Appearing directly above his sleeping mom, Dei quickly started floating so as not to land on her head, righting himself and gently coming down on the floor instead. Slipping out of her room, he went downstairs to check the time.

"5:38"

'I've still got a good bit of time, and I don't think this next part is dangerous so I can do it here in the living room, just in case it takes a while. Actually, since the Leviathans can't see me right now, the other part wasn't dangerous either… wait, scratch that, I might've blown the roof clean off the house by summoning Wild Chains after its transformation here. Either way, Commune with the Universe will be harmless. I'm just going to talk with some out-of-reality beings!'

He joked, but really didn't think he'd bring down catastrophe. If it was so easy for these beings to interact with the physical world, he wouldn't need some incredible spell to do so. Even the spell he had to talk with them did not involve bringing them here, but going to them.

Splaying out on the couch, he closed his eyes and, for the second time ever, activated Commune with the Universe.

A gentle caressing touched upon his soul, which was exactly when he remembered he'd tied his Identity to his body in order to turn himself into a union. Briefly panicking that it might actually take his entire body to this parallel realm, he calmed down when the process adjusted for his current condition. Rather than separate his Identity off, it felt like he'd entered a house of mirrors. His entire self was inside his body, but the sensations were being redirected and concentrated into his mind, tricking him into thinking the process was the exact same. Aside from the initial stutter of the spell changing function, it was impossible to tell anything was different.

His contemplation of the spell was quickly forgotten though, as he once more focused on everything around him. Again, he was in that… clockwork tower. That place with perfectly tuned gears, harmonizing beautifully with itself.

He thought something would've been broken without the presence of MP, but that was short-sighted, small thinking. Mana was not inherent to all existence, it was simply another facet. Another law, and Earth did not need it. If there were no affinities on Earth, life would go on. They were not only unnecessary, they were unnatural. It was only through the will of the affinities that they foisted their existence on a planet that would have survived without them.

A more important sensation he could detect was a general sense of changed location. It was hard to describe, but he knew for a fact that he was in another part of the great machine, and if he really focused, he could just barely get a sense of direction to his previous…

Before he could understand anything else, the vision ended, and the feeling surrounding his soul fell away.

Last time he'd used this spell, it'd nearly killed him as the strain it put on his soul caused it to collapse. This time, he was just winded.

He certainly would not be able to cast this spell rapid-fire, but he could reasonably defend himself in a fight immediately afterwards if he had to. Getting up again to check the time and see how long the vision had taken, he saw it was only 6:04.

Sitting cross-legged, he let himself focus fully on Meditation. It wasn't often that he really did so anymore, instead using it only as a tool, but he'd need to be centered for the next part. Making his presence known to the general government would be dangerous, but he was confident in escaping if need be.

Around seven, his mom woke up, coming down stairs and offering to cook him something, but he said he was fine. He'd eaten a lot from the food Luke gave him.

He thought about whether to tell his family about the church of The Champion, and knew it would be the right move to do so. Luke had assured him that his family would be taken care of, so it would be for the best if they understood everything beforehand.

Chatting with his mom while she cooked herself, Sophie, and Jack breakfast, he told her about what sort of things he'd found while rummaging around in his soul. When his sister and her husband got up, he told them in full what'd happened.

His sister, as usual, was the slowest on the uptake. "You went to hell? Then got picked up by God? God is a dragon?!"

"Yes. It gets funnier, wait til I tell you about Jesus…"

In the end, Sophie was left shell-shocked in her chair while Dei talked to his mom and brother-in-law about how they would even want assistance. They generally agreed they'd just want to be left alone in their house, maybe with some money. Oscar, his dad, liked his job though, so maybe not too much money. Just enough to spend on ridiculous purchases without worry.

When his family finished breakfast, they didn't have to wait long for Loretta to show up. His mom had told her to come earlier in the day, around nine, so they quickly heard the sound of a car door opening and shutting.

Not wanting the woman to run the moment she saw him, Dei got into his own position.

* * *

POV: Loretta

Pulling into the Hardie's family driveway, Loretta thought about the suspicious messages Kaylee had sent her

"You're not gonna believe what just happened Loretta, can you come over in liiieekeee 2 days? Not tomorrow but the next day."

"Ok, what happened? Also I know what 2 days means."

"You're not gonna believe it. It's a surprise though."

'Suspicious' was a strong word for what Kaylee sent her, but it was still accurate. She didn't fear any danger based on Kaylee's tone, but she still would've appreciated a forewarning for whatever it was.

Kaylee had been fairly cagey after that, just insisting that she show up and that Loretta would hear about it when she got there. It was approaching time for her to check in with Oscar's family anyway though, so she would've been down here whether Kaylee had asked or not.

Knocking on the front door, Kaylee opened it almost immediately, a wild look on her face. "Loretta! Please come in!"

Raising her eyebrow as she closed the door behind her and walked after Kaylee, Loretta asked "Okay, but what is this surprise, what's so special about it?"

Halfway through the living room now, she heard an unfamiliar, gravelly voice speak behind her. "Me."

Loretta whirled around, completely positive that there'd been nobody standing next to the doorway moments before. Ready to fight for all of one second, she paled when she came face to face with who spoke.

The man was six feet tall with a short mess of hair on his head and the physique of an olympic body builder. His white hair and pale skin marked him as an albino, but the glowing red and pink of his eyes belied otherwise; if she looked closely, she felt she could even see the colors shift, though it may have been a trick of the eye. More terrifying than any of his natural looks were those he'd clearly earned.

From what little exposed skin she could see, the man was covered in severe electrical burns that seemed to have scarred over, the largest scar being a chunk of discolored skin on his face spoke of a time when he might've had his jaw partially torn off. On top of that, there were spider webbing white cracks intermingled into his flesh, one which forced her to realize that which she'd already subconsciously understood the moment she glanced at the man.

He was an Elite, no doubt.

Worse, she could not recognize him. Loretta prided herself on being prepared, and she'd memorized the long list of all recorded public Elite. Public for active agents, at least. The fact that she could not recognize him spoke of two options.

Stolen novel; please report.

One, he was a rogue agent, one not yet taken in by an agency. Or two, he was a secret operatives agent. One on a secret mission for the U.S. would not have hidden from her if he wanted something though. Not unless he worked for an opposing agency.

'A trap, potentially someone created by the Chinese eugenics program? Is Kaylee in on it? No, she is either tricked or mentally compromised. Course of action? Escape, but he stands in the way of the door. The closest window is through Kaylee, I'll have to knock her to the side but then what? He is taller than me by a significant margin and clearly more athletic. He will catch up fast. Backup? Nobody will reach me in time. How? What do I do? How?'

Her entire assessment, from start to finish, had only taken a single second. She briefly saw her life flash before her eyes when she realized she'd left her radio in the car and there was no way she could type out a number for help fast enough on her phone.

She was cornered, and her attempts at finding an escape route proved to be too harsh on her mind.

She fainted.

* * *

Seeing Loretta's eyes roll back in her head, Dei saw her drop like a marionnet with its strings cut, instantly unconscious. Lunging forward, he caught her before her head could hit the ground, lifting her back up to her feet.

"That went… badly," his mother said.

"No, really?"

"Don't backsass me."

He chuckled, making his way further into the house to place Loretta on a couch in the living room.

Right as he sat down on the recliner, Loretta's eyes snapped open and she quickly sat up staring at him, and he stared right back. He waved at her.

She hesitantly waved back.

"Loretta! So nice of you to join us." Sophie said, coming down the stairs with Jack in tow. They hadn't wanted to surround the woman immediately.

Loretta tore her eyes away from Dei, glancing around the room for a few seconds, before slowly easing herself back down to lie flat once more.

"I might've misunderstood the situation," she said as she finally spoke.

"Reasonably so," Dei responded.

Closing her eyes as if refusing to acknowledge his existence, she said "Can you quickly explain to me who you are so I have a better idea? Really fast. Shortest version possible."

"I'm a dimensional hopper that landed in this family's house."

Inhaling for ten seconds, holding it, then exhaling for ten seconds, she finally said "A Visitor, thank God. The alternative was that I was about to be tortured and killed. May I ask how you're speaking our language? And what your native one is?"

"I'm speaking English because I have an ability that allows me to pull knowledge directly from someone's mind if I'm given permission, I used this to decipher Mrs. Hardie's language. My native one is something called Undercant, and it goes…

"Something along the lines of this, though I cannot imagine you understand me at all."

He'd switched to Undercant for the second part, and she seemed to relax when he did so.

"Okay, that's good. Both things that prove your Identity, can I experience this knowledge pulling spell?"

"Sure, but I need something to latch onto specifically. It can get a bit confusing if I try to understand someone's entire life. I'm curious as to what you meant when you called me a Visitor, would you mind if I looked into that?"

"Go for it."

Sending out a Kindness based Identify, he briefly noticed the spell splitting itself into hundreds of tiny branches rather than expanding like a cloud. It appeared that when he linked it the main Connection line, he'd manually evolved it somehow. He mentally greeted her with a "I mean you no harm, could I glean from your knowledge of Visitors?"

The resistance he faced quickly fell away, and he gently dove into what she knew about the word. Not only was the casting different, but the usage was much faster as well. He didn't have to wait multiple seconds to glean the correct information from her soul, instead limited to how fast he could think.

Visitors, in Earth terms, were entities that passed through the universe for one reason or another. Most of the time they were simple researchers, investigating the laws of physics depending on their location. Every universe had slightly unique laws, and those trying to unravel their mysteries needed a wide variety of examples to draw from to really understand it.

Aside from the researchers were the tourists, peeking at their society for the fun of it.

The next group were diplomats from other universes, seeing if Earth had something trade-worthy and if they had something Earth wanted.

The last group were conquerors, those roving the multiverse to search for a weak or disjointed society to take control of. Those always came alone, as apparently the larger, more coordinated forces were fully repelled using a secret technique that Loretta did not know.

'It's likely that The Champion stops any full-on invasions to prevent word from getting out of Earth's condition.'

"Well, according to your definition of the word, I'm a researcher."

She finally opened her eyes to look at him incredulously. "You're a researcher?"

"Yes?" he responded, confused.

"You're covered, head to toe, in scars."

He chuckled. "Oh, that. Yes, my world has a much different definition of the word. I intend to research your world's laws of physics and use my knowledge to create powerful combat spells. The more someone knows how things work on my world, the more they can take advantage of magic. So the smartest people are the most powerful people."

It was partially true, but it required more than knowledge to create a spell on Avium, though he did know that was half the battle sometimes. There were two ways to create a spell- effort, practice, and research as Clever had with his time-seeing ability, or sheer desperation as most of Dei's spells were made.

Loretta sighed, "Yes that matches up with what we know of other universes. Okay, I'd like the entire story from the beginning if at all possible now that I know I'm not in danger."

Looking at his mom, he said "Mrs. Hardie, would you like to give her your side? I believe she will be more comfortable hearing it from you."

They'd practiced the story, so Dei wasn't particularly worried about a slip up.

Dei was surprised with how well the woman was faring after she fainted from a mere Glimpse of him, but something told him the initial calm was from shock, and the continued calm was because he was slowly proving himself to be a non-threat.

Leaning back in the chair, he let his mom weave a tale of how he'd appeared in their house, communicated with them, and agreed to help them bring Oscar back from insanity in exchange for a place to live and a guide while on Earth. It was a slight revision of their original, but he felt like it would work out better this way. Especially when The Champion's church stepped in to deliver that info straight to him.

* * *

Now caught up with the version of the story she needed to know, Loretta said "Alright, I understand most of it, but may I ask why you had to scare me badly?"

Dei laughed, "That was unintentional, I just didn't want you to run and call down an army on my head before you got my side of the story. I knew you'd assume I was an enemy, so it was better if you actually knew all the details before people attacked me and I was forced to defend myself."

"Reasonable. Alright, thank you for humoring my questions, sir."

He shrugged, "You make it sound like I'm in a position of authority. Universe hopping is quite easy where I come from, I'm actually a commoner. Young as well, for my Race at least."

Squinting at him, she said "Aren't you human? How old are you?"

"Only sort of. I underwent a procedure to change my race into something called a Union, but I was originally a human yes. Specifically a Gem Dweller human, a variant that is oftentimes around seven or eight feet tall. I'm fourteen by my standards- not to say I'm unusually short though, I've shrunk my form to better fit into this house. By Prime human standards I believe I'd be around sixteen or seventeen, because Gem Dwellers age faster."

It was stuff Justin and Aloran had told him about, though he was estimating the Prime human age-rate. They just said Prime humans took a bit longer.

When she heard he was only fourteen her eyes nearly popped from her head with how wide they opened, but she quickly schooled her expression.

"Thank you for telling me. May I leave now so that I can prepare my agency for your arrival? It may take some time to get clearance."

"Sure, but I'm going to be honest, I don't intend to spend that long in this universe. I only have a couple months before I need to return home, so I wanted to be done on Earth as quickly as possible."

She tried to hide a wince when she realized it'd have to be quick, and he had no doubt it would normally go through a hundred hoops. Still, he was being honest. If she took too long, he was just going to break his dad out of prison, take care of everything, and leave Earth before anyone knew what to do.

"I'll see what I can do."

Loretta seemed hesitant to leave the Hardie's alone with him, but knew there was nothing she could do to keep them safe if Dei actually meant harm, so all she could do was drive off.

Dei didn't miss her immediately making a phone call though, and he'd already discussed with his family that they were to play their parts from now on rather than engage in typical family activity. The government could have people watching them at any moment.

That didn't mean he'd treat them coldly though, he just wouldn't vocally call his mom "Mom" or anything like that.

He wasn't too worried about them springing a trap on him at his moms house. If it would be anywhere, it'd be in the heart of the facility he needed to get to anyway. That was when he'd need to be careful of becoming trapped on Earth for research purposes.

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