Okay, so… I probably shouldn't give birth while three inches tall.  I have some time to deal, though… childbirth takes hours.  So I climb out of my body, dismiss Minute Form, make a couple of doctors for myself… lie down naked on a suitable bed in the demiplane, and wait. I mean… the doctors probably aren't particularly useful: Nine out of ten times a woman is fully capable of birthing a baby all by herself with no major complications (the other one in ten, though…), and I'll certainly survive… even if I don't.

So I just lie there, in pain (I don't respond to painkillers…), waiting for the time to push.

Did I mention this takes hours?

I mostly play games on my magic personal comm unit… the mindless twitch variety, where you don't need to think too terribly much, just pay attention and mash buttons… although here, the buttons are purely mental, as are the sounds and the display.

So maybe they're thinking games, not mindless ones?  Huh.  Mindless mind games… whatever.

Regardless, I pause and breathe when the pain gets bad, push when my manufactured doctor tells me to, and mostly just try not to think about what's going on.

…which mostly works.

After an indeterminate and painful length of time, my fake doctor hands me a twenty inch tall fairy with butterfly wings, full womanly curves (ta's chest pillows are about the size of apples, despite the small scale of the rest), a human-scale twig and berries (which means they hang down to ta's knees), a neon purple soul, and what look like tattoos… and I watch as the various fluids of birth simply flow off.  So yes, my child inherited at least one of my buff spells, likely more as neither I nor either of the likely fathers have wings, and those tattoos had to come from SOMEWHERE.

Hmm… that's mixed.  On the one hand, it means I have little to fear of Ta getting hurt. On the other, discipline is going to be troublesome.

“Ooh, mama, I am HUNGRY, let me at those sweet massive melons of yours…” my child sounds very… weird saying that.  On the one hand, that tiny voice is quite cute, and milk is something most babies need. On the other… well, the emphasis sounds more like ta wants to molest me than feed.

Still… babies and milk, so I let the little one go at it, sucking and pulling liquid down ta's throat, hands wandering to stimulate the mammary tissues… or at least I think that's the plan?

This body is responding, though. Feels really nice… hmm… feeling a little hollow… oh, wait, there's something brushing the inside of my thighs… who… oh.

NOPE.

With a thought, I'm on the other side of the room, my child hovering just over where I was, and yes, his man meat is at full attention. “I do NOT want to go through that again, thank you, and you most assuredly didn't ask if you could go THAT far.”

“Ah, man, busted…” my child admits.

And I'm connecting dots now… “You’re talking, and acting very much like you have life experience already. So are your memories from Star or Ocean?”

He pauses (and yes, with that thing between his legs standing proud, I'm thinking of him as male at this point), “I'm not fully certain… most of their memories up until the… ‘upload’... come from Steven Steel, they spent basically all of their time next to each other before then, my core could be from either, and I'm neither crawling with mechanical ants nor manifesting a Hardlight body, so….” he trails off and shrugs.

Hmm, “And have you selected your own name?”

He chuckles, “Earth, as I’m more solid than either of my possible fathers, but I am mostly cut from the same cloth.”

I nod, “So you can't change your shape, then?  What about the ship body thing?”

He chuckles, “Not as fast as they can, no; I have to grow into it. I can bond with a biomechanical ship and get very close to what they have, but I'll need to find one that's not taken already.”

It's a good thing I have a lot of Sense Motive… “What else do you have from me?”

He considers his answer, “I was able to clone several of the plug-ins, but only a handful of the more inherent things… I kind of like the fairy look, so I kept it when you tossed that one.”

“So you don't actually need to eat,” no, I'm not asking, but I am demanding a response.

“Of course I do…” he begins.

My sense Motive skill is working fine, “Partial truth: You're knowingly omitting details you know I'd consider relevant.”

He stops, “I'm not going to be able to hide things from you, am I?”

I shake my head, and he continues, “I need to eat to grow physically; I don't need it for basic sustenance, and won't suffer from neglect… and my digestive system is fully operational already, so I could eat steak just fine,” he pauses, “I just really wanted to wrap my hands around those ginormous jugs.”

Definitely a lot of Steven there… acting a lot like a horny teen called to carpet, though, so not quite an instant adult like several of the others… who may be in a similar boat, I wasn't paying that much attention because… well… labor pains, “Well… we should both cover up; I’ll get back to my body, you…” I Fabricate and toss him a robe… which comes out as pink silk, decorated with overly busty exotic dancers in lewd poses.  Ugh, “That should do until we can get you proper clothing.”

I renew my Minute Size spell, teleport back into my body, and hook up… I finish booting up as he is tying the robe closed.

It feels good to be me again.

Earth looks me up and down… and I feel like a side of beef, “Ooh, Daddy… I could ride that…”

Again, nope, “Incest is a colossally bad idea with anything biological.  Also, NO. No actions that could even potentially make children until you are in a good spot to take care of them on your own, AND you have an agreement with your partner specifically and explicitly about them.”

“Hey pot…” I'm aware I haven't always… maybe ever… followed that myself, Patricia.

Earth rolls his eyes, “Fine, DAD.”

At least with the baby coming out as a teenager, I can just blame inherited memories from Steven for the bad behavior, “Also: I'm going to need an inventory from you of what all you picked up from me and your other father,” I pause, “A COMPLETE inventory.”

“Why? What good is…” I don't let her finish the sentence.

“I'm occasionally involved in things that normal people can't survive. I would feel very bad if I found out the hard way that while I'm fine in a star's corona, you're not, and you died because I opened a door at the wrong time… or you froze to death. Or suffocated. Or were poisoned by something that was harmless to me. Or got stuck because you couldn't…” and it's his turn to interrupt.

“I get it, I get it, okay, yikes…” he pauses, “Check your email.”

Right, she's a computer at her core, “Will do…” I check my magic com, and yes, there’s a message waiting. “Great I'll go through it when…”

“What, you can't keep up old man?” Oh, it's on.

I disconnect, cast Time Stop, and reconnect. I go through the mail in detail… okay, so basically ALL of my buffs, plus From the Void and Rejuvenation… so I don't need to worry about about Ta starving, suffocating, burning, or staying dead… but he can still get sick or poisoned… well, assuming the numbers boosting and rerolls don't take care of it.  And she's a Technomancer, an Intelligence based caster… one of those tattoos is actuslly ta's spell cache. Hmm. Junk Armor and Wall of Fog will go well with all the buffs…nothing offensive, she won't beat the shots from Stormrage for quite some time anyway… took the conjugation talent… fine build, as far as it goes.  No method to recharge gear away from a ship, but that’s fixable with the right gear… not that it will usually matter.

And I have all the time in the world.

Laptop?

“Sure…” Patricia pulls it up for me, and I write Earth a ten page essay, going over her build, listing items that would well compliment ta's abilities, things that might be useful for covering some gaps in their defenses (like the complete lack of self-healing or the inability to recharge gear away from civilization).

I copy the essay into a real computer, hit send, cancel the Time Stop, and reply verbally, “I just made time,” reasonably literally, even, “Check your inbox.”

Earth pauses as she checks his mail, “Okay, when did you write this?”

I chuckle, “Just now. I can, and have, outrun starships when I want. I spend most of my time moving at a normal pace so I can interact with people, but when I want to move quickly… nobody can keep up unless I let them.” Ninth level spells don't exist here, so I'm the only one with Time Stop.

Ta pauses, “So why haven’t you conquered the universe yet?”

I shrug, “Because I really don’t want to.  I want to be useful and make money, sure, but I don’t want the kind of responsibility that comes with ruling an empire, nor am I willing to do the kinds of things needed to obtain or maintain such a position.”

Earth smiles, “Good to know… catch you later Dad…” and wanders off.

What have I brought forth?