Mizu
Software Developer
- Location
- Victoria, Australia
Better than weeks or months, like what I do sometimes! In all seriousness though, glad to hear you're both still working on this and that a new chapter is incoming soon.
Song in the Fog: Da Capo (Ar Tonelico, Metroid AU, Arpeggio of Blue Steel)
- Thread starter Einsig
- Start date
Highwind
To Rise From The Ashes
- Location
- Brazil
Wait what?
Oh. Okay. Now I feel kinda silly about that heart attack I just had.
Jokes aside, that's some very good news! I was wondering when the next chapter of this story would come
I can't wait for the new chapter!
Stop giving us heart attacks! We already have enough with Hana.
- Location
- EXA_PICO
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Funny, Baughn said the next chapter gave him heart trouble...
Chapter 7
- Location
- EXA_PICO
- Pronouns
- He/Him
"Shu-Qi!"
Enza's enthusiastic voice, loud with excitement, was the first thing Shu-Qi heard as he entered the room. Today it was higher-pitched than usual, and carried a tinge of frustrated impatience that no doubt meant she'd thought of another thrilling experiment and had been waiting to bounce it off him.
It had also been the last thing he'd heard the evening before, while he was trying to eat. She had been the first person to draw his attention during three of the five previous mornings, and the only one to retain it, but five samples did not a statistically significant set make.
He had, despite his own hopes and wishes, become somewhat of an expert on the subject. Enza was one of the smarter people he'd met, but she was also painfully earnest.
"Oh don't give that look. Come here, I swear you'll enjoy this." She lightly huffed, reading him like a book where most of the attending researchers saw only an animated statue. He deliberately did not groan in resignation and carried himself over to her.
He was proud of his unflappability. It was the product of many years of training.
Shu-Qi ambled over to the object of attention. It was one of the Poison devices, its proper examination having been pushed off for several months due to ever-shifting priorities and competing schedules, but now on center stage in the testing chamber. It seemed that none other than Kohinoor was personally involved, the stout male making repeated adjustments to one of the containment fields; for what purpose, Shu-Qi didn't know.
Kohinoor, as a former general of the defunct Chozo military, liked to keep his research to himself. It was a point of annoyance for Shu-Qi, who felt that all research should be shared as widely as possible, but Kohinoor's gang of like-minded researchers meant he couldn't even use the argument that sharing would speed things up.
Although, this time, they seemed willing to include him. Shu-Qi gave the device a shrewd glance. Kohinoor's research was mostly focused on military applications, not all of them against the Poison, which in combination meant…
"Having difficulties?"
"We tried to run the test before you got here, but had to abort," Enza said apologetically. "Right now we're trying to strengthen the containment against forceful interference."
"The first test of artifact 87 nearly destroyed the containment field," Kohinoor said, not looking at either of his colleagues.
That cleared up what he was doing. As for Enza… whether she was apologising for joining Kohinoor and starting without him, or for the near-disaster they'd caused, he didn't know and frankly didn't care. Both were reasonable assumptions, but the first was irrelevant to him so long as the results were released, a certainty if Enza was on board. The second, he would like to avoid.
Enza waved Shu-Qi away from that area and directed him over to her personal workstation.
"While avoiding that is crucial, it's not why I wanted to speak with you. They'll be busy with the adjustments for some time, I bet."
'No doubt,' he thought, considering just what it would take to destabilize containment.
"Now, I hope you won't be too annoyed, but I took the liberty of skimming your notes. Incidentally, I didn't take you for fancying ecology. All of your published works are in fields of nanotechnology, archeology, reverse engineering, theoretical physics..."
He raised an eyebrow.
"Ah." She blinked, momentarily lost for words. "Yes, of course. You are quite old. I should have expected a few hobbies. Now, I know I've talked your ear-holes out about the things we could theoretically do if we imitated the nucleic structure of the Poison, already, but I'm finding it increasingly difficult to make real progress while the interface field remains as a black box. That's why I took a few weeks off last month, so I could study and compare my own archives against your notes. A lot of my own information is fragmentary, but with your help… Ah."
The awkwardness laid over the room like a blanket… wait, no it didn't. He suppressed a sigh, as Enza completely ignored her own gaffe, rooting through the mess of paper on her desk while she continued talking.
He'd have said that taking time off to do more work was an unhealthy way to live, if he hadn't done the same thing himself on many occasions. No matter.
She picked up a data-pad, handing it over for him to look at. Curiously, Shu-Qi skimmed a few pages.
His eyes narrowed.
"Where did you get this?"
"Zebes."
They shared an unhappy look, Enza's usual enthusiasm now tempered by distaste.
She continued, "Those damn pirates destroyed a great deal of its monuments and structures over the decade they spent there, but their destructive tomb robbing wasn't entirely without merit." A bit of humor re-entered her voice. "For us, that is. Their behaviour would have pissed off the ancestral spirits even if it had been us doing it. I find, given that it wasn't, that I'm fine letting them be the ones to pay the price."
"Are you?" Shu-Qi felt himself going a little green at the memory, and hastily redirected his thoughts.
"That was a pivotal event; after all, it's when Samus received her Power Suit. So, yes. In fact, since you're here, why don't we go over the recordings together? I'd like to see the activation sequence, and I know you have a cop...y. That, is…"
"So long as it's just the activation," he said, his voice remarkably even for someone who was trying hard not to throw up.
Samus, armored suit half-destroyed, trudging through the churned-up mud like a woman possessed, not even noticing as a plasma bolt burnt off half her wrist, her other arm lashing out to kill the pirate who had done so, tearing him in half and—
He wasn't part of the group that had chosen to adopt the poor, orphaned human girl, but he'd met her often enough to make her an acquaintance, and the recordings from her final return to her home planet would have disturbed even a complete stranger. It was testament to her mental fortitude that she'd overcome it as well as she had, in his opinion.
"That's… acceptable," Enza said, looking at him askance. "And I am sorry for bringing it up. I wouldn't have, but some of the element I have been studying—I believe I might be able to explain part of its functioning. I would need to examine the power suit in person to be confident. However, the containment devices we have been using create a field very similar to the suit's interface field, from what few recordings I have been able to access…"
Enza was attempting to look contrite, and failing; she was practically flapping her wings. Still, Shu-Qi thought, that amusingly youthful behaviour was a much better medicine than if she'd joined him in depression. He'd always been a sucker for enthusiasm.
Though he felt a great deal of relief when everyone was jolted out of their seats by the blaring of an alarm.
'Wait.'
That was the terminal proximity alert. That alarm only went off when something had breached all of the outer defense stages, entered the lower atmosphere, and was about to reach their location.
Kohinoor quickly put a stop to his ongoing experiment and switched the main hologram projector to the security system. The map showed a red dot, moving quickly near ground level. Its course was taking it directly for the temple.
Shu-Qi's first thought was that it had to be a false alarm. Greenfly had recently acquired what was, by current Chozo standards, a reasonably effective planetary defence system. That was not due to any expectation of assault; it was simply what happened when you put enough Chozo engineers on one planet, some of whom were either paranoid enough or bored enough to set up self-replicating defences.
"Is this real? How did it get past our defenses?" Someone asked loudly, taking the words out of his mouth. There was no way anything could have entered high orbit without them noticing, let alone reached the planet's surface undetected. Maybe, if they'd landed in the ocean—but such a scout should have still been picked up before now, and there was no such thing as a stealthy FTL system. Not against a sensor grid filling half a solar system.
"More sensors are reorienting on it now… Its signature is incredibly small. A new stealth system?"
Discussion and speculation continued to fly around the room while the target kept moving in their direction. Then, all of that slammed to a halt when the hologram displayed another warning.
"Phazon, 87% probable."
Had alarms not been going off, the sudden clattering of several people dropping things in mute shock might have been more startling. For his part, Shu-Qi's eyes were burning holes into his personal HUD, watching the target closely and querying the system for every scrap of information it could provide him.
"Panic is not necessary. Our defenses will destroy it in short order," Kohinoor stated firmly. Even as he spoke, automated emplacements hidden under the large river adjacent the temple had risen above the water and were preparing to bombard the entire area of the target. A squadron of small aerial drones flew out of the temple and readied a strike run.
"Something is wrong about this," Enza muttered, observing the dot as it raced across the screen.
"I would have to agree. Are you also checking the readings?"
"Who in the room isn't?" she replied, perhaps more cynically than she had intended. "The growth curve… there's virtually none."
"None that can't be dismissed as a noisy signature, at the least. Even this small, it couldn't have breached the orbital net. We would have seen it coming."
Which, to Shu-Qi's racing mind, meant one of two things. Either it had a stealth system that could penetrate their defenses, and had chosen to drop it — a ludicrous idea, to be sure — or it had been here before those systems were put in place. At this size, it couldn't be detected by the ground-based sensors until it was practically on their doorstep.
"Wait. Don't fire just yet."
Kohinoor looked at Shu-Qi as if he was a lunatic speaking in tongues.
"You must agree that its sudden appearance on the planet's surface without being detected is too suspicious. Look closer at the readings."
"Its influence isn't expanding at all," Enza added. She spoke as quickly as she could, with only moments left. "It must have been here all along. This could be the module that was meant to keep the vessel stable outside of its own space!"
"If we can capture it, we could obtain a complete specimen of this technology. The potential gains are immeasurable."
"You don't know that it can't expand its influence! What if it has been hiding, repairing itself until it was ready? You do realize that the potential destruction if this thing is not stopped could be just as immense?"
"It's only one, uninhabited planet. We can easily evacuate with our samples, if it comes to that. Well worth the risk."
On the screen, the weapons announced they had produced a firing solution and were about to open fire. Kohinoor's eyes narrowed at Shu-Qi and Enza, an expression passing over his face that his peers couldn't quite read. Then, the former general made a quick set of keystrokes.
"Aborting," came the voice of the computer.
The system stopped. The drones closed their launchers and hovered idly, waiting for new instructions. The fully-charged plasma cannons had to dump their built-up energy. Thankfully, they were half-submerged in running water. The plumes of steam seemed to mirror the release of tension in the room. Yet, it was only replaced by an air of anxiety and uncertainty as all present looked between them and the viewscreen showing the Poison anomaly about to appear from the trees.
"I hope we didn't just get us all killed," Enza breathed, everyone else holding their breath in anticipation.
Shu-Qi's eyes fell on the consoles. It was still moving rapidly, but slowing as it approached the treeline. Intelligent behaviour—almost certainly. It wasn't unknown for a Poison infestation as a whole to behave with something approaching cunning, but a single fragment?
That being said, if it suddenly sped up they'd have only seconds to react.
It slowed down even further, moving at a nearly walking pace as it crossed the treeline, and giving them plenty of time to reconsider. Shamefully, he'd later think, he almost did that. It was one thing, to look at an off-the-scale reading on a monitor. It was something very different, to look through a camera and see what appeared to be a black hole, on a planet. Training and experience both screamed at him, shouting to shut it down, that their experiment was about to cost the lives of everyone on the continent—
Though this wasn't an experiment. Anyone but him would only see a visual distortion, a gravitational anomaly so harsh that light had bent into circles. And, since this wasn't his lab on Tenza, a projection failure wasn't about to cause disaster.
While he was thinking that, the distortion effect rapidly shrank and folded in on itself, giving them their first glimpse of what it had hidden.
The silence, he'd later think, had been striking.
"Why are they hugging the attack drone?"
He had no idea who said that, blanked out as his own mind was. It took him a moment to regain focus and see that yes, a small human child — clearly not so, as humans don't fly, glow, or warp space — had embraced the hovering UAV. They were also crying, with a big happy grin on their face.
"... Someone ought to ask them, and find out."
It took him a second to realise that he'd been the one to say that. It took him a few more to realise that everyone else was now looking at him.
———————————
She'd found it. She'd found it! This was her happiest moment in years! No more waiting, no more wandering, no more wondering when someone would come for her, no more sleeping alone in the muggy and damp jungle… maybe that part wasn't such a big deal. She'd built a pretty nice house after a few weeks, and Melon was good company. It wasn't like sleeping in a wet, dirty place had bothered her all that much, either.
Regardless, that was all over! Not Melon, he was coming home with her. Everything else was over, though! There were flying machines, and big… guns? Yes, guns, she was sure. She'd seen a lot of those so she had a good idea what a gun looked like, and they were some of her happiest (remaining) memories. Still, the important thing was, they were built by smart things! Smart things generally meant people, and if they were smart enough to fly into outer space, they had to be smart enough to help her get home!
Hana stared up at the floating robot thing, her emotions skittering all over the place. Tears welled up as the years of loneliness and hopelessness seemed to finally be at an end. She couldn't hold it in, and after a few hiccuping sobs she burst into giggling fit. She flew up to the robot and threw herself onto its top.
She hugged it. She hugged the huge piece of cold metal like it was her long-lost best friend. She didn't care that it was hard and cold. To her, it was the most comforting thing in the world after her cat. The best part was that it looked like a bird. So wrapped up in this joyous moment was she that Hana didn't pay much attention when the drone decided to move, only latching on tighter so she wouldn't fall off.
After what seemed like no time at all she was no longer out in the sun and open air. Hearing a large door closing behind her, she finally looked up. She was inside a huge room, not very well lit, and several other identical flying machines were coming for a landing on either side of her. They settled into what looked like mobile charging stations and went silent. Hana yipped as her ride landed with a loud clunk and shut down. It got very quiet after that. Standing up, she looked around to see if she could find someone. She couldn't sense anything living nearby, but she hoped that they might be listening from another room.
"Hello?" She called, receiving no reply, not even an echo. She waited for a minute, calling out a few more times, before she gave up and decided to go looking. It couldn't be too hard to find them, she thought.
———————————
"Is that a male or female?" Enza wondered aloud. "It's so hard to tell with human children."
"Male, female, whatever it is, it is not human. I strongly suggest we close the hangar area and dispatch security to capture it. This is the reason we decided not to obliterate it on sight, is it not?"
Kohinoor received nods of agreement from most in the room. Shu-Qi conceded that he did have a point. Even so…
"Observe them for now. No matter where they go, we can easily lock down any section of the facility."
That received a narrow-eyed stare.
"I have confidence in your recent renovations," Shu-Qi added, only intensifying the stare.
———————————
"This place is huge!"
"—uge! —ge."
She stopped, listening as her voice echoed from several different directions. Echoes! Indoors!
Experimenting a bit, she took a deep breath, put her hands to her mouth, and yelled, as loud as she could.
"HUGE!"
This time, three echoes returned!
It really, really, really was. Huge, that was. So far she'd walked at least a kilometer inside, and she'd yet to find anything other than empty rooms, corridors and decorations, photographs carved into the walls, and occasionally statues of birds and other animals. She couldn't even imagine how many people had to be living here! Now, if only she could find some. They knew she was here, right? They had to, she'd gotten here on one of their robots.
She thought about the problem for a second, then a golden chandelier caught her attention, and she abandoned it in favor of floating up to take a look. It was… well, chandelier-y. Pretty bright, and large, and hanging. Hana prodded it with a finger, noting that the chandelier was both warmer than expected, and lighter. The lights weren't warm, though, and there was something odd about them. Or maybe there wasn't? She didn't know, she'd only ever used fire.
Also, it was shaped like a bird. The chandelier. And the lights in the chandelier. And some of the wall decorations. Whoever owned this place really seemed to like birds. They'd get along great with Mom!
Her grin had, by this point, become a permanent fixture of her face. She tugged at her lips, but… nope! That wasn't coming off.
So when she'd finished studying the chandelier she let herself drop to the floor and, heart beating excitedly, ran deeper into the building. She didn't care that flying would have been faster. Everything was new, there was so much to see… and sooner or later, she'd run into people! She wanted to savor the anticipation.
———————————
"It's climbing all over a three thousand year old statue of the great philosopher Ni-Kao-Yu."
"Yes, they are astoundingly curious…" Shu-Qi hummed, ignoring the sour note in Kohinoor's voice. The old warbird released a sigh of exasperation while crossing his arms.
"We've done enough observing. I'm dispatching security."
"Hold." Shu-Qi raised his hand.
"If you're about to tell me you think we should bring it in peacefully…" Kohinoor nodded. "I had much the same thought, but you'll need backup in case of problems."
Shu-Qi lowered his hand, now mildly surprised. Kohinoor took that as his answer and pointed at one of his subordinates.
"Rhuma, bring me the control set for the Mimic."
'Ah,' Shu-Qi thought. 'That would be the safest way to meet a potentially hostile element non threateningly.'
The eager assistant quickly ran off to the next room. While they waited for his return, they watched the humanoid child continue to flit about looking at and touching absolutely everything they could get their hands on. With the ability to fly, there wasn't much that didn't fall into that category. All the while, they kept babbling excitedly, and occasionally calling out loudly. Shu-Qi presumed they were trying to get a response.
Rhuma soon returned, carrying a small, locked box. Kohinoor unlocked it and walked over to Shu-Qi, who eyed him suspiciously.
"Since you suggested it," he said, holding up a pair of small, rounded triangular plates. "you should do the honors."
He did have a point.
———————————
Everything was so cool! There were giant statues, and huge bowls full of fire, and pretty decorations hanging from the ceilings, and art and carvings all over the walls, and, and...
"Where is everybodyyyyyyyyyyyy?!"
And there was nobody there! Huffing in frustration, Hana plopped down on the base of one of the big bird man statues. There were two of them, standing upright and facing each other with their clawed hands held out palms up, holding bowls full of brilliant orange flames. Between them was a massive door that went to what looked like a really huge shrine of some kind. It was all really cool, sure. She was still really excited and smiling most of the time, but now she was getting tired of not finding anyone.
There had been people there recently. Everything was so clean. Old, and a lot of it really worn down, but there were clear signs of recent restoration. There wouldn't be lit torches and bowls if nobody had been there recently. Where had they gone? Were they all out to lunch?
Even after years on her own, she couldn't maintain the same level of happiness about finding people for hours on end when there were no people.
Her smile faded a little.
Was it her? Was she the reason nobody was showing themselves? She'd been so excited to find an actual building, it hadn't occurred to her that she might scare them, and so she'd charged right in with her klein field at maximum so she could cut through the forest. And that… Mom had told her that she shouldn't, shouldn't…
She couldn't remember. But she wasn't supposed to use it where there might be people. She'd forgotten, and… now there was a thin thread of guilt sneaking its way through her stomach and spoiling her mood entirely.
Sagging down further, she trailed her finger over the solid base of the statue. There was a thin layer of dust, but not like it had been abandoned; more like it hadn't been cleaned for a day or two. People had been here, and now they weren't.
This sucked.
"Is anyone there?" She shouted, not expecting an answer. Then, operating off a cringe-worthy memory that she wasn't quite sure was real, but which matched a little too well with the other one, she added: "I'll be careful! I promise I won't hurt you!"
Hana felt her stomach twist in a knot as soon as those words left her mouth. If they weren't afraid her her before, they sure would be after hearing that. It sounded so suspicious! All the bad people in her games and stories always denied exactly what they were doing, so the audience would know what they were doing. Though, that didn't apply to real life, now that she was older and could tell that that didn't make sense.
'Maybe I'm thinking too hard…'
Dad had always said…
She scowled, barely noticing as the corridor flickered around her. No, that didn't sound right. Dad didn't say very much, he wasn't the type to think very deeply, but he'd never told her to be anyone but herself. Sometimes, he just had opinions on what 'being herself' meant. He'd told Mom she could be better, that she was better, because that's the sort of person he was.
It was that friend of his, the one who'd told her to be like Dad and not think so hard. Who was it, again? The dumb blond guy, or the dumb white-haired guy? Dad had told her they were dumb, and their advice was dumb, and then he'd frowned. She hadn't been sure, but… Mom agreed, so they were probably right.
No, Dad had always told her that trying to be perfect would only stop her from being good enough. She wasn't sure how that applied to this situation, but she told herself it was important enough to remember. And… she remembered.
Her scowl turned into a weak smile again, because she'd remembered. She wasn't sure if it was the situation, or time, or just luck, but she'd just remembered a little more of her life. The older she got, the more little bits she recovered of her life with her parents, and her family. And the more she missed them, not like an amnesiac child, but knowing what she'd lost.
She abruptly jumped to her feet, scanning the area again. Not because she thought anyone would be there, just because she didn't want to dwell on that thought.
…
There was someone there.
— — —
Shu-Qi watched the gynoid watching him, nervousness only dampened by the knowledge that she could not, under any circumstances, actually hurt him. Despite appearances, he was actually hundreds of meters away in a different wing of the building entirely.
The Mimic suit was how he could nevertheless appear to be in the same room as them. It was a remote-controlled sea of nanites in the exact shape of his own body, which felt exactly like standing there himself would have. This was the result of hundreds of years of research, the eventual life's work of tens of thousands of Chozo, and advanced beyond the wildest fever dreams of the younger races.
Which was another way of saying that it was just like anything else the current-day Chozo could put together, based on half-understood research reports and technologies from a civilization that no longer existed. Self-hosted nanofabrication ensured that their technology wouldn't be lost, so long as it could be distilled into a blueprint for those fabricators, but at the same time there were far too few Chozo in existence for any of them to focus on understanding any single device. They were all renaissance men, knowing a little about everything, purely out of necessity.
As far as Shu-Qi knew, the Mimic suit was something Alba had thrown together based on an old VR gaming system, a hazardous-situation nanoform remote waldo, and a phased-array full-spectrum cloaking system. The systems didn't work perfectly together.
He hoped that was why the gynoid had seen through it, and not because her sensors were better than the Chozo's cloak. It was scant consolation that she had taken several minutes to do so. She'd actually frozen in place for most of that time, giving him the opportunity to observe her closely, which was how he knew she was a gynoid—human sexual dimorphism included hair length and some elements of facial structure, he was pretty sure, and the xenologists in their group concurred.
"So?"
Part of him kept track on the other researchers' conversation, far away from here. The rest focused on the gynoid, whose expressions were startlingly evocative. Even he, who hadn't made a particular study of humanity, could tell that she had been put dramatically off balance by his appearance.
"It looks startled. I would say 'afraid', but the body language isn't right; humans, especially children, would instinctively protect the vitals of their body in dangerous situations. That would be the lower torso and the face, mainly. The android isn't making any attempt to do so; of course, it's anyone's guess to what degree human instincts apply to this entity."
The speaker likely hadn't seen his HUD light up with anomalous-gravity warnings, but that was as a flicker that just as quickly faded.
"Do not be afraid. I mean you no harm."
The girl, once he spoke, gasped and hid halfway behind the leg of the statue. She observed him with one eye, wide with fright yet also brimming with the easily-recognized boundless curiosity of a child.
"That is a more classic fear response. Did its programming need to adjust to an unforeseen variable? Expecting to see a human, it didn't know what the right behavior was. Hmm..."
More likely, she was simply confused as to whether she should see him as a threat. She'd most certainly thought about shielding herself upon first seeing him. He supposed he would have to gently coax her out. Maybe she was programmed to pretend to enjoy sweets, though he hadn't considered the idea of bait before leaving to— the gynoid blinked her one visible eye, looked down slightly with a distant focus, then squeezed it shut.
His HUD flashed at him, but the warning period was far too brief. Had he been armed, he wouldn't have been able to draw his weapon. The machine outpaced him physically in every way, leaving him defenseless in the face of its assault. There was a blur of brown and purple, barely perceptible to his mortal senses. A weight slammed into his chest, hurtling him back with all the force of a high-velocity... bag of feathers.
For a time, what was happening was lost to him. The gynoid had hurled herself at him, and suddenly he was on his back? Momentarily, he wondered if she had noticed that the Mimic was a synthetic body, and had forced a disconnect. Being severed from VR too suddenly was known to be disorienting.
But no, when he opened his eyes, he could see the ceiling of the corridor which he'd only just been standing in.
Ignoring the panicked shouting coming over the line, he took a moment to process the situation. His HUD warned him of extreme proximity to a weak radiation source bearing all hallmarks of the Poison. It had been two years since he'd last seen those same warnings…
Shu-Qi was having some difficulty connecting that warning with the trembling being clutching him with what he could only describe as desperation.
Deciding that staying unresponsive for much longer would cause the gynoid to grow suspicious, he summoned up a bit of long-forgotten fatherly instinct and gently patted her on the back. She flinched at the contact and froze for a moment. Then, in a most perplexing way, she shoved her face into his chest and let out a low whine.
Whatsoever could have been the reason for that?
———————————
She'd gotten too excited. Way too excited. That wasn't how first contact was supposed to go! She was supposed to be all "I come in peace! Take me to your leader!" Then she needed to bow, give him a gift and have tea, or something like that. Except she didn't have any tea, and she couldn't taste anything so even if she had something to make tea out of it would probably taste really bad. She could, maybe, have used a cup of water.
Hana had wanted so badly to meet another person that the moment she told herself to stop being scared and greet the bird man, she… well, that had happened. She wasn't proud of it, but at least it sort of worked out okay? He didn't get angry and peck her eyes, or claw her face, as birds tended to when she tried too hard to be friendly with them. He was actually really nice. She didn't understand anything he said, and he didn't understand her, but she could tell he was trying to be comforting.
It almost didn't feel real to her, finally meeting someone she could maybe, eventually talk to. What if he wasn't even real, and she was frozen up in another fugue? Hana knew it was silly, but if she let go, she feared he'd vanish and leave her alone again.
When he picked her up, she knew it wouldn't happen. Her body trembled like a leaf, waves of warmth chasing each other around. It was real. It was all real.
Shoving the bad thoughts out of the way, she made herself relax as best she could.
The bird man carried her through the building, seeming to know pretty well where he was going. He made the place feel a lot smaller with the ease with which he navigated, crossing in a few minutes a distance that had taken Hana, who knew she was easily distracted, several hours to cross on her own.
After a while they stopped in front of that statue she'd been climbing all over before; the one sitting in front of a sun in a meditating pose. The bird man put Hana down and pointed in the way adults always did when they wanted her to stay put. He turned around and then started pressing the "flames" of the sun in a sequence. Hana's eyes nearly bugged out as she realized what he was doing. There was a sudden whoosh, rather than a rumbling of grinding stone, and a wall lifted up to reveal a hidden passage.
"It's a secret door! Oh my gosh! That's so cool!"
She should have pushed everything!
This corridor was metal rather than stone like everything else. It looked really high-tech, which sent Hana's excitement through the roof. She rushed past her new friend, eager to see all the cool things inside. Then she skidded to a halt, remembering this was really rude. She couldn't just barge in! Hana quickly turned around, grabbed his clawed hand and yanked him along, trying to make him hurry up.
"Show me show me show me show me!" she asked while bouncing up and down, forgetting he couldn't understand her. He got pretty flustered and protested, but huffed and picked up his pace. She giggled, thinking that sounded a bit like Dad, but the bird man was way too old for that comparison. He was more like she imagined a grandpa would be like. She didn't have a grandpa… did she?
As soon as she thought that thought, she started telling herself not to follow it, because she knew what would happen. It was no use. Of course it wasn't, and she'd known it wasn't. It was just like that game, 'Don't think of the fuzzy, huggable, adorably terrifying Nyo.'
She froze, her body staying upright on autopilot.
This wasn't like her earliest fugues. Hana could still tell what was going on around her, even as part of her shut down trying to fix a memory that probably didn't even exist. She could feel the bird man initially trying to haul her onwards, then holding her shoulder with the arm that wasn't locked in her death grip. He was probably looking into her vacant eyes. She had to be scaring him. She didn't want to do that.
The reason she could still think at all was—probably—
Panicking a little bit, she interrupted her defences before they could kick into high gear and show her what they'd do to someone partially inside the trillion-gees-per-millimeter gravity shear of her full-power Klein field.
She wobbled between unconsciousness and nightmare.
'Stop—'
If she could have left out a sigh of relief, she would have. Her generators were thoroughly frozen, the worst that could happen now was she'd run out of capacitor power and do a hard reboot, but that was nowhere near as bad as spaghettifying the first (friendly? Any!) person she'd met in years. Large parts of her mental model were, similarly, frozen, but not all of her. She could still think. She could still…
'What is this thing doing?'
The frozen bits included pretty much all of her memories, so she didn't feel sure about anything anymore, but she could still see what it was trying to do. A lot of her memories were missing, or extrapolations built on extrapolations and then rebuilt whenever she noticed inconsistencies, but that shouldn't take seconds. The reason it did was that… before extrapolating, it poked a black box of some sort, which never responded…
Her coding was particularly strange there, and she worried that she'd misunderstood, but it seemed to just be timing out. So—
No. Wait. She'd promised not to do this. She'd promised Mom not to do this, and she still remembered why. She was a ten-year-old, poking at things she didn't understand. This was one of the few ways she could seriously hurt herself.
But she'd nearly killed someone.
'Please…'
She wanted to bite her nails, and she couldn't even do that. If she shut down those calls… she didn't know what would happen, and it might be important. It looked important. But if she didn't, then the next time this happened, she might not catch it in time. But she wasn't supposed to change anything.
'Anyone…'
Wasn't there a third option?
The 'box' finally responded to one of the queries. Not usefully, just with an error message—'RPC error, structural failure'?—but it was something. It wasn't completely dead. If she… no, there wasn't any physical damage, she'd know, and it looked like an I/O interface. Maybe it was just… jammed. Maybe, if she just hit the reset button…
…
[Synchronizing…]
…
<DDW <-> DHW aux channel established. Structural damage detected. SHS initialization failed.>
…pure optimism, really, except that now it was producing errors in a consistent and timely manner, and… that's how Sasha had put it, and her sister's best friend had claimed it was better that way, and she'd thought that was silly, and it totally wasn't! She hadn't paid much attention, though. She'd been too busy playing a game.
It might be a good thing that her body was still frozen, because if it hadn't been, she'd have broken into a wholly inexplicable grin. She'd gone through a dozen microseizures just remembering that scene, and none of them would have lasted long enough to be noticed. She wanted to hug the bird-man again, and spin in a circle.
She didn't, of course, waiting until she'd gotten herself a little more under control before she let herself unfreeze. The whole episode had taken less than a second. Calming down? That took a lot longer.
When she finally did, she quickly turned aside and pretended to study a portrait on the wall.
She didn't think he bought it, but suddenly she felt embarrassed and guilty about it all. She hadn't wanted him to see her like this.
— — — — — — —
Shu-Qi let the gynoid into the conference room.
Despite knowing that it wasn't truly human, he'd felt concern when it froze up in the middle of walking. That, however, was at least partially because it meant the gynoid was degrading. That it had hung on this long despite being made of the Poison was astonishing, but they couldn't expect it to survive for very much longer. Any course of research taking more than a year had to be excluded.
In a way that was a relief. It acted so much like a real child that he'd found himself rapidly losing touch with the fact that it wasn't. He couldn't allow himself to become attached.
He still let out a cluck of laughter, however, when it attempted to charge the other Chozo researchers and ran straight into the holographic conference room's central wall.
— — — — — — —
Her eyes had lied to her.
Poking the air in front of her, and scowling when the supposed 'air' turned out to be an extremely smooth, transparent wall, she considered the problem. One birdman, next to her; two dozen others, sitting only a few meters away from her. Her sonar was no help, claiming that the place they were sitting was actually solid rock. This was clearly a very tough wall. She supposed she couldn't complain, given she'd nearly killed one of them already, but she was a little sad she wouldn't be able to touch anyone.
She made herself back away, then bowed deeply. This was a solemn occasion, she knew; the first meeting between humans and aliens. Real aliens, not like the fairies from some of Turnip's stories, or the Teru. Her first reaction shouldn't have been to run up and try to hug each and every one of them.
But looking at all the people who were there to meet her, and seeing all the different colors and sizes and shapes, she felt a sudden burst of mirth bubbling up inside. She covered her mouth and snickered, drawing all sorts of looks, then guiltily looked away. No. Bad Hana!
When she saw some of them raise the feathers on their heads and look at her sideways, she couldn't contain herself anymore. Her cheeks puffed as she tried to hold it in, which worked—for about two seconds—then she burst into laughter. She felt even worse when that made some of them jump, but she couldn't help it, she was in stitches.
It was just too funny. She'd been so caught up in excitement, wonder, fear and joy that she hadn't seen the humor in the situation until now.
She had been saved by, of all things, birds.
Mom loved birds.
Enza's enthusiastic voice, loud with excitement, was the first thing Shu-Qi heard as he entered the room. Today it was higher-pitched than usual, and carried a tinge of frustrated impatience that no doubt meant she'd thought of another thrilling experiment and had been waiting to bounce it off him.
It had also been the last thing he'd heard the evening before, while he was trying to eat. She had been the first person to draw his attention during three of the five previous mornings, and the only one to retain it, but five samples did not a statistically significant set make.
He had, despite his own hopes and wishes, become somewhat of an expert on the subject. Enza was one of the smarter people he'd met, but she was also painfully earnest.
"Oh don't give that look. Come here, I swear you'll enjoy this." She lightly huffed, reading him like a book where most of the attending researchers saw only an animated statue. He deliberately did not groan in resignation and carried himself over to her.
He was proud of his unflappability. It was the product of many years of training.
Shu-Qi ambled over to the object of attention. It was one of the Poison devices, its proper examination having been pushed off for several months due to ever-shifting priorities and competing schedules, but now on center stage in the testing chamber. It seemed that none other than Kohinoor was personally involved, the stout male making repeated adjustments to one of the containment fields; for what purpose, Shu-Qi didn't know.
Kohinoor, as a former general of the defunct Chozo military, liked to keep his research to himself. It was a point of annoyance for Shu-Qi, who felt that all research should be shared as widely as possible, but Kohinoor's gang of like-minded researchers meant he couldn't even use the argument that sharing would speed things up.
Although, this time, they seemed willing to include him. Shu-Qi gave the device a shrewd glance. Kohinoor's research was mostly focused on military applications, not all of them against the Poison, which in combination meant…
"Having difficulties?"
"We tried to run the test before you got here, but had to abort," Enza said apologetically. "Right now we're trying to strengthen the containment against forceful interference."
"The first test of artifact 87 nearly destroyed the containment field," Kohinoor said, not looking at either of his colleagues.
That cleared up what he was doing. As for Enza… whether she was apologising for joining Kohinoor and starting without him, or for the near-disaster they'd caused, he didn't know and frankly didn't care. Both were reasonable assumptions, but the first was irrelevant to him so long as the results were released, a certainty if Enza was on board. The second, he would like to avoid.
Enza waved Shu-Qi away from that area and directed him over to her personal workstation.
"While avoiding that is crucial, it's not why I wanted to speak with you. They'll be busy with the adjustments for some time, I bet."
'No doubt,' he thought, considering just what it would take to destabilize containment.
"Now, I hope you won't be too annoyed, but I took the liberty of skimming your notes. Incidentally, I didn't take you for fancying ecology. All of your published works are in fields of nanotechnology, archeology, reverse engineering, theoretical physics..."
He raised an eyebrow.
"Ah." She blinked, momentarily lost for words. "Yes, of course. You are quite old. I should have expected a few hobbies. Now, I know I've talked your ear-holes out about the things we could theoretically do if we imitated the nucleic structure of the Poison, already, but I'm finding it increasingly difficult to make real progress while the interface field remains as a black box. That's why I took a few weeks off last month, so I could study and compare my own archives against your notes. A lot of my own information is fragmentary, but with your help… Ah."
The awkwardness laid over the room like a blanket… wait, no it didn't. He suppressed a sigh, as Enza completely ignored her own gaffe, rooting through the mess of paper on her desk while she continued talking.
He'd have said that taking time off to do more work was an unhealthy way to live, if he hadn't done the same thing himself on many occasions. No matter.
She picked up a data-pad, handing it over for him to look at. Curiously, Shu-Qi skimmed a few pages.
His eyes narrowed.
"Where did you get this?"
"Zebes."
They shared an unhappy look, Enza's usual enthusiasm now tempered by distaste.
She continued, "Those damn pirates destroyed a great deal of its monuments and structures over the decade they spent there, but their destructive tomb robbing wasn't entirely without merit." A bit of humor re-entered her voice. "For us, that is. Their behaviour would have pissed off the ancestral spirits even if it had been us doing it. I find, given that it wasn't, that I'm fine letting them be the ones to pay the price."
"Are you?" Shu-Qi felt himself going a little green at the memory, and hastily redirected his thoughts.
"That was a pivotal event; after all, it's when Samus received her Power Suit. So, yes. In fact, since you're here, why don't we go over the recordings together? I'd like to see the activation sequence, and I know you have a cop...y. That, is…"
"So long as it's just the activation," he said, his voice remarkably even for someone who was trying hard not to throw up.
Samus, armored suit half-destroyed, trudging through the churned-up mud like a woman possessed, not even noticing as a plasma bolt burnt off half her wrist, her other arm lashing out to kill the pirate who had done so, tearing him in half and—
He wasn't part of the group that had chosen to adopt the poor, orphaned human girl, but he'd met her often enough to make her an acquaintance, and the recordings from her final return to her home planet would have disturbed even a complete stranger. It was testament to her mental fortitude that she'd overcome it as well as she had, in his opinion.
"That's… acceptable," Enza said, looking at him askance. "And I am sorry for bringing it up. I wouldn't have, but some of the element I have been studying—I believe I might be able to explain part of its functioning. I would need to examine the power suit in person to be confident. However, the containment devices we have been using create a field very similar to the suit's interface field, from what few recordings I have been able to access…"
Enza was attempting to look contrite, and failing; she was practically flapping her wings. Still, Shu-Qi thought, that amusingly youthful behaviour was a much better medicine than if she'd joined him in depression. He'd always been a sucker for enthusiasm.
Though he felt a great deal of relief when everyone was jolted out of their seats by the blaring of an alarm.
'Wait.'
That was the terminal proximity alert. That alarm only went off when something had breached all of the outer defense stages, entered the lower atmosphere, and was about to reach their location.
Kohinoor quickly put a stop to his ongoing experiment and switched the main hologram projector to the security system. The map showed a red dot, moving quickly near ground level. Its course was taking it directly for the temple.
Shu-Qi's first thought was that it had to be a false alarm. Greenfly had recently acquired what was, by current Chozo standards, a reasonably effective planetary defence system. That was not due to any expectation of assault; it was simply what happened when you put enough Chozo engineers on one planet, some of whom were either paranoid enough or bored enough to set up self-replicating defences.
"Is this real? How did it get past our defenses?" Someone asked loudly, taking the words out of his mouth. There was no way anything could have entered high orbit without them noticing, let alone reached the planet's surface undetected. Maybe, if they'd landed in the ocean—but such a scout should have still been picked up before now, and there was no such thing as a stealthy FTL system. Not against a sensor grid filling half a solar system.
"More sensors are reorienting on it now… Its signature is incredibly small. A new stealth system?"
Discussion and speculation continued to fly around the room while the target kept moving in their direction. Then, all of that slammed to a halt when the hologram displayed another warning.
"Phazon, 87% probable."
Had alarms not been going off, the sudden clattering of several people dropping things in mute shock might have been more startling. For his part, Shu-Qi's eyes were burning holes into his personal HUD, watching the target closely and querying the system for every scrap of information it could provide him.
"Panic is not necessary. Our defenses will destroy it in short order," Kohinoor stated firmly. Even as he spoke, automated emplacements hidden under the large river adjacent the temple had risen above the water and were preparing to bombard the entire area of the target. A squadron of small aerial drones flew out of the temple and readied a strike run.
"Something is wrong about this," Enza muttered, observing the dot as it raced across the screen.
"I would have to agree. Are you also checking the readings?"
"Who in the room isn't?" she replied, perhaps more cynically than she had intended. "The growth curve… there's virtually none."
"None that can't be dismissed as a noisy signature, at the least. Even this small, it couldn't have breached the orbital net. We would have seen it coming."
Which, to Shu-Qi's racing mind, meant one of two things. Either it had a stealth system that could penetrate their defenses, and had chosen to drop it — a ludicrous idea, to be sure — or it had been here before those systems were put in place. At this size, it couldn't be detected by the ground-based sensors until it was practically on their doorstep.
"Wait. Don't fire just yet."
Kohinoor looked at Shu-Qi as if he was a lunatic speaking in tongues.
"You must agree that its sudden appearance on the planet's surface without being detected is too suspicious. Look closer at the readings."
"Its influence isn't expanding at all," Enza added. She spoke as quickly as she could, with only moments left. "It must have been here all along. This could be the module that was meant to keep the vessel stable outside of its own space!"
"If we can capture it, we could obtain a complete specimen of this technology. The potential gains are immeasurable."
"You don't know that it can't expand its influence! What if it has been hiding, repairing itself until it was ready? You do realize that the potential destruction if this thing is not stopped could be just as immense?"
"It's only one, uninhabited planet. We can easily evacuate with our samples, if it comes to that. Well worth the risk."
On the screen, the weapons announced they had produced a firing solution and were about to open fire. Kohinoor's eyes narrowed at Shu-Qi and Enza, an expression passing over his face that his peers couldn't quite read. Then, the former general made a quick set of keystrokes.
"Aborting," came the voice of the computer.
The system stopped. The drones closed their launchers and hovered idly, waiting for new instructions. The fully-charged plasma cannons had to dump their built-up energy. Thankfully, they were half-submerged in running water. The plumes of steam seemed to mirror the release of tension in the room. Yet, it was only replaced by an air of anxiety and uncertainty as all present looked between them and the viewscreen showing the Poison anomaly about to appear from the trees.
"I hope we didn't just get us all killed," Enza breathed, everyone else holding their breath in anticipation.
Shu-Qi's eyes fell on the consoles. It was still moving rapidly, but slowing as it approached the treeline. Intelligent behaviour—almost certainly. It wasn't unknown for a Poison infestation as a whole to behave with something approaching cunning, but a single fragment?
That being said, if it suddenly sped up they'd have only seconds to react.
It slowed down even further, moving at a nearly walking pace as it crossed the treeline, and giving them plenty of time to reconsider. Shamefully, he'd later think, he almost did that. It was one thing, to look at an off-the-scale reading on a monitor. It was something very different, to look through a camera and see what appeared to be a black hole, on a planet. Training and experience both screamed at him, shouting to shut it down, that their experiment was about to cost the lives of everyone on the continent—
Though this wasn't an experiment. Anyone but him would only see a visual distortion, a gravitational anomaly so harsh that light had bent into circles. And, since this wasn't his lab on Tenza, a projection failure wasn't about to cause disaster.
While he was thinking that, the distortion effect rapidly shrank and folded in on itself, giving them their first glimpse of what it had hidden.
The silence, he'd later think, had been striking.
"Why are they hugging the attack drone?"
He had no idea who said that, blanked out as his own mind was. It took him a moment to regain focus and see that yes, a small human child — clearly not so, as humans don't fly, glow, or warp space — had embraced the hovering UAV. They were also crying, with a big happy grin on their face.
"... Someone ought to ask them, and find out."
It took him a second to realise that he'd been the one to say that. It took him a few more to realise that everyone else was now looking at him.
———————————
She'd found it. She'd found it! This was her happiest moment in years! No more waiting, no more wandering, no more wondering when someone would come for her, no more sleeping alone in the muggy and damp jungle… maybe that part wasn't such a big deal. She'd built a pretty nice house after a few weeks, and Melon was good company. It wasn't like sleeping in a wet, dirty place had bothered her all that much, either.
Regardless, that was all over! Not Melon, he was coming home with her. Everything else was over, though! There were flying machines, and big… guns? Yes, guns, she was sure. She'd seen a lot of those so she had a good idea what a gun looked like, and they were some of her happiest (remaining) memories. Still, the important thing was, they were built by smart things! Smart things generally meant people, and if they were smart enough to fly into outer space, they had to be smart enough to help her get home!
Hana stared up at the floating robot thing, her emotions skittering all over the place. Tears welled up as the years of loneliness and hopelessness seemed to finally be at an end. She couldn't hold it in, and after a few hiccuping sobs she burst into giggling fit. She flew up to the robot and threw herself onto its top.
She hugged it. She hugged the huge piece of cold metal like it was her long-lost best friend. She didn't care that it was hard and cold. To her, it was the most comforting thing in the world after her cat. The best part was that it looked like a bird. So wrapped up in this joyous moment was she that Hana didn't pay much attention when the drone decided to move, only latching on tighter so she wouldn't fall off.
After what seemed like no time at all she was no longer out in the sun and open air. Hearing a large door closing behind her, she finally looked up. She was inside a huge room, not very well lit, and several other identical flying machines were coming for a landing on either side of her. They settled into what looked like mobile charging stations and went silent. Hana yipped as her ride landed with a loud clunk and shut down. It got very quiet after that. Standing up, she looked around to see if she could find someone. She couldn't sense anything living nearby, but she hoped that they might be listening from another room.
"Hello?" She called, receiving no reply, not even an echo. She waited for a minute, calling out a few more times, before she gave up and decided to go looking. It couldn't be too hard to find them, she thought.
———————————
"Is that a male or female?" Enza wondered aloud. "It's so hard to tell with human children."
"Male, female, whatever it is, it is not human. I strongly suggest we close the hangar area and dispatch security to capture it. This is the reason we decided not to obliterate it on sight, is it not?"
Kohinoor received nods of agreement from most in the room. Shu-Qi conceded that he did have a point. Even so…
"Observe them for now. No matter where they go, we can easily lock down any section of the facility."
That received a narrow-eyed stare.
"I have confidence in your recent renovations," Shu-Qi added, only intensifying the stare.
———————————
"This place is huge!"
"—uge! —ge."
She stopped, listening as her voice echoed from several different directions. Echoes! Indoors!
Experimenting a bit, she took a deep breath, put her hands to her mouth, and yelled, as loud as she could.
"HUGE!"
This time, three echoes returned!
It really, really, really was. Huge, that was. So far she'd walked at least a kilometer inside, and she'd yet to find anything other than empty rooms, corridors and decorations, photographs carved into the walls, and occasionally statues of birds and other animals. She couldn't even imagine how many people had to be living here! Now, if only she could find some. They knew she was here, right? They had to, she'd gotten here on one of their robots.
She thought about the problem for a second, then a golden chandelier caught her attention, and she abandoned it in favor of floating up to take a look. It was… well, chandelier-y. Pretty bright, and large, and hanging. Hana prodded it with a finger, noting that the chandelier was both warmer than expected, and lighter. The lights weren't warm, though, and there was something odd about them. Or maybe there wasn't? She didn't know, she'd only ever used fire.
Also, it was shaped like a bird. The chandelier. And the lights in the chandelier. And some of the wall decorations. Whoever owned this place really seemed to like birds. They'd get along great with Mom!
Her grin had, by this point, become a permanent fixture of her face. She tugged at her lips, but… nope! That wasn't coming off.
So when she'd finished studying the chandelier she let herself drop to the floor and, heart beating excitedly, ran deeper into the building. She didn't care that flying would have been faster. Everything was new, there was so much to see… and sooner or later, she'd run into people! She wanted to savor the anticipation.
———————————
"It's climbing all over a three thousand year old statue of the great philosopher Ni-Kao-Yu."
"Yes, they are astoundingly curious…" Shu-Qi hummed, ignoring the sour note in Kohinoor's voice. The old warbird released a sigh of exasperation while crossing his arms.
"We've done enough observing. I'm dispatching security."
"Hold." Shu-Qi raised his hand.
"If you're about to tell me you think we should bring it in peacefully…" Kohinoor nodded. "I had much the same thought, but you'll need backup in case of problems."
Shu-Qi lowered his hand, now mildly surprised. Kohinoor took that as his answer and pointed at one of his subordinates.
"Rhuma, bring me the control set for the Mimic."
'Ah,' Shu-Qi thought. 'That would be the safest way to meet a potentially hostile element non threateningly.'
The eager assistant quickly ran off to the next room. While they waited for his return, they watched the humanoid child continue to flit about looking at and touching absolutely everything they could get their hands on. With the ability to fly, there wasn't much that didn't fall into that category. All the while, they kept babbling excitedly, and occasionally calling out loudly. Shu-Qi presumed they were trying to get a response.
Rhuma soon returned, carrying a small, locked box. Kohinoor unlocked it and walked over to Shu-Qi, who eyed him suspiciously.
"Since you suggested it," he said, holding up a pair of small, rounded triangular plates. "you should do the honors."
He did have a point.
———————————
Everything was so cool! There were giant statues, and huge bowls full of fire, and pretty decorations hanging from the ceilings, and art and carvings all over the walls, and, and...
"Where is everybodyyyyyyyyyyyy?!"
And there was nobody there! Huffing in frustration, Hana plopped down on the base of one of the big bird man statues. There were two of them, standing upright and facing each other with their clawed hands held out palms up, holding bowls full of brilliant orange flames. Between them was a massive door that went to what looked like a really huge shrine of some kind. It was all really cool, sure. She was still really excited and smiling most of the time, but now she was getting tired of not finding anyone.
There had been people there recently. Everything was so clean. Old, and a lot of it really worn down, but there were clear signs of recent restoration. There wouldn't be lit torches and bowls if nobody had been there recently. Where had they gone? Were they all out to lunch?
Even after years on her own, she couldn't maintain the same level of happiness about finding people for hours on end when there were no people.
Her smile faded a little.
Was it her? Was she the reason nobody was showing themselves? She'd been so excited to find an actual building, it hadn't occurred to her that she might scare them, and so she'd charged right in with her klein field at maximum so she could cut through the forest. And that… Mom had told her that she shouldn't, shouldn't…
She couldn't remember. But she wasn't supposed to use it where there might be people. She'd forgotten, and… now there was a thin thread of guilt sneaking its way through her stomach and spoiling her mood entirely.
Sagging down further, she trailed her finger over the solid base of the statue. There was a thin layer of dust, but not like it had been abandoned; more like it hadn't been cleaned for a day or two. People had been here, and now they weren't.
This sucked.
"Is anyone there?" She shouted, not expecting an answer. Then, operating off a cringe-worthy memory that she wasn't quite sure was real, but which matched a little too well with the other one, she added: "I'll be careful! I promise I won't hurt you!"
Hana felt her stomach twist in a knot as soon as those words left her mouth. If they weren't afraid her her before, they sure would be after hearing that. It sounded so suspicious! All the bad people in her games and stories always denied exactly what they were doing, so the audience would know what they were doing. Though, that didn't apply to real life, now that she was older and could tell that that didn't make sense.
'Maybe I'm thinking too hard…'
Dad had always said…
She scowled, barely noticing as the corridor flickered around her. No, that didn't sound right. Dad didn't say very much, he wasn't the type to think very deeply, but he'd never told her to be anyone but herself. Sometimes, he just had opinions on what 'being herself' meant. He'd told Mom she could be better, that she was better, because that's the sort of person he was.
It was that friend of his, the one who'd told her to be like Dad and not think so hard. Who was it, again? The dumb blond guy, or the dumb white-haired guy? Dad had told her they were dumb, and their advice was dumb, and then he'd frowned. She hadn't been sure, but… Mom agreed, so they were probably right.
No, Dad had always told her that trying to be perfect would only stop her from being good enough. She wasn't sure how that applied to this situation, but she told herself it was important enough to remember. And… she remembered.
Her scowl turned into a weak smile again, because she'd remembered. She wasn't sure if it was the situation, or time, or just luck, but she'd just remembered a little more of her life. The older she got, the more little bits she recovered of her life with her parents, and her family. And the more she missed them, not like an amnesiac child, but knowing what she'd lost.
She abruptly jumped to her feet, scanning the area again. Not because she thought anyone would be there, just because she didn't want to dwell on that thought.
…
There was someone there.
— — —
Shu-Qi watched the gynoid watching him, nervousness only dampened by the knowledge that she could not, under any circumstances, actually hurt him. Despite appearances, he was actually hundreds of meters away in a different wing of the building entirely.
The Mimic suit was how he could nevertheless appear to be in the same room as them. It was a remote-controlled sea of nanites in the exact shape of his own body, which felt exactly like standing there himself would have. This was the result of hundreds of years of research, the eventual life's work of tens of thousands of Chozo, and advanced beyond the wildest fever dreams of the younger races.
Which was another way of saying that it was just like anything else the current-day Chozo could put together, based on half-understood research reports and technologies from a civilization that no longer existed. Self-hosted nanofabrication ensured that their technology wouldn't be lost, so long as it could be distilled into a blueprint for those fabricators, but at the same time there were far too few Chozo in existence for any of them to focus on understanding any single device. They were all renaissance men, knowing a little about everything, purely out of necessity.
As far as Shu-Qi knew, the Mimic suit was something Alba had thrown together based on an old VR gaming system, a hazardous-situation nanoform remote waldo, and a phased-array full-spectrum cloaking system. The systems didn't work perfectly together.
He hoped that was why the gynoid had seen through it, and not because her sensors were better than the Chozo's cloak. It was scant consolation that she had taken several minutes to do so. She'd actually frozen in place for most of that time, giving him the opportunity to observe her closely, which was how he knew she was a gynoid—human sexual dimorphism included hair length and some elements of facial structure, he was pretty sure, and the xenologists in their group concurred.
"So?"
Part of him kept track on the other researchers' conversation, far away from here. The rest focused on the gynoid, whose expressions were startlingly evocative. Even he, who hadn't made a particular study of humanity, could tell that she had been put dramatically off balance by his appearance.
"It looks startled. I would say 'afraid', but the body language isn't right; humans, especially children, would instinctively protect the vitals of their body in dangerous situations. That would be the lower torso and the face, mainly. The android isn't making any attempt to do so; of course, it's anyone's guess to what degree human instincts apply to this entity."
The speaker likely hadn't seen his HUD light up with anomalous-gravity warnings, but that was as a flicker that just as quickly faded.
"Do not be afraid. I mean you no harm."
The girl, once he spoke, gasped and hid halfway behind the leg of the statue. She observed him with one eye, wide with fright yet also brimming with the easily-recognized boundless curiosity of a child.
"That is a more classic fear response. Did its programming need to adjust to an unforeseen variable? Expecting to see a human, it didn't know what the right behavior was. Hmm..."
More likely, she was simply confused as to whether she should see him as a threat. She'd most certainly thought about shielding herself upon first seeing him. He supposed he would have to gently coax her out. Maybe she was programmed to pretend to enjoy sweets, though he hadn't considered the idea of bait before leaving to— the gynoid blinked her one visible eye, looked down slightly with a distant focus, then squeezed it shut.
His HUD flashed at him, but the warning period was far too brief. Had he been armed, he wouldn't have been able to draw his weapon. The machine outpaced him physically in every way, leaving him defenseless in the face of its assault. There was a blur of brown and purple, barely perceptible to his mortal senses. A weight slammed into his chest, hurtling him back with all the force of a high-velocity... bag of feathers.
For a time, what was happening was lost to him. The gynoid had hurled herself at him, and suddenly he was on his back? Momentarily, he wondered if she had noticed that the Mimic was a synthetic body, and had forced a disconnect. Being severed from VR too suddenly was known to be disorienting.
But no, when he opened his eyes, he could see the ceiling of the corridor which he'd only just been standing in.
Ignoring the panicked shouting coming over the line, he took a moment to process the situation. His HUD warned him of extreme proximity to a weak radiation source bearing all hallmarks of the Poison. It had been two years since he'd last seen those same warnings…
Shu-Qi was having some difficulty connecting that warning with the trembling being clutching him with what he could only describe as desperation.
Deciding that staying unresponsive for much longer would cause the gynoid to grow suspicious, he summoned up a bit of long-forgotten fatherly instinct and gently patted her on the back. She flinched at the contact and froze for a moment. Then, in a most perplexing way, she shoved her face into his chest and let out a low whine.
Whatsoever could have been the reason for that?
———————————
She'd gotten too excited. Way too excited. That wasn't how first contact was supposed to go! She was supposed to be all "I come in peace! Take me to your leader!" Then she needed to bow, give him a gift and have tea, or something like that. Except she didn't have any tea, and she couldn't taste anything so even if she had something to make tea out of it would probably taste really bad. She could, maybe, have used a cup of water.
Hana had wanted so badly to meet another person that the moment she told herself to stop being scared and greet the bird man, she… well, that had happened. She wasn't proud of it, but at least it sort of worked out okay? He didn't get angry and peck her eyes, or claw her face, as birds tended to when she tried too hard to be friendly with them. He was actually really nice. She didn't understand anything he said, and he didn't understand her, but she could tell he was trying to be comforting.
It almost didn't feel real to her, finally meeting someone she could maybe, eventually talk to. What if he wasn't even real, and she was frozen up in another fugue? Hana knew it was silly, but if she let go, she feared he'd vanish and leave her alone again.
When he picked her up, she knew it wouldn't happen. Her body trembled like a leaf, waves of warmth chasing each other around. It was real. It was all real.
Shoving the bad thoughts out of the way, she made herself relax as best she could.
The bird man carried her through the building, seeming to know pretty well where he was going. He made the place feel a lot smaller with the ease with which he navigated, crossing in a few minutes a distance that had taken Hana, who knew she was easily distracted, several hours to cross on her own.
After a while they stopped in front of that statue she'd been climbing all over before; the one sitting in front of a sun in a meditating pose. The bird man put Hana down and pointed in the way adults always did when they wanted her to stay put. He turned around and then started pressing the "flames" of the sun in a sequence. Hana's eyes nearly bugged out as she realized what he was doing. There was a sudden whoosh, rather than a rumbling of grinding stone, and a wall lifted up to reveal a hidden passage.
"It's a secret door! Oh my gosh! That's so cool!"
She should have pushed everything!
This corridor was metal rather than stone like everything else. It looked really high-tech, which sent Hana's excitement through the roof. She rushed past her new friend, eager to see all the cool things inside. Then she skidded to a halt, remembering this was really rude. She couldn't just barge in! Hana quickly turned around, grabbed his clawed hand and yanked him along, trying to make him hurry up.
"Show me show me show me show me!" she asked while bouncing up and down, forgetting he couldn't understand her. He got pretty flustered and protested, but huffed and picked up his pace. She giggled, thinking that sounded a bit like Dad, but the bird man was way too old for that comparison. He was more like she imagined a grandpa would be like. She didn't have a grandpa… did she?
As soon as she thought that thought, she started telling herself not to follow it, because she knew what would happen. It was no use. Of course it wasn't, and she'd known it wasn't. It was just like that game, 'Don't think of the fuzzy, huggable, adorably terrifying Nyo.'
She froze, her body staying upright on autopilot.
This wasn't like her earliest fugues. Hana could still tell what was going on around her, even as part of her shut down trying to fix a memory that probably didn't even exist. She could feel the bird man initially trying to haul her onwards, then holding her shoulder with the arm that wasn't locked in her death grip. He was probably looking into her vacant eyes. She had to be scaring him. She didn't want to do that.
The reason she could still think at all was—probably—
Panicking a little bit, she interrupted her defences before they could kick into high gear and show her what they'd do to someone partially inside the trillion-gees-per-millimeter gravity shear of her full-power Klein field.
She wobbled between unconsciousness and nightmare.
'Stop—'
If she could have left out a sigh of relief, she would have. Her generators were thoroughly frozen, the worst that could happen now was she'd run out of capacitor power and do a hard reboot, but that was nowhere near as bad as spaghettifying the first (friendly? Any!) person she'd met in years. Large parts of her mental model were, similarly, frozen, but not all of her. She could still think. She could still…
'What is this thing doing?'
The frozen bits included pretty much all of her memories, so she didn't feel sure about anything anymore, but she could still see what it was trying to do. A lot of her memories were missing, or extrapolations built on extrapolations and then rebuilt whenever she noticed inconsistencies, but that shouldn't take seconds. The reason it did was that… before extrapolating, it poked a black box of some sort, which never responded…
Her coding was particularly strange there, and she worried that she'd misunderstood, but it seemed to just be timing out. So—
No. Wait. She'd promised not to do this. She'd promised Mom not to do this, and she still remembered why. She was a ten-year-old, poking at things she didn't understand. This was one of the few ways she could seriously hurt herself.
But she'd nearly killed someone.
'Please…'
She wanted to bite her nails, and she couldn't even do that. If she shut down those calls… she didn't know what would happen, and it might be important. It looked important. But if she didn't, then the next time this happened, she might not catch it in time. But she wasn't supposed to change anything.
'Anyone…'
Wasn't there a third option?
The 'box' finally responded to one of the queries. Not usefully, just with an error message—'RPC error, structural failure'?—but it was something. It wasn't completely dead. If she… no, there wasn't any physical damage, she'd know, and it looked like an I/O interface. Maybe it was just… jammed. Maybe, if she just hit the reset button…
…
[Synchronizing…]
…
<DDW <-> DHW aux channel established. Structural damage detected. SHS initialization failed.>
…pure optimism, really, except that now it was producing errors in a consistent and timely manner, and… that's how Sasha had put it, and her sister's best friend had claimed it was better that way, and she'd thought that was silly, and it totally wasn't! She hadn't paid much attention, though. She'd been too busy playing a game.
It might be a good thing that her body was still frozen, because if it hadn't been, she'd have broken into a wholly inexplicable grin. She'd gone through a dozen microseizures just remembering that scene, and none of them would have lasted long enough to be noticed. She wanted to hug the bird-man again, and spin in a circle.
She didn't, of course, waiting until she'd gotten herself a little more under control before she let herself unfreeze. The whole episode had taken less than a second. Calming down? That took a lot longer.
When she finally did, she quickly turned aside and pretended to study a portrait on the wall.
She didn't think he bought it, but suddenly she felt embarrassed and guilty about it all. She hadn't wanted him to see her like this.
— — — — — — —
Shu-Qi let the gynoid into the conference room.
Despite knowing that it wasn't truly human, he'd felt concern when it froze up in the middle of walking. That, however, was at least partially because it meant the gynoid was degrading. That it had hung on this long despite being made of the Poison was astonishing, but they couldn't expect it to survive for very much longer. Any course of research taking more than a year had to be excluded.
In a way that was a relief. It acted so much like a real child that he'd found himself rapidly losing touch with the fact that it wasn't. He couldn't allow himself to become attached.
He still let out a cluck of laughter, however, when it attempted to charge the other Chozo researchers and ran straight into the holographic conference room's central wall.
— — — — — — —
Her eyes had lied to her.
Poking the air in front of her, and scowling when the supposed 'air' turned out to be an extremely smooth, transparent wall, she considered the problem. One birdman, next to her; two dozen others, sitting only a few meters away from her. Her sonar was no help, claiming that the place they were sitting was actually solid rock. This was clearly a very tough wall. She supposed she couldn't complain, given she'd nearly killed one of them already, but she was a little sad she wouldn't be able to touch anyone.
She made herself back away, then bowed deeply. This was a solemn occasion, she knew; the first meeting between humans and aliens. Real aliens, not like the fairies from some of Turnip's stories, or the Teru. Her first reaction shouldn't have been to run up and try to hug each and every one of them.
But looking at all the people who were there to meet her, and seeing all the different colors and sizes and shapes, she felt a sudden burst of mirth bubbling up inside. She covered her mouth and snickered, drawing all sorts of looks, then guiltily looked away. No. Bad Hana!
When she saw some of them raise the feathers on their heads and look at her sideways, she couldn't contain herself anymore. Her cheeks puffed as she tried to hold it in, which worked—for about two seconds—then she burst into laughter. She felt even worse when that made some of them jump, but she couldn't help it, she was in stitches.
It was just too funny. She'd been so caught up in excitement, wonder, fear and joy that she hadn't seen the humor in the situation until now.
She had been saved by, of all things, birds.
Mom loved birds.
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Dreitus
Oh, Canada!
You're not alone
Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
I spent a lot of this chapter optimising for cuteness.
Just like Hana's creators.
Highwind
To Rise From The Ashes
- Location
- Brazil
This chapter filled me with the warmest and fuzziest feelings. Hana finally has some company! And the Bird-people are in for one hell of an experience, dealing with an hyperactive, hyper-smart and curious ten-year-old girl who can also fly.
guy bird bird-guy is going to b the grumpy bird who is going to try to convince everyone she is dangerous (which she is, just not intentionally dangerous to them). And They're going to be really surprising because despite what Shu-Qi thinks, Hana herself has stated she is actually getting better as time goes by.
Granted, Hana isn't exactly a reliable narrator, but she certainly knows more about her systems than Shu-Qi does.
Well, Shu-Qi is certainly going to get attached to Hana, and that Kohinoor
Granted, Hana isn't exactly a reliable narrator, but she certainly knows more about her systems than Shu-Qi does.
It doesn't really surprise me Mir put a lot of effort in making sure her daughter would be extra cute and adorable, actually.
Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
I was thinking of the original Sol Ciel scientists, because name one Reyvateil who doesn't come off this way? I don't think being younger makes Hana any less of a danger to the human spirit, either.It doesn't really surprise me Mir put a lot of effort in making sure her daughter would be extra cute and adorable, actually.
Although it's certainly true that Mir wanted only the best for her daughter, their exact relationship is <REDACTED>, and she didn't have that sort of choice.
That just makes Hana's very real cuteness all the more poignant, I suppose.
- Location
- EXA_PICO
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Uh... your co-author is now confused.
Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
You can have hugs too~
There was a short story I read, once, where AIs wiped out humanity through providing them with children which were cuter, less messy, smarter, and all around better than human children, but which weren't otherwise _human_.
Hana sort of fits that description, and sort of doesn't, which is of course true for all Reyvateils. Whatever else she is, though, she's also human.
Twei
I have a face!
- Location
- the land where they write things
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Well, hana is certainly adorable.
So very cute.
...even if I don't understand half of this thread and really need to play/watch through the Ar Tonelico stuff one of these days.
Ginger Maniac
Subject to Gravity
- Location
- Old Blighty
I'm not so sure. So far, it reads like he has some serious reservations but is willing to put them aside out of respect for Shu-Qi as long as Hana isn't a clear and present danger to the lives of all concerned. Wary but hopeful, essentially. I certainly hope that he doesn't get pigeonholed into the role of unreasonable ex-military antagonist, because that would be rather cliché.
Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
Depends. Did you find the <REDACTED>?
- Location
- EXA_PICO
- Pronouns
- He/Him
One of my friends has just done something terrible to me.
She's said the intro chapter doesn't have enough of a hook.
And I agreed with her. The intro is BORING, reads really blandly, and doesn't draw people in.
Anybody who has followed my stuff should know by now what this means.
She's said the intro chapter doesn't have enough of a hook.
And I agreed with her. The intro is BORING, reads really blandly, and doesn't draw people in.
Anybody who has followed my stuff should know by now what this means.
Highwind
To Rise From The Ashes
- Location
- Brazil
I hope he becomes the grumpy grand-uncle who occasionally shares War Stories, personally. It's just that him being that kind of character was the first thing my Trope Senses predicted, and I'll admit they aren't quite as sharp as they used to be.
So, should we prepare for the thread to be renamed 'Song in the Fog: Da Capo al Coda'?
- Location
- EXA_PICO
- Pronouns
- He/Him
If I understood what that meant, maybe?
Sorry, bad music joke on my part.
D. C. al Coda means to go back to the beginning of a piece and play like normal until you hit a Coda symbol, and then skip ahead to another Coda symbol later on the piece.
So essentially replaying the intro of piece and skipping ahead when you're done with it.
Edit: how the hell does my autocorrect confuse the word piece with the word doing?
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Dreitus
Oh, Canada!
Are you sure it's not an artifact of the serial format?
Twei
I have a face!
- Location
- the land where they write things
- Pronouns
- They/Them
nah, I was just thinking about pestering you for other things
But that'd be rood!
Mizu
Software Developer
- Location
- Victoria, Australia
Had alarms not been going off
This was really sweet, Einsig. Seems that the bird-folk and Hana are both at a loss when it comes to dealing with one another, and I'm now wondering what's up with Hana's mental black box really badly. What would happen if she did shut down the connections to it, I wonder?
- Location
- EXA_PICO
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Thank you.
Just a bit of advice for how you inform authors of mistakes.
Instead of cutting out the extra word, point out the extra word with a strikethrough, or some other highlight. Otherwise, I will stare at your correction for half a minute in confusion wondering what it is you're trying to tell me is wrong.
The human brain automatically sifts out words repeating twice, so I can't even see the error until I've looked at it several times.
Mandabar
Waifu of choice is Rem. Give that girl some hugs!
- Location
- Florida, USA [Yes. Florida *FacePalm*]
YAY AN UPDATE! This chapter was sheer gold. I've been waiting so long to see this happen. And it ended sooo soon. I was just about sated when it ended. I must have more Hana and people interaction even if they are birds. I hope she does some surprising (Poison doesn't work that way!?!) bullshit soon!
I am a bit confused on the timeline of this Hana incident and the Phazon/Poison world tornado happening at the same time with Samus. I could've sworn Hana was going to meet Samus first and help fix that issue or something. Now I'm wondering if they are even on the same world.
Well I can't wait for another chapter, and I disagree with your friend about the first chapter! No discouragement! Carry on! <3
I am a bit confused on the timeline of this Hana incident and the Phazon/Poison world tornado happening at the same time with Samus. I could've sworn Hana was going to meet Samus first and help fix that issue or something. Now I'm wondering if they are even on the same world.
Well I can't wait for another chapter, and I disagree with your friend about the first chapter! No discouragement! Carry on! <3