The walls of Egghead hummed like a living thing. Machinery exhaled in steady rhythms, as if the island itself were a beast asleep, dreaming through wires and glass. Shinobu stood in the sterile white chamber, gown tied around her waist, her body still tender from the procedure.
Her ten egg cells — once hers, intimate and ordinary — were no longer hers at all. Dr. Vegapunk had taken them with a surgeon's precision, each one slipping from her body into cold storage, placed into a machine that looked more like a temple than a tool.
Now they were something new.
The scientist had stripped them down, undone them to their scaffolds, and laced them with Lunarian DNA strands pulled from King's blood. Shinobu hadn't watched every detail, but she had heard the clinical voice, the clicking instruments, and the low wonder in Vegapunk's mutters. She knew her cells were no longer just human, no longer just hers.
They were hybrid. They were promise. They were daughters who could be born with wings of fire.
She clasped her hands in front of her stomach and whispered, "Please… please hold."
The recombined egg cells had to stabilize first. Two days of hovering instruments, monitors spitting out numbers and curves, glass tubes lit with pale green light. She barely slept. Each beep of a scanner made her jolt, expecting disaster.
On the morning of the third day, Vegapunk adjusted his lenses and finally said, "Viable. The recombination has held."
Shinobu wept in silence.
The fertilization followed, a blur of gleaming needles and sterile chambers. King's contribution had been preserved from before his departure, sealed in a unit that pulsed faint blue when it was tapped. His absence made the room feel colder.
Shinobu stayed close. She pressed her palm to the glass of the cloning chamber as each fertilized embryo was introduced to its artificial womb. Ten sparks of life in fluid, tiny stars floating in green galaxies.
Vegapunk didn't smile, but there was something in his face — the twitch of satisfaction at a successful formula, the pride of a craftsman who had assembled something precise and rare. His gaze slid over Shinobu only briefly before returning to his consoles.
For a day, all seemed well. The embryos pulsed faintly in their containers, dividing, building, clinging to the rhythm of growth.
Then came her role.
Shinobu took a deep breath, rolled her shoulders, and raised her palms. The Mature-Mature Fruit was not meant for this, but she had vowed to use every part of herself for her children. She pushed her power into the chamber, the air trembling with unseen hands.
The embryos leapt. In seconds, what should have taken weeks occurred in the span of a heartbeat. Cells accelerated, dividing, organizing. Tissue took shape.
Vegapunk's lenses glowed as he tracked every line of data. His fingers scribbled notes so quickly that the ink nearly tore the page.
But Shinobu was looking only at the faint shadows within the green light. Ten of them, curling into the shapes of infants.
Another day passed. Vegapunk observed them through scanners, testing stability, noting every twitch of cell growth. Then Shinobu tried again — another surge of maturation. From one week to one month.
Her power strained against the glass, and sweat rolled down her spine. The children grew. Tiny faces, closed eyes. They seemed to drift in dreams.
Vegapunk's thoughts — precise, dispassionate — recorded everything: Accelerated tissue expansion stable. Organ development synchronized. Mitochondrial activity remains unusually high — perhaps an effect of Lunarian heritage. Potentially exploitable.
Shinobu bit her lip. They were not "effects." They were her daughters.
Another day, another leap — to three months. They were perfect, she thought. Their fingers curled, their small chests rose and fell, the wings beginning as faint buds.
Then came the silence.
Shinobu woke in the sterile bed to see Vegapunk's back bent over the controls. His screens had shifted from green to dull orange.
"What… what is it?" her voice cracked.
He didn't look at her right away. He pressed his stylus against the glass, scanning the figures. "Cardiac arrest. Cellular collapse."
Shinobu stumbled to the chamber. Her palms hit the glass. Inside, the little bodies had stilled. No more twitch of fingers. No more breath in their tiny chests.
She whispered, "No. No, no, no—" and her knees buckled.
The glass blurred with her tears.
It did not hurt her body — not like childbirth, not like injury — but it gouged her heart. Each one of those ten shapes had been hers. She had felt them, named them in secret. And now they were gone.
Vegapunk murmured notes without pause. "Failure at third maturation. Cloning chamber integrity compromised. Possible destabilization at DNA recombination juncture." His tone was as even as if he were discussing weather.
Shinobu slammed her fist against the glass. "They were my children!"
For a long second, the old man was silent. Then, faintly, he adjusted his coat. "I am aware."
The chamber was drained. The bodies taken out — respectfully, perhaps, but quickly. Shinobu could not bear to look. She curled in the corner of the sterile room and clutched her arms around herself.
That night she did not sleep.
The next day, King returned.
He did not come for her — not directly. He came in a burst of air, carried by Kuma's massive paws, and with him came Bonney, her face buried in her father's chest. Shinobu happened upon them by chance in the courtyard.
Kuma bent awkwardly to embrace his daughter, and Shinobu saw something shift in the man's massive frame. His shoulders, always taut, trembled. His enormous hands cupped Bonney as if she were made of glass.
"Father!" Bonney sobbed.
Shinobu's breath caught.
She saw the tear fall — just one, heavy as a stone — from Kuma's face. And Bonney's small arms tightening, clutching the man who had been machine, weapon, exile, and was now simply her father.
Something tore open in Shinobu's chest. The pain of loss mingled with something else, something sharper, cleaner: a determination that flared hot as Lunarian fire.
I will have this. I will have my children in my arms. I will not fail them again.
When King departed through Kuma's paw, Shinobu did not waste time in grief. She marched back to Vegapunk's lab, eyes still wet, voice steel.
"Find the problem," she demanded.
Vegapunk was already bent over the diagnostics. His stylus darted across notes. "The cloning chamber." His voice was cool, detached, as though he had known from the start. "A misalignment in the nutrient feed. Unstable feedback loop. I have replaced the part with a superior alloy. The error will not recur."
Shinobu's fists clenched. "Then we start again."
For once, Vegapunk looked up at her. His gaze flickered — a scientist weighing a subject, but also, faintly, perhaps, seeing the woman who had lost.
"Yes," he said simply. "We begin immediately."
Shinobu pressed her palm flat against the cool glass of the chamber once more, whispering to herself.
My children. Come back to me. I will not let you go again.