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"No, Captain. There appears to have been no sabotage to either the controls or the BioWarp drive."
"I seriously doubt that whatever happened here was planned, Hein. I mean, look at him!"
"Hmmph."

Slowly, the voices of the ship's crew members faded into Keith's ears. The events that had just transpired still fresh in her mind, she didn't bother taking the time to doubt what had just happened, though a part of her wished she could. Opening her eyes, she saw that she had become rather acquainted with the utility room's floor. Groaning audibly, she pushed one arm against the floor and spun her upper torso around to face the other three, who all went silent the moment they noticed her.

For a beat, there was nothing from any of them. The other three had noticed the long hair, but the crumpled clothing that covered her had done a good job of hiding her new slight, girlish figure, and only now that gravity was pulling her now sizes-too-large shirt over the curves were they able to realize that the person in front of them at least looked nothing like the human male they'd taken in.

It was at least fifteen seconds until one of them decided to speak up, punctuating the awkward silence in the room and allowing it to deflate.

"Keith?"

Keith very nearly spoke an affirmative, but instead, perhaps realizing that her new voice might lend doubt to the claim, she nodded her head slightly. Quickly concluding that they might want to know a bit more, she volunteered what little she knew about what happened. The humming, the ship taking her to the lower level, the strange bright light inside the tiny room. The others all took in the story in their own way, Heinrich glowering in disbelief, Lyn listening intently and trying her best to seem sympathetic, and Sergio taking in the information to process however it was he did that. At the point the story reached the part where Keith was floating in space surrounded by familiar stars, the Demi-Human couldn't contain his skepticism any longer.

"No, hold on. That's not a thing we have. We don't have a giant floaty space room. What we had was a utility closet."

"Had?" Keith scrambled to her feet and spun around on the spot. Where she expected to see whatever futuristic variations of mops, brooms, and buckets was instead a large podium, about four feet tall and a foot and a half wide with a pair of raised cylinders protruding from either side, each with a slight indentation shaped just right to nestle a smallish human hand into. It looked to be made at least primarily of the same metals as the rest of the ship, and aside from it being cleaner than everything around it, it seemed as though it was part of the ship by design rather than something that had been jury-rigged into place.

"Yeah, had. I don't suppose you have any clue what that is?" Heinrich barked as Keith looked back at him, shrinking almost instantly at his accusatory stare.

"Actually, Captain," Sergio interjected, "I may perhaps be able to hazard a guess." From his immaculate pocketed white coat, he produced a small, flat box with a pair of probes wired to the front side. Turning it on with a switch to the side, he took a step toward the room, lowered his head at Keith to indicate the need for space, and allowed her to scurry past him into the main hallway. Laying the device on the pedestal, he tapped the first probe to one of the hand receptacles and pressed a button on the wired end of the probe, letting go as it held in place suspended by a technological force Keith didn't quite understand yet. As he placed the second probe into the other cylinder, he turned his attention to the screen on the device, which lit up with a flurry of readings. "It is as I suspected, Captain. The pads are wired with mahoucite and are leading directly into the Machination's power supply."

"So then, it's..." Heinrich trailed off, and after a moment where the Vampire clearly expected him to finish his own thought, he continued.

"It's a BioWarp Mage station. And judging purely by the height of the podium and the size and distinct shape of the basins, one tailor-made for our new passenger."

"Okay, then," Heinrich answered, now more confused than angry, "How did that happen?" Turning to point both hands at Keith, he quickly spat, "And how did THAT happen?"

Keith stammered for a moment, trying to resume her story about the constellations, the band of light and her transformation at its hand, but this provided none of them with the answers they were looking for. Both the captain and engineer traded odd theories back and forth, none of them really sounding all that helpful.

"Might we entertain the possibility of her being a shape-shifter?"

"On an AltEarth where she said they weren't real? Doesn't seem likely."

"It certainly would not be unheard of. You know as well as I do that the great migration--"

"Yeah, yeah, but then she'd be a shape-shifter, not a SHIP-shifter. Still doesn't explain the BioWarp thing there. I'm still not sure that it's not a trick of some kind."

At that, Lyn interrupted, musing loudly at Heinrich. "Yeah, that's some really top-notch sabotage, there. How about she sabotages a portaspa into my quarters, while she's at it?"

Heinrich sighed, clearly defeated. As much as he wanted to be angry at their passenger for what had happened, it was clear that Keith was more a victim of the mystery event than the ship itself. "Okay, but what about the other thing?"

"What other thing?" Keith managed to chime in.

Heinrich looked back at Keith, trying to remain calm now that he'd accepted, at least for now, that the Human was truly innocent in this and had no idea what was going on. Gesturing toward the cockpit, he explained. "We're out of BioWarp four hours early. What's more, we're already in the Proxima Zed system. Ser's told me that he checked and there wasn't a malfunction or anything like that. And I checked the ship's chronometer against the subspace synchro frequency, so we didn't lose any hours."

Lyn piped up again. "I looked through the ship's flight recorder. We were still in BioWarp, but there was something a bit odd about the relativity shield. Hard to put it to words, though. Sorta like the way the colors moved around was different from usual."

It was Keith's turn to speak again. "So we got here faster? Was it like when I charged the ship up to get us away faster?"

Lyn shook her head. "It doesn't work like that. BioWarp drives are usually engineered for a specific speed range. A relativity shield has to be the only source of power once it's accelerated, or the ship risks dipping through it and getting torn apart by relativistic forces instantly. You can't just pump extra power into it to go faster, you would need a larger relativity shield."

"My investigation of the BioWarp's Engines may shed some light on that particular conundrum." Sergio replied. "The readings seem to imply that the ship dropped out of BioWarp for a period of approximately four minutes, then re-engaged. Perhaps whatever reconfigured this room in that time frame upgraded the BioWarp drive as well. Given more time, I'll do a more thorough examination."

With that line of inquiry completed, Keith looked back to Heinrich, and after a moment, the other two followed suit. With a dismissive shrug, he concluded. "Alright, so whatever he did made Cassie faster. I suppose that's fine, though before we take off again I'll want Serge to do a full search for anything screwy." He turned more directly towards Keith, and attempted a more apologetic tone. "As for what it did to you, I don't really know what to say."

"Is there any way to turn me back?"

"Oh, yeah, sure. There's mages in the hospital that can turn you right back. Usually you'd need a big pile of money or a smaller pile of money and extensive papers from a psychologist, but I think they'll cut you a break due to the extenuating circumstances. Once the sublights get us in comm range, I'll mention it to our contact and see if they can help. If not, we'll just find one of the body mages for hire in the city proper that'll zap you on the cheap, and we'll just add it to what you owe me."

"Owe you.." Keith started to ask, but then remembered. "Right, for the room and board there until you can figure out what to do with me?" She looked to Heinrich for acknowledgement, and after a quick nod she continued. "Thank you, then. I still don't know exactly what I'm going to do after that."

"You'll have time to figure it out. In the meanwhile, Lyn, do you think you have anything that'll fit her?"

Lyn tilted her head at her captain, cocked an eyebrow, and, with a slightly curled lip, incredulously huffed. "Does she look like she's anything my size? I don't just carry around women's clothes that I can't wear. Except for those jeweled ceremonial robes we lifted off Ama, but those are too big for you." Once she realized that a blank look from Heinrich would be all she would get in return, she finally relented. "I suppose there's something in there that wouldn't look too bad on her." As a buzzer sounded from the cockpit, she grabbed Keith's arm and dragged her back toward her room. "Hurry up, you want to be presentable for our client. Don't want them thinking we kidnapped you or anything." She shot a look back at Heinrich as she hissed, "Captain, incoming hail from Proxima Zee. You should probably take that."

The experience that followed wasn't as abjectly humiliating as Keith had expected. The demoness didn't bother stripping her down or checking her sizes or any of the prodding and squeezing that usually entailed in this sort of thing; rather, Lyn simply dug through a pile of haphazardly folded clothes, occasionally holding a garment at arm's length, and then unceremoniously slapping it either back into the pile or atop her bed. After repeating this process a couple dozen times, she gathered the assortment of clothes from her bed in both arms and offered it to Keith. "This is everything that won't look weird on you. Pick something out of that and leave the rest on the bed. When you're done, head back to the cockpit, I'm gonna go make sure the captain's not screwed anything up yet."

As Lyn left the room, Keith poked through the pieces of clothing. Thankfully, Lyn had left her a selection of fairly modest outfits to choose from. None of it was quite styled in any way she was familiar with, most of them having oddly-shaped, collarless necklines and cut on the bottom to match, and all of them seemed just a bit too small until Keith realized that they stretched quite a distance without squeezing uncomfortably. Rather than try to guess at the whims of centuries of intergalactic fashion, she picked the plainest pieces on display, a black pair of leggings and a blue top which seemed to be the only one that covered the midriff but had a jagged zigzag cut along the edges. Lacing up her old shoes, they were able to tie tight enough to be secured, though still clearly ill-fitting. Satisfied that she didn't look terribly out of place, she made the short trek from the bedroom to the ship's cockpit.

In addition to the starfield and an ever-growing whitish orb in the center of the ship's field of vision, there was now a box in the upper left corner displaying a video feed to a woman's face. Keith couldn't help but examine her features, taking in light green hair, dark tan skin, and purple eyes. More obvious, however, was her backdrop of glistening white feathers that, judging by the way they moved with her, Keith was able to ascertain was a pair of large wings. The mystery of exactly what this woman was faded as she nodded in response to one of Heinrich's questions, a gleaming golden halo momentarily bobbing in and out of frame. Keith had seen that a force of Angels is what drove back the Devilings terrorizing the galaxy some time ago, but somehow the reality that Divine beings actually existed out in the galaxy as physical...well, people? That was going to need a little more time to process. Keith didn't have much time, though, as at that she woman on the viewscreen turned her attention toward the Human girl. "Oh, hello! Captain, you didn't mention that you had a passenger!"

"Oh, right. Miranda, this is, uh..."

"Kiki!" Lyn spat out, barely in time to finish her commander's sentence. "She's got a medical condition that we were hoping to have someone check out while we were here."

Heinrich and Keith looked at Lyn in a manner that clearly sent her their confusion, but scrubbed the expressions as Miranda's gaze shifted back to the other side of the cockpit. "Yeah. It's a magic thing we need to have looked at. Not contagious or anything, though."

"Of course, Hein. You do know that we're all a little pressed right now, so I'm afraid if it's not life-threatening it will have to wait until we've settled things down a bit."

Hein looked a bit disappointed, but as he looked back up at the Angel in front of him, his demeanor improved almost instantly. "That's no worry. Like I said, it's magical in nature, so we can just find one of the city's wizards for hire to deal with it."

"Great! I've got your clearance to land now, we're giving you first priority. If you could land as soon as possible on the hospital's freighter pad, I'll have a team ready to unload the medicine."

"Gotcha. Lyn, do we have the coordinates for that?"

Lyn snapped to attention, sounding a little more serious than usual. "Affirmative, Captain."

"Excellent. Touchdown ETA is Ten minutes. We'll see you there, Miranda."

Miranda nodded, adding, "Good. Oh, and Hein, thank you so much for this." The tone in her voice was more gracious, Keith thought, than someone affords your average merchant moving a product. Maybe it was just how she always acted, but something about her tone of voice made it seem as though she were thankful to him on a very personal level. Before she had a chance to look any further into it, however, the viewscreen winked out.

It was apparent that most of the cockpit's windows had darkened themselves somehow, as the light that shone from Proxima Z's sun should have been practically blinding in the emptiness of space. Figuring rather astutely that whatever system allowed the windows to show display screens could also act as a sun visor, Keith turned her attention toward the planet, now a cloudy marble in the bottom center of the cockpit. The entire world's surface was covered with thick white clouds, and as the ship approached closer Keith could see them roiling slowly over each other, spreading and mixing but never revealing the surface of the planet below. Keith searched for something better to say, but in the end could only comment, "Cloudy day?"

"That's all Proxima Zee has is cloudy days." Lyn answered, her attention split between readouts before her and the approaching planet. "It's a clean volcanic world. That means that instead of acidic ash, the volcanoes here pump a very helpful mixture of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Combine that with a relatively high oxygen content and the powerful magnetosphere, and you have a world with practically no UV exposure and severely lowered radiation levels of all types. The geothermal energy is also easy to access and helps keep the planet self-reliant. The planet's layers of protection also help to stave off any EMP attacks, and without a signal broadcast from the beacons below any pirates or terrorists wouldn't know where to hit anyways."

"That all sounds really helpful, but wouldn't the planet be dark most of the time from all the cloud cover?"

"You're pretty good at this. Yeah, its naturally pretty dim on the surface most of the time, so all of the geothermal plants--and there's a lot of 'em--have massive floodlights that beam up to the clouds, where the light scatters back down to the planet. It's not the sort of sky you're used to, I'll grant you that, but it does the job and different parts of the planet can time the lights differently to simulate other races' solar cycles."

Satisfied with the explanations, Keith watched as the ship approached the planet, then turned to position itself as gravity began to pull on the vessel. For a moment, Keith felt a slight lurch forward, but the ship's artificial gravity system shuddered for a moment before correcting itself. Without the threat of being shot at occupying her, she watched Lyn as she used a pair of fingers to turn on each of the maneuvering jets in smooth sequence. Through the ship's glass the darkness of space gave way to a blue haze, then rapidly flooded with thick white clouds. The visuals being of little use to Lyn, she focused on her readouts, tapping occasionally to change the thrust of one or two jets. After nearly a minute of watching nothing but clouds rush by, there was a sudden flash of light as they passed through the cover to reveal the world below. It was mountainous but not quite jagged, more smooth with valleys specked with the colors of civilization. In the peaks of the mountains, she saw some fitted with boxy stations beaming out their light while others were cratered with an intensely bright blue substance, whatever material was the equivalent of lava on this planet. Instead of a blue sky off to the distance, the horizon faded to a pure white, giving it a very sterile feel that was mildly discomforting to Keith. As the ship descended, Keith was able to make out buildings rising up below them, though the ship slowed to a halt before any of them came level with the ship. It appeared that this hospital was the largest building in the city. With a gentle motion, the ship perched atop its landing pad, and the captain's voice came across the ship's speaker system.

"Alright, we've made landfall. I want everyone down to the cargo bay now to assist with the offloading!"

Lyn pressed her screen a few more times before spinning her seat toward the back and standing. After a short stretch, she made her way down the hallway toward the lift. Not wanting to be left behind on the ship and assuming the order applied to her too, Keith followed, and the two descended to the ship's cargo bay.

The cargo bay of the ship was shaped similar to the recreation room on the top level, though it was larger in all dimensions. A large rectangle on the floor decorated with warning markings in all colors designated itself as the cargo ramp, but otherwise the area was unpainted and unmarked. It would have seemed rather empty and desolate save for the large cylinders that took up a great deal of the space down there. Each of them was marked as well, though this time with bio-hazard warnings, some of which actually seemed like what he'd recognized from his home planet, others in colors that seemed more or less threatening and completely inscrutable.

Heinrich and Sergio stood by the boxes, each holding a thin metal hoop. Looking to see that all of his crew members were there, the captain punched a few buttons on his wrist. The central ramp lowered itself and the planet's own air rushed in. It was a very amiable temperature, and other than that, Keith couldn't tell much about it, as it was devoid of any of the scents that either nature provided or pollution typically forced. "Landing go okay?"

"Yeah, no problems there. Our guests can come on aboard."

The Demi-Human called out down the ramp, and a human and someone who was almost human save his long, pointed ears made their way up to the ship, pulling behind them a square platform that hovered on a skirt of air. They began to heft cylinders onto the platform, and without a word, took them down the ramp. Heinrich pressed a button on the edge of his hoop and tossed it down to the floor, where it began to float barely an inch off the metal plating. With incredible ease compared to the effort the hospital technicians made, he hefted a pair of the cylinders and gently set them on the hoop, where a field of energy much like the lift shield caught them. "Load up two at a time and follow them. Dollies are behind the cargo." He waved to the back of the pile of cylinders. As Lyn made her way back to grab a pair, Heinrich held out a hand to stop her, then spoke to her in a voice that was lowered but hardly subtle. "Kiki?"

Lyn shrugged and moved around the captain's hand, procuring a pair of hoops before tossing one to Keith, who awkwardly caught it. "Rule number one when dealing with Divine. Tell the truth, even if you have to lie about it. I could tell you didn't want her knowing about our little pit stop, and nothing I said was technically wrong."

"Fair enough." Heinrich turned to Keith, who had finally managed to locate the button to turn her hoop on. "You think you can handle a bit of hard work before we take you out to figure out how to fix you?"

Keith nodded in reply. This was little different from farm work, but she was eager to do it, if only because it would be her first experience on an alien world.

Description
"No, Captain. There appears to have been no sabotage to either the controls or the BioWarp drive."
"I seriously doubt that whatever happened here was planned, Hein. I mean, look at him!"
"Hmmph."

Slowly, the voices of the ship's crew members faded into Keith's ears. The events that had just transpired still fresh in her mind, she didn't bother taking the time to doubt what had just happened, though a part of her wished she could. Opening her eyes, she saw that she had become rather acquainted with the utility room's floor. Groaning audibly, she pushed one arm against the floor and spun her upper torso around to face the other three, who all went silent the moment they noticed her.

For a beat, there was nothing from any of them. The other three had noticed the long hair, but the crumpled clothing that covered her had done a good job of hiding her new slight, girlish figure, and only now that gravity was pulling her now sizes-too-large shirt over the curves were they able to realize that the person in front of them at least looked nothing like the human male they'd taken in.

It was at least fifteen seconds until one of them decided to speak up, punctuating the awkward silence in the room and allowing it to deflate.

"Keith?"

Keith very nearly spoke an affirmative, but instead, perhaps realizing that her new voice might lend doubt to the claim, she nodded her head slightly. Quickly concluding that they might want to know a bit more, she volunteered what little she knew about what happened. The humming, the ship taking her to the lower level, the strange bright light inside the tiny room. The others all took in the story in their own way, Heinrich glowering in disbelief, Lyn listening intently and trying her best to seem sympathetic, and Sergio taking in the information to process however it was he did that. At the point the story reached the part where Keith was floating in space surrounded by familiar stars, the Demi-Human couldn't contain his skepticism any longer.

"No, hold on. That's not a thing we have. We don't have a giant floaty space room. What we had was a utility closet."

"Had?" Keith scrambled to her feet and spun around on the spot. Where she expected to see whatever futuristic variations of mops, brooms, and buckets was instead a large podium, about four feet tall and a foot and a half wide with a pair of raised cylinders protruding from either side, each with a slight indentation shaped just right to nestle a smallish human hand into. It looked to be made at least primarily of the same metals as the rest of the ship, and aside from it being cleaner than everything around it, it seemed as though it was part of the ship by design rather than something that had been jury-rigged into place.

"Yeah, had. I don't suppose you have any clue what that is?" Heinrich barked as Keith looked back at him, shrinking almost instantly at his accusatory stare.

"Actually, Captain," Sergio interjected, "I may perhaps be able to hazard a guess." From his immaculate pocketed white coat, he produced a small, flat box with a pair of probes wired to the front side. Turning it on with a switch to the side, he took a step toward the room, lowered his head at Keith to indicate the need for space, and allowed her to scurry past him into the main hallway. Laying the device on the pedestal, he tapped the first probe to one of the hand receptacles and pressed a button on the wired end of the probe, letting go as it held in place suspended by a technological force Keith didn't quite understand yet. As he placed the second probe into the other cylinder, he turned his attention to the screen on the device, which lit up with a flurry of readings. "It is as I suspected, Captain. The pads are wired with mahoucite and are leading directly into the Machination's power supply."

"So then, it's..." Heinrich trailed off, and after a moment where the Vampire clearly expected him to finish his own thought, he continued.

"It's a BioWarp Mage station. And judging purely by the height of the podium and the size and distinct shape of the basins, one tailor-made for our new passenger."

"Okay, then," Heinrich answered, now more confused than angry, "How did that happen?" Turning to point both hands at Keith, he quickly spat, "And how did THAT happen?"

Keith stammered for a moment, trying to resume her story about the constellations, the band of light and her transformation at its hand, but this provided none of them with the answers they were looking for. Both the captain and engineer traded odd theories back and forth, none of them really sounding all that helpful.

"Might we entertain the possibility of her being a shape-shifter?"

"On an AltEarth where she said they weren't real? Doesn't seem likely."

"It certainly would not be unheard of. You know as well as I do that the great migration--"

"Yeah, yeah, but then she'd be a shape-shifter, not a SHIP-shifter. Still doesn't explain the BioWarp thing there. I'm still not sure that it's not a trick of some kind."

At that, Lyn interrupted, musing loudly at Heinrich. "Yeah, that's some really top-notch sabotage, there. How about she sabotages a portaspa into my quarters, while she's at it?"

Heinrich sighed, clearly defeated. As much as he wanted to be angry at their passenger for what had happened, it was clear that Keith was more a victim of the mystery event than the ship itself. "Okay, but what about the other thing?"

"What other thing?" Keith managed to chime in.

Heinrich looked back at Keith, trying to remain calm now that he'd accepted, at least for now, that the Human was truly innocent in this and had no idea what was going on. Gesturing toward the cockpit, he explained. "We're out of BioWarp four hours early. What's more, we're already in the Proxima Zed system. Ser's told me that he checked and there wasn't a malfunction or anything like that. And I checked the ship's chronometer against the subspace synchro frequency, so we didn't lose any hours."

Lyn piped up again. "I looked through the ship's flight recorder. We were still in BioWarp, but there was something a bit odd about the relativity shield. Hard to put it to words, though. Sorta like the way the colors moved around was different from usual."

It was Keith's turn to speak again. "So we got here faster? Was it like when I charged the ship up to get us away faster?"

Lyn shook her head. "It doesn't work like that. BioWarp drives are usually engineered for a specific speed range. A relativity shield has to be the only source of power once it's accelerated, or the ship risks dipping through it and getting torn apart by relativistic forces instantly. You can't just pump extra power into it to go faster, you would need a larger relativity shield."

"My investigation of the BioWarp's Engines may shed some light on that particular conundrum." Sergio replied. "The readings seem to imply that the ship dropped out of BioWarp for a period of approximately four minutes, then re-engaged. Perhaps whatever reconfigured this room in that time frame upgraded the BioWarp drive as well. Given more time, I'll do a more thorough examination."

With that line of inquiry completed, Keith looked back to Heinrich, and after a moment, the other two followed suit. With a dismissive shrug, he concluded. "Alright, so whatever he did made Cassie faster. I suppose that's fine, though before we take off again I'll want Serge to do a full search for anything screwy." He turned more directly towards Keith, and attempted a more apologetic tone. "As for what it did to you, I don't really know what to say."

"Is there any way to turn me back?"

"Oh, yeah, sure. There's mages in the hospital that can turn you right back. Usually you'd need a big pile of money or a smaller pile of money and extensive papers from a psychologist, but I think they'll cut you a break due to the extenuating circumstances. Once the sublights get us in comm range, I'll mention it to our contact and see if they can help. If not, we'll just find one of the body mages for hire in the city proper that'll zap you on the cheap, and we'll just add it to what you owe me."

"Owe you.." Keith started to ask, but then remembered. "Right, for the room and board there until you can figure out what to do with me?" She looked to Heinrich for acknowledgement, and after a quick nod she continued. "Thank you, then. I still don't know exactly what I'm going to do after that."

"You'll have time to figure it out. In the meanwhile, Lyn, do you think you have anything that'll fit her?"

Lyn tilted her head at her captain, cocked an eyebrow, and, with a slightly curled lip, incredulously huffed. "Does she look like she's anything my size? I don't just carry around women's clothes that I can't wear. Except for those jeweled ceremonial robes we lifted off Ama, but those are too big for you." Once she realized that a blank look from Heinrich would be all she would get in return, she finally relented. "I suppose there's something in there that wouldn't look too bad on her." As a buzzer sounded from the cockpit, she grabbed Keith's arm and dragged her back toward her room. "Hurry up, you want to be presentable for our client. Don't want them thinking we kidnapped you or anything." She shot a look back at Heinrich as she hissed, "Captain, incoming hail from Proxima Zee. You should probably take that."

The experience that followed wasn't as abjectly humiliating as Keith had expected. The demoness didn't bother stripping her down or checking her sizes or any of the prodding and squeezing that usually entailed in this sort of thing; rather, Lyn simply dug through a pile of haphazardly folded clothes, occasionally holding a garment at arm's length, and then unceremoniously slapping it either back into the pile or atop her bed. After repeating this process a couple dozen times, she gathered the assortment of clothes from her bed in both arms and offered it to Keith. "This is everything that won't look weird on you. Pick something out of that and leave the rest on the bed. When you're done, head back to the cockpit, I'm gonna go make sure the captain's not screwed anything up yet."

As Lyn left the room, Keith poked through the pieces of clothing. Thankfully, Lyn had left her a selection of fairly modest outfits to choose from. None of it was quite styled in any way she was familiar with, most of them having oddly-shaped, collarless necklines and cut on the bottom to match, and all of them seemed just a bit too small until Keith realized that they stretched quite a distance without squeezing uncomfortably. Rather than try to guess at the whims of centuries of intergalactic fashion, she picked the plainest pieces on display, a black pair of leggings and a blue top which seemed to be the only one that covered the midriff but had a jagged zigzag cut along the edges. Lacing up her old shoes, they were able to tie tight enough to be secured, though still clearly ill-fitting. Satisfied that she didn't look terribly out of place, she made the short trek from the bedroom to the ship's cockpit.

In addition to the starfield and an ever-growing whitish orb in the center of the ship's field of vision, there was now a box in the upper left corner displaying a video feed to a woman's face. Keith couldn't help but examine her features, taking in light green hair, dark tan skin, and purple eyes. More obvious, however, was her backdrop of glistening white feathers that, judging by the way they moved with her, Keith was able to ascertain was a pair of large wings. The mystery of exactly what this woman was faded as she nodded in response to one of Heinrich's questions, a gleaming golden halo momentarily bobbing in and out of frame. Keith had seen that a force of Angels is what drove back the Devilings terrorizing the galaxy some time ago, but somehow the reality that Divine beings actually existed out in the galaxy as physical...well, people? That was going to need a little more time to process. Keith didn't have much time, though, as at that she woman on the viewscreen turned her attention toward the Human girl. "Oh, hello! Captain, you didn't mention that you had a passenger!"

"Oh, right. Miranda, this is, uh..."

"Kiki!" Lyn spat out, barely in time to finish her commander's sentence. "She's got a medical condition that we were hoping to have someone check out while we were here."

Heinrich and Keith looked at Lyn in a manner that clearly sent her their confusion, but scrubbed the expressions as Miranda's gaze shifted back to the other side of the cockpit. "Yeah. It's a magic thing we need to have looked at. Not contagious or anything, though."

"Of course, Hein. You do know that we're all a little pressed right now, so I'm afraid if it's not life-threatening it will have to wait until we've settled things down a bit."

Hein looked a bit disappointed, but as he looked back up at the Angel in front of him, his demeanor improved almost instantly. "That's no worry. Like I said, it's magical in nature, so we can just find one of the city's wizards for hire to deal with it."

"Great! I've got your clearance to land now, we're giving you first priority. If you could land as soon as possible on the hospital's freighter pad, I'll have a team ready to unload the medicine."

"Gotcha. Lyn, do we have the coordinates for that?"

Lyn snapped to attention, sounding a little more serious than usual. "Affirmative, Captain."

"Excellent. Touchdown ETA is Ten minutes. We'll see you there, Miranda."

Miranda nodded, adding, "Good. Oh, and Hein, thank you so much for this." The tone in her voice was more gracious, Keith thought, than someone affords your average merchant moving a product. Maybe it was just how she always acted, but something about her tone of voice made it seem as though she were thankful to him on a very personal level. Before she had a chance to look any further into it, however, the viewscreen winked out.

It was apparent that most of the cockpit's windows had darkened themselves somehow, as the light that shone from Proxima Z's sun should have been practically blinding in the emptiness of space. Figuring rather astutely that whatever system allowed the windows to show display screens could also act as a sun visor, Keith turned her attention toward the planet, now a cloudy marble in the bottom center of the cockpit. The entire world's surface was covered with thick white clouds, and as the ship approached closer Keith could see them roiling slowly over each other, spreading and mixing but never revealing the surface of the planet below. Keith searched for something better to say, but in the end could only comment, "Cloudy day?"

"That's all Proxima Zee has is cloudy days." Lyn answered, her attention split between readouts before her and the approaching planet. "It's a clean volcanic world. That means that instead of acidic ash, the volcanoes here pump a very helpful mixture of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Combine that with a relatively high oxygen content and the powerful magnetosphere, and you have a world with practically no UV exposure and severely lowered radiation levels of all types. The geothermal energy is also easy to access and helps keep the planet self-reliant. The planet's layers of protection also help to stave off any EMP attacks, and without a signal broadcast from the beacons below any pirates or terrorists wouldn't know where to hit anyways."

"That all sounds really helpful, but wouldn't the planet be dark most of the time from all the cloud cover?"

"You're pretty good at this. Yeah, its naturally pretty dim on the surface most of the time, so all of the geothermal plants--and there's a lot of 'em--have massive floodlights that beam up to the clouds, where the light scatters back down to the planet. It's not the sort of sky you're used to, I'll grant you that, but it does the job and different parts of the planet can time the lights differently to simulate other races' solar cycles."

Satisfied with the explanations, Keith watched as the ship approached the planet, then turned to position itself as gravity began to pull on the vessel. For a moment, Keith felt a slight lurch forward, but the ship's artificial gravity system shuddered for a moment before correcting itself. Without the threat of being shot at occupying her, she watched Lyn as she used a pair of fingers to turn on each of the maneuvering jets in smooth sequence. Through the ship's glass the darkness of space gave way to a blue haze, then rapidly flooded with thick white clouds. The visuals being of little use to Lyn, she focused on her readouts, tapping occasionally to change the thrust of one or two jets. After nearly a minute of watching nothing but clouds rush by, there was a sudden flash of light as they passed through the cover to reveal the world below. It was mountainous but not quite jagged, more smooth with valleys specked with the colors of civilization. In the peaks of the mountains, she saw some fitted with boxy stations beaming out their light while others were cratered with an intensely bright blue substance, whatever material was the equivalent of lava on this planet. Instead of a blue sky off to the distance, the horizon faded to a pure white, giving it a very sterile feel that was mildly discomforting to Keith. As the ship descended, Keith was able to make out buildings rising up below them, though the ship slowed to a halt before any of them came level with the ship. It appeared that this hospital was the largest building in the city. With a gentle motion, the ship perched atop its landing pad, and the captain's voice came across the ship's speaker system.

"Alright, we've made landfall. I want everyone down to the cargo bay now to assist with the offloading!"

Lyn pressed her screen a few more times before spinning her seat toward the back and standing. After a short stretch, she made her way down the hallway toward the lift. Not wanting to be left behind on the ship and assuming the order applied to her too, Keith followed, and the two descended to the ship's cargo bay.

The cargo bay of the ship was shaped similar to the recreation room on the top level, though it was larger in all dimensions. A large rectangle on the floor decorated with warning markings in all colors designated itself as the cargo ramp, but otherwise the area was unpainted and unmarked. It would have seemed rather empty and desolate save for the large cylinders that took up a great deal of the space down there. Each of them was marked as well, though this time with bio-hazard warnings, some of which actually seemed like what he'd recognized from his home planet, others in colors that seemed more or less threatening and completely inscrutable.

Heinrich and Sergio stood by the boxes, each holding a thin metal hoop. Looking to see that all of his crew members were there, the captain punched a few buttons on his wrist. The central ramp lowered itself and the planet's own air rushed in. It was a very amiable temperature, and other than that, Keith couldn't tell much about it, as it was devoid of any of the scents that either nature provided or pollution typically forced. "Landing go okay?"

"Yeah, no problems there. Our guests can come on aboard."

The Demi-Human called out down the ramp, and a human and someone who was almost human save his long, pointed ears made their way up to the ship, pulling behind them a square platform that hovered on a skirt of air. They began to heft cylinders onto the platform, and without a word, took them down the ramp. Heinrich pressed a button on the edge of his hoop and tossed it down to the floor, where it began to float barely an inch off the metal plating. With incredible ease compared to the effort the hospital technicians made, he hefted a pair of the cylinders and gently set them on the hoop, where a field of energy much like the lift shield caught them. "Load up two at a time and follow them. Dollies are behind the cargo." He waved to the back of the pile of cylinders. As Lyn made her way back to grab a pair, Heinrich held out a hand to stop her, then spoke to her in a voice that was lowered but hardly subtle. "Kiki?"

Lyn shrugged and moved around the captain's hand, procuring a pair of hoops before tossing one to Keith, who awkwardly caught it. "Rule number one when dealing with Divine. Tell the truth, even if you have to lie about it. I could tell you didn't want her knowing about our little pit stop, and nothing I said was technically wrong."

"Fair enough." Heinrich turned to Keith, who had finally managed to locate the button to turn her hoop on. "You think you can handle a bit of hard work before we take you out to figure out how to fix you?"

Keith nodded in reply. This was little different from farm work, but she was eager to do it, if only because it would be her first experience on an alien world.