"Just what do you three think you were doing? Going outside? At this time? Absolutely not. In case you haven't noticed, you could DIE out there!" Mycro's hair flared, her hands punctuating every little word, "You three know what is going on out there, you know very well." She was pacing back and forth, looking at the three stars. They were all equal height, staring at the floor, and listening.
"We're sorry Miss." They said, all at once. Mycro didn't say anything for a couple of moments, tensing up at the word 'Miss.' That was the last thing she wanted to be called, but occasionally it slips out, and she can't really do anything about it.
"I am not your Mistress, I am your adoptive parent. Okay?" She sighed, and calmed down. "Just... please don't do that again. There's a reason I keep all of you in here, and... I just don't want to risk losing you. Not any of you. Please promise me that you won't do that again." She had stopped pacing now, looking at the three.
"We promise."
"Good, now, carry on to whatever you were doing beforehand, I have some things I need to do."
"Okay."
Once Mycro was out of range, the three simply looked at each other in silence. This lasted a few moments before Miskal stared at Zen, "You were soooo scared!" She laughed, watching Zen nearly flip out, "I was not!" He protested, "If anything, you were terrified!" Part of him know exactly what she was trying to do, while the other refused to give up and admit he was scared. "I had to be the least scared one here, while you an' Ender were freakin' out!"
"So you admit, you were scared." She smiled, while Ender just stepped back, letting them do their thing.
"No, just a bit on edge. There's a difference."
"Sure there is."
Well hey, the bickering stopped. Their orbs simply emitted electrical bolts, and ended up connecting Ender to the silent conversation as well.
'We should go to the observatory, up top, it's not outside, but there's windows there. So we can still see what might be going on.' Zen suggested.
'Sounds safe enough.' Miskal agreed.
'Well, I guess? She never really let us know what is going on, and I know 'm not the only one who is curious.' Ender said quietly, they weren't really sure whether or not Mycro would be okay with that.
'So were all in?' Zen asked.
'I guess so.'
And so they set off, upstairs, through passageways, and all these little nooks. They needed all these places, and as much space as they could get. There was near 1000 residents in this household.
"Well, were here." Zen said, reaching the door to the observatory.
"Should we go in? Or can we just sit outside?" Ender asked, contemplating whether or not to bail.
"We're going inside." Miskal grabbed Ender by the wrist and opened the door, walking in with Zen tailing behind.
The observatory wasn't all to special, just a glass dome with several papers and a few telescopes inside. It was huge, to say the least. There was a fair amount of windows, where the glass connected to the wall, and Zen peered outside.
"Oh... She... She wasn't kidding... theres--theres a whole war out there." He said, examining everything he could. There was several buildings in rubble, mist hung thick on the ground, and nowhere else. The ground was scorched, due to several ambushes and bombs going off.
How in the world are we still standing?" Miskal choked out, looking around.
Ender shrugged, and turned away from the window.
"I'm... I'm going back inside. I wanna see what Mother is up to..." Ender mumbled, beginning their descent down the stairwell.
They were a few stairways down when Miskal and Zen decided to tag along, sliding down the railing. Needless to say Ender joined them, it was the quickest way down, and obviously the most fun.
"Hey, Mother, what are you doing?" Ender asked, once they found her.
"Oh, I'm not doing much, just figuring some things out. You are here to know when dinner is going to be finished aren't you?" She turned around, her dress giving a little twirl.
"Thats... some of the reason, yes." The other two stars remained outside the room, just listening in.
"Dinner should be done in an hour. What is the other reason?" The wall was full of papers, charts, and systems that Ender couldn't make heads or tails of, so they didn't bother. Maybe in their spare time they could try and decode it.
"Oh, okay thank you." They paused, "What is really going on outside? How come you never really let us out?"
Oh. It was another one of these questions. "I've told you, there's a total war zone out there, and it's just not safe. They are fighting for many different reasons, now that I think about it. One of them being to take you all away, Stars, I mean, and another is to just get rid of you altogether. Another one is to give you all rights, freedoms, all that good stuff. I'm supporting that side, and hopefully it will win."
Huh, she never gave out that much information before. That's new, but hey, it's information. "You won't let them take us away, if that side does win, right...?"
"Of course not, You are all my family, I would never let something take you away from me."
"Alrighty, thank you!" They 'smiled' and walked out of the room, almost tripping over Miskal's leg. They shrugged it off, 'I'm assuming you two heard all of that.' A nod from both was enough to confirm that. 'Then you should know we have to wait an hour until we get food.'
'Yeah.'
"Okay." Ender said and walked off.
That was years ago. They were all separated on some foreign hunk of floating rock, barely a stable place to live. Any contact to Miss, to Zen, to Miskal, was lost in the endless waves of transmissions, and never reached the desired entity.
That doesn't mean they didn't try.
Each went to the highest point in their location and tried for endless hours to contact each other, mostly during the dusk hours. Sometimes they were successful, if only for a moment, and when they disconnected, they tried again. And again. And a whole ton more times after that.
"Don't leave!"
"Why does it keep messing up?"
"Your not leaving?"
"Yeah, I wouldn't intentionally leave."
"Oh, yeah, I know that but please listen I have things to say--"
Static.
