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"I tried," Rin said, grimacing. "But my communications are fried. If I wasn't near a planet with so much uncontained energy in its atmosphere I would have never jumped this far out of the known galactic system," he said, trying to cut down on questions by saying what he thought the man would ask next. "If I get a hyperdrive... Or several..." he muttered, seeing how his Eisan Generator was fried and it would take quite a while to fix up again, "I could make several jumps and not burn out a single hyperdrive in one jump. I would be sparing my comrades the inconvenience of being stranded in an unknown system."

... His comrades. Commander Wyr... Hopefully she was alright. And Vaxur- that idiot BETTER be okay.

Ugh.

He nodded stiffly as the salesma- Montagne bowed, eyes subtly following the points of his ears before they were hidden away by the hat. "My ship was a one-seater, but I modified it so it could seat two more," he replied, still unsure about the man but... It's not like he had a choice. "Why?"

Laurent smiled with gleem once he heard "Why?" he jumps over his stall and bends towards Rin and says "Because I'll be joining you, you are quiet new and strapped for cash, while need things to sell and be nice to stretch my legs a little" as he walks to the trolley. "Oh I almost forgot" as he throws a knife out of his sleeve hits his stall and collapses upon itself neatly with a little sign that pops up that says "Closed"

"Now...where's your ship, Rin" he says with excitement and eager to leave this station once this hyperdrive is installed. Laurent was confident that in Rin position he can't say no to his help since no will accept his currency and no one around will actually help him out. Laurent in his mind was glade with the cards he was dealt with.

Rin had to keep himself from snarling at Montagne. That jerk was flaunting his HEIGHT. AGAIN. And GAH, NO, he couldn't HANDLE people, and this guy was a people person so it was a million times worse and he KNEW he'd been played somehow, AUGH PEOPLE-

... But- hyperdrive- hyperdrives- he gritted his teeth, staring defiantly up at the jerk. "You're not coming all the way with me," he said, voice steady. "Just around your galactic system." No way in HECK was he going to expose his system to THIS man. "And I'll need multiple hyperdrives, like I said," he added, in case the man forgot.

Aredella

The beast let out a loud roar as it was continuously shot and explosions happening in front of it and almost on all of its sides. Soldier's behind it, would easily get its tail, mashing them up against the bunker walls, while the soldiers on the side of it, would be smashed by the beast as it slams itself up against the walls. He beast would roar once more and charged down the hallway chewing up anyone who got in its path. Soon eventually the beast can only take on so much firepower and so as its last ditched attack it drooled what can be some black goo with that sizzled with black fumes from its mouth, quickly covering the floor and as if the goo was sentient it would begin to engulf some of the soldiers close to the beast before it quickly disappears as it loses it footing and collapse on the floor. It's dimming out as it gave one last huff of air and then bursting into nothing, of course no damage to the soldiers close by when it would vaporize.

Laurent approached Rin once more as he heard a very key word from the boy. "Galactic system? Are you telling me you are from a different galaxy? Ooooo this going to be really good" he begins cackle seeing that there is a good possibly that he was in the presence of first contact from a different galaxy. "I'm sorry to say that this galaxy has not developed the ability to hyperdrive's powerful enough to do intergalactic travel, but there is one man I know who can make what you want though, but we are going to need some serious cash" He then leans in goes to his ear and whispers "A poor military boy like you is a very tempting target to many, from different system governments to the empires of this galaxy...you don't want me to get started if my old master gets a hold of you...she let's say has specific tastes for individuals with looks like yours" he then straighten up and with a cheerful smile and says "Ah but don't worry mate, I am your friend on this, both us just a couple of outcasts and you so faraway from home and me, just a lowly fencer in need to make money for my family of me, myself and I!" as he acts a little dramatic towards Rin.

"Of course at the same time make money for you" he states as he gives him a nice friendly wink towards him.

Rin's eyes widened in alarm, a faint curse escaping him as he lost what little composure he had. Shoot, he messed up-

He clenched his fists, willing himself to stop shaking, dangit and get a frickin' HOLD of himself. Calm, he thought, closing his eyes and exhaling slowly, like the Commander taught him. Calm is control. When he opened his eyes, he looked up at Montagne with a purposely blank expression.

"Fine," he said, in perfect monotone. No time for anxiety attacks. "How do you suggest we get the money for this... man to help us?"

Laurent can see the boy lose his composure for a quick second, which put a smile on his face as he states "I love it when I hit something right on the nose" as he takes a break before answering Rin's question. "Wellll when I say I mean a powerful being who heads an empire who may or may not be freindly towards me because of past affliations that I had, bbbbuuuuttttt we can worry about that later" he gives a cheeky smile at Rin.

"Now you want to make money? Well if you want you can go suck on a montegger rods, but that doesn't end well and usually gets very messy. But someone with your training you would be more appropriate towards bounty hunting" he says as he traps a flier under his foot takes and shows it to him, the poster being one for Ketin Clark for the ridiculous amount of money from the galactic empire. "This fella Ketin Clark, is wanted by the galactic empire but also by the Ovan and Kampferian, the last two paying a much higher price than the imperials" he says as he looks at him and then at the poster of menacing looking City Destroyer.

(I'm doing this post on my phone so I wasn't able to add Ketins wanted poster here, but it's on his profile though:) )

Rin rolled his eyes irritably. "Jerk," he muttered before looking down at the wanted poster. He scanned the features of the seemingly young orange humanoid staring up at him, taking note of the pointed ears and different colored eyes. He looked up at Montagne curiously. "What's he wanted for?" A pause. "...And what are montegger rods?"

Laurent still smiling said "Well monteggar rods are the alien version of what dangles between your leg if you catch my meaning, but anyway from what I hear, is that he committed planetary genocide, destroyed cities, petty thievery, murder, and the most damning crime he did is....Loitering" he lied on the last one but it didn't really matter. "Of course, there are other targets to go after, like the infamous Mad Ranger, who's wanted for planetary terrorism and murders" he adds to the list. "these are some big fish to catch so if you want, we can pop over to a different station where can got to a bar where bounty hunters are at and see what targets we can get from there...entirely up to you by the way" some what regretting giving him the choice to go after the two most wanted and hardest to catch individuals of the galaxy and decided to give him that third option for much smaller fish.

Rin glared at that stupid bastard, ignoring the hot blush settling on his cheeks. What the hell. Sure he was gay as £&€¥ but. RUDE.

... Right. Back to the matter at hand. His eyes narrowed back down at the poster. "How many smaller targets would I have to catch in order to get the man's help?"

Laurent notices Rin's face get slightly red but didn't say anything towards him about it. "Well we don't always need actually need to bounty hunting but we can do is smuggling, pays about the same and with the same risk, plus I we need is a ship since I already have the cargo for it" he says to him trying to weasel himself out of doing bounty hunting missions since it wasn't really his forte. "With the small fish bounty hunting it would take a while, the cash in general is really used so that we can by pass whatever he wants us to do in return if he accepts so just keep that in mind since we are going to need at least 2 million and that's the low end of the market" he adds on.

Rin pursed his lips, eyes still downcast. If he only went with the small-time bounties and smuggling, who knows how long he'd be stuck here? On the other hand, if he tried the big jobs, there was a higher chance of getting killed, both from the targets themselves as well as from competing bounty hunters...

"... We can start with smuggling," he decided, but then pointed at Montagne, narrowing his eyes. "But I also want to check out that bar you mentioned. For the smaller bounties." He bent down to pick up the wanted poster of Ketin Clark, dusting it off slightly before rolling it up. He tilted his head toward the direction of his ship. "Let's go."

The air was painful in her lungs, yet Nirix could not get enough of it. Breathing hurt, the adrenaline that pumped all throughout her body hurt, but she could feel nothing but happiness right now. Smiling just as wide as Ketin was, the Assassin made sure to say a silent prayer of thanks to her Gods that they had actually made it out of all that...Chaos, alive.

"Sometimes I forget how much of tempest of chaos you are, Da'len" She managed to say, leaning back into her own seat. Though her ears were ringing and her vision slightly distorted, Nirix tried to bring herself to a calm. They were fine, for now, and since Kete had basically destroyed the entire planetary capital city, she really had no further reason to ever return to Daedalus.

Perfect. She hated this icy planet more than anything. It was time for a scenery change...at least she hoped.

"Yet somehow Kete, you always seem to remind me. How many times will we repeat this same routine, Da'len? If we keep destroying prime locations for me to find work, I won't have much to do but sit and lose my skills. I won't be Nirix anymore without them and I rather like being myself" She frowned slightly, realizing she was playing "Mother" to Ketin again. She swore this was becoming a terrible habit of hers but Nirix was enjoying it more than she would be willing to admit.

It was nice to feel normal-ish for once.

"Speaking of locations, where are we going?"

D A E D A L U S – Approaching Sagan Starport

Ketin gave a dismissive wave. ”Aah, it’s not my fault if things get a little crazy sometimes!” he said, contending for ’understatement of the year’ with his usual grin. The second bit, however, seemed to make him think a little bit, and it took some seconds to respond. ”Eh. Work is overrated. I’ve made it, uh-“
Wait, did she know how old he was? Damn! It was so hard to keep track of these kinds of things! The more complex a web of lies, the harder it is to maintain – and Kete’s life had been three…or was it four centuries of lies? All his relationships were forged from lies, this one in particular. But when in doubt, old habits died hard, so it was easy to just change the phrasing mid-sentence to the usual sort of evasive wording. ”Most of my life without doin’ any real work. Buuuut, I guess you got a point about not wanting to get rusty. So, I promise we’ll try to be a bit more sneaky from now on, huh~?”

He paused, glancing forward for a moment to adjust for a gentle curve in the tunnel. He rarely had to actually look where he was going, even when doing something like driving a heavy vehicle at excessive speeds.

”Hey, it’s not that bad, anyway.” He said after a moment, with only a hint of real defensiveness in his tone. ”It’s not like the whole place fell down or a-“

At that exact moment, as if the Universe itself sought to prove him wrong, the ground trembled and a terrible, thunderous roar could be heard a good distance behind them, even over the roar of the hydrogen engine. It sounded like a great sum of very large structures collapsing all at once, or in rapid succession.

Kete blinked, his smile growing a tad more awkward – and, like the master-of-denial he was, he continued on anyway. ”Anything. Nothing they can’t fix I’m sure, heheh~” It would all be fine if he kept himself convinced of that. Surely nobody would come to any harm at his expense. Surely. He was harmless. Do-no-harm. He didn’t want to hurt anyone, so no one got hurt! Simple. He wasn’t at fault. End of story. Definitely. If someone did get hurt? Well what could he have hoped to do to prevent it? Nothing. So move on and forget it. Done and done.

As if to change the topic – and, as it happened, in just about the least ideal way possible, he said somewhat out of the blue ”More like a big sister I think.” Again, failing to recognize that Nirix’s private realization had been solely in her head, and not spoken aloud – until it was too late. He gave a slight cough.

But luckily, she had either missed it, or chosen to take it upon herself to change the subject gracefully – more than he could ever seem to do, despite that it probably should have been one of his best skills. Then again, it was one of his best skills – but only when he wasn’t so emotionally invested in someone. Sure, he told himself there was no such emotional investment in order to keep up the destructive habit of having friends, but it was still true that all his clever social abilities became worthless around Nirix.

Responding with a widening grin, the kid took on a funny, unfamiliar accent. ”To the one place that hasn’t been corrupted by capitalism... SPAYSE!” He gave a silly, dramatic flail of both arms with the last word, recklessly releasing the steering wheel for a few seconds in the process, and only grabbing on again seemingly as an afterthought to keep them from sideswiping the tunnel wall.

But with his silliness out of the way, he took on a thoughtful expression.

”Come to think of it though, I don’t really know. I mean, I sure wanna’ get off this rock. I don’t mind the cold but…I dunno’, I got bad vibes from Daedalus, y’know? Usually I’d just hop on the first flight out an’ see where it went.” So, for once it seemed he was asking for a suggestion? The glance he gave Nirix seemed to communicate that.

In the relative peace of the drive, he remembered ’Blue’, the entity in his head that he hadn’t quite figured out the name of.

He had determined that speaking to his other half aloud was, at best, inefficient – and it made him look a little crazier than even he liked to appear. So he decided to try something new – and communicate with ‘Blue’ via thought alone. Logically, he figured, it should work. Granted, it never quite worked that way with CAI – but things had been different then. After all, he hadn’t even known that CAI was in his head until he had been transferred to his original database again. Yes, this time was different.

So, in his head, Kete tried to ask -What is your name?-

But instead, it would come out something closer to -BbflbglabGHAOYBfuhgflzzdfapplurG777777HHFhphPUFPIUHFHGPANCAKES!?- And he got the feeling right away that somehow his attempt at silent communication had gone awry. Not being quite able to determine exactly how it had sounded, he decided against continued attempts, and would wait for his other half to contact him again first. It had worked before, anyway. She had thanked him – right? Right! His other half was a she! Well, that was something. anyway.

Up ahead, there was a light at the end of the tunnel. He finally began to slow the truck down considerably, though easing on the brake so as to not send them both flying through the windshield.

They exited the tunnel at a reasonably slow speed, so as to avoid unlikely, but still potential collisions with whatever might be sitting just outside.

It was, as he had anticipated, the back-end of the cargo and docking fields at the Sagan Starport. The truck slowed to a stop, and the HISSSS of the air-brakes engaging required no pulling of a valve. He looked around with some satisfaction. Ships, ships everywhere! Far and wide. Better still, lots and lots of cargo crates which would be just perfect for stowing away in!

Did Nirix know about his electromagnetic abilities yet? Well, it didn’t really matter anymore, did it? So why not – he went ahead and glanced through the nearby ships logs, to see where their next destinations were listed as. Hopefully, he figured, she wouldn’t ask how he could possibly know…Or at least, if she already knew, she wouldn’t point it out. That would be, like, super awkward.
”So…That one’s headed to…Nasser Station, which I think is in orbit here. I guess tha’d be good if none of the others look right. That one there’s headed to Ipswitch V, I dunno’ what that is. That one’s…Out of service I guess. That one’s doing a run-over of a planet called Iria, wherever that is. Then I think it’s headed for a scientific outpost on…a nearby moon. That one’s going to Komiksanz, or a station near there. The one waaay over there’s going to Sanpellegrino 8, and that one…Not sure where that one’s going. It’s a mystery~. I’ll let you pick. Or we can keep drivin’ around some if none of those feel right to ya’.” He gave her that cheerful, charming smile of his. It felt very good to have options again.

In the far distance, the sensitive Eoclu and Foxkin ears could pick up on the faint, but unmistakable sound of emergency response sirens, but luckily they did not seem to be getting any closer, which was good.

Very good.

Earth IV

The with high leadership gone from the planet, the very few in leadership remain but that is generally standard protocol and the acting military governor of Earth IV is Colonel Natalia, a quite beautiful Z-bot with snow like skin and a light blonde hair in a pony tail and beautiful blue eyes. She was trying to deal with the human Kamperian officials in corruption, just she was about to get them, they die to damn ECLF. With the war against Ovain Empire dragging more forces towards the front, she tolerated the ECLF's operations, but it was obvious they were getting too big for there own good and she knows they either need to be taken down a notch or purged out before they decided to go into a revolution and if that's the case, then this planet will be designated into a mining planet and that's not good for the people.

Luckily for her, since Colonel Paypus was on the planet for some time, she has a good amount of Deathshead units she can use and has a detachment of SuperSoldatens under her command as well as entire occupation force slightly weaker but still there she can use. She decides to see that the group of ECLF is dropped down a notch and so she decides to sends a squad towards a known ECLF safe house and raid it. As they bust down the door, they will either arrest the memebers that are currently there or kill them if they resist. She understood these troops have the advantage since of how strong these troops are and as well as there equipment. Of course they have an escort of ATT's to help that consist of two squads of Z-bots so the ECLF in this particular safehouse was not only outmatch but also outnumbered.

As they burst down the door, with weapons drawn, poised to fire once hostile action seems to be taken place, one Deathshead solder calls out "Surrender! By warrant of the Military Governor you are under arrest for conspiracy of treason"

In all the chaos, Éva nearly lost herself. So much of Ketin's mind had been occupied with organizing electromagnetic machinations or planning means of escape that there was hardly time for her to exist. For a few long moments, she simply vanished from his sight, unable to maintain such a complex hallucination given that and her already-limited state.

His thoughts became increasingly compartmentalized, further and further isolated from her. Perhaps the Devil's Eye was interfering, or perhaps some barely-suppressed mental hardening instinct taught its bearer was constricting her. In either case, she was still extant at least.

He began to relax, and so did she; soon enough, she was granted some degree of memory, and after a minute or two of combing through the available knowledge and coming again to a resolution state, she determined things would be significantly faster if she forgot most of her history.

She spent so long just remembering she only had fleeting moments of clarity, knowing only the important parts of herself enough to decide and then losing her mind all over again while she searched for more information to answer a new question. It was strange to be a thinking, breathing, living being experiencing thought as a computer might. Even to her, this felt unnatural.

She was breathing, right? It felt like it. Her thoughts existed in whatever part of Ketin's brain was unoccupied in a given moment, essentially a second engram that was likely taking a toll on his biology; but it was ultimately a shared experience, insofar as the Devil's Eye allowed. After all, despite the coexisting personalities, in the end there was only one brain.

And then something strange came along. Like an aneurysm, or some kind of short-circuit. He tried to ask her his name, but the intent was lost upon the Devil's Eye which attempted to transfer it to itself, briefly clouding his brain with an unnecessary spasming of neurons. It was especially unpleasant for her; her entire existence was for a moment in question.

Of course, the Devil's Eye is far too intelligent to allow itself to harm its bearer as a result of a logic error. It corrects the damage and aborts the transmission. Éva from three seconds ago is reborn. What was that he had asked? Her name?

He meant to think to her, but hasn't yet understood the nature of their coupling. She only even knew because his brain is her universe, now. But to communicate purely by thought wasn't something Ketin was accustomed to. He only knew how to listen.

So she gave him something to listen to. Not a hallucination, not a transmission through the Devil's Eye, not even a mind's-ear series of words. It was as though he had known these sounds all along, and only now had they come to the forefront of his mind.

---

It was an ancient memory, written by flesh, not by machine. A young woman's hands, accompanied by an existential bliss not known to her since. The last bright day, a bittersweet memory of an adolescence that never did complete. It was joy; to her, incarnate.

Evidently, she was a pianist at heart. The memory was from a place called Germany, on a planet called Earth and came with all the soul of two families come together. A sister she'd never known, a friend and kindred spirit. A second mother and father, strangers but kin nonetheless. It was like a dream, how the two communities fit together so perfectly.

And all this, all tied down to a rhythmic sequence of ceramic clackings and harmonic tappings. Strange, how one memory leads to another, and another, and yet another.

This is Éva. All her identity and wishes and dreams — even her name — encapsulated in a single moment.

"Reading my mind again?" It was more of a statement than a question and Nirix hadn't really expected a response from him. It was...different, nonetheless, to have your thoughts laid out for someone else to read like a book. Nirix wondered, just how far Ketin could go with his ability. Could he read through her memories too? Would he know of her past? The strive she had gone through to get here? The Eoclu sincerely hoped not. Thought she had nothing to really hide, nothing that she thought would interest Ketin anyway, she would've rather not have him see her past. She didn't want him to judge her too, it was too soon.

How long did she have left until she was to return home? Currently, she was two hundred and thirty-five. She had only fifteen years left...

Nirix was sure to make them count.

"Anywhere is fine," She offered as a suggestion once they neared docking fields at the Sagan Starport. Her contacts were sparse in this system and but it wouldn't be too hard to find work, right? Someone always wanted someone else dead. A scorned lover, a business partner gone rouge, an old rival, these were all the usuals and Nirix could make do with whatever.

"Yet, it seems only fair that since I chose our location last time, I shall allow you to choose this one. So pick, Da'len, I will follow you wherever you want to go"

D A E D A L U S - Sagan Starport



Ketin gave a start, looking as though someone had dropped an ice cube down his back, and blushed. Instantly flustered beyond repair, it was all he could do to wave both hands innocently in a gesture of denial and give a wide, and entirely unconvincing smile.

”W-what? Reading your mind? That's ridiculous nobody can read minds and even if someone could it totally wouldn't be me and I think we're just in-tune like thinking alike and like, uh, heheh~” He had been speaking much too fast, and only after this occurred to him did he remember to inhale and continue breathing.

Feeling slightly ashamed of how awful a performance it had been, Kete went for one of his other go-tos, and this one came off a little better. It was, after all, not a lie - merely a change of subject, squeezed in before anyone could get a word in and call him out on it.

"There's a really great bar on Menards Grove. They brew this great mead from the sap of those huge trees, but the best part is the food. Ever been to Menards Grove? Aw, I think you'll like it there. It's kinda' chilly but the whole planet is just one huge evergreen forest! And all the cities are built into the trees - but there's not a lot of people there so they don't end up ruining the forests." He paused, then looked thoughtfully downward, leaning heavily on the arm rest and massaging his chin with a propped hand. When he spoke, he started by dragging out the syllable, as if not totally certain of what he was saying. ”Aaaaaaaaaaand... I think I've got some friends on a station over there who might be able to get you some work.” He made a point of slightly downplaying the word 'you' - since what he really meant was 'us'. ”They do a lot of, like...super sneaky undercover spy stuff.” again, utterly ignoring the fact that his friend was an 'assassin, and not merely a spy.

But those last words had a slightly distracted undertone to them. Kete seemed to be staring off into space, looking through the steering wheel as if there was something on his mind.

It was an intense sensation of Deja Vu.

Vaguely, it made him think of four centuries ago, when he was less natural in the use of his Eye in a normal, public setting. Some time, cumulously, before he had realized that rooting through memories was both deeply immoral and terribly uncomfortable - when, habitually, he would collect data from those within his range. His own 'professional skills' left over from what seemed like lifetimes of espionage and keeping people in line. Deja Vu had been a relatively common sensation, thanks to suddenly remembering other peoples' memories without realizing it. It had made him uncomfortable.

This time, it wasn't so bad.

What might have been a stressful procedure for someone without his unusual skills was little more than an off-kilter sensation of false recognition, of memories that were not his own. Something that, of course, he had known before but merely forgot for a while.

It certainly was wonderful to play the piano.

But, he remembered belatedly, he did not know how to play the piano. Button squeezebox, perhaps, but the keyboard had never quite appealed to him, largely in part due to the lack of mobility.

Had he slipped into such an old, old habit all of a sudden? No - there was nobody around to have picked it up from save for Nirix, and for whatever reason, it was self evident that it was not her.

Of course - the answer was right in front of him. Or, rather, inside him. Duh.

There was something vaguely unsettling about this entity, who could spring up thoughts that felt like his own because they were his own. Sure, the Eye 'communicated' with him by doing just that same thing - except he had trained and been trained to recognize the thoughts as foreign to such an extent that this fact, too, was self evident. A picked-up memory that he couldn't identify as a Devil's Eye translation? Virtually impossible. So it had to come from inside him - really inside him.

And with this new sensation, the unsettled feeling dissipated. There was an openness about this entity which he had taken upon himself. An honesty.

Honesty.

Blue - for he still could not determine the name of his new part, due to the nature of the Eye, not having a word prossessor - was hiding nothing. He had taken Blue into his mind and now she - he did think of Blue in the feminine sense, though their connectedness was making it harder to distinguish - was repaying the favor by showing that there was nothing to hide.

It was not a conscious decision that Kete made in the following moments, It was not a reaction to this sensation of honesty that was now a part of him - yes, not merely in him, but a part of him. There was no notion of 'She was honest with me, so I should be honest with Nirix' - because he was so certain now that Blue was truly integrated with him as to be just another aspect of their collective mind. She was contributing to his thought process not by channeling thoughts or ideas, but by being a part of him. Of them.

The distant stare Kete had been giving the inert steering wheel had not lasted long - for Deja Vu was an experience that could play out a million fold in the pan of seconds - before shifting into a thoughtful, deeply pondering look. Shifting uncomfortably in his seat, he let arms fall limply onto the seat between his legs. Something was on his mind now - not something so terrible as to have ripped him from the glee he was sharing with Nirix only seconds before - but something solemn indeed that must have croppe up out of nowhere.

Nirix was worried. She had spoken of his mind-reading light in heart, but the prospect disturbed her - that was all too clear to him, of all people. He hated lying. He always had - so much that he had long since nearly perfected the art of convincing himself his own lies were truths. Liars revolted Ketin. To lie was despicable - and here he was lying to Nirix's face - Nirix, who was so deeply important to him. Who's' presence alone was, he was certain, the most comforting, and reassuring thing he had ever known.

The inward blooming of sensations and emotions from a faraway time made him - not homesick, that was impossible - but emotional. Here was this part of him being so open and honest with himself - and it was with a bitter self-loathing that he silently cursed his own dishonesty. It had been a satisfying nostalgia budding from another world, but now turned, wheeled to convert into a torrent of vicious hatred toward himself - that lying piece of @#$% who was, by the virtue and kindness and honesty of his new part, being ousted as the fraudulent, lying scumbag he was.

But Kete was very good at suppressing things, so the hot loathing did not last long. As he sat there, looking thoughtfully down at his hands resting on the seat with shoulders slumped wearily, he shoved the hate into a little box and buried it under false promises.

Except this time, they would not be totally false.

More foreign memories began to bubble up to the forefront of his mind now - he scanned them with all the lightning rapidity of the electrons of the brain. The Eye, a closed system, did what it did best. There were plenty of electronic devices nearby, all with aethernet access or data of some kind - and anywhere that data could be manipulated, the Eye could turn into memory.

There were over four hundred years of memories inside the Eye. Not only Ketin's, but memories of the billions, and billions of people that had, at one point or another, happened to come into the range of the eye for even a moment. It was an object of inconceivable power, which Ketin only barely tapped.

Inside the Eye, the vast, maddeningly overwhelming sum of information memories,,thoughts, and any given configuration of electrons - it was all there, sealed away, compressed into infinite smallness by being stored within quite possibly the greatest storage device in history - in a place where all the memories and configurations were only ideas. A place that was, and was not. A place that was not a place, a space that was Not Space.

And yet, despite this complexity, the method of retrieval was elementary. The Eye simply took the metaphorical zeroes and ones from the available sources, and converted them to extracted files, compressing them again once they had served their purpose.

Though Ketin had never been able to command himself to retrieve from the vast store of memories just waiting inside his head, he had long-since figured out how to scan over recent events in his own memory to get the gist of things.

And so, inadvertently, he gave Blue a similar sort of 'show' to what she had 'shown' him. Earth IV. Kampfer. The bombs falling far off in the burning city. Nirix - Nirix again. The abject horror of watching as a man with black eyes very nearly put a bullet into his Nirix's head, and the lingering regret of having been too stunned to do anything about it. The station - then a blacked-out moment of silence where he would only barely peek - then Daedalus, and 'meeting Blue' - something else he refused to acknowledge - and that was it. Not a single moment with all the immersion of nostalgia, but a series of flashbacks and bits and pieces of thought that accompanied them. They came from the Eye and were made accessible, emulated as his own memory - and then were packed away again all within milliseconds.

And now something else happened - the same thing, except those glimpses and wisps were not his own. They were Nirix's. Indeed, Blue was finally getting a good, solid look at the kernel in action. The electron configurations detected by the field were converted into rational thought and inserted into the mind, then stored away where they became inaccessible.

He had come to a conclusion - or at least a consensus with his doubts.

It was lovely to play the piano, wasn't it?

Nirix knew the Eye was something special. She had seen enough to infer almost everything. He had given her more than enough evidence that doubtless she had already come to the conclusions, and there was no point in denying it. She knew he could manipulate things and read minds. She had good reason to believe he had hurt people in the past. She didn't know how old he was, nor did she have definitive evidence of his hurting others - with the possible exception of his outbursts of violent temper - and violence.

Sitting there, immersed in all these things, Ketin took a deep breath. It was a shaky breath, and his face had gone slightly pale - as if he were preparing to do something which he was very afraid to do - something which every instinct in his body screamed to stop. But he fought the instincts now, and even in this mounting terror he was able to overcome himself thanks to this new part of him who was so inherently open.

”I... I don't look at memories.” he said, his voice a tiny, trembling mumble, He had stiffened, and his eyes were locked with some intensity on his hands in his lap.

”I m-mean....m-memories that... I wasn't there for.”

So, Ketin Clarke really was a mind reader. He'd said it himself.

This was, whether it could be inferred or not, monumental. In four centuries, plenty of people had figured out what his Eye could do - but he had never once admitted to any of it. Not once. Yet here he was - not stating it too explicitly, but saying it nonetheless. His hands were picking at each other now, anxiously scritching fingernails on fingertips. He looked as though he were afraid that something he was saying was going to get him hit. Ears were flat back and there might even have been a slight tremor there.

"I m-mean...I mean Ican, but I don't. N-not unless I...r-really gotta'. C-cause....it f-feels w-wrong.”

His feet shifted nervously on the floor, he refused to look up as though to do so would give him only an empty passenger seat. He had lost plenty of friends who had figured it out for themselves, because nobody wanted to be around someone who was constantly integrated with all their private thoughts and feelings. If all those people had lost their trust in him that way, how likely was it that his admission of the curse would do the same thing? It had been like forcing himself to pull the trigger on his own head, and now he was waiting to see if the bullet would fire.

This had been a mistake.

A terrible mistake.

How could he have admitted something like that?!

What was he thinking?!

He did not resent Blue for having been a part of the Kete that decided to tell. He resented the part of himself that was, he figured, effectively telling Nirix that she wouldn't want to be around him anymore. Or that at very least she would always want to be guarded against him. It was going to be a barrier if not a total separation.



”I... I don't...I don't s-snoop around or nothin' I promise! I c-can't help it, I try to ignore it all b-but it's always there! I c-can't stop it an' pleasedon' hatemeIpromise I'llneverlookatnothin'youdon'wan'meto Ipromise!” His voice broke slightly and the latter words came out as a rapid, breathless string of syllables through gritted teeth, with the telltale shudder of staunchly, but barely restrained sobs. He wanted to look up at her now, but he couldn't do it. The best he could manage was to glance sidelong at the red leather bench seat, with a foot of worn cushion the only thing separating them looking more like an endless, expansive sea of crimson regret.

So, this was it. After all they'd been through, this was going to be the part where, even if Nirix didn't leave, she was never going to be the same around him again. And yet he still didn't blame Blue - for how could he have known that it was their integration alone that had induced his decision? And even if he did know, or if he ever did figure out that he himself would be a new person so long as he and Blue were as one - he still wouldn't have placed the blame anywhere but upon that part of him which always seemed to make the wrong decision when the right one was so crucial.

His body language told her everything.

No sooner had he stopped talking, had he looked at his steering wheel with an odd hint of remembrance, Nirix had just felt something. She could see the wheels turning in his head, see him shift in moods in a matter of seconds and before she had turned, she somehow knew he was unraveling again. In his features, she found an overwhelming amount of guilt. Or was it shame? Nirix could not tell, but that wasn’t entirely the point.

How had they gotten here? Nirix thought they had been having a normal conversation, well what was normal between them. A trip to a new planet; it would be filled with new sounds and smells, new people and, as Ketin so aptly put it, great food. Yet, he had grown quiet and the Eoclu was left with her own thoughts. Had that done it? Her thoughts about Ketin’s powers? It pained her when the realization finally hit her.

Yet it seemed to hurt even more as he spoke. Nirix turned to see his shoulders shake in the gloom. Ketin thought what he was saying was a mistake. The way his body language was displayed, he looked as if Nirix was going to punish him for speaking. It was as if he thought he was a monster and she was to be the angry mob to do him in. But Ketin didn’t understand how Nirix felt. He would never be a monster.

"Ir ableas Da-,” Nirix started but couldn’t seem to finish her sentence. She paused, letting her mind think on just what to say. She knew the sudden bout of silence would nearly kill him, but Nirix had to think. She had to make sure to say the right thing because she had promised Ketin. Promises were important, not only to her people but to her as well, a broken one was nearly worse than death. Nirix had promised him that everything would be okay. She didn’t attend to break it.

“Thank you for tell me, Da’len.” Nirix decided to say instead, giving the foxkin a small smile. She hoped this was better. Apologizing wasn’t what Ketin would want. He would want acceptance, he would want things to be basically the same between them as if nothing would really change.

“Do you still want to go to Menards Grove?” She added hesitantly, worried that he suddenly would object to her offer.
“I’ll pay for everything, we could both do with a good drink right about now,”

A drink? Oh, that could be dangerous. Was Kete vulnerable to the influence of alcohol? If he was, how would that affect her? What an awful existence it must be, constantly fearing existential annihilation. It was second-nature to her, she'd died twice already.

"Let us not test the adage third time's the charm, shall we?"

Was that a sentence? Maybe it was a memory. There wasn't a lot of thought dwelling behind that one, no trailing secondary nostalgia filling out the details. Or maybe she just spoke to him again, and he hadn't looked in her direction yet. Ketin was beginning to relax his focus again.

Maybe Nirix's last suggestion comforted him. Or perhaps that relaxing was Éva, who found it amusing. She hadn't exactly been burdened with the united consequences of biochemistry and shared consciousness before. This was truly novel to her.

The interface . . .

It was, of course, working. With Éva-9B 08 F9 AC D3 72 FC 41 taking a backseat to the Symnature neuroprint, the NIRN node was running the show. Unlike her machine counterpart, Éva was indeed organic, albeit simulated. She possessed a brain with neurons and synapses, just like Ketin's. And augmenting this virtual brain was a digital interface, the robotic part of her that ensured everything ran smoothly.

Perhaps she could adapt herself in some way to improve the stability of their experience. But that would come later. For now, she trusted the man who clawed her out of a near-death situation with her well-being. After all, with the Devil's Eye present, an accidental disruption in her stream could just be reverted with a wink and a nod from the foxkin. . . Right?

That might be a strange sentiment to a Flesher. After all, the concept of uploading one's consciousness wasn't exactly new, but the consequences of doing so had hardly been explained in detail. There's a whole culture Denizens have developed that to their biological ancestors could be horrifying:

Death of one instance meant nothing. Duplicates were like soulmates (or rivals, if left unchecked), whose existence empowered self-sacrifice and motive beyond one small instance. With the guarantee that no matter what happens, your mind will prevail in some form or another, what fears could a Denizen possibly have?

Of course, that begs some questions. Which one gets to call itself the original? Who do you become if your local instance is disabled? What does it mean to be a clone? Are you merely a servant, a backup, of the original?

But these only made sense to ask for a Flesher, whose mind was accustomed to one brain, one small space to occupy. To a Denizen like Éva, and perhaps to an enhanced macrocognate like Ketin, they were trivial.

All are equally unoriginal, for none is made of flesh. Your mind is as much held here as it is in the next data node. Two duplicates mingling is one mind thinking aloud to itself. But what about digital annihilation of an instance?

What becomes of her if she dies here, unable to reunite with the greater NIRN? Would Éva forget Ketin, and all he had done for her? Might the Devil Eye keep her neuroprint safely stored in memory of his transcendental implant, and one day release her back into the NIRN?

Could she trust him to do so in dire circumstances? Would he even know how to get to it?

Trust is the only logical reply.

"On second thought, let us enjoy ourselves. That thriller has had me on edge since I began."

---

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