Chapter Thirty Seven

The room went silent.

Yuma looked to Rei who was now looking at Meyna in silence. Unable to take it any longer she finally spoke. "Half… Machina?" her voice shaken almost in a whisper as she stared at Meyna in shock. "But how? That's biologically impossible!" she looked right to Grithiff. "How can she be half Machina? How Grithiff?!"

His eyes remained locked on Meyna's sleeping form. "I don't know…" he let out a shaky breath as he grasped her hand, his thumb tracing back and forth along her face. She had not turned back as of yet, her body still encased within the black armor.

"What do you mean you don't know?" Yuma asked but Grithiff kept quiet. "How could you not know something like that unless…"

"All I know is," he cut her off. "Is that when she first began to show signs of her body changing was after the incident when she had been taken. When she was five Meyna was abducted, my father and a number of others from the Colony went after the person who took her. They had assistance from those who lived in the desert."

"You mean Colony 5?" Rei asked.

He shook his head. "No, these were not people who lived in a Colony, these people dwelled in the desert. I would have gone too by my mother told me not too, after… after he returned with Meyna, things began to change mainly…" he lifted his hand and tapped an index finger along the back of his neck. "Here, the device on the back of her neck began to change. My father and mother believed it was due to what had happened. We already had a number of Machina watch out for her; to monitor and let us know if something else had changed."

Rei frowned. "So your parents didn't just leave her with Machina because of their work."

"No, it was so that they could let us know if something else began to change. Meyna always had that device on the back of her neck even when she was born. At least that's what I was told by Daud…"

"Daud?" Yuma frowned as well. "Who's that?"

"Someone who knew Meyna very well…" he then changed the topic back at hand. "The first time her body changed after the event, I remember it clearly, she was screaming. A mix of crying and screaming, as the device grew and grew… it was like another form of growing pains. Only, this one was growing over her body. Like a second skin." he looked back to Meyna, eyes trailing down her body that was still covered in the black armor. "That black armor is a part of her, and from what the Machina told me, when she grew she could change it if needed much like anyone else of that race."

Yuma looked over Meyna her frown deepening. "That still doesn't explain why this happens, how is she half Machina?"

"I don't know…" he told her. "And honestly, I never cared, she is my sister and I always told myself the moment she came into my life that I would do everything in my power to protect her. Little did I know that her own power was still growing…"

"You mean about what happened with Colony 4?" Rei asked and Grithiff nodded.

"Yes, a year after the events with the abduction one of the Maichna, Eira, took Meyna in and began to teach her how to shift back and forth. But that she could only use that black armor in times of great peril. But…"

"Brother!" Meyna called him as he walked up the path to the Meyneth shrine. She came running part way and hugged him. "What are you doing here?"

"I couldn't find you," he said as he wrapped his arms around her. "What are you doing?"

She smiled up at him. "Eira has been showing me what I can do to shift!"

"Shift? You mean because of that thing on the back of your neck?"

"Yeah!" she tugged on his arm to follow her up the mountain. "Eira said that would stop if anyone tries to get me."

"However it takes a lot out of her," the Machina woman Eria said when the two reached the Meyneth shrine. "So she cannot do it all of the time."

Grithiff frowned. "Then why make her do that?" he asked Eria. "If it takes so much energy out of her, shouldn't it not be done, whatever this is."

"I wish I could say yes but, with how much her body is changing, and the ether levels within her also changing doing this will at least subside some of the affects."

He became quite, unsure what to say.

"It's okay Grithiff!" Meyna said to him. "Besides, I only do one shot, and it can disorientate whoever I aim at. Like when I was trying to get out of the fortress from the scary person there with Gen."

"Yes but…"

She cut him off. "See I'll show you."

"Meyna no don't!" Eria told her but it was too late.

Meyna turned and extended her arm, the black mechanical device seemed to grow from her neck along her right shoulder and down her arm to her hand. And right before his eyes he saw white Ether particles formed around her hand followed with a blast that completely destroyed a solitary tree.

He said nothing as he looked on in shock, what did he just see?

"See!" Meyna proclaimed. "Those mean people won't come after me ever again if I do this and scare them off." Her smile vanished when Grithiff grabbed her.

"Don't do that again!" he demanded as he shook her before hugging her tightly. "Please… please Meyna…"

She fell silent as she looked at her hand which turned back to normal before she hugged her brother back. "Is what I did really scary?"

"No," he said softly. "It's not scary, but we can't let others know. if someone were to take you again and you weren't able to protect yourself then I…" his shoulders began to shake. "I wouldn't know what to do." He wasn't afraid of her abilities, what he truly feared was the others, how would the others react if they knew that Meyna could make a freaking Ether cannon from her power alone. Was this what those people who kidnapped her truly wanted, or did they want to manipulate her into something monstrous? He didn't know, nor did he wish to know, he just didn't want Meyna to go through anymore horrible ordeals then what she already went through after what happened when she was taken.

Eria turned away with a look of self-sadness as if he understood the meaning of his words.

"Okay," Meyna said as Grithiff slowly pulled away to look at her as she smiled. "I won't do it, ever again. I promise," her smile fell slightly. "I'm sorry if I did something bad."

"It's alright Meyna," Eria said to her. "You need to be careful; I've mentioned this have I not?"

"Yes, I'm sorry Eria."

She shook her head as if saying in silence that she didn't need to apologize.

"Now then," Grithiff stood and offered her his hand and smiled at her. "Let's go home."

Her smile grew as she took it. "Okay!"

"A week later, the Telethia attacked the Colony…"

Rei looked to Meyna's sleeping form with shock. "You're saying that even back then she had such power?"

"And you think it was because of what happened brought this man with the Telethia?" Yuma added.

Grithiff nodded. "Yes," his eyes turned sad as he looked to Meyna. "If she were to know the truth, that the attack might have been because of what she was capable I don't think Meyna would be able to forgive herself from it all."

"But that's not her fault!" Rei snapped. "It's those people who attacked your Colony and Colony 13; they were the ones who did it, not Meyna!"

Yuma now looked to Meyna with a questioning stare. "But now the question is, why are these people after her, and what reason would it be? And how can she be…"

"It's because of her powers." They all turned and saw Igholt, staring at them with an angry glare with his arms folded across his chest, his shirt was partly undone from being looked at as his skin seemed to have become slightly pale from the loss of blood but that didn't stop him from looking extremely angry. "That is what we were able to deter why these people are after her…" his eyes narrowed on Grithiff. "We need to talk, now."

There was silence, almost a deafening kind, before Meyna heard the sound of her brother's voice and she opened her eyes and reached out for him only to find that there was nothing, nothing but countless stars in around her.

"Again with this place…" Meyna murmured as she stood looking around seeing that she was truly alone. Before recalling the events that had taken place before she collapsed. "Those cloaked people, like the one that attacked Colony 13, do they follow him? Why are they after me? And that man what is it that he wants from me?"

"What that man wants is hidden within your own body…"

That voice, Meyna turned and saw someone she didn't expect to see in this strange place. "Alvis?"

Alvis smiled as placed his hand on his hip. "Hello again Meyna,"

She eyed him with unease as her hand went to her throat. "What are you doing here?" but more to the question was how, she was a sleep within her own mind, wasn't she?

"I'm here to see you," he said simply. "I told you that you and I would see each other again at some point, only I had not thought it would be so soon after the last encounter. But then you are an anomaly after all."

"Why do you say that?" she demanded. "You and that man! How am I something that should not exist when I am clearly here!?"

"Do not get angry," he said softly. "I assure you it is by no means an insult; it is merely a statement of what you are. A being that should not exist, but one who clearly does. Hence the wording of what I used before, that is what you are, Miss Anomaly."

"Am I dead?" she asked dreading the question the moment it came for her lips.

He shook his head. "No you are not dead, you are merely asleep, after the attack with the Telethia your body succumbed to a great deal of stress and as a result your body could not take it causing you to black out."

"But where are we?" she asked looking around.

His smile sent a chill down her spine. "Where do you think we are?"

Meyna looked around; it had been the same place before, with stars, floating rocks and an endless black void. "I don't know…"

He was suddenly behind her, leaning over to whisper in her ear. "Relax; let your mind go, let it wander. The word will come to you." Meyna had jumped and covered her ear looking at him with a startled expression as he continued to smile at her. "Nothing here will hurt you, at least for now."

"That's not comforting you know…" she said in a deadpan tone which he merely shrugged. She looked around the place again, allowing her gaze to drift as well as her mind.

Sp…

Meyna frowned, a voice sounding like her own echoed in her mind.

Space… outer space.

"Outer space?" she repeated the word aloud with that frown still there. Alvis smiled and simply nodded in response. "How do I know that? And… how can you be here?"

"I am here because I am needed, that is all I can tell you on that regard. As to how you know where we are it is simple. Someone gave you that information, information that helps you react before you know what's going on."

"Who are you talking about?"

His smile returned, and another chill ran down her spine. He knew something, but she had a distinct feeling that he wasn't about to share it. Yet another thought came to her mind.

"Alvis?"

"Yes?"

"Didn't you die, or at least vanish?" in the book that Meyna had read she discovered where she had heard the name Alvis before, he was the one who guided Shulk to the path that he had walked in defeating Zanza, but then had vanished shortly after. No one knew what happened to him, and it had been presumed that Alvis had died; the info on Alvis was very spars there wasn't much about him and what he could truly do.

When she had finished her sentence however Alvis had suddenly vanished, an arm wrapped around her shoulders and his face leaned in close to her's. "Do I look dead to you?"

She nearly gasped at his sudden closeness of him as he smiled at her. "No…" she said softly as he moved away. "You don't."

"Then I am not dead then, am I?"

"Yes but…" she frowned once more was in information from the book somehow wrong? Could Alvis had received a long lasting lifespan on top of what he might have already had been given from Zanza?

Something about this didn't make sense.

"You said that you're here because you need to be, what reason would that be?"

His smile fell as his gaze turned to that of the endless void around them. "There has been a shift, a shift that was very gradual. Even after the events with Shulk and Zanza, I could feel that something had changed. That there was still something wanting to destroy and recreate the world from what it is now, and bring it back to what it was before."

"You mean the cycle of destruction and rebirth that Zanza did with the Bionis."

"Correct, I felt it, a few hundred years Shulk's death but I wasn't alone ether. There is a place far from the remains of the Bionis, and the Mechonis, hidden in the vastness of the sea itself. Within that place another felt it. That the powers of creation and destruction still dwelled strongly within this world were gods should no longer be…"

"I don't understand," she told him. "What does that have to do with me?"

The look he gave her spoke volumes. "Everything,"

"What the hell were you thinking?!" Igholt demanded angrily in another room closed off as the others stood in the hallway. "Do you have any idea what you just told them!?"

"I'm aware Igholt, but you don't have to shout. You honestly thought no one would start asking questions about why Meyna could change? It'd get out eventually, and you know as well as I do that it couldn't go on for long."

"That doesn't matter; you told them damn it, what if they start asking Meyna about this?"

"He is really laying into him huh," Rei said to Ethon.

"First time Ethon ever hear Iggy be so scary-mad. Ethon no like it when Iggy angry, he scary like another Bird Man."

"You're saying he's never acted like this before?" Yuma asked him.

Ethon shook his head. "No, Iggy normally calm Bird Man even when angry, Ethon never see this before but Lina might know more."

Yuma stilled. "You mean…"

"I've seen him like this before," Linada suddenly spoke from down the hall as she immerged from Meyna's room. "Back when she first changed, Igholt became fiercely determined to protect her at all costs. It was like a completely different side to him. It's rare when he acts like this." Her gaze then turned to Yuma and offered a slight smile. "Hello Yuma, it's been a while."

"It has indeed," she cast a slight narrowed glance to her. "Mother…"