Small Volt’s Small Dream

“Hey, is that your friend there?”

Khora nudged at Volt as they both exited Khora’s bright pink Railjack. Khora herself was decorated in white and red, with her pet cat Venari’s metallics matching, but the railjack was so bright that it put Volt and his yellow-ness to shame.

They had just finished a mission that was somewhat longer than they had expected, flying through the scary, red place known as the Veil Proxima and finding themselves boarding a very strange and, uh, ‘flower’-shaped ship. Overall, it had been a successful mission, but the ship had disappeared and Khora and Volt had returned to the Dry Dock in their Dojo.

“Oh, yeah…” Volt blinked his neural sensors awkwardly. In the corner of the Dry Dock, sitting on a bench and watching the repair crew do their work on Khora’s battered Railjack was another Volt, but in a much more muted colour scheme of black and purple.

“He’s better-dressed than you are. Nice colours, good choice of armour, wearing a cape…”

Volt glanced at Khora. “You can talk, Missy Candy Cane.”

“Between you and him, you’d think YOU were the newbie!” Khora laughed. “Well, aside from that veteran Syandana of yours…”

“Well, we all have our own tastes in colour schemes… I’ll go check on him.”

Khora giggled some more, then waved goodbye to Volt. “See you later. I’ve got insanely rare loot to go and farm.”

“See ya, Khora.”

Volt watched as Khora leaped back into her Railjack. After a few moments of awkward silence, the ship slowly lifted up and took off, disappearing into the depths of space. Also watching was Smaller Volt, whose attention had been grabbed by the sound of roaring engines. With a shrug, Volt wandered over and sat down next to him.

“So, how you feeling?”

Smolt’s words trembled as he tried to organize them into a coherent sentence. “I… My… uh… My mind… My mind has been blown. I… I didn’t realise… Thank you…”

“Thank you for what?”

“For leading me down this path. And for getting me through the beginning of that… whatever that was…”

Volt shrugged. “You’re welcome. You needed to know. Everyone needs to experience it for themselves.”

“It was… amazing…” Smolt beamed, picking himself up. “I can’t believe THIS was the… the twist all along! I’m not Volt, I’m a kid! A child! A magical child! But at the same time I AM Volt! And… And we saved the moon and we… we did so many crazy things…”

Volt shrugged some more. He thought back to when he awoke from the Second Dream and wasn’t nearly as enthusiastic. He was pleased that Smolt was happy though. “You realise this is just the start, right? There is… a lot more out there. Good and bad.”

“I do! And… oh my… I… I can’t wait…” Smolt jumped up and down with glee.

“Shall we get started then?”

Smolt suddenly stopped jumping. “Sure thing. But I need… to mull over what happened first. And make myself look pretty…”

“You already are pretty though?” Volt exclaimed.

“Oh, no!” Smolt beamed. “I meant the real me…”