“Vam...pire…” Well, Breve isn’t too surprised anymore. If dragons are real, vampire aren’t too much of a stretch. His name, however… “Dechambul…”

Breve repeats that name, before recognition flares up in her mind— and not the good kind. “Wait, Tiffney said you spied on me!”

He meets Breve’s gaze with large, red eyes, and cracks a rather awkward smile at her accusation. “Ah, yes… bad first impression, I’m assuming?” He pulls himself out of the chair, and holy shit nevermind anything Breve ever thought about him being a normal human being.

Because the moment he stands up, he’s immediately standing nearly seven feet tall, absolutely towering over the both of them. That’s not the most alarming thing, though: through a slip in his long, black cloak, Breve can see that his entire body from the chest-down is covered in bloodied bandages, and they’re oozing with the most uncomfortable drops of black goop. His naked chest (why is his naked chest just out there?!) seems totally fine, if only just to make things more confusing.

“You left a stain,” Peach unceremoniously points out, and Breve’s eyes dart over to see a layer of black ooze on the chair he was just sitting on.

Dechambul looks back, groans, and grabs a cloth to wipe it down. “Sorry, sorry, I was sitting down too long! Man, why do we always get a newbie when I’m literally melting my skin off?”

Melting skin. Great! Wonderful! That’s not weird at all!

Breve stumbles over to the couch, before slowly sinking down onto the plush pillows. There’s a weariness in her bones, the type that tends to overcome someone when their home planet has just been obliterated. “Okay,” Breve squeaks, and she closes her eyes. “Melting skin. That’s fine.”

Both Peach and Dechambul tentatively step closer, though they decide to give Breve some distance for a moment. “Hey, let me make you a drink,” Dechambul offers, putting on a cheery tone. “Spying isn’t the only skill I’m known for! Anything you like? I’ll make it… if I know what it is, of course.”

“I… like coffee,” Breve says simply, unsure if it even exists on this spaceship. Dechambul, however, claps his hands together gleefully, clearly recognizing what it is.

“Luckily for you, coffee is a universal constant! Any preferences?”

Because something that will kill me instantly will probably be taken as a serious request, Breve decides to go for something that doesn’t betray her withering mental state. “Some milk, but not too much,” she says instead, and Dechambul happily goes about fulfilling her request as she lets her body go limp on the soft cushions.

Peach silently takes a seat next to her, and both don’t say anything for a while. “I truly apologize for Tiffney’s behaviour,” she finally decides to say. “Her… introduction has made this much harder for you than it already is for most, I am sure. Though most would agree that many are recruited to the CBT under extreme duress, you were… exposed to more than usual.”

Breve cracks an eye open, and upon seeing Peach’s sympathetic gaze, her mood does lift, if only a little. Though Breve has only known Peach for a short while, she seems to have her best interests at heart, and, well, it’s not like Breve has anyone else to turn to now, does she? “Thanks,” Breve mutters in return. “Sorry, I just… I don’t understand anything, and it’s all…”

She trails off, and Peach gives her an understanding nod. “Dechambul and I will answer all your questions to the best of our ability,” she promises, and Dechambul mumbles something in agreement as the scent of roasted coffee beans fill the room with a sense of familiarity. It almost smells like her family’s bakery business.

Which is. Currently destroyed. Drifting along the cosmic stardust along with the rest of her planet.

Breve sinks further into the couch.

“Here we go.” Dechambul presses a switch, and a tile from the floor pops in front of Breve, acting as a convenient table for him to put down a cup of coffee. Breve lifts her head off the couch, just barely, and in the whirring cogs of her mind, she faintly admires how latte art is somehow also a universal concept.

She takes a sip. It’s nothing special, just a good old latte. Basically, it’s exactly what she needs right now. “So then,” Dechambul begins, and Breve realizes that he’s wrapping a second layer of bandages on top of his already-soaked ones. “If you’ve got any questions, ask away!”

“Okay.” Breve takes a deep, long breath. “Why did you even destroy my planet?”

“Good question,” Dechambul chirps, and his cheery demeanor only makes Breve feel a little worse. “To explain that, I should probably give you a short history lesson.”

“History lesson…?” Breve looks up. “Of… the CBT?”

“Well, yes, but also the galaxy,” Dechambul answers nonchalantly. “Ah, with Peach’s permission, of course! She’s the historian here, and if I get anything wrong, she’ll have my head!”

Peach raises an eyebrow before shaking her head. “I… am not nearly as stern as you make me out to be.”

“Oh, no, you’re a million times more stern than I could ever articulate. You’re terrifying,” Dechambul laughs. “But anyway, let me start explaining.”

He walks over to the countertop, and amongst the finely-dusted cocoa he had topped Breve’s drink off with, he retrieves his gauntlet and wears it on his bony left arm. “First things first, this is the CBT sleeve. It lets you interact with all CBT-issued technology, such as…” He waves his hand, and suddenly, the wall in front of them turns from white tiles into a burst of color. Breve blinks, somehow still surprised by what’s happening in front of her, and realizes that the wall is now showing a beautiful image of the night sky. “Switching on the projector.”

Amongst the glittering cosmos, white lines are suddenly drawn between each star, connecting them together in a sort of spider web. “Long ago, there lived no vampires, elves, or even catfolk. Humans were alone in this vast galaxy, and one day, they began to travel across the stars. Not only did they find no other life, but they realized that the majority of other planets were uninhabitable.”

The lights of many stars suddenly began to dim. “Ones they could live on were few and far between, and though their mastery over space had made once-unimaginable distances nothing more than a mere inconvenience, as their race expanded, demand increased. They were a rather destructive race, you see… some would argue even more so than they are now! Humans razed through previous planets at an alarming pace, exhausting their resources, and the problem of one day running out became more real.”

Dechambul snaps his fingers, and a majority of the stars disappear entirely, leaving only a handful remaining. “And so, in their infinite ingenuity, they thought: if there aren’t enough habitable planets, why not make them?”

“...Make them?” Breve’s eyes widen. She was beginning to grasp that she was contending with powers beyond her imagination, but creating whole planets?

The image of the night sky disappears, instead cutting to the image of a circle. “So was the beginning of humanity’s greatest invention. Its true name is lost to the annals of time, scattered into the shimmering stars of the space around us, but the CBT calls it the Lifebringer Sphere.”

The circle fills out with light grey, now transformed into a revolving orb with a shiny, metallic sheen. “This sphere, no bigger than a head and unassuming at first glance, holds the secret to planetary creation. Whatever mankind desired on a new planet, this sphere would bring to life. A world full of mountains and magic? Of course! No, make the trees pink and the fish have legs? Sure! Or perhaps, for the more creative consumer, an entire world according to their design, filled with wondrous beasts and terrifying dragons? Absolutely!”

“Ahem,” Peach coughs, interrupting the lecture. “The successful progeny of non-human species was a later advancement within the Era of Creation. Most early prototypes were simply replicas of Earth, the original human planet.”

“You get the idea,” Dechambul waves off. “And so, humanity prospered... at least, that was how the story went those millions of lifetimes ago.”

The screen goes dark. “What happened after that prosperity is mostly unknown. But what IS known underlies our problem today: the secrets behind creating the Lifebringer Sphere are long-forgotten.”

Breve sits up. “What… how? Forgotten? Something that powerful?”

Peach cuts in. “There are many theories surrounding the First Death of Humanity, but most agree that it was likely a plague of sorts, one that wiped out planet after planet. All who wished to survive cut off all travel to other stars… and coupled with humanity’s penchant for conflict, it is the most likely scenario that civil communication simply… ceased to exist.”

Dechambul nods, before continuing. “The countless planets which were once all part of an intergalactic network slowly lost contact with one another, with some civilizations being so cut off that they ceased to remember the days when they once ruled the stars, or that there were other planets at all. The legend of a magical orb that could create an entire world, however, lived on... and a treasure of such immense power will always have adventurers who covet it.”

The screen is flooded with color once again, but now it shows the image of a child surrounded in trees, staring up at the sky. “A very, very long time has passed since the First Death of Humanity. Life on different planets now looks... well, alien to one another. But one aspect of mankind has lived on in the countless new species that have evolved from it: the desire to conquer the stars. And so, in several different worlds, they began to reach for the heavens... and when they flew above it, much like those before them, they decided they wanted more.”

Peaceful greenery suddenly cuts to bursts of red and white, illustrations full of fire and violence. Even if a battlefield amongst space is still a foreign concept to Breve, she understands enough to realize it’s a war. “It was not long till interplanetary invasion became commonplace. Overtaking another planet became routine for the few that advanced to the point where they ruined their own. But, in a much more populated galaxy, eventually, these intergalactic bullies ran into each other. The conflicts that raged across the cosmos threatened to, once again, wipe out life and destroy the histories of everyone who ever lived— until they found a solution.”

The screen cuts to a video of various different species surrounding the same metallic orb Breve had seen earlier. “The race which found it first is disputed. The Elucidites will claim they were the pioneers, while the Procyon will scoff and declare that they invented the technology which made it possible. Nevertheless, what matters is that the four strongest intergalactic conquerors decided to put their differences aside, instead turning to see if the age-old myths of the Lifebringer Sphere were true. To test this, they fired their weapons onto their ruined home planets. And when they found that orb lying within, they realized that it was not only real, but it also still worked.”

Finally, a strange logo appears, one which Breve remembers spotting now and then along the corridors. “These four powerhouses went on to call themselves the Progenitor Races. The Cosmic Bulldozing Team was formed soon after, with one goal: destroy planets that couldn’t fight back, and snatch their spheres for their conquerors.”

“So… that’s why?” Breve looks down at her hands. “My planet was destroyed because they wanted to make a new one?”

“Yours, and ours too!” Dechambul cheerfully confirms Breve’s statement, and before she has any time to dwell on the terrible greed that is within their nature (so on so forth), Dechambul promptly continues on with his lecture. “However, humanity was, in the end, ingenious enough to anticipate its own violence; and so, some planets have... greater security systems than others.”

An array of different planets appear on screen. “While some can be blown apart with nothing more than a single battleship’s laser before the sphere is retrieved from the rubble, others have an atmosphere that will deflect even the most high-tech weapons available. There are a few with eldritch monstrosities which patrol its outer rim, requiring careful maneuvering, lest you want to have your battleship snapped in half by a space-cthulhu larger than the dark side of the moon.”

Breve looks up. “Space… what?”

Peach clears her throat, interjecting once again. “A cephalopod-type leviathan. The correct term for what Dechambul is referring to is the planet’s Orbital Guard Program.”

“Peach, with all due respect, that probably makes even less sense to her than ‘space-cthulhu’,” Dechambul quips, before moving on with the history lesson. “Besides those, there are some planets which are trained to recognize non-native invaders. One such example are the statues—”

“Do not tell her about the statues,” Peach immediately commands, and with a flick of her wrist, the screen shuts off. Breve looks at Peach, then at Dechambul, and only grows more concerned with whatever Peach is afraid to tell her. “Besides, they will not be relevant until our first successful mission together.”

“Alright,” Dechambul shrugs. “Well, Breve… this is where you come in. It’s unfortunate your planet was a Class F: an easy job, with just a press of a button to bulldoze to bits!”

“I… see,” Breve mutters. “So that was what happened, then? When the ground began to make that horrible sound…”

Dechambul spends a moment in silence, almost as if contemplating if he should let Breve have the space to relive what is probably going to be her worst memory (for now). Instead, however, he opts to happily bumble on. “Yes, exactly! Our squad was assigned to investigate your planet, found it extremely vulnerable, and called for the Nostradamus with its planet-destroying weapons to fly in to finish the job.”

As Breve slumps back into the chair, he continues. “Most of the time, however, planetary destruction is dangerous work, and people are constantly dropping dead... the good thing about invading other planets, though, is you’ve always got a whole world of refugees to recruit from! Haha, get it?”

“Terrible,” Peach mutters in response. “That tasteless joke must be the worst thing you have picked up from Tiffney.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t know about that,” Dechambul laughs, though his chuckle is tinged with a slight edge of nervousness. “...In any case, Breve, you’ve been dragged onboard to replace a very-dead cleric, who has left a very-urgent vacancy! And now, you’re part of our illustrious crew.”

“Wait, your last cleric died?” Breve looks up, and she knows she probably won’t like the answer to this question, but fuck it, she has nothing left to lose. “How, exactly…?”

Peach shifts rather uncomfortably in her seat. “Breve… first, you must understand that—”

“Tiffney fed him to a space-cthulhu,” Dechambul explains frankly, and Peach buries her face in her hands with the loudest sigh of sheer exasperation. “To be fair, none of us liked him, so it was a welcome change.”

Before Breve can even stammer out a shocked response, Peach pulls a hand off her face to slam a fist onto the table. She spills Breve’s half-finished coffee and punches a rather sizable dent onto the tabletop. “No matter how we felt about him, his death was absolutely unnecessary. We could have easily out-maneuvered that Orbital Guard Program without tossing him out of the airlock as a distraction—”

“Absolutely unnecessary, but I’m pretty sure you smiled when it happened anyway—”

“He was the last of his kind—”

“And thank the stars for that,” Dechambul finishes off, and Breve decides she doesn’t want to hear anymore of this.

“O-okay,” Breve awkwardly interrupts, trying to remove the image of being gobbled by a giant space squid from her mind. “My next question… if we’re not blowing the planet up with a... ‘laser’, then how do we… destroy it?”

Dechambul claps his hands. “Good question! Once we’re shuttled onto our next planetary victim, our job will be to find the planet’s Dismantling Procedures.”

“Dismantling Procedures?” The phrase seems pretty self-explanatory, but the mere idea that a whole world can be ‘dismantled’ is still baffling. “Like… for the entire planet?”

“Exactly,” Dechambul confirms. “You see, every human invention has some sort of backdoor, and for the Lifebringer Sphere, those procedures are the backdoor we’re looking for. It is a set of instructions that, when performed, will cause the sphere to destroy the planet itself, till nothing is left but the sphere, leaving it nice and ready to create a whole new world! Sounds simple, right?”

“Right,” Breve mutters, knowing full well that the destruction of the planet around the sphere also consigns all life upon it into the void. “What are these Dismantling Procedures like?”

“That varies. Sometimes, they’re recorded in ancient forbidden rituals... or sometimes they’re lost to time entirely, leaving you to rummage through a million years of rubble to find out!” Dechambul lets out a full-bodied laugh, and Breve swears she can hear the cracking of bones from under his oozing bandages. “Don’t worry, it’s in there somewhere. In fact, my home planet had it saved in an underground temple which was actually a laboratory a gazillion years ago! I found it as a boy, and, for my efforts in leading the CBT towards it, I got to live!”

Breve blinks. “Oh,” she says, and because she doesn’t know what else to answer with, “I’m sorry.”

“Well, what’s happened has happened, and now we’re here.” Dechambul shrugs, displaying nonchalance in that clearly practiced way that even a stranger like Breve can tell is just a little faked. “Any more questions?”

Breve shakes her head, and Dechambul smiles. “...No? Good, because beyond that, I sure as hell don’t know the answers—”

The door slides open. The woman standing behind it turns Breve’s veins to ice.

Dechambul pivots around, greeting the newcomer with a smile. “Hey, Tiffney. Wow, you look terrible.”

“Thanks. I feel terrible too,” she grumbles, dragging her feet into the room. “Done briefing our newbie, then?”

“Yes, and without any thanks to you,” Peach answers smoothly, and her snarkiness evokes an airy laugh from Tiffney’s lips.

“Oh yeah, as if you’d let me. Even if you didn’t knock me out.” Tiffney raises her left arm, and a screen on the plating of her CBT sleeve flashes brightly. “Anyway, suit up. We’ve gotten orders for our next hit.”