Overlooking the valley, Cryten and a couple others surveyed the damage that the storm had brought. Trees thought too large to fall had been toppled, but there were saplings to take their place. Such was the way of things. Scattered herd beasts and small predators native to the planet were starting to come back to their senses and try rooting around for their normal lives.

A swath had been carved through the valley, by a torrential downpour - and the subsequent flood that came from the hills nearby didn't help at all. Most of the normally dry grounds were sopping if not covered with a layer of muddy debris-filled water.

"There were no deaths?" Asked Wildstorm. The tall Zekiran woman had the strangest combination of features that Cryten had seen - on someone who didn't have too many limbs or shapeshifted like other Zekirans could. She was a very tall, slender girl with pale hazel-colored skin with faintly brown striped markings. It was slightly furry, Cryten knew that because she'd rubbed up against him when they met. Her hair was a stringy mess of color, sunset reds, browns, tan and white mixed in with yellow and the odd strand of blue. Her eyes were a vivid blue, like Cryten's own family's tended to be. She had normal humanoid features, but her limbs were long and almost gangly, she had a sunset-fur-tufted tail, and her feet and hands bore slight claws. Her face was long, handsome, like her father's, but she had long pointed ears where his were more small and round.

She was a weathershaper like her father Tresis, but she also had some kind of control over natural things like plants and earth. Thus, she'd offered to help out recovering from this major flood on the Plateau. There were still waterfalls coming down where Kin would usually step off the high rocks - a huge pool of water had collected on top of the plateau, almost a lake. In fact the plateau was big enough to support such a thing, but the water was busy seeping down through the many cracks and nooks into the very center of the huge stone wall anyway. It would dry too, given the heat of the summer and autumn sun.

But for now, it was a big puddle that needed to be controlled. Tresis didn't seem like he wanted to play, so his daughter volunteered. Wildstorm floated around, and then landed near Cryten again.

"It'll go away by itself, given time," she said.

"Of course," he replied. "But in the mean time, we've got soaking living spaces now. And these animals down there aren't used to this kind of deluge. I wonder why it's suddenly like this. I don't think anyone's ever said there are typhoons like this before."

Wildstorm gave what looked to Cryten a guilty start. This was lost on the Kin, and they were occupied with other things anyway - looking for prey and trying to figure a way not to get very wet and dirty in the process of hunting.

But Cryten was intrigued, and he realized there was something more going on. "What is it, Wildstorm?"

She averted her eyes, and then muttered, "it was my dad. He's an asshole sometimes. And sometimes he forgets that we're not on Zekira any more, and he can't do the things he'd been used to doing there. Just because we land in a place that has peaks and valleys doesn't mean he gets to re-create his tower and pull the same crap he did on the natives."

"... And that would be?" Cryten asked, moving closer so that the others didn't need to hear.

"He's a weather shaper, Cryten, and he loves making storms. But that water has to fall somewhere. And I think he's already started messing with the weather patterns of this planet - if we don't stop him, If I can't convince him not to, he'll make a desert out of the pride lands, and he'll flood this place until the plateau is all that's left above water out here."

Cryten gazed first at Wildstorm, and then back down towards the south-west. There was the gigantic inland lake, the ring of mountains keeping it apart from the ocean beyond. The Plateau was the more northerly feature, but he could see that the lake was risen many feet higher than it had been - that would kill Kin, many of them, because they were living so close to the shore.

"You're right, he has to be stopped." Cryten said flatly. "Let's go."

"Go? You?" Wildstorm said, half snorting. "I don't know, Cryten, you're not exactly what he respects in the world."

"Then what does he respect?"

"Very little," Wildstorm said. But she lifted him into the air with her sizable (and very well practiced) powers, and they floated to the shuttle. The hovercraft that the small group of Zekirans had come in on was bobbing now on the shore opposite the inland lake. Cryten wasn't afraid to fly with Wildstorm - but the trip would be too long for her to fly over the two thousand mile wide sea back to the Zekiran colony. Their hovercraft would do it in a matter of a few hours.

"Aren't you going to leave this for them?" Cryten asked, "or take the others back with us?"

"Nope, they're staying until the mud's dry. That's what they do best." She said regarding the other few water shapers of the Zekirans. They didn't exactly know that their transportation had been liberated back to their colony, but apparently Wildstorm didn't care.

In the year and a half since Cryten had arrived, many things had happened. His sister had born a seriously cute baby girl named Xyma to Omaciyu and the Tribe became "twelve and four". Another two children were on the way - both would be cousins to each other, children of Temih's daughters. And it looked as though Temih had cornered Utori, or been impressed by his flight and hunting skills. The tribe would be strong and new.

But if their lands were destroyed on a regular basis by Tresis and his weathershaping antics... This had to change. But Cryten had never met this man, Wildstorm's father. He was well known among Zekirans to be the least sane, and the most dangerous. Why in the world did a fifteen year old half-kin like Cryten think that he could tame this man's insanity?

He didn't, really. He only knew that this land had become his home. And a threat to his home was not going to be met lying down.

***

Tresis was a terrifying man, Cryten realized that right away. Since the Colonization had started he was moody, brash, annoying, and openly violent at times. He particularly seemed to enjoy hunting - as long as he didn't have to get himself dirty he would strike fear into his prey first with a thunderclap and bolt of lightning (which often started a fire), or he would simply change the pressure around a poor creature's head until it exploded.

Cryten stood next to Tresis' daughter, and tried not to look nervous.

"Why ought I to care about this matter?" Tresis asked, casually and caustic. "It's around the world from me."

"It is right next to you, and it is affecting our allies," Wildstorm said. She could match his anger, but perhaps not his power.

"They are able to survive in the wild, why shouldn't this be merely a ... test for them?" Tresis said. He was taller than his daughter, but not as muscular. His hair was fades of tan, white and bronze, and he wore a long flowing white and grey silken robe. He looked entirely too human, apart from his perfectly white skin and his very tall stature - Cryten realized that he was being affected by the Kin's views a little strongly.

"Sir, with all due respect for your abilities and power," Cryten put in, carefully, "you and your people are not the dominant people on this planet. The Kin have asked your people to colonize knowing that you can defend the planet. They are not prepared to accept you trying to destroy it too. They have humans to do that for them."

The tiny bit of humor in Cryten's statement made a faint smirk appear on Tresis' thin lips.

"A ... good point, boy. But perhaps you do not understand. We can be gods, if we so wish."

"Only if you subdue the natives, which includes me, into thinking that. We're a bit beyond gods and their whim." Cryten said.

Tresis narrowed his green-grey eyes. "Do you think that we could not subdue you? Mighty half-human boy? You have no powers. And I," Tresis stood and looked even more menacing than he had while seated arrogantly in his 'throne', "have nothing but power. And I practiced upon many of the local Neresian population - and many millions of other such powerless people of many other worlds, in the meantime. You cannot defend against me, and my will."

"Why should I have to?" Cryten shot. "I'm telling you that if you continue endangering the normal weather patterns here, you and your people will have to find another place to colonize. Power or no. And remember," he said, snarling a bit, "I might not be a powered Kin, but the entire planet is composed of them. Every one else has powers - just like yours."

"Only weaker," Tresis smirked - knowing this to be true.

"Only in far greater quantities, father," Wildstorm said. Her father spun, hair and robe dancing on the slight breeze.

"You? You would say this?"

"I agree with him," she said simply. "You're not going to endanger our new planet's colony just so you can get your own godhood back. You were never a god, father, and I was never a goddess. We are merely Zekirans with power over physical things. We are not the law here, were are asked to be the enforcers because we can do things at a greater range, or at a stronger ability than the Kin. But this is their world first, and I ask you to remember that. Before Viridia and the others come looking for you for this same conversation."

"Viridia." Tresis spat. "What does she know? And besides... If they do not remember, what can they do?"

Tresis turned on Cryten, and his eyes narrowed again. Cryten felt something creeping in around his eyes, his mind. He went cold...

There were bits of blackness in his mind, spots he could swear had been bright before. This would not happen to him. Not to him! He steeled himself, forced brightness back onto the parts that were dim. Ah - a memory here, an experience there. Tresis was attempting to black out his mind, remove his memories?

"You are not going to do that to me," Cryten said, and before Tresis could react, he'd stepped up to the tall man and struck him - hard - across the face.

Stunned that the boy would attempt something so ... physical, Tresis did not move for a moment. That moment, Cryten chose to close in. The half-cheetah "powerless" boy held Tresis' robe and pulled the ancient immortal close to his muzzle.

"If you try that again, to me or to anyone else - Kin or Zekiran or human - I will make you hurt so badly that you will not remember how to do your tricks. Do you understand?"

Balking, but not yet trying to fight back, Tresis said, "you cannot resist me! You have no powers!"

"I - have - enough," Cryten growled, and from somewhere in his will, he pulled a blackness so deep that he wondered how he could ever live in light. He aimed it carefully at Tresis - whose eyes went round and wide suddenly.

"Don't!" Wildstorm yelled, and pulled on Cryten's arm.

"Why not?" Cryten said. "I can, and I will. If you make me do it. So don't make me."

"What.... is that?" Tresis asked, pulling away and straightening his robe out. He stood up, and tried to collect his wits. "What was that, boy? Do you even know?"

"I know this: if you push me, I will use it on you and I will obliterate you. Permanently. Understand?" Cryten said, still puffed up and growling.

Something that Cryten could not have known, something deep in Tresis' past, was what the man feared. Here was a whelp - a half-human and not-quite-kin? With a power that only one Zekiran had mustered in their entire immortal travels?

"Of course..." Tresis whispered, as he realized who held that power. "The multiverse has been kind to you, I know the reason you do this." He paused, as Cryten tried to understand. "Your powers are hidden, but we have brought our dead with us. And the dead have uses for us."

"That was mysterious," Wildstorm said.

"Do you not remember who it was that killed the Outsiders when they asked?" Tresis said, darkly.

Wildstorm's eyes also went wide, but then she turned with a snarl on her father. "Will you agree to stop this?"

"I will," he said. "I will have to find something else to do."

"You could find another planet to play on," Cryten said, angrily, "you've got a dragon who can teleport. Why not do that instead."

Tresis almost got a smile on his face, but realized that would be tempting fate. The idea pleased him. He would have to find somewhere else to torment. But he could still live here among the people.

"Come on," Wildstorm said, "it's late. We'll get going back there in the morning, and I'll help with the clean up."

They left Tresis' large dome-topped quarters, and said nothing.

The hours drifted by, and Cryten could not sleep. Wildstorm lay beside him, a teenager's dream come true - there was something absolutely entrancing about her smell. But still, Cryten didn't understand why Tresis had suddenly changed his mind, or any of the other things he'd said. Why did the Zekiran dead have anything to do with him?

He spent another hour in thought. It would be dawn soon - and he would be on his way back to the Plateau, where hopefully he could get some real sleep.

But suddenly he understood. They were all connected - the Sangers of his universe, the Sengihr of Zekira... They were the same people. And the Outsiders, alone among them was Vanya, brought back to life with powers that he never had while he lived before his immortality. The powers of the dead.

And Cryten, whether he wanted to be or not, was a Sanger. Vanya had been cursed or blessed with abilities through the long-dead and highly-powerful people who came before him. They had embued him with the ability to slay even an immortal soul. And he had done so? To whom? And why would someone ask for something like that if they were immortal?

Too many questions - but he did know at least that much now. Cryten had the power over these immortals - and he would use them if he needed to. That would mean he would be needed longer-term on Planet 20.

That would mean he would be able to get better 'aquainted' with Wildstorm, too...

***