“I’m not an explorer,” Natalie said. “I memorize and theorize. I can talk in terms of what’s established and what’s likely, and work from a pretty solid backbone if you want me to sling out some ‘maybe’s. Most of what I memorized doesn’t even matter, now.”

“Keep me on track, then?” I suggested. “Throw out whatever comes to mind, call me on my shit.”

“I’ve had a bad track record of keeping you guys on track or effectively calling you out.”

“Mmm,” I acknowledged. “That’s on us more than it’s on you. If you want to map it to the Titans, we can’t communicate effectively with them either. They’re filtered out, they might as well be speaking a different language, to the point that even a game of charades wouldn’t get through.”

“If you want me to call you out… you at least had a choice.”

“Yes. I think those choices largely made sense in the moment, but… paint a bleak picture when you look at the big picture in retrospect.”

“They’re making choices that make sense to them, I’m sure,” she said.

“Fume Hood attacked us to drive us away. But there’s something of herself in there. And I guess that’s the closest thing we have to a parallel to secret identities. I’m just spitballing here, for the record.”

“Spitball away,” Natalie said. She looked over at Kenzie, who had just finished cleaning the material fabricator and was sitting back down.

“There might be something more in there. Swansong might exist, buried in that crystalline structure. Kenzie says Moose and Prancer are completely gone, except for what the Titan structure needed in the way of tactics and instinct. No personality. Fume Hood isn’t completely gone, apparently. There’s a kernel of something.”

“Apparently,” Natalie said.

“So… do we pursue communication?” I asked. “I tried talking to her face. That didn’t work. Maybe we go to the source.”

“Through the cracks, into an environment where the Titans are supposedly full strength and your powers are reduced.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Depending on how we did it, we wouldn’t necessarily have the ability to dive into the crystals or access different facets of ourselves. Either way, it’s immensely dangerous.”

“With no guarantee it works,” Natalie said. “High risk, low odds.”

I nodded.

“And even if you do communicate… who’s to say you talk to these powerful things and they listen? You could give them sound advice about the future and the big picture and they could choose to press on or ignore you.”

I raised my eyebrow as I looked over at her. “They could. Absolutely.”

“What they want in terms of society or the big picture isn’t necessarily what you want.”