Explosions? Already? Alien spaceship knew how to start a day. Mutiny, suppression of the same, fast-onset abductee infighting, poor maintenance, random monster battle... the cause didn't matter; violence was enough to draw her attention. The novel environment made everything seem a lot more potentially interesting than back at the old alma mater.

Magical explosion, she realized. Even better. And...

She winced a bit at the scream, used to being the only person around who put out that kind of volume. Annoying. Not when she was doing it, of course. But...

She hadn't been wrong. It was the boy. And judging by the frankly epic nature of the outburst, he wasn't taking the news well.

Once she might not have cared. Once his idea of what was important had been a child's. But she'd molded him well in the last few months, and that meant that his opinions and hurts actually carried some small weight with her. Enough for their existence to be tolerated without immediate deprecation, at least.

Instead she flickered to his side, and said, "Get up, boy."

There were some lower life-forms clustered around as well, but she was ignoring them for now.