OsakanOne
Retired Member
Crimson Kestrel (shore), Cargo Bay, Box
48 hours before mission 4
The scent of solder, burnt metal, and plastic clung to the inside of the cargo container that the short, odd Nekovalkyrja called home. Her hunched form sat amid a snarl of warm cables periodically thrown into sharp relief by blinking lights. On and off they flickered throwing sharp shadows in contrast with the comparably ambient dim light of the single portable lamp that she had procured.
Despite the small size of her frame, Tamamo's head and shoulders managed to obscure most of the boxy object that she had before her. This left her back facing the partially open door of the cargo box. Lost in whatever she was presently interacting with the Neko may as well have been dead to the world.
Knuckles sharply rapped on the door to the container in the dark, a small voice clearing its throat behind her distinctly.
"Ahem."
Something was muttered in response to the noise that cut through the silence, it might have been an invitation or the slurred syllables of 'go away' it wasn't clear. A few seconds of renewd silence stretched the unanswered question of whether the visitor had been addressed before a bright, peppy voice distorted by the poor acoustics of the container called out, "What do you want?"
A strange hour. In the low light, Aiesu stood bare foot to the deck in little more than a gauzy white slipdress and an animal pelt hat, the stuffed head of a description Tamamo couldn't identify. Her hair was longer, too.
She stood hand on her hip as she stared at the source of the flashing light as it dimmed. Feet against the floor padding as she entered, mindful of the sneaking wreath of cabling and parts about her. Balance not quite right.
"I never would have thought you a tinkerer, Tamamo." Her voice was honeyed. Warm. Even playful. Her iris were like wedding rings. She hadn't been drinking but something was clearly not right with this picture.
As Aiesu's small figure approached it became apparent that the Nekovalkyrja was clad in little more than a shirt, and it wasn't even put on properly at that. Only her head and one arm having made it into the holes.
There was no response for a moment before the voice returned, quieter this time, "I have limited resources, but this was important... This is hardly how I'd ideally want to work. I'm not Seiren or Luca... I prefer more finesse to a development process."
Aiesu blinked, pale features shadowed some beneath the upper half of the ey'tis pelt she wore, its false glass eyes still and calm as she crossed her arms, inching closer.
"...Something of mine went missing earlier. I've spoken about it with you before. I think it would be good if you owned up before the consortium takes a special interest, or..." her brows were held high, lips thin, glasses hanging on her neckline. "compensate me for it and I'll look the other way" she said in an impish, froggish tone.
"Oh! Oh! Who is it?" The voice that inquired was different, wrong for who sat before Aiesu and even more out of place given that the Neko had flinched when it spoke up. "Is it the l'manel? I was looking forward to meeting her."
The bright, cheerful voice, was almost ecstatic with its tone. Almost happy enough to make the slightly artificial, autotuned edge to the voice seem a trick of the mind rather than an actual feature. Following this outburst Tamamo merely leaned to the side a little, as a quiet whirr of an inexpensive camera mount drew attention to the brushed durandium box that her form had been hiding. Apart from holes drilled for LEDs dotting its surface and apparently the terminal for most of the cables in the cargo container it was an unimpressive thing.
Aiesu's arm came up, idly pointing as she spoke in the lowest register her voice knew how to, rasping as she glanced in Tamamo's direction.
"What's that?"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLKIL7gkkUw
♫ Otomedius X Excellent OST - Aurora (Hanafuuma Stage 7)
"That's rude," the voice chirped brightly.
"Okay fine: What is that?"
"I'll tell you anyway. I'm Koa."
"Which is what exactly?" Aiesu said, leaning some. "I see you're smuggling the missing maesus... Though what did you do with the IRI-projector?"
At this point Tamamo twisted at the waist finally moving to look back toward Aiesu. Normally this would have been an action associated with looking over one's shoulder, however instead of merely looking back her head tipped back, nearly leaning over backwards as she settled her gaze upon Aiesu.
Regarding Aiesu from her partially inverted position silently for a moment before speaking up Tamamo made a guesture toward the camera much like one would when cutting someone off from speaking, "It's behind the box... I'm not sure how much current it will draw, so we havn't gotten around to testing it yet. It should work tough."
As if the thought had just occured to her Tamamo added, "Oh... I guess you asked what she is... She's a person. A person in a... Maesus? I think you called it."
The l'manel flinched, hands up. The way Tamamo twisted her neck like that was just...
"Construct.. Don't do that. The thing with your neck..." she started, slowly leaning, eyes puzzling how to get the housing off already searching for tools. Within a few moments she had something resembling a flathead screwdriver with a tuning fork like end at each side: twisting the cap to flip the forklet antennae over before moving for the box.
Catching sight of the tool in Aiesu's hand Tamamo got up. Only people weren't supposed to get up like that. Tamamo's motion was more akin to a marionette being lifted by its strings, her body loosely lifting into the air, inverting as it travelled, closing in on the pale girl, Tamamo's blue hand closing around the construct's own pale hand before it could be withdrawn.
Unsettlingly close it was apparent that Tamamo's eyes were wide, pupils slits, as a snarl formed on her lips. Before Tamamo could act, a shimmer of light stopped what could have either been a coarse command or an attempt to bite the smaller girl. Slowly Tamamo's head followed by her inverted body turned, twisting at Aiesu's wrist without seeming to pay attention as a form started to coalesce in the half-light.
Aiesu repeated the same word again as her hand clutched her wrist, feeling her heels, then toes leave the ground momentarily.. "Ow ow ow ow ow OW OW OW...Owuh uhh?"
What formed wasn't very big, maybe a head shorter than Aiesu, though proportioned much as one physically older than the construct would have been. Simplified features reminiscent of stylized electronic media formed, hard angles where there would naturally be curves, in the end a short grey figure, with the implication of dark green hair, stood just in front of the box before shuffling aside to allow the camera an unobstructed view.
Faintly glowing painted on blue-green eyes settled on Aiesu and Tamamo before the digitized voice once again reported, the newly rendered figure's similarly painted on mouth moving in time, "Girls, girls, can't we play nice?"
Slowly Aiesu turned her head, then back again, keeping her vision straight. Then next, her eyes slowly moved in their sockets, settling on this new person. It took her a moment to know what to make of this other person, or the illusion of one as she paused.
"Tamamo, is this Koa your doing?" she twitched, trying to slip her fingers free.
In response to the attempted escape Tamamo's grip tightened on the captured appendage as she responded softly, "Partially."
As if planned Koa's voice filled the space immediately after, "I'm also partially your doing Aiesu, in a way at least." As she stopped speaking, an exaggerated grin painted the simulacrum's face an expression of elation that seemed somewhat inappropriate for the circumstances.
Aiesu grit her teeth, wincing some as she herself hung from the floor.
"And how do you explain that?"
A moment was taken as the newly formed humanoid shape moved its limbs about, testing its range of motion in sight of the camera before begining to expand at a notable pace. Returning its attention to Aiesu it offered cheerfully, "Tamamo had a talk with... One-oh-One I think it was? Yes, thank you for the confirmation. One-oh-One. Another you. She decided to make me! Thanks to Tamamo's hard work I can now be me, instead of being asleep or something. Oh! She also told me lots, though you interrupted our conversation."
Now taller than both Aiesu and Tamamo, the manifestation of the one who called herself Koa inquired pleasantly, "Does that satisfy your requirement for an explaination?"
"So you're the maesus. and the projector..." Aiesu grumbled quietly. A swift click came just past her elbow as she sunk to the ground, landing on her backside: Wrist still in Tamamo's grasp as Aiesu cradled the stump of her arm. It was crisscrossed with a webbing of dark red painful looking scars resembling clawmarks or gouges with a silver metallic surgically implanted plug in the middle, mated to her synthetic endoskeleton. Visibly bitter, she motioned for Tamamo to return her arm, the elbow hanging like a drumstick from the Nekovalkyjra's fingers. On the other side, a stump midway through a bicep.
"So I'm to blame here on some existential level. At the very least, considering 101 made you, I should study you. Consider it a lease on life. Tamamo, arm. Give."
As Aiesu fell to the floor, Tamamo's eyes swept between the detached limb and its orphaned socket taking note of the curious setup. Reluctantly the blue girl shifted, rotating in the air as she set down lightly on her feet, standing on the side opposite the hard-light construct giving Aiesu no clear path to the physical guts of the set-up.
After a hesitant moment with the arm still held, Koa chided, "Give it back to her. It's not nice to be taken apart." As the words were spoken, Tamamo wordlessly offered the arm with an unexpected reverence, apparently not wanting to damage the limb more than she already had.
Aiesu glanced from it to Tamamo then back again, pale fingertips grasping at her own bicep, slipping it from the dark violet fingers of the Nekovalkyjra. Looking it over for damage beyond a few superficial bruises of the synthetic skin, she reattached it to her very biological shoulder: Wincing as she missed the socket the first time: pushing then twisting at an uncomfortable angle before the fingers on that hand moved freely once more. A trickle of blood ran down the faint and usually covered seam of her arm where the two connected, earning little more than a scowling examination on her part: she'd missed the connector and the plug was quite sharp. Her thumb lapped up a droplette before slipping it into her mouth. For whatever reason, this construct was redblooded.
"I appreciate the sentiment more than you probably think I do. You, grey" she said, woefully ignoring the new sentient's name.
"The name is Koa dear, I trust you don't have an issue with memory?"
"Hmph. Koa, keep a leash on the cat. I really can't stand cats..."
"She isn't much of a cat. Not anymore at least."
"What, since the MODUS?"
"And One-oh-One."
"Share the details with me. I'd be happy to read about it. Tamamo, try not to break the parts. Koa, try not to break Tamamo." she yawned, turning about, watching the blood along her pinkie finger and the long nile running from her bicep..
"Oh, we're not done with you..." The statement was unsettling, such words weren't meant to be spoken so cheerfully.
"Excuse me?"
The imitation l'manel turned about slowly. The beginnings of dread present and accounted for.
The hardlight construct put a finger to her mouth, or at least tried to, the accuracy was a little off, as she paused miming thought. Eventually she spoke up again, "Tamamo, and by extension myself would like to try to... Negotiate with you a little. You see you have things we want..."
"Extortion isn't going to work" she frowned, visibly disappointed in what she saw as Tamamo's new discovery of height and strength. "I'm disposab-"
"And, we have things that you'd likely appreciate."
"I'm listening."
"We want work, real work, not just standing around as guinnea pigs."
"You mean a payroll?"
"Somewhat, you give us resources, we do development work for you... Given your products it's clear that you're not just a Communications Firm."
"...It is a business avenue, among others. Given the nature of you.. Find a way to produce another Koa. One that can be useful, that does useful things. I'm not saying make a copy of who she is, just what she is. Like an assistant."
"We'll need a better idea of your inventory. We don't know what we're working with. We can't produce miracles with no data."
Aiesu reached beneath her slipdress before withdrawing a handful of amber marbles with engraved surfaces from a place that was best not described but at the same time served no biological purpose in something with a four year lifespan and largely artificial components. She soon handed several over. More maesus.
"Manuals. Catalogue. Schematics. Figure the rest out. If you can show this Koa doing something useful that benefits say a fighter-pilot as more than just someone to talk to or a fancy face for a computer, I'll drop a tidy 50K into your laps. You can start spending it now as credit."
There was a pause, then the hardlight construct's face split at the jaw, she had teeth now. As well her general resolution had improved greatly, appearing much more humanoid than the blocky construct had been. With her newly formed toothy grin Koa assured cheerfully, "I'm sure we'll have plenty of pleasant surprises for you~"
Aiesu just frowned.
"Whatever. Despite the fact I'm synthetic, I do enjoy sleeping. Are you done?"
A glance was shared between the camera and Tamamo, a short pause before a synchronized response was given.
"Yes."
The lmanel rolled her shoulder, hands closing about the long flowing ear-flaps of her pelt which ran down her front like a scarf, level with her waist as the long ears hung in reverse. Slow steps out of the container, a subtle nod.
"50K isn't much but I'd prefer if you used it wisely. Don't spend it on your plane, alright?"
Shaking her head Tamamo spoke up her voice high and soft, notably she didn't talk like this in public much, "It will not happen. It would be a waste." Dark jade eyes studied the form before her, wondering just how useful the exchange would be in the end. Before she could put too much thought into it the cheerful voice interrupted.
"One more thing. I wanted to ask. Have you seen the chef we picked up anywhere?"
The pieces fell into place.
"Shouldn't you be heading to bed?"
Red hands caught. A grumble on Aiesu's part as she set her hand against the cargo-container door, the leftover blood staining it some but only slightly before she turned about, her voice echoing through the cold empty cargo chamber.
"Don't act like you care until you're completed! It'd be a shame if Tamamo got attached and you broke!"
It still echoed, after she slammed the door.
48 hours before mission 4
The scent of solder, burnt metal, and plastic clung to the inside of the cargo container that the short, odd Nekovalkyrja called home. Her hunched form sat amid a snarl of warm cables periodically thrown into sharp relief by blinking lights. On and off they flickered throwing sharp shadows in contrast with the comparably ambient dim light of the single portable lamp that she had procured.
Despite the small size of her frame, Tamamo's head and shoulders managed to obscure most of the boxy object that she had before her. This left her back facing the partially open door of the cargo box. Lost in whatever she was presently interacting with the Neko may as well have been dead to the world.
Knuckles sharply rapped on the door to the container in the dark, a small voice clearing its throat behind her distinctly.
"Ahem."
Something was muttered in response to the noise that cut through the silence, it might have been an invitation or the slurred syllables of 'go away' it wasn't clear. A few seconds of renewd silence stretched the unanswered question of whether the visitor had been addressed before a bright, peppy voice distorted by the poor acoustics of the container called out, "What do you want?"
A strange hour. In the low light, Aiesu stood bare foot to the deck in little more than a gauzy white slipdress and an animal pelt hat, the stuffed head of a description Tamamo couldn't identify. Her hair was longer, too.
She stood hand on her hip as she stared at the source of the flashing light as it dimmed. Feet against the floor padding as she entered, mindful of the sneaking wreath of cabling and parts about her. Balance not quite right.
"I never would have thought you a tinkerer, Tamamo." Her voice was honeyed. Warm. Even playful. Her iris were like wedding rings. She hadn't been drinking but something was clearly not right with this picture.
As Aiesu's small figure approached it became apparent that the Nekovalkyrja was clad in little more than a shirt, and it wasn't even put on properly at that. Only her head and one arm having made it into the holes.
There was no response for a moment before the voice returned, quieter this time, "I have limited resources, but this was important... This is hardly how I'd ideally want to work. I'm not Seiren or Luca... I prefer more finesse to a development process."
Aiesu blinked, pale features shadowed some beneath the upper half of the ey'tis pelt she wore, its false glass eyes still and calm as she crossed her arms, inching closer.
"...Something of mine went missing earlier. I've spoken about it with you before. I think it would be good if you owned up before the consortium takes a special interest, or..." her brows were held high, lips thin, glasses hanging on her neckline. "compensate me for it and I'll look the other way" she said in an impish, froggish tone.
"Oh! Oh! Who is it?" The voice that inquired was different, wrong for who sat before Aiesu and even more out of place given that the Neko had flinched when it spoke up. "Is it the l'manel? I was looking forward to meeting her."
The bright, cheerful voice, was almost ecstatic with its tone. Almost happy enough to make the slightly artificial, autotuned edge to the voice seem a trick of the mind rather than an actual feature. Following this outburst Tamamo merely leaned to the side a little, as a quiet whirr of an inexpensive camera mount drew attention to the brushed durandium box that her form had been hiding. Apart from holes drilled for LEDs dotting its surface and apparently the terminal for most of the cables in the cargo container it was an unimpressive thing.
Aiesu's arm came up, idly pointing as she spoke in the lowest register her voice knew how to, rasping as she glanced in Tamamo's direction.
"What's that?"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLKIL7gkkUw
♫ Otomedius X Excellent OST - Aurora (Hanafuuma Stage 7)
"That's rude," the voice chirped brightly.
"Okay fine: What is that?"
"I'll tell you anyway. I'm Koa."
"Which is what exactly?" Aiesu said, leaning some. "I see you're smuggling the missing maesus... Though what did you do with the IRI-projector?"
At this point Tamamo twisted at the waist finally moving to look back toward Aiesu. Normally this would have been an action associated with looking over one's shoulder, however instead of merely looking back her head tipped back, nearly leaning over backwards as she settled her gaze upon Aiesu.
Regarding Aiesu from her partially inverted position silently for a moment before speaking up Tamamo made a guesture toward the camera much like one would when cutting someone off from speaking, "It's behind the box... I'm not sure how much current it will draw, so we havn't gotten around to testing it yet. It should work tough."
As if the thought had just occured to her Tamamo added, "Oh... I guess you asked what she is... She's a person. A person in a... Maesus? I think you called it."
The l'manel flinched, hands up. The way Tamamo twisted her neck like that was just...
"Construct.. Don't do that. The thing with your neck..." she started, slowly leaning, eyes puzzling how to get the housing off already searching for tools. Within a few moments she had something resembling a flathead screwdriver with a tuning fork like end at each side: twisting the cap to flip the forklet antennae over before moving for the box.
Catching sight of the tool in Aiesu's hand Tamamo got up. Only people weren't supposed to get up like that. Tamamo's motion was more akin to a marionette being lifted by its strings, her body loosely lifting into the air, inverting as it travelled, closing in on the pale girl, Tamamo's blue hand closing around the construct's own pale hand before it could be withdrawn.
Unsettlingly close it was apparent that Tamamo's eyes were wide, pupils slits, as a snarl formed on her lips. Before Tamamo could act, a shimmer of light stopped what could have either been a coarse command or an attempt to bite the smaller girl. Slowly Tamamo's head followed by her inverted body turned, twisting at Aiesu's wrist without seeming to pay attention as a form started to coalesce in the half-light.
Aiesu repeated the same word again as her hand clutched her wrist, feeling her heels, then toes leave the ground momentarily.. "Ow ow ow ow ow OW OW OW...Owuh uhh?"
What formed wasn't very big, maybe a head shorter than Aiesu, though proportioned much as one physically older than the construct would have been. Simplified features reminiscent of stylized electronic media formed, hard angles where there would naturally be curves, in the end a short grey figure, with the implication of dark green hair, stood just in front of the box before shuffling aside to allow the camera an unobstructed view.
Faintly glowing painted on blue-green eyes settled on Aiesu and Tamamo before the digitized voice once again reported, the newly rendered figure's similarly painted on mouth moving in time, "Girls, girls, can't we play nice?"
Slowly Aiesu turned her head, then back again, keeping her vision straight. Then next, her eyes slowly moved in their sockets, settling on this new person. It took her a moment to know what to make of this other person, or the illusion of one as she paused.
"Tamamo, is this Koa your doing?" she twitched, trying to slip her fingers free.
In response to the attempted escape Tamamo's grip tightened on the captured appendage as she responded softly, "Partially."
As if planned Koa's voice filled the space immediately after, "I'm also partially your doing Aiesu, in a way at least." As she stopped speaking, an exaggerated grin painted the simulacrum's face an expression of elation that seemed somewhat inappropriate for the circumstances.
Aiesu grit her teeth, wincing some as she herself hung from the floor.
"And how do you explain that?"
A moment was taken as the newly formed humanoid shape moved its limbs about, testing its range of motion in sight of the camera before begining to expand at a notable pace. Returning its attention to Aiesu it offered cheerfully, "Tamamo had a talk with... One-oh-One I think it was? Yes, thank you for the confirmation. One-oh-One. Another you. She decided to make me! Thanks to Tamamo's hard work I can now be me, instead of being asleep or something. Oh! She also told me lots, though you interrupted our conversation."
Now taller than both Aiesu and Tamamo, the manifestation of the one who called herself Koa inquired pleasantly, "Does that satisfy your requirement for an explaination?"
"So you're the maesus. and the projector..." Aiesu grumbled quietly. A swift click came just past her elbow as she sunk to the ground, landing on her backside: Wrist still in Tamamo's grasp as Aiesu cradled the stump of her arm. It was crisscrossed with a webbing of dark red painful looking scars resembling clawmarks or gouges with a silver metallic surgically implanted plug in the middle, mated to her synthetic endoskeleton. Visibly bitter, she motioned for Tamamo to return her arm, the elbow hanging like a drumstick from the Nekovalkyjra's fingers. On the other side, a stump midway through a bicep.
"So I'm to blame here on some existential level. At the very least, considering 101 made you, I should study you. Consider it a lease on life. Tamamo, arm. Give."
As Aiesu fell to the floor, Tamamo's eyes swept between the detached limb and its orphaned socket taking note of the curious setup. Reluctantly the blue girl shifted, rotating in the air as she set down lightly on her feet, standing on the side opposite the hard-light construct giving Aiesu no clear path to the physical guts of the set-up.
After a hesitant moment with the arm still held, Koa chided, "Give it back to her. It's not nice to be taken apart." As the words were spoken, Tamamo wordlessly offered the arm with an unexpected reverence, apparently not wanting to damage the limb more than she already had.
Aiesu glanced from it to Tamamo then back again, pale fingertips grasping at her own bicep, slipping it from the dark violet fingers of the Nekovalkyjra. Looking it over for damage beyond a few superficial bruises of the synthetic skin, she reattached it to her very biological shoulder: Wincing as she missed the socket the first time: pushing then twisting at an uncomfortable angle before the fingers on that hand moved freely once more. A trickle of blood ran down the faint and usually covered seam of her arm where the two connected, earning little more than a scowling examination on her part: she'd missed the connector and the plug was quite sharp. Her thumb lapped up a droplette before slipping it into her mouth. For whatever reason, this construct was redblooded.
"I appreciate the sentiment more than you probably think I do. You, grey" she said, woefully ignoring the new sentient's name.
"The name is Koa dear, I trust you don't have an issue with memory?"
"Hmph. Koa, keep a leash on the cat. I really can't stand cats..."
"She isn't much of a cat. Not anymore at least."
"What, since the MODUS?"
"And One-oh-One."
"Share the details with me. I'd be happy to read about it. Tamamo, try not to break the parts. Koa, try not to break Tamamo." she yawned, turning about, watching the blood along her pinkie finger and the long nile running from her bicep..
"Oh, we're not done with you..." The statement was unsettling, such words weren't meant to be spoken so cheerfully.
"Excuse me?"
The imitation l'manel turned about slowly. The beginnings of dread present and accounted for.
The hardlight construct put a finger to her mouth, or at least tried to, the accuracy was a little off, as she paused miming thought. Eventually she spoke up again, "Tamamo, and by extension myself would like to try to... Negotiate with you a little. You see you have things we want..."
"Extortion isn't going to work" she frowned, visibly disappointed in what she saw as Tamamo's new discovery of height and strength. "I'm disposab-"
"And, we have things that you'd likely appreciate."
"I'm listening."
"We want work, real work, not just standing around as guinnea pigs."
"You mean a payroll?"
"Somewhat, you give us resources, we do development work for you... Given your products it's clear that you're not just a Communications Firm."
"...It is a business avenue, among others. Given the nature of you.. Find a way to produce another Koa. One that can be useful, that does useful things. I'm not saying make a copy of who she is, just what she is. Like an assistant."
"We'll need a better idea of your inventory. We don't know what we're working with. We can't produce miracles with no data."
Aiesu reached beneath her slipdress before withdrawing a handful of amber marbles with engraved surfaces from a place that was best not described but at the same time served no biological purpose in something with a four year lifespan and largely artificial components. She soon handed several over. More maesus.
"Manuals. Catalogue. Schematics. Figure the rest out. If you can show this Koa doing something useful that benefits say a fighter-pilot as more than just someone to talk to or a fancy face for a computer, I'll drop a tidy 50K into your laps. You can start spending it now as credit."
There was a pause, then the hardlight construct's face split at the jaw, she had teeth now. As well her general resolution had improved greatly, appearing much more humanoid than the blocky construct had been. With her newly formed toothy grin Koa assured cheerfully, "I'm sure we'll have plenty of pleasant surprises for you~"
Aiesu just frowned.
"Whatever. Despite the fact I'm synthetic, I do enjoy sleeping. Are you done?"
A glance was shared between the camera and Tamamo, a short pause before a synchronized response was given.
"Yes."
The lmanel rolled her shoulder, hands closing about the long flowing ear-flaps of her pelt which ran down her front like a scarf, level with her waist as the long ears hung in reverse. Slow steps out of the container, a subtle nod.
"50K isn't much but I'd prefer if you used it wisely. Don't spend it on your plane, alright?"
Shaking her head Tamamo spoke up her voice high and soft, notably she didn't talk like this in public much, "It will not happen. It would be a waste." Dark jade eyes studied the form before her, wondering just how useful the exchange would be in the end. Before she could put too much thought into it the cheerful voice interrupted.
"One more thing. I wanted to ask. Have you seen the chef we picked up anywhere?"
The pieces fell into place.
"Shouldn't you be heading to bed?"
Red hands caught. A grumble on Aiesu's part as she set her hand against the cargo-container door, the leftover blood staining it some but only slightly before she turned about, her voice echoing through the cold empty cargo chamber.
"Don't act like you care until you're completed! It'd be a shame if Tamamo got attached and you broke!"
It still echoed, after she slammed the door.
