nexus_crossings | Some Reassembly Required

Some Reassembly Required

There’s an open, grassy area on the edge of the Wilds, some distance from the most popular Nexus parks where people are enjoying their picnics and centaur polo and so forth. It’s a good place to go if you want slightly more peace and quiet - or in Blaze’s case, a good open space in which to make a lot of noise. The robot soldier has a few small crates out on the grass. One of them she’s sitting on; the others are being used as tables which hold a small array of tools and components and blocks of metal. She’s working on modifying a pair of heavy armored boots much like the pair she’s wearing, refitting the soles and reinforcing their structure. Her Ghost hovers beside her, inspecting a blueprint spread out atop one of the boxes. The little bot is spinning his pointy shell back and forth as if concerned, but Blaze pays him no heed.

“So,” she says, speaking up while she works. “People change. Some of us change more than others. Sometimes we don’t notice how it happens. Sometimes,” she yanks out a component and chucks it down beside her, “we don’t get a say. So what part of yourself would you want make sure you held on to? What’s the part you’d want to be remembered?” She pauses, then looks up at the nearest people. “And, hey, anyone got some spare explosives?"

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

"We age at the same rate as humans," he replies automatically. That vague look of confusion persists a moment longer before he realizes what Blaze is getting at by asking. "Ah... okay. I get it. That's not an issue for me. Resurrection was a kind of immortality, but with the technology lost and all the hubs destroyed, it's irrelevant."

He also has no intention of outliving Adia, but he knows that's too dark to say out loud. His gaze follows the light of the torch, absently following her work. "What about you? What's your lifespan?" And why is that suddenly bothering her now?

The piglet smiles and wags her springy tail. "Tep!" she says cheerfully. The plasma torch catches her eye and two tiny flames appear from her nostrils. Look, Ghost, she can do that, too!

"Princess, take it easy. Let the 'bot work." Caspar sounds equal parts exasperated and amused. You're supposed to be helping me pick out a picnic spot, remember? Adia will be here soon."

Blaze listens and thinks of her Ghost guiding her after the first resurrection. The friends who watched over her when the Nexus turned her inside out one way or another. The spy who stood beside her when she was about to get her head cracked open and told her it'd be okay.

Humanity's been good to her, by and large. Even if that term doesn't strictly cover Ghost.

"People are hard to get a handle on." That too she can agree with. There's a soft synthetic edge to her voice, the inside of her throat lighting up when she speaks. "And we're all real good at screwing up. But humanity's worth fighting for. I think you're right. Maybe we need that connection to each other to stay sane when everything else is in flux."

"Go ahead. You can tell me what you think. Not a lot of alien tech there, though. That's good old human ingenuity and some ideas I had on my own." The schematics are for boots - the ones she's holding, in fact - with dark lines showing the intended modifications. Extra supports, inertial dampers, some controlling electronics, a lot of reinforcement... and cavities for unspecified explosives. She's still working out the details.

"Not if it works it ain't." Hmph. Him and Ghost both. "It's not for playing minesweeper. Don't need special boots for that. I want to redirect the explosive force as a propellant. You know, give it an extra kick when I charge something big. You see now?"

Ghost takes his attention from the diagrams to look between the two of them for a second, before he gives a little electronic sigh, the points of his shell drooping slightly. Seems like Fairfax's opinion is pretty well shared by the bot who's going to be putting together all the pieces afterward.

"Yeah. Yeah, that'd make things simpler." She's glad she had more time than that, though, given her issues. If her creators saddled her with recurrent cognitive breakdown at least they let her live long enough to find a solution.

"Until I find something that can kill me." Answering Caspar's question is almost an afterthought. "Neither an Exo nor a Guardian's ever died of old age." The piglet's flames catch her eye and she puts down the welder, reaching out an armored hand to the little pokemon. Ghost is expressing his curiosity in his own way: by scanning her. "Hey, little one. You offering to help?"

More important, can Blaze pet her? She offers Princess some headscratches, then looks back up at Caspar. "So. Is he dead?"

Change can be a tricky thing for a creature who is genetically identical to every one of her sisters. By her very nature she is a recipe. A copy from which anyone with the right magical aptitude could summon another one of her sisters and get virtually the same thing. A bound servant of Justice looking for a cause to serve.

And yet.

Angel catches the tossed component with practiced ease. Her eyes uncovered. Her hands unbound. Where every one of her sisters is tied--Angel is free. She is different from them. Changed. Apart and isolated. There was a time she felt it made her so very much alone.

"What part of myself...? Curious. I have no name, no defining features compared to my sisters. The only thing that sets me apart would be my contract, Blaze. Even if I did not remember, I would like that to remain." Something she could dedicate herself to even if she forgot who Blaze or herself were. Even if she were to lose all memory she would still fundamentally be the same because of her nature. Surely she would learn to appreciate Blaze all over again.

The second question, however...

"I only brought two grenades. Would you like them?" Her tactical gear has come a long way from the haggardly stitched tabard Blaze had fashioned a dress for her out of so long ago. Angel still favors golds and whites where she can but more important is making sure she matches her Mistress.

Edited 2018-06-17 23:40 (UTC)

It's harder then Alec is willing to admit on a good day. The green is like a hunger, a howling need for dominance, an angry wind. He firmly believes that humanity is supposed to be a check on the power of the green. The green is not empathetic. It doesn't feel.

The sheer amount of power at his fingers however...

"Yes." The creature's red eyes are distant, "It isn't only a means of keeping yourself safe, but it's often a means of...healing. Protection." Of yourself and others.

"Why do you ask?"

"It's the same for Centurions. Their physiology isn't as complex as yours, though." He never thought to ask one how they felt about that, living eternal. He's not sure how to ask Blaze, either, so he's grateful when her focus switches to his pokémon companion and they can both let the subject drop for now.

Princess oinks an affirmative, her nostrils glowing like embers. Unfortunately, her nose flames aren't nearly hot enough to replace Blaze's plasma torch. Disappointed, she grunts and settles for scratches instead. She's warm, but not unbearably so, and her fur is coarse and wiry. Ghost will likely pick up on the same facts with his scan. (More if he's bothered to download a pokédex at some point.)

"Yeah, he is." There's no pause of confusion before he speaks this time. He knows who she's referring to. "He managed to leave an even bigger problem in his wake, but at least he isn't a threat anymore." He frowns briefly. "I probably should have texted you after it happened, sorry. You want the whole story, or just the highlights?"

"I'd ask how you knew I was a a Time Lord, but if you've met one of us before, 'regeneration' sort of gives it away."

He doesn't care about her terseness. He's cross enough for everyone.

"Like I said, I've rebooted the universe once or twice. I've had memories deleted. I have a pretty good idea of which I'd prefer."

Thousands of years old, billions of years of experience kind of does that to him.

"As to 'acting tragic' well..."

He shrugs. Nothing acting about it, but he's not about to show off the glow. He's been having enough troubles recently without adding to them.

Brilliant, she gets to have a snoop at the foreign tech. Without any further ado she walks over to peer at the blueprints, bending over to get a good look without touching them. After a while she straightens a little more, nodding, but keeping her attention on the intriguing information in front of her.

"Impressive." There's no irony in her tone, she genuinely is impressed. "The adaptation to endure such a wide variety of environments must be useful in encountering alien races. Do you find yourself on many planets, or just Earth?"

"Maybe later. Hold onto them for now." There are some advantages to carrying physical grenades instead of the Light-spawned things Guardians use. Then again, maybe it's better Blaze can't experiment with them too often.

She's glad Angel came along. Nevertheless, the Exo looks up at her with a troubled frown. Blaze has been doing a lot of thinking these past few months, in spite of herself. Too much thinking, even. Some of it has borne fruit.

"You know, I never really thought about you not having a name. I guess Angel sounds enough like one that it didn't stick out." And she figured if the demon wanted another name, she'd just call herself that. It's been hard for Blaze to get her head around the fact that it doesn't work that way with Angel. She's getting there. "Do you want a name? You ought to have one of your own. No good reason you shouldn't, unless you're like Ghost and you can't decide."

"Couple of reasons." Reasons this man-turned-plant might understand better than most. Blaze sets the boot she's working on aside, beside where its pair has fallen over on the grass. This conversation is more interesting right now. She leans forward, armor-plated arms resting on armor-plated knees while she figures out how to explain it. Her Ghost has long since left off studying schematics in favor of watching Alec with fascination, but the smaller bot keeps quiet while his partner talks.

"The first is that I'm going to seek out a new kind of power. It's related to the Light I have now- sort of two faces of the same thing. But this new kind's got a different, hn, mindset to it. A different temperament, if that makes sense. I've been warned that if I take it up, it's going to change me. But no-one I can talk to is really clear on the specifics. I'm trying to figure out how to approach it."

"No," he says, just as slowly. He still doesn't see how this makes any sense. Fairfax doesn't have the most expressive face, unless he's scowling, but the set of his jaw implies a certain disbelief. ""And I thought I was insane," he mutters under his breath.

So she doesn't want to step on grenades with her feet. She wants to strap them to her feet. "What's wrong with a jetpack?" he asks, genuinely confused, clasping his hands tighter. Was she always this tactically suicidal? A manic episode? What little he saw of her combat wasn't this. But then again, she did charge right into the thick of things. And if she could scrap a foot to a mine and keep going, he'd take different considerations too.

Alec's first response is Don't. He has no regrets about his bio-restorative formula, the ability to quickly regrow plants would have saved humanity, would have ushered in a reality unlike anything they'd ever seen before. He just never expected that it would have made him the thing he was now.

Except...Except it turned out that he had no other option but to become the thing that sits before her. That he was predestined to do so and that if someone hadn't tried to kill him the green would have tried to claim him one way or another to fulfill his so called destiny.

"Do you feel...drawn to it? Does it speak to you? If it does..."

He stares down at the earth, "Does it frighten you? Those are all normal responses."

"Tell us everything," Ghost insists, floating closer to listen. "Is Adia all right?"

"He wouldn't be wandering round here otherwise, Ghost." Blaze tickles the Tepig's ears and nods up at Caspar. "But I want to know how it went down, too."

"We've been to a few in the system." Blaze is not a little pleased at the praise, and willing to chat. Ghost is watching a little more closely as he backs away to give the scientist a look at the schematics. "Mars, Luna, Venus. Mercury. Conditions there probably aren't quite the same as in your system, though. Not unless you've got the hang of some serious terraforming."

Or an infestation of alien horrors carving out the moon. The multiverse is full of variety.

"You're packing some interesting gear yourself. What's the function?" Ask about her specs, she'll ask about yours. It's not fair to be the only one who gets to show off.

"Nothing insane about- oh." She has to stop and give that question some thought, because really, what is wrong with jetpacks?

"Nothing," she concludes. Nothing at all. "Wouldn't mind getting my hands on one. My booster pack kinda works the same but it's kinda slow. Doesn't give the kind of kick I'm thinking of. I've seen alien psions use jets to zip around the battlefield but we don't have anything like- huh. Hey, Ghost. Know where we can find some psions after this?"

"I'll check the bounty list for Mars.

She nods approvingly. "Thanks, Fairfax. That's good thinking."

The demon is no Guardian no matter how much she tries to be like them. She can fundamentally do the same jobs as they can with the same level of death defiance thanks to Blaze's soul being tied to her own. She carries their gear and their guns but where her Light differs from theirs she compensates where she can. The physical grenades are one such thing. She may not be able to summon Light Grenades but she can heal most anything and smite her enemies with her own brand of Light.

Angel flutters a bit closer to the Exo with a hint of a smile on her face. When Blaze looks troubled, she does her best to be reassuring. A counterweight. A port in the storm of the Exo's troubled thoughts. The question catches her by surprise though.

"None of my kind do. It is difficult to mourn something you've never had." She doesn't want Blaze to feel bad about her lack of a personal identity. It's not as though she's longed for one before now, but hearing the Exo offer to give her something so personal has her eyes wide and her jaw ever so slightly open in shock.

"You would...you would give me an identity? I couldn't--I have no right to ask that of you, Blaze." It sounds as though the demon would cherish it though.

"She's fine," he's quick to reassure Ghost. "Didn't get a scratch on her. She'll be here soon if you want to ask her yourself."

He finds a sturdy-looking crate to sit on, putting the folded blanket down first to provide a cushion. "I don't know where the hell to start. There was a festival in the Plaza not that long ago. A spring "revelry". Except it was a front for some psycho witch to bring a god of chaos into the Nexus. Jeff -- that was his real name -- was working with her, but tried to back out at the end. He ended up getting possessed by the god. That's when I showed up."

Only in the Nexus can he say that and have it make any sense. Or, who knows, maybe getting possessed by a malevolent deity is completely normal everywhere but his own universe.

"Adia was locked up in an empty storage room in a temple. so I got her out. The god cut off our escape routes and challenged me to a duel, but when I shattered his sword, it broke the curse that he had put on the Plaza."

That's right: Caspar saved the Nexus ~~and all he got was this lousy t-shirt~~. Princess oinks happily at the ear tickle, then gives Caspar a reproachful look. He's leaving out the best part!

"Oh, yeah, Jeff's pokémon were there, too, but they helped me instead of him. I guess loyalty doesn't extend to a trainer while he's possessed."

"Not on a planetary scale…" Although she is certain Dr. Al-Shahrani would be eager to get her hands on planetary terraforming work. Perhaps she'll ask after the research at a later stage. "Humanity has always been driven to reach for the stars, but the last attempt to colonise the moon was an unmitigated failure."

Moira straightens, turning her attention to the bracers keeping the experimental technology close to hand. She faces Blaze properly, folding her right arm behind her back and offering her left up for inspection. "It's primary function is as emergency medical assistance utilising biotic energy and nanobiology."

Thank fucking God. At least she saw reason, and didn't have some - weird ideological aversion to jetpacks or something. Who knows. He nods, jerkily. "Don't mess around with blowing yourself up deliberately, even if it's safe. World's got enough of that." It's a harsh edge to his voice that comes out of concern. And a little relieved, secretly.

A lull in the conversation is enough to remind him why he's here. He glances down, then looks back up again. He's slightly uncomfortable at the thought of bringing up their last meeting, and everything associated with that, but there's no real way around it. "...Don't think I ever got your name?" he mutters.

"Yes." Surprise in her voice again. "I've only caught glimpses of it, but it's like- like a memory you can't quite bring to mind and can't let go of either. I want to know what it's like up close. I don't know if I'm scared of it. I'm scared of letting something change me again, but it almost feels like fear doesn't matter. I'm not sure I could turn my back on it now anyway. You think that's normal, too?"

Insofar as anything about this subject is normal. But it's funny how fast your sense of mundanity can alter. Or atrophy, depending who you talk to.

It's strange to hear Angel speak of individuality as if it's a privilege Blaze can bestow - or withhold - at her pleasure. Absurd to see her so overwhelmed at a gift that demands no sacrifice and only the barest level of decency. And still. Angel looks at her with wide eyes and hesitating even to hope and Blaze understands what it means to her.

"You have it backwards. I have no right to deny you one. Especially not after you've fought alongside me so many times. Patched me up, helped my friends." She's rubbing an antenna awkwardly. "Besides, you know, when I'm telling stories about our missions, I'm gonna need a real name to call you."

Even if it's safe? An Exo's face doesn't lend itself to nuanced expression, but she gives him a thoughtful look. She's still working on that boot, but she already has all the material and a pair of reinforced boots could conceivably be even more useful if they didn't contain explosives.

"...I forgot that. Guess we had bigger problems." Honestly, she's not sure he'd have remembered if she had given it, then. Now she does put down her tools so she can give him a salute, sharp and brief. "Blaze-37. The little guy is Ghost, but he's kinda shy." He's also a bit more sensitive to body language, so although the smaller bot spins a bit to say hello, he's hanging back out of the way. And keeping a watch for airborne ammonites, of which he isn't fond.

"And...what would you wish to call me to your friends?"

The demon leans forward slightly, nervously fluttering closer to the Exo's eye level while she waits for Blaze's opinion. There has never been a thought that this moment would or even should come. Now that she's here Angel has no idea what to think. To say or expect. Her breath catches in her chest.

"Whatever you choose is fine by me. All that matters is that it was given to me by my--by you." Would it be a name to match the Exo's? If she is Blaze-37, what would Angel be? Or perhaps a more human name. Any name.

It's so overwhelming to even consider.

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

Page 2 of 6

Some Reassembly Required

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

Figured now should be about the time I brought out these bad boys