The disciples had been doing an admirable job keeping Aria's adventure running smoothly. They had deflected hundreds of attempted approaches from various factions, prevented four different groups from conducting surveillance too aggressively, and managed to keep their charge entertained without any major incidents.

Then Aria saw the prison ship.

The Quantum Bazaar, like most major hubs, had a security sector where dangerous criminals were held before transport to permanent facilities. The ship was heavily shielded, designed to contain beings up to peak Universe Realm without possibility of escape.

But Aria could see through the shields as easily as looking through glass. And what she saw made her child's sense of justice flare with indignation.

"They're hurting people in there," she said, her voice gone cold and hard in a way that made all five disciples immediately go on alert.

"Lady Aria—Aria," Zhen Wei corrected himself, "those are criminals. Dangerous individuals being transported to—"

"They're children." Aria's eyes blazed with violet-silver light. "They're children who were caught stealing food because they were hungry. And the guards are using pain-compliance techniques on them for entertainment."

Krix extended his senses toward the ship and felt his crystalline form crack slightly in fury. She was right. Among the actual dangerous criminals, there were several juveniles whose only crime was survival theft, and the guards were indeed abusing their authority.

"We should report this to the station authorities," Lysa suggested carefully.

"Father taught me something," Aria said, and her voice carried a weight that made the disciples understand exactly whose daughter she was. "He said that sometimes, the optimal solution to a problem is not the one that follows proper procedure. Sometimes, you just fix it."

"Aria, wait—"

But she was already moving. Not physically walking toward the ship, but simply deciding that she was now inside it, and reality obliged her desire.

The disciples rushed after her, Thorn shadow-stepping ahead while the others tore through space to catch up. They arrived inside the prison ship's holding area to find Aria standing in the center of a corridor, surrounded by guards who were reaching for weapons that suddenly refused to work.

"Hi," Aria said with deceptive cheerfulness. "You've been mean to children. That's not okay."

"Who the hell are you?" one guard demanded. "This is a secured facility! How did you—"

Aria waved her hand. "Not important. What's important is that you're going to release all the juveniles you're holding on minor charges. Right now."

"Like hell we are! These prisoners are our responsibility—"

"They're children," Aria's voice dropped to something cold and terrible, and suddenly every guard in the corridor felt the weight of a Universe God's displeasure pressing down on them. "You don't get to torture children. Nobody gets to torture children. Release them, or I'll make sure you understand what it feels like."

The head guard, a grizzled veteran who had faced down dangerous criminals for two centuries, looked into those violet-silver eyes and saw something that made his survival instincts scream. This wasn't just a powerful cultivator. This was something fundamental, something that reality itself had declared precious.

"Release the juveniles," he ordered his subordinates, his voice shaking. "All of them. Now."

Within minutes, seventeen confused and frightened children of various species were freed from their cells. Aria approached each one, her demeanor shifting from terrible judge back to friendly child.

"Hi! I'm Aria. You're free now. My friends—" she gestured at the five disciples who had arranged themselves in protective formation around her, "—are going to help find your families or good homes for you. Okay?"

One small creature, barely more than a toddler by their species' standards, looked up at her with wide eyes. "Are... are you an angel?"

Aria laughed, the sound bright and innocent. "No, silly. I'm just someone who doesn't like bullies. Now come on, let's get you all somewhere safe."

As they left the prison ship—Aria leading a small parade of freed children, the disciples scrambling to manage the logistics—the head guard collapsed against a wall, his hands shaking.

"Report this," he told his second. "Report exactly what happened. Because if we don't, and that child tells her father we were mistreating prisoners..." He didn't finish the sentence. He didn't need to. Everyone in the multiverse knew who Aria's father was.

(AN: I know I didn't specify where he knew her identity but take it like that🤭😅. I am getting lazy)

Word of the incident spread through the Universal Hub faster than light. Within hours, the story had been embellished, exaggerated, and mythologized:

The Daughter of the Multiverse had descended upon the Quantum Bazaar like an avatar of justice itself.

She had walked through military-grade shields like they were paper.

She had threatened hardened security forces into submission with a glance.

She had freed the innocent and left behind blessings of perfection.

The truth, as the disciples reported back to Elias that evening, was somewhat more nuanced but no less impressive.

"She demonstrated perfect control throughout," Zhen Wei reported. "No unnecessary force. No permanent damage. She simply identified an injustice and corrected it with minimal collateral impact."

"The station authorities have actually thanked her," Lysa added. "Apparently, that security company had been abusing their contract for months, but no one had been able to prove it. Aria's intervention gave them cause to terminate the contract and investigate properly."

"The freed children have all been placed with appropriate families or social services," Mira continued. "Several of them have already started showing unusual cultivation improvements—being near Aria for even that short time seems to have optimized their spiritual foundations."

"And the merchants in the areas she visited are reporting unprecedented business," Krix noted. "People are treating her path through the bazaar like a pilgrimage route."

"There's already a shrine," Thorn added quietly. "Someone set up a small altar at the food stall she visited. They're calling it the 'Place Where the Daughter Smiled.'"

Elias listened to all of this with an expression that was equal parts pride and concern. His daughter had gone on her first unsupervised adventure and had immediately involved herself in a political incident, freed prisoners from lawful custody (regardless of the morality), and accidentally created a religious movement.

It was, he had to admit, exactly the kind of thing he might have done at her age. If he'd been capable of emotions like righteous indignation at her age. Which he hadn't been.

"She got that from you," he told Kaelen, who was trying very hard not to smile.

"The immediate action without considering diplomatic consequences? That's definitely from me," Kaelen agreed. "The perfect execution and zero collateral damage? That's from you."

"I'm not sure whether to be proud or concerned."

"Be both. That's what parenting is."

Aria herself burst into the room at that moment, her face flushed with excitement. "Father! Mother! It was amazing! I saw so many things and met so many people and tried seventeen different kinds of food and freed some kids from bad guards and accidentally made a shrine and—"

"You accidentally made a shrine?" Elias interrupted.

"I didn't mean to! The nice octopus-star merchant just really liked that I fixed his stall!"

Despite everything—the security breach, the political incident, the nascent religious movement—Elias found himself smiling. His daughter had gone out into the multiverse and had tried to make it better. Not through overwhelming force or casual displays of power, but by identifying a problem and fixing it with the minimum necessary intervention.

She really had learned from him.

"Did you have fun?" he asked.

"So much fun!" Aria threw her arms around him. "Can I go again tomorrow? I want to visit a cultivation academy. Or maybe a starship construction yard. Oh! Or one of those mysterious ruin sites you told me about!"

"We'll discuss tomorrow's plans tomorrow," Elias said, hugging her back. "For now, tell us everything about today."

And as Aria launched into an enthusiastic recounting of her adventure, with the five disciples adding details she missed, Elias reflected that perhaps letting his daughter explore the multiverse wasn't the disaster he'd feared.

It was just going to require a lot more incident reports than he'd anticipated.

Epilogue: The Aria-Watchers

Within a week of Aria's first public adventure, a new profession had emerged across the Universal Hub networks: Aria-watchers.

These were beings who dedicated themselves to tracking the Daughter of the Multiverse's movements, predicting her next appearances, and preparing their locations accordingly. Some did it out of religious devotion. Others saw economic opportunity in the blessings she left behind. A few were genuinely concerned with protecting her, despite knowing she needed no protection.

The Aria-watcher information networks became some of the most active in the multiverse, with sightings and predictions traded like valuable commodities.

"She visited the Quantum Bazaar last week. Pattern suggests she'll try a cultivation academy next."

"All academies within seventeen sectors are preparing visitor protocols. Just in case."

"I've analyzed her movement patterns. She prefers locations with historical significance or interesting social dynamics."

"Someone needs to warn the Celestial Ruins about potential reality distortions if she visits."

"Are you kidding? The Ruins would be honored! Half the mysteries there would probably just solve themselves if she looked at them!"

And across the multiverse, civilizations began to prepare for the possibility that a five-year-old Universe God with her father's analytical mind and her mother's compassionate heart might suddenly appear in their midst and accidentally revolutionize everything just by being herself.

The age of Aria Vance had truly begun, and the multiverse was learning to adapt to a new kind of wonderful chaos.

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