092: Bullets and Boards – Seven
The next day saw the crew of the Pelekys once again in their complementary shuttle, headed off in a different direction.
They'd awoken early and refreshed, and after a handful of suggestions, they'd decided to hit up the hiking trail that Nevara had settled on.
"By the looks of it, it's not a difficult trail, but it is lengthy, so you'll be better off with sturdy and comfortable attire rather than fashionable." She'd told them as they separated after breakfast in order to get ready for their day.
"Aw, but I was so looking forward to breaking out my necupole outfit again!" Rhea drawled sarcastically as Malakh shoved her into their room, laughing as she halfheartedly pretended to resist.
"I take it necupole fashion is impractical, then?" V'tala asked, and Elytra scoffed at that.
"That's putting it mildly. I'll show you in a bit."
And that led to the pair of them sitting next to one another in the shuttle, a data pad between them, images and videos of necupole fashion filling the screen.
"It's… well made." V'tala said of the style eventually, the current model on screen giving a turn in order to show off the sharp suit she was wearing. Sharp in a literal sense, as it seemed to be made of small, mirror-bright geometric shapes that were all linked by some dark material that called to mind the leading around stained glass, but was flexible enough for the model to strut her stuff down the runway without her movements being impeded. Narrow at the waist, it flared out to comical proportions at the shoulder and calves, giving the model an hourglass silhouette in the most extreme sense.
"You know how bad it is? It's worse." Rhea said as she leaned over the seat to see what they were looking at, "Wearing that shit was rough! All the jewellery I wore made me feel like I was in traction!"
"I saw the recordings of when you went undercover. I'm amazed at how just altering your colouring made you look so alien." V'tala told her.
Letting out a short laugh, Malakh said, "You've no idea! Gotta say, I wasn't a fan of that look."
"But baby, what if I wanna go blonde?" Rhea teased, leaning back so she could loop an arm around Malakh's shoulders.
"Hair colour's one thing, but that was a whole huge change to what you looked like, to the point where you didn't look like you anymore. And I really like the way you look." Malakh let out an exaggerated whine as she leaned back against Rhea.
"Well I guess I'll hold off on the dye job then." Rhea said, eyes soft as she ran her fingers through Malakh's mane.
"Or maybe it's your turn to try out necupole fashion." Elytra cheekily cut in, holding up the data pad, which now bore the image of a necupole woman bedecked from head to toe in jewellery so complicated it looked like she was covered in scaffolding.
Eyes bugging out at the sight of it, Malakh said, "No thanks. I like being able to move."
The trail Nevara had her heart set on ran through a protected forest on Osatiawjo, a game trail that had been carefully expanded to do as little harm as possible to the surrounding plants and wildlife, maintained year round by dedicated park staff.
They couldn't have picked a better day for their hike - bright and sunny, with just enough cloud cover to prevent things from overheating, and dry enough to both not have them dying from humidity or have to worry about the risk of a forest fire.
It was a noisy place, but very different from the ships and stations they'd been frequenting since their assorted enslavements. A constant breeze had leaves and branches rattling, and trunks creaking against one another as they swayed around them. The cries of birds, beasts, and insects were an inconsistent symphony as they made their way along the trail. Now and again, they could hear the shouts and laughter from the scant few other tourists who had come out for a stroll of their own, and in the distance someone was either playing an instrument live, or playing back a recording of one.
Rain had graced the area a few days ago, according to the weather report they'd checked out to make sure they wouldn't have to worry about a deluge while they were out and about, and the rich scent of damp earth complemented the clean smell of all the greenery around them, and the sweeter notes from the flowers in bloom.
Nevara heaved a sigh, her eyes closed as she soaked in the atmosphere. "I'd forgotten how much I enjoy being out in nature."
"You enjoy it so much because there's no people around." Rhea teased, bumping playfully into her shoulder as they walked.
Nevara shoulder bumped her right back with a grin. "You're here, aren't you?"
"But you hardly count us in the ranks of 'people', now do you?" Pryseia said as she looped an arm through Nevara's, "We're yours, and everyone else is just noise."
"I suppose that isn't inaccurate." Nevara hummed, her look of annoyance spoiled by her fond smile.
"This place is incredible," Elytra breathed, "I didn't know trees could get this tall!"
"Had you none on your own world?" Pryseia asked, leaning around Nevara to peer over at her.
"More shrubs than trees, at least where I lived," Elytra said with a shake of her head, "They grew out, not up."
Walking backwards while looping a tail around Rhea's wrist so she wouldn't stray from the path, Malakh said, "I spent my entire childhood in the same city, and pretty much every deployment on a world was spent building outposts in patches of wilderness that had been orbitally bombarded flat. I've never been out in the woods like this."
"Yes you have," Rhea said, her eyes going dark and her smile turning wicked, "When our ship was shot down on Biowulf, remember?"
Malakh made a flustered noise at the memory, grinning even as she blustered, "That was entirely different, and you know it! Our CO had us tromping out to a nearby hill in order to set up a signal booster, it wasn't exactly a relaxing stroll! We also had bombs bolted to our skulls, hello?"
"Well I remember it fondly." Was Rhea's gentle response as she twisted her arm enough so she could loosely hold Malakh's tail.
"Those were the Longan Units that the Thalatte surgically attach to their slaves?" V'tala asked.
Snapping two fingers before pointing the both of them at V'tala, Malakh said, "Yep. Easy to keep a person in line when you've got the means to blow their brains out at the first sign of insubordination."
"And yet you continue to wear Longan in both your Kith costumes and in your daily lives." V'tala's statement was more curious than accusatory.
Shrugging, Pryseia said, "When one becomes accustomed to a tool, it's hard to set it aside for another. For as dire a threat as the Longan Units were at the time, they were also incredibly useful, and after decades of using them, their use is second nature. The fact that our current Longan have neither the explosives or the permanency of their predecessors has done much to mitigate the unpleasantness associated with them."
"I've been meaning to ask you if you'd like to get fitted for one," Rhea added, "They've proven to be very handy for all the crime we've been getting up to since we joined the Kith."
Nodding along, Elytra said, "And they're pretty easy to get the hang of. I'd used nothing that came anywhere close to how a Longan works, and I picked it up a lot quicker than I thought I would."
"Then if it's part of the team's equipment, I should be outfitted with one as well." V'tala agreed with finality.
"Hooray!" Viatrix cheered, clapping her drone's hands together, "They're also communication devices, so you'll be able to stay in contact with me and the others. And Malakh can make it look however you'd like, so it won't clash with the rest of your outfit."
Perking up like that had reminded her of something, Viatrix rushed slightly ahead of them so she could fly backwards and face them all as she said, "I also had an idea of where I want to take the Program in our story. I still like the name, but I think I want to play less of a, well, a program, and more of a person."
"Given that all we've put up since you had your upgrade was the fight with the two Etas and the Storlayacas combining into one, it would be easy enough to make it so that the Program comes back as different as you want." Rhea said.
"We've still got that drone you made to look Hyttan, don't we?" Viatrix asked, turning to Malakh, "The one we didn't get a chance to use because the Briddbragnan showed up and nearly killed Rhea?"
"Still in the armoury," Malakh confirmed, "Gonna lean more into the Hyttan aspect of things?"
Snapping her own fingers before pointing them at Malakh, Viatrix said, "That's the plan! We've got Augury whose been giving us targets, and now the Knight whose going to be testing us, so I was thinking that I could sprinkle in more of that Hyttan lore we learned during the course of the whole…"
She trailed off, gesturing between herself, Pryseia and V'tala.
"We haven't really talked about that, huh?" Malakh said quietly, "The whole thing where it wasn't just our Storlayacas, but all of us that were combined into a single entity."
"It almost feels too big to even talk about," Elytra admitted with a little laugh, "In more than just the sense that, as Storlayacas, we were huge."
Making a thoughtful hum in the back of her throat, V'tala said, "It didn't feel like we were subsumed. I could feel your thoughts as easily as my own, but they were separate."
"I couldn't understand it, though. All of you think so differently from me." Rhea added.
Nodding, Pryseia continued, "But once we were reminded of the threat of the Etas, it was as if our minds were unified for the task at hand."
"It was like we were all mainframes that had been linked together to run the same program." Malakh said, "Between the six of us, and the six mechs, the computing power was off the charts. I've never thought that fast, let alone acted so quickly as when we were all together like that."
"But we were able to separate too, just as easily. I didn't think to be worried about that until later that night when I actually had the chance to, you know, think about it all. And that was something I was meaning to ask," Rhea said as she turned to Viatrix, "Was it you linked us all together?"
"That time, yeah," Viatrix told her, bobbing her entire drone to nod, "The program to run that feature was one of the things I got in that download, but I've transferred it to the Storlayacas, so you should be able to do that without me going forward."
"Are you also responsible for the paint jobs on them all coming in?" Malakh asked, but Viatrix just shrugged at that.
"No, I think that was the Storlayacas themselves. I haven't really had a chance to shoot the breeze with them like you did with Castore, but with how they were already changing colour to match all of you, I think it had more to do with them than it did the stuff the Hyttan gave me."
"And that aspect, communion," Nevara said, her voice thick with awe, "The Storlayacas aren't just machines, they're something more akin to Viatrix herself."
"I'm hoping that, since I'm a digital construct like them, and now that I'm upgraded to be a little more Hyttan, I would have an easier time talking with them than you did, because I had a look over your injuries from your little chat and it looked bad!" Viatrix said as she hovered over to Malakh, "But I'm not gonna lie, I'm kinda scared to try, even though I should be able to now? With how badly it fried your system, I'm worried it'll do the same - or worse - to me."
"I think it's because we did a direct interface that it fucked me up so bad," Malakh said quietly, her gaze going distant in reverie, "The thing that was taken from us, that prevents us from blocking out the noise of the Leviathan, it was what would have allowed us to understand more than just the Hyttan language, I think. Whatever it was, I believe it would have acted like a regulator? Or maybe a radio tuner, so we could metaphorically tune out the Leviathan channel and tune into the Hyttan one? But since we don't have it, we're just going to be blasted with the signal at full force, and that was too much voltage for my mental wires. I had a look over Castore after, and it was in the process of mending itself too. Damaged because it ran an incompatible current through a device that couldn't handle it."
"They were able to stop the psychic damage that those Eta were putting out, so could they find a way to restore that… tuner?" Elytra asked.
"Maybe?" Malakh told her, "I think what they did was more the equivalent of plugging a hole than making an adapter, which was obviously easy enough for them to do. But on the metaphysical level, or wherever it was this ability even dwelled, from what Castore implied, it sounded like the black hand removed it in such a way that it couldn't come back, through artificial means or otherwise. But who knows? Maybe this is something the Storlayacas could figure out if given enough time?"
"Given the uncertainty of that, and the fact that both you and Castore were so grievously damaged in your initial attempt, I am hesitant for any of us," Pryseia said as she placed a hand on Viatrix's drone, "To repeat the endeavour. As imperfect a method as it is, the safest way we seem to be able to communicate is when we are not directly plugged into the Storlayacas."
"It might be safer when all of us are Storlayacas?" Rhea suggested, "Going off Malakh's computing power analogy, when we're like that, we might be able to get more information across if it's being routed through all of us, instead of just one of us."
Pryseia made a noise like she didn't like that idea, but she conceded the point with a nod. "It would be something to test out when we aren't in the heat of battle. And something that can wait until after our vacation. I would rather none of us be stuck convalescing at this time."
"I raise my hand in favour of that!" Malakh agreed with a dire chuckle, the memories of her own experience still fresh in her mind.
Their hike ended up taking longer than they expected, mostly due to the fact that they'd ambled through it at a leisurely stroll, stopping at scenic spots all throughout in order to have a break or a snack, or just to enjoy the novelty of being completely surrounded by nature. As such, after a quick stop at their hotel to get cleaned up and changed into something a little more theatre appropriate, they headed back to Pernula to see Her Flower, Her Garden.
A dramatization of the life of Queen Erpesinsdclza, it chronicled her rise from being last in line for the throne, to her usurping it from her corrupt grand-uncle, and then leading her country through the social and economic cesspool that had been created by her power-hoarding forebearers. By the time of her death, an old woman with heirs poised to take up her mantle and bring their nation into a brighter future, her country had gone from a pariah on the global scene to one that ushered in an age of enlightenment.
"I'm sure a lot of that was propaganda," Viatrix admitted as they strolled down the street to find somewhere to have dinner, "But the performers were spectacular! They way the lead was able to capture Erpesinsdclza's emotions?! To portray them with such subtlety!? I'm positively gobsmacked!"
"Me too." V'tala agreed, "I didn't know I could be moved like that."
"Right!?" Viatrix was all exuberance as she darted over to her, "We've definitely gotta check out more media! You're as brand new to this stuff as I am!"
Giving her a small smile, V'tala said, "I'd like that."
Cackling suddenly, Rhea said, "Oh, we've gotta start showing you schlock then. You'll appreciate the highs more when you know how low the lows can get!"
Catching each other's eye, Pryseia and Nevara said in tandem, "Getchperav."
Elytra let out a screech of laughter, while Malakh laughed so unexpectedly that she choked, and Rhea's eyes were bright with tears of mirth as she gently patted her coughing wife on the back as she explained, "It's a legendarily bad movie. It's a Lacertus take on a Human film that technically never existed, as it was completely made up on an ancient social media site. The Lacertus production team thought it was lost media and tried to reconstruct it off of all these old writings, but that just led to an absolute hot mess of an end product! It's so bad on every level that it looped around to being hilarious, and it's got something of a cult following where people will watch it just to make fun of it!"
Finally getting herself back under control, Malakh said, "Watching it in a group is the best, especially when you talk shit about it the entire time! We have got to have a movie night and tear that thing to shreds!"
"I will hold off on sneakily watching it while you're all eating, then," Viatrix said cheekily, "I don't want to distract your digestion if it's going to make me lose it!"
Once they returned to the hotel, Viatrix brought up Getchperav on the sitting room's entertainment centre, and it proved to be every bit as bad as Rhea had said. If anything, she undersold just how truly awful it ended up being. The writing, the acting, the production value, the sound, the editing, everything about it was comically, embarrassingly terrible.
Lying in bed hours later, her sides aching with how hard she'd ended up laughing over that atrocity of a film, V'tala felt an odd sense of assurance about her own acting abilities. As new to the performing arts as she was, she wasn't even close to being that bad.
Rolling over to grab her data pad off the night stand, V'tala brought up the Pelekys' forum. After being audience to two wildly different productions that day, she was curious to see how their own had reacted to the liberation of Yarula.