Tabai was petrified by the time they got there, the seraph horn placed neatly before her paws. It was not Tabai as they knew her, but rather Tabai the Nyuhenge they had all, apparently, known her to be. She was far skinnier than the Tabai Pechi had known, and the way she curled around herself, only her front paw extended to reach for the seraph horn, made her look so much smaller.

Alexa stood over her like she might have surveyed one of the broken refrigerators, distastefully. In any other situation Pechi would have snapped at her for the sheer disrespect-- well, okay, Pechi would have tried to look a little more angry from the corner where she was currently standing, and maybe a few harsher words would have been exchanged in regards to the contempt with which Alexa treated what was clearly a heroic sacrifice. However, in this situation, Alexa was still bleeding from the side of her face and her left horn had been chipped. Between that and the scars Tabai had given her earlier, it looked like the two had been in a fateful spat, and it was clear who the victor was.

Almost clear. Tabai's eyes gazed skywards, at something neither Pechi nor Alexa could see, and there was something akin to a knowing smile across her face.

"She's pretty," Pechi said. "I wish w-we had-- had-- y-you're gonna k-kill me for this-- the opportunity to know her l-like this."

"I'm sure she'd appreciate the sentiment," said Alexa. To no one in particular, she continued, "I suppose this is the part where I learn my lesson."

Pechi watched her, incredulous. "Is th-that it? S-s-seems like a b-b-bit of a hollow revelation."

"You could say she knocked some sense into me," said Alexa. She twitched. Pechi grimaced. "Let's go."

Pechi picked up the seraph horn, and Alexa dragged Tabai's body, by the tails, through the dust. Once they hit the ship, which was waiting where they'd left it, Alexa looked up at it, mutinously.

"Th-thanks for coming to g-g-get me," Pechi said. "Instead of just g-g-going after her."

"I thought there was a mutiny," Alexa said. "I was wrong. I don't know what you would have done in the case of a mutiny, but I think you might have made a nice meat shield. Unfortunately, now, we'll never get to know."

"There are th-three more planets for y-y-you to use me as a m-meat shield," said Pechi. "D-d-don't discount the p-possibility."

"I've always appreciated your ability to look on the bright side, Pechi," remarked Alexa.

"Much obliged," Pechi said. As the pair entered the ship and closed the airlock, they entered the dusty room, and Alexa set Tabai roughly to rest in the corner of the room. Alexa proceeded to turn on the wipers, which was of some use, though the rest of the room, windshields aside, was still covered in dust. It obscured the top and bottom windows, and the tables looked even more banged up than usual. Pechi moved to tilt the tapestry back to its rightful position, save the skew, and began dusting it off with a foreleg, which just served to get her ashen pawprints across the Auspicia's gleaming body. The brightly colored Canis, whose fur had taken on a more reddish hue than originally intended by the artist, was beginning to take on a more cruel countenance, too, much like Suvi, the Sixth, in her ashen fur and dark expression.

"You're wasting your time on that," said Alexa. "You know it'll be back where you started, soon." She twitched again.

Pechi retreated back towards the pod. "I know, b-b-but it's s-s-something about formality. I c-c-can't stand the bad energy a tilted portrait g-g-gives the room."

"How about the energy that the ash is giving the room?" asked Alexa. "Or my blood, the petrified body, the dents in the wall, the empty pods. Take your pick of unsettling elements, if you most. You'll find they're in no small supply."

Pechi shuddered. Something could have exploded in this room, besides the occasional temper, and it would look better for wear than it did. Alexa jerked the ship upwards with none of her usual finesse, causing Tabai to rest against the airlock, tilting upwards, and when the ship slowed, in space, she fell with finality, in a way that would have fractured any other stone sculpture.

"C-c-could you be careful with her?" asked Pechi, hanging suspended from her pod, where she was being clutched tightly by her midsection by the cushions. The pods, too, were covered in her pawprints, where they hadn't taken damage from someone else's mistakes in earlier missions.

"I'm being about as careful with her as she was with me," Alexa said.

Pechi wanted to roll her eyes, although she knew the gesture would go unappreciated. Only Alexa would carry on a grudge with a petrified body. Then again, it wasn't like anyone on this ship, alive or petrified, was particularly mentally stable. They were a few bad planets from barking up the walls and tearing the pods apart like pups with their first set of bedding.

As the docking began, Alexa turned from the helm, releasing Pechi to the ground with an unceremonious thump as the pods deflated far faster than normal. Pechi found herself bound up in the restraints-- oh, no, seatbelts-- but was at least able to press the button for the release against the ground, freeing herself, after a moment of difficulty. Alexa was still watching her, judging her, all while flipping switches with her mind.

"P-problem?" asked Pechi.

"How long did you know for?" asked Alexa, from the helm.

"Since th-the beginning," Pechi said. "N-nearly. A-a-are you mad?"

"No," Alexa said. "Anger comes from a place of grief with the world, when our moral expectations fail to line up with the world as it is. I had no expectations of you in the first place, so in all honesty, I can muster nothing."

"H-how long did you know?" asked Pechi.

"Had a hunch," Alexa said. "They think they're much craftier than they are, always. It's almost embarrassing."

Pechi tried not to bristle. "I'm going to go wash off," she told Alexa, grabbing the seraph horn and placing it on her back.

"You don't want Tabai for your shrine?" asked Alexa.

Pechi, who was already into the elevator (which apparently Alexa had been in last, as evidenced by the blood and ash streaked across the sides), sighed, "I'm sure I'll have p-plenty of t-t-time to grab her later."

Dusty was on the outer ship. Pechi tried to walk in the opposite direction, which would have gotten some distance between the pair of them, but there, too, was Dusty, looking smug as Pechi had ever seen him. Even then, it was like looking at a blanket draped over a decaying body, as the grin almost hid how bloodshot his eyes were and how grim his general countenance had become.

"Hard world," Dusty said. "Hardest yet."

"Y-y-yep," Pechi said. "Two refrigerators down. Two."

Dusty followed her. "I see you don't have Tabai. Do you want her for your shrine, or--"

"I w-w-want to t-t-take a shower," said Pechi. She accelerated her pace. The showers were just down the hall, and there was at least a one for two chance that the water hadn't broken since she'd last turned the nozzle.

"You were wrong about that one," Dusty said. "The mission."

"As you've m-m-mentioned," Pechi said. "No less than f-f-fifteen times. H-how does it f-f-feel to be c-c-correct? W-w-would you l-like me to c-congratulate you f-further?"

Dusty's smile fell. "You said I could have this one. I'm just having it."

"H-hopefully y-y-you never get another 'one'. I c-c-can not imagine h-how obnoxious you'd be if y-y-you started being correct with any f-f-frequency, but if it d-d-does happen, V-Verhamera save us all." Pechi shut the bathroom door in his face, which admittedly was a win she would have to give over to the mechanism that caused the door shut. Pechi was sure Dusty would delight in the irony of that.

The water still functioned, though it was irritatingly cold. Pechi watched the ash roll down her fur and down the drain, although the fur itself clumped heavily, too. They weren't 'out' of liquid soap, per say, but it was, like many of the items on the ship, accessible specifically to those who could levitate and squeeze it. Pechi could only imagine how much less she'd smell like carrion if she had better fur care, but she could pretend it didn't bother her. She was sure the others thought she was filthy, anyways, and they weren't wrong.

She shook herself off and grabbed the seraph horn, which had been lying in wait for her. As she opened her room, she felt its energy sweep through her. The threads overhead wove themselves into a tapestry of truths only she knew, and all around her was everyone she had ever loved, and everything she had ever loved. The difference between the two had been growing murkier for years, and recently, it had plunged into an even more intimate darkness.

There was a hole where Tabai would fit snugly, near Benn and G'ana on the right side. She could see how that might shift the room's energies... while characteristically she was a good fit, putting two tragically splayed figures greatly off-balanced the room, which wasn't fair to the right side. She had modeled it after the Omnian sunset, so that she could read the room from left to right while predicting, but the double death was laying it on a little strong. There was the further theme of change to be considered, given Tabai's heritage, and that didn't even account for the obvious but ever-important visual element of her presentation. How would the crescent body fit as a decoration? The bodies had been taxing her design sense for too long.

Fortunately, she had cleared room for the seraph horn already, so that was far less difficult. She placed it at the center of Hemera's cluster of plants. Hemera. She was the easiest to refer to, since her parents had named her after a planet... the red planet, and the red swell of blood in Hemera's veins. Even her haemo was red. Hemera had enough red in her to pay for their smuggling business to get off the ground.

Pechi had loved the articles they acquired, but the business, not so much.

"Sister," Pechi muttered to the plant, and the word came out true, like prophecy. She pressed her head against its branches. Like the other plants which now held a seraph's horn beneath their boughs, it was young but carefully trimmed, and it bent in a way often skew with the others, stirred not with wind but something more sinister. Pechi could feel her sin climbing in her throat. She wondered how tightly her sister's bones, those she could fit in the pot, were being held by the roots of the plant itself. She dared not check. If the plant died, so, too, ended her final chance at redemption.

"Mami Petya," Pechi said, watering the next plant nursing a seraph horn, halfway across the room. She could see the limblike markings on the bark, branching out to leaves which had not the usual veins but rather the whorls of paws on them. "Father Eren," she said, continuing onto another plant with a seraph horn curled around its base, like a dragon protecting its horde. Her father's flesh and bones made a beautiful tree.

Her father had never been fond of her trees. He would not be happy, when he came back, to have had his soul be a botanical project for so long. However, between that and Pechi's own blood, along with the seraph's magic, she was saving up for a wish.

When she was done with her plants, magical or otherwise, Pechi ran her back along the underside of Cassie's face, pressing herself against Cassie's chest, pushing the paintings she'd so carefully arranged out of the way. A soft chirruping left her throat as she stared at her, blankly, and then removed herself, a sad thrum still echoing from her throat.

Pechi kicked out the cube and rose to the top of the room, where she had made her own cosmos. A tangle of connections electrified her mind as she began to rearrange the universe, moving Tabai away, bringing new threads in, and settling her predictions for seven. "N-not long now," she told her family, whose ambient whispers seemed to fill the room whenever she wasn't overtly focused on something. "Maybe it'll work w-when I have all nine."

The room settled, though the winds still spelled disturbance.

"Y-y-you know who gets picked from the f-f-flock first," Pechi said. "Yes. I do know."

She moved her pins into position. All signs pointed to her going next, from the spectral to the material.

She didn't have time to die. She could only hope that she would finish the last three worlds before they finished her.