"Eureka was corallian and human at the same time," she'd been speaking with Darui and the other Kage, via a form of conference call, for the past twenty minutes. They'd agreed to listen to the information, and per Eien's insistence that the five of them be made aware of such important information together; it had taken a little time for the arrangements to be made - but not all too much time, afterall.


They'd already been discussing why Eureka ended up creating the Shinju, and the culture of the time - but there was a lot of information to update them on before they reached the chain of events leading to it's creation to begin with.

For starters, Eien had to remind them about the 10,000 years of silence - the time between when humanity had fled the earth and then returned to it, only 4,000 years ago from the current time they were living in.

She'd explained that the humans that came back to the earth hadn't recognized that it was their homeworld at first, because the corallians had changed the shape of the planet's continents and oceans so drastically. In addition, all of the lifeforms had initially been forced to fuse with the corallians - during their original, terribly excited state in which they forgot about time itself. During that era, it wasn't until after there was nothing left to fuse with, that eventually time 'caught up' with the corallians' perception, and they realized they were alone. It was then that they first forced nearly 50% of their beings into a deep sleep, to help other lifeforms grow and evolve - the corallians feared that if they kept themselves awake, no other life could grow and develop as their coral cluster bodies would immediately, automatically, seek out and fuse with the new life, stopping them from ever becoming something else - something more.

That was why new plantlife and animal life had already taken hold when the humans returned. So that in addition to the changes in terrain and ocean coverage, led humans to believe this was just some other new planet to try and develop. It also meant there were still humans from that initial exodus that lived out there, somewhere amongst the stars.


Eien declined to reveal all of that to them, as it would lead them off track of what they were discussing about the Shinju's origins and Eureka. Instead, she focused on revealing to them that it wasn't until the human government that'd been set up in developing this 'new' planet, realized that according to the astrology and the location of this planet, along with other aspects of it's star system, that this was the earth... their homeworld. That government had elected to keep the information secret, in order to offset the widespread panic and hysteria it would cause. Needless to say, people would probably try to leave again - and for whatever reasons, that government had decided they'd rather stay.

If this hadn't been the story, the corallians might still be alone. Or they might be interacting with a different lifeform than humans at this time...

Diverting her thoughts from these, and refocusing on their intended discussion, Eien had to explain some of the nitty-gritty details of that human government. Like the fact it was ruled by the Novak family, the royalty of the time, until Dewey Novak, the elder brother, murdered his father in cold blood, out of some old family superstition - which Eien declined to reveal, as she also did not have the full facts on it - and out of jealousy for his younger brother, Holland.

It was this event that led the nobility to deny his claim to the throne, and instead superimposed a council of three sages. These were very similar to the Daimyo of today, in that they directed the nation's economy, legal, and military decisions. The weight of their influence could be seen everywhere, and as such, these Sages were protected at all costs and spared no luxury or expense.


Revisiting the time after this council was superimposed, Eien explained that the military had discovered a girl that seemed to have been grown out of rocks - the scub coral - which back then, humanity didn't even recognize as a lifeform. Due to the lies of their government, the people believed these rocks were just that - strange rocks, and that sometimes earthquakes occurred. Their government protected the people from the volatile nature of this planet's terrain by creating massive towers which sent great, gigantic metal rods deep into the earth's crust - rods created out of the same thing as the black chakra rods: dead, corrupted scub coral. But of course, the people didn't know this - and back then, the scub coral hadn't realized it either.

They only thought that this tactic might work to keep the coral from moving around too much - and causing massive damage and earthquakes.


The girl who was found was given the name 'Eureka' - which Eien mentioned was a Greek word meaning 'I have found it' - something that was said with joy back in those days and had ties to scholarly intentions and intriguing new discoveries. She kept the thought to herself, but Eien realized the connection between humanity naming that corallian girl a word out of the Greek language, when a thousand years later, Kaguya would become obsessed with the idea of Genesis - which also was a Greek word.


Eureka didn't know anything - human language, how to make sound or walk, nothing. She was put into the world with absolutely no information whatsoever - the opposite of Eien: Eureka was a blank slate. The humans worked with her for a good amount of time, but eventually, due to the strange construct that was found near her - a large, humanoid archetype which the scientists realized they could not influence or control except through Eureka - that Eureka and this strange archetype were militarized. At first, the purpose for putting machine and robotic parts on this gigantic humanoid thing that was partly rock, partly flesh - was simply to heighten the interaction that only Eureka was able to draw out of the thing. She could, through physical touch, emit a type of energy that nothing else could emit, and that energy somehow communicated with the archetype, telling it what Eureka wanted it to do - the thing could then choose to walk, change it's shape, so on and so forth. The scientists realized it was almost like a partner to her - an aid of sorts, but one that also held the possibility of being a vehicle or weapon.

When this information came to the man who had been working his way up in the military, after being placed in it due to political arrangements and a general sense that he was atoning for his past wrongs - Dewey Novak, then the head of the small military division dedicated to protecting this research facility, the man had decided to militarize the archetype and push it further in scientific testing and study. At first, it was just to try and find out the vehicular limits of the thing - it was also discovered to be capable of using an oversized Ref board, which Eien explained that in those days, because so much more of the corallians were active, the trapar level was much, much, much higher than anything that could exist these days. And Ref boards were used as a form of flight, relying on trapars to lift the board and it's rider into the air.

Ref boards were made from the scales of skyfish, a species that had evolved during the 10,000 years humanity was absent. These skyfish flew using trapars - their scales sort of 'reflected' the particles and allowed them to take advantage of the changes in physics to fly through the sky as easily as if they were surfing through water. And more, that trapars would then change color due to the interaction and could glow green - and more than even that, the changes in the light spectrum also meant that shifting between a highly concentrated stream of trapars to a lowly-concentrated stream of trapars in the skies, meant that things could even seem to 'disappear' as the light spectrum shifted, or that different colors of glowing lights would show, rainbows, and so many other phenomena.

Eien had to cut herself short, as that was a very interesting time that she would have loved to live in. She finished by mentioning that the humans of those days had created technologies meant to take advantage of the trapars in many ways, using them as an energy source, or for flight via finely processed and refined skyfish scales, and so much more.


Finally, Eien revealed that Eureka was eventually forced to use her and her aid - dubbed the Nirvash Type Zero - in a military strike to wipe out the Vodarac people. There were a lot of questions around the table about who the Vodarac were, and Eien only stated that they were a people whose religious beliefs were that the corallians were a living being, and a highly advanced one - these people didn't worship the corallians as gods, but they believed the corallians wanted to show and help humanity along the way to enlightenment. This earned a comment from Darui, who stated something about worshiping a thing that makes people fuse with it, but his words were largely ignored. Eien continued in explaining that because the Vodarac saw the corallians as living beings, the government of the time was worried that the information may incite it's people to realize that this was the earth - and thus result in a mass panic and fleeing of the world, when in fact, they didn't have the resources or the tools - the ships - available to get everyone off the planet if that did occur. It would result in massive catastrophes.

And because of this concern, the government had started passing laws limiting the Vodarac people's freedom and their access to jobs, civil rights, tax advantages, medical care, and so on and so forth. The Vodarac responded by saying they were being unfairly treated due to their religion, and that they had rights, and they began butting heads with the government. The government responded by inciting, under the table and through the free media, propaganda against the Vodarac - making most people see them as outlandish and weird, scary even.

The Vodarac then responded by gathering it's people in their holy city, and releasing their own propaganda. The ruling council then caught wind of a mass press release that would soon be held by the Vodarac's leading people, and thus they ordered - under the strictest of secrecy -that Dewey Novak, now set to elevate his position to that of a Colonel - to obliterate the Vodarac's holy city. They were labeled as terrorists by the government, and it was spread that the government had ordered this attack because of threats they had received from reliable and long ongoing investigations into the Vodarac people. They were already seen poorly by the vast majority of the populace, so this kind of deception came easily.

However, during that time, Holland Novak - the younger of the two brothers once set up for royalty, and who never wanted anything to do with the throne or politics at all - he met a Vodarac priest named Norb, whom had interacted with the very first humanoid corallian -Sakuya. These two had become partners in secret, living in lands largely only known to the Vodarac, and as such, they attempted to get through the Zone - a place that Eien had already mentioned a few times to the five Kage she was now speaking with.


When they asked why Sakuya and Norb tried to get through the Zone, Eien admitted she had no clue why, except that both Sakuya and Eureka were put into the world with absolutely no information whatsoever, and both were tasked with finding and interacting with a human partner with the intent of them both getting through the Zone. She continued to explain that back then, the corallians were trying to be careful and limit themselves so as not to frighten or harm humanity - they had just been forced to be alone for 10,000 years. And now that humans had returned, they were trying to find out if coexistence on this planet was even possible at all to begin with - but they also knew they had to be very, very careful so as not to scare the humans away or to cause undue harm to them.

They next asked Eien why it was humans the corallians were so concerned with - why not any other animal or lifeform? And why did it matter if corallians could coexist with humans, when they had so very many people and animals and things that they had already fused with in and of themselves? Why would it matter to coexist with a lifeform outside of what they already had, which was so very much in comparison?

Eien had to remind them, that in the corallian's higher state of existence, all information is shared. That meant that yes, while so many people and animals and things existed within the corallians, they also all knew each other already. And yes, they could as individuals continue to have relationships, continue to learn and be happy and be good to one another - and to just live like that for all of eternity. But the problem was that the corallians had reached a point, several times, where they had nothing new going on. And they had realized this during those 10,000 years alone - Eien told them, "Think about it. If time is perceived differently by corallians, then all that time they - that we - spent alone, we were already doing just that - talking to one another, learning, having relationships with one another. But we came to a point, that we realized, there is a great deal of importance in having someone other than yourself to talk to. The Corallians see humans as the only other intelligent lifeform on the planet that has the capacity for communication," with these words, she revealed more of just how the corallians actually do see humans, and what they wanted - to have a relationship and to coexist peacefully.

She then explained that while yes, the corallians and those they've fused with do exist as individuals, when an individual gets 'full' of all the information they can possibly have available to them, and that happens to another individual, and then more and more and more, until finally, the entirety of the corallians have become 'filled up' - that is, they literally cannot learn, communicate, or relate to one another in new and different ways anymore. For them, what this means is death. It would be like literally filling one's mind with so much information that it bogs a person down to the point that they start to die. "We literally think ourselves to death, as the amount of information we have to process and our ability to do so is relative to the total size of all coral clusters."

By not processing new information, corallians end up dying. So actually, it's a very bad and dumb idea for them to fuse with every living thing on the planet. But it's also in their nature, if they become excited to the point that fusing goes unchecked.


There were a few more rounds and rounds of questions, they got off track for a while before getting back to Norb and Holland.

Eien explained that due to the much higher concentration of trapars, this interacted with human's old technology in that it caused electromagnetic interference - so that everything that used to work, didn't. But people didn't have the time or resources, initially, to come up with new technology which was completely reliant on this new trapar energy. So instead, while investigating the skyfish scales and other things, humans developed something called a Compac drive. The Compac drive was filled with a fluid - refined skyfish scales processed, liquefied, broken down and with some other chemical additives put in it, then sealed in a tube and topped off with a specialized wiring and sensor system. One would have to plug this into an item that was hindered by the electromagnetic interference, so that the trapars causing the interference would be drawn and focused up into the Compac drive's liquid, then flushed out towards the top - invisibly reverting back into trapars in the air surrounding people. This was the only way they could still use their old technologies - things like cars, planes, computers, pretty much any advanced mechanical or computerized item.

Eien couldn't get into the exact science of what caused the interference and how these Compac drives worked, but she was made to promise them that it was something she'd help them look into, as it could become important. Finally, Eien tied in why this information was important when she revealed that the Vodarac priest, Norb, had implanted a Compac drive within his chest - and had learned to attune his own slight biological electromagnetic system in his body, however very slight it is in organic lifeforms, to use the Compac drive in communicating directly to the scub coral itself - and in fact, he could raise the scub coral up out of the ground by simply moving his hand, or just concentrating.

It was this tactic that allowed Norb to escape when Holland Novak was forced, via the military and some possible dishonorable actions by himself, the military, and his brother - to attempt to capture or assassinate Norb, as he was one of the Vodarac's leaders.

Norb ended up escaping, but his words to Holland caused the younger brother to leave the military and recognize the scub coral as living beings - abducting Eureka, whom he learned was a corallian girl, and stealing an advanced prototype ship at the same time. He was also, miraculously, somehow able to steal the Nirvash Type Zero - which the military had used as a foundational example for other mecha units modeled after it.


A war ended up breaking out over it, Holland and Dewey the heads of each side, and Eureka's human partner and lover, Renton Thurston, the son of a man who worked with Eureka when she was first discovered and disappeared in a phenomena known as the 'Summer of Love' - which Eien realized sounded ridiculous in the same way that Might Guy and Rock Lee's titles of some things sounded so very, very ridiculous. She had to resist making a face at the thought.

Eien continued before being cut off with more questions, stating that there had been only two times this phenomena had ever occurred: the first when Renton's father, Adroc, was swallowed by it; though the reasons which caused it were unclear. The second was when Eureka and Renton were swallowed by it, and the Shinju created.


Now Eien got to the finality of their story: the events leading to that initial creation of the Shinju itself.

The war had resulted in Dewey Novak becoming obsessed with killing off the scub coral, and he realized that he could achieve this goal most effectively by annihilating the control cluster. Using a tactical orbital bombardment system, and analyzing the ways the scub coral responded to these attacks, Dewey and his team of government-paid scientists deducted precisely where the control cluster was located.

At the same time, Holland, Eureka, Renton, and their allies had realized what Dewey was trying to do, and were attempting to stop him - as destroying the control cluster would result in the scub coral immediately surpassing the Question Limitation. They would overreact, and space and time would tear itself apart, a hole would open in the very fabrics of the universe and the whole earth and everything in it's vicinity would be swallowed up into a void - wiped out, vanished, gone - as if it never had existed in the first place.

The scub coral knew this would happen because they nearly surpassed the Question Limitation once before. Eien revealed that this had occurred about two to three thousand years before humanity returned to the planet, because the scub coral were thinking so much, but also so very 'bogged down', that they could more easily approach and surpass the Limitation at that time, as they were overworking themselves without realizing it. They avoided completely surpassing the Limitation then by forcing another 30% of their beings into a deep slumber - meaning that when humanity returned, 80% of the scub coral were already in that deep sleep. To protect the earth and all the other lifeforms that were living upon it.


The atmosphere of that room had shifted, and even Darui had nothing to say. Eien was glad that the weight of their efforts was finally sinking in, and she continued after a minute: "So when Dewey attacked the control cluster, he very nearly did kill it all off. But not all of it... And so, the corallians needed someone - someone who was a corallian - to become a new physical shell for the foundations of a new control cluster. Eureka and the Nirvash were the only non-stone type physical corallians close enough to save them in time, there was one other girl who was a candidate - Anemone - but she was a... hmmm... she was a human girl that human scientists forced into becoming a hybrid corallian through their own experimentation." Eien turned herself away from thinking about the horrific experiments, the madness and desperation that had occurred back then.

"So, I'm not even sure that it would have worked if Anemone were to have..." She digressed again, focusing on the facts of the story. "In any case, Eureka, the Nirvash, and Renton; sacrificed themselves to create the foundations for a new control cluster, and unfortunately; because of the damage that had already been done and the laws of physics that were already beginning to break and unravel themselves - and the fact that there wasn't enough of the awake coral clusters left to force into a deep sleep and prevent the Limitation, the corallian's only option was to increase their size... and to do that meant fusing. So in addition to forcing all but the last 10% of the corallians into a deep slumber, they..." Eien's throat caught a lump in it, noticeably to the others she was talking with, but they did not interrupt as she collected herself, "They had to force half of the world's human population to fuse with them, as well."


The black Zetsu had once insinuated that it wasn't only one time that the corallians had forced humans to fouse with them. That it wasn't only Kaguya's fault, or only Kaguya's will, that the corallians did such things. That Eien was part of a lifeform that has done, and would do, such terrible things.

They realized this now, more fully.


And Eien, too, realized this as well.

"I... I hadn't..." She had known that the possibility was there. She had been part of the corallians when they all experienced it. But due to what Kaguya did to the Shinju, and to the corallians, and due to the scattering and fracturing of their memories - Eien had truly, completely, forgotten. And more than that, the rest of the people in Eien's semi-separated part of the control cluster - those that were forced by Kaguya to become part of the Gedo Mazo and fuse with the Shinju - they had no clue, either. It would be a great blow to their trust, when they did find out. And she had no intention of keeping the information from them... despite how difficult that could be. They needed to know.


Eien's revelation was obvious to those she was speaking with, so much so, that it was one of them that first spoke up before she starting fretting, "So... you're telling us the Shinju was created with the intent to protect?" Eien caught his eyes - empty and a strange mix of mint-and-azure due to the technology of the lightning-type chakra projection that gave off such a mixed hue with it's blue glow. "Yes," she confirmed, and then the Tsuchikage asked, "But it had to force half of the world's population to fuse with it in order to do so?" To that Eien's head dropped a bit, not to show disrespect, but simply out of consideration - she was thinking, and after a moment, "...Yes," she confirmed it for them, there was no more dabbling around in the dark.

"And perhaps, we've realized," she was speaking out of information that the rest of the control cluster was sharing with her, speaking as an envoy for them now, "that it may have been overdone by anywhere from 18-21%."

Darui chimed in at that, "These are people you are talking about, not statistics!"


Her eyes caught his, a mix of pain, restrained sorrow, and a ferocity - also restrained, but not so much as the former. To her, his statement was an obvious outcry - one she was far too familiar with.

'Of course I know these are people,' Eien would have thought, 'People that I never chose to harm! People that I am trying to save, and protect!'