Lepochim felt his face as the bird-plane rocketed through the air towards Italy. The new skin that seamlessly covered his rather bony cheek and forehead ridges unnerved him. Even as he placed his hand over the skin, he could feel his face just the same way he had before, as though the added skin were no different from his own.

He had a complex expression on his face as he looked over at human Bath currently explaining a bit of Italy's history to the foreign Waymaster. Of course, the history had been compiled by Lisa, whom Lepochim was starting to realize was a lot more competent than he'd originally assumed.

She'd discovered the Earth gate and on the same day received bodily modifications and gone through the gate to three separate planets. All in one day. Moreover, she'd been constantly using the chip reader she received on Lime World--technically from Juserin--to broaden her knowledge about the universe at large. At the same time she'd put together a tour itinerary for Bath along with detailed historical/cultural break-downs of each destination.

He had to admit to himself that the opinion he'd had of human school girls was rather...inadequate.

Even now, Lisa was quietly conducting more research on her chip reader. About what, Lepochim had no idea. The information contained in the encyclopedia was vast beyond imagination; Lisa could delve into innumerable rabbit-holes on various different subjects.

Unbeknownst to Lepochim, Lisa was actually looking up the role of religion in the universe. She'd discussed with Bath the almost absurd evolutionary phenomenon that led to around 50% of all sapient species possessing bipedal, humanoid forms. It wasn't logical, in the sense that independent evolutionary chains shouldn't all converge to a similar final form. In one or two cases across the vast universe, sure.

But, if the encyclopedia on the chip reader was to be trusted (and Lisa was fairly certain that it was), 50% of known sapient species all looking relatively the same...was simply too improbable. And now that Bath had gotten his hands--tendrils?--on several verdora, who had some vaguely humanlike characteristics, he was already starting to make some conjectures.

Of course, if Bath had Lepochim to study, this research might be going faster; however, Lisa recognized that Lepochim was already incorporated into one of Bath's plans and was, at the moment, off-limits.

With regards to religion, Lisa hadn't been having a very fruitful search. The encyclopedia generally held that only underdeveloped worlds tended to believe in religions, on the basis that most religions were planet-specific and planet-centric. Once a world was opened to the vast beyond via gate, its inhabitants quickly realized that their religion was too localized and short-sighted.

In the end, according to the encyclopedia entry, every planet in the Core and most even at the fringes of civilized space had all forsaken religion. It had been this way for countless millions of years.

'But how do they explain these inconsistencies?' Lisa thought to herself, her hand over her mouth. 'It's impossible to say that the development of sapient species is organic. How else could a species like Lepochim's, from the Core, look so similar to humans?'

Besides, Lisa wasn't so convinced that all these worlds had forsaken religion. Maybe their old religions, with their planet centricity, but that didn't explain why sapients couldn't adapt and create new religions. Through all she'd read so far, Lisa was fairly certain that aside from physical similarities, sapients generally had the same kinds of thought-structures, emotions, and desires. Aside from the fact that this furthered her point that something was influencing the development of sapients, this also led Lisa to believe that, like humans, most sapients wanted something to believe in.

If that was the case, Lisa felt like they all must believe in something. Perhaps it wasn't classified under religion...

Lisa looked over at Lepochim, then turned back to the encyclopedia. 'Perhaps I can ask him later.' Lisa fixed her gaze to the interior of bird-plane Bath, wishing he'd installed some kind of shower. Heaven knows she would've just loved for Juserin to provide a shower on his voyager, but alas such an amenity was omitted for the fairly 'short' voyage to Earth.

'At least aliens probably don't know proper standards for human hygiene,' Lisa chortled to herself. 'Here we are, on Earth's first intergalactic diplomatic mission, and I'm dressed in a silk robe I've been wearing for the past several days and my hair's an oily nightmare.'

She touched a little node Bath had just recently placed under her right ear, then began to speak: "Hey Bath, mind changing my clothes and somehow de-greasing my hair?"

Bath continued to explain away Italy to Juserin, not showing any indication of having heard Lisa's request. However, within a few seconds, Lisa felt her skin involuntarily raise as Bath's essence flowed over her from the ground up. Soon, the dirty silk robe was replaced with typical warm-weather attire: a short-sleeved t-shirt and a pair of Bermuda shorts. Moreover, everywhere that Bath's essence swept over was quickly rendered clean and fresh.

By the end of the fifteen second clean-up period, Lisa felt like a new person.

'That's literally so OP,' she muttered to herself as she returned to the dictionary.

Bath eventually let them down in a small, unpopulated field close to the city. And by close, a forty-five-second car ride. But Bath, ever a gracious host, shrank down to the size of a large car.

Lisa had to admit, Bath put on a pretty convincing show. She didn't know he had the capabilities to look like a car, of all things. Of course, the car looked very bizarre and almost looked like an armored beetle, and in reality Bath used many stubby bug legs to move the car...but because of a black drape surrounding the bottom of the already conspicuous car, the wheels of the vehicle--and the millipede-like bug legs--were impossible to see.

While it was altogether extremely weird, car Bath was able to navigate all the way into Rome without incident.

Best yet, they didn't have to pay for parking.

---

Bath flew, drove into, and then gave Juserin fairly brief tours of each of the destinations Lisa placed on the itinerary.

While they were about halfway down the list, Tokyo, Japan, Bath looked down at the time on his watch. "It's 6:40..." He glanced around at the surroundings, then told the rest of the travelers to walk with him into the next alleyway. He quickly became a car, then drove them out of the city. He found concealing shelter in a forest off the side of the road, then became his bird form and shot up into the clouds at an astonishing speed.

As they ascended, Lisa could be heard chanting slowly, "It's a bird, it's a plane, it's Bath..." as she struggled to stay conscious.

Technically, were everyone aboard Bath humans, they would have all died. Lisa was only able to handle such a fast acceleration because Bath had already modified her body and had the ability to apply constant, situational modifications whenever the need was felt.

Verdora and whatever Lepochim was were tougher than humans in this regard and had no problems with the fast rate of acceleration. This thankfully made Bath's job of being "covert" much easier.

They arrived at Ritus around 8:30 pm, much later than they'd originally said. Nevertheless, Bath expected obedience as he led the party into the Ritus headquarters.

"Has the dinner been prepared?" he boomed into the enormous, cavern-like estate.

Jessup came running up from a flight of stairs leading to the underground. "Bath," he panted, "you've arrived. We were expecting you at 7 so now the food's a bit cold. Allow us a few minutes to prepare."

Bath let a rather distasteful expression come over his face, then sighed. "Do as you must." Bath didn't want to seem too relaxed, nor did he want to seem too difficult to serve. "We'll be resting in the living room." With that, Bath led the others into the nice, glass-windowed area of the main living room that was facing the lake.

That was when Lisa broached her question to both Lepochim and Juserin.

"Do sapients believe in a higher power?"

Juserin raised a rather nonexistent eyebrow. "High power?"

"For instance, look at Bath and I; then look at Lepochim. We're both different species, yet we look almost identical."

Juserin cocked his head. "So?"

Lepochim just sighed. "So, she's implying that something must have planned the convergence of sapient evolution onto a fairly humanoid form," Lepochim explained disinterestedly. "Unfortunately for you, Lisa, endless research had already been poured into that very question."

"And?" Now Bath was the one to ask a question.

"And, they haven't found any evidence suggesting outside involvement. The only thing common to all sapient life is kursi-compatibility. However, even non-sapients all have kursi within them, they just aren't able to bind with them in a true relationship. That's why everything has a shell, full kursi or not. Remember that every human has a kursi symbiote within them that's effectively dormant."

"Well, what if the kursi symbiote is what's influencing evolution?"

Lepochim gave a disdainful smile. "If that were the case, don't you think that'd be public knowledge by now?"

Lisa frowned. She didn't know what kind of scientific community existed within the universe at large, but part of her was fairly suspicious towards what it had to say towards kursi and evolution. After all, the universe's scientific bodies hadn't produced much in the way of technology over the past million years.

Lisa had checked.

Suddenly, a voice could be heard from the archway leading to the hall: "Dinner is served."