—himself. He's noticeably human, but—from his memories of old pictures, not exactly the same. Slightly different.

"—oh," he finally says, after a long time thinking through what this means that doesn't last even a second.

"—what."

"Good question. What?! ...What are you? Are you a clone? Time-traveler?"

The butterfly flutters back towards new-Sadde and lands on his head.

"Alternate universe version of him," says the new one, in their language, pointing at local Sadde. "...does this place not have light? My butterfly says she can't see anything, and now that I'm paying attention I can't, either."

"...what?" he repeats eloquently.

Viera raises her hand. "Hi, my name is Viera and I am one of the leaders of this scouting mission. I would be very interested in not being confused."

"There exist many, many universes. In some of them, alternate versions of the same people exist. I am an alternate version of him. In... all universes I've ever visited, things work through fundamental almost exceptionless mathematical equations, and a constant in all of them is light. This world does not have light, and I can only see because I have a magic ring of translation that seems to be interpreting light and sound as the same thing and giving me interpretations of both."

His butterfly flutters its wings.

"...light and sound are the same thing. They're just—different aspects of perception magic."

"...What you just said should be impossible!" Henry tells the newcomer Sadde.

And far above the planet's surface someone is really confused by that vast emotional well that he is sensing. What is even more confusing is how familiar the signature feels like.

Viera is informed of this and is not any less confused.

"Very impossible," he agrees.

"...why are you here?"

"That is a long, depressing story. I'm not sure here's the best place to tell it."

"I am sorry," Viera tells the new Sadde. "Sadde - the old one - should we take him back to the ship and sort this through?"

"—yeah. Yeah, we should."

"We will need disambiguating nicknames."

"I am not sure we can help with that."

"Also, is your butterfly your pet?"

"My butterfly is my soul."

"My name's Crystal," comes the butterfly's distinctly female voice.

"I will stop asking questions."

"...well the scouting mission was pretty much over, anyway," he says, trying to get his bearings. "Let's go?"

"Agreed."

Everyone back in their ship made of stone, which the new Sadde and Crystal might or might not find weird.

The Imperium is awaiting them.

Felix bears a very pained expression.

The emotional aura can't be seen here, but both Felix and Sadde can feel it reach out and sort of "touch" Felix gently once.

He's not paying attention. He's kinda staring.

"...oh. You have them," he says in a small voice.

You met another version of us?

"Yes" wow his aura's flaring now goddamn.

Felix is openly crying now.

What happened?

"I—I—are you happy? The four of you?—do you have a Katur?"

Okay Sadde's completely bewildered by this. "We're, erm, not together? And what's a Katur?"

And now he's crying, too.

Well, he can cry while Felix is holding him.

To their own Sadde he sends, He loves them. Loves them in a supernatural way. It hurts beyond comprehension and he has been missing them for a long time.

Oh.

He is not sure what to do but... if this person really is an alternate universe version of himself... He hugs the other Sadde.

Yeah the other Sadde will just sob and snuggle.

"...what exactly is going on, here?"

We are figuring it out, but it's obviously very emotional.

"—tell me when you're back to discussing novel magic, Ker Ullak should be able to reach me."

Off she goes. Most of the rest of the exploration crew decides this is as good a time as any to leave, too.

We will contact you promptly.

Fenris insues orders on what to do with the relevant data.

Meanwhile: new Sadde gets snuggles.

It's unclear whether that's helping.

So why exactly was he in supernatural love with other yous? local Sadde sends to the Imperium only. That sounds creepy and scary.

Don't have enough information on that. I can tell he is not quite human.

That's not surprising, most people aren't humans even in this universe let alone others. You aren't humans, even.

(Henry is still there, feeling awkward as hell, but not wanting to leave his friend alone in this weird situation.)

He is closer to an augmented than anything else and mentally boosted. Can't tell much else.

Mental impression of a nod.

Felix waits until the new Sadde is more emotionally stable so they can go back to investigating.

Eventually he calms down enough to stop crying. "I'm sorry," he says. "You're—the first alts I've found. Katur is—he's tall and very kind and shy and good. You'd know him if you had him."

We have people that fit that. But it's not obvious if any of them is him.

...We might not have had the opportunity to meet him. We haven't been active for long.

"Then maybe you'll meet him someday. I hope you do. He does you good."

(Trevor makes a mental note to try and find him.)

Is there anything we can do to help you?

He shakes his head. "I'm the one meant to help you. I should explain my resources and situation."

We can help each other. But please explain.

"Is here the best location?"

If you are well enough to move. We have a room nearby.

"Lead the way."

Local Sadde unhugs.

They lead.

Henry asks the local Sadde if he is supposed to go with them.

Do you want to? I can't imagine my other self would mind, and I welcome your company, but I want you to be happy.

Henry comes along.

And here is their office. Seats are offered, but the Imperium doesn't take any.

Local Sadde does.

New Sadde doesn't. "I should start by saying that my species does not need to rest. At all. Ever. No sleep, no need to sit, I could stand like this for centuries."

What is your species?

"I'm not sure the name matters, much. I'm a vampire, which in practice means I subsist on blood, any kind—although I have personal magic that permits me to produce my own—and I'm ridiculously overengineered, with super strength and speed and a perfect memory and lots of mental capacity and incredible physical resistance. I have super senses in universes that run on physics, but here I apparently don't, which is a bit distressing, except for the fact where my ring of translation does a good enough job of it. I don't age, the only way to kill me is setting me on fire, don't need to sleep or breathe."

"—wow."

Wow, indeed.

What happened to you?

He looks down at his feet. "One of the features of my species is a form of—magical love, called mating. If a vampire ever lays eyes on someone they're mutually romantically compatible with, and the mutually is important, then they're in irrevocable hypermonogamous love with them, forever. If the other person is a vampire or is turned into one—and humans, at least my kind, can be turned into vampires—then this relationship is symmetrical. And it also happens that if a vampire sees multiple people that fit the criterion, simultaneously, then they mate on all of them. I mated on alts of the three of you, and an alt of myself, and someone named Katur."

He closes his eyes. "And then our worlds got separated. And I have not seen them in hundreds of years, although time has probably passed differently for them."

Felix hugs Sadde again, tighter. You got here somehow. Are you capable of finding them? Maybe there is something the local magic can do.

"Maybe. I can find them using a magic aura I have, which shows me where to open a door to the next universe. ...something tells me the fact that I've found alts here means I'm close, and that makes me want to skip to the next world already but that wouldn't—wouldn't be—right—"

Meanwhile the other Sadde has finished working out the implications of what Sadde's just said. He opens his mouth to say something, thinks better of it...

"That probably means you and these three would work out together, yes, and it also means I'm not going to—do anything that way, with any of you."

We had strong suspicions of our compatibility within the hour of first meeting Sadde. We should continue the explanation, the faster we get over with it, the faster we will know what to do. Even if we can't help you, it sounded like you wouldn't continue your journey until you shared resources with us.

"Wait, what? And you never told me?"

"If you had a daemon we would be able to pursue this parallel thread of discussion."

He nods, but continues: "I got stranded in my world due to a portal mishap. I spent several years there. Then I found this key." And he shows them the small key he used. "It opens doors to other worlds. So I started looking. And... I've been looking for a long, long time. As of the time I arrived here, you all should be able to use a new type of magic called sorcery, although it might interact oddly with how you all do biology, it doesn't seem to be the same way I do it. I have a couple of other trinkets, but this is the main thing."

Things have been busy and complicated. And we have absolutely no romantic experience. ...We had decided to wait for a couple of days after arriving here, Felix tells their Sadde.

Do you know if there is a safe way to test if sorcery still works? What other trinkets?

"Uh... How does the key work? Y-you obviously can't just pick your mates' world, but maybe we could use it to go somewhere else here? We have people to free..."

I don't have a ton of romantic experience, either! I have, like, two romantic experience.

"The key only opens doors to other worlds. It's one-way only, in the sense that while the door is open anyone can go from either world to the other but once it's closed it can only be reopened from the world I came from. Each location in space is associated with a world, and it took me decades to understand how to translate the small differences between how different locations feel to things like 'this world contains life' and 'this world is full of lava.'

"As for other trinkets, there's my ring of translation, a bag that's bigger on the inside which I made and which contains dust that when exposed to sunlight coalesces into magic rocks you can wish on, a few books, a couple of other less useful magical artefacts. As for sorcery—I'm not sure there's a thoroughly safe way to test it, if your biology is sufficiently different casting a spell could mess with it in unpredictable ways, but that said I don't expect that to happen."

(Well, it couldn't be that easy.)

"If you need a volunteer, you have one."

Part of the reason we decided to wait, is that currently your faction is dependent on ours to survive. We were hoping that in a few days we could've established the colony well enough that the associated power dynamics wouldn't be a problem or at least less of one.

Thank you for the offer, Henry. But Lord might figure out sorcery without putting anyone in danger. How does the wishing work?

You should know that we are currently on the run from a galactic government. The plan is to colonize the planet below us.

I guess that makes sense, he sends dubiously. Anyway, enough sidetracking.

"Larger rocks can have larger effects. You hold it, and it must be touching your skin but nothing more, and you make your wish. If it fits in the rock, it turns to dust and your wish is granted. The bag was made with it. It can't do anything interdimensionally, and it can alter properties of things or create things, but not grant literally any wishes.

"I expect if you're fleeing from a government it's probably not a very nice one."

The Federation is reportedly tolerable according to the people that live in it, but forbids several kinds of research, controls trade routes and has an iron grip on everything. The problem is that a spaceship accidentally stumbled upon a planet that was home to an ancient, powerful and possibly dead civilization with kinds of magic previously unknown to the current Galaxy civilization. The Federation could not be trusted with that kind of power, so the spaceship decided to mutiny and set up a colony there. Our Sadde and a man named Isra - who was born in this station - were in that spaceship. However, they were betrayed and the Federation managed to sneak up on them, and many including Isra were captured. They managed to create a portal and evacuate to this station. We then made some further preparations and then moved the station to this star system.

Also, separately, this station was initially founded by an apocalyptic cult. They had the plan to create a race "pure" from evil and then they would kill the "corrupt" people from their planet by creating a mass extinction event. They hired a human man called Lord that was secretly the greatest biological expert in all known history and who had been alive for centuries. He liked the challenge of creating people like the cult wanted and took it. Then said people rebelled against the original cult and took over the station because they opposed to the idea of genocide, putting Lord in charge. We were also his creations; our function is to lead and we are just too proactive to let Lord live alone in the peace and quiet he wanted, so he kept us dormant until Sadde and his group came knocking. Lord decided the tradeoffs were such that it was better to he wake us up and put us in charge.

"We sure do seem to lead interesting lives. What's your plan now?"

"Colonise this planet, build a resource base, rescue the people captured, become an independent polity other people can join if they so desire."

"...well I can help at least with the first three things."

Do you have a time-scale of how long you want to stay around? Or how much you wish to help?

"Until I'm no longer useful. And I'm not useful for—managerial things. I'm too broken."

Felix hugs the new Sadde a bit tighter. He is concerned that not being efficient will prolong your suffering longer. Is there anything we can do to help make your stay easier?

"Worrying about being as efficient as possible is likely to cause blunders that will only make my stay longer. But I don't think there's anything you can do, no."

Causing blunders wouldn't be efficient, Fenris protests, but noted.

We should spend time figuring out what resources you have so we can figure out what to do with them.

"...I just told you."

We don't know the full capabilities of sorcery. You mentioned that you have a couple of trinkets, but didn't specify them. Even if the physics of this universe are too different from yours you could have scientific knowledge that could still be useful to us. There might be other things lost to us due to non-obvious cultural differences.

"Ah. Yes. I think of these, sorcery is the most useful—my other trinkets are small things I traded or got as gifts, like a notebook that never ends or ice that never melts. Given that I'm—in a spaceship made of stone, I'm not sure any scientific knowledge will be applicable, but anyway the best way to share it is not listing everything I know, it's me learning enough about your culture to guess what you might be missing."

Fair enough. We can have people talk about culture to you then. What can sorcery do? It might not be as useful as the local magic.

"It's rather flexible. It can do interdimensional portals and wards and physical enhancements and various small spells... I could write you a list of everything I know of sorcery, probably."

Please do. Are you interested in acquiring resources? We could see if local magic works on other worlds.

At that he cracks a small smile. "Have you met him?" he asks, gesturing at the other Sadde.

Fenris smiles. We have, but it was worth asking. I'm organizing people over to explain our world to you. Lord is going to want to take a look at you. Some of our metamages are going to want to take a look at your magic.

He nods. "Thank you." He looks at the other Sadde. "How do you deal with the genderfluidity?"

"—oh I have some sort of magic no one understands that does it. You?"

"Generalised biokinesis and biomatter generation."

Pause. "That's—"

"Yeah."

That is convenient! How fast can you do it? Could you create samples of things?

"Quite fast, and yes, I can."

That is absolutely fantastic. Lord is going to pester you to produce all samples of everything ever, but overall that is absolutely fantastic.

"I can do that."

That is absolutely fantastic.

I have some people ready to give you cultural context.

"Lead the way."

They lead.

So..., Trevor sends to the local Sadde only.

So?

When do you want to talk about all the relevant implications of our alts?

I'm... not sure? I'd naively think that meeting an alt of mine would be exciting but wow this other Sadde's depressing.

Yeah, absolutely. Felix noticed when he entered the universe right away, it was just too much to not notice.

I kinda want to keep hugging him all the time but I'm not completely sure that actually helps as opposed to reminding him that I'm not—the one he wants.

Same here. Felix is mostly still doing it, out of... not selfishness, but mostly because he thinks his alt would've wanted him to do it.

Yeah. Anyway, about the implications—I don't know, I'm suddenly way more popular here than I ever was in my life, and Isra's okay with me being with other people and apparently so's Temperance and Henry and I are sorta friends with benefits? I keep expecting that to fail horribly somehow and it keeps—not.

"We really should pick disambiguating nicknames," the other Sadde says.

The augmented are generally okay with polyamorous relationships. When it fails for them - which is unusual - it isn't horrible. Not sure about Temperance and Henry. It should be worth it to talk to them separately.

It might worth it for all alts to pick, but you two are the practical priority to that, Fenris sends to the new Sadde, and I suppose there is no simple systematic way to do it, like numbers... maybe pick differences like the fact that you are a vampire? Or your soul animal thing?

...Sadde's lip twitches. "Sparkles," he suggests.

He was about to say something to Trevor but stops short and blinks. "Erm. Why?"

"Vampires of my kind who do not have the benefit of biokinesis sparkle in sunlight. Well, physics sunlight anyway."

That is sure an interesting species feature.

"It is actually rather pretty."

And he figures out how to send mental images so he sends them an image of himself running in sunlight, his skin sparkling like it's made of a million diamonds.

Wow, that is pretty. And to think that the local Sadde called us over engineered.

"Hadn't met any vampires yet! That's ridiculous. And I feel very narcissistic for saying that it's also very pretty, yes."

"I mated on our alt. We are narcissistic."

But you're a narcissist with excellent taste if I say so myself.

Sparkles twitches, too quickly and faintly for the humans to notice. Felix might get the emotional burst, though.

"Guess I should just embrace it."

Felix pretty much can't ignore Sparkles' emotions right now. He leans and hugs tighter.

That he notices. And replays what was just said in his head and—We should probably not flirt around him, he sends to Trevor exclusively.

In hindsight that was obvious. I was not even doing on purpose.

It's okay, I know you weren't. This isn't really a—situation any of us is prepared for. Pause. By the way, the Captain will probably want to hear about this.

Good call.

Is the Captain free to receive the news? She probably knows some of it, already.

She is so glad they've decided to include her. What's up?

Met alternate version of Sadde that is in an interdimensional journey. He has resources to share.

More detail, please.

Trevor gives her a more detailed account of the situation, including the fact that Sparkles' mates are versions of the Imperium.

Is that so.

Yes...?

She thinks that is a rather convenient happenstance.

Yes, they should be more suspicious, but Felix's empathy is pretty good evidence that this isn't something faked. Or at least not something faked with known resources.

...no he's missing the point, she thinks it's rather convenient for the Imperium that strong evidence they and Sadde get along splendidly showed up just like that.

Huh, indeed. It takes away the guesswork in the relationship. Also, it is interesting if the Imperium had goals, nefarious or not, that would be advanced by the already mentioned evidence.

Have Sadde trust them and lower his guard, do—something about it then. She's not clear on what, but this is more plausible than alternate universes.

Fair enough. From their perspective it is implausible that someone would be able to fool Felix's empathy... hmm.

So, the Captain is justifiably suspicious of the whole alternate universe thing, he sends both Saddes.

"Introduce her to Sparkles. Should be enough to convince her."

Well, Trevor can invite the Captain over to meet their sparkly visitor.

They'll probably arrive wherever they were going before she finds them, though.

They in fact do! The Captain can meet them over there. We are going to organize shifts so we can have one person talking to you at all times.

Fenris got a couple of elf volunteers, a dwarf, three humans and four augmented to come over. The augmented are two feather-heads, a girl with large ears and entirely black eyes and a hulking man with with dirty-blond fur.

"Cool. If you have, like, books for me to read and stuff like that, I can pay attention to lots of things at the same time, I could multitask."

And here's the Captain.

"Well. You're pretty boy's clone, then."

"I think we usually say 'alt,' and yes. You can call me Sparkles."

"...Sparkles."

"His species sparkles in the sun."

"Does it now."

So he says.

One of the featherheads raises a hand. "Yes, he does sparkle."

She raises an eyebrow. "I was not, in fact, doubting it, but how do you know?"

"I can sense mineral structures. He is kinda crystalline in nature."

"I see."

"I understand you're sceptical?"

"The thought has crossed my mind that this is rather unlikely."

He nods. "I can open you doors to other worlds if that would help—but now that I think about it it's actually not unlikely you'll be unable to see anything there, if you've evolved to perceive magic rather than light."

"Convenient."

We could test anyway and if it fails, someone could try to rig some special sort of perception magic.

"Ker Ullak should do it."

As long he shares how it works so we can be sure this is not an elaborate ruse. There might be a touch of irony in the message.

"Commendable paranoia," she says without a hint of sarcasm.

Anyway, the immediate plan is to share a lot about galactic culture with Sparkles so he knows how to best help us.

"I could leave a door to another world open so Ker Ullak can do their thing while I do mine."

"Temperance is going to want to... I am pretty sure she is going to want to take a look at all of the magic everything you have, but I suppose she could work on something else while Ker Ullak works on the door."

And Lord is going to want biological samples. I suppose there is no harm in parallelizing some of the simpler things.

"Yeah."

"I'm gonna go fetch Temperance."

Temperance's reaction to hearing the news is just about as excited as one might expect.

"He's very, extremely depressing, though," Sadde warns.

"Okay? I will try not to bounce... for that and for general reasons."

She does have a spring in her step though.

When they get there, Sparkles is reading a book and talking to two people at the same time about different things. He looks up at the newcomers and smiles, but doesn't miss what's being said by whom nor where he is in the book.

A glasswinged butterfly pokes out of his hair and moves its wings in a rather expressive gesture reminiscent of a nod.

And both the Captain and a small humanoid with absolutely no hair whatsoever and mole-like eyes—the dwarf, Ker Ullak—are staring intently at a human-sized rectangle of pure and complete blackness, still in the air like a door into oblivion. Every now and then, the Ker does something with one of the several runes he's drawn on the floor and a momentary echo of light is visible through the door, but it's too quick for them to actually see anything.

Temperance asks if they have tried different non-perception magics through the door (might or might not yield results that are relevant to their investigation, but it would be interesting to know regardless). That said she is more curious about extradimensional magic systems and sorcery in particular.

Lord also shows up and ask for biological samples of various things (plants mostly, to see if they adapt to the local environment.)

They've tried that, already. It looks like magic just doesn't work through that door.

Sparkles is glad to provide samples of whatever.

Did Sadde check and see if sorcery works in this universe?

Lord greedily collects the samples.

Nope, they're waiting on Lord to be willing to run tests since it uses biological stuff as its fuel and their biology is apparently weird. See also, Exhibit A, the world beyond that door.

Interesting! But Temperance was thinking in terms of seeing if he could still use it himself.

Sadde shrugs and looks at Sparkles.

Yeah, I can still use it.

Great! Now Temperance wants to know...

They proceed to test things.

It turns out that sorcery works alright with local biology.

Local magic doesn't work through the doors, not even to just perceive things. They can't find local magic compatible worlds with the key. This means that anyone that goes through the door is effectively blind, but the doors can still be made useful with a minimum ingenuity.

You can wish using the crystalwishes but they can't repair themselves with the local version of light. This can be somewhat bypassed with the doors, but that has the risks associated with keeping the doors open.

Local metamagic is pretty terrible at understanding or interacting with foreign magic.

In that case, would Sparkles mind giving ludicrous amounts of lifeforce to people?

Sparkles was thinking exactly the same thing and has actually done that to everyone here as soon as Lord confirmed the safety of performing sorcery. They should all live to see ten thousand, now.

Nice, that should have some interesting effects on morale.

It should at least hold up until they can rescue the people captured.

Yes, meanwhile, would Sparkles mind building them a town? They designed something that takes advantage of their biokinesis and is low maintenance.

Sure, he can do that.

And the Captain has interacted with him enough that, honestly, this is unlikely to be some ploy. That is very much a very depressed pretty boy.

And pretty boy would like to bring up a topic of conversation they dropped while Sparkles was being depressing around them.

Yes, they should do that. The four of them gather in the same room.

"So."

Yes?

"...the three of you are absurdly attractive on about every single axis I can think of."

Well, what a coincidence. We think the same about you.

"And it kinda sounds too good to be true—like Isra did, actually—but that, er, Sparkles is me, that's obvious, and—erm—I don't know how to do this very well yet, and I feel like I might be disrespecting Isra for even thinking—"

I don't think Isra would agree with you. And we don't know how to do any interpersonal interactions well yet.

"I'm not sure what that's an argument for—or against."

I think it's an argument for being careful.

"There are many possible degrees of care."

Nod. It doesn't mean the kind of care that involves not trying. At least not on our end.

He grimaces. "Have I mentioned you're too perfect to be true? Because you are."

You have. But in our case we are deliberately perfect, fabricated specifically for that purpose. You're the product of a terribly optimized process to do what amounts to the propagation of a complicated set of chemicals. Yet, that process still produced you. Who is the one too perfect to be true here?

He blushes.

He meant every word on behalf of all of us.

Personally, I don't know if we are that perfect, not enough evidence for me.

"That's adorable and exactly the perfect thing to say."

Oh, I was just aiming for accurate. But I definitely don't mind being adorable.

"Yeah but that's part of it, that you wouldn't take it for granted and just believe it and you'd want hard evidence of it. And generally everything about the three of you."

Well, that certainly is flattering.

He grins. "So... do we just give it a try?"

Yes, they send at same time.

More blushing and, "I kinda really want to kiss you now.—all of you."

After a moment of deliberation they decide that Fenris is going to be the first. He holds Sadde and kisses him.

!!!!!!!!

Fenris is obviously new to this, being rather curious what he can do, but picks up the skill surprisingly quick.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And Fenris breaks away from the kiss and smiles...

...and Felix takes his place.

I might expire of excess kissing, here.

Aaawwww, does this mean I won't get a turn?

You totally get a turn! We need to do science to this.

Oooh, science! I like this idea.

Trevor takes Felix's place in the science.

So much science!!

Science is great!

Very great!

Erm—should we be doing something more productive than kissing, though?

Oh, we cleared our agendas for this...

Did you, he inquires archly.

It would've been terribly insensitive to interrupt an emotional conversation so we could discuss how to best cannibalize the station for materials.

Have you met me?

They giggle. Kiss.

Kiss!

Of course, if you want to interrupt this to discuss resources we will understand. Our kisses can't be that good yet.

We have telepathy, he points out. Mine's pretty much just this range but. We're all in this range.

Gosh, you are a match for Fenris.

Just for Fenris?

I didn't say just, did I?

You did not. My bad.

All forgiven, since we are biologically augmented to be magnanimous.

I am very humbled by your capacity for forgiveness.

Trevor chuckles and takes a turn kissing.

And sharing! So very humbled.

They laugh. Well, maybe you're just too much for just one of us.

I hardly think so! You're all so competent and capable.

We strive for efficiency.

So clearly I'm not enough for the three of you.

No, but if you can find a third Sadde who is willing...

The multiverse is wide enough, although apparently that one is enough for the three of you, an extra one, and another one of me!

Giggle. Kiss.

Felix decides to try kissing Sadde's neck while Fenris is busy with the mouth.

!!!!!! That is a very good decision yes he is now Making Inappropriate Noises.

I am curious if you're comfortable... to provide more kissing area.

You might need to elaborate, he sends teasingly.

Clothing removal, Fenris sends simply.

Oooh that sounds like an interesting idea.

Well, in that case.

Fenris removes Sadde's shirt.

He is very obliging.

And now the "triplets" have extra area for kissing.

They do! So many kissable spots!

They really enjoy exploring these new spots. They have a very curious nature.

He approves of all this curiosity.

Hopefully more than just "approve"?

He's only shirtless, Trevor is going to have to make a better effort.

Gosh, what sort of better effort? Sadde might need to spell it out, since they are still young and innocent.

Is that so? Because Sadde has some ideas, starting with the three of them being way less dressed than they currently are.

They are rather agreeable to this.

...how about even less dressed than that.

Fenris is the first to remove all his clothes. The other two follow suit.

...wow they're pretty.

So is Sadde.

He's not sure they're not prettier but he's not going to quibble details he needs to do things with three hot naked men.

Really? What sorts of things?

Sex. He's talking about sex here.

Of course he is... Well, the triplets know the theory behind it, but they are happy to put it in practice.

Sadde even has some idea how to do this with three other men! Granted, last time he did it they were also doing things to each other...

Saddly, Sadde is going to have to deal with their full attention.

Oh no. How terrible. No. No. Stop.

(Don't.)

If it is so terrible, maybe they should stop.

(Personally, they don't find it terrible at all.)

Yeah no they should continue until long after he's unable to say words anymore.

Hopefully this doesn't mean he is unresponsive? Since they are working very hard and on multiple fronts to stimulate him.

Oh no he is extremely responsive and very nonverbally so.

How fascinating. Maybe if they switch places or if Trevor climbs on top of Sadde...

Oooooooooh!

That was one of the intended reactions, yes.

One of them?

One of many! Fenris and Felix are providing other reactions and also things to react to.

Yes there will certainly be reactions, here.

They're glad, for a moment they thought their inexperience would be too hindering.

Oh he has gotten some more experience over the past while, their inexperience isn't too much of a problem.

And they are fast learners!

Hopefully that's the only thing they're fast about, here.

Not only that, but they are full of stamina.

Good.

Very good. Excellent even.

Excellent is a good word, yes.

Excellent is a great word, since Sadde is excellent.

They're excellent to. And now they're excellently snuggling.

Snuggling is always excellent. They might need a new word for Sadde-snuggling.

...yeah portmanteauing this won't work they'll have to content themselves with the regular word.

Heh, at some point they could hire an etymologist.

A linguist will probably more useful.

Snort. Kiss.

Kiss!

...okay break's over they should go be productive or something.

Colony development proceeds, as does research. They get Sparkles to make self-sustaining arcologies around the world for future expansions. They find mineral veins both on the planet and on a nearby asteroid belt which should be sufficient to sustain their endeavor. Organic resources are more than well supplied thanks to Sparkles. They learn sorcery. They work out a plan to rescue people from the Feds.

There is an accident with someone that managed to break his legs while experimenting with a new vehicle and falling in a chasm. The tons of lifeforce meant that his legs kept healing, while the cramped space bent them in a weird way, which further prompted the healing. He is fine once they get him out and the legs even unbend on their own.

He developed a sorcery gift to "hold" inertia.

Yeah that's a thing: lots of pain and hurt and suffering makes gifts.

Only those things? Is he sure there is no other way?

(Lord is very curious about this.)

It is possible to get gifts by meditating and channeling your lifeforce to the correct place. The huge amounts of lifeforce he's given everyone help.

Temperance and Lord develop gifts.

Temperance got hydrokinesis that allows her to also freeze water (by which point she stops being able to move it.)

Lord got the ability to create a protective "shell" around himself. He can't move while using it, but it bounces off damage while also being camouflaged to match the environment.

Things like that will probably be useful for the rescue mission.

Extremely! Not everyone is immediately acquiring gifts and most are not as fast as Temperance and Lord, but they eventually acquire more things like...

...light manipulation...

...Persistent sound manipulation...

...Anti-magic.

That one is definitely going to be useful for the rescue mission. Henry cries over that.

"—there's an alt of yours in one of my mates' worlds," she tells Henry when that gift expresses itself. "I never met him but they have someone called Henry with that same gift."

"Wait, really? ...Do you know if they have a Gabe?"

"I don't, time was stopped in their world for most of my time with my mates and I never got to meet him and we didn't talk much about them. Wouldn't be surprised, though."

"Okay." Pause. "Thank you for telling me this."

Henry leaves in the sort of worry that signals that he needs to be alone.

Yeah that's reasonable.

Is the local Sadde interested in developing a sorcery gift?

Probably!

They can try for it together.

...Fenris gets air manipulation...

...Felix gets heat manipulation...

...Trevor gets earth manipulation!

And each of these gifts interacts nicely with the local magic. They can make elemental runes at a much faster rate than an experienced elementalist.

And he gets illusions!

"Ooh, these are pretty cool," he says, making a tiny illusionary replica of their ship.

Felix watches it fly. It's extremely cool.

It has sound effects! He flies it around the room and giggles.

It's adorable. This earns giggles.

"I'm so happy I have an alt. Even a depressing one."

I fully approve of your multiple existence.

"Apparently you three have a multiple existence, too!"

And there are always three of us. So we cheat by default.