With everything that has happened since he awakened on the ship, Shiki was overcome with the gravity of the situation. The weight of everything was not helping his frail body, and he suffered from one of his anemic spells shortly after the "Meet and Greet" concluded. Taking a chance to collect himself, Shiki bid farewell to everyone in the pod room after asking for directions for the Medbay. He may not know much the world he was in now, but hopefully they can run a diagnostic and possibly treat him.

If anything, they should have a comfy bed for him to lie down in, right?

He should have been dead.

He remembered lying miles below Terra’s surface, the whole planet shuddering, Keith lying beside him, and blood on the white marble. He remembered, too, knowing that Tony and the humans had come together to save that world… To learn that their Terra – no, that the whole universe! – had been destroyed, just when he thought he’d led everyone somewhere they could live in peace…

What kind of beings were the Ohm, to destroy humanity’s cradle? To slaughter billions of beings on the verge of a new way of life, before they could restore beautiful Terra…? It had been one thing to face the human armies of the Superior Domination system. The Mu were humanity’s children; he could understand their sadness, their fear, their anger, everything that drove them to chase the Shangri-La to the ends of the galaxy. Would he ever be able to understand the Ohm? To reason with them? If they came to a negotiation table, would he want to reason with them, knowing what they’d done to his people and their promised land? To Terra.

He pressed his tear-streaked face to the great windows of the observation deck, gazing out into the shifting reds of the Bleed and projecting grief strongly enough for any psychic aboard to feel. Somewhere above humanity’s home, Physis was gone, and Tony, and all the Mu he’d brought across the galaxy. He should have been dead, but he was alive, and everyone who he’d wanted to enjoy the new world was gone.

“We can’t change the past,” he murmured to the vortex. Somewhere beyond the Bleed, there was an infinite number of shining blue worlds. Those Terras could still be saved. They would still be saved. “But we can shape the future.”

He turned from the glass and back to the ship. It was a solid vessel with a good crew. Unlike the fragile Mu, many of the people onboard were warriors: trained, hardy, used to rough conditions and the psychological strain of prolonged combat, and all of them had a reason to fight. He didn’t know them or all of their stories well now, but he’d learn to understand them, and try to guide them as Blue had guided him, once upon a time. He’d been on this journey before – pulling a small band of castaways across a sea of stars. They’d reached their goal then, and they would reach it now, because his last words to Keith were as true here as they had been on Terra:

When all else was gone, there was hope.

Thank god for pants.

Chris had a look around the room where his sister had been sleeping for the past year, getting the feeling he'd never quite get used to the whole "alien organs" motif this place had going for it. It seemed nice enough, though, and he was curious to know who all the things on one side of the room belonged to.

"So, I guess it'd be an understatement to say I missed a lot," he said, giving Boon a belly rub on the bed next to him.