Isekai Family Robinson: A slow-burn Isekai

It was later. Seeker Tempest stood atop the fabulous craft that had brought the Sojourners to this world and watched the Sojourner husband and wife work on tech that would have had the elders of the Community weeping tears of joy merely to be afforded a glance at them. She stood there, atop wealth untold, atop tech beyond anything she had ever encountered, atop a craft that was the summation of all her people's hopes and dreams…

And she saw none of it.

She saw only the faces of the Sojourners in her mind's eye, and felt only the sensation that her brain was trying to whirl out of her skull. The scene replayed again and again in her mind, watching as the Sojourner Matthew Albright spoke the darkest truths of history to his children.

At first she had felt incensed, that he could so easily speak of the atrocities visited upon her ancestors when he was the very inheritor of that legacy. Then she had felt anger, as he skipped over details the histories spoke of, as he callously described in a gentle, diluted manner the true horrors her people had endured.

Then had come the shock.

Shock at the reactions from the other Sojourners.

Alejandra Albright had simply stood there, listening. From the way her aura barely flickered, she must have heard the story before. Her eyes narrowed as Matthew Albright spoke of the rendering facilities, but nothing else happened.

No, it was the children that shocked Seeker Tempest to her core. Their auras did not merely react to their father's words, they recoiled, as if he had just slapped each of them across the face as violently as possible. Isabel Albright's eyes flew open wide and her mouth dropped open. Dinah–Seeker Tempest still did not know her Secondname–went white as a Kek-ghost. Olivia Albright looked as though someone has just struck her upside the head with a club. And Lucas…

The boy was staring at his hands, horror writ large across his young features and tears forming in the corner of his eyes.

It… Had not been the reaction she had expected.

"You mean this Gaius guy was basically Fantasy Hitler?" Isabel Albright's voice had cracked, and her aura had flickered and flared like fire in a sharp wind.

"More like Fantasy Stalin, but yeah," Dinah had said, invoking another unfamiliar name. "Man I knew Rome was screwed up, but that's…"

"Luc? You okay?" Olivia Albright had asked.

Everyone had turned to look at the boy, who had started to tremble.

"We're not…" the boy swallowed and tried to force the words up. "The powers… The stuff we can do… It's not… Not powered by… By…"

"No," Matthew Albright had said immediately. "No it's not. Remember what Toraline told us originally? We're drawing power naturally from the world. What Gaius did… It was a long time ago, and it's not affecting our powers right now."

The relief, pure and radiant, had washed off of the boy like heat from a flame, and it had struck Seeker Tempest like a blow.

But not half as much as a moment later when Olivia Albright, she who had looked upon Seeker Tempest with naked suspicion, had walked right up to her and apologized.

"I'm sorry," she'd said quietly, looking Seeker Tempest right in the eye. "I didn't realize that's what your people had gone through. No wonder you didn't want to trust us."

And then she had embraced Seeker Tempest. It was quick, but fiercely strong, and Seeker Tempest had grunted in shock both at the action itself and the almost painful pressure it produced.

"You just take all the time you need," Olivia Albright said, stepping back.

The memories submerged back into her mind and she returned to the present, watching Alejandra Albright and Matthew Albright work together to remove support struts for the most advanced solar panel she had ever laid eyes on. The elders of the Community would have sold off their first-born offspring–and gladly at that-just for a glimpse of what she was seeing now.

But it was not the glorious tech that made her mind whirl. It was the reactions that the Sojourners had demonstrated upon learning of the atrocities committed by Gaius Caesar against her people so long ago.

Shock. Horror. Anger. Understanding. Acceptance. But nowhere was the bloodlust, the ruthlessness, the cold-blooded calculation. The histories painted Sojourners as… Monsters, striving for power and conquest. But here these people had been shown an aspect of that; a Sojourner who had gone to lengths unheard of in his mad quest for power. They should have approved of his methods, or at the very least looked upon the ideas the methods he had espoused with favor.

Instead, they had been utterly repulsed by the idea.

For a second she had thought it possible they were lying, that the whole scene had been a farce designed to lull her into a sense of security and comradeship. But she had seen their auras, she had seen their faces. She did not think there was a liar that skilled in the entire world.

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"Why?"

The word fell from her lips before she could stop it, and slapped into the air, graceless, artless, guileless. The man and woman stopped their work and looked up at her, near-identical expressions of surprise on their faces.

"Why?" Matthew Albright repeated her question, raising her eyebrows.

"Why…" She didn't know how to continue. Why are you like this? Why are you not pursuing what your predecessor did? Why are you welcoming to me and not demanding my fealty? Why are you kind and generous? Why are you… like this??? The thoughts whirled and tumbled about in her mind, but none of them found their way to her mouth.

It was then that Alejandra Albright's eyes narrowed and her expression cleared.

"Why are we not monsters," she said quietly. And there, in that simple phrase, was everything Seeker Tempest wanted to ask and more. "That is what you mean, isn't it?"

Seeker Tempest felt her cheeks flush, but had to nod. Honesty was the only course open to her now.

Again the two Sojourners looked at each other, as though communicating without words. It was Matthew Albright who replied, setting down his tools and straightening up from where he had been bent over the solar panels.

"The simple answer?" Matthew Albright glanced over his shoulder at his wife, who also stood and moved up beside him. "Because we choose not to be."

"That is no answer," Seeker Tempest said. "The histories say tell of the Sojourners that came before. They were all monsters. But you… You truly are different. Why? Please, I must know."

Matthew Albright looked at his wife, and this time it was she who spoke.

"In our world," she said, catching and holding Seeker Tempest's gaze with her own, "there is a story about a young man who asked a very similar question of a wise elder. 'How can I be a good man', he asked. And the elder replied; 'every man has two wolves within him. One wolf is white, and represents honor and bravery and all that is good. The other wolf is red, and represents selfishness and greed and all that is evil. And at every moment of your life, these two wolves fight against one another, and the one who wins will determine the kind of man you will be'."

"And the young man," Matthew Albright said, taking up the tale, "asked the wise man 'Which wolf will win inside me?'"

"'Whichever one you feed the most,' was the wise man's reply," Alejandra Albright finished.

"You see, It's not that we're any better or any worse than the people in those histories," Matthew Albright said, taking up the narrative again. "It's that we have made different choices, and those choices have shaped us. We have chosen to follow the precepts of our God, who teaches love and holiness. We have chosen to raise our children according to that faith, to live our lives according to that faith…" he trailed off and a kind of sad smile flickered across his features. "Even if we do so imperfectly most of the time," he added, sharing another look with Alejandra Albright.

"That is not to say we do not believe in evil," Alejandra Albright spoke up. "We have seen it, and we have fought against it, here and in the world where we come from. But for most people? It is simply the culmination of a series of choices. Of a life spent feeding the wrong wolf. Gaius Caesar? Perhaps he was evil, perhaps there was a demon in his heart, or an imbalance in his brain. Or, perhaps it is as simple as he kept feeding the red wolf, and that wolf grew stronger and stronger until he could no longer see the evil in his choices."

"We're not here to seek world domination," Matthew Albright continued. "We're not conquistadores, we're not murdering, blood-hungry maniacs. We're just people, trying to do the best we can with what we've been given."

Seeker Tempest heard their words, and saw the sincerity in their auras, and felt as though the earth were shifting under her feet. This… Was not how it was supposed to go. This was not what Sojourners were supposed to be.

"Then why are you even here?" she heard herself ask. Every Sojourner the histories spoke of had been… Conquerors. Wielding immense power in their quests for world domination. Or 'unification', as they called it.

Another look passed between husband and wife, and when they met her gaze again there were identical looks of… not confusion, but something close to it. They shrugged in unison.

"Truth? We have no idea. Two weeks ago we were back in our world, and we were not in a good place, spiritually, relationally, emotionally, mentally."

"I was struggling with my past," Alejandra Albright said quietly. "And with fear, and a host of other things."

"And I was running away from pain and hardship," Matthew Albright said. "And in doing so, from my family as well."

"Perhaps our God allowed it to happen in order to repair our relationship and draw us back together," Alejandra Albright said. "Perhaps it is a test from Him. Or perhaps it is crazy happenstance."

"Or more likely, there are multiple reasons, and many of them have yet to make themselves known," Matthew said. "That's sort of how God works most of the time."

"But we are not here to conquer," Alejandra said firmly. "We are not here to get involved in world wars, or to force anyone to our way of thinking, or to raise our banner as rulers over anyone. In truth, I do not think any of us know what we are going to do here. Right now, we are simply trying to stay alive and build a place of safety for ourselves among the craziness of this strange world we have been dumped into."

The words were sincere. Their auras were calm and unroiled. They were speaking truth, or as near to it as to make no difference. And it flew in the face of everything Seeker Tempest had been taught.

"I…" she trailed off, not even sure what to say. Her thoughts were jumbled, her emotions a-whirl, and her brain was still trying to spin out of her skull.

"It's a lot to take in, I get it," Matthew Albright said. "We don't fit into the box you have for us, and that's always to get through. My advice? Don't try to take it all at once. Think over what we've said, watch us as we go about our lives, let it all sink in over time instead of trying to force it down all at once. Words, after all, are cheap. Actions speak louder, and all that."

Sound advice from a Sojourner. The world truly had gone mad. But for all that… It was still sound advice.

"I… Thank you," she managed to get out. "I will do as you say."

"Excellent," Matthew Albright said, and this time his face broke into a grin. "Now, would you care to come over here and give us a hand taking down the panels?"

"And perhaps while you do," Alejandra Albright added, "you can tell us how it is that you know what such things are. If you are willing to part with that information, of course."

After a moment's thought, Seeker Tempest decided that yes, she could in fact do that. It seemed a fair trade, for the information and assurance they had given here.

And it proved to be a very enjoyable time.