Outwardly Alterrans and Evoians looked much like a normal human from Earth. It wasn?t until you checked out their insides or witnessed an Alterran child's development that the differences became obvious. The fact that at six months of age the boy was already talking was not a surprise to Ciani, it was expected. Not full sentences yet, that would come later, but not too much longer.

There was no word from Vegas and that concerned Ciani, in the moments she found between trying to figure out how to parent and dealing with the vast evolution her technomancy had taken in the past few months. Her parenting skills were about as terrible as she feared. Who could really blame her as her examples were Calypso, who tried to kill her, and Admiral Rooks, who also tried to kill her all within a few months of one another.

Growing up at the Academy had skewed all expectations of social ties. Rather than looking to these as what to do, she used her experiences as what not to do. She supplemented this with videos of Arlin with his son. She tried to view these when he was not around, knowing that it was a bittersweet thing for him to see. Arlin was the opposite of her in parenting skills, he was so very natural with the boy. For that matter so was Hawk, taking up watching the child when both she and Arlin were busy in their own head and projects to properly engage the boy.

The fact that she and Arlin were not bonded in Alterran fashion was also a concern. They agreed it would be unwise to do while the dynamic of how her bond with Hawk would integrate but as the days passed she found a growing conviction that they would attempt the bond anyway and deal with the consequences after.

She knew, even without the Alterran bond, that he was delaying. The bond they shared through the crystals of Evo allowed for some hints of his weakening state and agitation but she needed no bond at all to see he was suffering.

Her suspicions fully realized when he hired that strange woman, Jet Sato, to retrieve the sword Vegas claimed from him. The difference in him just a day after receiving the sword back was stark and frightening all at once. The fact he did not ask her for help in retrieving it rankled her slightly, choosing to use a stranger over her was a thorn in her side. Finding out that the woman was an associate of Brooklyn Teagues, a man that Arlin obviously found distasteful, did not help.

Worse, perhaps, was his investigating items that could be used as weapons against the Brigade. It would be a lie to say she did not want some vengeance against Vegas but it was a stronger truth that she did not want to risk gaining the animosity of the rest of the Brigade. The damage Vegas had wrought to her family was proof enough that they were a force to be reckoned with and at present none but Vegas seemed so focused on her and Arlin.

Thinking on how he was being evasive about the experiments cemented her decision to construct the bond with him again and it was within a day of that she had them scheduled to travel to Evo. If something went wrong that would be the best place for Arlin to be to get assistance.

Then it was just a matter of waiting and hoping that life would soon resemble that of ones she?d read about in books where the ending was happy after all.