For once, things were somewhat quiet at Savepoint, the Thantir’s new base, to the point that the Thantir could take a few hours off. During this time, it had been decided that they were going to have a Singles’ Party for Teekay and Elkay, since they were going to get married soon. Everyone was somewhat split into two groups, one for males, one for females, even if who was male and who was female was up to debate. That being said, the constant in-joke was that Elkay, despite being larger, more muscular and blatantly more masculine than Teekay, was always the ‘wife’ of the relationship, and that was how they’d ended up splitting themselves.
On one side of the base, in the small, park-like area with recently replanted trees, Teekay was getting drunk and sharing stories with Retvik, Vikalos, Itaviir, Galyn, Tenuk, Akah, Eksi, Kaytee and Saahro. They were all clearly having fun, mostly due to Vikalos telling stupid stories about his time as a Justar Decayling, and Retvik and Tenuk recounting various events from their lives, while everyone was trying to get Akah drunk enough for him to open up a bit more.
Meanwhile, Elkay was spending time with Phovos and Elksia, the only bona-fide female members of the Thantir. They’d made a small campfire on the beach and were mostly just listening to the waves of the small lake. That was, until they heard mechanical footsteps crunching through the sand.
“Oh, hey, Tah, what are you doing here?” Phovos immediately asked. “I thought you lot were keeping Tahvra company and being on guard?”
Tah shrugged as he sat himself down. “You lot looked lonely, so it was suggested I come over.”
“You don’t have a vagina though!” Elksia chirped. “You’re not female! Or female-leaning. Or… uh… Do you even have a gender?”
“That is a very complicated question which I normally answer no to.”
Elkay sat up straight and grunted. “Well, we have been mostly sitting and drinking in silence. Perhaps you can explain why that question is complicated?”
“It’s supposed to be an evening for you though?” Tah clicked.
“We do not have much to say. A Singles’ Night is supposed to talk about past escapades of a sexual nature. I have none, Phovos has almost none and Elksia had a steady on and off relationship with a kindly Vrekan called Vel which she does not like talking about.”
“Oh…” Tah didn’t have a response for that. “Well, it’s… it’s not that it’s complicated, it’s that genders in my universe were really stupid. And, I’ll be honest, I don’t actually know how most of the rest of the universe reproduced. I assume some genetic material was passed between beings, but it definitely wasn’t anything like what everything else in the multiverse does.”
“Your universe had males and females though, right?” Phovos was quite curious now. “You had to have genders or something to pass things between. Or was everyone intersex the way Elkay is?”
“I don’t know how genetics worked, but genders weren’t related to it. Beings considered themselves male or female, but the percentages were… very weird… and…” Tah hesitated. “Well, genders for the majority of our universe’s denizens were based on what element you had.”
Phovos and Elksia glanced at each other, then sat up straight as well. They were now very, very curious.
“How does that work?”
Tah clicked several times. “Well, there were eight base elements. Light, shadow, fire, earth, water, air, ice and stone. Light and shadow were unique, they were split equally, 50-50 male and female, but their overall populations were tiny. The other six, they made up about 70% of all beings, and they were all male apart from water.”
“You don’t have any of those elements though!” Elksia exclaimed. “Like, the closest you got is Pah, and he calls his powers Plasma, not fire!”
“Before we were made into Cleanser Kal, the six of us were normal Cleansers, and we had the six base elements. As far as we’re aware, there were no Cleansers with any other elements. But when we were upgraded and made sentient, our elemental powers changed into those of the secondary elements… somewhat.”
“So, what are the secondary elements?”
Tah’s eyes flickered briefly. “That’s where things get complicated. There were a lot of them. The they were Sonics, Electricity, Plasma, Psionics, Magnetism, Nature, Acid, Iron, Gravity, Time and Creation. However, Time and Creation elementals were essentially mythical entities, and Gravity elementals were driven to extinction, to the point that Nuh is the only Gravity elemental we are aware of, and, because so many beings in our universe were made of metal in some way, Magnetism and Iron elementals were very rare as well.”
Elksia counted on her fingers, clearly confused by something. “Hang on… None of those match Leh’s element.”
“As far as we can tell, Leh is the only being we know of that has ‘vacuum’ as his element. The Imperators that fought us suggested that Leh’s element is air, but air elementals can’t make explosions the way Leh can.”
“And were most of those elementals male too?” Elkay asked.
Yet again, Tah hesitated. “Mostly.”
“Can I make a wild guess?” Phovos tutted. “Electricity was a female element, yes? That’s why you’re here.”
Tah clicked, then nodded. “Technically, yes, electricity was a female element. But since I’m a Cleanser, I don’t have a gender. And if you… assumed that Cleansers did have genders, then I was originally male and became female when I was upgraded. But as far as we can tell, us Cleanser Kal were made before genders were even a thing.”
“Does that mean that Gah is trans too, female to male?” Phovos mused.
“Explains why Gah has that weird twang to his voice!” Elksia nodded.
“Huh. I… I guess? Honestly, I never really thought about it. Didn’t think about it myself until we joined you Thantir proper…” Tah trailed off, then dug his hands into the sand, before grabbing a handful and letting it fall between his heavy claws. “Our universe was pretty stupid. I’m glad it’s gone. It was full of ‘great beings’ just experimenting on everyone and making things doomed to fail, then just destroying everything and starting again.”
Elkay though seemed to only partially agree. “I actually think a lot of universes were like that. At least, ones created intentionally. From what Teekay and Kaytee have discussed in their “Too Many Teekays” group chat, Kinisis potentially created many, many universes and doomed many of them to die because she was unhappy… Oh, hello Litvir!”
Everyone glanced up as Litvir hobbled over, leaning on a pair of crutches. While he could have used his telekinesis to move himself, he found his powers overall were a little bit wobbly, thanks to the lingering numbness in his hands and tongue, which he normally used to control his abilities.
“Hello, dears. How are you all?”
“We were discussing genders in Tah’s old universe!” Elksia tweeted. “Technically, Tah’s a she! What are you doing here? You ain’t with the manly men?”
Litvir grunted, before sitting in a nearby empty deck chair. “I am not particularly masculine-leaning and did not want to be asked about my mortal sexual encounters, since, like Phovos and Elkay, I have none of note.”
Tah raised a claw in confusion. “We’re notoriously bad at picking up gender traits, but I thought you were masculine? You use the same pronoun Retvik, Elkay and Teekay do.”
“Gender traits in Rethans are broad and vague, unlike those in Skyavok. But also, I do want to be left alone right now…” Litvir sighed, then took a very long, drawn out breath. “I love Retvik but he has been rather clingy and I need some space.”
“Understandable, but you ought to tell him that,” Elkay frowned. “Retvik does not have telepathy, he cannot read your mind.”
Litvir sighed again, then nodded in agreement. “I will, but I also do not want to spoil the atmosphere over there. They are having fun right now.”
All of a sudden, Tah vanished, then suddenly teleported back with a tray of drinks and snacks. “We should be having fun too!”
Elkay smiled as he leaned forward and patted Tah on the head. “You are right. We should be more cheerful!” Elkay took one of the drinks from Tah’s tray, and Tah handed a drink to everyone else. “Cheers, friends.”