Remnants of the Earth
SPACE STATIONS => The Cancer => Topic started by: Daglobster on November 18, 2019, 12:05:23 am
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Torien's vision whipped about as he felt his back slam the steel and concrete barrier that surrounded the ten foot diameter circle that made up the center ring of Cancer's Stern Club, something of a hangout for pirates and gangers who'd made it big enough to enjoy some of the finest pleasures in life. He didn't know much else about the place other than it was run by goblins, didn't really have time to ask.
His opponent stepped back and slammed him against the wall again, and he could feel the studs digging through his flesh, but none of the hot pain or running warmth of his streaming blood, just faint echoes of it.
"Come on, kill him!" came the brute's manager, and someone from the crowd above threw down an empty beer bottle in protest, which shattered on the arena floor. Torien yelled and slammed his spiked elbow into his opponents back, and when the man reared up he balled up one of his cybernetic hands until he could feel the joints creaked and his knuckle studs stick out. The sound of metal on metal announced the blow and the assailant staggered back into the spotlights.
The man had metallic studs on his head and a massive, cybernetic jaw. He swayed a bit on his enhanced legs but came rocketing back in, swinging the circular saw that used to be his left hand. Torien just barely stepped back in time to feel it skim across his chest, slicing the skin but revealing gleaming metal beneath it.
Cut down to the bone, damn near, and he didn't feel a lick of it, just the cold air against his now exposed flesh. He sprung right in before his opponent could recover, rocketing another punch into his side while he cocked the other back. Mechanisms clicked and reverse-oriented spurs came out of the sides of his forearms and when his opponent came in for a backswing his adrenaline spiked and his accelerated reflexes kicked online.
The crowd watched as he flowed around his opponent's strike and swung an arm to catch him in the face with the spurs. Face bloodied and gouged, the man stumbled to the side, and Torien grabbed him by one of his metal studs and gave him an uppercut. He pulled him back down and when the man grabbed at his arms to try and free himself, Torien rooted himself to the spot and slammed his plated knee into his face.
The man fell back, catching himself on the wide mesh but otherwise barely able to stand.
Everyone cheered, and when Torien looked up to see what his handler's instructions were, he found him absent. Looking back down to the man he was fighting, he took a moment to study the look in his eye before he raised an arm and punched him square in the face, finally knocking him out.
The crowd peaked and a scratchy voice came fromthe speakers above.
"An' DAT'S IT folks! Chrome Warrior takes tha brackets! I 'aven't seen an upset like this since the days'a Skinner Pete!"
There was more, of course, but the promise of being able to leave that small pit took up his full attention. He tuned out the crowd and announcer as the floor lowered and he was delivered to the "backstage" spaces, so to speak.
Stern Club was a brand new venue for him, so he was thankful for the two armed goblins who took him to the arena's chop shop, half engineering bay and triage ward. The place smelled like gas fumes and blood but he couldn't complain about the treatment.
The doctor, a scraggy hobgoblin who definitely didn't have a medical degree, made it a point to confirm his augmentations with him, a process that took a while as there wasn't quite much of him left after he'd been augmented.
Most of his body was either enhanced or replaced (89%, by his last measurement), and while he was proud to show off his chrome beneath the knees and past the elbows (as that where most of his weaponry was anyways) the rest was covered in living tissue that gave the appearance of life, save for his head which sported two lines of exposed chrome that outlined his squat mohawk and framed his synthetic eyes. And then he had to point out the pain regulator in his brainstem, how that system was wired all the way down to the spine and integrated with his adrenal booster and delimiting device.
Upon spotting the delimiter, the "doctor" raised an eyebrow, but when you worked in illegal bloodsports it was more of a curiosity than anything else.
Anyways, he was just grateful for a synthskin regrowth treatment and the free morphine, and even though he looked pretty grievously wounded it was mostly his "outer layer", so he wasn't worried. And with the bandages and grafts done, he just kind of looked like a recently wounded warrior.
What did have him worried was his handler bursting into the room. Madrissa hadn't owned him for that long a time, she was nearing her fourth week with him, but he'd never seen her as skeeved out as she looked at that very moment. A blur of brown hair and candy red clothing approached them and she shooed the doctor away.
"He's done now, we're leaving," she said, and despite Torien's sour look she quickly pulled him out of the room.
"We got to get out of here. You just won me a fat payout but we've gotta survive to collect it," she said as they started down a hallway. Torien knew better than to question, and he could see the honest terror in her eyes.
"Fucking Anklehackers," she continued.
"They tried to buy you but I ditched them. I got the winnings check though and you won't have to fight for just about two weeks."
She led him down a hallway and started slicing into a door that led into one of the club's storage areas. Another door further down the way opened, and the sound of goblinish syllables being barked out spurred Madrissa to work faster. She got the door opened and motioned him through.
"I'll be back, don't go anywhere. I'll be rich, eh? So I'll treat you right, no reason to run off," she said, and patted the regulator control on her waist with a smirk. Torien wanted to say something but she closed the door and he could hear her making a break for it.
Yeah, he was gonna get out of here. And so he turned about and glanced around this room, which seemed to hold display items that weren't being displayed at the moment, either covered in tarps or locked away behind plasteel walls or cabinets.
So he started down his own way and moved down deeper into the room, hoping to find a vent or some other way out.
-
Darkness. That was alright, she was used to darkness. Honestly, she found she preferred it--her only real, sustained experiences with light tended to involve pain, confusion, or terror. Sometimes all three, on an off day.
That hadn't seemed to change much since she'd been dumped from one dark tank into another. Of course, her new "home" was at least a bit more interesting, at first; she saw new people, new places. The group of street performers who had purchased her off the black market had mostly kept her in a sort of side-show attraction, a dilapidated building with a broken neon sign, if she remembered correctly.
It was getting harder to remember.
The carnival had been her first new tank. From there...well, she honestly wasn't sure. No one ever seemed to really care to tell her where she was, or where she was going when she was inevitably sold off again--she only knew she was being sold because she'd learned to listen in when people would stand beside her tank and speak with those wide, expressive hand gestures. She'd tried doing that herself once or twice, but the only people who really paid attention were the little ones that sometimes came close to gawk at her.
So this darkness was pretty much par for the course, really. She hadn't even bothered to look around her new surroundings once her tank had been dumped into this storage room. At least she assumed it was a storage room--even if she'd wanted to take a look around her view was mostly blocked by stacks of crates or oddly lumpy protrusions covered in some kind of thick fabric.
But then light. Brief and flickering, lasting only a moment or two as it accompanied the sound a door opening and closing. The emergency lighting in the room had flickered on, sickly green, but it was dim enough that she didn't have to squint against it as her eyes adjusted.
Was that...were those footsteps?
Her eyes widened and she instinctively darted to the furthest corner of her tank from the noise, coiling her tail in close to her body and wrapping her arms around herself in an effort to make herself as small and unnoticeable as possible in the greenish, murky water.
...Of course, this effort wasn't helped by the gentle sloshing of liquid against glass caused by her movement. Or by the fact that the emergency lighting wasn't quite enough to obscure the subtle blueish glow of the markings that covered her body.
-
This place was pretty packed with all kinds of empty containers and things covered in tarp. He reckoned this must be a storeroom for stolen things with no real black market value, it figured that the little green monsters would keep it all in one big mess. Torien even pocketed a few things, including a heavy wrench from an open toolkit lying next to a half dismantled machine. As he picked it up he heard what sounded like... sloshing?
He turned about and looked behind him, and his gaze fell upon a tall, cylindrical object covered in the same grey tarp as everything else about halfway down, and the bottom half was mostly darkened, but...
There were some lights on the bottom? He stooped down to get a closer look. Something about the tank must have detected proximity (it seemed like a pretty advanced unit.) and the interior of it lit up just enough to reveal the shape of something curled up on the bottom and away from him. Whatever it was, it was big, as big as him at least and... wait...
were those hands?
-
The creature in the tank pressed back further against the smooth glass behind her, chest starting to rise and fall rapidly as her breathing picked up. It--he?--was getting closer, closer...she was trapped.
She looked around desperately, wincing and gritting her teeth as the markings along her body flared brighter in her distress.
In a sudden burst of movement she uncurled herself from her tiny, protective ball and rocketed toward the top of her tank, slamming against the lid with a dull, metallic thunk. Her tail churned the water below her anxiously, most of her body except for the very end of her tail fins now hidden by the tarp.
She spun wildly, the panic of a trapped prey animal overriding conscious thought. She slammed her hands into the side of the tank, earning another, louder thunk and causing the tarp to shudder delicately as her desperation shook the cylindrical structure.
-
The creature surged and his adrenaline spiked, and what was a lightning fast slam upwards for her, Torien perceived as a slow-motion glide upwards. She was... a lot to take in, or at least Torien thought it looked like a "she", there were a few details that hinted him towards that. But he also knew what terror looked like on someone's face and it was the horrified look in her eyes that caught him off guard and sent him stumbling a step back, chromed limbs clinking against the metal floor panels.
But the moment passed and as the edge wore off he saw the container continue to slam. Suddenly remembering the guards from before, he advanced back up to the glass and laid a hand on it, cool metal resting against the glass.
"Hey, hey," he said, wincing through the pain of talking. Ever since he'd been put back together his voice was one thing that never really came back. He'd been rebuilt to fight, either to the death or until someone pitied him enough to free him.
"It's alright, please..." he said, pleading quietly, as raising his voice too high caused stabs of pain. He did his best to try not to look threatening, trying his best to find her face with his sharp green eyes. And now that he'd come closer, she'd be able to see that he was just a young man, barely an adult but with extensive cybernetic reconstruction on the right side of his face. The brow, temple, and lower jaw had the most obvious chrome, but his right eye was also framed with a studded outline that helped shield that eye.
His eyes held the same fear as hers.
Because he'd heard of how the Anklehackers operated, a nasty cartel run by the nastiest little creatures in this arm of the galaxy. If they caught him, he'd die fighting for sure. At least his newest owner made promises, whether she'd keep or not was yet to be seen.
He laid another hand on the bottom of the cylinder, trying to steady it so it didn't slam about as loudly.
"You don't... Need to be scared."
-
She stared at him, chest rising and falling rapidly while the gills along her ribs fluttered as she panted. The blue-green markings that covered her body flared once, then began to dim--she was grateful for it, as she had no conscious control over her bioluminescence.
Though the stranger spoke softly, his voice carried easily to her through the glass, amplified in a strange, echoing sort of way by the water. She winced and flicked her finned ears back against her skull: no one had spoken to her in a long time, and she was unused to the volume of one so close.
Her eyes flickered over him, equal parts suspicious, curious, and terrified. But she stopped banging on the glass, allowing herself to drift back down through the water so her tail curled against the bottom the tank and she rested on the finned coil of scales. She'd never seen anything like him before...
Carefully, as though afraid he could somehow hurt her through the four inches of glass, she raised her own hand to press against the side of the tank, lining her fingers up with his on the other side of the glass. The webbing between her fingers stretched thin, nearly translucent. She tilted her head at him, strange, floating hair twining around her face as though it had a life of its own.
Words. She understood them, could understand most, but she had never...
The creature's throat convulsed as she clearly tried to speak, lips parted to reveal a flash of sharp, serrated teeth. For several moments, nothing happened. No sound. She closed her eyes as though in pain, then clenched her jaw and tried again.
Her throat bobbed and, slowly, she forced out a soft, surprisingly raspy, "Don't...need to...be...scared..."
-
"That's right," he whispered, and he dared to let a rare smile up to the surface as he splayed his fingers just a little wider to match hers. He studied the webbing, followed the line of her arm back to her face, and his eyes widened as he met them through the glass. He hadn't got a very close look at her before but now that she'd slowed, she... she was enchanting.
He could see that the volume of his voice affected her, so he made an effort not to speak too closely to the glass, even pausing to settle more comfortably on one knee. Mechanized joints clicked into place and he leaned his shoulder against the glass to rest against it.
"Sorry, just tired. Cleared a bracket," he said, and managed to widen his smile as he lifted a closed hand to peer at the dents and fresh, rusty stains on his knuckles. Chrome Warrior was a name that actually meant something to him. It was the closest thing he'd ever had to a reputation before the accident, and even though it'd landed him in a reconstruction scheme, well...
"I'm Torien, what's... your name?"
-
The creature stared at him for a long moment, studying. Then she tried to emulate his smile—lips closed, as she had learned quickly that her teeth tended to scare people, and when they were scared they lashed out.
Large, liquid black eyes moved over his form as he sank onto one knee, and she even allowed herself to drift closer to the glass, one hand still pressed against it. She tilted her head when he said “cleared a bracket”, confusion plain on her face despite the inhumanity of it. Now that she’d calmed down a bit, the gills along her ribs began to flutter in a rippling, steady rhythm, revealing flashes of pinkish red flesh beneath the green-scaled skin.
“Tor...orr...ee...in .” Her voice was still low and rasping, and it was clear from her wince that it was painful to speak—either because she’d gone so long without doing so, or because her throat just wasn’t built for it in the same way. Still, she forged on.
Shaking her head at him, she offered another small smile and laid a webbed hand in the center of her chest. “No...name...”
-
"No name?" he echoed, and his eyes fell a bit to hear that. He shifted a bit to better face this mysterious creature, studying her as she floated a little closer. The movement of her gills caught his eye and his eyes glanced over shapes that were familiar at a base level, but...
His eyes kept going downward, following the movement of her tail. He wasn't afraid of her, per se, but... something about her struck him as unnatural.
He put two fingers against his throat and tried to comfort her with a smile.
"Me too. Hurts if I talk too loud," he offered, and he broke his eyes away from her to look around the base of her tank. No name or anything, just a number.
"82641," he added, and he traced one of the stenciled letters.
"It's not a name, but... Six-Four has a good sound to it," he said, looking back up to her.
-
She smiled again for that--not necessarily his shortening of her designated call number, but for the strange spark of kinship that bloomed in her chest when he touched his throat and murmured, "Me too."
She'd never heard that from someone before.
A faint glow pulsed through the markings along her body and she tilted her head the other way, hair swirling through the water around her. "Six...Four," she repeated slowly. Her voice held...some sort of accent, but it was impossible to place. Though still soft, her tone sort of trilled on the "r"s, hissed on "s"s, and lilted its way through the vowels in between, so that "Six-Four" came out sounded a bit more like "See-xa-Fohr".
Again, the markings down her tail glowed blue. She glanced down at herself in a panic and suddenly backpedaled, trying to curl in on herself to cover the light. The light brought attention, and thus far that had never meant anything good.
-
"Hey, hey... it's okay. It's just us here, so you don't have to worry," he continued, and he stood to his feet so he could grip the tarp covering most of the top half of her tank and pull it off. It was like a cross between some kind of medical pod and an aquarium, he'd never seen anything quite like it.
He beckoned up towards himself.
"Seexa doesn't sound too bad either," he offered. He laid both his hands on the glass.
"How long have you been in this tank?"
-
[Omg I'm crying this is so good and soft]
82641...Seexa...til ted her head back to stare up at him with wide eyes. It took her a few moments to seemingly gather her courage, but when she had she carefully unfolded herself from the bottom of the tank and gave a deft flick of her tail to rise through the water so they were once more at eye level with one another.
She laid her hands on the other side of the glass, a mirror to his.
She glanced down at herself, then around at the tank, then back to him. She shrugged, the gesture surprisingly blithe and human. "Always," she murmured, devoid of any real inflection. "Always a tank. Here...the tank...in this place..." She tilted her head back and forth. "Hard to...say? Weeks. Months." She shrugged again.
-
[ X~X it makes my chest hurt]
She came up to the glass and he unabashedly used the opportunity to better get a look at her. He was raised in Libra, hadn’t really seen any sea creatures, let alone a creature like her. He couldn’t help but smile properly now, utterly captivated by the sight of her. It’d give her a glimpse of his teeth, which had been replaced with sharper, polished metal replacements more suited to life in an arena where the combatants often struck with hydraulic force. His expression sobered a little when she’d told him that this tank had been her life, that she’d never seen anything outside of it. A life as a display object, kept in a tank and knowing nothing else.
“Me too,” he finally said again, whispered tone overflowing with sympathy.
“They lied to me. Said they’d fix me, but made me into... this,” he said, and he drew a hand away from the tank so he could show her his arm, and motion down to himself. Then, he clenched his fist, and showed her his reverse-spurs, as well as the two-foot blade that was mounted in that same arm’s wrist. He relaxed, and with a thought it all slid and whirred back into place.
Then, he returned to the glass, putting both hands back onto it. She seemed to really take to that gesture so why not?
“I—“
Some chattering in goblinish syllables was heard through the door, and it sounded like there was people coming up to the door. Torien looked back towards the entrance of the dark storage room, and then back to his new friend with a terrified look on his face.
“Hide,” was the only thing he said, and he made to pick up the tarp to cover her tank again, but the door was already opening. Haphazardly, he threw the tarp over her tank and slinked backwards to hide in the shadows amongst the piles of stuff.
Two Anklehacker gangsters entered the room, both were the shorter variety of goblin but they brandished firearms in the hands and swords on their belts.
“An’ why we’s gotta go lookin in dis heap? Door was locked when we gots here,” One of them growled. The other one cuffed him on the back of the head.
“Then you’s can be the one ta tell Trenk we din’t look in all the hidey spots. Ya want that?”
-
The creature skittered back from the blades he revealed instinctively, eyes going even wider as she just stared at the gleaming metal. She overcame the moment of panic quickly though and cautiously edged forward again, once more mirroring the placement of his hands against the glass.
"I'm...sorry," she whispered, black eyes surprisingly soft and sympathetic for so inhuman a feature. Though she had never left her tank, she had quite a few ideas of who and what the people who shared the galaxy were from all those screens back in the before-place, and she knew that Torien was...changed. Whatever had been done to him, she had a sickening sense of certainty that it must have been painful.
But before either of them could say anything else their attention was drawn sharply toward the door. Seexa--a name, was that a name? She liked it--backpedaled again quickly, already starting to pant as her markings lit up in her sudden panic.
Then Torien had thrown the tarp back over the tank, told her to hide. Hide where? With no better ideas, she propelled herself toward the top of the tank and tried to curl herself against the lid as best she could, long tail coiled and drawn up as tight as she could manage.
But...where was Torien? She couldn't see anything, and she knew the light she emitted could be seen from the revealed base of the tank--she desperately hoped he was hidden from it.
-
The best Torien could do was find somewhere nearby but out of the light. He ducked behind some rubbish and drew the ends of a tarp over himself, hoping he’d just sort of blend in.
“Trenk ain’t shit,” spat the other goblin, leaning his slugthrower on one shoulder while he rubbed the back of his head. “Poor-gob’s Skitzo, s’who he is,” he growled. They walked into the room, beady little eyes peering about. Goblins weren’t the brightest, or bravest, or even the quickest, but their senses missed very little.
Their long, elf-like ears perked up just a smidge, noses taking in the smells of the room. The first goblin nodded at the other’s statement.
“That he is. Loadsa tragic, that was. Never seen da boss look—oy, waitaminute!” Suddenly, the first goblin stopped the other one, and pointed deeper into the room, towards the gently lit tank.
“Someone left somefin on.”
Both goblins glanced at each other, and the second one smiled and cocked his gun, pulling the grip back to rack a fresh shell. They parted from each other, and while the second one went out amongst the various things in the room, the other approached the tank. He didn’t bother looking up immediately, instead searching the base of the tank for a way to turn the lights off, for goblins were more comfortable in the dark.
Unsatisfied that he couldn’t find any buttons, he growled, and gave the bottom of the tank’s glass a hearty kick in his frustration. “Stupid glittertech gubbin!” He snarled.
-
Seexa held her breath--or, sort of. Her upper respiratory system paused while her gills moved in a slower ripple against her sides, only feeding trace amounts of oxygen to her body directly through her bloodstream.
Of course, she had no conscious knowledge of what she was doing. She only knew it was one of the few ways she could exercise any control of her bioluminescence; gradually, the bluish glow slowly began to fade.
Not fast enough.
The goblin kicked the bottom of the tank and she jerked closer to the lid in instinctive, blind panic. Her back thunked against the metal and she winced, stilling quickly. Her markings glowed all the brighter at the sudden motion and she slammed her hands against the lid, drawing her tail up even closer, though she knew it was useless.
Trapped. She was always trapped.
-
The bump from inside and the sudden flare of light sent the goblin skittering backwards a few steps, and he drew his sidearm and aimed it vaguely at the tank, letting out a few snarled curses as his little heart raced in his chest, dagger-like teeth bared and eyes wide.
Torien, who’d been about to move, only ducked lower as the other goblin suddenly turned, ears perked up, and he simply frowned at his fellow criminal.
“What’d ya muck about with now?” He said, and then hopped and clambered over some things to join his compatriot.
“Dere’s something big in dis tank!” The other whispered, and the second shook his head, and walked up and pulled the tarp off with a rather dry look on his face. Both goblins jumped at the sight of her, but the one who’d been initially scared finally found his nerve.
“What is that?” He said, prodding the tank’s glass with the barrel of his slugthrower, and the other shrugged. both goblins just kind of stared up at her like children in a zoo. It only took them a few moments to realize she was stuck in there, and the fear quickly faded. And when goblins weren’t afraid of something, there were only a few other emotions that could replace it.
The one with the sidearm smiled rather lecherously, and the other gave him an odd look.
“What’s with the grin?” He said, and raised a hand to jostle his compatriot, only to get the hand swatted away.
“S’kinda pretty, innit?” he murmured, pointing up at her, and the other groaned.
“It’s a fish, you horny little git. ‘Sides, the only way you’re gettin’ in that tank is by breakin’ that thick skull a’ yours.”
“Ah yeah? This’ll do it,” the other said, brandishing his sidearm and pulling the hammer back. The other was quiet for a few moments, looked back up at Seexa and studied her head to tail, and then looked back down to his friend, who quirked an eyebrow at him.
“Well, it beats lookin’ for a deadly cyborg,” he finally conceded, and then shoved his larger-calibre slugthrower into his friend’s hands. “Use dis instead.”
The goblin chattered excitedly, and he aimed the slugthrower at the tank. His grubby little finger almost squeezed down on the trigger but a shadow rose from the darkness behind him. Torien lunged in from the darkness and used that heavy wrench he’d found before to club the little green menace upside the head. He fell to the side, aim going wide as the slugthrower fired right up into the cieling.
-
Seexa panicked.
The moment the tarp was pulled away she threw herself back against the far wall of the tank, wide eyed and panting as she stared back at the diminutive creatures peering at her through the glass. She could understand them, mostly, but she was still confused as to what exactly they were talking about, why one said something about getting into the tank—
At least until the gun was exchanged. Then she realized all too quickly what they were trying to do.
A sharp, rasping sort of cry echoed through the water as she threw herself against the lid of the tank again, tail churning frantically in the water beneath her. She was convinced the glass was about to shatter and would send her sprawling, helpless, across the floor. A literal fish out of water.
The whole tank shook with the force with which she threw herself against the sides.
But then—it didn’t happen. Torien was there, standing over an unconscious goblin, and the gunshot echoed painfully loud around the room as the slug hit the ceiling. Seexa winced and cried out again, though this time it was fear for the cyborg as much as herself. She pressed both hands to the side of the tank, looking out at Torien with wide eyes, shaking her head desperately.
But there was nothing she could do, except watch through the glass.
-
The gunshot was already much too loud, and Torien needed to make this quick. The remaining goblin drew a large knife and barreled towards him, even as the other sort of squirmed and turned about on the ground, not quite unconscious but not all there either.
The little greenskin lept up and Torien raised an arm between the two of them, managing to grab the goblin by the shirt but not before the creature gouged him in the shoulder, knife piercing through his flesh until it hit the metal underneath and bent, getting stuck inside him.
Torien whipped his head forwards to headbutt the goblin and the loud metallic thud rang out through the room. The goblin spat some of his teeth back at Torien and he finally managed to tear the thing away from himself. It made to scramble to the side and reach for its gun, but he managed to catch it by the nape of its armor and he clubbed it on the head as well. It went down, and he stood over it, breathing, and dropped the wrench.
Shit. Shit shit shit. Somebody heard that gunshot, there was no way it went unnoticed.
“They’re gonna come for me,” he said, leaning the shoulder with no knife in it against the tank to look at her.
“I gotta... we...”
He started to look around. The room wasn’t so massive, and he could see that it connected to other areas. Including... a door to a loading hangar!
He put both his hands on the glass, once more speaking to her.
“I gotta get out of here, but... hold on, I’ll be back,” he said, and he started off towards the door.
“I’ll be right back, I promise!”
-
The creature in the tank shrieked again, though this time she managed to clap her hands over her mouth to partially stifle the noise as she skittered back, then began frantically dashing from one side of the relatively small space to the other, pounding uselessly on the glass.
She just wanted to help!
And then it was over. Both goblins on the ground, Torien leaning heavily against the tank--he was hurt, badly. She could smell blood.
Her lips parted in another cry, though this one was nearly soundless as she pressed close to the glass and almost seemed to be trying to reach for him, useless as the gesture was. "N-no..."
He was already moving. Clenching her eyes shut, Seexa raised her voice as loud as she could and shouted through the pain in her throat, "Don't...come back! Run!"
It didn't matter how badly she wished he could stay; more than that, she wished that the one person who had shown her even a shred of kindness since...since as long as she could remember would just be safe.
-
Torien barely felt the knife in his shoulder, but as he stumbled into the loading hangar he still took the time to pull it out, looking at the bent tip for a moment before he discarded it into his side. He paid no mind to the bleeding, knowing he was fine. The knife hadn't even made it through the first layer of plating beneath his flesh, but...
well, his new friend didn't know how sturdy he was.
He pushed past those heartbreaking cries to not come back. Oh, he knew that coming back was a very bad idea, but with just a bit of luck... there!
Parked near one of the hangar's force-fields there was a dingy, neglected looking scavenger vessel, looking a little rusty and scratch-built, but fuck it. It looked big enough for his purposes.
It was a way out. Not just for him, though. If he left that creature alone in that storage room, the Anklehackers would definitely have her at their mercy. It was almost his fault, really, that she'd been rediscovered in a sparsely traveled part of the Stern Club, and if that other goblin woke up before the others... No, he didn't want to think about that.
And so it was with a grim determination that he powered up an old magnetic cargo loader and turned about. It'd taken him only a minute or so before the door to the storage room was opening and he was pushing the hovering loader into the room.
"I know what you said, but... I can't leave you here!" he said, not caring that he'd accidentally raised his voice and brought searing pain onto himself as he brought it up to her tank and started working the controls. They seemed familiar, but... he couldn't quite place it. He didn't have much of his memory left after his reconstruction. The loader's arms spread out and gripped the side of her tank. He turned the magnetic lift on and her tank slowly started to raise from the ground and onto the loader.
"I've... I've never had a chance to save anyone before, only spare them, even then..." his words were coming out as a stream now, the adrenaline having him much more talkative than usual. As the loader worked, he put a hand on the tank.
"I can't just save myself. I'm going to save you too."
-
Seexa was left quite literally spinning circles in her tank, occasionally casting wary glances at the unconscious goblins as she tried to think of something, anything that she could do. No answers presented themselves.
Would they kill her? Would they think she'd done this? Would they go after Torien?
As though simply thinking his name had summoned him, the artificial mermaid was suddenly greeted with the sight and sound of the storage room door opening and...some massive piece of machinery being pushed through.
Her eyes widened and she pressed back against the furthest wall of the tank before she realized who was doing the pushing. "T-Torien!"
She winced, one hand fluttering instinctively to her throat, but quickly brushed the pain aside. He was already at the tank, pressing buttons, doing something--something she didn't understand.
And then she was being lifted--or rather the whole tank was--and she gave a quick, instinctive little cry of fear before she realized what was happening.
"Wha...no." Wide-eyed, Seexa pressed close to the glass again, mirroring his hand as she had before. "You can't, it's...it's not safe..."
They would certainly come after him if he stole her away.
But even as she said the words the fear was plain in her eyes and voice. She wanted to leave. She didn't want to be here anymore, she didn't understand what was happening. Huge black eyes stared up at him through the water, and the pale green scales of her palms went almost white with how hard she was pressing against the glass.
"Not safe..." she repeated in less than a whisper, though now it was a token protest more than anything else.
-
"This place isn't safe," he murmured, pressing his hand a bit more firmly against the glass once she mirrored it. The loader beeped and some hydraulic clicks and electric humming meant that her tank had been safely loaded on and secured.
"You've only seen this room, but... I can't leave you here. If I leave you here, you're going to die," he said, and he left her for a moment so he could start prepping the loader for movement, and then he knelt down and threw the slugloader into the loader's bed with the tank, and he stuffed the sidearm into the pockets of his sweatpants.
"Torien!" came a woman's voice from outside, and he froze for a moment. His handler was here, and she sounded scared.
"Torien, the Anklehackers have a very convincing deal for us. The owner of the whole club's here to talk to us. Come on outside now and talk to us. It's safe, I promise!"
At the mention of "The owner", he only started to work faster, and then the loader was up again. Gods, the tank was heavy, but for once he was thankful to be heavily augmented and he powered through anyways. Madrissa started to speak again, but she was cut off by a goblin's voice.
"Soddit, Ah's sick'a waitin'. Get inn'ere an' bring me dat prizefighta!"
Torien looked back to Seexa. They were about halfway to the door, not enough time. He met her eyes.
"Get down!" he hissed, and just as he said that the door opened once again. This time, it was a group of three hobgoblins, much better equipped and armed then the two mooks Torien had ambushed before.
They raised their black market assault rifles, and one of them yelled out to the others.
"He's leggin' it! Clip'em!" he yelled, and they opened fire, albeit inaccurately.
If Seexa got down low, the bulk of the loader would protect her from any rounds, but Torien didn't have such a luxury. He got clipped in the leg and even felt a bullet embed itself in the stage 2 plating on his back as shots whizzed around them. It was fine, he could take it. It was Seexa he was desperately worried for.
They'd nearly made it through to the loading hangar when Trenk came through the door. A bit on the taller side for a goblin (four and a half feet, absolutely gigantic for his species), he wore rather fine clothes and seemed to be enjoying the perks of his relatively good life. Slicked back hair, perfectly trimmed pencil moustache, and even a tailored suit, red and yellow to represent the gang's colors. he came in and started hollering for the mercenaries to cease fire.
Madrissa tailed behind, looking genuinely worried. She knew Torien's specs like the back of her hand, and she knew it'd take something heavier to stop him. Something that could kill him...
"Stoppit, ya droolin' goons!" he said, swatting at their guns.
"Yer usin' peashootas. Dis is how ya stop a cyborg."
He drew a sleek, long-barreled handgun all decked out in chrome and ivory. When he squeezed on the trigger, there was a distinct electrical sound and a blue flash from the muzzle.
Torien had just finished taking her out into the loading bay through the door when the tungsten bullet tore through his shoulder, spraying equal parts blood, oil, and mechanical bits onto the tank's glass. The shot even went so far as to go through the first two inches of her tank's glass before the thick material stopped it from opening a hole.
Torien's right arm nearly went limp, and he swung his hand to the side to smash the door's panel and close it for good. He kept pushing her, letting his arm rest as he just put his shoulder into moving the loader.
"I've almost... we're almost there..." he whispered, and he rest the hand of his injured arm on the tank.
"Just gotta get out of range..."
-
Seexa screamed again, throwing herself backward as the bullet slammed into the glass, and then quickly surging forward again when Torien sort of slumped against the tank. Blood and oil decorated the glass and she whined quietly, pounding uselessly against the side of the tank.
There was nothing she could do. She couldn't even reach him, much less actually help him.
"Run, just run," she begged, her voice raw and desperate. "Leave me, please, just run. They'll kill you..."
She pressed forward against the glass again, eyes searching his face. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."
-
Ignoring the cries in goblinish from the other door, Torien kept going until the loader was by the junker’s entry ramp. He pressed a few buttons and it started to hover up the ramp, he was about to get up after it when Madrissa’s voice came from the other side of the door.
“I’m sorry, Torien! You don’t give me another choice!”
Torien paled, and he rushed up the ramp as quickly as he could, even going past Seexa’s tank to the ramp’s controls. Before he could touch it, however, sparks came from his joints and he suddenly doubled over in agony. He fell to his knees as his pain regulator was shut off remotely and the constant pain or his augmentations suddenly flared up with a new bloom of fresh suffering thanks to his new wounds. In truth, his modifications had been so severe and painful that they constantly agonized every inch of him. Without his pain regulator to block it all out, he was little better than a metallic cripple.
He laid there for a couple moments, just too agonized to really do anything other than cry out until his throat bled. The goblins started to cut through the door with a welding torch, and he found it in himself to rise to his feet, even if supporting himself on his metal legs made what was left of him cry out.
He had to keep going, so he pulled himself up with his one good arm.
He closed the ramp, sealing them inside, taking a moment to just hold himself up on the panel. The rest of the vessel was dimly lit, but it was two chambers. Most of the ship was cargo and scrap space, but there was also a crude airlock and salvaging tools, some goblin-sized space suits, and a bunk/cockpit room that had it’s own waste hatch.
Nice.
Too bad he was in literal hell right now.
-
"Torien!"
Seexa whirled uselessly in the tank, battering herself against the side in a desperate, futile bid to--to...she didn't even know what. Just to do something.
Because he was clearly in pain, and he was the only person she could ever remember showing her even a scrap of kindness, and she wanted to help.
Her eyes narrowed, following the spiderweb of cracks from the bullet that had lodged itself in the glass of her tank. A few of the hairline fractures spread up toward the top, near the metal lid. With the angle the tank was cocked in the loader...
Oh, I hope this works.
Closing her eyes, Seexa curled herself down at the bottom of the tank, then suddenly exploded upward with a powerful beat of her tail, sending the--relatively slight though powerfully propelled--weight of her body against the far left edge of the tank's lid, angled carefully so that she nearly collided with the glass rather than the metal hatch.
She got lucky. Under heavy fire, the integrity of the tank had been weakened enough that even just the force of her lunge was enough to pop the lid on the side, just a bit. Just enough for her to squirm her fingers into the gap and heave.
The metal cap clanged to the floor.
She was free.
Well...sort of. She still couldn't leave the tank. But now, with the lid gone, she could hold herself up above the water; with the way the tank rested in the loader and how Torien had slumped against the control panel, if she heaved most of her upper body out of the tank and stretched she could just reach him.
She started to, started to reach out to him with one dripping, webbed hand, water sloshing onto the floor with every movement. Then she hesitated. What if...what if she couldn't actually do this? What if he didn't want her to?
"Torien...?" Her voice was soft again, rasping and weary. "Let...me...help?"
-
She sharp clanging of the metal lid drew his attention, and he managed to lift his head a bit through the pain to see droplets of cold water dripping onto his forearms. It seemed he didn’t notice that she hesitated, because he desperately took the lifeline of an offered hand without even really thinking of how, or even who.
He didn’t have much sensation in his fully chromed extremities but the smoothness and coolness of the touch, the moisture and water dripping down on him from someone above...
Through the pain, he lifted his head up, and his eyes widened in a little bit of surprise and something approaching genuine happiness to see her.
“Hey there...” he groaned, and he wanted to say something else, but then a sheet of water from the tank splashed onto him and...
It was like bucket of ice-water to the back, and he clutched her hand a little tighter, but no pain came. Instead, the waters dripped into his wounds and flowed over old bruises and he somehow felt... better. He used the opportunity to right himself, and looked back up at her for a moment more.
Somehow, wirhout tje water to accentuate her fishy features and fins, she seemed even more human out of the tank. She was also a bit bigger than he expected. For a brief moment, he just let go of her hand and reached up past to hesitantly rest it on her shoulder. “Thank you.”
“No time to pause now,” he said, and he took his hand off of her to press a few more buttons on the loader, then he pushed her over narby the pilot’s seat.
Using his legs was still fresh torture but it served him long enough to get into the seat.
“We’re gonna make it out of here,” he said, and he examined the controls before him.
-
A soft sort of crooning noise rose up from the back of her throat when he took her hand, and she squeezed back. Water traced over her upper body in rivulets, following the nearly imperceptible pattern of scales down her shoulders, arms, and chest. Any movement splashed a little more onto the floor--what with the way the tank was resting at an angle, it was impossible to avoid.
While experiment #82641 theoretically possessed the DNA that should have made quite a few wondrous things capable for her, she was only passingly cognizant of the fact; so while she didn't entirely understand that the water she had been living in, that had been exposed to contact with her skin and scales for so long, had essentially become a diluted form of the healing agent an alchemist might call "Siren's Tears", she did know that it had certain soothing properties. It was one of the reasons she'd been such a valuable trinket.
She squeezed back when Torien's grip on her hand tightened for a moment, and her markings lit up with a subtle glow of bluish light once again. His hand on her shoulder brought another pulse of light and she looked at it with a combination of curiosity and wariness. The scales on her upper body were smaller and softer than those on her tail, but he'd still be able to feel them, along with the cool slickness of the water that still sluiced off her body.
Then he was moving again, wheeling the tank over toward the pilot's seat, and she was forced to let go so she could grip the the rim of the glass, looking around with wide eyes.
"Torien..." Though the tank still rested at an angle, the top of it was still a good three or four feet above the pilot's chair; she had to brace against the rim and lean out over the edge to try to get closer to him, a little awkwardly. "You're...hurt."
She reached for his shoulder this time, instinctively--not really trying to touch, for fear of hurting him, but trying to get a better look at the bullet wound.
-
“I know, girl, I know...” he muttered, and he focused on lifting his good arm to switch on the fuel lines and engines. He could do this, he... he knew how to do this, yeah. He’d been properly fucked up before (he wasn’t exactly undefeated in the ring), but by this point his only focus was getting this ship out of the hangar and out of the range of the control rig on Madrissa’s belt so his pain regulator could re-activate.
It gave her plenty of opportunity to look at the wound. There was a hole clean through his shoulder, torn flesh revealing the gleaming metal beneath, showing that much of the internal damage was to his augmentations, he had very little actual flesh in his shoulders and arms. There were more sparks and leaking oil than there was blood, and the whole thing looked... jagged and crude. Like his augments were fused and bolted into the flesh rather than properly integrated, save for the chords of alloys sewn through his muscles.
The ship hummed to life, and the engines sputtered before they flared with life, shooting choking black smoke out into the hangar.
“Hang onto something.”
-
The mer-creature's expression twisted into something that was an odd combination of aching sympathy and...anger. Anger was new. She didn't often feel anger.
It wasn't just at the people who shot him. She may not have much experience with the world, but in the before-place, where it was almost always dark save for the light of screens, she'd seen enough in holograms and vids to understand that whatever had been done to him was wrong. And that it hurt.
"I'm...I'm sorry..."
Her hand covered the wound as gently as she could manage, not sure if it would really do anything but hoping it might help soothe.
But then she was retracting her hand again as he told her to hold onto something. She almost asked "Hang onto what?" but then the ship was moving and she grabbed frantically for the rim of the tank again, paling a little beneath her scales.
"Ohhhhh….okay. Okayokayokay…" Her tail churned nervously in the water beneath her, once more sending a few shallow waves sloshing over the glass.
-
Behind the ship, the door finally fell from its frame and Trenko and his hobgoblin guards came barreling through. They levelled their rifles and fired at the ship, but no shots penetrated the hull, and one of them even tried to run up to the ship.
"Just hold on!"
Torien didn't have time to try and do this safely, and so as soon as the ship got some lift underneath it he gunned the engines, roasting the brave goon and filling the hangar with fumes and heat as they went sailing out through the force-field that marked the hangar's entrance.
Water from his new friend's tank spilled about, both from her nervous churning and from the movement of the ship, dousing the cockpit and Torien alike. But once again, he found that he rather liked how that water felt against his battered body and didn't quite care that everything was now wet and uncomfortable.
But they were clear, they... they were actually clear and out!
He held the control wheel tightly, other arm hanging limply from the shoulder, and once he'd brought the ship to a slowing stop once they were clear of the space around Cancer, he just looked back at her, eyes wide...
...and even through the agony, he managed a breathless, incredulous smile, not too bothered that she could see his sharp metal teeth.
-
Seexa screeched as the ship suddenly rocketed forward, and despite Torien's warnings she was thrown against the back wall of the tank. She had the presence of mind to drop to the bottom and brace her hands against the glass to either side of her, but she still thought she'd bruised her ribs pretty good.
But it didn't matter. Because suddenly they were out, through the force-field, and she could see stars.
Stars.
...He'd really done it.
Her head poked cautiously out of the water, staring at him with wide, limpid eyes. And then suddenly she was laughing, the sound rough and hoarse, revealing the sharp, sometimes serrated edges to her own teeth as she just...laughed.
She boosted herself up out of the water, gripping the rim of the tank, then gave a wordless, joyful cry and flipped back into the water, so enthusiastically that her tail actually waved jauntily above the surface for a moment as she turned a tight somersault in the water before surfacing again.
Some of the sheer, nearly painful relief and joy left her as she looked at her new friend and concern quickly flashed back into her eyes. She reached out to him. "Are you...okay?" Was he still in pain? It was hard to tell, she had no idea how much of his distress was from his wounds and how much from...whatever else had happened back there.
-
He allowed himself a moment to watch her tumble around in the water, finding her happiness contagious. The distraction from the pain was welcome, and once they'd gotten a certain distance away from the hangar he seemed to finally relax.
No longer in range, so it didn't feel like his joints were grinding in their sockets, but damn him if he still wasn't hurting. And to him, that was a terrible sign.
"No, not okay," he said, and he banked the ship up so that they traveled across The Cancer's surface. Runaway construction was an understatement for The Cancer's condition as a space station, and new sections and lengths are added by their inhabitants seemingly at random, and yet, like any pirate den, there was always a rhyme and reason to these places.
He looked down at himself, and saw just how frightful he was. He'd been bleeding freely ever since he'd been shot up and the seat was wet with more than just water. He was definitely going to need new clothes.
"We need to... I need a doctor," he said, looking back out across Cancer as he searched for a secluded docking hangar or even an open bay. He had to be careful, if they're spotted by even a single Anklehacker the whole gang could be on them within the hour.
"And we need to hide. No time to relax yet," he said, continuing to push himself. He just needed to land, that was it. Once they were landed and hidden he could finally relax, finally let the edge fade.
-
The mercreature tilted her head and gave a soft, almost crooning sound in the back of her throat that seemed to be a sympathetic sort of groan. She started to reach for him again, then pulled her hand back after a moment of hesitation--there wasn't really anything more she could do, if she'd helped at all.
"I'm...sorry..."
Seexa ducked back into the water, but she allowed herself to rest up against the side of the tank closest to the pilot's chair, keeping an eye on Torien as he navigated the ship. Well, one eye. Despite her worry for her friend--friend, the word even just sounded nice. Friend--she couldn't keep herself from looking out through the viewport in fascination as they navigated the Cancer.
When she'd been left here, months ago, there hadn't been the opportunity to actually see the place from a distance. She'd been given an injection that made her sleep in the before-place, then she just...woke up here. No in-between.
She shook herself and tried to return her attention to the problem at him. "Where is...doctor? Close?"
-
"I don't know many," Torien whispered, and he glanced down to set some coordinates into the ship's console. Thankfully, The Anklehackers had only stolen and slightly scavenged their little salvage vessel, meaning that many of the navigation systems and some of the other rooms should be in fairly good condition as well.
"One. He's old, but was the doctor at my first arena," he continued, and once he was confident about the autopilot he swiveled the seat around to face Seexa. He lifted his good hand up and put it on the glass, and then he followed that by resting his head against the glass and finally letting out a sigh.
"I couldn't leave you, I'm sorry... I know you wanted me to but I could never leave you in that place."
-
Seexa crowded herself forward against the side of the tank so she could press against the glass, mirroring him once again. Her eyes moved over his face, large and open and clearly worried.
But when she spoke, it was at first only to murmur a very soft, "Thank you."
She pressed her hand a little more firmly against the glass and closed her eyes. Her sigh escaped her in a ripple of gills and a small trail of bubbles from her mouth. "Thank you. I wanted you...to go. Be safe. But I didn't...I was scared. I didn't want you to leave, not...not really... I'm sorry."
Her hand moved to gesture toward his injured shoulder, mouth drawing into a tight line. "You were hurt...because of me. I didn't want--I'm sorry."
-
"It's fine, it doesn't hurt anymore," Torien said, thoroughly exhausted now that the pain and adrenaline had finally subsided. He met her eyes and studied her own face in turn, taking the moment to study her properly.
"It wasn't your fault."
His eyes went to her hand, mirroring his movements, and he looked up to the top of the tank, still unsealed. By this point, enough water had fallen that the top no longer constantly surged over with her tank fluids.
He stood, slowly, and motioned upwards.
"Can... Can I touch your hand?"
-
A soft, rasping sort of crooning sound rose up in the back of her throat. He may say it wasn't her fault, but she still felt guilty for it, and she couldn't stop herself from making the instinctive, grief-heavy sound--though there was an oddly soothing quality to it as well.
Then he asked to touch her hand, and her eyes widened. She blinked at him, mute, then nodded slowly. The gills along her ribs rippled in a sharply in-drawn breath, then she uncurled herself from the bottom of the tank and rose up through the water to poke her head up above the surface.
She simply looked at him for a moment, almost considering, before she moved forward and gripped the rim of the tank with one hand to help boost her upper body out of the water again. Very, very slowly, she lifted her other hand and held it out toward him. A few droplets of water ran from the webbing and scales, and the surprisingly elegant, dark claws that capped her fingers shimmered with moisture.
-
The poor girl looked terrified for him, and he couldn’t help but feel a pang of sorrow for her, trapped in a tank all her life, never hugged or held. It made his enhanced heart ache. She seemed to crave the physical contact and the least he could do was to try and soothe her, even going so far as to step up onto the loader so she wouldn’t have to reach as far. The first time, she’d pulled him up and he barely had a moment to register, let alone even think about her touch.
But now?
He met her eyes, strangely enchanted by how large and deep they seemed. Everything that would make her look dangerous instead drew his fascinated gaze. Those teeth and claws looked like they could rend the average man to pieces if she had a mind for it, but strangely enough he was completely unbothered.
Instead, he lifted a hand to meet hers, only for his touch to start a bit higher, and he curiously stroked his hand down from her elbow to her wrist. He could barely feel anything from his limbs but the texture of her scales registered, as well as just how cold she was.
Not that he was complaining, the alloy of his hands was probably cold as well, and he didn’t show any real hesitation as his touch finally drifted down to her hand and he took it and held it genuinely, because he wanted the comfort just as much as she did. He gave her a little squeeze, and managed a tiny smile her way.
“It’s going to be okay,” he said.
-
[Dear god these poor touch starved buttons :'( ]
The shiver started at the crown of her head and quickly traveled down through the rest of her body, growing from just a few soft shakes to genuine trembling as his fingers skated down the length of her forearm to her wrist.
She couldn't help it; she wasn't scared, or cold, or angry, or any of the other things that she knew to cause such a reaction in her, but she was... No one had ever touched her like that before, so gently. In fact, almost no one had ever touched her at all. In the before-place, any contact was from machines and needles, or through thick gloves. After--well, no one had bothered.
Her hand on his shoulder before had been born mostly of concern, and she'd been too worried about him to really register the feeling of it. But now...now she could actually allow herself to feel it, to experience and enjoy the simple contact. He seemed just as curious about her as she was about him, and it was...it was just nice.
Her fingers tightened through his, stopped about halfway down by the webbing, and a tiny, aching little whimper rose up in the back of her throat. Slowly, carefully, she lifted his hand to press against her cheek, her shivers redoubling at the cool, metallic sensation, but she didn't mind. She closed her eyes and leaned into the touch with sheer, raw desperation. A low thrumming, something between a growl and a purr, started softly in her chest.
Without realizing what she was doing, Seexa pressed closer until her entire body was nearly flat against the glass, so desperate for contact that she moved instinctively. She was like a desert wanderer suddenly presented with the water of an oasis, desperate to the point of giddy stupidity and shivering with something like shock.
Finally, she managed to find her voice. Her eyes opened again and she forced herself to ask softly, "Going to...be okay?"
Once more her hand wrapped around his, squeezing gently as worry furrowed her brow again. How did he know?
-
The very first thing he noticed was just how bewildered she looked, even to just have her arm stroked like that. That’s what he figured, although when she tried to link their fingers, only to be foiled like the webbing, a feeling of kinship came over him. Most of the time, when a stranger was touching him it was because they were trying to kill one another.
She pulled his hand into her cheek and his heart bled for her. The emotion was universal and he stroked her cheek as she leaned into it. He let his hand explore the shape of her head a bit, enchanted by those thrumming noises she made.
He stepped a bit closer to the tank, nearly chest-to-glass with it. He found himself drawn in, something about her voice, her eyes...
Then, she pressed up against the glass in search of his touch and while he didn’t startle he definitely wasn’t expecting her to just press up against the glass like that. Now that he had the opportunity to get a look at her, he noticed with a bright blush that the shape of her was quite feminine indeed.
“We’ll be safe, for now,” he whispered, taking a moment to gaze up into her eyes. He squeezed her hand back.
“Where we’re going, there’s an old doctor there. Nobody knows we’re friends, so it’ll be a start,” he said. He lifted his hand again and he stroked her cheek again, taking a moment to get a closer look at her hair and satiate his curiosity.
-
Her hair didn’t feel quite like hair, as his fingers moved through it. The incredibly thin barbels were a little bit coarser than human hair, and didn’t lay quite the same way: just a little too thick, a little too wild around her face, even dripping wet. And as they operated rather like a cat’s whiskers—or a catfish’s, more accurately—they were actually sensitive to touch. Not unduly so, but enough to earn another shiver as he explored.
“Safe...” Seexa repeated softly, almost sounding confused. Which she was, in a way; that word held almost no meaning for her, at least not one she’d ever had real experience with.
She frowned and sort of nuzzled her cheek into his hand. The metal was cool and smooth against her scales, but different from the glass. Oh, anything was better than the glass... “I want you...to be safe.” The words came slowly, puzzled out even as she said them. “But I—I can’t go. I can’t go with you.”
Her other hand tightened on the rim of the tank and she flicked her eyes down to glower at it. “Hate this,” she hissed suddenly, that low, rasping voice slipping dangerously toward a growl. “Hate this. Stuck. Always.”
She was shaking again, though this time it was clearly from sudden, impotent rage rather than the shock of his touch. It subsided surprisingly quickly though, and another sigh escaped her as she sort of slumped against the edge of the tank.
“...Wish I could stay with you,” she mumbled, eyes downcast. “But...if you say it is...safe. I trust you.” She looked up into his face again, and reached up to cover his hand with hers gently. After so long without any form of contact, she was loathed to give up even a fraction of it. “Can...can I...?”
She started to reach toward him, then hesitated, waiting for his permission.
-
That was a surprise, to see anger on her face. Not that he didn’t think the gentle girl who’d been trapped in a tank her whole life would have her resentments, but seeing it twist her face like that affected him more than he thought it would.
“Hey, hey...” he started, and he took his hand off of her cheek to lay it on the hand tightening around the tank’s edge. Comforting her was the least he could do. Slumped down against the edge like that, she was closer to him, and when she reached out for him he just nodded and stepped a little closer.
“I’m not going to abandon you,” he started, and his hand rose back to stroke her head.
“I... I won’t.”
-
It wasn’t until he said it that she realized that was exactly what she’d been afraid he would do. When he spoke of a doctor, she’d—at least consciously—been more concerned that she wouldn’t be able to go with him to see whoever this doctor was, that she would be stuck in her tank while he walked into potential danger.
She hadn’t even realized that a part of her had been scared he would simply...go. Would get himself fixed, leave her somewhere he thought was safe, and then wash his hands of her.
Her face scrunched up a little bit, and it became abruptly clear that she was trying not to cry. Shakily, she reached out to mirror his hand on her cheek with her own. Water dripped down his face from the contact, but she kept her hand against his skin as long as he would allow. Her own head tilted further into his touch with a low, thrumming croon.
“But I can’t...I’m stuck,” she repeated softly, desolately. “What if you have to run again? What if the doctor is...what if you have to get away? I’ll—I’d keep you...I don’t want you...to get hurt again...because of me...”
The first phrases had tumbled out in a rush of emotion, but the last few trailed off into damning silence. She dropped her eyes again with a sigh.
-
He couldn’t deny that what she was saying rang with truth. He went silent, letting her words sink in even as her touch sent a shiver down his neck. It was cool and wet, but her touch was surprisingly soft as she stroked him in return. He expected her to be harder, slimier, but instead...
He leaned his head into her touch, not caring that it made water drip down the side of his head and onto his wounded body. It’d been a while since he felt comfort like this, and there was a sweet numbness that seemed to spread from her touch, taking away the aches and soothing the memory of the brief moment he’d spent without his pain regulator on.
“I can move you with the loader,” he offered, looking down at the machine he was haphazardly standing on to reach her easier. He was just as scared for the future as she was, but he could try to make her feel better. He came closer to her, letting his touch spread from her cheeks to her head, stroking fingers through her hair.
“And if we’re careful, we can hide out until I’m fixed and we can both leave this place forever.”
-
Seexa made a soft brrrp sort of noise, almost like a chirping cat, and tilted her head further into his hand, encouraging the attention. Her hair almost seemed to move against his fingers of its own accord, just for a moment: swaying and tangling gently before it settled down to frame her face again.
His offer to move her, to take her with him, made her chest feel oddly tight. She just looked at him for a few moments, her fingers stroking gently, curiously over his cheek and down to cup his jaw softly in her palm.
"You...sure?" She blinked, first one set of eyelids, then the second. "It will be...okay? If you take me?"
Her hand drifted back to his where he'd sort of braced himself against the tank, stroking her fingertips lightly over the chrome. "I want...I want to leave, Torien." She closed her eyes and pressed her face into his hand with a soft, shivering sigh. "I want to go away from here, I...I want to stay with you..."
-
Torien nodded, eyes widened from the movement of her hair against his fingers but otherwise more intrigued than unnerved. He couldn’t contain the little gasp that came out of him when she stroked his jaw. She’d find that the subdermal plates and bracings gave his jaw, chin, and cheekbones a hard, unyielding quality to them. The numbness spread to his throat and collar, and for once he couldn’t feel the pain in his throat as he spoke.
This was crazy. What he did was so crazy, and risky, and-and...
“I’m sure, it’s going to be okay,” he said, and he splayed his fingers and stroked her as she rubbed her face into his chrome hand. As far as he could remember, he’d used those hands to kill and main. They never really felt like a part of him until Seexa reminded him that he could still help, he could still be a person.
“It... when you touch me,” he started, and he would’ve said more, but then the ship’s console was beeping.
“Hold on, I have to land us.”
He gave her hair another stroke and offered her a warm smile, and just like that, he slipped away from her to return to the pilot’s seat.
-
She nearly drew her hand back when he gasped, worried that she’d hurt him somehow. But he seemed alright—in fact he stroked the side of her face again, which she found she was really starting to enjoy—so she left her hand where it was a moment longer, exploring where flesh gave way to metal gently with her fingertips.
Then the beeping, and he pulled away to return to the controls. Seexa nodded, even though he wasn’t looking, and sank back down into the water again. She allowed herself to drift to the bottom of the tank, and her hand moved absently to play with the ends of her own hair as she settled close to the glass again, watching what he did with interest.
What had he been going to say? Did he not want her to touch him anymore? She wondered if she’d done something wrong...but he’d been so kind about it, and smiled at her like that, and she thought maybe that wasn’t the issue after all.
She didn’t say anything, just watched as he navigated the stolen ship in for a landing, black eyes wide and fascinated behind the glass.
-
Torien guided them through Cancer’s interior. While it was sealed off from the outside, there was still enough space in the sprawling station’s interior for ships to fly. Towers, struts, and strips, all containing habitation blocks and starship bays. Nothing on Cancer was really developed with an overarching plan, new extensions and life support was constructed as needed by the populace and the result was an asymmetrical city that rose from the floor, hung from the ceiling, and went about every which way in between. He couldn’t help but take a glance back at Seexa and he smiled a little when he saw how engrossed she was in the sights.
Torien was looking for a different landmark, however, and when he saw a familiar looking slum with a prominent dome with hovering advertisements for sporting events such as hovercar races and cyborg fights.
“There, that’s the place,” he said, and he took a hand off the controls for a moment to point.
“We just need to stay quiet for a little, until the commotion dies down,” he said, and then took them in lower.
Thankfully for them, the goblinish junker he was flying was both small and trashy looking, so all it took to conceal it was a dark, garbage-filled underpass near the dome to hide it. He set the ship down as softly as he could, right on top of a trash pile. He hoped it’d be enough.
He set about turning the ship off and then stood. He stepped past the tank to glance about at the interior of the ship. There wasn’t really anything to sleep on, or look at really. There was a bathroom somewhere on the ship, he could smell it from here, and maybe one of those junk piles in the ship was concealing a chamber.
“I’m tired, Seex...” he murmured, and finally gave in and leaned against her tank. He turned the loader off, so that it could save power and set her tank down, and then sat down against the tank’s base.
Torien didn’t care, he was too fatigued. He’d spent the whole day fighting and taking a beating and that was before he’d been shot several times and then blasted with a rail-pistol.
Still, his smile was real as he put his hand on the glass for her.
“I think I’ll take a few hours to get some sleep. You should rest too,” he said, even as he slipped off his bloody shirt and bundled it together so he could lie on the metal floor and have something for his neck and head. He couldn’t hide the external reinforcements on his spine or the way his body looked sculpted and almost angular from the sub-dermal plating. Most of all, she could see that he was also wearing the bandages and wounds from his fights at the arena that day, including a long gash on his chest that looked healed and clean but still displayed the gleaming metal beneath his skin through the wound.
He moved a bit more onto his side and laid closer to her.
-
Seexa shuffled back into a little ball at the floor of the tank as he set the ship down, wrinkling her nose a bit at the camouflage of the garbage around them, but she couldn't exactly complain. It would do better to hide them than nothing.
She watched with interest as the ship's systems began to shut down, a small part of her missing the flickering lights and dull humming of the engines--but she knew those too would easily give away their little hiding place.
When he allowed the loader to set down the tank she lurched slightly with the movement and had to brace her hands to either side; she could do it easily, her "home" wasn't even wide enough in diameter for her to stretch her arms out fully and touch either side. He settled down on the floor just beside her and she almost instinctively raised her hand to shadow his on the other side of the glass again.
"Sleep..." She encouraged him quietly...and she tried not to stare as he stripped his shirt. He looked...almost patchwork. Taken apart and put back together, but not quite cleanly. It made her chest and the pit of her belly ache.
When he shuffled to lay closer, she pressed her shoulder into the glass. Though she had been grateful for the four-inch barrier when they were being shot at, now she was suddenly irritated with it. She glanced up. The tank, settled on the floor, was not too much higher than the head of a tall man. Maybe...maybe she could...
She glanced at Torien again, then sighed. No. Best not. If it didn't actually work, there would be two of them in need of care--and her unable to even move to find it. She didn't want to burden him like that.
So she curled herself up in the bottom of the tank, resting her upper body on the coil of her tail, and pressed as close to her side of the glass as she could manage. Her eyes closed with a small sigh, and she allowed herself, finally, to rest.
-
Her encouragement was the last nail in the coffin for him and Torien nodded, mostly unaware of her plight save for how she looked at him as he stripped his shirt. He was used to the looks, but getting them from Seexa felt differently. It wasn't her fault, tenderness was something not really present in his life, not since the accident. He shifted fully onto his side to face her better and curled closer to the base of the tank. The warmth of its power source was actually fairly nice and he went so far as to lay his forehead against the glass.
"Yeah, I think I will," he whispered, but yet his eyes didn't close. Instead, he watched Seexa for a little, smiling at how oddly cute she looked all curled up and sleeping.
"Good dreams," he murmured, nigh inaudible and he finally found his rest with a smile on his face.
-
Dreams were strange--they almost always were, of course, but these felt...a little different. More frightening, but somehow more hopeful than she could ever remember too. Though she of course didn't know it, the markings along her body pulsed in a subtle, steady ripple of faint light as she dreamed, starting near the nape of her neck and flashing down her spine in a soft arc of blue before trickling out over her hips, her ribs and waist, and down her tail.
Without much room to move, she woke in essentially the same position in which she'd fallen asleep. Big dark eyes blinked open and she yawned, gills rippling, before pushing herself up a bit to look around.
Right. Still on the ship.
So yesterday had really happened then.
Seexa shook her head, feeling a little...unreal. As though she expected this to be the dream, and she was just waiting for it to end. "Torien..."
Her voice was low and rough again, nearly as rasping as when she'd first spoken to him. She tried to clear her throat, winced a bit, then tried again a little more successfully, "Torien, you...awake?"
-
When she awoke, she'd find him turned away from her, curled up tighter. Sleeping when all your limbs were made of metal was interesting. Usually they just lock up after you start drifting off, but Torien shivered and a cold sweat covered his body, making his chrome shoulders glisten with moisture.
Something about the wounded shoulder brought on an old memory. A bad fight, one that he won, but at a cost...
When she spoke a second time, it managed to wake him. He sprang up into a sit. The sleep hadn't done much to heal his crippled arm but he came up swinging with the other, sword fully extended. His serrated, alloyed teeth were bared, and his eyes had gone fully red as his scanners turned on. He was used to sleeping alone. Never anything a stricken mind could mistaken for a nightmare...
Like a whip, he struck, but as soon as he'd done so he stopped, and as his pupils slowly dimmed back down to his natural green the horror of what he'd almost done set in and his skittered back, muttering pitiful apologies as he slammed his back against the far wall and tried to hide himself and his shame.
He covered himself with his good arm, sword still drawn if only from the stress.
"No... no no Not... I didn't... Seexa..."
-
She cried out. She couldn't help it, it was instinctive--a prey creature's reaction to being trapped with a hostile predator.
But the tank shielded her as much as it caged her, and it only took her a few moments to realize that he couldn't actually get through the glass to hurt her, not swinging blindly as he was. It was only a moment more before she began to realize what had happened.
But by then he was already skittering away, looking stricken. She surged forward from where she'd automatically pressed back against the furthest part of the tank and placed both hands against the glass, tilting her head at him with a low, throbbing croon in the back of her throat.
"Okay, it's okay," she whispered, not even really deciding to speak the words. The just sort of...happened. "It's okay...you're okay... Safe here, we're safe. Remember?"
-
"I remember, I remember, just..."
He held himself a little tighter as he just shook. He'd gone into a state of boosted adrenaline, and even if it was for a second or two he still felt the effects of the crash when he came off of it so suddenly.
He nodded as she spoke, and when he finally lifted his head to look at her she'd see that his retractable visors had come out to cover his eyes behind a carbon glass shield, tinted red. Torien hated how it made him look like a robot, it covered the only human things he had left on his face.
"I'm sorry, I just... I thought I was somewhere else," he finally managed, and he uncurled. He shuffled towards her on his knees, pitiful and apologetic, and his combat features slowly retracted back into him.
He laid his hand on one of hers and rest his head on the tank.
"I'd never want to scare you, or hurt you."
-
"I...know."
Seexa tried for a smile. Her expression was still a little pinched, both with worry and the last dregs of instinctive wariness, but it was a smile. "I know...Torien. I know you wouldn't...hurt me."
Her eyes skated over him, taking in the gleam of metal so stark against what was left of flesh. She glanced up, then gave her hand a quick, firm press against the glass before uncurling herself from the bottom of the tank so she could rise up through the water and pull her head and shoulders free, leaning forward over the rim.
"Let me...see?" She reached down to him with one webbed hand. "You're shaking. I...want to help." She smiled again, soft and kind and sad. "I won't...hurt you, either. Promise."
-
That was nice, to have someone promise him something. He nodded against her tank and tightness ran through him when she told him that he was shaking. He tried to reel himself in with steady breaths, and he used his hand against the tank as support to rise to his feet and into her reach.
"I just need a moment..." he said, but he surrendered to her assistance nonetheless, eyes downcast and shoulders slumped.
"I... They make me fight. All that killing..." he said, and finally looked up to meet her eyes and didn't say much else, because her smile struck him deeply.
-
It was still awkward to try to reach him, even when he stood up onto the loader to get closer to the top of the tank. The rim of glass dug into her belly and ribs uncomfortably as she leaned down, but she didn't paid it much mind.
Her hand came to cup his jaw, a few droplets running down her arm in spiraling rivulets until they reached him. Another low croon thrummed in her throat and she tilted her head at him, hair spilling forward over one shoulder.
"Not...your fault," she murmured, her eyes searching his. "I'm sorry. So sorry. Sorry they...hurt you. But it's...not your fault."
-
"No, never my fault. Never had a choice," he said, and he covered her hand with his own, giving her a smile, albeit a grim one. He could see her struggling with the rim of the tank, and his eyebrows knit with concern. He held her hand for a moment more before he took it off of his face.
"That looks uncomfortable," he said, and his expression turned sympathetic.
"You should sit tight. I need to find this doctor, and something to eat for you, too. Are you hungry?" he said. Now that he'd thought about it, her tank was open only because it was technically broken. How long had it been since someone actually fed her?
Did the tank feed her? Torien hoped so, he had no idea what it was she would eat.
-
Seexa winced a bit and glanced down at where the smoothed edge of the glass was digging into her ribs. With a sheepish sort of smile, she admitted, "Not...comfortable, really."
He pulled her hand away from his face and she sighed quietly, the sound instinctive more than anything else, and gave his fingers a quick, firm squeeze before she withdrew her hand completely. He'd stopped shaking, at least. That was good.
Her face brightened a bit at the idea of food. She'd been surviving off the micro-plankton in the tank--which gave it the greenish tint to the water--for nearly three days. "Yes, please. I'm...hungry," she said with a quick nod.
She probably could have gone a few more days without proper food, but it certainly wouldn't have been comfortable. In fact, she was starting to forget what it felt like to be comfortable, well fed and safe with enough room to do more than turn in tight circles in the water.
-
"I'll get you something," Torien said, not even knowing how or where, but... for her, he would do it.
"Something to chew, hm?" he said, and even managed to tease her with a smile as he showed her his teeth.
"Me too."
He stretched up his good arm to catch the rim of the glass tank and cover her hand. He'd never thought that someone could find comfort in his cold steel limbs.
"And maybe I'll find something to stand on, too. So you don't have to bend down all the way like that."
-
She giggled a bit for that, her own sharp teeth revealed in a brief flash. The smile softened a bit, teeth hidden again, when he stretched up to touch her hand. She turned it over so she could trace her fingertips along his palm, as much because she was intrigued by the feel of how the metal fit together as because she simply...wanted to.
It was nice, to be able to touch and be touched without fear or pain or some other punishment for the transgression.
She chuckled again and nodded, allowing herself to slide back off the rim so she could fold her arms over it, letting her cheek come to rest against one forearm. "Maybe...step-ladder?" she offered up; her tone was bland, but those black eyes gleamed with a hint of teasing mischief.
The mirth faded a bit as she looked into his face, her lips drawing into a thin line. "Be careful...okay? I can't...I wish I could go...with you. Can't do anything to help...from here."
-
"Yeah, a step-ladder," he repeated, and he gave a short chuckle followed by a sharp wince. He gave his throat a stroke. His fingers gave small twitches as she stroked his palm. The touch felt hollow through the prosthetic but he was still desperate for it.
"I'll be back as quick as I can," he said, and he shifted his hand to thread his fingers through hers.
"I promise."
Then, he let her hand go and let his touch travel upwards until he could cup one side of her jaw with his good hand. He didn't forget about how she seemed to almost treasure that contact, and he wanted to do anything to make her feel better. He looked up to meet her eyes, and offered her another smile.
Water dripped onto him where he touched her and once again he found it strangely soothing as it ran down his arm and seeped into where his limb was connected to his shoulder. He gave her jaw and head a few strokes, going a little farther to stroke the tips of his fingers up into her "hair", and then stepped down from the loader.
The sight of something metallic caught his eye, and he remembered the sidearm he'd tucked into the loader's chassis during their panicked run. He took that, and a section of scrap cloth large enough to use as a makeshift cloak.
When he finished donning his equipment, he approached the tank one last time and laid his hand on the glass.
-
Seexa winced with him, and when he stroked at his throat she reached out unthinkingly to run three webbed fingers down the column of his neck.
She quickly snatched her hand back when she realized what she'd done. Or tried to--he'd already laced his fingers through hers, at least as best he could with the webbing. She smiled and nodded for his promise, then released him, letting her head tilt slightly into his touch as he cupped her jaw. Her eyes fluttered, first one set of lids sliding closed, then the other.
Her eyes snapped opened again when he stroked her hair, earning a full body shiver that went all the way down to the tip of her tail fins. That was...interesting. The hundreds of thin barbels that grew from her head were sensitive by nature, meant to help her navigate in the black of the depths. No one had ever touched them directly like that before--at least, not in a nice way. It was...
Well. Interesting.
She watched Torien prepare to leave, and when he came closer to once again place his hand against the glass she mirrored the gesture. It was automatic at this point to do so.
"Come back...soon?" she urged with a small smile, eyes searching his face intently.
-
Something in him fluttered when she stroked his neck like that. It'd been so long since he'd been touched like that, he could scarcely remember...
He nodded and pressed his hand against the glass more.
"As soon as I can, Seex," he said, and his finger tips lingered against the glass even as he pulled away from it. He made sure the sidearm was secured on his belt and that his makeshift cloak covered his damaged body and bloody clothes.
He walked over and lowered the boarding ramp. He looked back to her, as if reluctant to leave their little hidden place.
-
The mercreature deflated a bit as he walked away, once more allowing herself to sink down toward the narrow bottom of the tank. She tried to perk back up when he paused and glanced back at her though; she didn’t want him to worry about her when his attention should be focused on keeping safe.
“I’ll...be fine,” she assured him, rasping as she tried to raise her voice to be heard over the farther distance than they’d as yet spoken. “Promise. I’ll be safe.”
-
It wasn't hard to navigate towards the Markov Ultradome. Even though the slums themselves were foreign to Torien, he knew well enough to keep his head down and move along like he lived in the place. It wasn't like the infrastructure was bad or the structures crummy, but the overall life in these places was unsavory. Cancer's population included pirates, criminals, and even worse sorts. Many found their riches in the spires, but many more remained here, in the slums.
He spotted a grouping of thugs hanging out on their turf and ducked down a narrow street.
He could only hope that the Old Doc still lived in the same place.
After some skulking around, Torien peeked around the corner, spotting the doctor's residence. Two loaf-shaped habiation modules, one stacked right on top of the other. It was tucked between a support column for a larger structure and a liquor store.
Torien didn't trust staying on the street, and so hurried to the building and knocked a token couple of times.
"Hello?"
When there was no immediate answer, he tested the door. Finding it open, he came inside and shut the door behind him, leaving him in almost total darkness. He remembered that the old doctor always preferred his house to be dark...
"I'm not seeing any patients right now," came a rough, annoyed voice from the room beyond. Torien saw a glint of red eyes in the dark, and stood his ground.
"I need help," Torien said, and he let his cloak fall away. The shape in the darkness crept closer, and a clawed hand reached out a bit further in recognition. It came closer and Torien reckoned he could make out the old man frowning at him.
"What the hells are you doing here?!" snapped the old man, and he lifted his cane.
By the time Torien returned, the station's night cycle had already activated. hat the ship's ramp opened again, letting in the sound of a pair of voices. Torien, and someone else, with a much gruffer voice.
"And y'stole this heap? Kia's tit, boy..."
"Didn't exactly have many choices," came Torien's voice, always kept low for fear of pain.
The old man chuckled, which evolved into a full laugh as they finished coming up the ramp.
Torien was back in his cloak, and the Old Man with him was dressed in full slacks and tie, tucked in shirt and everything in a style that hearkened back to Le'Ranna's nuclear age. He had it all under a sturdy coat to keep the falling condensation.
-
Despite herself, after the first hour or so spent waiting in anxious silence, Seexa realized she was...bored. It was boring, sitting in the tank and gazing listlessly out at the flickering, sometimes beeping controls of their stolen ship.
Boring was better than the only alternative she knew, of course. Boring was better than fear. Still... She sighed to herself and floated up toward the top of the tank again, propping her arms on the rim and trying to see how far out she could lean without falling out--or tipping the whole tank over.
Hmm. Not very far. She couldn't even really reach the far side of the pilot's chair, not even with the tips of her fingers if she stretched her arm to its full extent. Pity.
She had no idea what she'd planned to do if she could have reached, but still.
Somehow, Seexa had actually fallen asleep at some point while waiting for Torien to return. Well, it wasn't like there was much else to do--and she supposed it was nice, in a way, that she felt safe enough to actually sleep here, for a reason other than sheer exhaustion stealing her consciousness, which was what she had grown accustomed to in recent months.
The sound of the hangar door opening roused her, and she blinked a little groggily, peering around. Then she heard a voice, an unfamiliar voice, and she came awake all at once, shooting to the top of the tank and grabbing at the rim of it on either side of her body. She looked around wildly, as though searching for some sort of escape--
Torien. Torien's voice was also there. The breath left her body in a sharp, shuddering sigh, gills rippling rapidly, and she allowed herself to lower back into the water slightly. She kept her grip on the rim of the tank, still wary, but when she caught sight of her friend she gave him a small, relieved smile.
"You're...back." Her black eyes moved to his companion, smile fading quickly, replaced with a tense, wary expression. "This...is help?" she asked softly. Hopeful, but still leery of the stranger.
-
Even though they were laden down with things, they both paused at the sight of Seexa, albeit for different reasons. Torien was just taking a moment to feel relieved that she was safe, and he nodded and opened up his cloak to reveal he was carrying a step-ladder under his arm. The old man looked more awed than shocked or surprised. Torien had told him his friend couldn't exactly move around on her own, but...
The old man regarded Seexa with something akin to recognition, plainly visible on his tight features, as his skin seemed to stick too tightly to his skull to form anything other than the most token of wrinkles. His ears came to more of a point than Torien's and he wore a hat to cover up the fact that he was completely hairless save for a short beard and mustache.
He remained there even as Torien approached Seexa to let down the load he was carrying.
"Boy, you told me your friend wasn't exactly mobile, but I sure as shit didn't expect a mermaid," he finally said, cane tapping as he made his way closer to set down his tools and get a closer look at her.
"A mermaid?" Torien echoed, and he looked over to Seexa. He didn't necessarily expect her to know, but it felt different knowing he had a name for what to call her.
"What's that?"
-
Seexa flinched a bit at the sound of the older man's voice--new and strange, if not necessarily loud--and her sensitive ears flickered back against her skull briefly. She looked from Torien to the other man, still sort of cautiously bobbing in the water around the middle of the tank.
When Torien looked to her, she widened her eyes and shrugged. "Never knew...what it was...called." She gestured to herself to indicate it. "Only heard...snippets. In the before-place. DNA splices. Magic." She shrugged again and shook her head. That was pretty much the extent of what she knew about her creation.
Her eyes flickered to the older man and she cocked her head to one side, a soft, low chirping sound burbling in the back of her throat. "You can...help Torien?" She looked to her friend again, trying to see if his injuries had in fact been taken care of. It was difficult to tell with the cloak on.
-
The old man huffed with an exascerbated smile, and he motioned to Torien with his cane.
"Stubborn. Insisted I do the work here," he said, and almost as if he sensed the mood, Torien set down the pack he was carrying and the Old Man did the same. Finally, Torien shrugged the cloak off to reveal that his injured arm was still hurt, but he was carrying a folded step-ladder under his good arm!
He shot Seexa a knowing smile, but then the Old Man cut in again.
"And he gave me good enough puppy eyes to convince me to bring food, too. And some other things," he added, almost growling as he poked Torien's chest with his cane, which Torien barely noticed. Indeed, along with a old-fashioned doctor's bag, the Old Man was carrying a heavily laden bag filled with foam containers.
"Burger-Mat, mostly. Some steaks, from my own fridge, too, so y'better be grateful!"
As the Old Man started to unpack and set up his tools, Torien grabbed a thick, vacuum-wrapped steak made out of synthmeat and put the step ladder down in front of her tank. It easily let his chest clear the rim of the tank and he climbed it, excited to finally be at eye level with his new friend.
-
The promise of food had Seexa perking her ears up--literally--but the more obvious reaction came when Torien climbed up on the step ladder to stand beside the tank. She smiled, sharp teeth flashing for a moment, and made a chirping sound as she poked her head above the water to look up at him.
"...Hi." She gripped the edge of the tank, pulling herself closer and a little higher out of the water so they were face to face. Moving slowly, ready to pull back at the first sign of discomfort, she raised one hand up to lay her palm against his cheek.
Her smile grew and she gave another little chirp, a noise that she didn't seem to be entirely conscious of making.
-
Having her suddenly so close was a little stunning, at first. Not in a bad way, but his words left him when they finally came face to face. Instantly, Torien accepted her touch with a breathless smile.
He didn't notice the way the Old Man stared at the two of them. Not with spite, but just sheer dumb curiosity. As if he couldn't quite grasp the circumstances.
"Hey," Torien answered.
Holding the steak in his good arm, He lifted the package up and used his steel teeth to catch the tear point on the wrap and opened it up for her. Once she'd taken it, he'd return the affection by giving her a stroke on the jaw and cheek.
"This is much easier," he said with a slight chuckle.
-
Seexa barely had the restraint to keep herself from falling on the offered food like a ravenous animal—which was what she was, really. But she managed to keep at least some semblance of control, though she still scarfed it down pretty quickly.
A soft, thrumming sort of sound tumbled through her ribs and she tilted her head into his hand with a soft, happy curve to her lips. “Much,” she agreed with a soft giggle of her own.
She raised a hand to his cheek again, then let it trace the shape of his jaw, down along the line of his throat to land on his shoulder. “Are you still...hurt?” Her head cocked the other way and the smile has morphed into more of an expression of concern. “You’re okay now?” Her eyes moved to the stranger. "What work does he...have to do?"
-
Torien couldn’t help how quickly he snapped his hand back. The water churned and clouded with bits of meat, only for the detritus be filtered out by whatever advanced filters kept the tank going. Despite the sudden, animalistic display, Torien couldn’t help but give her a breathless smile when she came back up. She laid her hand on his shoulder, and he winced for a moment before the dampness soaked through and took the pain away.
More and more, he was starting to notice she had a habit of making it all better with just a touch, or a stroke.
“Still hurt,” he said, and he lifted his good hand from her chin to cover the hand on his shoulder. By now, he’d learned his lesson with the webbing, and instead he just covered and stroked her hand.
With a reassuring look Seexa’s way, he stepped down from the ladder towards the Old Man, who’d been busy unpacking and unrolling his tools and spare parts.
“Your friend wanted me to work on him here. Felt it’d be safer to get surgery in a scrap dump. Angsar’s name,” he grumbled. He singled out a rusted crate for Torien to sit on, and once the damaged cyborg was comfortable the Old Man slipped a pair of insulated gloves on.
He took up a handheld drill and unbolted Torien’s arm from the ruined shoulder joint, letting the battered, soiled limb fall down to the ground.
“Yup, this whole joint is blown. Don’t even get me started on the bio-components, shit...“
-
A crooning sound rang low in her throat when he winced, and she started to pull her hand back, afraid she'd hurt him. But then his hand was covering hers and even just that simple contact still felt so good after so long in utter isolation that she couldn't force herself to be the one to pull away first.
Another soft sound, more of a chirp, followed Torien as he stepped down from the ladder, and she watched the doctor warily as he set about working on her friend's arm. She gave a sharp, distressed squeak when the limb detached entirely, hauling herself a little further out of the water--but Torien didn't seem to be in any undue distress, and she quickly realized that was supposed to happen.
Or at least that the older man had meant to do it.
She swallowed thickly, her eyes drawn almost magnetically to the wound. "Sorry," she whispered, voice low and rough. Almost as it had been when she first spoke to him. "I'm...sorry. My fault. It was...my fault..."
Seexa slipped back down into the water, one hand still pressed to the glass as she allowed her tail to coil beneath her and rested most of her weight onto it.
-
"Don't say that, Seex. It was my choice," Torien offered quickly, and the Old Man only scowled as he adjusted his arms to Torien's movement. He took a few more pieces off. The arm had basically fused into the joint's socket, so after the limb itself came the shoulder housing, and finally the armor plating that sat just beneath the skin of the shoulder. The Old Man even shone his surgical light through the hole in Torien's shoulder, frowning at the burn marks at the edge.
Without the housing, Seexa would be able to glimpse at the inner workings of Torien (or at least, his shoulder). The augmentations went all the way to the edge of his collar, but she'd be able to see the ends of cables that would've threaded through his shoulder and into his arm, patches of ruined flesh sticking to chrome pistons and actuators.
The doctor probed, cranked, yanked, and even took out a blowtorch at one point to mend the critical damage, but Torien barely flinched the whole time, eyes set on Seexa.
"If anything, I think I'm the one that should be apologizing," Torien whispered with a tiny smile.
"I got us shot at, and scared you half to death," he continued, and the Old Man dinged him on the head with a socket wrench, which would've bruised a person but merely made a metallic clonk against Torien's head. He frowned back at the Old Man, who proceeded to speak.
"Stop moving so much, I don't want to trip your regulator."
Torien's fell still, but still kept his head turned to look at Seexa.
"You still hungry, Seex?"
-
Seexa shook her head quickly, sending her hair floating around her in a miniature cyclone for a moment before she stilled. "No. No, it wasn't your fault. You...got me out." She smiled, sharp teeth flashing for a moment, and pressed her palms against the glass. "You saved me, Torien."
The smile was short lived, as she winced and gave a distressed little shriek when the doctor whacked Torien's head with the wrench--but he seemed fine, so she subsided easily enough.
She held his eyes, and when he asked if she was hungry she sort of fidgeted sheepishly--which was an interesting sight for someone floating in the water--then nodded, twisting her fingers together in front of her body. "Yes," she admitted quietly. "I...they didn't...feed me. Days..."
She glanced away, adding hurriedly, "The water, the--the algae...helps. I'm not starving. I'm...okay."
-
Torien looked back at the Old Man, and the geezer sighed and nodded, but just as quickly put his hand on Torien's shoulder.
"Not just yet, though," he grumbled, and then he went and opened the duffel bag that he brought with him. Inside the bag was a jumble of spare cybernetic parts. He rummaged through and picked out a new casing for Torien's shoulder, and went about fitting it onto Torien, taking note of where he had to make adjustments.
Even as he did, he looked to Seexa and spoke.
"Don't you worry about Torien here. He's built tougher than starship steel. I'd know, I'm the one who put 'im together after his first showing."
Torien smiled and chuckled, but it didn't quite make it to his eyes.
"And, lucky for him, I've still got some of the old X12 series parts I put him together with, so quit your fussin'!" the Old Man snipped, and he pointed his wrench at Seexa.
"I'm an old man, you know! I need peace and quiet to work, not..." he trailed off when Torien laid the one hand he had left on the Old Man's shoulder.
"Adjust the housing, Crem. Less fussing."
The Old Man narrowed his eyes at the use of his name (even if it was a part of it), and grumbled to himself as he took out a plasma cutter and started trimming the new housing for Torien's shoulder.
Torien himself grabbed yet another steak, and without a second hand to hold it in he opted to hold the plastic in his sharp metal teeth as he went back onto the stepladder and used his one hand to hold onto the rim. He leaned his head past the tank's rim to offer Seexa the cut of meat.
-
She was gentler about taking this piece. Mostly because she didn't want to accidentally hurt Torien, with the way he was holding it between his teeth. She swam up to meet him and carefully plucked the plastic packaging away from his mouth, slicing through it easily with wickedly sharp claws before she glanced up at him again and smiled.
"...Thank you." She hesitated a moment, then gave a sharp flick of her tail to propel herself a little further out of the water so her face was level with his and nudged her forehead against his gently for a moment before she allowed herself to sink back down.
She tried to be a little more sedate eating the offered food this time around, and thought she managed okay. She hadn't been lying, she wasn't starving anymore, though she was still plenty hungry.
The second steak certainly helped though.
When she was done, Seexa gripped the rim of the tank again, one on either side of Torien's as she brought herself level with him again. She cocked her head, brow furrowed over too-large eyes as she glanced at his shoulder, then his head again. She chirped quietly and reached up to drag her fingers lightly over his scalp, trying to feel for any injury. It wasn't that she didn't believe the doctor when he said Torien was fine, she just...felt better checking herself.
Satisfied, she dropped her hand again and smiled at him almost sheepishly. "Sure you're...okay?"
-
“Yeah, just need a few new pieces, is all,” Torien said, letting his eyes close as she touched his bare scalp and water dripped down his head. Even through the sensory dulling and the armor beneath his skin, he could feel her touch. Almost like it was magical.
“I know it looked pretty bad but that was just my, um... my regulator,” Torien continued, and he propped his only elbow on the rim of the tank. He brushed the backs of his knuckles and fingers along her jaw and up her cheek.
“And it was worth it.”
-
Seexa reached up to grip his hand as he skated the back of it over her skin. She wrapped her fingers around his and pressed his hand against her cheek, closing her eyes and letting out a long, slow breath that was too heavy to even be a sigh.
She shook her head, but only slightly, loathed to break the contact even a little. "Not worth it," she whispered, eyes tight shut. Then: "...But thank you."
She opened her eyes to search his face again and once more reached up to trace her fingertips along skin and metal, from his temple down along the line of his cheek and then down again to his jaw. A tiny smile quirked at her lips and she drew her hand back with a rueful, "I'm...making you damp."
-
"Not that damp," Torien countered, and he propped on the edge with his stomach so he could clear the space with his hand and give her a light touch that skated from her cheek to her chin.
"Besides, been a lot of things today. Damp's not so bad."
He held her chin for a silent moment as his eyes peered into Seexa's, and then a stiff cough from the Old Man caused Torien to startle. He gave Seexa a parting smile and climbed back down the ladder, where the Old Man was waiting with some replacement parts.
"If he's got water in the wiring, so help me..." he grumbled as he set about cleaning the damaged area and repairing the tight bundles of moving parts.
-
Seexa found herself going still when he met her eyes, only the gentle back-and-forth movement of her tail keeping her afloat. A little dazedly, she started to reach up to cover his hand with hers--but then the doctor called him back and she pulled herself away abruptly with something like a slightly befuddled smile.
She sank back beneath the water and allowed herself to lean up against the side of the tank, watching Torien and the Old Man with her tail curled up under her body and her head resting lightly against the glass. She chirped in a quiet, sheepish sort of way when he complained about water in Torien's wiring.
"Sorry... I'll be more careful," she murmured, wincing a bit and dropping her eyes quickly.
-
Torien shot The Old Man a pensive look, and the ancient one seemed moved by it. His eyes turned apologetic, and he stayed quiet for the moment. By accessing some hidden connection points, the old man was able to access hidden seams in the skin around Torien's shoulders and removed the damaged sections in tiles. Torien basically didn't have a shoulder anymore, as the entire thing needed to be replaced.
"You need a brand new arm. New housing too. So I'm giving you an upgrade. Something an old customer of mine never got the chance to pick up. I was waiting for a client that could pay for it, but heck, this is better than gathering dust on a shelf."
The Old Man opened several refrigerated boxes and started to pull out the replacement components. Sleek black components that stood out starkly from his previous augments as decidedly less crude. As he busied himself by filling Torien's shoulder with new components and mechanisms, he spoke to Seexa.
"I've... heard tales of creatures like you, lass. Sirens, and Mermaids... and other creatures of that feather. Haven't seen one of you for a very, very long time."
-
Curled up on the floor of the tank, Seexa perked up a bit when the Old Man addressed her and cocked her head to the side. Wide, dark eyes blinked--first with one set of lids, then the other--and she frowned a bit in confusion.
"Mermaid?" she repeated quietly. Her eyes followed the moment of his hands as he tinkered with Torien's shoulder. She shook her head slowly: not a denial, more a helpless kind of confusion. She shrugged and glanced away. "I don't...know. I was...the only one. Alone. For a long time."
She wrapped her arms around her ribs and settled back to the bottom of the tank again with another little shrug. "Made me. In the before-place. Didn't...know any others."
-
The Old Man listened, attentive and silent even as he put a new shaft into Torien's shoulder and cranked it in. His brows lowered, perhaps in distaste or empathy, when she mentioned being "made".
"That kind of power. To just... make you from scratch... something only the gods used to have..." he said, but his voice descended into a lower grumble as he reached the end.
"But, they used to exist?" Torien said, and that elicited a nod from the Old Man.
"Long time ago. Swam the oceans of old, luring in sailors so they could eat them with their sharp teeth," he said, ending with a smirk. Torien chuckled, and rubbed the back of his head as he looked at Seexa.
"I don't think she's done much of that," he said.
-
A shudder passed down the length of her body when the doctor seemed to almost lament the conditions of her creation. Seexa ducked her eyes and murmured, unthinking, “Mother...wishes to be...more than a god. Gods...only have one...world...”
She shook herself and threw Torien a quick smile when he chuckled. She hummed in agreement. “No. No eating sailors. Or...luring.” Her smile turned wry as she tapped her fingers against her throat. She may not have one of her own. But she knew the words siren song. “I do not think...I could,” she added ruefully. Her voice was still raw, rough, and though the pain when she spoke had lessened with practice it still wasn’t comfortable.
Then her eyes sort of glazed over and she leaned her shoulder up against the wall of her tank. “Wish I...could,” she murmured, seemingly more to herself than the two men. “Swim...the old oceans. Swim anywhere. I’ve never had...more than this.”
She stretched out her arms so that her palms pressed against opposite sides of the tank on the word “this”, her expression both wistful and resigned.
-
"There must be a way," came Torien's whispered answer, looking at her as she stretched her arms across her tank. Before he could stop himself, he reached out from where he sat and put his chromed fingers against the glass. The Old Man grumbled, but adjusted to the change in position. After he finished installing all the new inner structures, he set about replacing the plating that covered the inner workings of his shoulder.
Torien wanted to ask who "Mother" was, but Seexa had already moved on past it.
The Old Man procured one last box, a sealed refrigerated case that clicked open once scanned. The sound drew Torien's eyes, and they widened once he saw the sleek, jet black limb inside.
"Is that..."
The Old Man spoke with a smile in his voice for once.
"Yep. That's an Onotari Skylight, so quit 'yer oglin before you get eyeball smudges all over it," The Old Man chided, and Torien put his attention back to Seexa.
-
Seexa started slightly, snapped out of her own head, then smiled when Torien lined his hand up against hers from the other side of the glass. She pressed her palm a little more firmly to the tank, then settled back again as the older man continued working.
Torien’s reaction to what had been revealed in the box was intriguing. She shifted to try to see better, head cocked curiously to the side. “That’s…good?” She looked between the two of them, trying to gauge what exactly was happening from their faces.
-
Torien raised an eyebrow, and he rubbed his chin with his good hand. Hmm, how could he explain this to someone who didn't even know what a cyborg was?
"It's... very good," he initially said in his usual whisper-tone, but he realized she probably couldn't hear him all to well from where she was. He grimaced as he spoke louder.
"Better than just a new arm, it's... it's the best arm," Torien offered, and The Old Man chimed in.
"Damn expensive, too, but it doesn't stop cyber-handlers from keeping Onotaris sold out, just to install 'em onto some screwbrains. But somebody with Torien's upgrades?"
The Old Man put a hand on Torien's shoulder in an almost fatherly fashion.
"This arm was practically made for him."
-
That definitely sounded good.
Seexa smiled at them both, a simple joy plain in her face. "Good." She turned a tight, excited circle in the tank before propelling herself toward the top so she could fold her arms over the rim and peer down at Torien and the doctor.
She wanted to offer help, but she knew there really wasn't anything she could do.
Well. Maybe one thing? It wasn't much, but it was all she could offer in the moment.
"Torien?" She cocked her head at him. "You don't...have to." She touched two fingers to her throat. She'd noticed that wince when he tried to raise his voice. "I can hear." She flicked one finned ear and smiled a little crookedly. "I have...really good ears. You don't have to...talk too loud."
-
The Old Man also looked down at Torien when he strained to speak. He remained silent, though, instead quietly studying the dynamic between his self-given charge and his new, exotic friend.
Torien, for one, sighed with a smile that was both tired and thankful.
"They... reinforced me. Here," Torien said, drawing some fingers along his adam's apple and upper throat. With the skin stretched out, she'd be able to see hydraulics beneath the skin and extra "veins" that were actually wires.
"But they didn't do it very well," he said with a wry tilt of his lips.
While he talked, The Old Man set about installing the new limb, starting with the frame. The sleek, black-polished metal and delicate angles of the limb contrasted sharply with the bright, unpainted chrome that made up the rest of his augments. It came with a built-in shoulder plate that gave that side a little more bulk than the other. The Old Man started humming an ancient tune to himself as he started wiring up the synthetic muscles and nerves.
"Flex your hand," he said, and despite Torien's lack of an arm there he knit his brow with focus. The bottom set of wires sparked.
"Bicep."
More sparks, this time from one of the connections on top. They quickly covered all the movement groups before The Old Man started putting the casing on Torien's shoulder with a satisfied smirk.
Torien looked back up at Seexa and couldn't help but smile a little, finding that she looked kind of playful perched up there like that.
"I'm just glad to have a working arm again, honestly," he said, and then The Old Man grunted.
-
Seexa watched curiously as Torien tested the new arm, and when he glanced up toward her she chirped happily and offered a quick smile. She gripped the edge of the tank to pull herself up a little further and hold herself out of the water, leaning forward as much as she dared as she cocked her head. The gentle figure-eight motion of her tail in the water seemed to keep her balance easily enough, but she was starting to look a little precarious on her perch.
Seemingly oblivious to this fact, she gave another little chirp as she looked him over. "Better?" Her eyes flickered between her friend and the older man, but came back to rest on Torien quickly enough. "Does...that one hurt?" she asked, softer now, concerned.
-
"Better?" Torien repeated, and his smile became wider. He held up the skeletal frame that was installed so far, and watched the back of his knuckles as he slowly opened and closed the fingers. He was about to say something else, but then The Old Man swatted at his outstretched hand with an oil rag and Torien quickly set his arm back down.
Still, he didn't let that deflate him.
"So much better," he finally managed, letting his arm go limp again as the Old Man worked on attaching the bundles of synthetic muscle fibers to the proper nerve connection and installing the casing. When he was finally done and the last connection was made, Torien jumped a little at the sudden jolt to his nerves and the arm reacted, now with its full fluidity.
With a silent gasp, he moved his other hand to his new bicep, and his eyes widened when he clenched his fist and felt synthetic muscles bulge and ripple under the flexible alloy casing.
"It's almost real," he said with a breathless wonder in his voice,
The Old Man stood away and regarded Torien like he was a masterpiece in progress, then produced a collapsible rod from his tool kit and took his place in front of him again.
"Spacial," The Old Man said simply, and leveled the rod next to Torien's head. He pulled it away, and right before it got out of arm's reach, Torien snatched the tip with his new arm. "Hand-Eye," came the next one, which Torien passed even easier, grabbing the rod as it passed in front of him.
"I think she likes your new arm," The Old Man said with an oddly mischevous smile on his face, and when Torien looked over to Seexa, The Old Man gave him a solid smack on the elbow with the rod, and immediately Torien's new arm jumped away from the impact and he made a surprised sound, looking back to his sudden assailant with a wounded look on his face as he rubbed his new elbow.
"Twitch response is also good," he added with some genuine mirth to his tone.
-
Seexa smiled as Torien inspected the new limb with something approaching wonder. She giggled quietly when the doctor rested his reflexes and seemed to surprise him doing it, but she tried to smother the sound quickly.
Pleased that her new friend seemed so much happier with the new arm, she chirped and leaned a little further over the edge of the tank--and the whole thing rocked dangerously in its makeshift standing bay. Her eyes widened and she squeaked, quickly throwing herself back the other way in an effort to balance it out.
Too far. In the brief moment of panic, she over-corrected, and the tank lurched back to land with an awkward clang so that it rested at a much sharper angle, sending an impressive amount of water surging over the edge and onto the floor.
An impressive amount of water and one startled, artificial mermaid. Seexa hit the ground with a wet slap and went very, very still as the shock hit her system and left her all but paralyzed for several long moments.
-
The split moment before the tank gave its final, fateful shift, Torien had been entranced with his limb. It did not feel too different from his current augmentations, most likely due to smart calibrations on The Old Man's part. One limb outperforming the other can lead to all kinds of unnecessary strain on the body and can be a a very easy way to throw yourself off balance.
Those happy, approving chirps that Seexa was oft to produce lulled him into a moment of neglect, when he really should've been making sure that, well...
...that Seexa's tank didn't tip over!
As soon as her shocked squeak his his ears, Torien looked up just in time to see the top of the tank swing backwards and away from him. The Old Man cursed as he scooped up some of his most sensitive instruments before the small wave of water washed over their part of the floor.
Water did not bother Torien, and he was up in a flash. Worry threatening to spill into panic took root in his chest, coiling around his lungs and heart and causing him to breathe heavily enough that it started to hurt.
"Seex!' He callled, and he was at her side in an instant. He had never seen a fish, let alone something like her. As she laid there, paralyzed and still, Torien's blood turned to ice, and he knelt down to get an arm under her head and to help rest her upper back on his lap. He opened his mouth to speak, but terror strangled him.
Was this going to kill her? If not, how long could she last like this? As the knots grew tighter, the Old Man behind him had risen into action. The mighty wave had left some of the packaging for Torien's new arm partially filled. The Old Man came up with a waterlogged piece of concave packing foam and splashed it onto Seexa's chest, so the gills could get some water, and he helped Torien turn her onto her side, so at least one of her sets of gills could still have something to work with.
-
It hurt.
That was the first thing she registered. The only thing, for the first few seconds. She'd never exposed her whole body to the air like this before, and everything from her gills down ached with a sharp pins-and-needles sensation. Oversensitive, her bioluminescence flickering rapidly, she tried to draw in a breath and choked as her lungs and gills competed, her body panicking as much as she was.
The floor felt so cold it burned, and when Torien half lifted her into his lap she gave a tiny whimper that was half relief and half pain. The water that splashed over her torso helped--at least a little, she thought--and her gills rippled in panicky little breaths as her chest started to rise and fall quickly.
Too quickly. She was hyperventilating.
The burning, prickling feeling through her lower body wouldn't fade. She was no stranger to pain, she was used to waiting it out, but this...she'd never felt anything like this. She might have been going into shock, or entering some sort of emergency survival mode. She didn't know, and she couldn't seem to force her voice from her throat, only adding to the panic.
Instinctively, she reached out, and her hand caught on Torien's wrist as she tried to force her lips to move, her lungs to work. She needed to say something, ask something, but she couldn't--
Her mouth opened, but all that came out was a high, sharp keening as she convulsed, her tail writhing back and forth through the shallow puddle that had formed around her. She jerked against him again, her grip on his wrist tightening automatically, and the burning sensation seemed to center in her tail and intensify, until it felt like she was being ripped apart and she screamed.
Her tail stopped twitching as it split in two--slowly, too slowly, peeling a bandage inch by inch rather than ripping it off in one go. Her tailfin twitched and contracted, slowly forming into two webbed, slightly misshapen feet at the end of a pair of long, almost frog-like legs. Her gills rippled once more, then sealed themselves along her ribs, looking more like lines of scar tissue once they were closed.
Her markings were lit up a bright, pulsing blue as she collapsed into Torien's hold entirely, whimpering softly. She didn't even seem to fully realize what was happening, eyes squeezed shut as the pain finally, blessedly, began to fade.
-
Torien was utterly shocked, holding her head in his lap and stammering over the beginnings of words that didn't even make it out of his mouth. She wimpered with pain when he brought her onto his lap, and he gave her forehead a quick stroke with his new hand, its smooth touch contrasting the cold metal that made up the rest of his augments.
He blinked when some water splashed into his face and soaked his front, and he ignored the numbness that seeped through him. He saw her try and breathe, and when she started to hyperventilate panic really set in. She took his wrist and he leaned down, desperately trying to make out what she was attempting to say.
"It's okay, we'll get you back in," he said, and he took her other hand to comfort her.
"Crem! Help me with-"
Then she started to wail and keen, and Torien was shocked into silence. He wanted to move her, but then Crem, The Old Man, pointed at her tail.
"Wait!" he said.
"Don't move her!"
Torien automatically made a protesting sound until he followed where Crem was pointing. Watched in abject horror as the agonizing display started to take place in front of him, and he averted his eyes. She started to squirm and thrash and Torien did the only thing he could, pulling her close to hold her, to keep her safe during whatever she was going through.
Her screaming and gods, the sound her tail made as it slowly tore itself in hand, reminded him of his own cries when he'd been torn apart and put back together again.
"By the gods," said Crem, and Torien didn't say anything, instead whispering things like "you're okay" and "I've got you," as whatever was happening seemed to finish and she was in his hold entirely. He soothed at her hair and back, keeping his head against hers.
When it was over, he didn't do anything other than speak up softly.
"Seexa?"
-
It took a moment for his voice to register. She felt dazed--she looked it too, when she finally managed to raise her head and look up into his eyes, her own glazed and distant. "I..."
She shifted, some vague corner of her mind realizing that she was being held in his lap and not wanting to make a nuisance of herself, but the moment she did a new pang of pain jolted through her lower body and she went still, whimpering. It wasn't as strong as before, more an ache than that sharp tearing sensation, but it certainly wasn't comfortable.
And there was something else. Something felt...different. Wrong.
"What...?" Her voice croaked in the back of her throat, nearly as rough as it had been when they first met, and she tried to turn her head to look down at herself, find the source of whatever that had been. Surely she must have cut herself. Badly. Maybe on the broken glass of the tank when she'd fallen...
There were several long moments where she just couldn't process what she was seeing as she stared down at her legs. There was blood--too dark and thick to be human--but not nearly as much as she would have thought from the amount of pain that had accompanied it. She frowned, instinctively trying to flick her tail to slough some of it off. The flipper-like feet twitched, and her eyes widened.
"What--?!" Her voice rose into a screech that made her wince. She squirmed in Torien's hold for a moment, panicky, before the lingering ache and the awkward scrambling of legs she didn't know how to control made her go still again.
She looked up at him, trying to focus on the feeling of his arm around her and his hand against her back as her breathing tiptoed toward terrified pants. "I don't--I didn't..."
She had no idea what to do. Trailing off with another quiet whimper, Seexa turned her face into his chest and clung to him, shaking violently.
What's happening to me?
-
Torien continued to stare, mouth agape, as Seexa tried to move her legs around only to react more and more anxiously. Now that she was shaped more like him, part of him wanted to be flushed and embarrassed, but that wasn't even a concern at the moment.
She was scared, and she needed somebody.
''You... grew legs...'' Torien said slowly, both for her and himself.
''And you can breathe. You're okay,'' he said, suddenly looking down at her, eyes pausing on her now sealed gill slits. Torien didn't know much about magic or science, but he could guess she never knew about this because, well... she'd been in a tank her whole life. Part of him was relieved, he didn't know what they were going to do otherwise.
He pulled her into a proper hug, and let himself lean backwards just a little to give her more space. He sat there, covered in water and what felt like lukewarm fish blood as he held the trembling mermaid.
Old Crem merely hung back, hand over his mouth as he tried to piece together what had just happened through the shock of it all.
-
Somehow, actually hearing that--you can breathe, you're okay--helped the reality to sink in. Gradually, the terrified panting evened out to slightly-heavier-than-normal breathing, and after a few more moments Seexa was able to raise her head and look down at herself again.
She managed not to completely panic this time, at least. But a tiny, confused whimper still escaped her throat, and she pressed back into Torien's arms as though she could somehow escape her new legs.
"I..." She drew in a careful, shaky breath, felt it travel down her throat and fill her lungs in a way that was new and strange and made her wince. "I didn't...know," she finally managed to murmur, and tilted her head back to meet Torien's eyes. "I didn't...know that would..."
She trailed off, looked down at herself again. It finally registered that they were more or less collapsed in a puddle of tank water and her own blood. She winced, and if she'd had her tail she probably would have been curling down into it. As it was, her legs gave a little jerk as her body tried to move in a way it couldn't anymore, and she whimpered at the strange intensity of the sensation.
"I'm...making you wet," she muttered, sounding a little dazed, and tried to push herself out of Torien's arms to give him space. She only succeeded in flopping awkwardly onto her side with a panicky little chirping sound.
-
"I've been through worse," Torien said, remembering the agony he'd been through not that long ago, and despite her own trepidation about it Torien had not even flinched. He'd seen blood and horrors enough for two lifetimes, been covered in blood both his own and his opponent's.
She flopped onto her side and off of his lap, and rather than immediately pull her back towards himself, he simply let down a hand onto her shoulder.
"Here, let me help. Sit up with me, like this," he said, trying to find her hands so he could guide her up to a sitting position to match his, with his legs spread out in front of him.
-
Seexa tried to swallow back another quiet whimper as his hand settled gently on her shoulder. He'd touched her there before, it shouldn't have felt so strange--though any touch was still something of a shock to her system. Still, she realized she felt even more overly sensitive to it than she'd been before.
She really hoped that was going to go away. She could feel the air against her pebble-scaled skin like a physical weight, making her itch and shift uncomfortably as she tried to push herself up beside Torien, letting him guide her up and steady her with his hands on hers.
"Okay..." She managed to settle herself beside him, leaning carefully against his shoulder for support, and looked down at her legs sprawled out awkwardly in front of her. Despite her friend's augments, his legs were at least shaped human. Hers were not.
She frowned and carefully tried to flick her tail--or whatever the equivalent that would be in this new shape. It turned out that was curling her long, webbed toes. "That's...weird," she muttered, blinking in that rapid, dual-lid pattern, first one set then the other in quick repetition. She tried it again, slightly more aware of how her body moved now, and managed to point and flex her feet a few times--like a dancer warming up--before the sensation started to prickle uncomfortably and she stopped.
"I...have legs." She looked up at Torien, then to Crem, then back, clearly completely lost. "I have legs."
-
Crem, no longer "The Old Man" by virtue of Torien letting his nickname slip, quickly sprang back into action. He opened up a medical case with expanding towels designed for body fluids, and set about cleaning the congealing mess of semi-amphibious vitae and tank water on the ground.
Torien barely noticed, because he was staring at Seexa in a strange mixture of curiosity and shock as she tested out the flexing of her feet. When she leaned her shoulder up against his, the water that clung to her started to run down the chrome limb in rivulets.
"And knees!" Torien finally pipped, and then he motioned downwards to his own legs. Torien's legs were augmented all the way up to the middle thigh, although Torien was still wearing his pair of ring shorts, meaning only the metal sections could be seen. Like all his other augments, they had a fair amount of external hydraulics, but along the upper thigh and knee the casing was more or less still human-shaped. His feet had the vague shape of toes on their casings, but they were solid.
Or that is what it seemed. With a mental flex of his own feet, they elongated slightly and talons useful for kicking unsheathed themselves like the claws of an eagle.
"Like me," he said, motioning to their feet, and he dipped one of his closer to hers to compare the size. He turned his head to seek out her eyes, and he motioned down to her side.
"Your gills," he said, and his hand lingered nearby to point.
"You know how to breathe with your nose, at least," he remarked with a growing smile.
-
Seexa watched his leg move, then flinched back a bit, startled, when the blade emerged from his toes. She recovered quickly enough, and it was plain that she wasn't afraid, just curious.
She managed a small, slightly shaky smile when he laid his foot beside hers. "Like me," she repeated. Her hand drifted up to her throat, remembering that first moment of true connection when he'd first found her. When they'd both tried to speak and winced at the effort.
Me too.
She made a considering sort of crooning noise when he gestured to her gills, nodding sort of dazedly. "It feels...weird," she mumbled, taking a careful inhale and then scrunching her face up when air traveled into her lungs. "Really weird."
She looked up at Crem, busy cleaning, and winced apologetically. "Sorry. Can...I help?" This was mostly her fault, after all. She wriggled around until she could sort of tuck her legs to the side like she might have with her tail, making a face and shuddering at the over-sensitivity, but that was fading, thank the stars.
Very, very carefully, she leaned forward until she could place one hand on the ground, the other braced against Torien's shoulder. She took a few steeling breaths--weird, so so weird--and pushed.
She managed to get almost halfway to her feet before her legs trembled and buckled under her own weight, sending her collapsing back into Torien's lap with an indignant squeak.
-
“You get used to it, I guess,” Torien said, his own voice going a little breathless with worry as he saw her move her legs about. When she finally managed to bend and tuck them aside, he gave a reassuring smile and mirrored the same position with his own legs, facing her. He straightened a bit more when it became clear she was going to use him as a support. The hand on her side slid up her forearm to support her better.
It seemed it was in vain, because she flopped onto his lap and was suddenly very close to him. It was easier to ignore her state of total undress when she was shaped less like a person, but it was very hard to ignore now.
“Oof!” Came his exclamation. She was heavier than she looked, but he managed against it just fine and kept her from just falling off of him with a supportive hand to her back.
“You almost had it,” he said, only encouragement in his voice. Nobody had done anything like this for when he’d woken up with his augmentations, filled with foreign weapons and wielding limbs that were not his own at first.
“Here, let me help you,” he said and he did his best to gently deposit her on the ground next to himself. He brushed one of her knees with his hand, and motioned to his own. He drew his legs in until he could put his elongated, talon-bearing feet down flat, and pushed himself into a squat with his arms, twisting one side of his torso for enough momentum to right himself once he extended his legs.
“Come on, Seexa. You can do it.”
-
She stared up at him with wide eyes for a few moments, mute, when he stopped her from rolling off his lap onto the floor. She shifted slightly when he moved to lay her down, bracing her forearms against the ground as she watched him stand with a small frown wrinkling her forehead.
At his encouragement, she took a breath and moved to try to get her legs under her body again. She managed that part alright--now she just had to make them bear her weight, right? Glancing up at Torien nervously every few seconds, she awkwardly finagled herself into a sort of half crouch, one hand braced against the ground and the other arm out for balance.
Then she took another breath and tried to heave herself upward. She actually managed to get all the way up that time, though her legs shook and bent awkwardly. Her arms pinwheeled as she tried to keep her balance, threatening to topple over, and she gave another frightened little squeak as she instinctively staggered forward and wound up grabbing onto Torien's shoulders to hold herself up, which brought her in rather close.
She was still damp, water dripping from the ends of her hair to steadily form a puddle around their feet, and she realized belatedly that by now it was starting to soak through his shirt. Seexa blinked at him, legs still shaking but at least holding her up now. "Um...sorry?"
-
"It's fine," came Torien's voice, as it seemed he was completely unbothered by the wetness. He'd been in much worse states very recently, he didn't mind a little dampness here and there. When she held onto his shoulders for support, she'd find him more than capable of supporting her with his augmentations, and he laid his own hands on her shoulders in a mirror of how she held him.
And hopefully she wouldn't notice just how red his face was.
"Look, you're already standing," he added, smiling a bit wider at her. He straightened up to show her a more comfortable posture and brought his heels closer together.
"Like this."
-
Seexa stared at him a moment longer, then a cautious, breathless smile started to spread across her face in response.
"I'm...standing," she repeated quietly, almost disbelieving. She shifted a bit when he straightened, instinctively adjusting herself with his movement. Her legs still shook, but she wasn't leaning the entirety of her weight on him anymore.
Vaguely, she noted that if they both stood straight--or as straight as she could get her new legs to go--she was much shorter in comparison than she might have expected to be. Well. Inasmuch as she could have expected any of this.
Carefully, she drew her awkward, webbed feet closer together. She nearly toppled sideways, but managed to grab Torien's arm and steady herself. She shuffled a little closer, instinctively leaning into the stability he offered. She glanced up at him with another quick, small smile, though there was a slight wince behind it. Everything below her waist still felt unreasonably sensitive.
"What..." She glanced down at herself, then up again, looking between Torien and Crem. "What do I...do?"
-
Standing with her like this, Torien did note with some curiosity that she was shorter than he'd expected. Maybe it was because the water made her look much larger than she was or if she merely had more height to her when she boasted a tail.
When it seemed she needed a little less of his support, he let his hands slip down to her elbows, supporting her forearms but otherwise allowing her to slowly acclimate to her own weight.
Seexa's gaze seemed to finally stir Crem, who seemed to come out of his almost death-like stillness. "Clothes", he said simply, and turned away to offer Seexa some form of modesty. Torien, having just been reminded of this, simply turned his face away so Seexa wouldn't see the fire that had just lit under his cheeks at the realization. And still, he didn't exactly make an effort to distance himself.
"The cloak," he said quietly to Crem, and the old man set about looking for the discarded garment. Torien looked back to Seexa, and with an encouraging smile he took a step backwards.
"Try and walk with me."
-
Seexa blinked at him, then repeated as though the word was entirely foreign, "Clothes."
She glanced down at herself. While her creator had drawn on Old Earth merfolk as a template to give her a distinctly, if vaguely willowy, feminine humanoid shape, she wasn't technically mammalian--or at least she didn't think she was--so the slight curve of her breasts was really more decorative than it was anything else. She knew from the data feeds in the before-place that most humanoid women used them to feed young, though without nipples she wasn't properly equipped to do that.
As for her legs, well...now that she was getting the hang of standing properly, they did look slightly more humanoid--barring the large, flipper-like feet on the ends--and the slight flare of her hips indicated that a little more thought may have gone into the functionality of this aspect of her anatomy. Aside from the filament-thin barbells on her head she was entirely hairless, which revealed that a thin, almost imperceptible slit at the fork of her legs was the only indication that her species may have been capable of live birth.
That is, if she'd properly had a species.
None of that seemed particularly dangerous to her--pretty much everything important was protected by thin-pebble scales--but if her new friends thought she needed clothes then she supposed she did. Now that she thought of it, she hadn't exactly seen any of the people who'd come to gawk at her in her tank walking about naked.
Torien's voice snapped her from the train of thought and she blinked up at him, vaguely dazed for a moment. Then she realized, "Oh!" and glanced down at their feet again. She bit her lip, glancing up at him, and took a cautious, shuffling step forward to follow him.
It was strange, and cumbersome, but she learned if she let her feet turn out slightly she was able to take proper steps, albeit tiny, careful ones. This meant she moved in something between a waddle and a walk, but she didn't seem to care as she met Torien's eyes with another breathless smile.
"It doesn't...hurt," she said, sounding both surprised and delighted. She wasn't entirely sure why she'd expected it to, but was more than happy to have been proven wrong.
-
She was still the closest thing to a naked woman that he'd held in a long time. Somehow, he knew she wasn't the first, despite the shattered memories that his conversion left him with. His vision returned to her once she started to move, too worried that she could still topple over at any moment.
She had an odd sort of density her that he supposed was a side effect of her aquatic nature, and he noted that she was definitely heavier than she looked as she leaned on him for support. One of his hands went to her side to help keep her steady, his new one.
He made a startled sound as the advanced limb registered the coldness of her skin and the texture of the scaly skin along her sides. His eyes set onto that point of contact, which made it easy for them to wander along.
She was definitely not mammalian in the slightest, even if her smooth underbelly, hips, and body shape were crafted to suggest otherwise. She was piscine, cetacean, and even batrachian all at once, but still human enough that it had his color flaring anew once his eyes wandered low enough.
When she spoke, he looked back up to her with a "deer in headlights" look on his face.
"It doesn't hurt!" Torien repeated with a beaming smile, sooooooooo happy to have something to latch on.
-
The soft, startled noise he made when his new hand came into contact with her skin made Seexa start in turn, looking up at him with eyes even wider than normal as concern flashed across inhuman features. Had she hurt him, somehow?
But no. No, he seemed fine. He even smiled at her, an expression she returned breathlessly, nodding. The feeling of cool metal against her skin was…different, somehow, with his new prosthetic. Smoother, maybe? Perhaps warmer? As though this metal was more capable of retaining what little heat it could glean from her body.
She gave her head a little shake, putting it from her mind for the moment as she tried a few more steps, bringing her flush against Torien as she gripped his shoulder with one hand to keep her balance. “This is still…so…weird,” she giggled—actually giggled. It was a rough sound, clearly unpracticed, but the happy glint of her dark eyes made the emotion behind it unmistakable.
She glanced down at herself again, wiggling webbed toes against the floor. “I wonder…how long,” she mused, almost to herself. She glanced up into Torien’s face again. “It all feels…new. Sort of…buzzing?”
She wasn’t sure how to put the odd, tingling sensitivity of her new legs into words, or if she even needed to. Leaning a little more heavily into her friend, she glanced back over her shoulder at Crem, vaguely remembering Torien had told him to collect a cloak. “You’re a…a doctor, right?”
And he’d seemed to understand something about her. Or at least, something about what she was supposed to be. Maybe he’d have a better idea of what was going on.
-
Okay. He could do this.
He would have continued that line of thinking, but then she waddled just that much closer to him and he felt her arms drape around his shoulder, her damp body come flush against him. He wasn’t a sailor, not by a long shot, but she certainly could have eaten him right then and there. Metal and all.
His own hands rise to her shoulders to better support her as she used him as a support. He retracted his foot talons so he could stand this close to her without bumping her with any sharp bits.
“Feeling pins and needles?” He said in an enthusiastic whisper, but then his smile faded somewhat when Crem cleared his throat.
“The lady’s cloak,” he said blithely, coming up and very lightly dropping it on her shoulders. It was a makeshift cloak with a hood, so she’d have to hold it closed with her hands as she walked. Torien adjusted on her shoulders and took her hands to show her how to properly “wear” it.
Crem’s eyes were hard an analytical as he took the two of them in, as if he was mulling over a nagging thought that he kept to himself. “I’m not a fancy geneticist, just a surgeon and cyber-doc. It’s my guess that you have “adapted” to land. Lungs instead of gills, feet in place of limbs. I don’t know how long you can stay without water, probably not long.”
He glanced to the fallen tank, which was on its side and blinking with red lights instead of its usually gentler glow.
“So we’ve still got a problem.”
-
“Pins and needles,” she repeated with a rough, quiet laugh and a nod. She’d heard the expression before, but had never really had any basis for comparison. Until now, apparently.
She twitched a bit at the foreign feeling of fabric against her skin when the cloak was draped over her shoulders, but quickly adjusted to hold it closed over her chest. Still moving carefully, adjusting to her new center of gravity, she turned to see the crooked and leaking tank Crem indicated and frowned.
“I…hate…that thing,” she rasped quietly, glaring at it. Logically, she knew it needed to be fixed—she would need to be in water again sooner rather than later, most likely. But just looking at it, seeing from the outside how confining it was, how limiting, her entire world—
Seexa hissed at the tank, lips drawing back over sharp teeth in a snarl. “I hate it,” she spat, still glaring at the thing as though it was a sentient creature that might retreat under her gaze.
-
“She hates it,” Torien murmured, giving Seexa a reassuring little back rub. He was more comfortable once she had some semblance of decency. He was tired and he also wanted to spare himself the confusion that came with Naked Friends.
“But if we want to leave…” Although… he looked around at the goblin ship’s interior, and several small ideas sparked in his mind. No, that was for later.
“Well, erm… for now…” and he looked over to Crem, whose eyebrows nearly pierced the cieling. “Oh for-“ But Torien was already stepping up to make his whispered voice heard. “I’ll do all the work on the tank. And I’ll even do work on your place.” Torien strained to raise his voice confidently, but he stood in front of the old man.
Crem pointed his cane at Torien.
“It’s not you I’m worried about, Chrome Warrior,” he said, looking past him towards Seexa. He shifted on his feet, replaced his cane against the ground, and made for the ship’s entry ramp.
“I’ll get my truck. You should eat something, Torien. Kick start that interchanger.”
Torien shrugged, and once it was dark and quiet, Torien looked to Seexa, but not before eyeing the still-wrapped collection of burger-mat food brought alongside the steaks.
“Still hungry?”
-
Seexa managed to wrangle the sudden anger back under control and took a careful step back from the tank, though her breath was still coming more harshly than was strictly necessary. She knew she needed the damned thing, but…
She just hated it.
“Hm?” Torien’s question reminded her of the present situation and she looked to the synthetic foodstuff. “Oh. Um…yes,” she admitted with a small smile. “I could eat more…”
She cocked her head curiously in Torien’s direction. “That…what he called you. Chrome Warrior. What does…that mean?”
-
Seexa confirmed she was hungry, and Torien matched her small smile. He hated eating by himself, especially when there were others around. Something about being watched while eating gave him unease, even if he didn’t remember why…
With a little “come on” gesture, he walked over to the (blessedly dry) bundle of food and picked up a synthpaper bag that smelled of greasy food and fried things, filled nearly to the brim. Crem had scribbled “starter fuel” on the bag in marker over the colorful Burger-Mat logo. The only true seat in the ship was the control station, so Torien made sure to recline it as far back as possible so he could use it as a “bench” of sorts.
“It’s the name they gave me,” he whispered, and he scooched over and patted the space next to him. From the burgeoning bag, he unveiled a foil-wrapped cheeseburger. “It’s what they call me whenever they make me fight, but… it’s not a bad name.”
As he spoke, he unwrapped the burger, fold by fold.
“I like it when my friends call me Chrome Warrior. It makes me feel strong, like I’m important. Not… owned. Like I’m free.”
-
Seexa trailed after him, moving in some awkward combination of a shuffle and a waddle—but at least she was waking on her own! She hovered a moment, but clambered into place when he patted the “seat” beside him. She sniffed curiously at the unearthed burger, sitting with her shoulder just barely touching his.
“You are.” She dipped her head so she could meet his eyes and repeated seriously, “You are free, Torien. And…I only am because you’re strong.”
She smiled gently and let her shoulder press a little more firmly against his for a brief moment. “…Thank you. I know I already—you didn’t…have to come back for me. She might…she might not have been able to hurt you if you just left…”
She sighed and let her head drop forward a bit, webbed fingers laced tightly in her lap. “Thank you for coming back for me…Chrome Warrior.”
-
Chrome Warrior.
It had always amazed Torien how powerful such a simple identity was. He remembered so little of his life before his reconstruction, that it was the closest thing he had to a proper identity. He’d heard it barked out over speakers so many times, by people who couldn’t care less of he lived or died. To them, he was just a chrome warrior, another in the long list of cyber-gladiators.
But to the few friends he’d made in the fighting pits, to Crem, he was The Chrome Warrior. He was a comrade, a confidant. Someone worth investing more than just spare parts in. And now… a hero? Well… someone’s personal hero at any rate.
“I don’t regret it, even if you did get me wet,” he said with a growing smile. Expertly holding the burger in one hand, he ventured out with his new limb and set the hand down on top of Seexa’s hands. The sensation of touch was still so marvelous to Torien that he ended up splaying his fingers against the back of her hand. “And I couldn’t leave you. Not in that place, with them.”
He turned towards her slightly, resting one of his knees against her own.
“Here, try this,” he said, smiling as he held the steamy burger out to her.
“Real cooked food. Not raw steaks and fish flakes.”
-
Seexa smiled sheepishly at him, still dripping tank water from the ends of her hair as she cocked her head. “I’m glad…you don’t regret it.”
She started a bit when he laid his hand over hers, still unused to touch. But she adjusted quickly, unfolding her fingers from around each other so she could let her fingertips press lightly against the cool metal.
When he offered her the burger, she found herself leaning toward the smell of the food before her brain caught up with her. She sat back again quickly, but nodded. “Yes please.”
Cautiously, she took the proffered food and lifted it to her nose, sniffing curiously before she took a careful bite—a surprisingly delicate bite, considering the vigor with which she’d attacked the earlier steaks.
Her already wide eyes widened a bit further. “Oh…” She whipped her head around to stare at Torien. “That’s good!”
The shout made her raw throat ache, but she didn’t even care. Grinning, she took another bite of the burger, more enthusiastic this time, chirping and crooning happily all the while.
-
http://fotostudios.com.de/unterlusz (http://fotostudios.com.de/unterlusz)
-
(We got botted I'm shook. Also Seexa with the borger is too much for me T_T )
He couldn't help but laugh as she shouted, wincing internally as he thought about how much it hurt him just to speak at a normal volume. She wasn't exactly eating high cuisine, but Torien recognized that the raw steaks she'd had earlier was probably the closest thing she'd had to real food.
He watched her take her second bite as well before he reached down to the bag to get some more of the food out. Ever since Crembor had re-initiated many of his systems, his augmentations (and especially the new arm) had been drawing plenty of power. As a result, Torien felt famished, and he eagerly unwrapped a burger of his own. Settling with his side against Seexa's, he took a large bite with his sharpened chrome teeth.
"It is," was all he managed to say. As soon as the food hit his cybernetic stomach, it started being burnt like fuel. Another bite, and he was looking at Seexa with a goofy, satisfied grin, before his expression softened somewhat.
"Hold still a second..." he said, and he used his thumb to snatch up some rogue ketchup at the corner of her mouth, and then turned it to show her.
"You got ketchup on your face," he whispered and it took everything he had to not just laugh painfully.
-
Seexa could only croon and nod in encouragement as Torien took a bite of his own meal, her mouth quite occupied. She did manage something of a smile in return for his own, but when he told her to hold still she furrowed her brow in confusion.
She tried to ask what was wrong, but her mouth was full. She managed to swallow a downright inhuman bite, but by then he'd swiped the ketchup from the corner of her mouth. She found herself giggling as he showed it to her.
"Guess I...don't have much practice...with table manners," she laughed quietly, giving him a sheepish but happy shrug. "Here."
Stuffing the rest of the burger into her mouth--stretching her jaw far too wide to do so, but so quickly that it was difficult to catch--she sorted through the synthpaper bag and came up victorious with a scrap of a material she couldn't name, but which shimmered slightly and bore a cartoonish logo.
She took Torien's hand and used the napkin--wrapper? Honestly, she wasn't sure--to wipe the dollop of condiment away. Chirping, pleased with herself, she looked up at him and squeezed his fingers lightly in hers. "Better?"