“Let me go,” Breve protests, trying to slip out of Tiffney’s grasp. Unfortunately, the elven woman is still stronger, and she proceeds to give Breve a hard noogie on the head, right between her twitching caten-ears. “H-hey!”

“You’re here to see Peach, yeah?” Tiffney guesses correctly, and suddenly she does as Breve requests, letting the catgirl go. After stumbling back a little, Breve steadies herself, before looking at the direction Tiffney is pointing. “She’s going to start sparring. You’d probably wanna head over soon, before the crowd sets in.”

The crowd? “Is Peach popular?”

“Guess you could say that,” Tiffney says with a laugh. Breve gives her a look, before deciding to head off and see for herself, walking in the direction that Tiffney pointed towards.

Immediately, Breve realizes she’s walking into an observation deck overseeing an incredibly large training room— bigger than any of the previous ones she’s seen on this already-massive beast of a spaceship. As Tiffney had said, there’s already a bit of a crowd, humans and humanoids alike along with various other alien species huddling up to get a better view. All seem to be here for the same thing: to watch whatever’s about to go on in that room.

“Excuse me,” Breve squeaks out, trying to worm her way to the front. Slipping past a horned orc, she manages to get a clear view, and that’s when Breve sees her:

Peach, bubblegum-pink hair and glasses and all, wielding an unassuming wooden pole. And on the other side of the arena lies an absolutely massive, serpentine creature, adorned in majestic white scales. Its horns curl up like a deer’s antlers, but shine an incredible blue hue, as if plucked from the heart of the ocean.

It looks like some sort of dragon, though different than any Breve has ever seen in the pages of storybooks— wingless, and less menacing; more elegant, almost divine.

Needless to say, Peach seems to be about to face down an absolute fucking unit of a lad. “Whoa,” Breve gasps aloud. “Can she really take that?”

“Oh, my bets are on her,” someone else says, and Breve turns to see a starry-eyed man with long, black hair. He’s leaning over the railings of the observation deck, excitement clear on his face. “Not often you see two Rank S facing down, though, so it’s anybody’s game.”

Blinking, Breve looks the man up and down. He’s dressed in loose gold-black robes that seem to mimic the same style as Peach’s, and it seems like he’s got a sword on his hip. She decides to question him a little more. “Rank S?”

“What, you new?” He gives Breve a smile, and upon studying the look on her face, realizes he’s probably guessed correctly. “Oh, well… basically, they’re as powerful as you can get around here.”

“Wow,” Breve whispers. Though she’s not sure on what scale of power he’s referring to, surely to be the most powerful amongst a galactic crew of planet-destroyers is a high accomplishment. “Peach is that strong?”

“Yeah,” he says, pointing to her. “She’s a Rank S Monk, while Yaolong is a Rank S Druid. When you get that powerful, the CBT forces you to wear Power Limiters while you’re on the Nostradamus. The only time you get to take them off…”

And as he speaks, Peach raises her left arm. Some sort of banding flies off her sleeve, and in that moment, a similar banding flies off the dragon’s curled talons as well. “...is when you’re in the Training Grounds. And watch, it looks like they’re about to start!”

The entire observation deck goes quiet in anticipation. Peach and the dragon greet each other with a bow, treating their opponent with clear respect, along with just a dash of reverence.

Then, in an instant, the entire room below explodes into a flurry of colour.

It takes a moment for Breve to realize that the blur of pink dashing around the arena at incredible speeds is Peach. The dragon, in the span of a few seconds, has summoned an entire forest of trees— resplendent greenery bursting through what should be the empty metal flooring to fill the entire room. The vines upon each twisted branch lash forward to grab Peach, desperately flailing in a vain attempt to halt her in her tracks, but she is simply too quick.

“Ow, that’s got to hurt!” The man next to Breve excitedly commentates as Peach lands a successful blow on the dragon’s side. Not to be outdone, however, it immediately springs into the air, launching its massive body off the ground as if it was weightless. The momentum is enough to summon a violent blast of wind, one which tears the leaves off the very forest it has created, and Peach is caught right within it.

She’s slammed into the glass wall, and the fact that there isn’t a single crack despite the sheer force of the blow really hammers home the strength of CBT engineering. Breve and the man both wince at once, but Peach doesn’t even waste a moment to flinch— she immediately kicks her legs back, jumping off the wall and back into the fray.

The dragon switches tactics, choosing to instead uproot the trees and begin telepathically flinging them at Peach’s direction. “He’s trying to buy time,” the man explains, pointing towards a swarm of insects which seem to be gathering around the dragon’s glowing horns. “Yaolong has immense power over nature, both in its creation and its destruction. He’s going to fill the whole arena with an infestation of locusts, all focused on attacking her. That’ll make it much harder for her to win… that is, if she doesn’t manage to disrupt his cast.”

Breve gasps as a tree seems to make direct contact with Peach— but instead, it barely misses her, and Peach hops off the passing tree trunk in order to send herself flying right towards the dragon’s horns. “And it looks like she’s going to do just that!”

Peach smashes her pole into the dragon’s horns, and as it howls in pain, the entire swarm disappears as quickly as it came. “To dragons, their horns are like our wands or staves,” the man explains, and Breve notices that the glow from within those horns disappear. “Hitting them hard enough forces them to stop their cast, like how humanoid spellcasters get interrupted by muting their voices or knocking the magical catalyst out of their hands.”

Not wasting a second, Peach immediately hops down and slams into the top of the dragon’s head, too, before it punishes her with a torrential blast of water, sent right out its snout and into Peach’s direction. “Uh oh,” the man gasps. “She might be in trouble!”

As Peach is sent flying up, the dragon follows, as if aiming to smash her against the ceiling with its paw. But Peach breaks free of the water, narrowly dodging the dragon’s mighty talons before racing down the length of its body in the blink of an eye.

“Whoa, whoa!” As Peach makes contact with the ground, countless welts open up on what seemed to be the dragon’s impenetrable scales. With another bellow of pain, it collapses backwards, into the trees which dissipate as it lays defeated. “I didn’t even see what she did!”

As the dust settles, tiny gadgets fly into the room, surrounding both fighters. Breve realizes that the two of them are being healed, with the dragon’s wounds disappearing as the robots hover over each cut. “Wow…” Breve breathes out slowly in awe, and then, Peach looks up.

Despite the crowd, Peach seems to spot Breve immediately, waving towards her. Breve waves back, and the man besides her jolts back in surprise.

“Waaait, you know her?!”

“Oh, yeah,” Breve admits sheepishly, scratching the back of her head while the man blinks at her in shock. “She’s my squadmate—”

Suddenly, the glass walls open up, and Peach jumps right up from the arena below to the railings of the observation deck.

“Hello,” she greets politely, perching herself precariously on the thin handrails. Nearly half of the crowd falls back in shock— not just at Peach’s sudden arrival, but also because her Power Limiter quite literally shoots across the observation bay like a bullet in order to reattach itself to her CBT sleeve. Peach, bless her heart, doesn’t seem to notice that the whizzing mechanism nearly took someone’s head off on the way back to her. “Did you need anything, Breve?”

“H-hey,” Breve greets back with a stammer. “I’m just—”

“HELLO THERE!” The man suddenly cuts in, and Breve stares at him with wide eyes. Peach stares at him, too, and all three stand there in abject silence for about two seconds before he realizes he should probably continue. “A-ah, I’m sorry! That was rude! I’m just, sorry, I’m Yaolong’s squadmate, and he’s always told me not to bother you till I’ve trained myself further but I just think you are incredibly cool and the way you manage to beat someone as powerful as Yaolong is amazing and I’m Zhenxuan how are you?”

Zhenxuan’s fast-paced introduction elicits nothing but silence from both women. For an agonizing five more seconds, they both stare at one another in silence, and Breve thinks she can see the beads of sweat welling up on his forehead.

And then, Peach lets a smile slip onto her face as she tilts her head. “Ah, Zhenxuan. Yaolong told me about you.”

“Really?” Zhenxuan blinks. “What did he say about me? I, wait, no, I mean… oh, it’s an honor you know my name—”

Suddenly, half the observation deck doubles back with various noises of alarm as Yaolong rises up as well, placing a menacing-looking talon on the railing next to Peach. “Foolish boy,” he immediately chides, and Zhenxuan lets out an audible gulp. “Have I not told you to spare her your presence till you are Rank S yourself?”

“I-I’m getting there!” Zhenxuan retorts, and Yaolong huffs angrily in his face. The blast of air from the dragon’s nostrils nearly sends both Breve and Zhenxuan falling back. “I just need to hone up my skills, and—”

“Idiot,” Yaolong scolds, and Peach chuckles to herself as the boy gets admonished by her sparring partner. “You are Rank A in potential only. As of your current abilities, I would not dare put you above C. You are far from worthy of her time.”

Zhenxuan opens his mouth to retorts, but instead yelps as Yaolong shoves him away, regarding both Peach and Breve with a sorry expression. “Forgive my squadmate. He is still young and arrogant.”

“Peach!” Zhenxuan calls out anyway, waving at her. “Why don’t you join our squad? We’ve still got a space, and all of us are from the same type of world! You’ll get along—”

“Silence,” Yaolong commands. And then the dragon opens his mouth, snapping Zhenxuan up in his jaws.

For a moment, Breve thinks Yaolong just deadass swallowed Zhenxuan whole. But then the dragon turns his head, and Breve can see Zhenxuan’s legs sticking out of Yaolong’s mouth, still wriggling in protest.

Yaolong gives Peach a silent nod as good-bye, before flying away, Zhenxuan’s legs between his teeth and all.

“...Well,” Peach hums, hopping onto solid ground. “I will be heading back to the squad room, now that my sparring partner has taken his exit.”

Breve walks up to Peach, keeping the pace besides her. The remaining observers begin to disperse, though a few still admire Peach from afar. “If you don’t mind me asking, what was that about? When he said that you were all from the ‘same type of world’. Did you guys come from the same planet?”

“No,” Peach hums, leaving her wooden pole on the weapon rack. “However… if you recall Dechambul’s explanation, all planets are artificial creations of the first human race. When gifted with the ability to create worlds from their wildest fantasies, they did just that… and the worlds we came from share many similarities, due to being based on the very same fantasy.”

“I… see,” Breve hums. “Is that why a lot of species look similar, even though everyone’s from different planets?”

“Excellent observation. You are correct,” Peach praises, and Breve feels her cheeks turn slightly red at being complimented for once. “Indeed, people from disparate corners of the galaxy may find themselves looking very alike due to originating from the same idea that was once popular among the first human creators. In my case, we had all come from ‘cultivation worlds’. Though no two planets are perfectly identical, our home worlds did share many of the same rules.”

Leaving the Training Grounds, Peach looks around her for a moment before letting out a sigh. “As you may expect, people from similar worlds tend to work among themselves,” Peach explains. “Being able to relate with one another on the basis of shared experience is a valuable thing… especially when you are so cruelly plucked from your planet, as many here were.”

“Hmm…” Breve looks down at her feet. “Uh, if it’s worth anything… I’m glad you’re working with us!”

“Haha, is that so?” Peach gives Breve a soft smile, and though Breve did just witness her beat a massive dragon to within an inch of his life, any fear Breve felt beforehand melts away at Peach’s warm expression. “We haven’t even been on a mission yet. Let’s save such words for after we perform a successful bulldozing together.”

“Alright,” Breve says with a nod. “Then, I’ll do my best!”

“I do like to hear that,” Peach hums in approval. As they reach the entrance to their squad room, Peach reaches out to pat Breve on the top of her head. “Well, we will set off once everyone has gotten a good night’s sleep. Or, whenever I locate Tiffney from whatever mess she’s gotten herself into. Whatever comes first.”

Breve blinks. “Oh, actually… the reason I came to the Training Grounds in the first place is… Peach, do you have any tips for sleeping while stressed out of your mind? I’m having trouble, you see…”

“That, I can help with,” Peach confirms. She turns around, and then gently places her palm on Breve’s forehead. “Close your eyes.”

-----

And then, the next thing Breve knows she’s lying in bed with her sleeve buzzing like a cuckoo bird, waking her up.