14 14. A normal day on Mars

Mars.

Planum Boreum.

Caelicetus POV

After declaring this, I saw my son, this will take a bit of time to get used to, I'm now a father, yes this is strange how do you even be a father a space whale that controls gravity to an ice titan cub. 

He was currently doing the equivalent of giggling while also looking proud of himself, the fur on his chest puffed up in pride. He is adorable.

That's why I threw him the biggest snowball so far, well big for him, it was 80 HAL in diameter (50.4m or 165.35ft) and Olaf was 29.35 HAL (18.49m or 60.66ft) from the top of his front nuby ice horn to the base of his back talons.

His electrics blue eyes goes wide in shock as he made a high-pitched screech of surprise when the medium-sized snowball smashed into him with a loud *BAM* and he was buried alive under a pile of snow.

I waited a minute, two minutes then I spoke with clear amusement in my voices, knowing he was alive and perfectly fine, "I know you are alive, Olaf.", yes the son part will take a bit more time to really sink in. 

It is a bit surreal, not as surreal as me reincarnating as a whale on Mars in another universe but still. I'm a father, how are you supposed to react to this?

I sensed him dig his way up from the ton of snow he was under, with relative ease. As expected. Olaf did dig quite a lot, he mostly moved in the many natural ice caves and tunnels made by different life forms and Ola-my son included, in all of the Planum Boreum, we're the North Pole of Mars is.

"Dad!", my son's head burst out of the snow as he put the two front talons that he could use like hands. His throat bulged out a bit and he burped in my direction with what looked like a snowball. That's new. I will also do something similar, a sort of breath attack maybe with the radiation mini black holes create when they decompose.

I stared at the slow projectile and greatly augmented its speed and force. Olaf's expression became ecstatic as if his dream were going to be realised, his tail ending with a stinger like-shape but it was made out of ice, it was poking out of the snow and wagging.

"Wake up to reality.", I said as I made a wormhole just when the snowball was going to hit me, it was directly in its trajectory.

His arrogant expression and demeanour shifted to abject horror as he saw the portal in front of me while at the same time I made another wormhole appear just above his head.

"DA-", he didn't finish his cry of 'despair' as his own attack 'violently' crashed back onto the top of his head. Making all of his body go out of the snow and his head stuck into the icy plain, similar in shape to what some might think an ostrich will, sticks their head in the sand but here it's snow.

'Back at you.', I thought as I made repeated clicks similar to a laugh, the impudent ice titan was now unconscious, his body completely limp.

I then woke up a part of the Flock that we were sleeping under the two fins above my front flippers and behind my eyes. And mentally ordered them to look after Olaf.

Yes, now most of the Flock live with me, directly nest on me, grab sort of perch below my fours fins and they rest and sleep on them, good thing is that they are viviparous, can do parthenogenesis and their fry can fly from birth, but all of this didn't phase me, it was normal for me.

Those place were they rest are encased in weak force fields of gravity that make a sort of small atmosphere, protecting them from most things that would do nothing to me but would kill them fairly easily.

With this they can even come with me in the void of space or when I space jump since they are protected by my body and those weak force fields I instinctively make.

The Flock work most the time independently but I can control easily like an extension of myself, know we're each individual is and more.

They did their jobs of cleaning me and shorts of protecting me, sometimes even giving me food, they also are connected to one another.

If one dies which happens quite often since they didn't have a very long life span and are incredibly suicidal. Especially one that I named Kenny, he constantly died.

Well, it didn't truly die, as long as one individual of the Flock is alive and I'm alive. They all will be 'reborn' and the Flock will be back as good as new in a short amount of time, hive-mind for the win. 

I know those facts due to my psychic bond, that is what I suppose it is, that I have with the Flock and that I also tried to understand the symbiotic relationship between me and them.

One of the conclusions I came up with was that the Flock has evolved to be and is meant to be expendable, as cold as it sounds.

I then made a space jump to one of the bottom levels of the Abyss.

_______________________

Mars.

The Abyss- Approximately 190 kilometres (118 mi or 30 159 HAL) deep.

Third POV

Caelicetus reappeared just after with the usual reverse cracking sound of space.

His four golden eyes looked around the remnant of the ancient martian civilisations. The black and metallic facilities were mostly covered in green vegetation and white coral-like structures. 

Some waterfall with the water going up instead of down while clouds were also seen floating between the mostly destroyed buildings but still rhythmically pulsing with a weak green light.

Some of the buildings were also drifting around, on them could be seen, hundreds of white birds each having three pairs of wings crackling with electricity and a long tail that in the middle separated into two distinct feathery tails.

The whole area was eternally bathed in a strange ethereal light similar to sunshine, this same light was originating from the layer above.

The atmospheric pressure and composition here hardly differed from the one on the surface, however, the time here passed one hundred times faster.

*RAWR*, only one of the whale titan eyes looked down at the irrational creature that just roared at him for trespassing on its 'territory'. 

He called them turbinid-dragon, it wasn't the first time he saw one but he didn't know who was male or female and the one here was a male, to be precise the young dominant male of a herd and he was in this young male 'territory'.

It had a giraffe-shaped body that ended with a snail-shaped tail with six strange appendages, its back and neck covered in spikes, its body supported by six long legs, a jade-like carapace and a long neck that ended with a head comparable to that of a seahorse but with a proboscis. It was the height of a 7-story building and also very elegant, not that the whale cared.

'I'm in a good mood so I will let you li-', Caelicetus's thought was interrupted as he caught a green ball full of liquid and stones that was shot by the turbinid dragon that he was going to spare.

'Did it really spit at me?', the Alpha of Mars thought as he caught a second projectile coming his way. He was more stupefied at the stupidity of the things than angry.

The calf took hold of the crystalline giraffe in his gravity and released the floating balls of green liquid and stone, he could see that the ground they landed on quickly sizzled and melted away. He definitely wasn't going to eat that shit, he didn't want a stomach ache. 

It was also a bit too big for a one-way trip to the Sun, for the moment that is. But it didn't need to be in one piece or the same density to do the said trip.

And so the young adult turbinid-dragon became a small crystalline and perfectly shaped cube that weighed hundreds of tons. 

Caelicetus remarked that the not-so-giraffe was still somehow alive, he then promptly teleported it to the surface of the Sun with a one-way wormhole. 

What he did to the turbinid-dragon, he would have even done it to his son, if Olaf had the intention to kill him and acted upon it, the ice titan would have had the same fate as the turbinid-dragon.

If a member of your family wants to kill you and really act upon it, then they cannot be considered family and everything goes if it isn't family. That was what his human grandma used to say and he agreed with it. It will hurt to do it but it's better than dying.

'Back to why I'm here.', Caelicetus thought as he swam to a martian pong out of the wall of the Abyss, this one was void of any flora and fauna and in a very good state of conservation compared to the others. It only emerged from the stone four hours ago in normal time.

The calf then teleported the green cube he got from Deimos, the strange door of the facility immediately opened with a loud sound of air decompressing as a green force field immediately appeared, evidently, the titan couldn't enter, the door was smaller than his eyes. The whole structure was smaller than him. He also noted that the cube was indeed the cube was more than a fancy lamps.

He knew he was big, very big, but it hit really home when he compared what a door for something that wasn't that much bigger than a human was to him. As a human, he was 1.86 meters (6.1ft) tall so 2.95 HAL meaning he was in body length the equivalent of 147 of his human self laying down together in a straight line.

'Oh but it isn't that I'm especially big, just that humans are small…', he admitted as he opened a small wormhole in front of one of his eyes and one in the middle of the martian facility, now he could peep inside.