Rot. Her garden was nothing but rot. The sweet smell of fresh dew running down flower stems was replaced by the pungent stench of death. Lunai's orchids used to sway with the wind. Now they curled towards the ground, their petals the color of ash. Even the grass supporting them started whittling away into piles of brown mush.

  The only speck of green to be found was a small weed curling out of the ground at the edge of the garden. Bright. Vibrant. She slowly moved one foot in front of the other, just in case the garden hid any other nasty secrets. She crouched down next to where it sprouted, smelling the life it had stolen from her plants. Her hands moved to her pockets and pulled out a pair of leather gloves she saved for this exact moment. They slid over her hands and moved up both arms.

  "Enough of you. Enough!"

  She grabbed the weed and pulled as hard as she could. The familiar sweet dew scent filled her nose, something she decided had to be a deliberate attempt at lowering her guard. It only fueled her grief further, the frustration of her grip turning to a raw scream.

  "Leave us alone!"

  The weed gave in just a tad, allowing her one moment of release as she fell backwards into a bed of necrotic plant matter.

  "Lunai!"

  She heard hurried footsteps getting closer before her father's face appeared above. He was hunched over, his mossy mane hanging down along with the wooden pendant shaped like a willow tree around his neck. His wide eyes softened when he saw the gloves protecting her hands.

  "Oh, thank the spirits." He leaned down and helped her up, carefully pulling her away from the weed. "Didn't I tell you not to touch them?"

  Her father's eyes were still tense, fixed on the disturbed weed as if it might curse his descendants. Lunai took another glance, finding a thinner spot on its path through the ground. She reached for her leg and unsheathed a knife whose metal gleamed in the sunlight.

  "Lunai, where did you get-"

  Snap.

  With one quick push, the weed had been severed. Lunai's father gasped and clutched the pendant at his neck.

  "You're still hung up on this? I thought we finally agreed-"

  "We did agree, Lunai, we did." He took a deep breath and let his pendant settle. "That doesn't make us callous. We're not like the rootless one."

  "Dad! He's trying to help. It's not like we left him with many options."

  "Are you really taking his offer? It would mean years away from Ya'ar. Years that could be spent tending to the jungles that remain. Leading our people. Guiding them through the darkness."

  "Ya'ar needs a hero, dad. Not another priest."

  He put his hands around her face, gently moving his forehead to hers. "My sweet sprig, you would be so much more than another priest."

  She pressed her forehead back to his with a little more force, breathing everything in one last time. Then she let him go and turned toward the horizon, where the edge of the once lush arboreal skyline was already turning grey.

  I hear you, spirits. No more.

  "Next stop, the Rebirth System."

  Lunai's eyes fluttered open to the hum of the shuttle engine and the glow of the ID badge resting on her lap: Galactic Security Agency - Intern Hero. After four years of frustration as a glorified observer, she was ready for real hero work. At least, that's what she told herself as she picked at the loose strings of bark coming off of her hands. The shuttle finally descended, revealing the shining ring of interconnected planets that formed the GSA's base of operations. Her eyes were immediately drawn to the crowned jewel in the center of it all, a black hole sprawling across the space within a massive metal cage.

  The view of Rebirth's endless pools of black energy was slowly eclipsed by a titan of an office building. Lunai took her first step on the unfamiliar planet, finding the comforting sight of children playing in a courtyard just outside of the building. Their eyes settled on the moss growing out of her arms and head, and she gently plucked a few loose leaves hanging onto it for them. Each child now had their own leaf, and the joy on their faces jumped right back to Lunai. She walked through the sliding doors ahead with a small boost of confidence from a small act of goodwill.

  The lobby was as welcoming as Lunai hoped it would be. She walked through a curved path between two large fish tanks, the perfect sight to calm the last bit of fear lingering in her mind. Their beady eyes watched her until she emerged in front of a security desk. A guard sat there with her elbow on the desk and her eyes locked on the computer in front of her.

  "New intern?" she asked.

  "Yes, ma'am!"

  “You're going to Case Management on the third floor. Go right and It'll be at the end of the hall.”

  “Thank you!”

  Lunai made her way through the baffling hallway of the third floor, side-stepping through abrupt turns in direction that made her head spin. She let out a huff of air when she reached the end and stepped through the archway marked "Case Management." The sight of her new colleagues scattered throughout the room greeted her on the way in. The one that caught her eye was a woman covered in a thin sheet of soot. Her grey hair twisted up into the shape of a volcano, spewing out smoke that turned to ash and fell onto her light-pink skin. Lunai noticed that the woman was looking at the digital screen hovering over her wrist. Lunai peeked at it, seeing a complete map of the GSA's main office complex. She stared for just a little too long, causing the woman to look up at her.

  “Looks like you need a map.”

  Lunai hiccuped as their eyes met. “Sorry! I didn’t mean to stare at your CellPulse...”

  "It's fine." She raised her arm towards Lunai. "Just give me your wrist and I'll send it over."

  They put their wrists together and a new contact popped up on Lunai's CellPulse - Ashetana Verlot, Intern Hero. Ashetana's scarlet eyes drifted down and scanned her own wrist. “Lunai Hiraetha. Pretty name.”

  Before Lunai had time to blush, the clock struck 0800. A small figure emerged with a flowing cape behind him. Black and white spirals swirled on his torso and formed a galaxy in the center of his chest. His human appearance was striking; Lunai thought tales of their puny size were exaggerated, but the man wasn't even six feet tall.

  “Welcome, new interns! You may know me as Bliss, the first human hero. I’ll be leading your tour today." He gave the interns a second to get their bearings and close their gaping mouths. "Before we begin, I'd like to thank all of you for the immense effort you put into your career as a hero. Make no mistake, this was not an accident. All of you were chosen over a long list of applicants for your mastery of abilities never seen before, but you also understood that a hero needs more than power. Your badge makes things official, but you were heroes long before today." The hero's charisma had already captured the interns' hearts, though his infectious smile faded slightly. It was barely noticeable, but nothing escaped Lunai's gaze. "Alright, twelve here, that's everyone. Any questions before we begin?”

  A man next to Lunai jumped forward with his hand raised. He didn't dare wait for permission to speak. “Nice to meet you! Just wanted to say I’m a huge fan-”

  “That's nice, but I didn't ask for statements." His response nipped the intern's outburst in the bud, causing his bouncy energy to deflate. "How about you?” He pointed towards a large intern with a metallic body and one large eye sprawling across his face.

  “Thank you, it is a great honor to be here today." He bowed his head, his posture impressively stable compared to Lunai's shaky roots. "How many interns will work with one mentor?”

  “Two. In fact, I'm a mentor starting this year.”

  Lunai heard chatter from her fellow interns about the possibility of being paired with Bliss. He was the first human hero, but everyone knew that was only half of his story. Everyone could feel the other half radiating off of him, prying its way through their skin and into their bones. Lunai felt a tingling sensation that urged her to move forward, to go deeper.

  Stop! Don't think about it so much...

  “Let's get going, someone's covering my shift.” He eyed his eager fan, then found Lunai standing in the corner with her arms politely tucked behind her back. “You, you'll lead the group.” He pushed her into the man’s spot, which she accepted without hesitation.

  Bliss didn't take them very far at first, they simply went deeper into the case management department where a large office sat, hidden from public view. The air immediately tensed as the sound of typing filled the interns' ears. Bliss walked them straight through and they reached a line of doors at the back.

  “These are your resident rooms. The heroes tend to rotate on what team they’re assigned to; you will rotate with them. The various services we offer were listed in your introductory psy-pings. Every room is marked with its service.”

  Lunai read the sign on each door carefully. Her head froze the second she caught the word Apocalypse in the corner of her eye. Her thoughts returned to the jungles of her home planet. The rotten fruits falling from trees. The villagers with necrotic bark peeling away from their bodies. She willed herself to speak, careful to avoid sounding too demanding on her first day.

  “When we’re rotating on Apocalypse, do we have the chance to be involved in the planet-salvaging plans?”

  “You’ll be there for the briefing, but it's not very interesting." Bliss turned to her, raising an eyebrow at the sudden inquiry. "The goal is always to rebuild the planet.”

  Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  "W-what if the planet's terrain is sacred?"

  Bliss was silent for a moment; his eyes moved to the ceiling and darted back and forth a few times. "I think there’ve been planets like that. They usually - no - they always reconsider terrain modification when the planet starts to fail."

  Her father's voice rang through her head, telling her to keep pushing, but she silenced him for the time being. It wouldn't help anyone to make a fuss on her first day.

  Bliss took them back through the nauseating hallway to the other side of the building. A statue of the CEO stood in the entrance hall just through the opposite hallway, which was mercifully short. His hand was extended out with a planet floating above it; the texture of every rock on his body detailed to an impossibly realistic degree. Pieces of rock and ice floated around his body using a type of construction technology Lunai had never seen on her home planet.

  The walls around the statue were lined with several archways marked as refugee housing areas. One was labeled as an exclusive area for human refugees. Her curiosity got the best of her and she peered into the hall, catching one human staring at her with beady eyes. She mouthed an apology and turned away; he must've been a new arrival.

  Poor guy. I hope he can go home to Earth someday. Hopefully another Sol Exclusion Zone bypass will open.

  “Hey, does your dad live here?”

  The noise came from Bliss's overeager fanboy. Everything stood still for a moment as Bliss froze dead in his tracks. He slowly turned around, the same smile plastered on his face.

  “No.”

  "Wait, really?”

  Bliss's smile started to fade. Even Lunai couldn't help but use his facial expression to paint a tragic picture. He turned his back on them again, trying to move forward.

  "If there's anything wrong, we can -”

  Bliss punched the air next to him, creating a small tear in midair that sparked and glitched, drawing everyone’s attention. For a moment, Lunai noticed the light dimming and the crack expanding. It reached towards the floor, threatening to break the foundation. Lunai jumped into action, stretching her roots to protect the ground, but a spark of pain warned her to step back. The cracks disappeared as soon as she got too close, and light returned to the room. The initial tear collapsed in on itself, creating a blast of sound and beautiful lights.

  An eerie smile returned to his face. “No time to waste! You all have to be working by the afternoon!" He twirled away from them and continued.

  The smile melted off of the fanboy’s face and his blue skin turned a shade lighter. His legs wobbled a bit as the group walked by clusters of refugees lingering in the hall. The entire tour group was walking further from Bliss than before, and their whispering ceased entirely.

  Lunai tried to tuck the incident into the back of her mind and turned her attention elsewhere. She was drawn back to Ashetana, who was playing with some of the children, strolling back and forth while letting her cape engulf the children. A goofy grin crept onto Lunai's face as the woman she took for a stoic laughed along with the children just as she had that morning. She watched the cape brush over them one last time before the group had to move to the elevators.

  Their final stop was a vibrant training center with motivational projections covering every wall. A holographic combat demonstration of how to create an energy blast hovered outside a room marked for private training sessions. Bliss scanned his wrist at the door and funneled the interns into the room, barely fitting everyone within the limited space. A terminal sat at the far edge of the room, passively scrolling through the various training environments it could simulate.

  "I believe your orientation letter promised a combat demonstration." Several interns' mouths went agape as Bliss strolled towards the terminal. Even the fanboy started to bounce in place again.

  "Naturally, I'll be running a simulation in space. You will all be registered as passive observers."

  The machine whirred to life and scanned Bliss with a ray of light, beeping happily when complete. Lunai blinked, and when she opened her eyes, they were all standing in the middle of an asteroid field. Her heart rate picked up when she looked at the vast space below her feet, but the ground felt just as solid as it did a second ago. Only Bliss was able to fly through the space that previously made up the training room's floor; everyone else simply had to watch as a human-sized missile headed straight for their beloved hero.

  MISSION: PROTECT THE PLANET 0.5 ASTRONOMICAL UNITS BEHIND YOU.

  Lunai whipped around to find a luscious planet directly in the missile's flight path. She quickly flipped back to watch Bliss in action, just in time to watch as he grabbed at the empty space above him and pulled down. Space itself peeled away as if Bliss was tearing up a piece of paper. The rip in front of him twitched with the same glistening energy as the hole he punched through reality, but this time even more of the dark and inviting place beyond the universe could be seen. The missile went straight into it, vanishing as if it had never existed in the first place.

  The assault continued with several smaller shots blasting towards the hero. Lunai tracked the direction they came from and found a few blurry dots in the distance: a small fleet of attackers quickly encroaching on the space between them and Bliss. In a quick flash of light, the hero turned translucent, surrounded by a white outline of his body. Little sparks erupted from the spots where the bullets met his skin.

  He angled himself towards the fleet and took off, a black fire surrounding his body. The interns' viewing point shifted to follow him as if they were drones programmed to match his every move. When his body came back into focus, he was floating between two pill-shaped ships.

  "Surrender now, or I can't guarantee your survival." His warning was met with silence.

  The third and final ship moved to flank him from above, forming a triangle for an assault on all fronts. Each ship turned to face him and shot a black ray into the spot beside him. The energy collided and started twisting into something new, with the ships abruptly stopping their blast and throwing up shields. Bliss eyed the shields with a smirk and looked at the entity in front of him, a dark void not too dissimilar from the ones he produced himself.

  Its immense gravitational pull brought him closer until they inevitably collided. A blinding light filled the entire area, forcing the interns to shield their eyes. When it faded, Bliss was the only one remaining; the ships were nowhere to be seen, nor was the tiny black hole they had formed.

  SIMULATION COMPLETE: MISSION SUCCESSFUL!

  An upbeat jingle played as the training room returned to normal. Bliss was back at the side-wall with the terminal. He ignored its official grading for the simulation and brought the interns back into the hallway, where their tour officially ended.

  "Psy-pings with your assignments should be reaching your minds right about now. See you in the field." Bliss left the group by blasting down the hall, gone in an instant.

  Lunai and her fellow interns scrambled to their thoughts to check for the new psy-ping. Sure enough, she saw it behind her eyes - Mentor Assignment: Bliss, small-scale combat. She stared at the letters in her mind, making sure they were real. Given his fame, she would’ve been happy about this assignment, but now, talking to Bliss again would be stressful. At least he wasn’t mad at her.

  Ashetana appeared at her side and glanced at her wrist, peeking without permission the same way Lunai checked her map earlier. "Looks like we're not partners."

  Lunai found nothing revealing in her eyes. "Are you disappointed?"

  Ashetana reached up and plucked a small leaf from Lunai's hair, twirling it once between her fingers before letting it fall. She walked away without answering the question. Lunai stood in silence and held the tingling moss where the leaf was, somehow more enticed by the brief encounter with the smoky woman than she was by her mentor assignment.

  She shook herself out of it, letting several bits of foliage fall from her mane. It was time to take her place in the small-scale combat call room. She was greeted by darkness as she opened the door. The lights flickered on as she stepped inside and took a seat at an empty desk.

  Bliss isn't back yet...

  With nothing else to do, Lunai turned on a computer and logged into the GSA's official records system with her new account. Overwhelming menu options populated the screen as she desperately searched for the correct case list. Incessant clicking sounds filled the room just as Bliss walked in. Lunai's fingers froze as she watched Bliss set himself down at the adjacent desk. He checked his CellPulse and started forcefully typing on it.

  Shit, say something before you seem creepy!

  “Bliss!”

  He flinched and turned to face her. She immediately covered her mouth. Is that really what she decided to say?

  His posture calmed when he registered who just screamed at him. “Oh, you’re the intern, right?”

  “Yes, that's me! I was trying to set up my computer, but the menus!”

  “I’ll show you how to set it up after sign-out.” He looked at his wrist again.

  “Spirits, thank you!"

  The door flew open and a man with swirling rings of space dust around him entered the room.

  “Dammit Bliss, I cover for you and this is how you thank me?" He pointed to a message written in all-caps on his CellPulse. "What the fuck is your problem?”

  “You should've stayed in the call room. That's how being on call works.”

  “Sure, you’re a saint. Thank you for interrupting my nap.” He dropped a packet of paper onto Bliss’s desk. “Let's just make this quick. We have one resolved incident with a captured subject and two outstanding incidents. First was a dude that was using some sort of rocket launcher on his home planet. The blasts caused instability in the planet’s plates, leading to massive earthquakes. I pulled him into space for a chat and he now has a lovely home in the corrections center.”

  “What do they want me to do with him?”

  “Just to ask if he was working with anyone else. One of the open cases is probably just some floating space debris, but the higher-ups want it monitored just in case it's from an attack." He flipped to the next page and smiled. "Finally, something interesting. Some dude was flipping out and screaming about the Lord of planet Kathous, decided to take the guy’s…” He squinted at the page as he read the next line, chuckling softly. “Gym trainer? Interesting choice. You’re just waiting for more intel on that front.” He finally set the papers down on the table and turned to leave, his eyes catching Lunai on the way out. “Hey, are you new here?”

  “Yes! I’m Lunai Hiraetha. Nice to meet you!”

  “Cool. Name's Surfrista" He flashed her a peace-sign and pursed his lips, a pose that told Lunai all she needed to know about the senior hero. “I’m outta here. Good luck with this one!” He shook Bliss’s shoulder and glided out of the room.

  “All right, let's get your computer set up.” Bliss interlaced his fingers and stretched his hands forward before touching her keyboard. He started clicking through menus as if it were a professional career. Lunai's eyes darted across the screen in an attempt to memorize the process.

  “Thank you, sir, I won’t let you down!”

  “Yeah…" He avoided looking directly at her smiling face, quickly changing the subject. “Looks like all we have today is an interrogation.”

  “What about the hostage situation?”

  “You know, those investigations usually take a long time. We may be called today, maybe another day.”

  “We’re gonna wait days?” she gasped.

  “Listen, our protocol was refined over thousands of years. We’re gonna make it worse if we rush in.”

  “I guess...It just feels wrong.”

  “Do no harm: the first motto of a hero. We can’t put people at risk, even if we’re trying to help. Don’t worry, the situation is being watched, and we can be there in an instant if something happens.”

  That’s right. We need to be ready to put our best root forward to provide the best help possible.

  The door opened once more to a tall, metallic figure. He sat at the computer next to Bliss and bowed his head. “It will not happen again. I accidentally went through a civilian area, and the metal detector went off.”

  Bliss flashed a smile and opened his mouth; nothing came out. He turned away and hunched over his desk, grasping at his chest. He gasped for air and wobbled in place, trying to steady himself. Blood trickled down onto his keyboard, and Lunai caught a glimpse of golden words glowing on his hand.

  “That’s fine," he choked. "Lunai, you go over the cases with him. I’ll be back in a minute."

  As Bliss left the room, Lunai noticed that the blood was coming from his nose. She stared at the door and considered going after him, but the incident at the refugee center flashed in her mind. Maybe today wasn't a good day to pry.

  “I’ll...I'll help you log in to the system,” she said.

  As Lunai started to go through the same menus Bliss showed her earlier, the two interns eagerly awaited the return of their senior. They huddled close to the same computer, unaware that every minute of silence was another crack in the mirror of a stable reality. With Bliss as their mentor, their descent into the life of a hero was solidified, and they'd be falling faster than anyone else.

  Character Art

  Lunai Hiraetha

  Bliss