Wardroom
As Medikku came into the wardroom, Eden looked at light play on Anastasia's face and the Shosa tensed as she broke her gaze to look around for the source. Streaks of light blasted through the only window on the ship above them in the wardroom.
"Battle stations!" Eden snapped out as she made for the main exit from the wardroom. To the bridge, she asked, "Asuka, are engines online? Weapons?"
"Not at all, Shosa. But... Eden?" Asuka said telepathically, for nearly all to hear. "We're experiencing a high energy reading directly above your position."
Eden came to a full stop and looked up just before a man appeared before her after a dim, sparkling flash of light. He was about six feet tall, a bit round in the stomach, and bald save for a thing ring of trimmed grey going from one ear to the other. He was wearing a friar's frock with a roped belt around his waist. Eden got into a defensive stance with her hand on her NSP and opened her mouth to speak, but he put a finger up to her lips.
"Now, before I release you from this graviton beam, who are you and what are you doing to our beloved enemies?"
"Enemies?" Eden asked. "We are no enemy of yours, I can assure you. We are..." Eden caught her tongue, feeling it best not to try to explain how they were Yamatai, but not the Yamatai this man was used to dealing with.
"Don't lie to me, I am omnipotent!" the man said excitedly.
Eden straightened her stance, hand still on her NSP while she pursed her lips. "We are not the Yamatai you call enemies, but we are of the Star Army of Yamatai. What business do you have with us?"
"We have business with them and, thus, you. Why are they towing you? Is it against your will?"
"Yes," Eden said succinctly.
The man snapped his fingers and gave a chummy smile. The ship rocked a moment and the light show above them was still going, but the ship somehow felt a lot less heavy. Weightless in space.
Eden looked to the man with a mouth agape and asked Boss, "The graviton beam?"
"Not holding us, Captain."
"Kyōi!" Eden called out telepathically. "Get us out of here! Anastasia and Mochi, please work on making us go fast." The Shosa nodded to the man and said as she walked out of the wardroom, "Come with me."
"Don't you want to know what they were going to do with you?"
Eden looked behind her, at the face of her daughter as the door to the wardroom closed behind them.
"Yes."
"Torture you. Rip you limb from limb and get every ounce of information about where you came from out of you. That is what they do, don't you know?" the man said, getting close to Eden's ear to nearly whisper them to her.
Hand still on her NSP and shoulders tense, Eden replied, "I expected it as one of the many possibilities. How do we get back to our home?"
"Well that depends," he said while rubbing his hands together.
"I thought you were omnipotent?" Eden asked, looking at him harshly as they walked.
"I am! I am... It's just—" he said, but Eden cut him off.
"Just what?"
He raised his hands up, "Just that I am, but it has its limits..."
"Omnipotence doesn't normally have limits."
"Universally, it doesn't."
Eden said nothing as she stood at the entrance of the bridge. He made to enter and she put a hand up in front of him, halting his entrance. He pinched his face together and frowned while she crossed her arms.
He steepled his hands and inhaled, then pressed and unpressed his fingers together, saying. "Multi-universally, it does."
"Aaaahhh," Eden murmured. "So you don't know how to get out of here. I see." She stiffened and walked into the bridge, looking around to notice he hadn't followed her. In a burst of soft light a moment after she had sat down, however, he was in front of the view screen, looking closely at what had just turned into the battle raging in front of them.
Eden asked as the bridge crew filtered in, "If you are omnipotent in this universe, why do you fight them?"
"Technology," he said only. "Their technology has begun to side-step our abilities. I cannot enter their ships like I can yours. I can break off their graviton beam projectors, but I bet you in a month, they'll have fixed that minor issue. But you won't be here in a month, now will you?"
"Status update, Barlow-hei and Seinosuke-juni? Get this ship going, Kiseki-hei!" Eden noticed a video channel open up on her panel from the IYS Kaiyō. "Kawazoe-hei, see what they have to say."
In a small sparkly light, the man was sucked out of visible space and was off of the bridge while Eden stared at the volumetric screen displaying the battle in front of them unblinkingly.
