Blink and you'll miss it, but there's a brief reference to my fic 'Playing Pieces' in here. Rereading it, and possibly my other Ellimist fics, 'Checkmate' and 'Emotional Blackmail,' might help your comprehension of certain, finer points here. That Ellimist is a tricky son-gun. I'm sure I've noted that they're all in continuity with this fic.

Also in regards to that reference—I'm working off the idea that the Ellimist, the Drode and Crayak can look into and influence the future (they're every when), but after a certain point, especially if it affects the outcome of their game, they can't quite call it for certain.

The Chee Chronicles: Chapter Ten: Wild

The Ellimist, in the form of a little Pemalite girl, smiled serenely. "So. You will help me?"

"Yeah, sure. Why not?" I answered. "Nothing's going on here," I added, looking around. No one, save the Ellimist and myself, had stirred yet. No one spoke, no one breathed… I couldn't hear the soft clangs as the gears inside my fellow Chee worked. It unnerved me.

"All right, then," said the pretend Pemalite.

And once he spoke that final syllable, I felt myself… removed. Detached. I was plucked up from my proper location in space-time, I felt, and the world began to spin and twirl and run and a million things…

But as the sensation persisted, I realized that it was not the world running around me, but the individual threads that make up the world. It was as if I was sitting outside of space-time; I could see forever in all directions, I could see beyond infinity, I realized. Blue, four-eyed quadrupeds and reptilian, bladed creatures were in one direction, and my dear friends, the gray, furry Pemalites in another. But I turned away from those glorious sights, in all times and directions.

Instead, I looked at myself, but even while I looked at that Chee designated 'Sendo,' with his triangular plates of silvery sutiiru, a purely Pemalite alloy, and whitecap, interlocking a thousand times into a torso, legs, arms and paws, crowned off with a head, that Sendo was looking at another Sendo, who was looking at another Sendo…

And as this paradox went on and on, at the same time, I could see so much more. Looking at myself looking at myself, I saw what was beyond the sutiiru and whitecap, I saw the circuitry and the crystal computer, with the algorithms that spelled everything I am, was, and ever will be. I saw every bit of coding Dach had formulated, and every tweak Lubis had made to change the programming from Niomee into me.

And I saw this a million, million times! Over and over and over! I could see what I was doing while seeing what I was doing!

"Is this the power you have, Ellimist?"someone wondered. And it was not I.

But the Ellimist was not disturbed. He was no longer a juvenile Pemalite, but a something, a something that appeared beyond my mortal, mechanical comprehension. Light and darkness in equal measures, biological and mechanical in some strange sense, physical and ghostly all at once.

A god.

"Oh, no, oh, no," cackled the mysterious someone. "This old fool? Toomin? A god? Don't make me laugh!"

I don't know how I knew, I don't know how it was possible for a disembodied mass (was he mass? Was he matter?) to do so, but I felt that the Ellimist turned to this mysterious someone, and he smiled. Smiled, at this rude, pretentious being.

"Oh, Drode," said he, speaking verbally, as this 'Drode' did. "You mustn't tease him. He does not have your grand perspective."

"Better gain it soon, though, huh?" answered the creature. He came into focus then, became visible. A reptilian creature, with wrinkled skin, balanced on a tail. His eyes were intelligent, but mocking, and ringed with bright green. His arms seemed to be good for little more than waving in the air.

"Not necessarily. Unlike your master, I do not feel the need to have a henchman present for me to cackle to." And then that sensation of him turning to me, facing me. "Chee-Sendo, this is the Drode," he introduced. "My favor will put you against him."

"Against?" I repeated. "Like in a game?"

The Drode laughed. "A game!" he chortled. "How wonderful, to be so right and yet so wrong at the same time! I love it!" He clapped his thin little hands. "Yes, yes, you silly little robot--"

"Android," I interrupted coolly. "I am an android, a machine designed to resemble a lifeform. Not a robot."

"Oh, boo-hoo," sneered the Drode. "An android, wow. I've been told."

"It is a valid distinction," the Ellimist said mildly.

"It is not," the Drode contradicted. He turned to me, a mocking smile beaming at me cheerfully. "Robot, android, cyborg—all are equally flawed. All are created by mortals, or biologicals, as you say, little Chee." One wave of his useless arm, one taunting cackle. "Your biological creators, your masters—old Toomin here did his best to make them perfect."

"And succeeded!" I snapped. I don't know why. Obviously this little creature serves Crayak. Obviously Crayak is the equal of the Ellimist. Obviously Crayak can imbue the Drode with the power to destroy me utterly, from the inside out, from the past to the future.

But the Drode merely looked at me pityingly. "Dear, dear Sendo"—I was really getting tired of being called that—"Is that computer in your head malfunctioning?" The Drode had fixed his voice to be syrupy sweet, sticky… ensnaring, if I wasn't careful. "Weren't you watching the Howlers today? Surely, if your mistress was perfect, your dear, sweet, Dach, loving to you as a mother would be, she wouldn't have been killed. Hm?"

He didn't stop there. "As they are flawed, so you are more flawed! If the most Supreme Being in the universe--"

"Why, Drode!" the Ellimist interrupted with a steely smile. "I didn't know you cared."

"Shut up," the Drode said casually. He smirked triumphantly as he brought his point home. "If my master couldn't succeed with creating the perfect race, if his perfect weapons have a fatal flaw, so, surely, do the Ellimist's—the Pemalites. And if the Pemalites are flawed, so too must be their creations. If perfection can't duplicate itself, imperfection has no chance, wouldn't you agree?

"If perfection's creations—imperfection—are flawed, then wouldn't you agree it's reasonable that imperfection's creations are also flawed, in a proportion equal to flaws from perfection to imperfection? You are imperfection's creation, Chee-Sendo. What does that make you—other than helpless? A mistake? A walking, talking mess of circuitry and crystal, stuck in his allocated space-time location, stuck here with Toomin the Ellimist, who cannot help him or his masters when he so dearly wants to?"

"That will be enough of that," said the Ellimist. "There is still the matter of my favor."

The Drode looked at me critically. "Am I done, then?"

"Apparently."

"Lovely. Well, then, I have one more thing to say, Ere—I mean, Chee-Sendo." He smirked. "Do not let the bear sleep."

"Oh, come now, that's cheating. Not to mention you're confusing him."

He certainly was; what on Pema was a bear?

The Drode pretended to consider that. "I suppose so. I haven't checked the score in some time, but Arbron was losing quite spectacularly last I did. My warning may be entirely invalid. It is hard to say…"

With that, he was gone. No flashing lights, no sound effects; one minute there was the Drode, the next there was none.