It took half an hour of waiting and soft knocking every five minutes. But eventually, someone answered. A woman, possibly in her early 40s, answered. “Morning, what do you need?” She was clearly groggy, probably sleep-deprived.

  I didn’t know what to do. “Hello. I’m Nova… are you Erika Fenix, by any chance?”

  The woman muttered something before a look of surprise was plastered all over her face as her eyes went wide. “Stay right where you are, don’t move!” She went back inside the room. I could hear the sounds of commotion and muffled talking.

  It was then that I checked my internal clock. It was a little after five AM local Angmar time. So it stands to reason that everyone would be asleep anyway.

  “Please, come in, come in.” The woman offered as she ushered me inside. “I am so sorry, we waited at the gate for hours. The delays and… everything. So we got a room here instead of camping out in the spaceport.” She said as her family grogily got up.

  “You mean you're the Fenix’s?” I asked, obviously, they didn’t want to be woken up so early in the morning.

  Their number included the mother, Erika Fenix, the woman who let me in, and the father, Richard Fenix. And their children, Lily Fenix, age sixteen, and Jeremiah Fenix, age sixteen.

  “Yep,” Jeremiah said grogily. “Now, can we go back to sleep? It’s five in the morning.” Clearly, not a morning person. Can’t say I blame him.

  A few hours, and some food in them latter, the Fenix’s looked leagues better than they did when I arrived. I had spent the whole time charging with my charging cable; I hadn’t gotten a full charge since leaving Crucible. “I’m sorry it took so long-”

  “Kid, we heard about what delayed your ship. Doubt any of it was your fault.” Richard said, his voice deep and gruff. “Think you can manage a Winterheim storm?”

  “Don’t worry, I’ve been designed to withstand the cold,” I said proudly.

  “That’s what Talos thought,” Lily said cryptically. “Thought he could survive, with some jumpsuit he was probably built inside of. But when he faced his first real, actual winter in Fridrheim. He was more ice than robot when he was found deep in the woods. A look of unbridled terror on his face, probably realizing his hubris, too late to undo his error. All of his chips, his servos, and other advanced robo-guts… cracked, turned into little flakes of ice. Nothing to salvage from him, except his face, and a grim lesson about the dangers of the cold.”

  That was the scariest story I've ever heard about this planet so far. “Y-You know what? You talked me into it.” Truth be told, I always wanted clothing that was my own. No jumpsuits that marked me as CID property. Just me, Nova. But on Crucible, if the CID made you, you were owned by the CID.

  “Then it’s settled. Richard, you and Jeremiah pack. Lily and I will meet you at the mag-tain station, we’ll take Nova clothes shopping.” Erika said with the intensity of a general planning a military maneuver.

  “What for real?!” Lily said with the excitement of a puppy that just got its first forever home. “Come on! There’s a clothing store in the spaceport!” She grabbed me by the sleeve and dragged me out of the room like she was a charging T’rak. I’m so hoping this doesn’t become a recurring thing with her. I wasn’t designed to be a doll… and I thank my stars every day that I’m not.

  However, in her excitement, she tripped over a door frame and fell flat on her face. “Oh my goodness! Are you okay?” I gasped as I got her on her feet. Thankfully, I had been trained in medicine on Crucible. Her nose didn’t suffer major damage. A little bleeding, but nothing severe, though Erika didn’t think so when she caught up with us and admonished Lily for running off and hurting herself again.

  After we cleared things up, we got to the clothing store that started this mess. One that catered to winter fashion, which will definitely help me avoid the same fate as Talos. Assuming he wasn’t made up. “Now, Nova, you can pick out one outfit for yourself. Lily, help her navigate the aisles. I’ll look around the store myself.” Erika said.

  Lily took me by the arm again and dragged me. “Hey! You don’t have to drag me! I’m perfectly capable of following!” I protested. Lily then looked at me sadly. “Oh… Lily, I didn’t mean to raise my voice. I-”

  “No, you're right. I always get overexcited about… everything, now that I think about it. Let's start over again. I’m Lily Fenix. You’re new sister.” Lily said with an outstretched arm. I could tell from my ambient scan that she was sincere.

  “Nova Vita CRP-14. It’s nice to meet you, Lily.” I said, returning the handshake. “Shall we see what we can find?”

  “Yes, let's!” Lily began scanning clothing racks. It’s actually kind of scary how focused she is on this. As she pulls out shirts, pants, and so forth, she says ‘no’ and puts them back. “So… you're from a volcano planet, right?”

  “Yes, I was created on the planet Crucible. By Dr. Daniel R. Samson, as a prototype companion robot for lonely children.” I explained proudly.

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  “Well, hot dang! Here I was thinking we’d just adopt an ordinary Freebot.” Lily’s presumption stung.

  “Actually… I’m not. I’m not Emancipated from Crucible Interplanetary Developments. My adoption by your family is an integration probation.” I admitted sheepishly.

  Lily looked at me as if I had said something weird and obscene. “Pardon?”

  I took a deep breath, even though I didn’t need oxygen. It was more for my nerves and to cool down. “Look, I’m a prototype. But I was dismissed by the CID’s board of directors because they believed I was emotionally unstable. Apparently, they thought that a robot as emotional as I could be a liability. So my creator argued with the board, and they reached a compromise. I’d live with a human family, with a CID-appointed supervisor planetside to check on my development.” Lily stared at me in disbelief, looking disheartened.

  “How long should that take?” Lily asked.

  I didn’t want to cause a scene in the store, because I imagined her reaction to being told that being Emancipated, especially from a corpo like the CID, could take months, or even years. I also wasn’t comfortable with lying. I decided to change the subject, and I pointed out the first thing I could see.

  “Lily, what kind of clothing is that?” I said, pointing to a line of colorful long-sleeved jackets.

  “Those are puffer jackets… wait a minute,” Lily said contemplatively, as she looked between the display and me. “Tell me, which color of these jackets do you like?” I had never been asked something like that before. Not by someone who wasn’t Dr. Samson anyway.

  “The teal one.” Lily took one of the teal jackets.

  “Follow me, sis. By the time we’re done, you’ll be the cutest robot on Winterheim.” Lily had a grin on her face that seemed like a cat's. Though, to be fair, I DID want to look cute. She took me through the store, and by the time we were done, we had gotten teal gloves, a teal shirt, black leggings, a black skirt, and black boots. “Are you ready to be reborn?” She asked me dramatically in the women's dressing room.

  “As I’ll ever be.” Lily gave me the clothes, and I went inside to get dressed. I was hesitant at first, as I had never worn anything other than a CID jumpsuit.

  So I had no idea how to put these on at first. But I thought it through, and I zipped off my jumpsuit, and put it to the side, and slowly but surely. I put the new clothes on.

  I started with the shirt, then the leggings, then the skirt, the boots, the jacket, and the gloves. I didn’t even recognize myself in the mirror at first. It was like another girl was looking back at me… a real girl. Not a bot with the sword of Damocles hanging over her head. “Uh… Lily, could you come in here, please?”

  “Did a zipper get stuck- OH MY GOODNESS!” Lily shouted in disbelief when she came into the dressing room.

  “What’s wrong?!” I said in shock.

  “You’re the most adorable bot I’ve ever seen.” Lily looked like she was going to cry as she hugged me.

  “So… this is a good look?” I asked nervously.

  “Of course it’s a good look!” Lily dragged me out of the dressing room. “Whoops… forgot about boundaries.” Then Erika caught up with us.

  “Girls, I found the funniest shirt.” She was holding a shirt that had a cartoon penguin on it, wrapped in layers of winter clothing, and shivering. It read ‘Cold enough for you?’

  Lily giggled. “You know, that’s one of your better corny shirt finds. It’d be perfect.”

  “Yes, that penguin is adorable.” Did I just say that outloud? Lily must be rubbing off on me.

  “Well, you’re going to see more. Winterhearth has over thirty species of penguin!” During the six months, Dr. Samson prepared me for life on Winterhearth. His research included the Winterhearth penguins; there are exactly thirty-six species of penguin indigenous to Winterhearth. From the Leviathan penguins, birds at least two to three stories tall, to the small and mysterious green Fae penguins.

  “I believe I’d enjoy seeing them,” I said as we went to the register. Thankfully, modern cash registers can scan what a person is wearing. “Will this be enough for Winterhearth?”

  “Don’t worry, it’s warmed up today,” Erika said as we went outside. It was my first ever snowfall. I had heard of snow, water crystallized by cold. But I never believed I’d ever see it in person.

  “Well, that’s just peachy,” Erika said, breaking me out of my wonderment. “The plaza is swarmed by Iron-Crowns today!”

  And true to her word, the plaza was filled with penguins with large grey crests and grey beaks. They looked so cute, but Lily grabbed my wrist. “Rules of Iron-Crowns, sis. Never block an Iron-Crown’s path; they’ll bite at you. Never look an Iron-Crown directly in the eyes; they’ll scream at you. And never, ever, ever laugh at an Iron-Crown, they’ll bite and scream at you.”

  Lily scared me. I mean, they’re just penguins, what's the worst they could do? I got my question answered when a number of them made an ear-piercing scream. I had to manually disengage my hearing just to avoid being overwhelmed by the shrieks of the Iron-Crowns. How do people live with that kind of noise?

  When Erika and Lily stopped holding their ears, I reactivated my hearing. “-us around the flocks. If an Iron-Crown crosses your path. Stop. Don’t walk over it, or behind or in front of it. Do you understand me, Nova?”

  I’ll admit, when Dr. Samson told me about my host family. I never imagined I’d be attacked by penguins. It took longer to get through them than expected, not helped when I accidentally stepped on one that was missing its left foot and covered in scars. Who took such offense that he chased me around like a madman.

  Apparently, he’s a local menace known as ‘Captain Ahab’ who routinely terrorizes anyone who has the misfortune to come anywhere near him. He chased me through restaurants and stores, where staff of all stripes were either panicking, taking pictures, or standing their ground before the little monster tackled them into submission like an angry cat.

  And after that misadventure passed. We finally caught up with the boys at the mag-train station. “What took you so long?” Richard asked.

  “Iron-Crowns, Nova stepped on Captain Ahab, we lost him, when’s our train coming? And has anyone seen one of those bots that give out complimentary t-shirts?” Lily said briskly.

  Jeremiah, for the first time since I met him, smiled. “You actually stepped on Ahab? Nice.”

  Then a robot approached me. “Congratulations! You survived Captain Ahab! On behalf of the Angmar City Chamber of Commerce, you’ve more than earned a free t-shirt!” The shirt in question had an image of Captain Ahab, modified to replace his missing foot with an ancient wooden prosthetic called a ‘peg-leg’. On it read ‘I survived Captain Ahab, Scourge of Angmar City, High King of the Iron-Crown Penguins’.

  Goody, not only is he a menace, he’s a tourist attraction. At least I won’t be living here. Hopefully, the penguins in Fridrheim are gentler than that squaking maniac.

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  What to Expect:

  - An epic, multi-book space opera with a large found family and multiple POVs.

  - A powerful but emotionally vulnerable protagonist with chaotic powers he struggles to control.

  - Strong, capable, and sometimes morally gray women.

  - High stakes, cosmic threats, and detailed world-building.

  What NOT to Expect:

  - LitRPG/System elements

  - Lone wolf power fantasy

  - A story that is only about romance

  This story contains mature themes, explicit sexual content, and graphic violence. It is not suitable for readers under the age of 18.

  90+ Chapters in the first month

  500,000+ words already written and backlogged