Moogle
Retired Member
Undertale - So cold
Seiren's white-knuckled grip on the bat he found was beginning to hurt. But he didn't let go. Not yet.
He reached /her/ room, where she was waking up as the second one of her constructs in as many days. He didn't bother knocking.
As always, the room was cast in darkness, illuminated only by displays and blinking lights, the floor a mess of cables. She sat on an office-chair of sorts several sizes too large for her, hunched forward with her feet upon a box of some sort, facing one of the displays. She didn't seem to type or even make any kind of action at all, her head lowered, back to Seiren. The sound of the servers working was loud enough to mask the sound of the door opening.
He so desperately wanted to give her no alarm. Just raise the bat and end her right there. But he couldn't. Seiren closed the door behind him and kept the bat in front of him. His eyes took the time to adjust now that the hall lights were no longer shedding into the space.
"Aiesu!"
Her head turned in the darkness, the chair's wheels rolling as she visibly flinched in surprise, her voice calling out in the dark. It was clear she couldn't see him, squinting as she tried to adjust.
The terminal instance she had open had some long schpeil of warnings in capitol letters, cables running between her and it. Something about a factory reset.
"Answers. Now."
Seiren stared her down, the metal in his hands glinting in the dim light. His blue eyes glinted right along with it. Three sets of shining.
They almost glowed.
From the way she looked through him, her night vision was pretty poor. Maybe she didn't even have any, though her eyes darted to the glinting, her expression sour as she tried to make out the object with little success. And then, eyes searching for him again. Even with the shine, she still couldn't clearly see him. Seiren would recall remembering the way Aiesu had mentioned the way ey'tis were practically blind in the dark, relying on their noses and hearing.
"Seiren?"
She was already visibly cowering, a hand up to protect her face from she knew not what.
"How did you not know? How could you be so out of the loop? Aren't you supposed to be some. . ."
He struggled for the words.
"I-I only know what I'm told..." she started looking for him again, craning her neck. "Where are you?"
He could see her nose moving, scenting the air.
The room felt so cold.
"You're supposed to be. . . some big hotshot mad scientist and you somehow didn't know that this big horrible machine with little horrible machines with big horrible microwave guns weren't prancing about everywhere? Don't give me that."
She frowned.
"The development on the OUREX only started a little while ago. E-Even the earliest prototypes should have been at least a year away. Its not a p-project I had a lot of involvement in"
The way she moved her nose with that last part. Echelon had mentioned at some point this was a tell.
She was lying.
"And I guess it was just chance that Rebeka was given a shitty prototype machine to fly in, huh?"
He brought the bat up and slammed it hard against one of the walls - it might have been a server, from the way it sparked.
Aiesu's hands were either side of her head, feet upon the chair in an instant as she lowered herself: hands behind her head, elbows forward as she trembled.
"W-W-What was that? Are we...?" under attack, something she'd asked so many times before whenever any kind of loud noise went off.
Already, she was hyperventilating.
"The opposite of an answer. Stop lying to me!"
Her expression changed. Eyes searching for him again.
Easing back into her chair, up on her heels -- trying to disappear backwards into it: hands over her face now. Eyes tightly shut.
"I-Its the best we had.. What we gave her is B-B...Better than anything we'll be mass-producing... I-I sunk four months of resources into procuring it..."
"So what you mean is. . . you knew that it was there. You knew it existed. Or maybe just the high odds of it. And you didn't. . ."
Seiren trailed off.
The urge overtook him and he slammed the bat into another machine - definitely a screen this time.
"There's no earthly way of knowing. . ."
Another sharp yelp, like a frightened dog. She slipped off the chair as it fell over, small wheels still spinning. Her heels met the deck, inching beneath the desk, desperately trying to hide.
Seiren's free hand flicked his wrist, causing the metal gravity gauntlet to cover his hand. He pointed it at Aiesu's legs and pulled.
"You're not telling me something! Stop! Lying!"
The l'manel's lower half was lifted off the ground, leg hanging up into the air as if dangling: fingers tight about a bar making up the workstation.. Arms crossing to tighten about the bar quivering.
The leg came off about the middle of her thigh, caught in Seiren's hand. Prosthetic.
From beneath the desk, she could be heard rattling.
He tossed the leg up and batted it, sending it sailing across the room with a broken clatter.
"H-How could I have known?!" she yelped "We don't even work in that kind of time-frame! Its not physically possible!"
"But it still happened! You lied and I'm going to find out one way or another what!"
He pulled off her other leg and repeated the process.
Beneath the desk, she was huddled up against a bank of routers -- the cooling fans deafening to her. Still, she couldn't see him, eyes tightly shut, face against the bar.
"I-I-I... I..." she sighed, exasperated "I CAN'T TELL YOU WHAT I DON'T KNOW! DON'T HURT ME!"
"THEN WHAT DID YOU LIE ABOUT? HUH?"
"WHERE ARE YOU GETTING THIS IDEA FROM? WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS? I-I FUCKED UP, I GET IT!"
"YOU ARE A TERRIBLE LIAR, THAT'S HOW!"
He gripped the stump of her leg physically and pulled her out from under the console. She looked so frightened, and yet. . .
It was surprising how weak she was, or how light her body was; grip surrendered so quickly against her will: arms crossed over her face - her body contorting with fear. Looking like she was about to be physically sick.
His gauntlet plunged for her throat, but he only barely squeezed - enough to make breathing uncomfortable, but not enough to kill. And locked it. His hand retracted from the metal and he stood up, exhaling heavily.
Aiesu's eyes were tightly scrunched up, hands about his wrist. White eyelashes firm, brows above squeezing as she turned her head as far away from him as she possibly could.
"I thought I could trust you." He stared her down, though she couldn't look. "I hope you understand what you've done."
"I-I spent the last two hours trying to decide if I should just reset myself" she said through clenched teeth. Still trying to pull back.
It took Seiren a moment to realise that for a construct, that equated to suicide. And also, passing the buck. Making it somebody elses problem.
"No. You don't get that luxury. She doesn't get that luxury. Connect."
He touched the tip of her nose with the bat.
Aiesu turned her face just a little harder. Through her fingers, it was clear her heart was pounding.
"S-She won't answer!"
"Make her!"
"YOU THINK I'VE NEVER TRIED!?" she screeched in desperation.
"Then. . ."
He stooped down low, crouching over her.
"Make MOTHER make her."
Her eyes were wide. Confused, deep confusion even if she didn't quite look at him - her gaze still slightly off.
"H...How do you...?"
"We aren't still friends. Not after this. Make. MOTHER. Make her."
"...I can't. She's off-world. Somewhere with no connections of any kind... She's running from someone. Someone... found out where she really is. She could be in stasis for all I know!"
'Or dead' is what she wanted to say but something in her code wouldn't let her use those words.
"I want her to see this!"
"S-She gets reports every hour... Everything said or heard. Tr-...Transcription.. But she hasn't read them in nearly a week."
Logical deduction would say the construct hadn't had any sort of intelligence updates or new instructions in that long, either, explaining the restlessness she'd had.
"Then. . . I have somethin' to tell her. And I want you to listen. . ."
He leaned in close. "You can't undo this. You know that, right?"
By this point, Aiesu's nose was running, her eyes too a wet mess as she flinched at the words.
"R-R...R...Right..."
Seiren bolted up and walked over to another of the server banks, and then back across the room.
"WHY WAS IT HER? WHY WAS IT EVER HER?"
"I...Its... Its.. It it it ..." she took a moment to compose herself, wrist rubbing her nose.
She knew the answer would make him angry and was already cowering.
"...I-Its made specifically to do that...?"
"Do. What?"
"S-S...Sssss....S-Sourcians..." was her only reply.
"And that's what you've been hiding this whole time? The fact that you had a weapon made to kill the only Rebeka in existence? . . ."
"M-MOTHER fears a full on invasion... Not of R-Rebeka but... That there's others like her out there. G-Given the scope of what she told us about the territory they'd occupied, they could sss..span a whole other galaxy by now and we'd never know."
"You could have told us. You could have warned us."
"A-Against what, armageddon?! I-I didn't even--"
"ABOUT THE MACHINE YOU FUCKING SORRY PILE OF BOLTS!"
" I-I didn't know it was even approved f-for formal development! It was a schematic! A t-t...t..test-type! L-Like the first revision, not e-even meant to be used!"
"What does that make you, huh?"
"...Uninformed...?"
"Unfinished."
He raised the bat and slammed it down on her face. Just once.
The l'manel made no effort to evade, completely blind to it and stuck in place by the gauntlet: the hit sending her head bounding back -- then forward again into the bat. Her glasses were cracked, some of the clear material biting into her cheek -- pale fluid running down her forehead and down her cheek. Her hands were up, desperate to cover herself - shivering.
It was only after the fact that Seiren even remembered that she'd screamed.
"D-Duh...ddah...dd-d-d...D-Don't... Please...?!"
He wasn't even aware of the words slipping out of his mouth as he raised the bat up a second time, smashing through her feeble guard. And again.
Her features were horribly swollen. Bright white, not bruised purple -- cheeks out of shape, an eye hanging from its socket: a glass bauble on some sort of tether -- more glass inside, hints of silver.. Teeth across the floor, white blood down her face, soaking her shirt until the red of her tie had vanished.
And again. And again. He kept swinging until there was nothing left to swing at. Until was bat was coated white. Until the ringing of metal on metal was all that echoed through the room. Until his dented gauntlet was holding nothing more than a stump of white flesh and clumps of hair attatched to a body down.
At some point, she'd gone limp. The arms she'd tried to protect herself with hung at her side: one visibly dinted, the other across the floor - detatched as her cybernetic prosthetic leg had been.
But he couldn't bring himself to stop. He just kept swinging. Into the server banks, the screens - the electric shocks didn't even phase him.
The room soon looked as if a paint ball grenade had gone off.
White gushes covering every concievable surface, dripping in thin reeds.
Her body a heap on the floor, spasming weakly. The more he hit, the less she seemed to move at all.
His muscles screamed at him. And eventually the screaming turned to shrieking. And wailing.
Seiren dropped the bat and slumped against the wall, sobbing. When did he start crying?
The doll started moving again. The sound of rasping, bubbling from the exposed throat and tongue: lower jaw missing as it started moving.
He stared at the body. Or at least attempted to through blurry eyes.
She was crawling. Dragging herself with he one good remaining limb, upon her elbow. Not away, but towards him.
"Wh-why. . . why aren't you dead. . . I smashed your brain in, didn't I? . . ." he mumbled in between sobs, getting up and putting his gauntlet back on. Scratching himself on dented metal.
Still she kept going. Mechanics of her joints whining weakly. Blood spilling out onto the floor as she - or what was left of her, had to keep moving, following him.
He pointed the gauntlet again and locked it to her - but then swung his arm around. Back and forth. Up and down. Across the room.
It was like watching someone torture a small animal. But he saw it like a ragdoll game. Her body hoisted up into the air, smashing into the ceiling, blood across it. Then down. Up again. Down. he walls now... Objects in the room, broken banks of glass slicing her, ripping her clothing.. Chunks of hair and viscera across the floor. As if a bottle of milk had exploded.
Costal corrosion in fleshy form at 200mph.
What was left on the end of his grip couldn't even be considered part of a person.
A fractured silver skull, missing its lower jaw among other things. Chromed ribs. The collar of a shirt. Only the first few ribs though. Hair. Empty eye-sockets. Tongue hanging, turning blue from the loss of blood. Her arm now entirely skeletal: bones dinted and warped, pistons and elements ripped out and smashed, most of her fingers missing. It was almost funny, the way her one and only necktie had survived.
The parts fell to the ground, sounding more like a sack of spanners than a person.
He felt cold. So cold.
Seiren took the skull and rummaged around in it, looking for something. Soon found it. The Maesus; her mind in the form of a baseball sized amber pearl.
It was still intact, through some miracle.
So small.
So fragile.
His eyes went dead a moment, but then flashed back with a different light. He took something out of his pocket - Rebeka's all-encompassing translator device, and attatched it to the Maesus. Turned it on.
The prompt hung empty. On some level, she was still in shock from what had happened.
"Hello? Are you in there?" he asked, unnaturally calm for the emotions pouring through him not ten seconds prior.
Nothing. It felt like she was trying to hide in the only way she had left. Inside that little ball. With no sensation of any kind, it was the cruelest solitary confinement sensory deprivation imaginable and still, she chose not to talk.
"You did this to him you know? Sister, you could have stopped this. But I don't blame you. Children mean well, even when they hate eachother." he whispered into it.
Still nothing. Was she really truly, that frightened?
"I'm going to hide you from him. You can learn from the experience. But I want you to tell her something. Not the rabbit. You know who. She could have prevented this. She knew how this would affect him. She's run the test a thousand times. So here's my message. 'how does hurting him so deeply fit into the bigger plan?' There you go. That's the message. Take care of him, alright? Or at least, tell your next you to take care of him, so she won't be afraid of him. I never wanted this to happen."
"Lorem ipsum docet" was the only reply. A very very old dialect of trade. The voice frail, almost non-existant.
Seiren walked over to one of the server banks - miraculously, one of the slots in a corner tower had survived - and swapped the maesus over to it, tying it neatly to the back with the wires - making sure the lights twinkling inside were lit. And as he stepped back out in the middle of the room, his eyes went dark once more. He stared around the room, lost for a moment.
He took the bat and left.
Not a speck of light was showing.
Seiren's white-knuckled grip on the bat he found was beginning to hurt. But he didn't let go. Not yet.
He reached /her/ room, where she was waking up as the second one of her constructs in as many days. He didn't bother knocking.
As always, the room was cast in darkness, illuminated only by displays and blinking lights, the floor a mess of cables. She sat on an office-chair of sorts several sizes too large for her, hunched forward with her feet upon a box of some sort, facing one of the displays. She didn't seem to type or even make any kind of action at all, her head lowered, back to Seiren. The sound of the servers working was loud enough to mask the sound of the door opening.
He so desperately wanted to give her no alarm. Just raise the bat and end her right there. But he couldn't. Seiren closed the door behind him and kept the bat in front of him. His eyes took the time to adjust now that the hall lights were no longer shedding into the space.
"Aiesu!"
Her head turned in the darkness, the chair's wheels rolling as she visibly flinched in surprise, her voice calling out in the dark. It was clear she couldn't see him, squinting as she tried to adjust.
The terminal instance she had open had some long schpeil of warnings in capitol letters, cables running between her and it. Something about a factory reset.
"Answers. Now."
Seiren stared her down, the metal in his hands glinting in the dim light. His blue eyes glinted right along with it. Three sets of shining.
They almost glowed.
From the way she looked through him, her night vision was pretty poor. Maybe she didn't even have any, though her eyes darted to the glinting, her expression sour as she tried to make out the object with little success. And then, eyes searching for him again. Even with the shine, she still couldn't clearly see him. Seiren would recall remembering the way Aiesu had mentioned the way ey'tis were practically blind in the dark, relying on their noses and hearing.
"Seiren?"
She was already visibly cowering, a hand up to protect her face from she knew not what.
"How did you not know? How could you be so out of the loop? Aren't you supposed to be some. . ."
He struggled for the words.
"I-I only know what I'm told..." she started looking for him again, craning her neck. "Where are you?"
He could see her nose moving, scenting the air.
The room felt so cold.
"You're supposed to be. . . some big hotshot mad scientist and you somehow didn't know that this big horrible machine with little horrible machines with big horrible microwave guns weren't prancing about everywhere? Don't give me that."
She frowned.
"The development on the OUREX only started a little while ago. E-Even the earliest prototypes should have been at least a year away. Its not a p-project I had a lot of involvement in"
The way she moved her nose with that last part. Echelon had mentioned at some point this was a tell.
She was lying.
"And I guess it was just chance that Rebeka was given a shitty prototype machine to fly in, huh?"
He brought the bat up and slammed it hard against one of the walls - it might have been a server, from the way it sparked.
Aiesu's hands were either side of her head, feet upon the chair in an instant as she lowered herself: hands behind her head, elbows forward as she trembled.
"W-W-What was that? Are we...?" under attack, something she'd asked so many times before whenever any kind of loud noise went off.
Already, she was hyperventilating.
"The opposite of an answer. Stop lying to me!"
Her expression changed. Eyes searching for him again.
Easing back into her chair, up on her heels -- trying to disappear backwards into it: hands over her face now. Eyes tightly shut.
"I-Its the best we had.. What we gave her is B-B...Better than anything we'll be mass-producing... I-I sunk four months of resources into procuring it..."
"So what you mean is. . . you knew that it was there. You knew it existed. Or maybe just the high odds of it. And you didn't. . ."
Seiren trailed off.
The urge overtook him and he slammed the bat into another machine - definitely a screen this time.
"There's no earthly way of knowing. . ."
Another sharp yelp, like a frightened dog. She slipped off the chair as it fell over, small wheels still spinning. Her heels met the deck, inching beneath the desk, desperately trying to hide.
Seiren's free hand flicked his wrist, causing the metal gravity gauntlet to cover his hand. He pointed it at Aiesu's legs and pulled.
"You're not telling me something! Stop! Lying!"
The l'manel's lower half was lifted off the ground, leg hanging up into the air as if dangling: fingers tight about a bar making up the workstation.. Arms crossing to tighten about the bar quivering.
The leg came off about the middle of her thigh, caught in Seiren's hand. Prosthetic.
From beneath the desk, she could be heard rattling.
He tossed the leg up and batted it, sending it sailing across the room with a broken clatter.
"H-How could I have known?!" she yelped "We don't even work in that kind of time-frame! Its not physically possible!"
"But it still happened! You lied and I'm going to find out one way or another what!"
He pulled off her other leg and repeated the process.
Beneath the desk, she was huddled up against a bank of routers -- the cooling fans deafening to her. Still, she couldn't see him, eyes tightly shut, face against the bar.
"I-I-I... I..." she sighed, exasperated "I CAN'T TELL YOU WHAT I DON'T KNOW! DON'T HURT ME!"
"THEN WHAT DID YOU LIE ABOUT? HUH?"
"WHERE ARE YOU GETTING THIS IDEA FROM? WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS? I-I FUCKED UP, I GET IT!"
"YOU ARE A TERRIBLE LIAR, THAT'S HOW!"
He gripped the stump of her leg physically and pulled her out from under the console. She looked so frightened, and yet. . .
It was surprising how weak she was, or how light her body was; grip surrendered so quickly against her will: arms crossed over her face - her body contorting with fear. Looking like she was about to be physically sick.
His gauntlet plunged for her throat, but he only barely squeezed - enough to make breathing uncomfortable, but not enough to kill. And locked it. His hand retracted from the metal and he stood up, exhaling heavily.
Aiesu's eyes were tightly scrunched up, hands about his wrist. White eyelashes firm, brows above squeezing as she turned her head as far away from him as she possibly could.
"I thought I could trust you." He stared her down, though she couldn't look. "I hope you understand what you've done."
"I-I spent the last two hours trying to decide if I should just reset myself" she said through clenched teeth. Still trying to pull back.
It took Seiren a moment to realise that for a construct, that equated to suicide. And also, passing the buck. Making it somebody elses problem.
"No. You don't get that luxury. She doesn't get that luxury. Connect."
He touched the tip of her nose with the bat.
Aiesu turned her face just a little harder. Through her fingers, it was clear her heart was pounding.
"S-She won't answer!"
"Make her!"
"YOU THINK I'VE NEVER TRIED!?" she screeched in desperation.
"Then. . ."
He stooped down low, crouching over her.
"Make MOTHER make her."
Her eyes were wide. Confused, deep confusion even if she didn't quite look at him - her gaze still slightly off.
"H...How do you...?"
"We aren't still friends. Not after this. Make. MOTHER. Make her."
"...I can't. She's off-world. Somewhere with no connections of any kind... She's running from someone. Someone... found out where she really is. She could be in stasis for all I know!"
'Or dead' is what she wanted to say but something in her code wouldn't let her use those words.
"I want her to see this!"
"S-She gets reports every hour... Everything said or heard. Tr-...Transcription.. But she hasn't read them in nearly a week."
Logical deduction would say the construct hadn't had any sort of intelligence updates or new instructions in that long, either, explaining the restlessness she'd had.
"Then. . . I have somethin' to tell her. And I want you to listen. . ."
He leaned in close. "You can't undo this. You know that, right?"
By this point, Aiesu's nose was running, her eyes too a wet mess as she flinched at the words.
"R-R...R...Right..."
Seiren bolted up and walked over to another of the server banks, and then back across the room.
"WHY WAS IT HER? WHY WAS IT EVER HER?"
"I...Its... Its.. It it it ..." she took a moment to compose herself, wrist rubbing her nose.
She knew the answer would make him angry and was already cowering.
"...I-Its made specifically to do that...?"
"Do. What?"
"S-S...Sssss....S-Sourcians..." was her only reply.
"And that's what you've been hiding this whole time? The fact that you had a weapon made to kill the only Rebeka in existence? . . ."
"M-MOTHER fears a full on invasion... Not of R-Rebeka but... That there's others like her out there. G-Given the scope of what she told us about the territory they'd occupied, they could sss..span a whole other galaxy by now and we'd never know."
"You could have told us. You could have warned us."
"A-Against what, armageddon?! I-I didn't even--"
"ABOUT THE MACHINE YOU FUCKING SORRY PILE OF BOLTS!"
" I-I didn't know it was even approved f-for formal development! It was a schematic! A t-t...t..test-type! L-Like the first revision, not e-even meant to be used!"
"What does that make you, huh?"
"...Uninformed...?"
"Unfinished."
He raised the bat and slammed it down on her face. Just once.
The l'manel made no effort to evade, completely blind to it and stuck in place by the gauntlet: the hit sending her head bounding back -- then forward again into the bat. Her glasses were cracked, some of the clear material biting into her cheek -- pale fluid running down her forehead and down her cheek. Her hands were up, desperate to cover herself - shivering.
It was only after the fact that Seiren even remembered that she'd screamed.
"D-Duh...ddah...dd-d-d...D-Don't... Please...?!"
He wasn't even aware of the words slipping out of his mouth as he raised the bat up a second time, smashing through her feeble guard. And again.
Her features were horribly swollen. Bright white, not bruised purple -- cheeks out of shape, an eye hanging from its socket: a glass bauble on some sort of tether -- more glass inside, hints of silver.. Teeth across the floor, white blood down her face, soaking her shirt until the red of her tie had vanished.
And again. And again. He kept swinging until there was nothing left to swing at. Until was bat was coated white. Until the ringing of metal on metal was all that echoed through the room. Until his dented gauntlet was holding nothing more than a stump of white flesh and clumps of hair attatched to a body down.
At some point, she'd gone limp. The arms she'd tried to protect herself with hung at her side: one visibly dinted, the other across the floor - detatched as her cybernetic prosthetic leg had been.
But he couldn't bring himself to stop. He just kept swinging. Into the server banks, the screens - the electric shocks didn't even phase him.
The room soon looked as if a paint ball grenade had gone off.
White gushes covering every concievable surface, dripping in thin reeds.
Her body a heap on the floor, spasming weakly. The more he hit, the less she seemed to move at all.
His muscles screamed at him. And eventually the screaming turned to shrieking. And wailing.
Seiren dropped the bat and slumped against the wall, sobbing. When did he start crying?
The doll started moving again. The sound of rasping, bubbling from the exposed throat and tongue: lower jaw missing as it started moving.
He stared at the body. Or at least attempted to through blurry eyes.
She was crawling. Dragging herself with he one good remaining limb, upon her elbow. Not away, but towards him.
"Wh-why. . . why aren't you dead. . . I smashed your brain in, didn't I? . . ." he mumbled in between sobs, getting up and putting his gauntlet back on. Scratching himself on dented metal.
Still she kept going. Mechanics of her joints whining weakly. Blood spilling out onto the floor as she - or what was left of her, had to keep moving, following him.
He pointed the gauntlet again and locked it to her - but then swung his arm around. Back and forth. Up and down. Across the room.
It was like watching someone torture a small animal. But he saw it like a ragdoll game. Her body hoisted up into the air, smashing into the ceiling, blood across it. Then down. Up again. Down. he walls now... Objects in the room, broken banks of glass slicing her, ripping her clothing.. Chunks of hair and viscera across the floor. As if a bottle of milk had exploded.
Costal corrosion in fleshy form at 200mph.
What was left on the end of his grip couldn't even be considered part of a person.
A fractured silver skull, missing its lower jaw among other things. Chromed ribs. The collar of a shirt. Only the first few ribs though. Hair. Empty eye-sockets. Tongue hanging, turning blue from the loss of blood. Her arm now entirely skeletal: bones dinted and warped, pistons and elements ripped out and smashed, most of her fingers missing. It was almost funny, the way her one and only necktie had survived.
The parts fell to the ground, sounding more like a sack of spanners than a person.
He felt cold. So cold.
Seiren took the skull and rummaged around in it, looking for something. Soon found it. The Maesus; her mind in the form of a baseball sized amber pearl.
It was still intact, through some miracle.
So small.
So fragile.
His eyes went dead a moment, but then flashed back with a different light. He took something out of his pocket - Rebeka's all-encompassing translator device, and attatched it to the Maesus. Turned it on.
The prompt hung empty. On some level, she was still in shock from what had happened.
"Hello? Are you in there?" he asked, unnaturally calm for the emotions pouring through him not ten seconds prior.
Nothing. It felt like she was trying to hide in the only way she had left. Inside that little ball. With no sensation of any kind, it was the cruelest solitary confinement sensory deprivation imaginable and still, she chose not to talk.
"You did this to him you know? Sister, you could have stopped this. But I don't blame you. Children mean well, even when they hate eachother." he whispered into it.
Still nothing. Was she really truly, that frightened?
"I'm going to hide you from him. You can learn from the experience. But I want you to tell her something. Not the rabbit. You know who. She could have prevented this. She knew how this would affect him. She's run the test a thousand times. So here's my message. 'how does hurting him so deeply fit into the bigger plan?' There you go. That's the message. Take care of him, alright? Or at least, tell your next you to take care of him, so she won't be afraid of him. I never wanted this to happen."
"Lorem ipsum docet" was the only reply. A very very old dialect of trade. The voice frail, almost non-existant.
Seiren walked over to one of the server banks - miraculously, one of the slots in a corner tower had survived - and swapped the maesus over to it, tying it neatly to the back with the wires - making sure the lights twinkling inside were lit. And as he stepped back out in the middle of the room, his eyes went dark once more. He stared around the room, lost for a moment.
He took the bat and left.
Not a speck of light was showing.
