5 Prelude

A relatively small space craft with a inwardly curving concaved bottom in an opposite fashion to its outwardly curved top made its way towards a larger, similarly shaped space craft which dwarved the original space craft in size.

The smaller ship currently carried two passengers and was piloted by a single droid pilot.

The two passengers being composed of one young girl and one woman who appeared to be entering her later years.

The child was around half the height of the woman and could be not be described as ugly or beautiful, she had no distinguishable features excluding her beautiful pair of emerald eyes and wore what seemed to be a school uniform.

Like most clothes worn by the upper classes of human society, the uniform was a 'pseudo exo-suit;' a 'normal' set of clothes interwoven with robotics and computing systems for increased convenience and in some cases, even provide some bit of protection.

The woman was evidently twice the size of the child and was relatively pretty, her brown-black hair was styled into a short ponytail that reached halfway down her neck. Like the child she wore a pseudo exo-suit but this time, her exo-suit took the form of a real suit instead of a school uniform.

After a few short moments, the smaller space craft docked within the massive space craft before its doors opened and its two passengers walked out side by side.

The girl's cheerful voice slightly echoed against the walls of the massive ship's docklands as the two made their way back into the ship.

"And there's this girl named Meru, she is kinda weird but I guess she's kinda funny too! Oh and then there's this other girl called Star! I know right! Star! I don't want to be mean but who names their child sta-"

"My God..."

When Cynthia and Mary were returning to Eden after being picked up by their drop ship at the warp zone of Zone A-15, Cynthia began relating what happened at school today to Mary as part of their daily routine.

A routine that was started by Mary, much to Cynthia's chagrin, but like with most things, Cynthia decided to play along with Mary due to her current body's status as a five year old child.

However, when the duo actually returned to and entered Eden, a sudden look that appeared to be a mix of both surprise and fear quickly grew on Mary's face as she interrupted Cynthia.

From the left side of Mary's head, Cynthia was able to spot a single drop of sweat that only barely managed to cling onto Mary's brown-black hair while her eyes became sharper and more focused.

Soon, in an apologetic yet rushed manner, Mary hurriedly apologised to Cynthia.

"I'm sorry Cynthia but something needs my attention, I.... I'll be back soon."

"Oh... al-alright... bye?.."

Cynthia pretended to reply in a disappointed tone as her response to Mary. Although Cynthia could easily kill the unaware and unprepared Mary then and there, she knew that she could not afford to take such a brash and reckless action.

Since Cynthia was still technically a mere five years old with nothing but money to her name, she thus had to act accordingly to her present situation.

And in her honest opinion, she rather hated pretending to be a naive child, even pretending to be a decently smart child like she was now was slowly clawing away at her sanity.

It was just too degrading of an experience to just ignore through sheer willpower.

Oh how she longed to possess a body where she was not only free to unleash her full psionic potential but was also free from the scrutinising watchful eyes of others.

Even though she knew that her ultimate goal was to 'transcend the weaknesses of the flesh,' she still couldn't deny the perks of a fully grown, mature human body.

At the very least, Cynthia knew that if she wanted achieve her ultimate goal, she had to cultivate and empower her current human body, no matter how weak it actually was. Especially since she could still use her current body to train her psionic abilities.

After all, that was the exact reason why she let the information that she was a psionic leak.

Since she was still a child, that meant that many organisation would want to gain hold of her as quickly as possible.

To mould her into their own personal weapon for them to manipulate until their use for her runs out.

However, in the end they would only give Cynthia exactly what she wanted.

Mentally, Cynthia smiled to herself at these thoughts.

On the other hand, a serious look took hold of Mary's face as her eyes turned towards the direction leading to the bridge of the ship, completely ignoring whatever thoughts were inside Cynthia's mind.

Within moments, Mary gave Cynthia an order,

"Cynthia, return to your room. Now."

"W-what?"

While Cynthia continued to pretend being confused by the turn of events, her mind has already deciphered the nature of the situation. From the tone of Mary's voice and the look on her face, Cynthia could come into one possible conclusion.

They were under attack.

Under attack by a criminal organisation.

And the reason why was obvious.

The information was leaked.

It has only been a day since Cynthia revealed that she was a psionic to those kids and she was already under attack.

Two completely different feelings swarmed within Cynthia at this revelation.

She was amazed yet at the same time disappointed.

It would seem that even with the knowledge of how brutal and how unforgiving this universe really was, Cynthia still grossly miscalculated her predictions.

She felt time slow down around her as she quickly thought things over in her head.

Such a feat should have been impossible for a mere five year old. However, Cynthia wasn't technically a five year old when one refers to the one inhabiting the body.

Within seconds, she fully rationalised and thought out her current situation.

Dilemmas were solved.

Contingency plans were made.

Although Cynthia was able to mentally think quickly thanks to her aged soul combined with her inherent S-class psionic abilities, her brain itself was still quite young and didn't contain the actual processing speed that she would have liked.

Soon, Cynthia felt a minor headache come on as she strained her young brain due to her thoughts being too much for her brain to actually handle in such a short time frame.

However, Mary continued to remain unaware of Cynthia's thoughts as she quickly reaffirmed her order with a more commanding shout while at the same time, firmly placing both of her hands on Cynthia's shoulders.

"Do as I say!"

In response, Cynthia only silently nodded her head at Mary as her answer. There was no need to antagonise Mary at this moment, lest Cynthia accidentally exposed herself.

As with everything else, Cynthia would play along for now.

When Mary saw Cynthia's response, she appeared to grit her teeth together before she turned around and made her way for the ship's bridge, the hair in her short pony-tail bouncing up and down as she ran.

All that Cynthia could do was simply comply with Mary's orders as she proceeded to make her way back towards the 'safety' of her bedroom.

After all, if this attacking force was the least bit competent and Cynthia was indeed their target, her bedroom would most likely be among the first of their list of places within this ship to look for her.

However, Cynthia couldn't help but feel that something was off as she walked in the pristine white halls of the ship.

If they were indeed under attack then why hasn't the ship's alarm gone off yet?

Granted they could have infiltrated stealthily into Eden but then that would instead raise another question.

If they did stealthily infiltrate the massive ship without activating the alarm, how would Mary be aware of their presence?

These factors simply contradicted themselves too much to actually make sense.

This combined with the minor headache that Cynthia formed earlier forced her to give up entirely.

Her tired and lonely voice sighed as she drew closer to her bedroom.

"Whatever it doesn't matter to me. As long as they find me, that is all that matters."

A certain glint flashed in Cynthia's eyes as she slightly flicked her wrist, sending a literally lightning fast white coloured bolt of lightning that temporarily disabled all nearby surveillance systems and destroyed their recent recordings.

Once she was sure that her actions were no longer being recorded, a cold voice left her mouth.

"As long as I win in the end. Nothing else matters."

...

Mary felt some small beads of sweat start to form in her hair as she sprinted through the halls of Eden. Unlike a 'real' suit, her pseudo exo-suit did little to hinder her movement and in some aspects, even enhanced it slightly.

Such was only to be expected from an expensive pseudo exo-suit which was specifically designed to be viable for battle in a pinch. Of course, a pseudo exo-suit still couldn't compare to a real fully armoured and fully protected exo-suit but for Mary's purposes this suit did just fine.

Mary was more than just the chief maid of the ship.

In her younger years, Mary was trained in hand-to-hand combat as well as basic gun handling and fighting.

But more importantly she was a trained psionic.

Before she retired from military service and found employment as the chief maid under Adam Starr in Eden, Mary was once a psionic operative of 'P.A.I.N.' the 'Psionic Assault and Intelligence divisioN,' one of the Intergalactic Terran Confederation's psionic military divisions with a rather ridiculous and forced name.

Not that Mary once liked that ridiculous name when she was still one of their psionic operatives .

No definitely not because of that.

Anyhow, those details were unimportant at this moment.

Mary had a job to do.

Mary's psionic ability in particular being a rather peculiar one.

While most psionics had the ability to either generate heat or energy to create lightning or even in some cases pure energy balls to be used offensively or the ability to strengthen their muscle and bone density through some unknown psionic phenomena, Mary's psionic ability did not inherently contain that same type of offensive potential.

Her psionic ability was something that was dubbed as 'Psychic Premonition.'

Psionic scientists and the like have yet to discover the true nature of 'Pyschic Permonition.' The most they were able to discover was that it allowed Mary and anyone with the same ability as her to sense any and all sorts of incoming 'unnatural' danger to either herself or someone else that she cared about.

Although Mary could not wield the same kind of devastating powers as her fellow psionics, her ability to sense ambushes and other kinds of attacks before they even occurred made her an invaluable asset to any team, whether it was team composed of psionics or otherwise.

And now like her old days as a P.A.I.N. operative, her ability warned her of a terrible threat.

But unlike her old days as a P.A.I.N. operative, she had none of her old psionic comrades to back her up in heat of battle.