• • The Royal Bastards of Galagan
• October 4, 2025

The Royal Bastards of Galagan (Chapter 6)

The Royal Division

“In war, everyone is a fool. Everyone makes mistakes, everyone weighs their options, and everyone seems so stupid. Everyone’s a fool… until they win.”

Lady Flavia Lexus

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Potempa Lexus

Cutta pulled us aside before she left with Koki, thinking that being there was a distraction to us. I thought it was ridiculous at the time, but she was probably right. I never expected to do anything right if Cutta hadn’t already done it. She was the oldest, the strongest, and she always figured things out first so that probably made her the smartest too.

But we’ve never been apart all that long, and I had no idea when I would see her or Lemon. I always had my big brother or sister with me, as pathetic as that might sound by at 19 years old, but it was the truth.

Then Cutta told us, “Listen, while we may be training separately from now on, but I want you to know you can always call to me if you’re in trouble.” 

She went on and on about the potential dangers, but I was just happy to hear that reminder that she cared. I’d had seen other people say that to their young before, but those were parents to their children, mothers even. Cutta shouldn’t have had to take up that job.

She snapped her fingers in my face, as she told me, “Listen to me, Poppy, there are other aliens here, and we’re bound to run into some who don’t like Galagans, let alone the royals. Any try to bother you or hurt you, you set off your cakra signal. We haven’t had to use it in a while, I know, but you should still know how to. I swear I’ll come as soon as possible.”

Others may have found the way she spoke condescending, but I knew where it came from. I was thankful to have Cutta there, so protective of us. I believed her when she said she would be there.

I hugged her then and she stiffened at my touch. “Not in front of the Pyrie…” she muttered to me, but I didn’t really care. She wasn’t going to pull me away.

It took a moment before she did anything but sigh. I felt one arm go around me while the other reached out, and soon Lemon and I were both giving Cutta a group hug.

When we let go, Cutta was trying her damndest to look all harsh and hard. That really didn’t mean anything to me, or the Pyrie, with Koki appearing by her shoulder, snickering at her. “I didn’t think her royal highness had a soft spot.”

“It’s under all the muscle I use to squash pipsqueaks like you,” she snapped at him, but he didn’t care for it. It was strange to see that. 

Back on Galagan, the only people who didn’t wet their pants under the glare of Calcutta were the royal family, the only people supposed to be stronger than her. Not even Kybi would bother her without our father or an army at his back, the old lecher. 

All evidence told us that Calcutta Sha, fist of the Khan, would wipe Koki off the face of the planet, and he couldn’t give a single shit.

“Ho, ho, ho,” he mocked, “my fellow pipsqueaks, how sad. Now that you can appease your ego, take my hand so I can take us where we’ll train, give your brother and sister the space they need.”

“You can teleport with other people?” Lemon asked as Cutta hesitated to take his hand.

“Yes, but that certainly takes decades to practice and master,” Koki told him, “you have to synch and control their cakra to yours, so don’t expect to learn that just yet.”

As Cutta took his hand, Lemon was still trying to talk to him, “But how would that even—”

Pfft.

Suddenly, Koki and Cutta were gone, leaving Lemon and me alone with our teachers.

“We should go too,” Howl told Lemon. 

“Wait, but I haven’t—” 

Unlike Koki, Howl didn’t care to give Lemon much time to wait and teleported him away immediately without warning.

And then I was alone, just me and Atolli out on this balcony. 

You’re probably thinking, this is a 3ft tall gray alien, what could she have done? Well, this one could expand to a size bigger than me, and control my emotions. Not to mention, her size told nothing of power. Sure, intimidation is important but conquer enough cities and planets with your big sister and you learn that even the smallest bodies can have the biggest fights. In fact, they’re much harder to hit, especially when you want to keep the planet they’re standing on.

“Well,” Atolli said first, breaking the silence, “would you care to go again? Or do you need a break?” She gestured to the balcony’s little courtyard again, having me resume the same old training once again.

Another thing about little creatures, they could be just as cruel as anyone else.

I sighed and got back up into position. Again, I let my cakra flow through me as I had been instructed multiple times, becoming in sync with it, one with the power that flows through everything and everyone. I even had my target location and everything before I even moved.

And then I started flying for the wall, expecting to teleport and hit my head instead. 

Bam!

I clutched my bruising forehead as I screamed, “Aaaahhh!!!” I was so filled with emotion at my repeated mistakes that I clenched my fists and screamed into the scream. 

Why was I failing? Why couldn’t I get it right?! Over and over again I embarrassed myself! I looked like a child, the baby, the one who always needed help! 

You’re supposed to be an elite Poppy! Act like it already!

“Why are you doing everything all at once?” Atolli asked me. In my rage, I had forgotten I wasn’t alone. 

That shouldn’t have happened. 

“What do you mean?” I asked, stifling the yell in the back of my throat. I noticed the way her hand seemed to lower in front of her, and then I realized it. She was using her empathetic powers already to calm me down.

“I didn’t want to say it when your siblings were here, but right before you take your try against the wall, you let your cakra flow through you, become one with you before you even move. You treat it like a step-by-step process where you skip from the middle to the end.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. I was dumbfounded. 

Then I felt my brain feel naked, with nothing covering it. “I don’t have the luxury of falling short, I’m prepping everything so I can get it right all at once!”

“But by doing that you get everything wrong,” Atolli pointed out to me.

Before I could get a real handle on emotions, I felt feelings I didn’t know I had bubbled to the surface. She was trying to control me, but I would allow that.

“I know that! But I’m supposed to set myself up for success beforehand, so I can’t possibly fail! If I fix what I’m doing wrong there, I can do what I’m supposed to do!”

Atolli tilted her head more and more as I went on. “But success doesn’t work like that, you can’t control whether you fail ahead of time, or else you’ll always fail.”

“Stay out my head!” I yelled at her, which caught her off guard, making her step back. 

I hadn’t realized until I pulled back that I had bent down to shove my face in her personal space. 

She lowered her hand and seemed to do as I asked. “I’m sorry, that was unfair of me. I only wished to learn what was driving your ill-fated technique, but I’m telling you, try again, try as your sister did, and don’t get ahead of yourself. Relieve yourself of the pressure of needing to succeed.”

The need to succeed? That’s what I felt with every task, that’s what everyone felt with every task! People didn’t do things to fail! It was always about success.

And I decided then that I would succeed in showing her that she was wrong. I would do my best to try it as she suggested and when I failed, she’d see that you have to stack the odds in your favor at every turn.

I let my cakra flow through me. Cutta told me that for her it was like turning open the valves and letting the energy rush through her body. It always seemed more like a flood to me. Mother told me that’s because I wasn’t as disciplined as my older sister.

Well, that may be true, but I was going to prove that I could be, as my cakra overcame everything I was and everything I am. The energy that runs through all things, that connects us all, became one with every cell in my body. 

Then as the wall approached at lightspeeds, my mind slowed the world down. I should have asked Calcutta if this was what it was like to come so close to success. The world was a blur, tinted blue like my cakra usually was. 

My eyes searched around and when I stared ahead, I was both seeing through the wall and not. I could tell the location of each and every block on the ground, each blade of grass, and—

The incoming wall!

I picked the last thinking I noticed, the blade of grass, and hoped it hit, but I doubted it. I remember telling myself that I had proved the little gray bobblehead wrong and… feeling no pride. There wasn’t any pride in failing, even if I expected it. 

I would learn later that there is no pride in failing and learning nothing. 

But in that moment I hadn’t failed at all. 

Thump!

I found myself face first in the grass bed, not the wall. I flipped over onto my butt and used flight to stop from hitting the wall afterward. It wasn’t much of an improvement because I was still coughing and choking on the dirt in my mouth.

“Ugh! Alg!” I grunted and coughed. I literally started smacking my tongue at light speed a hundred times before it hit me. 

Then with mud in my mouth, I stopped and slowly turned around. I was on the other side of the wall.

I did it, I followed Atolli’s instruction and… and it… it…

“Why do you look so sad?” Atolli asked me as she floated to me, her hands held together in her sleeves. “You were successful the first time you tried to perform the technique correctly!”

I looked down at the mud in my hands, distinctly remembering how graceful Calcutta was. She looked so cool calmly appearing on the other side of the wall, picking up a flower and acting like it was nothing, and I bet it was nothing to her!

Even when I do it, I faceplant into the dirt. 

“But I didn’t do it like her,” I admitted, before being embraced by this burning warmth, this…

“Wait,” I said, as I felt myself being hugged by emotion, “this is you right now.” I looked up at her gray face with her wide-open eyes, appearing quite perplexed. She was a good actress, pretending like she didn’t know what I was talking about.

“You’re using your power on me again,” I accused her with a jab of my finger, “aren’t you?!”

Atolli made a meek smile, she didn’t smirk. She shrugged into herself learning that she had been caught. “It seemed like the best way to motivate you, appealing to your competitiveness and then amplifying it. It helped you in the end!”

My competitiveness? I was confused for a moment before I realized, “You never stopped using it on me! That’s why I did it as you asked?!”

“It worked didn’t it?”

“I ended up face first in the flower bed! I couldn’t control it! Even when I get it right, I still fuck it up…!” I felt her release her hold on me, and that’s when I learned that it was her power holding me together.

All that pressure that was on my shoulders, she was holding it up for me. When she let go I dropped to my knees and looking at the ground as my tears hit it. “I can’t do anything right!”

“Are you kidding?” Atolli said, laughing at me, tears in her own eyes. 

I looked up and found myself so confused as I saw tears in her eyes too. 

“How could you feel this way when you did your best?” she told me, floating down and taking my hands in hers. “You kept your momentum even after teleporting, do you have any idea how difficult that is?” 

She cleaned off my eye with my own hand. It was like the puppet was actually controlling the puppeteer. 

“Real… really?” I asked.

“Yes, most head straight for their destination, stopping in their tracks, losing all momentum, just like your sister did. What you did takes practice, hours and hours, days and weeks of practice just to crash into the wall!” 

She raised my hands to her face and held them to her forehead. All the while, her tears still streamed her cheeks. “You have nothing to be ashamed of,” she told me.

I couldn’t help it, I had to know, “Why are you crying?”

“Because you are,” she admitted, “our power can go both ways, and you felt so betrayed by my manipulation, that I made it go my way for a change, and I’m glad I did.” She leaned in and rested her forehead against mine. “You have no reason to put this much pressure on yourself, there’s no rush, no great expectation for you to fail or succeed. Fuck whatever Calcutta can do.”

“Wha, what?” I kind of laughed. Actually, no, I laughed hearing Atolli curse, especially about Cutta. 

Atolli just looked up at me with this kind smile. “I hope, if you learn anything in the coming days with me, is that the only expectations that matter are the ones you put on yourself, Potempa, and even those are a bit bullshit. You don’t always need something like that.”

No expectations? 

Mother’s words hung around in the back of my head, “You are a royal, bastard or not, you are nothing but expectations.”

There’s no such thing as being without.

I found myself calmed, but not by Atolli. We each wiped our own eyes, and I looked forward at her with her hand out. She was so much shorter that it wasn’t efficient for her to help me up, but that wasn’t what mattered. 

She was kind of adorable as she took so many steps back to help me to my feet.

That’s when she asked me, “Do you know which technique you wish to learn?” 

“Yes,” I said as I felt emboldened, squeezing my fist as hard as I could as I thrust it above my head, “I need to punch through my limits. You said most have to practice just to be able to crash while teleporting, well, that means something. Healing isn’t fit for someone who runs ahead, who needs to lead from the front. Honestly, multiplying isn’t going to do that either. 

“I need to expand, and I need to learn how to grow as you did.”

Atolli only smiled at me. There was nothing sinister about it, but she appeared validated in a sense like she won some kind of bet. “How delightful.”