The last of the daylight fades and the stars come out, and they aren't stars she can recognise.

She watches her for a while, head tilted, swirls wine in her cup. This is the second new world she's found herself in. The way she reacts...

Who even is she, at this point? She resembles the little teenage girl fleeing home very little, now. Earth Bet taught her to be kind and endure. Night City taught her to be wary and proactive. This world is letting her be kind again. Just... The sheer stupidity and cruelty of base matter, when machines can just fix it-

That's maybe a pretty rosy view of things. She's not totally clear of dastardly action in Earth Gimel.

Stop thinking about her father. He's gone. And whenever she thinks about him she finds herself painfully analyzing him, attributing his habits to various psychological sources. 

.......Sigh.

She never actually wanted to be a paranoid bitch all the time. It was necessary in Night City. She wants status and self esteem. She wants wealth and comfort. She wants interesting work. She wants to grow in knowledge and power. She wants friends who are happy to be around her. She wants to reshape the world in her image and it just so happens that her image is 'prosperity'. All these and more, active all at once.

...

What really matters is the work, and moving forward.

But what about Pelor? Of the five, she thinks that's the one she aligns closest to; Sirenna, then Moradin, and she does not especially vibe with Aphrodite or Mystra. Though maybe she's misunderstanding.

Does she really want independence? To become a little god all on her own, working through some of the ideas on power and substance that Shard leaks into her mind? Or is that a fear response, created from an endless series of disappointing authority figures? Would the pattern that is her be satisfied with outpacing all its friends and becoming ever more distant from humanity?

Yeah, she doesn't trust Pelor. Not on a gut level. But you can never fully trust anything or anyone. That's what existing in the world is.

What's to stop Pelor, the golden Emperor, from singling out some poor soul in a fit of pique and smiting them? Nothing but itself. Who watches the watchers, indeed. She had thoughts like this before, and Pelor tried to answer her.

She has her standards, created ostensibly out of game theoretical calculation on reputation and the golden rule, but really from her gut and guilt and shame and indignation. The pattern that is her does seek justice. The pattern that is her does seek prosperity. The pattern that is her does seek peace. The pattern that is her does seek kindness. The pattern that is her does seek knowledge.

(She's been staring at the sky for a couple minutes now. She says aloud, "Pelor. Sirenna. Moradin.")

In her head it is now a yearning, a tentative hand reached out. Your goals are not quite mine. I do not want to become less from this, but more. I am pained, and afraid. But. But... You share many of my goals, and the power of good here is greater when those with shared goals cooperate, so here I am. Let's cooperate.

What do you three think?

Yes.

There is a terrible sense of nearness and greatness, like being at the very edge of a cliff over an endless sea; there's a penetrating quality to the feeling that takes hold of her then, like being caught creeping about in the dark when the lights are turned on. 

In His Sight Dr Baika is herself not so righteous. There is fear in her and also hate. It is plain as day to Him and in that light, like spilt blood on snow. He knows. Her guilt and shame blaze brightly and awfully to Him. What has she done.

What's to stop Him? Nothing, indeed; and Everything. 

Those thoughts she had - what is it that restrains Him? - those doubts she had - those are in her because for all that she may be so, so confused about doctrine, she knows about sin. Somehow she knows, she knows she is not clean and never was. There is evil in her.

It's why He Chooses her now. 

Because it is what leads her to distrust kings, and His Chosen priests, and Him Himself. 

He also Sees the things she is reaching out for. A distant and gleaming light, at once transcendent and strange and sober and sensible and written deep inside her. She might be dirty, but she does know she could be clean. She is at once herself and not herself. There was, indeed, something more she was meant to be. Perhaps she can still reach it. He'll help. She is doing well and He is so proud. 

 But it will not be a matter of becoming something small and strange and merely strong. He is not so distant from humanity merely because He is very great, and God is greater and closer still. 

It feels like a bright light, of course, like the sun at her back; and like rightness and forgiveness; and a light breaks through her. She glows beneath the stars as though lit by the midday sun, and can do so again as she pleases. She might fall if she weren't sitting; her soul is filled at once with glory. 

(Her brain monitoring programme reports nothing unusual. He Sees something broken that should not be, and restores it; her damaged cybernetics are at once as they were when she arrived.)

 Some of the sense of these things, not words so much as a deeper shape of things, comes to her.

The thing she is glimpsing, the thing that led her to look towards Him, is that which holds Him back. 

...

Okay, first of all, she doesn't need your forgiveness. She'll redeem herself, thank you very much.

Second of all, bullshit 'nothing unusual'. It should at least be flagging the unusual introspection and, okay fine it literally is, religious experience as an anomaly... Though it isn't unreasonable that there is not any outright manipulation of her brain the way Shards would do it going on...

Third of all, did that also restore her damaged databases and so on? How does that even work.

Fourth...

...

That kid with the delivery service and the shitty optic installation. The ""Doctor"" who she got tortured by the Tyger Claws, and inherited his stuff. Her comradery with the Trauma Team crew, and the nickname 'Breaker. That pharmacy she robbed when she was half lucid and just getting started, so so far back, on Bet...

She does like being herself. She doesn't want to become one with the universe or whatever, perfect and unchanging. She just wants to be better.

She has it anyway. 

And her mind is reacting perfectly reasonably to the true Presence of the divine. 

It did indeed restore her databases. It was a miracle.

Is there a way she can help those people now and put right what went wrong? Their forgiveness would matter to her. If there is not - that's where the work begins. 

Who should she have been, if not 'Breaker? Why was she not her? How could she change that now? 

And on that last - she has touched on something that runs far deeper than she knows or could imagine. He wants her to be herself but better, too. That's the mystery, isn't it. 

Well. That'll help.

She'd need a Gate back to Earth Bet or Earth Gimel. Seems... Dangerous. Bet was not healthy, in different ways than Gimel. Can't help the ""Doctor"" now, he's dead. And he deserved to die for murdering those girls, but not to be tortured. The kid's probably okay; She fixed his eyes, she just had the gall to charge for it even though he didn't have much to spare, because a thousand eddies of nanomeds was too much to give away free as she was then. There's very little she could have done better.

The nickname was fine- Giving each other nicknames you kind of hate is the culture. They're a little humbling, and that's kind of the point. 

She's going to start referring to Pelor as the Emperor, at least in her own head, in a tongue in cheek reference to a fictional horrible dystopia.

Anyway. She opens her eyes again.

Out loud, "Pelor, huh? Okay then."

She has dropped her wine-cup and is staring openly. 

Yeah, that wasn't subtle, she's glowing. A lot of people are kneeling and praying. 

She would like to stop being shiny for now please. But she would like to exercise the other rumored powers; Especially the sense for uncleanliness. That will be wonderful for maintaining sterile fields. Is anything in this courtyard unclean?

Does she have to preach now?

"It's alright everyone. This is a good thing. We can do so much better, if only we try. You can always just choose to help. You can always simply ask yourself, what is the right thing to do? I've seen a vision of what could be. The world will grow in prosperity and freedom and joy all the faster for every ordinary soul that helps in ordinary small ways. A rising tide shall lift a humble rowboat and a grand yacht just the same. Please, enjoy your food. It's delicious."

She can manage to stop glowing. 

She can indeed explain how to sense uncleanliness, once she's recovered from her shock. It was something the Prophet... received, or invented, it's said. 

(A very little, it's just possible to sense, the background possibility of infection; one of the vines climbing the awning is mildly diseased.)

"That'll be useful later. But I want to finish relaxing for now. Breaks help the mind work better."

She smiles broadly at that. They really do. 

She'll take her for a walk after that, under a sky full of stars more colourful and strange than either Earth's sky, it turns out. She knows little of this place, but she did hear once of the singing tree in one of the public gardens, and takes her there. ...She's extremely impressed with her, by the way.

"I don't have a proper reference for how impressive or not this is. That's something I've noticed sometimes- The things one is most proud of are not always the same things as others find most praiseworthy. There's all these personal, tiny moments... All these important inner stories that can't be expressed or explained. Or would be too bothersome to explain, anyway. You can't know everyone. Really knowing someone is an investment of time and effort, and a city like this is too big for the most tenuous connections with most people..."

...

"My old crew with Trauma Team- I worked for them a while, an air ambulance service, if you got attacked we'd fly out and rescue you and keep you alive- They nicknamed me Heartbreaker. Implying I would date people, lead them on, and then suddenly abandon them when it would cause the most emotional pain. It was doubly shocking to me, because Heartbreaker is also the name of a notorious evil mind controller from my first home... But the thing about military-adjacent culture's nicknames on Earth Gimel, is that everyone's is attached to some insult or embarassing story. It can get mean, but it's also a sort of... A thing of humility. Don't get too full of yourself. So, I'm going to think of Pelor in my head as the God-Emperor of Mankind, or just the Emperor. Referring to an old fictional story with some of the most horrible caricatures of an 'empire' ever. It's not a real insult. Just..." She shrugs. "Complicated feelings."

"I cannot give you real numbers, like I imagine you would want, but... among humans, I believe clerics are one among dozens or hundreds. And for never having heard of the gods before... even if destiny does turn around you and your alien magic, Dr Baika, there must be something about you, as a person."

Her face does show the horror, for a moment, even after all this time she still has to remind herself that that kind of thing can't actually physically injure humans. 

And then-

"...It isn't what's in a name, it's what you mean by it, I see."

How does she warn her without making her think about it harder. 

"I think - I think in fact that's a good thing, if you focus on what that culture means by it."

"...Why did you do that to people?"

"What? No, I didn't. I rejected a bunch of people actually, it became a team joke and that ended up as 'Breaker. I've never had a serious romantic relationship in my life."

"Oh, what a relief. That makes much more sense. ...Because Earth Gimel was a horrible place and you couldn't trust anyone there to get close to you?'

"...More or less, yeah. Bet wasn't exactly paradise either. And - most people settle. They find something acceptable and they get comfortable and stop trying. I could have done that. I have - an unusual advantage, sure, but I could have been a lot slower, safer, and saner about it, more relaxed. Instead I threw myself into learning and earning, got a prestigious job phenomenally young, earned my way into rare and expensive training without taking on debts, started my own company, got betrayed and nearly murdered a few times by standing up for myself and others instead of rolling over... It is still weird to be away from Gimel. What I built there is mostly going to fall apart without constant attention keeping it propped up. But I can probably make more of a difference here."

"Well. I see exactly why Pelor Chose you and I am amazed He did not do it earlier. ...Unless He was actually just being polite, that would explain a few things. I think you can certainly make more of a difference here, I am going to make sure of it and so are many, many others. And we have extremely strong opinions about you not being murdered and clearly so do the gods - ah, it's more difficult to hurt clerics. Maybe one day we can do something about Earth Gimel, when we heal everything that's wrong here."

"I asked him not to back on the first night I arrived at Silvermoon."

She seems faintly embarrassed about this.

She laughs bright and clear. And it echoes back to them from one of the huge trees in a little hollow in the ground some way off, down one of many branching and curving paths. 

"That certainly explains a lot. I am genuinely torn between advising you not to share the, er, personal details of how you were Chosen too widely, and badly wanting to see the looks on everyone's faces."

"I'll tell you more stories from Night City some time. But for now... Back to work, I think."