Standing in front of the shipping container, Luca was feeling the tension dripping out of it in rivulets. Thick rivulets unseen to the naked eye as he watched the power supply Echelon had rigged up into a hole to power the Faraday cage inside. He didn't know what it was supposed to do exactly, but it did bring him comfort - and he couldn't use his phone in there either.
Luckily for Luca, Seiren was already in the cargo bay- with Rebeka - showing her exactly what a car was. So when the call came, it was a small task to find Luca for a different task.
The inventor merrily skipped next to his hero, looking up with a grin.
"So, how're we gonna do this? Because I'm not an expert in biomechanics or anything," he asked, popping a fresh lollipop in his mouth.
"Yeah, but Aiesu is. Rebeka probably knows a thing or too as well."
"So we're gonna play Surgery Simulator, except with a semirobot man?"
"What is surgery simulator?" Rebeka spoke, her trade fighting through her thick Lorath accent.
"A weird Nepleslian video game in which you must perform surgery. With reversed controls."
"I do not understand your fixation to make pretend.." she stated rather fatly with a bored sigh, squeezing her hands about Seiren's shoulders possessively to give herself some motivation to follow the conversation.
"Video games exist! You saw one upstairs when- aaAAaah could you not pleaase?"
Reluctantly, she released the small inventor, sucking her synthetic teeth and giving a click of disappointment Luca had heard elsewhere before.
"
Well then," Luca said as he stepped towards the doors of the shipping container. He grabbed the handles and gave it a shake to double check whether it was locked, and he knelt down to undo the deadbolts before standing back up and reaching to undo the auxiliary locks. Some shoddy wiring was present thanks to Echelon's job and he felt a slight tingle in his arms when he shook the thing.
He then cranked a lever open and pulled the doors open. He was now face to face with the construct, suspended in the middle of the Faraday cage by hooks that was lining the walls, floor and ceiling of the shipping container. Its body was fully intact, but the place where Enzo had shot it had not healed. It appeared to be a male Lorath L'manel of currently unknown aspectation (trans-cranial lead therapy does that). It did not move. It was as a corpse. Eyes glassy, blood clotted in clumps, starting to smell vaguely like rotten, foetid flesh - like a battlefield the day after.
"Ugh," Seiren mumbled, covering his mouth and nose with his shirt, tugging the material of his collar just enough to grant him somewhat fresher-smelling air. "I thought he was supposed to be a robot man, not a fleshy. . . flesh. . . whatever."
"That's what I thought too. Weighed a tonne to move around though, must have some sort of durandium skeleton or nerimium alloy. I don't think his skull was expecting such a hit though."
"Nobody expects a Mancannon to the face!"
"I do." Rebeka said quietly - painted lips curling into a smile. Oh, she didn't - not by a longshot, but it wasn't unlike what she was used to dealing with. Even so, she wanted to know just how those around her would react.
Seiren looked at the woman with a confused, shocked expression. "Uh?"
"A mancannon in the face is intimidation. A packet rifle in the face is escalation," Luca replied.
"Rapid escalation... That's a frame-scale weapon" Rebeka grumbled, the wind beneath her metaphorical wings gone. She leant into the gap, staring at the body. She prodded, genuinely expecting a reaction from it. It took her a moment to work out that whatever she was looking at was not alive.
"He does not look happy."
"Aiesu should be here soon to give him enough life to talk." Luca replied, checking his watch. He wondered where she was. That was the weird thing about her he could never figure out. She was as a ghost, coming, going when she needed to rather than when Luca necessarily wanted her to. "You'd think with a Lagrange construct on our hands she'd be more curious."
Just as he'd said that, a familiar figure stepped out from behind him. She cleared her throat, the sound a surprise to those among her.
Seiren frowned. "Last time I checked, people don't function very well with a hole in their- AHJEEZWHEREDIDYOUCOMEFROM!??!"
The pint-size Yamataian leapt a foot in the air, somehow landing in Rebeka's arms like a
certain animated dog.
She held him there, in her arms rather contently, the smile formerly robbed from her now returning as she cradled his face up against her neck -- unnervingly still, like stone.
"Oh, hi Aiesu," Luca said. "Guess my good eye wasn't on you."
"Yes," she said, flatly, clearly not in the mood to return the greeting proper. She gently eased Rebeka (who was still holding Seiren) to one side and then Luca to the other to give the corpse very metaphysical breathing room as she crouched down before it. She opened a heavy looking metallic brief-case and fished into it, she taking a number of cords which she held carefully in her teeth and a scalpel which she began carving their cadaver with. She was curiously enthusiastic.
"Power."
"Uh, you can let me down now. Onto the ground. Lightly," Seiren said, realizing how silly he looked in the tall woman's arms.
"Must I? You're so small."
"Oh, well, the weather up here is so nice, and- yes I want to be let down."
Luca stepped out of the cargo container and went to Seiren's workplace and returned with an extension cable coiling in from behind him. There was more than enough length and a second loop.
Aiesu held out her hand, clicking her thumb -- the scalpel left haphazardly stabbed through some portion of the corpse for her own convenience. She soon matched the cable and then one of the smaller lines in her teeth to the cable and then that into the back of the construct's neck. An audible clicking sound, like a synthetic purr vibrated against the interior of its synthetic skull. The moment she heard it, she pulled the cord again.
"Story?"
"Zeta, Enzo and Panther found him snooping around the water plant at Handler's Reach. He was talking in circles to my rogue, who didn't really have time to get talked down to so he shot him in the head and found out he was a construct." He then fished through his pockets and produced some items and laid them on a table.
A sample of the 'D-Motiva' they'd found taken from the water plant with some sickly blue algae in it, a bundle of money with some notes missing (guess who) and a strange seal wrapping them up, some data sticks with the operation manuals to the water plant and technical diagrams of where the pipes go and where the filtration systems are, and the nametag and identification to the dead water plant worker that was in the unfiltered water supply.
"They found all this too."
For good measure, a now-returned-to-the-ground Seiren also placed a piece of crocodile leather from one of the mutant crocodiles at the edge of the pile.
"Mutant critters got all ragey too."
"And the fact that there were Nekovalkyrja walking around unaffected by this chemical is making me raise an eyebrow."
"There was more than one?" the inventor asked, clearly confused. Luca caught himself and coughed.
"One, sorry."
Aiesu rapped her knuckle against the blood-smeared synthetic skull.
"Australum. Its about the hardest composite we use on constructs, short of zesuaium. To go to this trouble, whatever's in here is worth something."
"Not hard enough for a bullet to the skull. I wonder why?"
"That wasn't what took him offline," she said, lifting the body up and laying it over, revealing a massive exit-wound about the belly. She reached in rather clinically and pulled slowly, withdrawing a synthetic tube about the size of the more pitiful variety of carbonated soda can's -- the thing clinging to the figure's innards on cables. The container was dinted, black fluid leaking from it.
"Its not dead. Its asleep. No power means no go."
"Sleeping devices still transmit signals, that's why we're standing in a far-a-day cage."
"No, Luca. This is a generator. I've got one too, somewhere in my guts. Our friend here is due a replacement. You can't run a computer without power, right?"
"So are we plugging this guy into the power grid or what? I mean, I can pull my Frame over here and wire it to my aether drive if it's that necessary," Seiren cut in.
"You're packing aether? In
that thing?" Aiesu tried not to laugh.
Rebeka contemplated picking Seiren up again.
"Long story short, it involves NMX."
"You'll have to let me take a look at it some time" she said, taking some sort of circular saw blade out of the box. She started with the scalpel, doing rings about the construct's neck and then put the saw-blade to it. It took a few minutes but eventually she had the thing's head off. Soon, she was making more incisions, taking her time in doing so -- cutting a square into the side of its skull and removing that plate. Next, came a number of pliers and adaptors set up in a chain and a small thin rod like component which she withdrew and set aside.
Then there was a moment of hesitation, reaching back for it and unscrewing a coin like cap on one side and the ribbon cable from the other.
"
Don't need you talking to your friends..."
The head's eyes opened in eerie fashion as the thing powered up, disconnected from its body.
Seiren remarked, "Creepy."
"Wake up, time to die...vulge." Luca told the head with a grin as his eyes levelled with the construct's. The pupil of the construct's one good eye wandered around before focussing and settling on Luca. The eyelids narrowed as it stared at him.
"You two know eachother?" Rebeka arched a brow, her hands settling on Seiren's shoulders as she watched Luca.
"I know of you." The head said to Luca, who wondered how it was talking without lungs or a thorax.
"State your title, position and serial number" Aiesu said flatly - flicking her index finger against the glassy-tube she'd withdrawn from its skull very obviously. From the look of sheer mind-numbing boredom, she'd done this a few times.
"XFCEZRURJMJMAVAJOUCK." It said. It sounded familiar enough to Luca, who nodded since he had to read it out.
"Title. Position." Aiesu grumbled, not even looking at it as she prodded her bare foot against its cheek. Again, with the bare feet again. Did Aiesu have an allergy to shoes?
"Call me ZEDD. Clearance Orange. If you were clever enough to make me live, if only for this monkey's entertainment then you must be Clearance Blue or Indigo, at the least."
"Ultraviolet." she said, thumbing her scalpel curiously close to the construct's eyes. She couldn't help but notice the way it watched.
"Now that the introductions are sorted - Handler's Reach. Why there?" Luca asked.
"Isolated, low income, very few people moving in and out of it. Perfect place to test," it smiled. "I however am not the architect of this, just a bagboy."
"And a go between." Luca grabbed a bundle of money and put it down in front of the construct's nose. "Some wheels had to be greased." He placed the water plant worker's identification down. "With blood. You're hiding more than you're letting on, and my friend here..."
Aiesu smiled sweetly, giving an uncharacteristically peppy smile and a wave.
"...can get it out of you the hard way or we can talk." Luca continued.
The L'manel clicked her tongue thoughtfully, twisting something deep inside the skull housing... "Goodbye pain-limiters... Good bye vasovagal response... Hello easy interrogation~" and then taking the fluid filled tube. She eyed a particular component -- a set of locker-like dials and hummed thoughtfully.
"If you tell me the combination to this, you won't be held accountable for what you tell us and you get off scot free. The real you, I mean. That means you can duck and run."
Seiren chipped in, grinning like a fool.
"And if you don't talk, I can totally use a talking head for something! And your new name will be Chief Diamond Philips! And you'll be forced to make bad puns!"
Aiesu tried not to laugh, running her tongue through her cheek. She nodded, weighing this up against the things her own Seiren had said with a chortle. Suffice to say, it ranked pretty high on the so-dumb-its-cute list.
Luca smiled a little too. "So. Question one as my sharktoothed companion gets into your head; this Motiva strain, let's just call it D-Motiva, doesn't affect Nekovalkyrja. Only seemed to affect Yamataians, Geshrin, Nepleslians who stayed around too long, as well as some local wildlife. Surely, something that big is not an accident."
"My money is on an attempt to cause riots and rebellion against Yamatai or something," the inventor said with another grin.
"My money is money," Aiesu said, adjusting her glasses with the flat butt of her scalpel. A stab at Lorath humour lost on most of those around her but Luca nodded in agreement.
"It does?" the head asked.
Luca's head tilted. "What do you mean 'it does'?" He looked over to Seiren with a frown.
"Success." The construct grinned. "Where is that Nekovalkyrja
right now?"
Where was Aoi? Luca's expression seemed troubled after he began summarising the possibilities in his mind. Aoi said she was an artist, and she'd leave back for where she came from as part of her deal to work for Luca doing advertising.
"...One more thing though," Aoi asked. "Can I pay you in kind?"
"That depends. I don't do favours."
"Nah; I want a job... I want to do your advertising - first round free of charge! ... I can draw, I can make holograms, I can do music too."
"Sure thing. What are your rates?"
She said her studio and hideaway was on Dawn Station.
"You had better find her before she takes a bath or a shower or something. It was oh-so grimy back there wasn't it?"
"Wait wait wait, hold up - who would wait to take a shower until AFTER multiple shuttle rides to a far-away station?" Seiren asked, poking a hole in that threat like a cruel man with a needle to a child's balloon.
"Do you think that just because it doesn't affect her doesn't mean she could still carry it?" the head retorted.
"Well, after walking around in the neutralising piss-rain, I'd think she'd wash herself off in the nearest hotel possible. You're not very good at this whole, ominous villain thing, are ya?"
"You'd need a full immersion to get it all out of a Neko. They're complex organisms. Do your homework, schoolgirl." If nothing else he was good at pushing buttons.
Aiesu picked the head up in her hands and held it up over her head.
And then she dropped it.
And then it went skittering across the deck as she kicked it. Impishly, hands linked behind her back, she floated along, rearing her foot back for another kick to the face. She did this several times before returning the head to Luca and the others.
"Goal." Luca told Aiesu as he had the head passed to him. "Listen headboy, do you think you're dumb enough to divide and conquer us by splitting us into two groups, one goes to Dawn Station while the others chase your backers down and attacking us both without each other to support us. This isn't my first Funky City Shuffle."
Seiren looked nonplussed. "Not to mention, the amount of the stuff in her body can't be nearly enough to contaminate a massive station's water supply to any measurable degree, yanno?"
"It'd take what, several years to actually do damage even without the filtration systems working, which I can assure you it won't."
Slowly, Aiesu lifted her scalpel, the sharpened end hanging downward. She dropped, watching it dig into the fleshy forehead of the construct.
"Pyu~cheiu~"
Luca then grabbed Aiesu's hand.
"H-Huh?"
"I think we're done here. Zedd, you're a shitty bluffer. Yo, Rebeka!" He pulled the scalpel out of its forehead and passed it back to the Lorath.
"Uh?"
"Snack!" He tossed the head to her.
"Uhhh..."
The head smacked her in the shoulder. It took the sourcian a moment to realise it was there before she reached over, picking it up. She glanced toward Luca, then to Aiesu for confirmation.
"You want me to eat this?"
"Wait WHAT." The construct's head bellowed, looking up at Rebeka.
"We've got no more use for his stupid head."
"Be sure to wash your hands afterwards! Don't want to get. . . head. . . juice. . . all over the ship,"
Seiren revelled in the teasing, but was more than a little repulsed at the thought of somebody eating the head.
This much, Rebeka could tell, frowning in Seiren's direction.
"Are you sure this is a good idea?"
"To be honest, n-"
Before Seiren could finish his words, she'd already peeled off a strip of cheek Aiesu had nicked with the scalpel and was already chewing on it, slurping the dripping wet muscle. She took the scalpel, and began to score another chunk out of the screaming head.
"Uh?"
Seiren shuddered as the sort of 'that looks extremely painful' kind of empathy ran through his spine.
Rebeka froze on the spot, swallowing reluctantly. She stared down at the face, beginning to regret her decision. She almost looked embarrassed.
Luca didn't flinch and looked back to Aiesu casually. "So, just a bagboy for Lagrange then?"
"From the looks of things, yes. That said... I've got a backup core and a modem here so... I can probably work out who this person really is. Its kind of a rule that you don't let your modem fall into enemy hands" she said, holding up the tiny coin sized object.
"Do I have to eat the hair? I don't.. Really like hair." Luca shook his head at the sourcian before looking back at Aiesu.
"Perfect."
"I'm gonna go. . . do a thing. Elsewhere," Seiren grimaced, heading off to another end of the cargo bay. The image of that screaming head would be stuck in his brain for a little while.
Rebeka's spirits visibly sunk. But she didn't stop.
Screaming, disembodied heads were the last of Luca's concerns. They were in dreams and nightmares alike, whether he was cutting them or whether they were asking for an answer that Luca couldn't have.
In time, the construct's head ceased to be: simply a metal husk, something that resembled a jaw without teeth hanging open.
"So, Aiesu. How long will it take you to get that modem and core analysed and scoured?"
"A few days. You don't really have any heavy metal here or the tools I really need so I'll have to ask the consortium. Flogging a construct is a pain, since I designed them to be hard to break, you know?"
Luca pointed his index finger in a circular motion. "But you designed them, so it'd take any other yahoo a couple of months to do what you're doing, which is time we don't have."
"N-Not really" she smiled bashfully, a bit embarrassed for the first time in his company. "Anyone who knows what I know could do this. It doesn't give me much of an advantage, you know... This isn't the movies, Luca. Haa..."
He shrugged. "It's beginning to look like one though, which means-"
INTERLUDE 1 - COMPLETE!!
"...yeah. It's happening." Ever since Delsauria he was having a hard time keeping those under control. "Just give me a ring when you're done."
"What... What was that?" Aiesu said, her smile quashed. She eyed the ceiling of the cargo-bay for some possible source of the sound. "Am I losing it?"
"No..." Rebeka began. "I heard it."
Seiren's voice called across the cargo bay.
"This isn't
The Adventures of the Unreasonable, you know!"
"Wh..." Aiesu scowled at Seiren.
"Young master," Rebeka frowned as she stepped behind the boy. She cupped the his shoulders again in her hands, her voice softer this time, knowing the bad impression she'd made.
"Might you share with us how you did that?"
"He didn't do it, I didn't do it - I think." Luca piped up. "They're just always following me around whenever an important event happens."
"They!?" Aiesu tightened her grip about her scalpel, eyeing the rafters suspiciously.
"Add one to the 'shit Aiesu cannot explain' tally."
"F-Fuck you!" the construct stuttered, eyeing Luca incredulously.
"If it makes you feel better I have no idea either."