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The sky was a sea of snow on Friday, February 19th, 2049, at the settlement. It was cold, and it was going to get colder. All of the little kids, though there were only a few tens of them in the settlement, were all bundled up. They hurried through the trenches that had been carved in the snowfall that blanketed the settlement. Ahead of those kids, and their parents, the Grey Whale waited. Thousands were evacuating. It was early, but it was also time for them to go.

The 5 Winter Auroras in the sky were already joining together into 4, and the joining was happening right on top of the settlement… well, a little to the west and north. It was like a zipper closing. Two auroras floated high in the sky south of the settlement, but to the north, the two auroras were slipping together to become one, and all of that winter mana, that ice, water, cold, death, sleep, and too many other mana types to name, were precipitating out of the atmosphere, transforming the world in their joining.

The atmosphere shivered, and snow fell as a result." But I wanted to see the gate open, for real," said one small girl, held in her father's arms, as the father held her up, as they walked toward the Grey Whale. The father was Sam Ranger, the leader of the Kaiju Squad. Sam said, "I know, honey, but we've got to protect the Grey Whale while they're out of port. Only a few people are staying behind at all." The little girl was mad, but she was cold, too. So she held onto her father for dear life.

The father, the daughter, and their family hurried up the gangplank into the Grey Whale. Sam handed off his girl to his wife, kissing both of them on the cheeks, while he tousled the hair of his boys and gave them small hugs, telling them that they were going to be fine. It was an easily-believed maybe-truth. They parted ways. The family to their quarters. Sam to the command room.

Most of the evacuation piled into the Grey Whale, but some people took to smaller vehicles, to fly ahead, to fly behind, to scout for kaiju and threats before those threats could show. Some people, like Lee Windhopper, Sky Shaper, flew ahead and around, checking out everything, everywhere, and eyeing the sky, the bands of blue flowing through the heavens. The snow parted around him, making him rather easy to spot if you knew what to look for amid the sky. He wasn't wearing bright colors, though.

He wore normal gear for cold-weather flight, but even with such robust gear he was still chilly in the freezing sky. Lee spoke into his coms, "It'll be 4-bander in an hour. We need to leave before then." His voice passed through the radio waves, through the light, into the systems that connected everyone to everyone else, to the command center of Castle South, but mostly to the command center of the Grey Whale.

Kandon Valen, True Brawny and Telekinetic, brother to General Aurora Valen, was in the command center of the Grey Whale. He watched as Sam walked in and nodded, and Kandon nodded back. Kandon was feeling anxious to see one of the settlement's defenders here on the ship, as opposed to back in the settlement where he should be, protecting the place. Kandon's feelings mirrored most people's feelings.

But there was a need to split the forces of the settlement, to keep the people safe while they evacuated for the first test of the gate, and Kandon was better up here than down there. Sam was more useful up here, too. Threadmaker always worked better from a position of heights, while Threadmaker and Sky Shaper were one of the best duos possible, and Lee was already out here, in the sky, scouting.

Kandon glanced at the algorithms that the Techies had installed, and then he spoke into his coms, "We're at 70% full, Lee. We'll be ready to go in 20 minutes." And then Kandon spoke to everyone, "15 minute warning." Deedee, at the control board, tapped away with her spiderbots. Messages went out.

In the control room of the Grey Whale, Captain Gearhead, the captain of the Grey Whale, saw the signal and called out to his crew, his voice passing through hidden hallways and staging rooms across the ship like a foghorn in the night, "Attention, crew! 15 minute warning! Everyone to your stations!" People began rushing around— A voice came through the wires, sequestering the view, holding tight on Quark— Captain Gearhead spoke directly to Quark, "Shouldn't you be doing something better besides spying?"

Quark moved on, and Gearhead ignored him. A few kids cried about missing out on class or their friends, and they wanted to go back. They didn't want to be on the 'stupid ship anymore!', calling this whole thing an awful experience, and other such non-niceties. They wanted to see the gate open, and to see the ships come through. The sentiments said by the children were echoed by the many adults on the Grey Whale, though they used language that was slightly more adult."

Fuck this fucking ship," Wilma Hallingill, Combo Flight, said to her brother, William, as she paced the tiny cabin that they shared.

"It's too fucking small." William Hallingill, also Combo Flight, laid back in his bunk bed, below his sister's. It was just the two of them in their room, while their team was in the room across the hall. No one was where they should have been. Everyone was shoved wherever they could fit. William wasn't too upset about all of this, but he understood his sister was quite miffed. William sighed, and said, "Think of it like a cruise.""

A week-long cruise to a port in Aluatha where we'll have a day off the ship and then we get right back on and then it's back to the settlement if the settlement still exists by then," Wilma said, furious.

"We should be out there, William. Not in here! Why are they making us go away? We're one of the top teams!" And then she got really mad as she clutched her green and gold cape, saying, "It's because we broke alliance with Tartu, isn't it." William sighed.

"Yeah. Probably! And I'm good with that! We don't want to be a part of that sort of life, so here we are." William sat up and looked at his twin sister.

"When we agreed to break that alliance, we knew there would be consequences. Getting pushed out of the settlement during the big event is one of those consequences." Wilma huffed.

"I want to ally with Mark."" Phhhbt! Fuck no. I don't mind the guy, but an alliance? No fucking way." William laid back down. Wilma glared… And then she plopped down on the chair in their room, which was cramped between the wall, another wall, and their beds. They didn't even have a window. They were in an interior cabin. Wilma frowned at the walls, and complained, "Why doesn't this room have a screen!" William put a pillow on top of his face, saying, "I'm sleeping, now. I'm tired."

Wilma and William had been flying supplies this way and that all day long, and she was just as tired as him, so… eventually, she floated up to the top bunk, waking her brother as she used their shared Power together. He didn't care. He mumbled and went back to bed, and soon Wilma was asleep in the bunk above him. They were not the only people who went to bed as soon as they could, even before the Grey Whale took off. A lot of people had been working on the gatehouse and its assorted areas for the last full day.

Exhaustion was omnipresent. People were still working, though. Tartu Solari, Domainer, stood with Kardi Shale, Lucky, under the snowing sky, near the gate anchor, in the center of the larger gatehouse structure. They were not working, not really. Several other people were closer to the gate anchor, actually working, including Grand Mage Rekaro Solari, Domainer.

Tartu and Kardi stood apart from the main operation, with Tartu supporting the space around the anchor, keeping out the cold and the snow for a good 20-meter-diameter hemisphere. It was big enough to contain the space, and not much more than that. The smaller anchor was a mirror for the larger space above, being 5 meters tall and 5 meters wide, instead of 500 by 500 meters large.

It was barely 'work', and Tartu was annoyed that he was here, doing this, but he was also all about duty and responsibility, so he was here. The Grand Mage, Tartu's father, was working his Skill in the center of the anchor itself, amidst the actions of four other mages, all of them tuning the magic of the space properly, aligning it to what stood far, far above them all. Their work was much more fiddly. Exact. … Quark ignored the father and focused on the son, and his teammate.

Kardi wore a thick pink parka and enchanted leggings, while Tartu had on his white and blue hero suit, but in a winter style. He wore a white and blue winter jacket as well, to help keep away the cold, but his Domain was doing most of that warming work in this area. Quark felt that wearing white and blue in the winter was a bad idea, but Tartu clearly had other opinions. It was still 10 degrees Celsius, even inside this warmed-by-Domain space. Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere.

Support the author by seeking out the original. Both of them seemed glad that they weren't out in the snow. Snow piled up against the edges of Tartu's Domain, forming a higher snow wall in the north than in the south, since the wind was coming from the north and piling snow on that side— Kardi jerked, looking around rapidly. Tartu noticed Kardi's action, but he didn't speak. Not for a little bit. But Kardi kept looking around, so eventually Tartu asked, "… What?"

When Kardi continued to look around, her eyes focusing on the air here and there, her eyes landing on the cameras all around her, Tartu focused his voice, and quietly demanded to know, "What? Kardi? What occurs?" Kardi blinked and came back, saying, "I think…" She frowned. She looked over to the west. And then she looked up. Eliot's crane was like a spider, clutching the left upper archway of the main gate, dangling below, as he set another alignment spike into the edge of the inner gate.

Mark, Sally, and Isoko were all up there with him. Mark's Union was mostly focused on the other people working on the archway of the gate. Their actions up there were barely visible from down here, at ground level, but Kardi glanced up at them anyway. And then the Grey Whale started to rise from the dock, just south of the gatehouse. Almost everyone turned to watch the great grey hovership pull out of dock and into the sky. Kardi didn't really care about the Grey Whale, though.

She watched, of course, but she glanced at every camera all around her, most of which Quark was sure she couldn't actually see, at all. Soon enough, most people returned to what they were doing. Tartu asked Kardi, "What are you looking at?" Kardi pointed upward, at Eliot's spider crane, grinning and lying to Tartu, "I lost track of them for a minute!"" Well try not to do that," Tartu said, believing her.

"I'll be glad when they're gone. Less worries all around."" They might try to come back," Kardi said.

"What are we gonna do when that happens?" Tartu had no answers he was willing to give. He just shook his head a little, and said, "I don't know. All I know is he doesn't need to be here, and whatever they give to tempt him to stay on that side will be more than he deserves… And he won't take it. So…" He went silent. Thinking. Kardi let him be silent. She was planning something… And now she was looking around again— She looked straight into the camera. Quark moved to a different camera.

She looked straight at him again. … Quark moved to another camera and Kardi was already looking at that one, so Quark implemented a random number generator outside of his own control and consisting of how snow fell across a camera far to the west, and that seemed to destroy Kardi's ability to track him. Kardi still looked around several times trying to find him. Quark was pretty sure she didn't know that it was him looking at them, but he could be wrong.

Tartu watched her for a minute, then he asked, exasperated, "What the fuck, Kardi? I hate it when you get jumpy. It always means something is happening." Kardi frowned. She looked around, left and right, then up to Eliot's crane spider, then back down to the ground—" Kardi!" Kardi said, "Someone is… is looking at us, I think? I don't know. I wasn't sure of it, but it's… long distance? But not. Not a long distance at all…" She frowned." It's probably Mark's new familiar," Tartu said, ignoring it.

"Don't worry about it. He can't say anything to Mark about us, or about anything he sees, unless we wish him violence, and we don't." Kardi scoffed.

"Yup. No violence here." And then Tartu smirked, but it was there and gone, and Quark decided to move on, for now. … He decided to move back up top, to the spider crane. His owner, or master, or partner, or something… Quark wasn't quite sure what Mark wanted to be called… Mark sat at the back of the machine, while Eliot sat in the middle, and Isoko and Sally were to the side, playing chess and slapping a red button when they finished their turn, which, in turn, helped Eliot to work better.

The cabin itself was cozy and warm, with a crackling fire electrical heater to the side and frosted windows that allowed everyone to look outside, if they wanted— Mark glanced at Quark.

"You were gone for a while that time. See anything interesting out there?"" Sir no sir," Quark reported. Whatever Kardi and Tartu were planning did not rise above privacy protocols, though if Mark asked enough, if Mark pushed enough, then Quark could bypass those protocols. At least in this specific instance. So, with that in matrix, Quark said, "But I could speak on certain things, if you wish to know them most dearly."

Mark shook his head— Isoko spoke up, "It means he can't tell you unless you directly ask, Mark, and he's asking you to ask." And then she moved her chess piece and slapped the red timer button. Sally was engrossed in where she would move next, but she had the wherewithal to look up at Quark, floating there beside Mark, and say, "I want to know what he found." Mark scoffed, "I'm not a snoop. I don't need to know people's business." Isoko said, "Just ask him, Mark. Do it." Sally smirked and said, "Do it!

Be the snoop! Find out all the secrets!"" Be a proper villain, Mark!" Isoko said, grinning." Bah! Gods! Fine." Mark asked Quark, "What did you find?"" Oh it's nothing that important—"" Just tell me already," Mark said. Quark spilled, "Kardi can find out where I am rather easily, as long as I stick around. Her Lucky is a lot stronger than the normal variety. When you go up against her you must be very careful of random happenstance, sir." A small silence, as they all thought about that.

And then Isoko asked everyone, "It's just Lucky, right? PL 60?"" I estimate it is a lot higher than that, good miss!" Quark said, eagerly.

"At least PL 80! I estimate she has great hidden depths. I doubt her team even knows how strong she is, and Tartu certainly doesn't appreciate her as much as he should." Sally said, "I want to know what Tartu's full deal is. Can you tell us that?"" I am afraid I cannot, good miss."

Quark knew the full deal, but he was rather sure humans weren't as simple as they appeared to be, so he was probably hallucinating all of that series of events, for only two events in Tartu's life, as it regarded healers and dragons, were actually known and documented. All of the rest of Tartu's descent toward a deep hatred of Mark was only speculated. And it wasn't even that deep of a hatred, anyway. Just… present. Possibly. Outwardly, Mark didn't care to know, either, as he said, "I don't care to know.

Tartu can keep his secrets." But Quark knew that Mark was seething inside, in some small way. He hated Tartu with about as much ferocity as Tartu hated Mark. Neither of them really understood each other, though, so how could they really hate at all? Perhaps, if the two of them stepped toward each other and started talking openly and honestly, they would find themselves friends. … Quark turned inward, turning his modeling toward figuring out what such a confrontation might look like.

On a featureless plain, Quark had a Pseudo-Mark and a Pseudo-Tartu stand facing each other." My mother was a healer who should have stayed home, but instead she went out helping people and got killed!" Pseudo-Tartu would say, before adding, "Therefore, you should not go out into the wilds, for you will die."" I don't rightly care about death," Pseudo-Mark would retort.

"I laugh in the face of death! Ha! Ha! Ha!" Pseudo-Tartu would scowl, and then he would say, "Clearly, we are forever at odds."" Quite right!"" Quite right!" And then they would fight. … Hmm. Somehow, Quark did not think that was an adequate representation of what might happen. Tartu would never talk about his mother in that way, anyway, and Mark might get emotional about his own. Perhaps they would bond over dead mothers? No. That would be crazy. Tartu's issues with Mark went deeper than that.

Quark ran the simulation again, but different.