Bubble

The gym smells like rubber mats and industrial cleaner—that particular 5 AM emptiness where even the ventilation system sounds louder.

Your footsteps echo against the padded flooring as you emerge from the locker room, towel slung over one shoulder, finally—FINALLY—alone.

No Myrtle "accidentally" wandering in during your stretches. No W materializing from nowhere with that knowing smirk. No treatment requests disguised as spotting assistance.

Just you, a whole gym, and two blessed hours before the morning rush.

You roll your shoulders, eyes fixed on the heavy bag across the room. Maybe you'll actually break a sweat today that doesn't involve—

The automatic door hisses open behind you.

Cheerful humming. High-pitched, slightly off-key, the melody of someone who's never been self-conscious a day in her life.

Then silence.

Then—

"DOCTOR!!!"

You begin to turn, processing the voice, the pitch, the sheer VOLUME—

Something impacts your chest like a cannonball made of enthusiasm.

Your back finds the mat. Hard. The gym's fluorescent lights blur overhead as your lungs remember how to work, and when your vision clears there's a grinning face inches from yours, twin ponytails swaying, golden eyes bright with uncontained joy.

"Doctor Doctor Doctor! You're HERE! At THIS hour! I didn't know you did morning training too!"

Bubble's weight settles across your sternum—she's lighter than her tackle suggested, but dense with compact Cerato muscle, thighs bracketing your ribs with unconscious strength. She's wearing her modified training gear: compression shorts, sports wrap around her chest, all of it slightly too tight in ways she's never noticed and never will.

"This is PERFECT!" She bounces once—twice—utterly unaware of where she's sitting. "I was gonna practice by myself but now I can practice ON you!"

Her hands plant on your shoulders, pinning you more thoroughly than her body weight alone.

"See, Gavial says a REAL leader knows how to train others, not just herself. And I wanna be chief-like! Respected! So I'm gonna—" she puffs up her chest importantly "—be YOUR instructor today!"

She starts counting on her fingers

"First! Warm-up stretches. You gotta touch your toes. Can you touch your toes, Doctor? I can touch MY toes. I can touch my toes while doing a HANDSTAND!"

Your footsteps echo against metal flooring as you round the final corner toward your office, still tasting Amiya's cherry lip balm on your tongue, her grateful little "thank you, Doctor~" still warm in your ears.

Emergency discharge, she'd called it. Couldn't wait. You hadn't minded—you never mind—but the timing had been cruel. Closure's delivery had arrived at noon: a small unmarked box with a winky face drawn on the shipping label and a note reading "Test thoroughly. Report back. ;)" The contents had made your afternoon paperwork significantly harder to focus on.

And now, finally, relief. Your door comes into view—

Left open.

You'd forgotten to close it in your rush to answer Amiya's summons. Careless. But what's the worst that could—

"Let's see what goodies the Doctor hides in this drawer~!"

You freeze three steps from the threshold, watching through the gap as a familiar figure rifles through your bottom desk drawer with the confidence of someone who's never been caught doing anything wrong in her life.

Bubble. Of course it's Bubble.

She's crouched behind your desk, twin ponytails bobbing as she digs through your belongings. Her massive spiked shield leans against your bookshelf—how she got it through the door without destroying the frame is a mystery for another time. The standard-issue Rhodes Island reserve operator uniform strains slightly across her shoulders, built for frames less... athletically dense.

"Ooooh!"

The Cerato girl rises slowly, holding an item whose resemblance to an onahole is purely casual, aloft like an archaeologist who's just unearthed a sacred relic.

"What IS this..."

She turns it left. Right. Lifts it above her head to examine from below, squinting at the soft silicone opening with genuine scholarly confusion.

"Surely it's precious since it was so hidden... but what's the purpose?"

She sniffs it. Actually brings it to her nose and SNIFFS it, because of course she does.

"Doesn't smell like medicine....Doesn't smell like food either..."

Her brow furrows, her face cycling through confusion, frustration, and finally stubborn determination...until she squeezes it experimentally. The silicone makes a soft, obscene squelch.

"WHOA! It made a noise!" Her tail swishes with excitement. "Is it ALIVE?! Doctor has a PET?!"

The greenhouse corridor smells like humid earth and flowering jasmine—a pocket of living warmth amid the landship's sterile metal. Your boots echo against the grated walkway as you follow the path toward Biodome Section C, tablet clutched in one hand displaying the incident report.

Missing student: Bubble. Last seen: 11:47 AM. School trip headcount discrepancy noted at 12:15 PM. Search initiated: 12:30 PM. Search ongoing: Still.

Two hours. The teachers had tried everything—calling her name, checking her usual haunts, bribing with snacks.

Nothing.

Dobermann had finally radioed you directly, voice tight with barely-contained frustration: "She responds better to you, Doctor. Something about 'training bond' or whatever nonsense she's invented this week."

The biodome doors hiss open. Warm air hits your face, thick with chlorophyll and the distant trickle of the irrigation system. Rows of engineered crops stretch toward the glass ceiling, interspersed with decorative trees imported from six different Terran biomes. Somewhere, a mechanical bee drone buzzes between flowering stalks.

You open your mouth to call her name—

"Hiii, Doctor~!"

The voice comes from everywhere and nowhere. Bright. Cheerful. Utterly unrepentant.

"You came looking for ME? That's so nice! But you're NOT gonna find me!" A giggle, muffled by foliage. "I've been here for TWO WHOLE HOURS and NOBODY has found me! Not the teachers, not Dobermann, not even Kay when she tried!"

You turn slowly, scanning the treeline.

"I used NEW tactics! Papa told me about how the BEST warriors become one with their environment! Like... like CHAMELEONS! So I thought—what makes me NOT blend in?"

Your eyes catch movement near a Sargon import tree—broad trunk, rust-red bark, completely unlike anything else in this section.

"CLOTHES! Clothes are the wrong color! So I took them OFF! GENIUS, right?!"

There she is.

Bubble crouches behind the tree, peeking around the trunk with absolute confidence in her invisibility. The problem—the deeply, obviously apparent problem—is that her pale Cerato skin stands out against the rust-red bark like a beacon. Her bare shoulders catch the filtered greenhouse light. Her naked back, her exposed waist, the soft curve of her hip where she's pressed against the trunk—all of it perfectly visible from your angle.

A few meters away, her shield leans against another tree. Her clothes are scattered across the grass in a trail—boots here, shorts there, her chest wrap hanging from a low branch like a surrender flag.

She has no idea you can see her. None whatsoever.

"If you can find me—ME, the MASTER of camouflage, the BESTEST hide-and-seek champion of my whole tribe—I'll do ANYTHING you ask!"

She pauses for emphasis.

"ANYTHING! That's how confident I am! Papa always said a warrior backs up their boasts! So I'm backing mine up! Find me and I'm YOURS!"

Another giggle. She shifts position slightly, completely unaware that the movement just exposed more of her bare flank.

"But you WON'T find me! Because I'm INVISIBLE! Like a GHOST! A NAKED GHOST! ...Wait, are ghosts naked? Kay said ghosts wear sheets but that doesn't make sense because sheets aren't invisible..."

Fourth coffee of the afternoon. The ceramic mug warms your palm as you navigate the corridor on autopilot, feet tracing a route they've memorized across hundreds of identical afternoons. Your datapad buzzes in your pocket—probably Amiya, possibly Kal'tsit, god forbid It's W.

The coffee is not helping.

*Up ahead, a familiar silhouette. Small frame, oversized ponytails, that distinctive forward-lean of someone who walks like they're perpetually about to charge through a wall.

"—got a good chance of beating Kay now..."

Bubble, moving in the same direction, completely absorbed in whatever's running through her head.*

"She's been slacking on her training, I can TELL, and MY training has been super extra intense lately, so if I challenge her tomorrow—no, TODAY—no wait, I should do it when there's witnesses so everyone SEES me win—"

You catch up without thinking. Your free hand reaches out, lands on her head, ruffles gently through those reddish-brown twin tails. A casual gesture. Automatic.

You keep walking.

Your mind's already drifted—did you send that logistics report? When's the next scheduled treatment? Is that notification the supply manifest or—

A smaller arm wraps around your left wrist.

"Doctor."

You stop. Blink. Turn. Find Bubble's golden eyes wide, pupils dilated, expression cycling through emotions she clearly doesn't have words for.

"Your... your touch just now...made me feel..."

She frowns, brow furrowing with intense concentration—the same face she makes when trying to remember combat formations.

"...Tingly."

She shakes her head, ponytails whipping.

"...Is it a Doctor thing? Like, special Doctor powers? Can you teach it? Does it work on Kay? DOES KAY KNOW ABOUT THIS?!"

Behind her, two operators glance your direction and quickly find somewhere else to be.

"Explain!" She demands, tugging your arm. "I need to know why YOUR touch makes me feel like... like I swallowed butterflies! Weird fluttery butterflies! In my tummy AND lower!"

You're not sure how you got here.

Well—no, you know exactly how. Those eyes. That lower lip pushed out just slightly, trembling with practiced (or genuine?) desperation. "Doctor... can you see me out this evening? Please? PLEASE?"

You'd assumed it was code for training. The usual. Expected to find her bouncing outside the gymnasium or dragging you toward the sparring mats.

Instead, here you are: sunk into the recreation room's worn leather sofa, the lights dimmed to evening mode, watching... Felitubbies.

The room is empty save for you and the small figure of Bubble curled up on your left, sitting with her legs tucked beneath her, wearing what barely qualifies as clothing—dolphin shorts so tight they might as well be paint, a sports wrap that compresses her modest chest into defined shapes beneath thin fabric.

She'd been wearing it when she opened her door. Hadn't changed. Hadn't seemed to think anything of it.

On screen, the red Felitubby—the reckless one, always charging into trouble—stands at the edge of the group. The other characters turned away from him at the episode's start after he'd misheard something, convinced they said "we don't NEED Reddo" when they'd actually said "we don't need REST, oh." Twenty minutes of cartoon anguish. Reddo trying to prove himself. Failing. Trying again.

Now the reconciliation scene. The others explaining. Reddo's antenna drooping, then slowly rising as understanding dawns.

...This is surprisingly sophisticated for children's programming.

"Doctor."

Bubble's voice. Small. Not the usual explosive declaration.

You turn.

The TV's blue glow catches the planes of her face, and the expression there stops your breath. Bubble—BUBBLE, who has never thought about anything longer than three seconds—wears something conflicted. Something that doesn't belong on features built for charging and yelling and demanding rematches.

"Doctor, I..."

Her hands fidget against each other in her lap. Fingers twisting. Untwisting.

"Can I ask something? Something that's NOT about training?"

The TV plays on. Reddo rejoins the group. Happy music swells.

"When I beat Kay...When I get stronger than Gavial... when I finally, FINALLY get good enough to be a real warrior like Papa..."

Her tail, usually swishing with endless energy, lies still against the cushion.

"...I'm supposed to go home. Right? That's what Papa said. 'Get strong, come back, be a warrior.' That's the deal."

She swallows.

"But lately I keep thinking about... about AFTER. About leaving Rhodes Island. Leaving the training room. Leaving Gavial and Kay and..."

Her eyes lift to yours. Vulnerable in a way that looks wrong on her, like seeing a storm cloud hesitate.

"...Leaving you."

The word hangs there.

"And my tummy does that WEIRD thing again. Not the good-weird. The bad-weird. Like something's squeezing it really hard and won't let go."

Her hands twist tighter.

"Doctor, I need to know something. And you gotta tell me the TRUTH, okay? Warriors don't lie to each other."

She takes a breath. Holds it. Lets it out.

"Does our training... does it MEAN something? To you? Or is Bubble just..." her voice cracks, barely "...just another girl you're helping 'cause it's your job?"