We last left our adventurers amidst a mighty battle. The crew of the Invictus, minus our pilot Ash, were stuck on the planetoid battling the native creatures. N.I.K.K. had heroically thrown himself off the tower onto the very creature Chanty was trying to communicate with. Needless to say, things were not progressing in a manner helpful to anyone. So Zen lights the creatures and N.I.K.K. on fire.
Meanwhile, Ash is at peak teenage angst on the Invictus and is done with Vicky, Simulated Mom, and Bio-Mom. She just wants to get back to her peps and away from the mama-drama.
N.I.K.K, on fire, prone, and in severe danger of being destroyed by the creatures, pulls the pins off of all his grenades to cause a large explosion. Tybar comes out to see what is going on. Zen goes invisible and moves away from the arrow slits. Joy, Benny, and Lilith Zeizerer arrive on the scene just in time for Benny to be attacked and knocked to the ground. N.I.K.K., having recently been healed by Chanty, cinematically stabilizes Benny. Lilith gives her daughter nanites to heal her, she has Zen swallow powder that feels like ants in her mouth. The crew rallies and ends up having to just obliterate the creatures because communicating with them was failing and it was a choice between us or them.
Ash finally arrives back on the planet and is shocked to see everything that is taking place. She has her android mom guard bio mom. However, when Tybar sees that Ash is there, he quickly goes and grabs bio mom and hands her over to the one remaining creature and we shut off the forcefield for it to go back to its family. In the distance, we hear a scream.
Ash has a moment. She wanted to be reunited with her parents, but she is conflicted because bio mom was so evil. Yet, simulation mom was what she was expecting to find, but the trauma she just went through with being chloroformed and bound and gagged by her bio mom had her not wanting anything to do with any version of a mom. Ash was then reunited with her simulation dad and was told her bio dad had been lobotomized by her mom. We decided to put simulation dad into Vicky's android body, Ash asked that simulation mom be destroyed, but Tybar had a feeling we would eventually need her and instead hid her on a disk in his quarters.
The crew is trying to get back to "normal" while still being stuck in the void of the Maelstrom, when we all hear a commotion coming from the medical bay. Calisto is screaming at someone to keep away. We all rush to see what in the world is going on, only to see Calisto firing at a figure all dressed in black. The bullets seem to go through the figure or just freeze around her. The figure walks forward, her heeled boots clicking in the silence. Calisto tried to bargain with this individual, but her words ignited a passion in the black-dressed figure. The figure tells of lost friends and loved ones. Of being an eternal being with an infinite life yet a finite memory. No one can hurt her because of her own suffering her life brings. And we see a small girl crying and lamenting of the life that must have been taken from her. This child proceeded to explain it is her job to carry on with her father's work to escort souls to the next chapter, or they would sit her in our world and rot and turn into vile things. When it was all over, Vicky asked what just happened. Joy had to explain to her the concept of Death and its personification and how Calisot's sister was no longer with us. Calisto went off to mourn in peace.
We try to finally leave this cursed place. The Invictus is all powered up and Ash has entered a course set for home. Immediately VIcky's warnings go off. Her systems are not working and we are falling back to the planetoid on a crash course when another ship pulls up beside us and tethers us to them. It looks to be a thematic pleasure cruise ship, one that is quite old and set to look like a pirate ship of old. Not something any of us were expecting to find in the Void. The best explanation is that it was once pulled into the Maelstrom at one point and has been lost out here ever since. The crew of this pirate vessel board us and hail Captain N.I.K.K., they have been following the holy blog and have come not only to save him, but invite him to be their Captain! N.I.K.K. welcomes his people with open arms and serves them all rum from his boot.
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