"No, Antonious."

Auren folded his arms across his chest. The god's Battle Aura simmered and crackled, a violent corona over his muscled form.

"The Warp Pads to Arach are down because the Padinus Blockade is contesting the space, we need to punch through the blockade and the Ascendant Fleet can do that -" Tony attempted to rationalize.

"I said 'No,' and that's final."

"Auren -"

"Do I need to repeat myself?" the god bellowed, his Aura flaring up to a roaring bonfire.

Tony clenched his fists by his side, turned on his heels, and stormed out of the Lord of Auras' audience chamber, Maximus hot on his heels... or... shoulder?

The dog, formerly up to just under his knee, could now rest his head on Tony's shoulder if he wanted. He was still barrel-chested and stocky, but his amber fur had a laquer to it and there was a certain ferocity to his shape. His claws made tinny taps on the steel floors of the Ascendant Flagship as he walked next to Tony, toward their chambers.

Sparky-god-man seem angery... Maximus said into Tony's mind. He still sounded like a puppy, sounded like the voice Tony had given him back on Earth when he "talked" for him.

"I know buddy, he's not mad at you, promise," Tony offered.

He mad at you? Why?

"Well, because I was trying to tell him he was wrong, I guess. Gods don't like hearing that."

What he wrong for?

"You remember the big spider planet?"

The large dog nodded.

"Imagine if all of them were big and angry all the time, and they couldn't tell who were friends or bad guys, that would be bad, right?"

That would be scary, Dadda.

"And they can go into space, all on their own, so if they were bug, scary, angry, and in space that would be everyone's problem, right?"

Max nodded again.

"Auren doesn't think it would be everyone's problem, I think he's wrong, and I think we should do something about it," Tony explained.

The nostalgia of the moment wasn't lost on him. Vivid flashes of memory, sitting on his bed, tears in his eyes, explaining why what his "father", Bruce, had done that day made him upset. Maximus had been an intuitive dog in life, and here, in this game turned "new" life, he was even moreso.

So why don't you do somefing about the spooder planet, Dadda? Take spooder lady wiff you and fix da prollem?

Tony sucked air in through his teeth.

"Well, she might be a little mad at me too..."

Whyfor?

"Well, see, I thought she was going to be..." Tony mulled over his next words carefully, "asleep... for a very long time. We like each other a lot, but I kinda got caught up in liking another person too..."

Shammy-lady wiff da big stick?! Max's tail started wagging immediately. It was curled, so when the hound got excited it was more like a helicopter propeller than a swishing limb. The other Ascendants ducked the oscillating tail, not wanting to be clobbered by it.

"Yeah, Vasna..." Tony trailed, "but it turns out that she wasn't going to be asleep as... permanently as I thought she might be and she didn't like that Vasna and I had been smooching."

Vasna and Tony had lived in the same multiplex back on Earth. She was the head administrator, Tony had learned. When they both signed up for the Closed Beta of Ascendant: Online by Gambit Games, Tony had been selected. Vasna had not.

Tony had no way of knowing, since the only interactions they'd had prior to having their souls taken from their body, flung forward through time by about fifteen hundred years, and placed into perfected versions of their previous bodies, had been Tony dropping off his rent checks and Vasna dropping the occasional package at his door. When Vasna had found Tony's soulless body under the Gambit Games headset, she'd put it on herself.

Is just kisses, Dadda...

"I know, buddy," Tony lied.

It had not just been kisses between the two Ascendants, more like a perpetual series of intimate and emotional moments that only served to escalate as they had compiled. Jorogu had been awake for a couple of days now, and Tony hadn't seen or heard from Vasna since.

Thinking back to his trips to Arach, over the last few weeks, really, Jorogu had essentially tricked him into accepting her proposal. He'd been unaware of the significance in being gifted a katakana made of two melded Arachne legs until he'd seen the item's name: Jorogu's Marital Blade, or the pace at which such nuptials were intended to happen. When he'd returned to Arach, after putting down Tolik, the Traitor, he'd been scooped up, thrown into ornamental garb, and had a duel to the death with Jorogu's other suitor, Sujuko.

When Ignacious, king douchebag of the universe, had interfered and granted Sujuko a tremendous Buff, Jorogu, and her mother, Queen Semiramis had intervened... and died.

Tony had ascended, killed Sujuko, broken the Marital Blade in the process, and then received a quest from the dying Arach Queen that could bring Jorogu back to life, and make her the rightful queen of the Arach.

According to his Quest Log, Tony had succeeded; but there had been no "Regeneration Timer" no "Jorogu Slumbers" countdown, nothing. It was all up to chance.

Then, a dungeon threatened the ship and it had been scaled to the average level of the Ascendants. Tony, Vasna, Esava, and at the time of its formation, Tolik, were leagues above the other Ascendants in the program. Tolik's soul had been rattling around in Tony's Dreadblade for a bit, Esava had been off-ship, and he barely knew Vasna... at the time. It had come down to the two of them against the dungeon.

The lair had been harder on their minds and spirits than their bodies; filled with the emptied husks of respawned Ascendants that had been filled with some sort of essence... goop... that turned them into wailing zombies that asked for death, a giant amalgam that was a lot of zombies and some of the guts of the ship smashed into one titanic body, and Mendacius, the mad man that created all of them.

The whole experience, being flung forward in time, trying to interpret the system that dictated his life, having a fling that got a lot more committed, losing that person, being confronted with his fears, his doubts, finding comfort in someone that he actually knew, had been a lot to handle.

"It's gonna be alright, pal. You're gonna stick with me, aren't you?"

Ah course, Dadda. Not goin' nowheres.