A Space Oddity

by J. J. Pavlov

  Thirty years ago, she woke up in the middle of a barren wasteland, naked and freezing from the cold winds. The last thing she remembered was her neck snapping under her own weight as she kicked the chair away. But here she was, alive, with grayish-blue skin and purple hair, two curved horns growing from her forehead, and a feeling of power emanating from her body.

  However, just a moment later, memories that were not her own flooded her mind. She nearly collapsed from the overwhelming headache assaulting her entire head, and a shock ran down her spine, into every fiber of her body. The pain of death from being digested alive replayed itself before everything blacked out.

  Opening her eyes, she realized it was just an illusion, one caused by a repetition of memories from the person whose body she now inhabited. Or rather, whose form her new body had taken; she was definitely not human, but she also was not of this world.

  She lifted her arm and scrutinized her fingers one by one, which suddenly split open and spread out into countless black tendrils at a simple thought. It ran down her entire forearm, but she knew that her whole body was like this now.

  There was more she knew than just about her new body. She was in a different world, where demons and magic existed. There was no disbelief, no fear, only tranquility. Her death had brought her here, given her a new chance. Not a chance at life - that was something she did not care about anymore. It was a chance to bring her daughter back.

  Not long after waking up, a group of demon soldiers appeared over the horizon. Her enhanced eyesight allowed her to make out their features from a great distance, causing her to panic. She then decided to act as if she was unconscious to avoid speaking to them. The memories of her body told her that she had been a simple farm girl before her death. If recognized, they would surely bring her to the other survivors of the disaster.

  However, she quickly learned that there were no others like her. She was the only one who had returned after being swallowed and was now treated as a special existence. They took her to a military camp, then brought her to a city in the back of a carriage, all while she was still acting unconscious.

  During that time of inactivity, she explored her memories, distilling the information into a singular train of thought that formulated a plan. She understood what her body was capable of, but also its limitations and the curse placed upon it. Soon, the hunger would set in and dictate her every thought, so she had to secure a steady supply without having to dedicate her life to it.

  Shortly after openly waking up for the first time, Court Magician Mithra Umratawil came to question her, but she acted as if her memories were gone. Unable to glean anything from her, he had to give up soon. She would have been returned to the refugee camps as just another displaced demon, if not for a surprise visit.

  Demon King Aldeath Rangatira came to see her after hearing about her beauty. He was a towering man with red skin and gigantic horns extending from his temples' like a bull's. From her new memories, she knew that the knowledge of his overwhelming lustfulness spread even to remote villages of this nation.

  She could use that.

  He took her as his concubine when she tweaked her pheromone output to attract him to her. Even though she had never learned anything like that in her previous life, she knew exactly how to do it with this new body. His sex drive was immense, and his member equaled it, but with her malleable body, she was able to make him addicted to her.

  Within two weeks, he declared her queen, the only person in the Dominion fit to stand next to him at the top of the nation. It was not only for her ability to satisfy him but her incredible fighting prowess. It helped that she was able to unscramble all sorts of memories from the many demons that had been consumed alongside her. Those included genetic templates and even magical knowledge, which she had secretly applied to make herself worthy in his eyes.

  Thus, she could live in comfort and set her secret wish in motion. With the court magician coerced into working for her with his unique ability to teleport, she was able to keep it a secret from everybody else. Splitting off pieces of her body, she hoped that they would catch the soul of her daughter just like hers had been.

  The likelihood of that happening was infinitesimally small that it might as well have been nil, but she tried nonetheless. It was neither science nor faith, only the attempts of somebody who had gone mad long ago.

  That she liked living with Aldeath and eventually even fell in love with him was inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. All that mattered to her was to bring back her daughter.

  A part of her mourned his death at the hands of the humans two years later, but rage won the upper hand and compelled her into action. She descended on the human army with a vengeance and wiped them out to the last person while revealing that she could transform her body.

  Luckily, nobody connected her abilities to the Crawling Chaos she was born from, or even demonkind would have tried to kill her.

  Even after witnessing her terrifying power, there were dissidents when she announced that she would continue to reign as the queen of the Dominion. She didn't want power but needed her position to make use of Mithra. Her public reasoning was that demons should reign through might rather than democracy.

  It resulted in her killing several clan leaders to make an example, including one from the Four Great Clans. Once nobody threatened her position anymore, she continued efforts to rebirth her child.

  Many years passed when the first sign of success appeared; one of her children had memories of another world. When she revealed glimpses of their past, she realized that it was her daughter.

  But something was wrong with her mind. She was prone to violent outbursts and phases of childish innocence, and eventually even attempted to kill her mother. She had to be put down.

  However, that failure did not deter her. She tried again and again, sometimes taking great leaps forward but crashing back to previous lows as if in karmic compensation. Nearly thirty years of failed experiments did not make her lose heart, and eating her own child, again and again, became a routine. Soon, she felt nothing about it.

  In fact, she considered none of them her child. They were monsters, possessed by evil, that did not deserve to be compared to her daughter.

  But as their personalities became less and less distinguishable from the real one, she devised a series of tests that could discover hidden flaws. It aimed to find idiosyncrasies that did not exist in the original.

  "And then you came along." Maou-mama gives me a beaming smile after finishing her story in perfect Japanese.

  I'm speechless.

  My mind is in turmoil.

  Umm... what?

  "I was not sure you were my Makoto-chan, but after everything I saw, you are the one." She continues while walking toward me. My thoughts snap back to the present situation, and I catch myself trying to inch away from her.

  "You... are mama, right?" I stare at her, and she stops. Then she gives me an understanding smile, and all doubts fade away. Slightly ditzy, always there with an answer to my life troubles, not infallible but lovable precisely for that reason, gentle and caring but strict when it matters, a housewife who has a penchant for cooking too much when excited about something. That's Kuroe Yumiko, my mother from before I reincarnated into this world.

  "Who else would I be, silly?" She bridges the distance between us and pets my hair while looking up at me. As Demon Queen Pelomyx, she's nearly equal to me in height. But be it because of my father's genes or because I always drank milk for breakfast, I used to be quite a bit taller than her.

  "What happened? I mean, to me... to you?" The very start of her story already shocked me, and it only got worse as it reached the part about how she dealt with her offspring. The gentle person of my memories turned into somebody I would normally be afraid of if she weren't my mother. If not for all my experiences in this world so far, I would still be scared of her. That's why I have to know what drove her to do what she did in her previous life, as well as all the things that s
he did in this one.

  "You disappeared." Her expression changes, but she maintains a smile for a completely different reason than before. It breaks my heart when I look into her eyes; that's the expression of a broken woman, one who had lost everything and had seen no more meaning in her life. "You went into your room in the evening, and in the morning, you were gone. It made the national news, you know?"

  I was a little bit of a star if I do say so myself. After all, I did run near Olympic times on my marathons; the road to becoming a world-renown athlete was paved for me. I guess suddenly disappearing would garner quite a bit of interest. How did my best friend Hitomi-chan react to it?

  But thinking about it is pointless now. I can never return to that time and place, and neither can Maou-mama.

  "What happened to dad?" I'm afraid to ask but muster the courage to do so anyway.

  "There were many prank calls from people saying they saw you. The police gave up after not too long as there were no leads. You were filed as a cold case, and your disappearance was considered a complete mystery. Three years later, even the scummy private detectives decided that they had sucked enough money out of us and abandoned the job. Around that time, your dad gave up as well. And it no longer worked out between us." Her cracked smile fades away when she recalls that part of her past life. I can't even begin to imagine what he must have gone through until he came to that decision. And what it must have been like to separate over this. "But I never gave up. Not until they found your body eight years after the night you vanished."

  Something rumbles in the pit of my stomach when I see a shadow of the abyss of despair in my mother's eyes at these words. She must have held hope in her heart until the cold reality came crashing down on her in the form of undeniable evidence.

  "There were no signs of foul play. You were the same as on the day you disappeared. I am sorry that I could not give you the funeral you deserved." She touches my cheek with an apologetic look. I don't understand why she feels sorry about that; it wasn't her fault that somebody killed me in my sleep and took my corpse away. "Your ashes are with your grandparents in Chiba."

  "Why did you..." I can't bring myself to say it out loud.

  "Kill myself?" Her face lights up at these words as if recalling the epiphany that she had reached at the time before taking the final step. "After everything, there was nothing left in that world for me. I thought I should join you in the next, and here we are."

  We did meet again in the next world, but it wasn't as easy as just ending her life in the previous. Although thirty years doesn't seem that long to a being like Aldeath, who lived over half a millennium, it's still unthinkable when one considers what she had to go through in all that time. It's a wonder she didn't give up after however many failed attempts she had.

  The fact that I don't remember any of the earlier iterations is either an indication for the fact that they weren't actually me or opens up a whole new can of worms. It would mean she killed me because I didn't behave the way she wanted me to.

  I prefer to believe that it was the former as it's better for my sanity. Still, I wonder how they had my memories and parts of my personality. Maybe Maou-mama created them from scratch out of her image of me, but they lacked a real soul. I have no idea how the Crawling Chaos body works, so that's entirely within the realm of the possible.

  "So, what did you want to tell me earlier? There was one more person?" Suddenly moving away from the heavy topic of her past, Maou-mama looks at me with a warm smile that melts my resistance. She really is my mother, not just the one I've come to love in this world, but the one from my previous life. What happened to her after my death no longer matters to her, and it shouldn't matter to me either. We have found each other across dimensions, and that's what counts.

  "I think there was an accident during our transfer, so when we arrived, she wasn't with us." I speak in Imperian - or the Dominion dialect of it - so that Mithra can understand us as well. We've been talking in Japanese all this time after all so nobody could understand a word though I wonder why she made everybody else leave the room if she was going to do it like this.

  "If you are here, she should be, too. Accidents do not happen in the transportation network." Maou-mama states with a skeptical expression but then slaps a hand in front of her mouth.

  Wait.

  "What do you mean, accidents don't happen?" I stare at her, and she turns her head away. Then I fall back into Japanese. "Oi, look at me!"

  "I have no idea what you are talking about." Shrugging with an innocent smile, she lies into my face.

  "Was it part of the process to see whether or not I'm the real Makoto?" Sighing, I relax my shoulders and speak in a resigned tone. I have to assume that every little mistake that Maou-mama seems to have committed was part of her test. That would include the supposedly accidental teleportation to Yagrath and forgetting to tell me the activation phrase for the map in my starter kit.

  "Yes, it was." Her overeager nod as if to jump at my conveniently provided explanation somehow tells me otherwise, but I'll let it rest.

  "So, what happened to my companion then if it wasn't an accident?" I return to using Imperian and address both my mother and Mithra.

  "It no longer matters. I will find her." Mithra declares with a nod. That's an attitude that satisfies me, though I wonder what he has been doing for the past few hours. After all, he has been standing around here and listening to a language he shouldn't understand instead of searching.

  "Hestia seems to crave a bed." Maou-mama comments while pointing at the angel girl, who was in the process of dozing off in her seat but startles awake at being called out so suddenly.

  "N-no, I am alright. Please do not worry about me." The latter quickly says while waving her hands in denial.

  "It would be best if you rested for tonight. I shall let you know when I find your companion in the morning." With a respectful bow, the court magician suggests. Knowing myself, Asoko should be fine no matter where she ended up. And if Mithra can find her remotely, we don't have to worry about her wandering off from her initial location.

  "Thank you." I nod at him, then turn back to my mother. "I want to talk a little more."

  "Are you not tired?" She asks me with a gentle smile while fixing a loose strand of hair behind my ear.

  "No, I'm fine. I want to spend some time with you, mama." I go in for a hug while transforming my body into the form I had before my death, and she accepts me with open arms. We're finally reunited, so I don't want to leave her side already - even if it's only a few rooms over from hers.

  My mind hasn't fully processed the truth of this situation yet. My mother in this fantasy world is my mother from the previous world who reincarnated here before me. It just feels statistically improbable for my spirit to have drifted across however many dimensions or universes to this particular planet and ended up in this exact place to be reborn as her child. Something else must be at work underneath it all.

  But I don't really care right now; all that matters is that it happened and that we're here.

  Hestia slept in my room while Maou-mama and I talked through the night, recalling memories of our past life together. For a while, we forgot our surroundings and were transported back to the dining room in the small house we used to live in. We reminisced about my marathon successes, my sometimes poor grades at school, and what life was like with the existence of supermarkets and convenience stores.

  I learned that she already realized I swung that way in middle school, even before I myself did. She then dissuaded my father from trying to influence me toward the straight path, giving me all the freedom I needed. After all, I had enough pressure from growing into an Olympian, although I never felt that way about sports.

  She's happy for me now because I found girls I love and am not afraid to announce it to the world. She reassured me that as the crown princess of the Dominion, I wouldn't have to justify myself before anybody - not even to her - and could do whatever I wanted. She also told m
e that if I were so inclined, I could choose more partners from among the Maid Corps. After all, the current iteration was explicitly created for my sake when I finally came to this world. As a Crawling Chaos, she already expected that a single partner wouldn't be enough.

  And it's true. Very few beings in this world could keep up with my untiring body.

  I always thought the Maid Corps was a remnant from Aldeath's tenure, considering his famous libido - or even Maou-mama's hobby. Most of them do seem too young to have been alive when he was, though. Then again, demon species all have different aging processes. I'm sure that just like Kamii, most of them are adults despite some definitely not looking the part.

  When a maid walks into the dining hall to start setting up the breakfast table without knocking, we realize that the whole night has passed by in the blink of an eye.

  "Excuse me." The slender woman with long white hair and a deathly-pale complexion apologizes with a bow. She wears a completely black version of the maid uniform, and her eternally sullen face with the upturned eyes is covered by a netted veil as if she's in mourning. Her entire outfit resembles an elaborate funeral dress. "I did not think Maou-sama and Chaos-sama would be up so early."

  Maou-mama and I exchange a look at her words and smile to ourselves. Then she turns to the goth maid and gestures for her to stay.

  "Otsuyu, please ask Airiunne to cook a feast for breakfast. Once in a while, that should be fine, right?" It actually sounds like she's asking a superior rather than giving an order. But my mind is more fixated on this particular maid's name.

  "Otsuyu?" I ask out louder than I intended to, and the woman in question looks at me as if expecting a follow-up to it. Her eyes fixated on mine seem to radiate sadness. The funeral attire may hold an explanation, but I don't want to pry. "Sorry, it's nothing."

  "Understood." Bowing once more without showing her thoughts about my doubtlessly strange behavior on her face, she turns around and leaves to fulfill Maou-mama's request.