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Mina's not Malagasy, nor from anywhere in Africa. She's not even from Earth (or at least any version of it that would be recognizable).

Nor was she born a fossa, though it's the shape she prefers. It's become comfortable for her, like a pair of old gloves.

Monoforms couldn't possibly understand the power at her disposal, but in a way that's why she admires them: their stubborn tenacity in the face of their tragic rigidity.

It's a virtue she wants to learn from.

She wishes more people spent time here, took the chance to live among the single-shaped. The default point of view in the Omega Realm is that technology grants freedom from limitations. They don't see that limitations themselves can be freeing! Her people don't so much solve problems anymore as sidestep them. If you never truly grapple with something, how can you say you've transcended it?

Regardless, Mina's not about to go to Madagascar and rediscover her "roots". Her mind has shifted even further from the default. She has a different lens focusing her vision now.

It would be dangerous for her to pay Victor Proudspears a visit in the Paleolithic, given how entangled their worldlines are now. Not to mention unsportsmanlike. Fighting a man who doesn't remember you is like shooting him in the back. It earns you a permanent stain of dishonor.

No, she wants him to remember her. She wants them to settle their differences the right way.

For thousands of years mammalkind fought their battles with sticks, sharp things and various combinations of the two—as well as their own teeth and claws. If you can get by with that then you don't need anything else. She and Victor have watched time unfold from opposite vantage points and come to the same conclusion: the ancestral virtues are best.

If her superiors end up allowing her to stay on the Victor case they'll almost certainly urge her to de-pattern first, to pick a different, fresher shape with a higher probability of success.

No thank you. Spears, teeth and claws aside it's this body that has the tenacity and the training to take him on. You don't throw away a pair of gloves just because they're a little banged up. You use them.

And if he gives her a beating, even takes out her other eye, so what? She'll gladly retire from the field, even tech herself up like Johann did after he got form-locked. It'll give them something new to make smalltalk about around the water cooler. All the latest implants and upgrades.

As long as she wins. But... that won't be for a while. She's still on vacation.

And if anything convinces her not to bet it all on an act of revenge, it will be the fact that she won't get to enjoy sunsets from the treetops anymore.

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The final part of the "Mina's vacation" series (after skipping over the main plot, as usual). Artwork by  kate-venom