MHA #6, Early Saturday Morning

[firstofitskind]

Verity had been out patrolling in Baltimore last night, late enough that Liam had fallen asleep on the couch waiting. It wasn't the first time that had happened, and wasn't likely to be the last, except that normally what happened is he'd either wake up when she came in through the door window, or if he'd been really tired, after his usual couple hours of sleep and make his way to the bedroom to find her there. This time... not so much. Maybe whatever Fandom magic was in the air was responsible for making sure he actually slept through the entire night, because the Liam who woke up was not the Liam who'd gone to sleep.

The Liam who woke up was about six years old, and very, very confused. Gone were the familiar purple walls of the Mothership and the hum of her engines. Instead he was on some sort of- squishy but also lumpy surface?

He looked around, eyes wide. The only thing he recognized was a completed Taelon puzzle on a shelf just out of reach. A cursory examination of the space revealed another room with a table and chairs, and he dragged one of the chairs over to the shelf and clambered up on it to bring the puzzle down.

Prize acquired, he made his way back to the couch, clinging to the one bit of familiarity in this strange place he'd found himself in.

[ooc: mostly establishy, but open if you live here!]

Comments

[firstofitskind]

"They are dying," Liam explained patiently. "And they are afraid."

Again, nobody had told him that this wasn't common knowledge. "They know that joining with humanity is the only way to save their species. But they cannot figure out how."

[arboreal_priestess]

"Not being giant dicks is a start," Verity muttered into her coffee. "And so they want to know how you are so, uhh, big and strong?"

That was a thing kids liked to hear, right?

...Unless they were Prices, where they liked hearing 'fast and sneaky.'

[firstofitskind]

Well, she wasn't wrong about the 'not being giant dicks' thing.

"And alive," Liam supplied helpfully, having finished the rest of his muffin.

[arboreal_priestess]

"That is a good start," Verity sighed. "What does Da'an say?"

She finished her coffee and poured herself another. "You still hungry, kiddo? Want another muffin?"

[firstofitskind]

"Sometimes it is just 'small talk'. He wishes to know about my day. Sometimes he will tell me stories." He considered his plate. "I would have another."

[arboreal_priestess]

Someone needed to teach this kid contractions. Stat.

"Sure," she said, getting up to grab another muffin. "Does he, err, explain where you came from?"

[firstofitskind]

"That my father used the body of my other father to Join with my mother?" Liam asked. "I am aware."

[arboreal_priestess]

"I meant in a waaaay more metaphorical way," Verity said quickly. "The whys and wherefores, not the, uhh, hows."

She wished Alex were here. Alex could talk about the biology of alien sex and mating to a six year old, making it sound dry and boring as possible, too.

[firstofitskind]

"The 'whys and wherefores'?" Liam repeated. "Do you mean the purpose behind my creation?"

[arboreal_priestess]

"I do, yes," Verity said slowly. "If that's not too rude a question."

[firstofitskind]

"I was the result of a biological imperative," Liam informed her. "Ha'gel's effort to solve a problem he had created."

This was true for Verity's Liam as well, though he'd never actually put it in those particular words before. That he was supposed to save the Taelons and the Jaridians from extinction, yes, but he'd never gone in to the why.

[arboreal_priestess]

Why yes, that was an interesting take. Enough so that Verity didn't immediately link it to Liam's explanations. "Ha'gel's problem...?"

[firstofitskind]

And this Liam, who had been raised by Taelons, who had been adjacent to if not fully immersed in the psychic link of the Commonality since birth, had no real understanding of ‘secrets’. “Do you know of the Jaridians?” he asked.

[arboreal_priestess]

"I know they're, uhh, the ancient enemy of the Taelons," Verity said quickly, not wanting to bring up Ariel right now. She didn't know how real this boy would be after the weekend, but if it were a case of him being really real somewhere, she wasn't going to say. "And were on a different evolutionary path?"

There. Nice and vague.

[firstofitskind]

It was entirely possible that Ariel existed in the world this Liam was from, although an altered sequence of events meant she may still be on the Jaridian homeworld.

Liam nodded. “They were the same species, once,” he told her. “The Kaaluet. Ha’gel... gave them what he saw as a gift, the shaqarava, meant to help them on that evolutionary path,” he turned one small hand, and then the other, palm-up so that Verity could see the burn-like marks there. “But they could not agree about how to use this gift. Those that became the Jaridians embraced the violence, the desires it inspired in them. Those that became the Taelons were afraid, and sought to bury it.”

[arboreal_priestess]

Either way, Verity wasn't about to say for sure. That way lay stupid.

"Denying a part of yourself generally doesn't end up well," she noted. "It always finds a way to come to light."

[firstofitskind]

It generally didn’t, but that the Kaaluet never asked for the shaqarava complicated matters somewhat. “Neither side can live without the other. But by the time Ha’gel realized this, it was too late to undo what he had done to them. The Taelons captured and imprisoned him, and he spent eight million years figuring out a way to solve the problem he had created.” The solution, of course, being Liam.

[arboreal_priestess]

"That's a very long time," Verity noted wryly. "And his answer was...you?"

Jesus, no pressure or anything, kid.

[firstofitskind]

“Yes,” Liam nodded. “I am to be the bridge between them.”

[arboreal_priestess]

"Well, that sounds like..." Verity's mouth wouldn't let her say 'fun.' It just wouldn't. "A thing."

No wait, do better.

"A big responsibility."

There.

"What about the humans? You know, the ones on Earth?"

[firstofitskind]

"They are part of the solution." Liam frowned. "I do not know how," he admitted, sounding visibly frustrated for the first time in this conversation.

He knew a great many things, more than your average six-year-old, but this... this eluded him.

[arboreal_priestess]

"That bothers you, doesn't it?" Verity asked, voice full of sympathy. "Don't like not knowing things? Me neither. And my brother Alex is even worse."

[firstofitskind]

"I hate it," Liam admitted. Even more frustrating was the feeling that the answer was just out of his reach.

[arboreal_priestess]

"But if you know everything now, then what will you have left to learn?" Verity asked.

[firstofitskind]

"What if I do not figure it out in time?" Liam asked her, distressed. "And they die? That is- I do not want that."