World Seed

After finding Tokemi, and explaining the situation to her… her reaction was pretty much what I had expected. She looked at me with big, watery eyes, her body trembling. “Do… do you have to go?” She asked, her voice shaking.

I could only nod my head in response. Even if there wasn’t some calamity even that would occur if we put this off, no doubt Malthan would make our lives a living hell until we finished his little quest. “Sorry…”

Before I could finish apologizing, the young fox girl threw herself at me, burying her head into my chest and sobbing loudly. “But… but I don’t want you to go, daddy… Can’t you… can’t you stay? You and my moms… we can all just stay together, right?” She cried out, not able to lift her head to look at me.

Now who’s making the loli cry, Malthan… I thought internally, shaking my head. “I can’t, Tokemi.” I spoke softly, bringing my hand up to gently stroke through her silver hair. “But I can come back and visit you as often as possible.”

“P...promise?” She sniffled slightly, finally looking up at me with her tear stained cheeks. When I found her, I was momentarily surprised that the ‘Eye of Time’ didn’t activate, but then I remembered something. The quest that created her was to give birth to something that had never existed in all of time. This should be Tokemi’s only timeline, unless someone later makes her like I did.

I had a soft smile on my face as I looked down to her. “Promise. And that goes for Sharon and Yin, too.” Even if we had to leave to become gods, Malthan had already said that we could return to this timeline whenever we wanted.

Tokemi stared at me for a while, as if trying to tell whether or not I was being honest, before nodding her head slightly. “O..okay. But… can we all stay together… at least until then?” As she asked that, her arms tightened around my waist, like she was afraid to let me go.

“Alright, Tokemi, we can stay together.” I accepted with another nod. “How about we go meet with the others?” I asked, and she nodded her head again. Reaching down, I took her hand in mine and began walking back towards the room where I had left Yin and Sharon.

By the time I arrived, only Sharon was left in the room. No doubt Yin wanted to go and talk to her sister like I did with Tokemi. When Sharon saw the girl walking with me, her eyes held a trace of guilt in them. “I’m sorry, Tokemi… I didn’t think something like this was going to happen.”

“It… it’s fine, Mommy.” Tokemi shook her head, pulling her hand from mine before running up and jumping into Sharon’s arms, wrapping her own arms around the woman’s waist. “Just… just visit all the time, okay? Don’t forget about me…”

“Silly child, how could we ever forget about you?” Sharon asked, her eyes watering slightly as she patted Tokemi’s back. “We’ll come back and visit all the time, just you wait. We’ll be here so often you’ll get sick of us.” Her words seemed to draw a small giggle from Tokemi, though I could still see the tears at the corner of her eyes.

“It’s a promise.” She said, her arms tightening around Sharon again. “Where’s Momma Yin?” She asked, looking around curiously as she finally noticed that there was someone missing from the room.

“She had to go talk to Yang first.” Sharon answered softly, still looking down at Tokemi.

This time it was my turn to speak up. “You didn’t have anyone to tell?”

She smiled slightly, shaking her head. “The only people I really have left are you guys. Jeeves is still working at that space station, and my only other family would be you, Yin, and Tokemi.”

“Ah…” I had almost forgotten about Jeeves. After we established the space station around the Qu’Lopti homeworld, he had surprised us all by choosing to stay there and work as a waiter, as opposed to continuing with Sharon. It was that incident that let me get a better look at what the AI companions from NeoLife really were.

Each companion was exactly what the person needed when they received it. For me… I received a best friend. In the previous timelines, I saw situations where the relationship between Celeste and I had been basically that of lovers, but it seemed like she had never even considered such a thing a possibility in this timeline. In the truest sense, she was born to be a good friend.

For Sharon, perhaps because of her loneliness and need for someone to take care of her, Jeeves took a role more similar to a butler. Yet, unlike Celeste, Jeeves wasn’t able to continue his role forever. After Sharon met us, and her circle of friends expanded, he said that he was feeling less and less needed. Not in a bad way, he was actually happy about it, because it meant that Sharon no longer needed someone to take care of her. So, he chose to take up a different life, serving others at a restaurant. According to him, the Qu’Lopti needed someone to take care of them far more than Sharon ever had.

Though, I’m pretty sure that bit was just a slightly disguised insult to the Qu’Lopti. Either way, we hadn’t seen him again after leaving that station. And unless our quest took us back to that world, it was unlikely we would again. Though, knowing Malthan, he probably planned for us to visit Qu’Lopti at some point.