Melia removed her rubber gloves with relief and satisfaction, carefully making sure that their exteriors did not come into contact with her normal gloves underneath. It might have taken a few hours, but cleaning the kitchen and bathroom wasn't as hard as it initially seemed to be. It helped that she tried to keep everything clean from the start; if she had allowed the muck and gunk to build up over the past few months, it would certainly be much more of a pain. She naturally didn't like having to do such chores, and she probably could have found a way to get Fiora to do it or at least help (under the premise of "I've never done this before, can you teach me?"), but there was a certain pleasure obtained from demonstrating she had the skills to live alone successfully. Since she had moved into the house that Riki had had built for her, she had taught herself how to vacuum carpet, clean windows, unblock the toilet, and now wash floors and scrub every surface in the two tiled rooms.

With half of today's job done, she moved into the bedroom and took stock of the situation. She had been pretty good at keeping clutter to a minimum, the bedsheets had already been washed and were in the dryer, the windows had been washed and drapes had been beat yesterday, and the only thing she had ever spilled was tears on the carpet. But one thing that could not be avoided was dust, and it was starting to show on all the objects that she didn't manipulate on a daily basis.

Should I open the windows? Are you supposed to dust with a breeze, or with calm air? The mid-September weather outside was pushing a cool breeze around that helped get rid of the smell of the cleaning chemicals used in the bathroom and kitchen, but trying to dust in the wind might be an issue. She decided that leaving the windows closed would be the correct course of action, only opening them once it was time to vacuum.

Melia proceeded around the room, dislodging everything present to dust all sides with a disposable blue cloth. It was a process that effectively refreshed her memory of everything she owned, something that had never really occurred before; with no obligation to clean her chambers in the palace, she simply left everything where it belonged unless she used it, causing some things to sink out of conscious recognition.

As she neared the completion of the job, she came upon something she had almost forgotten about: her travel pouch, sitting on a shelf behind a row of books. Ever since the party's adventure had concluded, she had no need to carry it around all the time, leaving it unused for several months. After dusting off the tiny bag, she dumped its contents onto her desk. The miniature bathroom implements were still there, almost unused since she had taken the full-sized versions from her chambers in Alcamoth. So was the sleeping bag, ready to be unfurled but unlikely to ever be again, unless she decided to go camping or stay over at someone's house for some reason. Finally, the remote to the Illustrious Alighting remained.

She picked up the remote with a twinge of interest. She had assumed that her ship had not survived into the new world, given that she was forced to leave it inside the Bionis' heart as the group pieced together the five Veritas Glyphs to unlock the way to Prison Island; it was not capable of self-navigating without direct access to open sky (or reasonably close enough), and the home point's beacon was never found in the new world. But what if it did survive? Stranger things had happened; the day after Melia's house was revealed to her, Alvis had brought a High Entia transport full of books into the new world to try and reduce the amount of lost knowledge. It was worth a shot.

Melia continued to dust and vacuum her bedroom and closet, followed by taking the bedsheets out of the dryer and replacing them where they belonged. Once everything in the house was cleaned to her satisfaction, she stepped outside with the Illustrious Alighting's remote in one hand and a book in the other. She debated over using the location function to see if she could pick up a signal before summoning the craft, but to an extent she felt like that would spoil the surprise, so she decided to only resort to it if nothing happened for a long while. Holding the remote aloft, she pressed the summon button and held it for three seconds.

She didn't expect the ship to show up immediately; after all, the Nopon mapmakers had covered quite a bit of land and would have found it already if it was anywhere remotely close. So while waiting to see if anything would happen, she sat in the chair on the porch and opened up the book. It was a three-year old piece of Homs speculative fiction called They Came from Beyond the Sky!, involving a trio of Homs being abducted by High Entia and placed in a zoo. She found an odd sort of humour in reading the genre, in seeing the various depictions of High Entia that the Homs of the time could only guess at. This particular interpretation was quite amusing - they were depicted as having a total of six wings, with two on their heads, two on their backs, and two instead of arms, leaving them with talon-like appendages on their legs.

Melia stopped paying attention to time once she started reading. But eventually, she heard it, and quickly looked up - the Illustrious Alighting floated down from the sky and landed in front of the house, looking as pristine as ever.

Excited, Melia put the book down and stepped towards the craft before realizing that the deck wasn't empty. In fact, it had a few things aboard that she thought had also been lost in the old world. A wave of relief and nostalgia washed over her.

The first thing she went for was the huge bag of money she had extracted from the imperial treasury. She had last left it in the Regeneration Chamber near Colony 9 for safekeeping, but the chamber was also never found in the new world, and she was forced to assume the money had also been lost. Opening all the doors in her path beforehand, she tugged at the massive sack until it fell off the deck into her arms, pinning her to the ground. It was twice as heavy as she was. After spending a few minutes getting herself free, she began rolling the bag inside. Eventually, and after much effort, it was stashed safely in the corner of her closet. She had never really considered that she would ever run out of money, given that as the empress of a race she had an unlimited number of favours to turn in, but it was still a relief to be over 150 million G richer in cold hard cash. For now, she would keep it a secret.

Next, she took hold of the unique bass guitar, propped up in the pilot's seat, and played a few notes. She once considered buying one to replace it simply so she could continue to mess around with music, but decided not to for reasons she couldn't currently remember - probably something about being too frivolous, despite the others constantly yammering at her that "you need to treat yourself once in a while". She placed it in a corner of her bedroom, determined to come up with a better storage method later.

She considered dislodging the Empress Staff still placed behind the pilot's seat, acting as the catalyst of the ship's weapon systems, but she had no real need to. The Imperial Staff was residing at the headquarters of the New Alcamoth project, and both the Protect Staff and Hope Staff remained in her possession. There was no reason to take yet another staff and potentially render the craft defenseless once more.

Finally, the Chozo interface was placed on one of the passenger seats. Melia eyed it with a mix of curiosity and sadness; it had no practical use anymore, and did nothing but bring back memories of the old Alcamoth. Perhaps I should donate this to the New Alcamoth infrastructure team. I'm sure they can find a use for it, if not simple inspiration. She brought the item inside and put it at the front of her desk as a reminder to do something with it later.

With the surprise gifts dealt with, Melia realized that the home beacon was not present. Either it no longer has a home point, or the beacon is elsewhere in the world, likely wherever the craft was stationed before now. I should find it.

She stepped onboard, settled into the pilot's seat, and pressed the return button on the remote. The Illustrious Alighting rose above the cliffs and began travelling due south at average speed.

Melia considered raising the auto-pilot speed to get to the unknown destination faster, but she found that she wanted to just sit and enjoy the ride. Having remained grounded for a few months now, the sight of the landscape passing by beneath her was a refreshing experience. But before long, it also began triggering a bunch of memories. Searching for a Telethia in the forest, half-expecting to die that day and almost succeeding were it not for the arrival of four people to replace the ones she lost. Preparing the land for the Colony 6 refugees to return, moments after taking the wheel for the first time against her best judgement for no reason but altruism. Ferrying people and objects across the world, helping to reconstruct a world that had been thrown into chaos by a lost man trying to outsmart a delusional god. Departing Alcamoth for the final time, sadly gathering all her possessions together before fighting her transformed instructor to prove her mastery of ether, and taking on an entire race of former kin with a single vessel. It wasn't like she hadn't gone over these and other such memories before, but of course the nature of memories is that they become ever more entrenched as they are relived.

Eventually, an older memory of flight resurfaced: racing through Colony 7 to evacuate survivors of the Mechon attack. She wondered if the remnants of the colony existed in the new world, and if so where. All the occupied settlements were positioned somewhat similar to their locations on the Bionis - one had to go east through a series of tunnels and a vast plain to go from Colony 9 to Colony 6, for example. If the same rules held for all major landmarks, regardless of whether people lived there, Colony 7's wreckage would be somewhere far to the southeast.

As she pondered the issue, something that she had pretty much completely forgotten about arose from the depths of her consciousness. She could see a young Alvis staring her in the eyes, speaking with a quiet yet serious tone.

"This one boy will, one day, be worth more than all the other survivors combined."

Melia hadn't even considered the words since they had been spoken. What did Alvis mean by that remark? I do recall thinking that he only suggested the rescue mission for that one boy, but whatever happened to him? The boy's image appeared in her mind, or at least as close as she could get; it was probably inaccurate due to not having thought about him for several decades. If he was indeed as important as Alvis claimed, he must have become some figure of high status in the Homs world. Perhaps a high-ranked commander in the defence force? What would he look like right now?

She attempted to conceive of what the three-to-six year old face might look like as a young adult. To her great annoyance, she couldn't come up with a face without her mind immediately turning it into Shulk's. In fact, it occurred to her that the similarity between Shulk and the boy was quite uncanny.

That...that boy couldn't have...been Shulk...could he?

She strained her mind to try and recall the entire Colony 7 storyline. After an ill-fated pre-emptive strike against their base in the nearby tunnels, the Mechon had attacked, the rescue forces arrived, and the Homs were relocated to Makna Forest. Then someone - the boy's father - announced that he intended to go to Valak Mountain to search for a legendary weapon...

And they found a legendary weapon, the Monado, in Ose Tower. And Dickson appeared shortly afterward, finding no one left alive but Shulk...

Melia's mouth fell open as the connections were made. Alvis had sent her to rescue Shulk from Colony 7 so he could be present when the Monado was discovered by the Homs, ensuring that a specific person would be made into Zanza's vessel, thus leading to the only future that resulted in Zanza's defeat and the salvation of reality.

It was a bit insulting to realize that, even way back then, Alvis had been manipulating her life in secret. But then again, it was those manipulations that resulted in her and the rest of the world still existing. She wondered how much else he could have been controlling from behind the scenes. He could have inspired the Illustrious Alighting, or any one of the times her father had sent her on a mission, including the first Telethia. In fact, given his apparent affinity for the creatures, he could very well have sent the baby Telethia into her chambers to ensure she gained the correct experience. After all, they had discovered a Telethia genetics laboratory deep within the Tomb; from what they could tell, it wouldn't be hard at all to produce an infant hardwired to go to a specific location.

Changing train of thought a bit, she realized that this new insight meant she knew what Shulk's parents looked like, at least from a single superficial glance, and where he originally came from. She wondered if this was worth telling him, given that she couldn't do so without admitting she had met him all those years ago, and...and him telling her she had "a nice real face"...

She shook off the last part of the thought. He's made it clear in the past that he wishes to know anything possible about his former family and home...Maybe one day, if it ever becomes appropriate to reveal that I made a secret visit down to the lower colonies, I'll tell him.

The Illustrious Alighting finally began slowing down and descending. Melia looked over the side to see that it was aiming toward a tiny, vaguely heart-shaped island in a large lake. About half the size as the hole in the cliffs Melia's house was in, the island was a mostly-flat patch of grass, with a beach on the west side and several deciduous trees on the south side. The vessel's home beacon was placed directly in the centre.

Once the landing was complete, Melia slowly disembarked and looked around. The island was untouched and pristine, far more isolated and inaccessible than anywhere else she'd been in this new world. She could basically make it her own private island, and no one else would find it for potentially years. But did she really need to? The area around her house was private enough, only accessible through a lockable tunnel or a disableable transporter, and to have property so far away from everything else that currently existed seemed rather pointless. But at the same time, it was an attractive kind of secret to have, and it would serve well as a place to hide her vessel for the moment - she wasn't yet sure if she wanted knowledge of its return to be public, and keeping it in the clearing where she lived would not be a good way to keep it unseen. After all, she didn't really need its services the way things were right now - transporters connected all the settlements, and she had no business wandering in the wilderness by herself.

She explored around the island. The beach on the west was rather shallow; the water looked to become waist-deep quickly enough, but it appeared to stay there for quite a ways outwards. The north coast was the top of the heart shape, with no particularly interesting features. The east side was the flattest part of the grass and would be perfect for a picnic or small-field sport. The trees to the south didn't seem of a familiar species at first glance, as their leaves were already more orange than any other tree she'd seen in the new world, but after investigating the leaves closer she determined they were dytermaples.

As she wandered around beneath the trees, she saw an odd sight on the ground around one of the trunks: what looked to be a gravestone, broken into fragments by the tree that had sprouted directly underneath it. It looked to originally be a simple slab of stone placed flat on the ground, now split into five pieces and weathered far past legibility.

Unable to contain her curiosity, Melia bent down to brush the dirt off the fragments, trying to see if she could find any hint as to why there was a decades-old gravestone on an untouched island in a world only a few months old. It had to have some sort of purpose, planted in the universe's artificial history for some reason.

She didn't succeed. The stone was truly battered by the elements, too roughed up to find any trace of anything that had once been carved into it.

That's a shame. I can't help but feel something - or someone - important is here. Melia looked back towards the centre of the island. The Illustrious Alighting had self-activated its stealth parking function, hiding itself and its beacon underneath a large holographic rock, ensuring it would be safe from anything if she wished to leave it there. And it's difficult to believe this island was created merely as a hidden hangar. No, I'm investigating further before I depart.

Melia returned to her ship and brought up a map onscreen. The island's vaguely heart-shaped coastline was even more obvious in the coloured diagram than in reality.

This island is a puzzle waiting to be solved, she decided. Why did my ship begin its new existence here? Why is there an ancient gravestone here? Why is the island shaped like a heart beyond reasonable doubt? Wh-...wait.

The realization came quickly after that. She had last left her craft in the Bionis' heart, and it had appeared in the new world on a heart-shaped island. It wasn't in the expected geographical location, and it didn't explain how it came to be loaded with her missing possessions from various other places, but the connection was obvious.

That means... She slowly turned back towards the broken gravestone the south. Only two people had ever died in the Bionis' heart, and only one of them deserved to be honoured.

Melia quietly and deliberately returned to the tree that broke the gravestone and kneeled on the ground in front of it, her eyes going misty. Of course, dytermaples, Brother's favourite tree. He would put so much of its syrup on his meals...sometimes it wouldn't even look like food anymore, just a massive pile of goop. To his own detriment, of course, when he inevitably lost track of his elbows. I never understood why he never got reprimanded for it, when I would get told off for spilling tiny amounts of salt on the table linens...

The train of thought destabilized into a general feeling of grief, punctuated by a parade of the most impactful recent memories of Kallian: watching him snap an illegal rifle over his knee, fighting alongside him against a giant Hiln, conversing with him the day before leaving to fight the Telethia, accepting his blessing to join Shulk's party permanently, watching him attempt to sacrifice himself, and finally freeing him from Lorithia's clutches by means of death - followed by hearing his spirit's last words to her. It was nice to actually be able to cry in response to a death in private for once, kilometres away from any other sentient being. It felt like the tears had been welling up for months.

After watering the tree for quite some time, Melia did the only thing she could do with no staff in hand - she reached inside herself and pulled out a massive ball of vitality, depositing it into the soil while balanced on a knife-edge of not fainting.

You did not die in vain, Brother.

Slowly recovering from her intentionally overdone usage of Healing Gift, Melia decided it was time to leave. She turned back towards the centre of the island and walked into the false stone that hid her ship.

She blinked a few times, presuming that she was seeing things. But no, it truly was Alvis standing beside the beacon in his typical not-a-care-in-the-world manner.

He smirked a bit. "Are you surprised to see me here, Your Majesty?"

"...To be perfectly honest, not really."

A quiet chuckle. "You undoubtedly have come to many realizations in the past short while. But it is certain that many more unknowns remain. As gratitude for your role in freeing this world from the overlording of Zanza, I offer one answer."

"One answer?"

"It would not do to reveal every mystery of the universe, would it? Yes, one answer." He paused for a moment before heading off the first few things that came to her mind. "I have made the same offer to your friends. Some of them have taken it in order to put a burning question to rest, even if the response was not what they wished to hear, while others have let it pass, for each their own reasons. I may offer more answers in the future, or I may not. What matters at this moment is: Do you have a question?"

Melia stood and thought for several minutes, going over every question she'd ever had that remained unanswered, carefully considering every possibility she could think of. Eventually, she finally responded.

"Why me?"

Alvis tilted his head and raised an eyebrow to suggest he did not follow.

"Why me?" Melia intended to simply repeat herself until he answered, but ended up continuing, becoming more and more agitated with each syllable. "Why did these events only come to pass within my lifetime, and not that of countless millenia of others? Why was I gven the perfect combination of attributes to ensure that no other being could possibly take my place? Why was I selected out of all people in history to take on the burden of my entire species while I watched them become monsters? Why was I the only one to lose not only their entire family but also their home, society, and purpose in life?! Why am I the one with the extended lifespan, seemingly to ensure that I amass the most suffering in life?! Why am I THE ONE DESTINED TO OUTLIVE ALL MY FRIENDS MANY TIMES OVER?! WHY ME?!"

There was dead silence for a moment. Alvis was no longer smiling, his face and pose completely stoic. Melia stared at him with the fury of her entire race, tears hanging in her eyes and electricity crackling around her fists.

After what felt like an hour of the two remaining completely motionless, the seer finally answered.

"Because you knew that none of the other six undestined souls could succeed in your place."

With that, Alvis walked southward and disappeared into the trees.

Melia wasn't sure what she expected to come of her outburst. But what Alvis said could not be more clear: somehow, somewhere, before any of this had begun, she was given the choice of being herself or any of her six companions - and she chose the most difficult path because she knew the others would fail were they in her place. It was a revelation of many facets - unnerving to think that everyone existed together in some way before birth, yet empowering to think that her sacrifice had saved them from a worse fate.

It was a bit much to take in for the moment. She delayed her thoughts about it a little bit by boarding the Illustrious Alighting and travelling back home at top speed, followed by sending the ship back to the heart-shaped island. But once her mind was free to consider it once again, to think about how the lives of her friends and the world at large had changed over the past several months, the inevitable conclusion was drawn.

If it is my chosen lot in life to take on the suffering of others so they may find happiness...

...then their happiness is my own.