“...speak nothing but your mind. Say nothing but the truth. Keep all our secrets, and outwit them both… and you just might survive.”
Willow was… unusually dour today. Grey and overcast as the skies…
She was stroking her middle with a tender maternity she only ever reserved for Alphi… But her mind was a million light years away, eyes drooping and… Well, if the Princess had to guess, the air was a bit hopeless…?
“What… could possibly have happened, teacher? Things are that dire?” Alphi asked, carefully. She felt as if she was using her staff to prod a bomb… But the Loretracker merely shook her head…
“No… not as of yet. It was simply the advice that Zochosa gave about speaking to the other Forgemothers… I was just remembering it now…”
Alphi nodded… she was stood beside her, letting the Caravan carry them across the open fields and towards their destination… They went to the Ward, the neutral ground where all felt just a bit safer with one another’s presence… though it could be said that they needed no encouragement to work together…
Grim news on the wind… An ominous broadcast calling for the leaders of each faction to convene. Normally, that would be the Forgemothers… But with Gaia missing, Mars uncooperative, and Neptune… apparently ‘busy’… It meant that negotiations would be taking place at the Elites’ level instead. It was a tremendous burden for Forgeborn who were far lesser in power than those who had created them, but…
...well, the situation hadn’t exactly been normal, even since day one…
“...you are the Forgemother of our clan, at least in waiting. I shudder to think of what might have happened if you had been forced to convene with Mars and Neptune alone, as is typical… But luckily, if I can even say such a thing, all of our Forgemothers seem to be… indisposed. We can only do the best we see fit, Alphi…”
“...And I will learn more fully of it once we are there…?”“Mm, we ARE here, my dear princess...”
Up onto a fine green hill, and over to see the valley spread before them. The grand hexagonal complex that was the Ward, or more officially, the Outpost for Internal Forge Research. Here, Scientists, Soldiers, and Rangers alike stood to gain knowledge from the rapidly advancing technology that Gaia had blessed them with. They worked together with a fanatical zeal usually reserved solely for Grand Forgemother Allma herself…
“Do I speak?” Alphi asked, hesitantly…
“...you know far more than you once did, Alphi. If you have something to say… then I would trust that by now your judgement on whether to say it or not…”...Willow sighed and leaned back on an arm… She stared down at her middle… Alphi could tell she was doing so more lately, though as to why… even the Loretracker’s close confidant could not say, and merely had to watch…
“Then… I will try not to disappoint you, Loretracker…” Alphi said, softly. She drew her cloak around herself, as the Caravan lumbered slowly to a stop and thumped to the ground like a lazy beast. Willow pushed herself up to a stand, took Alphi in arm, and then hopped down to land gracefully there, before striding forth towards the building...
Inside, the usual bustle of activity hadn’t calmed for a moment since the building was erected. Scientists scanned patients laid out on beds, repairing any faults they found. New Forgeborn who had been reluctant or wary now seemed to be nearly lined up far out of the front door in desire to have the internal forge granted to them…
It was a perfect way to test and vet this technology. Those taking it on knew the risks, after all, and yet nearly every single Forgeborn on Ova had been desperate to have one anyway…
...and the few who couldn’t have one installed, for whatever reason, were forced to stare in utter longing…
Viden’s productivity had steadily declined over her tenure on Ova. A ‘lesser elite’ like her was expected to perform her duties diligently and without delay, or fuss. Yet here she was, stood and staring for minutes at a time, instead of hauling her load across the lobby and where it needed to be.She settled her hands on her hips, staring down at her midsection with a faint glare of frustration just barely visible… It was heavy, yes, full of vital materials that needed to be stored and transported just so. She was a living cargo crate, in other words… and cargo didn’t kick, or heat her insides in any way but uncomfortably…
She never even used to get this big, but Ova’s unique situation was straining her limits… And her patience. Like any other Forgeborn, she’d become captivated with the idea of the Internal Forge… yet thanks to her specific design, and the fact her torso was the only place that storage could reasonably be placed… she was barred from having one. After all, it’d eliminate her purpose entirely…
So she stared. Increasingly, she did so without concealing much of her longing. Every bot around her sported a tummy. Even her subordinates, the dummies, had them… Some had even managed to sneak them aboard themselves, so she heard… But her?
No. Nothing but jealous stares from the corner… until a mechanical eye lowered from the ceiling and focused on her…
‘M.U.L.U. Viden – explain current inaction; malfunction?’“...A-Ah, calculating best vectors, Ward...”
The eye stared for a few more moments before retracting. Viden sighed and turned to get back to work… As she did, the front doors slid open with a soft hum…
Viden and the rest of the lower bots watched as Willow strode through the crowd, Alphi perched on her folded arm. Despite what might have been seen as cute, the air of foreboding that they brought with them was enough to bring a lull to the chatter that bounded off the walls of the Ward…
Willow was focused forward, eyes locked on a door at the other end of the lobby… The Administrator's office…
She stopped before it. There was a brief chirping, a soft flicker of light… then the door opened. Willow silently ascended the stairs behind, and the door closed once she was out of sight…...the bustle eventually picked back up, but with a bit more of a chilly air to it. Viden couldn’t shake the feeling that someone had just carried a corpse through the room… So she did what was best and locked her mind to her task… Away from her nagging desires… Away from the atmosphere of gloom…
...while Alphi was forced to plunge into it.
Willow entered the Admin Office. It was dimly lit by a large screen and little else. Seri Vex stood in front of the screen, while Osiria and Jorien stood to one side of her. With Willow joining, the three factions stared across at one another, their eyes moving warily from one stony face to another. Even now, trust was hard to come by… If circumstances were just a bit worse, they might even have had weapons drawn and pointed…
“Thank you for being prompt.” Vex said, softly… “And doubly so, since we shouldn’t be here in the first place… But Gaia is…?”
“Still missing.” Willow answered, without hesitation. Alphi averted her eyes downward, hating this topic every time it came up. Her lost mother was being so desperately sought, but none seemed WORRIED for her… Especially not Willow, at least not as intensely as Alphi thought she might…
...but now was not the time to prod at that tender spot. Vex glanced at Osiria, who nodded, and the two then looked back at Willow...
“Likewise, Mars continues to be an asset we have to be very careful of.” Osiria said, in her usual weighty tone. Her hands were settled on her hips, and she was carrying her midsection far better now. Jorien, usually one to grandstand, was simply stood there with her sword planted in front of her. Her hands draped on it idly, and her eyes gazed into the distance… Her mind was occupied intensely… hopefully by the current situation, and not something frivolous. She had been a bit more subdued since the wastelands attack…
“...And to be frank, Neptune is… beginning to malfunction. I would speculate she was damaged in the crash at some point…”
None of them met each other’s eye at that. Every one of them remembered how… ‘eccentric’ Forgemother Neptune had been acting before the Loving Burden even crashed… But again, if there was a time to prod such pustules of problems open, it was past the point where it was a priority…
“So in essence.” Willow said, with an almost singsong note of sardonic cheer in her voice… “We are forced to take roles far above our station during a time of… crisis?”
“Crisis. Yes.” Seri Vex said, dryly. Jorien finally snorted and glanced up, specifically at Alphi…
“Far above our station? Is SHE not the genesis of a new generation? A Forgemother above all others?”She lifted her sword… though, even Alphi could see it was simply to lazily gesture, rather than threaten. The Wardancer had a reputation for being brash, of course, but one didn’t survive on the battlefield by putting a blade to an ally’s throat…
“Why are we worried? She can simply calculate how to get us out of these messes, eh?”
...there was an awkward silence. Vex had no reason to interject, but Willow didn’t want to downplay Alphi’s impact, after she had played it up for so long… she just… never expected the Princess would have to prove herself so thoroughly, and so quickly…
...but she was more than capable, so she’d shown. She lifted her chin, and hummed gently…
“Then… If that’s the expectation, why not tell me precisely what this crisis is? We can begin to work out solutions once all the information is on the table.”
...Jorien looked nearly as offended as when her strike was blocked. Her gears ground in annoyance before she planted her sword again, heedless of the damage to the floor…
“...More than one disaster, heh. Like we’ve been placed in the crossfire of a cosmic feud of some kind…”
“...Mm.” Vex muttered, speaking up and retaking the reigns of the conversation… before it became a confrontation…
“I’m sure by this point, you’ve at least received confirmed reports of Scrapper sightings…”
Willow and Alphi glanced at one another, then nodded…
“Unavoidable. Our scouts were coming across corpses long before we spied live specimens. It took us some time to actually confirm them… That level of coordination means…”
“They are not without a leader.” Osiria spoke, her eyes narrowing hatefully… “An Elite… Or a network of them… I needn’t say, it’s disgraceful when even the Dummies are cut off from the Signal, and forced to fight their former comrades… But to willingly defect… To be such a seed of corruption. There is no forgiveness for that…”
“...An Elite?” Alphi spoke up, a bit emboldened by deflecting Jorien so handily… “Or…?”
“...What are you suggesting, girl?”
Alphi puffed a bit, annoyed at being spoken down to even now…
“Could it not be some Scrapper equivalent of a Forgemother… if not a defected one?”
A Defect. Indeed… And the very word sent Osiria and Jorien on edge… They glared in unison at Alphi, who tried not to be intimidated… though she did avert her eyes…
“...That would be a grand catastrophe indeed. Defects rarely show themselves openly, but… They would be trapped on this planet as us…”
“Or potentially…” Vex said, her voice tinged with anxious exhaustion… “...they had made a base here far before us. We know some Scrappers have had the capability of interplanetary, and even interstellar transport. Stolen flagships… disgraceful as it seems… But it shouldn’t be questioned that they exist, given the blockade that was waiting for us is why we’re stranded in the first place.”
Vex placed her palm firmly on the table…
“...We can’t rule out the possibility that there is a vast contingency of Scrappers on this planet. An army. And if indeed there is a Defect…”
...she let that hang in the air… She barely needed to say more… The situation was indeed more dire than it had seemed…
“...our reports have shown no recent major Scrapper activity…” Willow said, carefully… “Skirmishes. Ambushes. But nothing concerted…”
“That will change soon.” Osiria said, bitterly… “We roused a nest of them, now they know that we know. Within a few weeks, this could escalate into full on battle for survival. I’ve already begun to mobilize the troops and organize defences…”
Willow turned her head away and huffed sharply. Her hand went gingerly to her midsection…
“...But is that all? I wouldn’t think so.” the Loretracker said, after a few moments…
“No, of course not.” Vex answered… “We’ve made contact with the homeworld. I’m sure your networks have relayed that to you…”
“I’d yet to confirm its efficacy but… Yes. I had heard that communications have been re-established…”
“For the moment, they will not be maintained nor improved…”
Silence. All who were there understood what it meant… They had reached out and told their homeworld of their distress… and now, they weren’t eager to reach out again.
“...What can we expect?” Alphi pushed forward again. She was far more likely to shove past the taboos of the homeworld when she had never visited it before… “I assume this means that the leadership… The Grand Forgemother… She isn’t pleased? But surely she can understand the circumstances…”
Osiria’s eyebrow raised, though her expression was one of mixed pride… She couldn’t help but think highly of any who would be so bold as to strike at their very ‘queen’…
“Whether she understands or not isn’t the issue at hand. She certainly already understands… and if she deems us to be at fault, we will be punished.” Vex spoke up, glancing at Osiria… “In this case, I don’t have any good feelings over how she reacted to our communication. For now, we improve our current situation unless it is of the utmost dire need that we call the homeworld again…”
“So we’re on our own.” Willow summed up, with terse annoyance… “And not only that, you know that the Grand Forgemother will not sit idly by and forget about us… no? What if she discovers the designs of the Internal Forge… Did you not see that it might be taken as blasphemy without the proper introduction…?”
Osiria subtly moved a bit more between Willow and Vex. The Scientist simply rubbed the side of her head and sighed, with a nod…
“...Of course. I… I already transmitted the data, and I would assume she did indeed come to some conclusion like that… I had assumed she would take it in stride, given it was Gaia’s accomplishment. She is much more lenient about her daughters than us ‘lower rabble’ of Elites…”
Alphi crossed her arms and thought of the strange irony, given how she’d seen Vex treat some of the Dummies that worked for her…
“But she didn’t.” Osiria finished… “And now…”
“A fleet would take months to get here. Potentially years, if their coordinates are not perfectly triangulated… Which is very possible, given…”
Willow was the one to lift an arm to silence Vex… The normally very relaxed and quiet Loretracker was fuming, but remained as stoic as the trees she was modelled on…
“...The Scrappers are what we focus on… But… The threat from enraging Allma is something you should all know by now…”
She said the words with brief hesitation, looking from face to face for recognition…
Alphi, of course, patiently waited for explanation as always. Osiria glanced away and growled, while Vex simply glanced away and held a hand up, as if she could deflect the question physically. Only Jorien saw the reactions and looked confused…
“...Come now, Willow. You can’t mean…”
“I do. She will send someone among us to spy, and report to her. She will send an Assassin.”
Jorien chuckled weakly, more of an annoyed bark than a laugh… “Ah yes, the metal monster under every bad Forgeborn’s recharge pod? That old legend?”
“Do you honestly think…” Osiria spoke up, in a weary tone… “That it is so ridiculous? That Allma has spies and killers at her disposal… And that she would attempt to hide that from us?”
“...especially with false rumours that it is indeed just a bad legend. Given the data are somewhat conclusive, I can say with some definitiveness that the Assassin clade is real.”
“Why would… she send an assassin to us?” Alphi asked, hesitantly. The others again all glanced at her at once, but… rather than the mocking expressions or annoyed tones, Vex answered with what could almost be bitter pity for Alphi’s naivety...
“Allma’s vision is… rigid. It is a precise and intricate plan for the future, in which each piece must be cohesive and efficient. Inefficient pieces are… excised. Sometimes, even efficient pieces are excised, if advances allow replacement or… outright elimination.”
Alphi looked taken aback…
“You’re saying if she thinks we’re doing a poor job, she’ll KILL us???”
Silence…
“...What kind of psychotic deity icon do you worship?!”
“WHAT?!” Jorien snarled. This time she did attempt to lift her sword to bare it at Alphi for the blasphemy… But Osiria’s own sword slammed down to block her…“Do not… demand zealotry. Not here. Ordinarily… I would agree with you. Allma’s vision is what drives us. She created our homeworld, spread our numbers across her solar system… But in this case, I feel there are things she cannot understand about what has happened on Ova… and until she does, we are at risk…”
She released the sword lock, and sheathed her blade… Then she settled her hands on her midsection. Subconsciously, Vex did the same… and then, all of them did…
“...It isn’t simply us that we’re risking, either.” Osiria concluded, with a sigh… “As awful as it may seem… We are forced to defend what is more important…”
“...Are these Newborns more important than Allma?” Jorien asked, wistfully… She did so innocently, genuinely wondering… But it was a question that made them all wince… None could think of an easy answer…
“...Hm. Are we in agreement that this is the best course of action?” Vex asked. Willow, who had been intensely lost in thought, turned back…
“I agree that we should strengthen our roots here planetside… Who knows? If Allma brands us traitors for bearing this wonderful gift, then maybe that is what we should desire anyway… Ova would make an almost ideal home...”
Another uncomfortable silence, but Osiria grunted softly in acknowledgement…
“We entrench. We begin to plan not for escape off planet, but for longevity on it…”
“I’ll… Slow research focus on space travel equipment repairs…” Vex sighed… “I still think I should devote SOME resources towards it…”
“...We’ll review.” Osiria muttered, turning towards the screen… “We no longer have the luxury of idle curious research, nor lazy wanderings of the forests. If we are indeed to survive, then it’s finally time I did the task I was brought along for…”
The General turned, looking from her sister, to her Scientist, to Alphi…
“...Machina of all Forgeborn breed… We must stand together. For now…? We prepare for war...”