He's unusual enough to get stared at some, anyway, though that may just be that this is a small enough town that everyone knows everyone else.

The main street is pretty obvious, and if he's going to find help it'll probably be there. There are a few shops, a tavern, a parking lot containing a few speeders and shuttles, an inn, or some benches if he'd rather just sit for a while.

Felix waits until he has heard some of the language to identify what they speak here and adjusts his universal translation accordingly. He is looking for someone that can take it to he nearest major city. Are there anyone obviously offering that service? He can ask at the tavern and the inn if there is no one obviously offering the service.

The bartender directs him to a grizzled, wiry human sitting in a booth near the back of the bar.

He thanks the bartender and goes over to the man.

"Hello? I'm Felix. I'm looking for transportation."

"That'd be me. Where to?"

"I don't have a specific destination in mind. My criteria for places to go would be: needs to have a pawn shop; a population over a thousand; spaceport; some place where I could blend in. More or less in that order of priority."

"So you want to go to Kincardine, more or less. What kind of schedule are you on?"

"I don't have a schedule. Ideally, I wouldn't need to sleep here or on the way there. But that is it."

"If we left now we'd get there after midnight. If you just need money for the inn I can have a look at what you're pawning."

"It's not about the money for the inn. I just have peculiar sleeping preferences."

"All right. Two hundred credits, and we can leave in two hours. A hundred if you'll wait until morning."

"I have some things to trade that are worth that much. If you're not interested I could find somewhere else to pawn them off and come back to you later."

If he is interested, Felix has some various items good for trade, mostly spare parts. He checked and researched enough that he is definitely offering more than necessary, but he hardly cares about paying too much.

He's interested, and only tries to gouge him a little bit.

"All right. Come to the shipyard in two hours; tell them Raafi sent you."

Nod. Felix goes outside to wait for the two hours to pass. There isn't much he can do about the local weather that wouldn't be noticeable but he pokes at some things just to make rain that bit more likely.

Anything eventful happens during these two hours?

Not especially. Lunchtime comes and goes; people continue to intermittently stare at him; a cute toddler asks if he can go talk to the 'bird-man' and his father tells him 'maybe later'.

Felix gives the toddler a brief smile, but deigns to interact with anyone otherwise.

Once the two hours are nearly up he goes to the shipyard and does as instructed.

The man at the desk gives him directions, which lead him to a medium-sized shuttle. Raafi is standing beside it, with a squat cylindrical droid beeping angrily at him about how the shuttle's splines need reticulating.

"Yes, all right, you can take care of it tomorrow."

"I won't be responsible if you wreck the compressor again!"

"Tomorrow, RJ."

Felix doesn't notice anything unusual about the droid's language. He didn't even notice that it was a different language,

"Hello, is there a problem?"

"Oh, Hello! No, no problem. You know droids, they want everything just so. We'll be ready in ten minutes." He gestures for Felix to come aboard.

In he goes. His luggage is a hovering metal box thing that follows him around, about three feet tall and vaguely cube shaped. What sort of vehicle is this?

Kind of a shabby one, though it doesn't look any worse than any of the others on the lot. Raafi gives him a tour - bunks there if he decides to use one, refresher there, lounge, galley, cockpit. "Make yourself at home; you can stow your - luggage - in the closet there if you'd like."

Nod. "Thank you. I will be busy reading, but feel free to interrupt me if needed."

Felix stores the luggage inside the closet. He goes to the lounge and starts reading about the various galactic species, planets, etc.

Another few minutes of preparation, and off they go.

Felix will be left alone until dinnertime, when Raafi comes out to offer him a meal.

Which Felix politely accepts. He asks if everything is alright.

"Yep, fine. We're making good time, nice tailwind today."

Brief smile. He won't take credit for the nice weather, he didn't even tinker too much with it. "Good."

Oh, good, a smile.

"Are you going to be okay in Kincardine? It's not a big city, as they go, but you seem a little out of your element."

"I should be. I just need a place where I can get a better footing."

"All right. We'll be staying for a couple days after we drop you off, if you need help with anything."

Another brief smile. "Thank you. That is very kind."

He smiles.

"If you're looking to get off-planet, we might be the first ship leaving - I have another trip to make first, so it'll be a week or two, but there isn't much traffic out this way."

"Uh, maybe contact me when you're about to leave. I don't have any solid plans for the future."

"All right. How can we reach you?"

"Uh, I will set up standard means of contact and send them your way."

"Fair enough. They'll take messages for me at the shipyard."

Nod nod. "I am likely to want to leave the planet, I just don't know yet. If you are still around, I will contact you."

Nod.

Food.

Food. Reading.

And back to work. He reappears to offer Felix a blanket a bit after sundown, and otherwise leaves him alone until they reach the city.

Another brief smile and he thanks the blanket.

(He doesn't need one, his magic handles temperature, but the blanket can be folded for head support while reading.)

And eventually they arrive.

"I recommend the Blue Diamond Hotel," Raafi offers as they debark. "They're expensive, but they're good about special requests, even this time of night. You'll need credits first, though... try Yersk's, first, but if it seems like he's jerking you around, don't hesitate to go to Obbet's instead - she doesn't pay as much, but she's more reliable."

He gets directions to all those places. Polite smile. "Thank you, for all the help."

"You're welcome. Good travels."

"Good travels," Felix repeats.

He goes to the Yersk's place to acquire enough credits for at least a night (ideally a week) at the Blue Diamond Hotel.

Yersk is in a good mood, and doesn't jerk Felix around at all; he's more than happy to buy whatever he has to sell.

Good. Felix is more than happy to part with his things and go to a hotel to have a good night sleep and also create a residence inside his pocket dimension.

Nothing interrupts this plan.

In that case Felix is going to manifest a bit of pocket dimension with a nice house in it and very well-stocked digital library. He reads and researches. He figures outs places to put portals to his pocket dimension that won't attract attention. In the next few days he figures outs how to make money and even how to make discreet charity donations without people asking too many questions.

This eventually leads him to the local hospital where they need assorted new equipment, which Felix is willing to give away for free.

The hospital is thrilled.

On his way out, he notices a droid pacing anxiously in the front lobby. Unlike the other droids he's seen so far, she's heavily decorated; most of her torso and upper arms are covered with enameled metal flowers in a pleasing mixture of colors.

And Felix been around long enough to realize that. 1) Droids are people, because his magic tells him that they are; 2) They're not recognized as people and are in fact terribly mistreated; 3) Not likely to get any sympathy from biological people.

He approaches. "Hello? Sorry for bothering you, but you look like you need someone to talk to."

She stops pacing.

"I'm - I'm fine, sir."

Yeah, not even a little.

"Please, call me Felix. You don't look fine- sorry, what is your name? If you don't mind me asking?"

"Daisy, sir - ah, DZ-12Q, sorry."

"You really can just call me Felix," he says, "if you don't mind," he amends. "Do you prefer Daisy or DZ-12Q?"

"I'm sorry, it's - been a while, since - ... you can call me whatever you like."

"I'm sorry if I'm scaring you. I'm... aware that the droid situation is not a nice one."

That gets her attention. "Yes, it's -" she gestures helplessly. "I don't know what I'll do, if..."

It's not hard to imagine what the "if" could be. This is a hospital, there is an obvious reason to pace around anxiously.

"Maybe I could help? I came here to donate things to the hospital and might be able to come up with unusual resources to help."

"They don't even know what's wrong. It's been four days and she just isn't waking up."

"Did they rule out all the typical causes? Injury? Toxins? Disease?"

"We just got here this morning, they're still running tests, but - it isn't any of those." She sounds absolutely certain, and more than a little nervous about admitting it.

Felix looks a bit nervous. Four days was when he arrived here and when he knows of one thing that makes people not wake up despite no visible medical cause. And if she was far enough away... he barely registers her nervousness.

"Okay..." he says slowly, "I will see what I can come up with, maybe there is relevant equipment that they lack or something. ...Is there anything else I could do for you?"

"I-"

"I don't think so, sir. Thank you."

Felix kiiiinda wants to hug her, but he doesn't know if that is even something that droids enjoy. He puts a hand on her shoulder instead. "I promise to do the best I can. Let me give you my contact information in case something happens." He does that.

She takes it with a nod. "Thank you, sir. I don't... I'll get in touch with you when I have one."

Nod nod. "You're welcome. If I can't find you, I will leave a message with the hospital. I'm sure they I can motivate them to be nice about it."

If there isn't anything else to say he will leave and go back to his pocket dimension. Once there he will use one of the high tech anesthetics to fall asleep.

Is there another pocket dimension around?

Yup.

Well, that is just fantastic.He feels around as far as his dreamshape "sense" lets him and he can feel the dimension stretching. Daisy must have brought her over all the way here from wherever they live.

He places some portals between his own dimension and hers. Likely, he is going to need to go all the way to where the person was got dreamshaping to rescue her properly. Which is good, because there might be a dreamshard around.

Felix goes looking for Daisy.

She's not in the lobby, but when he asks the receptionist he's directed to the small on-site library, where she's sitting with a book of poetry.

"Hi, Daisy? I think I figured out what happened."

He looks around, does this place looks private enough?

The librarian is keeping an eye on them, so probably not.

Daisy closes the book. "Yes?"

"Uh, better find somewhere more private."

"All right." She stands and sets the book on a cart to be re-shelved. "I, ah - she's in a private room. This way."

She moves more smoothly, headed for where her friend is sleeping, like a fair portion of her earlier tension was just from keeping herself from doing this.

Felix follows along. "Is she stable?"

"As far as I know, yes. We live a day's travel away from here, with no stops on a good speeder; I waited to bring her until I was sure she wasn't going to come out of it on her own, and there was no change in that time."

Nod nod. Once they're sufficiently private.

"I'm from another universe. There are different kinds of magic there instead of the Force. One of those kinds of magic is likely responsible for what happened to your friend."

"Oh."

"Yeah. What happened is that she is generating a pocket dimension, a bit of finite extra-dimensional space and she won't wake up until her... dream-avatar leaves the place. Once she does that she is going to have control over the pocket dimension generation power, called dreamshaping and won't be in danger any longer."

"All right. How long does that usually take?"

"Well, I need to go there, find her and bring her to a portal. I can provide the portal. I have dreamshaping too. She is likely around the area that overlaps with where she got dreamshaping. I should ask, was there a piece of gray quartz anywhere near her?"

"I didn't notice one."

"Okay. We can deal with that later. At any rate there are... bits of her dimension that overlap with this city and I'm going to check and see what it looks like. Search for her a little, but she is unlikely to be around. I think we are going to need to go to where you come from."

"I don't think she would have left, if it's up to her. She's very attached to our home."

"Her pocket dimension might not look like your home. Uh, it's somehow personality based."

"Oh. That... might be bad. Depending on how it works." She approaches the bed and takes the sleeping woman's hand in her own.

Felix looks at them concerned. "It might not. It's a bit esoteric and hard to predict. Regardless, I promise I will try my best and keep trying."

She nods. "Even if it is dangerous, she'll do whatever she can to make it safe."

Nod nod. "I will check her pocket dimension now and get back to you. We are likely going to need to go back to your place anyway. Do you think we should bring her along? When we rescue her she is going to wake up in her original body."

"We shouldn't let her wake up here alone." Apparently the prospect is a bit alarming.

"Of course. Uh, how hard it would be transfer her back? If it's necessary we might be able to just... steal her from here via pocket dimension."

"I have the speeder I brought her with. I think they're planning on giving her a feeding tube this afternoon, though, we shouldn't wait."

Nod nod. "I'm going to check on her dimension right away and be back very soon."

"All right. I'll be in the library if I'm not here."

Nod nod. "Take care."

Felix leaves.

He goes to one of the portals that connects his own dimension to Daisy's human (he should've asked the name). He opens it. What is on the other side?

Desert, liberally dotted with metal statues and stone pillars. It appears to be early evening; the sky is just beginning to change color in the west.

Felix puts a hand through the portal just to be sure the dimension doesn't bite right away. Then he walks in.

Nothing happens.

Good. He flies around for signs of life.

Nope.

Clouds start to gather overhead.

...What if he tells the clouds to not do that?

They're pretty insistent; he can shoo them, but they re-form as soon as he stops, a little faster and a little darker each time.

Okay, Felix isn't going to be insistent, but does need to search around.

The clouds continue to gather and darken.

After a minute or so, there's a well-aimed bolt of lightning.

Felix is more weather resistant than the average person.

This does not make him invulnerable and he dies.

 Well, his body is dead, Felix is currently dreamshaping and fretting.

Fretting without being able to do anything with your body (which doesn't exist) is quite terrible. More so when you can't even kick yourself over not coming up with better contingency plans.

He thinks of something. Felix can use dreamshaping to create lots of things. He could create himself another body or otherwise wait a week. Daisy's human could die in that time. So he tries to create one and hopes that nothing goes wrong.

Something goes wrong.

Or maybe it goes very right. The attempt at creating a new body half-fails and instead there is someone new. With Felix's memories, but not him.

Still, that person knows what Felix wanted to do. Which was to help Daisy and her human.

A winged person goes looking for Daisy the droid.

She's still in the hospital room, sitting in the corner staring out the window. She looks up when he comes in.

"So, complicated bits of news. Her dimension bites. Hard."

She nods. "Are you all right?"

"Felix is alright, but in an attempt to not take a week to come back he accidentally created me. Uh, hi?"

"I don't think I understand."

"Felix has a sort of magical immortality that grows him a new body whenever his previous one dies. But it takes a week. Independently of that, his dreamshaping lets him create things. He tried to create a new body for himself faster. Failed, the result was me. I'm his clone, I suppose. I have his memories, but not his personality."

"Oh."

"I'm sorry."

Helpless shrug. "At any rate we still need to figure out a way to save... uh, what is her name?"

Sigh. "She's registered here as Deskyl but her name is Dusk."

"Does it have to be a dreamshaper who goes to get her?"

"Not necessarily, but we wouldn't want to risk you either."

"If it's voluntary at all, she won't hurt me."

"Might work. I might be able to protect you some. We are still going to need to find her and that is likely to be around where she first got dreamshaping."

She nods. "The speeder can handle all three of us. Maybe not very comfortably with your wings, though - I can rent something, if need be."

"Felix made something the other day, but he doesn't know how to pilot it. Should be big enough to fit all of us comfortably."

"I can probably pilot it; what model?"

He names it. She can pilot it.

"I'm familiar with that one. Can we bring the speeder, too? There should be just enough room for it."

"Of course. My plan is to bring... Felix's respawn point with us and hopefully he is going to take the hint to open a portal between his own dimension and hers, such we can rescue her. If that fails, we can still wait a week. We can feed dusk and keep her stable during that time."

"Yes. Um."

"What do you know about Sith?"

"A faction of the local kind of magic-users? Unpleasant reputation of being unstable?"

"Mmhmm." She crosses the room as she's talking, to sit by her friend's bed again. "That's generally true; don't challenge a Sith, it won't go well for you. But it's not universally true; Dusk has put a lot of effort into having enough self-control to avoid hurting people."

"Oh, I see. It even explains the dimension's... temperament. Well, I still want to go ahead and rescue her."

"Thank you."

"I mentioned it because Force users are more durable than regular humans; it won't be dangerous for her to wait for Felix to come back, if that's safer for us."

"It would take longer to find her dream-avatar. But that isn't an insurmountable obstacle. More so with your levels of technology."

"I suspect we'll have exactly as much trouble with that as she wants us to. That's another reason for me to go."

Nod nod. "Okay. In that case we should bring her and you to Felix's dimension."

"All right. Now?" She takes Dusk's hand again.

Nod. "I'm going to open the portal."

He isn't Felix and doesn't have pyrokinesis, instead he got electrokinesis. He zaps a small piece of paper that catches fire and that opens the portal.

The room beyond it's a very nice hospital dorm, overly decorated, but fully equipped. They can easily move Dusk through the portal and then load her in a state of art hovering hospital bed.

The droid detaches the IV line from the needle in Dusk's arm, and then hesitates for a second before picking her up, ever so carefully. Moments later, the transfer is complete.

Then they can make their way to Felix's residence. The place is gorgeous. A lot of fire features. Not a single light-bulb. The still-unnamed clone directs Daisy and Dusk to a hangar while he goes to retrieve... what looks like a house-sized floating boulder with a fountain on top.

Daisy brings Dusk into the shuttle. There's not quite room for the bed in the cockpit, but if she leaves it in the hall outside there's just enough room to get by; she does that, and then starts looking over the controls, to make sure she remembers everything she needs to.

He attaches the boulder to a hover-thing and that to the shuttle. It should be safe to move.

From the outside the entire thing looks weird, but as long it flies. He boards the shuttle.

"Everything ready?"

"We still need the speeder, but yes, everything's in good shape here."

"Oh, of course."

They go retrieve the speeder.

It has an open-topped wagon hitched to the back, the sort of thing someone would use to transport equipment or building materials, with a nest of pillows and blankets constructed carefully inside; the net she must have used to keep Dusk from falling out of it lays haphazardly on top.

She loads it up, transferring the nicest blanket and some of the pillows to the hovering bed when she's done. "All right, I'm ready as soon as you are."

"Let's go."

And off they go.

The shuttle is faster than the speeder, but it's still going to be several hours.

"So... I have no life of my own to talk about. Do you mind if I ask about yours?"

"I don't mind talking about it, but the interesting parts aren't very nice."

"We already read enough about this universe to figure out how fucked the droid situation is."

"-differently than that. Dusk knows I'm a person."

"Ah."

"You might not actually know the worst part, yet. The - standard advice, for droids, is that our owners are supposed to wipe our memories every six months; we die, in any meaningful sense. And it's obvious to anyone who's spent any time around protocol droids that I'm older than that."

"Your universe is really fucked up."

"Yeah. Dusk has done a really good job of making it right for me, though."

Nod. "We will save her," he reassures.

She nods, and goes quiet for a minute.

"What's it like where you're - well, I guess Felix - is from?"

"Uh... primitive when compared to galactic standards? Our technology level means that we haven't reached farther than our moon. We also don't have artificial intelligences and our holonet equivalent is only a few decades old. Humans are the dominant species, but there are some other magical intelligent beings around. And there is diverse magic, instead of just the force. It isn't super common, but it's a thing."

"Wow. We barely have records from that long ago."

"Yeah, Felix was actually trying to figure out if this is a different version of our galaxy, because of the humans. But he has been busy going around making money and donating to charity too."

She nods. "We can help, if that's important to know."

"Thank you. We are lucky to be able to sort of blend in because of all the aliens, but we are very much flying blind here."

She nods. "You'll need to talk to Dusk, I'm not sure which contacts she'll still be able to get things from. But if you just need information about the galaxy as it is now - we can't get much about the Republic, from here, but most things about the Empire and Hutt territory we should be able to help with."

Nod nod. "We are in no hurry, though. Is Dusk just going to want to stay around?"

She considers. "The new magic might change things. My guess is that she'll want to stay, though."

Nod nod. "Why this place?"

"It's hers, and that's important to her. And she likes being the most powerful person around; she doesn't use it, much, but knowing that nobody can challenge her makes it easier for her to keep her calm."

"How attached is she to being the most powerful person around?"

"It would depend a lot on the situation. Just someone else being around, but not bothering her at all, would probably be okay, but if they tried to challenge her - I don't know. She is a Sith, no matter how nice of one she is."

"Ha! Felix is the least challenging person ever. At worse he is going to unobtrusively going to donate things around the place. Which he has to do regardless of Dusk, because one doesn't wave this sort of power around."

The droid chuckles. "I don't think she'll mind, then. She does some of that herself."

"Heh. Cool."

"Yeah, it's - the rule for Sith is that they're allowed to do literally whatever they want, so long as nobody wins a fight with them about it. It's really messed up, a lot of the time. But what Dusk wants is for herself and her people and the people around her to be safe and happy and fulfilled, and she's strong enough to get that, now - it is, actually, the kind of thing other Sith would try to kill her for, for 'being weak' - so she really enjoys making it happen, when she has a chance."

"Making the people around him be safe and happy and fulfilled is basically Felix's goal in life."

"Hopefully the first impression won't hurt them too badly, then. Though I'm not really sure we mean quite the same thing by that - it does seem like Felix generalizes more. What I mean is, like - we live a few hours' drive from a town, and she thinks of that as hers and would defend it if any other Sith came, donates to the library, that sort of thing; she doesn't care the same way about the city, that's not hers."

"Huh, yeah, I see what you mean. Felix generally wants to offer his help as far as he can reach."

Nod. "She's very good to the people and places she does care about, usually. I think she doesn't feel like she can stretch very far before she has to give that up, and it's important to her."

Nod nod. "That is wise of her. I- I kinda wish Felix was more like that? Or at least that he would be better able to accept his limitations. He won't do anything actually stupid or bad, but he sort of mopes that he can't do more."

Nod. "I'm not sure how she does it, exactly. I know part of it is that she doesn't like dealing with conflicts of interest - there are things about how I was treated at the hospital that I'm not going to tell her about, because she would go kill some people over it, and if she did care about the city and not terrorizing people in it, she'd have an uncomfortable choice to make there."

Slow nod. "Why it's so hard for people to realize that droids are people?"

"Six-month-olds are still babies, even for us."

"Yes. But they still obviously count as people. And given the numbers I would naively assume that many people would've noticed what happens if you don't wipe the droids and then word would get out and everyone would know."

"I mean, everybody knows droids go a little strange if you skip a wipe, they don't think anything unusual is going on when they see that. Plus the language barrier, and mech droids are the most common sort and they don't generally spend all that much time around biological people to start with."

"Okay... still, there are hundreds of trillions of people in the Galaxy and at least someone should've noticed." Shrug. "Maybe I'm underestimating how not-obvious it is, but even so. It doesn't make the thing any less of an atrocity."

"I'm sure people have; Dusk did. But noticing and being in a position to do something about it aren't the same thing." She shrugs. "I agree about how bad it is."

"I wonder if Felix could recover you... He can make things and copy things from the past. Never managed that with humans, but might be easier with droids."

"If he's prepared to take care of a bunch of poorly-socialized children, yes, probably."

"Possibly not a project for the next month then."

"Yes." She sounds amused.

"Well, we have all the next of forever to come up with a solution."

"Mmhmm. It's a complicated problem but I don't think it's literally unsolvable."

Nod nod. "Is there anything similarly complicated around?"

"The war. The Jedi in general; the Sith in general. I'm not sure if biological-person slavery is complicated in comparison to those but it sounds like something Felix will want to do something about. Probably plenty of more local problems, in various places."

Nod nod.

"It's not a very nice galaxy."

Sigh. "Well, we have all the rest of forever to fix it."

"Yeah. And there are definitely worse places to start trying."

He nods. The hours pass along.

Night falls. They keep going.

A few hours after midnight, Daisy makes a hairpin turn onto a trail that's nearly invisible in the dark. Soon after that, they start passing artwork, similar to the sculptures in Dusk's pocket dimension.

He comments on the resemblance.

"That's good," she diagnoses, fondly. "I wasn't sure how - trapped - she'd be, but if she has her artwork, she's probably fine."

"And once we rescue her, she will just be able to dream up her art."

"She'll like that."

"Pocket dimensions are really great. I might get enough jealous of the two of them to want one of my own."

"Yeah. None for me, I suppose; droids don't sleep."

"Yeah, sorry. I wonder if there is a way to work around that, but I can't think of anything... simple."

"It's all right. I'm sure Dusk will share." She's fond, still, and a little amused.

"You two sound really close."

"Yeah. We've been through a lot together. She raised me, through a really tough time in her life."

Nod. "Well, can only get better from now on."

"Mmhmm." She sounds pleased.

A few minutes later they reach the pair's home, an unassuming adobe house paired with an unassuming adobe garage, facing a dusty yard that hosts a thin spire of metal that seems to twist in the shuttle's headlights. Daisy brings the shuttle in carefully, opting to crush some of the nearby vegetation rather than take up the main part of the yard. "I should see to the animals, first thing, will you be all right for a few minutes?"

"Don't mind me. I'll be fine."

"All right; I won't be long." And she bustles off behind the house.

"I think we'll be all right," she reports when she returns a few minutes later. "We'll lose some of the garden, but we can recover from that. Would you like to come inside?"

"Of course."

She picks Dusk up out of the bed - still carefully, but less hesitantly - and heads for the house; opening the door without putting her down is a bit of a juggling act, but she manages it. The room beyond is dominated by a huge square table, big enough that people sitting on the benches surrounding it wouldn't be able to reach things in the center. It's obviously a worktable, stained and scarred with the signs of its use, but it's empty at the moment. The bins on the wall to the right, on the other hand, are full and neatly organized, some by color, some by some less obvious system. The back wall holds a pair of large machines and a decorated wooden cabinet, along with a closed door that must lead to the rest of the house. A small galley kitchen takes up most of the left-hand wall, with another door just beyond it. Wherever there's free space on the walls, the room is decorated with draped bits of brightly-colored cloth.

"Make yourself at home, I'll be back in a second," Daisy says, heading for the back room.

Well, he was going to offer to help with carrying Dusk, but there might be an obvious reason why that isn't a good idea.

He removes his shoes, but doesn't touch anything.

She's not gone long.

"All right, everything urgent is taken care of. What can I do for you?"

"Well, we should look around to see if the dreamshard is around?"

"The crystal Felix mentioned? I can look - it's not dangerous, or especially fragile, or anything?"

"It's only dangerous to sleeping people. And it's harder than it looks."

"All right. You can - sit, or look around, if you'd like, nothing in here is fragile or anything."

"Sure..." Then he blinks. "I just realized that I don't have a name."

"Yeah." She'd noticed; she's not to happy about it. "I expect it'll be a while before that gets inconvenient, if you need time to think of one."

"Yeah, don't worry. This situation is bizarre, but I think it's for the best. Felix doesn't need to worry about being alone."

"You seem to be doing okay, yeah. Though I hope he won't be alone regardless."

"Yeah, he just needs time to adjust to the idea of being stranded in this universe for who knows how long."

"Yeah, that's - going to be rough."

Slow nod.

"I can't speak for Dusk, but I'll do my best to help him."

"Well, thank you."

Nod.

"Are you sure you aren't hungry or anything?"

"...I could eat if it isn't too much trouble."

"Not at all. How do you feel about eggs?"

"I can't lay them if that is what you're asking. I'm curious if I will find them delicious."

She chuckles. "No, that wasn't what I meant. We have plenty, the chickens haven't stopped laying. Do you want to try them any particular way?"

"I'll let you pick."

"All right, egg salad it is, then." She sets up a couple of eggs to boil, and then gets some dough out of the refrigerator to bake; apparently by 'egg salad' she means a sandwich complete with freshly baked bun and sliced fruit on the side.

"This smell delicious." He takes a bite and mumbles something to the effect  that it tastes delicious too.

She grins, or at least gives as much of an impression of it as she can without a mouth to grin with. "I'm glad you like it."

He grins too. And then his computer tablet starts beeping.

Daisy also receives messages.

Uh, okay...

Daisy? Is this working? What is going on?

He reads this. "Uh, I know he can send messages, but he wasn't supposed to be able to read them."

"...huh. If he can do that, he might be able to talk through the radio; let me get that set up out here and we'll try it."

Yes, it's working. We're fine; we brought Dusk - my friend - home. She'll be fine, too, I think. I'm going to try setting up the radio in case you can hear us that way; we'll be listening on the 21.2 megahertz channel.

Did you bring me along? How did you know to bring me along?

We did. You made a clone - accidentally, I assume - and he has your memories. He's fine, too.

The radio is really not meant to be moved; in the process of getting it out of its spot she discovers the dreamshard where it'd fallen under the bed.

There is a long silence from the radio.

"I think he is going to need a while to process that. Do you mind if I keep that?" He says about the dreamshard.

"Not at all." She hands it over.

"Thanks." He pockets the thing.

She nods.

"Is there anything else you'll need while you're here?"

"Not really. If Felix can communicate with us then I can offer you things. And we will be able to help Dusk much more neatly."

"Right, I meant -" she shrugs. "Someplace to sleep? A ride to the library?"

"Ah, I think that Felix can provide both a place to sleep and a library. If he takes too long, I will accept the former."

"All right."

The yet-unnamed clone and Felix have a conversation through the datapad.

After a few minutes he says. "Felix can do things for us. Like opening a portal to Dusk's dimension."

"I'd like that. Please."

Nod. Exchange of messages.

A portal opens outside. It leads to Felix's dimension, but there is a second portal leading to Dusk's right in front of the first.

She looks through, first. It looks just like home, except for the time of day and the extra statues.

"Oh. Oh, good." She goes to step through the portal, but stops herself. "What - happened, specifically, to Felix?"

"Lightning bolt. The weather is sort of responsive."

"- was there warning?"

"It started gathering up as soon Felix walked in the dimension... I could go with you and try shielding you from it? I should be better than Felix."

It should be mentioned that his wings have slowly changed from fire-orange to dark-blue with lightning patterns."

"That sounds like she's in control of it; if she is, and you get into a fight with her, it will be more dangerous, not less. I think I'll be okay."

Nod. "Uh... if you're not, can I ask Felix to restore you?"

"Yeah. And I'm going to stay right by the portal; if it looks like I might get zapped, I'll leave. I really do think I'll be okay, though."

Slow nod. "Good luck."

She steps through. "Dusk? It's me."

Nothing happens. She looks at the sky: it's entirely cloudless.

And then there's the blur of someone approaching at speeds generally associated with speeders, or, contextually, Sith who want to be someplace in a big damn hurry. "Daisy!" She scoops her up. "What happened? How did you get here? How did I get here?"

The droid laughs and hugs her back. "Weird otherworldly magic!"

"Not cool!"

"I know! You're technically still asleep; scared me half to death! But it's fine now, you just need to come back through to the real world and you'll be fine."

"All right." She steps through the portal and disappears; Daisy doesn't quite land on her feet, but hops back up and gives the winged clone a quick hug on her way to the bedroom.

Aaaaw.

He doesn't go into the bedroom, but he observes through the door.

More hugs; signed conversation. Dusk wants to know why she's in a hospital gown; she's surprised that it's been nearly a week. (I'd believe it, though, it feels like I'm a week behind on my saber practice. Ugh.) And then: So, I assume your friend has to do with the magic?

Yes; it's complicated.

Okay. What do I need to know right away?

He's friendly and stuck here and doesn't have a name yet. There's another one, he'll be back in a few days, his name is Felix, he's friendly and stuck too. And might think you killed him.

...okay, that was real, I guess?

Yeah.

All right. I'll be more careful with it in the future. "Hello."

"Hello! How are feeling?"

"Fine, thank you. Daisy tells me you're stuck here, possibly from another world?"

"Yeah kinda? Felix is from a completely different universe and we don't know if there is a way back."

She nods. "Well, I'm not sure I can help, but if anyone can it's probably me. Do you have any leads?"

"We don't research the topic yet. It's... likely very difficult. Felix's hope are only nonzero because it happened once so in theory it can happen again. And we have time."

Nod. "Luckily for you, I do power design. There's a reasonable chance I can come up with something, if the Force can do it at all."

"The Force can do teleport? ...Do you think the Force could interfere with pocket dimension portals?"

"It can't that I know of, but that's not the only approach. The portals do look like something; I should be able to change them with a bit of practice, that's an obvious thing to try."

"Okay. Felix was flying through a place with weird portals that zapped him with energy, and then he found finding himself here. The dreamshard wasn't with him, but since both showed up here it makes sense to assume it's connected to the phenomena."

"That would be the - loud - crystal in your pocket?"

"Yes? What do you mean with loud?"

"It's - I'm not sure if it's sentient, quite, but it has a lot going on, even compared to an attuned one, and it's projecting some of it. I'm not entirely sure what I'm seeing, there, it's not my specialty, but it's very definitely something."

He removes it from his pocket and peers at it.

"Uh, I honestly don't even know why I'm surprised. What do you mean with attuned?"

"Mm - how much do you know about Force users?"

"Not a lot to be honest? Felix didn't have time to read much about the subject - I have his memories - and most of what he found was at first glance sort of... biased-looking."

"Probably not, Sith are actually pretty horrible." Her tone is light, but it doesn't sound like she's joking. "And Jedi too, if the rumors are right, just differently. Anyway, we all use lightsabers -" she's barely out of bed, but hers is already at her hip; she draws it without lighting it. "They can cut through close to literally anything, among other properties." That's enough threat; she puts it away again. "And to use one well, it has to have a focus crystal that you've attuned to yourself, so that it echoes your Force presence back to you; it's a fairly distinctive sensation."

"Ah, I see. And yes, it should be very loud indeed."

She nods. "It'll take me a bit to figure out what's going on with it, but I won't be surprised if I can use it to find your home world."

Slow nod. "Uh... Felix is not going to be very hopeful about that."

"Oh?"

"I don't know if we mentioned our immortality? It involves a connection to a respawn point, coming to this universe broke it and it's not a casual to break."

"Ah. Well, I'm not saying it's definitely possible, but I'm not going to give up without looking."

Smile. "I'm very grateful, Felix will be too."

She grins.

"First, though, I need something to eat. And a shower."

"Yeah, you should do that. And I should pick a name."

Nod.

"I will leave you to it. Felix made a house for us, so we can get out of your hair and everything, but please drop by for anything."

"All right."

He leaves. There is an open portal to Felix's dimension if they want to drop by.

Shower, breakfast, and while she eats she tells Daisy about the new dimension - the desert, like theirs except for the time of day, stuck just before sunset. The statues, some of which she thinks are magical - in an entirely different way than the Force, if her impression of the matter is right; they should, some of them, be able to give out temporary specific powers to people who interact with them in specific ways, if it's the right person at the right statue doing the right thing. The weather, which is mostly voluntary: she can tell when someone is in her dimension, and who they are, at any range; the clouds are a reflection of how she feels about a given intruder, and the lightning ranges from 'impossible to produce' to at least 'easier to do than not', it may be that someone she really despised would get zapped completely involuntarily, but without trying it she won't know.

And then she goes and sits under the tree in front of the house and stares at Felix's portal for a bit, mapping out the parts of it.

It's tripper than hyperspace. She can feel a sort of distortion that is weird, but in a way that intuits well with the concept of "portal", there are parts which move and fit with each other in a way that is very hard to understand.

Eventually, he pops his head through the portal and looks at her inquisitively.

She looks up almost immediately. "Preliminary results are promising!  I have no idea how I'd aim but I suspect I can change where it goes."

"Cool. I should, maybe give you a pocket dimension and dreamshaping overview. Also, I got a name! Trevor Dalkaila."

"Nice to meet you. And, sure, that sounds useful. Inside?"

"Inside your place? Sure."

And in she goes. She sits at one of the corners of the table, so that Daisy can sit next to her - which she does, and takes her hand - and Trevor can sit more or less facing them without being uncomfortably far away.

He sits. "Hi, Daisy." He turns to Dusk. "Have you napped since you woke up or something?"

"No. I could, I guess."

"Okay. So, you no longer can dream, instead every time you go to sleep you will be able to dreamshape. Which means that you will be able to add space to your pocket dimension and creates portals connecting it and other dimensions. You will get a sense, similar to proprioperception to what you can do with your dimension."

"-nice."

"Isn't it just? So... let me see... Ah, pocket dimensions sort of exist adjacent to reality, imagine something like a different layer, but connected? There are bits of your overlapping over this house and others overlapping the city Daisy took in and something like a line connecting the two. Now that you can control the expansion, you will be able to expand as you like... Does that make sense?"

"I'd noticed that, yeah; that was pretty bizarre when Daisy started moving me. Being able to control it sounds good." Not being able to control where other people put theirs, less so, but she'll deal with that later; for now she keeps her casual smile.

"Oh? You could tell? Interesting. Huh... I don't know what else to say. Do you have any questions?"

Hm. "Does it have to be continuous? If I was on a different planet, say."

"Not it doesn't. But you'd need to go to the different planet first. You can expand bits of your dimension that are far away."

Nod. "Is there any way to get into or out of them besides the portals?"

"Ah, yes. Not exactly safe, but you can walk to the edge until you vanish and reappear somewhere else. Which can be outside the dimension. Wouldn't have worked on you while you were asleep, but others can use that to leave. It's not safe because you can appear anywhere that can support your weight, including places that leave you trapped or some other sort of danger."

"Okay. But if I'm in my dimension and just close all the portals, nobody else can get in? Except other dreamshapers, I guess."

"Pretty much. Someone could try the edge vanishing trick, but then the other dimension's edge needs to be suitably place and then it might just put them somewhere and then it might put then somewhere dangerous. And given that your dimension throws lightning at invaders, somewhere dangerous might be anywhere they land on there. Also, they're pretty hard to notice. I don't know how it interacts with the Force, but back home they're perfect for hiding."

She nods again. "And what are your plans, for other dreamshapers?"

"There are no plans for other dreamshapers? I might become one eventually. Where 'eventually' means a long, long time. But we need to know how to navigate the Galaxy safely first while using our capabilities and defending the dreamshard. And that doesn't even touch finding other people we can trust with the power or even with the information that the dreamshard exists."

"Good. It might not feel like it, but you got very lucky, landing here; you have the space to figure out how to do that. Not that we shouldn't be on alert for other Sith anyway, but the chance of them finding it at random is negligible at least."

Nod nod. "Yeah, Felix's reading about the Galaxy was... not exactly reassuring about how easy it would be to navigate."

"Mm. Well, it depends on what you want to do, I suppose. There are plenty of different species and cultures, but if you stay more or less in one place you generally won't need to know about more than a handful of them. And if you do move around regularly it's not too infeasible to just do your research first."

"We want to do the most good given our capabilities. That is the only fundamental thing. So we don't mind being slow and stay in the same planet for a long while. We are no hurry, or at least not a hurry where we will want to trade-off speed for carefulness." Shrug.

She nods, thoughtfully. "Hutt territory might be the place to start, then. It's not safe, but there aren't many Sith there, and Hutts are big on slavery - you'd have plenty to do."

He makes a face but nods. "Do you think we could pass dreamshaping as some unusual technology if it ever comes up?"

"Not to a Sith. To someone who wasn't force-sensitive, maybe, depending on how much science they know - if you say it's based on an experimental NQF generator that'd be plausible to anybody but a hyperspace physicist, I think, at least as long as they don't see much of the dimension itself."

Nod nod. "Safer if no one finds out." Sigh. "One of the things Felix's dimension can do is supply energy because in there fire doesn't default to consume fuel and nearly any dimension can produce air and water for terraforming, but I suppose all of those would be noticeable?"

"If someone looked closely, yeah. Though if they're looking that closely you already have a problem, if you hide it as conventional terraforming or power generation and buy at least some supplies."

"One of Felix's ideas was 'discovering' underground water reservoirs."

"Those're a known thing, actually, it just hasn't been worth anybody's while to pump them up in terraforming quantities. Somebody might notice that the water's still there, but you can set it up so it's less likely."

"Yup. Or maybe bribe people into registering a false discovery. Well, one might suppose that people wouldn't ask too many questions if a lake or ocean rose up a bit."

"Well, they might, but so long as they aren't asking them of you it shouldn't be a problem."

Nod nod. "And the beauty of the thing is how secret the entire operation can be made. Felix could go to a city miles away from a lake, set a section of pocket dimension that pours water into a lake or river and no one would even have a way to figure out he is responsible."

"Yeah, exactly."

"Do you have plans to do anything interesting with yours?"

"Not especially, yet. I want to have a better idea of what it can and can't do, first."

Nod nod. "You're likely to at least be able to do more art with it."

"Yes. And I think it'll duplicate the house for me, if I want it to."

"Cool." Trevor thinks. "Just to be sure, any signs of people in there?"

"Not at all, and I'd know if there were. I could even sense Daisy, which is - unusual, to say the least." Handsqueeze.

Aww. "Is there anything else to discuss?"

"I don't think so. I'm sure Daisy's asked if there's anything you need while you're here."

"She did." Trevor smiles at Daisy. "We don't really need anything. We actually would rather offer you things, because of the inconvenience of dealing with clueless aliens."

"Daisy'd have more to say about that than I would - Love?"

"There's nothing we really need - well, help with the garden, but if I want to hire another droid I'll do that in town, definitely don't make one." She considers. "Generator upgrade?"

"I could install that, sure."

Handsqueeze. "And a washing machine, and I'll think about what else I might want."

"Cool. Don't hesitate to ask for anything fancy, Felix is only constrained by volume."

She nods. "We really are pretty comfortably set up, though. Mm - how's your tea supply doing?"

"That could use topping up, yeah."

"Splendid."

"Thank you."

"Anything else you'd like to know? I am not a dreamshaper, but I have the memories of one."

She considers. "If someone does get the shard, what kind of trouble are we looking at? Worst case."

"Huh... I think there are kinds of worst case. One is something similar to what happened to Felix, someone kidnaps people and turns them into dreamshapers without waking them up, except one for accessibility. Another is that someone becomes a dreamshaper with a particularly dangerous or powerful dimension. But the more powerful the magic the longer it takes to make, and possibly less likely to crop up."

Nod. "Both of those seem plausible, for Sith. Or a master empowering their apprentices, that also seems likely. Are there- known patterns, with dangerous dimensions?"

"What sort of patterns do you mean? We don't have a lot of hard data on the thing - dreamshaping is actually a secret in our universe - and the specifics of a dimension would be hard to predict in advance. Like, I expect conquest-prone people to have the ability to make weapons or soldiers, maybe harmful ambient magic, but nothing more specific than that."

"That's the type of thing I meant, yes - most Sith are conquest-prone, in one sense or another; if one of them gets the shard I want at least some kind of plan for how to deal with it, even if it's one that needs to be adjusted for the situation."

"Oh, absolutely."

Trevor thinks.

"What sort of... resources would you want to create to prevent a Sith from owning the shard?"

"Making it physically hard to get to mostly won't work." She pats her saber. "Blocking them from being able to hear it would help, though; I don't have any information on materials that could do that here, but I know they exist, and I can order books or samples if Felix can't make them just based on that. Or just keeping it in a closed dimension might work; we should test that. Keeping it and the general area under surveillance is a good idea, too - that's worth getting some droids for, but I'll want to think about the logistics of it before I go ahead and do that, it's a big commitment. And - being ready to run, basically. I'm strong enough to take most Sith one-on-one but for something like this we absolutely shouldn't count on there only being one Sith."

He nods along. "That all sounds reasonable. Felix got a lot of technological options from coming to this universe, but we don't know if it's literally all technology. And... well, one thing that might be worth noting is that Felix can make people, including droids. But getting droids is better than letting them being constantly wiped."

"Absolutely. It won't be a trivial expense, but I can cover it."

"-ah..."

"Hm?"

"I - if we're -"

"Of course we can buy your friend, Love."

"All right. Thank you."

"Oh, absolutely. Is there anyone else we should buy? Money should be easy to acquire."

"Oh, Daisy'll be doing the buying anyway, I don't go into town, that was just her having someone in mind who isn't an obvious fit for the job."

"Ah. I meant 'should' in the sense of 'the things they're doing to droids is abominable and we can't save them all today, but if there is some we could save today' instead of something more tactical."

Oh dear. "...Dusk..."

"I know, Love."

To Trevor: "...maybe you'd better go. I'll come by and explain later."

"Okay."

He leaves.

She comes by after fifteen minutes or so.