Tieria had decided to change the policy against humans doing depictions of him almost on a whim. He merely wanted to make Mileina happy. As it so often happened, spurious decisions could and in this case did, snowball into unpredictable developments whose ramifications, in hindsight were mystifying in how unlikely and yet almost unavoidable.

Shortly after his proclamation Tieria received a very elaborately worded invitation from the temple he had visited. It humbly requested his presence at the unveiling of the first Tieria Erde exhibition, which happened to be a collection of depictions of himself done by devotees.

Tieria wondered if they were emulating Ribbons's style in invitations but it was probably a coincidence. In this case the humility was very real. He considered his options. Unlike Ribbons's party, this event was one he could easily skip. There was no need to even give a justification or an excuse.

But Tieria saw potential here. Granted, he had absolutely no desire to inspect rows upon rows of pictures of himself. It was the very definition of dull and pointless but if he was reading the situation correctly- or even if he could find a way of tweaking it in such a direction- then there was a real chance at making a difference.

So Tieria decided to accept. On his way to the shuttle he was met with Ribbons, faux casually leaning against the wall leading to the docking bay. Ribbons had a whole vocabulary of body language that he had mostly borrowed from his borderline obsessive poring into human behavior and this particular pose had been honed to hint at his nonchalance while at the same time barely covering the need to burst into something much more intense, be it spite, controlling paranoia, sly confidence, lust or more likely a combination of all of the above to varying degrees. Dealing with Ribbons was absolutely exhausting: Tieria would rather skip to the sex and be done with all this but it could not be.

And as bad as it was, Tieria had no choice to make it a lot worse. All for a rather forlorn hope. Maybe the saying was true and the more things changed the more they stayed the same, here he was, again stacked up against impossible odds, again knowing it, again resolute to brace it. Might very well be faulty programming, the notion had occurred to him many a time. Would Veda just reset them all and end it all, he wondered.

"Why, Tieria. To think you are leaving us."

"I won't be gone long."

Ribbons made a show of crossing his arms. The billowy sleeves of the pajama uniform rendered the gesture almost endearing.

"You'll be sorely missed. That twin of yours could not be bothered to be here at such a time, truly, I will never understood Regene."

Ribbons shrugged in wonderment.

"I am sure Regene is busy as it is. And I really won't be gone long."

Ribbons detached himself from the wall and got close enough to trace a very light caress on Tieria's chin.

"You will back in time for my birthday?"

"I will, couldn't miss it for the world."

"Good…"

Ribbons placed a kiss on the hollow of Tieria's throat, the mere shadow of his lips becoming more insistent. Tieria felt his body rev up as it always did. Just then Ribbons stepped back, the satisfied grin on his face that of pure mischief. "Have fun with your humans, then. Don't let me keep you any longer."

A stab of annoyance could not be avoided. Tieria tried to smooth it away.

"Right. See you soon, then."

"Bye bye. Let me know how it went."

The smirk was beaming as Ribbons strutted away. Tieria took a couple of seconds to recompose himself. There would be plenty of time for at least a quickie but Ribbons was withholding sex for the purpose of making Tieria realize how much Tieria needed it.

And unfortunately, it worked.

By the time Tieria settled on the shuttle, his mind was already on other things. He nodded reassurance at Mileina as he confirmed the route and prepped the ship to takeoff. Initially Tieria had meant to leave her behind. The last thing he wanted was to further entangle her in his bizarre cult but she was so thrilled to go that he could not deny her. More than that, Tieria realized that if he wanted Mileina to commit to learning, he had to reward her properly. He had been meaning to show her how pleased he was with her steady progress and this was a good opportunity.

Tieria was received with the expected pomp and circumstance. He had brought along a change of clothes so as to put on as much of a regal front as possible. Much waving to adoring crowds followed and meeting with high ranking priests.

Tieria immediately recognized the priest from the self-proclaimed human faction. He made sure to detain the man after the rest had crawled away.

With that done, Tieria hesitated. He needed to choose his words very carefully. The man remained on his hands and knees as was required of him.

"You may rise. At least, please lift your head from the floor."

The man obeyed. Tieria tried his most engaging smile. He felt nothing of ashamed of his attitude when they had first met and desperately in need of making amends. "I wanted to apologize to you. Last time we met, I treated you unfairly."

It was the man's turn to hesitate. He could not correct Tieria but at the time same he could not just accept the apology as it meant Tieria had done something wrong. So he struck a different note altogether.

"You honor me too much."

Tieria's smile grew.

"As you may remember, you asked me to appeal on the behalf of humanity before Ribbons. I have given this much thought and will try my utmost to help."

The man was all dismay.

"Lord Tieria, Your kindness is-"

"No so fast. Keep in mind that I am greatly limited in what I can accomplish, if anything at all. Do you understand?"

"Yes."

"Good. Also, it seems I cannot avoid being a god...but I'd like to choose just what kind of god I can be. What do you think of Tieria Erde also being a god of learning? Tieria Erde would sponsor the creation of schools."

Slipping into the third person came very naturally when he referred to his supposedly godly persona.

"Schools…"

The man sounded somewhat dubious. Tieria could not blame him. Humanity should never have trusted his kind. But as things now stood, Tieria was humanity's best- only, in fact- bet. He produced a blank sheet of paper and a pen, writing as he spoke.

"I have in mind a very basic curriculum to start with. "Reading and Writing", alongside with "Science and Mathematics". For now, this should be enough. What I want from you is a group of talented, intelligent members of the clergy to instruct on how to teach children. I leave the selection entirely up to you."

Tieria wrote more details on this curriculum and handed him the page. The man took it reverently and studied very thoughtfully. At he nodded at length.

"Yes, this seems possible."

"Good. Feel free to add to the curriculum as well. I'm still unsure on how to properly train teachers but I am sure it can be done."

The man hesitated.

"Will they be learning Innovate?"

Tieria shivered at the thought. Might as well teach them Esperanto.

"No. Unless it becomes strictly necessary."

Which, come to think of it, might very well be the case. Ribbons might disapprove of the whole thing entirely and if he were to seriously oppose it, Tieria's hands would be tied. But Innovate might very well get Ribbons to let the whole thing go.

"I understand."

Tieria blinked as he realized the man very likely did understand. It suddenly occurred to Tieria that he did not even know his name.

"What was your name again?"

The man bowed very low.

"Samiel, Your Honored Innovator."

Tieria chuckled.

"Samiel, I'd really like you to address me like an actual person and not a god but you may have a point there. It wouldn't do to get into the habit of being too familiar with our kind. Isn't that so?"

Samiel's smile was cunning. It gave Tieria hope.

Tieria studied the walls of the bedroom. It was late at night, all his many appointments finally over. The works of art depicting His Greatness turned out to be remarkably interesting. Given Tieria's status as a kind of Athena of sorts, they were all very caste yet quite well done in their own right. They were all heavily influenced by the style official Innovator art had imposed on them but not entirely so. There were glimpses of originality, cleverly accomplished tones of purple and their combination with several white attires of all cuts and types.

Now that he was finally alone, Tieria could not help but stare at the walls. He felt drained despite having spent the day merely nodding, looking at pictures and then dining. But it had taught him that being around humans like this was something he had grown unused to. The highly formal posture he was forced into had much to do with as did the grating fawning from the part of the humans but Tieria suspected there was to it.

He now stared at the walls, half-afraid Regene would burst from one and half-hoping he would do so. It was a peculiar kind of loneliness that he thought he had long ago lost but here it was, plaguing him yet again. The loneliness of being set apart from everyone around him, of being utterly unable to being like them, lost, for all purposes, inside himself. Ironically, Tieria had felt this amid the Innovators as well and odds are his longing for Regene had much to do with his knowing, on some level, that in the sameness that united them there was a means of feeling absolved.

Regene had once told him that the problem with him was that he was too lucid and unable to let himself be lulled by sweet illusions. As usual, there was some truth to Regene's sayings. The logical centers of Tieria's brain were fine tuned to such a degree that they kept functioning at their best even when reality contradicted them, when the complicated mess of conflicted emotions bogged him down, even when those around him tossed their own logic to the wind for differing reasons, all of which ended in disaster.

It was like being perfectly able to seeing the car was going to fly off the road and plummet down the canyon but not able of, at all, steering the wheel to avoid it.

In other words, Tieria's entire being seemed condemned to extreme futility. This was something he had never been able to fully convey to his teammates.

Tieria sat on the balcony, taking deep breaths of the flower scented night air. The purple colored garden was less garish in the dark and Tieria felt less constrained. He was painfully aware these were thoughts that were dangerous to entertain but he also knew he had to do so.

Time and time again during Tieria's tenure at Celestial Being- a strange way of putting it but he decided it would do for the time again- entirely irrational decisions would be taken that derailed things off the charted plans. These were not adaptations in real time, contrary to common belief Tieria was perfectly capable of improvising on the spot whenever the mission required it. What did bother him to the point of utter frustrations were the many ways in which his human teammates would deviate from long term goals for the sake of extremely limited side-missions that even if successful would accomplish precious little and were, in fact, much more likely to fail and entirely jeopardize everything. Even worse, the actual success of some of these only undercut the actual fulfillment of missions.

Tieria had tried, and mostly failed, to express just why this haphazard approach could not possibly work out. It was assumed that Tieria was just laser focused on the mission and thus would not allow for personal implications. And in a sense, that was very true. But there was much more to it and only Sumeragi seemed to have realized it and by then it was far too late to make a difference.

Because Tieria's sustained adhesion to the plan was his personal way of being. If it could be discarded then Tieria's whole point in being with Celestial Being- which, amounted to his whole point in being, at all- was questioned and essentially made moot. It resulted in his being redundant and essentially a futile existence.

And all along, Regene had been paying very close attention to every single misstep, to every single entirely wrong and ever so human error of judgment. Tieria did not know precisely at what point this idea had become settled in his mind and to this day he had not asked Regene. If there was one thing he feared broaching with Regene, this was it. Be it as it may, even if the notion some Innovators held about a hierarchy between identical pairs turned out to be erroneous, Tieria could almost see Regene going over Celestial Being's interventions and drawing his own conclusions.

To this day it pained and perplexed Tieria that he was almost sure Regene's conclusions were his own. Where they differed is that Regene would surely find means of getting everyone to follow along.

Thus far, all this was old territory Tieria had gone over before. But he now went a bit further. What would have happened had Tieria stayed behind? If Regene were appointed to Celestial Being while Tieria stayed with Ribbons. Would Ribbons be obsessing over Regene now? Would things have panned out in such a radically different way Tieria could not even imagine?

Instead of getting embroiled in musings as to how Regene's superiority would have managed to overcome all obstacles, Tieria turned to how he, Tieria would have done if he had had the privilege of Regene's relative neutrality.

It was mere speculation except, of course, not entirely. Tieria had done much to forget as much as it was possible for him to forget that he was equipped with what Veda dubbed 'Predictability Drive'. In essence, it was a program that allowed Innovators to run immensely complex simulations by plugging in background information, a set of conditions, along a series of mathematical grids. Its accuracy depended on the quantity and quality of the info plugged and perhaps more importantly, on prior experience as the Drive learned from past experience in order to create increasingly more reliable models.

The Drive worked in real time, responding to new input immediately, and could be accessed consciously but it played a background role in establishing a theory of mind. Very frequently Tieria was not even sure whether he was using it or not, it was that ingrained.

The Drive meant that technically, Tieria could have a fairly accurate notion of hypothetical situations if he were to plug in the actual data.

Only once had Tieria explained about it to a human. He nearly gave a watered down version to Mileina when she asked him if he could read minds but had decided against it. But he had told Sumeragi, after ruling out his fellow pilots as utterly unable to even grasping the idea.

As he had told her then, the Drive worked better when handling larger quantities. It was more likely to predict how a society would react under under circumstances, less able to properly assess how particular groups would react and its scope was at its most limited when dealing with individuals.

Sumeragi had been a mixture of horrified and fascinated, a reaction that stayed with Tieria long after her death. Tieria had speculated as to whether the Drive could be of use if he were to die but his brain were not destroyed. Theoretically, at any rate, it should be possible to activate it. This was the reason why he had spoken to Sumeragi at all, despite its very much going against the protocol of not revealing personal information.

Sumeragi had been adamant against this course of action. Tieria understood it now, it was her own brand of compassion but it was also another example of humans making sure they screwed everything up. Again.

Tieria was aware that the parameters for each Drive were not the same across all Innovators. They could program their own Drive, within certain limits, depending on the priorities at hand. Not surprisingly, Ribbons's Drive had been carefully calibrated to perform at a higher level. So much so that it was usually sheer hubris that made him commit errors as Ribbons had a way of dismissing the Drive's input if he thought he could get away with it.

If it were true that the Drive was at its less reliable when processing individuals, this did not hold true between twins. Tieria could, at least theoretically, resort to the subsystem that would predict Regene's actions in all sorts of hypothetical scenarios.

In reality, Tieria was extremely loath to do so. Even when predicting Regene was so vital, Tieria had been very uncertain about using it. He knew that the very moment he turned his Drive in that direction, Regene would know. That scared him the most was not precisely that but that he had no idea how this knowledge had come to him in the first place. It was probably part of the basic programming but be it as it may, Tieria had the distinct impression it would be extremely dangerous to him. Not that Tieria refrained from putting himself in danger, that was, in essence, all he ever did but the nature of the danger in this particular instance was simply too great.

On a surface level, there was the obvious: whatever information the Drive provided it, Regene could deflect. Even if he turned to going full 3D chess and count on using the Drive so as to make Regene change in ways that benefited Tieria, it could only only backfire but wipe out the entity known as "Tieria Erde".

During his time with Celestial Being, every single kind of connection with Regene entailed the fear of Regene simply overrunning him entirely and, as he tried very hard to explain to Sumeragi but again, failed, just hijack his body. This was the ultimate "compromising of an asset" and he needed to stress if such a thing were to happen, or if they had a strong suspicion it might, they should simply shoot him dead.

But ironically, while Sumeragi would send him to sure death if the mission required it, she would hear nothing of this. Yet another infuriating detail of self-sabotaging.

Now, that Tieria would indulge in running the simulations to his heart's content if only to see what Regene would have acted in the past he remained very loath to do so. Regene would know but even if he did not, Tieria had such negative associations of his Drive in connection to Regene that he would rather just leave it alone.

Tieria shook his head. What he needed was to focus and what was ahead and test just what he could do.