The One Who Hopes

When I meet his gaze, I know.

The One Who Bridges the Gap. His eyes are my eyes. I can see the... familial resemblance. I see it in a way that it wasn't present even in Aimi, or Sever, or Stitch, or Malicious. I see in his eyes what I see in my own, and in Nero's, and I know.

I know what I have to do.

"Who are you?" he asks, echoing back my own question. The question. One of the two questions that are truly important.

"My name is Rei," I reply.

He cocks his head to the side in a motion that is less Cheldrun than it is birdlike. "Rei? That doesn't make any sense."

"People keep saying that," I murmur. I think for a moment. "I'm... Mikomi?" I offer. It feels strange to use that name, but it feels close to the truth. Closer than 'Rei,' anyways. Zero. ... I no longer want to be the Empty Void, but I doubt I will ever really be able to change my nature.

"Your real name," he says.

Moses and Una and High Dive are watching now, and Moses's worried thoughts are like a distant buzzing in the back of my awareness. Amaterasu hungers. I don't want to be the empty void. Emptiness. Hallow. Cold. Dark. The question. Life? The inevitable heat death of the universe. Maximum entropy. An eternity of nothingness. There must be something more than that. Against all evidence to the contrary, that can't be all there is. I consider my answer for a long moment, and when I speak, I know before I even open my mouth that I am about to say something true on a level I have never uttered before: "I am The One Who Hopes."

The One Who Bridges the Gap nods. "Ah yes. That makes sense. Don't worry, The One Who Hopes. It will be over soon. But how did you get out here?"

"I came from the planet," I say. His eyes are hypnotic. So very like my own. The sense of kinship is almost painful in its intensity.

"Sent out in advance?" it asks. "The others will want to meet you."

I move forward and take his hand, feeling now more sure of the rightness of this course of action than I have ever before in my life. All the justifications I had been making for it seem to fade into the background: that I must learn about my enemy if we are to defeat it, that I am gathering information, that it would be irresponsible to let any more of my friends die because of our ignorance. All fades behind a great singular fact: this is what I was born for. This is why my father created me.

The One Who Bridges the Gap looks towards my companions. "Malice must be resolved," he says, and with a gesture of his hand, Garandu-Oni and Suraisu-Oni step through the wall.

The distant buzz of Moses' thoughts crescendos, and I am distantly aware of making telepathic contact with his mind. Then High Dive cries out, "Rei, what are you doing!?"

I meet her gaze and smile. "It's my purpose," I say. And then, hand in hand with The One Who Bridges the Gap, I walk through the bulkhead, and then through another, and another, and another. The sounds of combat are quickly muted, and then fade altogether.

We emerge into a vast open chamber, and my eyes are immediately drawn to the center, where floating in midair, strange metallic rings circle the largest quantity of White-Rock I have ever seen in my life: here is the heart of the ship, and Amaterasu's whispers rise up like a tide, urging me to let her out, to let her feed, and even here where I am able to distinguish between her thoughts and mine, I want to do as she asks. This amphitheatre-sized chamber is the Wandering Star's FTL drive, full of catwalks and strange technological devices and readouts and instrumentation so alien that I can't even begin to hope to understand it. But then, I don't need to, because what I see next stills even the hungry murmurs of Amaterasu within my mind.

There, all around the white rock engine, are strange, familiar figures. Each of them like the One Who Bridges the Gap, each of them different. Each of them like an idealized Cheldrun figure, and each of them with vibrant, otherworldly eyes. Some blue, some yellow, some red, some other colours, but each of them like mine; each of them like Nero's.

"I'm home," I whisper.

welcome home