[Various] We get signal...

[MissingNo]

A few months previously, a broadband radio signal was detected over the IPG training facility. The signal lasted a single millisecond, and the probe of origin vaporized simultaneously with the transmission's termination.

Though the signal was easily intercepted, the IPG couldn't make heads or tails of it. There was no message or data fragments, just noise over several radio bands aimed at the continent as a whole. They were not even subspace but normal FM range.

Inside the initiates' barracks, Nelew Enev'rana remained motionless in her version of 'sleep cycle'. Her senses registered the disturbance, however, and she knew what to do.

---

Another mission, another day. Another completion.

But Nel never reported in. Scraps of her uniform were found on a body-shaped ash stain approximately her size. It was impossible to get DNA from pure carbon residue.

---

No one reported a pale woman sneaking into a tanker ship outbound from the mission site. There was a stolen shuttle reported in one of the Nepleslian colonies, but that was a week later and one of several stolen that weekend, with at least one of them found when the joy-rider was apprehended. Meanwhile, Nelew was well on her way toward Elysian space. Timely course adjustments kept her away from their sensor nets, and a shuttle wasn't a concern even if they did see it.

Fuel was a slight problem, but a strategic pass through an asteroid field scarred the vessel enough to disguise it and she took advantage of an automated refueling station. Between there and her final destination, she kept life support and auxiliary systems turned to bare minimums and let the shuttle do the piloting, hitching rides in the FTL wakes of larger vessels whenever she could. Four weeks after she left, Nelew arrived at New Kohana.

((OCC: A tie-between post getting Nel back to Kohana for an upcoming plot insertion.))

 

[MissingNo]

"The one called 'Nelew' has returned, master."

A To'Yaree warrior put a hand on his shoulder and narrowed his eyes, rotating the limb in its socket. "Back, you say?" he rumbled at the smaller mustang messenger, who nodded nervously. "So the tiny one's pet has returned at last...Su'ul duRaal, see to my armor and weapons. The Colosseum calls!"

The mustang nodded and bowed, then left his master to see to his orders. The warrior set himself down on a tall-backed stone seat, his tail twitching as he rested his chin on his hand in thought. His voice dropped to a murmuring sound, like distant thunder. "Now you have received training that I have never had, seen places I shall never go. But we shall see how much you have really learned, pale maiden of the fighter's geist...we shall see..."

---

Gilded eyes surveyed the forest. The Sha'nai spies had already spotted her, but Nelew had also noticed them. She continued walking toward the capitol city and the palace while waiting for someone to stop or join her.

No one knew who she was, but the lack of scent was enough to make most Kohanians wary when they saw her. So it was nearly an hour into her walk before one approached her.

"Master Lenwe offers an escort to the city, milady," said the raccoon, bowing low. He glanced up when she didn't answer and saw her staring at him. A shiver ran down his spine as she smiled. It was an empty smile, as one gives when humoring someone.

"You will take me to the city," she said in a voice equally devoid of emotion. The raccoon nodded furiously and lead the way.

---

When they arrived, Nel was taken back to the underground laboratory complex that she had been 'born' in. They took her back to her old room, and there she waited.

Then there were tests. Mostly tests of knowledge, but also physical tests. She passed all of the physicals, even exceeding her previous marks and their expectations once more. The knowledge and mental capacity tests turned up problem areas, though, as they discovered that whole categories of information were missing. She simply did not remember them.

Meanwhile, a single scientist continued chipping away at the enigma that was the little white box. Aside from knowing its components (polymers, carbon aerogel, and unknown computer workings), being able to activate it (the process that ended up creating Nelew) and plugging it into a computer to see the raw code (which they still didn't know how to read), the Kohanians knew nothing about it. The team dwindled as more and more were taken 'off the project' for various reasons until there was one left. She was scared, frustrated, and generally felt like she was head-butting a stone wall.

Guiding Stars wished she had some of her namesake to point her in the right direction. She stood just outside the door to the gymnasium, watching as Nel went through the last set of physical tests and listening to the chatter of the handlers (As if any of them could truly handle a being of Nel's strength, thought Stars) and to her own mind's brainstorming.

There was still no answer to how Nel had been created. No clues to why the case and its contents had refused to repeat the process. She and her teammates had performed every test that they could think of until they had begun just running stupid tests as an excuse to do something, anything. Except one idea.

"Why don't we let her look at it?"

With nothing else, they had made the request and it was refused with no explanation. So they had gone back to their useless examinations.

Well, now I'm all that's left. And I think I am appropriately bored by now...so tonight, then. Guiding Stars returned to the lab and watched code scroll by until the night shift change.

((TBC))

 

[MissingNo]

That night...

Guiding Stars walked down the corridor toward what she hoped was the room that the Godfather's project was kept in. The white case was tucked in a pouch at her waist, wrapped in cloth and with a few scrolls over it. In her hands she carried a tray with some random objects that she hoped might pass for something used in a psychology test, because that was going to be her excuse for a visit.

Guiding heard a laugh as she approached the last intersection, turning the corner and nearly walking into a table. There were two guards sitting at the table, laughing over some joke. One, a rather slightly-built ibex was leaning back with his iron-shod hooves pushed against the wall as he tipped his chair back on two legs. The other was a solid wall vaguely resembling a ram, hunched over a large mug. Both were armed and armored, the ram with a hammer the size of Guiding Stars' torso and the ibex with a sword/dagger combo, the sword strapped to his back and the dagger at his waist. Beyond them, Nelew's room was at the end of the very long hallway. The doors and rooms leading off the hall were all sealed with concrete slabs, and, since Nelew had moved in, the door to her room had been replaced with a solid iron one with nearly a dozen heavy locks.

The guards stopped laughing when they saw Guiding Stars. She was nearly scared out of her skin, but managed to keep herself together. The ibex's nose twitched and he smiled.

"Hello, there," he said, drawing the words out and smoothing his tone, dropping his chair back to all fours. "I haven't seen you around here before..."

The ram narrowed his eyes at Guiding, his eyes dropping from her face to her chest. "She's with the laboratory, you kek'thra," he growled at the ibex, nodding toward Guiding. She reminded herself to start breathing again as she remembered that she had worn her lab robes, which had the logo of her team over the left breast. "She probably has business with her." The ram jerked his head toward the door down the hall. He looked back at Guiding, his eyes still studying her and noting the objects on the tray. "They usually bring her to the labs for tests, though. And I haven't heard anything about anything going on this late."

Guiding didn't know what to say. The ram was surprisingly observant, though she wondered why she thought a guard wouldn't be. That was his job, wasn't it? To notice suspicious things? She tried to remember what she had planned as her excuse, but the ibex saved her the trouble.

He glanced at the ram, his smile taking on a darker tone as his eyes frowned. "From the labs, huh?" He also looked at the logo, but Guiding didn't think that was all he was looking at, unlike the ram. "That'd be why you're so...nervous, eh?" he said, his voice losing a little of the smooth quality. "Hey, you know why we're posted here? We're not keeping her safe. We're not even keeping her in. We're keeping whatever poor wool-brain wants to try gettin' in there to kill or kidnap her from being volunteered to repaint the place." He barked a laugh. "The one in there, she likes bright red. But her paint keeps turning brown, you know?" He laughed harder as Guiding's ears folded back and her tail tucked down.

"Don't pounce the cub*, she's frightened enough already," the ram glared. He looked back at Guiding and sighed. "Follow me."

Guiding Stars couldn't believe it. The ibex had given her a reason to play being scared to cover for her fear of being discovered. It was hard to lie to people who could smell what you were feeling, and she probably reeked at this point, but thanks to him she hadn't had to say a word! At this point she didn't trust herself to say anything without giving herself away and now she didn't have to.

The ram led her down the hallway while the ibex stayed at the table. "You have five minutes. I'll check on you then," said the ram as he began undoing the locks. He glanced over his shoulder at her and then looked back down as he undid the last lock. "You understand that if you get into trouble, you're on your own. We can't do anything for you and our orders are to keep the door closed. If anything happens, we sound the alarm, but that's it."

Okay, NOW she was scared. What was she doing? But...

She closed her eyes and nodded, and the ram rapped his knuckles on the door.

There was a heavier knock from inside the door and Guiding wondered if there was a third guard inside. She was even more surprised to hear a number of locks being opened on the other side. The door's well-oiled hinges squeaked softly as the iron swung inward.

Inward? Every safe door and blast door Guiding had seen in the lab had opened outward. Why did this open in?

She reminded herself to breathe again before slowly walking to the doorway. There was no light in the room, but she could see a bare concrete floor and an outline of a desk and chair against the wall opposite the door. The ram had stepped to one side as the door opened, he leaned forward to see inside. "Nelew, please turn on the lights."

The room lit up and the ram nudged Guiding Stars through the door. "Five minutes," he said. He backed up and the door swung shut with a clang.

(("Don't pounce the cub": A figure of speech similar to telling someone to "lay off". Sometimes one animal cub (usually of one of the predatory species) would stalk and pounce a sibling. This is a means of practice for hunting and taking down prey. Among Kohanians, one person picking on another could be seen as something similar in form (if not intent, since cubs aren't usually malicious) and so it became a figure of speech.))

 

[MissingNo]

The iron door clanged shut, revealing Nelew standing behind it. Guiding Stars had seen the pale woman before, in testing and in video footage of the training that Nel had before leaving. She knew that this Furless One standing before her could do what the ibex had suggested, and very easily, but it had never before entered her mind that the owner of the eerily expressionless face would do such things.

Nelew's metallic yellow eyes stared at Guiding Stars' dark brown eyes for five seconds before either of them spoke or moved. Nelew broke contact, looking away as she walked over to the bed and sat down. Guiding watched, some part of her noting that Nel sat with a rather ridged posture: Back straight, knees together, hands placed on her lap. Like a soldier undergoing inspection, everything was in place and every movement calculated.

"Um..." Guiding looked down and realized she was still holding the tray. She hurried over to the desk and put the tray down, then looked at Nelew.

"You have four minutes and twenty-six seconds remaining in your visit."

"Right..." Guiding swallowed and pulled the cloth-covered case from the pouch on her belt. "I-I wanted to ask you s-something."

Only Nelew's eyes moved. After a moment, she nodded to Guiding.

Guiding nodded, looking down at the case. "Right. I wanted to ask if you knew w-what this was."

Nelew's eyes slid down to the case. For a moment, the Kohanian got the distinct impression that Nel was actually curious, even though Nelew's expression didn't change or even twitch. After a few seconds Nel stood and walked over to Guiding Stars and took it.

"It appears to be a microcomputing and storage device," the strange woman said, turning it over and around in her hands, stopping when she found the faceplate with the three symbols and what Guiding Stars and her team had decided was a data jack. Tilting her head to the side, Nel pushed a button.

Nothing.

Nelew pushed the button repeatedly, with no results, then looked over at Guiding. "The buttons have no function?"

"We don't know," said Guiding, still too nervous to shrug. "I...I was hoping you might. Since you came out of it..."

"I came out of this?" Nelew looked at the case, then back at Guiding. "The mass requirement for my body exceed the containment volume of this object," she said flatly.

"It made you, then. We hooked it up to a computer and it only showed us symbols that we could not read, then it began absorbing objects, then it made you." Guiding's voice fell to a whisper. Nelew was staring at her intently, why was she staring at her? "Why-"

"Show me the symbols."

"But I can't take you out of here," Guiding Stars said, then frowned. "Can I?"

Nelew just looked at her.

"Okay...I guess I can get a screen to bring in here. I'll be right back."

"There are thirteen seconds left in your visit." Nelew's expression remained still until the guard had returned to let Guiding Stars out of the room, leaving Nelew holding the strange case.

 

[MissingNo]

Guiding Stars returned with a tablet computer a short time later, noting that the guards seemed surprised she had returned. They allowed her the ten minute extension she requested (the ram seemed more curious about what she was doing than the ibex as the latter's interest in her was still fueled by the boredom of his duty) and Stars re-entered the Nelew's room.

Nel had set the case down on the desk to open the door for Stars, so Stars took the case and plugged a cord into it leading to the tablet. The stream of foreign code started flowing across the monitor soon after and Stars motioned to it.

"Any idea what it means?" Guiding looked over at Nelew.

To Nel, time had slowed to a crawl. She could see each symbol as it appeared while Guiding Stars only saw shapes going by too quickly to comprehend. When the code appeared, Nel's mind automatically started a cross-reference against the languages she knew, which weren't many. Surprisingly, she found a match, but in a language she didn't realize she understood. Even so, though, it was only the symbols, the letters, that she recognized, but she didn't know what they meant...

Wait. She did know. That one meant "to connect", that one made the sound "hyr", that one referred to the way a path ended...how did she know this? Even with that knowledge, though, she still didn't understand what was being said. The symbol streams appeared to be fragments of sentences, or random words.

The woman looked down at the case, then picked it up and inspected the symbols under the cable connector plug. " 'Interface', 'Save', 'Lock'," she said to herself.

Guiding Stars' eyebrows went up. "You understand it?" the scientist asked eagerly.

Nelew nodded. "There are meanings, but no rules of language are being adhered to," she said. She poked the "Interface" symbol on the case. Immediately the screen on the tablet computer went black, a short green horizontal line flashing in the middle of the top of the screen. Nel pressed the symbol again. The screen changed to a mess of flowing multi-colored lines and shapes that moved about the screen and Nelew supposed it might have aesthetic appeal to some people. One more press brought her to a screen with a single column of the symbols she knew; a menu-style arrangement.

"How are you doing that?" asked Guiding Stars. The super-being was messing with technology that had killed one of her co-workers and this made her nervous, to put it mildly. Please, let me leave this room alive...

"This symbol changes the means of interacting with the device," Nel explained. The tablet had no keyboard, so she decided it was a touch-screen model. Her time training with the IPG had exposed her to such technology and she had a rudimentary idea of how to operate it. " 'Logs', 'Applications', 'Backups', 'Maintenance'," she said, reading the options presented.

"Maintenance?" Guiding was confused. The case needed to be maintained? Her eyes widened. Nelew had come out of the case. Maybe it was she that needed 'maintained'? What happened if she wasn't? Guiding resumed praying that she would leave alive.

"Backups..." whispered Nel. She pressed the button and the screen shifted to show a list of symbol arrangements. She noted that each of them saved configurations and appeared to have notes of how each configuration improved on the previous one. "Shell Modification: Skeleton. Sense Modification, number two-three-one-nine. Shell Modification: Computational Ability..." she read. She reached the end of the list and returned to the main menu, this time choosing 'Applications'.

Externally she showed no reaction. Internally Nelew was a mess of curiosity. What were these? 'Energy manipulation', 'matter synthesis'...'shapeshifting'? She pressed all of them, a selection symbol appearing next to each, and then pressed a confirmation button at the end of the list.

FLASH.

Guiding Stars stumbled backward, tripping over her feet and landing hard on her backside, narrowly missing a damaging impact to her tail. "WHAT IN SHADOW'S END?!" she hollered, rubbing her eyes to get her vision back. Slowly she got back to her feet, and her vision cleared to see Nelew staring blankly ahead. "Miss?" Guiding Stars slowly took a step toward Nel, worried. What just happened? "Are you hurt?"

Nelew didn't move or blink. Guiding Stars panicked and quickly disconnected the case from the tablet, then started to hide the case in her robe. She was stopped by a pale hand grabbing her wrist, and looked up to see Nel's half-lidded eyes locked on her with an intensity that she never wanted to see again.

"Leave it."

Too scared to do otherwise, Guiding quickly nodded, gathered the tray and tablet, and went to the door. Undoing the locks, she stayed there watching Nel until the guard returned to let her out.

((OOC: "What in Shadow's End" is an exclamation similar to "What the hell", referring to the scientist, Shadow, believed to be dead.))