Twisted Destiny

The crying for no reason luckily didn’t appear and after a couple of minutes I finally start being able to feel emotions again, the emotion of relief and happiness that everything had transpired relatively well. I also do not feel dizzy anymore which is a big plus too. 

My sister helps me get to my feet, but still guides me to one of the chairs to sit me down again. She’s still worrying about me but that’s definitely understandable considering the situation. 

“How about I make you a milkshake?” She proposes. 

“That sounds lovely.” I smile. 

Gamma looks at my sister, stopping her tinkering for a couple of seconds. It looks like she wants to say something but decides not to. 

My sister rolls her eyes, walks up to Gamma and gives her a head pat. “I’ll make one for you too, don’t worry.” 

“Thank you.” Gamma looks really happy about that and doubles down working on the watch again. 

While my sister heads to the kitchen to start preparing our milkshakes, our little kitties decide to wander into the room again. Pocky jumps on my lap while Mocchi jumps on the table to keep an eye on what’s happening in the room. 

“Those two really love you, don’t they?” Gamma says without looking up from the watch.” 

“They do.” I pet Pocky on her head as she starts to pur. “There’s a bit of a story behind it.” I start explaining as I don’t really have anything else to do for the moment. I can tell by the movement of Gamma’s ears that she’s listening very attentively. 

In the end, Gamma takes a tissue out of her pocket dimension to blow her nose. She puts down the watch for a bit, as she looks up I can see that she also got a bit teary-eyed. “That’s so sweet. I’m happy you managed to reunite them.” Gamma puts her tissue away and opens her arms. Mocchi doesn’t wait a second to walk over to her to give her a big hug. “If there is anyone who deserves the saintess title, or Goddess in this case, it’s you.” 

“Surely that’s an act of kindness everyone would show, right?” I reply. 

My sister puts down one delicious looking strawberry milkshake in front of me after which she uses her now free hand to pet Pocky. “I think you’d be surprised about that, sis. There’s some awful people around. I mean… you don’t need to look further than the people who birthed us.” 

“I know… but still…” 

“There is more goodness in this world than there is evil, that’s for sure. But there’s also a lot of indifferentness, and that’s almost just as bad.” Gamma says. “So it is great that you and your family are at least a beacon of hope. Keep spreading your kindness around and everything will be just fine. Especially now that you are divine, the influence you can have is enormous, and for you that counts double, both here on Earth as back in Turn of Destiny.”

“Will her influence on Earth be just as big as on Haurchefaud?” 

“Possibly, yes. Probably not in the same way as there but I don’t think you should underestimate the power of one divine being. Even though she is still quite the upstart.” 

 

“Hmmm. That’s something to think about.” 

I clench my teeth to which my sister puts her hand on my shoulder. 

“I know it’s not something you like, but you still have us to lean on.” She pats my shoulder twice before she turns back to Gamma. “By the way, I don’t think we ever asked. But do you have followers?” 

-Oh, I actually didn’t think about that…- 

“Me?” Gamma points at herself and then puts down the watch to scratch her chin. “I wouldn’t know the precise amount, I kind of stopped paying attention to that a while ago. But as for the number of planets, it’s at least twelve.” 

“There’s twelve planets out there who see you as their Goddess?” 

“At least twelve.” Gamma confirms. 

“What, really?” 

“Yeah.” Gamma shrugs. “It’s not that strange. At least mine are all in the same dimension. Unlike V’s.” 

“Wow… okay….” My sister seems really surprised by the fact. It’s definitely impressive, that’s for sure. 

“What do your followers worship you for?” I decide to ask. The conversation did get me a bit curious too. 

“Take a guess.” Gamma picks the watch up again but doesn’t continue fiddling with it. Instead she just stares at me with anticipation. She must like playing guessing games. 

“Hmmm…” I scratch my head. “Is it something technology related?” 

Gamma nods with a happy smile. “Of course it is, that’s pretty obvious, isn’t it?” She points at herself. “The people who worship me belong to a technocratic civilization. I’m their Goddess of knowledge and technological advancement.” 

“Did you create them?” My sister asks, having rebounded from her surprise. 

“No, another God created me to watch over it. It was practically an orphaned world, much like this one and Haurchefaud, at that point. I decided to take the form of the most numerous intelligent species on their planet and help them a hand. Guiding them at certain points in time.”

“That’s quite hands-on.” My sister comments. 

“It’s not like I was there constantly.” Gamma shrugs. “Sometimes you need to take a step back too.”

“So you have parents as well?” I ask. 

“If you refer to the God who created me, no I don’t. We are not really on speaking terms.” 

“How so?” 

“Well, turns out they created me to grow their own power. Other gods didn’t really like that. Me and the Gods they created next to me, also didn’t like to be used as tools. We deposed of him and that’s one of the reasons why your situation now is a little bit iffy.”

“If I remember correctly, Veanya told me that the existence of you Gods was also still a rather big mystery to yourself…” 

“You are asking if that’s the case, why was the God who created me, able to create me?” 

I nod. 

“The answer to that is that we don’t know.” 

“Well, that’s anticlimactic.” My sister replies. 

“Look, we can’t help it that they just decided to bleep out of existence once they noticed everyone was turning against them, alright?” 

“And because that God was set on gaining power they probably didn’t share the knowledge either?” 

“Yes, you’ve been paying attention, that’s good.” Gamma smiles at me. “There’s a small committee working on unraveling the mystery behind your existence at this very moment. Because it might be a bit of a breakthrough. In a way there’s similarities with how we were brought into existence. Since we both practically inherited orphaned worlds.” 

 

“An entire committee? That doesn’t sound… reassuring… What if they deem me… faulty?” 

“They won’t do that.” Gamma shakes her hands in front of her. “You don’t need to worry about that. The big difference is that V didn’t create you to gain power for herself. Nor are you an evil being. The entire skill based thing is interesting and you can gain considerable power like that. But even that is not terribly concerning. As long as you don’t go claiming worlds that are owned by other gods and start fights with them, it’ll be a-okay.” Gamma gives me a thumbs up. 

“This starts sounding a lot like politics…. and I don’t like that.” My sister crosses her arms. 

Gamma shrugs “And that’s why I like to stay out of it. It’s the favorite pastime of the ancient gods though.” 

“What if they decide to come and take a look at what’s going on?” I ask. “I’d rather not get into any issues with them. Ancient sounds pretty scary.” 

“In the unlikely event that they do come along. Just answer their questions. And if you want someone to help you. Just call me or V, or both. But the possibility is so minimal that you don’t need to fret about it.” 

“Okay…” I have been know to attract bad luck at times though…

 

Gamma proceeds with the watch for a while longer while we both enjoy our milkshakes. My sister is sitting next to me, playing a little quiz game with me while we wait. 

Until finally Gamma puts the watch in the palm of her hand and proceeds to show it to me. “Here, it should be calibrated now.” 

I want to take the watch but hesitate for a second. 

“No, go ahead, take it.” Gamma nods. 

I slowly pick the watch from her hand and put it against my wrist. “Do I just wear it like a normal watch?” 

“Pretty much, I also added an actual time function so you don’t need to wear two watch-like devices, that’d be a bit strange.” 

“Oh…” I fasten the watch around my wrist and take a look at the screen. It does look like a normal watch but at the bottom there’s a bar that's 10% filled with a smiling smiley next to it. At about 4/5th of the bar there’s a small stripe. 

“I assume this tells me when I get in the ‘danger zone’?” 

“It does.” Gamma nods. “In short. The smiley will tell you what mood you are in and the bar will indicate the progress towards your transformation threshold. At 80% the watch will start vibrating, meaning you need to calm yourself. The two most important emotions which the watch will show are regret, sadness, concern. This will show a crying smiley. The other is anger. Which will show an angry emote.” 

“Pretty straight forward.” My sister nods, looking at the watch over my shoulder. “Do you have any tips concerning how she should manage it?” 

“I think the most effective way will be to think of a situation that makes you feel the complete opposite of what you feel now. But you really do need to find your own way through that. As thinking about a happy situation when you are angry might actually make the anger stronger as you might continue your train of thought to ‘what I have lost’ or ‘what could have been’.” 

“Ah… That makes sense.” I nod. “Thank you.” 

“No problem. At least now you have a tool which you can rely on. If you need anything more, just call me.” Gamma winks with a smile. “Also, thanks for the milkshake.” She smiles at Lise and after that a portal appears and Gamma is gone, together with her tools. 

“Gamma is really bad at goodbyes, isn’t she?” I chuckle. 

“At least she wasn’t as hyper today as she normally is.” My sister lets go of a rather relieved sounding sigh. 

“Mhmm.” I nod and continue to look at my watch for a bit longer.

-At least the watch is somewhat fashionable too.-  

“By the way… you said you’d tell me what operation you had gone through.” 

“Right.” Lise nods. “It’s really stupid though. Not too long after I left to live by myself I fell really badly on my right knee because I slipped on some ice. So they had to do some work on my kneecap.” 

“Ouch.” 

“Yeah, at the time it did hurt but nowadays I luckily doesn’t hurt anymore. Long live medical science.” 

-Long live medical science indeed. Although I’m a bit sad she didn’t tell me before. But then again. Our parents would probably have found out that way too and that’s probably why she didn’t.-