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17th of 4th, 1173. 3:27PM.

Sunlight faintly shines through the windows, the muted orange rays that break through the sky's constant overcast pouring into the classroom. Whoever thought it would be a good idea to arrange the building so that the sun shone directly into your eyes as the lesson came to an end was just...

Your eyes creep up to the digital clock ticking away on your terminal again. The seconds dribble by, ticking by slower than what can be humanly possible as your teacher drones on about weekend assignments. Read the news, write a short summary and embed a copy of the article into the submission.

"Now, remember, we will be setting aside a period for peer-reviewing your recent history essays after the weekend, so..."

It's difficult enough to focus on the assignment what with your... problems. Thinking about home, the things you'll need to do after class lets out, going through your mental checklist. Mentally speaking, you're barely present as that blessed, blessed bell rings and you can finally back away from your desk.

You are...

>Tiiris Elson. Your Dad has trouble making ends meet - not much work for gas miners after the war - so you picked up a part time job to help out. He doesn't like his daughter having to work, but it's either that or not being able to pay for your glasses, for all the good they seem to do.
>‘Kara’ Makagan. Just Kara, thanks. Having a weird first name is embarrassing enough, so you try to keep the... pills you need to take under wraps. Dad owns a CHS rental place that you help out in, though, so it's not hard to find friends willing to put up with you.
>Elan Hukak. Having people treat you like you're made of glass can be a bit frustrating- probably because you're in the wheelchair because your bones are practically made out of glass... but it's alright. Dad's out of town with your stepmom tonight, but that's alright. You prefer to cook for yourself, anyway.

Woo, COADE is back
>>3722255
>Elan Hukak. Having people treat you like you're made of glass can be a bit frustrating- probably because you're in the wheelchair because your bones are practically made out of glass.
We don't get many disabled PCs, I think it'll be a novel experience to play as one. I can see our destiny as the snarky disabled pilot already.

>>3722362
>We don't get many disabled PCs
Actually, all of the options are disabled in different ways. The first one has a rather severe vision disability, and the second has a mental problem.

>>3722255
>>Tiiris Elson. Your Dad has trouble making ends meet - not much work for gas miners after the war - so you picked up a part time job to help out. He doesn't like his daughter having to work, but it's either that or not being able to pay for your glasses, for all the good they seem to do.

>>3722255
>‘Kara’ Makagan. Just Kara, thanks. Having a weird first name is embarrassing enough, so you try to keep the... pills you need to take under wraps. Dad owns a CHS rental place that you help out in, though, so it's not hard to find friends willing to put up with you.

>>3722255
>>‘Kara’ Makagan. Just Kara, thanks. Having a weird first name is embarrassing enough, so you try to keep the... pills you need to take under wraps. Dad owns a CHS rental place that you help out in, though, so it's not hard to find friends willing to put up with you

>>3722255
>>Tiiris Elson. Your Dad has trouble making ends meet - not much work for gas miners after the war - so you picked up a part time job to help out. He doesn't like his daughter having to work, but it's either that or not being able to pay for your glasses, for all the good they seem to do.

>>3722255
Elan.

>>3722255
>Elan Hukak. Having people treat you like you're made of glass can be a bit frustrating- probably because you're in the wheelchair because your bones are practically made out of glass... but it's alright. Dad's out of town with your stepmom tonight, but that's alright. You prefer to cook for yourself, anyway.
Time to enjoy ramps and elevators and dying when our apartment catches fire.

>>3722255
>>Tiiris Elson. Your Dad has trouble making ends meet - not much work for gas miners after the war - so you picked up a part time job to help out. He doesn't like his daughter having to work, but it's either that or not being able to pay for your glasses, for all the good they seem to do.

Closing the vote in fifteen minutes. If it's still a tie then, we'll have the people who voted for Kara be the tiebreakers.

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Make the right choice anons.

Alright, calling it. Can >>3722465 and >>3722485 or anyone new vote for either:
>Tiiris Elson. Your Dad has trouble making ends meet - not much work for gas miners after the war - so you picked up a part time job to help out. He doesn't like his daughter having to work, but it's either that or not being able to pay for your glasses, for all the good they seem to do
or
>Elan Hukak. Having people treat you like you're made of glass can be a bit frustrating- probably because you're in the wheelchair because your bones are practically made out of glass... but it's alright. Dad's out of town with your stepmom tonight, but that's alright. You prefer to cook for yourself, anyway.
Please?

>>3722724
>Tiiris.

Tiiris it is, then. Writing.

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You push back from your desk and stand up, rubbing your eyes slightly and sliding your terminal and notepad into your bag. Turning on your heel, you amble out of the classroom and follow the route that you've memorized by rote down to your locker. Spinning the dial on your locker, you turn a quarter to the right, half and change to the left, and... open.

Shoving the bag with your gym clothes inside, you pull out your coat and slide your bag over your shoulder. A few people wave your way as you trot out, and you wave back in their general direction before stepping out into the school grounds.

Tagara's sun shines through the rain. A storm front had been moving in for the past few days, and the sky was finally starting to clear. Once it had gone, you might have a few days of blissful clear skies before the cloud layer closed back up. Looking up at the sky as you walk along the concrete path, you see the clouds distort and swim, twisting in on each other and dissolving into many colored dots that overlay on each other. Lowering your head, you shut your eyes hard and shake your head to try and clear it. Opening them again, you adjust your glasses and join a queue of students and workers who have just gotten off of work.

The line moves forward in fits and starts as people file into the elevator, one car filling up and sliding down it's rail only for the car waiting above it to drop down into place and more people to file on. You step onto it's metal deck and slowly walk to the back, taking a seat on one of the many rows of chair that takes up it's inside. Concrete walls braced with metallic struts slid past the windows, the car briefly swallowed in darkness, with only the lights on it's insides to light it before it dropped into the skies above the cities second floor, and the car was filled with the orange light reflecting off the ocean.

Trying to focus on anything too detailed for too long made your already bad eyes... fuzt out. Some of the signals didn't want to go to your brain, it seemed, or at least that's what they told you after a few expensive doctor's visits. They crisscrossed and sparked against each other and the world dissolved into scary shapes and dark spots. Looking out the window, you see the tops of all the buildings that make up the second floor of Miir looming up at you as you get closer and closer. Odd how something as basic as looking at the sky could blind you, but looking at the thousands of pinpricks of light that lit a city didn't.

>Qualities gained: ‘Reading Troubles’ and ‘Seeing the Unseen’

A Quality has just been added to your character sheet. Qualities represent your traits, abilities and resources, and sometimes have values to represent multiple units or a effect of greater magnitude. Simply having some Qualities will open certain doors for you while closing others, while other Qualities can be spent to gain options you otherwise would not have access to.

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>>3723154
The elevator slides down into it's dock and opens it's doors, disgorging you along with most of it's passengers. Stepping onto the darker streets of the second level, you navigate around the crowd and take the first left onto the riseway. Quickly walking up the ramp, you join the heavy pedestrian traffic attempting to dodge the intersections and crosswalks of the street ironically slowing the rest of you down.

Cutting around a few others waiting in line, you find your exit ramp and cross the street when there's a gap in traffic. Slipping into a side alley, you walk up to the employee entrance and reach out for the doorknob. Just before your hand touches it, your vision distorts. The alley, with it's dark lighting and muted colors, has never provoked this reaction in you before. The best thing to do is simply to close your eyes until you feel a bit more steady, but it continues to grow worse.

Something white flashes at the edge of your vision, and you swivel your head to the front of the alley, eyes still closed. Skulking around the edge of the alley, illuminating the two walls that frame the slice of the street beyond was... something round. It was white and almost blobby in shape, or maybe that was your vision. In the center orbited six black orbs that slid around each other as it peered around the alley at you.

"Tiiris?"

"Fff-" You muffle back the scream as you swivel around. Sana, your supervisor blinks back at you in surprise. The alley was quickly returning to it's normal coloration, static and distorted shapes locking back into place. "Bwuh..." Your head swivels back towards the alley entrance, looking as dark and disused as it normally did.

"Are you feeling alright?" Sana asks with concern. "If your eyes are bugging you today, you can..."

"No! No, I'm fine." You babble slightly. "Just thought I saw something." Glancing one more time over your shoulder, you follow Sana back into the store.

"If you're sure..." Sana lets you walk by and shuts the employee entrance.

Dad doesn't make much, so you've been working at Sana's store ever since you got into middle school. You're not sure if she keeps you around because she feels sorry for you and your Dad, or if she genuinely needs the helping hand when her daughter isn't there, but you'll take her money at the least. Kicking some of the outdoor dirt off your shoes, you deposit your bag into one of the waiting cubby holes and change into your...

>Apron. It's a small grocery store, selling fresh produce and the basic essentials.
>Polo. There's no uniform, really, but the polo helps sell the 'professional' vibe an electronics store needs.
>Dress shirt. It may be a bookstore, but that's no reason to run around in your uniform.
>Just take off your uniform jacket. A CHS store isn't a judgemental place.

>>3723159
>Apron. It's a small grocery store, selling fresh produce and the basic essentials.

>>3723159
>Dress shirt. It may be a bookstore, but that's no reason to run around in your uniform.

>>3723159
>Dress shirt. It may be a bookstore, but that's no reason to run around in your uniform.
Never trust alleys.

>>3723159
Dress shirt.

>Dress shirt. It may be a bookstore, but that's no reason to run around in your uniform.
Writing.

Tugging off the starchy, 'fancy' jacket of your uniform, you drop it into the cupboard and undo your tie and blouse, swapping it with the dark dress shirt you had packed away in your bag. It wasn't a massive change, but it was different enough for a small bookstore.

"How was school?" Sana called from the back as she tugged out a few plastic boxes.

"It was fine. Here, let me-" You duck in and take the box she's trying to lift. Wheezing a little at the heavy weight, you heft it up onto the front desk.

"Okay, so we just got these in today, I want you to add them all into the system and shelve them." Sana directs. "After that..." She fumbles slightly with an old-fashioned pad of paper. "We had a few call-ins for holds, so grab them off the shelves as well."

"Is that it?" You huff a little as you set the final box onto the desk.

"That's it!" She smiles warmly at you. "Now that you're here, I need to crunch some numbers in the back office, okay?"

"Alright." You smile and wave a little as she navigates the narrow staircase to the store's small upper level. Popping the top off of one of the plastic bins, you pull out a sheaf of books and navigate to the new book entry window on Sana's aging inventory system. She didn't know how to use it that well, and even if you couldn't stare at the screen for too long, a little light reading to see the titles and you were basically fine.

As each book is scanned and stamped with it's appropriate price on a sticker, you toss them onto a nearby cart, attempting to ignore the slow, but steady build up of static at the edge of your vision. Once it becomes too much for you to read the titles on each book's spine, you take a break by rolling the cart out into the shelves and carefully sliding each volume into place.

Schools and the government had been using paperless technology since before you were born, but not every book was fortunate enough to get a digital reprint- almost none of them were, actually. Sana's Bookshop - and that was literally it's name - carried almost nothing that would be useful to anyone. Old textbooks, religious texts and the less popular side of fiction were your bread and butter. Hardly a hardcore engineering volume to be found.

You're sliding books onto the shelf when you hear the tinkle of the door, and poke your head out from behind the shelf to see a man soaked by the early rain letting the door shut behind him. "Hey, can I help you?" You call, finishing up the row of books.

"Ah, yeah, I have a hold for..." The man rattled off his phone number and name for you to look up on the computer. Holds on an old fantasy series, it seems.

While you ring him up, you notice a car pull up outside the store's windows. It was some kind of beater, looked like it hadn't run in ten years. What's more, the windshield glared with the light of the sun as the ran ate away the normal cloud cover. Six dots seemed to swim on it, as your vision distorts and swims in front of you.

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>>3723721
The man pauses for a second. "Am I blabbering too much?"

You squeeze your eyes shut and shake your head. "No, sorry, I just have this thing..." When you open them again, the car is gone and your vision is back to normal. You finish ringing him up and hand him his books. "Have a nice day!" You call after him.

Returning to your labors, you start to put more books into the system, when you notice the... blob. Orb. Whatever you want to call it has reappeared again, this time almost seeming like it's in the shop. You can just barely see it creeping around one of the shelves, sliding out of view before shining through the shelves.

>Investigate it, you never have hallucinations like this!
>Ignore it, your schizovision is probably just on the fritz and it hurts to look at.

Update was dragged out way past when it should have been done due to a circumstance. Going to sleep now and close the vote in about ~9 hours.

>>3723723
>>Investigate it, you never have hallucinations like this!

>>3723723
>>Investigate it, you never have hallucinations like this!

>>3723723
>Investigate it, you never have hallucinations like this!

>>3723723
>Investigate it, you never have hallucinations like this!

>>3723723
>Ignore it, your schizovision is probably just on the fritz and it hurts to look at.

>Investigate it, you never have hallucinations like this!
Wrrriting.

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Stamping the final price of $8.75 on the book in your hand, you toss it on the cart and wander out from behind the counter. Putting a hand on a nearby shelf to steady yourself as you come closer and your vision distorts, you get a better 'look' at it.

Your previous assessment of it as a blob seems to have not been very accurate. As you approach, it... skitters almost, the sound of many small, metallic things whirring as it moves on the shelf. When you come into view, it freezes up, almost like a guilty child getting caught. It drops to the floor from it's perch with many small jerks to the side and scurries under one of the shelves against the wall.

Getting on your hands and knees, you slowly peer under the nearby bookshelf and see the orb backing away into the crevice. You hesitate for a moment. It's common sense to not just randomly touch strange things, but this was probably just a hallucination of some kind, so you reach out quickly and grab at the orb. You're surprised when your vision suddenly snaps back to normal- well, as normal as it ever gets - as your hand closes around the orb and instead feels something large and heavy.

Pulling it back in surprise, you see that you have a book clutched in your hand. It's a thin hardcover book, no bigger than a postcard, and completely unadorned except for the black pleather cover. A personal journal of some kind. You know you cleared out behind the shelves just two days ago, so it must be new. Scratching your head, and with no sign of the orb, you return to the front desk. Does it belong to someone?

Checking just inside the cover, you don't see a name or address to call. It could be private, but unless they come back to the store, there's not much you can do to return it to them if you don't read it...

>Screw privacy, snoop!
>Put it behind the front desk with a note about where you found it.

>>3725040
>>Put it behind the front desk with a note about where you found it.

>>3725040
>>Screw privacy, snoop!

>>3725040
>Screw privacy, snoop!

>Screw privacy, snoop!
Writing.

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Glancing casually over your shoulder to see if Sana is still in her office, you open it up and start flipping through the pages. You're faintly surprised to see that it's filled with hundreds of intricate, detailed drawings. Some of them take up the entirety of a page, with small marks of pen expertly sketching out corridors and rooms. Each one was captioned with a short title or description. "Air", "Kitchen", "Docks".

One shows a wide open corridor, apparently brightly lit and lined with doors, with plants spilling out from planters that hung over every door. It was labeled "Street".

You spend some of your preschool years aboard a gas mining station, right after Mom died and Dad was trying to hold onto his job and raise you at the same time. Given that you were something like four, you can barely remember the station's dimly lit, drafty hallways, but the drawings remind you of them in a nice way.

The small journal is filled with more sketches, some displaying alien landscapes, while a great many are depictions of machinery and small organisms. One catches your attention, primarily for the sudden art shift. It reminds you of ancient hieroglyphics, showing blocky, geometric humans set apart into three separate 'scenes'. The first shows a pair of humans - one man and one woman - laboring over a sphere of some kind. The second shows them bowing before the floating orb, which was now surrounded by an intricate halo. The third then showed the woman wielding a spear against a group of crouching, bent-over machines - except now, she had a halo of her own. The title was "Faith".

"Tiiris?"

You start at Sana's voice, quietly slipping the journal into your breast pocket. Thankfully, your chest was small enough that the hard corners weren't obvious against your chest. You turn and look behind you. "Yes?"

"We still have that old encyclopedia in stock, right?"

"I think so?" You answer. "I can check."

"Thanks." She smiles. "I think one of those cultural preservation societies will take it off our hands."

"That's good." You echo mildly, stepping behind the shelves to look for the old set in the back.

>Quality gained: 'Book of Drawings’

The remaining hours at your job pass quickly, as the work day lets out and people start to casually stop by Sana's Bookshop on their way home. You don't make many sales, especially since it's raining, but it keeps you from examining your curious find until it's well past 8:00PM and Sana comes downstairs to see you still manning the counter.

"Alright, it's late enough." She says, gently shooing you away from the counter. "Go on, were supposed to stop working thirty minutes ago. It's a Friday after all."

"Hmm?" You glance at the clock. "Oh. Yeah, thanks." You make to turn away from the counter.

"Hey, aren't you forgetting something?"

You turn, and see Sana waving a small sheaf of bills. "It's Friday." She repeats. "You weren't going to leave without getting paid?"

>>3725383
Taking the bills, you pocket your normal earnings and smile sheepishly. "Thanks, Sana."

>Quality gained: 'Some Pocket Change'

"Stay safe!" She calls as you leave through the side entrance. Picking up your bag and your uniform with it, you step back out onto the streets. The setting sun is turning the entire sky red, and with it, the quiet evening life of Miir is starting up. Considering it's a Friday, Dad probably wouldn't mind if you stayed out a little while longer, went out somewhere...

>Immediately blow part of your earnings at the mall.
>Head home so you can look at the weird book closer.
>Go on a walk. It's free and you can do some reading at the park.

>>3725384
>>Head home so you can look at the weird book closer.

>>3725384
>Go on a walk. It's free and you can do some reading at the park.

>>3725384
>Go on a walk. It's free and you can do some reading at the park.

>Go on a walk. It's free and you can do some reading at the park.
Writing.

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Hanging a left, you detour through a nearby park. This was an old haunt of yours back when you went to school on the second floor. Now that you work for Sana, you stop by every now and then. The trees are lit orange from underneath by the setting sun, their trunks and branches wrapped with hydroponic support and tubing attached directly to it with plastic taps.

Grow lights mounted on poles around you beat down on your back and glare through your glasses slightly, but you squint and keep moving on your meandering path around the park. It was divided into a multitude of odd shapes by the dirt paths and the flowers at their edges, islands of grass that surrounded the red leafed trees at their center. They were large, and didn't shed their spade-shaped leaves in the winter like most of the trees from Miir. Soldier's Trees, you think they're called.

...An appropriate name, come to think of it. There's a sign that sits in front of the fountain in the center of the park, with large, blocky letters engraved into the stone: CONTACT DAY MEMORIAL PARK. It's sister park, for the day that marked the end of the war, is on the city's newer, third floor. Each and every group of flowers that lined the edge of the path was marked with a plaque dedicating it to a single soldier. Only the highest expense for the fallen.

You take one of the benches that surrounds the fountain at the center of the park. The little book comes out of your breast pocket and you flip through some more of it's pages. More drawings of ship interiors, and weird alien plants that looked like they were bred in a lab more than they evolved naturally. Flipping through, you come across a sketch of a familiar tapered shape. The caption reads "Shipbreaking".

Once, when you were in elementary school, you got to go on a field trip to the Y'avel Shipbreaking yards, just outside the city. Big walls and lots of soldiers milling around, but they let you go inside, past the ash bog to see the Valkan's ship itself. It was... Hull II, you think? No, Hull X? Try as your teachers might, they couldn't get anyone to memorize the hull numbers.

Looking back on the whole thing, it was a pretty obvious recruiting scheme, especially from the way the engineer they brought out to talk to them kept trying to get you all engaged. Worked, too. There was nothing to get the imagination of a nine year old going like alien battleships.

Your eye is drawn up to the fountain that sits at the center of the park, having to stare a minute for your brain to really let you see it. It was a multitude of metal models of ships, mounted on feed poles from the fountains. When it ran, the water spewed out from the back of each of them like their engines were running. In the middle was a carrier, dwarfing the three cruisers, eight destroyers and twenty torpedo boats that ringed it in concentric circles. Every ship lost on Contact Day. The names of their crew were marked around the park.

>>3725757
It's... difficult for you to think about the Valkans in anything but the abstract. You were born four years after the war ended, and you'd never lost anyone to it. Well, directly. All that you could get out of Dad about how Mom died is that they couldn't afford treatment. Dad's lost his job a few times over all the stuff that happened at Paar, but that's just... how it's always been, from your perspective. Grandma had served, but it had been a few years since you'd gotten to see her.

Valkans have always seemed like this looming, existential threat that hangs over everything and everyone. The big political stink that you'll probably have to write about this weekend is the upcoming elections. How people are fighting it out over whether they should cut the military budget to fund other things, or how many more ships they want to build that year, or how many more military officers they want to commission. But they're just... not in your worldview.

Summing it all up, how do you really feel about the Valkans?

>They're too abstract for you to feel anything strongly.
>Distaste. The world feels like a shitty place because of them.
>Hatred. If they hadn't come, Mom might still be alive.
>Admiration. Alien invaders are pretty cool...
>[Write-In]

>>3725760
>>Distaste. The world feels like a shitty place because of them.

>>3725760
>>Distaste. The world feels like a shitty place because of them.
>>Hatred. If they hadn't come, Mom might still be alive.

Torn between these two. On the one hand, mom's death could be seen as a facet of the first one, but I have no idea how personally involved we should get.

>>3725760
>Hatred. If they hadn't come, Mom might still be alive.

>>3725760
A mix of distaste and hatred

>>3725811
>>Distaste. The world feels like a shitty place because of them.
>>Hatred. If they hadn't come, Mom might still be alive.

>Distaste. The world feels like a shitty place because of them.
>Hatred. If they hadn't come, Mom might still be alive.
Mixed seems to be the general consensus? Writing... VALKAN SCUM.

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You feel your face twist up slightly at the thought. Something else in your chest seems to be twisting, as well. It was cruel that something you never even got to see would be responsible for your Mom's death. Well, suppose not directly so, but you still held them responsible.

It felt all the more silly when you considered that you had barely known your own mother. All you had were old photos Dad had taken, and that one family portrait he kept above the fireplace, of him and her standing with yourself as a baby in Mom's arms. She stuck out like a sore thumb next to your average-looking father and the average-looking baby, although Dad swore up and down that you were the cutest baby in the hospital ward.

Any memories you had of Mom were possibly inventions by your brain to fill in a desperate gap in your memory, and for that you squarely blamed the Valkans.

Standing up from your bench, you march home with a bit more of a snap in your step from the anger you stirred up. Sometimes, you wished that you could join the military, maybe the Navy, as a way of honoring Mom's memory, but with your eye problems, you had been thoroughly rejected.

Leaving the park, you get back on the riseway and meander over to the nearest elevator, your nose occasionally poking back into the book. The drawings in it were quite good, although you're not sure why anyone would make them. Perhaps it was an expedition sketchbook or something? But... no, they'd carry cameras for that. A hobbyist, maybe?

You sit down on the nearly empty elevator as it shudders and begins to slide down. It gets darker and darker as you descend beneath the second floor of the city, bringing you down towards the industrial districts that crisscrossed Miir's first story. Here, the sun is almost entirely blocked out by the vast infrastructure projects that crowd under the city. Waste treatment plants, desalination facilities, power plants and port connections. As you step off, you can see the vast spiral of roads that direct traffic up to the higher stories. Their hellish planning was the subject of many a joke about your Dad and neighbors.

Making your way down to the street-level, you expertly navigate the back alleys and service streets. Living down here all your life, you've definitely picked up a thing or two about how to keep yourself safe. Skirting around the block, you finally leave the really sketchy part of town and enter your not-sketchy-but-low-class neighborhood.

Undoing the latch on the grate fence that surrounds your complex, you trot up the few stairs to your apartment, letting yourself in with the key. It was an old unit, no fancy electronic doors or maglocks to keep anyone out, just a wooden door frame. The halls were slightly cramped, too, but it had two separate bedrooms so Dad didn't need to sleep on the couch anymore. And it was... well, it was home.

>>3727222
"I'm home!" You call out, shutting the door behind you, ditching your shoes in the little cubby up against the wall.

"Hey." You hear the TV running. When you come into the living room, you see your Dad leaning over the coffee table, book balanced on one leg and glasses in the other. The TV was running at a low volume, some comedy program or another playing. "You missed dinner."

"Yeah, sorry, I just got held up at work." You smile.

"Uhuh." He gets up and kisses you on your head quickly before sitting back down. "There's leftovers in the fridge."

You chatter slightly about your day with Dad as you pull out the cold bowl of noodles and soup and push it into the microwave. About your weekend assignments and how that means you'll need to actually tune into the news a few times this week. While you sit down to eat your noodles, Dad relays his own workday.

"New hire today, right, and the idiot just walks up and grabs a heat exchange pipe. Burns his hand and says he thought heat exchanges were supposed to make things cold..."

"Uhuh." You drone with a smile. Your hand touches your breast pocket and you consider whether to show Dad the sketchbook you found. Then again, it was late, and part of you just wanted to take a shower and go to bed.

>Show him the sketchbook.
>Eh, he'd just nod and say yes. Shower and go to bed.

>>3727226
>Show him the sketchbook.

>>3727226
>Eh, he'd just nod and say yes. Shower and go to bed

>>3727226
>Show him the sketchbook.

>Show him the sketchbook.
Writing.

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"Hey, Dad. Check this thing I found at work today." You pull the book out of your breast pocket and hold it out for him to look at.

"What is it? A novel?" He takes it out of your hands and opens it, peering at it through grocery store reading glasses that were comically small on his face. Flipping through the pages, though, you see his expression flicker with recognition. "...huh."

"I dunno who's it is, but it was behind one of the shelves at Sana's today." You explain. "There isn't a name, though, so I don't know if I can get it back to them."

"If it was behind the shelves, it's probably been there a while." Dad offers, rubbing the thick stubble that had grown since that morning on his jaw. Your father was a typical equatorian guy- darker skin, dark hair and a thick, messy beard. Always dwarfing you in size since you were a kid, he was tall, big and burly. "Are you interested in drawing at all?" He asks. At your shrug, he goes on. "You know, your mother used to sketch like this as well."

"Really?" You perk up slightly at the thought.

"Yeah. Pen and ink in little journals. She wanted to become an artist, was pretty good, too. Might still have some of her old stuff over in storage, if you're interested."

"I've got bad eyes, remember?" You ask, raising an eyebrow. "Hard to see the page."

"No reason to not try, if you're at all interested. You know, there are plenty of blind painters out there."

"Calling me blind, now?"

"I didn't say that!"

You grin and pluck the book out of his hands. "I'm gonna take my shower, now. Night, Dad."

"Night, kiddo." He reaches up and gives you a half-hug. "You got any plans tomorrow?"

"Dunno yet. Got paid, but I don't know about our bills this month. I'll take a look in the morning."

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>>3727560
You catch a slight frown on Dad's face as you step into the bathroom and shut the door. He was never quite comfortable with the fact that you had to work to help support them, so part of the deal was that you spent some of your earnings on yourself. Not like you were never going to, but the fact that he makes such a big deal about it just turns the whole thing awkward sometimes.

Stripping out of your work clothes, you toss them to the side and turn on the water in the old shower. It was a cramped thing, with the shower separating the toilet from the sink and only a small hallway to move around in front of them. While you're waiting for it to get hot, you look and frown at your reflection. You've always been a bit plain and dumpy, with nothing to show in the chest or elsewhere, although Dad liked to insist that you were pretty. There are hints of both of your parents in there, although you...

>Primarily resemble your father. Black hair, darker skin than your mother, and stronger, sterner features with wide lips and thick brows. Although you still have your mother's brighter, blue eyes and a lust dusting of her freckles.
>Somewhat of a mix between your parents. Skin closer to Mom's pale color and hair that's a darker red than hers was. Your face looks... just, well average. Nothing ugly, but nothing particularly pretty except some stronger freckles.
>Resemble Mom more than anything else. Bright blonde hair like hers was, and a face covered with many, oddly symmetrical and clustered freckles like she had. The features just... don't quite come together, though, but maybe when you get older...

>>3727563
>Somewhat of a mix between your parents. Skin closer to Mom's pale color and hair that's a darker red than hers was. Your face looks... just, well average. Nothing ugly, but nothing particularly pretty except some stronger freckles.

>>3727563
>Resemble Mom more than anything else. Bright blonde hair like hers was, and a face covered with many, oddly symmetrical and clustered freckles like she had. The features just... don't quite come together, though, but maybe when you get older
Pics?

>>3727596
I don't have anything specific, since I don't have the cash for a commission that includes the specific details, and most animu pics are going to be flattering. But I can rustle up some if people really want it.

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>>3727563
>>Resemble Mom more than anything else. Bright blonde hair like hers was, and a face covered with many, oddly symmetrical and clustered freckles like she had. The features just... don't quite come together, though, but maybe when you get older...

>>3727563
>Resemble Mom more than anything else. Bright blonde hair like hers was, and a face covered with many, oddly symmetrical and clustered freckles like she had. The features just... don't quite come together, though, but maybe when you get older...

Blonde and the blurry image of her mother it is, then. Writing.

>>3727795
Hey, that's pretty close.

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You squint slightly at your reflection as it slowly comes into focus. The resemblance is clear, with your Dad only visible in the slightly stern cant to your otherwise rounded features. It just... you always felt distaste looking at your own face. The resemblance to your mother was undeniable, but the nose was just a bit crooked, the shape of you face too long, your cheeks just a bit too gaunt. The same features, but not put together the right way.

Carefully pulling down your pantyhose, panties and the bra you barely need, you step into the shower. Sometimes people thought that being poor meant having nothing, but to you it just meant living frugally and shopping smart. The giant bulk bottle of body soap in your shower was a testament to that. Scrubbing down the normal dust and book grime of your day quickly, you take a moment to scrub and brush out your hair quickly. Once, you remember being told that doing that while it was wet would ruin it, but it just tangled too quickly to be worth it otherwise.

Emerging from the bathroom a few minutes later, wrapped in a towel and with teeth freshly brushed, you head back into your room.

It's cramped, but honestly, you find it plenty livable. A small closet with your daily wear, spare uniforms and one or two nice outfits in the back. The walls of your room before you moved were covered with old posters you'd long lost interest in and never bothered to take down, but the walls of this room were bare of anything. Maybe you'd put something up on it one day. Your desk was scattered with papers and the charging stations for your terminal and phone.

Tossing them both onto the pad, you yawn and, looking at the late hour, decide to just go straight to bed. Ruffling yourself down with the towel one last time, you change into a pajama shirt and pants before flopping down on your bed and allowing yourself to pass out.

---

Stumbling out of your room early the next morning, you see Dad sitting at the breakfast table with a plate of eggs and toast in front of him. He raises an eyebrow slightly at your disheveled state. "Morning, princess."

You mumble something before grabbing a plate and sliding the remaining eggs out onto your plate. Without your glasses on, you can barely see anything closer than ten feet, but you're used to doing your morning routine without them. Some slight questing with your hands finds you a glass and the carton of orange juice before you sit down at the table.

"Sleep well?" Dad asks, raising an eyebrow.

"Fine." You groan, shoveling some eggs into your mouth. Slowly, you start to feel more human as the food makes it's way into you. You've always been a big eater - like your Mom was, apparently - which makes you alternate between feeling guilty about the extra cost and frustrated at your lack of growth. "You?"

He shrugs. "Fine. Need to finish up an assignment, though."

>>3729046
Now that you've woken up a little, you manage to hunt down where you'd left your glasses last night and sit down in front of the television with a book you and Dad kept on the kitchen counter. The news is running with a story about an accidental collapse at one of the shipbreaking yards caused by unsafe demolition practices while you look over the ledger.

The amount that you and Dad both collectively pulled in were listed in neat rows, followed by the budgets you had set for your expenses. This month, you'd already pulled in enough to cover food, water and rent... Dad's next paycheck would cover the electricity and gas bill. That left you with some pocket money... or you could put it into the emergency savings.

It was the weekend, too. You could go to the mall, get some new clothes, see a movie, even just waste time watching TV or kicking around the park. If you were willing to make the trek, you could go all the way to the commercial district where Sana's Bookshop is and browse the old novelty stores- gaming, knicknacks, surplus and other oddball places like that.

>Head to the mall, it has things to do even if you don't spend money.
>Visit some more parks - maybe one that wasn't as depressing as Contact Day Memorial.
>Head to the commercial district and poke around.
>Stay home, watch TV and get a headstart on your homework.

And also...

>Take your hard-earned moolah.
>Put your normal earnings into the family savings, you never know.

>>3729050
>Head to the mall, it has things to do even if you don't spend money.
>Take your hard-earned moolah
How old are we

>>3729067
Sixteen. Born four years after the war ended.

>>3729050
>Stay home, watch TV and get a headstart on your homework.
>Put your normal earnings into the family savings, you never know

>>3729050
>Stay home, watch TV and get a headstart on your homework.
>Take your hard-earned moolah.

>>3729050
>Head to the mall, it has things to do even if you don't spend money.
>Take your hard-earned moolah.
Don't we have friends

>>3729530
You in fact, have friends. If you vote to go out, the next vote will be about calling any of them.

>>3729050
>Head to the commercial district and poke around.
>Take half of your earnings, put the other half in savings.

Rolled 6 (1d100)

Take your hard-earned money seems to be in the lead. Since it's a tie between Mall and Stay Home, we'll roll off for it here. 1-50 for Mall, 51-100 for Home, you know the drill.

>>3730500
Mall it is. Writing- oh, and sorry about the wait from before.

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Making a quick count, you take your normal allowance for yourself out of the sheaf- sixty bucks was plenty to mess around on the weekend. Standing up, you wander back into your room and finally get out of your pajamas. Simple jeans and a t-shirt for the weekend were all you needed. Beyond one or two formal outfits and your uniform, you didn't have many skirts. Pantyhose and razors were expensive.

Plucking your phone up from the desk, you shout back from the hall while you push your feet into your shoes. "Hey, I'm gonna go out!"

"Where?" Dad calls back.

"Mall!" You stand up and grab your bag from the floor, reaching in and tossing the packet of school things inside onto the counter.

"Have fun!" Dad calls after you as you close the door behind yourself and lock it. With the daylight, you had marginally less to worry about when it comes to your neighborhood. Ambling in the direction of a different elevator than the one that takes you to the commercial district, you poke around on your phone a little bit. It's boring to kick around by yourself during the weekends... maybe someone's up to meeting you there?

>Kara. She's cool, even if she's a bit weird. Everyone always wants to hang out at her Dad's store, so you're sure she'll appreciate the chance to be invited somewhere else for a bit.
>Taylor. If she's not busy with concert practice, she's always been down to join you on whatever stupid thing you've wanted to do that day.
>Lynn. Kind of a cynical asshole, but she makes for some fun banter.
>Elan. He always seemed to walk in different circles than you- er, uh, 'walk'. But he's always been fun to talk to, going on about this game and that movie in circles.

>>3730652
>Elan. He always seemed to walk in different circles than you- er, uh, 'walk'. But he's always been fun to talk to, going on about this game and that movie in circles.

>>3730652
>Taylor. If she's not busy with concert practice, she's always been down to join you on whatever stupid thing you've wanted to do that day.

>>3730652
>Elan

>>3730652
>>Lynn. Kind of a cynical asshole, but she makes for some fun banter.
So we are half alien
Can't wait until we get to shoot some alien scum trying to convert us with that

>>3730743
+1

>>3731166
Shhhhhh
Probably

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Looks like a tie between Elan or Taylor. >>3731166 or a new vote can be the tiebreaker, otherwise I'll roll a d100 in ten minutes.

>>3731166
>>3731405
>pic

Rolled 24 (1d100)

>>3731480
1-50 Elaniboy, 51-100 Taytay

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You send a quick text off to Elan asking if he's free and wants to go to the mall. His parents were out of town this weekend, so he'll probably say yes just to get out of the house. Sure enough, as you're riding the elevator up, you get a text from him agreeing and asking which mall.

Skyview Mall was the biggest shopping center on the third floor, and despite the cheesy name, it was fitting. It perched on top of a nexus of riseways and the open air skypaths, boosting it above the normal city skyline and making it easy for pedestrian traffic to reach it.

The third floor in general was the result of extremely careful city planning and lessons gleaned from other cities and the construction of Miir's own second floor, and it showed. Riseways, instead of cluttering the skyline, were built and carefully drawn around the zoning in advance to cut down on walking times. In places, it went straight through buildings or simply dipped into the plate itself, which was filled with dozens of hollow 'underground' spaces that massively increased the amount of people the third floor could support.

All of that summed up to you sitting on the rim of the fountains flicking through texts on your phone. The blessed air conditioning of the mall helped strip away the obscene humidity that built up on cloudy days like this. It rained more frequently in Miir, which helped keep the humidity down usually, but today it seemed to be overpowering.

You catch the rims of a wheelchair at the top of your vision and look up. Elan waves at you with a slightly crooked smile. A jacket was on over his normal sweater and pants and his brown hair was disheveled like usual. There was something about his condition that made him dress so warmly, but you've never bothered asking him about it. You hate it when people badger you about your eyes, so why would you badger him?

"Hey, Tiiris." He rolls up to the fountain. "Fancy meeting you here."

"Can't imagine why we'd cross paths." Your own lips twist into a smile as you stand up. "How's it been?"

"Eh, holding down the fort while Dad and Tina are on their trip. Been playing a lot of Star Eden."

"More than usual?" You ask as you start to wander. Elan immediately begins chattering about balance patches and the newest expansion as you both window shop. The guy was more than capable of keeping up the conversation on his own, with you only chiming in occasionally to ask a question or prompt him. You didn't have the money to even rent the gear for a VRMMO, but it was nice to hear his genuine enthusiasm.

"...and so now instead of just spamming our first ability, we actually have to directly mend the hits on the hull, teams of ten or more per ship..."

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>>3731665
Plenty of the store fronts you were passing offered items on layaway, looking to make their products more attractive to an economy that was just starting to get back on it's feet. Bonuses or discounts for veterans were everywhere. Computers and cellphones were marked as easy to learn and use, for the people that had missed the vast shift in electronics that occurred during the war.

The fashion you had grown up with (and comprised most of your closet) was durable, practical fabrics in simple cuts that held it close to the skin. Everything had small clips on the waistband that the mandatory gas masks could be slipped onto, or an emergency water bottle or flashlight. What was on display was becoming increasingly freer, with looser shirts, skirts and fine heels coming back into fashion. Shiny buttons, patterns and embroidery were on virtually every article, either harkening to the military styles of a bygone era or simply touting their quality.

With all the visual stimulus, your vision is starting to distort slightly, so you slow down and lean to for a moment to get your bearings. Elan, used to your needs as much as you're used to his wheelchair, simply stops and keeps chattering while you close your eyes for a moment.

"And so our guys on the destroyers are pissed that missiles are scarce now..."

"Why are they scarce again?" You enjoy the blessed darkness of your eyelids, phantom shapes moving across your 'view' and slowly fading. Little lights dance across your vision, still, and you- wait... you know those shapes.

"The latest world event destroyed the mines..."

When you moved your head from side to side, they stayed locked in the same place, somewhere... you open your eyes slightly at squint. It was one of the plazas that lined the rim of the mall. A fountain beneath a skylight which broke up the glare of the sun outside with a hanging array of tinted glass. They swam around the edges of the glass dome, shifting from place to place.

Elan noticed the weird direction you were looking. "What are you looking at?"

"I dunno, just something on top of the skylight." You brush up your glasses and rub your eyes, before letting them drop and squinting again. "Not blurry enough to be one of my hallucinations..." They suddenly changed color, their normal blue-white glow darkening to an angry red orange.

"I don't see-"

And then the plaza exploded.

>>3731667
There was a yell, and something just next to the fountain suddenly plumed into a bright flash that seared through the lenses of your glasses. A wave of pressure rippled through your chest, knocking you back onto your ass and pushing the air out of your lungs. A clattering sounded as Elan's wheelchair pitched over on it's wheels, making him hit the ground with a grunt next to you. Smoke and dust filled the air, blotting out the light of the sun and pitching your part of the mall into an early blackness. Cracking open your eyes, the red orbs were still visible, seemingly 'floating' over the backdrop of the smoke.

"Survivors of the reckoning!" A voice rang out through the smoke. It was reedy and whiny, with an almost desperate quality to it only enhanced by the amplification pushing it out. The voice of someone who badly wanted to be taken seriously. "We, the chosen of the great destroyers have come, to deliver you from-" His voice was immediately drowned out by the sound of gunfire. The orbs appeared to 'drop' down from their perches, roving through the smoke quickly.

Something faint pulsed at your back, an air current pushing towards you for a second before pulling back. It didn't take the screams and shouting for you to figure out that it was another explosion. People were already starting to run from the ruined plaza, brief shouts or screams echoing out from ahead and behind you. Rubble covered the floor, with a faint mist from the ruined waterworks peppering through the smoke.

Your body is bruised, but you don't think anything major was hurt. At least, you can move. Elan, on the other hand, is groaning in pain, clearly winded by the explosion - and knowing his condition, with broken bones, too.

>Grab Elan and run with the crowd towards the exits.
>Screw getting trampled, find a side exit.
>Don't try to exit, try to hide in the back areas where maintenance happens.
>Find a store and hide in there.

>>3731669
>>Grab Elan and find a side exit.

>>3731669
Grab Elan and run with the crowd towards the exits.

>>3731680
Support

>>3731669
>>Don't try to exit, try to hide in the back areas where maintenance happens.

>>3731680
I'll support this.

>Grab Elan and find a side exit.
Wrriting.

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Stumbling to your feet, you grip the back of Elan's chair and hastily shove him up, eliciting a groan from him. People are already running from the bombing, and you almost make to follow for a second before memories of holiday sales flash in your head. That's a good way to get trampled, and with Elan...

You pull him backwards into a side hall- the ones that lead to the bathrooms and, eventually, to the exits to the mall beyond it. Quickly swiveling him around, you begin pushing him down the hall faster and faster. Gunfire echoes down the hall behind you, and you pray that none of the maniacs will glance down your little hall before you turn the corner...

Blood thunders in your ears, the stress causing your world to rapidly distort and darken around you. Navigating purely by feel, you manage to make the turn and push Elan into the side corridor. Going from memory, the turn was... left? No, straight? You can't see anything through the static except the weird orbs.

Pulling Elan into a corner where you'd be hidden from sight by anyone following, you collapse on the ground. "I'm sorry, I just..." You breath heavily, legs feeling like jelly despite the relatively short distance you sprinted. "...I need to take a break."

"It's fine..." He grunts, leaning back in his chair. "Only a few broken bones."

"I-isn't that bad?" Dammit, your body just won't stop shaking.

"Actually pretty normal." Elan cracks a slight smile. "You okay?"

"Can't see, so I'm fine." Your own laugh sounds slightly deranged, even to your ears. "I-" Swiveling your head slightly, you hear the sounds of other footsteps coming from one of the halls, but the echo makes it difficult to tell how close they are. "You hear that?"

"Yeah..." Elan breathes out. "Not from the way we came..."

"Which hall?" Out of the right corner of your eye, you notice one of the orbs rushing in a straight line, before abruptly turning and rushing in your direction- towards you, actually.

"Left one."

"There's something coming up the right one, too." The clapping of feet grew closer, and you fumble to grip Elan's chair, ready to yank him back down the way you came. Your vision has barely come back to you, though, turning you around and confusing your sense of direction. Which way were you facing? You grit you teeth and back up, only for your back to collide with someone else who pushes through you.

You're knocked down to your knees, stumbling up to look into the face of... no, the mask of someone, swimming in your vision. Tattered t-shirt with some stupid slogan on it, jeans and a mangled paper mache mask. It was a terribly made facsimile of a full-face helmet, the brim broken up by chunks of paper and two eyeholes bored through the visor, which was painted yellow instead of gold. You know enough to recognize it immediately from images you were repeatedly shown as kids. A Valkan helmet. Death cultists.

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>>3733359
A pistol was clutched in his... no, her hand, and she waved it wildly as she stumbled around your sudden collision. Steading herself at the other door and whirling around, she raised it towards you. Her whole outline was bathed in red light as she took wordless aim.

And then the light became an arm that reached from behind her and grabbed her by the throat. It lifted her into the air and threw her against the wall with a dull thump of body against concrete. Up close, the orb was huge- bigger than the one you'd seen before, and resolved into a figure bathed in faint red light. It's free hand gripped something long and thin and raised it above it's head, turning it's back to you and towards the woman.

She was coughing and sputtering at her crushed windpipe, but managed to raise the pistol. A gunshot ripped through your eardrums, then another, and the figure brought down it's hands upon her. You hear a sputter and a gasp, and it strikes her again. Then again, repeating until she finally stops moving.

From the back, you can see the teal camouflage and the Planetary Guard emblem standing out on it's fatigues. There was a slight whirring sound from the exoskeleton gripping it as it rose into a standing position, hissing as whoever was wearing it breathed heavily.

"Thank..." You stutter slightly as they rise to their feet. "I... was..." The words die in your throat as they turn around to face you. The normal environment mask that would cover the face was hanging on it's strap to the side, clapping against the exoskeleton slightly as it did. Looking back out at you was the pearly white bone of a human skull. Slight amounts of gristle still held the jaw to it, decay clinging to the bone around it's face, two pinpricks of red light glowing inside each eye socket. A repeated static hiss ushered from the speakers of it's helmet in a digital imitation of human breathing, a dull green activity light flaring as it did.

"NO THANKS NECESSARY." A masculine voice boomed from the speakers, a repeated hiss and click interrupting it as it... almost worked it's jaw, the words distorting slightly. It almost stumbled through it's speech, as if it was unused to the words. "TELL ME. ARE YOU UNHARMED?"

>"I-I'm okay?"
>"This must be a dream."
>"Stay back!"
>Immediately lose your cool and freak out.
>[Write-In]

>>3733362
>"I-I'm okay?"

>>3733362
>>"I-I'm okay?"

>>3733362
>>"Stay back!"

>>3733362
>Immediately lose your cool and freak out.

>"I-I'm okay?"
Writing.

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"I-I'm okay?" You manage to stammer out. You hurt all over, and your heart feels like a jackhammer, but you aren't dying. Unless this is what dying feels like? The body of the death cultist slumped against the wall looked very, very real, though.

"GOOD." The skeleton boomed back. It turned to look at Elan, an audible whirring emanating from the joints of it's exoskeleton as it moved. Now that you were paying attention, you could see the way the fatigues draped over it's body, outlining the bones beneath the fabric. Elan himself stared back, white-faced and wide eyed as it studied him for a second. "YOUR COMPANION HAS SUFFERED INTERNAL DAMAGE." It eventually announced. "COME. I WILL GUIDE YOU TO A LOCAL MEDICAL FACILITY." It stepped away from Elan, moving towards the door the two of you had barged through on your way out.

"I'm fine, just a few broken bones..." Elan grumbled. His face was pale, though, faint bruises visible on his collarbone.

"Wait!" You call after it, the words dying in your throat as it strides forth unperturbed. "That is the way to the..."

"THE UNWORTHY ARE BEING DEALT WITH." The monster... skeleton thing stopped and turned it's head. It's voice was still booming, even from several feet away, how anyone hadn't heard it and come running... "WE WILL CLEAR A PATH FOR YOU."

"But..." It takes some stammering to get the words out. "But I don't even know who the hell you are!"

"I AM MERELY A FRAGMENT, RETURNED TO SERVE AS DICTATED BY ANCIENT BARGAIN." It turned around, fully. "IF YOU DO NOT WISH TO COME WITH ME, KNOW THAT THE NORTH PASSAGE HAS BEEN SEALED AND CLEARED OF HOSTILES." It raised a single, skeletal hand, pointing to the passage it had come through- opposite to the one the cultist had come from.

>Go with the skeleton... thing.
>>[Sub-Option] Badger it with questions. (Can write-in specific ones)
>Go down the north passage.
>Go down the south passage.
>Hunker down where you are and wait for this all to be okay.

>>3734137
>Go with the skeleton... thing.

>>3734137
>>Go with the skeleton... thing
What bargain are you talking about?

>>3734137
>Go with the skeleton... thing.
I can forsee nothing bad coming of this

>>3731166
fuckfuck I overlooked this comment first time. You're onto something, those two at the end of the last thread are 100% our parents and our mum is definitely a Valkan. OWTTE.

>>3734137
>Go with the skeleton... thing.
>>[Sub-Option] Badger it with questions. (Can write-in specific ones)
>"What bargain? How are you moving? Elan, you're seeing this too, right?"

>Go with the skeleton... thing.
>"What bargain are you talking about?"
>"How are you moving?"
>"Elan, you're seeing this too, right?"
Wrrriitiing.

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Opening and closing your mouth for a second, you hurriedly get to your feet and grab the back of Elan's chair. Seeing that you're following, the skeleton turns again and continues down the passage. You notice it raise a hand up and close it's mask, hiding it's most obvious feature. "Wait, hold on! What bargain? What are you?"

"A SOLDIER, CALLED FROM BEYOND THE VEIL TO FULFILL MY OBLIGATIONS. HOLD HERE." It holds up a hand as you approach the end of the passage. Shifting slightly in place, it suddenly shoves itself around the corner and fires. The loud banging sound of it's rifle painfully jabs into your ears, making you jump slightly. The... 'Soldier' turned the corner, gesturing you to follow with it's hand.

You round the corner, and have to take a minute to process that this was the same plaza you were in a few minutes ago. Smoke and dust filled the now nearly-empty plaza, clinging to the ceiling or slowly settling to the floor, and giving the distant ends of the hall a hazy, distant quality. The fountain that once burbled in the center was shattered, water leaking across the floor and soaking into the powdered concrete. Several of the store fronts near you were pulverized with gunfire, all glass in pieces on the floor and displays ruined. Rubble from the initial explosion practically coated the floor in white dust and large chunks you have to step around. One of the pieces of rubble has an arm sticking out from under it, and suddenly you're thankful for all the dust. "Am I the only one seeing this..." You mumble to yourself.

"Terrorist bombing, undead soldiers?" Elan asks.

"Dammit..." You bite your lip.

"COME. THIS WAY." The soldier turns and grabs Elan's chair from your hands, lifting him over a large piece of rubble and setting him down on the other side.

You follow, scrambling over the piece of wet stone. It's slippery, and your foot slides down and crunches against something dry and plastic. You look down, and see a mask beneath your foot. Several holes have been neatly punched through the papermache- and, presumably into the head behind it. Shaking your head, you grip the edge of the rubble and drop down on the other side. A few gunshots echo from the hall behind you, and you quickly grab Elan's chair and push after the soldier. "What bargain are you talking about?"

"YOUR ANCESTORS MADE A PACT WITH THE DEAD FOR THE PROTECTION OF THEIR CHILDREN." It swiveled it's rifle to point it at a shape in the fog, only lowering it once you all grow closer and it was revealed to be a corpse. "IT HAS BEEN MANY HUNDREDS OF YEARS SINCE WE WERE NEEDED, BUT THE DEAD ALWAYS HOLD THEIR WORD."

"But you're a..." Words fail you, and you end up just gesturing at it's teal fatigues and uniform.

"IT IS THE DUTY OF ALL THAT HAVE PERISHED ON THE BATTLEFIELD TO ANSWER THE SUMMONS." It's head snapped up, looking at a distant point in the fog. "PLEASE GET DOWN, ONE OF THE UNWORTHY IS PRESENT."

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>>3736187
"Unworthy?" Your look around for a space you can hide Elan and his chair in, trying to pick out the fine details... Elan bumps your hand, and points you to a suitable piece of debris. "...thanks."

"Deny it all you want, but I am more worthy than anyone else here!" A voice called back from the distance. It reminded you a lot of the first voice, being weak and somewhat underdeveloped- a young voice, but brimming with a confidence you hadn't heard before. You can see his vague shape moving about in the fog. "For I am the only one standing who has-"

The single gunshot rang out, and his words cut off with a pained choke. You saw the soldier move from his standing position, fluidly sliding over the obstacles and falling upon the collapsing figure. "IF YOU ARE VALKAN, THEN SHOW ME. TRANSFORM YOUR BODY, UNLEASH THE POWERS OF DECAY AND RENEWAL. CAST ME DOWN LIKE A SHADE THAT HAS DISPLEASED YOU." It raised it's rifle above it's head, bayonet gleaming in the haze and brought it down once, then three times more, until he stopped moving. "YOU ARE NO VALKAN. YOU ARE NOTHING MORE THAN BROKEN FLESH PARTS." It got to it's feet once again. "COME."

Fatigue was beginning to set in, your feet increasingly refusing to move when you stand. Your mind is racing, but your body feels numb and tired, your vision struggling to stay. Decay and renewal? Shades? Ancient pacts? Pushing again, and trying to ignore the body, you follow the soldier further. The dust was beginning to clear, voices and sirens echoing back to you.

It stops you, just at the perimeter of the devastation. Pointing a finger down one of the mall's corridors, it says: "LOCAL MEDICAL EVACUATION IS BEGINNING AT THE END OF THIS HALL. IT IS SAFE THE REST OF THE WAY."

"It is?"

"YES." It studies you for a long moment. "YOU BEING SEEN WITH ME CARRIES RISK TO YOUR PERSONAL SAFETY. I MUST LEAVE YOU NOW."

"I... okay?" The words barely make it out of your lips before the soldier turns around and begins walking back the way you came. "I, um... thank you?" You call after it.

The head doesn't turn, but the speakers boom loud enough to carry back to you before it's figure is swallowed by the gloom. "MAY YOU NEVER NEED US AGAIN." You stare after it for a long moment, still struggling to process what exactly happened.

"Tiiris?" Elan grunts. "Not to rush you, but I'm staring to feel the bad pain."

"Shit..." You mutter to yourself, hurriedly pushing his chair forward. The dust and grime of the ruined mall suddenly gives way to pristine tiles, unmarked by dust. Sirens ring in the distance, but as trails of blood end and smoke dissipates into nothing, you can almost pretend that nothing happened. Pushing down the hall, you can indeed see the evacuation the soldier meant.

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>>3736192
A police line stretches across the end of the mall, soldiers in armor- new armor, with hidden joints and bright paint, not hidden by camouflage or inhabited by dead bodies lined up. As you approach, one of them shouts at you and gestures towards them. They pull you behind the line and you're immediately accosted by medics and crowds of vehicles clogging up the pavilion. Armored cars, white helicopters emblazoned with the repeating red chevrons of emergency services and swarms of personnel.

Elan is spirited away from you by medics badgering him with questions, while a single one gently looks you over and asks if it hurts anywhere. You have to stammer out the details of your condition and explain that you can barely see at the moment, while the medic elects to do a more thorough examination. More survivors are pouring in, now, and you find yourself moved to tents in the back, sipping hot chocolate from a disposable cup in a tent and half-heartedly chewing on a bar of nuts.

The sudden shock back to mundanity is almost maddening, your life having been interrupted by the fantastic and horrible for a brief instant before snapping back to almost normal. You barely realize that your father is there until you realize that you're stumbling back to the car with him, as you've been cleared with no major injuries. Slumping in the seat, he quickly drives you back home in silence, unsure of what to say to you.

It's still light out when you get home, too. Barely after lunch. All of that only happened in the span of a few hours. Stumbling into your room, you hear Dad softly say that he'll be there if you need anything, before closing the door. All you really want to do at the moment, though, is...

>Sleep. The exhaustion is too much.
>Shower. Cleaning off all the gunk that's on you will help you feel more human.
>Just pause and... think. Too many questions are going through your head right now.
>Turn off your brain and watch TV or something.
>[Write-In]

>>3736194
>Shower. Cleaning off all the gunk that's on you will help you feel more human.
Use the shower to pinch, touch and check your part of our body. Why is that thing protecting you? Are you..... a Valkan?

>>3736194
>Shower. Cleaning off all the gunk that's on you will help you feel more human.

>>3736211
+1

>Shower. Cleaning off all the gunk that's on you will help you feel more human
Commencing existential crisis in 3...

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With a groan, you manage to force yourself upright and stumble into the bathroom. Your clothes come off, and you force yourself under the water before it even has a chance to warm up, splashing yourself with the chilly water in the hopes that it'll bring you back to reality. Dust is caked all over your body, stuck in your hair and in the crevices of your ears and fingernails.

Liberally applying some of the soap from your bulk bin, you manage to slowly clean out your hair and face, before working down. The water running down the drain turns dark with all the grime coming off you, more than you thought possible. Each part of your body you carefully inspect and prod for potential wounds, bumps and... well, anything. A needle prick, or a big bruise on your head, or anything that might explain what you just saw. Your skin feels raw and weirdly rubbery by the time you're finished, but you're clean again.

Wrapping yourself in a towel, you wipe off part of the mirror as the steam fills the bathroom. Putting your glasses on, you stare into the mirror and slowly think over everything that happened. The most pertinent question came immediately to mind. Was any of that real? You've long since learned to not trust your eyes one hundred percent, but Elan said he saw the skeleton was well... was Elan not real, then? You know your eye thing is related to your brain. Could it be spreading? That thought sends a chill down your spine. No, you would know if you were breaking down that badly. You think.

But... presuming it was real, what was it? It was an undead soldier, but how? Was it just a dead body inside some kind of hacked exoskeleton? It wasn't flopping around inside the shell, though. And what was with that light? How could you see it before it approached you? That gave an unnerving amount of credence to the 'my brain is failing' theory. After all, you don't need logic if everything is just a hallucination.

And even ignoring all of that, it still brought you to the question of Why. Why would this thing help you, of all people? Maybe it wasn't helping you, but Elan? No, it spoke directly to you the entire time, it basically ignored Elan except to note that he was hurt. So what was special about you...?

The thoughts began to come faster and faster. You barely realize it, but you're gripping the counter hard as your stare at your reflection.

It talked about a pact. A pact with who? Your 'ancestors', right. Going back far enough, though, wouldn't your ancestors cover most of Tagara? It said 'hundreds of years' since they were last called, so it can't have been within the last one thousand years. That was way after recorded history, someone would have noted the fucking undead running around! So it was someone else...

Wait...

It called the death cultists the 'Unworthy'. The way it said it implied a capital U, like it was a title. Unworthy of what, though? The title of Valka-

No. No, no, no.

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>>3737109
You can't stop the revelation from coming, though. It spoke specifically of Valkans like it knew them. Powers of decay and renewal. Shades. Whatever those mean, you have no idea. Your body trembles slightly as the possibility races through you. Are you a Valkan? What even is a Valkan? Nobody ever figured out what Valkans were, as far as you can tell. Does that make you half-alien? Was that even biologically possible, or are you some kind of horrible changeling that will turn on everyone you know and love at the worst possible time-

You squeeze your eyes shut and shake your head vigorously. Don't consider the possibility. You're you. Nothing can take that from you, not even your broken brain. A knock on the door is what breaks you out of your trapped train of thought.

"Are you doing okay in there?" Dad calls softly.

"Yeah." You say through the door, before hastily adding. "Just drying off."

"Okay..." He trails off, and you hear his footsteps returning to his room. Knowing him, he was going to surprise you with your favorite dinner in the next few nights, probably already had the stuff for it, too, but he knew not to push it.

Cracking the door open, you return to your room and shrug on a pair of pajamas, falling back onto your bed. The afternoon sun shines through your window, but right now all you can think about is sleep. Just sleep. Closing your eyes, you finally surrender to the exhaustion that's been building in your bones for hours, kept back only by the paranoid running of your brain.

It's dark out when you finally open your eyes again. A slight orange glow shines through your window, and you find yourself briefly confused as to whether it's late or early. Quickly glancing to your phone, still dropped on your bed along with your bad, you see that it's early Sunday morning. Sitting up with a groan, you realize that a good night's sleep has not done well for your aches. Everything feels slightly stiff, and reluctant to move.

Opening the door to your room, you wait and listen, but hear nothing from Dad's room except light snoring. Sitting down for a bowl of cereal, you find yourself unsure of what to do. You don't need to worry about doing your weekend assignment anymore, you're sure of that. Getting caught up in a bombing was the ultimate get-out-of-jail-free card. Hell, you probably wouldn't need to go to school tomorrow, either.

Nevertheless, you find yourself getting... restless. What were you supposed to do now anyway? Sit and wait, huddled up under your covers? You could call Elan, but... no, he'd be busy getting his bones all fixed up. Maybe you could just go on a walk, or head somewhere familiar, but...

>Stay home. You don't want to go out just yet.
>>[Sub-Option] Try and search for stuff on Valkans online.
>>[Sub-Option] Do your homework anyway. Just to take your mind off everything.
>Go out, even if it's just to prove you can. You'll go on a walk or something.
>[Write-In]

>[Write-In]
Check in with Elan. Would be a good distraction. If he's going to be a recurring character, I need to keep a tally of how many bones he breaks.

>>3737123
>>Stay home. You don't want to go out just yet.
>>>[Sub-Option] Do your homework anyway. Just to take your mind off everything.

>>3737146
+1
The homework was about a current event, right? Well, we have our event.

>>3737136
>>3737146
Supporting these.

>>3737136
>You could call Elan, but... no, he'd be busy getting his bones all fixed up.
Don't think he'll answer.

>>3737123
Valkan research. Let's strike while the iron's hot, see what we can learn about our skeleton friend.

>Stay home. You don't want to go out just yet.
>>Do your homework anyway. Just to take your mind off everything.
>>Try and get in touch with Elan.
>>Do a little Valkan research afterwards.
Writing.

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Going back to your room, you get out your terminal and... your mind draws a blank for anything fulfilling to do, so almost as if you're on autopilot, you crack open a word processor and begin typing. Name, date, class period. What was the prompt? Write something about the news, right.

...a quick search later, and you have an article about the bombing. Embed, and you begin typing a summary while reading it. Surprisingly, they don't seem to know much more than you do. Apparently about twelve people were killed, and a hundred more injured, so you note that down. They only say that it was 'probably' death cultists- feeling a little cheeky, you note in your summary that it was definitely death cultists.

Interestingly enough, though, there's no mention of all the death cultists the undead soldiers killed. No mention of even how the death cultists died, just that Civil Security had "responded to the situation". Not even the regular Planetary Guard. Interesting. Were there survivors, then? A few different articles that didn't take the direct quote say that they were all killed by the police or each other.

Reading about it through the news lets you put a degree of separation between yourself and the events, though. When you finish, you definitely feel a bit more settled than you were before. At least you aren't dead. Or undead, even.

Glancing towards your phone, you frown slightly. Normally, you had to endure a string of messages from Elan that eclipsed everything else that normally appeared on your phone, but it had been silent today. He was probably in the hospital getting all of his broken bones set and stapled, although...

You pick up your phone and send him a quick message asking if he's alright, hopefully he'll be-

>E: hey
>E: im ok

Oh. That was quick.

>T: I was just worried, since I hadn't heard from you.
>E: hurts, but ill be ok
>E: just time
>T: ...why are you typing like that?
>E: arms in casts
>E: typign with nose
>T: ...Ah.
>T: Well, I'm glad you're not dying.
>T: Let me know if you need anything, okay?
>E: i do actually
>E: critical importance
>T: What is it?
>E: fill in for me on raid night
>E: my rep hangs in the balance
>T: Oh, fuck off.
>E: hhhhhhahahha

Like you could even afford to rent VR equipment, much less learn to play in... what, a day? You talk back and forth with Elan for a little bit longer, talking some basic pleasantries and judiciously avoiding any mention of the mall or what transpired there. As your conversation peters off, you turn back to your terminal and stare at the empty search bar.

>'Valkans'

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>>3739068
Dozens of webpages popped up. The top of the results was prominently taken up by the national wiki's entry on the subject. Only verified government sources, an edit war in the talk page and virtually no photos. Nothing on Valkan biology or even what they look like aside from one or two bodies recovered. The information was classified, though, so there was only the official government statement.

You try the leak sites next. Those have photos, dozens of them in the same grainy, zoomed-in phone quality. Most of the ones of ships or suspected Valkans crawling out of ship wreckages are either so blurry they were discarded or revealed to be odd bushes or pieces of debris. This isn't doing you any good.

>'Valkan skeleton'

More fakes or 'leaks' posted by too-eager people with blurry cellphone photos. Someone had assembled what they claimed was an entire Valkan skeleton they'd 'found' in the woods behind their house. It was easily ten meters long and had six human arms.

>'Valkan unworthy'
>'Valkan undead'
>'Valkan soldiers'

That gets you some legitimate images. Old warning posters- propaganda, really. Valkan drones, descriptions of their combat troops with large 'STAY AWAY' captions and 'KNOW THE SIGNS' labels. None of them were really humanoid, though. Large walkers that perched on two feet like birds, or smaller, humanoid robots the size of a car. There was even the 'super-fighter', which was a bizarre mass of shifting metal that nobody had yet to understand, despite the few units they'd salvaged. Nothing that was anything beyond purely mechanical, though.

Hm...

>'Valkan decay and renewal'
>'Valkan powers of decay and renewal'
>'Valkan powers of decay'
>'Valkan powers of renewal'

Nothing more than people waxing poetical about rebuilding after the war. A few news articles that used the word here and there, one about the slums that had taken over Kana...

>'powers of decay and renewal'

More of the same. The word seemed like it had some sort of meaning, though. The way the soldier used it indicated it was something more specific than bad translation. Then again, it did had an odd way of speaking.

>"powers of decay and renewal"

Only one result. That's odd. A blogpost, more than ten years old. The original domain - 'sparesparksontherail.com' - had long since expired and put up for sale again, but an automatic archiving site had saved a copy. Most of the links to other posts and the parent site had broken with the archiving, but the body text and the images embedded in the post itself were still valid.

The body itself was... it appeared to be a story of some kind. Or maybe a poem? It didn't really rhyme, but you remember something in class about poems not actually needing to rhyme. Specifically, the line that mentions it is...

>>3739074
And the noble serpent bowed it's head and the machine voice issued from it's maw. "Do as the serpent does and cling to life. Consume yourself and harness the powers of decay and renewal. Become the half of the greater whole." It raised itself up and gored itself upon their bayonets and bled the machine ichor upon them. "This is my worship. Ayat."

...huh. That was... helpful. The image that topped the page was of rows of human figures bowing to a massive winged snake. It's head was surrounded by a halo of some kind, and the style reminds you of old stained glass windows. It also seems very familiar, for some reason. You're not sure where...

>This obviously isn't relevant. Keep looking for other leads.
>Try to check the information on the expired domain. Maybe you can reach whoever ran this site?
>Give up for today.
>[Write-In]

>>3739076
>Try to check the information on the expired domain. Maybe you can reach whoever ran this site?

>>3739076
>This obviously isn't relevant. Keep looking for other leads.
By

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>>3739076
>This obviously isn't relevant. Keep looking for other leads.

>>3739076
>>This obviously isn't relevant. Keep looking for other leads.

>This obviously isn't relevant. Keep looking for other leads.
Writing.

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You click off of the webpage. That wasn't very helpful. Your fingers hover over the keyboard as you consider the search bar. What haven't you tried yet? You think everything that the soldier mentioned you tried...

>'Valkan death cultists'

You get a few of their manifestos and forums popping up. Now that you think about it, you're probably on some kind of watchlist for searching this stuff, but, nothing ventured...

The manifestos aren't particularly coherent. As you read more and more of them, you realize that not only do they seem to know no more about the Valkans than you do, they clearly have no communication with each other. Several of them outright contradict each other, denouncing one thing another praises or even directly saying another group is made up of heretics.

>'Valkan infiltrators'

More results for that than you expected, although it's not a surprise it occurred to more people than you. The top links are actually to government websites, more 'SEE THE DIFFERENCE' posters. The profile of Valkan, disc-shaped drones and roving 'scorpion' drones versus government quadrotors and planes. Afterwards, the results become pages and pages of conspiracy theories, mad guessing and claims that top government agents were genetically-engineered infiltrators.

All of that was... probably a big, fat lie. Although there might be a kernel of truth to anything you read here. Maybe it's worth delving into a little further?

>Keep going down this rabbit hole of paranoia.
>Try searching for something else. (Can write-in specific prompts or methods)
>>[Sub-Option] Just... assuming that you're Valkan. Does that mean you're adopted or...?
>Bah, this isn't getting you anywhere. Give up.
>[Write-In]

>>3741021
>Bah, this isn't getting you anywhere. Give up
>Go back to looking through the journal we found

>>3741021
>Bah, this isn't getting you anywhere. Give up.

>>3741021
>Bah, this isn't getting you anywhere. Give up

>>3741021
>>Bah, this isn't getting you anywhere. Give up
>>Go back to looking through the journal we found

>Bah, this isn't getting you anywhere. Give up
Writing, I see two votes for >Go back to looking through the journal we found, so we'll be doing that as well unless there are any strong objections.

Also servers are dying on my end, so there may be a slight delay in the update going up.

Pushing your desk chair back from your desk, you sigh. None of this is really relevant to your interests, only... tangentially related. Anything that's really relevant is either classified or unavailable. It's not like you can just reach out and pluck the answer out of thin air, though. How would you get at information that's normally censored back in the day? Books? Well, too bad there aren't any books written on Valkans that you know of. They were too far after- wait.

You reach into your bag and widthraw the book you'd found at Sana's. Was this somehow related- no, that was a stupid question. It had to be related. You'd practically been guided to it by one of those orb things. The soldier - really, you needed a better name for it - had appeared to you as an orb before it became the skeleton. Was that an undead thing? Did Elan see it that way, too?

Opening it again, you flip through it, hoping for some kind of evidence, some kind of direct passage that would explain it's contents. But... no such luck. It's just cover to cover drawings, impressive as they may be. You flip through them, looking for some kind of keyword, something that will stand out to you. There are the few images you looked at before. "Air", "Faith", "Kitchen", "Street", "Docks", no more containing a hidden message than you noticed before. There were dozens more drawings beisdes- "Knife", "Abyss", "Nursery", "Store", "Pet", "Dinner", "Engines"- you could go on, but there are so many.

>Review an image you looked at before, maybe getting another look will give you another idea. (Write-In specific image)
>Look at one of the new images you came across more closely. (Write-In image name)
>Look for a specific word that you haven't found yet. (Write-In the word or topic)
>Do something else.
>[Write-In]

>>3741782
>Look for a specific word that you haven't found yet. (Write-In the word or topic)
Ayat. Serpent.

>>3741782
I'm too dumb for this so I'll let other anons have a go.

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>>3741801
If you're unsure, I'd recommend reading back through previous posts to refresh yourself on what you've seen in the book before. Offer suggestions or remind people of details you think are important. If you don't feel confident enough to vote, that's fine, but everyone is capable of helping out.

>>3741782
>>Look at one of the new images you came across more closely. (Write-In image name)
Figures worshiping a winged snake with a halo? Let's try looking at Faith.

>>3741782
>Look for a specific word that you haven't found yet. (Write-In the word or topic)
Topics related to Mr. Wraithguard from earlier, since he's our best solid lead. Keywords like "protection", "bargain/deal/contract", "ancients" and so on.

>Look for a specific word that you haven't found yet. (Write-In the word or topic)
>>Ayat. Serpent. Protection. Bargain. Pact. Ancients. Anything related to the undead soldier.
>Look at one of the new images you came across more closely.
>>See if there's one with a snake in it.
>Review an image you looked at before, maybe getting another look will give you another idea.
>>Faith.
Alright, I think that's the plan. Writing.

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Quicker to study the titles of each entry than to absorb the entire thing at once. You start flipping through the book, your eyes only on the lower corner of each page where the title would be. At first, you start looking for a smattering of different things, but slowly narrow it down each time you come to the end of the journal and find nothing.

You find an entry labeled "Great Serpent" in the middle. Funny, because the blog was probably bullshit. Then again, it's not like snakes were something that was confined purely to the realm of myths. It was another highly detailed sketch. It depicted... some sort of computer bank, you think? Many rows of boxy machines and monitors. One of them had a symbol on it. A hexagon, broken at one end, and with a circle on one half. Weird...

Another is labeled "Guardians". It was a row of figures in armor, each of them cradling a rifle in their arms, a sword sheathed at their sides. The armor was kind of decorative looking, with prominent fins projecting from the helmet and bright, visible patterns sketched on the shoulder guards. The armor covered it's whole body in hard metal, though, and covered the face. There was no way to really tell if they were undead or just people in fancy armor.

A thought occurs to you. Looking up from the book, you see the archived blogpost, still open on your terminal. That art style seems familiar. Flipping through more pages, you find a page you'd looked at before. The article titled "Faith". A depiction of two humans creating some kind of... orb, or... something. What would you build? A tool? A machine? Whatever they were making, it had a halo in the second scene, then afterwards, one of the humans had a halo, too.

Holding it up to the monitor, your eyes widen at the similarities between the two. Both used the same sort of blocky, primitive art style. And the halos they used were exactly the same. Highly detailed, with repeated, short lines radiating out from the head of the wearer. It was the same. And if they were the same... then they were probably of the same origins... and if an orb was the one to guide you to this journal, then...

>Quality upgraded: 'Book of Drawings' has become 'Valkan Sketchbook'

One of your Qualities has just been upgraded. Occasionally, your actions will cause one of your Qualities to transform into another. This can be because of an exchange, an addition or the Quality becoming more potent.

So if this book was legit, then the blog was probably legit, too. That meant...

Hm...

What should you do?

>Go back to the webpage, see if you can find out who ran it.
>The journal is kind of useless without clarifying text, but look through it for another specific image. (Write-In)
>>What do Valkans look like?
>Try and find other related blogs. Maybe there was more than one?
>Immediately run outside and back to Sana's bookshop, or somewhere. Try and hunt down those orbs.

>>3744008
>Immediately run outside and back to Sana's bookshop, or somewhere. Try and hunt down those orbs.

>>3744008
>Immediately run outside and back to Sana's bookshop, or somewhere. Try and hunt down those orbs.

>>3744008
>Immediately run outside and back to Sana's bookshop, or somewhere. Try and hunt down those orbs.

Also save the website for offline viewing later

>Immediately run outside and back to Sana's bookshop, or somewhere. Try and hunt down those orbs.
ORB. Writing.

>>3745339
Check, one two. Do I still have my ID or do I need to get a trip now...

Pausing for a brief moment to save the webpage to your terminal, making sure that the image or the text didn't break in the process, you immediately start to get dressed. Pulling on your day clothes and a jacket, you take only a moment to scribble down a note for Dad before grabbing your bag and rushing out the door. He might be a little worried considering you were literally in a bombing yesterday, but in the moment it doesn't even occur to you.

Catching the elevator up, you half-jog all the way to the commercial district. The towering apartments that were built into and surrounded each of the city's supports slowly gave way to smaller buildings, then individual houses and stores, forming the throughways of the second story between them.

Each of the thoroughways was lined by many short, purpose-built buildings, most of them stores like Sana's. Specialty stores selling niche or unique goods. Car dealers, mechanics, drone and electronic stores.

Wandering up the block, you come across Sana's and stare into the windows. The lights inside were on, but you couldn't see Sana out front. Business was generally slow on Sundays, so she's probably in the back.

That's not why you were here, though. This was where you got the journal, so most likely you'd find out more here. Just looking around, you didn't see any more of the orbs. Would they hide if you went looking for them? Would they only return to Sana's or... well, if you were in danger?

>Hang around Sana's for the time being. Maybe one of them will come back?
>You seem to be able to 'sense' them through walls. Try wandering around town to see if you find any.
>Do something stupid to try and get their attention.

>>3746199
>You seem to be able to 'sense' them through walls. Try wandering around town to see if you find any.

>>3746423
+1
Try closing our eyes?

>You seem to be able to 'sense' them through walls. Try wandering around town to see if you find any.
Writing. God it feels weird to have a trip.

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You always seemed to be able to see them, before. No matter if you were blind, or had your eyes closed... or what. Taking a moment to duck inside an alley, you close your eyes and wait for the after-images of the city to fade. Almost as soon as you do, you start to notice them.

Small pinpricks of blue light danced in the darkness. If you hadn't been looking specifically for them, you would have missed them. They were small and faint enough that you mind have mistaken them for simple sunspots, but they were locked in place, moving too deliberately to be mere figments.

Taking a moment to focus in one, you open your eyes to find yourself staring in the direction of the park. It's the weekend, and while normally it would be gorged with visitors or people looking to pay their respects, the fact that a bombing was all over the news would probably scare people away.

Clearing your vision and focusing in on one again, you open your eyes to find yourself staring deeper into the commercial district. You can't tell which store, but there are actually two- maybe three clustered together? They're actually not moving at all, compared to the others which are... well, not lively, but definitely active and moving.

Another is around one of the elevators, in the residential blocks that surround each strut and their elevators. Looks like it's either in the apartment building or the strut itself. While that's still a public area, it's snooping around people's homes, and that's probably going to attract more notice.

Looking up, you finally see a dense cluster of them, repeatedly swarming and moving all over a small spot on the third floor. Considering the ugly red color they're all glowing, and what happened yesterday... yeah, that's probably the mall, or somewhere nearby. Of course they'd be gathering there, but there's no way you could escape notice coming back to poke around.

Whichever one you pick, there's a chance someone's going to notice you poking around and start asking questions. But, then again, you're just shopping, so unless one of them fucking explodes, you should be fine, anyway. You're probably the only person on the planet who cares about this stuff.

>Check out the park. It's totally normal to just go wandering off there, and there are some secluded spots.
>Try to find the ones in the commercial district. Wonder why they're not moving at all?
>Go into the residential blocks. It's the middle of the day, so people are probably going to be at home.

>>3746867
>Check out the park. It's totally normal to just go wandering off there, and there are some secluded spots.

>>3746867
>Try to find the ones in the commercial district. Wonder why they're not moving at all?

>>3746867
>Check out the park. It's totally normal to just go wandering off there, and there are some secluded spots.

>>3746867
>Try to find the ones in the commercial district. Wonder why they're not moving at all?
If anyone asks, we lost our FUTURE!phone around there and tracked it down to the area.

Rolled 1 (1d2)

That's a tie between
>Check out the park. It's totally normal to just go wandering off there, and there are some secluded spots.
and
>Try to find the ones in the commercial district. Wonder why they're not moving at all?
Probably not going to get a tiebreaker anytime soon, so we'll be flipping a coin here. 1 for park, 2 for space walmart.

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The park would be the easiest place to start. Closing your eyes, poking around and then stopping randomly would probably be suspicious as all hell in the middle of a store- don't want to get accused of shoplifting after all.

Heading away from the throughway, you get onto one of the riseways and begin navigating the pedestrian traffic to get to the park. There were far less people out today, probably owing to the news, but the riseway was still crowded and difficult to navigate.

While you're walking, your phone buzzes with a message from your father asking if you're doing okay. Tapping out a response while descending the ramp back to the street level, you tell him that you're okay and just wanted to get out for a bit.

Entering the park itself, you note with surprise that it's not nearly as empty as you thought it would be. In fact, it's probably even more packed than usual. People weren't jostling for space on the circles of green, or taking their kids out for a picnic or the normal things that would crowd the park. Most of them were on the paths, looking at the flowers planted along the sides or clearly hunting for a specific plaque. Guess tragedies draw out the people looking to pay respects.

Stepping off the crowded path, you make your way to the circles of green surrounding each tree; and the shade they provide from the combined glare of the grow lights and the afternoon sunlight creeping in from the edge of the city. Shading your eyes slightly, you focus and close your eyes again. The afterimages dance across your vision, slightly worse than before with the glare of the sun as you look for the orbs again.

You spy it almost immediately, it's significantly closer than any of the other ones, and when you open your eyes, you're looking at the foliage of one of the trees. Carefully picking your way over to the specific hill it's on, dodging the crowds on the path and multiple people who've spilled over onto the grass, you make your way to the tree.

Like every other tree in the park, it was obviously taken care of on a regular basis, the branches nicked through with clear, white circles where they had been pruned. Rods and wires were bent around the limbs to ensure they didn't tangle as they grew.

Looking up into the branches, though, you can see that at the very top, there was an orb, clear as day. It very slowly moved between the branches, the glow cutting out and shining as it was obscured by the leaves. Try as you might, you can't seem to focus to see it's true 'form' like you had with the soldier.

Too high up for you to just reach up and grab it, and there are all these people watching. What should you do?

>Climb the tree. Go up to it.
>Try to call it down to you.
>Shake it out of the tree somehow.

>>3748783
>Shake it out of the tree somehow.

>>3748783
>Shake it out of the tree somehow

>>3748783
>Try to call it down to you.

>Shake it out of the tree somehow
Here, kitty-kitty-kitty...

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Hopping slightly to try and reach the lowest branch, stretching your arms up above your head, you managed to catch one of the lowest branches. Realizing you don't have the strength of experience climbing trees to simply hoist yourself up, you resort to swinging your legs back and forth, making the entire tree start to sway back and forth. You see the object start to jostle slightly under the unexpected force, sliding back and forth on the branch it's on. Just a little bit more-

"Hey!"

You immediately stop swinging, and turn your head in the direction of the voice. A disapproving mother, trailed by her two preschool kids and a father who was busy connecting his face with his hand as his wife shouted. "Um..."

"Don't climb the trees, you'll break them!" She scolds from across the hill, getting the attention of virtually every visitor who was content to let you swing. "Get down from there right now!"

You drop down, more of an automatic response than anything else. Raising your hands, rapidly trying to explain yourself as the woman looks like she's ready to march over and slap you, you stammer. "I- well, I was just trying to get-" At that moment, you here a solid, metallic thump as something falls to the ground, passing just to the left of you and rolling slightly on the grass.

Glancing down, you see a small metal device, a bit bigger than your closed fist curled up on the grass. It's body was a dull, matte grey that didn't reflect light, highlighted with stripes of black and cream. There was a main, roughly cylindrical body, with four stubby mechanical legs sprouting from the bottom. Each was currently curled up to the body, like a dead insect. The entire thing shuddered with a faint energy that surrounded it like an aura, one that was blue in coloration.

Looking back up at the angry woman, then down at the weird robot and up again, you sputter one last excuse before snatching the thing up and running. Ignoring the stares you get as you race away, prize clutched firmly to your chest, you escape that section of the park entirely, only coming to a stop at the edge where the buildings begin again.

Holding the thing out from your chest, you look at it more closely. It was surprisingly heavy, with the metal having a soft, pebbled texture to it. Instead of feeling like smooth metal or even the grippy polymer of a shoe sole, it feels more like many small panels, or the scales of a reptile. There's not much you can tell about it, other than the fact that it's definitely like the soldier... that is, Valkan.

It seems generally unresponsive, although you can see it's legs faintly moving back and forth. It was moving in the tree before. Did it run out of power? There isn't a charging port of any kind on it that you can see, but it might just be hidden? Interesting that it turned out to be a robot, though. Does that mean the skeleton was some kind of elaborate robot, too? A hack of the exoskeleton? Just weird, all around.

>>3749899
At the very least, it does confirm that these orbs you're seeing are in fact tied to real things, although it makes you wonder what the connection between them all is. They're probably Valkan, all things considered, but what about them made them appear to you like this? Was it just a Valkan 'trait'? Great superpower, tech echolocation. Never lose your car keys again.

Glancing about, you slip the strange robot into your bag. Probably for the best not to mess around with it too much in public.

>Quality gained: 'Four-legged Valkan robot'

Your phone says that it's only three o'clock. Plenty of time for you to do something else, or you could call it quits early and head back home for some privacy.

>Head back home and pick apart your prize.
>Keep hunting down orbs - Valkan 'signals', rather.
>Stay out, but do something other than search, instead.

>>3749901
>Head back home and pick apart your prize.
Let's not get ahead of ourselves, and take things one at a time. Get the screwdriver/hammer/buzzsaw (delete as applicable) and dismantle this one.

>>3749901
>Head back home and pick apart your prize.

>>3749901
>Head back home and pick apart your prize.
Time to examine

>>3749901
>Keep hunting down orbs - Valkan 'signals', rather.

>Head back home and pick apart your prize.
Electronics surgery time baby.

You decide to skedaddle. There are other Valkan things out, but you only have one so far and that's already more than you know how to deal with. With a final check that no mother or cop is marching towards you for climbing a tree or whatever, you get back onto the riseway and head back home. The entire trip, you're haunted by a faint paranoia that someone's going to leap out from behind a streetlamp or something and arrest you for being a Valkan. Or a Valkan machine. Either is likely at this point.

Dad is up when you walk in the door. He looks up in surprise from the kitchen table when you walk into the room, and lowers the screen of his terminal. "Enjoy your walk?"

"Yeah." You kick off your shoes in the hall. "Just needed to get out of the house for a bit."

"Tiiris." Dad's tone makes you stop. "If you weren't doing okay, you'd talk to someone, right?"

He really could not have picked a worse time to ask that question. Your mind was pretty much entirely taken up by the illicit piece of probably-Valkan machinery in your bag, which was probably super-illegal to own. That also immediately calls to mind how much he knows about your... possible nature. Was he in on it? Was Mom? The idea of either of your parents being alien invaders was laughable, unless Dad's original was killed and replac- okay, stamping out that train of thought right now.

You force a serious expression and nod. "Of course I would, Dad."

"That's good." Dad pauses and thinks for a second, then shrugs and pushes his terminal back out again. "I got in touch with the school, you're excused for as long as you think you need."

"I might go back tomorrow." You muse. "Already got all my assignments done..."

Dad gives you an odd look.

"I was really bored, okay?" You protest weakly.

"Don't push yourself." He raises an eyebrow and looks back down at his laptop.

"If I'm ever not okay, you'll be the first one to know, 'kay?" You smile at him and quickly scurry into your room before he can respond.

Now back in blessed privacy, you open your back and quietly withdraw the little robot. Part of you was worried that it would vanish from your bag the second you took your eyes off of it, but here it is, glow and all. Turning it over in your hands, you consider Dad's words. Were you really okay? Yesterday a bomb had exploded in front of your face, several people had died in front of you and the dead had risen, and yet here you were, running out to parks and chasing robots. Was your enthusiasm for this a reaction to the bombing?

All that really comes to you when you consider a bomb exploding in front of you is... mild irritation? You try to recall the bodies in the wreckage, the cultists the soldier had killed in front of you. The twitching bodies, their last shallow breaths, and... nope, nothings coming. No anger, no fear, just irritation mixed with curiosity. None of the traumatic flashbacks and psychological scarring you would have expected.

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>>3751082
That... probably wasn't normal.

Still, though. You sweep your terminal and phone charger to the side of your desk to create some room, and gently set the robot down on it. Fishing around in your drawers, you come up with a few of the tools you keep around. Mostly, a glasses repair kit and a screwdriver for getting at the batteries in things. You know the hammer and some pliers are in the hallway closet, but you're not sure you want Dad to ask any questions about what you're doing in here.

The robot didn't have any readily apparent seems or screws that you could jam your tools into, although it did have several recesses and lips to it's surface. With enough force, you might be able to pry it open. That said, you'll probably wreck the thing in the process... if you get it open at all.

Starting simple, you press a flathead into the seam formed by the top of the lid and try to force it in. If you can just get a small part off, that's your foot in the door for prying it open. The screwdriver unfortunately scraps off the rounded side on your first attempt. Trying for a more flat angle, you try at the squared sides where the legs attach, only to once again scrape off and hit your desk. Finally, you set it flat on your desk and try to lift the top off like a lid, carefully wedging the flathead in and pulling, then eventually using both hands to try and force it in.

One of your hands slips from the handle of the screwdriver and slides down the shaft, smacking into the top of the thing and making you slip, the flathead scraping across your desk and leaving a long score. The immediate irritation is immediately smothered by the small robot suddenly leaping to life in front of you, jumping partially out of your hands to land on it's feet.

You freeze, staring at the robot, which stares right back at you. After a brief staring contest, the robot breaks your gaze and marches over to the long score you just left on your desk. Small arms pop out of the sides - fitting perfectly into the recesses you notice - and extend to trace the score. One arm with a small needle-like head on the end is inserted into the score, filling it with some kind of gel while another planes it flat again. Another pass and it's like the long nick was never even there.

Before you can stop it, the robot turns and begins marching on the other marks you left on your desk, arms popping out and working again.

>Immediately try to turn it off before it can escape.
>See if you can't give it a specific command or if it's fully autonomous. Can it speak?
>Give it more things to fix.
>[Write-In]

>>3751087
>See if you can't give it a specific command or if it's fully autonomous. Can it speak?
If we can't, just watch what it does. I have a hunch that after it has finished its repairs to its designated environment, it'll enter standby.

>>3751124
That is, assuming its list of things to "repair" doesn't include us.

>>3751087
>See if you can't give it a specific command or if it's fully autonomous. Can it speak?

>See if you can't give it a specific command or if it's fully autonomous. Can it speak?
Writing.

"Um... hello?" You manage after a second of staring at the strange robot, starting loud but then lowering your voice when you remember that Dad's in the other room.

The strange robot immediately turns to you expectantly, raising it's torso up towards you on it's front legs, like it's miming looking at you. It can tell that you're speaking to it, then...

"Can you understand me?"

It keeps 'looking' at you, but gives no indication that it understood.

"...can you speak?"

Still nothing. Not even an activity light.

You think for a second, then stand up and grab two things from one of the shelves above your desk. One is a broken analog radio that had been up there since you'd moved. At one point when you were younger, you'd thought you'd grow up to be an electrician to help Dad cut some costs around the house, and it had been a pet project of yours. The problem came when you realized that your vision problems meant you couldn't really see what you were doing, and it'd stayed up there ever since. The other was a broken mechanical watch that Dad said had belonged to your mother. It didn't work anymore, something about the mainspring breaking. Dad liked to talk about maybe getting it fixed, but something like that is way out of your price range.

Setting them both down in front of it, you place your hand over the radio and ask. "Can you fix this?"

The robot doesn't respond for a second, then immediately marches over to the radio and sets about taking it apart. Methodically, it disassembles the wooden casing and begins prying at and testing the metal internals, poking the electronics inside with metal probes. More arms pop out, probing down into the antenna and suddenly spraying a tiny shower of sparks. Apparently that thing put out enough power to run a welding torch.

Eventually, the robot steps back and lodges the radio's casing back into place, clicking it down and stepping back. It stops for a brief moment, returning to a sort of 'neutral' posture you've noticed it assuming before it apparently picks a new target and marches over to the watch.

You spare it a brief glance to make sure it's not doing anything suspicious before returning to the radio. Picking up the plug, you push it into the wall and click the dial. Sure enough, it lights up and a garbled mess starts to spill out of the speakers. These old radios weren't good for much anymore, the airwaves were too finely chopped up for a hand tuner to get the stations perfectly. Playing with the dial a little bit gets you a rock station that's only a little bit corrupted by a neighboring news program.

>>3751902
The robot was just finishing up putting Mom's watch back together, having finished welding the weird coil of metal in the middle back together while you weren't looking. With a quick whirr of one of it's arms, it pressed the entire thing back together and presented it to you. Picking it up, you see that the second hand is in fact ticking. Completely wrong time, but that was to be expected. This little robot was quite useful, it seems. Useful, but basic, and it didn't really answer any of your questions. It didn't seem to be a good conservationist, either, although it understood you speaking Miirian, instead of... whatever Valkans spoke.

You suppose your next question is...

>Maybe this thing can activate some kind of homing function? Point you to where it came from?
>Perhaps this thing can speak, but you're just approaching it the wrong way?
>One little drone isn't going to be the answers to all of your problems, move onto a different topic. A topic like... what you are, and if one of your parents was an alien, WHICH.
>This thing might not be an oracle for all your problems, but it is useful. Take it with you next time you go out looking for orbs.

>>3751903
>Maybe this thing can activate some kind of homing function? Point you to where it came from?
A basic design like this can't speak, probably

>>3751903
>One little drone isn't going to be the answers to all of your problems, move onto a different topic. A topic like... what you are, and if one of your parents was an alien, WHICH.

>>3751903
>Maybe this thing can activate some kind of homing function? Point you to where it came from?
Also close our eyes and see if it has a different signature now

>Maybe this thing can activate some kind of homing function? Point you to where it came from?
Writing.

You can pick up all the useless- well, useful junk you want, but none of it is going to bring you closer to answers. Thinking about what kind of answers you want makes you slightly uneasy, so you turn back to the robot.

Junk... well, it's not exactly junk, it's just... the small stuff. A journal, a little robot, a blog. None of it is exactly providing any revelations. What you need is the big stuff, something that would actually answer your questions, not a little repair drone that couldn't speak. Wait, if it's a drone, wouldn't that mean it was sent by something?

Clearing your throat, you ask the robot. "Were you sent from somewhere?"

No response. Right, can't speak, should have factored that one in.

Rephrasing, you ask. "Can you show me where you came from?"

The robot immediately comes to attention, turning left and right, before angling it's body up. You frown and look up at your ceiling. Nothing but the plaster. Did it mean orbit, then? That would make sense, considering the Valkan ships that were still up there.

"So you- hey!" You begin, before cutting yourself off as the robot suddenly jumps itself from your desk to your window. With a smooth motion, it unlocks your window and slides it up before slipping outside. It launches itself to the opposite apartment building's lower floor, then down to the street. You gape at it dumbly for a second before grabbing your stuff and dashing out the door.

"Hey, honey, what-"

"Notimegottarunbye-" You spill out as you rush out the door barefoot, shoes in hand.

The robot is waiting for you by the alley when you get outside, and as soon as it sees you, it immediately begins scuttling down the street. Hopping slightly as you pull your shoe on, you run after the damn thing. It set an insane pace, rarely waiting for you to see it before moving again. It leads you out of your neighborhood, taking you in the direction of the floor's edge, before leading you down one of the elevator struts.

With that brief moment to breathe, you have a chance to think. Why exactly are you pursuing this? You could have abandoned the search and kept your head down at any time, just forgot that the soldier existed and returned to your normal life. Why are you still chasing after this, though?

>You're probably Valkan. Probably. Well, you don't know, but you need to know for sure.
>>[Sub-Option] If your mother was Valkan... well, this would be a way to grow closer to her.
>Nobody knows anything about the Valkans, this is an opportunity to find out more.
>You've seen things that are impossible- the dead rising, and impossible things. You need to know more.
>Your life was so ordinary before. It's hard to imagine going back.
>[Write-In]

>>3754385
>You're probably Valkan. Probably. Well, you don't know, but you need to know for sure.

>>3754385
>Nobody knows anything about the Valkans, this is an opportunity to find out more.

>>3754385
>Nobody knows anything about the Valkans, this is an opportunity to find out more.
We can't just jump from "I hate the Valkans, they killed my mom" to "My mom was a Valkan and I can learn more about her this way" so easily now, can we

>>3754385
Why one of these? ALL the things!

>Nobody knows anything about the Valkans, this is an opportunity to find out more.
And some mixed feelings besides. Writing.

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The possibility of your... ties constantly lurks in the back of your mind. But they're... half-baked. They don't seem real, and they seem patently absurd when you look at them logically. Always lurking, just like a fantasy or a dream, but never quite real.

What's really driving you- the real call is the unknown. The Valkans are necromancers, they raise the dead. They left behind many strange things. Useful, friendly things, but strange nonetheless. You feel like you're treading in the places that nobody has ever been before. Mysteries that have never been solved.

The elevator hits the ground floor and you immediately dash out. There were no houses here, just roads, industrial facilities and piping. The city's 'mechanical floor', where all the nasty stuff that barely anyone wanted to live near was. In reality, what everyone thought of as the city's bottom floor was the first floor, which was built on the top of this place that people rarely used. After all, people rarely left the city on foot.

You turn a corner, take a moment to locate the robot again and chase after it. The halls were dark, but the floors were clean, brushed daily with mechanical precision by drones in the dead of night between shifts. You hop into a stairwell, following the robot as it drops down the gap in the center, balancing on handrail after handrail. Feet clatter on the stairs as you race down to the bottom, which is bathed in sunlight.

The direct glare of the sun, instead of UV lamps and skylights washes over you as you rush out the bottom of the city. It's too far away to really hear the ocean that Miir partially projects over, but outside the filters of the city and the metal hallways, you can smell the salt. Concrete paths stretch out into the hills and cliffs around you, cutting into the dirt and carving out tunnels in the rock. Afternoon traffic hums by on the roads above you, briefly roaring by before vanishing into the tunnels.

Blinking a bit to clear your vision, you see the robot waiting attentively at a fork in the path. As soon as you start moving, it takes off down the left fork. Then a right fork. Keep straight for a while, then follow the curve. You spare a glance behind you and see Miir looming up behind you, framed by the afternoon light glaring around the city decks. Occasionally the robot slows down or even stops for a long moment, and it isn't until you hear a group of tourists pass down the path from you that you realize the robot is intentionally avoiding crowds.

A sudden right takes you off the paved paths entirely, onto dirt trails or even just straight wilderness. The sun is slowly obscured by the increasing foliage and trees above, the ground becoming more uneven as you move away from the sea. You stumble a few times, and manage to bang your hand on a tree at one point, but manage to keep up as you descend into an odd inlet, framed by hills and with it's bottom formed by the cliffs below it.

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>>3759192
The hills were formed from stone, topped with dirt that ran out as it slipped in-between the two, leaving only rock at the base. Part of the floor was collapsed, apparently haven fallen into the cave below, with the great chunks still visible in the water as you approach the edges, long worn smooth. The curved, organic edges of the small basin were contrasted, though, by the large, deep gashes cut into the floor and walls. They weren't exceptionally deep, but they were punched into solid stone in a way that... whatever had gone it was heavy, large and going fast.

Parts of the cliff had collapsed over time, littering small rocks all over the basin which were mixed in with large, sharp chunks of stone that had been torn out. Walls of stone had peeled away in odd chunks from gashes that weakened their foundations and partially collapsed the cliff over the hole that had been punched in it. Part of the same underground pool that the floor had collapsed into, breached into by something colliding with the cliff face.

"Here?" You look at the robot. It scurries up the pile of rocks, turning to face you at the top, with only a small gap between the top of the debris and the cliff to fit through. "Are you sure I can...?" But it twists and slides through without a second thought. "...thanks."

Steeling yourself, you clamber up the pile of debris, hesitate for a long second, then slip your feet through the hole and allow yourself to fall down. Small rocks ping against your legs as you slip down, making you thankful that you wore pants for this excursion. Your feet land in cold water up to your ankles, soaking through your shoes and socks and making you grimace with the wetness. The only light in the cave is from the gap in the rocks, so you fumble with your phone for a moment to turn on the flashlight before raising it.

Before you lies... a machine, although it reminds you more of a corpse than anything. A wide body tapered into a narrow nose with broad, stubby wings, and a gray colored body. But from the back, it dissolved into a twisting mass of metal. The panels peeled back like the skin from a corpse, giving way to skeletal black metal. Fluids leaked out of punctured tanks and stained it's body in places. What might have been a pair of great engines at one point were mangled, delicate blades crushed and intricate mechanical assemblies shattered.

You have to duck around the wreckage of the wings as you move up towards the front of it. They were wide- too wide for the cave, and the crash had sheared them off at the joints, smashing them against the rock. Putting a hand on one as you carefully move around it, you realize that it's warm to the touch, despite the cold water in the cave.

>>3759194
Stepping onto a small island of stone in the back, you look into-

There was a body in the cockpit. A human one, to be sure. Two legs, two arms, five fingers. It lay on it's side in the cockpit, only prevented from falling out the chair entirely by some kind of harness. A suit hung emptily against the skeleton underneath it. It was colored gray, and was made out of a material that reminded you faintly of silk, catching the light in the dark. Fabric had been draped over it in places, fastened to the suit with small studs and pins. What once had probably been vibrant patterns were now lost, having rotted away from constant water exposure, leaving only the small faded patches.

A helmet partially covered the head, although it had broken open upon crashing, the side caved in and the visor shattered to reveal the skull behind it. It was a perfect image of what the death cultists had been trying to replicate, a smooth metallic visor jutting out over a thin strip of gold. Faded marking covered the helmet and the glass. Aliens scripts and symbols you didn't understand.

Wires covered the body like a mess, running out of the skull and between the sockets like a net until they vanished under the suit. Bulging from the suit in regular intervals were cables that all pulled back into the cockpit seat behind it, some broken or torn out to reveal even more wires and tubes filled with strange fluids that leaked onto the wreckage.

The pilot hadn't simply died upon impact, though. While they had been dragged forward by the movement of time, the body wasn't positioned in the way that someone who died in a crash had. The suit - and whatever technology was inside - had kept the body stiff, allowing it to wrap firmly around the small canister in it's arms. It was... oddly infantile, in a way, to see that it was cradling something like a security blanket before it died.

You really have no idea what the canister is, either. It was maybe as big as your hand, the size of a can of soda, maybe. Green glass and gray metal fused together, but nothing more unless you want to take a closer look.

>[Write-In]
>Poke around some more. You came this far.
>>[Sub-Option] Examine the body closer.
>>[Sub-Option] Take the canister out of it's arms.
>>[Sub-Option] See if there's anything of interest in the cockpit.
>>[Sub-Option] Check around the main body itself. Identifying marks?
>This place is fucking haunted. Get the hell out of here.

>>3759195
>Poke around some more. You came this far.
Page 9 btw.

>>3759195
>Poke around some more. You came this far.

>>3759195
>This place is fucking haunted. Get the hell out of here.
Come back with some friends

Oh sweet jesus I have no idea how to archive things. I think I did this right?

http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/qstarchive/3722252/

>>3759195
>Poke around some more. You came this far.
>>[Sub-Option] Examine the body closer.

>>3759910
Yep, you did it right. It's archived fine.

>>3759195
>Poke around some more. You came this far.
>>[Sub-Option] Examine the body closer.
Well, I'm pretty sure it's Valkan tech due to the way it looks like what the death cultists were trying to imitate and how the robot led us here. Maybe it's like the undead soldier. Try talking to it.
>"Hello?"

>Poke around some more. You came this far.
>>[Sub-Option] Examine the body closer.
>>Say hi to the friendly dead body.
Writing. If this falls off before the update, we'll open the new thread with it.

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Taking a cautious step closer to the cockpit, you peer at the helmet and the skull behind it. "Hello?" You feel silly as soon as you say it, the skeleton remaining immobile and lifeless. If only it had come back to life like the other one...

Warmth emanates from the suit, just like the remains of the craft. Peering closer, you notice that there is still a tangle of wires within the skull, as well. One cluster in each eye, then back into the skull where a wet mess of cabling, computer parts and ports remains. Cybernetics that had remained intact even as the body beneath rotted away. Angling your head oddly to see down the helmet, you can see more cybernetics and silvery sinew tracing the neck before it's swallowed up by the suit.

Something down there is glowing, but... no, it's no good. You can't seem to get a good angle on it. Somehow you'd need to dismantle the suit, or at least take off the helmet to see what it is. A cursory glance over the suit draws you attention to the top and bottom of it. Specifically, the noticeable extra slack at the chest and hips relative to the waist. A woman, then.

You wonder how long it's been down here. Bodies take... well, actually how long does it take for them to rot into bones like this? Hundred years? No, fifty? It can't be something as low as twenty. Although, she's probably not all the way rotted yet, just in chunks... which is a... pleasant thought.

Shining your phone light into the corner of the cave, you carefully pick your way between chunks of debris and metal. You catch something out of the corner of your eye, something you might have dismissed as just a reflection if you hadn't been on the lookout for them all day. Sloshing over to it, you reach down and lift whatever is generating the Valkan signature out of the water. You blink a few times and tilt your head at what you're holding.

It's... a necklace of some kind. The silver links are incredibly small and fine, making the whole length slither in your hands, although it is broken and kinked in places. Hanging from the chain is a small pendant made of glass and metal. A small cage of metal formed a framework upon which the outer layer of dark glass grew, forming something roughly shaped like a bullet. The link of the chain went through the tip, which was colored black, like the internal cage and the exposed frame of the aircraft.

You realize that the the necklace itself isn't what's glowing, but in fact what's inside the pendant. It was tightly contained, shining a dark green through the glass and shifting like a fluid. The color reminds you of microbes and plants under a microscope. If you looked very closely, for a brief second before your eyes gave out, you swear you could see a seed, and maybe some roots.

>Quality added: 'Glass Pendant'

>Try and get the suit on the body open, see what's glowing in there.
>There's not much more you can do with the pendant... open it? It might ruin whatever is in there, though.
>[Write-In]

>>3762490

>Try and get the suit on the body open, see what's glowing in there.

>>3762537
+1

>>3762490
>>There's not much more you can do with the pendant... open it? It might ruin whatever is in there, though.

>Try and get the suit on the body open, see what's glowing in there.
Writing and probably making new thread when I finish.

New thread here:

>>3765021