Apocalypse Redux

There were oh so very few interesting people in the world.

And a not-insignificant number of those that were, Atticus could not stand, for one reason or another. Typically, either they wanted to connect to his parents through him, or he simply feared that was what they wanted, and wound up ruining the relationship before someone could set the record straight … and then things wound up too awkward to continue.

On one hand, having found the Dragonfly meant that he’d finally found a place to belong outside of his parents’ estate.

On the other, that made it all the more painful when everyone else was busy, made him miss his friends just that much more, however brief the period might have been.

Mimi had all but locked herself into the engineering section to do some, er, stuff that completely flew over his head despite the fact that he actually had learned to fix most systems on standard ships, at least to such a degree that the ship would be able to get home after suffering immense damage.

Granted, that was only the engines, the enchantments that messed with the plasma getting blasted out the starship’s rear by making it heavier and the ship itself lighter by comparison, the inertial dampening enchantments that prevented the acceleration from wrecking the computers, the most fragile portion on any ship with a decently-leveled crew, and finally the enchantment that expanded [Alcbubierre Bubble] all around the ship … all in all, trying to talk shop with the Sionnach Sidhe was like talking to an alien through three layers of language barrier.

In the meanwhile, Derek had decided to farm more Aspects for trade, to take full advantage of the time they were spending here.

And Ye-in had found some kind of boxing gym kind of place, a title which had all sorts of implications and connotations, most of them incorrect, thanks to all the aliens involved, but it was still the closest term.

All of that had wound up combining to leave him alone in the food court.

“Excuse me, may I sit here?” a voice asked, causing Atticus to look up to find the speaker, who, despite his perfect grasp of English, and even a hint at a Canadian accent very similar to his father, was not human. The alien in question was tiny, barely up to his chest, willowy, short, moving in an almost jittery fashion, as though barely able to contain its energy.

A Dromon.

And a high Level one to boot, considering that there seemed to be absolutely no problem with the atmosphere that contained precisely none of what they needed to breathe, while the food in their hands should have given off fumes that were lethally toxic to Atticus, considering the physiological differences, everything was contained by some kind of spell.

“My name is Kiretas,” the alien introduced themselves. “My people refer to me as ‘all-knowing,’ while yours tend to use terms like ‘know it all,’ ‘shitstirrer,’ and even more unprintable terms. I also believe I know your parents. Would you have a moment?”

“Sure. What about?”

… He’d probably done that in the wrong order.

“I’m not sure if your parents told you, but they were actually the first humans to make direct contact with my people. And then they cleansed an entire continent of monsters that had replicated, overcome their summoners, and started replicating. When I heard their son was Chimera, I figured a conversation was in order.”

“They did, actually,” Atticus said. “Dad keeps joking about how if they hadn’t already been married, the sight of Mom charbroiling an entire monster horde would have sent him running for the hills.”

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“But not too often, I suspect,” Kiretas replied. “I suspect your mother strongly appreciates the jokes, and he wishes to preserve its … effectiveness.”

Atticus blinked owlishly at the little alien, trying to figure out just what that meant, until the penny finally dropped a good ten seconds later.

“Ew.”

Kiretas laughed softly, the sound once again quite human.

“Hi,” Ye-in’s voice suddenly called out from behind Atticus. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” he said, turning his head to meet her eyes. “Apparently, Kiretas knows my parents.”

Although, in retrospect, he at least knew of them. Even if thinking about it made Atticus want to give himself a lobotomy, the assessment of his parents’ actions was accurate.

“Kiretas the All-Knowing,” the alien said, standing up and shaking Ye-in’s hand before planting himself at the table once more, then he poked the seemingly forgotten meal with a finger that seemed to be the equivalent of his pinky.

Instantly, what had seemed to be something like lasagne but not quite identical shifted into … a purple version of itself, maybe?

“This is a spell you might want to learn,” Kiretas explained. “It can transmute anything that is meant to be ‘food’ into something that is food to you. And it transforms the food in a way that maintains how it would have tasted to the original cook, so what’s good enough for the culture of origin is good enough for you. Unless it’s niche. Or spicy.”

“What’s wrong with spice?” Atticus asked.

“I will never understand the human fascination with capsacin. Chili peppers produce it precisely to prevent them from being eaten, to teach anything that might want to do that the error of their ways, and then humanity goes … oh, what was that phrase …” Kiretas thought for a moment, though Atticus strongly suspected he was pausing for effect, no one truly worthy of a title like “all knowing” lacked a [Skill] for perfect memory. Then, the Dromon snapped his fingers in a very humanlike gesture.

“Right. ‘Joke’s on you, I’m into that shit.’”

Ye-in sniggered. “Most humans think it’s weird to eat them, too. I’m from Korea, we eat a lot of chillis, and do you know how they got there?”

“The Japanese thought they were toxic and planted them en masse during the Imjin war as a form of biological warfare,” Kiretas replied immediately.

Obviously, he did have some kind of perfect memory ability.

“How much of y- … of …” Atticus began, cutting himself off.

Shit, how to put this …

“How much of how you act is …”

“How many of my mannerisms are a deliberate mimicry of how humans do things?” Kiretas finished for him. “Most of them.”

“Why?” Atticus asked, only to suddenly find himself fixed with a solid stare from unblinking eyes that seemed to stare all the way down to his very soul … and then, Kiretas switched back into his “human” mode.

“Because my people are the exact opposite of humans. We’re fast, but have no endurance; therefore, we tend to stay as still as possible when not moving, and you tend to find that unnerving. Now, before we get even more off topic, would you like to learn the spell?”

Atticus nodded and, without any visual indication of anything having been done, a [System] window appeared.

Kiretas “The All-Knowing” would like to teach you the spell [Cross-Species Cusine Shift].

Accept?

He accepted it in a heartbeat, feeling the spell settle within his memory.

Now, Atticus’ understanding of magic might have been well below what his mother would have liked him to have, but that still put him well above the average, and as such …

“This spell is a work of art,” he admitted. “But somehow, I don’t think you came to talk to me just to give it to me.”

Kiretas laughed, again.

“You’re just as suspicious as I would have expected any child of Jason’s to be. And you’re mostly right. I wanted to make sure you weren’t walking straight into the mouth of hell without knowing. But you’ve got a good set of comrades, a solid ship, and no calamities that are within my ability to divine in your near future. As such …” Kiretas shrugged. “Mundane conversations, it is.”

“Then how about you tell me what Dad actually does for a living?” Atticus asked.

Kiretas sniggered. “That topic is pretty far from ‘mundane.’ Your father is a rogue, he’s on the side of the angels, and I don’t think he’d be very happy with me telling you any more than that.”

Damnit. Mom had said pretty much the same thing, which should have been enough, but decidedly was not to anyone with even the tiniest smidgeon of curiosity.

Either way, they did end up having a fun conversation over lunch.

Even if it would have been a lot more fun if Kiretas had had less respect for other people’s privacy …