

"It's about time you leave," says Rosa, holding her bloodied son, his arm missing from where it was crushed by a falling building and had to be cut off.

    "Just leave," agrees Elliott's corpse from where it's being buried nearby.

[Come to me, Zash. You know where I am. I love you. I've always loved you, and I always will.]

"Keeping people in cages isn't love, Nai!"

"And what is?"

An image of Yvette, hugging him in the middle of a sandstorm.

"—witch!"

And he cuts her head off, too.

"Yvette!" he screams, sitting bolt upright, gasping for air rapidly and raggedly, a wild look in his eyes and sweat covering his body.

She'd been partially woken up earlier, confused and a little alarmed at why comfy snuggle time had involved such upsetting emotions bleeding into her during the night. It hadn't been clear if they were hers or not, but as she woke up it became more and more obvious the source was external. She realizes the culprit abruptly, when he awakens screaming.

"Zash," she says softly, reaching out to hold him. "Zash sweetie, it was a nightmare. It's okay. I'm okay."

He doesn't cry, while he hugs her much harder than is comfortable. Not hard enough to actually meaningfully hurt, but hard enough that she can tell he could in fact hurt her a lot if he wanted to. It helps that he's still one-armed.

He doesn't cry, but his breath is still fast and irregular, his body shaking with dry sobs as he repeats "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I'm sorry..." over and over and over again.

"Shhhhh it's okay..."

This is a little bit uncomfortable, but honestly, it's fine. He's not trying to hurt her.

So she can just hold him and, well, the lullaby worked earlier when he was freaking out, she can try that again. Holding and humming and petting his hair and reassuring him that it wasn't real.

It doesn't take as long as last time for him to calm down and stop shaking, but it takes much longer for him to want to release the hug.

She can be held for as long as he likes. (How long has it been since someone's held him??) And in the meantime she continues petting him and humming half-remembered lullabies from when she was small.

Eventually he does calm down enough to pull away a little bit and look at her. "...sorry. For waking you up."

Yvette scoffs.

"None of that, hush. I'm glad I was here."

He shakes his head. "I've dealt with nightmares before." They don't usually get this bad and badly jumbled with so many different feelings but it's happened a few dozen times. "I'm used to them."

"Zash, I know you could have dealt with it alone, just. ... I'm glad I was here. Are you okay? Is there anything else I can do?"

Aaaand now his feelings are going to completely vanish because he does not want them to leak anymore. He really needs to watch himself or he's going to fall in love with her, hard.

Zash shakes his head again. "I don't think so. Just... takes a bit to get my heart to calm down but then I'm fine."

"Okay." Being cut off abruptly from the emotional outpouring kind of hurts, actually, but she is going to make a point of not being offended or upset at him about it. She makes an attempt to sit on her own emotions to not dump them on him, but she does not have his practice, so uh. Hopefully it's enough.

(She's sad and she misses him, but it's okay.)

".... Sandstorm's still going, unfortunately. So we can't go and see if Morgan's left us with our squishy feelings forever more, yet."

Yeah no his feelings are not safe right now, they need to be carefully managed and he can't do that while also using them communicatively.

"Yeah. Let's try to resume our interrupted sleep, then. Promise I won't wake you up again."

"Don't worry! If it does," she says, amused, "it just means that I'll make you drive. I warn you, it lists endlessly to the left, it's very annoying."

She goes to get resettled, then pauses. "... Um, do you still want to snuggle, or...?"

Would he rather have space?

WHY is she making him make a DECISION there he was perfectly happy to just not think about it at ALL and now he has to be RESPONSIBLE and THINK about it.

"If you're fine with the risk of another nightmare and still haven't gotten annoyed with the metal everywhere." Because the no self-flagellation rule is still in place and he does want the snuggles.

"Nope! It's better than freezing. C'mere."

He comes here. He's kind of touch-starved, which shouldn't be surprising but somehow it is.

So they snuggle up and see about getting back to sleep. The sound of the howling wind outside makes it seem like they're the only people in all the world.

It's kind of nice. He almost wishes it were true. It'd make some things a lot simpler, if so.

"HEY! You alive and decent in there?!" yells a voice from outside, proving the inherent lie.

It's not quite dawn, yet, but the sandstorm has ended. Apparently she slept better than they did, or needs less of it.

"Oh look she's still around," mumbles Yvette, "yay..."

Zash looks similarly bleary and yawns. "I'm in my underwear," he calls, "but you've seen that already."

"Well get your pants on and get ready to get moving, we have a deadline to keep!"

"Yes, Mum," he whines, but yeah that's a good idea. He's not bleeding at all anymore and his clothes are grimy but what's new. He can get up and ready.

Yvette can also see about getting ready. Fortunately, she does actually have a change of clothes. Her old set can... go in a little pile of sadness for cleaning when they get to civilization. She'd thought about trying to get the blood out with what little hydrogen peroxide and bleach she has, but that'd also take a lot of water to clean, and a lot of effort, and, eh. It seemed better to wait. And if that means she doesn't have to try to get blood out of white clothes and can instead pay someone else to do it, great.

And then they can go out and face the day. Or, well, early morning.

"Grave's over there," says Morgan without preamble, lounging on the car like it's furniture and pointing.

Ah. Yeah.

He does want to visit it. And kneel by it, sitting on his heels and bowing deep.

It's a simple and unassuming, if rather large, cairn. There is a bit of scavenged metal that is used as a small makeshift marker, containing the name, 'Rollo.'

"Also since you took forever, we're bringing the cloth. I got bored. Tore it all down again. Guess we can attempt to do that whole clever selling thing our nerd mentioned, or just like, throw it at the first people we see."

He doesn't respond, and just stays there, head bowed, for a few minutes longer, before getting up again and nodding at her. "Sounds good," he says, a bit distractedly.

Yvette gives him a hug, but then they can get all of their stuff packed up and head out.

They've still got a long drive ahead of them.

Morgan... does not seem apologetic, exactly, but she is rather quiet from the backseat.

Zash notices.

"...I'm not mad at you, or upset. For what that's worth."

"Are you stupidly blaming yourself instead like a goddamned idiot."

"Not... in... the sense that I might've been otherwise inclined to blame you?"

"Well, knock it off, asshole. We tried to help him. We got pretty far. He got to hear an apology from someone he wanted one from before he got popped. That's more than a lot of people get. We cut our losses before trying to help him got someone else hurt. This ain't a good day, but it's not a bad one, either."

He shakes his head. "...I'm gonna live a lot longer than most people. And I'm gonna get into a lot more situations where what I do matters. There are... things I could've done differently. I could've gone into open space. I could've gone vertically. I could've circled around rather than keep running away. Dealing with a big towering mass of muscle with machine guns for arms isn't something I could've reasonably prepared for, in the specifics... but there are general things I could've done better. Should've done better. Should've known better than to do. I've had more time to learn these things than most people ever will. I want to not... make those mistakes again."

"Okay, but like. Is that a way to improve going forward, or is that a way to beat yourself up for what happened? 'Cause I saw a guy who had things mostly covered, with room for improvement, then lost his cool when his damage came up. You ain't going to fix that by causing more. You know?"

"When my damage came up?" he asks archly.

"You were doing okay before you realized the guy was someone you knew. Then you shut down and just started apologizing while he was wailing on you and let him have all the power. And he broke stuff. That's when the structural issues started happening that led to everything going wrong."

"That's... fair." He chews on his lip. There's a part of him that wanted Rollo to hurt him, once Zash realised what must've happened. That felt like he deserved to be hurt. But... "You're right."

"I know I am! So stop it."

"I'm not sure how," he sighs. "Or... Even if I manage to just act completely unaffected when it counts, I can't really not be damaged. I can't come out of today and not hurt. I cared about him, and he's dead, and there are things I could've done that might have prevented it, and that hurts."

"Then work on that instead of going over the billion and one ways you could have done better if you were a tactically perfect robot. Instead of just. 'Oh no, I was inefficient because I was hurt, let me hurt myself more because I was inefficient!'"

"Easier said than done, you know."

"Yeah! Always is. Words are easy. Actions're harder."

"Work on what? I don't want to not hurt."

".... why."

"...because it's important? Because it's correct to be sad when you lose someone you love? I feel like this can't be the disconnect here."

"Who died and made you feelings overlord, king of the feelings that are or aren't correct, man."

He shakes his head. "I'm not... trying to claim anything about everyone, here. But I just feel like... it's the same kind of thing as loving someone. I... I miss my brother more than I can say, I feel his absence like a physical ache in my heart every day, and it's part of what loving him is, for me. It's wanting to see him and wanting him next to me and wanting him to be in my life, and feeling the lack.

"It's the same thing, but more. I'll never see Rollo again, and the world doesn't have his light anymore. If I'd known he'd gone on to live his full life then... I'd miss him still, like I miss everyone I've met, but it would hurt less."

"... Okay, but feeling sad and feeling like you have to be sad to remember him are different things. Isn't making yourself hurt more just. Making the main effect he and everyone you've ever loved be causing more hurt in the world? How is that fair."

"I don't think that's... a good description. It's..." His turn to struggle with words. "I don't feel like I have to hurt. I just do hurt and I don't want to stop hurting. And not all hurt is bad. I think I would be... worse at being myself, if I didn't hurt. Feeling this is important to who I am. Both sides, the good and the bad. I don't want to not miss my brother, it's the same thing as not wanting to not love him. I don't want to not hurt for Rollo, it's the same thing as not wanting to not have met him."

"....... For a guy who doesn't feel like he has to hurt, you sure do fool me, man," she sighs. "With your actions and your, Iunno, reflexive beating yourself up thing. I think what you're saying makes sense, but also is not matching up with what you're doing. And you seem like you feel like you should be an ultra efficient perfect life-saving robot man, and acting like whenever you aren't it's a thing to beat out of yourself, except when anyone pokes it hard enough you'll go on about the sanctity of emotional attachment or whatever."

"If you want to say that I spend too much time dwelling on my supposed failures and expect much more of myself than is remotely reasonable you'll find no argument from me. That's just not the same as me having to work on not feeling hurt when it happens."

"I guess, yeah. Do what you want with your own brain."

"I'm not entirely sure I have one but I'll take the sentiment."

"I thought we said no self-flagellation, Zash."

"Talking about biology, here! Who knows what I got in here. Could be marshmallows. Or pollen, maybe pollen, plant and all. ...do you know about original flavour plants?"

"Flora? Yes, though honestly they sound fake."

"I don't, what the hell are you talking about? Original recipe plants? Flora???"

"They're not fake. The ships used to have them. ...there's a place here on Gunsmoke that has them but it's secret and not my secret so I can't actually tell you guys myself."

".... Can you blindfold me and take me there and let me shake down the residents for their secrets. Please."

"I'll have to ask my friend who's responsible for the place but I think he'd be thrilled to have a plant engineer there." And maybe Zash could leave her there, it's the safest place in the world and she'd be able to do meaningful contributions to humanity at large from there... Food for thought.

"Is this the same friend who made your arm. Is there just a secret base of this one guy who has been sitting on a bunch of revolutionary things that could change the entire world? Because he'd better have some damn good reasons or I might punch him."

"Aww! Look, Zash, she's learning violence!! I'm so proud. Now will one of you explain the not-plant plants to me, here. This is confusing terminology, can I call them flora instead."

"He does have good reasons," Zash agrees, "and yes you can," to Morgan. "I've heard them called geoplants, too, literally 'plants from Earth'.

"Which is sort of what they are. They're a native life form from Old Earth which takes many forms." He can project some psychic impressions of the ones Zash has seen in the arcologies, grass and trees and flowers. They're not proper mental images, more like afterimages, but good enough to be getting on with. "They absorb sunlight and use that plus water from the ground to grow and generate nutrients. Some of them were edible to humans, and there were animals on Old Earth who could eat the kinds that weren't edible and then humans would eat those animals, too.

"Before humanity discovered plants, geoplants were the main source of nutrition for nearly everything on the planet."

"Wild. Flora's easier to say, though, I'll go with that."

"Are you going to explain the good reasons to me, Zash. Or are you just going to say 'He'll tell you' and then watch as I am slowly overcome with curiosity until my head bursts."

"You know, I was going to tell you, but maybe not telling you would be a lot funnier."

"Well, that's settled then. I'm selling you off for your bounty, that is clearly the only logical and proportional response to this."

He laughs and shakes his head. "His reasons are mostly practical. The arm," and he stretches it out and flexes his fingers, "is somewhat based on plant research by..."

"...uh, by Dr. Conrad. On Tesla." He winces. "I don't think it's very straightforwardly usable by humans, I think, uh, Rollo might be the current state of the art of his research on human cybernetics."

"Oh. I guess it would make sense to rely on your bullshit biology, wouldn't it, since it's your prosthetic. ... That's very sweet, though, that someone specifically researched how to make a functioning prosthetic for you based on your unique physiology. I mean, the research scales less well for everyone else, but. Very sweet."

"Yeah. Brad is very cool."

"As for the geoplants, if you don't already have soil with the right nutrients and the kinds of weather patterns that can support them, they die very easily. If you transplant a sufficiently large area of them somewhere they can make the weather that supports them, but it's extremely expensive and requires a lot of complex infrastructure to set up. —which Brad is doing, to be clear, he's spent the last hundred and fifty years working on scaling that up because in the long term it would be to everyone's benefit if the entire planet were covered in vegetation like Old Earth was, before.

"It was part of the original SEEDS project, to—the verb they use is 'terraform', which literally means 'shape into Earth'—to terraform Gunsmoke so that it could support its own flora. February wanted to do that. But most of it was lost either on the crash or shortly after, and as far as I know Brad's is the only arcology with flora that exists, here. If anything happens to it—well, it'd be possible to use plants to recreate one, eventually, but very expensive. It's a long-term project."

"All a lot of power held by one guy, are we sure we shouldn't be calling Brad God?"

Zash grins. "It's not just him, he has a whole team, he's just the team's leader. It was Luida, before, but." (Nai killed her.)

"Gotcha. I wouldn't have called him God anyway. It just would have been kinda funny."

"... Zash, have you been quietly planning to take me there and introduce me and see if I'll stop following you around if you give me something meaningful and useful to do?"

"Not explicitly. Not until five minutes ago."

"Oh I see. ... Well. I'm definitely curious, and it'd depend on their mechanisms for acquiring and disseminating information, and probably I'll still want to go out into the world and directly help plants and get data, but. Something could maybe be worked out. I am not... entirely against the idea."

"Gotten sick of being out here in the wastes already?"

"That's not... I mean, I can't say it's fun living out of a car in a desert of sand and hyper-violence, but it's not really about my comfort? I said I want to improve the world and I meant it. If the best way to do that is to continue being a rogue plant engineer with a car and a dream and heaps of data, marching up to each and every plant that has gone red and helping to save it, then that's what I'll do. But more important than me is the overall field of knowledge itself, and if there's a, a secret arcology of super scientists who are sitting on half of the lost knowledge of the ancients then, uh, yes I would like to knock on their door and get a look at their notes and yell at them if they're being stupid. And help, if I can."

"Brad's team is responsible for the birds, too," Zash adds. "They're not native to Gunsmoke and didn't exist on Old Earth, they were bioengineered based on native Earth species and then once they were stable and could reproduce and all that they were released so that people would have better access to cheap transport. Old Earth's birds were a whole host of different species, not just the one, and they were mostly smaller and most of them had larger wings that could be used to fly, but they couldn't carry passengers."

"Are they?" she says, sounding delighted. "I knew they were engineered, but it's always been a point of contention which city was responsible. It'd make sense that it was a, what, secret eighth city that went 'Actually, this would probably be good for everyone,' and then created it."

"Yeah, geniuses from on high deciding things for the rest of the petty mortals and occasionally deigning to grant them nice things, there's no way that's gone wrong before or anything."

"There's a difference between geniuses making decisions for people and geniuses offering more options for people to make their own decisions about. The latter is just the development of technology."

"I guess, but are you their only window to the outside world? Just you? And the rest of them safely tucked away in their little paradise with the ancient not-plants?"

"No, I wasn't involved with the birds at all. They mostly don't leave because it's risky and also they're in cryosleep most of the time, Brad has only aged about twenty or thirty years over the last hundred and fifty, but I'm not their only let's call it field operative. They are working to scale things as best they can, and I wouldn't be surprised if they had other locations and research I didn't know about for backup and parallel development, but...

"...well they gotta do what they gotta do to continue working while Nai's cadre of crazy people and the corrupt governments of the Seven Cities are still throwing their weight around."

.... Sigh.

"Secret shadow war going on behind the scenes, huh. Ugh. Fine. I guess it makes sense they wouldn't want to show their hand."

"Honestly the world has been so much more interesting than I was expecting?" says Yvette, amused. "I wasn't expecting it to be boring or anything, but. I kind of thought I'd just be going out to little nowhere towns, fixing things, and then eventually dying by getting stupidly mugged or something. Instead it's like we're out of a novella, with evil twin plots and secret arcologies and assassin cults."

"I wouldn't say Nai is evil. Just... I mean okay he does some very evil things but he's not like that bomber guy who's only doing it because he enjoys people's suffering."

"Okay, fine. Tragic misguided twin that is nonetheless doing a lot of villainy. And that I probably can't just, you know, talk to, because I am human and that makes me the worst and he'd probably kill me where I stood if I got too mouthy. I feel like my point nonetheless stands."

"Yeah, yeah, it does. ...from the stories I heard about Old Earth—Nai used to like reading them and sharing his mind with me while he did—it was a lot more peaceful there for a long time. Something about people having plenty and not needing to fight to survive. And stories are made of conflict, so it stands to reason that here on this planet where people are always in conflict you'd get a lot of story material."

"True. And I suppose it's the human condition to sort things into narratives and declare different sides 'the good guys' or 'the bad guys.'"

...something about this is making Zash make the most interesting faces. "Yeah."

She takes her eyes off the rocky horizon to look at him.

"... What. You're making a face."

"Just. Never say that. Around Nai. Ever. Ever ever ever."

"Zash, I wasn't planning to ever have a conversation with him again on account of the way he might kill me if I say the wrong thing or get even slightly in his way, but. Okay. Noted. ... Because he likes stories, and hates humans, and probably... hates having any human characteristics at all?"

"Yyyyyep."

"Honestly, that just sounds uncomfortable, and I want to give him a hug. ... Not, to be clear, that I literally ever would if I had the chance, because again, I am human and he would probably stab me for that, but. It really must suck hating part of yourself like that."

Zash smiles a little bit. "Honestly though you're about as close to an acceptable human as he'd find, I think."

"Hooray for me?"

"Just, you know. If you're around me for much longer you're bound to run into him again, we trip over each other every half a decade to a decade or so."

"It seemed like the best way to deal with him was to just get out of his way? Which, um. You'll notice I am in fact capable of doing. ... sometimes."

"... Wait, you've already met his brother?"

"Oh. Yes. Briefly. Technically speaking we did speak to each other, but, I mean, I wouldn't really call it a conversation. Is that against the scripture that you hate?"

".... I dunno about against, but it was like. 'God is very murder murder, kill kill, all humans are unworthy, death death death death.' I would not expect conversations to... happen. So uh, good job?? My ex-boss would want to have an interview with you and maybe, I dunno, call you an apostle or whatever."

"Ew."

"Yeah."