[Dante Alan Skyisle]

“Destiny? Mom and dad were going to name me Destiny? Ha!” Delta laughed as she reviewed the memories of my birth via Bessie.

Over the passing days she was becoming less glitchy, her movements, speech tone and expressions a lot smoother. Her brilliance was shining through now that she wasn't bound by the infection. I felt that she was a more carefree version of myself.

“It’s not a bad name,” I muttered, glancing at one of the screens.

On it, mom was singing that sad-sounding song again to me again in that weird, soft language. I had no idea what the words were. It was fine, I would eventually learn it from her. If I used the [Universal Comprehension] as it was intended by simply levelling it up, I would have never figured out Omnicode.

Sure, I could get Delta to take apart [Universal Comprehension], all the way down to its lowest bits, figure out how to modify it to translate mom's lullaby… but I had bigger fish to fry. It was after all, just a lullaby and not something incredibly important like staying alive while fighting off the local religious fanatics.

“I feel that Destiny is not a very scientific name,” Delta stated. “I’m sticking with Delta! I believe in free will and like to forge my own destiny using my intelligence! Not be bound to some ridiculous rails of some ridiculous religious nonsense, thank you very much.”

She was definitely echoing my Soviet atheism.

“Just because they were going to name you Destiny, doesn’t mean you have to become a zealot,” I said.

“You sound a tad glum,” Delta ignored my comment. “What’s up crumbum? Not getting enough baby sleep?”

“I feel kind of bad,” I replied. “I get to be a human and you don’t.”

“Pshh,” Delta rolled her eyes. “Being a human is boring and lame, especially the parts where you’re a newborn that nobody listens to.”

I sighed.

“See, I like my bees because they have no choice but to listen to me.” Delta grinned, showing off her sharp canines.

“I feel that if you don’t get to interact with people as a homomagicus you’ll eventually drift away from humanity,” I said.

“I’m interacting with you right now, Dante. You’re a human bean.” She laughed, glitching ever so slightly.

"Did you mean to say human being?"

"No, you're a swaddled bean! Look, she's swaddling you harder! Ha!"

I glanced at the screen again. Mom's obsession with swaddling me was quite annoying. She had tightly wrapped me up in a pink cloth to keep me from constantly wiggling my arms and legs. I was trying to exercise my new body, damn it. I wasn’t going to grow up as a scrawny weakling in this life!

I looked back at Delta.

“You’re essentially a younger and more hyper copy of me,” I explained.

“Am not! I think you’re just scared that I’m going to leave you.” She pointed out. She must have downloaded my memories from Bessie to learn this fact.

“Yes, there’s that too,” I rubbed the back of my head. “I think that being alone for nearly eight months did a number on my psyche. Honestly, sometimes I wake up and I worry that I’m just imagining all of our conversations, because I’ve gone insane.”

“You’re perfectly sane and that’s not happening.” Delta crossed her arms. “I’m not leaving your side. Are you worried about the Overseer?"

"I am," I nodded. "What if they have the skills to Equalize my level, rip you away from me?"

"If someone tries to hurt you, I’ll bite their soul in half to protect you or send the bees if that doesn’t work." She declared. "Do not underestimate my bees!"

I smiled.

“You need to be your own person.” I said after a pause. “Your personality is a near-copy of mine, since it’s based on my memories. The only point of divergence is that you got hurt by the phantom.”

"I am my own person!" Delta professed resolutely. "Just because I know almost everything you know, doesn’t make me a female version of you. I observed your entire existence from the sidelines and evaluated it, learned from it. I didn’t actually get to physically live out your entire Soviet-man life. I’m not you.”

I nodded. "But, if you're not me you will definitely depart…"

“Where do you think I would go?” She inquired. “Into the village? I’d get fried by the first anti-spy rune. Into the Astral Ocean? I’d get eaten. Our parents' house and your Mindspace is the safest place for me to reside in. Someday, I might move out, sure… but not until both of us are strong enough, not until we solve the mysteries of the universe and break them and Omniscience over our metaphorical kneecaps.”

“Is that really how you feel?” I asked.

“Yeppers. I feel very violated.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“Not by you, you dolt. By the local god, or whatever the hell it is that masqueraded as Yuri Gagarin for you! I’m sure that Omniscience shoved you into my soul just to mess with me!”

“How can you be sure of that?” I asked. “Maybe it was just… random chance?”

“Cause and effect. Nothing is random when it comes to intelligence,” she said with a growl. “I’m not going to stop searching for answers. I will find out WHY you were entwined with my soul.”

She glanced at me once again. “Don’t give me that look! I honestly don’t regret being your soul-sister. I just want to know WHY… so I can bite their soul if they deserve it.”

“I wish you could get hugs from our parents too, that’s all.” I said. “All this talk of soul-biting isn’t normal human behavior.”

“Hrmmmm,” Delta rubbed her chin. “I’m not really normal and neither are you. Why can’t we be odd together? If you’re that worried about it, you could eventually make me a human body. An adult one. I don’t want to deal with being a newborn. Look, I’ll put it on our to-do list. Is that going to make you happy?”

I nodded.

“Did you actually think that I would leave you? Really?” She asked after a deep pause.

“Yes,” I sighed. “You were missing for seven days. All of my employees and colleagues left me when Aralsk-7 was evacuated. They thought that my plan to stay behind to destroy the lab was insane. If I only had some help and more time to set up a proper bomb timer I might not have died that day...” I answered, thinking back to the day I destroyed the Soviet Bioweapons lab.

"Then I'd never have such a dolt for a brother, so shush." Delta declared resolutely.

I shrugged.

“Seriously! You should never think that!” She flickered back into her spell-form. The fractal tendrils of the Infoscope spread out and merged back together to resemble a human girl in a Soviet pilot’s outfit. Her silver-blue eyes settled on me as she put a hand onto my shoulder. “I’m never leaving your side. Never-ever!”

I curiously looked at her.

"We need each other. I observe everything and you modify it. We are a team. As long as we’re together we’re stronger than anything life will throw at us. We can do anything as long as we are together.”

“Together.” I nodded.

“Together,” she affirmed again with vigor, wrapping her hands around mine in a familial way, spirals of silver sparks twinkling in her eyes like little galaxies.

It lasted only briefly but in that instance I felt understood, cared for by another. She really was my sister, expressing the kind of familiarity and friendship that I failed to attain in my past life.

Delta rapidly flickered to Bessie. Her hands split into a hundred threads, entering something into the supercomputer. A screen lit up in the back, featuring the anatomical structure of a human girl.

“Uhhh?” I looked at the screen.

Delta rapidly typed something else into Bessie. The girl unfolded into a large dinosaur-like monster and back.

“I’ve merged a bunch of high-level girls from the village to make this avatar,” Delta explained. “Eventually your [Modify] will get strong enough to shift anything organic into a human. There’s a lot of monsters in the forest. We’ll take down a strong one and you can [Modify] it into an approximation of a human using this handy chart.”

“Why not make yourself look like our mom?” I asked. “You kinda look like mom now with blue eyes and silver hair.”

“Because then I’d have to explain why I look like mom.” Delta shook her head. “I don’t want to deal with that drama. Do you want to deal with that drama?”

“You’re pretending to be our Great-Aunt under all of your bees now,” I pointed out.

“Fair point, but great-aunt Delta is supposed to be hella old. I don't need to look like mom and I don't want to look old. I think I’ll be whatever color the monster we can take down is. Check this out! Scales get converted into hair, like this.” Delta spun the theoretical monster - human conversion diagram. “The organs of the monster get converted into human organs. See? It’s an approximation of Homo sapiens! Get it? I’m trying to save you mana.”

I nodded.

“Anyways, this is going to be decades in the future.” Delta slid the screen to the back. “Your [Modify] is nowhere near strong enough to forge me a human body. From my calculations, the amount of power required to create a fully grown human body is astronomic. Somewhere around a million mana, even if you bring Modify to a really high level.”

“It would take less mana to make a baby,” I pointed out.

“And who knows what that baby would grow into!” Delta shook her head. “You can’t extrapolate these things! My design is perfect. I want to be a strong human that fits into Skyisle like a missing puzzle piece, not a freaking baby! Who’s going to raise this baby? You? The bees? Our parents wouldn't adopt a random child from the forest! I’ve already decided on the perfect design idea, so drop it! There’s an abandoned lighthouse on the edge of the village, facing the cliff. When you grow up, we can rebuild it into a laboratory and live there together.”

I realized that she was as stubborn as I was, so arguing with her over it was pretty useless.

“Fine,” I said. “I’m dropping it.”

“Good,” Delta huffed.

I didn’t say anything, pondering over our future. A magical laboratory! One where nobody would tell me what to do.

“You won’t even have to do much!” She declared with a sinister giggle. “I’m going to work on this project myself, design the most optimal monster - human [Modify] ever.”

“You seem far too jovial about this prospect. Is there a joke I’m missing here?” I squinted at her.

“An army of monster girls at your command, my general!” Delta announced with a flourish.

“Why do they have to be girls?” I sputtered.

“As a homomagicus I have no interest in relationships… but I want you to be happy. I want you to take the chances you’ve missed. So many chances…” She shook her head. “You’d be a lot happier with a big family, you know. You’ve spent your entire life breeding death and ignoring the people around you.”

“Seriously?” I asked, raising an eyebrow. “Don’t you have better things to do than to shame me for my lack of past relationships? Are you trying to make me a… pride? Do I look like a lion to you?"

“If I don’t plan to set you up with someone early, you’ll be a lonely nerdlet forever, brother.” She laughed. "Don't you want a lovely, perfect, wise maiden-wife like in the stories? You could be like Danilo, Dante! All you have to do is find and sieze the monstrous Chudo-Yudo and use it to summon the beautiful Swan Maiden!"

“Yep, I walked right into that one.” I facepalmed.

Her monster-girl commentary suddenly made sense. She was talking about a Russian fairy-tale! In the children's book my mother read me in USSR when I was six, Danilo the Luckless beat up a bearded ocean-dragon and acquired a magical, swan-shapeshifting wife with numerous magical powers.

“You should see your face right now!” Delta giggled furiously. “I wasn’t serious, you know that, right? I’m just teasing you. There’s no feasible way to make an army of humanoid monsters that also won’t try to murder you. Also, there’s only one of me to pilot one theoretical brain-dead body. Unless… do you think there are human-level intelligent monsters out there?”

“I’m ignoring your ridiculous theorizing,” I said, rolling my eyes. "Let's focus on investigating the wards and weaponizing the house, okay?"

"Okkay, boss." She stuck her tongue out at me.

"Did your scan of the house find anything we can use?"

"I found a big, old pile of copper wire in one of the chests deep in the basement. It was probably used to make jewelry-trees or guitar strings by one of the Alans couple of decades ago."

"That's an excellent start," I nodded. "Is there any... iron?"

"The crawlspace beams beneath the floors are iron!" Delta replied instantly.

"That's perfect," I smiled. "If we can figure out how we can make the ward convert mana into..."