The Moon is Haunted

[Gehn]

“…gone, I'm afraid. Had to take it. The tail was — well, it was ruined, and it would have fought the spinal integration every step of the way. But listen to me, listen — what I've replaced it with, what I've done to the rest of you? You should be thanking me. You have no idea what you are right now.”
“…I saw one. Once. A being of such power that the word felt inadequate — not ki as you or I understand it, not the sorcery that two-bit conjurers peddle across the galaxy, something else entirely. Something fundamental. Divine. It moved through the air like the universe had been built around it. And I thought: if something like that can exist, then it can be understood. And if it can be understood, it can be made. ”
“…seventy-seven attempts! Seventy-seven! And every single one of them taught me something. Biology alone — oh, I was a fool for years, thinking flesh could carry divinity on its own. You can engineer the perfect organism, coax every cell into place, and it still hits a ceiling. The body gives up before the design does! But machinery — machinery doesn't quit, it doesn't fatigue, it doesn't decide it's done growing. Do you see? ”
“…of course I've had the time. I made sure of that early on. Aging is just cellular decay with good publicity — I solved it before I solved anything else. What would be the point of chasing perfection if my own body betrayed me halfway to the answer? ”
“…your musculature, your organs, every ligament — rebuilt, reinforced, perfected. There's a silver quality to the tissue now, you'll see it if you look. And the eye! Oh, the eye was the exciting part. It talks to your brain directly, no lag, no interpretation, pure data. You're not diminished, Saiyan. You are the first version of something extraordinary. ”
“…never predicted this kind of power increase. Your species — the way your biology responded to the augmentation, it exceeded every model I had. This is — do you understand what this means? The organic-artificial synthesis, it isn't just viable, it's — this changes everything, I need to…”

Gehn sat through it all. He wore his regular clothes – reconstructed and cleaned without the slightest oversight, or so Dr. Napyarn warned him – and perched himself on the edge of a metal table that he had awoken from. The side of his head ached in a way he never felt. His ears rang as he went back and forth with this man of science and madness, learning what happened.

He crashed landed, his vessel damaged. Only Gehn knew it had been by a blast from Axar during his escape from Earth, before he went superliminal and escaped Axar’s reach. The doctor found him, explained the condition he had been in, and went to further explain his work: the why, the how. Almost all of it was the how.

How he had reworked Gehn like some animal for testing, for experimentation. The first he had said: Gehn hadn’t even been the perfected work. He was the first attempt to put some of his earliest thoughts into practice, for he had, it sounded, given himself the lifespan he’d need in order to make many, many more.

His Saiyan tail, gone. His body in some ways, more machine than flesh. In others, untouched. His eye, his brain, his mind, permanently fused with something foreign. The entire time Gehn listened, and kept up perhaps more than the generous doctor realized, he saw them: Celerus, Ollis, standing, laughing at him.

He felt anger building, bubbling hot in his stomach and crawling up his throat. It was a stranger to him, even as a Saiyan. He never had the temper of his siblings, his was never so easily brought out.

Yet, they mocked him. He wondered what this would do to him long-term: his lifespan, his health, what undiscovered flaws had the doctor built into him? Could they even be fixed? What did this even make him, now?

The toy of a mad man pursuing imagined gods?

Gehn’s muscles clenched, his power rose. He wore shackles, yes, but they seemed inadequate for the strength that now ran through his body – light and thin. The doctor was right when he brought that up: Gehn felt astonishingly strong compared to before. He barely trained in years, and now? He felt as if he had done nothing but since leaving Vegeta.

A large screen with an integrated set of keys, biometric interfaces, and more, next to Gehn’s metal “bed”, began to beep. It pointed out his growing power: Gehn had been 70 or less on Earth, in his degraded state, but it rose now: 500…600…

…700…

The doctor went on: He couldn’t believe it! It was working better than he ever thought, ever dreamed, ever hoped! Gehn pulled the cord connected into the side of his head, which allowed the machine to read his power, free.

Shackles, too weak for what he created, snapped like ceramic instead of steel.

Finally, the white-hot rage leaped out of Gehn’s throat with something that sounded alien to his own ears: A scream.

---

Blood spatter flecked Gehn’s tight-fitted, white shirt, his gray pants, and even his face. He stood in front of a sliding door – one half coming in from either side of the door frame, sealing shut in the middle – and jammed his fingers in. Other doors in the hall to his left, where he had come from, were already pried open.

Supplies. Separate working labs. A huge facility for just one man that could easily accept the aid of dozens. Yet, not one android or other robot among them to aid him. Computers lined the walls in certain chambers, voice-activated as Gehn learned. In other chambers he found supplies, what appeared to be a couple offices, and more.

So much to examine, but only after he swept this entire place.

Half-dry blood smeared as Gehn forced open the next chamber – and stopped. Before him, dimly lit, a long chamber lined with rounded capsules. Each the size of a person, all uniformly and particularly tall. All with a globe-like glass window, frosted over. The metal floor laid obscured by mist and, as Gehn stepped in, he felt a chill. Bumps raced across his skin and the left side of his head, around his eye, ached.

Through each glass window he looked: a face. Some male. Some female. Some Saiyan. Some Namekian. Human. Others, unrecognizable.

Seventy-seven, he recalled the doctor say.

The anger had gone now, replaced by the deep-red stain from his right fist up to that arm’s elbow. Instead, he looked at them all and felt only his stomach sink: seventy-seven and, if anyone searched for these people, none found them. How long, he wondered, had some been here? Years? Decades?

His steps echoed slowly.

He looked through each one as he slowly walked to the back. Room for at least a hundred, but Gehn didn’t bother to count. He did, however, feel that machine in his eye try to wake up, to tell him the exact number – reading his thoughts like a psychic invader, but with wires and circuits instead! – only for Gehn to ignore it.

Then, he stopped. His boots clicked against the floor one last time and the echoing of his steps ended.

A woman, pale, with raven-black hair not unlike a Saiyan. Vitrified, it seemed. Frost on her cheek. A single horn, blackened at the tip as if by ink.

In that moment, Gehn wasn’t sure why: but he reached for the terminal and, this time, when the device in his head analyzed the fingerprint patterns across the otherwise-blank touchpad controls, he entered the same code it indicated when a number pad appeared.

The rounded lid hissed, disconnected from the main body of the capsule beneath, and slowly swung upward.

 

[Failure-64]

It was as if the fires of hell had washed over her. Searing heat branding her every inch in a sudden blast that sucked the air from her lungs. It choked out a scream that clawed at the back of her throat, and numbed her senses.

Bare feet plapped against the stone flooring as she stumbled forward. A hand on the frame of the pod kept her from falling to her knees. The other hand covered her eyes and gripped her face with trembling fingers. The inferno was fading -- her body adapting to the sudden change in temperature.

With a groan, she dragged her hand down her face, as if to rub away the throbbing in her skull, and then dared to open a single eye, grimacing.

Before her stood a man with wide heterochromia eyes. Blood stained his shirt and arms, even up to his face. Just as he looked her over, her own eye flicked up and down him just once.

A shaky breath announced that the pain was growing manageable. Still leaning on the metal frame, she opened her other eye and then took in her surroundings -- whoever this man was, he didn't seem hostile. She was in...Cold storage? Confusion furrowed her brow. She shouldn't have been in here. Only the trash was tucked away in this oft-forgotten hall.

Her mind was assaulted with questions and their supposed answers, none of which were pleasant.

Her grip tightened on the pod's casing, and the metal groaned lowly.

"Who are you?" She finally spoke, voice hoarse and dry. "What are you doing here?"

And where the fuck is the Doctor?

 

[Gehn]

Something about her. Maybe it was the face. Despite the unusual appearance, she looked Human, or perhaps Saiyan. The pale skin, that blackened horn, it was something that had been done to her. Just like all the others in here. Just like Gehn.

It just didn’t feel right to leave her.

Her eyes flickered back open and she breathed. The vitrification ended in seconds after the lid hissed open and rose. The process proved quicker than Gehn anticipated, and did he not despise the corpse back in the room where he awoke he might have been impressed. In just seconds, unsteady on her feet as she was, the woman was on her feet.

Black hair spilled nearly to the floor. Her horn seemed more like flesh wrapped around bone, than the exposed black of a Changeling’s horn – like Axar. She wore a very simple, black dress. It looked tattered at the bottom, not quite to her knees. Her body: young, tall, soft, without flaw, and it moved with grace and strength.

Failure-64, read the panel that Gehn had interacted with to free her.

He felt a presence in his mind. Information flowed into his brain as his green-glass eye turned back to her: 2,000…2,200…2,550…2,900…

She leaned on the rim of the capsule behind it and gripped the metal with such force it groaned, but didn’t quite deformed. Gehn felt electric anticipation in his entire body as the number rose over 3,000 and continued to climb. His boots shifted against the floor, an instinct to run.

He ignored it, just as he had the scouter-like device in his skull.

She spoke in a voice indistinguishable from a normal woman’s. Gehn blinked his good eye. That he could not blink his other felt wrong, an the urge, the instinct, remained like an itch impossible to scratch.

“I’m a Saiyan,” Gehn answered honestly – but it felt like a lie, and that made his lip twitch. “Gehn. Avondall brought me here.”

After what happened, he refused to call him Doctor Napyarn again. Instead, Gehn put two fingers to his temple, next to the eye socket.

“Did this to me,” he told her, the irritation like impatience in his voice. “It looks like he did as much or more to you.”

Gehn glanced back at the panel that continued to show her name and the large, yellow OPEN indicator with an exclamation symbol.

“Your name isn’t Failure, or 64; so who are you?”

 

[Failure-64]

Avondoll? A Saiyan?

His answers only added fuel to the growing headache born from her confusion. Did the Doctor have a new ally that specialized in...whatever the hell this Saiyan now was?

"Nothing was done to me," she clarified while pushing herself from the pod. Her feet were steady and she didn't much like standing with her back to that prison. "This is how I was made with not alterations like your eye."

She stepped around him, mindful of his space in a polite manner, but her eyes turned away from him entirely. Instead, she looked down the pods prior to hers. All still in tact and seemingly housing the failed experiments before her. Nothing seemed out of place.

"My name?" She echoed and then turned her attention forward, to the empty cells for what would have come after her.

No, not empty.

She stood before pod 65. Within, a frosted over man with blue skin and Changling-esque features. He was motionless; preserved for as long as this room was powered.

She stepped to the next, pod 66. Another was within.

Another in 67...68...69...70...

"How long..."

She breathed the beginning of a question as she stared up at a winged alien of unknown origins. Her chest felt tense, like a knot being pulled too tight -- was it fear? Panic? Something she hadn't felt before, but she knew she didn't like it. With grit teeth, she tore her eyes from the creation and met the Saiyan's gaze.

"What year is it?"

---

16 years. 16 entire years she had laid dormant in that pod. Cast aside and remembered only for everything she was not. Her entire existence served only to guide the Doctor's hand in his future attempts at harnessing the power of the so-called gods. Supposedly, each of the 13 past her all just stepping stones in his plans.

Gehn, it seemed, was the Doctor's first attempt at starting anew; building from the foundation of someone, rather than create an entirely new lifeform from scratch. Gehn had told her what he had learned from the ramblings of the Doctor when he awoke -- something akin to jealousy burned in her chest when he did. Biology was flawed? That the very concept of what she was could never hope to achieve such power.

It made her gut churn.

Both of them were hurt in their own ways, and both lacking an understanding of what to do next. So, they chose to remain in the facility. It was well stocked, secure, and isolated from the rest of the population. The perfect place to get their feet under them.

At first, much of the time was spent with Gehn explaining their options and basic knowledge of their surroundings. She, of course, knew loosely about what existed beyond the facility, but only in concept. Her brief existence while conscious wasn't exactly spent doing social studies and learning the history of the universe.

She was lucky to have someone as patient as Gehn to guide her.

At first she didn't fully understand his generosity, aside from a general respect for her. Not until he explained what brought him here in the first place:

He was a wanted man. A Changling by the name of Axar was hunting him down, eager to fulfill a bounty placed on Gehn's head. Though she couldn't sense Gehn's own power, she got the impression there was a stark difference between them.

She was his muscle, should this Changling ever find him.

A fair enough trade, she supposed.

About three days had passed since Gehn was mutilated and 64 was freed from her prison. Both of them had calmed and more or less were relaxed around each other. Plans were being made to hunt down these "Dragon Balls" to wield power hitherto unheard of, as well as repairing Gehn's ship so they could hut said Dragon Balls.

There had been a lot of talking. Planning. Anticipating. Hypothesizing.

"Gehn?"

64 spoke as she rounded the corner into the dining room. It was early morning, not long after he had risen the past two nights, so she knew he'd be there.

She continued to wear her plain, black dress. Other clothes in her size had been found, but she liked this one. Especially after it had been cleaned up, she saw no reason to change.

"This idling has me restless," she declared as if they had been pondering the mysteries of the universe for decades. "When will we be going to the city proper?"

 

[Gehn]

Why did Avondall even have a dining room?

It wasn’t large, of course. Metal floor, stone walls, like the rest of the place. But all the amenities expected in a place as economically active as the Interstellar Market, and then some. It even had a modest table to fit four or five.

Perhaps his other creations, the ones Gehn saw before, dining with him.

At that modest, metal table, Gehn sat in a padded chair. The doctor had been out of his mind – obviously, of course – but he hadn’t been some hard, cold, emotionless automaton. The place was sterile, a place of work, but it also had some of the comforts of his living space. Gehn even found his quarters that same day he set Failure-64 free.

A name she insisted to go by: Failure. 64. Failure-64. Any of the three.

His fingers tapped away at the glass of a tablet. He scrolled through messages from a team he had made contact with while in transit before: those looking into the Dragon Balls. A sort of group that got paid to investigate wild, “moonshot” possibilities and share their findings with their investors.

Gehn had been getting paid, handsomely, to share all he knew and pour over their own information on these supposed, mystical objects. Such unique work, requiring specialized knowledge that Gehn possessed from his time on Vegeta and on Earth – he had not been much of a fighter, but he excelled in academics and engineering – meant he understood the subjects they discussed. One idea excited him in particular:

That, apparently, these “Dragon Balls,” and this team he consulted with proved certain they were indeed real, had a faint electromagnetic field. That meant they could be tracked not by the minds of ki-wielding fighters sensing other life energy, but by technology.

While he read through the latest of those messages, news reports speaking of nothing of note, played audibly. Until the door to the dining room quietly hissed open and Failure, still barefoot, still wearing a newly-repaired and plain black dress, stepped in.

Gehn’s organic eye turned to her. He couldn’t help how he stared at times, as she wore so little, but did his best to ignore that as well.

More difficult, as it was, by the day.

“64,” he sighed, not taking his eyes away from that all-glass tablet device. He refused to call her ‘Failure’ out of something approaching a principle. “I’ve told you about the Changeling, Axar. If, as unlikely as it sounds…”

His eyes, still scanning the message, came across rudimentary designs at the bottom of his latest message from the Dragon Ball researchers. His brow furrowed. They were suggested designs for prototypes of the very device that might allow them to find these Dragon Balls wherever they truly were.

Gehn turned his head to face Failure properly.

“…No, you’re right,” he corrected himself after a single moment’s pause. “We can’t stay in here forever. I should remain in, but there’s no known connection between us. Just avoid any red-orange Changelings and we’ll both be fine.

“Come, sit. I even have something for you to do.”

 

[Failure-64]

The corner of her lips lifted, chin tilted just a hair higher, to silently impart the message of _'Finally you see reason'_. She made her way up to the table, grabbed the closest chair, and then positioned it right beside Gehn's own. Close enough that she could snoop on his tablet, but not so much so that either of them touched.

While curious eyes pried, she spoke:

"You needn't feel trapped, either. You're not..."

She cut herself off the moment she realized her initial words were, likely, not what he wanted to hear. Not so soon after everything. She looked at him, paused to reconstruct her sentence, and then looked away.

"It's much more difficult to identify you. I cannot sense your power level, so I doubt any others can. A change of clothes and a new hair cut would make you a new man."

Even if her tone might have lacked in deep empathy, the length of it surely conveyed some level of care. She had always been curt, after all. Now, however, not only did she soften her words, but made it a point to express herself fully.

"On the subject of clothes," she continued, this time with a much more upbeat lift to her tone. "I'm glad you've taken a liking to my dress; it's my favorite."

Why else would his eyes linger on her so often?

 

[Gehn]

With a tap, Gehn silenced the newsman reporting on some dull affair in the city.

Failure had not spoken much since he awoke her and left, still frozen, the others behind. Just now, he heard her speak dozens of words without being further prompted. He blinked a few times, but said nothing about it.

“To identify me by my power, yes, I doubt he could do it now,” Gehn agreed with a nod. “But by sight, word of mouth? That’s what I’m worried about.

“This is the safest place for me. And what if I brought that danger to you?”

Gehn had already brought danger to people around him, back on Earth. Now here. He knew Axar didn’t delight in collateral damage, though he doubted how much it would bother him if it had to happen in order to finish his job.

“But I won’t stay here until we depart the moon, you’re right. It'd be nice to see the gas giant in the sky again, and the sun.”

Then, she pointed out how much he liked her dress. He felt his face warm and hoped it wasn’t visible, then cleared his throat.

“Yes, you cleaned it up well. You sew? Or was some machine here able to do it for you?” Gehn asked.

He spent considerable time cataloging everything here, though he hadn’t finished. He also went through the extensive amounts of data that Avondall Napyarn collected in the various, interconnected computer systems that powered this place. Gehn, like it seemed Failure had been, possessed some knowledge of how to interact with everything.

An expectation that he would be around for a while, as he learned Failure had been before she was frozen.

Yet something else foreign, built right into his brain.

“But I’ve a job for you, regardless,” Gehn shifted the subject away from her well-fitted dress and appearance. “If you wish to go out into the city, I have some things for you to pick up. I’ll give you a Zeni chip for your purchases, and some extra for you.”

“And while we’re on the subject of what to do next: Have you thought more about it?” He asked, referencing an earlier conversation of theirs.

“What you want to do after this?” Gehn repeated that question from some time ago now. He already told her what he intended: learn everything he could in this place, something she had begun to do as well, and use the Zeni he was making to buy himself a proper starship and crew to man it.

As it turned out, working to help a well-funded group of researchers look into reality-changing wish-orbs paid better than mining companies back on Earth. He had already made more doing this than his entire, personal take of his corporation back on Earth.

He’d decide where to go with that ship when he got to that point.

 

[Failure-64]

"Sewing is easy to pick up. Fairly intuitive," she said with a nonchalant shrug. Then, the corner of her lips curled ever so slightly, chin lifting a hair higher. "Perhaps my higher calling is in textiles?"

She waited for a laugh from Gehn, but only seemed pleased if it was genuine. It was a clever comment and deserved at least a chuckle!

Regardless, the moment was just that: a moment. Gehn refocused to the matter at hand, and told her that he needed a few things. He'd pay, of course, making her effectively his personal shopper for the day.

There were worse fates, though not many. At least she would be able to see the Market for the first time -- for better or for worse.

She nodded a few times, not quite dismissive though obviously not as excited as she had been a moment ago. Not until he asked what she wanted to do.

It gave her pause, just like it had the first time he asked.

It had never occurred to her that she would need to forge a path of her own. What could be called an "upbringing" taught her that she was more tool than person -- she was either sufficient as she was, or was trash.

A failure.

The mere thought made something burn in her chest. Anger, perhaps? Or a deep aching sorrow bleeding from a gaping hole in her very soul. Maybe both. Whatever it was, her face tightened, jaw clenched and lips pulled into a fine line. At some point her eyes wandered from Gehn and she now stared at the table as if she might burn a hole through it.

A single blink lightened her expression forcefully. Tension still sharpened her eyes, but at least she didn't openly glare at Gehn.

"I wish to study the Namekians or Kanassans," she declared. "The Doctor was inspired by them during my creation and the fact that I yet live is proof that he was onto something."

He didn't deserve to be called by his given name, she had decided days ago. But, in the same breath, she didn't deny his work. She was powerful, capable and stood well above the average being because of him. Whether Gehn liked it or not, he, too, was living proof that there was some credit to be given to the man.

"I feel powers within me. Untapped, locked away," she said while her eyes turned toward her open palm, as if she could see a manifestation of this lost power. "One of those planets will certainly help awaken them."

 

[Gehn]

“Namekians?” Gehn asked, the word jumping out of him almost involuntarily.

Failure stood there in pale silence for some time after his question. He waited, patiently, but found that he didn’t know what to do with his eyes – his eye, as much as the self-correction stung. When she answered, she all but blurted out that she wished to study the Namekians and Kanassans.

The eerie similarity to Dr. Napyarn’s choice in words had his gut tighten, but he decided to see it in a different light:

Her first, novel, independent desire.

Yet, what truly caught him by surprise was what he had just been thinking: If she could get the components, if he believed the device worked, they could go to Namek and find out once and for all if there was any truth to those rumors of wish-granting orbs.

Dragon Balls.

He didn’t interrupt her again after that. He listened as he explain that the Namekians and Kanassans were part of the inspiration for her creation. That she believes she still has power hidden away inside, waiting to come out.

A thought he wasn’t sure if he enjoyed: she was already stronger than most Saiyans.

Except, of course, that it meant the people coming after him were suddenly far less dangerous. With the sole exclusion in that statement, of course, of the real problem – Axar.

Gehn needed, still, another plan for him.

“Then Namek it is, first. We can go to Kanassa as well, once I have everything prepared,” Gehn answered her, then looked back out the doors of the cinder-block-walled dining room.

“We should go through more of Avondall’s computer systems. I can interface with most of them directly,” he explained, as much as he hated how convenient that scouter in his head was. “I’m sure we both still have much we can learn from it all.

“Including about these untapped powers, 64. If he made them part of you, I’m sure he wrote them down. He wrote down just about everything.”

Except, Gehn thought while he stared at the half-eaten plain rice before him, how to make a decent meal down here.

 

[Failure-64]

Her brow furrowed at his reaction to her thought of going to Namek. Perhaps it was related to whatever had his nose glued to his tablet; the work she assumed he was doing. But it brought only a passing moment of curiosity. By the time he suggested they go through the Doctor's -- she still refused to use his name -- logs, she seemed to completely forget how something had clearly shifted in his mind.

"Agreed," her flat, simply reply came. A much more familiar response that wasn't joined with any further comments. A single nod told him that she was ready to go, and the pivot of her heels asserted that she wouldn't be waiting for him.

---

As Gehn had suspected the Doctor had written a lot. Such that it was more cumbersome to pick out the truly useful information from the inane ramblings of a mad man. It was through this effort that 64 learned something critical about herself:

She was not very patient.

It was no more than half an hour before her eyes began to glaze over. Paragraphs blurred into wordless blobs, her fingers swept through the documents in a rhythmic pattern just a touch too fast for her to actually read everything. At some point Gehn noticed and commented on her lack of focus.

She didn't have a good answer, so she merely huffed and leaned back in her chair. A silent protest to this bothersome chore.

Gehn would continue on without her aid.

Eventually, he either finished going through the relevant documents or his own patience had ended. In either case, he summarized what the Doctor had noted about 64's results.

There was a strong emphasis on her sensitivity to Ki and an uncanny ability to understand and read the world in a way that wasn't normal to most. The ability to sense and feel the ebb and flow of Ki was, shockingly, not something most could inherently do. She couldn't imagine living a life without such basic understandings of what was around her. Furthermore, the descriptions she gave to the Doctor didn't seem to align with what was considered "normal".

Furthermore, there was a depth of her understanding that the Doctor struggled to consistently describe -- or, more likely, 64's inability to reliably recreate those situations. Gehn didn't quite grasp the meaning, but it did spark a memory in 64.

Without a word, she stood and approached Gehn who was half slumped in his chair. Her eyes narrowed, head tilted slightly. The tops of her cheeks reflected the light glow of her eyes as she stared at the center of Gehn's chest.

If she focused just right, she could see it: threads wound too tightly, some entirely severed, knots and frayed ends that comprised the spiritual body of Gehn. With the right touch, she could--

A needle pierced through her brain and 64 recoiled with a grimace. A shrieking headache crippled her, viciously scolding her for doing something wrong in that moment. A high pitched ringing echoed in her ears, deafening whatever Gehn's initial reaction was.

Only after a few moments of tense stillness did 64 let out a breath. She relaxed, lowered her hand from her head, and then blinked her eyes open. No longer did they glow.

"Still not right," she commented to herself and only as an afterthought did she look Gehn over to make sure he was fine after her little test. "I believe that is what the Doctor was trying to describe. Unraveling the tangled mess of Ki of another.

"It seems I need more practice before I'll get it right, however."

 

[Gehn]

Gehn leaned back in one of the desk chairs – meshed, ergonomic, comfortable – and simply stared at a screen in front of him. Another series of highly-technical entries from Avondall, this time going over how deeply interconnected it seemed combat and power truly was. How the former pushed the latter to greater heights that could never be achieved otherwise. He even had veritable masses of empirical experiments to back this up.

With them, countless fighting techniques, styles, tactics, strategies, methodologies, he had learned about in his studies. Something that could be studied by someone else, like Gehn, or Failure, to learn from.

Deep in thought on the subject, it was only when Failure, suddenly standing near him, tensed. Her chest bounced into place, drew his eye, and then suddenly she breathed again. Gehn furrowed his brow slightly at it as she talked, out of blue and after a long stretch of silence, of something not quite being right.

“…Is there something you want to tell me?” Gehn asked with a chuckle.

He looked back at the screen – movement and evasion techniques. Probably not related, he decided.

His eye flicked back to Failure and, somewhat to his surprise, she answered: She believed that Avondall wanted her to learn how to unravel and untangle someone else’s Ki. Gehn’s brow furrowed further. Where ha—

“Where has all this come from?” Gehn asked a new question. “Ki isn’t something that gets knotted within someone like rope. It’s life-energy, 64. It flows through anything that lives, biological or otherwise. Even moss, robots, or algae.”

Gehn knew much about this subject. His siblings once told him too much knowledge, too much refinement, and not enough power behind the precision and skill. They had been right.

But, right now, it helped. Gehn hadn’t, truly, revealed to Failure just how deep his own knowledge was.

“It all sounds remarkably selfless, too. Doesn’t that seem out of character for him?” Gehn pressed the point. “How about you tell me what you’re referring to with all this.

“I have some…proficiency in this subject, you could say. I might be able to illuminate some things for you.”