((Collab Post by Letter Bee and Sapphire.))
"Hey!" shouted Eden, transformed back into a human, at Cer, "I just rescued that guy!" And with that, he began running towards the jungle, surprisingly fast for someone who was using their body - or a computer stimulation of a body - for the first time. Once he reached Cer's position, he would begin panting, then place his hand on a nearby tree,
absorbing the plant matter into himself; turning it into slurry that was sucked up into his body.
Then, he went on the empty space left by the tree...and transformed into one himself, a majestic apple tree out of place in the (partly smoking) tropical jungle, its branches weighed down with dozens of fruit. The boy then said telpathically:
<Pick one and feed it to the man over there; that ought to heal his body.>
Cer stared at the boy her eyes emotionless, she didn't care much for Kuro's well being at this point. She watched as the boy turned into the tree, again without emotion, to be fair she was very fed up. For a while she ignored it but something gave her the feeling that if she didn't do something that kid would bother her again.
"I don't need your dumb fruit powers, I could heal him if I wanted to but I don't. He doesn't deserve it and he wouldn't die anyway, they won't let him because they'd lose the other two as well." She was more than a bit snappy but her resolve weakened and she decided to heal him, she did it herself though, just out of spite.
If a tree can convey sadness and dismay, Eden did that by having his branches fall lower than usual, before turning away from Cer.
<I was just trying to help>, he said sullenly.
"If you are looking for sympathy you're not going to get much from me." She growled before softening a little and healing Kuro with a tap to the forehead, before returning to the issue she had been mulling over since she met this kid. He was responding independantly from the system so he wasn't computer generated but she could tell somthing was off, he wasn't comepletely real, it put her even more on edge. "Whenever you feel like not being a tree we can talk about who you really are."
Eden, in response, transformed back into a human, making sure to include his swim trunks in the transformation. He then said:
"My name is Eden, Eden McFadden. I am the son of Jaden McFadden and..." he shuddered, a sense of...hatred and fear overcoming him, "...Isabella Lancaster, with a Surrogate Mother, Cindy Wade." His mind was struck by needles of pain, as if there was a prickly wall of sharp bristles blocking him from...something." He then stared at her eyes.
"No...No...I shouldn't be out of the womb yet; why am I here?..."
Cer looked at him curiously before chuckling darkly, "That's a damn good question, I can't answer it though. Keep asking yourself those questions and you'll find a world of trouble." She stood and scanned the sky lines for the destruction at the beach, worried it would come find them.
"I don't want trouble..." spoke Eden, "but at the same time..." he inhaled and exhaled deeply, still in indecision. "I'm curious. But if you don't want me bothering you, then I won't. I'll go back to my father." Then, a thought came to him. "Father...he has this strange urge to eat people, doesn't he? Can you heal him of that, too?"
Cer was about to tell him to do whatever he wanted because she didn't care and apologize for her behavior in the most indirect and confusing way possible because any other way would really be admitting that she was wrong. However she was distracted by the boy's request, "I could try but the brain is a tricky thing, one synapse off and the repurcussions could be devastating." She shrugged, "I'd need his explicit permission and even then that kind of work makes me uncomfortable."
"Understood," spoke Eden, carrying Kuro over his shoulder with surprising strength. "Why don't we go over there and get his permission, then?"
