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The bulkheads of the
MS Sally Lue were once a stock standard grey. But years of only minimal cleaning and significant graffitiing had left them in a state of ore black and brown with splashes of violent or faded color. Depending on when some inspired crew member had felt the need to express artistic creatively. The Old Bear often would roar about the state of the ship but, eh, Aiko figured he must secretly like it. Why else would he bother to not crack down on it? She stepped back to behold her most recent decoration. Looking it up and down to make sure she hadn't missed some detail or left a part unfilled.
"Gotta say," chimed a voice, "that looks absolutely garish, Ai."
A healthy and bright smile spread across Aiko's face as she turned to greet Mysha with her dirty blonde hair and crooked smile. Always claimed that she was truly pure blonde but that all the work had stained it. "What? You can do better?"
"What even is it?"
"A bird."
"Wow," Mysha rolled her eyes, "going for the psychedelic look or just drunk?"
The image was certainly avian in look but was oddly circular. Black center with a radiating rainbow of colors all around its edges. Yet these edges were rounded all over. Crisscrossing circles that gave the painting its odd shape. Spreading up and around the hall. Even under the grated walkway the two stood on. Aiko wondered how she had painted down there, then casually threw the thought away. Not important. She scratched her neck as she replied, "something like that, yeah."
"Hideous!"
"You paint then if you're so blessed!"
"You would think that." Mysha's voice suddenly went flat.
What? Aiko thought. Mysha picked up the cannister of spray paint. Aiko suddenly realized that it was the only can, a matte black. Where had the other colors come from? Her friend began spraying a large circle on some specific section of the wall. Covering over part of the colored bird…thing Aiko had made. She tried to lean back to watch. Tried, because as soon as she got close, a soft metal clank reached her ears.
Wha… Aiko began again in her head. Twisting her neck as much as she could, she could just make out some metal bulge on her back. Silver and reflectively dull. Spread like some plaster over a good bit of her pristine suit. Pristine? Her miner suit had been stuffed into her arms dirty on her first day aboard the
Sally Lue. When had she cleaned it?
"I wonder," Aiko's head flicked back to the sound of Mysha's voice, "if you could have saved some of us. If you had maybe tried. For once."
Mysha looked wrong. All wrong. Her face was bulging, bubbling, and breaking apart. Yet freezing and hardening in what seemed to be the same breath. Depressurization! They had to…Aiko had to get her…Aiko was rooted to the spot and could not even strangle a whisper.
"You know?" Mysha finished her circle. Looked back at her friend with already dead eyes. Then the bulkhead blew out, right on the sprayed line. Mysha went with it. The miner suit saved Aiko's life. Automatically. Without need of either desire or thought to do so. Rooting her feet to the corridor. A sudden impact of metal sealed the breech and Aiko was running. Running without thought or heed as the avian circled and swooped. Divided and spread. Plastering all around her. The alarms were blaring, screaming about imminent impact. Blazing heat was searing throughout the doomed vessel. With a grinding screech of metal, Aiko was hurled into the wall and knew no more.
Yet the blackout lasted only a moment. The silver was plastered all over her bits of body. Pain from a million injuries lanced through her body for a moment until a sudden shock in her head eliminated all of it. Aiko tried to stand but flopped to the ground on still broken legs. Numbly she looked herself over. Aiko's body was a disjointed mess. Broken and splintered in numerous jagged directions. This, too, did not last long. Still without pain, her new suit snapped the bones back into their rightful position. Holding them together. Standing up, Aiko took stock of her surroundings. She was not on the
Sally Lue. It wasn't anywhere in sight.
The world around her towered in tight domes that dwarfed her and yet crushed her. Spiraling stairs and passages looped up and around and through every inconceivable way. Shadows dripped across flickering silver-grey monolithic walls. It was difficult to make anything out for certain as it all seemed to shift. Phase. Then, suddenly, sliding across the wall, the blasted bird came back. Dominant, powerful. Pushing aside all shadow and flowing over every structure. Aiko felt the same old…old? She knew this fear. It had plagued her nightmares time and time again. Why couldn't she remember? Yet Aiko knew she had run. Always ran away. It gnawed at her still. Sapping at her. However, in her dark hours of brooding and wandering the ship, Aiko had realized something. She was sick. Of a lot of things. Running most of all. She would not run. Not here. Not now.
Not this time!
With a roar that was a mouse's mewl in the cavernous colosseum she launched forward. Immediately a gaping hole opened before her and the went crashing down a set of stairs that sent her to the ceiling. Recovering, she rushed back up and up and up around a pillar that seemed to gradually arch towards the avian being with colors waving off it. The next round of the bend saw her running upside down on a bridge. Fury and fear wove a potent concoction of uncertain determination that drove her ferally on. And with each time she sought to draw nearer, the thing seemed no closer. With each bend, Aiko lost sight of the creature, only to bring it back anew. Greater and more terrible to behold. A growing monolith. A Mount Fang. A sheer cunning mind that perceived its surroundings with a casual lack of effort.
Daunted, Aiko ran on without heed. Snarling, Aiko decided that if this expanse wasn't going to play to her, she'd go around it. Vaulting the balcony, she launched towards the being. Immediately, gravity seemed to pull her towards the roof. With a shriek, she plummeted through and erupted out of the ground before gravity decided to right up and down and, with a crash, she slammed into soft grass.
Aiko rushed to her feet. The universe seemed to open up before her as the pantheon of stars was slowly overcome by the encroaching forest. Small towers scattered before her on the ground as blossoms bloomed and bore fruit upon the trees. All around her, the avians watched from their brightly decorated towers while silver automatons toiled at soulless labor. Aiko's own tower seemed dull in comparison. Oozing shadows that touched and smeared over the once-upon-a-time miner as the sheer brilliance of the beings burned into her eyes. But she would not run. Her knees knocked. One approached. She wouldn't run away. Sweat streaked down her face. It reached its beak out towards her. She'd stand her ground. Shaking and shivering all over. Silvery metal formed on it as if to give some form to its shape in Aiko's mind. Gods how she wanted to run! Her breath ran in ragged gasps! Its beak touched her forehead.
Aiko drew a deep breath. Its voice was song. Powerful and overwhelming. Aiko knew this way of speaking. She knew how it spoke. And this knowledge immediately brought her comprehension. Fed into her soul, translated by machine, and produced into results someone else could comprehend. Aiko now knew where to go. Her mind breathed of life and beauty. Of sculpted groves and blossoming fields. Of endless sky and ranges of stars. Of towering machines and manufactorums of ceaseless production. Of death, the first horror, to die upon this material plain and have one's existence possibly even expunged from the entire cosmos inflicted upon her damaged mind a rending shriek that brought tears of blood to her eyes. And it was below these tombs lay the first secret. But birds were buried in the aeries that they lived. Yet, Aiko's mind was dragged down, down, through halls as brilliantly painted and thrumming with machine life as above. Into corridors and storerooms unpainted silver. Here the reaper waited. To fly, Aiko must return. It was time to return. The ooze finally blocked over her eyes and all went mercifully black.
Wasn't it time to stop running?
With a shriek, Aiko awoke in smooth darkness. She panicked for a moment, swinging about, before remembering where she was. Softly safe in her armored shell in her room. Which was almost surprising. Apparently, the suit hadn't felt the need to sleepwalk this time. Aiko struggled to control her breathing and silently brought light into her abode. The black birds radiating color were all around her. A scream and an eldritch curse sent her propelling out of her pod, several meters above the ground. Before she hit it, though, her suit deftly and gently caught her. Shifting from the ceiling to the ground. Holding her on a slab of molding silver. No excess of black or color anywhere.
A string of inexplicable swear words spilled from her lips and mind. Aiko didn't even realize that it wasn't her human native tongue. Her mind was drained. Spirit: sapped. Emotions: shot. Skull: pounding. Body: fatigued. It was as if every part of her body had been pumped with a cocktail of drugs and then violently bounced around a metal cube without padding. Her stomach roiled and she tried, and failed, to throw up. Cleaned up before it even left her mouth.
Hells, it's getting good at that, Aiko thought.
She reflected she should get as much information on human biology as possible. She'd need it. Regi would be the go-to source. Aiko groaned again. Curling up on her bed. Slab. Platform. Thingy. She just couldn't deal with this at the moment, but she
had to deal with it anyway. Forcing herself to her feet, she made her way over to the room's terminal. Technically not needed to speak to the ship's AI, but that was how Aiko played the game of business from her room and dang it she'd stick with it until the end. Punching her login in, this is what she transmitted from Eve's perspective.
Aiko: Eve.
Eve: Takeda-san. How can I help you today?
Aiko: Grimbokctok advel. Advel Harli khadna.
Eve: Takeda-san, what is this?
Aiko:
Grimbokctok advel. Advel Harli khadna.
Eve: Aiko, is this another game? Official channels are for official business! You agreed!
Aiko: …
Eve: Aiko? Takeda-san? Wait, Harli? New Harli? What about her?
Aiko: *channel closed*
Aiko paused to think. Try to think. Eve was probably attempting to watch her now. Might even be informing sweet Gabi or the Meadowlark of her newfound lack of Imperial Common. Greeaaat. So needed right now. She really hoped it would come back before she had to talk to anyone else. But she also knew that they needed to get going. Now. Yesterday, really. There was an urgency in her mind that just wouldn't let up. It was the only reason why she wasn't curled up in a ball in the corner. Nothing for it. Forcing her silver laced fingers…silver laced? That hadn't happened in a while. Forcing them to move she manually contacted the Head of Navigations. Her face popped up on the screen an instant later. Aiko didn't waste time on any pleasantries.
What she said was, "Kevix tol corda. Ach ach i. Ach ach kev. Tol ach ach ven. Advel Gabbi brix kem!"
What she typed to Harli was, fortunately, far more legible, "Galactic coordinates follow. 331. 336. 7339. Tell Gabi 'all haste'!"
Aiko repeated the message three times and then immediately closed the channel. She really,
really didn't want to talk right now. Sliding out of the chair, she crawled back onto her slab and curled up with a groan. Aiko focused on the pain. A distraction might have been welcome but every time she turned her mind away from that, it began wandering back to her dream. And that was the absolute last thing she wanted to think about right now.