I stirred from my sleep from the pull of someone calling on Kyth and I's token and I pulled up some minor systems to see what time it was. We'd barely been asleep for two hours... I noticed Kyth was missing from our bed and I sensed on my scanners that he was standing next to the bed, geared up. He leaned down and planted a kiss (although given the cephalapodic nature of his current body it was more of an affectionate nudge) on my head and I heard him speak in an exhausted tone.

“G’back to sleep J. I got this one…”

I smiled at this and curled back up in the covers as Kyth faded out, and allowed for my systems to re-enter sleep mode...

I woke up a few hours later, feeling fully refreshed. I stood up and brought up all of my systems back online and after a quick look around the room I found that Kyth had returned at some point while I was asleep, and was now unconscious on the floor, slumped over. I chuckled and hefted him onto my back, moving him onto the bed and pulling a blanket over him. I decided that since he had dealt with the summon that I’d let him rest for the day. I blinked as I heard the Hyperion Beacon doing something downstairs. I walked down to the closet where I had it set up and looked to see a storage container from the Borderlands games paced in front of it. I blinked and opened it, finding it full of armored clothing for me. I opened the small holo-note that was with it.

THIS IS A FREE SAMPLE OF THE LATEST IN HYPERION ARMORED BATTLEWEAR, MADE FROM OUR RECORDS OF UNIT ‘JEN’S SIZINGS! ORDERING INFORMATION IS INCLUDED IN CASE YOU DESIRE TO ORDER MORE OF THIS LINE FOR YOU AND SUBJECT ‘KYTH’ TO USE. CONTAINED IN SAMPLE PACK IS FIVE BASE OUTFITS TO TRY.

I blinked and pulled out one of the sets to try on, quickly changing and looking over myself in the mirror. Hmm. They were a deal more revealing than I would’ve liked, the tops being tank tops  with no midriff and the bottoms being skirts that barely went halfway down my thighs, and both were made of a woven mesh of various materials in the same shade of blue as my pigtails and hair, and all of them were made to shift between armor and clothing as my body shifted between battle and biological modes. Whether revealing or not I could tell they offered a decent amount of extra armor for me, not to mention that they would offer me a full range of movement and wouldn’t interfere with any of my transformations sans the ones that’d require for me to reconstruct my entire form (most of which had no practical use anyway). And I had to admit I looked pretty okay in them. I jumped back in surprise when a note from F.A.U.S.T. lit up from the container.

I bet Kyth will spring a leak from seeing his marefriend in a revealing light!

I sputtered and blushed as I turned off the hologram notes. I swear, at this rate between Doxuna and F.A.U.S.T. I was gonna become as pervy as they were…

Then again… Maybe that wasn’t entirely a bad thing. Even back on Earth I bounced between being a self-conscious clutz and a sort-of-okay-with-myself nerd, so maybe… Maybe if I could look at my robotic body sort’ve like they did with their forms, I could look at my human body the same way when we got back home...if I was turned back into a human when we arrived, that is.

I grabbed the container and slid it into a corner, deciding I would put it away later so I didn’t have to disturb Kyth. I moved to grab myself breakfast, only to stop upon seeing my bucklers sitting on the table, marred with burn-marks from the battle with the Vault Hunters. I lost my appetite, staring at it and freezing in place as memories of the prior day echoed through my mind.

We had… We had nearly died.

That had happened. The image of Kyth laying broken over in F.A.U.S.T.’s world flashed in my eyes, himself and the drones operating on him drenched in unnatural, burning black blood while they attempted to patch together his wounds, on a body with unknown, unscannable biology from such a state…

We had nearly died.

Black lightning curling from Valravn’s claws as a silly and half-developed idea of my own conception did its very best to end my life, sending total agony through me as it did so with a blend of apathy and malice…

We had nearly died.

I stumbled to the sink and heaved up the contents of my stomach, thankful to have not eaten anything the day previous. I stood there for a few minutes, trying to come to terms.

I had nearly died.

I thought I heard something, but everything around me was droned out by the pounding of my own artificial heart pumping the eridium-oil-metal cocktail I had for blood echoing in my skull. I felt a hoof on my shoulder and I was jostled back into reality, looking up to see Sombra standing on the counter beside the sink and where I stood, his foal-body’s height requiring this for him to be anywhere near eye-level with me. He gave me a confused look, clearly having just woken up to find me like this. I seized him in a hug, clinging to him and not saying a word as he patted my back and I slowly calmed down.

He didn’t say a word as I moved into the living room, sitting down and still holding him. I heard him speak, though his tone didn’t convey any real irritation, but the barest hint of concern was audible.

“Erm… Wouldst thou mind telling me what hast thou in such a state, metal maiden...?”

I shook my head and he seemed to understand my momentary inability to speak.

“Very well, I can wait.”

A few minutes of silence passed by before I spoke.

“It’s not a game anymore…”

“Hrm? What wouldst thou mean by that?”

“Sombra… You saw the barest bits of the truth behind Kyth and I, over in Jack and F.A.U.S.T.’s world. The truth is, we’re nothing like we seem. We’re not heroes or champions of justice or anything like that. We’re just… Kids. A couple of kids in costume. The only reason I’ve been able to fight any of the things here in Equestria or in parallels of it, or even you before you got reformed through Dox’s blood… It was like a game. We could go out and play pretend, throw a few punches and play the heroes in a grand adventure but… It really isn’t a game. It’s finally started to sink in how real all of this is. We nearly died Sombra, th-that’s not the sort of thing that you can joke around with. All those battles, we could have been killed, and I never even considered that! Not even in Dox’s world when that dragon stomped me, it never felt real.  It all felt like some big game we were playing, just Kyth and I in some cartoon world. And now that the Vault Hunters made it plain to see how terribly real all of this is, I’m…”

I hitched a breath. “I’m terrified. I just wanna find Jack and Calvin a-and go home, and I don’t know if we even can at this point…”

Sombra didn’t say a word, seeming to be lost in thought. After a few moments he spoke up, hopping out of my arms and striking a defiant pose.

“Thou art a dingus!”

I tilted my head, not understanding his words.

“Uh… What do y-”

“A dingus I say! Despite it being a game in some appearances to you, I would easily wager that a great deal of your actions were far FAR more than a child playing at heroics! I have seen you both place thineselves at risk not for showboating but out of genuine concern. Whether some of those cases were borrowed confidence or not I cannot say but there is most definitely the makings of genuine heroes within you both, that much I can see even if you cannot! Yes, you had a brush with the reaper but that does not mean that he has painted you over with a new palette! Let this be a moment you learn from, to find strength in rather than weakness! Continue, find your home if you would wish as well as your lost ones, but do not let such occurrences bind your path in place. In other words...”

Sombra moved forward and booped my non-existent nose.

“It is rather silly to let such things halt you, when you have so much to move you forward. Understand, Jen?”

I cracked a smile, and nodded, grabbing him in a final, more gently hug.

“Yeah. Thanks, Sombra.”

“Do not mention it.”

I snickered and halted.

“Hey… You called me Jen there!”

“No, I did no such thing!”

“Yeah you did~”

“NONSENSE! DINGUS, RELEASE ME!”

I finally burst out laughing as he squirmed to escape my arms, feeling a good bit better about my troubles and pushing them to the back of my mind for the moment. I flopped onto my back, a small smile crossing my face as I came to stare at the glow in in the other room coming from the Hyperion Beacon, my one continuous link across the multiverse… Wait. Would it be possible…?

I hopped to me feet and moved quickly toward the beacon, Sombra calling out to me on my sudden action.

“Where art thou going?”

I shushed him as I brought up all the data I had on the beacon and its specifications with the Hyperion system, and then brought up some of my own data on XJ9’s deep-space transmission technology… If I were to put this there and that over there then… Holy hell.

If Kyth and I were going to find Calvin and Jack in such a massive multiverse, then we couldn’t simply wait for the right tokens to arrive to the right people. We would need to get out there and find them ourselves. If I could determine the right combinations of Hyperion and XJ9 components to use, then what was to stop me from imitation Jack’s Beacon token?

A semi-robotic probe with an AI to operate it,  with the intent to search for any information regarding the whereabouts of Kyth and I’s families and then transmit back. If I could get a working design together, then I could even make them into a separate token for myself in the same way as Jack’s beacons. Then it could transmit back to me in the way the beacons do with Hyperion’s mainrframe or even have the probe’s AI initiate its own summoning of me if it found anything major. If I could get a token-probe like that online, then it would give me viewpoints into any number of worlds, Kyth and I’d be able to find everyone exponentially faster!

Of course, if I could figure out the right design then what was to stop me from producing more than one, to create even more possible openings to different points in the multiverse with different Displaced? It would take some time to put together the designs, and even more to collect the components for me to construct them with my own transformations and the forge Doxuna left me, but it was certainly possible! I turned to Sombra, a grin across my face.

“Sombra, I just thought of a way to super-speed my finding the ones I’m looking for!”

“Well that is excellent!”

“And Sombra… Thanks. Really.”

“Meh. Do not mention it. And if you were really grateful you would make me breakfast…”

I giggled. “Eggs and gems sound alright?”

He gave me a shocked look, clearly not expecting me to go along with his ploy but taking it in stride, not dropping his faux-prideful expression.

“I suppose they’ll just have to do…”

I found myself having an appetite again.

When I turned I saw reflected in the beacon him flaring a grin and hoof-pumping in the air. While putting breakfast together, I had another idea come to me. If I was already going to be gather materials in advance until I had the right designs compiled, then maybe I should work on some other projects in the meantime. Kyth was a close-combat fighter, and he had nowhere near the protection that my body had. Maybe I could fix that. I had a brand new forge and the equipment to use it, not to mention the ability to get all the right materials together… What was to stop me from trying to put together some sort of armor for him? Something better than the tunic/pants he already had, at the very least. While I pondered how to go about that, I noticed Sombra eyeing my bucklers on the table.

“Something wrong Sombra?”

“...Orichalcum. That’s what you said those were made of, correct?”

“Uh… Yeah, why?”

“...I remember something new. From my first life, from before the rebirth you and your mate gave me.”

I didn’t say anything as flickers of purple and green danced at the edges of his eyes, and were it not for the emerald coloration of his irises then I would swear he looked just as he had when I first saw him.

“A place where said metal was said to be found, or rather bestowed… Far to the north, some distance from the Empire...”

I decided to cautiously probe at this bit of information. I did need more orichalcum, both to sell back to Jack for supplies plus for forging more armor and weapon components, and this had the potential to give me just what I needed.

“Really? Well, do you know what it was called?”

His eyes lost focus, the flickerings still hanging at the edges of his eyes as he seemed to behold an unknown vision.

“Yes… The Elders’ Cairn. A place of ritual, to test those who sought to rule the Crystal Empire in mind and spirit alike. A place which ref… refused m-me, and so I…”

He shuddered, as if he were physically struggling to speak. His eyes flashed back into focus, locked on me with no further signs of the magical aura they previously held.

“Jen, I would require your assistance! I believe I may have done something regretful in my past life, and I would like to know for certain the result!”

“S-sure thing, but what exactly do you need?”

“We must depart for the Cairn post-haste! Take a brief time to collect yourself and then we fly!”

“W-wait, as much as I’m up for this, we can’t just up and leave on the spot! Kyth and I gotta check in with the Mayor later to tell her about what happened, and we still have to double-check that everything in town is okay after yesterday.”

He deflated slightly, and I spoke up with a possible idea to cheer him up.

“Of course, this will give you extra time to prepare for whatever it is you need to look into up north. Maybe you can do some research at the library to see if Equestria has any information relating to it since your...erm...absence.”

He looked at me for a moment before putting a hoof to his chin in thought.

“Hmm… Yes, I see your point. Very well! I shall prepare myself and you will see to your affairs until you are able to assist in mine mission, and then we depart with the squidface for the north!”

I nodded and watched him gallop out of the house, extending out an arm to grab all of the dishes and then dispose of them. Now that he was gone I could get straight into planning for my next moves.

“I’m gonna get us home Kyth…”

I brought up a mental display of the for viewing blueprints and similar data from within my headspace.

“One way or another, we’re gonna see them again…”