The Observer

…

"Fate. What is fate, but a series of moments and choices that define our lives?" -The Observer, Tome 2

…

FROM THE DEPTHS OF DARK WATERS

Chapter 2: The Observer

"We mean you no harm."

Around Aphelion, countless people faced him as the metal mech spoke aloud, aiming their weapons at him, ready to launch an assault at any time, but none of the many females that wielded those weapons dared to fire at him. His mech stood steady behind him without a sound, floating effortlessly above the crashing waves that collided with the bow of the ship he was on, ushering the females in front of Aphelion to stand down. His artificial intelligence spoke to him personally, sounding from his exosuit in a language that only he could understand.

This unit estimates that there has been a one-hundred and five percent increase in threat level. A preemptive strike in response is highly advised.

"I would like to avoid any unnecessary fighting with potential allies." Aphelion replied, keeping his hands held in the air above his head to display that he was unarmed.

Understood.

Eventually, the white-haired girl with amethyst eyes approached him slowly, as though she were walking on unsteady ground that would crumble at any given moment. With her strange-looking bow clutched tightly in her hand, she began to speak with caution evident in her words.

"Who are you?" the girl began, her voice filled with wavering amounts of confidence. Aphelion couldn't understand what the woman was saying, but he could tell by the wavy tone of her voice that the girl was unsure of herself when speaking to him. "Tell us your name."

She is requesting your name.

"I understand. Translate this message," Aphelion spoke loud enough for only his machine, making sure to keep his movements slow and steady as he began to speak, the machine behind him speaking his words exactly as he said them. "I am pilot of the anti-Siren extermination weapon named Aphelion One. Pilot Aphelion Estrada."

"Aphelion Estrada? Extermination weapon?" The blonde girl asked, tossing the words around on her tongue as if she were trying them out.

"Well met, Aphelion. I am the second ship of the Yorktown class aircraft carriers, Enterprise." The white-haired woman introduced herself, raising a hand and placing it on her chest, offering a very simple lean. She then turned her shoulder slightly away, as though she were making way for the girl that stood beside her.

"And I'm Cleveland, knight of the sea! I am the big sister of the Cleveland-class cruisers. But I guess that's obvious from my name alone though, isn't it?" the girl with long strawberry-blond hair introduced herself, her red eyes looking at him filled with the same uncertainty he had seen from the girl who called herself Enterprise.

Though this unit has not detected any abnormalities, the information provided does not match historic records.

"Explain," Aphelion quickly interjected, his eyes narrowing as he looked between the two girls who revealed themselves as Enterprise and Cleveland, fully preparing himself to act against them if he had to. Enterprise became very concerned by the look he had sent in their direction, and the concern slowly turned into worry as Aphelion's stance took a more defensive tone. He had angled himself towards them, and the strange armor he wore seemed to shift as if it had been made of small coin-shaped objects that hardened around him.

A moment later, his artificial intelligence explained to him the situation that he had found himself in by displaying a holographic image in front of him. The problem that the artificial intelligence of his warship had managed to find, was that the two girls in front of him were named after ships. Or rather, they were ships. Their names and even the stories they told added up perfectly with the stories of old ships from the first and second World Wars. More problems arrived as he further read that all of them had been decommissioned or recycled almost a thousand years ago, according to the history his warship displayed. Not even to mention the most peculiar thing, the fact that the ships were standing before him in human flesh.

Aphelion couldn't help but look between the two girls cautiously as he read, then look further past them. The hundreds of other girls that looked at him, armed with weapons on their arms and metal riggings on their bodies were looking steadily at him, their weapons aimed at him and ready to fire. He concluded that all of them were the same: ships.

As he looked at the girls that aimed their weapons at him, he couldn't help but wonder if he had made yet another mistake. He was sure that the weapons they donned on him would be more than enough to kill him while he wasn't in his warship, that is if they were able to even hit him with their ballistic weapons. But he was also sure that—in the unforeseen chance they did attack him—he was more than capable of surviving the barrage and answering their attack with one of his own. What he had against them was the speed in the form of his warship behind him. As soon as it detected an incoming threat, it would act out to stop the oncoming assault as fast as it could.

"We are proud ships of the Eagle Union, in service to the worldwide military organization known as the Azur Lane. We Kansen are born from the thoughts and hopes of humanity and given emotions and life through Wisdom Cubes." Enterprise further explained to him, hoping to deescalate his concern and worry by further explaining herself, her voice was being translated after she spoke by Aphelion's assistant.

There was a moment of silence that fell over them as both himself and the machine behind him processed the information they had been given from the girl. His own thoughts were filled with questions about what the girl had said and specifically wondered what exactly a Wisdom Cube was. He had studied years of human history, and there was absolutely nothing he could remember about a device that could create humans from thoughts. Creating humans from nothing was simply not possible.

More like, it wasn't possible.

"Impossible." He found his thoughts leaving his lips, the words precariously his own as the machine behind him didn't translate for him. There was no need for the machine to translate, as the girls both seemed to understand his words completely.

"What exactly is impossible? Do you not know what Wisdom Cubes are?" Enterprise asked him, her expression turning to one of shock and curiosity.

His thoughts had begun to spew. Things of metal that were given flesh sounded exactly like Sirens to him. His training urged him to move to action, to dip his hands down and grab the pistol he had at his side that was flush on his suit, almost unnoticeable. But he never fully reached the weapon, instead, he decided to bite the bullet and continue the conversation, feeling that there was still information to be learned. It made no sense in his mind why a Siren would attack another Siren, so for now, he figured could trust the girls in front of him. At least until they proved to him otherwise.

There is no recorded data of any objects called 'Wisdom Cubes' in the human database.

His aide explained its findings to him, leaving him just as puzzled as he had been before. Aphelion kept his arms raised carefully at his side in a neutral display, searching his brain to find the words to say next but kept coming up at a loss. Nothing he was seeing, and nothing he could imagine, helped him in any way to make sense of anything going through his head now.

"Earlier you said that you were the pilot of that… thing behind you. The extermination weapon. Where did you come from?" Enterprise asked, attempting to break the awkward silence that had fallen between them once again. Her response was met with a single gesture from the man dressed in black. A single hand extended up further than the other, pointing towards the sky.

"Enterprise of the United States. This vessel's charted star system is thousands of years ahead of the current observed and charted star patterns."

Enterprise paused as questions began to evidently stir behind her eyes. "United States?"

Aphelion listened to her translated voice carefully. Her question proved to him that there was no United States in this world. They said they were Eagle Union ships. His AI had explained to him their decommissioning and the dates they were sunk. They hadn't even experienced World War Three. They hadn't even experienced the First Vryheidsoorlog. And they never would.

He wasn't simply sent back in time. No. There was more to it than that—a variable an artificial intelligence would never be able to see. Not only had he been sent back in time, but he had also been sent to some form of altered one as well. His hands lowered slowly without him realizing it as he thought about that idea. The prospect of entire parallel universes existing outside of the one he was used to was both unimaginably amazing as it was completely and utterly terrifying.

From the moment the first Rift appeared at the deepest depths of the Mariana Trench, to the moment Sirens had fled to the stars in pursuit of humanity, the one question that had always been asked had been where did the Sirens come from? Humanity had never answered such a question. And the answer had been constantly one step behind them, left behind through the wormholes they created during a warp. He had been so distracted by his own thoughts; he had completely ignored the two girls speaking in front of him.

"Tell them we are allies and request to work with them," Aphelion quickly interjected, his curiosity getting the better of him as he thought about the world around him that was becoming more and more interesting to him with each passing moment.

"We request to work with you."

"Don't you… want to get back to your home?" Enterprise asked, looking genuinely taken by surprise.

"Impossible."

"I… I see." Enterprise answered with a stagnant pause. "I look forward to working with you Aphelion. I hope you enjoy your time here. Can you give me a few hours to find a vacant place for you to stay? Everyone at Azur Lane is female, so it might take a while to find a proper place for you to rest your head."

With a nod of understanding from Aphelion, Enterprise gave her goodbyes and began her brisk walk away, leaving him alone with the girl named Cleveland who gave him a toothy grin before she also walked off, leaving him alone to think about what he had just heard.

Enterprise had said that everyone at Azur Lane was female. If that were true, did that mean all the current residents were like the girls who still held weapons in his direction? What happened to all the humans? Something felt… off.

…

"Dear sister Kaga, tell me what you just saw." Came the calm and low tone of one of two girls that sat and watched the base they were only just seconds away from waging a full-scale attack on. The girl who had asked the question to her sister was a tall woman with a slender frame and a large bust. She donned a long, black kimono with golden designs, black leggings, and red heels. She had a pair of fox ears atop her head with long and lush waist-length brown hair that flowed down to a magnificent six tails that moved freely behind her. Her red eyes stared at the place where their fleet of summoned Sirens should have been.

But there was nothing left of them.

"I… don't know." Her fair sister—a girl with white hair that had been cut off just slightly past her jawline—answered. The girl wore white—the opposite color of her sister—and, like her sister, the girl had a pointy pair of fox ears that sat atop her head and nine tails that flowed freely behind her. Blue eyes watched with complete and utter shock as the girl looked out towards the base, completely unfocused on them. All information they had obtained from their spy Ayanami had been completely flipped on its side just moments after they had started their attack.

They had come prepared for a fight, with enough sirens to completely wipe the floor with Azur Lane.

And Akagi was more than aware that such a machine, capable of completely disintegrating more than fifty Siren warships in the blink of an eye was something that wasn't to be toyed around with. Continuing the attack on the Eagle Union after witnessing the power she had just seen was completely and utterly stupid and it didn't take a genius to realize that. A machine capable of destroying that many sirens, was more than capable of doing the same to her and her sister.

The power that the machine had displayed had been so terrifying that she almost wanted to pass out from the feeling of it alone. She was close enough to the destruction that she could feel the unimaginable amounts of energy from it zip around her like the air itself had been electrified, causing the hairs on her body to stick upright, and when the energy sucked in on itself like some form of vacuum, the force that she felt wasn't at all like being hit by a wall of concussive air.

It was the exact opposite. It was almost unexplainable. Like the gravity around her had shifted and pulled the life from her body before violently throwing her aside.

And it was hot. So unbelievably, undeniably, and unexplainably hot. For only a single moment, the wave of energy felt far hotter than any flame she could ever conjure around her body, and it felt far more ferocious than her vocabulary allowed her to explain. It felt cruel, it felt oppressive, and it hungered for an unimaginable carnage. It was the form of power that the Sakura Empire and the Iron Blood craved but could never obtain, and such power was created for a purpose that far exceeded whatever threats they faced on the surface of this world.

It was rage, vanity, and vile given purpose in the form of a weapon beyond this world's understanding.

For four months, Akagi had the strange object observed by Ayanami, waiting to see if it would ever move with anticipation. Four months she had deterred her attack in response to the arrival of an unknown variable, and more than a few times she wished to see for herself what the thing was capable of. And now she wished that knowledge was something that she wouldn't have ever learned of.

She felt as though they had awoken a sleeping giant.

The Sakura Empire thought they had the heavens on their side. They thought they had the good fortune and luck of the gods with them. They thought they were doing the right things by modifying the Siren's weaponry onto themselves. But her intuition told her, deep down, this would come back to bite them. Both the Iron Blood and the Sakura Empire. The Red Axis, just as quickly as it had been formed, would fall. By the might of a star that fell from the heavens above.

Coherent fear and fantasies were things that both factions understood in their own religions. Each of their respective religions' primeval fears was each horrifying in their vistas of reality, but what stood before them… was a horror that was far more important and prevalent to them than any mythology. Through the looking glass of discerning fact and fiction, what stood against them was an enemy beyond their imaginations and it was factual. And Akagi knew she was about to do something stupid to meet the source of that.

Very stupid.

She was going to sneak onto Enterprise's unattended flight deck and speak to the steel giant itself. If it weren't for the fact that some already unknown source was on Enterprise's carrier already, this would have been unimaginably stupid of her. But with the massive metal figure on Enterprise's flight deck, she was sure her presence would be significantly harder for her sworn enemy to discern her presence. Or so she hoped.

However, before she voiced her plan to her dear sister, she suddenly noticed something interesting. The machine itself opened, and out stepped a man. A man dressed in armor so black, it seemed to absorb all light that touched it, the only differentiating thing about it was the fact it appeared to be scaly from a distance. Like small patterns moving on the surface as if some shield was protecting him. She was thankful then for her gifted observation tools, allowing her to see the events unfurl from a distance.

However, she was not the only one gifted with such devices, and the only reason she and her sister hadn't been spotted yet, was the same reason her idea to approach the boy was stupid. All eyes—as well as most weapons—were rightfully trained on the man that stepped out, arms held in the air, not in surrender, but in an attempt to display he was harmless to them.

Akagi thought against herself for a moment. As much as she wanted to speak to the boy herself, Ayanami was in a far better position to carry out her idea, especially after her recent endeavor of helping a few Royal Navy and Eagle Union ship girls. Akagi let out a sigh. She wanted to meet the man herself.

Yes. Despite all the fear she had felt in the core of her body towards the man, and against all logical and rational thought, Akagi found herself too struck to look away from him. His cold, cunning look with confident steps and actions, even when standing at the business end of multiple cannons. There was no fear, no hesitation, and no emotion in his actions. His calculating icy blue eyes, piercing and judging Enterprise herself for all she was worth was an action that struck something inside her.

Yes, Akagi found herself to be very attracted to the boy and the energy he emanated—it was fate for the strong to be drawn to each other, after all. Once that seed of desire had been planted in her mind, her brain processed the attraction to the one thing needed for its fulfillment; the man who had just stepped onto the flight deck and stared Enterprise down. She took a sharp breath in, a wicked smile forming on her face as her cheeks turned red. She would do anything to meet the man that she had chosen.

"I have an idea~"

…

Aphelion had been left alone with his machine for the better part of an hour now, staring out at the crashing waves that brought curdles of foam crashing onto the rocky shoreline that surrounded the naval base he had previously escaped from. The most eye-catching thing to him—aside from the curdles of foam and salty sea spray—was the fact that the base in his vision had no wall around it, nothing that showed even a slight resemblance to the naval bases he had learned about through his extensive history lessons.

He directed his attention to the second package of rations he held in his hand, a simple grey bag filled with the same flavorless gel he had earlier that contained all the nutrients and sustenance the human body needed and nothing more. He hadn't opened it yet, despite knowing he needed to eat. He also knew it was foolish to not eat, but he wasn't feeling hungry at all, as the shock of the world around him was still fresh on his mind and hid his hunger with ease. He sat down on the deck of the Enterprise, leaning against one of the metal legs of his warship that now gently stood on the deck of the Enterprise, and thought about what it was he had just done.

The cannon he had used—a weapon named the Purge Cannon—fired a simple high-density mass of unstable and super-heated plasma that was roughly a few inches in diameter. The larger the diameter of the initial plasma ball, the larger the plasma explosion itself was, and the AI of his warship did all the math to determine the perfect outcome of the attack so that there were no complications.

Essentially, the plasma explosion itself was hot enough to vaporize anything that was inside of the larger radius. In space, the attack was hardly noticeable, producing no sound whatsoever, and only causing minimal amounts of damage to the Sirens that met the attack. But on Earth, the attack was significantly different from the times he had used it in space combat. While the attack itself was by no means the weakest in his armament, it also wasn't the strongest. The strongest weapon in his armory was rightfully the centerpiece of his Siren extermination weapon, and when that power was directed towards a single point, it came out as an intense electromagnetic eruption—like a solar flare—that could glass an entire planet's surface with ease, given enough time to do so.

Deciding to not think any more about the attack he had decided to use to eradicate the attacking Siren force, he averted his attention to the girl who had introduced herself to him as Cleveland. After his initial conversation with her and the girl named Enterprise, both had walked off and left him to his own devices on the flight deck of the water vessel that belonged to Enterprise. It was hard to explain and understand how that worked, but he managed just fine regardless. However, now the girl named Cleveland had returned with some form of a red bucket in her hand and began to cautiously approach him while he remained seated.

Stopping her movement only a few feet away from him, Cleveland reached into the bucket and pulled out a golden and crispy looking object that looked like the upper leg of some avian creatures he had seen in videos. He looked at the object in curiosity that turned into horror as Cleveland immediately began to eat the object without any amount of hesitation or remorse.

This unit estimates that that is the remains of an avian lifeform, coated in a mix of flour, eggs, and spices cooked in grease. An ancient technique called frying.

A moment later, she held out the second piece of the fried creature for him to take.

This unit estimates that the corpse of the creature displays no special abnormalities that may subject the metabolic system to damage. It is only a harmless source of sustenance.

"Ask what her intentions are for this," Aphelion asked, eyeing the food as if it would jump at him at any given moment.

"What is the purpose of this visit?"

"I only want to talk with you some more!" Immediately, Cleveland's expression became one of complete determination. Aphelion offered her only a nod in reply as he took the fried animal from her hand and brought it up to his lips. Taking a bite of the fried food, Cleveland's face immediately lit up into a bright and radiant smile.

And only a second later, the flavor from the food hitting his tastebuds sent him spiraling mentally. He paused as he ate the food, thinking of the rations he had been eating up until this point. The small packets of gel-like food had been completely tasteless, or maybe not tasteless, but they were identical in taste to water. Cool and refreshing, but not exactly savory. The food he ate now was the complete opposite. The food—what he assumed was from the bird of limited-flight called a chicken—was coated in a crispy and crunchy form of breading that kept all the juices of the meat inside it, and the breading itself had evident spices cooked into it.

Simply put, it was the best thing he had ever tasted. He hadn't experienced anything like the food he was eating now, and before he even knew what had happened, the food was completely devoured down to the bone—which he also left clean. A moment later, Cleveland was in front of him, offering him the bucket of food clearly in a gesture to grab another as she smiled at him with a toothy grin.

"Do you mind if I have a seat and talk with you?" She asked him, her facial expression poised as she spoke to him. The girl was clearly starting to feel more comfortable in his presence.

The girl was very animated, to say the least, but it made her easier to read and understand, even with the language barrier between them. Aphelion nodded his head in response to her, moving to sit down against his spacecraft while she followed shortly behind him, sitting beside him while leaving only a few inches of distance between them.

"Earlier, you said you were from space. What was your home like?" Cleveland asked him, once again being the initiator of their conversation. Aphelion hesitated for a moment, deciding if it would be wise or not to explain his home to her, but ultimately decided that it would be entirely harmless for her to know, so he explained and allowed his interface system to translate for the girl as he spoke.

"The Garden is the name of the super fortress that humanity from my time survives on, drifting through the darkness between the stars in constant search of peace away from Sirens. The Garden is a place where only the physically perfect is allowed to survive, imperfections such as diseases and genetic issues are immediately destroyed."

Cleveland's expression turned sour as she listened. "Destroyed? W-why? What do you mean?"

"Imperfections and mentally unsound individuals are considered useless to the future of mankind and are executed immediately or abandoned in space."

"That sounds… horrible."

"The Garden is designed to be a place where no disease and famine should exist. No crime, no hostility, and no way for any virus or plague to thrive. It is a utopia and a beacon that shows mankind's willingness to persevere in the face of impossibility."

"And… what about you? How did you end up here?" Cleveland asked, turning her head away from the red and white striped box of fried chicken and looking at him. There was a stagnant pause as he looked back into her red eyes, their curiosity and brilliant red hue were the exact opposite of his own blue eyes that failed to display how he was feeling.

"I stayed behind to delay the assault of Sirens that had been attacking The Garden before a warp was initiated. When The Garden warped away to a new location, I was left behind, fighting alone against an endless wave of Sirens. But I fell into the gravitational singularity that had been left behind by The Garden's warp and awoke here seven months later."

"So… there is a colony of humans wandering between the stars in the sky above us as we speak?" Cleveland asked, amazement and wonder creeping across her face. His previous explanation had been left as a run-on for more information, he left details out that he didn't want to explain or put up with. However, he had accidentally let important information slip. Telling her he was from the future wasn't good, but he was too far into his explanation now to go back and correct himself.

"Incorrect. It would appear that—some way or another—I have traveled backward in time and arrived here. However, this world is nothing like the one I have come from. My history records have described and shown me a world far different than the one seen so far."

"Like… another alternate reality. We all—meaning the Azur Lane—saw something like that a few years ago, when an odd bunch of girls showed up claiming to be from some world that they called the 'Gamindustri.' Bizarre little group if you ask me." Cleveland explained, bringing a hand up to her chin as she thought. "And we have even been able to see the past in singularity experiments, we have gone back to the past, recounted events from history, and even came back with new ship girls!"

Aphelion stopped eating almost immediately. He knew exactly what the girl was talking about, and it was very much like the thing he had gone through to get here. The girl named Cleveland had just told him about a phenomenon called Gravitational Singularity. An event that is formed when gravity becomes so unbelievably dense it begins to break down spacetime around it catastrophically. And she had just told him they had managed to return from events that took place in the past.

"Oh! I guess you don't know what the 'Kansen' even are, huh?" Cleveland rhetorically asked him with excitement, immediately continuing after she had caught his attention again. "We ship girls are the Kansen! Personifications of the beliefs, thoughts, and hopes of humanity! We are created to protect humanity against the Sirens and defeat them."

"And then what?" Aphelion spoke without thinking, allowing his mech behind him to translate once more. He sounded cold, reserved, and calculating as he spoke to her, as though he was judging her every word and motivation, but the tone was discarded as the machine spoke in its normal monotonous tone.

"Well…" The girl seemed to shut down a little, falling into a deeper train of thought. "I guess after we win and defeat the sirens, we just… live our lives like normal?"

"That sounds… nice." Aphelion nodded his head as Cleveland shared her thoughts. It was an admirable dream, and certainly, one that she was entitled to. But that is all the fleeting thought was to him.

A dream.

Her destiny was like his, and it was easy to see. Her purpose in this life was to serve humanity and protect them against the Sirens, even if it cost her own life. Unlike him, however, the girl seemed to be far more free-thinking than he was. She had been created from the thoughts and hopes of humanity and as such, was given personality through perspective. He, on the other hand, had been created from something entirely different.

He was a product of humanity's desperation. He wasn't born from something as noble as hope or belief. He was born, to serve a cause and die doing it. There was no normal life waiting for him at the end of his service to live. When his service ended, he would be cast aside. His parents—while he knew he had them—he couldn't even remember what they looked like. Did they ever care about him? He had seen videos of parents with their children and mentions of love. Did his parents ever love him? What even was love?

He had never been taught its meaning.

For him, he couldn't even remember where his story began. Sometimes, it felt like he was looking at the past through a dreamy haze, and there was much doubt as to where they even began; at times it felt appalling to a vista of years that stretched behind him into a formless grey cloud, while at other times it seemed to him as if the present moment that he lived in was the only place he could truly remember. The only meaning his life had—the only meaning he had been taught—was found only while fighting the enemy of humanity. He had no aspirations or dreams that he wanted to personally obtain.

He didn't understand how to even have them.

In a way… the girl in front of him was more human than he had ever been.

While he now knew that the girls in front of them had ways to go back in time to past events and return, he also knew he could alter that in some way to potentially send him forward in time, potentially back to his own, as they had done themselves. However, he didn't ask at all. He didn't want to know, and instead decided—one of the few things he had ever decided for himself—that he had found a new obligation in his life. A new home. His oath wasn't to protect The Garden. His oath was to protect humanity. And that included the girl in front of him.

And the ones that still pointed their weapons at him from a distance.

The girls in front of him—no—this world, in front of him, was nothing like the world his people and ancestors came from. But, as different as this world was from his own, even this world seemed to borrow from events that took place on his own, such as wars and places.

However, ships—once completely metal or wooden constructs—were now given flesh, mentality, beating hearts, and the ability to feel emotion. He was sure even the races that existed in this world were different from his own, and the only indication for such a hypothesis was that, in the distance, he could see a girl with electric-blue eyes staring at him, with long white hair tied by two red bows. She had large, furry ears situated at the top of her ears as if she were a humanoid animal…

No. It was a headband, upon his closer inspection.

Perhaps the most merciful thing about the human mind was its inability to correlate all its contents. As the term and mantra go; ignorance is bliss.

But in the distance, he saw something else. Skimming across the ocean, was yet another girl, this one with long brown hair, large fluffy and pointed brown ears situated atop her head but much larger than the white-haired girls, and six tails flowing behind her back. He had to double-take and count them all twice to be sure.

"Anyways! We Kansen are made from these neat little things here that are called Wisdom Cubes!" Cleveland continued her explanation, pulling out and holding up a small blue cube from seemingly nowhere in his direct line of sight. "These things are what create us! From the smallest atoms in our bodies to the riggings we wear out to sea! I snagged this one while I went out, just to show it to you!"

Once more, he didn't reply to the enthusiastic girl. Not because he did not want to, but because he did not know how to reply to her. He had not ever been given the luxury of communicating like this to people before, not even amongst his peers, and the experience—as unique as it was to him—was something he put his attention on entirely. Specifically, his attention was on Cleveland. The girl with her bright smile, happy demeanor, and red eyes was where his focus averted to. His experience with the opposite sex was entirely limited to his service, and those females were just as reserved as he was.

Cleveland wasn't like them. And he couldn't help but notice that. In fact, of the two girls he had met since his awakening, the most interesting—to him—was the one he was conversing with now. He couldn't fully explain why that was either. He could only explain it with the word attracted, but he didn't understand the implications of what that meant.

And he was also at a loss for words as he saw the blue cube before him in Cleveland's hands. It felt… familiar. An underlying, gentle hum of energy that felt like the first dive he had with his mech. The first time he had linked his mind to the technology that stood unmoving behind him.

He reached for the cube, and Cleveland froze as his hands touched it. As soon as he touched the thing, it began to glow brighter, as if a miniature sun had formed at the core of the cube itself. And as it began to glow brighter, a multitude of things began to take place around him and inside his head. First and foremost, the girl who skimmed across the waters toward them had jumped onto the Enterprise with them and immediately froze in her place. Cleveland momentarily panicked and kicked over the small red and white striped bucket of food onto the metal ground, accidentally spilling its contents everywhere as it tumbled. She looked at him with wide eyes filled with curiosity, as if she had just seen something extremely important to her.

And the cube itself began to twist itself in front of him, opening at the corners and unfolding, releasing a strange amalgamation of blue, projecting blue holograms of circular information both in front of and around him. And the last thing that happened, was the sudden and unexpected darkness that filled his vision.

…

When Aphelion's vision returned to him a few moments later, he felt completely separated from the world he had previously been in. There was now only a formless infinity around him, both black, and oppressive. He felt tiny, like a speck in the vastness of infinity. Like he was both nothing and everything. He couldn't feel his body, and he couldn't see it either. He tried curling his fingers, then his toes. He tried flaring his nose and then tried opening his mouth. But he couldn't feel anything. There was no sensation of air filling his lungs and he couldn't feel the beating of his heart. Fear began to take hold of him, but it was completely ambiguous since there was no way for him to show it. In the mix of his dazed panic, he struggled to think properly.

While he knew how to speak, he couldn't form any words and he had the vague impression that some strange and perhaps terrible mediation would be needed to speak what he wanted to say into words if he wished to be heard from beyond his slumber. For a single moment, even his identity, too, became bewildering cloudy. It seemed to him that he had suffered a great shock from some utterly monstrous outgrowth of his normal cycles of unique and incredible of experiences.

He couldn't remember what had led to him being here after the cube had opened, and the only possible explanation he could form was that he had been somehow rendered unconscious from the strange cube that had managed to open with his touch. Soon, there was a piecing together of dissociated knowledge that filled his head, and it appeared before him as a formula of some kind—a sort of list of things to think and do—which he immediately recognized as something to be unnatural from the world he came from. It was a key—a guide—to certain gateways and transitions of which scientists from his world could have only dreamed and whispered about, the key which led to freedoms and discoveries beyond the three dimensions and realms of life and matter that humans from his world knew.

The cube could show him things where he wasn't physically located. It was similar to the ability that humanity had stolen from Sirens long ago to use in their favor during the First Vryheidsoorlog. But the cube seemed to show him a world that was voided, empty, and undisturbed by the thoughts and information normally distributed among and between other Sirens.

And soon enough as his thoughts began to run wild, so did the world around him. The darkness that had once been empty and filled with nothing began to change as color bled onto the dark canvas like a light was being shined into his closed eyes. He discovered that he was now no longer alone in the cold darkness. While he knew his physical body was still—probably—on the flight deck of Enterprise with his mech standing behind him in defense, he felt acutely aware of a new figure that appeared before him.

The figure was feminine in build, like the Siren he had seen before he had been cryogenically frozen. But the new figure did not speak at first—nor did he hear any sound whatsoever during all the immediately following moments of movement in the world around him. Everything was a shadowy pantomime as if it were being seen in his eyes from a vast distance through some intervening haze—and on the other hand, the crushing darkness and shifting stars loomed large and close, both near and distant as if being afflicted upon by some abnormally shifting geometry.

And then there was a moment when he heard a voice that made him very suddenly aware that sound had begun to form around him.

"Nothing will ever be the same for you…" the figure finally spoke out to him, her gentle voice piercing through the darkness of the space around him and filling his head as the figure came into view.

It was a girl with short white hair, and paper-white, ghostly pale skin. Though, unlike the figure he had first seen, the one that stood before him now had only a single eye that he could see, which was a stunning electric blue instead of the angered purple of the original he had seen.

"The lost soldier… far from home and lost in time. Nothing will ever be the same for you; the one who has only ever known the death and decay of the endless void. You who were never taught to feel the pleasures and pains of human flesh can feel it all now. In your stomach. In your arms and in your veins. You've caused a lot of suffering, and yet you don't know it. You feel no remorse. You were never taught its meaning.

"You feel the hunger inside you. Not for food or drink. Not for talk or fun. But to understand the world around you. To understand the great and horrible mystery of a past that never existed in your time. But to know… to really know… would drive you mad."

Aphelion tried to speak, but the words never formed.

"I am called 'Observer Zero.' Remember it well as the only Siren that spared your life for the greater good of humanity. But now… you want knowledge. That's why you opened the cube, isn't it?

"There is a curiosity at the core of every thinking thing, even Sirens. A desire for knowledge from uncharted and unknowable territories. But the knowledge you want to obtain… the knowledge that exists in the blankness of the abyss… is far too immense for you to understand. Things that are best left unobserved, even by me. It is better for us both to embrace ignorance than face the truth of our insignificance in the grand scheme of all things.

"Against the vastness of the black infinity, we are nothing more than swirling specs. Less than pawns. What I do know… is that I've been observing since the beginning of it all. Across time and even through it. I look and observe these worlds with eyes that only see disharmony, chaos, fear, and infinite terror. I see worlds where Sirens don't exist. I see worlds where Sirens won. I see worlds where Kansen's betray. I see your world, and I see this one."

Again, Aphelion was forced into a stagnant and one-sided silence. He had questions and demanded to know answers. The girl named Observer Zero knew a lot about him, she even knew him better than he did himself. And she had even saved him? A Siren had saved a Human? That was an impossible occurrence that went against all values and beliefs he had been taught. She even claimed to see other worlds, through time itself. That should also have been impossible.

"I look and observe… and yet… I am swayed by the thought of another truth beyond the veils I can't look beyond. Your arrival here—as assisted as it may be—shines an uncanny light through the black fog. I need you. And you need me. Without me, you would be dead. So, I offer you a trade, an answer to your desire.

"You help me. I help you. I'll be your guide, and you will be mine."

The deal seemed obvious. And Aphelion had the vague sense he didn't have a choice. No matter what his answer is here, the Observer would always be watching him. But the options he made now could be used to his benefit. While he had no idea what the cryptic language the girl spoke had meant, he had a feeling it would serve some purpose later on.

So, he made a choice at that moment.

He nodded his head.

Knowledge for knowledge.

End of Chapter 2: The Observer