Hearing Haxxor Bunny's grave warning, everyone hurried back to the sleeping cars, ready to give their own rooms a careful once-over.
Ah Qi.
Stelle trailed behind the pink-haired girl, tossing out a reminder that sounded almost careless:
Don't forget to check under the bed extra carefully — who knows, a facehugger might come zipping right out!
Seriously, now of all times you want to scare people?!
March 7th spun around, annoyed, and flicked the gray-haired raccoon smartly on the forehead:
Read the room, would you!
With that, she huffed, hands on her hips, and stormed through her door.
Owww...
Stelle clutched her slightly reddened forehead, pouting pitifully, her eyes wide with feigned innocence.
"Drop the act. She's already inside."
Caelus called her bluff without mercy, lifting a leg to give the Stellaron spirit's backside a knee that was neither too gentle nor too rough.
"Drop the act. She's already gone."
Stelle: (￣ε￣;)
She dropped the wronged look in an instant, whistling an off-key tune with feigned nonchalance, striding forward on those absurdly proportioned long legs as if to push open the door ahead.
Smack!
A hand clamped firmly down on her shoulder.
"What? (⊙?⊙)"
Stelle shot her little brother Caelus a sidelong glance.
"This is my room. Yours is up ahead."
The hand pinning her shoulder raised a single slender finger and pointed off at an angle ahead.
Stelle followed the line of his finger to a door both familiar and, from long disuse, faintly strange. She blinked.
"Oh, right."
She spent most nights holed up in Caelus's room, but a check was still necessary at a time like this.
Stelle pushed open the door to her own room, which had basically degenerated into a storage closet.
Yet less than two minutes later—
accompanied by the sound of a sliding bathroom door, Stelle emerged, easy and practiced, from the shared bathroom connecting the two rooms.
She scooped up the sweet-smelling, soft form of Ruan-Caelus-Stelle-Mei, rolled straight onto Caelus's bed with her, buried her face in that warm, soft embrace, and let out a satisfied sigh, savoring top-tier facial-cleanser service.
"Caelus-cub, after we finish checking the room, do we still need to check the storage room too, go over every last nook and cranny? That's so much work..."
Ruan-Caelus: the state where Caelus alone is in control.
Stelle-Mei: the state where Stelle alone is in control.
Ruan-Caelus-Stelle-Mei: the state where both their consciousnesses control the body together.
"Won't you help your big sister check~"
Stelle's own body and Stelle-Mei's raised their flawless, crystal-clear, perfectly curved long legs together, lazy yet deliberately alluring, toes swaying lightly in the air:
"Later, big sister will give you a reward~ How about it?"
"Hard pass."
Caelus kept it short, snatching control of Ruan Mei's body away. His long, powerful legs snaked out like a serpent, clamping precisely around Stelle's neck. His core snapped into action, and with one clean, crisp submission hold — bam!
He flipped the slacking Stellaron spirit clean off him, sending her tumbling to the other side of the soft bed.
Boohoo...
Stelle struggled to sit up, then suddenly sensed something and froze, looking at Caelus-cub, whose eyes were now closed.
With herself as the anchor, Ruan Mei had linked her own bodily senses and spirit to both Caelus and Stelle, which strengthened, to some degree, the mental connection between the two of them.
"Elemental Sight?"
"It's Witcher senses."
Caelus answered in a flat, wooden monotone.
In truth, it was the swarm-sense of a Pathstrider walking the Path of Propagation.
Of course, an ordinary Propagation Pathstrider wouldn't have this particular ability, but in the Simulated Universe, Caelus was the strongest Emanator to have all but mastered the entirety of [Propagation] — so out in the real world, he was a little special too.
"Tch. So a bug really did sneak aboard."
The power of Propagation stirred faintly inside Caelus, and in a manner not unlike a bat's echolocation, he pinpointed the target's exact bearing.
Sharing his mind through their bond, Stelle whipped her head around to the same direction instantly.
"That direction, that distance... Oh no! Ah Qi!"
Stelle's face changed, and she launched off the bed like a spring, racing with Caelus, one right behind the other, in a whirlwind dash toward March 7th's boudoir.
The Express's room locks had several ways to open them, and Stelle had the numeric passcode to March 7th's room.
Supposedly, to keep Caelus from sneaking in and causing mischief, they'd never given it to him.
Stelle had gloated about that for quite a while!
"Ah Qi, are you all right...?"
Stelle's anxious, worried call took an abrupt eighteen-degree turn the instant the door swung open, her voice pitching upward, brimming with blindsided confusion.
What met her eyes was March 7th's little pink world, thoroughly girlish — plush toys scattered everywhere, the walls covered in cute stickers and a photo wall chronicling their Trailblaze journey.
The room's owner sat properly at a small round table, hosting an afternoon tea party with an utterly incongruous guest.
Across the table sat, unmistakably, a Giant Giant Sting — its carapace fearsome, its compound eyes glinting, radiating an ominous aura.
On the tabletop sat one of March 7th's little cakes, dressed up with strawberries and cream.
"Stelle, Caelus, you're here~ Perfect timing!"
March 7th beamed, pointing enthusiastically at the ugly bug:
"Let me introduce her properly — this is my long-lost baby sister, March 8th! Look, don't we look exactly alike? Even our names are only one digit apart!"
"Chirrp chirrp~~"
As if to confirm her sister's words, the Giant Sting let out an approving buzz, its antennae wiggling happily.
Watching March 7th affectionately call the bug her little sister and, with great solemnity, share her cake with it, Stelle parted her lips, then closed them again without a word.
A full ten seconds of silence passed before she drew a deep breath, her face switching instantly into an expression mixing gravity and sorrow:
"Ah Qi, actually, there's something I've been hiding from you for a long time..."
"Eh? Wh-what is it?"
"The truth is... I'm your birth mother! And Caelus-cub is your birth father!"
Stelle's eyes turned distant and mournful:
"Long, long ago, Caelus and I co-starred in a TV drama that took the whole universe by storm, Caelus's Star... It was during that time that our love bore fruit — a precious daughter!"
Stelle's voice thickened with tears, her shoulders trembling faintly:
"But then! A terrible calamity tore our little family of three apart! Your father and I... lost our memories because of it, and all we could remember was that somewhere out there, we had a most beloved daughter!"
Stelle spread her arms wide, as if to embrace the tragedy of the entire world:
"To find you, we searched every corner of the sea of stars, enduring hardship beyond counting!"
Without so much as an exchanged glance, Caelus smoothly picked up the act, his expression turning distant and sorrowful, brimming with parental affection.
"Finally, guided by Elio, we came to the Astral Express and found our long-lost treasure, our precious heart — and that's you, Ah Qi!"
Seeking, seeking, searching, searching — cold and desolate, wretched and sorrowful.
In that moment, Stelle looked every bit the loving mother who'd weathered untold hardship, eyes brimming with hot tears, finally reunited with her most precious treasure.
...
March 7th's gaze darted back and forth between Stelle and Caelus, her small mouth hanging slightly open, as if turned to stone.
"Chirp?"
Even the Giant Sting looked dumbfounded, its compound eyes glazed, its antennae forgetting to twitch.
What was even happening?
"Do you two... think I'm a complete idiot?"
March 7th turned her head slowly, like a rusted machine, her pretty pink-blue eyes going flat and lifeless as a dead fish's, her voice numb with the weariness of having seen through everything.
"Do I look that easy to fool?"
"Even if I really were an idiot, I still wouldn't buy this nonsense! Put your two ages together and it's still less than mine! Where would I get a daughter as old as me?! And this cute, too!"
"Huh? That's not right, is it?"
Seeing March 7th's reaction, Stelle scratched her head in bewilderment:
"Oh, so your IQ hasn't dropped after all? Here I thought everyone in the whole Galaxy had their IQ drop ten thousandfold all at once, and only Caelus-cub and I stayed the same."
"How on earth did you arrive at such an outrageous theory?!"
March 7th couldn't hold it together anymore.
"Then why do you believe it's your little sister, but not that we're your parents?"
Stelle pointed at the Giant Sting.
"Eh, well, obviously it's because..."
March 7th instinctively cast about for a rebuttal, but then she saw Caelus suddenly move.
His figure blurred like a specter for an instant, a faint whistle of wind trailing him, and at a speed March 7th couldn't even register, he appeared behind her little sister March 8th!
"Caelus, what are you doing?"
March 7th cried out in alarm.
"Don't worry, Ah Qi."
Caelus's voice was unusually gentle. Under March 7th's tense gaze, he slowly raised his hand and softly stroked the hard, weirdly patterned, fearsome carapace of March 8th's head.
The power of the Path of Propagation surged, and the Giant Sting had no room to struggle at all before Caelus had it completely subdued.
The true terror of the swarm lay in its capacity to propagate — a single bug's combat power was unremarkable, especially for this particular species, which wasn't a combat type at all.
It was a phantom-moth type.
As though petting a docile household pet, Caelus met March 7th's eyes:
"I'm just saying hello to my second daughter, that's all."
In March 7th's eyes, Caelus, his face full of loving warmth, was stroking her little sister's head.
"You still haven't answered us — why don't you believe we're your parents?"
Caelus's voice was low and magnetic, carrying a patient, coaxing quality, as though guiding a lost child.
"Obviously it's because..."
There's no way you two could be my parents...?
The second half of that sentence went unsaid — seeing how docile March 8th had turned under Caelus's hand, March 7th froze.
Why couldn't it be true?
If the girl in front of her, March 8th, really was the second daughter of Stelle and Caelus, then wasn't she, March 8th's own big sister, obviously also their daughter too?!
That was it!
The mystery of her blank origins, the one that had plagued her for so long — the answer had been right beside her all along!
Stelle! Caelus!
They were actually her... mom and dad!
This enormous 'truth' surged like a tide, instantly overwhelming the dam of March 7th's reason.
Watching the loving light in Stelle's eyes, a tangle of feelings surged through her — bewilderment, shock, absurdity, all indescribably mixed, and yet strangely underlaid by the comfort of a fledgling finally returning to its nest.
"Da... Daddy..."
A little awkwardly, tentatively, she voiced this word toward Caelus, one she'd never spoken before.
Turning her gaze to Stelle, her voice carried a faint tremor of dependence:
"Mom... Mommy..."
"Eh!" (×2)
As if they'd rehearsed it a thousand times over, Stelle and Caelus spoke in perfect unison, voices ringing loud, brimming with excitement and gratification.
In flawless sync, the two of them spread their arms wide, and, as if welcoming home a treasure lost for years, drew March 7th tightly into an embrace from either side.
Ruan-Caelus-Stelle-Mei held up her phone and recorded the entire scene, start to finish.
Just then, a flurry of hurried footsteps approached.
"March, Stelle, Caelus, are you all rig— holy crap?!"
Unable to reach the three of them and worried they'd run into danger, Haxxor Bunny had rushed ahead to check, and the sight inside the room nearly made her jump out of her skin.
Behind her, Himeko, Dan Heng, and Argenti came to a halt as well, staring into the room with the look of people who'd just seen a ghost.
Caelus had one hand clamped tight around the bug — a bug that shed fibrous wing-dust every time it flapped its wings — and instead of stopping, he swung it back and forth, keeping it steadily shedding wing-dust,
sprinkling it all over March 7th.
What really made Himeko and Dan Heng lose it, their eyes twitching uncontrollably, was that March 7th was clinging to Stelle and Caelus, calling them Daddy and Mommy.
"What... exactly are you two doing?"
Dan Heng asked, heart aching.
How to put this.
When danger struck, Stelle and Caelus were the greatest safety net!
But when there was no danger, they were the greatest danger!
"Ahaha, it's nothing, we're catching a bug."
Stelle laughed it off, and Caelus stopped swinging the bug around.
"What brings everyone here?"
Holding her 'mom and dad's' hands, March 7th was about to say something to everyone when, as the wing-dust dissipated and she gradually snapped out of the hypnosis, her expression froze stiff.
Daddy?
Mommy?
What had she just done?!
Noticing March 7th's body go still and her eyes gradually clearing, Stelle and Caelus, perfectly in sync, spoke at breakneck, tongue-twisting speed:
"Bugs-got-on-the-train-we-have-to-hurry-and-wipe-them-out-before-they-breed-inside-the-cars-it's-urgent-no-time-to-lose-we'll-go-ahead-first."
With that, the two of them bolted for the door together — forgetting that their hands were still clasped in Little March's.
"No need to rush off, Daddy~ Mommy~ We just got our family reunited~"
March 7th's cute cheeks seemed shadowed by a dark cloud, her willow brows standing bolt upright, her smile turning sickly-sweet in the most terrifying way.
"...I was wrong."
"I was wrong! I'm sorry!"
Stelle and Caelus dropped to their knees at light speed.
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